Spiritual Declension: Lessons From Early 18th Century Particular Baptists, Part 6: Negative Attitudes Toward The Evangelical Revival: Reason #2 (b)

Posted by jsmitheasley on January 30, 2009
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In the last post I commented on the fact that proper and spiritual emotions can sometimes be raised very high and that this is especially the case during times of revival and spiritual awakening. I want to close out this series by giving some examples from church history and making some final observations.

Let’s start with the matter of godly fear. Listen to this description that Robert Murray McCheyne gives with reference to the revival that occurred in his church in 1839. This was given in a document in which he answers questions from the leadership of his denomination about what had taken place. McCheyne writes,

It pleased God at that time to bring an awfully solemn sense of divine things over the minds of men. It was indeed the day of our merciful visitation…. At that time there were many seasons of remarkable solemnity, when the house of God literally became a ‘Bochim’ and place of weepers…. I have myself frequently seen the preaching of the word attended with so much power, and eternal things brought so near, that the feelings of the people could not be restrained. I have observed at such times an awful and breathless stillness pervading the assembly; each hearer bent forward in the posture of rapt attention…. Again at such a time, I have heard a half-suppressed sigh rising from many a heart and have seen many bathed with tears. At other times I have heard loud sobbing in many parts of the church, while a deep solemnity pervaded the whole audience.[1]

This is reverence and godly fear to an unusually high degree. Times of revival are also marked by extraordinary transports of joy. Quoting Jonathan Edwards with reference to the revival that occurred in 1734-35: “The town was never so full of joy … joy in families on account of salvation being brought to them, parents rejoicing over their children as new born, and husbands over their wives, and wives over their husbands.”[2] He could say both that the town was never so full of joy or so full of distress. Edwards could be called the great theologian of revival. He experienced that wonderful revival that occurred in New England and in the colonies at the same time the revival was occurring in England. With his penetrating mind, he wrote extensively about it. He found it necessary at times to defend the revival against those who criticized it because of the expressions of emotion that took place. He carefully pointed out, on the one hand, that much emotion is no true sign of a genuine work of the Spirit of God. On the other hand, we should not be surprised if during an outpouring of the Spirit on the church spiritual affections are raised very high.

Think about this. If a pastor is preaching on the wrath of God and about hell, what emotion ought that to produce? Surely if the Spirit of God has enabled us to believe these things to some degree, we ought to feel the emotions of fear and alarm. Now would it not be true then that the more we are convinced of their truth, and the more the Spirit makes these truths real to our hearts, the more we will feel those emotions of fear and alarm? What if you were actually standing right now over the pit of hell looking down into the fiery furnace of God’s wrath? Don’t you think you might begin to tremble and perhaps even to cry out in fear? I think you would, and to do so would only be reasonable. Accordingly, when the Holy Spirit enables men to apprehend with the eyes of the soul the horrors of hell with unusual clarity, it’s only reasonable that there will be corresponding emotions produced in their hearts. Furthermore, the greater the influence of the Spirit in causing men to apprehend and feel the power of these truths, the greater will tend to be the measure of fear that men feel in their souls and the greater will tend to be the expressions of fear that may come forth from their mouths, or that may even be evident in the trembling of their bodily frame. The same is true with joy. The Spirit works as the Spirit of adoption in the heart of the Christian. It is the Spirit who gives us something of a felt sense of our adopted status before God as we are enabled to lay firm hold on the promises of the gospel and as He enables us to see the evidences of his work of grace set forth in Scripture in our own hearts and lives. The more of this felt sense of peace and assurance, it’s only natural and reasonable that the more joy. So when the Spirit comes with power bearing witness with our Spirits through the word that we are the children of God—when He takes the things of Christ and shows them to us with great clarity, force and power, we should not be surprised when the affections of joy and exuberance are raised to an unusually high degree. This is exactly what happens in a time of revival to a lot of people at the same period of time. The same can happen in the life of any individual Christian at any time.

Edwards, in his A Treatise on Religious Affections, takes as his key text 1 Peter 1:8: “Whom having not seen, you love; in whom, though now you see him not, yet believing, you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” Do we know anything of what Peter was speaking of there? Not just joy, but “joy unspeakable and full of glory”? Let me quote Edwards. He has in mind here those who sought to debunk the revival because of the emotions that were sometimes evident. There were Michals (King David’s wife who spurned his emotional exuberance) around in his day. Edwards acknowledges that sometimes there were excesses and false carnal emotions. He notes that emotion itself is not a certain sign of true grace. But consider what else he says:

Some are ready to condemn all high affections: if persons seem to have their religious affections raised to an extraordinary pitch, they are prejudiced against them, and determine that they are delusions, without further inquiry. But, if, as before proved, true religion lies very much in religious affections, then it follows, that if there be a great deal of true religion, there will be great religious affections; if true religion in the hearts of men be raised to great height, divine and holy affections will be raised to a great height…. Love is an affection; but will any Christian say, men ought not to love God and Jesus Christ to a high degree? And will any say, we ought to not have a very great hatred of sin, and a very deep sorrow for it? Or that we ought not to exercise a high degree of gratitude to God, for the mercies we receive of him, and the great things he has done for the salvation of fallen men, or that we should not have very great and strong desires after God and holiness? Is there any who will profess, that his affections in religion are great enough?[3]

In another place he writes,

Though there are false affections in religion, and in some respects raised high; yet undoubtedly there are also true, holy, and solid affections; and the higher these are raised the better…. If we take Scripture for our rule, then the greater and higher our exercises of love to God, delight and complacency in him, desires and longings after him, delight in his children, love to mankind, brokenness of heart, abhorrence of sin, and self-abhorrence for it; the more we have of the peace of God which passeth all understanding, and joy in the Holy Ghost, unspeakable and full of glory, the higher our admiring thoughts of God, exulting and glorying in him; so much the higher is Christ’s religion, or that virtue which he and his apostles taught, raised in the soul.[4]

This is not some kind of crazed charismatic lunatic saying these things. This is the great sober-minded reformed preacher and theologian Jonathan Edwards. We love the Puritans and we like to extol the Puritans but do we really know the Puritans? Do we really know God like the Puritans did? Let me give an example from the life of the well-known Puritan John Flavel. He was on a journey one day and this is what happened,

Thus going on his way his thoughts began to swell and rise higher and higher like the waters of Ezekiel’s vision, till at last they became like an overwhelming flood. Such was the intention of his mind, such the ravishing tastes of heavenly joys, and such the full assurance of his interest therein, that he utterly lost all sight and sense of the world and all the concerns thereof, and for some hours he knew no more where he was than it had been in a deep sleep upon his bed. Arriving n great exhaustion at a certain spring he sat down and washed, earnestly desiring that if it was God’s pleasure that this might be his parting-place from the world. Death had the most amiable face in his eyes that ever he beheld, except the face of Jesus Christ, which made it so, and he does not remember though he believed himself dying, that he ever thought of his dear wife and children or any other earthly concernment. On reaching his Inn the influence still continued, banishing sleep, still the joy of the Lord overflowed him and he seemed to be an inhabitant of the Other world. He many years after called that day one of the days of heaven, and professed that he understood more of the life of heaven by it than by all the books he ever read.[5]

Many other examples like this could be given from the lives of our Reformed and Puritan forefathers. Take the time to read the experiences of Jonathan Edwards’ wife Sarah.[6] She was by no means an emotionally unstable, flighty woman. After recounting some of the experiences she had, Jonathan, her husband, the great scholar, the greatest intellect America has ever produced, didn’t think his wife was becoming a religious fanatic. If her brain was becoming confused, he wrote, “Let my brain be evermore possessed of that happy distemper.” He added, “I pray God that the world of mankind be all seized with” the same experience.[7]

Here again is my point: we must beware of despising the expression of emotion in the worship of God. We must be careful and discerning. But if it is emotion produced by truth properly understood and powerfully felt we must not despise it out of hand. This was Michal’s great sin for which she was cursed with barrenness. Michal was one with those who have a form of godliness but deny the power thereof. I’m afraid there may be many churchgoing people who are just like her. I’m afraid there may be some in our churches. They have the form; right forms in worship, right forms in doctrine; all of which are very important; but where’s the power? Where’s the joy? Where’s the love? Where’s the fear and reverence? Where’s the godly sorrow over sin? Where’s the joyful exuberance over sins forgiven? Where’s the delight in God and his service? Moreover, sadly, like Michal, such people, often despise and resist any expressions of emotion. They are sticklers for dignity, proper decorum, formality, but they seem to know nothing of the fire of the Spirit. The Welsh Reformed Baptist Geoff Thomas comments on this. He says,

They are unmoved by (the Spirit’s) life giving power, and they never seem to get excited about Jesus Christ. They could never sincerely sing, All that thrills my soul is Jesus/He is more than life to me…. This is the way they want it. They may have a very fine doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and they may be very conservative in their beliefs, but they are just so staid, cold and lifeless in their Christianity. They are afraid of those awakenings that are described for us in the Bible and in the pages of church history. Evangelical Christians in the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century were often called ‘enthusiasts’, but no one in their right mind could accuse their modern counterparts of enthusiasm.[8]

What about us? What about me? Could anyone ever accuse us of being enthusiasts? The emotions can be abused, and emotion alone is no certain evidence that something is from God. But let us also remember as Edwards so well puts it, “Holy affections do not only necessarily belong to true religion but are a very great part of it….Let it be considered that they who have but little religious affection have certainly but little religion. And they who condemn others for their religious affections, and have none themselves, have no religion.”[9]

Jeffery Smith, Pastor
Covenant Reformed Baptist Church
Easley, South Carolina

[1] Robert Murray M’Cheyne, “Evidence On Revivals” in Memoirs and Remains of R. M. M’Cheyne, ed. Andrew Bonar (1844; reprint, Carlisle PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 1987), 546-548.
[2] Jonathan Edwards, A Narrative of Surprising Conversions, in Works, 1:348.
[3] Edwards, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, in Works, 1:245.
[4] Edwards, Thoughts on the Revival of Religion in New England, in Works, 1:367.
[5] Lloyd-Jones, “Knowledge-False and True” in The Puritans: Their Origins and Successors, 38-39. Quote taken by Lloyd-Jones from Flavel’s Treatise of the Soul of Man.
[6] Edwards, Works, Vol. 1, lxii-lxx.
[7] Ibid. lxix.
[8] Geoff Thomas, Philip and the Revival in Samaria (Carlisle PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 2005), 82-83.
[9] Religious Affections. 238,244.

Spiritual Declension: Lessons From Early 18th Century Particular Baptists, Part 4-Negative Attitudes toward the Evangelical Revival: Reason #1

Posted by jsmitheasley on January 20, 2009
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In the late 1730’s, in connection with the ministries of men like George Whitefield, John Wesley, Howell Harris, Daniel Rowland and others, Great Britain became the scene of one of the greatest spiritual awakenings that has ever occurred in the history of the church. The same thing happened in America. Thousands gathered sometimes in the open air to hear men like George Whitefield and others preach the gospel. Multitudes were converted and brought to Christ and the whole fabric of English society was transformed.

What effect did this great awakening have upon the Particular Baptists? It basically passed by many of them. According to Mark Reid, “The Baptists seem to have largely passed the first Evangelical Revival by with very few records of positive responses to it in the peak years”.[1] Naylor describes the attitude of Particular Baptists as stubbornly negative towards the evangelical revival.[2] In the words of Haykin, “up till the death of Whitefield in 1770 the majority of Calvinistic Baptists in England stood aloof from this great work of God, the Holy Spirit, and were largely untouched by it.”[3] There were exceptions but this is the general picture that we are given. The awakening did begin to have a more substantial effect upon them by the last quarter of the century but when George Whitefield died in 1770, over thirty years after the awakening began, Particular Baptists were still basically untouched on a large scale. Why is that? What accounts for their negative attitude toward the revival?

First of all, they were suspicious of the revival because many of its leaders were members of the Church of England. They had a hard time accepting that anything good could come out of a denomination they refused to consider as a true church. This was partly related to what was a commendable and faithful commitment of the Baptists to the importance of biblical church order. In some instances, however, this commitment went wrong by swinging over to the extreme of failing to have a proper spirit of catholicity toward all true Christians. Many of the Baptists were aware that their churches were in a state of decline and some of the leaders, like John Gill and Benjamin Wallin, had strong opinions as to how this decline was to be remedied. Haykin writes, “For them the pathway to church renewal lay first and foremost in an earnest commitment to upholding the distinctives of Calvinistic Baptist church order and discipline.”[4] For example, Benjamin Wallin, pastor of the Maze Pond congregation, argued that “as long as there was a neglect of believer’s baptism and the principles of congregational church government, any attempt to revive the churches of Christ was ‘essentially deficient.’”[5]

Well it’s not surprising that men like Wallin criticized the revival. The emphasis of the preaching was not upon biblical church order and the proper subjects of baptism. It was upon those great central and essential gospel doctrines of salvation by grace alone, justification by faith and the necessity of the new birth. In addition, most of the great preachers who were leaders of this revival were members of the Church of England. For example, George Whitefield, Daniel Rowland, Howell Harris, William Grimshaw and William Romaine were all members of the Church of England. So were John and Charles Wesley. Worse than that the Wesley’s were also Arminian. Harris was too at the beginning, though he early on became a Calvinist.

These realities caused the Particular Baptists in general to view the whole revival with suspicion and to stay aloof from it. William Herbert, a Welsh Baptist pastor, was a friend of Howell Harris. He protested to Harris about his staying in the Church of England, which we can perhaps sympathize with. But one may question the attitude that seems to be revealed in the manner in which he did so. “In a letter he wrote to Harris in January of 1737, he compared the Church of England to a pub, ‘which is open to all comers’, and to a ‘common field where every noisome beast may come.’”[6] Then he appealed to one of the favorite texts of Particular Baptist’s at that time, Song of Solomon 4:12. Don’t you realize, he asked Harris, that the scripture describes the church as “a garden enclosed, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. Separate from ye profane world.” Arnesby Baptist Church in Leicestershire excommunicated members in the first half of the 18th century “for going to Babylon to be joined together according to the wicked way of the Church of England.”[7]

Their dislike for the Wesley’s is more understandable in light of the Arminianism of the Wesley’s. But most of the great leaders of the revival were Calvinists like George Whitefield and Howell Harris and many others. These were men who were willing to establish friendships with the Baptists. Some Calvinistic Baptists (particularly those influenced by Hyper-Calvinism), however, complained of what they called the “Arminian dialect” and “semi-Pelagian addresses” of men like Whitefield because they preached for conversions and exhorted the lost to flee to Christ for salvation.[8]

What is the lesson for us as Reformed Baptists as we enter into the 21st century? Well here we are reminded of how important it is to have a catholic spirit toward all true Christians, though they may not be part of our circle of churches. Though some may have difficulty accepting this, God in his sovereignty sometimes greatly blesses and uses men who are not Reformed Baptists; men who don’t have everything right in their ecclesiology, or even men who are wrong in other areas of their theology. They have the gospel and they preach the gospel, but they are lacking in some areas. May I dare to say it, they may even be confused Arminians. Yet God uses them, and He may even use them in ways He’s not using any of us. We need to be able to rejoice in that. We need to ask ourselves, if God raised up some men in our day full of the Holy Spirit; men who are preaching the gospel and whose preaching God is mightily blessing with every biblical evidence of true conversions (not merely decisions, but real conversions), and those men are Methodists or Episcopalians, or Assembly of God or some other denomination, or some other kind of Baptist, other than Reformed Baptist, could we rejoice in that and be thankful for it? Could we even consider those men as our friends and brothers and even work together with them insofar far as we can? Or is our almost immediate knee jerk reaction to be critical and to pick at any and every fault we can find to try to discredit any one God is using who is not one of us?

Let us not be guilty of the sectarian spirit John manifested when he said to Jesus, “Master, we saw someone casting out demons in Your name and we forbade him, because he does not follow with us.” Jesus rebuked John for that spirit. (Mk. 9:39). Rather let us have the spirit of Aquilla and Priscilla. Near the end of Acts 18 we are introduced to a fervent preacher by the name of Apollos. He was an eloquent man and mighty in the scriptures. However we’re told that there were certain deficiencies in his understanding of the truth; “That he knew only the baptism of John.” When Aquila and Priscilla heard him, what did they do? They didn’t write him off and have nothing to do with him and tell people to stay away from him. No, they sought to befriend him, took him aside and explained to him the way of God more perfectly. So let us not have the spirit of John in Mk. 9, but the spirit of Aquila and Priscilla in Acts 18. And even when deficiencies remain, if the gospel is being preached, let us rejoice. Let us have the spirit of Paul writing from a Roman prison in Pp. 1:15-16 when he said, “Some preach Christ of envy and strife, and some also from good will…what then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached; and in this I rejoice, yes, and will rejoice.”

Related to this, there’s a common mistake we need to be aware of. It’s the error of thinking that there can be no revival without thorough reformation first. It’s true that reformation sometimes precedes revival. Likewise it’s true that we must always be pursuing more and more thorough reformation. If we are not seeking to reform our lives and our churches by the scriptures, it is presumption to expect revival. But in God’s sovereignty it is simply a fact of history that sometimes revival precedes reformation. Some of the Particular Baptists thought there could be no church renewal if there was a neglect of believer’s baptism and the principles of Baptist church government. They were wrong, and because they felt that way, they renounced the revival when it came. But consider, for example, what happened in the reformation of the 16th century; both in Europe and in England? It was first a spiritual awakening before it became a reformation. Men like Luther and others first came to understand the gospel and were converted and they started preaching the gospel. In England there were men like Hugh Latimer who got converted and began preaching the gospel. At first they were still in the Roman church but reformation followed after, not before. What about the revival in England that we’ve been considering? Listen to Lloyd-Jones making this same point that I’m making,

There are people who say, ‘You have no right to talk about revival, you have no right to expect revival until people become Reformed in their doctrine’. The simple answer to that is that George Whitefield received his baptism of power in 1737, but did not become a Calvinist in his theology until about 1739. Revival had come to him and through him to many others, before his doctrine became right. Exactly the same thing happened to Howell Harris.[9]

Many Particular Baptists missed it because they weren’t willing to even allow for that possibility in their ecclesiology. Perhaps they could have been the Priscilla’s and Aquila’s of that generation; from a posture of support, friendship and participation helping these men to understand the way of God more perfectly, instead of renouncing what God was doing through them. Perhaps they could have learned a few things from Whitefield, Harris and Rowland as well and maybe even from John Wesley.[10]

Jeffery Smith
Covenant Reformed Baptist Church
Easley SC

[1] Mark Reid, “Religious Revival and English Baptists in Eighteenth Century England,” 2001. Internet article at www.webministries.co.uk/papers/c18baps.html (accessed January 2009).
[2] Quoted by Reid.
[3] Haykin, One Heart and One Soul: John Sutcliffe of Olney, his Friends and his Times (Durham, U.K.: Evangelical Press, 1994), 27.
[4] Ibid. 26.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid. 27
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid. 28.
[9] D.M. Lloyd-Jones, “Revival: An Historical and Theological Survey”, in The Puritans: Their Origins and Successors (Carlisle PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 1987), 14-15.
[10] On this point see Ian Murray, The Old Evangelicalism: Old Truths For A New Awakening (Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2005). Chapter five is entitled, “What Can We Learn From John Wesley?”