Meet the Puritans

In 2016, every two months ( February , April , June , August, October, December) we will be producing a Meet the Puritans Resource, which you will be able to find linked under Our Resources . These will be classic texts with introductions, footnotes, and modernized language. The purpose is to...

Last time we looked at the life of John Knox (c. 1514-1572) up to his imprisonment on the French galley ships. Today we pick up the story as Knox is released. Knox in England Eventually Knox was released – no one is quite sure why – and he made his way to England in 1549, now aged 35. Edward VI is...

Chad B Van Dixhoorn, Confessing the Faith: A Reader’s Guide to the Westminster Confession of Faith (Banner of Truth, 2014). Chad van Dixhoorn once described a dream of his in which he was puzzling over the handwriting of the original minutes of the Westminster Assembly. In his dream, as he agonized...

Every born again child of God who places true faith in Jesus Christ will struggle with assurance in various degrees over the course of their lives. It's in this context that what we call "the signs of grace" are so helpful to the soul. These sign are means by which we may know whether we are in a...

The Situation Today There exists much confusion about worship today. This remains true even in churches that claim the title "reformed" and those claiming the phrase reformata, semper reformanda (“reformed and always reforming”). Typically, the approach of most churches has been, “Whatever God has...

I have referred to the puritan John Ball in a number of posts thus far. He is not exactly a household name, even within the relatively small Reformed world. Mention the term puritan and the names William Perkins, Richard Baxter, John Owen, James Ussher, and John Bunyan come to mind, not John Ball...

If someone looks at [God's commands] in the wrong way and says that they are heavy to bear, he is merely revealing his own weakness. —Andreas Presbyter, Catena on 1 John 5:3 When I was in college I was required to read G.K. Beale's edited volume, The Right Doctrine from the Wrong Texts? Essays on...

“So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured.” (Hebrews 13:12-13) We’ve paused at the half-way point in our reading of the Puritan Paperback, Sermons of the Great Ejection...

John Knox (1514-1572), perhaps as influential as any in the journey to modern Scotland, is far from loved in his homeland. A BBC news reported a couple of years ago asked the public in Edinburgh who Knox was. Some had no idea, others laid at his door all the faults of modern Scotland. This one...

William M. Schweitzer, God is a Communicative Being: Divine Communicativeness and Harmony in the Theology of Jonathan Edwards . London: T...