True Knowledge of Heavenly Things

This post has 626 words. It will take approximately 3 minutes, 7 secondes for reading it.

William Ames

True knowledge of heavenly things increases according to the measure of sanctification.   I do not speak of knowledge that is called false, as the Apostle somewhere terms it, but of true knowledge.   This is inward, experimental understanding, and this grows up as holiness enlarges itself in the soul.   The clearer the mirror, the more perfect is the reflection that it makes.   The more pure and spotless the soul is the better it receives and judges of heavenly things.   If it is but daybreak or a dim and dusk twilight, we have a more doubtful appearance of things that are before us.   But if it grows to a morning-light, and then increases into a noonday brightness, then have we a more exact and judicious vision of them.   When the soul begins at first to turn to God, it has some taste or smattering of these spiritual dainties, and it is like that taste, which new-borne babes have of the milk that they suck from the breasts.   But when the Christian follows on to know the Lord, whose going forth is prepared as the morning, and when he does resolvedly, and strongly carry on the work of sanctification in his heart and life, then he comes to a more mature and ripened judgment of these things.   He was a child before, but now he is grown up to a strong man in Christ. The great Apostle tells us, when he was a child, “he thought as a child, he understood as a child,” but when he became a man, “he put away childish things,” and his apprehensions of truth were but low and weak.   This is so because his capacity was not great, but now he looks upon the brighter face of truth with greater com­placency then he did before.   Our Lord Jesus tells us in John 7: 17, “If any man will do his will, he shall know him of the doctrine whether it be of God.”   The best way to know assuredly and impregnably the truth of those things that God speaks in His word, is to observe and obey those things that God enjoins.   The Holy Ghost, which is the best witness of Jesus Christ and His Doctrine, is given to them that obey Him, Acts 5: 32, and these men do sweetly rest in an assurance of the truth.   Others who are of impure spirits quarrel and snarl against it.   He that would grow in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, let him grow in grace, as the Apostle exhorts in 2 Pet. 3: 18. One that is newly entered into the School of Christ finds it a hard and diffi­cult task to subdue every corruption: the sins of edu­cation, custom, and natural tendency are not easily matte­red.   So, it comes to pass that upon any lapse, or fall into any particular sin, the soul begins to be haunted with scruples, doubts, and fears, and upon such occasions falls to question around the truth of grace and the certainty of the Gospel.   But if one keeps in a constant and close walking with God, there are no such clouds arising rather a constant serenity upon the face of the soul.   The truth is all those secret suspicions and jealousies concerning the certainty of the ways of Christ, or of the work of His grace upon our hearts, proceeds from some guilt contracted by acts of violence against the light and principles of the new Creature.   If you would be perfect in, and assured of the truths of the Gospel, take the Apostle’s counsel, “Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof.”
–William Ames

Unholy Division by Distinctions

This post has 218 words. It will take approximately 1 minute, 5 secondes for reading it.

There is a.. sort of profound disputers in the world, who apprehending they reach to be beyond the reason and writings of other men, have out of the depth of their judgments, devised a way judiciously to deceive their own souls; and out of their pick-lock subtlety, count it easy to make way for themselves, and maintain their way in any question. And this they do by making a maze of divisions, and cut things in so many shreds, by multitude of distinctions, that at length they lose their cause, the truth, and themselves in the issue, and must of necessity bewilder the reader, unless he be of searching judgment: This kind of distinguishing is like snuffing of the candle that is too near, putting out the light wholly, while they intend to make the light burn more clearly: so do these men darken the truth, professing to discover more of it. When to avoid the dint of argument concerning significant ceremonies and worship, his distinctions are so many and intricate, that one member destroys another, and the true nature of worship also.
Whether the Pharisees in their ceremonies did not pretend more holiness than other men? However, these men, in who effect say to all other men, stand back, I am more holy than thou.
—–William Ames

All Men's Duty Toward One Another

This post has 78 words. It will take approximately 23 secondes for reading it.

True morality, or the Christian ethics, is the love of God and man, stirred up by the Spirit of Christ, through faith, and exercised in works of piety, justice, charity, and temperance…. Take heed that you lose not that common love which you own to mankind.
—Richard Baxter

To profit or benefit others, is a duty belonging to  all men… Love towards God cannot consist without this charity towards our neighbour… neither can any true religion.
—William Ames

Schism and Division

This post has 1416 words. It will take approximately 7 minutes, 4 secondes for reading it.

There are plenty of things I believe are worth getting up and fighting for over, in the Christian religion. I am a great proponent for purity in worship and returning back to the churches glory days, where Christ reigned in his Church in the manner of which he is to be worshipped. For that reason, even if Providence did not prevent me attending Church, because of chronic illness, there would be very many churches that I could not in good conscience attend, believing I would be partaking of sin to do so just by being there.

However, in America, the Presbyterian church is much more visible than in England, we have 3 Reformed Presbyterian churches of the Scots covenanting tradition,  for the whole of England. But in America, Presbyterianism means different things, many of the Presbyterian churches are quite liberal, and I would call them deformed rather than reformed. If I was the other side of the pond, then in no way could I join myself to any of the Presbyterian churches that fit that description.

BUT, I also think one can have an air of being too exclusive. To make the terms of membership to a church something that many people would have a hard job to square with either conscience or logic as part of the terms of communion and if you do not subscribe to those things, then I think that is unnecessary dividing the house of God, and going further than Scripture warrants. And in doing so, just as those who have wandered away from the Reformed history they were bred from by dethroning God in the practice of worship, then there is the other extreme, of extra creedal and extra Biblical requirements, which is no less schismatic than the first group. The schism in the first group, many Reformed Presybterians who hold to Reformation attainments, , couldn’t join themselves to those churches who have wandered away from them, because it would go against their beliefs and in many cases conscience. It is the sin of those churches in dethroning Christ that causes the need to separate from them, as far as not being able to join with them in worship.

The same with the other end of the extreme. Though I believe they are probably fewer in numbers. Those  that have extra creedal and extra Biblical requirements for joining to their church, which is of course legalism, by adding requirements that God has not imposed, and binding people’s consciences to those requirements is a form of tyranny, because the conscience should be answerable only to the Lord, and not to the doctrines of men. Yet there are some, who hold to these extra creedal requirements for terms of communion. They come from within the Covenanter groups, yet I am a covenanter myself, but not one that will go further than Scripture does, whether its in the liberal way of the first group of “anything goes,” or the exclusivity and extra Biblical strictness of the second group, the steelite covenanters, who clearly go further than Scripture requires to be able to join yourself to their church. But the result of either group, the liberals or the extra creedal churches is schism and unnecessary division. And in the second group, an unhealthy exclusivism, that in no way would the Lord warrant or approve of.

Christ’s priestly prayer of John 17 speaks to me in a way that many other Scriptures don’t. It will move me to tears for the desire of his and what he wants to see for his church of brotherly unity. It’s also interesting, that John Knox, that was the very passage of Scripture on which he “first cast anchor,” and was responsible for his conversion. On his death-bed, he asked his wife to read him again the passage of where he had “first cast anchor,” and the whole priestly prayer of Christ was very dear to him, and I feel a great attachment to that passage myself.

There is a time for separation for the good of Christ and his church, but we should not unnecessarily rent his body apart, on trifles or without Biblical warrant to support the stance we are taking on whatever the matter may be.

I am reading a book by puritan William Ames, called “A Fresh suit against Human ceremonies in God’s worship” Volume one, as the subject of purity in worship, and Christ reigning in his church by what is allowed and what is not allowed in the Worship of God is a subject very dear to me. But despite that, I still don’t believe that there should ever be things from outside of Scripture that causes separation, division, or being set apart and exclusive. What God has joined together, let no man put asunder. This is a quote from the William Ames book mentioned above.

There is a.. sort of profound disputers in the world, who apprehending they reach to be beyond the reason and writings of other men, have out of the depth of their judgments, devised a way judiciously to deceive their own souls; and out of their pick-lock subtlety, count it easy to make way for themselves, and maintain their way in any question. And this they do by making a maze of divisions, and cut things in so many shreds, by multitude of distinctions, that at length they lose their cause, the truth, and themselves in the issue, and must of necessity bewilder the reader, unless he be of searching judgment: This kind of distinguishing is like snuffing of the candle that is too near, putting out the light wholly, while they intend to make the light burn more clearly: so do these men darken the truth, professing to discover more of it. When to avoid the dint of argument concerning significant ceremonies and worship, his distinctions are so many and intricate, that one member destroys another, and the true nature of worship also.

Whether the Pharisees in their ceremonies did not pretend more holiness than other men? However, these men, in who effect say to all other men, stand back, I am more holy than thou. [William Ames]

The Gospel and its message was not meant to be shut up and an exclusive club that one may not be good enough to partake of in the worship of God. That kind of exclusivity is both unhealthy and unbiblical. And it perhaps is self serving since in separation from the vast majority of other Christians, they have no obligations with or real sense of brother hood. If that were not true, you could join in their worship service any Lord’s Day of your choosing, in an official public worship setting at least. Yet the terms of communion would make it almost impossible for anyone logical or right minded to be able to subscribe to the terms, so you would not be able to.

The steelites have serious error I believe, and there is a bent of legalism amongst them. That’s not to say they still don’t have a lot of good things about their beliefs and practices, but I still believe the later to be true, and rather than just this post which gives thoughts without Biblical reasons of why, I shall at some later point in time, with the Lord’s assistance in both, discernment, and giving me the time to, address in more detail, with the reasons from Scriptures and creeds, of why it is wrong.

I think it is a very slippery slope actually, when one considers the fiascos at the Edmonton Church who were also like-minded, and they became more and more exclusive and continued to add thing after thing that had no Biblical warrant, to continue being part of their church. The result was, that the church at Edmonton imploded on itself.

However, just because they have some error, I believe at least, and I doubt I am alone in this belief, doesn’t mean one should throw the baby out with the bath water and ignore the good and focus on the bad, or erroneous, or to start bandying words such as cults about them as is commonly done. But I do think they are on a slippery slope. I am a covenanter, through and through. I am not a steelite Covenanter however.

A Fresh Suit Against Human Ceremonies in God's Worship Vol 1 by William Ames

A Fresh Suit Against Human Ceremonies in God's Worship Vol 1 by William Ames