Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 84:2 (Fall 2022)
Article: Joseph Alleine: Contender For Conversion
Author: Joshua Brownfield

WTJ 84:2 (Fall 2022) p. 281

Joseph Alleine: Contender For Conversion

Joshua Brownfield

Only a few years after his death, Joseph Alleine (bap. 1634, d. 1668) was becoming one of the best-known Puritan writers of the seventeenth century. His 1671 biography, The Life and Death of That Excellent Minister of Christ Mr. Joseph Alleine, was printed in seven editions over six years. His best-known work, the 1672 An Alarme to Unconverted Sinners, sold 20,000 copies its first year, and when it was re-issued under a new title in 1691 it sold 50,000 copies. Alleine’s full purposes behind writing the Alarme have been obscured in part, however, by his depiction in The Life and Death.

In keeping with portrayals of other Bartholomeans in the 1670s, Alleine’s biographers described him as a man of moderation, so concerned with the conversion that it was almost to the exclusion of any interest in polemic. Since its publication, Alarme has been understood solely as a timeless work of piety in which Alleine urged his unconverted readers to flee from their sins to Christ. It is the thesis of this dissertation that when Joseph Alleine’s best-selling work, An Alarme to Unconverted Sinners, is closely examined, a long-forgotten polemical dimension is revealed. In these pages, Alleine sounded his Alarme not only as a timeless call to sinners to be converted, but also to address the Admission Controversy, a dispute over access to the Lord’s Supper that raged from 1651 to 1659. The Admission Controversy began with John Humfrey’s influential call for free admission to the Lord’s Supper, which Humfrey justified with a re-working of the topic of conversion. Joseph Alleine’s Alarme was the means by which he sought to correct the views of Humfrey and others whose understanding of conversion would offer false hope to the unconverted.

Alleine was not only willing to fight for conversion; he was also willing to innovate for conversion. His Alarme, when examined alongside his other writings on conversion and the Life and Death, indicates that in his parochial catechesis he not only conventionally instilled the tenets of Christianity, but also examined for evidence of conversion. This diverged from the influential prescriptions of the London Provincial Assembly that called for examination for visible wickedness and knowledge of the essentials of the Christian faith.

WTJ 84:2 (Fall 2022) p. 282

Perhaps because of the intensity of his examination, Alleine also innovated with respect to methods of assurance. He included a Scottish-style personal covenant in his prescribed steps for conversion. This written covenant had a dual purpose: to solemnize the convert’s transaction with God and to pr...