GODLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE

As I thought about the message with which I must leave you, the address which Gisbertus Voetius gave in 1634 when he assumed his professorship in theology at the Illustere School of Utrecht came to my mind. This school was a sort of intermediate between a high school and a university. Two years later the Illustere School became an academy, and it has remained such to the present.

Voetius was the pastor in Heusden and was then about 40 years old. He filled his position in Utrecht with brilliance until his 87th year. When he assumed this post, he gave an address on the theme “Godliness must be joined to knowledge.” There were thus two words: godliness and knowledge.

Permit me to begin with the latter, with knowledge. What value our forefathers have attached to knowledge. Take Calvin for example. What concern he had to establish his academy in Geneva in 1559. He wrote to the congregations spread throughout Europe: Just send me wood and I hope, with God’s help, to make arrows from it. And what arrows have come from Geneva, from Calvin’s academy! Think only of Guido de Bres.

What men have graduated from this academy, men who formed the backbone of the reformed congregations, the young churches of the Reformation.

If you would read the speech of Voetius, you would be deeply impressed by the outstanding learning of this man. He was educated in Leiden by Franciscus Gomaras, the great opponent of the Arminians, and this lecture is a witness of his development. Our forefathers also attached great value to it.

In our time you often meet people who make a contradiction between these two things, between godliness and knowledge. It must not be in the head but rather in the heart. Voetius, however, placed emphasis on the fact that it must be in the head and in the heart. The fear of God must pervade our entire existence.

There can indeed be a conflict between godliness and knowledge. I too was once afraid the people would graduate from this course who are wise in their own eyes. The greatest danger is, I think, that a spirit should arise in our churches of learning without piety. Then we would alienate ourselves from the humble people of God. That is the great danger which threatens us, knowledge without godliness.

On the other hand, it may not be a contradiction. Godliness must be joined to knowledge. This is what Voetius titled his address. It will be profitable if we can receive such people in our congregations, people who would be enabled to combine godliness with knowledge, wisdom with an everlasting inheritance.

Godliness. What is that? Voetius did not call his address “Faith and Knowledge,” but rather “Godliness and Knowledge.” Godliness was the heart of the Later Reformation.

I believe that William Teelinck was one of the men who gave the word godliness• its great power. In his youth, Teelinck studied law in England. There he came into contact with the English Puritans and the piety of these Puritans made a deep, permanent impression on his young heart. The manner in which they kept the Sabbath was not legalistic, but rather a genuine evangelical sanctification which impressed him, as did the manner in which the fear of God permeated the lives of the Puritans in all their relationships. The family life and the family worship which he encountered there also impressed him. The English Puritans used the word godliness for this life with the Lord, for this pious life. It was a word which the Apostle Paul also used often in his Pastoral Epistles.

When Teelinck returned to the Netherlands, he tried to bring the spirit of the Puritans into the Dutch churches.

The movement known as the Later Reformation arose. This Later Reformation did not have in view a reformation of doctrine, but rather had as its aim that the teaching of the Reformation would permeate the lives of the authorities and people, of young and old, of nobility and servants; that the entire life of the people would be brought under the discipline and rule of God’s Word. This was the aim of the Later Reformation.

We must never forget that the strength of the Later Reformation lay in that it called the entire nation back to the observance of God’s commands and pointed out that reformation of the understanding and of doctrine is not sufficient, but that the teaching of the Reformation must be experienced practically in the heart, must be known experimentally and practically.

This is now godliness. This Voetius meant by godliness — an inward experiential knowledge of the doctrine of the Reformation.

And, my friends, has this not been the strength of our churches? For this reason I so cordially love the Netherlands Reformed Congregations, because they have followed in the path of the Later Reformation, and certainly also of the Reformation.

Calvin’s Institutes is a work which we must still value. I am sometimes afraid that Calvin is a bit suspect among us because some of our opponents, those who are so critical of our preaching, so often appeal to Calvin. But, if you know the real Calvin, then I believe that he stands very close to us. It is for this reason that God’s humble children love Calvin so. He may not be suspect amongst us.

I have known humble farm people who read Calvin’s Institutes five times. Can you say that too? I can’t. They had read the Institutes five times. They were rooted in it, and thus in both the Reformation and the Later Reformation.

This is the life of our Netherlands Reformed Congregations. That was the preaching of Rev. Kersten. He said once “I have milled Comrie.” He was grounded in the preaching of the Latter Reformation. Godliness has been the flavor of our churches. If we lose this, we will be left with nothing but the dead form.

And knowledge? In his writings, Rev. Kersten encouraged our young people to pursue teacher training. Sometimes he would report from week to week in the Saambinder that he has his diploma and she has her diploma. Young people, study, study, study! Rev. Kersten was no man who said “If it only is in the head, it need not be in the heart.” No, but he followed in the steps of Voetius. Godliness and knowledge must be joined for the welfare of our congregations.

Therefore, knowledge. When I had read the address of Voetius this week, I said “How far behind we are! How far behind these people we are! “ Not only behind their godliness, behind their practical fear of God, but how far behind their knowledge we are. How very necessary it is to study. May you also be enabled to join godliness and knowledge in your personal lives.

I have catechism students who can read Hebrew better than I can. Into such times we are coming. Our young people are advancing and we, often as people of the other generation, must take care that we can continue to provide them with guidance. May these two subjects — godliness joined to knowledge — be indispensable to you, and may they continue to form the backbone of our congregations.

We must fear knowledge without piety, for this destroys the church. You can see in other churches, which previously were closer to us, what knowledge without piety leads to. The congregations are crushed and destroyed by the theologians.

On the other hand, the fear of God without knowledge can give no answer to the many questions which our children have, and with which they turn to us. Therefore, the fear of the Lord is the begining of wisdom and of knowledge.

Then it may be a critical time, but I think then of the fifth vision of Zechariah. Zechariah was sitting in sackcloth and ashes, for the future of the church looked gloomy. The temple must be rebuilt, and the foundation had already been laid. But, because of the agitation of the Samaritans the work had stood still for 16 years.

Deep despondency had the upperhand among the people. How must they go on now? Then the Lord instructed the prophet through a dream. As that man sat down in despair, not knowing how things must go with the church, he saw two olive branches. These branches bent toward the earth and from them ran golden olive oil. The oil ran into a bowl. The bowl had 49 pipes which ran down and emptied into a candlestick, all of gold, with seven lamps. This candlestick was burning.

What is the oil a figure of? The oil is a figure of the work of the Holy Spirit.

And what is the candlestick a figure of? It is a figure of the church of God.

Then the Lord allowed His servant to see that the oil ran in the bowl and out of that into the pipes, the 49 pipes. And the oil ran in the candlestick.

No man is able to do this. God preserves His church. Then the Lord asked “Knowest thou not what these be?” Zechariah had to answer “No Lord, I don’t know.” The Lord then said, as an explanation, “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.”

That, my friends, is the word of comfort that we may have from God’s Word, that He cares for His church.

It is necessary for you and for me that the golden oil of God’s dear spirit runs in our candlestick and comes into our lamps, for this is godliness. A candlestick without oil is knowledge without godliness. But the wise virgins may have had this oil in their lamps. “Godliness joined to knowledge.”

SINCERE THANKS

Dear relatives, friends, and acquaintances:

It is impossible for us to say good-bye personally to all we met, so in this way we wish to heartily thank everyone for all the hospitality so liberally shown us.

We feel unable to return all the kindnesses you have done for us. The Lord reward you, our hearty greetings, and the Lord’s blessings.

Mr. and Mrs. A. Verhey

Mr. and Mrs. P. Verhey

September 20,1979

THE PURITANS

Thomas Goodwin (1600-1679)

Thomas Goodwin was born at Rollesby, near Yarmouth in Norfolk on the 5th of October, 1600. Queen Elizabeth was still on the throne of England, the last of the Tudor Monarchs. She was to be succeeded by the time Goodwin was three by the first of the Stuarts, James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England. Goodwin was thus born in this momentous century, which was to witness the Civil Wars, and the rapid development of Puritanism in this country. Little is known about his early life. From his own writings we learn that as a child he suffered ill-health. His parents brought him up from an early age with a knowledge of the Bible, though it does not appear that they belonged to the Puritan party. When quite young, about the age of seven, he mentions times when he wept over his sins. His parents obtained for him a good education; he entered Christ’s College, Cambridge at the age of thirteen and was about the youngest in the University at the time. Cambridge in 1613 was said to be “a nest of Puritans”, and Goodwin says, “The whole town was filled with the discourse of the power of Mr. Perkins’ ministry”. Perkins was a Fellow of Christ’s College, was Vicar of St. Andrew’s Church, and his ministry was made a great blessing to numberless students, though he died at the early age of forty-four. While at College, at the age of fourteen, Goodwin began to attend the Communion Service, hoping that it might prove a strength to prevent him falling away from God. But when he was about to go a second time, his tutor stopped him on the grounds that he was too young. This he felt to be a great humiliation, and caused him to become indifferent to religion. He gave up going to hear Richard Sibbs preach, and made the comment, “They talk of their powerful Puritan preachers, and of Mr. Rogers of Dedham, and such others, but I would gladly see the man who could trouble my conscience”. During his remaining six years at Cambridge, he seems to have continued very much in this same state of mind. His main ambition was to become a great popular preacher, and while his proud spirit would not allow him to become a Puritan preacher, his secret conviction was that the Puritans were doing God’s work. While at College, he went on one occasion to Dedham in Essex to hear the great Puritan, Mr. Rogers, preach. The subject was the Scriptues, and the minister expostulated with his hearers over their neglect of the Bible. The Holy Spirit so blessed this discourse to many of the hearers that they broke out into unconcealed weeping, and Goodwin says, that before he left Dedham, he wept for a quarter of an hour on the neck of his horse before he had power to mount. Goodwin took his Degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1619, and then left Christ’s College for Catherine Hall. Here at the age of twenty, he took his M.A. and was chosen a Fellow and lecturer at this college.

The year 1620 was to him the most memorable of his life. Soon after being elected Fellow of Catherine Hall, on the 2nd October, while passing St. Edmund’s Church, on his way to a party at his old College, he heard a funeral bell tolling, and was persuaded by a friend to stop and hear the funeral sermon. Having taken his seat among several scholars, he felt a great unwillingness to remain, but was ashamed to get up and leave. The text of the sermon was Luke 19 verses 41 and 42. As the minister spoke of the importance of seeking God, while it was called today, a great impression was made on Goodwin. Instead of going to the party at Christ’s College, he returned to his own room in Catherine Hall, refusing to spend the evening with his friends. There alone, he felt struck down by a mighty power. The hand of God took hold of him, and his sins were brought to his remembrance. This was the beginning of nearly seven years of conviction. In it he was turned from his ambition to be a great preacher with great gifts of oratory, to now openly join with the Puritan party in the University, and to enter into correspondence with some of the godly Puritan ininisters, one of whom, Mr. Price of King’s Lynn, was the means of bringing him, in the Lord’s hands, to a knowledge of forgiveness. In 1625, he was licenced as a preacher in the University, and was appointed lecturer of Trinity Church. He obtained his Degree of Batchelor of Divinity in 1630, and was appointed Vicar of Trinity in 1632.

These were the years in which the High Anglican, Archbishop Laud, governed the Church of England, and persecuted men of evangelical belief. Working with Charles I, Laud was trying to introduce High Church practices into the Church of England, and had asked his Bishops to keep a strict eye on the clergy, and report to him any whose beliefs were evangelical. The Bishop of Ely, Bishop White, was one of the most zealous supporters of the Archbishop. As Goodwin felt constrained to preach the truth out of a felt acquaintance with it in his own heart, he found himself constantly interfered with by the Bishop of Ely, and growing dissatisfied with the restrictions imposed upon preaching the truth, which he had found to be the life of his own soul, he resigned the living of Trinity Church in 1633, and his lectureship there in 1634, as well as his fellowship at Catherine Hall, and finally left Cambridge. Little is known about him during the next five years, except that in 1638, he was married to Elizabeth Prescot, a daughter of one of the Alderman of London. It is probable that in this period, he was in London, preaching among congregations of Separatists (people who found they could not worship in the Church of England), and frequently incurring the risk of fines and imprisonment. Many persecuted men had already fled to Europe and some to America. It was only a few years before in 1620 that the Pilgrim Fathers had crossed the Atlantic. They had come from a persecuted group of Puritans, who had gathered together at Leyden in Holland under the ministry of John Robinson. Sometime about 1638, Goodwin himself left this country to seek freedom in Holland. At first he settled in Amsterdam with other English refugees, such as Nye, Burroughs, Bridge and Sympson, who later worked with him in the famous Westminster Assembly of Divines in the years 1643-4. Eventually he left Amsterdam, and went to Arnheim (the scene of the famous battle of the Second World War), where he ministered with Philip Nye to an English congregation of about one hundred. Here in Holland these men excluded by persecution from the Anglican Church, said: “We had nothing else to do but simply and singly to consider how to worship God acceptably, and most according to His word”. They were led to see that there was no need of an organisation of Bishops, and Archbishops, but that Scripture pointed to independent congregations.

While he was abroad, Archbishop Laud so suppressed civil and religious liberty in England that he roused the whole nation against himself and the King, and forced Parliament to act in defence of national liberties. Laud was eventually arrested by Parliament, while those who had fled abroad were invited to return home. Goodwin came back to London, where he gathered an Independent Church in a meeting house near Thames Street in the Parish of St. Dunstan’s-in-the-east, London. Here he was pastor for ten years, that is through the whole time of the Civil War, until in 1650, he was selected as President of Magdalene College, Oxford. In this pastorate, he became an eminent London minister, and on the occasion of the solemn national fast on the 27th April, 1642, he was selected to preach before the House of Commons. In this sermon, he exhorted the Members to work for further reformation in the Church in England. In 1643 the Assembly of Divines met at Westminster, and Goodwin was appointed a member. He led the group known as “The Dissenting Brethren”, which included his four companions from his Dutch exile, in strong opposition to the majority of the Assembly who held Presbyterian views. The Scottish Commissioners who wished to see Presby-terianism established in England, found Goodwin’s opposition especially frustrating. Among their number were such men as Samuel Rutherford. They had to admit, however, that for all this opposition, Goodwin’s spirit was gentle, reasonable and free from anger or animosity. As a recognised leader of the Independents, he was even approached by King Charles I in January, 1644, when the King was trying to take advantage of the difference between the Presbyterians and the Independents. In December, 1644, together with others, he presented the completed work of the Assembly to Parliament, and in February 1645 was asked again to preach before Parliament. In June, 1649, he and John Owen preached before Cromwell and Parliament at Christ Church, Oxford, and shortly afterwards he was appointed President of Magdalene College. His great desire in accepting this office was that he might assist godly young men in their studies for the ministry. In 1647 he had been invited to go to Boston, New England, and actually loaded many of his books on board ship, but was persuaded by his friends and members of his church in London to stay in this country. Now he finally gave up his pastorate and went to Uve at Oxford. He had been a widower for sometime, but about this period he married again, a young woman by whom he had four children. He was also in his years at Oxford pastor of a church, and had many godly men in his congregation, amongst whom was the well-known Puritan, Stephen Charnock. In December 1653, he had conferred on him the Degree of Doctor of Divinity. On the 4th September, 1653, he preached on the occasion of the State Opening of Cromwell’s Second Parliament, Cromwell, the Lord Protector, “being seated over against the pulpit, and the members of Parliament on both sides. “ Later in the day, speaking to the House of Commons, Cromwell made several references to this sermon, and concluded his speech with the words, “I do therefore persuade you to a sweet, gracious and holy understanding of one another, and of your business, concerning which you have so good counsel this day, which, as it rejoiced my heart to hear, so I hope the Lord will imprint it upon your spirits.” Goodwin was a favourite minister of the Protector.

In June 1658, the Independents, led by Goodwin and Owen, held an official Assembly at which they drew up a statement of their faith, known as the Savoy Declaration. But the days of their prosperity were coming to a close. On the 3rd September, 1658, Cromwell died. Goodwin was with him at his end, and comforted him in his dying hours. He preached in Westminster Abbey in January, 1659 before the Parliament of the new Protector, Richard Cromwell.

On the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, he gave up his work at Oxford, and moved to London, where many members of his church followed him. Their meeting house was in Fetter Lane in a building later occupied by the Moravians, and subsequently in another building erected on the opposite side of the street. He spent the rest of his life quietly out of the current of pubUc eye, labouring among his people through the dangers of persecution, and the awful year of the Plague (1665) and later as a resident in the Parish of St. Bartho-lomew-the-Greater, when in 1666 the Fire of London threatened his home. He moved a large part of his library to the house of a friend hoping to save it, but the fire spread in that direction, and the books were destroyed while his own home was saved. As a result of this loss, he wrote a work entitled, “Patience and its Perfect Work under Sudden and Sore Trials.” In the days of the Conventicle and Five Mile Act, he was allowed to preach unmolested by the authorities. He died in the eightieth year of his age on the 23rd February, 1679. Among his last words were, “I could not have imagined I should have had such a a measure of faith in this hour; no, I could never have imagined it. My bow abides in strength.” He was buried in Bunhill Fields where other godly Puritans, such as Bunyan and Owen now Ue with him.

J.R.B.

Deze tekst is geautomatiseerd gemaakt en kan nog fouten bevatten. Digibron werkt voortdurend aan correctie. Klik voor het origineel door naar de pdf. Voor opmerkingen, vragen, informatie: contact.

Op Digibron -en alle daarin opgenomen content- is het databankrecht van toepassing. Gebruiksvoorwaarden. Data protection law applies to Digibron and the content of this database. Terms of use.

Printen