September 30, 2025 Show with Brian G. Hedges on “William Bridge: A Puritan Every 21st Century Christian Should Know”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Armisen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Armisen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 30th day of September 2025.

And I am so thrilled to be back after a wonderful weekend on Long Island. This past Saturday was the 80th birthday celebration for a long time very dear friend of mine, Pastor Rich Jensen, who is still actively and powerfully pastoring Hope Reform Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island.

And it was such a joy to be there to join the celebration and to see some friends, not only those that I've seen fairly recently during a previous trip to Long Island to host the memorial service for my late brother, Andy, just a few weeks ago, but also some folks that were at the birthday celebration for Pastor Jensen that I haven't seen in 20 years or more.

So it was just an absolute joy and thank you for all your prayers for my safe travels to and from Long Island. I had a very close call on Long Island the day that I was leaving where a van came within inches of slamming into the Uber that I was riding in.

And that was quite a startling occurrence. But thankfully, your prayers were answered and the Lord kept me safe. And I'm so thrilled to be back. But today we are having a returning guest in the program, Brian G. Hedges.

He is an author and he's the lead pastor at Redeemer Church in Niles, Michigan. Today we're going to be addressing William Bridge, a Puritan every 21st century Christian should know. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Brian Hedges.

Thank you, Chris. So good to be back on your show again. Thanks for inviting me.

Hey, my pleasure. Well, tell us about Redeemer Church there in Niles, Michigan.

Yeah, Redeemer Church is an independent church, but pretty similar in makeup and theology and beliefs with Reformed Baptists. And we are in Niles, Michigan, just a few miles north of South Bend, Indiana.

So our congregation is what we call a Michiana congregation. It's Michigan, Indiana and Indiana. So we have a congregation of about 400 people. Wow. And I've been here for 22 years. So a long time. I spent a majority of my ministry in this church.

Very thankful for it. We have a wonderful staff and a godly team of elders. They're leading the church and we're in a wonderful season right now. We've seen a lot of growth in the last few years, really since COVID, it seems like we've seen a lot of growth in our church and grateful for the opportunity to be here.

Well, I'm assuming you do know that a congregation of 400 people in Reformed Baptist circles, that's a mega church.

Yeah. Well, we, as I say, we're similar to Reformed Baptists and we are certainly Reformed-leaning in our theology and Baptistic. Our congregation is a bit more diverse than that. So we do pull quite a few people from, you know, Presbyterian upbringing or non-denominational Bible church backgrounds and so on.

But yeah, we're very grateful. It feels like the Lord has really blessed the ministry these last few years, especially. And of course, you can't measure too much by numbers. More people just means more sin and more problems that you have to deal with.

But we do have wonderful people here. We're grateful for many people that are growing in the Lord and the opportunity to minister.

So I know that the former name of the church was Fulkerson Park Baptist Church. So I have the old website, fulkersonpark .com. Do you have another website? That's right. Do you have a new one?

We are now, it's redeemer .ch. Redeemer .ch is the new website. So when I moved to this in 2003, it was Fulkerson Park Baptist Church. And you know, I didn't really have any ambition of changing the name of the church or even, you know, trying to become 400.

I don't know if I even would have believed it if someone had told me that would happen. But over the years, a number of different people in the church, and I guess probably about 10 years ago, maybe even more, some folks started suggesting maybe we should reconsider the name of the church.

And the elders in 2018 made the determination that that would be a good thing to do and let our church through that process. And it wasn't a change of theology. It was really just choosing a name that we felt like would be more missional and would better identify the church for our community.

And the Lord blessed that. I'm thankful to say that we led the church through that change. We didn't lose any members of our church in that process. Even though some had been in this church for 30 years and knew it as Fulkerson Park Baptist.

So yeah, we've been Redeemer Church now for the last seven years.

Redeemer .ch. Yes, sir.

Redeemer .ch.

Oh, okay.

Great.

William Bridge and the Puritan Treasury of Grace

Well, today we are going to be addressing, as I've already said at the outset of the program, a figure from Puritan history that is not one, unless you are thoroughly knowledgeable about the Puritans and have a lot of knowledge about the history of the Puritans, you might not necessarily immediately have the name William Bridge pop into your mind when you are discussing the Puritans.

So tell us about this figure from history that was so important to you that it compelled you to write the book, An Infinite Treasury, Grace in the Piety of William Bridge, which is a publication of Reformation Heritage Books.

Yeah, you know, I came across William Bridge probably 15, 20 years ago in Banner of Truth's Puritan paperback series. There's a volume by William Bridge called A Lifting Up for the Downcast, and it's a series of 13 sermons he preached from Psalm 42.

And it just was really helpful for me personally in wrestling with some discouragement in my life and ministry, and reading that book was such a blessing to me. That was actually the very first Puritan paperback that Banner of Truth ever published.

So it seems like those publishers understood the significance of that volume and of this author. And then in 2022, they actually did publish the works of William Bridge in five volumes. So that's in publication now.

I think William Bridge is not as well known because his works were really out of circulation for a long time. So not as well known maybe as, you know, John Owen or Richard Baxter or some of the better known Puritans.

But I have grown in appreciation to William Bridge because of how he helped me personally and spiritually, and reading that book made me want to read him more. And so I searched high and low to find a used set of the works of William Bridge, and did,.

Started reading those.

And yeah, a book was kind of born out of that process. So I'll give you just a few details about his life. We don't know a lot about William Bridge because there's just not that much, there's not many letters or, you know, I didn't leave behind diaries and things like that.

So he's not as well known and we don't have much information, but we know some basic things. We know that he was born in 1600, the same year that Thomas Goodwin and Charles I were born. He was educated at Emanuel College in Cambridge and earned both a BA and then an MA degree.

He was initially ordained priest in the Church of England in 1627, but early on, he refused to wear vestments, the priestly clothing. So he was right from the beginning, had a part of that, a movement within the Church of England that was pushing back against the more Catholic elements in the Church of England.

And that got him in trouble. So by 1634, he was coming under scrutiny because of his opposition to Arminianism and because he was preaching the doctrine of particular redemption or limited atonement. And so he was starting to get in trouble with the bishops that were over him.

And finally, in 1636, he was suspended and excommunicated from the Church of England by Bishop Matthew Wren. And so he was actually one of those Puritans that ended up exiled for a while. He had to leave England and went to Holland.

And that was just over his opposition to Arminianism?

It was his opposition to Arminianism and his refusal, I believe, his refusal, you know, to conform to the various things that the Church of England was warning him to do doctrinally and practically.

Yeah, because even the Church of England back then, I'm assuming, was nearly universally, if not completely universally, at least professing to be governed by the 39 articles of religion, which are clearly Calvinistic.

That's true. To the best of my knowledge, that's true. But there were these elements within the Church of England, some bishops that were in power that were in pretty strong opposition to the Puritan element, into the, you know, the stronger doctrinal strands of the Reformation.

And so Matthew Wren, in particular, was really opposed to winning a bridge. And when he was excommunicated, he left England, he went to Rotterdam in Holland, and he renounced his ordination. He was ordained as an independent or congregationalist minister and helped lead an English congregation there.

And we actually have a note to Charles I, when this happened, and said that, you know, William Bridge had left, and Charles I wrote in the margin, well, we're glad to be rid of such a good race. They wanted to get rid of these Puritans, they did not like the Puritans that were within the Church.

And so, you know, of course, many of these things were playing into not only the like of the Church, the ecclesiology of the day, but also the political line of England. And so you have the English civil wars.

And Bridge returned during that time period. He was just gone from England from 1636 to 1641. And he returned in 1641. And this was a very tumultuous time in England. And William Bridge was actually a prominent independent.

So he was preaching to the Long Parliament, multiple times addressing Long Parliament. And he preached a sermon called Babylon's Downfall, in which he was criticizing and rejecting both the Scottish and the English forms of church governments, and was an advocate for independency and for congregationalism.

And then he also published a sermon called The Wounded Conscience Cured. And this is quite interesting, Chris, because this sermon argued for the right of Christians to defend themselves against a tyrannical government.

Interesting.

Which of course is really important.

Yeah, very much a topic of not only conversation, but even heated debate amongst Christians today ever since it probably was brought to the forefront more than ever before during the COVID pandemic, where governments were, both federal and local, were abusing their authority and imposing ridiculous mandates on the population.

Sure. Yeah. And, you know, of course, it was at least one important strand of thought, philosophically and religiously, that played into the formation of our country. And so independence from influence a century later.

So I don't know how influential Bridge was in those conversations a century later, but certainly within the 17th century, Bridge was one of the primary leaders in the movement for church independence.

He was also a member of the Westminster Assembly and one of only 10 independents that sat in the assembly, along with Thomas Goodwin, who's probably the most famous of those. And then a couple of other facts.

He co-authored a document called An Apologetical Narration. He did this with fellow Congregationalists and helped draft the Savoy Declaration, which was the Congregationalist Confection of Faith, modeled in some ways off the Westminster Confession, but with a distinctively Congregationalist and independent view of church government.

So that was in 1658, when he helped draft the Savoy Declaration, did that with John Owen and Thomas Goodwin and several other leading independents of the day. And then, of course, he was ejected by the Act of Uniformity in 1662, along with 2000 Puritan ministers that were kicked out of their churches, and continued to preach for the years following, despite restrictions, sometimes, you know, getting himself close to getting himself in trouble.

And then he died in 1671, so before the Act of Toleration. So yeah, those are kind of the basic events of his life.

I'm assuming that he was, in some way, close with Philip Nye, a fellow Congregationalist who was at the Westminster Assembly. I have that famous portrait of the Westminster Assembly hanging in my living room where Philip Nye is standing up giving his presentation in defense of Congregationalism.

Yeah, yeah.

And that happens to be a topic that a group of Reformed Baptists, including my own congregation where I am a member, Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, we are strongly Congregationalist and believe that the 1689 London Baptist Confession would lead us to that opinion.

Of course, first and foremost, we believe that the scriptures would, but there is a group of Reformed Baptists who are trying to revive Congregationalism amongst the Reformed Baptists globally because there has been a history of overly emphasized elder rule, and sometimes that has been rightfully the source of some authoritarianism in some Reformed Baptist churches.

Right, yeah. Well, I mean, that's always a perennial danger in the church, isn't it, that there's authoritarianism and leaders that are stepping beyond the biblical bounds of their authority and leadership.

So, yeah, so William Bridge, I think, would be an ally for those who believe in Congregationalism. He was actually called the Puritan of the Congregational Way. There's a kind of a biography of William Bridge, the only one that I know of that has been written by a guy named Rumberg, to the last name, so that volume is called William Bridge, the Puritan of the Congregational Way.

So, yeah, so he was really influential, I think, in those circles. Now, you know, giving you all that detail, his significance for me was not so much his ecclesiology. It was more his approach to spirituality and the power of his preaching.

And so most of what we have in his writings are sermons. And he just was a very race-oriented pastor, a very Christ-centered pastor. And it was his distinctive notes in preaching and the way he addressed people in preaching that really grabbed my heart.

And I've written in this book that he reminds me, more than any other Puritan, he reminds me of Martin Luther before him and Charles Spurgeon after him. Huh. So I kind of like those kinds of, you know, there's a specific note that these guys hit.

So Luther and especially his commentary on Galatians, really Spurgeon in all of his ministry, was just always pointing people to Christ. And that's William Bridge. William Bridge was like that in his ministry.

Now, do you know whether or not Spurgeon himself was acquainted with the writings of William Bridge and was fond of them in any way?

You know, I have I've really searched to try to find that. I think he probably was familiar, but I have, you know, searched, done the word search and so on. I've got all of Spurgeon's sermons and a lot of software.

And he does not refer to Bridge very often, maybe once or twice, but not often. So I don't know that he was as familiar with William Bridge as some of the other Puritans. And that's probably just because his works were probably not in circulation.

I don't know that they were. I can't remember now, I'm looking to see if they were published in the, well, they were published in 1845. So it's possible that Spurgeon had them, but he's not referred to as often.

So I don't know what the reason is for that.

Well, we're going to go to our first commercial break. And if you have a question, you may feel free to email us with a question for my guest today, Brian G. Hedges. The email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio. And if you've just tuned us in, our guest today is Brian G. Hedges. We are discussing the Puritan, Congregationalist Puritan, William Bridge.

And in addition to my guest being the pastor of Redeemer Church in Nile, Michigan, he is also an author, including a book he has written about the Puritan we are discussing today, William Bridge, titled An Infinite Treasury, Grace in the Piety of William Bridge.

If you have questions for our guest today, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA.

And so tell us some more details about William Bridge that you include in this book, Grace in the Piety of William Bridge.

The Piety and Pastoral Heart of William Bridge

Yeah, so this book is a part of this series that's published by Reformation Heritage Books called Profiles in Reformed Spirituality. And so the book follows the format of all the volumes in the series with a biographical introduction to a significant character or figure in Reformed history, and then a selection of readings that illustrate the spirituality or the piety of that person.

And so, you know, essentially what I give is a biographical introduction to William Bridge, and we've kind of covered the details of that. And then a selection of readings about Grace in the Piety of William Bridge.

I break those readings down into four sections called The Treasury of Grace, The Reception of Grace, The Experience of Grace, and The Means of Grace. And each one of those sections has, you know, eight, ten, twelve, fifteen readings that are illustrating examples of William Bridge on those topics.

So can I read just a brief quote from William Bridge that gives you a flavor? OK, so this is the epitaph of the book. So it's the quotation at the beginning of the book. I'll just read a portion of it.

That's where the title comes from. So William Bridge, in a sermon called Grace for Grace, or The Overflowings of Christ's Fullness Received by All Saints, said these words, quote, There is an infinite treasury of grace and holiness in Jesus Christ, whereby he is able to supply and succor all those who are tempted.

Jesus Christ is not only the Lord treasurer of all our comforts, but the Lord keeper of all our graces. And I think that's a pretty good description of the piety in the approach of William Bridge. He really believed that everything the believer needed for life and godliness was found in Jesus Christ, the treasury of grace in Christ.

And that's where I benefited from him so much. He's just so prisonerred, and it's so encouraging to read him because he he gets the eyes of the believer off of himself, off of herself, off of their problems, off of their reasons for discouragement, and onto Christ and onto God's promises that are laid up in Christ and the fullness that we have in Christ.

That's really at the heartbeat of William Bridge's spirituality.

And that seems to be a reflection of the sentiments that compelled him to write the book that Banner of Truth has brought back into print that you mentioned earlier. The title escapes me right now.

Yeah, A Lifting Up for the Downcast.

Yeah, there you go.

Yeah, and so that's really a book that's written for discouraged believers or people who are struggling with being downcast or discouraged or depressed. And so in that book, his argument is that the saints should never be discouraged no matter what their condition.

And then he takes these conditions and he addresses them one by one. And so he looks at these different cases, the case of great sin. When you're guilty of great sin, should you be discouraged? And Bridge essentially says you should be humbled, but you shouldn't be discouraged.

You should repent, but you should not be unbelieving. You should still trust in Christ and you should turn to Christ and find encouragement for your repentance of Christ. And so he looks at great sins.

He looks at weak grace. He looks at a lack of assurance. He looks at temptation, affliction. And so on. So he goes through probably about 10 different conditions of the heart that may cause someone to be discouraged.

And he gives reasons why you should not be discouraged, but instead should find encouragement in Christ.

Yes, that is so often, it seems anyway, the compelling factor for those who have committed great sins, scandalous sins that require discipline and even if not repented of, require excommunication, when these folks, rather than submit to discipline, do what is asked of them by their elders and just enjoy the fact that they have been stopped in their tracks and rejoice in the fact that they will put that activity behind them, rather than do that, they just flee from the church and flee from any authority over them in the church.

Have you, as a pastor, recognized that to be true?

For sure. I mean, thankfully, it's been a fairly rare occasion, but our church has had to practice excommunication. And yeah, I think so often when people are caught in sin, even though it makes them miserable, I think rather than viewing the encouragements from the church and even confrontation and correction, viewing that as a means to help them get back on track.

When people are resisting that, there really hasn't been genuine repentance yet. And people can maybe mistake the difference between being humbled for their failures and having a genuine spiritual evangelical humility.

They can fail to distinguish between that and being discouraged. And so, Bridge addresses that in his book, and he says that true humiliation is no enemy, but a real friend to spiritual joy. And the more a man is humbled for sin committed, the more he will rejoice in God and rejoice that he can grieve for sin.

Yes.

And when there's a lack of that, it just shows that when there's a lack of that, there's a lack of rejoicing in the Lord and grieving for sin, it shows that there's a lack of real humility. There's still pride in there somewhere.

Yeah, I was just going to say, I thank God that that very thing and being disciplined myself for a season in my life where I sinfully returned to drunkenness, habitual drunkenness, during some very sad and depressing times in my life, rather than waiting on the Lord to lift my spirits, I heavily consumed spirits.

And I look upon that time as a gift from God, that discipline that I received by loving elders and even loving pastors of other churches that were involved in the discipline because they were friends of mine.

I look upon that as something that actually saved my life. I think that I would have perished if I continued in that habitual consumption of large quantities of alcohol. I don't drink anything today, not that I want to rob other Christians of their liberty to responsibly, moderately consume alcohol.

I just know that I shouldn't ever return to even trying to do that. But people are all too afraid of church discipline and the humiliation and embarrassment that comes from that. But it can really be one of the best things that ever happened to you.

And I'm fairly confident you would agree that I'm not exaggerating about that.

No, no, I mean, I think when church discipline is done biblically, you know, when it's done faithfully with an aim for restoration and with love for the sinning, erring member, then it is a means of grace through which God works.

And that's the design. I mean, if you read the key passages, you know, Galatians chapter 6, 1 Corinthians chapter 5, and so on, it's clear that that's the aim in those passages and the reason why the discipline is so necessary.

I know at some point you want to give a broader treatment of the Puritans in general, not that they were all identical. There is a wide spectrum of personalities and approaches and even beliefs on some occasion within the Puritans, from among the Puritans historically.

I mean, Richard Baxter wasn't even a Calvinist, one of the rare Puritans we know of that was not in our theologically reformed camp, even though he wrote the Reformed Pastor, it was not about theologically reformed doctrine he was speaking about.

But unless you have not yet concluded any specific things you want to highlight about William Bridge, you can feel free to move on to the Puritans in general and why they should not be overlooked or shunned as some Christians do today.

In fact, many Christians do today. A lot of it has to do with the stereotypes and slanderous caricatures they've heard about the Puritans. But whenever you're ready to do that, feel free, like I said, unless there's something else you want to highlight about Bridge.

Yeah, I mean, I would just encourage readers to, especially readers who are already familiar with Puritan literature, to try to rediscover Bridge or maybe discover Bridge for the first time. And so there's a number of ways to do that.

So my book is really just meant to be kind of an introduction to William Bridge to whet somebody's appetite. But it is an easy entry point because you can get the biographical introduction and 45 selections from Bridge's writings.

And these are like two, three page readings. So you can easily read one a day, you know, and take a month and a half to read through it, and you get a pretty good sample of Bridge. But his works are also available through The Inner Truth.

We've already mentioned Lifting Up the Dam Calfs. And then I'll mention one other title by William Bridge called Comforts in Holiness from Christ's Priestly Work. And that's actually the first volume I worked on related to Bridge.

So that is a modernization of a series of sermons that William Bridge preached on the priestly work of Jesus Christ. And it's published in Reformation Heritage Books. They're a little series of volumes called Puritan Treasures for Today.

And also just, again, greatly encouraging, I wanted to do that volume because I found those sermons so helpful for me personally and wanted to share that with others. So those are all good places to go for Bridge.

I was just about to give the websites. If anybody wants to look up those books, go to heritagebooks .org, heritagebooks .org, and also banneroftruth .org, banneroftruth .org. And you can also find out more about the Puritans from my friend Mike Gadosz's publisher.

Mike Gadosz was my very first pastor who baptized me in the 1980s. And he operates Solid-Ground Books, I'm sorry, Solid-Ground-Books .com, Solid-Ground-Books .com. And he offers a number of works by Puritan authors.

So I just thought I'd give that information to the listener, but go ahead. I'm sorry I interrupted you.

Yeah, no, I'm glad you did. You know, Christmas is coming. It's a great time for people to buy books for their family members and these Puritan volumes, especially the modernization of these Puritan paperbacks and Puritan treasures for today.

They're great gifts, a great way to encourage people. I agree with you. I think the reason why Puritans get a bad rap is because there's just actually a great deal of ignorance about what the Puritans actually taught and believed.

And even among Christians, I mean, you're certainly going to get this, you know, if you go to any kind of a secular context, secular university and take a class on American history or English literature, all you're going to get on the Puritans is that Jonathan Edwards preached Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God and The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Salem Witch Trials.

And that's pretty much all that anybody knows, except for the rare believers who have taken the time to dig into this historic literature. And so it's really tragic neglect because I can't think of a generation of Christians in history who wrote more for the spiritual and personal and practical application of biblical truth to the heart and to the life of the believer as much as the Puritans did.

And so sometimes they are known in our circles as physicians of the soul, and they really are that. They really do have the unique ability to diagnose the problems of the heart, to apply scripture in a very powerful way to the issues of the heart.

So Bridge does that with discouragement. But, you know, you can name just about any issue and there's a Puritan volume that deals with it. So, you know, whether it's anger, you could go to John Dallin and cure for unjust anger, or if it's discontent, you could go to Jeremiah Burroughs and The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment.

And the list could just go on and on of the value of these volumes. So I do I love the Puritans, I love having the opportunity to promote them.

In fact, if anybody listening wants to get an accurate evaluation of the Salem Witch Trials that my guest just mentioned, that have been unfortunately a primary reason why many people, whether they're Christians or not, avoid the Puritans because they have been slandered in so many ways, even in their involvement in the Salem Witch Trials.

But if you go to ironsharpensironradio .com, my website, ironsharpensironradio .com, and if you type in the search engine Paul Jehle, J-E-H-L-E, or you could even type in witches, which is easier to remember.

If you type in witches in the search engine, you will find an audio link for my interview with Paul Jehle last year, January 23rd, 2024, where he was offering a critique of Bill O 'Reilly's book, Killing the Witches.

And he did a great job doing so. Just to let you know, folks, I'm not saying that everything that Bill O 'Reilly wrote is bad or should be avoided, but if he ever is writing about anything involving Christians or Jesus Christ, avoid it like the plague, because he is extremely ignorant of those areas.

And of course, whoever his co-authors are on these books, they are obviously profoundly ignorant of the Christian faith and history of the Christian church. So just avoid those. I also wanted to point out, I just found out when I looked up my friend Mike Gadosh's website for Solid Ground Christian Books, which, once again, is solid-ground-books .com, he does offer the works of William Bridge, and there are a number of other books there in his catalog that you can choose from by or about William Bridge and other Puritans.

So that's solid-ground-books .com. I thought I'd throw that out there again. So we have about seven minutes before we get to our midway break, if you'd like to bring up some of these valuable jewels that we have been given by the providence of Jesus Christ in gifting the church with the Puritans.

They were not perfect people. There were Puritans that were involved in abuses of authority and so on. But tell us about why they are still, nonetheless, so meaningful and so important for Christians to be acquainted with.

Why the Puritans Still Matter for Pastoral Ministry

Yeah. I mean, there's many reasons I think the Puritans are useful to us. Joel Beeky and I, I'm sure you're familiar with Joel Beeky, who's the foremost Puritan scholar in our day, I think.

Very close friend of mine. I've known Joel going all the way back to the 1990s. He was very unknown at that time outside of Reformed circles and even inside of Reformed circles. Hardly anybody knew who he was.