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And it is a mercy to have so near a friend to be a helper to your soul; to join with you in prayer and other holy exercises; to watch over you and tell you of your sins and dangers, and to stir up in you the grace of God, and remember to you of the life to come, and cheerfully accompany you in the ways of holiness.Richard Baxter,A Christian Directoiy: or, Sum ofPractical7heology, and Cases of Conscience, 11.1 (7he Practical Works of the Rev. Richard Baxter [London: James Duncan, 1830], IV, 30).
the decline of church discipline is perhaps the most visible failure of the contemporary church. No longer concerned with maintaining purity of confession or lifestyle, the contemporary church sees itself as a voluntary association of autonomous members, with minimal moral accountability to God, much less to each other.
the following are specific areas addressed in Scripture that require Church discipline: personal sin committed by one member against another member of the church; egregious/public moral failure; heretical teaching; divisiveness; idleness; confirmed sin among the church's leaders.Sojourners and Strangers, 199
It has been remarked, that when discipline leaves a church, Christ goes with itA Treatise on Church Order
church discipline is a proleptic (or anticipatory) and declarative sign of the divine eschatological judgement, meted out by Jesus Christ through the church against its sinful members and sinful situations.Sojourners and Strangers, 184
I think it is my duty to choose rather to join with those who refuse to admit into the Communion with them such as are openly vicious and profane than with those who, being under an unhappy obligation to administer the Lord's Supper to all in office and to transfer the trial of all suspensions to the bishop's court, cannot possibly use so strict a discipline. Not that I think I am ever the worse for bad people's joining with me in the Lord's Supper, but perhaps they are the worse for my joining with them; and I would not be accessory to the hardening of them in their impieties. I do not expect to meet with any society of Christians perfectly pure on this side heaven. There are spots, I know, in our feasts of charity; but I must prefer those who appear to me either to be more pure from the mixture of corrupt members, or at least more solicitous and desirous to be so and capable of being so by their own constitution.
The neglect of discipline has a strong tendency to the deluding of souls by making men think that they are Christians when they are not because they are not separated from such as are, and by making scandalous sinners think their sin tolerable because it is so tolerated by the pastors of the church. We hereby corrupt Christianity itself in the eyes of the world and do our part to make them believe that to be a Christian is only to be of such or such an opinion, and that the Christian religion requires holiness no more than the false religions of the world. Reformed Pastor
The accusations of none, not even the best in the church, should be taken without proof. A minister should never make himself a party before he has sufficient evidence of the case. It is better to let many vicious persons go unpunished and without censure when we want full evidence against them than to censure one unjustly, which we may easily do if we go upon bold presumptions alone. And that will bring upon a pastor the scandal of partiality and unrighteous dealing, which will make all his reproofs and censures become contemptible.
Sometimes, the guilt of renewed infirmities or decays doth renew distrust and make us shrink, and we are like the child in the mother's arms that fears when he loses his hold, as if his safety were more in his hold of her than in her hold of him. Weak duties have weak expectations of success. In this case, what an excellent remedy has faith in looking to the perpetual intercession of Christ. Is He praying for us in the heavens, and shall we not be bold to pray and expect an answer? O remember that He is not weak when we are weak.
The life of religion, and the welfare and glory of both the Church and the State, depend much on family government and duty. If we suffer the neglect of this, we shall undo all.
They will give you leave to preach against their sins, and to talk as much as you will for godliness in the pulpit, if you will but let them alone afterwards, and be friendly and merry with them when you have done, and talk as they do, and live as they. and be indifferent with them in your conversation. For they take the pulpit to be but a stage; a place where preachers must show themselves, and play their parts; where you have liberty for an hour to say what you list; and what you say they regard not, if you show them not, by saying it personally to their faces, that you were in good earnest, and did indeed mean them
Keep up your conjugaI love in a constant heat and vigor. Love Will suppress wrath; you cannot have a bitter mind upon small provocations, against those that you dearly love; much less can you proceed to reviling words, or to averseness and estrangedness, or any abuse of one another. Or if a breach and wound be unhappily made, the balsamic quality of love will heal It. But when love once cooleth, small matters exasperate and breed distaste.
This life was not intended to be the place of our perfection, but the preparation for it.
A heavenly mind is a joyful mind; this is the nearest and truest way to live a life of comfort, and without this you must need be uncomfortable. Can a man be at a fire and not be warm? Can your heart be in heaven, and not have comfort?
God himself will have his servants tried and exercised by difficulties. He never intended us the reward for sitting still; nor the crown of victory, without a fight.
Of all preaching in the world, (that speaks not stark lies,) I hate that preaching which tendeth to make the hearers laugh, or to move their mind with tickling levity, and affect them as stage-players use to do, instead of affecting them with a holy reverence of the name of God.
The vigor and power and comfort of our spiritual life depends on our mortification of deeds of the flesh.
If God be not enough for you, you will never have enough. Turn to him more, and know him better, if you would have a satisfied mind.
Let no man think to kill sin with few, easy, or gentle strokes. He who hath once smitten a serpent, if he follow not on his blow until it be slain, may repent that ever he began the quarrel. And so he who undertakes to deal with sin, and pursues it not constantly to the death.
Lay siege to your sins, and starve them out by keeping away the food and fuel which is their maintenance and life.
To live among such excellent helps as our libraries afford, to have so many silent wise companions whenever we please.
O what a blessed day that will be when I shall . . . stand on the shore and look back on the raging seas I have safely passed; when I shall review my pains and sorrows, my fears and tears, and possess the glory which was the end of all!
I preached as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men.
Study hard, for the well is deep, and our brains are shallow.
Prayer is the breath of the new creature
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2. Charles Spurgeon (134)
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