The average evangelical church probably celebrates the Eucharist four times a year. This is unfortunate. What is even worse is that during these rare times when communion is actually received, most congregants do not spend any time preparing for it! If you are a pastor, then it is your responsibility to foster self-examination in your congregants.
To help you in this task, consider these questions originally posted in the Georgia Baptist Christian Index during the mid-1800s. During your preaching before the Supper, plea with your congregation, that they would consider questions such as these.
1. In the interval since last partaking of the Lord’s Supper, what progress have you been making in your Christian life in proportion to the blessings of God you enjoy? Are you really gaining ground?
2. Is your soul actually strengthened and refreshed?
3. Are your corruptions growing weaker, and your graces growing stronger?
4. Are you able more successfully to strive against your besetting sin?
5. Is your love for the Savior deepening in your heart, and more influential in your life?
6. Is your conformity to His image more distinctly visible to the eye, both of God and man?
7. Are you advancing in love and charity to all men?
8. Do you find that since your last commemoration of this feast of love, you have become so much more full of the Holy Spirit, that you cannot only freely forgive from your heart the most unprovoked and aggravated injuries and insults, but you delight in pouring out fervent prayer on behalf of your bitterest enemy and are ready to minister to his temporal and eternal welfare?
9. Have you felt a warmer interest in the welfare of all who come under your influence?
. . .
17. Since I last partook of the Lord’s Supper, have I more faithfully followed the promptings of the Holy Spirit; have I listened more teachably to the slightest whisperings of His voice; have I cherished more carefully His sanctifying influences; have I guarded more jealously against the indulgence of any thought or desire that would grieve Him, or cause Him to have to withdraw, even for a season, the manifestations of His love and the communications of His grace?
18. Have I a sweeter sense of my Redeemer’s love?
19. Do I find communion with Him a foretaste of heaven?
20. Do I look forward with increasing desire for the day when I shall sit down with Him at the marriage supper of the Lamb?
. . .
Day One—a Christian publishing company—recently announced the release of a volume of previously unpublished Charles Spurgeon sermons. A few facts about the corpus of Spurgeon sermons testify to the uniqueness of this publication and the magnitude of Spurgeon’s sermonic contributions.
Spurgeon began publishing an annual volume of sermons at the age of 21, and soon, these annual volumes achieved great commercial success. Before his 30th birthday, Spurgeon had sold over 6,000,000 copies of individual sermons.
Estimations of the total number of Spurgeon sermons sold in the nineteenth century are astounding and verge suspiciously toward hyperbole. Biographers, W. Y. Fullerton and Charles Ray attest to the sale of hundreds of millions of individual copies of Spurgeon’s sermons.
Sales figures are not the only evidence of the popularity of Spurgeon’s sermons. Helmut Thielicke recounts that Spurgeon’s sermons were “cabled to New York every Monday and reprinted in the leading newspapers of the country.”
Though Spurgeon’s harsh stance against slavery would diminish his popularity in America (he once said he would just as soon admit a murder as a member of his church than a “man-stealer”), his sermons continued to engender international interest. In his lifetime, Spurgeon’s sermons were translated into over twenty languages, including Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and Braille.
The sheer quantity of Spurgeon’s homiletical output is astounding. Thirty-seven annual volumes of sermons appeared in his lifetime, and the new volumes continued twenty-six years after his death.
George Truett tallied over 3,500 printed Spurgeon sermons: “[r]eading one a day would take ten years!” These literary labors came from a man who died in his fifties.
These data make Day One’s new edition of Spurgeon’s sermons quite impressive. Rare indeed is the Spurgeon sermon that has not been printed previously. This publication also speaks to Spurgeon’s massive literary output. Sixty-three volumes of sermons later, and unprinted sermons are still emerging.
A more valuable discussion would focus on the content of Spurgeon’s preaching. But for now, let the sheer number of his sermons impress upon you, and consider Spurgeon, oh you sluggard.
I was recently informed that Standing on Shoulders was deemed one of the top 50 evangelical blogs by the Biblical Learning Blog. We are certainly honored for the recognition, and I would like to thank all of our authors (Matt, Adam W., Adam E., and Jason) for all their hard work in producing high quality articles/posts for the site.
The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself.
You must say to your soul:
‘Why are you down cast?’ What business do you have being disquieted?
You must turn on yourself, upbraid yourself, condemn yourself, exhort yourself, and say to yourself:
‘Hope in God,’ instead of muttering in this depressed unhappy way.
And then you must go on to remind yourself of God, Who God is, and what God is and what God has done, and what God has pledged Himself to do.
Then having done that, end on this great note:
Defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the devil and the whole world and say with David:
‘I will yet praise Him for the help of His countenance, who is also the heart of my countenance and my God.’
- David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression, 21.
Artistic depictions of Jesus Christ have provoked a fascinating debate. Christian thinkers have struggled with the question of whether or not artistic depictions of Christ are in violation of the second of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:3-4):
You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them . . . .
The question is fodder for much deeper theological investigation. This particular debate raises questions about how one puts the big picture of the Bible together:
- Are Old Testament commands binding for believers?
- Do certain aspects of the law still apply to believers (such as the moral law), while other aspects of the law (ceremonial) are no longer binding?
- Is the command against images of God part of the moral law or the ceremonial law?
- Has the incarnation changed the prohibitions of images of God, since the only image of the invisible God has been revealed?
These are complex questions, but a rather simple one is often ignored in the debate. What do images of Christ display about our view of Christ? For the moment, let’s set aside the moral, normative examination of Christ-art, and let’s embark on a descriptive examination of Christ-art. Three artistic renderings of Christ’s revelation to the disciples at Emmaus will provide the evidence for this investigation.
Christ: The Quintessential Western European
One of the more comical aspects of depictions of Christ is the dominance of the Caucasian portrayal of Christ. A first century Jewish carpenter came to be depicted as a tall, thin, pale (yet glowing), angular Western European. A good example of the Caucasian Christ is Pascal-Adolphe-Jean Dagnan-Bouveret’s Christ and the Disciples at Emmaus (1896-7).
Dagnan-Bouveret makes Christ the focal point of the painting through several artistic devices. Christ is centered between two pillars, and nearly every object of the painting points toward Christ. Visual lines are drawn by the servant on the left, who points a dish toward Christ, the disciple kneeling on the right, and Christ’s own arms, which point the audience toward Christ’s glowing face. The sunrise behind Christ also draws the audience toward Christ’s face.
Dagnan-Bouveret’s painting is the standard, Western depiction of Christ. It emphasizes the other-worldliness of the Son of God by making him the Platonic form of a European man.
Christ: The Protest Symbol
Caravaggio’s Emmaus scene (1601) is a quite different take on the biblical account. He uses similar lines of perspective to draw the viewer toward Christ, but his Christ is much less ideal (rounded-face, stockier build), and his disciples are more vivid (they actually looked surprised).
Caravaggio was a controversial figure. The National Gallery notes that “much to the horror of his critics, he used ordinary working people with irregular, rough and characterful faces as models for his saints and showed them in recognisably contemporary surroundings.”
The Catholic church was particularly roused by Caravaggio’s use of ordinary subjects for extraordinary biblical and ecclesial characters. A legend recounts that Caravaggio employed a prostitute to pose as the virgin Mary.
Caravaggio’s Emmaus scene would have a similar effect on the clergy. Christ is noticeably absent of artistic nomina sacra, that is, suggestions of his divinity: no halo, no glowing visage. While his painting may appropriately capture Isaiah 53:2—“he had no form of majesty that we should look at him”—it nevertheless lacks the reverent piety typical for depictions of Christ.
Christ: Most Lovely in the Church
An even more divergent scene is undertaken by Rembrandt Van Rijn (1606-1669). In the Netherlands, Rembrandt artistically labored in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation. In this context, many of his works diverge from standard Catholic devotional art.
His depiction of the scene at Emmaus is quite different from Dagnan-Bouveret’s. The face of Christ is hardly discernable. In fact, the perspective of the painting deemphasizes Christ and draws the viewer to two places. First, the viewer is drawn to the disciple’s face, which flames with the glory of the resurrected Christ. Second, the viewer notices that the servant in the background emits a similar, though less brilliant, light as Christ.
This technique is rife with ecclesiological and theological implications. Since the ascension of Christ, the beauty of the Lord is most evident in his body and bride, the church. That the servant shares the light of Christ draws upon the biblical motif of Christ as servant of all (cf. Mark 10:45).
Deciphering the Images
Dagnan-Bouveret and Caravaggio contributed to artistic trends that persist today. Devotional representations of Christ still include ideal Western European facial features; artists often project their idea of the “second Adam” onto the historical person of Jesus Christ. Similarly, Christ still makes his appearance in protest-art; ideologues know his image will inflame the church and culture for their causes.
The church would be better off avoiding both of these strands of Christ-art. Idealized images of Christ and rhetorically abrasive representations of Christ will not further the cause of the church. Rather, the church should learn to see itself as the visage of Christ. In this regard, master Rembrandt’s scene is lovelier than Dagnan-Bouveret’s or Caravaggio’s renderings of Emmaus.
The apostle Paul tells the Ephesian church that Christ “came and preached peace to you who were far off” (2:17). Biblical scholars could search far and wide for a gospel account of Christ in Ephesus, but there’s no historical record of such a visit. However, the book of Acts recounts the preaching of Paul in Ephesus (18:19, chs. 19-20). How do we reconcile these accounts?
The church is Christ’s ambassador, body, and bride, “the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Eph 1:23). As God redeems and sanctifies sinners, he is painting the greatest portrait of Christ. Let us, then, acquire the taste for true Christian art.
“The pious [that is, godly] mind . . . restrains itself from sinning, not out of dread of punishment alone; but, because it loves and reveres God as Father, it worships and adores him as Lord. Even if there were no hell, it would still shudder at offending him alone.”
- John Calvin, Institutes 1.3.2
One of the means through which the influential British Baptist minister Charles Haddon Spurgeon impacted the church and world in his own day was his Pastors’ College. The institution still exists to this day and is known as Spurgeon’s College. The history of this college reflects the changes in Christian academics and British Baptists in the last 150 years.
Prophets Rather Than Scholars
The idea for such an institution arose from Spurgeon’s tutoring of a young man named Thomas William Medhurst. Spurgeon began teaching Medhurst “theology for two or three hours each week,” in the first year of Spurgeon’s pastorate at the New Park Street Chapel in London (1855). Spurgeon was twenty-one years old; Mehurst was his junior by only a year.
The college emerged from a steadily growing group of tutees. By 1861, 20 young men were under Spurgeon’s tutelage, and three years later the group grew to over 100 aspiring ministers. The demands of such a flock required the hiring of staff and the acquisition of meeting space. Thus was born the Pastors’ College.
This institution had both numeric and spiritual success. At the time of Charles Spurgeon’s death, approximately 900 students had come through the Pastors’ College. While this number may seem insignificant compared to the enrollment figures of today’s seminaries, the attendance at the Pastors’ College meant that by 1892, one out of five Baptist ministers in England were alumni of this institution.
The spiritual success of the graduates was profound. Spurgeon chartered the institution to aim at creating prophets, rather than scholars. That is, he trained the men for the practical duties (and delights!) of the gospel ministry.
Accordingly, Spurgeon mobilized graduates for the spread of the gospel in London and abroad. Some he sent to what one biographer called “almost dead churches,” while others he sent to plant churches, often paying the rent for a meeting place for a year. Before Spurgeon’s death, these graduates planted over 200 churches (80 in the London area), administered 100,000 baptisms, and received 80,000 new members into their congregations.
The institution’s influence was international, as Spurgeon sent graduates to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Amsterdam, Haiti, the Falkland Islands, South America, South Africa, Spain, Italy, India, China, and Japan. Spurgeon never ventured beyond continental Europe, but through his college and its graduates, he exerted an influence abroad.
The Sepulchers of the Prophets
However, the ten principals of Spurgeon’s College since his death have taken the institution in an entirely different direction. When asked if the college has deviated from the founder’s intent, current college principal, Nigel Wright replied, “The answer is both Yes and No.”
Wright claims that Spurgeon would not “have anticipated the extent to which the College reflects the diversities of age, gender, denominational identity, and ethnicity which make this such an exciting place to work.”
Wright is correct to claim that Spurgeon would not have anticipated “gender diversity,” but he has inaccurately gauged the college’s denominational and ethnic diversity in the days of its founder.
Spurgeon selected a paedo-Baptist to be the college’s first principal. Furthermore, he pioneered racial diversity in Baptist education by admitting students of Jewish (ethnic, not religious) and African descent, including a former slave.
Wright’s list of modifications at Spurgeon’s College since the death of its founder is either mendacious or unintentionally incomplete.
After, Spurgeon’s death, the college mended ways with the Baptist Union of England, from which Spurgeon himself had ceded because of the Union’s widespread departure from cardinal Christian doctrines such as the inerrancy of scripture, the substitutionary atonement of Christ, and the reality and eternality of hell.
Spurgeon’s College reunited with the Baptist Union, and eleven of its graduates ascended to the Union’s presidency. This relationship was in the midst of further doctrinal turmoil, as leaders continued to deny the teachings of scripture. For example, H. Wheeler Robinson principal of Regents Park College (1920s-1940s), denied the historicity of Adam and the reality of original sin, and Michael Taylor denied the deity of Christ in a formal BU meeting, in 1971.
Wright was indeed correct to claim that Spurgeon would not have anticipated the “gender diversity” of the college. In the twentieth century, Spurgeon’s College joined the British movement of inclusion of women in the pastorate. The school began admitting women students in the 1960s, and the first woman president of the Baptist Union and the first black woman president of the BU were both Spurgeon’s graduates.
The mere admission of women in Spurgeon’s is not unorthodox in and of itself. Biblically faithful academic institutions have trained women for the mission field and for other appropriate ministry endeavors. The controversy here is in Spurgeon’s encouragement of women pastors. The college boasts in the participation of its graduates in the preaching at important evangelical gatherings, including Debra Reid at events of the Evangelical Alliance.
A Theological Pilgrimage
The obvious question that emerges from these events is what is the cause of the theological trajectory of Spurgeon’s College? Reunification with the Baptist Union and the promotion of women in the pastorate are symptoms of a greater disease.
In his article “Baptists and Academic Freedom,” Nigel Wright evidences the kind of thinking that has accompanied this doctrinal decline. In outlining his approach to identifying evangelicals, Wright notes,
Along with other evangelicals, some Baptists, lacking a central teaching office or magisterium, have tended to maintain their theological identity by establishing commitment to doctrines such as biblical inerrancy, penal substitution, and eternal conscious torment in hell for the impenitent as signs of allegiance to the evangelical cause. A preferable approach would be to guard the center of evangelical conviction rather than to police the boundaries.
Wright describes the role of the theologian as a “pilgrim” rather than “settler”; therefore, “where beliefs change radically and overflow the appropriate dogmatic boundaries, the first recourse should be to the individual’s own sense of integrity and conscience. Self-regulation is the best regulation.”
One of Wright’s predecessors at the college was one of these “pilgrims,” who was widely influential. George Beasley-Murray led Spurgeon’s college for sixteen years before accepting a professorship at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1977. Beasley-Murray produced important theological treatises on eschatology, baptism, and the Gospel of John.
Yet, these works are admixtures of confessional adherence to Baptist doctrine and a theological pilgrimage from this tradition. In his eschatology, Beasley-Murray rightly affirms that Christ was self-conscious of his eschatological role, even while, according to Ian Randall, “suggesting that Jesus was mistaken with regard to the exact timing of the Parousia.” Regarding baptism, Beasley-Murray affirmed baptism by immersion and for believers alone, but he also described conversion and baptism as incomplete without each other, which earned him the label as his day’s “foremost Baptist sacramentalist.” Beasley-Murray’s commentary on the Gospel of John, published in the Word Biblical Commentary series, endorsed C. H. Dodd’s view of the authorship of John’s gospel; that is, the gospel was compiled by a community of John’s followers and was shaped primarily by preaching concerns.
Another interesting facet of his theological pilgrimage was his involvement in the World Council of Churches. He participated in a number of WCC study groups, and in the 1950s he wrote, “I should be grateful to God if the general theology of the World Council of Churches, and the deep spirituality manifested therein, characterized our own Denomination. In fact, we fall far short of it.”
Lessons from Spurgeon’s College
The theological trajectory of Spurgeon’s College has followed the authority which the college’s leaders have established. The founder’s intent was to train a generation of prophets, who would herald forth “thus saith the LORD.” The established authority for these alumni was the very word of God. Tragically, Spurgeon’s alumni came to see the conscience as the authority in theology.
Each generation of Christians is a generation away from forsaking the truths of the faith. We would do well to emulate the spirit of the founder of Spurgeon’s College, particularly, those young men who are enrolled in theological studies. Let us aspire to become prophets before scholars—even if, the Lord wills scholarly labors for us—declaring the word of the Lord to the ends of the earth or the lowliest of congregations.
Sources
Bacon, Ernest W. Spurgeon: Heir of the Puritans. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1967.
C. H. Spurgeon Autobiography. Ed. by Harrald, Joseph and Spurgeon, Susannah. Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1994.
Chadwick, Rosemary. “Spurgeon, Charles Haddon.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Conwell, Russell H. Life of Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Nashville: Central Publishing House, 1892.
Culpepper, Alan R. “George R. Beasley-Murray.” In Baptist Theologians, ed. Timothy George and David S. Dockery, 567-87. Nashville: Broadman, 1990.
Fullerton, W. Y. Charles H. Spurgeon: London’s Most Popular Preacher. Chicago: Moody Press, 1966.
Hayden, Eric. “Did You Know?” Christian History. 1991. Available from http://www.spurgeon.org/spurgn2.htm; Internet.
Randall, Ian M. A School of the Prophets: 150 Years of Spurgeon’s College. London: Spurgeon’s College, 2005.
Commenting on Psalm 32:1-2, John Calvin writes,
The more eminently that any one excels in holiness, the farther he feels himself from perfect righteousness, and the more clearly he perceives that he can trust in nothing but the mercy of God alone. Hence it appears, that those are glossly mistaken who conceive that the pardon of sin is necessary only to the beginning of righteousness. As believers are every day involved in many faults, it will profit them nothing that they have once entered the way of righteousness, unless the same grace which brought them into it accompany them to the last step of their life.
Or, as Paul put it in Colossians 2:6,
As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him.
-John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms (Baker reprint 2003), 526.
Undertaking a history of anything contemporary often is an exercise in futility. The events of tomorrow could easily render this undertaking irrelevant. Recently, though, I was reflecting on the state contemporary Christian music (CCM), and I realized what this music says about the art evangelical Christians are creating and consuming these days. The state of CCM is a reflection of two trends, which may have evolved from consumer-driven trends to consumer-shaping trends.
Baptizing the Mainstream
In 1995, DC Talk released its Jesus Freak album, and the album met much commercial success. Jesus Freak climbed to 16 on the Billboard 200, which was the highest initial debut for a “Christian” album, and eventually sold two million copies.
If you asked a twenty-something or thirty-something CCM-listener to identify a favorite CCM song, the odds are pretty good that the album’s title track would be the reply.
However, for every Jesus Freak album purchased, ForeFront Records should cut a royalty check to the estate of Kurt Cobain. His band, Nirvana, created the market for Jesus Freak, and DC Talk essentially pirated the sounds and themes of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
Undoubtedly, Nirvana was the most influential rock band since the British invasion. If not for Cobain, Novoselic, and Grohl, we would all still be listening to big-hair 80s rock bands. The band’s biggest commercial success, the album Nevermind, toppled Michael Jackson’s Dangerous from the peak of the Billboard 200 in 1992.
“Smells Like Teen Spirit” made the Seattle sound commercial. Distortion, screaming vocals, and the mosh pit—all distinctive of “grunge”—were now here to stay. DC Talk’s “Jesus Freak” capitalized on the popularity of Seattle rock. However much the trio tried to infuse its hip-hop stylings into the track, “Jesus Freak” was artistically indebted to Nirvana.
Probably what’s more interesting is that the two songs are so thematically similar. Both tracks touch heavily upon the idea of identity. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” critiques the features of late 80s and early 90s young adults: violence (“load up on guns”), apathy (“here we are now, entertain us”), and independence (“our little group has always been”).
“Jesus Freak,” though less sarcastic, is no less fascinated with identity. The title is a moniker wielded by the world, but gladly embraced by the song’s speaker. “Jesus Freak” identity is largely understood by the way of negation. Repentance (“all the me I’ve divorced”) and resolve (“I won’t live and die for the power they seek”) are key elements of this identify. The street preacher and John the Baptist serve as emblems of this identity.
The more immediate observation from the DC Talk and Nirvana parallels concerns the CCM industry. DC Talk and ForeFront records showed that Christian musicians could peddle rock and pop trends to Christian audiences with Christian themes and produce commercial success.
Jesus Freak debuted approximately four years after Nevermind debuted and three years after “Smells Like Teen Spirit” reached number one. This scenario should sound all too familiar to anyone who has listened to a Christian music radio station in the last ten years.
CCM record labels have since improved how quickly they respond to secular radio success. A good example is Evanescence (2003) and BarlowGirl (2004).
The resultant state of CCM has been something very similar to the 80s hair-band trend. Record labels and producers imposed certain musical and cultural norms on rock bands: hair styles, wardrobes, ballads with predicable harmonies, synthesizers. Instead of big hair and ballads, the CCM labels are selling whatever was big last year in secular markets.
The Worship Music Movement
One movement has enervated this trend in CCM: the worship music movement. Labels realized an even more profitable angle: have famous artists sing worship songs that Passion and other movements popularized. The audience will attach to these songs as spiritually beneficial and fork over big dollars.
The early 2000s were inundated with commercially successful worship albums. Third Day’s Offerings (2000) and Michael W. Smith’s Worship (2001) both sold over 1,000,000 copies. Smith went on to release Worship Again (2002), which sold an additional 500,000 copies.
What’s interesting about Smith’s worship albums is that, although he is an acclaimed songwriter, he wrote so few of the tracks. Christian radio was peddling “new” Michael W. Smith material that youth groups and contemporary-oriented churches had been singing for years.
After the commercial success of Offerings, Worship, and Worship Again, the commercial worship music movement soon followed. Caedmon’s Call (2001, 2006), Rebecca St. James (2002), and Newsboys (2003) entered the foray.
The commercial success of worship music generated a new genre of CCM artists. Worship artists and bands such as Sonicflood, MercyMe, Jeremy Camp, Big Daddy Weave, and Todd Agnew kept the CCM airways humming with new worship material. MercyMe, in particular, dominated the industry by selling 2,000,000 copies of Almost There.
CCM radio stations, in the 2000s, have largely moved toward continuous rotations of worship music. The dramatic shift of the market has not necessarily been a positive development for the genre of worship music. Radio-friendly unit-shifters are becoming a-theological, non-confessional love songs, of which the listener’s romantic interest could very well be the subject.
The Art of Evangelicals
Musician Derek Webb has described the relationship between art, commerce, and religion as a dysfunctional marriage. The CCM industry has emphasized business in its approach. As secular music trends fluctuate, CCM responds with its “Christian versions.” When contemporary worship music had become deeply entrenched in the youth, college, and contemporary scene, CCM responded with a myriad of worship-oriented artists and albums.
As creators of art, CCM artists have lost, or perhaps simply stymied, creativity and innovation. CCM sounds increasingly aged, either imitating the sounds of secular radio from yesteryear or the praise songs of conferences from yesteryear.
As confessors of truth, CCM artists have lost, or perhaps simply stymied, regard for doctrine. CCM sounds increasingly hallow, speaking to God as lover, rather than lord.
The most damaging analysis of these trends is the influence CCM exerts upon contemporary church life. While CCM’s worship music movement may have been consumer initiated, the movement is deeply impacting the worship of the church. Now, church “worship leaders” strive to be current and “fresh,” which entails imitating the newest praise chorus peddled by CCM radio.
We must be on our guard, even in the midst of music labeled “Christian.” Remember that the industry is not only offering its listeners “family-friendly,” “upbeat,” “encouraging” music; it’s selling records, as well. And when zeroes and ones are as important as chapter and verse, we might be better off sounding like the nineteenth century than worshipping like its 1999.
Saving conviction extends itself to all sins, not only to sin in general, with this cold confession, I am a sinner: but also to the particulars of sin, yes, to the particular circumstances and aggravations of the time, place, manner, occasions, of the sin performed; to the nature of sin, as well as practice. There must be no baulking of any sin; the sparing of one sin, is a sure argument that you are not truly humbled for any sin.
John Flavel, Husbandry Spiritualized: or, The Heavenly Use of Earthly Things in The Works of John Flavel (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1997), 5:64.
