Elisha Coles
Elisha Coles (1608-1688) was a sovereign grace believer and Christian author. Although he never served as a preacher of the gospel, his writings on Divine Sovereignty and related subjects became a popular work among dissenting Christians.
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Elisha Coles On “God’s Sovereignty”
”Elisha Coles on “God’s Sovereignty” should also be mentioned as a book written in a most concise and interesting manner and well calculated to be helpful to young Christians. It was warmly recommended by Goodwin, Owen and Romaine. It was written by a plain Bible-reader engaged in business and but little versed in the niceties of the schools. Like Edward Polhill, of Burwash, the author of “The Mystical Union Betwixt Christ and Believers” and other works, Coles was not a preacher, but just a prayerful, Spirit-taught believer, who knew much of the ups and downs of business life.“
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A Practical Discourse On God’s Sovereignty
This high and tremendous attribute, being an ocean that has neither bank nor bottom, may not lightly be launched into by any, though ever so strongly built and well-manned, (much less by so weak a vessel,) without a divine compass, and an anchor within the veil. That the author of this Discourse came into it, was not of choice or designment, but of course and emergent necessity. Could he have found another basis to repose that doctrine upon, (which was, at first, his only intended subject,) he had not touched upon this: but apparently to him, no ground would bear the weight of election, but that of sovereignty; and there it fixed as on a rock; all the lines of its whole circumference running there,…
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The Life And Testimony Of Elisha Coles
Elisha Coles (1608?-1688), Calvinist, the uncle of Elisha Coles, stenographer [q. v.], was, according to Wood, a native of Northamptonshire. Originally a ' trader ' in London, he had in 1651 taken up his abode at Oxford, for on 23 May of that year we find him acting as deputy-registrar to the parliamentary visitors there, in the absence of Ralph Austen, the registrar. In 1657 Coles became steward of Magdalen College, through the favour of Dr. Thomas Goodwin, the Commonwealth president, and was also manciple of Magdalen Hall (Register of the Visitors of the University of Oxford, Camd. Soc., pp. viii, 337, 516, where, however, Coles is confounded with his nephew). He was obliged to quit his situations at the Restoration, on which he obtained…
