During the seventeenth century the theological tide was turning in England. A cursory glance at some bestselling books illustrates the intellectual shift that occurred. In the Jacobean period, the puritan bishop of Bangor published a Reformed handbook to cultivate godly spirituality. Lewis Bayly's The Practice of Piety (c.1612) became a publishing sensation, reprinted over thirty times in England before the Restoration. The success of other publications, such as A Golden Chaine (1591) by William Perkins or the Marrow of Sacred Divinity (Medulla Theologiae, 1623) by William Ames, reflected a voracious English appetite for Reformed theology and piety. In response to claims by Thomas Pierce that the Church of England had never been Calvinist, Henry Hickman was therefore able to appeal to the evidence of book sales: ‘Why hath the Practice of Pietie … with divers others been so often printed?’

However, in the second half of the century, trends and titles began to change. In 1658 an anonymous publication surfaced, entitled The Whole Duty of Man. In a commendatory letter Henry Hammond offered up intercessions that ‘the benefit of this Work’ should fill the ‘Hearts of the whole Nation’. His prayers were answered as sales of Richard Allestree's devotional classic eclipsed Reformed rivals. Stripped of doctrinal discussions, The Whole Duty exemplified the moral style associated with episcopal Arminians. In the preface, Allestree urged souls ‘to behave themselves so in this world, that they may be happy for ever in the next’ and warned of eternal torment for those who do not ‘faithfully obey’ the terms of the new covenant. Allestree's moral handbook captured the English imagination and went through forty-five editions between 1660 and 1715. Taylor's Holy Living reached its fourteenth edition by the Glorious Revolution and Holy Dying was into its twenty-first edition by 1710.5 These bestsellers indicate revised sensibilities among the English population as interest in Reformed doctrines was replaced by an emphasis on lay piety and moral reformation. These publishing histories therefore bear witness to a wider migration away from Calvinism during the seventeenth century.