Thomas Vincent on the duties of children and parents flowing from the Fifth Commandment

In my Sunday afternoon exposition of Spurgeon's revision of the Baptist Catechism, I have been making frequent use of Thomas Vincent's "The Shorter Catechism Explained from Scripture" (1674; Banner of Truth ed., 1980).

 

Yesterday, we began to look at the fifth commandment (Exodus 20:12).  Here is an abbreviated list of Vincent's seven duties of children to parents and seven duties of parents to children (with his copious proof text references largely omitted):

The duties of children to parents:

1.      Inward honor, reverence, and estimation.

2.     Outward reverent carriage and behavior.

3.     Diligent hearkening to their instructions.

4.     Willing obedience to all lawful commands.

5.     Meek and patient bearing their reproofs and corrections, with amendment of the faults they are reproved and corrected for.

6.     Ready following their reasonable counsel, in reference to their calling, station, marriage, and any great affairs of their lives.

7.     Grateful kindness to them, in nourishing them, providing for them, and bearing with their infirmities when aged, and fallen into want and poverty.

The duties of parents to children:

1.      Tender love and care of them, especially when infants and helpless; particularly, mothers ought to give suck [nurse] their children, if they are able. 

 

2.     Training them up in the knowledge of the Scriptures, and principles of religion, and giving them good instructions in the laws and ways of the Lord, as soon as they are capable of receiving them.

3.     Prayer for them, and giving good examples of holiness, temperance, and righteousness unto them.

4.     Keeping them under subjection whilst young, yet requiring nothing of them but what is agreeable to the law of the Lord.  He adds, “As children must obey, so parents must command in the Lord” (Ephesians 6:1, 4).

 

5.     Encouragement of them by kind looks and speeches, and rewards in well-doing, together with discountenance, reproof and loving and seasonable correction of them for evil doing (Proverbs 29:15, 17).

6.      Provision for them of what is needful for the present; as also laying up for them according to the proportion of what they have, for the future (1 Timothy 5:8; 2 Corinthians 12:14).

7.      Disposal of them to trades, callings, and in marriage, when grown up, as may be for their good; therein using no force, but consulting and considering their capacity and inclination.

Thomas Vincent outlines twelve elements of Scriptural worship

 

Note:  In our Sunday pm services at CRBC I am working my way through the exposition of the Ten Commandments in Spurgeon's Baptist Catechism. Sunday we looked at the requirements of the second commandment, including the implications for worship.  As elsewhere in this series, I have leaned heavily on the Thomas Vincent's exposition The Shorter Catechism Explained from Scripture (Banner of Truth, 1674, 1980).  Here are some notes from Sunday's message outlining Vincent's listing of eleven Scriptural worship elements:

 

In this exposition of the second commandment, Thomas Vincent asks:  “What is the way and means which God hath appointed for his worship?” and he answers:  “The only way and means which God hath appointed for his worship, are his ordinances, which he hath prescribed in his Word.”

 

Here is the heart of what is called the “regulative principle” of worship.  If we are negatively to avoid “graven images” we must positively worship God has he has prescribed or regulated in his Word.

 

Vincent offers the following list of ordinances for worship which God has appointed in his word (he does so with various prooftexts of which I have only selected one or two):

 

1.      Prayer unto God with thanksgiving and that publicly in assemblies, privately in families, and secretly in closets.
 

Philppians 4:6:  “Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.”
 

2.      Reading and searching the Scriptures.

John 5:39:  “Search the Scriptures, for in them ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of me.”

3.      Preaching and hearing of the word.
 

1 Timothy 4:2:  “Preach the word; be instant in season and out of season; repove, rebuke, exhort, with all long-suffering and doctrine.”
 

4.      Singing of psalms.

 

James 5:13:  “Is any merry?  Let him sing psalms.”
 

5.      Administration and receiving of the sacraments, both of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
 

The Great Commission in Matthew 28:19-20.

1 Corinthians 11:24:  “This do in remembrance of me.”
 

6.      Fasting.

Luke 5:35 says that when the Bridegroom is taken away “they will fast in those days.”
 

7.      Instructing of children and households in the law of the Lord.
 

Ephesians 4:8:  “And ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath but raise them up in  the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”
 

8.      Conference and discourse of the things of God.
 

Deuteronomy 6:7:  “Thou shalt talk of them when thou sittest down , and when thou riseth up.”

 

9.      Meditation.
 

1 Timothy 4:15:  “Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them, that they profiting may appear unto all.”
 

10.  Vows to the Lord.
 

Psalm 126:11:  “Vow and pay unto the Lord.”
 

 

JTR:  This might include covenant marriage vows, church membership vows, and vows made by church officers.

 

 

11.    Swearing by the name of the Lord, when lawfully called.
 

Deuteronomy 6:13:  “Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God, and serve him, and shalt swear by his name.”

12.  Exercise of church discipline.
 

Matthew 18:15-17.

Thomas Watson on Christ our Prophet

Note:  The afternoon sermon last Sunday at CRBC was a meditation on Question 23 in our Spurgeon Catechism Series on Jesus our Prophet.  I closed with a summary of Thomas Watson's applicatory "usages" from this question: 

After Thomas Watson addresses this catechism question in A Body of Divinity, his study of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, he offers three practical usages or applications on Christ as our Prophet:

1.      It is useful for information.  That is tells us more about Christ, “who is the great doctor of his church.”

2.     It tells us that we are to labor to have Christ as our teacher.

“A man can no more by the power of nature reach Christ, than an infant can reach the top of the pyramids, or the ostrich fly up to the stars.”

“Knowledge is in Christ for us as milk in the breast for the child.  Oh then go to Christ for teaching.  None in the gospel came to Christ for sight, but he restored their eyesight; and sure Christ is more willing to work a cure upon a blind soul than ever he was to do so upon a blind body.”

Christ can take the dullest man and make him “a good scholar’ so that “they know more than the great sages and wisemen of the world.”

Watson also points out that Christ does this through his appointed means.  “Ministers are earthen vessels, but these pitchers have lamps within them to light souls to heaven. Christ is said to speak to us from heaven now, by his ministers, as the king speaks by his ambassador.”

3.     It tells us to be thankful:   “If you have been taught by Christ savingly, be thankful.”

Watson draws on an ancient analogy. He says if Alexander the Great expressed thanks that Aristotle had been his teacher, then, “how are we obliged to Jesus Christ, this great Prophet, for opening to us the eternal purposes of his love, and revealing to us the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven!”

Vincent: Six Internal and Spiritual Miseries

Our current Sunday afternoon series at CRBC has been through Spurgeon’s Baptist Catechism.  I have been reading alongside this study Thomas Vincent’s classic The Shorter Catechism Explained from Scripture (1674; Banner 1980).  LastSunday’s message was on question #18 (“What is the misery of that state whereinto man fell?”).  Here is my summary and expansion of Vincent’s description of six “internal and spiritual miseries which men are liable unto in this life by the fall":

1.      “To the thralldom of the devil to be led about by him at his will.”  It is as if men are dogs on a leash led about by the devil.  Paul says fallen man is in “the snare of the devil” and “taken captive to his will” (2 Tim 2:26).

2.     “To judiciary blindness of mind, and reprobate sense.” Fallen sinners have eyes, but they do not see, ears, but they do not hear.  In Romans 1:8 Paul speaks of those whom God has given over “to a reprobate mind.”

3.     “To judiciary hardness of heart, and searedness and benumbedness of conscience.”  God allows the hearts of sinners to become hardened (Rom 9:18).  The conscience is seared “as with a hot iron” (1 Tim 4:2).  Such men are, Paul says, “past feeling” (Eph 4:19).

4.     “To vile actions.”  Pick up the paper or go to any internet news site for an endless list of illustrations.

5.     “To strong delusions and belief of damnable errors.”  Think of it.  There would be no heresies had man not fallen.

6.     “To distress and perplexity of mind, dread and horror of spirit, and despairful agonies, through the apprehension of certain future wrath.”

Unbelieving man does not know it, but the nagging dread he feels as he ages is not just an aversion to his impending death but also to his certain judgment.

We’ve noted again and again in this exposition of the early questions in the catechism that it does not tire of describing man’s state in sin.  It does this not to wallow in man’s depravity but to pave the way for the announcement of God’s response to man’s sin in Christ, “the only Redeemer of God’s elect” (from the answer to question #20).