Outline: "I think the rock on which I had the nearest made shipwreck of the faith was the writings of the mystics," wrote John Wesley to his brother in 1736, eighteen months before his evangelical conversion on Aldersgate Street. Mysticism, in essence, is the belief in a direct and intimate union of the soul with God through contemplation and love. The Mystic believes that one must partake of t…
Outline : “The Puritans can help us today toward the maturity that they knew, and that we need.” —J. I. Packer
Committed to hard work, humility, and serious study of Scripture, the Puritans lived out their faith in a way that many now dismiss as antiquated. But in an increasingly fast-paced, materialistic culture, Christ followers today can learn a lot from these spiritual giants of the …
Outline: "An Honest, Well Experienced Heart" introduces us to the life and writings of Puritan preacher and author John Flavel (1627 - 1691). In his brief, introductory biography, Adam Embry discusses Flavel's background, ministry, and theology of keeping the heart, which, for Flavel, "is the great business of a Christian's life." Embry guides us through forty-two short passages from Flavel's w…
Outline: John Stott was a twentieth-century pastor-theologian widely hailed for his heart for missions and expository preaching. Even today, Stott's legacy continues to influence churches around the world. As both a faithful preacher and a thoughtful writer, Stott profoundly shaped evangelicalism's contemporary understanding of Christianity through an approach to the Christian life founded on t…
Outline : John New Lon is famous for his legendary hymn "Amazing Grace." Many have celebrated his dramatic conversion from a life in the slave trade to his eventual work to end it. But often overlooked are Newton's forty years as a pastor ministering to parishioners and friends unsettled by the trials, doubts, and fears of life. Newton is perhaps the greatest pastoral letter writer in the histo…
Outline : J.I. Packer is widely recognized as a pillar of 20th-centuryevangelicalism and has had a profound impact on millions of Christians living today. Now in his late eighties, Packer still exerts an enormous influence on pastors and laypeople around the world through his many books, articles, and recorded lectures-works that overflow with spiritual wisdom related to the Christian life. In …
WE MAY DEFINE THE ENGLISH REFORMERS AS THOSE ENGLISH men who, in the half century that began about 1520, con
fessed that Jesus Christ is the complete and only mediator between God and men, and who therefore endeavored so to shape the doctrine and practice of the Church that her earthly existence should correspond to the truth of his existence. In this definition we place the Reformation within…
There is only too much truth in the frequent complaint that history, as compared with the physical sciences, is neglected by the modern public. But historians have the remedy in their own hands; choosing problems of equal importance to those of the scientist, and treating them with equal accuracy, they will command equal attention.......
The Book of Common Prayer is one of the most important and influential books in English history, but it has received relatively little attention from literary scholars. This study seeks to remedy this by attending to the Prayerbook’s importance in England’s political, intellectual, religious, and literary history. The first half of the book presents extensive analyses of the Book of Common …
Foxe's Book of Martyrs is a collection of unforgettable accounts of religious persecution. This modernized selection brings together some of the most stirring tales of the interrogation and execution of heretics burnt at the stake in the reign of Mary, with some of the original woodcut illustrations and an illuminating introduction.
The scripture-saturated culture of nineteenth-century England is displayed by Timothy Larsen in a series of lively case studies of representative figures ranging from the Quaker prison reformer Elizabeth Fry to the liberal Anglican pioneer of nursing Florence Nightingale to the Baptist preacher C.H. Spurgeon to the Jewish author Grace Aguilar. Even the agnostic man of science T.H. Huxley and th…
John Newton is famous for his legendary hymn “Amazing Grace.” Many have celebrated his dramatic conversion from a life in the slave trade to his eventual work to end it. But often overlooked are Newton’s forty years as a pastor ministering to parishioners and friends unsettled by the trials, doubts, and fears of life.
Newton is perhaps the greatest pastoral letter writer in the history…
J. I. Packer is widely recognized as a pillar of 20th-century evangelicalism and has had a profound impact on millions of Christians living today. Now in his late eighties, Packer still exerts an enormous influence on pastors and laypeople around the world through his many books, articles, and recorded lectures—works that overflow with spiritual wisdom related to the Christian life. In this s…
"Reading this book was a profoundly moving experience.”
—Derek W. H. Thomas, Senior Minister, First Presbyterian Church, Columbia, South Carolina; author, Let’s Study Revelation and Let’s Study Galatians
John Stott was a twentieth-century pastor-theologian widely hailed for his heart for missions and expository preaching. Even today, Stott’s legacy continues to influence churches …
Outline: The Westminster Assembly is celebrated for its doctrinal standards and debates on church polity. But how often is the assembly noted for its extraordinary intervention in the pulpit ministry of the Church of England? In God's Ambassadors, Chad Van Dixhoorn recounts the Puritan quest for a reformation in a preachers and peraching and how the Westminister Assembly fit into that movement…
Outline: In the mid-seventeenth century, persons on both sides of the Atlantic wishing to join a Puritan church had to appear before all of its members and tell the story of their religious conversion - in effect, to give convincing verbal evidence that their souls were saved. New England's Puritans widely adopted this practice, and in this book Patricia Caldwell attempts to unravel the mystery…
Outline: John Bunyan was the author of the best-selling Christin book of all time. His Bible-saturated works have inspired generations to believers all over the world. And yet, as influential as it is, John Bunyan's theology contains a unifying thread that is sorely neglected oin the modern church: the vital importance of the fear of God. Fearing God is seen by many as psychologically harmful -…
Overview: Jonathan Edwards (1703 - 1758) is widely regarded as one of the major thinkers in the Christian tradition and an important and influential figure in American theology. This book is a collection of specially commissioned essays that track his intellectual legacies from the work of his immediate disciples who formed the New Divinity movement in colonial New England, to his impact upon …
Overview: The Church of England is a unique institution. It is the only church in the world to have its bishops appointed by the prime minister so they can sit in parliament. And even in an age when only a small minority go to church, it lays claim to jurisdiction over every square inch of the land. Deeply conservative by instinct, the Church of England has nevertheless taken the radical and…
Martyn Lloyd-Jones biblically informed insight gave a certain prophetic quality to his ministry; not in the sense that he foretold the future, but rather in his God-given ability to put his finger on the essential issues, and to apply the burden of God’s Word. Knowing the Times brings together a number of addresses which exhibit this vibrant prophetic character. Those who heard Dr. Lloyd-Jone…