Meet the Puritans

At some point in every local pastor's ministry he is going to experience an inquiry and even a call to serve in another congregation or area of service. I know for me, the first time this happened I had no idea what to do. I certainly was not prepared in seminary for this! Thankfully I like old...

Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661) is often regarded as the finest Scottish theologian of the mid-seventeenth century. I’m not sure I entirely accept that. For me, at least David Dickson and James Durham were on a par with him, if not his theological betters. But Rutherford wrote more, and specifically...

Can faith damn us? The Dutch “Puritan” theologian Wilhelmus à Brakel (1635-1711) argued that the first sin of Adam and Eve was unbelief. To state this differently, they exchanged faith in the Word of God for faith in the word of the Serpent ( The Christian’s Reasonable Service , 1:372-373; print ;...

Thanks to our friends at The Latimer Trust , we have two (2) copies of Peter Adam's book, To Bring Men to Heaven by Preaching: John Donne's Evangelistic Sermons to give away. The deadline for entering is Friday, May 20 . Here's the Entry Form .

A while back while teaching a mid-week series on the life and work of Thomas Manton, I came across the following quote from Charles Haddon Spurgeon about Thomas Manton. It comes from the "Preface" to Illustrations and Meditations, or, Flowers From a Puritan's Garden, Distilled and Dispensed (London...

We continue our series on the blessed but difficult subject of assurance of salvation (see part 1 ). Assurance or certainty about a truth in general may come in various ways, such as seeing or hearing something with your eyes and ears, knowing a first principle and making logical deductions from it...

In my last article I referenced the evangelical understanding of the Scriptural phrase “do this and live” among some puritans. Such an understanding implies that good works are more than the fruit of salvation . We don’t engage in good works merely because we live or are saved, we are to do them in...

We live in a time in which our humanity is misunderstood, at best, and under attack, at worse. Our consumer society is rooted in the philosophy that greed is good, that “it’s not personal, it’s business,” and that he who dies with the most toys wins. The proliferation of pornography, sexuality, and...

This past year we got news that our eight-year-old daughter had a spinal tumor. She was having back pain and the specialist ordered an MRI just to make sure that everything was OK. It wasn’t. I walked with the doctor into the hallway. “Based on your experience,” I asked, “Do you think this is...

Herein lies that which all the beauty of the world fades before, and becomes as a thing of nought,—which brings all the outward pomp of ceremonious worship into contempt;—I mean the glory and excellence that lies in the spiritual communion of the soul with God, by the grace of the Holy Ghost, in...