Greetings in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is Matthew McMahon, author of A Puritan's Mind at www.apuritansmind.com and also administrator of www.puritanboard.com where we have online Reformed discussions. It is with great pleasure that I offer the following lectures and teachings to you. These lectures were originally given in a lecture hall setting at a Presbyterian church in South Florida. Those who attended these classes were overwhelmed by the amount of sound biblical information that these Puritan divines ministered to their souls. Some content has been edited due to time. Most of it is intact. To study the Puritans is one of the most profitable religious exercises the elect saint can traverse. It is true that the Puritans have received an unpleasant rapport among popular culture. They are often the brunt of bad jokes, caricatures, slanders. The Puritans have a reputation of epitomizing the holier-than-thou attitude. And those who are zealous for extreme ascetic piety That basically, though, is a caricature of Puritanism. As a matter of fact, Puritanism is far the opposite. And it is a tragedy to envision so many casting away the ideals of Puritanism because they closely associate it with a dreadful life or toilsome spiritual labor and a hermit-like attitude which shuns society. Even most Christians, to their own sanctifying demise, typify them in this light without first studying about them. I suppose ignorance is bliss? In this ignorance the Puritans are accused of thinking that sex was bad, that they never laughed and were opposed to fun, that they wore drab, woeful apparel, that they were opposed to sports and recreation, that they were overly emotional and looked down on education, and that they were exceedingly strict and legalistic. But, as stated above, these are unfair and quite incorrect caricatures, unsubstantiated and completely false. These ideas are the product of Satan, who desires that true spirituality, and those who exemplify it, would be cast down into shame and reproach, in order that their holy lifestyles would never be followed. For if the Puritans were truly represented as the caricatures above describe them, then one would have to say the same thing of Jesus Christ, their Lord, whom they emphatically followed with wholehearted delight. The theology and practice of Puritanism is not perfect. There is no theological system which sinful man has gained a perfect insight into the Bible. While men live upon earth coupled with the remnants of remaining sin, they will never have a mind free of error, and thus never have a theological system free from error. However, this does not mean that the theologians and preachers of Christ Church should surrender being as theologically precise as possible. Rather, in assessing the theological systems which exist, they should choose the one which hits closest to the mark of the gospel on the biblical target of doctrine. In my estimation, The theology of Puritanism is as close as fallible human beings may come to understanding the scriptures systematically. I am quite aware that the scriptures continue to illuminate our minds by varied angles and insights seen in some of the same passages which we read over and over. But a consensus on the overall understanding of biblical and systematic theology for clarity, preciseness of doctrine, an application in preaching must be awarded to the Puritans. They have triumphed closest to teaching men the mind of Christ contained in the Bible, for they stood upon the Reformers and the early Fathers who are Orthodox. This Puritanism, even for the 21st century church, is not dead, though many would like it to be dead. However, It is in a restless slumber awaiting the next generation of men who shall be raised up by God to preach the truth of his word in righteousness and by conviction. We earnestly await to see those whom God shall raise up as Neo-Puritans for a brave new world. May Christ be with you as you study, and may these lectures edify your soul, and may Christ be exalted. Amen. We begin this morning with who were the Puritans and what did they teach? Now in dealing with the Puritans this is going to be a series of lessons that surrounds a historical overview of England and the Puritans and various different Puritans throughout the history of the church during their time period which we're going to talk about in just a few minutes. and particularly their works. In other words, instead of just giving you an overview of, say, the life of John Owen, or the life of Thomas Watson, and a historical overview of Puritanism in general, I thought that as a beginning, as a beginning or introduction to understanding these particular men, that what we would do is not only give a brief bio of different and particular Puritans such as we'll say Jeremiah Burroughs or William Perkins and William Ames some of these different men but also demonstrate from their writings some of the most important things that they wrote in the theological or practical ideas behind what they wrote in order to come to an understanding, a clear understanding of the doctrines that made them famous as well as seeing what kind of contributions that they particularly had on the church in their time as well as how those particular doctrines, books, treatises, sermons, tracts, pamphlets, everything that they wrote has come down to us or up to us through the ages in order to affect what we think about Jesus Christ and what we think about God today now if we could begin by saying or asking what the nature of these lessons would be is first I'd like to use Ephesians chapter 3 verse 21 as the focus be praise in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever. Amen. The praise that comes from the lips of men is, as Ephesians says, in the church. And in the church, the Lord, by His gracious, His most gracious and most infinite mercy has gifted doctors and pastors the pastors and teachers of Ephesians 4 that are gifts to the church that are there for the encouragement of the church for the well-being of the church under shepherds under Christ teaching the church and so in looking at Ephesians 3.21 there is to be praise in the church by Jesus Christ throughout all generations forever amen here in the church that particular praise should come forth and it is here in the church that we're going to look at the Puritans of yesteryear now we also want to edify the saint in his endeavor to walk righteously before Christ For instance, that you might walk worthy of the Lord and please Him in all things, being fruitful in good works and increasing in the knowledge of God. That is the exhortation Paul gives us. That is the exhortation that we are to have. We are to be walking worthy of the Lord. We are to please Him in all things. We are to be fruitful in good works. and we are to increase in the knowledge of God so you have to ask yourself this question if this is what God requires of us if this is what he desires of us of every single Christian then understanding the text the Bible, ad fontes, going back to the original sources looking at the Word of God itself we would want then the best, most qualified teachers teaching us the Word of God so that we could walk worthy of the Lord so that we could please Him in all things so that we can be fruitful in good works and so that we can increase in the knowledge of God not increase in just knowledge but increase in the knowledge of God. That means we have to have a right understanding of the text. We have to have a right understanding of His Word. So as we deal with these Puritans, what I'm going to try to impress upon you is that the things that they wrote and the texts that they wrote about are some of the most glorious things you'll ever read in print. For instance, one of the greatest and best books ever written on worship besides the Bible is Jeremiah Burroughs work, Gospel Worship. dealing with Leviticus 10.3. Whenever a Puritan deals with the text, the moment that you hit the end of that particular text, and you're at the end of that book, and see the exposition of it, and the exegesis of it, and the doctrine pulled from it, and the application of it, you will not forget, after reading Gospel worship, that Jeremiah Burroughs was talking about Leviticus 10.3. It will be impressed upon you. It is one of the best things that you can read on the subject of worship. Like-minded, you have the atonement and the death of Christ. The death of death and the death of Christ by John Owen. One of the most glorious and some people even think exhaustive treatments of the death of Christ that was ever given in the history of the church. So we want to have the saint impressed by these men. We want these men to impress the saint. And have you have a wonderful and large overview of what these men wrote, how they thought, the manner in which they studied, how they can affect your life. That way we'll be walking worthy of the Lord. That way we can receive their teaching as pastors and doctors in the church. That we might be able to take that, place it in our heart, hide it in our heart. That we could please Him in all things. That we could be fruitful in good works. And that we can continually increase in the true knowledge of God. Now another point, another idea why these lessons may be important is I want to give you a historically accurate awareness of the Puritans. Often times the Puritans are seen as mournful, doleful, spoilers of fun. You can listen to the Subaru commercial on the radio that says something to the effect of, don't be like the Puritans who are always sad all the time, rather get in one of our cars and then you'll be happy. It's exciting to drive a Subaru, but it's not exciting. It's a sad thing. It's a horrible thing to be a Puritan. And so we don't want that to come across. I don't want you to understand the Puritans in that way, thinking that they wore drab clothing, that they were, you know, opposed to sex, that they were unhappy and that they were joyless and they just went around to stifle other people's joy in the Lord. No. These lessons are going to give you a historically accurate awareness of the Puritans and who they were, what they taught, and you're going to find that these are some of the greatest and most excellent gems you will ever find in writing on the Bible and on Jesus Christ. I also want to give you some solid biblical teaching from a select number of Puritans who wrote extensively on the Bible on various subjects. as I was saying I'm going to choose a number of them and some of the works that they have as they were most famously known to give you a short list when we deal next time with the first Puritan that we're going to look at it's going to be William Ames rather William Perkins will be the first one in his salvation the causes of salvation and damnation then next will be William Ames, and we'll deal with systematic theology, the marrow of theology. Then Jeremiah Burroughs for gospel worship. Then Thomas Goodwin, we're going to talk about justification in his works. Then we're going to deal with Richard Baxter, a couple of red flags with Richard Baxter, but we're going to deal with his pastoral theology and the Reformed pastor. We'll deal with John Owen's work on the atonement, the death of death and the death of Christ. We're going to deal with Christopher Love and the mortification of sin in his works. We'll also take one particular lesson and look at the Synod of Dort and go through Tulip which was a theological treatise against the remonstrants and we'll find out who those people were once we get there. We'll also deal with Thomas Watson and some practical Christianity in his book Heaven Taken by Storm, as well as Thomas Manton in dealing with the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. We'll look at Francis Turretin in his Doctrine of God in his Institutes of Elenctic Theology. And John Bunyan in Pilgrim's Progress in looking at the sanctification of the Christian. So we've got quite a list here to deal with. So let's begin. This particular lesson is just going to be dealing with the Puritans in general. Who are they? Who were the Puritans? When did they live? What did they do? How did they think? Well, in dealing with the historical timeline, I want to deal with the era of the Puritans and the years which they encompassed. For some scholars, it's debatable. I will tell you that people often, over and over and over again, get the time period, besides scholarship, get the time period wrong on where the Puritans were at. Somebody says, you know, Jonathan Edwards and immediately they say, yes, Jonathan Edwards was a Puritan. Or, you know, we even get up into Charles Spurgeon and they say, yes, Charles Spurgeon was a Puritan. Well, there's a great difference between those who adhered to Puritan theology and those who were actually Puritans because we're going to find out what the word Puritan meant and how it applied in the day that it was used. And people like Jonathan Edwards and Charles Spurgeon, they were not Puritans. They actually lived quite a bit after the Puritans. So when we deal with that question, the era, at what time period would we find the Puritans? I think based on my studies thus far that a good range would be from 1559 through 1654 and basically that begins the time when you have William Perkins coming just about on the scene during the reign of Queen Elizabeth just after Mary dies and then ending in 1654, just when the Lord Protector, during the Golden Age of England, Oliver Cromwell, when he actually dies. So, I think that would probably be a good span of time to deal with. You know, some expand this time to encompass a wider scope, some scholars restrict it even shorter. But if we say that Puritanism was reserved for the era when the Church of England brutally and relentlessly persecuted non-conformist ministers who wouldn't adhere to legalistic and Pharisaic practices of Mother Church, then the date that I gave you, that span of time, would be a very good span of time. That'll suffice just well. Because that era is what I'm going to call the ecclesiastical aspect of Puritanism. if we were to qualify Puritism by the core ideas and beliefs they preached and wrote about well then obviously I would grant a far wider date range even expanding it up and through the 21st century because I enjoy Puritan literature and hopefully by the end of these lessons you'll enjoy Puritan literature and you'll enjoy their theology and you'll adopt their theology And as a result of that, then just dealing with core beliefs or core ideas, obviously that date range is going to be a bit wider than that. But in dealing with the ecclesiastical period, we're going to use 1559 through 1654. That's where you're going to find the diehard Puritan preachers and non-conformist preachers at the time. Simply stated, Those who are Puritans by ideals are those who see the church in need of biblical reform. We could possibly toss that in as a definition. Just those who have the ideals of Puritanism see the church in need of biblical reform. They want to purify the church from within. They want to change it. They want to bring it back to the way that it was or the way that it should be based on the Bible. Now, one of the important aspect when you're dealing with the historical timeline of Puritanism is to really focus in and look at the persecution that was going on as a result of having these Puritans pop up on the scene because the word Puritan, as we're going to see, was a derogatory term. It was a derogatory term towards men who wanted to see something change. We'll find out what that is. During the 17th century, 16th to 17th century, that time span that I gave you, there were legal actions taken against the Puritans because they didn't want to follow the act of uniformity and they couldn't in good conscience. This act of uniformity was an edict which demanded that preachers would read from the ceremonial prayer book during services that they'd wear Anglican vestments and that they would support the Anglican ceremonies. The Church of England was also demanding that young preachers who desired a degree from the University of Oxford at Cambridge were compelled to sign the Act before they could earn any degree at all. So basically it was by manipulation that this was going on. You can't get a degree, you can't be a minister of the gospel, you can't study theology unless you sign on the dotted line. Now there was a conscious act of rejecting a forced religious view and that gave them the derogatory term, the Puritans. And so these were these guys who wanted to purify the church and they didn't want to conform to the act. of conformity or uniformity, and so they wanted to rebel against it. Puritan, Puritan as a name, was in fact basically mud from the start. and so they were ridiculed in that particular way. It was coined in the early 1560s and it was always like a satire, a satirical smear. It was a smear word implying peevishness or censoriousness or conceit, a measure of hypocrisy over and above its basic implication of religiously motivated discontent with what was seen as Elizabeth's Laodicean and compromising Church of England. So here were these men who were deemed Puritans, derogatory, mud, censorious kind of people and the church just wanted to get rid of them and banish them or lock them up or exile them anything to get them out of there so that they could keep the status quo because things seemed to be going pretty well for Queen Elizabeth at this particular time in trying to deal with Roman Catholicism and Protestantism of the day so later the word gained the further political connotation of being against the Stuart monarchy and for some sort of republicanism Its primary reference, however, was still to what was seen as an odd, furious, and ugly form of the Protestant religion. They desired to purify the church. That's why they're called Puritans. And because of this act, they were vehemently persecuted. And they could expect anything from being burned at the stake to being placed in prison for an indefinite period of time. You might recall that John Bunyan penned his classic Pilgrim's Progress from prison. And he was there for more than a few days, I can tell you. The Puritans desired to purify the Church of England from its corruption. They did not aspire a full emasculation from the Church of England, but rather a reformation of it, copying the reformation under John Calvin in Geneva. That's what they wanted to do. As with Luther and as with Calvin, they wanted to change the church for the better. We'll talk about a little bit those who... actually let's talk about them now. There's a difference between those who just saw the monstrous too big and those who wanted to change the church. There's three kinds of people that come out of this non-conformist movement. There are the Puritans, There are separatists and there's the phrase non-conformists. Now, really we're dealing with two groups. Both of them are non-conformists. The Puritans were non-conformists and the separatists were non-conformists, but one was more extreme than the other. Now, non-conformists are basically those who would not conform to the Church of England standards. That's basic to this. But a separatist is someone who said, listen, the monster is too big. We're not going to be able to tame it. We're not going to be able to change it. And not being able to do that, then they desired to separate from the church. And these are the people we call pilgrims. And the pilgrims ended up in the Massachusetts Bay Colony to start a new England there. But Puritans, they were also non-conformists, but they wanted to reform the Church. The question is, should the Christian Church and its ministers aspire to pure doctrine? The answer to that is absolutely. Now we have to ask how we go about doing it. Do we simply separate ourselves from a corrupt body? Do we just say that the monster is too big, or do we stay there and try to make a change? And then, if we can't make that change, we simply build up good solid churches alongside of it, which is exactly what happened with the Puritans. Now, should we despise the want of a pure life before God, or are we to embrace it? Are we not to be conformed to the purity of Christ? Of course we are. These though were the questions that they were asking. How do we go about doing it? How can we get in there? How can we change the beast? How can we tame the beast? Because it's out of control and power isn't lying on our side. So when we look at the Puritans We're looking at a group of people that were spawned to steadfastness before the Lord Jesus Christ during a time of intense persecution. It was not uncommon for people to be put in prison and die there. It was not uncommon for them to be put in prison and a few days later to be burned at the stake. It was not uncommon for them to be exiled. This is the life of the Puritan. Well, what made the Puritan so special? I mean, we're going to do a lengthy study on this and on these men and their doctrines. What makes them so special? Well, first, their desire to please Christ. It's exemplary. There was a two-fold ideology about them. They knew their Bible well, and consequently they wrote deeply and passionately about it. That's first. It wasn't that they just knew doctrine. This doctrine affected them. It moved them. It was powerful to them. When these kind of men were changed by the gospel, unlike today in America, there was a great change. There was a movement of God's Spirit in their preaching and the power of it. So they knew their Bible well and consequently wrote deeply and passionately about it and they put their knowledge about Christ into action. This is why we call Puritanism in this way Experimental Calvinism. Experimental Calvinism is taking the doctrines that formed in the Reformation and formed reformed doctrine and they're put into practice and they're used and they're lived out and they're seen by other people. It's experimental, it's practical And that two-fold ideology did not escape any Puritan that wrote anything during that time period. Some of them greater or to a lesser extent, yet at the same time, their desire was unequivocal to please Christ. Secondly, The spheres of Calvinism in their daily walk. Calvinism penetrated every area of their life. This was not something they just had for theological discussion. It was not something they had just for Sundays. You know, Christianity in America is for one hour a week. We get in, we sit in our pew, we listen to a mini sermon or maybe a pep talk. We sing a couple of songs, we go out, we're right back in the world, and we hadn't even got our mind off the world yet. And the American church is basically that way across the board. Well, that was not how these people lived, thought, or worked. Everything that they did in every sphere of their life, Calvinism penetrated it. For instance, religious and secular education. A key element in the home, and in the church, and in the university. The Puritans were an educated group. Many, if not all of the Puritans at one time or another, earned degrees at either Oxford or Cambridge. They did their homework, to say the least. See, it's much easier nowadays, because studying the Bible is hard, to simply have an experience with the Holy Spirit. have him move through a worship service and we raise our hands and we get emotional and we leave and we say, ah, the Lord met me there. We don't even understand what happened. There was no word preached. It was just some kind of experiment, some kind of subjective experimental feeling that we had. Well, the Puritans didn't have any of that. It wasn't that the Holy Spirit wasn't in their life, but because of their word, because of their knowledge of the word, the Holy Spirit was very much a part of their lives. But they knew! They knew these things. They understood the Bible. They understood theology. It wasn't just a subjectivism that happened. So, let me quote William Perkins. He states it nicely when he says, he, and he's referring to the preacher, must be godly affected himself who would stir up godly affection in other men. John Preston, he states it this way, there is not a sermon which is heard that should bring us closer to heaven or to hell. This is how they lived, this is how they thought. When the word hits us, the preacher should be so affected by the word that he's godly affected. And then he, by taking that word and bringing it out to the people, should bring us closer to heaven or hell every single time the words are spoken, or the sermon is given, or the tredes is read, or the tract is read. And it was not only that the Puritans wanted to hear preaching, they wanted to hear sound biblical study arise from balanced preaching. And I'm going to be straightforward and honest with you. Today's preaching cannot compare with what was said over oak pulpits 400 years ago. Preaching back then was critically important to the welfare of every soul in their eyes. Case in point, when you go to the pastor and you go visit him, where does he ask you to come and visit? Come up to my office and we'll sit and we'll talk. That is absolutely repugnant to the Puritan. The Puritans didn't have offices The Puritans referred to their space as the study. 2 Timothy 2.15 Study to show yourself approved. A workman in the study. And that's what the Puritans were doing. They were in their study. That was what went on in that place. It wasn't an office. We're not running a business and the pastor is not the CEO as many of these mega churches think. That is not experimental religion as the way the Bible presents it or the Puritans lived it. Puritan preaching has often been shunned because modern day preachers think that the Puritan sermon approach would not sit well with contemporary hearers. I'll give you a case in point. My personal preaching, the way that I find communicates the message most effectively and that when I listen to other preachers and hear them preach in this way, communicates to me most effectively, is the Puritan style. Exegeting the text, explaining it there, telling people what it's about and what's going on in the passage. Then secondly, pulling forth one, maybe two doctrines in the text, out of the text, and explaining those doctrines and their importance to the congregation. and then thirdly taking that particular doctrine and making a practical application to it so that the preacher has the ability to crawl in the back door of your mind and make you feel as though he's speaking directly to you. That is the kind of preaching the Puritans did. That kind of preaching is the preaching I enjoy. It's the kind I enjoy giving, it's the kind I enjoy listening to. One PCA pastor, not too long ago, listened to a particular sermon that I gave on Nehemiah and he said, you know, let me give you some pointers because the kind of style that you have is not going to go over well with people in the PCA. And this was a PCA pastor. Now, this is a very interesting thing to me because the PCA is supposedly resting upon the Westminster standards. But Puritan preaching or just basically exegetical and expository preaching isn't going to work for them. Why? Well, because the Puritan, they're not interested in entertaining listeners. That's what preachers want to do today. How many people can we get in the pew, what do we have to do to get them there? Well, the Puritans weren't worried about that. The Puritans had those three main ingredients, to read the text from the Bible and expound on it, the plain meaning from the text, to note and discuss a few key points of doctrine from that text, and to apply those doctrines to the life of the believer. That's their purpose. That should be the purpose of every pastor. Don't try to take the text and make the text say something you think it should say. Rather, get up there and simply tell us what the text says. Every sermon will lead and guide you in its own way. Don't force the text to say something that it doesn't say. That's not the Spirit of God speaking, that's you speaking with your own subjective ideas, if you're a pastor or teacher. Don't do that. So, these men were highly educated. In the home, they were educated by their fathers, who were godly men, and understood what a covenant family was about. in teaching their children and raising them up in the fear and admonition of the Lord that took place in the home and then at the ripe old age of maybe 14, 15, 16 years old they'd send them off to college and they'd get a further education, a classical education and then they would continue to study for the rest of their lives as solid biblical teachers and preachers and some of them went on to be doctors. So the religious and secular education that they had was permeated with experimental and practical Calvinism. Secondly, a second key point in the Puritan life was that which surrounded church life and the worship of God. When we deal with church life, when we deal with how that works by experimental Calvinism or reformed theology, we're dealing with five things. Here's the list. True preaching of the word by sound doctrine. Obviously people would say, well that's a given. Well, yes it is a given, but it's unfortunate that that particular given is not given today by most preachers in most pulpits. True preaching of the word by sound doctrine is the first one, second is the right administration of the sacraments, the third is the activity of church discipline, the fourth is strong leadership, solid biblical leadership, and the fifth is biblical worship. In worship they were reverent and clearly organized during the service. They prayed, they read scripture, they had a sermon, they would baptize, They had a long prayer accompanied by the Lord's Prayer or the Apostles' Creed or possibly the Ten Commandments that was either cited by them as a congregation or the minister himself. A psalm was sung and the benediction was read. They didn't worry about at what point we were going to have to bring up the stage lights to get the camel onto the stage so that we can have this skit work out in a way that makes the service flow so that we can get right on to the puppet show so that the mimes can get out there and they can do their thing in front of the congregation. They had none of that. They relied on the Word of God and the Word of God alone. All of this other entertainment stuff that goes on today is basically just a show. It doesn't bring people to God. It doesn't exalt the Lord. It debases him. He hates that kind of worship. Those five things made up the life of the church. And if those things weren't in the life of a church, they did not consider such a place a church. If God says, these five things are my prescription for a church, and you take out biblical worship, that no longer is a church. If you were to remove just one, if you were to remove strong biblical leadership, the rest of them are going to fall by the wayside. If you take out the true preaching of the word by sound doctrine, you've just killed strong biblical leadership. Because those people who don't do that are not strong biblical leaders. They might be good CEOs, they might be good entertainers, but they're not preachers. And then, when you're dealing with church life, the Puritans were very, very concerned about the manner in which the Lord's Day was upheld. Richard Baxter stated that after seven years of labor in the church he ministered at in Kidderminster, England, You couldn't walk down the streets there on a given Sunday without hearing the houses of families filled with spiritual songs and readings from the scriptures. They utilized all of their day for worship. It wasn't the Lord's morning, it was the Lord's day. Worship was so important to them that they began to prepare their hearts for it the night before. They'd retire after supper for family devotions and then read for some time and finally go off to sleep. If worship to God on earth now was of cheap import, which was the very reason why we're created, well, it couldn't be considered a light matter in the Christian's eyes. Thus, one day, the one day in seven given to men by God as a day of rest was to be viewed as a special day of sacred piety, not a day to watch football games, A day to go to the movies. Not a day in their day to go to the theater or play dice or go dancing or hanging out at the local tavern. It was the Lord's Day. It was part of church life that was extremely important for them. So whether it was secular and educational in the home, in the university, or in the church, whether we're talking about the church in general, in their high view of scripture regulating all things in the church, from true preaching, to the administration of sacraments, to discipline, to strong leadership and biblical worship, with all of that, even in social action, even the things that they did simply in the towns, were important. Because at that time, the two arenas, the church and social reform, were intrinsically linked together. It wasn't that they were so separated as they are today. And you have such a whacked version of the United States and the way that they think about separation of church and state in comparison to the manner in which the Mayflower Compact, which in and of itself was a mistake, but besides that, the idea of the way church and state dealt with one another and was together in that particular way. And even at the time of Geneva and the Reformation, it was a church state. In England, it was a commonwealth, a religious commonwealth. And the most glorious and golden age of Puritanism in England was when Oliver Cromwell had a certain kind of authority that he imposed upon the Commonwealth of England and put together something that allowed such a unity to go forth. Otherwise, it's a free-for-all. Otherwise, every church gets to do what it wants. It's not by the sword that we're ruled, but there should be a subjugation of the state to the church, because the highest and most glorious institution on the earth is the church. And the Puritans understood that. And so they did everything that they could. They preached in front of Parliament time and time and time again. Because the men in Parliament were godly men. Exercising a sphere of influence over the people for social action. Which was simply another way of the Church being able to utilize those as government officials to effect change in the lives of the people. So the Puritans had this experimental Calvinism that permeated the home, the church, the society, every area. It was something that happened every single day, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, every year. Calvinism for them was not something that just happened on Sundays for an hour. In just looking at a very, very basic overview that we've looked at thus far, we ask this question, what can the Puritans teach us? Here were these men. What can they teach us? What can they tell us today? If you were to ask me, what do I consider to be the most important lessons? Well, first, I would say the first lesson is their extreme zealousness for the Lord in whatever they did. It didn't matter what they did. Whatever they put their hand to, they did it with all of their might. They did it with zeal. They did it with the power of the Holy Spirit. They were religious tradesmen. They were gospel preachers. They were doctors. They were millers. They were basket weavers. Whatever it was that they were, they did it with all of their might and they did it unto the Lord. Secondly, If there is any word that appropriates the Puritan vision of the church, it would be the word reform. People today abuse that term. Reformed. I want to be reformed. I'm a reformed Christian. Well, when you deal with the word Puritan, you're really dealing with the idea of reformation and reform. And when you deal with trying to change the church from the inside. When you're dealing with trying to make the glorious body of Christ glorious, you're dealing with the idea of reform. That idea is essential, intrinsically essential, to the Puritan view of life. So that in and of itself is an important aspect. Thirdly, doctrinal stability. That in and of itself could be a major topic in and of itself. The ideas surrounding the Westminster Assembly, the ideas surrounding theology and doctrine, the ideas surrounding the stability of continuing reformed doctrine and not changing reformed doctrine, but upholding it and setting it, so to speak, in stone as the biblical systematic theology that came out of the Bible. I think Puritanism best illustrates doctrinal stability, especially because their time was so so much a focus of persecution and difficulty it was real to them it was a time of turbulence that forced the pen upon the page and I think that doctrinal stability is something that the church needs today and doesn't have and I think if we continue in the same lines that the Puritans had begun with in dealing with the Reformation doctrines that came out of Luther and Calvin and Zwingli and Lefebvre and Farrell and these men who continued to preach the Word of God and went back to the sources of the Hebrew and the Greek and put together these long tredices of doctrine like the institutes of the Christian religion and like the bondage of the will and like the sermons of Luther and some of these other things or the writings of Zwingli They built on these foundations. It wasn't that the Puritans were putting forth something new. They were trying to remain doctrinally stable. They were trying to stabilize the church when the Church of England wanted to overthrow that and change what God had said. Fourthly, I believe the church could learn volumes from the Puritans in the matter of Christian spirituality or as Robert Bolton has deemed it, the comfortable walk with God. I don't think doctrinal stability in and of itself should be the only thing that we should be worried about in the 21st century church. Rather, I think what is important is not only having that knowledge, not only having that doctrinal understanding, but then applying that doctrine in our life in a manner in which, just as they did, we become practical Calvinists. We have an experimental Calvinism that permeates every area of our lives. The church should sit down with the experimental and practical treatises that the Puritans wrote and should study them. There's a wealth of information when you're dealing with Michael and the Dragon by Daniel Dyck or you're reading through William Jenkins' commentary on Jude that runs over 2,500 pages on one chapter. or you're dealing, you know, with Henry Scudder's The Christian's Daily Walk, or you're looking at something like Thomas Cobbett's Gospel Incense, whatsoever it might happen to be, whatever treatise that you're looking at, whatever book you're reading, a sermon that you're reading from the Puritans, they're intensely practical. Even when they're expounding the doctrine, even when they're doing that, they're still bringing you to the point where they are going to apply it in your life and you're going to be changed by the Word of God, by the expositions of the Word of God. So I think that we definitely could learn volumes from the Puritans concerning Christian spirituality. Lastly, I think that the church could acquire a colossal lesson from the Puritans in the area of family. I think the families today have children training children. They aren't thinking biblically about the family. They aren't thinking exegetically about the family. Pastors don't know how to teach Christians how to be federal heads of their family. They don't know what that means. They don't know the basics of theology in the Bible to understand what that means. And I think the family is suffering greatly for it. Instead, parents are pushing off their children into Sunday school so that they can learn their theological ABCs. Where instead, they should be learning it from theologically able parents at home. And I think in looking at some of these books and looking at some of these men in being spurred on by the theological writings of the Puritans that parents will be able to again grasp some of the important aspects of theology that they need to learn so that they can pass it down to their children and teach their children well and raise them up well. Thomas Watson is not a hard Puritan to read. He is intensely practical. he could be a great help to the family or in dealing with you know somebody like Oliver Haywood and the family altar or dealing with somebody like Thomas Vincent's work to teenagers and the sermons that he gave in talking to them or just talking about family worship. Matthew Henry, many of the Puritans wrote all sorts of things about how to be intensely practical about the family. The family needs help because of that little church, if that little group of people in each individual family don't have things down then they're overwhelmingly trying to bury the pastor and work that they should be doing and the church should not be doing it. The church should be taking those families and teaching them but the family should be teaching their children and the father should be teaching their wives and the wives should be teaching their children and the children should be growing up together in the midst of the church knowing their theological ABCs and that is not just given off to the pastors in the church or the Sunday school teachers or the nursery sitters that's not their job their job The pastor's job in and of itself is to edify the saints, but then it's the father's and mother's job to go to the children and raise up their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. That is the command given to them through the scriptures time and time and time again to teach their children well and that their children would obey the commandments of the Lord. The commandments in the Ten Commandments, for example, are directed to the parents. The parents are to remember the Sabbath day and the parents are not to let listen. They're men servants and maid servants and sons and daughters. See, the parents, the parents should be teaching their children. The parents should be raising them. So that's somewhat of a soapbox for me, but in dealing with what the Puritans can teach us, that's where they invested their time. They invested their time in their children, in their families, in church, and in their vocation, and Calvinism permeated every aspect of that. The Bible permeated every aspect of that. From the time of William Perkins all the way through to the end of Cromwell's reign, you see that in the families and the piety. Baxter's Kidderminster is a perfect example of that. The families singing Psalms together, the family binding together on the Lord's Day to teach one another, to go over the sermon together, to talk about what they learned in church that day, to press it into their hearts, to help their children understand it. So, in looking at all of this information, this is basically a basic overview. I mean, very sketchy, very basic. of who the Puritans were, what time they lived in, the historical timeline, as well as things surrounding persecution as we talked about, what made them so special in dealing with their desire to please Christ. and the sphere of Calvinism in their daily walk no matter what aspects of it all the way from religious and secular education to church life all the way down to social action and then some thoughts that help us see or some thoughts that I consider to be most important in these lessons again zealousness in the Lord, the church and reform the importance of that, doctrinal stability, practical application of that doctrine in Christian spirituality, and a colossal lesson could be learned from them for the family. Might it be, as we look at all of this information over the next few weeks, a number of different lessons on different men, that we would learn something from the Puritans, and that we would be the better for it. Amen. 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And remember that John Calvin, in defending the Reformation's regulative principle of worship, or what is sometimes called the scriptural law of worship, commenting on the words of God, which I commanded them not, neither came into my heart, from his commentary on Jeremiah 731, writes, God here cuts off from men every occasion for making evasions. since he condemns by this one phrase, I have not commanded them, whatever the Jews devised. There is then no other argument needed to condemn superstitions than that they are not commanded by God. For when men allow themselves to worship God according to their own fancies, and attend not to His commands, they pervert true religion. And if this principle was adopted by the Papists, all those fictitious modes of worship in which they absurdly exercise themselves, would fall to the ground. It is indeed a horrible thing for the Papists to seek to discharge their duties towards God by performing their own superstitions. There is an immense number of them, as it is well known, and as it manifestly appears. Were they to admit this principle, that we cannot rightly worship God except by obeying His word, they would be delivered from their deep abyss of error. The Prophet's words, then, are very important. When he says, that God had commanded no such thing, and that it never came to his mind, as though he had said that men assume too much wisdom when they devise what he never required, nay what he never knew.