Throughout her history, the Christian church has had doctrinal highs and lows. Accurate understanding of biblical doctrine has ebbed and flowed in the course of history and some eras have especially bright lights shining on certain doctrines with unique clarity. The Puritan era is one such period of time shining an illuminating light on the doctrine of the family. Today we have an almost total eclipse on this foundational doctrine and we would do well to look to our Puritan forefathers to learn from their instruction.

During the Puritan era, there was a reformation of family life according to the scripture. This message, recovering the biblical doctrine of the family, was delivered by Scott Brown at the Puritan Family Reformation Conference in Wake Forest, North Carolina in 2008. Well, the Puritan era is a unique period of history because of their understanding of doctrine. That really is why we love the Puritans. Now let's just say this, all eras of history are not created equal regarding Bible doctrine and holiness and sanctification and understanding.

There are periods that rise above other periods. We could go to the great revival days of Joshua, or the great revival days of Jonah, or the great revival days of Josiah. We could go to the Protestant Reformation. We could go to the Great Awakening. But Here we're going to the Puritan era.

Think of it like this. Think of it in terms of some of the great gold rushes in history. Remember the California gold rush in 1849. The 49ers rushed into central California. And tens of thousands of people rushed in.

There was mass starvation, all kinds of things, because the local economy couldn't support it. There was a gold rush, the great Klondike gold rush in Alaska, where 400, 000 people rushed in. But there was one gold rush that outshined all of them and it happened in South Africa in the Widdershwan gold mines. Now here's what we learned about this gold rush. Forty percent of all the gold that has ever been mined came out of the Witterstrand mines in the late 19th century and into the early 20th century.

I think the Puritan era is like that. So much of the gold, so much of the sound doctrine for the church, for the family, for the civil government came out of the Puritan era. And so we're looking at an era in which tremendous gold was brought to the surface and shown to the world. And they published hundreds and hundreds of volumes. We have some of them right here, old documents that reflect the biblical doctrine of the family that I hope you have a chance to look at some of these first editions of some of these things that were produced by the Puritans.

But it was a gold rush of theology. It was the gold of the wisdom of God. And that gold was put into service. It was put into the economy. It was applied.

They sought what was acceptable and pleasing to the Lord. And they desired to apply it. So this study that we're engaged in, I hope will be sort of a three-way comparative study of three things. First, what does the Bible say that family life should look like? I hope that we are able to walk out with a clear vision of what the Bible says.

Secondly, how does it compare with the way we live today? Here's what I want all of us to do. I want us to look at at the biblical doctrine of the family and compare it with life today. Think about your own era. What is it like?

Because all of us are born into an era. We didn't choose this era. We didn't choose the nations. We didn't choose the families. We didn't choose the cities.

We didn't even choose really our neighbors or really our friends. They just came to us and we learned from them So how about how does all of that compare with what the Bible says and then thirdly? How did the Puritans understand what Scripture says about family life and what can we learn, learn from them. I pray that as we're going through this all of us would learn something more than we know today. I pray that will happen with me as well, that we would understand the family life that the shepherds of the church in our era advocate and what did the Puritans advocate and what does the Bible advocate that we would be thinking all on these three levels because this era that we've been born into is an era that's in need of Reformation like every era is.

That we would compare our practices with their practices, with the practices advocated in Scripture. Because in Scripture is where we find the great gold for the currency of our family life. And then we really want to issue an urgent call for the recovery of the biblical doctrine of the family. J.I. Packer said that the Puritans were the godliest generation since the first century.

What happened there? Something that only almighty God can do. I pray that he will do it in our era as well. I think he is. In fact, I know he is.

These principles of family life are being recovered in every denomination in every part of the country. It's absolutely remarkable what's happening today. So here we have with us today some people who have been thinking about it and speaking about it for for a long time. We have historian Dan Ford who's with us who's brought many of his documents. He's been collecting and studying them for many, many years and he's a wealth of historical information.

We also have Jeff Pollard who is a pastor of Mount Zion Bible Church and he operates a ministry called Mount Zion which distributes Christian literature but they distribute many Puritan works that are used in prisons. They have an absolutely marvelous ministry. All of their stuff is free, by the way. They print it down there in Pensacola, Florida, and Jeff is here with us to share his gleanings over many years of pastoral ministry and ministry really to the world. And then we have three of us from Hope Baptist Church, three elders here who are desiring and yet implementing so imperfectly I might say the biblical doctrine of the family of every doctrine that is in Scripture, and we've desired to implement these things in our church as best we can.

And so this conference will work to remember the Puritans and build upon what goal they pulled out of the ground and to take it on to the next level. We'd like to bring out their understanding and then say, okay, what do we not know? What applies to us here in our generation with the practices in our churches, with the practice in my daily home life, with the practices of my friends. How can I see clearly through all of these confusing data points of life? Well, that's what we really, really desire to do.

And so we're going to study the theologians and the personalities and the books and the homes and the towns that were affected. And we will hopefully leave behind us a legacy for a desire for doctrinal excellence, for doctrinal purity, for love for the Word of God, love for the glory of God, and to see what God has written and then and do what Paul so encouraged the Ephesian Church to do. Find out what is acceptable to the Lord. That is what we desire to do here. We desire really the centrality of Christ.

We desire the centrality of the church, the centrality of preaching, and the usefulness of the family in all these things. And it is from Bible doctrine that we know we must begin. We must cleave to the words of sound doctrine and find all of our foundational thinking in Holy Scripture, not out of our own head, not out of our family's head, not out of our culture's head, but out of the mind of God to hold fast to the form of sound doctrine and earnestly contend to the faith as Paul said to Timothy in 2 Timothy 1 3 that we as children though we're tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine would be found in a safe place under the great and beautiful thoughts of God, that we would speak the things which are proper for sound doctrine as we read in Titus 2 verse 1. So we believe the Puritans should be studied because of this doctrinal issue. You know the Puritans are often maligned.

Stiff, harsh, unhappy. It was interesting, I was on a radio program this week talking about this and the owner of the station sent me this long thread of email comments that came back and many of them were so defamatory to the Puritans. I would just suggest that those people who wrote those defamatory comments, They had never read them. They'd only read their little textbooks that they had in public school. But they had not read the sweet and precious affections of the Puritans toward God Almighty, that they loved His word, that they desired to put it into practice.

It was a humble appreciation that they had. And that really is what we really desire to bring out here. Much, much sound doctrine on the family has come to us by the Puritans. So who were the Puritans? Who were the Puritans is really a good question, okay, because, and I think for our purposes, we're really looking for the world view of the Puritans and see how it's traced in this era from early from the early Puritans to modern times.

First of all we need to know that the Puritans were the successors to the Reformers. The Puritans were building upon the doctrine that was uncovered during the Protestant Reformation. And so we see that in the Reformers from 1500 to 1580. We find Reformers like William Tyndale, that great Bible translator, at whose pen the world was changed. As the Bibles were chained and out of circulation and unable to be in the hands of common people, William Tyndale wanted to see the Word of God in the hands of every person, the simplest to the greatest.

We find Martin Luther. Martin Luther was a husband of a woman who had escaped the convent in a herring barrel. Culture was being transformed. The biblical doctrine of the family was being uncovered, and the Reformers were attacking the ungodly practices of the Roman Catholic Church. Doctrines of celibacy.

It was so exalted. Marriage was not thought to be ideal. Celibacy was thought to be ideal. Does that fit with what we read in the Bible? Absolutely not.

And so the Reformers were attacking the unbiblical doctrines that had encroached on the Catholic Church. And they were attacking them one by one. And one expression of this is the marriage of Martin Luther to his his dear wife Katie who was smuggled out of a convent in a barrel to be married to this man, Martin Luther. And marriage flourished. The doctrine of marriage flourished during this period.

Luther believed that the church was in crisis and the home was in crisis. And many of these crises revolved around the doctrine of marriage. And he saw that marriage needed to be reformed. And Luther saw the doctrines of marriage and family in the Catholic Church to be contrary to Scripture. He was a divisive personality.

He bucked the trend. He took pains to go in the other direction. You know, there are many of us who believe that daughters need to be rescued from many things that have crept into this culture. This barrel, this herring barrel to me, is such an iconic figure of rescue from a destructive, even Christian culture that does things to daughters, sends them places they should not go, places them in roles that they should not fulfill. But the Reformers were doing that very thing.

Here's Martin Luther on marriage. A companionable woman brings joy to life. Women tend to rear their young, administer the household, and are inclined to compassion. God has made them compassionate by nature so that by their example men may be moved to compassion also. Luther wrote passionately about children.

He makes us look like lightweights. Here's what he says about children. People who do not like children are swine, dunces, blockheads, not worthy to be called men and women because they despise the blessings of God, the Creator and author of marriage. Luther believed that marriage was the sweetest bond on earth outside of the spiritual bond toward the Lord Jesus Christ. And so the Protestants, in contrast to the Catholics, they permitted actually divorce and remarriage on the grounds of adultery and willful abandonment.

And Martin Bueser declared that no proper marriage exists in which there is not affection and true love. This was also a great contradiction to the Roman Catholic doctrine of marriage. The Roman Catholics had a priority list for marriage that the Reformers and the Puritans turned upside down and said, no, it's not that way at all. It's exactly the opposite. And that's what they did, and we'll hear more about that later today Martin Luther Said in domestic affairs.

I defer to Katie. Otherwise, I am led by the Holy Spirit You know what you get from the period from the reformers and the Puritans you get love these were not stiff Angry people. These were people that appreciated the nature that God has given us and the romance and the love and the tenderness, the sweetness that marriage brings and that this husband-and-wife relationship comes about. You know, the Catholics were saying, no, we'll pair people up in childhood. People just get married to procreate.

That's the only purpose of marriage. No, the Reformers and the Puritans said we will not marry people unless they love one another because marriage is so much, not exclusively, but it is so much about tender love from the heart. It's not a mechanical thing that you enter into. That was their perspective on marriage. We see men like Martin Bueser who believed that children must be catechized and educated for God.

They were very radical in their perspective. Look at this. Bueser believed what he wrote here in this letter to the government. So your royal majesty will make a law that orders parents to educate and establish their children in Christ's faith and obedience with great care, with a just penalty, appointed for those who themselves infect children with either false doctrine or bad morals, or permit them to be infected by others. The reformers wanted to make laws about infecting children with bad doctrine, with immoral things.

The children would be protected and filled with knowledge of every good thing. They would roll over in their graves at what we do today by sending our children to be educated by pagans in sodomite-driven schools and things like that. They would absolutely think it unconscionable, but only a very small percentage of the people in this land, in the churches, have taken their children out of it. The Puritans and the Reformers would have absolutely rolled over in their graves to know these things. We have the Reformers In Geneva, John Fox of Fox's Book of Martyrs, John Calvin.

John Calvin's Geneva is a fascinating study of reforming the family because they were attacking contradictions to what the Bible had said about it. They had, every Thursday, a meeting called the consistory in which they listened to the problems that were surfacing in the families and in the community. And they would have several theologians, John Calvin was one of them, and people would bring their problems and they would do biblical counseling. It was like a mandatory biblical counseling. And a problem would come up and they would open up the Bible and they would find the answers to the problems from Holy Scripture.

Marriage problems, courtship problems, every kind of problem you can imagine. One of my favorite is that a woman brought her husband in to the consistory because there was such a difficult problem that she couldn't solve in her marriage. Her husband every night would go out and get drunk and he would come home, roll into bed, and then throw up on her every night. And she brought him before the consistory and said, what can I do? And they opened up their Bibles, and they gave counsel from scripture about what this man and what this woman should do about this very difficult situation.

Well, the Reformers laid a bedrock that the Puritans built upon. When did they live? The Puritans lived roughly 1560 to 1750. I know these dates are not really perfect in their range, but this is kind of the date range that we can find. The early Puritans 1558 to 1603.

Here are some of the names. Richard Greenham, William Perkins. By the way, Jeff Pollard told me you can get all of William Perkins' works online, Google Books online, and they're all scanned and everything and he wrote amazing number of volumes. Lawrence Chatterton, John Dodd, John Rogers, then the later Puritans, John Owen, Richard Baxter, John Bunyan, John Howe, Thomas Doolittle, Philip Dodridge, Matthew Henry, William Bradford, John Winthrop, Jonathan Edwards, Richard Mather, Increase Mather, and Cotton Mather. We're going to dedicate a whole session on this three generation spiritual dynasty that we found here in New England.

We have the successors to the Puritans, and this gets a little fuzzier because who are really the successors to the Puritans. You have men like J.C. Ryle, you have Charles Spurgeon who saturated his mind in these books that we have here on this table. If you were in Spurgeon's library these are the books you would find And he had some of the real treasures of this era. D.

Martin Lloyd-Jones is one that would consider himself as a successor to the Puritans. Ian Murray, R.C. Sproul, some of these men may be familiar to you. Now the basis for the family reformation in the Puritan era was Bible doctrine applied. This is what I want us to really understand.

Bible doctrine applied. It's one thing to know the word of truth, But it's another thing entirely to do something about it. How easy it is to be hearers of the Word only and not doers. The Puritans sought to be doers. They sought to find out what was acceptable to the Lord and to have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but to find out what the Lord was pleased with.

This was their unique quality. Bible doctrine applied. We also are dedicating an entire session on this subject by Dan Horn. And I know you'll really appreciate his message here because it's really an expansion of this whole point and giving some detail about it. You know, blessed are those who hear the Word of God and keep it, so said the Lord Jesus.

Moses said that you should speak of these things when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up, that you may observe them in the land which you are crossing over to possess." God has given us His Word to apply it and this whole discussion of the Puritan era is about Bible doctrine applied, finding out what is acceptable to the Lord, and then putting it into practice. Of course, none of us can put it into practice perfectly. All our life long we won't. But still, this heart is what God desires in his people. A humble people, not wise in their own eyes, not given to the ways of this world, but looking unto Holy Scripture and saying, oh Lord, what would you have me do?

Oh Lord, I dedicate my life to finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. And how true it is that blessed are you who do them. That we would be like Joshua and say, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. That means he wanted to take the whole law of God and use it in his worship, which was his whole life, and to put it into practice and to pay attention to them, that we would not be like Uzzah with the ark and try to make up our own way, that we would not be like Nadab and Abihu who brought about strange fire, not from the Lord, that we would not create a golden calf out of our own imagination. Now I will have to say It seems to me to be very unpopular to apply scripture regarding family life in our day today.

It's a dangerous thing. It causes all kinds of conflicts and problems and This is the danger that all of God's people will have to suffer. If they apply it, then it will cause problems. But it will also release blessings. You can create your own life out of your own hat if you want to.

You can pull it out of your own meditations. You can pull it out of whatever books you want to, but here the truth of it, you would be found leaning against a wall that will fall down, but God's wall will not fall down, And so we advocate that. And this is what we so appreciate about the Puritans. It was Bible doctrine applied. Now, what were some of those doctrines?

Let's just take a few of them. This is not comprehensive. These are just some of the ones that I felt might be helpful. What were some of the Bible doctrines applied? First and foremost, really the doctrine of sola scriptura, scripture alone.

This would be the doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture. That a.) the Bible should be believed, that the lost book of the law should be recovered in every generation. All Reformations had this same characteristic of finding the lost book of the law. And this Reformation in the Puritan era, this Puritan family Reformation, took place because the lost book of the law had been uncovered. The things that have been uncovered in the Reformation era were there and the Puritans took them and expanded upon them and made them clear and we learned more from them and we desire to continue to do that.

The Puritans believed that the family was the foundational institution of society and the church was also a foundational institution of society. They both played different roles, but they were both very critical and one would feed the other and the other would bless the other as well. That there is this symbiotic relationship that church and family had, which we do see in Scripture, and the Puritans understood that. The doctrine of sola scriptura. It's one thing to believe that Scripture is inerrant, and it's entirely another thing to put it into practice.

We have an evangelicalism today, what one brother called the idolatry of inerrancy, where we believe in inerrancy but we don't believe that it's sufficient. We don't believe that it's enough to live our lives. We say that it's authoritative, but when it comes to putting it into practice in everyday life, we go blind on it. And We believe the doctrine. We become hearers of the Word, but not doers of the Word.

And this is a great danger of Evangelicalism today, that there is an idolatry of inerrancy and a complete neglect of sufficiency. But the doctrine of sola scriptura was of course one of the great principles of the Reformation and the Puritans understood that and they continued with its implications. And they believed that church was a fountain of society and that the family was a fountain for the church. And you read that in all of their writings and at this conference we'll see where they got it because some of the speakers here will help us to see where they found some of these principles. Okay, another one of the doctrines was original sin.

Original sin. The Puritans were the kind of people who would believe that if you had a nice child that had no bearing on a salvation, the Puritans were worried about well-behaved, polite children in households who had not been saved. And because of the... And why? Because of their doctrine of sin.

Listen to this statement. I will not say how far your personal mistakes in conduct may have been a snare and a temptation to your children. In other words, we all harm our children because we're not perfect. We don't have, we're not always, We are never the perfect example. And so parents always lead imperfectly and it can mislead their children.

That's what he is meaning by that. But I am confident of this. That they have derived from you a corrupt and degenerate nature through your veins. The original infection, which tainted the first authors of our race, has flowed down to them and is not this an affecting thought and ought it not and ought it not to quicken you to attempt for their relief and then he quotes Dr. Tillotson.

When a man as by treason painted his blood and forfeited his estate, With what grief and regret does he look on his children and think of the injury he has done to them by his fault? And how solicitous he is before he dies to petition the king for favor to his children. How earnestly does he charge his friends to be careful of them and kind to them. We are those traitors. Our children have derived from us tainted blood, a forfeited inheritance.

How tenderly should we pity them? How solicitously should we exert ourselves to prevent their ruin. The Puritans believed in the doctrine of original sin and that it is transmitted from parents to children along the line. They believed in the doctrine of biblical doctrine of depravity. This author, Philip Dodridge, then quotes Mr.

Flavell who says, Should I bring the plague into my family and live to see all my poor children lie dying by the walls of my house? If I had not the heart of a tiger, such a fight would melt my very soul. And surely, I might add, were there a sovereign antidote at hand, perhaps an antidote I had myself used, should I not direct them to it and urge them to try it, I should still, I should be still more savage and criminal." You see the heartbeat of this? The application is easy. The Lord deeply impresses it upon your souls that your dear children may not die eternally of the malignant plague they have taken from you." Philip Dodridge writing in a book about the education of children and his great point here is that we Pass down to our children the poison that will destroy their souls now Will we just let them die there or will we preach the gospel to them?

When we sit in our house when we walk by the way when we lie down we rise up Yes, we must we must rise up for it. That's what the Puritans believed, that they didn't just let their children go off into oblivion, but that they would do something about the poison of their souls by bringing them into every sweet aspect of fellowship of the kingdom of heaven. We find in the Puritans also the importance of the Church. The critical role of the family for biblical church life was understood by the Puritans. Family life and church life were conceived of by the Puritans as separate but very interdependent, and they were designed to be a blessing to one another.

Philip Dodridge says this, the families of God's children are generally speaking the nurseries of the Church. And this is how they viewed your family and my family, that it was like a nursery. It was a place of growing little olive plants for heaven to prepare them not just for heaven but also to prepare them for the church and leadership in the church and that fathers would manage their households well, for how could they manage the church of God if they did not know how to manage their little flock? Philip Dodridge says this, whatever mistakes you may discover in our conduct, or whatever deficiencies in our public ministrations, you should study to conceal them from the notice of your children, lest they should grow up in contempt of those whose services might otherwise be highly advantageous to them." He's saying, love the church. Don't be a harsh reviewer of your pastor.

Don't take them to task, but help them to love the church. Help them to love the leaders of the church. The Puritans desired a great and mighty role of the church and they spoke of it in many different ways. The doctrine of marriage. In the Puritan scheme, wives were not second-class citizens.

It's interesting when you read Puritan writings, they speak of wives as inferiors, okay, but they did not mean that they were inferior intellectually, most of them, some of them did, but they meant that they were inferiors in terms of order and authority, that there are superiors and that there are inferiors, that there are heads and that there are those who are submissive to heads. That's what they meant by that largely. Because when you read about the rest of what they talk about marriage, there's no sense in the world that a woman is derided in any way at all, but exalted to her place as being made in the image of God. But modern interpreters read the Puritans and they see the word inferior and they completely misunderstood it, misunderstand it. But marriage was, the doctrine of marriage was so beautifully developed.

The Puritans stated that the order of matrimony found in the Church of England's Book of Common Prayer was all wrong. The Book of Prayer had it that matrimony was first of all created for procreation, secondly as a remedy against fornication, and thirdly for the mutual help of society and the comfort of the husband and the wife. The Puritans reversed it and they said no. It is for love. It's for companionship first.

It is for the mercies of God and tenderness expressed from husband to wife and wife to husband. That's the way they understood it. Here's how the Second London Baptist Confession of 1689 reads, God instituted marriages for the mutual help of husband and wife, for the increase of mankind in accordance with his laws, and for the prevention of immorality. And so, you know, this is what happens when scripture becomes sufficient. You begin to see things the way that they were intended to be by God.

Puritan men, as a result of their being reformed by the principles and the commands and the patterns of scripture, had tender and beautiful thoughts toward their wives. Here's William Gogue on the subject. Though the man be as the head, yet is the woman as the heart, which is the most excellent part of the body next to the head, far more excellent than any other member under the head, and almost equal to the head in many respects, and as necessary as the head. As an evidence that a wife is to a man, as the heart to the head, she was at her first creation taken out of the side of man, where his heart lieth. And though the woman was at first of the man created out of his side, yet is the man also by the woman.

And so you see the tenderness here. You see the pathos that these Puritans had. Philip Ryken said, the Puritans affirmed what the Catholics denied and they denied what the Catholics affirmed. They were reversing the common spiritual understanding of things. This is what we would do if we would be believing in the Word of God.

We would be reversing things that are common and acceptable even in the Church if we would be believing Scripture. A man and a woman could marry and have a clear conscience instead of being dogged by the thoughts of the superiority of celibacy. They overturned the idea that the woman was a snare, which you find in many Roman Catholic doctrines. The Reformers exalted the place of a woman. The Catholics really believed and wrote about this proposition that women are distracting from the things that are holy and therefore we should not marry them.

And that was their very wicked proposition taken from scriptures out of context without seeing the whole picture. We see the words of Daniel Rogers, the son of John Rogers, who was burned at the stake. We'll hear more about him later. Here's what he writes. This is what this son writes about marriage.

Marriage, love is oft time a secret work of God. Pitching the heart of one party upon another for no known cause. Does that sound familiar? Your heart was pitched toward your spouse for really no... Could you figure out how this all happened?

Well God, the Puritans believed that God just did this to bring people together. And therefore when this strong lodestone attracts each to the other, no further questions need to be made, but such as a man and such a woman's match were made in heaven, and God hath brought them together." There is this sense of God Almighty bringing husband and wife together by his own power. We see the blessing of children in the Puritan doctrine of the family. Stephen Osmond in his book When Fathers Ruled, Family Life in Reformation in Europe says this, Never has the art of parenting been more highly praised and parental authority more wholeheartedly supported than Reformation Europe. And you can go back to the Puritans and read Hundreds of pages of exposition on Ephesians 6, 1 through 4, and raising of children.

William Gouge has a 600-page volume that we have here, we'll be showing it to you, on Ephesians 5 and 6, 1 through 4. Or actually, he goes farther than that. Expounding on authority and submission and the principles of child raising. And it's beautiful stuff. It's more detailed than anything you've ever read in the modern era.

And some of those books will be available here at the conference. Childbearing in the view of the Puritans was not just woman's work because in the Puritan homes father and mother would share in the duties of rearing the children and handling all manner of family life. In commenting on 1 Timothy 2, 5, that she shall be saved in childbearing, Richard Adams, the great Puritan, wrote this, an antidote against discouragement to cheer up suspicious and fearful women. In other words, there are reasons that women might turn their hearts away from childbearing in this sense, the dangers of it. He is encouraging childbearing here and using the Scripture to encourage women to be fruitful and multiply.

That's what they taught one another, that we should be fruitful and multiply. And he says, He says, They are heart-reviving words to every drooping woman, and should lead her with Sarah to judge him faithful who hath promised, whereupon she may be humbly confident in this great work of serving her generation, according to the will of God, in childbearing of preservation and salvation. And God will lay no more upon her than He will enable her to bear and find a way for her to escape, either by a comfortable, sanctified deliverance here or a blessed translation to heaven, to reap in joy what was sown in tears." These lines were preached by Richard Adams in the morning exercises. Over many years Puritans gathered together and gave speeches on particular important doctrines. This one was about child bearing and how important it is that women do not get discouraged or too fearful in child bearing.

The desire to be faithful to scriptural patterns of child-raising is found in all kinds of Puritan works. In one of the statements of Cotton Mather regarding the biblical doctrine of child-raising and the use of the rod, he says, better whipped than damned. Why would he say that? He would say that because of the book of Proverbs and everything that's been written there regarding the use of the rod and the importance of discipline. We also see the faithfulness of God, God's patterns for role distinctions in family life.

The Puritans believed that the man was the head and he was the nourisher of his wife, that the woman was the helper and that she was to be submissive to her husband. That marriage was one man and one woman in partnership. The Puritans articulated very clearly the biblical doctrine of headship. Family worship is another area that the Puritans wrote a lot about, and we'll hear much about that. Here's Philip Dodgeridge, Thus while you are watering these domestic plantations, you are watered also yourselves.

And from these holy converses with your children, you rise to more endearing communion with your Heavenly Father, God by His Spirit visiting your souls in the midst of those pious cares, in other words, your family worship, and giving you immediate comfort and strength as a token of his gracious acceptance and perhaps as a pledge of future success. This leads me to urge the religious education of children. He's saying if you take up what the Bible says about leading your family in spiritual things and bringing them holy scripture and instruction. He's saying while you're watering them, you will be watered also. You will grow.

Father and Mother grow while they teach their children. That's the biblical wisdom. This is why sending your children away for all of their teaching is so harmful. It's harmful to you. It's not just harmful to them and misleads them regarding the biblical order of home.

But family worship was a major category. And then catechisms. Hundreds of catechisms were written. John Owen, Richard Baxter, Calvin, they all had them. I can't remember how many were written in about a 200 year period, but it was hundreds of catechisms were written.

And why? Why were they written? They were written for fathers to teach their children in their homes. And then the shepherds of the church would verify whether the fathers had done it. Richard Baxter in his church in Kidderminster would put you under church discipline if he found out when he interviewed your children that you had not catechized them.

John Calvin said this about this, The Church of God will never persevere itself without a catechism, for it is like the seed to keep the good grain from dying out and causing it to multiply from age to age. And therefore, if you desire to build an edifice which will be of long duration and which shall not soon fall away into decay, make provision for the children." In the modern church, catechisms are thought of as ancient relics and they're not used at all. But why did the catechisms arise? They arose because the shepherds believed that the family shepherds should teach Bible doctrine in their homes, and that was their primary use. It's interesting that these catechisms were so important.

Now, my view of this is, use a catechism of course, but if you're not reading Scripture and memorizing Scripture, do that first and then add your catechism. But the catechisms were basically doctrinal instructions geared to the level of the whole family with a question and answer format. Then we have confessions. The Puritan era was a time of drawing up confessions. One of the most interesting things about at least two of the great confessions is that in the preface, We learn that they are actually written to fathers.

How about this in the Westminster Confession? Are you ready for this? To the Christian reader, especially heads of families. That's who the Westminster Confession was written to. It wasn't written to a bunch of pasty-faced theologians.

It was written to fathers. And it reads like this, We cannot but with grief of soul lament those multitudes of errors, blasphemies, and all kinds of profaneness which have in the last days, like a mighty deluge, overflown this nation. For restoring this duty is the due observance. Give us leave to suggest this double advice. Are you ready?

First concerns the head of families in respect of themselves, that as the Lord has set them in place above the rest of their family, they would labor in all wisdom and spiritual understanding to be above them also. The Second advice concerning heads of families in respect to their families. Whatever has been said already, though it concerns every private Christian that has a soul to look after, yet upon a double account it concerns parents and masters as having themselves and others to look after. Some there are, because of their ignorance, cannot. Others, because of their sluggishness, will not mind this duty." And then it just goes on and on and then you read Thomas Manton's epistle to the reader that comes right after And he goes right after the fathers He says a family is a seminary of the church in the state and if children would be not well principled all will miscarry if A fault in the first concoction is not mended in the second.

In other words, if there's a fault in the family, it won't be mended in the church because the family is a seminary for the church. The family serves the church. You know, there are many families who have rejected the church. That is so wrong. Their families are seminaries for the church, for the blessing, so that those arrows would go out into the church and bless it and cause it to be strong.

There are just so many. The Second London Baptist Confession does the same thing. They write about the chief reason for the decline of faith. They say, And verily there is one spring and cause of the decay of religion in our day. That is the neglect of the worship of God in families by those whom the charge and conduct to them is committed.

May not the gross ignorance and instability of many with the profaneness of others be justly charged upon their parents and masters who have not trained them up in what wherein they ought to walk when they were young. And so he and this goes on and on and on to illustrate the doctrines that are so critical that are going to be communicated in the Second London Baptist Confession of 1689. The passion was that these confessions would be learned in the homes. And then bringing ungodly influences into your home was another thing that the Puritans spoke about. All bad company is in this respect formidable, but that is most evidently so, which is to be found at home.

Great care therefore ought to be taken, that you admit none into your families who may debauch the tender minds of your children by pernicious opinions or by vicious practices." That was Philip Dodridge. How about the names of children? They were formed the way children were named. Historically children had been named after saints. But the Puritans said, no, we want to be pleasing to the Lord.

We're going to name our children after the names of the saints of heaven. And so On the Mayflower, you had wrestling and Oceanus Hopkins and Desire Mentor. You had Jeremiah Burroughs. You had Increase Mather. Instead of naming children after the saints, They named their children after Bible characters and Bible qualities.

They felt that God had felt enough about the significance of a name that He would actually rename people in Scripture. You have Abram to Abraham, you have Sarai to Sarah, you have Jacob to Israel, you have Saul to Paul, Simon to Peter. Something about a name is important. And so you had, you know, on the Mayflower, remember Allerton, you had humility, Cooper. You had William, William Brewster's children were love, fear, patience, and wrestling.

They named their children Josiah and Jonah and Samuel and Ichabod. Oh boy, what a terrible name that would be. Don't name your children Ichabod, That's a bad name. Ruth, Deborah, how about those? Name your children after these.

My daughter and her husband named their first child Triumph Perseverance. You know why? Because they love the doctrine of the name. That's why. You can criticize them all you want, just like Elizabeth and her husband Zacharias were criticized by the naming of their son John.

The family didn't like it, but at least they were naming their children after a principle of Scripture. And then lastly, Old Age. They spoke about everything. Young age, old age. Some of the most interesting things about Old Age are written here.

There's a book that we have here by Richard Steele called Old Age of Old Age. This whole book is to counsel those who are getting old, people like me. And he talks about the dangers of old age. And we're going to wind up this talk with this here. First, these are the dangers of old age, frowardness and peevishness, whereby they are prone to be morose, wayward, hard to be pleased, easily angry, often angry, and sometimes angry without cause.

Seldom are they pleased with others, scarce with themselves, no, not with God himself. Yea, they think, as poor Jonah did, that they do well to be angry. A second folly incident to old age is, I love this one, Loquacity and talkativeness, that is, an exceeding proneness to speak much, so that it hath passed into a proverb, senex siticus, an old person is a parrot. Herein they are twice children whose faculty you know lies in this way. I read this to my own parents who are in their 80s now and they said, now Scott, are you trying to tell us something?

No, no I'm not. This is more like me and less like them. Thirdly, the third sin more peculiar to old age is envy, which is an inward grudging at those who do anything that excel us. And the fourth vice too common in old age is arrogance and conceitedness, a humor whereby they assume so much to themselves as if they had a monopoly of wisdom to themselves, and that their word must be a law in all cases so that they can endure no contradiction. And then the fifth and most epidemic sin of old age is covetousness or worldly mindedness.

That is an inordinate love of riches. You know, you get old and you get grabby, which is shown in an insatiable endeavor to procure them and in an unreasonable loathness to part with them. Well, the biblical doctrine of the family, according to the Puritans, covered everything. From life in the womb, to courtship and marriage, to old age. They commented on everything.

They took scripture and they said, let us find what is acceptable and pleasing to the Lord. Lord, thank you for giving your word into this wicked world in which we've been born. We're so grateful for its reforming and refreshing qualities, how you've rescued us from darkness, how you have introduced us into the kingdom of your Son, the kingdom of light in which there is no variation or shifting shadow but only truth and goodness and clear water and good pasture. Lord help us to love these waters and these pastures always learning what is acceptable to the Lord. Amen.