PURITAN PAPERS

A Symposium of Papers Read at Two Annual

Puritan and Reformed Studies Conferences,

Westminster Chapel, London

Vol. 1, 1956–1959

Vol. 2, 1960–1962

Vol. 3, 1963–1964

Vol. 4, 1965–1967

Vol. 5, 1968–1969

J. I. Packer, Series Editor

PURITAN PAPERS

Volume 4

1965–1967

EDITED BY

J. I. Packer

©2004 by the Committee of the Westminster Conference

Previously published as separate annual volumes by Tentmaker Publications. Compiled and reformatted by the den Dulk Christian Foundation.

Published by the den Dulk Christian Foundation, Kingsburg, California, and by P&R Publishing Company, Phillipsburg, New Jersey, on behalf of the Committee of the Westminster Conference.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—except for brief quotations for the purpose of review or comment, without the prior permission of the publisher, P&R Publishing Company, P.O. Box 817, Phillipsburg, New Jersey 08865-0817.

Page design by Tobias Design

Typesetting by Carol Shaffer and Lakeside Design Plus

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Puritan papers / edited by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones ; foreword by W. Robert Godfrey.

p. cm.

Vols. 2-4 edited by J. I. Packer.

Includes bibliographical references.

Contents: v. 1. 1956–1959—v. 2. 1960–1962—v. 3. 1963–1964—v. 4. 1965–1967.

ISBN 0-87552-469-9 (pbk.)

1. Puritans. I. Lloyd-Jones, David Martyn. II. Packer, J. I. (James Innell)

BX9327.P87 2001

285’.9—dc21

2001032900

ISBN: 978-1-59638-797-3 (ePub)

ISBN: 978-1-59638-798-0 (Mobi)

CONTENTS

Contributors

Part I: Approaches to Reformation (1965)

1. Ulrich Zwingli 3 D. W. Marshall

2. The Anabaptists 15 D. P. Kingdon

3. Martin Luther

J. I. Packer

4. Thomas Cranmer

G. S. R. Cox

5. John Knox

S. M. Houghton

6. Ecclesiola in Ecclesia

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Part 2: One Steadfast High Intent (1966)

7. Charles Finney on Revival

P. E. G. Cook

8. John Owen on Communication from God

J. I. Packer

9. Catechisms and the Puritans

J. Lewis Wilson

10. Oliver Heywood, the Northern Puritan

W. H. Davies

11. Henry Jacob and the First Congregational Church

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Part 3: Profitable for Doctrine and Reproof (1967)

12. The Christian Mind of Abraham Kuyper

Rex Ambler

13. The Puritans and Spiritual Gifts

J. I. Packer

14. Daniel Rowland

Eifion Evans

15. Richard Baxter’s Reformed Pastor

J. A. Caiger

16. Sandemanianism

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Notes

CONTRIBUTORS

Rex Ambler was a researcher at Regents’ Park College, Oxford.

J. A. Caiger was a Baptist pastor in London.

P. E. G. Cook was pastor of the Baptist church in Shepshed, Leicestershire, U.K.

G. S. R. Cox is a retired Anglican clergyman who has specialized in rural ministry.

W. H. Davies was a Baptist minister in Blackpool, U.K.

Eifion Evans is a minister in the Presbyterian Church of Wales and has authored several books on revivals in Wales.

S. M. Houghton was a schoolmaster who did a great deal of editorial work for the Banner of Truth Trust during his retirement.

D. P. Kingdon is a Baptist pastor who has served for many years on the staff of Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester, U.K.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899–1981) was first co-pastor and then pastor of Westminster Chapel in London from 1939 to his retirement in 1968.

D. W. Marshall was an English Free Church minister who became pastor of a Presbyterian congregation in Hamilton, Ontario.

J. I. Packer is Board of Governors Professor of Theology at Regent College in Vancouver and executive editor of Christianity Today.

J. Lewis Wilson was a Presbyterian minister in New Zealand.

Part 1

Approaches

to Reformation

1965

1

ULRICH ZWINGLI

D. W. Marshall

The future reformer was born on January 1, 1484. His father was chief magistrate of the village of Wildhaus in northeast Switzerland, and the boy grew up proud of his Swiss nationality. Patriotic motives were destined to exercise a powerful influence on his life for good and ill in later days.

A second important influence on Zwingli’s life during his formative years was that of the Renaissance. A new impetus was given to this revival of learning in 1453 when the Turks sacked Constantinople and sent hundreds of Greeks fleeing westwards, “whose only wealth” says Tanner, “consisted in their priceless manuscripts and their power to teach.” Before this time the knowledge of Greek had been almost lost in Western Europe. The finest fruit of this reintroduction of Greek into Europe was the publication of Erasmus’ Greek New Testament in Basel in 1516. Zwingli as a young priest was so moved by reading this edition of the Greek New Testament that he set himself to copy out verbatim the epistles of St. Paul. The original autograph, together with the reformer’s comments in the margin, may still be seen in the State library at Zurich. Two humanists influenced Zwingli greatly: Thomas Wyttenbach, who taught that “the death of Christ was the sole price of the remission of sins, and therefore that faith is the key which unlocks to the soul the treasury of such remission.” The reformer also later wrote of the profound influence which a poem by Erasmus had on him: “I read a poem,” he says, “by that most learned man Erasmus of Rotterdam, in which Christ asks what it is that prevents foolish men from seeking all things in Him, since He Himself is the only fountain of all good, the Saviour and Helper, the very comfort and treasure of the soul. . . . When I read this I soon thought; this is perfectly true as you here read. Why then do we rush to the creature for help?”

The third great influence on Zwingli during his early years was of course the Medieval Church, which had by then come to the time of twilight and decay. Those early years of the sixteenth century in which he grew up were very like the sixties of the twentieth century in some ways. They were years of great mental and emotional disturbance for people in Europe. In those days it was the Turks who threatened the continuance of Christendom, and the revival of learning simply increased the questionings already prompted by new discoveries and the appetite for national greatness with which they coincided. At such a time “left to itself without captain or steersman the Church drifted about aimlessly on the unknown sea,” says a writer who is no friend of protestantism.

Ulrich’s education was conventional. In 1502 he was at Vienna University, and from 1502–1506 he was at Basel University. For the next ten years he was curate at Glarus. During this time he fell into the sin of sensuality of which later he became deeply ashamed. Such a failing brought no ecclesiastical censure, of course, in days when many clergy could cultivate what relationship they liked with the opposite sex so long as they did not attempt to get married.

During his time at Glarus, Zwingli went as chaplain to the Swiss troops who were fighting under the papal banner against the French. All went well until the disastrous defeat at Marignano in 1515. This left a lasting impression on the mind of the patriotic young priest, and Rilliet describes it thus: “Atrocious memories passed before his eyes; bloody corpses covering the Milanese plain . . . canals choked by dead horses. Was it right and normal for a . . . successor of St. Peter to unleash such massacres?”

The future reformer was learning much during his ten years at Glarus. He was impressed by his own sinfulness, by the need for reform in the Church, and most of all by Scripture. “When Zwingli turned towards Holy Scripture,” says D’Aubigné, “Switzerland took its first step towards the Reformation.”

The Word at Zurich

In October 1518 Oswald Myconius, then teaching classics at Zurich, wrote to his friend Ulrich that the post of people’s priest at Zurich cathedral was vacant, and that he longed to see Zwingli installed in that post. In due course he was elected, and at Christmas 1518 he preached his last sermon at Einsiedeln, where he had labored since leaving Glarus in 1515.

As we approach a brief consideration of the reformer’s work at Zurich, we should notice that he was responsible for a reformation there, and not a revolution. The reformation began with preaching, but it was years before the effect of this preaching was seen in the taking of those practical measures which followed upon the spiritual transformation of many people. In his first sermon the reformer declared his intention to the awe-struck congregation. “It is to Christ I desire to lead you,” he said, “to Christ the true source of salvation, His gospel is the power of God to salvation to all them that believe.” During those first days at Zurich it seems that times of great spiritual revival were witnessed at the Zurich cathedral. One member of the congregation declared that he was drawn to attend one sermon “as if someone had drawn me by the hair of my head.” “Never,” says Myconius, Zwingli’s first biographer, “had there been seen a priest in the pulpit with such an imposing appearance and commanding power, so that you were irresistibly led to believe that a man from the apostolic times was standing before you.”

We now briefly trace the course of events in Zurich by which the Reformation was established there, from the beginning of 1519 to the order for the abolition of images four and a half years later. Two general principles may be observed in the progress of reform.

1. Reform was gradual. Zwingli was content to bide his time, and to move without undue haste. Such an attitude seems to have been prompted by boundless confidence in his cause on the one hand, and compassionate concern for weak consciences on the other.

2. The reforms took place by the authority of the secular arm. If we feel that here Zwingli was at fault, we ought to ask what other course lay open to him than to use the civic authorities to carry out a lawful and orderly reform. To sympathize with Zwingli at this point does not commit us to the notion that there is any hope that the secular power today is likely to help the cause of reform for the Church in England.

Reform at Zurich

The break with Rome at Zurich was at last precipitated by what appeared at first sight a fairly small affair (compare Luther’s experience with his Ninety-five Theses in 1517). During Lent 1522, when the eating of meat was forbidden, the Zurich printer Froschauer was working to prepare a new edition of St. Paul’s epistles for the Frankfurt Fair. One day the printer’s workmen were becoming tired towards evening. His wife purchased sausages to refresh the workmen, in view of the high cost of fish. The steaming dish was in due course handed to Froschauer’s guests for supper, among whom were to be found three priests. Two of these eagerly devoured the forbidden meat; the third abstained, and that was Zwingli himself.

The reformer’s enemies counted his teaching as responsible for this breaking of tradition, and they informed the bishop of Constance, who took action skillfully designed to silence the cathedral preacher; this very nearly succeeded. Three priests were sent to Zurich, with instructions to defend the traditional rules, to impress the Zurich council, and at all costs to avoid a public clash with the preacher at the great minster. It was only with difficulty that Zwingli and his friends obtained an entrance to the assembly where the representatives of the bishop pleaded their cause. These latter said that dangerous men were teaching that human institutions were no more to be regarded, and that such action threatened not only the authority of civil laws, but Christianity itself. Zurich replied to this testimony to the effectiveness of his preaching thus: (a) He was able to state that he had never spoken against the observance of the forty days fast in lent, (b) He was able to show that Scripture never commends compulsory fasting. “For my part,” he said, “one may fast the whole year if he have not enough in forty days; only I hold that fasts should not be imposed on any one by the threat of excommunication.”

The result of this preliminary clash between the reformed and the medieval way was indecisive, but the abiding controversy between Roman and Reformed Christianity is seen in the questions raised in the dispute. What is the relation between Scripture and tradition? In what manner does Christ the Lord exercise authority in His Church?

Events now moved swiftly to a climax. The reforming party in Zurich now went on to consider the more sensitive question of clerical celibacy. They sent a petition to the bishop, requesting permission for priests to marry if they wished to do so. To this restrained and reasonable request the bishop was unwise enough to reply with contemptuous silence. At this Zwingli and the council of Zurich arranged for a meeting for January 29, 1523, to which were invited the bishop himself, the clergy of Zurich, and delegates from the Swiss cantons. The purpose of the conference was to be the consideration of matters of pressing controversy. The Zurichers, unable to obtain a hearing from higher authority in the hierarchy, were beginning to assert their liberty to settle things, under God, for themselves.

In preparation for this crucial gathering, Zwingli prepared Sixty-seven Theses, “which,” says S. M. Jackson, “really sum up his teaching.” According to Rilliet, they “constitute the charter of the Zurich reformation.” These theses, written in Swiss German in a style which everybody could understand, do not, of course, exhaust the themes of Christian theology, but are rather a clear statement of gospel faith and practice in the light of the increasing controversy of the time. The intense feeling over the disputed matter of the forgiveness of sins is seen in theses fifty, fifty-one, fifty-four, and fifty-five:

50. God alone forgives sins, and only through Christ Jesus our Lord.

51. Whoever therefore attributes this power to the creature, robs God of His glory, and is an idolater.

54. Christ bore our griefs and carried our sorrows, whoever therefore attributes to works of penance what is Christ’s alone, errs and blasphemes God.

55. Whoever therefore refuses to pardon even one sin of the penitent, holds his office not from God, nor from Peter, but from the devil.

When the day of destiny came, a great crowd composed of all sorts of persons crowded into the Zurich town hall. The burgomaster welcomed the assembly and declared that the council was tired of complaints against “Master Ulrich,” and if he had in fact been unfaithful to Scripture, let those who knew this, show from Scripture where he was at fault. In strangely modern fashion, the representatives of the bishop made it plain that their desire was to observe the squabbles of others, and not to be drawn into any debate themselves. At last John Faber, vicar-general of Constance, addressed the assembly in a very smooth manner. He said he was a friend of gospel preaching, and suggested that the real judges of disputed matters were universities such as Paris, Cologne, or Louvain. “Why not Erfurt or Wittenberg?” interjected Zwingli—at this everyone laughed. “No,” said Faber, “Luther is too near there, and then all evils come from the North.” In reply to Faber’s further suggestions for delay Zwingli recommended that the assembly constitute itself as a Church meeting. “Why delay, are we not . . . sufficiently numerous and sufficiently learned? Is it right that souls under the tyranny of unjustifiable customs should have to wait for a council which might never be convened? O men of Zurich you may take the matter into your own hands. It is a great honor which God has bestowed on you.”

The conclusion of the disputation was a great public vindication of Zwingli’s ministry. We get a glimpse into the soul of this Mr. Greatheart in the words of a prayer uttered some time before. If outwardly he seemed always engaged in some controversy, his feelings were far otherwise: “O Jesus, thou seest how the wicked and the blasphemers stun thy people’s ears with their clamours. Thou knowest how from my childhood I have hated all dispute, and yet in spite of myself, Thou hast not ceased to impel me to the conflict . . . therefore do I call upon Thee with confidence to complete what Thou hast begun. If I have built up anything wrongly, do thou throw it down with Thy mighty hand. . . . O vine abounding in sweetness, whose husbandman is the Father, and whose branches we are, do not abandon Thy shoots. For Thou hast promised to be with us until the end of the world.”

From now on the actual visible reform of the Church proceeded apace, with God’s Word as the authority, and the civic authorities in Zurich as the instrument by which this was effected. In October 1523, images were abolished. In June 1524, it was ordered that relics should be removed from the churches, and also that organs should no longer be used. In December of the same year came the dissolution of the religious houses. Then on April 12, 1525, the last mass was said in Zurich. If it be true that the mass is the center of Catholic worship, then its abolition, just over six years after Zwingli’s arrival, was a memorable landmark in the progress of the Swiss Reformation. The magnitude of the reformer’s work is seen in that within the space of a few months from 1523–1525, the false traditions of centuries were swept away; in their place was established a Reformed Church, which would survive the storms of the coming centuries. If we can borrow a phrase from Professor Rupp, first used in another connection, we may say, “In 1525, Zwingli had overcome the world; there remained, the flesh, and the devil.”

Anabaptists at Zurich

The Anabaptist controversy at Zurich took place about the time of the abortive peasants’ revolt in South Germany and there were refugees from this disastrous episode in the Reformation story who found their way to Zurich. They swelled the ranks of those already meeting together, in whose gatherings the Anabaptist outlook became more and more articulate. Differing attitudes were to be found among the Anabaptists of the sixteenth century, but one thing is certain: the controversy as to who were the proper subjects for baptism was not the sole nor even the chief cause of this unhappy dispute between Zwingli and the left-wing of the Reformation. For a time the Zurich reformer agreed that it might be best to defer the baptism of children until such time as they could confess the faith of their fathers for themselves.

Various other factors convinced him that the Anabaptists were a disruptive influence in the Reformation cause—a not altogether unreasonable view—and his subsequent spirited defense of infant baptism seems to me to have been more the outcome of a passionate desire to preserve the unity of the Reformed cause against the divisive influence of the individualistic enthusiasts than from any profound and ultimate conviction that one can prove the case for infant baptism from Scripture.

The Zurich Anabaptists had little difficulty in discovering what one supposes is obvious to any honest student of the New Testament; that there is no conclusive evidence there that infants were baptized in apostolic times. To them there seemed only one thing to say in the light of such a discovery, namely “down with infant baptism.” No sooner said than done, and some enthusiasts went and demolished the baptismal fonts at Zollikon Parish Church. As may be imagined this did not provide a very helpful background for the public disputations on the subject, which were subsequently held. One fanatic does more harm to a good cause than many of its enemies.

In due course the council of Zurich arranged for the disputations, the details of which are fairly well reported in Christoffel’s biography. Zwingli appears in not too pleasing a light. He gives the impression of a haughty schoolmaster reproving his erring scholars (the Anabaptists). Some useful things were said by both sides, some familiar to us and some unfamiliar. But one of the several unresolved problems of protestantism appears in the altercation: Who, if not the pope, is to be a proper authority to interpret Scripture? Both sides in this dispute claimed to prove their case from Scripture, and both came to diametrically opposed conclusions.

No one can justify the harsh treatment meted out to the Anabaptists, but in saying this we should remember that modern ideas of toleration were almost unknown in the sixteenth century. Further, it is at least possible to understand Zwingli’s exasperation when, already opposed by a host of foes, he was confronted by a further threat to Reformation unity and strength by those who, in the zealous pursuits of strongly held views, threatened to dismember the infant Reformed Church of Zurich. The sixteenth century was the time for the struggle between the gospel and the papacy, and this was no occasion to try and settle the Church and State question, which underlay the Anabaptist controversy; that question could well have waited till less troubled and dangerous times.

Quarrel with Luther

J. T. McNeill regards the Colloquy of Marburg (1529) as “the earliest formal conference for unity in Reformation History.” It developed into a bitter theological wrangle which did credit to neither Luther nor Zwingli. The formal cause of violent dispute was the question of the manner of the presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. Evangelicals, even in those days, wanted to be certain and definite about everything. But other factors served to sharpen this dispute, inviting Catholic suspicion, scorn, or amusement. Even before 1529 Luther and Zwingli had been engaged in a pamphlet debate in which they had become exceedingly irritated with each other. Added to this, political considerations caused the Germans to be unwilling to be too friendly to the Swiss. To crown all, the differing temperaments of the two great reformers easily fanned the flames of controversy once the two major contestants met face to face.

The sober judgment of the German theologian Dorner on this controversy was as follows: “This controversy by which the whole Reformation was soon agitated, did more than anything else to render the latter suspicious in the eyes of Catholicism, and make it seem to it to be only a human and not a divine work.” No doubt we should scorn to be persuaded by the opinions of men, but it is sometimes useful to see ourselves as others see us; and to a well-read Catholic one of the supreme absurdities of protestantism must seem to consist in this—that protestants boast of their unity in respect to the Bible and have quarreled most violently over the two sacraments of Christian unity commended in the Bible.

The lessons from the Marburg debate for the twentieth century are plain enough. In a Reformed Church it is neither necessary nor possible to agree about everything, still less to know and understand everything. Even 450 years after the Reformation it is still perhaps not too late to distinguish things essential from non-essential, and so discover a true basis for the visible unity of the Church of God. The New Testament requires that the spiritual unity inwardly experienced by Christians be outwardly displayed to the world. Such unity was not known in the sixteenth century, and since then it has been altogether lost. Modern evangelicals are guilty in that over four centuries after the first perplexities of the Reformation appeared, they seem little interested in resolving them in a truly Christian way. But the requirements of God’s Word stand. It is therefore our duty actively to seek what Scripture requires. The Marburg colloquy warns us to take care that our thoughts are governed only by Christian considerations.

It would be wrong to interpret the discouraging facts relating to the Anabaptists and the Marburg Colloquy in such a way as to conclude that the Reformation in Zurich ceased to make progress about the year 1525. In spite of increasing difficulties the Gospel spread in and around Zurich after that time. It reached numbers of cities in south Germany. In Switzerland, Berne embraced the Reformation, preparing the way for the westward spread of the Reformed faith to Geneva.

However this may be, it is difficult to avoid the impression that a spiritual decline took place in the soul of the Zurich reformer after the victory over the old order had been gained in Zurich. Having begun in the Spirit, Ulrich Zwingli seems unwittingly to have resolved to be made perfect in the flesh. Increasingly he became involved in politics, increasingly he ignored the distinction between Church and State, and in his last days at Zurich he was responsible for a law by which one of the qualifications for political office was regular attendance at the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper–a most unsatisfactory arrangement. In all this political activity, through which Zwingli’s work as pastor, prophet, and preacher suffered, he seems to have lost sight of the guidance of the Holy Spirit, whose aid he constantly sought in early days. His last major work, An Exposition of the Faith, curiously dedicated to that unsatisfactory king Francis I of France, has no section on the work of the Holy Ghost.

The end of Zwingli’s futile political maneuvering was the calamity of the battle of Cappel, in which this prophet who began his work so well perished as some Josiah, cut down in untimely death in a war largely of his own making. The Reformation at Zurich survived this terrible setback, in which the flowers of its manhood were cut to pieces by the men of the Catholic forest cantons. But from that time these latter were confirmed in their catholicism, and those rural areas remain devoted to Rome to this day.

In Zurich, near the water’s edge, there is a statue of its greatest son. The face, strong and resolute, looks heavenwards; in one hand a great Bible is firmly clasped; and in the other—equally firmly clasped—is a sword. This fittingly sums up the career of Ulrich Zwingli. By the Spirit of God he set himself to find deliverance from the mire and misery of sin. Through the same Spirit speaking in Scripture, he found deliverance, and was soon used as an instrument to deliver many others, and to reform the Church in which he had been brought up. Then confiding in a strength which was really weakness, he took to the sword: and perished with the sword.

“Poor Zwingli,” said a Christian friend to me in the summer, “he did not go all the way.” Such pious and question-begging statements are common enough among us. But what is all the way? What is a true Church, pure and reformed in doctrine and practice? When we can give a satisfactory answer to these questions, then we can criticize Zwingli’s limited achievements, which appear great beside the boundless confusion which reigns in twentieth-century Christendom. The life of the Zurich reformer provides part of the answer to the problems of our time; and therefore we thank God for the heroic faith, dauntless courage, and consecrated devotion of Ulrich Zwingli.

2

THE ANABAPTISTS

D. P. Kingdon

This paper falls into four parts. In the first I shall attempt to set the Anabaptists in their historical context; in the second I shall examine the origins and, to a small extent, the history of Anabaptism. Third, I shall endeavor to expound the Anabaptist doctrine of the reformation of the Church. Last, I shall attempt to draw out some conclusions which seem to me to be very relevant to the present day.

The Radical Reformation

The Anabaptists were part of a movement which has been variously described by recent historians as “the Left Wing of the Reformation” (J. T. McNeill and R. H. Bainton), or “the Radical Reformation” (G. H. Williams). The Radical Reformation, as I prefer to call it, was a complex movement, composed of heterogeneous elements. It included not only Anabaptists of various types, but also groups which exalted alleged revelations of the Spirit above the written word of Scripture, spiritualizers of varying tendencies, and what G. H. Williams calls Evangelical Rationalists. Grouped under the Radical Reformation one may find both political revolutionaries like Thomas Muntzer and pacifistic communitarians like Jacob Hutter. One may discover rigoristic legalists and antinomians, wild fanatics, and sober pietists. The Radical Reformation was, to employ the vivid image of Rufus Jones, a veritable banyan tree.

Diverse though the elements were which constituted the Radical Reformation they were united by two basic convictions. The first was that the Protestant Reformation in Germany and Switzerland, its two chief centers, had not been nearly radical enough. In both countries, which were a patchwork of separate jurisdictions, the reformation of the Church had been largely carried out by the government of the day. Both Lutheranism and Calvinism had this in common, that they made an appeal to the “Christian magistrate” or the governing power as an instrument for the reformation of the Church.

G. H. Williams has designated the Lutheran and Calvinist sections of the Reformation movement “the Magisterial Reformation.” He calls it such because its principle is reformation through the state. Basic to the Magisterial Reformation is the ideal of a Christian magistrate, the reform of the Church by means of the power of the state, an ideal which continued to be upheld even when it represented a small minority in a predominantly Catholic country. Intimately related to this ideal is a territorial conception of the Church. As the opposition of the Magisterial Reformers such as Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin to the principles of the Anabaptists increased, it was to become quite evident that their view of reformation depended upon their concept of a territorial Church which embraced all the citizens of an area or country in virtue of their baptism. When in 1531 Melanchthon drew up a memorandum on Anabaptism in which the death penalty was prescribed for recalcitrant Anabaptists, it is this territorial conception of the Church which is in the foreground. “What would happen,” he asks, “if children were not baptized, if not that our whole society would become openly heathen? . . . it is a serious matter to cast children out of Christendom and to have two sets of people, the one baptized and the other unbaptized. . . .”1

The second basic conviction which united the Radical Reformation in opposition to the Magisterial Reformers went far deeper than mere dissatisfaction with the pace and extent of reform. The Radical Reformers rejected root and branch the territorial conception of the Church. To their mind the Church is a covenanted community of converted men and women who are pledged and active disciples of Christ. What they desired to see was the restoration of the Apostolic Church as it existed in the days of the martyrs. The Radical Reformers did not agree with Luther that the Church, which he held to have fallen into a state of corruption in the later Middle Ages, could now be rescued and reformed. They held that when the Church received the support of Constantine, or even before this, it fell so as to be lost. What was required, therefore, was less the reformation of the existing Church than the restitution of the true Church.

The Radical Reformation held that the restitution of the Church could not be brought about by the magistrate precisely because the alliance of the Church and state from the time of Constantine onwards had resulted in the fall of the Church. The only way in which the effects of this terrible fall could be undone is by the preaching of the Gospel, and the gathering of a Church which would be a fellowship of regenerated persons. Since faith cannot be compelled, all forms of coercion are wrong. The Church must be formed on the principle of voluntary association by those who have first given themselves to Christ, and then to one another, to walk in His commandments.

Other common convictions were shared by the Radical Reformation. Apart from a few exceptions, such as the Munster revolutionaries (who have attracted a disproportionate amount of attention), the great majority of its adherents refused to bear arms. They held that our Lord, both by example and precept, had forbidden believers to engage in war. The only form of coercion they permitted themselves was excommunication. They also gave to the Great Commission (Matt. 28:19–20) an emphasis which it did not receive in either Lutheranism or Calvinism.

The exponents of the Radical Reformation differed from the Magisterial Reformers over a number of points of doctrine. For the most part they rejected the doctrine of absolute predestination. They did not agree with the idea of the invisible church as it was set forth, for example, by Calvin in the Prefatory Address of the Institutes: “as God alone knows who are His, so He may sometimes withdraw the external manifestation of His Church from the view of men.” The Radical Reformers rejected Calvin’s view because they believed that true saints may be visibly known and gathered into Church fellowship. For the most part the followers of the Radical Reformation were psychopannychists; that is they believed in the death or sleep of the soul, pending the day of resurrection. Some were anti-Trinitarian, others were docetic in their Christology. Many, however, were both orthodox in their doctrine of the Trinity and of the Person of Christ.

Emergence of the Anabaptists

It may be well, at the outset, to indicate that the study of Anabaptist history is beset with problems. The first problem is that of the relation of the Anabaptists to the pre-Reformation sects. Do the Anabaptists go back beyond the Reformation to the Middle Ages? Recent scholarship inclines to the view that they do not, but the question has not yet received a definitive answer. The second problem is that of the relation of the Anabaptists to the seventeenth century Baptist founding fathers, Smyth and Helwys. Were these two men induced to forsake independency because of the influence of Anabaptist ideas? On this question there is considerable controversy among Baptist historians.

A further problem is the diversity of the Anabaptists. Some groups, such as the Mennonites, rigorously repudiated any suggestion that they were linked with the revolutionaries of Munster. Many Anabaptists espoused the peculiar Christology of Melchior Hoffmann who taught that Christ did not receive His humanity from Mary, but “passed through her as water through a pipe.” Others held to the orthodox view of both the Person of Christ and the Trinity.

Three types of Anabaptist are discernible, although it must be emphasized that these classifications must not be too rigidly applied, because there are some individuals who could be placed in more than one group.

The evangelical Anabaptists were biblicists. For them the New Testament only was normative for doctrine, ethics, and policy. The Old Testament, on the other hand, received an allegorical interpretation. Thus the ban (excommunication) was held to have replaced the sword used by the Israelites.

The evangelical Anabaptists sought to cleave to the historic Christ. For them His instructions, His life, and His crucifixion were normative. The imitation of Christ was, for them, the normal expression of the Christian life: “from hazardous rebaptism at some Germanic Jordan to a martyr’s pyre, represented the fulness of the Christian way”2 (G.H. Williams). When they were baptized many evangelical Anabaptists felt that, like their Lord, they should itinerate, preaching the gospel of repentance. Some groups revived the voluntary Christian communism of the Church at Jerusalem (Acts 2). The Hutterites especially made it a way of life which still continues to this day in certain parts of the United States of America.

Unlike the evangelical Anabaptists, the revolutionary Anabaptists regarded the Old Testament as normative for theology, and especially for the constitution of the Church. When they came to set up their commonwealth in Munster (1533–1536) they drew more and more upon the Old Testament. Eventually it came to be interpreted out of any relation whatsoever with the New Testament. Not surprisingly certain features of the old dispensation, such as polygamy, began to reappear. Munster became, during the years of Anabaptist rule, a strictly organized theocracy on the Old Testament model. Sins punishable by death included blasphemy, seditious language, scolding one’s parents, backbiting, spreading scandal, and complaining.

The contemplative Anabaptists are the furthest removed from the revolutionary Anabaptists. In some respects they are akin to the later Quakers. A representative figure is John Denck. While he accepted baptism as an adult, and administered the rite to new converts, he placed most importance on the following of the inner Christ, whom he identified with the inner Word which he held was common to all mankind wherever it bursts into the flame of conscience.

Contemplative Anabaptists are less easy to define as a group than the other two groups of Anabaptists. They probably had contacts with all of the trends represented in the Radical Reformation.

It has been necessary to survey the various groups of Anabaptists because from the time of Luther and Calvin onwards they have frequently been classed together as all alike anti-social and indeed as violent revolutionaries. The terrible episode of Munster served to brand all Anabaptists, in the eyes of their opponents, as fanatical revolutionaries and terrible profligates. Yet both before and after Munster many Anabaptist conventicles went out of their way to rebut the charge that they were anti-social and immoral.

It is important to realize that among Anabaptists there existed a great diversity of opinion as to how the restoration of the primitive Church was to be brought about. The Anabaptists of Munster believed that the Kingdom of God could be brought in by force. The Anabaptists of Zurich and elsewhere believed, on the other hand, that the attacks of the world were to be expected and accepted as part of the lot of a Christian. As R. H. Bainton has written, “Anabaptism was inchoate and could include the Schwertler, who would use the sword, and the Stäbler, who would carry only the staff.”3

Most modern scholars locate the emergence of the Anabaptist movement at Zurich during the years 1524–1525, although a few still adhere to Karl Holl’s view that the movement had its origin in the prophetic movement at Zwickau in the winter of 1521–1522.

The leaders of the Anabaptist movement in Zurich were former supporters of the Zurich reformer, Ulrich Zwingli. Among the group around Zwingli were Conrad Grebel and Felix Manz. However, in course of time two divisive issues served to separate them from Zwingli. The Zurich reformer was prepared to leave the matter of the program of reform in the hands of the city council, whereas Grebel and others wanted reform to be carried out immediately. However, the division went deeper than disagreement over the strategy of reform. By 1524, while the Zwinglian party was seeking a gradual reformation of the whole of the Swiss cantons, the radical party was calling for the immediate restoration of the righteous remnant. The Anabaptists, as they were to become known, wanted a fellowship of churches assembling in Zurich and its village dependencies. After much disputation with Zwingli, they came to the point where they rejected outright their birthright in the established or civic Church. They rejected the baptism of infants, holding that it was incongruous to regard the passivity of eight-day-old infants and the joyous experience of old men who, awakened to their sinfulness, now rejoiced in sins forgiven, as underlying the same baptismal action.

The decisive break came when the city council decreed in January 1525 that all who failed to have their infants baptized within eight days would be exiled. On January 21, 1525, three days after the issuing of the decree, four leaders of the Brethren, as they called themselves, were expelled from Zurich, and Grebel and Manz were forbidden to hold any more “schools” for agitation. That same day, in the evening, Grebel baptized George Blaurock, a former priest, by affusion, on profession of his faith. Blaurock then baptized his companions. That evening was the birthday of evangelical Anabaptism. The account of this historic meeting in the “Hutterite Chronicle” says, very movingly, “Thus they together gave themselves the name of the Lord in the high fear of God. Each confirmed the other in the service of the Gospel and began to teach and keep the faith. Therewith began the separation from the world and its evil works.”4

In the week January 22–29 an Anabaptist church was formed in the village of Zollikon, about five miles from Zurich. Here baptism by affusion on profession of faith and the partaking of the Lord’s Supper in primitive, apostolic fashion according to the New Testament accounts of institution, were solemnly observed.

Within the decade 1525 to 1535 Anabaptism spread throughout Switzerland, Germany, and Bohemia. Its martyrs must be numbered not in hundreds, but in thousands upon thousands. The bitter persecution to which they were subjected undoubtedly helped to create the fanaticism which characterized the Munster commonwealth, for it unhinged excitable minds, and removed sane and wise leaders who would probably have held fanaticism in check.

The Anabaptist Doctrine of the Church

The Anabaptists exposed a fundamental ambivalence in the thought of Martin Luther. On one hand Luther maintained that faith is wrought in the heart by the Spirit working with the Word. It cannot, therefore, be compelled by man. As Luther wrote in 1523, “Faith is a free work to which no one can be forced. It is a divine work in the Spirit, let alone then that outward force should compel it or create it.”5 As a corollary to this view of faith Luther argued, in his earlier period, that “heresy is a spiritual thing which cannot be cut with steel nor burned with fire nor drowned with water.”6 Luther’s view of faith ought logically to lead to the dissociation of church membership from citizenship, for since faith is the inward work of the Spirit it is impossible to connect citizenship in a state with membership of the Church of the redeemed. Luther seems, at first, to have been aware of this. In 1520 he defined the Church as “an assembly of believers including all who have truth, faith, hope and love.”7 In 1522 he made an effort to form a nucleus of heart-felt believers, who partook of communion in both kinds apart from the rest of the professed members of the Church. In 1526 he recommended that earnest Christians should meet alone in a house for prayer, reading, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper. “Non-Christians,” he said, “should be excluded with the ban.”8 While what Luther envisaged is not precisely an Anabaptist separatist congregation, because he viewed the nucleus of believers as existing within the territorial church as leaven—ecclesiola in ecclesia—it is easy to see that Luther can be regarded as, in some sense, the source of Anabaptist ideas.

However, alongside the tendency in Luther’s thought toward an explicit doctrine of the gathered church, there exists another element with which it is in tension. Faith is outward as well as inward. It may be given creedal formulation. The Church is a visible society holding to this faith. As a visible society the Church exists in correlation with the state, the school, and all other agencies of the “corpus Christianorum.” After his experience with the Zwickau prophets this view of the Church came to triumph. The liturgy of 1526 marked the complete abandonment of any tendency toward a gathered church of believers. It was not, said Luther, intended for Christians, but for non-Christians. Inconsistently, he maintained that all baptized in infancy should be accounted Christian. By March 1530 Luther was ready to give his consent to the death penalty for Anabaptists.

The ambivalence in Luther’s thought is such that he can be regarded in some sense as the father alike of Anabaptism and Lutheranism. His concept of a society of believers, if pressed, leads to the Anabaptist conventicle. His view of the Church as a visible society in correlation with the state leads to the state church of later German Lutheranism.

The Anabaptists decisively rejected Luther’s view of the Church as including all baptized in infancy. They emphatically repudiated the identification of Christian and citizen, nowhere more pointedly made than in the preface to Zwingli’s commentary on Jeremiah: “The Christian is none other than the good and faithful citizen, and the Christian city none other than a Christian Church.”9

The Anabaptist concept of the fall of the Church is fundamental for an understanding of their view of the reformation of the Church. The Anabaptists believed that there was a “golden age of the faith.” In the time of the Apostolic Church Christians held goods in common, refused to bear arms, and practiced a rigorous simplicity. They were in all things separated from the world unto God. But when the Church received the support of Constantine, an illicit union of Church and state came about. The means whereby this union was perpetuated was the rite of infant baptism. By including children en masse in the Church at baptism, the Church became flooded with hosts of nominal Christians.

The Anabaptists had no sense of the historical continuity of the Church as Luther and Calvin had. The Church was not merely hidden beneath the accretions of medieval corruption. It was lost, for it had been destroyed. As Obbe Philips put it, “We must with all understanding concede and confess that the first Church of Christ and the apostles was destroyed and ruined in early times by Anti-Christ.”10

It is worth pointing out that the idea of a fall of the Church is a recurring feature in Church history. One meets it in Marcionism, Donatism, St. Francis of Assisi, J. N. Darby, and Mormonism! The question of great practical importance is how far one takes the idea of the fall of the Church. Has the fall destroyed the Church or only disfigured it? Has it led to the Church being overlaid with rubbish or has it led to its total disappearance? According to one’s view of the fall will be one’s view of the remedy. Broadly speaking the Reformers were persuaded that the remedy lay in reformation, the Anabaptists that it lay in the restitution of the Church. While the Reformers sought to reform the territorial Church with a rediscovered gospel, the Anabaptists desired to restore a long-lost apostolic Church pattern with the gospel. Philip Schaff has aptly commented on the difference between the Reformers and the Anabaptists. “The Reformers,” he writes, “aimed to reform the old Church by the Bible; the radicals attempted to build a new Church from the Bible.”11

The Church must be restored by the putting away of all that led to her fall, and by the creation of a spiritually pure Christian fellowship. The first necessity in the work of restitution was the sundering of the union between Church and State. Separation from the world unto God, in order to be free to follow His will, was the first note sounded by the Anabaptist call for restitution. Significantly the Hutterite Chronicle’s account of the first baptisms at Zurich ends, “Therewith began the separation from the world and its evil works.”

The Anabaptists were not separatist individualists. Their aim was the restoration of apostolic Church life. They therefore sought to found churches of regenerate believers, who gave themselves to God and to each other, to walk together in covenanted fellowship. The initiatory rite in this fellowship was baptism, which was administered only to those who could testify to the work of conversion in their hearts and who were prepared to give themselves up to Christ in serious and devoted discipleship. For the Anabaptists the restitution of the Church resulted in the recovery of true baptism. They were not concerned with a mere outward ordinance, for they held that the outward rite of baptism sets forth an inner baptism unto a life of stern ethical endeavor and, most probably, of suffering and martyrdom. The Christ unto whom they were baptized was not, in Muntzer’s words, a “sweet Christ” who allowed men to profess the faith while remaining careless about sin. He was the “bitter Christ” who offered his disciples the way of the cross—suffering, rejection, and death. Undoubtedly the Anabaptist stress on the ethical import of baptism stemmed from a sense of deep disappointment that the Reformation had not resulted in an adequate transformation of daily life. Constant emphasis is laid by Anabaptist writers on the necessity of crucifying the flesh, that the life also of Christ might be manifested in the believer. Where this crucifixion “does not take place,” says Dietrich Philips, “and cannot be seen, there is neither God, nor Christ, nor Holy Spirit, nor Gospel, nor faith, nor true baptism, nor the Lord’s Supper. In short, there is no congregation of God.”12

Related to the Anabaptist concept of inner baptism is the necessity of enforcing strict standards of entry into the Church, and vigorous discipline within it. Discipline was particularly important, for the Anabaptists were striving for a pure Church. “A Church without the practice of a genuine apostolic excommunication,” wrote Menno Simons, “would be like a town without ramparts or barriers, a field without enclosure, a house without doors or walls.”13

A further mark of the restored Church was evangelistic witness. While some of the Reformers were not persuaded that the Great Commission of Matthew 28:19–20 continued in force beyond the apostolic age, the Anabaptists viewed it as applying particularly to themselves. Because they recovered the baptism of believers they recovered also the impulse to evangelize the world. The phenomenal spread of Anabaptism was undoubtedly due to the recapturing of the binding authority of the Great Commission. K. S. Latourette rightly sees the Anabaptists as the forerunners of the modern missionary movement.

The final mark of the restored Church was the abolition of hierarchical distinctions between believers. Although the Anabaptist movement contained many ex-priests, it was essentially a lay movement. Questions of ministerial order were considered unimportant in the light of the fact that each believer was called to minister to the fellowship with the gifts that he had. The restored Church was a people, not a people plus a priest. A layman, if invited by the Church, could preach the Word, baptize, and administer the Lord’s Supper.

Evangelicals and the Church Today

I wish to conclude this paper by making a series of observations which seem to me to arise from the consideration of the Anabaptist concept of the Church.

First, it is possible within evangelicalism, historic and contemporary, to find those who lean to the side of the reformation, and those who lean to the side of the restitution of the Church. The former emphasize the continuity of the Church. They argue that reformation will strip away the unbiblical accretions of generations. For them the Church is not lost, but hidden. Evangelicals of this type are, therefore, reluctant to separate from the ecclesiastical communion to which they belong because they believe that the situation is never so hopeless that, by reformation according to the Word of God, it cannot be changed for the better. Howell Harris gave classic expression to this kind of outlook when, with reference to the ecclesiastical situation in the Wales of his day, he wrote that he had been set free from scruples about remaining in the Established Church “by having a deep Spirit of mourning and wrestling poured upon me for this dark benighted Church, and further to believe that He would not yet utterly forsake us, but would rebuild this ruined part of His Church.”14

The other type of evangelical, on the other hand, is prepared to contemplate separation because he believes that it is possible to begin again, and form a Church which is both doctrinally and spiritually pure. He tends to regard the Church as having ceased to exist when doctrinal error and spiritual declension come to dominate the life of an ecclesiastical communion. His type of outlook is exemplified in Philpot’s The Seceders.15 Of course sometimes, as in the United States particularly, separation can become for some evangelicals a sort of new gospel which they must forever be preaching.

Yet it must be recognized that by no means all restitutionist evangelicals (to coin a phrase) are separatist in spirit. But many, while reluctant to attempt to form a new evangelical Church, are persuaded that the point may be reached when a Church ceases to be a Church any longer, and that therefore the only course open to any evangelical within such a body is to separate and to attempt the restitution of the Church. The practical question is, “When does a Church cease to be a Church?”

Much of the present confusion among evangelicals in the face of the contemporary ecclesiastical situation stems from the fact that some are basically reformers and others are basically restitutionists. As a consequence it is impossible to get agreement as to what ought to be done now.

Second, the divergence among evangelicals as to whether or not to participate in the Ecumenical Movement seems also to have a very real connection with our subject. In a recently published symposium entitled “Evangelicals and Unity,” the editor, J. D. Douglas, points out that none of the contributors is drawn from a communion which subscribes to the principle of the gathered church.l6 I find such an admission interesting because it seems to me to provide an explanation as to why certain prominent evangelicals feel able to participate in the World Council of Churches. If they do not subscribe to the principle of the gathered church then an amalgam of territorial churches does not present nearly the same difficulty, in principle, as it does for the evangelical who believes in the doctrine of the gathered church. For the latter it is at least a theoretical possibility that a united Church in England would not be a Church at all, that is a Church of visible saints.

Third, my subject seems particularly relevant to the present situation as many evangelicals see it. A growing number of evangelicals want to set about forming a new, united evangelical Church. In other words, they want to go the way of restitution. Before they do so they need to ask themselves some searching questions. Does the concept of the fall and restitution of the Church rest upon biblical foundations? Is the restitution of the Church a practical possibility, or are hopes being built upon an unbiblical perfectionism?

Other evangelicals, like the Magisterial Reformers, urge caution. They are against a root and branch attack upon contemporary ecclesiastical problems. Some have a marked enthusiasm for the established Church, because they feel that there is biblical warrant for a recognition by the state of the Kingship of Christ. Such naturally are not enamored of life in a separatist Church.

What is God’s will in this hour, which is in so many ways similar to that which saw the birth of Anabaptism? It should surely pain us that evangelicals who believe the same gospel and preach the same inspired Word seem to be teaching paths which lead, I fear, not toward but away from each other. May God give us wisdom to know and grace to do His will in these perplexing days.

3

MARTIN LUTHER

J. I. Packer

Luther was the Father of the Reformation in the same sense in which George Stephenson was the Father of Railways—that is, he pioneered the whole subsequent development. Without Luther, nationalist revolts against the Papacy and Empire would still have taken place; absolutism and capitalism would still have reshaped community life; the principle that the civil power determines the form of religion in its own territory (cuius regio, eius religio, the basic principle of the Religious Peace of Augsburg, 1555) would still have been established in Western Europe; the Renaissance would still have run its course, secularizing culture and challenging all forms of authoritarianism; but the gospel would not have been recovered, nor would Christian faith and life have been renewed, nor would there have been any evangelical leaven to work in the upsurging life of the new European national states. There would have been no Bucer, Tyndale, Cranmer, or Calvin, for all these were disciples of Luther. Apart from Luther, the historical Reformation is as unintelligible as Hamlet would be without the Prince.

Luther put forward the idea that whenever God means to move decisively in His Church, He raises up a wonder-man (Wundermann), a hero (vir heroicus), a great individual leader, to be His instrument. Certainly this principle was exemplified in Luther himself. By 1521 he had caught the imagination of all Europe. He was idolized as a crusader of superhuman stature, the champion of Germany, of freedom, and of truth. A Holbein cartoon of 1522 pictures him as “the German Hercules.” In the same year, Spalatin compared him with Elijah, and the description stuck: a Saxon medallion calls him “Elijah of the last time” (Elias ultimi saeculi), and Melanchthon broke the news of his passing to the Wittenberg students by adapting 2 Kings 2:12, “Alas, gone is the horseman and the chariots of Israel.” What manner of man was this, we ask, to have called forth such estimates of himself?

The first thing to say is that he was a remarkable man by nature. Though a commoner (his father ran a copper mine), with a racy, homely style of speech and what we now call the common touch, he was no boorish countryman, as is sometimes supposed. He was in fact a gifted don, a brilliant scholar, a tremendous worker, and a magnetic teacher. In 1505, having crammed a six-year course into four years, he headed the list in the M.A. examination at Erfurt. In 1512, at the age of twenty-nine, he became a Doctor of Theology and professor of biblical studies at Wittenberg. He was a star lecturer from his first term to his death. A man of great personal force—his eyes, they said, looked right through you—and also of great charm and vivacity, he would have won affection and made his mark as a leader in any context. Also, he was a man temperamentally made for battle, at his strongest in debate and polemics, as his reforming career showed. Once he had grasped the truth of sovereign grace that was locked up in the biblical phrase “the righteousness of God”—an event probably belonging to 1513, when he was thirty and preparing his first lectures on the Psalms—he became an evangelical volcano. In the University he challenged “Aristotle” (semi-Pelagian legalistic scholasticism) in the name of “Augustine” (biblically-controlled reasoning about sin, grace, and faith in Christ). On a wider stage, he challenged the theory of Indulgences in 1517, with his Ninety-five Theses, and in 1519, at the Leipzig Disputation with John Eck, he allowed his opponent to bring out the fact that he was really challenging the whole basis of Papal jurisdiction. In 1520 he defied the Pope by publicly burning the Bull which excommunicated him, and adding the Canon Law to the bonfire; a gesture which he followed up by becoming a pamphleteer and issuing his three great Reformation manifestos—The Babylonish Captivity of the Church, An Appeal to the Christian Nobility, and The Liberty of a Christian Man. In 1521, having stood firm before the Emperor at Worms, he was put under the Imperial ban. But Frederick the Wise and, later, other princes kept him safe, and he continued till his death in 1546 teaching at Wittenberg, and writing for the furtherance of reformation in the German kingdoms. It has been estimated that for many years he produced on an average a tract a fortnight. His complete works fill ninety-four volumes of about 750 pages each in the standard Weimar edition. He wrote almost twice as much as Calvin!

Naturally, so titanic a figure has been variously estimated. Four centuries of Germans have seen him primarily as a patriot. Thomas Carlyle saw him as the archetypal “free man,” defying tradition and convention to follow his inner vision—a proto-liberal, in fact! But Luther saw himself simply as a theologian and a pastor, a preacher and teacher of the Word of God. He never thought of himself even as a reformer; the Reformation, he insisted, was not his work, but the work of God through His Word in the first instance and then, under God, of the German princes obeying God’s word. His own part had merely been to let the Word loose. Thus, his approach to reformation appears as wholly theological and theocentric. Reformation in its essence was to him not a human achievement, any more than salvation was, but God’s own work of restoring His Church from a state of ruin to one of life and health through the power of His Word.

The phrase “the Word of God,” or “the Word” simply, is a key phrase in Luther’s thought. It meant to him, not just the Scriptures formally regarded as inspired (though of course he assumed their inspiration, as all churchmen did in his day), but something wider—namely, the message and content of the Scriptures, that is, the gospel concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, which is the sum and substance of what God has to say to man. Often, indeed, Luther applies the phrase “the Word of God” to Christ Himself, and when he uses it of biblical teaching the thought of the living Word whom the written Word sets forth is never far from his mind. Only by exploring Luther’s understanding of “the Word of God” can we fully grasp his approach to reformation; to this task, therefore, we now turn.

The Theology of Luther

The theology which Luther reached through study, prayer, and inner conflict between 1512 and 1517, and which from then on he taught virtually without change, had three overall characteristics. It was exegetical, being propounded by the method of letting individual texts talk; it was evangelical, being a sustained assertion of the gospel of God’s grace to sinners; and it was polemical, firing in turn at Roman superstition, radical Protestant “enthusiasm,” and the folly and futility of the ways of this proud and sinful world. It represented essentially a rediscovery of the living God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The title of P. S. Watson’s introduction to Luther’s thought, Let God Be God! 1 well focuses its ruling motivation. Luther asserts God’s active sovereignty in providence and grace with tremendous vigor. All created things, he says, are God’s “masks” (larvae Dei)—that is, behind all that happens with such seeming haphazardness in this world of sight and sense is the hidden face, the guiding hand, the ruling mind of its Maker. And in The Bondage of the Will,2 Luther’s broadside against Erasmus, he speaks of the truth of man’s absolute enslavement by nature to sin and Satan, and his consequent absolute dependence on sovereign divine grace for salvation as the “hinge” on which the whole theological conflict of the Reformation really turned.

Luther’s constant aim was to inculcate the biblical knowledge of God, and to this end he constantly rang the changes on the following five staple themes: (1) the authority of the biblical Word of God, (2) the greatness of sin, (3) the graciousness of Christ, (4) the vitality of faith, and (5) the spiritual nature of the Church.

Luther affirmed the authority of the biblical Word of God against the practice of appealing to unwritten traditions, Papal pronouncements, canon law, and the trivial sophistries of allegorical exegesis—all of which appeals, so he maintained, have the effect of gagging the Scriptures, so that their true voice cannot be heard. His account of the Scriptures was essentially as follows. The Bible is a clear, straightforward book, for “the Holy Ghost is the plainest writer and speaker in heaven and earth.” It should therefore be understood in its “literal, ordinary, natural sense,” letting one text and phrase throw light on another. (It was by this means, as it seems, that Luther’s evangelical enlightenment took place: the words “deliver me in thy righteousness” in Psalm 31:1 and 71:2 suggested to him that “the righteousness of God” in Romans 1:17 also signified an outgoing, not of vindicatory justice, but of saving mercy.) Thus “literally” understood, Scripture proved to contain a double communication from God: a disclosure of law, to induce self-knowledge and self-despair, and a proclamation of promises, and of Christ as the sum and substance of these promises, to be the object of faith and hope. From this standpoint, the Scriptures, and those of the New Testament in particular, appear as “the swaddling-clothes in which Christ is wrapped.” Romans is the key to the Bible, “the true masterpiece of the New Testament, the purest gospel of all. . . . We find in this epistle in the most abundant fashion that which a Christian ought to know, viz. what are Law, Gospel, Sin, Punishment, Grace, Faith, Righteousness, Christ, God, Good Works, Love, Hope, the Cross. . . . It seems as if Paul wanted briefly to summarize in this epistle the whole of Christian evangelical teaching, and to provide an introduction to the whole Old Testament. . . .” This evangelical teaching is the true rule of Christian faith: we must ask that the Holy Spirit will enable us to grasp it by teaching us its application to ourselves, and that we may be enabled to cleave to it amid the distractions and errors whereby Satan seeks to wean us from it.

Luther affirmed the greatness of sin against current scholastic teaching about natural ability and the perfection (i.e., sinlessness) of a Christian’s good deeds. It was on this teaching that the contemporary doctrine of merit, a blatant assertion of salvation by works and effort, was based. Luther in effect addressed its expositors in the accents of Anselm: “You have not yet considered the weightiness of sin (quanti ponderis sit peccatum).” Claiming Augustine as his forerunner, Luther stressed the total inability of the natural man, and the guilt of the Christian, even at his best, because all his service of God is stained by sin. Like Augustine, Luther made much of Romans 7:14–25 as proving the latter point. Romans, the key book of the Bible, as we saw, was written, so Luther strikingly tells us, “to pull down, and pluck up, and destroy, all the wisdom and righteousness of the flesh, however great it may be . . . and to implant, establish, and magnify sin . . .”; for it is not till this job is done, and self-righteousness finally abolished, that we can grasp the dimensions of the divine mercy. We cannot know the greatness of grace, says Luther, till we have learned the greatness of sin.

Against the background of the popular picture of Jesus as a stern and dreadful judge, whom sinful men dare not approach directly at all, Luther stressed the point that the incarnation, lowly manhood, and patient suffering of the Son of God all prove the graciousness of Christ, whose attitude toward us is really one of overflowing love. The thought of Jesus’ voluntary identification of Himself with us in our helplessness and misery and, on the cross, in the deepest spiritual darkness and distress (anfechtung), and of His continuing sympathy with others who are tempted, was basic to Luther’s teaching on the life of faith. Also, Luther challenged all forms of the doctrine of salvation by works, whether by personal merit or by the purchase of indulgences or by the offering of the Mass as a propitiatory sacrifice, by appealing to the sufficiency of Christ’s atoning death as a ground of full salvation for “everyone that believeth.” Luther was the first theologian to give prominence to the thought that the satisfaction to God for sin which, as Anselm had established, Christ rendered on our behalf on the cross, was penal and substitutionary in its nature. Anselm had thought of satisfaction as an alternative to the inflicting of the due penalty, a compensatory act of homage which “made up” for the damage God had suffered through our sins. “Damages,” indeed, is the precise modern equivalent for Anselm’s conception of the atonement. But Luther saw that in Scripture satisfaction to God means satisfaction of the penal claims of divine law—that is, punishment vicariously borne. The following extract from Luther’s comment on Galatians 3:13 shows how vividly he set forth this thought:

The doctrine of the gospel . . . speaketh nothing of our works, or of the works of the law, but of the inestimable mercy and love of God towards most wretched and miserable sinners; to wit, that our most merciful Father . . . sent his only Son into the world, and laid upon him all the sins of all men, saying, Be thou Peter, that denier; Paul, that persecutor, blasphemer, and cruel oppressor; that sinner which did eat the apple in Paradise; that thief hanged upon the cross—briefly, be thou the person which hath committed the sins of all men; see therefore that thou pay and satisfy for them. Now cometh the law, and saith: I find him a sinner, one that hath taken upon him the sins of all men, and I see no sins but in him: therefore let him die upon the cross; and so it setteth upon him, and killeth him. By this means the whole world is purged . . . God would see nothing else in the whole world, if it did believe, but a mere cleansing and righteousness.

This led Luther to display atonement and justification as the two complementary stages of St. Paul’s “great exchange” as set forth in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “Learn to know Christ and him crucified; learn to sing unto him, and say, Lord Jesus, thou art my righteousness, I am thy sin. Thou hast taken upon thee what was mine, and hast set upon me what was thine. Thou hast become what thou wast not, that I might become what I was not.” Luther’s answer, therefore, to ideas of salvation by works and priestly meditation was to set forth the promise of full acceptance—the imputing of righteousness and the non-imputing of sin, together with the bestowal of sonship to God and liberty from the law—for all who rest their faith directly upon Jesus Christ and His atoning blood. This was the “theology of the cross,” the saving knowledge of God received through the gospel, which Luther opposed to the futile “theology of glory,” the conventional attempts of scholastic theologians to know God by abstract speculative logic. To know God, said Luther, is to know the grace of Christ, and this knowledge comes only through humbly contemplating Calvary.

Luther challenged the current assumption that faith is essentially credence (fides), and as such a meritorious work, by insisting that faith is essentially trust (fiducia), and that, so far from being meritorious, it is trust in Christ on the basis of a clear recognition that one has no merit at all, but that all merit, first to last, is found in Him alone. Faith is thus an empty hand stretched out to receive Christ, grasping Him and holding Him fast. “Faith taketh hold of Christ, and hath him present, and holdeth him enclosed, as the ring doth the precious stone.” Faith is God’s gift, given as part of His gracious work of “calling” (effectual calling, as later generations would say). Faith, thus supernaturally given, is a vital principle, resilient and active, triumphant in conflict and endlessly energetic:

When faith is of the kind that God awakens and creates in the heart, then a man trusts in Christ. He is then so securely founded on Christ, that he can hurl defiance at sin, death, hell, the devil, and all God’s enemies. He fears no ill, however hard and cruel it may prove to be. . . .

Right faith is a thing wrought by the Holy Ghost in us, which changeth us, turneth us into a new nature. . . . Faith is a lively thing, mighty in working, valiant and strong; so that it is impossible that he who is endued therewith should not work always good works without ceasing . . . for such is his nature. . . .

Luther repudiated the conventional equation of the Church with the Roman system. Indeed, before his excommunication in 1520, he had accepted the idea, which had appeared before among medieval radicals, that the Papacy was Antichrist, and he constantly insisted that according to the New Testament the Church was not to be thought of in the first instance as a system or organization at all. Luther held that the Church is essentially, as the Creed says, a fellowship of saints (communio sanctorum), “the lambs who hear the shepherd’s voice,” as he put it in the Schmalkald Articles. Though the Church has a visible aspect, i.e. its corporate life of worship and service, it is essentially invisible, for the relationship of faith in Christ is not the sort of fact that men can see. Only the Lord knows them that are His. One can belong to a congregation (Gemeine) and yet be outside the Church as God knows it; equally, one can be expelled from organized congregations (as Luther was when the Pope excommunicated him) and still belong to the Church. The visible life by which the presence of the Church is recognized has two leading features: the ministry of the Word and Sacraments, and the exercise of the priesthood of all believers, which to Luther meant mutual service at all levels on the basis of recognized mutual responsibility. It is sometimes thought that Luther made nothing of discipline as a mark of the Church, but this is not so. In two works published in 1539 and 1540 respectively he included discipline among seven marks of the Church visible: preaching; Baptism; the Lord’s Supper; “the keys of Christian discipline and forgiveness”; an ordained ministry; public worship; and “suffering, the possession of the holy Cross.”

We have now surveyed the five themes which made up the central content of “the Word” as Luther understood it. It was in this field that all Luther’s main concerns lay. It was here, rather than in his somewhat unreflective and stubborn speculations about, for instance, baptismal regeneration through infant faith (against the Anabaptists), or the physical reception of Christ in non-transubstantiated bread and wine at the Lord’s Supper (against Rome and Zwingli), that he made his abiding contribution to theology. Here, then, we have “the Word” which under God, so Luther held, must reform the Church.

The Reformation in Germany

Luther’s connection with the ecclesiastical reorganization of Germany was purely an advisory one: he was regularly the person whom the princes consulted first when re-ordering religion in their kingdoms. Luther’s own bent was pastoral and academic rather than administrative, and in any case his advice was not always taken, so that it is no wonder that the Lutheran reformation, by contrast with, say, Calvin’s work at Geneva, appears as a series of rather ramshackle improvisations.

Luther’s advice was concerned with, on the one hand, removing hindrances to congregations becoming true fellowships of saints (such hindrances as priestcraft, superstition, the Mass, and an anti-evangelical hierarchy), and, on the other hand, instituting the appropriate means to godliness and spiritual growth (such things as regular preaching and teaching, scriptural administration of the sacraments, and evangelical forms of worship, together with the provision of sound pastors). It is clear that it never occurred to him to question the centuries-old pattern of local churches in each kingdom forming an administrative unit (the Landeskirche), nor the propriety of appealing to the princes to take the work of reform into their own hands when Rome declined to do it from the center. (This was the burden of Luther’s Appeal to the German Nobility: he based his appeal first on the princes’ position as supreme magistrates and second on the principle of the priesthood of all believers, which obliges rulers to serve the interests of their fellow-Christians in every way they can.) There was, however, one question of principle to which Luther gave careful thought: that is, the propriety of retaining ceremonies and forms (vestments, images, etc.) which Scripture did not prescribe, but which had become traditional in use during the previous centuries. In his anti-iconoclastic sermons in Wittenberg in 1522, and often afterwards, Luther argued that the Church was at liberty to retain these “things indifferent” (adiaphora), and should be chary of abolishing them, lest weak consciences be injured. His thesis here was that the New Testament, unlike the Old Testament, does not dictate a church order, but leaves churches free to determine the outward circumstances of their worship and corporate life in whatever way seems most convenient and edifying. Unlike the Anglican reformers, however, who proceeded on the same principle, Luther held no brief for an imposed uniformity of liturgy or ceremonies. “I am, I confess,” he wrote in 1545, “disinclined to all ceremonies, even necessary ones, and I am the enemy of those which are not necessary. . . . Ceremonies so easily grow into laws, and laws, once established, speedily become snares of the conscience. Ultimately pure doctrine is obscured and overthrown, and people strive more for ceremonies than for mortification of the flesh. . . .” Some of the reforming princes imposed more uniformity in their kingdoms than Luther could approve of.

The German church reforms began after the Diet of Speier in 1526, at which the princes resolved that until a general council or national assembly was called to deal with religious abuses, each of them would “so live, govern, and behave, as he hopes and trusts to answer for it to God and the emperor.” This was understood to mean that each prince who desired reformation in his territory was free to get on with the job. Saxony led the way, followed by Brandenburg, Hesse, and other lesser kingdoms. The effect of these reforms was to produce a series of state churches managed by the princes, in the ordering of which neither the clergy nor laity had any effective voice. Luther recoiled from the idea of congregational autonomy, which had at first attracted him after the Peasants’ Revolt of 1525, and when Philip of Hesse later proposed to give the people of Hesse some rights in ordering their churches Luther advised against it. In the light of this, Luther’s sharp distinction between the spheres of civil and ecclesiastical authority, and his insistence that, just as church rulers must not, like the Popes, grasp after civil power (the power of the sword), so civil governors must not intrude into the exercise of church power (the power of the Word), comes to look somewhat hollow.

The procedure in Saxony, worked out over a period of fifteen years, may be summarized as follows. (a) “Visitors”—several sets of them, in the event—reported on conditions to the Elector. (b) Recusant bishops were replaced, first by individual visitors on a temporary basis, then by “superintendents” (“bishops”), who were administrators directly responsible to the Elector. (Luther later ordained at least one prince, George of Anhalt, to be his own superintendent-bishop.) (c) Endowments were diverted to the Elector, to be disbursed by him directly. (d) One of Luther’s two revisions of the Mass replaced the Roman rite. (e) Ordination, administered always after 1535 by members of the Wittenberg theology faculty, was by use of non-priestly forms. (f) In 1542, a consistory court was set up at Wittenberg, staffed by two law dons and two theology dons from the University, all nominated by the Elector. Similar patterns were followed in other states.

Shortage of competent clergy was a universal problem. German rural ministers were alarmingly ignorant—some did not know the Lord’s Prayer or the Commandments—and in many cases immoral as well. In one area the clergy brewed beer all week and spent sermon-time on Sunday teaching their congregations how to go and do likewise! To meet this situation, Luther wrote two catechisms and several books of Postils (expository sermonettes for public reading by clergy who could not write sermons of their own). “Emergency preachers” (untrained laymen of some little competence) were ordained for a few years, but it was recognized that the only long-term solution was to train a new ministry from scratch, which Luther and his colleagues at Wittenberg set themselves to do.

Luther was no statesman, and the ecclesiastical reorganizations that took place under his general guidance were hardly models of what reformation should be. The principle of the Church governing itself under Christ had to wait for Calvin before it was given substance. Yet there are lessons of great value that Luther can teach us. Among them are the following:

1. The necessity of reformation when the Church’s outward form and life contradicts the gospel, whether doctrinally or practically.

2. The nature of reformation as spiritual renewal, wrought from within by the Word of God.

3. The pastoral purpose that must govern church reorganization. Good church order is not an end in itself, but must be thought of as a means to the good of souls by inducing fellowship, edification, and holiness.

4. The primacy of preaching and teaching the Word as the means to reformation. All Luther’s emphasis was laid on teaching, by catechisms, sermons, books, and schools. This emphasis on Christian instruction was itself epoch-making.

5. Piecemeal improvement is better than none, and it is better to carry out innovations in a slow and piecemeal fashion than to outstrip weak consciences and make them stumble.

6. Patience is needed by those who seek reformation; having set ourselves to teach the Word, we must wait for it to do its own God-appointed work. Only God can build up Zion, and He is not always in such a hurry as we are.

4

THOMAS CRANMER

G. S. R. Cox

One frequent charge made against Cranmer, and therefore against the English Reformation, is that of expediency. This was not a biblical but a political reformation, and therefore one which stopped far short of the glories of Geneva. This, then, is the question to which we must address ourselves. Was Cranmer’s work and behavior (and therefore the English Reformation) a matter of expediency, or can it be explained in terms of Cranmer’s principles? Then, if it can be so explained, how far were those principles biblical, and how far do they fall short of what we today consider to be the full biblical principles?

Before considering this, however, we must refer to some other questions which, while outside the scope of this paper, deserve careful thought as having at least an indirect bearing on our conclusions:

1. The role of Parliament in this period. How much was Henry’s reformation the desire of the representatives of the nation? How far was Parliament representative of “the nation”? Is it true to say that the King himself was very much a representative—somewhat larger than life perhaps—of what Englishmen felt?

2. The extent and nature of the desire for reformation. What parts were merely anti-clericalism, and what Lollard and Lutheran?

3. The political and geographical differences between England and other areas of the Reformation. England was, first, a united and relatively pacified state, as a result of Henry VII’s policy after the Wars of the Roses, whereas hardly any other area of Reform was so peaceably settled. Again, England had no ready-made warring factions—though it was the fear of these which contributed to Henry VIII’s frequent matrimonial essays—such as were ready to hand in France and Scotland and in that magnificent contradiction in terms, the Holy Roman Empire. Again, Henry was perhaps the most powerful, autocratic, even despotic, individual monarch in Europe in a day when shortness of lines of communication made for efficiency and power. Again, there was no outstanding English Reformer to balance the King. One might almost think that there was only room for one leader in each area, let him be ruler or reformer, but that there could not be two. Here we had no Luther or Calvin, Zwingli or Knox, but instead there was always the very theologically minded Henry VIII. In England a reformation could almost only be effected by the State, and through the instrumentality of an archbishop who was not merely Primate of the Church, but also constitutionally the first adviser to the Crown, a position which both conferred powers and imposed restraints. For Luther and other Reformers, truth could be the only consideration. Cranmer had also to consider how truth could be translated into action and imposed on a doubting people.

4. The nature of hypocrisy in the case of those who held office in the sixteenth-century State. Cranmer was not alone in believing that, compared to the service of God and the State—usually linked in so few words and in the same breath—the claims of individual conscience were of no account. Thus a minister of state remained in office until relieved of it by the King himself. Like today’s civil servant he had to carry out official policy with no more choice than a man has today in the payment of his rates. Hence we find the same men in office under Henry VIII and Edward VI, under Mary and Elizabeth. Even so upright a man as Sir Thomas More remained Lord Chancellor while Henry was seeking his annulment from Catherine of Aragon—a measure which More abhorred. (It should be said in Henry’s favor that he never forced his ministers to carry out work they disliked. More was not commanded to deal with the annulment; Gardiner did that. Other cases could be cited.) This principle was likewise applied to the Church when the King became its Supreme Head. Bishops, whether Catholic or Protestant, gave effect to legislation whatever its character. Heath, afterwards Mary’s Chancellor, Tunstall, Day, Thirlby, and other Catholics administered the First Act of Uniformity, and their action involved at least as great a sacrifice of conscience as Cranmer was required to make under Henry VIII, and he held far higher views than they did of the duty of subjects to their king.

Background of the English Reformation

We begin the matter proper with a survey of the background and course of the English Reformation.

“If Henry VIII had not renounced the papal claims there is no doubt that the papal power might have lasted a generation or even two generations longer; but there can be no conceivable doubt that the Reformation and the overthrow of the papal power would have come in England as in Germany. Thunderbolts do not come from a clear sky.” Thus wrote one eminent historian. Let us therefore examine the clouds from which this “thunderbolt” came, with a brief glance at the background at the beginning of Henry’s reign, and the main factors underlying Henry’s reformation.

As backcloth to a more detailed consideration of the causes of the Reformation in England, we can say that the country’s religion was punctilious, pietistic—and superficial. Socially and economically we have the rise of an increasingly powerful middle-class, which found its progress hampered by the Church, and which could be divided into three groups: the old adherents of the medieval point of view; those adherents of the New Learning who had no desire to break with Rome, but desired reform from within; and the “Protestant party.” One fact, which is true of the whole country and which needs to be emphasized, is that the people were sick of war and anarchy. They had had their fill of “freedom,” and their main desire now was for strong and definite government. That Henry VIII was the man for such a task is undeniable, as is also the fact that he seems to have voiced time and again claims which were merely the articulation of the wishes of his people. While a superficial division of “the clouds” would be possible into political, social, and religious, we shall see that the latter is the thread that runs right through the matter, as indeed the Church did pervade life in the Middle Ages.

1. Political—basically anti-papal. This was partly historical, having its roots into the continuing partial freedom of the English Church, dating from William I; partly national, since Renaissance nationalism was reacting against the supra-nationalistic claims of the Papacy; and partly moral, with a revulsion against the worldliness and abuses of the Papal Curia.

2. Social and Economic—basically anti-clerical, again partly historical against such long-standing abuses as “Benefit of Clergy” and the arrogant clerical treatment of the laity (e.g. Hunne’s case 1514); partly economic since the Church as a permanent and undying, but also conservative and reactionary landlord blocked the path to improvements and possession coveted by the rising middle class; and partly moral, with a widespread contempt of clerical standards of living.

3. The more strictly Religious subdivides into a consideration of the Lollards, rooted in the past, inchoate perhaps as to organization or strict doctrinal definitions, but without doubt a flourishing movement, and the Lutherans, at first largely intellectual in Cambridge in the 1520s, and spreading in the Southeast of England as a result of trade with Northern Europe.

Combined with all these was, of course, the character of the king, deserving a separate study, since he is far more complex and interesting than the Papist ogre or sensual Bluebeard accepted by so many. To him then we must turn as we follow the course of the English Reformation.

Course of the English Reformation

The immediate occasion of the English Reformation which grew out of the breach with Rome was of course “the King’s matter”—put bluntly, that Henry had no legitimate male heir, and for good or ill he did not intend to leave England to a renewed outburst of the Wars of the Roses. He had been married for some years to the widow of his brother, despite the Levitical prohibition, and she had borne him, apart from the Princess Mary, a succession of still-born or swiftly dying children. In a superstitious age in which some had queried even the Papal right to dispense from such a close relationship, it was natural for Henry to feel concerned and to question his conscience, the more so when his conscience sat so close to his heart, and Anne Boleyn had captured his heart. Could not the Pope dispense his predecessor’s dispensation? This sort of thing was being done all the time, for of course there was no such thing as divorce, and indeed had been done twice in Henry’s family circle within the last thirty years. Unfortunately the Pope, usually so helpful—for a consideration—could not on this occasion oblige, for his Italian power politics had put him at the mercy of the Emperor Charles V, and Charles was the nephew of Catherine. (The Pope did suggest in all seriousness that Henry should merely take an additional second wife, as had done a previous King of Spain.)

By 1529 Cardinal Wolsey had failed to settle the King’s matter and was dismissed and arrested. He mercifully died on the way to his trial. Recourse was had to the advice of the Universities, and Henry also took measures to seize control of the English Church. The first Reformation Parliament (1529–1536) began to attack ecclesiastical abuses. Convocation under Archbishop Warham paid a crushing fine for breach of the old Praemunire Statute, and declared Henry “Supreme Head of the Church, so far as the law of Christ allows.” (The qualification soon vanished.) In 1531, and following fruitless appeals to Rome concerning the annulment, the autumn of 1532 brought matters to a head. Anne Boleyn was made Marquess of Pembroke, and by the end of the year was with child. Henry’s heir must be legitimate; therefore he must be free to marry. Warham’s death, no doubt also influencing Anne’s timing, made way for Cranmer whose unwilling appointment was ratified exceptionally swiftly by the Pope. The new archbishop pronounced Henry’s annulment with Catherine and his marriage with Anne valid. (All three were excommunicated for their pains.) The various Acts cutting off Appeals and money to Rome followed, together with Succession, Heresy, Treason, and Supremacy Acts, and an “Abjuration on Papal Supremacy by the Clergy.”

This separation of the English Church from Rome meant that instead of a dual control there would now be only one, the King. (He did have the grace to emphasize, as did the Articles afterwards, that he claimed the “potestas jurisdictionis” and never the “potestas ordinis,” but no one noticed. They still don’t.) The doctrinal situation remained otherwise the same until the publication in 1536 of the King’s Ten Articles, after the failure of his bishops to come to any agreement. Their aim was to secure unity and concord, and Foxe the Martyrologist describes them very accurately as meant for “weaklings newly weaned from their mother’s milk of Rome!” Five deal with doctrines—the Bible, Creeds, and first four councils, as the standard of orthodoxy: the necessity of baptism and penance; the Real Presence in the Eucharist; faith as well as charity necessary for salvation; etc. While images were to be retained and saints invoked, their value was carefully qualified, as was the teaching on Purgatory and praying for the dead. Professor Lindsay notes the similarity of teaching with Luther’s “Babylonish Captivity.” Interpreted as they must be by the Injunctions of the same year and of 1538, these Articles merit Foxe’s comment, not least for the command to provide “one whole Bible of the largest volume in English” to be set up in church, a regular quarterly sermon on the Gospel, and the condemnation of superstition and idolatry. The Bishop’s Book modified the reforming tendency somewhat, but mercifully did not affect the position of the Bible, the Great Bible, then Cranmer’s as it had been Matthew’s and Roger’s. Cromwell, incidentally, seems to have been glad to have this Bible printed for he had some financial interests in the printing. The years 1533–39 saw a distinct advance in the reforming direction, including the Dissolution of the Monasteries, which by splitting up the monastic lands among the rising gentry effectively rooted the Reformation in the pockets, and thus in the hearts of many in England. Then followed retrogressive steps with finally a glimmer of hope toward the end of Henry’s reign.

The Pilgrimage of Grace of 1539 and the associated risings in Lincolnshire suggested to Henry that the Reformation was being pressed a little too hastily for the majority of the English laity, and the resulting six questions put to Parliament resulted in the Act of Six Articles of the same year, a ferocious statute commonly called the Whip with Six Strings. To deny Transubstantiation or deprave the Sacraments was burnable heresy, while various other religious offences became felonies punishable by death. At the outset more severe in theory than in enforcement, it became fiercest in the latter years of Henry’s reign.

Cromwell had meanwhile tried to ally his master with the Lutheran princes, but the difference between the advertisement and the reality in the charms of his new bride Anne of Cleves was too much for Henry—and for Cromwell, who followed Wolsey into disgrace but into a crueler death. Two days later Henry gave a brutal exposition of his views—Barnes, Garrett, and Jerome were burnt as Lutherans on one side of Smithfield while three Romans were tortured and beheaded for denying the king’s spiritual supremacy on the other side. The reign can be said to close theologically with the King’s Book of 1543, restating among other things Transubstantiation, the celibacy of the clergy and invocation of the saints. In spite of the growing movement toward an evangelical reformation it must be said that this work fairly accurately represented the outlook of most Englishmen in that year.

With the accession of the godly young Josiah, Edward VI (1547) and the protectorships of Somerset and then Warwick, the tempo of reform accelerated too fast for any but the financial gainers. There was a royal visitation of the churches, together with the repeal of the Six Articles and many other heresy and treason laws. Convocation asked for communion in both kinds, marriage of the clergy, and the removal of superstitions, and the first Prayer Book was passed. This end of the first stage of the Reformation under Edward was marked by the failure of Somerset, himself a moderate reformer with too much sympathy for the underdog, and too much gentleness to survive the onslaughts of the unscrupulous Warwick-Northumberland who took over the Protectorship and hurried on the Reformation to his own great personal profit—financially. The great number of continental refugees seeking safety in England helped on the reformer’s task, although then as now one could never please everyone. Cranmer’s Forty-two Articles were the last significant theological production of the reign of a physically weak young man with whose death in 1553 the apparent collapse of the Reformation showed both the rapidity and also the shakiness of the building.

Of Mary’s reign we need say nothing further than that she besought Parliament to return England to the Roman obedience which, at their third re-election they did; to re-enact the heresy laws; and to welcome Philip of Spain as her husband. A pitiful and pathological specimen, she caused within three and a half years the death by burning of nearly three hundred reformers of all ranks and ages, and both sexes, not to count the many who perished in prison from hunger or torture; and thus earned for herself and her faith the undying aversion of the English people.

The Elizabethan Settlement included the restoration of the modified Second Prayer Book, thirty-nine of the forty-two Articles, and the Queen’s very definite supremacy. To go further into her reign would lead us straight into that Puritan controversy which we started to consider in this conference two years ago.

Leader of the English Reformation

Born into the lower squirearchy at Aslacton or Aslockton in Nottinghamshire in mid-1489, Cranmer later commented on his very hard and unpleasant schooling that it had “permanently damaged both the good memory and the natural audacity with which he had been endowed as a child.” While we can allow that some of this may merely have been the standard humanist criticism of fifteenth-century education (see Erasmus or Elyot) and we can marvel at what his memory would have been if it had remained unharmed, yet if true this charge would go some way toward explaining Cranmer’s respect for authority and his occasional subserviency. He entered Cambridge at the age of fourteen, took the normal degrees and in time became Fellow and Reader in Divinity of Jesus College, and University Preacher, having wisely declined a post at Wolsey’s new Cardinal College in the older university.

However it was that in 1529 he came into the service of a king exasperated by the deceits and procrastinations of the Papacy, he immediately proved of value to his master, and after writing convincingly on Henry’s behalf and collecting opinions from continental universities, he was recalled from his Ambassadorship at the Imperial Court to become in 1532 the new Archbishop of Canterbury. (Henry with characteristic Tudor discernment of men had laid hands on one who was to be the truest, and the most honest, and the sincerest servant that he ever had—and his affection and regard for Cranmer suggest that he knew this himself.) The necessary annulment was at once carried out, although Cranmer knew nothing of Henry’s marriage with Anne until a fortnight after the event. Anne’s child Elizabeth was born and Fisher and More died for denying the Royal Supremacy spiritual. Cromwell as Vice-Regent took over the land’s episcopal duties, but his fall just after the Act of Six Articles left Cranmer in a most dangerous position. He alone seems to have resisted that Act. Although he claims that it was the personal appearance of the King in the Lords which carried the day against him, and Cromwell’s Attainder and execution was universally expected to draw that of Cranmer in its train. He seems to have survived because of the King’s trust in and regard for him, and because of his undoubted value—for Henry was no altruist—to the King. (He had just pronounced the sentence terminating the third Royal non-marriage, this time from Anne of Cleves.)

For some years after the failure of Cromwell’s Lutheran alliance, Cranmer was under attack from many quarters. Not least was that of his own Canterbury Prebendaries, culminating in a set of Articles presented to Henry in April 1533. Morice, Cranmer’s secretary, tells how Henry was passing Lambeth Bridge in his barge in the evening and called Cranmer down to him. “Aha, my chaplain,” he said, “I have news for you. I know now who is the greatest heretic in Kent.” He then showed him the articles, and in answer to the request for a commission of inquiry appointed Cranmer himself as chief commissioner, in spite of his demurs. “I will have none other but yourself, and such as you will appoint,” said the King, “for I am sure that you will not halt with me in anything, although you be driven to accuse yourself.” As usual when his own interests were at stake, Cranmer did nothing, and after six weeks the King appointed his own inquisitor and the plot was laid bare, although at Cranmer’s request most of the plotters were pardoned. Within a month a more dangerous plot against him was dismissed by Henry with a sound berating of the Privy Council instigators, and Cranmer was no more troubled, at least in that reign.

The next years saw Cranmer busy in the Council, at work on his Litany, and then more, in 1546, in his own Diocese. Here it seems most likely that in discussion with Ridley he came to repudiate the Real Presence in the Sacrament which he had held, and which he had persecuted others for opposing, for at least thirteen years, and came to the doctrine he later died to defend. But first his master was to die, and at his death sought for the only true and honest friend of a strong and despotic reign. The feeling was mutual, for Cranmer so mourned his loss that from then on he let his beard grow unchecked until his dying day.

While he respected Protector Somerset, he was not one to rush ahead, and indeed would have preferred a slower Reformation under a stronger king. Cautious and conservative himself, he came slowly to his own convictions, and he did not attempt to press them hastily on others. The first task was to restrain the more revolutionary elements; the second was to convince the reactionaries, although his first prayer book of course pleased neither. The book contributed to the revolt which led to Somerset’s downfall, but worse than that, Gardiner claimed that the Mass and Real Presence were still clearly taught—a contention that may account for the widespread use of this 1549 Book in the Anglican Communion in preference to the 1552–1662 Book. So Cranmer set to work to stop those loopholes by 1552, at the same time compiling a new ordinal, and completed his three major works before the crash came. His other aim, a revision of the Canon Law, came no further than a draft version, concise, lucid, with suggestions such as that of Diocesan Synods of clergy and laity, which could have been of great value. His last work was the common doctrinal confession, finally published just before the young king’s death in the summer of 1553, a confession clearly Reformed but not too narrowly defined, aiming to comprehend rather than to exclude.

His lasting three-fold contribution was thus completed—English Bible, Prayer Book, and Confession of Faith—and these more than even the political enactments of King and Council revolutionized church and nation. It was only just in time, for within six weeks the king was dead. For the next two and a half years Cranmer had to endure the distressing spectacle of his life’s work undone, his doctrine attacked, his friends tortured and executed. He himself was subjected to every kind of physical, mental, and moral pressure, so that it was only through shame and weakness that at the last he witnessed a good confession, thrusting first into the flame and holding there until consumed that right hand which had signed the recantations he abhorred. Whatever may be said four centuries later, it was quite true that “after 21st March 1556 there was no more criticism of Cranmer in Protestant circles.”

Principles of the English Reformation

The basic principles underlying the English Reformation as Cranmer understood them and inscribed them for others were as follows. Basic to everything, as it had been from the early days of Cranmer’s ministry, was THE PRIMACY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. While seen most perfectly in his work on The True and Catholic Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, where his first concern is to establish the doctrine from an examination of the relevant passages of Scripture, article six of the Thirty-nine Articles is magnificently explicit on the point, “Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.” Here is the Reformation battle cry of Sola Scriptura. (Since the other doctrines are based on this principle, and since discussion must be largely a matter of exegesis, we shall not enlarge on justification, the Church, ministry, sacraments, etc.)

Second, it was Cranmer’s aim as a conservative thinker and an Englishman to retain as close a continuity as possible with the Church of the past. He therefore, like Luther, retained everything that he safely could, only discarding those practices which were clearly wrong, for he believed that the Holy Spirit had guided the Church down the ages, and that without clear leading to the contrary it was entirely wrong to reject the past out of hand. This principle, the corollary of the foregoing one, is expounded in Article Thirty-four, Of the Traditions of the Church: “It is not necessary that Traditions and Ceremonies be in all places one and utterly like; for at all times they have been divers, and may be changed according to the diversities of countries, times and men’s manners”—that is to say that every church has traditions and ceremonies, even the Brethren, but here is the point—So that nothing be ordained against God’s Word. NOTHING EXCEPT GOD’S WORD FOR SALVATION, AND NOTHING AGAINST GOD’S WORD FOR EDIFICATION. These are the two fundamentals, and the others follow from these. The authority of the Church is the development of Cranmer’s anti-individualistic beliefs, while the relation of Church and State draws from his view of the Sovereign, and both, he would claim, are based on Scripture only.

Character of Thomas Cranmer

What can we say of the chief English Reformer? Was he “an amiable and successful scholar” but “an irresolute and ineffective archbishop whose character degenerated year by year under the strain which his responsibilities imposed?” He was for one thing amazingly loyal to his friends, in both private and public. He alone dared to plead to the king for Anne Boleyn, for More and Fisher, for the Princess Mary, and for Thomas Cromwell, when all around were dissociating themselves from the accused with maximum speed and condemning their wickedness vociferously. His private letters to Cromwell were packed with requests, it is true, but they were never for himself, always for others, and this same lack of covetousness showed in all his financial dealings. He gained not one penny from the dissolution of the monasteries and other Reformation plunder, and he complained more than once that his financial state as an archbishop was far worse than when he had been a university don. That he was without guile and utterly sincere is shown not only by the trust Henry placed in him, and by the testimony of many, but above all by his behavior during the various plots against him. His theological learning was proverbial, and surely another title to Henry’s favor, for the King himself was no mean scholar. “For at all times when the king’s majesty would be resolved in any doubt or question he would send word to my Lord overnight, and by the next day the king should have in writing brief notes of the doctor’s minds, as well divines as lawyers, both ancient old and new, with a conclusion of his own mind. He . . . would advise the king more in one day than all his learned men could do in a month.”

He has been accused of unnecessary subserviency to the monarch, although to say this is surely to forget the nature of both the King and the century. His early schooling could be somewhat to blame, as could his theological principles, while the charge that he was a traitor to reform because he was present at the trials of Frith and others is surely to assume that he had come to a reformed position—and concealed it!!—far earlier than can at all be proved. It always seems very unfair to blame a man in the midst of the hurly-burly of government for not seeing the future as clearly as we can see it now. To criticize Cranmer, as some do, for not behaving as if from the outset of his work he had a clear vision, not only of his first and second prayer books, but even a third, before his eyes, is to betray one’s own immaturity as a scholar, to say nothing stronger. That he was more lenient to Romanists he himself explained thus: “What will ye have me do to him that is not yet come to the truth of the gospel . . . severity, cruel behavior . . . ? I take not this way to allure men to embrace the doctrine of the gospel.” But let an enemy sum him up. “He had in his favor a dignified presence, adorned with a semblance of goodness, considerable reputation for learning, and manners so courteous, kindly and pleasant that he seemed like an old friend to those he encountered for the first time. He gave signs of modesty, seriousness and application.”

And what were his basic principles? Apart from the two we have noted above, I think that Cranmer’s supposed confusions and contradictions can on the basis of Occam’s Razor be explained by just two verses of Scripture: (1) Romans 13:1 and following, “The powers that be are ordained of God.” The king was the divinely appointed ruler, and he was therefore to be implicitly obeyed (Article Thirty-seven). (Only at the end did Cranmer see that in fact More had been right and that the individual conscience had a more final authority than the public ruler, but his hesitation in struggling through to this belief showed how strongly he had held the other, and explains much that is otherwise difficult for us to understand.)

(2) 2 Peter 1:20, “No prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation.” In other words, Cranmer believed most earnestly in the corporate nature of the Church, and of the duty of the individual where necessary to submit to the judgment of the body. He expressed his view very fully in the Preface on Ceremonies in the Book of Common Prayer, but we quote from Article Twenty, “The Church hath power to decree rites and ceremonies . . .” and Thirty-four (continuing where we left off above), “Whosoever through his private judgment, willingly, and purposely, doth openly break the traditions and ceremonies of the Church which be not repugnant to the Word of God, and be ordained and approved by common authority, ought to be rebuked openly . . . as he that offendeth against the common order of the Church, and hurteth the authority of the Magistrate and woundeth the consciences of the weak brethren.” This may well explain his determination against some of the Reformers who had as yet gone further than himself, for they seemed to set themselves individually above the Church, and Cranmer had seen for himself in Germany the excesses of Anabaptistry to which this could lead.

Two final difficulties face us all in the examination of characters from another age, the twin difficulties of atmosphere and prejudice. Let Pollard speak here, “Cranmer has been termed the most mysterious figure in the English Reformation. The obscurity is not in his character but in the atmosphere which he breathed, and atmosphere is the most difficult of all things recreate. As a rule there are no materials for it. To the people who live in it a political or religious atmosphere is a familiar thing which needs no explanation and therefore is not recorded in documents. Then the atmosphere changes, and can only be recalled to posterity by an observation and reflection compared with which the mere ascertainment of facts is easy.” We must make the effort to understand the atmosphere of the sixteenth century, and thus when faced with an action or inaction which we tend to condemn, we must first seek an honest explanation before labeling the person a rogue or a knave. This leads straight into our other difficulty, that of prejudice. We are all guilty here, and it will not save us to conjugate the verb, “He is prejudiced, you are obstinate, I am clear-sighted.” Let us at least be aware of our prejudices. Many of our present-day concepts and beliefs are the direct fruit of this period and therefore of our English Reformation. (Take for instance our ideas of the freedom and duty of individual private judgment.) We must not give way to the temptation to judge Cranmer as if he were a mid-twentieth century evangelical Christian among mid-twentieth century Englishmen. Brought up as, educated by, and for most of his life surrounded by, convinced or at least determined Papalists and Scholastics, he must be judged in his own era, and by his own biblical principles first, and only then by other biblical principles which we feel he may not have grasped.

“Nothing except Scripture for salvation, nothing against Scripture for edification.” All right! But, Romans 13 and the Supremacy of the Sovereign, and 2 Peter 1 and the Primacy of the Church. Could this man have been an evangelical Christian? He came at the last to the Sovereignty—under God and His Word—of the Individual Conscience, and so he came at the last to the stake for that belief. Let us therefore remind ourselves that he was truly such a man of God as we might covet to be, by closing with perhaps his most moving memorial, the prayer which he wrote in the night he prepared to die, and which he prayed before his final recantation and martyrdom:

O Father of heaven: O Son of God, Redeemer of the World; O Holy Ghost, proceeding from them both, three persons and one God, have mercy on me most wretched caitiff and miserable sinner. I who have offended both heaven and earth, and more grievously than any tongue can express, whither then may I go, or whither should I fly for succour? To heaven I may be ashamed to lift up mine eyes; and in earth I find no refuge. What shall I then do; shall I despair? God forbid. O good God, thou art merciful, and refusest none that come to thee for succor. To thee therefore do I run. To thee do I humble myself saying, O Lord God, my sins be great, but yet have mercy upon me for thy great mercy. O God the Son, thou wast not made man, this great mystery was not wrought for few or small offenses. Nor thou didst not give thy Son unto death O God the Father, for our little and small sins only, but for all the greatest sins of the world; so that the sinner return unto thee with a penitent heart, as I do here at this present. Wherefore have mercy upon me, O Lord, whose property is always to have mercy. For although my sins be great, yet thy mercy is greater. I crave nothing, O Lord, for mine own merits, but for thy name’s sake, that it may be glorified thereby; and for thy dear Son Jesus Christ’s sake.

5

JOHN KNOX

S. M. Houghton

It is highly unfortunate that to the great majority of Englishmen, Christian and otherwise, John Knox is known only in caricature. The normal limit of an Englishman’s knowledge runs to this, that Knox wrote an infamous book about the rule of women, that he browbeat a Scottish queen, that he used to beat a pulpit into blads, and that in old age he married a girl in her teens. Three of these charges are factual and provable; the other is matter of opinion to which I do not subscribe. Maybe, too, the Englishman knows that Knox merited the words spoken over his grave, that he never feared the face of man, or to be more accurate, that he neither flattered nor feared any flesh. Even so, it is not a very pleasing image of a man who bestrode a certain kingdom like a colossus, or, in more biblical language, was called of God to root out, to pull down and to destroy, to throw down, to build and to plant, a work which he did right nobly.

But Knox’s image in the eyes of the spiritually-minded is in vivid contrast with that formed by the unlearned, and were there in existence a Christian portrait gallery of heroes of the faith such as the Epistle to the Hebrews supplies for the Old Testament, then assuredly John Knox would qualify for a place. Through faith he subdued a kingdom to the truth, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions (many of them), escaped by long-drawn-out miracle the edge of the sword, out of weakness was made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the foes of the gospel. Certain it was, too, that he had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea moreover, of bonds and imprisonment; was he not for a period of many months a galley slave to the French? It is but fitting that he should find a place, if not among the first three mighties, yet among the first four, in the city which he accounted an earthly paradise. I refer, of course, to the Reformation’s mural monument in a European world-city.

Personally I regard John Knox as primarily a man of action. He is not particularly high placed as a theologian, though there is such clarity and warmth in his writings that his reputation as such deserves to be raised. He was no recluse; a close student of the Word certainly, but not a man whose study was his little heaven upon earth. In the days of his strength he loved to itinerate ceaselessly, and even when in his later years his physical powers declined through long wear and tear, and he longed for release from his toils, the very measure of his weariness was also the measure of his life-labors. He wore himself out. Earthly honors he never sought. To the end he remained “John Knox, minister,” “Plain Mr. Knox.”

Throughout his career after conversion, Knox was a warrior. He wielded a trenchant pen and wrote as if he were earthly leader of the Lord’s hosts militant. But it was with tongue rather than pen that he waged his fierce fight of faith. It was from the pulpit that he surveyed the serried ranks of the foe and sought to urge on the warriors of the Lord. He would have agreed well with Luther’s statement that the gospel cannot well be “advanced without tumult, trouble and uproar.” Scotland was desperately in need of such a man and such a gospel as Knox brought to its ears. Its plight was extreme. The case of England was sufficiently bad, that of Scotland was palpably worse. Professor James Stalker wrote a book on Knox, his ideas and his ideals, in which he assures us that “those who know best what the moral condition of Scotland was before the Reformation, as this is revealed in her literature . . . are the most likely to be thankful to Knox for the changes he introduced into the country. Had he done nothing more than what he did to promote decency, he would have earned the eternal gratitude of Scotsmen.”

The sermons preached by Knox—and he was always preaching in season and out of season—were often tremendous in their effect. The whole sanctified personality of the man was alive in his utterance. In the passionate furnace of his words, many were saved by fear, pulled out, as Jude speaks, from their ungodliness, and caused to hate the garment spotted by the flesh. Sin was lashed with a vehemency equaled by few in the long history of Christendom. Sins public and private were set forth as in the light of God’s countenance. Men who sat under the torrent of his denunciations must have been either petrified with fear or, if repentance forsook them, fired with burning anger against the preacher. Knox was loved or hated. He gave to his generation and I may even say to all later generations, a superb demonstration of the vigor and the validity of pulpit utterance in the power of God most High. And this had, as its background, a fervency in prayer, both in public and in private, which was the envy of lesser men. Spurgeon spoke plain truth when he said that, “when John Knox went upstairs to plead (with God) for Scotland, it was the greatest event in Scottish history.”

It has been charged against Knox that to a great extent his message and his manner were much more akin to those of the Old Testament prophets than to those of the New Testament apostles, and there is undoubtedly a measure of truth in the allegation, arising from the fact that much of his earlier work was in the nature of a campaign against the evils which had to be extirpated from Scottish hearts and Scottish life before the gentler words of gospel truth could be cast abroad. It seems undeniable that many of his public discourses, perhaps the majority of them, were based on Old Testament themes. “He possessed a marvelous faculty for taking a book of the Old Testament or a portion of the Old Testament history, and laying it alongside of the contemporary history of his own country in such a way as to bring out comparisons and contrasts which illuminate the situation and reveal the path of duty.”

The outcome of such preaching, and of other hard labor accompanying it was remarkable by all human standards. Knox purged the floor of Scotland as it were with fire. The domination of falsehood and foulness was ended. Morality came in the wake of godliness. Licentious song gave place to psalm-singing. Scotland was transformed.

Many of the changes which Knox envisaged corresponded to the doctrine and discipline of Calvin’s Geneva. Not that Knox had received his doctrine from Geneva in the first instance. Long before he entered Swiss territory he was to all intents and purposes a Puritan of strong Calvinistic bent. His inward struggles, his outlook on the world of men and his program of reform coincided with that which met him on his first entry into Europe’s city of God. Geneva did not mean for Knox an initiation into the truth, but consolidation in its principles, and increase of zeal, if that were possible, for its propagation and application to a certain national situation. Doubtless the first glimmerings of light reached him through the ministry of one (Wishart) who had visited the Swiss Churches in 1541–42, and who had already translated their Confession of Faith into the Scottish tongue. In Knox’s case Lutheranism was bypassed, and he arrived, not by devious ways but by a direct road, in the Calvinist camp, so that when in 1554 he arrived for the first time in Geneva, it was to him a spiritual home from the commencement.

Knox and the English Reformation

Before I deal with the principles of reform which Knox so energetically and ably expounded and applied, I must briefly advert to his close links with England and its struggles to disengage itself from darkness and to pass into marvelous light. It is often forgotten that Knox spent several years in England, that he ministered with tireless energy in the areas of Berwick and Newcastle, and afterwards in the Home Counties (chiefly Buckinghamshire and principally perhaps in the area around Amersham), that he was offered a bishopric which he refused, that he was consulted by Cranmer when the Articles of Religion were being drawn up, and that as a Court preacher he made an impression similar to that made by Latimer. It is not easy to refrain from enlarging on this English ministry, which was fully equal in scope and character to the best ministry of the period as exercised by born-and-bred Englishmen. It seems to have appealed strongly to King Edward VI. One or two of its features only must receive limited enlargement.

Was Knox happy in a ministry of the English pattern? Not altogether so. From time to time he showed signs of considerable uneasiness. It was his conviction that Cranmer and his closest associates were prepared to concede too much to the traditions of the Papist past. Then as always after his conversion in 1546 he stood solidly and immovably on the thesis that the Word of God alone was the source of authority in the Church of God.

The matter came to a head in respect of the vexed question of kneeling at the Lord’s Table. The enforcement of the Second Prayer Book (1552) was shortly to begin. To Knox, kneeling as required by a threefold repetition in the instructions for clergy and people was a positive infringement of the divine law that Christians must at all costs keep themselves from idols. Knox’s protest was really one aspect of his denunciation of the mass itself. Cranmer defends kneeling in an interesting letter in which he contends that, if the Greek words used of sitting were interpreted with absolute literality, they would mean “to lie down on the floor or the ground” and not “to sit on a form or a stool.” In the outcome, although kneeling remained, the introduction of a special rubric was a concession to Knox, known afterwards as the Black Rubric, which stated categorically that, lest the act of kneeling be “misconstrued and depraved,” it must on no account be taken to signify adoration of the sacramental elements, which remained bread and wine in their very natural substances, whereas the natural body and blood of our Savior are in heaven and not in earth. The special rubric was omitted from the Prayer Book issued under the Second Act of Uniformity of 1559 (possibly, and even probably, with a view to the comprehension of all parties in the one Church of England) but it was brought back again, remarkably enough, in 1662 (possibly to induce men of Puritan leanings to remain in the Establishment).

Notwithstanding this concession, it would seem that Knox was not completely happy in his link with the Church of England. Vestments troubled him. As late as 1566 we find him leading his Scottish brethren in a protest to their brethren, the bishops and pastors in England, in support of Puritan ministers who were in trouble over this matter before the Court of High Commission.

The year 1566–67 saw the first Puritan secession from the Church of England in consequence of the suspension and subsequent deprivation of certain ministers. They seem to have communicated with Knox on the matter, and to have asked for his support, but his reply, though not preserved, was probably not altogether to their liking. He seems to have thought that, before taking so serious a step as secession, they should have consulted other churches, the more so because the brethren whom they were leaving undeniably preached the substance of doctrine and salvation through Christ. Secession seemed to him to be tantamount to the condemnation of the Church of England.

But perhaps it is the famous Frankfurt controversy of 1554 which best illustrates the attitude of Knox to Anglicanism, for it had the effect of causing him to embrace more closely than before the paradisiacal fellowship of Geneva and to draw apart from the Church of England.

Knox’s Principles of Reformation

From Frankfurt, Knox went to Geneva. A Church of English refugees was organized, and there followed the brief period which for Knox must have been the most peaceful of his Christian career. He looked back on it afterwards with unmitigated joy.

From 1554 to 1559, except for brief periods in the homeland, Knox was an exile. The English congregation in Geneva which had chosen him as their minister was reluctant to release him, and equally he longed to remain with them, but the knowledge that there were many in Scotland who desired his presence, and the clear call of duty hammering ever and anon at his conscience finally drove him back to his banks and braes. In any event, the death of Mary Tudor in November 1558 and the accession of Elizabeth completely changed the situation, and the Church in Geneva broke up as the exiles returned home.

Knox was home again by the spring of 1559. He returned to the land as the ambassador of the blessed and only Potentate; his pulpit shortly became his throne, and from it, in cooperation with like-minded men, there proceeded both a fiery and a healing word. “Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway.” Evil doctrine was attacked in its strongholds. Strong men bowed themselves. Idolatry fled apace. The pulpit drew its strength solely from the exposition and the enforcement of the Word of God in the power of the Spirit of God. Hence it was that Randolph, Elizabeth’s ambassador in Scotland, could say, “The voice of one man is able in an hour to put more life into us, than 600 trumpets continually blustering in our ears”; and of all trumpets of the era, that blown by Knox was most certain in its sound. Now was Scotland’s hour of destiny. It was Knox who set Scotland on the pathway that it was to follow more or less faithfully for generations.

What were the principles of reformation followed by Knox? On the negative side, of course, was the overthrow of papistry (as he termed Romanism), and his profound mistrust of the system which England chose to follow in the so-called Via Media settlement of 1559. In Knox’s eyes a middle way of compromise could not meet the requirements of standards set by the Word of God. On the positive side there is much to be said. On his return from Geneva, Knox shortly found in his native Scotland a clear field of action. To him it was a matter of first importance that he was not under necessity to cooperate with and yield to an earthly throne. Since 1548 Mary of Scots had been in France, and when in 1561 she returned to Edinburgh a widow, she found that her country had already passed through the throes of reformation and that the Protestant faith and worship was firmly inaugurated. Until her flight into England in 1568, she used every artifice known to her to overthrow what had been accomplished. But the work of reform moved steadily forward and proved itself to be on such secure foundations that all the skill and strength of an extraordinarily crafty and powerful enemy was in vain. It was a seventeenth-century prelate who laid claim to the word thorough as descriptive of his anti-Puritan policy; it was Knox whose work much more deserves the term for the far-reaching changes which it set in motion.

It was greatly to Knox’s advantage that he had a free hand in reform. The Genevan example filled his memory, but whereas that involved reformation within the small compass of a single city, his task began with the survey of a wide terrain, white already (in its lowlands at least) to harvest. It was on a nationwide scale that his efforts applied, and, humble in mind as he was, the task did not affright him. His work was done with speed. His incessant preaching ministry was linked with the work of creating an organization within the Church which would suffice to evangelize Scotland to its utmost bounds, and provide it with a ministry competent and sufficient for such a task. Time-servers and men-pleasers were cast out. In their place Knox aimed at a ministry educated, zealous, and above all, completely faithful to the Word of God. His work in this respect was somewhat akin to that of the Puritan party in England after the Civil War against Charles I was concluded, but his raw material probably even less tractable than theirs.

The instruments which Knox employed to produce the results he sought were, in the first instance, documentary, and we begin with mention of the Confession of Faith of 1561.

The articles of the Confession proceed as follows: God; the Creation of Man; Original Sin; the Revelation of the Promise; the Continuance, Increase and Preservation of the Church; the Incarnation of Christ Jesus; Why it behoved the Mediator to be very God and very Man; and Election (which is remarkable for its scant direct reference to the subject). Then follow articles on Christ’s Death and atoning work, His Passion and His Burial, His Resurrection and His Ascension, the last-named including mention of the Second Coming:

Christ shall visibly return as He was seen to ascend. Then shall the time of refreshing and restitution of all things begin; the righteous shall then inherit the bliss promised them from the beginning, but the wicked shall be cast into the dungeon of outer darkness. The remembrance of these things must not only bridle our carnal lusts, but also comfort us against the threatening of worldly princes. So that neither temporal death nor present danger is to move us to forsake that blessed society which we the members have with our Head and only Mediator, Christ Jesus, whom we confess to be the promised Messiah, the only Head of His Church, our just Lawgiver, our only High Priest, Advocate and Mediator. If any presume to intrude into these offices, we utterly detest and abhor them as blasphemers to our Sovereign and Supreme Governor, Christ Jesus.

Under the head “Faith in the Holy Ghost,” we read:

Our faith and faith’s assurance do not proceed from our natural powers but from the Holy Ghost. By nature we are so dead, so blind, and perverse, that we can neither feel when we are pricked, see the light when it shines, nor assent to the will of God when it is revealed. But the Spirit quickens that which is dead, and bows our stubborn wills to the obedience of His blessed will. So we confess that as God the Father created us when we were not; as the Son redeemed us when we were His enemies; so also the Holy Spirit sanctifies and regenerates us, without any respect to any merit of our own, be it before or be it after our regeneration. The glory is not ours but God’s. Of ourselves we cannot think one good thought. He that has begun a good work in us is He that continues the same, to the praise and glory of His undeserved grace.

Article eighteen clearly sets out the marks of a true Church of God. I quote the first part:

Satan from the beginning has decked his own pestilent synagogue with the title of the Church of God, and it is essential to distinguish the one from the other, lest, being deceived, we embrace to our own condemnation the one for the other. The tokens whereby Christ’s true Church is to be known from that horrible harlot, the Kirk malignant, are neither antiquity, nor title usurped, nor lineal descent, nor multitude of men approving of it; but

1. The true preaching of the Word of God, in the which God has revealed Himself to us;

2. The right administration of the sacraments of Christ, which must be annexed to the Word and promise of God, to seal and confirm the same in our hearts;

3. Ecclesiastical discipline uprightly ministered, as God’s Word prescribes, whereby vice is suppressed and virtue nourished. Wherever these three things are found (be the number never so few above two or three), there, beyond all doubt, is the true Church of Christ, who, according to His promise, is in the midst of the same; not the universal but the particular, such as was in Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus and other places.

Next follow articles on The Authority of Scripture, General Councils, and Sacraments.

In the article on the Sacraments, we read:

We utterly deny that these sacraments are nothing else but naked and bare signs. We assert that by baptism we are engrafted in Christ to be made partakers of His justice (righteousness), by the which our sins are covered and remitted, and that in the Supper, rightly used, Christ Jesus is so joined with us that He becomes the very nourishment and food of our souls. We deny the pernicious and damnable error of the Papists, transubstantiation, but the union and communion we affirm is wrought by operation of the Holy Ghost who by true faith carries us above all things visible, carnal and earthly, and makes us feed on the body and blood of Christ, once broken and shed for us, who now is in heaven, and appears in the presence of God for us. . . . We certainly distinguish between Christ in His natural substance and the elements in the sacramental signs, so that we neither worship the signs in place of that which they signify, nor despise and interpret them as unprofitable and vain. . . . We judge two things to be requisite to the right administration of the sacraments: (1) that they be ministered by lawful ministers (chosen by the Church) and (2) that they be ministered in such elements and in such way as God has appointed. Hence we fly the society of the Papistical Church in its sacraments, for their ministers are no ministers of Christ; also they have adulterated both sacraments with their own inventions. Also the receiver as well as the minister must understand the true end and purpose of the sacrament. The Papists claim that their priests are mediators . . . who offer a propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of the quick and the dead, which doctrine we utterly abhor, detest and renounce.

Baptism appertains to the infants of the faithful as well as to those of age and discretion. Hence we deny the error of the Anabaptists.

Article twenty-four: “Concerning Civil Magistrates: To rulers and magistrates the reformation and purification of religion appertains. They are not only appointed (of God) for civil purposes, but also for the maintenance of true religion and for suppressing idolatry and superstition. David and others were highly commended for this.”

The closing article (twenty-five) speaks of Gifts freely given to the Church, viz: “remission of sins and resurrection to blessedness.”

This Confession of Faith originated in a request of the Parliament for a summary of the doctrine which the reformers wished to see accepted in Scotland. In the short space of four days—hence some of the defects of the Confession—the work was accomplished. It held the field for nearly a century until replaced by the more famous Westminster Confession of Faith of 1647 (established by Acts of Parliament in 1649 and 1690), of which it was a not unworthy predecessor.

The Confession of Faith was followed by the First Book of Discipline, compiled as before at the request of the civil government. Both documents were composed by six men, all with the Christian name of John, of whom Knox was chief. The Preface of the Book of Discipline asserts that all rules and regulations of the Church must be according to the Word of God. In this document we have an insight into the practical issues of the Reformation which is completely authentic and also the explanation of many things in Scotland from that day to this. Here, in fact, is the work of reformation with all its values and (as some would wish to add) with all its defects seen at its clearest in Church, home, and State. Maybe it speaks of Knox’s ideal rather than of genuine achievement; at the same time it needs to be remembered that Knox’s fiery energy and stimulating personality brought, under God, quick results. Although it was prepared with the needs of the whole of Scotland in view, it indicates clearly the impact made by the reformation at local level, and herein lies its peculiar interest.

I hope you will not consider it tedious if I supply brief quotations from its most important parts.

Preface: “Nothing must be admitted which God’s plain Word does not approve, and nothing must be rejected that God’s Word specifies. There must be no man-pleasing, but all must be according to the Word.”

1. Doctrine: “Christ’s Gospel must be truly and openly preached . . . and all doctrine repugnant to it must be utterly repressed, as damnable to man’s salvation.”

2. Sacraments: The practice of the Lord Jesus and His apostles must be kept. The order of Geneva, as used in some of our churches, is sufficient to instruct the reader, but to make all clear we add the following: Water only is to be used (i.e. in baptism), not oil, salt, spittle, conjuration and crossing, etc., else Christ’s institution is pronounced imperfect.

3. Ministers and their election: In a reformed church none ought to preach or minister the sacraments until that orderly they are called to the same. (a) It appertains to the people and to every several congregation to elect their minister. (b) If it is needful for the superintendent to act in the matter, the person selected must appear for examination before men of the soundest judgment in the nearest principal town, or in the town of the superintendent, where he must demonstrate his gift and his knowledge by interpreting some part of Scripture chosen by the ministry. (c) If all is satisfactory, it is unreasonable of the destitute church to refuse him, and receive him they must unless they can produce a better. (d) The admission of ministers to their office must consist in the consent of the church where they are to minister and the approbation of the learned ministers appointed for their examination.

4. Financial arrangements: Ministers must be supported, also their wives and children after their decease. Uniformity of treatment is impossible, and responsibilities vary. Some will be single men, others will have families to support. Every several church much provide for the poor, though not for stubborn and idle beggars.

5. Schools and universities: God does not illuminate men miraculously, but youth must be given a godly education. Every church must have one schoolmaster, able to teach grammar and the Latin tongue if the town be of any reputation.

6. Ecclesiastical discipline: A commonwealth needs good laws and sharp execution of the same; so too does the church of God. The civil authorities should deal with blasphemy, adultery, murder, perjury, and capital crimes worthy of death. The church should deal with drunkenness, excess in apparel, or in eating and drinking, fornication, exacting of the poor, buying and selling with deceitful weights, slander and licentious living, and should use the sword of the Word of God.

The discipline of the church shall extend to all estates within the realm, as well the rulers and the preachers as the ruled and the people, even to the poorest.

7. The Policy of the Church: (i.e. the work of the Church.) This falls under two heads: (1) The essential—preaching and prayers, the administration of the sacraments, and the correcting and punishing of offenses. Without these there is no sign of a visible church. And (2) the profitable but non-essential—for example, the singing of psalms, which some churches may find difficult to manage, and the assembling of the church, whether daily, or twice, thrice, or but once a week.—Every church must decide these matters for itself.

Sunday must be kept strictly both before and after noon in all towns.

Four times in the year is sufficient for the administration of the Lord’s Supper, for people are prone to attend it superstitiously at Easter time, as if the season gave virtue to it, and for the rest of the year they are negligent of it.

Every church must have an English Bible, and the people taught the importance of reading it frequently.

Every head of a household is responsible for the instruction of his children, servants and family in the Christian religion.

So that the church may make trial of men’s knowledge, graces and utterances, and to cause men to grow in grace, it is expedient that in every town where schools and learned men are found, there should be a weekly gathering for the purpose of what Paul, in 1 Corinthians 14 calls prophesying.

No attempt was made to legislate through Parliament for the Church. The Book of Discipline was never authorized by Parliament, but it certainly molded the life of Scotland for centuries. Professor Mackie, writing as a secular historian, sums the matter up in these words: “Some say it produced a people narrow in religion, indifferent to the graces of life, blind to the beauty of holiness, and deaf to all music save the psalms. Others believe that it was a great factor in producing a race patient in discipline, valuing moral integrity, and anxious for education. . . . Those who disparage Knox would do well to remember that in denouncing him they denounce also the qualities which have enabled the children of a small poor country to set their mark upon the history of the world.” And we may also add, from our own angle of vision, “their mark upon the church of God.”

Dr. Stalker says that the Book of Discipline was Knox’s own vision of a Scotland religious, virtuous, intelligent, and happy; and such was in considerable measure its direct outcome. It was the most remarkable document which the Reformation age produced in Britian, and was the means, under God, of constituting an entire people—I speak generally—a “school of Christ.” Scotland became, as it were, an extramural Geneva, though obviously, in the very nature of the case, there could never be on a country-wide scale an extension of the tight arrangements possible in a small city; but as far as was humanly possible, this was Knox’s ideal, and through Scotland during the ensuing centuries his work reverberates.

To complete the work in his own lifetime, the reformer added the Book of Common Order, based closely on that used by him in Geneva during his pastorate there. It was virtually a prayer and a service book, though its prayers were intended as models rather than as prayers to which ministers were rigorously tied. In 1567 a Gaelic translation was made. The Book of Common Order was accompanied by a complete Book of Psalms in meter, and this became the congregational worship book of the Church, Scotland’s new-found joy.

Thus it was that, when Knox died in 1572, the Reformed Church was firmly established in Scotland. The principles of the Christian faith had been learned in innumerable Scottish homes, and to a remarkable extent the Church was independent of the State and self-governing. The Scottish Church was not a State establishment. Control over it was in the hands of its own ministers and people. Parliament had virtually confined itself to the condemnation and the rendering illegal of the Roman Mass, but it had not legislated for the new Church. Though Knox looked to the magistrates to enforce punishments for certain offenses, it was from the beginning his endeavor to retain control of the Church in Church hands, and this he succeeded in doing.

The fact is clear that “John Knox, minister” had been the instrument under God of a great work of reformation, in some respects greater and more potent than that which had come to England, a reformation which included a tremendously strong strain of Puritanism, and which therefore found much in common with the English Puritan movement of later days. In the ensuing years it produced an abundance of expert theologians, a martyrology, a Bible-based national life (I speak generally), and a Church which has played no mean part in upholding the “crown rights of the Redeemer.”

6

ECCLESIOLA IN ECCLESIA

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

The subject allotted to me is one that comes in a logical sequence as well as in a chronological sequence to what we have already heard in this conference. It is in a sense a kind of postscript, or critique of the approaches to reformation which we have been considering, and may, therefore, legitimately come under the general heading, although in and of itself it cannot properly be defined as “an approach” to reformation.

In other words what I am going to put before you is something which I trust I shall be able to demonstrate, which throws light upon those various points of view toward and efforts at reformation which were carried through in the sixteenth century. But in addition, and this is why it is so important for us, I think I will be able to show that it has a very real relevance to the pastoral position in which most of us who are pastors here today find ourselves, having as members of churches many, unfortunately, whom we can at best only regard as nominal Christians. The subject before us will inevitably raise the question as to what our attitude should be to these people who are in the Church, but concerning whom as evangelical pastors we may have serious reservations.

First of all let us define the term ecclesiola in ecclesia. It is very important that we should be clear as to the precise definition because the whole argument turns on this precision. What does it mean? It really means “little church in the Church” or “little churches within a church.” In other words the idea of those who formed these little churches was not to form a new church. That is basic. They were not concerned at all about separation; indeed they were bitterly and violently opposed to that. They were not out to change the doctrine of the Church. The early Reformers in this country, like Thomas Bilney and others, were out to do that; but the people who believed in forming ecclesiolae had no such intention whatsoever.

What were they concerned about? Well, their position was that they were not so much dissatisfied with the nature as with the functioning of the Church. They were not concerned about the Church’s doctrine, but were very concerned about its spiritual life and condition.

This is quite basic to our whole outlook upon this subject. The people who believed in the idea of the ecclesiola were not out to change the whole Church, but to form a church within a church which would form a nucleus of true believers inside the general Church. Their object in the formation of this nucleus was that it might act as a leaven and influence the life of the whole Church for the better. That is the definition. It was thought of in terms of the local church and local churches. It was not a movement but something that was to happen in individual local churches.

That being our definition, we have to understand further—and this was true I think we can say of all the men who became interested in this and tried to put it into practice—that for these people this was only a second best. The argument seems to be that if the attempt to reform the whole Church fails, well then all you can do, and the thing that you should do is to form this nucleus within the Church which you trust will permeate the life of the whole and eventually reform it.

The subject is in some ways a little difficult to handle because it was attempted by a number of different men in different countries and in different centuries. I must not weary you with a detailed description of all these. Indeed I deliberately refrain from this because to do so might only end in confusion. I am much more concerned about the principle involved in the idea. That it seems to me is the important thing for us.

But we must give some general indication as to how this idea was put into operation. There are certain things which were common to practically all of them. For instance, they were all animated by that same fundamental idea. They all likewise stressed the voluntary membership of these nuclei. People could either join this inner church, this little nucleus, or not; it was left entirely to their own volition. But the moment you did join you had to submit to a very strict discipline. They kept a list of members and observed their attendances very closely, and if a man or a woman failed to turn up with regularity he or she would be excluded, excommunicated. Sometimes indeed, a fine was imposed.

What did they do in these societies? Actually there was a good deal of variation about this, but the central idea in all of them was that the meetings should be an occasion for instruction which could not be given in the open preaching. Most of them held this kind of meeting to this select company, the true believers in the Church, once a week. They met in a more informal manner, and there they could go over the sermons preached on the previous Sunday, and people would have opportunities for asking questions and discussion. Some gave opportunity for people to relate their experiences; others frowned upon that and did not believe in it at all. In the case of those that appeared in Germany there was a good deal of discussion of doctrine, and indeed at times of philosophy, and they almost became debating societies; whereas in others doctrinal discussions were completely banned and prohibited. So you see there was this considerable variation in the way in which meetings were conducted, but this does not affect the principle.

Another thing that is common to most of these meetings is that they gave opportunities to the laymen. This is where we touch on that question of the universal priesthood of all believers referred to in an earlier paper. These people felt that the laymen had not been given sufficient opportunity, so in these gatherings the laymen were allowed to speak and put questions. That is an important principle for us to bear in mind. There was a good deal of difference with regard to the place of women. In most of them women were allowed. In the case of Spener, the German to whom I shall be referring, women were allowed to attend these meetings but they had to be behind a screen out of sight, and they were not allowed to speak! Others were very careful to divide even between married men and single men, and married women and single women, and particularly where the question of giving of experiences was involved.

Another point which is of importance is that they nearly all insisted upon ministerial supervision. Some of them taught that the minister himself should always be in charge of the meetings; others took a freer view and said that the people, if they liked, could choose a pastor of their own. Luther, for instance, took that point of view. But they nearly all agreed about the need of ministerial supervision because there were some instances where people like this met together without such supervision and it ended in a good deal of trouble in the form of excesses. Nevertheless they were all interested in giving the lay people a greater part to play, a greater influence in the life of the church.

Experiments on the Continent

Those are some of the general characteristics of these “little churches with the church.” Let us now turn to some historical examples.

In a sense it can be said that the first example in history of this kind of nucleus within the Church in general, strange though it may sound to us, is monasticism. In principle the idea behind monasticism was very much the same; it was a dissatisfaction with the general state of the Church and a calling together of men who were concerned about this and anxious to do something about it. They remained within the Church; they did not want to go out of it, indeed that was the last thing they thought of. They were in the Church, but they were a special body within it. And, of course, as time passed you had the phenomenon of nuclei being formed inside the original nucleus as the original nucleus tended to degenerate. Another pre-Reformation illustration of this idea is found in the case of the United Brethren who certainly started in this way. I think that you can include Waldensians also under this heading.

I do not want to stay with these because the first really big example which we have of a man seriously considering this whole matter of an ecclesiola in the ecclesia is none other than Martin Luther. This is where we follow on so directly from what we have already been considering. Calvin and Zwingli never considered this idea, and as far as I can discover were really opposed to it. They certainly never tried to put it into practice. Obviously the Anabaptists also never considered it at all. The action that they had taken was the exact opposite of this, and because of the nature of that action they argued that this was unnecessary. What they had done, they said, was right; they had separated, they had gone out. The principle behind Anabaptism is therefore the very antithesis of what we are considering here.

But Luther is a particularly interesting case with regard to this whole matter. I hope to emphasize and point out certain questions which arise in particular out of the fact that Luther of all people not only toyed with and played with, but advocated the formation of these ecclesiolae. He began to think of this as far back as 1522 and 1523; but it was in 1526 that he published something really definite on the subject. It was in his “Preface to the German Mass” that he put the thing quite plainly and said that something along these lines must be done.

Why did he do so? Here is the interesting thing—he did it because he was profoundly depressed by the state of the Church. From 1513 on to 1520 and even 1521 he was on the crest of a wave as it were. There was great excitement and everything seemed to be going well. But then a reaction set in, the reformed impetus seemed to be pausing, nothing much seemed to be happening. A spirit of caution arose, people were hesitant, political considerations came in and Luther became profoundly depressed. But still more important, and still more serious, he was disturbed at the condition of the Church to which he himself belonged, the churches which had responded to his teaching. He felt that they were lacking in true spiritual life and vigor, that they were not living the Christian life; so he began to feel the need of discipline. The Protestants had even been defeated in military battle, and baffled, and he felt that that was mainly due to their lack of discipline, that their whole life was lacking in discipline. Therefore a measure of discipline should be introduced into the Church. Another thing that greatly aggravated this feeling which developed in him was the phenomenon of Anabaptists. He was upset by them, as we have been told, and he reacted strongly against them. He felt that the true Church, which followed him, must be protected against them, and the only way to do that was to impose discipline.

Luther’s relationship to the Anabaptists is a most fascinating one; it is a kind of ambivalent relationship. He reacted against them, and yet in a sense he admired them and was a little bit jealous of the wonderful discipline that they were able to exercise in their own churches. He had to admit that there was a quality of life in their churches which was absent in the churches to which he belonged. So he reacts in two ways to them; he has got to discipline his people against them, and yet he wishes to have in his church the kind of thing that was working so well in their churches. The result of all this was that he felt that the only thing to do was to form these nuclei within the churches. He seemed to be failing to reform the whole Church; well then, the best he could do was this second best, which was to gather together the people who are truly Christian into a kind of inner church.

Luther went so far as to say that these are the only people who should be allowed to partake of the Lord’s Supper; the others are members of the Church, remember, but it is only these true Christians whom he would allow to partake of the Lord’s Supper; the others are unfit to do so. So he carries this distinction in his mind to the extent that while all are in the Church, the general church, the state church, the land church—call it whatever you like—the only people who are fit to come to the Communion are those who belong to this inner body.

That was Luther’s idea, and he proposed now that this should be put into practice. But he never did so, for two main reasons. One was that he felt that he could not discover the people who were fit to belong to the nucleus. It was as bad as that, and that is a very serious consideration. But the other was the Imperial diet of Speier which was issued in 1526. This was a purely political action on the part of the Emperor which appeared to be giving liberty to the heads of these states, the Electors, so Luther began to think that perhaps after all he could do the big thing. Here was an opportunity which had not been present hitherto. Everything had seemed to be against him, the Electors were so slow and lethargic and fearful; but at last they seemed to be given freedom to reform by the Emperor himself, so Luther felt that he could abandon the second best and go back to the original idea of reform. The result was that as far as action was concerned the idea of ecclesiola came to an end there and then. But more than once later on he seems to be looking back wistfully to this idea of the ecclesiola. When he becomes discouraged he goes back to it in his mind; but he never really put it into operation.

Another contemporary proponent of this idea was a man of the name of Franz Lambert. He had been a Franciscan but he had been converted. While traveling, he went to Zurich and met Zwingli and was very impressed by him. Then he went on to Strasburg and met Martin Bucer (or Butzer, as he preferred to be called). While he was there, Philip of Hesse became anxious to reform the Church in his area, and he was advised to consult Franz Lambert who had now developed ideas about a kind of perfect church, a church of true Christian people. So Lambert went to Philip and drew up his scheme. Philip was on the point of accepting it but he thought that perhaps he had better consult Luther first, and he did so. Luther by this time had changed his mind, and strongly advised Philip not to do this. The result was that Lambert’s ideas were never put into practice there. Lambert then took a post as lecturer in the new University of Marburg and died about 1530. The whole thing came to an end at that point.

That incident provokes the following remark about Luther. It does seem to me to be increasingly clear that Luther never really thought out his doctrine of the Church truly. He believed, of course, in the Church, and in the true Church; he was concerned to bring back the Church of the New Testament, but I do suggest that he never really thought it through. We have been reminded that Calvin did so in a way that Luther never did. Indeed I think that Luther can be quite honestly and fairly described as an opportunist.

Now that is not a criticism in a sense. We have got to remember the position in which Luther found himself. He had rediscovered the doctrine of justification by faith only and had experienced its liberating power, and what he desired was that that be made known to all everywhere. His chief idea of the Church was that it is a body that does that. But it seems to me that he never worked it out in detail and the result was that he was always improvising. He would often change his mind and his opinion according to changing circumstances. I have already shown that he did so over this one particular matter. He gets influenced by events and he goes back to an idea and rejects it again, and so on. He was a truly great man, and one cannot help but admire him even at this particular point. Yet we do know that what he said and taught tended to be not only adopted but hardened into fixed dogma which has influenced the Lutheran Church ever since. This throws light on the subsequent history of the Christian Church; it emphasizes the whole danger of regarding any man as an ultimate oracle and everything he said and did and thought as the only rule.

We come now to another man who is much more important in this connection, and that is Martin Bucer or Butzer, of Strasburg. He was a man above all others who became concerned about the great need of discipline. You will remember that he influenced John Calvin a good deal because Calvin spent a number of years in Strasburg with Bucer and found his wife there. He was certainly influenced by Bucer in his whole attitude to the need of discipline. I think it is fair to say that Bucer struggled with this problem in a sense more than any one of these men, and what he was concerned about above all else was that discipline in the Church should be ecclesiastical and not by the civil power. That was the thing for which he fought and contended, and he had to go on doing so for a number of years.

Bucer published a book in 1546 bearing the title The Need and Failure of the Churches and How to Improve Them, and he approached the whole problem in a thoroughly biblical manner. He has been attacked as being a biblicist; well, that is just a compliment to him in that he was concerned to base everything upon the plain teaching of the Scriptures. He drew up a scheme in terms of this which continued for a few years in spite of great opposition, and in the end, owing to a political event, Bucer and a friend had to leave the country and they came to England. In a few years he had died and the whole thing came to nothing. Indeed his ideas were rejected and what he had inaugurated was quite deliberately undone.

Those were the chief attempts at this idea in the sixteenth century. As we hurry on to the seventeenth century, we come to a most important man, a most important name—Philip Jacob Spener. He has been called “the father of Pietism,” and has had a great influence on the religious life of our country through the Moravians and ultimately the Methodists in the eighteenth century. He was born a Lutheran and was a very able man. He was early influenced by the book of Arndt called What Is True Christianity? and also, let us not forget (because there is a two-way traffic in these matters), greatly influenced by a famous book called The Practice of Piety, by Lewis Bayley, one time Bishop of Bangor in North Wales.

Under these influences Spener became quite a remarkable teacher and preacher. He got on to this whole idea of the ecclesiola in this way. He was, as I say, a great and influential preacher, influential in the sense that a number of young men students and others listening to him regularly were so moved by his preaching that they wanted further instruction from him, and asked if he would be good enough to meet with them. That is how the whole thing started. He began to meet with these men in his own house to start with, then in other houses, and then in public buildings and so on, the whole idea being to give further instruction to these people who were anxious to learn and to live a holy life.

Spener, again, was an orthodox Lutheran. He did not desire to change anything in the realm of doctrine, he did not want to go out of the Church; he was not concerned, in a sense, about reforming the Church. What he was concerned about was the life and piety of the Church; and so he began to meet with these people. He formed what he called Collegia Pietatis, and to help them he published a book called Pia Desideria which has recently been republished and is available in this country.1 Translated, this title means, “Earnest desires for a reform of the true Evangelical Church,” and it is a most important and valuable book. In it Spener analyzes the position and causes of the spiritual decline, and what, in his view, can be done with respect to it, and so on.

Spener was actively opposed to the idea of separation and he produced a whole series of arguments against it. These were that: the possibility of affecting the others in the Church for good is forfeited, and a breach of love is committed; a wound is torn in the side of Christ’s body, already sufficiently split and rent; the papists are given an opportunity for derision; it is contrary to the example of divine patience shown by the Savior and also by the Apostles and Prophets; the separatists injure themselves; and one separation always leads to another. True Christians must therefore not think of going out and separating; what they must do is to form these “colleges” within the churches, and then as they grow and their influence increases they will affect the whole lump.

Another who was contemporary with Spener, though thirty years younger, was again one who has had a great deal of influence on the Christian life of this country, August Herman Francke. You may have heard of him in connection with the work of George Müller and Müller’s Orphan Homes. Francke is famous for the orphanage which he began, and George Müller is not the only one who borrowed his idea. George Whitefield did exactly the same thing in the eighteenth century, and Howel Harris had the idea for his community at Trevecca also from Francke.

It has been rightly said about Francke and Spener that what animated them was the desire to stress the inner spiritual life and experience as over against “the secularization of the State Church, the ecclesiasticism of orthodoxy, the purely external Christianity that had developed and the petrification of doctrine.” In the seventeenth century Lutheranism developed into a kind of scholasticism. The term “petrification” is quite a fair one. Doctrine had become petrified, it was lifeless, it was useless, it was something purely intellectual. Pietism was a protest, if you like, against formalism.

These two men fought this battle thoroughly and had to suffer a lot. They were both very able theologians and commentators. It is tragedy that we in this country are so lacking in literature on these two men and in translations of their writings. Wherever they went, and they had to move from one place to another, they started these “colleges” or ecclesiolae, and they certainly had a potent influence upon the life of Germany.

One man influenced by them—and he is the next I have to mention—is none other than Count Zinzendorf, who, of course, belongs mainly to the eighteenth century. Now here again was a man who started as a very orthodox Lutheran and did not want to leave the Lutheran Church. He is an interesting case from the standpoint of this idea of the ecclesiolae because, having started with it, he departed from it. I shall be showing in a moment how that is a tendency that is inherent and incipient, it seems to me, in the whole idea; and in the case of Zinzendorf, as you know, it did eventually lead to a separation and to the formation of the United Brethren, or Moravian Brethren, which became a sectarian body.

Experiments in England

There, we have looked very hurriedly at the history of this idea on the Continent of Europe. I could mention other countries also. This influence came into Holland as well; in fact there was an attempt at something like this in most countries, especially where the works of Spener and Francke became well known.

But turning to this country, what do we find? Here is a most interesting thing. Were the Puritans believers in the ecclesiola in ecclesia? There is only one answer, and that is that they were not, strange though it may sound at first. Puritanism at its outset was a movement, a spirit, an influence, but not in terms of the idea of an ecclesiola. It was a school of thought, it was not even a society, or a defined group. But the material point for us is that the Puritans were not concerned to form these nuclei within the Church. Many of them in practice seemed to be doing that, but I think it can be pointed out that that was not their intention or their objective. If it did happen it was a kind of accident, because the majority in the church did not respond to what they were anxious to do for them. They never consciously went out to set up these “little churches within the church,” indeed their primary object was to influence the whole of the Church of England, and to carry on the reform which they felt had stopped instead of going on and completing itself. So they do not come under this particular heading.

Has this idea, then, no advocates in this country? It has. There is a famous example of this in the case of Anthony Horneck. It is he who really first started this idea in this country, and he did so in 1678. He was German, a very able man, and a very able preacher. He became the preacher at the Savoy Chapel about 1671, and, again, in a most interesting way he was driven, as it were, to form an ecclesiola in exactly the same way as Spener. It was entirely the result of his preaching. He influenced able, thoughtful young men and they came to him with the request that he should meet with them. He began to do so, and out of that the whole idea developed, and from his example the thing spread widely. As in the previous examples they again met every week, and Horneck was very strict in his discipline. He would not allow discussion on controverted points of theology; such discussions were entirely banned. The gatherings were intended to be meetings for devotional purposes. I must go on repeating this because the primary idea which they all certainly had in all places and at all times was devotional rather than primarily theological.

Others began to follow and to form the same kind of societies. Here I must put in a note. You may have read of “Societies for the Reformation of Manners.” Now they are not strictly speaking ecclesiolae in ecclesia at all; they had a different object and intention, they had a more purely practical purpose. But the question is, why did Horneck and others ever resort to this expedient of “the little church within the church”? The answer again is a profound dissatisfaction with the spiritual state and condition of the Church of England. As the result of what had happened in 1662, and the influence of the Restoration period headed by King Charles II and his company, the state of the Church spiritually speaking had sunk to such a low level that these men felt that this was the only thing to do. Again it was the second best, but they felt that it was the only thing to do.

Another great name in this connection is that of Josiah Woodward who preached in Poplar. I cannot stay with him. He wrote an account of these societies, and the result of the publication of his book,2 which passed very quickly through several editions, was that the whole idea became extremely popular and these “Religious societies” as they were called (they were nothing but these ecclesiolae) spread all over the country. Thus when you come to the time of George Whitefield you will find that when he began to be used of God in that phenomenal manner he told his converts to go to these societies at Bristol, London, and in other places. He recognized their value, although by this time they had lost most of their spirituality, and it was his hope that they might help his converts and that they, in turn, might be helped by the converts.

Thus we come on to the eighteenth century. Another man who introduced and practiced this idea in his church was William Grimshaw, of Haworth. Another was Samuel Walker, of Truro. His case is interesting and very important, especially because of his correspondence, not to say controversy, with John Wesley. Samuel Walker really formed an ecclesiola in his church. Henry Venn did the same thing in Huddersfield, and Charles Simeon did it in Cambridge.

What of Methodism? Here again is a most interesting case. Methodism is, and is not, an illustration of this at one and the same time, very much in the same way as happened in the case of Zinzendorf. The Wesleys, and Whitefield for that matter, and, of course, the Countess of Huntingdon in particular, are a difficult case for this reason, that they were not content to stop at an ecclesiola in ecclesia, but went beyond that. They of course were first and foremost concerned about the care of their converts; that was their controlling idea. They could see that their converts could not fit in to the churches as they then were, and they felt that they must make some provision for them. So that in that respect even at the very beginning there is a difference between them and the idea behind the ecclesiolae. With the Methodists it was not so much a calling out of the most Christian people and forming them into a society, but the needs of the new converts of the revival, and what could be done for them. Others of course were allowed to join. In the case of John Wesley he would admit to his societies people who were not members of the Church of England, so there he definitely departs from this whole idea of the ecclesiola. And not only that. Because of his organizing genius, it seems to me that from the very beginning there was a very powerful and prominent sectarian tendency in the Methodist societies, and the moment the Conference was organized and arranged I feel he had already crossed the line. It is all very well to say Wesley died a member of the Church of England. You can recognize many things on paper, but what really matters is what you do in practice. He really was a sectarian from the time of the starting of the annual Conference, although he tried to argue that it was not so. But from the beginning it was surely quite inevitable that Methodism should become a distinct and separate body.

The case of Brethrenism (Plymouth) by definition does not call for consideration because it is essentially separatist.

There is our historical review except for one further case. I think always that the most perfect illustration of this idea of the ecclesiola in ecclesia that can be found is in the case of Norway. There was a great revival in that country in the early part of the last century, the main leader of which was a farmer of the name of Hauge. He held very strongly that his converts must not leave the moribund Lutheran Church of Norway, so what he did was to organize them within the Church and he called it the “inner mission.” It is still there today. The famous Professor Hallesby belonged to this “inner mission.” They are within the Lutheran Church, but they are a distinct and separate body within it. They have their own seminary, their own foreign mission society, their own schools, and so on. That is, perhaps, the most perfect example of an ecclesiola in ecclesia that has ever been known.

Failure of These Experiments

What happened to these efforts, these experiments in forming little churches within the churches? The answer is that with the notable exception of Norway they all ended in failure. Luther, as we have seen, himself came to the conclusion that the idea was impracticable because he could not find the people, could not find a sufficient number of good Christian people to form such an ecclesiola. There were also the other factors to which I have referred. In the case of Bucer, as I have told you, it ended in ultimate failure. I know that political factors came in, and that circumstances made a very big difference particularly in his case, but the point is that it came to nothing.

But I want to go further and to suggest that this whole idea is bound to come to nothing for various reasons. Here are some of them.

Is it not inevitable that the larger portion of the Church, which you may call if you like the nominal Church, will always resent this? If you divide up your church and say “I am going to call out the true Christians and I am going to have special meetings for them,” what effect is that going to have upon the others? It is bound to arouse resentment and opposition; and it has invariably done so. So that far from helping these other people you create within them a spirit of antagonism.

Second, is there not implicit in it, as I have suggested, a sectarian element in its very essence? You are causing a division.

Then another factor which has always militated against this idea is that it has always produced tension over the question of churchmanship and over the relationship of the minister to this. Imagine a minister, a non-evangelical minister, a “dead” minister, as it were, in a church where such an ecclesiola is formed and in which the people are entitled to choose their own leader. It is inevitable that tensions are bound to arise.

Another cause of trouble—and they all had this, including Spener and Francke, was in connection with excesses. Some people are always ready to go too far and to abuse the privileges. Discussion tended to become wrangling, and the relating of intimate personal experiences and feelings is always likely to lead to trouble, and so the authorities have to intervene.

Another inherent defect in this idea, and again it is practically inevitable, is spiritual pride—spiritual pride in these people whom you call out, and who are ready to be called out because they regard themselves as being better than the others. And there is nothing more dangerous to the soul than spiritual pride.

A further difficulty arose in this way. This idea is all right as long as you have an evangelical minister. But what happens when he leaves and is replaced by a non-evangelical minister? This happened in the case of Samuel Walker. He opposed Wesley. He told the latter that he must not organize his societies as he was doing, that the right method, the only safe method, was a group within the church guided by the minister himself. Samuel Walker scarcely allowed anybody to speak at all, but did all the speaking himself, even in the ecclesiola. He was so concerned that none of the sectarian tendency should come in. However, what actually happened was that when Samuel Walker died, the members of his ecclesiola left the church, St. Mary’s, Truro, and the majority of them joined the two Countess of Huntingdon’s churches in Cornwall. Thus the whole experiment came to an end. Exactly the same thing happened when Henry Venn left Huddersfield and went to the little village of Yelling. The ecclesiola disappeared in Huddersfield. Venn got into trouble over this because, having gone from Huddersfield to Yelling, his successor did not carry on in the same way, and the members of the ecclesiola wrote to Venn for advice and instruction. He gave it to them, and thereby, of course, broke the rules. He should not have done that. A minister who interferes in his former church in that way is asking for trouble. Venn regretted afterwards that he had ever done this.

The point is that for these various reasons the experiments of “the little church within the church” failed. All this is a sheer matter of history; one of two things happened to them all. They either failed in the way I have been describing, or, second, they ended definitely in separation and the formation of a new church. That happened, as I have shown, in the case of Methodism in England. It happened in exactly the same way with Calvinistic Methodism in Wales, which became a separate denomination in Wales in 1811.

Justifying These Experiments

That leads to the next vital question—can these ecclesiolae in ecclesia be justified on any grounds? First, can they be justified on scriptural grounds? How do you justify this procedure? Many of us I know have been tempted to do this very thing in our churches. You have had the idea of calling together your truly Christian people to pray for revival or something like that. Well, is there any justification for this on scriptural grounds? These men were scriptural men as I have been emphasizing and they did quote the Scriptures in defense of their procedure. What were they?

These are the only Scriptures they could find to justify this procedure of the ecclesiola in ecclesia: “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst” (Matt. 18:20); “And I myself also am persuaded of you, my brethren, that ye also are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another” (Rom. 15:14); “Speaking to yourselves in psalms and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord” (Eph. 5:19); “Wherefore comfort one another with these words” (1 Thess. 4:18); “Now we exhort you, brethren, warn them that are unruly, comfort the feebleminded, support the weak, be patient toward all men” (1 Thess. 5:19); “For every one that useth milk is unskillful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe” (Heb. 5:13). That does indicate that there are different kinds of people in the church; does it do any more? “Let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more as ye see the day approaching” (Heb. 10:24–25). Those were the Scriptures that they produced, and the questions we have to ask is whether any one of them is really applicable to this point? Does any one of them justify the formation of an ecclesiola in ecclesia?

The New Testament clearly recognizes that there are different kinds of people in the Church. There are some who are strong, and some who are weak. There are some who are called “ye that are spiritual,” implying that there are those who are less spiritual. There are all these kinds of divisions and differences and distinctions recognized in the members of the Church. We are always exhorted to bear one another’s burdens, and the strong must help the weak, and so on. But surely none of these justify this kind of drawing out of some from among the others? Not one of these texts does so in any shape or form. I would go as far as to say that this procedure is one which is directly contrary to the New Testament teaching. If you do regard the Church as a gathering of true believers, and if you insist upon the three marks of a true church, where is there even a vestige of Scriptural substantiation for this kind of practice? The New Testament is always concerned about the whole church. It does not recognize any separation and special treatment for a nucleus. Its teaching always is that the members of the Church are sharing and are participating together in these things and are enjoying them together. Surely the New Testament does not cater for anything but that?

The advocates of this idea did not mention, any of them, as far as I can make out, the Parable of the Tares; and rightly so of course, because that does not deal with this kind of issue at all. It is concerned about the question of judgment, but in no way does it justify the minister, or anyone else, performing an act of separation and calling out certain people for special treatment and for special instructions. So it seems to me that we are left without any scriptural warrant at all for this procedure. This will, of course, finally determine our whole attitude toward the question.

There is one special question which I should like to raise before I come to a few final questions which this whole story seems to me to pose for us. Some may feel, perhaps, that this is the idea that we ought to adopt as evangelical people at this present time. If there is going to be a great world church does not this teaching and this idea indicate to us that we as evangelicals should be the nucleus, the ecclesiola in the great world ecclesia? Many believe that we shall “stay in” in order to infiltrate and influence in an evangelical direction—“In it to win it” as someone has put it.

What is the answer to that? It seems to me that that can be negatived quite easily in this way. As I emphasized in the definition, none of these people were concerned primarily about doctrine. There was no difficulty about that; they were all concerned about practice and about spirituality. Can anyone suggest that any of the men I have mentioned would allow or even tolerate within the Church men who deny most of the cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith? We know perfectly well that they would not. They had separated from Rome and they denounced Rome and her teaching. Not only that, we know what they did with people whom they regarded as heretics. They expelled them, and some of them advocated that they should even be put to death. So there is no case for the argument that we can borrow from this idea of the ecclesiola in ecclesia for supporting the idea that we can remain in the same general “world church” as men who are not only heretics but who are notorious opponents of the truth of God as it is in Christ Jesus our Lord as we see it.

Eight Urgent Questions

Let me therefore put to you what I regard as the urgent questions that this story of the ecclesiola in ecclesia idea raises for us.

Can a view of the Church which leads to the necessity of forming an ecclesiola in ecclesia possibly be right? The great Reformation, the great divide had just taken place, yet Luther by 1522 was already having to think of this idea. Was not there something essentially wrong with his whole idea of the Church? If you have to resort to this expedient does it not ipso facto suggest that there is something incomplete in the Reformation because there is something wrong in your whole view of the Church? That question arises, and it is a most important one.

The second question, obviously must be: what is a Christian? Luther said that the majority of the members of the Church were not fit to come to the Communion Table. Lambert definitely described them as heathen. And yet they were members of the Church! He said they were heathen who needed to be evangelized. Well, we have heard of people today who say that they regard the church as “a good place to fish in.” Is that a New Testament conception? Can people whom you regard as heathen be Christians and church members? You say, “But how and who are we to decide, how can you define these matters?” But if you call them “heathen” you are defining. A man cannot be a heathen and a Christian at the same time. So if you call them heathen you are saying that they are not Christians.

Then, third, what is the Christian church? We are really facing this fundamental question. This issue brings it up. It was there immediately after the Reformation; it is with us as acutely today.

Fourth, who should be admitted to church membership?

Fifth, are not we today still tending to do what the Reformers did in this whole matter? Are we not failing to learn the lesson of the centuries and failing to go back to the New Testament? I think we have got to face that question. We have been reminded several times already in this conference that the Reformers did what they did at certain points because that was the position that they found and inherited. We see clearly in the case of Luther that it was accepting what he “found” that drove him to such depression that he had even to resort to the idea of an ecclesiola in ecclesia. Should he not have see that? But above all, should not we learn the lesson that these men teach us? We can look on objectively at what they did, and what they failed to do; but are we not tending to repeat the selfsame error?

I would put as my sixth point the familiar argument which says that if you reject this idea, if instead you call for separation you will have to do exactly the same thing again in a hundred years or so. That is an argument that is often produced in favor of the ecclesiola idea. Spener used it. He said that you would find if you start separating you will have to go on separating. That, of course, was the famous Roman Catholic charge against Protestantism. It is most interesting to note how many Protestants, even evangelicals, still use it against other Protestants. It is really a Roman Catholic argument, and they are the only people who are really entitled to use it. But in any case it is a foolish argument. Who ever claimed that we are in a position to legislate for the Church in perpetuity? We are only responsible for the Church in our own day and generation. Of course you may have to go on doing this. We pray that you do not have to; but in any case the question for us is, what we are doing, how we are facing our position and the challenge of our present position? What our grandchildren may do is not our responsibility; but we are responsible for what is happening now.

Then I go on to the seventh question. Take that argument that Spener used, and it is still being used, that if instead of forming the ecclesiola you go out, you will lose your opportunity of influencing those people and that therefore you must stay in with them in order that you may influence them and make Christians of them. There is only one thing to say about this—it seems to me to be based entirely on a lack of faith in the power of the Holy Spirit. It is true to say today that the religious bodies and denominations that are growing most rapidly in the United States of America are the ones that are most rigorous and which have the highest standard. In any case we have evidence before our very eyes that our staying among such people does not seem to be converting them to our view but rather seems to be lowering the spiritual temperature of those who are staying among them and increasing the tendency to doctrinal accommodation and compromise. But in any case it seems to me to be sheer lack of faith in the power of the Holy Spirit. We are forgetting the “doctrine of the Remnant.” We are trusting expediency and expedients and not saying that if we are faithful the Holy Spirit has promised to honor us and our testimony however small our numbers and however despised by “the wise and prudent.”

So I come to the last question which seems to me to be raised, and I think it is the most acute question of all. God forbid that this last question should ever cause a division among us who are evangelical but it does seem to me that this story of the ecclesiola in ecclesia raises this great question. It was there at the beginning with Luther; it is still here. Should we start with the situation and the position as it is and try to reform it, or should we start with the New Testament and apply it? It comes to that. The Reformers began with the situation as they found it, and as we have been reminded several times in the conference, their policy was to reform it. If their premise was right I think their procedure can be justified. You must then be patient and diplomatic and so on.

But the great question I am raising is this—were they right in that original question? Where do you start? Do you start with the existing situation and try by adjustment and accommodation and meetings and fellowship and readiness to give and take for the sake of the body that is already there to get the best modifications you can? Is it that? History seems to show that if you do start with that you will soon be having to think of starting an ecclesiola in ecclesia because of the dead wood in the Church. That seems to me to be the argument of history. Do you start with that then?

Or do you rather start by asking, “What is the New Testament teaching?” Let us start with that. Our one object and endeavor should be to put that into practice, cost what it may, believing that as we are trying to conform to the New Testament pattern we shall be blessed of God. It is a difficult, it is a perplexing, it is a vexing question. As I have tried to remind you, in all fairness, the Reformers were concerned to bring back the New Testament idea; but they failed. There was this kind of polarity in their thinking and they kept on swinging between two basic ideas. That is why I am raising this as the ultimate and fundamental question.

This is the question that remains with us, and the Ecumenical Movement, it seems to me, has made it a more urgent question than it has been for several centuries. The leaders of that movement are saying, let us throw everything into the melting pot. They are not actually doing that because they are committed to the principle of modification and accommodation. But they are saying it. Well, let us say it! Let us say that we are living in a situation where we really must and can face these things in a new and fundamental manner. Let us determine to do so in the light of the New Testament teaching and not in the light of “the scientific man of the mid-twentieth century” or in the light of “the results of scholarship and of latest knowledge.” It is a profound, it is a fundamental question, and I believe that every one of us will not only have to face it but also have to decide one way or the other, and that very soon. May God keep us all humble, may He give us great charity, give us great patience, but above all may He give us a single eye to His glory and to His praise.

Part 2

One Steadfast High Intent

1966

7

CHARLES FINNEY ON REVIVAL

P. E. G. Cook

Each week during the winter of 1834–35 a tall gaunt figure of stern countenance mounted the pulpit of Chatham Street Chapel, New York, to deliver a lecture on “Revivals of Religion.” This young Presbyterian minister, whose steely blue eyes “swept his audience like searchlights,” was Charles Grandison Finney.

The New York Evangelist, a weekly launched in 1830 to support the type of revival work associated with Finney, in an otherwise unsympathetic religious press, printed his lectures as they were delivered. Shortly after the series concluded they were published in April 1835 in book form.1 Twelve thousand copies sold within a few months, and by the time the book was reviewed in that same year by Professor A. B. Dod in the Princeton Review it was in its fifth edition. Dod welcomed its publication, believing, as he thought, that its erroneous doctrine would soon be obvious to all, and that the influence of the “New Divinity,” as it was called, would in consequence rapidly decline.2 History has proved how wrong he was.

The publication of his Lectures on Revivals of Religion swept Finney into international prominence and extended his influence and teaching far beyond the bounds of the English-speaking world. The influence of Finney upon the thinking and practice of evangelicals in this century has been far more marked than that of C. H. Spurgeon. His Lectures in whole and in part have been translated into many languages and published in countless editions, and have become the raison d’ être ever since of all new methods of evangelism. Most of what has been written on the subject of revival during the last hundred years clearly reflects Finney’s thought, and very frequently appears to be an uncritical repetition of his views. Missionary work has been influenced by his ideas and outstanding missionaries, such as Goforth of Manchuria and J. O. Fraser of Lisuland, have been captivated by his teaching. Evangelists from Moody to Graham are his offspring; and books such as R. A. Torrey’s How to Work for Christ^3 are, in the main, a rehash and development of Finney’s thought.

Early Life and Conversion

Most of what we know about Finney’s early life and religious experiences is derived from his autobiography and frequent personal references in his lectures. He needs to be read with care, therefore, because it is all too easy to interpret one’s own religious experience in terms of the doctrine we would like to find there.

Finney was born in the state of Connecticut in 1792, and shortly afterwards his family moved westwards to Oneida, the central part of New York State. Here he was brought up among the settlers knowing little or nothing of true religion. He was sent away from home for some education, after which he did a little school teaching, until he settled in the year 1818 at a place called Adams not far from the St. Lawrence River. He entered a lawyer’s office where the legal work readily appealed to his precise and logical mind.

The Jefferson County, for so it was called, had been blessed at this time by gracious movements of the Spirit. A revival had swept those parts in 1815 and the Presbyterian church which Finney began to attend in Adams had been established as a result. Finney was then of a sceptical frame of mind. His interest was mainly intellectual and he argued frequently with the godly young minister, the Rev. George W. Gale, who did all he could to help Finney. In his Autobiography^4 Finney tells us that he “criticized his sermons unmercifully,” but in spite of this Mr. Gale seems to have had some effect because it was at this time that Finney began to read the Bible and attend the prayer meetings. Though he found plenty of fault in the believers’ prayers both then and afterwards, he became so restless that, he tells us, “A little consideration convinced me that I was by no means in a state of mind to go to Heaven if I should die.”5 His account of his conversion three years later gives the impression that this church and other believers had no part in his coming to Christ. There are good reasons for believing, however, that his conversion was brought about by the preaching of a Jedidiah Burchard who came into the area during another revival of religion in 1821.6

The American states had been favored with numerous revivals since 1799. An appendix of twenty letters in Sprague’s Lectures on Revivals, a book first published in 1832, shows how extensive these revivals had been.7 The Jefferson County in which Finney lived had been through a period of almost continuous revival since 1815 and the Eastern States since 1807. When George Gale began his ministry at Adams in 1819 sixty-five converts were added to the little church; and in the year of Finney’s conversion, 1821, almost a thousand souls were added to the churches in the Jefferson County and of these over one hundred were in the town where Finney lived and in which the movement began. It is strange, therefore, that Finney should represent his own conversion as being detached from these influences, the result only of his own resolution and will, and to imply later that these churches of Calvinistic persuasion were in the main spiritually dead. The spiritual quickening in the year of Finney’s conversion was evidence of a supernatural work of God. There can be no question as to the true inward work of grace upon Finney’s soul; and the manner of his conversion and the powerful outpouring of the Holy Spirit which he experienced immediately afterwards stand in very marked contrast to the man-centered emphasis found in his preaching and theology.

The impression created by reading Finney’s Revivals of Religion and his Autobiography is that the opposition he faced in his own work was due to hyper-Calvinism which had held the churches in a deepfreeze of formalism until he arrived on the scene with his own liberating doctrine. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The charge of hyper-Calvinism which Finney and Mahan lay against the churches in their autobiographies was a popular red herring to divert attention away from the “new measures” they and their followers introduced. There was little substance in the charge, for even Mahan admits that God was powerfully visiting the churches before Finney’s time under what he calls “high-Calvinistic preaching.” He is at a loss to understand this and even suggests that the doctrine of men like Edwards, the Tennant brothers, and Nettleton tended to quench true religion!8 The men who opposed Finney did so mainly on account of his intolerable attitude to his brethren and the new measures he introduced. They were men who believed in revivals, and many of them, among whom was the notable Dr. Asahel Nettleton, had themselves been mightily used by God in these days of visitation. The churches were being constantly quickened by God’s Spirit, and the doctrines being preached in these revivals in which Finney was converted were the biblical doctrines of grace.

It was the very doctrines under which Finney was converted that he was so soon to oppose. He had a deep and lasting affection for his minister, the young George Gale, but this high regard did not extend to Gale’s teaching, at least, not until Gale later capitulated under the impact of Finney’s powerful personality. “Not only were Mr. Gale’s theological views such as to cripple his usefulness,” remarks Finney,9 but “his practical views were equally erroneous.” We have already seen, however, that Mr. Gale’s usefulness was far from being crippled. His doctrine and that of the other ministers used in these revivals was at that time based upon the Westminster Confession of Faith. Finney’s view of this Confession is stated in his Autobiography: “I could not feel any respect for a document that would undertake to impose on mankind such dogmas as those, sustained, for the most part, by passages of Scripture that were totally irrelevant, and not in a single instance sustained by passages which, in a court of law, would have been considered at all conclusive.”10 Finney here betrays what is the overruling criterion of all his thinking in assessing the rightness or wrongness of doctrine: it is the rational principle. Finney would accept nothing in his system of thought which was not immediately intelligible and reasonable to the mind of man. Human logic and reason were for him the arbiters of truth. His first lecture in his volume Systematic Theology, entitled “How We Attain to the Knowledge of Certain Truths,” is a hotch-potch of Kantian philosophy. He ascribes infallibility to the intuitions of human reason, even on matters of religion, declaring that “. . . there can be no error in the à priori intuitions of reason.”11 The thousand page superstructure of his Systematic Theology is erected upon this perilous foundation. It is not surprising therefore, that Finney’s theology of man was thoroughly Pelagian, and that his view of salvation was semi-Pelagian. There could be little recognition of divine grace because man never accepts by the light of natural reason his need of total dependence upon God as Lord and Savior.

Early Ministry

Soon after his conversion Finney abandoned the legal profession to study for the ministry under the direction of the St. Lawrence Presbytery. He was licensed to preach as a missionary in December 1823 and proceeded to the northern part of the Jefferson County where his preaching appears to have met with success. In 1825 he transferred his attentions to the churches of the western area of New York State. For seven years he itinerated in the area, holding missions in the churches and generating a great deal of religious excitement and activity. It was these missions which became known as “the Western Revivals” or “the Finney Revivals” and which provided Finney with the material and principles upon which his Lectures on Revivals of Religion are almost exclusively based. His book is his apologia for the doctrine he preached and the methods he employed during those turbulent years. We do well to note that the book which has come to be regarded as an authoritative handbook on revivals and contained what W. H. Harding claims to be “probably the most exhaustive analytical studies on the subject that can be found in any language,”12 is based merely upon Finney’s own experiences over the years 1825–32, in one small part of the New York State.

The writings and claims of a man like Finney, whom A. T. Pierson warmly describes as “a born reformer, impassioned to the borders of impetuosity, positive to the borders of bigotry, and original to the borders of heresy,”13 need to be read with care. Finney’s glowing estimate of the importance of his own work, and his strictures upon the spiritual state of the churches and other ministries of his day have been accepted far too uncritically. His extravagant claims and his serious charges against other believers are not to be accepted just because he made them. They must be weighed against other evidence. It must be remembered that his lectures were delivered before the test of time had sufficiently proved the value of his work, but it is interesting to learn that even so shortly after the conclusion of the “Western Revivals” Finney himself was beginning to question their effectiveness. In his preface to his book published in 1835 he writes, “On my return from the Mediterranean, I learned with pain that the spirit of revival had greatly declined in the United States, and that a spirit of jangling and controversy alarmingly prevailed.”14 This was a correct description of the state into which the churches had fallen since his departure from them less than three years before he wrote.

Finney, undoubtedly possessing a strong streak of megalomania, was a man quite unwilling to learn from others and in his writings there is virtually no recognition of other men who labored with him, of whom there were many, nor does he concede that he owed anything to others. He often refers to Jonathan Edwards with approval, giving the impression that he respected the views of that great man, but he does in fact entirely depart from them. W. G. McLoughlin, Jr., in his cynical and otherwise generally unreliable book, Modern Revivalism, aptly sums up the difference between Edwards and Finney: “One saw God as the centre of the universe, the other saw man. One believed that revivals were ‘prayed down,’ and the other that they were ‘worked up,’”15 There is no real attempt in Finney’s book on revivals to understand the biblical teaching on the subject. He rarely quotes the Scriptures either in this book or in his Systematic Theology. Finney’s work and teaching must therefore be carefully examined in the light of historical facts and the Word of God.

Doctrinal Teaching

Finney’s Lectures on Revivals of Religion contain the doctrine and describe the methods he used in the “Western Revivals.” The “new measures” as Finney’s methods came to be called were the logical application of his doctrine. Methods in evangelism can never be discussed apart from doctrine. No one would have agreed with this more than Finney, and his imitators have need to consider it. Finney listed the “new measures” as follows: “They are Anxious Meetings, Protracted Meetings and the Anxious Seat.” Protracted Meetings and Anxious or Inquiry Meetings had been common, however, in Presbyterian and Congregational churches before his time. Nettleton made frequent use of “Inquiry Meetings,”16 and Protracted Meetings were employed by James Davenport as early as the 1740s. The main innovation of Finney’s, though the Methodists had previously made some use of it, was the “Anxious Seat” and associated with it, the appeal for people to respond to the message publicly by coming forward before the gathered congregation to occupy the “Anxious Seat”—usually a pew at the front of the church.

What was the doctrine behind this and other methods of persuasion employed by Finney? His view of God appears to be that of Dr. Taylor and the New Haven divines whose unorthodox doctrine was being propagated at this time. God is represented as the helpless slave of His creatures’ whims who could neither have permitted nor prevented the Fall of man. “It is vain to talk of His omnipotence preventing sin,” declares Finney. He distinguishes between what he calls God’s moral and physical government. God is sovereign in the physical realm but in the moral realm He is limited by man’s free will so that His power over man is reduced to that of persuasion only. The only way in which God can influence man is by presenting to his mind what Finney calls “infinite motives,” by which he means such things as the blessings and advantages of accepting the gospel, and in this way God tries to persuade men to adopt a godly life.

It logically follows that the object of preaching is to present truth for the consideration of man in such a way as is most likely to persuade him to accept it. Finney asserts that, “Grace has made the salvation of every human being secure, who can be persuaded, by all the influences that God can wisely bring to bear upon him, to accept the offer of salvation.” Grace has done this, and only this: made salvation possible for all and actual for none. So the purpose of preaching is persuasion, and the function of the Holy Spirit in all this is that He “gets and keeps the attention of the mind,” there being no direct or immediate work of the Spirit upon the mind. Evil motives and good motives battle for man’s patronage as God and Satan compete for the prize, and the Spirit’s work is to keep the impact of the truth “in warm contact with the mind” so that the evil motives are excluded while sinners are being persuaded to accept the truth. This teaching reminds one of the Communist brainwashing technique by which the mind is subjected to a continuous bombardment of Communist ideas to the exclusion of all else until finally the mind breaks down in an abreaction of self-defense and the poor victim is “converted” to Communism.

The Spirit’s work upon a man, according to Finney, is just external. He held that man’s mind has no moral character. It is a neutral agent and its desires can never of themselves be sinful; only when desire is directed toward action can we speak of sin. Any idea of a sinful disposition being the cause of sinful acts he called “utter nonsense.” Finney did not teach, therefore, that man’s nature is in need of regeneration, only his choices. It is little wonder that his view of holiness was so legalistic. He denies in effect that men are “by nature the children of wrath.” Man becomes a sinner on account of the environment into which he is born; this world so full of evil motives quickly corrupts his natal innocence.

It follows from this doctrine that the new birth is not an inner regeneration of the heart, but merely a change of choice. The Holy Spirit does not impart a new desire for spiritual things within man’s nature, but simply persuades the will to direct the mind to holy choices rather than sinful choices. “Regeneration consists in the sinner changing his ultimate choice, intention, preference; or, in changing from selfishness to love or benevolence; or, in other words, in turning from the supreme choice of self-gratification, to the supreme love of God and the equal love of his neighbor. Of course the subject of regeneration must be an agent in the work.”17 The sinner regenerates himself; but the word of God shows him how. The sinner converts himself; but the Holy Spirit persuades him to do it.

Finney likens the Spirit’s work to that of an orator with power to sway an audience, and conversions are brought about by persuading men that truth and righteousness are reasonable. Faith is the acceptance of the reasonableness of God’s word rather than a trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. The ability to accept or reject with equal ease belongs to the sinner and God’s power is limited to persuasion. Finney held that the sinner and saint must have the ability to do whatever the Scripture exhorts them to do. This is not a biblical view but one which is based upon philosophical and rational premises. But this was the foundation of all his thought, as the following quotation shows: “That man cannot be under a moral obligation to perform an utter impossibility is a first truth of reason,” he says.18 It may be; but it is not a first truth of Scripture. It was this opinion, that man is able to do what God commands, that led Finney to criticize all prayers which asked God to help sinners to repent and believe the gospel. He thought it an insult to God to ask Him to help men to do what He has commanded them to do, because it suggests that without His help they cannot do these things, and if that were so, thinks Finney, God would be a tyrant. The sinner is quite able to make himself a new heart without God’s help, and likewise the believer does not require any direct help from heaven to be perfect on earth.

Having denied that man has a sinful nature Finney very logically goes on to deny that holiness has anything to do with inward purification. Sin consists mainly of actions, and so therefore does sanctification. “Holiness is obedience to the law of God, and nothing else is,” comments Finney.19

View of Revival

Finney’s view, that the power of God over the sinner is limited to moral persuasion and that preaching is intended mainly as a means of persuasion, led him to the conclusion that any technique and method likely to persuade the sinner to accept Christ is justifiable. He advocated the introduction of dramatic story-telling in order to secure the undivided attention of the listener. The “Anxious Seat” was adopted as a means to bring the human will under moral pressure to take what Finney regarded as a step of faith. “Without new methods,” he declares, “it is impossible that the church should succeed in gaining the attention of the world to the subject of religion.” Novelty and excitement are essential if the cause of true religion is to be revived. All this is in strange contrast to Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 10:3–4, “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds). . . .” The one essential ingredient of success in spiritual work is not the Person and operation of the Holy Spirit, according to Finney, but human ingenuity and technique. Those today who adopt Finney’s methods in the fond belief that they are following his teaching are, in fact, doing the very opposite. Finney’s stress on the need of novelty led him to conclude that each generation must abandon old methods and invent new ones.20 Even Dr. Mahan fails to see the implication of Finney’s teaching when, bemoaning the failure of the “Western Revivals,” he comments, “revival measures, protracted meetings, for example, in a few years, lost all their power.”21

Finney begins his first lecture on revival by quoting Habakkuk 3:2, “O Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in wrath remember mercy.” This verse which stresses the impossibility of a revival of true religion apart from divine intervention is interpreted by Finney as meaning that man will not obey God without the “influence of His Spirit.” He does not understand it to mean that true religion is the work of God, for he declares, “Religion is the work of man. It is something for man to do. It consists in obeying God. It is man’s duty. It is true God induces him to do it. He influences him by His Spirit, because of his great wickedness and reluctance to obey.”22 This is fully consistent with his doctrinal view that the natural man is quite capable of living a godly life if he so chooses. Revival for Finney, consists of a resurgence of religious activity on the part of man; it is non-miraculous. He admits that, “Revivals were formerly regarded as miracles. And it has been so by some even in our day.”23 This is a gross understatement; it had been the prevailing view ever since Edwards, and right up to Finney’s own day.

Finney taught that man can produce revival and that he can produce it whenever he really wants to, because “a revival is nothing else than a new beginning of obedience to God.”24 In using the words “nothing else” Finney has surely forgotten the overwhelming baptism of the Spirit which he had experienced immediately after his conversion and the divine love which God poured out upon his soul in the early months of his own spiritual experience. This was revival; but Finney’s view of revival was cold and legal by comparison. He taught that revival is a natural phenomenon: “It is not a miracle, or dependent on a miracle, in any sense. It is purely philosophical result of the right use of the constituted means—as much so as any other effect produced by the application of means.”25 By “philosophical result” he means one which can be naturally explained in terms of cause and effect; it is not “in any sense” supernatural. It takes place when the “hearts” of Christians are “broken down.” By “hearts” he means “wills,” and by “broken down” he understands a condition in which the will is prepared to choose what is honoring to God.

This view of revival brought Finney to teach that revival could be promoted by man, by which he meant that churches can have a revival whenever they really want one. When the necessary conditions are fulfilled by members being willing to walk in God’s ways and to obey Him perfectly, then revival will be the result, since revival is “nothing else than a new beginning of obedience to God.” The means, therefore, by which revivals are promoted are those which will make believers repent of their sins. But as sin is thought to consist mainly of actions, Finney viewed repentance as a reformation of behavior only. His legalistic preaching was the result of this view of righteousness. Religion primarily consists in doing one’s duty. Our duty is set forth in long lists of “dos” and “don’ts.” He condemns parties and ribbons; and among other things, the drinking of tea and coffee, and actually goes so far as saying that the man who continues drinking tea cannot be a Christian! His censorious spirit is evident in his condemnation of those Christians who leave off reading a portion of Scripture by placing a bookmark between the pages. “It demonstrates,” he says, “that you read rather as a task than for love or reverence for the word of God.” Though Finney was clearly motivated by a burning passion to honor God, which one detects with spiritual profit in all his sermons and writings, his misunderstanding of the gospel meant that the notes of grace and mercy were absent from his preaching and that his treatment of the feelings of the human heart was cruelly severe.

Many of the methods and attitudes common among evangelicals today owe their origin to Finney’s influence. The emphasis in evangelism upon methods and techniques and the stress upon the necessity of creating the right atmosphere are his. The use of the “Anxious Seat,” called in the Salvation Army the “Mercy Seat,” is now popular in the form of open appeals to test meetings. Strong pressure is brought to bear upon people to make “a decision” to follow Christ and this decisionism has detracted from the need of inner regeneration by the Spirit, and of the saving faith which calls upon God for mercy through the merits of Christ. The Christian life is often represented in legalistic terms, with the emphasis upon outward acts rather than a godly spirit, and upon what one does rather than what one is. Adoration in prayer is not popular, and it is often suggested that unless believers get down to the task of making requests of God the prayer meeting is a waste of time. Preaching is very frequently a succession of scolding exhortations instead of a patient exposition of the Word, and Finney’s view that the best preaching is without preparation or notes has been widely expressed. Since religion is a work of man, according to Finney, any failure to produce results reflects upon the spirituality of the believer. Finney argues that the best and wisest preacher is the one who wins most souls, whereas the unsuccessful minister is a man obviously not called of God who has frittered away his time in indolence, being too wicked to do his duty.26 Results in terms of numerics rather than faithfulness has become the rule by which any spiritual work is measured; and if numerical results are forthcoming the absence of faithfulness in doctrine or conduct does not appear to trouble the conscience.

Teaching and Work Evaluated

Finney’s teaching on revival must be rejected because it seriously departs from the biblical emphasis. It is based upon a view of God which insults His sovereignty, a view of man which underestimates the effect of sin, and a view of the Holy Spirit which reduces Him to a powerless and pathetic suppliant. In fact, although Finney himself knew the supernatural work of the Spirit in his own life, his teaching denies the necessity of grace and represents the sinner as his own savior and sanctifier.

His doctrine of revival is unbiblical and, what is more, it does not work in practice. His book is a do-it-yourself revival kit in which he outlines the measures by which revival can be obtained. All a church has to do is to follow the instructions. Many have done this, but have seen no revival. Since the publication of his book and the wide acceptance of his views there have been relatively few revivals. We ask why? There is one answer; the teaching does not work because it is wrong. Finney himself said that, “A revival will cease whenever Christians become mechanical in their attempts to promote it.”27 But nothing has been more responsible for the mechanical view of revival than Finney’s own teaching.

Did Finney’s teaching and methods work in his own day? Were the “Western Revivals” genuine revivals of religion or were they a flurry of religious excitement with little permanent fruit?

The “Western Revivals” extended from 1825–32, but so soon afterwards as 1835 Dr. A. B. Dod, reviewing Finney’s sermons and Lectures on Revival, was able to write without fear of contradiction: “It is now generally understood that the numerous converts of the new measures have been, in most cases, like the morning cloud and the early dew. In some places, not a fifth, or even a tenth part of them remain.”28 Those that did remain were for the most part a constant source of trouble in the churches. Fanaticism and discontent with regular church life fostered by a critical and censorious spirit caused strife and division which left the churches spiritually impoverished. So much for the “Anxious Seat” and the “new measures.”

These comments upon the short-lived spiritual effect of Finney’s revivals are not just the opinion of his critics. One of his fellow-workers, James Boyle, in a letter to Finney dated Christmas Day, 1834, writes: “Let us look over the fields where you and others and myself have laboured as revival ministers, and what is now (i.e. two years later) their moral state? What was their state within three months after we left them? I have visited and revisited many of these fields, and groaned in spirit to see the sad, frigid, carnal, contentious state into which the churches had fallen—and fallen very soon after our first departure from among them.”29

Asa Mahan, President of Oberlin College, where Finney later served as a professor for many years, corroborates this evidence by stating in his autobiography that almost everyone involved in these revivals lapsed back into a state of great spiritual deadness.30

Even Finney, as we have seen, suggests in his preface to the Lectures published in 1835 that the churches were in a sad condition; and in his volume on Systematic Theology published in 1851 he admits that his early converts would “soon relapse again into their former state” and seeks to excuse it on the grounds that during the revivals he taught an imperfect doctrine of sanctification. Speaking of his converts during the “Western Revivals” he confesses that “the great body of them are a disgrace to religion.” The revision of his Lectures on Revivals published in 1868 carried two new lectures, twenty-one and twenty-two, in place of the original lectures on the same subjects.31 The new lectures propounded his revised views on sanctification.

In recent years we have seen Finney’s methods used in evangelism with equally disastrous effects. The appalling declension of large numbers of people who have made a public profession of faith has brought dishonor upon God and made the gospel look like a confidence trick of the worst kind. But whereas Finney was prepared to recognize in this something to be deplored, today it is defended on the grounds that some at least do continue in their profession.

C. H. Spurgeon, preaching in Halifax in the year 1858, on Habakkuk 3:2, “O Lord, revive thy work,” set forth in the course of his address three fundamental principles:

1. Salvation is God’s work.

2. God’s work of grace sometimes needs reviving.

3. No one can revive God’s work, but God himself.

He said, “I have not the slightest atom of faith in any professional revivalism; I have never seen any real good come of it. This I have seen—while the revivalist has been holding special services, the people have been stirred and warmed, and many have professed to be converted; but, alas! in far too many cases, a blast and a blight have been left on the churches for years afterwards, an injury has been done them from which they seemed never to recover. A got-up revival is a sort of spiritual intoxication, producing a kind of arousing of men and women, and yet really leaving them flatter and duller than they were before.”

Conclusion

Having examined Finney’s teaching and work some final conclusion is necessary. Is B. B. Warfield’s devastating attack upon Finney’s theology and labors in his book Perfectionism^32 too severe? His biblical demolition of Finney’s theology is unanswerable. Some reservation, however, about Warfield’s strictures on the “Western Revivals” may be called for on the grounds that a genuine revival of religion was already in progress when Finney arrived on the scene. There can be little doubt that the “Western Revivals” were initially a movement of the Spirit; but Finney superimposed upon the revival a theology and practice which tended to elevate man and devalue the work of the Spirit. In his great eagerness to serve God, Finney went ahead of the Spirit, and the spiritual failure of many who professed faith and the subsequent condition of the churches was an inevitable result.

Finney’s theology and practice gained increasing acceptance in the churches as liberal thought became more influential. Genuine visitations of the Spirit ceased, and were replaced by the visitations of the professional evangelist. Teaching which dishonored His Person quenched the Spirit, so that by 1835 the churches had stopped looking for the miraculous and instead turned away from the biblical doctrine of revival to a man-made doctrine of evangelism. Fowler, writing his official history of Presbyterianism in Central New York^33 in the liberal spirit of the 1870s, does not distinguish between the revivals of the early years and those evangelistic campaigns which followed in the wake of Finney. By describing all these movements as “revivals,” he fails to discern what even Finney’s own supporters detected after 1832 that, whereas the main agent of the movements before 1832 was the Holy Spirit, after 1832 the work became harder because everything had now come to depend upon man. This was what Finney had taught.

Finney began his ministry in revival and ended it in evangelism. And since Finney’s day, evangelism rather than revival has been the confidence of the churches, and will continue to be, until we get back to the biblical doctrine of grace which Finney so flagrantly denied. The Acts of the Apostles are really the acts of the Holy Spirit because biblical evangelism is revival. The products of man-centered evangelism are so unsatisfactory that like Finney and as a result of Finney’s influence through W. E. Boardman^34 and Robert Pearsall Smith^35 evangelicals have developed an unbiblical doctrine of sanctification. The converts of man-centered evangelism have to be taken from the campaign to the convention in order to receive the “Higher Christian Life.” But the Christian life is a higher life from its inception, and the soul that is regenerated by the Spirit is also sanctified by the Spirit. True sanctification is a developing process of ever-increasing growth in grace until it ends with the soul in the presence of Christ bathed in the glory of God.

“What we long for, then,” declares Dr. Bennet Tyler, “is no new way of preaching, no new doctrines that seek to make the strait gate wider, nor yet the mighty power of intellect of burning eloquence; but rather the anointing of the Holy Ghost which is found by close fellowship and holy walking with God; and that real undeniable Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Ghost which is not of man, but of God. For these let us cry to the Lord; for these let us urge Him Whose “heart turned within Him—whose repentings are kindled together,” at the sight of the perishing. Ere the Son of Man appears, let us, day and night, ask, seek, knock, cry—petitioning for those most needful, all-important blessings, from Him who stretched out His hand so gloriously in the days whose history we have before us.”36

8

JOHN OWEN ON

COMMUNICATION FROM GOD

J. I. Packer

If my title were construed according to the Owenian idiom, it would license me to range over the whole field of the Holy Spirit’s work in applying redemption; for John Owen used the word “communication” to cover every divine bestowal of benefit upon man. But I am using the word in its modern restricted sense, and what I propose to explore is John Owens’s account of cognitive communication from God to men—in other words, his doctrine of the Spirit and the Word, his answer to the question, how does God bring men to understand Himself, and to comprehend the world of spiritual reality?

The giving of spiritual understanding is not, of course, an end in itself; as Owen recognizes, it is always to be seen and valued as a means to something further—knowing and enjoying God. But it is a subject in itself, which can be clearly delimited in terms of the concept of communication from the mind of God to the minds of men. It was, in fact, in these terms that Owen saw and discussed it, rather than in terms of the formal categories of revelation, inspiration, illumination, and interpretation, which were, and are, the common topical divisions in textbooks of theology. Owen makes use of these categories, of course, but the object of his interest is the communicative action of God as a whole, and what is striking about his presentation of it is the organic way in which, Calvin-like, he holds these themes together in the broad and dynamic context which the thought of God making His mind known to men provides.

Owen does not, to my knowledge, anywhere make the point that the image of God in which man was created involves the capacity for receiving, and responding to, communications from the Creator. This, however, is constantly presupposed in his insistence, on the one hand, that the image of God in Adam was a state of actual responsive conformity to God’s revealed will, and, on the other hand, that God gives us knowledge of His mind by calling our minds into play. “God will instruct us in His mind and will, as we are men, in and by the rational faculties of our souls.” With all the Reformed theologians of his day, and certainly with the Bible, Owen assumes a direct affinity and correspondence between God’s mind and man’s, such that God can speak to us in words and we, within the limits of His own self-disclosure, can comprehend Him in our thoughts. Not, indeed, that we can in any sense take His measure—God measures man, but not vice versa. We cannot plumb the mystery of His being (He is in that sense wholly incomprehensible to us), and there are many “secret things” (Deut. 29:29) in His plan which He has not told us; moreover, we can be quite sure that, whatever stage in our pilgrimage we may have reached, many of the things that He has told us we have not yet understood. Nevertheless, so far as our thoughts about Him correspond to what He says about Himself, they are true thoughts, and constitute real knowledge about Him, knowledge which is fundamental to our actual dealing with Him. In this sense Owen, like Calvin, appears as a Christian rationalist, who would have condemned out of hand the irrationalism of the neoorthodox idea of a “knowledge” of God derived from non-communicative “encounters” with Him. Basic to our knowledge of God, Owen would have said, is our knowledge about Him, and this knowledge He Himself gives us by His own verbal self-testimony.

It is convenient to analyse Owen’s concept of divine communication under five headings: (1) the giving of revelation; (2) the inspiring of Scripture; (3) the authenticating of Scripture; (4) the establishing of faith in Scripture; (5) the interpreting of Scripture. Each of these headings covers what Owen saw as one distinct element in the complex of activities whereby the Holy Spirit introduces the thoughts that are in God’s mind into ours.

The source-documents are chiefly three. The first, published in 1658, is entitled Of the Divine Original; Authority, Self-Evidencing Light, and Power of the Scriptures: With an Answer to that Inquiry, How We Know the Scriptures to Be the Word of God.1 The second and third belong to the series of treatises, of which Pneumatologia: A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit (1674) was the first, in which Owen works his way systematically through all the biblical material concerning the third person of the Trinity. The two treatises which concern us, the second and third of Owen’s series as well as of our sources, are The Reason of Faith: or, An Answer unto the Inquiry, “Wherefore We Believe the Scripture to Be the Word of God: With the Causes and Nature of That Faith Wherewith We Do So” (1677),2 and, The Causes, Ways, and Means of Understanding the Mind of God as Revealed in His Word, with Assurance Therein: And a Declaration of the Perspicuity of the Scriptures, with the External Means of the Interpretation of Them (1678).3 All these works have an anti-Roman polemical slant; Owen is writing to overthrow the Roman contentions, first, that faith in Scripture as God’s Word should be based on the Church’s traditional authentication of it, and, second, that the ordinary Christian should not attempt to interpret the Bible for himself, but should leave that to the institutional Church to do for him. Owen’s aim is to show that it belongs to the revealed and promised office of the Holy Spirit both to bring God’s people to faith in Scripture as divine, and also to lead them into an understanding of Scripture as the law of life and the message of salvation. Since, however, his method of making his points in these treatises, as always, is expository, by means of appeals to texts, and since the treatises themselves are constructive and edificatory in their main purpose, and the polemical note is largely muted (as is common with Owen, though very uncommon in his age), it is easy to read them without thinking of their controversial purpose at all. Note, I did not say that it was easy to read them!—that would not be true; yet I do venture to say that the labor involved in plodding through these ill-arranged and tediously-written treatises will be found abundantly worthwhile.

For there is no question as to the importance for our day of the themes with which Owen deals. The doctrine of revelation is in the melting-pot; the historic evangelical belief in verbal communication from God through the Bible is at a discount; can Owen, the greatest British divine of his day, if not of all time, help us to recover and reestablish the truth? Or is he himself vulnerable to criticism? One feature of the contemporary theological scene is the polemic of Karl Barth and some of his followers against the expositors of reformed orthodoxy in the seventeenth century for having, as they allege, foreshortened their doctrine of divine communication by “freezing” the Spirit in the Scriptures. Barth’s complaint is that, having started well by asserting the divine origin of Scripture, these theologians allowed rationalism to creep into their biblical exposition and theology, for want of effectively thinking through the doctrine of the Spirit as lord of, and instructor through, the written Word. Since Barth’s own doctrine of Scripture makes its divine origin wholly problematical, and his theological interpretations of it seem again and again to be read into the text rather than read out of it, one is tempted simply to retort “physician, heal thyself,” and leave the matter there—but the criticism is a serious one, made in good faith, and if it is valid as a stricture on Owen, who, wherever else he is, is certainly a mainstream reformed divine, it would certainly limit the extent to which we could look to him for help today. But is it valid? It will be interesting, as we proceed, to see. In fact, we shall find that the criticism, as applied to Owen, is wholly invalid, and that the point at which Barth regards Owen’s generation as deficient is actually the point of Owen’s greatest mastery.

The Giving of Revelations

We move, then, to the first of our subdivisions: the giving of revelations. Owen normally used the word revelation to denote any immediate informative communication from God; disclosing things which could not otherwise have been known. Such communications, he tells us, were conveyed to their recipients by means of a voice or inward impression, accompanied on occasion by a dream or a vision. Owen lumps all revelations of this kind under the head of prophecy, defining a “prophet” as “one who used to receive divine revelations.”4 He affirms that the Patriarchs, from Adam onward, who received revelations from God, were “guided by a prophetical spirit,” and may properly be called prophets, as indeed Abraham is in Genesis 20:7.

The giving of these disclosures was the work of the Holy Spirit, who is “the immediate author of all divine revelations,”5 and it is clear from the narratives that they brought with them assurance of their own divine origin. They evidenced themselves to their recipients as being messages from God, and therefore as requiring absolute adherence and obedience, however inexplicable their content might appear to be—as, for instance, when Abraham was told to sacrifice Isaac. (The nature of this self-evidencing quality will be analyzed in a later section.) Adam, Abraham, Moses, and all the others to whom the Word of God came, did not need to ask what was the source of the message; they knew—that is, they found themselves sure and unable to doubt—that it was from God, and acted accordingly. Thus by faith they obtained their good report.

The revelations given to the prophets were in most cases not primarily for themselves, but for others, to whom they were charged to relay them. Owen knew that the prophets were, in the modern phrase, forthtellers as well as foretellers—as he himself says, “prophets are the interpreters, the declarers of the word, mind, will, or oracles of God, unto others.”6 In the providence of God, such of these revelations as “are of general use to the Church”7 were written down, and thus the Old Testament Scriptures began to grow till they reached their present size. A similar process produced the New Testament: the Spirit enabled the Apostles “infallibly to receive, understand, and declare, the whole counsel of God in Christ”8 and then to write what they knew for the instruction of later ages. In an anti-Roman passage, Owen sharpens the point that a written record, as distinct from mere oral tradition, is always necessary if God’s revelations are to be preserved from corruption and loss. “Before the committing of the Scriptures to writing, God had given the world an experiment, what keepers men were of this revelation by tradition; within some hundreds of years after the flood, all knowledge of Him, through the craft of Satan, and the vanity of the minds of men, which is unspeakable, was so lost, that nothing, but as it were the creation of a new world, or the erection of a new church-state by new revelations, could relieve it. After that great trial, what can be farther pretended on the behalf of tradition I know not.”9

Once the Scriptures were written, and the prophetic and apostolic witness to Christ was complete, no need remained for private revelations of new truths, and Owen did not believe that any were given. He opposed the “enthusiasm” of those who, like the Quakers, put their trust in supposed revelations given apart from, and going beyond, the Word. In a Latin work Owen calls the Quakers fanatici, “fanatics,” for their attitude. He is quick to deploy against them the old dilemma that if their “private revelations” agree with Scripture, they are needless, and if they disagree, they are false.

In all this, Owen is following the beaten track of Reformed exposition, from Calvin onward, and there is nothing novel in any of the points that he makes.

The Inspiring of Scripture

So we proceed to our second topic: the inspiring of Scripture. Here again, the line that Owen follows is the standard reformed teaching of his day. “Inspiration” he defines as the inbreathing of the Holy Spirit, whereby revelations are given, received, and transmitted, both orally and in writing. The human subjects of inspiration, says Owen, are passive during the process, in the sense of being non-originative: though their minds are active in a psychological sense, they are being acted upon, or simply, as Owen says, “acted,” by the Spirit, “moved (borne along) by the Holy Ghost” (2 Peter 1:21). We may quote here some statements from Owen’s own exposition of this text. The Spirit, says Owen, “prepared them (the prophets) for to receive the impressions he made upon them, and confirmed their memories to retain them. He did not indeed so enlighten and raise their minds as to give them a distinct understanding and full comprehension of all the things themselves that were declared unto them. There was more in their inspirations than they could search into the bottom of.” (Owen is thinking of the statement in 1 Peter 1:10f. that the prophets themselves did not know the full meaning of their own words about Christ.) “But he so raised and prepared their minds, as that they might be capable to receive and retain those impressions of things which he communicated unto them. So a man tunes the strings of an instrument, that it may in a due manner receive the impressions of his finger, and give out the sounds he intends . . . he himself acted their faculties, making use of them to express his words, not their own conception.”10

With this may be compared Owen’s account of the work of the Holy Spirit in inspiring the writers of Scripture.

“There were, therefore, three things concurring in this work. 1. The inspiration of the minds of these prophets, with the knowledge and apprehension of the things communicated unto them. 2. The suggestion of words unto them, to express what their minds conceived. 3. The guidance of their hands, in setting down the words suggested; or of their tongues, in uttering them unto those by whom they were committed to writing; as Baruch wrote the prophecy of Jeremiah from his mouth (Jer. 36:3, 18). If either of these were wanting, the Scripture could not be absolutely and every way divine and infallible.” This completeness of divine initiative and control did not mean, however, that the human personalities or characteristics of the writers were obliterated. “The Holy Ghost in His work on the minds of men doth not put a force upon them, nor acts them any otherwise than they are in their own natures, and with their present endowments and qualifications meet to be used and acted . . . the words therefore which he suggests unto them are such as they are accustomed unto, and he causeth them to make use of such expressions as were familiar unto themselves. . . . We may also grant and do, that they used their own abilities of mind and understanding in the choice of words and expressions. So the preacher sought to find out acceptable words; (Eccles. 12:10). But the Holy Spirit who is more intimate unto the minds and skills of men than they are themselves, did so guide, act, and operate in them, as that the words they fixed upon were as directly and certainly from him, as if they had been spoken to them by an audible voice.”11

The works of the biblical writers, therefore, have God for their ultimate author. “The laws they made known, the doctrines they delivered, the instructions they gave, the stories they recorded, the promises of Christ, the promises of gospel times they gave out and revealed, were not their own, not conceived in their minds, not formed by their reasonings, not retained in their memories from what they heard, not by any means beforehand comprehended by them (1 Peter 1:10–11), but were all of them immediately from God; there being only a passive concurrence of their rational faculties in their reception.”12 The inspiration of Scripture is thus both substantial and verbal: not only the matter, but also the words, are directly from God. “As to the doctrine contained in it (Scripture), and the words wherein that doctrine is delivered, it is wholly his (God’s); what that speaks, he speaks himself. He speaks in it and by it.”13 It is in this sense, and on this account, that we should receive the Bible as the Word of God, “the supernatural, immediate revelation of his mind unto us.”14

As the Word of God, Holy Scripture is a direct and primary object of faith, just as the revelations which came to the Patriarchs, and the inspired sermons of the prophets and apostles, were direct and primary objects of faith for their original recipients. All faith, says Owen, has the nature of assent on testimony, and Christian faith, which blossoms in consent to God’s covenant, trust in His promise, and affiance in His Son, has at its root assent to evangelical truth on the testimony of God. It is thus not “human,” but “divine.” “Human” faith in anything is assent on human testimony; “divine” faith is assent on divine testimony. Human faith in the articles of the Christian creed, and even in the evangelical presentation of Christ—assent, that is, based only on some form of human attestation, that of the Church, for instance, or of particular scholars or saints, or on a rational probability-judgment—is not enough. Not only is such “faith” necessarily unstable, it is not what God wants. The faith which He requires is divine faith springing from a recognition that the basis on which the Christian confession rests—that is, the testimony of Scripture—is God’s own infallible testimony to Himself. The ground of divine faith in the divine truth of what the Scriptures teach is thus the fact of their “divine original,” which is the source of their authority (that is, as Owen defines it, their “power to command and require obedience, in the name of God”15). The Scriptures carry God’s authority because, quite simply, He wrote them; they are His utterance, His own written Word.

When Owen refers to the “divine original” of the Scriptures, he means not only that God spoke their contents long ago when He caused them to be written, but also that He speaks the same content now: the Scriptures remain His contemporary utterance to every generation. So faith that is “divine, supernatural, infallible,” to quote a recurring trio of adjectives, true Christian faith, that is, as distinct from attitudes of conventional acquiescence that are less than divine faith—rests on the recognition that what Scripture says, God says, here and now, in direct application to all to whom the Scriptures come. Rational arguments based on facts relating to the Bible—its antiquity, its preservation, its inner unity of message and design, its historic attestation in the Church, and its transforming effects wherever it goes—may serve to remove doubts that bother believers, and to bring unbelievers, however reluctantly, to “a firm opinion, judgment, and persuasion”—a conviction, that is, that it is probably, indeed certain—“that the Scriptures are from God”;16 yet this is at best only human faith, and is not therefore adequate. God requires divine faith in the truth and authority of His written Word, and this comes only by recognizing that it comes to us, as the prophetic oracles came, under the rubric: “thus saith the Lord.”

Owen makes it sound as if ever since the apostolic age saving faith in Christ has in all cases depended necessarily on prior faith in the divinity of Scripture. Did Owen really mean this? we ask. Was it his view that nobody could believe savingly till he knew and accepted the Bible? And what would Owen make of the fact that some today give evidence of “divine, supernatural, infallible” faith in Christ while professing not fully to share his own faith in the “divine original” of Scripture?

To the two former questions, the answer seems to be that Owen’s controversial preoccupation explains his form of statement. Against the mistaken Roman thesis that the proper ground of faith in Christ is the Church’s witness—in other words, human testimony—Owen is insisting that the proper ground of faith is biblical witness—in other words, divine testimony. He is speaking against the background of his own day, in which Bibles were available for all, the plenary inspiration and truthfulness of Scripture were not yet challenged, and the only question at issue was whether faith should rest directly on biblical testimony or not. If asked whether a man could come to true saving faith on the basis of an accurate account of the biblical message which made no reference to the Bible itself (such as missionaries abroad, or apologists at home, might sometimes present), Owen would doubtless have replied that in the beneficent sovereignty of God such a thing might well happen, but that it was not this kind of situation that he was discussing in the writings under review.

On the third question, Owen could in terms of his principles make three sound points, each tending to show that when a person who gives evidence in other ways of saving faith in Christ claims not to accept the “divine original” of Scripture, the claim should not be taken as seriously as it is made. (Owen’s instincts would probably have led him to start by making the opposite point, that doubt of the divinity of Scripture is so anomalous in a believer as to suggest that such doubters are probably hypocrites!—but his own principles would also lead to the thesis as we have stated it.)

First, Owen could observe that the only Christ there is the Christ of the Bible, and that faith in this Christ necessarily presupposes faith in at least the main substance of what Scripture says about Him—which is not very different from saying that real faith in the real Christ rests on faith in the divine truth of a good deal of the Bible.

Second, he could point out that in the New Testament itself faith in Christ is represented as consequent and dependent on receiving the apostolic message as God’s own word of truth (see Rom. 10:14–17; Col. 1:4–7; 1 Thess. 1:5–10; 2:13), and that the New Testament is no more, just as it is no less, than the substance of this apostolic message in writing.

Third, he could make the point that the ministry of the Spirit enlightening sinners to receive the man Jesus as the divine Savior, and the human Scriptures as the divine Word, is one ministry, and that everyone in whose heart the Spirit bears witness to the divine Saviorhood of Jesus does in fact receive a similar testimony to the “divine original” of such of the canonical Scriptures as he knows; though confusion and weakness of mind, springing from the remnants of corruption within him and fomented by anti-Christian thought-currents around him in an age of unbelief, may prevent him from giving adequate intellectual expression to this. Owen would certainly have dwelt on the debilitating effect of this intellectual besetting sin, just as he does elsewhere in connection with errors regarding other doctrines, but there is no reason to ascribe to him the view that a man who was muddle-headed about biblical infallibility could not be a Christian at all.

The Authentication of Scripture

But how does faith in “God’s word written” come about? This brings us to our next two themes, the first of which, and the third in our overall order, is the authentication of Scripture. The Holy Spirit, the author of Scripture, says Owen, causes His work to be received with divine faith, as God’s Word, by means of a twofold operation: His external witness and His internal witness. The latter is “the internal work of the Holy Spirit on the minds of men, enabling them to believe”; the former is “the external work of the same Holy Spirit giving evidence in and by the Scripture unto its own divine orginal.”17 The former presupposes, and is correlative to, the latter, and both belong to the statement of the classic Reformed doctrine, first given prominence by Calvin in the Institutes, of the witness of the Spirit as the ground of faith in the Scriptures. In stating this doctrine against the Church of Rome, which laid emphasis on the external testimony of the Church, Calvin had stressed the internal witness of the Spirit and given no separate attention to the point that there is also an external testimony of the Spirit to which His inward witness in the believer’s heart corresponds. What is distinctive about Owen’s presentation of this doctrine, as compared with Calvin’s, is the stress that he lays on the Spirit’s external witness. His doctrine is thus of a double testimony of the Holy Spirit to Scripture; its effect is to draw out and make explicit what is implicit in Calvin’s statements on the subject, at points where these statements are not fully developed.18 It is the external witness of the Spirit that we deal with now.

“Herein consists that testimony which the Spirit gives unto the Word of God that it is so,” writes Owen. “The Holy Ghost being the immediate author of the whole Scriptures, doth therein and thereby give testimony unto the divine truth and original of it, by the characters of divine authority and veracity impressed on it, and evidencing themselves in its power and efficacy.”19 By this means “the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, do abundantly and uncontrollably manifest themselves to be the word of the living God.”20

How does the Spirit bring about this effect? By a threefold activity. First, He imparts to the Scriptures the permanent quality of light. Owen appeals to biblical references to Scripture as “light in a dark place” (2 Peter 1:19), a “light” to men’s feet and a lamp to their path (Ps. 119:105), a word whose entrance gives “light” (v. 130), and other similar passages. By light, Owen means that which dispels darkness and illuminates men and situations. Light, by its very nature, is self-evidencing. “Let a light be ever so mean and contemptible; yet if it shines, it casts out beams and rays in

a dark place, it will evidence itself.”21 Scripture, through the covenanted action of the Holy Spirit, constantly “shines,” in the sense of giving spiritual illumination, and so it makes evident its divine origin.

Second, the Spirit makes the Scriptures powerful to produce spiritual effects. They evidence their divine origin by their disruptive and recreative impact on human lives. Owen quotes in this connection the biblical descriptions of the Word of God as “quick and powerful,” “able to build you up,” and “the power of God” (Heb. 4:12; Acts 20:31; 1 Cor. 1:18).

Third, the Holy Spirit makes Scripture impinge on the individual consciousness as a word addressed personally to each man by God Himself, evoking awe and a sense of being in God’s presence and under His eye. This is what Owen means when he speaks of the “majesty” of the Scriptures. So he writes: “The Holy Ghost speaking in and by the word, imparting to it virtue, power, efficacy, majesty, and authority, affords us the witness, that our faith is resolved unto.”22

Thus, through the action of the Holy Spirit Scripture evidences and authenticates itself as the Word of God. “Must we not rest at last in that to theion (divine quality), which accompanies the true voice of God, evidencing itself and ascertaining the soul beyond all possibility of mistake?”23

What Owen is saying here is more straightforward, perhaps, than his language at first reveals. His point is simply that the unique enlightening and convicting power with which the canonical Scriptures come at men is itself “the public testimony of the Holy Spirit given to all, of the Word, by and in the Word.”24 Part of the distinctiveness of the canonical books lies in the fact that this testimony constantly accompanies them: “I fear not to affirm that there are on every individual book of the Scriptures . . . those divine characters and criteria which are sufficient to difference them from all other writings whatever, and to testify their divine authority unto the minds and consciences of believers.”25 It is in terms of this testimony, this constant outflow of light and power, that the self-evidencing quality of the Bible and its message should, according to Owen, be described and explained. That the Bible, like all messages and revelations from God, has this quality is proved by the fact that it is always the duty of those to whom any part of the written Word comes to receive and obey it, and failure to do this is always guilty. (For proof of this, Owen cities, among other passages, Deut. 31:11–13; Luke 16:31; 2 Peter 1:16–21).

The Establishing of Faith in Scripture

This brings us to our fourth topic: the establishing of faith in Scripture.

The internal testimony of the Holy Spirit, whereby the external testimony comes to be recognized and received, is not, says Owen, an inward voice, revealing facts otherwise unknown and unknowable (that is, a private revelation), nor is it an unreasoning conviction, objectively groundless, coming to us out of the blue; it is, rather, an activity of inward illumination, whereby a man’s natural spiritual blindness is removed, the veil is taken from the eyes of his heart, his pride and his prejudice are alike broken down, and he is given both an understanding and a “taste” (Heb. 5:14) of spiritual realities. This, Owen observes, is what the New Testament is referring to when it uses the verb “reveal” in texts like Matthew 11:25–27 and Ephesians 1:17–19, and it is also what the apostle John has in mind when he speaks of the Spirit as an “unction” that “teaches all things” (1 John 2:27).

The mark of this understanding is that Scripture now appears coherent: to the man enlightened by the Spirit, Scripture is no longer a bewildering jumble of isolated items, as it may well have seemed to him before, but “under the benefit of this assistance all the parts of the Scripture, in their harmony and correspondency, all the truths of it in their power and necessity, come in together to give evidence one to another, and all of them to the whole.”26 Part chimes in with part, Scripture meshes with Scripture, and the unified bearing of the whole Bible becomes apparent. The accompanying experience of the “taste,” or “flavor” of spiritual realities, is immediate and ineffable. Owen describes it as follows:

“He (the Spirit) gives unto believers a spiritual sense of the power and reality of the things believed, whereby their faith is greatly established. . . . And on the account of this spiritual experience, is our perception of spiritual things so often expressed by acts of sense, as tasting, seeing, feeling, and the like means of assurance in things natural. And when believers have attained hereunto, they do find the divine wisdom, goodness, and authority of God so present unto them, as that they need neither argument, nor motive, nor anything else to persuade them unto, or confirm them in believing. Any whereas this spiritual experience, which believers obtain through the Holy Ghost, is such as cannot rationally be contended about, seeing those who have received it, cannot fully express it, and those who have not, cannot understand it, nor the efficacy which it has to secure and establish the mind; it is left to be determined on by them alone, who have their ‘senses exercised to discern good and evil.’ And this belongs unto the internal subjective testimony of the Holy Ghost.”27

Also, the Spirit upholds those whom He enlightens against temptations to question the divinity of Scripture, from whatever source they spring—lust, unbelief, pressure of opposing argument, waning of the sense of God and His authority, or any other spiritual malaise. All this belongs to the inner witness of the Spirit, as Owen describes it. His is in truth the richest exposition of the subject that I know.

The grounds, then, on which we have faith in Scripture as the Word of God are the Spirit’s external witness to its divine origin, which is given in and with it constantly; and the reason why we so believe, is “because the Holy Ghost hath enlightened our minds, wrought faith in us, and enabled us to believe it.”28 And the way to bring others to like faith is simply to let the Bible and its message get at them, so that the Spirit may fulfill the same ministry toward them too. As Owen points out, the apostles’ way of convincing men that their message was divine was not by “rational arguments,” but “by preaching the word itself unto them in the evidence and demonstration of the Spirit, by the power whereof manifesting the authority of God in it, they were convinced; and falling down acknowledged God to be in it of a truth” (1 Cor. 2:4–5; 14:25–26).29

The Interpreting of Scripture

So we come to our final topic: the interpreting of the Scriptures. Owen’s first point under this head is the standard Protestant point that Scripture is perspicuous, in the sense that every Christian who uses the means of grace as he should can learn from it all that he needs to know for life and godliness. This formula is not, however, a warrant for anyone to go off on his own with a Bible and expect to learn everything by reading it in isolation; Owen makes this plain by listing as the prime means of grace, which personal Bible study presupposes, those afforded by the corporate life of the Christian community, namely the public preaching of the Word and informal discussion with Christian people. On the former Owen lays great emphasis, as being the principal means appointed in the Church for the instruction of God’s people. Of the latter, he writes: “The mutual instruction of one another in the mind of God out of the Scripture, is also required . . . thus, when our Savior found His disciples talking of the things of God by the way-side, He bearing unto them the person of a private man, instructed them in the sense of Scripture (Luke 24:26, 27, 32). And the neglect of this duty in the world, which is so great that the very mention of it, or the least attempt to perform it, is a matter of scorn and reproach, is one cause of that great ignorance and darkness that yet abounds among us.”30 This may be a word in season in our own day. Only in the context of the Church’s corporate learning from the Scriptures, both formally and informally, does Owen expect the individual to reach a right understanding of biblical teaching.

But even then it is not easy. Inbred spiritual evils—pride, corrupt affection, sloth, a darkened mind, temperamental traditionalism, and sinful rationalizations—hinder our progress, and these evils can only be countered and overcome by spiritual means. So, in a most searching chapter,31 Owen, having spoken of the need for careful and meditative reading of the biblical text, in large units as well as in small, goes on to list as necessary “spiritual” means of understanding it, over and above getting acquainted with its linguistic and cultural background and consulting commentaries and the history of exposition, these following: constant prayer for light; desire to experience the power of whatever truth may be learned; a conscientious practice of obedience to all truth known at present; and a life of worship in the Church. Though written in the usual dull style (dull even for him!) which Owen affected when writing about the Scriptures, this chapter is veritable dynamite, and deserves reading and re-reading by all who desire to prove the perspicuity of Scripture for themselves.

Of the contents and layout of the Bible, as Owen saw them, little can be said here. Owen viewed the Bible as a landscape, part of whose charm lies in its lack of order in surface arrangement. “The Holy Spirit hath not in the Scripture reduced and disposed its doctrines or super-natural truths into any system, order, or method,” although “there is indeed in some of the epistles of Paul, especially that unto the Romans, a methodical disposition of the most important doctrines of the gospel.”32 Generally, Owen saw Scripture as consisting of doctrines (facts about God) and examples of their application—the doctrinal principles interpreting the narratives, and the narratives illustrating the doctrinal principles. Owen insists that the existing arrangement of the biblical books is in fact more practical and useful than any other would be; it summons us to the right kind of meditative study, and shields us against the temptation to intellectual pride in doctrinal knowledge. Moreover, truth as it stands in Scripture is already in a “posture” to exert “power and efficacy,” and the demands of adjustment to its style and layout puts students into the right “posture” to receive and profit from it practically. As we prayerfully wait on God, so the holy message is made known and applied to us in all its converting and transforming power. Thus God communicates with us, to our soul’s health. If we now ask what exactly it is that He communicates, the short answer is, knowledge of ourselves, and of Christ, as set forth in the Westminster Confession and in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress: but we cannot amplify this answer here.

Conclusion

Question four of the Westminster Larger Catechism reads: “How doth it appear that the Scriptures are the word of God?” The answer is: “The Scriptures manifest themselves to be the word of God, by their majesty and purity; by the consent of all the parts, and the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God; by their light and power to convince and convert sinners, to comfort and build up believers unto salvation. But the Spirit of God, bearing witness by and with the Scriptures in the heart of man, is alone able fully to persuade it that they are the very word of God.” Owen’s doctrine of divine communication, as we have seen, merely spells out this position. That his doctrine is scriptural, suggestive, and spiritual to a high degree will hardly be disputed. That the Barthian criticism does not apply to him (nor, for that matter, to the Westminster divines) is also clear; one could hardly have a more complete or dynamic doctrine of the Spirit bringing home the Word to God’s people than that which Owen sets forth.

What lessons has this study for us? It reminds us that Scripture is always the best evidence for itself, and that preaching biblical truth in the power of the Holy Ghost will do more than any amount of arguing to bring about faith in biblical inspiration and in the divine realities which Scripture proclaims. It also challenges us to ask ourselves whether in our own searching and teaching of the Scriptures we are honoring the Holy Ghost as we should. When problems of interpretation arise, how much and how hard do we pray? And are we who preach wholly men of the Word? Is it our glory, as Christian instructors, to refuse to do anything save expound and apply the Word of God? May our study of Owen’s doctrine of communication from God renew our zeal to fulfill such a ministry, and our confidence in the fruitfulness that, under God, such a ministry will have.

9

CATECHISMS AND THE PURITANS

J. Lewis Wilson

When John Calvin wrote his Epistle of Godly Consolation to the Protector Somerset in 1548 the pastoral heart of the Genevan reformer guided him to place his finger unerringly on at least three sore spots in the church in England. “I think there very few lively preachings in the realm,” he complained, “. . . this preaching ought not to be dead but alive, for to teach, such a sort as if an infidel enter he may be wounded, overcome and taken . . . to give glory to God.” Next Calvin desired “that there be a summe resolute of doctrine that al ought to preach, the which al prelates and curates should sweare to follow.” Third he pressed on the Protector the crucial importance of a catechism “to instruct the young children and ignorant people”—a conviction hammered out on the anvil of his own experiences both of Geneva and Strasbourg. “Believe my Lord,” he appealed, “that the church of God shall never be conserved without catechism, for it is as the seed to be kept that the good grain perish not but that it may increase from age to age. Wherefore if you desire to build a work of continuance to endure long, and which should not shortly fall into decay, cause that the children in their young age be instructed in a good catechism.”1

Just over a hundred years later, and three years before his ejection in 1662, when he was rector of Acton in Middlesex, Philip Nye wrote, “It is true a forme of catechisme is mentioned in the common prayer book, but so as liberty left and taken to compose, or chuse what catechisme a man judged to be more suitable to his people for their edification; and few ministers of eminency in the land but composed a distinct catechisme, there are I believe no less than five hundred several catechismes extant.”2

In this vast collection of catechisms brought to birth in the century after Calvin, Nye delimits those written by men of the “episcopall way” so that he is thinking primarily of catechetical material prepared by those clergymen and school teachers who came to be known by the “odious name” of Puritan, or who, if more correctly described after 1640 as “presbyterian” or “independent,” were at the same time heirs of the Puritan tradition. A more cautious estimate than Nye’s is made, rather typically, by Richard Baxter, but he is none the less fully aware that a vast number of catechisms were available in the mid-seventeenth century—“scores, if not hundreds of catechisms are written in England.” Therefore when Godfrey Davies recognized “the enormous output of devotional literature” in the period which closed at 1640 he has ample reason for listing, among the most influential of these books, a Puritan catechism, Stephen Egerton’s Briefe Methode of Catechizing.3

There are at present some hopeful signs of renewed interest in the place of catechesis in the life of the church. The 400th anniversary of the Heidelberg Catechism produced a series of works on that historic reformation document.4 T. F. Torrance has traced the importance of catechisms of the reformed faith in the history of the Church of Scotland.5 From the Catholic side J. F. Jungmann’s Katechetik awards generous marks to Luther.6 There is certainly room for a study of the place of the catechism in religious instruction in the formative post-Reformation years in England. This paper is restricted to the Puritan use of the catechism; the terminus a quo will be 1570, the terminus ad quem 1660. This is extremely arbitrary, for some very notable Puritan work, e.g. Thomas Watson’s, appears after this date. But it is equally arbitrary to imagine that a horse and cart can always be driven between “Puritan” and “Anglican” in this particular task. A noted royalist like Charles Hoole could recommend both William Perkins and Alexander Nowell, as well as the church catechism for use in schools. None the less, the sheer bulk of material available from Edward Dering’s A Breife and Necessarie Catechisme (1572) to Richard Baxter’s Poor Man’s Family Book^7 and his leadership of the “Worcester association of ministers for catechising” should indicate that this is a field of “busie puritane” endeavor which has largely been ignored. The impression left by H. R. McAdoo, for example, that the Caroline divines were virtually alone in laboring to restore the catechism in the life of the Church should be modified.8 So too should a similar judgment that the Puritans’ main support for diligent catechizing was the buttress of some ingeniously culled proof-texts. Whatever its limitations the Puritan pastoral ideal was much more deeply based and closely integrated than this superficial verdict implied.

When they wrote catechisms the Puritans were following, as they would have claimed, the example of the “best reformed churches.” More important they found, as Richard Greenham wrote, the “steps of catechizing” in the Scriptures and in the early Church. But when Greenham reminds his hearers of this example he also says “we have the catechisme of Cyril; of Gregory of Nyssa, the books of Augustine, of catechising the ignorant and foure bookes de symbolo ad catechumenos. Also Athanasius his synopsis of sacred Scripture: and Fulgentius. . . .”9 The Puritans knew very well, then, that they were not “innovators”; they eagerly entered a house of instruction in the faith, spacious and well furnished, in which the early church and the first generation reformers had lived before them. On the continent Luther’s small catechism had been an immediate and surprising success, a decisive factor in reformation at the “grass-roots” in the homes of German people. Luther’s achievement stimulated both friends and opponents; John Calvin was influenced by his success, as also by his enforced stay at Strasbourg and his contact there with the work of Martin Bucer; the catechisms of Trent and Canisius were a later Roman Catholic counter-balance to the influence of Luther’s work.

In the reformation period the catechisms of Martin Luther, John Calvin, Pierre Viret, Henry Bullinger, Caspar Olevian all found their way into England. Some later continental catechisms were translated or introduced by Puritan clergy; Matthieu Virel’s A Learned and Excellent Treatise was introduced (possibly translated from French) by Stephen Egerton; Thomas Sparke and John Seddon translated an English edition of the Heidelberg Catechism and John Field translated Caspar Olevian’s work on the Apostles Creed. Several of the Marian exiles also wrote catechisms—John Poynet, Thomas Becon, Edmund Allen, and notably Alexander Nowell, whose three catechisms were among the most widely influential in post-Reformation England. In Thomas Cranmer’s Catechismus (1548), the preface asks, “Surely there can be no greater hope of any kinde of persons . . . than of suche as have been from childhoode nourished and fed with the swete milke and as it were the sappe of Goddes holy worde.”10 It was this heritage, then, into which the Puritans entered.

Basic Convictions

What then were the basic convictions which guided Puritan pastors in the use of the catechism? They were not primarily theorists, whether in religion or education; many were distinguished pastors whose chief concern was to convey the message of God’s electing grace as “plainly,” convincingly, and widely as possible, to all for whom they were responsible in family, church, school, and university. For this reason the Puritan clergy pursued a never-ending search for “method,” the “means” by which the truth of God in sermon, in scripture memorizing, in catechism could be screwed into the darkened minds of Adam’s spiritual children; the way in which the “means” which God had ordained could be most effectively used so that God’s elect could be called by His Spirit, and established in the faith. This “method” was thorough and all-embracing; home and church were married, careful provision was made for school and university. Thus, at Cambridge, that “Lebanon of the Lorde” in Greenham’s words, the office of college catechist was filled with conscientious devotion by William Perkins at Christ’s, by John Preston at Emanuel, and by John Cotton and Henry Palmer. In the rapid development of schools in this century up to 1660 the Puritan ideal is set by Thomas Gataker—a school is a “little church,” and its master a “private catechist.”11

Scripture—A Repository of Heavenly Doctrine

“I serve a precise God,” said Richard Rogers of Wethersfield. God who is the source and goal of all knowledge is a God of “order,” of “method,” even to detail. His will is revealed clearly, reliably in the word of God, which the Puritans identified with Scripture. In treating the Scriptures as God’s authoritative, and indeed infallible word, the Puritans believed they shared a common reformation heritage, more especially, from Calvin. For Calvin “doctrina” could be used both for God teaching by voice or word in and through Scripture, and also for authoritative preaching and teaching in His name. From this “written proof of heavenly doctrine,” as Calvin once called Scripture, the Puritans gathered “principles of religion” for instruction by catechism. John Ball’s catechism says “the scriptures are the very word of God, the immediate and infallible truth of God, that is to be received and obeyed and believed.”

From this position some Puritans argued that only Scripture and not, for example, the Apostles Creed, should be taught in the catechism; others made the equally risky deduction that the catechism was “not the words of men.” Richard Baxter, who appears more concessive that Ball, especially to the place of “reason” in the Christian faith, was nevertheless a doughty champion of what he called “scripture sufficiency,” who defended the use of catechisms because “not all truths of scripture are of equal necessity to salvation with the greatest points” and because ignorant persons cannot “cull out these most necessary points from the rest without help.”12

Man—A “Ruinated Place”

Another basic question in Puritan religious instruction was this: “What is this man, this child who is to be instructed?” The answer might vary in some details, but the fundamental issues would be the same. Man was created in God’s image, in Adam the federal head or “public man” he has fallen, the imperfection of sin has spread as a creeping corruption to every part of his life, leaving him condemned before God’s holy law.

James Ussher, whose influence on later Puritanism should never be overlooked, explains the doctrine of the imago dei as follows:

Q. Wherein was the Image of God principally seen?

A. In the perfection of the understanding and the freedom of the will.13

Because man’s fall has brought corruption to the understanding, the conscience, and the memory, the Puritans gave close attention to the effects of sin in the mind. Richard Rogers in The Garden of Spiritual Flowers writes, “This imperfection extendeth itself universally through the whole man, both soule and body, both reason and understanding, will and affections . . . nothing but blindness and ignorance concerning heavenly matters.”14 William Perkins follows this analysis almost word for word in his catechism.15 When Ussher sets out “sixe things principally” in which the corruption of man’s nature can be seen, he places first “the blindness of the understanding, which is not able to conceive the things of God, the forgetfulness of the memory, unfit to remember good things.”16 This conspicuous place given to the effects of sin in the mind, helps to emphasize the correspondingly important places given by the Puritans to systematic instruction, to “knowledge” and order in man’s spiritual restoration. As Baxter succinctly put it, “Ignorance is your disease, knowledge must be your cure.”17 Or Richard Rogers, “Man by nature being like a ruinated place, is restored by the graces of Christ: as to the soul the Lord stirres up new lights in the minde.”18

Psychology of Conversion

A third question to which the Puritans addressed themselves was this: “How does God restore such a man, separated from Him?” Basic to all their thinking was the reformation sola gratia. All the words used for this work of God’s grace—justification, repentence, regeneration, sanctification—explain the result and not the cause of God’s prior work of grace in man’s life. This grace, not a few Puritans would have claimed, like Augustine before them, was “irresistible”; but they would have resisted any charge that God treats men as blocks or stones. The reason for this is their view of God’s operation, that while He works on the will by His Spirit He enlightens the mind through “means.” John Preston indeed believed that God moved the will in a “physicall” way;19 but other leaders disagreed here, notably Richard Baxter.

But whatever disagreements the Puritans might have about the hidden work of God this is a further reason for “order,” for “method” in religious instruction. God moves the will by His sovereign grace, while He enlightens the mind through “means,” especially the preached word in church, the instruction of scripture reading, repeated sermon or catechism in home and family. This act of will is only possible through the prior work of God’s grace; it is only free if enlightened by the mind. If the “foregoing of judgment” of the understanding were lacking then the will is not free. By “order” in their lengthy sermons, by catechetical “heads of divinity,” by repetition of scripture in home and school, the strong beam of God’s word could be shone into the dark corridors of human understanding as the supreme means of conversion to God.

This close association of intellect and will, of knowledge and obedience, explains why the Puritans constantly warned against “bare knowledge.” Arthur Dent made “literal and historicall knowledge” the distinguishing mark of reprobates.20 Robert Bolton confirmed that true knowledge must be “not merely mentall swimming in the brain indeed, but not rooted in the heart.”21 “Knowledge rooted in the heart” was the aim of these divines who commended the Westminster Confession of Faith and its two catechisms to their readers. John Ball also desired those who learned his catechism to “go forward in godliness, in a holy method.”

One of the marks of “heart knowledge,” an infallible sign as it were of true conversion, was the renewing of the mind and the sanctification of memory. William Gouge’s catechism explains this:

Q. Wherein consisteth our sanctification?

A. In the enlightening of our mindes, and in reforming all our parts.

Q. What is the illumination of the mind?

A. A saving knowledge of the myesteries of godliness.22

Fortified by these conclusions the Puritan preacher believed the renewed mind to be capable of prodigious feats of memory. An oppressive boredom could sometimes result, especially for children, but equally there can be no doubt that in such memorizing exercises an ever increasing number of Englishmen found a surprising satisfaction, accumulating vast tracts of Scripture as well as a “system of divinity” in their mental furniture with incalculable results, both religious and political, as the seventeenth century advanced. If one can speak of a Puritan “theory” of religious education, these then were the foundations on which it was based.

The Catechism and Pastoral Ideals

These basic religious and theological beliefs, which provide a reason for Puritan religious instruction, and for the distinctive features which it developed, also shaped pastoral ideals, in which the use of the catechism had a close relationship with preaching, with the discipline required in observing the sacraments, and in the nurture and support of family religion.

Preaching and the Catechism

Stephen Marshall once claimed that “preaching is the chariot on which salvation comes riding into the hearts of men.”23 Against this exalted picture of Puritan preaching opponents inveigh against the “Geneva fashion” with a “poor fellow in a black gown bawling at his auditory.” Puritan preaching did become at times, especially after 1640, factious or downright obstreperous, artificially contrived or embittered by partisanship. In spite of this, there was at the heart of the Puritan tradition a very high conception of the place and importance of preaching, gained more especially from Calvin. The influence of a long succession of distinguished preachers in the Puritan “Gilead” at Cambridge, men like Lawrence Chaderton, William Perkins, Paul Baynes, John Preston, Richard Gibbes, and Thomas Goodwin, was reflected in the preaching brotherhood in towns and villages, even to the “dark corners of the land.” But for all this the Puritans were too conscientious in their pastoral task not to know, or at worst to discover, that preaching alone could be relatively ineffective. Luther had said as much long before: “Otherwise things will remain as they have been, daily going to church and a coming away again. For no one thinks that it makes any difference except for the time it takes. No one expects to learn anything there. A man listens to preaching three or four years and does not learn enough to give answer concerning one article of the Creed: this I know from daily experience.”24 Josias Nicholls in a parish of four hundred people found “tenne in a hundred” who knew elementary points of Christian doctrine. William Perkins prefaced his catechism with a blunt and downright estimate of the religious ignorance of his hearers, part of which has a singularly modern ring “that ye know more than the preacher can tell you.”25 Richard Baxter’s words on this subject are even better known when he began catechizing at Kidderminster.

The Puritan preachers knew, therefore, that preaching alone without some form of “familiar personal instruction” frequently failed. Richard Greenham dreaded that his people at Dry Drayton should come before him with” uncatechised hearts.” One of John Ball’s aims in writing his catechism was that his hearers should have a body of divinity into which they could “fit” the doctrinal points gleaned from his sermons. The Westminister divines also saw clearly the close relationship between the catechism and the sermon. One of the more turbulent spirits of the “presbyterian” party in 1656, Zachary Crofton hoped fervently even at the eleventh hour for “catechising to be setup” so that men could “profit by the word.”26 William Perkins advised that if there was a response to preaching there should be further instruction by catechism, for a “sermon to such persons is like a great loaf set before a child.”27

The Catechism and Discipline

When John Calvin returned to Geneva in 1541 from his enforced exile in Strasbourg he asked in particular two conditions: that he might use a catechism, and institute ecclesiastical discipline.28 These two, catechism and discipline, were linked in the Puritan ideal. In post-Reformation England “discipline” is capable of different and conflicting shades of meaning; it could mean to establish “presbyterian” order, as it did for Walter Travers and as James I feared it meant for him; in the confused and apocalyptic atmosphere of the commonwealth to “pray for discipline” meant almost to hope for the kingdom of God; much more often the term meant for the Puritans worthy standards for baptism and the Lord’s supper, and for admission to the membership of the church.

The majority of Puritans retained and defended infant baptism, but insisted that it should be public. The congregation must share reverently in the sacrament. The covenant sealed in baptism must be “improved” by catechizing, by family instruction. Richard Baxter laid the responsibility for this instruction on parents, in relation to the promises made in baptism. Children were given names “suitable to the work,” for they were to “suck piety and godliness in with their mother’s milk.” As for the minister it was not sufficient to preach the word openly from the pulpit; his pastoral charge demanded that he instruct the family by every means available. When parents brought their children for baptism he must require an account of their faith, otherwise he “seal to a blanke and so profane the sacrament.” When Thomas Manton wrote of “improving your baptism,” as the Larger Catechism also does, he was speaking of a continuing task of discipline and instruction which lasts through life; and in which the catechism had a decisive role.

All through this period out of the mouths of more than two or three episcopal witnesses we learn that confirmation was “miserably neglected.” Whitgift noticed this general carelessness in 1591; William Nicholson can still report “negligence” in 1661. In between two of the Laudian bishops, Richard Niele and John Cosin, required far greater care; the latter indeed wished that children should be at least fourteen to sixteen years old before they were confirmed. Not all Puritans, however, would have agreed that this “ceremony” should be done away. Baxter, for example, in spite of his own miserable personal experience at confirmation, opposed mainly its abuse and negligence. This Puritan concern for discipline, for worthy membership of the church and celebration of the Lord’s Supper, can be readily traced in their catechism. In 1583 Hopkinson wrote in the preface to his catechism, “But especially I have laboured to lead them into the right use of the Lord’s supper, a special confirmation of God’s promises in Christ, a matter also miserably neglected and lightly accounted of to the ruine and downfall of many thousands soules.”29 The subtitle of Perkins’ work expresses the same desire: “The Foundation of Christian religion gathered into sixe principles: As it is to be learned by ignorant people that they may be fit to hear sermons with profit, and to receive the Lord’s supper with comfort.” A letter to the Westminister Assembly from London ministers (1643) focuses these two issues even more sharply; it asked for “the distinction of people who come to the sacrament” and for “catechising.” For all the severity of some Puritan excesses the words of Baxter in pleading for the restoration of “the ancient and truly Christian discipline” should still be weighed, for they express the Puritan ideal: “ . . . to be against discipline is tantum non to be against the ministry; to be against the ministry . . . against the church; and to be against the church is near to being absolutely against Christ.”30

Family Religion

“If ever we would have the church of God to continue among us we must bring it into our households and nourish it in our families.”31 Richard Greenham’s words here were faithfully repeated by succeeding generations of Puritan clergy, reminding their people that the home is a “little church,” a microcosm of the large fellowship, in which the husband was by divine arrangement both head and priest, and in which “family order” was to reinforce the preached word and public ordinances. In a Paul’s Cross sermon in 1578 John Stockwood regretted that his advice on family religion would be considered “precise,” and “strange doctrine” and that a man “powerfull in instructing his children and household in the wayes of the Lord . . . would be as rare upon earth as a blacke swanne.”32 It would appear that the Puritans turned increasingly to the home as a bastion for religious instruction and influence when their overt and more public efforts to change the character of the Elizabethan church had been crushed. Certainly in the period 1580–1595 many pens were busy with detailed instructions for the “godly order of family government.” Robert Openshawe prefaced his catechism with an appeal “to those who were wont to ask how you should spend the long winter evenings” to “turn . . . to singing of psalms and teaching your household and praying with them.”33 Neglect of “family duties” soon became for the Puritans the mark of an unregenerate life, for which the Westminster divines “overdid” in desiring that the ultimate penalty should be excommunication. The discipline of the Lord’s Day has to be seen, at least partly, in this context; that one of its purposes was to devote the day following attendance at church to “family duties.”

Accounts of “family instruction” in English homes in this period are too numerous, too widespread to be discounted, even the transformation of a town like Malden in Essex. Of George Gifford’s ministry at Malden, Strype says: “He was much valued there for the good reformation he had made in that market town by his preaching, where very notorious sins reigned before his coming . . . others had by his diligence been nourished and strengthened in grace and virtue (as the inhabitants had set forth to the bishop at large); that in his life he was modest, discreet and unreprovable; that he never used conventicle but ever preached and catechised in the church.”34 The transformation of Kidderminster under Baxter and his assistants is another permanent example to bear witness to Puritan achievement in family religion.35

Theological Development

The basis of early Elizabethan catechisms taken over from the Reformation was the Apostles Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer. Calvin’s Institutes, for example, followed the order of the Apostles Creed. The early Puritans Edward Dering, Richard Greenham, Robert Openshawe, George Gifford, William Wood, Edmund Chapman, and others took over this pattern, as had Alexander Nowell. The retention of the Apostles Creed pressed these men toward a Christo-centric pattern of catechetical instruction. Edmund Chapman does not hesitate to declare there was “no other cause” which moved God to give his only begotten Son “but his owne love, mercy and compassion.”36 William Wood says “the favour purchased unto mankinde by Christ extendeth also to me.”37 Toward the turn of the sixteenth century there is a significant change in emphasis in the catechisms of Stephen Egerton, Thomas Cartwright, and John Ball. These men modified or abandoned the earlier framework and gave central place in their catechetical instruction to the decrees of God. Nonetheless there were influential men right up to the Westminster Assembly who followed the older order, e.g. Herbert Palmer.38 It has been sometimes pointed out that in his definitive edition of the Institutes in 1559 Calvin placed the decrees within the context of the work of salvation and the work of the Holy Spirit in the believer’s life. The early Elizabethan Puritans scarcely touched this issue at all. Dering warns of the dangers of investigating what Calvin had once called a “labyrinth.”39 Greenham gives a similar warning. In Matthew Virel’s catechism, extensively used in England, the issues of “predestination” are considered toward the end of the catechism, under salvation.40

An illuminating sidelight on subsequent development is given by Elnathan Parr, whose catechism wrestles with the influence of Theodore Beza, balances this against the views of other reformers, follows the doctrine of God by the doctrine of creation and providence, and finally rejects Beza’s rigid supralapsarianism after several pages of wordy debate.41 With Stephen Egerton and John Ball the decrees of God follow the doctrine of God in both catechisms. The immense influence of both men, and above them of William Perkins, must have done much to promote a wide acceptance of this pattern among Puritan clergy. Taken over by James Ussher and by the Irish Articles, this form was decisive, though modified, at the Westminster Assembly. Even at Westminster, however, a small but highly respected group of “Amyraldians,” of whom Edmund Calamy was the most influential, pled for some recognition of the more liberal Calvinism associated with John Davenant at Dort and Moise Amyraut on the continent.42

In the conflicts and vicissitudes through which the Reformation cause passed in the century after Calvin it was inevitable and indeed necessary to seek greater precision and clarity for these polemical battles. But this process has both gains and losses. With increased systematization the evangelical warmth and lively faith in a gracious God of the first reformers tended to be lost in careful logical precision. Also it has to be asked whether the tools of this systematization were drawn from Scripture or from the heady but alien air of current philosophy. Because it was the Puritans who were most deeply attracted to the “new logic” of Petrus Romus, it is not surprising that some of their catechisms show most clearly the tendency to “dichotomise” associated with Ramean logic, e. g. William Gouge. Stephen Egerton’s twenty-fifth edition has stuffed in a new section on the “communicable” and “non-communicable” attributes of God, which does not appear in his earlier editions.43 Paul Baynes admits when he introduces the dichotomy of the “active” and “passive” obedience of Christ that he is following “later writers.” The earliest reference in a catechism to the “covenant of works” and the “covenant of grace” appears to be in Thomas Cartwright,44 though the chief architects of the developed covenant theology were William Ames and William Perkins, and John Ball and John Preston. Ezekiel Roger’s catechism uses the less ambiguous phrase “covenant of nature.” B. B. Warfield claimed that this developed doctrine of the covenants was the “architectonic principle of the Westminister Confession.” Important as the covenant had been for Calvin, it had never taken the position of a single dominating principle, and he certainly never taught a “covenant of works.”

One of the main issues in the debate with William Barrett in Cambridge in the latter part of the sixteenth century concerned the doctrine of assurance. Puritan catechisms, at this stage, show a double tendency; to ground assurance in works or subjective signs: and to be more aggressively confident and less guarded than the New Testament requires. Charles Simeon told evangelicals of a later age of that Calvinist who “looks on statements like that of Paul’s possibly becoming a castaway as a dog looks on a hedgehog: he knows not what to do with it.” William Perkins gives a formidable list of inward signs to test the reality of repentance; similarly Stephen Egerton discusses “works” as a mark of assurance; pragmatic Puritans sought the “evidences” from William Laud at his execution. There were, however, distinguished Puritans who labored to redress this balance, from the inwardness of signs to a “willingness to follow Christ in all conditions,” and to those “conveyances” by which Christ “reveals himself to us, the word and the sacraments, and the communion of the saints.”

Assessment

In an assessment of Puritan catechisms there is both credit and debit. First theologically: those familiar with the massive theological work of B. B. Warfield on Westminster Assembly^45 will remember that he regards the Confession and Catechisms as the ripest fruit of Reformed scholarship, the precise and carefully defined confession of the Reformed faith after a century of conflicts, with its polemical sharp edges well turned outward toward opponents in the Roman Catholic church. The long list of translations of the Shorter Catechism at British Museum into the languages of many nations bears eloquent witness to the enormous theological influence of this catechism for over 250 years.

For all this the question raised once by Horatius Bonar ought to be weighed, “whether the church gained . . . by the exchange of the Reformation standards for those of the seventeenth century. The scholastic mould in which the latter are cast has somewhat trenched upon the ease and breadth which mark the former; and the skilful metaphysics employed at Westminster in giving lawyer-like precision to each statement have imparted a local and temporary aspect to the new which did not belong to the more ancient standards. Or enlarging the remark, we may say that there is something about the theology of the Reformation which renders it less likely to become obsolete than the theology of the Covenant . . . by the adoption of the biblical in preference to the scholastic mode of expression, they have secured for themselves a buoyancy which will bear them up when others go down.”46

There were many difficulties in such a vast confusion of catechisms, an untidy situation frowned on by William Laud and his associates, the weaknesses of which were recognized by some of the Puritans themselves. Thomas Cranmer had warned of the dangers of a multiplicity of catechisms, the Puritans at Hampton Court pressed for a new catechism for the whole church (the articles on the sacraments by John Overall were subsequently added to the church catechism), and the divines at Westminster sincerely desired to establish one catechism and one confession of faith for both England and Scotland. But even after Westminster the spate of catechisms continued. Philip Nye was not entirely satisfied with the work of the divines, Richard Baxter prepared Poor Man’s Family Book^47 for his people, and Zachary Crofton continued to use John Ball’s earlier work.

It has also been suggested by Christopher Hill that the Puritan use of the catechism was a temporary measure, a substitute tool for religious education, not to be compared with preaching because of its very formal and artificial method of learning, which could be readily dropped once the general standard of religious education had been raised. There may be some supporting evidence for this, that as the Puritans gained in influence they preferred preaching and tended to neglect the catechism, and that in this gap the Caroline churchmen Henry Hammond and George Herbert and the men associated with Archbishop Laud exerted a decisive influence. Richard Baxter, however, strenuously rebuts the usual Laudian charge that the “presbyterians” were prepared to “down catechising.” Nor can Laud’s attempt to “restore the catechism” be relieved entirely from the struggle for power in the church; when, for instance, Richard Sibbes’ “lecture” at Cambridge is put down because “students are taken away from catechising” we are left to conclude, in spite of this official reason, that catechizing would be a safer and less influential course even for a moderate and politically unself-conscious Puritan like Sibbes.

Against the view that the Puritans regarded the catechism as a temporary measure, two facts need to be faced. First, that they do not appear to have considered the catechism an artificial and formal method of religious education, soon to be discarded. There are very plain and very frequent hints that they did not wish to tie their people to the bare words of the catechism, and this was certainly one reason for resistance of Laud. They were concerned for “heart knowledge” and not for the repetitions, as they would have put it, of “parrots or popinjays.” Again the most significant and possibly the most effective of all Puritan attempts in catechizing took place immediately before the Restoration in the achievement of Richard Baxter and his associates at Kidderminster and in the wider Worcestershire Association. Baxter’s Reformed Pastor was originally prepared as direction for his fellow-minsters of Worcestershire, at the commencement of their united labors in this work, to use his words, of “familiar personal instruction.” It is in Baxter’s work that Puritan ideals reach in great measure, their fulfillment and their crown.

One aspect of this ideal can be finally noted. Not infrequently a Puritan catechism is dedicated by its author, if not to the lay patron under whom he survived, then to the people whom he served. So the multiplicity of catechisms has to be seen, in one sense, as an expression of a conscientious pastoral ideal, to communicate the “principles of religion” in a particular local situation, to use the labors of other “godlie” ministers if these were available and suitable, to change them where necessary, but never to be bound by them; above all to marry the pulpit and the home, the instruction of the word with family piety, the preaching and teaching office of the “painful” minister for the good of his flock. Beyond any limitations we have noticed this ideal of Puritan pastors can be traced, to labor diligently in church and home, in school and university for reformation both in doctrine and life; as Baxter once said to his Worcestershire brethren, “A Reformation that must be wrought by their own diligence, and unwearied labours, by earnest preaching, catechising, personal instructions, and taking heed to all the flock, whatever pains and reproaches it should cost them.”

10

OLIVER HEYWOOD,

THE NORTHERN PURITAN

W. H. Davies

The avowed aim of this paper is to encourage an interest in the writings of Oliver Heywood, and as a consequence to increase our pursuit of that godliness, which he made so much a part of his life and ministry. The method we shall employ is first of all summarily to consider his life as recorded in his diaries, and then to proceed to examine his published writings.

The Life

“Herbert speaks to God like one that really believeth a God and whose business in the world is most with God. Heart-work and heaven work make up his books.” So wrote Richard Baxter of George Herbert. The words might equally be applied to one who owed so much to them both (as his writings testify), the subject of our paper, Oliver Heywood. For above all else, here is a patently godly man dominated by a twofold aim—the pursuit of godliness, and the promotion of this same pursuit in the hearts of his fellow men.

Oliver Heywood was born in 1629 in the Parish of Little Lever near Bolton in Lancashire. His godly parents early accustomed him to the things of God, and it is no surprise that he soon evinced signs of youthful piety. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1647, and himself comments, “I also met with some ingenuous and gracious scholars, with whom I had intimate familiarity and was furthered by them in the ways of God. . . . All the time I was in the University my heart was much deadened in philosophical studies, nor could I, as I desired, apply my mind so closely to human literature, though I prize learning above all sublunary excellencies, I might have been more useful, had I improved my time better therein. My times and thoughts were most employed on practical divinity, and experimental truths were most vivifying to my soul. I preferred Perkins, Bolton, Preston and Sibbes far above Aristotle, Plato, etc.”

Coley is a small district on the moors above the Yorkshire town of Halifax. Its parish church stood, as indeed it still stands, at a remote distance from the inhabitants of the parish. To this charge Heywood was called in 1650, agreeing to supply the pulpit for six months. He was to stay in the district for the whole length of his mortal life, exercising among its inhabitants an effective ministry for fifty-two years. This will make it apparent that we are dealing with a pastor par-excellence. His writings are essentially pastoral.

One thing is consistently to be noticed in Heywood’s life and that is his habit of continuous heart searchings. When after two years he was ordained, he questioned his own soul concerning his entrance to his charge, “But how camest thou into so high an office? Art thou not an intruder? I hope not. I came into it in a lawful way, according to God’s Word. Though the window was open, and every one might enter, that had a mind, yet I crept not in thereat, but entered by the door of an internal call, inclining, disposing, and in some measure qualifying me thereunto; and also of an external call from the church, moving, selecting, and designing me for that function. Here is mercy upon mercy. To be a minister, and a lawful minister of the gospel, to have to deal with souls in an authoritative way as having a commission from Jesus Christ my Lord and my Master.”

Heywood was now twenty-six years of age and unmarried. His deliberate search for a wife was almost clinical in its exactness, and here again we see that same self-examination and searching out of God’s will. “Many times I had good hopes that I was near a conjugal relation, but I was disappointed by some strange means or other. This was no small trouble to me, but was the means of humbling my heart, and sending me more frequently and earnestly to the Throne of Grace. I was often afraid of missing my way, and as often begged direction, pleading this promise that God will teach the humble his way and the meek He will guide in judgment. I desired not to follow my own fancy, but God’s counsel.” He spiritually improved these disappointments and delays in a soliloquy entitled “Hope Deferred”: “Moderate thy desires then, bridle thy affections, put a curb upon thy roving imaginations, stay a while and wait God’s time . . . in the meantime, if God cause thee to live more to Him and have more communion with Him, it will be equivalent to the blessing itself.” I shall quote at greater length to show how this man acts on his own principles of self-examination, and to show how he improves every providence. He did marry and his wife was Elisabeth Angier, daughter of a godly minister in Denton, Lancashire. His reflections on this happy event are themselves worth perusal and worth quoting in parts: “But this blessing as bestowed on me hath many attendant circumstances that heighten my comfort and gratitude. (1) It was given me as an answer to prayer, which multiplies the favour and gives it sweeter relish. (2) It came in God’s own time which is always the best and most seasonable. My impatient spirit had fixed limits to the Lord and I was loth to stay His time and wait His choice. (3) It came in God’s way. My wife is not carried off by me but sent by God. How much sorrow would a clandestine marriage have produced.”

Three sons were born to this marriage, one dying in infancy, the other two growing to manhood and becoming useful ministers of the gospel. True to the man, the birth of his children were occasions of happy meditation:

Now I have a son, and I beg his life and health as well as his mother’s. Since he is born in my own image in the likeness of sinful Adam, I now want for his soul the grace of regeneration, adoption and justification. I desire not great things for him in the world, but good things for his soul to prepare him for another and better world. . . . I now see and feel more experimentally, God’s infinite love and my parents’ warm affection for me than ever before. My passionate love for my child speaks my parents’ pathetic love to me. . . . What father’s love can equal God’s, what mother’s affection will run parallel with His . . . let me love God with all my might and soul, yea let me love God for Himself and all other things in and for Him and put all things in a due subordination to Him. Beware my soul of splitting on the rock of inordinate affection. Thou canst not over love thy God, but thou mayest easily transgress in overloving dear relations. Get natural love spiritualized and so live as a Christian lest strong affection exceed moderation.

So this man made every occasion a means of grace.

Oliver Heywood was not friendly to the rule of Cromwell, and the state of the nation at this period provided occasion for further reflection:

Come then my soul and view this guilty nation . . . alas, we have become a mere skeleton; alas, this is the greatest grief of all that God is leaving England, this is the quintessence of our calamity; alas, how can our land fare well when God has departed? Well, and if poor England’s best days alone may be past, we alone may thank ourselves, we must condemn ourselves and justify God. Our people have been surfeited with the gospel, they cry out away with formalities; the manna is like food, it creates loathing, we need not wonder then if God should take away what has become offensive to the nation . . . should not the sins of this poor island, the cause of all its miseries much affect thee my soul.

And again, “O that I could learn the mind of God in all these dispensations. Surely I may sing of mercy and judgment, floods of love and only drops of displeasure. How mysterious is God in His proceedings! O that I had wisdom from above to spell out his meaning. He hath a special design in all these national commotions.”

Heywood, being deeply moved by the religious condition of the nation, believing also in God’s sovereign purposes, sought in obedience to the Scripture to discover its outworking in the events of his day. This reveals the prophet’s heart as much as the pastor’s. Pacific in his intents, he writes, “Woe is me that I have lived to see this day when ecclesiastical divisions have produced civil opposition . . . how sad is it that those who are reconciled by the blood of Christ should thirst after one another’s blood. How unlike is this to the spirit and grace of the saints of God.” At this time, he suffered from suspicion without cause, the loss of his child and the loss of his wife, giving rise to some of the most affecting words he ever penned:

Alas, we poor mortals speak of heaven enigmatically. But the vail of natural and sinful infirmities is withdrawn from the blessed eyes of her immortal spirit. I have not the least grounds of fear relative to her, nay while she was with me I had always better hopes of her state than of my own, and though she expressed not much to others, yet she was familiarly acquainted with the Lord in secret duties, and with her own heart by observing its movements in self-examination. Her soul knew in some degree the way and fruit of ascending to heaven, and now she is gone to take possession. But here I am a poor bewildered creature left behind to conflict with a world of sinful allurements. Had I made the same haste in holiness I had also made haste to happiness . . . but why do I deplore my state, my work is to mind God’s design.

The accession of Charles II brought about unexpected opposition. In 1661 private meetings were ordered to be prevented. Heywood at first put a favorable construction on events, though he later had cause to change his mind: “The truth is, our dread Sovereign, at the first and hitherto, hath allowed us abundant liberty for religious exercises both in public and private, but his clemency has been abused which has occasioned this severe and universal prohibition. The fanatical and schismatical party truly so called, have by their unwise and unwarrantable practices troubled all the people of God throughout this nation, and have rendered the sweet savour of Christian converse to be abhorred.” And he continues with unsparing self-analysis:

But why do I lay the blame on others and not on ourselves? The actions of men and edicts of princes could not have abridged our liberties had not our sins procured these things. Just very just, is what has come upon us, for we have been unprofitable under our privileges. . . . they have been so ordinary that our hearts are grown indifferent and less than ordinary preparations have served for extraordinary duties. We meet as if loth to meet, our prayers were full of deadness, unbelief and vanity. It is therefore just we should not be permitted to meet for prayer. We too much aimed at applause for our gifts and God has taken away the occasion of venting the pride and hypocrisy of our hearts. We did not improve the society of our Christian friends and therefore we must not now enjoy it. I doubt not we have been too much abroad and too little at home, religious in company but careless in our closets. Now we must learn to enter into our closets and shut the door upon us. It is the property of a Christian to make a virtue of necessity and wisely to improve this present restraint of Christian liberty which our gracious God will restore to us if He sees it useful.

I have quoted this at some length partly for the example of Heywood’s rigorous self-examination and partly because it reveals the man’s humility and partly because it has no small relevance to our own situation.

Even before the notorious Act of Uniformity, Oliver Heywood was continually harassed, and being cited to appear at York for his persistent nonconformity. Though no charge was specified, he makes this also an occasion for honest self-examination:

I have this day the unaccustomed news of a citation to appear before an Ecclesiastical Court at York. The cause I imagine is for not reading the Book of Common Prayer. This is a strange trial to me and I am unfit to manage it. Reflect on myself O my soul and see what use thou canst make of this startling providence . . . examine on what grounds thou dost refuse this English liturgy. Is it from principles of conscience or contradiction? Hast thou no by-ends in what thou dost? Consider an erroneous conscience hath carried many very far astray, even to die for a mere whim. Self-made crosses will be uncomfortable and hast thou not cause to suspect thine own judgment? Consider seriously before thou dost enter on sufferings. . . . The sufferings of preachers for truth have a wonderful influence in confirming believers and making new converts. Leave God to look to his own interest and take thou care of thy duty.

Always the heart searching, always the tender conscience. If this man taught much concerning self-examination, his teaching was tested and grounded in his practice.

Heywood was ejected in 1662:

O my soul was ever the Hand of God so laid on a minister of these nations to change them in a day from being in some sense, the life and spirit of the world to become as dead carcasses . . . but have we merited at the hands of men such things as we now suffer, what is our transgression and our sin? At present our work is to ascertain clearly the reasons of our sufferings. Woe be to us if we preach not the gospel, but a double woe to us if we enervate the gospel by legal ceremonies. Our peoples’ souls are precious and we ought to take care of them, but our own souls are precious also and we must not destroy them under pretence of saving those of others. Our work is dear to us, but God is dearer, and we must not do the least evil to obtain the greatest good. There are worldly advantages enough to sway us to conformity, if conscience did not answer all the pleas of flesh and blood. Should we forsake our Christian liberty, and put our necks under such a yoke as neither we nor our fathers were able to bear? Should we build again what we have destroyed and make ourselves transgressors . . . the bargain will be too hard to provide a livelihood by making shipwreck of faith and a good conscience . . . suffering may benefit the gospel as much as service when God calls to it.

He was suspended from his ministerial work six months before the Act of Uniformity became law; he was turned out of his pulpit and out of his church: “We must not divine, men forbid and God doth say Amen, in severe displeasure. But shall we desist altogether? The word is as a burning fire shut up in our bones and though it cannot blaze in public as a beacon on a hill yet should be glowing in private to enlighten the houses of God’s people and to warm the hearts of those who are willing to entertain us or our message.” He now lived in a state of constant alarm, and yet exhibited a holy courage in all circumstances. We cannot enter into the many details of life at this troubled time, except here and there to see his sober reflections upon what came to him. Though he was in constant danger of arrest, he preached whenever opportunity presented itself. Frequently he engaged privately with other believers in fasting and prayer, and the measure of this engagement is seen in this extract from his account: “Tuesday, June 7th, we had a private day of seeking the Lord in prayer. There was a considerable number of Christians in the room. I was put to engage in the duty first, and continued about three hours, pouring out my soul before the Lord, principally on behalf of His Church.”

A considerable number of people met in Heywood’s home despite the restrictions of the Conventicle Act. The Five Mile Act resulted in his being driven from home, and he was obliged to wander from place to place, but once again our author improves this seemingly adverse providence:

Another step the restless adversary has taken by God’s permission to disquiet poor ejected ministers by casting them out of their own houses, from their flocks and families, but the enemy has overshot himself, for this cut above all other means, tendeth much to the furtherance of the gospel. Instead of one house that we had to preach in, we have now at least a score. By travelling abroad, our acquaintance is exceedingly enlarged, and so are our opportunities of doing good; the persecution of seedsmen is the dispersion of the seed, which much tends to the propagation of the gospel. Whereas, before this Act we were confined to our houses, we are now sent to many families with the Word of Life and every honest man’s house is our home.

He was a constant traveler, both by necessity of the harsh laws of the land, and by an almost apostolic zeal. He was ready to expose himself to any discomfort and danger for the good of souls. He remarried in 1667 and a little later was imprisoned for a brief period, once again improving this adversity to his soul. The more severe the measures, the more he improved them; the greater the restriction, the more he labored in the gospel: “Whoever hardened himself against God and prospered? . . . the enemies of the gospel are so far from hindering that they shall help Christ up to his Throne . . . O my soul, mourn for thy sins that have procured these acts, pity those that have framed them, alas that swearing blasphemy and drunkenness and Sabbath breaking should find so little discouragement by the laws of man, that all their care is to suppress religious exercises. Lord open rulers’ eyes to see that true religion is the support, and profaneness the undermining, of the nation.” It was the custom of the nonconformists annually to celebrate the ejection of 1662. On August 24, 1665, he wrote, “This being the killing day of all non-conformist ministers, I appointed a fast at my house, and propounded four things: 1. To lament before the Lord this sad judgment; 2. To enquire of God what was the cause; 3. To beg of God the sanctified use of this dreadful stroke; 4. To entreat God to remove it.”

During this period, though he could not preach as freely as he might, Heywood used his pen and completed three of his publications, Heart-Treasure, Closet Prayer, and The Sure Mercies of David.1 During this period we have an excellent example of self-examination:

This day, July 31st, 1671, having the opportunity of solitariness, all my family being from home, I set myself solemnly to religious exercises. I first read the 139th Psalm concerning God’s omniscience and omnipresence with tears in my eyes, commenting on it and applying it to myself. I accordingly set myself as in the presence of God desiring to deal truly and faithfully with my own soul in self-examination, and to lay open all my known sins. I fell down upon my knees and for about an hour the Lord helped me to open my heart before Him . . . God brought my bitterest enemies to my thoughts and helped me seriously to beg mercy for their souls . . . the Lord hath given me some secret intimations of pardon and acceptance, and did communicate Himself graciously to my heart.

After ten years of restriction and oppression came the declaration of public liberty to the nonconformists. This new liberty was short lived, and persecution was soon renewed. As for Heywood, he traveled widely and preached much, his preaching being noticeably owned of God. Places of worship were erected in a score of places as a result of his itinerant labors in Yorkshire; and all the while he did not neglect his own soul: “Having the opportunity of secrecy and having to dispense and partake of the Lord’s supper tomorrow I have this afternoon, February 1st, 1673, been setting myself to examine my conscience, renew my faith and repentance and to pour out my soul before God. Having experienced some degree of enlargement I am pressed in spirit to lift up my hands to the Most High and bind myself to the Lord in a further vow of self-dedication to Him.”

In 1673, though the persecution was renewed, God continued to be gracious: “How sweetly,” says he, recording some pleasant meditations while traveling to preach, “did God melt my heart with a sense of His mercies towards me.” Again, “God melted my heart in secret prayer,” and on another occasion, “O how little power have I over my own thoughts, I feel the truth of that word ‘when He giveth quietness who then can make trouble, and when He hideth His face, who then can behold Him?’ But now I feel the benefit of prayer.” He was always recollecting God’s mercies, and always examining himself, not morbidly, but with profit.

Heywood was again apprehended in 1679 and again excommunicated in 1680. Severely treated, he was imprisoned in York Castle in 1685, spending his days there in prayer and study of the Word, preaching both to prisoners and jailors during his twelve months of imprisonment. When liberty finally came, the Dissenters at North-Owram adjacent to Coley erected a Chapel in 1688, or better still it was Heywood himself who personally bore the larger part of the cost. Here he continued to his end, and when unable to bear the fatigue of walking to his chapel (called Heywood Chapel to this day) his people being unwilling to be deprived of his services, and he unwilling to desist, carried him to the pulpit in his chair, and so he ministered with his usual power. He closed his public ministry the Lord’s Day but one before his death on May 4, 1702, in the seventy-third year of his age, and the fifty-second year of his ministry. One summing up his life said, “He dared to be good, in a bad time.”

The Writings

Heywood’s published treatises are sixteen in number, excluding his sermons and his voluminous diary. They are almost wholly taken up with experimental religion. The titles themselves suggest this: Heart-Treasure, Closet Prayer, Life in God’s Favour, Family Altar, Heavenly Converse.2 They are written in a plain style, as Heywood himself puts it: “It is true, it is simply and plainly dressed, not with ornaments of art or rhetorical flourishes to set it off to the learned, being adapted in intelligible language to ordinary capacities and possibly it may prove more profitable to country hearers.” He often brings home the truth by pungent sayings and delightful aphorisms, with not a little artifice of punning and rhyming of sentences. His power of application is so great that he must be a very dull soul indeed who can read his works and fail to be moved.

It is no surprise then that real godliness is greatly emphasized in Heywood’s works. We shall look for the remainder of this paper at some of the aspects of the pursuit of godliness, as seen therein.

The Centrality of Godliness

Godliness is central in Heywood’s writings, and central to godliness is the fellowship, the communion with God to be enjoyed by the believer. “Here,” he writes, “is the end of this new creature which is two-fold, first the glory of God, and secondly the soul’s present and everlasting communion with Him. Both these are wrapped up together and are very consistent, yea cannot be separated.” For him communion with God was founded in union with God. Communion with God was the believer’s worship of Him: “these holy souls are they that worship in the temple of God and at the altar, God admits them into His Presence as a people near to Him, the Christian is the man who sanctified God’s Name in his worship, and is satisfied with the fatness of God’s House. Here is the blessed merchant that trades in rich pearls, that goes from port to port, from ordinance to ordinance, not to see places but to take in his lading of communications, graces, privileges, assurance and comfort from God.” Again, “the first instant of this new creation commences a communion with God . . . God has two thrones, one in heaven, and the other in a holy heart. . . . This communion with God is a mystery to most men. Every one that hangs about the court does not speak with the King, many meddle with duties, but meet not with God. . . . This new creature puts a bias in the soul Godwards, it naturally carries the believer upwards, to engage his heart in approaching God.” Again, “a hypocrite dare not come before God but a saint can draw near with boldness through Christ, for he is like God and communion is founded in similitude.” “Communion with God is the heaven upon earth of the gracious heart . . . every child of God after the first impartation of grace to him and the change of estate and relation Godwards, is put into a capacity for communion with God, in this and in the other world, but increase in grace and exercise of grace do daily capacitate him for further communion with God.”

He makes us to see communion with God in its eternal context: “There are heaven born principles implanted in believing souls that make them soar aloft after the enjoyment of God. . . . This blissful sight of Christ is that which makes heaven, for where the King is, there is the Court. This glory consists in conformity to Him and communion with Him.”

The importance of communion with God is further stressed: “There, there is a Christian’s life, his love and his delight, thither he is mounting as on eagles’ wings, and is never satisfied until he is wallowed up in the divine embraces. He is glad of communion with saints below, more glad of a communion with God . . . it is true that the infinite God is ultimately and objectively the saints’ proper delight both here and in heaven.”

Following the insistence on the centrality of communion in the godly life, Heywood has much to say concerning the means, both internal and external, of pursuing fellowship with God.

Internal Means to Fellowship with God

We shall pass over the teaching on conversion and regeneration, and come immediately to conformity: “So that you may take this account of our sanctity, that holiness as it is in us consists in our complete conformity to the Holy One; godliness is Godlikeness. God is the Holy One by way of eminency, far surpassing both men and angels. He is essentially holy, but we are participatively so; it is but a quality in us, it is essence to Him. He is holy effectively, for He makes others so. Our holiness requires that there be conformity to the will of God. The will of God is the rule of holiness, as His nature is the pattern of it, and there is no more of holiness in any work than there is of the will of God in it.”

“Our conformity to God is our imitation of Him, and by our walking with Him we make Him our pattern and His will our rule.” This communion with God, according to Heywood, is firmly grounded in an ethical basis. Not only is it a pleasurable pursuit, but it is a holy duty and a clean delight. We are to conform to God’s will in our delight as well as in our duty; holiness is essential to communion, and communion is essential to continuance in holiness. “Secret duties of religion must be performed by those who walk in the way of holiness. These are prayer and meditation and heart examination, which must be looked after in secret. Many duties a pious person has to perform that none must be privy to but God and his own soul. He has much work alone; there he must look into his own heart, there he must look up to God to fetch down blessings from above. . . . And here take notice of one thing, these duties must all be performed one as well as another. We must not pick and choose those only that are suited to our humours, we need all the help heavenward that we can get.”

This holiness, so essential to communion, is not merely intellectual, an enlightened and orthodox head:

Alas, what are you better for having Christ revealed to you, unless He be revealed in you? O woe will be to you if you prove Christless after hearing so much of Christ. . . . We know that we all have knowledge, what kind of knowledge is yours? Devils have more knowledge than you, nor ever will be new creatures; thousands go knowingly to hell, and the more knowledge without grace, the more torment . . . thou mayest have an orthodox head, and heterodox feet. . . . There must be an inward principle so that there is something more required than an orthodox judgment. A learned head with an unholy heart, and ungodly life will not do. Alas, many have light in their heads, but no heat in their hearts.

A constant repentance is necessary to a constant communion. The work of the conscience is much stressed. It has four offices: a guide to discover our duty; a correct and faithful register of our actions, expressions, and thoughts of the heart and imaginations; a judge to pass sentence; an avenger and self-tormentor (the godly man must take the whip of conscience with a hand of grace, and scourge himself for his sins, or God will take it with His hand, and chastise him for it). Sin is to be avoided, “Custom in sin, takes away conscience of sin, the more men travel, the more brawny are their feet.”

Among the internal means to godliness you will not be surprised to hear this man urgently pressing the duty of self-examination, giving detailed instructions for this duty in several of his works. “My spiritual duties need spiritualizing; my repentance needs repenting of; my exercise of grace needs a gracious pardon; my Lord Jesus must take away the iniquity of my holy things, perfume my poor services, and offer my ‘prayers with his much incense, upon the golden altar before the throne.’” Heywood urges the believer to this duty: “It is of very great concernment for every rational soul to know and be sure on some certain grounds whether he be a new creature.” Among the things to be looked for in this duty are a sense of sin, a discovery of helplessness, and consequent “sad thoughts of heart.” The understanding, the will, the affections, all are to be searched out. “Christians try yourselves.”

External Means to Fellowship with God

Turning to some of the external means of pursuing godliness, Heywood has much to say about the Word of God and obedience to its authority: “Here is the rule of this new creature, which is expressed, by turning the heart and the life to the rule of the Word . . . the soul is the metal, the Word is the mould into which the sinner is cast, therefore he receives a new stamp, is formed into a new shape, which naturally terminates in a new course of life according to the scriptural rule. The Christian is both drawn and determined by its authority more than by a whole team of human arguments.” Again, “The new creation introduces a new counsellor. Now the Christian goes to the sanctuary in arduous cases, and makes the Scriptures his chief counsellors in his actions, natural civil and spiritual; and dare venture upon nothing but that for which he hath a warrant from God.”

The fellowship of believers is another external means. Heywood urges believers to attend together on a “lively ministry.” He urges the communion of saints:

Gather yourselves together in solemn exercises of religion; especially in times of public calamity and common danger. Persons may be helpful one to another, God sometimes expects unanimous votes which make a great sound in His ears. Many combustibles make a great blaze; grapes put together ripen one another. Is communion of saints good in heaven, and is it not good here? Are not some Christians ignorant and want informing? Are not some dead and want quickening; hard and want softening; wandering and want reclaiming? Are not some staggering and want settling? Are not some weak, and should not we lift up the hands that hang down and the feeble knees? Get together here as you hope to come together hereafter.

The ordinances are yet other external means to the same end:

Yet privileges are not to be slighted nor ordinances despised. . . . Ordinances can do us no good without the concurrance of divine grace. . . . It becomes us to obey God in hearing, praying, reading, meditating and tending on God in His own ways; the seals of the covenant are not insignificant ceremonies; ordinances are channels through which God conveys His grace to the soul (canales gratiae) . . . shall the bucket be thrown away because it hath not water in itself without letting it down into the well by the chains of faith? . . . Let our dependence be upon God in the way of His appointments. Affect not to be above, but go beyond all ordinances. God is present in all, that we may despise none; He withdraws in some, sometimes in all, that we may idolize none. When you enter upon a duty, look up to the blessed Jesus, make it your business to get communion with God therein. If you miss of God in ordinances, you lose your ends, yea, you are in danger of losing your souls.”

By this, he understands the soul to suffer a loss in so far as it misses God in the ordinance.

Ordinances are not to be abused however: “If you make your services your saviours, you will perish with them . . . things good in themselves may, by man’s abuse prove rather snares and hindrances than helps and furtherances in heaven’s road . . . they become not only dead but deadly. Nay, the best duties, ordinances and privileges rested in short of Christ will rather ruin than raise us, undo us rather than enrich us, grace here or glory hereafter.”

Much more could be said of the place of prayer, private and public, of the proper use of all things, of the improvement of providences, of the fear of hell and joys of heaven, of the coming again of the Lord Jesus Christ, all of which are pressed into the service of souls. To close with a quotation: “Remember sirs, you are new creatures; an old heart would have served well enough to have done the devil’s drudgery, you are new born to higher employment . . . now it becomes you to act as you are.”

11

HENRY JACOB AND THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Let me explain at once why I haven chosen this subject on which I am to address you. Indeed, it would be more accurate to say that it has been chosen for me: because this year happens to be the 350th anniversary of the founding in this country of the first Congregational or Independent Chapel which has had a continuous existence.

It has been my lot on other occasions and in other places to remind people of certain important historical occasions. I am sure that very few, if any of you, knew that this year is the 350th anniversary of the founding of that first Congregational Chapel. We are living in days when people no longer remember these things, and are not interested in them. It is a very significant symptom of the spiritual malaise that afflicts us, and I would probably have given this address in any case this evening, because a 350th anniversary is an important one.

But, on top of that, something has happened this year which makes this fact still more interesting and throws into still greater significance this thing which happened 350 years ago. Last May the Congregational Union of Independent Churches in Great Britain came to an end with the formation of what is called the Congregational Church of England. Now I have no hesitation in saying that the authorities of the Congregational Union were probably completely ignorant of the fact that they were taking this momentous step of doing away with essential Congregationalism on the 350th anniversary of the founding of the Congregational Chapel to which I am referring. But that is what they have succeeded in doing; and though it means nothing to them it means a great deal to me. So I felt that it would be wrong, apart from anything else, to allow this important occasion to pass without calling attention to it.

I am, as I say, interested in the mere history of this matter: but that is not my only interest. We are living in days when we cannot afford the luxury of mere antiquarian interests, neither can we indulge any historical bent that we may have as a matter of mere enjoyment. The times are too serious and too urgent for that. I am calling attention to this important anniversary because I think it has a great deal to teach us at the present time. It should help the thinking of every one of us.

We must never forget that the Puritans were not only interested in pastoral problems, or problems which come under the general heading of casuistry. They were, of course, vitally interested, as we have been so rightly reminded, in godliness and the outworking of the teaching of the Bible in daily life. But it would be a very regrettable and a most unfortunate thing for us to forget that they were also tremendously, and indeed even primarily, interested in the doctrine of the nature of the Christian Church. And it is with that, of course, that I shall of necessity have to deal as I tell you something about Henry Jacob and the founding of the first Congregational Chapel to have had a continuous existence. All this becomes peculiarly interesting and important for us because of the fluid condition in which we find ourselves as ministers and members of Christian churches at this present time.

The task which I am thus attempting to deal with is not an easy one. Clearly, the first thing that is necessary is to give a definition, if we can, of what is meant by Congregational or Independent. Indeed, this whole matter of what is meant by the very term Puritan is an extremely involved one which has been receiving much attention recently. There is a very fascinating essay on this subject under the title of “Puritanism: The Problem of Definition” by Professor Basil Hall of Cambridge.1

There has been from the beginning great confusion concerning this question of the exact meaning of the term Puritan. There were many factors which led to that. Daniel Neal’s History of the Puritans is one of the factors.2 He was a bit careless in his use of the term, and others have tended to follow him. Furthermore, as Professor Basil Hall points out quite rightly, the leaders of the Congregational and Baptist churches, priding themselves in the fact that their churches have attained unto respectability in this present century, are very anxious to play down their Separatist origins. That is not surprising, indeed it is inevitable, as is often seen in the case of individuals who have “risen in the world.” These factors then have conspired together to bring a great deal of confusion into this whole question of the definition of the term Puritan. The two volumes by Champlin Burrage, which were issued in 1912, on The Early English Dissenters^3 I believe did more good than anything I have come across to clear up this confusion, and since then the position has somewhat improved. But still it is not too clear even now. This term Puritan has been used very loosely, and as Professor Hall says again, its meaning has been greatly inflated.

What kind of definition is possible therefore? Well, the first thing we have to remember is that it is used currently, and has been for some time, in a very loose way to include people who differed not only radically from one another on this issue of the Church, but even in a very bitter manner. They have all been lumped together always as Puritans. That is where the difficulty has come in. In a sense, of course, they did hold certain things in common but at this point they very definitely divided and disagreed.

I am going to suggest a rough kind of definition. Roughly up until about 1570 Puritans were people who can be described as restlessly critical and occasionally rebellious members of the Church of England who desired some modification in church government and worship. You can think of examples and illustrations of that. They were members of the Church of England. Their one concern was that the Reformation should be carried further. They felt that the Church of England had stopped halfway between Rome and Geneva, and they were anxious that the Reformation should be carried out more thoroughly in the matter of ceremonies and discipline and things like that. That was the position more or less up until the time that Thomas Cartwright and others began to put forward the Presbyterian view of church government.

It is very important to remember that Cartwright, like those other Anglicans to whom I have referred, was not a Separatist. He believed, and the Presbyterians with him, that they could reform the Church of England in the direction of, and turn it into, a Presbyterian Church. For that reason they were not Separatists. But fairly soon afterwards people called Separatists came into being. Actually the first Separatist church in this country was probably one that was formed here in London in 1567 by a man called Richard Fitz; but it had a very checkered and short history. It is when you come on to the 1580s to people like Robert Browne and Robert Harrison that the Separatists really come to be fairly clearly defined.

These were the people who felt that the principle that Christ’s Church should be coterminous with the Tudor or Stuart State was wrong; so they believed in separating from the Established Church which took that view. The fact that Browne subsequently recanted and lived a long life as a vicar in the Church of England does not really make any difference to the matter of principle.

After Browne and Harrison there came three men who were still more remarkable, it seems to me, as Separatists. They were Henry Barrowe, John Greenwood, and John Penry, each of whom was put to death for their principles in 1593. Now these men believed in complete separation from the Established Church. The difference between the two groups was sometimes put like this, that the first group believed in “Tarrying for the Magistrate,” and the second group said “Reformation Without Tarrying for Any”—the title of a book by Browne.4

That, then, was the position until the turn of the sixteenth/ seventeenth century. After that it really becomes most difficult. The trouble has been that everybody seems to have assumed that the Independents were the direct continuation of the Brownists or the Barrowists or the Greenwoodites, whatever you like to call them. But I want to try to show that that was not the case. This is the point at which we have to be most circumspect. Certain men arose, and this man Henry Jacob about whom I am going to speak was one of the more important of them, who really were responsible for the beginning of true Independency or Congregationalism.

What then was the difference between Jacob’s position, and that of his followers who have sometimes been called “Jacob-ites”—not Jacobites—and the Separatists like the Brownists or the Barrowists or even the Anabaptists? Well, it can be put like this: the Independents did not regard the Church of England as being altogether wrong, they did not oppose occasional attendance at the services of the Church of England, and indeed were not really opposed to the notion of a State Church as such. Oliver Cromwell, for instance, was a true Independent but he continued the tithe system when he came to authority and to power and his government took an active part in organizing the religious life of this country.

We can, therefore, look at it like this, that until about 1640 you had that kind of original Puritan who was essentially Anglican, and who was non-Separatist of course; then you had the Presbyterian type of Puritan, also non-Separatist; then right at the other extreme you had the Separatists quite plain and clear and open. But then this new group came into being, it seems to me, about 1605 very definitely as the result of the understanding of this man Henry Jacob.

It is very interesting to notice the relationship between Jacob and John Robinson, known as “the pastor of the Pilgrim Fathers.” John Robinson was first a Separatist, but became an Independent, and this is where Neal and others have gone astray. I have been quite convinced by the argument of Champlin Burrage with regard to this matter. The old idea used to be that it was John Robinson who turned Henry Jacob into an Independent; but it was actually the other way around. It was Henry Jacob who turned John Robinson from being a Separatist into an Independent. This, I think, is something that Champlin Burrage proves quite clearly by quotations from the works of Robinson before 1610 when he met Jacob, and quotations from works which he wrote afterwards, and the way, indeed, in which he behaved afterwards.

This is matter of some interest for us today as it shows that these men kept their minds open, that they were not rigid and set, but they were always ready to listen to new evidence, new argument, or fresh demonstrations from the Scripture. This is something that we tend to forget about them. There were some, of course, who were thoroughly rigid and set and would never change under any conditions whatsoever; but, speaking generally of them, I think it is true to say that they were prepared to consider other points of view.

From 1640 onwards, however, the position does seem to become quite different. From that time you get terms used regularly. Instead of a general conglomerate term like Puritan, the terms Presbyterian, Independent, Baptist, or Anabaptist came into use. Of course there were others also, like the Quakers and Fifth Monarchy men, the Diggers and others. But the interesting point is that terms like Independent, Baptist, and Presbyterian, rather than Puritan, were used more and more frequently from 1640 onwards. We must not be pedantic about these things, but if we are to understand the essence of the story of this man Henry Jacob it was essential that I should have said that much.

In confirmation of that I have a statement, a quotation from the famous Robert Baillie who wrote so much about the Westminster Assembly 1643–1647 and who was one of the Scottish members of it. Robert Baillie says, “For the Brownists, their number at London or Amsterdam is but very small.” “The Independent Puritans of London,” he likewise reports, “as yet do consist of much within one thousand persons; men, women, and all who to this day have put themselves in any known congregation of that way, being reckoned.” Then follows an unsolicited testimonial, “But setting aside numbers, for other respects they are of so eminent a condition, that not any nor all the rest of the Sects are comparable to them.” He is talking there in particular about the Independents. You observe that they were small in number in 1645, less than a thousand, he thinks, here in London.

There, then, is some attempt at a definition. I trust that it is quite clear that the Independents did not believe in breaking altogether with the Church of England. They were prepared to grant that the Church of England was a true church, at any rate that there were true churches within the Church of England, and true Christians; and they did not cut themselves off entirely. They believed in “occasional conformity” and they would on certain occasions, as I am going to show you by quotations later, join with the Episcopalians in services. They have been rightly called semi-Separatists.

I have tried to describe the situation in a broad and general way. The thing we need to grasp is that there was great confusion during all these years. If ever the position was fluid and uncertain it was then, as we have already been reminded by more than one paper in this conference.

Jacob’s Story

We now come directly to the story of Henry Jacob. He was born in the county of Kent, in 1553, and educated at St. Mary’s Hall, Oxford, later becoming a precentor at Christ Church in Oxford. He was then appointed vicar of Cheriton in Kent, a living which he held, roughly, until 1591. Then, he seems to have gone to Holland. He had already begun to imbibe Puritan teaching (I use the term again generally), and as the result of that he went to Holland and remained there for some time. He was not an extreme Puritan, as we can prove in this way. In 1599 he wrote a book—by the way, he was a very able and learned man—with this title: A Defence of the Churches and Ministry of England written in two Treatises against the reasons and objections of Mr. Francis Johnson.5 Mr. Francis Johnson was a Separatist and had been pastor of a Separatist Church in Holland. He had written saying that the Church of England was not a true Church, and her ministry therefore not a true ministry. Henry Jacob, you see, came to the defense of the Church of England in this Defence of the Churches and Ministry of England.

That is very indicative of his position. He had not, obviously, at that time ceased to have communion with the Church of England; but he rejected all of what he called “her corruptions.” He regarded the Church of England as having many corruptions, but in spite of that he would not say, as the Separatists did, that she was no longer a true church.

In Holland somewhere around about 1600 he became the minister of a “gathered church” at Middleburg in Zeeland in Holland. It was a church consisting mainly of English exiles. May I take this opportunity of saying that I think we as people in this country ought to register our gratitude to that country for the way in which it sheltered and harbored these exiles at that time. Considerable numbers went over from time to time, and they were always given a very warm welcome and great freedom in Holland. Of course, in other times this country did exactly the same thing.

But to go on with this history. In 1604 Jacob published a book with this title—remember he had defended the Church of England in 1599—Reasons Taken out of God’s Word and the Best Human Testimonies Proving a Necessity of Reforming Our Churches in England.6 Here are some of the things he maintained in that book: (1) the absolute perfection of the Holy Scriptures in all matters of faith and discipline without any human traditions; (2) that the ministry and ceremonies of the Church of England stood in need of reformation; (3) that for two hundred years the churches of Christ were not diocesan churches but congregational; (4) that the New Testament contains a particular form of church government; (5) that this form of church government is not changeable by man, and therefore no other form is lawful.

In 1605—you see how busy these men were—we find him back in this country, and joining in what was called “A Third Humble Supplication” to King James I. Incidentally, Henry Jacob had been one of the men who had presented the Millenary Petition at Hampton Court to James I, who had been James VI of Scotland, in 1603; and he was one of the men who had been grievously disappointed at the King’s refusal. But they went on petitioning the King, and here in this “Third Humble Supplication” they made an urgent request for toleration.

This is what they asked for:

Permission to assemble together somewhere publicly to the service and worship of God, and to use and enjoy peaceably among ourselves alone the whole exercise of God’s worship and of church government, namely, by a pastor, elder, and deacons in our several Assemblies without any tradition of men whatsoever, according only to the specification of God’s written word and no otherwise, which hitherto as yet in this our present state we could never enjoy. Provided always, that whosoever will enter into this way shall (1) before a Justice of Peace first take the oath of your Majesty’s supremacy and royal authority as the laws of the land at this present time do set forth the same; (2) And shall also afterwards keep brotherly communion with the rest of our English churches as they are now established, according as the French and Dutch churches do; (3) And shall truly pay all payments and duties both ecclesiastical and civil, as at this present they stand bound to pay in any respect whatsoever; (4) and if any trespass be committed by any of them whether ecclesiastically or civilly against good order and Christian obedience; That then the same person shall be dealt withall therein by any of your Majesty’s civil magistrates, etc.

That is a good summary of what these men were standing for at the time, namely about 1605. They desired in their congregations “a pastor, elder, and deacons,” and they did not wish to be compelled to follow any human tradition. They were willing to take the oath of supremacy, to remain in brotherly communion with the Church of England, and to pay all dues, etc.

About the same time in a paper by Jacob called Principles and Foundations of Christian Religion he gave his definition of a true visible church: “A true visible or ministerial Church of Christ is a particular congregation, being a spiritual perfect corporation of believers, and having power in its self immediately from Christ to administer all religious means of faith to the members thereof.”

Then with regard to the question as to how such a church is to be constituted and gathered, he says, “By a free mutual consent of believers joining and covenanting to live as members of a holy society together in all religious and virtuous duties as Christ and His apostles did institute and practise in the gospel. By such a free mutual consent also all civil perfect corporations did first begin.” The officers of a church are to be “a Pastor or Bishop, with Elders, and Deacons.” This is his position: he is advocating the employment of covenants in forming a church in the way that afterwards became so well known and popular, and what he wants is an “Independent or Congregational non-separatist church.” This is most important. He was not a Separatist and he never became a Separatist. But he did believe “that each congregation in the Church of England was sufficient to determine its own policy and manage its own affairs without the necessity of assistance from Archbishops and Bishops, or even from Classes, Synods, etc.” This was his position about 1605.

In 1610—I reminded you that he met John Robinson at that time—Jacob published a most important book with the title The Divine Beginning and Institution of Christ’s True, Visible, and Ministerial Church.7 As this is a most important point in this history I must quote some passages from this treatise of The Divine Beginning, as it was generally known. Jacob writes: “I acknowledge that in England there are true visible churches and ministers, though accidentally, yet, such as I refuse not to communicate with. My meaning is, that as these particular congregations have in them godly and holy Christians associated together, to serve God, so far as they see, agreeable to his Word; so they are in right from Christ essentially true churches of God, and as such to be acknowledged by us, and in public not to be absolutely separated from.”

Again we are reminded that he was not a Separatist and that there is a difference between a Separatist and an Independent. But here are some further extracts from this famous book, The Divine Beginning:

Two sorts of men there are, Christian reader, who have chiefly occasioned the publishing of this treatise. The first is those who do hold and maintain that Christ Jesus in the New Testament hath instituted no certain form of a visible church nor church government for us; but hath left the same arbitrary, and free to the discretion of men in authority to erect and to set up, to alter and change again, as they in their opinions shall think most fit for the several states and towns wherein they live; and so withal they hold and confess that Christ, in respect of his church and government as it is visible and outward, is not king, or lord, or lawgiver to the same. The second sort is those who so plainly and clearly acknowledge that Christ is King, Lord, and Lawgiver of His church as it is visible and outward, and that He hath instituted in the New Testament, as in the Old, a certain form of His visible church and government, for us everywhere and for ever, not to be altered or changed by any man or men whatever they be. Thus these most truly and soundly do profess and teach that Christians ought so to believe. Yet I know not how, nor on what reason they live themselves, and are well content that others also do live, continue, and remain in a clear contrary practice: that is, first, not at all to participate in any such form of a visible church and government as they profess is of Christ’s institution in the New Testament, and consequently is his visible kingdom on earth; secondly, they submit and stand subject unto a provincial diocesan lord bishop’s ecclesiastical government and remain apparent members of a provincial church never instituted, yet is contrary to this said reformation and therefore He is not King and Lord of such a church; neither hath he promised nor can we ordinarily have assurance of any spiritual blessing therein.

These two sorts of men, beloved of the Lord Jesus, have given the occasion of writing this little treatise, which maketh manifestly and I hope soundly and sufficiently against the former, in a direct course of argumentation; against the latter, by necessary infallible consequence; and verily there is no Christian heart, I suppose, if he will deeply and advisably weigh the matter with an upright and single conscience in God’s own presence, but will confess with me that both these sorts of persons (especially their errors) are, justly in these our days, needfully to be reproved. For it is evident in the eyes of all men who look into the case, that by the opinions and profession of the former a wide door is opened, and an easy way for libertines to walk in; and Familists, as they are called in England, who taking for their ground that the outward form of the church, ministry, and ceremonies in respect of God’s law are things indifferent, do make no matter to present themselves upon occasion, either privately or publicly, to the exercise of any religion, and from thence do quickly gather, by a likely consequence of reason as it seemeth to them, that seeing those things so nearly concerning God’s special worship are indifferent, therefore other outward things are indifferent also, and ought not to trouble any man’s conscience, nor are to be held either as commanded or forbidden by God: from whence a world of impieties and most unchristian practices to overflow the land.

And on he goes with a similar kind of argument. This particular book was one of the things that helped to turn John Robinson from being a Separatist into an Independent.

In the year 1611 Henry Jacob published another book amplifying what he had said, and setting out his arguments still more clearly. He adduced additional proofs from the Scripture, and the testimonies of the learned and the godly men from the days of the Apostles, that “Church government ought to be always with the people’s consent,” and that “A True church under the gospel containeth no more congregations but one. The members of the church created anew in Christ Jesus, have the right and power to choose pastors called to the work by the grace of God, and not by influence transmitted through the polluted channel of the Papacy.”

Then he goes on to show, as he sees it, that the arguments brought forward to justify the Church of England position really play into the hands of the Papists at that point:

Well, will our adversaries say that the Protestant’s ministry is justified sufficiently against the Papists, albeit the people have no consent in their ministers’ calling? Oh, would God learned men in England would show this substantially. Then would I, for my part, quickly conform. But otherwise let them be assured the Church of Rome, do what they can, will get ground of them in England, and this maketh me to lay this to heart as I do. Every day we are challenged by the Papists to prove the lawfulness of our ministry in England, and our calling to it. What say our learned men hereunto? A direct answer must be made to this, men’s consciences will not be satisfied with dilatory and shifting answers, nor if we leave scruples and difficulties in that we speak.

To justify the calling of our ministry in England and to prove the lawfulness thereof, we must plainly show that the persons who give this calling with us have good authority to give the same. This is the very point; let our learned men make this clear, and then let the Papists be stopped, then all men are satisfied. For it is a plain case and granted of all, that every true ministry in the church must be received from some persons who have good and just authority to give it; and this is essential to every true ministry.

Jacob works that out to the point that ultimately the argument, as he sees it, of the Church of England is this:

The Pope is he who made Archbishop Cranmer and Ridley such bishops. They had no other ordination since. And from them all the rest of our ministers have had their ordination to this day. And so the effect of all this is, that our whole ministry in England successively and derivatively cometh from the Pope, all that maintain the church state in England will thus answer. But oh, miserable defence, and woeful unto us, which indeed, though it be false, yet it is such as the Papists desire, and do triumph in. It is false in two ways. First, whatsoever the Church of Rome did give to Archbishop Cranmer, etc., that wholly they took away again, namely, when he fell from them, for then they both deposed him and excommunicated him. So that they left him no whit of that power and function which they had given him. But, questionless, if they could give it they could take it away, wherefore, so soon as he was ours, being thus cut off and excommunicated from the Church of Rome, he could not after that have any power (as derived from them) to make ministers, nor to do any other bishoply act. Secondly, we all know the Church of Rome to be the very Antichrist, chiefly in respect of their clergy and spiritual government, and most chiefly of all in respect of the Pope, from whom all the rest, as from the head, do take their power and authority. Now shall we say that very Antichrist can have power from Christ to make ministers? Or that we have a lawful ministry derived from those who had their power only from him? It cannot be. What communion hath light with darkness? What concord hath Christ with Belial? And so what hath Christ to do with Antichrist? Nothing at all. Thus then our consciences can have no assurance, we cannot have confidence in such estate of that ministry. But, certainly, Christ’s true ministers among us in England have a better original than this. Wherefore the answer of our state Protestants must be false. Yet in this answer who seeth not how the Papists do rejoice, triumph, and insult? Who seeth not how by this they are encouraged, strengthened, and multiplied among us exceedingly. Truly, it would pity a man’s heart to behold how this one point putteth life into thousands to stand up against Christ’s Gospel and liberty of their country also. For when they hear ourselves openly ascribe to the Church of Rome, and to their means, such a gift of grace, even that which is our glory, even the holy instrument of our faith unto salvation, for so is our ministry, they will say: if the branch be holy, the root is more; if the rivers be sweet, the head spring is delicious. And so how can it be chosen, but that the Papists will be graced, and get advantage among us?

That book, again, of course, influenced Robinson and a number of other people. All that was in 1611.

Jacob’s Confession

After this events moved rapidly, and it became clearer and clearer to this man that he must come back to England, and that he must establish a church on the lines that he had indicated in those books to which I have referred. Thus it came to pass that in 1616—350 years ago exactly—he came back to this country with that intent. And he put it into operation. At this point let me quote from the second volume of Champlin Burrage where he gives an account of this as gleaned from the Gould Manuscript which is preserved in Regent’s Baptist College and in which a history of all this is written in the so-called Jessey Records. This record tells us that Henry Jacob had much conference about these things both here in this country and after that in the Low Countries. He had converse and discoursed much with Mr. John Robinson, late pastor to the church at Leyden, and with others about these matters, and, returning to England, in London he held several meetings with the most famous men for godliness and learning such as Mr. Throgmorton and Mr. Travers—that is the famous Walter Travers who was, you remember, a colleague of the famous Richard Hooker in the Temple Church; Hooker in the morning saying one thing, Travers saying the exact opposite in the afternoon. Others consulted were Wing, Richard Maunsell, and John Dodd. He was brought to this position by these consultations, “that having seriously weighed all things and circumstances Mr. Jacob and some others sought the Lord about them in fasting and prayer together. At last it was concluded by the most of them that it was a very warrantable and commendable way to set up that course here as well as in Holland or elsewhere whatsoever troubles should ensue. Henry Jacob was willing to adventure himself for the Kingdom of Christ’s sake, the rest encouraged him.”

And so we come to the formation of this church in Southwark, here in London, in the year 1606. I have completely failed to find the name of the street; we simply know that it was in Southwark, and this is the account:

Hereunto the said Henry Jacob with Sabine, Staiesmore, Richard Browne, David Prior and various other well informed saints having appointed a day to seek the face of the Lord in fasting and prayer, wherein that particular of their union together as a Church was mainly commended to the Lord, in the ending of the day they were united. Thus, those who minded this present union, now so joining together joined both hands each with other Brother and stood in a Ringwise: their intent being declared, Henry Jacob and each of the rest made some confession or profession of their faith and repentance, some were longer, some were briefer. Then they covenanted together to walk in all God’s ways as He had revealed or should make known to them; thus was the beginning of that Church.

Within a few days they gave notice to the brethren here of the Ancient Church—which is a reference to the church of the Separatists. There had been several Separatist churches in the time of Barrowe and Greenwood and Penry, but most of the members had been put to death and the churches had been exterminated; but there were still odd people about meeting together; and so Jacob and his friends gave notice to them: “In the same year the said Henry Jacob with the advice and consent of the Church, and of some of those Reverend preachers beforesaid, published to the world ‘A Confession and Protestation in the name of certain Christians showing therein wherein they consent in doctrine with the Church of England, and wherein they were bound to dissent, with their evidence from the Holy Scriptures for their dissent in about twenty-eight particulars.’”8

I have here a copy of the first edition of this Confession: “A Confession and Protestation of the faith of certain Christians in England, holding it necessary to observe, and keep all Christ’s true substantial ordinances for His Church visible and political (that is, endued with power of outward spiritual government) under the gospel; though the same do differ from the common order of the land. Published for the clearing of the said Christians from the slander of schism, and novelty, and also of separation, and undutifulness to the magistrate, which their rash adversaries do falsely cast upon them.”9

After a brief introduction, there follow twenty-eight points. I am not going to go through them in detail but will simply give the outline and essence of each:

1. Christ’s offices. This summarizes what I quoted just now from the work Jacob published in 1610. The point is that Christ is the King of the Church in these matters of order and of government as well as in the other matters.

2. Scriptures all-sufficient. Here again it is said that there are clear instructions in the Scripture as to how a church should be formed in that way—that Christ, in other words, has exercised His Lordship in this respect through what we find in the Scriptures.

3. Church’s distinction, or an alternative heading, Christ’s true visible Church generally. “We believe that Christ’s true Church is to be noted and considered four ways”—and then the different forms of the church are described.

4. Now comes a much more interesting point. Christ’s true visible political Church in a more special manner. This says: “We believe that the nature and essence of Christ’s true visible Church under the gospel is a free congregation of Christians for the service of God, or a true spiritual body politic containing no more ordinary congregations but one, and that independent. Wherein chiefly two points are to be noted. First, that a true visible political church under the gospel is but one ordinary Congregation: and this is to be seen plainly in these Scriptures.” A list follows, starting with Matthew 18:17; 1 Corinthians 5:4, 12, 13; 1 Corinthians 11:18, 20; and so on. Then: “The second point here to be noted is, That by God’s ordinance this one ordinary congregation of Christians is a spiritual body politic; and so it is a free congregation independent. That is, it hath from God the right and power of spiritual Administration, and government in itself, and over itself by the common and free consent of the people independently, and immediately under Christ, always in the best order they can. Which these places do prove”—again we have a list of Scriptural quotations.

5. Synods and councils. This is also interesting. “Howbeit we acknowledge with all, that there may be, and that on occasion there ought to be on earth a consociation of Congregations or Churches, namely by way of Synods.” Now while they believed in Independence in one sense they were not isolationists; they believed in this “consociation” of churches “namely by way of Synods.” But they go on, “But not a subordination or, surely, not a subjection of the congregations under any higher spiritual authority absolute, save only Christ’s and the Holy Scriptures. They who deny this, maintaining a Diocesan and Provincial (and neither we nor they themselves know what universal) visible political Church both proper and representative, do herein vary from the rule of the gospel.”

6. Of a Catholic, or Universal Church politic, that is endued with power of outward spiritual government. “It is demanded do we deny an universal visible church under the gospel? We answer, Yea. Under the gospel Christ never instituted, nor God, any one Universal visible Church either proper or representative, which ordinarily was to exercise outward spiritual government over all persons through the world professing Christianity. No such church is found in the New Testament.”

7. Of a Provincial Church Independent. “It is marvelled, why we likewise deny, that under the gospel there is any true visible political Church, Provincial or Diocesan; seeing so we shall deny a true visible political church to be now in England, because the English church (as commonly it is holden) is properly a Diocesan and Provincial, or a National visible political church. We answer, for our parts we acknowledge there are many true visible, yea political churches in England in some degree, and in some respect, yet indeed we deny also a National, a Provincial, and Diocesan church under the gospel, to be a true visible political Church (whether we mean the whole body, or the representative part of such churches) though the public practice among us doth hold them for true political churches. The reason why we deny these also, is, because neither any such is found anywhere set down in God’s Word of the New Testament, even like as there is no Universal Church visible political there set down. But only a free congregation, or ordinary Assembly is found in the New Testament, as a little before is showed.”

8. How true visible politic Churches are in England. Here it is shown that though individual churches may be true churches, owing to the system that are in a state of bondage.

9. Of Lord Archbishops and Lord Bishops Diocesan and Provincial. “We believe, that the spiritual office, calling, and power, and administration of Lord Archbishops, and Lord Bishops Diocesan and Provincial, with their inferior hierarchy, is contrary to the Ecclesiastical order, and ordinance of Christ established in the New Testament, and not to be communicated with. The proofs whereof do stand on the grounds of the Article No. 4 before and on those in Article 10 next following after.”

10. The making of ministers. “We believe that the essence of ministers’ calling under the gospel is the congregation’s consent”—a great point is made of bringing in that whole argument again about the Pope which we saw in one of the other quotations.

11. Of our communicating with the parish ministers and parishes in England. “First, we believe that to think we do, or can receive a ministry essentially from a former minister or a prelate (in these days) is an error, and the thing received is a nullity in that respect. Secondly, this receipt in a parish minister with us maketh not a nullity of the ministry in him in every respect besides; that is, it maketh not void all trueness of ministry in him.” That is a part of the argument for saying why they could occasionally go to a service in the parish church. They were drawing this distinction between recognizing that a man was a godly man, and preached the Truth, and the system to which he belonged. So they could go to a service with him occasionally, but they would do so in a way which made it quite clear that they did not believe in nor accept the system of which he was a part.

12. Touching plurality pastors and non-residents. This deals with the question of the plurality of pastors and non-residents. They assert that such are “directly contrary to the order of God in the Gospel; And therefore that now they are simply unlawful; and likewise deputed and substituted Pastors by private authority, such as Curates are. And mere Lecturers are little better.”

13. The question of discipline and censures is here dealt with: “We believe that true administering of the holy censures to be by the congregations’ consent also. And therefore not to be lawfully done by an absolute Diocesan or Provincial authority; that is, if it be without any necessary concurrence or consent of that congregation, which it chiefly concerneth.”

14. Touching the number of Pastors in each Church: and of the Pastor’s ordinary power and authority in managing the Church’s spiritual affairs and government. It is said that there should be at least one pastor in each church; there may be more, but there should be at least one; and as we have seen already they believe also in having elders and deacons.

15. Touching the profane and scandalous mixtures of people in the congregation. “We believe concerning mixtures of the open profane with some manifest godly Christians in a visible church, though at once it doth not destroy essentially, nor make void the holiness of that whole Assembly, yet truly it putteth that whole Assembly into a most dangerous and desperate estate by such their confusion, and by such extreme peril of further infection, especially if they do long tolerate the same among them.” Because of the danger to their souls the people are expected to leave such churches. That is the argument, you see, for a pure church.

16. Of traditions human. These they denounced and would not have for the reasons already given in a previous quotation.

17. Of traditions Apostolic. “We believe that every ordinance or institution apostolic (and that must unto us out of the Holy Scripture be proved) is divine, that is to say, of Divine authority, instituted of God, simply unchangeable by men, and such, that of right it ought to be used perpetually and universally among Christians, unless God Himself (by His own work) do let it, or make it void.”

18. Of prophecy, as the Apostle calleth it. “We believe that the sober, discreet, orderly, and well governed exercise of expounding and applying the Scriptures in the Congregation, by the Apostle called Prophesying, and allowed expressly by him to any understanding member of the church (but women) is lawful now, convenient, profitable, yea sometime very necessary also in diverse respects.” In other words, a man who shows that he has got a gift is allowed to exercise it that way, but not women.

19. Of the reading of homilies in the church. “We believe that with us the reading of homilies in divine service is not lawful, but very unmeet for the congregation of the faithful; namely where it is held for competent without the employment of a preaching pastor.” You see, if they did that instead of having a preaching pastor it is wrong. “Whereas a Pastor’s diligent, discreet, and judicious preaching, and applying of God’s Word, is the power of God unto salvation ordinarily. Neither doth every of the allowed Homilies in every point contain good doctrine.”

20. Of Christ’s descending into hell. Jacob had had a controversy over that with a bishop about the year 1600, and in this Confession he makes his position clear with respect to that, namely that it simply means that our Lord was at that point under the power of death.

21. Deals with prayer. “We believe concerning prayer: that though every form of prayer prescribed by men be not absolutely nor simply a sin, neither (as we judge) an Idol, nor an invention of man, nor a transgression of the Second Commandment; yet we constantly avouch and profess a prescribed Liturgy, or a Book of Common Prayer by commandment enforced upon a whole church rightly constituted, to be used still in the very same words whenever they assemble (in comparison of other praying) is not so profitable but rather hurtful in many users of it, as making holy zeal, true piety, sincere godliness, and other gifts of God’s Spirit in many of them to languish. The New Testament toucheth no such matter, neither troubleth itself with endeavouring on uniformity in this point, but leaveth all churches herein to their godly liberty, wisdom, understanding, and diligent consideration of themselves,” etc.

22. Of holy days so-called. “Now we believe that under the gospel there is not any holy day (besides the Lord’s Day) nor any fasting day, or days constant, ordinary, and on certain seasons or times of the year continually to be observed.” You can see the obvious thrust of that.

23. Of marriage and burying, and churching, as it is called. “Concerning making of marriage and burying the dead, we believe that they are no actions of a Church Minister (because they are no actions spiritual) but civil. Neither are ministers called to any such business; Neither is there so much as one example of any such practice in the whole Book of God either under the Law, or under the gospel, without which warrant we believe it to be unlawful whatsoever any minister doth attempt at any time, or in any place, especially as a part of his ministerial office, and function.” That may come as a surprise, but that is their teaching with regard to that.

24. Of ministers also made magistrates by the State. This is denounced as unlawful and “contrary to the Text of the New Testament.”

25. Of the gifts and offerings of the faithful. It is an encouragement to people to bring free-will offerings. Tithes are not altogether condemned. This subject is also partly dealt with in the next point.

26. Of tithes, and the pastor’s fittest, and due and necessary maintenance. “We believe that tithes for the pastor’s maintenance under the gospel are not the just and due means thereof. Howbeit yet we do not think these tithes absolutely unlawful if they remain voluntary.” They prefer the voluntary system which has been dealt with in number twenty-five and encourage the people, as the Scriptures teach, to put their gifts aside on the first day and to take them and offer them to the minister.

27. Of the civil magistrate’s duty, and charge to oversee and order his churches in spiritual matters. “We believe that we and all true visible churches ought to be overseen, and kept in good order, and peace, and ought to be governed (under Christ) both supremely, and also subordinately by the Civil Magistrate: yea in causes of religion when need is.” Here again is a very important point of distinction between these Independents and the Separatists who took a very different view of this matter. Later these Independents came to the same view as the Separatists, who saw this point before the Independents saw it. We must be accurate about these matters, and the Independents only came to it afterwards.

This section continues: “By which rightful power of his, he ought to cherish and prefer the godly, and religious; and to punish the untractable and unreasonable. Howbeit yet always but civilly. And therefore we from our heart most humbly do desire that our gracious sovereign king would (himself or through a Magistrate) in clemency take this special oversight, and government of us, to whose ordering and protection we most humbly commit ourselves, acknowledging that because we want the use of this divine ordinance, That therefore most great, and infinite evils both to us, and even to the whole kingdom doth ensue, and also because of the spiritual Lords their government over us. And notwithstanding the spiritual lords do think it an injury and wrong to themselves not small if the King should substitute Civil Magistrates to this business, yet that is God’s own ordinance.” You see the distinction they are drawing; they will take discipline from a civil magistrate but not from an ecclesiastical one. “If the king should substitute civil magistrates to this business, yet that is God’s own ordinance; and to do otherwise, namely to commit either spiritual or civil government (namely, diocesan or provincial) to Ministers of the Word, is evil, and (as we believe) a direct transgression of the text of the gospel above rehearsed in Articles 4, 10, and 24.” I am simply reporting, and not expressing my own opinion.

28. “Touching the necessity that lieth upon us to obey Christ rather than man in our using of the true and in refusing the contrary ecclesiastical ordinances above specified.” In other words, this last article enforces the application of the preceding points.

Jacob’s Message

That, then, is the story. The church was constituted, Henry Jacob was appointed as the pastor, so he published these articles in order to justify what they were doing and to clear themselves from the charge of schism. So the church began and flourished. Jacob was with them until 1624 when he left and went to Virginia in America where he died the following year. He was followed by a succession of godly men, and this was actually the first Independent or Congregational chapel or church that was formed in this country which had a continuous unbroken history.

After the time of the Commonwealth, and still more after 1662, there was a change in certain vital respects and the Independents became true Separatists or Free Churchmen.

To me, as I said at the beginning, all this is of real interest because it shows us how these men were feeling their way to what they felt was the teaching of God’s Word, and Christ’s will, in these matters. And it is just there, I feel, that it has a real message for us. It is surely a warning to us, therefore, to read the history again, to be sure of our facts, and not to make sweeping generalizations about “the Puritans said” this or that. Let us try to be sure that we know what we are saying, and that we are accurate in what we are saying as far as we can be.

Second, it is a warning to us against rigidity. Let us try to emulate these men in this at any rate. Let us search the Scriptures, let us keep our minds open, let us listen to what others have got to say, and let us recognize that, though we do not understand this, there is obviously a human element in all these matters. Some men seem to be able to leap to the true position in one leap as it were, others have to go through steps and stages. To me one of the great lessons I have learned as the result of reading all this once more is that we must be patient with one another, that we must remember that men who are equally honest may differ. We must ever remember what the Apostle Paul presses upon the attention of the Church at Corinth, namely, that there are strong and weak brethren, in every respect practically, in connection with the Christian life; and that it behooves us all to be patient with one another, to try to help one another, and not at any time to quarrel with one another or have bitter feelings toward those who differ. Recognizing that these men, who went into all this so thoroughly, took so much time, and had to go wearily through these various stages, let us who are in an age when these matters are all being raised once more in an acute way, and who will be called upon to take various decisions of some sort or another in the immediate future, let us try to learn something from this story of Henry Jacob and the first Congregational Church which will be of help and of encouragement to us. May God bless us to that end.

Part 3

Profitable

for Doctrine

and Reproof

1967

12

THE CHRISTIAN MIND

OF ABRAHAM KUYPER

Rex Ambler

Holland in the nineteenth century was living under the shadow of the French Revolution. In political and social life she was undergoing changes that were clearly effected by the ideals and ideas that brought about that revolutionary change in France in the 1790s. She was learning, like France, to throw off the yoke of political dogmatism and to think and act for herself in affairs of government. The ideals and ideas that inspired them were very largely derived from Rousseau and the European Romantics. The ideals were centered on the freedom of man, his right to determine his own destiny and fashion his life according to his own will. The ideas that clustered around this assertion of freedom were various: Rousseau was a man of the eighteenth century and believed strongly in the powers of human reason; the Romantics who followed him laid the stress on human feeling and will. But however they viewed the rights and powers of man, these revolutionary thinkers were agreed that the future of men, as societies and as individuals, depended on their coming to know themselves. Before man can act rightly and freely he must first understand his own nature.

But these ideas had implications far beyond politics. They transformed art and music from the classical activities of “holding a mirror up to nature” to the romantic activity of giving expression to powerful and restless feeling in the depths of man’s nature. They transformed philosophy from the conception of the world as a cosmic machine, well-ordered by the providence of God, to a conception of the world (in Hegel e.g.) as the manifestation of spirit. Indeed it would not be an exaggeration to say that the ideas of Rousseau and the Romantics brought about a revolution in the whole life of Western Europe from which it has not yet fully recovered. In the words of Sir Isaiah Berlin, the Romantic movement was one of “the greatest shifts in human consciousness in the whole history of Europe.”1

The effects of this shift in thinking on the mind of the Church has been no less dramatic. For by focusing man’s ideals and hopes on man himself it established a this-worldly way of thinking; it created what we know today as the Secular Mind. That is to say it created an attitude of mind in which everything was to be judged by its value for the life of man on this earth. This attitude was adopted toward religion as to everything else. Thus Friedrich Schleiermacher, perhaps the most influential theologian of the nineteenth century, argued that the Christian faith was indispensable because it filled a place in human life that could be filled by nothing else. It gave expression to that profound feeling in all of us of being at one with the universe. To abandon Christianity would be to abandon the goal of self-fulfillment. Schleiermacher had many insights into the nature of man; but he had succumbed to the Secular Mind of his age. And in this he was followed by most European theologians in the nineteenth century. They may have differed from him as to what aspect of human nature gave the clue to man’s religion, but they agreed that it was in terms of human nature, primarily, that the Christian faith was to be understood and defended. It was, in other words, in terms of a secular frame of reference that Christianity was supposed to have meaning.

Hardly a voice could be heard to the contrary. There were faithful believers who were scandalized by all this—evangelicals, pietists, and others—but few if any were prepared to challenge the leaders of thought on their own intellectual ground, and they therefore did little to check the advance of the Secular Mind.

One voice that could be heard, crying in the wilderness, was that of Abraham Kuyper. Unlike many of his fellow believers, he recognized the secular mind for what it was. He made it his life’s task to expose the assumptions of secular thinking, both in society and in the Church itself, and to call upon Christians to think Christianly. It is the purpose of this paper to show, in broad outline, how Kuyper tried to cultivate a distinctively Christian way of thinking about life and the world.

Early Influences

In 1855, when Kuyper was seventeen, he attended the University of Leyden to read classics and theology. His father, a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, hoped that his son also would enter the ministry. Abraham’s university life, however, disturbed him profoundly; and although he resolved to enter the ministry, his faith was put seriously to the test. “I entered the university,” he wrote later, “a young man of orthodox faith, but I had not been in the university more than a year and a half before my thinking had been transformed into the starkest intellectual rationalism.”

This was due entirely to the teaching of Scholten, the systematic theologian; Kuenen, the well-known higher critic; and Rauwennof, the church historian. Scholten endeavored to reinterpret the Reformed faith in terms of modern conceptions of man and his place in the universe, in much the same way as Schleiermacher had done some thirty years before. One quotation from Scholten’s work will give an impression of what the reinterpretation amounted to: “By the acceptance of monism and the recognition of the homogeneity of God and nature, God and man, we come to see that for faith there are no contradictions. As darkness is the absence of light, so sin is the absence of the good—an imperfect condition necessary and inevitable in the development of human nature. In the dictionary of human wisdom expressions like good and evil have their place. But for the pure all-embracing glance of the Eternal, they lose their significance.”2 On one occasion Professor Rauwennof, in a lecture on church history, confidently denied the bodily resurrection of Christ. The students literally applauded the assertion. And Kuyper, so he tells us, applauded with them. “I too,” he wrote later, “have dreamed the dream of Modernism.”

There were three events in his life which slowly woke him from his dream. In 1858 he entered an essay competition for which the subject was a comparison between Calvin and the Polish reformer John à Lasco. He was able to work through the writings of Calvin, but he found great difficulty in even getting hold of the works of John à Lasco. He enquired at the British Museum and the library in Petersburg, but with no success. He told one of his teachers of this frustration, and he was advised to visit an elderly minister of the Reformed Church in Haarlem. To Kuyper’s great surprise the old gentleman produced the complete works of John à Lasco. The discovery, which enabled him eventually to win the essay prize, Kuyper saw as an act of God’s providence. It ended the period of spiritual apathy.

The following year, after some months of mental breakdown, he read an English novel by Charlotte Yonge, The Heir of Redcliffe.3 It brought home to him something of his own pride and self-assurance. He wrote in an autobiographical essay, Confidentie (in Confidence), “Before I knew, I knelt down and wept. What my soul passed through in those minutes, I realized later. From that hour I despised and hated that which I had previously admired, and instead sought for that which I had thus far despised. This masterpiece of Miss Yonge’s has been for me the breaking down of my self-sufficient and stubborn heart.” It was the first step in his conversion.4

The third event was the experience of his first pastorate in the village of Beesd. His preaching, reflecting the liberal theology of the university, met only with the stubborn response that it departed sadly from the Bible and the Reformed Confession. He quite failed to win their confidence. One young woman, Pietje Baltus, a farm laborer’s daughter, was particularly stubborn in her refusal to accept the new minister. When a friend told her once, “The minister’s in the neighborhood and will soon be visiting you,” she only replied, “I’ll have nothing to do with him.”

The situation put Kuyper in a serious dilemma. He must either go along with them, or set himself deliberately against them. What it would mean to go along with them Pietje Baltus made quite plain to him; he would have to give unqualified assent to the Reformed Confession, or, as she preferred to put it, he would have to accept “full sovereign grace.” This, he thought, was asking too much. Yet his long talks with Pietje Baltus and other members of the congregation were making a deep impression on him. He was impressed by their spirituality of mind, and their intimate knowledge of the Bible and of the Old Masters of seventeenth-century Calvinism. He knew Calvinism well enough from his reading and from university lectures; but here was Calvinism lived and loved and deeply felt. He was driven to reconsider the whole position. He read the Old Masters and he re-read Calvin. It was Calvin that finally persuaded him. He wrote in Confidentie, with reference to his congregation, “Well, dear brother, I have not set myself against them, and I still thank my God that I made this choice. Their tenacious perseverance has been the blessing of my heart, the rise of the morning star for my life. I was indeed grasped, but had not yet found the Word of reconciliation. That they have brought to me, brought with their fragmentary language in this absolute form in which my soul alone can find rest: in adoring and glorifying a God who works all things both willing and working according to his good pleasure!”

Kuyper’s Calvinism

This act of God’s grace which brought Kuyper to confess his salvation in Christ, even against his own will, became the decisive experience of Kuyper’s whole life. He had now experienced God as the Bible had written of Him: the Sovereign Creator, the Lord of history, the only Savior of men. He now found it impossible to think of the Christian religion as primarily some activity of man, as something which man himself may achieve and cultivate, or which was somehow designed for his own benefit. To think of Christianity in this way, he discovered, was the fundamental mistake of the theologians of his time. Indeed religion fostered by man and for the sake of man would in the end be self-defeating, for “it becomes superfluous and disappears as soon as the egoistic interests are satisfied.” For many people of his time religion had become precisely that. “Of course,” Kuyper grants, “religion, as such, produces also a blessing for man, but does not exist for the sake of man. It is not God who exists for the sake of His creation; the creation exists for the sake of God. For, as the Scripture says, He has created all things for Himself.” He continues, “The starting-point of every motive in religion is God and not man. Man is the instrument and means, God alone is here the goal, the point of departure and the point of arrival, the fountain, from which the waters flow, and at the same time, the ocean into which they finally return. To be irreligious is to forsake the highest aim of our existence, and on the other hand to covet no other existence than for the sake of God, to long for nothing but for the will of God, and to be wholly absorbed in the glory of the name of the Lord, such is the pith and kernel of all true religion.”5

If it is for God that true religion exists, it is equally true that it exists only by God. This means in the first place that in all religion God Himself, as the Creator of all things, must be the active power. He must make us religious, He must give us the religious disposition. This Calvin had emphasized in his doctrine of the “seed of religion” which God has sown in the human heart. In the second place it means that where man departs from God in his sin, it is God alone who can bring about the necessary change of heart by the work of His Spirit. This Calvin had emphasized in his doctrine of election.

Here then was a reaffirmation of the Sovereignty of God as the first principle of Christian theology, and in this affirmation a denial of those types of theology which begin with the needs and powers of man. Clearly this was no blind and dogmatic assertion of traditional Calvinistic theology. It was Kuyper’s well-considered belief that the faith of the prophets and apostles and martyrs, which was now his own faith, was most truthfully and consistently set forth in Calvin’s writings. Moreover, at a time when society and the Church were largely succumbing to the secular mind it was imperative that the essential principles of the Christian faith as taught by the Reformers should be set forth as sharply and coherently as possible. That is to say, the Christian faith, with its assertion that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the Creator and Sovereign of all, must be shown to be the complete denial and antithesis of all man-centered thinking. If Christians fail in this task, they will fail in their struggle with the powers of darkness. “If the battle is to be fought with honour and with hope of victory,” said Kuyper, “then principle must be arrayed against principle; then it must be felt that in Modernism the vast energy of an all-embracing life-system, assails us, then also it must be understood that we have to take our stand in a life-system of equally comprehensive and far-reaching power. And this powerful life-system is not to be invented nor formulated by ourselves, but is to be taken and applied as it presents itself in history. When thus taken, I found and confessed, and I still hold, that this manifestation of the Christian principle is given us in Calvinism. In Calvinism my heart has found rest. From Calvinism have I drawn the inspiration, firmly and resolutely to take my stand in the thick of this great conflict of principles.”6

In this quotation we find the clue to Kuyper’s thought and activity. Far from being a detached academic, he was involved in the struggles of his time; and he was struggling not only with modernism in the Church but also and primarily with secular thinking in society at large. For in Kuyper’s view, the real struggle of his time was not between one Christian theology and another, but between “Christianity and Paganism, the idols and the living God.” Behind the revolution in theology he saw the revolution in thought and culture; and behind this cultural revolution he discovered a revolution in faith. In turning from the principles of the French Revolution men were turning from God to the worship of idols. Now to come to grips with the new situation it would hardly be enough to expose the assumptions underlying it; one should also be prepared to display the principles by which men ought to be governed. One should cultivate a positively Christian understanding of man—of men’s relations with one another and with the material universe, of man’s work and leisure, and of the whole range of man’s cultural activities. Christianity must be seen to be what Kuyper calls an all-embracing “life-system,” and not merely a way of personal faith. It must be seen in its breadth as well as in its depth. Thus every aspect of life must be first understood and then lived in the light of the truth that has been revealed in Jesus Christ. This positive and constructive task, the cultivation of a Christian mind, is what most challenged Kuyper.

It has already been said that for Kuyper such a task could not be undertaken by one man or even by a group of men. “This powerful life-system is not to be invented nor formulated by ourselves, but it is to be taken and applied as it presents itself in history.” It has been said also that he found the clearest articulation of the Christian mind in Calvin and the Calvinistic Reformation. However, he was equally conscious of the dangers of relying on history: that we come to think and live in the past instead of the present. At his farewell sermon at the Reformed Church in Utrecht he spoke of True and False Conservatism from the text in Revelation, “Hold fast that which thou hast.” He left them with the injunction: “Do not bury our glorious orthodoxy in the treacherous pit of a spurious conservatism.” Our fathers have laid the foundations. We must try to build on them.

Foundations and Framework

The principles of the Reformation which Kuyper saw to be relevant to the challenge of his time were, very briefly, these. First, that God, the holy and majestic Lord of the Universe, enters into immediate fellowship with his creatures as God the Holy Spirit. “Thanks to this work of God in the heart,” says Kuyper, “the persuasion that the whole of man’s life is to be lived in the Divine presence has become the fundamental thought of Calvinism. . . . It is from this mother-thought that the all-embracing life-system of Calvinism sprang.”7 Whatever a man does, in his work or in leisure, he does before the face of God.

Second, if the grace of God in Christ places our entire human life immediately before God, then it follows that all men and women, rich or poor, weak or strong, dull or talented, as creatures of God and as lost sinners, have no claim whatsoever to lord over one another, and that they stand as equals before God. In Calvinism therefore we have the clearest expression of the democratic interpretation of society. The Calvinist will not rest until both politically and socially every man, simply because he is a man, should be recognized, respected and dealt with as a creature created after the divine likeness. That Calvinism has, as a matter of fact, done more than anything else to promote equality and liberty in Western societies, Kuyper considered beyond doubt.8

Third, the Reformation, in placing man before the face of God, has not only honored man for the sake of his likeness to the divine image, but also the world as a divine creation. What God had created he considered “good,” and man should do likewise. The Reformers did not despise science; in a indirect way they positively fostered its progress.9

Thus the three Reformation principles which Kuyper thought relevant to the Christian understanding of life as a whole concerned respectively: man’s relation to God as a Sovereign presence, man’s relation to man as his equal before God, and man’s relation to the world as the sphere of God’s activity. The last two, we should note, depend on the first, which is to say that the fundamental principle for the Christian mind is “the Sovereignty of the Triune God over the whole cosmos.”

We must now consider—again, in very rough outline—the frame of Christian thinking which Kuyper built on this foundation. His study of Scripture led him to conceive God’s world as created and sustained by God’s ordinances (cf. e.g. Ps. 119:90–91). The order that we discover in the world, both in nature and society, is an order established by God. Moreover, we can only understand the world around because it displays this orderliness and regularity. The whole of science is built on the assumption that underlying the many and various changes in nature there is a fundamental law that governs them. Politics, where this maintains a proper concern for the life of men, does its work by reckoning with various orders in society—family life, commerce, education, economics, and so on—and by guarding the interests of each. Now the various patterns of life and nature are to be seen in the light of God’s sovereign and creative purpose. They are the work of God’s hand; they indicate the manner of God’s working in the world. Kuyper appeals to Psalm 119, “I have found an end of all perfection, but Thy commandment is very wide,” and warns us not to confine God’s law to the Ten Commandments, for there is a law for every creature of God.10 Neither must we divide God’s law into a moral law and a natural law; for then we would “divide life into two parts. On the one hand the spiritual life, with which you are occasionally concerned, and on the other hand the everyday, tangible life to which you devote two-thirds of your life.”11 There is one law of God, and there is one, unified human life lived under that law.

However, there are different spheres of life. Though each of them operates under the immediate sovereignty of God, they do have a relative independence of each other. Family life is not the same as school life, and the principles that govern their proper function are different in each case. It is part of Christian wisdom to know how to distinguish between one sphere and the next.

Third, in each sphere of activity, in society and in nature, there is a relative sovereignty. In each creature, says Kuyper, God has concentrated a part of His power.12 So in creating the animal world, e.g. according to certain biological laws, God has invested it with a power or potentiality for its own development. In creating society, with its various spheres, God sets it a number of tasks for the fulfillment of His purpose, so that men in varying degrees have a God-given power and authority in social life. Yet while each sphere must operate in relative freedom, it is also under the immediate sovereignty of God and has by virtue of creation a law for its own life. Each sphere is governed by an ordinance of God—this is seen most clearly in the ordinance of marriage (Gen. 2:2).

This general principle Kuyper calls “sovereignty in the individual sphere.”13 In a discussion of the spheres of society he says of this principle, “We understand hereby, that the family, the business, science, art and so forth are all social spheres, which do not owe their existence to the State, but obey a high authority within their own bosom; an authority which rules, by the grace of God, just as the sovereignty of the State does.”14

Social and Political Activity

For much of his life Kuyper was engaged in a great deal of social and political activity, and it would be worth noting at this point just how he tried to implement his Christian understanding of public life. During his first pastorate at the village of Beesd he was disturbed by the situation of the laborers. It seemed to him that by being denied any voice in deciding the conditions of employment they were being denied the right to be men. That problem remained with him—Professor de Gaay Fortman tells us that the problem of how men should win their bread lay at the center of his social concern,15 and that when eventually he entered Parliament he did so out of a “pastoral concern.”16

A second problem was the state control of education. In May 1869 Kuyper addressed a meeting of the Society for Christian National Education in which he appealed to “the national conscience” for the freedom of Christian parents to control the education of their children. The struggle for the free school was to be a long one, and Kuyper saw that, if it were to be effective, it would have to be carried into Parliament. In the same year, 1869, he became editor of a religious and political weekly, Heraut, which sponsored Reformed views. Two years later he was nominated as a candidate for the Christian political party—suitably called “Anti-Revolutionary.” In 1874, at the age of thirty-six, he won a seat in Parliament, and his first speech was on the state control of education. He urged that schools be given a certain independence of governmental control. “It should be possible to give our country too a school system in which party politics need not play any part whatsoever. Education, in my view, is not first of all a political but a social question and in that respect I agree with Mr. Forster, the English Secretary for Education. . . .”17 Schools should be administered by independent boards. The responsibility of government was to ensure minimal standards and the possibility for all parents, including the poorer, to send their children to schools of their own choice. But the conscience of the parents must in every way be respected.

He was not well received. Throughout his time in Parliament he was criticized heavily. Some accused him of designing to overthrow the monarchy, and establish a republic, with himself as a second Cromwell! The pressures on him, mentally and physically, were excessive. After two-and-a-half years he resigned his seat through ill-health.

He continued his work as editor of the Heraut. By now it had given birth to a daily paper, De Standaard, and this too Kuyper edited. He continued to press for Christian education, and now not only in schools but in universities as well. A society was formed for the purpose of establishing a Christian university. Its second article read, “For all the instruction that is given in its universities the Society stands wholly and exclusively on the foundation of the Reformed principles,” as set forth in the Confession of Faith. Within two years, in 1880, the Free University was founded in Amsterdam. Kuyper, who was given one of the two chairs in Theology, delivered the opening address on “Sovereignty in the Individual Sphere.” The event stands out as one of the boldest and most original of Kuyper’s career. He returned to Parliament in 1894, after a twenty years’ recess, as leader of the Anti-Revolutionary Party. In 1901 he was made Prime Minister.

Throughout his political and educational activities he was concerned to guard the rights and freedoms of the various social spheres. He rejected both liberalism and socialism for the reason that both misconceived the true nature of freedom and authority. Liberalism sets its store on the freedom of the individual but fails to appreciate his involvement in social groups and their respective authority. Socialism sees man as a community bound together by the authority of the State, but fails to recognize the freedom of men in different spheres of life. But the fault lies ultimately in the whole frame of reference within which they work. They are thinking of man, whether individually or collectively, as if in some way he were absolutely independent, free to shape society as he will. And such a view was, for Kuyper, radically unchristian.

In politics, therefore, as in science, philosophy, and art, the Christian must devote himself both to the service of God and to the casting down of idols. Indeed he cannot do one without also doing the other. To serve God is to depart from sin, and the meaning of sin, as Paul has it in Romans, is the worship and service of the creature in place of the Creator. Therefore, to think and act Christianly is to think about everything and to do everything in the light of God’s sovereign rule. And since nothing in the whole creation lies outside the scope of God’s rule, there is nothing we can think or do which is not either in obedience to God or in disobedience. With the Psalmist, Kuyper “calls upon heaven and earth, . . . upon all peoples and nations to give glory to God.” And God, he believes, “is present in all life, with the influence of His omnipresent and almighty power, and no sphere of human life is conceivable in which religion does not maintain its demands that God shall be praised, that God’s ordinances shall be observed, and that every labora shall be permeated with its ora in fervent and ceaseless prayer. Wherever man may stand, whatever he may do, to whatever he may apply his hand, in agriculture, in commerce, and in industry, or his mind, in the world of art, and science, he is in whatsoever it may be, constantly standing before the face of his God, he is employed in the service of his God, he has strictly to obey his God, and above all, he has to aim at the glory of his God.”18

13

THE PURITANS

AND SPIRITUAL GIFTS

J. I. Packer

The subject of spiritual gifts was not much debated in Puritan theology, and the only full-scale treatment of it by a major writer, so far as I know, is John Owen’s Discourse of Spiritual Gifts. This, the last installment of Owen’s great analysis of biblical teaching on the Holy Spirit, seems to have been written in 1679 or 1680,1 though it was not printed till 1693, ten years after his death. Owen’s Discourse is fully characteristic both of himself and of the general Puritan view of its theme, and we shall use it as our main source for the present exposition.

It is desirable to start by delimiting the area within which our study will move, for there could be false expectations here. To many Christians today, the phrase “spiritual gifts” suggests a wider range of questions and concerns than it did to the Puritans. Throughout the century that separated William Perkins’ pioneer ventures in pastoral theology (The Arte of Prophecying, Latin 1592, English 1600; The Calling of the Ministerie, 1605) from Owen’s Discourse, Puritan attention when discussing gifts was dominated by their interest in the ordained ministry, and hence in those particular gifts which qualify a man for ministerial office, and questions about other gifts to other persons were rarely raised. Preoccupied as they were—and as their times required them to be—with securing high standards in the ministry, and educating lay folk out of superstition and fanaticism, the Puritans had both their minds and their hands full, and modern questions about laymen’s gifts and service were given less of an airing than we might have expected or hoped for. Two such questions in particular may be noted here, since they bulk so large in present-day debate.

First, how should we evaluate “pentecostalism” (the so-called “charismatic movement”) in modern evangelical life?

The pentecostal movement, in both its denominational and its inter-denominational forms, claims to be in essence a renewal of neglected but authentic elements in Christianity—namely, the gifts of tongues, prophecy, and healing. (The details of the claim vary from group to group.) Can the Puritans help us to assess these claims? Only indirectly; for there was no such movement in Puritan times. Seventeenth-century England did not, to my knowledge, produce anyone who claimed the gift of tongues,2 and though claimants to prophetic and healing powers were not unknown, particularly in the wild days of the forties and fifties, the signs of “enthusiasm” (fanatical delusion) and mental unbalance were all too evident.3

It was partly, no doubt, Owen’s experience with such people that prompted him to write, of the class of “gifts which in their own nature exceed the whole power of all our faculties” (in which class he puts tongues, prophetic disclosure, and power to heal), that “that dispensation of the Spirit is long since ceased, and where it is now pretended unto by any, it may justly be suspected as an enthusiastical delusion.”4 But does this mean that, like B. B. Warfield,5 Owen would rule out a priori all possibility of renewal, for any purpose, of the charismata which were given in the apostolic age to authenticate the apostles’ personal ministry and message? Owen nowhere says so much, and it would be rash to ascribe to him this dogmatic a priori negation, which, as has often been pointed out, is not inevitably implied by any biblical passage. Rather, it may be supposed (though this, in the nature of the case, can only be a guess) that were Owen confronted with modern pentecostal phenomena he would judge each case a posteriori, on its own merit, according to these four principles:

1. Since the presumption against any such renewal is strong, and liability to “enthusiasm” is part of the infirmity of every regenerate man, any extra-rational manifestation like glossolalia needs to be watched and tested most narrowly, over a considerable period of time, before one can, even provisionally, venture to ascribe it to God.

2. Since the use of a man’s gifts is intended by God to further the work of grace in his own soul (we shall see Owen arguing this later), the possibility that (for instance) a man’s glossolalia is from God can only be entertained at all as long as it is accompanied by a discernible ripening of the fruit of the Spirit in his life.

3. To be more interested in extraordinary gifts of lesser worth^6 than in ordinary ones of greater value; to be more absorbed in seeking one’s own spiritual enrichment than in seeking the edifying of the Church; and to have one’s attention centered on the Holy Spirit, whereas the Spirit Himself is concerned to center our attention on Jesus Christ—these traits are sure signs of “enthusiasm” wherever they are found, even in those who seem most saintly.

4. Since one can never conclusively prove that any charismatic manifestation is identical with what is claimed as its New Testament counterpart, one can never in any particular case have more than a tentative and provisional opinion, open to constant reconsideration as time and life go on.

Owen was deeply concerned to bring out the supernaturalness of the Christian life, and to do justice to the Spirit’s work in it, but whether he could have felt close sympathy with any form of modern pentecostalism is a question about which opinions might differ.

The second modern issue that calls for mention is, how should we develop congregational life in our churches so as to secure an “every-member ministry”?

The New Testament pictures the local church as a body in which every member—that is, literally, every “limb”—has its own part to play in advancing the welfare and growth of the whole. But the churches we know today have inherited over-centralized patterns of life, so that most congregations contain passengers, and our institutional rigidity inhibits our impact on local communities. We are coming increasingly to see that small-group patterns of fellowship, prayer, study, and Christian action—home meetings, “cells,” and the like—need to be developed within our congregations on a much larger scale than we have done hitherto. Again we ask, can the Puritans help us here? Again the reply is, only indirectly; for over-centralization was not a Puritan problem, and the strength and influence of the family as a religious unit in Puritan times made the quest for other small-group structures less pressing.

However, though the Puritans give us no blueprint for modern group meetings, we find them vindicating with emphasis the fact that such meetings are right, desirable, and beneficial. Thus Owen, for one, included in his first book, The Duties of Pastors and People Distinguished (1643),7 a chapter entitled “Of the liberty and duty of gifted uncalled Christians in the exercise of divers acts of divine worship,” in which he argued that “for the improving of knowledge, the increasing of Christian charity, for the furtherance of a strict and holy communion of that spiritual love and amity which ought to be among the brethren, they may of their own accord assemble together, to consider one another, to provoke unto love and good works, to stir up the gifts that are in them, yielding and receiving mutual consolation by the fruits of their most holy faith.”8 Christians may rightly meet to pray together (cf. Acts 12:12), and to minister to each other encouragement (cf. Mal. 3:16) and spiritual help (cf. Isa. 50:4; James 5:16). The only provisos are that they should not become a splinter group, withdrawing from the church’s public worship, or despising and disregarding their pastors, or taking up with doctrinal and expository novelties. Owen ridicules the idea that such gatherings had the nature of “schismatic conventicles,” affirming them rather to be lawful and proper means whereby Christians “may help each other forward in the knowledge of godliness and the way towards heaven.”9

A generation later, in the Discourse, Owen returned to the theme that all believers receive gifts by the use of which they are “all to admonish one another, to exhort one another, to build up one another in their most holy faith,” and added this comment:10

It is the loss of those spiritual gifts which hath introduced among many an utter neglect of these duties, so as that they are scarce heard of among the generality of them that are called Christians. But, blessed be God, we have large and full experience of the continuance of this dispensation of the Spirit, in the eminent abilities of a multitude of private Christians. . . . By some, I confess, they (gifts) have been abused: some have presumed on them beyond the line and measure which they have received; some have been puffed up with them; some have used them disorderly in churches and to their hurt; some have boasted of what they have not received;—all which miscarriages also befell the primitive churches. And I had rather have the order, rule, spirit, and practice of those churches that were planted by the apostles, with all their trouble and disadvantages, than the carnal peace of others in their open degeneracy from all those things.

It is clear that, were Owen with us today, he would be urging us by all means to seek a recovery of “every-member ministry,” through a renewed quest for the “best gifts” of the Holy Spirit.

Overall Thrust of Owen’s Thinking

What we have cited from Owen has already made plain the nature of his concern about spiritual gifts. It is an aspect of the consuming, comprehensive concern that marked him all his days—his concern, that is, for authenticity of Church life. In pursuing this concern, he appears as at once a reforming theologian, opposing false structures, dead formalism, and unspiritual disorder; a pastoral theologian, challenging distortions of the gospel, mechanical religious routines, and barren professions of faith; and a Christ-centered theologian, insisting throughout that the honor of the Savior was directly bound up with the state of the visible Church. (All of which is only to say that Owen appears as a true Reformed theologian, a kindred spirit to Calvin himself.) The relevance of spiritual gifts to this concern, in Owen’s view, was simply that there can be no authentic Church life without their exercise. On this he is explicit and emphatic.

Gifts of the Spirit, says Owen at the outset of his Discourse, are “that without which the Church cannot subsist in the world, nor can believers be useful unto one another and the rest of mankind, unto the glory of Christ, as they ought to be.”11 Gifts are “the powers of the world to come” referred to in Hebrews 6:5, and “the ministration of the Spirit” mentioned in 2 Corinthians 3:8—for “the promises of the plentiful effusion of the Spirit under the New Testament . . . are frequently applied to him as he works evangelical gifts extraordinary and ordinary in men,”12 and the use of his gifts is “the great means whereby all grace is ingenerated and exercised.”13 Thus gifts are truly “the great privilege of the New Testament.”14

Gifts of the Spirit give the Church its inward organic life and its outward visible form. “This various distribution of gifts (i.e. that referred to in 1 Cor. 12:16–25) . . . makes the Church an organical body; and in this composure, with the peculiar uses of the members of the body, consists the harmony, beauty, and safety of the whole.”15 “That profession which renders a Church visible according to the mind of Christ, is the orderly exercise of the spiritual gifts bestowed on it, in a conversation evidencing the invisible principle of saving grace.”16

Gifts of the Spirit were, and are, Christ’s sole weapons for setting up, extending, and maintaining His kingdom. “It is inquired what power the Lord Christ did employ . . . for . . . the erecting of that kingdom or church-state, which being promised of old, was called the world to come, or, the new world . . . and I say, it was these gifts of the Holy Ghost. . . . By them it was, or in their exercise, that the Lord Christ erected His empire over the souls and consciences of men, destroying both the work and kingdom of the devil. It is true, it is the word of the gospel itself that is the rod of his strength which is sent out of Sion to erect and dispense his rule: but that hidden power which made the word effectual in the dispensation of it, consisted in these gifts of the Holy Ghost.”17 “By these gifts doth the Lord Christ demonstrate His power, and exercise His rule.”18 One secret of the abundance of life enjoyed by the early Church was that “all gospel administrations were in those days avowedly executed by virtue of spiritual gifts.”19

Without gifts, the Church is a mere shadow of itself. The round of worship becomes sterile, for “gospel ordinances are found to be fruitless and unsatisfactory, without the attaining and exercising of gospel gifts.”20 The Church falls into the ditch of formalism and the mire of superstition. Unconcern about gifts, writes Owen, “was that whereby in all ages countenance was given unto apostasy and defection from the power and truth of the gospel. The names of spiritual things were still retained, but applied to outward forms and ceremonies, which thereby were substituted insensibly into their room, to the ruin of the gospel in the minds of men.”21 “As the neglect of internal saving grace, wherein the power of godliness doth consist, hath been the bane of Christian profession as to obedience . . . so the neglect of these gifts hath been the ruin of the same profession as to worship and order, which hath thereon issued in fond superstitions.”22 Owen judged the Church of Rome to be a case in point: “We have an instance in the Church of Rome, what various, extravagant, and endless inventions the minds of men will put them upon to keep up a show of worship, when by the loss of spiritual gifts spiritual administrations are lost also. This is that which their innumerable forms, modes, sets of rites and ceremonies, seasons of worship are invented to supply, but to no purpose at all; but only the aggravation of their sin and folly.”23 Owen’s further generalization, “a ministry devoid of spiritual gifts is sufficient evidence of a Church under a degenerating apostasy,”24 suggests thoughts that might well disturb Protestants, too, at the present time.

The overall thrust of Owen’s thinking, and the theological and practical importance for him of the question of gifts, is now clear. In the light of this, we may profitably go on to focus attention on four specific subjects: the nature of spiritual gifts; their place in Church life; the different kinds of gifts, ordinary and extraordinary; and the place of gifts in the economy of grace. These themes will occupy the rest of our study.

The Nature of Spiritual Gifts

Spiritual gifts are abilities bestowed and exercised by the power of God; not natural, therefore, but supernatural; not human, but divine. Owen starts the argument of his Discourse by reviewing the New Testament phraseology for spiritual gifts, observing that this of itself tells us a good deal about their nature. The words may be arranged in four groups (Owen arranges them in three, lumping together the last two). Group one points to the thought that the gifts are free and undeserved bestowals. The words here are doµrea and domata, “present” and “presents,” and charismata, from charis (grace), on which Owen comments: “It is absolute freedom in the bestower of them that is principally intended in this name.”25 Group two highlights the thought that the author of these abilities is the Holy Spirit. Key words here are pneumatika, literally “spirituals,” in 1 Corinthians 12:1, and the phrases “manifestation of the Spirit” in verse 7 and “distributions of the Holy Ghost” in Hebrews 2:4 (AV and RVmg.) Group three expresses the idea that a gift is actually God’s work in a man, not the actualizing of a human capacity but a dynamic divine operation. This thought is focused in the word energeµmata, “operations,” literally “effectual workings” (1 Cor. 12:6). Group four pinpoints the function which gifts fulfill: they are “ministrations,” “activities of service” (1 Cor. 12:5), “powers and abilities whereby some are enabled to administer spiritual things unto the benefit, advantage, and edification of others.”26

A one-sentence definition of a gift, in line with Owen’s analysis, would be this: a spiritual gift is an ability, divinely bestowed and sustained, to grasp and express the realities of the spiritual world, and the knowledge of God in Christ, for the edifying both of others and of oneself. This definition appears to be entirely scriptural. However, it must be noted that whereas Paul, in directing Christians to use their gifts, speaks of expressing one’s knowledge of God’s mercy in Christ by the way one gives, rules, loves one’s brethren, and shows hospitality, as well as by prophesying, teaching, and exhorting (Rom. 12:4–13), Owen conceives of ordinary gifts (as distinct from those, like miracles and tongues, which “consisted only in a transient operation of an extraordinary power”) solely in terms of having thoughts of divine things, with power to voice them in words. He does not treat any other capacity for service as a “gift” at all. This intellectualism comes out in his assertion that “spiritual gifts are placed and seated in the mind or understanding only . . . and they are in the mind as it is notional and theoretical, rather than as it is practical. They are intellectual abilities and no more.”27 This appears to have been the general Puritan view; it rested on the assumption that 1 Corinthians 12:7–11 is complete enumeration of all the gifts there are, or ever were—an assumption which chapter four of the Discourse shows that Owen shared. But the assumption is unprovable, and Owen’s view is surely at this point incomplete. Has Paul only intellectual abilities in view when he says that God has set in the Church “helps” and “governments” (1 Cor. 12:28)? Significantly, perhaps, Owen makes no reference to these either in the Discourse or, so far as I can find, in any of his writings on the local church: probably, like other Puritan expositors, he did not suppose that the functions to which these names referred were manifestations of a distinct spiritual gift at all.28 But it seems clear that the category of spiritual gifts, as Paul views it, includes graces of character and practical wisdom, as well as powers of theoretical reasoning and discourse about divine truths.

Gifts are bestowed by the Lord Jesus Christ (Eph. 4:8) through shedding forth on men the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:23). Owen equates the “power” of the Spirit in Acts 1:4 and 1 Corinthians 2:4 with the bestowal and exercise of gifts. Though gifts are often given through sanctification of natural abilities, they are not natural abilities, and sometimes this is marked by nondevelopment in Christians of the gifts that their natural abilities would lead one to expect, and the manifesting in them of gifts for which their natural powers gave no foundation at all. But all gifts alike are increased by use of the means of grace—prayer, meditation, constant self-abasement, and active service in God’s cause.

Spiritual Gifts and Ecclesiastical Office

Though, as we saw, Owen recognizes that Christ gives gifts to all, and that the local church should accordingly display a pattern of “every-member ministry” in its regular life, the official ministry is central in Owen’s interest, and it is in terms of the relation and distinction between gifts and ecclesiastical office that he expounds (in chapters three and four of the Discourse) the place of gifts in the Church.

He begins by analyzing the notion of “office” in terms of power plus duty (in the sense of defined responsibility). He declares that “ecclesiastical office is an especial power given by Christ unto any person or persons for the performance of especial duties belonging unto the edification of the Church in an especial manner.”29 He affirms the standard Reformed view of ordination as an act of Christ conferring office through the action of the Church, rather than as an act of the Church delegating to the ordinand its own inherent powers. He also sets forth exactly the standard Reformed distinction between the offices of apostle, evangelist, and prophet, which were temporary and extraordinary, ceasing with the apostolic age, and the office of presbyter, which is permanent and ordinary, and is to last till the Lord returns. Laying down the principle that “all office-power depends on the communication of gifts, whether extraordinary or ordinary,”30 he argues that extraordinary offices presupposed both an extraordinary call and extraordinary gifts, and that in the absence of the latter, no less than of the former, it is impossible that the apostles, the evangelists (whom he understands to have been the apostles’ personally appointed assistants), and the prophets, could have successors today.31 All this is familiar ground to those who have read Calvin’s Institutes 4.3, and therefore we need not stay on it. Owen’s adoption of Independent principles of polity did not effect in the least his adherence to Presbyterian principles regarding ministerial order, character, and authority.

Nor is he anything other than typical of the whole Reformed tradition when he declares that “spiritual gifts of themselves make no man actually a minister, yet no man can be made a minister according to the mind of Christ, who is not partaker of them.”32 His point is that a minister is Christ’s gift to the Church (Eph. 4:8) only because, and insofar as, he is gifted by Christ for ministry in his master’s name, and the Church has no right to call and send into the Lord’s vineyard men whose gifts do not warrant the confidence that the Lord himself has called them to this service. “The Church hath no power to call any unto the office of the ministry, where the Lord Christ hath not gone before it in the designation of him by an endowment of spiritual gifts; for if the whole authority of the ministry be from Christ, and if he never give it but where he bestows these gifts with it for its discharge, as in Eph. 4:7–8, etc., then to call any to the ministry whom he hath not so previously gifted is to set him aside, and act in our own name and authority.”33 The main application of our Lord’s parable of the talents, in Owen’s view, is to the ordained ministry, and its main lesson is that “wherever there is a ministry in the Church that Christ owneth or regardeth as used and employed by him, there persons are furnished with spiritual gifts from Christ by the Spirit, enabling them unto the discharge of that ministry; and where there are no such spiritual gifts dispensed by him, there is no ministry that he either accepteth or approveth.”34

Ordinary and Extraordinary Gifts

The last point leads on to the question, what gifts are required for the ordinary presbyteral ministry? Owen’s answer is, not the extraordinary gifts mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:5–11 (faith that works miracles, healing powers, immediate discernment of spirits, tongues, and interpretation of tongues), but the ordinary ones, wisdom and knowledge, at an extraordinary pitch. Ministers must be able “in an eminent degree” (Owen’s constant phrase) to preach the Word with application, to pray with unction, and to rule with wisdom. To speak to men for, and from, God, and to speak to God for, and as the mouthpiece of, God’s flock, is no small undertaking. For it, says Owen, men need three gifts in particular.

The first gift is “wisdom, or knowledge, or understanding”—“such a comprehension of the scope of the Scripture and of the revelation of God therein; such an acquaintance with the systems of particular doctrinal truths, in their rise, tendency, and use; such a habit of mind in judging of spiritual things, and comparing them one with another; such a distinct insight into the springs and course of the mystery of the love, grace, and will of God in Christ, as enables them in whom it is to declare the counsel of God, to make known the way of life, of faith and obedience, unto others, and to instruct them in their whole duty to God and man therein.”35

Then second, “with respect unto the doctrine of the gospel . . . there is required . . . skill to divide the word aright, which is also a peculiar gift of the Holy Ghost” (2 Tim. 2:15).36 This gift of “right dividing” Owen understands, not in the exotic latter-day sense of distinguishing dispensations, but in the standard Puritan sense of making appropriate application of God’s truth to the condition of individuals. Whether, as Owen, with Calvin, believed, the picture here is of discriminating distribution of food to the family, rather than, as most modern expositors hold, cutting a straight furrow, is not the main issue; the central question is rather, will a minister be approved by God as a good workman, handling the word of truth in a manner appropriate to its nature and purpose, and winning the praise of the God whose word it is, if he misapplies it, or fails to apply it at all? One of the most valuable elements in Puritan teaching on the ministry is the constant stress laid on the need for discerning and discriminating application. Owen lays out in detail what this requires of a man:

(1) A sound judgment in general concerning the state and condition of those unto whom any one is so dispensing the word. It is the duty of a shepherd to know the state of his flock; and unless he do so, he will never feed them profitably. He must know whether they are babes, or young men, or old; whether they need milk or strong meat . . . whether in the judgment of charity they are converted unto God, or are yet in an unregenerate condition; what probably are their principal temptations, their hinderances and furtherances; what is their growth or decay. . . .

(2) An acquaintance with the ways and methods of the work of God’s grace on the minds and hearts of men, that he may pursue and comply with its design in the ministry of the word. . . . He . . . who is unacquainted with the ordinary methods of the operation of grace fights uncertainly in his preaching of the word like a man beating of the air. It is true, God can, and often doth, direct a word of truth, spoken as it were at random, unto a proper effect of grace, on some or other, as it was when the man drew a bow at a venture, and smote the king of Israel between the joints of the harness. But ordinarily a man is not likely to hit a joint, who knows not how to take his aim.

(3) An acquaintance with the nature of temptation. . . . Many things might be added on this head. . . .

(4) A right understanding of the nature of spiritual diseases, distempers, and sicknesses, with their proper cures and remedies, belongeth hereunto. For the want hereof the hearts of the wicked are often-times made glad in the preaching of the word, and those of the righteous filled with sorrow; the hands of sinners are strengthened, and those who are looking towards God are discouraged or turned out of the way. . . .”37

The question of the best syllabus of study for ministerial candidates is often discussed today. Would it not be in our interest to reconsider this syllabus of Owen’s? How dare we, in this or any age, contemplate ordaining men who have not first mastered it?

Third, with knowledge of God’s truth and skill to apply it must go the gift of utterance, which, says Owen, “is particularly reckoned by the apostle among the gifts of the Spirit” (1 Cor. 1:5; 2 Cor. 8:4; cf. Eph. 6:19; Col. 4:3).38 This is not the same as rhetorical skill, or a pretty wit, or “a natural volubility of speech, which . . . is so far from being a gift of the Spirit . . . that it is usually a snare to them that have it, and a trouble to them that hear them”; it consists of naturalness appropriate to the subject-matter, plus “boldness and holy confidence,” plus gravity and “that authority which accompanieth the delivery of the word when preached in demonstration of these spiritual abilities.”39 “All these things are necessary,” Owen concludes, “that the hearers may receive the word, not as the word of man, but as it is indeed the word of God.”

This rather shattering list of qualifications needed for acceptable ministry prompts the cry, “Who is sufficient for these things?” This leads us straight to our final topic.

Gifts and Grace

Owen’s concern for authenticity and reality in the life of the Church and of Christians prompts him, when discussing the relation of gifts and grace in chapter two of the Discourse, to lay stress on the negative point that a man can have gifts with grace—that is, one can be skilled in Christian comprehension and communication without having been born again. Owen insists that here are two distinct types of operation by the Spirit of God, and that only the work of grace, producing “the fruit of the Spirit” in a renewed heart and a transformed character is saving. Gifts belong to the outward administration of the covenant of grace only; it does not follow that a man with spiritual abilities is therefore in the inward saving relationship with God at which the covenant aims. The thrust of this is that none may presume on his gifts, and conclude from his having theological interests and abilities that therefore he has eternal life; it does not follow. Only the man who has come to know his sin and has been led in repentance and faith to the cross of Christ is in grace; and merely gifted man, however theologically articulate, may be under wrath still. The need to make this point, in our day as in Owen’s, is too obvious to require emphasis from me. We should thank Owen for reminding us of it—and examine ourselves.

But there is another side to the picture, a word of encouragement and incentive to balance the word of warning. Where “saving graces and spiritual gifts . . . are bestowed on the same persons,” writes Owen, “they are exceedingly helpful unto each other. A soul sanctified by saving grace, is the only proper soil for gifts to flourish in. Grace influenceth gifts unto a due exercise, prevents their abuse, stirs them up unto proper occasions, keeps them from being a matter of pride or contention, and subordinates them in all things unto the glory of God. When the actings of grace and gifts are inseparable, as when in prayer the Spirit is a spirit of grace and supplication, the grace and gift of it working together, when utterance in other duties is always accompanied with faith and love, then is God glorified, and our own salvation promoted. Then have edifying gifts a beauty and lustre upon them, and generally are most successful, when they are clothed and adorned with humility, meekness, a reverance of God, and compassion for the souls of men. . . . Gifts on the other side excite and stir up grace unto its proper exercise and operations. How often is faith, love, and delight in God excited and drawn forth unto especial exercise in believers by the use of their own gifts.”40

Do we deplore that so little of the life of God appears in our souls? Is it our complaint that our gifts are so small? Use your gifts and graces, such as they are, to stir each other up to exercise, Owen is saying, and you will have more of both. Do we seek to grow in grace through the exercise of our gifts? When we speak to others of the things of God, do we seek to feed our own souls on the same truths? Equally, do we seek to increase our gifts through stirring up our hearts to seek God? When we speak of divine things to others, and lead them in prayer, do we seek to feel the reality of the things we speak of? Small gifts may have great usefulness when backed by honest, sincere feeling and unaffected holiness. Are we depressed about our Christian service, finding it largely barren and ourselves largely impotent? Let us go back to our God for wisdom to learn how His grace and gifts in us may help each other. Covet earnestly the best gifts—and with them a humble, loving heart. This is the way of growth and fruitfulness.

14

DANIEL ROWLAND

Eifion Evans

The two most prominent leaders of the eighteenth-century revival in Wales were Howel Harris and Daniel Rowland. Together they blazed the trail of an indigenous Methodism in Wales, experimental in its organization and Calvinistic in its theology. If Harris and Rowland complemented one another in gifts, they differed in temperament. Harris was the restless evangelist and organizer, impulsive, zealous, stubborn, while Rowland was the solid preacher and theologian, impassive, gifted, persevering. Their common ground lay in their extraordinary youth, their attachment to episcopacy, and their Calvinism.

At the time of his conversion in 1735, Rowland was twenty-two, married, and serving as curate to his brother at Llangeitho in Cardiganshire. God’s chosen instrument for this gracious change was the ministry of Griffith Jones; in the words of a contemporary, Rowland was “begotten to the new Gospel by . . . Griff. Jones.”1

The latter had labored long in the cause of a gospel reformation in South Wales at a time when a general darkness and deadness prevailed. As early as 1714 he had experienced in some measure what the Methodists were to pass through on a much wider scale: a time of revival, the censure of the bishop and clergy for preaching in other parishes, and the attendance of large congregations. He was a man of vision and evangelistic zeal, and had commenced in 1731 the popular movement for education which was six years later identified as the “Circulating Welsh Charity Schools.” These provided free instruction to adults as well as children, the teacher moving every three months or so, while the curriculum was confined almost exclusively to reading and catechizing.

The fact that Rowland was staying with Jones at the time of his receiving priests’ orders in August 1735 is an indication of the strong affinities between them in that early period.2 Later, however, Rowland’s Methodism estranged Jones, and Harris was called upon repeatedly to neutralize the pioneer reformer’s opposition and criticism.

Rowland’s brother had been instituted to Llangeitho on their father’s resignation in 1730, and to this was collated the vicarage of nearby Nantcwnlle the following year. In addition, he served three curacies in the area,3 and at various times, determined by availability and expediency, Rowland preached in these churches, but was not confined to them.

His missionary labors soon spilled over into the neighboring counties, and by the end of 1740 his preaching activities extended throughout South Wales and he had penetrated into the North.

Apart from occasional excursions as far as Bristol, Daniel Rowland traveled little in England. John Cennick suggests a reason when writing to Harris in 1742: “You can’t think how it troubled me when Frank told Mr. Rowland [he] thought I looked cold on him in Bristol. I am clear in my mind on this account but I know I talked very little to him, and that was because he talked so bad English I could not understand him, and so was fearful of offending him. If you see him tell him this and salute him very affectionately in my name.”4 On the other hand, he regularly preached at those places which remained open to him in Wales, often on a monthly basis, and sometimes administering the sacrament for the benefit of the scattered converts in the area. The Welsh Methodists used “Chapels of Ease,” buildings of the Established Church often dilapidated and isolated, to provide them with the preaching stations which they needed, especially in Carmarthenshire. In due course, however, the authorities frustrated this strategy by direct prohibition and the threat of ecclesiastical sanctions.

For these reasons repeated attempts were made by the authorities of the Established Church to curtail Rowland’s preaching liberties. The diplomatic measure of licensing a curacy at Ystrad-ffin in August 1741 deprived him of this valuable preaching station in North Carmarthenshire. Within a matter of months, March 1742, he was turned out of Llanddewibrefi. Eventually Rowland’s licence for Llangeitho itself was revoked in 1763 by the bishop “because he would not refrain to go about preaching for three years.” The result, according to one commentator, was that “Daniel Rowland is now continual about preaching.”

Four years later the Nantcwnlle parishioners unsuccessfully petitioned the bishop for Rowland’s reinstatement on the basis of non-residence by the vicar. Its failure did not silence Rowland; the Methodists had built a chapel at Llangeitho in 1760, which they replaced with a new building in 1764.5

Another attempt to restore Rowland in an official capacity within the Established Church in 1769 also failed, Rowland finding the conditions unacceptable. This was an attractive offer by John Thornton, a philanthropic member of “the Clapham Sect”:

I am desirous to recommend a diligent faithful minister to the Rectory of Newport in Pembrokeshire . . . from the account I have had of you I am persuaded you will prove such. I therefore make you the offer of it, provided you will reside and are satisfied to proceed regularly as a Minister of the Church of England. You may see by this I know how to make all proper allowances for those irregularities that ministers are too often forced into by being shut out of the Church, but when they receive an offer of work sufficient to employ them in the pale of the Church I think their whole strength ought to be devoted to it, as I hope yours will be henceforward.

Rowland was, however, as concerned for the Llangeitho Methodists as they were to continue under his ministry, and his attempt at the compromise of combining the Newport incumbency with serving his new chapel at Llangeitho proved a failure. Thornton was adamant: “Since writing to you I have got a letter from your son Nathaniel mentioning the concern your people are under at the thought of losing you and that you proposed sometimes doing duty where you are at present. That can’t be as it is not an ordained chapel and unless you resolve to reside at Newport and be wedded to your parish we can’t stand before the bishop properly and answer his objections.”6

These abortive attempts clearly show that Rowland was unwilling to sacrifice ministerial liberty on the altar of Canon Law. Bishop J. C. Ryle is hardly fair in referring to the bishop’s revocation of the license as a “blundering exercise of episcopal power,” “preposterous and stupid.”7 Rowland’s extra-parochial activities and chapel building were irregular to say the least according to the disciplinary standards of episcopacy, and the bishop cannot justly be blamed for acting consistently with them. The indictment must be ranged against the Church of England for their existence rather than against the bishop for their exercise.

Rowland did not object to the clerical orders of episcopacy, but he did consider its sacredotalism misguided and its discipline inadequate. The chapel built for him at Llangeitho was symbolic of his repudiation of these things. Despite the rebuff of the authorities Rowland continued to enjoy the support of his people and success in his ministry at Llangeitho until his death in 1790.

Extraordinary Power in Preaching

From the time of his conversion that success was extraordinary. His preaching of the law in the early months brought severe conviction of sin among the ever-increasing crowds. William Williams’ elegy to him speaks of the marvelous change which took place when, in addition to opening the wounds of the people, he applied the healing balm of grace: “After preaching for some years the stormy law and wounding very many, his tone changed; He proclaimed full, complete, perfect salvation through the Messiah’s death on Calvary. Henceforth the power of his sweet doctrines nurtured faith by revealing the Mediator, God and Man, as the foundation of free salvation; the One who freely redeemed, by His precious blood, all the treasures of heaven for a poor believer.” These words are an indication of the openly acknowledged, almost proverbial, reputation which Rowland enjoyed as a champion of orthodoxy, and of his primacy among contemporaries as preacher of the whole counsel of God.

Harris had special cause to thank God for Rowland’s ministry. In February 1738 a sermon on Proverbs 8:32 convinced him of the freeness and unchangeableness of God’s grace: “My eyes were opened to the light . . . he was the means whereby I was brought to the knowledge of the truth about Christ. . . . Today was an extraordinary day to my soul.”8 In his letters of this period Harris refers to Rowland as one of the clergymen “who preach Christ powerfully”; “there is a great revival in Cardiganshire through . . . D. Rowland . . . and he has been much owned and blessed in Carmarthenshire also.”9 “Blessed be God for the amazing gifts and power given to brother Rowland. Sure there is no such ministry in Wales. I never heard of like.”10

Nearly five years later, in March 1743, it was still as powerful, and Harris reported to Whitefield that “the Kingdom of our Lord” was “coming sweetly” among them. He continued:

I can’t tell where to begin to tell you what great things He is doing daily among us. . . . I was last Sunday at the ordinance with Brother Rowland where I saw, felt, and heard such things as I can’t send on paper any idea of. The power that continues with him is uncommon. Such crying out and heart breaking groans, silent weeping and holy joy, and shouts of rejoicing I never saw. Their “Amens” and crying “Glory in the highest”, etc., would enflame your soul was you there. ’Tis very common when he preaches for scores to fall down by the power of the Word, pierced and wounded or overcome by the love of God and sights of the beauty and excellency of Jesus; and lie on the ground, nature being overcome by the sights and enjoyments given to their heaven-born souls that it can’t bear, the Spirit almost bursting the house of clay to go to its native home. Some lie there for hours, some praising and admiring Jesus, Free Grace, distinguishing grace, others wanting words to utter. You might read the language of a heart running over with love in their heavenly looks. Their eyes sparkling with the fire of love and joy, and solid rest in God; others meeting when the Word, etc., is over to sing, and you might feel God there among them like a flame; others falling down one after another for a long time together praying and interceding and you might see and feel it is the prayer of faith, and that they are worshipping a God that they know, and love, and delight in, and that now no veil is between. Others lie wounded under a sense of their piercing Jesus, so that they can hardly bear it . . . others mourning and wailing for the Comforter, and such love and simplicity that a spiritual eye must see and acknowledge that God is there. This is but a very faint idea of it, for what words can express spiritual things? But methinks I see you bow the knee, and cry, “I can bear no more; I understand how it is.” [Rowland’s] congregation I believe consists of above 2,000 whereof a great part are brought to glorious liberty and walk solidly in clear light in the continual enjoyment of God without a moment’s darkness. Many others walk in solid faith rejoicing in the hope and expectation of the clearer manifestation of God’s glory and the glorious liberty of His children. . . . In some of our private societies the Holy Spirit is uncommonly powerful indeed . . . everywhere there is a reviving . . . there are eight counties open for you, and thirsting to hear you, and opposition ceases.11

According to Rowland himself the experiences of such heavenly disorder were common in those days at Llangeitho:

There is such power as I never felt before, given me in preaching and administering the Lord’s Supper. The Lord comes down among us in such a manner as words can give no idea of. Though I have, to prevent nature mixing with the work, openly discountenanced all crying out, yet such is the light, view, and power God gives very many in the Ordinance, that they cannot possibly help crying out, praising and adoring Jesus, being quite swallowed up in God; and thus I was obliged to leave my whole congregation, being many hundreds, in a flame . . . this is our condition generally every Sabbath.12

The congregations were drawn from a wide area as Harris was to find a few months later:

I find our great Immanuel come more and more down in wisdom and power, revealing more of his glory and grace continually. There were some there from eight counties . . . many I spoke with since were telling me how they were so overcome by the love of God’s Son on the way that (they were as though) overcome with new wine . . . there is fresh life everywhere . . . Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire are all in a flame.13

The divine blaze continued unabated in 1745:

Mr. Daniel Rowland is one of the most surprising men that ever I heard . . . such wisdom to divide the Word, such divine light to penetrate to the spiritual [meaning] of the Word and such power to apply [it] I never knew with any one . . . in his pulpit he is a second Paul . . . his gifts and call among the people are superior to any and so far as he can go none are so blessed and owned as he is . . . in all these places ’tis impossible to express what visible signs the Lord continues to give of his gracious Presence, what life and power, what holy fire and warmth, what shouts of praise from some, what groanings and moanings from others, what tears of love and joy, and what signs of real happiness appears in the looks of others can only be understood by what experiences [are] in one’s own soul and has seen also in such congregations.14

The crowds, which according to Harris’s reckoning were about 2,000 in 1737, had reached 10,000 by 1763, another time of refreshing at Llangeitho.15

It was under Rowland’s ministry ten years later that Thomas Charles “of Bala” was converted, and his record of the event is in itself a spiritual classic as well as glowing testimony to the authority of the preaching:

January 20, 1773, I went to hear Mr. Rowland preach at New Chapel [Llangeitho]; his text was Heb. 4:15. A day much to be remembered by me as long as I live. Ever since the happy day I have lived in a new heaven and a new earth. The change a blind man who receives his sight experiences doth not exceed the change I at that time experienced in my mind.

The earth receded, it disappeared,

Heaven opened to my eyes,

My ears with sound seraphic rang.

Then I was first convinced of the sin of unbelief or entertaining narrow, contracted, and hard thoughts of the Almighty. I had such a view of Christ as our High Priest, of His love, compassion, power and all-sufficiency, as filled my soul with astonishment—with joy unspeakable and full of glory. My mind was overwhelmed and overpowered with amazement. The truths exhibited to my view appeared too wonderfully gracious to be believed. I could not believe for very joy. The glorious scenes then opened to my eyes will abundantly satisfy my soul millions of years hence in the contemplation of them. I had some idea of gospel truths before floating in my head, but they never powerfully and with divine energy penetrated my heart till now. The effect of this sermon remained upon my mind above half a year, during which time I was generally in a comfortable and heavenly frame. Often in walking in the fields, I looked up to heaven with joy and called that my home, at the same time ardently longing for the appearance of the glorious Saviour to take me forever to Himself.16

A mere eight years before Rowland’s death, Thomas Charles’ future wife heard him preaching on Jude verse 20, “Praying in the Holy Spirit,” with great profit and lasting impression:

There was something solemn and awful in the place, and I thought that perhaps the greatest divine since the time of the apostles was then undertaking his glorious employment . . . [he] showed that lip service is not respected, that cursers and swearers were more justified than those that mocked God with their lips and their hearts far from him; that the saints could be in no state in this world that their prayer would not be heard; that the promise of the Comforter in the 16th [chapter] of St. John is now accomplished; that the Spirit of God in the saints makes them conquerors over God himself, as in Jacob’s case; that it is not difficult to prevail for spiritual blessings, but if we ask for riches or honours, things hurtful, they are given like the flesh to the Israelites, but to those that ask, the Holy Spirit is given abundantly, proved in the 13th verse of the [11th chapter of] Luke and in the 4th [chapter] of St. John, being the water spoken to the woman of Samaria that springeth up to everlasting life. He dwelt much upon the 14th and 16th [chapters] of St. John, about the three Persons in the glorious Trinity and of Christ’s humiliation and abasement, and upon those words I WILL pray the Father and he shall give you another Comforter. He would not exempt Himself from being engaged for His people, but would send another also. He observed that Christ had prayed in different ways, sometimes with strong cries and tears, not that this was necessary to prevail, but like the cry of a man whose house was on fire, venting the grief that was in Him; that he prayed by shedding of His blood which cried louder than the blood of Abel, that He made one sacrifice of Himself, and that the prayers of His people are for ever acceptable in Him; that the Spirit teacheth to pray in His name; that Isaac and Jacob called upon God as the God of their fathers, Elisha called Him the Lord God of Elijah, but now the Antitype being come we have greater confidence in His name, but alas! I am darkening the lustre of the fine gold.17

Perhaps the feelings of Rowland’s hearers were best summed up in the words of a Montgomeryshire layman and exhorter: “Mr. Rowland’s preaching is so much betaken with me that I am ready to say as the primitive Christians for the Apostle Paul, O that we should hear Paul preach once more before we die. And say I, O that I should hear Mr. Rowland once more before I die.”18

Rowland’s excellence lay in preaching. In the estimate of some “he far surpassed Wesley and Whitefield.” One assessment which first appeared some forty years after his death brings out the difference between Rowland and Whitefield: “Rowland’s oratory bears most resemblance to that of Whitefield; but then there is this striking distinction, that when Whitefield rose in eloquence he appeared to fail in matter, whereas Rowland seemed to rise because he was overwhelmed with matter.”19 Even William Williams of Pant-y-celyn, Rowland’s friend and helper, acknowledged that “Mr. Rowland did shine in the pulpit, but was not fit for any other place or work.”20

Organizing Societies

The “other work” of the revival was the care of the emerging fellowship or society meetings. The blueprint for them can be traced to the end of the seventeenth century in Josiah Woodward’s Account of the Religious Societies.21 The organizing of them in Wales was due largely to the genius of Harris, and their effectiveness in nurturing Christian experience to the remarkable spiritual psychology of Williams. Rowland, however, was not entirely on the periphery of this “other work”; he established them doctrinally and resolved the dilemma of their embarrassing affiliation to the Church of England by providing chapels for their use.

Their beginning in Wales was a natural outcome of Harris’s homely attempts at evangelism. “The latter end of this year [1736], a man was going from one parish to another to instruct the young people in psalmody . . . I accompanied this man in his journeys, and every evening when the business of instruction was over, I proceeded to give a word of exhortation. By this means many were brought under convictions, and many religious societies were formed. I began in imitation of the societies which Dr. Woodward had given an account of in a little treatise on the subject.”22

Consequently, writing in October 1736 to Griffith Jones, Harris intimates, “we are beginning to set up private societies,” and within four years their number exceeded fifty. The need for them was patent; for one thing, “the scattered saints of the district must be gathered together for edification, and particularly for discipline”; for another, “many were leaving the Church and joining the dissenters because this privilege of meeting together to discuss the sermons they had heard, was enjoyed by the Nonconformists.” Basically, the societies were schools of the spirit, where the Christian disciple could be trained in the knowledge and experience of the things of God. Discipline, especially, was the keynote: “That is the purpose of our societies, and to this end I was called,” says Harris, “and through the power of grace I will set up such discipline that no hypocrite will be able to bear it.”23

An entry in Harris’s diary for March 18, 1737, crystallizes this lack in the Established Church:

I (on reflection) never saw anything wanting in the Church of England but these three modes . . . 1. A privilege of meeting together as a society to consult about points of salvation and self-examination. 2. More home pressed the necessity of regeneration in the pulpit, with familiar teaching, catechizing, and instructing privately in families and publicly; an inspection of the life of every communicant; the reason for their absenting to be taken by some set apart for that business—deacons, etc., with an examination on the Saturday before, public, ere they are admitted to Christ’s table and to have the sacrament monthly. 3. More familiarity between the Pastor and the sheep, etc.24

Rowland and Harris looked on the societies as supplying this serious deficiency in the episcopal system. Their efficient working depended on the use of unconsecrated buildings, and spiritual laymen whom the Welsh Methodists called “exhorters.” This term was adopted by Harris initially as a matter of expediency (“calling my work exhorting, not preaching, was a means of blinding the eyes of my opposers”25), but its usage persisted.

Whitefield soon recognized the indispensability of societies to the progress of the revival. As early as 1739 he wrote a letter “to the religious societies lately set on foot in several parts of England and Wales” with the purpose of guiding their meetings. Their purpose was unashamedly experimental, while their teaching function provided a safeguard against morbid introspection and unhealthy exhibitionism: “Form yourselves into little companies of four or five each, and meet once a week to tell each other what is in your hearts; that you may then also pray for, and comfort each other, as need shall require. None but those who have experienced it, can tell the unspeakable advantages of such a union and communion of souls. I know not a better means in the world to keep hypocrisy out from amongst you. Pharisees and unbelievers will pray, read, and sing Psalms; but none, save an Israelite indeed, will endure to have his heart searched out.”26 This appeared in Welsh translation the following year, when the rules of the societies had notice in another Welsh publication. Llwybur Hyffordd ir Cymru [Path of Instruction for the Welsh]. The latter was the precursor of a more official publication issued by the Welsh Methodists in 1742 called Sail, Dibenion a Rheolau’r Societies . . . [The Constitution, Purposes and Rules of the Societies], and attributed to “members of the Anglican Church.”27

The influence upon it of Whitefield’s letter is unmistakable, but the responsibility for its publication lay with Rowland and Harris. It shared Whitefield’s unequivocally experimental emphasis.

Objects of the Societies. 1. Heb. 10:24, to provoke unto love and good works. 2. To prevent hardness of heart and backsliding, 1 Cor. 3:2–3. 3. To understand better the deceitfulness of the heart, and the work of grace within us. 4. To instruct in the work of God and build up faith. 5. To warn against questionings and disputes of words. 6. To guard each other in life and conduct. 7. To glorify God in the presence of one another for his acts of grace. 8. To strengthen each other against common enemies of the soul and to pray on behalf of one another.

Rules of the Society. 1. After the singing of praise, and prayer, let the members relate in the hearing of one another the good and evil experienced since the last meeting. 2. So as to remove all possible hindrances to growth in grace, let even doubts, fears and suspicions be told and then examined. 3. Each member should be prepared to submit to an examination of his experience. . . . Refuse admission to no one who can satisfactorily answer the following questions: Are you convinced of sin? Have you been awakened by God’s grace? Do you admit your moral inability to do good in and of yourself? Do you accept the imputed righteousness of Christ in salvation? Have you felt the Spirit of God inclining you to surrender yourself to Christ? Have you counted the cost of following Christ? Have you received the testimony or witness of the Spirit? Has the Spirit of adoption followed your sorrow for sin? Do you accept and assent to the fundamental truths of the Trinity, election, original sin, justification by faith, and perseverance in grace as taught in the 39 Articles? Is it the love of Christ that impels you to join our society and are you prepared to abide by these rules?

Following the test of admission into the society come the tests to be applied to members who desire to gauge their growth in the Christian life:

1. Are you assured of faith, forgiveness, and the indwelling of the Spirit? 2. Is your sympathy with other people enlarged? 3. Is your spiritual comprehension of truth and holiness growing? 4. Is your conscience more sensitive to sin? 5. What spiritual lesson have you learnt since the last meeting? 6. Is the love of God deepening within you? 7. Are you more concerned with the salvation of your fellow men? 8. Does your inheritance in Christ grow more clearly to you?28

A regular check was kept on the state of the societies, their leaders meeting regularly in “association,” usually at monthly intervals, and more generally at less frequent intervals under Rowland as “Moderator.”

At these association meetings various aspects of the work were discussed, reports of the societies were examined, and future policy was decided.

While the societies provided the Methodists with a school for discipline where they could exercise their teaching ministry without fear of episcopal interference, the home of their disciples (for the most part, at any rate) still lay in the Church of England. The tension between this spiritual school and spiritual home was evident throughout the eighteenth century in Welsh Methodism, and not a little of Rowland’s energies were directed toward relieving it.

The Methodist policy with regard to separation from the Church of England is summed up by Harris in a letter to Whitefield in 1742: “Our call being not clear to me to separate from the Church till we are turned out.”29 They sought to reform the Established Church from within, making their appeal to the Thirty-nine Articles, but this position was repeatedly being challenged by the lay exhorters, many of whom could not obtain holy orders for all their spirituality and ability. Nevertheless, Welsh Methodism continued on this basis for the rest of the eighteenth century, and separated from the Church of England only in 1811 when Charles “of Bala” and others led in the first Calvinistic Methodist ordination. Rowland, however, was more flexible on the issue than Harris, and had advised the ordination, on Congregational lines, of one of the Monmouthshire exhorters, Morgan John Lewis, in 1756.

If the Welsh Methodists did not separate from the Church of England in Rowland’s time, they did everything else short of it. Their erection of chapels is a case in point. Rowland was the principal Methodist signatory to the Deeds of Soar Chapel, Cil-y-cwm (Carmarthenshire) in 1746, a building erected “for the exercise and performance of divine worship . . . and doing other acts for propagating the Gospel . . . preaching . . . and teaching.” The Deeds for Salem, Pen-coed (Glamorganshire) in 1774 are more explicit: “a Meeting house or place of religious or divine worship for the use of the said Protestants called Methodists and wherein such teachers or ministers only are to be admitted as shall preach or embrace the doctrine of salvation contained in the Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, Twelfth, Thirteenth, Fifteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Articles of the Church of England.” These related to the doctrines of original sin, bondage of the will, justification by faith only, the place of good works, and of works before justification, Christ’s atonement for sin, predestination and election, and that eternal salvation is to be obtained only by the name of Christ. In the year before his death Rowland’s name appears in the Deeds of Salem, Capel-y-Cwm, Llansamlet (Glam.), and there is no longer any attempt to avoid the appearance of nonconformity; the building was for “protestant dissenting subjects . . . to resort to, to publish divine worship.”30

Strong Pillar of Orthodoxy

Besides marking the emergence of Rowland’s nonconformity these deeds serve to indicate his Calvinism, and that of Welsh Methodism as a whole. Williams referred to him as “a strong pillar in the Church of God; a means to keep the Welsh Methodists from many errors their neighbours have fallen into.”31 Not only their neighbors, but sadly, Harris as well. The latter’s loose phraseology with regard to Christ’s person and death involved him in Patripassianism, and Rowland was obliged in 1750 to publish a pamphlet repudiating his views, Ymddiddan rhwng Methodist Uniongred ac un camsyniol [A Conversation between an orthodox Methodist and a mistaken one].

The seriousness of this situation was aggravated by other factors, and together they led to the separation between Rowland and Harris which was complete by 1752. The consequences for Welsh Methodism were far-reaching. The societies aligned themselves with one or other of the leaders; many of them gravitated toward dissent while others lost the vital spiritual ministry which Rowland and Harris had provided. It sapped the vigor of the revival for a decade, and brought about Harris’s tragic withdrawal to Trevecka. The breach was eventually healed in the early 1760s and by 1763 revival fires were again sweeping through South Wales.

It is William Williams who gives the clearest picture of Rowland’s theological acumen. In his elegy he credits Rowland with opposing the views of Baxter, Arminius, and Pelagius by instilling in the churches “the doctrines of divine grace.” He was in the vanguard of those who contended against the Antitrinitarians, the Antinomians, and the Sandemanians, following in the Reformed tradition of Huss, Jerome, Calvin, Cranmer, and Ridley. Finally, according to Williams, his doctrinal position is summed up in the historic Creeds, the Thirty-nine Articles, and the Westminster Larger Catechism, and is throughout thoroughly biblical.

The hymns which he wrote, the Puritan and other works which he translated into Welsh, and the sermons he preached consistently expounded the doctrines of grace. That in his long ministry of over fifty years at Llangeitho he was enabled to give a sustained presentation of these truths is a remarkable evidence of the goodness of God to this quiet laborer in the gospel vineyard. Nothing could be more fitting to close this study of Rowland and his place in the eighteenth-century revival than an extract from one of his sermons, the instrument which, more than any other, marked his outstanding contribution to it.

Romans 8:28, “All things work together for good to them that love God.” Observe what he says. Make thou no exception, when he makes none. All! remember he excepts nothing. Be thou confirmed in thy faith; give glory to God, and resolve, with Job, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.” The Almighty may seem for a season to be your enemy, in order to become your eternal friend. Oh! believers, after all your tribulation and anguish you must conclude with David, “It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I may learn Thy statutes.” Under all your disquietudes, you must exclaim, “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!”

His glory is seen when he works by means; it is more when he works without means; it is seen, above all, when he works contrary to means. It was a great work to open the eyes of the blind; it was a greater still to do it by applying clay and spittle, things more likely, some think, to take away sight than to restore. He sent a horror of great darkness on Abraham, when he was preparing to give him the best light. He touched the hollow of Jacob’s thigh, and lamed him, when he was going to bless him. He smote Paul with blindness, when he was intending to open the eyes of his mind. He refused the request of the woman of Canaan for a while but afterwards she obtained her desire. See, therefore, that all the paths of the Lord are mercy, and that all things work together for good to them that love him.

Even affliction is very useful and profitable to the godly. The prodigal son had no thought of returning to his father’s house till he had been humbled by adversity. Hagar was haughty under Abraham’s roof, and despised her mistress; but in the wilderness she was meek and lowly. Jonah sleeps on board ship, but in the whale’s belly he watches and prays. Manasseh lived as a libertine at Jerusalem, and committed the most enormous crimes, but when he was bound in chains in the prison at Babylon his heart was turned to seek the Lord his God.

Bodily disease and pain have been instrumental in rousing many to seek Christ, when those who were in high health have given themselves no concern about him. The ground which is not rent and torn with the plough bears nothing but thistles and thorns. The vines will run wild in process of time if they be not pruned and trimmed. So would our wild hearts be overrun with filthy, poisonous weeds, if the true Vine dresser did not often check their growth by crosses and sanctified troubles. . . . There can be no gold or silver finely wrought without being first purified with fire, and no elegant houses built with stones till the hammers have squared and smoothed them. So we can neither become vessels of honour in the house of our Father till we are melted in the furnace of affliction, nor lively stones in the walls of the new Jerusalem till the hand of the Lord has beaten off our proud excrescences and tumours with his own hammers.

He does not say that all things will, but do, work together for good. The work is on the wheel, and every movement of the wheel is for your benefit. . . . All the events that take place in the world carry on the same work: the glory of the Father and the salvation of his children. Every illness and infirmity that may seize you, every loss you may meet with, every reproach you may endure, every shame that may colour your faces, every aching in your bones, are for your good. Every change in your condition, your fine weather and your rough weather . . . your liberty and your imprisonment, all turn out for good.

Oh! Christians, see what a harvest of blessings ripens from this test! The Lord is at work; all creation is at work; men and angels, friends and foes, all are busy, working together for good.

15

RICHARD BAXTER’S

REFORMED PASTOR

J. A. Caiger

I preach’d, as never sure to preach again

And as a dying man to dying men.

I was but a Pen in God’s hand,

and what praise

is due to a Pen?

These two familiar quotations help us to see Baxter himself and his attitude to his own ministry. In the first we are made to feel the burning sense of urgency which possessed him in his preaching. In the second his spirit of humility puts a proper check on our rising admiration of his influence and his work.

A Shropshire man, Richard Baxter was ordained in 1638, at the age of 23. Three years later he was appointed curate of Kidderminster. After a brief period of somewhat turbulent ministry there, disturbed, it seems, by the troop movements and the outbreak of violent feeling in the early days of the Civil War, he moved to join a number of other Puritan ministers who had found refuge in the Parliamentarian garrison at Coventry. In 1645 he became an itinerant chaplain in the Parliamentarian army, returning to Kidderminster as minister in 1647, where he remained to fulfill an enormously influential ministry through the days of the Commonwealth, until the Restoration brought him persecution and ignominy. Forbidden to preach, he turned to his pen, and used it powerfully until his death in 1691.

The Reformed Pastor was written in 1656, when Baxter was forty-one, and has its roots in Baxter’s own pastoral practice in Kidderminster, notable for the urgency of his preaching, and the astonishing devotion and dedication of his catechizing of his flock. The work is an enlarged and extended sermon on the work of the ministry. It is an urgent and powerful call for a pastoral reformation, a throwing down of the gauntlet to ministers of the gospel, challenging them to a full acceptance of the disciplines involved in their work, pleading with them to play their part by reforming themselves in the light of the teaching of the New Testament.

For the purposes of this paper it seems most convenient to make a selection from Baxter’s abundant material under four heads: (1) the pastor’s view of the ministry in general; (2) the pastor’s care for his own soul; (3) the pastor and his preaching; (4) the pastor and his brethren.

The Pastor’s View of the Ministry

Two simple presuppositions govern Baxter’s view of the ministry: (1) every flock should have their own pastor (one or more), and every pastor his own flock; and (2) flocks must be no greater regularly and ordinarily than we are capable of overseeing or taking heed of. “God will not lay upon us natural impossibilities. He will not bind men to leap up to the moon, to touch the stars, to number the sands of the sea. . . . Will God require one bishop to take charge of a whole county, or of so many parishes or thousands of souls, as he is not able to know or to oversee? Then woe to poor prelates! This were to impose on them a natural or unavoidable necessity of being damned. . . . O happy Church of Christ, were the labourers but able and faithful, and proportioned in number to the number of souls!” Was Baxter’s own mind governed by this latter principle when he refused the Bishopric of Hereford in 1660?

The pastor’s duty is to exercise “a very great care of the Church as a whole and in every part, with great watchfulness and diligence in the use of all those holy actions and ordinances which God hath required us to use for their salvation.” The ultimate end of our pastoral oversight is the pleasing and glorifying of God, and the glorification of His Church. The nearer ends of our office are the sanctification and holy obedience of the people in our charge, their unity, order, beauty, strength, preservation and increase, and the right worshiping of God, especially in the solemn assemblies.

The pastor must be addicted to pleasing God, and making Him the center of all his actions, living to Him as his God and happiness. He must be concerned with the felicity of the Church, delighting in its beauty, rejoicing in its welfare, and willing to spend and be spent for its sake. His heart must be set on the life to come, sensible in some measure how much the inestimable riches of glory are to be preferred to the trifles of this world. “He that delighteth not in holiness, hateth not iniquity, loveth not the unity and purity of the Church, abhorreth not discord and divisions, and taketh not pleasure in the communion of saints and the public worship of God with His people, is not fit to be a pastor of a church.”

The object of our pastoral care is the whole Church (involving us in the faithful performance of our public duties), and every member of it (presupposing the necessity that we should know every person belonging to our charge—for how can we take heed to them if we do not know them?).

Christ Himself, the great and good Shepherd, and Master of the Church, that hath the whole to look after, doth yet take care of every individual. . . . Many passages in Scripture assure us that it is our duty to take heed to every individual person in our flock; and many passages in the ancient councils do plainly tell us, it was the practice of those times, till churches began to be crowded and to swell so big that they could not be guided as churches should be, when they should rather have been multiplied, as the converts did increase. . . . It was then taken for a duty to look after every member of the flock by name, though it were the meanest servant man or maid.

The pastor’s work is described in terms of the various groups which come under his care.

The work of conversion is the great thing that we must first strive at, and labour with all our might to effect. . . . He that will let a sinner go to hell for want of speaking to him doth set less by souls than the Redeemer of souls did, and less by his neighbour than rational charity will allow him to do by his greatest enemy. Therefore brethren, whomsoever you neglect not the most miserable . . . ply this great work of converting souls, whatever else you leave undone!

There follows the building up of those that are already truly converted.

Most of the godly stick in weak and low degrees of grace; and it is no easy matter to get them higher. To increase their knowledge and gifts is not easy; but to increase their graces is hardest of all. . . . The strength of Christians is the honour of the Church. When men are inflamed with the love of God and live by a lively working faith, and set light by the profits and honours of the world, and love one another with a pure heart fervently, and can bear and heartily forgive a wrong, and suffer joyfully for the cause of Christ, and study to do good and walk inoffensively and harmlessly in the world, as ready to be servants of all men for their good, becoming all things to all men to win them, and yet abstaining from the appearance of evil, and seasoning all their actions with a sweet mixture of prudence, humility, zeal and heavenly spirituality—what an honour are such to their professions! The world is better able to read the nature of religion in a man’s life than in the Bible. It is therefore a necessary part of our work to labour more in polishing and perfecting the saints that they may be strong in the Lord and fitted for their Master’s use.

We must also minister to those that are fallen under some great temptation, and special mention is made of temptations to error and heresy. “O what a deal of holy prudence and industry is necessary in a pastor to preserve the flock from being tainted with heresies and falling into noxious conceits and practices: and especially to keep them in unity and concord, and hinder the rising or increase of divisions.”

The disconsolate must be comforted: the age and the afflicted must be encouraged; and the strong must be assisted to preserve the grace they have, to help them to further progress and increase, and to direct them in the improving of their strength for the service of Christ and the assistance of their brethren.

We must labor to be acquainted with the state of all our people as fully as we can. We must use all the means we can to instruct the ignorant in the matters of their salvation. We must be ready to give advice to those who come to us with cases of conscience. We must also have a special eye upon families, to see that they be well ordered, and the duties of each relation performed. The master of the family is to be encouraged to pray and to read the Scriptures with his household. The sick are to be visited and helped to prepare either for a fruitful life or a happy death. The offensive and impenitent are to be reproved and admonished, and where necessary discipline must be administered by the Church.

The Pastor’s Care for His Own Soul

If we did but study half as much to affect and amend our hearts, as we do our hearers, it would not be with many of us as it is! We do little for their humiliation, but I fear it is much less that some of us do for our own. Too many do somewhat for other men’s souls, while they seem to forget that they have any of their own to regard. . . .

It is a sad thing that so many of us preach our hearers asleep; but it is sadder still if we have studied and preached ourselves asleep, and have talked so long against hardness of heart, till our own grow hardened under the noise of our own reproofs.

One of our most heinous and palpable sins is pride. It is so prevalent in some of us, that it inditeth our discourses for us; it chooseth our company; it governeth our countenances, it putteth the accents and emphasis upon our words; when we reason it is the determiner and exciter of our cogitations; it fills some men’s minds with aspiring desires and designs; it possesseth them with envious and bitter thoughts against those that stand in their light, or by any means do eclipse their glory, or hinder the progress of their idolized reputation.

Another sin the ministers of England are sadly guilty of is undervaluing the unity and peace of the whole Church. It is a great and common sin through the Christian world to take up religion in a way of faction, and instead of a love and tender care of the universal Church, to confine that love and respect to a party. . . . Of the multitude that say they are of the Catholic Church it is too rare to meet with men of a catholic spirit; men have not a universal consideration of and respect to the whole Church, but look upon their own party as if it were the whole. . . . We have as sad divisions among us in England, considering the piety of the persons, and the smallness of the matter of our discord, as most nations under heaven have known. The most that keeps us at odds is but about the right form and order of Church government. Is the distance so great that Presbyterian, Episcopal and Independent might not be well agreed?

We have seen to our sorrow that when the servants of God should live together as one, of one heart, and one soul and one lip, and should promote each other’s faith and holiness, and admonish and assist each other against sin, and rejoice together in their hope of future glory, we have contrarily lived in mutual jealousies and drowned holy love in bitter contendings. . . .

O what a nation might England have been ere now, if it had not been for the proud and obstinate contentions of godly ministers? Did we but agree among ourselves, our words would have some authority with the people. We may talk of peace as long as we live, but we shall never obtain it but by returning to the apostolical simplicity.

Baxter now puts the trumpet of exhortation to his lips and calls upon his brethren to rouse themselves up to the business of their ministry.

The harvest is great; the labourers are too few; the loiterers and contentious hinderers are many; the souls of men are precious, the misery of sinners is great; the beauty and glory of the Church is desirable; the joy that we are helping them to is inconceivable; the comfort that followeth and faithful stewardship is not small; the comfort of a full success will be greater. To be co-workers with God and His Spirit, is not a little honour; to subserve the blood-shed of Christ for man’s salvation is not a light thing; to lead on the armies of Christ through the thickest of the enemies, and guide them safely through a dangerous wilderness, and steer the vessel through such storms and rocks and sands and shelves, and bring it safe to the harbour of rest, requireth no small skill and diligence.

The fields now seem white unto harvest, the preparations that have been made for us are very great, the season of working is more warm and calm than most ages before have ever seen. We have carelessly loitered too long already: the present time is posting away: while we are trifling men are dying and passing quickly into another world.

Were there but such clear and deep impressions upon our souls of the glorious things that we daily preach, O what a change it would make in our sermons and in our private course. . . . O the gravity, the seriousness, the incessant discipline that these things require! I wonder at myself . . . that I can have room for almost any other thoughts or words, and that such astonishing matters do not wholly take me up. I marvel how I can preach of them slightly and coldly, how I can let men alone in their sins and that I do not go to them and beseech them for the Lord’s sake to repent, however they take it and whatever pains or trouble it should cost me. I seldom come out of the pulpit, but my conscience smiteth me that I have not been more serious and fervent. It accuseth me not so much for want of human ornaments or elegance, nor for letting fall an uncomely word; but it asketh me: ‘How could’st thou speak of life and death with such a heart? Should’st thou not weep over such a people, and should not thy tears interrupt thy words? Should’st thou not cry aloud, and shew them their transgressions, and entreat and beseech them as for life and death?’ Truly this is the peal that conscience doth ring in my ears, and yet my drowsy soul will not be awakened.

If the God of heaven, that knew our hearts, had in the midst of our prayers and cries on one of our monthly fasts, returned the answer with His dreadful voice, in the audience of the assembly: ‘What is reformation but the instructing and importunate persuading of sinners to entertain My Christ and grace as offered them, and the governing My Church according to My Word?’ I say, if the Lord (or any messenger of His) had given us such an answer, would it not have amazed us and have seemed incredible to us, that our hearts should have been such as now they prove?

Baxter has insisted that the Christian pastor be a man of learning, a man who neglects his studies at the peril of his ministry: but he insists also that these intellectual disciplines are not of the first and highest importance. Perspective is essential to a right view of the pastoral ministry, and the different elements in this ministry must each be seen in their proper relation and proportion to each other.

I highly value common knowledge, and would not encourage any to set lightly by it; but I value the saving of souls before it. That work which is immediately connected with the end of all our labours must be done, whatever be undone. Men’s souls may be saved without knowing whether God did predetermine the creature in all its acts; whether the understanding necessarily determines the will; whether God works grace in a physical or moral way of causation; what free-will is; with a hundred such like. Get well to heaven, and help your people thither, and you shall know all these things, and a thousand more, which by all your studies you can never know. . . .

This serious dealing with sinners for their salvation will help you to far deeper apprehensions of these saving principles than will be got by any other means; and a little more of the knowledge of these is worth all the other knowledge in the world. O when I am looking heavenward, and gazing towards the inaccessible light, and aspiring after the knowledge of God, and find my soul so dark and distant, that I am ready to say, ‘I know not God—He is above me—quite out of my reach,’ this is the most killing and grievous ignorance! Methinks that I could willingly exchange all other knowledge that I have for one glimpse more of the knowledge of God and of the life to come. O that I had never known a word in logic, metaphysics, etc., nor known what schoolmen said, so I had but one spark more of that light that would shew me the things that I must shortly see . . . I would throw by all the libraries in the world, rather than be guilty of the perdition of one soul; at least I know this is my duty.

Yet such is the balance of Baxter’s mind that he does not call his brethren to choose between a saving ministry and an increase of learning. He calls them to achieve both with due regard to the proper importance of each. And therefore the pastor must exercise the most careful watch on his time. He dare not trifle away a minute, either in needless sleep, or in unfruitful activity. He should take time for physical exercise in order to keep himself physically healthy, but recognizing that his health and vitality are for God, and for His service.

What have we our time and strength for, but to lay both out for God? What is a candle for, but to be burnt? Burnt and wasted we must be, and is it not fitter we should be in lighting men to heaven, and in working for God, than in living to the flesh? What comfort will it be at death, that you lengthened your life by shortening your work? He that works much, lives much.

He that hath looked death in the face as often as I have done will thereby be taught to value his time. I profess I wonder at those ministers that can hunt, shoot, bowl, or use like recreations two or three hours, yea, whole days together; that can sit an hour together in vain discourses and spend whole days in complimental visitations—when so many souls about them cry for help and death gives no respite, and they know that the smallest parish hath so much work that may employ all their diligence night and day.

May a physician in the time of the plague, take any more relaxation or recreation than is necessary for his life, when so many are expecting his help in a case of life and death? As his pleasure is not worth men’s lives, so neither is your’s worth men’s souls! The more you do, the more you receive; the more you lay out, the more you have coming in. If you are strangers to these Christian paradoxes you should not have taken on you to teach them to others. At the present, our incomes and spiritual like and peace are commonly in the way of duty; so that he that is most in duty hath most of God; exercise of grace increaseth it. And is it slavery to be more with God, and to receive more from Him, than other men?

Baxter makes much of the dignity and privileges of the pastor in his care of the Church of God. A right view of the Church is a powerful argument for a faithful exercise of the ministry.

It is the Church of God which we must oversee and feed. It is that Church for which the world is much upheld, which is sanctified by the Holy Ghost, which is united to Christ and is His mystical body; that Church which angels are present with, and attend upon as ministering spirits, whose very little ones have their angels beholding the face of God in heaven. O what a charge have we undertaken! Have we the stewardship of God’s own family, and shall we neglect it? God forbid! Are the souls of men thought meet by God to see His face, and live for ever in His glory, and are they not worthy of your utmost cost and labour? Christ walketh among them. Remember His presence, and keep all as clean as you can. The praises of the most high God are in the midst of them. They are sanctified, peculiar people, a kingly priesthood, a holy nation, a choice generation, to show forth the praises of Him that hath called them. . . . What a high honour it is to be but one of them, yea, but a doorkeeper in the house of God: but to be the priest of these priests, and the ruler of these kings—this is such an honour as multiplieth your obligations to diligence and fidelity in so noble an employment!

God the Son did purchase it with His blood. O what an argument here to quicken the negligent! Saith one of the ancient doctors: ‘If Christ had but committed to my keeping one spoonful of His blood in a fragile glass, how curious should I preserve it, and how tender should I be of that glass.’ If then He have committed to me the purchase of His blood, should I not as carefully look to my charge? What, sirs, shall we despise the blood of Christ? Shall we think it was shed for them that are not worthy of our utmost care? You may see here, it is not a little fault that negligent pastors are guilty of. As much as in them lieth, the blood of Christ should be shed in vain. They would lose Him those souls whom He hath so dearly bought!

O then, let us hear those arguments of Christ, whenever we feel ourselves grow dull and careless: ‘Did I die for them, and wilt thou not look after them? Were they worth My blood, and are they not worth thy labour? Did I come down from heaven to earth to seek and to save that which was lost; and wilt thou not go to the next door, or street, or village, to seek them? How small is thy labour and condescension as to Mine? I debased Myself to this, but it is thy honour to be so employed. Have I done and suffered so much for their salvation, and was I willing to make thee a co-worker with Me, and wilt thou refuse that little that lieth upon thy hands? Every time we look upon our congregations, let us believingly remember that they are the purchase of Christ’s blood and therefore should be regarded accordingly by us.

So in every way and for every reason the pastor must take heed to himself: and not least because his position exposes him particularly to the assaults of our great adversary.

The tempter will make his first or sharpest onset upon you. If you will be leaders against him, he will spare you no further than God restraineth him. He beareth you the greatest malice, that are engaged to do him the greatest mischief. . . . He knows what a rout he may make among the rest, if the leaders fall before their eyes. He hath long tried that way of fighting, of smiting the shepherd, that he may scatter the clock. As wise and learned as you are, take heed to yourselves lest he over-wit you. The devil is a greater scholar than you, and a nimbler disputant.

He can transform himself into an angel of light to deceive; he will get within you and trip your heels before you are aware; he will play the juggler with you undiscerned, and cheat you of your faith or innocence, and you shall not know that you have lost it; nay, he will make you believe it is multiplied or increased when it is lost. You shall see neither hook nor line, much less the subtle angler himself, while he is offering you his bait; and his bait shall be so fitted to your temper and disposition, that he will surely find advantages within you, and make your own principles and inclinations to betray you; and whenever he ruineth you, he will make you the instruments of your own ruin.

There can be few warnings in the whole of Christian literature that are wiser and more powerful than this.

The Pastor and His Preaching

Baxter is not as volcanic in his style as Luther. Luther’s fulminations light up the imagination with vivid pictures of fire and sulphur, of rocks and lava, hurled explosively over a trembling countryside. Baxter is more reminiscent of a torrent hurling itself over a waterfall, thundering down and rushing along its course with tremendous energy. Both were preachers, and in their preaching their amazing spiritual vitality is most fully shown.

How few ministers do preach with all their might? Alas, we speak so drowsily or gently, that sleeping sinners cannot hear. The blow falls so light that hard-hearted persons cannot feel it.

What excellent doctrines some ministers have in hand, and let them die in their hands for want of close and lively application. . . . O sirs, how plainly, how closely and earnestly, should we deliver a message of such a nature as ours is, when the everlasting life or death of men is concerned in it. . . . There is nothing more unsuitable to such a business than to be slight or dull. What! Speak coldly for God and for men’s salvation! . . . If you give the holy things of God the highest praises in words and yet do it coldly, you will seem in the manner to unsay what you said in the matter. . . . If we are commanded, whatever our hand findeth to do, to do it with all our might, then certainly such a work as preaching for men’s salvation should be done with all our might, that the people can feel us preach when they hear us.

We must be sincerely affectionate, serious and zealous in all our public and private exhortations. All our work must be managed reverently as beseemeth them that believe the presence of God, and use not holy things as if they were common. The more of God appeareth in our duties, the more authority will they have with men: and reverence is that affection of the soul which proceedeth from deep apprehensions of God, and signifieth a mind which is much conversant with Him. The most reverend preacher that speaks as if he saw the face of God, doth more affect my heart, though with common words, than an irreverent man with the most exquisite preparations. Of all the preaching in the world I hate that preaching which tendeth to make the hearers laugh, or move their minds with tickling levity, instead of affecting them with a holy reverence in the Name of God. We should, as it were, suppose we saw the throne of God, and the millions of glorious angels attending Him, that we might be awed with His majesty, when we draw near Him in holy things, lest we profane them and take His Name in vain.

All our work must be done spiritually, as by men possessed by the Holy Ghost, and acted by Him, and men that savour the things of the Spirit. There is in some men’s preaching a spiritual strain, which spiritual hearers can discern and relish: and in some men this sacred tincture is so wanting that, even when they speak of spiritual things, the manner is such as if they were common matters.

It is a sign of a distempered heart that loseth the relish of scripture excellency. For there is a connaturality in a spiritual heart to the Word of God, because that is the seed that did regenerate him.

There must be a prudent mixture of severity and mildness both in our preaching and discipline. If there be no severity, there will be contempt for our reproofs: if all severity, we shall be taken as usurpers of dominion, rather than persuaders of the minds of men to the truth. . . . The whole course of our ministry must be carried on in a tender love to our people. We must let them see that nothing pleaseth us but what profiteth them, and that which doth them good doth us good: and nothing troubleth us more than their hurt. When the people see that you unfeignedly love them, they will hear anything and bear anything, and follow you the more easily. . . . Therefore see that you feel a tender love to your people in your breasts, and then let them feel it in your speeches, and see it in your dealings.

Morever, if you would prosper in your work be sure to keep up earnest desires and expectations of success. God seldom blesseth any man’s work so much, as his whose heart is set upon the success. Let all that preach for Christ and man’s salvation be unsatisfied till they have the thing they preach for.

You cannot break men’s hearts by jesting with them, or telling them a smooth tale, or patching up a gaudy oration. Men will not cast away their dearest pleasure upon a drowsy request of one that seemeth not to mean as he speaks, or to care much whether his request be granted. . . . A great matter with most of our hearers lies in the very pronunciation and tone of speech. The best matter will scarce move them, if it be not movingly delivered. Especially see that there be no affectation, but that we speak as familiarly to our people as we would if we were talking to any of them personally. The want of a familiar tone and expression is as great a defect in most of our deliveries as anything whatsoever, and that which we should be very careful to amend.

Be very careful that your graces be kept in life and action. When your minds are in a heavenly holy frame, your people are likely to partake of the fruits of it. Your prayers and praises and doctrine will be heavenly and sweet to them. They will feel when you have been much with God. That which is on your hearts most, is likely to be most in their ears. We are the nurses of Christ’s little ones: they will quickly find it in want of milk: and we may quickly see it again in them, in the lean and dull discharge of their several duties. If we let our love go down, we are not likely to raise up theirs. If we abate our holy care and fear, it will appear in our doctrine. If the matter shew it not, the manner will. If we feed on unwholesome food . . . our hearers are likely to fare the worse for it. Whereas if we could abound in faith, and love, and zeal, how would it overflow, to the refreshing of our congregations, and how would it appear in the increase of the same graces in others.

I confess that I must speak it by lamentable experience that I publish to my flock the distempers of my soul. When I let my heart grow cold, my preaching is cold: and when it is confused, my preaching will be so: and so I can observe too oft in the best of my hearers, that when I have a little grown cold in preaching, they have cooled accordingly: and the next prayers that I have heard from them have been too like my preaching.

Above all, be much in secret prayer and meditation. There you must fetch the heavenly fire that must kindle your sacrifices.

The Pastor and His Brethren

Baxter was deeply burdened for the unity of the Church. He entreats his brethren to be very tender of the unity and peace of the Catholic Church. He is conscious of the difficulty of establishing the test of a Christian and true Church, and he raises the question as to what is the true center and cement of the unity of the Church in and by which our common calamitous breaches must be healed. He wishes it were possible to agree on the use of one or other of the ancient creeds, but at last declares that the only place of rest for the Church is in the Scripture itself.

Till men can be again content to make the Scripture the sufficient rule, in necessaries to be explicitly believed, and in all the rest implicitly, we are never likely to see a catholic, Christian, durable peace. . . . This is the thing that I would recommend therefore to all my brethren, as the most necessary thing to the Church’s peace: that you unite in necessary truths and tolerate tolerable failings; and bear with one another in things that may be borne with; and do not make a larger creed and more necessaries than God hath done . . . He that shall live to that happy time when God will heal His broken Church shall see all this reduced to practice, and this moderation take place.

He labors to convince his brethren of the sinfulness of schism—in themselves, and in their congregations. They must demonstrate their hatred of division by joining together with their true brethren whenever this is possible, doing as much of God’s work as they can in unanimity and concord: and when they become conscious of schismatic influences at work in their congregations they must seize every opportunity of a moderate, gentle opposing of the errors, remembering that it is easier to chide a sectary in the pulpit, and to subscribe a testimony against him, than to play the skillful physician for his cure.

We must be very studious in union and communion among ourselves, and of the unity and preacher of the churches that we oversee. Ministers must not only hearken to motions for unity, but propound them and prosecute them. They must therefore keep close to the ancient simplicity of the Christian faith and the foundation and centre of Catholic unity. . . . The Scripture sufficiency must be maintained, and nothing beyond it imposed on others. . . . We must learn to difference well between certainties and uncertainties, necessaries and unnecessaries, catholic verities and private opinions; and to lay the stress of the Church’s peace upon the former and not upon the latter. Instead of quarrelling with our brethren, we must combine against the common adversaries. Ministers must associate, and hold communion, and correspondence, and constant meetings to those ends: and smaller differences of judgment are not to interrupt them. They must do as much of the work of God in unity and concord as they can: which is the use of synods—not to rule over one another, and make laws: but to avoid misunderstandings, and consult for mutual edification, and maintain love and communion, and go on unanimously in the work that God hath already commanded us.

What then are the matters which should concern us in Baxter’s view of the Christian ministry?

1. First I would put the call to pastoral fidelity. The pastor is a shepherd of the flock of God. The sheep are not his; they belong to his Father, and he is charged with the care of them. He must therefore be faithful in personal sanctity, in proper preaching, and in pastoral counsel.

2. There is then the call to recognize the preciousness of the unity of the Church, to trace its source in “the apostolical simplicity” of the gospel, and to avoid like the plague every schismatic tendency.

3. Arising from this the faithful pastor will discern the necessity of ministerial fellowship. The visible unity of the Church in any locality certainly depends upon the free, but regular, association of the ministers of the churches.

4. Lastly, we shall do well to ponder Baxter’s view of the ministry as a whole—its dignity, its solemnity, its privilege, its demands, its rewards, its aims, its glory. This was well expressed in words spoken at the unveiling in 1925 of a tablet to Baxter’s memory in Christ Church, Newgate Street, where he is buried: “The Reformed Pastor is the best manual of the clergyman’s duty in the language, because it leaves on the reader’s mind an ineffaceable impression of the sublimity and awfulness of spiritual ministry.”

With these words we can only leave ourselves in the mighty hand of God with the humble and heartfelt prayer that He will, in His goodness and grace, make us worthy to fulfill such a calling.

16

SANDEMANIANISM

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Let me begin by explaining why I have decided to speak on this subject. It is a matter to which I have frequently referred in passing during the whole of my ministry, because I have had an increasing conviction that it is in many ways the most urgent one for us to consider at the present time. If I understand the condition of the Church today—and, indeed, during the last fifty years or so—I would say that its great trouble has been that it has fallen into this particular error. I have never before, however, dealt with it specifically or tried to evaluate it as I am now going to do. But a number of things have happened this year and at the end of last year which have crystallized the general vague idea I have had throughout the years and have led me to do this.

Many of you must have noticed that during 1967 the centenary of the death of that truly great chemist Michael Faraday was celebrated; and you may have noticed that he belonged to this particular branch or division of the Christian Church which goes under the name of Robert Sandeman. That arrested me at once and brought the subject to the forefront of my mind. In addition, I read a little book called J. R. Jones, Ramoth and his Times, by a man called J. Idwal Jones. This was written because it was the bicentenary of the birth of J. R. Jones, who was more responsible than anybody else for propagating and spreading the views of Sandeman in North Wales in particular. Reading this out of historical interest made me feel again that this was an indication that I should deal with this matter.

The other thing that brought me to deal with this was that the great Christmas Evans, whom some would say was the greatest preacher that the Baptists have ever had in Great Britain—certainly he and Spurgeon would be the two greatest—was born on Christmas Day 1766. Naturally, therefore, I have been reading a good deal about him during this past year; and, as I am going to show you, the whole question of the Sandemanian heresy played a very prominent part in the life of that great preacher. Those are the things, then, that have crystallized my great interest in this subject.

Historical Background

Perhaps the best way of approach would be to tell you something of how this movement, this aberration if you like, began in the Christian Church. Here is a little of the historical background.

It all began with a Scotsman named John Glas in the 1720s. He was a very able man and a minister of the Church of Scotland at a place called Keeling in the County of Angus not far from Dundee. Glas began to feel uneasy about two matters in particular at first. One was the custom of getting ministers to subscribe to The Solemn League and Covenant which had been introduced in the previous century. This led him into difficulties in his thinking as to the relationship between the Church and the State. Principal John Macleod very rightly says of him that he became a “voluntary” a century before voluntaryism. “Glas,” says Macleod, “made such a thing as a national Church, or a national reformation, or a national religion, or a national religious covenant, a sheer impossibility.” He believed in a complete separation of Church and State. In other words he became a Separatist.

The other thing that worried Glas was subscription to documents like The Westminster Confession of Faith. He believed that it was sufficient for a man to say that he believed, and accepted, and was prepared to be governed by, the teaching of the Scriptures. He said he was ready to be governed by the Word of God, but he was not ready to submit to the words of men. In addition, he began to put forward his particular views as to the nature of saving faith. These three things got him into trouble and he was deposed from his charge and formed an Independent cause in 1733.

John Glas is undoubtedly the father of Independency as far as Scotland is concerned. He was not only a Calvinist, he was a very high Calvinist, and thoroughly orthodox in that sense. But he was in trouble over these other matters. He himself was not a very aggressive man, but he soon had a son-in-law of the name of Robert Sandeman, who was a born controversialist and one who enjoyed writing. He took up the cudgels on behalf of John Glas, and went further than Glas himself ever went. Sandeman became famous through writing a book with the title—Letters on Theron and Aspasia.1 Some of you will recall that Dialogues between Theron and Aspasia^2 had been written by the saintly James Hervey of Weston Flavel, now a part of Northampton. Sandeman wrote his Letters attacking the point of view put forward by James Hervey, and in so doing gave a clear outline of the teaching, especially with regard to faith, which had been first propagated by Glas in his sermons and various books.

Added to all this these two men developed various ideas with regard to Church government. The first thing was the sharp division between the Church and State. Their desire was, as they felt, to get back to the New Testament pattern; but in doing this they went to extremes. They re-introduced feet-washing, “the holy kiss,” and a weekly Communion. They taught that the possessions of every member of the Church should be at the disposal of the Church, and that there should be no paid ministers. Incidentally this last is the reason why Lloyd George became a solicitor, and subsequently Prime Minister, rather than a minister of a church. He was brought up in a Sandeman church in North Wales—known there as the Little Baptists—of which his shoemaker uncle was the unpaid pastor. They also believed in having a multiplicity of elders in each church, and they prohibited an elder from marrying a second time. They had a very strict church discipline indeed but they always wanted unanimity, and they did not like voting. They wanted a consensus, a general consensus of opinion and unanimity. Furthermore, they believed in casting lots.

Besides these two men there is a third whom I must mention because he became very prominent later on in the century. This was Archibald Maclean, who was at one time a member of John Glas’s church, but began to feel that the discipline was too strict, and formed a church of his own in Edinburgh in 1765. While he retained much of the teaching of Glas and Sandeman, Maclean differed from them, in that he became a Baptist. He is really the father of all the Baptist churches in Scotland.

Maclean was a very able man indeed. He was a particularly great admirer of John Owen—that will tell you about his theology, his Calvinism, and so on. He exercised his main influence in the 1780s and the 1790s, and it was he who influenced the Baptist churches in Wales, particularly in North Wales. I should point out, however, that even before that, Glas, and still more Sandeman, who lived for a while in England, had considered influence. Churches were formed in various parts of England, and the teaching spread into Wales and influenced a man named Popkins, who started a church based on these ideas in Swansea in South Wales. This caused a great trouble and was dealt with, as we have heard, by the famous Daniel Rowland among others, and also by William Williams the hymn-writer of Pantycelyn.

But it was, as I say, in the late 1780s and 1790s that this Sandemanian teaching really became a menace both in England and in Wales. It produced a reaction from two notable men. The first was the famous Andrew Fuller, who dealt in particular with this teaching in an appendix to his book The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation,3 under the heading “Whether a holy disposition of heart is necessary in order to believing.” This was written in reply to the teaching of Archibald Maclean, who answered it, and then Fuller really dealt with him in a book bearing the title, Strictures on Sandemanianism in Twelve Letters to a Friend.4 It is generally agreed that Fuller more or less demolished Sandemanianism in those twelve letters.

The Sandemanian View of Faith

There, then, is the general historical background of this movement.

While it is true, as we have seen, that Sandemanianism was in itself a complete system involving matters of Church government and order and things of that kind, I want to confine attention to one aspect only. That is, the view of faith which was taught by these men. It is important that I should make this clear because Archibald Maclean was constantly at pains to say that he was not a Sandemanian. What he meant by that was that he did not agree with their entire system. But he did agree with them on this matter that we are going to discuss, namely, their view of faith. This was, in fact, common to them all, and it is interesting to observe that Dr. John Macleod says that the great Dr. Thomas Chalmers approximates very closely to this particular view of the nature of saving faith.

As we come to consider this subject I want to make it clear that I am not only going to deal with it as it was explicitly propounded by these men, but also with the modifications of it, which I believe have come down even to our day. I want also to stress the fact that this view of faith can be adopted by Calvinists as well as Arminians.

There is a danger sometimes—and I confess I have tended to drop into it myself—to equate this Sandemanian heresy concerning the nature of faith with what we have called “Believism,” and which we attribute only to Arminians. The fact is, however, that this particular view of faith is one which can be held by Calvinists as well as Arminians. As I have told you, Glas, Sandeman and Archibald Maclean were all strong Calvinists, and Maclean’s great hero was the celebrated Dr. John Owen. So you can be a high Calvinist and still be guilty of this particular error or heresy.

The vital question is, What is the true nature of saving faith? Perhaps the simplest way of putting it before you is to read a short extract from Robert Sandeman’s book. The matter on the title page of this book is, “One thing is needful,” and all along one leading point is kept in view which the author calls, “The sole requisite to justification or acceptance with God, in opposition to those who while they openly avow only one meritorious cause of justification do yet lead the guilty to seek after some inward motion, feelings or desires, as some way requisite in order to acceptance with God.” Among “those” to whom he refers he ranks Isaac Watts, Philip Doddridge, Thomas Boston, the Erskines, and among the others was John Wesley, whom he vilified and regarded as one of the most dangerous men that had ever appeared in the Church. “By the sole requisite” he understands “the work finished by Christ in His death, proved by His resurrection to be all-sufficient to justify the guilty.” Now here is the point: he maintains, “that the whole benefit of this event is conveyed to men only by the Apostolic report concerning it, that every one who understands this report to be true, or is persuaded that the event actually happened as testified by the Apostles, is justified and finds relief to his guilty conscience. That he is relieved not by finding any favourable symptoms about his own heart, but by finding their report to be true.” That is a very good definition of this position.

But let me, to make it still more plain and clear, give you Principal John Macleod’s view of it. He says: “He (Glas) puts a premium upon what is held to be orthodox doctrine, and to lay less stress than is called for on the reaction of the emotional nature to the truth of the gospel, and on the activity of the will as that goes out in the trust of the heart and its attendant obedience in life.”

The Westminster Confession, as you know, puts great emphasis upon this “trust of the heart”; that it is not merely an intellectual acceptance of the facts. Indeed, as Principal Macleod points out so rightly, the Sandemanian teaching was in a way a return to the Roman Catholic teaching, which is, that all you have to do is to believe and accept the teaching of the Church. You accept that with your mind, and that is all that is necessary. So he ends by saying that “it held itself coldly aloof from any display of feeling in the exercises of a religious life.” Now that is the very essence of this matter.

The same thing is put quite clearly by Andrew Fuller. He says, “It is a bare belief of the bare truth. It excludes from it all pertaining to the will and the affections except as ‘fruits’ produced by it.” Everything that happens in the will and in the affections is only the fruit of this belief and is not a part of it. “They will not have,” he says, “even a hearty persuasion, but emphasize only notional belief. It is knowledge without approbation.”

William Williams (Pantycelyn) puts it like this, that “it sets naked faith”—“naked” faith—“as the chief thing, believing without power, making little of conviction and of a broken heart.”

There, you have an idea as to what this particular teaching was. Its proponents were very fond of putting it like this: we are asked to believe the testimony of God in the Scriptures as we believe any other testimony. They said, “You believe the testimony of a man so you must believe this.” They said, “There is no difference whatsoever in the belief itself.” There is a difference in the object of what you believe, but they taught that as regards the belief itself there is no difference between believing the testimony, the ordinary testimony of a man or a witness in a court or in private, and believing the testimony of God in the Scriptures. So they emphasized “notional belief.” They went beyond saying that faith and other things are not the ground of justification; and said that it must be just naked belief. They therefore excluded all endeavors, and prayers, and religious exercises, and appeals that come to us, and so on. That is the essence of their position.

You may well ask, how was it that able men like this should ever have made such a point of this? What was their object in doing this; what led them to do this? Their answer was that they were trying to safeguard the doctrine of justification by faith only; and they felt that the others were reintroducing works. They were particularly opposed to those whom they called “the popular preachers,” like Wesley and Whitefield, and the others whom I have mentioned. The same thing was true of their followers in Wales. They were particularly opposed to the popular Calvinistic Methodist traveling preachers, who preached in a very emotional manner, and who provoked visible results in their congregations in the matter of emotions and so on. This was the thing which they disliked so much. They said that these men were turning faith into a work by introducing other elements.

This was put very plainly and clearly by Maclean himself. He said that to include good dispositions, holy affections, and pious exercises of the heart as demanded by law was to re-introduce works. That was the essence of their difficulty. They said that if you introduced any element of feeling, any kind of holy affections or desires you were introducing works, and that the only way to safeguard “justification by faith only” was to say that faith was something solely in the intellect. It was “naked” belief by the intellect.

On what grounds did they say this? These were scripturally minded men who accepted the authority of the Scriptures. As I say, they not only accepted them, but they thought that they were doing so more than anybody else. They were criticizing the Church of Scotland and The Westminster Confession because, as they felt, the Church was putting the definitions of men before the Word of God. And yet this was the conclusion to which they came.

On what grounds did they do so? Their great text, of course, was Romans 4:5: “But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” In particular it was the phrase—“justifieth the ungodly.” And they interpreted the word “ungodly” as meaning “those who were enemies of God,” who at the very time they believed were enemies of God. They argued that it was the only possible meaning you can give to this word “ungodly.” Thus you have got to say that when they believed they were ungodly. That was their great text.

The other text they used a good deal was, “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and everyone that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him” (1 John 5:1). That was their position, that it had to be “naked faith.” That might well lead perhaps to feelings and to actions by the will later, but you must exclude everything like that entirely from your definition of faith.

The questions, therefore, that are raised for us are these. What is the nature of saving faith; is it naked and notional only, or are feelings and the will included? That is the first question. The second is, does faith precede or follow repentance? And third, does faith precede or follow regeneration?

Refutation of Sandemanianism

Those questions show clearly why I suggest that this is a very contemporary subject. Indeed I would go further and suggest that it is one of the main problems before us at the present time. These were certainly the questions that were raised and debated at that time in the eighteenth century. As I have reminded you, William Williams, of Pantycelyn, the great hymn-writer, dealt with these questions very strongly in several works, and made great use of his extraordinary gift of ridicule. He settled the matter as regards the Methodists, at any rate in Wales, in the 1760s. Then, as I have told you, Andrew Fuller dealt with it in his way. In addition Thomas Scott, the commentator, dealt with it in his work The Warrant and Nature of Faith in Christ.5

What were the arguments of these men against this teaching propounded by Glas, Sandeman, and Maclean? I shall try to summarize them. The first question, obviously, is this—the exegesis of Romans 4:5. What is meant by “the ungodly”? As these protagonists pointed out very clearly, and especially Andrew Fuller, the very cases quoted by Paul in Romans 4 make the Sandemanian interpretation quite impossible. The apostle is actually dealing at that point with the case of Abraham in the first instance. He is showing how this teaching of justification by faith only, which he has been elaborating in the first three chapters of that epistle to the Romans and especially as he summed it up in chapter three, is not anything new, but that this is what happened in the case of Abraham.

They went on to show quite clearly that as you read what Paul goes on to say about Abraham you find that all this happened not when he was in Ur of the Chaldees, but long afterwards when for some time he had been a godly and a God-fearing man. It is, therefore, ridiculous to describe Abraham at the point when this term is used with respect to him, as “ungodly” in the sense of meaning an enemy of God. In the same way Andrew Fuller pointed out that the case of David, which Paul also quotes in that chapter, is exactly parallel with that of Abraham and that if you take the trouble to turn up the Scriptures you will find that both Abraham and David cannot at any point be described as “enemies of God.” They were both godly men.

What Paul is concerned to show and to emphasize is that they were not justified by their works. He is not trying to say that they were enemies of God at this point, but he is saying that it is not their works that saves them. It is through the faith which has been given to them that they are justified, that is how it comes to them. It is the action of God, and not their action. As Fuller and others pointed out, verse 20 of that chapter really settles the matter. There, the apostle, coming back to the case of Abraham, actually says about him, “He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; he gave God the glory.” “He gave God the glory!” The argument is that in no sense can this be described as something “notional,” “purely intellectual,” or “naked faith,” but that of necessity it includes these other qualities of heart and will.

Then, of course, you have to deal with a statement like that in Romans 10:9–10. This statement inevitably played a great part in the whole contention, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” Of course the followers of Glas and Sandeman had to say that the “heart” there simply means the mind. But it was pointed out to them that this is not the way in which the Scripture uses the term “heart.” It does not confine it to the affections, but it means the center of the personality, the center of man’s being including all these various faculties, not exclusively the mind but including the others also. We shall come to the exegesis of 1 John 5:1 later on.

That is the general answer to the Sandemanian view of faith. But we must get a little closer to this and examine more clearly what the Scripture tells us directly about the nature of faith. Here are the answers which these men gave between them. They pointed out, in the first instance, that faith is a duty, and therefore of necessity the will is included.

Second, they pointed out that faith is a grace given by the Holy Spirit. Here, they quoted 1 Corinthians 13, “Now abideth faith, hope, charity. . . .” As it is a grace, it cannot be confined to the head only and to the intellect; it is not merely something notional.

Again, they pointed out how in Romans 4:20, Paul says that faith “gives glory to God,” and you cannot give glory to God only with your mind. The whole person is involved. So they argued that if you just look at what we are told about faith by way of definition in the New Testament that is what you find.

Then they went on to point out that faith, according to the scriptural teaching, depends upon choice, or upon the state of the heart with regard to God, or toward God. At this point they quoted a great deal, and rightly, from the Gospel of John, chapter 5 toward the end, where our Lord says things like this: “Ye have not his word abiding in you”; “for whom he hath sent ye believe not. Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. And ye will not come unto me, that ye might have life” (vv. 38–40). “I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you” (v. 42). “How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only?” (v. 44).

There they were able to show clearly that a question of choice is involved, and that that is determined by the state of the heart toward God.

In addition to that they said that the whole idea of faith is expressed in terms which indicate the exercise of affection. They produced many examples of this. Take the word receiving or receiving not for instance in 2 Thessalonians 2:10, where you find “receiving the love of the truth that ye may be saved.” The whole term receiving is something that includes the affection; it implies the engagement of the affections. The very term receiving or not receiving carries that implication.

Further, as we have already seen in Romans 10 the apostle puts his emphasis upon “believing with the heart.” “Confession is made with the mouth,” but you believe in the “heart.” He deliberately says that in order, as Fuller and the others argued, to show that it is not merely a matter of giving an intellectual assent, but that you whole-heartedly do this, that this has become now something vital to you and the whole of your personality. You believe with the heart. Then you have in Acts 8:37 the report of the Ethiopian eunuch asking Philip to be baptized. The reply he got was, “If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest.” So again you have this same emphasis upon the heart.

Another most powerful argument, it seems to me, is that want of faith is generally ascribed to moral causes, or to a want of a right disposition. Take again those verses at the end of John 5, and still more striking the series of statements in John 8 from verse 33 onwards. You remember our Lord had just said, “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,” and then the Jews answered Him, “We be Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free?” Here is the conflict, here is the unbelief; and what our Lord says to them is this: “I know that ye are Abraham’s seed, but ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you. I speak that which I have seen with my Father: and ye do that which ye have seen with your father” (vv. 37–38). They objected to this and said, “Abraham is our father.” And He said, “If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham. But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God. . . . Ye do the deeds of your father” and so on. “Jesus said unto them, if God were your Father, ye would love me; for I proceeded forth and came from God” (vv. 39–42). Their whole unbelief is based upon their not loving Him, their antagonism to Him in fact, and that is something, of course, that we can link up with various other statements also. You have the phrase in Hebrews 3 about “an evil heart of unbelief.” And evil “heart” of unbelief.

Moreover, there are those statement which are to be found in Ephesians 4:17ff.: “This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart: Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness to work all uncleanness with greediness” and so on.

All these statements show that unbelief is due always to a state of the heart. That is what produces it and governs it. It is not a mere error of the understanding; indeed it is what Paul says in Romans 8:7: “It is enmity against God; it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” The trouble with the unbeliever is not simply in his mind, it is much deeper, it is an “enmity against God,” it is “an evil heart of unbelief.” There is the essential trouble.

Those were the main arguments that were bought against the Sandemanians to show the true nature of faith—saving faith—and that it clearly, in the light of all these Scriptures, is not something that you can confine to the mind or to the intellect.

Then what about that second question about the relationship between repentance and faith? Here is something which, you will agree again, is very important at this present time. Sandeman and the rest taught that faith comes first and is followed by repentance. These men in their replies were concerned to show that it is the other way around, that faith implies repentance, and that therefore if there is no repentance there is no true faith. They quoted large numbers of Scriptures here as we must of necessity do. Fuller puts it in a phrase, “Faith without repentance is not genuine.”

What were the Scriptures with which they were concerned at this point? There are many Scriptures which demonstrate that repentance always comes first. You find this in the Gospels. John the Baptist precedes our Lord and he preached a baptism of repentance. “Prepare ye the way of the Lord” was his message. You will find this summary of the beginning of our Lord’s own ministry in Mark 1:15: “Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.” That is the order, repentance first and belief of the gospel following.

There are also a number of other passages which we can quote. You remember how at the very end just before He ascended you have the account in Luke 24 of how our Lord spoke in that upper room with those disciples and said, “Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.”

When you come on to the book of the Acts of the Apostles you have the notable event on the Day of Pentecost reported in Acts 2. As Peter was preaching, they cried out saying, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” And the reply was, “Repent, every one of you, and be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for the remission of sins” (Acts 2:37–38). But note the order—“Repent” is the first thing, and then the other follows.

You have exactly the same thing in Acts 3:19—the same order. You have got it again in Acts 5:31. You have it in that most beautiful and lyrical statement in Acts 20 where Paul is saying farewell to the elders of the church at Ephesus, and makes his appeal to them. He calls them to witness with regard to the character of his own ministry. “Serving the Lord with all humility of mind, and with many tears and temptations, which befell me by the lying in wait of the Jews: And how I have kept nothing back that was profitable unto you, and have taught you publickly, and from house to house, Testifying to the Jews, and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God, and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ.” The order: repentance first, and faith following it. You get precisely the same thing in Acts 26:18, in the commission given by the risen Lord to Saul of Tarsus. Indeed, as the opponents of the Sandemanians pointed out, the case of the publican in our Lord’s parable of the publican and the Pharisee who went up into the temple to pray indicates precisely the same thing (Luke 18:9–14). The feeling, and the sorrow for sin is what is emphasized.

That is the evidence which goes to show that you cannot have saving faith without repentance. You can have an intellectual assent to propositions, you can have a notional faith, but you cannot have saving faith without repentance. Repentance is involved in it, and it is in a sense because you repent that you believe. It is that which leads you to believe. It is that which shows you the necessity of believing in the Savior. To say that you can have faith without it, and that faith is something that leads to it, is clearly to be going contrary to the teaching of the Scriptures.

That brings us to the last issue that I suggested was raised by all this; the relationship between faith and regeneration. You will agree that we are living in an age when it has been the custom to say and to teach that faith leads to regeneration, and that one of the inducements held out to people for believing, is, that if they will believe then they will become regenerate and will receive a new nature. This teaching is generally based upon the teaching of 1 John 5:1; and others would try to produce evidence from John 1:12–13: “To them that received Him gave He power to become the sons of God.”

This again, is surely a very important point. How did Fuller and the other opponents of Sandemanianism deal with this matter? Their method was the obvious one if we are going to be governed in our thinking by the Scriptures. You start, for instance, with what our Lord said to Nicodemus. Here is a man who patently comes with the idea, and the supposition, that here is a new teacher who has got some novel teaching and he wants to know what it is in order that he may evaluate it and add it to his own. At once he is interrupted by our Lord’s statement, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” There has got to be this radical change. He has got to be “born of the Spirit.” “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” This miraculous, marvelous thing that no one can understand, comparable to the wind, as the eighth verse puts it, must happen to us before we either understand or accept His teaching. This is the whole basis.

Added to that, as I have said, you have Romans 8:7: “The carnal mind is enmity against God: it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” It is impossible. Before a man can believe and accept God’s Word and God’s way of salvation he must have a new mind. It cannot be done with the carnal mind.

But this is put still more plainly and strongly and clearly in the series of statements Paul makes in 1 Corinthians 2. We read there, “We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery,” but Paul has already said that it is “not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nought.” That puts out the natural man, who is an enemy against God. That is not the wisdom of which he is speaking. “We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory: Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory”—and so on. Then from verse 10: “God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit. . . . What man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. He that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ” (vv. 10–16).

There, the apostle is surely demonstrating beyond any question that the natural man—man as he is—is incapable of believing and receiving the Word of God with regard to salvation or anything else. That surely demonstrates that until a man is born again he cannot believe, he cannot exercise faith. It is an utter impossibility. It is all “foolishness” to him, and he dismisses it and rejects it as folly.

At this point I must mention what is—I must say it in fairness—a kind of complication in this whole matter. Glas, as I have told you, was a Calvinist, and he took very great pains to say that this man who is still not born again accepts the witness and the testimony of the Scriptures as the result of the operation of the Holy Spirit upon him. He has got to say that as a Calvinist, has he not? And he does say so; yet he still says that faith is something entirely notional. Sandeman accepted the same position. That was an attempt on their part to answer an obvious difficulty. But still it does not face, as it should have faced, the whole question of the relationship of faith and regeneration.

With regard to 1 John 5:1: “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God,” what that says is, not that he shall be, but that he has been, and the fact that he believes that “Jesus is the Christ” is the proof of the fact that he has been born of God. It is John’s odd way of putting things. As you go through his Epistles you will find that John constantly uses that kind of expression. He seems to put the consequence before the cause. It is an arresting way, and the Spirit used him in that way to give us this Truth. So he puts it: “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God”—as if to say, show me a man who says Jesus is the Christ; I tell you that man is born of God. For, as Paul puts it, “No man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost.” It is just John’s way of putting it.

That is how the answers were given to these three main questions that were raised by this Sandemanian teaching.

Consequences of Sandemanianism

What conclusions do we draw from all this? Have I been wasting your time in considering all this? I suggest that I have not, for this reason: that the consequences of this teaching are most serious. And we must examine ourselves in the light of this.

What are the consequences? Clearly it immediately affects evangelism. These men were much opposed to Boston and the Erksines and Flavel in the previous century, and all who preached the Law and called to repentance. They said that they were trying to create feelings in their listeners, and that you must not do that. You must just give them the evidence that God has sent His Son into the world to save them. You must not preach the law, and you must not call men to repentance.

There is a good deal of that kind of teaching in our age. A lady came to me in distress in my vestry not long ago saying that she belonged to a certain group of Christian people in Ireland who taught that it is wrong for a preacher to call people to repentance. They teach that that was only for the Jews at the time of our Lord, but that it is no longer the case; and what we must do is to introduce people to Jesus. They say that that is evangelism—not preaching the Law, not trying to create any feelings or holy desires or aspirations or any sense of grieving for sin, or any of the weeping and wailing that we have heard took place under the preaching of Daniel Rowland. All that they would dismiss as entirely wrong, saying that you are introducing works, and that you must not do that; you just call upon people to believe that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son . . .” and that you accept Him as your Savior.

In the same way, of course, on this teaching you call for an immediate decision, and you do everything you can to produce one. A man has just got to receive the evidence. You put it like that to him. You have received the evidence in a law court, you have received the evidence of something that a man tells you in secular affairs, why do you not receive this evidence? And you are just asked to believe that evidence without any feelings, without any awareness of any change in yourself at all, without any holy desires—these are dangerous because they are “works,” and they must not be allowed. So you emphasize this “naked faith” which accepts the testimony, the evidence given, and it is obviously something that you should do at once. If you are going to wait and delay and query and question, it is obvious that you are dropping back under works once more.

So this teaching makes a very big difference to evangelism—it did so immediately at that time. Christmas Evans pointed out how these people were always bitterly opposed to what was called “warm preaching.” They did not like that. You see, you simply had to present the evidence, and you did it more or less like a barrister. You get Finney in the next century doing precisely this. He was a man of such an ardent constitution that he introduced a good deal of energy and of power, and perhaps almost a passion into his preaching; but he did not believe in doing that theoretically. He was still the barrister presenting the case, and all people had to do was to accept the case, and there it was. Those holding Sandemanian views are always opposed to warm, emotional preaching, and any preaching which would have the effect of bringing people to a feeling, and a sensible knowledge, of the fact that they were sinners, and the terrors of the Law, and that they were to face a holy God, and that they would have to be holy before they could face Him. So it has this great influence at once upon evangelism and preaching.

But it also has a great effect, obviously, upon the type of Christian that it produces, and this was the thing that so concerned William Williams. He said, “It chills one’s feelings until they despise Heaven’s pure breezes.” They were against emotion as such, and in particular at the point of believing. This is something that concerns us. I shall never forget how a few years ago a very well-known evangelical leader came to me and asked if I had been yet to a series of meetings that were being held here in London. I said, “No, I have not had the opportunity so far.” He said, “It’s marvellous, it’s wonderful. The people are streaming forward. No emotion! It’s marvellous, it’s wonderful—no emotion.” He was glorying in the fact that the people who were going forward to register their decision were not showing any emotion at all; this was something to be gloried in. It is just here that this teaching becomes so serious. Can you have saving faith without any emotion? Can you be a Christian without emotion? “It produces,” says William Williams, “a coldness, it chills men’s feelings.”

But let me quote what Christmas Evans says about it. Now Christmas Evans, that great Baptist preacher, was influenced by this teaching for a number of years; he fell to it, and this is what he tells us was the effect of doing so upon him:

The Sandemanian heresy affected me so far as to quench the spirit of prayer for the conversion of sinners, and it induced in my mind a greater regard for the smaller things of the Kingdom of Heaven than for the greater. I lost the strength which clothed my mind with zeal, confidence and earnestness in the pulpit for the conversion of souls to Christ. My heart retrograded in a manner, and I could not realize the testimony of a good conscience. Sabbath nights after having been in the day exposing and vilifying with all bitterness the errors that prevailed, my conscience felt as if displeased, and reproached me that I had lost nearness to and walking with God. It would intimate that something exceedingly precious was now wanting in me. I would reply that I was acting in obedience to the Word, but it continued to accuse me of the want of some precious article. I had been robbed to a great degree of the spirit of prayer and of the spirit of preaching.

This is the point at which we examine ourselves and especially those of us who are preachers. The question is not so much, are we still praying, are we still preaching—but have we got the spirit of prayer, have we got the spirit of preaching? You can preach mechanically, you can preach coldly; you can pray mechanically, you can pray coldly. The effect of this teaching upon Christmas Evans was to rob him of the warmth and the feeling and the urgency which he had known, and to introduce this terrible coldness into him. William Williams says, “Love is the greatest thing in religion, and if that is forgotten nothing can take its place.”

Sandemanianism leads to coldness of spirit, to lack of prayer; it affects very profoundly also one’s assurance of salvation, and especially the highest form of that assurance. These people taught—and many have taught it since, often following them quite unconsciously, that you must not talk of your feelings in the matter of assurance, that assurance is something that you obtain only from the Scriptures. They say that the way to get assurance is to go to the Scriptures, where you read, “whosoever believeth in him shall not perish.” They then ask, “You believe the Scriptures do you not?” “Yes.” “Well, then, you are not going to perish.” They say that our assurance is established in an objective manner, and that it is a mistake to introduce the element of feelings even into full assurance of faith. The teaching that countered this was, and which I would most certainly advocate and can support with quotations from the Puritans, John Owen included, that the highest form of assurance is the immediate assurance that is given by the Spirit Himself. There is a mediate assurance that one can get from the Scriptures. I am not disputing that. But that is the lowest form of assurance, that is the first form—you believe the Word of the Scriptures.

But you can go to a second form of assurance which is better, and that is the application of the tests suggested in the First Epistle of John: Do you love the brethren? Do you delight in His commandments and no longer find them grievous? And so on. Test yourself by those.

But there is yet another and a higher form of assurance, “The Spirit beareth witness with our spirits that we are the children of God.” The first two refer to our spirits; but the Spirit Himself also beareth witness “with” our spirits that we are the children of God. This is the highest and the most glorious assurance of all and it is “given” to us and not the result of our deductions from the Scriptures. Goodwin, and Owen, and Bolton, John Preston, John Howe, and many others of the Puritans, as well as Jonathan Edwards and indeed John Wesley have eloquent teaching concerning this. Here is something in the realm of “feeling”: immediate and direct, and not indirect. Sandemanian teaching does away with that.

It also does away with the spirit of brokenness, and a spirit of humility. Is not this the most serious thing about us as modern Christians? When did you last see someone weeping because of sinfulness? Is there evidence of brokenness of spirit among us, and humility? We are all so healthy, we are so glib. Why this essential difference between the type of piety that you see so clearly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and what we have today? Can what we have today be truly called piety? Can it be called “godliness”? It appears rather to be an intellectual acceptance of certain propositions, accompanied by hardness, an absence of feeling, a distrust of feeling, a dislike of feeling. As if the whole man were not involved, not only in faith, but in salvation!

The result is that you get a mechanical performance of duties; and people are taught to evangelize and to do “personal work” almost by numbers, and are drilled to pray. Everything is organized and arranged, you pass examinations in them, and so all these duties are done in an external mechanical manner instead of rising out of the heart.

What a contrast this is with what we are told in Acts 8 about the people who were “scattered abroad from Jerusalem because of the persecution”—the ordinary Christians, remember, the apostles being left in Jerusalem. What are we told about these ordinary Christians? “They went everywhere preaching the Word” (v. 4). That does not mean proclaiming it from pulpits; it just means “speaking” it. And then we are told in the next verse that Philip “heralded” it. He was an evangelist and a preacher. But they all spread the gospel. Not because they were trained to do so, or because they were told, this is what you have to do now that you have been saved. There is no sign of the mechanical stages we are supposed to go through. You take your decision, then you are given some work to do. You are taken from step to step; and it is all organized and arranged. And it is all done in this mechanical manner.

We expect that kind of thing from the cults, and that is always their great characteristic, but it is not the New Testament way. But if you start with a definition of faith which makes it something notional, and naked, and intellectual, and deliberately exclude the feelings and the emotions, that is the inevitable result. So you get a hardness, a coldness, a mechanical type of Christianity. What makes this so serious is that it is so discouraging to a true visitation of the Spirit of God. You cannot read the accounts of the revivals of the past without observing that the emotional element was always prominent. But, today, so many are terrified of emotion and have almost a phobia concerning excesses. Indeed I fear that it can be said of many that they seem to be so afraid of what they call excesses that they are “quenching the Spirit.” When have you known a congregation to be really moved? When have you heard a congregation crying out? Are you explaining away the great phenomena accompanying the revivals of the past in terms of the twentieth century, and saying that the people at Llangeitho listening to Daniel Rowland were a sort of primitive people lacking education, and just emotionalists? The Apostle Paul reminds the elders of the church at Ephesus of how he preached “with tears.” And Whitefield used to preach with tears. When have you and I last preached with tears? What do we know, to use the phrase of Whitefield, about preaching a “felt Christ”? Is not this the cause of the trouble today?

How can we get out of this cold and arid and mechanical type of worship and Christian living? What can we do to relieve the situation? Let me read a glorious statement from the life of Christmas Evans. He tells us how he came out of it. There he was under that blighting teaching of Sandemanism for about five years. He says:

I was weary, weary of a cold heart towards Christ and His Sacrifice and the work of His Spirit. [Are you weary of that? Do you feel anything at the Communion Table? Do you “feel” anything?] I was weary of a cold heart towards Christ and His Sacrifice and the work of His Spirit, of a cold heart in the pulpit, in secret prayer and in the study. For fifteen years previously I had felt my heart burning within, as if going to Emmaus with Jesus. On a day ever to be remembered by me as I was going from Dolgelley to Machynlleth and climbing up towards Cader Idris I considered it to be incumbent upon me to pray, however hard I felt in my heart and however worldly the frame of my spirit was. Having begun in the Name of Jesus I soon felt as it were the fetters loosening and the old hardness of heart softening, and, as I thought, mountains of frost and snow dissolving and melting within me. This engendered confidence in my soul in the promise of the Holy Ghost. I felt my whole mind relieved from some great bondage, tears flowed copiously, and I was constrained to cry out for the gracious visits of God, by restoring to my soul the joys of His salvation, and that He would visit the churches in Anglesey that were under my care. I embraced in my supplications all the churches of the saints, and nearly all the ministers in the principality by their names. This struggle lasted for three hours; it rose again and again like one wave after another, or a high flowing tide driven by strong wind, until my nature became faint by weeping and crying. Thus I resigned myself to Christ body and soul, gifts and labours, all my life, every day and every hour that remained for me; and all my cares I committed to Christ. The road was mountainous and lonely and I was wholly alone and suffered no interruption in my wrestling with God.

From this time I was made to expect the goodness of God to the churches and to myself. Thus the Lord delivered me, and the people of Anglesey, from being carried away by the flood of Sandemanianism. In the first religious meetings after this I felt as if I had been removed from the cold and sterile regions of spiritual frost into the verdant fields of divine promises. The former striving with God in prayer, and the longing anxiety for the conversion of sinners which I had experienced at Lleyn were now restored. I had a hold of the promises of God. The result was, when I returned home the first thing that arrested my attention was that the Spirit was working also in the brethren in Anglesey, inducing in them a spirit of prayer especially in two of the deacons who were particularly importunate with God, that God would visit us in mercy and render the Word of His grace effectual amongst us for the conversion of sinners.

That is our only hope: “All coldness from my heart remove.” What do we know about warmth of spirit, warmth of heart, warmth in prayer, warmth in preaching, to be moved to the depth of our being and feel the love of God flowing into us and flowing back out of us to Him? Is Sandemanianism merely a matter of antiquarian or historical interest, or is it our major problem today—Calvinists as well as Arminians?

NOTES

Chapter 2, The Anabaptists

1. Quoted in Roland H. Bainton, Studies on the Reformation (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1964), pp. 41–42.

2. George H. Williams, ed., Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers, in Library of Christian Classics, vol. 25 (London: SCM/Philadelphia: Westminster, 1957), p. 30.

3. Bainton, Studies on the Reformation, p. 120.

4. Quoted in George H. Williams, The Radical Reformation (London and New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1962), pp. 122–23.

5. Quoted in Bainton, Studies on the Reformation, p. 22.

6. Ibid., p. 23.

7. Ibid., p. 37.

8. Ibid.

9. Quoted in Joseph Lecler, Toleration and Reformation, trans. T. L. Westow, 2 vols. (New York: Association, 1960), 1:316.

10. Williams, ed., Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers, p. 149.

11. Quoted in Robert J. Smithson, The Anabaptists: Their Contribution to Our Protestant Heritage (London: James Clarke, 1935), pp. 14–15.

12. Cf. Theron D. Price: “From the Anabaptist point of view the difference between the Reformers and themselves was the difference between reform and restitution.” In What Is the Church? A Symposium of Baptist Thought, ed. Duke K. McCall (Nashville: Broadman, 1958), p. 101.

13. Quoted in Lecler, Toleration and Reformation, 1:212.

14. Howell Harris, Selected Trevecka Letters, 1742–1747, ed. Gomer M. Roberts, Trevecka Records Series, vol. 1 (Caernarvon: Calvinistic Methodist Bookroom, 1956), p. 13.

15. J. H. Philpott, The Seceders: The Story of J. C. Philpott and William Tiptaft (London: Banner of Truth, 1964).

16. J. D. Douglas, ed., Evangelicals and Unity: Six Essays (Appleford: Marcham Manor, 1964), p. 6. The Presbyterian and Anglican Churches, writes Douglas, “have never worked on the ‘gathered church’ principle, except where circumstances have forced them to do so. This fact has perhaps no small significance in their attitude to ecumenism.”

Chapter 3, Martin Luther

1. Philip S. Watson, Let God Be God! An Interpretation of the Theology of Martin Luther (London: Epworth, 1947/Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1950).

2. Martin Luther, Martin Luther on the Bondage of the Will: A New Translation of . . . Luther’s Reply to Erasmus, trans. J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnston (London: James Clarke/Westwood, N.J.: Revell, 1957).

Chapter 6, Ecclesiola in Ecclesia

1. Philip Jacob Spener, Pia Desideria, trans. and ed. Theodore G. Tappert (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1964).

2. Josiah Woodward, Religious Societies: Dr. Woodward’s Account (Liverpool: H. Evans, 1935).

Chapter 7, Charles Finney on Revival

1. Charles G. Finney, Lectures on Revivals of Religion (New York: Leavitt, Lord, 1835).

2. Albert B. Dod, “On Revivals of Religion,” in Essays, Theological and Miscellaneous, Reprinted from the Princeton Review (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1847), p. 141.

3. R. A. Torrey, How to Work for Christ: A Compendium of Effective Methods (Chicago: Revell, 1901).

4. Charles G. Finney, Charles G. Finney: An Autobiography (New York: Revell, [1908]). First published as Memoirs of Charles G. Finney (1876).

5. Ibid., p. 7.

6. B. B. Warfield, Perfectionism, ed. Samuel G. Craig (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1958), pp. 14–15; P. H. Fowler, Historical Sketch of Presbyterianism within the Bounds of the Synod of Central New York (Utica, N.Y.: Curtiss & Childs, 1877), p. 190n.

7. William B. Sprague, Lectures on Revivals of Religion (Albany, N.Y.: Webster & Skinners, 1832).

8. Asa Mahan, Autobiography, Intellectual, Moral, and Spiritual (London: T. Woolmer, 1882), p. 29.

9. Finney, Charles G. Finney, p. 44.

10. Ibid., pp. 45–46.

11. Charles G. Finney, Lectures on Systematic Theology . . . (London: Tegg, 1851), p. 3.

12. William Henry Harding, “Introduction,” in Charles G. Finney, Revivals of Religion, ed. William Henry Harding (London: Morgan and Scott, 1910), p. v.

13. Arthur T. Pierson, Evangelistic Work in Principle and Practice, rev. ed. (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1892), p. 140.

14. Finney, Revivals of Religion (1840), pp. vii–viii.

15. W. G. McLoughlin, Modern Revivalism: Charles Grandison Finney to Billy Graham (New York: Ronald, 1959), p. 11.

16. Bennet Tyler, Nettleton and His Labours, ed. Andrew A. Bonar (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1860), pp. 166–69.

17. Finney, Lectures on Systematic Theology, p. 411.

18. Ibid., p. 29.

19. Ibid., p. 153.

20. Finney, Revivals of Religion, pp. 314–22.

21. Mahan, Autobiography, pp. 227–28.

22. Finney, Revivals of Religion, p. 1.

23. Ibid., p. 13.

24. Ibid., p. 8.

25. Ibid., p. 5.

26. Ibid., pp. 197–221.

27. Ibid., p. 326.

28. Dod, “On Revivals of Religion,” p. 141.

29. Quoted in Warfield, Perfectionism, p. 26.

30. Mahan, Autobiography, pp. 227–31.

31. Charles G. Finney, Lectures on Revivals of Religion, rev. ed. (Oberlin: Goodrich, 1868).

32. Warfield, Perfectionism.

33. Fowler, Historical Sketch of Presbyterianism.

34. Mrs. [William Edwin] Boardman, Life and Labours of the Rev. W. E. Boardman (New York: D. Appleton, 1887), pp. 48ff.

35. Robert Allerton Parker, A Family of Friends: The Story of the Transatlantic Smiths (London: Museum, 1960), pp. 30–35; Warfield, Perfectionism, pp. 218–24, 256–57.

36. Tyler, Nettleton and His Labours, p. 235.

Chapter 8, John Owen on Communication from God

1. John Owen, Of the Divine Original, Authority, Self-Evidencing Light, and Power of the Scriptures: With an Answer to That Inquiry, How We Know the Scriptures to Be the Word of God (London, 1658). In John Owen, The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold, 16 vols. (London: Banner of Truth, 1965–1968), 16:295–343.

2. John Owen, The Reason of Faith; or, An Answer unto That Inquiry, “Wherefore We Believe the Scripture to Be the Word of God”: With the Causes and Nature of That Faith Wherewith We Do So (London, 1677). In Owen, The Works of John Owen, 4:3–115.

3. John Owen, The Causes, Ways, and Means of Understanding the Mind of God as Revealed in His Word, with Assurance Therein: And a Declaration of the Perspicuity of the Scriptures, with the External Means of the Interpretation of Them (London, 1678). In Owen, The Works of John Owen, 4:117–234.

4. John Owen, Pneumatologia: A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit: Wherein an Account Is Given of His Name, Nature, Personality, Dispensation, Operations, and Effects . . . (London, 1674). In Owen, The Works of John Owen, 3:128.

5. Ibid., 3:197.

6. Ibid., 3:130.

7. Owen, The Reason of Faith, 4:11.

8. Owen, Pneumatologia, 3:197. From an exposition of John 16:13–15.

9. Owen, Of the Divine Original, 16:334.

10. Owen, Pneumatologia, 3:132–33.

11. Ibid., 3:144–45.

12. Owen, Of the Divine Original, 16:298.

13. Ibid., 16:306.

14. Owen, The Reason of Faith, 4:15.

15. Owen, Of the Divine Original, 16:308.

16. Owen, The Reason of Faith, 4:45.

17. Ibid., 4:102.

18. Owen cites John Calvin’s classic statement on the inner witness of the Spirit in the Institutes, 1.7.5. The Reason of Faith, 4:68–69.

19. Ibid., 4:72–73.

20. Owen, Of the Divine Original, 16:307.

21. Ibid., 16:320.

22. Ibid., 16:328.

23. Ibid., 16:318.

24. Ibid., 16:328.

25. Owen, The Reason of Faith, 4:107.

26. Owen, Of the Divine Original, 16:327.

27. Owen, The Reason of Faith, 4:64.

28. Ibid., 4:60.

29. Ibid., 4:103.

30. Ibid., 4:13.

31. Owen, The Causes, Ways, and Means, 4:199–209.

32. Ibid., 4:188.

Chapter 9, Catechisms and the Puritans

1. John Calvin, An Epistle of Godly Consolation to the Duke of Somerset (1548), sig. C.1 verso–C.3.

2. Philip Nye, Beams of Former Light: Discovering How Evil It Is to Impose Doubtful and Disputable Forms . . . upon Ministers . . . (1659), pp. 85–86.

3. Stephen Egerton, A Brief Method of Catechizing . . . (London, 1610).

4. E.g., Karl Barth, The Heidelberg Catechism for Today, trans. Shirley C. Guthrie (London: Epworth, 1964).

5. The School of Faith: The Catechisms of the Reformed Church, trans. and ed. T. F. Torrance (London: James Clarke, 1959).

6. Josef Andreas Jungmann, Katechetik: Handing on the Faith: A Manual of Catechetics, trans. and ed. A. N. Fuerst (London: Burns & Oates, 1959).

7. Edward Dering, A Brief and Necessary Instruction, Very Needfull to Be Known of All Householders . . . (London, 1572); Richard Baxter, The Poor Man’s Family Book (London, 1674).

8. H. R. McAdoo, The Structure of Caroline Moral Theology (London: Longmans, Green, 1949), pp. 168–71.

9. Richard Greenham, The Works of the Reverend . . . Richard Greenham . . ., 5th ed. (London, 1612), p. 665.

10. Thomas Cranmer, Catechismus: . . . A Short Instruction into Christian Religion for the Singular Commodity and Profit of Children and Young People (London, 1548), preface.

11. Thomas Gataker, David’s Instructor: A Sermon [on Psalm 34:11] . . . (London, 1620), p. 18. Vid. William A. L. Vincent, The State and School Education, 1640–1660, in England and Wales (London: SPCK, 1950), p. 109; John E. C. Hill, Economic Problems of the Church: From Archbishop Whitgift to the Long Parliament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1956), p. 239. See also B. Simon, “Leicestershire Schools, 1625–1640,” British Journal of Educational Studies (Nov. 1954): 47–51, for reference to the work of Francis Higginson, John Barnsley, Richard Vines, Thomas Horne, Simon Humphrey, and William Chauncey.

12. Richard Baxter, The Catechizing of Families: A Teacher of Householders How to Teach Their Households (London, 1683), p. 5.

13. James Ussher, The Principles of Christian Religion: With a Large Body of Divinity (London, 1678), p. 6.

14. Richard Rogers, A Garden of Spiritual Flowers (London, 1643), pp. 2, 197–98.

15. William Perkins, The Foundation of Christian Religion, Gathered into Six Principles . . . (London, 1591), sig. A.8.

16. Ussher, The Principles of Christian Religion, p. 7.

17. Richard Baxter, The Practical Works of the Late Reverend and Pious Mr. Richard Baxter . . . With a Life of the Author . . . by the Rev. William Orme, 23 vols. (London: James Duncan, 1830), 8:21. I owe this reference to J. I. Packer, “The Redemption and Restoration of Man in the Thought of Richard Baxter,” D.Phil. thesis, Oxford University (1954), p. 173.

18. Rogers, A Garden of Spiritual Flowers, p. 197.

19. John Preston, The Position of John Preston . . . Concerning the Irresistibleness of Converting Grace (London, 1654), p. 6 or sig. B.3 verso.

20. Arthur Dent, A Pastime for Parents; or, A Recreation, to Pass Away the Time: Containing the Most Principal Grounds of Christian Religion (London, 1606), sig. C.6 verso.

21. Robert Bolton, Some General Directions for a Comfortable Walking with God . . . (London, 1625), p. 310.

22. William Gouge, A Short Catechism, Wherein Are Briefly Laid Down the Fundamental Principles of Christian Religion (1621), sig. B.5.

23. Stephen Marshall, A Sermon Preached before the Honourable House of Commons, at Their Public Fast, Nov. 17, 1640 (London, 1641), p. 33.

24. Martin Luther, The German Mass and Order of Service, ed. Luther D. Reed, trans. A. Steimle, in Martin Luther, Works of Martin Luther: With Introductions and Notes, Philadelphia Edition, 6 vols. (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1930–1943), 6:176.

25. Perkins, The Foundation of Christian Religion.

26. Zachary Crofton, Catechizing God’s Ordinance; or, A Short Treatise Concerning That Ancient . . . Exercise of Catechizing (London, 1656), p. 37.

27. Perkins, The Foundation of Christian Religion.

28. John Calvin, Letters of John Calvin Compiled from the Original Manuscripts, ed. Jules Bonnet, trans. David Constable, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Constable, 1855–1857), 1:260.

29. William Hopkinson, A Preparation into the Way of Life with a Direction into the Right Use of the Lord’s Supper (London, 1583), sig. A.3.

30. Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor: Showing the Nature of the Pastoral Work, Especially in Private Instruction and Catechizing . . . (London, 1657), pp. 112–13.

31. Greenham, Works, p. 799.

32. John Stockwood, A Sermon Preached at Paul’s Cross . . . (London, 1578), p. 98.

33. Robert Openshaw, Short Questions and Answers, Containing the Sum of Christian Religion (London, 1580), preface A.4 verso.

34. John Strype, The Life and Acts of . . . John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury (London, 1718), 3:152.

35. Baxter, The Reformed Pastor, preface sig. B.7 verso f.

36. A Catechism with a Prayer Annexed (1583) (c 123 a 12 British Museum) sig. A.4 verso. This catechism bears no name, but is considered to be by Edmund Chapman.

37. William Wood, A Form of Catechising in the True Religion (1581), copy at Sion College, London.

38. Herbert Palmer, An Endeavour of Making the Principles of Christian Religion . . . Plain and Easy . . . (Cambridge, 1640).

39. Edward Dering, Lectures upon Hebrews, in Edward Dering, M. Dering’s Works, 3 pts (London, 1614), sig. C.2; Elnathan Parr, The Grounds of Divinity, Plainly Discovering the Mysteries of Christian Religion . . ., 3d ed. (London, 1619), p. 307.

40. Matthew Virel, A Learned and Excellent Treatise, Containing All the Principal Grounds of Christian Religion . . . (London, 1594), pp. 267–68.

41. Parr, The Grounds of Divinity, pp. 300–301. “Maister Beza and some other are flat contrary to this my opinion and exposition.”

42. Minutes of the Sessions of the Westminster Assembly of Divines . . ., ed. Alexander Ferrier Mitchell and John Paterson Struthers (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1874), p. 154; B. B. Warfield, The Westminster Assembly and Its Work (New York: Oxford University, 1931), p. 56.

43. Stephen Egerton, A Brief Method, 25th ed. At Folger-Shakespeare Library; microfilm copy at British Museum.

44. John Dod and Robert Cleaver, A Plaine and Familiar Exposition of the Ten Commandements: With a Methodicall Short Catechisme, Containing Brieflie All the Principall Grounds of Christian Religion (London, 1619), sig. B.1.

45. Warfield, The Westminster Assembly.

46. Catechisms of the Scottish Reformation, ed. Horatius Bonar (London: J. Nisbet, 1866), p. 8.

47. Richard Baxter, The Poor Man’s Family Book (London, 1674).

Chapter 10, Oliver Heywood, the Northern Puritan

1. Oliver Heywood, Heart-Treasure: . . . Being the Substance of Some Sermons . . . on Matthew 12:35 (London, 1667); Oliver Heywood, Closet Prayer, a Christian Duty; or, A Treatise upon Matthew 6:6 (London, 1671); and Oliver Heywood, The Sure Mercies of David; or, A Second Part of Heart-Treasure . . . Being the Fruit of Some Meditations upon Isaiah 55:3 (London, 1672).

2. Oliver Heywood, Life in God’s Favour . . . Being the Substance of Sunday Sermons upon Psalm 30:5 (London, 1679); Oliver Heywood, A Family-Altar Erected to the Honour of the Eternal God . . . Being Some Meditations on Genesis 35:2–3 (London, 1693); and Oliver Heywood, Heavenly Converse (London, n.d.).

Chapter 11, Henry Jacob and the First Congregational Church

1. Basil Hall, “Puritanism: The Problem of Definition,” in G. J. Cuming, ed., Studies in Church History, vol. 2, Papers Read at the Second Winter and Summer Meetings of the Ecclesiastical History Society (London: Nelson, 1965), pp. 283–96.

2. Daniel Neal, The History of the Puritans or Protestant Non-Conformists, from the Reformation (to the Act of Toleration . . . in 1689): With an Account of Their Principles, 4 vols. (London, 1732–38).

3. Champlin Burrage, The Early English Dissenters in Light of Recent Research, 1550–1641, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1912).

4. Robert Browne, A Treatise of Reformation without Tarrying for Any, ed. T. G. Crippen (Middelburgh, 1582).

5. Henry Jacob, A Defence of the Churches and Ministry of England Written in Two Treatises against the Reasons and Objections of Mr. F. Johnson, and Others of the Separation Commonly Called Brownists, 2 pts. (Middelburgh, 1599).

6. Henry Jacob, Reasons Taken Out of God’s Word and the Best Human Testimonies Proving a Necessity of Reforming Our Churches in England (Middelburg[?], 1604).

7. Henry Jacob, The Divine Beginning and Institution of Christ’s True, Visible, or Ministerial Church (Leyden: Hastings, 1610).

8. Henry Jacob et al., A Confession and Protestation in the Name of Certain Christians Showing Therein Wherein They Consent in Doctrine with the Church of England, and Wherein They Were Bound to Dissent, with Their Evidence from the Holy Scriptures for Their Dissent in About Twenty-Eight Particulars (1606).

9. Henry Jacob, A Confession and Protestation of the Faith of Certain Christians in England, Holding It Necessary to Observe, and Keep All Christ’s True Substantial Ordinances for His Church Visible and Political (That Is, Endued with Power of Outward Spiritual Government) under the Gospel; Though the Same Do Differ from the Common Order of the Land: Published for the Clearing of the Said Christians from the Slander of Schism, and Novelty, and Also of Separation, and Undutifulness to the Magistrate, Which Their Rash Adversaries Do Falsely Cast upon Them (1616).

Chapter 12, The Christian Mind of Abraham Kuyper

1. Sir Isaiah Berlin, BBC radio talks on “Some Sources of Romanticism,” 1966.

2. Quoted by J. H. Mckay, Religious Thought in Holland during the Nineteenth Century (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1911), p. 198.

3. Charlotte Yonge, The Heir of Redclyffe (London: John W. Parker, 1853).

4. See Catherine M. E. Kuyper, “Abraham Kuyper: His Early Life and Conversion,” International Reformed Bulletin, no. 5 (April 1960).

5. Abraham Kuyper, Calvinism: Being the Six “Stone” Lectures Given at Princeton Theological Seminary, U.S.A. (London: Sovereign Grace Union, 1932), p. 80.

6. Ibid., p. 30.

7. Ibid., pp. 50–51.

8. Kuyper does not seem to have been aware of the extreme difficulty of establishing an historical thesis of this general kind. However, a similar thesis was to be forcefully argued by Ralph B. Perry, Puritanism and Democracy (New York: Vanguard, 1944). Cf. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London: Allen & Unwin, 1930), and R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism: A Historical Study (London: J. Murray, 1926).

9. Here again, Kuyper’s argument needs the support of careful historical analysis. See e.g. Herbert Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science, 1300–1800 (London: G. Bell, 1957); T. F. Torrance, “The Influence of Reformed Theology on the Development of Scientific Method,” in Theology in Reconstruction (London: SCM, 1965).

10. Abraham Kuyper, E Voto Dordraceno: Toelichting op den Heidelbergschen Catechismus, 4 vols. (Amsterdam, 1892–1895), 3:465.

11. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 191. Cf. C. Veenhof, In Kuyper’s Lijn: Enkele Opmerkingen over den Invloed van Dr. A. Kuyper op de “Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee (Goes: Oosterbaan & Le Cointre, 1939), p. 31.

12. Abraham Kuyper, “Ons Program,” in Abraham Kuyper, Architectonische Critiek: Fragmenten uit de Sociaal-Politieke Geschriften van A. Kuyper, ed. W. F. de Gaay Fortman (Amsterdam: H. J. Paris, 1956), 198.

13. See his lecture “Souvereiniteit in Eigen Kring” (1880), published in Kuyper, Architectonische Critiek. For a general discussion of this doctrine in historical perspective, see J. D. Dengerink, Critisch-historisch Onderzoek naar de Sociologische Ontwikkeling van het Beginsel der “Souvereiniteit in Eigen Kring” in de 19e en 20e Eeuw (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1948), pp. 95–161, and English summary, pp. 264–76.

14. Kuyper, Calvinism, p. 143.

15. Fortman, ed., Architectonische Critiek, “Introduction,” p. 14.

16. Ibid., p. 18.

17. Quoted by Frank Vandenberg in his biography, Abraham Kuyper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1960), p. 80.

18. Kuyper, Calvinism, pp. 89–90.

Chapter 13, The Puritans and Spiritual Gifts

1. John Owen, Discourse of Spiritual Gifts, in John Owen, Works, ed. W. H. Goold, 4:420ff. (1693; reprint ed., London: Banner of Truth, 1967). In his Inquiry Concerning . . . Evangelical Churches, written after the publication of Edward Stillingfleet’s sermon The Mischief of Separation (preached May 2, 1680), and before Stillingfleet’s larger work The Unreasonableness of Separation appeared in the following year (Owen, Works, 15:221–22, 375), Owen refers to his Discourse of Spiritual Gifts as already written (p. 249). In the preface to The Work of the Spirit in Prayer, published in 1682, he mentions a treatise on spiritual gifts as something he proposes to write (4:246). This indicates that The Work of the Spirit in Prayer, which follows Causes, Ways and Means of Understanding the Mind of God (published 1678) in the sequence of Owen’s treatises on the Holy Spirit, was written perhaps three years before it was published, since by 1680 its promised successor had already been completed.

2. The only Protestant tongue-speakers in the 17th century appear to have been Camisards, Huguenot refugees who fled to the Cevennes after the Edict of Nantes was revoked in 1685. In other ways the Camisard movement was unquestionably fanatical (see F. L. Cross, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church [London: Oxford University, 1957], s.v. and literature there cited).

3. “The air was thick with reports of prophecies and miracles, and there were men of all parties who lived on the border land between sanity and insanity” (Robert Barclay, The Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth: Considered Principally with Reference to the Influence of Church Organization on the Spread of Christianity [London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1876], p. 216). Barclay gives a number of instances.

4. Owen, Discourses of Spiritual Gifts, 4:518.

5. See B. B. Warfield, Counterfeit Miracles (New York; C. Scribner’s, 1918), chap. 1. Reprinted as Miracles, Yesterday and Today, True and False (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965).

6. Matthew Henry calls tongues “the most useless and insignificant of all these gifts” (on 1 Cor. 12:28). It is unlikely that Owen would have quarreled with this verdict.

7. The Duties of Pastors and People Distinguished is dated 1644, but Owen elsewhere states that this was the printer’s deliberate mistake (Owen, Works, 13:222).

8. Owen, The Duties of Pastors and People Distinguished, 13:44–45.

9. Ibid., 13:47.

10. Owen, Discourse of Spiritual Gifts, 4:518.

11. Ibid., 4:420–21.

12. Ibid., 4:432.

13. Ibid., 4:421.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid., 4:428.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid., 4:479–80.

18. Ibid., 4:426.

19. Ibid., 4:471.

20. Ibid., 4:421.

21. Ibid., 4:423.

22. Ibid., 4:421–22.

23. Ibid., 4:507.

24. Ibid., 4:482.

25. Ibid., 4:423.

26. Ibid., 4:424.

27. Ibid., 4:437.

28. “Helps” and “governments” were not identified with certainty by any Puritan exegete. Matthew Pool confessed it “very hard to determine” who they were—“whether he meaneth deacons, or widows . . . as helpful in the case of the poor, or some that assisted the pastors in the government of the church, or some that were extraordinary helps to the apostles in the first plantation of the church” (Annotations, ad loc.). Matthew Henry thought “helps” were sick visitors, and “governments” were, in effect, deacons, or “poor stewards” in the old Methodist sense, distributing the church’s charitable gifts to the needy. Richard Baxter thought “helps” were “eminent Helpers of the Churches by Charity and special Care, especially for Ministers and the Poor; Governments, to arbitrate Differences and keep Order” (Paraphrase of the New Testament, ad loc.). None of these writers, however, nor any other Puritan so far as I know, thought of a gift of helping and governing.

29. Owen, Discourse of Spiritual Gifts, 4:438.

30. Ibid., 4:442.

31. Owen’s remarks on prophets in the New Testament are worth noticing. “The names of prophet and prophecy are used variously in the New Testament: for, 1. Sometimes an extraordinary office and extraordinary gifts are signified by them; and, 2. Sometimes extraordinary gifts only; and, 3. Sometimes an ordinary office with ordinary gifts, and sometimes ordinary gifts only. And unto one of these heads may the use of the word be everywhere reduced.

“1. In the places mentioned (Eph. 4:11; 1 Cor. 12:28) extraordinary officers endued with extraordinary gifts are intended. . . . And two things are ascribed unto them: (1) that they received immediate revelations and directions from the Holy Ghost” (Owen cites Acts 13:2); “(2) They foretold things to come” (Acts 11:28ff.; 21:10–11).

“2. Sometimes an extraordinary gift without office is intended” (Acts 21:9; 19:6; 1 Cor. 14:29–33).

“3. Again, an ordinary office with ordinary gifts is intended by this expression” (Rom. 12:6—“prophecy here can intend nothing but teaching or preaching, in the exposition and application of the word; for the external rule is given unto it, that it must be done according to the ‘proportion of faith,’ or the sound doctrine of faith revealed in the Scriptures”). “Hence also those who are called unto offrice, who have yet received a gift enabling them to declare the mind of God in the Scripture unto the edification of others, may be said to ‘prophesy.’” Owen, Discourse of Spiritual Gifts, 4:451.

32. Ibid., 4:494.

33. Ibid., 4:495.

34. Ibid., 4:505.

35. Ibid., 4:509.

36. Ibid., 4:510.

37. Ibid., 4:510–11.

38. Ibid., 4:512.

39. Ibid., 4:512–13.

40. Ibid., 4:438.

Chapter 14, Daniel Rowland

1. A Second Letter to the Revd. Mr. George Whitefield (1751), pp. 4–5.

2. Journal of the Calvinistic Methodist Historical Society 12 (June 1927): 52, referring to John Evans, Some Account of the Welsh Charity Schools (1752).

3. National Library of Wales, Church in Wales Records, SD/BR/4, pp. 196, 201, 255; NLW MS. 9145F, pp. 10, 11, 14.

4. John Cennick to Howel Harris (1742), Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia (Special Collections).

5. Arch. Camb. pp. xcix, 155.

6. Journal of the Calvinistic Methodist Historical Society 29:34; 19:125.

7. J. C. Ryle, The Christian Leaders of England in the Eighteenth Century (London: Thynne & Jarvis, 1902), pp. 192–93.

8. Richard Bennett, The Early Life of Howell Harris (London: Banner of Truth, 1962), pp. 134, 153.

9. Howell Harris, A Brief Account of the Life of Howell Harris, Esq. (Trevecka, 1791), pp. 110, 113.

10. Journal of the Calvinistic Methodist Historical Society, MSS Supplement Series 1, p. 492.

11. Howell Harris, Selected Trevecka Letters, 1742–1747, ed. Gomer M. Roberts, Trevecka Records Series, vol. 1 (Caernarvon: Calvinistic Methodist Bookroom, 1956), pp. 81–82.

12. Edward Morgan, The Life and Times of Howel Harris, Esq., the First Itinerant Preacher in Wales: Whose Labours Were Very Extraordinary and Successful (Holywell: Morris, 1852), p. 130.

13. Selected Trevecka Letters, pp. 113–14.

14. Ibid., p. 164.

15. Journal of the Calvinistic Methodist Historical Society 29:95; Howell Harris, Howell Harris, Reformer and Soldier (1714–1773), ed. Tom Beynon (Caernarvon: Calvinistic Methodist Bookroom, 1958), p. 171.

16. David E. Jenkins, The Life of the Rev. Thomas Charles, B.A. of Bala: Promotor of Charity and Sunday Schools, Founder of the British and Foreign Bible Society . . ., 3 vols. (Denbigh: Llewelyn Jenkins, 1908), 1:35.

17. Ibid., 1:382.

18. Journal of the Calvinistic Methodist Historical Society, MSS Supplement Series 2, p. 97.

19. Arthur James Johnes, Johnes on the Causes Which Have Produced Dissent from the Established Church in the Principality of Wales (London: Houlston, 1870), pp. 42–43.

20. Harris, Howell Harris, p. 188.

21. Josiah Woodward, An Account of the Rise and Progress of the Religious Societies, 4th ed. (London: J. Downing, 1712).

22. Josiah Woodward, Religious Societies: Dr. Woodward’s “Account” (Liverpool: H. Evans, 1935), p. 15.

23. Bennett, The Early Life of Howell Harris, p. 80.

24. National Library of Wales, C.M. Archives, Howel Harris Diary; cf. Bennett, The Early Life of Howell Harris, pp. 105–6.

25. Bennett, The Early Life of Howell Harris, p. 83.

26. Luke Tyerman, The Life of the Rev. George Whitefield, 2d ed., vol. 1 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1890), pp. 318–19.

27. Sail, Dibenion a Rheolau, ’r Societies . . . (Bristol, 1742).

28. Morgan Hugh Jones, The Trevecka Letters; or, The Unpublished Mss. Correspondence of Howell Harris and His Contemporaries: An Inventory of the Letters with a Digest of Their Contents to Illustrate Certain Old and New Features of the Religious and Social Awakening in Wales during the 18th Century (Caernarvon: Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Church, 1932), pp. 252–53.

29. Harris, Selected Trevecka Letters, p. 32.

30. Journal of the Calvinistic Methodist Historical Society 27:3–4; 40:43; 27:162.

31. Ibid., 20:134.

Chapter 16, Sandemanianism

1. Robert Sandeman, Letters on Theron and Aspasia: Addressed to the Author (Edinburgh, 1759).

2. James Hervey, Dialogues between Theron and Aspasio: Upon the Most Important and Interesting Subjects, 3 vols. (London, 1755–1805).

3. Andrew Fuller, The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation; or, The Duty of Sinners to Believe in Jesus Christ (London: Religious Tract Society, 1838).

4. Andrew Fuller, Strictures on Sandemanianism in Twelve Letters to a Friend (Nottingham: C. Sutton, 1810).

5. Thomas Scott, The Warrant and Nature of Faith in Christ Considered: With Some Reference to the Various Controversies on That Subject (London, 1797).

Table of Contents

Contents

Contributors

Part 1: Approaches to Reformation

Ulrich Zwingli

The Anabaptists

Martin Luther

Thomas Cranmer

John Knox

Ecclesiola in Ecclesia

Part 2: One Steadfast High Intent

Charles Finney on Revival

John Owen on Communication from God

Catechisms and the Puritans

Oliver Heywood, the Northern Puritan

Henry Jacob and the First Congregational Church

Part 3: Profitable for Doctrine and Reproof

The Christian Mind of Abraham Kuyper

The Puritans and Spiritual Gifts

Daniel Rowland

Richard Baxter’s Reformed Pastor

Sandemanianism

Notes

Table of Contents

Contents

Contributors

Part 1: Approaches to Reformation

Ulrich Zwingli

The Anabaptists

Martin Luther

Thomas Cranmer

John Knox

Ecclesiola in Ecclesia

Part 2: One Steadfast High Intent

Charles Finney on Revival

John Owen on Communication from God

Catechisms and the Puritans

Oliver Heywood, the Northern Puritan

Henry Jacob and the First Congregational Church

Part 3: Profitable for Doctrine and Reproof

The Christian Mind of Abraham Kuyper

The Puritans and Spiritual Gifts

Daniel Rowland

Richard Baxter’s Reformed Pastor

Sandemanianism

Notes