I have just finished the next book in this series, and it is a gentle one: The Bruised Reed by Richard Sibbes.
If you have not met Sibbes, he was a Puritan preacher in the early 1600s, known in his own day as “the heavenly Doctor Sibbes”. He preached these sermons on a single verse, and the whole book grows out of it:
“A bruised reed he will not break, and a smouldering wick he will not quench, until he brings justice to victory.” (Matthew 12:20, ESV)
A reed that has been bruised is no use to anyone. It is bent, cracked and about to snap. A wick that has nearly gone out gives more smoke than light. Sibbes says that is exactly who Christ deals with: not strong trees, but bruised reeds; not blazing fires, but smouldering flax. And his answer, over 28 short chapters, is that Christ does not break them or put them out. He cherishes them.
What Sibbes actually says
This is a book for people who are tired, weak or doubting. Sibbes does not tell you to pull yourself together. He points you to Christ, and he does it with picture after picture. Here is how he argues for Christ’s mercy:
“A mother with a sick and fretful child doesn’t throw it out. And shall there be more mercy in the stream than in the spring?”
And here, on whether Christ has changed now that he is in heaven:
“His exaltation has not made him forget his own flesh. It has freed him from passion, but not from compassion toward us.”
He is just as plain about the Christian life. Grace is small at first. It is mixed with corruption, the smoke along with the fire. He does not pretend otherwise. But he will not let you conclude from the smoke that there is no fire. In chapter 7 he says of Christ, “For a little smoke, man will quench the light; Christ, as we always see, cherishes even the least beginnings.” Then he turns it on us. If Christ is that patient, how dare we be hard on one another?
He also takes up the question every anxious person asks: how can I know I am really bruised in the right way? Chapter 4 is a gentle, practical answer, and I think many readers will find themselves in it.
The book is dedicated to a soldier, Sir Horatio Vere, and it ends looking beyond the personal: the church may look battered, but Christ’s cause will prevail, “until he brings justice to victory”.
What I have done, and what I have not
I want to be clear about the approach, because it is the point of the whole series. This is not a translation, and it is not an abridgement. I have kept Sibbes’s own divisions, his order of argument, and nearly all of his words. What I have changed is the language: the long sentences, the old turns of phrase, the words that have shifted meaning in four hundred years. The aim is that when you read it, you hear Sibbes, not me.
All 28 chapters are here, along with his dedication and his note “To the General Reader”. Every Bible quotation is from the ESV and checked against the text, with the reference given in full.
It is about 42,000 words, so it is not a long read. Many people will manage a chapter or two in a sitting, and the chapters stand up well on their own.
The rest of the series
The Bruised Reed sits alongside the others already finished in the same voice: all four books of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, Perkins’s The Art of Prophesying, Owen’s Mortification of Sin and Flavel’s The Mystery of Providence. If you have liked any of those, I think you will like this, and it may be the best place to start if you are new to the Puritans, because it is short, warm and unafraid of weakness.
Get it
You can read or download it here: [Bruised Reed]. It comes as a PDF, with a cover to match the rest of the series.
If you read it, I would love to hear which chapter spoke to you