STUDIES IN THE WESTMINSTER SHORTER CATECHISM
by Rev. Leonard T. Van Horn

Q. 13. — Did your first parents continue in the estate wherein they were created?

A. Our first parents, being left to the freedom of their own will, fell from the estate wherein they were created, by sinning against God.

Scripture References: Gen. 3:6-8,13; Eccles. 7:29; II Cor. 11:3; Ps. 5:4.

Questions:

1. What was the “estate” in which man was created?

The estate was innocence, the state in which God had placed man and in which he had pure fellowship with God.

2. What is meant by the freedom of the will?

The freedom of the will was a liberty to choose or refuse of its own accord, without any constraint or force from anyone.

3. Were our first parents able to follow the way of perfect obedience unto God?

Yes, they had perfect knowledge and were holy in their hearts for God had made them in this way.

4. How was it then possible for man to sin?

It was possible because at creation man had a freedom both to good and evil. His natural disposition was to good but because he was a mutable (subject to change) creature he, through temptation, submitted himself to evil.

5. What is man’s state today in regard to freedom of will?

A distinction must be made as to the type of man. Unregenerate man “by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation” so that he can neither “convert himself, nor prepare himself thereunto.” (Confession of Faith, IX, 3). Regenerated man, by God’s grace, has the freedom to do that which is spiritually good, but he does not do it perfectly for he is sometimes inclined toward evil. (Rom. 7: 15, 19, 21).

6. Who was responsible for the first sin?

Man was responsible for he freely yielded to the temptation of the devil. When our first parents willfully chose to obey the word of Satan rather than the word of God, they were guilty of sinning against God. Man had been put on trial, the trial of simple obedience, but man failed the test. It should be recognized that God is not the cause of sin. This can be proven from the testimony of Scripture, (Gen. 1:31. Ps. 5:4).

This can also be proven by the facts taught by Scripture that God is perfectly good and holy and that God punished all sin severely. The fall of Adam is the efficient cause of original sin both in himself and in his posterity.

SINNING AGAINST GOD

One of the greatest dangers facing the church of today is the trend toward emphasizing sin as being against men rather than the fact that sin is first and foremost against God. This is especially noticeable in the prayers of many ministers and laymen. Their prayers are full of the fact that men sin against men, especially in a social sort of way, but are almost void of the primary fact that men sin against God. If you will read once again the great Episcopal General Confession [see below] you will note that the thrust of the confession is aimed at offending the holy laws of God.

It is true that when our first parents sinned in the Garden of Eden they certainly sinned against each other in that their sin affected one another. And their sin certainly affected the whole human race as it was naturally passed down to all. But the important point of our Catechism Question is that Adam and Eve sinned against God. This is the message we should keep in our minds. This is the message we need to remember as we live our daily walk before God as Christians saved by grace.

Probably our difficulty is that though we know our sins are against God, we do not make enough effort to resist, to overcome temptation. A faithful preacher of God’s Word used to tell his people time and time again, “Brethren, you must practice being careful of how you live before the Almighty, Sovereign God!” Thomas Goodwin gave four rules to the Christian regarding keeping away from sinning against God:

1. Keep thyself from evil thoughts, for they defile the man (Matt. 15:18-20).
2. Keep thyself from evil speeches, because “evil words corrupt good manners” (I Cor. 15 :33).
3. Take heed of ill company, for that will defile the man.
4. Take heed of all occasions of evil abuse of things lawful, even they also will make thee impure, because it is a means to draw out the impurity of thy heart.

Such thoughts are excellent for us as we strive to live to the glory of God. It is also excellent for us to realize and to remember that our sins are against the Holy God, He who sits on the Throne of Heaven. (I Cor. 10:12-13)

Episcopal General Confession:
The original form in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer is:

ALMIGHTY and most merciful Father;
We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep.
We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.
We have offended against thy holy laws.
We have left undone those things which we ought to have done;
And we have done those things which we ought not to have done;
And there is no health in us.
But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders.
Spare thou them, O God, who confess their faults.
Restore thou those who are penitent; According to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord.
And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake; That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, To the glory of thy holy Name. Amen.

Ministering to Wounded Soldiers
by David T Myers

It is a joy to this author to be able to post an article in This Day in Presbyterian History to his father, the Rev. Dr. David K. Myers. Dr. Myers was a Princeton Seminary graduate in 1929, studying there just before the liberals took control of that historic theological seminary. He went on to minister in the PCUSA churches in the Far West, eventually planting a Bible Presbyterian church in Lemmon. South Dakota, where I was born in 1940. It today continues to minister as a PCA congregation.

Of his many and varied ministries in South Dakota, he also served his country as an Army chaplain in World War Two through the Korean War Conflict. The following is taken from his autobiography “Preaching on the Plains” and tells of his ministry to wounded soldiers at the 156^th Army General Hospital in England in 1944 – 1945.

“When I was a lad in Austin High School in Chicago in the waning days of and after WWI, I had been a High School R.O.T.C. Cadet for three years, a Cadet Lieutenant, my last year. When a student at the outset of my Army training at Harvard Army Chaplain’s School, things were not exactly strange.

“Then I was assigned to an Army hospital unit training school . On June 10, 1944, my birthday, our unit left Camp McCoy, Wisconsin, and sailed with the 156^th General Hospital Unit to England. We were situated near another General Hospital south of Hereford on a manorial estate in southwest England, not far from the Welsh Border.

“Soon we began taking the wounded in increasing numbers from the fighting in France just after the landings in Normandy. I found myself visiting wounded soldiers morning, noon, and night. Many were there. It was hard to get from one end of the 1500 bed hospital to the other, because some of the less seriously wounded would be discharged and on their way either to America, or back to the front line. During the Battle of the Bulge, we were crowded to capacity.

“I felt a great opportunity for bedside visitation. There they would be, an entire ward, and ward after ward. They would all be lying (waiting for) a visiting chaplain, and my endeavor was to visit them all personally. I cannot remember a one who refused my visit.

“Unsaved were given a challenge to receive Christ. An unusual number indicated their conviction that conversion to Christ came to them when they were at the front lines. I sought to conserve this by pointing out their duty to become true witnesses, and to be related to their home church, if it was a Bible-believing one. I also sought to point out the difference between those (churches) which were Bible-believing and those which were not.

“Our nightly prayer meetings were fruitful. Walking wounded would come, and men of the hospital medical service.”

Rev. Myers came home after WW2, served briefly in his civilian church in South Dakota, then re-entered the Army chaplaincy where he was to serve his Lord and Savior through the Korean War as a chaplain. Two of his sons became ministers of the gospel, eventually serving congregations of the Presbyterian Church in America.

Words to Live By:
My father is now in heaven, but his spirit lives on through the faithful military chaplains seeking the spiritually lost in our nation’s military. Pray for chaplains today ministering the Word of God faithfully. Their calling is getting harder and harder to fulfill biblically. And if your congregation has not “adopted” a military chaplain, contact the Presbyterian and Reformed Chaplain’s Ministry in Atlanta Georgia, to support such a one in prayer and encouragement. They will appreciate it. And you as an individual and congregation will be ministering through them to our men and women in the Armed Services of our nation.

What Was that Old School/New School Thing All About, Anyway?

If you’ve heard of Old School Presbyterians and their counterpart the New School, and you’ve wondered what the differences were between the two groups, there is insight to be found in the somewhat lengthy reply issued by the New School men. We are off by a day, but this can be useful, nonetheless.

Unlike immediately prior years, the General Assembly of 1837 was controlled by the Old School wing of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Taking advantage of their numbers, they took the severe action of removing from the denomination the Synods of Utica, Geneva, and Genesee, in New York, and the Western Reserve Synod in Ohio. The primary complaint of the Old School Presbyterians was the teaching of a modified Calvinism, labeled “Taylorism.” And with the excision of these four Synods, they hoped to remove the Taylor doctrine from the Church. Old School Presbyterians had also come to oppose the 1801 Plan of Union, a cooperative arrangement with Congregationalists. Here too, the removal of New School votes from the Assembly made it that much easier to repeal the Plan of Union.

Sixteen charges of theological error were leveled at the New School men by the Assembly of 1837. And no sooner were those charges laid on the table, than the New School responded in prompt reply with the document initially known as Errors and True Doctrines. Later that same summer, in subsequent conference, the New School men issued a revised version of this text under the name of the Auburn Declaration. With this document, the New School men sought to affirm their orthodoxy. Or as one historian summarized it,

“The Declaration thus adopted became, not indeed a creed, but an authoritative explanation of the interpretation given to the Westminster Symbols by the leading minds in the New School Church, as organized in 1838. It was in 1868 indorsed by the General Assembly (O. S.) as containing ‘all the fundamentals of the Calvinistic Creed,’ and this indorsement was one among the most effectual steps in bringing about the reunion of the two Churches in 1870. The document is rather a disavowal of imputed error than an exposition of revealed truth, and must be understood from the anthropological and soteriological controversies of that period of division now happily gone by.”

ERRORS AND TRUE DOCTRINE.
[submitted as a protest to the General Assembly, June 8, 1837]

First Error.—“That God would have prevented the existence of sin in our world, but was not able, without destroying the moral agency of man; or, that for aught that appears in the Bible to the contrary, sin is incidental to any wise moral system.”

True Doctrine.—God permitted the introduction of sin, not because he was unable to prevent it, consistently with the moral freedom of his creatures, but for wise and benevolent reasons which he has not revealed.

Second Error.—“That election to eternal life is founded on a foresight of faith and obedience.”

True Doctrine.—Election to eternal life is not founded on a foresight of faith and obedience, but is a sovereign act of God’s mercy, whereby, according to the counsel of his own will, He has chosen some to salvation; “yet so as thereby neither is violence offered to the will of the Creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established;” nor does this gracious purpose ever take effect independently of faith and a holy life.

Third Error.—“That we have no more to do with the first sin of Adam than with the sins of any other parent.”

True Doctrine.—By a divine constitution, Adam was so the head and representative of the race, that, as a consequence of his transgression, all mankind become morally corrupt, and liable to death, temporal and eternal.

Fourth Error.—“That infants come into the world as free from moral defilement as was Adam when he was created.”

True Doctrine.—Adam was created in the image of God, endowed with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness. Infants come into the world, not only destitute of these, but with a nature inclined to evil and only evil.

Fifth Error.—“That infants sustain the same relation to the moral government of God, in this world, as brute animals, and that their sufferings and death are to be accounted for on the some principles as those of brutes, and not by any means to be considered as penal.”

True Doctrine.—Brute animals sustain no such relation to the moral government of God as does the human family. Infants are a part of the human family,and their sufferings and death are to be accounted for, on the ground of their being involved in the general moral ruin of the race induced by the apostacy.

Sixth Error.—“That there is no other original sin than the fact, that all the posterity of Adam, though by nature innocent, will always begin to sin when they begin to exercise moral agency; that original sin does not include a sinful bias of the human mind, and a just exposure to penal suffering; and that there is no evidence in Scripture, that infants in order to salvation, do need redemption by the blood of Christ, and regeneration by the Holy Ghost.”

True Doctrine.—Original sin is a natural bias to evil, resulting from the first apostacy, leading invariably and certainly to actual transgression. And all infants, as well as adults, in order to be saved, need redemption by the blood of Christ, and regeneration by the Holy Ghost.

Seventh Error.—“That the doctrine of imputation, whether of the guilt of Adam’s sin, or of the righteousness of Christ, has no foundation in the Word of God, and is both unjust and absurd.”

True Doctrine.—The sin of Adam is not imputed to his posterity in the sense of a literal transfer of personal qualities, acts, and demerit; but by reason of the sin of Adam, in his peculiar relation, the race are treated as if they had sinned. Nor is the righteousness of Christ imputed to his people in the sense of a literal transfer of personal qualities, acts, and merit; but by reason of his righteousness, in his peculiar relation, they are treated as if they were righteous.

Eighth Error.—“That the sufferings and death of Christ were not truly vicarious and penal, but symbolical, governmental, and instructive only.”

True Doctrine.—The sufferings and death of Christ were not symbolical, governmental, and instructive only, but were truly vicarious, i.e., a substitute for the punishment due to transgressors. And while Christ did not suffer the literal penalty of the law, involving remorse of conscience and the pains of hell, he did offer a sacrifice which infinite wisdom saw to be a full equivalent. And by virtue of this atonement, overtures of mercy are sincerely made to the race, and salvation secured to all who believe.

Ninth Error.—“That the impenitent sinner is by nature, and independently of the renewing influence or almighty energy of the Holy Spirit, in full possession of all the ability necessary to a full compliance with all the commandments of God.”

True Doctrine.—While sinners have all the faculties necessary to a perfect moral agency and a just accountability, such is their love of sin and opposition to God and his law, that, independently of the renewing influence or almighty energy of the Holy Spirit, they never will comply with the commands of God.

Tenth Error.—“That Christ does not intercede for the elect until after their regeneration.”

True Doctrine.—The intercession of Christ for the elect is previous as well as subsequent to their regeneration, as appears from the following Scripture, viz. “I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me, for they are thine. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word.”

Eleventh Error.—“That saving faith is not an effect of the operations of the Holy Spirit, but a mere rational belief of the truth or assent to the word of God.”

True Doctrine.—Saving faith is an intelligent and cordial assent to the testimony of God concerning his Son, implying reliance on Christ alone for pardon and eternal life; and in all cases it is an effect of the special operations of the Holy Spirit.

Twelfth Error.—“That regeneration is the act of the sinner himself, and that it consists in change of his governing purpose, which he himself must produce, and which is the result, not of any direct influence of the Holy Spirit on the heart, but chiefly of a persuasive exhibition of the truth, analogous to the influence which one man exerts over the mind of another; or that regeneration is not an instantaneous act, but a progressive work.”

True Doctrine.—Regeneration is a radical change of heart, produced by the special operations of the Holy Spirit, determining the sinner to that which is good, and is in all cases instantaneous.

Thirteenth Error.—“That God has done all that he can do for the salvation of all men, and that man himself must do the rest.”

True Doctrine.—While repentance for sin and faith in Christ are indispensable to salvation, all who are saved are indebted from first to last to the grace and Spirit of God. And the reason that God does not save all, is not that he wants the power to do it, but that in his wisdom he does not see fit to exert that power further than he actually does.

Fourteenth Error.—“That God cannot exert such influence on the minds of men, as shall make it certain that they will choose and act in a particular manner, without impairing their moral agency.”

True Doctrine.—While the liberty of the will is not impaired, nor the established connexion betwixt means and end broken by any action of God on the mind, he can influence it according to his pleasure, and does effectually determine it to good in all cases of true conversion.

Fifteenth Error.—“That the righteousness of Christ is not the sole ground of the sinner’s acceptance with God; and that in no sense does the righteousness of Christ become ours.”

True Doctrine.—All believers are justified, not on the ground of personal merit, but solely on the ground of the obedience and death, or, in other words, the righteousness of Christ. And while that righteousness does not become theirs, in the sense of a literal transfer of personal qualities and merit; yet, from respect to it, God can and does treat them as if they were righteous.

Sixteenth Error.—“That the reason why some differ from others in regard to their reception of the Gospel is, that they make themselves to differ

True Doctrine.—While all such as reject the Gospel of Christ do it, not by coercion but freely—and all who embrace it do it, not by coercion but freely—the reason why some differ from others is, that God has made them to differ.

Philadelphia, June 8th, 1837.

[signed by]:
George Duftield, E. W, Gilbert, Thomas Brown, Bliss lbirnan, N. S. S. Beman, E. Cheever, E. Seymour, George Painter, F. W. Graves, Obadiah Woodruff, N. G. Clark, Robert Stuart, Nahum Gould, Absalom Peters, Alexander Campbell.

Obviously the important thing here is not the date of the article, but the message of how a godly home bears a great blessing for generations to come. May we all seek to live to glorify our Lord with our lives, in all that we do and say.

[excerpted from THE CHRISTIAN OBSERVER, Vol. XXXI, No. 23 (5 June 1852):  89, column 5.]

THE FAMILY OF PRESIDENT EDWARDS.

It was an unspeakable privilege in the view of the late President [Jonathan] Edwards, that when surrounded by a young and growing family, and when his duty to his people, especially in seasons of revival, necessarily occupied his whole attention, he could safely commit his children to the wisdom and piety, the love and faithfulness of their mother [Sarah Pierpont Edwards]. Her views of the responsibility of parents were large and comprehensive. “She thought that, as a parent, she had great and important duties to do toward her children before they were capable of government and instruction. For them she constantly and earnestly prayed, and bore them on her heart before God, in all her secret and most solemn addresses to him; and that, even before they were born. The prospect of her becoming a mother of a rational, immortal creature, which came into existence in an undone and infinitely dreadful state, was sufficient to lead her to bow before God daily for His blessing on it; even redemption and eternal life by Jesus Christ. So that, through all the pain, labor, and sorrow which attended her being the mother of children, she was in travail for them that they should be born of God.

She regularly prayed with her children, from a very early period, and, as there is the best reason to believe, with great earnestness and importunity. Being thoroughly sensible that, in many respects, the chief care of forming children by government and instruction, naturally lies on mothers, as they are most with their children at an age when they commonly receive impressions that are permanent, and have great influence in forming the character for life, she was very careful to do her part in this important business. When she foresaw or met with any special difficulty in this matter, she was wont to apply to her husband for advice and assistance; and on such occasions they would both attend to it, as a matter of the utmost importance. She had an excellent way of governing her children; she knew how to make them regard and obey her cheerfully, without loud, angry words, much less heavy blows. She seldom punished them; and in speaking to them, used gentle and pleasant words. If any correction was necessary, she did not administer it in a passion; and when she had occasion to reprove and rebuke, she would do it in a few words, without warmth and noise, and with all calmness  and gentleness of mind. In her directions and reproofs in matters of importance, she would address herself to the reason of her children, that they might not only know her inclination and will, but at the same time be convinced of the reasonableness of it. She had need to speak but once; she was cheerfully obeyed; murmuring and answering again were not known among them. In their manners they were uncommonly respectful to their parents. When their parents came into the room, they all rose instinctively from their seats, and never resumed them until their parents were seated; and when either parent was speaking, no matter with whom they had been conversing, they were all immediately silent and attentive. The kind and gentle treatment they received from their mother, while she strictly and punctiliously maintained her parental authority, seemed naturally to beget and promote a filial respect and affection, and to lead them to a mild, tender treatment of each other. Quarreling and contention, which too frequently take place among children, were in her family wholly unknown. She carefully observed the first appearance of resentment and ill-will in her young children, toward any person whatever, and did not connive at it, as many who have the care of children do, but was careful to show her displeasure, and suppress it to the utmost; yet not by angry, wrathful words, which often provoke children to wrath, and stir up their irascible passions, rather than abate them. Her system of discipline was begun at a very early age, and it was her rule to resist the first, as well as every subsequent exhibition of temper or disobedience in the child, however young, until its will was brought into submission to the will of its parents; wisely reflecting, that until a child will obey its parents, he can never be brought to obey God.

[emphasis added.]