# The Puritan Excercise



## JOwen (Feb 7, 2007)

From KERUGMA

There is an old Reformed tradition we have somehow forgotten called “The Exercise”. Never heard of it? Don't be alarmed, your not alone.

Under the heading, 'For Preaching, and Interpreting of Scriptures, etc', the Scottish First Book of Discipline (1560) states,

To the end that the church of God may have a trial of men's knowledge, judgments, graces, and utterances; and also, that such as somewhat have profited in God's word may from time to time grow to more full perfection to serve the church, as necessity shall require: it is most expedient that in every town, where schools and repair of learned men are, that there be one certain day every week appointed [to] that exercise which Saint Paul calls prophesying. The order whereof is expressed by him in these words: Let two or three prophets speak; and let the rest judge.​

The famous Cripplegate Lectures preached in London, and recently republished in six large volumes followed the pattern of _The Exercise_. Here, one minister expound on a topic or text, and the rest would judge. There are several points of comparison between this phenomenon and the _Question Meetings _held in many traditional Reformed Churches. In the Question Meetings, after the Lord's Supper, time would be given to the discussion of the means of grace, repentance, and holy living. The men of the congregation (be they layman or minister), would expound on some aspect of these truths in an informal setting. However, this is where the similarities end. The aim of the Question Meeting was to open up to the inquisitive, the marks of grace in the life of the believer, thus promoting good direction in self examination. The aim of the exercise was _the reverse_. Scripture itself was to be expounded _without any application_. This is why it was _an exercise_.

First Book of Discipline,

The interpreter in that exercise may not take to himself the liberty of a public preacher, yea, although he is a minister appointed; but he must bind himself to his text, that he enter not by digression in explaining common-places. He may use no invective in that exercise, unless it is with sobriety in confuting heresies. In exhortations or admonitions he must be short, that the time may be spent in opening of the mind of the Holy Ghost in that place.​
After the exposition, a short debate would ensue discovering the merits of the exposition, “So every man must be given his censure” (This does not mean anything more that constructive criticism). If there was fault to be found, the exponent would be encouraged with the corrections.


Perhaps our hide is too thin today to revive this old practice among our men? Perhaps the roll of the Classis or Synod has functionally replaced this rendering it needless. But for the sake of discussion, let me give several reasons why it might be a good idea to revive this practice in some way.


The first reason this exercise was beneficial was to ensure that the minster could adequately analyze a text. Here lay the cardinal difference between the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church and the Reformers- scriptural scruples. I think what can be said of the ignorance of the Roman Priests can be reasonably transferred to the shoulders of the modern neo-evangelical preacher, who's emphasis is more on sense than of truth. Modern Christian culture has lost the art of “_rightly dividing the word of truth_” because we have not “_Studied to shew ourselves approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed_” (2 Tim 2:15) Even in many Reformed Churches, _sense_ has replace _sensibility_, and a text is isegetically forced instead of organically rendered. The Exercise would help curtail this perennial problem.


A second reason for this exercise was to bring into the open those men who had the gift of expounding Scripture. John Knox was discovered in such a fashion. Knox, much like Calvin was not pursuing the ministry, but was laid hold of by people who discovered his ability to expound the Word. For Calvin this was Farel, for Knox, it was John Rough. To corner Knox, Rough went so far as to declare that the congregation had the powers of election over anyone they deemed had the gifts of the office of teacher. Like Farel, Rough proceeded to address Knox on behalf of the people, charging him not to refuse the calling. How many in our number have this untapped gift of exposition in our Churches? Perhaps not many. The Exercise would be one way to find out. This, of course would only apply to confessing, baptized male members of a congregation.


A third function of this exercise was public instruction and edification. The First Book of Discipline sates, “the simple, and such as have somewhat profited, shall be encouraged daily to study and proceed in knowledge; the church shall be edified (for this exercise must be patent to such as list to hear and learn). The task of instruction could be distributed in the congregation creating several avenues of instruction. Often these men became elders or catechists (another forlorn tradition), edifying the people and helping the ministry of the Word.


From 1560-1570 there was no move to bring The Exercise within the conciliar structure of the Church. In 1579 an overture from the Synod of Lothian requested that the order of presbyteries (Classis) be erected “in place where public exercises is used, until the time the policy of the Kirk be established by law”. This meant that The Exercise as a function of discovery within the local setting was no longer used for its intended purpose. One could argue that the natural fertile ground of the local Church was usurped by policy, whereby organic cultivation of gifts were now given over to the ivory towers of academia. One might wonder if this is a biblical model at all and if we have not lost a scriptural avenue of discovering gifts among men? But that is for another posting.


Exercises, it could be said, have run their course. As the Second Reformation dawned in Scotland, and greater formularies and Confessions were written, our fathers quietly passed over “The Exercise” in the First Book of Discipline. Perhaps this was for the best. However we still have this interesting anomaly in the Cripplegate Lectures of 1659-1686, well after the formal inclusion of The Exercise had been discarded. The Second Reformation divines still practiced it albeit in a modified form. Perhaps we should do the same?


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Feb 7, 2007)

Good stuff, Jerrold! I have the Cripplegate Sermons and have been greatly blessed in reading them, but have been interested to learn more about the context and background. This is very helpful. Do you have any recommendations for further reading?

BTW, I saw reference made to the Synod of Lothian's quote and some discussion of that point in Thomas M'Crie's _Lives of the Scottish Reformers_, p. 236. I believe the date should be 1579 rather than 1779.


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## JOwen (Feb 7, 2007)

VirginiaHuguenot said:


> Good stuff, Jerrold! I have the Cripplegate Sermons and have been greatly blessed in reading them, but have been interested to learn more about the context and background. This is very helpful. Do you have any recommendations for further reading?
> 
> BTW, I saw reference made to the Synod of Lothian's quote and some discussion of that point in Thomas M'Crie's _Lives of the Scottish Reformers_, p. 236. I believe the date should be 1579 rather than 1779.



Glad it was of some help brother. You are correct that the date should be 1579, thanks, I'll make that correction.

As far as source material goes The First Book of Discipline is helpful no doubt, but I'm sure you are looking for something beyond that. If you look at McCrie in his life of Andrew Melville he gives some of the minutes for the exercise as an appendix. 

The November 8, 1597 extract from the Presbytery of Edinburgh states, "It is ordained that Mr. Robert Rollock shall make a catalog of the young men whom he thinks merit to exercise". 

I've gathered much of this through snippets of very old resources handed down to me by my mentor Rev. D. Beattie. Extracts from the Presbytery of Haddington, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and the like.

The Presbytery of Haddington reads in extract, "May 8, 1608. Mr. James Carmichael (younger) heard privilie exercises the second time upon Ephesians 6,12. The brethren prayest God for him, and appoyntit him to exercise privilie the next in the morning in the galrie, prosecuting the same text."

Most of this stuff needs to be collated. Something I'd like to do in the future, perhaps next time I go back to Scotland.


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Feb 7, 2007)

Thanks Jerrold! I'll look up that appendix in M'Crie's Life of Melville. Those references you cited are very interesting. If you do some collating or further research, please keep us posted.   

One thing I recall reading about the Cripplegate Morning Exercises: they were delivered around 5:30 am.


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## JOwen (Feb 7, 2007)

VirginiaHuguenot said:


> Thanks Jerrold! I'll look up that appendix in M'Crie's Life of Melville. Those references you cited are very interesting. If you do some collating or further research, please keep us posted.
> 
> One thing I recall reading about the Cripplegate Morning Exercises: they were delivered around 5:30 am.



Ack! Too early for this cowpoke. I'm up at 6:00 am, but I don't begin to think straight until noon. I need a running start at both rational thought *and *coherence! 

I'll keep you updated on what I'm able to gather in the future.


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Feb 7, 2007)

Derek A. Wilson, _The Uncrowned Kings of England: The Black History of the Dudleys and the Tudor Throne_ (2005), p. 292:



> [Robert] Dudley became increasingly worried by the activities of the Presbyterians who were endangering the progress of further reformations, splitting the radical wing of the church and making it difficult for him and his friends to fight for the cause at government level. Matters came to a head at Southam, Warwickshire, in 1576. One of the most important aspects fo the Puritan movement was the 'exercises' or 'propheysings': meetings of local ministers for mutual exhortation and Bible study, sometimes accompanied by public sermons. They were anathema to the queen and when complaints reached her about the behaviour of the Presbyterian ministers and gentlemen in Warwickshire, Elizabeth referred the matter to Dudley -- Warwickshire was, after all, 'his' county. Dudley passed on Elizabeth's protests to Archbishop Grindal and the Southam exercise was closed down. Dudley now found himself obliged to offer a defense to Puritan activists who accused him of deserting the cause.
> 
> ...for the exercises which I have known and heard of in many places, there was never thing used in the Church that I have thought and do think more profitable both for people and ministers, or that I have more spoken for or more laboured in defence of, even from the beginning, especially where they are used with quietness to the conversation and unity of the doctrine established already and to the increase of the learned ministry...I fear the over busy dealing of some hath done so much hurt in striving to make better...that which is...good enough already that we shall neither have it in Southam nor any other where else.



Edmund Grindal, Archbishop of Canterbury was suspended from his office in 1577 by Queen Elizabeth for disobeying her command to supress Puritan exercises or prophesyings.


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## JOwen (Feb 7, 2007)

VirginiaHuguenot said:


> Derek A. Wilson, _The Uncrowned Kings of England: The Black History of the Dudleys and the Tudor Throne_ (2005), p. 292:
> 
> 
> 
> Edmund Grindal, Archbishop of Canterbury was suspended from his office in 1577 by Queen Elizabeth for disobeying her command to supress Puritan exercises or prophesyings.



Hey, that's interesting! Thanks.


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Feb 7, 2007)

JOwen said:


> Hey, that's interesting! Thanks.



You're welcome! Here is another reference which may be of interest. 

Geoffrey F. Nutall, _The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience_ (1992), p. 77:



> In the Congregational churches 'prophesying' thus came to be practised partly through the Separatist strain in their ancestry; but not only so. John Robinson refers twice to the Synod held at Emden in 1571 (the year in which the exercise arose in England), at which it was decreed 'that in all churches,...the order of prophecy should be observed...and that into this fellowship, to wit of prophets, should be admitted not only the ministers, but also...of the very common people (_ex ipsa plebe_)'; in fact, Robinson claims 'prophesying' as 'the practice of all reformed churches.' The work in which he makes this claim, _The Peoples Plea for the Exercise of Prophecy, against Mr. John Yates his Monopolie_ (1618), is the _locus classicus_ for an early discussion of the subject.


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Feb 7, 2007)

Tom Webster, _Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England: the Caroline Puritan movement, c. 1620 - 1643_, p. 44:



> Thomas Cartwright had, after all, defined the business of a conference in his _Second Admonition_, of 1573, drawing on Scottish and continental practice, but naturally rooting the practice in Scripture:
> 
> A conference I call the meeting of some certain ministers and other brethren...at some certain place as it was at Corinth...to confer and exercise themselves in prophesying or in interpreting the scriptures...At which conferences...any of the brethren are to be at the order of the whole, to be employed upon some affaires of the Church...The demeanors also of the ministers may be examined and rebuked.


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## JOwen (Feb 7, 2007)

VirginiaHuguenot said:


> Tom Webster, _Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England: the Caroline Puritan movement, c. 1620 - 1643_, p. 44:



Love it. I'll keep cutting and pasting as you do the posting. I feel a good paper coming on!


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Feb 7, 2007)

JOwen said:


> Love it. I'll keep cutting and pasting as you do the posting. I feel a good paper coming on!



Happy to be of some small assistance. I look forward to reading that paper, dv!

1556 Genevan Book of Church Order:



> Prophecy or Interpretation of Scriptures
> 
> Everie weeke once, the congregation assemble to heare some place of the scriptures orderly expounded. At which tyme, it is lawfull for every man to speake, or enquire as God shall move his harte, and the text minister occasion, so it be without pertinacitee or disdayne, as one that rather seketh to proffit than to contend. And if so be any contencion rise, then suche as are appointed moderatours, either satisfie the partie, or els if he seme to cavill, exhorte hym to kepe silence, referring the judgment therof to the ministers and elders, to be determined in their assemblie or consistorie before mencioned.
> 
> a. 1 Cor. 14:1ff.; 1 Thess. 5:20; Eph. 4:29; 1 Cor. 12:28-31


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Feb 7, 2007)

The subject of prophesying exercises came up at the 1604 Hampton Court Conference and lead to a famous quote by King James.

Charles MacFarlane and Thomas Thomson, _The Comprehensive History of England; Civil and Military, Religious, Intellectual, and Social, from the earliest period to the supression of the Sepoy Revolt_ (1861), Vol. II, p. 610:



> His [King James'] hatred of the northern Presbyterianism, from which he had so lately escaped, and his readiness to identify it with English Puritanism, broke out at every stage of the contest. This was especially the case when Dr. [John] Reynolds, the chief of the Puritan advocates, reckoned the most learned man in England, ventured to propose that the clergy should be allowed to have meetings for prophesying (preaching) in the rural deaneries every three weeks; that such things as could not there be resolved might be referred to the arch-deacon's vistation; and, finally, that all the clergy of each diocese should meet in an Episcopal synod, with the bishop for its president, where they might determine upon such questions as could not be decided in the inferior assemblies. But although this was the nearest approach to Presbyterianism that had been made throughout the controversy, and although it was little else than the modified system of church polity which James had been labouring with such pains to establish in Scotland, it was anything but palatable to the royal disputant, who sharply declared, "I will none of that: I will have one doctrine and one discipline -- one religion in substance and ceremony." "If you aim," he afterwards declared, "at a Scottish presbytery, it agreeth with monarchy as God with the devil. Then Jack, and Tom, and Will, and Dick shall meet, and at their pleasure censure me and my council, and all our proceedings. Then Will shall stand up and say, It must be thus: then Dick shall reply and say, Nay, marry, but we will have it thus: and, therefore, here I must once more reiterate my former speech, 'le roy s'avisera.'" Still fuming with the thought of Presbytery, he thus concluded his strange harangue: -- "Stay, I pray you, for one seven years before you demand that of me, and if then you find me pursy and fat, and my windpipes stuffed, I will perhaps hearken to you, for let that government be once up I am sure I shall be kept in breath: then shall we all of us have work enough -- both our hands full. But, Dr. Reynolds, till you find that I grow lazy, let that alone."


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Feb 7, 2007)

If I recall correctly, there is a section on prophesying in Wilhelmus a Brakel's _The Christian's Reasonable Service_, Vol. I. I'll check on that.


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Feb 7, 2007)

It's probably also worth reviewing Thomas Case's introduction and conclusion to the Morning Exercises.


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## JOwen (Feb 7, 2007)

VirginiaHuguenot said:


> It's probably also worth reviewing Thomas Case's introduction and conclusion to the Morning Exercises.



Which is excellent BTW.


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## JOwen (Feb 8, 2007)

Interesting addition to the subject here.


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## bookslover (Feb 8, 2007)

It should be remembered that the whole idea of The Exercise has been taken out of Paul's original context. Paul's intent was to be bring order out of confusion among those among the Corinthians who were speaking in tongues in the worship service, by having one person at a time speak, with others, after the speaker finished, interpreting.

So, I guess, one could say that The Exercise is not a biblical idea, but an extrapolation from a biblical principle regarding tongues.

Or am I just being pedantic?


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## JOwen (Feb 9, 2007)

bookslover said:


> It should be remembered that the whole idea of The Exercise has been taken out of Paul's original context. Paul's intent was to be bring order out of confusion among those among the Corinthians who were speaking in tongues in the worship service, by having one person at a time speak, with others, after the speaker finished, interpreting.
> 
> So, I guess, one could say that The Exercise is not a biblical idea, but an extrapolation from a biblical principle regarding tongues.
> 
> Or am I just being pedantic?



Brother,

I beg to differ. Co 14:4 "He that speaketh in an unknown tongue edifieth himself; but he that prophesieth edifieth the church." The distinction is just that, the difference between the two not their similarity. "Prophesying in this chapter is not predictive but declarative. This is the uniform understanding of the text from the puritan standpoint. I'm afraid you have a modern interpretation my friend!


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Feb 9, 2007)

JOwen said:


> Interesting addition to the subject here.



  

Also, another source which I haven't had time to review thoroughly but which seems to address this issue in places is _Godly Learning: Puritan Attitudes towards Reason,. Learning. and Education, 1560-1640_ by John Morgan.


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Feb 9, 2007)

VirginiaHuguenot said:


> Also, another source which I haven't had time to review thoroughly but which seems to address this issue in places is _Godly Learning: Puritan Attitudes towards Reason,. Learning. and Education, 1560-1640_ by John Morgan.



Jerrold -- If you have this book, I recommend reading pp. 222-226, in particular, but the subject pops up in several places. Very interesting.


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## JOwen (Feb 10, 2007)

VirginiaHuguenot said:


> Jerrold -- If you have this book, I recommend reading pp. 222-226, in particular, but the subject pops up in several places. Very interesting.



Thanks brother, I'll give that a look-up.


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Feb 17, 2007)

I found the following comment at the PCA Index to Puritan & Reformed Sermons to be of interest:



> Our preferred title for this work is "A Grand Prophesying." This, after the Puritan tradition of meetings, called "prophesyings", in which a number of pastors would all speak on the same text, each having separately prepared his sermon. How interesting it must have been to hear the different aspects that each man would reveal from the text. How convicting it must have been, as the Holy Spirit drove, in each sermon, the same points into the hearts and minds of the congregation.


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