God’s Instrument but for a Time: Hugh Latimer’s Self-Perception as a Reformist Clergyman in Tudor England

God’s Instrument but for a Time considers the development of Hugh Latimer’s evangelical convictions as a central figure in the English reformations during the sixteenth century. Recent scholarship has increasingly recognized the Protestant bias and questioned the factual accuracy of John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (1563), which is more commonly known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Timothy Stanton’s method-tracing the growth of Latimer’s evangelical convictions from his extant sermons and letters-avoids the pitfalls of an over-reliance on Foxe by allowing Latimer to speak on his own terms. In this work, Stanton approaches Latimer’s life and thought topically rather than chronologically and so offers a fresh perspective. He aims to tell Latimer’s story in his own words rather than merely retelling the triumphalistic stories that English-speaking Protestants like to tell and are most familiar with-stories that fixate on a martyr’s courage and victorious death but frequently neglects the life, thought, and piety of the person behind them. The portrait that emerges from Stanton’s research is of Latimer in his humanity as one who is sometimes brash and stubborn, often meek and even self-deprecating, always in trouble, and ever increasingly convicted that English evangelicals must live and, if necessary, “suffer for God’s word’s sake.”

136 pages.