The Puritans wished to live godly lives in heart and thought as well as action. One of the tools they utilised in training their hearts and minds was the practice of diary-writing. In this short overview we see the theory of Puritan diary-writing as worked out by John Beadle, and the inspiring example of the sixteenth-century Puritan Richard Rogers writing about his life.

Kirsten Birkett is a minister and writer based at St John's Houghton with St Peter's Kingmoor in Carlisle. She is a former Latimer Research Fellow and the author of a previous St Antholin's lecture, And the Light Shineth in Darkness: Faith, Reason and Knowledge in the Reformation.