June 5, 2026 Show with Joseph Weissman on “The Practical Divinity of the Papists Discovered to be Destructive of Christianity & Men’s Souls”

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.

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

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth. We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this fifth day of June 2026.

Berith Press and the Preservation of Puritan and Reformed Works

I'm absolutely delighted to have a first-time guest today. His name is Joseph Weissman, and he is co-founder with his wife, Jamie, of the Reformed publisher Bereth Press. And we are going to be addressing The Practical Divinity of the Papists Discovered to be Destructive of Christianity and Men's Souls by David Clarkson, and an examination of this 17th century treatise warning a modern age of a foe few today have the courage and conviction to publicly denounce and expose.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Joseph Weissman. Thank you, Chris. And first of all, tell us about Bereth Press, how you came to develop this publishing house, which has a really quite an extensive collection of books that you brought back into print.

And also, I noticed at least one contemporary author in your catalog. But tell us about this publishing ministry.

Yes. So it started a few years ago when I really got into the Puritans and was devouring whatever I could read. And then I discovered that there were books that for some reason or another had not yet been brought back into print.

And you know, there's an ocean of works out there. And of course, it's not a reasonable expectation to think that publishers in the late 20th century could have got everything out. I know I haven't published everything I'd like to, but realizing that there were all these books kind of locked away, that I could purchase copies of them.

But typically, a lot of the most extensive Puritan works, many of them will be printed on folio paper. So initially, it was designed to be on 11 by 17 sheets. Now, when you buy that in a book that's being reprinted just to facsimile copy, typically the text has been shrunk down.

So you're having to contend with this tiny writing, and it's much less clear than it was for the original audience. And I'd see discussion boards and social media posts wishing that certain books would be republished.

And I thought, well, let's go ahead and I would try it. And so I did it just for fun, working on a few books on Google Docs. And then I was able to access some original PDFs, so I could start comparing the text I found online with the original PDF scan of the book.

I knew Hebrew by God's grace from college days and from influence from my family. And I was able to learn to pick up Greek transcription, just teaching myself a bit. And then over time, we've picked up some Latin translators who work alongside us.

And it's really grown from there. So the first work we put out was, well, the first one was, because we formed in October, we launched then, we thought it would be good to have something in time for Halloween.

And so we had Ludwig Labberter's work on ghosts and spirits, which really counts as a lot of, you know, misinformation and bad ideas around that, around spirits. And then our first major work was God's Covenants, Mystery and Mirror of the Bible by Francis Roberts, and that spanned five volumes in the end.

So it's grown from there. We want to restore work from the Puritan age and before. Also, we want to bring things out of Latin that have not been translated, and from French and other languages. And the main goal is to basically, where texts have not been fully reproduced, where there have been omissions in republications, we want to bring them back without any omissions.

So we want people to have a version that's exactly as the author intended. We don't believe it's our, I don't believe it's my job to correct the initial author. I might disagree with something he says, but the reader has the right to see that without me interfering too much.

So all we try and do is make the texts more readable. And yes, in time, we've picked up some modern authors too. And yeah, Lord willing, we'll continue to do so.

Hey, man, well, I'd like to have you back on the program already, I know, to discuss that book you brought back into print about ghosts and spirits. That sounds absolutely fascinating. How long ago was that originally written?

That was, you know what, let me bring it up. This was 16th century. Ludwig Labrador, I believe, was either the uncle or the nephew. I think it was related to maybe Bollinger. But yeah, Ghosts and Spirits was from, let's see, it was from 15, well, 1569.

It was initially published, and then it was put into English in 1596. So there was a version on Gutenberg that I edited, but I modernized the spelling. And so it's really interesting. It talks about basically how lots of the papists back in the day would, they would fake miracles and kind of a bit like, you know, you'd find them behind the curtain, you know, portraying this image onto the wall or what have you.

And he talks about, you know, when people have seen apparitions, he validates that as legitimate, but he also says that that is, those are demonic apparitions and explains some of the mechanics behind it.

It also has a really fascinating section about whether Saul saw the real Samuel or whether it was a demon pretending to be Samuel. And he goes for the view of a demonic impersonation, which is what I hold.

Really, really interesting stuff.

Yeah, that is obviously a highly debated issue. And I am very intrigued by that book already. By the way, I want to give our listeners your website, and I will be repeating this later on. But Berithpress can be found at berithpress .com.

And the spelling of Berithpress is B as in boy, E-R-I-T-H, press .com. And you are a first-time guest, and we have a tradition here on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, whenever we have a first-time guest, we have that guest provide for us a summary of their salvation testimony, which should include the religious atmosphere in which they were raised, if any, and what kind of providential experiences our Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them.

And we would love to hear your story.

Amen. What an edifying section, segment to have. I grew up in an evangelical church. But to go further back, my parents each, before they met, before I was born, they had separately left Judaism and they each came to Christianity.

Wow. I think each of them around their college years. And so my dad became a missionary to Jews in London. Wow. He was telling them about Jesus. He came across the house of an old woman who said, well, she's a Jewish old woman.

She said, I don't believe, but come back and meet my granddaughter. So she basically set them up and they went on some dates and fairly soon afterwards, they got married. So, yeah. So I was, we were brought up with that kind of evangelical background.

And then around my teenage years, my family started getting into kind of Messianic Judaism.

And this is in the United Kingdom. Yeah. Specifically where?

London. Okay. So they were getting very into dispensationalist and Messianic stuff. And so I got into that too. And in my late teens, my twenties, I was part of a Messianic congregation in Leeds where I was living for a time.

And it took me many years to figure out I was not a true convert. I was really living in sin. And my ideas of Christianity were mostly notional. I was going to church and the Messianic group, but my life was not changing.

I wasn't born again. And I think I was just using it as a cover for, you know, a very thin cover for my conscience. And listening to online preaching helped me. But I, I basically came to the realization because I was starting to have panic attacks and then went to the doctor.

The doctor said to call the psychiatrist. Maybe she gave me, you know, a number for mental health. I realized there's not a mental health problem I have. It must be spiritual. And as I started pressing into that, I started listening to online ministries, online talks and sermons and messages.

And I came across videos of false converts and everything that I was hearing, you know, it explained where I was at too. So I spent some years in Calvinistic dispensationalist circles and eventually found my way to Presbyterianism.

And that's where I've been, you know, by God's grace for several years now. And so I feel like I'm settled in my, in my views and convictions. But yeah, so I was a, I was a false convert for most of my life when God, by his grace, showed me my need for Christ and my, my sinfulness.

So I despaired of myself. I trusted in him. And since then, he's blessed me with the grace of the Holy Spirit and a new life, regeneration and the ability to obey him sincerely, not perfectly, but sincerely.

Praise God. And has anyone else in your family joined you in the Reformed faith?

No, one of my brothers has been around the Reformed circles, but he doesn't presently hold those convictions. So I do hope and pray that they will do so. But yeah, right now it's just, just me, although my wife and, and, and our children, you know, we're bringing them up, Reformed.

Now, are your parents still living? Yeah.

And they are still not Reformed? No, we will be praying for them as well. Thank you. Well, we have an interesting and fascinating topic today, and it is featuring an Anglican minister of the 17th century, David Clarkson, who is not very well-known, even amongst those that love the Reformed faith and have some decent knowledge of church history.

David Clarkson is not one of the most famous names among the Reformed Anglicans that many Reformed Christians today love and read, spanning denominational lines, whether they are Reformed Anglicans or Presbyterians or Reformed Baptists like myself.

But tell us about who David Clarkson was and why you have learned he came to specifically write this very lengthy treatise against the papacy.

David Clarkson, the Puritan Anglican, and His Anti-Roman Polemic

Yeah, there's not so much known about his life. He was born in Bradford in Yorkshire, which is very close to where I went to college, and I mentioned Leeds. Leeds, Bradford could be considered one, you know, urban city or two, depending on how you view it.

But he was born in Bradford in 1622. Then he graduated from Cambridge University and he got married in 1651. So I imagine around age 28, 29. And then basically he served as a rector in Kent in the south of England from 1650 to 1655.

And then he held the Curacy of Mortlake in Surrey, again in the south, from 1656 to 1661. So you may have heard of Samuel Clark. He served as Samuel Clark's assistant until the Act of Uniformity and the Great Ejection in 1662.

So he seems to have labored in relative obscurity until 1682. And that's when he became a colleague to John Owen, who basically, and Clarkson assisted Owen in Leadenhall Street in London. And Owen would die, he would pass away the following year.

And Clarkson would actually minister in Owen's pulpit, but he followed Owen three or so years later and passed away in 1686. So that's been helped by Banner of Truth's biography that they have of him.

They republished his works and actually the volume which we reprinted is, it forms either part or all of volume two of his works from Banner of Truth, which is sold in many stores. But I was really drawn to this title especially.

Yes, it's a much-needed title in an age of rampant ecumenism with Rome, where so many evangelicals are either just openly and gleefully embracing all Roman Catholics as our brethren in Christ. Now, I recognize that there are some of God's elect who are still in the Roman Catholic Church.

There are truly born-again believers there, but that is in spite of the teachings of Rome, which are heretical and damning. There are Roman Catholics that believe in the true gospel and yet, for some reason, remain in Rome.

Sometimes it's because they're just ignorant of what Rome teaches. They're not aware that the biblical gospel they believe in is not what their church has dogmatized. Sometimes it's because they think they're going to be a 21st century Martin Luther and bring some kind of reformation to this false church.

And sometimes it's because of fear of being shunned by their family. Perhaps they're afraid of losing a spouse who is Roman Catholic, and all kinds of reasons people remain there. But having said that, it is very sad that even some brilliant theologically-reformed men out there, their disputes with Rome are very mild, many of them.

And sometimes I've even had guests on my show where I've been surprised by comments they'll make that are in an ecumenical flavor, if you will, and I'll have to disagree on the air with what they have said, kind of putting me in an awkward position, but I have to make sure my audience knows that I'm not in agreement when someone says something that lessens the severity of the heresies of Rome.

And I was raised Roman Catholic, and I would never be an ecumenist with Rome, having been lied to by the Roman Catholic Church as a child through my teen years, and knowing that I have family members in that false religion breaks my heart.

And so it really saddens me that people are blurring the lines that separate the biblical Christian faith from Romanism. But in David Clarkson's day in the 17th century, was the Anglican Church somewhat more unified theologically?

I know that not all Anglicans were as Reformed as Thomas Cranmer was, and you had some Arminian elements in there, but as far as I know, the Romish element of the Anglican Church didn't really raise its ugly head until the 19th century Oxford movement.

Maybe I'm wrong on that, but tell us about that, about the Anglican Church and its theological positions in the day of David Clarkson.

Yeah, my knowledge on this is somewhat limited, but I will say that there was Archbishop Lord, L-A-U-D, and I know he had some Arminian tendencies, and he would seek to persecute some of the more Calvinistic and high Calvinistic ministers, and they would speak back against him, and there was a lot of resistance to that.

Saying that, some Anglicans, their difference with the Presbyterians was pretty much down to church government, and it didn't necessarily go much further beyond that. I mean, I know that some of the Scottish Covenanters and some of the English divines would have opposed the Anglican positions on elements of the worship service, which they would see as relics of paganism, so there is that element too.

But if you leave aside some of the disagreements on worship and church government, there were many ways in which the Anglicans and the Presbyterians and the Independents were very much aligned, and of course in the Westminster Assembly you had a mix of all of them.

Also, I'm not fully sure where Clarkson fell on church government. I do know that John Owen did sign the Savoy Declaration, and I think he helped author it, which was a Congregationalist and Independent document, so the fact that Clarkson served alongside Owen does make one wonder about it.

But all that to say, whatever one's view of church government, there were a lot of Anglican ministers who were very orthodox, especially on questions of divinity, questions of polemics, and there had already been Andrew Willett in the decades previous, who had really written a great work against potpourri, which we are planning to release as well in the next couple of years, God willing, if we can finish it.

His work with Synopsis Papismi was a very encyclopedic takedown of the theology of potpourri, or Roman Catholicism, as they would call it. And yeah, there were plenty of authors like that. George Downame, we also republished one of his books, Proving the Pope as Antichrist, and he also did a work against Bellarmine's position on justification.

So there's a very rich Anglican tradition. And although I'm personally Presbyterian, I've been happy to bring back works by Anglicans who have been really hot on these topics. And I hope that that's the way that those who are presently Anglican will be minded in the polemics question to return to some of these old heroes.

I don't think until in 1662, the nonconformist Presbyterians were rejected, but Clarkson served even in the days before that. So to serve in the Church of England in the 17th century didn't necessarily mean even that you held to an Episcopal form of government, although there were Episcopalians.

You could be Presbyterian or I think Congregationalist right up until the Great Ejection in 1662. And that was when you had more clear lines in the sand, I think. Although you could find it in their writings, but just looking at the fact someone served in the Church of England was not always an indicator of how they viewed ceremonies and governance and those kind of things.

And what were the compelling factors why David Clarkson wrote such a large volume exposing and denouncing the Pope of Rome?

Great. Well, I'm going to read to you his introduction, which is fairly short, and he explains why this book. Because there had been, he says this, the danger of potpourri and points of faith has been sufficiently discovered to the world by the divines of the Reformation.

And I suppose he's referencing Calvin's Antidote to the Council of Trent. You had Chemnitz as well, who wrote extensively against it. Willett, as I referenced. But he said, but their doctrine which concerns life and practice has not been so much insisted on.

So he's writing not so much taking down potpourri, the theology of it, but the way that the things we have in common, such as worship and obedience to the moral law, and how are those to be carried out.

And that's his focus. He says,. And yet there is as much occasion for this, for here the mischief is as great, an unchristian heart and life being at least as damning as erroneous belief. And hereby the greater plus to see in degeneracy of the papal church is as apparent, and herein they have proceeded with as much disregard of Christ and the souls of men, the design in this seems to have been not the promoting of Christ's interest, for that is manifestly prostituted, but the securing and greatening of a faction which, under the profession of Christianity, might be false to all its realities.

And basically he continues on in his introduction to say that their errors in practical divinity, how you're supposed to live your life, are every bit as damning and destructive to the soul as their theological doctrines are.

And was there any of his colleagues, were there any of his colleagues with an Anglicanism that were fearing his stance against the papacy was too strong? I know that the Church of England was a pendulum, starting as Romanist, and then under King Henry VIII, abandoning Rome and becoming a Protestant church, but from what I understand from Thomas Cranmer scholars, Henry theologically remained Roman Catholic, and even to the point of his death, Thomas Cranmer was concerned over his salvation and asked Henry on his deathbed, if you believe in justification by faith alone, please squeeze my hand, and apparently Henry squeezed his hand, giving Cranmer, the archbishop, comfort in believing that Henry was finally saved.

Whether he was in reality, I guess we won't know until we're in glory. But then, of course, Bloody Mary, when she rose to the throne after the death of King Henry VIII, she eventually became queen and began persecuting Protestants, and then she was executed, and we had a Protestant queen again, who I believe took a more moderate position.

But tell us about the atmosphere that was going on, that you know of anyway, with David Clarkson, and there must have been a reason he had to write such a lengthy and weighty treatise. Was it his fear that his colleagues or the parishioners were unaware of the depth of heresy of the Pope, or what were the reasons behind it?

Yes, so it wasn't so much the theological aspect in terms of, you know, why we are saved by grace, why we are saved by faith and by grace, right? He felt that basically the theological controversies had already been tackled really, really well.

But, you know, people would often emphasize, well, Rome has this in common with us, right? Don't we both believe in the Apostles' Creed? Don't we both believe in sin is wrong, right? So he's saying things like, well, yeah, we might both hold to the seventh commandment, for example, that shall not commit adultery, but Rome will say things like, well, it's not a sin if you put yourself in a position where there are whores and strumpets around, so long as you don't go with the intent to sin, but then if you should be taken in the moment in a fit of passion to go and sin, when you've already deliberately placed yourself there, then tis but a venial sin, that kind of thing, right?

That there were certain things that, if they occurred, so you could place yourself in a compromising position and that was not a sin. And then once you're in the compromising position, you could be overcome by, you know, you could find yourself committing an act of passion, but you didn't premeditate it, so therefore the guiltiness of it has been lessened, therefore it's but a venial sin, but, you know, that's not as bad.

Venial sins can be dealt with, can be forgiven. So basically, they came up with lots of exceptions and get-out clauses, and as a result, the moral standard of living of the papists would have been lower than that of the Protestants, generally speaking, because they had so many ways in which all the goodness that hypothetically remains in their religion was filtered out by their theologians and by the way they had interpreted it.

And, for example, belief, right? Faith is something that not only brings us to salvation, it's also, we're commanded to believe, right? And we believe in the Trinity, Rome believes in the Trinity, hypothetically, but they say, well, it's not, if you make a mistake about Christ, but the Pope has also made the same mistake about Christ, and you're just taking it on trust from the Pope, then you haven't sinned, because you're trusting the Pope, because you have this implicit faith in Rome.

So every doctrine that is similar that people will claim, maybe some of your guests who you mentioned, whom you disagreed with, they'll say, yeah, there are some differences with Rome, but look at this which we have in common.

But Clarkson is saying, even though things look like they're in common between us, we're very far from commonality with them, because of the way that they change the truth so much. And he has compiled all these books from Cayetan and Aquinas and other Pacist divines to then put them together and say, look at what they're saying in their own writings, and he's making that plain to Englishmen who might not have a clue, who might be fascinated by Rome otherwise.

So he doesn't get too much into the cultural or political context of why he needs to write it, other than no one had written a work like this, as far as he was aware, and so he was really filling in a gap.

Well, we have to go to our first commercial break. If you would like to join the conversation between myself and Joseph Weissman, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com. Chrisarnson at gmail dot 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 the USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

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Practical Divinity, Worship, and Moral Life Under Rome

Welcome back. If you just tuned us in, our guest today is Joseph Weissman co-founder with his wife Jamie of the Reformed publisher Bereth Press which is coming from the Hebrew word covenant and we are addressing one of the publications of Bereth Press the practical divinity of the papists discovered to be destructive of Christianity and men's souls by David Clarkson an examination of this 17th century treatise warning a modern age of a foe few today have the courage and conviction to publicly denounce and expose.

Before I go to any of my listener questions, I'd like you to go through some of the major reasons why David Clarkson is in strong opposition to the papacy. Sure.

So in chapter one he argues that by the Romanist doctrine you don't really need to worship God in public or in private and he says a true religion will have God actually worship. In the divine service of the papists they do not require an act of the will, but just an intention to attend the service is enough.

They don't have to necessarily be attentive when they are at it so then they barely need an intention to worship God at all. So the idea of going through the motions as you go to church is something that would horrify us who take doctrine seriously, but for Rome that's okay.

Even when they take the mass, they are not required to have any inward motion and inward worship. It's enough if their attendance there. It's enough that they're present. Even if their mind's elsewhere they're allowed to busy themselves with other employments while they're at the mass.

They can sleep, they can laugh, they can talk loudly, they can sing pop songs, as he put it lascivious or very profane tunes to the organ at mass. So it might be a small fault, but basically that's tolerated.

They're allowed to worship God for their own ends, not for his glory and basically preaching is very unnecessary of course, you know the service is not even in English so it bypasses the understanding and in their sacraments there are no good motions or actual dispositions such as a necessary and real worshippers.

None of that is required by Rome for those who administer or partake of it. So the minister might just not really believe and his mind might be drifting and the person taking the sacrament might have their mind elsewhere, but none of there's no sense of sincerity earnestness affection required.

You compare that right to the Protestants who such as Jonathan Edwards wrote about the religious affections that is not considered something necessary in Rome. They're not obligated to any private prayers and the knowledge is not necessary.

Chapter 2 is about knowledge. They don't need to know what they're to pray for many of their own priests don't even understand the common prayers. As I said they don't need to necessarily know what to believe.

Ignorance may be innocent may not only be innocent, it may even be meritorious. They don't necessarily need to know what they're supposed to do and actually he says a very few of the bishops in the Council of Trent who themselves decree many new articles of faith not many of them actually had the theological knowledge and even their posts were not commonly divine.

Many of them didn't even understand Latin and then chapter 3 is not necessary to love God and chapter 4 no faith is necessary but that which is neither justifying nor saving. So basically they allow implicit faith and he says it's the same faith as Jews, Turks and pagans have which is not sufficient for true Christians of course and they don't see a great necessity of faith.

Even the Pope doesn't need it so then they can make they can be helped by making a sign of the cross as their rave divines direct them to chapter 5 is interesting. There's no necessity of true repentance for any sort of sins by their doctrine.

And the clerksman talks about how he shows how their divines say it's okay to defer repentance. So logically when you hear people say oh well I don't need to repent I might just repent on my deathbed.

Well that is actually in line with what some of the some of the most prominent popish scholastics have said. So they might. All they need is a slight degree of remorse. It doesn't need to be as far reaching and extensive as our repentance is chapter 6 they don't need any holiness of life.

It's enough to nominate the universal church holy if there's only one man who's holy. One act of charity. The least act of charity will make you holy. And that's pretty much it. They don't really show any necessity of exercising the Christian virtues.

Brotherly love is unnecessary and so on. And then you get to chapter 7 and he talks about the idolatry of relics. How they basically give divine worship even though they try to claim it's something else.