BOOKS, PURITANS, COVENANTERS & REFORMATION

'Our books may come to be seen where ourselves shall never be heard. These may preach where the author cannot, and (which is more) when he is not.' This prediction by one of the great Puritans has had many fulfillments.

An ungodly Welsh clergyman, shopping at a fair in the eighteenth century, bought an article which happened to be wrapped in a page torn from an old Puritan folio. The reading of that one page led to his sound conversion.

As Luther said, 'Satan hates the use of pens,' and never were pens more powerfully wielded in the cause of God than by the Puritan divines of the seventeenth century.

Nor have their books outlived their usefulness. Although the original volumes are worn with age, the truths found in them are as fresh as the new formats in which they are now appearing.

- Publisher's Foreword to Richard Sibbes', The Bruised Reed

Though possessing only a basic education, Howie developed a distinctive and appealing literary style which was in peculiar sympathy with the subjects with which he dealt. While he contributed relatively little that was original, he performed valuable service by rescuing from oblivion much important material which, without his painstaking efforts, would certainly have perished. Not the least significant feature of his work was its appearance at a time when the memory of the Covenanters and Reformers was fast being forgotten.

- "John Howie" (author of The Scots Worthies), in The Dictionary of Scottish Church History and Theology. Howie's The Scots Worthies is free in MP3 format, on this site, under the title "Biographia Scoticana or Scots Worthies" beginning at http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=9702105842

Get books into your houses, when you have not the spring near you, then get some water into your cisterns; so when you have not that wholesome preaching that you desire, good books are cisterns that hold the water of life in them to refresh you; So, when you find a chillness upon your souls, and that your former heat begins to abate, ply yourselves with warm clothes, get those good books that may acquaint you with such truths as may warm and affect your hearts.

- Thomas Watson (1633-1686)

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