THE THEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL FOUNDATION OF THE PURITANS Dr.

Steve Lawson

I. Overview

It can be argued that no generation are ever assembled on the stage of human history has ever
been more devoted to living for the glory of God than the Puritans of the 15 th and 16th centuries.
And during that golden era of a 150 years, Puritans wielded a dramatic effect upon England and
ultimately far beyond. In the century and a half the Puritans • resisted the king, • executed another
king, • founded England as a republic, • established republic and New England, • reshaped
England’s culture, • wrote doctrinal confessions, • composed catechism, • created massive
commentaries on the Bible, penned theological tomes, • forming the lasting body of pros and
poetry, • produced English translations of the Bible, • dominated every pulpit that they entered, •
raised godly families, and • became the moral pulse and conscience of the nation.

The names of the Puritan divines read like the list of Hebrews 11 – God’s Hall of fame. Spiritual
giants walked the land. Such luminaries are: • John Owen, •John Bunyan, •Jeremiah Burroughs, •Stphen
Sharnick, • Thomas Goodone, • William Gurnall, •Matthew Henry, •Thomas Martin, •William Perkins, •Samuel
Rutherford, • Richard Sibbes, • Thomas Watson, and countless more.

J.I. Packer is rightly called the Puritans the “spiritual redwood” of the Christian forest, they were the
“spiritual titans” who rose higher and stood taller than others, in their day are virtually any day.

Charles Spurgeon extoled the Puritans when he said “let me have just one good solid Puritan
volume and my soul can be fed upon that. No modern books give so much meat.”

J.C. Ryle remarked, “we’re scarcely worthy to sit at their feet and they carry their books.

Mark Lloyd Jones said, “all that is good in evangelicalism finds its root in Puritanism.

The Puritans stood on the shoulders of the reformers and sought to extend the reformation to
every aspect of church and life and government in England, specifically to public worship. Broadly
speaking the Puritan spirit included non-conformist.

Puritanism is a • life-force, • a vision, and • compulsion which saw a beauty of a holy

life, and thrill to the satisfaction of a God-centered life.

WHO ARE THE PURITANS? WHEN DID THEY LIVE? WHAT DID THEY BELIEVE? WHAT DID THEY
ACCOMPLISH?

This is one of the most complicated eras of the church history if not the most because it shifts to
the changing of monarchs and the influence that is prevailing in that day.

Stage 1: THE SEEDS OF PURITANISM