Table of Contents

Introduction; Continental Antecedents; English Origins and Developments to 1600; The Seventeenth-Century Scene to 1600; The Major Seventeenth-Century Advocates; Early Eighteenth-Century Debates and Digressions; The Ascendancy of Thnetopsychism; The World to Come- Realised Immortality; Appendix I. The Mortalist Works of Henry Layton; Appendix II. Mortalist Interpretation of Biblical Texts; Appendix III. The Eighteenth-Century Sussex Baptists; Bibliography; Index of Biblical References; Index of Names and Places; General Index.

About the Author

Dr Bryan W. Ball is a retired academic and the author of numerous books. He holds a PhD from the University of London and has contributed to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and the Encyclopaedia of World Faiths. He was also Head of the Religious Studies Department at Newbold College, England, and Principal of Avondale College, Australia.

Reviews

'Ball is to be commended for bringing this movement more fully to light.'
Charles Hambrick-Stowe, in Ecclesiastical History, January 2009

'Ball handles a technical subject with admirable clarity, authoritatively directing his reader through a concentrated and challenging intellectual environment, offering helpful explanations and assessments along the way.'
David Parnham, Church History, 2010

'This book deserves to be widely read.' Gerhard Pfandl, in College and University Dialogue, 2008
'Well argued researched (and readable) academic work'
Alan Ruston, in Transactions of the Unitarian Historical, 03/04/2009

'If you've ever imagined yourself to be the only person on earth to believe a certain idea, only to make the pleasant discovery that many others share that particular conviction, then significant happiness awaits in Bryan Ball's The Soul Sleepers.'
in Ministry, September 2008

"This book offers readers what I believe are two valuable benefits: an up close view of the development of a key doctrinal argument, and additional support for the psychopannychist cause, something that remains a point of contention in Christian circles today. This book is worthy of the investment of money and time of any honest seeker after truth."
James A. Cress, Ministerial Association secretary, General Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists, Ministry, June 11 2013

The book is a clear, well-written, and enjoyable account of the beliefs that emerged from the English Reformation. Bryan W. Ball has rendered his sources with sensitivity to their differences, which taken together makes for a great ensemble.
Pierre Gauthier, Revue d'Histoire Ecclésiastique , 2019