"The essential thing in understanding the Puritans was that they were preachers before they were anything else. … Into whatever efforts they were led ini their attempts to reform the world through the Church, and however these efforts were frustrated by the leaders of the Church, what bound them together, undergirded their striving, and gave them the dynamic to persist was their consciousness that they were called to preach the Gospel." (Irvonwy Morgan, The Godly Preachers of the Elizabeth Church (London: Epworth Press, 1965), p. 11; J.I. Packer, Quest For Godliness, p. 37.)

"Ministers never write or preach so well as when under the cross; the Spirit of Christ and of glory then rests upon them. It was this, no doubt, that made the Puritans … such burning and shining lights. When cast out by the black Bartholomew-act [the 1662 Act of Uniformity] and driven from their respective charges to preach in barns and fields, in the highways and hedges, they in an especial manner wrote and preached as men having authority. Though dead, by their writings they yet speak; a peculiar unction attends them to this very hour…" (George Whitefield, Works (London, 1771), Volume IV: pp. 306-307; quoted in Packer, p. 23.)

"Richard Greenham, a pastoral pioneer, was incumbent of Dry Drayton, seven miles from Cambridge, from 1570 to 1590. He worked extremely hard. He rose daily at four and each Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday preached a sermon at daybreak, to catch his flock before they dispersed into the fields; then on Sunday he preached twice, and in addition catechized the children of the parish each Sunday evening and Thursday morning. Mornings he studied, afternoons he visited the sick or walked out into the fields ‘to confer with his Neighbours as they were at Plough’. In his preaching, Henry Holland, his biographer tells us, ‘e was so earnest, and took such extraordinary pains, that his shirt would usually be as wet with sweating, as if it had been drenched with water, so that he was forced, as soon as he came out of the Pulpit to shift himself…’ He was a pastoral counselor of uncommon skill. ‘Having great Experience and an excellent Faculty to relieve and comfort distressed Consciences,’ writes Holland, ‘he was sought to, far and near, by such as groaned under spiritual Afflictions and Temptations … the fame of this spiritual Physician so spread abroad that he was sent for to very many, and the Lord was pleased so far to bless his labours that by his knowledge and experience many were restored to joy and comfort.’ …" (Packer, p. 43.) [Note: Very little fruit; this was the pioneering stage of Puritan pastoral ministry.]

"Kidderminster was a town of some 2,000 adults, and most of them, it seems, were converted under his ministry. He found them, he tells us, ‘an ignorant, rude and reveling people, for the most part … they had hardly ever had any lively serious preaching among them.’ But his ministry was wonderfully blessed. When I first entered on m labours I took special notice of everyone that was humbled, reformed or converted; but when I had laboured long, it pleased God that the converts were so many, that I could not afford time for such particular observations… families and considerable numbers at once … came in and grew up I scarce knew how. Here’s Baxter’s retrospect of what went on. "The Congregation was usually full, so that we were fain to build five Galleries after my coming thither… The Church would have held about a thousand without the galleries. Our private Meetings were also full. On the Lord’s Days there was no disorder to be seen in the Streets, but you might hear an hundred Families singing Psalms and repeating Sermons, as you passed through the Streets. In a word, when I came thither first, there was about one Family in a Street that worshipped God and called on His Name, and when I came away there were sme streets where there was not past one Family in the side of a Street that did not do so; and that did not by professing serious Godliness, give us hopes of their sincerity. And those Families that were the worst, being Inns and Alehouses (sic) usually some persons in each House did seem to be religious. … When I stet upon Personal Conference and Catechising them, there were very few families in all the Town that refused to come. … [Baxter asked them to call on him at his home.] And few families went from me without some tears, or seemingly serious promises of a Godly life. (Reliquiae Baxterianae, first pagination, p. 86. (Packer, pp. 44-45.)

文字工作在傳福音的重要性。巴克斯特藉閱讀靈修書籍信主！

Richard Baxter was converted by reading: When he was about fifteen

"a poor pedlar came to the door. … And my father bought of him Dr. Sibbes’ Bruised Reed. This … opened the Love of God to me, and gave me a livelier apprehension of the Mystery of Redemption, and how much I was beholden to Jesus Christ. … After this we had a Servant that had a little Piece of Mr. Perkins’s Works (of Repentance, and the right Art of Living and Dying Well, and the Government of the Tongue): And the reading of that did further inform me, and confirm me … the reading of Mr. Ezek.Culverwell’s Treatise of Faith did me much good, and many other excellent Books were made my Teachers and Comforters: And the use that God made of Books, above Ministers, to the benefit of my Soul, made me somewhat excessively in love with good Books. … I remember in the beginning how savoury to my reading was Mr. Perkins’s short Treatise of the Right Knowledge of Christ crucified, and his Exposition of the Creed; because they taught me how to live by Faith on Christ."

"… the great puritan pastor-theologians – Owen, Baxter, Goodwin, Howe, Perkins, Sibbes, Brooks, Watson, Gurnall, Flavel, Bunyan, Manton, and others like them – were men of outstanding intellectual power, as well as spiritual insight. In them mental habits fostered by sober scholarship were linked with a flaming zeal for God and a minute acquaintance with the human heart. All their work displays this unique fusion of gifts and graces. In thought and outlook the were radically God-centered. Their appreciation of God’s sovereign majesty was profound, and their reverence in handling his written word was deep and constant. They were patient, thorough, and methodical in searching the Scriptures, and their grasp of the various threads and linkages in the web of revealed truth was firm and clear. They understood most richly the ways of God with men, the glory of Christ the Mediator, and the work of the Spirit in the believer and the Church.

丁道爾﹕讀經要注意﹕上帝的吩咐；恩典的應許；主如何對待子民的例子。

Directions for the study of Scripture follow. Tyndale adduces 2 Timothy 3:16, Romans 15:4 and 1 Corinthians 10:11 and proceeds: "Seek therefore in the Scripture as thou readest it, first the law, what God commandeth us to do; and secondarily the promises … in Christ Jesus our Lord. Then seek ensamples, first of comfort, how God purgeth all them that submit themselves to walk in his ways, in the purgatory of tribulation … never suffering any of hem to perish that cleave fast to his promises. And finally note the ensamples which are written to fear the flesh, that we sin not; that is, how God suffereth the ungodly and wicked sinners … to continue in their wickedness … they harden their hearts against the truth, and God destroyeth them utterly. Again, he instructs: "That thou takest the stories and lives which are contained in the Bible for sure and undoubted ensamples that God will so deal with us unto the world’s end." Once those principles are applied, says Tyndale, Scripture is found to be self-interpreting: ‘the Scripture giveth record to itself, and ever expoundeth itself by another open text.’ The key is justification by faith, and the door (as we should expect) is the Epistle to the Romans. ‘A light and way unto the whole Scripture’, Tyndale calls it, and translates Luther’s verdict upon it: ‘a bright light, and sufficient to give light unto all the Scripture.’ These principles of exegesis were handed on to the Puritan brotherhood by Perkins, who laid it down that if one began one’s study with Romans, and followed it with John’s Gospel, one had the key to the entire Bible; analysis shows that these principles have virtually axiomatic status in all Puritan exegesis." (Packer, p. 67.)

Perkins: Open Text, Divide Texts, Show Forth Its Doctrines:

"But how was truth to be taught? Principally from the pulpit, by the systematic analysis and application of biblical texts, all of which were approached as utterances of the Holy Spirit. The basic method was set out by Perkins in his Art of Prophecying. The preacher must serve his text by becoming the mouthpiece for its message. He should first paraphrase it, give the ‘connexion’ (context) and point out its structure and component parts, that is, ‘divide’ it’: all to make sure that his readers understood the biblical writer’s general meaning and scope. Then he should extract from it one or more doctrinal propositions or theses which the text asserted, implied, presupposed or instanced. Arthur Hildersam, for instance, ‘raises’ from Psalm 51:1-2 the following three ‘doctrines’: "That God’s people, when they are in any distress, must fly to God by prayer, and seek comfort that way; That pardon of sin is more to be desired than deliverance from the greatest judgments that can befall us; That the best of God’s servants have no other ground of hope to find favour with God, for the pardon of their sins, but only in the mercy of the Lord." John Owen, on the second half of Romans 8:13, raises these three: "The choicest believers, who are assuredly free from the condemning power of sin, ought yet to make it their business all their days to mortify the indwelling power of sin; The Holy Ghost … only is sufficient for this work …; The vigour and power and comfort of our spiritual life depends on our mortification of the deeds of the flesh." Baxter’s Call to the Unconverted is an extended exposition of seven doctrines derived from Ezekiel 33:11: "It is the unchangeable law of God, that the wicked shall live, if they will but turn; God takes pleasure in men’s conversion and salvation, but not in their death or damnation …; This is a most certain truth, which … God … hath confirmed … solemnly by His oath; The Lord doth redouble His commands and persuasions to the wicked to turn; the Lord condescendeth to reason the case with them, and asketh the wicked, why they die? If after all this, the wicked will not return, it is not long of God that they perish, but of themselves…they die because they will die." (Packer, 70-71.)

"In the Puritans’ communion with God, as Jesus Christ was central, so Holy Scripture was supreme. By Scripture, as God’s word of instruction about divine-human relationships, they sought to live, and here, too, they were conscientiously methodical. Knowing themselves to be creatures of thought, affection, and will, and knowing that God’s way to the human heart (the will) is via the human head (the mind), the Puritans practiced meditation, discursive and systematic, on the whole range of biblical truth as they saw it applying to themselves. Puritan meditation on Scripture was modeled on the Puritan sermon; in meditation the Puritan would seek to search and challenge his heart, stir his affections to hate sin and love righteousness, and encourage himself with God’s promises, just as Puritan preachers would do from the pulpit. This rational, resolute, passionate piety was conscientious without becoming obsessive, law-oriented without lapsing into legalism, and expressive of Christian liberty without any shameful lurches into license. The Puritans knew that Scripture is the unalterable rule of holiness, and never allowed themselves to forget it. Knowing also the dishonesty and deceitfulness of fallen human hearts, they cultivated humility and self-suspicion as abiding attitudes, and examined themselves regularly for spiritual blind spots and lurking inward evils. They may not be called morbid or introspective on this account, however; on the contrary, they found the discipline of self-examination by Scripture (not the same thing as introspection, let us note), followed by the discipline of confessing and forsaking sin and renewing one’s gratitude to Christ for his pardoning mercy, to be a source of great inner peace and joy." (Packer, 24.)

Richard Greenham, pastor-counselor (Dry Drayton, 1570-90)

John Smyth, John Robinson – Leyden, 1608; Mayflower to Plymouth, Massachusetts, 1620

Richard Sibbes, Bruised Reed, etc.

Thomas Goodwin

John Flavel, The Mystery of Providence

John Cotton

Richard Mather, Increase Mather, Cotton Mather

David Brainerd

John Eliot

John Newton, "Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound"; "How sweet the name of Jesus sounds"

Jonathan Edwards 爱德华滋

George Whitefield

Charles Spurgeon 司布真

Horatius Bonar