Welsh Journals

Search over 450 titles and 1.2 million pages

itself 'agreeable to the Westminster Assembly's excellent catechisms'. Was he nevertheless uneasy, as Schlenther suggests, about the doctrine of predestination? Perhaps. It is true that, unlike the Westminster catechisms and most others based upon them, Evans's omits any reference to the doctrine. But there is no hint either of universalism, or of Pelagianism. Evans had no reservations as to teaching children about hell which, they were taught, was a 'great and fearful Pit, burning with Fire and Brimstone; where Devils and wicked Men shall be tormented for ever' and children would be sent there if they slighted or wilfully rejected their baptismal Covenant. Nor could they win salvation by their own efforts: they could keep God's commandments only 'by His grace and strength', and there was no desert even in the best obedience. It may be, therefore, that Evans's reservations about predestination were limited to anxiety lest parents distorted the doctrine. He himself used only the Westminster catechisms in his public ministry. A Short and plain Help was written for parents, some of whom he found 'shamefully negligent, and also against early Instruction of their Babes in spiritual Things'. He reminded them that their children had been born 'in Filth and Sin', and that all were 'under the Curse and Wrath of God; and must be born again, or eternally damned'; parents who neglected their duties would be 'guilty of the Soul-Blood of your Babes!' Whatever his reasons for not treating of predestina- tion, Evans's catechism did little to temper doctrinal winds to the shorn lamb. PETER WHITE Ross-on-Wye Ursula R.Q. Henriques (ed), The Jews of South Wales. Historical Studies. (Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 1993), xi + 238 pp. ISBN 0 7083 1172 5. This volume is more limited in scope than its title indicates, for it contains eight essays by Anthony Glaser, Leonard Mars and the editor examining aspects of the history of south-east Walian Jewish