Category Archives: Puritans

Owen: what does it mean to preach the gospel?

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The teaching of the great Puritan writer John Owen on this subject is summarised by J.I. Packer:-

Preaching the gospel, [Owen] tells us, is not a matter of telling the congregation that God has set his love on each of them and Christ has died to save each of them, for these assertions, biblically understood, would imply that they will all infallibly be saved, and this cannot be known to be true. The knowledge of being the object of God’s eternal love and Christ’s redeeming death belongs to the individual’s assurance, which in the nature of the case cannot precede faith’s saving exercise; it is to be inferred from the fact that one has believed, not proposed as a reason why one should believe.…

Money, sex and power

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Money, sex and power, writes Richard Foster, are inseparably intertwined:-

Money manifests itself as power.  Sex is used to acquire both money and power.  And power is often called ‘the best aphrodisiac’.  We could discuss at length the interlacing connections.  There is, for example, an important relationship between sex and poverty: sex is the poor man’s holiday and the poor woman’s disaster.  Note also the connection between power and wealth: power is frequently used to manipulate wealth, and wealth is used just as frequently to buy power. 

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My Favourite Christian Writers

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My list of favourite Christian authors would look something like this (in roughly chronological order, not order of merit):-

  1. John Calvin – commentaries, Institutes
  2. Thomas Watson – Body of Divinity, Beatitudes, Lord’s Prayer, Ten Commmandments
  3. William Gurnall – Christian in Complete Armour
  4. Matthew Henry – Commentary
  5. C.H. Spurgeon – The Treasury of David, Lectures to my Students, An All-Round Ministry, Commenting and Commentaries (plus, of course, his many printed sermons)
  6. J.C. Ryle – Expository Thoughts on the Gospels, Holiness, Knots Untied, Old Paths, Practical Religion, Christian Leaders of the 18th Century
  7. J.
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Puritans on Providence

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What is Providence?

There are three things in providence: God’s foreknowing, Gods determining, and God’s directing all things to their periods and events.  (Thomas Watson)

Providence is the perpetuity and continuance of creation. (Richard Sibbes)

Tell me, if God had never a creature to look to in all the world but thee, wouldst thou believe that He would regard thy heart. and words, and ways, or not? If He would, why not now as well as then!

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Spiritual authority

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In his excellent collection of essays and papers on the Puritans, J.I. Packer offers the following succinct account of spiritual authority:-

‘Spiritual authority is hard to pin down in words, but we recognise it when we meet it. It is a product compounded of

      • conscientious faithfulness to the Bible;
      • vivid perception of God’s reality and greatness;
      • inflexible desire to honour and please him;
      • deep self-searching and radical self-denial;
      • adoring intimacy with Christ;
      • generous compassion manward; and
      • forthright simplicity, God-taught and God-wrought, adult in its knowingness while childlike in its directness.’
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Top Ten Puritan Classics

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I’d like to present a list of recommended Puritan works (well, perhaps a couple of them are best considered honorary Puritans).  They’re all available online.  In no particular order of merit:-

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Praying with giants

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I have used the following to guide an evening of prayer.  Much help was derived from members of that remarkable band of Christians who came to be known as ‘the Puritans’.  In particular, some of the prayers and devotions from The Valley of Vision (edited by Arthur Bennett) were adapted and used.

Invocation

Let us lift up our hearts unto God in the heavens.

Let us stir up ourselves to take hold on God, to seek his face, and to give him the glory due unto his name.

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Be bold!

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What I meant to do, when writing my previous post on William Gurnall, was to present this more extended quotation on boldness.  It is vintage Gurnall, and a magnificant encouragement to Christians.  So here it is:-

O how uncomely a sight is it to see, a bold sinner and a fearful saint, one resolved to be wicked, and a Christian wavering in his holy course; to see guilt put innocence to flight, and hell keep the field, impudently braving it with displayed banners of open profaneness; [to see] saints hide their colours for shame, or run from them for fear, who should rather wrap themselves in them, and die upon the place, than thus betray the glorious name of God, which is called upon by them to the scorn of the uncircumcised.
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Gems from Gurnall

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William Gurnall (1617-1679) was rector of Lavenham in Suffolk.  Although a Puritan in doctrine, he remained loyal to the Church of England all his life.  He is known for one book, The Christian in Complete Armour.  This is a massive exposition of Ephesians 6:10-20, and is a classic on spiritual warfare.  Massive it may be (almost 1200 pages) and yet, as someone once said, there is often more solid teaching in one line of Gurnall than in any number of pages of other Christian writers.…

Preachers and their preaching – the Puritans

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J.I. Packer, who has done so much to revive interest in the Puritans, identifies the following characteristics of Puritan preaching:-

1. It was expository in its method. The preacher’s task was to extract meaning from the text, rather than to impose meaning on it. The preacher seeks the mind of God as revealed in Scripture, and then seeks to express it faithfully. In ‘opening’ a text, the Puritan preacher would explain it in context, extract from it one or more doctrinal observations, and then amplify, illustrate and confirm from other scriptures the truths thus derived.…