ABSTRACT
The treatises by Richard Baxter and Spinkes bring the history of the art of suffering in the seventeenth century to a close, although the issue of God's government of the world continued to be the subject of inevitable and exhaustive debate. The arguments which the later seventeenth-century writers produced depend very largely on two major themes. The first is passive acceptance of suffering, which permits at least a degree of incomprehension about its meaning and purpose, and which ultimately rests on the unbridgeable distance between God the Creator and his creature, man. The second and perhaps equally important theme is the diminution of affliction, through generalization, compensation, naturalization, and emphasis on the universal, as distinct from the particular, providence of God. These two themes have always been in evidence at least to some extent, but their foregrounding in the context of the art of suffering in the second part of the seventeenth century is profoundly indicative of ideological change.
