freely. If forced, they are no judges who is fit; and who then shall be judge? If the magistrate, you make him a pastor; and oblige him to teach, examine, hear, and try all the people's knowledge, faith, and lives, which will find them work enough; and this is not to depose the ministers' power, but to put it on another that hath more already than he can do: and a pastor then that delivereth the sacrament to every one that the magistrate bids him shall be a slave and not a free performer of the acts of his own office, unless that magistrate try and judge, and the minister be but a deacon, that must give account for no more than the bare delivering it. But if it be the receivers of baptism, or the Lord's supper, that shall be judges, and may force the pastor to give it them; I have showed you already the profanation will make it no sacrament nor church. And if pastors, that are judges, shall freely give them to all, they will be the profaners, and such ministration will confound the church and the world. Q. 13. I do not mean that they should give them to heathens, but to all that profess the christian faith. A. Therefore they must judge whether they profess the christian faith or not; and whether they speak as parrots, or understand what they say: and withal, christian love, and a christian life must be professed, as well as christian faith. Q. 14. What are the terms on which they must receive men to communion? A. They must baptise them and their infants, who, with competent understanding, and seeming seriousness, profess a practical belief in God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and consent to that covenant, as expounded in the Creed, Lord's Prayer, and Ten Commandments. And they must admit all to communion in the Lord's supper, who continue in that profession, and nullify it not by proved apostasy, or inconsistent profession or practice.m Q. 15. May not hypocrites make such professions, that are no saints? A. Yes; and God only is the judge of hearts, not detected by proved contrary words or deeds: and these are saints by profession. Q. 16. But it is on pretence of being the judge of church Matt. xxviii. 19; Rev. xxii. 17. communion, that the world. pope hath got his power over the christian A. And if tyrants, by false pretences, claim the dominions of other princes, or of mens' families, we must not therefore depose our kings or fathers. Q. 17. But how shall we know what pastors they be that have this power of the keys, and judging men's fitness for com munion? A. All pastors, as such, have power, as all physicians have in judging of their patients, and all schoolmasters of their scholars. But great difference there is, who shall correct men's injurious administrations: whether the magistrate do it himself, or whe ther a bishop over many pastors do it; or many pastors in a synod do it, is no such great matter as will warrant the sad contentions that have been about it, so it be done. Or if none of these do it, a people intolerably injured may right themselves, by deserting such an injurious pastor. But the pastors must not be disabled, and the work undone, on pretence of restraining them from misdoing it." Q. 18. What is the need and benefit of this pastoral discipline? A. 1. The honour of Christ (who, by so wonderful an incarnation, &c., came to save his people from their sins) must be preserved: which is profaned, if his church be not a communion of saints." 2. The difference between heaven and hell is so great, that God will have a visible difference between the way to each, and between the probable heirs of each. The church is the nursery for heaven, and the womb of eternal happiness. And dogs and swine are no heirs for heaven. 3. It is necessary to the comfort of believers. 4. And for the conviction and humbling of the unbelievers, and ungodly. Q. 19. What further use should we make of this article? A. 1. All Christians must carefully see that they be not hypocrites, but saints indeed, that they be meet for the communion of saints. 2. All that administer holy things, and govern churches, should carefully see that they be a communion of saints, and not a "Phil. i. 15-18. Tit. ii. 14; Eph. i. 22, 23, and v. 25-29; Col. i. 18, 24; Eph. iv. 14, 16. : swine-sty not as the common world, but as the garden of Christ that they promote and encourage holiness, and take heed of cherishing impiety. 3. We must all be much against both that usurpation, and that neglect of necessary discipline, and differencing saints from wicked men, which hath corrupted most of the churches in the world.P Q. 20. But when experience assureth us that few Christians can bear church discipline, should it be used when it will do hurt? A. It is so tender, and yet so necessary, a discipline which Christ hath appointed, that he is unfit for the communion of saints who will not endure it. It is not to touch his purse or body: it is not to cast any man out of the church for small infirmities: no, nor for gross sin, that repenteth of it, and forsakes it it is not to call him, magisterially, to submit to the pastor's unproved accusation or assertions: but it is, with the spirit of meekness and fatherly love, to convince a sinner, and draw him to repentance, proving from God's word," that the thing is a sin, and proving him guilty of it, and telling him the evil and danger of it, and the necessity of repentance, and confession, and amendment. And if he be stubborn, not making unnecessary haste, but praying for his repentance, and waiting a competent time, and joyfully absolving him upon his repentance: and if he continue impenitent, only declaring him unfit for church communion, and requiring the church accordingly to avoid him, and binding him to answer it at the bar of God, if he repent not." Q. 21. But if men will not submit to public confession, may not auricular, private confession to the priest serve turn? A. In case the sin be private, a private confession may serve : but when it is known, the repentance must be known, or else it attaineth not the ends of its amendment: and the papists' auricular confession, in such cases, is but a trick to delude the church, and to keep up a party in it of wicked men, that will not submit to the discipline of Christ: it pretendeth strictness, but it is to avoid the displeasure of those that are too proud to stoop to open confession. Let such be never so many, they are not to be kept in the church on such terms: he that hath P Matt. xxii. 21, 22; xiii. 39, 41, and vii. 21, 22; Luke xiii. 27. 9 Matt. xvii. 21, 22; Luke xvii. 3; 2 Cor. ii. 7, 10, and vii. S; John xx. 23. Mark iii. 6; Luke xiii. 2, 5, and xvii. 3; Acts ii. 37,38, and iii. 19; Luke xxiv. 47; James v. 16; 1 John i. 9; Prov. xxviii. 13; Acts xix, openly sinued against Christ, and scandalized the church, and dishonoured his profession, and will by no conviction and entreaty be brought to open confession, (in an evident case,) doth cast himself out of the communion of saints, and must be declared such by the pastors. CHAP. XX. "The Forgiveness of Sins." Q. 1. WHAT is the dependence of this article on the former? A. It is part of the description of the effects of Christ's redemption, and the Holy Ghost's application of it: his regeneration maketh us members of the Holy Catholic Church, where we must live in the communion of saints, and therewith we receive the forgiveness of sins: the same sacrament of baptism signifying and exhibiting both, as washing us from the filth or power of sin, and from the guilt of punishment." Q. 2. What is the forgiveness of sin? A. It is God's acquitting us from the deserved punishment.' Q. 3. How doth God do this? A. By three several acts, which are three degrees of pardon : the first is, by his covenant, gift promise, or law of grace, by which, as his instrument or act of oblivion, he dissolveth the obligation to punishment which we were under, and giveth us lawful right to impunity, so that neither punishment by sense or by loss shall be our due." The second act is by his sentence as a Judge, pronouncing us forgiven, and justifying this our right against all that is or can be said against it. The third act is by his execution, actually delivering us from deserved punishment of loss and sense.* Q. 4. Doth not God forgive us the guilt of the fault as well as the dueness of punishment? A. Yes, for these are all one in several words: to forgive the $ 1 John i. 9. Mat. ix. 2, 5-7; Mark ii. 7, 10. u Psalm xxxii. 1, 2, and lxxxv. 2; Luke v. 20, and vii. 48, 50; Jam. v. 15; Eph. iv. 32; Heb. i. 3; 2 Cor. v. 18, 19; Psalm cxxx. 4. *Acts v. 31; xiii. 38, and xxvi. 18. sin, and to acquit from dueness of punishment for that sin, are the same thing. God doth not repute or judge us to be such as never sinned, for that were to judge falsely; nor doth he judge that our sin is not related to us as the actors, for that is impossible; nor doth he judge that our sin did not deserve punishment; but only that the deserved punishment is forgiven, for the merits of Christ's righteousness and sacrifice. Q. 5. Is not justification and forgiveness of sin all one? A. To be justified: 1. Sometimes signifieth to be made just and justifiable in judgment; and then it sometimes includeth both the gift of saving faith and repentance, and the gift of pardon, and of right to life everlasting; and sometimes it presupposeth faith and repentance given, and signifieth the annexed gift of pardon and life. 2. Sometimes it signifieth God's justifying us by his sentence in judgment, which containeth both the justifying of our right to impunity and salvation, and the justifying our faith and holiness as sincere, which are the conditions of our right." 3. And sometimes to justify us, is to use us as just men. And as long as we understand the matter thus signified by pardoning and justifying, we must not strive about words so vari ously used.' Q. 6. But if Christ's perfect righteousness, habitual and actual, be our own righteousness by God's imputation, how can we need a pardon of sin, when we were perfectly obedient in Christ? A. We could not possibly be pardoned as sinners, if God reputed us to have fulfilled all righteousness in Christ, and so to be no sinners; therefore it is no such imputation that must be affirmed. But God justly reputeth Christ's holiness and righteousness, active and passive, dignified by his divinity, to be fully meritorious of our pardon, justification, and salvation. And so it is ours, and imputed as the true meritorious cause of our righteousness, which consisteth in our right to pardon and salvation.a Q. 7. Is pardon perfect in this life, and all punishment remitted at once? A. No: 1. The punishment denounced in God's sentence of Eve and Adam is not wholly forgiven; the curse on the ground, y Isa. liii. 11, and xlv. 25; 1 Cor. vi. 11; iv. 2,5; ii. 13, and iii. 20; Gal. ii. 16, 17; Tit. iii. 5, 7; Rev. xxii. 12; Rom. Isa. 1. 8; 1 Kings viii. 32; Deut. xxv. 1; Isa. v. 23. * Rom. iii. 22, 25, 26; Gal. iii. 6; Rom. iv. 5,9, 22; v. 17-19; vi. 18, 16, 18, and viii. 4, 10. |