I like the Puritans, in spite of the caricature of them as constipated, legalistic, sexually repressed, witch burning men in black with buckles on their shoes, who killed the Indians they with whom they ate Thanksgiving dinner. There has to be something appealing about a movement (on both sides of the Atlantic) that arouses so much hostility and misrepresentation both then and now.
The Puritans were all great writers, verbose by modern standards. There are no contemporary writers who dig as deeply into their own hearts to find grounds for repentance (see John Bunyan's Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners), or who were as joyous and emotional in their experience of Christ's love for them and their love for Christ (see Jonathan Edwards' Religious Affections).
The fact is that the Puritans loved Christ, and wrote about Christ, and searched their souls to make sure they were bound to Christ. Flavel wrote:
"He (Christ) is bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, a garment to the naked, healing to the wounded; and whatever a soul can desire is found in him....Take away Christ, and where is the loveliness of any enjoyment? The best creature-comfort apart from Christ is but a broken cistern. It cannot hold one drop of true comfort. It is with the creature--the sweetest and loveliest creature--as with a beautiful image in a mirror: turn away the face and where is the image? Riches, honors, and comfortable relations are sweet when the face of Christ smiles upon us through them; but without him, what empty trifles are they all?"
The Fountain of Life is a detailed exposition of Christ's atoning work, beginning with the cost of our salvation in the heart of the eternal Trinity, moving through the incarnation, the humility and suffering of Christ through his lifetime, and ending with His passion, resurrection, ascension, session, and final triumph. Flavel unpacks the absolute all-sufficiency, all-pervasiveness, all-completed work of Christ on our behalf, a work approved and accepted by the Father, and confirmed by the coming of the Holy Spirit upon vessels that were previously unclean.
Flavel makes no apology for the doctrine of the Substitutionary Atonement. Of course, The Fountain of Life is not a doctrinal apologetic at all. It is aimed at lost sinners and believers who are seeking assurance of the love of God. But the doctrine of Christ's suffering and dying in our place pervades the book.
Flavel makes two assumptions:
1) Man is fallen beyond repair, and unless God takes the initiative, is under the wrath of God and an eternal curse. Flavel: "Man, by the apostasy, is become a most disordered and rebellious creature, opposing his maker, as the First Cause, by self-dependence; as the Chief Good, by self-love; as the highest Lord, by self-will; and as the Last End, by self-seeking. Thus he is quite disordered, and all his actions are irregular. But by regeneration the disordered soul is set right; this great change being, as the Scripture expresses it, the renovation of the soul after the image of God...."
2) God Himself supplies the antidote in Christ, who as God and representative Man bears the curse that rests upon our sin, bears the whole load, and in the process declares us free. His ascension and session are the Father's proof that the sacrifice is sufficient. Flavel: "O what a melting consideration is this! that out of his agony comes our victory; out of his condemnation, our justification; out of his pain, our ease; out of his stripes, our healing; out of his gall and vinegar, our honey; out of his curse, our blessing; out of his crown of thorns, our crown of glory; out of his death, our life: if he could not be released, it was that you might. If Pilate gave sentence against him, it was that the great God might never give sentence against you. If he yielded that it should be with Christ as they required, it was that it might be with our souls as well as we can desire. And therefore, thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift."
I realize that the doctrine of penal substitution is rejected in some parts of the church, accepted by others but not seen as all-sufficient, and is a bit of an embarrassment even among Protestants. Personally, I find it a great comfort and a joy beyond anything hoped for. I also believe we should move closer to the Puritans in the church's proclamation of the gospel in an age that resents God's right to be God. Let me close with Flavel's conclusion:
But now reader, let me tell thee, that if ever God send forth these two grim sergeants, his law, and thine own conscience, to arrest thee for thy sins, if thou find thyself dragged away by them towards that prison from whence none return, that are once clapt up therein, and that in this unspeakable distress Jesus Christ manifest himself to thy soul, and open thy heart to receive him, and become thy surety with God, pay all thy debts, and cancel all thy obligations, thou wilt love him at another rate than others do; his blood will run deeper in thine eyes than it does in the shallow apprehensions of the world; he will be altogether lovely, and thou wilt account all things but dung and dross in comparison of the excellency of Jesus Christ thy Lord."
