In this message, Dan Ford explains the significance of the work of the Puritans in reforming the family and helps the listener to understand the beneficial impact that the Reformation continues to have on the family today. Specifically, the Puritans wrote much on the subject of the family and we can glean much wisdom from their writings. 

Well Jason said this morning that we aren't here to worship the Puritans. I must say I'm thankful that after that last song and that last prayer we know who we are here to worship and glorify who is the God of the Puritans. We have that in common with them. We ought to know about our brethren. Scott also said at the beginning of his first talk that we, he said, meaning I assume this congregation has never had this kind of conference before, meaning on the family or particularly the Puritan family.

I would say that that may be a statement that's true of anywhere in America. There's a dearth of teaching on the Puritan idea of the family. And that is an essential component to understanding not only the Puritans, but our understanding of who we are as Christians. Today we live off the collateral that the Puritans gave us in so much of our understanding of culture and society. When we look at what is wrong in our society, we take for granted that much of our thinking is derived from the cultural inheritance of the Puritans.

That's part of our understanding, part of who we are. They are part of the great host of witnesses. The Puritans wrote much on the family. In a lot of ways, it was part of what was taken for granted in their writings. And then when they did open up an express, it made their other writings much richer because as Scott said in his presentations the family was considered the seminary of church and state that is a theme that was not just in Thomas Manton but other Puritans as well it was a fabric of who they were Part of understanding the Puritans or understanding any Christians is to understand them in their times.

For instance, these were not men who just sat down and decided they would write a doctrinal book about the family. They wrote for purposes needy to their times. They were men who had struggles culturally. Puritanism at the time in its richness of its time and its heyday as well as in the time of thriving was Always under tension, always under opposition. If we understand the sequence and how these things came about as literature, we can not only appreciate them for what they say, we can appreciate them and relate to them as fellow Christians as well because we similarly live in times of opposition to our faith.

If we can relate to what others have written into the face of their opposition, we can glean from that. Appreciate not only their times and them, but seeing ourselves that we can do things that honor God in similar ways. In other words, when they were faced with opposition, they got going, they got tough. They answered the opposition. Our mindset today is, well, the opposition is just great, we have to forebear it.

That is not the Puritan spirit. One of the hallmarks, as we saw at the beginning of Scott's presentation, of the whole Reformation era, the Reformation movement, was that it mirrored the Bible, the sola scriptura idea. One of the key aspects of Luther's teaching was, again in the context and the struggles in which he lived, was the appreciation of the priesthood of all believers, wherein There was not a exclusive priesthood that represented God. Every man, every householder was to be the priest in his home. That was essential in understanding not only what was wrong in the family, but what was wrong in the church as well.

Another thing that the early reformers found in the scriptures when they read their Bibles for the first time, their common tongue, was it was patriarchal. They saw that God himself was patriarchal. God was the great patriarch. He was the great father. And he commissioned the men to be so in their families.

We find that theme throughout scripture. That was a very powerful influence upon the early Protestants. There are other teachings as well we found in the Bible when the people could read it for themselves, such as the admonition by our Lord in Matthew 19, 14, to suffer not to prevent the little ones from coming unto Him. That too was powerful. We can find that just those three components put together would bring the authority and the responsibility of the Father to fore.

It would also diminish the paternal authority that the church had had until that time. The church in the medieval days, the Roman church, was considered fatherly and priestly. The Reformation undermined that because the Scriptures undermined that. So what Protestantism did in the beginning in the early stages was to undermine the paternal nature of the church and reinforce the paternal nature of the home and put responsibilities in line with how the Bible described them. As we know, the Bible was translated and then published for the first time at least the New Testament by William Tyndale.

Tyndale taught, quote, every man ought to preach the word and deed unto his household. In other words, preach the word and live by the word. And to them who are under his government. See, these are essential principles that we see in the very first reformer, that there's government in the home that should be recognized and who has that governance is the he who's in responsibility for it. So even by that we can see that there's no need for a priest other than Christ in the home.

Nor is there need as the later reformers which began to be known more and more as Puritans, there is no need for a bishop in the home other than Christ. Edward VI, who was the son and successor of his father, Henry VIII, issued his injunctions in 1547, which legalized the common reading of the Bible. Now Henry VIII, his father, had embraced the Reformation to use it for his domestic purposes and political purposes and for his private wealth, but he was not of the Puritan or Reformed spirit. By the end of Henry's reign, He outlawed the Bible except for the nobility. The injunctions of Edward VI opened up the reading of the Bible to the common people.

Again, Bibles were very rare at the time, but it became legal. He also said, Let every father bring up his son and a useful employment in his injunctions. Again, the responsibility, the more the Reformation took hold in England, the more the father's responsibilities came to fore. John Hooper, some consider the first Puritans, but as Scott was mentioning earlier, it's hard to define the beginnings of Puritanism. If you think about Puritanism, it lived in three basic societal spheres.

The family was the seed bed. The church was another era of reform. And the political life was another. So you will find Puritans that wrote only in one sphere and that disagreed with other Puritans about other spheres. Who were the first Puritans?

Those who tended to reform the church beyond the idea of bishops. John Hooper was offered under Edward VI a bishopric and he refused. He did not believe in that. He believed in what we would call a low church or a common church, a commonality of the Reformation. He says in his book, A Declaration of Christ, which was written at the end of Edward VI's reign, God commandeth his word to be preached in the church, but also in every family and household of whatever degree he be." Again that unites the commonality, which was we would consider the peasants of the day, with the nobility.

We can see the charge of God was in every home regardless of the status of the home. He goes on to say, again John Hooper, he should cause his family and children to read some part of the Bible for the erudition to know God. Likewise, he should constrain them to pray, meaning his children, under God for the promotion of his holy word and for the preservation of the government, of the governors of the Commonwealth so that no day should pass without prayer and augmentation of knowledge of the religion of Christ. Here we see the practical feet put to the Reformation. Here it's getting to the root of where the Reformation needs to go.

John Rogers, who was a cohort of Hooper and also a translator of God's word, he picked up the work that Tyndale left off when Tyndale was martyred. John Hooper was a man as well who believed in the low church and the fuller reformation that what was being seen in England at the time. Rogers death along with Hooper's was recorded in Fox's book of martyrs. Both became legendary. This is out of a New England primer.

The legends of these men went from generations and it was very telling to the people. This says, Mr. Rogers, minister of the gospel in London, was the first martyr in Queen Mary's reign. It was Bernard Smithfield, February the 14th, 1555. His wife with nine small children, one at her breast, followed him to the stake, which sorrowful sight he was not in the least daunted, but with wonderful patience He died courageously for the gospel of Christ.

That's carrying the reformation to its final end. That changed the mindset. The martyrdom of these early Protestants changed the mindset of England. It made Fox's Book of Martyr the most popular book because it spoke to the people about the cost of living according to God. This is a woodcut, again, from a New England primer which was printed 300 years after his martyrdom.

You will not find, or I don't know of a New England primer that does not have this picture in it. New England Primer was something used, of course, in America to educate your children. And this was part of the appreciation. This cut we see has Mrs. Rogers with her nine children.

Children in New England would see this, and it would be indelible on their minds about what the Reformation was about. That generational teaching and the sacrifice, once you see we have heroes of the faith that went and gave their all, who are we to deny our children of the truth would be the mindset and the thought. John Knox was a fellow of theirs as well. When he left England, and he did live in England for two years before he fled to Geneva, When he departed, he published this book. This is an original 1554 printing of his godly letter to the English.

He wrote back to the churches and to the people he had preached to. And he was a man of passion. This man was undaunted in his courage. It looked like the whole reformation in 1554, 1553 through 1555 and the rest of the reign of Mary had regressed and things had gotten worse. People were being burnt.

Knox was very courageous. He said, let's stick it out. Let's not covenant with the Church of England. Therefore the responsibility, again, falls back to the fathers. So even if the church is deteriorated, even if the state is deteriorated, That all the more brings the responsibility to the father.

That is an important principle of Christian living. What Knox says in his letter to England, he says, let every man that is not degenerated to the nature of a brute beast will appear to bear such love for his children that, to leave them riches in felicity and in good estate, he will patiently suffer troubles and will do many things for the well, meaning welfare, of his children that otherwise are contrary to his pleasure. Then God would that the life and conversation of the father to be a schoolmaster to his children. Plain it is that the true knowledge of God is not born with men, neither yet comes unto him by natural power, but he must have a schoolmaster to train him up, and that which he lacks. What image do you show your children?

Yea, in what estate do you leave them, both touching the body and soul?" John Knox is writing this to plain folks that should be taking charge of their family in very difficult times. Knox would have been martyred himself had he not fled. The principles that they found, they read at family training, etc., were very similar to what they found in the Hebrew model of education. This is a scroll that dates about 200 years ago. It's a scroll by which a father teaches his son the Hebrew language.

We read right to left because it's Hebrew. To the right we have the Hebrew alphabet. The middle parts of this are the phonetic sounds and how to pronounce the letters. And we conclude on the far left with a prayer. That's a good model of education where we have the letters, the phonics, and then the prayer.

As we can see in the backdrop, and I got this picture if you can make it out, that's a tent and we see families. These are the tabernacling Israelites. We can see the father and the mother with the children, the children around each tent. And they were the educators of their children. I got this out of Luther's catechism.

And he also included this woodcut in his Bible. The scroll we see is the Esther scroll, which we have here. Again, this would have been read in the homes of the Hebrews. This was from the festival of Purim that celebrated in the home. So the Hebrew idea of worship is in the home as well.

In other words, the idea of both the Protestant home as well as the Hebrews is you do not learn to worship God or glorify God when you assemble or go to church. You learn that at home. You go to church to worship God, but you do not learn it. It's not the church's job to teach you how to worship God. That's the home.

And we find that in both the model of the Protestants as well as the Hebrews. This is a famous horn book that came up about the time they existed before but they became popularized in the Leesbeethan England. Here's a couple horn books that were printed but never put on boards, or actually put on the board to be used. Most of those have deteriorated. But the horn book, again, follows the Hebrew model.

It always starts with the alphabet at the top, as we see in the slide. We have the phonetic sound, so learning phonics and how to pronounce as part of your education. And the Horn books always included the Lord's Prayer, so we have the same model that we found on the Hebrew scrolls, which is learn your letters, learn your pronunciation, and then glorify God. And where is that taught? It's taught in the home.

Another thing that they picked up from the Hebrews was the idea that marriage is covenantal. This is a ketubah, it's a marriage contract that solemnized a marriage in the Hebrews. The difference between the Hebrew marriage and ours is that the father, or the husband, I'm sorry, wrote the contract of the covenant and he gave it into the possession of the wife. She kept it in her keeping. That was her responsibility to hold the covenant that her husband, her patriarch, had given her.

So that if he stepped out of line, It would be according to his contract. He was to care for her. So it was a one-way promise in the Hebrew model. That was similar to the patriarchy of the Protestants as well, at least in England. The idea of not that they didn't share vows because they certainly did, especially under the Anglican church.

You do exchange vows, you're in covenant. But the idea of the covenant was to protect the wife more than the man. The man was to seen as the protector. These principles, The Bible is translated, there's a dearth of Bibles. These principles were set out in the Geneva Bible.

This is the title page of the spread, the opening of 1560, the first edition of the Geneva Bible. Knox had a hand in this as well, but The entire refugee church in Geneva was the actual author of the Geneva Bible. It was the first Bible in English that was rendered, translated by committee, and it had its famous notes. And of course, they went back to the Old Testament and they, in the margins, put the principles. This is the Geneva Bible side note of Genesis 17, 23, which says that masters in their houses ought to be as preachers to their families, that from the highest to the lowest they may obey the will of God.

Again, that follows exactly what was taught in the Old Testament and that was brought through now to Protestants in the New Testament in the marginal notes. This was the most influential book in the 16th century in England. In fact, for the commoners it was likely the only book that you owned. If you only had one book, what better could you have than the Bible itself and some notes regarding it? What in a change in culture would happen If that was the book that the commoners and the nobility read, the bishop's bible was scorned even by the bishops.

It was an attempt to have a Geneva bible without the notes. But the notes were very popular and very educational and very reforming. And they did their work in England which caused a cultural revolution. So even though Puritanism in Elizabethan England was butting up against the bishops in the high church, it flourished in the families. You can't put out what is being taught by parents.

So the state can be awry, the church can be awry in some instances, but the flames of Christianity can't be put out in the home. And that's how Puritanism succeeded. Yes, they fought their battles in the church. Thomas Cartwright was thrown, fled to Holland and he was thrown in jail from time to time, but it was a societal movement. This is one of the heroes that Scott had on the screen of the 16th century Puritans, William Perkins.

In his book, the whole treatise of the cases of conscience, he says, and this is the central idea of the Puritan, some questions concern man as a member of a family, some as he is a member of a church, and some as he is a member of a commonwealth. There we see the three societies, And we can see this Puritan is writing that the Bible is gonna affect all of these things. Now Perkins was an educator, he's a very brilliant man. They explained patriarchy. I don't have time to read all that Perkins says, but he explains the basic grounds, he said, of paternity or patriarchy, which are representation, paternity, and eternity.

And he describes each of those. In other words, the Puritans just didn't make a claim, they explained how it works. How does the Bible work when it speaks of the Father leading? For instance, in the case of representation or duty, Perkins went on to the grounds that that involved representation of God because man represents God. To Perkins, the creator put it upon the man.

He created man first and gave him the covenant in the garden first. Therefore the man in the natural order of creation is first. Not in privilege but in responsibility. So selfishness and pride and disregarding God had no more place in the Puritan home than it had with Adam in the garden. We can see that these principles are indelible.

According to Perkins, the next ground was his paternity. In other words, the man represented in his maleness, God's maleness, which was leadership. God is leader. He created man and made him male to lead, so in his paternity as well. Another ground which Perkins spelled out was his eternity, or what we would say his age.

In other words, the older a man gets, the more godlike he gets because God is timeless. The longer you live, in that sense, the more like God you are. You can see the high regard that Puritans had for the aged because of the maturity and the wisdom of them. They did not, they were not infatuated with youth as we heard in the first presentation. Youth was ignorance.

Maturity and wisdom and love and experience were the things that were to be honored. That's exactly what we find in God our Father. He's infinitely those things. And the older someone gets, the more they become God-like. So we can see that these principles were not what we would call chauvinistic.

They were very honorable and they honored their homes. They believed in hierarchy. They respected hierarchy because God created hierarchy. Not everyone was a Puritan. When James came to the throne in 1603, He gave a speech to the House of Lords.

This is the original printing of it. In which he says, the Puritans and novelists, what he means by Puritans are those who are trying to reform the church and society within. The novelists are the separatists and those who are separating themselves, and what he would say, creating innovations in the church. In other words, anything that doesn't conform with his idea is a novelist and should not be regarded. He says that Puritans and novelists, who do not so far differ from us, meaning the Anglicans, in points of religion as their counseled form of polity and parity, being ever discontented with the present government and impatient to suffer any superiority which maketh their sect unable to be suffered in any well-governed commonwealth.

In other words, these people knew so much about self-government that they couldn't countenance tyranny. So tyranny, therefore, couldn't countenance them. Well, that'd be one thing if it was spoken by a private man, but if it's spoken by the King of England who sees himself as a representative of God, you've got problems. He's going to enforce his views. He did not countenance Puritanism, and of course, many of us know the story of what he did to them, which we don't have time to go into there.

But the Puritans continued to think, and they continued to preach, and they continued to write. This is probably the most influential and powerful books on family life that was printed in the early Stewart era. This was published in 1622. This is the first edition published by William Gouge. It's the Domestical Duties.

It's eight treaties. He has the various topics, an exposition of that part of scripture out of which, Domestical duties are raised, the right conjunction of man and wife, the common mutual duties between man and wife, the particular duties of wives, the particular duties of husbands, the duties of children, the duties of parents, et cetera. It's very practical, bringing the Bible down to where we can understand it. So we can see the Puritans were about education, about teaching. Gush says in the opening, off the head and several members of the families would be persuaded, every of them, to be conscionable in performing their own particular duties, what a sweet society and happy harmony would there be in all houses.

What excellent seminaries would families be to church and commonwealth? This was said way before Thomas Manton said the same thing. He goes on, Domestical duties were first uttered out of the pulpit, meaning All of this that he was putting in this manual for Christian families was spoken from his pulpit, another characteristic of Puritans. They would preach it, and then they'd go take their notes and write books. What a wonderful idea.

He says, Domestical duties were first uttered out of the pulpit. Much succession was taken against the application of a wife's objection to the restraining of her from disposing of the common goods of the family without and against her husband's consent, meaning the women were complaining when they heard some of the duties that a wife was to have to her husband. But he goes on. But when I came to deliver the husband's duties, I showed that he ought to exact whatsoever his wife was bound into in case it were exacted of him, but he ought to make her the joint governor of the family with himself and refer to the ordering of many things to her discretion and with all honorable and kind respect to carry himself towards her. In a word, I so set down a husband's duties as if he were to be wise.

So we put wisdom behind these duties. These were thinking people and caring people. We can saw that they not only knew what would work, but they knew how to teach what would work. We could listen to these folks. This is the chart.

He begins his book with particular duties of wives, so it's spelled out in very understandable headings, particular duties of husbands. When James died, his son Charles I came to the throne in 1625 and he did not countenance the Puritans any more than his father did. The Puritan movement was growing. It is said that between 60 and 75% of parliament, which was his cohorts in government in England, were Puritans at the time. This caused Charles serious trouble.

All historians will know, cost him his head eventually. He commissioned Sanderson, which was his chaplain, to write a series of sermons concerning the Christian's liberty, or what he considered the right use of liberty, which is to be subject to the king. This is a title page. This is the edition. Again, this is the time of Archbishop Laud, who's rigorously imposing the Church of England upon people.

In 1637, the famous Star Chamber issued a decree, again, the abuse of courts, by the way, that legislated from the bench that you could not own Puritan writings, much less print them. And it was very restricted. Certain printers were limited to those who had conformed to the king's desires. The benefit to us in America was that many of our founders of colonial New England fled England at that time, notably John Cotton of Boston, John Harvard who had a tremendous library that was under threat, sailed with his library, and of course when he passed away the first year he lived here by the providence of God, his library started Harvard College. So we can see the providence of God works in persecution as well.

But the oppression was in England and it was felt greatly there by people who did nothing but want to follow God in all their ways according to the scripture we read. Find Sanderson's quote here if I can. Sanderson says, in a family, acknowledging somewhat of the Puritans, the master is a kind of petty monarch there. Hath authority and some power as a master over his servants, but no doubt, says the chaplain, hath the supreme magistrate over his subjects. What he's saying is, not only does the king have divine right, but he has fatherly care of the families.

So let's get this in order, you fathers. You are only fathers in your home, and so far, as godliness filters through the authorities. The Puritans, again, did not shirk. They fought back. This is a copy of Lex Rex, which was published in 1644.

It's really bringing down the divine right claims of the king, but in Chapter 15, Rutherford asks, is the king a father in any way? His conclusion is yes. Figuratively, he certainly is. But he is not the domestic father of your home. He is not the domestic ruler in your home.

We can see the Puritans drew sharp lines between the authority of the king and the lord of the home. Who was master in the home? It was who had God given responsibilities. Back to the Geneva Bible, which was still popular into the 1640s. I don't know if you have a handout on your desk.

It's a cream-colored piece of paper. We'll just touch upon some of the principles that the Geneva Bible taught. We already saw the first principle under the heading, the masters in the house ought to be as preachers to their families from the highest to the lowest, et cetera. A few of the others of the notes was the education of children we find in the passage of Psalm 78. Five, For instance, for he, God, established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel which commanded our fathers that they should make them known to their children." That's scripture.

The Geneva comment, by the testimony in law, he means your law written, or God's law written, which they were to command to teach their children. That's the teaching of the law. All the early Reformers, including Hooper, taught the Ten Commandments, not only to their own children, but all visitors in their home. If you visited John Hooper's house, You would sit down and you'd have a lesson in the Ten Commandments before you ate. And then you'd eat before the family ate, if you were a guest.

A wife's estate, we'll skip down to B. Wife's estate in her home, her wisdom And the gift of teaching was taught in Proverbs 31. Proverbs 31, 26 says, she opens her mouth with wisdom and on her tongue is the law of kindness. The Geneva note to that verse says, her tongue is a book by which one might learn many good things for she delights to talk of the Word of God, what rich commentary there is and brief words of scripture. We won't go into the rest, but we can see that the Geneva Bible, which fed Puritanism, had much to say about the duties of the home and the virtues of the home.

Scott covered what the assembly of divines put in the opening page of the Christian reader of Westminster Confession. I'll just read it briefly. Scott did a great job of explaining it. As we cannot, but with grief of soul, lament those multitude of errors, blasphemies, and all kinds of profanities, which have in this last age, like a mighty deluge, overflowed this nation. So among several other sins, " notice he calls it sins, "'which have helped to open the floodgates of all these impieties, we cannot but esteem the destilute of family instruction as one of the greatest.

So when the nation buys into the right of the state to educate, that's considered a sin by them. Notice this was written, as Scott pointed out to the masters of families. The political climate was, the tension is, the king is in charge or the high church is in charge. This speaks otherwise because it puts the father of the home in charge. Scott also read Thomas Manton's second preface.

We won't go over this for the sake of time. We remember it from the prior session. During the English Civil War, when the king was wrapped up in military affairs with parliament, parliament was fighting for the rights of the people, fighting in large measure for the estates of the people, which the Puritans saw as part of their responsibility as well. One of the things that was outlawed was the star chamber and all its decrees. And in a vacuum, a dearth of printing, printers came out in force during the 1640s and 1650s.

There was attempts to tighten it up, but many treaties came out which benefited the family. This is The Woman's Glory. Again, the Puritan addressed the virtue of the female sex in this. This is written by Samuel Torschel, 1645. This is a very powerful book, which Scott owns.

It's The Family religion revived or serving God in private houses 1655. This is the first book in which the word family religion appears. This is spelling out the principles. This is it. These are quite rare.

Some of these books were loved so dearly that they don't exist, meaning if you ask the antiquarian dealers, they were beat to death by families. They passed on generation to generation and page by page fell out of the books. It's very hard to find some of these volumes that are quite rare. That is exceptionally rare. This one is, I love this after hearing the first session, where Scott was using the metaphor of gold.

In fact, he came over and picked up this book. I don't know if he knew it. He was grabbing. It was called Apples of Gold. It's the same principles that Scott was speaking of.

This, by the way, is one of the rarest. This is the only copy known to exist of the first edition of this. There's one copy of the second edition, I think two, of the third edition of this book. But this was loved, loved. I think you can get that text online as well.

Thomas Brooks, who was an independent, who was a chaplain for parliament during its wars against the king, he says in his foreword, Dear hearts, he writes, back to the hearty puritanism that Scott spoke of. A word spoken in due season, how good it is. Proverbs 15, 23. It is often like apples of gold and pictures of silver. Proverbs 25, 11.

Many times such a word is sweet, precious, pleasing, delectable, and strong in its operation, peculiar that old, an old disciple, an old Christian, he has got the art of serving God, the art of religion, Got the art of hearing, got the art of praying, the art of meditating, the art of repenting, the art of believing, the art of denying his natural nature and his self, and denying his sinful self, and denying his religious self. We can see that this was a book. It was about how to raise your children from the beginning so that when they were old, they would be apples of gold in the sight of the Lord. What a rich cradle to grave picture we have. This is Charles II who following the Restoration in 1660 became king.

This state, by the way, Carolina is named after this guy and I'm not sure I'd want my state to be named after him. He was Bill Clinton to the max. He was very much a covenant breaker in his home. He worked behind the scenes to undermine his own nation and he was just untrustworthy. As Lord Shaftesbury says, it's a sad thing that we cannot trust the king, which was the beginning of opposition parties by the way in that comment.

This is his act 1660 by which he drew in all of the Puritan marriages that had happened from 1640s and 1650s and made them be solemnized in the Church of England. That affected the homes, because what it did was said the Church of England is the authority over your marriage and you're accountable to the Church of England. Many men were deprived, great men were deprived of their pastoral office. Thousands of men were denied the pulpit. One was George Swinick who had written this book and published it in 1662, I believe the first edition.

The Christian Man's Calling are treaties of making religion one's business. Again, this is the business of life. This is getting down to business. This is not just about marriage, but it has a chapter on marriage, but it's about manhood. What is it to be a Christian man?

This was written in hard times. This is not philosophy. This is not hyperbole about what might be good this was written by a man who knew what it was to suffer for Christ news teaching us he also wrote the ladies calling sometime later six this is a 1676 edition by which it what it is what is it to be a woman. This is a very popular book, a Treatise of Family Instruction, where it is proved to be the duty of parents and masters of families to train their children and servants in the knowledge of the scripture. Again that responsibility continues.

In the force of the later Stuart reign, 1673, was published, the Christian directory. We brought this just so you can see the massiveness of this volume. This is a man that's not a theorist. This is a man, Richard Baxter, that knew what he was talking about. He dealt, I don't know of people today that could write a volume like this.

This middle part of this, as we see, is the Christian Directory or Practical Divinity Christian Economics and Family Directory. It's not talking about money, it's talking about the economy, how you run the home and all things. It has chapters, which I don't have time to go into in this session, that has chapters on fathers' duties, mothers' duties, children's duties, familial duties. This changed England. Again, we have the time, the cultural setting, we have to know what's going on at the time these things are being written, published, and appreciated.

These fed the families because we have the formal high church, we have the low church driven out. In other words, pastors who were deprived of their pulpit would take doctrines such as this and visit and other people would visit the pastors and they would glean from this. If you have troubles in the home, what do you do? This would be family counseling. This goes to scripture.

This was very useful in a time when the church was being suppressed. When people couldn't hear these things from the pulpit, they could read them. The Puritans were very careful. Scott mentioned that they included catechisms. Many of these books had catechisms and they'd often print them in the back this was uh...

Richard back to his the poor man's book what he means is a man not only a man of low financial means but porn is understanding the scripture this is the same thing boiled down into a smaller volume. In the back of this, and it was later reprinted with a catechism, and because Baxter included the catechism in that and published that he was selling it with the catechism, he was arrested for printing illegal books. Why is that? Because the catechism that he included was not the official church catechism. It was a threat to them.

Even though it was to be used in the private homes, we can see that the church and the king had at least a claim to what went on in your home. This is Richard Steele. Scott mentioned this as well, old age instruction. This was published right upon the tip of the Glorious Revolution in 1688. 1688 was an important year in England political history because the king fled, which is James II, the second son of Charles I, who all had the same general understanding about the authority of the church, although James II's problem was he was openly Roman Catholic and tried to impose that doctrine in England very subtly from the top down.

But what we have in these writings of the time is writings that came out of struggle, that came out of opposition. They were an answer to opposition. So if you have struggles in your life, you don't retreat. You answer them because God's word is more powerful than any opposition. You write into them.

You instruct people when this oppression comes into the church, you find ways to educate the people outside of the high church or you found new churches. There are all kinds of underground churches at the time. Matthew Henry in his early life suffered that. He was deprived of the pulpit and he visited several house churches. This is, As Scott knows well, this is a very important work which has come down to us.

The Church and the House, again, this was a direct sermon that was just published and it's full of the principles of a godly home. Philip Dodgeridge, who was born about the time that Matthew Henry preached his sermon. Now in a time of what was called toleration or when the Church of England would permit books to be printed and permit alternate forms of worship to be practiced following the Glorious Revolution, There came another flood of printing. These are two. This is an early sermon by Philip Doddridge, sermons on the religious education of children.

Again, just carrying the tradition into a new environment. This next one is the family expositor again. This is Scott's copy This is I think a six volume set Which goes into the practical use of the Bible for the home, so it's commentary on the Bible but it's for the use of the home So the churches as well as the families were seen in Puritanism and as it was sorted out over time, although by the late 1600s we find Baxter complaining that the word Puritan is despised, which it is formally, okay we'll call it something else. They would just move along with their ideas. But the idea of a cooperation between the home and church.

One fed off the other. You cannot have a healthy church without healthy homes and home life. You cannot have healthy homes without the preaching of God's Word, even in spite of the fact you might have a high church that prevents it. Many resources were provided for the families of England. Some of the child's literature came out of this.

Again, this is a derivative of the old horn book and even the primers which were printed first in England or in New England. These were to counter some of the high church's teaching on the subjects. Isaac Watts wrote this divine songs for children. This is the beginning if you think about it of children's literature we go to the bookstore today and bookstores are full of literature for the entertainment and amusement children it started out for the edification the teaching of god these are songs written for children by Isaac Watts in the seventeen hundreds This next one is a very rare book. These, according to the book dealer that I bought this from, these really fell apart.

These are prayers for children. These books were used and passed on from house to house. So the point of this session is to see the Puritanism, which is hard to define because it has so many sinews that go out in so many directions and so many application was really a cultural revolution. Not all agreed on every aspect, But all tended to be used because if you think about it, it was the Lord doing the work. So many people had so many ideas, but the Lord was accomplishing in their day what he had in mind for England.

America benefited greatly in its establishment of colonies, which will be the subject of my next session, which is tomorrow. But we need to thank the Lord because at the beginning of the Reformation, God put in the men such as Tyndale and Luther and Calvin and the English a desire for His word. In the 1520s, nobody but the Lord could have known what He was gonna do with that. They were just faithful to the next generation and the next generation. We live in a very special time now.

We can look back and see the whole scope of what God did. They were in the middle of it. They didn't see the end. They saw the beginning. They saw what God was doing, but we saw that all they had was faithfulness to God.

That's the lesson we need. And back to the point that you don't find conferences like this. You don't find conferences on Puritan family for sure. But I'll tell you, if we're going to have a reformation and generations to come are going to look back, they're going to look back at this kind of thing where we look back before us to our Christian forefathers and appreciated at the hard cost sometimes of what those who went before us did so that should give us courage this conference to give us courage we should not well no when we see society going away it is specially in its definitions of redefinitions of marriage and home center we should embrace with it it seems like god provides people like us for times like this he's not worry he was a word in the fifteen hundreds he was just building from one to the next we have a heritage now that we can look back on and we can appreciate, as Jason said, not to worship them, but certainly worship the God of the Puritans. Thank you.