Puritan Papers: Vol. 1, 1956-1959

J. I. Packer

• Publisher: P Publishing
• Year: 2000
• ISBN:
  9781596387935
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Christliche Theologie

Topics include: interpreting Scripture, Christian experience, worship, the Lord's Day, the life and work of a minister, dealing with troubled souls, the law and the covenants, discipline and revival.

Part 1

The Wisdom of
Our Fathers

1956

1

The Puritans and the
Doctrine of Election

lain Murray

It would be foolish to ignore the very wide difference which lies between our days and those of our seventeenth-century fore-fathers. Their times were characterized by the powerful operations of the Spirit of God. The observance of secret prayer and family worship, the hearing of sermons of two hours’ duration, the keeping of days for thanksgiving or for fasting, were all pleasant duties to a great many of the people. Macaulay truly wrote of the Puritans, “To know Him, to serve Him, to enjoy Him, was with them the great end of existence.” It was not uncommon in their days for such a demonstration of the Spirit to accompany the word preached that multitudes were converted—five hundred people traced their conversion to one sermon preached by John Livingstone at Kirk O’ Shotts in 1630—and believers overwhelmed with the force of the truth.

Thomas Goodwin, after hearing Rogers of Dedham preach, hung “a quarter of an hour upon the neck of his horse weeping, before he had power to mount.” From the Houses of Parliament to the homes of lowly cottagers godliness was known and loved. One historian writing of seventeenth-century Scotland, says, “There was the atmosphere of a paradise of communion with God.” But an even clearer difference between their times and ours is in matters of doctrine, and no doctrine so unquestionably proves this as the doctrine of election. Of all the doctrines of the gospel, the one about which Christians today have become must unlike the Puritans in their view of it, is the doctrine of election.

It is the place which the Puritans gave to this doctrine, and the value which they set upon it, which supplies the real explanation why their memory and writings have fallen into such neglect and even disrepute in the last hundred years. The enlightened nineteenth century outgrew the Calvinistic faith of their forefathers. Matthew Arnold could write of the Puritan movement, with its doctrine of election, as extinct, save for some backward corners of the land. Professor Froude of Oxford, addressing the students of St. Andrews in 1871, declared, “Every one here present must have become familiar in late years with the change of tone throughout Europe and America on the subject of Calvinism. After being accepted for two centuries in all Protestant countries it has come to be regarded by liberal thinkers as a system of belief incredible in itself, dishonouring to its object, and as intolerable as it has been itself intolerant” (Short Studies on Great Subjects, J. A. Froude, vol. 2, Ch. Calvinism). In 1873 even such an alleged leader of evangelical thought as Dr. Dale of Birmingham described Calvinism as obsolete. Spurgeon had few to stand by him when he replied to Dale, “Those who labour to smother ‘Calvinism’ will find that it dies hard, and, it may be, they will come, after many defeats, to perceive the certain fact that it will outlive its opponents. Its funeral oration has been pronounced many times before now, but the performance has been premature. It will live when the present phase of religious misbelief has gone down to eternal execration amid the groans of those whom it has undone. Today it may be sneered at; nevertheless, it is but yesterday that it numbered among its adherents the ablest men of the age, and tomorrow it may be, when once again there shall be giants in theology, it will come to the front, and ask in vain for its adversaries” (The Sword and Trowel, Feb. 1874). Any superficial consideration of the Puritans which overlooks the great gulf which lies between their doctrine, and the doctrine commonly accepted by most evangelicals today, merely obscures the real issues. The doctrine of election was vital to the Puritans, they believed with Zanchius that it “is the golden thread that runs through the whole Christian system,” and they asserted that a departure from this truth would bring a visible church under God’s judgment and indignation. No subject could have a more direct reference to us and to our times.

In taking up this subject it is essential to remind ourselves of the manner and spirit in which the Puritans approached the doctrine of election. “This truth,” writes Anthony Burgess, “may be handled either sinfully or profitably; sinfully as when it is treated on only to satisfy curiosity, and to keep up a mere barren speculative dispute . . . This point of election . . . is not to be agitated in a verbal and contentious way, but in a saving way, to make us tremble and to set us upon a more diligent and close striving with God in prayer, and all other duties . . . This doctrine, if any other, should produce sobriety, holy fear, and trembling” (folio entitled “Spiritual Refinings,” Sermon 111, 1658). The Puritans were men whose deep concern was to feel the power of the truth in their hearts.

Let us then proceed to the doctrine itself. The following statement from the Westminster Confession of Faith, declares their united belief: “By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death . . . Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life, God, before the foundation of the world was laid, according to His eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of His will, hath chosen in Christ, unto everlasting glory, out of His mere free grace and love, without any foresight of faith or good works” (Confession 3.3, 5).

From this tremendous statement we can extract the principal points of their doctrine of election.

(1) Election Is an Act of God’s Eternal Will and Sovereign Pleasure

All the Puritan divines were agreed in this, writes Sibbes, “that there was an eternal separation of men in God’s purpose; secondly, that this first decree of severing man to his ends, is an act of sovereignty over his creature, and altogether independent of anything in the creature as a cause of it” (Sibbes’s Preface to Baynes on Ephesians, Nichols ed., p. 3). “The purpose of God,” writes Thomas Brooks, “is the sovereign cause of all that good that is in man, and of all that external, internal and eternal good that comes to man. Not works past, for men are chosen from everlasting, not works present, for Jacob was loved and chosen before he was born; nor works forseen, for men were all corrupt in Adam. All a believer’s present happiness, and all his future happiness, springs from the eternal purpose of God” (Brooks’s Works, Nichols, 5:317). “God dealeth not equally with all,” asserts Thomas Manton, “that are of equal merit . . . That grace is given to some and not to others, floweth from God’s eternal decree. This eternal decree is a free election, or the mere pleasure of God, giving faith to some and not to others” (Manton’s Works, 20:361–62, Nichols). Burgess expounding John 17:2, “That to as many as thou hast given him, he should give eternal life,” says, “We see here that God the Father hath power to appoint and determine concerning the everlasting salvation and damnation of men: It’s plain, for you see it is as the Father wills, whom He chooses He gives to Christ . . . This disparity of God’s grace choosing some and leaving others, is plainly asserted by Scripture, Matthew 11, where Christ makes a solemn acknowledging of it . . . Take we then this Truth for a foundation, it is in the sovereign power of God to choose when He pleases to Salvation and to leave the rest in their damnable estate: Neither is this any cruelty or injustice in God, for He might have forsaken all mankind, and not recovered one of them” (A. Burgess, Expository Sermons on John 17, Folio 1656).

(2) Election Is an Unchangeable Act

It is according to God’s “immutable purpose.” Which means, as the Confession states (3.4) that the number of the elect “cannot be either increased or diminished,” and that therefore God infallibly gives them in time all things necessary for their eternal salvation. “The doctrine of election,” says Elisha Coles, “containeth the whole sum and scope of the gospel,” all the other parts are but the carrying out of God’s first intention. Listen to Thomas Goodwin giving a comment on this marvellous truth. “All the ways and acts that God doth to eternity are but mere expressions of that love which he at first took up,” when He elected us. “Christ, and heaven, and whatever else God shews you of love and mercy in this world, or in the world to come, they all lay in the womb of that first act. God was not drawn on to love us, as a man is, who first begins to love one, and to set his heart upon him, and then his heart being engaged, he is drawn on beyond what he thought, and is enticed to do this and thus beyond what he first intended. No, God is not as a man herein, but as ‘known unto God are all his works, from the beginning of the world,’ so is all his love that he meant to bestow. There is no new thing to God, his love at the very first dash, when he began to love us, was as perfect as it will be when we are in heaven . . . My brethren, when God first began to love you, he gave you all that he ever meant to give you in the lump, and eternity of time is that in which he is retailing of it out” (Goodwin’s Works, Nichols, 2: 166–67). Brooks drives home the same truth in these words: “The love of God is unchangeable; ‘whom he loves he loves to the end,’ John 13:3; whom God loves once he will love for ever. He is not as man, soon in and soon off again, Malachi 3:6, James 1:17; Oh no! His love is like himself, lasting, yea, everlasting; ‘I have loved thee with an everlasting love,’ Jeremiah 31:3” (Brooks, Nichols, 5:316).

It is this “immutable purpose” of God which makes the conversion (effectual calling), justification, and perseverance of the elect certain. “Whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified; and whom he justified, them he also glorified” (Romans 8:30). Thomas Horton mightily expounds that verse—“It is clear from the text that God’s Election and Predestination is necessarily and infallibly followed with other acts in the execution of it, as calling and justification etc.” There is an “indissoluble connection and conjunction of the means with the end. These rings and links in this golden chain here before us are so involved one in another, as that they cannot possibly be disjoined or severed one from the other . . . predestination is not only the antecedent, but also the cause of effectual vocation. And the same grace, and good pleas-ure of God, that ordains us to eternal life, makes us also to embrace the means which tend to this life . . . Those who were elected shall be glorified, God Himself cannot be deceived, nor his purpose be intercepted, nor his calling be revoked” (Horton’s Sermons on Romans 8, folio 1674, pp. 500–507. See also Westminster Confession 3.6).

(3) Election Is in Relation to Christ

Now this truth lay at the very heart of their doctrine of election and determined every other part of gospel truth. God, says the apostle Paul, “hath chosen us in Him [in Christ] before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4). “His first choice of us was a founding us on Christ,” comments Goodwin on this verse, “and in and together with choosing us, a setting us into him, so as then to be represented by him. So that now we are to run the same fortune, if I may so speak, with Christ himself for ever, our persons being made mystically one with his, and he a Common Person to us in election. Other men, as likewise the angels that fell, were ordained to be in themselves,—to stand or fall by themselves . . . But we were considered in Christ from the first, and therefore, though we fall, we shall rise again in him and by him for he is a Common Person for us, and to stand for us, and is for ever to look to us, to bring us to all that God ordained us unto, and so this foundation remains sure. We are chosen in Christ, and therefore are in as sure a condition, as for final perishing, as Christ himself . . . Remember election is unto this great privilege, to be in Christ, and one with him, (of all the highest, and fundamental to all other)” (Goodwin’s Works, 1:76–77, Nichols).

It is not until we understand this point that we will see why the Puritans regarded a denial of the doctrine of election as an overthrow of the whole nature of the gospel. The great glory of the New Covenant is that God should carry out both His part and ours, and He does this by committing the elect to the care of Christ, by whom they are given all saving graces. “Christ, as mediator,” says Brooks, “had a command from his Father to die, and he observes it: ‘I lay down my life for my sheep; this commandment have I received of my Father,’ John 10:11, 15 . . . Jesus Christ has not only leave to save the elect, but a charge to save the elect: ‘All that the Father giveth me, shall come to me, and him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out, for I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will but the will of him that sent me. And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day . . .’ Christ is to be answerable for all those that are given to him; at the last day, and therefore we need not doubt but that he will certainly employ all the power of his Godhead to secure and save all those that he must be accountable for. Christ’s Charge and care of these that are given to him, extends even to the very day of their resurrection, that he may not so much as lose their dust, but gather it together again, and raise it up in glory, to be a proof of his fidelity, for, saith he, ‘I should lose nothing, but raise it up again at the last day’” (Brooks, 5:368–69).

We find this truth affirmed throughout the writings of the Puritans. Thomas Manton says, “If the elect should not be saved, Christ should neither do his work nor receive his wages” (Manton’s Works, 5:213). Likewise Christopher Love, “If the elect could perish then Jesus Christ should be very unfaithful to his Father, because God the Father hath given this charge to Christ, that whomsoever he elected, Christ should preserve them safe, to bring them to heaven. Now should not this be accomplished, Christ would be unfaithful to his Father, John 6:39” (A Treatise of Effectual Calling and Election, p. 187, 1658 ed.). The whole of the work of Christ is therefore to be understood in relation to the doctrine of election, and indeed they asserted it cannot be understood without it. “Christ’s blood-shedding was special blood-shedding, not for all, but for you many, Matthew 26:28. Sanctification is a special sanctification, not for all, but of you, John 17:9. Justification is a special justification, not of all, but of you only, his elect, Romans 8:33. Christ’s purchasing was a special purchasing, not of all, but of you his church, Acts 20:28. Christ’s prayer is a special prayer, not for all, but for you, John 17:9” (William Fenner, Sermon on The Mystery of Saving Grace, 1626).

We have thus considered the three principal points which characterize the Puritan doctrine of election. Before w...