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A refutation, written by the English theologian William Twisse, of a manuscript treatise on the subject of predestination, penned by the Puritan minister John Cotton several years before his arrival in New England, where he would become one of the Massachusetts Bay Colony's leading ministers. Cotton's manuscript treatise on predestination was written about the year 1625 while he was still minister at St. Botolph's Church in Boston, Lincolnshire, England. As literary historian Everett Emerson explains, "Cotton set forth his views in writing for the benefit of a neighboring minister, and this work then circulated in manuscript for many years. In 1633 Wiliam Twisse, a Perkinsian theologian, had the opportunity to read the work and to prepare a refutation, which Cotton saw before he left that year for New England." In his refutation, Twisse argues "that Cotton's views," as expressed in his manuscript treatise, come "dangerously close to the Arminian heresy" (DNB). Sargent Bush, editor of the definitive edition of Cotton's correspondence, notes that both Cotton's treatise and Twisse's reply "remained in manuscript another thirteen years after that. Finally, when Twisse was serving as moderator of the Westminster Assembly, and just a year before his death, his work appeared with the title A Treatise of Mr Cottons, Clearing Certaine Doubts concerning Predestination, Together with an Examination Thereof. This work is often taken as a full expression of Cotton's work on predestination, but it clearly is not. It is, rather, just those portions of Cotton's thought on the subject with which Twisse wished to express disagreement. Even in that respect, Cotton's views are very briefly stated, presumably in his words, while Twisse's 'examination' of them is much fuller." Despite the selective nature of Twisse's extracts, however, and in the absence of Cotton's original manuscript, of which no copies appear to survive, the portions of Cotton's manuscript published in A Treatise of Mr. Cottons can be counted among his earliest works. Cotton never published a response to Twisse's refutation, perhaps because, as his biographer, Larzer Ziff, points out, "by that time, 1646, Cotton was in another land and of another mind, preaching a more consistent doctrine and willing to accept Twisse's rebuke in silence." As Twisse himself notes in his "Epistle unto the Reader," his response to Cotton's treatise had been "communicated.unto Mr. Cotton, who carried it with him into New-England" and had been "approved of by Mr. Cotton himself." John Cotton (1585-1652) was the leading light among New England's first generation of ministers and has been called "one of the ablest and most influential men of his day in Massachusetts" (DAB). Educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, Cotton received both his B.A. and M.A. before becoming a fellow at Emmanuel College. In 1609, Cotton experienced a conversion in response to the preaching of Richard Sibbes. In 1612, he accepted a call to serve as vicar to St. Botolph's Church in Boston, Lincolnshire. There, Cotton enjoyed his liberty for many years, despite refusing to conform to the modes of worship prescribed by the Anglican high church. By 1630, however, Cotton faced growing persecution. That year, he preached a farewell sermon before John Winthrop and others as they prepared to set out aboard the Arbella to found the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Cotton joined them three years later to become minister of Boston's First Church. In New England, Cotton quickly found himself embroiled in what came to be known as the Antinomian Controversy, when several members of his congregation who had followed him from England, including one Anne Hutchinson, cited his doctrines as the foundation of their heterodox views. Cotton himself managed to weather the controversy but only after denouncing Hutchinson and her followers. Cotton would go on to become a "key spokesman for the New England polity," playing a significant role in the framing of.
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