Reformer

When a pastor is truly "reformed" and when he has submitted to the discipline of the Lord, then he can begin the work of reforming and restoring discipline to the Body of Christ. The important first step taken by the Worcestershire Association was the institution of an agreeable policy of discipline, which would be practiced throughout the county.

Church discipline was rare prior to Baxter's time. However, the early Christians were careful to "rebuke before all" the impenitent, "till selfishness and formality caused them to be remiss..," Baxter reminded his fellow pastors. "All Christians value God's ordinances, and think them not vain things; and, therefore, are unwilling to live without them."

Baxter was not infected with the pragmatism and unbelief so prevalent today. To him, turning a brother from sin was more urgent than maintaining popularity and numbers. Answering the common objection that the rebellious won't repent, he asked, "Will you give them up as hopeless?"

Baxter wrote much on the subject, but he was no mere theorist. At Kidderminster, the Christians were careful to solemnly warn habitual sinners. Baxter would speak privately to those whose sin was not public. If they would not repent, he would admonish them before the monthly meeting of the elders and deacons. The final step before excommunication was to call the offender to repentance before the entire congregation and ask them to join in prayer. "This I do once or twice or thrice as prudence shall direct...If yet he hear not the church, I do, from certain texts recited, require them to avoid him..."

Only a handful were actually excommunicated and usually for drunkenness. In his reflection upon those cases of discipline, Baxter sadly recorded:

But those that were cast out of our Communion were enraged, and made much more Enemies of Godliness than before... When private Intreaties and vehement Exhortations... and all that we could say or do... would not make most of them so much as say, We are sorry for our sin; nor any of them leave their common Drunkenness; how should Excommunication do them any good?

Baxter's doubts were answered with the conviction that discipline is "an Ordinance of Christ, and greatly conducing to the Honour of the Church..." Baxter's open rebuke of the habitual sinners was "For the sake of the rest more than for them..."

One case, which surely caused Baxter much grief was that of his personal friend, John Pearsall. Charged with slander and divisiveness, he refused to make public confession of his offenses. Baxter implored him to repent, in a four-page letter written on "Saturday night at eleven o'clock with an aching head and heart and weeping eyes..." Baxter's final appeal is permeated with the Good Shepherd's love for a lamb gone astray:

Ah, John Pearsall, sin is not worthy all this friendship. It must be up by the roots or you are a lost man. Have you so little sense of what hath bin so long preached to you from Proverbs v. 11, 12? Must those be your own complaints? And is there no remedy against deep - rooted selfishness and unreasonable wilfullness? Think not that these lines are written to you without tears. To conclude, by God's assistance I resolve to morrow, if you refuse a free and downright Humiliation and Confession, to desire ye congregation to pray for you, and ye next day, if you do it not, to warne them to reject and avoid you.

The letter is signed "Your faithful and truly loving Pastor." Pearsall did not heed this tender appeal and Baxter instructed the believers to avoid him.

Imagine, however, Baxter's joy in London after three years absence from Kidderminster, when he received an affectionate and moving letter from many friends and neighbors, including the signature of John Pearsall, received back into fellowship.

Christians nowadays have grown so cold in our love of the brethren that we tolerate all but the grossest sin and allow many in the family of God to suffer needlessly because of our unwillingness to discipline them. Because of our timidity and downright lack of active, Biblical love for one another, some may continue in a course leading to eternal punishment. Perhaps, if we were more diligent in seeking the repentance and restoration of habitual sinners, as Baxter did, fewer believers would feel constrained to separate themselves and we would not see the Body of Christ divided into so many factions.