Another blog has published the whole of John Kennedy, Dingwall's Leper Isle. This is rather like John Bunyan's The Holy War or The Pilgrim's Progress except set at sea. It is called 'a waking dream'. It was reprinted by the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland in 1967. There are various places in the world called Leper Isle.
This is part 1, part 2 and the key to the allegory.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Spiritual Decay
"It is fit,that professors of all sorts should be reminded of these things; for we may see not a few of them under visible decays, without any sincere endeavors after a recovery, who yet please themselves that the root of the matter is in them. It is so, if love of the world, conformity unto it, negligence in holy duties, and coldness in spiritual love, be an evidence of such decays. But let none deceive their own souls; wherever there is a saving principle of grace, it will be thriving and growing unto the end. And if it fall under obstructions, and thereby into decays for a season, it will give no rest or quietness unto the soul wherein it is, but will labor continually for a recovery. Peace in a spiritually-decaying condition, is a soul-ruining security; better be under terror on the account of surprisal into some sin, than be in peace under evident decays of spiritual life." John Owen
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
The external and internal aspects of the Covenant of Grace
Obadiah Sedgewick (one of the Westminster divines) shows how there is an internal (absolute) and external (conditional) side to the Covenant of Grace. The former is what is graciously effected in the elect. The latter is what those within the visible Church are brought into. This is preached and offered in the Word and Sacraments.
Of the Covenant in special.
I shall now descend to something more special, to show unto you, what that Covenant which God makes between himself and his people.
There are those who distinguish of a twofold Covenant.
1. There is Foedus absolutum, which is such a promise of God, as takes in no stipulation or condition at all, that runs altogether upon absolute terms; such a Covenant was that which God made with Noah, that he would never down the world any more. Gen 9.11. and such a kind of Covenant is that, when God promises to give faith and perseverance unto his elect, Heb. 8.10, &c. Both these Covenants are absolute, and without any condition; there is nothing in them but what is folded up in the promises themselves.
2. Foedus Hypotheticum, which is a gracious promise on God’s part, with an obligation to duty; for although it be natural to God, to recompense any good, as it is to punish any evil; And although man does owe unto God whatsoever God covenants with him for; yet it so pleases his Divine Will thus to deal with us, that in binding of us to duty unto himself, he binds himself in reward unto us, and promises such and such a recompence, upon the condition of such and such a performance.
Obadiah Sedgwick, The Bowels of Tender Mercy Sealed in the Everlasting Covenant (Printed by Edmund Mottershed, for Adoniram Byfield, and are to be sold by Joseph Cranford, at the Sign of the Castle and Lyon in St. Pauls Church-yard, 1661), 6.
Of the Covenant in special.
I shall now descend to something more special, to show unto you, what that Covenant which God makes between himself and his people.
There are those who distinguish of a twofold Covenant.
1. There is Foedus absolutum, which is such a promise of God, as takes in no stipulation or condition at all, that runs altogether upon absolute terms; such a Covenant was that which God made with Noah, that he would never down the world any more. Gen 9.11. and such a kind of Covenant is that, when God promises to give faith and perseverance unto his elect, Heb. 8.10, &c. Both these Covenants are absolute, and without any condition; there is nothing in them but what is folded up in the promises themselves.
2. Foedus Hypotheticum, which is a gracious promise on God’s part, with an obligation to duty; for although it be natural to God, to recompense any good, as it is to punish any evil; And although man does owe unto God whatsoever God covenants with him for; yet it so pleases his Divine Will thus to deal with us, that in binding of us to duty unto himself, he binds himself in reward unto us, and promises such and such a recompence, upon the condition of such and such a performance.
Obadiah Sedgwick, The Bowels of Tender Mercy Sealed in the Everlasting Covenant (Printed by Edmund Mottershed, for Adoniram Byfield, and are to be sold by Joseph Cranford, at the Sign of the Castle and Lyon in St. Pauls Church-yard, 1661), 6.
Friday, July 11, 2008
The Fellowship Meeting
Another blog covers the fellowship meeting with helpful links - the meeting is a feature of Highland Communion seasons. Here is a good example of a fellowship meeting in recent memory.
It is important that the meeting is referred to as the fellowship meeting as well as the question (a more Gaelic reference). This is because it has this, not extempore exegesis or exposition, at its heart. It is about personal experience. These Fellowship Meetings probably began in Kiltearn in the 1650s. It began with a practical and experimental purpose and content. The great question concerns the marks of grace. It shows the responsibility and concern of the stronger for the weaker. Fellowship is one of the most abused and trivialised words in evangelicalism. The fellowship meeting points to the real meaning of fellowship which signifies a community sharing and participating in a common life.
Dr Kennedy, Dingwall defends and describes the fellowship meeting well in The Days of the Fathers in Ross-shire as follows:
The great object of the fellowship meeting was the mutual comfort and edification of believers, with a special reference to the cases of such, as were exercised with fears as to their interest in Christ. And how was it conducted? At first, only communicants were present; but, latterly, admission became indiscriminate. The minister presides, and, after prayer, praise and the reading of a portion of Scripture, he calk on any one who is anxious to propose a question to the meeting, to do so. This call is responded to by some man who rises, mentions a passage of Scripture describing some feature of the Christian character, and expresses his desire to ascertain the marks of those whom the passage describes, and the various respects in which they may differ from merely nominal Christians. The scope of the passage of Scripture is then opened up by the minister, and the exact import of the question founded upon it is explained. He then calls by name, successively, on such as are of repute for piety, experience, and gifts to "speak to the question." One after another rises, as he is called, states briefly his view of the question, and without attempting either to expound Scripture, or to deliver an exhortation, or venturing to parade his own experience, speaks from the heart what he has felt, and feared, and enjoyed under the power of the truth. Thereafter, the minister sums up all that has been said, correcting, confirming, and expanding as may be necessary, and makes a practical improvement of the whole. The person, who proposed the question, is then usually called to engage in prayer, and, with praise and the benediction, the meeting is closed. Such was the fellowship meeting in the good days of the fathers in Ross-shire.
"The men" seem, to some, to have been taken out of their proper place, when called to address a congregation, and to have assumed work properly and exclusively the minister's. They must be quite ignorant of "the men" and of their work with whom this objection can have any weight. If they were accustomed to expound, or if they attempted to preach, it might be said, that they were stepping out of their proper place, and invading the province of the minister: but they who were worthy of a place among "the men" never attempted to do so. They but spake to one another, of their mutual fears and trials, hopes and joys: and the position, as office-bearers, held by the most of them, and the gifts which the Lord had conferred on them all, entitled them to do so, in the more public position of the fellowship meeting. Never was a godly minister's office less endangered, than when he was countenancing and directing their service in "speaking to the question," and often has the time thus spent by him been, to his own soul, a season of refreshing.
There are many who think, that uneducated persons, such as "the men," could not possibly deliver addresses that might edify their hearers. Those who required "the excellency of speech and of wisdom in order to be pleased, would certainly not be gratified at the fellowship meeting, but those who "desired the sincere milk of the word that" they "might grow thereby," would as certainly be profited. Of such learning, as makes one proud, "the men" had none; but they knew their Bibles as few besides have known them. Their clear view of the Gospel system might bring a blush on the face of some professors of divinity if they heard and understood them; and some doctors, however learned, might sit at their feet, as they spake of the sorrows and the joys of the Christian's life. Some of them were men of distinguished talent, and all their mental vigour, untrammelled by learning, they brought to bear upon the things of God. Never, surely, is there a more attractive exercise of intellect than when, divested of all literary acquirements, it enters directly into "the mysteries of the kingdom," and comes forth in a panoply of Scripture truth. Light from heaven then irradiates all the gifts of the speaker. Traces of learning, mingled with the halo of this light, would be spots of darkness. Some of "the men" were able speakers. Orators they were, without attempting to be so, and utterly unconscious of their gift, who could powerfully affect the feelings of their hearers. Some of them gave utterance to sayings that could not be forgotten, and a few of which would earn a fame for genius in a more public sphere.
Of the question, "How far lay agency may be employed for the edification of the Church," the wisest practical solution has been furnished in the service of the fellowship meeting. It is surely desirable, that, if there are talented and godly men in a congregation, an opportunity should be afforded, for securing to others, the benefit of those gifts, with which the Lord has endowed them. If He has made them "apt to teach," an opportunity to teach should be given them by the church. This should be provided, so as not to invade the province of the ordained teacher, and so as to conserve and support the authority of his office. By no summary process ought a man to be converted into a preacher, however shining his gifts, and however eminent his godliness. But is he therefore to be kept silent? May no opportunity be given him to exhort his brethren, publicly as well as privately, so as to secure, to the Church at large, the benefit of his stores of Christian knowledge and experience? All these conditions have been met, in the service of the fellowship meeting. There an opportunity, to exercise their gifts, for the good of the Church, and without the least prejudice to the position and influence of the minister, was given to such as the Lord had qualified. How strange it is, that some, who neglect to avail them selves of such an arrangement, and who are disposed to frown upon it where it has been adopted, should not hesitate to exalt into the position, even of evangelists, neophytes, with crude views of the doctrines of the Gospel, owing subjection to no ecclesiastical authority, and furnishing no security whatever for the prudence and the purity of their doctrine and their life.
The service, in which "the men" were employed, was useful as a test. In the good days of the fathers, the discernment of the Church was keen, and very rarely could a man, who was a stranger to a life of godliness, be approved at the fellowship meeting. Satan required to do his utmost in making a passable hypocrite in these days. He sometimes, even then, succeeded in foisting a counterfeit on the confidence of the Church, but it was not often that he tried it. Usually, "of the rest durst no man join himself to them." Through this ordeal the eldership had to pass, ere they found a place in a session, over which a man of God presided. It would be well if this kind of trial were universal. The application of such a test might, in some cases, allow no session at all; but it may be fairly questioned whether this is a valid objection to its use. Now, and in some places, let a man's religion be all on the outside of him, if it is only a decent garb to look at from a distance, and if he is a man of influence, or of money, or of talent, this is quite enough to win for him an elder's place. An uneducated, but godly and praying elder, would be better than a host of such men as he; but better still, the man, in whom the gifts and the influence of the one were sanctified by the grace given to the other.
It is important that the meeting is referred to as the fellowship meeting as well as the question (a more Gaelic reference). This is because it has this, not extempore exegesis or exposition, at its heart. It is about personal experience. These Fellowship Meetings probably began in Kiltearn in the 1650s. It began with a practical and experimental purpose and content. The great question concerns the marks of grace. It shows the responsibility and concern of the stronger for the weaker. Fellowship is one of the most abused and trivialised words in evangelicalism. The fellowship meeting points to the real meaning of fellowship which signifies a community sharing and participating in a common life.
Dr Kennedy, Dingwall defends and describes the fellowship meeting well in The Days of the Fathers in Ross-shire as follows:
The great object of the fellowship meeting was the mutual comfort and edification of believers, with a special reference to the cases of such, as were exercised with fears as to their interest in Christ. And how was it conducted? At first, only communicants were present; but, latterly, admission became indiscriminate. The minister presides, and, after prayer, praise and the reading of a portion of Scripture, he calk on any one who is anxious to propose a question to the meeting, to do so. This call is responded to by some man who rises, mentions a passage of Scripture describing some feature of the Christian character, and expresses his desire to ascertain the marks of those whom the passage describes, and the various respects in which they may differ from merely nominal Christians. The scope of the passage of Scripture is then opened up by the minister, and the exact import of the question founded upon it is explained. He then calls by name, successively, on such as are of repute for piety, experience, and gifts to "speak to the question." One after another rises, as he is called, states briefly his view of the question, and without attempting either to expound Scripture, or to deliver an exhortation, or venturing to parade his own experience, speaks from the heart what he has felt, and feared, and enjoyed under the power of the truth. Thereafter, the minister sums up all that has been said, correcting, confirming, and expanding as may be necessary, and makes a practical improvement of the whole. The person, who proposed the question, is then usually called to engage in prayer, and, with praise and the benediction, the meeting is closed. Such was the fellowship meeting in the good days of the fathers in Ross-shire.
"The men" seem, to some, to have been taken out of their proper place, when called to address a congregation, and to have assumed work properly and exclusively the minister's. They must be quite ignorant of "the men" and of their work with whom this objection can have any weight. If they were accustomed to expound, or if they attempted to preach, it might be said, that they were stepping out of their proper place, and invading the province of the minister: but they who were worthy of a place among "the men" never attempted to do so. They but spake to one another, of their mutual fears and trials, hopes and joys: and the position, as office-bearers, held by the most of them, and the gifts which the Lord had conferred on them all, entitled them to do so, in the more public position of the fellowship meeting. Never was a godly minister's office less endangered, than when he was countenancing and directing their service in "speaking to the question," and often has the time thus spent by him been, to his own soul, a season of refreshing.
There are many who think, that uneducated persons, such as "the men," could not possibly deliver addresses that might edify their hearers. Those who required "the excellency of speech and of wisdom in order to be pleased, would certainly not be gratified at the fellowship meeting, but those who "desired the sincere milk of the word that" they "might grow thereby," would as certainly be profited. Of such learning, as makes one proud, "the men" had none; but they knew their Bibles as few besides have known them. Their clear view of the Gospel system might bring a blush on the face of some professors of divinity if they heard and understood them; and some doctors, however learned, might sit at their feet, as they spake of the sorrows and the joys of the Christian's life. Some of them were men of distinguished talent, and all their mental vigour, untrammelled by learning, they brought to bear upon the things of God. Never, surely, is there a more attractive exercise of intellect than when, divested of all literary acquirements, it enters directly into "the mysteries of the kingdom," and comes forth in a panoply of Scripture truth. Light from heaven then irradiates all the gifts of the speaker. Traces of learning, mingled with the halo of this light, would be spots of darkness. Some of "the men" were able speakers. Orators they were, without attempting to be so, and utterly unconscious of their gift, who could powerfully affect the feelings of their hearers. Some of them gave utterance to sayings that could not be forgotten, and a few of which would earn a fame for genius in a more public sphere.
Of the question, "How far lay agency may be employed for the edification of the Church," the wisest practical solution has been furnished in the service of the fellowship meeting. It is surely desirable, that, if there are talented and godly men in a congregation, an opportunity should be afforded, for securing to others, the benefit of those gifts, with which the Lord has endowed them. If He has made them "apt to teach," an opportunity to teach should be given them by the church. This should be provided, so as not to invade the province of the ordained teacher, and so as to conserve and support the authority of his office. By no summary process ought a man to be converted into a preacher, however shining his gifts, and however eminent his godliness. But is he therefore to be kept silent? May no opportunity be given him to exhort his brethren, publicly as well as privately, so as to secure, to the Church at large, the benefit of his stores of Christian knowledge and experience? All these conditions have been met, in the service of the fellowship meeting. There an opportunity, to exercise their gifts, for the good of the Church, and without the least prejudice to the position and influence of the minister, was given to such as the Lord had qualified. How strange it is, that some, who neglect to avail them selves of such an arrangement, and who are disposed to frown upon it where it has been adopted, should not hesitate to exalt into the position, even of evangelists, neophytes, with crude views of the doctrines of the Gospel, owing subjection to no ecclesiastical authority, and furnishing no security whatever for the prudence and the purity of their doctrine and their life.
The service, in which "the men" were employed, was useful as a test. In the good days of the fathers, the discernment of the Church was keen, and very rarely could a man, who was a stranger to a life of godliness, be approved at the fellowship meeting. Satan required to do his utmost in making a passable hypocrite in these days. He sometimes, even then, succeeded in foisting a counterfeit on the confidence of the Church, but it was not often that he tried it. Usually, "of the rest durst no man join himself to them." Through this ordeal the eldership had to pass, ere they found a place in a session, over which a man of God presided. It would be well if this kind of trial were universal. The application of such a test might, in some cases, allow no session at all; but it may be fairly questioned whether this is a valid objection to its use. Now, and in some places, let a man's religion be all on the outside of him, if it is only a decent garb to look at from a distance, and if he is a man of influence, or of money, or of talent, this is quite enough to win for him an elder's place. An uneducated, but godly and praying elder, would be better than a host of such men as he; but better still, the man, in whom the gifts and the influence of the one were sanctified by the grace given to the other.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
The offence of blasphemy
On 8 May 2008, the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 abolished the common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel in England and Wales, with effect from 8 July 2008. Parliament cannot abolish the 3rd Commandment so easily as they would think, however, and as 'the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain' so will he not hold guiltless those that have abused their delegated power to protect and reward the evil doer in this way.
The Blasphemy Act 1698 declared it illegal for any person, educated in or having made profession of the Christian religion, by writing, preaching, teaching or advised speaking, to state the following:
- a denial that the members of the Holy Trinity were God.
- an assertion that there is more than one god.
- a denial of the truth of the Christian religion to be true.
- a denial of the Holy Scriptures to be of divine authority.
Those denying the Trinity were already deprived of the benefit of the Act of Toleration by an act of 1688. The first offence resulted in being rendered incapable of holding any office or place of trust. The second offense resulted in being rendered incapable of bringing any action, of being guardian or executor, or of taking a legacy or deed of gift, and three years imprisonment without bail.
It was rarely applied: an excessively short statute of limitations allowed for a very short time after the offense for lodging a formal complaint; a similar limitation applied to bringing the case to trial. It followed from February 1698 when a committee of the house of Commons requested William III to suppress 'all pernicious books and pamphlets which contain in them impious doctrines'. By the law of Scotland, as it originally stood, the punishment of blasphemy was death, a penalty imposed on Thomas Aikenhead in Edinburgh in 1697. By an act of 1825, amended in 1837, blasphemy was made punishable by fine or imprisonment or both. The last prosecution for blasphemy in Scotland was in 1843 but technically the law remains in force in Scotland.
The English act (exactly 310 years old) was directed against apostates at the beginning of the deist movement in England, particularly after the 1696 publication of John Toland's book, "Christianity Not Mysterious." "The reasonableness of Christianity" by John Locke was also in view. Both books were burnt by the public hangman. It was said that Toland's book took out all the mystery and left no Christianity at all. Momentum for action had been building since the 'Proposals for a National Reformation of Manners in 1694 'All men agree that atheism and prophaneness never got such an high ascendant as at this day. A thick gloominess hath overspread our horizon, and our light looks like the everining of the world.'
Daniel Defoe commented on the climate of skepticism: 'No age since the founding and forming of the Christian Church was ever like, in open avowed Atheism, blasphemies and heresies to the age we now live in'. One deist wrote that if Jesus Christ was responsible for founding churches 'I think the old Romans did him right in punishing him with the death of a slave'.
Francis Atterbury gave a similarly gloomy assessment:
'Heresies of all kinds, scepticisim, deism ahd atheism itself over-run us like a deluge...the Triinity has been...openly denied...a,ll mysteries in religion have been decried as impositions on men's understandings, and nothing is admitted as an article of faith but what we can fully and perfectly comprehend'
Another assessment shows the similarity of our age to the latter end of the 17th century 'we are fallen into those dregs of time wherein atheism and irreligion,seidition and debauchery seem to divide the world between them'. How much more is this the case now, and how much more proportionately do we need a blasphemy act to be retained.
The Criminal Law Act 1967 abolished the offences of the Blasphemy Act 1698,
and blasphemy became a purely common law matter. Lord Denning said 'we
all thought it was obsolescent'. In 1976 Mary Whitehouse, started a private prosecution of a blasphemous homosexual poem. During the House of Lords appeal Lord Scarman said that "I do not subscribe to the view that the common law offence of blasphemous libel serves no useful purpose in modern law. (...) The offence belongs to a group of criminal offences designed to safeguard the internal tranquillity of the kingdom." The conviction was followed by a endeavours to abolish the crime of blasphemy.
We ought to take special note of the reasons that are annexed to the third commandment. The Larger Catechism identifies these as:
'these words, The Lord thy God, and, For the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain, are, because he is the Lord and our God, therefore his name is not to be profaned, or any way abused by us; especially because he will be so far from acquitting and sparing the transgressors of this commandment, as that he will not suffer them to escape his righteous judgment; albeit many such escape the censures and punishments of men'. The last two clauses should be clearly emphasised in the light of current events.
Thursday, July 03, 2008
Are evangelicals becoming liberal?
A recent Time Magazine Article reports on the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life which last year surveyed 35,000 Americans, and found that 70% of respondents agreed with the statement "Many religions can lead to eternal life." Even more remarkable was the fact that 57% of Evangelical Christians were willing to accept that theirs might not be the only path to salvation, since most Christians historically have embraced the words of Jesus, in the Gospel of John, that "no one comes to the Father except through me." Even as mainline churches had become more tolerant, the exclusivity of Christianity's path to heaven has long been one of the Evangelicals' fundamental tenets.
This shows how far evangelicalism is from a sound bedrock of confessional truth drawn from Scripture. The Westminster Confession states:
…men, not professing the Christian religion, [cannot] be saved in any other way whatsoever, be they never so diligent to frame their lives according to the light of nature, and the laws of that religion they do profess. And, to assert and maintain that they may, is very pernicious, and to be detested [Westminster Confession of Faith, 10.4]
Robert Reymond writes against religious inclusivism here.
J.G. Vos was a good observer of other religions in "A Christian Introduction to Religions of the World" - he is very perceptive on Islam. He also has a good article on the Good Elements in False Religions. But we must remember that the counterfeit requires to have some resemblance to the truth to be successful. Here is a good article on the exclusivity of Christianity.
This shows how far evangelicalism is from a sound bedrock of confessional truth drawn from Scripture. The Westminster Confession states:
…men, not professing the Christian religion, [cannot] be saved in any other way whatsoever, be they never so diligent to frame their lives according to the light of nature, and the laws of that religion they do profess. And, to assert and maintain that they may, is very pernicious, and to be detested [Westminster Confession of Faith, 10.4]
Robert Reymond writes against religious inclusivism here.
J.G. Vos was a good observer of other religions in "A Christian Introduction to Religions of the World" - he is very perceptive on Islam. He also has a good article on the Good Elements in False Religions. But we must remember that the counterfeit requires to have some resemblance to the truth to be successful. Here is a good article on the exclusivity of Christianity.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Evangelical fears and compromises
Various commentators from within evangelicalism are coming to the conclusion that has been obvious for a rather long time, that evangelicalism's greatest fear is at the heart of all its compromises. This is the fear of not being relevant or to use a more realistic term, fashionable. David F. Wells in his latest book 'The Courage to be Protestant' writes: 'Frankly, there is no judgment more to be feared than this: you are now passé. That weighs more heavily even than words coming from the great white throne at the end of time. Imagine that! Passé.'
He also writes in a collection of essays 'Reforming or Conforming? Post-Conservative Evangelicals and the Emerging Church': 'Evangelicals today are fearful, but they are fearful of all the wrong things. They are deeply apprehensive about becoming obsolete, of being left behind, so to speak, of being passed by, and of not being relevant'.(p. 48) It fits very neatly with marketing theory and practice which, through a very thin veneer, is driving much of the trends within evangelicalism.
Os Guinness has written a book 'Prophetic Untimeliness: A Challenge to the Idol of Relevance', he says that this desire to be fashionable (culturally relevant) is exactly why Christians are now becoming marginalized. Being fashioable means creating trendy worship services, writing books about how Christ can be seen in current movies, or mirroring hot bands playing on MTV. He says in a recent interview 'Evangelicalism has never chased relevance more determinedly than it does now. And yet, we've never been more irrelevant'. This undermines the authority of Scripture, and a loss of identity and continuity with the Church historically.
Wells observes that the fear of being irrelevant and unfashionable has been 'transferred' from liberals.
'This, of course, was the fear that haunted the older generation of Protestant liberals, so many of whom began their lives in evangelical homes. They were overwhelmed by the need to be relevant to the culture...Their conversation partner was the Enlightenment.
This lesson, however, is entirely lost on most evangelicals today. The reason is partly that they are treading a different path and so they do not see the parallels. Theirs is not the accommodation to high culture, as was the liberals'.
That culture was suffused with intellectual pride and humanism, with rationalism and hostility to Christian faith. It is now dying. The Enlightenment, from which much of it arose, has all but collapsed, as has the Christianity that had made itself into an ally.
The parallels between these older liberals and today's evangelicals are not in the culture to which they are accommodating but in the process of accommodation. Behind each is the same mind-set. The difference is only in what is being accommodated. And the dangers are all concealed beneath the apparent innocence of the experiment.
The fact is, however, that evangelical Christianity today is as endangered by its postmodern dance partner as the earlier liberals were by their Enlightenment partner'. (p. 49)
My view on this as evidenced in the secularisation of the Bible through inferior translation in the 20th century is here.
He also writes in a collection of essays 'Reforming or Conforming? Post-Conservative Evangelicals and the Emerging Church': 'Evangelicals today are fearful, but they are fearful of all the wrong things. They are deeply apprehensive about becoming obsolete, of being left behind, so to speak, of being passed by, and of not being relevant'.(p. 48) It fits very neatly with marketing theory and practice which, through a very thin veneer, is driving much of the trends within evangelicalism.
Os Guinness has written a book 'Prophetic Untimeliness: A Challenge to the Idol of Relevance', he says that this desire to be fashionable (culturally relevant) is exactly why Christians are now becoming marginalized. Being fashioable means creating trendy worship services, writing books about how Christ can be seen in current movies, or mirroring hot bands playing on MTV. He says in a recent interview 'Evangelicalism has never chased relevance more determinedly than it does now. And yet, we've never been more irrelevant'. This undermines the authority of Scripture, and a loss of identity and continuity with the Church historically.
Wells observes that the fear of being irrelevant and unfashionable has been 'transferred' from liberals.
'This, of course, was the fear that haunted the older generation of Protestant liberals, so many of whom began their lives in evangelical homes. They were overwhelmed by the need to be relevant to the culture...Their conversation partner was the Enlightenment.
This lesson, however, is entirely lost on most evangelicals today. The reason is partly that they are treading a different path and so they do not see the parallels. Theirs is not the accommodation to high culture, as was the liberals'.
That culture was suffused with intellectual pride and humanism, with rationalism and hostility to Christian faith. It is now dying. The Enlightenment, from which much of it arose, has all but collapsed, as has the Christianity that had made itself into an ally.
The parallels between these older liberals and today's evangelicals are not in the culture to which they are accommodating but in the process of accommodation. Behind each is the same mind-set. The difference is only in what is being accommodated. And the dangers are all concealed beneath the apparent innocence of the experiment.
The fact is, however, that evangelical Christianity today is as endangered by its postmodern dance partner as the earlier liberals were by their Enlightenment partner'. (p. 49)
My view on this as evidenced in the secularisation of the Bible through inferior translation in the 20th century is here.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Jacob as a type of Christ
Recently someone mentioned Jacob as a type of Christ. We know that there is much in Jacob that was sinful and certainly could never be typical of Christ. We must look at the types, however, in terms of their office and public role rather than their personal characteristics. Jonathan Edwards says in one of his letters that 'the word of God came to Jacob, as a type of Christ, 1 Kings 18:31'. the latter verse highlights Jacob's new name of Israel, this is also a name used for Christ in prophecy. It was promised to Jacob that he would become 'a multitude of people'(Genesis 28:3). In the Greek translation the Septuagaint, the word is ecclesia which is the Greek for Church. Israel means 'prince with God' and Christ is a Prince and Saviour, the prince of the kings of the earth.
Jacob was a type of Christ in his priestly office especially in Genesis 31:54. Before Aaron was High Priest the patriarchs as heads of households were priests and offered sacrifices which was afterward reflected in the passover where the head of the household sacrificed the lamb. Genesis 31:54 is also in the context of a covenant being ratified through a covenant meal see Exodus 18:12 and Ex 24.
We should look at the covenant blessing of Jacob (Genesis 27:29) and remember that Christ confirmed the promises made to the patriarchs in these covenants (Rom 15:8). The blessing 'Let people serve thee' and 'nations bow down to thee' is prophetic of Christ and only fulfilled in Him (Dan. 7:14; Zech. 8:23; Is. 60:12;Ps. 72:11). He also says 'Be Lord over thy brethren' and 'Let thy mother's sons bow down to thee' which is fulfilled in Christ (Phil. 2:11; James 1:1 1 Cor. 15:7). Jacob speaks of 'the children which God hath graciously given thy servant'; similarly to Christ who says 'Behold I and the children thou hast given me' (Heb 2:13). There is also a reflection of the love of Christ for His Church in that of Jacob for Rachel.
Sometimes particular identifications of typology can be controversial. Patrick Fairbairn in his volumes on Typology takes the Puritan Thomas Taylor to task for
some of the seventeen instances that he discovered between Jacob and Christ. Fairbairn said that Taylor does not scruple 'to swell the number by occasionally taking in acts of sin, as well as circumstances of an altogether trivial nature. Thus, Jacob s being a supplanter of his brother, is made to represent Christ's supplanting death, sin, and Satan; his being obedient to his parents in all things, Christ s subjection to His heavenly Father and His earthly parents ; his purchasing his birthright by red pottage, and obtaining the blessing by presenting savoury venison to his father, clothed in Esau's garment, Christ's purchasing the heavenly inheritance to us by His red blood, and obtaining the blessing by offering up the savoury meat of His obedience, in the borrowed garment of our nature, etc.'
Fairbairn says that 'the analogy they found upon was a merely superficial resemblance appearing between things in the Old and other things in the New Testament Scriptures. But resemblances of this sort are so extremely multifarious, and appear also so different according to the point of view from which they are contemplated, that it was obviously possible for any one to take occasion through them to introduce the most frivolous conceits, and to caricature rather than vindicate the grand theme of the Gospel'.
There are no doubt, however, many more correspondences between Christ and Jacob that I have not mentioned above which do not come under Fairbairn's censure.
Jacob was a type of Christ in his priestly office especially in Genesis 31:54. Before Aaron was High Priest the patriarchs as heads of households were priests and offered sacrifices which was afterward reflected in the passover where the head of the household sacrificed the lamb. Genesis 31:54 is also in the context of a covenant being ratified through a covenant meal see Exodus 18:12 and Ex 24.
We should look at the covenant blessing of Jacob (Genesis 27:29) and remember that Christ confirmed the promises made to the patriarchs in these covenants (Rom 15:8). The blessing 'Let people serve thee' and 'nations bow down to thee' is prophetic of Christ and only fulfilled in Him (Dan. 7:14; Zech. 8:23; Is. 60:12;Ps. 72:11). He also says 'Be Lord over thy brethren' and 'Let thy mother's sons bow down to thee' which is fulfilled in Christ (Phil. 2:11; James 1:1 1 Cor. 15:7). Jacob speaks of 'the children which God hath graciously given thy servant'; similarly to Christ who says 'Behold I and the children thou hast given me' (Heb 2:13). There is also a reflection of the love of Christ for His Church in that of Jacob for Rachel.
Sometimes particular identifications of typology can be controversial. Patrick Fairbairn in his volumes on Typology takes the Puritan Thomas Taylor to task for
some of the seventeen instances that he discovered between Jacob and Christ. Fairbairn said that Taylor does not scruple 'to swell the number by occasionally taking in acts of sin, as well as circumstances of an altogether trivial nature. Thus, Jacob s being a supplanter of his brother, is made to represent Christ's supplanting death, sin, and Satan; his being obedient to his parents in all things, Christ s subjection to His heavenly Father and His earthly parents ; his purchasing his birthright by red pottage, and obtaining the blessing by presenting savoury venison to his father, clothed in Esau's garment, Christ's purchasing the heavenly inheritance to us by His red blood, and obtaining the blessing by offering up the savoury meat of His obedience, in the borrowed garment of our nature, etc.'
Fairbairn says that 'the analogy they found upon was a merely superficial resemblance appearing between things in the Old and other things in the New Testament Scriptures. But resemblances of this sort are so extremely multifarious, and appear also so different according to the point of view from which they are contemplated, that it was obviously possible for any one to take occasion through them to introduce the most frivolous conceits, and to caricature rather than vindicate the grand theme of the Gospel'.
There are no doubt, however, many more correspondences between Christ and Jacob that I have not mentioned above which do not come under Fairbairn's censure.
Monday, June 16, 2008
The Fashion of Feminism
Earlier this month the death of the fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent was mourned. In his personal life he was promiscuous, bisexual, a drug addict and alcoholic which induced depression. In his work he was extremely influential.
The Guardian claimed that he "reworked the rules of fashion defining how modern women dressed". He has been described as "the French fashion designer who created a bold new dress code for women during the feminist revolution of the 1970s". The news agency Agence France-Presse elaborated on how he "changed the silhouette of 20th century woman with a daring new dress code". This refers to the fact that he invented and popularised the trouser-suit for women. The silhouette refers to the fact that gender distinction could be clearly indicated as it is in symbol form by the silhouette of a woman in a skirt and a man in trousers. His business partner comments. "He was the first to put women in pants, the first to put them in tuxedos, the first to put them in masculine clothes". “He transformed society and he transformed women.” The trouser suit has been hailed as the real birth of the feminist revolution of the 1970s and "what fashion gave to feminism." “Feminism was built on the trouser suit”. As commentators have pointed out he introduced this revolution when the French academic feminists were airing their views. Although there had been a similar expression of feminism by some women in the 1920s it was in the 1970s that feminism became truly popular. There were certain reasons for this. A Russian news agency points to the context of "massive popular cultural shifts of the 1960s, with sexual liberation, women's unprecedented economic freedom, and the rise of feminism".
In 1970 the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland took account of these sea changes in society in its rebellion against God's Word. Its resolution (reaffirmed in 2003) noted that there "is evidence that the "permissiveness" of the age has influenced the Church. In particular this is the case in the dress of the women, and in the hair styles of both men and women.
The Word of God demands of women that they be dressed in modest apparel, and the Synod urge the women of the Church to give heed to this counsel. Not only does it require modesty of dress but also distinction in dress between the sexes. The practice of men and women wearing clothes which obliterates this distinction is quite contrary to God's Word and expressly declared to be an abomination to Him. "The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God" (Deut 22:5).
The Church must therefore condemn these practices as contrary to God's Word and direct her people to seek the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ to enable them to live unspotted in the world."
Several articles in the Young People's Magazine give further guidance.
"Such also is the spirit of feminism, which tries to destroy all God’s distinctions between man and woman (Ephesians 5:21-32, 1 Timothy 2:9-15, 1 Peter 3:1-7). Holy Scripture also makes a clear distinction between male and female in dress: “The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God” (Deuteronomy 22:5). As John Calvin points out, this text is one of around 24 in Exodus to Deuteronomy which enlarge on God’s teaching of the Seventh Commandment. It is exceedingly solemn to despise any of God’s precepts. The Lord Jesus endured such suffering as no tongue can tell (Hebrews 2:10) when the wrath of God fell upon Him because of a broken law, to which He gave perfect obedience (Romans 5:19). That is our only hope of eternal life. Feminism is all about removing God-given distinctions between men and women. The items of clothing that, throughout Western society, have distinguished between men and women for hundreds of years are trousers and skirts. This is a clear distinction, still universally used today on buildings. God has made a clear distinction between men and women, but feminism rejects God and His Word. Those who fear God wish to cleave to His precepts. Thus, in their walk, and especially in His house, they honour Him by acknowledging this God-given distinction. “Why call ye Me Lord, Lord, and do not the things that I say?” We grieve the Holy Spirit when we show some outward attachment to His people while following the fashions of this world. “Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (James 4:4). How solemn to hear one and another say, “Well, X does it”...We are safe only when we follow Christ and His Word. Let God be true and every man a liar."
Another article by Rev Neil Ross addresses the issue.
"It is true that God looks on the heart, while man looks upon the outward appearance. But the outward appearance does matter; it is part of a Christian lifestyle. Take clothing, for example: certain ways of dressing can lead to sin, and so we should remember some Scripture principles.
First, Deuteronomy 22:5 teaches us that there ought to be a distinction between male and female in their clothing: “The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God”. Changes in fashion do not cancel out this principle. It was in the 1960s, says a writer on the history of fashion, “that the distinctions between clothing made for men and that made for women became less and less obvious”. The principle remains however: God has ordained that there be a clear distinction between the sexes. In our culture, the dress or skirt is still viewed as the distinctly female garment."
The Guardian claimed that he "reworked the rules of fashion defining how modern women dressed". He has been described as "the French fashion designer who created a bold new dress code for women during the feminist revolution of the 1970s". The news agency Agence France-Presse elaborated on how he "changed the silhouette of 20th century woman with a daring new dress code". This refers to the fact that he invented and popularised the trouser-suit for women. The silhouette refers to the fact that gender distinction could be clearly indicated as it is in symbol form by the silhouette of a woman in a skirt and a man in trousers. His business partner comments. "He was the first to put women in pants, the first to put them in tuxedos, the first to put them in masculine clothes". “He transformed society and he transformed women.” The trouser suit has been hailed as the real birth of the feminist revolution of the 1970s and "what fashion gave to feminism." “Feminism was built on the trouser suit”. As commentators have pointed out he introduced this revolution when the French academic feminists were airing their views. Although there had been a similar expression of feminism by some women in the 1920s it was in the 1970s that feminism became truly popular. There were certain reasons for this. A Russian news agency points to the context of "massive popular cultural shifts of the 1960s, with sexual liberation, women's unprecedented economic freedom, and the rise of feminism".
In 1970 the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland took account of these sea changes in society in its rebellion against God's Word. Its resolution (reaffirmed in 2003) noted that there "is evidence that the "permissiveness" of the age has influenced the Church. In particular this is the case in the dress of the women, and in the hair styles of both men and women.
The Word of God demands of women that they be dressed in modest apparel, and the Synod urge the women of the Church to give heed to this counsel. Not only does it require modesty of dress but also distinction in dress between the sexes. The practice of men and women wearing clothes which obliterates this distinction is quite contrary to God's Word and expressly declared to be an abomination to Him. "The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God" (Deut 22:5).
The Church must therefore condemn these practices as contrary to God's Word and direct her people to seek the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ to enable them to live unspotted in the world."
Several articles in the Young People's Magazine give further guidance.
"Such also is the spirit of feminism, which tries to destroy all God’s distinctions between man and woman (Ephesians 5:21-32, 1 Timothy 2:9-15, 1 Peter 3:1-7). Holy Scripture also makes a clear distinction between male and female in dress: “The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God” (Deuteronomy 22:5). As John Calvin points out, this text is one of around 24 in Exodus to Deuteronomy which enlarge on God’s teaching of the Seventh Commandment. It is exceedingly solemn to despise any of God’s precepts. The Lord Jesus endured such suffering as no tongue can tell (Hebrews 2:10) when the wrath of God fell upon Him because of a broken law, to which He gave perfect obedience (Romans 5:19). That is our only hope of eternal life. Feminism is all about removing God-given distinctions between men and women. The items of clothing that, throughout Western society, have distinguished between men and women for hundreds of years are trousers and skirts. This is a clear distinction, still universally used today on buildings. God has made a clear distinction between men and women, but feminism rejects God and His Word. Those who fear God wish to cleave to His precepts. Thus, in their walk, and especially in His house, they honour Him by acknowledging this God-given distinction. “Why call ye Me Lord, Lord, and do not the things that I say?” We grieve the Holy Spirit when we show some outward attachment to His people while following the fashions of this world. “Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (James 4:4). How solemn to hear one and another say, “Well, X does it”...We are safe only when we follow Christ and His Word. Let God be true and every man a liar."
Another article by Rev Neil Ross addresses the issue.
"It is true that God looks on the heart, while man looks upon the outward appearance. But the outward appearance does matter; it is part of a Christian lifestyle. Take clothing, for example: certain ways of dressing can lead to sin, and so we should remember some Scripture principles.
First, Deuteronomy 22:5 teaches us that there ought to be a distinction between male and female in their clothing: “The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God”. Changes in fashion do not cancel out this principle. It was in the 1960s, says a writer on the history of fashion, “that the distinctions between clothing made for men and that made for women became less and less obvious”. The principle remains however: God has ordained that there be a clear distinction between the sexes. In our culture, the dress or skirt is still viewed as the distinctly female garment."
Friday, June 13, 2008
Why are the 10 Commandments addressed in the singular?
This is an important question. The original Hebrew is in the singular which is accurately reflected in the Authorised Version "Thou shalt not..." You is plural whereas Thou is singular. It does not say It does not say, "Do not kill" but "Thou shalt not kill".
Jewish writers and Rabbis have given many answers to this such as that they stood 'as one person of one heart', see here and here and here. For instance the first century AD Jewish writer Philo writes: "But why are the commandments formulated in the singular (Thou), when a multitude was present? Readers of the Holy Scriptures may learn from this that each individual who keeps the law and obeys God is as precious as the whole Nation, nay more, as the whole world. Another reason is that commands and prohibitions are more impressive if addressed to each individual in the audience." It highlights individual responsibility.
No doubt there is also something to be said for the fact that Israel is seen as the son of God, see here.
John Willison asks:
Q. Why doth this and the rest of the commands still run in the singular number, Thou, and not You?
A. Because God would have every man to notice the directions thereof as particularly as if they were spoken to himself by name.
It is "thou" not "ye," because each person is addressed separately as a distinct moral agent responsible to God for keeping the law. Willison also notes: "The Decalogue, or Ten Commandments, which were solemnly delivered to the people of Israel from Mount Sinai, do contain the moral law; being a fixed and perpetual rule of righteousness, which God hath given to be observed by all mankind, in all ages and periods, to the end of the world." The Larger Catechism reminds us:
"That the law is perfect, and bindeth every one to full conformity in the whole man unto the righteousness thereof, and unto entire obedience forever; so as to require the utmost perfection of every duty, and to forbid the least degree of every sin."
The puritan Thomas Watson answers our question:
"Because the commandment concerns every one, and God would have each one take it as spoken to him by name. Though we are forward to take privileges to ourselves, yet we are apt to shift off duties from ourselves to others; therefore the commandment is in the second person, Thou and Thou, that every one may know that it is spoken to him, as it were, by name." Some have said that we ought to put our own name as it were into the commandment in order to recognise our own responsibility.
James Ussher in his Body of Divinity answers the question as to why the commandments are addressed in the singular:
1. Because God being without partiality, speaketh to all men alike; as well the rich as poor, high as low.
2. Because no man should put the commandments of God from himself, as though they did not concern him: but every particular man should apply them to himself as well as if God had spoken to him by name. Whence we gather, that God wisely preventeth a common abuse amongst men: which is to esteem that which is spoken unto all men, to be (as it were) spoken to none. As you shall have it common amongst men to say and confess, that God is just and merciful, and that he commandeth this, and forbiddeth that: and yet they usually so behave themselves, that they shift the matter to the general, as if it did not belong unto them in particular; and as if they
notwithstanding might live as they list. And therefore every man is to judge and esteem that God speaketh in the law to him in particular; and is accordingly to be affected therewith.
We are addressed individually by God as sovereign. This is because as the puritan John Dod put it "self [is] our chief idol: So that every carnal man sets up himself, he does nothing but seek and serve himself and therefore is his own idol, and another god to himself".
There is also intimacy in the individual singular and personal address "thou". Thomas Boston shows that when we see the context of redemption in the Preface to the Ten Commandments we see the commandments in their correct light for the believer. "The ten commandments were not given to the Israelites as a covenant of works, but in the way of the covenant of grace, and under that covert. Ye saw it was Jesus the Mediator that spoke these, Heb. 12:24-26. Amongst all the reasons there is not one of terror; but the sweet savour of gospel-grace."
"All true obedience to the ten commandments now must run in the channel of the covenant of grace, being directed to God as our God in that covenant, Deut. 28:58. This is to fear that glorious and fearful name, THE LORD THY GOD. And so legal obedience is no obedience at all. This obedience is performed not for righteousness, but to testify our love to the Lord our Righteousness; not in our own strength, but in that of our Lord God and Redeemer; not to be accepted for its own worth, but for the sake of a Redeemer’s merits; not out of fear of hell, or hope to purchase heaven, but out of love and gratitude to him who has delivered us from hell, and purchased heaven and everlasting happiness for us."
"So far is the state of the saints from being a state of sinful liberty, that there are none so strongly bound to obedience as they, and that by the strongest of all bonds, those of love and gratitude, arising from the amazing and wonderful obedience and satisfaction which he has performed for them. So that the love of Christ will sweetly and powerfully constrain them to run the way of his commandments; for his commandments are not grievous, and in the keeping of them is a great reward. They will love him, because he has first loved them; and his love has flowed out to them in the crimson streams of their dear Redeemer’s blood, by which their sins are expiated, and their guilt atoned. And those to whom much is forgiven, will certainly love much."
"God might have required of us obedience by his mere will, without giving any other reason; and in that case, men had been bound to give it at their peril. But how much sweeter is the command, and agreeable what he demands, when he enforces the equirement he makes by such engaging motives, as that he is the Lord, a being possessed of all possible perfection, of every glorious attribute and excellency, the author of all other beings, and all the amiable qualities and attracting xcellencies of which they are possessed; that he is our God, related to us by a covenant, which he hath made with his own Son as our Surety and Saviour, and which is brought near to us in the gospel, that we may enter into the bond thereof, and the righteousness of which is brought near unto us, who are stout-hearted and far from righteousness, that we may accept thereof, and so be delivered from condemnation and wrath? How agreeable and ravishing is it to reflect, that he incites and prompts us to obedience, not by the authority of his absolute sovereignty over us, and undoubted propriety in us, but by the inviting and attracting consideration of the great deliverance he has wrought for us, of which the deliverance from the Egyptian bondage was a bright type!
Can we reflect on the great salvation wrought for us by Jesus Christ, by which we were saved from all the horrors of sin and hell, rescued from the power of Satan, and delivered from the present evil world, and the pollutions thereof; can we reflect on these great and glorious benefits, which afford astonishment to men and angels, and our hearts not glow with the warmest fire of love and gratitude to him who hath done such excellent things for us? Can we hesitate a moment to say, good is thy will, O God, just and holy are thy laws, and we will cheerfully obey what thou commandest us?"
We wonder why the modern versions see fit to obliterate the fact that we are personally and individually addressed in the commandments. They translate it as "you" and not "thou". Yet when we think that the Ten Commandments that were written by the finger of God and that He wrote in the singular what a fearful thing it is to alter this. The Lord also commanded Moses to keep the second set of Ten Commandments safe in the ark for a perpetual testimony (Deut 10:5). Does this not give particular reverence and care for God's written words? Why then have modern versions showed such contempt for this way in which God makes His sovereign will known?
There is in the Authorised Version 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. It is a Bible which alone addresses them as singular and as individuals in the way that God did at Mount Sinai.
Jewish writers and Rabbis have given many answers to this such as that they stood 'as one person of one heart', see here and here and here. For instance the first century AD Jewish writer Philo writes: "But why are the commandments formulated in the singular (Thou), when a multitude was present? Readers of the Holy Scriptures may learn from this that each individual who keeps the law and obeys God is as precious as the whole Nation, nay more, as the whole world. Another reason is that commands and prohibitions are more impressive if addressed to each individual in the audience." It highlights individual responsibility.
No doubt there is also something to be said for the fact that Israel is seen as the son of God, see here.
John Willison asks:
Q. Why doth this and the rest of the commands still run in the singular number, Thou, and not You?
A. Because God would have every man to notice the directions thereof as particularly as if they were spoken to himself by name.
It is "thou" not "ye," because each person is addressed separately as a distinct moral agent responsible to God for keeping the law. Willison also notes: "The Decalogue, or Ten Commandments, which were solemnly delivered to the people of Israel from Mount Sinai, do contain the moral law; being a fixed and perpetual rule of righteousness, which God hath given to be observed by all mankind, in all ages and periods, to the end of the world." The Larger Catechism reminds us:
"That the law is perfect, and bindeth every one to full conformity in the whole man unto the righteousness thereof, and unto entire obedience forever; so as to require the utmost perfection of every duty, and to forbid the least degree of every sin."
The puritan Thomas Watson answers our question:
"Because the commandment concerns every one, and God would have each one take it as spoken to him by name. Though we are forward to take privileges to ourselves, yet we are apt to shift off duties from ourselves to others; therefore the commandment is in the second person, Thou and Thou, that every one may know that it is spoken to him, as it were, by name." Some have said that we ought to put our own name as it were into the commandment in order to recognise our own responsibility.
James Ussher in his Body of Divinity answers the question as to why the commandments are addressed in the singular:
1. Because God being without partiality, speaketh to all men alike; as well the rich as poor, high as low.
2. Because no man should put the commandments of God from himself, as though they did not concern him: but every particular man should apply them to himself as well as if God had spoken to him by name. Whence we gather, that God wisely preventeth a common abuse amongst men: which is to esteem that which is spoken unto all men, to be (as it were) spoken to none. As you shall have it common amongst men to say and confess, that God is just and merciful, and that he commandeth this, and forbiddeth that: and yet they usually so behave themselves, that they shift the matter to the general, as if it did not belong unto them in particular; and as if they
notwithstanding might live as they list. And therefore every man is to judge and esteem that God speaketh in the law to him in particular; and is accordingly to be affected therewith.
We are addressed individually by God as sovereign. This is because as the puritan John Dod put it "self [is] our chief idol: So that every carnal man sets up himself, he does nothing but seek and serve himself and therefore is his own idol, and another god to himself".
There is also intimacy in the individual singular and personal address "thou". Thomas Boston shows that when we see the context of redemption in the Preface to the Ten Commandments we see the commandments in their correct light for the believer. "The ten commandments were not given to the Israelites as a covenant of works, but in the way of the covenant of grace, and under that covert. Ye saw it was Jesus the Mediator that spoke these, Heb. 12:24-26. Amongst all the reasons there is not one of terror; but the sweet savour of gospel-grace."
"All true obedience to the ten commandments now must run in the channel of the covenant of grace, being directed to God as our God in that covenant, Deut. 28:58. This is to fear that glorious and fearful name, THE LORD THY GOD. And so legal obedience is no obedience at all. This obedience is performed not for righteousness, but to testify our love to the Lord our Righteousness; not in our own strength, but in that of our Lord God and Redeemer; not to be accepted for its own worth, but for the sake of a Redeemer’s merits; not out of fear of hell, or hope to purchase heaven, but out of love and gratitude to him who has delivered us from hell, and purchased heaven and everlasting happiness for us."
"So far is the state of the saints from being a state of sinful liberty, that there are none so strongly bound to obedience as they, and that by the strongest of all bonds, those of love and gratitude, arising from the amazing and wonderful obedience and satisfaction which he has performed for them. So that the love of Christ will sweetly and powerfully constrain them to run the way of his commandments; for his commandments are not grievous, and in the keeping of them is a great reward. They will love him, because he has first loved them; and his love has flowed out to them in the crimson streams of their dear Redeemer’s blood, by which their sins are expiated, and their guilt atoned. And those to whom much is forgiven, will certainly love much."
"God might have required of us obedience by his mere will, without giving any other reason; and in that case, men had been bound to give it at their peril. But how much sweeter is the command, and agreeable what he demands, when he enforces the equirement he makes by such engaging motives, as that he is the Lord, a being possessed of all possible perfection, of every glorious attribute and excellency, the author of all other beings, and all the amiable qualities and attracting xcellencies of which they are possessed; that he is our God, related to us by a covenant, which he hath made with his own Son as our Surety and Saviour, and which is brought near to us in the gospel, that we may enter into the bond thereof, and the righteousness of which is brought near unto us, who are stout-hearted and far from righteousness, that we may accept thereof, and so be delivered from condemnation and wrath? How agreeable and ravishing is it to reflect, that he incites and prompts us to obedience, not by the authority of his absolute sovereignty over us, and undoubted propriety in us, but by the inviting and attracting consideration of the great deliverance he has wrought for us, of which the deliverance from the Egyptian bondage was a bright type!
Can we reflect on the great salvation wrought for us by Jesus Christ, by which we were saved from all the horrors of sin and hell, rescued from the power of Satan, and delivered from the present evil world, and the pollutions thereof; can we reflect on these great and glorious benefits, which afford astonishment to men and angels, and our hearts not glow with the warmest fire of love and gratitude to him who hath done such excellent things for us? Can we hesitate a moment to say, good is thy will, O God, just and holy are thy laws, and we will cheerfully obey what thou commandest us?"
We wonder why the modern versions see fit to obliterate the fact that we are personally and individually addressed in the commandments. They translate it as "you" and not "thou". Yet when we think that the Ten Commandments that were written by the finger of God and that He wrote in the singular what a fearful thing it is to alter this. The Lord also commanded Moses to keep the second set of Ten Commandments safe in the ark for a perpetual testimony (Deut 10:5). Does this not give particular reverence and care for God's written words? Why then have modern versions showed such contempt for this way in which God makes His sovereign will known?
There is in the Authorised Version 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. It is a Bible which alone addresses them as singular and as individuals in the way that God did at Mount Sinai.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Translation and the ministry of the word
Reformed theologians understood that while translation was necessary, and while they could convey the Word of God from the original Hebrew and Greek in substance, it could not be translated absolutely, perfectly, or exhaustively. This doctrine is classically expressed by Francis Turretin (cf. Francis Turretin, The Doctrine of Scripture trans. J.W. Beardslee III, Grand Rapids, 1981) but in the British post-Reformation context it may be discerned in the preface to the Authorised Version of 1611, ‘The Translators to the Reader’. Here it is asserted that in the sixteenth century English translations, ‘all is sound for substance’ (p.19). Slightly before this, the Elizabethan English Presbyterian Thomas Cartwright, responded to the criticisms levelled by the Roman Catholic translators of the Rheims New Testament with the tenet that ‘the title…the worde of God’ used in relation to translations ‘agreeth only to the truth of God, which hath also the frame of his words’ (Answer to the Preface to the Rhemish Testament, London, 1602, p.102). Like Calvin, he favoured essentially preserving the word order (T.H.L. Parker, Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries, Grand Rapids, 1971, p.102) in order to convey the majesty of the Scriptures. Calvin was well aware that Biblical Greek was not classical Greek: it was in fact more powerful, ‘the force of the truth of Sacred Scripture is manifestly too powerful to need the art of words’ (Institutes, I.viii.1). That is to say, it does not need to be revised according to classical taste in rhetoric and elegant style, it has a simple, clear and powerful style of its own.
It was widely recognised amongst the Reformed that preaching is able to supplement the deficiency of translations, and, moreover, that, as Beardslee explains, preaching ‘continues the work of Bible translation; hence the importance of an educated ministry’ (ibid. p.154, n.3). In their high view of preaching the Reformers held it to be the Word of God. Bullinger enunciates it in the clearest terms: ‘praedicatio verbi Dei est verbum Dei’ (the Word of God preached is in fact the Word of God) (quoted John R. Knott, The Sword of the Spirit: Puritan Responses to the Bible, Chicago, 1980, p.50). Likewise Calvin said that ‘[t]he Word of God goeth out of the mouth of God in such a manner that it likewise goeth out of the mouth of men; for God does not speak openly from heaven but employs men as his instruments’ (quoted Ronald S. Wallace, Calvin’s doctrine of the Word and Sacrament, London, 1953, p.82). We read of Ezra and his colleagues that ‘they read in the book of the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading’ (Nehemiah 8:8).
Clearly, the Reformers were not claiming either ex cathedra infallibility or immediate inspiration for themselves as their Roman Catholic and Anabaptist opponents respectively asserted. The distinction between the substantial authority of translations and the total verbal authority of the original is perhaps helpful here. Preaching, inasmuch as it represented the Word of God faithfully, could in fact be termed the word of God. A similar distinction was made at the Westminster Assembly by George Gillespie, who held that truths established by logical deduction, that is ‘good and necessary consequence from scripture’ should be regarded as authoritative truth (cp. WCF I.vi and A treatise of the Miscellany questions, Edinburgh, 1649).
The Westminster Confession asserted ‘the majesty of the style’ of Scripture, an epithet that reflected Calvin’s emphasis. Thomas Cartwright likewise spoke of the ‘maiestie of th’authentical copies in the Greek’ (op. cit., p.93), while the discerning preface to the 1611 AV identifies the ‘perspicuity, gravity, majesty of the original Hebrew’ (p.21). William Perkins therefore recommended that pulpit speech be ‘simple and perspicuous, fit both for the peoples understanding and to express the Majestie of the Spirit’ (The Arte of Prophesying, quoted Knott, p.50 - my emphasis). In other words preaching should reflect the majesty of the Scriptures and should aim together with translation at least to be an echo of it.
The Westminster Directory of Publick Worship used similar phrasing in recommending that the minister ought to preache ‘Gravely, as becometh the word of God’ and in requiring him to abstain from ‘an unprofitable use of unknown tongues, strange phrases...sparingly citing sentences of ecclesiastical or other human writers, ancient or modern’. William Perkins had asserted that ‘[h]umane wisdome must be concealed, whether it be in the matter of the sermon, or in the setting forth of the words: because the preaching of the word is the Testimonie of God, and the profession of the knowledge of Christ not of human skill’, therefore a preacher must not ‘tickle the itching eares of his auditorie with fine ringing sentences of the Fathers but observe an admirable plainness and an admirable powerfulness’ (quoted Owen Watkins, The Puritan Experience, London, 1972, p.7). Preaching was to echo the plain powerfulness of the Scriptures themselves and to be informed by close study, in other words it must correspond to a large extent with translation.
In this way, the Divines maintained the careful balance set by the Refomers and their heirs that required learning on the part of a minister with the important qualification that it should not be paraded in the pulpit. They ‘presupposed (according to the rules for ordination) that the minister of Christ is in some measure gifted for so weighty a service, by his skill in the original languages, and in such arts and sciences as are handmaid unto divinity...all which he is to make use of and improve in his private preparations, before he deliver in publick what he hath provided’. Samuel Rutherford supplied the homely but pithy aphorism, ‘the pot may be used in the bilyng but not brought in with the porridge’ (quoted, R.S. Paul, The Assembly of the Lord, Edinburgh, 1985, p.365).
Certain sectarians in England, particularly leading Antinomians, opposed these views at the time. William Dell and John Webster attacked the emphasis upon learning the original Greek and Hebrew. Webster held forth in his tract Academarium Examinem that there could be no teachers, since only the Spirit could teach anyone. ‘To this I know it will be objected’, he said, ‘[t]hat schools teach the knowledge of tongues, without which the Scriptures (being written in the Hebrew and Greek) cannot be rightly translated, expounded, nor interpreted: and therefore it is necessary that Schools and Academies should teach these as properly and mainly conducible to this end’. Webster, however, could concede nothing to such objections, in his opinion languages had been changed and altered as ‘fashions and garments’ and in fact, whoever relies upon a translator is the same as anyone that depends upon a teacher (London, 1654, pp.6-7). Where this left the individual is hard to distinguish. Dell on the other hand simply rejected learning as necessary or prerequisite for the ministry (Christ’s Spirit a Christian’s Strength, London, 1651, p.22).
Rutherford took it in hand to reply to these directly, he emphasised the importance of all Christians having access to the Scriptures but not without what the Confession calls ‘a due use of the ordinary means’ for interpretation (I. vii). The grammatical-historical method could not be dismissed by appeal to the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit, although the illumination of the Spirit was of course important. Rutherford could not see that those who ‘goe from weaving, sowing, carpentarie, shoo-making to the pulpit...being voyd of all learning, tongues, logick, arts, sciences, and the literall knowledge of the Scripture’ could make the dangerous claims that they made and allege a direct calling from Christ (A Survey of Spiritual Antichrist, London, 1648, vol. i, p.44-45). As Reformed theologians always emphasised, there must be a final appeal to the Hebrew and Greek, and there it was possible to refute heresies and ‘burie them by the power of the Word’. If the authority of ministers using the proper means of interpretation was rejected and ‘if interpretations be left free to every man’ chaos would ensue inevitably in ‘millions of faiths with millions of senses, and so no faith at all’ (A Free Disputation Against Pretended Liberty of Conscience, London, 1649, p.28 & 32).
According to this view as well as that of the Directory, the minister is a specialist engaged in reproducing and applying the message of the Scriptures, or preaching. The minister is a specialist in the Scriptures and must be entirely acquainted with them. J. Gresham Machen, writing at the beginning of the 20th century, in an article entitled defends this principle powerfully ‘The Minister and his Greek Testament’. ‘[W]hatever else the preacher need not know, he must know the Bible; he must know it at first hand, and be able to interpret and defend it. Especially while doubt remains in the world as to the great central question, who more than the ministers should engage in the work of resolving such doubt - by intellectual instruction even more than by argument?’ The obvious conclusion, however, is that ‘this work can be undertaken to best advantage only by those who have an important pre-requisite for the study in a knowledge of the original languages upon which a large part of the discussion is based’ (The Banner of Truth, 103, 4/1972, pp.21-23).
The translators of the Authorised Version possessed these qualifications to an extraordinary degree. Some such as Miles Smith were so conversant in Hebrew that when called upon for the public reading of Scripture on one occasion he produced a small Hebrew bible without vowel points and read from it in ‘the English tongue plainely and fully’. The Westminster Form of Church Government had comparably high standards and required candidates for ordination to be examined by ‘reading the Hebrew and Greek Testaments and rendering some portion of some into Latin’. The problem is that (speaking in the context of the last two centuries) the university or the Academy has taken biblical studies away from the Church particularly with higher criticism and its results. Specialisation in the Scriptures no longer seems to serve preaching at all. Most mainstream evangelical preaching is remarkable if it achieves any depth of continuous concentration upon the Bible at all. While there is no need to introduce learning in itself one feels that learning must be of no real use in the preparation of such discourses.
Today, there is a priestly caste of academics speaking their own language to themselves and these ‘Biblical scholars have rather successfully convinced many in the community of believers that only they, the biblical scholars, can really appreciate the Bible. They are the only ones who can determine what it means. The rest of the community must sit up and listen to the biblical scholars explain what the Bible means’ (T.J. Keegan, Interpreting the Bible: A Popular Introduction to Biblical Hermeneutics, New York, 1985, p.9). Yet this coterie has produced no collective consensus on the meaning of Scripture in the way that Rutherford envisaged synods of ministers achieving and as was indeed the case in the great Reformed confessions and standards. The work of interpretation, however, ‘cannot be turned over to a few professors whose work is of interest only to themselves, but must be undertaken energetically by spiritually-minded men throughout the Church’ (Machen, op. cit., p.23).
It was widely recognised amongst the Reformed that preaching is able to supplement the deficiency of translations, and, moreover, that, as Beardslee explains, preaching ‘continues the work of Bible translation; hence the importance of an educated ministry’ (ibid. p.154, n.3). In their high view of preaching the Reformers held it to be the Word of God. Bullinger enunciates it in the clearest terms: ‘praedicatio verbi Dei est verbum Dei’ (the Word of God preached is in fact the Word of God) (quoted John R. Knott, The Sword of the Spirit: Puritan Responses to the Bible, Chicago, 1980, p.50). Likewise Calvin said that ‘[t]he Word of God goeth out of the mouth of God in such a manner that it likewise goeth out of the mouth of men; for God does not speak openly from heaven but employs men as his instruments’ (quoted Ronald S. Wallace, Calvin’s doctrine of the Word and Sacrament, London, 1953, p.82). We read of Ezra and his colleagues that ‘they read in the book of the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading’ (Nehemiah 8:8).
Clearly, the Reformers were not claiming either ex cathedra infallibility or immediate inspiration for themselves as their Roman Catholic and Anabaptist opponents respectively asserted. The distinction between the substantial authority of translations and the total verbal authority of the original is perhaps helpful here. Preaching, inasmuch as it represented the Word of God faithfully, could in fact be termed the word of God. A similar distinction was made at the Westminster Assembly by George Gillespie, who held that truths established by logical deduction, that is ‘good and necessary consequence from scripture’ should be regarded as authoritative truth (cp. WCF I.vi and A treatise of the Miscellany questions, Edinburgh, 1649).
The Westminster Confession asserted ‘the majesty of the style’ of Scripture, an epithet that reflected Calvin’s emphasis. Thomas Cartwright likewise spoke of the ‘maiestie of th’authentical copies in the Greek’ (op. cit., p.93), while the discerning preface to the 1611 AV identifies the ‘perspicuity, gravity, majesty of the original Hebrew’ (p.21). William Perkins therefore recommended that pulpit speech be ‘simple and perspicuous, fit both for the peoples understanding and to express the Majestie of the Spirit’ (The Arte of Prophesying, quoted Knott, p.50 - my emphasis). In other words preaching should reflect the majesty of the Scriptures and should aim together with translation at least to be an echo of it.
The Westminster Directory of Publick Worship used similar phrasing in recommending that the minister ought to preache ‘Gravely, as becometh the word of God’ and in requiring him to abstain from ‘an unprofitable use of unknown tongues, strange phrases...sparingly citing sentences of ecclesiastical or other human writers, ancient or modern’. William Perkins had asserted that ‘[h]umane wisdome must be concealed, whether it be in the matter of the sermon, or in the setting forth of the words: because the preaching of the word is the Testimonie of God, and the profession of the knowledge of Christ not of human skill’, therefore a preacher must not ‘tickle the itching eares of his auditorie with fine ringing sentences of the Fathers but observe an admirable plainness and an admirable powerfulness’ (quoted Owen Watkins, The Puritan Experience, London, 1972, p.7). Preaching was to echo the plain powerfulness of the Scriptures themselves and to be informed by close study, in other words it must correspond to a large extent with translation.
In this way, the Divines maintained the careful balance set by the Refomers and their heirs that required learning on the part of a minister with the important qualification that it should not be paraded in the pulpit. They ‘presupposed (according to the rules for ordination) that the minister of Christ is in some measure gifted for so weighty a service, by his skill in the original languages, and in such arts and sciences as are handmaid unto divinity...all which he is to make use of and improve in his private preparations, before he deliver in publick what he hath provided’. Samuel Rutherford supplied the homely but pithy aphorism, ‘the pot may be used in the bilyng but not brought in with the porridge’ (quoted, R.S. Paul, The Assembly of the Lord, Edinburgh, 1985, p.365).
Certain sectarians in England, particularly leading Antinomians, opposed these views at the time. William Dell and John Webster attacked the emphasis upon learning the original Greek and Hebrew. Webster held forth in his tract Academarium Examinem that there could be no teachers, since only the Spirit could teach anyone. ‘To this I know it will be objected’, he said, ‘[t]hat schools teach the knowledge of tongues, without which the Scriptures (being written in the Hebrew and Greek) cannot be rightly translated, expounded, nor interpreted: and therefore it is necessary that Schools and Academies should teach these as properly and mainly conducible to this end’. Webster, however, could concede nothing to such objections, in his opinion languages had been changed and altered as ‘fashions and garments’ and in fact, whoever relies upon a translator is the same as anyone that depends upon a teacher (London, 1654, pp.6-7). Where this left the individual is hard to distinguish. Dell on the other hand simply rejected learning as necessary or prerequisite for the ministry (Christ’s Spirit a Christian’s Strength, London, 1651, p.22).
Rutherford took it in hand to reply to these directly, he emphasised the importance of all Christians having access to the Scriptures but not without what the Confession calls ‘a due use of the ordinary means’ for interpretation (I. vii). The grammatical-historical method could not be dismissed by appeal to the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit, although the illumination of the Spirit was of course important. Rutherford could not see that those who ‘goe from weaving, sowing, carpentarie, shoo-making to the pulpit...being voyd of all learning, tongues, logick, arts, sciences, and the literall knowledge of the Scripture’ could make the dangerous claims that they made and allege a direct calling from Christ (A Survey of Spiritual Antichrist, London, 1648, vol. i, p.44-45). As Reformed theologians always emphasised, there must be a final appeal to the Hebrew and Greek, and there it was possible to refute heresies and ‘burie them by the power of the Word’. If the authority of ministers using the proper means of interpretation was rejected and ‘if interpretations be left free to every man’ chaos would ensue inevitably in ‘millions of faiths with millions of senses, and so no faith at all’ (A Free Disputation Against Pretended Liberty of Conscience, London, 1649, p.28 & 32).
According to this view as well as that of the Directory, the minister is a specialist engaged in reproducing and applying the message of the Scriptures, or preaching. The minister is a specialist in the Scriptures and must be entirely acquainted with them. J. Gresham Machen, writing at the beginning of the 20th century, in an article entitled defends this principle powerfully ‘The Minister and his Greek Testament’. ‘[W]hatever else the preacher need not know, he must know the Bible; he must know it at first hand, and be able to interpret and defend it. Especially while doubt remains in the world as to the great central question, who more than the ministers should engage in the work of resolving such doubt - by intellectual instruction even more than by argument?’ The obvious conclusion, however, is that ‘this work can be undertaken to best advantage only by those who have an important pre-requisite for the study in a knowledge of the original languages upon which a large part of the discussion is based’ (The Banner of Truth, 103, 4/1972, pp.21-23).
The translators of the Authorised Version possessed these qualifications to an extraordinary degree. Some such as Miles Smith were so conversant in Hebrew that when called upon for the public reading of Scripture on one occasion he produced a small Hebrew bible without vowel points and read from it in ‘the English tongue plainely and fully’. The Westminster Form of Church Government had comparably high standards and required candidates for ordination to be examined by ‘reading the Hebrew and Greek Testaments and rendering some portion of some into Latin’. The problem is that (speaking in the context of the last two centuries) the university or the Academy has taken biblical studies away from the Church particularly with higher criticism and its results. Specialisation in the Scriptures no longer seems to serve preaching at all. Most mainstream evangelical preaching is remarkable if it achieves any depth of continuous concentration upon the Bible at all. While there is no need to introduce learning in itself one feels that learning must be of no real use in the preparation of such discourses.
Today, there is a priestly caste of academics speaking their own language to themselves and these ‘Biblical scholars have rather successfully convinced many in the community of believers that only they, the biblical scholars, can really appreciate the Bible. They are the only ones who can determine what it means. The rest of the community must sit up and listen to the biblical scholars explain what the Bible means’ (T.J. Keegan, Interpreting the Bible: A Popular Introduction to Biblical Hermeneutics, New York, 1985, p.9). Yet this coterie has produced no collective consensus on the meaning of Scripture in the way that Rutherford envisaged synods of ministers achieving and as was indeed the case in the great Reformed confessions and standards. The work of interpretation, however, ‘cannot be turned over to a few professors whose work is of interest only to themselves, but must be undertaken energetically by spiritually-minded men throughout the Church’ (Machen, op. cit., p.23).
Saturday, June 07, 2008
The Church's Guardianship of the Oracles of God
The Westminster Confession, in its opening chapter emphasises that the Scriptures have been entrusted to the Church by the Lord, in order to ‘declare that his will unto his church; and afterwards, for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the Church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world’. Although the ‘authority of the holy scripture, for which it ought to believed and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God’, ‘We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the church to an high and reverend esteem of the holy scripture, and the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style’ etc.
Chapter 25 speaks of the ‘catholick visible church’, unto which ‘Christ hath given the ministry, oracles, and ordinances of God’. This connection suggests that the guardianship of the Scriptures within the Church rests especially with the ministry, one may assume that the order is significant: to the Church the ministry is given, to the ministry the oracles and ordinances are specially entrusted. One of the proof texts here is a covenant promise in Isaiah 59:21 that seems to tie these elements together in saying ‘My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth shall not depart out of thy mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed’s seed , saith the LORD from henceforth and for ever’. The Confession does not explicitly draw our attention there but in speaking of the oracles of God we are reminded of I Peter 4:11, ‘If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God’, which seems to indicate the principle that preaching should echo the Scripture. Another passage that is quite clear, moreover, is Acts 7:38, which speaks of ‘the church in the wilderness’ ‘who received the lively oracles to give unto us’.
The Larger Catechism (Q156) together with the Directory of Publick Worship and the FPCG restrict the public reading of Scriptures to ministers. This is defended by proving that ‘the priests and Levites in the Jewish church were trusted with the publick reading of the word’ (Deut 31:9-11, Neh. 8:1-3, 13 & 9:3-5). The Divines concluded that the New Testament ministers correspond to the Priests and Levites (an interpretation that went back at least to the Second Book of Discipline in Scotland) ‘the ministers of the gospel have as ample a charge and commission to dispense the word, as well as other ordinances, as the priests and Levites had under the Law’. The basis for this was in Isaiah 66:21 and Matthew 23:34, where this identification is made, ‘under the names of Priests and Levites to be continued under the gospel are meant evangelical pastors’.
The Divines were clearly against any idea of a sacrificing priesthood and did not wish ministers to be known by the title of priest, but they recognised a typical correspondence which may be supplemented by texts such as II Chronicles 15:3& 17:7-9, Malachi 2:4&7, Micah 3:1, 1 Leviticus 10:11, Isaiah 30:20 and Malachi 3:3, since these texts emphasise the teaching responsibility of the priest and Levite and its future restoration under Christ. The Priests and Levites were the scribes of Scripture and received the deposit of the law in the Tabernacle (Deut 31:25-26, 1 Sam. 10:25, Deut 17:18, I Chron 2:55 ), during days of persecution, the priests kept the written word safely in the Temple (II Kings 22:8). ‘The priests lips should keep knowledge’ (Mal. 2:7), the very word of God should be stored upon his tongue: surely this is something of what ‘holding fast the faithful word’ means (Titus 1:9). The idea of the preacher as steward and guardian of the truth is of course well developed in the Pastoral Epistles (ITim. 1:3-5 &18-20, ch.4:7&14, ch.5:21, ch.6:12-14, II Tim. 1:13&14, ch.2:15, ch.3:14-16, ch.4:15).
This inference of guardianship has tremendous significance for the responsibilities of the minister as well as that of the role of bible translation. The Church has handed over its deposit in the present age when profiteering publishers can hijack the work of translation to ensure their own market niche. The Old Testament Church was extremely careful with the deposit of Scripture and its transmission. In the present era the Scriptures are patently being rewritten through the philosophy of dynamic equivalence.
The Church cannot be careless with the Scriptures. As Answer 54 of the Shorter Catechism reminds us, the third commandment requires of us ‘the holy and reverent use of God’s...Word’. If the Church and the ministry have been given a particular stewardship of the oracles of God then we must recall the principle in which the Head of the Church has instructed us. …unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more (Luke 11:48).
Chapter 25 speaks of the ‘catholick visible church’, unto which ‘Christ hath given the ministry, oracles, and ordinances of God’. This connection suggests that the guardianship of the Scriptures within the Church rests especially with the ministry, one may assume that the order is significant: to the Church the ministry is given, to the ministry the oracles and ordinances are specially entrusted. One of the proof texts here is a covenant promise in Isaiah 59:21 that seems to tie these elements together in saying ‘My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth shall not depart out of thy mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed’s seed , saith the LORD from henceforth and for ever’. The Confession does not explicitly draw our attention there but in speaking of the oracles of God we are reminded of I Peter 4:11, ‘If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God’, which seems to indicate the principle that preaching should echo the Scripture. Another passage that is quite clear, moreover, is Acts 7:38, which speaks of ‘the church in the wilderness’ ‘who received the lively oracles to give unto us’.
The Larger Catechism (Q156) together with the Directory of Publick Worship and the FPCG restrict the public reading of Scriptures to ministers. This is defended by proving that ‘the priests and Levites in the Jewish church were trusted with the publick reading of the word’ (Deut 31:9-11, Neh. 8:1-3, 13 & 9:3-5). The Divines concluded that the New Testament ministers correspond to the Priests and Levites (an interpretation that went back at least to the Second Book of Discipline in Scotland) ‘the ministers of the gospel have as ample a charge and commission to dispense the word, as well as other ordinances, as the priests and Levites had under the Law’. The basis for this was in Isaiah 66:21 and Matthew 23:34, where this identification is made, ‘under the names of Priests and Levites to be continued under the gospel are meant evangelical pastors’.
The Divines were clearly against any idea of a sacrificing priesthood and did not wish ministers to be known by the title of priest, but they recognised a typical correspondence which may be supplemented by texts such as II Chronicles 15:3& 17:7-9, Malachi 2:4&7, Micah 3:1, 1 Leviticus 10:11, Isaiah 30:20 and Malachi 3:3, since these texts emphasise the teaching responsibility of the priest and Levite and its future restoration under Christ. The Priests and Levites were the scribes of Scripture and received the deposit of the law in the Tabernacle (Deut 31:25-26, 1 Sam. 10:25, Deut 17:18, I Chron 2:55 ), during days of persecution, the priests kept the written word safely in the Temple (II Kings 22:8). ‘The priests lips should keep knowledge’ (Mal. 2:7), the very word of God should be stored upon his tongue: surely this is something of what ‘holding fast the faithful word’ means (Titus 1:9). The idea of the preacher as steward and guardian of the truth is of course well developed in the Pastoral Epistles (ITim. 1:3-5 &18-20, ch.4:7&14, ch.5:21, ch.6:12-14, II Tim. 1:13&14, ch.2:15, ch.3:14-16, ch.4:15).
This inference of guardianship has tremendous significance for the responsibilities of the minister as well as that of the role of bible translation. The Church has handed over its deposit in the present age when profiteering publishers can hijack the work of translation to ensure their own market niche. The Old Testament Church was extremely careful with the deposit of Scripture and its transmission. In the present era the Scriptures are patently being rewritten through the philosophy of dynamic equivalence.
The Church cannot be careless with the Scriptures. As Answer 54 of the Shorter Catechism reminds us, the third commandment requires of us ‘the holy and reverent use of God’s...Word’. If the Church and the ministry have been given a particular stewardship of the oracles of God then we must recall the principle in which the Head of the Church has instructed us. …unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more (Luke 11:48).
Friday, June 06, 2008
The mode of baptism as defined by John the Baptist
John the Baptist prophesied that the disciples being baptised by fire by the Lord Jesus Christ and the Spirit in the future.
Matthew 3:11: I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire:
Mark 1:8: I indeed have baptized you with water: but he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost.
Luke 3:16: John answered, saying unto them all, I indeed baptize you with water; but one mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire:
John 1:32-33: And John bare record, saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him. And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost.
When we look at the fulfilment of this on the day of Pentecost, we read:
Acts 2:1-3: And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.
John Gill comments: "Through this baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire, the apostles became more knowing, and had a greater understanding of the mysteries of the Gospel, and were more qualified to preach it to people of all nations and languages. The Holy Spirit, in his gifts and graces, is compared to fire, because of its purity, light, and heat, as well as consuming nature; the Spirit sanctifies, and makes men pure and holy, purges from the dross of sin, error and superstition; and enlightens the minds of men, and gives them knowledge of divine and spiritual things; and fills them with zeal and fervour for the glory of God and Christ, and the good of his church and interest, and for the doctrines and ordinances of the Gospel; as well as fortifies them against their enemies, whom he consumes"
The company gathered was the 120 disciples which is significant, 12 the number of the church multiplied by 10 - the number of completion. This was symbolic of the baptism of the Church by the Holy Spirit.
But what do we read of this fire? Did they have to walk through it? Did it utterly engulf them? Rather it was merely cloven tongues of fire, individual tongues of fire divided and distributed "and it sat upon each of them". Appropriately it would have sat on their heads since it was symbolic of them receiving the Spirit to speak in other tongues. The next verse reads: "And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance".
This was a baptism but the element was administered to the head only. This demonstrates that "Dipping of the person into the water is not necessary: but Baptism is rightly administered by pouring or sprinkling water upon the person" (Westminster Confession of Faith).
Matthew 3:11: I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire:
Mark 1:8: I indeed have baptized you with water: but he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost.
Luke 3:16: John answered, saying unto them all, I indeed baptize you with water; but one mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire:
John 1:32-33: And John bare record, saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him. And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost.
When we look at the fulfilment of this on the day of Pentecost, we read:
Acts 2:1-3: And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.
John Gill comments: "Through this baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire, the apostles became more knowing, and had a greater understanding of the mysteries of the Gospel, and were more qualified to preach it to people of all nations and languages. The Holy Spirit, in his gifts and graces, is compared to fire, because of its purity, light, and heat, as well as consuming nature; the Spirit sanctifies, and makes men pure and holy, purges from the dross of sin, error and superstition; and enlightens the minds of men, and gives them knowledge of divine and spiritual things; and fills them with zeal and fervour for the glory of God and Christ, and the good of his church and interest, and for the doctrines and ordinances of the Gospel; as well as fortifies them against their enemies, whom he consumes"
The company gathered was the 120 disciples which is significant, 12 the number of the church multiplied by 10 - the number of completion. This was symbolic of the baptism of the Church by the Holy Spirit.
But what do we read of this fire? Did they have to walk through it? Did it utterly engulf them? Rather it was merely cloven tongues of fire, individual tongues of fire divided and distributed "and it sat upon each of them". Appropriately it would have sat on their heads since it was symbolic of them receiving the Spirit to speak in other tongues. The next verse reads: "And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance".
This was a baptism but the element was administered to the head only. This demonstrates that "Dipping of the person into the water is not necessary: but Baptism is rightly administered by pouring or sprinkling water upon the person" (Westminster Confession of Faith).
Thursday, May 29, 2008
The objects of faith
Scripture sets forth two objects of faith - the Father and the Son. Christ says 'ye believe in God, believe also in me'. These are sweetly joined together in the phrase 'the mercies of God in Christ Jesus'. This is a scriptural phrase but it is also found in the Shorter Catechism definition of repentance unto life.
Thomas Goodwin (Vol. 8, Bk 2, Chap 1) writes that 'the mercies in God s nature are not the object of our faith, but as they are considered together with Christ. That God s mercies and Jesus Christ are accordingly propounded jointly to our faith'. He continues 'THERE are two grand objects our faith doth act upon, God the Father and
Jesus Christ; the Holy Spirit being the person who anoints us, generally teaching us all things. Our Saviour Christ therefore, John xvii. 3, having spoken of giving eternal life to them that believe, superadds, This is eternal life, to know thee (the Father), the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent; thereby setting forth them two as the objects which our faith and knowledge are carried out unto for eternal life ; which eternal life is begun in this world by the knowledge of faith, and perfected by the knowledge of sight in the world to come'.
'That which in the Father our faith doth specially act upon, are the riches of his grace; and free grace is indeed, and in reality, but the love of God in election, though uttered in absolute promises and declarations, yet expressed indefinitely as to persons. God indeed absolutely declareth in the promises and covenant of grace what his heart was and is unto an elect company, but conceals the persons (which promises I therefore term indefinite), thereby ascertaining us that there are some of mankind he so loves resolvedly and unchangeably, whom he intends therein; which promises shall infallibly take hold on them. And that covenant and those promises I call absolute, because they promise to give the very conditions required to salvation in that covenant.
The other object of our faith is Jesus Christ, both in his person and his suffering, death, resurrection, intercession ; and likewise the benefits that are the fruits of all these. And our faith is to aim at the having fellowship with him in all these, as the object of faith, as well as the free grace of God the Father. In all which benefits which our faith seeks from these two, I might quote many scriptures, wherein Christ and the free grace of the Father are still joined, and go hand in hand. I instance particularly in justification for all the rest, in which there is both the grace of the Father and the righteousness of the Son, that concur both thereunto; and our faith is distinctly to exercise itself upon both these, for obtaining justification. This conjunction you see in Rom. iii. 24, Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. You have it also in Rom. v. 15, The grace of God, that is, of God the Father, and the gift by grace (the gift of righteousness and justification thereby) which is by one man Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. And again he says at verse 17, They which receive abundance of grace, and of the gift of righteousness, &c. a righteousness by which we are made righteous, ver. 19. There is both the grace of God in the heart of the Father, and there is the gift of righteousness by grace, which is by one man Jesus Christ, as by whose righteousness we are made righteous; and these concur to our justification of life, as it is termed in verse 18.
Now, there being these two grand objects of the faith of all believers for the first benefit they are brought to seek at first, all converts under the gospel are therefore brought to a distinct communion and fellowship (through faith) both with the Father and also with the Son, to obtain both grace and righteousness from both, and afterwards in the course of their lives they enjoy a distinct fellowship with both Father and Son: 1 John i. 3, These things I write to you, that you may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ; with these two objectively is our fellowship transacted. The Holy Ghost is he who, 1 John ii. 20, is styled the anointing of us and our eyes, to
converse with these, and by whom we know all things; but our fellowship is objectively with the Father, and with his Son.'
Goodwin goes on to write of how the ark and the mercy-seat typified this relationship of Christ and the mercies of God in him as the objects of faith. He infers that because the mercy-seat was topmost on the ark that The mercy-seat was uppermost on the top of the ark 'that all the grace in God's heart flowing to us is through Christ, and as supported by Christ, and his mediation and expiation, so as it is God s grace and mercy as in Christ'.
Goodwin also observes that the mercy-seat and the ark were 'both of a like size and proportion, as long, as broad, as deep, the one as the other (Exod. xxv. 10,
17 compared), to shew that however the essential grace and mercy in God's nature is essentially infinite, yet his dispensatory mercy and grace laid up for us, and intended towards us sinners of the sons of men, are of the same extent and commensuration with Christ, and his merits and righteousness, &c., because all that grace which God hath intended to bestow upon us, for the matter, manner, or measure, is but commensurable, and of like extent, with all that Christ purchased and procured, and is no more nor no less. As also because that these two must never be
separated; for God hath conjoined them thus closely and immediately one
to the other, only God's grace is uppermost, and the fountain of us, and
Christ, and all; and the glory of it is the supreme end of all, Eph. i. 5.6.'
Goodwin points out the practical matter that some people find it hard to focus upon Christ and the Father equally. 'Some converts indeed more distinctly, and withal amply and abundantly, have their hearts run out sometimes to God the Father and pursue after the attainment of his love and grace, and have their hearts drawn and set more largely to treat with the Father, and his grace, and to seek the obtain
ing more frequently the manifestations of his grace, and have their hearts more intent upon what his work for their salvation in his heart is. They consider that it was he who first decreed Christ, and our salvation through him, and called Christ to die for us, and gave us to Christ, &c., and with a peremptory and unchangeable love ordained the salvation of some through faith and holiness ; and accordingly they desire to have the manifestations of his grace made forth upon their souls. But others have the Lord Jesus Christ in their eye, and treat with him through his death, redemption, and the works which he performed towards it, in a more large and abundant manner. But though his heart goes out thus more amply to Jesus Christ, and hath communion with him and his righteousness, yet he believeth also on God the Father, that ordained and sent his Son out of his grace, and believes on him as the pardoner of his sin. And...he that hath communion with God the Father in seeking his love, he doth it in Christ impliedly, as through whose mediation he hath access unto the Father.
Goodwin believes that this experience lies behind the text '1 John ii. 13 (I cite it to this very purpose, to shew that sometimes the heart of one Christian runs out more to the Father, and at other times more to the Son), I write unto you, fathers, because you have known him that is from the beginning. Who is that? Jesus Christ; chap. i. 1, That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the word of life : that is apparently Jesus Christ, Then again, says he, I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father. Here the spirits of the one run out at differing seasons, sometimes more to God, sometimes more to Jesus Christ. I will not stand to explain whom he means by fathers, and whom by babes, nor need I do it as to my purpose; it is enough for the present that it is ascribed to the same sort of persons at different times, that when they were babes, they knew the Father ; when fathers, they knew Christ more intently. The reason of which different intentions of our spirits is, that our souls are narrow vessels, and use not to be intent on two so eminent objects at once, which therefore take their turns in our hearts, that we take in sometimes the one, and sometimes the other.'
Goodwin goes on to show in the next chapter that 'when we come to Christ, and believe on him, there is a concurrence and consent of all the three persons in the Godhead unto that great work'. '...as Christ is the object of faith, so, when any soul is converted, and drawn to believe on him, there is the concurrence of all the three persons in the Trinity to that work, and that they all put forth conjointly a renewed act of agreement in it'.
We need not think therefore that when Christ is set forth in the gospel that there is a disservice done to the other members of the Godhead. It the mercies of God in Christ are preached this will take in the work of the Father also in setting forth his Son for a propitiation and in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.
It is the mercies of God but it is bound up in a person, the person of the Mediator and not merely a bare promise. He that hath the Son hath life. The puritan William Spurstowe said "Those Divines who in their Catechetical Systems have made the formal object of Faith to be the Promise, rather than The Person of Christ, have failed in their expressions, if not in their intentions." - SPURSTOW on Rom. vi. 1.
"Faith does not marry the soul to the portion, benefits, and privileges of Christ, but to Christ Himself. I don't say that the soul may not have an eye to these, and a respect to these in closing with Christ; yea, usually these are the first things that faith has in its eye. But the soul does, and must go higher; he must look at and pitch upon The Person of Christ, or his faith is not so right and complete as it ought to be. It is The Person of Christ that is the great fountain of all grace and of all manifestations of God to us; and faith accordingly does close with His Person." - PEARSE's Best Match, p. 160.
Thomas Goodwin (Vol. 8, Bk 2, Chap 1) writes that 'the mercies in God s nature are not the object of our faith, but as they are considered together with Christ. That God s mercies and Jesus Christ are accordingly propounded jointly to our faith'. He continues 'THERE are two grand objects our faith doth act upon, God the Father and
Jesus Christ; the Holy Spirit being the person who anoints us, generally teaching us all things. Our Saviour Christ therefore, John xvii. 3, having spoken of giving eternal life to them that believe, superadds, This is eternal life, to know thee (the Father), the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent; thereby setting forth them two as the objects which our faith and knowledge are carried out unto for eternal life ; which eternal life is begun in this world by the knowledge of faith, and perfected by the knowledge of sight in the world to come'.
'That which in the Father our faith doth specially act upon, are the riches of his grace; and free grace is indeed, and in reality, but the love of God in election, though uttered in absolute promises and declarations, yet expressed indefinitely as to persons. God indeed absolutely declareth in the promises and covenant of grace what his heart was and is unto an elect company, but conceals the persons (which promises I therefore term indefinite), thereby ascertaining us that there are some of mankind he so loves resolvedly and unchangeably, whom he intends therein; which promises shall infallibly take hold on them. And that covenant and those promises I call absolute, because they promise to give the very conditions required to salvation in that covenant.
The other object of our faith is Jesus Christ, both in his person and his suffering, death, resurrection, intercession ; and likewise the benefits that are the fruits of all these. And our faith is to aim at the having fellowship with him in all these, as the object of faith, as well as the free grace of God the Father. In all which benefits which our faith seeks from these two, I might quote many scriptures, wherein Christ and the free grace of the Father are still joined, and go hand in hand. I instance particularly in justification for all the rest, in which there is both the grace of the Father and the righteousness of the Son, that concur both thereunto; and our faith is distinctly to exercise itself upon both these, for obtaining justification. This conjunction you see in Rom. iii. 24, Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. You have it also in Rom. v. 15, The grace of God, that is, of God the Father, and the gift by grace (the gift of righteousness and justification thereby) which is by one man Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. And again he says at verse 17, They which receive abundance of grace, and of the gift of righteousness, &c. a righteousness by which we are made righteous, ver. 19. There is both the grace of God in the heart of the Father, and there is the gift of righteousness by grace, which is by one man Jesus Christ, as by whose righteousness we are made righteous; and these concur to our justification of life, as it is termed in verse 18.
Now, there being these two grand objects of the faith of all believers for the first benefit they are brought to seek at first, all converts under the gospel are therefore brought to a distinct communion and fellowship (through faith) both with the Father and also with the Son, to obtain both grace and righteousness from both, and afterwards in the course of their lives they enjoy a distinct fellowship with both Father and Son: 1 John i. 3, These things I write to you, that you may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ; with these two objectively is our fellowship transacted. The Holy Ghost is he who, 1 John ii. 20, is styled the anointing of us and our eyes, to
converse with these, and by whom we know all things; but our fellowship is objectively with the Father, and with his Son.'
Goodwin goes on to write of how the ark and the mercy-seat typified this relationship of Christ and the mercies of God in him as the objects of faith. He infers that because the mercy-seat was topmost on the ark that The mercy-seat was uppermost on the top of the ark 'that all the grace in God's heart flowing to us is through Christ, and as supported by Christ, and his mediation and expiation, so as it is God s grace and mercy as in Christ'.
Goodwin also observes that the mercy-seat and the ark were 'both of a like size and proportion, as long, as broad, as deep, the one as the other (Exod. xxv. 10,
17 compared), to shew that however the essential grace and mercy in God's nature is essentially infinite, yet his dispensatory mercy and grace laid up for us, and intended towards us sinners of the sons of men, are of the same extent and commensuration with Christ, and his merits and righteousness, &c., because all that grace which God hath intended to bestow upon us, for the matter, manner, or measure, is but commensurable, and of like extent, with all that Christ purchased and procured, and is no more nor no less. As also because that these two must never be
separated; for God hath conjoined them thus closely and immediately one
to the other, only God's grace is uppermost, and the fountain of us, and
Christ, and all; and the glory of it is the supreme end of all, Eph. i. 5.6.'
Goodwin points out the practical matter that some people find it hard to focus upon Christ and the Father equally. 'Some converts indeed more distinctly, and withal amply and abundantly, have their hearts run out sometimes to God the Father and pursue after the attainment of his love and grace, and have their hearts drawn and set more largely to treat with the Father, and his grace, and to seek the obtain
ing more frequently the manifestations of his grace, and have their hearts more intent upon what his work for their salvation in his heart is. They consider that it was he who first decreed Christ, and our salvation through him, and called Christ to die for us, and gave us to Christ, &c., and with a peremptory and unchangeable love ordained the salvation of some through faith and holiness ; and accordingly they desire to have the manifestations of his grace made forth upon their souls. But others have the Lord Jesus Christ in their eye, and treat with him through his death, redemption, and the works which he performed towards it, in a more large and abundant manner. But though his heart goes out thus more amply to Jesus Christ, and hath communion with him and his righteousness, yet he believeth also on God the Father, that ordained and sent his Son out of his grace, and believes on him as the pardoner of his sin. And...he that hath communion with God the Father in seeking his love, he doth it in Christ impliedly, as through whose mediation he hath access unto the Father.
Goodwin believes that this experience lies behind the text '1 John ii. 13 (I cite it to this very purpose, to shew that sometimes the heart of one Christian runs out more to the Father, and at other times more to the Son), I write unto you, fathers, because you have known him that is from the beginning. Who is that? Jesus Christ; chap. i. 1, That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the word of life : that is apparently Jesus Christ, Then again, says he, I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father. Here the spirits of the one run out at differing seasons, sometimes more to God, sometimes more to Jesus Christ. I will not stand to explain whom he means by fathers, and whom by babes, nor need I do it as to my purpose; it is enough for the present that it is ascribed to the same sort of persons at different times, that when they were babes, they knew the Father ; when fathers, they knew Christ more intently. The reason of which different intentions of our spirits is, that our souls are narrow vessels, and use not to be intent on two so eminent objects at once, which therefore take their turns in our hearts, that we take in sometimes the one, and sometimes the other.'
Goodwin goes on to show in the next chapter that 'when we come to Christ, and believe on him, there is a concurrence and consent of all the three persons in the Godhead unto that great work'. '...as Christ is the object of faith, so, when any soul is converted, and drawn to believe on him, there is the concurrence of all the three persons in the Trinity to that work, and that they all put forth conjointly a renewed act of agreement in it'.
We need not think therefore that when Christ is set forth in the gospel that there is a disservice done to the other members of the Godhead. It the mercies of God in Christ are preached this will take in the work of the Father also in setting forth his Son for a propitiation and in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.
It is the mercies of God but it is bound up in a person, the person of the Mediator and not merely a bare promise. He that hath the Son hath life. The puritan William Spurstowe said "Those Divines who in their Catechetical Systems have made the formal object of Faith to be the Promise, rather than The Person of Christ, have failed in their expressions, if not in their intentions." - SPURSTOW on Rom. vi. 1.
"Faith does not marry the soul to the portion, benefits, and privileges of Christ, but to Christ Himself. I don't say that the soul may not have an eye to these, and a respect to these in closing with Christ; yea, usually these are the first things that faith has in its eye. But the soul does, and must go higher; he must look at and pitch upon The Person of Christ, or his faith is not so right and complete as it ought to be. It is The Person of Christ that is the great fountain of all grace and of all manifestations of God to us; and faith accordingly does close with His Person." - PEARSE's Best Match, p. 160.
Monday, May 26, 2008
No time to be spiritually-minded?
The following extract is from John Owen's book "The Grace and Duty of being Spiritually Minded". It is a very striking piece and deals with objections to fixing the thoughts consistently upon spiritual things, particularly the objection that we do not have time to devote to this duty. (See also the last post from John Owen in relation to this objection.) Owen contends that we owe to God the best and most of our time. He shows how we can be spiritually-minded and diligent in our work.
Some, it may be, will say, that if all these things are required thereunto, it will take up a man’s whole life and time to be spiritually minded. They hope they may attain it at an easier rate, and not forego all other advantages and sweetnesses of life, which a strict observation of these things would cast them upon.
I answer, that however it may prove a hard saying unto some, yet I must say it, and my heart would reproach me if I should not say, that if the principal part of our time be not spent about these things, whatever we suppose, we have indeed neither life nor peace. The first-fruits of all were to be offered unto God; and in sacrifices he required the blood and the fat of the inwards. If the best be not his, he will have nothing. It is so as to our time. Tell me, I pray you, how you can spend your time and your lives better, or to better purpose, and I shall say, Go on and prosper. I am sure some spend so much of their time so much worse as it is a shame to see it. Do you think you came into this world to spend your whole time and strength in your employments, your trades, your pleasures, unto the satisfaction of the "wills of the flesh and of the mind?" Have you time enough to eat, to drink, to sleep, to talk unprofitably, it may be corruptly, in all sorts of unnecessary societies, but have not enough to live unto God in the very essentials of that life which consists in these things? Alas! you came into the world under this law, "It is appointed to men once to die, and after this the judgment," Hebrews 9:27; and the end why your life is here granted unto you is that you may be prepared for that judgment. If this be neglected, if the principal part of your time be not improved with respect unto this end, you will fall under the sentence of it unto eternity.
But men are apt to mistake in this matter. They may think that these things tend to take them off from their lawful employments and recreations, which they are generally afraid of, and unwilling to purchase any frame of mind at so dear a rate. They may suppose that to have men spiritually minded, we would make them mopes, and to disregard all the lawful occasions of life...The generality of Christians have lawful callings, employments, and businesses, which ordinarily they ought to abide in. That they also may live unto God in their occasions, they may do well to consider two things: —
(1.) Industry in men’s callings is a thing in itself very commendable. If in nothing else, it hath an advantage herein, that it is a means to preserve men from those excesses in lust and riot which otherwise they are apt to run into. And if you consider the two sorts of men whereinto the generality of mankind are distributed, — namely, of them who are industrious in their affairs, and those who spend their time, so far as they are able, in idleness and pleasure, — the former sort are far more amiable and desirable. Howbeit it is capable of being greatly abused. Earthly mindedness, covetousness, devouring things holy as to times and seasons of duty, uselessness, and the like pernicious vices, do invade and possess the minds of men. There is no lawful calling that doth absolutely exclude this grace of being spiritually minded in them that are engaged in it, nor any that doth include it. Men may be in the meanest of lawful callings and be so, and men may be in the best and highest and not be so. Consider the calling of the ministry: The work and duty of it calls on those that are employed in it to have their minds and thoughts conversant about spiritual and heavenly things. They are to study about them, to meditate on them, to commit them to memory, to speak them out unto others. It will be said, "Surely such men must needs be spiritually minded." If they go no farther than what is mentioned, I say they must needs be so as printers must needs be learned, who are continually conversant about letters. A man may with great industry engage himself in these things, and yet his mind be most remote from being spiritual. The event doth declare that it may be so. And the reasons of it are manifest. It requires as much if not more watchfulness, more care, more humility, for a minister to be spiritually minded in the discharge of his calling, than for any other sort of men in theirs; and that, as for other reasons, so because the commonness of the exercise of such thoughts, with their design upon others in their expression, will take off their power and efficacy. And he will have little benefit by his own ministry who endeavors not in the first place an experience in his own heart of the power of the truths which he doth teach unto others. And there is evidently as great a failing herein among us as among any other sort of Christians, as every occasion of trial doth demonstrate.
(2.) Although industry in any honest calling be allowable, yet unless men labour to be spiritually minded in the exercise of that industry, they have neither life nor peace. Hereunto all the things before mentioned are necessary; I know not how any of them can be abated; yea, more is required than is expressed in them. If you burn this roll, another must be written, and many like things must be added unto it. And the objection from the expense of time in the observance of them is of no force; for a man may do as much work whilst he is spiritually minded as whilst he is carnal. Spiritual thoughts will no more hinder you in your callings than those that are vain and earthly, which all sorts of men can find leisure for in the midst of their employments. If you have filled a vessel with chaff, yet you may pour into it a great deal of water, which will be contained in the same space and vessel; and if it be necessary that you should take in much of the chaff of the world into your minds, yet are they capable of such measures of grace as shall preserve them sincere unto God.
Some, it may be, will say, that if all these things are required thereunto, it will take up a man’s whole life and time to be spiritually minded. They hope they may attain it at an easier rate, and not forego all other advantages and sweetnesses of life, which a strict observation of these things would cast them upon.
I answer, that however it may prove a hard saying unto some, yet I must say it, and my heart would reproach me if I should not say, that if the principal part of our time be not spent about these things, whatever we suppose, we have indeed neither life nor peace. The first-fruits of all were to be offered unto God; and in sacrifices he required the blood and the fat of the inwards. If the best be not his, he will have nothing. It is so as to our time. Tell me, I pray you, how you can spend your time and your lives better, or to better purpose, and I shall say, Go on and prosper. I am sure some spend so much of their time so much worse as it is a shame to see it. Do you think you came into this world to spend your whole time and strength in your employments, your trades, your pleasures, unto the satisfaction of the "wills of the flesh and of the mind?" Have you time enough to eat, to drink, to sleep, to talk unprofitably, it may be corruptly, in all sorts of unnecessary societies, but have not enough to live unto God in the very essentials of that life which consists in these things? Alas! you came into the world under this law, "It is appointed to men once to die, and after this the judgment," Hebrews 9:27; and the end why your life is here granted unto you is that you may be prepared for that judgment. If this be neglected, if the principal part of your time be not improved with respect unto this end, you will fall under the sentence of it unto eternity.
But men are apt to mistake in this matter. They may think that these things tend to take them off from their lawful employments and recreations, which they are generally afraid of, and unwilling to purchase any frame of mind at so dear a rate. They may suppose that to have men spiritually minded, we would make them mopes, and to disregard all the lawful occasions of life...The generality of Christians have lawful callings, employments, and businesses, which ordinarily they ought to abide in. That they also may live unto God in their occasions, they may do well to consider two things: —
(1.) Industry in men’s callings is a thing in itself very commendable. If in nothing else, it hath an advantage herein, that it is a means to preserve men from those excesses in lust and riot which otherwise they are apt to run into. And if you consider the two sorts of men whereinto the generality of mankind are distributed, — namely, of them who are industrious in their affairs, and those who spend their time, so far as they are able, in idleness and pleasure, — the former sort are far more amiable and desirable. Howbeit it is capable of being greatly abused. Earthly mindedness, covetousness, devouring things holy as to times and seasons of duty, uselessness, and the like pernicious vices, do invade and possess the minds of men. There is no lawful calling that doth absolutely exclude this grace of being spiritually minded in them that are engaged in it, nor any that doth include it. Men may be in the meanest of lawful callings and be so, and men may be in the best and highest and not be so. Consider the calling of the ministry: The work and duty of it calls on those that are employed in it to have their minds and thoughts conversant about spiritual and heavenly things. They are to study about them, to meditate on them, to commit them to memory, to speak them out unto others. It will be said, "Surely such men must needs be spiritually minded." If they go no farther than what is mentioned, I say they must needs be so as printers must needs be learned, who are continually conversant about letters. A man may with great industry engage himself in these things, and yet his mind be most remote from being spiritual. The event doth declare that it may be so. And the reasons of it are manifest. It requires as much if not more watchfulness, more care, more humility, for a minister to be spiritually minded in the discharge of his calling, than for any other sort of men in theirs; and that, as for other reasons, so because the commonness of the exercise of such thoughts, with their design upon others in their expression, will take off their power and efficacy. And he will have little benefit by his own ministry who endeavors not in the first place an experience in his own heart of the power of the truths which he doth teach unto others. And there is evidently as great a failing herein among us as among any other sort of Christians, as every occasion of trial doth demonstrate.
(2.) Although industry in any honest calling be allowable, yet unless men labour to be spiritually minded in the exercise of that industry, they have neither life nor peace. Hereunto all the things before mentioned are necessary; I know not how any of them can be abated; yea, more is required than is expressed in them. If you burn this roll, another must be written, and many like things must be added unto it. And the objection from the expense of time in the observance of them is of no force; for a man may do as much work whilst he is spiritually minded as whilst he is carnal. Spiritual thoughts will no more hinder you in your callings than those that are vain and earthly, which all sorts of men can find leisure for in the midst of their employments. If you have filled a vessel with chaff, yet you may pour into it a great deal of water, which will be contained in the same space and vessel; and if it be necessary that you should take in much of the chaff of the world into your minds, yet are they capable of such measures of grace as shall preserve them sincere unto God.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Marks of heart-covenanters with God
John Willison
Examination. O communicants, try if ye be within this covenant; remember, if you be not you have no right to the seals of it; no right to sit down at the Lord’s table. "Let a man examine himself and so let him eat." And examine yourselves by these marks.
1. Know you any thing of a change of your state? Can you say, "Once I was a bond-slave to Satan, and an enemy to God: once I loved sin, and hated holiness: but now God hath opened my eyes, and humbled my heart for sin, and made me cast down the weapons of my rebellion at his feet: once I was at peace without Christ the Mediator; but now I see nothing but fire and wrath out of him: once I thought little of sin; but now I see it to be the most black and bloody thing in the world." Then this is a good sign.
2. If you be in covenant with God, you will certainly love God with your hearts, and love the Mediator, who brought you into the covenant. Can you say then with Peter, "Lord, thou that knowest all things, knowest that I love thee?" Lord, though I cannot hear, pray, praise, or communicate as I ought, yet thou knowest I love thee; yea, I love thee above all things. And though all the riches, honours, and pleasures of the world were in my offer or possession, and Christ would say, you must either part with these, or part with me; my heart would answer, Lord, abide thou with me, and let them all be gone.
3. Those that are in covenant with God, have certainly made choice of God, as their God and portion. Can you say you have done this, O doubting communicant? Though you cannot say that God hath chosen you, yet doth your heart truly choose him? And are you resolved never to be satisfied without him? And whatever offers be made to you, yet you will be put off with nothing besides God. Then this may give you comfort.
4. Can you say you have made a resignation of yourselves, and of all you have to God, and you resolve to renew it again this night in secret, and to-morrow before men and angels? Then it is a token for good. It may be, doubting soul, thou art afraid to say, Lord, thou art my God; but canst thou venture to say, "Lord, I am thine, I resolve to be thine, and thine only; I will not be mine own, I will not be the devil’s, I will not be the world’s, I will not be my lust’s; Lord, I am resolved to be no one’s but thine." Well, let this comfort you when other marks cannot. For if once you come the length to say, "Lord, I am thine," you may say in the next place, "Lord, thou art mine;" for the relation is always reciprocal: and this is the reasoning of the spouse, Cant. vi. 3, "I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine."
5. Are you mightily pleased with the contrivement and design of this covenant, which is to debase self; and exalt free grace? And would you desire heaven, though it were for no more than to stand eternal monuments of free grace, and join your note with the redeemed, eternally to cry, "Not unto us, not unto us, but to thee be the glory?"
And, Lastly, Are you inclined to perform covenanted-duties conscientiously, and that in a covenant-way, relying on covenant strength, and from a principle of love and gratitude to your covenanted God, and with an eye to glorify his name: then fear not to come forward to take the seal of the covenant, for you belong to it.
Examination. O communicants, try if ye be within this covenant; remember, if you be not you have no right to the seals of it; no right to sit down at the Lord’s table. "Let a man examine himself and so let him eat." And examine yourselves by these marks.
1. Know you any thing of a change of your state? Can you say, "Once I was a bond-slave to Satan, and an enemy to God: once I loved sin, and hated holiness: but now God hath opened my eyes, and humbled my heart for sin, and made me cast down the weapons of my rebellion at his feet: once I was at peace without Christ the Mediator; but now I see nothing but fire and wrath out of him: once I thought little of sin; but now I see it to be the most black and bloody thing in the world." Then this is a good sign.
2. If you be in covenant with God, you will certainly love God with your hearts, and love the Mediator, who brought you into the covenant. Can you say then with Peter, "Lord, thou that knowest all things, knowest that I love thee?" Lord, though I cannot hear, pray, praise, or communicate as I ought, yet thou knowest I love thee; yea, I love thee above all things. And though all the riches, honours, and pleasures of the world were in my offer or possession, and Christ would say, you must either part with these, or part with me; my heart would answer, Lord, abide thou with me, and let them all be gone.
3. Those that are in covenant with God, have certainly made choice of God, as their God and portion. Can you say you have done this, O doubting communicant? Though you cannot say that God hath chosen you, yet doth your heart truly choose him? And are you resolved never to be satisfied without him? And whatever offers be made to you, yet you will be put off with nothing besides God. Then this may give you comfort.
4. Can you say you have made a resignation of yourselves, and of all you have to God, and you resolve to renew it again this night in secret, and to-morrow before men and angels? Then it is a token for good. It may be, doubting soul, thou art afraid to say, Lord, thou art my God; but canst thou venture to say, "Lord, I am thine, I resolve to be thine, and thine only; I will not be mine own, I will not be the devil’s, I will not be the world’s, I will not be my lust’s; Lord, I am resolved to be no one’s but thine." Well, let this comfort you when other marks cannot. For if once you come the length to say, "Lord, I am thine," you may say in the next place, "Lord, thou art mine;" for the relation is always reciprocal: and this is the reasoning of the spouse, Cant. vi. 3, "I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine."
5. Are you mightily pleased with the contrivement and design of this covenant, which is to debase self; and exalt free grace? And would you desire heaven, though it were for no more than to stand eternal monuments of free grace, and join your note with the redeemed, eternally to cry, "Not unto us, not unto us, but to thee be the glory?"
And, Lastly, Are you inclined to perform covenanted-duties conscientiously, and that in a covenant-way, relying on covenant strength, and from a principle of love and gratitude to your covenanted God, and with an eye to glorify his name: then fear not to come forward to take the seal of the covenant, for you belong to it.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Is there enough time for all of our duties?
This question follows on from our previous post. John Owen provides the answer. God certainly gives us enough time for all of the duties that he lays upon us. The following is from 'The Nature, Power, Deceit and Prevalency of Indwelling Sin'.
The deceitfulness of sin makes use of corrupt reasonings, taken from the pressing and urging occasions of life. "Should we," says it in the heart, "attend strictly unto all duties in this kind, we should neglect our principal occasions, and be useless unto ourselves and others in the world." And on this general account, particular businesses dispossess particular duties from their due place and time. Men have not leisure to glorify God and save their own souls, It is certain that God gives us time enough for all that he requires of us in any kind in this world. No duties need to jostle one another, I mean constantly. Especial occasions must be determined according unto especial circumstances. But if in any thing we take more upon us than we have time well to perform it in, without robbing God of that which is due to him and our own souls, this God calls not unto, this he blesseth us not in. It is more tolerable that our duties of holiness and regard to God should intrench upon the duties of our callings and employments in this world than on the contrary; and yet neither doth God require this at our hands, in an ordinary manner or course. How little, then, will he bear with that which evidently is so much worse upon all accounts whatever! But yet, through the deceitfulness of sin, thus are the souls of men beguiled. By several degrees they are at length driven from their duty.
Get grace, then, up betimes unto duty, and be early in the rebukes of sin. 3. Though it do its worst, yet be sure it never prevail to a conquest. Be sure you be not wearied out by its pertinacity, nor driven from your hold by its importunity; do not faint by its opposition. Take the apostle's advice, Hebrews 6:11,12, "We desire that every one of you do show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end: that ye be not slothful."
Still hold out in the same diligence. There are many ways whereby men are driven from a constant holy performance of duties, all of them dangerous, if not pernicious to the soul. Some are diverted by business, some by company, some by the power of temptations, some discouraged by their own darkness; but none so dangerous as this, when the soul gives over in part or in whole, as wearied by the aversation of sin unto it, or to communion with God in it. This argues the soul's giving up of itself unto the power of sin; which, unless the Lord break the snare of Satan therein, will assuredly prove ruinous. Our Savior's instruction is, that "we ought always to pray, and not to faint," Luke 18:1. Opposition will arise, — none so bitter and keen as that from our own hearts; if we faint, we perish. "Take heed lest ye be wearied," saith the apostle, "and faint in your minds," Hebrews 12:3. Such a fainting as attended with a weariness, and that with a giving place to the aversation working in our hearts, is to be avoided, if we would not perish. The caution is the same with that of the same apostle, Romans 12:12, "Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing instant in prayer;" and in general with that of chap. 6:12, "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof."
To cease from duty, in part or in whole, upon the aversation of sin unto its spirituality, is to give sin the rule, and to obey it in the lusts thereof.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
The acceleration of everything (spiritual)
The book by James Gleick Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything (Pantheon, 1999) argues that everything is speeding up; technology, entertainment, work and the pace of invention and change. "If there is an ultimate limit to the pace of entertainment, we must now be approaching it...In some ways, we are past the limit. Any day now, lawyers will take note of the considerable quantities of television text-including copyright notices and advertising fine print-that flash by too fast for any human to read it."
We hear of 'hurry-sickness' and the advent of real-time communications and delivery of work seems to intensify this by creating higher expectations. The distinction between work time and free time seems blurred, as employers expect more time from their employees and if they are at a certain level to be always 'on call' through an 'electronic tagging device'.
"At least in industries like high-tech and finance, quick-wittedness rules," observes Nicholas Lemann, author of The Big Test. "Some companies, such as Microsoft or D. E. Shaw, the stock-picking firm, are particularly known for hiring on the basis of mind speed and for peppering job applicants with SAT-like questions in interviews so as to bring the quality into high relief." There is an obsession with time-management among executives - seeing every instance of communication as a battlefield where they must win the war for productive time.
Gleick points to this obsession with accelerating everything and the effects of it as "mania" which is "defined by psychologists as an abnormal state of excitement, encompassing exhilaration, elation, euphoria, a sense of the mind racing. Maybe our hurry sickness is as simple as that. We-those of us in the faster cities and faster societies and faster mass culture of the technocratic dawn of the third millennium C.E.--are manic. The symptoms of mania are all too familiar: volubility and fast speech; restlessness and decreased need for sleep; heightened motor activity and increased self-confidence…. These are the time obsessions of complex civilizations, populous nation-states with many technologies."
"This is not a state of affairs that would, at most times and places in history, have been considered normal and healthy". Ironically it is something of a state of mind since it has been shown that Americans have almost five hours more free time per week than in the 1960s. Yet there is a perception of less time and more stress. That free time is, however, more defined and controlled by the media and commercialised 'lifestyle' anxieties than ever before.
This busyness of life easily spiils into the time that we give to spiritual things if we are not careful. Devotions and family worship become accelerated with one eye on the clock. Perhaps we start to feel we only have time for one or the other. We feel that we have not time to give to reading that will enrich our souls so we feed only on religous news or comments. We are so harrassed by all the communications that pour into our eyes and ears that we do not have time at the end of the day to cast up our spiritual accounts and deal with our wanderings at that time as we should.
It seems surprising to us that the question: "When may a Christian be said to pursue the affairs of the present life, so as to prevent his advances in grace, dishonor God, and injure his soul?" may have been asked in the mid-eighteenth century. The minister Samuel Hayward in addressing this responds that "the Christian may be said to pursue the world, so as to dishonor God, prevent his growth in grace, and injure his soul, When it breaks in upon his opportunities of attending to spiritual duties". "It is not enough that we spend one day in seven in attending to the concerns of our souls. The Christian must not let the week slip away, even if his worldly engagements are never so great, without conversing with God and his own heart; if he does, it is a sad sign of his being in languishing circumstances. Spiritual meditation, self-examination, prayer, religious conversation, and reading the scriptures, are all duties of great importance; duties in the performance of which the Christian life is maintained, corruptions are subdued, graces are strengthened, and he is enabled to make some progress in his way to Zion. I say not how often a person must pray, read, hear, etc., that he may grow in grace. But when we find our worldly engagements breaking in upon our spiritual duties, and gradually curtailing our opportunities of attending to them, we should take the alarm. We have many enemies to encounter with in our Christian warfare. We have but little strength. We had need be much upon our guard, be much in prayer, and in the use of those means, which are necessary to our spiritual prosperity. When the world therefore encroaches upon our time, so as to leave but little for these duties, we have reason to be afraid of a decline. Many have begun well, have set out with attending to the duties of the family and the closet; but the world, increasing upon them, has taken up their time; they have left off all family prayer, and are, I fear, too little in the duties of retirement, and plead, for an excuse, they have no time. They content themselves herein by a persuasion that the work was begun some time since, and therefore they are safe, though they cannot so well attend to all the duties they once did. Whether these persons are Christians or not, I dare not determine; but I apprehend we may without hesitation conclude, that they are not growing Christians. They bring no honor to religion. They who give up such opportunities as these for the world, reflect thereby upon the concerns of the soul, as of a trifling nature, and far inferior to outward enjoyments: and I need not say how much this grieves the Spirit, and brings a consumption upon the new man. But if, whilst you are pursuing the world, you will reserve time for family and closet religion, for looking into your hearts, and attending the means of spiritual improvement, you may be growing as to both worlds".
"How much should each be concerned to examine himself with regard to his pursuits of the world! If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him, 1 John 2:15. The covetous shall not inherit the kingdom of God, I Cor. 6:10. This should put us upon inquiry, whether we fall under this character or not. We should inquire, whether we do not dishonor God, and injure our souls, by a too diligent pursuit of inferior comforts? Does the world take up all my time? Can I easily omit duties, the duties of the family, or of the closet? Do I find a growing coldness to spiritual duties? What is my end in pursuing the world, to gratify an unbounded ambition of honor, wealth or pleasure; or is it to improve every mercy, and employ every talent for the glory of God? With what frame do I pursue the world? What impression, what influence has it upon me? God knows how it is with you: I must leave it to your consciences to answer."
"What matter of lamentation is it, that there are so many professing Christianity, who are of so worldly a temper? Does it not call for a tear, when we see so much of a covetous, proud, carnal, trifling spirit amongst those who call themselves Christians? Alas, alas! How much time in the world, how little with God? What eagerness in worldly, but what coldness in spiritual pursuits? How cheerfully are opportunities embraced for the world, but how they are omitted for God! How does the world lift us up! What readiness to lay out any thing upon self, how backward to use it for the good of others! What self love amongst Christians! Is it not so? Canst thou stand the test, Christian? Is not thy heart too much divided? Art thou not too greedy of earthly gain? Dost thou not trust too much in thy riches? Where is thy love to God, thy zeal for his glory? O be ashamed, ye professors of religion, be ashamed for your earthliness, your coldness, your carnality and unprofitableness."
"Consider amidst your pursuits of present things, that they are all transitory and uncertain, Luke 12:16–21. Consider, and walk under the view of that day, when you must give an account of your improvement of time, with all your enjoyments. Consider the obligations Christ has laid you under to him, and what a short time you have to do anything for him or his people. Consider how much more excellent spiritual enjoyments are than temporal. And may the Lord enable us all to keep a watch over our hearts, and to use this world so as not to abuse it, knowing that the fashion of all things is passing away."
We hear of 'hurry-sickness' and the advent of real-time communications and delivery of work seems to intensify this by creating higher expectations. The distinction between work time and free time seems blurred, as employers expect more time from their employees and if they are at a certain level to be always 'on call' through an 'electronic tagging device'.
"At least in industries like high-tech and finance, quick-wittedness rules," observes Nicholas Lemann, author of The Big Test. "Some companies, such as Microsoft or D. E. Shaw, the stock-picking firm, are particularly known for hiring on the basis of mind speed and for peppering job applicants with SAT-like questions in interviews so as to bring the quality into high relief." There is an obsession with time-management among executives - seeing every instance of communication as a battlefield where they must win the war for productive time.
Gleick points to this obsession with accelerating everything and the effects of it as "mania" which is "defined by psychologists as an abnormal state of excitement, encompassing exhilaration, elation, euphoria, a sense of the mind racing. Maybe our hurry sickness is as simple as that. We-those of us in the faster cities and faster societies and faster mass culture of the technocratic dawn of the third millennium C.E.--are manic. The symptoms of mania are all too familiar: volubility and fast speech; restlessness and decreased need for sleep; heightened motor activity and increased self-confidence…. These are the time obsessions of complex civilizations, populous nation-states with many technologies."
"This is not a state of affairs that would, at most times and places in history, have been considered normal and healthy". Ironically it is something of a state of mind since it has been shown that Americans have almost five hours more free time per week than in the 1960s. Yet there is a perception of less time and more stress. That free time is, however, more defined and controlled by the media and commercialised 'lifestyle' anxieties than ever before.
This busyness of life easily spiils into the time that we give to spiritual things if we are not careful. Devotions and family worship become accelerated with one eye on the clock. Perhaps we start to feel we only have time for one or the other. We feel that we have not time to give to reading that will enrich our souls so we feed only on religous news or comments. We are so harrassed by all the communications that pour into our eyes and ears that we do not have time at the end of the day to cast up our spiritual accounts and deal with our wanderings at that time as we should.
It seems surprising to us that the question: "When may a Christian be said to pursue the affairs of the present life, so as to prevent his advances in grace, dishonor God, and injure his soul?" may have been asked in the mid-eighteenth century. The minister Samuel Hayward in addressing this responds that "the Christian may be said to pursue the world, so as to dishonor God, prevent his growth in grace, and injure his soul, When it breaks in upon his opportunities of attending to spiritual duties". "It is not enough that we spend one day in seven in attending to the concerns of our souls. The Christian must not let the week slip away, even if his worldly engagements are never so great, without conversing with God and his own heart; if he does, it is a sad sign of his being in languishing circumstances. Spiritual meditation, self-examination, prayer, religious conversation, and reading the scriptures, are all duties of great importance; duties in the performance of which the Christian life is maintained, corruptions are subdued, graces are strengthened, and he is enabled to make some progress in his way to Zion. I say not how often a person must pray, read, hear, etc., that he may grow in grace. But when we find our worldly engagements breaking in upon our spiritual duties, and gradually curtailing our opportunities of attending to them, we should take the alarm. We have many enemies to encounter with in our Christian warfare. We have but little strength. We had need be much upon our guard, be much in prayer, and in the use of those means, which are necessary to our spiritual prosperity. When the world therefore encroaches upon our time, so as to leave but little for these duties, we have reason to be afraid of a decline. Many have begun well, have set out with attending to the duties of the family and the closet; but the world, increasing upon them, has taken up their time; they have left off all family prayer, and are, I fear, too little in the duties of retirement, and plead, for an excuse, they have no time. They content themselves herein by a persuasion that the work was begun some time since, and therefore they are safe, though they cannot so well attend to all the duties they once did. Whether these persons are Christians or not, I dare not determine; but I apprehend we may without hesitation conclude, that they are not growing Christians. They bring no honor to religion. They who give up such opportunities as these for the world, reflect thereby upon the concerns of the soul, as of a trifling nature, and far inferior to outward enjoyments: and I need not say how much this grieves the Spirit, and brings a consumption upon the new man. But if, whilst you are pursuing the world, you will reserve time for family and closet religion, for looking into your hearts, and attending the means of spiritual improvement, you may be growing as to both worlds".
"How much should each be concerned to examine himself with regard to his pursuits of the world! If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him, 1 John 2:15. The covetous shall not inherit the kingdom of God, I Cor. 6:10. This should put us upon inquiry, whether we fall under this character or not. We should inquire, whether we do not dishonor God, and injure our souls, by a too diligent pursuit of inferior comforts? Does the world take up all my time? Can I easily omit duties, the duties of the family, or of the closet? Do I find a growing coldness to spiritual duties? What is my end in pursuing the world, to gratify an unbounded ambition of honor, wealth or pleasure; or is it to improve every mercy, and employ every talent for the glory of God? With what frame do I pursue the world? What impression, what influence has it upon me? God knows how it is with you: I must leave it to your consciences to answer."
"What matter of lamentation is it, that there are so many professing Christianity, who are of so worldly a temper? Does it not call for a tear, when we see so much of a covetous, proud, carnal, trifling spirit amongst those who call themselves Christians? Alas, alas! How much time in the world, how little with God? What eagerness in worldly, but what coldness in spiritual pursuits? How cheerfully are opportunities embraced for the world, but how they are omitted for God! How does the world lift us up! What readiness to lay out any thing upon self, how backward to use it for the good of others! What self love amongst Christians! Is it not so? Canst thou stand the test, Christian? Is not thy heart too much divided? Art thou not too greedy of earthly gain? Dost thou not trust too much in thy riches? Where is thy love to God, thy zeal for his glory? O be ashamed, ye professors of religion, be ashamed for your earthliness, your coldness, your carnality and unprofitableness."
"Consider amidst your pursuits of present things, that they are all transitory and uncertain, Luke 12:16–21. Consider, and walk under the view of that day, when you must give an account of your improvement of time, with all your enjoyments. Consider the obligations Christ has laid you under to him, and what a short time you have to do anything for him or his people. Consider how much more excellent spiritual enjoyments are than temporal. And may the Lord enable us all to keep a watch over our hearts, and to use this world so as not to abuse it, knowing that the fashion of all things is passing away."
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Richard Sibbes and the love of Christ
The puritan Richard Sibbes was called 'the heavenly Doctor'. Izaac Walton wrote of Sibbes:
Of this blest man, let this just praise be given,
Heaven was in him, before he was in heaven.
Here is a good summary of his life.
Sibbes' book 'The Bruised Reed' was instrumental in the conversion of Richard Baxter who said that the book 'opened more the Love of God to me and gave me a livelier apprehension of the Mystery of Redemption, and how much I was beholden to Jesus Christ'.
His writing exudes this character.Sibbes describes preaching as the lifting up of the banner of Christ's love'.'When the beauty of Christ is unfolded, it draws the wounded, hungry, soul unto him' (2:232). 'Christ is the object of all the senses. Beloved, he is not only beauty to the eye, but sweetness to the smell, and to the taste' (2:152). He describes the presence of Christ 'delectable as spices and flowers'.
The following are some precious quotations from Sibbes.
"seek for heaven in hell that seek for spiritual love in an unchanged heart"
"with the same love that God loves Christ, he loves all his."
"Love is a boundless affection."
"Love is the weight and wing of the soul, which carries it where it goes"
"Beloved, get love.. ..It melts us into the likeness of Christ. It constrains, it hath a kind of holy violence
"we are not as we know, but as we love"
The following article by Joel Beeke is very helpful. Richard Sibbes on Entertaining the Holy Spirit.
Of this blest man, let this just praise be given,
Heaven was in him, before he was in heaven.
Here is a good summary of his life.
Sibbes' book 'The Bruised Reed' was instrumental in the conversion of Richard Baxter who said that the book 'opened more the Love of God to me and gave me a livelier apprehension of the Mystery of Redemption, and how much I was beholden to Jesus Christ'.
His writing exudes this character.Sibbes describes preaching as the lifting up of the banner of Christ's love'.'When the beauty of Christ is unfolded, it draws the wounded, hungry, soul unto him' (2:232). 'Christ is the object of all the senses. Beloved, he is not only beauty to the eye, but sweetness to the smell, and to the taste' (2:152). He describes the presence of Christ 'delectable as spices and flowers'.
The following are some precious quotations from Sibbes.
"seek for heaven in hell that seek for spiritual love in an unchanged heart"
"with the same love that God loves Christ, he loves all his."
"Love is a boundless affection."
"Love is the weight and wing of the soul, which carries it where it goes"
"Beloved, get love.. ..It melts us into the likeness of Christ. It constrains, it hath a kind of holy violence
"we are not as we know, but as we love"
The following article by Joel Beeke is very helpful. Richard Sibbes on Entertaining the Holy Spirit.
Monday, May 12, 2008
A Brief History of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland
By Rev. NEIL MACINTYRE, Edinburgh (Paper Delivered at 1943 Synod).
The Free Presbyterian Church has had a wonderful history. She might be compared to the vine brought from Egypt which took root and filled the land and the boughs extended over the sea. Such is the history of the Free Presbyterian Church. She began in a very small way. Two ministers and one elder formed her first Presbytery. To-day we have twenty-five ministers with many lay missionaries. We are represented in England and South Africa, where we have two ordained European missionaries and a female teacher. We also have Mission Stations in America, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. At the beginning of our history enemies predicted we could only exist for a year or two owing to want of funds and leaders. But these prophets proved to be false, for we are now fifty years in existence, which is our Jubilee, and no appearance of us coming to an end notwithstanding the wishful thinking of some who do not wish us well. This should humble us and make us give the glory to Him who hitherto has helped us.
Let me give a brief sketch of the history of the Free Presbyterian Church. In 1843 the Free Church made an noble stand in defence of the crown rights of the Lord Jesus Christ as King and Head of His own Church. The Disruption Fathers contended, especially during the "Ten Years' Conflict," against the intrusion of the Civil Court to rule in the House of God. On account of this unscriptural interference the Constitutional party were compelled to separate not from the Church of Scotland as to her creed and constitution, but from the Erastian party, as was clearly stated by Dr. Chalmers—"We have left," he said, "a vitiated Establishment but we would gladly return to a pure one and we are not Voluntaries."
In 1843 the Free Church firmly maintained the absolute inerrancy of God's Word and the purity of worship. In 1863 a Committee was appointed to consider whether difficulties which stood in the way of Union between the UP. Church and the Free Church could be removed. This question caused a bitter controversy between the Constitutionalists and the Rainy party. In 1873 Dr. Rainy, afraid of a serious split in the Church called a halt and for the time dropped the subject.
The Free Church which made such a noble stand in defence of truth and principle and which the Lord so abundantly acknowledged did not proceed far on her ecclesiastical journey when boars from the forest appeared to devour her, and break down her hedges. The first to be noticed of these heretics who publicly expressed their pernicious opinions regarding the infallibility of God's Word was Professor Rob-ertson Smith of Aberdeen. He publicly denied the authenticity and inspiration of several parts of the1 Bible." After much wrangling over his case in the courts of the Church he was finally suspended from his professorial chair'by a majority vote. That his suspension was by a majority showed clearly that he had many supporters and sympathisers behind him. The decision no doubt encouraged other sceptics regarding the infallibility of the Word of God. Professors Dods, Bruce, Denney, Drummond and others publicly stated that there were errors and immoralities in the Bible. These heretical teachers instilled their false doctrines into the minds of their students and when they were licensed they went over the land like a plague of locusts spreading their pernicious views among the people. While these men were preaching their unscriptural doctrines they felt they had no legal authority in doing so. In 1889 an Overture was presented to the General Assembly craving that a Committee be appointed to enquire as to how the difficulties and scruples that some professed to have regarding certain doctrines of the Confession of Faith might be removed. A Committee was appointed and gave in their report. In 1891 the Assembly by a large majority approved of the report and on the motion of Dr. Rainy it was sent down to Presbyteries under the "Barrier Act" for their approval or disapproval. Presbyteries were not allowed to make any changes, but simply to say "yes" or "no." In 1892 the Act came up at the Assembly and as it was approved by a great majority of Presbyteries, Dr. Rainy moved that it be passed as a Declaratory Act. The Constitutionalists moved a counter motion. There voted for Dr. Rainy's motion 428, and for the counter motion by Rev. Murdo MacAskill, Dingwall, 66. So the Act was passed by a large majority as "a binding law and constitution of the Church." Some maintained that because the Questions and Formula were not changed the Act was not binding. That argument is vain for the Act would have to be passed into law before any one could be asked to subscribe it. Some Presbyteries arid Synods entered Protests in their minutes against the Act, but all these when they came up to the Assembly were ordered to be deleted and declared null and void.
In 1893 several Overtures were sent up from Presbyteries and Synods to the Assembly to have the Act repealed, but it was moved by Dr. Rainy that the Assembly pass from these Overtures, which was carried by a large majority. Twenty-one ministers and twenty-one elders dissented from that finding. It was then the Rev. Donald Macfarlane (Mr. Macfarlane was not a member in 1892) stepped forward and tabled his Protest in which he stated that the General Assembly in passing the Declaratory Act into a law of the Church in 1892 ceased to be the true representative of the Free Church of Scotland and declared that he claimed all his secred and civil rights according to the terms of contract agreed upon between him and Free Church at his ordination. Dr. Rainy said if the document Mr. Macfarlane had laid on their table, were it merely a dissent, they would have no hesitation in allowing it, but it was much more, it was an express repudiation of the authority and validity of the Act of the General Assembly. He then moved that they do not receive the Protest. The Free Church adopted the Declaratory Act as part of its constitution, and all who remained in connection with it were under its jurisdiction whether they agreed with the Act or not.
It is rather strange to find some among us now who hold that it was when Messrs. Macfarlane and Macdonald, with Mr. Macfarlane, elder, Raasay, constituted themselves as the Free Church Presbytery of Scotland that they separated from the Free Church. That certainly was not Mr. Macfarlane's view when he tabled his Protest. Besides, if that view is correct, which we hold is not, then the history of the Free Presbyterian Church will have to be re-written.
After Mr. Macfarlane protested he agreed to come to Millhouse, Kames, for Sabbath, and hold a meeting of the congregation on Monday. On his way there he stayed with me on Friday night at 147 Albert Street, Glasgow, where he met a number of students, including the late Messrs. Cameron and Macrae and others. After some discussion it was agreed that Mr. Macfarlane should call a meeting of the Millhouse congregation on Monday. The meeting was called and the whole congregation attended. After Mr. Macfarlane and others had explained the ecclesiastical position the whole congregation except six decided to separate from the Declaratory Act Church. That was the first congregation to cast in their lot with Mr. Macfarlane. The late Mr. Archibald Crawford who was present was asked to express his mind. He rose and said:-"I saw this bastard child being formed in the womb of the Free Church when Drs. Dods and Bruce were appointed professors, but as the constitution was not changed I did not actually leave the Church, but now that this bastard child is born in the Declaratory Act, whatever others will do, I am done with the Declaratory Act Church forever."
Mr. Macfarlane, greatly encouraged by the noble stand made by the Millhouse congregation returned home to Raasay where he was then minister. On Monday after the Communion (2nd Sabbath of June) he explained his own position and asked those who adhered to the Word of God and the Confession of Faith to stand. All stood except very few. Soon after a public meeting was convened at Inverness. The Rev. Donald Macdonald, Sheildaig, who had not yet publicly declared his mind was present. He rose and intimated that he refused to acknowledge the Declaratory Act Church as the Free Church of Scotland, and that he was taking his stand with Mr. Macfarlane. At this meeting it was agreed that immediate steps be taken to form a Presbytery. On 27th July the Revs. D. Macfarlane, D. Macdonald, with Mr. Alexander Macfarlane, elder, Raasay, met in conference at Raasay and resolved to meet in the name of the Head of the Church and constitute themselves a separate Presbytery, not owning the jurisdiction of, the courts of the Church calling herself the Free Church of Scotland. By this action they placed themselves beyond the power of the Declaratory Act Church. It was said that Dr. Rainy admitted that that was the cleverest Act known in the history of the Church in Scotland. The Presbytery was first called "The Free Church Presbytery of Scotland." It was afterwards discovered that the above name might cause it to clash, especially in financial matters, with the Free Church, so in July 1894, after due deliberation, it was unanimously agreed that the Church be called the "Free Presbyterian Church." This, we were told, was a great disappointment to the Rainy party, for that was the name they had in view to give to the United Free Church.
A Committee was appointed by the Declaratory Act Free Church to take legal proceedings against the Free Presbyterian Church to claim the property, but as Messrs. Macfarlane and Macdonald did not contest the case in the Civil Courts they were evicted from their churches and manses. But the Lord whom they served and whose cause they defended soon provided them with churches and manses.
The Free Presbyterian Church did not proceed far on her ecclesiastical journey when serious and trying troubles assailed her especially with some of her ministers and students. As was said by a certain writer in our Church magazine-"Some of the officers and crew, dissatisfied with the discipline of the smaller ship have left her for a vessel of larger dimensions and wider liberality." While we lamented the departure of these men, and especially some of them, yet that did not change or cause the Church from faithfully adhering to the position she took up in 1893 in defence of truth and principle.
I am not going to refer to many other troubles we have had during these fifty years. If we, however, hold fast by the infallible Word of God and the testimony of the Free Presbyterian Church we may expect trials and opposition. Christ said to His disciples-"In this world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." While we have much reason to mourn over our short-comings and failings, yet on the other hand we have many reasons to take courage and hold fast the position we took up in 1893, and set up our Ebenezer that "Hitherto hath the Lord helped us."
We had and have our differences at times regarding Church procedure and discipline, yet we maintain that these differences do not change the attitude of the Free Presbyterian Church regarding the absolute integrity of God's infallible Word which all our ministers, office-bearers and people are pledged to uphold and defend. While we greatly deplore the many divisions in the professing churches in the land we would rejoice to see the people turning to the Word of God and to a scriptural form of worship of which, alas! there are no signs at present. It is, therefore, our duty as a Church to hold fast by God's Word and to purity of worship as He has commanded us. May the Lord in infinite mercy grant us an outpouring of His Spirit that we turn to Him in repent-ence and godly sorrow. He is removing from our midst one by one to their eternal rest many who were faithful witnesses in our Church, but His command to us is—"Hold fast that which thou hast that no man take thy crown."
We would earnestly appeal to our young people to adhere steadfastly to the testimony raised by their godly fathers in 1893, and to shun countenancing churches who have openly and defiantly departed from the Word of God and from the purity of His worship. We would earnestly pray that this, our Jubilee year, would be one in which many would "be delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the Kingdom of His dear Son."
The Free Presbyterian Church has had a wonderful history. She might be compared to the vine brought from Egypt which took root and filled the land and the boughs extended over the sea. Such is the history of the Free Presbyterian Church. She began in a very small way. Two ministers and one elder formed her first Presbytery. To-day we have twenty-five ministers with many lay missionaries. We are represented in England and South Africa, where we have two ordained European missionaries and a female teacher. We also have Mission Stations in America, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. At the beginning of our history enemies predicted we could only exist for a year or two owing to want of funds and leaders. But these prophets proved to be false, for we are now fifty years in existence, which is our Jubilee, and no appearance of us coming to an end notwithstanding the wishful thinking of some who do not wish us well. This should humble us and make us give the glory to Him who hitherto has helped us.
Let me give a brief sketch of the history of the Free Presbyterian Church. In 1843 the Free Church made an noble stand in defence of the crown rights of the Lord Jesus Christ as King and Head of His own Church. The Disruption Fathers contended, especially during the "Ten Years' Conflict," against the intrusion of the Civil Court to rule in the House of God. On account of this unscriptural interference the Constitutional party were compelled to separate not from the Church of Scotland as to her creed and constitution, but from the Erastian party, as was clearly stated by Dr. Chalmers—"We have left," he said, "a vitiated Establishment but we would gladly return to a pure one and we are not Voluntaries."
In 1843 the Free Church firmly maintained the absolute inerrancy of God's Word and the purity of worship. In 1863 a Committee was appointed to consider whether difficulties which stood in the way of Union between the UP. Church and the Free Church could be removed. This question caused a bitter controversy between the Constitutionalists and the Rainy party. In 1873 Dr. Rainy, afraid of a serious split in the Church called a halt and for the time dropped the subject.
The Free Church which made such a noble stand in defence of truth and principle and which the Lord so abundantly acknowledged did not proceed far on her ecclesiastical journey when boars from the forest appeared to devour her, and break down her hedges. The first to be noticed of these heretics who publicly expressed their pernicious opinions regarding the infallibility of God's Word was Professor Rob-ertson Smith of Aberdeen. He publicly denied the authenticity and inspiration of several parts of the1 Bible." After much wrangling over his case in the courts of the Church he was finally suspended from his professorial chair'by a majority vote. That his suspension was by a majority showed clearly that he had many supporters and sympathisers behind him. The decision no doubt encouraged other sceptics regarding the infallibility of the Word of God. Professors Dods, Bruce, Denney, Drummond and others publicly stated that there were errors and immoralities in the Bible. These heretical teachers instilled their false doctrines into the minds of their students and when they were licensed they went over the land like a plague of locusts spreading their pernicious views among the people. While these men were preaching their unscriptural doctrines they felt they had no legal authority in doing so. In 1889 an Overture was presented to the General Assembly craving that a Committee be appointed to enquire as to how the difficulties and scruples that some professed to have regarding certain doctrines of the Confession of Faith might be removed. A Committee was appointed and gave in their report. In 1891 the Assembly by a large majority approved of the report and on the motion of Dr. Rainy it was sent down to Presbyteries under the "Barrier Act" for their approval or disapproval. Presbyteries were not allowed to make any changes, but simply to say "yes" or "no." In 1892 the Act came up at the Assembly and as it was approved by a great majority of Presbyteries, Dr. Rainy moved that it be passed as a Declaratory Act. The Constitutionalists moved a counter motion. There voted for Dr. Rainy's motion 428, and for the counter motion by Rev. Murdo MacAskill, Dingwall, 66. So the Act was passed by a large majority as "a binding law and constitution of the Church." Some maintained that because the Questions and Formula were not changed the Act was not binding. That argument is vain for the Act would have to be passed into law before any one could be asked to subscribe it. Some Presbyteries arid Synods entered Protests in their minutes against the Act, but all these when they came up to the Assembly were ordered to be deleted and declared null and void.
In 1893 several Overtures were sent up from Presbyteries and Synods to the Assembly to have the Act repealed, but it was moved by Dr. Rainy that the Assembly pass from these Overtures, which was carried by a large majority. Twenty-one ministers and twenty-one elders dissented from that finding. It was then the Rev. Donald Macfarlane (Mr. Macfarlane was not a member in 1892) stepped forward and tabled his Protest in which he stated that the General Assembly in passing the Declaratory Act into a law of the Church in 1892 ceased to be the true representative of the Free Church of Scotland and declared that he claimed all his secred and civil rights according to the terms of contract agreed upon between him and Free Church at his ordination. Dr. Rainy said if the document Mr. Macfarlane had laid on their table, were it merely a dissent, they would have no hesitation in allowing it, but it was much more, it was an express repudiation of the authority and validity of the Act of the General Assembly. He then moved that they do not receive the Protest. The Free Church adopted the Declaratory Act as part of its constitution, and all who remained in connection with it were under its jurisdiction whether they agreed with the Act or not.
It is rather strange to find some among us now who hold that it was when Messrs. Macfarlane and Macdonald, with Mr. Macfarlane, elder, Raasay, constituted themselves as the Free Church Presbytery of Scotland that they separated from the Free Church. That certainly was not Mr. Macfarlane's view when he tabled his Protest. Besides, if that view is correct, which we hold is not, then the history of the Free Presbyterian Church will have to be re-written.
After Mr. Macfarlane protested he agreed to come to Millhouse, Kames, for Sabbath, and hold a meeting of the congregation on Monday. On his way there he stayed with me on Friday night at 147 Albert Street, Glasgow, where he met a number of students, including the late Messrs. Cameron and Macrae and others. After some discussion it was agreed that Mr. Macfarlane should call a meeting of the Millhouse congregation on Monday. The meeting was called and the whole congregation attended. After Mr. Macfarlane and others had explained the ecclesiastical position the whole congregation except six decided to separate from the Declaratory Act Church. That was the first congregation to cast in their lot with Mr. Macfarlane. The late Mr. Archibald Crawford who was present was asked to express his mind. He rose and said:-"I saw this bastard child being formed in the womb of the Free Church when Drs. Dods and Bruce were appointed professors, but as the constitution was not changed I did not actually leave the Church, but now that this bastard child is born in the Declaratory Act, whatever others will do, I am done with the Declaratory Act Church forever."
Mr. Macfarlane, greatly encouraged by the noble stand made by the Millhouse congregation returned home to Raasay where he was then minister. On Monday after the Communion (2nd Sabbath of June) he explained his own position and asked those who adhered to the Word of God and the Confession of Faith to stand. All stood except very few. Soon after a public meeting was convened at Inverness. The Rev. Donald Macdonald, Sheildaig, who had not yet publicly declared his mind was present. He rose and intimated that he refused to acknowledge the Declaratory Act Church as the Free Church of Scotland, and that he was taking his stand with Mr. Macfarlane. At this meeting it was agreed that immediate steps be taken to form a Presbytery. On 27th July the Revs. D. Macfarlane, D. Macdonald, with Mr. Alexander Macfarlane, elder, Raasay, met in conference at Raasay and resolved to meet in the name of the Head of the Church and constitute themselves a separate Presbytery, not owning the jurisdiction of, the courts of the Church calling herself the Free Church of Scotland. By this action they placed themselves beyond the power of the Declaratory Act Church. It was said that Dr. Rainy admitted that that was the cleverest Act known in the history of the Church in Scotland. The Presbytery was first called "The Free Church Presbytery of Scotland." It was afterwards discovered that the above name might cause it to clash, especially in financial matters, with the Free Church, so in July 1894, after due deliberation, it was unanimously agreed that the Church be called the "Free Presbyterian Church." This, we were told, was a great disappointment to the Rainy party, for that was the name they had in view to give to the United Free Church.
A Committee was appointed by the Declaratory Act Free Church to take legal proceedings against the Free Presbyterian Church to claim the property, but as Messrs. Macfarlane and Macdonald did not contest the case in the Civil Courts they were evicted from their churches and manses. But the Lord whom they served and whose cause they defended soon provided them with churches and manses.
The Free Presbyterian Church did not proceed far on her ecclesiastical journey when serious and trying troubles assailed her especially with some of her ministers and students. As was said by a certain writer in our Church magazine-"Some of the officers and crew, dissatisfied with the discipline of the smaller ship have left her for a vessel of larger dimensions and wider liberality." While we lamented the departure of these men, and especially some of them, yet that did not change or cause the Church from faithfully adhering to the position she took up in 1893 in defence of truth and principle.
I am not going to refer to many other troubles we have had during these fifty years. If we, however, hold fast by the infallible Word of God and the testimony of the Free Presbyterian Church we may expect trials and opposition. Christ said to His disciples-"In this world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." While we have much reason to mourn over our short-comings and failings, yet on the other hand we have many reasons to take courage and hold fast the position we took up in 1893, and set up our Ebenezer that "Hitherto hath the Lord helped us."
We had and have our differences at times regarding Church procedure and discipline, yet we maintain that these differences do not change the attitude of the Free Presbyterian Church regarding the absolute integrity of God's infallible Word which all our ministers, office-bearers and people are pledged to uphold and defend. While we greatly deplore the many divisions in the professing churches in the land we would rejoice to see the people turning to the Word of God and to a scriptural form of worship of which, alas! there are no signs at present. It is, therefore, our duty as a Church to hold fast by God's Word and to purity of worship as He has commanded us. May the Lord in infinite mercy grant us an outpouring of His Spirit that we turn to Him in repent-ence and godly sorrow. He is removing from our midst one by one to their eternal rest many who were faithful witnesses in our Church, but His command to us is—"Hold fast that which thou hast that no man take thy crown."
We would earnestly appeal to our young people to adhere steadfastly to the testimony raised by their godly fathers in 1893, and to shun countenancing churches who have openly and defiantly departed from the Word of God and from the purity of His worship. We would earnestly pray that this, our Jubilee year, would be one in which many would "be delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the Kingdom of His dear Son."
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