The Evangelical Church: Richard Sibbes And The Sufficiency Of The Gospel

By Mark E. Dever

[This is the first article in the four-part series “A Puritan Vision of the Church,” delivered as the W. H. Griffith Thomas Lectures at Dallas Theological Seminary, February 4-7, 2014.

Mark E. Dever is Senior Pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church, Washington, DC, and President of 9Marks.]

A little context: the Reformers held that two essential marks of the church were the right preaching of the Word and the right administration of the sacraments. On this there was unity between them and the generations that followed. And yet, inside this unity there was great diversity about how this was to be carried out. There were Episcopalian visions and Baptist ones, Congregational ones, and even, yes, Presbyterian ones!

Winston Churchill, among his other remarkable qualities, possessed a keen wit. He was once heard to jibe, “An empty cab pulled up to 10 Downing Street and Neville Chamberlain stepped out.”[1] Churchill’s representation of Chamberlain may be something like what we experience with the church today. We read of it in the Bible and in endless books and articles. We know from seminary classes and Bible study that it is the body of Christ, the bride of Christ, composed of those who are to be co-heirs with Christ. But then when we begin to experience it more fully, particularly when we begin to have responsibility in it for ministry and service, it can sometimes begin to feel as if it is something much less.

In many ways, it begins to appear as merely a wan reflection of the culture around us. I’m reminded of the sign a friend of mine recently saw in front of a Unitarian meeting house, “The Church that Puts Its Faith in You.”[2]

But let’s leave the Unitarians out of this. We evangelicals may be especially open to the charge of wrongly ignoring the importance of Christ’s church. Perhaps our reformation legacy of understanding justification by faith alone makes the church seem optional. As someone eloquently put it, “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going into a garage makes you a car.” We know that, don’t we? But in our supposed evangelical clarity about what a Christian is, have we forgotten what a church is? And does forgetting one definition imperil the other?

It has been observed that what one generation knows and teaches, the second generation assumes and the third generation loses. Has this been the case with the heirs of the Protestant reformation in our understanding of the church?

Introduction To Puritanism

We want to zero in on the great act of God’s Spirit popularly known as the Reformation. And we particularly want to see how one man in its English stream came to understand the church and see what we might learn from him. Such English Reformed types can broadly be classed as Puritans.

We could spend the rest of this lecture presenting caricatures of Puritans. Macaulay, for example, in his history of England wrote that “the Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.” The famous newspaperman H. L. Mencken said that a Puritan was someone who feared that someone, somewhere, somehow, might be having fun. Even Lake Woebegon’s Garrison Keillor has tried his hand at representing the Puritans. He said that “the puritans came to America in the hopes of discovering greater restrictions than were permissible under English law.”

In fact the Puritans were not fundamentally characterized by restrictions, fear, or hatred. They were, instead, characterized by the joy of finding liberty in the gospel, assurance of their acceptance with God through Christ, and a renewed understanding of the church as the people of God. The Roman Catholic understanding of the church was often degraded at the local level to nothing more than spiritual plumbing, piped into the local parish through the priest, pouring God’s grace out to the individual through obediently observing the sacraments of the church. This was a kind of “church as spigot” approach.

The Christians in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, however, began to be more self-consciously shaped by Scripture in their understanding of the gospel and of the church. Five of the so-called sacraments were found to be without sufficient scriptural warrant. The right preaching of the Word of God and the right administration of baptism and the Lord’s supper were widely understood to be the essential marks of a true Christian church.

I should note that occasionally people use the word “puritan” interchangeably with the word “presbyterian.” This is understandable, but it is not accurate. In fact, many ministers known as Puritans were not Presbyterians. Richard Sibbes, James Ussher, William Gurnall, William Gouge were Episcopalian Anglicans, John Bunyan was a Baptist, and John Cotton, Thomas Goodwin, John Owen, and Jonathan Edwards were Congregationalists. Whatever their visions of the church were, none of them seemed to be fundamentally tied to the political structure of governing a church. But each raise for us different questions about the church—questions that reveal the differences they would have had among themselves, should they ever have been able to meet, this side of glory, questions that reflect their united, faithful Protestant understanding of the gospel, raising questions about ours.

Richard Sibbes’s Vision Of The Evangelical Church

There is no doubt that in the Church of England (the only church in England in the early 1630’s—this was a pre-denominational period), many had been concerned about the growth in “formalism.” And Sibbes was clearly among the concerned. How was he to maintain his equilibrium in days when “the godly” were seen to be under attack in the church? In William Laud, Sibbes saw a kind of tradition-centered view of the church. It was a culturally conservative vision, favoring the existing powers.

Sibbes had an altogether more word-centered, gospel-centered, preaching-centered view of the church. Let’s listen to him now from one of his sermons in 1632 or 1633:

What is the reason, that in popery the schoolmen that were witty to distinguish, that there was little Spirit in them? They savoured not the gospel. They were wondrous quick in distinctions, but they savoured not the matters of grace, and of Christ. It was not fully discovered to them, but they attributed it to satisfaction, and to merits, and to the pope, the head of the church, &c. They divided Christ, they knew him not; and dividing Christ, they wanted the Spirit of Christ; and wanting that Spirit, they taught not Christ as they should. They were dark times, as themselves confessed, especially about nine hundred and a thousand years after Christ, because Christ was veiled then in a world of idle ceremonies—to darken the gospel and the victory of Christ—that the pope made, who was the vicar of Satan. These were the doctors of the church then, and Christ was hid and wrapped in a company of idle traditions and ceremonies of men; and that was the reason that things were obscure. . . .[3]

Now of late for these hundred years, in the time of reformation, there hath been more Spirit and more lightsomeness and comfort. Christians have lived and died more comfortably. Why? Because Christ hath been more known.[4]

Sibbes saw God’s providence in this gradual dawning of the gospel noon-day sun:

As the sun riseth by degrees till he come to shine in glory, so it was with the Sun of righteousness. He discovered himself in the church by little and little. The latter times now are more glorious than the former; and because comparisons give lustre, the blessed apostle, to set forth the excellency of the administration of the covenant of grace under the gospel, he compares it with the administration of the same covenant in the time of the law; and in the comparison prefers that administration under the gospel as more excellent.[5]

Sibbes’s optimism held even in light of the surrounding events that seemed like they were putting the century-old Protestant settlement at risk. He said, “Let us seriously and fruitfully consider in what excellent times the Lord hath cast us, that we may answer it with thankfulness and obedience. . . . God hath reserved us to these glorious times, better than ever our forefathers saw.”[6]

How could any self-respecting Puritan sound so optimistic during such times of increasing trial for the godly in the land? Because fundamentally, Sibbes’s vision of the church was a typical one for the magisterial reformers. The magisterial reformers are people like Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and Cranmer. They are called “magisterial” as opposed to the so-called “non-magisterial” reformers, like the anabaptist Menno Simons, not because they were such masterful reformers (though they were that), but because they worked through the magistrates, the political rulers. They did not try to disestablish the churches. And the common thread that Sibbes and these earlier magisterial reformers had was a commitment to understanding the preaching of the Word as the heart of the church. They had an evangelical vision of the church.

Sibbes said,

The mark whereby this church is known is especially the truth of God. That is the seed of the church, the truth of God discovered by his word and ordinance. To which is annexed the sacraments and ecclesiastical government; but the former most necessary. And these three were typified in the ark; for there was the law signifying the word, and the pot of manna signifying the sacrament, and the rod to shew the discipline. Those three were, as it were, types of the three marks of the church. But especially the word. For that is the seed of the new birth. Wheresoever the word hath been published, and there hath been an order of teachers, and people submitting themselves, there is a church, though perhaps there might be some weakness in other regards.[7]

So it is that Sibbes could look at his scheme to help place good preachers and even at his own position being under attack and still find that the church of England was in a rich time for the gospel. I quote Sibbes again from this series of sermons: “Now of late for these hundred years, in the time of reformation, there hath been more spirit and more lightsomeness and comfort. Christians have lived and died more comfortably. Why? Because Christ hath been more known.”8 He observed concerning the knowledge of the gospel of God’s love in Christ, the believer’s possession of the Holy Spirit, and other benefits, that,

because we have all these abundantly in these latter times of the church, in the second spring of the gospel, in the reformation of religion, after our recovery out of popery, there is a second spring of the gospel. Oh, beloved, how much are we beholding to God! Never since the beginning of the world was there such glorious times as we enjoy. We see how the holy apostle doth prefer these times before former times, when the veil was upon their eyes, and when all was hid in ceremonies, and types, and such things among the Jews. “Now,” saith he, “we behold the glory of God and are changed by the Spirit from glory to glory.” To conclude all. Therefore consider that the glory of the times, and the glory of places and persons, all is from the revelation of Christ by the Spirit, which hath the Spirit accompanying it. The more God in Christ is laid open, the more the times, and places, and persons are excellent.[9]

The times were excellent in Sibbes’s mind—Laudian innovations notwithstanding—because he firmly believed in the centrality, even the sufficiency, of the right preaching of the gospel for the health and existence of the church.

Sibbes sounded like all Protestant reformers when he preached that

hearing begets seeing in religion. Death came in by the ear at the first. Adam hearing the serpent, that he should not have heard, death came in by the ear. So life comes in by the ear. We hear, and then we see: “As we have heard, so have we seen,” say they in the psalm, Ps. 48:8. It is true in religion most of our sight comes by hearing, which is the sense of learning. God will have it so. Therefore we should maintain all we can this beholding of the glory of the Lord [referring back to his text in II Cor. 3:18] in the glass of the word; and for that end hear much.[10]

This should not be understood to say that Sibbes worshipped preaching—that he was a homilolator. He knew that “the Scriptures profit nothing, preaching profiteth nothing, the sacraments will profit nothing; there is none of these will be ‘meat indeed,’ unless the Spirit of Christ quicken them.”11 But he knew that there was no better means to present Christ to the people, because this was God’s ordained means. Again, Sibbes:

You will ask me, What is the best glass of all to see and know Christ in? If you ask a papist, he will shew you crucifixes, and such kind of things. Oh but to behold Christ in the glass of the word, with a spirit of faith, that is the best picture and representation that can be! It is scarce worth spending so much time, as to confute that foolery, to have any grace wrought in the heart by such abominable means as that is, as they use it. Take it at the best, it is but a bastardly help, and bastardly means breed a bastardly devotion. For will God work grace in the heart by means of man’s devising? If pictures be any teachers, they are “teachers of lies,” saith the prophet, Isa. ix. 15; and in the church of God, till pastors and teachers became idols, idols never became teachers. Then came the doctrine of idols teaching of simple people, when idols became teachers a thousand years after Christ. So that the best picture to see Christ in, is the word and sacraments; and the best eye to see him with, is the eye of faith in the word and sacraments. Keep that clear, and we need no crucifixes, no such bastardly helps of bastardly devotion, devised by proud men that would not be beholden to God for his ordinances. . . . In Gal. iii. 1, see what St Paul saith his judgment was: “Oh foolish Galatians, before whom Christ hath been painted and crucified!” How was he painted? Nothing but by the preaching of the gospel; and in the sacraments laid open. Do you think there were any other crucifixes in the world then?[12]

We can tell from comments Sibbes made during this series of sermons that he was concerned that England was squandering this great privilege of hearing God’s Word preached, and there is no doubt that he knew it to be a great privilege.

The more we hear of the sweet love of God in Christ, the more the Spirit flows into the soul together with it. The Spirit goes together with the doctrine of the gospel; which is called the ministry of the Spirit. Therefore let us delight in hearing evangelical points, the love of God opened in Christ. A civil moral man, Oh he is taken mightily, if he hear a moral witty politic discourse that toucheth him; and he is in his element then. What is this to the gospel? This hath its use. Oh but the Spirit goes with the opening of the gospel, with evangelical points; and if our hearts were ever seasoned with the love of God, these points of Christ, and the benefits and privileges by Christ, they will affect us more than any other thing in the world.[13]

What then if this preaching should be lacking? That was the question that English theologians in Sibbes’s day posed to each other about the Roman church, and that is the question that their separatist sons would ask them about their own church of England. In Sibbes’s hands, the centrality of preaching was a force for unity, not for dissent. It quelled disquiet, rather than stirring it. And it did so exactly because, whatever other faults the church may have had, it was a church committed to the Protestant, that is to say, the biblical gospel—the good news of justification by faith alone. And to leave such a church would be tantamount to rending Christ’s body:

And indeed so it is a matter of comfort to see a communion of many in one; for what is the mystical body of Christ Jesus but many members joined in one body, under one gracious and glorious head? And therefore it is a deformed sight to see fraction and disunion. It is that the devil rules in. Divide and rule. It is fit for the devil. God and Christ rule in union. The same Spirit of God that knits the members to the head by faith, knits the members one to another in love; and all grace is derived from the head to the members, as they are united to the body. If there be therefore disunion, there is no grace conveyed so far as there is disunion.[14]

We must be united, Sibbes taught, and we must be united around the gospel.

Perhaps twenty years earlier Richard Sibbes had faced a difficult choice: subscribe to the three articles, or resign his college fellowship in Cambridge. Through the popularity of his public lectures in Cambridge, Sibbes had come to the attention of many who were not as well disposed to him. As a licensed minister he, along with Mr. Bentley, another lecturer in the town, had to subscribe to the three articles of Canon 36 (of the Canons of 1604). These articles asserted first, that the king was the supreme head and governor of the realm in spiritual and ecclesiastical, as well as in temporal matters; second, that the Book of Common Prayer contained nothing contrary to the Word of God, and that it, and only it, should be used as a guide for public worship; and finally, that the 39 Articles were all agreeable to the Word of God. The subscription was to take the following form, “I, n. n., do willingly, and ex animo, subscribe to these three articles above mentioned, and to all things that are contained in them.” In a report of the Vice-Chancellor of the University, it appears that both men subscribed, but Sibbes less willingly than Bentley. I quote: “Sibbes hesitated to do so, not because he had any resolved opinion against the articles, but for feare to displease his crasie Auditors.”

For the next decades Sibbes lived out this compromise. He submitted to the established authorities in the church, and yet he never tired of trying to improve the preaching of those in the church. He died in 1635.

Sixty-two years later, in 1697, John Higginson, 81-year-old minister of the church in Salem, Massachusetts, looked back on the first generation of ministers (which included his father) who came from England to New England. He remarked, “Our fathers did in their time acknowledge, there were many defects and imperfections in our way, and yet we believe they did as much as could be expected from learned and godly men in their circumstances.”[15] Such was the respect accorded Sibbes by those after his death who differed from him, yet esteemed him. To Richard Baxter, Sibbes was one of those “old moderate sort” of “Episcopal men . . . who were commonly in Doctrine Calvinists.”[16] Not that Sibbes was a moderate man when preaching of the necessity of justification by faith, the certainty of God’s salvation of the elect, or the duty of all members of the covenant to fulfill their obligations. No record remains of his being put in a position by those in authority over him to equivocate on such doctrinal essentials. His moderation was reserved for those externals of religion that he deemed adiaphorous, and which his church deemed edifying—the sign of the cross, the use of the surplice.

Given the changes that were about to come in England, hindsight suggests that, as Lord Clarendon later wrote about one of Sibbes’s contemporaries (the Lord Keeper Thomas Coventry), “he dyed in a season most opportune, and in which a wise man would have prayed to have finished his course, and which in truth crowned his other signal prosperity in this worlde.”[17] Even in his last years when he must have felt most circumscribed and could have most easily despaired, he remained until his dying day a member of “the sacred communion of this truly Evangelicall Church of England.”[18] Reflecting on a lifetime of fruitful experience, it is understandable that, in his will, Sibbes should commend his soul to God “with humble thankes that he hath vouchsafed I should be borne and live in the best tymes of the gospell.”[19]

Notes

1. James C. Humes, Nixon’s Ten Commandments of Statecraft (New York: Scribner, 1997), 80.
2. Seen at the Unitarian/Universalist Church of Louisville, Kentucky.
3. Richard Sibbes, “The Excellency of the Gospel above the Law,” in The Complete Works of Richard Sibbes, ed. Alexander Balloch Grosart, vol. 4 (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1863), 215.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., 238.
6. Ibid., 239.
7. Sibbes, “A Breathing after God,” in The Complete Works of Richard Sibbes, 2:242.
8. Sibbes, “Excellency of the Gospel above the Law,” in The Complete Works of Richard Sibbes, 4:215.
9. Ibid., 302-3.
10. Ibid., 251-52.
11. Ibid., 211.
12. Ibid., 252.
13. Ibid., 300-301.
14. Ibid., 255.
15. John Higginson, “An Attestation to the Church-History,” prefixed to Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana (Hartford, CT: Salas Andrus & Son, 1853), I:17.
16. Richard Baxter, Reliquae Baxterianae, ed. Matthew Sylvester (London: Parkhurst, Robinson, Lawrence, and Dunton, 1696), ii.149. Christopher Hill has noted “the middle way of Archbishops Grindal and Abbott in the church, to which late seventeenth century nonconformists looked back as the true Church of England” (A Turbulent, Seditious, and Factious People: John Bunyan and His Church [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988], 32).
17. Henry Hyde, Lord Clarendon, TheHistory of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, ed. W. D. Macray (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958), I:38.
18. Sibbes, “Consolatory Letter to an Afflicted Conscience,” in The Complete Works of Richard Sibbes, 1:cxvi.
19. Sibbes, “King David’s Epitaph,” in The Complete Works of Richard Sibbes, 4:495.