Opening Scripture

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Opening the Text
1. "Humane Skill" and "The Arte of Prophecying"
2. John Cotton: Reading, Preaching, and the Rhetoric of Inevitability
3. Thomas Shepard: God's Word and God's Words
4. Applying the Word Home: Thomas Hooker's Affective Reading and Preaching
5. "Goe Home and Consider": Lay Responses to the Preached Text
6. "Mist and Fog": Roger Williams and the Problem of Interpretation
7. "All the Strife amongst Us": Consensus, Reading, and Revelation in the Antinomian Controversy
Epilogue: Interpretive Expertise and Questions of Baptism
Appendix: The Problem of the Texts
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index