# Samuel Rutherford on true churches being deficient in discipline



## Reformed Covenanter (Dec 17, 2022)

_Distinct._ The power and right to discipline is a propriety essential to the Church, and is not removed from it, till God remove the Candlestick, and the Church cease to be a visible Church; but the exercise may be wanting and the Church a true visible Church, from which we are not to separate.

4 Discipline is a necessary note and unseparable from a visible Church, whole, entire, and not lame and imperfect. But a Church may retain the essence and being of a visible Church, and yet have no discipline in actual use, or little, and though want of discipline do leaven a _Church,_ yet it doth not (as [John] _Robinson_ saith) _evert the nature thereof, and turn it into Babylon and a den of Dragons. Robinson_ will have profaneness and impiety by absolute necessity rooted out by discipline, but he is too hasty. Nay not by public preaching of a sent Pastor, through absolute, but only through ordinary and conditional necessity. You bind the Almighty too hard.

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Samuel Rutherford on true churches being deficient in discipline


Distinct. The power and right to discipline is a propriety essential to the Church, and is not removed from it, till God remove the Candlestick, and the Church cease to be a visible Church; but the…




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