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Puritans: Their Origins and Successors

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This book is a collection of addresses given by the Reverend Lloyd-Jones. He presents the puritan view of a wide range of issues relevant for the church today including revival, engagement with culture and the nature of the church. He also introduces us to the historical figures such as Whitfield, Owen and Edwards and briefly analyzes the historical development of the puritans and the methodists.

Reading the book shattered many of my assumptions, provoking me to ponder a perspective refreshingly different from much of the contemporary evangelical rhetoric. Learning of the faith of those who walked before us gives us a wider lens with which to critically examine our understanding of scriptures and our worldview. Also gone now from my thinking are the caricatures which society (and sadly, the church) use to malign these imperfect, yet Godly men. O, that we may recapture the passion and the single-mindedness for the glory of God exemplified by them.

This 400 page book is a collection of transcribed addresses given at the annual Puritan Conferences in England from 1959 to 1978. Dr. Lloyd-Jones is quick to stress that the study of the Puritans must not be a merely academic exercise; otherwise we are in danger of lapsing into a barren intellectualism that is of no use at all. Instead, in each address he is concerned to show how the subject matter is relevant to the issues facing them in their day: issues of church-state relationship, unity in the church, and revival. He argues that Puritanism was not simply a concern about doctrine, but a "desire to carry the reform, which had already happened in the matter of doctrine, further into the nature and life and polity of the Christian church."

One example, drawn from his last address, on John Bunyan, illustrates how a study of the Puritans can be very relevant to our present day concerns. In his own day (the late 17th century) the nature of the church was a hotly disputed issue, even among the Puritans, who were certainly not of one mind here. Bunyan himself was a Separatist, meaning that he considered that the church consisted of visible saints. In this regard he stood opposed to the Roman Catholics, the Anglicans, and the Presbyterians. He also considered himself an Anabaptist, believing in baptism by immersion. However for him this issue was one of secondary importance. He argued that a believer already has that which baptism signifies, that being his participation in the death and resurrection of Christ. The sign, therefore, though important, should not be something that disrupts communion between Christians. For it is the thing that water baptism signifies that is important. Bunyan wrote these things and was strongly attacked in writing by some of his strict Baptist brothers. He held his ground but hated the controversy which he was convinced was over non-essentials, and so after responding to his critics he never mentioned the subject again. A reader of his "Pilgrim's Progress" would have no idea what his denominational affiliation was. A further testimony to the liberty which he believed in can be seen in the fact that though he himself was a believer in adult baptism by immersion, he had three of his children baptized in infancy.

Lloyd Jones' chapter on John Bunyan has certainly given me, who has struggled much over the question of baptism, much to think about. His discussions of John Knox, Jonathan Edwards, and others truly bring these distant Puritans to life and show how they are relevant to the issues we face in today's church.