Meet the Puritans

“For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:” Romans 8:3 Among the years of fruitfulness in the ministry of Thomas Manton, an unknown Dutch artist was completing a painting in...

Then He said to them all, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me." Following Jesus requires a commitment to lifelong self-denial. Anything less falls short of biblical religion. The Lord made this exceedingly clear immediately after...

Reformed Catholicity . Depending on where you are in the Reformed-Evangelical world, this label may prompt songs of joy or cries of disdain. Those who adopt the term for themselves wish to retrieve the best of the catholic tradition, or perhaps seek to confess doctrinal truths with the Great...

“And 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.” For Christians living in the rampantly-individualistic twenty-first...

“For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:” Romans 8:3 The law of God has great value in the Scriptures and for the Christian life. Thomas Manton would not doubt the value...

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been looking at Puritan preaching through the lens of the trivium. Scripture gave Puritan preachers a foundational grammar , and through logical/dialectical methods this grammar would be brought to bear upon the minds of men. But sermons are more than logical outlines...

The Great Awakening of the mid-eighteenth century provoked the ire of many Protestants. This was due to reports of hysteria surrounding the Awakening's particular brand of revivalism. Many did not know what to make of the excitement and fervor exuded by those caught-up in the movement. In New...

The Puritans were driven by Christ-centered expository preaching. God’s Word gave them the grammar ; it was as essential to Puritan preaching as phonics for the four-year-old learning to read. And yet knowing what God said in a particular text is not alone sufficient for transformative, God-...

“For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.” – 1 John 5:7 The above verse is found in nearly all Reformation-era Bibles, such as Wycliffe 1395, Tyndale 1525, Coverdale 1535, Great Bible 1539, Matthew’s 1549, Geneva 1560,...

Earthly-mindedness is to the mind what gravity is to the body—it is an invisible, powerful, and constant force that weighs so heavily upon the individual that without a greater force acting against it, he is powerless to break free from its controlling influence. Even the stoutest Christians know...