Editor’s Note: This post has been adapted with permission from William Perkins: Architect of Puritanism, now available at ReformedResources.org. William Perkins was born in 1558 in Marston Jabbet, in Warwickshire, a few miles north of Coventry. We know relatively little about…
The Westminster Standards teach that the post-fall covenants in Scripture are gracious. Although the covenants are distinct and different in some respects, they are the same in substance. This is why the Standards speak of one covenant of grace “under…
Though he only published a sermon during his own lifetime, Stephen Charnock (1628–1680) wrote quite a bit on Christology, salvation, and theology proper. Discourses Upon the Existence and Attributes of God is one such work, and it continues to receive…
What is essential in an adequate list of Divine attributes? Summarizing the attributes of God is a difficult task, and hardly two lists of divine attributes agree. In this light, many people have asked, “Where is the love of God…
The Westminster Standards teach that Christians are obligated to obey the Ten Commandments. The fact that the Larger and Shorter Catechisms include a detailed exposition of the Ten Commandments indicates this. Moreover, chapter 19 of the Westminster Confession of faith…
Satan downplays the seriousness of sin so that we think it poses no danger to our soul. “But it’s such a harmless sin,” he tells us, “It’s so small. No one will be hurt. It’s just a little pride, a…
A while back, I published a relatively critical review of Crawford Gribben’s biography on John Owen. Gribben’s Owen was initially jarring to me. In my previous assessment of his work, I noted that the book was a mixture of “scholarly…
“And he said, Nay; but I will die here.”— 1 Kings 2:30 In his sermon on the above text, Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) points out that participation in outward Church activities and ordinances cannot save, no more than Joab was saved…
Westminster divine Anthony Burgess addressed Antinomianism in his book Vindiciae Legis: A Vindication of the Moral Law and the Covenants. In a passing comment, Burgess noted that God may have allowed “Antinomian errour” to grow in popularity in order rebuke…
David Clarkson and Soul Idolatry, Part 2: The Remedy Applied Our last post identified the problem of soul idolatry from David Clarkson’s book, Soul Idolatry Excludes Men out of Heaven. For Clarkson, soul idolatry occurred in general “when the mind and…
