The English Puritans
Tenth elder Tom Derby wrote the following article on the English Puritans that I thought you would find of interest.
The English Puritans are both comforting and challenging to Christians. They preached the gospel and taught it well in their writings. They make us grapple with concepts. The reading pays off in greater confidence about our understanding of Christian doctrine. These men were unyielding on key doctrines such as the Trinity and the work of the Holy Spirit, and worship priorities and practices such as the supreme authority of the Bible in worship and the centrality of the pulpit and of gospel preaching in the church.
What comes to mind when you hear the word Puritan? Responses could be rigidity, self-righteousness, asceticism, or bigotry. No responses could be more inaccurate and misleading than these. “No group of people has been more unjustly maligned in the Twentieth Century than the Puritans,” wrote Leland Ryken in Worldly Saints. The name Puritan was a moniker given to these unusually humble, Christ-centered men by the Anglicans. The Puritans actually did not like the name by which they were identified but they lived with it.
There is a small section of the Tenth book store where one paperback book title got my attention a few years ago—The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. Who doesn’t want contentment, I must have thought. But great discontent exists in the West today even where one would not expect to find it (Alistair Begg, Made for His Pleasure, pp. 144-45). If you will kindly google Barnes and Noble, you will find there are precious few books on Christian contentment. Jeremiah Burroughs’ book on Christian contentment started in my heart and mind a love affair with the scholarly and godly group of Calvinists known as the English Puritans, the people who, indeed, embodied the Reformation in England and Scotland. Jeremiah Burroughs deals with his topic effectively and honestly; when I say honestly I mean that Burroughs, like all the Puritan writers, deals directly with afflictions as coming from God. Whether running for their lives from Queen Mary early on or over a century later from King Charles II, these men were no strangers to affliction. To Burroughs, contentment was not something one could grasp in five easy steps. It is something that is Christ-centered and learned over a lifetime. Christian contentment is not found by owning a Lear jet, finding a new spouse, nor based on any set of external circumstances. We are quick to say that’s obvious, but I recall that when teaching The Rare Jewel in a Bible study a few participants were slow to pick up that the book is introspectively oriented, that is, about ME and not “THEM.”
Many are aware that John Bunyan, made wise not in colleges but by his love of the Lord and his own affliction, wrote the monumental Christian classic A Pilgrim’s Progress while residing for years in the Bedford jail. Not so many are aware that Bunyan also wrote his classic Prayer while incarcerated there. In Prayer Bunyan thoroughly unpacks the concept of Christ as God’s Throne of Grace, to whom we are privileged to run boldly. (Timidly is ok but boldly is better, says Bunyan.) Reading Burroughs led me to the study of teachings of John Bunyan, Thomas Watson, Thomas Brooks, Richard Sibbes, John Flavel, and John Owen.
Allow me to conclude with a few words of encouragement. The entire set of these paperbacks are available in our bookstore. They have been abridged and made easy to read by Pastor R.K. Law. A warning, though, easy version or not, you cannot speed-read John Owen. Don’t even think of it. Owen is very worthwhile reading, but every now and then I have had to stand up and catch my breath. John Owen’s Apostasy from the Gospel is an enlightened but blistering attack on false teachings of his day and ours. Owen’s Indwelling Sin in Believers convinced me there is but one way to understand Paul’s struggle as the Apostle shares it with us in the seventh chapter of Romans. That is, whether Paul’s struggle with sin is part of our Christian or our pre-Christian experience is not open to debate by college sophomores in their room until three a.m. We Christians are miserable sinners until we get to glory, but we are obliged to avoid the traps of indwelling sin and those of the enemy of our souls. Indwelling Sin provides us with real understanding of the sin problems we face and real, hands-on strategies for dealing with them.
Thomas Brooks is encyclopedic in his slightly different approach to the avoidance of sin, which he calls “a greater evil than hell itself.” We have the power to “resist the devil, and he will flee from us.” Since we owe him not an ounce of respect, we can, instead of arguing with the evil one, tell him to go back to hell where he belongs. Resist him we must, because while afflictions attack only our “worst parts,” Satan subtly attacks our consciences. In Brooks’ Precious Remedies against Satan’s Devices, he calls afflictions—which of course we naturally tend to avoid at all costs—“God’s furnace, by which he cleanses his people from their dross.”
Encouragement to the reader may come best not from what I say but from the words of someone eminently qualified to give encouragement. I was lured into reading Sibbes’ The Bruised Reed from what Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said about it: ‘“I shall never cease to be grateful to ….Richard Sibbes who was balm to my soul at a period in my life when I was overworked and badly overtired, and therefore subject in an unusual manner to the onslaughts of the devil…I found at that time that Richard Sibbes, who was known in London in the early Seventeenth Century as “The Heavenly Doctor Sibbes” was an unfailing remedy…The Bruised Reed…quieted, soothed, comforted, encouraged and healed me.”’
I was not disappointed. Nor will you be if you partake of the thoughts of these great men of God, who well understood the comfort of the Holy Spirit, the majesty in our lives the free graces of God, the real and active treachery of Satan, the insidiousness of “little” sins, and the centrality of the preaching of the gospel—the power of God unto salvation. There is so much more in the English Puritans to delight and challenge ours minds and our souls, I would like to end here and let you discover the hidden treasures yourself.
Tom Derby, Parish 4
The English Puritans are both comforting and challenging to Christians. They preached the gospel and taught it well in their writings. They make us grapple with concepts. The reading pays off in greater confidence about our understanding of Christian doctrine. These men were unyielding on key doctrines such as the Trinity and the work of the Holy Spirit, and worship priorities and practices such as the supreme authority of the Bible in worship and the centrality of the pulpit and of gospel preaching in the church.
What comes to mind when you hear the word Puritan? Responses could be rigidity, self-righteousness, asceticism, or bigotry. No responses could be more inaccurate and misleading than these. “No group of people has been more unjustly maligned in the Twentieth Century than the Puritans,” wrote Leland Ryken in Worldly Saints. The name Puritan was a moniker given to these unusually humble, Christ-centered men by the Anglicans. The Puritans actually did not like the name by which they were identified but they lived with it.
There is a small section of the Tenth book store where one paperback book title got my attention a few years ago—The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. Who doesn’t want contentment, I must have thought. But great discontent exists in the West today even where one would not expect to find it (Alistair Begg, Made for His Pleasure, pp. 144-45). If you will kindly google Barnes and Noble, you will find there are precious few books on Christian contentment. Jeremiah Burroughs’ book on Christian contentment started in my heart and mind a love affair with the scholarly and godly group of Calvinists known as the English Puritans, the people who, indeed, embodied the Reformation in England and Scotland. Jeremiah Burroughs deals with his topic effectively and honestly; when I say honestly I mean that Burroughs, like all the Puritan writers, deals directly with afflictions as coming from God. Whether running for their lives from Queen Mary early on or over a century later from King Charles II, these men were no strangers to affliction. To Burroughs, contentment was not something one could grasp in five easy steps. It is something that is Christ-centered and learned over a lifetime. Christian contentment is not found by owning a Lear jet, finding a new spouse, nor based on any set of external circumstances. We are quick to say that’s obvious, but I recall that when teaching The Rare Jewel in a Bible study a few participants were slow to pick up that the book is introspectively oriented, that is, about ME and not “THEM.”
Many are aware that John Bunyan, made wise not in colleges but by his love of the Lord and his own affliction, wrote the monumental Christian classic A Pilgrim’s Progress while residing for years in the Bedford jail. Not so many are aware that Bunyan also wrote his classic Prayer while incarcerated there. In Prayer Bunyan thoroughly unpacks the concept of Christ as God’s Throne of Grace, to whom we are privileged to run boldly. (Timidly is ok but boldly is better, says Bunyan.) Reading Burroughs led me to the study of teachings of John Bunyan, Thomas Watson, Thomas Brooks, Richard Sibbes, John Flavel, and John Owen.
Allow me to conclude with a few words of encouragement. The entire set of these paperbacks are available in our bookstore. They have been abridged and made easy to read by Pastor R.K. Law. A warning, though, easy version or not, you cannot speed-read John Owen. Don’t even think of it. Owen is very worthwhile reading, but every now and then I have had to stand up and catch my breath. John Owen’s Apostasy from the Gospel is an enlightened but blistering attack on false teachings of his day and ours. Owen’s Indwelling Sin in Believers convinced me there is but one way to understand Paul’s struggle as the Apostle shares it with us in the seventh chapter of Romans. That is, whether Paul’s struggle with sin is part of our Christian or our pre-Christian experience is not open to debate by college sophomores in their room until three a.m. We Christians are miserable sinners until we get to glory, but we are obliged to avoid the traps of indwelling sin and those of the enemy of our souls. Indwelling Sin provides us with real understanding of the sin problems we face and real, hands-on strategies for dealing with them.
Thomas Brooks is encyclopedic in his slightly different approach to the avoidance of sin, which he calls “a greater evil than hell itself.” We have the power to “resist the devil, and he will flee from us.” Since we owe him not an ounce of respect, we can, instead of arguing with the evil one, tell him to go back to hell where he belongs. Resist him we must, because while afflictions attack only our “worst parts,” Satan subtly attacks our consciences. In Brooks’ Precious Remedies against Satan’s Devices, he calls afflictions—which of course we naturally tend to avoid at all costs—“God’s furnace, by which he cleanses his people from their dross.”
Encouragement to the reader may come best not from what I say but from the words of someone eminently qualified to give encouragement. I was lured into reading Sibbes’ The Bruised Reed from what Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said about it: ‘“I shall never cease to be grateful to ….Richard Sibbes who was balm to my soul at a period in my life when I was overworked and badly overtired, and therefore subject in an unusual manner to the onslaughts of the devil…I found at that time that Richard Sibbes, who was known in London in the early Seventeenth Century as “The Heavenly Doctor Sibbes” was an unfailing remedy…The Bruised Reed…quieted, soothed, comforted, encouraged and healed me.”’
I was not disappointed. Nor will you be if you partake of the thoughts of these great men of God, who well understood the comfort of the Holy Spirit, the majesty in our lives the free graces of God, the real and active treachery of Satan, the insidiousness of “little” sins, and the centrality of the preaching of the gospel—the power of God unto salvation. There is so much more in the English Puritans to delight and challenge ours minds and our souls, I would like to end here and let you discover the hidden treasures yourself.
Tom Derby, Parish 4
posted by M Clark at 10/05/2011 10:53:00 AM
1 Comments:
Thanks Tom! and Thanks, Marion, for posting this. Tom, do you know if all the books you mention are on the library shelves as well or is only the Contentment book to be found there? We better get in touch with Sylvia Duggan ( Tenth Librarian) and make sure she knows there may be an influx of requests to borrow these books!!
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