Complete Works of Edward Burrough, Volume 5
Burrough's doctrinal writings — his most sustained theological arguments for the central tenets of Quaker faith: the Inward Light, direct revelation, the priesthood of all believers, and the sufficiency of Christ as teacher.
- Volume 5 of 7
- EPUB format
This edition
Read itE-book · EPUB
- Time to read3.9 hours
- Length56,112 words
- Files1 EPUB, DRM-free
How we get 3.9 hours
This figure is here so you can compare one book against another. Every title on the site is timed from its own word count at the same reading speed — nothing is adjusted book by book — so if this edition says 3.9 hours and another says half that, the second one really is about half the reading. It is a measure of size, in the way a page count is. Your own pace is your own: at the speeds typical adult readers actually manage, this edition runs anywhere from 3.1 hours to 5.3 hours.
What is in this edition
| Modernized text | 54,183 words |
|---|---|
| Introduction, chapter summaries and notes written for this edition | 1,929 words |
| Total | 56,112 words |
The introduction, the chapter summaries and the notes on people, places and unfamiliar terms were written for this edition. They are 1,929 of the 56,112 words above, and they are part of what you are buying.
Counted from the text of the EPUB you receive. Navigation, the title page, the table of contents and the licence page are excluded — they are packaging, not reading.
The reading rate
238 words per minute, for adult silent reading of non-fiction, applied unchanged to every title on the site. We did not pick the number; it is the pooled result of a published meta-analysis. Nothing is adjusted book by book — that consistency is what makes two of these figures worth comparing.
Brysbaert, M. (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language, 109, 104047. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2019.104047
190 studies, 18,573 participants.
The same paper puts most adult readers between 175 and
300 words per minute, and those two speeds give the
3.1 hours and 5.3 hours above.
Because time is words divided by speed, an even range of speeds produces an
uneven range of times, so 3.9 hours sits nearer the fast end of that
range than the middle of it.
If it were a paperback
Roughly 160–224 pages.
Words per printed page is a typesetting convention, not a measurement — it moves with trim size, type size and leading. The range above assumes 250–350 words a page. Friends Illuminated publishes no print edition of this book; the figure is here only because pages are a more familiar size than words.
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About This Edition
In this fifth volume, Burrough works out the theological foundations of Quakerism with greater deliberateness than in his early polemical tracts. Here he is less the debater and more the systematic thinker — though system never quite tames his prose. The major writings collected here explore the Quaker understanding of Scripture, the role of the Holy Spirit in guiding the individual conscience, and the nature of the gathered meeting as a place where Christ presides. These are questions that separated Friends from all other Protestant groups of the period, and Burrough’s treatment of them remains one of the clearest and most vigorous in the tradition.
The doctrinal essays in this volume were written during the intense theological controversies of the 1650s and early 1660s, when the Quaker movement was defining itself in relation to Puritanism, Ranterism, and other radical movements of the English Revolution. Burrough navigates these disputes with considerable skill, distinguishing Friends’ position from extremes on all sides. This modernized edition makes his arguments fully accessible without softening their force.
