The Puritans
By J. C. Philpot
The Puritans, called so derisively from their purity
of principle and conduct, were hooted down, and driven from society as
disturbers of the public peace. They had no need to separate themselves from
the world, the world separated them from itself. Thus one grand point was
gained. The church and the world were really separated. Ranks of society in
those days were much more marked by outward distinctions than in our own.
The gayest dresses, the richest silks, the most gaudy colors were then worn
by all of both sexes who aspired to worldly distinction. Here were our
Puritan ancestors specially distinguished. Their plain garb and unadorned
apparel at once marked them. This made a gulf between the world and them,
now too much bridged over. And as thus they were driven out of the world,
they were more closely united with each other than we have in our day any
conception of. Two distinct forces were thus at work to bring together the
people of God—external persecution and internal love. One drove and the
other drew; one closed the circle from without, and the other attracted in
the circle from within.
But as in all ages grain and chaff have been strewn on
the same floor, wheat and tares have grown up in the same field, fish, good
and bad, have swum in the same net, the Puritan assemblies were not exempt
from admixture. If there was a Judas among the disciples, an Ananias and
Sapphira among the Pentecostal converts, a Demas among Paul's personal
friends, were the Puritans likely to be, according to their name, a pure
heap of unmixed grain? But this very circumstance exercised a peculiar
influence on their ministry and writings. If there had been no 'Talkatives'
in the little meetings at Bedford, what materials would there have been for
Bunyan's inimitable life-portrait? If no 'Mr. By-ends' or 'Mr.
Hold-the-world' were to be found within reach of the Tinker's eye and voice,
they would not have fallen within the scope of the Tinker's pen. 'Mr.
Money-love', it will be remembered, says to his good friend By-ends, "They,
and we, and you, Sir, I hope, are going on pilgrimage." And pilgrimage in
those days did not mean complying with the Act of Uniformity. In this,
however, as elsewhere, we see good springing out of evil.
Being thrown by the circumstances already mentioned more
closely together, if there was on one side deeper hypocrisy, there was on
the other clearer discernment. In their small assemblies character
became more closely watched, and therefore better known. Professors of
religion lived more under each other's eye. There was more spiritual
conversation; more discussion of doctrine and experience; more marked
displays of God's providence; more mutual communion and affection; more
sympathy and communion; more bearing of each other's burdens; and more
general equality and brotherhood than we have any idea of. Those who
experimentally knew the things of God lived more under their power and
influence than in our day; and religion, as a personal reality, was with
them more a matter of daily and hourly experience and consideration. As a
necessary consequence, counterfeits were better got up. If the coins from
heaven's mint had in those days a clearer ring, were of brighter hue, bore a
more deeply-cut impress, and showed a closer resemblance to the Sovereign's
image, the master of the infernal mint was not then behind in his imitative
coinage. The crude, mis-shaped, base money of the present day would not have
passed in times when Bunyan and Owen were assayers. Their sharp eyes would
soon have detected the clumsy counterfeit. This has made the Puritan writers
so searching, so discriminating, so minute in the marks which they lay down
of a real work of grace.
But the Puritan ministers were also men mighty in the
Scriptures. When they had opportunity they had been hard students. Dr. Owen
was one of the most learned men of the seventeenth century, and was
appointed by Cromwell Dean of Christ Church and Vice-Chancellor of the
University of Oxford, mainly for the advantage of the students. Most also of
the ejected ministers were men of ability and learning. But persecution
drove them from public libraries; and poverty soon compelled them to part
with books for bread. A learned ministry was rather an idol with the
Puritans; and this idol was to be broken. Having to defend the truth from
the assaults of Popery on the one hand and infidelity on the other, they had
been compelled, as they considered, to study works of learning. But, hunted
down by informers, haled before magistrates, hooted by mobs, and immured in
prisons, they had little time for learned researches. Poverty made them dig
other roots than those of Hebrew words; and the prison taught them to tag
laces instead of turning over lexicons. Hiding in a wood by day, and
preaching in a cottage by night, expecting every moment to hear the door
driven in, were not situations favorable to hard reading. Folios and
quartos, the usual sized books of that day, were not readily carried about
when soldiers were on their track; and a hollow tree or a damp cellar made
but an indifferent study. Thus were they driven to study the heart
instead of books, and to watch the movements of grace and the workings of
sin instead of confuting the infidel arguments of Hobbes, or replying to the
objections of Socinus.
The work of grace on the soul, its various
counterfeits, how far a person may go and not be a Christian, the certain
marks of regeneration, the opposition made to it by sin and Satan, the
privileges and duties of a believer, the misery and danger of an unconverted
state, the work of Christ on the cross, and the influences and operations of
the blessed Spirit on the heart—these and similar topics form the staple of
the writings of the Puritans. And though in some points, such as the law,
general invitations, &c., they may be obscure, or even erroneous, yet where
they are at home there is a peculiar weight and power in their works. They
are eminently scriptural and invariably practical. They were keen anatomists
of the human heart, dissecting its hidden fibers to the very core. Its
deceitfulness and hypocrisy were well known to them, and they possessed a
peculiar ability in laying bare all its pretenses and false refuges. They
were sometimes, perhaps, too systematic, and would scarcely tolerate the
least deviation from the prescribed formulas of doctrine and experience. But
they were a blessed generation, maintaining alive by their writings, when
persecution had much silenced their voices, the hidden life of godliness in
the hearts of hundreds; and by sending abroad from their hiding-places their
spiritual and savory works, they much made up by their pen what had been
lost from their tongue.
The writings of the Puritans are the brightest
mirror of their character, as well as the most enduring evidence of their
worth; for in them, as in a mirror, we see reflected the features of the
men, and, we may add, of that wondrous era when religion in this country was
not a shadow but a substance, not a form but a power, not a name but a
living reality, pervading all classes and ranks to a degree never before,
and never since known. Then appeared a long and successive series of writers
upon every religious subject, doctrinal, practical, and experimental, who
filled the land with their works.
The history of the Puritans, as a religious body of
England, reaches from the accession of Queen Elizabeth, (A.D. 1558,) to the
Revolution (1688.) But their writings, at least most of those preserved to
the present day, have not so wide a range. The early Puritans were chiefly
engaged in controversy against the corruptions of the Establishment, the
spread of Popery and Arminianism, and the arbitrary power of the bishops.
Their writings, therefore, were not of the same experimental character as
the later productions of the same school. The press also being heavily
fettered, and no publications permitted but those which were licensed by the
Authorities in Church and State, truth was gagged, and its voice choked in
the very utterance. When before the writer stood the pillory with the
Westminster mob, at its foot the executioner with the hot branding iron in
one hand and the shears in the other, and behind it a cell in Newgate for
life, it required some boldness of heart to put pen to paper, and paper to
press. In Laud's bosom there was no more pity for a Puritan than now rests
in the bosom of a London magistrate for a garotter; and as to punishment,
there is not the least comparison, for no criminal out of Russia would now
be treated as was Dr. Leighton.
But when what is usually called the Great Rebellion, but
what should rather be termed the uprising of the English people against the
most determined conspiracy of Church and King to overthrow all their ancient
laws and liberties, broke out, and in its progress and results liberated, to
a large extent, the public press, then appeared a long and successive series
of writers upon every religious subject, doctrinal, practical, and
experimental, who filled the land with their works.
The religious activity of that age it is almost
impossible for us to conceive, and the contrast which it forms with the
present is something absolutely marvelous. The change is as great as that of
a man one day in full vigor of mental and bodily health, and the next lying
on his bed with a paralytic stroke; or that of a fire blazing high, and
casting heat and flame in all directions, and then sunk down into a heap of
black ashes, under which it feebly and faintly smoulders. When, too, we
consider other points of comparison, the contrast will appear more marvelous
still. England at that period, say from A.D. 1640 to 1660, may well be
contrasted with England of the last twenty years. It was then very thinly
inhabited, its whole population probably not exceeding four or five million.
There were no great towns; manufactures were but scanty, the woollen being
the only one of any importance; the roads most miserable, and to
wheel-carriages almost impassable. And yet, with all these disadvantages,
there was an energy in writing, reading, and spreading religious works all
over the length and breadth of the land as much beyond the present apathy as
the serious earnestness, the ardent zeal, the Christian devotedness, the
godly life, and the unwearied labors of the Puritan ministers outshine the
words and works of their degenerate descendants.
In those days men breathed religion, ate religion, drank
religion. In the House of Commons, Oliver Cromwell would speak more in one
half hour of the grace of God, the work of the Spirit, and the blessedness
of knowing and serving the Lord, than most ministers in our day in a whole
hour's sermon; and the very soldiers in his army over their watch-fires
would read more in their little black bibles by the lurid light, and talk to
each other more of the precious things of God in one evening, than many of
our great divines would do of either in a week.
We by no means intend to express an opinion that all this
was real religion, vital godliness. There is no fire without smoke; but,
again, there is no smoke without fire. Shadow is not substance; but there is
no shadow without it; and the larger the substance the greater the shadow.
There is, indeed, the form without the power; but form presumes the
existence of power, as much as the image of David, which Michal made in the
bed with a pillow of goat's hair for his bolster, (1 Sam. 19:16,) presumed
the existence of David. In those days there was, you will perhaps say, much
false fire, hypocrisy, delusion, enthusiasm, and wild fanaticism. No doubt
there was. But false fire implies true fire, or why should it be false? If,
as has been well said, hypocrisy be the tribute paid to godliness, there
must be the tribute receiver as well as the tribute payer. So with delusion,
enthusiasm, and fanaticism. Where would be the place for these imitations of
the light, life, and power of the Spirit—except in a day when his operations
were specially manifest?
But Satan is often transformed, you will say, into an
angel of light. True—but there must be angels of light to induce the arch
deceiver to attempt the transformation. Thus, after making all the
deductions that a friend, not an enemy, to vital godliness may assume, we
must believe that in that day there was a blessed amount of real,
experimental religion. How men could find time to write, money to buy,
leisure to read, and strength to digest the ponderous folios which issued
from the pens of Owen, Goodwin, Charnock, Manton, Howe, etc., seems at the
present day an almost inexplicable mystery, of which we know but one
solution—that in those days there was a large number of people in different
classes of society who took the deepest and most lively interest in the
things which concerned their everlasting peace.
Now, such writers must have had readers of a similar
spirit with themselves—solid, serious, spiritually-minded men, with a
heavenly sobriety of spirit, well-ripened judgment, and clear discernment in
the things of God. There is no fairer or better test of an age than its
approved authors, for they represent and embody its spirit.
But while we have sufficiently, we think, indicated our
high opinion of the value of these good old Puritan divines, we would
carefully guard ourselves against the conclusion which some might thence
draw that we fully agree with all their views and sentiments. This is very
far from being the case; for in some points we most widely differ from them,
as, for instance, in offers of grace, progressive sanctification, the law
being a rule of life, calls to the dead. Upon these points, mainly through
Mr. Huntington's writings, the church of God has more light than in the days
of the Puritans; and as we are to call no man master on earth, and are bound
to walk according to the light which is given us, it does not make us
inconsistent to revere and admire the Puritan writers, and yet not tread
servilely in their footsteps. We follow them as far as they follow the word;
but when they depart from that, we depart from them. This is our Christian
liberty; and as long as we use it not as a cloak of licentiousness, but as
enabling us to serve the Lord in newness of the spirit and not in the
oldness of the letter, none can justly condemn us for inconsistency.