The below is a quote from James Durham’s “Concerning scandal” One often hears the verse, Judge not, lest ye be judged, used as the be all and end all of judging the estate of someone else. It is talking about when the person in question has been involved with gross sin, and is now being censured by his church, and what they should bear in mind while judging the situatin add the offender. It also makes the point just before, that such a professor, may in all other areas of life seem to live a faith filled or obedeint life. But if they either give a foney act of repentance, or praise Christ and then repeat the offense, that rather than hailing Christ or glorifying Him they are spitting on him, as their continuance of the offense negates the worth of any other acts of faith, and are probably nothing more than moral seriousness rather than saving grace. Sometimes, if a person sins heinously enough, behaves scandalously enough, and over a long enough time period, no matter what other professions or acts of seeming godliness they perform, while trampling Christ underfoot by continuing and repeating the offense, there is only one reasonable judgement to make.
If any says that charity ought to judge such a man sincere, seeing it can have no more? ANSWER: 1. What a person’s private thoughts may be upon these grounds we are not to determine. we only say that this acknowledgement comes not to be judged by a church judiciary upon that account. And 2. These who desire more for the constituting of church members, require besides this, evidences of the work of grace upon the heart, and expressions and narrations to that purpose. And indeed if the accounting of a person to be gracious and sincere were the alone upon which a person were to be admitted or restored to an actual right to the ordinances, such a serious profession would not be sufficient for the convincing of church officers of a person’s graciousness, even probably. For that which is to be accounted a probable sign of saving grace, must be that which though it does not always hold and be convincing, yet for the most part does so. For if it does more ordinarily fail than hold, it cannot be called probable. But experience in all times will confirm this, that more frequently such a profession fails and afterwards the person is found not to be gracious. Therefore it cannot be a probable sign, nor are we to account it such. We suppose that if all the churches of Christ that have been gathered, and all the penitents that have been received, were compared together, it will be found that there have been many more hypocrites than sincere believers. Yet in these cases this serious profession was called for. And though it may be pleaded that charity might construct the best of a person where the case is doubtful, yet (to speak abstractly of a sign) to account that a probable sign of sincerity, and such which ought to sway charity to account a person gracious, when yet is clear in reason that such a sign is ordinarily but an indicuium or evidence of moral sincerity, but not of saving grace, were against reason. For even in bodily diseases, that cannot be counted a probable sign of health, to ground a judgement on such a person’s liveliness, with which many more do die than recover. Nor can it be called uncharitableness, because the profession is not so accounted, for it is charity here to account the person serious, and to think as he says, sand not be dissembling therein; although it is not impossible for a dissembler to come all that length in outward evidences, and profession. But to believe that he is indeed so, as he says or thinks, is not a thing which charity is bound positively to conclude, but at the most, by judging nothing to the contrary to forbear any judging of the party till time evidences more afterwards. [Concerning scandal--James Durham]
