Acts 11:26; 1 Corinthians 4:12,13
And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.
Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it: Being defamed, we intreat: we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day.
JOHN NEWTON (1725-1807): In almost every age and country where Christianity has been professed, some hard name or term of reproach has been imposed upon those who ventured to maintain a more evangelical strain of doctrine, or a stricter course of conduct, than was agreeable to the spirit of the times in which they lived. Even the Christian name, honourable as we may now think it, was used by the heathens, when it first obtained, as a stigma, a term of the utmost contempt and hatred; Christians were, by common consent, reputed the off-scouring, and filth of all things…Men of the same spirit were afterwards branded in Protestant nations with the terms Pietist and Puritan.
JOHN TRAPP (1601-1699): He that was the old English Puritan was cried out upon as the worst of men.
J. C. RYLE (1816-1900): There are more baseless and false ideas current about them than about any class of men in British history. The impressions of most people are so ridiculously incorrect, that one could laugh if the subject were not so serious. To hear them talk about Puritans is simply ludicrous. They make assertions which prove either that they know nothing at all of what they are talking about, or that they have forgotten the ninth commandment, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.”
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): The name “Puritan” was the lowest of all. It was the symbol which was always employed by the drunkard and swearer to express a godly man.
ALEXANDER MacLAREN (1826-1910): Ignorant people use it as a scoff. It should be a crown of glory.
J. C. RYLE: The Puritans, as a body, have done more to elevate the national character than any class of Englishmen that ever lived. Ardent lovers of civil liberty, and ready to die in its defence—mighty at the council board, and no less mighty in the battlefield—feared abroad throughout Europe, and invincible at home while united, great with their pens, and no less great with their swords—fearing God very much, and fearing man very little—they were a generation of men who have never received from their country the honour that they deserve.
JOHN ANGELL JAMES (1785-1869): The gigantic Republic of the United States of America is in a great measure the result of their migration.
C. H. SPURGEON: What would the United States have been, at this moment, if it had not been for “the men of the Mayflower” in the olden times, and the many pilgrim fathers and pilgrim sons and daughters who have since gone across the Atlantic to be as salt in that part of the earth?
J. C. RYLE: That they were not perfect and faultless, I freely admit. They said, did, and wrote many things which cannot be commended. Some of them, no doubt, were violent, fierce, narrow-minded sectarians; some were half-crazy fanatics―Yet, even then, great allowance ought to be made for the trying circumstances in which they were often placed, and the incessant, irritating persecution to which they were exposed…With all their faults, the leaders of the party were great and good men. With all their defects, the Puritans, as a body, were not the men that some authors and writers in the present day are fond of representing them to have been.
C. H. SPURGEON: Our Puritan forefathers were strong men, because they lived on the Scriptures…Their leader Oliver Cromwell could hardly be called a fool, even by those who stigmatized him as a “tyrant.” Cromwell, and all that were with him, were not all weak-minded persons—surely?
A. W. PINK (1886-1952): Such men as Goodwin, Owen, Charnock, Flavel, Sibbes, though living in troublous times and suffering fierce persecution, taught the Word more helpfully―in our judgment―and were more used of God than any since the days of the apostles to the present hour. The ministry of the Puritans was an exceedingly searching one.
HORATIUS BONAR (1808-1889): They were men whose doctrines were of the most decided kind, both as respects law and gospel. There is a breadth and power about their preaching—a glow and energy about their words and thoughts, that makes us feel that they were men of might. Their trumpet gave no feeble nor uncertain sound, either to saint or sinner, either to the church or the world. They lifted up their voices, and spared not. There was no flinching, no flattering, or prophesying of smooth things. Their preaching seems to have been of the most masculine and fearless kind, falling on the audience with tremendous power. It was not vehement, it was not fierce, it was not noisy; it was far too solemn to be such; it was massive, weighty, cutting, and piercing―sharper than a two-edged sword.
ALEXANDER MacLAREN: Nowadays, people make cheap reputations for advanced thought by depreciating their theology.
C. H. SPURGEON: Nothing is so obnoxious 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.”―Ah, how many have there been who have said, “The old Puritan principles are too rough for these times, we’ll tone them down a little.”―The same men who reject the old-fashioned doctrines also rebel against the old-fashioned style of living; loose living generally goes with loose doctrine. There never was an age in which the doctrines of grace were despised but, sooner or later, licentiousness prevailed. On the other hand, when we had Puritan teaching, we had also pure and holy living.
J. C. RYLE: Their commentaries, their expositions, their treatises on practical, casuistical, and experimental divinity, are immeasurably superior to those of their adversaries in the seventeenth century. In short, those who hold up the Puritans to scorn as shallow, illiterate men, are only exposing their own lamentable shallowness, their own ignorance of historical facts, and the extremely superficial character of their own reading. The Puritans were not unlearned and ignorant men. The great majority of them were Oxford and Cambridge graduates―many of them fellows of colleges, and some of them heads or principals of the best colleges in the two Universities. In knowledge of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, in power as preachers, expositors, writers, and critics, the Puritans in their day were second to none. Unhappily, when they passed away, they were followed by a generation of profligates, triflers, and skeptics; and their reputation has suffered accordingly in passing through prejudiced hands―but, “judged with righteous judgment,” they will be found men of whom the world was not worthy. The more they are really known, the more they will be esteemed.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES (1899-1981): If you wish to know what Puritanism really is, don’t read large volumes on the subject by men who may be scholars, but never were Puritans―but rather, read the life-stories of Puritans.
J. C. RYLE: Milton, Selden, Blake, Cromwell, Owen, Baxter, and Charnock were men of which no well-informed Englishman ought ever to speak with disrespect. He may dislike their principles, if he will, but he has no right to despise them. Lord Macaulay, no mean authority in matters of English history, might well say, in his famous essay on John Milton, “we do not hesitate to pronounce the Puritans a brave, a wise and honest, and a useful body.”
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): We have reason to thank God for them all.
