The Puritan Library: A Look at the Books That Shaped Them – Joel Beeke

ABSTRACT: The Puritans were such able theologians and physicians of souls because they were so committed to carefully studying Scripture in deep conversation with the best of church history. Mining the wealth of their forebears meant reading carefully, and always in the light of God’s word, early church fathers, medieval theologians, the Reformers, and their contemporaries. Those who want to follow in the footsteps of Puritan pastor-theologians can sit down in libraries like theirs, reading the works they read in the same prayerful and humble spirit.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Joel R. Beeke (PhD, Westminster Theological Seminary), chancellor and professor of homiletics and systematic theology at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, and Fraser E. Jones (MA, Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary), research assistant to the chancellor, to survey the books that shaped the Puritans most.

Every library tells a story. The books that line your shelves — if read and digested — likely reveal what captures your attention, inflames your imagination, and impacts how you think about God, yourself, and the world around you. Just as you can learn more about others by browsing their libraries, so you can know the Puritans better by discovering what books they loved. The Puritans’ favorite books shaped their exalted vision of God, their profound insights into the human condition, their warm piety, and their life-giving, experiential preaching of Jesus Christ.

If we read more of the books that influenced the Puritans, we too might experience greater depth, freshness, and Christ-centeredness in our own lives and ministries. But before we look at the books they loved, we should first know a little about the Puritans themselves.

Who Were the Puritans?

The Puritans were a group of English pastors and laypeople between the mid-1500s and the early 1700s. They sought to purge the Church of England of Roman Catholic influences and promoted Reformed (or Calvinistic) worship, doctrine, preaching, and devotional life. They took the Protestant Reformation to full expression by developing Trinitarian soteriology, further articulating the doctrines of grace, purifying worship according to the simple pattern of the New Testament, tracing Christ and the gospel throughout the Old Testament in a rich and rigorous covenant theology, and cultivating the inner life of communion with God through the means of grace.

In essence, Puritanism was the Reformed tradition at its mature stage of development — communicated not in German, French, or Latin but in English. In other words, Puritanism was Calvinism with an English accent. The Puritans were filled with an all-consuming passion to glorify God in all of life (soli Deo gloria), to live before the face of God in joy-filled holiness (coram Deo), and to apply the principles of God’s word to every area of life (sola Scriptura) — whether in the home, the church, or the nation.

The Puritans were avid readers. They read broadly and deeply from a staggering variety of sources, drawing from hundreds of soul-nourishing books across church history as well as the liberal arts.1 Above all, the Puritans were shaped by the Bible. To better understand and apply the Bible, however, they drew from four other main sources: early church fathers, medieval theologians, Protestant Reformers, and other Puritans.

Source 1: The Bible

The Puritan minister John Rogers (ca. 1570–1636) once said, “Lord, whatsoever thou dost to us, take not thy Bible from us; kill our children, burn our houses, destroy our goods; only spare us thy Bible, only take not away thy Bible.”2

Many people wonder how the Puritans attained such intimacy with Christ, freshness of expression, and profound spirituality in their books. Was it their familiarity with the Reformers, their mastery of Hebrew and Greek, or their refined skills in logic and rhetoric? Or was it their natural giftedness, their seasoned counseling experience, or the depth of the trials they faced?

The “secret” to Puritan spirituality is unexpectedly simple: They read their Bibles, and they did so prayerfully, meditatively, and consistently. They loved the Bible, read it, believed it, lived it, preached it, and wrote about it. They were preeminently people of the book. They prioritized the word of God in their daily lives. Joseph Alleine, for example, devoted the time between 4:00 and 8:00 every morning to communion with God in Bible reading, prayer, and meditation. As a young student at King’s College, Cambridge, William Gouge read fifteen chapters of Scripture every day.3

The Puritans had what John Winthrop called an “unsatiable thirst after the word of God.”4 They viewed God as speaking to them in every line of Scripture.5 They read the Bible with diligence, wisdom, heart preparation, meditation, fellowship with other believers, faith, practice, and prayer. Bible reading was built into the DNA of the Puritans’ daily rhythm — from personal devotions in the morning, to midweek sermons, to family worship at mealtimes.

Above all, Puritan piety was Bible-based piety. Isaac Ambrose (1604–1664) wrote that the word-based means of grace are “brim full of rare and ravishing comfort.” He then said,

The saints look upon duties (the Word, sacraments, prayers, etc.) as bridges to give them a passage to God, as boats to carry them into the bosom of Christ, as means to bring them into more intimate communion with their heavenly Father, and therefore are they so much taken with them. . . . They who meet with God in duty, usually find their hearts sweetly refreshed, as if heaven were in them.6

The word-centeredness of the Puritans is evident from their sermons and books, which were a dense patchwork of carefully selected, interpreted, and applied Bible passages. For example, The Glory of Christ by John Owen (1616–1683) — about 130 pages long — has an average of about thirty Scripture references per chapter and over four hundred total.7 In his exposition of the Lord’s Prayer (47 pages), William Perkins (1558–1602) cites over two hundred Scripture references.8 And Thomas Case (1598–1682) referenced about 150 Scripture passages in a single sermon on 2 Timothy 1:13.9 Given the sheer volume of Scripture references in their writings, the Puritans evidently committed hundreds of passages to memory. Drawing from this reservoir of biblical knowledge and meditation, their pens and tongues overflowed with Scripture.

Source 2: Early Church Fathers

The Reformed faith of the Puritans was not a novelty produced in the intellectual soil of Elizabethan England. Rather, it grew out of the fertile soil of centuries of theological reflection tracing back to the apostles. From the early church fathers, the Puritans grew in their grasp of the sinfulness of man, the grace of God, and the sovereignty of the triune God in salvation.

The Puritans read scores of early church fathers, including Irenaeus, Chrysostom, Cyprian of Carthage, Tertullian, Augustine, and many others.10 While the Puritans did not read the early church fathers uncritically, they still learned from them and quoted them while testing their doctrines against the touchstone of Scripture.11

The Puritans read Augustine (354–430) more than any other theologian in church history. They were particularly influenced by his writings on providence, divine sovereignty in salvation, election, predestination, saving grace, and the work of the Holy Spirit.12 At the Westminster Assembly, Augustine was the most frequently cited early church father. He was second only to Theodore Beza as the most frequently cited theologian of all time at the Assembly.13

Augustine features prominently throughout the collected works of the Puritans. For example, John Owen references Augustine nearly two hundred times in the Nichol edition of his Works, while William Perkins references him over three hundred times in his ten-volume corpus.14 In the preface to his exposition of the Song of Solomon, John Collinges (1624–1691) indicates that he read Augustine while he was “a very young man.”15 Throughout his sermons on the Song, he references Augustine eighteen times, often in relation to divine sovereignty. For, he writes, “We only will when we are made willing, and act when we are first moved and acted.”16

Richard Sibbes (ca. 1577–1635) — affectionately known as “the heavenly doctor” — quotes, paraphrases, or strongly echoes Augustine over fifty times in his writings. Sibbes draws from Augustine’s Confessions, The City of God, and The Gift of Perseverance, as well as his expositions of Scripture.17 Several of Sibbes’s references draw from Augustine’s thoughts on original sin, total depravity, and the captivity of the unregenerate will, as well as the monergistic work of God in salvation.18

In relation to divine sovereignty in salvation, for example, Sibbes echoes Augustine: “If we say to God, ‘I am thine,’ it is because he hath first said unto us, ‘Thou art mine.’”19 Later, he quotes Augustine as saying, “We move, but God moves us.”20 Elsewhere, Sibbes expands on this distinctly Augustinian thought: “If we should hold our will to move itself, and not to be moved by the Spirit, we should make a god of it, whose property is to move other things, and not to be moved by any.”21 In his exposition of 2 Corinthians 4, Sibbes describes how God “overcometh all rebellion and resistance in them that he doth convert.” He then marshals a thought that he attributes to Augustine, one that is reflected throughout the Confessions: “When God will save a man, no stubbornness of his will shall withstand . . . else the will of man were stronger than God’s.”22

Augustine also appears in tender, pastoral contexts, such as in Edward Pearse’s (ca. 1633–1673) last letter to his congregation before his untimely death at the age of forty: “I will conclude all with that solemn and cordial profession to you,” wrote Pearse, “which Augustine often made to those, to whom he was wont to preach: in other words, that it is the desire of my soul, that as we have been often crowded together to worship God in one earthly house or temple, so we may all worship Him together forever in the heavenly house or temple.”23

Source 3: Medieval Theologians

The Puritans did not accept medieval theology uncritically but were selective in their appropriation of it.24 For example, they rejected medieval errors regarding justification, tradition, the sacraments, church authority, and the mediation of Mary and the saints. However, they still drew heavily from medieval scholastics in their articulation of a robust doctrine of God and the cultivation of their devotional lives. The Puritans read widely from medieval scholastics such as Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Bonaventure, Peter Lombard, and William of Ockham. In large part, they were shaped by the reflections of medieval theologians on the divine nature, the decree of God, providence, causality, predestination, the nature of grace, and the person of Jesus Christ.25

For example, John Owen used Thomas Aquinas’s (ca. 1225–1274) articulation of God as pure act (actus purus) to defend the doctrine of divine sovereignty in salvation and the perseverance of the elect. By describing God as “pure act,” Aquinas meant that God is pure actuality. In other words, there is no potentiality (or latent possibility) in God. He possesses ultimate perfection that is fully realized and actualized; he cannot be more perfect than he already is. Thus, his decrees are inseparable from his simple (or uncompounded) being and can no more be frustrated than he can cease to exist. Owen insisted, then, that the elect will certainly persevere in the grace of God because the accomplishment of their salvation is as certain as the very existence of God himself.26

The Puritans also cultivated a warm, experiential piety by reading the devotional writings of medieval theologians like Thomas à Kempis (ca. 1380–1471) and Jean Gerson (1363–1429). The Puritan movement was well within the stream of devotional piety that marked the late-medieval Brethren of the Common Life (Devotio Moderna) movement.27 In particular, the Puritans appreciated Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153). John Owen references Bernard about sixteen times in his Works, while William Perkins references him about thirty times.28 The Puritans read Bernard’s letters, sermons, and his popular treatise On Loving God. But above all, they relished his sermons on the Song of Solomon, which extol the spiritual marriage between Christ and the church.29 For example, in his own sermons on the Song of Solomon, John Collinges references Bernard about thirty times, sometimes quoting him from memory.30

Richard Sibbes even refers to the Cistercian abbot as “holy Bernard.” In one place, he quotes Bernard as saying, “Thou dealest sweetly with my soul in regard of myself, yet strongly in regard of thyself.” Sibbes then expands on Bernard’s thoughts: “He [God] speaks to us as a man in our own language, sweetly; but he works in us almightily, after a powerful manner, as God.”31

Perhaps more than any other Puritan, however, Isaac Ambrose was particularly fond of “devout Bernard,”32 who appears throughout his writings.33 For example, Bernard’s sermons on the Song of Solomon shaped Ambrose’s perspective on the value of spiritual solitude for sustained meditation. In his diary entry for May 16, 1648, Ambrose reflects on his monthly spring retreat in the woods of Lancashire: “I came to Weddicre, to renew my engagements and loves with my Lord and my God this spring also.” After providing the justification for his annual retreat from the Song of Solomon — “Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field . . . there will I give thee my loves” (Song of Solomon 7:11–12 KJV) — he then quotes Bernard: “The bridegroom of our souls is bashful, and more frequently visits his bride in the solitary places.”34

Source 4: Protestant Reformers

The Puritans loved reading the Reformers, viewing them as God’s instruments to deliver his people from what Martin Luther called the “Babylonian captivity” of the Roman Catholic Church.35 William Ames (1576–1633) even wrote that, loosely speaking, the Reformers (such as Wycliffe, Luther, and Zwingli) bore some resemblance to the “extraordinary ministers” of Scripture (the prophets and apostles) because God gave them special gifts to reform the church after a period of marked decline.36 From the Reformers, the Puritans grew in their understanding of justification by faith alone, the doctrines of grace, and the unity of God’s covenant purposes in redemptive history.

William Perkins, fondly remembered as “the father of Puritanism,” was influenced by Reformers like Theodore Beza, Caspar Olevianus, Peter Martyr Vermigli, and Girolamo Zanchi, as well as Martin Luther, William Tyndale, and John Calvin.37 Perkins, in turn, “molded the piety of a whole nation”38 and became “the principal architect of the Puritan movement.”39 Robert Hill (ca. 1565–1623), a Puritan who compiled The Contents of Scripture (1596), drew from the biblical expositions of several prominent Reformers, including John Calvin, Franciscus Junius, and Johannes Piscator.40 Martin Luther’s commentary on Galatians was instrumental in John Bunyan’s conversion.41

The Puritans developed their distinctly Reformed (or Calvinistic) theology in large part from Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575), the often-overlooked pioneer of the Swiss Reformed movement whose fifty doctrinal sermons, the Decades, helped shape the classic Reformed understanding of Scripture, faith, the law of God, Christian liberty, providence, predestination, the church, and the sacraments. So influential were Bullinger’s sermons that, in 1586, Archbishop John Whitgift instructed junior clergymen and ministerial candidates in England to study one Bullinger sermon from the Decades every week, to write their reflections on the sermon in a notebook, and to discuss the sermons with a tutor four times per year.42

The Puritans inherited their comprehensive Reformed worldview in large part from another Swiss Reformed theologian — John Calvin (1509–1564), and particularly his groundbreaking Institutes of the Christian Religion. One New England Puritan, John Cotton (1585–1652), so enjoyed reading Calvin that he once wrote, “I love to sweeten my mouth with a piece of Calvin before I go to sleep.”43

During the 1580s, Calvin’s works outsold every other Protestant Reformer combined in the English book market. Between 1564 and 1600, 65 editions of his complete works were available in England.44 It was at this time — the formative years of the fledgling Puritan movement during the second half of the sixteenth century — that members of the first Puritan generation were at the height of their ministries, including Thomas Cartwright, Richard Greenham, William Perkins, Richard Rogers, and William Whitaker. It was also during this time that several prominent Puritans were being educated, including William Ames, Robert Bolton, William Bradshaw, William Gouge, Joseph Hall, Arthur Hildersham, and Henry Smith. Given the scope of Calvin’s influence in Elizabethan England, it is almost certain that most of these early Puritans read his writings in university or during their early pastorates. For Reformed Christians in England (including the Puritans), Calvin’s Institutes soon became “the definitive statement of doctrine.”45

Although the Puritans do not directly quote Calvin as frequently as might be expected,46 his teachings on divine sovereignty, providence, and predestination permeate their works — if only indirectly. In other places, however, Calvin’s influence is more direct. For example, in his Beam of Divine Glory, Edward Pearse mentions John Calvin’s reference to the “firm and stable constancy or immutability” of God’s election in his comments on 2 Timothy 2:19. Pearse then expands on Calvin’s comment: “God will have his own eternal purpose according to his election stand, and stand it shall, and that forever.”47 Like Calvin, Pearse roots election in the immutability of God’s counsel and ultimately of his being. Throughout the treatise, Pearse quotes Calvin directly seven times48 and indirectly three times.49

Source 5: Other Puritans

Every wise theological reader “brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old” (Matthew 13:52). The Puritans were no different. Not only did they draw from the riches of church history in their reading, but they also drew from their contemporaries — fellow Puritans ministering in their own time and place who were producing fresh meditations on Scripture that built upon (and often surpassed) their predecessors in depth, doctrinal rigor, and experiential piety. From their nonconformist brethren, the Puritans learned much about the life of faith, the pursuit of holiness, and the desire to glorify God in every area of life.

As a young married man in his early twenties, for example, John Bunyan (1628–1688) read two books by Puritans — the Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven by Arthur Dent and the Practice of Piety by Lewis Bayly — both of which were instrumental in his conversion.50 William Ames’s library in the Netherlands included titles from Henry Ainsworth, Nicholas Byfield, Thomas Cartwright, Arthur Hildersham, and William Perkins.51

At the Westminster Assembly, the Westminster divines frequently cited Thomas Cartwright (twelve times), John Cotton (eleven times), William Whitaker (eleven times), William Ames (six times), and John Robinson (six times), as well as Henry Ainsworth, Tobias Crisp, and William Perkins (three times each).52 Isaac Ambrose devoured the writings of fellow ministers in the Puritan tradition. For example, in his book on the Christian life entitled Media, he recommends a list of experiential writers that includes Richard Baxter, Robert Bolton, Jeremiah Burroughs, Anthony Burgess, Thomas Goodwin, William Gouge, and Richard Rogers. He also relied heavily on Joseph Hall for his views on Christian meditation.53

In New England, The Marrow of Theology by William Ames became the main theological textbook at Harvard University, nurturing the minds of several generations of Puritan pastors and leaders in the English colonies.54 In the Marrow, Ames famously defines theology in Puritan fashion as “the doctrine or teaching of living to God.”55 In other words, theology should lead to a life lived in the presence of God (coram Deo) that involves not only the assent of the intellect but also the embracing of the will in faith and obedience.

A list of English Puritans appears in Jonathan Edwards’s (1703–1758) book catalog, including Joseph Alleine, Stephen Charnock, John Flavel, Thomas Manton, John Owen, William Perkins, George Swinnock, and Thomas Watson.56 In addition to The Family Expositor by Philip Doddridge (1702–1751), Edwards relied most heavily on Bible commentaries written by two English Puritans — Matthew Poole and Matthew Henry. In fact, he cites Poole’s compilation of commentaries, the Synopsis Criticorum, nearly eight hundred times in his “Blank Bible,” a Bible interleaved with blank pages that he used for extensive note-taking.57

The Puritan Library and You

If the Puritan worldview was like a river, it was fed by many streams of thought that flowed from various sources in church history. But above every stream stood a thundering waterfall: the pure and powerful word of God. For the Puritans, books other than the Bible still mattered — insofar as those books helped them better understand Scripture, were faithful to Scripture, and were interpreted through the lens of Scripture. To extend the metaphor, the water from the mighty cascade of Scripture intermingled with the tributary streams of human reflection but, like Aaron’s rod, swallowed up those streams with irresistible divine authority.

In our theological reading, we often lose sight of one of the most elementary truths of Christian discipleship: Daily communion with Jesus Christ in his word — read, meditated upon, memorized, and prayed over — is the manna of the Christian life. Without it, we will shrivel like withered shrubs instead of flourishing like well-hydrated, blossoming trees (Jeremiah 17:5–8). Scripture is our spiritual oxygen, our spiritual food, and our spiritual water. Our theological reading should never replace our absorption of God’s word. That is a lesson the Puritans grasped well. And their spiritual lives and books blossomed as a result. Who can tell how deep, sweet, and full our walk with God would be if we simply read the Bible, believed its promises, and applied its truths — and did so every day of our lives? Oh, that the Holy Spirit would help us to live word-saturated lives!

With the foundation of daily Bible reading, join the Puritans in building a strong theological library and reading widely, deeply, and consistently. Read the early church fathers for rich Trinitarian soteriology and exalted Christology. Read medieval theologians for scholastic rigor and warm, Christ-centered devotion. Read the Reformers to reflect on justification by faith alone, the covenant of grace, and divine sovereignty in salvation. And read the Puritans for greater depths of experiential communion with Jesus Christ, as well as for the quintessential articulation of doctrine, practice, and piety drawn from the rich streams of church history.

Returning with discretion to many of the same sources that the Puritans used with discretion — always bringing their reading to the touchstone of Scripture (Isaiah 8:20) — can be helpful for us today to buttress our reading of the Puritans themselves. In some ways, to understand the Puritans without having some knowledge of the sources they read, profited from, and built upon is akin to trying to understand the New Testament without deeply plumbing the depths of the Old Testament. Then too, we ourselves should read the Puritans today with the same kind of discernment that we read historical-theological books of all ages — just as we also study more modern writers in our own generation, particularly those who are biblically sound and edifying.

Every library tells a story about what we love, what we value, and what we believe. For the Puritans, their bookshelves testified to their love for the Bible and those who taught it faithfully throughout church history. So, let us close with a question — one that each of us should ask at some point in our lives: If your library could speak, what story would it tell about you?

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