In the field of seventeenth-century English Puritanism and Dissent it can be difficult to hear over the loudest voices. Figures like Richard Baxter and John Owen remind me at times of the occasional dominant student in my tutorials: I struggle to constrain their forceful personalities in order to hear what those softer voices in the room have on their minds. This book brings to the fore Giles Firmin (1613/14–97), one of those softer voices but still with something important to say. The result is a richer appreciation of the subtleties within the Puritan tradition as it transitioned and adapted to the cultural, theological and philosophical context of Dissent.

Firmin was set apart from his English peers by his early experience of New England, making him something of an outsider. As Pagán capably demonstrates, Firmin's time in New England, which Thomas Edwards used to discredit him in Gangraena, forever tarred him with a Congregationalist brush. Indeed, Firmin defended New England Congregationalism but only to demonstrate that it was non-separating. Creating a new Church from the ground up, he argued, was different from reforming an existing Church already to hand. Thus England's Congregationalists were far more separatist and harmful in effect than their American brethren, and Firmin's consistent concern throughout his life was effective reformation brought about by strong bonds of unity among believers. If that priority caused him to move away from England's Congregationalists, he would do so, and, if anything, he became more firmly Presbyterian over time, but he was ever averse to applying one single label to himself, be it Presbyterian or Congregationalist. This rare mixture of experience and outlook makes him a fascinating commentator on his fellow godly. His story captures the capacity for rich variation of perspective even among allies within the broader Puritan movement.

Pagán's book traces Firmin's career through his engagement with a succession of issues and controversies, beginning with ecclesiological concerns regarding the roles of bishops and presbyters and the matter of reordination after 1660. Chapter iii focuses on Firmin's classic work, The real Christian (1670), and examines his theology regarding effectual calling, faith and assurance, in which his enduring distaste for Antinomian doctrine is an important feature. The fourth chapter places Firmin between those like Edward Stillingfleet whose patience with the Dissenters had run thin and others like John Owen whose inclinations tended to perpetuate a drift towards separation. The next two chapters place Firmin in controversy first with the Baptists and then with the Antinomians. Given his formative New England experience during the free grace controversy of the 1630s, Firmin could never side with the Antinomians and went most of the way with Richard Baxter and Daniel Williams in viewing the Gospel as a law, not merely a promise.

Firmin emerges from the book as a figure firmly within the bounds of mainstream Puritanism: three parts Presbyterian, one part Congregationalist; always the reconciler; but at times demonstrating a determination to diverge on individual issues. For example, he maintained that self-love was an appropriate motivation when the soul first closes with Christ, showing himself to be ‘astonishingly novel’ (p. 264). Pagán does excellent work in placing Firmin within a much broader context, frequently assessing the views of both his allies and his opponents, and placing him alongside some unexpected bedfellows. Indeed, at times Pagán does too good a job of this: there are portions of his book where Firmin effectively disappears and the story becomes dominated by those loud familiar voices. They really are hard to silence. But all this means is that the book is not a one-dimensional account of just one man. It is in many ways the study of a series of controversies that together comprise (and enrich) the story of the Puritan movement through the seventeenth century. In Pagán's own words, it is ‘an episodic history of the theology and ecclesiology of Puritanism in its transition from the Interregnum into the Restoration’ (p. 259). And it is well worth reading.