The Glory of a True Church

Originally titled: The Glory of a True Church, And its Discipline Displayed Wherein a true Gospel–Church is described. Together With the power of the Keys, and who are to be let in, and who to Be shut out. Published in 1697

Written originally at the request of his members, this book met one of the outstanding needs of the English Particular Baptists at the end of the seventeenth century. Having survived some thirty turbulent years of persecution, they needed some biblical direction as to how to conduct their life together as gathered churches. Benjamin Keach’s book met this need. He was concerned for the corporate life of the people of God, that they understood who they were, how their life was to be ordered by the word of Christ, and how they were to fulfill their responsibilities as members of the church. He emphasized the glory of the church—a much-needed emphasis in the early decades of the twenty-first century when that glory has been so tarnished. Keach believed that God had invested his glory into the churches of Christ and in their authority and power. That glory derived from the head of the body, the Lord Jesus Christ, and was to be displayed not only in the way the church ordered its affairs, but also by the holiness of each of the members, by their sincere love and prayers for one another, and by their bearing with one another’s burdens and weaknesses.