Six Degrees of Alexander Comrie

As in the parlor game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, I like to find connections between select Puritans, such as Richard Rogers. Today's "Six Degrees" centers on the Scottish-Dutch Puritan Alexander Comrie (1706-1774). He was an interesting figure because of he was both Scottish-born and educated, and also ministered in the Netherlands, where he was one of the last leaders of the Nadere Reformatie, or Dutch Further Reformation. He is the author of the well-beloved book entitled The ABC of Faith.

In his family tree, he counted the Scottish Covenanter/Puritan minister Andrew Gray (1633-1656) as a great-grandfather on his mother's side; Scottish Biblical commentator George Hutcheson (d. 1678) was his mother's step-father; Scottish Covenanter James Fraser of Brea (1639-1698) was his great-uncle; and Scottish Anglican Bishop and church historian Gilbert Burnet (1643-1715) was also a relative (who himself was a cousin of Scottish Covenanter Robert Baillie (1602-1662), who was brother-in-law to Scottish Covenanter Archibald Johnston, Lord Warriston (1611-1663)).

As a young man, he was catechized by Ralph (1685-1752) and Ebenezer Erskine (1680-1754).

Later in life, he translated into Dutch Hutcheson on the Minor Prophets; Thomas Shepard's (1605-1649) The Parable of the Ten Virgins; Walter Marshall's (1628-1680) The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification; Thomas Boston's (1676-1732) The Covenant of Grace; John Owen's (1616-1683) treatise on Indwelling Sin in Believers; Stephen Charnock's (1628-1680) treatise on the Atonement; Gisbertus Voetius' (1589-1676) treatise on the Experience of the Power of Godliness; and Isaac Chauncy's (1632-1712) exposition of the Westminster Shorter Catechism entitled The Doctrine Which is According to Godliness.

Remove Not Old Landmarks

Historically and spiritually speaking, many of the old landmarks (Prov. 22.28; 23.10) have been removed from us. Or so it may seem in our modern age which is so often characterized by -- in the words of C.S. Lewis -- "chronological snobbery" (Surprised By Joy, pp. 206-208). But God is faithful to his people to not remove them completely. Wisdom is not confined to the golden ages of the first or second Reformations, yet what Charles Spurgeon said (Preface, Illustrations and Meditations, or, Flowers From a Puritan's Garden, Distilled and Dispensed) of the writings of Thomas Manton is true for us as well with respect to divines of old:

Ministers who do not know Manton need not wonder if they are themselves unknown.

Gerrit Hendrik Kersten was a 20th-century Dutch divine who delighted in the old paths. One biographer described his appreciation for the giants upon whose shoulders he stood thus.

M. Golverdingen, Rev. G.H. Kersten: Facets of His Life and Work, pp. 252-253:

It was the great attention given to the work of the Holy Spirit which knit Rev. Kersten to Calvin, and particularly to the men of the Dutch Second Reformation and their English and Scottish contemporaries. Calvin's Institutes unfolded the doctrine of the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit, who seals the Word of God in the hearts of men. There was no other work of Calvin which Kersten read with "more acquiescence and greater blessing."[275] He was very much of one mind with men such as Boston, the Erskines, Watson, Justus Vermeer, and Van der Kemp, who so eminently described the work of the Spirit in the spiritual life of the regenerate, as well as with Comrie, who was one of the few orthodox theologians of stature from the eighteenth century. Numerous times in his sermons and writings he refers to Comrie, a kindred spirit. He also took the initiative to reprint his works, which were frequently advertised in De Saambinder and De Banier during the 1930s. The old writers are the spokesmen of the "old, proven truth"; the views of the neo-Reformed contradicted these truths.

[275] De Saambinder, 25 February 1932.