The hymns of Isaac Watts are a remarkable blend of biblical, theological, liturgical, poetic, musical, and practical dimensions, some of which have seldom been touched upon in previous studies of the hymn writer. In this book, you will find analyses of Watts’s texts from each of these perspectives. As shown by this study, it is not only these individual factors but their combination that made Watts’s hymns innovative but also effective and long lasting in his own time—and that makes many of them still useful and widely sung today.

From his first publication of hymns in 1707, common knowledge regarding Isaac Watts (1674–1748) often revolves around his hymn-writing legacy. Though Watts legacy as a hymnographer is significant, he also functions as a key transitional figure between the English Puritans and the Evangelicals during eighteenth-century English dissent. As a pastor, theologian, philosopher, and literary mainstay of his era, Watts' influence grew well beyond his early work in hymnody to impact scores of Christians on both sides of the Atlantic. Watts' approach to Christian spirituality is an area of his thought thats been unexplored. This book provides the first ever analysis of Watts' theological vision for the Christian spiritual life. In emphasizing the experience of holiness and happiness, Watts leans heavily upon his Reformed theological heritage to underscore how knowing and loving God are central to God's preparation of the soul for heaven.

The Textual Culture of English Protestant Dissent 1720-1800 explores the sociable character of dissenters' teaching and writing in the eighteenth century by focussing on manuscript cultures and publishing projects.