Well, welcome back to another episode of Five Minutes in Church History.

Last week we were talking with Dr. Stephen Yule about John Cotton, and we learned something

fascinating that John Cotton, this husband, this pastor, this Puritan, made his way onto the most wanted list.

Dr. Yule, please, our listeners have been waiting all week.

Let's finish the story.

Well, as a Puritan, John Cotton was opposed to what he called the intermixing of human inventions with divine institutions.

And so he objected to certain practices within the Church of England.

And the Archbishop, he was very much in favor of what we call conformity among all ministers.

And so he issued an arrest warrant for John Cotton and other Puritans.

And Cotton, with the permission of his church, he went into hiding in the city of London,

where he could, you know, escape in that sea of humanity and remain hidden. And the plan was

eventually to travel to the Netherlands. But a friend of his

named Thomas Hooker suggested the New World, New England. And John Cotton knew some people

who had traveled to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. And so he decided to take his wife, his family,

and travel across the ocean, settle in the

Massachusetts Bay Colony, and settle in the city of Boston.

And there he was able to serve the church without any real fear of persecution.

So to understand the man, we really need to understand something of his Puritanism.

And then if I used to add a fourth thing to keep in mind, and this is going to sound a little odd, John Cotton was a Puritan,

but I'm using the word in a different sense here. John Cotton had this conviction that the purity

of Christ must be the pattern of every believer.

So that's really important to keep in mind.

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