Alright, great to see you. Get down here so I can see the lights of your eyes. It's great. Been looking forward to this for a long time. You say, oh history, oh my, such a boring subject. Well I hope not. I hope this morning it's an exciting subject for you. We're going to be talking about perhaps the most misunderstood, misrepresented, maligned people in history. the Puritans. That name was actually applied to them as a term of derision originally, but they accepted it, welcomed that term for them, because it really describes exactly what they were. They were attempting to purify the Church. Turn in your Bibles, if you would, first of all, to Hebrews chapter 6. Hebrews 6, verses 12-19. This is a passage that the American Puritans often referenced as they made their exodus from England to America. Hebrews 6 verse 12, that ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises. These British Puritans looked at America as their promised land, a place of new opportunity to serve Christ freely. For when God made promises to Abraham because he could swear by no greater, He swore by himself, saying, Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee. And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. For men verily swear by the greater, and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife. Wherein God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise, the immutability of his counsel confirmed it by an oath, that by two immutable things in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us." Notice that phrase, the hope set before us. That was a key promise in this passage for the Puritans. which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the veil." The Puritans had a wonderful definition of history. History is a memorial of the mercies of God. so that posterity might know them, remember them, and hymn His praises." Every phrase of that definition is significant. History is a memorial of the mercies of God. Another way of describing mercies would be providences for God's graces to His people. But His mercies, His blessings upon His people, So that those who follow us might remember them. And of course the God who provided them. So that posterity might remember them and be able to, him, sing his praises. And I hope that that's what we'll get out of this series today. That we'll not only appreciate the Puritans, but we'll more appreciate the God of the Puritans. And we'll be able to better hymn his praises as we understand their history, which really is part of our history too. It's part of our history. Well, I hope you all have a handout because that's what we're going to be using this morning and this time and then the afternoon service. We'll be doing something differently during the worship service today, talking about the Puritan family and an emphasis on marriage, family devotions, very practical things. And hopefully you'll stay for that. So we're going to go down through this outline. And this is Sunday school, so this is a little more informal. If you want to ask me a question or make an observation, please do that. Interrupt me, I don't mind that. Just do that. This is your time as well as mine. So please feel free to do that. One of my favorite history books is that of Sidney Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People. It's a well-done history of American religion. And he said Puritanism provided the moral and religious background of fully 75% of the people who declared their independence in 1776. Now, the majority of Puritans in Old England were Presbyterians. That was the largest branch of the Puritan movement in England. The lesser branch would be the Congregationalist branch. And that's the branch that we find located in New England. And eventually joining them would be the Scotch and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. Collectively, those immigrants provided, as Alstrom said, 75% of those who were defending freedoms against the British during the American Revolution. Now that's quite amazing. The Puritans not only established the Christian foundations of America, and that's so significant. I mean, that is providential in and of itself, that God would see fit to establish America clearly on Christian principles using these people. They set the intellectual, the ethical, and moral tone in the nation for over a hundred years. They have the lowest illiteracy rate of any people in America for at least 200 years. Very well educated people, but very godly people. So, we may learn from the Puritans as we face the diabolical enemies of the postmodern secular age. And my, do we face them all of the time. Secularism is on the increase in America. Protestantism is on the decrease in America. First time last year, according to the polls, Protestantism was the largest, it was the majority of inhabitants in America. No longer is that true. Secularism, if you could call it a religion, is the majority in America. Well, what is Puritanism? What is Puritanism? Well, it's a reform movement. You know, a couple of days ago, we celebrated, not Halloween, Reformation Day. Reformation Day, October 31st. Reformation Day. What happened on that day? Well, Martin Luther inaugurated the Protestant Reformation by nailing his 95 theses against the indulgent system of the Roman Catholic Church. at the church door in Wittenberg, Germany, which set in motion a whole series of events that led to the coming of Puritans to America. So there is a close tie there between Protestantism and Puritanism. In fact, the Puritans are definitely Protestants. In fact, we call them Protestants of the Protestants. Well, one definition I found helpful is from Allan Cardin's Puritan Christianity in America. a reformist religious movement comprised of individuals who took issue with the Church of England in matters of polity, style, and doctrine, and who desired to discard Romish practices, to exercise congregational autonomy and authority, and to build their society on the Bible as the final authority. And so the Puritan movement was a non-conformist movement. The Puritans, by and large, wanted to stay in the Church of England, but clean it up, reform it, purify it. There were still too many Roman Catholic beliefs and practices in the Anglican Church, so they wanted to reform it. Another author said, a Puritan, therefore, was a man of severe or strict morals, a Calvinist in doctrine, and a nonconformist to the ceremonies and discipline of the Church. And when we think of discipline, we normally think of punishment. That's not the case here in this context. It means orderliness of the discipline of the Church, though they did not actually separate from it. Now there was a group of, I guess we could call Puritans, they didn't call themselves that, but in the Puritan movement, that actually felt that the Church of England was just pass all hope. And the only remedy for us is to leave it. And they were called the Separatists. And the Separatists are represented by the Pilgrims who came to America's shores in 1620 and founded Plymouth, Massachusetts. Those were the Pilgrims. They differ from the Puritans. The Puritans wanted to stay in the church, clean it up. The Separatists wanted to come out altogether. So one would say, farewell Babylon, there's no hope for you. The other would say, well, farewell Mother Church, we hope better things for you. The origin, where did the Puritans come from? They originated theologically, as I suggested, from the Protestant Reformation. It originated from this intense desire to have God glorified in the Church. It was the logical and theological result of the Protestant Reformation. Now, the Puritans emphasized what Luther and the other Protestant Reformers emphasized, the three cardinal doctrines of the Protestant Reformation. The first one is the most important one. In fact, we derive the other two from this one, the absolute authority of scripture. We cannot compromise that under any circumstances. The absolute authority of scripture over the Roman Catholic view of scripture plus tradition, the dictates of the popes, and all that goes with that. The second cardinal doctrine was justification by faith alone, sola fides, faith alone, over against the Roman Catholic view of salvation by faith plus works. Folks, with the Catholics, it's always faith plus something else. It's always plus something. And with the liberals, it's always subtraction. We deny it. But with the Catholics, it's perversion by addition. So they'll say, yeah, we believe the Bible, we believe in faith, but it's always faith plus merit, plus works. The Bible plus tradition. And the third cardinal doctrine is the priesthood of the believer. That is, the responsibility and opportunity for every believer to appear directly before the throne of grace through the merit of Jesus Christ. There is no other mediator between God and man except for the man Christ Jesus. We don't go through relics, we don't go through saints, we don't go through Mary, we don't go through the local priests. We come directly to God through Jesus Christ. So those are the three cardinal doctrines of the Protestant Reformation. The Puritans definitely held to those doctrines. The Puritans were also concerned about practical holiness, practical piety. One of their foremost theologians, William Ames, wrote, Theology is the doctrine or teaching of living to God. That is an excellent definition of theology. It's so practical. You see, theology in the textbook says, well, it's the study of God. No, it's the study of God. Well, on the basis of that definition, just about anybody could be a theologian, I suppose. But for the Puritan, it was more than that. It was the study, not just of God, but of knowing God, knowing who He is, and responding to that knowledge. by glorifying Him in our daily lives. That's a lesson we all ought to take home with us today. Theology is the teaching or the doctrine of living to God. Life. Godliness was an impetus then for their movement. Perry Miller, who was an authority on the Puritans and yet not a believer, evidently, He was an agnostic, professor of Harvard for many years, but he was an authority on the Puritans, and he said, Piety was the inspiration for Puritan heroism. It was foolishness and fanaticism to their opponents, but to themselves it was life eternal. Holiness. The Puritans recognized that God governs providentially. All of us, every one of us has our own story to tell today about the providence of God in our lives, right? Some of us who are older have much more to tell about how God has led us in our lives. I mean, any one of us could get up here today and just describe the blessings of God and how He's provided providence, provided for us along the way. That's how God normally works in this dispensation. He works providentially. When there are some unusual circumstances, the Puritans called those special providences. Special providences where God reveals himself in unusual and amazing ways. And we'll locate some of those as we go along. For them, history was a series a long series of divine intentions. Now, for us, intentions could be just wishes. I hope this is going to happen. But for God, an intention is a done deal, right? Whatever God intends, He does. So, for the Puritans, history was a long series of divine intentions, divine promises. that are sure to come true. Their worldview was theocentric, God-centered. It wasn't segregated or segmented. God permeated every aspect of their lives. Puritan doctrines reshaped their minds and souls, set them apart from other folk, and gave them meaning and direction in their lives. Another historian, George Bancroft, who wrote back in 1892, said Puritanism was a life-giving spirit. Activity, thrift, intelligence followed in its train. And as for courage, a coward and a Puritan never went together. A coward and a Puritan never went together. So the Puritans, because they were theocentric, of course meant that they were essentially Biblicists, because they adhered to the word of God. They drew their theology from several sources, but their final authority was always scripture. Now, we see where they originated theologically, but practically, where did they originate? Well, I think we can trace their practical origins all the way back to John Knox. Most of you have heard of John Knox, the great Scottish reformer. Philosopher and historian Thomas Carlyle refers to Knox as the chief priest and founder of the faith that became Scotland's and New England's. Now, he's using chief priest as kind of a metaphor here for his headship in the ministry in Scotland. Martin Lloyd-Jones calls Knox the founder of Puritanism because his principles became the policies of Puritanism. both in Great Britain and in America. And because he embraced Puritan principles. Courageous opposition to wicked rulers. Well, I think of Knox confronting Mary, Queen of Scots. And she would cry and bemoan the fact that Knox was superior in trying to take over the church. And he says, no, I want God to take over the church. I want God to be glorified in Scotland, not the Pope. And during his time of reformation, he was actually arrested and put on a galley ship and made a slave for a few years. And a priest came around while he was sitting there at the oars and had a picture of Mary and required every slave to kiss her picture. And he took that picture of Mary and threw her overboard and said, let our mother swim. This was the kind of courageous man that Knox was. And it wasn't that he was defying authority, he was submitting to it. He was submitting to divine authority over human authority. Folks, that's very important for us because we're going to face that. if we aren't already facing that. We're going to have to make a decision whether we're going to follow God or man. And man's precepts are becoming increasingly obnoxious to us, right? And offensive to us, and they ought to be. When you have a government sanctioning homosexuality, when you have a government sanctioning abortion, Judgment is bound to come. We're going to have to make some very personal decisions. They may not have affected us personally yet, but they're coming. And so I hope that as a result of what we're doing today, your faith will be fortified. John Knox had to face these kinds of things. Not exactly the same problems we face today, but similar. And he had the courage to do it. That was an inspiration of the Puritans who followed him. Well, John Knox, the reformer of Scotland, provided inspiration. But historically, where do the Puritans come from? We've seen theologically where they came from, practically where they came from. What about historically? Well, we can trace their origin back to 16th century Elizabethan England, Elizabeth I. When her half-sister Mary Tudor was on the throne from 1553 to 1558, she wanted to return the Church of England back into Roman Catholicism, back into the fold of the papacy. And so to do that, she persecuted the Protestants. She put to death probably some 300 ministers. Well, there were several who escaped her wrath and went to the continent. John Mox was one of those. He went to Geneva and ministered there alongside of John Calvin. Well, when Mary Tudor died, her half-sister, Elizabeth I, came to the throne. Oh, now we can go back home, which is what they did. They came back home with their Geneva Bible in hand and with the desire for a thorough reformation of Great Britain. hoping that Queen Elizabeth would be sympathetic. No, it didn't happen. Queen Elizabeth initiated a compromise called the Elizabethan Settlement. She wanted to retain the pomp and circumstance, the ceremonies of the Catholic Church, and the doctrines of Protestantism. You know, that reminds me of the guy who wanted to compromise during the Civil War, and he wore the gray tunic. and the blue trousers, because he didn't want to be identified with either side. You know what happened, right? Both sides shot at him. Well, both sides are shooting at Elizabeth, so to speak. And disgruntled Protestants who were hoping for a thorough reformation began initiating, through Parliament, acts that would offset the settlement. Well, Elizabeth would have none of it. So some of the Puritans had to go into hiding, they were persecuted. So it was just dissatisfaction. And again, they opposed this policy and their admonition to Parliament in 1572, which said, employ your whole labour and study, not only in abandoning all Popish remnants, but also in bringing in and placing in God's church those things only which the Lord himself in his word commandeth." I mean, we have all these additional offices, you know, archbishops and bishops and chancellors and rectors and all these things. Where do we find these in Scripture? Of course, bishop we find there, but that's the equivalent of a pastor. But all this hierarchicalism in the church, let's get rid of that. Let's get rid of bowing at the altar during communion. Why is bowing so wrong at communion? Because it suggests that we're worshipping those elements which to the Catholic become the literal body and blood of Christ, called transubstantiation. Let's get away with crossing ourselves. Let's get rid of all these vestments, these Catholic robes and vestments. Let's get rid of what Elizabeth wants us to abide by, a book of common prayer that prescribes everything we have to do in a worship service. Where's the freedom in that to worship God? 39 articles of the Anglican Church. You have to subscribe to these or you're out of office. And keep in mind, the Church of England, it's a state church. So who pays your salary if you're a minister? The state does. So the state can oust you from your ministry and you have no living. You have no way to support your family. That took real courage to say no to Elizabeth. But many did. And then we come to migration. What brought the Puritans to America? What brought the Puritans to America? Some reasons for leaving England. Well, you can guess what some of these would be. OK, Elizabeth passes away. She's the Virgin Queen, never marries, never has any children. She dies in 1603. So Parliament looks around. Who do we get to replace Elizabeth? Well, they note that James VI has Tudor blood running from his veins, and he's a steward. He's James VI of Scotland, but he's also a Tudor. So let's ask him to become king and he'll unite Scotland and England under one crown. That's what happens. So he becomes James I of England. Why? Well, he's coming from Presbyterian Scotland. So the Protestants gain new hope. Surely, surely, he'll repeal all of these requirements that Elizabeth imposed upon us. No. They took a millinery petition to him. Millinery because a thousand signatures were on it asking for changes in the Church of England. They presented that at Hampton Court Palace in 1604. And James says, OK, I'll hear you. Now he heard them all right. The only thing he granted them was a different version of the Bible. They didn't like the Bishop's Bible. He didn't like the Geneva Bible. So okay, we'll have a new translation. What's it called? The King James Bible. But that's the only thing, the only thing that remotely satisfied the Puritans. They wanted a more democratic church. They wanted to get rid of all these Roman Catholic additions to the service to the Christian Church. And he said, no, I'm not going to abide by that. He said, if you don't conform to these policies that Elizabeth had established, I will carry you out of the land or do worse. Well, that was a signal for many Protestants, Puritans, Separatists, to get themselves out of the land. And that's what happened. Many of them came to Holland first. You know, that's providential that God raised up this place of refuge for persecuted Protestants in England. The Netherlands were having their own problems with Spain, with the imposition of Catholicism on the Netherlands. But, nevertheless, during that period of time, in the early 1600s, they found a home temporarily in Holland. Stuart monarchs, one after the other, imposed restrictions on the Puritans. The Stuart monarchs, climaxed with the appointment of William Loud as Bishop of London and then as Archbishop of Canterbury, imposed all kinds of worship standards and restrictions on the Protestants. I mean, William Loud was like a bloodhound. He would try and seek out ministers who were preaching the Word. Depose them. Well, they would go to another place. Well, they would preach there. He would go there and find them and depose them and just kick them out of their pulpit. So what to do? Well, we'll go to America to find a new way of life in America. That's what many of them did. There were other reasons why they went. Economic depression, the King Dissolved Parliament, which was increasingly a Protestant, Puritan parliament. The fear of impending judgment in England. One of the leaders of the Puritan movement in America, John Winthrop, said all other churches of Europe are brought to desolation. What was going on in the continent at the time? mainly in France, Germany, the Holy Roman Empire. The Thirty Years War, 1618-1648, between Catholics and Protestants. War was raging. And a lot of the Protestants thought that this was indicative of God's judgment upon His Church. That was another reason they felt like, we need to get out of here. We need to go to a new promised land. Go to America. And so he says, It cannot be but the light judgment is coming upon us, and who knows? But that God has provided this place, America, to be a refuge to man. We can't continue living in Holland, different language, different lifestyle, The Dutch Reformed Church is there, it's similar but not exactly what we believe. But there's America, a land of promise, a land of opportunity, a land of hope for us. To be a refuge for many whom He means to save out of the general destruction. And then another reason for coming would be wicked influences on the children. John Winthrop complained that the fountains of learning and religion are so corrupted that most children, even the best wits and fairest hopes, are perverted, corrupted, and utterly overthrown by the multitude of evil examples and the licentious government of those schools. We can identify with that, can't we? The secular school system in America? You know, the public school system in America, most colleges in America, in fact I can't think of an exception in early America, were Christian. They were governed by Christian ministers. That's all changed, of course, now. But what drove these people? What drove these people away from their homes, their businesses, all that had been familiar to them? to go to a strange place, to go to a wilderness. Hey, there are no Holiday Inns there. There are no Walmarts. I mean, this is wilderness we're talking about. This is Indians there. And what compelled them to do that? A profound sense of mission. If you read the original documents of the Puritans, and there are many of them, You'll find this evidence time and again, this sense of mission. A mission to glorify God through presenting the gospel. They were concerned about displacing the Indians. They wanted to win the Indians to the gospel of Christ. That was one of their intentions. A realization that the truth of God was greater than themselves. God's glory, God's name must be upheld. That's greater than us. It reminds me of Martin Luther's words to the Duke of Saxony when he was called to go to Worms and defend the faith before the prelates of the Church, the high-ranking officials of the Church, and the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. And he said, I must go. I must go. Even though I never leave the place alive, I must go. Because the truth of Christ is greater than myself. You know what impresses me so about these men is the truth of God obsessed them. That's what we need today. We need the truth of God to obsess us. So, if everything that we enjoy is taken away from us, what really matters still remains. The truth of God. No one can take that away from us. That's inalienable. It's in people who are being bought and sold. It's inalienable. It belongs to us. Objectives in coming to America. I must move quickly. provision to perform divine intentions, protection to obtain religious freedom, preservation to establish God's kingdom on earth. They talked about it as a city set upon a hill. The poet described it this way, their altars they forgo, their homes they quit, fields which they love and paths they daily trod, and cast the future upon providence. as men that dictate, of whose inward sense the truth outweighs the world, in propagation to extend the gospel of Christ. Their first settlement was Salem. When we think of Salem today, we think of what? The witch trials, right? That was only a brief episode in Puritan history, and one, I might add, that they repented of. They knew they had made a huge mistake, and they repented of it. I'll say more about that later. But Salem, 1628. But the large colony was the Massachusetts Bay Colony in and around the Boston area. beginning around 1630, two years later. John Winthrop and his associates sailed from Southampton in four vessels. Within a few months, 17 ships sailed in all, carrying a total of 840 passengers. Between April and December of that year, about 200 died, including Winthrop's son Henry, who accidentally drowned in Salem on September 30. When Winthrop came as the Moses of this exodus from England, his wife and the rest of his family remained behind to settle the affairs of his estate. Winthrop was a lawyer, he had a wealthy position, wealthy estate, but he was willing to sacrifice all of that and come to the New World. He gets here, his son is drowned. So he writes Margaret, The Lord is pleased still to humble us. Yet He makes us so many mercies with His corrections, as we are persuaded He will not cast us off, but in His due time will do us good according to the measure of our afflictions. He stays but till He hath purged our corruptions, healed the hardness and error of our hearts, and stripped us of our vain confidence in this arm of flesh, that he may have us rely wholly upon himself. We may not look at great things here. It is enough that we shall have heaven, though we should pass through hell to it. We here enjoy God and Jesus Christ. Is that not enough? I do not repent any coming. And if I were to come again, I would not have altered my course, though I had foreseen all these afflictions." Wow! He had known his son would drown? I'm not going to go. No. If I had foreseen that, I would have come anyway. As I said, Winthrop was an English lawyer. Lord of Groton Manor. stockholder in the New England Company. And the New England Company, by the way, helped to establish the Massachusetts Bay Company, which is also a stockholding company. And so it was a business venture, and yet Winthrop called this, in his lay sermon on the flagship Arbella on the way over the Atlantic Ocean, he called this group the Church. He didn't refer to it as a business company. He saw this as the people of God being transplanted in a new world and to establish themselves as a church or a group of local congregational churches. That's a very interesting thing. And the charter, this is very significant. The King of England allowed them to take their charter with them to their new location in New England. This allowed them to establish their own government, their own churches, their own society. That is highly significant. Later on, when King George wanted to take those freedoms away, this helped to precipitate the American Revolution. What? You granted us all these freedoms to begin with. This charter is highly significant, for it allowed for the establishing of churches and the free choice of government, the two bulwarks of society. Also, this colony was established by towns. The Roman Catholics, mainly the Jesuits and the Franciscans, had already been coming to America. What were they establishing? Missions. Mission speaks of transience. Towns speak of permanence. And that's one reason, I think, that the New England way took precedence over other ways, over other ways of establishing society in the New World. That's significant. Towns speak of settlement. These were settlers. We're here for the long haul. We're here to stay. We're not here today and gone tomorrow. See, the Catholics were exploiters. The Protestants were settlers. Big difference. Other settlements were established after the Boston Settlement, Connecticut, by a minister named Thomas Hooker. He was their principal leader. They had the option of establishing the church any way they wanted. They opted for congregationalism. that the final authority in church affairs would be the congregation. The congregation would determine who the ministers would be. The congregation would help support that minister and the work of the local church. Congregationalism is very significant in the development of democratically oriented America. So their society helped in the establishing of what became the United States of America in the late 1700s. John Davenport, another minister, helped to establish New Haven. And of course New Haven and Connecticut combined eventually into the colony of Connecticut. And we're going to be noting in the service to come and in the afternoon service the importance of the covenant, of uniting these people together on the basis of promise. We're going to promise one another before God that we're going to behave and believe in a certain way. That was the genius of Puritan society. My wife and I have lived in Taylors now for three and a half years. We shopped around for a church and we eventually joined a church in Greer and one of the reasons we did that was because of the church covenant. It made us promise to do certain things if we were going to be members of that church. I welcomed that. It makes us accountable to God and our fellow church members. It's an excellent way of doing church. I'm not trying to impose that on you folks. And most churches of our kind have either a written covenant or an implied covenant. Meaning that as believers, as co-believers, we are united in Christ therefore responsible to him to behave and believe properly. God help us to do that. And I'm not sure exactly what I was supposed to be done, but we'll finish now. The main service starts at 11, I believe, and I have a quarter till. So let's close in a word of prayer. Thank you for your attention, and hopefully you'll stay around for the other services. Father, thank you for the privilege of knowing the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you for shedding your love abroad in our hearts for you and for one another. Thank you for the ministry of the gospel of Jesus Christ. You have told us to go into all the world and to preach the gospel to every creature. And I pray that as a result of our understanding of the Puritans and their desire to come to America to preach the gospel, we might as well be inspired to do that. And also to be inspired by their lives, their courage, their testimony for Christ, their desire to glorify God in their lives. And I pray that you will be glorified in these services today. And we'll give you the thanks in Jesus' name. Amen.