The Life and Work of a Minister According to the Puritans
1
The Life and Work
of a Minister
According to the Puritans
Introduction: Puritanism and the Ministry
Historically, Puritanism began as a clerical movement of religious reform, reacting against, among other things, a corrupt ministry; and one of the ideals which united the members of the Puritan brotherhood throughout the whole period from the movement’s emergence under Elizabeth to its suppression a century later was a common high view of the minister’s calling. This never varied, and it was this as much as anything which held them together. Their faith was a dynamic Calvinism; they shared Paul’s passion for personal holiness and for the glory of Christ within His church; and their constant and uniting purpose was to promote spiritual preaching and seek the reviving of the ministry.
I. The Office of a Minister
Puritan thought on this, as on all other religious matters, was consciously based on and controlled by the Bible. It is essential for a right appraisal of the Puritans to realise that, for all their often immense learning, they depended for their guidance wholly upon the infallible revelation of God’s will recorded in the Scriptures.
(a) The Nature of the Office
From the time of Thomas Cartwright, who attacked Elizabethan episcopacy as being rooted in human traditions and needing reformation by Scripture, the Puritans devoted much thought to elucidating the ministerial office as the Bible depicts it. Thomas Goodwin, though an Independent, is fairly representative here. A minister or “pastor” (his usual word), is appointed to rule and teach Christ’s flock. He must be set over one flock (local congregation) and one only. If he has more, he cannot fulfil his duties to them all; if, like a diocesan bishop, he has none, he is a mere figurehead, not really a pastor at all (see Works, 11:221–31). He is appointed by a special, supernatural “call,” which originates from God and is sealed to him by the Holy Spirit through the agency of the local church. Owen insists that the ministerial office was not created by man, but instituted by Christ for the continuance of His church. Ministers therefore occupy their office by His authority and are responsible to Him for the flock which He has committed to their care. He, for His part, grants them special grace for their special tasks.
To be a minister is a solemn responsibility. The Puritans echo Paul—“Woe unto me if I preach not the gospel!” To be entrusted with the dispensing of the gospel is a solemn thing, for “men cannot hear and disobey it, but under an extraordinary curse” (Goodwin, 5:6). Yet, Goodwin tells us, the pastoral ministry “is the best calling in the world” (6:415). It carries a special reward: “a poor minister shall have a personal glory for his personal holiness as a Christian, and a super-added glory as a minister” (9:368).
(b) Qualifications for the Office
When Puritanism emerged, the clergy were ignorant, uncouth, undisciplined, and corrupt. Preaching before Elizabeth in 1570, Edward Dering described them thus: “blind guides and can not see . . . dumb dogs and will not bark . . . The Parson against the Vicar, the Vicar against the Parson, the Parish against both, and one against another, and all for the belly” (Works, p. 12). Der-ing expressed the general Puritan sentiment in pleading for a learned and godly ministry.
Some, over-reacting, thought that godliness without learning would be sufficient. William Dell, a left-wing Puritan of Commonwealth times, attacked the practice of “making universities the fountains of the ministry . . . For human learning hath its place and use among human things, but hath no place nor use in Christ’s kingdom” (Select Works, p. 583, cf. p. 655). With this depreciation of ordinary education as part of a minister’s training went in some quarters a corresponding depreciation of the preparing of sermons, as a violation of the liberty of the Spirit. The assumption was that the Spirit would supply the message to the preacher as he rose to speak, but that He could not or would not do this at any earlier stage. This was not, however, the general Puritan attitude. “Whereas some men are for preaching only extempore and without study,” says Goodwin (9:378), “Paul bids Timothy meditate and study . . .” The Puritans believed that true and sound learning was a necessary part of a minister’s equipment. They were in consequence great advocates of education; the importance of university education was stressed under the Commonwealth, and when they were excluded from the universities at the Restoration they founded their own academies—twenty by 1688, fifty by 1750. Learning, they insisted, is a gift from God, which, rightly used, helps to make a minister. They did not overvalue learning or give it a false prominence; they never forgot that without the Spirit’s help no man could minister to any purpose. But “if we give to reason, memory, study, books, methods, forms, etc., but their proper place, in subordination to Christ and to His Spirit, they are so far from being quenchers of the Spirit, that they are necessary in their places, and such means as we must use, if ever we will expect the Spirit’s help” (Baxter, Works, 5:567).
What gifts mark a man out as called to the ministry? Owen (in The True Nature of a Gospel Church) lists five: (1) Spiritual gifts—“knowledge, wisdom, understanding and utterance for prayer and preaching.” (2) Compassion and love. (3) Watchfulness of the flock of Christ. (4) Zeal for the glory of God. (5) “Some degree of eminency above others” in Christian character and holiness of life.
II. The Personal Life of a Minister
Horrified by current abuses, the Puritans re-examined every aspect of ministerial life and work in the light of Scripture and formulated one of the loftiest conceptions of this subject ever held in the Christian church.
Consistency, they held, was vital. A minister’s life must be of a piece with his faith, and must be exemplary to his flock. Baxter’s Reformed Pastor develops this powerfully: “Take heed to yourselves, lest you live in those actual sins which you preach against in others; and lest you be guilty of that which you daily condemn.” Commenting on Paul’s “Take heed therefore unto yourselves” (Acts 20:28), Baxter insists that a minister must (1) see that the work of saving grace is thoroughly wrought in his own soul; (2) take care to keep his Christian graces in vigilant and lively exercise, preaching first to himself all that he intends to preach to others, and watching constantly over his heart; (3) take heed lest his example contradict his doctrine; (4) take heed that he is not lacking the qualifications needed for his work. The minister must be a ruthless realist in dealing with himself and fighting the inner battle of the spiritual life against the world, the flesh, and the devil. He must therefore examine himself regularly and thoroughly; every Christian must, but the minister particularly. It should be clearly understood that the Puritan insistence on self-examination was not a summons to morbid and moody introspection, but to a practical discipline of measuring oneself in the sight of God by the standard of God for the glory of God—in order that, knowing oneself better, one might oppose one’s sins more realistically and effectively. Baxter gives eight reasons why ministers should examine themselves: “(1)You have heaven to win or lose yourselves . . . A holy calling will not save an unholy man . . . (2)You have sinful inclinations as well as others . . . (3)(Ministers) have greater temptations than most men . . . (4)The tempter will make his first and sharpest onset upon you. If you will be leaders against him, he will spare you no further than God restrains him . . . (5)Many eyes are upon you, and therefore there will be many to observe your falls . . . (6)Your sins are more aggravated than those of other men. They have more of hypocrisy in them, and are more detrimental to the cause of religion . . . (7)The honour of your Lord and Master, and of His holy truth, doth lie more on you than other men . . . (8)The souls of your hearers and the success of your labours, do very much depend upon your self-examination.” The preaching of one who does not live as he preaches will be disregarded. All that a minister does is a kind of preaching.
Daily repentance and confession of daily sins, the natural outcome of daily self-examination, was a necessary discipline, the Puritans held, in any man’s Christian life, more especially a minister’s; for only thus is the fulness of the Spirit and assurance of salvation preserved. God would not much regard a lazy man who was so little concerned about his sins that he would not take the trouble to examine his life and confess them one by one. The diaries of Richard Rogers and Samuel Ward (published by M. M. Knappen, Two Elizabethan Puritan Diaries) were kept as aids to this daily discipline: the diarists “note and lament their lapses so that they will be ashamed to repeat them” (p. 3). Matthew Henry, we are told, regularly reviewed and confessed his failures and lost opportunities at the end of each day, using a pencil and paper to record them. These practices were typical, and the importance of this daily discipline of self-examination and confession in moulding the Puritan pastors’ lives can hardly be exaggerated.
The Puritans laboured to subject all parts of their life to the will of God: “they proposed, that is, within the church and under the conditions of society around them, to try the experiment of living according to the self-imposed discipline which they derived from Paul, Augustine and John Calvin” (W. Hailer, Rise of Puritanism, p. 25). Simplicity and order were the marks of their daily routine. Doubtless it was no harder, as it was certainly no easier, for them to live lives thus disciplined in their day than it would be for us in ours.
The Puritans said much of the special temptations which ministers face. Their task is so onerous as to be literally killing: “The minister’s work debilitates nature; like the candle, he wastes while he shines” (Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour, p. 791). The devil opposes him in the study and the pulpit, “disturbs him with passion and leavens his zeal into sourness and unmercifulness” (ibid.). Baxter mentions three peculiar sins always dogging ministers: pride of office, applause, and appearance; negligence of study and inadequate preparation; worldly temporising, so that one grows afraid to speak one’s mind. Also, if he is faithful, the minister can expect abuse and slander from a wrathful world, which he must learn to bear meekly. Truly he needs his people’s prayers!
The minister must be holy, humble, and reverent in his handling of holy things. “The . . . preacher that speaks as if he saw the face of God doth more affect my heart though with common words, than an unreverent man with the most exquisite preparations” (Baxter). He must learn to abhor and eschew all sins, even the smallest, for no sin is really small when it affronts a great God; and he must learn (indeed, if he walks with God he cannot but feel) a great compassionate sorrow for those who let unrepented sin come between themselves and God. “ ‘A minister,’ saith Chrysostom, ‘. . . should be still lamenting his own sins and the sins of his people.’ The office of a minister is the office of a mourner” (Thomas Adams, Works, 1:365).
Prayer was a constant activity with the Puritan pastor. “Pray often,” said Bunyan, “for prayer is a shield to the soul, a sacrifice to God, and a scourge of Satan” (Works, 2:1297). Regular times were set apart for prayer, both in private and with the family.
The pastor’s home radiated a simple godliness. His family life was ordered as an example to his people for good. Morning and evening prayers, conducted by the minister as head of the house, were the rule. The highest ambition of the minister, as of every Puritan parent, for his children was that they might adorn the doctrine of Christ with pure and humble lives.
III. The Work of a Minister
(a) Their Doctrine
What was the substance of the message which the Puritans declared and by which they lived? Generally, it was Calvinistic (though a few Puritans were not Calvinists—Milton and John Goodwin, for example—and some Calvinists were not Puritans: Whitgift, for instance, was a Calvinist). The Bible was their rule of faith; the centrality of God and His glory determined their approach to all things; and Paul’s doctrine, especially as set out in Romans (“the quintessence and perfection of saving doctrine,” Thomas Dr.axe, Earnest of our Inheritance, p. 1), was the essence of their gospel. God, sin, the law, election, salvation by grace through faith in Christ, and the life of the regenerate soul, were their staple themes. The minister’s responsibility was held to include the defence of the gospel “against the craft of seducers from with-out, or the springing up of any bitter root of error among them-selves” (Owen, True Nature of a Gospel Church, p. 70); and therefore he has double need to study Scripture diligently and know the faith thoroughly.
(b) Their Preaching
In The Faithful Shepherd, Richard Bernard defines the preaching of God’s word as “an open unfolding thereof by a public minister to the people’s capacity, according to the analogy of faith, with words of exhortation applied to the conscience both to inform and reform, and where they be well, to confirm . . .” Preaching is solemn work, for the preacher speaks in God’s name; one needs to prepare oneself by prayer and mount the pulpit with trembling. Said Daniel Cargill, the Covenanter, on the gallows ladder, “Lord knows I go up this ladder with less fear and perturbation than ever I entered a pulpit to preach.”
The Puritans preached solid doctrine, but they preached it in such a way as to be understood by the common man. Repudiating the fashion of pedantry and ostentation which governed most of the preaching of their day, they sought to be “plain and perspicuous,” “spiritual,” and “powerful.” “Whereof comes it that there is so much preaching and so little learning? but because men preach high and delight to hear plausible novelities, to please the ear rather than the simple power of the word to please the heart” (Richard Greenham). The Puritans eschewed “plausible novelities” and sought only to be vehicles of the “simple power of the word,” preaching central truths in a plain, serious, vivid, passionate, homely, yet dignified manner. They preached the law to drive men out of themselves, the power of God in saving the helpless to give them hope, and the gospel to draw them to Christ. The law must be preached in its place, for “the field is not fit for the seed to be cast into it, till the plough hath broken it up! nor is the soul prepared to receive the mercy of the gospel, till broken with the terrors of the law” (Gurnall). Man must first be made miserable if he is to be made truly happy. In selecting subjects for sermons, pride of place must be given to those that are most basic, necessary, and practically relevant: “first, fundamental truths, or . . . catechism points, that contain truths necessary to be known and believed . . . Secondly, those truths are oft to be preached which ministers observe to be most undermined by Satan, or his instruments, in the judgments or lives of their people . . . and thirdly, truths of daily use and practice” (Gurnall). The Puritans favoured series of sermons, in order to facilitate large-scale systematic instruction.
Preaching demands much of the minister: he must know God’s truth, and he must enjoy some personal experience of the power of it, for “a man preacheth that sermon only well unto others, which preacheth itself in his own soul” (Owen). But the godly minister, conscious of his unworthiness and limitations, may yet mount the pulpit in confident expectation, for “Christ and the minister go into the pulpit together; a greater than man is there; Master and servant are both at work” (Gurnall). What sustains the preacher is his hope that the Spirit’s power may be upon him, guiding him and working through him; without such a hope, preaching would be a heart-breaking enterprise indeed, for “let us weave our nets never so close, a cunning wicked man will find holes to get out at, except the Holy Ghost comes down and stops all . . . The hearts of men are very deceitful and cunning, and ministers have need of a great deal of wisdom to search out all their windings and turnings; and this they never can do unless the wisdom of the Spirit of God assist them” (Goodwin). And to give the Spirit full liberty Bernard advises the preacher to be free from his manuscript if possible, and to be ready to alter the course of his sermon if circumstances demand it.
Preachers are tempted to moral cowardice more almost than to any sin. Too many ministers, says Bernard, are “men pleasers, not the servants of Christ. This is the cause why many weigh every word, as in a balance, for weight and turnable measure, for fine pronouncing, to delight the ear, more for a plaudite, than to convince conscience, or to remove impiety; they glance at sin sometimes but fair and far off, for fear of hitting.” But the Puritans, because they feared God, were fearless of men’s faces. A man who fears God, says Gurnall, will be bold “first, in asserting the truths of the gospel . . . and secondly, in reproving sin, and denouncing judgment against impertinent sinners.” He adds that boldness must be robed in a wise, meek, and humble spirit, but there must be no compromise, for he that fears his people’s faces is the man that is most likely to murder their souls.”
The pulpit is no place for flippancy and jocularity, but for the most serious urgency. Baxter found himself “despising . . . wittiness (in the pulpit) as proud foolery which savoureth of levity, and tendeth to evaporate weighty truths and turn them all into fancies and keep them from the heart.” The preacher, he maintained, should preach “as a dying man to dying men.” With this all the Puritans would have agreed.
(c) Their Praying
Some Puritans used a set form for public prayer, some did not; but there was a general feeling among them that a set form, solely and invariably used, imposed an undue restraint on the minister and made it hard for him to relate public prayers to the changing needs of his congregation. Many Puritans, Baxter among them, agreed with Calvin that liturgical forms and free prayer might ideally be combined in the same service. In general, the Puritans were tolerant here. Gurnall is typical when he observes that no definite commands or prohibitions of extempore prayer are found in Scripture, and goes on to comment, “Alas! the evil is not in form, but formality.” The Puritans all held that public prayer must in any case be comprehensible to the congregation (not offered inaudibly, therefore, or in Latin) and that the congregation should “testify by their hearty ‘Amen’ at the close” their willing association with the prayer that has been offered in their name.
(d) Their Study
The Puritans were great students, both of Scripture itself and of other subjects insofar as they believed these would help them to understand Scripture better. Their motive in study was not selfish intellectual gratification, but the glory of God and the service of their people. They demanded constantly that all ministers should be diligent and disciplined in study. “Remember this,” says Cotton Mather, “there never was an eminent, who was not an industrious man.” Mather perceptively warns ministers against being too taken up with contemporary writing and theological thought, for the ruminations of a single passing age—even our own—may reflect a general deficiency in some article of faith, and represent a real declension from what has gone before. All study of divine things is in any case vain and fruitless without illumination from above. “There must be Spirit in me as there is a Spirit in the Scripture, before I can see anything,” says Richard Sibbes.
(e) Their Visitation
The Puritans left a lasting mark on the home life of Britain. Says Trevelyan, “It was only by the sustained personal efforts of Puritans in every part of the island, during the period when they were still within the official church, that family prayers and Bible reading became at all customary. These habits, which remained the staple of English education for generations . . . were being slowly established during the reigns of James and Charles I by the patient work of exhortation and instruction carried on by thousands of zealous men . . .” (The Stuarts). The ministers produced this effect by being regularly in their people’s homes. Their visits were not social formalities; they went to catechise and teach. Baxter’s Reformed Pastor, which describes the system of visitation and catechising which Baxter himself had used with great success at Kidderminster (a system whereby he and his two assistants dealt with eight hundred families each year), did much to encourage work of this kind elsewhere.
(f) Their Counseling
“All Christians are bound to teach or help each other in charity, but Christian ministers are set in the Church to do it by office, and therefore must be qualified above others for it” (Baxter). The minister must have the biblical knowledge, diagnostic discernment, and prescriptive skill to act as physician to the souls of his people. “Ministers,” says Thomas Adams, “are physicians under Christ, sent only with His physic in their hands, and taught to apply it to our necessities.” The requisite understanding of spiritual health, malaise, and proper treatment can be obtained, says Owen, only “by diligent study of the Scriptures, meditation thereon, fervent prayer, experience of spiritual things, and temptations in their own souls, with a prudent observation of the manner of God’s dealing with others and the ways of opposition to the work of His grace in them.”
The Puritan approach to distressed souls may be briefly outlined. The pastor would consider first whether the person with whom he was dealing was truly converted, for he knew that there was much self-deception here. To decide this question, he would look for a sense of sin and love of God. If he found reason to doubt the person’s conversion, he would deal with him as an unbeliever. If, however, he was satisfied on this score, he would then consider the possibility that the enquirer’s distress was due to non-spiritual factors (“melancholy”). If it seemed genuinely spiritual, he would then seek its cause in either (1) an attack of Satan, or (2)unrealised or unconfessed sin, or (3)a God-given state of temporary spiritual desertion. On the basis of the axiom that all God’s children are in His hands and under His care, the pastor would then try to help the enquirer understand his own condition and God’s purpose in it, and teach him what his behaviour under it ought to be.
IV. Practical Results of a Puritan Ministry
The Puritans raised ministerial standards. Baxter pointed out the vital strategic importance of doing this in his Reformed Pastor: “If God would but reform the ministers and set them on their duties zealously and faithfully the people would certainly be reformed. All churches either rise or fall as the ministry doth rise or fall (not in riches and worldly grandeur but) in knowledge, zeal and ability for their work.” Under God, a generation of Reformed pastors grew up in England during the Puritan ascendancy; it was a major tragedy that in 1662 so many of them were driven out of their livings and separated for ever from the congregations they had laboured to serve. But in the days when they were free to minister they accomplished much. Not merely did they re-establish the dignity of the ministry in the eyes of the people; they built up churches and influenced whole communities towards a more godly way of life. “This have I made good observation of,” declared Samuel Ward of Ipswich, “that where God hath raised up zealous preachers, in such towns this serpent (Satan) hath no nestling, no stabling or denning.” Preaching the truth in public and private in a homely, pointed, loving way, the Puritans wrought wonders. When Baxter first arrived in Kidderminster, for instance, he found “there was about one family in a street that worshipped God and called upon His name, and when I came away there were some streets where there was not past one family in the side of the street that did not so.” During that time—under fifteen years—hundreds had been converted and the church had had to be enlarged to hold the crowds. And Baxter was only one among many. Is it not, then, reasonable to suppose that their theology, which produced so much true godliness, must have been in close accord with divine truth? And is it not worth our while to labour to re-think, re-state and re-apply this same scriptural teaching in our own day?
Selected Bibliography
(i.) Historical: G. R. Cragg, From Puritanism to the Age of Reason; Puritanism in the Period of the Great Persecution; W. Haller, The Rise of Puritanism.
(ii.) Puritan: Thomas Adams, Works, vol.1; Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor; Richard Bernard, The Faithful Shepherd, The Shepherd’s Practice; Thomas Goodwin, Works, vols. 5, 6, 9, 11; William Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour; Cotton Mather, Student and Pastor; John Owen, True Nature of a Gospel Church.