… and Andrew Fuller
Part I
The work of the Banner of Truth Trust proved a great encouragement in my spiritual development and I became an enthusiastic reader of their magazine from its start. Throughout the following years, especially during the seventies and eighties, I was able to break away from my work in Sweden and Germany to attend those inspiring Leicester Conferences which blessed the soul of so many pastors and teachers and gave them a love for Reformed …
Posts Tagged Great Rebellion
… the church herself whom she would then protect.
These royal rights became obsolete at the Great Rebellion when Parliament appropriated them. The Westminster Assembly, for instance, was called neither by King nor Church but by Parliament. At the Restitution, Parliament refused to give up such sovereign powers and when Charles II proclaimed his Act of Tolerance for Dissenters, Parliament ignored it and persecuted ‘heretics’, using the same laws that had caused them to persecute …
… he shows preference for John Wesley, disdain for the Gospel Magazine and disinterest in the great work of God done through the pre-Rebellion Reformed Church of England. Hind’s simplistic etymology is used as an excuse for his lack of attention to the subject matter.
Rather than refute Toplady by praising Wesley, one must ask oneself which Christian stood nearest to Biblical, Reformed doctrine. Glossing over Wesley’s dishonesty against Calvinistic evangelists is an …
Apostate Church of England
Dec 17
… Cromwellian chaos.
Sir:
The Letters to the Editor on the spiritual state of the pre-Rebellion Church of England swing from one extreme to the other. Ignoring historical facts, they back-project later dark sectarian interpretations onto more luminous times. The rejection of the Restitution by an alleged 2,000 (nearer 800) ministers in 1662 was a direct result of the ejection of the alleged 10,000 (nearer 7,000) Anglican ministers and scholars who were outlawed in 1643. One cannot …
… that those thousands of Anglicans ministers and scholars who were deprived and ejected during the Great Rebellion of 1640-1660 were removed for scandalous and ungodly behaviour. Indeed, when I read that 2,000 of these men of scandal were evicted and punished in various ways in 1643 alone, and hundreds followed them year by year, I thought that England had been rightly rid of much dross and was shocked that the Reformed Church of England had been so corrupt.
Five events caused me to …
Books
Aug 21
… and Gospel in the Theology of John Gill
History of the Reformed Church in England up to the Great Rebellion
The History of the English Bible
Great Bible Translators
Friends searching for previous essays of mine in the English language could consult the indices of Evangelical Times, Banner of Truth Magazine, Bible League Quarterly, The Baptist Quarterly, The Banner of Sovereign Grace Truth, The Messenger, English Churchman, Focus and New Focus. Various American magazines have …
To Honour God
Aug 17
… confessed to God how weak, unskilled and unfitting he was for his calling. It takes a very great man to admit great wrong and, whenever Cromwell lapsed, as in Calamy’s example where he deceived both Parliament and the army in order to remodel the former on the latter, his Christian conscience forced him to confess openly that he had sinned.
After dealing with Cromwell’s view of his own vileness, Haykin devotes a chapter to Cromwell’s spirituality, showing how Cromwell …
Puritan Papers
Aug 18
… thrice pure puritans; nevertheless in these blemishes of his I have not yet found any mote so great as the greater beams which one may perceive in their characters.”
However, the term ‘Puritan’ caught on and was soon used positively in the sense Richard Baxter applied to his father, a man who lived a godly life according to the Scriptures. However, during Martyn Lloyd-Jones struggle with Anglicanism, he tended to back-project the Anglican Church of his day onto the …
Men Not Gods
Sep 9
… and articles claiming that the English Church of the Reformation had become corrupt and the rebellion of Oliver Cromwell and the Enlightenment philosophy of Samuel Rutherford put England back on the Reformation path.
Men of Two Natures
Sir: Both Oliver Cromwell and Samuel Rutherford were not gods but men of two natures. Today, Protestants are re-discovering Cromwell ‘warts and all’ and are beginning to realise that Rutherford had a similar verrucosis. …
… has this longing to know more about the past so motivated the churches. Of course, there are great spiritual treasures to be found in church history and much to be learnt through past triumphs and failures. However, there is also a danger in this preoccupation with the past against which we must be warned. As our churches grow sadly less and less dependent on Scripture, we tend to look for historical roots for our support. So many once Bible-believing churches who scorned tradition are …
