Two Thomas Manton Gems

My friend Crawford Gribben, at his blog Anablepo , has drawn attention to a series of sayings of Thomas Manton (1620-1677) in a one-page broadsheet, Words of Peace, or Dr Mantons Last Sayings (London, 1677). Here are two excellent ones—the first one applies to some Christian bloggers I have occasionally read! And the second, well the second has a large application in our day, when, like the Athenians, so many love to entertain only the latest novelty:

• 32. Some men love to live in the fire, and be always handling the red hot questions of the Age with passion and Acrimony: but alas! this doth no good.

• 9. When a people begin to Innovate, ‘tis an hard matter to keep them within the bounds of any Moderation.

For other sayings from the list, see the blog of Ian Clary: Anablepo - Gems from Thomas Manton.

Puritan Balance about Coming to Christ

One of the great dangers of the current recovery of biblical truth, namely evangelical Calvinism—in which I heartily rejoice—is for some to veer too far to the right and end up in genuine hyper-Calvinism. To be sure, some of what is claimed as hyper-Calvinism is not that at all. It is simply that those making the charge of hyper-Calvinism have never really encountered robust Calvinism before. But this not to say that there is no such thing as hyper-Calvinism in which passion for the salvation of the lost is a thing hardly thought about and zeal for the expansion of the Kingdom of God simply something by-the-by. The Puritans—as in many things—can be such great guides here. They knew where to find the balance when it came to divine sovereignty and human responsibility. Listen to this text by John Flavel (c.1630-1691), said to be Spurgeon’s favourite Puritan, on Matthew 11:28—“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Flavel is discussing what it means to come to Christ.

“Coming to Christ shows the voluntariness of the soul in its motion to Christ. True, there is no coming without the Father’s drawing; but that drawing has nothing of compulsion in it; it does not destroy, but powerfully and with an overcoming sweetness persuades the will. It is not forced or driven, but it comes; being made willing in the day of God’s power. Psalm 110:3.” [The Method of Grace (New York: American Tract Society, n.d.), 201].

John Bunyan: A Source for a Baptist Spirituality of Prayer

My Baptist heritage has generally affirmed that when it comes to praying, written prayers are really not acceptable. Prayer has to be extemporaneous. One key source for this conviction is John Bunyan (1628-1688) and his influential treatise I will pray with the Spirit (1662). Rejecting written prayers

Bunyan had been arrested in 1660 for illegal preaching and at his trial in January, 1661, John Bunyan was asked by Sir John Kelynge, one of the judges, to justify his absence from worship in the local parish church. Bunyan, true to his Puritan heritage, stated that “he did not find it commanded in the word of God.” [A Relation of the Imprisonment of Mr. John Bunyan in W. R. Owens, ed. John Bunyan: Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1987), 95].

Kelynge pointed out that prayer was a duty. Bunyan agreed, but he insisted that it was a duty to be performed with the Spirit’s aid, not by means of the Book of Common Prayer, which set out the structure for the worship services of the Church of England. Bunyan proceeded to argue:

“Those prayers in the Common Prayer-book, was such as was made by other men, and not by the motions of the Holy Ghost, within our hearts. … The scripture saith, that it is the Spirit as helpeth our infirmities; for we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us, with sighs and groanings which cannot be uttered. Mark, … it doth not say the Common prayer-book teacheth us how to pray, but the Spirit.” [A Relation of the Imprisonment of Mr. John Bunyan in Owens, ed. John Bunyan: Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, 95, 96].

The background to Bunyan’s convictions

Bunyan’s outright rejection of the use of written prayers cannot be understood apart from the view of his Puritan contemporaries and forebears. John Calvin (1509-1563), the spiritual father of Anglophone Puritanism, had defined prayer as essentially an “emotion of the heart …, which is poured out and laid open before God.” At the same time Calvin was tolerant of written prayers. Some of his spiritual children among the English Puritans, like Richard Baxter (1615-1691), preserved both of these emphases.

Many of the Puritans, however, took Calvin’s view of prayer to its logical conclusion and saw little need for written prayers. Walter Cradock (c.1610-1659), a Welsh Congregationalist preacher and author, stated forthrightly: “When it may be the (poor Minister) … would have rejoyced to have poured out his soule to the Lord, he was tied to an old Service Booke, and must read that till he grieved the Spirit of God, and dried up his own spirit as a chip, that he could not pray.”

John Owen (1616-1683), Bunyan’s friend and admirer, similarly maintained that “constant and unvaried use of set forms of prayer may become a great occasion of quenching the Spirit.” Owen conceded that the use of written prayers is not intrinsically evil. But since the Spirit whom God had given to the believer is “the Spirit of grace and supplication” (Zechariah 12:10), the believer has all the resources that he needs for prayer. Moreover, Owen affirmed that the “Holy Ghost, as a Spirit of grace and supplication, is nowhere, that I know of, promised unto any to help or assist them in composing prayers for others; and therefore we have no ground to pray for him or his assistance unto that end in particular.”

These criticisms of the Book of Common Prayer accurately reflect Puritan dissatisfaction with both the type and content of the prayers in this book. Moreover, undergirding the approach of both Cradock and Owen to prayer was an intense interest in the work of the Spirit in general and the accompanying recognition that only with his empowering could God be rightly served and worshipped. Bunyan shares these perspectives on prayer and the Spirit, but states them in his own expressive way.

The impact of Bunyan’s view detailed

Bunyan’s interest in extemporaneous prayer, quickened by his debate with Kelynge, found written form not long after his trial in I will pray with the Spirit. There are no surviving copies of the first edition. The second edition, dated 1663, appears without a bookseller’s or publisher’s name on the title page. The title page simply states “Printed for the author”. The book was probably too hot for any publisher to handle! And no wonder when Bunyan declared near the end of the book: “Look into the Gaols in England, and into the Alehouses of the same: and I believe, you will find those that plead for the Spirit of Prayer in the Gaol, and them that look after the Form of men’s Inventions only, in the Alehouse.” [Richard L. Greaves, ed., John Bunyan: The Doctrine of the Law and Grace unfolded and I will pray with the Spirit (Clarendon Press, 1976), 294].

Bunyan’s treatise on prayer helped to secure what has become a leading attitude to written and read prayers: an attitude of extreme wariness.

Bunyan’s treatise can also be seen as a declaration that without the Spirit not only our prayer-life, but also our entire Christian walk is hollow, stale and lifeless. It is often forgotten that Bunyan and his fellow English Baptists were vital participants in what Ronald Reeve has described as the Puritan “rediscovery of the Holy Spirit as the mainspring of all Christian activity.” [“John Wesley, Charles Simeon, and the Evangelical Revival”, Canadian Journal of Theology, 2 (1956), 205]. The claim by some contemporary authors and theologians that no post-Reformation movement until this past century has really given the Spirit his due is shown to be quite false by the interest that the Puritans had in the person and work of the Spirit.

Bunyan, like most of his fellow Puritans, had an intense desire for the experience of the Spirit, for he knew that the Spirit of Christ alone could lead him to God. Thus, at the conclusion of the treatise, Bunyan expresses the hope that: “Christians…pray for the Spirit, that is, for more of it, though God hath endued them with it already …The Lord in mercy turn the hearts of the people to seek more after the Spirit of Prayer, and in the strength of that, pour out their souls before the Lord.” [Greaves, ed., John Bunyan: The Doctrine of the Law and Grace unfolded and I will pray with the Spirit, 271, 285].

Spirit & Structure–A New Year’s Agenda from John Owen

In a recent blog, I have been looking at the perennial tension between Spirit and structure. Lest any think I have erred in the direction of structure, let me share some thoughts from one of my favourite authors, the Puritan John Owen (1616-1683). And in this way indicate “my agenda” for the new year! In his own day Owen was known as the “Calvin of England” [Allen C. Guelzo, “John Owen, Puritan Pacesetter”, Christianity Today, 20, No. 17 (May 21, 1976), 14]. More recently, Roger Nicole has described Owen as “the greatest divine who ever wrote in English” and J. I. Packer says of him that during his career as a Christian theologian he was “England’s foremost bastion and champion of Reformed evangelical orthodoxy.” [Cited Guelzo, “John Owen, Puritan Pacesetter”, 14; J. I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness. The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 1990), 81]. Owen’s chief interest, though, was not in producing theological treatises for their own sake, but in order to advance the personal holiness of God’s people.

For Owen, genuine spiritual experience is vital. Owen asserts that ultimately it is the Spirit who gives the believer such experience: “He gives unto believers a spiritual sense of the power and reality of the things believed, whereby their faith is greatly established…”[A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit (Works, 4:64)].

It is these inner experiences that motivate external attendance on the various ordinances of the Christian life. “Without the internal actings of the life of faith,” Owen writes, “external administrations of ordinances of worship are but dead things, nor can any believer obtain real satisfaction in them or refreshment by them without an inward experience of faith and love in them and by them.” [The Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually Minded (Works, 7:435).].

The importance that Owen placed on spiritual experience can be seen clearly and distinctly in the following quote—pardon its length:

“[L]et a gracious soul, in simplicity and sincerity of spirit, give up himself to walk with Christ according to his appointment, and he shall quickly find such a taste and relish in the fellowship of the gospel, in the communion of saints, and of Christ amongst them, as that he shall come up to such riches of assurance in the understanding and acknowledgment of the ways of the Lord, as others by their disputing can never attain unto. What is so high, glorious, and mysterious as the doctrine of the ever-blessed Trinity? Some wise men have thought meet to keep it veiled from ordinary Christians, and some have delivered it in such terms as that they can understand nothing by them. But take a believer who hath tasted how gracious the Lord is, in the eternal love of the Father, the great undertaking of the Son in the work of mediation and redemption, with the almighty work of the Spirit creating grace and comfort in the soul; and hath had an experience of the love, holiness, and power of God in them all; and he will with more firm confidence adhere to this mysterious truth, being led into it and confirmed in it by some few plain testimonies of the word, than a thousand disputers shall do who only have the notion of it in their minds. Let a real trial come, and this will appear. Few will be found to sacrifice their lives on bare speculations. Experience will give assurance and stability.” [A Practical Exposition Upon Psalm CXXX (Works, 6:458-459)].

Here then is a strong emphasis upon an experiential Christianity, one that is rooted in the Spirit’s application of biblical truth to the heart of the believer. And it is this sort of Christianity that we are seeking to promote to the honour and glory of the Triune God, one that preserves the biblical balance of Spirit and structure. May this God, the true and living Lord of the universe, enable in the year to come.

The Spiritual Brotherhood of the Puritans

In his address at the inauguration of the Puritan Resource Center, located in the library of Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary (www.puritanseminary.org), Sinclair Ferguson, senior pastor-elect of First Presbyterian Church in Columbia, South Carolina, spoke on “The Puritans: Can They Teach Us Anything Today?” [PRTS Update 2, No.4 (December 2005), 1-5]. It is vintage Ferguson. He mentions four things in particular that we need to learn from the Puritans, those ecclesial Reformers of the British Isles and New England who longed for Spirit-wrought revival.

• The “significance of spiritual brotherhood in the movements of the Holy Spirit” (p.2-3)
• The necessity of “the recovery of the pulpit for the recovery of the church” (p.3-4)
• Driving the Puritans was “their deep sense of the infinite glory of a Triune God” and thus they mining of Scripture produced a theology with a “Trinitarian character” (p.4-5)
• The Puritans were men and women devoted to the Bride of Christ: they “recognized with great clarity the significance of the church in the purposes of Christ” (p.5)

To all of these points I heartily say amen!

I was especially struck by the first point: the need for a spiritual brotherhood—Christians with “a common vision and a common burden, a common prayer life, and therefore a common goal” (p.3). What was true of Puritan leaders like Richard Greenham, John Cotton, and Richard Sibbes—men bound together in a spiritual family tree—is true of all true movements of the Spirit. Here, as Ferguson emphasizes, one thinks of the Cappadocian Fathers or the circle of friends around Augustine (p.2). Or one might think of two “Puritan” style groups in the 20th century, the circle of men around Martyn Lloyd-Jones and those men mentored by William Still of Aberdeen.

And the same must be true if we are going to see any forward movement of the Spirit in our day. We, who have been made to delight in the sovereign grace and glory of the Triune God, need to learn to esteem one another highly for the sake of the Gospel. This does not mean becoming wishy-washy in our convictions. But it does mean breaking down the barriers erected by distrust and pride and the pettiness of turf-wars. It means ongoing displays of genuine humility and repentance. O for a clear eye centred on the things of first importance and not bedimmed by the things of this passing world.

Some of this is taking place. I am thinking of the upcoming Together for the Gospel conference hosted by Mark Dever, Ligon Duncan, C.J. Mahaney, Albert Mohler with special guests John MacArthur, John Piper, and R.C. Sproul in Lousville next April. But we need to see far more initiatives like this one. May God be gracious to us.

George Swinnock on Printing Sermons

This past summer a friend of mine, Stephen Yuille, who is finishing a PhD thesis on the thought of the Puritan George Swinnock (1627-1673), introduced me to the work of this Puritan leader. I really knew little about Swinnock beyond the fact that he was an English Puritan. I relished the thought of learning more about Swinnock since I am always delighted to make the acquaintance of a fellow-traveler on the way to the heavenly kingdom. Of course, in Swinnock’s case he has already arrived! Swinnock’s piety and thinking is well encapsulated in one key thought: his passionate commitment to living life in the fear of God [Stephen Yuille, “The whole duty of man”: The fear of God in the spirituality of George Swinnock”, Eusebeia, 2 (Spring 2004), 43]. In Yuille’s thesis on Swinnock, I came across an intriguing text that fits well with the bookish theme of my last two posts. In his The Christian Man’s Calling [The Works of George Swinnock, M.A. (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1868), I, 57], Swinnock offers this fascinating observation about why “ministers are often more exact in their printing than in their preaching”:

“...men print, in a sense, for eternity. Sermons preached, or men’s words, pass away with many like wind—how soon are they buried in the grave of oblivion! but sermons printed are men’s works, live when they are dead, and become an image of eternity: ‘This shall be written for the generation to come.’ ”

Having just preached three times this Lord’s day I sense something of the truth of Swinnock’s observation.

When one compares, for instance, the printed corpus that we have of the sermons of George Whitefield (1714-1770)—pitifully few compared to the stream of preached speech that poured forth from his anointed lips—with that of the New England preacher Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)—a truly massive amount of sermonic text—one can but confess the rectitude of Swinnock’s remarks.