The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment

Author Bio: Jeremiah Burroughs

Jeremiah Burroughs (1600–1646) was an English Congregationalist and a well-known Puritan preacher. It is said that he harmoniously combined in his own person qualities that might be considered incompatible: a fervent zeal for doctrinal purity and worship and a peaceable spirit which longed and labored for Christian unity. It is said that his heart was broken by the divisions among the Puritan reformers in the 1640s and that this contributed to his premature death at age forty-six.

Among his contemporaries and colleagues, Burroughs was recognized as outstanding for his conciliatory temper and efforts. The often-quoted opinion of Richard Baxter was that if all the Episcopalians had been like Archbishop Ussher, all the Presbyterians like Stephen Marshall, and all the Independents like Jeremiah Burroughs, then the breaches of the Church would soon have been healed.