PCA Historical Center

Dr. Paul Woolley's (Westminster Seminary) 1951 chart of the Presbyterian denominations in the U.S.

Presbyterian History You Should Know - 1936:

Another Reason to Pay a Visit

Praising God for this most recent blessing—the PCA Historical Center now holds a collection of twenty-nine sermons by members of the Westminster Assembly, all published between the years 1641-1647, with eleven authors represented in this collection.

Robert Baillie: an overlooked Westminster divine:

"The sweetest exercise of a Christian is the improving of the privilege in hand, the making use daily of this mutual relation: We are God’s inheritance and God is our Portion. A soul truly religious must give itself up fully to be possessed and filled by God, to be replenished in mind, will, affections, memory, conscience, and every faculty, with the whole fulness of God, as an inhabitant, as a due, proper and only heritor. On the other part, it will claim and lay hold by faith on the power, the glory, the truth, the mercy, and all that is in God, as its own peculiar portion, as the only heritage which either in earth or heaven it desires to enjoy."
—Robert Baillie, Errors and Induration are the great sins and the great judgments of the time. (1645)

Errours and induration are the great sins and the great judgements of the time : preached in a sermon before the Right Honourable House of Peers, in the Abbey-Church at Westminster, July 30, 1645, the day of the monethly fast : Baillie, Robert,... Printed at the request of the House of Lords

Best preaching quote?

“​It is not what we seek for others, that usually profits them most. Commonly God makes us seek and find for ourselves, and then testify to others what we have seen, and speak what we know. It is the lack of this element that makes much of our preaching so powerless; for it is the God-taught man who is the God-sent messenger. It is Christ found by us for our own souls in solitude, who is Christ preached by us on the house-tops, and so lifted up that all men are drawn to him. "
—Alexander Moody Stuart

HT: Zach Dotson

We Stand on Shoulders : How the Work Began.

The old Southern Presbyterian Church worked from 1866 to 1879 to come up with their first approved Book of Church Order. Except they had not tackled the Directory for Worship section. That work waited till the next year, and so they began in 1880 but it was only in 1894 that they finally agreed upon the text for this Directory.

News as posted Dec. 1, 1880:
THE DIRECTORY FOR WORSHIP
The proposed new “Directory for the Worship of God” is just at hand. The last General Assembly ordered that a copy of the same be forwarded to each minister of this church, and two copies to each session; also two copies to each stated clerk of Presbyteries for examination. It has many good points, and is in many points capable of improvement. Our elders and ministers will take pleasure in giving it a careful examination.

Our BCO History Project is getting an update. We've just completed an update to the Directory for Worship section of the Project, with addition of commentary by Dr. Morton H. Smith, who served as the first Stated Clerk of the PCA (1973-1988). Now on to updating the first two sections of the BCO (Form of Government & Rules of Discipline).

The Historical Development of the PCA Book of Church Order This project is designed to provide a convenient summary of the history of each of the paragraphs in the Book of Church Order of the Presbyterian Church in America. The primary point of this exercise is to show where we've come from and how we got here, to point out the value of the text we have inh...

READING THE MORNING PAPER
'Tis a fine day, reading the paper with coffee in hand.
Joking aside, I'm launching into a project to search out discussion and debate over the Directory for Worship section of the old Southern Presbyterian Book of Church Order. They first adopted the Form of Government & Rules of Discipline sections of their Book in 1879, but it wasn't until 1894 that they finally adopted that third and final section, the one covering worship. Hoping to find some great debate on the various chapters and paragraphs, many of which were eventually imported into the PCA's Book of Church Order and some of these remain unchanged to this day. More news as it develops.

NEW MACHEN BIOGRAPHY:

The link below provides the table of contents for Machen's Hope, a new biography written by Richard E. Burnett. Dr. Burnett is Executive Director and Managing Editor of Theology Matters and the book is being issued on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Machen's Christianity and Liberalism.

This should provide for some interesting discussion!

TinyCat

A Minor Machen Mystery:

The PCA Historical Center has just received with today's mail the donation of a small Greek New Testament formerly owned by Dr. J. Gresham Machen. Just nine pages bear some notes and we can't figure out the purpose of these notes. See the images in the link for a closer look:

A Minor Machen Mystery

WHEN AFFLICTION COMES YOUR WAY:

"You must be such as value not your happiness by the increase or decrease of worldly comforts, but by the increase or decrease of grace in your souls: 2 Cor. 4:16, 'For this cause we faint not, because, though our outward man perish, yet our inward man is renewed day by day.' If you value yourselves by your outward condition, you will still be imbrangled [confused or perplexed]; you should more highly esteem of and be more solicitous about the welfare of your souls in a time of affliction than of all things else in the world: and you will more easily submit and more wisely consider of His doing, and the better understand your interest. When the main care is about your souls, you will value other losses the less, as long as your jewel is in safe hands."

--Thos. Manton on Psalm 119:75.

AN EXCELLENT WORD FOR THE DAY (any day actually!):

[The Word of God] supports us in all our afflictions and extremities. All the wealth in the world composed and put together cannot yield us that true contentment and satisfaction which the word of God does to the obedient soul. Wealth cannot allay a grieved mind nor appease a wounded conscience. The word directs us where we may find rest for our souls: Jer. 6:16, 'Go ask for the good old way, and you shall find rest for your souls.' We lose ourselves in a maze of uncertainties till we come to the word of God: Mat. 11:28, 'Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and ye shall find rest for your souls.'

Here is ease for the great wound and maim of nature. The great maim of nature is sin. Now where shall we have a plaster for this sore, but only in the word of God? So for particular afflictions: Rom. 15:4, 'That ye, through the patience and comfort of the scriptures, might have hope.' Comfort is the strengthening of the mind, or the
fortifying the mind when it is vexed and weakened with doubts, fears, and sorrows: 'I had fainted in my affliction unless thy word had quickened me,' Ps. 119:50.

The comforts of the world appear and vanish in a moment, cannot firmly stay and revive the heart; every blast of temptation scatters them. Philosophy and natural reason cannot give us true ground of comfort: that was what they aimed at, how to fortify the soul and keep it quiet notwithstanding troubles in the flesh; but as they never understood the true ground of misery, which is sin, so neither the true ground of comfort, which is Christ. That which man offers cannot come with such power and authority upon the conscience as that which God offers, and bare reason cannot have such an efficacy as divine testimony and the law of God's mouth. This moonlight rots before it ripens fruits; but the word acquaints us with Christ, who is the foundation of comfort; with the Spirit, who is the efficient cause of comfort; with the promise of heaven, which is the true matter of comfort; with faith, the great instrument to receive it.

--Thomas Manton, Sermon on Ps. 119:72.