Joseph Alleine
Author of An Alarm to the Unconverted, one of the most widely distributed evangelistic works in English. He died at thirty-four from illness brought on by imprisonment for Nonconformity.
Biography
Joseph Alleine was born in 1634 in Devizes, Wiltshire. He was educated at Lincoln College and then Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he came under the influence of John Owen, then Vice-Chancellor. He became assistant minister at Taunton, Somerset, in 1655, serving under George Newton.
Alleine was a zealous evangelist who spent his time visiting households in Taunton, catechizing, and pressing the claims of the gospel on unconverted townspeople. He rose early, often at four in the morning, to pray and prepare for the day's work.
In 1662 Alleine was ejected from his living by the Act of Uniformity. He continued to preach illegally and was imprisoned in Ilchester jail in 1663, where the harsh conditions permanently damaged his health. After his release, he continued to preach when his health allowed but suffered from recurring illness.
His most important work, An Alarm to the Unconverted (1672, published posthumously), was a direct, urgent appeal to sinners to repent and turn to Christ. The work was enormously popular and was distributed in very large quantities. George Whitefield is said to have distributed thousands of copies during the Great Awakening.
Alleine died in 1668 at the age of thirty-four. His wife Theodosia published his letters and an account of his life after his death.
Life & Career
Why Alleine Matters
Alleine was not a systematic theologian but an evangelist, and his contribution was in the practice of direct evangelistic appeal. An Alarm to the Unconverted was one of the first English Protestant works written specifically to convert the unconverted, as distinct from works addressed to believers.
The work was notable for its directness. Alleine addressed the reader as an individual, pressed the urgency of immediate repentance, and refused to let the reader off with vague good intentions. This approach anticipated the evangelistic methods of Whitefield and Wesley in the eighteenth century.
