The lasting legacy of the Puritans was their preaching, as captured in their books. Puritanism was, above all else, a Bible-centered movement. J. I. Packer described the Puritans as “premodern”—meaning they ignored the culture in interpretation, and they were absorbed with the context and with Scripture interpreting Scripture. They were competent exegetically with biblical languages. They were capable critical thinkers. They were literalists in interpretation, and they excelled in application. All of this rose out of their strong conviction of the inspiration, authority, perspicuity, and sufficiency of Scripture.

A high view of Scripture was their most defining quality, and that was related to their high view of God.

Because of their view of God and their understanding that God had exalted His Word equal to His name, as Psalm 138:2 says, they were compelled to biblical exposition, declaring the entirety of Scripture to their people and making their enemies fear.

Richard Baxter said, “The reading of the Word of God, and the explication and application of it in good books, is a means to possess the mind with sound, orderly, and working apprehensions of God, and of His holy truths: so that in such reading our understandings are oft illuminated with a heavenly light, and our hearts are touched with a special delightful relish of that truth; and they are secretly attracted and engaged unto God and all the powers of our souls are excited and animated to a holy, obedient life.”

William Bradshaw said, “The Word of God contained in the writings of the prophets and apostles is of absolute perfection given by Christ the head of the church to be the same, the sole canon and rule of all matters of religion.”

Thomas Cartwright, driven from his professorship in 1570 and later imprisoned for preaching, wrote this: “Let him that shall preach choose some part of the canonical Scripture to expound, and not the Apocrypha.” Further in his ministry, “Let him not take postils”—which means homilies—“but some whole books of the Holy Scriptures, especially of the New Testament, to expound in order, in choice whereof regard is to be had both of the minister’s ability and of the education of the church.” Cartwright gave more specific instruction when he said, “Let it be, if it may be, every Sabbath day, two sermons, and let them that preach always endeavor to keep themselves within one hour, especially if they preach on the weekdays.”

William Perkins expressed his love for and reliance on Scripture when he said, “We hold that the Scriptures are most perfect, containing in them all doctrines needful to salvation, whether they concern faith and manners, and therefore we acknowledge no such traditions beside the written Word which shall be necessary to salvation, so as he which believeth them not cannot be saved.”

Lawrence Chaderton served for many years as headmaster of Emmanuel College, the most Puritan of all the colleges in Cambridge. He was a native of Lancashire in northern England. One day he was preaching, and he went on for two hours. He neared the conclusion with the comment that he would no longer trespass upon the people’s patience. The audience refused to allow him to stop. “For God’s sake, sir, go on. Go on,” they implored Chaderton. Surprised by their insistence, he continued his message for an even longer time. And that could be said about the Puritans in general. They went on and on and on.

Joseph Caryl preached on the book of Job for twenty-four years. During those twenty-four years, he preached 424 sermons on the book of Job, as well as sermons on other books. When he was finished with the 424 sermons, he wrote a commentary on Job that fills twelve volumes and totals eight thousand pages. Spurgeon recommended it highly. And J. I. Packer said this about it: “In all his microscopic study of verbal detail and his proliferation of edifying inferences, never does he go beyond the scope of the text.” Four hundred and twenty-four sermons, eight thousand pages, and it’s all still in the text.

Thomas Manton spent several years preaching through Psalm 119. He had 190 sermons on that psalm. Fills five volumes of 1,800 pages. Volume 3 in the works of Richard Sibbes consists of Sibbes’s commentary on 2 Corinthians 1. That’s twenty-four verses. It’s 525 pages set in tiny typeface with narrow margins. Yes, they went on and on and down and down. They handled Scripture in a way that puts all of us to shame.

All the canards that suggest that Puritan preaching was ponderous and wordy and harsh and grim are the imagination of someone who hasn’t read the Puritans.

There’s no doubt that they dug into the text more deeply than preachers are inclined to do today, and they did it the right way.

William Perkins, in The Art of Prophesying, gave four principles for biblical, theological exposition: “Read the Scripture distinctly. Give the sense of an understanding of the Scripture, comparing Scripture with Scripture. Collect profitable points of doctrine out of the text. Apply the doctrines rightly understood to the life of the people in plain, simple language.” That’s a good summary. Lloyd-Jones said, “That is true, authentic preaching.”

This was contrary to the churches in England at the time, where preaching was not the center. The altar was in the center, and a pulpit was off to the side. The Puritans’ conviction of the centrality of preaching put the pulpit back in the very center of their nonconformist chapels, and they put a Bible on it, and it took center place.

The Puritans were heirs of the Protestant Reformation who wanted to continue the reforming. They wanted to take the Reformation beyond the sort of semi-Reformed, semi-Catholic version of the church in their day. So, they ended up being such nonconformists that they were forced out of their churches in the Great Ejection. They insisted that there had to be a restoration of biblical, expositional preaching that developed an understanding of the text and yielded doctrine on which a person could build a doctrinal structure, the framework for life.

So how does our generation, then, preserve the legacy of the Puritans? We have to produce expositors.

That should be the passion of every seminary. That should be the discipleship objective of every pastor who finds a young man in his care who has any interest in ministry and drives him down that path. In fact, the only hope for preserving sound doctrine to the next generation is another generation of expositors. Anything less than that doesn’t bode well.