What is there to say about Richard Baxter’s The Reformed Pastor that has not already been said? It is, perhaps, one of the greatest books ever written by a pastor for pastors. It challenges, encourages, and equips the man of…
The corridors of history are filled with surprising twists and abrupt turns. Some philosophers, noting how the cogs of history seem to turn abruptly upon the smallest of happenings, have sometimes discussed what popular culture refers to as “the butterfly…
On December 22nd, 1666, the Market-Cross of Edinburgh was filled with a crowd of teary-eyed spectators. The cause of their lament was the young man of twenty-six-years-of-age who was being hung from the gallows before them. His name was Hugh…
If there is one haunting line from literature that may encapsulate the American and Christian spirit regarding Salem, Massachusetts, it may be Nathaniel Hawthorne’s famous line from The House of Seven Gables: “Shall we never get rid of this Past?…
If you were to travel to the Reformation Wall in Geneva, Switzerland, or to the Huguenot Memorial in Franschhoek, South Africa, you would likely happen across that famous Latin phrase, “Post Tenebras Lux.” Taken from the Latin Vulgate translation of…
The Scottish Covenanters are not nearly as well remembered as they ought to be these days. If it wasn’t for the Scots, and the Covenanters in particular, there is good reason to believe that Western Civilization would look far, far…
For the previous post in this four-part series, part 1, part 2, part 3. Perhaps the most general Puritan principle on habits was their effects in promoting Christlikeness. The Puritans appealed to this in both a positive and a negative…
The sermon was the minister’s attempt through reason to encourage faith as it affected this life and the next. They were committed to a style that was plain but not dull. Each minister was pledged by his own creed to…
The Puritan preacher’s concern was light and heat; light from the pure Word of God to penetrate the darkness of the heart and soul of the hearer, and heat from the passion and pathos of the heart and soul of…
The Puritan preacher saw the role of preaching much differently than we do today because he saw the role of the preacher so much differently than we do today. Rather than seeing the preacher as just “one of the boys”…
