Archive for the ‘Vox Patrum’ Category
Vox patrum: Binning, Dickson & Goodwin
Posted in Vox Patrum on September 29, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Vox patrum: Boston, Baxter, Shepard
Posted in New England Puritanism, Puritans & Puritanism, Vox Patrum on March 18, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Brakel: earnestly waiting on the means of grace
Posted in Christian Life & Experience, Experimental Religion & the Cure of Souls, Ordinary Means Ministry, Vox Patrum on March 18, 2025| Leave a Comment »
You who are unconverted, if you do not give heed, know that He will not always speak to you. He will remove either His Word, His Spirit, or you, and then it will be too late. “To-day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your heart” (Ps 95:7-8). You who are converted, know also that if you are not diligent in listening to Him, in continually beseeching Him, in expecting His answer, nor in following His counsel, He will remain silent, hide Himself more and more, and leave you in darkness. The more attentively and persistently you hear His instruction, however, the more He will reveal His secrets to you, and grant deeper insight into that which you may know already. His voice of instruction will be more enduring and efficacious within you. Therefore, “Hear attentively the noise of His voice, and the sound that goeth out of His mouth” (Job 37:2). The Lord Jesus says, “Hearken diligently unto Me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness” (Isa 55:2); “Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at My gates, waiting at the posts of My doors. For whoso findeth Me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the Lord” (Prov 8:34-35). All of you who are conscious of your blindness and are desirous for spiritual light, come to this Prophet who can and will instruct you, in order that by His instruction you may make progress.
Shields: Study the unity of the Church!
Posted in Catholicity, Communion of the Saints, Connectionalism & Conciliarism, Covenanters, The Visible Church, Vox Patrum on December 23, 2024| Leave a Comment »
“Therefore all the true Members [of the Church] should study Unity; This Truth of the Oneness of the Catholick Visible Church, being the Ground of all the Union and Communion in the Ordinances thereof. Cant. 6.9. My Dove, my Undefiled is but One, She is the only One of Her Mother. If the Church be One, Divisions and divided Communions in her must either inferr that this one Church is many, made up of Heterogeneous parts, or that the Church divided from is not apart of that one Church, and hath broken off from that which compacts the Body together.”
Alexander Shields (1661-1700)
* * * *
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)?
Vox Patrum: Shaw, Owen, Fraser of Alness
Posted in Vox Patrum on December 8, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Vox Patrum: Dickson, Cotton, Burroughs
Posted in Experimental Religion & the Cure of Souls, Practice of Piety, Redemption Accomplished, Redemption Applied, Vox Patrum on November 30, 2024| Leave a Comment »
“The Jews,” by George Herbert (1593–1633)
Posted in Eschatology, Israel; Calling of & Mission to the Jews, Vox Patrum on November 16, 2024| Leave a Comment »
“For if thou wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and wert graffed contrary to nature into a good olive tree: how much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be graffed into their own olive tree” (Romans 11:24). This poem of Herbert beautifully and tenderly expresses the right attitude of the believing Gentiles toward the disinherited Jews, with Pauline longings for their final restoration by repentance and faith in their own, rejected Messiah.
1. scion: a young shoot or twig of a plant, especially one cut for grafting or rooting. 2. purloin: to steal. 3. sluice: a sliding gate or other device for controlling the flow of water, especially one in a lock gate.
Manton: “a new right of empire and sovereignty over the creature”
Posted in Christ Jesus, Mediator, Mediatorial Kingship, The Kingdom of God, Vox Patrum on November 7, 2024| Leave a Comment »
I’ve been meditating on these most mysterious and weighty words of our Lord in John 17:3, “As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.” Here is indication of the Father’s donation authority and right of Christ, as God-man, to dispense salvation to the elect out of the world over which He has been given all authority. Found this passage from Manton especially illuminating in light of it:
“There is no entrance into this kingdom but by coming into the kingdom of Christ. Besides the kingdom which belongeth to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, one true and only God, there is the kingdom of Christ considered as mediator; a new right of empire and sovereignty over the creature, not destructive of the former,but accumulative, as superadded to it, that the government of God might be the more comfortable and beneficial to us in our lapsed estate.” Read the rest below.
In the nick of time
Posted in Alexander Henderson, Vox Patrum on April 9, 2023| 1 Comment »
West Port Experiment 