Faith in the Time of Plague is both encouraging and edifying and is thus recommended for all who labor within the church, as well as for those who sit in the pews. It will cause pastors, sessions, consistories, and diaconates to carefully consider the last two-and-a-half years, not in a vacuum, but with proper historical, biblical, and Reformed theological perspective.

The past two-and-a-half years of COVID-19 fears, restrictions, and dissensions have led to strenuous circumstances for many professions and vocations. The callings of pastors and ministers have been no exception. It has been especially difficult for sessions, consistories, diaconates, and congregations in general, as they have had to navigate thorny paths while remaining faithful to the Scriptures and, in particular, the Great Commission.

Elders have been forced to make decisions they never thought they would have to make regarding church closures and openings, social distancing, outdoor services, live streaming, and visitations of both the sick and the healthy. Deacons have had to discover ways to carry out mercy ministry during times when close contact was not only difficult, but in some states and locales, restricted by edict. Pastors and congregants alike have been forced to think deeply about the most practical theological matters concerning the ministry of the Word and Sacraments, as well as Christian fellowship.

As arduous and seemingly unique as this process has been, as the Preacher says, “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun” (Eccl 1:9). Thus, it is important to be aware of Church history, for we are not the first Christians to live through times such as these. Christians have been thinking through such issues all throughout the history of the Church. Indeed, many of our Protestant and Reformed theologians have written on and even experienced such issues firsthand.

This makes the volume Faith in the Time of Plague: Selected Writings from the Reformation and Post-Reformation (2021) an invaluable resource for the Church today. In it, editor Stephen M. Coleman and editor-translator Todd M. Rester have compiled, contextualized, and provided numerous primary readings from many 16^th and 17^th-century Protestant and Reformed theologians and pastors.

It will perhaps surprise the reader to know that most of our Reformed forefathers dealt with not only similar circumstances to our own, but also with far worse in both quality and quantity than our recent pandemic. During the 16^th and 17^th centuries, for example, as the Bubonic Plague swept through Europe several times, up to 25 percent of populations were wiped out.¹  Hardly a Protestant Reformer remained untouched by the Plague in one way or another. Several great minds of the Reformation died from the plague, including Johannes Oecolampadius (1482–1531) and Franciscus Junius (1545–1602), with several others surviving the disease. ²

The reader of Faith in the Time of Plague is provided access to Theodore Beza’s (1519–1605) “A Learned Treatise on the Plague,” written from the perspective of one who not only taught and ministered during the Plague, but also suffered from it himself. Beza is followed by the French Protestant Andre Rivet (1572–1651), who wrote his “Letter to a Friend,” as an overview of what fellow theologians said concerning the Plague and how to continue to minister faithfully amid ravaging pestilence. He died of the Plague fifteen years after writing the letter.

Dutch Reformed theologian Gisbertus Voetius’ (1589–1676) “A Treatise on the Plague” provides both a comprehensive view of the Plague and how to respond spiritually. He closed his treatise with these words, “Conquer the fear of death and you will conquer the fear of the plague.”³ Following Voetius’ work is that of his student, the lesser-known, yet no less influential in the Dutch Further Reformation, Johannes Hoornbeeck (1617–66). In his “Theological Dissertation on the Plague,” Hoornbeeck wrote with scholastic clarity concerning how to think about the Plague and respond pastorally.

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