Puritan Perplexities: Lessons From 1640–1662
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PURITAN PERPLEXITIES:
LESSONS FROM 1640–1662
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
The subject on which I propose to speak is, “Some lessons from 1640–1662.” I have four main reasons for calling attention to this subject. The first is, of course, that this does happen to be 1962, and it would be a terrible thing if this conference, of all conferences, did not give some time and attention to the consideration of that great and notable event.
Having already tried to say something about it from the more purely historical standpoint in a lecture I gave under the auspices of the Evangelical Library, I am going to take it for granted on this occasion that we are most of us familiar with the salient facts of that great story. I am concerned rather to draw certain lessons from what happened, not only in 1662 but also from the whole period of 1640 to 1662.
My second reason for dealing with this subject is, that as we have been rightly reminded more than once in this conference already, there was nothing more remarkable about the Puritans than their emphasis upon the conscience. “The Puritan conscience!” There was nothing more characteristic of them. And we have been reminded, very rightly, that they were very scrupulous in this matter. They were scrupulous in their desire to know exactly what the Truth was, not simply that they might have a theoretical knowledge of it, but in order that they might carry it out, and put it into practice whatever might be the cost. That has been emphasized already in this conference, and therefore it is essential that one session at any rate, and perhaps most appropriately the last session, should be given to the application of what we have been considering. This is particularly appropriate this year, for the message of 1662 is one which places emphasis upon the conscience and the importance of translating what we have already understood in theory, and intellectually, into actual practice. That is my second reason.
The third reason is already implied by what I have just said—anyone who knows anything at all about Puritan preaching knows that they had never finished until they came to “application.” It is vital, therefore, that we should do this year by year. These men with their pastoral and experimental interest were essentially concerned with application. There is nothing that they more deplored than a mere academic, intellectual, theoretical view of the Truth. It was one of their criticisms of the Caroline preachers, that they contented themselves with that, giving their learned disquisitions with their classical allusions and so on, and were more or less indifferent to the practical application in the lives of the people. The Puritans always put great emphasis upon application. So we must try to apply to our own contemporary situation something of what we have learned of their whole attitude to the Christian faith, and to the Church, and to practical Christian living, and to conscience.
My last reason is this, that concerned as we all are, or at any rate should be, with a true revival of religion, with a manifestation of the power of Almighty God amongst us, with a shaking and a bringing together of the “dry bones,” with a demonstration of the power of God and an authentication of His most holy Word—concerned as we are about that, we must realize that there is nothing more urgently important than that we should examine ourselves. Some kind of reformation generally precedes revival. There are certain conditions in this matter of revival, and God has so ordained it, as history shows us clearly, that before He pours forth His Spirit upon a people, or upon an individual, He first prepares that people or that individual. It is inconceivable that great blessing should be given to a Laodicean, backsliding, or apostate Church without a preliminary work of repentance. It is vital, therefore, that we should address ourselves to this whole problem of the condition and state of the Church in order that we may obey the leading and prompting of the Spirit of God and prepare ourselves for the much longed for and looked for outpouring of His Holy Spirit.
Those are my four reasons for dealing with this subject. They all come together as you notice, and it would have been wrong of us, as I say, to allow this year to pass without trying to garner for ourselves some fruit from that great and notable event of 1662. That it was a very crucial episode in the religious history of this country is something about which all, I think, will agree. It was a turning point at which the history and the pattern of religion in this country was more or less determined for nearly three hundred years. There is a sense in which that period which led up to 1662 was almost as important as the Protestant Reformation itself, because a final decision was taken at that point with regard to the nature of the Anglican Church.
Puritan Dissatisfaction with the Church
It is vital that we should remind ourselves that from the very beginning of the Protestant Reformation in this country there had not been complete satisfaction in the Church. The group that became known as Puritan was dissatisfied from the very beginning; they had a feeling that the Reformation was incomplete. If we do not lay hold on that we cannot possibly understand this history. There was never a period when they were satisfied.
Some have been trying to say recently that, from about the time of the setting aside of the Cartwright and Marprelate episodes to the arrival of Laud upon the scene, the Puritans and Anglicans “differed very little.” That is a statement that simply will not hold water when tested by the facts. The book of the American Professor George and his wife which it is claimed “demonstrates” this, seems to me to be based upon a fallacy—and that is, that they rely almost exclusively upon the sermons of that period and not upon the actual historical facts.
It is true that there were not perhaps the same number of references in the sermons to the dispute during that period, but this was to be explained by the utter discouragement which the Puritans felt as the result of the disappointment of the Hampton Court Conference of 1604, and also to certain repressive measures introduced by James I and Archbishop Bancroft. The result was that the Puritans just went on preaching quietly and positively and were not as active in their protest as they were before, and as they were after. But there are facts, and I have tried to state some of them in that lecture delivered at the Evangelical Library, which make it abundantly clear that there was a continuous and persistent sense of dissatisfaction.
At no period from the time of the Reformation to 1662 were the Puritans satisfied with the state of affairs in the Church. As to the actual period of the early part of the reign of James I, the conclusion arrived at by Dr. S. Barton Babbage in his book Puritanism and Richard Bancroft1 is undoubtedly correct: “His achievements were solid and substantial; however, it is not unfair to say that, in relation to the challenge of Puritanism, the peace which reigned was more apparent than real; the conflict was only postponed and not concluded.” But our immediate concern now is that all this came to a head and to a climax in 1662, for then a final decision was really taken.
It is a most remarkable phenomenon. How often have we contemplated this fact—the extraordinary change which took place almost within a matter of a year? I mean this. Look at the period of the Civil Wars and the Interregnum and the Commonwealth under Cromwell. By 1644 the bishops and the various other offices had been abolished, the Prayer Book had been prohibited, and the Westminster Directory had been brought in. The Church of England as she had been known for nearly one hundred years, seemed to be almost entirely defunct; many of her own people, her greatest supporters, thought she was. She seemed to have gone and to have gone forever, and the Puritans of various schools were in control. And yet by 1662 you find a complete transformation; indeed you already see the beginnings of it in 1660. Here in this nation which had beheaded Charles I, and had dealt in that drastic manner with the whole Anglican conception of the Christian Church, you see the transformation that produced the crowds in London acclaiming the return of Charles II on May 29, 1660, and the Presbyterians having a prominent place in the procession of that monarch into the City of London and into Westminster. The thing is a phenomenon; the change truly extraordinary. And it must be examined by us.
I assert again that what happened in 1662 was really a definite turning point in the history of the Church in England. Let me put this point in the words of Dr. Robert S. Bosher in his book The Making of the Restoration Settlement.2 He says that “1662 marks the final refusal to come to terms with the Continental Reformation.” Now this statement by Bosher is interesting because he writes from the Anglican standpoint, and his book has been recommended in a Foreword to it by the late Dr. Norman Sykes, a great historian and professor of Church history in Cambridge at one time and later Dean of Winchester in the Church of England. Dr. Norman Sykes says that he feels that Dr. Bosher has established his thesis; and the thesis is that 1662 was a complete victory for the Laudian party in the Anglican Church. It is for that reason that it can be regarded as the final refusal of the Anglican Church to come to terms with the Continental Reformation. The Puritans had hoped throughout the century that the Church of England would be brought into conformity with the Reformation as it had worked itself out on the Continent. They hoped against hope that this could be done. But after 1662 there was no longer any hope. The Laudian view of the Church, according to Dr. Bosher, was something that was finally established; it was a complete victory for that point of view.
This is something, therefore, that we must consider, and consider very seriously. Dr. Bosher says again, “The ecclesiastical settlement which thus took effect has been rightly regarded as a major landmark in English Church history and remains as a permanent achievement of the Laudian party. The Church of England would continue to be a meeting place of divers traditions, but, broadly speaking, its essential position, and the limits of its comprehensiveness, were finally established by the decision made in 1662. If, a century before, Anglicans had solemnly affirmed that ‘the Church of Rome hath erred,’ the Laudian triumph resulted in a judgment of equal moment—that the Ecclesia Anglicana was of another spirit than Geneva.” “In the Elizabethan settlement,” he goes on, “the Reformation had been given a peculiarly English expression, and we may interpret the settlement of 1662 as an equally characteristic version of the counter-Reformation.” What happened in 1662 was, therefore, a most important event; it was a very real turning point. The hope of the Puritans was finally dashed to the ground. It was their final defeat, and the exploding of all their longings.
The Importance of 1662
Why is it important that we should look at this matter and examine it? I suggest that it is important for this reason—that if I am not guilty of entirely misreading and misunderstanding the signs of the times—we are today in a position that is more closely similar to the whole state of affairs from 1640 to 1662 than has ever been the case during the intervening three hundred years. What I mean is this. During the period we are examining (1640–1661) everything was in the melting pot as it were. The possibilities were tremendous; it was difficult to prophesy which way they were going to turn. Many of the Puritans believed at one or two points that they really had succeeded at last, and that they had got everything they had wanted; but in the end it all proved to be vain, and everything was in the melting pot again.
Surely today everything is in the melting pot once more. The whole question of the nature of the Church is being raised acutely again. Men are now prepared to think in a more loose and detached manner of their denominational attachments than they have been for three hundred years. Until comparatively recently they have fought for their denomination, the particular denomination to which they belong, with great tenacity, and there has often been much bitterness. All that has practically gone, and men are now apparently prepared to throw the whole situation into the melting pot again and are talking about the emergence of something new.
Well, here is my question: Are we ready for that? Where do we come in at this point? What is our attitude to these possibilities? For I believe they are very real, and I think we shall witness something quite new probably in the lifetime of most of us. So it seems to me that here we have brought before us, as it were providentially, by this tercentenary of 1662, the very thing that we need to give us some guidance. Alas, unfortunately, the lesson, as I see it, of this period is mainly one of warning. God grant that we may turn even that into a source and a means of blessing and of encouragement. We are in a situation in which we must all examine ourselves, and do so very honestly. I predict that we are going to pass through a period in which probably every one of us in this room will have to make as vital and as drastic a decision as did those men of 1662. We shall be forced to decide one way or the other—indeed that is already upon us. It is for that reason, therefore, that I invite you to turn to a consideration of this most extraordinary period.
Causes of the Puritans’ Failure
So I start by asking a question: What went wrong? What was it that produced this amazing change from the apparent utter defeat of Laud to the triumph of this cause? You remember that he was impeached and put to death and that all that belonged to that side seemed lost, especially when Charles I was beheaded. It seemed to be in utter defeat; and yet in 1662 here they are victorious. The Laudian party that had seemed to be almost exterminated is back in control again and celebrating a notable victory. What went wrong? What went wrong especially with the Puritans who had been in the ascendancy during most of this period? What were the causes of failure?
I can simply put before you my own analysis of the period, my own idea as to what it was that went wrong. The first cause, I would say, was the admixture of religion and politics. That was the thing that seems to me to bedevil most of their history. It was unfortunate that Laud, in addition to being Archbishop, was a most important political person who as chief adviser to the King had a great deal to do with politics. The result was that it was impossible to disentangle the political grievances and the religious grievances. Finding that the Puritans also had grievances they naturally gravitated together, with the result that you had this—I had almost said unholy—alliance between those who were purely political in their motives and those who were essentially religious, because they seemed to be fighting a common enemy. This meant, of course, that the real issue tended to be confused and men made compromises for the sake of gaining a victory over the common enemy.
The records make it quite clear that there were those on the Puritan side, such as Baxter, who did not really believe in the Solemn League and Covenant, but in order to have the help of the Scots many of them subscribed to it. Thus, the motives became mixed, as they always will become mixed if we begin to confuse and admix politics with our religion.
It is a fact also that about 1640 there were even Royalists who heartily disliked and hated Laud and all his practices. Men, who in 1660 and 1662 were nothing but pure Royalists and supporters of the bishops, had been anti-bishop, because of the excesses of Laud, twenty years earlier. Their dislike of Laud had driven them to work with the Puritans, whose interest was more purely religious, and the result was that there was a great deal of confusion.
I do not want to stop with this, but I put it first because I have always felt that it is the first key to the understanding of the tragedy of what happened in 1662. This is always a danger, this admixture of politics and religion. Surely we need to face it at the present time. I feel certain that every Nonconformist or Free Churchman in this gathering will agree with me when I say that the main cause of the present condition of Nonconformity is to be found in the action of the leaders at the end of the last century and the beginning of this century who were more politicians than religious leaders! If you object to bishops in the House of Lords, I hope you object equally to the preacher-politician who was the curse of the Nonconformist Churches during the second half of the reign of Queen Victoria and indeed right up to 1914. The fire and the zeal and enthusiasm went into social reform and political action, and there was real justification for the saying that Nonconformity was the Liberal Party at prayer as the Church of England was the Tory Party at prayer.
To mix politics with religion in the Church is always a danger. May we learn the lesson of 1640 to 1662 and keep clear of any such worldly entanglements. Let us fight the battle of the Lord with spiritual weapons. That is the first explanation.
The second is a much more tragic one. It is the unfortunate and most regrettable divisions in the ranks of the Puritans. This is what makes the story a real tragedy. Fundamentally, these men were all agreed about doctrine. What is the difference between the Savoy Declaration and the Westminster Confession? It is negligible. They were fundamentally agreed about the great essentials of the faith, of their approach to it, and all it contained. Yet the picture that is presented is one of division, endless divisions almost, in the ranks of the Puritans.
They divided chiefly, of course, on the question of Church government; but there were other matters which also caused division. No one can read the biography of Oliver Cromwell without seeing the way in which that righteous man’s soul was vexed by these endless divisions among the Puritans. There is something pathetic in the way in which he wrote in a letter from Bristol on September 14, 1645, “Presbyterians, Independents all had here the same spirit of faith and prayer: the same pretence and answer; they agree here, know no names of difference; pity it is they should be otherwise anywhere! All that believe have real unity, which is most glorious, because inward and spiritual in the Body, and to the Head.”3
I do not want to be unfair to any section, or any one group among them, but I am compelled to say that, taking a detached historical view—and especially for one who has been brought up as a Presbyterian—the really guilty party in all this was the Presbyterian party.
On what grounds do I say that? I do so for this reason, that they were the most intransigent. Not only that, they were always ready to make agreements with the king, whether it was Charles I or Charles II. It is almost incredible, but actually in 1650 the Presbyterians in Scotland came to an agreement with Prince Charles, afterwards Charles II, and brought him over from France. There was that brief war, which fortunately ended in disaster for the Royalist party and their Presbyterian supporters in the Battle of Worcester. But is it not a tragic thing that the Presbyterians should be found in such company, and fighting against the men who on the vitals of the Christian faith were in such entire agreement with them?
And then, later, at the end of the Interregnum or Commonwealth, and the early part of 1660 you come across the character General Monck. What can one say about him? He was the man in many ways who “sold the pass” and made possible the return of Charles II and his Laudian entourage; and it was very largely because of this Presbyterian interest that he did so.
Divisions arose among the Puritans, and, as I say, they were almost endless. You had the Presbyterians, the Independents, the Fifth Monarchy Men, the Quakers, the Diggers and the Levellers, and others. You see the Puritan party divided, almost splintered. And, of course, the Anglicans not only knew this, but they played upon it and took advantage of it. Their policy was, as it has always been the policy of people who stand for any kind of Establishment, “divide and conquer.” And it worked out most successfully! The result was that you had eventually the disaster of 1662. While the Puritans were divided and quarrelling among themselves, that brilliant group of Laudians, men who believed in the teaching of Laud, and most of whom escaped to the Continent, were planning and scheming for the restoration of all they held dear.
Bosher brings this out and establishes this fact very clearly. His great thesis, which Professor Norman Sykes, as I say, asserts he has proved to the hilt, is that it was this brilliant Laudian party in exile which produced the extraordinary victory of that party in 1662. They had the aid of the most brilliant politician of the century in many ways, Edward Hyde, afterwards the Earl of Clarendon. They were all there together, and they were the people who immediately surrounded the person of the prince, who eventually became King Charles II. They just went on preparing and scheming and plotting. They just kept on, and in the meantime kept in touch with their agents in this country. While the others were quarrelling among themselves and poor Oliver Cromwell was driven to say that “the new presbyter was as bad as the old priest,” here was this party with its cohesion standing together, fighting together, though everything seemed to be hopeless. The result was, in the end, that because of the divisions among the Puritans and their successful exploiting of those divisions, they obtained this their most notable victory in 1662.
That brings us to the third point I would establish—the main cause of the division. And that is none other than the whole question of the State-Church idea. Now let us be clear about this: they all really believed in that. The Presbyterians believed in a State Church quite as much as the Anglicans. There is a sense in which it is perfectly true to say that the same thing applies even to Oliver Cromwell! We need not be surprised at this. After all, this was the situation and the position which they had inherited; they had never known any other situation at all. The Church had always been the State Church. So they started with the position as they found it. They were all essentially Erastian in their standpoint.
The position of Cromwell in this matter is to me particularly interesting. There is a sense in which he was Erastian but it was as Bosher says, “an Erastianism with a difference.” Let me quote Bosher again. He is talking about the anarchy in the National Church during the Interregnum, or during the Commonwealth, and he says: “None-the-less, beneath the anarchy of a National Church based on the merely negative principles of tolerance, a coherent policy can be observed radically different from the old. The clue to the Cromwellian Church is to be found in the vehement ‘religiousness’ of the new regime, in its profound conviction of the religious character of the State, its endless legislation upon matters of private and public morality. Unlike previous governments, it was utterly non-ecclesiastical and non-clerical in its attitude toward the State Church. The questions of ordination, sacramental administration, liturgy, and ceremonial, which, as the symbols of Church order and unity, had been bones of contention in the past, were now ignored. Every attempt to elaborate a doctrinal basis for the Church beyond the simple requirements of ‘faith in God by Jesus Christ’ was resolutely opposed by the Protector. To a recalcitrant Parliament he declared that ‘whoever hath this faith, let its form be what it will: he walking peaceably, without the prejudicing of others under another form’ would be guaranteed full liberty of worship.”
I repeat what I said in my lecture at the Evangelical Library—here is the father and the pioneer of toleration and of religious liberty in England. Let us go on with the quotation: “The new conception was unashamedly Erastian, but Erastian with a novel twist.” Now comes the important point: “The authority of the State was to be exercised not for regulating religious doctrine and practice, but for preventing any such regulation.” That is the exact opposite of the view held before. Previously it had been “to regulate religious doctrine and practice”; as is still the case. But Cromwell was opposed to that. What he wanted the State to do was to put an end to such regulation, and thereby to guarantee toleration and liberty. To go on with the quotation: “To make the Establishment the instrument for enforcing an almost unlimited tolerance of opinion, and for uniting warring groups in a common zeal for godliness was Cromwell’s ideal.” Thank God for Oliver Cromwell! “Hence,” Dr. Bosher continues, “he could regard with equanimity the crazy patch-work of the Commonwealth Church at the parish level—a spectacle that to Anglican and Presbyterian alike seemed an intolerable nightmare.”
We say and quote all that in defense of and to the glory of Oliver Cromwell. Though he took, in a sense, the Erastian view of a State Church and held it and practiced it, his idea was to use the power of the State to guarantee tolerance and variety and liberty, not to enforce particular points of view.
What, then, is our criticism of the other idea? I do not mean the Cromwellian, but the idea that too much controlled thinking both on the Anglican and the Presbyterian side. Is it not that it was too much governed by the existing conditions instead of stopping and asking, “What does the New Testament say about this?” Instead of taking the present position as it was and saying, “What can we do to this?” they should rather have said, “Well now, here is an opportunity for a new start; let us go back and look at the Church as depicted in the New Testament, and start from that.” But they did not do so in reality though both claimed to be scriptural. They started, as if it were beyond any need of demonstration or proof, with the fact of a State Church; and the whole point then resolved itself to this—should it be Episcopal, or should it be Presbyterian?
Second, were they not too much influenced by the analogy of the Old Testament and of Israel? Here, it seems to me, was the source of the trouble, that they would persist in taking the analogy of Israel in the Old Testament and applying it to England. Was not that the real error? In the Old Testament and under that Dispensation the State (of Israel) was the Church (Acts 7:38), but the State of England in the sixteenth century was not the Church. In the Old Testament the two were one and identical. But surely in the New Testament we have the exact opposite. The Church consists of the “called out” ones, not the total State. The State and the Church are not coterminus, but the Church consists of those who are “called out” of the world, out of the State, into this peculiar and separate body. Nowhere in the New Testament is a direct connection between Church and State taught. To conceive of the Church of the New Testament in its relationship to the pagan Roman Empire in any other way is just impossible. Moreover the Christian is one who is “delivered out of this present evil world” and exhorted to “come out from among them, and be ye separate” (Gal. 1:4; 2 Cor. 6:14, 17). The called out ones are of all nations, “whether Jews or Gentiles, Barbarians or Scythians, bond or free.” So, there, it seems to me, is a large part of the explanation of what led to this ultimate tragedy.
But, furthermore, holding the view they did of the State-Church connection, quite naturally they believed that their particular view should be “enforced.” Now let us be perfectly fair to the Anglicans, who were most responsible for that Act of Uniformity in 1662; the others did exactly the same thing when they had the power, and would have done so in 1660–62. The Presbyterians believed, quite as much as the Anglicans, that people should be compelled by Act of Parliament and the power of the State to submit to their particular view of the Church, and in 1644 they enforced their view by the power of the State and by the enactments of Parliament.
This view means, that ultimately these matters depend upon and are determined by the fickleness of the crowd. The result is that the same London crowd that had acclaimed Cromwell is to be seen in 1660 in its gaiety and its buffoonery welcoming back Charles II. The same people! That is what follows when you give this power to legislate and to enforce doctrine to the State. You are left ultimately with the fickleness of the crowd, without stopping to mention the inherent inability and incapacity of the crowd, the irreligious crowd in particular, to have any opinion that is of any value concerning these matters. If we are told in 1 Corinthians 6 that members of the Christian church should not take even matters of private personal disputes to the public Law Courts, how much less should we take matters of doctrine?
It seems clear that both sides were starting with the given position and did not trouble to examine it in the light of the New Testament teaching. In addition to all this, as we have already seen, they also believed that you could enforce a kind of “strict religious behaviour” upon the populace by Acts of Parliament; hence those various Acts they passed with regard to sports and entertainments and certain other things. I am bringing this forward quite deliberately because it is more than likely that there will be a fight about all this in the immediate future, and you and I will be expected to have some kind of attitude with respect to it.
I venture to assert that once more we are dealing with a standpoint which is based upon a fallacy, which is Old Testament thinking again rather than New Testament; and it always leads to trouble. Take that crowd, the London crowd, that had been compelled to live in a given way, and according to a given pattern, during the Commonwealth. It had never believed in what was being forced on it, and had never understood the principles on which it was being enforced. Consequently it got very tired and weary of it. This was one of the main factors in turning people back to Royalty, and to saying that they must have the king back, and that they must get rid of those wretched Puritans who were spoiling life, and so on. That kind of “enforcing” of morals by Act of Parliament instead of by moral and spiritual suasion, it seems to me, is bound to produce a reaction against itself. I believe we are witnessing just that at the present time. We are witnessing a reaction against Victorianism, which was so similar to what was in force during the period of the Commonwealth. This has been described in many books. During the time of Queen Victoria, and even before, as the result of the work of Wilberforce and others, what is called “Victorianism” came into being, and people were compelled by Act of Parliament, as it were, to live a certain kind of life. But that always produces a reaction against itself as it did toward the end of the Commonwealth and in 1660–62.
I am suggesting that if only all these different divisions and factions had stood together when they had a wonderful opportunity, and especially at the return of Charles II—if they had only stood together for a general religious toleration—the whole situation would have been entirely different. But the Presbyterians would not agree to that; it had to be Presbyterianism. And so the forces were divided; and the Anglicans, as I say, with their ability and astuteness and cohesion, and with what is generally described as the astounding “political finesse” of Sheldon, the Bishop of London, afterwards Archbishop, were entirely and completely successful. If the Puritans had but stood together for religious toleration in general rather than any one system, the history at that time and during the subsequent three hundred years would have been very different.
Now that was all that the Independents asked for. The Sectarians, the Independents, simply asked for toleration. They did not go into the discussions at the Savoy and various others places. They were not interested in this “either—or,” Presbyterianism or Anglicanism. All they wanted was liberty to worship God in the way they understood the Bible to teach. But, that, unfortunately, was not the view held by all Puritans and because of their divisions about these secondary matters, the whole position was lost. Of course, it was not lost in the sense that these men did not go on preaching. Alas, too late, many of them were forced to see the truth of the position taken by Dr. John Owen and Dr. Thomas Goodwin and others, and they were driven to that position. But by then the damage had been done, and a glorious possibility and opportunity had been missed.
Lessons for Today
There, then, is a kind of analysis of the causes of failure. Let me now attempt in a final section to draw some lessons for ourselves today. The first is this: what is it, according to our Reformed and Puritan view, that really matters? I have tried to show that this central all-important point became obscured for the various reasons I have adduced—the political admixture, and the concern about matters which are not, surely, of primary importance. Well, then, we must ask ourselves the question—what do we regard as of supreme importance? What are we going to put in the center? What are we going to say matters above all else, and which we must never lose sight of? Surely there can be no disagreement among us with regard to the answer. It is the gospel of salvation which is also, “the gospel of the glory of God.” It is the thing about which all those Puritans were agreed—the nature, the essence of the gospel. We have looked at it so many times in these Conferences that I need say no more.
Coupled with that, there was their emphasis upon the necessity of having able and good ministers, and the primacy and the centrality of preaching. These were the things about which they were all agreed, and about which, surely, we must also all agree as being the first, the primary, and the most essential things.
What is the gospel? Must we not put this first—that there can be no uncertainty about this? Our consciences must compel us to say this; that we cannot allow any vagueness or uncertainty or indefiniteness about this. Surely our whole position is based upon this, that we say the gospel can be defined, can be stated in propositions. We do believe in Confessions of Faith, we do believe in Creeds. It is just there that we are differentiated from the majority of people in the Christian Church at the present time. Surely, then, that is something which we must assert and proclaim and defend at all costs—this pure gospel, this pure Word of the gospel. And we will tolerate no compromise with respect to this.
Then second, we are surely compelled by all this to face again our whole view of the Church. That was a question about which the Puritans—and, indeed, for that matter the Anglicans as well at that period—were all agreed as being central. We must praise and commend them all in that respect: they were all concerned about the Church. They did not try to solve their problems by forming movements; every one of them was concerned about the state of the Church. The Anglicans were contending for their view of the Church. The Presbyterians were not content to be just a movement within the Church, they wanted the whole Church to be Presbyterian. The point I am making is that they did not meet the position by just saying, “Well, all right, we will remain Anglicans, but we will have a movement of our own within the church, and we will meet together and have fellowship and carry out activities from time to time”—leaving the Church untouched as it were. That was not their view at all. The same is true of the Independents also. Every one of them was contending for a view of the Church. They were not content to allow the condition of the Church to be chaotic as long as they could meet together in fellowship in their movements. Every one of them was concerned about the state and condition of the Church. The doctrine of the Church was central with all of them.
We need to be reminded of that. Is it not the case that for far too long we as Evangelicals have been divided, and are rendered ineffective, because we do not think in terms of the Church? We have formed movements, and we have not applied what we believe to the Church situation—hence the chaos and the anarchy of our time in almost every department of our life and activity.
That, then, raises the question: What is our view of the Church? What is the New Testament view of the Church? What has the New Testament to say about this whole question of a State Church, and as to the way in which doctrine and practice are to be determined? Surely this question ought to be one of our priorities. These people of 1662 compel us to face that. The movements around us today, the Ecumenical movement in particular, and other factors, I believe, are forcing us to ask this question: What is our view of the Church? And surely at this point we need to learn this great lesson from the Puritans—the all-importance of the purity of the Church, especially in the matter of doctrine.
Implicit in that, of course, is the necessity for discipline. Is it right to tolerate in the same Church people whose views on the essentials of the faith are diametrically opposed? Is it right that we belong to the same company, calling itself a church, as men who deny almost everything we stand for—the Deity of our Lord, the Virgin Birth, His miracles, His atoning sacrificial death, the punitive and substitutionary elements in the atonement, our Lord’s literal physical resurrection, the Person of the Holy Spirit, regeneration, justification by faith only, the “blessed hope” of our Lord’s return? Is it right in the light of New Testament teaching that we regard such people as “brethren,” that we should refer to people who never darken the doors of a place of worship as “lapsed Christians” simply because they were baptized when infants? Is that compatible with the New Testament teaching with regard to the Church, and her purity, and her discipline, and her life? Such questions have got to be matters of prior and primary consideration for us if we really take these Puritans seriously, if we pay any serious regard to their teaching about the conscience, and of the need of being scrupulous, and of honestly carrying out what we believe to be the Truth whatever the consequences.
Another urgent question surely is the freedom of the Church to determine her own affairs. Is there any suggestion anywhere in the New Testament that any body, the State and Monarch included, has any right in that respect save the Church herself? Do we not need to remind ourselves again of “the crown rights of the Redeemer”?
I go on to put a practical question: Can we who are agreed about the vital, fundamental, first, things allow anything of lesser importance to divide us? We have a great lesson in the history of 1640 to 1662 which shows us what happens if we do so. As Evangelicals we are divided among the various denominations, and our efforts are made negatory and nullified; and in the end we count for very little. But is it right, I ask, for us to allow ourselves to be separated and divided by anything which falls short of the great central things we have mentioned? Is it right that we should be more associated in general, and in our total life as Christians in the Church, with people with whom we do not agree, than with people with whom we do agree about these central vital matters?
The next lesson we learn from 1640–62 is the importance of fighting this battle in a spiritual manner, and not with carnal weapons. If 1640 to 1662 teaches us nothing else it teaches us this: that in that kind of ecclesiastical fighting, the ecclesiastics will win every time. They are past masters at it. It is the thing in which they really believe, and while you and I are concerned about doctrine, and the culture and the nurture of the soul, their whole attention is given to practicalities and to the politics of the situation. So the moment we begin to fight with a semi-political, ecclesiastical outlook, the moment we develop a party spirit and begin to think in terms of party advantage, and regard people who really agree with us about the centralities, as enemies almost, and in opposition, the cause is already lost.
There is nothing, it seems to me, that is more offensive, or more removed from the spirit of the New Testament than a party spirit that puts the interests of its own particular point of view upon matters that are not of primary and central importance before those matters that are of primary and central importance. Not only is it wrong but, as I say, the ecclesiastics will always succeed best at that kind of thing. They always have succeeded; they always will succeed. Our only comment upon them is this—“Verily, they have their reward.” They are past masters at manipulation, at lobbying, at meeting behind the scenes, and at organizing. And they will stoop to almost anything. Fancy the Presbyterians, during this period we are examining, actually cooperating with Henrietta Maria, the widow of Charles I! They cooperated with her though she was a Roman Catholic who really hated everything for which they stood. They did so in order to get an advantage over the Anglicans. Shame on them!
“The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds” (2 Cor. 10:5). But the moment men become animated by a party spirit they will stoop to almost anything to get their ends and to ensure the success of their party; and so you get these unholy alliances. They are a blot upon the Presbyterian record during that whole period. Thank God, the men whose names are most frequently mentioned in this conference—John Owen and Thomas Goodwin—cannot be charged with that. They had this other view of Church government to which I have already referred. They did not look to the State connection; they but wanted liberty to worship as they understood God to teach in the New Testament; and therefore they never resorted to these shameful practices and subterfuges. May God preserve us from developing a narrow party spirit that is more interested in the success of its point of view than in the glory of God and the purity and the welfare of the Church. If that does not come as a lesson to us from 1660 to 1662, well then I say God help us—our cause is already lost.
The Puritan Conscience in Action
My final word is this, and it is a still more practical one. A great lesson that comes to us from this period is to be alert to the danger of being ensnared and bought by the subtlety and the craftiness and the wiliness of men. All this was practiced upon the Puritans, and especially on the Presbyterian party, from 1660 to 1662. The principle on which the Laudians acted was the prin-ciple on which they are acting today. It can be seen in ecumenical circles at the present time. The Roman Catholics, and the present pope in particular, are acting on it. The principle is this: stand inflexible on the essentials, but having done that, be affable, be ready to concede on irrelevancies and matters that really do not matter at all, speak kindly, fraternize with and flatter members of the opposing group. It was a deliberate part of the policy of the Laudian party to bribe some of the Puritans. Richard Baxter was offered the bishopric of Hereford, Calamy was offered the bishopric of Lichfield, Reynolds was offered the bishopric of Norwich, and Thomas Manton was offered the deanery of Rochester. Bates was offered the deanery of Lichfield, Bowles was offered the deanery of York. The only one who accepted was Reynolds, who actually became the Bishop of Norwich.
I do not want to say anything about Reynolds, but I do say this about the others: there is the Puritan conscience in action! It cannot be bribed, it is not “taken in” by the affability and the niceness and the flattery of men. It does not say, “You know, some of these other men are much nicer than our people.” It sees through all that, and it sees beyond it. Attempts were made in that way to divide the Puritan party by offering preference to some of their leaders; but it was rigidly and sternly and conscientiously rejected and refused. These men could not compromise on these matters, their consciences could not be bought. They preferred to go out into the wilderness, and to the suffering that followed to so many and in such a terrible manner. That, I say, is the Puritan conscience in action. The scrupulosity, the carefulness, and particularly the carefulness not only to have the right view, but to act upon it whatever the consequences might be.
In other words, the ultimate lesson to be learned from this period, is this: “The arm of flesh will fail you, ye dare not trust your own.” We must “trust in the Lord, and in the power of His might.” We must be “strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might.” We must indeed realize that “the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.” It does not matter what they are, or who they are; it does not matter how small we may be. If we see what the Truth is, well then, I say, we must hold to that and fight for that, and refuse to compromise about that, whatever it may cost us. We must refuse every enticement, every offer, every form of flattery and honor, we must be wise to detect the devices that will be used against us—the offering of offices, preferences, positions of honor, places in our denomination, or whatever else it may be—we must reject it all as these men rejected it all, in order that we may fight for the faith and the purity of the Church, the honor of God and of His Christ.
We thank God for the memory of these men, who, having seen the position clearly, acted upon it at all costs. May God give us grace to follow in their train!