The Sacrifice of Life Slain by the Twenty-nine Instruments of Death

John ChurchProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.1
Word count
31K words
Chapters
4

Tags

English Originals Religion Faith ThemeMartyrdomMeditation on LifeMoral CultivationIntellectual CommentaryPopular ExplanationChristian TheologyReligious Sermons

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Sacrifice of Life Slain by the Twenty-nine Instruments of Death by J. ChurchAuthor: Church, J. (John), 1780?-1825?,Language: English, Class: BV: Philosophy, Psychology, Religion: Christianity: Practical theology, Worship, Release Date: Jan 2, 2019

Editor's review

This is a public-domain text with a strong tone of religious exhortation. Its author, J. Church, lived in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and the title refers through "twenty-nine instruments of death" to the various ways people meet their end, leading on to reflection on the fragility of life and on salvation through faith. Its value lies in showing the rhetoric and view of life and death of popular religious writing of that era: it uses vivid, warning images to prompt self-examination, its language is plain, and its structure unfolds in layers around a central theme. For readers studying Christian practical theology, sermon literature, or nineteenth-century popular reading matter, it is a small sample open to analysis; ordinary readers can also sense from it how different ages express themselves on death and faith. It should be read as a historical text rather than a contemporary devotional guide; noting the distance between its context and one's own beliefs, and reading with a documentary awareness, will better bring out its stylistic features and intellectual threads.

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Reading tips

  1. Learn about the author's era and the background of the sermon genre before turning to the main text.
  2. Treat the enumeration of the "twenty-nine instruments of death" as a rhetorical structure and analyze its exhortatory logic.
  3. Read it alongside religious pamphlets of the same period to observe what popular religious writing shares and where it differs.
  4. Note the images that strike you as you read, while marking their period limitations, and avoid applying them directly.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4

FAQ

What do the "twenty-nine instruments of death" in the title refer to? This is the author's rhetorical way of summing up the various paths to death; the specific enumeration unfolds around disease, accidents, and other ways of endangering life, with the aim of using warning images to lead into exhortation on the fragility of life and salvation through faith. It is a common device of sermon literature, not a strict medical or statistical classification, and should be understood in terms of rhetoric and period context.
Can this book be used as daily devotional reading? With caution. It was produced in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and its language, theological emphases, and manner of exhortation all bear clear period marks, differing considerably from the concerns and expression of contemporary devotional works. If used for devotion, read it with historical awareness, take its intent to prompt reflection on life, and distinguish the parts unsuitable for direct application today.
Can readers without a religious background understand it? Broadly speaking, yes. The language is plain and the theme centers on life, death, and faith without relying on complex theological argument. But readers without a religious background may feel alienated by its frequent exhortatory tone and scriptural citations. It is advisable to first learn the characteristics of nineteenth-century popular sermon style and read it as a historical and cultural text, which will make it easier to follow.

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About the author

John Church Author · British · 1780–1835

John Church (1780–1835) was an English Independent minister and Evangelical writer. Some bibliographic sources give his dates as "1780?–1825?", while the library record lists 1780–1835; the discrepancy cannot be fully resolved from the limited public information available. He is said to have been a foundling raised in the Foundling Hospital, and he began preaching in 1807. The library holds 23 of his works, mostly sermons and religious tracts, including A Confession of Evangelical Principles, The Precious Name, The Believer's Confidence in a Faithful God, and The Glory of Grace Effected by Weak Means. Centered on Evangelical faith, his writings urge believers to trust in God and hold fast to hope in adversity, showing a distinctively Independent and Evangelical character.