Puritans on Reformation and Revival

“…Baxter also focused my vision of the ordained minister’s pastoral office. …Baxter’s Reformed Pastor: its words have hands and feet. They climb all over you; they work their way into your heart and conscience, and will not be dislodged. My sense of being called to preach the gospel, teach the Bible, and shepherd souls cold have been learned from the Anglican ordinal that was used to ordain me, but in fact it crystallized out through my study of Baxter’s own ministry and his Reformed (we would say, Revived) Pastor. From student days I have known that I was called to be a pastor according to Baxter’s specifications, and my subsequent commitments to lecturing and writing have simply defined for me aspects of the way in which I should fulfill that role.” (Packer, Quest for Godliness, p. 13.)

“I could have learned this ideal of overall evangelical renewal from England’s still unappreciated reforming genius Thomas Cranmer or from the nineteenth-century colossus J.C. Ryle…; but in fact, I got most of it from the Puritans, and principally from the would-be Anglican and reluctant nonconformist Richard Baxter, to whom I owe so much in other areas, as I have already said. Following this gleam as a reforming Anglican has sometimes put me in places where I seemed not to be in step with anyone, and I do not suppose that my judgement on specific questions was always faultless, but looking back I am sure that the comprehensive, non-sectarian lead that Baxter gave was the right one.” (Packer, Quest for Godliness, pp. 14-15)

“…There are lessons to be learned from the Puritans’ ideal of church renewal. To be sure, ‘renewal’ was not a word that they used; they spoke only of ‘reformation’ and ‘reform’, which words suggest to our twentieth-century minds a concern that is limited to the externals of the church’s orthodoxy, order, worship forms and disciplinary code. But when the Puritans preached, published, and prayed for ‘reformation’ they had in mind, not indeed less than this, but far more. On the title page of the original edition of Richard Baxter’s The Reformed Pastor, the word ‘reformed’ was printed in much larger type than any other , and one does not have to read far before discovering that for Baxter a ‘reformed’ pastor was not one who campaigned for Calvinism but one whose ministry to his people as preacher, teacher, catechist and role-model showed him to be, as we would say, ‘revived’ or ‘renewed’. The essence of this kind of ‘reformation’ was enrichment of understanding God’s truth, arousal of affections Godward, increase of ardour in one’s devotions, and more love, joy, and firmness of Christian purpose in one’s calling and personal life. In line with this, the ideal for the church was that through ‘reformed’ clergy all the members of each congregation should be ‘reformed’ – brought, that is, by God’s grace without disorder into a state of what we would call revival, so as to be truly and thoroughly converted, theologically orthodox and sound, spiritually alert and expectant, in character terms wise and steady, ethically enterprising and obedient, and humbly but joyously sure of their salvation.” (Packer, Quest for Godliness, pp. 26-27.)

“Puritanism was at heart a spiritual movement, passionately concerned with God and godliness.” (Packer, Quest for Godliness, p. 28.)

“…When we ask what emphases Puritan tradition contains to counter arid-intellectualism, a whole series of points spring to view. First, true religion claims the affections as well as the intellect; it is essentially, in Richard Baxter’s phrase, ‘heart-work’. (Packer, Quest for Godliness, p. 32.)

“…The Puritans did not use ‘revival’ as the technical term for what they sought, but expressed their objectives entirely in terms of the vocabulary of ‘reform’. When, for instance, in 1656 Richard Baxter published his classic on the ministry, The Reformed Pastor, what he meant by ‘reformed’ was not Calvinistic in doctrine (he assumed that, at least in a broad sense); what he meant was renewed in vigour, zeal and purpose, in other words revived, as the book itself makes plain. And when he wrote elsewhere, ‘If God would but reform the ministry, and set them on their duties zealously and faithfully, the people would certainly be reformed’, what he meant by ‘reformed’ was once again what we would express by saying ‘revived’. (Packer, Quest for Godliness, p. 38.)

“…If… we ask why concern for a ministry of evangelical quality was always top of the list of Puritan priorities, as indeed it was – the answer stares us in the face. As Baxter put it: ‘All churches either rise or fall as the ministry doth rise or fall (not in riches or worldly grandeur) but in knowledge, zeal and ability for their work.’ The Puritans wanted more than anything else, to see the church in England ‘rise’ spiritually, and they saw that this could not be without a renewed ministry. (Packer, Quest for Godliness, p. 38.)

“…The end to which all church order, on the Puritan view, was a means, and for which everything superstitious, misleading and Spirit-quenching must be rooted out, was the glory of God in and through the salvation of sinners and the building up of lively congregations in which people met God. And by the salvation of sinners the Puritans meant not just their conversion, but also their growth in fellowship into spiritual health, strength and consecrated obedience – in short, their holiness (for Puritans used that great word in a sense so broad as to include in it every aspect and dimension of the godly life). But without a ministry that was ‘powerful’, ‘painful’, (laborious), and ‘useful’ – the three great Puritan commendations of good clergymen – holiness among the people of England would never become a reality. That was why for more than a century Puritan clergy spent themselves in preaching and pastoral care. The cause they served was not so much that of restructuring as of revival.” (Packer, Quest for Godliness, p. 39.)

“[The loaded word, “Puritan,”] was contemptuously applied to would-be reformers of the national church and to pious people generally, like Richard Baxter’s father, who was mocked as a Puritan by his neighbours for staying indoors on Sunday afternoons to read the Bible and pray with his family instead of dancing and playing games on the village green.”

Baxter on Evangelism

O sirs, surely if you had all conversed with neighbor Death as oft as I have done, and as often received the sentence in yourselves, you would have an unquiet conscience, if not a reformed life, as to your ministerial diligence and fidelity: and you would have something within you that would frequently ask you such questions as these: Is this all thy compassion for lost sinners? Wilt thou do no more to seek and to save them?… Shall they die and be in hell before thou wilt speak to them one serious word to prevent it? Shall they there curse thee for ever that thou didst no more in time to save them? Such cries of conscience are daily ringing in my ears, though, the Lord knows, I have too little obeyed them… How can you choose, when you are laying a corpse in the grave, but think with yourselves, ‘Here lieth the body; but where is the soul? And what have I done for it, before it departed? It was part of my charge; what account can I give of it?’ O sirs, is it a small matter to you to answer such questions as these? It may seem so now, but the hour is coming when it will not seem so… (TRP – p. 17)

Let [ministers] that have taken most pains in public, examine their people, and try whether many of them are not nearly as ignorant and careless as if they had never heard the gospel. For my part, I study to speak as plainly and movingly as I can…and yet I frequently meet with those that have been my hearers eight or ten years, who know not whether Christ be God or man, and wonder when I tell them the history of his birth and life and death as if they had never heard it before…But most of them have an ungrounded trust in Christ, hoping that he will pardon, justify and save them, while the world that their hearts, and they live to the flesh. And this trust they take for justifying faith. I have found by experience, that some ignorant persons, who have been so long unprofitable hearers, have got more knowledge and remorse in half an hour’s close discourse, than they did from ten years’ public preaching. I know that preaching the gospel publicly is the most excellent means, because we speak to many at once. But it is usually far more effectual to preach it privately to a particular sinner… (TRP – p. 18)

Ministers of Love

Taken from On Doctrine...

The dominion of love in the hearts of Christians, appearing in all the course of their lives, doth much glorify God and their religion.—I mean a common hearty love to all men, and a special love to holy men, according to their various degrees of loveliness. Love is a thing so agreeable to right reason, and to sociable nature, and to the common interest of all mankind, that all men commend it; and they that have it not for others, would have it from others. Who is it that loveth not to be loved? And who is it that loveth not the man that he is convinced loveth him, better than him that hateth him, or regardeth him not? And do you think that the same course, which maketh men hate yourselves, is like to make them love your religion?

Click here to read the whole piece.

Baxter on Mere Christianity

The thing which I daily opened to [my congregation], and with greatest importunity labored to imprint upon their minds, was the great fundamental principles of Christianity contained in their baptismal covenant, even a right knowledge, and belief of, and subjection and love to, God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and love to all men, and concord with the church and one another…The opening of the true and profitable method of the Creed (or doctrine of faith), the Lord’s Prayer (or matter of our desires), and the Ten Commandments (or law of practice), which afford matter to add to the knowledge of most professors of religions, [takes] a long time. And when that is done they must be led on… but not so as to leave the weak behind; and so as shall still be truly subservient to the great points of the faith, hope and love, holiness and unity, which must be still [i.e., always, constantly] inculcated, as the beginning and end of all. (TRP – pp. 12-13)

Looking at the Past and Present of Counseling

by David Powlison (intereviewed at 9Marks)

9Marks: Are there significant points of commonality between biblical counseling in the past, such as the Puritan approach, and proper biblical counseling today?

David Powlison: The church forgets things. The church rediscovers things. But when it rediscovers something, it's different because it's always in a different socio-cultural-historical moment, and different forces are at work. Caring for the soul, which we try to do in biblical counseling, is not new. Two of the great pioneers in church history would be Augustine and Gregory the Great. Even secular people will credit Augustine's Confessions as pioneering the idea that there is an inner life. Augustine did an unsurpassed job of tearing apart the various ways in which people's desires become disordered.

Gregory wrote the earliest textbook on pastoral care. He pioneered diverse ways of dealing with a fearful person, a brash and impulsive person, an angry person, an overly passive person. He broke out these different struggles and sought to apply explicitly biblical, Christ-centered medicine—full of Christ, full of grace, full of gospel, and full of the hard call of God's Word to the challenges of life.

The Puritans represent a second era of great riches in the area of pastoral care, and the question is often asked about CCEF's relationship to the Puritans. People are more familiar with them because we still read them. You think about people like Richard Baxter, whose Christian Directory offers a treatise on everything from melancholy to domestic violence to addictions. Now, the Puritans use a different language set. There are certain ways that their studies are not as nuanced and sophisticated as ours, but there is a tremendous correlation of current wisdom for pastoral care in the cure of souls.

Click here to read the whole article.

The Ten Marks of a Flesh Pleaser

The signs of a flesh-pleaser or sensualist are these:

1. When a man in his desire to please his appetite, does not do it with a view to a higher end, that is to say to the preparing himself for the service of God; but does it only for the delight itself. (Of course no one does every action conciously with a view to the service of God. Nevertheless, the general manner or habit of a life spent in the service of God is absent for the flesh-pleaser.)

2. When he looks more eagerly and industriously after the prosperity of his body than of his soul.

3. When he will not refrain from his pleasures, when God forbids them, or when they hurt his soul, or when the necessities of his soul call him away from them. But he must have his delight whatever it costs him, and is so set upon it, that he cannot deny it to himself.

4. When the pleasures of his flesh exceed his delights in God, and his holy word and ways, and the expectations of endless pleasure. And this not only in the passion, but in the estimation, choice, and action. When he had rather be at a play, or feast, or other entertainment, or getting good bargains or profits in the world, than to live in the life of faith and love, which would be a holy and heavenly way of living.

5. When men set their minds to scheme and study to make provision for the pleasures of the flesh; and this is first and sweetest in their thoughts.

6. When they had rather talk, or hear, or read of fleshly pleasures, than of spiritual and heavenly delights.

7. When they love the company of merry sensualists, better than the communion of saints, in which they may be exercised in the praises of their Maker.

8. When they consider that the best place to live and work is where they have the pleasure of the flesh. They would rather be where they have things easy, and lack nothing for the body, rather than where they have far better help and provision for the soul, though the flesh be pinched for it.

9. When he will be more eager to spend money to please his flesh than to please God.

10. When he will believe or like no doctrine but "easy-believism," and hate mortification as too strict "legalism."

By these, and similar signs, sensuality may easily be known; indeed, by the main bent of the life.

Thanks to Fire and Ice: Puritan and Reformed Writings

Why We Need the Puritans

Here are J.I. Packer's reasons on why you ought to read the Puritans.

1.) There are lessons for us in the integration of their daily lives. As their Christianity was all-embracing, so their living was all of a piece. There was for them no disjunction between sacred and secular; all creation, so far as they were concerned, was sacred, and all activities, of whatever kind, must be sanctified, that is, done to the glory of God.

2.) There are lessons for us in the quality of their spiritual experience. In the Puritans' communion with God, as Jesus Christ was central, so Holy Scripture was supreme.

3.) There are lessons for us in their passion for effective action. They had no time for idleness of the lazy or passive person who leaves it to others to change the world.

4.) There are lessons for us in their program for family stability. It is hardly too much to say that the Puritans created the Christian family in the English-speaking world.

5.) There are lessons to be learned from their sense of human worth. Through believing in a great God, they gained a vivid awareness of the greatness of moral issues, of eternity, and of the human soul.

6.) There are lessons to be learned from the Puritans' ideal of church renewal. The essence of this kind of renewal (what they called "reformation") was enrichment of understanding of God's truth, arousal of affections Godward, increase of ardour in one's devotions, and more love, joy, and firmness of Christian purpose in one's calling and personal life.

From pages 23-27 of Packer's "A Quest for Godliness."

Baxter on Knowledge

1.) Every man that has a reasonable soul should know God that made him; and know the end for which he should live; and know the way to his eternal happiness, as well as the learned: have you not souls to save or lose as well as learned have?

2.) God hath made plain his will to you in his Word; He hath given you teachers and many other helps; so that you have no excuse if you are ignorant; you must know how to be Christians if you are no scholars. You may hit the way to heaven in English, though you have no skill in Hebrew or Greek; but in the darkness of ignorance you can never hit it.

3.) If you think, therefore, that you may be excused from knowledge, you may as well think that you may be excused from love and from all obedience; for there can be none of this without knowledge. Were you but as willing to get the knowledge of God and heavenly things as you are to know how to work in your trade, you would have set yourself to it before this day, and you would have spared no cost or pains till you had got it. But you account seven years little enough to learn your trade, and will not bestow one day in seven in diligent learning the matters of your salvation.

If heaven be too high for you to think on, and to provide for, it will be too high for you to ever possess.

From page 70 of J.I. Packer's A Quest for Godliness.

Baxter on Church Discipline

from The Reformed Pastor

My second request to the ministers in these kingdoms, is, that they would at least, without any more delay, unanimously set themselves to the practice of those parts of Church discipline which are unquestionably necessary, and part of their work. It is a sad case, that good men should settle themselves so long in the constant neglect of so great a duty. The common cry is, ‘Our people are not ready for it; they will not bear it.’ But is not the fact rather, that you will not bear the trouble and hatred which it will occasion? (TRP – 46-47)

I now only beseech you, if you would give a comfortable account to the chief Shepherd, and would not be found unfaithful in the house of God, that you do not willfully or negligently delay it, as if it were a needless thing; nor shrink from it, because of the trouble to the flesh that doth attend it; for as that is a sad sign of hypocrisy, so the costliest duties are usually the most comfortable; and you may be sure that Christ will bear the cost. (TRP – 47)

Baxter on Catechizing, Christian Education, and Pastoral Care

from The Reformed Pastor

[Is it not] the unquestionable duty of the generality of ministers of these three nations, to set themselves presently to the work of catechizing, and instructing individually, all that are committed to their care, who will be persuaded to submit thereunto? I need not here stand to prove it, having sufficiently done this in the following discourse. Can you think that holy wisdom will gainsay it? Will zeal for God; will delight in his service, or love to the souls of men gainsay it?

• That people must be taught the principles of religion, and matters of greatest necessity to salvation, is past doubt among us.

• That they must be taught it in the most edifying, advantageous way, I hope we are agreed.

• That personal conference, and examination, and instruction, hath many excellent advantages for their good, is no less beyond dispute.

• That personal instruction is recommended to us by Scripture, and by the practice of the servants of Christ, and approved by the godly of all ages, is, so far as I can find, without contradiction.

• It is past doubt, that we should perform this great duty to all the people, or as many as we can; for our love and care of their souls must extend to all. If there are five hundred or a thousand ignorant people in your parish or congregation, it is a poor discharge of your duty, now and then to speak to some few of them, and to let the rest alone in their ignorance, if you are able to afford them help.

• It is no less certain, that so great a work as this is should take up a considerable part of our time.

• Lastly, it is equally certain that all duties should be done in order, as far as may be, and therefore should have their appointed times. (page 42)
  

Richard Baxter and His Gospel

Maurice Roberts writes...

It is surely right that we should give attention to the theme of this lecture. After all, Richard Baxter, though a man of genius and a brilliant leader in his day, was first of all a preacher and perhaps we could say that he was a model preacher. For the Puritan, nothing mattered like the gospel and so Baxter would certainly have approved of our emphasis here tonight, Richard Baxter and his Gospel. That is what I have come to emphasise and to try to demonstrate a little from his own writings.

But before we come to do that it is only fitting that we should recall Richard Baxter as a very great man and that, too, in an age of great men. He was a many-sided man, strongly independent and at times too much so, as John Wesley was in the next century. They were both very much Englishmen and very eminent ones. You will probably be aware that there is an inscription at the base of Baxter's statue which reads as follows:

'Between the years 1640 and 1660 this town was the scene of the labours of Richard Baxter, renowned equally for his Christian learning and his pastoral fidelity. In a stormy and divided age he advocated unity and comprehension, pointing the way to "the eternal". Churchmen and Nonconformists united to raise this memorial AD 1865.'

Click here to read the whole article.

Thanks to Fire and Ice

Lord, It Belongs Not To My Care

Lord, it belongs not to my care
Whether I die or live;
To love and serve Thee is my share,
And this Thy grace must give.

If life be long, I will be glad,
That I may long obey;
If short, yet why should I be sad
To welcome endless day?

Christ leads me through no darker rooms
Than He went through before;
He that unto God’s kingdom comes
Must enter by this door.

Come, Lord, when grace hath made me meet
Thy blessèd face to see;
For if Thy work on earth be sweet
What will Thy glory be!

Then I shall end my sad complaints
And weary sinful days,
And join with the triumphant saints
That sing my Savior’s praise.

My knowledge of that life is small,
The eye of faith is dim;
But ’tis enough that Christ knows all,
And I shall be with Him.

Click here to learn more about the hymn as well as to hear its tune.
Thanks to Cyber Hymnal

Advice on Reading

from Fire and Ice

"Make careful choice of the books which you read: let the holy scriptures ever have the pre-eminence, and, next to them, those solid, lively, heavenly treatises which best expound and apply the scriptures, and next, credible histories, especially of the Church . . . but take heed of false teachers who would corrupt your understandings."

Click here to read all of Baxter's advice on reading.