Practical Works

Practical works were designed to enable readers to practise the Christian life. This chapter begins with comparative accounts of collections of sermons and prayers and their intended audiences. Some sermon collections were meant for family worship on Sunday evenings, such as those by the Congregationalists Isaac Watts and John Mason; John Wesley’s were for Methodist preachers and societies; George Burder’s were for poor villagers and Sunday schools. Prayer collections analysed are Elizabeth Rowe’s Devout Exercises and those by the Presbyterian Samuel Bourn, the Unitarian William Enfield, the Congregationalist Samuel Palmer, and the Church of England evangelical James Stonhouse. The chapter is largely devoted to case studies of three devotional handbooks, William Law’s A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, Philip Doddridge’s The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul, and Henry Venn’s The Complete Duty of Man, with accounts of editions, adaptations, and readers’ responses.