Witnessing to the faith provides significant new insights into the construction of absolutist theory and its relationship to martyrdom in post-Reformation England. Taking John Donne's works concerning the Jacobean Settlement as a contextualised case study, it examines the issue of Catholic loyalism post-1603 and the disputes over conformity that fractured the community of which Donne was in some sense a member.

Although Donne's position in the literary canon is unquestionable, his importance for early modern constructions of martyrdom and absolutist theory has been underappreciated. Witnessing to the faith places Donne within the mainstream of late-Elizabethan and Jacobean conformist thought by showing how he radically reconceptualised the martyr-figure as a subject defined by political obedience.By exploring the intricacies of Donne's argument in the context of the contemporary pamphlet wars, the book charts what it meant to be an English subject trying to make sense of a complex religious and political terrain during the reign of James I.