John Bunyan

John Bunyan (1628–1688), the Bedford tinker and preacher, wrote from prison the most beloved allegories in the English language.

Author index: John Bunyan

• Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners — His spiritual autobiography of conviction and conversion. (6 notes)
• The Holy War — The allegory of the town of Mansoul, besieged and reclaimed by Emmanuel. (21 notes)
• The Pilgrim’s Progress — The immortal allegory of the Christian’s journey to the Celestial City. (21 notes)

Thomas Watson

Thomas Watson (c. 1620–1686), preacher at St Stephen’s Walbrook, is prized for his warm, quotable, and practical divinity.

Author index: Thomas Watson

• A Body of Divinity — Sermons on the Westminster Shorter Catechism. (44 notes)
• A Divine Cordial — An exposition of Romans 8:28 — all things work together for good. (11 notes)
• The Art of Divine Contentment — An exposition of Philippians 4:11 on Christian contentment. (15 notes)
• The Doctrine of Repentance — Repentance taken apart into its six ingredients, and then pressed home. (17 notes)
• The Godly Man’s Picture — Twenty-four characteristical signs of a man that shall go to heaven. (36 notes)
• The Mischief of Sin — On Psalm 106:43: how sin brings a person, and a nation, low. (1 note)

Richard Baxter

Richard Baxter (1615–1691), pastor of Kidderminster, was one of the most influential and prolific of the Puritan pastors.

Author index: Richard Baxter

• A Call to the Unconverted — An earnest evangelistic appeal to turn and live. (6 notes)
• The Reformed Pastor — His searching call to faithful, personal pastoral ministry. (19 notes)
• The Saints’ Everlasting Rest — A classic meditation on the believer’s heavenly rest. (19 notes)

Henry Scougal

Henry Scougal (1650–1678), professor at Aberdeen, left one small classic that helped kindle the Evangelical revival.

Author index: Henry Scougal

• The Life of God in the Soul of Man — On true religion as the life of God in the soul. (3 notes)

John Flavel

John Flavel (1627–1691), minister of Dartmouth, was a tender and experimental Puritan preacher and writer.

Author index: John Flavel

• Keeping the Heart — On the great work of keeping the heart in every condition of life. (25 notes)
• The Mystery of Providence — What providence has performed for the saints, and what it asks of them in return. (25 notes)

William Gurnall

William Gurnall (1616–1679), rector of Lavenham in Suffolk, is remembered for one immense and richly practical work on spiritual warfare.

Author index: William Gurnall

• The Christian in Complete Armour — A vast exposition of Ephesians 6:10-20 on the Christian’s spiritual warfare. (18 notes)

Stephen Charnock

Stephen Charnock (1628–1680), Presbyterian divine of London, is chiefly remembered for his profound discourses on the being and attributes of God.

Author index: Stephen Charnock

• The Existence and Attributes of God — Fourteen discourses on the being and attributes of God. (16 notes)

William Perkins

William Perkins (1558–1602), fellow of Christ’s College and lecturer at Great St Andrew’s in Cambridge, is the father of the English Puritan tradition — the elder to whom nearly everyone else in this section owes a method.

Author index: William Perkins

• The Art of Prophesying — The first Protestant manual of preaching in English: read the text, give the sense, gather the doctrine, apply it to the seven kinds of hearer. (14 notes)

Richard Sibbes

Richard Sibbes (1577–1635), preacher at Gray’s Inn and master of St Catharine’s Hall, Cambridge, was called “the sweet dropper” for the tenderness of his preaching. The Bruised Reed was the book that turned Richard Baxter.

Author index: Richard Sibbes

• The Bruised Reed and Smoking Flax — On Matthew 12:20: that Christ deals gently with weak and failing faith. (28 notes)

Jeremiah Burroughs

Jeremiah Burroughs (1599–1646), preacher at Stepney and Cripplegate and one of the five Dissenting Brethren of the Westminster Assembly, pressed the sweetest subjects in the plainest words.

Author index: Jeremiah Burroughs

• The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment — Eleven sermons on Philippians 4:11, and the classic Puritan treatment of contentment. (13 notes)
• A Treatise of Earthly-Mindedness — On Philippians 3:19: what it is to mind earthly things, and how the heart is got free. (8 notes)
• An Heavenly Conversation — Its companion, on Philippians 3:20: the saints as citizens of heaven. (22 notes)
• Of Walking with God — On Genesis 5:24, printed with the two treatises above. (9 notes)

Thomas Brooks

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680), of St Margaret’s, Fish Street Hill, stayed in London through the plague and the Fire after his ejection. He writes in short, hammered sentences and piles image on image.

Author index: Thomas Brooks

• Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices — Satan’s devices named one at a time, with the remedy against each. (37 notes)

Joseph Alleine

Joseph Alleine (1634–1668), ejected from Taunton and imprisoned for going on preaching, died at thirty-four and left one book, which sold in numbers no other Puritan work matched.

Author index: Joseph Alleine

• An Alarm to the Unconverted — What conversion is not, what it is, and why it cannot be put off. (9 notes)

Anthony Burgess

Anthony Burgess (d. 1664), vicar of Sutton Coldfield, sat in the Westminster Assembly and preached to it. He wrote at length and against everybody, but always to a pastoral end.

Author index: Anthony Burgess

• Spiritual Refining — A treatise of grace and assurance in a hundred and twenty sermons: the true signs of grace, the false ones, and grace under every name Scripture gives it. (121 notes)
• Vindiciae Legis — Twenty-nine lectures vindicating the moral law and the covenants against the Antinomians. (32 notes)

William Ames

William Ames (1576–1633) was Perkins’ pupil, driven out of England for nonconformity, and professor of theology at Franeker. His Medulla was the textbook of New England divinity for a century.

Author index: William Ames

• The Marrow of Sacred Divinity — His systematic theology in two books, faith and observance; the 1642 English translation of the Medulla Theologiae. (63 notes)

Westminster Assembly

The Westminster Assembly of Divines (1643–1649) produced the confession and catechisms that became the doctrinal standards of Presbyterian and Reformed churches throughout the English-speaking world.

Author index: Westminster Assembly

• The Westminster Confession of Faith — The confession of the Westminster Assembly (1646), the classic Reformed standard. (33 notes)
• The Westminster Shorter Catechism — The Assembly’s catechism of the faith in question and answer. (1 notes)

Savoy Assembly

The Savoy Assembly of Congregational divines — led by John Owen and Thomas Goodwin — met in 1658 to adapt the Westminster Confession for the Congregational churches.

Author index: Savoy Assembly

• The Savoy Declaration — The Congregational adaptation of the Westminster Confession (1658). (2 notes)

Francis Turretin

Francis Turretin (1623–1687), professor at Geneva for thirty-four years, was the last great systematiser of Reformed orthodoxy, and the theologian the English Puritans’ heirs read. He is not an English Puritan; he is kept here with them.

Author index: Francis Turretin

• The Atonement of Christ — Locus XIV of the Institutio, on the satisfaction of Christ, in James R. Willson’s translation. (8 notes)

Wilhelmus à Brakel

Wilhelmus à Brakel (1635–1711), minister of Rotterdam and “Father Brakel” to the Dutch Reformed, was the great popular divine of the Dutch Second Reformation — the Netherlands’ own Puritanism, whose English authors he read and translated. His Christian’s Reasonable Service (1700) goes through the whole of Reformed doctrine and ends every chapter in its practice. He is not an English Puritan; he is kept here with them.

Author index: Wilhelmus à Brakel

• The Christian’s Reasonable Service — The complete four volumes of Bartel Elshout’s translation: doctrine of God, man, Christ, the church, salvation and the last things, the Ten Commandments, the Christian graces, the Lord’s Prayer, and the appendix on the covenant of grace in both Testaments. (115 notes)