‘In my private reading of the scriptures'

This chapter explores the techniques and meaning associated with reading the Bible alone in the home. It reveals the techniques of reading and reflection, writing and re-reading by which the Bible was put to use over questions of assurance of salvation and the manner of the godly life. The Bible was central to every aspect of early modern society and a principal feature of the Protestant message was the responsibility it laid upon all Christians to understand and to apply the teachings of the Bible to their lives. For the methods deployed by Owen and Elianor Stockton were outgrowths of a century in which Bible-reading spread beyond clerical circles to a lay readership. Owen Stockton read the Bible in terms of Calvinist predestination and located the search for assurance in the context of the covenant of grace between God and the elect.