Practical Divinity

This volume gathers William Fenner’s most searching and urgent sermons, preserved and modernized so that their fire may strike fresh in our day. Here are his amazing works on Importunate Prayer (Luke 11:9), showing how a soul must ask, seek, and knock until heaven yields grace, mercy, and peace. Here are his funeral sermons on the death of the righteous (Isaiah 57:1), pressing home the bitter loss of godly men, the peril of a nation when its pillars are removed, and the call to mourn when glory departs from the earth. The Signs of God’s Forsaking a People (Jeremiah 14:9), is a scorching rebuke to England’s sins in his own day, and a warning to every nation fattened with privileges yet careless of God’s presence. ＂A Caveat Against Late Repentance＂ is one of the best sermon on the text of Luke 23:42, ＂And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom＂ concerning the theif on the cross.

Fenner was no conceited man with airy speculations; his words strike where flesh is tender and conscience is raw. He does not speak of religion as ornament, but as life and death. Every page breathes the marrow of Practical Divinity: doctrine made lived truth, Scripture set like nails into the heart, Christ pressed as the only refuge for guilty souls, and holiness urged as the safest shield against judgment.

To read these sermons is to sit under a seventeenth-century herald who feared God more than men, who could speak comfort to the broken and thunder to the careless. In an age dulled with trifles, Fenner’s voice calls us to tremble, to pray, to repent, and to cling to Christ until the door of mercy is opened. These sermons remain as timely as ever, for the God who once dealt with England in Fenner’s day is the same God who deals with nations and souls now.