By the close of the 1630s, Goodwin was a well-known and well-connected London minister. Firmly established as one of the City's leading Puritan preachers, he was a respected if controversial figure. Yet despite having reached his mid-forties, he had not published a single book or pamphlet. In part this was because he was preoccupied with a busy ministry in a teeming urban parish. More importantly, it was a reflection of early Stuart controls on the press. In dedicating a book of sermons to John Pym, Goodwin explained that ‘this little piece had stucke in the birth some yeares together, and was well neere stifled’, but had now been published thanks to the ‘influence of that happy constellation, wherein your selfe shine as a starre, in much glory’.

During the 1640s, England (and London in particular) was to witness a spectacular rise in the number of new books and pamphlets. Whereas the average press output for the 1630s was just 624 items per annum, 848 titles were published in 1640, 2042 in 1641, and an astonishing 4038 in 1642. The central European Reformed philosopher, Jan Amos Comenius, reported from London in 1641 that ‘there are truly not more bookstalls at Frankfurt at the time of the fair than there are here every day’. It is little wonder that Goodwin himself referred in May 1641 to ‘the late overflowing of the Presses’.