Church History

King James VI of Scotland (1566–1625) recorded his advice to Prince Henry (1594–1612), his son and heir, in a 1599 volume entitled Basilikon Doron , “The Royal Gift” (repr., 1887). Amidst other advice on how to operate effectively as a monarch, James warned his son against presbyterians, who had...

The great grandson of several New England families (John Cotton’s among them), Elisha Williams (1694–1755) graduated from Harvard in 1711. After a brief career of teaching and tutoring in 1722 he became the pastor of a congregational church in Wethersfield, Connecticut, prior to becoming and...

When World War I erupted in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson was committed to a policy of neutrality. However, Germany was not committed to the same policy. German submarines had attacked several civilian European vessels killing many, including Americans. In the April 15, 1916 edition of the New...

Who were the Puritans? Since you are "meeting" them it would be remiss if someone did not at least give a definition of who the Puritans were. Now, one of the problems in defining a "Puritan" has to do with the "canon" that the Banner of Truth Trust set up—a canon that included the solidly Reformed...

The Rev. Jasper Adams was an Episcopal Minister and President of the College of Charleston when he preached this 1833 message to the Diocese of South Carolina at St. Michael’s church in Charleston, South Carolina. This sermon occurred a little over a half century after the American Revolution. In...

It is not uncommon for our church to receive protests for being careful adherents to the historic Westminster Standards; thus, I have developed a confessional apologetic that boils down to these modern proverbs: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”; and, “Don’t try and reinvent the wheel!” B. B...

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield (1851-1921) was professor of Didactic and Polemic theology at Princeton seminary from 1887-1921. Warfield still stands at the center of most of the significant theological controversies marking our day. Yet, despite his voluminous and accessible writings, Warfield is...

Benjamin B. Warfield (1851-1921) served as the professor of didactic and polemic theology at Princeton Theological Seminary from 1887-1921. Warfield is known as the “Lion of Princeton” for his defense of Christian supernaturalism and the verities of the faith, which has come to be known “Old...

Imagine your pastor announcing from the pulpit, “I want you to know that I regard myself as a prophet.” Don’t you think this would raise a few eyebrows? In this third of five parts on Puritan preaching ( part 1 , part 2 ), I will discuss l essons on preaching from a book in which William Perkins...

The blows of a brother are the best kind. I thought of that proverb when I read Benjamin B. Warfield's assessment of Charles Hodge as a teacher of exegesis. [1] Five years after graduating from Princeton, A. A. Hodge, the son of Charles, had written Warfield a request. Warfield summarized the...