Books

I ordered some books today; some of them are ones I have wanted to get hold of for a while, and it is likely to be the last time I am able to spend that much money on books at once. I am sharing them with any readers who have an interest in puritanism, in case they are titles you may not be aware of and because at least a couple of them are worthy of pointing out a few things about:

The Above Title along with William Haller’s Rise of Puritanism are worthy of special note. Because until around 50-60 years ago, puritanism was very much still a dirty word, a by-word, and people really had a cock-eyed impresssion of who the puritans were, what they stood for, and the lives they lived.  These two books are two that earlier this century helped to set the record straight.  And perhaps started the tide turning, so that in those days, there was around 10-25 puritan titles printed in the preceding fifty years, that in the fifty years since then,  it well into treble figures, and around 50-60 new titles are being printed every year that was written by the puritans. Another book I ordered of which the same is true as the two preceding book is this one:

These 3 titles in particular I have wanted for some time. If we are going to either encourage their thought, or refute and reject any group of people’s thoughts or ideology then the least we can do, is have an informed opinion,  one not based on fable or folk-lore, or the BBC, but  by things that have been proved to be fact and some good men have set these things down on paper just for the very reason that we need not be ignorant.

A couple more I ordered as relatively inexpensive paperbacks were these:

If I had to pick just 2 or 3 as recommendations, it would either be William Haller,  Worldly Saint’s and/or Visible Saint’s. I’ve heard enough to know they changed the face of how the  puritans as a group of people are perceived, though sadly, much ignorance does still reign over this issue, which is the reason for this blog post, because today, we have no justification for ignorance to continue forever.

However, I do want to add a short anecdote I heard last weekend, as far as exhorting or reading the puritans.  That we can read all we like, it is only a walk and life to match, and  a heart cleansed by Christ’s blood in sanctification that will lead us to purer lives and purity in the puritan vein.  I heard  a well known preacher relate this tale the weekend and I shall use my own words to get across what he said. He knew a man who had a vast puritan library. He was very proud of his library. He was thought to be a pillar of the Christian community,  and a bright light.  But what no one outside of his home knew, was that next to his wonderfully spiritually rich puritan library, in the next room, he had a different kind of library, of shelf after shelf of triple X movies, and the police had raided him, and he was now in prison on pornography charges and was an active and practicing homosexual. AS Christ so wisely said, and it applies no less to good stuff as bad stuff, that it is not what goes in that defiles a man, (or improves him) its what comes out, as that shows what is in our hearts.

I have been and continue to take part in the Matthew Henry Commentary Challenge. Not sure I shall read it in a year, certainly not at least without forsaking some other planned study, but how long it takes it not the point, so much as how much the profit, on a spiritual level, and how much it helps to love and understand the Word of God.
It’s still January, so still early enough for others to join in if they so wish to do, who haven’t yet started.
But on account of this regular reading plan, the reader may have noticed that I have posted odd short excerpts from Matthew Henry here the last week or two, and think I shall have the Matthew Henry minute when it seems appropriate, just a sentence or two or a few lines, from the incomparable Matthew Henry commentary. I had someone write me a while ago, asking who apart from Henry of puritans would make a good second commentary. Matthew Poole was the answer I gave, and  would be the answer I would give to anyone. He is much briefer than Henry, his commentary is more in the form of notes, but actually the brevity of Matthew Poole, compliments Henry’s flowing prose nicely.

But the first official at least, Matthew Henry Minute follows below:

By this way, sinners draw near to the throne of grace with acceptance. By faith we perceive this way, and in prayer we approach by it. In answer to prayer we receive all needful blessings of providence and grace. We have no way of getting to heaven but by Christ. And when the soul, by faith, can see these things, then every place will become pleasant, and every
prospect joyful. He will never leave us, until his last promise is accomplished in our everlasting happiness. [MH commentary on Gen 28]

I’m sorry I have not blogged at this site for longer than I care for; there have been various things that have prevented me, not least of all my daily struggles in my illnesses and afflictions; I try to keep up at the other sites, a puritan at heart, and 2. Covenanted Reformation, particularly the former, when the sites are all merged into one, I think it will be an aid to being more organized with blogging.

But since I have had little to say, and didn’t want to go another day without having something for the reader, thought I would make three book recommendations, which are not puritan, but are definitely reformed.
There is much it seems to me, ignorance amongst the reformed community, (some of it at least) about what Calvin taught and thought exactly about the insitute of marriage and family. Calvin was very much a man of his times, and to read him in one place it seems like he contradicts himself in others; however, Calvin was no chauvinist, the woman was made equal and the heart of the home in Calvin’s Geneva. Same as the divorce laws we currently have,, originated from Calvin’s Geneva. Before that time, women were not seen as equal to the men in the home, they were treated often as slaves or children, or definitely as inferiors, and Calvin and his time in Geneva changed this, and we are still reaping the benefits of this today.
Yes, Calvin does seem to contradict himself on some subjects, but he wrote and lived so long ago, that we only have the translated works of Calvin, (for English speaking folk) and language and use of it, has changed since his time, and some of what is translated is likely very far from what Calvin originally intended, hence we are left with what often appears contradictions.
But two books on this subject I would reccommend are:

Sex, Marriage, and Family in John Calvin’s Geneva.

Family Reformation: The Legacy of Sola Scriptura in Calvin’s Geneva by Scott T. Brown

And

The third book, if you are an iconoclast though written by a papist it is a very good book to read on this subject by Carlos Eires called
The War against Idols. Which starts pre reformation and goes up to Calvin’s time, and how idols in the Worship of God were seen by the Church.

Are you a Bibliophile? I am, and always have been. As still quite a young child, my first love was books, and the reading of them, and that remains true to this very day, as far as occupations or what I am willing to spend money on.  However, I don’t believe in reading for reading’s sake. There are far too many Christians out there with head knowledge that doesn’t seem to permeate down into their hearts.  There are many atheists out there who are more well versed in matters of Scripture than many professing Christians.  Books should be read, but digested slowly, and meditated upon. We should savour them, so that we don’t just swallow them without having tasted or gotten the goodness from them, but slowly chew and digest, so that they go beyond our brains, but into our whole man, and ultimately our heart. The reading of books is best done, with the eyes of the heart.

On the other hand, you get folks who with the pace of life we live today, not really setting serious time aside and setting eternity as the priority, it gets put into second place behind the humdrum rota of family life, work, recreation and whatever else. Yet, the pace of life may have been slower in those days, but they lacked the ease that we do, and our comfort should make us more fit for a life of service than a life of hardship does, as they worked tirelessly, yet still never neglected their own souls, or those of their neighbours, or flocks; their hours of work would put most today to shame. So the pace of life and business doesn’t really wash at all as a valid argument. Heaven will either be our priority or it won’t.

Richard Baxter was a Bibliophile, and I want to post an excerpt from the section on Richard Baxter from Marcus Loane’s book, “Makers of Puritan History.”

Speaking of Baxter:

Books were the one pleasure in life which he deemed a necessity, and he spared no money in their purchase. He formed a friendship while at Whitehall with a godly bookseller’s apprentice from whom he could always obtain information about new books and get them as he wished. Shelves lined the wall of his upstairs room at Kidderminster, and books lay on the floor and were piled on the chairs. Once as he sat in his study, the weight of his largest folio volumes broke down three or four shelves and they crashed down around his chair: “the place, the weight, the greatness of the books was such, and my head just under them, that it was a wonder they had not beaten out my brains.” Nothing grieved him more than in the Great Fire of 1666 than the half-burnt leaves of books which the wind scattered miles from London. “The loss of books was an exceeding great detriment to the interest of piety and learning.”
This love of books was to survive all the vicissitudes of the future. “When I die,” he wrote in 1683, “I must leave my library and turn over those pleasant books no more.”  We do not know when he found time to read in view of all his other labours, “all which,” he said “leave me but little time to study which hath been the greatest personal affliction of all my life.” We must suppose he read far into the night when the streets were still and silent. He read the old and the new with equal ardour, and he must have read with rapid eye and retentive memory. He poured over old and musty volumes in a tireless effort to wring from them all their treasures, and he amassed a vast store of knowledge on all kinds of subjects. He made himself at home with the Fathers and the school-men, and though he had not the tongue of any foreign country, he read French, Dutch and German divines in English translations. He toiled through vast tomes on medieval philosophy, mastered the chief authorities on metaphysics and dialectics, and took up the study of fresh subjects like pharmacy and medicine…
…He could quote from hundreds of books and there were marginal allusions to more than a hundred authors even in such a work as the second edition of the Saints Everlasting Rest. It was not for nothing that he gave this advice with regard to marriage:  “So great are the matter of our studies and labours, requring our total and most serious thoughts that I earnestly advise all that can, to live single.”—Marcus Loane “Makers of Puritan History.”

I have been studying the book of Lamentations this afternoon. The first verses of Chapter One seem to speak to my lot in life exactly. However, I have also noticed over time, there seems to be a distinct lack of readng material about this book of the Bible.

I ordered this one today, by Peter Martyr from Amazon UK.

Lamentations 1:1-7 How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary! She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies. Judah is gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great servitude: she dwelleth among the heathen, she findeth no rest: all her persecutors overtook her between the straits. The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn feasts: all her gates are desolate: her priests sigh, her virgins are afflicted, and she is in bitterness. Her adversaries are the chief, her enemies prosper; for the LORD hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions: her children are gone into captivity before the enemy. And from the daughter of Zion all her beauty is departed: her princes are become like harts that find no pasture, and they are gone without strength before the pursuer. Jerusalem remembered in the days of her affliction and of her miseries all her pleasant things that she had in the days of old, when her people fell into the hand of the enemy, and none did help her: the adversaries saw her, and did mock at her sabbaths.

It is also available from one of my favourite Reformed book store, Reformation Heritage books

If like myself, you are an avid reader, and are always explanding your Reformed library, but to know what is “good” to what is not, my friend Andrew Myers, printed a whole list of recommendations by Joel Beeke which was a complation of  a whole bunch of recommendations  at Joel Beek at Reformation Heritage’s sites.  his blog yesterday. It is well worth checking out, for the discerning reader.

I have over the past few weeks, read two or three biographies on John Calvin, and I have to say I am somwhat suprised how much of the things he is often criticises for, I see in myself and get the same criticism. He was accused of being too harsh in the written word, and yet some of those same critics could not believe the same man they sat across the dinner table from, enjoying fellowship and gracious communion with, had penned those same words they had criticized.

He couldn’t see and felt impatience, because others took a lower or less black and white view than he did about what is right and wrong from a Biblical perspective; again, I often have the same frustration. I tend to see most things in life in black and white terms, but I also believe Scripture, and good evil can only be black or white–good or evil.

He felt people took a low view of the Gospel, of its teachings, and were resistant to it, for their own safety’s sake. I again level the same criticism, yet I feel the people in his day had more justification for being less open and less willing to stand up and be counted, because to do so then, could cost them their lives.  Today, it would cost people for the most part, a little comfort,  and same as in those days, when the stakes were much higher, most people won’t. And I have a hard job to feel patience about it, or toleration.

I could go on in other similarities,  but I won’t; tho I am not in any way claiming his intelligence or his achievements; except we both do what others  of our day at least if as ill as he and as ill as me, would not do, to try and further the truth. Peoples early life does shape them I think; and in some ways,  there is a link between the road that Calvin was taken on, and my own, in hardship from a young age, and maybe it takes certain sufferings or certain things to make the personalities that will not lie down when others would only be able to lie down and do nothing but be invalids.  Calvin, wrote in his sermons on Job that earlier sufferings prepared us for greater and harder ones, and both he and I can see how that has been true.  But I feel much of the impatience, much of the frustration that he did over the same things,  peoples lack of enthusiasm being another one.  Yet I guess I feel it even sharper in the safety we have to today to stand up for and defend the truth, as if one’s life is at risk for doing so, whose going to say they would do any different if living in those times. But today, mostly, peoples lives are not at risk,  the cost is a little comfort! And comfort and ease in my opinion are two of the idols of our age amongst the visible church. Sometimes I am glad to be in such abject poverty, and discomfort, or without a doubt I would fall foul to it too, but I never get the opportunity to.

Calvin wrote that in Geneva he died a thousand a deaths a day; and I can honestly say I have said the exact same words to some folks, before I ever knew he said it. The last week has been tougher than I could hope to describe in adequate terms so that most or anyone reading this would be likely to understsand in any reality,  in the biography of Calvin I am currently reading, “John Calvin–A pilgrim’s life,” you read of Calvin saying:

“Today I urgently prayed and begged God at least twenty times that he may let me die.” but Calvin knew  God did not always answer prayer in the affirmative,  and so he was to stay in Geneva , and to stay there alive.

But to read of Calvin having the same criticisms, that I have had directed towards me, by both Calvinst and non-calvinists alike, I find rather reassuring.  Many people will say they are Calvinists, without knowing much about the man, or having read much if anything in its entirety of what he wrote.  The Scriptures say that the student will become like his master. And yes, it is talking of Christ of course, and his diciples, those who follow him. But as Calvinists, we should also kow what Calvin thought, believed and said about certain  issues. Not take his word on those things that they are correct without first  checking whether what Calvin said, wrote, or belived, can be supported by the Scriptures, Calvin, the Westminster Standards or any other reformed writings should always be subordnate to the Scriptures, but as refomred belivers, they are not of no import to us.  A Christian who does not study Church history, and actually know it for themselves, rather than second hand, will never be a good Christian.  God’s dealing with his people through the church down the ages, is HIS-story.  But the student is never wiser than his master, and Calvin was a student of the Scripture most of all, but he still read widely the patristic fathers of his day, such as Augustine.   So, even though different imes, different aims, I guess I have found a Christian I can relate to in Calvin. Some will even today, criticise his view, and that is their right of course,  yet what is Calvin doing apart from putting the teachings of Scripture at the forefront of everything.  People today will often claim the Scriptures are infallible and sufficient, and yet live  as if they don’t believe that at all. What a man belives so he is. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Our actions will always tell others what is really in our hearts no matter what we may claim with our lips.

But if you are going read Calvin, or any books on Christian history, then read them with a critical viewpoint. Because many of these works are unscholarly at best, dishonest at worst.  The Scriptures is the only book one can gurantee is a hundred per cent authentic.  It is why, if you are reading about Calvin, or the Puritans, or the Scots Covenanters, you need to know them for yourselves, as far as their teachings and thoughts on any given issues.  Because without that, given the  way some writers today misrepresent history, in some cases distort the truth, you will believe alot of stuff about Calvin, the puritans, and Scots covenanter that has no basis in truth. Whereas if you have enough understnading of what they teach on certain issues, how they thought, how they lived, how the interprted certain things, you will have the critical eye needed to read any book of history.  Because many historians today, have ahidden agenda; many of them are written by pagans and heathens, so of course they have an agenda.  And if you do not know to start with what they thought and believed, then it will be a case of the blind leading the blind, and you both falling down a ditch as far as believing things that are inaccurate.

Learning the truths of the Bible, and letting the word dwell in us richly comes by diligent study of the word; learning the truth about Calvin, the puritans the socts covenanter or any other individual or aspect of church history, again, comes by diligent study. It doesn’t happen by surfing a few websites, for a few quotes here and there, that my impress a forum, (or may not do) but whatever men may think of us, whether it is good or ill, the only opinin that should really mater to us, is that of the Lord Jesus, and to be assured of our standing with Him. That can, and will only come by diligent study, not by sloth, or indiffierence, or indulging the flesh in recreations or pleasures in excess.  The Christian life should not be a comfortable life for the most part, but one of hard work, often very lonely, often very afflicted,  but always, always, leading us closer to Christ and heaven.   John Calvin was an example of that in action. He is a good figure for any Calvinist to study, and as Calvinist’s I would say it is even our duty to.

I for one have been much encouraged in learning of Calvin the man, as well as the Theologian. In his great physical exteremities of course he has been a source of encouragment and comfort that way, given my own physical extremities. But, I also take cofort, that the same criticisms, and same narrow views that he was accused of having, are often the same as my own, and will I belieive, make the criticisms bounce off easier without leaving much of a mark.  In fact, I parted from a  “friend” just this last weekend, because they said my views were too “narrow.”

John calvin--A Pilgrim's Life

Tis a little after ten pm here, and I was putting the trash out for the collection tomorrow. I keep my trash cans in the cupboard to the right of the front door, where my electric and gas metres are so that in high winds they don’t get blow away. HOwever, I saw a big white sack. And it was to find the postman had left my order from Reformation Heritage books in there.

What a nice surprise at ten pm. I was very blessed to find these titles and often the titles that RHB has are not easily available over here. However, for any British readers, if at all possible it will pay to buy inland because Royal Mail has started to charge horrendous import duty charges. I’ve had two charges this week, one for health products, and this one for the books, and between them it was almost sixty UK pounds. They seem to base the charge on how much the goods are worth, as each other was about the same price to buy and each import charge exactly the same amount.

Most people who have read my blog for any length of time know I love teo study the puritans and puritanism, and these were the title from Reformation Heritage books:

Scottish Puritans in two volumes--select biographies

Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation

History of the Puritans in 3 Volumes by Daniel Neal

So all in all, a very profitable trip to put the trash out!