Finding Assurance with Thomas Goodwin (eBook)

Introduction

The assurance of faith is a universal Christian desire, while doubt is a common Christian experience. The Puritans, perhaps more than any other group in history, were acutely aware of this reality and relentlessly probed Scripture and their own experience for comfort, and not for themselves alone but that they might share it with others in their pastoral ministries. Thomas Goodwin (1600–1680) wrestled with doubt for seven years after his conversion. When assurance came, it came with rapturous joy and euphoric confidence in that Christ died for him personally, that his sins were in fact forgiven. Such confidence endured and resulted in a life of increased holiness, usefulness in ministry, and perseverance in the faith.

Goodwin found a biblical basis for this experience in the language of the Spirit’s sealing from Ephesians 1:13–14 and developed the idea of the sealing of the Spirit as a second work of grace in which the believer is convinced beyond doubt in the soul of personal salvation, a work not enjoyed by every believer but one to be sought by all. In so doing, Goodwin pushed the Puritan doctrine of assurance to its apex. As an innovative doctrine, clear in both his life and writings, the sealing of the Spirit is a fitting lens through which to view Goodwin’s biography and thereby bring coherence to a story that spans some of the most eventful years in English history. This doctrine also provides help for the perennial struggle for assurance that is ever present in the lives of Christians.

LIFE AND TIMES

By 1600, England had enjoyed over four decades of relative religious peace. King Henry VIII (1491–1547) broke the Church of England away from the Church of Rome in 1534, but not for doctrinal reasons. The pope failed to provide his desired annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon (1485–1536), who had not provided Henry with a male heir. His thoroughly Protestant archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556), thus had to proceed slowly and cautiously with internal church reform. When Henry’s son became king in 1547, everything changed. Edward VI (1537–1553) was only nine years old when he was crowned, and his regents accelerated the English Reformation. Cranmer wrote the Book of Common Prayer, designed to regulate worship in the Church of England, and what would become the Thirty-Nine Articles, the confessional standard of the national church. Edward, a sickly child, died in 1553, and his half-sister, Mary (1516–1558), ascended to power. She was the daughter of Henry’s first wife, Catherine, who successfully passed down her devout Catholic faith and bitterness toward the English Reformation, which had caused her to be sidelined. Mary earned her nickname, “Bloody Mary,” by burning at the stake roughly three hundred Protestants, most infamously Cranmer himself, and exiling many more in her attempt to reverse the religious course. Her reign was cut short by her death in 1558.

By the time Elizabeth I (1533–1603), Henry’s last remaining heir, became queen, the country was weary of religious upheaval. A series of laws passed in 1558, known as the Elizabethan Settlement, put England on its permanent Protestant course, but some, who came to be labeled Puritans, viewed this as a compromise, which it was. At the risk of oversimplification, Elizabeth reformed the church’s doctrine but not its practice. Theologically, the Church of England became truly Protestant, part of the Reformed tradition. But in terms of its externals and worship forms, much was carried over, such as kneeling to receive the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, priestly vestments, the sign of the cross, and perhaps most significantly, the church’s hierarchy of bishops. To the Puritans such things smacked of superstition and Roman Catholicism, so they wanted the externals to be reformed as well. They wanted to purify the Church of England by making its worship and government look like what they saw in John Calvin’s (1509–1564) Geneva and other Reformed centers on the Continent. In short, they wanted a church strictly regulated by Scripture.

This regulation was anything but a burden in the Puritan mind. In fact, it was a liberating principle. For them, only elements of worship with clear precept in Scripture or apostolic precedent belonged in the church. If Scripture regulated worship, then people would be free to worship without human impositions, whether seemingly helpful, hurtful, or indifferent. The problem, however, was that the Book of Common Prayer imposed all kinds of demands and restrictions. To make matters worse, the requirements were enforced by bishops, whose very offices were illegitimate in the estimation of most Puritans. While the Church of England would never return to the Roman Catholic fold, the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries saw a great deal of chafing as the Puritans worked for further reformation.

In this context, Goodwin was born in 1600 to Puritan parents in Rollesby, Norfolk. The county was infamous for its nonconformity to the worship dictated by the Book of Common Prayer and its resistance to religious persecution by the Crown. Goodwin’s Puritan parents raised him religiously and determined that he would pursue the ministry of the gospel. They provided him with an education, including in Greek and Hebrew, and sent him to Christ’s College, Cambridge, at the age of fourteen. He matriculated to Catherine Hall, Cambridge, in 1620, where he became a fellow and lecturer. While he had experienced conviction of sin as early as age six, knew the gospel, and had several obvious seasons when the Lord was working in his life spiritually, it was 1620 when he was truly saved, beginning his seven-year struggle for assurance. In addition to his university work, he gained a preaching license in 1625. He ministered at St. Andrew the Great and eventually at Trinity Church starting in 1628, the church known for its pastors Richard Sibbes (1577–1635) and John Preston (1587–1628). He followed their precedent of plain-style Puritan preaching and was later honored with appointment as one of the editors of Preston’s sermons. He was also entrusted with the publication in England of The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven (1644), by John Cotton (1585–1692), showing his Congregationalist convictions.

By the middle of the 1620s, it was becoming increasingly difficult to exist in the Church of England as a Puritan. Charles I (1600–1649) became king in 1625 and supported William Laud (1573–1645). Laud had an impressive rise through academic and ecclesiastical ranks, landing as chancellor of Oxford University and archbishop of Canterbury, the highest office in the Church of England. He was Arminian, sacramental, episcopal, and a royalist, all anathema to the Puritans. He attacked the Reformed consensus in the church and narrowed the boundaries of conformity. He enforced strict adherence to the Book of Common Prayer, requiring the wearing of priestly clothes, bowing, and precise placement of the communion table, which the Puritans deemed superstitious. He used degrading punishments, cutting off the ears of those who refused to conform and branding the foreheads of undeterred Puritans with the letters “SL” for “seditious libeler.” The Puritans made light of this by joking that the letters stood for stigmata Laudis, or the “sign of Laud.” By the mid-1630s, suppression of criticism and nonconformity was severe, and the fallout was great. Goodwin resigned his positions in Cambridge in 1634 and fled to the Netherlands in 1639.

Goodwin returned and settled in London in 1641. The Long Parliament (1640–1648) had convened, and civil war broke out. Charles had assembled Parliament in 1640 because he needed money. He had exhausted his resources in the Bishops’ Wars, his failed attempt to force Laudianism on Scotland. That Parliament had Puritan sympathies reveals both the effectiveness of the Puritans, even under persecution, and how unpopular Laud’s zealous reforms really were. The Puritan Parliament went to war against the king and won in 1646. It tried and executed Laud in 1645 and then King Charles himself in 1649. During these tumultuous years, Goodwin served in the Westminster Assembly, the religious advisory body to Parliament, and was vocal about his congregationalist ecclesiology and other key theological topics.

Goodwin was close to Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), the general of the parliamentary military and later Lord Protector, after Charles was executed and Parliament dismissed in 1653. Cromwell was a firm, efficient, and moderate Puritan, and he ruled during a time of religious toleration by the standards of the day, by which only Roman Catholicism and unorthodox sects were forbidden. Cromwell showed his favor to Goodwin with an appointment to the presidency of Magdalene College, Oxford. From this post he helped the school both academically and spiritually. This was the height of his political and ecclesiastical career. During this decade he served in numerous significant roles in the Cromwellian government and was part of the inner circle with John Owen (1616–1683) and Phillip Nye (1592–1672), who wrote the Savoy Declaration (1658), the Congregationalist revision of the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646). Goodwin’s fate was tied to Cromwell and the Commonwealth, however, and when Oliver died in 1658 and his son, Richard Cromwell (1626–1712), failed to command the same influence as his father, the whole Puritan project unraveled. Goodwin left his position at Oxford and went to London, where he pastored an independent congregation.

The final decades of Goodwin’s life were spent in relative...