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This thesis compares various aspects of the preaching ministries conducted by two Methodist contemporaries, preachers, and professed ‘men of one book’, John Wesley and George Whitefield.  One of the principal ways in which Wesley and Whitefield manifested their desire to be ‘men of one book’ was through a life-long commitment to itinerant preaching.  Indeed it was especially in their capacity as ‘preachers of one book’ that Wesley and Whitefield feature so prominently in an evangelical revival that spanned not only England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and the American colonies, but also included Calvinists and Armenians.  But even though itinerant preaching occupied privileged place in the efforts of Wesley and Whitefield to further evangelical revival, their public ministries did not consist wholly of spoken sermons.  Instead, both deliberately pursued a ‘print and preach’ ministry, where their published sermons complemented and reinforced the sermons they preached. In order to remain sensitive to their dual commitment to the spoken and printed work, and in response to the conspicuous paucity of intentionally comparative studies that focus on the full-orbed preaching ministries conducted by these two Church of England clergymen, this thesis compares Wesley’s and Whitefield’s style, delivery and rationale for field-preaching, paying particular attention to the influence of Scripture on these facets of their spoken sermons.  In addition, various aspects of their sermons as they appear in printed form are compared.  This includes a comparison of the function of their published sermons within their wider ministries, how their printed sermons reflected the way they used, applied and interpreted the Bible, and also how they understood its prominent doctrines.  Ultimately, Wesley and Whitefield manifested their singular desire to be men of one book through preaching ministries that were by no means identical, yet equally committed to the spread of the gospel throughout the transatlantic world.

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In assessing the relationship between theology and politics in the writings of the three major Leveller pamphleteers of the 17th century, scholars have tended to search for, and focus upon, individual aspects of one or other of the Levellers' respective theological positions which they consider to have had democratic implications - as, for example, the notion of congregational church government, or a universalist understanding of salvation - which are then deemed to have been foundational to their political theories. But this approach is too abstract. The development of the Leveller platform can best be understood if it is seen as the attempt to answer a question posed by the Presbyterian opponents of religious liberty, and in particular, by William Prynne. In effect, the question was this: how can a society avoid anarchy and continue to exist in any civilised form if the social cement of established religion is removed? Prynne asked this of the Independents and sectaries in civil war England in the belief that there could be no satisfactory answer. Lilburne, Overton and Walwyn sought to provide one by appealing to principles drawn from the law of nature. The major influence on the development of their political thinking was the revolutionary theory of natural rights which underpinned Parliament's struggle against the King Theology was but a secondary factor. It was the fundamental secularity of the Levellers' approach which led to its rejection in 1649 by leading Independents and sectaries, whose own separatism was modified by millennialism and notions of 'godly rule'. Thus, while the Levellers' political platform developed as an attempt to translate into reality the separation of church and state that was at the heart of separatist ecclesiology, it failed because of the opposition of the very people whose ideas it was intended to reflect and embody.

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