A splendid introduction

If friends or pastors are exhorting you to read the Puritans, read Following God Fully: An Introduction to the Puritans first.

For fans already immersed in the Puritan story, the book offers an excellent overview of the forest, not just the trees.

The Puritans have made several comebacks since the 17th century when they were so influential in England and New England. George Whitefield benefited from the commentaries of Puritan Matthew Henry as he prepared to lead the Great Awakening in the 18th ­century. Anglican Bishop J.C. Ryle led a renewed Puritan interest in England in the late 19th century. After World War II Martyn Lloyd-Jones made the Puritans popular again, teaming with Iain Murray and J.I. Packer. Between those revivals Puritans tended to be dismissed as cranks, then forgotten.

In more recent years Joel R. Beeke has maintained this Puritan interest and teams up here with English theologian Michael Reeves to summarize Puritan biographies and commentaries.

The authors cram a lot into 151 pages, including two-page biographies of nine Puritans, but Following God Fully (​​Reformation Heritage Books, 2022) is quite readable. (Readers can turn to Meet the Puritans, by Beeke and Randall Peterson, for many more Puritan biographies.)

The book starts with the significance of the Puritans, and how the Puritans dealt with classic or permanent questions. The authors follow a systematic theology outline of topics of Puritan thinking, concluding with Christian living. Recent authors have reemphasized how we should look to Christ for identity and significance and that we won’t satisfy those longings in our performance. Beeke and Reeves show how Puritan Richard Sibbes answered that question: through union with Christ and imputation of His righteousness.

An oversight in the book is the lack of mention of Martyn Lloyd-Jones and his leadership in the revival of interest in Puritans after World War II, through Puritan conferences he organized with J.I. Packer.

Yet the result is still a splendid brief introduction to an impor­tant era in church history.