We would do well to model our ministry after these men. They were men of integrity. They saw their calling as one of dignity and worth. They loved the church because Christ loved it. 

The sermon was the minister’s attempt through reason to encourage faith as it affected this life and the next. They were committed to a style that was plain but not dull. Each minister was pledged by his own creed to use a balance of doctrine and practice, faithfully devoted to the exposition of the Word of Scripture, and understood by all. Every Puritan sermon began with a definite Biblical text. Once a text was selected, the preacher’s immediate duty was to clarify it in all possible ways. Thus the lengthy Puritan sermon had a structure of its own. It had a triple division into Doctrine, Reason, and Use. In contrast to the sermons of the Anglican divines such as Andrewes and Donne which were weighted down with classical quotations, the sermons of the Puritans were restricted almost entirely to Biblical citations because evangelical teaching was the first aim of the sermon. They did, however, refer to a Luther, a Calvin, or even each other on occasion, in addition to citing several of the church fathers, such as Jerome or Bernard.
Each sermon was an attempt to identify from the text an axiom of theology and to discuss its practical applications. In procedure, the text was taken apart by the method of analysis into its component parts and usually set out again as a proposition. After the logical analysis of the passage, the practical appeal was made by the pastor who attempted to make the Bible applicable to real life.
In defining the process, Horton Davies observes, “The doctrines had to be explained to the congregation and their contraries refuted. The second division of the sermon was a logical defense of the assumptions of the first section. It was insisted that apparent contradictions were to be reconciled, and that little time was to be spent in answering trivial objections or mere cavillings. The third section intended to drive home the practical advantages of belief in the particular teachings and concluded with encouragements.”
Richard Baxter affirmed this tradition by stating, “The preacher’s aim should be first to convince the understanding and then to engage the heart. Light first, then heat. Begin with a careful opening of the text, then proceed to the clearance of possible difficulties or objections; next, to a statement of uses; and lastly to a fervent appeal for acceptance by conscience and heart.”
While being masters of divinity, the Puritans were also masters of practical divinity. To these men of the Word, there was no doctrine that could not be practice. To them, all that was practiced had to be founded on sound doctrine.
Lastly, Puritan preaching was bold preaching. The Puritan preacher was not afraid to let the preaching of the Word of God offend sinners. As Samuel Hieron said in his Preacher’s Plea, in 1629, “As men love nothing more than their sins, so they loathe nothing more than the discovery thereof.” The Puritans realized that there would always be a violent reaction to bold preaching, but that it was absolutely necessary.
To re-quote Baxter, “You cannot break men’s hearts by jesting with them, or telling them a smooth tale, or pronouncing a gaudy oration. Men will not cast away their dearest pleasures at the drowsy request of one that seemeth not to mean as he speaks or to care much whether his request be granted or not. If you say that the work is God’s, and He may do it by the weakest means, I answer, it is true, He may do so; buy yet His ordinary way is to work by means, and not only to make the matter that is preached, but also the manner of preaching instrumental to our work.”
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Puritan minister did not spare his pulpit efforts. He preached for an hour or two once or twice and sometimes three times a week—that is, always once or twice on Sundays, often at a week-day lecture, and occasionally on days of fasting, of thanksgiving, and election. His sermon content was based directly on the Bible, for Scripture was the final and infallible authority by which every man was to govern his life. The doctrine for each and every sermon was taken directly from the Bible, and all proof rested in the Bible. No opinion on any matter—theological, moral, political, pragmatic—had any value unless it could be supported by definite Biblical references.

The Puritan preacher saw the role of preaching much differently than we do today because he saw the role of the preacher so much differently than we do today. Rather than seeing the preacher as just “one of the boys” with a bit more knowledge of religious things, the Puritan preacher saw his office as one of dignity and importance, character and content. Alexander Grosart, speaking of Thomas Brooks, said,“In all likelihood he proceeded from degree to degree, although in common with other of the Puritans, he places none (of those degrees) on his title pages, preferring the nobler designation, ‘Preacher of the Gospel,’ or ‘Preacher of the Word.’ ”
The difference in how we view the pulpit is pointed out by Dr. Bruce Bickel in his excellent book, Light and Heat: the Puritan View of the Pulpit:
The fading picture of the pulpit is a clear picture of how many Protestant ministers see their task and function. Their time is dictated by the vision they have of the pulpit. Many ‘share’ rather than preach, pray rather than pronounce blessings, and perform under a clouded vision of their ministry because they have no clear conviction about the nature of preaching. They do not see clearly the unique and supernatural nature of preaching because they do not see clearly the unique and supernatural nature of the divine Scriptures.
Many ministers allocate their time accordingly. More time is spent in motivational discussions, program planning, and church administration than in sermon study and preparation. Both pastors and congregations alike organize the minister’s schedule based on his or their view of the pulpit. Demands or expectations are placed upon the minister based upon a job description that reflects a weak view of the pulpit.
Throughout history God has raised up men and movements whose great work was to preach and apply the Word of God to their own generation. Of course, by implication, these men have affected all generations thereafter. Such men were the Puritans.
Because the Puritans held that the pure Word of God was the criterion to which doctrine, worship, and church government must conform, proclamation of the Scriptures occupied the central position in their worship. Horton Davies writes: “The importance of [Puritan] preaching consisted in the fact that it was the declaration by the preacher of the revelation of God, confirmed in the hearts of believers by the interior testimony of the Holy Spirit.”
Richard Sibbes spoke for all Puritan preachers when he said, “Christ, when He ascended on high and led captivity captive (He would give no mean gift then, when He was to ascend triumphantly to heaven) the greatest He could give was ‘some to be prophets, some apostles, some teachers (and preachers) for the building up of the body of Christ till we all meet, a perfect man in Christ.’ ‘I will send them pastors according to My own heart,’ saith God (Jer.3:15). It is the gift of all gifts, the ordinance of preaching. God esteems it so, Christ esteems it so, and so should we esteem it.”
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This emphasis on religion as spiritual and not ceremonial was a marked characteristic of godly preaching, and in time the Puritan preachers came to be known as “spiritual preachers” in contrast to the “witty” preaching of their opponents. They not only were to be understood by the people, but they were to stir their emotions, touch their imaginations, convert them to the Lord, save them from sin and death and hell, help them to discern the striving of the Spirit in their hearts as they struggled to make good their election, and point them to the true end of man which was to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

One of the great follies of which many studies on Puritanism are guilty is the practice of analyzing and criticizing the Puritans rather than allowing them to analyze and criticize us! It is not my intent in this series of posts to comment on the preaching of these godly men, but rather to allow their preaching to speak for itself and to comment on our preaching.
Of all the names used in the 16th century to describe the Puritans, such as “precisians,” “disciplinarians,” “the brethren,” “the consistorians,” and the name which best sums up their character is “the Godly preachers.”
The essential thing in understanding the Puritans is that they were preachers before they were anything else, and preachers with a particular emphasis that could be distinguished from other preachers by those who heard them. Into whatever efforts they were led in their attempt to reform the world through the church, and however these efforts were frustrated by the leaders of the church, what bound them together, undergirded their striving, and gave them the dynamic to persist was their consciousness that they were called to preach the gospel. “Woe is me if I preach not the gospel,” was their inspiration and justification. Puritan tradition in the first and last resort must be assessed in terms of the pulpit.
The Puritan preachers termed their style of preaching as “spiritual preaching” in contrast to the “ceremonial preaching” of the Roman (and eventually even the Anglican) church. John Foxe, the martyrologist, said that the true Christian is not the “ceremonial man after the Church of Rome, but the spiritual man with his faith and other fruits of piety following the same.”
This emphasis on religion as spiritual and not ceremonial was a marked characteristic of godly preaching, and in time the Puritan preachers came to be known as “spiritual preachers” in contrast to the “witty” preaching of their opponents. They not only were to be understood by the people, but they were to stir their emotions, touch their imaginations, convert them to the Lord, save them from sin and death and hell, help them to discern the striving of the Spirit in their hearts as they struggled to make good their election, and point them to the true end of man which was to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
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All that we can do in great and deep affliction, and sore distresses of soul, is only to look up to Christ as a poor, wounded, bleeding man looks and cries to one who passes on the road for help. And our Savior and Physician is so compassionate that He will regard us, though we are able to say little more than, “Have mercy on us, Thou Son of David.”

The Puritans not only preached to comfort the weary and wounded, but admonished those who had close relations with such saints in how to help them.  So Timothy Rogers gave instructions to those who had to deal with those under a sense of God’s desertion:
Speak kindly and compassionately to those whom you perceive to be under the sense of God’s anger. Job complains in Job 19:2, “How long will ye vex my soul, and break me into pieces?” And as men who have been long used to poring over their troubles, he tells them how often they had vexed him in verse 3: “These ten times have ye reproached me; ye are not ashamed that ye make yourselves strange to me.” It is very likely that they did not vex him with their words purposely; for, being good men, they could not be so extremely barbarous. They made good sermons, but very sorry and mistaken application. It is easy to trample upon those with sharp and cutting speeches whom God and their sorrows have already thrown into the mire. It is easy for those who are in no trouble to silence and upbraid those who are. As Job says to Eliphaz, “Shall vain words have an end? I also could speak as you do, if your soul were in my soul’s stead. I could heap up words against you, and shake mine head at you. But I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the moving of my lips should assuage your griefs.”
When any of your friends are under spiritual trouble, you must carefully abstain from any passionate or sour word or action that may increase their grief; it will be some small help to them to see that you pity them, though you cannot give them relief. Use all the compassionate and kind words to them that you can, and seek to bind up their sores with a gentle hand. Beware of using any expression that savors of sharpness, reproach, or scorn, for these will, as they did to Job, vex their souls more, and they will be evil in you as well as unpleasant to them. Hence is that complain in Psalm 69:20: “Reproach hath broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness; and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none. They gave me also gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” And Psalm 123:4: “Our soul is exceedingly filled with the scorning of those that are at ease, and with the contempt of the proud.”
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All that we can do in great and deep affliction, and sore distresses of soul, is only to look up to Christ as a poor, wounded, bleeding man looks and cries to one who passes on the road for help. And our Savior and Physician is so compassionate that He will regard us, though we are able to say little more than, “Have mercy on us, Thou Son of David.”

The Puritans not only preached to comfort the weary and wounded, but admonished those who had close relations with such saints in how to help them.  So Timothy Rogers gave instructions to those who had to deal with those under a sense of God’s desertion:
Speak kindly and compassionately to those whom you perceive to be under the sense of God’s anger. Job complains in Job 19:2, “How long will ye vex my soul, and break me into pieces?” And as men who have been long used to poring over their troubles, he tells them how often they had vexed him in verse 3: “These ten times have ye reproached me; ye are not ashamed that ye make yourselves strange to me.” It is very likely that they did not vex him with their words purposely; for, being good men, they could not be so extremely barbarous. They made good sermons, but very sorry and mistaken application. It is easy to trample upon those with sharp and cutting speeches whom God and their sorrows have already thrown into the mire. It is easy for those who are in no trouble to silence and upbraid those who are. As Job says to Eliphaz, “Shall vain words have an end? I also could speak as you do, if your soul were in my soul’s stead. I could heap up words against you, and shake mine head at you. But I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the moving of my lips should assuage your griefs.”
When any of your friends are under spiritual trouble, you must carefully abstain from any passionate or sour word or action that may increase their grief; it will be some small help to them to see that you pity them, though you cannot give them relief. Use all the compassionate and kind words to them that you can, and seek to bind up their sores with a gentle hand. Beware of using any expression that savors of sharpness, reproach, or scorn, for these will, as they did to Job, vex their souls more, and they will be evil in you as well as unpleasant to them. Hence is that complain in Psalm 69:20: “Reproach hath broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness; and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none. They gave me also gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” And Psalm 123:4: “Our soul is exceedingly filled with the scorning of those that are at ease, and with the contempt of the proud.”
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