Peter Nockles

Oxford's Protestant Spy

History & Biography

“In this thoroughly researched and compelling study, Andrew Atherstone's achievement is to shed welcome light on the shadowy figure of C. P. Golightly, the bete noir of the Tractarians. While Golightly's reputation as a 'clerical gadfly' and 'witch hunter' may not be entirely dispelled, Atherstone's balanced study gives much needed serious consideration to Golightly's wider career as a Protestant churchman. In particular, he gives a subtle and nuanced reading of Golightly's apparent partisanship, concluding that for all his anti-Tractarian polemic and scare-mongering he had no intention of being identified with any species of 'low churchmanship.'”

The Limits of a Catholic Spirit

History & Biography

“Yates presents a balanced historical investigation of a neglected subject, John Wesley’s troubled relationship with Roman Catholicism. She shows how Wesley’s devotion to the early fathers, to primitive church discipline, and to his life-long Arminianism led to recurring but misplaced charges of ‘popery’ and ‘Jesuitism’ by Anglican and Calvinist critics, compounded by misguided perceptions of Jacobite sympathies. She explores the nature and basis of Wesley’s enduring anti-Catholic proclivities, exemplified in his writings and experiences in Ireland, while doing full justice to his admiration for Roman Catholic devotional literature. She explains how this spiritual irenicism coexisted with his doctrinal and political anti-Catholicism. The end result is a coherent and measured analysis of the subtle complexities and tensions in Wesley’s thought and practice.”

True Christianity

Theology

“This sophisticated theological treatment of the thought of John Wesley's chosen successor John Fletcher (1729-1785), heavily based on deep research in the vast Fletcher archive in the Methodist Archives & Research Centre at the John Rylands Library, represents an invaluable contribution to existing scholarship. Frazier's in-depth study provides an admirable example of what David Bebbington has recently called the recent 'Evangelical Discovery of History' (though some might call it a 'rediscovery'). Frazier rescues Fletcher from the confines of the traditional Arminian-Calvinist binary by showing how his doctrine of accommodation provided a unifying corrective to both those theological systems. He demonstrates how Fletcher's union of grace and nature provided the foundation for a sophisticated theology of history and was thus an important contribution to both Evangelical and wider religious historiography. More controversially, Frazier rescues Fletcher from what he regards as the narrow categorisations provided by the Wesleyan-Holiness paradigm and tradition which has come to dominate recent interpretations of Fletcher's thought. This is historical theology at its best.”