Posted in Audio Resources, Free Church of Scotland on February 26, 2025| Leave a Comment »
I’ve recently read-recorded three sermons from Alexander Moody Stuart’s great devotional classic, The Three Marys. Below is a very helpful 2-part introduction to Moody-Stuart published in The Bulwark.
Part 1 begins on p. 7 (pdf), p. 12 (print):
Part 2 begins on p. 2 (pdf), p. 3 (print):
Posted in Audio Resources, Reformed Parish Mission (RPM) Posts on February 26, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Here is the latest quarterly update. If you missed the last one from August, you can read it here. Also, as a part of my home mission labors under my presbytery, I am free to take pulpit supply opportunities one Lord’s day per month on average. This enables me to supplement our support income with honoraria and, as opportunity allows, raise awareness of Reformed Parish Mission. If you have or know of any opportunities, feel free to drop me a note at michael@reformedparish.com. (Bio & online sermons here.)
Posted in Audio Resources, Conscience & Casuistry, Experimental Religion & the Cure of Souls, Pastoral Theology, Puritans & Puritanism, Richard Baxter on February 19, 2025| Leave a Comment »
I just completed reading-recording the most helpful, practical, and thorough treatment on the subject of the Christian and his emotions I have ever read. Baxter’s “On the Government of the Passions” (or emotions) is found in Volume 3 of his Practical Works, a part of his massive Christian Directory. If you’ve never read the Puritans before, this would surely be a good place to start. The English is of course dated, but I’d say its much more accessible than you might think. I would personally encourage anyone who has never read this to do so—and you’ll probably feel like me, that this one should be read maybe once per year. And now I’ve recorded if for you, so now you have no excuse! Begin to heal your disordered feelings and cultivate a godly, stable, and enriching emotional life today as you are stuck in traffic or washing dishes. Your next podcast episode will still be there later. Your venerable fathers await!
And on the subject, let me commend a (more) modern theologian, B. B. Warfield, and his absolutely one-of-a-kind article, “On the Emotional Life of our Lord.” As Baxter is a doctor here treating the illness, Warfield presents the Savior who walked in our footsteps with the full range of our emotions, yet without sin. And the complete WPE Audio library can be accessed by the tab up top.
The following is a sample, where Baxter is treating sinful depression and despair. The PDF is below (print p. 256; pdf p. 281)
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Direction XIV. ‘Abhor all that tendeth to take down the power and government of reason (that is, all feebleness and cowardioe of mind, and a melancholy, a peevish, passionate disposition): and labour to keep up the authority of reason, and to keep all your passions subject to your wills; which must be done by Christian faith and fortitude.’ If you come once to that childish or distracted pass, as to grieve and say, ‘I cannot help it: I know it is sinful and immoderate, but I cannot choose,’ if you say true, you are out of the reach of counsel, advice, or comfort. You are not to be preached to, nor talked to, nor to be written for: we do not write directions to teach men how to touch the stars or explain the asperities or inequalities of the moon, or the opacous [opaque, or hidden] parts of Saturn, or to govern the orbs, or rule the chariot of the sun. If it be become a natural impossibility to you, doctrine can give you no remedy: but if the impossibility be but moral in the weakness of reason, and want of consideration, it may be doctrine, consideration, and resolution be overcome. You can do more if you will than you think you can. How come you to lose the command of your passions? Did not God make you a rational creature that hath an understanding and will to rule all passions? How come you to have lost the ruling power of reason and will? You would take it for a disparagement to be told that you have lost the use of your reason: And is it not a principal use of it to rule the passions, and all other inferior subject powers? You say you cannot choose but grieve! But if one could give you that creature which you want or desire, then you could choose: You could rejoice, if one could restore you that child, that friend, that estate which you have lost. But God, and Christ, and Heaven it seems, are not enough to cure you: if you must have but them you cannot choose but grieve! And what hearts have you then that are thus affected? Should not those hearts be rather grieved for? God will sometime make you see, that you had more power than you used.
Posted in Church of Scotland, Ordinary Means Ministry, Redemption Applied, Sacraments, Union with Christ on February 17, 2025| Leave a Comment »
That same Holy Spirit that is in Him, is in every one of us in some measure: and in respect one Spirit is in Him and in us, therefore we are accounted all to be members of one spiritual and mystical body. And in the same verse the Apostle says, “We are all made to drink into one and the self-same Spirit” that is we are made to drink of the blood of Christ. And this blood is no other thing than the quickening virtue and power that flow from Christ, and from the merits of His death: we are made all to drink of that blood, when we partake of the lively power and virtue that flow out of that blood. So there is not a bond that can couple my soul with the flesh of Christ, but only a spiritual bond and a spiritual union. And therefore it is that the Apostle (1 Cor. vi. 17 ) says, “He that is joined unto the Lord is one Spirit.” And John says (ch. iii. 6), “That which is born of the Spirit, is spirit.” So it is only by the participation of the Holy Spirit that we are conjoined with the flesh and blood of Christ Jesus. That carnal bond, whether it be the bond of blood running through one race, or the carnal touching of flesh with flesh, that carnal bond was never esteemed by Christ. In the time that He was conversant here upon earth, He respected it nothing for as He witnessed himself by His own words, He never had it in any kind of reverence or estimation in comparison with the spiritual bond. But as for the spiritual tie whereby we are coupled with Him, He ever esteemed it in the time that He was conversant on earth, and in his Book, He has left the praise and commendation of the same.
(more…)Posted in Church of Scotland, Covenanters, Establishments, Political Dissent, Political Theory & Theology, Secularization on February 17, 2025| Leave a Comment »
The following is a six-part series of articles by my father-in-law, Brian Myers, who is a long-standing elder in our Des Moines, Iowa congregation of the Presbyterian Reformed Church on the subject of the Scottish Covenanters, the Reformed Presbyterians, and political dissent. It really is an extremely helpful overview of the subject from the perspective of confessional Presbyterians today who accept the basic legitimacy of the Revolution Church of 1690, who oppose separation and schism, and who allow a legitimate place for voting in the modern democratic political order without the compromise of original Presbyterian principles. Well worth your time.
1. Political Dissent Part One: A Practice Searches For A Doctrine
2. Political Dissent Part Two: The Doctrine Articulated
3. Political Dissent Part Three: A Shift To A New Cause
4. Political Dissent Part Four: Change And Division
5. Political Dissent Part Five: The U.S. Constitution
Posted in Audio Resources, Catholicity, Church of Scotland, Church Order & Discipline, Separatism & Schism, Terms of Communion, The Secession Church on February 11, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Just recorded three of John Brown’s Letters on the Constitution, Government, and Discipline of the Christian Church: No. 4, “Of the Qualifications of Church Members,” No. 18, “Of Scandals and Discipline,” and No. 19, “Of Church Fellowship and Separation.” Very solid and worth your time. Visit the entire WPE Audio library at the tab up top.
Below I’ve included a few striking passages, followed by the entire PDF. A few observations. First, I note that his letters definitely reflect his Secession outlook vis-a-vis certain corruptions of the Church of Scotland at the time. Second, baptized children may revoke their church standing by falling into heathenish “principles or practices.” Next, it would seem that Brown agrees with me (or better, I with him) that a working knowledge of the Shorter Catechism is more or less the cognitive requisite for an intelligent profession of faith. And while he counts as useful and warranted to utilize confessions and catechisms as a means to ascertaining an intelligent profession of faith, he has great misgivings against overloading the minds and consciences of applicants by the misuse of obliging them to public covenanting. He has said what I have long thought: to require taking vows to historically involved and obscure documents easily calls for implicit faith.
(more…)Posted in Reformed Parish Mission (RPM) Posts on February 6, 2025| Leave a Comment »
We’re starting back up the monthly bilingual outreach meeting we had held in Rhode Island. This time, our good church friends and helpers, Peter & Daya Rivera, are opening their home in Woodbine, and the Ives and Dollaways will be going as a core group. We have some initial commitments from some Hispanic contacts in the parish. Please pray that the Lord would bless it for conversions. And feel free to watch along by livestream! Information in the post below:
Posted in Audio Resources, Establishments, Parish in American Context, Parish Theory & Practice, Religious Marketplace, Thomas Chalmers on February 5, 2025| Leave a Comment »
“If you build it, they will come.” Or . . . will they? Smith said yes; Chalmers said absolutely not. The following is an academic article I wrote for the Historical Journal of the Scottish Reformation Society that explains how Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847) argued for religious church establishments as mission agencies against Adam Smith’s regrettable misapplication of laissez faire to matters of religion.
I also gave a somewhat abbreviated lecture last year at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. You can listen to that here:
Someday I hope to be free to return to further academic research on Chalmers’ territorial or ‘parish’ missiology, if not to get back into a Ph.D. program. All God willing!
Posted in Audio Resources, Catholicity, Church of Scotland, Separatism & Schism, Thomas Boston on February 4, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Thomas Boston preached this sermon in 1708, which I’ve just recorded here. He addressed very tangible forms of division in his day, but its relevance is timeless. Visit the entire WPE Audio library at the tab up above.
Whole doctrine catholicity | “Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners” (Song 6:10)?
Posted in Church of Scotland, Establishments, Parish Theory & Practice, Thomas Chalmers on February 4, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Religious establishments are built upon the divine economy, both of nature and of grace: “They are the overflowings of the Nile which have given rise to the irrigations of an artificial husbandry in Egypt, for the distribution of its waters. And there is positively nothing in the doctrine of a sanctifying or fertilizing grace from heaven above, which should discharge us—but the contrary—from what may be termed the irrigations of a spiritual husbandry in the world beneath. It is not enough that there be a descent; there must be a distribution also, or ducts of conveyance, which, by places of worship and through parishes, might carry the blessings of this divine nourishment to all the houses and families of a land” (Thomas Chalmers, Works 17:190-91).
West Port Experiment 