Judges 5:14
And out of Zebulun they that handle the pen of the writer.
J. C. RYLE (1816-1900): Let me clear the way by considering an objection which is frequently brought against Manton. That objection is that he was “a Puritan.”
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): Nothing is so obnoxious to these creatures as that which has the smell of Puritanism upon it. Every little man’s nose goes up celestially at the very sound of the word “Puritan.”
J. C. RYLE: But what of it, if he was a Puritan? It does not prove that he was not a valuable theologian, an admirable writer, and an excellent man.
C. H. SPURGEON: Manton needs no praise from us―Manton’s work is most commendable.
J. C. RYLE: What are Manton’s special merits? What claims has a man of the seventeenth century on our attention? What good thing is there about him that we should buy him and read him?
STEPHEN CHARNOCK (1628-1680): Manton was the best collector of sense of the Puritan age.
JOHN COLLINGES (1623-1690): In all his writings one finds a quick and fertile invention, governed with a solid judgment; and the issue of both expressed in a grave and decent style. He had a heart full of love and zeal for God and His glory; and out of the abundance of his heart his mouth continually spake.
J. C. RYLE: As a writer, I consider that Manton holds a somewhat peculiar place among the Puritan divines. He has pre-eminently a style of his own, and a style very unlike that of most of his school. I will try to explain what I mean. I do not regard him as a writer of such genial imagination, and such talent for illustration and similitude, as several divines of his day. In this respect he is not to be compared with Brooks, and Watson, and Swinnock, and Adams. Talent of this sort was certainly not in Manton’s line. I do not regard him as a writer of striking power and brilliancy―he never carries you by storm, and excites enthusiasm by passages of profound thought expressed in majestic language, such as you will find frequently in Charnock. He never rouses your inmost feelings, thrills your conscience, or stirs your heart of hearts, like Baxter. Such rhetoric as this was not Manton’s gift, and the reader who expects to find it in his writings will be disappointed.
C. H. SPURGEON: Whatever he does is done in a style worthy of a chief among theologians.
J. C. RYLE: As a theologian, I regard Manton as a divine of singularly well-balanced, well-proportioned, and scriptural views. He lived in a day when vague, indistinct, and indefinite statements of doctrine were not tolerated. The Christian Church was not regarded by any school as a kind of Pantheon, in which a man might believe and teach anything, everything, or nothing, so long as he was a clever and earnest man. Such views were reserved for our modern times. In the seventeenth century they were scorned and repudiated by every Church and sect in Christendom―earnestness alone was not thought sufficient to make a creed. Did the famous Westminster Assembly want a commendatory preface written to their Confession and Catechisms of world-wide reputation? They committed the execution of it to the pen of Thomas Manton.
THOMAS JACOMB (1622-1687): Manton did not so much concern himself in what is polemical and controversial; but chose rather, in a plain way, as best suiting with sermon-work, to assert and prove the truth by scripture testimony and argument.
J. C. RYLE: As an expositor of Scripture, I regard Manton with unmingled admiration. Manton’s chief excellence as a writer, in my judgment, consists in the ease, perspicuousness, and clearness of his style. He sees his subject clearly, expresses himself clearly, and seldom fails in making you see clearly what he means. He has a happy faculty of simplifying the point he handles. He never worries you with acres of long, ponderous, involved sentences, like Goodwin or Owen. His books, if not striking, are generally easy and pleasant reading, and destitute of anything harsh, cramped, obscure, and requiring a second glance to be understood. For my own part, I find it easier to read fifty pages of Manton’s than ten of some of his brethren’s; and after reading, I feel that I carry more away. Let no one, moreover, suppose that because Manton’s style is easy, his writings show any lack of matter and thought. Nothing of the kind. The fertility of his mind seems to have been truly astonishing. Every page in his books contains many ideas, and gives you plenty to think about. No one, perhaps, but himself could have written such an immense book as he wrote on the 119th Psalm, and yet repeated himself so little, and preserved a freshness of tone to the end.
C. H. SPURGEON: One hundred and ninety sermons on the 119th Psalm. The work is long, but that results only from the abundance of matter.
VINCENT ALSOP (1630-1703): The matter of them is spiritual, and speaks the author one intimately acquainted with the secrets of wisdom. He writes like one who knew the psalmist’s heart, and felt in his own soul the sanctifying power of what he wrote. Their design is practical, beginning with the understanding, dealing with the affections, but still driving on the design of practical holiness.
WILLIAM BATES (1625-1699): I cannot but admire the fertility and variety of his thoughts; though the same things occur in the verses of this Psalm, yet, by a judicious observing the different arguments and motives whereby the psalmist enforces the same request, or some other circumstance, every sermon contains new conceptions, and proper to the text.
J. C. RYLE: This witness is true. If Manton never soars so high as some writers, he is, at any rate, never trifling, never shallow, never wearisome, and never dull…Manton’s writings, with few exceptions, were originally published under very great disadvantages. Most of them never saw the light till after his death, and were printed without receiving the author’s last touches and corrections.
WILLIAM HARRIS (1675-1740): Whosoever shall consider the constant frequency of his preaching, and the affairs of business in which he was often engaged, will easily be able to make a judgment of his great abilities and vast application, and to make the requisite allowances for posthumous works; especially when Manton tells us that he was “humbled with the constant burden of four times a week preaching.”
JOHN COLLINGES: So frequent, and yet so learned and solid preaching by the same person was little less than miraculous.
J. C. RYLE: I am sure that Manton was one of the best authors of his day―one who was eminently a “good man and full of the Holy Ghost.”
