Archives for March 28, 2020

The beautiful Queen and I took an uplifting, wonderful 4.5 mile hike around Reeds Lake. The beauty of God in the beauty of nature is always so special to us. The crocuses were the third most beautiful thing I saw.

Wise and interesting advice from Richard Baxter:

Question:
May we omit church-assemblies on the Lord’s day, if the magistrate forbid them?

Answer:
1) It is one thing to forbid them for a time, upon some special cause, (as infection by pestilence, fire, war, etc.) and another to forbid them statedly or profanely.

2) It is one thing to omit them for a time, and another to do it ordinarily.

3) It is one thing to omit them in formal obedience to the law; and another thing to omit them in prudence, or for necessity, because we cannot keep them.

4) The assembly and the circumstances of the assembly must be distinguished.

(1.) If the magistrate for a greater good, (as the common safety,) forbid church-assemblies in a time of pestilence, assault of enemies, or fire, or the like necessity, it is a duty to obey him. 1. Because positive duties give place to those great natural duties which are their end: so Christ justified himself and his disciples’ violation of the external rest of the sabbath. “For the sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath.”2. Because affirmatives bind not ‘ad semper,’ and out-of-season duties become sins.3. Because one Lord’s day or assembly is not to be preferred before many, which by the omission of that one are like to be obtained.
(2.) If princes profanely forbid holy assemblies and public worship, either statedly, or as a renunciation of Christ and our religion ; it is not lawful formally to obey them.
(3.) But it is lawful prudently to do that secretly for the present necessity, which we cannot do publicly, and to do that with smaller numbers, which we cannot do with greater assemblies, yea, and to omit some assemblies for a time, that we may thereby have opportunity for more: which is not formal but only material obedience.