“Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.”
2 Pet. 3:18
“And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.”
Psalm 1:3
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Subsection
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Order of Contents
Articles
Books
On Preciseness
On Spiritual Idolatry
On Charity Towards & Confronting Christians who Err
On the Excessive Use of Tobacco
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Articles
Alexander, Archibald – Practical Directions on How to Grow in Grace and Make Progress in Piety, no date or source info, 30 paragraphs
Fentiman, Travis – The Most Predominate Sin of Reformed Christians, 2014, 6 paragraphs
Hodge, Charles – On Suing another Christian in Civil Court, from his Commentary on 1 Corinthians, ch. 6:1-11
Isbell, Sherman – Recovering Experimental Religion, no date, 13 pages
Miller, Sauel – Conversation, HTML, from his Letters on Clerical Manners and Habits. 1835
Miller, Samuel – Religious Conversation, HTML, from his Letters on Clerical Manners and Habits. 1835
Miller, Samuel – A Recommendatory Letter to: The force of truth, 1841, by Thomas Scott, 11 pages
A helpful introduction to a classic of Christian literature. This is Scott’s autobiographical account of the development of and the force of the truth of the doctrines of grace on his own soul. Scott was an Anglican pastor and first published this account in 1779.
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Books
Alexander, Archibald – Counsels of the Aged to the Young, HTML, 1844, 67 pages, 20 counsels,
Here is godly counsel from the aged at the end of life to all those who are still in the middle of their lives. You won’t find such balanced, scriptural and practical wisdom on the Christian life being printed today.
Alexander, Archibald – Practical Truths, Buy 1857, 414 pages
Alexander is the best at making short simple illustrations come alive with profound spiritual truth that moves the soul.
Alexander, Archibald – Thoughts on Religious Experience, re-typeset PDF with hyper-linked table of contents, Buy 1844, 594 pages, Archiblad Alexander
Required reading. A classic of experiential religion. This was the first book of its type in America. Alexander defines true religious experience as the objective truths of God’s Word stamped on the soul, with all the effects that follow.
Alexander, Archibald – The Way of Salvation Familiarly Explained in a Conversation Between a Father and his Children, 1800, 78 pages, by Archibald Alexander
Einstein said what takes brilliance is making complex truths simple to understand. Alexander was brilliant. Here is help for you talking to your children about the Lord.
Bavinck, Herman – The Christian Family, Buy 168 pages, by Herman Bavinck
Buchanan, James – Comfort in Affliction: Meditations, Buy 1851, 254 pages, the substance of these meditations were given in 1832
This is some of the dearest and most poignant Christian literature, filled with comfort for those suffering in affliction.
Hodge, Charles – The Way of Life, Buy 1842, 328 pages
Popular treatments of the practical teachings of Christianity aimed to produce holiness
Miller, Samuel – Letters from a Father to his Sons in College, 1852, 260 pages
Here is help for godly living as well as overseeing the development of your own children as they leave home and grow into independent young adults at college. Much needed by fathers and mothers in our own day as youth are everywhere neglecting and forsaking the God of their fathers in college. Be a constant, positive influence in their life for good.
Miller, Samuel – Letters of a Grandfather, to the surviving children of Mrs. Margaret Breckinridge, comes after p. 90, then numbering starts over, 1839, 98 pages
Grandfathers, teach your grandchildren practical godliness! Write letters to them!
Miller, Samuel – Letters on Clerical Manners and Habits, 1835, 414 pages
“Love… does not behave itself unseemly,” 1 Cor. 13:4,5. Study your life with an eye to this verse. Here is a book to help. Filled with practical wisdom and application of the scriptures. This is especially important for ministers and elders (clerics) who are to be blameless in all things (1 Tim. 3:2), and yet often needlessly offend by one word (James 3:2). The book is also interesting and a bit humorous as it sheds light on the culture of a different day. Culture changes but the principles of God’s Word, which it is filled with, do not.
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On Preciseness
Article
Calderwood, David – pt. 3, pp. 35-8 of The Pastor & the Prelate… (1628)
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Quote
George Gillespie
English-Popish Ceremonies (1637), pt. 2, ch. 3, pp. 18-19
“Who can then blame us to shun a danger, and fearing the worst, to resist evil beginnings? to give no place to the Devil, to crush the viper while it is in the shell, to abstain from all appearance of evil, 1 Thess. 5:22, and to take the little ones of Babylon, whiles they are young, and dash their heads against the stones?
It skils not, that many will judge us too precise for doing so. What? do they think this preciseness any other than that which the Law of God requires, even observing of the commandement of God without adding to it or diminishing from it, and keeping the straight path, without declining to the right hand or the left? or do they think us more precise than Mordecai, who would do no reverence to Haman, because he was an Amalekite, and so not to be countenanced nor honoured by an Israelite? Are we more precise than Daniel, who would not close his window when he was praying, no not for the king’s edict, knowing, that because he had used to do so aforetime, his doing otherwise had been both a denying of his former profession and an ensnaring of himself by yielding in small things to yield in greater, and after an inch to take an elle? Are we more precise than the apostle Paul who gave no place to the adversaries of Christian liberty, no not for an hour? Are we more precise than David, who would not do so much as take up the names of idols into his lips, lest from speaking of them he should be led to a liking of them: or may not the sad and doleful examples of so many and so great abuses and corruptions which have crept into the Church from so small and scarcely observable originals, make us loathe at our hearts to admit a change in the po∣licy and discipline of a well constitute[d] Church, and rightly ordered before the change, and especially in such things as are not at all necessary?
O! from how small beginnings did the mystery of iniquity advance it’s progression? How little motes have accresced to mountains? Wherefore simplicitatem Christi nos oportet coler•…, à qua ubi primum •…xtulit pedem vanitas, vanitatem sequitur superstitio, superstitionem error, errorem presumptio, presumptionem impietas Idololatrica. We have cause to fear that if, with Israel, we come to the sacrifices of idols, and eat of idolothyts, and bow down or use any of superstitious and idolotrous rites, thereafter we be made to join ourselves to these idols, and so the fierce anger of the Lord be kindled against us, as it was against them.”
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On Spiritual Idolatry
George Gillespie
English Popish Ceremonies (1637), Part 3, ‘Against the Lawfulness of the Ceremonies’, ch. 4, ‘That the Ceremonies are Idols Among Formalists’, section 14, p. 63
“…as [Jerome] Zanchi evidences by sundry instances, idolatry is committed, when more estimation is had of any thing, more dignity and excellency placed in it, and more regard had to it, than God allows, or than can stand with Gods revealed will.”
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On Charity Towards & Confronting Christians who Err
Samuel Rutherford
A Free Disputation Against Pretended Liberty of Conscience… (1649), ‘To the godly & impartial Reader’
“But is not brotherly forbearance, Christian indulgence, a debt we owe to brethren, saints and the truly godly in errors, and mind infirmities, which by a natural emanation or resultance get the fore-start of freewill? To which I shall speak in these few considerations:
1. It is much to be desired with the prayers and suits of the children of God that where there are two opinions, there may be one heart, that the Father of Spirits would unite the hearts of all the children of one Father and the heirs of one house.
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3. We cannot think but all saints in this side of glory carry to heaven with them errors, mistakes and prophesying in part, and the fairest stars and lights in this lower firmament of the Church are clouded, and the benefit of the moon serves to enlighten the under garden of lilies, where ‘Christ feedeth, till the day break, and the shadows flee away.’ And here brotherly indulgence and reciporation of the debt of compassionate forbearance of the infirmities one of another must have place.
4. Yet so, as there can be no conflict of grace against grace, nor can the taking off the foxes which destroy the vines be contrary to the gentleness and meekness of the saints in fulfilling the law of love and bearing one another’s burdens, nor can love seated essentially in a new born child of the second birth be contrary to the zeal of God in withstanding to the face a saint looking awry and walking not with a straight foot according to the truth of the gospel, which way, if heeded in sincerity, should breed more union of hearts and be a greater testimony of faithfulness to a straying sheep than our cruel meekness and bloody gentleness in a pretended bearing with tender consciences under a color of paying the debt of bastard love, while as we suffer millions to perish, through silence and merciless condolency with them in their sinful depraving of the truth.”
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On the Excessive Use of Tobacco
Hall, Thomas – Question 5, ‘Whether that Excessive Taking of Tobacco, which is Used in our Days, be Lawful?’, p. 99-101 of A Practical & Polemical Commentary, or, Exposition upon the Third & Fourth Chapters of the Latter Epistle of Saint Paul to Timothy… (London, 1658)
Hall (1610-1665) was an English, presbyterian puritan that was ejected from the Church of England in 1662.
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Related Pages
Sanctification