Good evening. Welcome to the meeting this evening. I apologize that there are no service notices available. That's partly because I was working late on today's service and didn't get it out in time to be typed up. So apologies for that. But if you'll take your Bibles and turn with me in the New Testament to 2 Timothy chapter 3 and verse 10, We're going to read through to the end of the chapter, 2 Timothy chapter 3 and beginning to read at verse 10. God's Word reads, have carefully followed my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, long-suffering, love, perseverance, persecutions, afflictions, which happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra, what persecutions I endured. And out of them all the Lord delivered me. Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the holy scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. So reads God's Word. Let's come before the Lord in prayer, shall we? Lord our God, we come before you and we give you thanks and praise that you are the eternal and holy God, and yet you are the one who reveals yourself. You haven't left us as humanity in the dark as to who you are, what your nature is like, what your will and purpose is like, but you have revealed yourself. We thank you from the beginning you are the self-revealing God. Thank you that you spoke to Adam and you spoke to Eve in the garden, and even after the fall, you came in grace and dealt with them and made provision for them. And so you have dealt with Adam's race ever since. And we thank you that we now have in our hands your word, the complete, final revelation of yours to humanity. We thank you that no more can be added to this Word, and nothing ought to be taken from it, for it is perfect, pure, and complete. And so, our Lord and our God, we ask now that as we come before you, that we will know that sense of your Spirit, so that as we read your Word and consider those who have studied and preached and taught your Word in the past, our hearts may be touched, and that our minds might be informed and that our wills might be evermore your own. So, Lord our God, we pray that you will take now our worship and our praise. May they be honouring and glorifying to you, to whom be all the majesty now and forever. Amen. Well, our first hymn is number 215 in Christian hymns. It's by a man by the name of Samuel Crossman who was born in 1624. So he covers part of the period that we are looking at this evening. In point of fact, at the period we're looking at, he was a Puritan and he left the Church of England with many other men in 1662 during the time of the Great Ejection. However, he ended up going back to the Church of England and ended his days as the Dean of Gloucester Cathedral. And this is one of his hymns. My song is love unknown, my Saviour's love to me, love to the loveless shown, that they might lovely be. O who am I that for my sake my Lord should take frail flesh and die? He came from his blessed throne salvation to bestow, but men made strange and none that longed for Christ would know. But O my friend, my friend indeed, who at my need his life did spend. Sometimes they strew his way, and his sweet praises sing, resounding all the day, Hosannas to their king. Then crucify is all their breath, and for his death they thirst and cry. They rise and needs will have my dear Lord made away. A murderer they save. the prince of life they slay, yet cheerful he to suffering goes, that he his foes from thence might free. In life nor house nor home my Lord on earth might have, in death no friendly tomb, but what a stranger gave. What may I say? Heaven was his home, but mine the tomb wherein he lay. Here might I stay and sing no story so divine. Never was love, dear King, never was grief like thine. This is my friend in whose sweet praise I all my days could gladly spend. Amen. Well, our second reading this evening is from the book of Psalms, Psalm 119 and verse 89, the section entitled Lamed. Psalm 119 and verse 89. Forever, O Lord, your word is settled in heaven. Your faithfulness endures to all generations. You establish the earth and it abides. They continue to this day according to your ordinances, for they are all your servants. Unless your law had been my delight, I would then have perished in my affliction. I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have given me life. I am yours, save me, for I have sought your precepts. The wicked wait for me to destroy me, but I will consider your testimonies. I have seen the consummation of all perfection, but your commandment is exceedingly broad. Praise God then for the word of God. Let's come again before our Lord in prayer. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you that as we have drawn together this evening, we can bring our requests in prayer. We pray, Lord, that though we are parted for this time, that it will now, we give you thanks, not be long before we are able to meet together as a body again. And yet, Lord, we would be mindful of one another. We know that there are many within the fellowship who have struggles in the flesh, in the mind, many who struggle on a day-to-day basis. Father, we would lift up before you our brother Howard. with all the troubles he is facing, with pain and with the difficulties he faces in his hands and other parts of his body. Lord, we pray, be gracious to him. Remember your child. Lord, we ask that the doctors might be enabled to help him and to ease the pain and to correct to some degree what is happening. We pray, Lord, for Wendy as she cares for him and as they seek to serve you together in the home, that they would know your presence and your blessing. We pray for Surinder too, Lord. We ask that you would be with him as he goes for further tests and that he again will know your hand upon him in the home there. that he and Baksha will know your grace in their lives at this time. We pray, Lord, for Kourtney that you will grant to him patience as he recovers and that he will know your hand upon him too. We pray that you will be present in that home with Kourtney and Jillian and help them both, Lord, in their physical struggles. Be with Tariq, Lord. Lord, we pray that your hand will be upon that home to the glory of your name. We pray, Lord, for those older members of the fellowship who are unable to come out. Think of Jack Bennett and Fred Watts. We think of our brother Sid Buggins, too. We think of Pauline Birch. We just lift them all up to you as they are at home. Lord, we just pray that you would be gracious and merciful to them. Lord, so many of our number need to know your grace and your strength in these days, and so we pray you would meet each one at their point of need. But Lord, we would not just be mindful of ourselves, but of your people elsewhere. Lord, we think especially of our brothers and sisters who are under the hand of the persecution of men. Think of the church especially in North Korea. The church across many parts of the Middle East. We would pray for them that they would know, first of all, that strengthening in their hearts and their minds of the Conviction of their faith that they would know the preciousness our Savior of your presence by the Holy Spirit and So that they might be unable to hold a good testimony no matter what man may do help them Lord We pray to bear whatever physical or mental suffering may be placed upon them. I We pray, too, for our brothers and sisters in China and in Hong Kong who will be fearful, perhaps, of government intervention, and we pray that they would be strengthened, too, and they may be found obedient to you. Good citizens, but obedient above all to you, our Lord. Lord, we pray too for those that are better known to us. We think of our brothers and sisters in Atti. We thank you for Roop with us. But Lord, we pray for that fellowship. You will strengthen them. We think of them as in all they have gone through in past months. And oh Lord, we pray, keep your people there. Strengthen them, build them up, lift them up. Lord, may there yet come a day when they will look back and be able to rejoice seeing how you have led them. Multiply your people, we pray. Draw many and save them in these days. We pray for our brother Pastor Callan in Transylvania with the work amongst the gypsies. Lord, we pray that you would enable him and those who work with him amongst the gypsies to be able to preach your word well and clearly and not to compromise it, but rather, Lord, your word would go out and many would be saved. O Lord, build your church as only you can and provide for your people there in their great need, we pray. We ask too, Lord, for Sazra and their work among the armed forces in this difficult time. We ask that the restrictions will not be too daunting and that they will be enabled to communicate with those soldiers and airmen as they should. We pray, Lord, that the gospel will be finding its way into many a heart in these days. We pray that your word will be distributed and that your word will find a place, not just in the pockets of these men and women, but in their hearts by new birth, we pray. So Lord, be with us now as we come and consider these matters that pertain to your word and your person in your church throughout history. We pray that we will be teachable and that we will be humble and that your name might be glorified. And for your namesake and according to your word and promise, we ask it. Amen. We are returning to 1662 and all of that. We still won't get to 1662 this evening. We will fall two years short of it. We are in the 17th century and its revolution this evening. Last time we had a little look at something of the rise of Puritanism as a movement to purify the Church of England. They were given the nickname Puritan. It was a pejorative nickname, but they soon adopted it. They felt that the work of the English Reformation hadn't finished and they became ever more active and prominent throughout Elizabeth I's reign. Although during her reign, the doctrine of the church was substantially still Reformation doctrine. Increasingly, Cambridge University became important as a place where godly Puritan men were being produced. William Perkins became very influential there. And indeed, he had a huge influence on the men who came after him. But at the beginning of the 17th century, with the death of Elizabeth and the coming of James I, there seemed for a moment to be a new hope in England for Puritanism. But it was soon turned to a bitter disappointment as high Anglicanism suited the Stuart thinking regarding the divine right of kings. And during those early decades of the 17th century, increasing numbers of separatist congregations, Congregationalists, Baptists, Independents and others grew up in England. But with the death of James and the coming of Charles I to the throne in 1625, battle lines were about to be drawn. There was a change of mood entirely in the country. James I had been a good man in the terms of being able to govern the nation, holding different parties in tension without overly annoying one side or the other. But Charles I didn't have his father's ability, it seems. During that whole period, I want us first to consider the man Richard Sibbes. Richard Sibbes was born in Suffolk. He may even have been born in Sudbury. But we certainly know that in 1595 he entered St. John's College in Cambridge. From 1610 through to 1615, He had become and was the lecturer and preacher at Holy Trinity Church in Cambridge. You can go there today and the Richard Sibb Centre is there. He left there in 1616 and became a preacher at Grey's in London in 1617, but was to return to Cambridge as Master of Catherine Hall in 1626 and even becoming the vicar of Holy Trinity in Cambridge later on. Also in 1626, he became a founding member of, and I'm going to have my best go at this, if anybody can correct me later, feel free, the member of the Theophis for Impropriations. Theophis brought up parish ministries it seems. and they would then give them to men who taught and preached Reformation doctrine. They preached the truth of scripture. These were Puritan men. Richard Sibbes died before the Civil War began. He died in 1635. But through his life and ministry in Cambridge, his own preaching had a tremendous effect on men who would come after him, and we'll touch on one or two of them later. Again, through the work of the Theophys, he and the men who worked with him in that had an influence by being able to place men in the ministry who preached sound Reformation doctrine. Now it's important to realize something that Richard Sibbes never left the Church of England. We do have a tendency to see all Puritans as non-conformist dissenters. They weren't all that. They weren't all that before 1660 and they weren't all that after 1660. Now although Sibbes never left the Church of England, he was a thorough going Puritan. He is called, in the memoir at the beginning, the first volume of his collected works, he's called the Heavenly Doctor Sibbes. It is said that the preaching of Richard Sibbes, he preaches in such a heavenly fashion, such a lovely way. He was called the Sweet Dropper. He would drop sweet morsels in his preaching, almost as though they came as the most natural thing in the world. His preaching was indeed sweet and it focused on the great mysteries of the gospel and he was able to open them up in such a warm, lively, compelling manner. As I say, through his preaching, through his teaching, through the theophys, he brought many to understand and preach the truth of Reformed doctrine despite the rise at that period of Archbishop Lord and his form of Arminianism. Benjamin Brooks said of him that beside the learned lawyers, many of the nobility and gentry as well as citizens flocked to hear him. And great numbers had abundant cause to bless God for the benefit which they derived from his ministry. He maintained that ministry through increasingly difficult years of persecution, never compromising the truth, yet somehow always managing to avoid being kicked out from his ministry. And many over the coming decades would be able to look back with gratitude to the Lord for the ministry of Richard Sibbes. Now, of course, he was a man of his age. We must be careful not to make these men sound almost superhuman. He was walking the line on the one side of sound theology and on the other of avoiding being kicked out of his ministry through rising persecution. He did that carefully and he did it, it seems, without compromise. And that makes his legacy over the coming decades, and even to us today, all the more powerful. The truth is we ourselves may one day in the not too distant future begin to find the same sort of balance being required of us. Theresa May in Parliament just before the recent lockdown warned that the government was set in a dangerous precedent and that another government in the future could follow the precedent for darker reasons, that is with regard to closing churches. It's for sure none of us know what's coming down the line the future is known only to the Lord in his providence and purposes. So our part like Richard Sibbes is to study now to show ourselves approved before God and men to show ourselves to be workmen that don't need to be ashamed when it comes to the things of God. We need to learn We should always be students of God's word, always learning, always studying. And so too, therefore, we should always be speaking of the things we have learned and witnessing to others with regard to them and preaching the word. Like Sibbes, we need to focus on Christ and the wonder of the gospel. That's the greatest legacy we can pass on to the coming generation, whatever difficulties they may face. So you and I, we need to set our minds to that. We need to prepare young people, not just entertain them, but prepare them with good, sound teaching from scripture and to seek the same thing for ourselves. So we turn to the Civil War. Two years before Sibbes dies in 1633, Charles appoints the man who for eight years has been his confidential advisor, William Laud. He appoints him as Archbishop of Canterbury. Now, it's interesting that Charles' father, James I, had warned Charles against William Lord, saying he did not understand the Scottish situation, temperament, or mood at all. But Charles didn't listen, and he relied very heavily on William Lord. The fact is that William Lord was hostile to anything Puritan. Charles himself sought obedience. and it suited his view of the divine right of kings to have a man like Lord at his side. William Lord therefore began to encourage sports on the Lord's Day, something which our Puritan forefathers frowned upon. They would frown upon perhaps many Christians today for engaging in sports on the Lord's Day. He also reintroduced stained glass windows and crosses and crucifixes and railed altars Errol Hulse put it this way, he said that he embraced the outward forms of Roman Catholic worship, but rejected the authority of the Pope. To William Laud, it seems it was all about ritual, it was all about ceremony. And so William Laud, we are told, believed that the altar was the greatest place of God's residence upon earth. Yes, greater than the pulpit. And then we have his attempt to enforce the use of the prayer book for set services through legal and other means. He seems to have set a course that was almost deliberately and selectively anti the Puritans and the preaching of God's word. Lord also set himself up to break up every separatist congregation. The separatist congregations that were sprouting up, he wanted to hunt them out and break them up and end them. And he did that at times with some ruthlessness. Errol Hulse gives the example of the cruelty that he was willing to use in the case of one called Dr. Alexander Leighton. Without any defense or right of appeal, Leighton was sent to Newgate Prison. And before an arbitrary court, he was condemned to have his ears cut off His nose slit on both sides, to be branded in the face with the letters SS for Sower of Sedition, to be twice whipped, to be placed in the pillory, and then to be subject to life imprisonment. This isn't in a 21st century British jail. This is in a 17th century jail. A man in that condition, having undergone that, his life would not necessarily be long. That, of course, is the extreme end of the persecution now unleashed against the Puritans. Nevertheless, in different degrees, the persecution was there. The fact is that by 1640, some 20,000 people had left these shores for New England following the Puritan fathers. included in that number was 79 ministers. Among them Puritan preachers and divines like Thomas Hooker, John Cotton, and Thomas Shepherd. Perhaps not names as familiar as they ought to be today. Now of course there are many factors that led up to the Civil War. This isn't a talk on the Civil War and the various causes of it and events of it. I'm not going to trace all of that. But just to touch on a few, certainly Charles with his more robust view of the divine right of kings began to butt heads with a largely Puritan influenced if not Puritan parliament. He had married Henrietta Marie who was an outspoken devoted Roman Catholic. Charles then ruled for 11 years without parliament. He felt it was his right to do so. Then you have Lorde's rather foolish attempt to force the 1549 prayer book on Scotland. That led to rebellion, apparently, as a priest in Edinburgh began to read from the prayer book in the service. A lady sitting near the front, whose name I forget, she was sitting there and hearing the prayer book read, stood up, picked her stool up, and threw it at the poor man. and it began a revolt right across Scotland which required funding and therefore a recall of Parliament and so on and so forth to raise an army to put the rebellion down. You have the recall of Parliament and the steps that led up to the drawing up of the two warring parties as armies. You have the King trying to close that Parliament down again, Parliament refusing to end its session, and so you end up with Cavaliers on one side supporting the King and the Roundheads on the other supporting Parliament. Please don't think that it was all the nobility supporting the King and it was all the commoners supporting Parliament. That's not what happened at all. One of the great leaders of the Parliamentary Party was the Earl of Manchester, for example. It is said that in the Civil War, entire families were split down the middle over these matters. Now, when war broke out in 1642, the Puritans were still largely within the Church of England. Things would change rapidly. January 1644 saw the parliamentary forces triumph over the royal forces at the Battle of Marston Moor. As well as Scottish forces fighting, their parliament had three forces led by Sir Thomas Fairfax, the Earl of Manchester, and Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell's troops really made his reputation. It's from then they were called the Ironsides, and he eventually rose to be commander-in-chief of the new model army when it was formed. Well, by 1649, Charles had been arrested. He had been put on trial for treason found guilty, and in the early days of 1649, he was executed as a traitor to the Commonwealth of England. We might often look at the French Revolution 1789 and say, there you go, they're killing their king, but I'm afraid we got there first. Cromwell eventually dismissed a large chunk of the Long Parliament and became Lord Protector of the Commonwealth, pretty much ruling in his own right. Now it's important to realize that Cromwell himself was a Congregationalist. He was outside of the Church of England. He's one of the separatists, if you like, a Puritan dissenter. And certainly he was a Puritan. We know nothing about his conversion. He never writes or talks about it. But when you read his personal letters, they are full of warm Christian Reformed teaching. Nevertheless, Cromwell doesn't push his own congregationalism over against, say, Presbyterianism, or the Baptists, or the Independents, or any other Puritan group. He was a man who seems to have believed in religious toleration to some extent at least, and in that was a long way ahead of his time. It's in that entire period really from 1644 onwards that we see Puritanism in all its forms and it was now taking a variety of forms in its ascendancy. This was the peak of Puritanism. The two parts of the Civil War and there were really two parts of the Civil War were won by the Puritan Long Parliament. Long not because it stretched a long way but because basically it didn't stop sitting for 20 years, there was no election. Much that happened during the Commonwealth period frankly is not important to us this evening. But one thing really should draw our attention, one thing that speaks of the Puritan ascendancy. Up until now, the mood of the Church of England had been set by the reigning monarch. Under Henry there was this independence from Rome but I don't want to move too far from it. Under Edward VI it suddenly becomes this increasingly rapidly reformed church but then Mary comes along and the swing back to Rome and then Elizabeth comes and a lot of the frippery of the high church is there but the doctrine is substantially reformed. Then when James comes along you have a heightening of the Anglican Church and when Charles comes along you have Arminianism, a very high church coming in. But on the 12th of June, 1643, a parliamentary ordinance was passed. Parliament, for the first time, was about to set the tone for the Church of England. It called for an assembly, a meeting of learned and godly divines to reform and establish the government and worship or liturgy of the Church of England. It was still dealing with a one national body. By now Archbishop William Lord had been arrested. and was in prison. In fact, in 1645 he would be beheaded as a traitor and that would happen in the Tower of London. So it is clear that the calling of this assembly would be of Puritans and the reforming of the Church of England would now take place along Puritan lines. The Westminster Assembly met on the 1st of July, 1649. The bulk of its members, of course, were Presbyterian. and it would meet over a period of years some 1,163 times. This was no few meetings in a couple of months and then it's all signed, seen and delivered. These were men who met and debated and discussed and refined and drafted and redrafted and discussed over and over and over again. 121 of its members were ministers and some 30 were laymen. Among that assembly were men whose names should ring in our ears. Sadly they often don't. Men like Jeremiah Burroughs who wrote books that are tremendously helpful in the Christian life today. Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices and books like that that come down to us from the Puritans really ought to be on our shelves and we should at least have read some of them. Edward Calamey, Thomas Goodwin, John Lightfoot whose commentaries are still helpful. James Usher. These were all part of the assembly. They were men who wanted to see the church reformed along Presbyterian lines, reformed in the terms of what had happened in Scotland with Knox and in Geneva with Calvin. The final result in 1649 was the Westminster Confession of Faith. Christian, you ought to know the answer to the first question in the shorter catechism. What is the chief enderman? Chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. That is also the result of the Westminster Assembly. So you have the Westminster Confession of Faith, you have the shorter catechism, the longer catechism, and the Directory of Public Worship. These were tremendous works of theology and learning and scholarship, and they had a profound effect on the church, not just at that time, but on many churches for the last 400 years. Now, these works were, like the majority of the men in the assembly, of course, largely Presbyterian. Were you to read the sections on baptism, it would speak of infant baptism. The sections on church government would reflect a Presbyterian former church government. Now prior to the publication of the Westminster Confession of Faith in 1649, the first London Baptist Confession of Faith had already been published. That was back in 1644 when the Assembly was just beginning to meet. But so influential was the work of the Assembly, so important and so influential and so biblical was the bulk of the Westminster Confession of Faith that in 1677 it was reworked in about 10% of its chapters and republished as the Baptist Confession of Faith and it's come down to us ever since as the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith. I even have a little copy that I usually carry in my bag with me along with the New Testament. A similar thing happened in 1658 with the Congregationalists which resulted in the Savoy Declaration of Faith. And when you come into the mid-late 19th century, what do you find happening? You find Charles Spurgeon in London. What's he doing? He's adapting and publishing a Baptist version of the shorter catechism produced by the Westminster Assembly. So these were hugely important works of the Puritan movement that were sanctioned by Parliament and published and taken again and tweaked in certain places and have an influence still to this day. These are reformed writings that frankly in the opinion of many have not been surpassed right to the present. What can we say about all of this? Well, there are times when politics would intrude upon our life as Christians and perhaps even national conflict will intrude. Things will come along. Perhaps the public mood will change or something will happen with a war. Perhaps there will be a pandemic, you may have noticed one. These things come along and they intrude upon us and they affect us whether we like it or not. They don't wait for our invitation. And we don't know what's going to come in the future. I reminded somebody the other day that 2019, most of us were glad to see the back of 2019 because it had been a thoroughly miserable year in many ways and then suddenly 2020 comes along. We're beginning to realise that 2019 actually wasn't anywhere near so bad at all than we thought it had been. We don't know what's coming. We don't know what troubles may face us individually, as a local body, or indeed as Christians in this nation and across this world. We may, in the future at some point, have to go through very testing times. Certainly if our nation keeps going in the direction it has gone in its way of thinking and living over the last 15 years or so, we will face very testing times in the future. We will find persecution rising as it did with the coming of Charles I and the ascendancy of Archbishop Laud. We will find it difficult perhaps to hold on to our jobs. We'll have to walk the tightrope that Richard Sibbes walked and pray that we will do it as well as that man did it. We might face arrest, persecution, the lack of freedom that we've hitherto enjoyed. But through all of that, God can, will, and does, by his grace, promise us that he will build his church. Part of that is raising up of men and of women, I would say, of real stature. Now, those men and those women, as there are men today, may not all carry West Park Church's teaching position in their back pocket. Some will belong to other fellowships. Yet we need to pray for them. Those who the Lord has given to the church today, in this country, across the western world, around the world, pray for them. There is a need also for men to enter the ministry in the United Kingdom today. Men of quality, men who love the word of God and are careful and thorough in preaching the scriptures. We have lots of men in the church today who will pander to people's wants or provide a feel-good factor, but what the church in this country needs is faithful men who, never mind what comes, what difficulties there are, will go on studying the Word of God, preaching the Word of God. We need men who, like those men who attended the Westminster Seminary, are able to carefully approach matters of difference and to do it with great gentleness and graciousness, to do it with strength of mind and purpose and conviction and yet not fall out with one another in the Lord. Those men who attended had taken the opportunity presented to them To prepare themselves and learn and study and grow and we need to do the same while we have the opportunity and time. To learn and grow spiritually and mentally. So we need to train ourselves. And we need to encourage and train up and raise up men of real quality. We also need, dare I say it, women, Christian women of real quality. I'm not going to touch on the Puritan women this evening. Maybe that's something I need to do some work on and return to because so many of them were important, were a tower of strength to their husbands and families. We need such women and they need to be trained and brought up and nurtured in the Christian faith too. Of course, not everybody, as we will see in a moment, needs a college level education. Those who do need it and do get it need to be careful where they get it from today. There are many places that will train you for the ministry but the level of teaching you will get is liberal and unbelieving often. It is woolly and it is denying the inspiration of the scriptures even. You see what's important and ought to be important is the truth of the Word of God and its fundamental place in our lives as God's people. So we need to pray for men who will put God's Word first. Now, we have a wealth of excellent theological books in English today. You can trace it all the way back to the days of the English Reformation. And you can follow it through to the Puritan period. Such an outpouring of works. You have the works of Lightfoot, you have the works of Poole, you have the works of Henry. That's just some of the commentaries. And I think of some of the commentaries I've got on my shelves at home. So many of them are Puritan men who wrote. But we have many other books that they wrote. And they need to find a place in our hearts and our minds once again. The outpouring of these men at the time of the ascendancy of Puritanism and in its aftermath, their works, their books deserve to be read and read again carefully. And simply say, well, the language is too difficult. They wrote in a funny type of English. Some of them were read by the most ordinary men and women. Collius in the 18th and 19th centuries. We need to pick them up in all humility, learn to read them and benefit from them as these men take us back to the scriptures. Because there's nothing shallow in them, there's nothing superficial in them. These were men who loved the word and presented the word. Now many of the Puritan men who stepped forward in ministry in this period wrote and published books that are still read and used widely today. I want to just mention four now. Four men who are active at this time of ascendancy. First of all, I want to mention Thomas Goodwin. Thomas Goodwin had had a good education. His parents had seen to it. In fact, so good was his education that he began at Christ's College in Cambridge just before his thirteenth birthday. He was still just 12 years of age when he began his university course. At that time, William Perkins was influential in Cambridge, and yet it seems that Goodwin was unconverted at the time. When he was converted a few years later, Goodwin very quickly gave himself to Puritan and Reformed teaching and was heavily influenced by the teaching and preaching of Richard Sibbes in Cambridge. As Puritan rose, he eventually left his ministry and went to Amsterdam for a time, but with the success of the first part of the Civil War he returned and became an important member of the Westminster Assembly that drew up the Westminster Confession of Faith and so on. But he wasn't a Presbyterian. He was an independent and he was, he is described usually as the strength of the dissenting party, the separatists who were not part of the Church of England. And yet though he was such a strong member of the dissenting party, he was also very gracious in the way he interacted with others. He was gracious in regard to those he disagreed with and who disagreed with him. So much so that everybody held Thomas Goodwin in high regard. As a result he came close to Oliver Cromwell and in fact in his dying days it was Thomas Goodwin who was able to minister to Oliver Cromwell as he lay dying. He moved to London from Oxford in 1660. And although he was under persecution as a dissenting pastor and had to preach and teach almost as it were in secret, when the plague struck London, the Black Death struck in 1665 and so many of the men in the Church of England fled, as many did who could, Thomas Goodwin stayed. He stayed and preached and pastored throughout the plague. The following year when the great fire of London struck, 1666, he lost something very valuable. Mr. Pepys, Samuel Pepys, I'm told, buried a very valuable cheese in his back garden. However, for poor old Thomas Goodwin, he lost half his library to the fire. We don't think too much about it today. But books back in those days were very, very expensive items, hard to replace. Through that experience, he wrote a book called Patience and Its Perfect Work Under Sudden and Sore Trials. It is apparently a deeply stirring book. There have been a number of occasions where it's been discussed and read at fraternals, and the men in the fraternals have been deeply stirred by what they have heard. These were men who didn't just go through life hoping for the best. They knew themselves to be in the Lord's school and they learned from these things and they applied these things to everyday life and they turned back to the Scriptures and opened up the Scriptures on these subjects for the benefit of all God's people. Well, what lessons we have to learn from Puritan men like Goodwin? We need to learn, don't we, afresh and new, how to discuss and disagree It's so difficult today. You take a different opinion to somebody and you've hurt their feelings. That shouldn't be the case with Christians. We need to learn to discuss and disagree and to do so with great grace with other Christians. Also, we need to remember that we are living in an age of abundance. Books are relatively cheap. You can even get many of the Puritan works for absolutely free for nothing on the internet. Just download them onto your computer device, whatever it is. And yet, like Thomas Goodwin, we need to look to the Lord more than to the things we own, and to hold him more dear and they less dear. We need to depend on the Lord like Goodwin depended on the Lord. And when there is a plague, and when there is a fire, and when we suffer loss, we turn to the Lord in his word, and that's where we are taught from. The second man I want to mention, of course, is Richard Baxter. I won't say very much about him really. We did have our brother David Fielding some time ago, a few years ago, come and speak to us about Richard Baxter. Unlike Goodwin, Baxter didn't study at Cambridge. He was pretty much self-taught. During the Civil War period, Baxter had been chaplain to a regiment of Cromwell's forces. But he was ordained in the Church of England and eventually ended up ministering in Kidderminster. He did spend a short time in Kidderminster and I think then went to Bridge North and then came back to Kidderminster. Not, I believe, by the Severn Valley Railway as it wasn't yet built. But he ministered in Kidderminster until the restoration of the Stuart Monarchy in 1660. If you go to Kidderminster today, his statue still stands in front of the church where he was a preacher and lecturer. Now his work in Kidderminster was such that it was said when he arrived there it was barren, spiritually speaking, and that barely a household in each street attended divine worship. But when he left, scarcely a house in each street didn't attend. There was a complete about-face through the ministry of this man. How did he do it? He preached the word of God faithfully. And he also visited each house, not to sit down for a cup of tea and a nice chat in the front room, but to catechize people who lived there. He catechized people regularly. You can imagine him taking something like the Westminster short of catechism and coming into your home and sitting down and saying, what is the chief end of man? You would be expected to give the answer. If you didn't have it, he would teach you the answer and you would recite the answer and he catechized you. His sermons then, which were preached on a Sunday, were listened to attentively. Notes perhaps even being taken. Notes taken during a sermon is a good practice. His sermons then were taken home by those who had attended and heard them and they were re-preached to those who hadn't come, couldn't come or wouldn't come. And everybody got to hear the sermons whether they liked it or not. They didn't go home and chat about the football. over the Sunday lunch, they talked about the sermon. They repreached the sermon throughout the day. Some of his books, of course, do take occasional theological detours, as David Fielding told us. But some of his books were not only bestsellers, but are useful down to this day. A Call to the Unconverted is one example. Another is The Saints' Everlasting Rest. Perhaps his most important work, of course, is the reformed pastor. Baxter challenges us in many ways. One way I want you to consider is this. Christian, are you taking every opportunity to teach yourself well? You know, one of the things that struck me when I first came to this church building some seven or so years ago was our library. What a resource for a local church to have. What an incredible library. So many visiting ministers come in here for the first time, or the second time, or the third time, will sit down and look at the books. You can almost see their eyes turning green. And they comment on it. What a resource we have. And we do. The question is, Christian, do you go in and use it when you are free to do so? Do you ever take any of the books out and read them? Do you ever ask, well, what book should I read? What will be good for me in this subject? You and I, we need to be learners. Before we can teach, we must learn. So we need to be readers of God's word first and the books that will take us faithfully to God's word second. And then our visits, the way we visit each other or call on the phone or even email, Baxter challenges us on that. They need to be visits and calls and emails that are beneficial in gospel terms. Do we recap things we've heard in the sermons to encourage one another or teach one another? Particularly if we're phoning or visiting those who are elderly and can't come out, do we speak about what we've heard? Those who are not saved, do we press the gospel call from the sermons? Perhaps on a small scale, even taking the young people through a bit of the church teaching position and showing them where it comes from in scripture. We need to be learners to do it. And then the third man I want to mention is John Owen. John Owen is called the Prince of Puritans. I hardly know where to begin with John Owen. There's so much to say, I'm going to say very little. Quite frankly, if you love God's Word and you love good books that take you to God's Word, John Owen is the man. There's an opportunity at the moment to be taken if you want to read a little of John Owen. Banner of Truth normally sell his complete works. It's a 16-volume set. Think about that on your bookshelf. It would look magnificent. They normally sell it for £215. You can get it at the moment in their sale for £129. So, Christian husbands, if you want to impress your wife and buy her a present she'll be really grateful for, visit the Banner of Truth. And perhaps you can read it together. But quite seriously, John Owen was a man with a great mind. He was a big thinker. And his works are not always easy to read, but they deserve and demand our time and our attention because they have so much to teach us. Very often his works were written in response to things and events and problems that arose challenging the truth of reformed biblical teaching in his day. And yet those things he wrote remained relevant for us today. It's often said of Calvin when you read his institutes that the ink is still fresh on the page. That's how they read. Read his commentaries. It's the same. They feel like they were printed yesterday. And it's a little the same with John Owen. You see, this man had a great mind, and he was a man who loved the Lord and the Lord's Word. He was another man who went to university, this time to Oxford, unusually. He went to Oxford when he was only just 12 years of age, perhaps even a little younger than Goodwin. He wasn't saved, and on one occasion, he and some of his friends decided to go down to London. They wanted to hear the famous Puritan preacher, Edward Callamy. who would later be a Westminster Divine. Calumny did not turn up and they were rather disappointed when a man described as a country preacher entered the pulpit to replace him. Can you imagine going to hear a famous preacher and instead of a famous preacher entering the pulpit you have Fred Bloggs from round the corner who is a cobbler coming into the pulpit. What a letter. But in the purposes and the providence of God, it was through that humble man's ministry that the Lord drew and saved John Owen. It wasn't through Edward Calamee, it was through a simple, humble country preacher. There's a lesson. Owen pastored his first church in Fordham, Essex. It was at the same time as he married. He had, he and his wife had 11 children. Only one of his children survived to adulthood. Gives you an insight into what some of these men suffered in the course of their ministry. 10 out of 11 children died before they became adults. The one who survived was a daughter. She married, but her marriage didn't work out. She returned to her parents' home where shortly after, she was to die of consumption. None of their children would outlive them. In 1646, he was called to a church in London and began to preach there. He soon met General Fairfax and preached to the army of the Parliament. He was then invited, having impressed Fairfax and the army, he was invited to preach to Parliament and eventually was appointed as one of Oliver Cromwell's chaplains. 1652, he became the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University. The man had a mind, a real fine mind that God used. To have a man who's got a mind and that mind is sanctified to the Lord's service is a tremendous gift to the church and he was a tremendous gift of God's grace to the church. Nevertheless, it seems that Oxford University had his work cut out. We do tend to see pictures of these Puritan men, they're in their Sunday best, they're dressed in black, they have their white lace collar. and they have their dark hat or maybe a dark cap and they look very somber and sober bearing in mind this wasn't a photograph, it was a painting and they might have to sit for some considerable time. You're not going to grin all of that time. We do tend to see them as very dour men who are perhaps squirrel-like in their study, perhaps a little short-sighted, squinting in their weakness at the books in front of them. But John Owen was certainly not that kind of man. For all he was a fine mind, he was an interesting character. There was a debate taking place on one occasion, one of the organized debates, and a student began to use bad language. John Owen remonstrated with him, but the student became even more insistent in using his bad language. So eventually John Owen got up, physically got hold of the student, and physically threw him out of the building. That's something else to think about, isn't it? In 1658, he met with a number of other congregational ministers like himself, and between them they drew up the Savoy Declaration based on the Westminster Confession of Faith. And again, it's a fine document if you read it. Apparently as a young man he enjoyed sport. One thing he particularly enjoyed was javelin throwing and maybe that helped him throw the student out, I don't know. But I've also been told that John Owen was a bit of a snappy dresser and he defies the image we've got of the dowry dress puritan. He was apparently a man who would dress in sometimes very colorful clothes, would have quite thick lace, highly decorated lace. His shoes might be adorned with buckles and he cut quite the figure by the way he dressed. We need then to pray, don't we, for those men in the church today and women who have great minds. Give God thanks for them. There are still men and women in the world today who have fine minds. They will face things in our age like John Owen had to face things that arose and which were challenging in his. Those things that challenge the church today, those men and women in our universities and institutions who have great minds will have to meet those challenges for the first time need to come up with careful biblical responses. And when they do, we all benefit from their leadership. And so we need to pray for them. Pray for those who teach in our Bible colleges around the world. There are many men I could mention. You need to pray for someone like a man like Al Mohler, for example. But there are many, many others. Pray for them. But remember, at the end of the day, it's not the greatness of the preacher. It's not how eloquent the preacher is, how stirring the preacher is. It's not the greatness of the preacher that matters, but the greatness of the gospel. Please don't think that if you had the world's greatest evangelist come along and speak to your friends, they'd all be saved. purposes of God, he has placed you amongst your friends to be the evangelist through whom they will hear the gospel. But it is the greatness of the gospel and God's grace that will save them. And we are all to give witness to the greatness of the gospel. The final man I want to mention is John Bunyan. You really can't mention John Owen without mentioning John Bunyan. John Bunyan is almost the complete opposite to John Owen. Bunyan was born at Elstow, just outside Bedford. You can go to where the house stood, but the house is no longer there. He was born into rather poor circumstances, and he grew up to be a very wild and, frankly, sinful young man. Very, very willful. At the age of 16, he joined the parliamentary army for two or three years. And if you want to find out how he was saved, the full account is given in the book he later published, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. That's his testimony. Grace abounding to the chief of sinners. To put it bluntly and shortly, the end of it was this. He was walking along one day, he was already being dealt with by the spirit when he overheard some women in the local village on the street talking about the new birth and the gospel. Overhearing, he asked them something about this and one of them eventually introduced him to the Bedford pastor, John Gifford. John Gifford, by the grace of God, was instrumental in leading John Bunyan to Christ and he was saved. By 1653 he had become a member of the church in Bedford. Two years later, in 1655, he is a church deacon. By the year 1660, John Bunyan would find himself in prison for the crime of preaching the gospel, and he would spend most of the next 12 years in prison. But it's out of that that perhaps his greatest work grew, The Pilgrim's Progress. And The Pilgrim's Progress has been translated into so many languages, and it is second on the all-time bestseller list, second only to the Bible. But John Bunyan's preaching style, as well as his writing style, were apparently compelling. His English was both powerful and, at the same time, delightful. It was simple and full of imagery and pictures, so much so that John Owen, with his fine mind and his precision for his theology and great learning, could say this of John Bunyan, that he, John Owen, would gladly trade all his learning if he could only preach like Bunyan, like that tinker. And the tinker he had been, a man who would go around the area repairing pots and pans. Well, above all, don't we all need to pray that like John Bunyan, our witness and our ministry in whatever form it takes, as well as the ministry and witness of West Park Church generally and the preaching that takes place here, as well as when we're able to preach in the open air, that it would know the same sort of power and directness and liveliness and delightfulness and receive the same kind of blessing as Bunyan's did. There were, of course, many men who deserve mention. Thomas Manton, William Bridge, Stephen Charnock, John Flavel, my wife's favorite, Thomas Watson. But the sad truth is this period of Puritanism was not to last. This ascendancy in the late 40s and 50s would not last, at least not in a political sense. In 1658, Oliver Cromwell died. His son Richard took over the leadership of the nation, but he was not the man his father had been. He didn't have the ability or the influence, and very soon he was being persuaded, along with Parliament, to have the return of Charles II, Charles I's son. We will deal with that, God willing, next time. But the sad truth is, at this point, the supremacy of the Puritans would never return on a national scale. Their influence, however, lives on. It lives on around the world. It lived on through men like Jonathan Edwards, through men like George Whitefield, later men like Joseph Parker and Charles Spurgeon and even Lloyd Jones in the 20th century and lives on right here, right now in Wolverhampton. These are men whose works still deserve our attention. Their lives scream out their love for the Lord, their dependence on the Lord. Many of their books are so very, very practical and they were great observers of the human condition and applied scripture. When you read how they develop things, it's amazing how they go through things in such a painstaking fashion. They have so much to say and so much help to give us and we are the poorer when we ignore them. Nevertheless, the end of this period is also a warning to us. We must not assume things. That what we have now, the world in which we live, the state in which we live, the freedoms that we have now will always be there. Things can change in the providence of God. Things were about to change for the Puritans in a very dark fashion for them. We, like them, must always be ready to give an answer for our faith, and to give that answer in the service of our Lord, no matter what may come. To do that, we need to be preparing ourselves, preparing ourselves through the word of God. May his word then take deep root in our lives. For it is all given by the inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for correction, for reproof, for instruction in righteousness, that you and I as men and women of God might be thoroughly equipped, complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. That's why we are to preach the word. May it be so to his glory. Amen. Well, our closing hymn is number 757. It's a hymn by Richard Baxter. Many of his hymns were written as poems, and they reflect his own life experience. Baxter was a man who was really not very well. His entire life, he was a sick man. And his famous quote, a quote I very much love, is that he preached as a dying man to dying men, and as one never sure to preach again. He expected, in a sense, almost every day to die. And this hymn reflects that, the trust that he had in the Lord and submitting to the purposes and providence of God in all of life. So, 7-5-7. Lord, it belongs not to my care whether I die or live. To love and serve thee is my share, and this thy grace must give. If life be long, I will be glad that I may long obey. If short, yet why should I be sad to soar to endless day? Christ leads me through no darker rooms than he went through before, and he that to God's kingdom comes must enter by this door. Come, Lord, when grace has made me meet thy blessed face to see. For if thy work on earth be sweet, what will thy glory be? Then I shall end my sad complaints and weary sinful days, and join with the triumphant saints who sing Jehovah's praise. My knowledge of this life is small, the eye of faith is dim, but tis enough that Christ knows all, and I shall be with him. Let's pray. Our Lord and our God, then we thank you for the example of these men who walked this path before us, some of them through days of persecution, some knowing days of great freedom and the ability to think and publish and preach freely, only to lose it all at the end. Lord help us therefore to remember not to rely and put our trust in horses and chariots and in governments and political parties and agendas, not to trust in the wisdom and the strength and the understanding of philosophers and teachers and professors, but to trust you, to grow in wisdom from your word. to be built up spiritually, mentally, emotionally, through your word, preached in your church, amongst your people. Help us, Lord, we pray, because we confess at our best we are very frail creatures. We are prone to wander. We are prone to fail you. And so, Lord, forgive us in all that we do that is wrong, and help us, we pray, that we might learn by the example of those that you led this way before. May we pick up the torch that they have passed on and bear it, passing it on to the next generation to the glory and the honor and the praise of your name, in which we ask these things now. Amen.