This is a most timely book. It is timely in its application of the newish research interest in the history of the emotions to old debates about the impact of Protestantism: timely also in reminding historians of religion of the excitement of studying the Reformed after some years when the study of forms of Catholic identity has dominated the field. Alec Ryrie has established a formidable reputation as a historian of Reformed behaviour in the early years of religious change in England and Scotland, and most recently as the leader of a research network examining patterns of worship and devotion in the early modern world. He has approached these themes from an evangelical or Protestant perspective, though always acknowledging the diversity of religious experience and the fluidity of patterns of belief. Here we seem to have the book that he has long wanted to write, with an explicit focus on one part of the confessional landscape. This is emphatically, as its title says, a study of being Protestant: and more particularly of being a type of Christian defined by the doctrines of Luther and Calvin, and the consequences of that for the devotional life. This immediately suggests a volume on those who, depending on one's rhetorical preferences, can be labelled Puritans or the godly. We might anticipate yet another book on the zealous contra mundum. But that is not Ryrie's purpose, and he deftly sidesteps the Puritan trap. Firstly his earnest Protestants are to be found as much in the first post-1530s generation as in the high years of Elizabeth's reign, and he insists on the essential similarity of their devotional life throughout the pre-Civil War generations. Secondly, he claims that the complex pattern of behaviour and belief that can be identified as quintessentially 'godly’, and is here labelled as 'earnestness’ by the author, is merely the most vigorous expression of a Protestantism that was a shared cultural experience for the English and Scots by the end of the sixteenth century. While much of the evidence, both prescriptive and descriptive, derives from the zealous minority, the case made for these as exemplifying wider religious patterns is compelling.

This is a rich, deeply researched book that considers many aspects of the devotional life of the Protestant, constantly measuring the quotidian experience of the believer against the demanding prescriptions of the preachers. Its greatest originality lies in its first long sections respectively on the emotions and on prayer. It is striking that such a deeply intellectualised system of belief, dependent as it is on both formal and doctrinal literacy, can so convincingly be presented as deriving its power from appeal to the affections. And not only to the anxiety and potential despair that generations of students assume must have been the consequence of predestinarian doctrine. Ryrie follows his preachers in insisting that happiness, or more specifically joy, was a gift of the Protestant God to his faithful people. But such positive emotion was paradoxical: the sheer intensity of some spiritual experience promised pain amidst joy. Prayer, here identified as the most significant site through which the individual could articulate and manage her or his spiritual relationships, exemplified the obligation to act and fight. It was to be constant, vocal and expressive of spiritual emotion, though Ryrie is rightly cautious about how spontaneous even ministerial prayers were: there is an excellent section on forms of speaking to God. Evidence about the use of the Book of Common Prayer in private devotion also provides a useful counterpoint to the usual observations on its unpopularity in public worship. There are some sections – on reading and writing, on experience in the godly household and on public worship – that address themes already thoroughly explored in the existing literature. Here Ryrie is concerned not to let his analysis follow well-worn paths. So, for example, the discussion of hearing sermons focuses partly on the process of listening and absorbing the preachers' words, while that on household worship looks inter alia at the dilemma of keeping company with sinners.

So many aspects of Protestant experience are opened by this volume that it seems to be captious to ask for more. However, Puritan suspicion of one of the senses, that of sight, deserves more attention than the brief comment on paintings in the household that it is accorded here. Iconophobia has a controversial historiography – like some other themes explored here there was no absolute consistency about Protestant attitudes to it in time or space – but it is the topic that most exemplifies the sensory constrictions upon godly devotion. The earnest had to deny themselves one of the most affective forms of spiritual meditation, and to strive instead to imagine Christ with the mind's eye, because of the acute fear of idolatry. Ryrie's earnest Christians seem more anxious about idleness, 'the mother and nurse of evil’ says Norden, than about the seduction of images. But this may be one historical debate too many in an already lengthy volume. The book certainly does not avoid the more critical questions about the nature of the faith that he is analysing, above all how widely it was internalised. Ryrie wisely eschews the language of popularity, arguing instead for the broad base of its acceptance. He accepts that, given the deeply intellectual character of full Puritan practice, it was not readily assimilated in the village pew. But, against much of the prevailing historiography, he makes a compelling case that full Protestantism, underpinned by a Calvinist theology, became the devotional culture of Scotland and England in this period. This is a compelling book about living in and of that culture. It leads us to empathise with the intensity with which his protagonists experienced their religion; to sympathise with their restless quest for assurance; and to return with new interest to old questions about the importance of this dynamic faith in reshaping the early modern world.