Burnet, Gilbert

Gilbert Burnet's Discourse of the Pastoral Care

1997 0-7734-8537-6
Before his appointment in 1689 as Bishop of Salisbury, Gilbert Burnet had served as Professor of Divinity at Glasgow University, and during his exile in Holland he had served as a chaplain and advisor to William and Mary. Burnet accompanied William to England during the invasion that led to the change in monarchs. They rewarded Burnet with his episcopal see. His Discourse of the Pastoral Care, first published in 1692, with a new preface and chapter added to the third edition of 1713, was a pastoral care manual for ministers of the Church of England, and was in use throughout the 18th and well into the 19th century. Since the church had lost the power of coercive discipline, the treatise attempted to show pastors how to exert moral and spiritual discipline through the reliance on reason and moral persuasion. This critical edition provides an introduction to the life and thought of Gilbert Burnet, and provides an annotated text, giving biblical and bibliographical citations, as well as definitions of archaic terms.