Important Bibles

We hope eventually to have a page dedicated to Bibles and Bible Study reference material (excepting commentaries). As we are some distance from this page appearing on the website because of time pressures, we thought we should post links to some important Bibles available online.

Theodore Beza

We have no way of verifying that the above is genuinely the Beza bible, and we are therefore taking at face value the claim that this is the case.

Breeches Bible

KJV 1611 in 2 volumes

Vol 1

Vol 2

KJV 1611 - 1 volume edition with important notes

Wycliffe:

vol 1
vol 2
vol 3
vol 4

The Englishman’s Greek New Testament; giving the Greek text of Stephens 1550, with the various readings of the editions of Elzevir 1624, Griesbach, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Alford, and Wordsworth: together with an interlinear literal translation, and the Authorized Version of 1611 (1896). Samuel Bagster.

Very important Baptist histories

We are delighted to announce that Google have at last scanned a couple of extremely imporant Baptist historical works, which are very hard to secure on the second hand and antiquarian market.

The works are Ivimey’s and Thomas Crosby’s histories of the English Baptists.

The downloads can be obtained from the following links:

Ivimey vol. 1 of 4  Download

Ivimey vol. 2 of 4  Download

Ivimey vol. 3 of 4  Download

Ivimey vol. 4 of 4  Download

Crosby vol. 1 of 4  Download

Crosby vol. 2 of 4  Download

Crosby vol. 3 of 4  Download

Crosby vol. 4 of 4  Download

Post-modernism and the current national crisis

The youth of today have grown up accepting as irrefutable the post-modern notion that morality is relative, and that differing or even conflicting views are nevertheless of equal weight and that provided no physical harm is done, then one’s own morals should be a private matter and none should dare challenge or question them.

Sadly, this cultural paradigm shift, once confined to Academia, has filtered through to the rest of society and we find these views promulgated in our education system, the media etc.

In this climate we have seen the rise of a political class which has seen itself as immune from public censure and many of whom have over the years perpetrated immoral acts and survived to carry on in their political posts. It is not surprising therefore that many of this political class have felt immortal and grown not only more daring in their personal immorality, but have succeeded in downgrading public morality by example and by legislating many of these views into our statute books. In the early years such attempts were met with opposition, but by attrition and devilish tactics (e.g. pushing forward such legislation under the guise of equality!) such opposition has been rendered ineffective.

What then has changed for the public’s moral sensibilities to be suddenly aroused and expressed in such vehement terms at the disclosure of the expenses scandal? Why should the public, who have been so forebearing, suddenly feel indignation because politicians have been found to have their hands in the public purse? Surely, this was widely known, even if we had no substantive proof. The rules for expenses claims were in the public domain, the weaknesses of the system had been discussed in parliament and had been covered in the press. There should have been nothing in the recent revelations which should have shocked, let alone led to such a show of anger. In any event the acceptance of post-modern notions of morality should have ensured that these revelations amounted to nothing more than a damp squib.

But, to our great surprise and for no evident reason, the public’s sense of morality has been touched and the expression of anger is leading not only to widespread political unrest, but also to a questioning of the whole political process, the need for uprightness of character in public office and the re-establishment of public standards. Many people that we have spoken with are also beginning to question the basis of morality and whether post-modernism is really the answer.

The only things post-modernism has succeeded in doing is to desensitise people to wickedness and ironically, in the name of tolerance, to make people intolerant to all viewpoints (especially those with religious pre-suppositions) opposed to post-modernism!

Are we now witnessing the demise of post-modernism? And if so, what will replace it?

Our prayer is that it will indeed mark the beginning of the end for post-modernism and that in its wake there will be a return to biblical morality and to a wide spread awakening. Dear reader, will you join us in this prayer?

Archibald Symson on 2 Peter

We have just added a download link to this work which has now been scanned and made available by Google Books. You will find it here.

Spurgeon wrote of this work, “Abundance of matter, pithily expressed. Symson is among the oldest and rarest of the English divines.”

Useful New Resource

We have just discovered a useful new resource which, though it does not provide a download option for the commentaries concerned, does provide online access to the text so at least the book can be studied.

Please check out the following on the Commentaries pages:

Hosea by Edward Pococke

Revelation by Thomas Brightman

The Ten Commandments by Dod and Cleaver

Colossians by Edward Elton

The Dutch Annotations

Critica Sacra by Edward Leigh in two parts

Judges by Richard Rogers

Colossians by Robert Rollock

Sarah and Hagar by Josias Shute

Leviticus by Andrew Willet

Romans by Andrew Willet

Daniel by Andrew Willet

Romans by Thomas Wilson

Zechariah by Benjamin Blayney

David by Patrick Delany

Joseph Caryl on Job

We have found an odd volume of Caryl on Job at Google Books. We shall add this to the main Puritan Library at a later date, but are pointing it out on this blog for the time being for those interested in getting hold of it.

Caryl on Job chapters 18 to 21

This is a 60.4 MB download.

In the wake of the Presidential election in the US

The election of the first African-American president may be a historic moment, but not all historic moments are necessarily good.

Certainly in terms of race relations this may be a positive thing, but from a Christian perspective, the negatives far outweigh the positives. His election indicates the determined abandonment of Christian values by a majority of the American electorate! Even today we saw an interview with Alice Walker (author of “The Color Purple”), who is representative of the new liberal intelligentsia, who while celebrating the victory of Barack Obama was lamenting how much there was still to do on equality legislation and mentioned in particular the very recent failure of one state (California) to legalise homosexual marriage! Christians knew that the stakes were extremely high- and this is a sad day indeed.

Nevertheless while we share the sadness felt by many of our American evangelical brethren, as Albert Mohler points out in his recent blog entry, this is no time to give up the fight. If anything it should make Christians even more determined to stand up for core Christian values, and to argue for them in church and state.

May God help you all do to so. We shall certainly pray for the new President, for the nation and for the cause of Christ.

In the meantime we would have our brethren remember the words of one wise old Puritan:

All the dark, intricate, puzzling providences at which we were
sometimes so offended … we shall [one day] see to be to us, as the
difficult passage through the wilderness was to Israel, “the right way
to the city of habitation.”
— John Flavel

Praise God from whom all blessings flow!

The 1 November marked the first anniversary of the launch of our new website, and we give thanks to God for the tremendous encouragement we have received and for the incredible statistics for a humble little website with no SEO organisations involved.

According to the statistics we have had 23,559 visits from 143 countries which include countries that are officially opposed to the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ!

THE DVD PROJECT

At present we are busy investigating the feasability of the DVD project and trying to get some costings done. We hope to be in a position to announce our findings by the end of this year, and if possible to start producing the DVDs early next year. These will be produced to a high standard and should comprise all of the works currently shown as downloadble files, and also extras like the Baptist works and the works of the Reformers. So please do look out for this announcement.

Puritan Gems

We have added a random quote generator to this blog which will produce random quotes from a substantial database of Puritan Gems. We shall be adding more and more quotes with time. In the meantime we trust that you will enjoy and benefit from this new feature.

Technorati

We’ve added the Book Academy blog to blog search engine Technorati. Please feel free to view our Technorati Profile. On a similar note, our feed is now run through feedburner to make it easier to subscribe to updates. You can view the feed and subscribe to it at http://feeds.feedburner.com/bookacademy.