1All books reviewed here are available from the Free Presbyterian Bookroom.
The Fear of God, by John Bunyan, published by the Banner of Truth Trust in their Puritan Paperback series, paperback, 176 pages, £5.00.
This reprint of a less well-known treatise by the famous author of The Pilgrim’s Progress is a welcome addition to the growing Puritan Paperback series. First published in 1679, a year after the author’s more famous work depicting Christian on his journey to the celestial city, Bunyan’s Treatise on the Fear of God shows the way to that same destination in the familiar style of the English Puritans. The subject is dealt with in a comprehensive, biblical and experimental manner with careful analysis and application of numerous Scripture texts which identify the fear of God. This reprint is helpfully divided into six chapters – on the object of our fear, the rule and director of our fear, different sorts of fear, the grace of fear, the privileges of fear, and the practice of godly fear.
Distinctions are useful in matters of spiritual religion where a word can have different meanings. The first three chapters therefore deal with definitions and distinctions. Careful discrimination is made between a fear of God which is produced by some of God’s dispensations, which is an ungodly fear, and the true fear of God, which is a grace in the souls of His children. A necessary and instructive distinction is also made between the grace of godly fear and the spirit of bondage.
Bunyan considers at some length the nature and benefit of the “spirit of bondage” (Rom 8:15) but asserts of it that “there is a fear of God that is godly but for a time” (p 33). This fear is the effect of “awakenings by the word of wrath which begetteth in the soul a sense of its right to eternal damnation”. He seeks to show that, while it is right for the soul before justification and adoption to have such a fear, it does not remain a godly fear after these blessings are bestowed. Indeed, Bunyan argues that the Spirit of God cannot work this “spirit of bondage again to fear” in those who have received the Spirit of adoption (p 37). Some interpreters might not entirely agree with Bunyan at this point, but he gives considerable emphasis to it.
The fourth chapter, covering 30 pages, gives a comprehensive view of the Scripture descriptions of the grace of fear, and details what it flows from and what flows from it. Its source is identified in 11 particulars, including: the grace of God in election, the new heart, the impression of the Word on the heart, faith, repentance, a sense of God’s love, as well as a “due consideration of the judgements of God that are to be executed in the world” (p 70), “a blessed conviction of the all-seeing eye of God” and “a sense of the impartial judgement of God upon men according to their works” (p 72). The inclusion of these as sources of a gracious godly fear is of essential importance in a day when they are almost lost sight of among professing Christians. Under 14 marks of this grace, all carefully drawn from Scripture, Bunyan details what flows from godly fear. These distinguishing marks of grace should be of great use to serious believers in the neglected duty of self-examination.
Among numerous pearls of truth, the following discriminating mark of godly fear is offered: “There flows from this fear of God great reverence of His majesty, in and under the use and enjoyment of God’s holy ordinances (Acts 9:31). . . It is one thing to be conversant in God’s ordinances, and another to be conversant in them with due reverence of the majesty and name of that God whose ordinances they are: it is common for men to do the first, but none can do the last without this fear.”
Written at a time when the Covenanters in Scotland and the Puritans in England suffered greatly for the purity of God’s holy ordinances, these and similar marks of godly fear are greatly needed today as a biblical touchstone of what is true religion. The closing chapters abound with practical advice and uses to be made of the doctrine by believers, as well as comfort for those who do truly fear God. The whole treatise closes with a most solemn word addressed to hypocrites. The cover design of the book has a representation of Bunyan listening to the godly women of Bradford as they speak of matters he discovered himself a stranger to. It would be good if many readers of this excellent book, in whom godly fear is absent or in decline, would be similarly stirred to follow the direction of God’s Word which is expounded in it – “Fear God” (Rev 14:7). (Rev) D Campbell
Hope During Desperate Times, by William Guthrie, published by Reformation Press, paperback, 84 pages, £6.15.
This book consists of three sermons on Hosea 13:9: “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in Me is thine help,” by William Guthrie (1620-65), renowned author of Trial of a Saving Interest in Christ and the Covenanter minister of Fenwick. The book was first published in 1664 and these three sermons were evidently the last he preached.
The circumstances were these: when the Presbyterian Church in Scotland was being persecuted, its ministers banished and imprisoned, and the godly scattered, Archbishop Burnett of Glasgow, who regarded Guthrie as a fomenter of schism in his diocese, decreed that he be suspended from the ministry and expelled from his pulpit on the Lord’s Day, 24 July 1664. On the previous Wednesday, a day of fasting and prayer, Guthrie preached to his flock the first of these three sermons. On the Sabbath, he preached the other two in the early morning, before the officer arrived to execute the prelate’s decree.
In the first sermon, Our self-destruction, which focuses on the words, “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself;” Guthrie uncompromisingly shows that the judgement of God on the Church and the low state in which the spiritual Israel of God were, were all the result of their own sins. The Lord’s people may be brought under divine strokes, he says, in order among other things “that they would blame their own sin as the cause of their own ruin”. He then shows that a right conviction of this fact must be “personal”, “particular”, “pungent” and “permanent”.
As to the sins of the people, he specifies what each class (ministers, elders, deacons, the godly, the gentry, ordinary people) was guilty of – such sins as worldly-mindedness, formality in religious exercises, slothfulness, self-seeking and envying, strife and contention, and so on.
He adds, “No doubt there are many who think there is no wrath on Scotland, and that Israel is in a good case, and has not destroyed himself. But O are you so blind? Are you not convinced that God has profaned [desecrated] the Church and state of Scotland? . . . So I would say to you: do not sit discouraged, but arise and fall to searching and finding out what is your part in this sin that has brought on this wrath.”
It is a hopeful sign of the sorely needed reviving and reforming of the visible Church, when professing Christians acknowledge their own sins as incurring God’s displeasure. As the publisher’s introduction rightly states, “We who are . . . concerned about moral deterioration in society, need to see ourselves as personally implicated”.
In the second sermon, Who is to blame?, Guthrie confirms that the people themselves are to blame for the judgements which have come upon them, but also shows that it most certainly is not God who is to blame, as some thought, for their help had been in Him in the past. God thus vindicates Himself for the glory of His justice and grace, that “He may all the more effectively bind on His people their own sin by which they have destroyed themselves”. However, the preacher also encourages the people by observing that God can help and will help. “Let us never be discouraged or lose heart,” he urges, “for if the heart be gone, all is gone.”
In his third sermon, Where can we find help?, Guthrie develops the fact that God can help and will help. Low as the Church is, he says, it has several grounds to hope for God’s help, not least the covenant of grace. He then lists the conditions required in a church which may warrant it to expect help from God, among them intercession.
“There must be intercessors,” he insists. “Many a savoury prayer has been put up, and many a tear shed within these four years [that is, since the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, after which persecution of the Covenanters began]. The people of God have been filling God’s bottle with their tears and we hope it shall be full before long. Everyone of His people should be helping to fill it. It is a strange thing that, though there are so many godly folk, between us we cannot get God’s bottle filled up. But when it is full, they will make the wheel of providence go round, to the confusion of His enemies and the redemption of His people.”
Considering we live in “desperate times” in which there is clear evidence that God is “justly displeased” with us nationally, this is a timely book which calls us to “search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord . . . till the Lord look down, and behold from heaven”. We heartily recommend it.
(Rev) N M Ross
Searched and Known, by Rev Donald MacLean, published by Reformation Press, paperback, 65 pages, £5.40.
This book consists of three sermons preached on Psalm 139:1 by Rev Donald MacLean during his time as Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland minister in Glasgow. Apart from a few introductory comments in the first, the emphasis of the sermons is not exegetical. Rather, what we have here is an explanation of the duty of self-examination in light of the Larger Catechism answer to the question, “How are they that receive the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper to prepare themselves before they come unto it?”
In emphasising this duty, Mr MacLean does not fail to direct the hearer to the divine assistance so necessary in it. He says, “We cannot discern the work of grace in our souls unless the Lord enables us to discern it. As we cannot appreciate the work of Christ, which He finished on the cross of Calvary, unless we are spiritually enlightened, so we cannot understand the work of the Spirit of God in our souls unless we are spiritually enlightened.”
There is, throughout the sermons, a most satisfactory combination of rich theology and experimental insight. His treatment of union with Christ is masterly, and there are crystal-clear descriptions of what the gospel call is and is not. On this latter topic he points out that “the gospel does not call a sinner to believe that Christ died for him. That’s very important. If you were called to believe that Christ died for you, that would mean that you were called to believe you are saved, which is in fact assurance and not faith.” Again, “Therefore, the Christ I must look to is the Christ who died for sinners. The Christ I look to is the Christ of whom the Father said, ‘Whosoever believeth in Him [shall] not perish, but have everlasting life’.”
For those who would write hard things against themselves due to their sense of sin, there is comfort if such are looking to Christ. To such Mr MacLean has this to say, “In these sins and wants, in the consciousness that they have of coming short with every breath they draw, the consciousness that they have of wants that are many – their wants of holiness, their wants of thirst, their wants of hunger in a spiritual sense, their blindness, their deadness, their coldness, their barrenness, all that gives them grief and sorrow in this world – in the midst of all this, their disposition and the inclination and exercise of their heart and mind is to look to Christ”.
The back cover of the book is perhaps too dogmatic when it states that the book “will lead readers to a better understanding of themselves and their growth in grace”. This seems to miss out the constant need for the divine blessing on all means used. Another, very minor, criticism is the choice not to render “it’s” as “it is” throughout, which jars a little on the written page. This short book is well worth reading and the sermons are of such high quality that they, to the reviewer’s mind at least, compare favourably with those of the greats of the Scottish pulpit in any age of the church’s history.
(Rev) I D MacDonald