Thread: History of the Solemn Assembly

Dear list,

I am doing some research on public fasting from a Puritan position and was wondering if you could make any suggestions for references works. Any help in this regard would be appreciated.

Blessings!

JL

[Edited on 10-11-2006 by JOwen]

Jerrold,
Do you mean Solomn Assembly or is there some assembly under Solomon you are asking about?

er, Solomn Assembly...:P

How about "solemn" assembly?

Some Puritan resources on fasting:

Westminster Confession of Faith, Larger Catechism 108 (see Fisher's Catechism 50.22-27 and other commentaries) and Directory of Public Worship on religious fasting
Gisbertus Voetius, Politicae Ecclesiasticae, has a section on religious fasting
Henry Scudder, The Christian's Daily Walk, has a chapter on religious fasting
Archibald Hall, Gospel Worship, has a chapter on religious fasting
Matthew Barker, A Religious Fast. The duty whereof is asserted, described, persuaded, in a brief exercise upon -- (one of the Cripplegate Sermons)
As I recall, there are several treatments of fasting in the Works of Matthew Henry and in Wilhelmus a Brakel's The Christian's Reasonable Service
Puritan Fast Sermons
Christopher Durston, "For the Better Humiliation of the People": Public Days of Fasting and Thanksgiving during the English Revolution, The Seventeenth Century 7 (1992)
Tom Webster, Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England: The Caroline Puritan Movement, 1620 - 1643, has a chapter on Fasting and Prayer with helpful references and quotes
Nicholas Bownde, The Holy Exercise of Fasting Described (1604)
Arthur Hildersham, The Doctrine of Fasting and Prayer and Humiliation (delivered at a publically appointed fast in 1625) (1633)
Thomas Cartwright, The Holy Exercise of a True Fast in Cartwrightiana
Henry Holland, The Christian Exercise of Fasting, Private and Publicke (1596)


Stephen Morton, Susan Doran, Christopher Durston, Princes, Pastors and People: The Church and Religion in England, 1500 - 1700, p. 99:

The religious life of moderate puritans was not confined to the parish church. Collective public and private fasting was another extremely important aspect of their spirituality. Fast-days took the form of a day devoted entirely to a round of sermons, prayers and psalm-singing, the participants abstaining from food and drink until they shared in a simple communal meal at the conclusion of the day. Patrick Collinson has argued that this practice was so central to the puritan experience of religion that 'an anthropologist wanting to describe puritan culture...should be led without further delay to the puritan fast' (Collinson, 1996, p. 50). In addition, within their godly households puritans fasted, discussed sermons, catechised their children, and pored over the Bible, Foxe's Book of Martyrs and other devotional manuals and domestic conduct books. Their experience of religion thus combined an austere private spirituality with the warmth and conviviality of good fellowship, or what they themselves labelled 'holy sympathy with the godly.'

and

Another important thing to note about the Westminster Divines (and indeed of many Christians living in those days) is that they were men of prayer. During the time when the Assembly was meeting, Parliament held regular Fast Days on the last Wednesday of every month. Here’s an example of how Puritan Fast Days were conducted:

It was upon these occasions his (John Howe’s) common way to begin about nine in the morning with prayer for about a quarter of an hour in which he begged a blessing on the work of the day: and afterward read and expounded a chapter or psalm in which he spent three-quarters of an hour. Then he prayed for about an hour, preached for another hour and prayed for about half an hour. After this he retired and took some little refreshment for about a quarter of an hour more (the people singing all the while) and then came again into the pulpit and prayed for another hour and gave them another sermon of about an hour’s length, and so concluded the service of the day at about four of the clock in the evening with about half an hour or more in prayer.

The seven hours of such a service included about three and a quarter hours of prayer and two and three quarters hours of preaching. The Parliamentary Fast Days likewise tended to have even more prayer than preaching, sometimes with two one-hour sermons and two prayers of two hours length each!

Source

great stuff.

Originally posted by JOwen
great stuff.

My pastor, Steven Dilday, preached on religious fasting today.

Public Orders into Moral Communities: Eighteenth-Century Fast and Thanksgiving Day Sermons in the Dutch Republic and New England by Peter van Rooden