Authors

Ambrose of Milan

around 339 to 397 AD

Bishop of Milan and one of the four traditional Latin Doctors of the Church, alongside Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory the Great.

Jerome

around 347 to 420 AD

The translator of the Latin Vulgate, who rendered the Old Testament from the Hebrew and whose letters became the founding literature of Western monasticism and of Latin biblical scholarship.

Tertullian

155–220 AD

The first major Christian author to write in Latin and the writer who coined the term "Trinity.

Cyprian of Carthage

210 to 258 AD

Bishop of Carthage through the Decian persecution and the leading letter-writer of the third-century Latin church, executed under the emperor Valerian in 258 AD in the first recorded martyrdom of an African bishop.

Thomas Watson

1620–1686

One of the most readable Puritan writers.

Hilary of Poitiers

around 310 to 367 AD

Bishop of Poitiers in Gaul and the leading opponent of Arianism in the Latin West during the reign of Constantius II.

Ambrosiaster

active around 366 to 384 AD

The modern name for the anonymous author of the earliest complete Latin commentary on the thirteen letters of Paul, from Romans through Philemon.

John Owen

1616–1683

The most formidable Reformed theologian in English.

John Bunyan

1628–1688

Author of The Pilgrim's Progress, the most widely read allegory in the English language.

Marius Victorinus

around 285 to 365 AD

African-born rhetorician who taught in Rome in the middle of the fourth century and converted to Christianity late in life.

Quintus Aurelius Symmachus

around 345 to 402 AD

Roman senator and orator, held by his contemporaries to be the finest Latin speaker of his generation and the leading voice of the pagan senatorial aristocracy.

Augustine of Hippo

354–430

Bishop of Hippo whose Confessions and City of God became two of the most influential works in Western Christianity.

Jonathan Edwards

1703–1758

America's greatest theologian.

Jeremiah Burroughs

1600–1646

Preacher and writer known for The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment.

John Calvin

1509–1564

French reformer whose Institutes of the Christian Religion became the most influential systematic theology of the Protestant Reformation.

Lucifer of Cagliari

died around 370 to 371 AD

Bishop of Cagliari in Sardinia and the most uncompromising anti-Arian voice of the Latin West during the reign of Constantius II.

Richard Baxter

1615–1691

The most prolific English Puritan author.

Aristotle

384–322 BC

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher who founded formal logic and wrote foundational treatises on ethics, politics, biology, and rhetoric.

Dionysius of Alexandria

190–265 AD

Bishop of Alexandria from around 248 AD, a pupil of Origen who led the city's catechetical school before becoming bishop, and a prolific letter-writer who worked to keep Carthage and Rome from breaking apart over the rebaptism of converts.

Lactantius

around 250 to 325 AD

A North African teacher of Latin rhetoric who wrote the Divine Institutes, the first attempt to set out the whole of Christian belief as a connected system in polished classical Latin.

Richard Steele

1629–1692

Puritan minister and author of The Tradesman's Calling (1684), which argued that trade and commerce were a genuine Christian vocation to be pursued with diligence, honesty, and generosity.

Rufinus of Aquileia

around 345 to 411 AD

The Latin translator whose versions of Origen, Eusebius, Basil, and Gregory Nazianzen carried Greek theology into the Western Middle Ages, and whose Commentary on the Apostles' Creed is the earliest surviving full exposition of that creed.

Cotton Mather

1663–1728

The most prominent minister in colonial New England.

Martin Luther

1483–1546

Augustinian friar whose Ninety-Five Theses sparked the Protestant Reformation.

Origen of Alexandria

185 to 253 AD

An early Christian theologian and biblical scholar who directed the catechetical school of Alexandria.

Richard Sibbes

1577–1635

Called "the heavenly Doctor Sibbes" by his contemporaries.

Sedulius

5th century AD (active around 425 to 450 AD)

Sedulius was a Christian Latin poet whose five-book biblical epic, the Carmen Paschale, retold the miracles of Scripture in Virgilian hexameter.

Athanasius of Alexandria

296 to 373 AD

Bishop of Alexandria and the chief defender of the Nicene position that the Son of God shares the same substance as the Father.

Constantine the Great

272–337 AD

Roman emperor from 306 to 337 AD and the first emperor to profess Christianity.

Jan Amos Comenius

1592–1670

The father of modern education.

John Chrysostom

349–407 AD

Archbishop of Constantinople and the most celebrated preacher of the early Greek church, whose expository homilies and treatise On the Priesthood shaped Christian preaching and pastoral practice.

John Flavel

1630–1691

Puritan pastor of Dartmouth whose works on providence, the heart, and the person of Christ combined doctrinal precision with intense devotional warmth.

Josephus

37 to 100 AD

First-century Jewish historian whose Greek works, The Jewish War and Antiquities of the Jews, are the main narrative sources for Judea under Roman rule, the revolt of 66 to 70 AD, and the destruction of the Second Temple.

Richard Allestree

1621–1681

Anglican divine, Regius Professor of Divinity and Provost of Eton, conventionally identified as the anonymous author of The Whole Duty of Man, The Ladies' Calling, and The Gentleman's Calling.

Samuel Rutherford

1600–1661

Scottish Presbyterian theologian whose Letters from prison became one of the treasured devotional works of the Reformed tradition.

Stephen Charnock

1628–1680

English Puritan minister whose Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God, preached at Crosby Hall in London and published posthumously in 1682, remains the most extensive Puritan treatment of the doctrine of God.

Sulpicius Severus

around 363 to 425 AD

Aquitanian lawyer turned ascetic who wrote the Life of Saint Martin, the first widely read biography of a living Western holy man, along with the Dialogues and a world chronicle that preserves the earliest account of the Priscillianist affair.

William Gouge

1575–1653

Pastor of Blackfriars, London, for forty-six years.

William Gurnall

1617–1679

Author of The Christian in Complete Armour, a massive exposition of Ephesians 6:10-20 on spiritual warfare that Spurgeon called the best work on the subject ever written.

Chromatius of Aquileia

died around 407 AD

Bishop of Aquileia and a biblical preacher whose tractates on the Gospel of Matthew and sermons survive, and who acted as patron to both Jerome and Rufinus during the years of their translation work.

Dionysius of Rome

died 268 AD

Bishop of Rome from 259 to 268 AD who reorganized the Roman church after the persecution under the emperor Valerian.

Eusebius

260 to 339 AD

Eusebius of Caesarea wrote the Ecclesiastical History, the first sustained narrative of the Christian church from the apostles to the reign of Constantine, and is called the Father of Church History.

Eusebius of Vercelli

around 283 to 371 AD

First bishop of Vercelli in northern Italy and, with Hilary of Poitiers, one of the leading Western defenders of the Nicene faith under Constantius II.

John Knox

1514–1572

Leader of the Scottish Reformation who established Presbyterian church government in Scotland.

Juvencus

active around 330 AD

A Spanish presbyter who wrote the Evangeliorum libri quattuor, a paraphrase of the Gospels in Latin hexameter verse.

Pacian of Barcelona

died between 379 and 392 AD

Bishop of Barcelona in the later fourth century, remembered chiefly for three letters to a Novatianist layman named Sympronian that defend the church's power to forgive sins committed after baptism.

Paulinus of Milan

active around 390 to 425 AD

A deacon and notary of the church of Milan who wrote the Life of Ambrose, the earliest biography of the bishop, and who in 411 AD lodged the formal accusation against Caelestius that opened the public phase of the Pelagian controversy.

Phoebadius of Agen

died after 392 AD

Bishop of Agen in Gaul who wrote Against the Arians in 357 or 358 AD, the earliest surviving theological treatise composed by a Gallic bishop.

Plato

428 - 348 BC

Pope Damasus I

around 305 to 384 AD

Bishop of Rome from 366 to 384 AD, whose long episcopate joined a vigorous defense of Nicene orthodoxy to a lasting program of Roman self-presentation.

Robert Lewis Dabney

1820–1898

Southern Presbyterian theologian, seminary professor, and moral philosopher whose Lectures in Systematic Theology became a standard textbook in nineteenth-century Reformed education.

Thomas Boston

1676–1732

Scottish minister whose discovery of The Marrow of Modern Divinity sparked the Marrow Controversy and revived evangelical Calvinism in the Church of Scotland.

Thomas Brooks

1608–1680

Author of Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices and Heaven on Earth.

Westminster Assembly

1643 to 1649

The council of divines convened by the English Parliament that produced the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms.

William Perkins

1558–1602

The father of English Puritanism.

Alexander Hamilton

1755–1804

A Founding Father of the United States and its first Secretary of the Treasury, who wrote the majority of The Federalist Papers and built the young republic's financial system.

Alexis de Tocqueville

1805–1859

French magistrate and political thinker, author of Democracy in America (1835, 1840), written after a nine-month tour of the United States in 1831.

Bachiarius

active around 400 AD

A Christian monk and writer from the Iberian peninsula who defended his orthodoxy in a written profession of faith, De Fide, submitted to the bishop of Rome while he lay under suspicion of Priscillianism.

Charlotte Mason

1842–1923

The founder of the Charlotte Mason educational method — a Victorian teacher and writer who insisted that children are born persons and built an entire philosophy of education around that conviction.

Christopher Love

1618–1651

Welsh Presbyterian preacher in Civil War London whose sermons on heaven, hell, and effectual calling were published after his execution in 1651.

Faustinus the Presbyter

active around 380 AD

A presbyter of the city of Rome belonging to the rigorist Luciferian communion, the followers of Lucifer of Cagliari.

George Whitefield

1714–1770

The most famous preacher of the eighteenth century.

Hermann Witsius

1636–1708

Author of The Economy of the Covenants, the most comprehensive and influential treatment of covenant theology in the Reformed tradition, renowned for its biblical depth and irenic spirit.

J.C. Ryle

1816–1900

First Bishop of Liverpool and the leading evangelical voice in the Victorian Church of England.

John Locke

1632–1704

English philosopher and physician whose theory of natural rights and government by consent, set out in the Two Treatises of Government, and whose empiricist account of the mind in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding became founding documents of liberal political thought and modern epistemology.

Joseph de Maistre

1753–1821

A Savoyard magistrate and diplomat who became a leading voice of European counter-revolutionary thought, arguing that political constitutions grow from history and divine providence rather than reason.

Matthew Henry

1662–1714

English Nonconformist minister whose Exposition of the Old and New Testaments, begun at Chester in 1704, became one of the most widely read English Bible commentaries of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Novatian

200–258 AD

Roman priest and theologian who wrote the first substantial Latin treatise on the Trinity, and who later became a rival bishop of Rome at the head of a rigorist movement that refused to readmit Christians who had denied the faith under persecution.

Octavius Winslow

1808–1878

A Victorian evangelical minister and devotional writer of the Reformed tradition, known for Christ-centered meditations on grace, assurance, and the work of the Holy Spirit.

Theodosius the Great

347–395 AD

Roman emperor from 379 to 395 AD, the last to rule both the eastern and western halves of the empire.

Thomas Chalmers

1780–1847

Scottish minister, mathematician, and political economist who led the 1843 Disruption that created the Free Church of Scotland.

Thomas Goodwin

1600–1680

Independent theologian and member of the Westminster Assembly.

Thomas Vincent

1634–1678

English Puritan minister who wrote the most widely used exposition of the Westminster Shorter Catechism and stayed in London through the Great Plague of 1665 to minister to the dying.

Victorinus of Pettau

died around 304 AD

The earliest Christian writer known to have composed biblical commentaries in Latin.

William Ames

1576-1633

English Puritan theologian and professor at Franeker whose Medulla Theologiae (The Marrow of Sacred Divinity) defined theology as the doctrine of living to God and served as a standard textbook in Reformed schools and early New England colleges.

William Bradford

1590–1657

English Separatist who sailed on the Mayflower, served as governor of Plymouth Colony for roughly thirty years, and wrote Of Plymouth Plantation, the primary firsthand account of the Pilgrim settlement.

Zacharias Ursinus

1534–1583

Principal author of the Heidelberg Catechism (1563) and its definitive academic commentary — one of the most important catechetical works in Reformed Christianity.

Abraham Kuyper

1837–1920

Dutch Reformed theologian and statesman who formulated the doctrine of sphere sovereignty and led the neo-Calvinist movement.

Alexander Falconbridge

1760 to 1792

A British ship's surgeon who sailed on four Atlantic slave-trading voyages and then turned against the trade, publishing a detailed eyewitness account of conditions aboard the ships.

Alexander Nowell

1507–1602

Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London for forty-two years and author of the catechisms, commissioned by Convocation, that taught Reformed doctrine across Elizabethan England.

Arnobius of Sicca

died around 330 AD

A teacher of rhetoric in Roman North Africa who, after converting to Christianity, wrote the seven-book apology Against the Nations in the years leading into the persecution under Diocletian.

Asser

died 909 AD

Writing the Life of King Alfred in 893 AD, the only biography of an Anglo-Saxon king composed by a member of his own court while he was still reigning.

Ausonius

around 310 to 395 AD

A Latin poet and rhetorician of Bordeaux who tutored the future emperor Gratian and rose to the consulship in 379 AD.

Basil the Great

around 330 to 379 AD

Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia and the eldest of the three Cappadocian Fathers, who defended the full divinity of the Son and the Holy Spirit against the Arians and wrote the treatise On the Holy Spirit.

Bede

673–735

An Anglo-Saxon monk at the monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow who wrote the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, the earliest connected account of Christianity in Britain.

Benedict of Nursia

480–547 AD

Benedict of Nursia founded the monastery of Monte Cassino and wrote the Rule that became the standard code for monastic communities in the Latin West.

Benjamin Franklin

1706–1790

American printer, scientist, and statesman who conducted foundational experiments on electricity, built Philadelphia's civic institutions, and helped draft the Declaration of Independence, negotiate the French alliance, and frame the U.

Benjamin Morgan Palmer

1818–1902

American Presbyterian minister who pastored the First Presbyterian Church of New Orleans for forty-six years and served as the first moderator of the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America.

Bernard of Clairvaux

1090–1153

Cistercian abbot of Clairvaux whose On Loving God and Sermons on the Song of Songs set the pattern for Western writing on the soul's love for God.

Boethius

480 to 524 AD

Roman statesman and philosopher who wrote The Consolation of Philosophy while awaiting execution.

Charles Spurgeon

1834–1892

The most widely heard preacher of Victorian England, pastor of London's Metropolitan Tabernacle for thirty-eight years, whose weekly printed sermons eventually filled sixty-three volumes and remain in print worldwide.

Charlotte M. Yonge

1823 - 1901 AD

The Heir of Redclyffe, the 1853 novel that made her reputation, and a long series of historical stories for children, of which The Little Duke is the most reprinted.

Cicero

106 - 43 BC

Roman statesman, orator, and philosopher whose speeches, letters, and treatises such as On Duties made Latin a language of philosophy.

Commodian

3rd century AD

A Latin Christian poet, commonly counted as the first, who wrote the Instructiones, eighty acrostic poems attacking the pagan gods and instructing Christians in conduct.

Daniel Defoe

1660–1731

Author of Robinson Crusoe (1719), often called the first English novel, and one of the most prolific journalists and pamphleteers of his age, with more than three hundred works attributed to him.

Daniel Rogers

1573-1652

Puritan lecturer at Wethersfield, Essex, and author of Matrimonial Honour (1642), a full-length Puritan treatment of courtship, marriage, and the duties of husband and wife.

Edmund Burke

1729–1797

Anglo-Irish statesman and political thinker whose Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) argued for tradition, inherited institutions, and gradual reform against the French Revolution.

Epictetus

around 50 to 135 AD

A Greek Stoic philosopher, born a slave, whose lectures survive in the Discourses and the Enchiridion (Handbook) recorded by his pupil Arrian.

Faltonia Betitia Proba

active around 350 AD

Faltonia Betitia Proba wrote the Cento Vergilianus de laudibus Christi, a retelling of biblical history assembled entirely from lines and half-lines of Virgil.

Firmilian of Caesarea

died 268 AD

Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia and a leading churchman of the Greek East, whose blunt letter to Cyprian of Carthage is the Eastern voice in the third-century controversy over baptism performed outside the church.

Founding Fathers

1774–1791

The Founding Fathers led the Thirteen Colonies to independence from Great Britain and framed the government of the United States, producing the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

Francis Bacon

1561–1626

English philosopher and statesman who argued that knowledge should be built from systematic observation and experiment, and whose Essays remain among the most quoted works of English prose.

Frank P. Bachman

1871-1934

Author of Great Inventors and Their Inventions (1918), a school reader that tells the story of the steam engine, the cotton gin, the telegraph, the telephone, and other inventions through the lives of the men who made them.

Frédéric Bastiat

1801 - 1850 AD

Coining the term legal plunder in The Law and satirizing protectionism in the candlemakers' petition, which asks the French Chamber of Deputies to shut out sunlight for the benefit of the tallow trade.

Frederick Douglass

1818–1895

Frederick Douglass was an American abolitionist, orator, and writer who escaped slavery in 1838 and became the most prominent Black public figure of nineteenth-century America.

Friedrich Wilhelm Krummacher

1796–1868

A nineteenth-century German Reformed pastor whose dramatic, narrative preaching and bestselling biblical meditations — above all Elijah the Tishbite and The Suffering Savior — made him one of the most widely read preachers of his era.

G.K. Chesterton

1874–1936

English journalist, novelist, and lay theologian who defended Christian orthodoxy through paradox and argument in books like "Orthodoxy" and "The Everlasting Man.

Gaudentius of Brescia

bishop from around 387 AD, died around 410 AD

Bishop of Brescia and successor of Philastrius, remembered for a collection of sermons that includes ten Easter homilies taken down by stenographers for the nobleman Benivolus.

George Gillespie

1613–1648

Scottish Presbyterian minister and one of the commissioners sent from the Church of Scotland to the Westminster Assembly, where he became its sharpest debater against Erastianism.

George Swinnock

1627–1673

George Swinnock was an English Puritan minister ejected from the Church of England in 1662, best known for The Christian Man's Calling and The Incomparableness of God.

George Washington

1732–1799

George Washington commanded the Continental Army through the American Revolution and served as the first President of the United States from 1789 to 1797.

Gregory of Nyssa

335 to 395 AD

A Cappadocian bishop who helped secure Nicene Trinitarian doctrine at the Council of Constantinople in 381 AD, and whose treatises on the soul, the making of man, and the ascent of the mind toward God shaped both Eastern and Western mystical theology.

Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer

1801–1876

Dutch historian and statesman whose Ongeloof en Revolutie (Unbelief and Revolution, 1847) argued that the French Revolution grew from a religious root, the denial of God's sovereignty.

Harriet Martineau

1802–1876

English writer and social theorist who popularized political economy for a mass Victorian audience and is often called the first female sociologist.

Heinrich Kramer

around 1430 to 1505

Heinrich Kramer was a German Dominican inquisitor who wrote the Malleus Maleficarum, the printed handbook that laid out how to identify, interrogate, and prosecute accused witches.

Henry Scougal

1650–1678

Author of The Life of God in the Soul of Man, a short work on the nature of true religion that profoundly influenced George Whitefield and the evangelical movement.

Henry Scudder

fl. 1607 - 1644

Hermas

2nd Century AD

Hermas was the second-century Christian author of The Shepherd of Hermas, a Roman apocalypse about sin and repentance that was read in churches and treated by many early Christians as near-scripture.

Hugh Binning

1627 - 1653

Hugh of Saint Victor

1096 to 1141

Master of the school of Saint Victor in Paris, known for the Didascalicon, a guide to the order of study, and On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith.

Irenaeus of Lyon

130 to 202 AD

Second-century bishop of Lyon whose five-book treatise Against Heresies is the fullest surviving refutation of Gnosticism from the early church.

Isaac Ambrose

1604–1664

Lancashire Puritan minister known for his devotional practice of annual retreats.

Isaac Watts

1674–1748

English Congregationalist minister who wrote roughly 750 hymns, among them "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," "Joy to the World," and "O God, Our Help in Ages Past.

J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur

1735–1813

Author of Letters from an American Farmer (1782), an early and widely read account of colonial rural life that posed the question "What then is the American, this new man?

Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet

1627-1704

Bishop of Meaux, court preacher, and tutor to the heir of Louis XIV, known for his funeral orations, the Discourse on Universal History, and the classic French statement of divine-right monarchy.

James E. Seaver

1787 to 1827

Seaver interviewed the aged Mary Jemison in western New York and produced A Narrative of the Life of Mrs.

James VI/I

1566-1625

King of Scotland and later of England and Ireland, author of The True Law of Free Monarchies and Basilikon Doron, and the king under whom the King James Version of the Bible was translated.

Jennie Hall

1875 - 1921 AD

Viking Tales (1902), her retelling of fifteen Norse saga stories for elementary readers, which AmblesideOnline assigns in Years 1 and 2 of its Charlotte Mason curriculum.

Johann David Wyss

1743–1818

The Swiss pastor whose story for his four sons, edited and published by his son Johann Rudolf Wyss in 1812 as Der Schweizerische Robinson, became The Swiss Family Robinson.

John Ball

1585–1640

John Ball was an English Puritan minister and schoolmaster whose widely reprinted catechism and posthumous A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace (1645) helped systematize covenant theology in the years before the Westminster Assembly.

John Eliot

1604–1690

English Puritan minister at Roxbury, Massachusetts, who translated the entire Bible into the Massachusett language and organized Native converts into self-governing "praying towns.

John Foxe

1516–1587

English martyrologist and author of Acts and Monuments, popularly known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs, a history of Christian persecution that became one of the most widely read English books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

John Milton

1608 - 1674 AD

The poet of Paradise Lost (1667) and the author of Areopagitica (1644), the speech to Parliament against licensing books before they may be printed.

John Newton

1725–1807

Author of the hymn "Amazing Grace" and a former slave-ship captain who became an evangelical Anglican clergyman.

John Ray

1627–1705

English naturalist who gave the species its working definition and whose The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation set the pattern for the English tradition of natural theology.

John Stuart Mill

1806 - 1873 AD

The harm principle set out in On Liberty (1859), the restatement of Bentham's ethics in Utilitarianism (1863), and the argument for women's legal equality in The Subjection of Women (1869).

John Winthrop

1588–1649

English Puritan lawyer who led the Great Migration to New England in 1630 and served as the first and longest-serving governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Joseph Alleine

1634–1668

Author of An Alarm to the Unconverted, one of the most widely distributed evangelistic works in English.

Juan Luis Vives

1493–1540

Julius Firmicus Maternus

active around 330 to 350 AD

Sicilian writer of senatorial rank who produced two works in different halves of his life.

Justin Martyr

100 to 165 AD

A second-century philosopher who converted to Christianity and defended it in writing before the Roman emperors.

Marcus Aurelius

121 to 180 AD

Roman emperor from 161 to 180 AD and a Stoic philosopher whose private notebook, the Meditations, records his effort to govern an empire while living by Stoic principles.

Margaret Gatty

1809-1873

Victorian writer and naturalist whose Parables from Nature drew spiritual lessons from close observation of plants, insects, and the sea, and who founded and edited Aunt Judy's Magazine for children.

Matthew Mead

1629–1699

Matthew Mead was a London Nonconformist minister best known for The Almost Christian Discovered (1661), a widely reprinted treatise examining how far a person can travel toward Christianity while falling short of saving faith.

Michael Harrison

An English nonconformist minister who defended the baptism of infants against Baptist objections in his treatise Infant Baptism God's Ordinance.

Minucius Felix

flourished around 200 to 250 AD

Roman lawyer who wrote the Octavius, a Latin dialogue defending Christianity against pagan charges.

Myron T. Pritchard

1853–1935

Boston schoolmaster who compiled Stories of Thrift for Young Americans with Grace A.

Niccolo Machiavelli

1469 - 1527 AD

Florentine diplomat and political theorist whose 1513 treatise The Prince analyzed how rulers gain and hold power apart from conventional morality.

Olaudah Equiano

1745–1797

A formerly enslaved African writer and abolitionist whose 1789 autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, became a bestseller and a central document in the British campaign against the slave trade.

Optatianus Porphyrius

active around 320 to 335 AD

A Latin poet of Constantine's court who built pattern poems in which selected letters, read across a fixed grid, form second poems and recognizable pictures.

Optatus of Milevis

active around 364 to 385 AD

Bishop of Milevis in Numidia, North Africa, known almost entirely from his one surviving work, Against the Donatists (De Schismate Donatistarum), the first full-length Catholic answer to the Donatist schism.

P.T. Barnum

1810 to 1891

American showman who built Barnum's American Museum in New York and, late in life, the traveling circus that became Barnum & Bailey's "The Greatest Show on Earth.

Peter Martyr Vermigli

1499–1562

An Italian-born Reformed theologian who taught at Strasbourg, Oxford, and Zurich and helped shape the English Reformation under Edward VI.

Philastrius of Brescia

died around 397 AD

Bishop of Brescia in northern Italy in the later fourth century, remembered chiefly for the Book of Diverse Heresies, a catalog of 156 heresies that is the earliest large-scale heresy list written in Latin.

Pliny the Younger

61 – 113 AD

Roman senator, advocate, and imperial governor whose collected Letters preserve daily life under the emperors Domitian and Trajan.

Plutarch

46 - 120 AD

The Parallel Lives, twenty-three surviving pairs of Greek and Roman biographies built around character rather than campaigns, and the Moralia, the essay collection that preserves much of what is known about Delphi under Roman rule.

Polycarp of Smyrna

around 69 to around 155 AD

Bishop of Smyrna and one of the Apostolic Fathers, remembered for his single surviving letter, the Epistle to the Philippians, and for the eyewitness account of his death preserved as the Martyrdom of Polycarp.

Pontius the Deacon

died around 260 AD

Pontius was a deacon of Carthage and companion of its bishop Cyprian; his Life and Passion of Cyprian is the earliest surviving Christian biography.

Pope Innocent I

Pope from 401 to 417 AD

Bishop of Rome from 401 to 417 AD whose letters to bishops in Gaul, Spain, Italy, Africa, and the East made the ruling of the Roman see a court of appeal on discipline, liturgy, and doctrine.

R.H. Charles

1855–1931

R.

Ralph Robinson

1614 to 1655

A London Presbyterian minister who preached at St.

Ralph Venning

1621–1674

English Puritan minister ejected from the Church of England in the Great Ejection of 1662, best known for The Plague of Plagues, a treatise on sin later reprinted as The Sinfulness of Sin.

Richard Alleine

1611–1681

An English Puritan minister ejected from the Church of England in 1662, known for practical works of devotion such as Vindiciae Pietatis (A Vindication of Godliness) and The World Conquered.

Robert Filmer

1588–1653

The royalist theorist whose defense of absolute monarchy in Patriarcha provoked John Locke's Two Treatises of Government.

Robert Law

1860–1919

Scottish Free Church minister and New Testament scholar whose study of 1 John, The Tests of Life, became a standard commentary on the letter.

Samuel Tregelles

1813–1875

Self-taught English biblical scholar who produced a critical edition of the Greek New Testament built directly on the oldest surviving manuscripts.

Seneca

4 BC – 65 AD

Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist who tutored and later advised the emperor Nero.

Sojourner Truth

1797 to 1883

Abolitionist and women's rights speaker who was born enslaved in New York, took the name Sojourner Truth in 1843, and dictated The Narrative of Sojourner Truth.

Solomon Northup

1807 – unknown

A free-born New Yorker who was kidnapped in 1841 and sold into slavery in Louisiana for twelve years.

Thomas a Kempis

1380–1471

Thomas a Kempis was a German-born Augustinian canon in the Netherlands who wrote The Imitation of Christ, one of the most widely read Christian devotional books ever printed.

Thomas Carlyle

1795 - 1881 AD

Naming his century the Mechanical Age in Signs of the Times in 1829, and for The French Revolution in 1837, the narrative history that made him the most read essayist in Victorian Britain.

Thomas Doolittle

1630-1707

Thomas Hobbes

1588–1679

The English philosopher who argued that without a common power to hold people in awe, human life would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Thomas Hooker

1586-1647

Puritan preacher and founder of Hartford, Connecticut.

Thomas Manton

1620–1677

A leading Presbyterian preacher of Interregnum and Restoration London, known for his verse-by-verse expository sermons, including 190 sermons on Psalm 119.

Thomas More

1478 - 1535 AD

Utopia, the 1516 Latin dialogue that gave English the word for an imagined ideal commonwealth, and for his refusal of the Oath of Supremacy, which cost him his life in 1535.

Thomas Paine

1737 to 1809 AD

The English-born pamphleteer whose Common Sense (1776) argued for American independence in language ordinary colonists could read, followed by The American Crisis, Rights of Man, and The Age of Reason.

Thomas Shepard

1605-1649

New England Puritan pastor of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and author of The Sincere Convert and The Sound Believer, classic Puritan books on the marks of true conversion.

Tyconius

active around 370 to 390 AD

African lay theologian of the Donatist communion and author of the Book of Rules (Liber Regularum), the first Latin treatise devoted to the interpretation of Scripture.

Victricius of Rouen

around 330 to around 407 AD

Bishop of Rouen and a former Roman soldier whose one surviving work, In Praise of the Saints (around 396 AD), is the earliest extended Western theology of relics.

Walter Marshall

1628 to 1680 AD

An English Puritan minister known for a single posthumously published book, The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification, which argues that Christian holiness flows from union with Christ received by faith rather than from self-effort or law-keeping.

William Bridge

1600–1670

English Congregationalist minister and one of the Five Dissenting Brethren who pressed for independent church government at the Westminster Assembly.

William Carey

1761 - 1834 AD

The English Baptist shoemaker whose Enquiry of 1792 helped launch the modern Protestant missionary movement.

William Guthrie

1620–1665

The Christian's Great Interest, a two-part manual on how to tell whether one is savingly united to Christ, and what to do about it if the answer is no.

William Law

1686 - 1761

William Sprague

1795–1876

William Buell Sprague was an American Presbyterian minister who pastored the Second Presbyterian Church of Albany for four decades and compiled the nine-volume Annals of the American Pulpit, a biographical record of deceased American clergy.

William Symington

1795–1854

Scottish Reformed Presbyterian minister known for two systematic works of Covenanter theology: On the Atonement and Intercession of Jesus Christ (1834) and Messiah the Prince (1839), an exposition of Christ's kingship over the nations.

William Tyndale

1494–1536

The scholar who first translated the Bible into English directly from Hebrew and Greek and had it mass-produced in print, executed for heresy in 1536.

William Whately

1583–1639

An English Puritan preacher and vicar of Banbury known as "the Roaring Boy of Banbury," and one of the most widely read authors on marriage and household life in early Stuart England.

William Wilberforce

1759–1833

British Member of Parliament who led the twenty-year campaign to abolish the Atlantic slave trade, secured in 1807, and whose 1797 book Real Christianity became a defining statement of English evangelical faith.

Wolfgang Musculus

1497–1563

A German reformer who led the Reformation in Augsburg for seventeen years and, as professor of theology at Bern, wrote the systematic textbook Loci communes theologiae sacrae (1560).

Zeno of Verona

bishop of Verona around 362 to 371 AD

Bishop of Verona in northern Italy in the middle of the fourth century, remembered for the collection of tractates, or short sermons, that survives under his name.