1. The truth was stated in the other post and thus I will not recant. Here I Stand (heard that one before [img]http://www.the-highway.com/w3timages/icons/laugh.gif" alt="laugh" title="laugh[/img])

2. Even if what you assert is true concerning “some” of the Puritans at specific times in their ministry, it is no proof that this was the “norm” for their ministry. Additionally, by your own admission you “do not” agree with everything the Puritans wrote. Though they may be right on many/most things they are not omniscient. I see a healthy balance not only in the "experience" issue of the Puritans, but in the other areas as well.

3. The Preface to Owen’s work, The Holy Spirit has “no statements” regarding this issue? (Banner of Truth, 1998, maybe you have a different edition than I).

4. Why don't you give the Author, book, and page of specific examples you are speaking about so we may examine their context.

WILLIAM GOUGE said:

[color:blue] It is God's word that does convert, quicken, comfort, and build up, or, on the other side, wound and beat down. What is the reason that there was so great an alteration made by the ministry of Christ and his disciples, by the apostles and others after them, indeed, by Luther, and other ministers of reformed churches? They did not preach traditions of elders like the scribes; nor men's inventions like the Roman Catholics do. They preached the pure word of God. The more purely God's word is preached, the more deeply it pierces and the more kindly it works.
Lloyd-Jones said:

[color:blue]Preaching, the Puritans said, “is the exposition of the Word of God.” They even said that, in faithful preaching, God himself is preaching, and that if a man is giving a true exposition of Scripture, God is speaking because it is God’s Word, and not the word of man.

To the Puritans, explaining doctrine was not vain, academic self-indulgence, but an integral part of Biblical preaching:

This is essential in (the Puritans’) view of preaching. They were always out to find a doctrine, and doctrine is to be found in the Word. You do not impose doctrine on the Word. You do not start with doctrine and then find a text to fit it. You start with the Word and then find the doctrine in the text. You then produced reasons which justified your finding this doctrine and then you referred to other Scriptures which taught the same doctrine and confirmed the idea, the doctrine, that you claimed to discover in your text . . . They never failed to do this.
Packer states:

[color:blue]The Puritan preacher regarded himself as the mouthpiece of God and the servant of His words. He must speak ‘as the oracle of God.’ His task, therefore, was not information, fastening on to Scripture text meanings they do not bear, nor was it juxtaposition, using his text as a peg on which to hang some homily unrelated to it. The preacher’s task was precisely, exposition, extracting from his texts what God had encased within them.

The Puritan method of ‘opening’ a text was first to explain it in its context; next, to extract from the text one or more doctrinal observations embodying its substances, and then to amplify, illustrate, and conform form other Scriptures the truths thus derived; and finally, to draw out their practical implications for the hearers.
Richard Baxter, the importance of theology was based in the conviction that a proper understanding of God would allow for a proper understanding of everything else:

[color:blue]. . . it is a grand error, and of dangerous consequence in Christian academics . . . that they study the creature before the Redeemer, and set themselves to physics, and metaphysics, and mathematics, before they set themselves to theology; whereas, no man that hath not the vitals of theology, is capable of going beyond a fool in philosophy. Theology must be the foundation, and lead the way of all our studies.


Reformed and Always Reforming,