Meet the Puritans

Preaching was the heartbeat of the Puritan movement. It would be no exaggeration to say that without Puritan preaching there would have been no Puritans. To quote Irvonwy Morgan, "Puritanism in the last resort must be assessed in terms of the pulpit." [1] And though much has changed since the 17th...

Christian virtue is lovely to behold. Jonathan Edwards, in his treatise A Dissertation Concerning the Nature of Virtue , described it as, “Something beautiful , or rather some kind of beauty , or excellency.” [1] Edwards did not mean that a delicate flower or an excellent meal possess virtue;...

Previously, we saw the importance of understanding a covenant as an agreement in Scripture, and that the Covenant of Works existed with Adam before the Fall with the promise of life for obedience ( which we qualified typologically as temporal , not eternal—earthy, not heavenly). All these details...

…Hath made me free from the law of sin and death. Romans 8:2b Sin and death are often connected in the Word of God. In Genesis 2:17, the Lord commanded Adam to obey or suffer the pains of death. God said, “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day...

As we saw in our last post , we can appropriately use the term “covenant” to describe God’s relationship with Adam in Eden. Specifically, that relationship was a “covenant of life” (WSC 12), which is to say that “life was promised to Adam, and in him to his posterity, upon condition of perfect and...

William Perkins was a prolific writer and a monumental thinker within the Puritan movement. Yet Perkins believed that the heart of his ministry was preaching “one Christ, by Christ, to the praise of Christ.” We saw the principle behind this in our last post : Our preaching must be full of Christ...

In the first article of this series on covenant theology, we saw that “covenant” is, exegetically, essentially an “agreement.” Isaiah 28:15, 18 practically demonstrates this by twice using the words interchangeably as poetic synonyms. We also noted that some take strong exception to such an...

"You keep using that word—I do not think it means what you think it means." Reflecting on an essay he wrote some years ago, Richard Phillips once referenced this humorous quote from The Princess Bride to illustrate the confusion that abounds over the biblical term "covenant." [1] Such confusion is...

“The heart of the matter is this: Preach one Christ, by Christ, to the praise of Christ.” [1] These words were written by the great Puritan William Perkins (1558-1602) as his summary of the task of preaching. Perkins has been called the “principal architect of the Puritan movement.” [2] Although he...

Having shown his readers the great value of Christ’s freedom through the application of the “law of the Spirit of life,” Manton turns towards uses. For Puritan preachers, "uses" were the application of the text to the hearts, minds, and wills of the hearers. These uses were intended to change the...