The Divine Right of Church Government: Wherein it is proved that the Presbyterian government, by preaching and ruling elders, in sessional, Presbyterial and synodical assemblies, may lay the only lawful claim to a divine right, according to the Holy Scriptures
Religion
The Divine Right of Church Government: Wherein it is proved that the Presbyterian government, by preaching and ruling elders, in sessional, Presbyterial and synodical assemblies, may lay the only lawful claim to a divine right, according to the Holy Scriptures
Presbyterian Church -- Government
bound to answer to the call of God, and to enter into his holy temple.
I say that church privileges are yours, the doors of God's house stand
open for you, Christ stands at the door and waits for you, he invites
you to come in and to sit down at his table, and you shall be most
freely and heartily welcome to your Lord, and to his people.
_Quest_. What are those qualifications, which the rulers of a church,
for their own satisfaction, should look for, and find in such persons,
as they admit into full communion with the Church of Christ?
_Ans_. It is certain that all that profess the name of Christ and his
ways, ought not, and may not be admitted into the Lord's holy temple,
because many, if not the most of them, are very ignorant of Christ and
his ways, and notoriously scandalous in their lives, as sad and woful
experience shows. If church rulers should admit known hypocrites, they
betray their trust, and defile Christ's holy temple, by taking in such
persons as they know, or ought to know, he would not have there: and
that they ought to try and prove persons, that they may know their
fitness, before they admit them in, is clear in Acts ix. 26, 27, and
because Christ hath committed the keys of his house to take in and
exclude according to his will and appointment.
As to satisfying qualifications in persons desiring admission into the
church, when they appear to be real sound-hearted believers, according
to the judgment of charity, by the rules of the word, the church ought
to receive them in the Lord.
I. If they can satisfy the church, by giving Scripture evidence of their
regeneration, conversion, repentance, and faith in Christ; of their
knowledge of Christ, his laws and ordinances; of their lost and
perishing state by reason of sin, and of their sincere desires and
resolutions to become the Lord's, and to walk with him unto all
well-pleasing in all his ways.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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