In this audio message, Scott Brown discusses how there was a decline of Puritanism in colonial America. He first defines what "puritanism" means and then provides nine reasons why there was a decline. There was less of a reliance upon God's Word as sufficient.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 (NKJV) - "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work."

Okay, well, welcome to a new day. I want to read you something for a new day, and it does have to do with the decline of Puritanism, because when you get this back, you don't have the decline of Puritanism. Psalm 98, Oh sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things. His right hand and his holy arm have gained him the victory. The Lord has made known His salvation, His righteousness He has revealed in the sight of the nations.

He has remembered His mercy and His faithfulness to the house of Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God. Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth. Break forth in song, rejoice and sing praises. Sing to the Lord with the harp, with the harp and the sound of a song, with trumpets and the sound of a horn, shout joyfully before the Lord the King.

Let the sea roar and all its fullness, the world and all those who dwell in it. Let the rivers clap their hands, let the hills be joyful together before the Lord, for He is coming to judge the earth with righteousness. He shall judge the world." Well, this was really the heart of the Puritan understanding of everything that I just read. And it really did begin with the joy of the Lord, a confidence in His goodness in everything. Well, I want to tell you where I'm going here this morning in this message on Puritanism.

First of all, I'm going to define Puritanism. And then second, I'm going to give you nine reasons for the decline of that Puritanism. There are many lessons to learn from the decline of Puritanism. It's a story of changes in education, changes in the church, changes in family life, changes in government and changing understandings of the law and the Gospel and conversion and good works. And in defining the decline of Puritanism, we end up at the bottom with knowing some secrets, secrets for how America got what it is to be today.

You know, as Kevin Swanson asked in his book, Apostasy, how do you get from John Winthrop to Barack Obama in America? How did that happen? How do you get from Bach to Eminem's rape rap in the later part of the 20th century? And the story of the decline of Puritanism really tells you how it happened and the various forces that were there. And there were many changes that all worked together to create this postmodern world.

And so it's very helpful to inspect the lessons of the past, to see how we ought to consider and really understand our own 21st century. Here's a top-level analysis from a book called The History of Puritanism by Earl Morse Wilbur. I think he says it so well in a very dense format. By gradual and almost unconscious process in their thinking, they first ceased to emphasize certain doctrines as of vital importance. Then they left them of account and finally deliberately abandoned them from conviction, making no secret of their views.

This was the story of the decline of Puritanism, the decline of the moral structure and fiber of America. So let's first of all define Puritanism. First of all, who were the Puritans? Well, Puritanism was a movement of pastors in the 16th century and 17th century and they sought to build on the doctrines of the Reformation. This was a group of Protestant non-conformist pastors.

But it wasn't just limited to Protestant non-conformist pastors. Time frame, 1560 to 1700. When You get into the 1700s, the 18th century, and you find Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. They really had the heart of the Puritans, but They were the last vestiges. I have a book in my library called The Last Puritan, Increase Mather.

So Puritanism runs from 1560 to 1700 by most counts. Okay, I'm going to bulletize some of the things that characterized the Puritans. Number one, they were pastors building on the doctrines of the Reformation. Number two, they had a dependence on Scripture as their only guide. They desired all spheres of life to be governed by Scripture alone.

They rebuilt their families according to Scripture. They desired to rebuild their churches according to Scripture. And they desired to rebuild the state according to Scripture. Number three, anthropology. The sinfulness of man was a primary concern.

They had an Augustinian understanding of mankind. Number four, They sought to apply the law of God to all of life. They made it their objective not to ignore it, set it aside, put it for an outmoded era, but rather to apply the principles of the law of God. Number five, spirituality and personal experiential communion with God were prioritized. The Puritans really desired to know nothing of a dead religion.

They talked about an experimental religion, meaning it's something that actually works from the time that you rise in the morning to the time that you go to bed, and after you go to bed you're crying out to God in your experimental religion. It's a religion that works every day. It runs in your soul. It's not something that you do in a moment of religious experience. Number six, they emphasized the work of the Holy Spirit.

Number seven, it was decidedly anti-Roman Catholic. Number eight, it was a revival movement. It really was a renewal. It ended up renewing the places that it took hold in its real form. Now, Puritanism, as you know, is a negative term.

It's a pejorative, and it's associated with excessive rigidity, stuffiness, austerity, hyper morality, puritanic values that restrict everyone and make them so uptight and nitpicking and, you know, excessive and hair-splitting and legalistic. That's the modern view of Puritanism. It comes out of Nathaniel Hawthorne and his famous book that almost every child in America was forced to read in public school, The Scarlet Letter, which was a melodrama which totally distorted the whole Puritan view of life. Well, probably this is the bottom line. They are hated because they loved the Bible.

That's the deal. What were the Puritan theological distinctives? That's another question. Puritan theological distinctives were basically, you know, standing on the foundation of Calvinistic theology. If you, If you understand Calvinism, you understand the theology of the Puritans.

And so if you look at, you know, the five points of Calvinism, which were just written as a response to the five points of Arminianism. Total depravity of man through Adam's fall, every human being is born sinful. This is the concept of original sin. Unconditional election that God saves those He wishes. Only a few are selected for salvation.

Limited atonement that Jesus Christ died for the chosen and not everyone, for irresistible grace, that God's grace is freely given, it cannot be earned or denied. It's by the power of God. And then finally, the perseverance of the saints, that those elected by God have full power to interpret the will of God and they live uprightly. And if anyone rejects the grace of God, then He's going against God's will, so the perseverance of the saints. Number — here's another question.

What was the fruit of the Puritan era? Well, there was enormous fruit that came from the Puritan era. Many of the great confessions of the Church that have helped us understand our lives and understand the Bible, the three forms of unity, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession of 1566, the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Savoy Declaration, the Second London Baptist Confession of 1689. There were sermons, there were revivals, there was an emphasis on discipleship and education. There were universities, there were families like the Mathers and Matthew Henry and Philip Dodgeridge and Jonathan Edwards, really model families, families that you really should look to and say, what can I learn from this family as they try to apply the Word of God in their lives?

It's so wonderful to notice that there are exemplary families that we can look to and be helped by. I've been so helped by these families. In fact, when I was a young father, I sort of realized there weren't that many fathers in my generation that were writing to help me learn how to be a father. I had to go to a bygone era, and I did. I went back to Matthew Henry.

I went back to the Mathers and Philip Dogridge and Jonathan Edwards to try to learn what was pleasing to the Lord. And I'm so glad I did. I'm kind of done with my child-raising effort now, but I am so grateful that I went back to these families to try to learn from them something that I couldn't know from my own generation. You know, this generation also pumped out missionaries by the platoons. You know, you had John Elliott among the Indians, David Brainerd, Adoniram Judson, particularly the Calvinistic Baptists and Presbyterians, they really were the stock of the great missionary movement of the 18th and 19th centuries particularly.

You know, in the Massachusetts Bay Charter, you had this missionary revival sensibility that was so clearly communicated. I'll read it, a section of it, that the settlers may win and incite the natives of the country to the knowledge and obedience of the one true God and Savior of mankind. And in the Christian faith, which is our royal intention, and the adventurers of free profession, this is the principal end of this plantation." In other words, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony Charter, they're saying, we're here for evangelism. We're here to win the hearts of the Indians that we are meeting here in this land. Here's another question.

Why were the Puritans so godly, and why were they so successful? Well, I'll just give you my take on this. You know, they desired the kingdom of God. They desired the reign of Jesus Christ in the heart. They prayed.

They were a happy people who believed that God's ways were pleasant ways, that His kingdom was beautiful, that Jesus was a good shepherd. They believed that in their hearts. They believed that God's law was better than man's law, and that it worked, that it outperformed man's law, and that man's law was a putrefying thing, but God's was beautiful. They believed the word of God and they preached it like they believed it. And they believed in authority, they had a vision, they understood honor.

There were so many things about the Puritans that made them successful. The Puritans singularly honored their fathers. Does that answer the question well enough? Because the Bible says if you honor your father and your mother, it'll go well with you. And so I do believe that they had these elements of success, these seeds that make everything successful.

They had, you know what, they had it in their hearts. That was the difference. And they desired to create the kingdom of heaven on earth, which was really encapsulated in John Winthrop's statement that New England was going to be like a city set on a hill. He borrowed it from the Gospel of Matthew. You know, let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven that you'd have a lamp, not under a bushel, but on a lampstand that it gives light unto all the house.

They also believed in the work of the Dominion Mandate. They believed that it was the purpose of man to take every inch of ground, every piece of paper, every breath of air, and use it to take dominion. They believed that everything had a purpose, and nothing was to be thrown away at all. And they believed that God charged man to improve his skills, to take his talents and multiply them, in craftsmanship, in intellect, in everything, to multiply it. That was what they believed.

R. H. Tawney, in a very graphic passage in his book, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, he says this. He describes this as the tremendous storm of the Puritan movement. And here's how he speaks of it.

The forest bent, the oaks snapped, the dry leaves were driven before a gale, neither all of winter nor all of spring, but violent and life-giving, pitiless and tender, sounding strange notes of yearning and contrition. So there you have it. That's Puritanism. You know, who were they? What were their theological distinctives?

What was the fruit? And why were they so successful? That's really the range of what was so good about Puritanism. But Puritanism, like your life and my life, has its flaws. And there were flaws in the Puritan era, as there are in every era.

What we don't want to do is to say that this was the only, the only godly generation. Although, men like J. I. Packer have stated clearly enough, and I quote, the Puritans were the godliest generation since the first century church. I think he's right.

We know, we know that we all have so many flaws. Well, let's get to the flaws. I want to give you nine reasons for the decline of Puritanism. Reason number one, changes in education. You know, we often think of the Puritan era as a time when all the parents did everything they could to shepherd their families, and We think of our modern environment as such a contrast from that where parents don't pay attention to their responsibilities.

But the truth is, parents have always struggled with this, and they did in the Puritan era as well. And that's why in 1642, the general court in Massachusetts enacted its first law concerning education and the family for the colony's children. And I'll read you the law. That the select men of every town in the several precincts and quarters where they dwell shall have a vigilant eye over their brethren and neighbors to see first that none of them shall suffer so much barbarism in any of their families as not endeavor to teach to themselves, to others, their children and apprentices as much learning as they may, and here it is, enable them to perfectly read the English tongue and knowledge of the capital laws under penalty of twenty shillings of each neglect. Also that all masters of families do once a week at least catechize their children and servants in the grounds and principles of religion.

Now, there are a few things about this that are really fascinating. First of all, he says at the very beginning, the law says that there is something that is barbaric. He says it's barbarism when parents don't teach their children to read, when parents don't teach their children the laws, and when parents don't catechize their children. They called it barbarism. Can you imagine that?

There are a lot of things you put under the category of barbarism, but most guys today, when they hear the word barbarism, they don't think of a guy who isn't teaching his family. They don't think about that. But that's what the Puritans thought. So much that they enacted a law that you'd get fined 20 shillings for each infraction. And I think it meant infraction for each child.

So some of you who have 16 children sitting in this audience right now, 16 times 20 shillings, that would have been a big hit. You know, you probably, you probably would have really powered up, you know, not to get caught to get hit by 20 shillings times 16. Well, they enacted a law that you had to do these following things. You got the list. Learn the English language, learn the laws, and catechize your families once a week, or we're going to come and fine you.

I mean, I'm placing this under the decline of Puritanism because they enacted a law that led to other things. Five years later, it just took them five years to figure out this was not going to work. And so the General Court enacted a more extensive school law stating—it was called the Satan-Deluder Act. The Satan-Deluder Act. And the whole idea was, if you don't teach your children, Satan the deluder is going to grab your children by the neck and destroy them and you're going to have to do something about it.

They already started fining people. Now they realize that they had to do more because that didn't work. You know, you can't pay a man, you cannot pay a man to do this. It has to come from his heart. You can't fine a man into family discipleship.

And the Puritans tried it, didn't work. Don't you try it in your church either. But this new law required that communities above 50 households shall forwith appoint one within their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and read. Okay, so if you had a town of 50 or more families, then you had to appoint somebody in that town to teach the children to write and to read. That was the new law.

And if you lived in a town of a hundred or more, then you had to set up a school, a grammar school, quote unquote, the masters being thereof being able to instruct you so far as they may be fitted for life, fitted for marriage, fitted for dominion? No, no, no, no, no. Fitted for the university. Fitted for the university. So if you live in a town of 100 or more families, then you had to set up a school to get the children ready for the university.

That law, just five years after the 1642 general court law to find parents. Now what happened, they were actually ordering the abandonment of jurisdictions by helping the abdication of parenthood through the Satan Deluder Act. And it was a poor vision cast for children, it was a poor vision for parents, And the vision really included the university. That became the formula for success in Puritan New England really early on. Imagine, 1647 this happened.

It happened early. And what were they taught in the grammar schools? They were taught to read and write, but there was actually a lot more. They taught a lot from Greek classical literature and even from the Enlightenment scholars that were being adored at that time. And then this continued going until the Boston Latin School was finally founded in 1712.

Now, these schools were organized like this. In the first three years, they were learning Latin and Aesop's fables. In the fourth year, Erasmus and Ovid. In the fifth year, Cicero. In the sixth year, more Cicero, more Ovid, and then Virgil and Florus.

In the seventh year, more of the same. Justin and Homer and Horus and Perseus and the Greek New Testament. And every child had his eyes on the university. That's what the education ordinances were designed to promote. So there's a great emphasis in classical education during this time.

And then the universities were founded by the Puritans. Harvard, maybe one of the best known examples of this, named after John Harvard, who had no children. He willed half of his estate and his library to the school in order to train pastors, in order that the ministers would not be uneducated. And Harvard's motto used to be, truth for Christ and the church. Today the motto is truth.

They've taken out Christ. And so out of this came an exposure to classical literature and the affections that grow from it, a displacement of the family as the primary mode of discipleship for reading and writing and catechizing, and also a porthole into which the flood of the Enlightenment and the Greek philosophers would flow in and finally sink the ship. So there are changes in education. Secondly, the second of nine, there were changes in the church. Many of these changes were introduced as a result of the embracing of the halfway covenant.

And the halfway covenant was a debate over who was eligible for baptism. I'll sum it up in one sentence. The halfway covenant involved offering partial membership rights to people who were not converted. That's essentially the halfway covenant. It allowed for the baptism of children of unconverted church members, and these children, by virtue of their baptism, were given a half membership in the church, and it granted them voting rights in that church.

And in 1657 there's a ministerial convention that suggested that these children should be accepted into baptism and church membership, and then in 1662 there was a synod and it was accepted. This, this scene is one of the, the key markers for spiritual decline. What happened was it really was the result of spiritual decline, not so much a force of it, although they did work together hand in hand. Because as spiritual life was declining, you ended up with an unregenerate church membership. And what do you do about that?

You either allow an unregenerate church membership to continue, or you insist on only giving the ordinances to the regenerate. And it was a tremendous debate, and it was finally determined that the children of the unregenerate could indeed receive the Lord's Supper. And, you know, there's kind of a generational explanation of how generation one is more passionate, generation two is less, and generation three finally, you know, throws everything over the wall. But what happened was individuals were baptized because of their bloodline. Standards began to arose.

There was a pamphlet war that erupted as a result of this. You had supporters of the halfway covenant like Solomon Stoddard, who was the grandfather of Jonathan Edwards. He had a sharp disagreement with his grandson, Jonathan Edwards. There were thirteen ministers that gathered and agreed that this should be embraced. The dissenters had a lot to say about it.

I'm just going to read you some snippet quotes from some of the dissenters. It exposes the blood of Christ to contempt and baptism to profanation. It exposes the church to pollution and the commonwealth to confusion. Here's another. It's a withdrawal of divine favor from the colonies.

Here's John Davenport. He claimed that the only way apostasy and irreligion would be prevented was to do this, to have the porter look well to the doors of the Lord's house. In other words, to protect the entry into the doors of the church, that the porters had to protect the entry, and they came with a principle that withdrew their protection. In the preface to what was called the answers to the dissenting members of the synod. They said, it is apparent unto all what a corrupt mass of unbelievers shall throng into the communion of God's people.

And the children of strangers, uncircumcised in heart, shall be brought into the sanctuary and polluted." So that's what was being said. Jonathan Edwards was the staunch opponent of the halfway covenant, and in fact, he suspended the Lord's Supper from 1744 to 1748 in his church as a result of the confusion and the debate that was going on. The impact of the halfway covenant, there was no difference between the unsaved and the saved. Baptism was open to everyone. There were generational tensions.

The halfway covenant really split pretty neatly across generational lines. The second generation was solidly in favor while the first generation of Puritans were resisting it with all of their hearts. You can see so many examples of this even today. There's a tremendous debate in the Southern Baptist Convention today on what it means to have a regenerate church membership, where you have 16 million people that are on the books, but many people saying there are probably maybe only 4 or 5 million of these are regenerate. Only half of them even go to church at all.

But you have this idea of embracing the unregenerate into a church membership. You have the United Methodist Church who made a business out of this, really, of bringing the unregenerate in. And you know, the Word of God has something to say about bringing unbelievers into the Lord's Supper. 1 Corinthians 11, 27 through 29 says, whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body." So there was a diminishing of the ordinance of the Lord's Supper and a baptism, and as a result there was an unregenerate church membership that followed. So, changes in the church. Thirdly, changes in Puritan jurisprudence. Now, perhaps one of the most controversial aspects of Puritanism was their view of law and punishment. The historic reformed view is that the civil magistrate not only has a civic duty to preserve the peace and order in the commonwealth, but it also has a religious obligation to promote truth, faith, to abolish idolatry and to support the Reformed faith.

And that scripture should be used exclusively. You know, in modern language, you know, you don't... The government should not be promoting Islam. I mean, that's sort of a modern-day, you know, counterpoint to what the Puritans believed. While this view is held by very few, even Reform people today, it really was the doctrine of the Geneva Confession, the Helvetic Confessions, the Belgic Confession, the Westminster Standards, and the New England Puritans maintained this as well.

And they understood that God's word applies to every area of life, including the laws of a nation. And they desired to uphold that. You know, it's a little bit like the Desert Island challenge. You know what that is. If you're stuck on a desert island, all you had was the Bible, how would you live your life?

You'd use the Bible. How would you do your family? How would you do your work? How would you think about laws? Well, you would use your Bible.

You know, that's pretty much how the Puritans viewed it. And, you know, the Puritan movement distinctively desired a holy community. And what that meant, in one sense, was that it was holy in the sense that it was distinct from England. English common law was different than biblical law in many ways. And the Puritans in England were not as free to innovate with their laws as they were in New England here in America.

And John Cotton single-handedly drafted a code and presented it to the court in October of 1636. And what he presented was a distinctively Christian biblical law book, and it was a departure from English common law. And what Mather and the Puritans attempted to do was to set aside some of the unbiblical punishments of England. Like, there were over 200 capital crimes in England. Imagine, I mean, you know, stealing was one of them.

But capital crimes were assigned to even some of the smallest infractions. For example, you know, while in England you were killed if you stole, in the Bible you make restitution. It's different. So the biblical laws were actually much, much less severe than the laws of England. So it was very different in that sense.

There were fewer laws, and punishments were meted out the way that the Bible has them meted out. And here was what was called Cotton's Code, Moses, his judicials, ten chapters, you might guess, for ten commandments. Nathaniel Ward's statement, I think, explains it. No custom or prescription shall ever prevail amongst us that can be proved to be morally sinful by the word of God." So it had to be proved sinful by the word of God. And so there was this attempt to displace English common law with Biblical law.

Now, did they do it perfectly? No, I don't think they did it perfectly. Now, when you look at Biblical law and capital offenses, here's what Cotton Mather wrote. Crimes which were capital offenses were idolatry, witchcraft, blasphemy, murder, bestiality, sodomy, adultery, kidnapping, and perjury, resulting in the execution of an innocent person. These were capital offenses, according to his code.

And so that, in contrast to English common law, there were much, much fewer laws. So the Bible was really the source of law. And so they believed that it was the duty of the civil magistrate to take care of matters of religion in this way, and that the civil magistrate did have some responsibility with godliness and to punish idolatry and blasphemy and heresy. And why the Bible? Well, they chose the Bible as their law book because of their anthropology, because they believed that man was sinful, and that they needed the laws of God to constrain their sin.

Now, they weren't completely consistent in their laws. And there are areas of debate. Which laws are moral, which laws are civil, and which laws are judicial? Sometimes they seem to overlap. And it's not as easy as you might think to discern every single law.

But Winthrop believed that the punishments of the law were up to the discretion of every civil authority. Here was where I think the Puritans saw through a glass darkly, And that is that they, from time to time in their laws, failed to distinguish between a sin and a crime. And they they meted out public punishments for sins that probably should have been dealt with in the church, and they called them crimes. Now, you've probably, if you grew up in American public schools, you hear of all the ridiculous laws that the Puritans had. Maybe you heard the story of that, the seaman.

He comes back from a trip, he gets off his boat, he runs across the dock, and it's the Sabbath day, and he sees his wife, and he kisses her, and he's fined because you're not supposed to kiss your wife on the Sabbath. Now I don't know if that was actually a Puritan law or not, but there are many purported Puritan laws like that, where there are excessive fines for sins. You know, parents being put in stocks for having disobedient children and things like that. Well, these aren't biblical laws. You can't find these kinds of laws in Scripture.

You know, I have a lot to learn about this, but my view at this moment is that the Puritans blurred the distinction between a crime and a sin in their civil laws. Maybe some of you have some greater insight on that, but they weren't completely consistent in applying biblical law. But here was the golden nugget of Puritan jurisprudence. They desired to be faithful to the laws of God. They believed that they were from God.

They believed that the most merciful voice in the room was God. And so when there's a theft, God says, if you confess, you pay back double. If you're caught, you pay back four times the amount. And the Puritans would say, God is the most merciful voice in the room on any matter. If you have something different, it's not mercy.

God is merciful perfectly. So that's just what they believe. They believe the right thing. And their error, I believe, was that they enacted laws, if it's true that they enacted laws concerning personal dress and other behaviors, they were confusing sins with crimes. Now, from the earliest days of Puritanism in America, there were those who opposed this doctrine in the name of liberty of conscience for religious toleration.

And denominations came from this. Roger Williams argued that the civil magistrate should never punish breaches of the first table of the law. Well, what happened here as a result was it was kind of the end of the Golden Age. It ended in about 1700. From 1700 on, we adopted English common law again.

Blackstone, Coke had pushed the Bible to the periphery, though the Bible did consult their laws. And finally, when you get to the American Revolution, the law of God is not appealed to hardly at all. And so that's what happened. Changes in jurisprudence. Now changes in the state, this really brings us to changes in the state, and particularly the whole matter of separation of church and state.

There was a change, and the change came from two directions. First from England, and secondly from Roger Williams. England began to tighten its cords again against the colonies, And this would really lead eventually to the American Revolution. But from the 1660s onward, the crown desired greater control over the colonies and wanted to regulate them for profit. They really wanted a piece of the action.

There was a lot of action, a lot of fish, a lot of goods coming out of these lands, and they wanted a part of it, and so in their desire to control it, they clamped down on the laws in the colonies. And James II revoked the Massachusetts Bay Colony charter in 1684. And he instituted what he called the Dominion of New England. And this provoked men like Increase Mather. He was so provoked he traveled to England.

He submitted a petition to the King for a new charter. And James II's governor, Edmund Andros, was brought in. And then he was finally deposed. And While Andros was taken back, the seeds of English domination really never went away. And this slow decline really found its fruition in this new republic with the U.S.

Constitution, which the Constitution ends up leaving out the acknowledgement of Jesus Christ as King. It was a sin of omission, I believe, in the Constitution. They did not establish the duty to affirm biblical law. By the way, get Dan Ford's book on law and liberty. He's got it back here on the book table.

He has all the documents that chart the advancement of this whole proposition. Increase Mather wrote a narrative of the miseries of New England. It was a remarkable document where he defined this encroaching power that was coming upon the colonies. And then you had not only forces from England, but you also had other forces, particularly Roger Williams, who rejected the idea that God had given his authority to the state at all. And the whole idea of separation of church and state was promoted.

Separation of church and state is translated like this. It's freedom of the state from religion. It disconnects Jesus Christ from the state. It's really a rejection of Psalm 2. Go read Psalm 2.

You'll see how connected God does have Jesus Christ with the state. Roger Williams says Jesus Christ has nothing to do with the state. And that was the principle. And this was the beginning of the separation of church and state and freeing the state from all religion, that the state has no right to prevent anything. Roger Williams, in 1644, published The Bloody Tenet.

Interesting, 1644, as Roger Williams is publishing this volume that says the state has nothing to do, that God has nothing to do with the state, on the other side of the ocean, Samuel Rutherford writes Lex Rex, law is king, on the exact same year, 1644. And you have these two different views of government. One by Samuel Rutherford, who was a Puritan, and the other by Roger Williams, who had thrown off Puritan theology. And there's much to say about Roger Williams. He established Rhode Island.

Rhode Island's charter explicitly says that no one was to be molested or punished or disquieted or called into a question for any differences of opinion in matters of religion. And that was the principle. You see this exact same statement in modern documents, ecclesiastical documents. The Baptist Faith and Message of 2000 has almost the exact same statement in it. I'll just read it.

The church and the state should be separate. No ecclesiastical group or denomination should be favored by the state or more than others. This is just the application of it all. So you had changes in the state. Number five, declining family discipleship.

This was beginning to decline in the days of the Mathers. I spoke about this in my last speech on the multi-generational vision of the Mathers, where increased Mather particularly was crying out for the rising generation. I mean he was burning with that message that the next generation had to be rescued. He and his son Cotton are bringing pastors together, really, to cry out for the rising generation. And all these things they've been trying to do, the Satan Deluder Act, finding fathers, none of it worked at all.

And so there was this decline. In 1679 there was the reforming synod which was held. Here's what they said. As to what concerns families and government, thereof there is much amiss. There are many families that do not pray to God constantly morning and evening, and many more wherein the Scriptures are not daily read so that the word of Christ might dwell richly with them.

Some and too many houses are full of ignorance and profaneness, and these not duly inspected, for which cause wrath may come upon others around them as well as upon themselves." In this scene of declining family religion, you had this fear that judgment would come upon the land because fathers were not teaching their children and they weren't opening up their Bibles. This was the fear of those who were in authority in New England, and they saw this decline advancing and ramping in its height and increasing in its speed. So there was a declining family discipleship, And I think this jurisdictional compromise that moved education out of the family was a part of it. Whenever you try to displace the institutions that God has established and have some institution do them, it doesn't go all that well. And there's so many examples of that.

Number six, advancing antinomianism. The sixth reason for the decline of Puritanism, advancing antinomianism. The key disputed issues here are questions like this. Are good works evidence of true conversion? Is the grace of God in salvation displayed primarily in justification or both in justification and sanctification?

How are Christians to come to an assurance of their salvation? Those are the questions that revolve around this issue of antinomianism. The antinomians argued that using good works to warrant one's conversion and to derive assurance is a departure from the Gospel, and it puts men under what Anne Hutchinson said was the covenant of works. And you had men like Richard Mather writing, fighting against this whole thing. Richard Mather in 1697 says, a workless faith is a worthless faith.

That was the counterpoint. John Winthrop's argument against antinomianism was collected in an essay, a book, a short one, I'm going to read you the title of the book. Okay? Hang on. Hold on.

It's going to take a while to read this title. A short story of the rise, reign, and ruin of the antinomians, familists, and libertines that infected the churches of New England, and how they were confuted by the assembly of ministers there, as also the magistrates' proceedings in court against them, together with God's strange and remarkable judgments from heaven, upon some chief fomenters of these opinions, and the lamentable death of Mrs. Hutchinson, very fit for these times here, being the same heirs amongst us, and acted by the same spirit, published at the instant request of sundry by one that was an eye and ear witness to the carriage of matters there." Well, that's the title of the book, okay? The short title is The Short Story of the Rise, Reign, and Ruin of the Antinomians, okay? So, you had the the the familial, familialists, which were those that were, they trusted in private revelation and intuition for the discernment everything.

Not this book, but your heart and your heart only. You want to know something? Consult your heart. Follow your heart. Have you ever heard that before?

The ghosts of the antinomians are walking, you know, among us today, absolutely. Anne Hutchinson was at the center of the controversy. She is honored at the Massachusetts State House. If you go there, you'll see Anne Hutchinson, a big granite statue of her, calling her, quote, a courageous exponent of civil liberty and religious toleration. Translation, throw this out and follow your heart.

That was Anne Hutchinson's proposition. She started a women's group in her home. She held weekly meetings to discuss Church sermons. And at first they were discussing the sermons of John Cotton, her pastor, and the Reverend John Wilson. But before long, Anne began telling them of her own beliefs, which differed from the Boston ministers.

And she actually ended up claiming that there were only two Boston ministers who were Christians. It was John Cotton and her brother-in-law, John Wheelwright, and everybody else was preaching a covenant of works. She was charged, prosecuted, and excommunicated for heresy, and I will read to you just a list of some of the things that she was charged for. And this is in the preface to a short story of the rise, reign, and ruin of the antinomians. That the law and the preaching of it is of no use to drive man to Christ.

Next, that this assurance of salvation is only from a witness of the Holy Spirit. Next, to question my assurance, though I fall into murder or adultery, proves that I never had true assurance. Next, that sanctification is no evidence of a man's good estate. Next, that no comfort can be had from any conditional promise. You know what a conditional promise is?

If you do this, then that. No comfort, you can receive no comfort from that. That sin in the child of God must never trouble him. Next. That all covenants of God expressed in works are legalism.

Next. That a Christian is not bound to the law as a rule of his life, or it says conversation, not the way you talk, but the way you live. Next, a Christian is not bound to pray except when the Spirit moves him. Next, the whole letter of the scripture is a covenant of works. Next, that no Christian must be pressed to duties of holiness.

Next, no Christian must be exhorted to faith, love, and prayer except that he knows by the Spirit. You know, again, the ghosts of Anne Hutchinson are running all over the place today. I just got back from Australia, New Zealand. I can't even remember how many people I talked to who said, my pastor believes that it's wrong to preach any of the commands of God, which is astonishing to me. There are a thousand and fifty commands in the New Testament alone.

How do you even open your Bible and not find a command on any individual page? But this was the proposition. And what she claimed that she could distinguish between right and wrong simply by an immediate revelation. This was revealed especially in her trial. And she actually prophesies, she gives her infallible revelation in the trial.

She says, if you go on in this course as you begin, you will bring a curse upon you in your posterity. The mouth of the Lord has spoken it. Of course, that was her mouth that was speaking it. And this was what she believed. She was brought to trial in 1638 before the General Court of Massachusetts presided over by Governor Winthrop on the charge of traducing ministers.

And this is really a key factor in the rise of antinomianism, where people today hate the law. When you, modern expressions of the spirit of Anne Hutchinson, the modern charismatic movement with its emphasis on private revelation and prophecy, feminism, women leading worship, anti-authority, rejection of the authority of a husband, which she did. Maybe you've spoken with people who say, God told me. I was speaking with a woman one time a few years ago, and I lost count at about 35 when she said, God told me, God told me, God told me, God told me. I thought, he told you that?

And this is the spirit of Anne Hutchinson. It's interesting, back in our hometown just this week, a new abortion law was passed by the state senate restricting abortion clinics, putting higher standards on abortion clinics. And outside, there were hundreds of protesters dressed in pink and they were carrying signs and they were chanting this, not the church, not the state, women must decide our fate. Anne Hutchinson speaks today. But this was the rise of antinomianism, a rejection of the law of God.

Number seven, advancing Arminianism. Now, Arminianism is a teaching regarding salvation. The fundamental principle is rejection of predestination and an affirmation of free will. I'm just going to read you something from the late James Montgomery Boyce that he put in his book, Whatever Happened to the Gospel of Grace? And here's how he explains Arminianism, and I think it's helpful.

The Arminian teaching does not uphold any of the five solas. It denies sola scriptura, Scripture alone, because its essential arguments are non-biblical but are philosophical. In other words, it isn't predestination unfair. Next, it denies sola fide, faith alone, by changing the character of faith so that it is basically a work. It denies sola gratia, grace alone, by centering salvation on us instead of on God.

And most certainly, it denies sola deo gloria, to God alone be glory, since I am saved ultimately because of what I have done." And then he says, so it is a serious error. Essentially, Arminianism is a rationalistic rejection of the Protestant Reformation. Of course, the Senate of Dort is the standard which corrected the Arminian five points with what are now called the five points of Calvinism. Calvin didn't write the five points of Calvinism. The Senate of Dort developed them to explain what Calvinism was.

Let me illustrate this for you out of the biography of David Brainard. Jonathan Edwards wrote the biography of David Brainard. And in that biography, he compares the faith of David Brainerd with the faith of the Armenians. And let me read it to you. And Brainerd's faith really was just consistent with Calvinism.

And the question is, you know, what was the effect on his life? What did it look like? And here's what Jonathan Edwards says it looked like. He says, we read abundantly in scripture of loving God with all the heart, with all the soul, with all the mind, and with all the strength, of delighting in God, of rejoicing in the Lord, rejoicing with joy unspeakable, full of glory, the souls magnifying the Lord, thirsting for God, hungering and thirsting after righteousness, the souls breaking for the longing it has for God's judgment, praying to God with groanings that cannot be uttered, mourning for sin with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, etc. How full is the book of Psalms and other parts of Scripture as things as these?

And then he says, Edwards says this about what happened to Brainerd. He says, these things he was brought to by that strange and wonderful transformation of the man, which he called his conversion. And don't this well agree with what is so often said in the Old Testament and the New concerning the giving of a new heart, creating a right spirit, a being renewed in the spirit of the mind, a being sanctified throughout, becoming a new creature." And then Edwards asks this, What does an Arminian conversion look like? And here's what he says. Now, where is there to be found an Arminian conversion or repentance consisting of so great and admirable change?

Can the Arminians produce an instance within this age and so plainly within our reach and view of such a reformation, such a transformation of a man to scriptural devotion, heavenly mindedness and true Christian morality in one that before lived without these things on the foot of their principles and through the influence of their doctrines. What Jonathan Edwards is saying is, has an Armenian ever been like this? Do you ever see a converted Arminian look like, feel like, think like, live like David Brainerd? Because it thrilled his soul. It changed his whole life.

He was changed from heaven. That was Edward's proposition. But the growth of Arminianism was a critical piece in the downfall of Puritanism. Number eight, formalism in church discipline. On the one hand, formalism entrenched, formalism in the churches, and the lack of church discipline.

Church discipline began to weaken toward the end of the 17th century, And there are a number of places that this is documented. In the reforming synod that I quoted from earlier, the authors there speak of the degeneracy of the rising generation, and it is attributed to the neglect of church discipline. He says, in these respects, church discipline is neglected. And if it were faithfully and diligently attended not only toward parents but also toward the children of the church, according to the rules of Christ, we may hope that the bunk and dying interest of religion will be revived and a world of sin be prevented for the future and that disputes respecting the subjects of baptism would be comfortably issued. The Synod was saying that if the churches would return to the practice of church discipline, it would save the generation.

That's what they were saying. Now, I hope all of you go to churches that do church discipline. Unfortunately, most churches in America today don't have any conception of church discipline. They don't understand the various categories and degrees of discipline. They don't understand the procedures.

But this matter of the decline of church discipline has really continued to our own day. Number nine, changes in economic status contributed to the decline of Puritanism. The Puritan work ethic had such advantages, and the advantages are that they bring you prosperity, And when you are brought prosperity, there are always dangers. Working for material riches in the place of spiritual treasure is dangerous. And What happened with the Puritans is that their wealth brought them respectability.

And respectability, when it becomes an idol, has to be maintained. And that's often the beginning of the loss of holiness. And the prophetic voice is often lost in the face of financial interest. That's what happened. And the love of money is the root of all evil.

And as time passed, people also started coming to the colonies for the sake of prosperity. That was their motive, because there was a lot to gain. And the Puritan work ethic, when in the hands of a corrupt man, it becomes a death ethic. And they forgot God. They really were a picture of Deuteronomy 6.10.

So shall it be when the Lord your God brings you into the land, which he swore to your fathers to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give you large and beautiful cities, which you did not build, houses full of all good things, which you did not fill, hewn out wells, which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant. When you have eaten and are full, then beware lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage." Well, Israel did forget the prophecy was fulfilled and their prosperity became their downfall. Same thing happened in Sodom. We often forget that what happened in Sodom is recorded in Ezekiel 16. It was their pride, their fullness of food and abundance and idleness.

You only have idleness in a prosperous society, and their idleness was part of their downfall. And they committed abominations because they were haughty and they were rich. And then God judged them. Wealthy people become lazy, often. I remember One time I sold a company to a large publicly held company, and this company was acquiring all these companies all over the world.

And they were using a term, affluenza. Affluenza, those who were being acquired, they got affluenza, they didn't want to work anymore. And that often happens, and that happens to some degree to the Puritans. So, there you have it, nine reasons for the decline of Puritanism. Now, as we've gone through these markers, I'm sure we've seen the likes of the decline of Puritanism today in our land.

We look around the American landscape and we can see the results. We can see the ghosts of Anne Hutchinson roaming about the private revelation, the disconnection of faith from works, the hatred of the law of God, which is the essence of antinomianism, and which is really at the heart of the religion of the God told me kind of crowd. We see the ghosts of the Satan-deluder act in the form of declining family religion in the church and the state supplanting the family for matters of discipleship in our great institutions, in our Sunday schools, in our programs. We see the ghosts of Solomon Stoddard and the halfway covenant of unbelievers thronging into the communion of God's people, pretenders. Paul Washer says that if you want to do evangelism, the best place to do it is in a local church, because most of the people there are unconverted.

The ghosts of the universities like Harvard, which have become the satanic apostasy factories are here. The ghosts of classical education, Aesop's fables, and Cicero, and Ovid, and Kevin Swanson's gonna speak about that in the next session, I believe. The ghosts of Roger Williams, and the separation of church and state, which is really the separation of the state from God. Instead of kiss the Son, as Psalm 2 commands, the separation crowd is basically saying, kiss yourself, it's all you have. Figure it out on your own, the ghosts of these antinomian, Arminian, unlawful themes that have gripped our country.

That's how you get from John Winthrop to Barack Obama. That's how you get from Bach to Eminem. That's how you get it. And we're on that track now. And the question is, is the Puritan legacy lost forever?

I'm going to give you two answers to that question. First of all, it's the wrong question. The right question is, what does the Scripture say? The Puritans were right on a lot, but probably not right on absolutely everything. We don't want to go back to the Puritan era.

We don't want to go back to the 16th century. We want to go back to the Word of God and trust it and trust it alone. We must return to their root if we want to have their fruit. And that's the key matter. I want to close by reading to you Deuteronomy chapter 11, which impinges, I think, so powerfully on this whole question of the decline of spiritual life.

Deuteronomy 11, 13 through 32. And it shall be that if you earnestly obey my commandments which I command you today, to love the Lord your God and serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul, Then I will give you the rain for your land and its season, the early rain and the latter rain that you may gather in your grain, your new wine and your oil. And I will send grass in your fields for your livestock that you may eat and be filled. Take heed to yourselves, lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them. Lest the Lord's anger be aroused against you, and he shut up the heavens, so that there be no rain, and the land yield no produce, and you perish quickly from the good land which the Lord is giving you.

Therefore you shall lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and bind them as a sign on your hand. They shall be as frontless between your eyes. You shall teach them to your children. Speaking of them, when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up, and you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land in which the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, like the days of the heavens above the earth. For if you carefully keep all these commandments, which I command you to do, to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to hold fast to him, then the Lord will drive out all these nations from before you, and you will dispossess greater and mightier nations than yourselves.

Every place on which the sole of your foot treads shall be yours, from the wilderness in Lebanon, from the river Euphrates, even to the western sea, shall be your territory. No man shall be able to stand against you. The Lord your God will put the dread of you and the fear of you upon the land where you tread just as He has said to you. Behold, I set before you today a blessing and a curse. The blessing if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today, and the curse if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God.

But turn aside from the way which I command you today, to go after other gods which you have not known. And it shall be, when the Lord your God has brought you into the land which you go to possess, that you shall put the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal. Are they not on the other side of the Jordan toward the setting sun in the land of the Canaanites, opposite Gilgal, beside the Terabinth trees? For you will cross over the Jordan and go and possess the land which the Lord your God is giving you, to possess it and dwell in it, and you shall be careful to observe the statutes and judgments which I set before you today." My charge today is go, possess the land, use the law, the word of God, let it be your guide, let it be your watchword, let the people fear you and walk with God Almighty. Thank you.

Let me just pray briefly. Oh Lord, I pray you'd lay your hand upon all of us for all these things, that you would teach us your statutes and make us a mighty people in this land. Amen.