The Puritans wrote dozens of treatises about family life, describing the proper roles and relationships between husbands and wives, fathers, mothers, and children.9 They placed every family relationship in the light of God’s sovereignty and fatherhood, and called every family member to live in the faith and fear of the Lord. Part of their genius was teaching people to stop looking at what others were doing, and to focus upon what they must do as their loving duty to God. Christ, of course, is the model in this; for what would become of us if Christ treated us the way we treat Him? God’s sovereign love is freely given, and so should ours be.

The universal scope of God’s sovereignty teaches us that we must glorify Him with all of our being. There is no “must” to enjoying God; it is but the consequence of glorifying Him. Do the one, and you will have the other. The Puritans fervently practiced this conviction in seeking to bring all of life under the direction of God’s Word. They believed in the great conclusion of Ecclesiastes 12:13: “Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.” John Bunyan (1628–1688) said that fearing God “sanctifies the whole duty of man.”1 He wrote, “It is a universal grace; it will stir up the soul unto all good duties. It is a fruitful grace, from which…flows abundance of excellent virtues, nor without it can there be anything good, or done well that is done.”2
To be lived out, a worldview must be practical, and that requires wisdom. The Reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone released Christians from an unbiblical system of sacramental salvation and church-mandated penance. After the Reformation, the human tendency to drift into formalism and inconsistency of doctrine and practice became commonplace. The Puritans revived Reformation doctrine and made it more practical by stressing how to live the Christian life in every possible facet. Authors such as Richard Greenham (c. 1542–1594), Richard Rogers (1550–1618), William Perkins (1558–1602), William Ames, and Richard Baxter (1615– 1691) wrote treatises addressing various “cases of conscience” to guide believers on how to fear the Lord and do His will in every sphere of human existence.3
Since so much is available today on Puritan views of personal godliness, family piety, and church reformation, we will touch briefly on these topics before immersing ourselves in the Puritan views of economics and politics.
Godly Personal Life
Ultimately, each of us will stand before the Lord to be judged for our own thoughts, words, and actions in life (2 Cor. 5:10). Therefore, the Puritans placed great emphasis upon personal godliness. The most important “case of conscience” they addressed was, “Am I a true child of God?”4 The Puritans relished full assurance of salvation and peace with God through the blood of Christ, for both afforded the believer the stability and power to serve God. Knowing God as a loving Father through Jesus Christ helped a believer live for God’s pleasure by the Holy Spirit as directed through the written Word.
The Puritans believed that all of life should be offered to God as a continual act of consecration in response to His mercies (Rom. 12:1).
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We cannot deny man’s sinfulness, as revealed by God’s law; we are sinful, polluted, and an abomination in God’s sight. But we also must not deny God’s gospel; He delights to save sinners and encourages them to come to Him (John 6:37). Both these truths should not keep us from Jesus Christ, but direct us to Him, the only remedy for sin. The gospel should lead us to pray, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner. Please take away all the unrighteousness of self that fills me and fill me with all that I am missing—the righteousness of Jesus Christ.”

Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near: let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.—ISAIAH 55:6–7
In Isaiah 55, God shows His compassion by inviting “everyone that thirsteth” (v. 1) to enter into His promised blessings. This thirst of deep spiritual longing drives us to Him for mercy; verses 6 and 7 emphasize the urgency of responding to Him. The verb seek suggests actively using God’s means of prayer. The One we seek is the LORD: the unchangeable, gracious, covenant-keeping Jehovah. We should not foolishly delay embracing God’s offer; we must seek Him “while he may be found”—now—before the day of our death. The prophet emphasizes personal prayer with the words “call ye,” reminding us that God’s offered salvation is available now, while “He is near” us with His Word and blessings. We must not reject this offer. If we do not heed the call, the time will come when He will not be found and we will be separated from Him forever. God requires us wholeheartedly to repent of our sinful thoughts, words, and actions, receiving by faith His abundant, pardoning mercy and grace, which far exceed the mountains of our great sin and guilt.
Some people argue that because they cannot pray rightly, it is better for them not to pray at all. They draw support from Scripture verses that describe the prayers and worship of sinners as a stench in God’s nostrils and an abomination in His sight. They say that God will not hear sinners and that whatever is not of faith is sin.
The first part of this argument—that we cannot pray rightly—is true, but the conclusion that it is then better not to pray at all is false.
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In the great questions of national life presented by the crises of their day, the Puritans looked to Scripture for light on the duties, power, and rights of king, Parliament, and citizen-subjects. In regard to the individual, the Puritans focused on personal, comprehensive conversion. They believed with Christ that “except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of heaven” (John 3:3). So they excelled at preaching the gospel, probing the conscience, awakening the sinner, calling him to repentance and faith, leading him to Christ, and schooling him in the way of Christ. 

Just what is meant by the term Puritan? Many people today use the term to describe a morose and legalistic brand of Christianity that borders on fanaticism. Much of this stereotype was the product of nineteenth-century anti-Puritan sentiments. While subsequent cultures have expressed various opinions of the Puritans, it is helpful to chronicle a brief history of the term and to assess the movement as objectively as possible.
The term Puritan was first used in the 1560s of those English Protestants who considered the reforms under Queen Elizabeth incomplete and called for further “purification” (from the Greek word katharos, “pure”). Its negative connotation derived from its being a translation of the Latin term catharus (Puritan) or cathari (Puritans; from katharos), a title given to medieval heretics (Gordon S. Wakefield, “The Puritans,” in The Study of Spirituality, ed. Cheslyn Jones, Geoffrey Wainwright, and Edward Yarnold, p. 438). For William Perkins (1558- 1602), often called “the father of Puritanism,” Puritan was a “vile term” that described people with perfectionist tendencies (The Works of Mr. William Perkins, 1:342, 3:15). Leonard J. Trinterud concludes, “Throughout the sixteenth century it was used more often as a scornful adjective than as a substantive noun, and was rejected as slanderous in whatever quarter it was applied” (Elizabethan Puritanism, pp. 3ff.).
The terms Puritan and Puritanism stuck, though what they mean has changed over the years. Twentieth-century scholars offer various opinions on what the terms actually intend to describe. William Haller sees the “central dogma of Puritan ism [as] an all-embracing determinism, theologically formulated doctrine of predestination” (The Rise of Puritanism, p. 83). Perry Miller finds the “marrow of Puritan divinity” in the idea of the covenant (Errand into the Wilderness, pp. 48–49); and Alan Simpson, in the concept of conversion (Puritanism in Old and New England, p. 2). Christopher Hill emphasized the social and political ideas in Puritanism (Society and Puritanism). John Coolidge linked the Puritan emphasis to a rejection of the Anglican doctrine of adiaphora, or things indifferent (The Pauline Renaissance in England: Puritanism and the Bible).
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Hebrews 3:1 and 12:3 tell us that the most effective means for enduring affliction is to consider Christ, the fountainhead of all vital Christianity. But how, you ask, and in what ways must I consider Him? In this booklet, Joel R. Beeke shows how our consideration of the passion, power, presence, patience and perseverance, prayers, plenitude, preciousness, promises, purposes, and plan of Christ provide strength for living through and profiting from the deepest sorrows of this world. 

Here are a few guidelines that the Puritans provide us with for using God’s promises in Christ while encountering affliction:

Choose some verses that speak of Christ’s assurance of His presence and protection in trials and meditate on them so that you will not be at a loss for support and comfort when hard times come. In this way, you will prepare your heart for trials and will not be surprised when they come.
Do not just assent to God’s promises in Christ; take them in hand and lean upon them, like elderly people lean on their canes. Andrew Gray says: “As you would not destroy your own souls, be much in making use and application of the promises. Are not the promises your life? Did not all the saints that went to heaven before us, go to heaven living upon the promises?”
Remember that Christ promises to uphold and sustain you in afflictions (Pss. 9:9; 37:4, 39–40) and also that His abundant comforts will shatter your troubles as light shatters the darkness (Ps. 112:4; Mic. 7:8–9; 2 Cor. 1:5).

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By His obedience to God’s will, even in the things that He suffered, He secured salvation for us. As our high priest, Christ teaches us that we have no other way of dealing with our moral failure and its penalty than to come to God and say, “Nothing in my hand I bring, / Simply to thy cross I cling.”

For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. — JOHN 6:38
Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God. — HEBREWS 10:7; CF. PSALM 40:7–8
Jesus came to earth to do the will of the Father. Ultimately, the will of God is His righteous decree that determines all that comes to pass and causes all things to work together for His glory (Eph. 1:11; cf. Deut. 29:29). Everything that comes to pass is the will of God, and He accomplishes that in Christ (Col. 1:16–17). But when Christ speaks about coming to do God’s will, He is referring to the will that God has revealed “unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deut. 29:29). God’s revealed will is breathed out of His heart and establishes His expectations for His people.
It may surprise us, then, to hear Jesus refer to two wills: His own and His Father’s. In doing so, Jesus opens a window on His humanity. As Andrew Murray says, “Christ had a human will. For instance, he ate when he was hungry, and he shrank from suffering when he saw it coming.”1 While His will was not sinful, Jesus still had to deny it. In taking on flesh, Christ undertook the ultimate challenge of conforming His human will to His Father’s divine will.
Jesus met that challenge; He did the will of God in all things. He performed every duty of the law (Matt. 5:17) and resisted all temptation to transgress it. At the end of His earthly life He could say, “I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do” (John 17:4).
James 4:17 says, “To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” We commit sins of omission every day, but Jesus never did. Indeed, He sometimes went out of His way to heal just one person (Mark 5:1–20). He showed compassion to people who were guilty of notorious sins (John 4:1–30; 8:1–11). The disciples accused their master of being unreasonable when He fed crowds of five thousand and then four thousand, because no one could be expected to provide for such multitudes (Mark 6:35–37). But Jesus had compassion on them (Matt. 15:32).
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For many of our Reformed and Puritan forebears, death spelled victory. For them, death did not extinguish the light, but it merely put out the lamp because the eternal dawn has come. We die to die no more, for in and through Christ, death brings life and perfect and complete victory in its wake—forever!

Our lives are not just a journey to death. They are a journey to one of two eternal places: heaven or hell. In heaven all evil is walled out and all good is walled in. Heaven is an eternal day that knows no sunset. Hell is an eternal night that knows no sunrise. Which destination are you heading for? Are you a true Christian—a follower of Jesus Christ? Do you trust only in the doing and dying of Jesus—in His active and passive obedience—as your ground of acceptance with God? If you were arrested today for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? Are you born again, justified by gracious faith alone, and on the narrow path to the Celestial City?
If so, you may have every hope that your death will be victorious; that, despite the discomfort and pain of the misery associated with dying, you may die joyfully and delightfully by looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of your faith, resting in justification by faith alone in Christ alone to the glory of God alone. As Paul put it, “We…rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Rom. 5:2).
Dear believer, when we die, then “there shall be no more death” (Rev. 21:4). You will ascend triumphantly, gloriously, majestically, peacefully, and joyfully into the heaven of heavens, where you will be a blessed part of one undivided body of Christ and His church (see John 17). There Christ will present you as His bride to His Father without spot or wrinkle in soul or body to be permanently instated into heaven to dwell forever with your precious Lamb: “For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes” (Rev. 7:17).
You will be in tearless glory living with Christ forever, crying out, “Worthy is the Lamb!” You will drink of the fountains of the full enjoyment of God, praising Him for all eternity in the most holy, glorious, and perfect activities: worshipping God, resting in Him, praising Him in song, serving Him forever in His temple, exercising authority with Him, and above all, gazing upon the face of Jesus while communing with Him, and enjoying loving the triune God more fully than ever. You will be communing with the holy angels and redeemed saints made perfect (cf. Luke 18:7; Rev. 6:9–11). Delightful, victorious, holy, happy, eternal day when we shall ever be with the Lord—sin-free in Immanuel’s land, ever growing in our capacity and fullness of knowing and relishing Him!
Examples of Victorious Death
God gives dying grace to His people for death’s hour. Some of His people die with little fanfare. They depart this life quietly, serenely, with barely a sigh. For others, the king of terrors is more violent, but Jesus brings them through in the end and gives them the victory. Still others receive special measures of dying grace, so that their deathbeds become their best pulpits. Such was the case with the well-known Scottish theologian, Thomas Halyburton (1674–1712), who died at the age of thirty-seven. To read in his Memoirs the nearly seventy pages of his last sayings, which were recorded by those around his deathbed, is to dwell in the vestibule of heaven. Here is only one example: “Come, sweet Lord Jesus, receive this spirit, fluttering within my breast like a bird to be out of a snare. I wait for thy salvation as the watchman watcheth for the morning. I am weary with delays. I faint for thy salvation. Why are His chariot wheels so long a coming?”1
History is full of tens of thousands of saints who have died victoriously in Jesus with great joy, despite the affliction death brought. Biblical examples, such as those of Paul (2 Tim. 4:6–8) and Stephen (Acts 7:54–60), are well known. So are the cases of many martyrs, such as John Huss (1369–1415), Hugh Latimer (c. 1486–1555) and Nicholas Ridley (c. 1500–1555), and repentant Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556). Cranmer recanted under pressure from Roman Catholic Queen Mary (1516–1558), but he recanted his recantation, went to the stake, and as the flames crept up his body, he stretched his right hand into the midst of the flames, and cried out: “This hand hath offended”—and died horrifically but victoriously!
One of my (Joel Beeke) favorite simple accounts of a victorious death is that of a Scotsman, David Dickson (c. 1583–1662), well-known for writing the first commentary on the Westminster Confession of Faith and for his commentaries on the Psalms, Matthew, and Hebrews. When his friends were gathered around his deathbed, one of them asked him when in the throes of a painful death what he was thinking. Dickson replied, “I have taken all my bad deeds and put them on a heap, and I have taken my good deeds as well, and I have put them on the same heap. And I have run away from that heap into the arms of Jesus. I die in peace.”2
Still others have written helpfully about dying and death. Affliction was a life-long companion to Puritan pastor, Richard Baxter (1615–1691). He wrote a 700-page classic, The Saints’ Everlasting Rest, while suffering from tuberculosis (a severe respiratory disease with long-term debilitating effects), chronic pain, and the frequent prospect of dying. In this condition, Baxter looked death in the face and experienced the sufficient grace of God to sustain him until he fell asleep in Jesus in 1691.
Baxter impresses upon his readers that suffering, sickness, and death are to be expected in this life; they are the norm at present. According to Baxter, these miseries remind Christians they are not to seek physical comfort, rest, and healing here and now so much as we are to seek to know Christ better. He says that when we are “fastened to [our] beds with pining sickness, the world is nothing, and heaven is something.” Further, he writes:
O healthful sickness! O comfortable sorrows! O gainful losses! O enriching poverty! O blessed day that ever I was afflicted! Not only the green pastures and still waters, but the rod and staff, they comfort us. Though the word and Spirit do the main work, yet suffering so unbolts the door of the heart, that his word has an easier entrance.
Baxter describes disease, dying, and facing death as providential means God uses to permit “easier entrance” of the Spirit-blessed Word into the human heart, so that it may transform us and enable us to rejoice in the midst of sorrow.
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Contrary to the false hopes encouraged by agnostic modern thought and modern medicine, the death of the body is only the beginning of sorrows for those who have been so foolish as to live apart from God and continue in sin. After death there is a day of judgment slated on the calendar of God; all must appear before His tribunal, and none shall be spared (2 Corinthians 5:10).

There is a remarkable difference between how an unbeliever and a believer look at dying, death, and the afterlife. For the unbeliever or the agnostic, death is mysterious and the afterlife is even more dubious. For the believer, death is not an extinction or a terminus but only a transition, a junction. Though solemn, it is demystified in Christ and the afterlife is the best life. Let’s consider this contrast.
After Death—Agnosticism’s Version
Sally, the hospice nurse, stood by Bruno’s bedside.1 Bruno was a prisoner with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), who had been transferred to the hospital with his fifth bout of pneumonia in the past six months.2 He was serving a life sentence for the murder of his elderly neighbor, who had attempted to stop him from stealing his narcotic pain medications. While incarcerated, he developed ALS, underwent a tracheotomy, and became dependent on a ventilator to breathe.3 Bruno had a choice: return to prison on the ventilator until suffering the next bout of pneumonia with the possibility of dying by suffocation; or, have the ventilator withdrawn, receiving medications to manage his respiratory distress, and dying in the luxury of a hospice facility. Needless to say, Bruno, who thought he was the victim of injustice, did not like his choices.
As he lay silent with expressive eyes, paralyzed, his right wrist handcuffed to the bedrail, and a prison guard by his side, Sally presented her case for hospice care: “Bruno, I know this is a difficult choice to make, but we will keep you comfortable after the ventilator is removed. You won’t have to go back to prison—you won’t suffer anymore.”
Sally was presenting the common view that what happens after death is in some way better than persisting in this present state, even for unrepentant murderers who see themselves as victims of the system. In Europe and America, it is quite acceptable to choose or create a self-customized hereafter. If one wants to believe in nirvana, reincarnation, a happy hunting ground, heaven, any combination of these possibilities, or else simple annihilation, the modernist will not object—provided the belief is not imposed on others. According to the modern mindset, no one really knows what happens after death. “What is emphatically clear is that everyone is dying, and one day, we will all die,” says the modernist, “so why not permit the imagination to wander when it comes to the hereafter?”
For many centuries the church was the predominant institution addressing dying, death, and what happens after death, not hospices and medical institutions that could be indifferent to or at odds with traditional Christianity. Following the beginning of the scientific age in the seventeenth century, the medicalization of death in the nineteenth century, and the increasing effectiveness of medical science in the decades that followed, the church was pushed aside. A paradigm shift occurred. The church is now on the periphery and modern medicine has shifted to the center. Moving into the twentieth century, many hospitals in the West, once Christian institutions in purpose, ethics, and practice, have become Christian in name only. Influenced by the rise of higher criticism, liberal theology, and the social gospel, these hospitals no longer affirm a supernatural-natural Christ-centered worldview grounded in Holy Scripture. In the twenty-first century, modern medicine is eager to fill the void left by the traditional, confessional, and biblical church.
Since the two absolutes of dying and death have become medicalized—that is, as aspects of human experience to be addressed by doctors and nurses rather than by ministers of the Word or one’s fellow Christians—it is not surprising to see healthcare professionals, like Sally, asserting an unqualified view of what happens after death to provide answers, comfort, and hope. This position is commonly referred to as agnosticism, which is derived from the Greek agnosis meaning “a state of unknowing,” that is, with respect to metaphysical questions such as the existence of God or an afterlife. Thus, an agnostic claims not to know matters beyond his or her ability to observe or quantify them. This approach to empirical or scientific facts has the appearance of humility. As a philosophical system, however, agnosticism is a proud and unconditional assertion in which all that can be known with certainty must be measured, tested, demonstrated, and verified by hands-on experience. Agnosticism is an outright rejection of non-empirical truth, which claims, without empirical validation, the impossibility of knowing truth outside the process of scientific investigation!
Two major issues stand behind agnosticism in the contemporary West: pluralism and the eventual failure of medical science to sustain life. In western democracies, citizens have a right to believe what they choose, so long as they do not act on their beliefs in violation of civil law and they tolerate other people’s beliefs. All of these personal views address the hereafter in some way, so agnosticism provides a vehicle for tolerance and affirmation.
Another primary factor already alluded to is the innate human need for answers, comfort, and hope. Dying and death are absolute—we are dying, and one day we will cease to be as we are now. This is mysterious, uncomfortable, and even dreadful. Someday medical science will fail us, when the doctor says he can do no more for us. After all the optimistic counsel from well-meaning healthcare professionals and hopeful state-of-the-art medical treatments, dying and death stand firm and fixed on our human agendas—then what? In modern medical practice a referral to hospice is made, and end-of-life experts come alongside to support individualized answers, provide comfort in the midst of suffering, and affirm one’s self-customized hopes for some good or life after death.
Death as a Natural Part of Life
In a similar way, modern medicine commonly promotes the view that death is a natural and normal part of human existence. Since dying is a process running parallel with life, in modern medicine the death of the body has become associated with the outworking of natural laws of life. In medical literature, one will often find dying and death associated with pregnancy and birth, or as a stage in a natural process, much like a caterpillar emerging from a cocoon as a butterfly. This interpretation is rooted in the rise of evolutionary biology in the late nineteenth century. According to this viewpoint, no line exists between dying and the death of the body, because they are both the outworking of natural laws of survival occurring in the larger cycle of life. Thus, people facing death should accept and even welcome death with optimism as a transition to a self-customized hereafter.
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Great sinners need a great Savior. That is exactly what Christ is, for He is “able also to save them to the uttermost” (Heb. 7:25)! That is life-changing news for the “chief of sinners.” If Christ can save Paul, who was a blasphemer, a persecutor, and injurer of innocents, He can also save you, no matter how hell-worthy you may be. Ask Jesus Christ for the grace of repentance and faith that you may put all your trust in Him (cf. Acts 5:31).

This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief. — 1 TIMOTHY 1:15
For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. — HEBREWS 9:26; CF. 1 JOHN 1:9; 3:5
In Christ’s first coming, He implemented a rescue plan conceived in the mind of God before the foundation of the world. He did not come to promote holiday cheer, boost end-of-year sales, or serve as the central figure in a nativity scene. He came to save sinners.
To save sinners, Christ had to put away what makes people sinners— namely, sin. At the dawn of man’s history, sin, like an unwelcome virus, infected mankind easily enough. But how could it be exterminated? God was already answering this question through the Old Testament sacrificial system. One of the main themes in the epistle to the Hebrews is the repetitious labors of Old Testament priests: “And they truly were many priests, because they were not suffered to continue by reason of death” (Heb. 7:23). Morning and evening, priests placed burnt offerings for sin on an altar, the fire of which was never to go out (2 Chron. 13:11; Lev. 6:12).
Nonetheless, sins were not fully extinguished through this system (Heb. 10:4). Old Testament sacrifices were merely a shadow, or copy, of what was to come (Heb. 9:23); thus, the priesthood of Aaron could have sacrificed burnt offerings for a million years without putting away a single sin. The writer of Hebrews says the seed of Adam needed a better priesthood to put away sins—a priesthood “after the order of Melchisedec” (Heb. 7:17; cf. Ps. 110:4). Likewise, a better sacrifice offered in a better tabernacle was necessary. When a truly perfect sacrifice was offered in the tabernacle of heaven, sin would finally be put away.
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The cross looms large and men, women, boys, and girls see themselves as crucified with Christ. The gospel humbles us lower than the most scathing human criticism, but it simultaneously exalts us into God’s gracious favor so that the negative appraisal of our fellow man no longer devastates us.

A healthy church is one that is shaped by the gospel. Our people need to see the beauty of Christ. Nothing will enable them to lovingly and humbly give and receive constructive critique more than heart-searching, expository gospel preaching. This is our great task and privilege as ministers—to proclaim Christ. And as we do, whether we recognize it or not, we will be promoting a healthy culture of criticism.
What is it that fuels both a hypercritical spirit and an aversion to criticism? It is a high view of self. Man criticizes incessantly in order to feel better about self. Man runs from or suppresses criticism directed his way for the same purpose, to protect and promote the self. There is a certain high-mindedness native to us all that is averse to both giving and receiving constructive critique.
At the cross, however, man’s high-mindedness is utterly decimated as he comes face-to-face with the savage heinousness of sin. Sin is insurrection of the highest sort, a rebellious uprising against the Creator and Ruler of all things. While the law certainly does much to show us our sin, it is actually the gospel that gives us the most alarming impression of the infinite affront that our sin is to God.
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