Welcome to a year of reading Richard Sibbes together! The reading plan for the entire year can be accessed here. I encourage you to stick with us, allow yourself time to read, and soak in the riches of this gifted and prolific Puritan preacher. You will be edified and encouraged.
If you have trouble with how Sibbes used words, check out the Lexicons of Early Modern English for definitions from the period.
Summary/Engagement
We have now reached the end of Dever’s PHD dissertation on the life and theology of Richard Sibbes. Chapter seven was devoted largely to Sibbes’s views of assurance of salvation and the conscience of man. Sibbes taught on assurance much like the Reformers before him, though Dever pointed out they may have stated their positions differently. In teaching, they were nearly the same.
Dovetailing in to assurance is Sibbes’s teaching on the conscience. The conscience was the guide by which a man was to determine his standing or assurance before God, and his actions before men. “Sibbes taught that God had left the conscience in man as his “vicar; a little god in us to do his office, to call upon us, direct us, check and condemn us.” (187) God was supreme, the conscience was under God, and the counsel of men came after them. God informed the conscience, which informed the man, which logically placed them ahead of the counsel of others.
It is this view of the conscience that helps explain Sibbes staying in the Church of England as a “conscientious conformer,” rather than a non-conformist. Dever notes Sibbes was convinced that he should not separate from the church for matters that were only of first importance: the gospel and right preaching of the word of God, the administration of the ordinances, and discipline.
Coupled with his trust in the sovereignty and goodness of God, and you have the ingredients to make a conforming moderate Puritan who kept covenant with the Church of England until his death in 1635. While many of his friends and other Puritans left the church, some to the colonies in America and others to mainland Europe, Sibbes stayed faithfully in the church, though its character had changed much from his days at Cambridge. Yet, we can see from this quote he perhaps did not see the church as healthy, but had faith in God who could make it healthy.
“Look with other spectacles, with the eye of faith, and then you shall see a spring in the winter of the church.” (205)
Application / Further Discussion
Sibbes was a Reformed Calvinist, a moderate Puritan, and yet a conforming member of the Church of England. The Puritans were “non-conformists,” those who left the church of England due to objections to its faith and practice. Yet somehow, Sibbes was able to make peace with his conscience and stay in the church.
He had hope of what was to come. “A spring in the winter of the church.” He believed that the church was fundamentally God’s, and thus he trusted in God’s sovereignty over the church. This is not to say he was without bounds as apparently in 1616 when he had to re-state his conformance he may have been close to non-conformity. Yet he stayed.
I am reminded of a story Mark Dever tells about a friend of his who would not join his local church because he felt that “they would slow him down.” Dever pointed out this brother was indeed bright, and devoted to God and his word. His retort to his friend was, “yes, but did you ever think you might speed them up?” This captures for me Richard Sibbes and his conformity to the Church of England.
Sibbes did not find matters that he objected over of a nature worth splitting from the church. Thus, his duty was to stay and preach and teach those who he had influence over. He taught the sovereignty of God, the sinfulness of man, and the assurance that could be afforded man contrary to Roman Catholic teaching. He chose to stay.
The significance of Sibbes’s decision to stay resonates deep within me. The link of the believer to the church is increasingly weak in North America. People leave over trivial matters such as music, programs, activities, and disputes. First order doctrinal issues are not often the reason for separation of saints from the local church. Can we not learn from Sibbes here?
Can we resist the temptation in ourselves to leave for a “better” church rather than staying and perhaps being God’s instrument of grace?
Coupled with that, can we then stay and be humbled as God uses this imperfect church we so quickly wish to leave as his instrument of grace to us?
Can we stop looking for the perfect church, and instead unite with fellow believers, who share common doctrinal convictions, and work together for the cause of the gospel?
Can we, like Sibbes, trust God in all things, including our sanctification?
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Last week, we covered chapters five and six in Mark Dever’s biography of Richard Sibbes.
Next week, we’ll read Sibbes’s sermon, “A Breathing After God.”
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