Wednesday @ Westminster: What’s in a Name?
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.” (“Romeo and Juliet,” II, ii, 1–2) Juliet expressed her love for Romeo in these words. Her point was not that she…
Category Meet the Puritans
Does the Trinity Really Matter? Part 3
Several posts ago I began a series of short posts on Owen’s teaching on communion with the Trinity under the analogy of building an iPad (part 1, 2). This third and final post presents his teaching on all three…
John Owen on Delighting in Worship
Like me, many young reformers of my generation and even younger came out of a myriad of non-Reformed but evangelical churches into a Reformed church. Recall the struggles. One of them, no doubt, was over the theology and practice of…
The Puritans and Their Evangelistic Model
A condemned prisoner was climbing the gallows when William Perkins said to him, “What man! What is the matter with thee? Art thou afraid of death?” The prisoner confessed that he was less afraid of death than of what would…
Zachary Crofton (1626-1672) and the Baptismal Burden of Proof
God wants Christians to baptize their infant children. It took me a while to make such a claim. I was converted at 21 and spiritually raised in Arminian Baptist circles. Eventually, I embraced the “doctrines of grace” and joined…
The Necessity of a Human Mediator
We really have a crazy-sounding religion. We confess that God exists as one, yet three. Totally irrational! We confess that one of those three, the Son, became a human by being born of a virgin. What a fantasy! We confess…
Broaden Your Horizons
What do you do when two parties within the same Reformed tradition approach the issues from such different perspectives that they end up seeing one another as the devil? In the previous article in our series on lessons from an…
John Knox on Predestination and the Attributes of God
“This is our plaine confession, which we simply and boldly do affirme, that Rom. 8., this is a stable and immutable foundation, ‘The Lord knoweth his own, that no creature is able to seperat his Elect frome his love, which…
Book Review: Unity in Diversity
Randall J. Pederson, Unity in Diversity: English Puritans and the Puritan Reformation, 1603-1689, vol. 68, Brill Studies in Church History (Leiden: Brill, 2014). 380pp. Hardcover. *Click here for details on our current giveaway of this book. “Puritanism” is…
October’s Free Resource
In 2016, every two months (Feb, Apr, June, Aug, Oct, Dec) 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.…