Welcome back to another episode of Five Minutes in Church History.

On this episode, I have a special guest, Dr. Stephen Yule.

Dr. Yule is the director of Puritan publishing at Reformation Heritage Books.

He is the preaching teaching pastor at Fairview Covenant Church in his home in Granbury, Texas,

where he is currently joining me by phone.

He is also a professor of church history at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

He is the author of a number of books, and he is the editor of the new five-volume set of the works

of John Cotton. Dr. Yule, welcome to five minutes in church history. It is great to be with you.

Thank you very much for the invitation. Well, let's get right into it. Please tell us, tell everyone five things that they need to know about

John Cotton. Yeah, that's a great question. And I was giving that some thought this morning and

trying to imagine someone picking up these five volumes of John Cotton's collected works, and what is it that

the reader really needs to know to appreciate the man and appreciate the content of those

volumes? And so I think the first thing is this. John Cotton was a husband and a father.

I mean, both feet firmly planted on the ground.

He married, a woman named Elizabeth. They were wed for 18 years, and then she died.

I think she contracted malaria or something like that.

And then his second marriage to a young woman named Sarah, and they had six children, three boys, three girls.

Sadly, two of those children contracted smallpox as infants and died obviously at a very early age.

So I think it's really important to know some of these details

concerning the man that he was flesh and blood just like us.

And he faced many of the challenges we face.

And so he is relatable.

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