It might be cheating to mention three devotional classics in one post, but allow me to defend my choice. The Practice of Piety, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, and The Devotions of Bishop Andrewes are similar enough in several ways. First, they were all written in the Puritan and late Puritan era: 1611, 1733, and 1850 respectively. They were each written by an ordained minister in the Church of England: Lewis Bayly, William Law, and Lancelot Andrewes.
Each of them presents Christian spirituality as a disciplined, structured, and methodical affair. They call for particular times of prayer (one suggests different prayer every third hour of the day beginning at 6am, and concluding at 9pm), acts of charity and service, public worship, regular confession and self-examination, frugality, avoidance of worldly distractions, and an all-life approach to piety and virtue. Andrewes does this not by instruction but by example, presenting a very methodical devotional life consisting of adoration, confession, thanksgiving, meditation, petition, and intercession.
Spirituality suffers from a tug-of-war between “interiorists” and “exteriorists”. Interiorists argue for an interior spirituality of prayer, communion with God, meditation on Scripture, and the internal invisible work of the Spirit. Theirs is “inside-out” approach: indwelling Scripture, illuminated by the Spirit, will work itself out in obedient actions. Exteriorists contend that chosen habits and disciplines have a formative effect on the soul, deepening and internalising the truth through action. Theirs is the “outside-in” method: external practices (seasons of prayer, meditation, fasting, study, solitude) imprint our theological priorities and positions on our inner man.
Law, Bayly and Andrewes are all on the exteriorist side, though none is a pure type, for each believes in inner regeneration and the work of grace in the soul. Nevertheless, they lay the emphasis on the structures, habits, disciplines, and practices that not only flesh out the faith but also imbibe and digest the faith from the outside-in.
The pendulum has seemed to swing from one pole to another at different seasons in the church’s history. Christians should be acquainted with both sides. These three men give one of the best examples of a highly disciplined, structured, and methodical approach to piety.
