Four realities for the Puritans that determined the landscape of piety

J. I. Packer:

For the Puritans, the landscape of piety—that is, the spiritual topography of the ongoing life-situations in which each saint serves God—was determined by four realities, on all of which, as their books show, they laid out a great deal of expository effort.

These were

• the sovereignty and sanctity of God, under whose eye we live, in whose hands we are, and whose purpose to have us holy, as he is holy, explains his way with our lives;


• the dignity and depravity of human beings, made for God but ruined by sin and now needing total renewal by grace;


• the love and Lordship of Christ, the Mediator, the Christian’s Saviour-King;


• and the light and power of the Holy Spirit, who convicts, quickens, regenerates, witnesses, leads, and sanctifies.

(A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (Crossway, 2010; repr.), 332.)

(HT: Justin Taylor)