Getting Started with the Puritans
Over the last few years I’ve gradually focused my reading in such a way as to address specific issues in my spiritual growth and my ministry. Like many of us I am just not as scholastic as I should or need to be. Unfortunately, there for a while I laid down some of the heavier works and turned to blogs. Blogs are great for the commute in to work but they won’t and can’t sustain you. Of course, the Bible is always going to win out when considering what reading takes priority.
God’s word should always be the mainstay of any spiritual diet. You can, however, supplement your diet in such a way as to optimize your growth. I found, after all these years, that reading the Puritans has been a profound blessing both spiritually and personally. These men continue to disciple me as I turn from one to yet another in my reading. If you feel like you’ve “hit the wall” in your reading and devotion time I would encourage you to try the Puritan genre.
I started with an excerpt from John Newton’s letters to a friend. “The Advantages of Remaining Sin” was a sweet read and opened my eyes to a style of writing I’d never seen before. I followed this with “The Bruised Reed and Smoking Flax” by Richard Sibbes and I was hooked. Since then I’ve given myself to reading numerous Puritans and I can truly say that, in addition to God’s word, these readings have been a definite aid to me.
In the posts that follow Tony Reinke lays out his experience with the Puritans and captures, for the most part, the same journey I experienced. I hope that you find these posts helpful as you consider the Puritans. I’ve placed all the posts in one post here so you can scroll down through them OR you can click on the links below and go directly to Tony’s posts (he’s done all the work for you). Enjoy!
Part 1: The delights and pains of Puritan study
Part 2: The rules of a Puritan library
Part 3: The people of a Puritan library
Part 4: Why our effective use of the Puritans begins with our Bibles
Part 5: Print book searches
Part 6: Electronic searches
Part 7: Using the Christian Classics Ethereal Library
Part 8: To quote or not to quote?
Part 9: The strategy of building a Puritan library
Part 10: Concluding thoughts, part 1
Part 11: Concluding thoughts, part 2
Part 1: The Delights and Pains of Puritan study
Here begins a several part study on building (and using) a Puritan library of your own. Of all the areas of my library, the Puritan section is the most useful.
The “Puritans” are a group of people I (very) loosely define as faithful Christians of the 16th and 17th centuries, as well as those who carried on the Puritan tradition into the 18th and 19th centuries. My definition includes John Bunyan and John Owen (true Puritans), Jonathan Edwards (post-Puritan), and Charles Spurgeon (who carried the Puritan tradition). Other names you may not be familiar with include Brooks, Boston, Burgess, Sibbes, Flavel, Reynolds, Ames, Manton, Rutherford, Newton and Clarkson. You will become more familiar with the names as we continue on.
This series is based upon two fundamental convictions.
First, the church today benefits most from leaders and preachers who are burdened to present expositional messages – sermons drawn from principles clearly demonstrated in scripture. The preacher is to “preach the Word” by taking every precaution in the name of accuracy and then exhorting and encouraging by earnest application.
Secondly, an efficient and workable library of the best Puritan literature is a great way to faithfully preach and apply scripture to the hearts of your hearers. The Puritans are no substitute for careful exegesis and use of contemporary commentaries. But once the foundational research is complete, the Puritans will open up new threads of understanding and application on your text. Pastors and congregations today truly need the Puritans.
J.I. Packer once wrote, “the great Puritan pastor-theologians – Owen, Baxter, Goodwin, Howe, Perkins, Sibbes, Brooks, Watson, Gurnall, Flavel, Bunyan, Manton, and others like them – were men of outstanding intellectual power, as well as spiritual insight. In them mental habits fostered by sober scholarship were linked with a flaming zeal for God and a minute acquaintance with the human heart. All their work displays this unique fusion of gifts and graces. In thought and outlook they were radically God-centered. Their appreciation of God’s sovereign majesty was profound, and their reverence in handling his written word was deep and constant. They were patient, thorough, and methodical in searching the Scriptures, and their grasp of the various threads and linkages in the web of revealed truth was firm and clear. They understood most richly the ways of God with men, the glory of Christ the Mediator, and the work of the Spirit in the believer and the church. And their knowledge was no mere theoretical orthodoxy…”
The delights of Puritans
I would not be writing this series if I were not personally acquainted with the great fruitfulness of Puritan study. The Puritans have matured my understanding of God, the Christian life, the idols of my heart, marriage and parenting. I have a deeper appreciation for the Cross, grace and the resurrection because of their words.
And here are a few other delightful benefits from the Puritans…
1. Cohesive biblical wisdom. As you can already see, the Puritans are an incredible source of biblical insight and application. They were skilled at seeing the big picture of the Christian life and then breaking that picture down into its various facets and details. Each sermon and every detail was presented in light of the big biblical themes and tied back to God Himself. What you will see in the coming weeks is that (as Packer would say) we “need” the Puritans. Even to this day there are no substitutes for their wisdom and perception in drawing us back to the big picture of God.
2. Well outlined sermons. Typical Puritan sermons provide the greatest help in my expositional research. These sermons are well outlined and very easy to navigate. Typically the whole purpose of the sermon is summarized in one nifty sentence towards the beginning of the sermon. And because these sermons are so well-organized, you can sift through them fairly quickly.
The pains of the Puritans
I won’t mislead you, there are a few pains involved in Puritan research.
1. Old words and Roman numerals. Four hundred year old literature comes with difficulties. There are words that are no longer in use today. And don’t think you can get along without memorizing Roman numerals. These are critical when you are researching Psalm lxxiii and verse 25. Be prepared to read a few sentences two or three times. Patience is important.
2. Puritan sermon style. There are some great Puritan commentaries. But for me, the most useful Puritan literature are the printed sermons (this series will focus specifically on these sermons). A typical Puritan sermon covers just one verse and rarely in the context of a broader book study. So here is the rub: The contemporary researcher (preaching through an entire book like Ephesians, for example) will need to collect and have a proper index to find Puritan literature on a given verse or topic. This is no small challenge and thankfully there are researchers who have given us great resources here (and some for free!). But if you can master this problem, and I will show you how, a library of Puritan sermons will come alive.
3. Errors. We must be on guard against the error of thinking that the Puritans were infallible. The Puritans had their errors. But this is the glory of old books. As C.S. Lewis once said, the errors in old books are easier to see than the errors in new books. Old errors are less deceptive, just as hindsight is 20/20.
For the delights and the pains, there are no substitutes for the Puritans. For every sermon I consult my trusted Puritan friends and grow from their wealth of wisdom and unparalleled seriousness with the bible. They will stretch you, challenge you and keep you accountable. But most importantly, they will cast a stern eye when you feel the pressure to compromise the biblical message.
Part 2: The Rules of a Puritan Library
In the remaining weeks we will be spending a lot of time discussing how to efficiently use the Puritans. In this and the next post, I want to take some time to define what a solid Puritan library looks like. Today we lay the ground rules for what follows.
It is my view that the most useful Puritan Study (or Library) will be well-indexed and use both printed volumes and electronic files.
E-books vs. Print books
Open this question, and memories of Ali vs. Frazier or Tyson vs. Holyfield come to mind. Debate whether the Puritans will endure in e-books or print books, and the two sides strap on the gloves and enter the ring for a showdown.
Let’s step back from the debate and make some clarifications.
No question, the computer has changed the way we pass words around. More and more Puritan books are being scanned into .pdf format for use on a computer, and many of these are being converted into text files for easy searching.
Here’s a little more info about the two types of electronic Puritan books commonly available today.
PDF picture files. Some electronic publishers take the Puritan texts and scan them into a computer as a picture file. The pictures can be seen on your computer and are an identical copy of the book page. Usually these are not text-recognized so you cannot conduct a text search or copy and paste. These files are very common with the Puritans but they also make for large and cumbersome files. (My powerful Apple PowerBook G4 can hardly keep up with a 100 MB file off the hard drive.) So unless you have the most powerful computer on the market, it is hard to efficiently use these large .pdf files.
Text files. These are more rare because they demand careful editing of the raw text. The raw text is generated by a computer deciphering words from the printed page through a scan of the page. Because many Puritan books are old editions, the computer doesn’t perfectly transcribe the words and so time-consuming editing is critical. This text file makes for much smaller and convenient file. But even better, they are searchable. There is a growing collection of these files freely available at www.CCEL.org . The Puritans are in the public domain so anyone can scan and distribute the texts freely. More about that later.
Back to the ring. Who is going to win the fight? The old dusty volume or the energetic young e-book? If we look at e-books and print books honestly, we see that they are more compatible than at first glance. In fact, I would argue that e-books and print books make a better matrimonial match than a boxing match.
For example, print books travel easily. A volume travels in the airport and across the country, without plugs or electricity. You can underline in it and write marginal notes. On the other side, the e-book text can be searched in seconds. But who spends hours at their computer reading through a Puritan e-book? (Ouch, my eyes water at the thought.) Print books are much easier to read. Print books usually include very helpful indexes at the end and since e-books are often repaginated, those indexes become worthless in text files. With e-books, I can keep hundreds of volumes on my laptop when I’m out of town.
My point: We need both e-books and printed books. Let them live in peace.
One example
Probably the best example I can give you is my use of the 2-volume Works of Jonathan Edwards. (No preacher should be without them, Martyn Lloyd-Jones said.) And no preacher should be without the free text files either.
The two work beautifully together. The text file is easy to search and the print volume is nice to read.
Let’s say we are preaching through Ephesians chapter 2, and we want to see what Edwards had to say. We open the text file to the first volume. And since the text file uses Roman numerals we do a quick
search on “Eph. ii.”. We see there are 35 references to Ephesians 2 in the first volume of Edwards’ Works in about 3 seconds.
The reference you see on the screen shot looks like an interesting one. Notice this text file (from the CCEL) includes the printed page number in the left column. I open the Banner of Truth volumes in my library to page 628. Where was this reference by Edwards? A sermon? A book? What was Edward’s main point in using Ephesians 2 here? These questions are more easily answered by reading the printed book.
Wasn’t that easy?
Now here is the shocker: I personally believe e-books actually make the printed books MORE valuable! They certainly make the printed volumes more useful. [One idea: Puritan publishers should consider bundling their printed volumes with a free CD of electronic volumes.]
Remember Thomas Edison who invented the phonograph (‘sound’ + ‘writing’) in 1876? Well Edison proudly predicted that by the year 2000 audio books would eliminate the need for printed books. He was wrong. Printed books, like diamonds, are forever.
Q: Should I pay for Puritan CD-Roms?
Generally speaking I say “No,” don’t buy Puritan CD-Roms. As you will see there are exceptions to this rule but most Puritans are going online at an amazing rate. Just look at the files available on Puritan John Owen from CCEL (here). And all these are free.
Because almost all of the Puritans (including Spurgeon) are public domain, nobody has the rights to the text itself. Anyone can take the text and publish them as they wish. And that is what people are doing online.
Wait patiently. Pretty much all the important Puritan files you see on these expensive CD-Roms sets will be available for free (and in searchable text form) in the coming years. So if you own the CD-Roms already consider unloading them on Ebay while they still have value. Invest your money in printed books.
Indexes
Indexes are the key to the Puritan Study I am laying out before you. I don’t have the time to sift through 100,000 pages of Puritan literature to create my own index (and I’m certain you don’t either). So the best Puritan Study will be built from the indexes currently available.
The following two indexes are especially valuable. (Ironically, one is electronic and one printed.)
1. A free online index. This index lists the Puritan sermons by sermon text. It’s especially valuable because it includes an index to the sermons of Charles Spurgeon. There is no topical index. Later in the series I’ll show you how to get around this hitch.
2. A Guide to the Puritans by Robert P. Martin (Banner of Truth, 0851517137). This volume comprises two indexes (by text and by topic). Like the free resource above, this book is a handy textual reference to the Puritan sermons (minus Spurgeon). But what makes this especially valuable is the topical index of the sermons. You can look up any topic – like ‘Christ > Pre-incarnation existence of’ – and see that both Flavel and Manton preached sermons on the subject. No true Puritan researcher should be without this volume.
So these are the ground rules for my Puritan Study. I value both the e-books and printed volumes. And a good index is critical.
Tomorrow we will look specifically at the most useful (and best indexed) of the Puritans.
Part 3: The People of a Puritan Library
So far we’ve talked vaguely about some group of people named ‘The Puritans.’ Today we name names.
Like I said, this list does not include Puritan commentaries. You should consider getting Matthew Henry’s commentary on the bible. It is very useful and mature in its biblical application. And of course (Reformer) John Calvin’s commentaries are likewise valuable. Both are available in print for a reasonable price and online for free.
The list
I have used the following 14 Puritans in a number of situations but mostly in expositions. These men are faithful and trustworthy friends. I have been pushed deeper into scripture as these men faithfully expound and apply the bible. Many of their sermon illustrations have been reworded for my hearers. I have shared hundreds of quaint and beautiful quotations from these men. And I have personally been fed and refreshed as each of these men exalt in the glory of Jesus Christ, teach me to conquer (mortify) sin, and steer my affections away from the temporary and towards the eternal.
The Shepherd’s Scrapbook is proud to offer this list of Puritans (ordered by each author’s usefulness and availability. See pictures of these sets). …
1. Charles Haddon Spurgeon (63 sermon vols.; CD-Rom). Not a Puritan (obviously) but he is the great synthesizer of the best of the Puritan literature (see the Treasury of David for example).
2. Jonathan Edwards (2 vol. works; printed)
3. John Bunyan (3 vol. works; printed)
4. Thomas Boston (12 vol. works; printed)
5. Thomas Manton (22 vol. works; printed)
6. John Owen (16 vol. works; but especially vols. 1,2 and 6; printed)
7. John Flavel (6 vol. works; printed)
8. Richard Sibbes (7 vol. works; printed)
9. Jeremiah Burroughs (misc. books; printed)
10. Thomas Brooks (6 vol. works; printed)
11. Thomas Goodwin (12 vol. works; printed)
12. John Newton (6 vol. works; printed)
13. David Clarkson (3 vol. works; printed)
14. Edward Reynolds (vols. 1,4,5,6 of 6 vol. works; printed)
(Note: Spurgeon’s sermons work better in electronic format because of their sheer size and cost in print format.)
At the close of this series on building a Puritan Library, I will be reviewing each set in order to highlight the strengths. Plus, I will share a few tricks necessary to exhaust each of these incredible resources.
Honorable mention
The following Puritans are very helpful. However, these men are either poorly indexed or hard to find (or both). These include the works of William Ames, William Bates, Stephen Charnock, William Perkins, Samuel Rutherford and Thomas Watson.
The bottom line
The bottom line is this: God’s grace is magnificent. He alone allows the funding for these Puritans to be reprinted. He gives publishers the burden to print them today (although these efforts bring very little, if any, profit). He gives men like Robert Martin the generosity to share his Puritan index so we can all benefit from his work.
Before we consider the costs of such a library and the tricks to using one effectively, we should take time this weekend to thank God. His Spirit makes these ancient resources available so the Word can go out into the world today with the earnestness worthy of the Gospel.
Part 4: Why our effective use of the Puritans begins with our Bibles
In this installment I will be showing you how the Puritans are made useful by our initial use of the bible. In the next two parts we will be looking more specifically at how to search printed books and then how to search electronic books.
Starting with the bible
The big problem with Puritan sermons is that most of us preach differently than the Puritans. They preached on one verse and often jumped all over scripture. We seek to preach through books of the bible and in 4-8 verses (or more) at a time.
A proper use of the bible is really one of the most important keys to unlocking the wisdom of the Puritans.
King James Version
Whether you use the KJV in your sermons or not, use of the Puritans requires an understanding of the KJV. No exceptions. The wording of this translation permeates all Puritan language.
Here is an example of how important the KJV is in Puritan research.
Psalm 16:11
I personally preach from the ESV. But when I study the Puritan sermons, I keep the KJV close.
For today, and in the following weeks, I selected Psalm 16:11 as the example passage we will be researching.
ESV Psalm 16:11 You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
KJV Psalm 16:11 Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.
When we look at electronic searches, I will break these translation distinctions down a little more. But what is important here is to note the difference in language. First, the Puritans would not say “in your presence” (ESV) but “in thy presence” (KJV). And even the spelling is different (“fullness” vs. “fulness” or “forevermore” vs. “for evermore”). These may seem like small distinctions, but they make a huge difference in electronic searches. Being aware of this will greatly enhance your Puritan research accuracy.
Breaking the passage down
The Puritans often scatter biblical phrases in their works. So while the Puritans only preached on one text, by the time they were done preaching the sermon on that one verse, several dozen other references were been brought in. In other words, a sermon on Psalm 36:8 (“They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures”) will probably reference Psalm 16:11 (“in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore”).
Before we find these cross-references, we need to break our sermon text into its various parts. In Psalm 16:11 I see three principles that are especially interesting to me …
KJV Psalm 16:11 (a) Thou wilt shew me the path of life: (b) in thy presence is fulness of joy; (c) at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.
(a) What is the nature of this path of life? Why does God have to show it to me?
(b) What does it mean to be in God’s presence? Can I live in His presence now?
(c) What are these pleasures forever? Can I find an illustration? Can I experience these pleasures now?
You may have many more questions but these are the three questions I will ask my Puritan friends as I study Psalm 16:11.
But we are not yet ready to invite our Puritan friends over.
Cross-references
I don’t use the Puritan sermons for their keen exegetical insights into the text (I let contemporary Hebrew and Greek scholars make those). My main use of the Puritans is for their explanation and application of broad biblical themes. They make concepts come alive in cross-referencing, illustration and application.
It is especially important that we find other biblical texts that say the same thing. The Puritans can make the same conclusion from many different angles using many different texts. Their one-text-at-a-time preaching style is misleading. The Puritans were experts at keeping the big picture in view and bringing in other passages from Genesis to Revelation.
Here are some cross-references that I believe will help me understand Psalm 16:11 better and will open up new paths in my Puritan research. I found them using the Thompson’s Chain Reference Bible and the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge.
(a) The path of life… Prov. 2:19; Prov. 5:6; Prov. 12:28; Matt. 7:14; Acts 2:28
(b) To be in God’s presence… Ps. 17:15; Ps. 21:6; Matt. 5:8; Eph. 3:19; Jude 24; Rev. 7:15-17
(c) The pleasures forever… Ps. 36:8
The Puritans
Now we are ready to search the Puritan sermons. From our observations of the biblical text we have four research options. Beginning with the most important to the least, here are the four research options in order.
(i) Primary text as sermon text. Example: A full sermon on Psalm 16:11.
(ii) Primary text as indexed text. Example: A sermon on Ps. 38:6 that references Ps. 16:11.
(iii) Cross-reference text as sermon text. Example: A full sermon on Ps. 38:6.
(iv) Cross-reference text as indexed text. Example: A sermon on Jude 24 that references Ps. 38:6.
Printed volumes are most helpful for my research in levels (i), (ii) and (iii). I can comfortably read a full sermon on a text (i and iii). And the text index at the end of a printed volume helps a lot in the search (ii). Electronic searches are helpful in all four, but especially in search (iv) when I want to search several resources quickly.
[Note: Often I have enough research material from searches (i) and (ii) that I don’t need to proceed into levels (iii) and (iv).]
Two searches
There are two types of searches … We can search printed works (or those .pdf picture files) and we can also perform electronic text searches. Depending upon your library, you may have more printed works or more electronic books (ideally we want both electronic files and the printed books together).
In the next two posts we will discuss the specifics of the print and electronic searches.
Part 5: Print book searches
We have spoken much about the Puritan literature; today we begin looking at real research. In the next post we will specifically cover e-Puritan searches, but today we are concerned with using printed Puritans.
Printed indexes
One of the most important resources available to the Puritan researcher are the printed indexes. This is true in both the works of a single author and in the Puritan index by Robert Martin (A Guide to the Puritans).
Thomas Manton
There are two reasons why Puritan Thomas Manton is my homeboy. First, his sermons are filled with rich exposition and pastoral warmth. When I really need a quote to convey a deeper truth, Manton is my source. And second, whoever edited his complete works did an incredible job (and an incredible service to preachers today) by including a detailed index. His 22-volume works (available on CD-Rom) conclude with over 300 pages of textual and topical indexes! A dream for the researcher.
From the screenshot to the right, you can see two pages fro
m Manton’s topical index.
But Manton is not alone. The Complete Works of John Bunyan, Thomas Brooks, John Flavel and Richard Sibbes all come with excellent topical indexes.
Topical index
As an aside, I was speaking with a close friend recently who admitted that keeping a list of quotations was very difficult for him. One of the great difficulties to making an effective index of quotations is an inability to view an individual quote within the big framework. Some will read a quote about the power of the Cross without thinking how it would be properly indexed (ex. Christ > the Cross > effects of > power in believer).
To me, this is why the Puritans are liberating. Once you determine the general content of your sermon, you can go searching for great quotations! Surrounding yourself with quality Puritan literature will lessen the importance of a lengthy quote index.
As another example, I don’t have many quotations indexed on the sobering topic of God’s eternal judgment upon sinners. And I don’t need to. All I need to remember is that Jonathan Edwards preached a few incredible sermons (like Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God) and John Bunyan preached another ver
y quotable sermon on the same subject (A Few Sighs from Hell). Allow a little time to read and soak these sermons in and you will have all the quotes you could imagine on the subject.
This makes the topical Puritan index by Robert Martin, A Guide to the Puritans, especially important. Because while I knew that Edwards and Bunyan preached on the subject of God’s judgment, I was unaware that John Flavel (3:129-153), Thomas Boston (8:347-375) and Thomas Brooks (5:113-145) had also preached important sermons on the subject.
The wealth of Puritan sermons make personal quote indexes unnecessary.
Back to Psalm 16:11
As we began in Part 4, we are researching Psalm 16:11 as an example. And in studying our text we have three avenues of research open to us with these printed volumes.
(i) Primary text as sermon text. Of our 14 top Puritans, none preached sermons where Psalm 16:11 was their primary passage (Why not? I cannot say). If you are searching on a text and you find two or more sermons where your text is the primary text, you may have all the content necissary for your Puritan research. But our problem here is a common one. On Psalm 16:11 we will need to dig deeper.
(ii) Primary text as indexed text. I will use the scripture index from Manton as an example. If you look to the screenshot to the right you will see that Psalm 16:11 was a topic of concern for Manton throughout his ministry. We see this especially in the following works in the following places: (volume: printed page) 9:455; 12:474; 14:469; 15:400; 16:192; 19:236; 20:465; 22:19. And these references come from just one of our 14 Puritan friends.
(iii) Cross-reference text as sermon text. If you need more information from the cross-references, follow the steps for (ii) except with other texts like Ps. 36:8.
You can use these principles on any text or topic study. Just find the biblical passages and track down the references in the scripture index or look up the topic in the topic index. The printed editions of the Puritan works remain important for these indexes.
Examples
Now a few references from Manton that I found as a result of my research.
Manton, 9:455 – “What can be found in the creature is but a drop to the ocean in comparison of what a believer findeth in God himself. God is to them an overflowing fountain of all felicity … Here (in this life) it admits of increase and decrease; but there the soul is so filled that it cannot receive any more: Ps. xvii. 15, ‘As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness.’ … In heaven the soul shall be filled with unspeakable joy and delight. What delight is to the sense, that joy is to the mind. Three things are necessary to delight – a faculty, or power of the soul capable of pleasure; and then the thing itself; which being brought to the mind, doth stir up delight. As in bodily things, colors, fruits, tastes, pleasure consists in the near union and conjunction of these things. The more noble the faculty, the more excellent the object; the nearer the conjunction, the greater the delight and pleasure. Now in heaven our faculties are perfected: God is the subject, and there is a near conjunction. Oh! What embraces between him and the soul!”
Manton, 22:19 – “The tree of life is gone, when paradise was defaced by the flood; but God hath provided a better life by the death of his Son, that we should live for ever, both in body and soul, eternally in heaven. Nothing else be this deserveth to be called life. The bodily life is short; it is a dying life or a living death. It floweth from us as fast as it cometh to us; but this never fadeth, but endureth for ever. The bodily life is subject to pain and misery, but the heavenly, full of joy and endless glory. The bodily life is supported with meats and drinks, but there God is all in all. The bodily life is consistent with sin, but this life is pure and perfect” (references to 1 John 3:2, Jude 2-4 and Psalm 16:11).
The options of what we now do with the quotations will be the subject of a later post. My point here is to show that it took just five minutes to find these two references from the works of Manton. I have six others references remaining in the works of Manton and another 13 Puritans I have yet to open.
By using these printed scriptural and topical indexes, it should be obvious that Puritan sermons provide the valuable depth we need in our sermon preparation.
Part 6: Electronic searches.
What would the Puritans think of the Internet, CD-Roms, DVDs and pdfs?
We know the Puritans were innovative. They broke new ground, always seeking to refo
rm the church and re-think ministry. It is fitting that at least one Puritan scholar warns preachers today from lazily copying the style and language of Puritans who lived 300 years ago. “It would be very un-Puritan,” he said. To be Puritanically minded today is to re-think how we can best communicate the message of the Cross to our generation (rather than resting on the language and methods of a previous generation).
We can presume, therefore, that the Puritans would be enthusiastic in the ways their works can be condensed into digital numbers and stored in a tiny little part of a hard drive.
Without question, the digital age has made the Puritans more accessible today than during any other generation. These digital files are essential to any efficient library of Puritan literature.
Precision in Electronic searches
Electronic text searches are precise. For fun, misspell a word in a Google search (like “recieve”) and you can find everyone on the Internet who needs a dictionary. This precision also means we can find information very quickly.
This speed and precision are great, but they pose challenges when we try to search old language like the Puritans. Precision is critical.
E-search awareness
In an earlier post, we talked briefly about the awareness required when performing a text search. The Puritans used Roman numerals for biblical chapters (ex.: “Ps./Psa. xvi. 11.”). They also used the language and spelling of the King James Version. These points are very important when running a text search of the Puritans.
Defining the search
Knowing exactly what you are looking for is the first key in conducting a text search of the Puritans. Let’s break our passage down in light of this. Here again is our text in the ESV (which I preach from) and the KJV (which they preached from):
ESV Psalm 16:11 You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
KJV Psalm 16:11 Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.
In our printed book searches, we were concerned with finding scriptural references in sermons and then looking into topical indexes. When we search the Puritan e-books, we are also looking for scriptural references but also a new option – phrase searches.
Here are the details on the two searches most useful in e-Puritan literature:
(a) Scripture reference searches. Like I said earlier, the Puritans used Roman numerals. There are programmers who are going through these old works and tagging the files so they can be searched without needing to use the Roman numerals. But this helpful technology has not hit most Puritan works yet, so precision is the key. On our passage in Psalm 16:11 we will want to search for “Psa. (or “Ps.” depending upon the author) xvi. 11”.
(b) Phrase searches. The Puritans are filled with biblical phrases and language of the KJV. We can find these biblical phrases littered throughout their sermons. It is essential that we become familiar with the language of the KJV and pick out specific phrases we seek to research (the shorter the phrase, the easier to find).
For our purposes in this post we will search for three phrases in Psalm 16:11. These include, “Thou wilt shew me the path of life,” “fulness of joy,” and “pleasures for evermore.”
So going into our searches we have our list.
Again, technology will make all of this searching more helpful and useful in the coming years. For now, I must open up specific works on my computer. Let’s begin with a Puritan, Jonathan Edwards, whose printed works lack both a textual and topical index. To navigate these works we must search the text files (free from the CCEL here).
Jonathan Edwards
With our computers open, let’s conduct a text search of the 2-volume works of Jonathan Edwards. I’ve opened the files and run searches on each of our phrases.
Here are the search terms we are looking for and their frequency in the two volumes.
The results (“phrase”, vol. 1 / vol. 2):
“Psa. xvi. 11” = 0/1.
“Thou wilt shew me the path of life” = 0/0
“fulness of joy” = 4/6
“pleasures for evermore” = 0/7
Notice what happens in Edwards’ works. He only mentions Psalm 16:11 by name one time in the entire 2-volumes! It would be easy to think Edwards placed little emphasis on this passage when, in fact, he did. We know this because Edwards actually references the passage 17 times!
This search illustrates beautifully the importance of phrase searches in the Puritans (and consequently why we must use electronic books). If we were simply looking in our printed indexes we would never find these references. Only e-books give us the precision and speed to search on single phrases.
For the Puritans, the biblical language permeates everything they write. Those seventeen references in Edwards to phrases of Psalm 16:11 contain some very helpful quotes like this one on the content of our pleasures forever,
Edwards, 2:893: “There they shall dwell in habitations of sweet delight and pleasure in paradise; there they shall drink of those rivers of pleasures for evermore; there they shall dwell in perfect light and perfect love; there they shall see and converse with God and Christ, and with angels and glorious spirits, and shall contemplate the wonderful love of God to men in sending his only Son; there shall they contemplate the glorious love of God to them, the love he had to them before the foundation of the world. There shall they see and know what love Christ had to them, that influenced him to lay down his life for them; and shall behold the beauty and excellency of Christ, and see face to face, and know even as they are known.”
What a beautiful quote! It takes Psalm 16:11 and focuses our attention back to the Cross.
Not only are these electronic search principles important with the files we store on our hard drive, but they are also important for searches we conduct on the Internet. One growing source of Puritan text files is providing pastors with a wealth of content to search. The website is the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. It’s free and next time I will show you how to maximize this Website in your Puritan research.
Part 7: Using the Christian Classics Ethereal Library
I don’t like clothes. At least not for my birthday.
When it’s my birthday I hope for books: old used books, new shrink-wrapped books, leather-bound, clothbound or paperback books. It’s all the same. My family
and friends, however, don’t buy me books because few people know what I need or want and I’m not about to tell them. So I get shirts and polos and (with a winter birthday) a lot of fleece and sweatshirts. These are nice and generous gifts, but they are not as delightful as free books.
If you have never walked into the Christian Classics Ethereal Library, you are in for a special treat. There they offer hundreds of free books. Good ones. Some you want, some you need (and some to leave on the shelf). The point is: these books are downloadable, searchable and delightful as they are free!
Who’s Who at the CCEL
Many of the Puritans we have talked about on the digital shelves of the CCEL include Charles Spurgeon, John Owen, Jonathan Edwards, John Bunyan, Thomas Boston, John Flavel and Thomas Manton.
Beyond our Puritan Study, there are several other helpful references including the works of Augustine, Alexander MacLaren, Horatius Bonar, John Calvin, Stephen Charnock, John Foxe, William Gurnall, Matthew Henry, Charles Hodge, Martin Luther, A.W. Pink, Samuel Rutherford, Thomas Watson, Richard Baxter and Isaac Watts.
Take time to browse around and become familiar with the depth of free books available. There is also a very helpful topical index to locate books on given topics (click “Browse” > “Browse by Topics”).
Searches
We covered a majority of the tricks to electronic searches in the last post. Use those same textual and phrase searches here.
From my own experience at the CCEL, it seems the phrase searches are most fruitful because the various authors use too many different formats for verse references (ex.: ‘Ps. xvi. 11.’ / ‘Psal. 16: 11’).
An added bonus of the CCEL (as opposed to computer files) is that searches can
be done on the entire CCEL library with one click. Search on “pleasures for ever” and you will be searching their entire database!
But you can also run specific searches. Here is one example of a search I ran specifically of author John Owen and the phrase “Psa. xvi. 11” (see screenshot to the right).
There are several types of specific searches you can perform on the CCEL and they have a helpful search guide that does not bear repeating here.
Search Examples
After about 5 minutes of searching, here are three examples I found on a phrase search of “presence is fulness of joy.” Also, I’ve included a little information how I would use the quotations (though the next post in this series will address this topic more fully).
(i) John Owen teaches us that true faith is revealed when we seek the presence of God, knowing (again by faith) that it’s in His presence that our greatest joy springs. By contrast a weak faith would reveal itself in the heart by a lack of anticipation of God’s eternal presence, and a greater display of worldliness. This second point is not found here in Owen, but made obvious from a moment’s meditation upon Owen’s quote. I personally would not quote this passage to my listeners.
John Owen – “When the soul hath a view by faith (which nothing else can give it) of the goodness of God as manifested in Christ — that is of the essential excellencies of his nature as exerting themselves in him — it reacheth after him with its most earnest embraces, and is restless until it comes unto perfect fruition. It sees in God the fountain of life, and would drink of the “river of his pleasures,” Ps. xxxvi. 8, 9 — that in his “presence is fulness of joy, and at his right hand are pleasures for evermore,” Ps. xvi. 11. It longs and pants to drink of that fountain — to bathe itself in that river of pleasures; and wherein it comes short of present enjoyment, it lives in hopes that when we “awake, it shall be satisfied with his likeness,” Ps. xvii. 15. There is nothing grievous unto a soul filled with this love, but what keeps it from the full enjoyment of these excellencies of God. What doth so naturally and necessarily, it groans under. Such is our present state in the body, wherein, in some sense, we are “absent from the Lord,” 2 Cor. v. 4, 8, 9. And what doth so morally, in the deviations of its will and affections, as sin — it hates and abhors and loathes itself for. Under the conduct of this love, the whole tendency of the soul is unto the enjoyment of God; — it would be lost in itself, and found in him, — nothing in itself, and all in him. Absolute complacency herein — that God is what he is, that he should be what he is, and nothing else, and that as such we may be united unto him, and enjoy Him according to the capacity of our natures is the life of divine love.” (from Christologia, chapter 13)
(ii) Puritan John Flavel emphasizes both the joy Christ must have experienced in the presence of God in His earthly life, and also the depth of Christ’s sacrifice through the incarnation. Maybe not points I would bring out in a sermon on Psalm 16:11, and certainly not a quotation I would read to my hearers, but it is still an interesting thought that reminds me to tie every sermon back to Christ and the Cross.
John Flavel – “(1.) We cannot but conceive it to be a state of matchless happiness, if we consider the persons enjoying and delighting in each other: he [Christ] was with God, John 1: 1. God, you know, is the fountain, ocean and centre of all delights and joys: Psal. 16: 11, “In thy presence is fulness of joy.” To be wrapt up in the soul and bosom of all delights, as Christ was, must needs be a state transcending apprehension; to have the fountain of love and delight letting out itself so immediately, and fully, and ever lastingly, upon this only begotten darling of his soul, so as it never did communicate itself to any; judge what a state of transcendent felicity this must be. Great persons have great delights.” (from Fountain of Life Opened Up, sermon 2)
(iii) Puritan Richard Baxter (whose printed works are a bit hard to find) is a highly recommended source of sermon material. Notice there is no biblical text reference in this passage (common in some Puritans). His point here is that without revelation we cannot understand that we have access to the full pleasures of God. This is an invitation from God in His own language, highlighting the importance of revelation. If the preacher were to update a few words and read the second half of this quote with increasing speed and volume it would beautifully illustrate the power of this concept – we are invited to experience the full joy of God’s presence!
Richard Baxter – “Thou wilt show me the path of life; in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.” What presumption would it have been, once, to have thought or spoken of such a thing, if God had not spoken it before us! I durst not have thought of the saints’ preferment in this life, as Scripture sets it forth, had it not been the express truth of God. How unbecoming to talk of being sons of God—speaking to him—having fellowship with him—dwelling in him and he in us—if this had not been God’s own language! How much less durst we have once thought of shining forth as the sun—of being joint heirs with Christ—of judging the world—of sitting on Christ’s throne—of being one in him and the Father—if we had not all this from the mouth, and under the hand of God! But hath he said, and shall he not do it? Hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?—Yes, as the Lord God is true, thus shall it be done to the man whom Christ delighteth to honor.” (from,Saints’ Everlasting Rest, chapter 1)
Discriminate
Some searches will produce hundreds of references. You need to scan for authors you trust and avoid trying to look at every reference. This highlights the importance of taking several hours to become familiar with the resources at the CCEL. The more you know about who is referenced there, the less likely you will be to jump at the first search result you see. Take your time. Especially become familiar with the authors I mentioned at the beginning.
Quote? Paraphrase?
So now you have 300 Puritan quotations and a sermon to preach in three days. What do you do with all the material? Paraphrase? Quote directly? Next time we will answer the question: To Quote or Not to Quote?
Part 8: To Quote or not to Quote?
“The great Puritan preacher Jeremiah Burroughs once said of this passage …”
If you think this is the only way (or the best way) to integrate the Puritans into your sermon, this post is for you.
That was me a few years ago. I was introduced to the Puritans and fell in love, going bonkers quoting this Puritan and that Puritan. My listeners, (unfortunate 
college students), were forced to endure 150-word quotes by John Owen. I’m certain as soon as I said “In the words of one Puritan…” they began thinking about their homework or dinner or (living off 3 hours of sleep each night) simply blacked out.
In this post we answer the questions regarding the best use of the Puritan quotations.
Authority
First, it must be stated that there is both a good way and a very poor way to use the Puritans.
The poor way is to force a Puritan thought or quote on a text that does not complement the clear meaning of the biblical text. The quote may be good and it may be biblical, but if it does not fit with the text it appears the preacher is forcing another authority upon the text for his own end. Your hearers know when you are not being straight with them, and they will dismiss you and your quote.
The best use of the Puritans (or any other source for that matter) is to reinforce the plain meaning of a text. We should let the text stand on its own and bring in quotations and thoughts that drive the thought home. Another way to say this: The text of scripture should authenticate the Puritan quote, not the other way around.
For example, let the biblical text teach on the importance of God’s perfect holiness. Let John Owen then come along and instruct the Christian to find their delight and affection in that perfect holiness of God.
I can say after several years of preaching experience, no source will better help you reinforce the plain meaning of scripture than the Puritans. They cherish what God cherishes, delight in what God delights, and hate what He hates. If ever there were people suited for complementing the text of scripture, the Puritans are it.
Narrow the quotes
After studying our printed Puritans, e-Puritans, and online Puritan sources, we have a mountain of material that may fit our sermon. What do we do?
It is essential (before writing your sermon notes) to carefully sift through the quotations for the most appropriate. I have found that 10 quotes per sermon is more than enough for me. And in selecting only the 10 best, there are dozens of other excellent quotations that hit the cutting-room floor. You may have a ton of great material, but the truth is that your sermon will become more powerful the more focused it becomes.
Buffer zone
As an aside, I formerly pasted directly all interesting quotations into my Microsoft Word sermon note file and then tried to incorporate all the material into my sermon. I would discourage this practice. It’s important that preachers use a buffer between what you find in your research and your sermon notes themselves.
For me, I use a Moleskine notebook for my quotes. When I write my sermon out (usually in about one day) I consult this notebook. I am amazed how many quotes simply do not fit my sermon! Had I started typing out my sermon with 50 quotes and points from various day’s thoughts, I could never write a clear sermon. It would be confusing and broken. Use a buffer.
Now what?
Let’s say we have our 10 best quotations that fit our sermon notes well. No what? We have three separate options.
(1) Directly quote. I am still committed to directly quoting the Puritans (even to college students). My series of photo cards entitled “Quotes from Dead Guys with Cool Hair” was an attempt to introduce my students to the Puritans. The cards were geared towards issues in the college life and were well received.
Here are some examples of direct quotes.
In a sermon on Galatians 6:12-15, Thomas Manton provided me an excellent quotation to explain the reciprocating crucifixion of the believer to the world and the world to the believer. It’s from my sermon delivered on 12/17/04,
Manton: “And truly to eye our pattern, Christ, hanging and dying on the cross will pierce the world to the very heart. He was contented to be the most despicable object upon earth in the eyes of men. If Christians be not ashamed of their head and glorious chief, this spectacle should kill all our worldly affections, and make us despise all the honor, and riches, and pomp, and pleasure of the world, the favor or frowns, the love or wrath, the praise or dispraise of men, so far as it is opposite to the kingdom of Christ. When it is crucified to us, we should be crucified to it.”
In a sermon to college students I wanted to convey the importance of redeeming the time. This quote is from my sermon delivered 10/21/05 on Ephesians 5:15-16,
Richard Baxter: “1. To redeem time is to see that we cast none of it away in vain; but use every minute of it as a most precious thing, and spend it wholly in the way of duty. 2. That we be not only doing good, but doing the best and greatest good which we are able and have a call to do. 3. That we do not only the best things, but do them in the best manner and in the greatest measure, and do as much good as possibly we can. 4. That we watch for special opportunities. 5. That we presently take them then they fall, and improve them when we take them. 6. That we part with all that is to be parted with, to save our time … This is the true redeeming of our time.”
These were both excellent quotations. In both cases, I took a little liberty in updating spelling for clarity.
Print handouts
Once I started quoting Puritans directly in sermons I began using sermon handouts. This practice has worked well for me over the years. Handouts provide great freedom by allowing you to quote lengthier Puritan quotes.
Handouts also give the preacher the freedom to skip over quotes. Let your people read them at home. I quoted eight different authors in my sermon on Ephesians 5:15-16 (download notes here), though I doubt I read more than four of them.
Be certain when you print notes that you define difficult words for your hearers in aggregations [that is ‘brackets’].
(2) Paraphrase quote. Often the Puritan quotes are excellent but could be better stated for clarity and conciseness. This is where paraphrasing comes in. Paraphrasing is simply the act of restating an idea with new words.
The best examples I can give come from my book entitled, Come Unto Me: God’s Invitation to the World, where I used hundreds of quotes and paraphrases from the Puritan sermons.
I thought this quote by Spurgeon too difficult for a non-Christian. So I paraphrased it.
Charles Spurgeon: “The gospel was brought near to us, earnest hearts were set a praying for us, the text was written which would convert us; and as I have already said, the blood was spilt which cleanses us, and the Spirit of God was given, who should renew us. All this was done while as yet we had no breathings of soul after God” (Sermons 23:216).
Paraphrase: “During the same period as the ungodly were in a state of spiritual rebellion towards God, Christ gave Himself on the Cross to die for those who were undeserving. The blood of Christ was shed, the text of the bible was written, the actions of God were moving all while the sinner was loving the sin which alienates himself from God!”
I really liked Thomas Boston’s likening a worldly man’s pursuit of wealth to a blind mole, but I didn’t like the wording.
Thomas Boston: “Hence the carnal man, I may say, never gets up his back, but on his belly doth he go, and labours, as if he were a slave condemned to the mines, to dig in the bowels of the earth; like the blind moles, his constant labor is in the earth, and he never opens his eyes till he is dying.”
Paraphrase: “The soul that pursues wealth spends its short life digging deeply into the dark mines of worldliness, like the blind mole tunneling deep into the temporal world.”
If you love the thought, but are having difficulty with the wording of a quote, paraphrase it.
(3) Create your own thought. Ironically, as I mature in preaching I find myself doing more of this. I find a great quotation by John Owen and by the time I’m getting ready to insert the thought into my sermon I find his quote has catapulted my thoughts further into the text and I cut the quote itself.
I did this in the last post with the quote from John Owen. His thought led me to my own. Frequently, the more useful the Puritans become in your life and ministry, the less you will mention them.
Psalm 73 sermon
An interesting thing happened to me recently to illustrate the point. When I was asked to preach on Psalm 73 (title: Depression, Worldliness and the Presence of God), I used more Puritan resources than on any other sermon I can recall (over 200 printed pages). However, I only quoted one Puritan, an excerpt from Jonathan Edwards’ sermon Sinner in the Hands of an Angry God. As you will see in the sermon notes, Edwards’ thoughts are authenticated by the text.
I was amazed how many people asked me after the sermon for that title so they could read the entire sermon by Jonathan Edwards (although the church bookstore 20-feet away carries a paperback version of the sermon). This reminds us that pulpit promotion increases interest. Even if you have a bookstore full of Puritans, you still need to tell your people who they are any why they are important. Sermons are great place for this.
Now, back to the Psalm 73 sermon. I only quoted one Puritan although there were many paraphrases of the Puritans throughout the entire sermon and many thoughts catapulted from my Puritan research. All of the comments I received were encouragements for how deeply the text had taken hold of me. “You grasped the text, or rather, the text grasped you,” one said. Another said, “The sermon was text-driven.” Certainly, I let the text drive everything else but the reality is that its depth also drew from the meditations of 14 faithful Puritan preachers.
What I learned was this: The more you use Puritan literature and the less you directly quote Puritan literature the more impressed your hearers will be with God’s Word. It wasn’t that I didn’t use other sources, but that I carefully discerned the important Puritan sources from the not-so-important, let scripture authenticate the Puritan quotes, and then internalized those quotes. The final product was deeply biblical and very mature because it was deeply Puritan.
Conclusion
I hope my intention in this post has become clear by now. We want to use the Puritans, but not so our hearers are impressed with our scholarship. Nor should our intention be to impress people with the wisdom of the Puritans themselves. Our goal must be to use the power of the Puritan sermons to display the power of God’s Word.
When our hearers walk away from our sermons impressed with the power of God’s Word (rather than impressed with us or our Puritan library) we have used the Puritans correctly.
Would Jonathan Edwards have it any other way?
Part 9: The Strategy of Building a Puritan Library
I assume many of you are like me, lacking access to a solid library of Puritan literature. Here in my hometown we have no seminary and it is rare to find a fellow believer who has even heard of Spurgeon, not to mention Boston, Manton and Goodwin.
So building a Puritan library was my responsibility. I just started buying Puritans that I had indexes for and especially the Puritans published by The Banner of Truth. I learned from both my successes and mistakes.
The Strategy
First, I assume you already spend a fair amount of money on books right now. If you are like me, you probably look around your library with regret at some of the volumes that serve no purpose in your expositional research. For years, my library suffered from a clear game plan.
A poorly planned library will lack important reference books like commentaries and Puritan sermons. It will be heavy on contemporary controversies and issues books. Read blogs if you want to be up-to-date on the current trends in the church. Buy commentaries and Puritans if you want a solid expositional library.
A solid library that helps support the preacher or writer in their expositional work is no accident.
This post will help you define your own personal game plan.
Bottom line
The Puritan Study I have described in this series comes to a grand total of $1,500.00. That sounds like a lot but it figures out to $1.40 a day for 3 years (which is about what I spend at Starbucks). And to have this entire library in three years is pretty fast!
I’ve broken down my list of Puritans into $500 segments. Again, this list is ordered by availability and usefulness of each author. Your first $500 will be the best-spent money. The second and third $500 increments are important but not immediate.
(Note: What follows is a simple strategy for building a Puritan library. Specific reviews of each author and set will follow the Puritan Study series. Pictures of each set can be seen here. Updated (3/17/07): Note that most of these resources can be found at a more reasonable price through Monergism Books. Please check them before making any purchases.)
Here is my strategy, broken into three phases…
// THE FIRST $500
1. Charles Haddon Spurgeon (63 sermon vols.; CD-Rom)
I cannot begin with any more important preacher than Charles (C.H.) Spurgeon. The Puritans thoroughly impact everything Spurgeon preached or wrote. Look at his commentary on the Psalms (The Treasury of David) and you will see why Spurgeon is a priceless Puritan resource. He is the great Puritan synthesizer. Spurgeon’s complete works total about 150 volumes and you can download them all for $15.00 or buy the CD-Rom for $20.00 from Ages software. (If you have extra money, I would recommend buying some printed volumes from Pilgrim Publications but especially his autobiography and the classic book on pastoral ministry, Lectures to My Students.) [Read Piper’s biography of Spurgeon here]
2. Jonathan Edwards (2 vol. works; printed)
An extraordinarily rich resource! These two volumes of works by Jonathan Edwards are gems to the Puritan researcher. I would recommend the Banner of Truth volumes for their sturdy binding. You can buy volumes one and two here in the Banner of Truth editions or a cheaper version. The complementary text files can be found online for free. [Read Piper’s biography of Edwards here]
3. John Bunyan (3 vol. works; printed)
John Bunyan is most famous for his novel, The Pilgrim’s Progress. But he was also an incredibly gifted (and imaginative) preacher. These three clothbound volumes from the Banner of Truth are well built and come with an excellent topical index. You can find them for about $89.00. All of the associated text files can be found online for free. [Read Piper’s biography of Bunyan here]
4. Thomas Boston (12 vol. works; printed)
Jonathan Edwards considered Thomas Boston, “a truly great divine.” Boston is one of my personal favorites. These precious volumes have provided me many years of sermon quotes and exegetical thoughts on God’s Word. The entire 12-volume set has been recently published by Tentmaker in a beautiful cloth binding and is available in the United States for $325.00 here or $250.00 here. Worth every penny! You can buy the incredible Memoirs alone. [Read our full review of this set here]
5. Thomas Manton (22 vol. works; CD-Rom)
A set that is simply too large to make affordable in print format. The CD-Rom of Manton’s complete 22-volume set can be purchased for only $10.00. A great price for a must-have set of works! The first three volumes are avaliable in print.
// THE SECOND $500
6. John Owen (16 vol. but especially vols. 1,2 and 6; printed)
All of John Owen’s 16-volumes works are excellent. I especially have found volumes one, two, six and seven of great use. You can add other volumes in the future but these three are essential. The volumes are clothbound (as you would expect from the Banner of Truth) and run about $25.00 each or $75.00 total. The text files are available online for free but you will want to read these volumes cover-to-cover, making the printed works a must. [Read Piper’s biography of Owen here]
7. John Flavel (6 vol. works; printed)
Another excellent Puritan I have used on several occasions. Your meditations and sermons will be greatly blessed by Flavel. The Banner of Truth volumes are clothbound and beautiful. They sell for $150.00.
8. Richard Sibbes (7 vol. works; printed)
The “sweet dropper,” Sibbes was an incredible Puritan preacher. The Banner of Truth volumes are clothbound and run $126.00.
9. Jeremiah Burroughs (misc. books; printed)
Burroughs is the most difficult author on the list because his works are not collected and published by various companies. Several of his works comprise the Gospel Life series ($91.00). The six titles include Gospel Worship, Gospel Fear, Gospel Conversation, Gospel Revelation, Gospel Remission, and Gospel Reconciliation. Beyond this there are other Burroughs titles in print including The Sinfulness of Sin or The Evil of Evil ($17.00), The Excellency of a Gracious Spirit, Hope ($15.00), Irenicum to the Lovers of Truth and Peace ($22.00), The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment ($6.25), The Saints’ Happiness, The Saints’ Treasury and A Treatise of Earthly-Mindedness. All told, it would be easy to spend $180.00 on Burroughs alone. Still, his works are indexed and very valuable.
10. Thomas Brooks (6 vol. works; printed)
The Complete Works of Thomas Brooks in six volumes is available in cloth binding from Banner of Truth for $140.00. One Puritan scholar says of Brooks, “He had a body of divinity in his head and the power of it in his heart.” Incredible material!
// THE THIRD $500
11. Thomas Goodwin (12 vol. works; printed)
Reformation Heritage Books has recently reprinted the paperback version of Goodwin’s 12 volume works. This is a great service to the Puritan community and can be purchased for $240.00. I have yet to read a Puritan that glorifies the person and works of Christ more than Goodwin. [read our full review here]
12. John Newton (6 vol. works; printed)
“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me” are the words of John Newton. An excellent preacher, his complete works are available in cloth binding for $144.00. [Read Piper’s biography of Newton here]
13. David Clarkson (3 vol. works; printed)
Not as experiential as the authors above, but well indexed and valuable. The works of David Clarkson are available for $62.00.
14. Edward Reynolds (vols. 1,4,5,6 of 6 vol. works; printed)
Like Burroughs, the complete works of Reynolds are not available. Today there are five volumes in print: Commentary on Ecclesiastes, Meditations on the Holy Sacrament of the Lord’s Last Supper, Preaching Christ, Sinfulness Of Sin and Treatise on the Passions and Faculties of the Soul. All these valuable volumes can be purchased for about $115.00. Spurgeon wrote, “Reynolds was a man of vast learning and thoroughly evangelical spirit.” The digital files are beginning to appear on Google books for free download.
Conclusion
By this point you may feel totally overwhelmed (and broke). Remember, this is a long-term goal.
I don’t even think it would be beneficial to buy all these works at once! Slowly add works as you grow comfortable with the ones you already have.
If you follow this plan you will spend your money wisely and have a storehouse of expositional material at arm’s-reach. This is my promise to you: Even if the Lord blesses you with 30 more years of expositional ministry, you will never exhaust the Puritan Study you built in three years.
Part 10: Concluding Thoughts, part 1
Now on to some concluding thoughts.
… to the electronic publishers
I want to take a moment and say, ‘thank you,’ to the many individuals that are working together to produce electronic versions of the Puritan works. Throughout 
this study I have met several of you. What you are doing is a wonderful service!
From all of us who think “THml” is a new seminary degree — we don’t know exactly what you do or how you do it, but we are thankful you do it. Keep it up!
One of these techies, Thomas Black at stilltruth.com, sent us links to the works of John Owen and Jonathan Edwards. These files work with Logos/Libronix digital Library and are searchable (a Mac version is yet to be released). The Logos/Libronix system is a great and growing resource for searchable Puritan works and many of these resources (like Owen and Edwards) are free because of the generous work of Black and others.
For more information you can check out our friends at StillTruth. They have a large selection of other free resources, too.
For those who are interested in publishing the Puritans in this form, let me encourage you with a few content suggestions.
The most important Puritan works in print that await OCR conversion, editing and tagging into THml include the works of Thomas Boston, Thomas Manton, John Flavel, Richard Sibbes, Thomas Brooks, and Thomas Goodwin. You will serve the church well if your efforts are directed towards these much-needed authors.
… to the print publishers
To my friends who work diligently to republish the Puritans in print format: There are a number of excellent Puritan resources that I cannot recommend because they are unavailable. About half of the Puritan works I would recommend as ‘excellent’ are not even in print format. The church would greatly benefit from the complete works of Stephen Charnock (beyond Existence), William Ames, William Bates, Anthony Burgess, James Durham, William Perkins and Samuel Rutherford (beyond Letters). Maybe the programmers and publishers could work more closely together in re-typesetting these works and simultaneously release the print and THml versions of the works at the same time? At the very least, these Puritans also need to be converted into searchable text formats.
If Puritan publishers and scholars (who favor printed volumes) and the techies who are converting the Puritans into free electronic files would open up in communication, both sides would benefit greatly. Could the two sides meet in a forum to exchange ideas?
On another note, some of the Puritan complete works sets are now being published in paperback form. Is there a way to continue cutting the cost of production? I would love to have every Puritan published in clothbound covers but maybe some these other works (named above) could be more economically printed. Even printed on-demand, maybe? How can technology help publishers cut costs and print more?
… on Puritan PDFs
I want to make one other note about why I recommend people NOT buy Puritan CD-Roms and DVDs (except in rare cases). Most of these files (like the works of Thomas Manton) are simple picture files of the pages. They are usually not text-recognized or searchable and almost never tagged into THml format. These files are both inferior to printed books and inferior to text files. They are a sort of in-between compromise that are not easy to read nor easy to search. This is why they are fading in importance. Focus now on accumulating the print volumes and, in time, the electronic text files as they become more readily available.
… on the value of e-Puritans
In 2003 the World Wide Web contained 170 terabytes of information. That’s 170 million megabytes or more than 200,000 CD-Roms filled with information. In comparison, the entire Library of Congress print collection is only about 10 terabytes in size. To look at it another way, the complete works of Shakespeare comprise only 5 megabytes. So the entire content of the WWW in 2003 (not including text messaging, emails and P2P file sharing) was the size of the complete works of Shakespeare multiplied 34 million times!
The natural consequence of these vast numbers is the devaluing of information. We now look at words as cheap and common.
The danger here is that we begin looking at the men who most faithfully expounded the Word of God as likewise having words that are cheap and common. They are not.
Many of the words of Bunyan were written in a solitary prison cell separated from his family. The words of Spurgeon were forged in years of faithful prayer and amidst painful debates and trials. Men like Sibbes and Calvin ministered during political upheaval and turmoil. The most powerful preachers in Christian history were purified in the fires of struggle and pain. Their words (unlike dozens of terabytes available on the Internet) are precious gold.
Publishers who release the Puritans in beautiful clothbound covers should continue this practice. And pastors need to continue to support publishers that treat the Puritan works with such respect. Publishers like The Banner of Truth, Tentmaker and Soli Deo Gloria remind us of the value of Puritan words.
As the Internet continues to grow by the terabyte and the electronic texts of great Puritans become more plentiful, we must beware this cheapening of Puritan words. We must always remind ourselves that these words were slowly and carefully sculpted in pain, out of a fear of God, through an intense study of His Word, and from a love of His glory.
(to be continued…)
Part 11: Concluding Thoughts, part 2
Finally, the conclusion of the Puritan Study comes today. I wish I could continue on in this study but I must move on. Thank you for all the very kind emails and helpful suggestions throughout this series. Seeing others come to a deeper appreciation of the Puritan literature has been an incredible encouragement to me.
Here is a collection of final thoughts …
Expositional Puritans
I think it’s worth noting again that in this series of blog posts I have emphasized the most important Puritan resources for expositional research. Other Puritans are useful on a number of issues.
I like Baxter, Burgess, Watson and other Puritans. But these and other Puritans simply have not helped me when I’m under pressure to preach and write expositionally on a certain text. Spurgeon, Bunyan, Owen, Boston, Manton and the men I have promoted, however, have proven faithful in these situations.
If you are more interested in systematic theology, or apologetics, or church history, you will find other Puritans to be of great help. Here, we were concerned with the most effective Puritans for expositional sermon preparation and ranked these authors in order of availability and usefulness.
Dutch ‘Puritans’
I was hoping to use this series to begin introducing you to the Dutch ‘Puritans’ (they are not really called ‘Puritans,’ but ‘the Dutch Second Reformation Divines’). These authors ministered during the same period of time as the English Puritans we know well, but their works were originally published in Dutch. Thanks to the recent work of the Dutch Reformed Translation Society, these works are now being made available in updated English. After some time reading these Dutch works, it’s clear these authors were as mature and experiential as their English counterparts.
Among others, the Dutch ‘Puritans’ include Wilhelmus à Brakel, Willem Teellinck and Herman Witsius (whose works have been in English for a few years now). Teellinck’s book on living a holy life (The Path of True Godliness) is very valuable and will be the subject of an upcoming book review.
These Dutch authors are very powerful and, although many of them will not be indexed and easily accessed, an introduction to their works was warranted at the end of this Puritan study. More information this winter …
Tough and Tender
John Piper once said, “one of my great desires is to see Christian pastors be as strong and durable as redwood trees, and as tender and fragrant as a field of clover.” This ideal finds its origin in the words and works of Jesus Himself. He knew when to be tough and when to be tender. He was strong and resolute but loving, kind, and compassionate, too. Many Puritans remind me of men who were uncompromising and stable in their convictions. They were a forest of redwood trees. But these preachers often displayed a compassionate tenderness like a fragrant field of clovers, too. An excellent pattern for preachers today.
The Presence of God
Many things draw me to the Puritans, but one of the most important is their pursuit of God. They see the Psalms as a blueprint for the Christian life – striving and praying for the presence of God to draw near (see Pss. 16, 42, 73). You can spot authors who read much of the Puritans because they, too, have a healthy and well-developed desire to pursue the presence of God (see A.W. Tozer, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, John Piper, etc.).
Personal change
I did not realize what was happening, but for several years as I have used the Puritan literature, I thought I was just borrowing a few quotes and thoughts along the way. Now it is obvious that over those years I was being changed.
What I love most about the Puritans is how they have been used in changing me. I treat the Word with more sobriety and seriousness now. My application of the text is much more mature. I am more articulate in pointing my hearer’s affections towards the things God sees as precious (like His Son, His holiness, His justice, love and grace).
Specifically, three areas of my life have been changed due to my Puritan Study …
(i) In catching the Puritan hermeneutic. The Puritans interpret every passage in light of the big picture of God’s glory in the Cross of Christ. Everything comes back to this. As expositors we are apt to get wrapped up in our four verses and lazily forget this big picture. The Puritans, especially in their application, make it clear that every text must be brought back to this big picture. Sadly, very few expositors today do this consistently (Piper and a few others, however, excel here). I pray that we would all catch this Puritan hermeneutic. Spurgeon reminded preachers that every sermon must find a way back to the Cross. This was the Apostle Paul’s point exactly (Gal. 6:14, 1 Cor. 1:22-25; 2:2; Phil. 3:8).
(ii) In catching the Puritan experiential style. When publishers want a good definition of ‘experiential preaching’ they turn to Puritan scholars. In the book, Feed My Sheep: A Passionate Plea for Preaching (Soli Deo Gloria, 1573581445), Dr. Joel Beeke writes: “Experiential or experimental preaching addresses the vital matter of how a Christian experiences the truth of Christian doctrine in his life … Experimental preaching seeks to explain in terms of biblical truth how matters ought to go, how they do go, and what is the goal of the Christian life … Experimental preaching is discriminatory preaching. It clearly defines the difference between a Christian and a non-Christian, opening the kingdom of heaven to one and shutting it against the other” (pp. 95-96). The Puritans understood that a sermon lacking powerful application is an incomplete sermon. The Puritans are unparalleled here.
(iii) In catching the Puritan earnestness. The Christian life is a struggle of balance. The same is true in the pulpit. It is easy to focus on strengthening marriages, helping others raise children, and overall improvements in godliness while lacking earnestness. We can get the idea that the purpose of the pulpit is only for long-term sanctified changes. We need the Puritan earnestness to remind those who have never experienced the grace of God in their own hearts (the ‘almost Christian’ sitting in the pew), that they teeter on the brink of God’s judgment. There may not be a tomorrow. Each of us will be in heaven or hell very shortly. Nothing guarantees the sinner one more day to repent. Now is the time. Today is the day of salvation. Plead with sinners. The Puritans balanced these two sides of preaching and teach us to use the same sermon to both strengthen Christian marriages (long term) and to plead with sinners earnestly (now).
Conclusion
In the end, the ultimate benefit of a (well-used) Puritan library is how it changes you. Because of the Puritans, I view the bible differently, more seriously. They have taught me deep thoughts so I am not easily distracted with the empty and hollow ‘Christian’ thoughts today. They have taught me to treasure Christ. They have pointed out the sin in my heart. They have encouraged me in the task of preaching. And they have been faithful friends pointing me back to the scriptures when I begin to wander around. ‘Be serious because God’s thoughts are weighty,’ is the Puritan message I hear every time I use their works.
So keep at it. Work hard. Study diligently. Learn new terms. Don’t be intimidated by 200-word sentences. Grasp the concepts. Learn from the Puritan big-picture. And one day you will realize that God’s Spirit has taken the Puritan Study from your shelves and into your heart and changed you forever. All for His eternal glory.
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