‘Church History’ Category

• Dr. Michael Haykin – “Puritanism Under the Cross” (MP3)
• Steve Weaver – “Baptists and 1662: The Persecution of John Norcott and Hercules Collins” (MP3)
• Dr. Tom Nettles – A Brief Summation and Concluding Word (MP3)

Dr. Haykin hs recently reviewed a new book by Ben Witherington, III titled A Week in the Life of Corinth. Read this review and others here on our Book Review page.

I just posted the schedule for our 6th annual conference. The theme this year is “Andrew Fuller and His Friends.” As usual, a stellar line-up of speakers are slated to speak on a range for interesting topics related to our conference them. Please watch this website for more details about the conference, including registration details.

Information about and audio of previous conferences are available here.

While working through the Wapping Church minute book, I discovered this festive account from 1677. The church had voted to withdraw fellowship from Okey in June of the year. Apparently that was not okay with Okey. Okey had responded by praying for God to kill the pastor, Hercules Collins. The church took the following further action on Christmas Day 1677.

At the Church Meeting in ole Gravell Lane the 25th of December 1677 was John Okey Cut off and Excommunicated from all the priviledges of the gospel for the sin of lying and Revilling and for Refusing to hear the Church: together with his Invocating the God of Heaven to cut off and destroy Bro: Collings and saying also that he would be Revenged.

On a bit more pleasant note than the Christmas 1677 meeting, the Wapping Church took up a special collection for London pastor Benjamin Keach on December 25, 1679 in response to his recently having been robbed.

December 25th 1679 The Congregation in old Gravell Lane Did then Raise and give to Bro. Benj. Keach when he was Robed the Sum of Three pound five shillings

The church ultimately gave 3 pounds and eight shillings to Keach. On December 30th 1679, it was recorded in the minute book that: “Bro. Collings gave to Bro. Keach the Sum of three pound Eight Shillings which was gathered for him of the Church.”

The above was posted last week on my personal blog and the Hercules Collins site.

Posted by Steve Weaver, Research Assistant to the Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin.

In many ways, C.H. Spurgeon’s ministry was nothing less than amazing: the crowded auditories that assembled to hear the “Cambridgeshire lad” in the 1850s and that continued unabated till the end of his ministry in the early 1890s; the remarkable conversions that occurred under his preaching and the numerous churches in metropolitan London and the county of Surrey that owed their origins to his Evangelical activism; the solid Puritan divinity that undergirded his Evangelical convictions-something of a rarity in the heyday of the Victorian era during which he ministered for that was a day imbued with the very different ambience of Romanticism; and finally, the ongoing life of his sermons that are still being widely read around the world today and deeply appreciated by God’s children.

What accounts for all of this? Numerous reasons could be cited, many of which may indeed play a secondary role in his ministerial success. For example, in a fairly recent biography of Spurgeon, Mike Nicholls emphasizes the importance of Spurgeon’s voice to his success as a preacher.  He possessed, Nicholls writes, “one of the great speaking voices of his age, musical and combining compass, flexibility and power.”(1) Augustine Birrell (1850-1933), the son of one of Spurgeon’s fellow Baptist pastors and who served as the Chief Secretary for Ireland from 1907 to 1916, testifies to this fact. Birrell records that when he went to hear Spurgeon preach once, the only seat he could find was in the topmost gallery, in what the English call “the gods.” He was squished between a woman eating an orange and a man sucking peppermints.  Finding this combination of odours unendurable, he was about to leave, when, he said, “I heard a voice and forgot all else.”(2) But Spurgeon himself looked to quite a different source for the blessings that attended his ministry.  In a speech that he gave at a celebration held in honour of his fiftieth birthday in 1884, the Baptist preacher forthrightly declared that the blessing he had enjoyed in his pastorate “must be entirely attributed to the grace of God, and to the working of God’s Holy Spirit… Let that stand as a matter, not only taken for granted, but as a fact distinctly recognized.”(3) In other words: behind Spurgeon’s successes as a minister of the gospel was his walk with God.

1. C. H. Spurgeon: The Pastor Evangelist (Didcot, Oxfordshire: Baptist Historical Society, 1992), 37.
2. Cited E.J. Poole-Connor, Evangelicalism in England (London: The Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches, 1951), 226-227.
3. C.H. Spurgeon’s Autobiography, compiled Susannah Spurgeon and J.W. Harrald (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1900), IV, 243.

Lavenham parish church is reckoned to be one of the most beautiful Anglican church buildings in the entire county of Suffolk, something that I can attest from personal experience, having visited the church last September. For a hundred years, from 1578 to 1679, the church was served by a succession of Puritan pastors, the last of whom was the famous William Gurnall, the author of The Christian in Complete Armour (1661).

Now, the first Puritan leader in the Suffolk town was Henry Coppinger, Lavenham church’s longest-serving pastor, who was there from 1578 to 1622. When his father, also Henry Coppinger, was dying, he asked the younger Coppinger, one of eleven sons, what course of life he would follow. When the latter told him he intended to be a minister of gospel, the elder Coppinger was immensely pleased, for he said, “what shall I say to Martin Luther when I shall see him in heaven, and he knows that God gave me eleven sons, and I made not one of them a minister?”

PS One of the great joys at Southern, where I teach, is serving with Dr Mark Coppenger. Drafting this mini-post I was obviously struck by the similarity of his name with that of Henry Coppinger (a difference of an i/e, easily accounted for). Maybe I am serving with a descendant of this Puritan leader who helped prepare the way for the great Gurnall!

In his book on the Trinity, Hilary of Pictavis (modern Poitiers) has a very telling statement regarding the Patristic understanding of the heart of piety: “in confessione pietas est”—“in confession there is piety” (De Trinitate 10.70). For theologians of the Ancient Church like Hilary, doctrinal confession was essential to true piety.

Dr. Michael Haykin recently gave the Staley Lectures at Charleston Southern University on the history of the King James Version of the Bible.  These lectures were given in commemoration of the 400 year anniversary of the publication of the King James Version in 1611.  Dr. Haykin’s lecture notes are now being made available here for free download.  They will be available in the future on the Papers page of this website.

There has been a lively interchange going on regarding theological education on my facebook page. This will be my final post on the issue of theological education (though I do intend to write, DV, a small book on the issue).

In the early Church context about 12%-15% of the Graeco-Roman world were literate. All of the Church Fathers were drawn from these ranks. They had to have been to be able to use and preach the Word of God.

It is very telling that the Reformation leaders were all men trained in the universities. And it is also very telling that the Puritans, all of them apart from Bunyan and Baxter, were university men, with MAs in theology. Very telling indeed. And the impact of the Puritan literature on the 18th century men is well known: it is a major stimulus for revival. And none could accuse the Reformers or the Puritans of not being lovers of the church and ardent pastors.

And then the 18th century leaders of the Evangelical awakening: which of them had not been to university? Well, there is Newton and some of the key Baptists like Fuller and Carey. But both of the latter were geniuses.

And do we really think in this complex world we will be best served in the church by men without such formal training? We are whistling dixie (no offence to my Southern brothers!) And we all know what happened to Dixie.

Pace the canons of contemporary historiography, a key reason presented by the Word of God for the study of Church History is to find models for imitation. In Hebrews 13:7, the preacher of this tremendous holy text urges his hearers to “remember [their] leaders, who spoke the Word of God to you. Pondering carefully the outcome of their way of life, imitate their faith.”

How is the Christian community to view such preachers/teachers of the past?

First, they are to “continue to remember” such men/teachers/preachers. The use of the present imperative stresses continual remembrance.[1] What is the nature of this remembrance?

It is summed up first in the participle anatheōrountes. This word has the basic idea of looking at something again and again, examining and observing it carefully.[2] One source defines it thus: “to closely view with attention, to scrutinize closely.”[3] Now, how is the participle being being used here? Is it imperatival, thus indicating a command in addition to remember?[4] Or is it the means by which we remember?[5] Either way, it is strong directive to spend time reflecting on the lives of past leaders in the church.

What especially is to be scrutinized? Their “way of life”—“the “sum total” or “achievement” of their day-to-day behavior, manifested in a whole life.”[6] Note what this says is required of leaders: godly lives and, to some degree, transparent lives. See also in this regard 2 Timothy 3:10–11. And what is required of Christians in general? This is nothing less than an admonition to be familiar with history of Christian leadership.

Finally, believers are to imitate (mimeisthe) the faith-informed lives of these men. The idea of imitation has already been mentioned explicitly in Hebrews 6:12 and by implication in Hebrews 11. Here, is nothing less than a key reason for the study of Church History.

This is not hagiography for undergirding the command to imitate these men’s faith is the object of their faith: “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). It is because Christ Jesus was at the centre of these men’s preaching and living, their lives can be imitated today since He never changes.