Few teachings of the Puritans have provoked such strong reactions and conflicting interpretations as their views on preparing for saving faith. Many twentieth-century scholars dismissed preparation as a prime example of regression from the Reformed doctrine of grace for a man-centered legalism. In Prepared by Grace, for Grace, Joel Beeke and Paul Smalley make careful analysis of the Puritan understanding of preparatory grace, demonstrate its fundamental continuity with the Reformed tradition, and identify matters where even the Puritans disagreed among themselves. Clearing away the many misconceptions and associated accusations of preparationism, this study is sure to be the standard work on how the Puritans understood the ordinary way God leads sinners to Christ. Table of The Question of Preparationism

1. Preparation and Modern Scholarship
2. Precedents to Puritan Augustine to Calvin
3. Preparation and Early English Perkins, Sibbes, and Preston
4. Preparation for William Ames
5. Preparation in Early New England (I): Thomas Hooker
6. Preparation in Early New England (II): Shepard and Pemble
7. Preparation and the Antinomian John Cotton
8. Preparation at the Pinnacle of Westminster, Burroughs, and Guthrie
9. Preparation under a Scholastic Norton
10. Preparation and Later Puritan Goodwin and Firmin
11. Later Puritan Flavel and Bunyan
12. Jonathan Edwards and Seeking God
13. Continental Reformed Zwingli to Witsius
14. The Grace of Preparation for Faith William Ames' Theological Disputation on Preparation