Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

as sarcasm; it is dictated in the spirit of candor. It is true, after all the light that can be elicited shall have been thrown on the subject, I shall feel bound to use my own mind in deciding it. This is not only the privilege but the bounden duty of every intelligent being; and he who leaves this guide, flies from the standard around which his great leader and commander has commanded him to rally. We must "prove all things, and hold fast that which is good."

It may, perhaps, appear that the rules of decorum would have dictated that Philalethes and John should have been left to themselves; but as when in company a conversation occurs between two individuals, a third person present, feeling interested, frequently joins in, without being considered as violating the rules of decorum; so it is hoped it may appear on the present occasion.

I still like to appear in the humble guise of

AN INQUIRER.

CO-OPERATION OF CHURCHES-No. V.
[Containing Correspondence between A. B. G. & F. W. E.]

Brother E

October 29th, 1831,

YOURS came duly to hand. I was gratified to hear of your safe arrival at and comfortable prospects afterwards. But I am exceedingly jealous over you and all my brethren, as I see by the last Harbinger (No. 10. Vol. ii.) an association in embryo. It was from exactly such a beginning that the many-headed monster grew. There never was, and there never can be, any occasion for such a combination of "the churches" to build up the Redeemer's kingdom. His kingdom is built-is come. His church is one. To convert the world is no part of their business; no object of their anxiety nor solicitude. The Apostles did their own work, and neither had, nor needed, any successors. If they have no successors in office, they certainly can have none in business. They preached the gospel to all the world. They were the fathers of the gospel age-the heads of the tribes of spiritual Israel. They drew the line as wise master buildand laid the foundation. Jerusalem was built compact together: her walls salvation-her gates praise. So is she a "strong city:" the everlasting arms are under her, and the Eternal God her refuge. Her watchmen see eye to eye-together do they sing. Her King is in the midst of her. Her law is the spirit of life, love, and liberty; her form of doctrine in the Scriptures of truth; her garner is full, affording all manner of store; the inhabitant says not, "I am sick;" all the gifts possessed by the church are for her edification; all the divine knowledge, wisdom, love, faith, hope, energy, courage, &c. are bound to the church; they cannot be exercised out of it. Each individual is a component part of the body. The whole church, in the order of the gospel, is a city on a hill-a light which cannot be hid.

ers,

There is exhibited-there is manifested the temperance, meekness, brotherly love, watchfulness, honesty, truth, wisdom, &c. of the spirit of Christ; and each one according to his gift, and the things of which he is made a steward, ministers to the edification of the whole, in good works, as commanded in the Scriptures, viz. gospel faith by gospel obedience, love by feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and visiting the sick and in prison. The love of Christ will bring them together in as great numbers and as often as may be. The Apostles are a standing committee who have reported and been accepted on every question that can arise in the church of God. They therefore need no committee of contrivances- -no reverend bench of bishopsno college of cardinals--no synod--no consociation-nor association to manage their affairs; and no church can divest themselves of their own proper standing to become a part of any other body. That body must have more than one head who can spare any members to make committees on any occasion. I am jealous of any form or body of which the pattern is not in the Scriptures. It will certainly be a monster. Just look over the New Testament, and see where the church is required to send the gospel, or where any but the Apostles were ever authorized to labor in the word or doctrine out of the church. Note the places and send me word, and I will attend to them and write my views. But I stand on the word of the Lord; and we as a church have been excommunicated from the fellowship of the churches at the last session of the New Haven Association for sundry heresies of which we have not been informed. We were not summoned to attend court, and were cut off where we never were grafted on: "We have a law, and by our law, we ought to die.” Jews. But we rejoice in the Lord, and count the reproach of Christ worth more than all the treasures of Egypt. There is a body or grade of men called 'Baptist Ministers,' who are not a whit behind the most malicious adversaries of the church. They are proud, knowing nothing. They want great salaries, running greedily in the way of Balaam, and they will perish like Korah. The language of the Spirit is, "So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord? My soul has no fellowship with them. They love in word and tongue, but not in deed and truth. Through grace my honor is not united to their assembly, lest my years be given to the cruel, my labor to others, my strength and honor to a stranger."

A. B. G.

REPLY.

January 7th, 1832.

Dear brother G

YOUR favor of the 29th of October ult, was received on the 28th November, one month after date. I did not then calculate that two months more would pass before you would receive my reply: but tempus fugit-time flies away. We were happy again to hear from you, and much interested in the contents of your epistle, with the doctrine of which, for the most part, I most heartily accord. If there

be any difference between us, it is chiefly on one of your starting points, to wit:-"To convert the world is no part of their [the church's] business-no object of their anxiety or solicitude." If it be not the church's business to convert the world, whose is it? Not any other society's surely. But, perhaps, the proper antecedent of "their," in the above extract, is not church's, but "combination of churches," If so, we are at one here. I, too, have been jealous of this co-operation scheme, and am still exceedingly afraid of all representative bodies, associations, synods, general assemblies, &c. &c. whose professed object is 'the advancement of the Redeemer's kingdom.' The church of Christ,-the church in propria formu,' and 'in her members scattered abroad,' having the living Oracle in their hearts and hands, exhibiting its teachings by word and deed, I am fully persuaded, is the institution, and the only institution authorized of Heaven for this purpose; and, therefore, all-sufficient. My name and honor, I thank the Lord, are now united to none other. We agree perfectly in this, that 'the reign of Messiah has already comethat the Apostles did their own work, and neither had nor needed any successors. We agree in this, that "No church can divest itself of its own proper standing to become a part of any other body." But do we, or do we not, agree in all the proper works of the church? You say, "Just look over the New Testament and see where the church is required to send the gospel, or where any but the Apostles were ever authorized to labor in the word or doctrine out of the church." I consider the following, from the Saviour's sermon on the mount, as equally applicable to all his followers, "You are the light of the world. A city situate on a mountain must be conspicuous. A lamp is lighted to be put, not under a corn-measure, but on a stand, that it may shine to all the family. Thus let your light shine before men, that they seeing your good actions, may glorify your Father who is in heaven." [Matth, ch, v.] Stephen the Deacon was not an Apostle. [Acts vii.] nor was Philip the Evangelist. [ch. viii.] Their example, together with that of the many, who were dispersed through the regions of Judea and Samaria, on account of the first great persecution against the congregation in Jerusalem,-answer with me instead of commands; or, rather, coincide with, "Let him that hears say, Come." [Rev. xxii.] and "He that turns back a sinner from the error of his way, will save a soul from death, and will cover a multitude of sins." [James v.] How very irrelevant this last passage to prove that any but the Apostles were ever authorized to labor in word or doctrine out of the church! But may not one, who is called a brother, so far err from the truth, as to be delivered unto Satan? Answer.—Yes. See 1 Cor. v. 5. Well, then, as James does not limit his apostacy--as the brother might even come up in sinring to the number of seventy times seven, aud be counted as a heathen man and publican; the conversion of such a sinner being authorized, why not that of any other? "They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars forever and ever." [Dan, xii 3.] I would say, therefore,

let every disciple consider himself not as a servant, merely; but a son, a king, and a priest--let him approach boldly to a throne of grace, and offer up his sacrifices of thanksgiving and praise-let him press upon all, with whom he has influence, the all-important subject of salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ let him exhibit the evidences to produce faith, and then urge obedience--"Reform, and be each of you immersed in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." Let him neither promise, nor expect, any physical or mystic influences to accompany his preachings; nor any thing independent of these and the word, to convert men; but, with a common blessing, relying on the mighty truth alone, let him exhibit the testimony, and it will perform its own work. The truth-the truth as it is in Jesus, rightly apprehended, will convict, convert, and sanctify. How changed my views on this subject, from what they once were! Once I preached— 1st. The Holy Spirit,

"The Spirit, like some heavenly wind,

Breathes on the sons of flesh;

New-models all the carnal mind,
And forms the man afresh."

2d. Repentance; which I defined to be incipient godly sorrow. 3d. Faith.

4th. Remission or Justification, and Sanctification in part. 5th. Baptism; and

6th. Entire Sanctification at Death, and Eternal Life.

How different the tune played upon the same strings! How different, too, the strings! Repentance is not Reformation nor is Justification and Sanctification in part, the Remission of Paul and Peter. But I must draw my letter to a close.

Hoping, by this time, your health is quite restored, as that you may yet live and labor in the best of causes, I remain yours, in the bonds of the gospel.

F. W. E.

LOGIC AND CANDOR OF UNIVERSALISM-EXAMINED.

NO. 11.

THE Editors of the "Star and Sentinel of the West," have not as yet published my No. 1, page 80, vol. 3. headed "Logic and Candor of Universalism Examined." Instead of a compliance with their own proposition in the following words, "If Mr. Campbell dare to make the attempt to show that Unitarian Universalist preachers hold to any one point of doctrine with which he implicates them in his attempt to correct 'an evil report,' our columns are at his service; and if he refuses this INVITATION to justify his conduct, the chaisian public will say that our remarks are not uncharitable, and judge of Mr. Campbell according to his works;" they have given us more than four columns of abuse, without the semblance of an argument, and did not "dare" (to use their own term) to let their readers hear my examination of their logic and candor until they treated them with a

vial of the musk of Universalism by way of antidote. By turning over to page 530, vol. 2, the reader will see that the preceding proposition is unaccompanied with any proviso or condition whatever.

The conditions which I propose, page 534, vol. 2, were declared by Mr. Bailou himself to be fair and equitable. But instead of complying with these, some ex post facto conditions were proposed by these chivalrous editors in their paper of the 14th February. One of these conditions is that I publish in the Harbinger all their pieces; or, to give their own words: "1. Our columns shall be open to Mr. Campbell's pieces so long as he publishes ours in the Harbinger." This was in fact eating up or recalling the proposition which brought me out. Now the gentlemen have the hardihood to tell their readers that I have backed out, or something tantamount thereunto.

I did intend to publish, as my manner is, the pieces they might write in support of their theory, should they be couched in decent language and pertinent to the subject. My general, if not universal custom, was pledge of this; and as they did not at first demand it, I did not propose it. I had, I confess, but superficially glanced over their pages for some months before; but from that slight attention which I had bestowed upon their productions, I conceived that they owed more of their success with the public to their address, than to their logic or biblical attainments; and that they did not fail to whip with scorpions, in their own braggart way, the unfortunate victims of their universal benevolence, who dared to use the word hell in defiance of all they had said against that offensive monosyllable.

I did not much like, it is true, to fill some twenty pages per month with such matter as I generally saw in this Occidental Star; and I know full well that unless I obtained some definite proposition and some definite proof, it would be an augean task to follow them from Lizzard Land's End to the Elysian Phantasma, which lies as near their Hades as is Tartarus and the sluggish Acheron to the occiduous horizon in which their planet sheds its crepusculous rays upon the intellectual owls and bats which wing their sportive flight in the glimmerings of eventide.

More than four columns of brevier are filled in their last paper before me, without one proposition or argument in reference, direct or indirect, to their peculiar system of universal holiness and salvation. And although unconditioned on my part, I republished their first piece as a specimen of the good manners of universal benevolence, and in my No. 1. copied every word which, on any rule of interpretation known to me, I could regard as a reply to my first notice, they have not yet published my first number in redemption of my proposition. Some detached and garbled sentences are strewed through their declamations about my cowardice, and my representing the Bible as an augean stable!!

To prevent, if possible, such exhibitions of human folly and imbecility, I informed them in my No. 1. that "I would make no reply to any thing of that sort;" and as I do not intend to reply, I will republish nothing which is not in keeping with some pretensions to reason

[blocks in formation]
« VorigeDoorgaan »