“And I will establish my covenant between Me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.”
Gen. 17:7
“At that time the Lord said unto Joshua, Make thee sharp knives, and circumcise again the children of Israel the second time. And Joshua made him sharp knives, and circumcised the children of Israel at the hill of the foreskins… For the children of Israel walked forty years in the wilderness, till all the people that were men of war, which came out of Egypt, were consumed, because they obeyed not the voice of the Lord: unto whom the Lord sware that he would not shew them the land… And their children, whom He raised up in their stead, them Joshua circumcised.”
Josh. 5:2-7
“The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.”
Eze. 18:20
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Order of Contents
Intro
Start Here – MacPherson
Pro
. Articles 14+
. Quotes 10+
. Latin 1
Westminster Assembly
Adherents Generally 1
. Discipline of Adherents 1
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Introduction
An adherent is someone who is baptized but does not come to the Lord’s Table. This category includes (but is not limited to) persons who:
Were baptized as a child, have grown, married, and have had children, but do not profess personal faith, and they desire their children to be raised in the church.
Persons who have been baptized as children, but who struggle with assurance of faith and are hence reluctant to come to the Lord’s Table.
New converts to Christianity who are not yet ready to partake of the Lord’s Supper.
Professing believers who are under the discipline of the church and have been barred from the Table.
Should their children be baptized?
The answer depends largely on Covenant Theology. If such baptized church members who do not communicate at the Lord’s Table are externally in the Covenant, then their children are too, and should be baptized. If such church members are not externally in the Covenant, then neither are their children, and their children should not be baptized.
The older view of the Reformation and puritan era was largely: Yes, baptized church members who do not partake at the Lord’s Supper are still externally in Covenant with God, and hence their children should be baptized, baptism being the sign and seal of being externally in Covenant with God.
Start with MacPherson’s 8 pages below, which is a necessary introduction to the question. Then see the writings of the most prominent persons in church history who have answered this question: Samuel Rutherford ** and Thomas Boston.
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Start Here
MacPherson, John – ‘The Idea of the Church & Membership in it’ in Lecture 2 of The Doctrine of the Church in Scottish Theology (1903), pp. 82-90
MacPherson, of the Free Church of Scotland gives the best introduction to the topic, giving the historical background and theological issues relating to the difference of opinion between Rutherford and Boston.
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Pro Articles
** – Denotes a Westminster divine
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1500’s
Calvin, John – Letter 549: to John Knox, Answers to Different Ecclesiastical Questions (1559) 4 paragraphs in Letters of John Calvin, vol. 4, pp. 74-6
Beza, Theodore – 2nd Book of Questions & Answers
Reformed Churches of France – ed. John Quick, Synodicon in Gallia Reformata (London, 1692), vol. 1
The Discipline of the Reformed Churches of France (1559), ch. 11, ‘Of Baptism’, Canon XI, p. xlvi
1st Synod at Paris (1559), ch. 3, section 17, p. 9
Synod of Vitre (1583), section 11, p. 145
3rd Synod of Rochel (1637), section 35, p. 293
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1600’s
Perkins, William – III Question, ‘Touching Baptism. Whether children of excommunicate persons, which are cast out, and not holden as members of the Church, have right to Baptism?’ & ‘Whether children born in fornication, have right to baptism?’, pp. 324-330 of The Whole Treatise of the Cases of Conscience… (d. 1602; 1606)
Abbott, Robert – Section 9, ‘A Question by the Way, about Baptizing Bastards of Impenitent Christians’ in A Trial of our Church-Forsakers. Or A Meditation Tending to still the passions of unquiet Brownists, upon Heb.10:25 1639
Abbott (1588?-1662?) was a reformed Anglican.
Rutherford, Samuel **
A Peaceable & Temperate Plea for Paul’s Presbytery in Scotland… (London, 1642)
ch. 12, ‘On the Baptism of the Children of Adherents’ 29 pp.
Rutherford (1600-1661) was a Westminster divine, and minister of the Church of Scotland. To see how Rutherford interprets 1 Cor. 7:14, and hence Westminster Confession 28.4, see the 9th Argument, 4th Objection.
Rutherford’s main proposition, or conclusion, that he argues for with 9 arguments is:
“All the infants born within the visible Church, whatever be the wickedness of their nearest parents, are to be received within the Church by baptism.”
p. 273, queries 8-10 of ch. 18
On the Baptism of the Children of Adherents, Part 2 (1644) 16 pp. being the 2nd Part, Chapter 4, Section 6 of The Due Right of Presbyteries, pp. 256-66, with a 3 page extended outline
Rutherford further argues against the Independent John Cotton.
A Survey of the Survey of that Sum of Church Discipline (1658)
Book 1, Ch. 11, ‘Other Arguments of Mr Hooker for the Constitution of a Church of only visible Saints’
By ‘visible saints’, the congregationalist, Thomas Hooker, meant (1) persons of real, spiritual, internal holiness, which (2) could be visibly recognized by others. With regards to the essence of the visible Church, admission thereto and continuance therein, Rutherford denies (1), and denies that (2) is an infallible indication of (1).
Hooker taught that a requirement for church-membership is being a ‘visible saint’
Book 4, Ch. 8, ‘Whether Covenant-Right to Baptism be Derived from the Nearest Parents only, or from the Remoter, the Grandfathers?’
Apollonius, Willem – ch. 4, ‘Whether those Infants whose Next Parents do not by a Solemn Church-Covenant Join Themselves to Some Particular Church are Not to be Baptized in the Church, but are to be Accounted as Incapable of Baptism & to have No Right to Church-Privileges’ in A Consideration of Certain Controversies at this time Agitated in the Kingdom of England: Concerning the Government of the Church of God (1645)
Blake, Thomas – The Covenant of God… Buy (1652)
ch. 59, ‘A Defence of the Former Doctrine Respective to the Latitude of Infant-Baptism’
Blake’s work was intended to be a defense of the majority view and practice of his day (1652) on this point and other points related to God’s Covenant of Grace. From the original title:
Vindiciae Foederis, or a Treatise of the Covenant of God… in the several kinds and degrees of it, in which… the just latitude and extent [of it is] clearly held forth and fully vindicated… infant baptism in that latitude as now in use in reformed churches maintained.
Fuller, Thomas – Ch. 19, ‘Whether the Children of Profane Parents, Bastards, Exposed Children & the Captive Infants of Pagans are to be Baptized’ in The Infants’ Advocate of Circumcision on Jewish [Children] & Baptism on Christian Children (London, 1653), pp. 160-71
Leigh, Edward – A System or Body of Divinity… (London, 1654), bk. 8, ch. 8, ‘Of Baptism’
Question, ‘What if the Immediate Parents be Believers Only in Show?’, p. 673
Baxter, Richard – A Christian Directory: a Sum of Practical Theology and Cases of Conscience (1673), pt. 3, Christian Ecclesiastics
Baxter’s reasons for answering the second question ‘Yes’ are rather weak, he being a congregationalist.
Baxter answers that the infant has title to baptism only on the parents’ account, being a congregationalist. This, of course, dramatically differs from all of the other Reformation and puritan divines on this webpage.
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1700’s
Mather, Cotton – The Great Works of Christ in America, vol. 2, p. 276-316 Buy (1702) 40 pp.
Mather (1663-1728) gives the historical account of this issue coming to prominence in old congregationalist puritan New England. He sides with baptizing the children of adherents.
The 7 propositions put forth affirmatively in favor of the practice by the Synod of Boston in 1662 are concisely stated on p. 279. The Synod’s arguments from scripture for each proposition then follow for 21 pages. Mather’s commentary then follows on pp. 302-315.
Cotton, John
This John Cotton (1712-1789) in New England was the son of Josiah Cotton (1679/80–1756). Josiah was a missionary to the Indians and a grandson of the more well-known John Cotton (1585–1652).
As these treatises of his are founded on congregational principles, they are not entirely recommended.
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1800’s
Kennedy, John, of Dingwall – ‘On the Paucity of Communicants’ being the last section (section 5) of Ch. 4 of his The Days of our Fathers in Ross-shire Buy (1861), pp. 131-154
Kennedy was a famed conservative of the old Free Church of Scotland. Here he gives an explanation and defense of the practice in the highlands of Scotland from spiritual experience, contra the lowlanders’ practice and view (held by such notable figures as William Cunningham, etc.). Kennedy rightly distinguishes the scriptural differences between Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
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Pro Quotes
1500’s
Girolamo Zanchi 1516-1590
Commentary on Ephesians, p. 226. As quoted by Thomas Boston, Works, vol. 6, ‘Miscellaneous Questions’, Question 6
pp. 139-140
“The children of those that are indeed in the church, but, because of their unclean way of living, declare that they are not indeed of the church; if they be offered to baptism, they cannot be debarred therefrom, nor ought they. The reason is, because though the parents be wicked, yet their impiety ought not to prejudge their children which are born within the church. But if you say, only the children of the faithful are to be baptized, because those infants only are judged to be within the covenant, and they only holy; I answer, the impiety of their nearest parents is not to be considered here, but the piety of the church in which they are born;—as also their ancestors who have lived godly and holily.”
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p. 310
“The children of unwilling Jews and Turks cannot be baptized, but if the parents consent, they can be admitted to baptism… [Their children] can be baptized, upheld, and instructed in the Church, if the parents consent, because it does no harm to them. Indeed, such parents, by consenting in this way, give some sign of their piety, even if they do not profess it publicly. Then, therefore, the Church is established as a mother of such children, and therefore can baptize them.”
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1600’s
William Bucanus 1606
Institutions of Christian Religion, p. 711, 713-4
“Who are to be Baptized?
All men living, who are received or esteemed to be received into the Covenant of God, without difference of sex or nation…
Or else the infants of the faithful and those which are begotten of baptized parents (but not of infidels, which are not in the Church and not the children of the baptized) because their seed is contained in the Covenant, but not these others. Acts 2:39, “To you is the promise made and to your children.”…
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Are the children of those which are in the Church, but by the uncleanness of their life declare themselves indeed not to be of the Church, to be baptized?
They are, because 1. the iniquity of the parents ought not to defraud the children born in the Church: Eze. 18:4,20, “The Son shall not bear the iniquity of the fathers.”
2. Neither is the impiety of the next parents to be considered so much as the piety of the Church in which they are born and which is, as it were, their mother: as likewise their ancestors who lived godlily. Unto which appartains that which Paul says, Rom. 11:16, “If the root be holy,” that is, the first parents, “then the branches also,” that is, the posterity. Therefore circumcision was not denied to the children of the wicked Jews.
Hence it is that even they which are born in adultery, although the parents repent not, yet being offered to baptism by others than their parents, are not to be rejected of the Church, as Augustine teaches, where he concludes: “If any be born of excommunicated persons, yet such a one cannot be partaker of the excommunication, seeing he is not of the crime.”
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Anthony Walaeus
Synopsis of a Purer Theology (Brill, 2020), vol. 3, Disputation 44, ‘On the Sacrament of Baptism’, section 50, p. 167
“However, we do not therefore exclude form the fellowship of this sacrament those children who were born of Christian stock and baptized parents–even though their own parents through their wicked lives or impure faith cause the efficacy of the covenant sealed in their own baptism to be ineffective for themselves–if those same parents or the relatives who have authority over them present them for baptism according to the customary order in our churches.
For in the new covenant the son does not bear the iniquity of the father, and of such children God remains God just the same, as He Himself bears witness in Ezekiel 16 and 23. There He calls the children of the godless Israelites his own sons, whom they had begotten for God, although they were sacrificing them to Molech. And it is from these children that God also normally gathers his church through the ordinary preaching of the Word. And for this reason he also commanded the children of such Israelites (of whom many had died in their ungodliness) to be circumcised, no less than those of the godly ones (Joshua 5:4 and 6)–which necessary deed also the Israelite and the early Christian church always have considered beyond debate.”
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Oliver Bowles 1577-1644 **
De pastore evangelico tractatus, Book 3, Ch. 3, as quoted by Thomas Boston, Works, vol. 6, ‘Miscellaneous Questions’, Question 6, p. 140
“All infants who, in the judgment of charity, are within the covenant, are to be baptized. And baptism is to be administered exactly according to this judgment of charity. And that judgment concludes all to be within the covenant, whose parents were sometime sealed with the seal of the covenant.”
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Thomas Hooker
Survey of the Sum of Church-Discipline (London, 1648), Preface, no page number. Hooker was a leading New England congregationalist.
“That infants of visible Churches, born of wicked parents, being members of the Church, ought to be baptized. In these and several other particulars, we fully accord with Mr. Rutherford…”
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Daniel, Cawdrey
“6. [The Independents hold] ‘That none but confederates by the explicit Church-Covenant have right to Ordinances’: which is to keep out many precious souls from communion with their fellow-members, and their children from baptism, and to make them no better than infidels.”
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Fullwood, Francis
A Discourse of the Visible Church… (1658) as quoted by Thomas Boston, Works, 6:130
“The Word of God, Gen. 17:23, acknowledges that one may have a right to the first seal of the covenant, and that coram Deo, that has no saving grace. Ishmael was thirteen years old, verse 25, when he was circumcised, and therefore of age to answer for himself; yet Ishmael had no saving grace, neither was he within the covenant of Isaac–the covenant of absolute and certain salvation, from which he was excluded, verse 19.
Yet Ishmael has a right to the first seal of the covenant coram Deo, as is most most evident from the immediate command of God, that he that was born in Abraham’s house, must needs be circumcised, verse 12, and accordingly Abraham understood it. He proceeds upon the command of God to circumcise Ishmael first of all. Now what is it that giveth one right to any ordinance but the command, or at least more evidently than the command of God Himself? And that right which we have from God’s command, is doubtless a right coram Deo, and in his sight.”
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1700’s
Cotton Mather 1702
The Great Works of Christ in America, vol. 2, p. 309
“Baptism is a seal of the whole covenant of grace; but it is by way of initiation. Hence it belongs to all that are within the covenant or have the first entrance thereinto. And is there no danger of corruption by overstraining the subject of baptism? Certainly, it is a corruption to take from the rule, as well as add to it. Moses found danger in not applying the initiating seal, to such for whom it was appointed. Is there no danger of putting those out of the visible Church, whom our Lord would have kept in?… If we do not keep in the way of a converting, grace-giving covenant, and keep persons under those church dispensations, wherein grace is given, the Church will die of a lingering, though not violent, death. The Lord has not set up churches only that a few old Christians may keep one another warm while they live, and then carry away the Church into the cold grave with them when they die; no, but that they might with all care, and with all the obligations and advantages to that care that may be, nurse up still successively another generation of subjects to our Lord, that may stand up in his kingdom when they are gone.”
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1800’s
John Kennedy of Dingwall 1861
The Days of the Fathers in Ross-shire, ch. 4, pp. 132-33
“They of the south [of Scotland, such as William Cunningham and others] maintain, that both the sacraments, being seals of the same covenant, and imposing the self-same obligations, ought to be administered on the same footing, the same kind and measure of profession and of qualification being required, on the part of applicants for either; that no adult should be admitted to the one, without being admitted also to the other; and that the Christian profession required of a parent, in order to the baptism of his child, cannot be complete, without his being a communicant. The result of these views being carried into practice in the Lowlands, or rather the result of their mode of reducing them to practice, is, that with rare exceptions, all the members of a congregation, above a certain age, go to the table of the Lord, and that any parent, who is a communicant, receives, as a matter of course, baptism for his child.
The Ross-shire fathers [in the highlands of Northern Scotland] held, that though in general, the two sacraments were equally seals of the covenant of grace, they do in some respects differ, even as sealing ordinances; that baptism, being the door of admission into the visible Church, a larger exercise of charity is required in dealing with applicants for that sacrament, than is called for in administering the other, which implies a confirmation of those who were members before; that the lessons of baptism are more elementary than those of the sacrament of the Supper; that the connection of the child, and of both the parents, with an ordinary case of infant baptism, calls for peculiar tenderness on the part of church rulers; and that the rule of Scripture requires baptism to be given, on an uncontradicted profession of faith, while an accredited profession is required to justify the church, in granting admission to the table of the Lord. The result of carrying these views into practice is well known; the number of members in full communion is comparatively small, and parents who have never communicated, receive baptism for their children.”
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Pro Latin Article
Voetius, Gisbert – Questions 12-18 in Ecclesiastical Politics, vol. 1, book 2, tract 3, section 3, ch. 2, pp. 656-70
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Con Articles
1700’s
Boston, Thomas – Who Have Right to Baptism, & are to be Baptized? (†1732) 94 pp. being from his Works, vol. 6, ‘Miscellaneous Questions’, Question 6, p. 125-219.
Boston (1676-1732) was a Church of Scotland minister and gives the fullest argument against the baptism of the children of adherents. Boston gives personal background to this piece in pp. 155-156 of A General Account of my Life.
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1800’s
Hodge, Charles – ‘Whose Children are Entitled to Baptism?’ Buy (1873) 20 pp. being pt. 3, ch. 20, Section 11 in Systematic Theology, vol. 3, pp. 558-79 of the 1981 Eerdmans reprint
Hodge (1797-1878) was a professor of systematic theology at old Princeton and is writing from the later American context. As usual, he has a comprehensive knowledge of the subject, is organized, and is very clear. Hodge gives the next best defense of this later viewpoint after Boston.
Compare also p. 246 of Hodge’s Church Polity, where he says things that seem to be more consistent with the older view.
Peck, Thomas – ‘Whose Children Have a Right to Baptism?’ (1855) 10 pp. in Writings of Thomas Peck Buy (rep. Banner of Truth, 1999), vol. 1, pp. 184-94
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1900’s
Murray, John – ‘Whose Children are to be Baptized?’ (1980) 6 pp. being ch. 6 of Christian Baptism Buy pp. 77-82 (Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing)
John Murray (1898–1975), the Scottish-American theologian of early Westminster Seminary deals with the question briefly. Unfortunately there is a lack of interaction with the arguments of the other side.
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Con Quotes
On the New England New Divinity
“Insisting that only those who were admitted to the Lord’s Supper could have their children baptized (and requiring transfers from “impure” churches to make a full profession of faith), the New Divinity pastors were often indistinguishable from the Separatists, and frequently cooperated willingly with Isaac Backus [a calvinistic baptist] and the growing Baptist movement. (Allen Guelzo, Edwards on the Will: A Century of American Theological Debate, 1989, pp. 125-126)”
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The Westmister Assembly on the Baptism of the Children of Adherents
Westminster Confession 28.4
“Not only those that do actually profess faith in and obedience unto Christ,[l] but also the infants of one or both believing parents, are to be baptized.[m]
[l] Mark 16:15,16. Acts 8:37,38
[m] Gen. 17:7,9,10 with Gal. 3:9,14 and Col. 2:11,12 and Acts 2:38,39 and Rom. 4:11,12. 1 Cor. 7:14. Matt. 28:19. Mark 10:13-16. Luke 18:15.”
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Interpretation
As the term ‘believing’ in Scripture (and in 1 Cor. 7:14 specifically) generally refers to visible professors who are in the Church (as Rutherford shows on p. 18 ff. of his first article), so the term includes those parents who may not have spiritual, saving faith and may in fact be under the discipline of the Church, not communicating at the Table.
As the Confession simply reduplicates Scriptural terminology, so must a proper interpretation of the Confession allow for the Scriptural practice.
The Westminster Confession does not limit baptism to the children of parents that are members of local congregations, or to children that will become members of local congregations. This is because Christ’s Church is not limited to membership in local congregations, but is constituted of all persons that profess the true religion and their children, whether or not they are members of a local church (church government not being of the essence of the Church, but only for its well-being). Thus Westminster Confession 25.2 says:
“The visible church, which is also catholick or universal under the gospel… consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion,[b] together with their children;[c] and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ…
[b] 1 Cor. 1:2. 1 Cor. 12:12,13. Ps. 2:8. Rev. 7:9. Rom. 15:9-12.
[c] 1 Cor. 7:14. Acts 2:39. Ezek. 16:20,21. Rom. 11:16. Gen. 3:15. Gen. 17:7
Rutherford defended this necessary inference from the teaching of the Confession, that children born of professing believers outside of local congregations have a divine right to baptism, in 1644 while the Assembly debates were taking place, in The Due Right of Presbyteries, Part 2, Ch. 4, Section 5, pp. 185-203. His Scriptural arguments are irrefutable. As such believers are in the Covenant, so are their children, who thus have a right to be baptized.
The nature of the Assembly’s Confession was that of a consensus document: the end result after majority votes were propositions that the differing parties could agree on, though what they disagreed on was not mentioned and usually not excluded where the Confession is silent. Thus, positive affirmations in the Confession may not, and often do not, exclude other positive and true propositions in other respects.
It is an easily provable historical fact that the dominant reformed and presbyterian view and practice since the Reformation, as Rutherford and others argue, was that baptism may be administered to children who are the descendants of godly predecessors beyond their parents, as the covenant in Gen. 17 extends to all natural descendants immediately, and is not limited solely to succession by mediate parents. It is also very clear that a distinctive of the Separatists and Independents during the early 1600’s was that they limited baptism to only the children of believing parents.
The reformed and presbyterians at the Assembly could agree with the Independents that baptism should be administered to the children of believing parents, as WCF 28.4 says. However this positive assertion does not rule out other cases, and must be historically understood as consistent therewith, in that:
– Where the parties at Westminster could agree by majority vote that certain cases were the only cases allowed for something, they were able to explicitly state this in the finished document. One evidence of this is WCF 24.6 which speaks of the only two legitimate grounds for divorce:
“yet nothing but adultery, or such willful desertion… is cause sufficient of dissolving the bond of marriage;”
Yet WCF 28.4, about the infants of believing parents being baptized, only makes a positive assertion for that case, and does not use exclusive language, excluding all other unnamed cases.
– David Dickson (d. 1663), the Scottish divine, and a contemporary of that era, wrote the first positive commentary on the Westminster Confession, entitled Truth’s Victory Over Error (1684). In ch. 28, in his treatment of Baptism, he consistently affirms that infants of one or both believing parents ought be baptized, but he never uses exclusive language that that is the only case in which infants are to be baptized.
– Rutherford argued at the Assembly, in the context of whether the Westminster Directory of Public Worship should include vows of the parents in its baptismal administration (which numerous parties were arguing for), that such vows can nowhere be found to be a Scriptural requirement at baptism (see pp. 81-84 of David Wright, ‘Baptism at the Westminster Assembly’).
Thus, while such vows of the parents didn’t make it into the final form of Westminster’s Directory of Public Worship, yet vows at the baptism of a child may be Biblically lawful and a legitimate practice (in that religious vows generally are warranted in Scripture as worship).
– Rutherford could defend the reformed and presbyterian practice of baptizing the children of professing grandparents, etc., because, as he argues convincingly, especially from the Old Testament practice, children of professing forefathers remain in the covenant, though their immediate parents were cut off therefrom. Thus, still, persons, and only persons in the external aspect of the Covenant of Grace are to be baptized.
– When the Church of Scotland adopted the Westminster Directory of Public Worship and the Confession in 1645 & 1647 respectively, it did nothing to change the practice of the baptism of the children of adherents in the Church of Scotland and Rutherford still defended this practice to its full extent in writing as late as 1658 in A Survey of the Survey of that Sum of Church-Discipline Penned by Mr. Thomas Hooker. Needless to say Rutherford was never disciplined over this point for teaching contrary to the public standards of his Church.
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On Adherents Generally
Article
Rutherford, Samuel – Question 3, ‘Whether or No there be a True Church Communion with Ordinary Hearers of the Word who cannot be Admitted to the Lord’s Supper, & what Union Excommunicated Persons who do Hear the Word have with the Visible Church? & how the Preaching of the Gospel is an Essential Note of the Visible Church?’ in pt. 1, ch. 9, section 9, pp. 268-288 of The Due Right of Presbyteries (1644)
Rutherford makes 6 distinctions and 3 conclusions. He then proposes two further questions and makes 4 distinctions in answering the first.
1st Distinction. There is a difference betwixt ordinary and settled bearers of the Word, and transient and occasional hearers.
2nd Distinction. Public ordinary preaching for the converting of souls is a public Church-worship. Another set way of ordinary public use of converting souls, by preachers not in office, we know not.
3rd Distinction. Some be members of the visible Church properly and strictly, such as are admitted to all the seals of the covenant and holy things of God. Others are less properly, or in an inferior degree members of the visible Church, such as are baptized and are ordinary hearers of the Word, but not admitted to the Lord’s Supper.
4th Distinction. Excommunication being medicinal and for edification, cannot cut off the member close, except we should confound killing and curing.
5th Distinction. There is a note of a ministerial Church, such as is preaching of the Word of God, and a note of the visible Church of believers, and obedience professed to the Word preached is such a note.
6th Distinction. Preaching of the Word may well be: [1.] a note of the Church invisible in fieri, while it is ‘in gathering’, because God purposes to convert where the Word is purely preached. 2. A note of the invisible Church already constituted, insofar as it is obeyed. And 3. A note of the ministerial Church, in respect where God holds out the standard of the preached Word, there is his ordered army.
1st Conclusion: To communicate with the Church ordinarily and of set purpose is an act of external Church communion.
2nd Conclusion: Excommunicated persons, though they be debarred from the Lord’s Supper and delivered to Satan, and [are] to be accompted as heathen and publicans, yet are they not altogether and every way cut off from the visible Church.
3rd Conclusion: We hold the preaching of the Word to be an essential note of the visible Church.
1. Whether discipline be a mark of the visible Church?
1st Distinction. There is a power of discipline, and there is a care thereof. True Churches have a power given them of Christ, and this [John] Robinson proves, and no more; yet the care to exercise the power may be wanting in a true Church.
2nd Distinction. Right discipline is not necessary for the essence of a visible Church [but it is rather for the well-being of the Church]. All our Divines condemn Anabaptists and Pelagians, who plead that righteous men only, and such societies as have right discipline to be true Churches.
3rd Distinction. The power and right to discipline is a propriety essential to the Church, and is not removed from it till God remove the candlestick, and the Church cease to be a visible Church; but the exercise may be wanting and the Church a true visible Church, from which we are not to separate.
4th Distinction: Discipline is a necessary note and unseparable from a visible Church, whole, entire, and not lame and imperfect. But a Church may retain the essence and being of a visible Church, and yet have no discipline in actual use, or little.
The other question is, if conversion of sinners be an ordinary effect of a public and sent ministery? [Yes] Our brethren… deny this.
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On the Discipline of Adherents
Quotes
Samuel Rutherford
The Due Right of Presbyteries… (London, 1644)
pt. 1, ch. 9, section 9, Question 3, ‘Whether or no there be a true Church communion with ordinary hearers of the Word who cannot be admitted to the Lord’s Supper…?’, p. 272
“7. Professed hearing makes the hearer under a tie of being particularly rebuked of his sin, but particular pastoral rebuking, being done by the power of the keys, presupposes the rebuked to be within; for the Church cannot judge those who are without.”
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pt. 2, ch. 4, section 5, pp. 200-1
“Also strangers of approved piety, may be capable of Church rebukes, which are Church censures…
…now Paul and the faithful at Corinth are not estranged from those of approved piety of other congregations: he took care to edify and rebuke them, and so are all the saints to edify, censure and rebuke one another….
The banished servants of God, who suffer for the Truth, or transient members, who because their calling is ordinarily trafficking, and so not consistent with a membership in a settled congregation, are they (I say) without [1 Cor. 5:13], not to be edified by the censures of the Church, but left to the immediate judgement of God? This is contrary to God’s Word, and an insolent interpretation…”
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“Moreover thou hast taken thy sons and thy daughters, whom thou hast borne unto Me, and these hast thou sacrificed unto them to be devoured. Is this of thy whoredoms a small matter, That thou hast slain My children, and delivered them to cause them to pass through the fire for them?”
Eze. 16:20-21
“Yet the Lord hath not given you a heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day… Keep therefore the words of this covenant, and do them, that ye may prosper in all that ye do. Ye stand this day all of you before the Lord your God… with all the men of Israel, your little ones… That thou should enter into covenant with the Lord thy God, and into his oath, which the Lord thy God makes with thee this day: That He may establish thee today for a people unto Himself, and that He may be unto thee a God…”
Deut. 29:4,9-13
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Related Pages
Children of Professing Believers are Baptized Because they are in the Covenant
Historic Reformed Quotes on the Visible Church being Outwardly in the Covenant of Grace