In Volume 8 of the Master’s Trumpet, we considered the relation of noncommunicant, baptized members to the discipline of the church. Should such members be subject to the formal judicial process of ecclesiastical discipline up to and including excommunication? After noting that this question is essentially a practical application of Covenant Theology to church order, we surveyed the arguments against the formal discipline of baptized members and responded to each of these in turn, to establish the view that baptized members are under the whole discipline of the church, up to and including the censure of excommunication. Having established this principle, we proceed in this article to deal with some practical questions of how this discipline might be implemented, at what age formal process should become relevant, and for what judicial discipline might be instigated.
Experimental religion, which once was a vital part of the Reformed tradition of preaching and spirituality, has in a large measure been lost sight of in our day. Even use of the term experimental in connection with religion is no longer customary, it being more commonly associated with the natural sciences, where a method of probing and investigation leads to an understanding of reality. The older Reformed writers used the word to indicate that we not only read and confess what Scripture teaches, but also are enabled by the Holy Spirit in our own experience to prove and enter into those truths. The propositions of Scripture are true regardless of our experience of them. But in those who belong to Christ, there is a work of the Holy Spirit to persuade them of those truths, so that they taste and feel the power of them in their own souls.
From the outset, the sixteenth-century Scottish Reformed Church was firm in its pursuit of tutoring and examining communicants, and this preparation intensified in the weeks leading up to the administration of the Lord’s Supper. The First Book of Discipline (1560) enjoined, “All ministers must be admonished to be more careful to instruct the ignorant than ready to serve their appetite and to use more sharp examination than indulgence in admitting to that great Mystery such as be ignorant of the use and virtue of the same. And therefore we think that the administration of the Table ought never to be without examination passing before and specially of them whose knowledge is suspect.”
The circumstance which has occasioned the raising of a question here is, that within recent memory there was a controversy about the Atonement in one branch of what now is the United Presbyterian Church; and that in view of that controversy there is a reasonable doubt, whether the United Presbyterian Church is now completely at one with ours with reference to the Atonement. The controversy, while it lasted (1840–1845), appeared to disclose the existence in the United Secession Church of two schools of theological opinion regarding this matter, whose views were seriously antagonistic. The controversy issued in the granting (in 1845), by that Church, of a virtual toleration in her pulpit to those views of the new school which had been denounced by the other party as opposed to the Westminster Confession and the Word of God.
We read in scripture of those who believe the word of God, and yet are not saved, as in Luke 8:13: “They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away,” or in Acts 26:27–28: “King Agrippa, believest thou the prophets? I know that thou believest. Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.” Or James 2:19: “Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.” Faith of a certain kind, constrained by evidence, will be found even in those who hate the truth with which they are confronted. Gardiner Spring comments, “We receive, compound, and compare ideas, whether we wish to or not. When we see the evidence of a religious doctrine to be clear and convincing, we cannot withhold our assent from it, while at the same time we may hate what we believe and love what we reject.”
Thus I have shortly shewed what are the effects or works of the law, when managed by the Spirit of God for this end, to bring an elect vessel to become dead to the law. The man, I say, getting a discovery of these things, must now conclude that there is no hope or expectation of life for him by the works of the law; and therefore he must turn his back upon that and seek relief from some other airth, and row to another shore. For clearing of this matter, let us speak a little to some few questions.
Robert S. Candlish (1806–1873) was a prominent figure in the Disruption of 1843, second in influence only to Thomas Chalmers. He served for many years as the minister in St. George’s Free Church in Edinburgh’s New Town. In the spring of 1864, Candlish delivered the first series of lectures from the recently established “Cunningham Lectureship,” in memory of the late Calvinist giant, William Cunningham, DD (1805–1861). Each lecturer had liberty to choose his own theological subject. Candlish’s choice was “The Fatherhood of God,” which he delivered in six lectures. His stated aim was to “bring out the import and bearing of the Scriptural doctrine respecting the Fatherhood of God as an influential element in Christian experience.”
It is not intended in this discourse to enter at length or with any minuteness of detail into the wide field of unfulfilled prophecy. The particulars of the future destiny of Israel, the time, the manner, and the accompanying circumstances of their restoration and conversion, must be left in a great measure untouched. For the present, it will be enough for our purpose to dwell on the broad and general announcement of the prophetic Word, that in the latter days, they are to be restored to their old inheritance and converted to the faith of the Gospel, and to consider that fact—its connection with the blessed prospects of the church of Christ—in the humble and earnest hope that the views, thus suggested, may tend to stir up our heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel, that they may be saved.
The general sound of heaven, eternal life, salvation, the love of God in Christ, is pleasing to the ears of men. There are few to be met with who suspect themselves to have any dislike at the things expressed by these terms; much less that they are in danger of being eternally damned on account of an obstinate refusal of such blessings. Every man thinks himself fond of heaven, and that his desires of eternal life are not only sincere, but sufficiently strong, to bring him, at one time or other, to go through whatever may be required that he may obtain that blessedness. Why do men entertain such flattering thoughts of themselves? It is because they know not the plague of their hearts, and because they consider not the true nature of the salvation and happiness which are brought to light by the gospel.
The formation of a partner for Adam out of a portion of his own frame, and the junction of the two under the direct sanction of their Maker, so as to form in a manner one flesh, however important in a social and economical respect, however fitted also to bear indirectly on the higher interests of the world, was still not formally of a religious nature. For the world’s secular well-being alone, there were reasons amply sufficient to account for its Divine author resorting to such a method, when bringing into being the first family pair, and in them laying the foundations of the world’s social existence.
