The Life and Discourses of Stephen Charnock
Stephen Charnock (1628-1680) was a Puritan theologian and pastor. He was converted during his years of study at Cambridge and then went on to preach at Oxford where he completed his studies. There he worshiped alongside the likes of Thomas Goodwin and Theophilus Gale. He became chaplain to Henry Cromwell, then governor of Ireland. After returning to England, he was barred from public ministry following the Great Ejection of 1662, until taking a co-pastorate in London with Thomas Watson in the last five years of his life.
It was while at this church in London that he composed what would become his magnum opus, the Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God. It was an unfinished work and the style was “chiefly for homiletical purposes.”1 Though he wrote on other matters, such as providence, regeneration, the work of Christ, and pastorally on various applications of sanctification, none of these were published during his lifetime. The Discourses were published posthumously in 1682. Though they began essentially as sermons, their final composition has become one of the most widely read works of theology proper in the English speaking world.
As to the structure and substance of the work, there are fourteen discourses in all. The first two regard God’s existence per se. This is where Charnock spoke of the natural knowledge of God, its implications for nurturing our own faith and for what we would today call apologetics. However, we must read such reflection in its historical context.
In his book, Puritanism and Natural Theology, Wallace Marshall writes that,
“The overwhelming majority of Puritan theologians were firm believers in the legitimacy of natural theology and evidentialism … Puritans were persuaded that the existence and attributes of God, the creation of the world, the immortality of the soul, as well as the divine origin of the Scriptures, could be proved by rational arguments made without any a priori appeal to special revelation.”2
On the other hand, the dominant motivation for this focus in their writings seems to have been what has been called a “practical atheism.” This is that thinking and action which is conducted as if God did not exist. The deeper temptations to atheism seem more a matter of spiritual warfare than they were Christian laymen reading the works of Enlightenment rationalists. “In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him; all his thoughts are, ‘There is no God’” (Ps. 10:4). This is later given more color in the same Psalm—“He says in his heart, ‘God has forgotten, he has hidden his face, he will never see it’” (v. 11).
William Perkins had already provided some of the same justification for natural theology in his Whole Treatise of the Case of Conscience (1596), namely, “to remove, or at least help an inward corruption of the soul, that is great and dangerous, whereby the heart and conscience by nature denieth God and his providence.”3
Along those same lines, Mark Jones comments about Charnock, that he “is concerned with the practical implications of who God is, which means practical atheism takes up a major part of his treatment on God’s existence.”4 The 2022 edition published by Crossway is unabridged and divided into two volumes. Until now, most readers have either used the two volume 1979 edition by Baker Books or else a few other single-volume versions. Jones has simplified a bit of the language without altering any of the content. It also comes with William Symington’s brief “Life and Character of Stephen Charnock,” written in 1846.
Taking all fourteen discourses, the outline of both volumes is as follows:
Discourse 1. On God’s Existence
Discourse 2. On Practical Atheism
Discourse 3. On God’s Being a Spirit
Discourse 4. On Spiritual Worship
Discourse 5. On the Eternity of God
Discourse 6. On the Immutability of God
Discourse 7. On God’s Omnipresence
Discourse 8. On God’s Knowledge
Discourse 9. On the Wisdom of God
Discourse 10. On the Power of God
Discourse 11. On the Holiness of God
Discourse 12. On the Goodness of God
Discourse 13. On God’s Dominion
Discourse 14. On God’s Patience
For the reader of our day, with only a beginner’s exposure to the Puritans, how does Charnock compare with his contemporaries for the sake of our own edification? Mark Jones has written that, “Thomas Watson was clear but not as sophisticated as Charnock. Baxter and Owen were sophisticated but not always immediately clear—at least not to the present-day reader. But in Charnock you have the best of both: lucid sophistication.”5
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1. Mark Jones, Intro. to Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, Vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2022), 4.
2. Wallace W. Marshall, Puritanism and Natural Theology (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2016), 6.
3. William Perkins, Works, 2:49; 49-52; 57-50.
4. Jones, Intro. to The Existence and Attributes of God, I:5.
5. Jones, Intro. to The Existence and Attributes of God, I:6.
