Skip to content
mannafest.faith
Read
A painting of a crowded wood-panelled hall with stained-glass windows, where ministers in black gowns and white collars sit around a table with a green cloth, and one standing minister spreads his hands as he speaks to the assembly while a soldier in a buff coat listens from a bench.
John Rogers Herbert, The Assertion of Liberty of Conscience, 1847. Public domain.

Philippians 4:11 · Story · Contentment

The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment

The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment is a book of sermons on Philippians 4:11 by Jeremiah Burroughs, printed after his death.

Richard Baxter judged that if all the Independents had been like Burroughs, "the breaches of the church would soon have been healed".

Philippians 4:11 BSB
I am not saying this out of need, for I have learned to be content regardless of my circumstances.
When
1599 to 1649 AD

Summary

Jeremiah Burroughs was a congregational minister who was suspended and then deprived in Norfolk. He served the English church at Rotterdam, then came home to preach at Stepney and Cripplegate and to sit in the Westminster Assembly. His sermons became The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. The book treats contentment as a grace of the heart that is learned, and it teaches the learning as an art.

  • The Dictionary of National Biography dates the first printing to 1648, two years after his death, and records a new title page in 1649.
  • Burroughs defines contentment as a quiet frame of spirit that submits to God's wise and fatherly disposal in every condition.
  • In his account a Christian reaches contentment by bringing his desires down to his condition.

A Preacher and His Text

The first sermon gives its reason for preaching on contentment.

Jeremiah Burroughs wrote a whole book on contentment as Paul says he learned it. Suspension, removal to another country and the quarrels of an assembly gave him occasion to practise what he taught.

The question this study answers is who Burroughs was and what his book teaches about learning contentment. Its answer comes from the record of his ministry and from the book's own pages. There contentment is a grace learned by the one who would have it, and God is the portion that satisfies.

The first sermon calls Paul's verse "a very seasonable Cordial to revive the drooping spirits of the Saints in these sad and sinking times".

I know how to live humbly, and I know how to abound. I am accustomed to any and every situation—to being filled and being hungry, to having plenty and having need. I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.
Philippians 4:12 to 13BSB

The verses stand here because the conditions Burroughs writes of are the ones Paul names, want and plenty alike.

Burroughs's Life and the Book in Dates

The dates run from his birth to the printing of his book.

Fifteen years passed between his institution at Tivetshall and his death.

To scale: 11 of 11 stops dated; a mark that would lie on another stands in a lane under the axis.

  1. Birth1599 ADThe Dictionary of National Biography
  2. Admitted to Emmanuel College, Cambridge1617 ADThe Dictionary of National Biography
  3. Master of Arts1624 ADThe Dictionary of National Biography
  4. Instituted rector of Tivetshall, Norfolk21 April 1631 ADThe Dictionary of National Biography
  5. Bishop Wren's injunctions, which he would not observe1636 ADThe Dictionary of National Biography, which dates the injunctions
  6. Removal to the English church at Rotterdam1637 ADThe Dictionary of National Biography
  7. Return to England1641 ADThe Dictionary of National Biography
  8. Named in the ordinance calling the Westminster Assembly12 June 1643 ADThe Dictionary of National Biography
  9. The Apologetical Narration presented to parliament1644 ADThe Dictionary of National Biography
  10. Death after a fall from a horse13 or 14 November 1646 ADThe Dictionary of National Biography, citing the Perfect Occurrences for the 13th
  11. The Rare Jewel printed1648 ADThe Dictionary of National Biography

A timeline of eleven dated events, each row naming what fixes its date.

Return to England, Named in the ordinance calling the Westminster Assembly, The Apologetical Narration presented to parliament, Death after a fall from a horse, The Rare Jewel printed

Norfolk, Rotterdam and London

Burroughs's ministry moved with the church conflicts of his day.

After Cambridge, Burroughs assisted Edmund Calamy at Bury St Edmunds. As rector of Tivetshall he was suspended for not reading the Book of Sports, and he was later deprived. He then went to Rotterdam as teacher of the English congregational church there.

Back in England he preached at Stepney in the early morning and at Cripplegate later in the day. Hugh Peters called him the "morning star" of Stepney, and William Greenhill the "evening star". He held no benefice after his return and was content with the two lectureships.

In the Westminster Assembly he was one of seven dissenting brethren whose views of church government were congregational. He was also one of the five who presented the Apologetical Narration, the first statement of their principles.

The Book's Argument in Its Own Words

Burroughs states what contentment is and how it is learned in sentences of his own.

Burroughs opens with a definition that he then breaks open phrase by phrase: "Christian Contentment is that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit".

He shows the difference between outward calm and inward rest with a picture from daily life: "The shoe may be smooth and neat without, whilst the flesh is pinched within".

He explains why the contented Christian still longs for more. "A little in the world will Content a Christian for his passage, but all the world and ten thousand times more will not Content a Christian for his portion".

He names the art itself, "So this is the Art of Contentment. Not to seek to adde to our conditions, but to substract from our desires".

The Printing and Its Editors

Seven ministers published the book as the first of three volumes of his works.

The title page of 1649 names the seven: Thomas Goodwyn, William Greenhill, Sydrach Simpson, Philip Nye, William Bridge, John Yates and William Adderley. It was "Printed for Peter Cole, at the Printing-Press in Cornhil, near the Royall Exchange".

The same page lists six parts, from what contentment is and "The holy Art or Mystery of it" to the evils of murmuring and the aggravations of that sin.

What the Record Leaves Open

The record gives no year for the sermons and two answers each for his birth and his death.

The Dictionary of National Biography gives his birth as 1599 and notes that his portrait's age would put it in 1601 at the earliest. It also gives two days for his death, the usual 14 November and the 13th reported by a newsbook of the time.

The Dictionary of National Biography does not say when or where the sermons were first preached, and the printing is the first date the book has.

Filled with God

Burroughs rests the whole of contentment on God Himself.

A few lines after his sentence on the Christian's passage and portion, Burroughs gives the reason, "That Soul that is capable of God, can be filled with nothing else but God". He adds that "let God give what he will to a gracious heart, a heart that is godly, except he gives Himself, it will not do".

A gracious heart, he wrote, "knows that it is capable of God, and was made for God". For that reason, he says, "nothing in the world can fill a gracious heart, it must be only God himself".

Sources

Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.

  1. Alexander Gordon, "Burroughes or Burroughs, Jeremiah", Dictionary of National Biography, 1885 to 1900, vol. 7, printed page 446 and the page before it.
  2. Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment (London: Peter Cole, 1649), title page and pages 1, 4, 28 and 31.

Every cited work: the sources registry →

Keep Studying

The whole shelf: Values →