The Puritan Hope

Iain Murray

The word hope I take for faith; and indeed hope is nothing else but the constancy of faith.

JOHN CALVIN, Commentaries on the Epistle of Paul to the Hebrews chapter 3, verse 6

But our chief consolation is that this is the cause of God and that he will take it in hand to bring it to a happy issue. Even though all the princes of the earth were to unite for the maintenance of our Gospel, still we must not make that the foundation of our hope. So, likewise, whatever resistance we see today offered by almost all the world to the progress of the truth, we must not doubt that our Lord will come at last to break through all the undertakings of men and make a passage for his word. Let us hope boldly, then, more than we can understand; he will still surpass our opinion and our hope.

JOHN CALVIN, Quoted by J. H. Merle D’Aubigne, History of the Reformation in Europe in the time of Calvin, 1876, vol 7, 49

Strong and certain was the conviction of the Christians that the church would come forth triumphant out of its conflicts, and, as it was its destination to be a world-transforming principle, would attain to dominion of the world.

J. A. W. NEANDER, History of the Christian Religion and Church translated by Joseph Torrey, vol 2, 1851, 395-6

Though our persons fall, our cause shall be as truly, certainly, and infallibly victorious, as that Christ sits at the right hand of God. The gospel shall be victorious. This greatly comforts and refreshes me.

JOHN OWEN, The Use of Faith, if Popery Should Return Upon Us, 1680 [The Works of John Owen, 1851, vol 9, 507-508]

There will come a time when the generality of mankind, both Jew and Gentile, shall come to Jesus Christ. He hath had but little takings of the world yet, but he will have before he hath done.

THOMAS GOODWIN, 1600-1679, Sermon xxxiv in An Exposition of the First Chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians [Complete Works, 1861 vol I, 520]

There will come a time when in this world holiness shall be more general, and more eminent, than ever it hath been since Adam fell in paradise.

THOMAS BROOKS, The Crown and Glory of Christianity, 1662 [Complete Works, vol 4, 434]

There have been great and glorious days of the gospel in this land; but they have been small in comparison of what shall be.

JAMES RENWICK, martyred 17 February 1688, A Choice Collection of Prefaces, Lectures, and Sermons by James Renwick, 1777, 279

Plain it is, there is not a more stupifying, benumbing thing in all the world than mere despair. To look upon such a sad face and aspect of things through the world as we have before our eyes; to look upon it despairingly and with the apprehension that it never will, never can be better.... But hope is a kind of anticipated enjoyment and gives a present participation in the expected pleasantness of those days, how long soever they may yet be off from us.... Religion shall not be an inglorious thing in the world always.

JOHN HOWE Sermons on The Prosperous State of the Christian Interest Before the End of Time, 1678 [Works, 1837, 578-579]


I had a strong hope, that God would ‘bow the heavens and come down’ and do some marvellous work among the Heathen.


DAVID BRAINERD, Life and Diary for 22 July 1744, Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol 2, 1840, 349

‘We also rejoice in hope. We have many and express assurances in the Scriptures, which cannot be broken, of the general, the universal spread and reign of Christianity, which are not yet accomplished. Nothing has yet taken place in the history of Divine grace, wide enough in extent, durable enough in continuance, powerful enough in energy, blessed enough in enjoyment, magnificent enough in glory, to do anything like justice to these predictions and promises. Better days, therefore, are before us, notwithstanding the forebodings of many.

WILLIAM JAY, 1769—1853, Nonconformist leader The Autobiography and Reminiscences of the Rev. William Jay, 1855, 162

David was not a believer in the theory that the world will grow worse and worse, and that the dispensation will wind up with general darkness, and idolatry. Earth’s sun is to go down amid tenfold night if some of our prophetic brethren are to be believed. Not so do we expect, but we look for a day when the dwellers in all lands shall learn righteousness, shall trust in the Saviour shall worship thee alone, O God, ‘and shall glorify thy name.’ The modern notion has greatly damped the zeal of the church for missions, and the sooner it is shown to be unscriptural the better for the cause of God. It neither consorts with prophecy, honours God, nor inspires the church with ardour. Far hence be it driven.

C.H. SPURGEON, From an exposition of Psalm 86.9, ‘All nations whom thou hast made shall come and worship before thee, O Lord; and shall glorify thy name’. The Treasury of David, 1874.

MY father was a Christian who believed in prayer but I knew and understood little of his praying until after my own conversion at the age of seventeen. From that time as I listened, to my father’s petitions I concurred with them all — all, that is, except one, and this one had to do with a subject which was so much a part of his praying that I could not miss the divergence in our thought. Our difference concerned the extent to which the success of the kingdom of Christ is to be expected in the earth. My father would pray for its universal spread and global triumph, for the day when ‘nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more’, and when great multitudes in all lands will be found numbered among the travail of Christ’s soul. According to the teaching with which I was then in contact these petitions were misguided, the product of a theological liberalism which believed in the upward progress of man and in the coming of a better world. Evangelical belief so I thought, bound one to a contrary persuasion, namely, that growing evil must dominate the world-scene until Jesus Christ comes again in power and glory. Until then the gospel must be preached as a testimony unto all nations, though not with anticipation that large numbers of the human race will receive it.

I was therefore ill at ease over this one aspect of our family prayers, especially so as I supposed that belief in the imminent second advent of Christ is a necessity in evangelical experience, whereas the petitions from which I dissented could hardly be offered unless one supposed that ‘the end is not yet’. Was not that a supposition which would destroy the readiness for his appearing which Christ commanded?

In the urging of his petitions I realized that my father was often employing scriptural language. I conceived his mistake to be that he was applying to this age and to the present course of history what is descriptive of a period which is to follow the return of Christ. Only after his personal appearing will multitudes — including the Jews as a nation — ‘enter his kingdom; only then will ensue an age of peace when ‘the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea’.

With this view of the future one can both believe in the present progress of evil and in a period yet to dawn when the predicted prosperity of the kingdom of God in the world will at last become a reality. In consequence one must also believe that the conclusion of this present age is not to witness the end of the world but the return of Christ and the ushering in of a new era — often called ‘the millennium. When that has run its course, the last judgment shall take place and time shall be no more.

In accepting this outlook upon the future — an outlook which has been known as millenarianism — I was unaware of an objection which has long been urged against it. It is an objection which can be simply stated: the return of Jesus Christ is represented in the New Testament in terms which exclude the possibility of a new era intervening between his coming and the end of the world. His second advent and ‘the end’ will occur together (I Cor. 15. 23,24). He is to remain in heaven, not until the commencement of a millennium, but until ‘the time of the restoration of all things’ (Acts 3. 21), elsewhere spoken of as ‘the regeneration’, which Jesus identifies with the last judgment (Matt. 19. 28). When he comes all the dead will be raised, Christians glorified, the kingdom complete and the day of God’s longsuffering towards sinners will be over. The witness of many texts which speak of these truths renders impossible the idea that Christ’s appearing can be connected with, or followed by, a new era of spiritual blessing for those hitherto unsaved. For this reason all the Confessional statements of the Reformed Churches four hundred years ago refused to identify millenarianism with historic Christianity and spoke rather of the return of Jesus Christ as coincident with the day of judgment. The Thirty-Nine Articles declare, in connection with the resurrection of Christ that he ascended into heaven ‘and there sitteth, until he return to judge all men at the last day’. The Scottish Confession of Faith (1560), The Belgic Confession (1561) and the Heidelberg Catechism (1563) all repeat the same truth. ‘We believe, according to the Word of God, when the time appointed by the Lord (which is unknown to all creatures) is come, and the number of the elect complete, that our Lord Jesus Christ will come from heaven, corporally and visibly, as he ascended with great glory and majesty, to declare himself Judge of the quick and the dead, burning this old world with fire and flame to cleanse it. And then all men will personally appear before this great Judge, both men and women and children, that have been from the beginning of the world to the end thereof.’ (Footnote: The Belgic Confession, Article 37, The Creeds of the Evangelical Protestant Churches, edited by H. B. Smith and P. Schaff, 1877, 433.)

Thus I came to see that there is an insuperable objection to the view of prophecy which I had accepted in my early Christian life. I retain my respect and affection for those who have held and still hold that view; I know also that they urge Scripture to support it, but, when Scripture is alleged against Scripture, it is of cardinal importance that the dependence we place upon texts which are obscure in meaning or capable of more than one sense should be less than that which we place upon doctrinal texts where the sense is clear and confirmed by parallel scriptures. As the Westminster Confession says, ‘All things in scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all’. Therefore, in view of the total absence of supporting evidence from the New Testament, it is exceedingly hazardous to claim that a thousand years intervene between Christ’s coming and the end of the world on the grounds that Revelation 20 teaches a millennium. The truth is that Revelation 20 contains what has been called ‘the darkest passage in all the Bible’; widely differing meanings have been given to it by those who share a common faith in the inerrancy of Scripture, and it is better to admit that our view of that difficult chapter is uncertain rather than to commit ourselves to an interpretation which can only be harmonized with the remainder of Scripture by introducing confusion into the meaning of many passages otherwise clear. (Footnote: It would be unfair to imply that only millenarians have erred by putting too much weight upon the uncertain. Some of the Puritans were also over-influenced by their view of the closing chapters of the book of the Revelation — applying too much to earth which belongs to heaven — and some of the postmillennialists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries carried this further when they spoke of the world being conquered by holiness for a thousand years before the Second Advent in language inconsistent with what Scripture elsewhere declares of the mixed spiritual conditions which will remain until the end. Whatever wider blessing attends the Church’s witness in the future it will still remain a fact that wheat and tares are to grow together while the world shall last (Matt. 13. 30). It is a mistake to treat as synonymous the Puritan and postmillennial view of unfulfilled prophecy.)

In reply to this plea that one should begin with the plain, not the obscure, and build upon what is written large in the Word of God, it may be asked who is to decide what is ‘plain’? Ultimately every Christian must form his own judgment, but in this area it is wise to consider what has been the consensus of Christian opinion in the past. When, for example, we read the same testimony in the Nicene Creed of the fourth century —‘He shall come again, with glory, to judge the living and the dead’ — as in the Confessions of the Reformation — all professing that Christ’s advent is the final judgment — there ought to be strong evidence before we conclude that this belief does not represent the clear witness of the New Testament.

For some while after I gave up the millenarian view of future history the only truth respecting unfulfilled prophecy which I could regard as clear was this great one that Christ’s coming will be at the consummation of his kingdom. Therefore all conversion-work yet to be seen in history must occur before the Second Advent. Of the certainty or extent of any future work of grace I was entirely in doubt. I still retained the conviction that the testimony of Scripture on human depravity requires the expectation of an ever-darkening world and the signs of the twentieth century seemed to point me to the same conclusion.

Only very slowly did I come to believe that the Christian Church has indeed a great future in the world and this conviction came as the result of several lines of thought. For one thing all the scripture texts claimed as proof that the coming of Jesus Christ must now be close at hand have also been confidently so used in former generations. Not a few Christians in the past have been erroneously convinced that their age must witness the end. When the Teutonic barbarians overturned Rome and reduced a stable world to chaos in the fifth century A.D., many in the Church despairingly drew the wrong conclusion that the world could have no future. Even larger numbers did so at the approach of the year 1000, believing that the closing millennium would end the world. In the gloom of the fourteenth century such tracts appeared as The Last Age of the Church, and in terms very similar to that old title a great number have written since.

All this does not make scripture predictions a subject for legitimate scepticism but it does prove that the signs of the end are not nearly so clear as some men would make them. To believe that ‘the end is not yet’ is not therefore so patently unscriptural as it is often represented. In the absence of any certain evidence to the contrary, the possibility that history is not about to close cannot be other than a real one. The acceptance of this may not change one’s thoughts profoundly but it can open the way to other considerations. Supposing the church, after all, is to have a future in history, and that our individual end will not coincide with the end of the world, what then may that future be? To be disinterested in such a question simply because it does not affect our own individual salvation would not be an attitude worthy of a Christian.

Another subject which increased my doubts about the rightness of my pessimism was the significance of revivals. One common reason for believing that the world must grow worse and worse has always been the evidence of abounding moral decay. Confronted by this evidence it has too often been supposed that the only work left for God is judgment. Yet the history of revivals should teach us that even in the midst of prevailing evil it is possible to form precisely the opposite conviction. For example, when John Wesley arrived in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in May, 1742, he wrote these memorable words: ‘I was surprised; so much drunkenness, cursing and swearing (even from the mouths of little children) do I never remember to have seen and heard before in so small a compass of time. Surely this place is ripe for Him who came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance’. (Footnote: The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, Standard Edition, vol. , 13.)

And the great evangelical revival which was then dawning proved this conviction to be right. The gospel of grace does not need promising conditions to make its reception a certainty. Such a result depends upon the will of him who declares his love to the ungodly. Thus in various centuries revivals of apostolic Christianity have broken out in the most improbable circumstances and have powerfully, rapidly and extensively affected whole communities. ‘When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him’ (Isa. 59. 19). The wonder of God’s saving works ought therefore to make Christians slow to believe that only doom and catastrophe must await the vast population of this evil earth. If, as men predict, the world population is to double in the next thirty years, why should it not be that God is going to show on a yet greater scale that truth is more powerful than error, grace more powerful than sin, and that those given to Christ are indeed ‘as the sand which is upon the sea-shore’ for multitude?

It may be replied, however, that though such a bright future is possible in terms of the character of God, yet one is prevented from believing it by God’s purposes as revealed in the prophetic word of Scripture. The key issue here is whether Scripture prompts us yet to expect any time of wider blessing for the Church before the Advent. I had many hesitations on this point, conscious that there is much in the symbolic Old Testament descriptions of a period of world-wide blessing which may already be fulfilled, and also that some of the exalted anticipations of the prophets may well have more to do with the eternal state than with any period in time. Is there any event predicted by Scripture to take place in history of which one can say with any certainty that it is yet unfulfilled? In considering this question I came to believe that there is at least one event, namely, a great revival, which is both promised and, as yet, unaccomplished.

The predictions of Scripture concerning Israel’s conversion, particularly those of Romans 11 cannot be said to be already fulfilled. Still less can they be referred to the eternal state. They must await fulfilment in history. This conclusion is not a detail which can be treated apart from our general view of the future of the Church of Christ, for Paul himself points to the spiritual repercussions of Israel’s future conversion upon the world (Romans 11. 12, 15) and, by referring to Isaiah 59. 20 as a scriptural confirmation of his own apostolic testimony respecting the salvation of the Jews (Romans 11. 26), he teaches us that we are to look for a larger fulfilment in history of some of the grandest Old Testament predictions. When I saw this, like Bunyan’s Pilgrim I was ready to emerge from Doubting Castle. Men have spoken too soon in claiming that the world has now entered a post-christian era and we have been fools to believe them.

The mention of John Bunyan leads me to say something on the school of Christians to which he belonged and of which we speak more largely in subsequent pages. J. C. Ryle in ‘An Estimate of Thomas Manton’ written in 1870 says, ‘The Puritans, as a body, have done more to elevate the national character than any class of Englishmen that ever lived.’ The source of this influence was their theology and within that theology there was an attitude to history and to the world which distinguished them as men of hope. In their own day this hope came to expression in pulpits and in books, in Parliaments and upon battlefields, but it did not end there. The outlook they had done so much to inspire went on for nearly two hundred years after their own age and its results were manifold. It coloured the spiritual thought of the American colonies; it taught men to expect great outpourings of the Holy Spirit; it prepared the way to the new age of world-missions; and it contributed largely to that sense of destiny which came to characterize the English-speaking Protestant nations. When nineteenth-century Christian leaders such as William Wilberforce viewed the world not so much as a wreck from which individual souls must escape, but rather as the property of Christ, to whose kingdom the earth and the fulness thereof must belong, their thinking bore the genuine hall-mark of the Puritan outlook.

A hope which led to such world-wide results is surely worth examining. In the light of history we can hardly say that matters prophetic are too secondary to warrant our attention. The fact is that what we believe or do not believe upon this subject will have continual influence upon the way in which we live. The greatest spiritual endeavours and achievements in the past have been those energized by faith and hope. By comparison how small are our efforts! And can we disregard the possibility that this stands related to the smallness of our anticipations and to the weakness of our faith in the promises of God? As one of the last great representatives of Puritan theology, J. H. Thornwell, wrote more than a century ago:

‘If the Church could be aroused to a deeper sense of the glory that awaits her, she would enter with a warmer spirit into the struggles that are before her. Hope would inspire ardour. She would even now arise from the dust, and like the eagle, plume her pinions for loftier flights than she has yet taken. What she wants, and what every individual Christian wants, is faith — faith in her sublime vocation, in her Divine resources, in the presence and efficacy of the Spirit that dwells in her — faith in the truth, faith in Jesus, and faith in God. With such a faith there would be no need to speculate about the future. That would speedily reveal itself. It is our unfaithfulness, our negligence and unbelief our low and carnal aims, that retard the chariot of the Redeemer. The Bridegroom cannot come until the Bride has made herself ready. Let the Church be in earnest after greater holiness in her own members, and in faith and love undertake the conquest of the world, and she will soon settle the question whether her resources are competent to change the face of the earth’.(Footnote: Collected Writings, 1871, vol. 2, 48.)

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This book grew out of an address which I gave at the Puritan Conference in London in 1967. At that date I knew few volumes which credited the Puritans with the beliefs which were theirs upon unfulfilled prophecy. Most writers attributed the rise of the expectation of far-reaching and world-wide blessing not to the seventeenth century at all but to Daniel Whitby who published his ‘Treatise of the True Millennium’ as an appendix to his Paraphrase and Commentary on the New Testament in 1703. Christopher Hill in his Puritanism, and Revolution published in 1958, gives the impression, as do other writers that the Puritans far from being characterized by hope expected the imminent end of the world! The reason for these mistakes lies partly in the diffusiveness of the seventeenth-century literature which renders it difficult to assess which view-points predominated. It was not a feature of the mainstream Puritan divines — those whose theology is represented by the Westminster Confession (1647) and The Savoy Declaration (1658) — that they produced books specially dealing with unfulfilled prophecy. The seventeenth-century volumes which deal exclusively with prophecy are more often than not the products of men of acrobatic imaginations or of half-crazy fanatics. They are by no means a safe guide to Puritan thought and when they are treated as though they were the error to which I have referred easily occurs. (Footnote: I am thinking, particularly, of such authors as John Archer and Robert Maton whose books I purposefully do not consider in this volume.)

In the following pages I have sought, when dealing with Puritan belief upon prophecy, to base conclusions on evidence drawn from a considerable number of the mainstream Puritans. This evidence has to be searched out from their sermons and commentaries, and though it has been the work of some years to garner the material I have used in this book, the field is so large that much has inevitably been left unturned. I hope, however, that I am not wrong in thinking that most of the conclusions I have drawn are broadly based upon evidence which is substantial. I say this not to impress anyone with the idea that views supported by so many spokesmen must necessarily be true, but simply as a comment upon the method I have employed in seeking to formulate what the majority of the Puritans actually believed.

I wish that I could have gone further in tracing the development of English Puritan thought, and in particular its relationship to that of the other Reformed Churches of the seventeenth century. For this reason I have included some treatment of the Scottish Church in these pages and from this there emerges the important fact that by the 1640's there was a common belief upon unfulfilled prophecy both in England and North of the Border. Had this been observed by some recent writers it might have prevented them concluding that this belief belonged more to the Independents than to the Presbyterians. In the same way I do not doubt that if more attention can be given to the thought of the Reformed Churches of the Netherlands, and to the Latin literature of such divines as Gisbertus Voetius (1589-1676) of Utrecht, the belief which I have termed ‘the Puritan hope’ would be found to be more international than my phrase suggests.

I make no apology for treating the Scots under the general term ‘Puritan’. It is sufficient justification that the word was used in reference to the Scots in the seventeenth century itself. For example, Robert Boyd, Principal of the Glasgow College, was charged with being a Puritan in 1621(Footnote: H. M. B. Reid, The Divinity Principals in the University of Glasgow, 1545-1654, 1917.) and Samuel Rutherford preaching in Scotland, probably in the 1630s, says, ‘Many are ashamed to own Christ, and to profess him, they will not be called Puritans’. (Footnote: Fourteen Communion Sermons, reprinted 1876, 341.) Peter Heylyn was therefore not creating a precedent when in his History of the Presbyterians, published in 1670, he speaks of ‘the Presbyterian or Puritan Faction in the realm of Scotland’.

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It only remains for me to remember the many friends — some of them now in a better world — to whose assistance and encouragement I owe so much. Ministers of the gospel to whom I am particularly indebted include Erroll Hulse, the late J. Marcellus Kik, Kenneth J. MacLeay and John R. de Witt. As always I have been greatly aided by the support of Geoffrey Williams and his staff of the Evangelical Library, London. The literary advice and general guidance of S. M. Houghton of Charlbury has been invaluable and as his views on prophecy do not, in certain respects, correspond with my own I have appreciated the help all the more. In a real sense this book has grown out of a team spirit among those who have shared in the work of the Banner of Truth Trust. Iron has sharpened iron and my colleagues have helped me from the early stages in my thinking, some years ago, to the final work of turning a manuscript into a book.