Meet the Puritans 2.0

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Puritans sought to purge Roman Catholic vestiges from the Church of England to make it more Protestant. They agreed with much of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, but objected to the Church’s use of crucifixes, graven images, episcopal polity, ornate clerical vestments, the liturgical calendar, the sign of the cross in baptism, the elevation of the host, and kneeling to receive the Lord’s Supper. Their attempts to purify the Anglican Church ultimately failed, leading to the growth of dissenting denominations in Old and New England.

Their writings, however, especially on Reformed and experiential piety, were valued beyond their own lifetimes. Individual titles like Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible, Thomas Watson’s A Body of Divinity, and William Gurnall’s The Christian in Complete Armour saw numerous printings, but none compared with John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. John Flavel’s works were published five times in the eighteenth century and three in the nineteenth century, influencing men such as Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, Robert Murray M’Cheyne, Andrew Bonar, and Archibald Alexander. Richard Baxter’s Practical Works were also very popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, being published in three different editions.

The works of several other Puritans were published in the nineteenth century. Thomas Tegg released The Works of William Bridge in 1845, Johnstone & Hunter produced William Goold’s Works of John Owen from 1850 to 1855, and W. G. Blackie & Son published George Offor’s Works of John Bunyan in 1850s and 60s. The Nichol family conducted the most ambitious printing of the Puritans in the Victorian Era. At the encouragement of Charles H. Spurgeon, James Nichol, the father, started work on a Series of Standard Divines, which was slated to include the works of Thomas Goodwin, Richard Sibbes, Stephen Charnock, Thomas Adams, Thomas Manton, Edwards Reynolds, Thomas Brooks, and David Clarkson. Nichol passed away in 1861, but James, the son, completed the project throughout the next two decades. The publisher also released Nichol’s Series of Commentaries during that same time frame, which contained many Puritan expositions. Sales for these books, and other Puritan titles, increased as Spurgeon and J. C. Ryle offered their endorsements.¹

Interest in Puritan republications waned for almost 90 years until Iain Murray, Sidney Norton, and Jack Cullum founded The Banner of Truth Trust in 1957. With Martyn Lloyd-Jones acting as an advisor, Banner published many individual titles and abridgments in the ensuing decades, and also printed facsimiles of a number of nineteenth-century sets. Other publishers developed in Banner’s wake, capitalizing on the Reformed resurgence with their own Puritan reprints. Such publishers included Christian Focus Publications, Reformation Heritage Books, Soli Deo Gloria (now an imprint of RHB), Naphtali Press, Tentmaker Publications, Sprinkle Publications, Northampton Press, and Solid Ground Christian Books. Larger evangelical publishers and academic presses also joined in the business of republishing the Puritans.

In 2006, Joel Beeke and Randall Pederson published Meet the Puritans: With a Guide to Modern Reprints, which catalogued many of the Puritan reprints from the late twentieth century. Beeke and Pederson have now released an updated edition with Fraser Jones, detailing additional reprints since the original publication. Like the first edition, the second gives short biographical accounts of the Puritans as well as the Scottish Presbyterians and Dutch Further Reformation Divines, whose faith and practice were similar to their English counterparts. Forty-five new biographies are included in the new edition, in addition to 278 new summaries of reprints.

While the former work seemed to be geared for pastors and laymen, the second edition broadens its appeal to scholars by including footnotes and an extensive “Select Biography of Secondary Resources.” The second edition does not lose sight of the pew or pulpit though, as it continues to have a glossary and now adds three introductory essays on the authors’ favorite Puritans. These chapters, along with ones on “How Should I Use This Book?” and “Where and How to Begin Reading the Puritans,” help guide readers through the plethora of Reformed classics, encouraging beginners to start with RHB’s Puritan Treasures for Today or Banner’s Puritan Paperbacks or Pocket Puritans.² A “Select Puritan Bibliography” also provides a quick reference guide for Puritan commentaries, systematic theologies, and books on the Christian life dealing with topics like affliction, assurance, children, contentment, depression, evangelism, prayer, and meditation.³ The authors furthermore offer pastoral counsel in their book summaries, even cautioning readers when they think a work is dense or unprofitable.

Like all reference works, Meet the Puritans will need to be updated again to reflect future publications, but for now, the Church and academy can count themselves blessed to have such a comprehensive work. Due to denominational distinctives, some Christians may differ with Puritanism on secondary or tertiary matters, but they can nevertheless say with Spurgeon, “It would do [everyone] … good to read more Puritan theology, and have the opportunity of stocking their libraries better.”⁴ Meet the Puritans is just such a book that will inspire people to better supply their shelves.⁵