Just sharing some time looking at some of the things that happened in the history of Christ's church and what we can learn from those for our own lives today and the place and time that God has put us. As we begin together, I'd like to read with you Psalm 48. At the beginning of each session, we'll read a scripture passage together that ties into some of the talk And our first talk is really sort of a history talk. We're gonna step back in time and set some of the context, what the world was like at the time of the Mero controversy, what it was about. I think there's a good reason why we should take some time as Christians to think about what God has done in the past in the history of his church. I think Psalm 48 gives us instruction there. Hear with me from God's word, Psalm 48. Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the city of our God. In his holy mountain, beautiful in elevation, the joy of the whole earth, is Mount Zion on the sides of the north, the city of the great king. God is in her palaces. He is known as her refuge. For behold, the kings assembled, they passed by together, they saw it, and so they marveled. They were troubled, they hastened away. Fear took hold of them there, and pain, as of a woman in birth pangs, as when you break the ships of Tarshish with an east wind. As we have heard, so we have seen. In the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God, he will establish it forever. We have thought, O God, on your loving kindness in the midst of your temple. According to your name, O God, so is your praise to the ends of the earth. Your right hand is full of righteousness. Let Mount Zion rejoice. Let the daughters of Judah be glad because of your judgments. Walk about Zion and go all around her. Count her towers. Mark well her bulwarks. Consider her palaces. that you may tell it to the generation following. For this is God, our God forever and ever. He will be our guide even to death. Last words of this Psalm verse 12 and following. I really sum up this call to the Old Testament people, the covenant people in that era to go walk around the city of Jerusalem. to look at the buildings, to look at the walls, the towers that have been built in generations before them, to consider the things that they saw central to which was the temple with its worship and why, so that they could talk to the next generation, talk to their children, talk to their grandchildren about what God had done. And pointing forward to His great work of salvation that would come in Christ, what God had done to redeem His people. And to see that as they looked at these things, they were seeing a reflection of who God is. God's faithfulness, God's mercies, God's grace, God's great salvation for a sinful people. So verse 9 through 11, We have thought, O God, on Your lovingkindness in the midst of Your temple. Let Mount Zion rejoice. Let the daughters of Judah be glad because of your judgments. So here I think as well, we live in the New Testament era. We don't live in the Old Testament. There's a great fulfillment that has taken place. The temple is no more. We have a risen and ascended glorious Christ who we serve. And he's been building his church through the generations. And the call for us then, what do we do with the call to walk around Zion? Well, I think the New Testament era, it's the call to walk around the church, to be presently, to look around and to see what God has done in people's lives around us and building his church right now, here around the world, but also to walk around the church in history and to go back to the Reformation or to other time periods in history, walk around. and look and see what God has done. So that's what I hope to do with you now as we look at the marrow controversy together. What was the marrow controversy? It's kind of a weird title in some ways. When we think of the word marrow today, we might think of bone marrow, transfusions, might think of healthcare, medicine, Well, the word marrow in the 1620s, 30s and 40s in England was a word that was a thought of not in medical terms so much as in terms of food. The marrow was what people really enjoyed sucking out of a bone. It was the sweet inside of the bone, when you're eating a good piece of meat, and you broke that bone open, and you sucked out the marrow from the inside. And so, you see this term used by various English Puritans, Scottish Presbyterians, others, use this language of the marrow. There was a man named William Ames, he wrote a book called The Marrow of Theology. There's a book we're gonna be talking about tonight, The Marrow of Modern Divinity. And so the marrow was sort of the contemporary word, this was the cutting edge language of the time to say this is the heart, this is the tastiest part, this is the rich core of theology. And so that's what we're gonna step into looking at. Well, I always think there's an aspect of stepping into history, I'm a history professor, of studying church history that's kind of peaceful, sort of bookish, kind of interesting, it gives you the feeling maybe of sitting down in a nice wingback chair by a fireplace with a good book, cozy, reflecting on the past, a nice fire blazing cheerily in the fireplace, a wonderful sense of nostalgia and interest. I hope that our times together over this weekend will have that kind of restful, comfortable learning to them. But also, as we just read in Psalm 48, will really bring us into the presence of our great and holy triune God. Will cause us to see and to know Jesus more fully. To have a refreshed and renewed grasp of the gospel. And bring us into a reality which is much greater than perhaps just an interesting bit of history. Well, to do this, tonight in our first talk, we're going to step back into England in the 1600s. Then in our second talk tonight, we're going to jump forward to Scotland in the beginning of the 1700s. Our first talk, we're going to talk about a book. The second talk, we're gonna talk about a man who's a preacher of the gospel and how he's impacted by this book and what his gospel preaching looked like as a result. And then tomorrow, we're gonna be looking at the themes of faith and assurance in the morning in our first session. And in our second session, we're gonna look at life in Christ, sanctification particularly, and how to guard against the twin errors of what we call antinomianism, lawlessness, and on the other side, legalism. What's the biblical answer to both of those? So let's start tonight by stepping back into the 1600s, into the city of London. What would the city of London, England be like in, say, the 1640s, the early summer of 1645? That's the summer that the book, The Marrow of Modern Divinity, first appeared in print in this city. Some printers ran off copies. The Gutenberg press had been invented already 200 years earlier, so printing presses exist. They would be cranking and pressing down these wooden presses onto sheets of paper and working busily in shops, no air conditioning. If it was hot during the summer, it would be sweaty. There'd be flies buzzing around. Outside on the streets, you would have the smell of smoke everywhere. Everybody's cooking over fires. You'd also have the smell of manure everywhere. The streets don't have cars in them. The streets have horses and oxen, carts going by, occasional chicken or pig running by. These are years, the 1640s, of great tumult in England. It's the middle of a civil war. You'd probably see soldiers riding down the street. You'd hear news of battles. There's all the ordinary stuff of life going on. There are births and deaths, marriages, celebrations. There are happy marriages, there are broken marriages. There are families that are loving Christ and gathering together with his people for worship. There are those who are antagonistic to Christ. It's a world very different from our own in some ways, but in other ways, exactly the same. No different at all, really. Well, during the early summer of 1645, the Parliament had really been leading the charge against the King of England, King Charles I. As I mentioned, there's a civil war going on. There's a division in the nation. And in this period where the parliament is controlling much of the country and eventually the king will be removed altogether and beheaded and Oliver Cromwell will become the leading figure of power in England, there's this window in which Puritanism, Protestantism in a reformation form really has the opportunity to flourish tremendously, freely and publicly. Where there'd been persecution in past decades of people who really loved the gospel and longed for a complete reformation in the nation, this now under parliamentary rule was taken away. And it's in this context that this book appeared in print. The man who was the official censor for the parliament, there was actually a government censor of literature wrote an endorsement for this book. He said, this book is clear, it's moderate, it's helpful, and it seeks to reconcile and heal unhappy differences which have broken out among us. The man who wrote these words was named Joseph Carroll, and he wrote his preface on May the 10th, 1645. just about a month before a major bloody battle, the Battle of Naseby, which would lead to a decisive military victory for the Parliament against King Charles I. Well, what was this book about and who wrote it? Well, the author didn't state his name. He only gave his initials on the book, E.F. And he said that he was writing to try to explain to his fellow Puritans how to walk as a middle man between the strict professor according to the law, between the legalist and the loose professor according to the gospel. And he doesn't mean university professors, he means people professing faith in Christ. someone who's strict and someone who's loose. He's trying to create, explain a middle way between legalism and antinomianism. Legalism would add things or change the way that we come to Christ to somehow involve our own works or add things beyond what Christ calls us to to the Christian life. Antinomianism. would emphasize really strongly the gospel of the grace of Jesus Christ, but then sort of you're free as a Christian and all your sins are covered and it really doesn't matter so much what you do or how you live. Well, this anonymous author wrote this book in the form of a dialogue. He wrote it for ordinary people. This is the age of Shakespeare. The age of plays being written with different characters. And so this author wrote it with three different main characters and then a fourth who joins in. One man's name was Nomista, he was the legalist. Antonomista was the lawless person. And then Neophytus, a young Christian who's just being converted and his friends with these two other men. And then the fourth character who comes in is a minister, evangelist or evangelista, who comes and counsels these three friends. And directed by the minister, there's a discussion that takes place between these characters about what it means to be a Christian, what the gospel is. How do we understand the place of the law of God in our lives? What is faith? What is grace in Jesus Christ? What is the gospel? When you become a Christian, what's the place of God's law in your life? Does it still have a place? Well, the author of this book really argued in the Reformation stream of teaching. And from its content and notes, it was clear that he knew a lot of Reformation writers. He cited Luther, Calvin, as well as contemporary Puritans like Thomas Goodwin. And as he began to explain the gospel, he really sought to clarify the difference between being justified and being sanctified, and to make sure that there wasn't confusion between what we call the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. He also strongly proclaimed the call of Christ. The call of Christ is for everyone. The call of the gospel. Jesus Christ, the writer said, will either be a whole savior or no savior. Jesus Christ is proclaimed to all and we're called to go and preach the gospel to every creature under heaven. Go and tell every man without exception that here is good news. that Christ is dead for him. And if he will take him and accept of his righteousness, he shall have it. Now, what was the context like in this time? What were these antinomians and legalists like in the city of London? What's the mixture in this city? Well, it is quite a mix. We've got what we call the Puritans, Puritans were those who were from within the Church of England who wanted greater reformation. They wanted a more pure and simple worship. They wanted centrality of preaching instead of rituals in the life of the church. They were concerned for the gospel, but there were fringes to the Puritans. I said some tended to so emphasize the grace of God in Jesus Christ in a way that minimized God's law, or sort of did away with it after you became a Christian. On the other side, there were those who emphasized God's law very strongly, but in a way that diminished the grace of God in Jesus Christ. And the edges of that, as they went out into the surrounding culture, other religious groups, some of the antinomian groups were very radical and bizarre in their practices. They were cult-like, like sects, really just blatantly rejecting biblical things. They were encouraging polygamy, sexual immorality, flagrantly, and saying, well, we're in Christ. We're free from the law. And on the other hand, you had those if you moved into the Church of England in a more high church direction that were saying that really the way you get right with God is by being moral, by being a good person in our terms today. And so the Merrill writer stated that he was intending not only to show the middle way, but also to warn against those in this city who would really be proclaiming a form of godliness without the power of godliness on the one hand, or on the other hand, who would be proclaiming That the way to come to God, to be made right with God, is by our own works, by our own righteousness. Well, why was this book anonymous? And who was this man EF? Was it just that he was modest, that he didn't give his name? Or perhaps, was he still somewhat fearful? We're just coming out of a period of persecution here. And it's a period of civil war. There's this war raging between half of the nation and the king and the other half of the nation. And the king's side is pretty hostile to the Puritans at this point who are on the parliamentary side. So that may well have played in. What is dedication? to a man named John Downs who was a member of parliament. The author of this book said this. He said, by my own experience, I have found our aptness, our tendency to walk in either one of these erroneous paths, legalism or antinomianism. He went on to say that he personally wrestled with these issues in the midst of heated debates in the churches about 20 years ago. And then again, in the last three to four years. From the details we can pull together, it seems that this writer, who we know his initials EF, he must have been an adult already at the beginning of the reign of King Charles I. And no doubt he'd experienced the efforts of the king with the Archbishop William Law to try to pull all of the Church of England away from Calvinism, away from Puritan influences, towards a high church direction. And we know that that took place. And those persecutions took place as a result of it. Well, now this book comes out, and we know that shortly after its first edition comes out, a second edition comes out, and things are added to it. And new endorsements come to the book from different Puritans who are very appreciative of it. And the connections all indicate that this man must be somewhat well-known, this anonymous man who's writing this book. He gives some more hints as to who he might be, at least by things that he says. He notes people who have been influential on his own life. He says there's a man named Mr. Dodd and a man named Mr. Hooker who both counseled him towards his own conversion, made him aware of his own hypocrisy and pride. His own legalistic tendency brought him to understand the free riches of Christ's grace. And he also noted another writer, a man named John Eaton, who he gave some appreciation towards for understanding the freeness of the gospel. But at the same time, he removed some things from his writing as well. He said that he wanted to walk very carefully in this dialogue, and he noted two men, Burton and Eaton, a man named Henry Burton, who was very legalistic and had gotten fiery into a debate with Eaton. And as a result of that debate, it seems that this EF was being very careful in his own wording. Well, as we try to trace out who this man was, the answer is found eventually, actually through tax records. Not surprisingly, governments always keep close tabs on their citizens. When we tracked down, there were really two EFs that were around at this time who were writing books. One was a high church Anglican who was very much sort of on the moralistic side and simply wouldn't fit with the content of this book. The other EF turns out to be a barber, a barber surgeon. And this EF was the man who wrote the book. His name we find out was Edward Fisher. And it's fascinating to find out that this book, which turned out to be one of the great works of theology of this time period, was not written by a pastor. It was written by a layman. Barber surgery was the way these jobs were combined in this time. The man who cut your hair would also do amputations and pull teeth. And so perhaps that's one of the reasons, maybe, why he thought about Merrill. We don't know. But once we get that piece of the puzzle, suddenly other things fall into place. It seems likely that this man, Edward Fisher, had personally experienced persecution as a Puritan. Someone by his name had been arrested at one point earlier. And this likely, again, fits in with his anonymity at this point, his hesitation to put out his name. Well, there's some initial criticism of this book as it comes out, but it keeps being reprinted over and over again. 1645, by 1646, four editions have been published. 1647, a fifth edition. 1648, a sixth edition. In 1647, a second part is added to the work, and Edward Fisher writes another work. Now he puts his name on it. What's this work about? It's about the Lord's Supper, and how do you know if you are fit to attend the Lord's table? And he writes this work as, again, sort of like a stage play, a discussion between different people. Here it's between a minister of the gospel, a man named Zacchaeus, and a man named Simon. Zacchaeus is worthy to attend the Lord's table, but Simon is not. Interestingly, Simon, who's not worthy of attending, is a morally upright man, a man who is very self-righteous. And Zacchaeus is someone who has sinned visibly, but has repented visibly. And it rests in Christ alone for forgiveness. The lessons of this work about the Lord's Supper were in harmony with the heart of the teaching of the marrow as it would unfold in that book. That God has made a covenant of grace in and through the Lord Jesus Christ. That Christ is a complete savior for sinners. That he is sufficient both to justify us and to sanctify us. Well EF wrote a third book where he addressed individuals thinking about attending the Lord's Table. This was called A Touchstone for a Communicant. There he encouraged people to examine their own hearts and consider their relationship with Christ as they prayed and thought through attendance on the Lord's Table and coming to be a communicant member of a church. So through all of this we see that this man whose job was being a barber and a surgeon had a great love for knowing Christ, for shepherding people's souls. We have a few other details about him. We know that he was engaged in a couple of different congregations. It seems very likely that he served as an elder later on in his life. They had a passion as well to bring people together as believers. In fact, there was a great debate at this point between Congregationalists and Presbyterians, who theologically in many ways had so much in common, but there was division between them. The last work that this EF, Edward Fisher, wrote was a discussion on the essentials of the faith. in a dialogue between two ministers. One, an independent minister, and one, a Presbyterian minister. And what are they doing together? It's two ministers together, one congregational minister, independent, the other Presbyterian. Together, they're counseling a tempted, doubting Christian. Together, shepherding him to Christ. And so Edward Fisher, the barber surgeon, from what we get of the man who's the author of this book, seemed to be a man who loved the church, who had real commitments as to what the church ought to be like in terms of being a faithful church, but who also saw beyond his own convictions to see that there are believers in other churches. Even if he didn't agree with everything there, he saw the centrality of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and a great love to see that every believer would really know Christ more and more fully. Well, Edward Fisher's books all came out in the 1640s. The last one came out in the year 1650. It's interesting, the only note that we have beyond written of Edward Fisher is this. In 1650, in a London newspaper, there was an obituary that simply noted in one line, the death of Mr. Fisher, bookseller and barber. And so was Edward Fisher in his context. And he wrote this book, The Marrow of Modern Divinity. And that book had a tremendous impact in his generation. and the generations following in England. It helped many ministers, it helped many church members who were grappling with, what's the relationship of the law and the gospel? Who is Christ, what has he done? How do I understand these things? It helped them come to a greater clarity, a greater joy and resting in Christ, but also living out of Christ. It's fascinating that the second part of the book, which he added in 1647-48, by the time he finished it and was published, was on the Ten Commandments. So the first part was really on understanding the gospel of Jesus Christ, responding in some ways to legalism, as well as to lawlessness. And the second part that was added to it really reaffirmed that response to lawlessness by saying, okay, once you've come to Christ, yes, the law's role is to convict you of sin, to show us our sinfulness, to show us our need of Christ. That's what God's law does. It points us to him. Christ is the one who has fulfilled the law. He's fulfilled all righteousness for us. And he's obeyed perfectly in our place. And his righteousness is imputed to us. And he has taken the penalty for our law breaking on the cross. He has borne the wrath that we deserve for all of our sin. But then as we come to Christ and come to faith in him, and we receive him and all that he is for ourselves, and that's his righteousness is accounted to us. Well, what place then does that law have? Well, that law, that law which was his delight, that law which was his joy to fulfill, then becomes the rule of our new life and new obedience. And Edward Fisher walked through that. He showed that, yes, there are aspects of the Old Testament law that do not continue. The ceremonial law, the sacrifices, all of the rituals. They pointed forward to Christ. Christ fulfilled those. There came an end to the temple service. The veil was torn in two. Christ fulfilled those things. The civil law, there's a change from the covenant people being the nation of Israel to becoming the church that went from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the ends of the earth and became both a Jew and Gentile church from every tribe and tongue and nation and no longer a physical ethnic nation of one ethnicity, but a nation encompassing all nations. and all peoples, a spiritual body rather than an ethnic and national covenant body. And so, he showed all of those marvelous transitions, but then also showed, well, the moral law of God, that abides, that continues. And so, as he exposited the Ten Commandments in his second part of the book, he exposited to show us that that Christ has called us into a new life of obedience, of positive obedience, of glory to God. And how are we to know what the Christian life is to be? Well, God has given us presets. He's given us the riches of his word to direct and guide us into how to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. And so that's what Edward Fisher laid out in very summary form in that book. And we know that that was very positively received in the main in England in both the days when it was first printed and after his death. There were some criticisms against the book. Some who are legalists thought that the book was offering Christ too easily and too freely. There were some on the other side who were antinomians who didn't like the book because they didn't like the idea that the moral law would still be something that's required for the Christian to follow. And that it has the same bearing as it did in the old covenant community. Well, what about the Merrill controversy moving forward as it developed? It was this controversy initially, somewhat over the book in England, but not very strongly. But it really flared up in another country. This was in Scotland. If we move forward, about 50 years after Edward Fisher died in London, England, into the early 1700s. Time has passed. English kings have come and gone. England and Scotland were two separate kingdoms at times at war with each other. But now they're unified. There's an active union that's taken place. And there's now one ruler over both. You've had William and Mary. and the Glorious Revolution, and the end of persecution of Puritans in England, the end of persecution of Presbyterians in England, the end of the Killing Times, as they were called, when many died for the faith, for preaching the gospel. Many were imprisoned in England. That all came to an end. And in Scotland, which was mostly Presbyterian at this time. 111 Evangelical Presbyterians rejoiced and were glad that they were finally free to worship again in simplicity. They were no longer bound as they had been under Charles II to have bishops and to have more of a high church kind of worship. They had liberty to worship as they saw was biblical. But in this context, it seems in Scotland, that while things were very reformed, the error had almost slipped in an opposite direction. Probably in the 1640s in the days of Edward Fisher, I think antinomianism, the challenge of lawlessness, was the bigger challenge in the city of London than the legalism was. But here in Scotland, it slid in the other direction. There was a restoration of reformed theology, of simplicity of worship, of freedom of worship. But as one author says, it wasn't so much that Calvinism was attacked as that the doctrines of grace were eroded and were slowly neutralized by a growing spirit of legalism. Another author says this, that increasingly among the Scottish Presbyterians at this time, there was the teaching that Christ is offered as savior only to those who God effectually calls, only to those who show signs of election. only to those who show signs of brokenness over their sin. So what was happening in Scotland by the year 1700? It was kind of what we would call an experiential piety, like among the Puritans, concerned about Christian experience, concerned about true repentance, true faith, life in Christ and in God. But what developed here got sort of distorted A kind of a legalism crept in, and this legalism taught that before you can tell someone to come to Jesus, to trust in Jesus, before you can tell them that the Savior welcomes them, you really need to be sure that they have a deep sense of their sin, that they're broken over their sin. that they've come to a place where they're really crying out over their sin. This is kind of a subtle shift because scripturally, repentance and faith go hand in hand. There's a need for repentance. The Holy Spirit, by the preaching of the word in conversion, convicts men and women and children of sin. And it's normal for us to be convicted of sin in coming to Christ. But what got distorted in the preaching among the Presbyterians in Scotland during this era was that that became taught sort of as a prerequisite. It got pulled away and separated. so that ministers would preach and teach for conviction of sin first and hold off offering Christ until they felt someone was convicted of sin, and that kind of emphasis worked it in. It wasn't always explicit, but the emphasis in the preaching tended in that direction. And the result of this was that people in the pew would wonder, am I sorry enough for my sin to come to Jesus? Am I really broken enough of my sin? I don't know that Christ is for me because I don't really think I'm repentant enough to come to Him yet. And so it separated those two things out. It sort of held Jesus back. It obscured the gospel. And it was still preaching about Christ, but it's very interesting. You read some of the sermons of this time, the applications on sin and do you know the extent of your sin would be very personal and direct from the pulpit. but the preaching of Jesus would be sort of held back. Christ would be mentioned, but really be narrowed down to, in a sense, are you qualified to come to Jesus? Are you qualified enough to come to him? Well, some of the Scottish Presbyterians wrestled with that. Some of them sort of drifted along with this, and this became sort of the majority ethos in the Church of Scotland. But some were very concerned about it. And there were other issues in the Church of Scotland at the same time. It's interesting that with that preaching there was influence of Enlightenment philosophy and some theological liberalism that was actually challenging biblical doctrines of orthodoxy on who Jesus is and what the doctrine of the Trinity is scripturally. And the assembly of the Church of Scotland, which was the gathering of all the pastors and elders that would happen that governed the Church of Scotland as a Presbyterian body, they were kind of soft on that. They weren't really dealing with that. Well, in the year 1716, one presbytery, so one regional grouping of churches with their pastors and elders, They had an evangelical spirit there in that region of churches. They were very concerned about this drift that they saw around them. And they decided, we're going to require of anyone who wants to be a pastor in the churches in our area, that they need to make a specific vow before they can become a candidate to receive a call. They need to vow this. I believe it is not sound and orthodox to teach that we must forsake sin to come to Christ and be instated in covenant to God. So that was their statement. They were going to require that of all new pastors in that area. Anybody who would be called by a church would have to assent to that statement. along with their normal confessional adherence. It was a good idea. They're trying to guard against an error, but think about that wording for a minute. I believe it's not sound and orthodox to teach that we must forsake sin in order to come to Christ. You could see on the one hand that statement, if they're aiming at this idea that you need to first break with sin and then you can come to Jesus. You need to first be deeply convicted of your sin and only then can you come to Christ. Well, that's what they're aiming at as a problem. But the way it's worded could also be read as, you can come to Jesus without repenting for your sin, without being convicted over your sin at all. And so this erupted in controversy. The more evangelical minded pastors saw this wording of this statement as a good guard against the errors that they saw increasingly around them. The men on the other side said, whoa, just a second here, you're heading into antinomianism, lawlessness. Doesn't matter, you know, your sin really doesn't matter. Just come to Jesus and you don't need to turn away from sin at all. Well, the presbytery, these pastors and elders rejected a young man who refused to assent to this proposition. He appealed to the National Assembly of the church which ruled in his favor. And they very strongly said they abhorred this statement. It was unsound, it was detestable. It would lead to unholiness in the churches, to wickedness in life. Well, at these meetings where this debate was raging, a number of pastors were sitting together. They were evangelical men wrestling through these issues. One of them was a man named Thomas Boston. Thomas Boston was a pastor in southern Scotland close to the English border in a small town. And around the year 1700, 17 years earlier, he'd come across the book, The Marrow of Modern Divinity. He was visiting a very old member of his congregation, an old soldier who had fought in the civil wars down in England. And this man had just a couple books on his bookshelf, and one of them was The Marrow of Modern Divinity. Thomas Boston had struggled with these issues himself. We're gonna get to that in our next talk tonight. He struggled with these issues. He'd read this book, and it helped him tremendously. And he passed it on to a friend named James Hogg. James Hogg was also an evangelical minded pastor. James Hogg read this book and he loved it. He said, this is the book that the Church of Scotland needs to read. All these Presbyterians need to read this book. It's excellent. Now, the challenge perhaps with James Hogg was, James Hogg was kind of like Martin Luther. You know, Martin Luther, he was very fiery, very blunt, used very colorful language in describing Roman Catholicism and errors. Well, James Hogg did the same thing. He took the Marrow Modern Divinity, found an old copy in a bookshop in Edinburgh, and he got it reprinted, but he wrote his own foreword to it. And the foreword was sort of a flamethrower of a foreword. It talked about how the Church of Scotland has been overcome by darkness. The gospel has been obscured and lost in our midst. And James Hogg was getting at something that was true, that was right, but the way he did it created a lot of reaction as well. And a giant controversy erupts over this book. A leading theologian from St. Andrews University, which is one of the seminaries of the day, named James Haddo, started writing against the book. And different essays came out against each other. One essay titled, The Snake in the Grass. Talking about the evils of the one side and then just all kinds of titles that were very sharp. And this controversy erupts and becomes called the Marrow Controversy. And all surrounding this book. Well, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland receives complaints about the book, The Marrow of Modern Divinity. Sets up a commission to investigate the book. and ends up declaring that the book is out of bounds, that it shouldn't be read in Scotland. Well, why does it say that? Well, it says that for several reasons. One reason is that in the book there's a statement, Christ is dead for you. in the gospel offer. So when the gospel offer is proclaimed, you should say Christ is dead for you. That was a statement that Edward Fisher used. And opponents of the Marrow of Modern Divinity were concerned that that was kind of almost like an Arminian universalism, like Jesus died for you. Just say that to everyone. And was negating the fact that Christ died for his people specifically, particularly. And beyond that, they were concerned that it didn't emphasize conviction of sin enough. And so their result was, they said, all ministers are strictly prohibited to preach about, write about, or reprint this book, or say anything in favor of it. But they need to warn their people not to read or use this book. Well, in response to this, a number of ministers appealed and spoke in favor, and this was the evangelical stream in the Church of Scotland, really led by the man named Thomas Boston. He reprinted the book, and he reprinted it with footnotes and explanation that he wrote added to it. explaining the areas where the marrow of modern divinity was maybe a little unclear in its wording and showing, no, he doesn't mean anything here that's error. What he's doing is proclaiming the gospel. And from these men who preached and were really revived by understanding this book and coming to see the gospel afresh and coming to see Jesus afresh, a revival broke out in Scotland. both in Church of Scotland congregations where they pastored, and in new separate churches that were founded in time as well. And so there's a powerful transformation that took place here in Scotland. It's fascinating to see how God could use a man who had no formal theological training, a barber surgeon in England, and use his meditation on scripture, the preaching he sat under, the teaching he received, and multiply that to great blessing in England. And then 50 years later, God in his providence would use the same book written by this man to bring about a recovery of the gospel in Scotland where it was so desperately needed and a great clarity. And so we see a marvelous transformation here. In our next session together, what I want to look at with you is Thomas Boston's own life. What happened to Thomas Boston? And really walk through his life to see, you know, what does this mean in terms of an individual? When we're confused about the law and the gospel, what does it do to us when we really don't get it yet? Thomas Boston wrestled through that. And how do we get clarity? What does it mean to get clarity? Who is Jesus really in what he does in all of his sufficiency for us? And how does that bring real blessing and real life to the church and to us in communion with him? So we'll stop there. Let's close in prayer together and then we'll pick up with our next session after our break. Lord our God, we thank you so much for the history of your church and for those that you have raised up generation after generation by your sovereign, mighty, redeeming work. We thank you for the way you transformed a man that we know just a little bit about, Edward Fisher, this barber surgeon. Thank you for the way that you brought him out of a spiritual confusion, to see you and to know you, to love your gospel, to love you, Lord Jesus, to know the riches of your grace, to know your sufficiency, to justify us, and your grace and strength to sanctify us, to love your law and to love your gospel. And Lord, we thank you for the way you caused that work of his to bear fruit in another generation, in another country, and the way you raised up people there. And Lord, we pray that you would continue that good work even through our conference that we enjoy tonight and tomorrow. Lord, we pray that you would give us through the coming sessions just a crisp clarity. on who you are, Lord Jesus, and all that you have done, that we would delight in you, that we would love you, and that we would understand your gospel more fully ourselves, and so be able to share it more fully and freely and clearly with those around us. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.