I never tire of hearing a Beethoven symphony even though I must have listened to all nine (ten, if you count an unfinished one) hundreds of times. The same is true of all great literature—particularly those that feed our souls and draw us nearer to God. And the best literature of that kind comes from the Puritan era.

Despite Leland Ryken’s valiant attempt to salvage the Puritans from dishonor (Worldly Saints: The Puritans As They Really Were [Zondervan,1986]), H. L. Mencken’s infamous quip defining Puritanism as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy” still has mileage in many quarters. How refreshing, then, to find IVP publishing a thoroughly positive appraisal of the Puritans and the Puritan era. I cannot recall enjoying a book so thoroughly as this one for quite some time.

The Devoted Life makes the case that Puritan theology produced its own spirituality—a distinctive approach to life in this world as preparation for the world to come. For the Puritans, doctrine and experience go together as French Fries and Ketchup do in our time. More than anything else, the desire for true Christian experience is muddied by the pervasive lack of discernment as to what exactly constitutes true spirituality. “Experience is the life of a Christian,” wrote the “sweet-dropper,” Richard Sibbes, and Puritan experience of God is the richest of all. But it was an experience of God squeezed from the fruit of sound (what the Bible calls “healthy”) doctrine. Where we are infants, the Puritans were fully grown, mature adults and that because they had eaten well of the rich food of Reformation truth and discerned its usefulness for everyday life.

Kelly M. Kapic and Randall C. Gleason have selected eighteen Puritans together with representative works from William Perkins (The Arte of Prophesying) to Jonathan Edwards (Religious Affections) for consideration by some of the best known Puritan scholars of our time (J. I. Packer, Sinclair Ferguson, Mark Noll, Leland Ryken, Richard Lovelace). One could quibble with the selection; personally, I would have included Thomas Brooks’ Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices as well as Joseph Alleine’s Alarm to the Unconverted, the latter because it represents one of the first evangelistic tracts in print and says something of the Puritan concern for evangelism; the former because I have witnessed modern readers who know nothing about the Puritans thoroughly absorbed by its spiritual insights into Satan’s wiles in a way that surpasses C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters. One almost always quibbles with unevenness in books of this kind: some authors are just better than others (and there are some astonishingly good chapters in this book—Packer (on Bunyan) and Ferguson (on Flavel), of course; but, others too, including, Coffey (on Samuel Rutherford), Barker (on Thomas Watson), Beeke and van Vliet (on William Ames), Duncan (on Matthew Henry), and the Rykens (Leland on John Milton, and Philip on Thomas Boston). Still, these are mere quibbles and what Kapic and Gleason have done is masterful.

An introductory chapter sets the scene in as precise and powerful a fashion imaginable. In just over twenty pages, Kapic and Gleason summarize who the puritans were. They are right on top of modern scholarship (citing recent publications by such notable historians as Durston, Eales, Spurr, Trueman, Beeke and Dever), but in a thoroughly unobtrusive way. This is undoubtedly the best summary known to me and ranks with the respective opening chapters by J. I. Packer in A Quest for Godliness (Crossway, 1994 reprint) and Leland Ryken in Worldly Saints (Zondervan, 1986). In this volume, in what has become a received interpretation of late, the Puritans are viewed along broader lines than the radical protestant nonconformists. A set of theological characteristics are employed to classify the essence of Puritanism rather than political, ecclesiastical differences; thus, the inclusion of Thomas Boston and Jonathan Edwards who came much later than Puritanism as narrowly defined). Puritans thus include supporters from both sides of the English Civil War including Anglicans (e.g., William Perkins and Richard Sibbes), Separatists (e.g., William Bradford), Independents (e.g., Thomas Goodwin, John Cotton and John Owen), Presbyterians (e.g., John Howe and Thomas Watson) and Baptists (e.g. John Bunyan). Interestingly, this broader definition includes “Dortian” (i.e. five-pointers!) Calvinists (e.g., John Owen and Thomas Goodwin), “moderate Calvinists” (e.g. Richard Baxter) and, surprisingly perhaps, some Arminians (e.g. John Goodwin).What emerges is a matrix of ideas with, perhaps, as its principle metaphor that of the Christian life (and Puritan spirituality in particular) as a pilgrimage.

Kapic and Gleason embrace the view that there is such a thing as a distinctive Puritan spirituality—a relationship with God shaped by doctrine—systematized truth (based on an Augustinian-Calvinian understanding of God and man) viewed from every conceivable angle for its value to the pilgrim’s journey from this world to heaven. Puritan theology is thereby viewed as producing its own spiritual ethos both in the individual and in the community. Seven characteristics are explored briefly (alas, too briefly, for this is pure gold!) epitomizing what unifies an otherwise disparate body of men.

From individual chapters we learn a host of things:

• from J. I. Packer, that Bunyan’s classic Pilgrim’s Progress is designed to impress both lobes of our brain “the left for logic and the right for every form of imagination” (p. 198);
• from Sinclair Ferguson, that John Flavel’s classic The Mystery of Providence that “God is far more interested in what I become than in what I do” (p.223);
• from Ligon Duncan, that Matthew Henry’s A Method for Prayer teaches us that “availing ourselves of the comprehensive categories of scriptural prayer enumerated by Henry reminds us just how much there is to pray about day by day” (p.249);
• from Joel Beeke and Jan van Vliet, that William Ames understood the relationship between faith and works better than most, and that “key to this balance was placing obedience within the covenant” (p. 63);
• from Ronald Frost, that it is to Richard Sibbes’ The Bruised Reed (written before Jonathan Edwards and from which Edwards borrowed) that we owe the current regard for the place of transformed affections in Christian experience (p.91);
• from John Coffey, that Samuel Rutherford’s Letters shows us the danger of a pietist strain that divorces rigorous analysis and experiential theology (p.106);
• from Michael Horton, and a tad more controversially, that Thomas Goodwin’s treatment of the relationship of justification to the assurance of faith in Of the Object and Acts of Justifying Faith is different from that of Calvin and the Continental Reformed tradition but “the general instinct and concerns are the same” (p.122);
• from Leland Ryken, that reading John Milton’s Paradise Lost is best done by “starting at the beginning, settling down for the archetypal “long read,” and moving forward as fast or slowly as one’s time and attention span allows” (p.15);
• from Kelly Kapic, that John Owen’s Communion with God “challenges us to consider how impoverished our view of God becomes when we do not maintain a robust Trinitarian consciousness” (p.181);
• from Philip Ryken, that Thomas Boston’s  Human Nature in its Fourfold State teaches us that “God uses the preaching of his wrath to bring sinners to himself” (p. 282); and,
• from Stephen Holmes, that it is to Jonathan Edwards in his Religious Affections that we owe the insight that the “true work of the Spirit of God in the converted heart… is about a cheerful love for God and growth in holiness that lasts a lifetime” (p.296).

The book contains a valuable bibliography on Puritanism pp.34-37), though it is odd that little attention is given to the Westminster Assembly as representative of Puritanism’s climactic achievement (pp.34-37). Thus, to this list one could add, S. W. Carruthers The Everyday Work of the Westminster Assembly edited by J. Ligon Duncan III (Reformed Academic Press, 1994), William M. Hetherington History of the Westminster Assembly of Divines (Still Waters Revival Books, 1993), and Alexander Mitchell The Westminster Assembly – Its History and Standards (Still Waters Revival Books, 1992). Of considerable importance is Crawford Gribben’s The Puritan Millennium: Literature & Theology 1550-1682 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000) and less so, John Brown’s The English Puritans (Christian Focus Publications, 1998). And, more surprising still is Paul Chang-Ha Lim’s bibliographical omission of the recently published, but half-century old dissertation by J. I. Packer on Richard Baxter, The Redemption and Restoration of Man in the Thought of Richard Baxter (Regent College Publishing, 2003).

Still, it remains a refreshing book, full of insights and anecdotes. Reading it makes one ache with longing for such times—‘this incredible age” as Richard Baxter called it. The real task, of course, is not simply to read this book but the eighteen masterpieces about which it speaks. That’s a real challenge; to rid ourselves of the fleeting and trivial and immerse ourselves once more in those things which are truly great and lasting.

The Devoted Life
An Invitation to the Puritan Classics

Edited by Kelly M. Kapic and Randall C. Gleason: (IVP, 2004), 318pp.