Puritan Gut Check!

I confess I was eager to get through my work this morning so I could read the next chapter in Alleine’s Sure Guide to Heaven. Now – not quite so sure!

You see, I have this notion that when I read the puritans, I will be elevated to soaring plateaus, from where I can see all of God’s glory laid out before me – like the writer is a sort of spiritual Lewis and Clark. They traverse the land and map the features to which one should pay particular attention – then I can come along and hit the highlights and feel better about things.

But it turns out, you can’t approach reading the puritans like you’re riding a train at Disneyland. You don’t get to sit in your nice little seat whilst the driver motors round a track designed to show you the things you want to see, whilst hiding the things you don’t want to see.   Turns out when you read the puritans, you’re as likely to see the behind the scenes stuff where it’s all nitty-gritty and, can we say, real – and not the shiny facades that you expect to see.

In fact, you may even find your train wrecks on your nice little ride and you’re dashed to the ground, dazed, confused and wondering quite where it was that you decided to sign up for a ride like the one you just had!

What does this have to do with my reading? Simple…

I opened Chapter One expecting a Disneyland tour of salvation. You’ll recall that Alleine hinted that he would set out to show us what salvation is. Between yesterday and today, I forgot about the plan to show that in the negative first – that is, what it is not, before turning to what it is in a positive sense.

So I was expecting a nice little Disneyland tour through salvation where I could smile benignly at the sights, nod with passing familiarity at the landmarks we’d encounter in our fun tour of SalvationLand. I was NOT prepared for the train to jump the tracks, careen into a disused siding and dump me out in the miry muck of my own sin.

• Conversion is not the taking upon us the profession of Christianity.
• Conversion is not putting on the badge of Christ in baptism.
• Conversion does not lie in moral righteousness.
• Conversion does not consist in an external conformity to the rules of piety.
• Conversion is not the mere chaining up of corruption by education, human laws or the force of affliction.

Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips! Paul said he was the chief sinner of sinners. I venture he was using hyperbole because I know my own wickedness and I far exceed Paul in sin and corruption. Even if we were equal in wretchedness – Paul was a great mind and used greatly of God. I throw out a few chairs on a Saturday and annoy most people I know.

Alleine makes it painfully clear, in excoriating detail, that it’s nothing that we DO that can bring us into right relationship with God.

In short, conversion does not consist in illumination or conviction or in a superficial change or partial reformation. An apostate may be an enlightened man (Heb vi 4), and a Felix tremble under conviction (Acts xxiv 25), and a Herod do many things (Mk of 20). It is one thing to have sin alarmed only by convictions, and another to have it crucified by converting grace. Many, because they have been troubled in conscience for their sins, think well of their case, miserably mistaking conviction for conversion. With these, Cain might have passed for a convert, who ran up and down the world like a man distracted, under the rage of a guilty conscience, till he stifled it with building and business.

Others think that because they have given up their riotous ways, and are broken off from evil company or some particular lust, and are reduced to sobriety and civility, they are now real converts. They forget that there is a vast difference between being sanctified and civilized. They forget that many seek to enter into the kingdom of heaven, and are not far from it, and arrive to the almost of Christianity, and yet fall short at last. While conscience holds the whip over them, many will pray, hear, read, and forbear their delightful sins; but no sooner is the lion asleep than they are at their sins again. Who more religious than the Jews when God’s hand was upon them? Yet no sooner was the affliction over, than they forgot God. You may have forsaken a troublesome sin, and have escaped the gross pollutions of the world, and yet in all this not have changed your carnal nature.

Ouch! I came expecting a smile and a nod at some pretty conversion truths and left with a severe doubt of my own salvation! Ok ok – now I’m being hyperbolic – but if this chapter does not cause you to sit up and take sound notice of your sinfulness, and drive you to a sincere and earnest evaluation of your own state – then there is something wrong with you. Am I deluding myself into hell? Worse, am I misleading others? Sobering thoughts from Alleine.

Tomorrow I will be much better prepared for the train.

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A Sure Guide to Heaven.

I’m not a very smart guy. I get some things, to be sure, but on the whole, I have neither the capacity nor the inclination to be a ‘brain’.

But I have just enough sense to know a good thing when I see (read) it, and for me, the Puritans have consistently given a plentitude of “Wow!” moments. I plan to try and read some going forward.

I’m also not very good at consistency. Check the archives to see what I mean… and so I pulled out the shortest book by a puritan author I know – Joseph Alleine’s A Sure Guide to Heaven. You may know it by the title I know it by: Alleine’s Alarm.

Iain Murray gives a great peek into Alleine’s life in a short preface to the book, sketching a broad strokes biography of his life. It’s interesting to read and makes me realize I really need to understand more of the 17th century history of the church in Scotland if I really want to get to the root of my quest to know what it is to be Presbyterian. But that’s another book!

In his introduction to the reader, Alleine spells out his earnest desire to see their conversion:

With what shall I win them? O that I could tell! I would write to them in tears, I would weep out every argument, I would empty my veins for ink, I would petition them on my knees. O how thankful should I be if they would be prevailed with to repent and turn.

His zeal for the lost is something that Murray pointed out as a solid underpinning of his entire life and work. It’s no wonder that his passion rises here as he considers the best way to reach those in danger of damnation.

His conclusion about the best way to present his argument for conversion is masterful. He outlines his plan for the rest of the treatise, how he will empty out the ink in argument to prevail upon them to repentance. He writes:

Some of you do not know what I mean by conversion, and in vain shall I attempt to persuade you to that which you do not understand. Therefore for your sakes I will show what conversion is.

Others cherish secret hopes of mercy, though they continue as they are. For them I must show the necessity of conversion.

Others are likely to harden themselves with a vain conceit that they are converted already. To them I must show the marks of the unconverted.

Others, because they feel no harm, fear none, and so sleep as upon the top of a mast. To them I shall show the misery of the unconverted.

Others sit still, because they do not see the way of escape. To them I shall show the means of conversion.

And finally, for the quickening of all, I shall close with the motives to conversion.

Chapter One is entitled Mistakes about Conversion and looks set to put paid to faulty ideas before examining more closely the nature of conversion in Chapter Two. I’m looking forward to getting into Ch. 1, and beyond, and letting my soul just luxuriate in these basic, but essential truths, written as only the Puritans can write – in a way that makes the truth like a comfortable coat I can’t wait to wear, knowing it will keep me safe and warm from the buffeting winds that life will bring along.

Should be fun! You can get this book at Banner of Truth – or even read along online.

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The Burden of Prosperity

VII. The seventh lesson by which Christ teaches contentment is the burden of a prosperous outward condition. One who comes into Christ’s school to be instructed in this art never attains to any great skill in it until he comes to understand the burden that is in a propserous condition.

Objection.You will say, ‘What burden is there in a prosperous condition?’

Answer.  Yes, there is certainly a great burden, and it needs great strength to bear it. Just as men need strong brains to bear strong wine, so they need strong spirits to bear prosperous conditions, and not to do themselves hurt. Many men and women look at the shine and glitter of prosperity, but they little think of the burden. – Jeremiah Burroughs: The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment ch. 6

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Blogroll: The Puritan's Woodshop

Adding this to the blogroll:
http://thepuritans.wordpress.com/

The “About Page” alone was enough to convince me!

What I am doing here….

“The method that I shall choose to discourse upon these words shall be this—I will propound certain questions upon the words, and direct particular answers to them; in which answers I hope I shall answer also, somewhat at least, the expectation of the godly and conscientious reader, and so shall draw towards a conclusion.”
-John Bunyan

Why I am doing it….

“My intention in this weak endeavour (which is but the undigested issue of a few broken hours, too many causes, in these furious malignant days, continually interrupting the course of my studies), is but to stir up such who, having more leisure and greater abilities, will not as yet move a finger to help [to] vindicate oppressed truth.”
-John Owen

How great is that?

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M'Cheyne and the Gentle Gospel

“June 15.—Day of visiting (rather a happy one) in Carronshore. Large meeting in the evening. Felt very happy after it, though mourning for bitter speaking of the gospel. Surely it is a gentle message, and should be spoken with angelic tenderness, especially by such a needy sinner.”

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Puritan Thursday: William Ames on Baptism

Baptism
 

What is this sacrament of the NT all about? And who is able to be baptized? Baptism
By Dr. William Ames

1. The sacraments of the New Testament follow from its nature. They are few in number, easy to prepare and observe, and very clear in their meaning.

 

2. They were sanctified and instituted by Christ himself. Although the one sacrament was first used by John the Baptist yet by that very fact he became the forerunner of Christ so that he might show that it did not become an ordered institution by the ministry of John but through the institution of Christ himself.

 

3. The sacraments are baptism and the Lord’s Supper. No other sacraments or sacramental signs were delivered to the church by Christ or his apostles, nor can others be appointed by men in the church.

 

4. Because of God’s institution it is of greatest necessity for believ­ers to use these sacraments diligently and devoutly. But they are not so necessary to salvation that the absence or mere lack of them de­prives one of salvation. Given the institution, they are not to be celebrated by any who are not lawful ministers or who are outside of a church assembly.

 

5. Baptism is the sacrament of initiation or regeneration.

 

6. Although it seals the whole covenant of grace to all believers, when it is specially made our own, it represents and confirms our very ingrafting into Christ. Rom. 6:3, 5, We have been baptized into Christ Jesus … being planted together with him; 1 Cor. 12:13, We have been baptized into one body.

 

7. From the time of our first ingrafting into Christ by faith a rela­tionship of justification and adoption is entered into. As the sacrament of that ingrafting, baptism stands for the remission of sins, Mark 1:4. And it stands, also, for adoption in that we are consecrated by it to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, whose names are pro­nounced over the baptized.

 

8. And because holiness always comes from Christ into whom we are ingrafted, to all the faithful, baptism is also the seal of sanctification. Titus 3:5, He has saved us … by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit;
Rom. 6:4-6.

 

9. And since glorification cannot be separated from true holiness it is at the same time the seal of eternal glory, Titus 3:7, That we might … be made heirs, according to the hope of eternal life; Rom. 6:8, If we are dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live together with him.

 

10. Because those benefits are sealed by initiation in baptism, it should be noted, first, that baptism is only to be administered once. There is only one beginning of spiritual life by rebirth as there is but one beginning of natural life by birth.

 

11. Second, baptism ought to be administered to all those in the covenant of grace, because it is the first sealing of the covenant now first entered into.

 

12. The infants of believers are not to be forbidden this sacrament. First, because, if they are partakers of any grace, it is by virtue of the covenant of grace and so both the covenant and the first seal of the covenant belong to them. Second, the covenant in which the faithful are now included is clearly the same as the covenant made with Abra­ham, Rom. 4:11; Gal. 3:7-9—and this expressly applied to infants. Third, the covenant as now administered to believers brings greater and fuller consolation than it once could, before the coming of Christ. But if it pertained only to them and not to their infants, the grace of God and their consolation would be narrower and more con­tracted after Christ’s appearing than before. Fourth, baptism sup­plants circumcision. Col. 2:11, 12; it belongs as much to the children of believers as circumcision once did. Fifth, in the very beginning of regeneration, whereof baptism is a seal, man is merely passive. There­fore, no outward action is required of a man when he is baptized or circumcised (unlike other sacraments); but only a passive receiving. Infants are, therefore, as capable of participation in this sacrament, so far as its chief benefit is concerned, as adults.

 

13. Faith and repentance no more constitute the covenant of God now than in the time of Abraham, who was the father of the faithful. Therefore, the lack of these ought not to prevent infants from being baptized any more than it prevented them from being circumcised then.

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