The Shadowed Face

by Philip Bennett Power


"You must put on more shadows," said an artist to a young lady who was engaged on painting a female face. "You must put on more shadows—for she is not young."

There were many shadows on the artist's own face—those of advancing years, of thought, and labor, and the wear and tear of life; and she knew well that shadows were not merely required by the rules of the painter's art—but that they were true to life. But the thought was a sad one.

The world which we enter upon with such brightness—is soon seen to be full of shadows; and the longer we are in it, the farther we travel into them—the more deeply and thickly they gather upon us, until we go down to the grave; beyond which all shadows flee away in the land of light—OR deepen into darkness which may be felt.

It must not be supposed that because we introduce such a subject at the commencement of a year, that we are going to throw up a long shadow of gloom over its coming days. Far from it! God is a God of hope and joy; and with such a God we would have our readers enter on the coming year—but here in this world, here in our experiences, here on our very faces—there are many shadows—and we shall gain nothing by shutting our eyes, and saying there are no such things.

And it will help us at the outset to think more kindly of shadows—if we remember how heavily they lay on the face of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. "As many were astonied at thee; his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men" Isaiah 52:14. The Jews said to Him, "Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?" He was indeed far from fifty—He was but a little above thirty—but shadows and lines were on His face; and His enemies thought more of fifty than of thirty, when they looked upon Him.

So let us not turn from shadows as a disagreeable subject, but draw from them the blessed teachings which they have for our own characters, and our own souls.

There are two kinds of shadows:

1. those which come upon us,

2. those which are made by us.

The first must come, the second need not come.

Yes! as we advance in life, we find so many things which we thought solid—to be hollow; so many things which we thought enduring—to be perishable; so many things which we thought would satisfy us—to leave us unfilled; that one disappointment after another throws its shadow, first on the heart and then on the face!

Take the fairest, youngest child—encompass him with wealth, give him health, give him all that this world can bestow; yet you cannot save him from the pencil charged with the shading color—the shadows will in due time be laid on. At first they will be mere greyish tints, they will seem perhaps to make but little change; but they will deepen, and that more and more as time goes on.

Sometimes they are laid on heavily all at once—and no matter how bright things may become in after life, there they remain; they never can be effaced.

But we must not accept this lot sulkily, and say, "If they must come, they must—but we would be glad if they never came."

Some little while ago, a woman who dealt in perfumes and powders of various kinds, advertised herself as able to make people beautiful forever; and it was no uncommon thing some time ago, for people to cover their face and necks with makeup, filling up the crevices which wrinkles had made, just as you put fresh plaster over an old wall to fill up the cracks—these people would have no wrinkles, no shadows.

Now, some of the most beautiful faces in the world are shadowed ones; and certainly some of the loveliest characters are the same. Therefore we are not so much to trouble ourselves about the shadows themselves—as about how they came, and what they mean.

Have they come in the course of God's providential dealings? Then they are from Him, and not from ourselves; and being from Him, they are able to do us good—they are meant to do so. They are able to do what all His dealings with His people can accomplish—that is fit us for Himself.

It was by the coming up of many shadows upon Him, that Jesus, thus tried in all points like ourselves, became an experienced High Priest. Feeling for our infirmities—His sorrows fitted Him to be a sympathetic friend to us in our sorrows.

And the sorrow and discipline which throw shadows are fitting us too. These are tokens of experience. They say, "A voice has spoken, telling me that this earth is not a place simply of enjoyment; that I must be preparing for an eternal world. The lightness, the garishness of our natures must be wrought upon by the great Master's hand."

So then the heavy shadows made by the furrows in the face may be looked upon with reverence, with affection, with awe—when they have been the handiwork of God.

Thus let us accept them. They are His softenings—His tonings down of the roughness and crudeness of our natures— His way of drawing character.

It is the shadows which give character to a face, and it is by shadow-casting dispensations, that God gives us character.

But let us take heed how WE ourselves make shadows for ourselves or for others. There are many such. They come up upon the faces of wives, and husbands and parents—and do not depart until the face becomes placid in death.

The unkind word—the cruel sleight—the sad short-coming, where 'love' had reason to expect so much; all these are powerful shadow-casters. They do their work in the mansion of the nobleman, and in the cottage of the poor man; for they are the same in themselves, and have to work on people who have the same affections. The shadows, which need not have come, are those which make the world as wretched and gloomy as it is!

why good and necessary consequences are good and necessary: part 2

We have seen that what is meant by "good and necessary consequence" is not human wisdom but "reason captivated and subdued to the obedience of Christ" (George Gillespie). The consequence must be necessary, that is to say it must be demanded by a relevant Scripture passage. This means taking premises stated in the Scripture and using sanctified reason in order to draw their inexorable conclusions which although not expressly stated in a particular verse are nevertheless entirely warranted as the conclusions of such a process.

Historic limitations of the regulative principle

In the 17th Century some sought to limit this even with regard to doctrine, specifically Arminians and Socinians. Erastians and Anabaptists sought in different ways and with different purposes to limit it in respect of the regulative principle. There were members of the Assembly that sought to defend the old Anglican view of Richard Hooker that gave "indifferent things" such as Church government to the monarch so that they could control the church, this is sometimes called Erastianism after Erastus who articulated the theoretical basis. Thomas Coleman was one of the Erastian Westminster divines, although their views were not prevalent in the eventual documents of the Assembly, they made themselves heard, as when Coleman preached to Parliament (July 1645) that the Assembly's agenda ought to be "Establish as few things by divine right, as well can be".
Divine right or jus divinum meant scriptural warrant. But if we do not give the authority to the Divine scriptures we give it instead to men, the king or individuals, human reason or prejudice or mere pragmatism and cultural influence. Although Coleman's principle may seem plausible it was crafted to serve his own agenda: he made it clear in the same sermon that the only thing that he wanted to establish by divine right was the King's/Parliament's authority by divine right. The attitude of the Scots commissioners to the Assembly on the other hand was "establish as much as possible by divine warrant".

The Anabaptist argument was that the regulative principle could only use explicit warrant. Zwingli pointed out the problems with those to Anabaptists in his day. They believed that Acts 19 contains a rebaptism by Paul of those followers of John the Baptist who had been initially baptized by Apollos. Zwingli argued that the Scripture does not tell us explicitly that Apollos baptized, so, following the explicit warrant principle, Apollos didn’t baptize. Yet it was quite obvious otherwise that Apollos did.

The limitation of the regulative principle by Anabaptists in the 17th Century to explicit warrant transpired in the popularity of some rather odd views by the standards of modern antipaedobaptists. The first antipaedobaptist in England, John Smyth, did not read from a translation of the Bible. Instead he read the original languages and sought to translate on the hoof. There is of course no explicit warrant for translating the Scriptures into written form. Only good and necessary consequence will establish our warrant for it. His congregation also ended up as Seventh-day Baptists. This was quite a popular controversy amongst 17th Century Baptists. There is of course no explicit statement in the New Testament that the day has been changed. References to meeting on the first day in the book of Acts or to the Lord's Day in Revelation do not satisfy this explicit warrant requirement. Only good and necessary consequence will establish our warrant for it. The Smyth group also wound up keeping the Old Testament feasts and ceremonial laws.

Few antipaedobaptist congregations in the 17th century had congregational praise. They didn't believe that there was an explicit statement commanding congregational praise. All the usual verses were understood as addressed to individuals. Prophetic solos were acceptable but not congregational praise.

Contemporary limitation of the regulative principle

This is the final way in which there is an attempt to limit the scope of application of good and necessary consequence in Scripture is by excluding it from the regulative principle. This is at the crux of the arguments in a book by a modern antipaedobaptist, Fred Malone. It is entitled 'The Baptism of Disciples Alone'. The book is of course highly polemical but Malone carries it to a degree that topples into being offensive and hostile. The title of the book for instance is explained as the explicit assertion that the rejection of infants as proper subjects for baptism is on the same level as the 5 solas defined by the Reformers as critical to salvation.

Malone identifies two main bulwarks to his book against paedobaptism. 1) the regulative principle and 2) biblical interpretation.

Malone refers again and again to the regulative principle of worship (RPW), although his discussion of it is rather thin. He does not refer to any writers apart from John Frame, in order to show that the regulative principle prohibits drama and dance in worship. The regulative principle is about more than this. Once antipaedobaptists start applying the regulative principle consistently and with rigour in the areas of festivals and holy days, their warrant for composing and using hymns, musical accompaniment and the like we might be able to accept that they are not just being selective in applying the regulative principle. It seems that when it comes to baptism matters are very tight and there is only one valid mode. What about their practice of the Lord's Supper, however, do they have one loaf as Scripture prescribes? Do they have one cup of wine as Scripture prescribes? Where is the warrant for medicine glasses of juice?

Malone refers to the confessional definition of the RPW but defines it differently himself in order to accuse paedobaptists of forsaking the regulative principle for the normative principle. The WCF and 2nd London Confession of Faith both define it as 'the acceptable way of worshiping the true God is instituted by himself, and so limited by his own revealed will, that he may not be worshiped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representation, or any other way not prescribed in the holy Scripture'. In order to understand what limited by God's revealed will means we must go back to the first chapter of the Confession which defines the whole counsel of God as express statements and what may be deduced by good and necessary consequences. This, contrary to Malone, does set good and necessary consequence on the same level as explicit Scripture statements.

Malone defines the regulative principle as only based on explicit statements or approved examples drawn from the New Testament. In the previous post we pointed out that the regulative principle is an Old Testament principle which cannot be derived from New Covenant passages. Good and necessary consequence must not only be used in applying the regulative principle but in identifying it itself as a New Testament principle.

It is important to note that as the whole Scriptures are the "word of Christ", anything positively instituted by Christ as the author of Scripture in the Old Testament, which is not abrogated in the New, remains instituted and binding. We must conform ourselves to the way that Scripture is written and not limit God by limiting His revealed will. Peter Edwards, the 18th Century Particular Baptist minister who saw through the inconsistency of these arguments and renounced antipaedobaptism notes that the demand for explicit warrant 'it seems to dictate to the ever-blessed God in what manner he ought to speak to his creatures. Since it is so where contained in his word, and he knows best how to communicate his mind to men, it little becomes such creatures as we are, to lay down rules by which he shall proceed...it supposes we cannot understand what God says, but when he speaks to us in one particular way.' The whole of Scripture is given to us as authoritative and is profitable for doctrine and practice.

Malone refers to paedobaptism as a sacrament and then says that cannot have a whole distinct sacrament added without positive institution. We are not talking about a distinct sacrament we are talking about two sacraments, the Lord's Supper and Baptism and the issues that arise after establishing this is who should receive them (proper subjects) and how?

In terms of the Lord's Supper. We do not have a positive command or historical example to administer it to women. Yet noone denies it to women. This question has been put to antipaedobaptists for nigh 500 years without satisfactory answer. Every answer involves an inference. Appeal is made to 1 Cor 11:28 “Let a man [Anthropos] examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, &c.” The argument has been that anthropos in Greek is a generic term and not specific to males. Peter Edwards entirely demolishes this assumption with nineteen instances where anthropos is distinctly male, http://www.biblelighthouse.com/sacraments/baptism-edwards4.htm. Malone actually cites Exodus 12:1-4, 16 as support for women partaking of the Lord's Supper (entirely contrary to his line of reasoning) which only refers to every man and not to women and makes no mention of the Lord's Supper. Malone says that because the previous pericope introduces women that they must be understood here. That is an argument from inference and not from clear positive institution and explicit warrant. Besides there is no logical connection, Paul might easily move between various matters, some of which only apply to one sex or the other.

Peter Edwards points out that the principle which antipaedobaptists assert, 'A person who has a right to a positive institution, must be expressly mentioned as having that right' is found nowhere expressly stated in Scripture. They have created it themselves. It is also abandoned by antipaedobaptists as soon as they are pressed for proof of women being admitted to the Lord's Supper.

There is no explicit and direct command in the New Testament to baptise only confessing adults to the exclusion of infants. Malone cannot produce this but proceeds as though he has. Would it not be clearer to proceed on the basis of what Scripture states clearly about children in the New Covenant than assumption? There is explicit inclusion of Christian children in the new covenant promises (Dt. 30:6, Jer. 31:36-37; Acts 2:39), explicit inclusion in the church (Eph. 6:1-4, 1 Cor. 7:14), and explicit inclusion the kingdom (Mt. 19:14, Mk. 10:14, Lk. 18:16). There is of course no express command that says 'Baptise children'. Neither is there a direct command that states what is to be done with the children of the visible church, that they are not to receive the signs and seals of the covenant. We can only proceed by good and necessary consequence from Scripture and it will not be good consequence unless it accords with the explicit principles stated above. Antipaedobaptists will go to passages that say connect baptism with faith and point out that infants cannot exercise faith. But of whom is the faith required? Of (pagan) adults. It is fallacious to take a statement with adults in view and say that infants cannot meet the requirements when infants were never in view in the first place. The inference that is usually drawn must be fallacious also. Peter Edwards covers this matter in detail http://www.biblelighthouse.com/sacraments/baptism-edwards4.htm.

Malone reads into Matthew 28:18-20 what he calls the baptism of disciples alone. It does not teach this at all. It requires the nations to be discipled. It shows how discipling is to be done. Baptise and then teach. The grammar of the text is against Malone's contention. He says that it states we are to make disciples from all nations. The text says disciple all nations. In the Greek "nations" is the direct object of the verb "disciple" (which is not a noun). Gregg Strawbridge details the only possible grammatical reading at http://www.wordmp3.com/files/gs/malonemore.htm and says: 'It is beyond dispute that the grammatically precise rendering is simply "disciple the nations and baptize them (nations)." ' The Commission considers nations as nations and is not simply looking at individuals. Strawbridge goes on to note that the Great Commission reflects the promises of the Abrahamic Covenant that in Abraham's seed (Christ) all the nations of the earth would be blessed. He refers also to prophecies that speak of the nations serving Christ (Ps:72:11; Rev 15:4).

What we have seen is that we cannot exclude necessary consequence from the regulative principle and both antipaedobaptists (inconsistently) and paedobaptists are proceeding on this basis anyway. We must take into account the clear Scriptures concerning children in the Church and the New Covenant and realise that their privileges under the Abrahamic Covenant have not been abrogated, especially because this covenant is widened not set aside under the New Covenant. The matter becomes clear by proceeding consistently with good and necessary consequence. As we have before pointed out those who do not hold to Covenant theology (Closed Brethren) can still arrive at this by applying good and necessary consequence consistently.

why good and necessary consequences are good and necessary: part 1

We have seen that if we are to make any kind of doctrinal conclusions from Scripture, we require good and necessary consequence. This is simply drawing out the meaning that is already in Scripture. It doesn't add anything new. It must be what explicit statements of Scripture require and entail inevitably and not contradict the rest of Scripture. It is not reason speaking but the Scriptures themselves. These inferences were foreseen by God and are part of the intended meaning of Scripture. The Holy Spirit is involved in the process of enabling us to identify these consequences “the inward illumination of the Spirit of God [is] necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the word.”

In order for consequences to be good, they 'must be truly contained in the inspired statements from which they profess to be taken'. In order for them to be necessary they must be 'unavoidably forced upon the mind, upon an honest and intelligent application of it to the Scripture page'. These are the words of James Bannerman, who goes on to say;

'The extent to which the principle of Scripture consequences is available in gathering up the meaning of the Word of God, is very great. It is hardly possible to conceive of a revelation from God in any form from which no inferences could be drawn, upon which we might legitimately found our faith, equally with its literal or express statements. It is impossible at least to conceive of a revelation assuming the shape found in the Bible, which teaches not by abstract and dogmatic propositions only, but by a thousand methods of historical example and incidental and indirect exhibition of truth, that would be possible or intelligible on the principle that each single proposition must be interpreted by itself and apart from every other, and that no comparison of Scripture with Scripture, and no deduction from the comparison, were lawful in framing our creed'.

The Second London Confession 1677/1689 produced by Antipaedobaptists substituted another phrase for 'good and necessary consequence'. The phrase was 'necessarily contained in Scripture'. This, however much people try to argue that it means the same, is not the same thing. It tells us nothing about the sound and logical method of drawing consequences - it tells nothing about any method. There may be a large body of truth necessarily contained in Scripture but we don't know how to draw it out. The definition of necessity may be as loose or tight, objective or subjective as we wish. It only leaves us with questions. How is it necessarily contained in Scripture and how do we distinguish this?

It amounts to less than the fully formed, defined and confessed Reformed doctrine of Scripture outlined the Westminster Confession and leaves Antipaedobaptists without a confession of this indispensable principle. This, despite the fact that it is clearly taught and demonstrated by the Lord Jesus Christ and the Apostles.

We are left with various options in relation to good and necessary consequence.

Option 1. To deny that it is legitimate to identify good and necessary consequences.

The first difficulty with this is that since this principle is nowhere expressly stated in Scripture, one must derive the principle itself only by good and necessary consequence.

The second difficulty is a very practical one. We can only have assurance and personal faith by good and necessary consequence. In order to say that such a promise, a warrant or offer belongs to me I must make use of good and necessary consequence. Boston writes 'Refusing to admit good and necessary consequences from scripture, overturns all religion, both law and gospel, faith and practice. For how shall it be proved, that John or James are obliged to obey the law, and believe the gospel but by Consequence ? where will they find an express text for these ? Only the law speaks to all, the gospel to every hearer of it, and consequently they oblige thee and me'.

A prohibition on making use of the Bible for good and necessary consequences is a prohibition of making any use of the Bible apart from reading it. Thomas Boston says: 'Good and necessary consequences are such as the word is designed for. What is deduced from them, so is indeed the sense and meaning of the words; and if you have the words without the meaning of them, or without the full meaning of them, in so far ye come short of the true intent of the words. If I bid a man draw near the fire, do I not desire him to warm himself, though I speak not one word of his warming himself" Were not the scriptures written for that end, that 'we through patience and comfort of them might have hope ?' Rom. xv. 4. But this cannot be obtained without the use of consequences. Are they not profitable for doctrine,--'that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works ?" 2 Tim. iii. 16. But can this be had without the use of consequences?'

The third difficulty is that by simply quoting verses out of context you can arrive at a theology that although only based on Scripture texts is against the teaching of Scripture. For instance your doctrine of justification might be 'by works a man is justified, and not by faith only' James 2:24 but this would not be a fully scriptural doctrine cf. Galatians 2:15-16 - 15.

Rejecting good and necessary consequence is impossible therefore. In previous posts we have shown its scriptural basis.

Option 2. To restrict the scope of application of good and necessary consequences.


We have seen that we cannot restrict consequences simply to doctrine they must be applied to practice as Christ and the apostles have done. We have seen that we cannot avoid making personal application of good and necessary consequence. If we restrict the scope of good and necessary consequence we are saying that the Bible must not speak into these areas or that the only way the Bible can speak into these areas is by express statement and preachers cannot make application in these areas. Again we must have an express statement for this prohibition. It is arbitrary and unworkable.

Option 3. To restrict good and necessary consequence to the New Testament.

Once again we must ask of the Marcionite adopting this as to where his Scripture warrant from the New Testament is for this. The practical consequences will be that we have no limitation of consanguinity and affinity in marriage, little to go on against abortion etc. etc. It means that the Old Testament is reserved for illustration only and not for faith and life or practical application. The regulative principle of worship is also proved from the Old Testament and where Christ asserts it in the New Testament against the Pharisees, this is in an Old Covenant context.

To be continued...

No Consequences, No Creed

The Early Church saw the need very quickly of deriving doctrinal formulations from Scripture by the method of good and necessary consequence, which, other than producing a list of verses that may be variously interpreted, is the only way of producing a doctrinal formulation or creed. One of the classic and most critical creeds of the early Church was the Nicene Creed. The critical terms used in the creed such as “homousias” to define the divine nature of Christ are not derived by a churchly magisterial fiat but by good and necessary consequence from the Scriptures. J.D. Kelly writes concerning the usage of such terms, “... it was everywhere taken for granted that, for any doctrine to win acceptance, it had first to establish scriptural basis. A striking illustration is the difficulty which champions of novel theological terms like houmoousias’ (‘of the same substance’)... experienced in getting these descriptions of the Son’s relationship to the Father, or of God’s eternal being, generally admitted. They had to meet the damning objection, advanced in conservative as well as heretical quarters, that they were not to be found in the Bible. In the end they could only quell oppositions by pointing out (Athanasius in one case and Gregory of Nazianzus in the other), the meaning they conveyed was exactly that of Holy Writ.” in Early Christian Doctrines (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1978) pg. 46.

The term “Trinity” was not found in the Scriptures, but it is a theological correct term which describes the doctrine that may be derived from Scripture by good and necessary consequence. Gregory of Nyssa displays how the method of good and necessary consequences was used in relation to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul in drawing out the principles of Scripture.

“we are not entitled to such license, I mean that of affirming what we please; we make the Holy Scriptures the rule and the measure of every tenet; we necessarily fix our eyes upon that, and approve that alone which may be made to harmonize with the intention of those writings. We...we will adopt, as the guide of our reasoning, the Scripture, which lays it down as an axiom that there is no excellence in the soul which is not a property as well of the Divine nature.” –Gregory of Nyssa, Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers II V. 5, p. 439.

John Leith notes that: 'All theology is in some measure dependent on this method, as all theologians have known since the time Augustine reflected upon the theological task'. In De Doctrina Christiana Augustine emphasized that good and necessary consequences were necessary in the interpretation of Scripture. In Book Two he discusses the extent to which the Christian should make use of other aids (such as history, natural science, dialectics, and rhetoric) in interpreting Scripture and formulating Christian doctrine. Chapters 31-35 discuss logic or reasoning. “The science of reasoning,” writes Augustine, “is of very great service in searching into and unraveling all sorts of questions that come up in Scripture....” Augustine notes that logic is not a human invention but ordained of God. “[T]he validity of logical sequences is not a thing devised by men, but it is observed and noted by them that they may be able to learn and teach it; for it exists eternally in the reason of things, and has its origin with God.”

John Calvin taught that teaching “drawn from Scripture” was “wholly divine.” (Institutes IV.x.30). Turretin contended also that the perfection of Scripture implies only the exclusion of traditions, and that the doctrine of the perfection or sufficiency of Scripture includes “besides the express word of God, evident and necessary consequences are admissible in theology.”(Institutes I.xii.2;6-7,8). Reformed scholastics viewed Scripture doctrines in two ways: kata lexin,
expressly, or kata dianoian, implicitly and as to the sense. Systematic theology or the formulation of doctrine depends upon this. BB Warfield noted that “the plea against the use of human logic in determining doctrine...destroys at once our confidence in all doctrines, no one of which is ascertained or formulated without the aid of human logic.” In the introduction to his Dogmatic Theology William G. T. Shedd stated that “the proper mode of discussing any single theological topic” is twofold: Exegetical and Rational. “The first step to be taken is, to deduce the doctrine itself from Scripture by careful exegesis; and the second step is, to justify and defend this exegetical result upon grounds of reason.” “When the individual doctrines have been deduced, constructed, and defended by the exegetico-rational method, they are then to be systematized.”

John Gill defended this theological method also in his Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity. “Systematical Divinity, I am sensible, is now become very unpopular. Formulas and articles of faith, creeds, confessions, catechisms, and summaries of divine truths, are greatly decried in our age; and yet, what art or science so ever but has been reduced to a system?” “Nor is every doctrine of the Scripture expressed in so many words; as the doctrine of the Trinity of persons in the Godhead; the eternal generation of the Son of God, his incarnation and satisfaction, &c. but then the things signified by them are clear and plain; and there are terms and phrases answerable to them; or they are to be deduced from thence by just and necessary consequences”.

Creeds and Confessions are necessary for the defence of the faith, instruction in the faith and making public confession of it. I Corinthians 2:10 commands believers that they all "speak the same thing." In Matthew 10:32 Christ says: "Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven." How can we confess the divinity of Christ without good and necessary consequences? “No Creed but Christ” cannot have anything much to say about Christ at all. Thomas Boston notes 'The great fundamental article, that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, before the New Testament was written, could not be proved to the Jews by express scripture testimony, but by good and necessary consequence; yet Christ tells them that there could be no salvation for them without the belief of this. 'If ye believe not that I am he (the Messiah),' says he, 'ye shall die in your sins.' John viii. 24'.

Christ promised the illumination of the Spirit to help the Church draw the principles of Scripture forth John 16:13: "Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will show you things to come." We are to give an answer or defence of the truth which will involve reasoning from the Scriptures (I Peter 3:15).

II Timothy 3:16, 17, "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." Scripture is profitable for doctrine but we cannot have the teaching of it and the application of it let alone the systematising of doctrine without good and necessary consequence. Preaching and teaching encourages believers like the Bereans to search the Scriptures to see if the things taught in them are true (Acts 17:11). Paul did more than read the Scriptures, he reasoned from them in a way which could be confirmed by private examination of Scripture. 1 John 4.1 warns: ‘Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they be of God’ - this requires reasoning from Scripture. Bannerman, in his second volume on the Church of Christ shows how heretics or those in error have always insisted on explicit statements in Scripture rather than the inferences that may be drawn from them. “Errors are covered by an appeal to the letter of Scripture, while the real sense and meaning of it have been evaded or denied.”

William Cunningham wrote:

It has been the generally received doctrine of orthodox divines, and it is in entire accordance with reason and common sense, that we are bound to receive as true, on God’s authority, not only what is “expressly set down in Scripture,” but also what, “by good and necessary consequence, may be deduced from Scripture”; and heretics, in every age and of every class, have, even when they made a profession of receiving what is expressly set down in Scripture, shown the greatest aversion to what are sometimes called Scripture consequences,- that is, inferences or deductions from scriptural statements, beyond what is expressly contained in the mere words of Scripture, as they stand in the page of the sacred record.

B. B. Warfield noted that the method of good and necessary consequences 'is the strenuous and universal contention of the Reformed theology against the Socinians and Arminians, who desired to confine the authority of Scripture to its literal asservations; and it involves a characteristic honoring of reason as the instrument for the ascertainment of truth. We must depend upon our human faculties to ascertain what Scripture says; we cannot suddenly abnegate them and refuse their guidance in determining what Scripture means. This is not, of course, to make reason the ground of the authority of inferred doctrines and duties. Reason is the instrument of discovery of all doctrines and duties, whether ‘expressly set down in Scripture’ or ‘by good and necessary consequence deduced from Scripture’: but their authority, when once discovered, is derived from God, who reveals them and prescribes them in Scripture, either by literal assertion or by necessary implication.

It is the Reformed contention, reflected here by the Confession, that the sense of Scripture is Scripture, and that men are bound by its whole sense in all its implications. The re-emergence in recent controversies of the plea that the authority of Scripture is to be confined to its expressed declarations, and that human logic is not to be trusted in divine things, is, therefore, a direct denial of a fundamental position of Reformed theology, explicitly affirmed in the Confession, as well as an abnegation of fundamental reason, which would not only render thinking in a system impossible, but would logically involve the denial of the authority of all doctrine of the Trinity, and would logically involve the denial of all doctrine whatsoever, since no single doctrine of whatever implicitly can be ascertained from Scripture except by the process of the understanding. It is, therefore, an unimportant incident that the recent plea against the use of human logic in determining doctrine has been most sharply put forward in order to justify the rejection of a doctrine which is explicitly taught, and that repeatedly of a doctrine which is explicitly, in the very letter of Scripture; if the plea is valid at all, it destroys at once our confidence in all doctrines, no one of which is ascertained or formulated without the aid of human logic'.

Why do anti-household baptists reject the apostolic method of interpreting Scripture?

It is very evident that the apostles follow Christ in his method of good and necessary consequences in interpreting Scripture.

In Acts 2:25-32, Peter argues for the resurrection of Christ from Psalm 16 a passage which does not state the resurrection of Christ. Peter infers that since David died and remains dead he must be prophesying about Christ and his resurrection in Psalm 16. Paul did similarly in Acts 13 in drawing inferences out of Psalm 2 and Psalm 16:10 concerning the resurrection. The reference to the second psalm is similar to Paul's statement in Romans 1:4, that Christ was declared to be the Son of God with power, by the resurrection from the dead. This is an inference, however. Paul also quotes Isaiah 55:3 'I will give you the sure mercies of David'. We may ask how do these words prove the resurrection of Christ? They presuppose it but do not state it. The reasoning is that since an eternal kingdom was promised to David, the Son of David who would be Ruler of this kingdom could not remain under the power of death.

Paul proved that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, by reasoning with the Jews out of the Old Testament Scriptures Acts 17: 2-3. He 'reasoned with them out of the scriptures, Opening and alleging, that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead; and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ'. This was a reasoning process, drawing good and necessary consequences and connecting them with Christ. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul brings together passages that reflect the resurrection obliquely. For instance in v27 he infers from Psalm 8:6 that since all things are put under Christ's feet, death must also be put under his feet. In verse 45 he quotes Genesis 2:7 that Adam was made a living soul in order to develop the doctrine that we shall have resurrected spiritual bodies.

Paul defends the right of ministers to payment in 1 Cor. 9:9 by quoting Deut. 25:4 which forbids muzzling an ox treading corn. The principle is drawn that the labourer is worthy of his hire. In verse 13 he refers to the scriptural provision for the priests to eat of the sacrifices and infers that v14 'Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel'.

In 1 Cor. 10:26, he quotes Ps. 24:1 to support the practice of buying meat without asking questions since the Christian has a free use of all creatures because all belong ultimately to the Lord. This is obviously an inference.

Heb.1:6 proves that Christ is greater than the angels and divine by the fact that Psalm 97:7 includes an instruction to the angels to worship him. The verse says nothing of the divinity of Christ, this must be inferred.

Without entering into the details it ought to be obvious that the way that Paul reasons using the Old Testament Scriptures concerning justification by faith in Romans and Galatians depends upon good and necessary consequence.

The claim has been that those who defend good and necessary consequence are undermining the sufficiency of Scripture. Does Christ do this when he practices it? Or do the apostles? Nay, rather we establish the sufficiency of Scripture. Good and necessary consequence shows how far the Scriptures are sufficient rather than limiting them and allowing human ideas to take over completely where we must do something but cannot find an explicit command. “All Scripture” is declared to be “profitable for doctrine, for reproof; for correction, for instruction in righteousness" (2 Tim. 3:15-17. These purposes cannot be obtained without good and necessary consequences, however. "Legitimate consequences, indeed, only bring out the full meaning of the words of Scripture; and as we are endued with the faculty of reason, and commanded to search the Scriptures, it was manifestly intended that we should draw conclusions from what is therein set down in express words" (Thomas Boston). If we are forbidden to make such consequences, then cannot apply or use Scripture at all – only read it.

Why do anti-household baptists reject the Saviour's method of interpreting Scripture?

The Lord Jesus Christ's method of interpreting Scripture is evident from his frequent references to Scripture in the Gospels, particularly in responding to the Scribes and Pharisees. An example from Scripture is the way in which Christ charges the Sadducees with unbelief in relation to Scripture. He cites Exodus 3:6 concerning the resurrection of the dead. This does not speak about the resurrection, however, it only implies this doctrine because Christ asserts that since this was said to Moses long after the patriarchs were dead that they were still living and that God is the God of the living. This is based upon the tense used (present tense), Christ's charge against the Sadducees is based not on the express statement of Scripture but for not drawing the good and necessary inference or consequence from Exodus 3:6 (cf. 3:1-10,12).

As Thomas Boston observes, Christ 'does not seek after a text that said in express words, that the dead shall rise again, but proves it by good consequence, yet no less firmly than if he had produced an express text for it, Matt. xxii. 32'.

Christ responded to a charge of blasphemy made by the Pharisees (John 10:36; see v. 33) with a quotation in John 10:34 from Psalm 82:6, which refers to human magistrates as 'gods'. He is noting that Scripture contains the principle that individuals can be given a general divine title by virtue of their divine commission (vv. 34, 35a). This cannot be blasphemous. He adds, "the Scripture cannot be broken" (v. 35b), what Scripture has said cannot be blasphemous. If it is not blasphemous, therefore for individuals to be given this title, how much less blasphemous is it for Christ who is divinely commissioned to use his divinely given specific and unique divine title, the Son of God. In effect Christ asked, "How can you accuse Me of blasphemy when I, too, claim the divine title rightfully?" It is evident that Christ is making inference from a passage that does not expressly state his point.

Another example is in Matthew 19:4,5 where Christ, quoting from Genesis 2:24, is being questioned on the matter of divorce. "And he answered and said unto them, 'Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." The text says nothing about divorce but Christ is drawing out a necessary inference concerning divorce.

In Matthew 12 Christ defends the disciples eating ears of corn on the sabbath by referring to the example of David in 1Sam 21:1-6. 'But he said unto them, Have ye not read what David did, when he was an hungred, and they that were with him; How he entered into the house of God, and did eat the shewbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but only for the priests?' (vv3-4). It is likely on a comparison with the ceremonial law that this took place on the sabbath, but the point that Christ is addressing is the principle that it was more important to preserve life and indeed the life of the Lord's Anointed by giving the shewbread which was not lawful for any but the priest and his household to eat. How much more should Christ's life be preserved by means of such food as the disciples partook of? In other words God's commands are never meant to be at the expense of or in conflict with works of mercy. Hence Christ refers to Hosea, 'I will have mercy and not sacrifice' as a verse that brings out the same principle. John Gill comments 'Now our Lord's argument stands thus, that if David, a holy, good man, and, the men that were with him, who were men of religion and conscience, when in great distress, through hunger, ate of the showbread, which was unlawful for any to eat of but priests, the high priest himself assenting to it; then it could not be criminal in his disciples, when an hungred, to pluck, rub, and eat a few ears of corn, which were lawful for any man to eat, even though it was on the sabbath day'.

He also refers to the fact that the ceremonial law required work of the priest that would be a breach of the sabbath by anyone else. It was, however, a work of mercy and an act of worship to provide sacrifices and offerings for those who needed their sin to be ceremonially cleansed. 'Or have ye not read in the law, how that on the sabbath days the priests in the temple profane the sabbath, and are blameless? But I say unto you, That in this place is one greater than the temple' (vv.5-6). Christ is greater than the temple and he is Lord of the sabbath. If the priests could work on the sabbath and be blameless in their works of mercy, how much more could Christ in his healing? The disciples also had a ministerial work to do and were justified in sustaining themselves for it. 'Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the sabbath' (v12). It will be evident that Christ is drawing out principles and inferences in all of this in relation to practice as well as doctrine.

In John 7:23 Christ defends his act of healing on the sabbath by the fact that they practiced circumcision on the sabbath if it coincided with the eighth day in obedience to the law of Moses. If this physical 'wounding' was permitted because of its spiritual significance, why not Christ's physical healing with its spiritual significance.

It is evident that Christ used good and necessary consequence in order to interpret Scripture. Anti-household baptists have rejected this and while adopting most of the Westminster Confession of Faith, the 2nd London Baptist Confession deliberately omitted the reference to 'good and necessary consequence'. This is because good and necessary consequence is used to make the case for household baptism.

the form and power of godliness

I have come recently to appreciate the writings of J.C.Philpot, the Strict Baptist. His 'Ears after Harvested Sheaves' is of the very best of daily readings. I have been unable to find expressly any Antinomian or Hypercalvinist error in it at all as yet. Philpot emphasises a high-toned experimental Christianity, and reading him does the soul much good. In the following extracts from a sermon on "Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away." —2 Tim 3:5 he distinguishes very carefully the true from the false.

By godliness he understands 'the whole of the Spirit's work upon the soul, the teachings of God in the heart, all that is generally conveyed by the expression, experimental religion, with all the fruits and consequences which flow out of that divine work. Thus godliness in this sense has a very comprehensive signification. It embraces the whole of experimental religion; it includes the whole work of grace from first to last, from the first teachings of the Spirit in the heart of the babe, up to the last hallelujahs of the expiring saint. And not only so, but it comprehends all the external fruits and manifestations of the work of grace upon the soul. Thus, in this sense, godliness has a very extensive signification; and therefore many spiritual branches will be found to grow out from this deep and broad stem'.

He speaks of how these graces of godliness are not always in high exercise so as we always experience the power of it to the same degree. 'If ever you have loved Jesus with a pure affection; if ever you have felt him near, dear, and precious to your soul, that love can never be lost out of your heart. It may lie dormant; it does lie dormant. It may not be sweetly felt in exercise; but there it is. "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha" (1 Cor. vi. 22). You would be under this curse if the love of the Lord Jesus Christ were to die out of your hearts.

But this love is often sleeping. When the mother sometimes watches over the cradle, and looks upon her sleeping babe with unutterable affection, the infant knows not that the mother is watching its slumbers; but when it awakes, it is able to feel and return its mother's caresses. It is so with the soul sometimes when love in the heart is like a babe slumbering in the cradle. But as the babe opens its eyes, and sees the mother smiling upon it, it returns the smiles, and stretches forth its arms to embrace the bending cheek; so as to feel enmity against them? Nay, perhaps when we face of Jesus stooping to imprint a kiss of love, or drop some sweet word into the heart, and there is a flowing forth toward him of love and affection—"this is the power of love'.

He observes that it is easy to talk about and emphasise experimental religion but not actually exercise it. In distinguishing the power from the form he warns that 'when two things very nearly resemble each other, there lies the peril; lest the poison should be mistaken for the remedy.

Thus peril lies in the wide-spread profession of experimental truth, for it is that alone which deserves the name of "godliness," lest in the wide profession of experimental truth we should deceive ourselves, or others should deceive us, by the form without the power.

And this is perilous to the people of God lest they should be entangled by the wide-spread profession of experimental truth and the mere exterior of vital godliness, without the heart-felt possession of spiritual knowledge and enjoyment of it.

A form is something that comes very near, and yet is not the thing itself.

1. There is the form of repentance. A person may profess to be very sorry for, and to have great conviction of sin, talk about a law-work, and guilt on account of his transgressions; and yet not have that life-giving power of the Spirit upon his soul producing real contrition and true repentance. It may be only the workings of natural cons-science, and not that peculiar teaching of God the Spirit in the heart of a sinner whereby he is broken down into godly sorrow and deep penitence of heart before the Lord.

2. So with respect to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. There is a natural faith in Christ as well as a spiritual faith. A man may have heard so much about Jesus Christ under ministers who extol him highly, speak of his Person, proclaim his blood, and dwell upon his justifying righteousness, that he may fancy he has faith in Christ, because he has heard so much of him with the outward ear; and yet be all the time without living, genuine faith. This special gift and work of God upon the soul may be still fatally wanting.

3. So with respect to love to the Lord Jesus Christ. There may be a natural love toward him. A man may have heard and read so much of his kindness to sinners, and such glowing descriptions of the beauty of his Person, that he may have fallen in love with him. Just as Roman Catholics have their crucifixes and paintings of Christ, and in admiring their crucifixes and adoring their paintings, feel the workings of fleshly love towards him whom they suppose to be there represented; so a man may have heard so much about the love of Christ, that he may have his fleshly affections roused up, and mistake them for that pure love which is shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost.

4. So we may have something that draws us towards the Lord's people. We may feel that there is an amiableness about them; we may believe that they are the Lord's living family, and wish to be like them; to talk as they talk, and speak as they speak; and this we may mistake for love to the brethren; whilst all the time our heart may be completely destitute of that true love to the brethren, the fruit and effect of the Spirit's work upon the soul.

5. So with respect to the gift of prayer. It may seem to ourselves, and those who hear us, so simple, so fervent, so earnest, so humbly expressed, that surely it must be a spiritual prayer. And yet, we may often mistake a mere natural gift for that special grace of God whereby we are enabled to pour out our heart before him.

6. So we may be able by what we have felt under the convictions of natural conscience to live a life of separation from the world, to overcome sin when not very strong, to walk in the commandments and ordinances of God blameless; and yet be destitute of the vital power of the Spirit's teachings and operations, without which all these things are but as the convulsive twitchings of a dead body under the action of an electric battery. Like Herod, a man may do many things, and yet be absolutely devoid of the vital power of godliness brought into the heart by the Spirit of God.

'Well,' some may say, 'if this be the case, how may I know that I am not deceived altogether?' 'If a man may go so near, and yet not be a real character, what evidence have I,' says some poor tempted child of God, 'that I am not deceived?' Now what is said of these characters? They deny the power. Have you done that?

But what is it to "deny the power?" The power may be denied in various ways.

1. It is denied by some publicly and openly. There are some preachers professing the doctrines of truth, who cut down all experience, and say, it is nothing but frames and feelings.' This is to deny the power of godliness. If we have no frames, if we have no feelings, I am very sure the Spirit of God has not made our bodies his temple. If we have never had frames of sweet meditation, a frame of living faith, a frame of divine love, a frame of spiritual-mindedness, a frame of heavenly affections, I am very sure the Spirit of God has never blessed our soul. Again, if I am without feelings—"a feeling of sorrow for sin, a feeling of faith towards Jesus, a feeling of love towards his name, a feeling of love towards the brethren; if we are without these gracious feelings, we are dead as stones as to any possession of the life of God. So that, to cut down experience, and say, 'it is nothing but a parcel of frames and feelings,' is to deny the "power of godliness."

You will observe these men do not deny godliness; they dare not do that; but they deny the power of it in the heart of a saint, under the operation of the Spirit. Every jeer and sneer, every taunting speech thrown out against frames and feelings just manifests what a man's heart is; it is opening a door through which you can look indeed into the secrets of his bosom, and there see the serpent coiled up and hissing enmity against God's truth and against his living people.

2. Others deny it by their life and conversation. If a man walk in the lusts of the flesh; if he wallow in uncleanness or drunkenness; if he be altogether given up to the power of pride and covetousness, he denies the power of godliness by his actions as much as the preceding deny it by their words.

Both these characters deny the power of godliness out-wardly—"the one in word, the other in deed.

3. Others, having more regard to conscience, cannot go that length of outward enmity; yet they too deny it inwardly. For instance, are there not those who secretly think there is no absolute need for the soul to be emptied and stripped, and to have a revelation of Christ; and that they can be saved without such an experience of the bitter and the sweet, the sorrows and the joys that the Lord's people speak of? And are not these secret thoughts much strengthened and fostered by those ministers who profess to preach Christ as distinct from, and far superior to experience? What more common than such language as this from the pulpit: 'I cannot bear to hear people talk of their castings down and liftings up; they dwell and pore so much upon self; why do they not go out of self, and look to a precious Jesus?'

I want to know if this is not inwardly denying the power? They dare not say there is no such thing; but they speak of looking out of self to Christ, as if there were no inward experience of Christ, no visitations of his presence and love; and as if all religion consisted in a dry, speculative knowledge, without one inward grain of life and feeling. Their talk of looking to Christ is very plausible and subtle; but its real aim and drift is to deny the power of vital godliness in the heart of a saint.

4. But there are others who deny it virtually and actually by the non-possession of it. For instance, there are many who say they approve of, and that there is nothing like experimental preaching; they will crowd and cram a chapel to hear the experience of God's people traced out; and yet all the while they virtually and actually deny the power of it by the non-possession of it in their hearts. They have imbibed such a knowledge of the plan of experience from constantly hearing it preached, and they are so certain that it is the truth, that they will hear nothing else, and yet the vital power has never reached their conscience.

Now, what testimony have we who desire to fear God's name that we have anything more than a "form of godliness?" We have a form; that is very clear. But have we any living testimony in our conscience that we have something more than the form? Have we ever felt the power? We have no testimony that we are possessors of godliness unless we have felt its power.

But there are children of God (there may be some here present this morning) who are now, and have been for weeks, or even months, without the feeling power; and they are perhaps writing bitter things against themselves because they are not under those lively feelings that they once enjoyed. But since you have once felt it, have you ever denied the power, or with all your darkness and deadness, do you deny it now? Is not this rather the feeling of your soul? "O that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me; when his candle shined upon my head, and when by his light I walked through darkness" (Job xxix. 2, 3). Is not this rather the language of your heart, 'O that the Lord would bless me indeed! would revive his work upon my heart, and give me life and power, to enable me to believe in his name! O that he would visit my soul with some discovery of his love, and bring me out of that gloomy and dark state in which I am so sadly sunk!'

These are the feelings of a living soul. But those who have but the "form of godliness," deny all these exercises. They want no revivings; they are sighing after no manifestations; they never plead with the Lord to look down upon them and bless them; they are satisfied with an outside religion; they are contented with the mere form. If they can deceive themselves and one another, it is enough. But the living soul, who has the fear of God alive in his bosom, is not so satisfied; he wants living manifestations of God's presence, sweet communications of God's mercy, and the blessed overshadowings of the Spirit upon his heart. If he has not them, he feels he has nothing.

Thus, while this text cuts to a thousand pieces those who have but the form, it does not wound the poor mourning child of God who is sighing and crying after the power. Every sigh, cry, and groan that he has on account of his dark, dead, gloomy state are so many living evidences of that power. Whence arise your sighs? What makes you mourn upon your bed? Whence spring those breathings in your soul as you sit by your fire-side after the Lord's presence—"that he would speak to your soul, and manifest himself to you? Why, they spring from this conviction deeply wrought in your heart, that nothing but the power of God can reach your soul. All short of that is stamped upon your conscience as nothing.

Why do the elders interview intending communicants?

Elders must interview intending communicants if they are to discharge their responsibilities faithfully. The individual has their responsibility "Let a man examine himself". The Lord's Supper is not an individual activity but a communion, however, with the communicant membership of a particular congregation amongst others. The Lord's Supper is a seal of the covenant of grace and a seal of church membership and of church privileges. It is a pledge of the fullest communion in God’s visible covenant society upon earth. The elders of that congregation have a duty both to Christ as head of the Church and to the souls of those over which they have oversight. 2 Tim. 4:2 "Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all long-suffering and doctrine. Titus 2:15 'These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee. 1 Cor. 5:12 'For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within? Heb. 13:17 'Obey them that nave the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account; that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you'.

Elders have been set in the Church together with minister for the purpose of the edification of the body and to bring all to a maturity of faith (Eph 4:11-13). Ministers are elders (Titus 1:7, 1 Cor 4:1-2) are called 'the steward of God', particularly stewards of the mysteries of God, who are required to be found faithful.

The elders are to watch over the Church "Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which He hath purchased with His own blood." There is a duty to be strictly attentive, active and cautious in this responsibility [Acts 20:17, 28-31]. The elders must only admit those who publicly profess faith in Christ and who live in conformity to that profession (Titus 1:16, Matthew 7:21). They are like the porters under the Old Testament, (2 Chron. 23:19) 'And he set the porters at the gates of the house of the Lord, that none which was unclean in any thing should enter in'.

Christ has given to these officers the keys of the kingdom (Matt. 16:19; 18:17-18; Jn. 20:21-23; 2 Cor. 2:6-8). "Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth, shall be loosed in heaven." [Matt. 18.18], note that this is addressed in the plural (ye, you). The Westminster Confession asserts that elders exercise the keys of the kingdom: “To these officers the keys of the kingdom of heaven are committed, by virtue whereof they have power respectively to retain and remit sins, to shut that kingdom against the impenitent, both by the word and censures; and to open it unto penitent sinners, by the ministry of the gospel, and by absolution from censures, as occasion shall require".

I Cor 5:1-8 shows that the Lord's Supper is the New Testament Passover and that the Church is to purged of the 'leaven' of hypocrisy in order to maintain the true witness and profession of the Church. As they sit at the Lord's table they are to "keep the feast", the feast in the New Testament sense, purely and in sincerity "not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth". Paul condemned them in verse 2 for keeping the man in its fellowship and allowing him to come to the communion table. [1 Cor. 5:2].

With a view to celebrating the Lord’s Supper properly, the Kirk Session at Corinth was to constitute itself into a court of Christ's Church, in the name and by the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, and "purge out the old leaven", so that they might partake of this holy sacrament in an acceptable manner. "Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:" [1 Corinthians 5:6-7]. Other relevant portions are:
2 Cor. 10. 8. "Our authority which the Lord hath given us for edification".
1 Thess 5. 21. "Prove all things: Hold fast that which is good."

If the elders have received the keys from Christ they must be very careful to open the door of admission only to those whom Christ would have them admit. They are to look for an accredited profession of faith. There are three dimensions to Christian profession: doctrine, duty and experience. These dimensions are also necessary to communion with Christ JN 14:21 "He that hath my commandments [doctrine], and keepeth them [duty], he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him [experience]." These are those "that join themselves to the LORD, to serve him, and to love the name of the LORD" IS56:6. This faith, love and obedience needs to be tested in an objective manner however, if a court of the church is to admit individuals to the privilege of this sacrament. They cannot, however, know the secret state of anyone's soul and they can only assess the evidence of the outward profession and consistent conduct of the person applying to be received as a communicant (Acts 19:18).

Why do sessions interview candidates and not just issue a verbal warning from the pulpit?
[1] Reliance on the word of warning from the pulpit alone fails because it introduces a more stringent standard for admission to baptism than the Lord's Supper. Before a person is allowed to present himself, or his children, for baptism, he must satisfy the Session as to his profession and life. If there is only a verbal warning in the case of the Lord's Supper, however, the candidate is only asked to examine himself before he is allowed to come to the Lord’s Table - this is inconsistent.
[2] If we rely upon a word of warning from the pulpit alone, we are dangerously assuming sufficient competence to judge spiritual matters on the part of those who may be complete strangers. Sessions must assume the opposite, unless-and until-they have obtained adequate information. Many people who say that they are Christians are profoundly ignorant of what that really means.
[3] A mere verbal warning does not deal with the problem of those who are under discipline from other churches if it is left up to the individual to judge his own case. It does not do justice to the sinful propensities of men, or to the seriousness of church censures.
[4] There is such a thing as corporate responsibility. Many people belong to Churches that will not submit to the Word of God but rather reject it. There are also Churches that do not administer the sacraments as appointed by Christ in His Word, but add to and take from them. They do not emphasise the need for holy living according to the Word of God. These individuals think that this has nothing to do with their own personal faith. This needs to be vitally addressed. Only examination by elders will achieve this.
[5] People need their errors pointed out - it is no kindness to ignore them.
[6] In the best days of the Church admission to the table was viewed as proper only when the elders had sufficient knowledge of the communicants to judge them to be worthy receivers. If persons are admitted of whom the Session know nothing it cannot be reconciled with the clearly stated requirement of the Westminster Confession which says:
...ignorant and ungodly persons, as they are unfit to enjoy communion with [Christ], so are they unworthy of the Lord’s table; and cannot, without great sin against Christ, while they remain such, partake of these holy mysteries, or be admitted thereunto. [Note that people must be admitted they cannot admit themselves]
Larger Catechism Answer [WLC 173] 'May any who profess the faith, and desire to come to the Lord's supper, be kept from it?'
'Such as are found to be ignorant or scandalous, notwithstanding their profession of the faith, and desire to come to the Lord's Supper, may and ought to be kept from that sacrament, by the power which Christ has left in his church, until they receive instruction, and manifest their reformation'.
[7] Examination by the elders means that people are brought to face the seriousness of what it means to partake of the Lord’s table.
[8] The table was fenced in this way in the Early Church:
Justin [c.150 AD]:
And this food is called among us [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. [Apology I LXVI]
The requirements of the church of 150 AD were 1] believe the teachings of the church [2] baptism and [3] godly life. The Didache Didache [c.120AD?] also says "But let not any one who hath a quarrel with his companion join with you, until they be reconciled, that your sacrifice may not be polluted". [14:2]
[9] It was also fenced from the Reformation onwards. Knox's Book of Common Order, adopted in Scotland in 1564: "The administration of the Table ought never to be without examination pass before, especially of those whose knowledge is suspect. We think that none are apt to be admitted to that Mystery, who cannot formally say the Lord's Prayer, The Articles of the Belief, and declare the sum of the Law." Knox goes on to say: "And therefore of necessity we judge it, that every year at least, public examination be had by the Ministers and Elders of the knowledge of every person within the church; to wit, that every master and mistress of household come to maturity, before the Ministers and Elders, to give confession of their faith, and to answer such chief points of Religion as the Ministers shall demand"
[10] As in all things in the Church, cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord negligently. The elders must not follow convenience but the injunction: "Let all things be done decently and in order" [1 Cor. 14:40].

the glories of Christianity

Sabbath day, Jan. 20. At night. The last week I was sunk so low, that I fear it will be a long time before I am recovered. I fell exceedingly low in the weekly account. I find my heart so deceitful, that I am almost discouraged from making any more resolutions.—Wherein have I been negligent in the week past; and how could I have done better, to help the dreadful low estate in which I am sunk?

Monday, Jan. 21 Before sunrise, answered the preceding questions thus: I ought to have spent my time in bewailing my sins, and in singing psalms—especially psalms or hymns of penitence; these duties being most suited to the frame I was in. I do not spend time enough in endeavouring to affect myself with the glories of Christianity.—Fell short in the monthly account. It seems to me, that I am fallen from my former sense of the pleasantness of religion.

Tuesday, Feb. 5. At night. I have thought that this being so exceedingly careful, and so particularly anxious, to force myself to think of religion at all times, has exceedingly distracted my mind, and made me altogether unfit for that and every thing else. I have thought that this caused the dreadful low con-dition I was in on the 15th of January. I think that I stretched myself further than I could bear, and so broke.—But now it seems to me, though I know not why, that I do not do enough to prepare for another world. I do not seem to press forward, to fight and wrestle, as the apostles used to speak. I do not seem so greatly and constantly to mortify and deny myself, as the mortification of which they speak represents. Therefore, wherein ought I to do more in this way?—I answer: I am again grown too careless about eating, drinking, and sleeping—not careful enough about evil-speaking.

Saturday, Feb. 16. I do certainly know that I love holiness, such as the gospel prescribes.—At night. For the time past of my life, I have been negli-gent, in that I have not sufficiently kept up that part of divine worship, singing the praise of God in secret and with company.—I have been negligent this month past, in these three things: I have not been watchful enough over my appetites, in eating and drinking; in rising too late in the morning; and in not applying myself with sufficient application to the duty of secret prayer.

"I do not spend enough time endeavouring to affect myself with the glories of Christianity." 

- Jonathan Edwards (Diary entry for January 21, 1723, age 20) 

Edwards took steps to make sure that this would not be his epitaph, do you and I?

'I have written to him the great things of my law, but they were counted as a strange thing'. Hosea 8:12

The Soul of Life

This was published in the September issue of the FP Magazine.

The Soul of Life: The Piety of John Calvin, edited and introduced by Joel R Beeke, published by Reformation Heritage Books in their Profiles in Reformed Spirituality series, paperback, 220 pages, £6.95 from the F P Bookroom.

In John Calvin’s five-hundredth anniversary year, there is no shortage of books being published about his life and work. This book is undoubtedly among the most edifying of them. It provides a useful outline of Calvin’s life and then the aspects of the biblical piety that he emphasised. Calvin defined piety as “that reverence joined with love of God which the knowledge of His benefits induces”. Dr Beeke explains the theological dimensions of Calvin’s piety: (1) Its root: mystical union, (2) Its double bond: the Spirit and faith, and (3) Its double cleansing: justification and sanctification. He then refers to the practical exercise of this piety in the means of grace, including the Word, sacraments, prayer and psalm-singing. Other practical dimensions include repentance, cross-bearing, obedience and heavenly-mindedness.

The bulk of the book consists of 45 short selections from Calvin’s writings which are arranged under the headings mentioned above. Calvin writes warmly, clearly and attractively and this volume provides a very helpful introduction to his works. These selections are brief enough to read one per day and one might well choose to follow the example of the Puritan John Cotton who said, “I love to sweeten my mouth with a piece of Calvin before I go to sleep”. It is a well-illustrated pocket-size book, in what is becoming an interesting and helpful series.

The Christian needs every such help in his “faint, yet pursuing” endeavours after godliness. “We ought to apply ourselves altogether to piety alone, because when we have once attained it, God asks nothing more from us.” “It is this, indeed, that through the whole course of life we seek and follow. But we shall attain it only when we have cast off the weakness of the body and are received into full fellowship with Him.”

sin seeps in

A poem by Francis Quarles compares various kinds of sin to various types of wet weather by which we become soaked. On several Sins.

Gross Sin. Is like a Show'r, which ere we can get in Into our Conscience, wets us to the skin: Sin of Infirmity. Is like the falling of an April Shower; 'Tis often Rain, and Sun-shine, in an hour. Sin of Custom. Is a long Shower, beginning with the Light Oft-times continuing till the Dead of Night. Sin of Ignorance. It is a hideous Mist, that wets amain, Though it appear not in the form of Rain. Crying Sin. It is a sudden Shower, that tears in sunder The Cope of Heav'n, & alway comes with Thunder. Sin of Delight. Is like a fethered Shower of Snow, not felt, But soaks to th' very skin, when ere it melt: Sin of Presumption. Does like a Shower of Hail, both wet and wound With sudden Death: or strikes us to the Ground. The Sin of Sins. It is a sulph'rous Shower, such as fell On Sodom, strikes, and strikes to th' Pit of Hell.

The sermon taster's solemn warning

The sermon taster comes in various forms. Some will gad about from
church to church looking for what suits them for the moment. Others
will only come to hear those that they consider worth hearing. Others
also rate the preachers against each other as though they were being
entertained. Apparently, it was popular among wealthy Londoners in
Victorian times to race across the city from one church to another,
sampling the preaching of the more popular ministers. Each Monday in
Parliament, meetings were held to discuss which preacher delivered the
best sermon.

Other sermon tasters like to hear their pet subject or theme and will
not be satisfied without this. There was a man in Scotland whose pet
theme was the second coming. He visited several Edinburgh churches at
one time. When he returned to his hometown, he was asked, "How did you
like the Edinburgh preachers?" "They all fly on one wing," he
answered. "They all preach the first coming of Christ, but don't
preach His second coming."

body language Other sermon tasters have a more damaging effect. They
are not getting on with a sermon and they don't mind if everyone
behind them knows that. The body language tells the congregation
behind, "Switch off, don't listen". The head hangs down, the shoulders
droop, sometimes the head is shaken and the face wears a displeased or
pained expression. Perhaps they start leafing through their bible as
though to say - "I'm not pleased with this and so I'm not listening".
It seems as if they would rather be elsewhere. What a discouragement
to those behind. They can't help but notice. If they weren't
struggling with the sermon, they will feel now that they should be.
Some of them need to hear the gospel and not be put off from hearing
it yet Satan uses this distraction before them to snatch away the seed
of the Word. What of their spouse beside them? Or if they have
children that share their pew? How would they take this example? Will
the word profit them?

Some sermon-tasters are keen to let everyone know how they did not get
on with the sermon afterwards. They will pick over the expressions,
gestures and illustrations of the sermon in order to find fault. What
is of value and benefit is left aside so that the 'defects' may be
exposed. Their pride will not allow them to profit and will also deny
the privilege to as many as possible. This is the most dangerous in
its effect upon others, particularly those of the immediate family.
They may be put off the gospel and the church permanently. The
question is whether or not there is error and if error of how serious
a nature can it be corrected in the most gracious way without deleting
all effect from the sermon, disparaging the person, their office or
the way it was presented.

The following is from William James Hoge's "Blind Bartimaeus and His
Great Physician"

"your criticisms may turn it into very foolishness, and a
stumbling-block, and the savor of death to some beloved one for whose
salvation you have been striving. I cannot better illustrate this
caution than by a true narrative from "The Central Presbyterian." " A
pious lady once left a church in this city, [Richmond,] in company
with her husband, who was not a professor of religion. She was a woman
of unusual vivacity, with a keen perception of the ludicrous, and
often playfully sarcastic. As they walked along toward home, she began
to make some amusing and spicy comments on the sermon, which a
stranger, a man of very ordinary talents and awkward manner, had
preached, that morning, in the absence of the pastor. After running on
in this vein of sportive criticism for
some time, surprised at the profound silence of her husband, she
turned and looked up in
his face. He was in tears. That sermon had sent an arrow of conviction
to his heart!
What must have been the anguish of the conscience-stricken wife, thus
arrested in the
act of ridiculing a discourse which had been the means of awakening
the anxiety of her
unconverted husband!".

Watch then, your words and spirit. Take care what you say, and before
whom you say
it. Are you about to speak in love, in humility, in the temper of
Christ? Will any one be the better for what you say? Will your
criticisms deepen your child's or your friend's reverence for Christ's
Ambassadors, and God's chosen instrument for saving souls?

When you have said what you wish, will you become thereby
fellow-helpers to the truth?'
If not, oh, leave it all unsaid, lest in criticising the flaws of the
earthen vessel, you be found
to have despised the heavenly treasure; lest you turn aside the sword
of the Spirit, and
with great sin to yourself, bring destruction on some most precious soul".

Did the sermon-taster pray for a blessing from the sermon? Do they
pray regularly for the minister and before every sermon for every
preacher? Do they pray for the preacher while he is preaching, that he
may be helped, especially when he may be struggling? In the Welsh
revival of 1859 two preachers were talking together. One said, "Have
you noticed how all the ministers are preaching a great deal better
than they used to?" "Yes," his friend replied, "but perhaps people are
listening a good deal better than they used to." "That may be true,"
said the first man, "but I think the sermons ought to be much better
these days." "Why is that?" said his friend. "Because all the
congregations seem to be praying for their ministers now."

Is the sermon-taster depending too much upon the public means for
their spiritual growth and feeding and not being diligent in the
private means and the secret place? If they profit more in the one,
they may find that they are in a different spirit to profit from the
other.

The sermon-taster is responsible for themselves and not whether there
is or is not something deficient in the preacher whether in his life,
experience or style of preaching. Perhaps familiarity has bred
contempt and the sermon-taster has become too familiar with the
pet-themes, the mannerisms and turns of phrase of the preacher. They
may need to pray to be able to overcome this.

Has the sermon-taster examined their life and heart? Is there
something there that means that they are not profiting at all from
what they hear? Pride will certainly hinder it. There can be a carnal
response to what we hear. We are not getting the calibre of sermon
that we deserve, we think. We are not getting what we should. We have
particular spiritual needs that we want addressed and they are not
being addressed. But this does not mean that none of our spiritual
needs are being addressed. We forget that this, as with all other
things, is in the sovereign providence of God. This is to murmur
against that providence, wishing for one set of circumstances over
another. Surely if the man is orthodox, there is something that we may
glean from the sermon and meditate upon. Where this is not addressed,
a resentment can sometimes build up against the man and forms a great
barrier against profiting at all from any sermon. The resentment and
distaste eventually takes the sermon-taster to another preacher and
another congregation, but they have not submitted to God's providence
and learned from it, so it may be that the same thing will occur
again. They may need to consider whether they have what Scriptures
terms "itching ears".

O, Eternity

How long shall God and his Saints reigne? How long shall the damned
burn in Hell? For ever. How long is that? Imagine an hundred thousand
yeares. Alas! That is nothing in respect of Eternitie. Imagine ten
hundred thousand yeares, yea so many ages? Yet that is nothing:
Eternitie is still as long as it was. Imagine a thousand millions of
yeares. And yet that is nothing. Eternitie is not a whit shortened.
Imagine yet more, 1000000000000000000000000000000, a thousand,
thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand
Millions of yeares. Imagine, I say, the damned should burn in Hell so
many yeares, and yet thou hast not found the very beginning of
Eternitie. Imagine once more so many millions of millions of yeares as
there are drops in the sea, and yet thou art not come to the beginning
of Eternitie.

Let the consideration of the immortality of that precious soul, that
lies in thy bosom, curb thy corruptions at the very first sight of
sin, and make thee step back as though you wer ready to tread upon a
serpent. Not all the men upon earth, or devils in hell, can possibly
kill the soul of any man. It must needs live as long as God himself,
and run parallel with the longest line of eternity. Only sin wounds
mortally that immortal spirit, and brings it into that cursed case,
that it had infinitely better never have been, shall be for ever. For
by this means, going on impenitently to that last tribunal, it is ever
in the pangs of death, and never dead; not able to die, nor endure the
pain; pain exceeding not only all patience, but all resistance: there
being no strength to sustain, nor ability to bear, that which, whilst
God is GOD, for ever must be borne. What a prodigious cruelty is it
then for a man, by listening to the Syren songs of this false world,
or the devil's desperate counsel, to imbrue his hands in the blood of
his own everlasting soul, and to make it die eternally? For some
fleeting vanity, to bring upon it in the other world, torments without
end, and beyond all compass of conception? And his madness is the
more, because, (besides its immortality,) his soul is incomparably
more worth than the whole world.

Robert Bolton

NIV revision

In their ultimate consumer marketing campaign the publishers and
translators of the New International Version have decided to do their
best to upstage the Authorised (King James) Version by publishing a
new revision in 2011 see website www.nivbible2011.com. "It is fitting
that the new edition of the NIV Bible will be coming out in 2011, the
year which marks the 400th anniversary of the King James Version,"
said Douglas Moo. "Our goal in the NIV Bible translation mirrors that
of the 17th Century translators themselves: to produce a Bible that
removes all unnecessary obstacles to comprehension by drawing on the
best available scholarship". This is of course marketing speak; the
principles adopted by the AV translators and those of the NIV could
hardly be greater. Gerald Hammond pointed out that "while the
Renaissance Bible translator saw half of his task as reshaping English
so that it could adapt itself to Hebraic idiom, the modern translator
wants to make no demands on the language he translates into".

The attempt to chase the mirage of contemporary idiom and the need for
publishers to profit from new products has meant the frequent revision
of translations such as the NIV. Keith Danby, Global President and CEO
of Biblica said: "we are recommitting ourselves today to the original
NIV charter, complete with its charge to monitor and reflect
developments in English usage and Biblical scholarship by periodically
updating the NIV Bible text. As time passes and English changes, the
NIV we have at present is becoming increasingly dated. If we want a
Bible that English speakers around the world can understand, we have
to listen to, and respect, the vocabulary they are using today."

Moo gives an example of the changes that are required. "In the 1984
NIV when Paul says (in 2 Corinthians 11:25) 'I was stoned,' we changed
it to 'pelted with stones' to avoid the laughter in the junior high
row of the church." The assumption is that (as Gerald Hammond puts
it), "a modern Bible should aim not to tax its readers' linguistic or
interpretative abilities one bit. If this aim is to be achieved then
it seems likely that a new Bible will have to be produced for every
generation - each one probably moving us further away from the
original text, now that the initial break has been made". On cue the
NIV is now being revised 25 years after the 1984 edition.

One of the NIV's best kept secrets is that it is actually full of
archaic and difficult vocabulary as the list at the following site
shows http://www.biblebelievers.com/Vance2.html. A comparison of
these words in context will show that the AV has actually in many
cases used a less difficult word such as Eph 6:4 "provoke" rather than
"exasperate" (NIV). See also the list at the bottom of this post.

The new edition will replace both the 1984 NIV and the 2005
gender-neutral TNIV. There is a bit of obfuscation in the official
position as to whether the new edition will be gender neutral or not
and if so to what extent. For the 2011 edition, more than a dozen
scholars will "review every single gender-related decision we have
made and make sure we are putting God's unchanging word into English
people are actually using," says Douglas Moo, chairman of the
Committee on Bible Translation. "I can't predict what will happen with
gender usage. My guess would be we made a lot of the right decisions
for the T-NIV but every one of those is open for consideration. We may
even be returning to what we had in the 1984 NIV". Noone really
believes that this will be the case, however, they are simply trying
to keep their market appeal to those who might be swayed towards
either the NRSV or NLT on the one hand and the ESV, NASB on the other.

Moo notes that marketing the bible for profit isn't always easy, you
have to launch a revision at the right time: "We recognize at the same
time that people often will buy a Bible, they will use it as their
Bible, they'll memorize it, churches will buy Bibles to put in their
pews, and I think we have to balance very carefully the need to keep
the Bible up to date in terms of where English is with the reality
that people don't want to have to be buying new Bibles every two or
three years".

Fresh from last year's 30th anniversary marketing campaign Zondervan
are keen to maintain their market dominance as their President
enthuses. "We are tremendously excited about this initiative and we
wholeheartedly support our colleagues from Biblica and the CBT as they
work again with the same recipe that made the NIV the most popular
Bible translation in the world," said Zondervan President Moe Girkins.
"Since its first publication in 1978, more than 300 million copies of
the NIV have found their way into the hands and heart of people
worldwide...We are going to take great care to prepare our customers
for this new edition."

Ironically the NIV marketers are using the anniversary of a bible
version which has stood the test of 400 years to launch a revision of
a bible version that has hardly lasted 25. Never mind its popularity
or whether it needs updating - to use Richard Bacon's article title -
the NIV is still simply a bad translation.

NIV Difficult vocabulary list
abashed, abominable, abutted, acclaim, adder, adhere, admonishing,
advocate, alcove, algum, allocate, allots, ally, aloes, appease,
ardent, armlets, arrayed, astir, atonement, awl, banishment,
battlements, behemoth, belial, bereaves, betrothed, bier, blighted,
booty, brayed, breaching, breakers, buffeted, burnished, calamus,
capital (not a city), carnelian, carrion, centurions, chasm, chronic,
chrysolite, cistern, citadel, citron, clefts, cohorts, colonnades,
complacency, coney, concession, congealed, conjure, contrite,
convocations, crest, cors, curds, dandled, dappled, debauchery,
decimated, deluged, denarii, depose, derides, despoil,
dire,dispossess, disrepute, dissipation, distill, dissuade,
divination, dragnet, dropsy, duplicity, earthenware, ebony,
emasculate, emission, encroach, enmity, enthralled, entreaty, ephod,
epicurean, ewe, excrement, exodus, factions, felled, festal, fettered,
figurehead, filigree, flagstaff, fomenting, forded, fowler, gadfly,
galled, gird, gauntness, gecko, gloating, goiim, harrowing, haunt,
hearld, henna, homers, hoopoe, ignoble, impaled, implore, incur,
indignant, insatiable, insolence, intact, invoked, jambs, joists,
jowls, lairs, lamentation, leviathan, libations, loins, magi,
manifold, maritime, mattocks, maxims, mina, misdemeanor,
mother-of-pearl, mustering, myrtles, naive, naught, Negev, Nephilim,
nettles, nocturnal, nomad, notorious, Nubians, oblivion, obsolete,
odious, offal, omer, oracles, overweening, parapet, parchments,
pavilion, peals (noun, not the verb), perjurers, perpetuate,
pestilence, pinions, phylacteries, plumage, pomp, porphyry, portent,
potsherd, proconsul, propriety, poultice, Praetorium, pretext,
profligate, promiscuity, provincial, providence, qualm, quarries,
quivers (noun, not verb), ramparts, ransacked, ratified, ravish,
rabble, rawboned, relish (not for hotdogs), recoils, recount, refrain,
relent, rend, reposes, reprimanded, reputed, retinue, retorted,
retribution, rifts, roebucks, rue, sachet, satraps, sated,
shipwrights, siegeworks, sinews, sistrums, sledges, smelted, somber,
soothsayer, sovereignty, spelt, stadia, stench, stipulation, sullen,
tamarisk, tanner, temperate, tether, tetrarch, terebinth, thresher,
throes, thronged, tiaras, tinder, tracts, transcends, tresses,
turbulent, tyrannical, unscathed, unrelenting, usury, vassal, vaunts,
vehemently, verdant, vexed, wadi, wanton, warranted, wield, winnowing
and wrenched.

Trading and Thriving in Godliness

Trading and Thriving in Godliness: The Piety of George Swinnock,
edited by J Stephen Yuille, published by Reformation Heritage Books,
in their Profiles in Reformed Spirituality series, paperback, 235
pages, £6.95 from the F P Bookroom.

George Swinnock is not a well-known Puritan; indeed little is known
about his life, but his writings speak for themselves in distilling
the essence of the Puritan concern for practical godliness. In a brief
introduction, Yuille notes Swinnock's constant emphasis that the fear
of God is central to the right understanding of godliness. Fifty
judicious selections from Swinnock's writings have been arranged under
seven sections: the foundation of godliness (the character of God),
the door to godliness (regeneration), the value of godliness, the
pursuit of godliness, the nature of godliness, the means to godliness
and the motives to godliness.

In commending the necessity, beauty and primacy of godliness, Swinnock
maintains that it is the business of life. It is the Christian's trade
and they must be as diligent in it as any tradesman. "Every moment
must be devoted to God; and as all seasons, so all actions must be
sacred". He shows how "godliness is profitable unto all things" (1 Tim
4:8), that is, in all conditions, relations, duties and in both
worlds. He also shows what it means to "exercise thyself unto
godliness" (1 Tim 4:7). His application of these things to the home,
the workplace, the conditions of prosperity and adversity are very
appropriate and carry a faithful rebuke.

This Puritan has a facility for vivid illustration and is easily read.
The book makes an excellent introduction to the Puritans, and we would
commend it particularly to the young as an attractive exposition of
the truth that "godliness with contentment is great gain" (1 Tim 6:6).
"This indeed is the true life, all other but the shadow of living".

published at
http://www.fpchurch.org.uk/Magazines/fpm/2009/FPM%20-%20August%202009.pdf

considering our praise

'The praises of the Lord, being well considered, will yield continually new matter, and fresh delight in the work'

'There is no exercise whereunto we have more need to be stirred up, than to praise; such is our dulness, and such is the excellency and necessity of the work' David Dickson.

Man's chief end is to glorify God. To praise God is to declare His glory; this is the highest activity on earth of which we are capable. The book of Psalms concludes with these words, 'Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord' (Ps. 150:6). The godly Scottish divine John Willison writes: 'God made man the tongue of the creation, to trumpet forth aloud what the rest of the creation do but silently whisper'.

Praise is also the continual exercise of those in heaven where they behold his glory immediately. John Willison writes that praise 'is the eternal work of heaven, the music of saints and angels there, (Rev. 5:9-11; 15:3). And what are church-assemblies here, but the place of our apprenticeship and preparation for heaven? I know nothing in the world that more resembles heaven, than a company of God's people harmoniously singing his praises "with grace in their hearts, making melody to the Lord" for then the soul rejoiceth in divine goodness, meditates on divine promise, extols divine excellencies, and mounts up to God in acts of faith and love. Let us then make conscience of this heavenly duty in the public assemblies, and perform it with heart and tongue; for were it not a proper exercise, God would not honour it to be the only work of heaven, to the exclusion of prayer, repentance, reading, hearing, communicating, etc.'

We can sum these things up in the words of the Puritan Thomas Ford (member of the Westminster Assembly). 'To praise God, and bless his name, is the highest and most excellent service we can do on earth; it comes nearest to the exercise of the saints in heaven, who are always praising God in the admiration of his infinite and incomprehensible glory'. Elsewhere he says, 'I believe that godly men (who are such indeed) have scarcely seen more of God in any exercise than in this. To my thinking, there is not a more lively resemblance of heaven upon earth than a
company of godly Christians singing a psalm together'.

Praise is one of the parts of religious worship, it consists of singing psalms to God with grace in the heart. God is the focus of all our praise: 'whoso offereth praise glorifieth me' (Ps. 50:23; Ps. 109:1). We must not only 'praise him for his mighty acts', done for us but 'praise him according to his excellent greatness', for what He is in Himself, His glory and perfections. God, to whom all praise alone is due commands that we praise Him, 'Praise ye the Lord' (Ps. 147:1). He commands this duty frequently and even four times within one verse. 'God is gone up with a shout; sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises unto our King, sing praises' (Ps. 47:6).

God also prescribes the type of praise that is worthy of His name and how we must engage in it. We are limited to the commandments of the Word of God in the exercise of praise. The Lord Jesus Christ regards that as vain or empty worship which is instructed by the commandments of men, 'in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men' (Matt. 15:9). He has instructed His Church only to teach to observe all things that He has commanded (Matt. 28:20). The Apostle Paul defines 'will worship' as that which is 'after the commandments and doctrines of men' (Col 2:22-23). In the praise of God, we are confined to singing the psalms of the Old Testament which only are commanded in Scripture without the accompaniment of musical instruments (since these are not commanded in the New Testament).

the Lord's Supper in Scottish Presbyterianism

This book review is posted at www.middletome.com
The Lord's Supper
Malcolm Maclean

272pp paperback
Isbn 13: 9781845504281 £10.99, 2009 Christian Focus Publications Mentor

This book has definite value in its thorough treatment of the theology and practice of the Lord's Supper in Scottish Presbyterianism. This part of the book begins with a good treatment of the Reformed understanding of the Lord's Supper. There follows an account of the way that Communion seasons developed in the Lowlands from the time of the Reformation. The theology of the Lord's Supper in the Lowlands is outlined using the Scots Confession and Westminster Confession and a range of authors such as James Durham, Robert Bruce, Thomas Boston, John Willison and John Brown of Haddington. Several other less well known authors are introduced. This is a very helpful section which traces common emphases and notes practical instruction. The practice of the Lord's Supper in the Highlands is then taken up. There is undoubtedly a distinctiveness to Highland communion seasons but in reality the elements were all present in Lowland communion seasons also. Even the fellowship meeting is only a more formalised version of Lowland precedent. Rather than a chapter on the Highland theology of the Lord's Supper as one might expect, the chapter that follows is called Features of Highland Communion seasons. This is disappointing because there is sufficient material in John Kennedy of Dingwall's writing to follow this out. We believe that there was a distinctive theological contribution to the understanding of the sacraments in the
way that Kennedy explains the different nature, purpose and meaning of the two sacraments.


While certain features of the Highland practice are commended as positive, this section is more critical than the chapter on the Lowlands of various aspects. The substance of this is the lack of assurance found among Highland Christians. He focuses upon Kennedy's discussion of this in the Days of the Fathers in Rosshire and notes that Kennedy's doctrine of assurance is entirely the same as that of the Westminster Confession. Kennedy connected the issue of assurance to the fact that in the Lowlands the same requirements applied to those receiving either sacrament whilst there was a difference in the Highlands. We do not feel that this section is conclusive in dealing with this complex subject. Maclean says that Kennedy does not acknowledge that both views might be wrong but it is not quite clear what other views are possible in the context of the Westminster doctrine of the sacraments. Maclean then notes the decline in the communion season in the Highlands which is really the same as marking the decline in Highland presbyterianism. He seems to feel that the loss is not significant and that such seasons cannot be sustained due to changes in society. He then wishes to contextualise rather than preserve certain aspects of the Highland communion season.

We have focussed on the substance of the book in order to commend it. There is, however, some other material surrounding it. An introductory section gives a brief overview of the passages that deal with the Lord's Supper in the New Testament. The chapters which follow the historical study deal with miscellaneous practical and theological aspects of the Lord's Supper today such as pastoral and personal preparation, liturgy, the role of the Holy Spirit and the Lord's Supper and children (where a fuller rebuttal of paedocommunion would have been helpful). Some of these sections are rather brief to do the subject justice. The historical treatment accounts for 70% of the substance of the book and we wonder whether it would have been better to focus upon this alone which might have avoided a little unevenness. More space could then have been given to the historical study and appropriate observations.

Malcolm Maclean is very candid about the views and experience that he brings to the writing of this book. 'This book is an expression of my search for my spiritual roots'. He refers to his upbringing in Inverness Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. 'I can still recall the sense of reverence for God and the awareness of his presence that characterised the occasions when the Lord's Supper was held in the congregation that my parents attended when I was young'. He describes the fact that the way these occasions were conducted 'was in line with the traditional practices associated with Scottish Highland communion seasons'. He was converted, however, through the witness of the Brethren and became a member in their Assembly. This brought an entirely different practice of the Lord's Supper. Maclean feels that there is a tendency to shift the focus from Christ to the believer in our approach to the Supper. This of course must never happen. There is a danger, however, that those who perceive a distraction from Christ in thorough, genuine and scriptural self-examination may, in seeking to redress this, undermine true communion with Christ. As the Song of Solomon shows, the communion between Christ and His Church consists in and depends upon seeking the exercise of grace in the means of grace through Christ and His Spirit.

While these observations are necessary, the book is extremely valuable in the diligent historical review it presents, especially in bringing new sources and material into view. It is vital that we have the right understanding and approach to the Lord's Supper and, in highlighting the theology and practice of Scottish Presbyterianism, this book helps us toward that.

meditation and prayer

The Puritans wrote much on both meditation and prayer separately, but they always emphasised that both are mutually indispensible.

What is meditation?
Meditation is “a holy exercise of the mind whereby we bring the truths of God to remembrance, and do seriously ponder upon them and apply them to ourselves.” - Thomas Watson

How are meditation and prayer joined to each other?"There is a meditation that is holy and godly, and that is when we meditate upon things that are holy and heavenly; and of this nature was the meditation of Isaac, he went out into the field to meditate on the works of God, and of the blessings and mercies of God; to meditate upon the Heavenly Canaan, and upon his sins; and this appears, because the Hebrew word that is here used for meditation, that is here translated meditation, doth also signifie to pray; and therefore it is in your margent, And Isaac went out to pray at eventide. It was a Religious work that Isaac went out about; and you must know that Prayer and Meditation are very well joined together; Meditation is a preparation to Prayer, and Prayer is a fit close for Meditation; and Isaac went out to meditate, to pray and to meditate, and to meditate and pray." - Edmund Calamy

How are they mutually indispensible?
“Meditation is the best beginning of prayer, and prayer is the best conclusion of meditation,” - George Swinnock.

"For as Mr. Greenham saith well, Reading without Meditation, is unfruitful; Meditation without Reading, is hurtful; To meditate and to read without prayer upon both, is without blessing.

If you do read and not meditate, then you will want good affections. If you meditate, and not read or hear, you will want good Judgement, and be apt to fall into some ill Opinions.

If you do read, or hear, or meditate, and not pray, you will want the blessing of the Lord upon both: Read, or hear first; then meditate; and then pray upon both. I speak of settled meditation, and let one be proportioned unto another. There must be a proportion between the one and the other, in a settled meditation; and therefore if that you would meditate rightly, I say in all your meditations, begin with reading, go on with meditation, and end with prayer". - William Bridge

How does meditation relate to both prayer and reading?
“Meditation is a middle sort of duty between the word and prayer, and hath respect to
both. The word feedeth meditation , and meditation feedeth prayer; we must hear that we be not erroneous, and meditate that we be not barren. These duties must always go hand in hand; meditation must follow hearing and precede prayer.” - Thomas Manton

How do prayer and meditation differ?
"They are often confounded in name, but inseparably linked in nature going hand and hand together; and can no more be severed, than two twins, who live and die together; only in prayer we confer and commune more directly with God by petition and thanksgiving; in meditation we talk and confer more directly and properly with ourselves and our own souls". - John Ball

What happens if we neglect meditation?
"Take away Meditation, and the duties of religion lose their life and vigor; prayer
is cold, reading unprofitable; think daily with thy self what great honor it is to be the son of God, what unspeakable joy to possess assurance that our sins are pardoned, how unvaluable a prerogative to lay open thy cares into the bosom of the Lord; persuade thyself of his readiness to hear, mercies to forgive, and compassions to relieve them that ask in his Son’s name. These things will stir up intention fervency in prayer; with what sighs and groans will he confess and bewail his iniquity who with a single eye doth behold the filthiness of sin and look into his own estate? But lay aside Meditation, and all is turned into form, comes to be of little use. For the appetite will decay if it be not sharpened; desire will cool if it be not quickened." - John Ball

Can meditation and prayer help us against temptation?
"we cannot be ignorant of this, that the old subtle fowler lets his snares and nets so thick in our way, that we have no shift but to fall into them, and light upon them, except with wings of meditation and prayer we mount up on high above them, and fly over them" - John Ball

How does meditation become the subject of prayer?
“Pray over your meditations. Prayer sanctifies every thing; without prayer they are but unhallowed meditations; prayer fastens meditation upon the soul; prayer is a tying a knot at the end of meditation that it doth not slip; pray that God will keep those holy meditations in your mind for ever, that the savour of them may abide
upon your hearts.” - Thomas Watson

"Never pray but let Meditation track thy prayer: this passage was right,that passage was amiss". - William Fenner

What sort of petitions can we use to help meditation by prayer?
"The matter or form of our prayer must be this, or such like, Oh Lord, it hath pleased thee to give me a mind ready, and desirous to perform this holy duty (for which I humbly thank thy heavenly majesty) I beseech thee by thy Holy Spirit to assist me therein, that I may bring the same to a profit and comfortable issue. Thou hast charged me, Oh Lord, to seek thy face, that is, thy blessed and holy presence.
Let my soul answer and say with thy faithful servant, Lord, I will seek thy face; Oh cause the light of thy face to shine upon me, enlighten my understanding, strengthen my memory, and sanctify my will and affections; withhold my ranging and truant-like heart, from all trifling fantasties, deceitful dreams, vain hopes, carnal fears, and worldly cares, wherewith it is naturally and customarily entangled, keep it unto thyself, and unto thy laws, that it may wholly delight and solace itself in thee, and grant that this point that I now go about to think upon, may be so settled in my memory, and rooted in my heart, that I may reap the fruit thereof all my life long, to thy glory, and upon my own comfort, and salvation, through Jesus Christ". - John Ball

Did Samson commit suicide?

Unfortunately one comes across those who foolishly assert that Samson committed suicide. This is impossible since Hebrews 11:34 tells us that he did this action in faith "out of weakness were made strong". This cannot be a reference to any other than Samson since he is also mentioned by name. Did God answer a prayer of one who desired to commit suicide? He could not have done this without a superhuman action. Samson was a type of Christ, eminently in his death. His death slew his enemies. No mere man in his own strength without divine upholding could have endured what Christ endured. Samson bowed himself in his full strength and gave up the ghost - this is what Christ did also. Thomas Ridgeley answers this in the following

Christ the scope of Scripture

The Puritan Isaac Ambrose (1604-1664). said: "Let a man have what the
world can give, yet if he have not Christ, he is nothing worth. Christ
is the marrow and fatness, the fulness and sweetness of all our
endowments, separate Christ from them and they are bitter and do not
please us, empty and do not fill us." "Surely Christ is enough to
fill all our thoughts, desires, hopes, loves, joys or whatever is
within us or without us. Christ alone comprehends all the
circumference of all our happiness. Christ is the pearl hid in the
large field of God's word Christ is the scope of all the scripture:
all things and persons in the old world were types of him; all the
prophets foretold him, all God's love runs through him, all the gifts
and graces of the Spirit flow from him, the whole eye of God is upon
him, and all his designs both in heaven and earth meet in him; the
great design of God is this, That " he might gather together in one
all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on
earth, even in him," Eph. 1:10".

He has another more well-known quotation about Scripture in this
regard: "Keep still Jesus Christ in your eye, in the perusal of the
Scriptures, as the end, scope and substance thereof: what are the
whole Scriptures, but as it were the spiritual swaddling clothes of
the holy child Jesus? 1. Christ is the truth and substance of all the
types and shadows. 2. Christ is the substance and matter of the
Covenant of Grace, and all administrations thereof; under the Old
Testament Christ is veiled, under the New Covenant revealed. 3. Christ
is the centre and meeting place of all the promises; for in him the
promises of God are yea and Amen. 4. Christ is the thing signified,
sealed and exhibited in the Sacraments of the Old and New Testament.
5. Scripture genealogies use to lead us on to the true line of Christ.
6. Scripture chronologies are to discover to us the times and seasons
of Christ. 7. Scripture-laws are our schoolmasters to bring us to
Christ, the moral by correcting, the ceremonial by directing. 8.
Scripture-gospel is Christ's light, whereby we hear and follow him;
Christ's cords of love, whereby we are drawn into sweet union and
communion with him; yea it is the very power of God unto salvation
unto all them that believe in Christ Jesus; and therefore think of
Christ as the very substance, marrow, soul and scope of the whole
Scriptures."

John Owen had a similar view, reflecting on Luke 24:27, "It is
therefore manifest that Moses, and the Prophets, and all the
Scripture, do give testimony unto him and his glory. This is the line
of life and light which runs through the whole Old Testament".

Richard Muller notes that it was common in Reformed writers to see
Christ as the "scope" of Scripture "…the theologies of the Reformers
and of their orthodox successors consistently place Christ at the
center of their discussions of redemption, consistently understand
Christ as the center and fulfillment of divine revelation, and equally
consistently understand the causality of salvation as grounded in the
divine purpose".

Muller comments on the definition of the term: "It is particularly
important that the contemporary English meaning of 'scope,' the full
extent, range, or intention of a thing, be excluded. The original
Greek (skopos) and Latin (scopus) indicates the center or bull's eye
of a target. Indeed, in the First Helvetic Confession, scopus
translates der Zweck of the German original. The term is rightly
understood, therefore, not as the aim, purpose, goal, and center,
indeed, the 'bull's eye' of the biblical target. The Latin title of
the section is simply 'scopus Scripturae,' but the German reads at
greater length and with a clearer definition of the issue, 'What the
center (Zweck) of Holy Scripture is, and toward what the Scripture
ultimately points.' The 'entire Bible' (die ganze biblische Schrift)
teaches 'that God is gracious and benevolent' and that he has bestowed
his grace upon mankind in the person of Christ, his Son, by means of
faith. Much as in Luther's statement concerning the canon and in the
Schmalkald Articles, the center of Scripture is not merely Christ
doctrinally understood, but Christ apprehended by faith as the focus
of God's work of reconciliation. The larger sense of scopus as the
divine work of reconciliation throughout Scripture is echoed in
Bullinger's use of the term to indicate the covenant - a usage that
will appear in the writings of some of the Protestant scholastic
theologians."

Ambrose applies this:

All things are summed up in this one Jesus Christ: if we look on the
creation, the whole world was made by Christ, if we look on
providences, all things subsist in Christ, they have their being, and
their well-being in him. Where may we find God but in Christ? Where
may we see God but in this essential and eternal glass? Christ is "the
face of God," 2 Cor. 4:6. " The brightness of his glory, the express
image pf his Father's person," Heb. 1:3. The Father is (as it were)
all sun, and all pearl; and Jesus Christ is the substantial rays, the
eternal and essential irradiation of the sun of glory: Christ outs God
as the seal doth the stamp: Christ reveals God, as the face of a man
doth reveal the man, so Christ to Philip," He that hath seen me, hath
seen the Father," John 14:9. q. d. I am as like the Father as God is
like himself: there is a perfect indivisible unity between the Father
and me, " I and the Father are one;" one very God, he the begetter,
and I the begotten: Christ is the substantial rose that grew out of
the Father from eternity: Christ is the essential wisdom of God;
Christ is the substantial word of God, the intellectual birth of the
Lord's infinite understanding: oh the worth of Christ! compare we
other things with Christ, and they will bear no weight at all; cast
into the balance with him, angels, they are wise, but he is wisdom;
cast into the balance with him men, they are liars, lighter than
vanity, but Christ is " the Amen, the faithful witness;" cast into the
scales kings, and all kings, and all their glory, why he is King of
kings; cast into the scale millions of talents' weight of glory; cant
in two worlds, and add to the weight millions of heavens of heavens,
and the balance cannot down, the scales are unequal, Christ outweighs
all. Shall I yet come nearer home? What is heaven but to be with
Christ? What is life eternal but to believe in God, and in hia Son
Jesus Christ? Where may we find peace with God, and reconciliation
with God, but only in Christ? "God was in Christ reconciling the world
unto himself," 2 Cor. 5:19. Where may we find compassion, mercy, and
gentleness to sinners, but only in Christ? It is Christ that takes otf
infinite wrath, and satisfies justice, and so God is a most lovely,
compassionate, desirable God in Jesus: alt the goodness of God comes
out of God through this golden pipe the Lord Jesus Christ. It is true
those essential attributes of love, grace, mercy and goodness, are
only in God, and they abide in God, yet the mediatory manifestation of
love, grace, mercy and goodness, is only in Christ; Christ alone is
treasury, store-house, and magazine of the free goodness and mercy of
the Godhead. In him we are elected, adopted, redeemed, justified,
sanctified and saved; he is the ladder, and every step of it betwixt
heaven and earth; he is the way, the truth and the life, he is honor,
riches, beauty, health, peace and salvation; he is a suitable and rich
portion to every man's soul: that which some of the Jews observe of
the manna, that it was in taste according to every man's palate, it is
really true of Christ, he is to the soul, whaisoevor the soul would
have him to hp. All the spiritual blessings wherewith we are enriched,
are in and v Christ: God hears otir prayers by Christ: God forgives us
our iniquities through Christ; all we have, and all we expect to have,
hangs only on Chtist: he is the golden hinge, upon which all our
salvation turns.

Oh! how should all hearts be taken with this Christ? Christiana! turn
your eyes upon the Lord: " Look, and look again unto Jesus," Why stand
ye gazing on the toys of this world, when such aChrist is offered to
you in the gospel? Can the world die for you? Can the world reconcile
you to the Father? Can the world advance you to the kingdom of heaven?
As Christ is all in all, so let him be the full and complete subject
of our desire, and hope, and faith, and love, and joy; let him be in
your thoughts the first in the morning, and the last at night. Shall I
speak one word more to thee that believest? Oh! apply in particular
all the transactions of Jesus Christ to thy very self; remember how he
came out of his Father's bosom for thee, wept for thee, bled for thee,
poured out his life for thee, is now risen for thee, gone to heaven
for thee, sits at God's right hand, and rules all the world for thee:
makes intercession for thee, and at the end of the world will come
again for thee, and receive thee to himself, to live with him for ever
and ever. Surely if thus thou believest and livest, thy life is
comfortable, and thy death will be sweet. If there be any heaven upon
earth, thou wilt find it in the practice and exorcise of this gospel
duty, in "Looking unto Jesus."

a blasphemous church in a blasphemous abuse of the Bible

Some of the media have more respect for God's Word than those who want to go by the name of Christian and church. Under the headline: 'Gallery's invitation to deface the Bible brings obscene response', we read, 'A publicly funded exhibition is encouraging people to deface the Bible in the name of art — and visitors have responded with abuse and obscenity'. The open Bible (Authorised Version) 'is a central part of Made in God's Image, an exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art (Goma) in Glasgow. By the book is a container of pens and a notice saying: "If you feel you have been excluded from the Bible, please write your way back into it." The exhibit, Untitled 2009, was proposed by the Metropolitan Community Church, which said that the idea was to reclaim the Bible as a sacred text'.

Metropolitan Community Churches seem to be largely for homosexuals with an evangelical background. It celebrates "racial, cultural, linguistic, sexual, gender and theological diversity". It wants, however, to have some relation to historic belief as it's denominational statement of faith shows. After the exhibition they will retain the defaced bible as an exhibit in their church. They seem some symbolism in this and there is much indeed. It shows that they are a church that unashamedly blasphemes God by abusing His Word. 

We can read the attempt by the female 'minister' of this 'church' to justify it here. In their liberal naivety they thought that their invitation would receive a restrained and thoughtful kind of blasphemy such as they engage in themselves. They do not understand the nature of sin, however. 

The sins forbidden in the third commandment are, the not using of God's name as is required; and the abuse of it in an ignorant, vain, irreverent, profane, superstitious, or wicked mentioning, or otherwise using his titles, attributes, ordinances, or works, by blasphemy, perjury...misinterpreting, misapplying, or any way perverting the Word, or any part of it, to profane jests, curious or unprofitable questions, vain janglings, or the maintaining of false doctrines; abusing it, the creatures, or anything contained under the name of God, to charms, or sinful lusts and practices; the maligning, scorning, reviling, or anywise opposing of God's truth, grace, and ways (Westminster Larger Catechism Question 113)

The third commandment reminds us that the Lord will not hold such guiltless.

Basil of Caesarea on Psalmody

Psalmody is the calm of the soul, the repose of the spirit, the
arbiter of peace: it silences the wave, and conciliates the whirlwind
of our passions, soothing that which is impetuous, and tempering that
which is unchaste. Psalmody is an engenderer of friendship, a healer
of dissension, a reconciler of those who were inimical; for who can
longer account that man his enemy, with whom to the throne of God he
hath raised the strain. Wherefore that first of blessings, Christian
love, is diffused by psalmody, which devises the harmonious concert as
a bond of union, and connects the people in choral symphonies.
Psalmody repels the demons; it lures the ministry of angels ; a weapon
of defence in nightly terrors, a respite from daily toil; to the
infant a presiding genius, to manhood a resplendent crown ; a balm of
comfort to the aged, a congenial ornament to women. It renders the
desert populous, and appeases the forum's tumult; to the initiated an
elementary instruction, to proficients a mighty increase ; a bulwark
unto those who are perfected in knowledge. It is the Church's voice.
This exhilarates the banquet; this awakens that pious sorrow which has
reference to God. Psalmody from a heart of adamant can excite the
tear; psalmody is the employment of angels, the delight of Heaven, and
spiritual frankincense. Oh! the sapient design of our Instructor,
appointing that at once we should be recreated by song and informed by
wisdom! Thus the precepts of instruction are more deeply engraven upon
our hearts: for the lessons which receive unwillingly have a transient
continuance; but those which charm and captivate in the hearing are
permanently impressed upon our souls. From hence may not every thing
be acquired ? Hence mayest thou not be taught whatever is dignified in
fortitude, whatever is consummate in justice, whatever is venerable in
temperance, whatever is sublime in wisdom? Hero the nature of
penitence is unfolded; patience is here exemplified. Is there a
blessing to be named which here resides not? The splendours of
Theology beam effulgent; Jesus is predicted; the resurrection is
announced; judgement" is proclaimed; the sword of vengeance is
unsheathed ; crowns of glory glitter; speakless mysteries astonish—all
these are treasured up in the Book of Psalms, as in a common treasury
of the soul.

Basil of Caesarea, also called Basil the Great, (330 – 379)

all of life worship? part 2

Like all slogans, the phrase "all of life is worship" is based on an
element of truth but as a simplistic generalisation it is essentially
untrue. We are to glorify God in everything but worship is something
different. The Bible clearly teaches that worship has a beginning
point (Matt. 8:2; 9:18; 14:33; 15:25; 28:9,17; Mark 5:6; John 9:38;
Heb. 11:21) and an ending point (Luke 24:52) and that worship does
involve a "when" and a "where" (John 12:20; Acts 8:27; 24:11). Abraham
told his servants that he and Isaac would "go yonder and worship, and
we will come back to you" (Gen. 22:5). God told Moses to "come up to
the Lord ... and worship from afar" (Ex. 24:1).

There is a real difference between the activities of Colossians 3:16
and 3:17. The point is that the assembling of ourselves together in
public worship involves specific activities and is carefully
regulated. It is a corporate and not an individualistic activity -
individualism is part of the thinking behind "all-of-life-is-worship".
It's a way of making sabbath worship less important.

There is a distinction between a common meal at home and the Lord's
Supper in corporate worship in 1 Corinthians 11:18-34. Worship is
also distinct from home life in 1 Corinthians 14:34-35. The Larger
Catechism question 156 makes this distinction between the public
reading of the Word of God "to the congregation," which is only to be
done by those authorised, and the duty of all people "to read it apart
by themselves."

John Frame has a strange view of the regulative principle when he
says, "the regulative principle for worship is no different than the
principles by which God regulates all of our life." T. David Gordon
has pointed out in response to John Frame that the regulative
principle of worship deals with the limits of ecclesiastical power and
liberty of conscience. Either we have to make individual decisions
about worship or we are entirely regulated in our everyday decisions:

"The issue was not... 'worship' versus 'the rest of life,' but those
aspects of life governed by the church officers versus those aspects
of life not governed by the church officers.... Frame's attempt to put
'all of life' under one umbrella... is doomed to futility, because it
does not address the very issue the regulative principle was designed
to address, the limits of church power and the liberty of conscience."

Lewis Sabbath Ferry

We were encouraged that a BBC Article closed with these words from Rev. Dr James Tallach which express more clearly the point that I was wishing to make in my last post .

James Tulloch [sic] of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland said it "grieved the spirit when the law of God is broken".
He said the fourth commandment states "remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy".
"CalMac made a great play that they must keep the law", he said.
"Well, I ask them what about the law of God?
"We will not be tried at the end of the day, when all of us stand before the judgment seat of Christ, on the basis of EU law."

Whose law? Sabbath sailings

Robert McCheyne's lament over the Parisian Sabbath was: " Alas ! poor Paris knows no
Sabbath. All the shops are open, and all the inhabitants are on the wing in search of pleasures — pleasures that perish in the using. I thought of Babylon and Sodom as I passed through the crowd. I cannot tell how I longed for the peace of the Scottish Sabbath!" How much true-hearted people now long for the peace of the Scottish everywhere in Scotland! The spurious pretext for Caledonian MacBrayne forcing sabbath sailings on the Isle of Lewis (with the approval of the Scottish Government) is the Equality Act 2006. Yet they refuse to publish the legal opinion that they have obtained and the Equality and Human Rights Commission has not taken up their position. They are only able to say that one man's opinion is that not providing sabbath sailings is 'more than likely to be in breach of the Equality Act 2006'. It hardly sounds like a sure basis. The decision is of course just a commercial one and that is why it flouts the democratically expressed view of the people of Lewis in the Council and the recent Stornoway Trust elections not to mention an overwhelming petition. Yet there is a desire to appeal to law in order to cry down the law of God in order to take away the last protection of the Sabbath in Scotland. One man's less than absolute opinion about a human law that in many of its provisions opposes the law of God is to be appealed to as a sufficient authority. When men stop believing in God's law and authority, they start believing anything and everything. The idea behind the thought that any law can be independent of God's law is the sinful and self-destructive desire for autonomy. Autonomy is only a synonym for blasphemy.

This is what McCheyne pointed out in his day to sabbath breaking commercial transportation companies: 'If you shall really carry your motion, against the prayers and longings of God’s people in this land, then, sir, you will triumph for a little while; but Scotland’s sin, committed against light, and against solemn warning, will not pass unavenged'.

The appeal to discrimination is utterly spurious but such is the false one-sided logic of the Equality movement. Iain D Campbell of the Lord's Day Observance Society says: 'In fact there is no absolute right to a Sunday ferry service anywhere. CalMac don't run Sunday ferries from Mallaig to the Small Isles, for instance, or ferries anywhere on Christmas Day – I don't think anyone seriously argues that that's discrimination. Experience has actually shown that new Sunday ferries don't increase traffic, they just spread it, and there is no evidence whatever that Sunday ferries bolster a local economy. There have been Sunday sailings to the Uists and Barra for many years now and if anything their problems of unemployment, housing and depopulation are even worse than ours'.

Some refuge is sought for the open breach of God's law although it be a false refuge and a refuge of lies but there will be no refuge on the day of judgement. McCheyne warned commercial transportation companies in his day:

'Guilty men ! who, under Satan, are leading on the deep, dark phalanx of Sabbath-breakers, yours is a solemn position. You are robbers. You rob God of his holy day. You are murderers. You murder the souls of your servants. God said, ” Thou shall not do any work, thou, nor thy servant;” but you compel your servants to break God’s law, and to sell their souls for gain. You are sinners against light. Your Bible and your catechism, the words of godly parents, perhaps now in the Sabbath above, and the loud remonstrances of God-fearing men, are ringing in your ears, while you perpetrate this deed of shame, and glory in it. You are traitors to your country. The law of your country declares that you should ” observe a holy rest all that day from your own words, works, and thoughts ;” and yet you scout it as an antiquated superstition. Was it not Sabbath-breaking that made God cast away Israel ? And yet you would bring the same curse on Scotland now. You are moral suicides, stabbing your own souls, proclaiming to the world that you are not the Lord’s people, and hurrying on your souls to meet the Sabbath-breaker’s doom'.

We pray that in our day we will have ministers with the convictions and courage of McCheyne and Christians with the convictions and courage of the Strome Ferry men of 1883.

What is patience in relation to providence?

Thomas Goodwin in his invaluable treatise on Patience and its Perfect Work says, 'if you now ask a description of patience, as it thus respects suffering the will of God, we must give it as it is in the word of God in the height, for that is the rule itself that directs to it, and not down it to what is found in our hearts. And yet that which afterwards follows, and will confirm every tittle of it, is drawn mostly from examples of the saints, either in the Old or New Testaments, which shew that it is attainable, though with allowance to defects, which accompany all graces in this life.

It is a constant, thankful, joyful enduring, with perseverance to the end of a man's life, all the trials that are grievous, how great, how long, how hopeless soever as to coming out of them; mortifying and compescing the inordinacy of opposite passions, as fear, grief, care, anxiety, which wifi arise upon such afflictions; with submitting to God's will, for God's glory, and his good pleasure's sake; still blessing and sanctifying God in all, waiting on God, and relieving one's self by faith in what is to be had in God, and from God, in communion with him, and from his love, in this life; in expectation also of that glory which is the reward after this life ended.

I might, in this place, confirm every word and tittle of this description, either out of examples of holy men or the rules which the word gives. But I omit the set collection of such proofs here, because that, scatteredly, up and down, in the particulars that follow, this will be found performed'.

The definition may seem easy to one who feels crushed and bruised by Providence and in great perplexity. In this relation there is a very helpful meditation that can be made use of in a book by the puritan Thomas White which is called A Method and Instructions for the Art of Divine Meditation:

O blessed God, if the way of thy Providence be such, that thou wilt not give so much Grace as to make me, through the abundance of it, almost whether I will or no, to serve thee, yet to whom thou dost give so much grace as to desire more grace, O let not this desire which is of thy own infusing; be in vain, if there be any thing in the whole world that I desire more than thy grace, then let me want grace to desire it any more; Lord, if the reason why thou deniest my prayer, be, because I do not desire as I ought, I humbly beseech thee to grant that I ask aright; alas my afflictions lie heavier on me then ever they did, and I am more wicked, or at least less holy then ever since my conversion I was; how little am I affected with any thing that belongs to thy service, nor yet doth it affect me that I am not affected: Lord, if there were any in heaven or in earth that could help me besides thee, then considering my Manifold Sins, I should; I but Lord, I would not, thy Mercies are so great, go to any other: Now Lord, now is the time to have Mercy upon me; I am like the Man that went from Jerusalem to Jericho, wounded, naked, and half dead, I cannot call for help, O let my wounds move thee to compassion; if I could bewail my sinful Misery with tears of Repentance, I know thou wouldest deliver me, but I cannot weep, nay, hardly mourn; Oh faint, faint is my grief, and cold is my love! What wilt thou do, Lord, with one that scarcely from his heart desires to serve thee: Alas, what canst thou do for me more or less, then to make me desire to serve thee! Accept I must, or for ever be lost: What a low degree of goodness am I come unto? a soul full of sadness, and empty of goodness; To morrow, Lord, I am to receive thee into my soul, thee my blessed Saviour: Lord, thou knowest I did not use to have a heart so empty of goodness, when I expected thee to come next day.

The Forgotten Calvin

In the midst of the Calvin commemorations one aspect of his teaching will be conveniently forgotten because it doesn't sit well with most of those who are claiming to be his successors. His teaching on purity of worship is very clear, reflecting the historic uniform presbyterian and reformed position and practice. He maintained the regulative principle of worship, that nothing could be brought into the worship of God without scriptural warrant.

Calvin opposed instrumental music in public worship as belonging to the ceremonial law. "To sing the praises of God upon the harp and psaltery," says Calvin, "unquestionably formed a part of the training of the law and of the service of God under that dispensation of shadows and figures, but they are not now to be used in public thanksgiving." On Ps. lxxi. 22. He says again: "With respect to the tabret, harp, and psaltery, we have formerly observed, and will find it necessary afterwards to repeat the same remark, that the Levites, under the law, were justified in making use of instrumental music in the worship of God; it having been his will to train his people, while they were yet tender and like children, by such rudiments until the coming of Christ. But now, when the clear light of the gospel has dissipated the shadows of the law and taught us that God is to be served in a simpler form, it would be to act a foolish and mistaken part to imitate that which the prophet enjoined only upon those of his own time."On Ps. lxxxi. 3. He further observes: "We are to remember that the worship of God was never understood to consist in such outward services, which were only necessary to help forward a people as yet weak and rude in knowledge in the spiritual worship of God. A difference is to be observed in this respect between his people under the Old and under the New Testament; for now that Christ has appeared, and the church has reached full age, it were only to bury the light of the gospel should we introduce the shadows of a departed dispensation. From this it appears that the Papists, as I shall have occasion to show elsewhere, in employing instrumental music cannot be said so much to imitate the practice of God's ancient people as to ape it in a senseless and absurd manner, exhibiting a silly delight in that worship of the Old Testament which was figurative and terminated with the gospel." On Ps. xcii. 1.

He also wrote:

Musical instruments in celebrating the praises of God would be no more suitable thatn the burning of incense, the lighting of lamps, and the restoration of other shadows of the law. The Papists, therefore, have foolishly borrowed this, as well as many other things from the Jews. Men who are fond of outward pomp may delight in that noise; but the simplicitly which God recommends to us by the apostle [Heb. 13:15] is far more pleasing to Him.

Does any one object, that music is very useful for awakening the minds of men and moving their hearts? I own it; but we should always take care that no corruption creep in, which might both defile the pure worship of God and involve men in superstition. Moreover, since the Holy Spirit expressly warns us of this danger by the mouth of Paul, to proceed beyond what we are there warranted by him is not only, I must say, unadvised zeal, but wicked and perverse obstinacy.

Again, Calvin notes that: "We know that our Lord Jesus Christ has appeared, and by His advent has abolished these legal shadows. Instrumental music, we therefore maintain, was only tolerated on account of the times and the people, because they were as boys, as the sacred Scripture speaketh, whose condition required these puerile rudiments. But in gospel times we must not have recourse to these unless we wish to destroy the evangelical perfection and to obscure the meridian light which we enjoy in Christ our Lord." (Calvin's Commentary on the Thirty-third Psalm, and on 1 Sam. 18:1-9).

The best article on this subject appears to be one written by J G Vos. In terms of the content of praise, Calvin believed that the Psalms of Scripture were the only songs worthy of God. In the Preface to the Genevan Psalter he writes:

What is there now to do? It is to have songs not only honest, but also holy, which will be like spurs to incite us to pray to and praise God, and to meditate upon his works in order to love, fear, honor and glorify him. Moreover, that which St. Augustine has said is true, that no one is able to sing things worthy of God except that which he has received from him. Therefore, when we have looked thoroughly, and searched here and there, we shall not find better songs nor more fitting for the purpose, than the Psalms of David, which the Holy Spirit spoke and made through him. And moreover, when we sing them, we are certain that God puts in our mouths these, as if he himself were singing in us to exalt his glory. Wherefore Chrysostom exhorts, as well as the men, the women and the little children to accustom themselves to singing them, in order that this may be a sort of meditation to associate themselves with the company of the angels.

Richard Arnold therefore notes, “However Calvin’s enthusiasm for singing was subject to a crucial qualification: he restricted what was to be sung exclusively to the Psalms – these were, he writes in 1543, the songs provided by God and dictated by His Holy Spirit, and it would be presumptuous and sacrilegious for humankind to sing any words or arrangements of his of her own devising.”

Calvin extolled the range of truth found in the Psalms as entirely suited and adequate for New Testament worship. "The Psalms are replete with all the precepts which serve to frame our life to every part of holiness, piety, and righteousness". He wrote that "this book makes known to us this privilege, which is desirable above all others-that not only is there opened up to us familiar access to God, but also that we have permission and freedom granted us to lay open before him our infirmities, which we would be ashamed to confess before men". The Psalms were unique in the whole of Scripture:

There is no other book in which there is to be found more express and magnificent commendations, both of the unparalleled liberality of God towards his Church, and of all his works; there is no other book in which there is recorded so many deliverances, nor one in which the evidences and experiences of the fatherly providence and solicitude which God exercises towards us, are celebrated with such splendour of diction, and yet with the strictest adherence to truth; in short, there is no other book in which we are more perfectly taught the right manner of praising God, or in which we are more powerfully stirred up to the performance of this religious exercise

I have been accustomed to call this book, I think not inappropriately, The Anatomy of all the Parts of the Soul… there is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror. Or rather, the Holy Spirit has here drawn … all the griefs, sorrows, fears, doubts, hopes, cares, perplexities, in short, all the distracting emotions with which the minds of men are wont to be agitated. The other parts of Scripture contain the commandments which God enjoined his servants to announce to us. But here the prophets themselves, seeing they are exhibited to us as speaking to God, and laying open all their inmost thoughts and affections, call, or rather draw, each of us to the examination of himself in particular, in order that none of the many infirmities to which we are subject, and of the many vices with which we abound, may remain concealed. It is certainly a rare and singular advantage, when all lurking places are discovered, and the heart is brought into the light, purged from that most baneful infection, hypocrisy

We do not think that many modern theologians would be able to say what Calvin says of the Psalms:

In short, as calling upon God is one of the principal means of securing our safety, and as a better and more unerring rule for guiding us in this exercise cannot be found elsewhere than in The Psalms, it follows, that in proportion to the proficiency which a man shall have attained in understanding them, will be his knowledge of the most important part of celestial doctrine

The Psalms provide us with an infallible rule:

Besides, there is also here prescribed to us an infallible rule for directing us with respect to the right manner of offering to God the sacrifice of praise, which he declares to be most precious in his sight, and of the sweetest odour.

"… in short, there is no other book in which we are more perfectly taught the right manner of praising God, or in which we are more powerfully stirred up to the performance of this religious exercise".

Calvin also has a clear warning to those who are casting the psalms aside from public worship:

The psalms can stimulate us to raise our hearts to God and arouse us to an ardor in invoking as well as in exalting with praises the glory of His name. Moreover by this, one will recognize of what advantage and consolation the pope and his creatures have deprived the church, for he has distorted the psalms, which should be true spiritual songs, into a murmuring among themselves without any understanding

500 years on from Calvin's birth, how near are most 'Calvinist' churches to his doctrine and practice of worship?

the personal reality of providence: faith penetrating more deeply

"God's will is the highest and first cause of all things, for nothing can happen apart from God's command or permission" (16:8). "What God has determined must necessarily take place" (16.9). 

 

"anyone who has been taught by Christ's lips that all the hairs of his head are numbered [Matthew 10:30] will look farther afield for a cause, and will consider that all events are governed by God's secret plan. And concerning inanimate objects we ought to hold that, although each one has by nature been endowed with its own property, yet it does not exercise its own power except in so far as it is directed by God's ever-present hand. These are, thus, nothing but instruments to which God continually imparts as much effectiveness as he wills, and according to his own purpose bends and turns them to either one action or another". (I.16.2)

 

For someone who wrote three chapters on the doctrine of providence in the Institutes (chapters 16-18 of book one) and a book on the Secret Providence of God, Calvin had a very person application of it. One "must consider that his business is with his Maker and the framer of the universe, submitting humbly in fear and reverence (18.4). "Faith" he wrote "ought to penetrate more deeply, namely, having found Him Creator of all, forthwith to conclude that He is also everlasting Governor and Preserver" (16:1). "There are very many and very clear promises that testify that God's singular Providence watches over the welfare of believers" (17:7). Looking back Calvin saw this in his life, in his youth he was destined for the priesthood and completely bogged down in the superstitition of Romanism. "God," he wrote much later, "at last turned my course in another direction by the secret rein of his providence." On one occasion later in life, he wrote of his endeavours in a letter to Philip Melanchthon, 5 March, 1555:  "You know however that our duties by no means depend on our hopes of success, but that it behooves us to accomplish what God requires of us, even when we are in the greatest despair respecting the results." When we reflect on Calvin's life and influence we should be thankful for his faith in providence so that he did what God required of him irrespective of how difficult it seemed to be that it would succeed. Did he think that that influence would reach China?

 

 

What is experimental preaching?

Experimental preaching is the overflow of the preacher's experience of the Word of God to meet the experience of those to whom he preaches. It is vitally important but especially difficult to define. I tend to rely upon John Owen's acute observations on this as the best definition available.

"Experience of the power of the truth which they preach in and upon their own souls. Without this they will themselves be lifeless and heartless in their own work, and their labour for the most part will be unprofitable towards others…But a man preacheth that sermon only well unto others which preacheth itself in his own soul. And he that doth not feed on and thrive in the digestion of the food which he provides for others will scarce make it savoury unto them; yea, he knows not but the food he hath provided may be poison, unless he have really tasted of it himself. If the word do not dwell with power in us, it will not pass with power from us. And no man lives in a more woeful condition than those who really believe not themselves what they persuade others to believe continually. The want of this experience of the power of gospel truth on their own souls is that which gives us so many lifeless, sapless orations, quaint in words and dead as to power, instead of preaching the gospel in the demonstration of the Spirit." Vol. 16, p. 76.

But it stands to reason that it is better experienced than defined. This sermon is probably the most experimental sermon I have heard.

The sun of holiness

Sanctification is a constant, progressive renewing of the whole man, whereby the new creature doth daily more and more die unto sin and live unto God. Regeneration is the birth, sanctification is the growth of this babe of grace. In regeneration the sun of holiness rises; in sanctification it keepeth its course, and shineth brighter and brighter unto the perfect day (Proverbs 4:18). The former is a specifical change from nature to grace (Ephesians 5:8); the latter is a gradual change from one degree of grace to another (Psalm 84:7), whereby the Christian goeth from strength to strength till he appear before God in Zion.

George Swinnock 

how we take God’s name in vain in reading or hearing His Word

Thomas Boston has these solemn considerations in relation to our reading and hearing (i.e. hearing sermons) of the Word of God.

 

In reading or hearing the word, we take God's name in vain,
[1.] When we do not prepare ourselves for it, appointing a meal in it to our souls by prayer and looking to God; and when we make it not our business to get our hearts emptied of worldly thoughts and affections, and come with an appetite, 1 Pet. 2:1, 2.
[2.] When we do not strive to understand what we read or hear of the word, Acts 8:30; but pass it, as if bare reading or hearing were all.
[3.] When we are not attentive thereto, but let the heart wander in the time after other things, Ezek. 33:30.
[4.] When we are dull, drowsy, sleepy, and weary in it, crying in our hearts, When will the Sabbath be over? like Doeg, detained before the Lord.
[5.] When we do not receive it as the word of the living God, looking on it as God himself speaking to us, 1 Thess. 2:13.
[6.] When we do not subject ourselves humbly to what we hear from the Lord by his word, being affected suitably to every part of the word, approving the commands thereof, believing the promises, and trembling at the threatenings, Heb. 4:2.
[7.] When we do not lay ourselves open to the word, to be taught our duty, to be reproved for our faults, to be searched and known as by the candle of the Lord; but ward off convictions, and rise against the speaker when the word toucheth us.
[8.] When we hear it partially, having more respect to the speaker, to receive it or reject it according to our opinion of him, than to the Lord's word itself, Acts 17:11, &c.
[9.] Lastly, When we do not meditate upon it afterwards, confer about it, and labour to improve it to our soul's good.

Is all of life worship?

There are many attempts to redefine the regulative principle of worship viz. that "the acceptable way of worshipping the true God is instituted by himself, and so limited by his own revealed will, that he may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan...or any other way not prescribed in the holy Scripture" (WCF). One of these is the idea that "all of life is worship". In other words the Bible only regulates worship in the way that it regulates the rest of life. All of life contains many elements and activities that are not explicitly and strictly regulated by Scripture. therefore whatever is permitted in "all of life," is permitted in the public worship of God on the Lord's Day. This changes the regulative principle to a rather loose principle and to mean simply that worship may introduce what is not forbidden by Scripture. The idea has been popularised by John Frame citing passages such as Romans 12:1 and 1Corinthians 10:32. He concludes "Unfortunately, it is virtually impossible to prove that anything is divinely requiredspecifically for official services." This idea ignores the obvious distinction between generic commands and specific commands in the Bible. Yet the Lord's Day is a distinct time of worship set apart by God, sanctified from the rest of the days.
 
There are some very useful contributions refuting this idea here. Daniel Ritchie also does so in pp.63ff of his book.

Is a minister an employee?

This is a matter that is to be settled ultimately by Scripture. We bring worldly assumptions into this area at great peril to the church of Christ. When a member speaks of paying the minister's salary and having a right to demand things in return
they are expressing matters in entirely the wrong way. They have not 'hired' the minister, they have called him to exercise among them a function to which he has already been called by God. The spiritual offering of the individual's substance is to God, not a tax or a salary. Indeed, it is extremely dangerous to see it in this light, as though spiritual things might be bought and sold (Acts 8:18). In the
prophecy of Micah 3:11 this is rebuked and hirelings are also condemned from the mouth of Christ.

The ministry is a spiritual vocation not to be identified with secular employment. Where does this vocation or calling come from? Christ is the Head of the Church and He calls men inwardly Himself and then outwardly through the delegated authority of the courts of the Church who confirm that call (Ro 1:1, 1 Co 1:1). What is that man before he is ordained? He is a member of the Church, subject to the disciplinary
authority of Christ ministerially applying His decrees in the courts of His Church. What is he after ordination? He is a member of presbytery. He is an officer of Christ's church whom Christ has set apart for functions within that Church subject to the disciplinary authority of Christ ministerially applying His decrees in the courts
of His Church. As the older writers asserted the external call of the Church is mediate. A call that comes through a means; the means by which God calls men into the ministry is the church. We do not believe that men can set themselves up in the ministry without the mediate call of the Church but that does not mean that we are to regard that man as any less called of God than the prophets who were called by him
immediately and sent without means. The call from the church is a divine call mediated through the Church.

We must remember that a salary is not essential to the being of a minister. A minister who is retired may not have a salary or an active minister may forego a salary in exceptional circumstances (1 Cor 9:5,6; Acts 20:33; 2 Thess. 3:8, 9; 2 Cor. 11:8). Who pays a minister? Essentially it is Christ who pays a minister. He has ordained that they that preach the gospel should live of the gospel (1 Cor 9:14,15).
He is the one who lays down the principle that a labourer is worthy of his hire (Mt. 10:10; Lk. 10:7). Who were the disciples working for? For a Church? No, this was not possible. They were working for Christ. He had sent them out as labourers and would ensure in His providence that they were maintained. He is the Lord of the harvest who sends them into His harvest field. The master of the house instructs those entrusted with the stewardship of His resources to supply to the labourers that He has hired that which is worthy of that hire. The Master provides his people with the substance and the willingness to offer of their substance, part of which is communicated to the work of the ministry. He lays upon them this duty. The means of supply should not be confused with the one from whom the supply comes. In this sense a minister is no more an employee of the Church than he is of the bank through the money may be paid. As Turretin points out: 'these wages can be paid in various ways; either by the volun tary offerings of believers which they liberally contribute of their goods for the
common use of the church from Christian love and justice (as was done by the first Christians in the time of the apostles and for some ages after); or from a mutual agreement and the joint pay of individuals brought together; or paid from the public treasury by the Christian magistrate; or drawn from tithes; or finally, from the annual returns and produce of fields and farms given and left to the church and other
ecclesiastical property'.

The church does not recruit. Christ recruits His labourers Himself. The Church does not sack a minister as an employee. It proceeds against him as against any member of the Church to discipline with the purpose of restoration. It proceeds using the prescriptions of the King and Head of the Church using its delegated authority. Christ through the means of His Church suspends or deposes a minister just as Christ through the means of His Church suspends a communicant member or applies other censure. If the Church disciplines a minister for something that is not required by Christ then it is ultra vires, this shows that ministers are not in the employ of the Church but of Christ.

Martin Chemnitz puts it well when he says:
Just as God properly claims for himself the right to call, also mediately, and it is accordingly necessary for it to be done according to divine instruction, so also has
God properly reserved to himself alone this power of removing someone from the ministry. 1 Sam 2:30, 32; Hos 4:6. But since that dismissal takes places mediately, it is therefore necessary that it not take place except by instruction and divine direction. Therefore as long as God lets in the ministry his minister who teaches rightly and lives blamelessly, the church does not have the power, without divine command to remove an unwanted man, namely a servant of God. But when he does not build up the church by doctrine or life, but rather destroys, God himself removes him, 1 Sam 2:30; Hos 4:6. And then the church not only properly can but by all means should remove such a one from the ministry. For just as God calls ministers of the church, so he also removes them through legitimate means. But as the procedure of a call is to follow the instruction of the Lord of the harvest, so also if one is to be removed from the ministry, the church must show that that also is done by the command and will of the Lord.

It is said that ministers have an employment contract. The word is objectionable but for the sake of argument let us ask. Who is the contract with? The vows are administered by the courts of the Church but they are as the Confession says "not to be made to any creature, but to God alone" and are a part of religious worship since a vow is of the like nature to a lawful promissory oath "the person swearing solemnly calleth God to witness what he asserteth or promiseth". The Church can only impose what the Head of the Church imposes through His Word. The Church itself is bound by the same vows to Christ, showing that the vows are made to Christ and not the Church.

When we consider the titles applied to ministers in Scripture, it should be clear who "employs" ministers. They are God’s servants (1 Cor 3.5), farmers (1 Cor 3.6), and fellow-workers with one another under God’s employment (1 Cor 3.9). Paul is God’s master-builder (1 Cor 3.10). They are servants or “ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Cor 4.1).

There is an important Scriptural and theological principle at stake in asserting that ministers are not employed by the Church. Added to this there is the problem of compromising the spiritual independence of the Church. If we assert that ministers are employees in the same sense as civil callings then they are under the employment legislation of the nation which means that the State has the right to determine who can be a minister and who cannot and to regulate all aspects of their
'employment'.

getting Christ better

It is reasonably well known that Robert Bruce, the Scottish minister of the second generation of Reformers, emphasised that grace received through the sacraments is not different from that received through the Word. Both convey the same Christ. But as he went on to assert that while we do not get a better Christ in the sacraments than we do in the Word, there are times when we get Christ better. He said "we get Christ better nor we did before; Aye get the thing that we gat mair fullie, that is, with a surer apprehension nor we had of before; we get a better grip of Christ now: For be the sacrament my faith is nurished, the bounds of my saull is enlarged, and sa, quhere I had but a little grip of Christ before, as it were betwixt my finger and my thumbe, now 1 get him in my haill hande; and ay the mair that my faith growes, the better grip I get of Christ lesus. Sa the sacrament is felloun necessarie, an it were na mair but to get Christ better, and to get a faster apprehension of him be the sacrament nor we coidd have of before". Bruce spoke of it as leading to 'growth of faith and increase of holiness', so that the believer might say 'the bounds of my soul are inlarged... I grow in knowledge. I grow in apprehension. I grow in feeling... He changes the affections of my soul. He changes their faculties and qualities. Hearts and mind not changed in substance - but made new to the extent that we are new creatures.' 'Christ works in you a spiritual feeling', said Bruce, 'that in your heart and in your conscience you may fmd the effect of his Word.' The effect of having such new feelings is that the believer might obtain 'strength' to 'lay hold of mercy' and obtain 'strong resolve for bettering the self'. In the words of Bruce, 'there is no other lesson in Christianity than this - to shake off your lusts and affections more and more to renounce yourself, so that you may embrace Christ.'

George Gillespie explained this further in writing that believers are given the body and blood of Christ through preaching also, but in preaching there was
more 'human wisdom' mixed in, so it was not so 'pure' as the sacrament.'

In the words of the Scots Confession, 'The faithful in the right use of the Lord's table have sic a conjunction with the Lord Jesus Christ as the natural man cannot comprehend.'

Litigation among Christians

The subject of litigation among Christians, and even the relation which they stand in to one another as such, render the adjustment of their differences more delicate and embarrassing. It is always a work of difficulty to reconcile hostile parties, whatever the matter of strife may happen to be. Once involved in litigation about civil rights and property, men, not of the most contentious or obstinate tempers, have been known to persevere until they had ruined themselves and their families. When unhappily discord and contention arise between those who are allied by blood, or who were united by the bonds of close friendship, their variance is of all others the most inveterate and deadly. "A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city; and their contentions are like the bars of a castle" (Prov. 18:19). If "love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave" (Song 8:6). Of all the ties which bind man to man, religion is the most powerful, and when once loosened or burst asunder, it is the hardest to restore. Religious differences engage and call into action the strongest powers of the human mind. Conscience comes to the aid of convictions of right, and zeal for the glory of God combines with that jealousy with which we watch over everything that is connected with our own reputation.

Feelings of personal offense and injury form no inconsiderable obstacle in the way of removing divisions in the Church. In one degree or another these are unavoidable, when religious differences arise and grow to a height. They are no proper ground of separation, and the recollection of them ought not to be allowed to stand in the way of a desirable reunion. If in any instance personal injury has been combined with injuries done to truth, those who have been the sufferers need to exert the utmost jealousy over their own spirits. Self-love will lead us insensibly to confound and identify the two; and what we flatter ourselves to be pure zeal for religion and hatred of sin, may, in the process of a rigid and impartial examination, be found to contain a large mixture of resentment for offenses which terminated on ourselves.

Victory, not truth, is too often the object of litigant parties, and provided they can gain this, though it should be achieved by over-reaching one another, and by practicing the low tricks of worldly policy, they will boast of a religious triumph.

Thomas McCrie(1772-1835).

McCrie well knew the sorrows of division. In 1806, with three other ministers, he was forced to separate from the Antiburgher side of the Secession Synod to form the Constitutional Associate Presbytery. In 1821 he published Two Discourses on the
Unity of the Church, Her Divisions, and Their Removal from which this excerpt is taken.

An open letter to Gordon Brown

To the Right Honourable Gordon Brown Prime Minister MP.

Dear Prime Minister,

I was most encouraged to learn that you had a "presbyterian conscience", one indeed which is capable of being offended. It is indeed a solemn matter to have a properly informed conscience, when we consider the danger of having what the Bible calls a "defiled" or even a "seared conscience". As the Scottish presbyterian Samuel Rutherford said, "We take nothing to the grave with us, but a good or evil conscience". He also warned that if you "break your conscience in twain...who then can mend it, and cast a knot on it?" If our conscience is properly informed by what God requires we will realise that we can never hope in ourselves to fulfil his righteous requirements. The Bible instructs us that nothing we can do but only the application of the atonement of Christ can "purge our conscience from dead works to serve the living God" (Hebrews 9:14). The reforming presbyterian Robert Bruce said "There is no man nor woman that is able to purge their conscience, to take away the guiltiness of sin off their conscience; it is only God who, by virtue of the blood of his Son, doth purge the conscience; therefore, they address them to God only."

In order to best inform your presbyterian conscience we would commend to you the close study of the Bible, together with the Sum of Saving Knowledge, the Westminster Larger Catechism (especially on the Ten Commandments) and the Westminster Confession of Faith.

As you study these matters your presbyterian conscience ought to smite you when you think of the evil of abortion as legalised murder that is carried out in the nation that you govern. It ought also to make you reconsider the legislation on embryological research and creating animal-human hybrid embryos that you have sponsored as you recover the Bible's teaching on the sanctity of all human life. Your voting record on moral matters is very alarming. It will be a solemn matter to have this record brought into view on the day of judgement with the condemning voice of a conscience now fully informed as well as the condemnation of the judge.

The Bible will also speak loudly to your presbyterian conscience about the fact that homosexuality is clearly against the law of God. This will make you look again at the Equality Bill with its ideological coercion and other legislation. As you look at the breadth and length of the law of God in the Ten Commandments it must be clear to a rightly informed conscience that your government and that of your predecessor have gone much further than all previous governments in passing legislation that positively undermines each one of the 10 commandments. It is a fearful thing to be using God-given power to encourage sin and restrain those who seek to do right.

Your presbyterian conscience rightly informed by Scripture and the Westminster Confession would make you reconsider the place that you have given to Roman Catholicism in visiting the Pope and seeking to amend the Act of Settlement.

There are many other matters that we could mention right down to the long-overdue required repeal of the Acts Recissory. The essence of it all is this the prayer that the Biblical and presbyterian principle that Christ alone is King in State and Church would sound loudly in your conscience and that you would follow it and implement it faithfully and sincerely. This would be by far the best for you, best for us and best for this nation and its future.

Yours sincerely,

MAV

‘So Catholic it forgot to be Christian’

These words from a priest in Ireland, in relation to the industrial home abuses carried out on children by Roman Catholic orders in the 20th Century are very solemn. Yet even more haunting are the words of one of the victims Michael O'Brien: "They raped me on a Saturday, gave me an unmerciful beating afterwards, and then gave me Communion on Sunday." One amongst thousands.

How much have the orders learned from this? They haven't fully paid their paltry 10% of the compensation package. They are failing to acknowledge their full responsibility and appear to be in such open conflict with the Roman hierarchy about the Church's response that the Pope will have to be brought in. This situation looks set to be overtaken by the publication of other reports this summer into sexual abuse committed by priests and the efforts by church authorities to cover it up.

The Tablet newspaper comments in its editorial: "It is clear the problem was not just "a few bad apples" or even a whole barrel of them, but the arrogance of an almighty Church too powerful for its own good. It is useless to blame the state or society for allowing it to happen. The blame lies within the Church itself. The power and the glory that were so badly misused had a theological, even ideological, basis. This told the Church that it was "a true and perfect society" (in the words of Pius IX): whatever it did was right, and whatever might contradict that impression had to be suppressed. Only "bad Catholics" would dare whisper it." Is not the ideological and theological basis, the Roman Catholic elevation of the Church above Scripture? While this is the case the law of God will never be adhered to as it ought. As the papal historian put it, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

sad divisions that make us lose the fair scent of the Rose of Sharon

"One day when he [Samuel Rutherford] was preaching in Edinburgh," says Robert Woodrow, "after dwelling for some time on the differences of the day, he broke out with: 'Woe is unto us for these sad divisions that make us lose the fair scent of the Rose of Sharon', and then he went on commending Christ, going over all his precious styles and titles about a quarter of an hour; upon which the laird of Glanderston said, 'Ay, now you are right; hold you there'."

Rutherford mentions the same concern - that sad times and energy in combating divisions and defections may cloud the loveliness of Christ if we are not careful - in the Trial and Triumph of Faith. He says,'the truth is, while we endeavour to gain a grain-weight of truth, it is much if we lose not a talent-weight of goodness and Christian love'. Rutherford was such a resolute defender of the truth, however, out of devotion to Christ as King and Head of the Church. We ought not to run to the other danger of abandoning any contention for the faith and the truth because there is a temptation that we may not keep it in balance with everything else.

Rutherford is very wise in his counsel. He says that we need to keep the glory of Christ in view together with the condition of the times so that we know what we are contending for. It is lack of love for Christ that hinders faithful contending. 'Christ hath too many occasional friends; but the ground of all is this, "I love Jesus Christ, but I have not the gift of burning quick for Christ." Oh, how securely should faith land us out of the gun-shot of the prevailing power of a black hour of darkness! Faith can make us able to be willing, for Christ, to go through a quarter of hell's pain'. We also need to view free grace lest we think of ourselves more highly than we ought and think that we earn something by faithful contending.

Listen to Rutherford's commendation of the Rose of Sharon.

Should Christ, the condition of affairs we are now in, the excellency of free grace, be seen in all their own lustre and dye, we should learn much wisdom from these three. Christ speedeth little in conquering of lovers: because we have not "seen his shape at any time," we look not upon Christ, but upon the accidents that are beside Christ; and therefore, few esteem Christ a rich pennyworth. But there is not a rose out of heaven, but there is a blot and thorn growing out of it, except that one only rose of Sharon, which blossometh out glory. Every leaf of the rose is a heaven, and serveth "for the healing of the nations;" every white and red in it, is incomparable glory; every act of breathing out its smell, from everlasting to everlasting, is spotless and unmixed happiness. Christ is the outset, the master-flower, the uncreated garland of heaven, the love and joy of men and angels. But the fountain-love, the fountain-delight, the fountain-joy of men and angels is more; for out of it floweth all the seas, springs, rivers, and floods of love, delight, and joy. Imagine all the rain and dew, seas, fountains, and floods, since the creation, were in one cloud, and these multiplied in measures, for number to many millions of millions, and then divided in drops of showers to an answerable number of men and angels;—this should be a created shower, and end in a certain period of time; and this huge cloud of so many rivers and drops, should dry up, and rain no more. But we cannot conceive so of Christ: for if we should imagine millions of men and angels to have a coeternal dependent existence with Christ, and they eternally in the act of "receiving grace for grace out of his fullness," the flux and issue of grace should be eternal, as Christ is. For Christ cannot tire or weary from eternity to be Christ; and so, he must not, he cannot but be an infinite and eternal flowing sea, to diffuse and let out streams and floods of boundless grace. Say that the rose were eternal; the sweet smell, the loveliness of greenness and colour must be eternal.

Oh, what a happiness, for a soul to lose its excellency in His transcendent glory! What a blessedness for the creature, to cast in his little all, in Christ's matchless all-sufficiency! Could all the streams retire into the fountain and first spring, they should be kept in a more sweet and firm possession of their being, in the bosom of their first cause, than in their borrowed channels that they now move in. Our neighbourhood, and retiring in, to dwell forever and ever in the fountain-blessedness, Jesus Christ, with our borrowed goodness, is the firm and solid fruition of our eternal happy being. Christ is the sphere, the connatural first spring and element of borrowed drops, and small pieces of created grace. The rose is surest in being, in beauty, on its own stalk and root: let life and sap be eternally in the stalk and root, and the rose keep its first union with the root, and it shall never wither, never cast its blossom nor greenness of beauty. It is violence for a gracious soul to be out of his stalk and root; union here is life and happiness; therefore the Church's last prayer in canonic Scripture is for union, (Rev. 22:20.) "Amen: Even so, come, Lord Jesus." It shall not be well till the Father, and Christ the prime heir, and all the weeping children, be under one roof in the palace royal. It is a sort of mystical lameness, that the head wanteth an arm or a finger; and it is a violent and forced condition, for arm and finger to be separated from the head. The saints are little pieces of mystical Christ, sick of love for union. The wife of youth, that wants her husband some years, and expects he shall return to her from oversea lands, is often on the shore; every ship coming near shore is her new joy; her heart loves the wind that shall bring him home. She asks at every passenger news: "Oh! saw ye my husband? What is he doing? When shall he come? Is he shipped for a return?" Every ship that carrieth not her husband, is the breaking of her heart. What desires hath the Spirit and Bride to hear, when the husband Christ shall say to the mighty angels, "Make you ready for the journey; let us go down and divide the skies, and bow the heaven: I will gather my prisoners of hope unto me; I can want my Rachel and her weeping children no longer. Behold, I come quickly to judge the nations." The bride, the Lamb's wife, blesseth the feet of the messengers that preach such tidings, "Rejoice, O Zion, put on thy beautiful garments; thy King is coming." Yea, she loveth that quarter of the sky, that being rent asunder and cloven, shall yield to her Husband, when he shall put through his glorious hand, and shall come riding on the rainbow and clouds to receive her to himself.

schism undoubted in the body of Christ

Although Carl Trueman seems to have a more shrewd insight into what makes the Church of Scotland evangelical tick, several Free Church ministers here, here and here are inviting them over to the Free Church, in some cases with a glimmer of a promise of relaxed distinctives. Some of the comment makes reference to the scandal of schism. Yet it seems strange that only last week the Free Church General Assembly approved the December Commission of Assembly's removal of the suspension of the Free Church (Continuing) Ministers in 2000. We have no affiliation to either but the matter is extremely baffling. What is strange is that it was expressly stated: "strictly on the grounds that the FCC is a denomination distinct from and separate from the FCS as affirmed in the judgment of the Court of Session in the finding referred to above." "Were these men not now a separate and fully-operative church apart from the FCS there would be good reason for regarding their suspensions as still valid and such action as proposed here for the FCS to take would not be called for". The logic is impenetrable. It is strange because it is unclear how ecclesiastical discipline can be lifted purely on the basis that the parties are now in a separate denomination. Does this not give open licence to anyone to become a fugitive from discipline in that simply because they are within a different denomination? Does it not also undermine the church discipline if censures can be lifted without repentance on the behalf of the parties involved? This is acknowledged as a difficulty but said to be only a temporary departure from the principle that evidence of repentance is due from parties under discipline prior to their being restored. Not only this but it is expressly said that it is difficult to see how these suspensions can have any meaningful purpose for the FCS now, although this is not to admit that they were inappropriate when imposed'.

The FCS does not see the fact that the FCC is in direct competition as a censurable offence either. "The fact that the FCC may still claim to be the FCS, and thus the rightful successors to the 1843 Free Church, should not be regarded by the FCS as a barrier to removing the suspensions or undertaking any of the other proposals set out in this report".

All of this, apparently, should demonstrate that "the FCS will show publicly that they value highly the unity of Christ’s visible church and the interests of the gospel". Rather than recognise a schism and seek to heal it, they believe the best way to heal it is to recognise the other party as a separate denomination and this apparently removes the schism and restores peace. The fact that they go on to dwell upon resolving property issues shows that this motivation lies behind this action.

We can see how very far Scottish Presbyterianism has drifted from the true concern of the Westminster Divines and the Second Reformation, represented by James Durham, Samuel Rutherford and George Gillespie for the unity of the visible Church. Most presbyterian denominations in Scotland with their constant cycle of fraternal niceties seem to think that this constitutes unity and smoors over the fact of schism. The Westminster Divines were of an entirely different view. As James Walker records, when the Independents proposed to the Westminster Assembly a friendly co-existence and occasional communion, it was resolutely declined with the explanation. "That will be no plain and total separation," said the former ; "we shall be working substantially towards the same end." "So,"it was answered, "might the Donatists and Novatians have pled, and indeed almost all the separatists who have figured in the Church's history. Such separation was unknown in the apostles' time, unless it were
used by false teachers : all who professed Christianity then held communion together as one Church. If you can join with us occasionally in acts of worship, you ought to act with us in joint communion, not in separated congregations. God's way of revealing truth to such as are otherwise minded, is not by setting men at a distance from each other. That you should be a distinct Christian organization, taking members from our Churches who may have scruples of conscience, is schism undoubted in the body of Christ."

CofS General Assembly requires evangelicals to sin

This is what is behind the accurate Scotsman headline 'Kirk orders ban on gay minister debate'. Evangelicals adhere to what the ordination service in the Church of Scotland outlines: that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are the supreme rule of faith and life in the Church of Scotland. They are now being asked not to adhere to the Scriptures and denounce homosexuality as a sin. They have ruled that no members can speak in public on the issue of openly homosexual, non-celibate ministers. Only the Church and Society, HIV/Aids Project and Mission Discipleship committees can speak out on the broader issue of human sexuality. The General Assembly has instructed all authoritative bodies within Scotland's national church to avoid any public comment on the matter -- including press releases, briefings to the media, and blogging -- and to avoid taking any decisions in relation to 'contentious matters of human sexuality, with respect to Ordination and Induction to the Ministry of the Church of Scotland, until 31 May 2011'. They have done this while insisting that the induction of Scott Rennie proceeds.

What we are witnessing is the outworking of the controversial Life and Work editorial which stated. 'The dissenters who have taken ordination vows to preserve the unity and peace of the Church perhaps ought to 'agree to differ' on this and allow the Church of Scotland to remain a broad and inclusive church that can celebrate its diversity while remaining true to the Gospel.' They are being forced to agree to differ. In terms of the ordering of the Assembly's business evangelicals have been ambushed and outflanked and in terms of so-called 'unity', patronised and whitewashed. One evangelical was quoted as recognising this - members were now "effectively prevented from speaking out in public on this". This cannot possibly bind anyone authoritatively, apart from the fact that

two-thirds of the presbyters within the Church had no vote upon it their ordination vows resist it. Evangelicals must protest and speak out or else they are complying with sinful terms. The Lochcarron-Skye overture noted that "a lengthy period of reflection has elapsed without a resolution of the issue". This is now to be extended.

 

In commending the motion, the Rev Angus Morrison (once a very conservative evangelical) said any split in Church ranks would be a "deeply flawed" solution to the issue. "It is comparatively easy to split a church, but the challenge of healing the divisions is of an entirely different nature," he said. "The notion that these tensions within a church can best be solved by going separate ways is deeply flawed. It is a path rather to the multiplication of problems."  The idea is to let things cool down and take the momentum out of separation.

The decision has not gone under the Barrier Act which would make it constitutional as happened with the ordination of women which was passed with the consent of a majority of Presbyteries on 22nd May 1968. This may yet happen. The fact is that it was even before that point for evangelicals to realise that Scripture had been cast aside. This happened constitutionally, when the Confession was modified. It also happened in 1843 when a schism was made by those remaining in the CofS with those who realised that the constitution of the CofS could only be maintained outwith the Establishment.

The CofS and the rejection of the Bible

This is an addition to the previous post commenting on the recent debate.

 

What we see is that when Scripture is abandoned, all wisdom and reason are set aside any argument will do to defend personal preference, "they have rejected the word of the LORD; and what wisdom is in them?" (Jer. 8:9)

 

The Church of Scotland was once known as the fairest daughter of the Reformation on account of the purity and extent of her adherence to Scripture.

 

In the Scots Confession (1560) the Reformers write, "if any man will note in this our confession any article or sentence repugnant to God's holy word, that it would please him of his gentleness, and for Christian charity's sake, to admonish us of the same in writing; and we, of our honour and fidelity, do promise unto him satisfaction from the mouth of God (that is, from his holy scriptures), or else reformation of that which he shall prove to be amiss".

 

The Church of Scotland long ago abandoned this position and in doing so abandoned any moral claim to be known as the true heirs of such men. How infinitely far from it they are now. We ought to have the spirit of mourning.

 

"how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary!...Her filthiness is in her skirts; she remembereth not her last end; therefore she came down wonderfully: she had no comforter. O LORD, behold my affliction: for the enemy hath magnified himself.   The adversary hath spread out his hand upon all her pleasant things: for she hath seen that the heathen entered into her sanctuary, whom thou didst command that they should not enter into thy congregation". (Lam 1:1. 9, 10). 

 

The Church of Scotland has set out a clear stall

says Alyson Thomson, head of communications, "it is a modern church for a modern Scotland. The commission is delighted that the Church has, as Scott Rennie requested, taken an honest look at itself over the issue of sexuality and decided that the values of fairness, equality, dignity and respect are of more worth than those of ignorance and intolerance." The tone of this reflects the tone and type of argument adopted by those defending Rennie throughout the public portion of the debate.

The arguments are emotive, sociological and fallacious. The stall is anything but clear in terms of clear thinking and arguing.

First we have the fallacy of appealing to novelty (argumentum ad novitatem). This assumes that what is modern is good, correct or superior simply because it is modern.
This is also seen in the language used by the media to describe evangelical opposition under the label "traditionalists". The assumption is that because what is modern is good - the only reason you oppose it must be because you think that what is old and traditional is good.

It is entirely inflammatory and incorrect to describe the opposition as ignorant and intolerant. It is another fallacy, this time one that employs insultive, compromising or pejorative language to influence the judgement of others. It is also an ad hominem personal attack. Don't listen to the arguments of these people they are intolerant and ignorant. It doesn't matter how well the opposition reason then, they have been characterised as ignorant and shouldn't be listened to.

Then we have George Cowie of the Aberdeen Presbytery saying: "Are we to tell people that because of the way God made you, you must live alone and not have a life's companion?" This is the naturalistic fallacy or appeal to nature, which claims that what is, is what ought to be. Even Richard Dawkins can see the problem with this kind of argument, saying that a society that uses nature as a moral compass would be "a very nasty society in which to live". The point about this kind of argument is that it ignores the reality of sin, especially original sin. It assumes that what is "discovered" in the natural realm takes precedence over clear statements of Scripture. This is natural theology not only gone mad but gone very bad. Cowie goes on to exacerbate things by saying: "It was once considered to be an illness, or a lifestyle choice. Many, many people now consider it part of an individual's make-up."
This is the fallacy of the argumentum ad populum, appeal to majority thinking. This too is logically fallacious. Just because a belief is widely held does not mean it is correct; the more people that believe it doesn't increase its accuracy.

Reverend (sic) Lindsay Biddle of Affirmation Scotland, a group which supports gay and lesbian clergy, said: "Scripture does not address homosexuality, much less condemn it." There is no qualification of this or explanation. It is truly remarkable. It is the kind of argument that one thinks that if you assert it often enough, people will accept it, even though you don't defend it.

Rennie himself was describing his opponents as "those that don't want any change,".
He added: "We don't stone women, we don't stone adulterers, we've moved on from that." This is the idea that the position held by evangelicals is stone age and therefore to be dismissed. What has the mode of civil punishment of certain crimes which are always denounced as sin by Scripture to do with whether or not homosexuality is sinful? The idea is to insinuate that the opposition are like the Taliban.

Rev David Court and Rev Dr William Philip of the Fellowship of Confessing Churches, who opposed Rev Rennie's appointment said: "We deeply regret the decision of the General Assembly, which has brought great shame on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and his Church by publicly proclaiming as holy what God, the Bible, and orthodox Christianity all down the ages, and all over the world, unambiguously call sin.

"This is about far more than just sexuality. The very nature of the Christian gospel is at stake."

Rev Steven Reid, said:

"I think it deepens the divide. That's an accurate assessment of the situation we are in. There have been issues down the years, issues to do with the scriptures, and this has brought them to a head...For those of us who hold the scriptures to be the supreme rule of faith, the decision seems to fly in the face of that belief." The argument here is based on Scripture, which is an appeal to an authority above men's thinking.

the presbyterian downturn in Scotland

As many wait to see what the Church of Scotland will make of biblical morality at the end of this week there are other indications of a downturn on the ecclesiastical scene in Scotland.

Some of the debate turns upon what it means that 'the act of Ordination and Induction the Church of Scotland declares that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are the supreme rule of faith and life in the Church of Scotland'. The evangelicals have a tight interpretation of this but the response by the Aberdeen Presbytery notes that this statement 'has its origins in the first of the Articles Declaratory which declares, ‘The Church of Scotland adheres to the Scottish Reformation; receives the Word of God which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as its supreme rule of faith and life; and avows the fundamental doctrines of the Catholic
faith founded thereupon.’ The presbytery goes on to assert that the word of God is not 'synonymous with the Scriptures', 'but it can, in part, be discerned from the Scriptures through prayer and through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit'. This, they believe allows for widely varying interpretations according to individual experience.

It shows that the confessional revision movement has ultimately arrived at the point where no statement can express meaningfully the diversity of views within the Church of Scotland without being so vague as to mean that Scripture is interpreted entirely differently.

The Free Church have found this in their discussions with the CofS which some in the FC General Assembly unsuccessfully attempted to bring to a close. The idea of an associate presbytery had been dropped as unworkable, and there are no overt moves towards integration because the fundamental problem is still the authority of Scripture. The Convener of the Committee said, however, 'we have to take risks some times'. Which is no doubt exactly the objection in the minds of those trying to suspend the discussions. The question was asked as to why the joint report says 'both churches stand in the Reformed tradition'. The Convener responded: 'That is what they claim. It may be a different understanding to us'. A response which shows that they have entangled themselves in the same net as the evangelicals within the Church of Scotland by allowing vague statements to cover contrary positions. It isn't far from here to accepting a vague statement that covers contrary positions on the Scriptures also.

Yet there are problems of contrary positions within the Free Church itself. It's position and constitution couldn't be much clearer on paper. The most obvious is in relation to worship where a special General Assembly is expected to debate in 2010 whether the FC can adopt musical instruments and hymns. The strange thing is that those pushing overtly for the latter are bound by ordination vows which bind them solemnly to assert, maintain and defend the purity of worship in the Church which was clearly explained to them at ordination and induction to exclude hymns and musical instruments. There was a clear encouragement of freedom of expression on this which was contrary to those vows. ID Campbell picked up on the fact that the regulative principle was being skewed in the report by a reference to the primacy of Scripture. He pointed out: 'This report affirms the primacy of Scripture. Primacy is something you start from. Scripture is a finality not a primacy'.

'We have taken serious vows regarding a particular position on worship. We’re now being asked to approve a process in this report that begs serious questions. We seem to be asked to reinvent the wheel. It seems to be predetermining the outcome. He did not think he could approve a report that would allow songs of human compositions and instruments.'

Others defended the idea that one could have taken these vows and then challenge the Assembly for Scriptural proof of the position. This is absurd, if someone has taken vows and changed their minds it is not their business break their vows and then to change the Church's mind so that the vows can be changed.

Alex Macdonald raised an interesting point which was that in the period 1900 – 1904 'there was no focus whatsoever on the presence of worship, the practise at the time was to use psalms, hymns and instruments. It was not viewed as a fundamental principle of the Free Church'. This reveals the influence of the spirit of the Declaratory Act on the 1900 men and the fact that they were willing to allow everything to continue without correction to ensure that the property would be secured. This ambiguous position is the root of the current movement.

Some were arguing that it is not a constitutional matter - simply a case of changing legislation as had been done in the 19th Century. The Westminster Confession, however, requires singing of psalms only. Further the vows are part of the constitution and the Animus Imponentis was clear. The fact that the change is to be approved by a plenary Assembly and to go through the Barrier Act will make the change constitutional. Dr Kennedy would have separated from the FC if this step had been taken to constitutionalise impure worship. Why? The Free Church would have departed from its constitution and he could no longer keep his ordination vows by being part of it. The same will be the case for the FC now. Once this legislation goes through the procedure envisaged it can no longer be regarded as having a constitution equivalent to the FC of 1843.

The Art of Living Well to God

Apparently it was Aristotle who coined the phrase 'the art of living well'. He said that 'those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for these gave only life, those the art of living well'. When we consider these matters from a higher perspective we will see that it is God who gives life and he must teach us how we are to live well. The Reformation philosopher Petrus Ramus built upon Aristotle's phrase in his Commentariorum de religione christiana (1576), he defined theology as ars bene vivendi “ the art of living well”, which he divided into “the need for proper faith” and “the actions of faith, man’s observance of God’s laws”. This showed that it was not a philosophical question but rather a matter that could only come from revealed truth. William Ames, who popilarised the ideas and method of Ramus, improved upon the phrase by defining theology (Marrow, pp.1-3) as the 'art of living well to God'. He, together with William Perkins, was very much a pioneer of the practical theology of the Puritans. Ethics must have a summum bonum - a highest good, God himself is the standard and highest good. The Westminster Divines defined this well in speaking of man's chief end as being to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. The art of living well is summed up in that.

This was very much the concern of the puritans. Hence their commitment to spiritual diaries which allowed them to examine their lives. To the Puritan the art of living was the highest art form, as Owen Watkins indicates, this was the principle that lay behind Puritan autobiographies, ‘that the only masterpiece worthy of the name was to be achieved in the most complex and difficult of all forms of creative endeavour: a human life’ (Watkins, p.1). This is also why the puritans laid such stress upon sermons full of practical and experimental divinity. It was through authentic experience of the Word of God that the saint would live the life exemplified in Scripture. John Owen shows the progression of the experience of the Word. It begins with divinely assisted understanding, then follows ‘a spiritual sense of the goodness, power, and efficacy of the word and the things contained in it, in the conveyance of the grace of God unto our souls...By the one...our minds are refreshed; and by the other, our souls are nourished’. ‘To complete the experience intended, there follows hereon a conformity in the whole soul and conversation unto the truth of the word, or the mind of God in it, wrought in us by its power and efficacy’. Puritan sermons were therefore weighted towards application or the 'uses'of the doctrine of Scripture.

The puritan George Swinnock has a book which is rather like Thomas Watson's 'The Godly Man drawn with a scripture pencil'. The book is called 'The Christian Man's Calling' and in it he writes: 'I have drawn the saint's picture, by which thou mayest perceive somewhat of the beauty of his person, and the excellency and loveliness of his life. This indeed is the true life, all other but the shadow of living'. Godliness is a Godlikeness, bearing the image of the One who is entitled 'The Beauty of Holiness' and who clothes his own people in holy beauties from the womb of the morning. It is a likeness to Christ and a conformity to His image. To me to live is Christ. Living must be done in dependence upon the Son of God who loved His people and gave Himself for them. John Willison writes: O that we could learn the heavenly art of living by faith on the Son of God, by continued dependence on him, and making application to him for righteousness and strength; righteousness for removing our guilt, and justifying our persons before God ; and strength for performing duties, conquering lusts, and bearing crosses!'

Where is this found in the New Testament? The people of God are his 'workmanship' (poiema) which means a created thing. They are 'created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them' (Eph 2:10). In Titus 2:10 the saints are to 'adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things' - they are to have an order and arrangement in their lives that corresponds to the truth of Scripture. There is an order in beauty - the best things in the best order, the most attractive things in the most attractive order. They live 'as it becometh the gospel'. The beauty of the gospel in its perfect wisdom and grace, the manifold wisdom and grace of God, is reflected in their lives. Swinnock says that man is made to be the mirror of God's glory: 'Man is made as a glass, to represent the perfections that are in God. A glass can receive the beams of the sun into it, and reflect them back again to the sun. The excellencies of God appear abundantly in His works; man is made to be the glass where these beams of divine glory should be united and received, and also from him reflected back to God again.'Who would not desire this?

The life of faith is available to all. The poorest among us, and the least educated can travel this road to Heaven. The poor may have little opportunity to become wealthy or honourable, but they can live a truly happy life through faith! They can live such a life just as much as the greatest princes and learned educators. Whoever you are, if you desire to lift up your condition and change the few days of your pilgrimage into happier and longer days, faith is the art of living well, and living long! (Samuel Ward)

How one small nation changed the world

This is the title of a conference to be held later this year: Scotland's Global Impact - How one small nation changed the world! There is nothing of the religious impact upon the world made by Scotland in this conference, however. Unfortunately the Scots have the counter-legacy of the Englightenment to own up to also - as this book demonstrates.

Yet when President Mbeki of South Africa addressed the Scottish Parliament in 2001, almost all the historical links that he cited between the two countries were related to missionaries. Wherever Presbyterian churches exist throughout the world, Scotland's influence is witnessed, particularly in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. David Bogue in 1818 was so bold as to say: ‘Scotland has since the Reformation sent more saints to heaven than any country in Europe of the same population.’ We wonder if he would have been confirmed in this when he saw the fuller effects of the Scottish missionary movement. I recommend Chapter 8. The Hope and Scotland's Missionaries in Iain Murray's The Puritan Hope for further reading.Scotland’s first foreign missionary, Alexander Duff, declared: "Oh, what promises are ours, if we had only faith to grasp them! What a promise is that in the Great Commission – Go and make disciples of all nations, and lo I am with you, even to the end of the world! We go forth amongst the hundreds of millions of the nations; we find gigantic systems of idolatry and superstition consolidated for thousands of years … they tower as high mountains. But what does faith say? Believe and it shall be. And if any Church on earth will realise that faith, to that Church will the honour belong of evangelising the nations, and bringing down the mountains."

It was a clear eschatology that gave rise to this movement. Murray says: "The theological impetus which lay behind the new missionary era came from the Puritan books of the seventeenth century, which must be classified as Calvinistic." In his commentary on Psalm 72 David Dickson cites nineteen benefits that will ensue as the gospel prospers in all nations so that they call Christ blessed.

I wonder if more prayers have been made from Scotland in the past for the conversion of the Jews, an event that will certainly change the world. Iain Murray comments:

The future of the Jews had decisive significance for them because they believed that, though little is clearly revealed of the future purposes of God in history, enough has been given us in Scripture to warrant the expectation that with the calling of the Jews there will come far-reaching blessing for the world. Puritan England and Covenanting Scotland knew much of spiritual blessing and it was the prayerful longing for wider blessing, not a mere interest in unfulfilled prophecy, which led them to give such place to Israel

There is no place for pride, however, Scotland's own darkness is now so profound that it will not be long before she requires missionaries herself.

Keeping a Spiritual Diary

Keeping a spiritual diary is a practice that has often appeared wherever puritan piety is found. John Coffey and Paul C. H. Lim in the The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism describe the early Puritans in this way: "They prescribed a demanding regime of personal devotions, including godly reading, psalm-singing, prayer, fasting and spiritual meditation. They recommended practices of self-discipline, including keeping a spiritual diary and private covenanting." Isaac Ambrose in his Prima: The First Things in Relation to the Middle and Last Things, published in 1674, emphasised the importance of a spiritual diary and gave an example from his own. Thomas Goodwin found the practice helpful in his seven year struggle for personal assurance - during which time he was "intent on the conviction God had wrought in him, of the heinousness of sin, and of his own sinful and miserable state by nature; of the difference between the workings of natural conscience, though enlightened, and the motions of a holy soul, changed and acted by the Spirit, in an effectual work of peculiar saving grace. And accordingly he kept a constant diary." An excellent post on Puritan Diary keeping is here. I wonder if it is significant that in the past they kept private diaries and today we maintain public weblogs? 
 
It was also a feature of later piety. Jessie Thain's Diary is a good example. John Macdonald of Ferintosh - the apostle of the North - writes as follows.
'Among the many omissions of my past life [he was c.36] which I have to lament, that of not keeping a diary, containing some account of the Lord's dealing with my soul, and of the work of my ministry, is not the least. I was chiefly prevented from this by a false humility, and was not thinking anything done in me or by me worthy of being recorded; and as reckoning myself so far behind those who usually kept such diaries that it would be presumptuous on my part to attempt anything of that kind. I now find, however, that this was a mistake, and I have no doubt that Satan was at the bottom of it; for if the Lord wrought in me and by me in any measure, however unworthy I am -- and none is more so, as He knows, on the face of the earth -- His work deserves to be recorded, and some account of it might be serviceable to myself, useful to others, and conducive in some measure to His glory. I would, therefore, in future endeavour to keep some account of my labours, with anything in my own soul, in providence regarding me, or in my success in the vineyard, which may be deserving of notice. And I begin with this year (1816).'

Praying for the Reign of Grace Over All the Earth

The Larger Catechism asks the question
Question 191: What do we pray for in the second petition [of the Lord's prayer]?
Answer: In the second petition (which is, Thy kingdom come), acknowledging ourselves and all mankind to be by nature under the dominion of sin and Satan, we pray, that the kingdom of sin and Satan may be destroyed, the gospel propagated throughout the world, the Jews called, the fulness of the Gentiles brought in; the church furnished with all gospel officers and ordinances, purged from corruption, countenanced and maintained by the civil magistrate: that the ordinances of Christ may be purely dispensed, and made effectual to the converting of those that are yet in their sins, and the confirming, comforting, and building up of those that are already converted: that Christ would rule in our hearts here, and hasten the time of his second coming, and our reigning with him forever: and that he would be pleased so to exercise the kingdom of his power in all the world, as may best conduce to these ends.

The Southern Presbyterian William Swan Plumer, a good commentator and an attractive experimental writer writes on this subject in 'The rock of our salvation' and provides a prayer that illustrates this spirit.

God's people can pray for the reign of grace over all the earth. Such supplications are agreeable to the will of God. Psa. 122:6. The first three petitions of the Lord's prayer embrace the same subject. There is too little united, hearty calling on God. All the progress hitherto made in bringing men to a saving knowledge of the Redeemer has been in answer to the fervent cries of the children of God. There is nothing more powerful for good than prayer.

There should be a much deeper tone of piety in all the churches. Love is too cold. Faith too often staggers. Repentance -sheds too few tears. Joy has but few feasts. Pity for the perishing too seldom stirs the soul to its depths. Adoring views of God have too little power over men's minds. Hope is too feeble to impart much animation.

Holy, holy, holy Lord God of hosts ! The whole earth is full of thy glory. Blessed be the Lord for the precious things of heaven, for the dew, and for the deep that coucheth beneath, and for the precious fruits brought forth by the sun,and for the precious things put forth by the moon, and for the chief things of the ancient mountains, and for the precious things of the lasting hills, and for the precious things of the earth, and the fulness thereof. Still more would we bless thee for the good will of Him that dwelt in the bush, and for thy precious loving-kindness, and for the precious seed of gospel truth, and for the precious promises, and for precious faith to believe thy word, and for the precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, and for the precious death of thy saints, and for the precious name of Jesus, which is as ointment poured forth, and for the precious blood of the Son of God, through whom we have redemption. Look in mercy on this dark world. Remember Zion. Make Joseph a fruitful bough, whose branches run over the wall. Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion. Bring back the captivity of thy people, that Jacob may rejoice and Israel be glad. Thou hast set thy Son on thy holy hill of Zion. Righteousness is the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. Hasten the time when the wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the young .lion and the fat- ling together, and a child shall lead them; and the cow and the bear shall feed, and their young ones lie down together, and the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the nations shall learn war no more, and thy ancient people the Jews and the fulness of the Gentiles shall be brought in; when the kingdoms of the world shall become the kingdoms of the Lord and of his Christ; when the Lord shall call them his people which are not now his people; when the angel shall fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people.

Lord God of hosts, cut short the work in righteousness. Let the ploughman overtake the reaper, and let a nation be born in a day.

"Pity the nations, O our God;
Constrain the earth to come ;
Send thy victorious word abroad,
And bring the strangers home."

We are indeed asking great things, but we do it at thy command. We ask no more than thou hast promised to thy Son, and no more than he has purchased by his most precious blood, and no more than he himself intercedes for in heaven. Amen.

Scotland's heritage

Scotland has had an influence in spiritual terms far beyond its size. The Scottish Church was the fairest daughter of the Reformation. The number of theologians and theological books produced in Scotland was beyond the proportions of its economic prosperity and wealth. It may not have been perfect in the reviving and reforming times of the Covenant but it achieved what no other nation has. The historian Symington shows that it appeared at this time as the Church shall appear in the millennium: "But above all these, to the Christian, to the lover of the Saviour and His Church, this period is pregnant with instruction and with promise, the brightest day of Scotland’s Church—a day in which millennial glory seems to dawn. A Church, holding directly after her Head in heaven, with doctrines, and institutions, and polity based immediately on the Holy Scriptures; with standards so excellent; with ministers so pious and faithful; with people so enlightened and devoted; allied to a Christian reformed State, without any encroachment upon its independence or compromise of her own; with schools for Scriptural education and seats of learning consecrated by sound religion; and banded together in holy Covenant; and standing fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made her free, and resolutely prosecuting her proper purposes, presents, an object commanding admiration. This is the Church of Scotland with ,which we aspire to the honour of being identified."

Andrew Cant said the following at the time of the National Covenant:

How far other nations have outstripped Scotland in naturals, we have outstripped them in spirituals. Her pomp is less, her purity more. They had more of Antichrist than she, She had more of Christ than they. They have but an ill said mass in England. Satan gets through in lordly supremacy, pomp and fairding, whorish buskings.. men's precepts, medley of rites.

But where is this Scotland today?

Israel and the Church : part 2

The previous post re:Israel and the Church should be understood from the right perspective and we trust that this was reasonably clear. There are three main perspectives in relation to Israel and the Church.
1) Replacement Theology. This perspective teaches that the Church replaces Israel. Charles D. Provan's title "The Church is Israel Now" may not intend to signify this but it is certainly unfortunate and not a phraseology to be used. Replacement Theology (sometimes called Supercessionism) was taken to its very unpleasant anti-Semitic extreme in medieval Roman Catholicism. This perspective asserts that the Church exactly replaces Israel, so that the latter is always to be read into the Old Testament as the replacement of the former.
2)Repudiation theology. The perspective that repudiates any connection between Israel and the Church. It is a view classically espoused by Dispensationalism which views the Church as a mystery which is unmentioned and unknown in Old Testament Times. According to this view it is a parenthesis required as a contingency plan because Israel rejected Christ as Messiah. The prophetic time-clock for Israel has therefore been paused at this point but will resume because the Mosaic covenant with Israel is intended to be permanent. Interestingly Romanism has now shifted to the idea that this covenant is permanent and the Jews are saved in their own way.
3) Reform Theology. The third perspective is that the Church represents an extension of Israel because there is only one overall people of God and one overall covenant. This is the view of covenant theology. The Church is the reform or renewal of Israel. The New Covenant extends what was already present in the Old Covenant. Hebrews 9:9-11 identifies the New Testament era as the time of reformation in speaking of the tabernacle and its ceremonial ordinances:

"Which was a figure for the time then present, in which were offered both gifts and sacrifices, that could not make him that did the service perfect, as pertaining to the conscience; Which stood only in meats and drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordinances, imposed on them until the time of reformation. But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building"

These perspectives have a connection with eschatology. Replacement theology is seen in classical A-Millennialism of the pessimistic variety. Augustine espoused this view. Consistent A-Millennialists see no role for ethnic Israel and no unfulfilled prophecy related to them. OT prophecy is exclusively interpreted as fulfilled in the Gentile Church. Preterism especially full-preterism has a tendency to replacement theology. The only exception is where partial preterism may join with the optimistic A-Millennial in expecting a conversion of the Jews.

The repudiation of a connection between Israel and the Church is, as mentioned, connected to Dispensationalism and similar types of premillennialism.

Postmillenialism is the most consistent application of Reform theology in that it sees a role for ethnic Israel in being brought back to its olive tree and Israel blossoming and budding and filling the face of the earth with fruit.

There is also an ecclesiological aspect to these perspectives.

Roman Catholicism (and Episcopalianism to an extent)is an express imitation of the ceremonial forms of Israel with its sacrificing priesthood and festivals. Erastianism assumes that the Church should be governed as Israel was with a monarch at its head, according to an erroneous interpretation.

Repudiation between Israel and the Church is applied in areas of Church Government and practice such as baptism rejecting the application of the seal of the covenant to children and the sabbath, in some cases rejecting the abiding principle of the sabbath. It says that unless something is expressly commanded in the New Testament it is no longer applicable to the Church.

The reform view of Israel and the Church sees continuity and extension of the principles established in Israel's church government but does not see the ceremonial ordinances only imposed until the time of reformation as permanent. What has not been abrogated continues. This is the view upheld by presbyterianism.

It should be recognised that individuals are more or less consistent in applying these things. Thus there are amillennialist presbyterians and postmillennial baptists. Nevertheless the broad observations obtain.

The Church as the True Israel

What is the Church? To ask this question is almost to ask a similar question concerning God's kingship and kingdom. God is king over all things in relation to his creation, He is completely sovereign. "His Kingdom ruleth over all" (Ps. 103:19). God's Kingdom (Heb. Malkuth) is his kingly rule. There is the kingly rule of His power in nature, and the kingly rule of His grace amongst men that are the recipients of his special grace (Exodus 19:6). Even in His complete sovereignty God shares His kingly rule in a limited sphere as a grace gift to those He chooses to make His servants (1Chron. 17:14).

The phrase "the kingdom of God" is frequent in the Gospels and that reminds us of the intense expectation surrounding this matter at that time. It was prophesied in connection with the coming of Messiah and it meant that instead of rebellion and disobedience, Israel would truly bow to the kingly rule of God's grace and therefore know the LORD's continued blessing (Matt 6:10). Messiah would bring the kingdom (Luke 11:20 & Mark 1:14-15).

The Prophets, however, spoke of only a remnant initially being formed by means of whom Israel would ultimately be saved (Jer. 23:3, Zech. 13:7-9, Micah 4:4-7 & 5:1-4, Is. 4; Is. 53:1). In Micah 4 the remnant becomes the seed or new root of Israel and determines the nature and form that it will take. Christ's phrase in Luke 12:32 (“it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom”) is based upon this and Daniel 7:22&27, which speaks of the kingdom being given to the saints of God. The remnant is not a new Israel rather it is the true Israel. The new covenant likewise is a renewed covenant rather than a discontinuous entirely separate “covenant. The true Israelite in the Old Testament was the one who had circumcised his heart as well as having been circumcised in the flesh (Rom. 2:28-29). Christ calls those true Israelites who imitated the faith of their father Abraham such as Nathanael. The true Israel remnant were always found in the Old Testament Israel (Rom. 9:6) but the promise of the gospel is that this remnant will be expanded entirely, recognised as the true Israel with unfaithful Israel cut off and the Gentiles brought in. The olive tree of the Church (Romans 11) remains the same, but the Gentiles have been “grafted in” and “made partakers”, with the true Israel of God.

Since the time of John the baptist, the kingdom was announced (Luke 16:16), Christ was coming to baptize Israel with spirit and fire (Matt 3:11-12): to baptize true Israel (the repentant remnant) with the Holy Spirit and unrepentant Israel with the fire of judgement. John the baptist was preaching in order to call out a repentant remnant, denying that merely genetic Israel (Abraham's genetic descendants) constituted the true Israel (Matt 3:9 & Luke 3:8). Josephus (a historian contemporary) tells us that John was "commanding the Jews...“to come together“ in Baptism". He was fulfilling Ezekiel 36:25 and Isaiah 52:15 amongst other prophecies, which is why he was thought to be claiming Messiahship or at least to be Elijah who would prepare Messiah's way (John 1:25).

Christ was building a new temple (John 2:19-210 on himself as the cornerstone (Isaiah 28:14-16, I Pet. 2:4-8). Christ calls his disciples and teaches them the true Law of Moses on a mount in a way corresponding to the giving of the law at Sinai. He reveals the true depth of the law - he becomes the new Moses as the greater Prophet (Mark 3:13&14, Matt 5:1ff. Acts 3:22; Deut 18:15-18). Christ chooses 12 from all of his disciples. They are the true representatives of Israel, when they sit down with Christ to the Last Supper that inaugurates the New Covenant in similarity to the Old Covenant covenant meal (Exod. 24:1-12 esp. v11, cp. Luke 22:14&29-30 & Matt 19:28.). The Transfiguration also mirrored Exodus 24 in the small group brought with Jesus to the mountain to to see the glory. The voice that spoke indicated the law was now being delivered to Israel through Christ, as Moses' presence confirmed. It was being delivered not through Moses as mediator, but Christ Himself.

Why does Christ gather 12 main disciples? Surely to represent Israel (12 tribes) and the remnant which is the true Israel (Luke 22:29-30) since judgement is to come upon the nation. The twelve were chosen for a reason, as instruments in God's hand so that the true vine of the true Israel would bring forth lasting fruit (John 15:16). The great complaint against Israel in the prophets was that they did not bring forth fruit, they were an empty vine (Isaiah 5). The twelve and the seventy (cp. Ex 24 – 70 elders) were brought (as the remnant) into the mystery of God's purposes (Mt 11:25; Luke 10:21) namely, the mystery of the kingdom of God (Mk 4:1; cp. Mt 13:16-17 and Luke 10:23-4).

Christ then sends out the twelve and the seventy. It is important to notice the significance of the seventy. These correspond to the Sanhedrin and to the seventy elders of Exodus 24. The sanhedrin numbered seventy one because the high priest was the head of it. The sanhedrin was the ultimate church court of Israel like a Synod or General Assembly it was the supreme court (2 Chron 19:8-9). Christ as high priest was issuing and commissioning a new sanhedrin for the true Israel. The sanhedrin was composed of priests, scribes or Levites and elders (mainly Pharisees). When we read of these together or some of them they are described as “scribes and elders or in the Jew's shorthand, simply “the Jews” - meaning the rulers of the Jews. Sometimes they are called either the “scribes” or “the elders” (Mk 7:1and 5). Christ calls his disciples sent forth “scribes” (Mt 13:52 and Mt 23:34). At a particular time of reformation, the elder-judges in the Old Testament were sent forth with authority to establish the law of God and teach it in all the cities of Israel (2 Chron 19:5-7). The seventy were appointed also to relieve the work of the twelve and to share it in the way that Moses shared it with the seventy elders (Exodus 18).

In Mark 6:30 a technical term is used - “apostle”. In Hebrew this was “sheliakh”, an officer appointed by the Sanhedrin to represent them – the sheliakh had legal authority, fully representing the council in an action, mission or place. An example of this is Saul of Tarsus who, as is not always realised, was converted from being a false apostle (sent by the Sanhedrin) to being a true apostle (sent by Christ) as well as being converted by grace. It was normal that these officers should be sent in at least two's when representing the senders in some activity. We see in Christ's sending out apostles to preach that he sent them out by two's, the apostles followed this pattern in the missionary activity recorded in Acts. The Mishnah states in this respect (as the Jewish book of practice) “he who is sent by a man is as he who sent him”. Thus Christ gives his authority to his disciples, saying “he that receiveth you, receiveth me” and “as the Father sent me, so send I you” (Mt 10:40; Jn 20:21; Luke 10:16). Paul also sees his role as the ambassador of Christ in this respect, that he stands in Christ's stead (2 Cor 5:20). The disciples were only to go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Mt 10:6), in fulfiilment of Isaiah 40:9-11; 52:7&9). The apostles were given authority, full power over the evils of demons and diseases. The fact that Christ spoke through the disciples and the apostles (Eph 2:16-17) was attested by the miracles that he performed through them (Acts 2:33; Hebrews 2:3-4).

The Church is the true Israel only because Christ himself is the true Israel (Hos. 11:1; cf. Mt. 2:15). He is Abraham's seed (Gal. 3:16). Christ came born of a woman, born under law (Gal. 4:4), as the true Israel who would obey the commandments of God by perfectly keeping the covenant (Mt. 2:14-21) and suffer the curse for their covenant breaking (Gal. 3:13,14). Christ sent out the twelve with all authority before his ascension (cf. Matthew 28: 18-20). At the right hand of God, rules his people (Eph. 2:12-22; Col. 1:12-15; Heb. 2:14,15).

The fundamental principle of the Church is then that it is the true Israel as Paul insists (Rom. 2:28-29; 9:6; Gal. 6:16; 1 Pet. 1:1; 2:9-10; Jas. 1:1; Rom. 4:11-17; Gal. 3:7; Eph. 2:14ff; Philippians 3:3). Christ instituted a new Sanhedrin for the true Israel, a new government of his making and calling. When we consider the government of the Church therefore we must see that it will have a form continuous with that of the Old Testament. The Church was not a Jewish sect or a charismatic cult springing up separately in diverse and strange communities and forms wherever it appeared. It was nothing less than the true Israel to which all the prophets gave witness (Acts 7:38; Amos 9:11-12 cp. Acts 15:15-18; Acts 13:17; cf. Deuteronomy 7:7).

For an overview of the way in which Scripture shows that the Church is Israel now, read Charles D. Provan's booklet with that title. It is a collection of relevant Bible verses under various headings to demonstrate this truth.

The roots of Erastianism: Property disputes

Erastianism is the idea that there is no distinction between the church and state in a Christian state but that the head of the state is the visible head of the church also. Besides the Westminster Standards, George Gillespie showed convincingly in his writings that there were distinct ecclesiastical courts in the Old Testament which were not subject to the king. The other significant point that refutes Erastianism is that there can be only one head of the Church.

How did Erastianism begin?
Erastianism began after the time of Constantine and became established in the Byzantine empire. The church was controlled by the Emperor, a phenomenon known as “caesaro-papalism".

This position took a while to establish itself and met with some understandable resistance. It gained its foothold, however, through church splits and resulting property disputes. It was the Donatist schismatics who in 313 appealed to the emperor Constantine in a property dispute and asked him to turn the case over to the bishops of Gaul for determination. This was ironic because their leader Donatus had once himself said: “What has the Emperor to do with the Church?”

The emperor Constantine had a certain reluctance to be involved but turned the case over to the bishop of Rome Miltiades, instead and arranged the detail of who should attend. Miltiades reinforced the secularisation of the church by conducting the case according to Roman civil law and the outcome was not favourable to the Donatists.

The Donatists then complained once more to the emperor and Constantine summoned the Council of Arles. This was the first time that a civil ruler had taken the initiative in convening a church council. The Council ruled against Donatists and they appealed once more to the emperor. This time Constantine agreed to hear them himself. This was the most ominous step because it was not simply the state instructing the church to try the case but the state assuming the power of settling church issues. It meant of course, that the emperor had to enter into matters of doctrinal dispute

Perhaps realising how far things had gone the Synod of Antioch in 341 ruled that ‘direct recourse to the emperor is forbidden’. It was too late, however, and gradually the imperial power over the church became too much to resist. The Synod of Antioch had some experience of this. There had been something of a precedent before the time of Constantine when the Roman Empire was still heathen. It was in the case of the heretic Paul of Samosata. Paul taught that Jesus Christ was born a mere man, but that at his baptism he was infused with the divine Logos or Word of God.

In 269, the Synod of Antioch deposed Paul as bishop and elected Dominus as his successor. Despite being deposed, Paul refused to acknowledge this and continued to function as before and continued to occupy the bishop's house in Antioch. Paul held the civil office of Procurator ducenarius, and was protected by Zenobia, the Queen of Palmyra but when she was defeated in battle in 272 events changed. Appeal was made to Aurelian the Emperor who who ejected Paul of Samosata from the house handed the matter of who should occupy it over to the Bishops of Italy. It was an ominous step for Christians to appeal to a heathen Emperor because the basis upon which the emperor claimed his right to accept judicial appeal in a religious matter was as Pontifex Maximumus or Chief Priest of all cults or religions right. Aurelian was a pagan and later persecuted Christians.

There was discussion at various times as to how the situation could be managed and contained. It was considered by some that ecclesiastical courts' decisions, viz. of a final authoritative synod, must not be appealed to the emperor since such appeals gave the emperor important opportunities to interfere in church affairs. The flood gate once opened, however, was not easily held back.

The origins of Erastianism are instructive for this very reason. It may find a foothold even in a presbyterian nation and church that historically oppose it by the same means that we have noted above. For instance, the Free Church of Scotland constituted in 1843 in protest against Erastianism, state interference in the Church and the civil courts reviewing the decisions of Church courts. In 1900, the minority Free Church took the matter of determining which was the true Free Church to the civil courts in order to claim the material assets, particularly property, of the Free Church. Part of the reason that they remained within the Church after the Declaratory Act had been retained in its constitution was that the Constitutionalists had consulted eminent legal opinion about property in the winter 1892-3 in Scotland and England but it was not favourable to their retaining property unless Union came about. According to Free Church Counsel Mr Johnson in the 1904 case, it was a case of waiting till the best legal grounds for contesting the property came up - "We have certainly resisted, and when it comes to touch property, then is our opportunity". Ultimately, the case was successful at the House of Lords who seemed to be some toehold in determining the finer points of Calvinism. Yet the churches still required the State to establish a Royal Commission in order to determine how the property should be divided. To allow the State the right to review the civil consequences of the decisions of church courts appears to give it the role of a court of appeal from any decision of a church court, particularly in the light of the State's obsession with discrimination legislation.

These things work differently where there is an established connexion between Church and State so that the latter, in George Gillespie's words, “taketh care also for maintaining the ministers and schools, and supplieth the temporal necessities of God's servants”. In this case, however, the property and emoluments belong to the State and not the Church.

Gillespie's One hundred and eleven propositions concerning the ministry and government of the church defines clearly the role of Church and State and were approved by the Church of Scotland at its General Assembly. Gillespie says that the Scriptures forbid “the Christian magistrate to enter upon or usurp...the judicial dispensing of the keys of the kingdom of heaven, to invade the church government” “but if any magistrate (which God forbid) should dare to arrogate to himself so much, and to enlarge his skirts so far, the church shall then straightway be constrained to complain justly, and cry out, that though the Pope is changed, yet popedom remaineth still”. Doctrinal determination of the principles of a church appears to involve the invasion of church government. As Gillespie goes on to say: “It is unlawful, moreover, to a Christian magistrate to withstand the practice and execution of ecclesiastical discipline (whether it be that which belongs to a particular church, or the matter be carried to a class or synod)”. Gillespie qualifies this to allow for absolute extraordinary emergencies when the Church has collapsed morally and in “the worst and most troublesome of times”, “when nothing almost is sound or whole”. There is also the qualification that civil laws are not to be disobeyed as far as obedience is consistent with obedience to God – likewise the Church has no business in “disturbing the peace and order of the commonwealth”.

The most telling proposition, however, is number 85.

“85. Yet ordinarily, and by common or known law and right in settled churches, if any man have recourse to the magistrate to complain, that, through abuse of ecclesiastical discipline, injury is done to him, or if any sentence of the pastors and elders of the church, whether concerning faith or discipline, do displease or seem unjust unto the magistrate himself, it is not for that cause lawful to draw those ecclesiastical causes to a civil tribunal, or to bring in a kind of political or civil popedom.”

Proposition 85 speaks of a situation where processes and procedures have not been followed correctly in that it speaks of where "through abuse of Ecclesiastick Discipline, injury is done". I would emphasise the word abuse, if Gillespie wished to refer to injury incurred by the proper or lawful exercise of church discipline he would not have needed to insert the word "abuse".

The same principle of no appeal beyond the supreme court of the church to the State is asserted by the Covenanter James Durham. "If all that [steps of Matt. 18] does not prevail, private persons may communicate it to other church officers; and no redress following, it is their duty to follow it before the competent superior judicatories. For Christ's directions, Tell the church, imports, and warrants the same.If it is asked, 'What further is to be done, if that fails?' ANSWER. We know no other public redress. Christ has left it there, and so may we also…That it is thus necessary for private persons to acquiesce in the church's determination, in manner as has been said, may appear from the unsettledness and confusion, both in private and public, which would otherwise follow. For either there must be a sisting in this determination of the church or there must be some other period to fix at, or there must be no fixing at all. Neither of the two last can be said, therefore etc. Not the last, to wit that there is no fixing at all; for so a particular person that was offended, would not know what was duty, or what to follow, and it would infer a defect in the Lord's ordinance in reference to his people's direction and peace in such cases, which is most absurd. If the second is said, viz. that there is some other thing to fix on for quieting of consciences in such a case, as to their exoneration beyond that public decision, we desire to know what that is which is called for, and by what rule we are to proceed in it?" p.116 James Durham, A Treatise Concerning Scandals.

It is for this reason that when one minister in the Reformed Church of Scotland in the 16th century appealed to the civil courts against his discipline, he was immediately deposed. The Claim, Declaration and Protest of 1843 describes this:

“The General Assembly having, in the year 1582, proceeded to inflict the censures of the Church upon Robert Montgomery, minister of Stirling, for seeking to force himself, under a presentation from the King, into the archbishopric of Glasgow, contrary to an act of the General Assembly discharging the office of Prelatic bishop in the Church, and for appealing to the secular tribunals against the infliction of Church censures by the Church Courts, and seeking to have these suspended and interdicted—and having deposed and excommunicated him, notwithstanding of an interdict pronounced by the Privy Council of Scotland, the then supreme secular court of the kingdom—and having at the same time declared it to be part of the subsisting discipline of the Church, that any ministers thereof who “should seek any way by the civil power to exempt and withdraw themselves from the jurisdiction of the Kirk, or procure, obtain, or use any letters or charges, etc., to impair, hurt, or stay the said jurisdiction, discipline, etc., or to make any appellation from the General Assembly to stop the discipline or order of the ecclesiastical policy or jurisdiction granted by God’s Word to the office-bearers within the said Kirk,” were liable to the highest censures of the Church; although their sentence of excommunication was declared by one of the Acts of Parliament of the year 1584, commonly called the “Black Acts,” to be void, yet ultimately the King and Privy Council abandoned their interference. Montgomery submitted to the Church Courts, and the statute of the twelfth Parliament of King James VI., already mentioned (1592, c. 116), cassed and annulled “all and whatsoever acts, laws, and statutes made at any time before the day and date thereof, against the liberty of the true Kirk, jurisdiction and discipline thereof, as the same is used and exercised within this realm;” since which enactment, no similar interference with the discipline and censures of the Church was ever attempted till the year 1841.”

Gillespie's following propositions clearly show his mind that Church courts are sufficient and there needs to be no appeal to the state.

87. Again, it hath been before showed, that to ecclesiastical evils ecclesiastical remedies are appointed and fitted, for the church is, no less than the commonwealth, through the grace of God, sufficient to itself in reference [pg 5-033] unto her own end, and as in the commonwealth, so in the church, the error of inferior judgments and assemblies, or their evil government, is to be corrected by superior judgments and assemblies, and so still by them of the same order, lest one order be confounded with another, or one government be intermingled with another government. What shall now the adversaries of ecclesiastical power object here, which those who admit not the yoke of the magistrate may not be ready, in like manner, to transfer against the civil judicatories and government of the commonwealth, seeing it happeneth sometimes that the commonwealth is no less ill governed than the church?

88. If any man shall prosecute the argument, and say that yet no remedy is here showed which may be applied to the injustice or error of a national synod, surely he stumbleth against the same stone, seeing he weigheth not the matter with an equal balance, for the same may, in like sort, fall back and be cast upon parliaments, or any supreme senate of a commonwealth, for who seeth not the judgment of the supreme civil senate to be nothing more infallible, yea, also, in matters of faith and ecclesiastical discipline, more apt and prone to error (as being less accustomed to sacred studies) than the judgment of the national synod? What medicines then, or what sovereign plasters shall be had, which may be fit for the curing and healing of the errors and miscarriages of the supreme magistrates and senate? The very like, and beside all this, other and more effectual medicines by which the errors of national synods may be healed, are possible to be had.

89. There wanteth not a divine medicine and sovereign balm in Gilead, for although the popish opinion of the infallibility of counsels be worthily rejected and exploded, yet it is not in vain that Christ hath promised he shall be present with an assembly which indeed and in truth meeteth in his name with such an assembly verily he useth to be present, by a spiritual aid and assistance of his own Spirit, to uphold the falling, or to raise up the fallen. Whence it is that divers times the errors of former synods are discovered and amended by the latter; sometimes, also, the second or afterthoughts of one and the same synod are the wiser and the better.

90. Furthermore, the line of ecclesiastical subordination is longer and further stretched than the line of civil subordination; for a national synod must be subordinate and subject to an universal synod in the manner aforesaid, whereas yet there is no oecumenical parliament or general civil court acknowledged, unto which the supreme civil senate in this or that nation should be subject. Finally, neither is the church altogether destitute of nearer remedies whether an universal council may be had or not.

the future of evangelicalism

Time magazine's photo essay on "The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals" is distinguished by people that really aren't evangelical at all. If this defines evangelicalism, it is in serious trouble. Time's coverage of the 'new Calvinism' of Generation X may prompt some concerns too.  Someone has been blogging on their expectations of significant decline for evangelicalism over the next 10 years and "that within two generations of where we are now evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its current occupants". The blogger is eschatologically optimistic but not optimistic for evangelicalism.

He gives as his reasons:

• Evangelicals have lost the culture war and will be damagingly identified with this.
• "Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people the evangelical Christian faith in an orthodox form that can take root and survive the secular onslaught".
• "Evangelical churches have now passed into a three part chapter: 1) mega-churches that are consumer driven, 2) churches that are dying and 3) new churches that whose future is dependent on a large number of factors. I believe most of these new churches will fail, and the ones that do survive will not be able to continue evangelicalism at anything resembling its current influence."
• "Christian education has not produced a product that can hold the line in the rising tide of secularism."
• In a strongly secularist environment we can expect "evangelical ministries to take on a less and less distinctively Christian face in order to survive".
• "Much of this collapse will come in areas of the country where evangelicals imagine themselves strong. In actual fact, the historic loyalties of the Bible belt will soon be replaced by a de-church culture where religion has meaning as history, not as a vital reality. At the core of this collapse will be the inability to pass on, to our children, a vital evangelical confidence in the Bible and the importance of the faith".
• A major aspect of this collapse will happen because money will not be flowing towards evangelicalism in the same way as before.

What will be left as a result? 1) an evangelicalism greatly chastened in numbers, influence and resources and far from its doctrinal heritage including the gospel, 2) a remaining majority of Charismatic-Pentecostal Christians faced with the opportunity to reform or become unrecognizable, 3) an invigorated minority of evangelicals committed to theology and church renewal, 4) a marginalized emerging and mainline community and 5) an evangelicalized segment of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy 6) the death of fundamentalism 7) the death of large parachurch organisations. One blogger comments here .

 

This analysis must at some level owe a lot to Francis Schaeffer's book published in 1984, The Great Evangelical Disaster. The great evangelical disaster was "the failure of the evangelical world to stand for truth as truth. There is only one word for this -- namely accommodation: the evangelical church has accommodated to the world spirit of the age". It was a fairly to stand for Scripture (abandoning inerrancy) unequivocably and to stans against cultural decline. He wrote "we can expect the future to be a further disaster if the evangelical world does not take a stand for biblical truth and morality in the full spectrum of life". The following comment was incisive "It does seem to me that evangelical leaders, and every evangelical Christian, have a very special responsibility not to just go along with the "blue-jean syndrome" of not noticing that their attempts to be "with it" so often take the same forms as those who deny the existence or holiness of the living God. Accommodation leads to accommodation-which leads to accommodation..." It was a call to arms that was only partially heeded. Other subsequent writers such as David F Wells and Michael Horton have been more critical that evangelicalism is selling out completely on all of its historic principles.

How do you define evangelicalism? The historian David Bebbington gives it a largely doctrinal definition: crucicentrism [substitutionary atonement], conversionism, biblicism [the sole authority and inerrancy of the bible], and activism. This only fits in the loosest of senses that would blur any distinction with Barthian theology, for instance. 

D. G. Hart, in Deconstructing Evangelicalism argues that evangelicalism is "a minimalist account of the Christian faith" and "a concept that has obscured more of Christianity than it has revealed and should be abandoned as a separate religious identity". He also queries whether it can be properly defined and therefore really exists as a distinct movement. A very insightful series of articles 'Evangelical or Reformed' by Rev. H.M Cartwright in the Free Presbyterian Magazine covered this question, the first article is here (scroll down to p.213) with further articles in subsequent months .

 

We need those who have an understanding of the times. How do these observations fit within the total purpose of the history of redemption? Jonathan Edwards' book  which has that title shows how the millennium is the goal of redemptive history. It is the purpose towards which God in providence is directing history. 

He wrote "We have all reason to conclude from the Scriptures, that just before this work of God begins, it will be a very dark time with respect to the interests of religion in the world. It has been so before preceding glorious revivals of religion: when Christ came, it was an exceeding degenerate time among the Jews; and so it was a very dark time before the Reformation. And not only so, but it seems to be foretold in Scripture, that it shall be a time of but little religion, when Christ shall come to set up his kingdom in the world. Thus when Christ spake of his coming, to encourage his elect, who cry to him day and night, in Luke xviii. 8 he adds, "Nevertheless, when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?" Which seems to denote a great prevalency of infidelity just before Christ's coming to avenge his suffering church.—Though Christ's coming at the last judgment is not here to be excluded, yet there seems to be a special respect to his coming to deliver his church from their long-continued suffering, persecuted state, which is accomplished only at his coming at the destruction of Antichrist. Then will be accomplished the following passages, Rev. vi. 10. "How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth." and Rev. xviii. 20. "Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles, and prophets, for God hath avenged you on her."

It is now a very dark time with respect to the interests of religion, wherein there is but a little faith, and a great prevailing of infidelity on the earth. There is now a remarkable fulfilment of that in 2 Pet. iii. 3. "Knowing this, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts." And so Jude 17, 18. "But, beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; how that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts." Whether the times shall be any darker still, or how much darker, before the beginning of this glorious work of God, we cannot tell."

Lachlan Mackenzie of Lochcarron in his essay on the delusions that shall probably prevail prior to the millennium also spoke of a darkness so great that "it is to be feared that the Protestant Churches will be greatly eclipsed". "Darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people".

But to encourage you to pray for the hastening of the days when the knowledge of the glory of the Lord shall cover the whole earth as the waters cover the sea, read Edwards on the millennium.

Love and Hatred

Love and hatred are not faults in themselves, it is what you hate or love that matters, so aince let the object of these affections be right, and then let thy affections be as bent as they can be. If you love God let affections be strong, if you hate his enemies then hate them with a perfect hatred. Many thinks that if they aince be changed by grace they must quit all their affections. No! No! Think not that.. There is no difference between the godly and the wicked in affections,
only anent their objects whether God or the World...it is by affection that God ties the heart to him and makes it quit all else. Above all affections look to your love and hatred for it is only these that brings about perfection. It is pitiful when people about to die say, they never did anyone wrong in their lives and never consider what they loved and hated all their lives.

Alexander Henderson

the case for a contemporary bible in English

What makes a contemporary English Bible? It is widely presumed that this is an easy and straightforward question to answer: a contemporary version can only mean the Bible put into modern idiom. The great variety of modern idiom versions that exists, however, tells us that even this conclusion is not that uncomplicated since there is significant difference of opinion over what modern English idiom is. Does it for instance, include “gender neutral” terms? Kenneth Barker, secretary of the NIV Committee aimed to justify the 'gender-neutral' revision of that version in terms of “shifts in English idiom”.

Another problem is the common assumption that contemporary idiom means that “a modern Bible should aim not to tax its readers’ linguistic or interpretative abilities on bit. If this aim is to be achieved then it seems likely that a new Bible will have to be produced for every generation - each one probably moving us further away from the original text, now that the initial break has been made”. (Gerald Hammond). Indeed some publishers of the modern versions have estimated that translation will need to be revised in the light of modern language every 25-50 years.

There is yet another problem. What constitutes contemporary idiom? Where is it best found? Many modern versions have selected one contemporary idiom above all others and forced the Bible to speak in a journalistic voice. Billy Graham's high praise for the Good News Bible was that it read like the newspaper. Yet this a problem in that: "Unlike the modern newspaper, the Bible was never meant to yield the fullness of its message to those who are only willing to expend the absolute minimum of effort necessary” (Robert P. Martin).

From the perspective of language study this obsession with the journalistic voice is very strange since it is clear that different varieties of English exist in different situations. These are called registers and they vary according to the setting and purpose of the interaction, the relationship of those speaking together, and whether the language is spoken or written. Prof. WH Stevenson explains: ‘…at any given time, there is more than one “English” in use. The language of the corner shop is not the language of the most “popular” journalist, and the language of the pulpit, even with the most modern of preachers installed, is different from either’. What is ‘the language of today’ that we hear so much glib reference to in Bible version discussion? The very concept makes very little sense in this context. Instead of speaking of contemporary English we need to be more accurate and to define the register of the English language that is in question.

Definitions of contemporary idiom can be remarkably elastic and subjective. One of the principal translators of the New English Bible, Prof. Kenneth Grayston said: ‘Modern English, it seems to me, is slack instead of taut, verbose and not concise, infested with this month’s cliché…it seems to me a repository for the bad habits of foreigners speaking English. This is how we must speak if people are to listen and grasp what we say’. The translators of the New English Bible believed they were reproducing modern idiom, but in fact it was coloured by their ‘preponderantly Anglican’ and ‘Oxford’ background. The translators often found themselves proposing some ‘very 1930ish upper middle class English idiom’: the translation was made in the 1960s.

Dr Anthony H Nichols has researched problems in contemporary cross-cultural translation. In some versions Western principles and thought forms seem to dominate. This making the Scriptures to be Westernised rather than reflective of biblical language and culture. Dr. Nichols’ highly important research investigates the influence of dynamic equivalence in several Far Eastern translations. The results are alarming: “ what emerged was the immense influence of the GNB [Good News Bible] on three important no-western versions”. It was concluded that “the renderings of the more traditional ‘formal-correspondence’ Indonesian versions were regularly more culturally appropriate [in comparison with the dynamic equivalent versions]”.

What is more culturally appropriate in our own society may likewise be far different than the manufacturers of the modern versions assume. Like the “traditional” formally equivalent Far Eastern versions we believe that the Authorised Version is actually more culturally appropriate than its recent rivals. It is the most accurate and the faithfulness of the Authorised Version is the very thing that has contributed to its character of being perennially contemporary and appropriate. It is worth reflecting upon the fact that it was no more accessible to the large number of working class converts in the 1920’s and 1930’s who loved it, than it is to us.

The AV, contrary to much misleading prejudice, is ‘clearly a form of Modern English’ (WH Stevenson). Its language is still part of English as currently used, indeed the English Bible has shaped the language. Granted that it is an early form of modern English but it is clear that it is as removed from Medieval English (Chaucer and Wycliffe) as 20th century English. What is required in a translation is that it should be accurate and faithful and that it should be in English. The AV has not only shaped the English language as a whole, it is the most significant influence upon ‘religious English’, the register appropriate for worship.

God’s Word through the AV still maintains a place in our society.In fact it is more contemporary than the so-called contemporary English versions. This is because we must properly define the term “contemporary” in relation to accurately and faithfully rendering the Scriptures and presenting them adequately. There are broader dimensions to the position, place and influence that a translation of the Bible holds and should hold. Contrary to the popular fallacy that there is no present point of contact with the idiom of the AV, it is firmly embedded in everday speech, especially in our proverbialisms. A website which investigates the origin and meaning of proverbial sayings notes: 'What raises that version above other versions of the Bible in terms of its linguistic impact is the fact that the language used has persisted into the present-day. Many of the phrase used are still commonplace. Here are some of the many phrases that originated in the Bible...' (go here for the list, which is only a selection).

There is a Bible that contains the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, and the 23rd Psalm as the man in the street knows them only. There is a Bible that carries a weight of authority and stirs a wealth of association for a significant proportion of our population. A Bible too exists that is quoted whenever the bible is quoted or alluded to, whether in popular books; academic seminars and conference papers; tabloids; broadsheets; and high, low, or middle-brow culture.

Think of a local church with a building that is situated prominently within a community, town, or village: a building with which all sections of the community are readily familiar and into which the majority have been at least once or so. Should that church abandon that building and commission plush, new premises right out in the middle of nowhere, remote from any houses whatsoever? The analogy with the Authorised Version and our community is very appropriate.

We are surely justified in concluding that rumours of the death of the Authorised Version have been greatly exaggerated and that it still deserves its justified title - The English Bible.

7 reasons why God permits sin

Samuel Rutherford gives these reasons in his A Sermon Preached before the Honourable House of Commons.
if permitting sin had not been,
1) The beauty of free grace and 'pardoning grace' had never been made obvious.
2) There had been no employment for 'the mercy of a soul-redeeming Jesus'.
3) We had not have had occasion to exalt 'the new Psalme of the Praise of a Redeemer'.
4) By this permission, the human creature of self-dependence is cried down, whereas God is exalted.
5) By this, the broken and humble heart is necessitated to kiss Christ, who binds up the broken hearted. 6) Then, we as poor pupils improve our dependence upon so kingly a Tutor.
7) Therefore, when clay triumphs over Angels and hell through the strength of Jesus Christ, 'Satan hath faire justice in open patent court'.

In his Catechism Rutherford writes just as concisely.

has God any hand in sin? A. He suffers men to sin, and punishes sin and
directs it to his own glory; but he neither allow, loves, nor commands sin'. Q.
But is not God the author of sin when he hardens men's hearts? Q. Not at all,
for God, as the ruler of the world and judge, leaves men to harden their own
heart, and so punishes sin by sin (Psa. 81:11,12; Rom. 1:24; 2Thess. 2:11,12)
as that no guilt cleaves to him'. ...Q. How can God then be free of sin if he
works in sin? A. The Lord can touch a serpent and not be stanged, (i.e.
stung), and as a good painter drawers black lines in the image to make the
white appear more beautiful, and the physician extracts good oil out of
poisonous herbs, and the musician makes the mistuned harp to send out a
pleasant sound, even so God in the hardening of men's heart does the part of
a judge justly and holily.

This is a complex area and the Reformer Ursinus is very helpful and careful in it:

The evils of guilt as far as they are such, that is, sins, have not the nature of that which is good. Hence God does not will them, neither does he tempt men to perform them, nor does he effect them or contribute thereto ; but he permits devils and men to do them, or does not prohibit them from committing them when he has the power to do so. Therefore these things do indeed also fall under the providence of God, but not as if they were done by him, but only permitted. The word permit is therefore not to be rejected, seeing that it is sometimes used in the scriptures.
...But we must have a correct understanding of the word lest we detract from God a considerable portion of the government of the world, and of human affairs. For this permission is not an indifferent contemplation or suspension of the providence and working of God as it respects the actions of the wicked, by which it comes to pass
that these actions do not depend so much upon some first cause, as upon the will of the creatures acting; but it is a withdrawal of divine grace by which God (whilst he accomplishes the decrees of his will through rational creatures) either does not make known to the creature acting what he himself wishes to be done, or he does not incline the will of the creature to render obedience, and to perform what is agreeable to his will. Yet he, nevertheless, in the meanwhile, controls and influences the creature so deserted and sinning as to accomplish what he has purposed.

He further defines a little what this withdrawal of divine grace is by which God,

1. Does not make known to man his will, that he might act according thereto.
2. He does not incline the will of man to obey and honor him, and to act in accordance with his will as revealed. "If a dreamer of dreams shall arise among you, thou shalt not hearken unto him, for the Lord your God proveth you." "The Lord moved David against Israel to say, Go and number Israel and Judah. (Deut. 13:1,3; 2 Sam. 24:1.) Why did he afterwards punish David? That he might be led to repentence.
3. He nevertheless influences and controls those who are thus deserted, so as to accomplish through them his just judgments; for God accomplishes good things through evil instruments, no less than through those which are good. For as the work of God is not made better by the excellency of the instrument, so neither is it made worse by the evil character of the instrument. God wills [by permission] actions that are evil, but only in as far as they are punishments of the wicked. All good things are from God, All punishments are just and good. Therefore they are from God...

The Westminster Confession (6:1 also Larger Catechism Q19) declare that God 'permits' sin, but that it is not a 'bare permission'.(5:4) A 'bare permission' (such as Arminians believe) would make it an involuntary decision whereas it was possible not to permit it.

Turretin is characteristically concise: 'Two extremes are to he avoided. First, that of defect, when an otiose permission of sin is ascribed to God. Second, that of excess, when the causality of sin is ascribed to him. Between these extremes, the orthodox hold the mean, who contend that the providence of God extends to sin in such way that he does not involuntarily permit it, as the Pelagians say, nor actively cause it as the Libertines assert, but voluntarily ordains and controls it'.

Boston is characteristically rich: "God's providence is most holy. "The Lord is righteous in all his ways and holy in all his works" (Psalm 145:17) Even though providence reach to and be conversant in sinful actions, yet it is pure; as the sun contracts no defilement, though it shine on a dunghill. For God is neither the physical nor moral cause of the evil of any action, more than he who rides on a lame horse is the cause of its halting. All the evil that is in sinful actions proceeds and flows from the wicked agent, as the stench of the dunghill does not proceed from the heat of the sun, but the corrupt matter contained in the dunghill."

Jonathan Edwards writes: "To permit the event of sin, or not to hinder it, implies, that the cause of defection is not in the permitter, but in the permitted; not m the governor, but the governed." What is very interesting about Edwards' views is that he believed that "the glory of the divine rectitude, towards the intelligent and moral part of the universe, considered as accountable, and to the full extent of its moral capabilities, could not be manifested without the permission of sin. The full exercise of equity must necessarily leave the moral system to its own tendencies and operations." Note the following: "Without the permission of sin, restoring benevolence, or the exercise of mercy, would have been impossible; and consequently the glory of that perfection, which can be fully displayed only by its exercise towards the miserable, would have been eternally concealed".

Finally, Witsius expresses it attractively in saying "it is peculiar to divine wisdom
and power not only to do good but much more, to make the evil devised by others, to answer a good and valuable end, and manage those things which appear to be evil to the greatest advantage".

But lest these thoughts should lead us to any smaller or weaker views of the exceeding sinfulness of sin itself as the greatest evil and our own responsibility for it, read The Absence of Sin in Present Day Religion.

The growth of love to Christ

Estimation produceth love, even the love of Christ; and love is a great favourite, and is much at court, and dwelleth constantly with the king. To be much with Christ, especially in secret, late and early, and to give much time to converse with Christ, speaketh much love; and the love of Christ is of the same largeness and quantity with grace, for grace and love keep proportion one with another.

I have emphasised the words in the last line as indicating the importance of love to Christ. It is a grace, if we are depending upon our works we have not the love of Christ in us, for it empties before it fills us. It is a grace of great fullness that is ever expanding to all eternity. Heaven is a world of love. Rutherford also writes "The love of Christ in its first rise, is a drop of dew that came out of the womb of the morning; the mother, in one night, brought forth an host, and innumerable millions of such babes, and covered the face of the earth with them. But this drop of dew groweth to a sea that swelleth up above hell and the grave, (Cant. 8:6,7); it is more than all the floods and seas of the earth, and floateth up to the heaven of heavens, and up, and in, it must be upon Christ. Ye see not Christ, yet ye love him, (1 Pet. 1:8). It overfloweth Christ, and taketh him, and ravisheth his heart. It is a strong chain that bindeth Christ, when the grave, sin, death, devils, could not bind him, (Cant. 4:9; Acts 2:24)."

Samuel Rutherford - Trial and Triumph of Faith

The importance of two or three

Commonly, the phrase "where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst" (Matt. l8:20) is applied to small gatherings for worship or prayer. It does bear this application but the original context shows that Christ is speaking of a Church Court. It is important to not that this is not the irreducible minimum for a congregation, rather it is the irreducible minimum for church government and discipline. This is evident because Christ speaks of two or three agreeing together as a church court on earth regarding anything they would request, it would be done for them by His Father in heaven. "For where two or three [plural] are gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst them [plural]."

Two or three is an important principle in Church Government and order as shared between the Old and New Testaments. This is the case in terms of the minimum number of witnesses (Matt. 18:15-16; Deuteronomy 17:6 and 19:15). In the case of prophets participating it is a maximum number (1 Cor. 14:27&29). In Matthew 18 the two or three refer to the elders gathered to judge the case (Deut. 19:17), they have a ministerial, delegated binding and loosing authority (v. 18). Therefore Samuel Rutherford says, referring to the size of a church court, that "two or three faithful ones in the Church of the Jews, no less than in the Christian Church were a true visible church, having the power of the keys". It is true that as George Gillespie notes, it is "a dictate of reason, to ask counsel of a greater number when the counsel of a few cannot resolve us, then reason, being ever like itself, will dictate so much to a congregation, that they ought to submit to the authority of a greater number when their own authority is not sufficient to end a controversy among them." Yet this is only where matters are unresolved. Noone can question or decline the authority of a church court on the basis of the number of its members.

As Rutherford puts it elsewhere, the size of a church court does not relate to its authority, "the authority of Synods consisting of six onely, differeth not in nature and essence, from a generall councell of the whole Catholike visible Church" (Due Right of Presbyteries, p.331). "Synods should take care that no man despise their Authority". On 20 December, 1560, the first General Assembly of the Church of Scotland convened in Edinburgh, under the leadership of John Knox. Six ministers and 36 elders gathered to deliberate on and eventually to present for the approval of the Scottish Parliament the Book of Discipline. It was a small court for the nation but had all due authority.

There was a proposal after the time of the Scottish Reformation to have small Presbyteries — comprising "ane or twa," [one or two] "thrie or four" kirks — but this was never carried out. In 1581 the General Assembly considered a "forme how elderschips may be constitute of a certain number of parochines lyand together,"
and in this form all the parishes in Scotland were grouped under fifty Presbyteries,
"twenty to every Presbytery, or thereabouts." This form was modified but was the basis of the structure. Two or three is the quorum, however, for a presbytery. Three members of Presbytery form a quorum, two of them being ordained ministers.

Another significant number is 7, as in Acts 6. It is said that in many Patristic Churches there were approximately seven Congregations associated in each Presbytery., and then again seven such Presbyteries associated together in one Regional Synod (Dr FN Lee). Perhaps this was drawn from the seven churches of Asia. Although the Presbytery of Antioch had five Preaching Elders (Acts 13:1).

A small presbytery enables greater familiarity but it can also present challenges in providing assessors and dealing with matters of discipline and other difficult areas. The point is that size is not related to authority. As the Reformer Martin Bucer said; "the number of parishes in which such as meeting is convened is an extraneous circumstance, pertinent in no respect to the essence of the particular church"

experiential theology: union with Christ

The Dutch theologian Wilhelmus à Brakel (1635-1711) is best known for
his four-volume work, The Christian's Reasonable Service (Reformation
Heritage Books; 1993; 4 vols.). This book reflects the three
dimensions of true religion: doctrine, duty and experience. I have
gathered some quotes that reflect this, particularly in relation to
union with Christ. The translator Bart Elshout describes it as
experiential as well as systematic theology. He says:

'I would define experiential theology as that theology which explains
how the doctrines of Scripture become an experiential reality in the
hearts and lives of believers. One could say that experiential
religion is doctrine experienced. It is unquestionably à Brakel's
intense desire that his exposition of the doctrines of Scripture would
lead to the experience of the reality of these doctrines. Once you
grasp this, you will observe how in the theological sections of his
chapters he lays the ground work for the experiential application. His
aim in "doing theology" is the edification of the believer. He does
this by describing what the experiential application of the expounded
doctrine should be, and by describing what it often is when believers
struggle to appropriate the precious truths of Scripture. In doing so,
he magnifies Christ and touches the heartstrings of every true
believer. Therefore, when reading The Christian's Reasonable Service
you will be both educated and edified. What a rare and unique
combination! While it looks like another Reformed systematic theology
it is actually more practical in nature and intended to provide
content for small group discussions as Christians gather to encourage
one another in the Christian life. It is one of the beautiful works of
the "Dutch Puritans."'

à Brakel quotations

"All true godliness proceeds from the knowledge of, and a believing
union with, the Lord Jesus. This generates love and all that proceeds
from love. Whatever does not proceed from this source cannot be called
godliness. Even though nature may give us an impression of God and
religion, it does not reveal this mystery. He who has only been
illuminated outwardly is also ignorant of the frame of heart which
proceeds from knowing Jesus (that is, as both God and man)."
(pp.512-513)

"Many know Jesus according to the letter, but not internally by the
illumination of the Holy Spirit. Consequently, such also have no love
for Him. They do desire Him as a servant to protect them from hell and
to help them get into heaven--of which they also have no correct
perceptions. Beyond that they have no use for Him. There is no
entering into covenant with Him, no surrendering to Him, no receiving
of Him by faith unto justification and sanctification, no heart-union,
and no exercising of fellowship with Him. They are neither acquainted
with His presence nor with His absence. They are satisfied if they are
but good church-members, partake of the Lord's Supper, live honestly,
and have the illusion that they will be saved. On that basis they
proceed--even though Jesus remains a stranger to them, remaining
outside of their heart and thoughts. Since you are acquainted with
human love, you will thus perceive that you have no love to Jesus,
whom you ought to love more vehemently than men. You may say that you
love Jesus. But then I ask you, "How is this evident? Is there esteem
and reverence for Him? Do you grieve and long for Him? Do you endeavor
to live in immediate union with Him? Is there a resemblance between
your nature and His? Are you obedient and do you keep His
commandments? Is there love for the most eminent among the godly? Is
there an aversion toward the unconverted, of whom we have dealt with
in the above, and of whom you yourself are convinced? If you consider
your love toward men, and apply this to love toward Christ, then you
must be convinced that you do not love Jesus--whatever good thought
you may also have concerning yourself" (III: 278-279).

"A temporal believer concerns himself only with the benefits and has
no interest in Christ Himself. Believers, however, have communion with
the Person of Jesus Christ, but many neither meditate upon nor closely
heed their exercises concerning Christ Himself. They err in this,
which is detrimental to the strength of their faith and impedes its
growth. Therefore we wish to exhort them to be more exercised
concerning the truth of belonging to each other, and the union and
communion with Jesus Himself. They will then better perceive the
unsearchable grace and goodness of God that such wretched and sinful
men may be so intimately united with the Son of God. Such reflection
will most wondrously set the heart aflame with love. It will
strengthen their resolve to put their trust in Jesus without fear. It
will give them strength and liberty to obtain everything from Him to
fulfill the desires of their soul, causing them to grow in Him, which
in turn will generate more light and joy. Therefore, faith, hope, and
love are mentioned in reference to the Person of Christ. Scripture
speaks of receiving Him, believing in Him, trusting in Him, living in
Him, loving Him, and hoping in Him" (2:91).

"By faith, hold fast to the fact that you are reconciled to and are a
partaker of Him and His benefits, even if you do not perceive and feel
this. This belonging to Him is not based on feeling. If the souls may
truly believe this and be exercised therewith, this will lead the soul
toward communion with Him" (2:96).

"1. Take note of how intimately the Lord Jesus is united to His elect.
They have been given to Him by the Father, in order that, as His
children, He would deliver, preserve, and lead them to felicity. Would
He then not exercise tender care of them, and be compassionate towards
them when they are in distress? They are His bride, children and
members. He has their very own nature - "for which cause He is not
ashamed to call them brethren" (Heb. 2:11). When they are in misery
and sorrow, they weep and long for Him, and cry out to Him for help
and comfort. How can it be any different but that the Lord Jesus is
greatly moved to compassion, especially since He is experientially
acquainted with the feeling of their suffering?

2. God is not only the cause of spiritual life, but also the object of
its motions. God Himself is all the delight, pleasure, and joy of the
regenerate man. He cannot be without God. He wishes for and must enjoy
the light of God's countenance, peace with God, and love and communion
with God. By virtue of union with God he wishes to be united to His
will, and thus to hate and shun what He hates, and to find delight in
and in doing whatever God delights in and is pleasing to Him.

3. Believers on earth love Jesus, their hearts go out after Him, and
He is the focal point of the passions of their love. "Therefore do the
virgins love Thee" (Song of Sol. 1:3). The bride continually has the
word Beloved in her mouth. Just consider how each believer mourns when
Jesus is absent; how they long for His coming to them; and how
delighted they are when they may sweetly enjoy His fellowship. All
their asking, crying and weeping is for Jesus. In Jesus only they find
all their satisfaction".

"Jesus Himself delights in having communion with you" (2:93)...a
"sweetness and overflowing delight … Here they (Christians) find balm
for their sick souls, light to clear up their darkness, life for their
deadness, food and drink for their hunger and thirst, peace for their
troubled heart, blood to atone for their sins, the Spirit for their
sanctification, counsel when they are at their wit's end, strength for
their weakness, and a fullness of all for their manifold deficiencies"
(2:93,94).

Sifting Words

The best summary of Sandy Gair's life is in the article by Rev. Douglas Somerset on the Separatists here

The following account is told of him. One day while crossing the moor, he inquired of a stranger who crossed his path if he had any news. The stranger, unaware of his questioner’s identity, replied that Sandy Gair’s two sons had been drowned that morning. This was his intimation of the tragedy. Broken and crushed by the stroke, his answer was, referring to himself, "He has not yet received what he deserves."

Dr Kennedy, Dingwall writes:

'No one, able to appreciate talent, could listen to one of his addresses, without admiring the originality of his views, and the clear terseness of his diction. In apt illustration, and in scathing satire, few could excel him. Twice only did the writer ever hear him, but one of his sayings he can not forget. Speaking of the advantage possessed by the Christian over the worldly in the security of his portion, he said, "It was not much that Jacob took with him, when he left the house of Laban to return to his kindred, but amidst the little which he brought away, Laban lost his gods; but though Satan stripped Job, till he left not even his skin on him, the patriarch still could say, "I know that my Redeemer liveth." Speaking, on another occasion, of the very different estimates, of their respective services, formed by the Christian and the hypocrite, he said, "Of the offering accepted on Mount Carmel, the fire from heaven left only the ashes to Elijah; but, had the priests of Baal survived, they might have fed them selves fat on their rejected sacrifice."'

William Sinclair, Wick records in his diary November 26th 1846:
'Sandy Gair said many a sifting word if I could only record them. He said, "When Saul was at war with his enemies he made a vow that he would not eat till he gained the victory; but Jonathan ate of the honey and gained the victory. If we were eating of the honey of the promise we would get greater victories over our spiritual enemies, but we have more of the spirit of Saul than of Jonathan." He made also a good comparison between a bad watch and a bad heart as to how to repair them. "A man had a bad watch which would work now and stop next time, so he sent it to Inverness, but it was as bad as ever when it came back. He then tried it at Aberdeen and Edinburgh, but with no better speed. One day he opened it and discovered the maker's name and address on it. He at once sent it there and got it back in perfect order. Do this with your heart when none else will do, send it to the Maker."'

Gair once wrote to a theological student warning him to beware of the “great pot” out of which the sons of the prophets get their pottage, for there is “death in it” (2 Kings 4:40) which can only be cured by the “handful of meal”. Gair explained, “The pot is the college; the death in it is learning without grace, and the meal is the good food ground on Calvary between the millstones of law and justice, which can be gotten only by the hand of faith”.

In the book "Records of Grace in Sutherland", Rev. Donald Munro records the following incident about Gair:

'Sitting by the fireside at the end of the evening after family worship Angus Bailie of Strath Brora, to the surprise of other family members threw a fresh supply of peat on the fire. When his wife asked him the reason, he replied - "Oh I expect that before the peats are consumed, one of the Lord's people will come who may be in sore need of a good fire". A short time later, footsteps were heard outside and a distressed young man, soaked to the skin, entered. He was immediately recognised as the renowned Sandy Gair who, in extreme spiritual distress, had crossed Loch Brora! His needs, both physical and spiritual were attended to and would later recall, on more than one occasion, that the night spent in this home was one of the happiest he ever spent in his life.'

Household baptism in the Old Testament

Household baptism is a New Testament term and it may seem strange to associate it with the Old Testament. There are indeed five household (oikos) baptisms in the New Testament(Cornelius’, Acts 10:48; Lydia’s, Acts 16:15; the Philippian jailer’s, Acts 16:31; Crispus’, Acts 18:8; and Stephanus’, 1 Cor. 1:16). These five
household baptisms illustrate a principle seen throughout Scripture that, the obedience of the entire household is required as part of the obedience of the head. This is due to federal responsibility thus when the head of a household believed, baptism of his whole household followed.

As a note of interest at this point, these five baptisms are among only nine where baptism is specifically mentioned. In Acts there are 7: the Ethiopian eunuch, Simon Magus, Saul of Tarsus, Cornelius, Lydia, the Philippian jailer, and Crispus of Corinth. In 1 Corinthians there are 2: Gaius and Stephanas. Of these nine baptisms, there are two where no household was present: the Ethiopian eunuch and Saul of Tarsus. We are not informed about the households of two others: Simon Magus and Gaius. In the other five cases, the entire household was baptized. There is a clear principle that in every case where the apostles administered baptism to the head of a household, they also administered it to the entire household as well. For the Jews, the conversion and baptism of proselytes was on a household basis. In the case of the Philippian jailer the grammar emphasises the head of household’s action through singular verbs "rejoiced" and "believed" (Acts 16:34).

In addition to baptised households, there are also references to household
salvation: Zacchaeus’, Luke 19:6-10; the official’s, John 4:53; the 3,000 believers on Pentecost Sunday who were told that the promise of salvation was “for you and for your children,” Acts 2:38-39; and Onesiphorus’, 2 Tim. 1:16.

The solidarity of the household or posterity with the head is explicit in all the Old Testament covenants. It is made clear to Noah (Gen. 7:1; Heb. 11:7), to Abraham ("I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him", Gen. 18:19), to Jacob (Gen. 47:12), to Israel (Exod. 1:1), and to Rahab (Jos. 6:25). The word for household in Greek ,Oikos is used in the Septuagaint (the Greek translation of the OT) of Noah's family (Gen 7:19), of the covenant with Abraham and the circumcision and instruction of his household (Gen 17:13, 18:19), regarding the families in Passover (12:27), and David's descendants in the Davidic covenant (2Ch 21:7).

The household reference is frequently made:

- Gen 7:1 – Noah
- Gen 17:12-13, 23, 27 – Abraham
- Ex 12:27 – Passover
- Num 3:15 – Levites numbered according to household membership
- Deut 29:10-13 – Covenant renewal
- Joshua 24:15 – “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

There are also promises made to heads of households: Deut. 4:37-40; Psalm 78:4-7; 100:5; 102:28; 103:17-18; Isa. 44:3; 54:13; 59:21; 65:23; Jer. 32:38-39; 35:19; Ezek. 37:25; Zec. 10:6-7.

We should note, however, that there are also many instances in which God judges households in relation to the sin of the head of that household:
- Gen 20:17-18 – Abimilech
- Ex 20:5, 34:7 – Punishments for breaking the law
- Joshua 7:15, 24-25 – Achan
- 1 Sam 3:12-14 – Eli
- 2 Sam 12:10 – David

We should note also that neglect of the commandment of circumcision (the sign of household solidarity) incurred judgement (Gen. 17:14). The family is an organic unity, in which, if the head sins, all the parts of the organic unit are held to be sinful with it.


There is a particular ceremony in the Old Testament that parallels household baptism. It is the sprinkling of blood that was done at the time of the Exodus from Egypt. Pharaoh was willing to let the men go, but not the little ones (Ex. 10:7-11).

- It was a ceremony performed by the head of the household not for their own benefit but for the firstborn son who was liable to destruction as part of the nation of Egypt and under Pharaoh's dominion. The firstborn son did not do it for himself.
- It was a household action, lamb was to be taken by the head of the household and slain for the household who would partake of it. Noone feasted alone.
- It was a token or sign of the covenant which signified spiritual realities
- It was a family token.
- It distinguished the firstborn of Israel from the firstborn of Egypt (Ex 11:7).
- It solemnly signified that the firstborn of Israel belonged to a holy and ransomed nation.
- It signified the deliverance of Israel as houses (Ex 12:27) and their being gathered to serve and worship the Lord as a corporate unit.
- It was done in faith (Heb 11:28)
- It signified the blood of Christ and his merits and offered it to them(1 Cor 5:7)
It signified being under God's protection
It signified separation unto God from sin and the world. Not a hoof was to be left behind.
- It was the basis of instruction: Exod. 12:26 : "And it shall come to pass, when your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service? That ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord's passover, when he passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt; when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses."
-It was open to Gentiles. Exod. 12:48: "When a stranger will sojourn with thee, and will keep the passover to the Lord, let all his males ba circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it; and he shall be as one that is born in the land. One law shall be to him that is home-born, and unto the stranger that sojourneth among you."
- It was a corporate action of the Church. The slaying of the lamb is ascribed to the "whole assembly of the congregation", because it was to be slain by their order, and in their name, for their use and in their presence (Ex 12:6).
- It signified deliverance from national judgement (as with the baptism of John the Baptist cp. 1 Cor.10.1 ff, exodus from Egypt; 1 Pet. 3.19-21, of the flood)
- It was like circumcision a sign of God's judgement if the stipulations of the covenant (including circumcision) were not kept. Thus a solemn judgement is also signified if baptised people do not enter into the reality of the blood of Christ and trample it under foot as an unholy thing.
- It was a seal of God's ownership.
- It was effected by sprinkling as with the purifications elsewhere described in Scripture (Exodus 24:1-8; Leviticus 14:4-7, 16, 49-53, 16:19; and Numbers 8:5-7,
19:18, 19; Hebrews 12:22-24; 1 Peter 1:2). The Old Covenant sprinkling of blood has been replaced by the New Covenant washing with water.
- It meant that the firstborn were sanctified and sacred to God
- It meant a general, external adoption of the nation to be God's firstborn (Exod 4:22)

what is now, and what was then

This poem by John Flavel written in 1691 was recorded by William Sinclair of Wick in his diary which is online here. William Sinclair was (I think) the father of Rev. James S. Sinclair.

"Then did the sunshine of Thy face,
And sweetest glimpses of Thy grace,
Like April showers and warming gleams,
Distil their dews, reflect their beams.
My dead affections then were green,
And hopeful buds were to be seen;
Oh joyful days, thrice happy state,
Each place was Bethel, heaven's gate.
What sweet discourse, what heavenly talk,
While daily I did with Thee walk;
Mine eyes o'erflow, my heart doth sink,
As oft upon those days I think.
For strangers now have come between
My God and me, and may be seen;
For what is now, and what was then,
'Tis just as if I were two men.
My fragrant branches blasted be,
No fruits like those now can I see;
Some canker worm lies at my root,
Which fades my leaves, destroys my fruit.
My soul is banished from Thy sight,
For this it mourneth day and night;
Yet why dost thou desponding lie?
Like Jonah, cast a backward eye,
That God who made the Spring at first,
When I was barren and accurst,
Can much more easily restore
My state to what it was before;
A word or smile on my poor soul
Would make it perfect, sound and whole."

Why are we here?

ALL that men have to know, may be comprised under these two heads,—What their end is; and What is the right, way to attain to that end. And all that we have to do, is by any means to seek to compass that end. These are the two cardinal points of a man’s knowledge and exercise: Quo et qua eundum est,—Whither to go, and what way to go. If there be a mistake in any of these fundamentals, all is wrong...Except you would walk at random, not knowing whither you go, or what you do, you must once establish this and fix it in your intention—What is the great end and purpose wherefore I am created, and sent into the world?

It is certainly the wrong establishing of this one thing that makes the most part of our motions either altogether irregular, or unprofitable, or destructive and hurtful. Therefore, as this point hath the first place in your catechism, so it ought to be first of all laid to heart, and pondered as the one necessary thing. ‘One thing is needful,’ says Christ, Luke 10.42; and if any thing be in a superlative degree needful, this is it. O that you would choose to consider it, as the necessity and weight of it require!

We have read two scriptures, which speak to the ultimate and chief end of man, which is the glorifying of God by all our actions and words and thoughts. ROM. 11.36. "Of him, and through him, and to him, are all things; to whom be glory for ever." And 1 COR. 10.31. "Whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." In which we have these things of importance: 1. That God’s glory is the end of our being. 2. That God’s glory should be the end of our doing. And, 3. The ground of both these; because both being and doing are from him, therefore they ought to be both for him. He is the first cause of both, and therefore he ought to be the last end of both. ‘Of him, and through him, are all things;’ and therefore all things are also for him, and therefore all things should be done to him.

God is independent altogether, and self-sufficient. This is his royal prerogative, wherein he infinitely transcends all created perfection. He is of himself, and for himself; from no other, and for no other, ‘but of him, and for him, are all things.’ He is the fountain-head; you ought to follow the streams up to it, and then to rest, for you can go no farther. But the creature, even the most perfect work, besides God, it hath these two ingredients of limitation and imperfection in its bosom: it is from another, and for another. It hath its rise out of the fountain of God’s immense power and goodness, and it must run towards that again, till it empty all its faculties and excellencies into that same sea of goodness. Dependence is the proper notion of a created being,—dependence upon that infinite independent Being, as the first immediate cause, and the last immediate end. You see then that this principle is engraven in the very nature of man. It is as certain and evident that man is made for God’s glory, and for no other end, as that he is from God’s power, and from no other cause. Except men do violate their own conscience, and put out their own eyes—as the Gentiles did, Rom. 1.19,&c.—‘that which may be known’ of man’s chief end, ‘is manifest in them,’ so that all men are ‘without excuse.’

Now when we are speaking of the great end and purpose of our creation, we call to mind our lamentable and tragical fall from that blessed station we were constitute into. ‘All men have sinned and come short of the glory of God,’ Rom. 3.23. His being in the world was for that glory, and he is come short of that glory. O strange shortcoming! Short of all that he was ordained for! What is he now meet for? For what purpose is that chief of the works of God now! The salt, if it lose its saltness, is meet for nothing, for wherewithal shall it be seasoned? Mark 9.50. Even so, when man is rendered unfit for his proper end, he is meet for nothing, but to be cast out and trode upon; he is like a withered branch that must be cast into the fire, John 15.6. Some things, if they fail in one use, they are good for another; but the best things are not so,—Corruptio optimi, pessima. As the Lord speaks to the house of Israel, ‘Shall wood be taken of the vine tree to do any work?’ Even so the inhabitants of Jerusalem, Ezek. 15.2-6. If it yield not wine, it is good for nothing. So, if man do not glorify God,—if he fall from that,—he is meet for nothing, but to be cast into the fire of hell, and burnt for ever; he is for no use in the creation, but to be fuel to the fire of the Lord’s indignation.

But behold! the goodness of the Lord and his kindness and love hath ‘appeared toward man. Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us,’ ‘through Jesus Christ,’ Tit. 3.4-6. Our Lord Jesus, by whom all things were created, and for whom, would not let this excellent workmanship perish so, therefore he goes about the work of redemption,—a second creation more laborious and also more glorious than the first, that so he might glorify his Father and our Father. Thus the breach is made up; thus the unsavoury salt is seasoned; thus the withered branch is quickened again for that same fruit of praises and glorifying of God. This is the end of his second creation, as it was of the first: ‘We are his workmanship created to good works in Christ Jesus,’ Eph. 2.10. ‘This is the work of God, to believe on him whom he hath sent;’ ‘to set to our seal,’ and to give our testimony to all his attributes, John 6.29, and 3.33. We are ‘bought with a price,’ and therefore we ought to glorify him with our souls and bodies. He made us with a word, and that bound us; but now he has made us again, and paid a price for us, and so we are twice bound not to be our own but his, ‘and so to glorify him in our bodies and spirits,’ 1 Cor. 6.20. I beseech you, gather your spirits, call them home about the business. We once came short of our end,—God’s glory and our happiness; but know, that it is attainable again. We lost both; but both are found in Christ. Awake then and stir up your spirits, else it shall be double condemnation—when we have the offer of being restored to our former blessed condition—to love our present misery better. Once establish this point within your souls, and therefore ask, Why came I hither? To what purpose am I come into the world? If you do not ask it, what will you answer, when he asks you at your appearance before his tribunal? I beseech you, what will many of you say in that day when the Master returns and takes an account of your dispensation? You are sent into the world only for this business,—to serve the Lord. Now what will many of you answer? If you speak the truth (as then you must do it,—you cannot lie then!) you must say, "Lord, I spent my time in serving my own lusts; I was taken up with other businesses, and had no leisure; I was occupied in my calling," &c.

Hugh Binning summarised from here

The Vital Importance of the Westminster Standards

J.H. Thornwell spoke of his personal debt to the Westminster Standards (Confession and Catechisms): "I bless God, for that glorious summary of Christian doctrine contained in our noble Standards. It has cheered my soul in many a dark hour, and sustained me in many a desponding moment...[I know of] no uninspired production in any language, or of any denomination, that for richness of matter, soundness of doctrine, scriptural expression and edifying tendency can for a moment enter into competition with the Westminster Confession and Catechisms."

B.B Warfield stated that the Westminster Standards (Confession and Catechisms) 'embody the gospel of the grace of God with a carefulness, a purity, and an exactness never elsewhere achieved, and come to us as, historically, the final fixing in confessional language of the principles and teachings of evangelical religion'. He referred to 'how fully and genially they represent the consensus of Reformed doctrine in its most developed and most catholic form; how strictly they are held in every definition to the purity of the Biblical conceptions and enunciations of truth'.

'Open these standards where you will and you will not fail to feel the throb of an elevated and noble spiritual life pulsing through them. They are not merely a notably exact scientific statement of the elements of the gospel: they are, in the strictest sense of the words, the very embodiment of the gospel. They not only know what God is; they know God: and they make their readers know Him—know Him in His infinite majesty, in His exalted dominion, in His unlimited sovereignty, in the immutability of His purpose and His almighty power and universal providence, but know Him also in that strangest, most incomprehensible of all His perfections, the unfathomableness of His love. Their description of Him transcends the just limits of mere definition and swells into a paean of praise—praise to Him who is "most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin, the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him." And how profound their knowledge is of the heart of man—its proneness to evil, its natural aversion to spiritual good, its slowness of response to spiritual influence, the deviousness of its path even under the leading of the Holy Ghost. But, above all, they know, with a fulness of apprehension which startles and instructs and blesses the reader, the ways of God with the errant souls of men—how He has condescended to open the way to them of having fruition of Him as their blessedness and reward, how He has redeemed them unto Himself in the blood of His Son, and how He deals with them, as only a loving Father may, in disciplining and fitting them for the heavenly glory. Where elsewhere may we find more vitally set forth the whole circle of experience in the Christian life—what conversion is and how God operates in bringing the soul to knowledge of Him and faith in its Saviour, what are the joys of justifying grace and of adoption into the family of God, and what the horrors of those temporary lapses that lie in wait for unwary steps, and what the inconceivable tenderness of God’s gracious dealings with the stumbling and trembling spirit until He brings it safely home?'

They are 'historically speaking, the final crystallization of the very essence of evangelical religion—scientifically speaking, the richest and most precise and best guarded statement possessed by man, of all that enters into evangelical religion and of all that must be safeguarded if evangelical religion is to persist in the world—religiously speaking, the very expressed essence of vital religion. Surely blessed are the churches which feed upon this meat! Surely the very possession of Standards like these differentiates the fortunate churches which have inherited them as those best furnished for the word and work of the Christian proclamation and the Christian life. May God Almighty infuse their strength into our bones and their beauty into our flesh, and enable us to justify our inheritance by unfolding into life, in all its completeness and richness and divinity, the precious gospel which they have enfolded for us in their protecting envelope of sound words!'

The Westminster Standards are therefore well worth reading through in 2009 - the following is a calendar of readings in the Westminster Standards. There are various harmonies of the Westminster Standards - here is one of them. Listen to them here.

Subjects of Meditation for a Time of Trouble

1. Our frailty and entire dependence as creatures on the self-existent and infinitely glorious Jehovah.

2. Our awful inconceivable guilt as apostates from Him who made man in His own image, after His likeness; the entire depravity of our natures as fallen, and our personal actual transgressions by omission and commission, in youth and riper years, before we knew, or rather, were known of God, and since; and most particularly in sins against Christ, His Gospel, Spirit, and grace, etc.

3. The believing contemplation of Christ in His person, covenant engagements, mediatory work, all-sufficiency, grace, truth, and saving benefits.

4. The patience, long-suffering, and abundant grace of the Heavenly Father, as it has been so richly manifested in the Son of His love and in His dealings with us.

5. The shortness of time, the certainty of death, the vanity of the world, the solemnity of judgment, the preciousness of the mercy-seat, the necessity of entire sanctification.

6. The glory of the exalted Redeemer, the perpetuity of His intercession, the fidelity of His promises, His power to guide unto death and through it, the blessedness of those that are at home with Him in the mansions which He has gone to prepare, the unutterable blessedness, transport, and triumph which are stored up in the words of eternal life--”I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also.”

Excerpted from Rich Gleanings from Rabbi Duncan, Free Presbyterian Publications, 1984, pp. 396-397.

Holding Fast Christ's Name

thou holdest fast my name, and hast not denied my faith Revelation 2:12,13.

It is commended for holding fast His name, that is His truth, cause, and interest, yea, everything whereby He makes Himself known. Then

(1.) We must lay hold of Him by making peace with Him. "Let him take hold of my strength, that he may make peace with me." So unless ye be in Christ, ye cannot hold fast His name in a day of trial, temptation, and persecution. You must close with Him as JESUS, that is, as a Saviour to save you both from the guilt of sin and the power of sin. And also ye must close with Him, as CHRIST, that is, as He is anointed to be King, Priest, and Prophet to His people,

(2.) If you would hold fast His name, you must hold fast everyone of His truths, every part of His cause and interest We must quit with none of them, or any part of them, whatever it may cost us. Many will hold fast a part of His name. They will hold fast and suffer for some of His truths, but not for all. Some they will quit and not think them worth the suffering for. But if ye would hold fast His name, then ye must hold fast and suffer for all His truths, not quitting any of them.

(3.) If ye would hold fast His name, then ye must do it constantly. Ye must not think it enough to commend and suffer for the truths a while, and quit and deny the same afterwards; but that is not the way. If ye would hold fast His name, then ye must do it to the end.

from a lecture delivered by Alexander Shields at the Lowthers in Crawfordmoor, March 11, 1688

Real Challenges for 2009

9 days into 2009 how about some real reading challenges?

Read the New Testament right through in Greek here - although you may want to learn NT Greek first - here is a free option.

If you don't fancy Greek what about reading the Bible through in the Authorised Version? This Bible Reading Plan Generator is software allowing you to generate a plan for reading any books of the Bible you choose over any number of days you wish. If you didn't know you can listen to the whole Bible in a year at 10 minutes each day. Listen to/download mp3s here AV (British/Male Voice narrating).

Since 2009 is the anniversary of Calvin’s birth read the whole of the Institutes through here or could it be easier than this? You can also cheat by listening to it by mp3 here. Other good audio book mp3s are also on this site.

But remember that reading without prayer and practical application will not profit.

Countess of the Covenant

Anna, Countess of the Covenant by Mary McGrigor Birlinn Books pbk Price: £9.99

ISBN: 9781841586687

This book is a biography of Lady Anna Mackenzie, daughter of Lord Seaforth, first married to the Earl of Balcarres and later after his death married to Archibald Campbell, 9th Earl of Argyll.

She lived during the tumultuous times of the Covenanting Revolution and the Restoration. She was not a 'Lady of the Covenant' in the same way as the godly wife of the 8th Earl of Argyll who was among the first Covenanting martyrs after the Restoration (see Donald Beaton's Ladies of the Covenant). While Royalist and not radical Covenanters, neither of her husbands could be termed malignants. They were firm Protestants and Presbyterians, however, and while weaker than the most resolute in defence of the Covenants, from their testimonies they appear to have had a firm hold on saving knowledge. Lord Balcarres was a great favourite of Charles II but does not appear to have been corrupted as a result and expressed a significant degree of assurance on his deathbed. He received one polite letter expressing differing opinions from Samuel Rutherford but was not among his close correspondents.

The 8th Earl of Argyll collided resolutely with James VII & II, while the latter was still Duke of York in relation to the Test Act and after a dramatic escape from execution was finally captured and executed as a martyr for the Protestant faith because he would not bow to the tyrannical abuses of James. His testimony is most moving and perhaps one of the most moving parts of the book.

Lady Anna was a strong figure who suffered many great griefs during the course in which Providence guided her life. As an exile, she became a governess to Prince William of Orange, later William III. She entertained kings and bargained with them. Her piety was much admired by Richard Baxter who dedicated several books to her. She suffered a lot through one of her daughters running away to become a Romanist nun, Richard Baxter sought to help her through this and seek to persuade the girl of her errors.

While not a religious biography intended to bring spiritual benefit - this book is a fascinating window into the personal lives of some of those who lived through the Covenanting times, particularly the firm faith of those not gathered among the Scots Worthies. The book builds upon the victorian biography of Lady Anna and uses research such as personal letters to fill out the picture in a very illuminating way.

Why December 25?

You won't find 25 December in the Bible. So where did it come from? Find out here. The article referred to is here.

Saving Knowledge - part two

Following on from a previous post on The Sum of Saving Knowledge.

Dickson's Friendship with Durham

Robert Wodrow records that David Dickson 'had a wonderful opinion of great and worthy Mr Durham … He said somewhat to this purpose of Mr Durham, that ‘He was like a great bottle full of excellent good wine that when it did go to come out it could not well come out… ‘ so Mr Durham had little expression [in preaching or writing] but much good and great matter. (Analecta, 3:10)

Defining the Gospel Offer

Thomas Boston refers to the teaching of the Sum of Saving Knowledge in relation to the universal offer of the gospel, specifically to the following section, 'Again, consider, that this general offer in substance is equivalent to a special offer made to every one in particular; as appeareth by the apostle’s making use of it, Acts 16:31. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. The reason of which offer is given, John 3:16.'

The Sum of Saving Knowledge also helpfully teaches that it is a hearty and free offer on God's part, speaking of offers of grace, sweet invitations, loving requests etc. This use of offer serves to interpret what the Westminster Standards mean when they speak of Christ and life being freely offered in the gospel. It does not merely mean to "present" or "exhibit":
'The Lord…Maketh open offer of Christ and his grace, by proclamation of a free and gracious market of righteousness and salvation…He inviteth all sinners, that for any reason stand at a distance from God, to come and take from him riches of grace, running in Christ like a river, to wash away sin, and to slocken wrath: ‘Come ye to the waters,’ saith he,'. 'But I (may the weak believer say) upon the loving request of God and Christ, made to me by the mouth of his ministers, have embraced the offer of perpetual reconciliation through Christ, and do purpose, by God’s grace, as a reconciled person, to strive against sin….' 'That is any man shall not be taken with the sweet invitation of God nor with the humble and loving request of God, made to him to be reconciled…'

The Gospel is presented in a covenant framework in the Sum of Saving Knowledge. C.G. M’Crie showed an animosity to this covenant language of market and bargain and a complete misunderstanding of its import:

…Federalism, as developed in the Sum, is objectionable in form and application. Detailed descriptions of redemption as a bargain entered into between the First and Second persons of the Trinity, in which conditions were laid down, promises held out, and pledges given; the reducing of salvation to a mercantile arrangement between God and the sinner, in which the latter signifies contentment to enter into covenant and the former intimates agreement to entertain a relation of grace, so that ever after the contented, contracting party can say, ‘Lord, let it be a bargain,’--such presentation have obviously a tendency to reduce the gospel of the grace of God to the level of a legal compact entered into between two independent and, so far as right or status is concerned, two equal parties. This blessedness of the mercy seat is in danger of being lost sight of in the bargaining of the market-place; the simple story of salvation is thrown into the crucible of the logic of schools and it emerges in the form of a syllogism. (Confessions, p. 72, quoted by Bell, 106)

As Durham clarifies it in one of his sermons: 'The gospel doth not, as it were, so much offer to make with you a bargain, as it offers you the benefit of a bargain already made, viz. with Christ.' Samuel Rutherford in the Covenant of Life Opened writes 'Gods bargaining with us depends not upon the equality between thing and thing, the work and the wage; But upon his own free pleasure of disposing of his own: And it is the froathinesse of our nature to judge the penny of Glory, that we get by labouring to be our own, whereas after the promise, and after we have fulfilled the condition, it is not ours, but Gods, and he calls it his own, and it is to be disposed on by the Lords free-grace. Friend, may not I do with mine own, what I please? Mat. 20.15.' 'The whole Gospel is the word of Grace, Acts. 20.32. Col. 1.6. the Bargaine a paction of Grace'. Rutherford consistently speaks of the Eternal Covenant between the Father and the Son as a bargain. It is made clear in the Sum that we buy 'without money'. '"Come, buy without money," (saith he,) "come, eat:" that is, consent to have, and take unto you all saving graces; make the wares your own, possess them, and make use of all blessings in Christ; whatsoever maketh for your spiritual life and comfort, use and enjoy it freely, without paying any thing for it: "Come, buy wine and milk without money, and without price," saith he'.

Perilous Times

An extremely topical article on the moral state of the nation is to be found here under the above title. Here is an excerpt: 'John Owen affirms that one of the dangers of such times is that we are apt to have light thoughts of great sins and to countenance ourselves in lesser evils, seeing the greater abominations of other men. The spirit of the age can almost imperceptibly affect the Church of God and result in increasing conformity to the world, which in turn helps confirm the world in its ungodliness.'

These sentiments are found with other puritans. The New England Puritan Samuel Willard gives as a mark of perilous times, the appearance of sin in those with a profession of religion which goes without rebuke, but such men are in credit with the best. What sort of sins is Willard thinking of? He gives a few.
Sabbath breaking - 'where the strict observation of the Sabbath is lost, there the power of godliness is gone'. Contention and slander among the people of God. Frequenting public houses and the company of lewd and loose people. In brief not living soberly, righteously and godly in this present evil world.

Making Shipwreck of the Faith

We are not as familiar with the Early Fathers as the Reformers and Puritans were. This is to our disadvantage. The following description by Basil of Caesarea (c. 329-379), one of the great Cappadocian Early Fathers, is tremendously powerful and entirely appropriate as a description of the state of the Church in our own day.

To what then shall I liken our present condition? It may be compared, I think, to some naval battle which has arisen out of time old quarrels, and is fought by men who cherish a
deadly hate against one another, of long experience in naval warfare, and eager for the fight.

Look, I beg you, at the picture thus raised before your eyes. See the rival fleets rushing in dread array to the attack. With a burst of uncontrollable fury they engage and fight it out. Fancy, if you like, the ships driven to and fro by a raging tempest, while thick darkness falls from the clouds and blackens all the scenes so that watchwords are indistinguishable in the confusion, and all distinction between friend and foe is lost. To fill up the details of the imaginary picture, suppose the sea swollen with billows and whirled up from the deep, while a vehement torrent of rain pours down from the clouds and the terrible waves rise high.

From every quarter of heaven the winds beat upon one point, where both the fleets are
dashed one against the other. Of the combatants some are turning traitors; some are
deserting in the very thick of the fight; some have at one and the same moment to urge on
their boats, all beaten by the gale, and to advance against their assailants. Jealousy of
authority and the lust of individual mastery splits the sailors into parties which deal mutual death to one another. Think, besides all this, of the confused and unmeaning roar sounding over all the sea, from howling winds, from crashing vessels, from boiling surf, from the yells of the combatants as they express their varying emotions in every kind of noise, so that not a word from admiral or pilot can be heard. The disorder and confusion is tremendous, for the extremity of misfortune, when life is despaired of, gives men license for every kind of wickedness. Suppose, too, that the men are all smitten with the incurable plague of mad love of glory, so that they do not cease from their struggle each to get the better of the other, while their ship is actually settling down into the deep.
Turn now I beg you from this figurative description to the unhappy reality. Did it not at
one time appear that the Arian schism, after its separation into a sect opposed to the Church of God, stood itself alone in hostile array? But when the attitude of our foes against us was changed from one of long standing and bitter strife to one of open warfare, then, as is well known, the war was split up in more ways than I can tell into many subdivisions, so that all men were stirred to a state of inveterate hatred alike by common party spirit and individual suspicion. But what storm at sea was ever so fierce and wild as this tempest of the Churches?

In it every landmark of the Fathers has been moved; every foundation, every bulwark of
opinion has been shaken: everything buoyed up on the unsound is dashed about and shaken
down. We attack one another. We are overthrown by one another. If our enemy is not the
first to strike us, we are wounded by the comrade at our side. If a foeman is stricken and
falls, his fellow soldier tramples him down. There is at least this bond of union between us that we hate our common foes, but no sooner have the enemy gone by than we find enemies
in one another. And who could make a complete list of all the wrecks? Some have gone to
the bottom on the attack of the enemy, some through the unsuspected treachery of their
allies, some from the blundering of their own officers. We see, as it were, whole churches,
crews and all, dashed and shattered upon the sunken reefs of disingenuous heresy, while
others of the enemies of the Spirit of Salvation have seized the helm and made shipwreck of
the faith. And then the disturbances wrought by the princes of the world have caused the
downfall of the people with a violence unmatched by that of hurricane or whirlwind. The
luminaries of the world, which God set to give light to the souls of the people, have been
driven from their homes, and a darkness verily gloomy and disheartening has settled on the
Churches. The terror of universal ruin is already imminent, and yet their mutual rivalry is so unbounded as to blunt all sense of danger. Individual hatred is of more importance than the general and common warfare, for men by whom the immediate gratification of ambition is esteemed more highly than the rewards that await us in a time to come, prefer the glory of getting the better of their opponents to securing the common welfare of mankind. So all men alike, each as best he can, lift the hand of murder against one another. Harsh rises the cry of the combatants encountering one another in dispute; already all the Church is almost full of the inarticulate screams, the unintelligible noises, rising from the ceaseless agitations that divert the right rule of the doctrine of true religion, now in the direction of excess, now in that of defect. On the one hand are they who confound the Persons and are carried away into Judaism; on the other hand are they that, through the opposition of the natures, pass into heathenism. Between these opposite parties inspired Scripture is powerless to mediate; the traditions of the apostles cannot suggest terms of arbitration. Plain speaking is fatal to friendship, and disagreement in opinion all the ground that is wanted for a quarrel. No oaths of confederacy are so efficacious in keeping men true to sedition as their likeness in error.

Every one is a theologue though he have his soul branded with more spots than can be
counted. The result is that innovators find a plentiful supply of men ripe for faction, while self-appointed scions of the house of place-hunters reject the government of the Holy Spirit and divide the chief dignities of the Churches. The institutions of the Gospel have now everywhere been thrown into confusion by want of discipline; there is an indescribable pushing for the chief places while every self-advertiser tries to force himself into high office.

The result of this lust for ordering is that our people are in a state of wild confusion for lack of being ordered; the exhortations of those in authority are rendered wholly purposeless and void, because there is not a man but, out of his ignorant impudence, thinks that it is just as much his duty to give orders to other people, as it is to obey any one else.So, since no human voice is strong enough to be heard in such a disturbance, I reckon silence more profitable than speech, for if there is any truth in the words of the Preacher, "The words of wise men are heard in quiet,” in the present condition of things any discussion of them must be anything but becoming. I am moreover restrained by the Prophet’s saying, “Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time, for it is an evil time,” a time when some trip up their neighbour’s heels, some stamp on a man when he is down, and others clap their hands with joy, but there is not one to feel for the fallen and hold out a helping hand, although according to the ancient law he is not uncondemned, who passes by even his enemy’s beast of burden fallen under his load. This is not the state of things now. Why not? The love of many has waxed cold; brotherly concord is destroyed, the very name of unity is ignored, brotherly admonitions are heard no more, nowhere is there Christian pity, nowhere falls the tear of sympathy. Now there is no one to receive “the weak in faith,” but mutual hatred has blazed so high among fellow clansmen that they are more delighted at a neighbour’s fall than at their own success. Just as in a plague, men of the most regular lives suffer from the same sickness as the rest, because they catch the disease by communication with the infected, so nowadays by the evil rivalry which possesses our souls we are carried away to an emulation in wickedness, and are all of us each as bad as the others. Hence merciless and sour sit the judges of the erring; unfeeling and hostile are the critics of the well disposed. And to such a depth is this evil rooted among us that we have become more brutish than the brutes; they do at least herd with their fellows, but our most savage warfare is with our own people.

For all these reasons I ought to have kept silence, but I was drawn in the other direction
by love, which “seeketh not her own,” and desires to overcome every difficulty put in her
way by time and circumstance. I was taught too by the children at Babylon, that, when there
is no one to support the cause of true religion, we ought alone and all unaided to do our
duty. They from out of the midst of the flame lifted up their voices in hymns and praise to
God, reeking not of the host that set the truth at naught, but sufficient, three only that they were, with one another. Wherefore we too are undismayed at the cloud of our enemies, and, resting our hope on the aid of the Spirit, have, with all boldness, proclaimed the truth. Had I not so done, it would truly have been terrible that the blasphemers of the Spirit should so easily be emboldened in their attack upon true religion, and that we, with so mighty an ally and supporter at our side, should shrink from the service of that doctrine, which by the tradition of the Fathers has been preserved by an unbroken sequence of memory to our own day. A further powerful incentive to my undertaking was the warm fervour of your “love unfeigned,” and the seriousness and taciturnity of your disposition; a guarantee that you would not publish what I was about to say to all the world,—not because it would not be worth making known, but to avoid casting pearls before swine. My task is now done. If you find what I have said satisfactory, let this make an end to our discussion of these matters. If you think any point requires further elucidation, pray do not hesitate to pursue the investigation with all diligence, and to add to your information by putting any uncontroversial question. Either through me or through others the Lord will grant full explanation on matters which have yet to be made clear, according to the knowledge supplied to the worthy by the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Communion as Mutual Communication

John Owen in Volume 2 of his Works enlarges upon the subject'Of Communion with God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost'. He defines 'communion is the mutual communication of such good things as wherein the persons holding that communion are delighted, bottomed upon some union between them.'

'Our communion, then, with God consisteth in his communication of himself unto us, with our returnal unto him of that which he requireth and accepteth, flowing from that unions which in Jesus Christ we have with him. And it is twofold: - 1. Perfect and complete, in the full fruition of his glory and total giving up of ourselves to him, resting in him as our utmost end; which we shall enjoy when we see him as he is; - and, 2. Initial and incomplete, in the first fruits and dawnings of that perfection which we have here in grace; which only I shall handle.'

While Owen stresses communion with each member of the Godhead, he also emphasises the role of Christ the Mediator in access to God and these communications.'In every thing wherein we are made partakers of the divine nature, there is a communication and receiving between God and us; so near are we unto him in Christ.'

'The Father will have him to have "in all things the pre- eminence," Col. 1: 18; "it pleased him that in him all fulness should dwell," verse 19; that "of his fulness we might receive, and grace for grace," John 1: 16. Though the love of the Father's purpose and good pleasure have its rise and foundation in his mere grace and will, yet the design of its accomplishment is only in Christ. All the fruits of it are first given to him; and it is in him only that they are dispensed to us. So that though the saints may, nay, do, see an infinite ocean of love unto them in the bosom of the Father, yet they are not to look for one drop from him but what comes through Christ. He is the only means of communications. Love in the Father is like honey in the flower; - it must be in the comb before it be for our use. Christ must extract and prepare this honey for us. He draws this water from the fountain through union and dispensation of fulness; - we by faith, from the wells of salvation that are
in him.'

'That which lies hid in Christ, and is revealed from him is full of love, sweetness, tenderness, kindness, grace. It is the Lord waiting to be gracious to sinners; waiting for an advantage to show love and kindness, for the most eminent endearing of a soul unto himself, Isa. xxx. 18...'

How do we cultivate this mutual communication? 'The way and means, then, on the part of the saints, whereby in Christ they enjoy communion with God, are all the spiritual and holy actings and outgoings of their souls in those graces, and by those ways, wherein, both the moral and instituted worship of God doth consist.'

Yet these return communications are all through Christ. 'Our returns are all in him, and by him also. And well is it with us that it is so. What lame and blind sacrifices should we otherwise present unto God! He bears the iniquity of our offerings, and he adds incense unto our prayers. Our love is fixed on the Father; but it is conveyed to him through the Son of his love. He is the only way for our
graces as well as our persons to go unto God; through him passeth all our desire, our delight, our complacency, our obedience'.

There are a few marks of this communion and mutual communication drawn from Song of Solomon chapter 2.

(1.) Sweetness."He brought me to the banqueting-house," 'The grace exhibited by Christ in his ordinances is refreshing, strengthening, comforting, and full of sweetness to the souls of the saints.'
(2.) Delight. "Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples; for I am sick of love." 'Upon the discovery of the excellency and sweetness of Christ in the banqueting-house, the soul is instantly overpowered, and cries out to be made partaker of the fulness of it.'
(3.) Safety. "His banner over me was love," 'The banner is an emblem of safety and protection, - a sign of the presence of an host...[there follows a phrase well worth committing to memory] All their protection is from his love; and they shall have all
the protection his love can give them.'
(4.) Comfort. Supportment and consolation, verse 6, "His left hand is under my head, and his right hand does embrace me." 'Now, "the hand under the head," is supportment, sustaining grace, in pressures and difficulties; and "the hand that does embrace," the hand upon the heart, is joy and consolation; - in both, Christ rejoicing, as the "bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride," Isa. 62: 5. Now, thus to lie in the arms of Christ's love, under a perpetual influence of supportment and
refreshment, is certainly to hold communion with him.'

What the duty of holding fast means

This post looks at the text that heads up this blog. Revelation 2:24-25 “I will put upon you none other burden. But that which ye have already hold fast till I come.”

Undoubtedly we live in an evil day. What we have in these words from the lips of the Lord Jesus Christ is valuable counsel for His Church in the midst of an evil day. “That which ye have already, hold fast”. To hold fast implies that when we make a sincere and open profession of the truth there will be significant opposition in our way and there will be great difficulties and even danger in fulfilling this duty.

Holding fast also implies that in an evil day our main responsibility and duty is to retain and maintain the heritage or deposit of truth with which we have been entrusted: “I will put none other burden upon you”. “Hold fast that which is good” (1 Thess. 5:21). This is our basic duty. It may take all of our energy just to swim against the high waves of opposition and iniquity, even just to hold our ground. The man who slackens to attend to anything else while swimming against the tide will never succeed in either task by which his attention is divided.

Christ gives us “none other burden”, we are not to take additional burdens from anyone else. Men love to add burdens, the Pharisees piled duties upon the people which blinded them to the real necessities of their responsibility towards God. “I have spoken to them the great things of my law, but they were accounted as a strange thing”. The apostolic Church could say of their synodical decrees “it seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things’ (Acts 15:28).

In a day of small things men like to add new burdens in the Church of God. They bring in inventions of their own, innovations in the worship of God which are neither commanded nor necessary. These are the burdens of men and they hinder rather than help us in holding fast. It is gross disobedience to “teach for doctrines the commandments of men”. Others will remove from the testimony and water down the whole counsel of God in order to make the truth more palatable to a rebellious age. This too is forbidden. We are to maintain the whole truth and nothing but the truth: “that which ye have already, hold fast”. “Earnestly contend for the saints once delivered to the saints”.

Men also like to bind burdens on the people of God which will detract from a careful and holy profession of Christ. There were trends in the Church in Thyatira which encouraged walking closely with the world, conforming in certain areas to whatever was required in the trade guilds such as eating in the temples of idols. No doubt there were those who could justify it from the perspective of building bridges with the world but the truth is, as in our own day, that those who advocate running to the same places of sinful pleasure with the world are not extending the influence of the Church in the world but rather that of the world in the Church. Such are seeking to weaken the grip of the Christian and even wrestle out of their grasp the burden that Christ has given to them. In the natural world we often see a bird find a morsel of food, no sooner than he can make away with it in his beak he is pursued by another and then by several birds harrying and chasing to see if they can make him drop his prized meal. So it is with the Christian, no sooner does he take up a profession of the Saviour and the world, the flesh and the devil are all upon him to see if they can make him lose that which he must hold fast.

What we must hold fast
We must hold fast the full deposit of truth and sound words as it has been once delivered in the Scriptures. This is emphasised throughout the Pastoral Epistles and the Epistle to the Hebrews. The Church is the pillar and ground of the truth.

We must not seek to hold merely the bare minimum; we have not been called to reduce the burden for our own ease. The Church must hold to all that it has received. If we do not maintain our heritage what deposit of truth will there be for future generations? We must seek to hold fast in order to pass the deposit of truth on to the succeeding generation, that is truly guarding or preserving it. That is truly holding fast.

The Church must be agreed on the confession that it is collectively holding fast (Hebrew 10:23 & Philippians 3:16) hence the value of the Westminster Confession and Catechisms which are accurate summaries of the truth. Hence also the value of subscribing all of these truths and professing them to be our own personal confession, ‘holding the mystery of the faith with a pure conscience’. There is a sacred deposit of truth, the form of sound words. This must be maintained and asserted at all costs. Many believe that the old truths are outworn and must give place to new ideas. They believe that we can improve on what we have received. They believe that we must lower the biblical standard so that we can arrive at something more acceptable to a greater number of people. Needless to say, this is not holding fast the truth.

One vital way of holding fast in this connection is the instruction of the young within the Church. They must receive the knowledge of the truth. A great encouragement in this work is Isaiah 59:21: “My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed’s seed, saith the LORD, from henceforth and for ever”. This promise guarantees the continuance of a profession of the truth but it does not thereby take away our responsibility to instruct our seed. That responsibility is enjoined in Deuteronomy 29:29 “those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law”. This is a solemn duty and privilege. Fathers, elders, ministers must be vitally concerned that the children of the visible Church are immersed in the truth. (Deut 6:1)

God willing, we may be able to look at how we must hold fast in a future post.

Persecution of the Bible

An article recently published on the Persecution of the Bible. It looks at the persecution of the Scriptures at the time of the Reformation, those who were burnt at the stake for possessing them or translating them and how this persecution continues in our own day.

Why are ministers subject to so many trials?

Luther said that that it is prayer, meditation, and temptation that contribute to make a theologian or minister. Trials, testings and temptation have a key role in divine providence. William Cunningham in his Theological Lectures is the best expositor of what Luther was emphasising in this phrase, see here and here.

"Luther places prayer first, and this was nothing more than is justly due to its paramount importance; it is the imperative and primary duty of all who desire to become acquainted with theology, and qualified for the office of a minister of the gospel, to abound in prayer and supplication. It is quite true that men without piety and without prayer may read many theological books, that God may uphold and sustain them in the ordinary exercise of their faculties when directed to these objects, as when directed to any others, and that they may thus acquire a large measure of acquaintance with theological topics, and be able to discuss them and dispute about them. It has often been remarked, and the remark is undoubtedly true, that many men have written ably and convincingly in defence of the truth of the Christian revelation, in opposition to the attacks of infidels, who never understood or comprehended the leading truths contained in the revelation which they proved to have come from God, and who of course derived no real permanent benefit from the revelation which God had given them.

You can have no thorough and intimate acquaintance with divine truth, and especially you will be very ill fitted to explain and apply it for the benefit of others, unless you have had some practice in actually bringing it to bear upon the resistance of those temptations with which all believers are assailed in their journey towards Zion. All the principal truths revealed in Scripture are intended to be instrumental in leading men—those to whom they are made known —to receive Christ Jesus the Lord, and thereafter to walk in him, in opposition to all the obstacles which the devil, the world, and the flesh may interpose. The word of God is the sword of the Spirit, and is continually to be employed in the spiritual warfare; and the man who has not had the benefit of temptation in the sense in which we have explained it, is like one who has learned the use of the sword only from written instructions, without having tried to handle or to wield it, and who, of course, is still very unfit for defending himself against the assault of enemies, and still more unfit for instructing others in the art of self-defence.

The whole doctrines of God’s word have a practical tendency; they have all been revealed to us for practical objects, and they should be all employed for producing practical results...This process of actually applying the word of God and the doctrines which it contains to their great practical purpose in the formation of character and in the regulation of conduct, according to the actual circumstances in which men are in providence placed and the temptations they are called upon to encounter, produces a clear, impressive, experimental acquaintance with divine truth, which cannot be acquired in any other way, and which peculiarly fits them for communicating clear and impressive conceptions of them to others; and it is held as a maxim applicable to all branches of knowledge, that an acquaintance with any subject which qualifies and entitles a man to become an instructor of others, must be thorough and extensive, such as to give him the clearest, fullest and most impressive conception of it himself...Hence it is not uncommon to meet with persons who have not read much, and who have had but little mental cultivation, but who have been long in the habit of applying the word of God and the doctrines of the gospel to the object of being enabled to resist temptation and be directed in difficulties, to be comforted in trials, and to be guided and encouraged in their spiritual progress, and who, by the study of the Bible, and by this process of practically applying it, have acquired an intimate and thorough knowledge of the word of God and of Christian truth, have attained to a clearness of conception on those subjects, and hold their views with a firmness of grasp which many book-learned theologians have never reached, and which all the ingenuity and sophistry of error cannot diminish or impair.

This is a process which ought to be ever going on, and which will certainly not impede but greatly promote your more formal studies in theology. As private Christians, you are bound to be continually resisting temptation, mortifying sin, and growing in grace; and by carrying on this process through the unceasing application of the word of God and divine truth, and by the reflex act of observing the operations and affections of your own mind while the work of bringing divine truth to bear upon it is going on, you will undoubtedly acquire much real practical available knowledge of the word of God and of the truths which it was intended to unfold, and this knowledge is of essential importance to all who are allowed to be put in trust with the gospel. Divine truth is then only applied to its right purpose when it is employed in this way, then alone is it fully seen in its proper light and in its true character, and no one therefore can be regarded as possessed of a full and competent knowledge of it unless he has seen and watched the process of its being subjected to such experiments.

It is your imperative duty, in accordance with the injunction which Paul gave to Timothy, to flee youthful lusts, which war against the soul, to be avoiding every appearance of evil, to be even already enduring hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ, i.e. to be mortifying pride and ambition, self-confidence, self-conceit, envy, and worldliness, and to be cultivating and cherishing in your souls all the fruits of the Spirit. In this work you will have temptations to resist and difficulties to encounter. You must employ the whole armour of God, especially the shield of faith and the sword of the Spirit, i.e., under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, you are to be ever employing the word of God and the truths which it unfolds; and by carrying on this process faithfully and conscientiously, and by reflecting on its nature, its manifestations, and its results, you will not only grow in grace and in meetness for heaven, but you will acquire a much more thorough insight into the word of God and the truths of Scripture, and be much more fully prepared than otherwise you could have been for wielding the sword of the Spirit for the conversion of sinners and the edification of Christ’s body.

The place of the law in the gospel

“The law of God has its place in the book, and its use in the work of God. ‘By the law is the knowledge of sin’; and the Spirit, who convinces of sin, uses it in that department of His work. A due regard to the glory of God demands that it be so used. Sinners are not to be saved on a misunderstanding as to what they are, and as to what they merit. They must know Him against whom they have sinned. They must know what is justly due to Him from them as His creatures. They must be made acquainted with their iniquity as well as guilt, as sinners. And through the coming of the commandment sin must ‘revive’ in their consciousness, so that they know that they are desperately wicked, as surely as that their persons are condemned to die. Without this they can have no conception of gospel grace. Any hope attained to without this, can only be based on a misunderstanding, and must involve dishonor to God. God is not to be conceived of as one who has to study man’s convenience only, instead of supremely consulting his own glory. It should be an aim of preaching, therefore, to bring sinners to plead guilty before God; to feel themselves, in excuseless guilt, shut up to the sovereign mercy of Him against whom they have sinned. The attainment of this may be the result of a moment’s working of the power of God, or it may be reached only after a protracted process; but to this all must come who are reconciled to God.” -James Begg