Author’s Corner: Puritan Paperbacks

Each week on Credo we welcome you to join us in the Author’s Corner where we will meet a set of authors whose recent books deserve your attention and might even help you grow in your knowledge of theology, history, philosophy, and the scriptures. We hope the Author’s Corner can keep you up-to-date on the most important books published today and where you can find them.

On today’s Author’s Corner we present you with a selection of Puritan Paperbacks from Banner of Truth.

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The Glorious Feast of the Gospel by Richard Sibbes

More than anything else, Richard Sibbes (1577–1635) was a great preacher. He never lost sight of the fact that the best Christian counselling is done by the Holy Spirit through the patient and lively exposition of God’s word. Sibbes excelled as a comforter of the troubled and doubting. But he also possessed a rare gift of illuminating every passage of Scripture he handled by drawing out its significance for his hearers and readers.

These features of Sibbes’s ministry figure prominently in The Glorious Feast of the Gospel. Sibbes takes for his text Isaiah 26:6-9 in order to display ‘Christ’s gracious invitation and royal entertainment of believers.’ The subject-matter is a perfect blend of rich doctrine and practical application. Here is an ‘admirable feast indeed … Jesus Christ is the master of the feast, and the cheer and provision too.’

If you have lost the ‘spiritual relish of savoury practical truths,’ these sermons, if read prayerfully, will help you recover it.

Preparations for Sufferings by John Flavel

The apostle Paul often taught young converts to the Christian faith that ‘we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God’ (Acts 14:22). For first-century Christians suffering for Christ was an inevitable accompaniment to a life of serious discipleship.

In many parts of the world little has changed since those early days. But in the West, Christians have long enjoyed a period of unusual rest from such troubles. However, there are ominous signs that change is on the way. Suffering ‘for righteousness’ sake’ may once again mark the lives of faithful Christians in the West.

In this exposition of Paul’s words, ‘For I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus’ (Acts 21:13), John Flavel shows us how vital and excellent a thing it is to prepare ourselves for the onset of sufferings.

The Mystery of Providence by John Flavel

Do we believe that everything in the world and in our own lives down to the minutest details is ordered by the providence of God? Do we ever take time to observe and meditate on the workings of Providence? If not, are we missing much?

It should be a delight and pleasure to us to discern how God works all things in the world for His own glory and His people’s good. But it should be an even greater pleasure to observe the particular designs of Providence in our own lives. ‘O, what a world of rarities’, says John Flavel, ‘are to be found in Providence…With what profound wisdom, infinite tenderness, and incessant vigilance it has managed all that concerns us from first to last’. It was to persuade Christians of the excellency of observing and meditating upon this that Flavel first published his Mystery of Providence in 1678.

Since then the work has gone through many editions. Based on the words ‘God that performeth all things for me’ (Ps. 57 v 2) this work shows us how Providence works for us in every stage and experience of our lives. The book is richly illustrated from the lives of believers and from the author’s wide reading in church history. There are avenues of spiritual knowledge and experience opened to the Christian in this work which he probably never knew existed.