Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in subsequent chapters of this book. The book addresses in a sustained and rounded form the transformations and permutations that the concepts of sin and salvation underwent over the course of the reformation in England, as well as the practical consequences of these changes as lived. The concepts of sin and salvation lie at the heart of Christianity, and in that sense are often presented as the very embodiment of continuity and indelible religious truth. Sin and salvation also underpinned contemporary understandings of human anthropology, while increasingly nuanced interpretations of the range of possible sins fed into elite and popular perceptions of orthodoxy, and of its mirror image, heresy. Tara Hamling's essay charts some of the ways in which concern with sin and salvation could be made visible within the post-reformation domestic interior, focussing on biblical images representing divine deliverance from fire.