Puritans

The Puritans were English Reformers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They were frustrated by the slow progress of the Reformation in the Anglican Church. They left a legacy of theological writing that is unsurpassed in church history. Their doctrine tended to be Calvinistic and Presbyterian. John Calvin encountered Luther's teaching and was converted in Switzerland-. A man with an intense love for God, he believed that all knowledge of God could only be found in the Word of God. He also believed in predestination. He believed in the final authority of God and that God has everything under control -how close and fundamental this is to our belief! 

These two men were not perfect! - Luther believed that babies were “born again” at infant baptism. Calvin had more than one opponent burnt at the stake for opposing his teaching. But through them and the division they caused in the church, came further expansion of Christianity. Renewal and reform cane at the cost of the break up of religious unity in Western Europe but was basis of modern religious freedom. Most denominations were born out of a search for truth rather then strife. Luther became father of Protestantism (so called because of taking the stand of protest) and also founder of the Lutheran church.

Calvin's work gave rise to the Presbyterian Church in Scotland and Netherlands and Puritan movement in England and America. What a prevailing truth that some of our doctrines based on these men, but usually to Calvin. This is the truth that these things happened for the sake of preserving the truth even between life and death situations, these people were willingly to give their lives. This reminds me that as a Bible school student what I should pass on to the next generation. It seems that I had no capability to impart my intelligent but hopefully my living testimony would speak through them that there is God.