The Puritans and Revival Christianity
By Iain Murray
Following as it did so closely upon the Reformation it is not surprising that the Puritan movement in England believed so firmly in revivals of religion as the great means by which the Church advances in the world. For the Reformation was itself the greatest revival since Pentecost -- a spring-time of new life for the Church on such a scale that the instances recorded in the apostolic era of three thousand being converted on one day, and of a 'great multitude of the priests' becoming 'obedient to the faith', no longer sounded incredible.
The Reformation, and still more, Puritanism, have been considered from many aspects but it has been too often overlooked that the main features of these movements, as, for instance, the extensiveness of their influence, the singular position given to Scripture and the transformation in character of the morally careless, are all effects of revival. When the Holy Spirit is poured out in a day of power the result is bound to affect whole communities and even nations. Conviction of sin, an anxiety to possess the Word of God, and dependence upon those truths which glorify God in man's salvation, are inevitable consequences.
Today men may wonder at the influences which changed the spiritual direction of England and Scotland so rapidly four hundred years ago making them Bible-reading nations and witnesses to a creed so unflattering to human nature and hateful to human pride.
Innumerable writers have attempted to explain the phenomena by political and social considerations. They have supposed that the success which the historical Reformers and Puritans achieved occurred through a curious combination of historical circumstances which cannot be expected to happen again. To the Christians of that era, however, the explanation was entirely different. They read in Scripture that when the Spirit is poured from on high then the wilderness becomes a fruitful field [Isaiah 32:15]. They read also, 'Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts' [Zechariah 4:6], and they attributed all the spiritual renewal of their age to the mercy of God. In taking this view they understood at once that all the successes of the Reformation were repeatable -- as repeatable as the victories of the apostolic age -- for Scripture places no limitation upon the Spirit's work of glorifying Christ and extending His kingdom. Thus there was recovered at the time of the Reformation belief in what may be called revival Christianity, and the attention which the Puritans who followed gave to this area of truth profoundly influenced the following centuries and gave to the English-speaking world what may be called the classic school of Protestant belief in revival. So prevalent indeed did this outlook become that until the nineteenth century all who wrote specifically upon the subject represented the Puritan standpoint. Of these writers the most notable who treated the subject of revival at length were Robert Fleming [1630-1694] in his The Fulfilling of the Scripture, Jonathan Edwards [1703-1758] in several works, and John Gillies [1712-1796] in his Historical Collections Relating to Remarkable Periods of the Success of the Gospel.
The commencement of the Reformation in England and Scotland was marked by a thirst for Scripture among the people. Tyndale's version of the New Testament circulated in both realms from 1526 onwards and soon a train of preachers appeared, at first small in number, whose ministry was attended by effects which had not been commonly seen for many long centuries. Of the Scottish reformer, George Wishart, martyred in 1546, we have this account of his open-air preaching: 'He mounted an earthen fence, and continued preaching to the people above three hours, and God wrought so wonderfully by that sermon that one of the wickedest men in the country, the laird of Sheld, was converted by it, and his eyes ran down with such abundance of tears that all men wondered at him.'
Scenes like this were soon to become common in the northern kingdom. In May, 1556, John Knox, running the gauntlet of the Catholic powers who still controlled the country, preached for ten consecutive days in Edinburgh. When he returned to Scotland again, in 1559, the spiritual revival became general. 'God did so multiply our number', Knox writes of the growth of the Protestant cause, 'that it appeared as if men had rained from the clouds.' In a letter to an English friend written on June 23, 1559, he says: 'Now, forty days and more, hath my God used my tongue in my native country, to the manifestation of His glory. Whatsoever now shall follow, as touching my own carcass, His holy name be praised. The thirst of the poor people, as well as of the nobility here, is wondrous great, which putteth me in comfort that Christ Jesus shall triumph for a space here, in the north and extreme parts of the earth.'
Looking back on this glorious period the Scottish Church historian, Kirkton, later wrote: 'The Church of Scotland hath been singular among the churches. And, first, it is to be admired that, whereas in other nations the Lord thought it enough to convict a few in a city, village, or family to himself, leaving the greater part in darkness, in Scotland the whole nation was converted by lump; and within ten years after popery was discharged in Scotland. there were not ten persons of quality to be found in it who did not profess the true reformed religion, and so it was among the commons in proportion. Lo! here a nation born in one day.'
Even when allowance is made for the number who were carried by outward persuasion rather than by inner spiritual conviction the history of the Scottish Reformation bears eloquent record to the vast success which the Gospel then had. It was a great revival.
The same holds true of England. Despite the severest penalties against the possession of Scripture, and against unauthorized preaching, spiritual concern spread rapidly in the later years of Henry VIII, after the appearance of Tyndale's New Testament. During the reign of the boy King, Edward VI [1547-1553], the public preaching of the Gospel by Latimer, Hooper, Bradford and others was attended with remarkable success. An entry in the records of St. Margaret's, Westminster, bears its own witness to the way in which people pressed to hear the Word of God; it notes that one shilling and sixpence was expended, 'for mending divers pews that were broken when Doctor Latimer did preach'. Speaking of a few years later, John Jewell writes thus of open-air gatherings in the City of London: 'Sometimes at Paul's Cross six thousand persons were sitting together, which was very grievous to the papists.' Details like these show that the English Reformation was much more than a series of legislative Acts executed by the authorities. Political decisions certainly entered in, but the policy of burning which claimed nearly three hundred Protestants in the reign of Mary Tudor [1553-1558] served to demonstrate that convictions were planted in many hearts which no force could uproot. Upon the death of Mary the last English Catholic monarch passed from the scene until the restoration of Charles II in 1660, and two years later, in 1560, the Scottish Parliament formally abolished the Catholic religion in Scotland.
The storm of persecution which blew itself out in Mary's reign did more than test the roots of the new faith. By driving into temporary exile a number of the younger spiritual leaders it brought them into closer contact with the Reformed churches of the Continent. The influence of the two Continental theologians, Martin Bucer and Peter Martyr, had already been felt as they had taught at Cambridge and Oxford respectively in the days of Edward VI, but now, as a congregation of some two hundred exiles gathered at Geneva, the full weight of Calvin's ministry -- as mighty in the pulpit as in the lecture hall -- was experienced at first hand. From this haven in the Swiss Alps Knox and Christopher Goodman went to Scotland, while the others returned to England after the accession of Elizabeth I in 1558. Thereafter the two groups, 'the Covenanters', so-called in the north because of the public and national covenants by which they affirmed their common allegiance to God, and the Puritans, in England, developed along parallel lines, like two streams originating at one fountain. The fountain was not so much Geneva, as the Bible which the exiles newly translated and issued with many marginal notes in 1560. Between that date and 1644 no less than 140 editions of the Geneva Bible were to be issued and, as a modern writer says, 'it was read in every Presbyterian and Puritan home in both realms'. When these two streams came together again at the convening of the Westminster Assembly in 1643, their unanimity was given peerless expression in the great truths of evangelical religion set down in the Confession of Faith. In their understanding of the gospel and in practical divinity the Christians of England and Scotland were then one, and the expositions of the Scottish divines were as eagerly read in London as were the writings of the English Puritans north of the Border.
The problem which confronted the English and Scottish evangelicals in 1560 was basically the same, namely the need to spread the gospel at the parish level in countries which had become formally Protestant. In England the main hindrance to this endeavour was the dead-weight of the Church, which though 'reformed' by Acts of Parliament remained in many areas in its old pre-reformation spiritual condition. For the next century the 'Puritans', as they were nicknamed in the 1560's, gave themselves to the work of renewal in the national Church -- a work which was terminated by the ejection of most of them after the passing of the Act of Uniformity in 1662. The Puritan age proper spanned these hundred years.
In Scotland, from the outset, the Church of Scotland was free from the entanglements which the semi-reformed state of the Church caused in England. At one blow the old priesthood and episcopal hierarchy lost their places, except in the still Catholic Highlands, and the leadership of the Reformed Church was in the hands of Knox [c. 1514-1572] and his brethren. Yet the Presbyterian form of church government, which set them free from the corruption of prelacy and made possible the exercise of a scriptural church discipline, was not long allowed to continue unimpeded. James VI of Scotland had no more enthusiasm for experimental godliness than his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, who was deposed from the throne in 1567, and shortly he set himself against Knox's successors an activity in which he could engage with all the more power when he also became James I, King of England in 1603. Thereafter, aided by willing bishops, he worked to shackle the independency of the Scottish Church and to suppress the English Puritans. This was the policy which led at length to the Civil War of 1642 and the defeat of his son, Charles I.
Despite the force exerted against both Puritan and Covenanting causes they both prospered and that because the rising tide of spiritual life could not be effectively countered. A school of preachers arose in both realms of whom it could truly be said that their gospel came not in word only, 'but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance'. [I Thess. 1 :5].
In the south the University of Cambridge was the nursery for this school. Thomas Cartwright gave the movement its momentum in the late 1560's when his preaching in Great St. Mary's became so popular that 'the sexton was fain to take down the windows, by reason of the multitudes that came to hear him'. Cartwright and others were soon deposed for their boldness, but the watchword of the movement continued to be, 'Pray for reformation by the power of the word preached'. From the 1570's onward, friends of Cartwright, such as Richard Rogers, John Dod and Arthur Hildersham, began to put this into practice at the parish level. In the next thirty years the few swelled to a flood, partly through the foundation of Emmanuel College at Cambridge by Sir Walter Mildmay in 1584 ['to render as many as possible fit for the administration of the Divine Word and Sacraments'], and partly by the conversion of William Perkins.
Perkins, born in the year of Elizabeth's accession, became a student at Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1577 when he was without any spiritual concern. The great change came while he was still a student. At the age of twenty-four he was made a fellow of his College and later, for over fifteen years until his early death in 1602, preached at St. Andrew's Church in the same university city. In these capacities Perkins had enormous influence. Even in 1613, when Thomas Goodwin went up to Cambridge, he tells us that 'the whole town was filled with the discourse of the power of Mr. Perkins' ministry'. 'Master Perkins,' says Samuel Clarke, 'held forth a burning and shining light, the sparks whereof did fly abroad into all the corners of the kingdom.'
