From Puritanism to the age of reason

"We recognize instinctively the importance of the issues raised in the religious discussion of the Restoration era. The place of reason, the character of morality, the limits of authority, the nature of the universe, the reign of law -- these are all questions which we still debate. What is more, we discuss them in essentially the same spirit as that which first emerged in the latter part of the seventeenth century. The period of transition is the generation which followed the Restoration, and during those years the new lines of thought were marked out." [Introduction] The author's main concern is with the eclipse of Calvinism, the Cambridge Platonists, the religious significance of Locke, Toland and the rise of Deism, the relationship between the Church and the civil power and the question of religious toleration.