If you love the Puritans, if you love J. I. Packer, and if you love short, meaty addresses and essays on Puritan and Reformed themes, then you will love the five-volume set Puritan Papers, edited by J. I. Packer and released by P&R Publishing.
Although they first appeared 25 years ago, the volumes can still be found and are certainly well worth adding to your library. They contain some of the great Puritan and Reformed scholars and pastors of recent times speaking about some of the great Puritan and Reformed figures and teachings of earlier times.
In the Foreword to each volume W. Robert Godfrey gives us the rationale for the books and how they came into being:
[I]t is truly remarkable that about fifty years ago two young scholars conceived the idea of holding a conference on Puritanism as a practical help for pastors and Christians generally. Surely a modern conference largely devoted to the study of Puritan thought as a vital resource for the contemporary church would not commend itself to many. But O. Raymond Johnston and James I. Packer had an advantage over many: they had actually read the Puritans. They had so profited spiritually from their own study of the Puritans that they wanted others to share in the rich spiritual blessing that had been theirs. In the late 1940s they consulted with D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, minister at Westminster Chapel, London, who enthusiastically embraced the idea and offered the chapel as a meeting place for what became known as “The Puritan Conference.”
The first conference took place in December 1950. Six papers, each about an hour in length, were read over the course of two days, one in the morning and two in the afternoon. After each paper a discussion followed of about one hour, often a very vigorous exchange of ideas. The basic form of the conference has remained the same over the years. For nearly thirty years Dr. Lloyd-Jones chaired the sessions of the conference and from 1959 contributed an annual paper and led the discussions. His commitment to the conference reflected his conviction: “As I see things, it is of supreme importance for the future of the Christian faith in this country that we should experience a revival of interest in the literature of the great Puritans of the seventeenth century.”
James I. Packer organized the conference for many years and contributed regularly for the first twenty years. His keen study and analysis helped set a very high standard for the papers. His presentations, along with those of Dr. Lloyd-Jones, ensure that the volumes of the conference papers from those years are of great value.
No conference was held in 1970. Dr. Lloyd-Jones objected strongly to some of the ecumenical positions taken by Dr. Packer. Dr. Lloyd-Jones was approached by several men who asked him to chair a reconvened conference of the same character as the earlier ones. He agreed to do this, and so the Westminster Conference was held in 1971 and has continued to operate under that name.
The basic purpose of the conference has remained the same for the fifty years of its existence. As Dr. Packer wrote in a foreword to the 1958 conference papers,
“[the conference] exists because its organisers believe that historic Reformed theology in general, and the teaching of the great Puritans in particular, does justice to certain neglected Biblical truths and emphases which the church today urgently needs to re-learn. This is not, of course, to imply that Puritan expositions of Scripture are infallible and final, or that the Puritans always succeeded in balancing truth in exactly the right proportions; nor is it suggested (forsooth!) that the way to solve the problems which face Christians of the twentieth century is to teach them to walk and talk as if they were living in the seventeenth. What is meant is simply that the Puritans were strongest just where Protestants today are weakest, and their writings can give us more real help than those of any other body of Christian teachers, past or present, since the days of the apostles.”
Puritan Papersby J. I. Packer (Editor), W. Robert Godfrey (Foreword)
What follows is a brief overview of each of the volumes. I mention the years of the conferences, the books’ publication dates, the number of pages, and some of the speakers and topics covered:
Volume 1, 1956-1959 (2000 – 320 pp.)
There are 23 papers included in this volume. While all can’t be listed here, let me mention some of them:
“The Puritans and the Doctrine of Election” by Iain Murray
“The Witness of the Spirit: The Puritan Teaching” by J. I. Packer
“Thomas Shepard’s ‘Parable of the Ten Virgins’” by O. R. Johnston
“John Bunyan and His Experience” by Owen C. Watkins
“Divine Sovereignty in the Thought of Stephen Charnock” by F. K. Drayson
“Discipline in the Puritan Congregation” by D. Downham
“Revival: An Historical and Theological Survey” by D. M. Lloyd-Jones
Volume 2, 1960-1962 (2001 – 334 pp.)
Here are 6 of the 16 papers found in this volume:
“Jonathan Edwards and the Theology of Revival” by J. I. Packer
“John Knox and the Scottish Reformation” by G. N. M. Collins
“The Puritan Doctrine of Christian Joy” by J. Gwyn-Thomas
“Missions in the Reformed Tradition” by B. R. Easter
“The Puritan Conscience” by J. I. Packer
“John Owen’s Doctrine of Christ” by F. R. Entwistle
Volume 3, 1963-1964 (2001 – 258 pp.)
Of the 10 papers, these 7 can be highlighted:
“The Puritan Approach to Worship” by J. I. Packer
“Scripture and ‘Things Indifferent’” by Iain Murray
“Charles Haddon Spurgeon: Preacher” by D. M. Whyte
“John Owen on Schism” by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
“John Calvin’s Doctrine of God” by R. A. Finlayson
“John Calvin’s Geneva” W. J. Grier
“John Calvin and George Whitefield” by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Volume 4, 1965-1967 (2004 – 292 pp.)
This volume contains 16 papers, of which here are 8 quite useful ones:
“Martin Luther” by J. I. Packer
“Thomas Cranmer” by G. S. R. Cox
“John Knox” by S. M. Houghton
“Charles Finney on Revival” by P. E. G. Cook
“Catechisms and the Puritans” by J. Lewis Wilson
“The Christian Mind of Abraham Kuyper” by Rex Ambler
“The Puritans and Spiritual Gifts” by J. I. Packer
“Richard Baxter’s Reformed Pastor” by J. A. Caiger
Volume 5, 1968-1969 (2005 – 240 pp.)
Here are 9 of the 11 papers found within:
“The Arminian Conflict and the Synod of Dort” by John R. de Witt
“Arminianisms” by J. I. Packer
“John Wycliffe: The Evangelical Doctor” by David Fountain
“Puritan Eschatology: 1600–1648” by Peter Toon
“John Fletcher: An Arminian Upholder of Holiness” by David R. Smith
“William Williams and Welsh Calvinistic Methodism” by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
“German Pietism and the Evangelical Revival” by John D. Manton
“The Doctrine of Justification among the Puritans” by J. I. Packer
“Can We Learn from History?” by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
All up these five volumes contain 76 excellent papers covering quite a wide range of topics and issues. But to further tempt you into considering getting one or more of these valuable books, let me just share a short quote from one piece: Packer on Puritan Worship from vol. 3. He writes:
What is worship? It is, says John Owen, an activity designed to “raise unto God a revenue of glory out of the creation”. In the broadest sense of the word, all true piety is worship. “Godliness is worship,” wrote Swinnock. “Worship comprehends all that respect which man oweth and giveth to his Maker. . . . It is the tribute which we pay to the King of Kings, whereby we acknowledge his sovereignty over us, and our dependence on him. . . . All that inward reverence and respect, and all that outward obedience and service to God, which the word (sc., godliness) enjoineth, is included in this one word worship. Usually, however, the Puritans used the word in its narrower and more common sense, to signify simply all our direct communion with God: invocation, adoration, mediation, faith, praise, prayer and the receiving of instruction from His word, both in public and in private.
Worship must be, as our Lord said, “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). The Puritans understood this as meaning that, on the one hand, worship must be inward, a matter of “heart-work,” and, on the other, worship must be a response to the revealed reality of God’s will and work, applied to the heart by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, they insisted that worship must be simple and scriptural. Simplicity was to them the safeguard of inwardness, just as Scripture was the fountainhead of truth. The austere simplicity of Puritan worship has often been criticized as uncouth, but to the Puritans it was an essential part of the beauty of Christian worship. This comes out in two sermons by Owen on Ephesians 2:18, entitled “The nature and beauty of gospel worship,” in which the weightiest of all the Puritan theologians formulates to perfection the Puritan ideal of worship in scarcely veiled antithesis to the Prayer-book formalism of Laud (“The beauty of holiness” as Laud was pleased to call it.)…
Any one of these volumes will be of great value for those who are interested in such matters, and the complete set will provide you with a wealth of information, inspiration and encouragement. Why not check them out?
