Winchester University Press paperback book.
To Edify and Delight is the first in-depth study of the sermons of Gilbert White. Louis Coulson places White in his historical and ecclesiological context. He offers close readings and analyses of White's sermons to allow us to engage with White's thinking, theological understanding and working methodology. Louis Coulson has reproduced White's annotations to his sermons to allow us to encounter White's own verbal delivery and preaching style. We enter White's church to hear White at work. Louis Coulson offers a unique insight into the experience of church going in the eighteenth century. White's fame today is as the founding father of the ecology movement. Though concern for the environment is never formally present in White's sermons, Coulson allow us to capture the moment that marked White's turning towards the study of the natural world. White's concern for his garden, village locality and the life they contained becomes apparent. Coulson references White's interest in the work of the various 'physico-theologians' of the period - thinkers who were the forerunners of today's environmental philosophers, theologians and ethicists.