The Puritans and Revival Christianity
by Iain Murray
Following as it did so closely upon the Reformation it is not surprising
that the Puritan movement in England believed so firmly in revivals of
religion as the great means by which the Church advances in the world.
For the Reformation was itself the greatest revival since Pentecost a
spring-time of new life for the Church on such a scale that the instances
recorded in the apostolic era of three thousand being converted on one
day, and of a 'great multitude of the priests' becoming 'obedient to the
faith', no longer sounded incredible.
The Reformation, and still more, Puritanism, have been considered from
many aspects but it has been too often overlooked that the main features
of these movements, as, for instance, the extensiveness of their influence,
the singular position given to Scripture and the transformation in character
of the morally careless, are all effects of revival. When the Holy Spirit
is poured out in a day of power the result is bound to affect whole communities
and even nations. Conviction of sin, an anxiety to possess the Word of
God, and dependence upon those truths which glorify God in man's salvation,
are inevitable consequences.
Today men may wonder at the influences which changed the spiritual direction
of England and Scotland so rapidly four hundred years ago making them
Bible-reading nations and witnesses to a creed so unflattering to human
nature and hateful to human pride.
Innumerable writers have attempted to explain the phenomena by political
and social considerations. They have supposed that the success which the
historical Reformers and Puritans achieved occurred through a curious
combination of historical circumstances which cannot be expected to happen
again. To the Christians of that era, however, the explanation was entirely
different. They read in Scripture that when the Spirit is poured from
on high then the wilderness becomes a fruitful field [Isaiah 32:15]. They
read also, 'Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord
of Hosts' [Zechariah 4:6], and they attributed all the spiritual renewal
of their age to the mercy of God. In taking this view they understood
at once that all the successes of the Reformation were repeatable as repeatable
as the victories of the apostolic age for Scripture places no limitation
upon the Spirit's work of glorifying Christ and extending His kingdom.
Thus there was recovered at the time of the Reformation belief in what
may be called revival Christianity, and the attention which the Puritans
who followed gave to this area of truth profoundly influenced the following
centuries and gave to the English-speaking world what may be called the
classic school of Protestant belief in revival. So prevalent indeed did
this outlook become that until the nineteenth century all who wrote specifically
upon the subject represented the Puritan standpoint. Of these writers
the most notable who treated the subject of revival at length were Robert
Fleming [1630-1694] in his The Fulfilling of the Scripture, Jonathan Edwards
[1703-1758] in several works, and John Gillies [1712-1796] in his Historical
Collections Relating to Remarkable Periods of the Success of the Gospel.
The commencement of the Reformation in England and Scotland was marked
by a thirst for Scripture among the people. Tyndale's version of the New
Testament circulated in both realms from 1526 onwards and soon a train
of preachers appeared, at first small in number, whose ministry was attended
by effects which had not been commonly seen for many long centuries. Of
the Scottish reformer, George Wishart, martyred in 1546, we have this
account of his open-air preaching: 'He mounted an earthen fence, and continued
preaching to the people above three hours, and God wrought so wonderfully
by that sermon that one of the wickedest men in the country, the laird
of Sheld, was converted by it, and his eyes ran down with such abundance
of tears that all men wondered at him.'
Scenes like this were soon to become common in the northern kingdom. In
May, 1556, John Knox, running the gauntlet of the Catholic powers who
still controlled the country, preached for ten consecutive days in Edinburgh.
When he returned to Scotland again, in 1559, the spiritual revival became
general. 'God did so multiply our number', Knox writes of the growth of
the Protestant cause, 'that it appeared as if men had rained from the
clouds.' In a letter to an English friend written on June 23, 1559, he
says: 'Now, forty days and more, hath my God used my tongue in my native
country, to the manifestation of His glory. Whatsoever now shall follow,
as touching my own carcass, His holy name be praised. The thirst of the
poor people, as well as of the nobility here, is wondrous great, which
putteth me in comfort that Christ Jesus shall triumph for a space here,
in the north and extreme parts of the earth.'
Looking back on this glorious period the Scottish Church historian, Kirkton,
later wrote: 'The Church of Scotland hath been singular among the churches.
And, first, it is to be admired that, whereas in other nations the Lord
thought it enough to convict a few in a city, village, or family to himself,
leaving the greater part in darkness, in Scotland the whole nation was
converted by lump; and within ten years after popery was discharged in
Scotland. there were not ten persons of quality to be found in it who
did not profess the true reformed religion, and so it was among the commons
in proportion. Lo! here a nation born in one day.'
Even when allowance is made for the number who were carried by outward
persuasion rather than by inner spiritual conviction the history of the
Scottish Reformation bears eloquent record to the vast success which the
Gospel then had. It was a great revival.
The same holds true of England. Despite the severest penalties against
the possession of Scripture, and against unauthorized preaching, spiritual
concern spread rapidly in the later years of Henry VIII, after the appearance
of Tyndale's New Testament. During the reign of the boy King, Edward VI
[1547-1553], the public preaching of the Gospel by Latimer, Hooper, Bradford
and others was attended with remarkable success. An entry in the records
of St. Margaret's, Westminster, bears its own witness to the way in which
people pressed to hear the Word of God; it notes that one shilling and
sixpence was expended, 'for mending divers pews that were broken when
Doctor Latimer did preach'. Speaking of a few years later, John Jewell
writes thus of open-air gatherings in the City of London: 'Sometimes at
Paul's Cross six thousand persons were sitting together, which was very
grievous to the papists.' Details like these show that the English Reformation
was much more than a series of legislative Acts executed by the authorities.
Political decisions certainly entered in, but the policy of burning which
claimed nearly three hundred Protestants in the reign of Mary Tudor [1553-1558]
served to demonstrate that convictions were planted in many hearts which
no force could uproot. Upon the death of Mary the last English Catholic
monarch passed from the scene until the restoration of Charles II in 1660,
and two years later, in 1560, the Scottish Parliament formally abolished
the Catholic religion in Scotland.
The storm of persecution which blew itself out in Mary's reign did more
than test the roots of the new faith. By driving into temporary exile
a number of the younger spiritual leaders it brought them into closer
contact with the Reformed churches of the Continent. The influence of
the two Continental theologians, Martin Bucer and Peter Martyr, had already
been felt as they had taught at Cambridge and Oxford respectively in the
days of Edward VI, but now, as a congregation of some two hundred exiles
gathered at Geneva, the full weight of Calvin's ministry as mighty in
the pulpit as in the lecture hall was experienced at first hand. From
this haven in the Swiss Alps Knox and Christopher Goodman went to Scotland,
while the others returned to England after the accession of Elizabeth
I in 1558. Thereafter the two groups, 'the Covenanters', so-called in
the north because of the public and national covenants by which they affirmed
their common allegiance to God, and the Puritans, in England, developed
along parallel lines, like two streams originating at one fountain. The
fountain was not so much Geneva, as the Bible which the exiles newly translated
and issued with many marginal notes in 1560. Between that date and 1644
no less than 140 editions of the Geneva Bible were to be issued and, as
a modern writer says, 'it was read in every Presbyterian and Puritan home
in both realms'. When these two streams came together again at the convening
of the Westminster Assembly in 1643, their unanimity was given peerless
expression in the great truths of evangelical religion set down in the
Confession of Faith. In their understanding of the gospel and in practical
divinity the Christians of England and Scotland were then one, and the
expositions of the Scottish divines were as eagerly read in London as
were the writings of the English Puritans north of the Border.
The problem which confronted the English and Scottish evangelicals in
1560 was basically the same, namely the need to spread the gospel at the
parish level in countries which had become formally Protestant. In England
the main hindrance to this endeavour was the dead-weight of the Church,
which though 'reformed' by Acts of Parliament remained in many areas in
its old pre-reformation spiritual condition. For the next century the
'Puritans', as they were nicknamed in the 1560's, gave themselves to the
work of renewal in the national Church a work which was terminated by
the ejection of most of them after the passing of the Act of Uniformity
in 1662. The Puritan age proper spanned these hundred years.
In Scotland, from the outset, the Church of Scotland was free from the
entanglements which the semi-reformed state of the Church caused in England.
At one blow the old priesthood and episcopal hierarchy lost their places,
except in the still Catholic Highlands, and the leadership of the Reformed
Church was in the hands of Knox [c. 1514-1572] and his brethren. Yet the
Presbyterian form of church government, which set them free from the corruption
of prelacy and made possible the exercise of a scriptural church discipline,
was not long allowed to continue unimpeded. James VI of Scotland had no
more enthusiasm for experimental godliness than his mother, Mary Queen
of Scots, who was deposed from the throne in 1567, and shortly he set
himself against Knox's successors an activity in which he could engage
with all the more power when he also became James I, King of England in
1603. Thereafter, aided by willing bishops, he worked to shackle the independency
of the Scottish Church and to suppress the English Puritans. This was
the policy which led at length to the Civil War of 1642 and the defeat
of his son, Charles I.
Despite the force exerted against both Puritan and Covenanting causes
they both prospered and that because the rising tide of spiritual life
could not be effectively countered. A school of preachers arose in both
realms of whom it could truly be said that their gospel came not in word
only, 'but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance'.
[I Thess. 1 5].
In the south the University of Cambridge was the nursery for this school.
Thomas Cartwright gave the movement its momentum in the late 1560's when
his preaching in Great St. Mary's became so popular that 'the sexton was
fain to take down the windows, by reason of the multitudes that came to
hear him'. Cartwright and others were soon deposed for their boldness,
but the watchword of the movement continued to be, 'Pray for reformation
by the power of the word preached'. From the 1570's onward, friends of
Cartwright, such as Richard Rogers, John Dod and Arthur Hildersham, began
to put this into practice at the parish level. In the next thirty years
the few swelled to a flood, partly through the foundation of Emmanuel
College at Cambridge by Sir Walter Mildmay in 1584 ['to render as many
as possible fit for the administration of the Divine Word and Sacraments'],
and partly by the conversion of William Perkins.
Perkins, born in the year of Elizabeth's accession, became a student at
Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1577 when he was without any spiritual
concern. The great change came while he was still a student. At the age
of twenty-four he was made a fellow of his College and later, for over
fifteen years until his early death in 1602, preached at St. Andrew's
Church in the same university city. In these capacities Perkins had enormous
influence. Even in 1613, when Thomas Goodwin went up to Cambridge, he
tells us that 'the whole town was filled with the discourse of the power
of Mr. Perkins' ministry'. 'Master Perkins,' says Samuel Clarke, 'held
forth a burning and shining light, the sparks whereof did fly abroad into
all the corners of the kingdom.'
A similar power rested upon the ministry of Laurence Chaderton [1546?-1640],
the first Master of Emmanuel College, a position he resigned in favour
of another Puritan, John Preston, in 1622. For fifty years Chaderton was
also lecturer at St. Clement's, Cambridge, and when he laid down this
charge in 1618, at the age of seventy-two, it is said that forty ministers
begged him to continue, attributing their conversion to him. Thomas Goodwin
reports the words of a Cambridge friend who, speaking of the conviction
of sin which accompanied his preaching, declared that 'when he heard Mr.
Chaderton preach the gospel, his apprehension was as if the sun, namely
Jesus Christ, shined upon a dunghill'. On one occasion when Chaderton
had preached for two hours and promised to stop, he was interrupted by
a cry from the congregation, 'For God's sake. Sir, Go on, go on!'
By the end of the sixteenth century Cambridge was beginning to reap
results from the work done by the first generation of Puritans on the
parish level. Richard Rogers, for instance, who toiled with much success
at Wethersfield, Essex, from 1574 to 1618, saw Paul Baynes, one of the
former pupils at his parish school, become Perkins' successor in the lectureship
in St. Andrew's Church in 1602. Not wishing to have another like Perkins,
the authorities later suspended Baynes but not before he had been an instrument
in the conversion of many, including Richard Sibbes who himself became
one of the most successful preachers of the Puritan era. When Sibbes was
appointed lecturer at Holy Trinity, Cambridge, in 1610, additional galleries
had to be built to accommodate the crowded congregation. After 1615 he
was 'preacher' at Gray's Inn, London, but he returned to Cambridge, as
Master of St. Katherine's Hall, in 1626 and combined this with his London
post until his death in 1635. One of the fellows at St. Katherine's Hall
at this period was Thomas Goodwin who in a sermon preached at this time
reflected thus on the great work of God in Cambridge: 'If in any age or
in any coast it is or hath been full tide, it is now in England . . .
And this gospel hath made this kingdom and this town as a "crown
of glory in the hand of the Lord;" and "the glory of the whole
earth", as Jerusalem is called.'
It is when one looks at some of the crop produced from this school of
preachers in Cambridge that the Puritan age as an age of revivals reveals
itself. We can here only pause to give a few illustrative examples.
William Gouge [1575-1653], a student at Cambridge in Perkins' day, became
minister of the church at Black-friars, London, in 1608; here he remained
for forty-five years and six months. His general practice was to preach
twice on Sunday and once every Wednesday forenoon to a crowded church.
His expository sermons on Hebrews numbered more than a thousand, a work
which save for half a chapter he had completed for publication by the
time of his death. Of this man we read, God made him 'an aged father in
Christ . . . for thousands have been converted and built up by his ministry'.
His son, Thomas Gouge, followed him in the ministry and after his ejection
in 1662 did much to establish the gospel in the Principality of Wales.
Samuel Fairclough [1594-1677] left Cambridge in 1623 for Barnardiston
in East Anglia. Two years later he moved to Kedington, seventeen miles
from Cambridge, where he remained until the Great Ejection. At the time
of his settlement the place was characterized by profanity and ignorance,
but 'when he had been there sometime so great was the alteration that
there was not a family in twenty but professed godliness'. Many would
ride from Cambridge to hear Fairclough's Thursday 'lecture' and not till
long after were those days of spiritual blessing forgotten. Kedington
Church, Samuel Clarke tells us, was 'so thronged, that [though, for a
village, very large and capacious, yet] there was no getting in, unless
by some hours' attending before his exercise began; and then the outward
walls were generally lined with shoals and multitudes of people, which
came [many] from far, [some above twenty miles], so that you could see
the Church yard [which was likewise very spacious] barricaded with horses,
tied to the outward rails, while their owners were greedily waiting to
hear the word of life from his mouth'.
It is plain that scenes like this were far from rare in East Anglia in
the first half of the seventeenth century. Samuel Fairclough's own father,
Lawrence Fairclough, had seen spiritual prosperity in his ministry at
Haverhill, Suffolk, before his death in 1603. The successor to his work
in Haverhill was one of the most 'awakening' of all Puritan preachers
and one whose ministry was attended with a power which was still being
spoken of in the mid-eighteenth century. This was John Rogers, nephew
of Richard Rogers of Wethersfield, by whose financial support he studied
at Emmanuel from 1588 until 1592. In 1605 he was called from Haverhill
to be 'lecturer' in the beautiful vale of Dedham, later to be known throughout
the world by the paintings of John Constable but famous in the seventeenth
century for the great spiritual harvest which took place under Rogers'
ministry. 'Let us go to Dedham to get a little fire' became a common saying
among his contemporaries. One who went was Thomas Goodwin, while a student
at Cambridge, and many years later when he was Dr. Goodwin and President
of Magdalen College, Oxford, he reported his memory of it to John Howe.
Howe recorded it as follows: 'He told me that being himself, in the time
of his youth, a student at Cambridge, and having heard much of Mr. Rogers
of Dedham, in Essex, purposely he took a journey from Cambridge to Dedham
to hear him preach on his lecture day. And in that sermon he falls into
an expostulation with the people about their neglect of the Bible [I am
afraid it is more neglected in our days]; he personates God to the people,
telling them, "Well, I have trusted you so long with my Bible; you
have slighted it; it lies in such and such houses all covered with dust
and cobwebs. You care not to look into it. Do you use my Bible so? Well,
you shall have my Bible no longer". And he takes up the Bible from
his cushion, and seemed as if he were going away with it, and carrying
it from them; but immediately turns again and personates the people to
God, falls down on his knees, cries and pleads most earnestly, "Lord,
whatsoever thou cost to us, take not thy Bible from us; kill our children,
burn our houses, destroy our goods; only spare us thy Bible, only take
not away thy Bible". And then he personates God again to the people:
"Say you so? Well, I will try you a little longer; and here is my
Bible for you, I will see how you will use it, whether you will love it
more, whether you will value it more, whether you will observe it more,
whether you will practice it more, and live more according to it".
But by these actions [as the Doctor told me] he put all the congregation
into so strange a posture that he never saw any congregation in his life.
The place was a mere Bochim, the people generally [as it were] deluged
with their own tears; and he told me that he himself when he got out,
and was to take horse again to be gone, was fain to hang a quarter of
an hour upon the neck of his horse weeping, before he had power to mount,
so strange an impression was there upon him, and generally upon the people,
upon having been thus expostulated with for the neglect of the Bible'.
Another eye witness of John Rogers' ministry was John Angier who was under
his supervision for a period while he completed his preparation for the
ministry. 'Mr. Rogers,' says Angier, 'was a prodigy of zeal and success
in his ministerial labours and he recalled how a sense of the greatness
of eternal issues would at times overcome the crowded church at Dedham;
on one such occasion Rogers took hold of the supports of the canopy over
the pulpit with both hands 'roaring hideously to represent the torments
of the damned'. At another time when Rogers was taking a wedding service
he preached on the necessity of the wedding garment: 'God made the word
so effectual that the marriage solemnity was turned into bitter mourning,
so that the ministers who were at the marriage were employed in comforting
or advising those whose consciences had been awakened by that sermon'.
When the 'Great Awakening' began in America in 1740 and its critics complained
of the novelty of the outward signs of grief and conviction to be witnessed
in many congregations, the aged Timothy Edwards reminded them of how common
this had once been in the days of John Rogers.
We shall content ourselves with one further example of the extraordinary
measure of the Holy Spirit which rested upon much preaching in England
in the Puritan period. This time we can quote from one of the few personal
ministerial narratives which survive from three hundred years ago, the
Autobiography of Richard Baxter.
Baxter was born and spent his youth in Shropshire, a part of England then
comparatively little influenced by the Puritan movement. In childhood
he heard the word 'Puritan' only as a term of scorn in his neighbourhood,
where the villagers spent Sunday, except for the brief time in which Common-Prayer
was read, 'dancing under a May-Pole and a great tree, not far from my
father's door'. Books, however, did penetrate where there was no worthy
preacher. About the age of fifteen Baxter was awakened and went 'many
a-day with a throbbing conscience' through a reading of Edmund Bunny's
Resolution. Another book, obtained from a travelling pedlar, resolved
this state of sorrow: it was Richard Sibbes' Bruised Reed, 'which opened
more the Love of God to me, and gave me a livelier apprehension of the
Mystery of Redemption, and how much I was beholden to Jesus Christ'. In
these new convictions he was further confirmed by the loan of part of
William Perkins' Works from a servant of his father.
Baxter's theology never reached the full scriptural maturity of the school
of Sibbes and Perkins, partly, perhaps, because he did not share the opportunities
which many had who trained at Cambridge in these years. Nevertheless as
an awakening preacher to the conscience, with constant emphasis on the
need for personal godliness, Baxter attained to the front rank among the
later Puritans. His most memorable ministry was exercised in Kidderminster,
Worcestershire, first for two years preceding the Civil War of 1642-6;
then resuming in the late 1640's when peace was again restored, and through
until 1660. Looking back on the great change which had been wrought in
Kidderminster, Baxter wrote about the year 1666: 'When I came thither
first, there was about one family in a street that worshipped God and
called on his Name, and when I came away there were some streets where
there was not past one Family in the side of a street that did not so;
and that did not, by professing serious godliness, give us hopes of their
sincerity . . . And God was pleased also to give me abundant encouragement
in the Lectures which I preached abroad in other places; as at Worcester,
Cleobury, etc., but especially at Dudley and Sheffnal; at the former of
which [being the first place that ever I preached in] the poor Nailers
and other Labourers would not only crowd the Church as full as ever I
saw any in London, but also hang upon the windows and the leads without
. . . so that I must here, to the praise of my dear Redeemer, set up this
pillar of remembrance, even to His praise who hath employed me so many
years in so comfortable a work, with such encouraging success!'
Baxter goes on to write of the general spiritual success which marked
the Commonwealth period and refutes the sneers of those in the days of
Charles II who attributed the 'godliness' of the former age to the material
profit which men obtained by their hypocrisy:
'I know in these times you may meet with men that confidently affirm that
all religion was then trodden down, and heresy and schism were the only
piety; but I give warning to all ages that they take heed how they believe
any . . . I must bear this faithful witness to those times, that as far
as I was acquainted, where before there was one godly profitable Preacher,
there was then six or ten; and taking one pl ace with another, I conjecture
there is a proportionable increase of truly godly people, not counting
heretics or perfidious rebels or church-disturbers as such: But this increase
of godliness was not in all places alike: For in some places where the
ministers were formal, or ignorant, or weak and imprudent, contentious
or negligent, the parishes were as hard as heretofore. And in some places,
where the ministers had excellent parts, and holy lives, and thirsted
after the good of souls, and wholly devoted themselves, their time and
strength and estates thereunto, and thought no pains or cost too much,
there abundance were converted to serious godliness. And with those of
a middle state, usually they had a middle measure of success And I must
add this to the true information of posterity, that God did so wonderfully
bless the labours of his unanimous faithful ministers, that had it not
been for the faction of the Prelatists on one side that drew men off and
the factions of the giddy and turbulent Sectaries on the other side, [who
pull'd down all government, cried down the ministers, and broke all into
confusion, and made the people at their wits' end, not knowing what religion
to be of]; together with some laziness and selfishness in many of the
ministry, I say, had it not been for these impediments, England had been
like in a quarter of an Age to have become a land of Saints, and a pattern
of holiness to all the world and the unmatchable paradise of the earth.'
The testimony of Philip Henry [1631-1696] may also be cited in regard
to the prevalence of evangelical religion in the Commonwealth period.
Henry went up to Christ Church, Oxford, in 1647, and within a few years
when Thomas Goodwin became President of Magdalen College and John Owen,
Dean of Christ Church, the University enjoyed a period of spiritual life
comparable to that known in Cambridge in earlier years. Others then studying
or teaching at the University included Joseph Alleine, John Howe and Stephen
Charnock. Later in the seventeenth century, when the spiritual blight
which accompanied the Restoration had done its work, the fashionable Spectator
diverted its readers with a tale how Goodwin examined applicants at Magdalen
not so much on Latin and Greek as on the state of their souls. The examination
of one fearful boy, 'bred up by honest parents, was summed up in one short
question, namely, whether he was prepared for death?' Ridiculous this
might seem to the Spectator's readers, but Matthew Henry learned differently
of the Oxford of those days from his father:
'He would often mention it with thankfulness to God, what great helps
and advantages he had then in the University, not only for learning, but
for religion and piety. Serious godliness was in reputation, and besides
the public opportunities they had, there were many of the scholars that
used to meet together for prayer, and Christian conference, to the great
confirming of one another's hearts in the fear and love of God, and the
preparing of them for the service of the church in their generation. I
have heard him speak of the prudent method they took then about the University
sermons on the Lord's day in the afternoon; which used to be preached
by the fellows of colleges in their course; but, that being found not
so much for edification, Dr. Owen and Dr. Goodwin performed that service
alternately, and the young masters that were wont to preach it, had a
lecture on Tuesday appointed them.'
Philip Henry spent the first eight years of his ministry at Worthenbury
in Flintshire, and thereafter at Broad Oak, Flintshire, until his death
in 1696. In those later years the great benefit which England had formerly
enjoyed became the more apparent. 'He would sometimes say,' writes his
son, 'that during those years between forty and sixty [i.e. 1640-1660],
though on civil accounts there were great disorders, and "the foundations
were out of course", yet, in the matters of God's worship, things
went well; there was freedom, and reformation, and a face of godliness
was upon the nation, though there were those that made but a mask of it.
Ordinances were administered in power and purity; and though there was
much amiss, yet religion, at least in the profession of it, did prevail.
This, saith he, we know well, let men say what they will of those times.'
[Reprinted from the Banner of Truth Magazine, no. 72, September 1969]
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