Turn from the Anglican to the Puritan:—“I confess,” he says, “it is lawful for me to wear a helmet on my head in preaching; but it were not well if you would institute the wearing of a helmet, to signify our spiritual militia, and then resolve that all shall be silenced and imprisoned during life that will not wear it. It is lawful for me to use spectacles, or to go on crutches; but will you therefore ordain that all men shall read with spectacles, to signify our want of spiritual sight, and that no man shall go to church but on crutches, to signify our disability to come to God of ourselves. So, in circumstantials, it is lawful for me to wear a feather in my hat, and a hay-rope for a girdle, and a hair-cloth for a cloak: but if you should ordain that if any man serve God in any other habit, he shall be banished, or perpetually imprisoned, or hanged; in my opinion, you did not well: especially, if you add that he that disobeyeth you must also incur everlasting damnation. It is in itself lawful to kneel when we hear the Scriptures read, or when we sing psalms; but yet it is not lawful to drive all from hearing and singing, and lay them in prison that do it not kneeling. And why men should have no communion in the Lord’s Supper that receive it not kneeling, or in any one commanded posture, and why men should be forbidden to preach the Gospel that wear not a linen surplice, I cannot imagine any such reason as will hold weight at the bar of God.”[564]

Owen was particularly active and vigorous in defending Nonconformity, in pleading its rights, and in expounding his own views of Church polity. In the year 1667, he published several tracts, the design of which was to promote peaceable obedience to the civil enactments of government; to show the injustice and impolicy of subjecting conscientious and useful men to suffering, on account of their religious sentiments; to expose the unconstitutional nature of the proceedings against them by informers and secret emissaries; to unfold his ideas of the nature and benefits of toleration in former ages, and in other lands; to vindicate it from various charges; and to point out the folly of attempting to settle the peace of the country on the basis of religious conformity.[565]

At a later period, in 1681, Owen published his Enquiry into the Original, Nature, Institution, Power, Order, and Communion of Evangelical Churches, in which he maintains that “unless men by their voluntary choice, and consent, out of a sense of their duty unto the authority of Christ, in His institutions, do enter into a Church-state, they cannot, by any other ways or means, be so framed into it, as to find acceptance with God therein.”

A Church he defines to be—“An especial society or congregation of professed believers, joined together according unto his mind, with their officers, guides, or rulers whom he hath appointed; which do or may meet together for the celebration of all the ordinances of Divine worship, the professing and authoritatively proposing the doctrine of the Gospel, with the exercise of the discipline prescribed by himself, unto their own mutual edification, with the glory of Christ, in the preservation and propagation of His kingdom in the world.”[566]

But with all this zeal in defence of particular forms of government, the great Puritan Divines expressed the utmost charity towards all Reformed Churches at home and abroad. The schismatical sentiments of Anglicans, who cut off Presbyterians and Independents from communion, and expressed hopes of their salvation in only cautious, faltering terms, find no echo in the writings of their antagonists. It was the main business of Baxter’s life to unite together Christians of all kinds; for this he wrote numerous books, to this he devoted his best years; and if Owen came behind him in this respect, he has, as in a nut-shell, summed up most truly the cause of all disunion:—

“Men fall to judging and censuring each other as to their interest in Christ, or their eternal condition. By what rule? The Everlasting Gospel? The Covenant of Grace? No, but of the disciples: ‘Master, they follow not with us.’ They that believe not our opinion, we are apt to think believe not in Jesus Christ; and because we delight not in them, that Christ does not delight in them. This digs up the roots of love; weakens prayer; increases evil surmises; which are of the works of the flesh, genders strife and contempt, things that the soul of Christ abhors.”[567]

Able as the Puritans might be in controversy, they appear to much greater advantage in their experimental and practical instructions. And here it ought to be noticed, that whilst the conforming Puritans did not number amongst them any great scientific Divines, they included well-known names of another class. Bishop Hall, by no means an ecclesiastical Puritan, sympathized a good deal with the doctrinal Puritans in their distinctive views, and still more in their evangelical spirit; and this British Seneca, as he is called, always wrote upon moral and practical subjects with the unction characteristic of the best kind of Puritanism. Thomas Fuller, chiefly known as an Historian, employed his matchless wit in the enforcement of religious duties, after a manner which bore much of a Puritan stamp, whilst it fascinated and edified all parties. Dr. Reynolds, the Puritan Bishop of Norwich, wrote books which were once of considerable celebrity, and which contain a great deal of evangelical sentiment and practical piety. The Christian Armour, by Gurnal, the Puritan Incumbent of Framlingham, is perhaps as popular as ever—exhibiting as it does, amidst much perverted ingenuity of arrangement and a vitiated style of expression, a surprising amount of spiritual truth and of genuine wisdom. The Nonconformists, however, outpeer their brethren in this department of literature. John Bunyan has a niche of his own in the temple of literary fame, where the image of his genius has been crowned with chaplets woven by the noblest hands. Other Puritan authors of that age have contributed to the wealth of our spiritual literature. In proof of which I need only mention Owen’s ideal of Christian character, in his Mortification of Sin, and his Spiritual Mindedness; Baxter’s encouragement for believers, in his Saint’s Everlasting Rest; his warnings to the ungodly, in his Now or Never; and Howe’s solace for mourners, in The Redeemer’s Dominion over the Invisible World.

Alleine’s Alarm to the Unconverted—of which it was stated in 1775 that 20,000 copies had been sold, and 50,000 more under the title of The Sure Guide to Heaven—is one of those books which are eminently adapted to awaken deep spiritual convictions. Bates’ Spiritual Perfection Unfolded and Enforced—to mention no other book by this estimable author—is written in his characteristic silvery style: and, if there be sometimes an “abrupt dismissal of a train of thought,” “these breaks in the veins of valuable ore do not appear to be ever very material, and are rarely perceptible except to the eye of a closely-reflecting and examining reader.” But the religious excellencies of the volume surpass those which are literary, and if Alleine’s Alarm be calculated to arrest the godless, Bates’ Spiritual Perfection is equally fitted to guide and edify the godly. The titles of Brooks’ Treatises indicate the quaint kind of talent which he possessed:—“A Box of Precious Ointment”—“An Ark for God’s Noahs”—“A Golden Key to open hidden Treasures”—“Apples of Gold in Pictures of Silver.” “Many of his sentences are proverbs newly coined, shrewd, humorous, and Saxon; and they are provided with an alliterative jingle, which, like a sheep-bell, keeps a good saying from being lost in the wilderness.” It is impossible to read his writings without respecting his character as well as admiring his ingenuity; and whilst he exhibits more originality than Bates, like him he is a teacher fitted to instruct Christian people and to comfort their hearts under the troubles of life.

Flavel is entitled to occupy a niche, not far from that which is filled by John Bunyan; not that he possessed the inventiveness of the Great Dreamer, yet, like him, he delighted to use similitudes, and did it successfully. His Husbandry Spiritualized—suggested by his walks through pleasant farms in Dorset and Devon; and his Navigation Spiritualized, arising from observations on sea-faring life, whilst he resided in the picturesque town of Dartmouth, are full of sweet and healthy allegories.

Less known than Flavel, but somewhat akin to him in natural and spiritual taste, was Isaac Ambrose, whose work, entitled Looking to Jesus, is full of pleasant illustrations, drawn from the scenes of nature amidst which he delighted to ramble, especially “the sweet woods of Widdicre,” on the banks of the Darwen, where in a little hut, to which he annually repaired, this Puritan hermit, for the time, spent hour after hour in meditation and prayer.

John Spencer, in his Things New and Old; Robert Cawdray, in his Treasury of Similes; and Benjamin Keach, in his Key to open Scripture Metaphors;—also belong to the same class of authors as Flavel.[568]

Many of the practical treatises published in the seventeenth century consisted of courses of sermons, and partook largely of the diffuse style proper to the pulpit; also many of the sermons of that day are in fact practical treatises. We see this fashion of treating Divinity in the works of Taylor and Barrow, and still more strikingly in the works of Owen, Baxter, and Howe. Casuistry, now neglected by Protestants, was then much studied by theologians of all schools. Taylor’s Ductor Dubitantium, and Baxter’s Christian Directory, are worthy of a chief place on the shelf of a library appropriated to works of this description. The characters of the men, and the peculiarities of the different schools of theological thought to which they belonged, may be traced in these volumes, and there is truth in the remark of one well read in all kinds of theological literature,—“Both may be consulted occasionally with profit and advantage; but if resorted to as oracles, they will frequently be found as unsatisfactory as the responses of the Delphic tripod.”[569]

As, in common with devoted Conformists, Dissenting preachers “watched for souls,” the means they pursued for the accomplishment of their end bore a stamp indicating their distinctive theological principles. One peculiarity in the mode of preaching adopted by the Anglican, and an opposite peculiarity in the mode of preaching adopted by the Puritan, grew—as differences always must—out of different systems of Divinity maintained by the two parties. The first, regarding the ordinance of baptism as lying at the root of Christianity, and looking upon all who had undergone the holy rite, as regenerated Christians, addressed their congregations at large—those congregations being composed almost entirely of the baptized—as members of the mystical body of Christ, as people already in fellowship with the Redeemer, and as needing only to be awakened to a sense of their privileges, and of their responsibility, and to be stimulated to the discharge of their duties. The Puritan, on the contrary, regarding spiritual consciousness as at the bottom of all spiritual life, and looking upon those who were destitute of such consciousness, as dead in trespasses and sins, laboured at making people feel the need of that new birth which our Lord inculcated upon Nicodemus. The tone of the Anglican harp is heard sweetly in Jeremy Taylor’s Rule and Exercises of Holy Living and Dying. The Puritan trumpet waxes loud in Baxter’s Call to the Unconverted.

The office of expositor was necessarily, to some extent, combined with that of preacher. Puritan homilies were chiefly expository, and Puritan expositions were chiefly homiletic. Biblical criticism, in the precise sense of the word, was not studied then so thoroughly as it is in the present day; but looking at the critical literature produced by Puritans, in comparison with that which was produced by other scholars, those who come in the line of succession after the former have no reason to be ashamed of their predecessors. Thomas Gataker the younger, Incumbent of Rotherhithe, who died in 1654, was one of the first scholars of his age, and applied his extensive and profound learning to Biblical investigations. He was somewhat erratic in certain of his conclusions, but in the defence of them he displayed both erudition and ingenuity. In his work on the style of the New Testament, he overthrew the positions of Sebastian Pfochenius, who maintained the classical purity of the Scripture Greek; and in establishing the fact of Hebraistic peculiarities in apostolic writings, he anticipated the opinions of modern scholars, and also entered upon original inquiries respecting the origin of languages.[570] Pool’s Synopsis, published between 1669 and 1674, with the Annotations, which appeared in 1683, present, in an accurate and well-digested form, the principal results of all the learning which had then been applied to the investigation of the Old and New Testament. And Owen’s Exposition of the Epistles to the Hebrews is a rare monument of erudition:—considering the age in which it was written, it is equal if not superior to anything on the same subject which has been composed since. Still, its value as a series of devout and practical meditations far surpasses its exegetical worth, and that which is a pre-eminent quality in Owen is a pre-eminent quality in his brethren. Thomas Goodwin, if not equal in Biblical scholarship to John Owen, does not come very far behind him. His exposition of a part of the Epistle to the Ephesians is a noble production; but the chief excellence of Goodwin, like that of the other “Atlas of Independency,” lies in his clearness, sagacity, comprehensiveness, and point, as a practical and experimental expositor. Burroughs on Hosea; Caryl on Job; Greenhill on Ezekiel; Manton on James, Jude, the 119th Psalm, the Lord’s Prayer, and the 53rd chapter of Isaiah,—and the list could be easily enlarged,—are commentaries, in which the critical element appears faint, when compared with the theological and hortatory characteristics.

As Divines, as expositors, and preachers, the Puritans showed a wonderful acquaintance with the Bible and with the human heart, for they apply the one to the other with singular skill, force, and pathos. No doubt they were deficient in taste, and sometimes worried their metaphors to death, and handled their flowers till they dropped to pieces, and are open to all kinds of criticism from modern masters of science. No doubt, also, we in our day have many advantages over them in reading the Bible; for, owing to helps now familiar, we acquire a keener insight into ancient Eastern life than any of these worthies could ever attain. They had no works in those days like that of Conybeare and Howson; yet they had a pre-eminent gift in bringing to bear, for spiritual and practical purposes, the daily life of patriarchs and Apostles upon the daily life of the people to whom they preached, and for whom they wrote. Travellers often gaze with interest upon those frescoes in the churches of Florence and other Italian cities, in which the stories of Scripture are rendered into landscapes and figures, derived from streets and gardens, and costumes and faces, with which the artist happened to be familiar in the place where he dwelt. And who that has seen them has not been struck with the stained glass windows in Germany, grotesquely portraying Scripture scenes and incidents under forms borrowed from German dwellings and German people? So at times, when reading the homely applications of Bible stories in Puritan writers, are we not reminded of these works of art; do we not feel that amidst a great deal which provokes criticism, and which may make one smile, there is in the Puritan writer, as in the mediæval painter, an instinct of truth, and an insight into the connection between the Bible and common life, most profound, most keen, most admirable? As the wickedness of old is still reproduced, and as the enemies of Christ are the same in spirit whether dressed like Jewish priests or as Saxon burgomasters,—so the devotion and piety of ancient and sacred times may transmigrate into the souls, and be embodied in the habits of modern citizens. But of all the excellencies of Puritan divinity, this is the chief,—that it exhibits clearly, and with warmth and love, with light and fire, the distinctive doctrines of Christianity—the Fatherhood of God, the Divinity, the mediation, the priesthood, and the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, the agency of the Holy Spirit, the freeness of salvation, the way of acceptance with God through faith, and the new birth and sanctification of the human soul, through the efficacious operations of Divine grace.

Thus I have attempted to give an outline of the opinions which divided the English Christendom of the latter half of the seventeenth century. In citing passages from various authors I am fully aware how fallacious quotations are when taken by themselves; at the best they are insufficient for the formation of a judgment. The old illustration of a brick taken out of a house as a specimen of the structure scarcely applies to the subject; yet no judicious student of literature will rely upon passages extracted from an author, detached from their connection and separated from the leading idea and spirit of his work. Those which are employed in these pages have been chosen on account of their being not mere blocks lying upon the surface, but the croppings up of characteristic strata, penetrating deeply, and spreading far beneath the surface of the ground upon which they appear.

How do we acquire a correct knowledge of the opinions of the Fathers? Not by looking at quotations alone, but by analyzing their writings, by tracing out their trains of thought, by measuring the space which they devote to particular topics, by arranging together their favourite texts, by examining their references to tradition and the Church, as well as to Scripture, and by endeavouring to detect their sympathies and predilections; it is in the same way that I have endeavoured, not so well as I could wish, to read the Divines of the seventeenth century, and the result is such as the reader finds imperfectly stated in the pages of this volume.

What was indicated at the beginning of our survey may, in other words, be expressed at the close. In the Anglican teaching we find what is doctrinal, what is ethical, and what is emotional; we see the orthodox dogmas of Christianity, the indisputable morals of Christianity, and the spiritual experience of Christianity; but these are introduced in different proportions, the third less than the second, perhaps the second less than the first. Yet not in any of these do we detect the characteristic stamp of Anglican sentiment so much as in the belief of one catholic Church preserving this truth, inculcating this morality, and cultivating this experience, and in the idea of an organized unity, with its ministers, sacraments, and ordinances, receiving, enjoying, and dispensing God’s gifts of grace. In the Latitudinarian teaching, there is not much which can be called experimental, there is more of what is theological, but the principal feature is undoubtedly moral. Quakerism has its exposition of dogmas and its enforcement of duties; it has its creed and its forms as have other systems of Christianity; but it is in its mystical element that we discover the key to unlock the secrets of its power. Puritanism has its Church organizations, Presbyterian, and Independent,—it has its moral teaching, for it is decidedly practical, yet in neither of these do we reach its most prominent distinction. That consists both in its doctrinal zeal, and in its experimental tone, and in the last more than the first; for the dogmatical difference between John Goodwin[571] and Thomas Goodwin, between the Arminian and the Calvinist, seems lost when we ponder the fellowship of these souls in the same peculiar kind of emotional ardour, which glows with a coloured light, easily distinguishable from such fires as burn in Anglican, in Latitudinarian, or in Mystic lamps before the altar of the one God, in the one temple of His redeemed Church.