'A Puritan sermon was never a tape-recording session in which abstract doctrinal information was transferred from the pastor's memory to that of the congregation. It was always an operation on the spiritual lives of the hearers in which no doctrinal tool was used which did not vitally relate to the needs of some class among them. The preacher who was content to rehearse and admire doctrines without applying them to the life and the world of the congregation in such a way that believers sensed the guiding control of the Holy Spirit and heard the voice of God addressing them in concrete situations, was not for the Puritans a physician of souls, but an aesthetician or tool-salesman, displaying the instruments of healing but refusing to employ them.'
Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life, p.275.
