91. Q. What are some of the chief promises of the Author of this salvation concerning the union which subsists between the Lord and his people? 1. A. "Come out from among them and be you separate, and I will receive you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty." 2. "I will dwell in them and walk in them; I will be their God, and they shall be my people." 3. "If a man love me he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come and make our abode with him." 4. "Behold I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in and sup with him and he with me." 5. "I will never leave you nor forsake you." "Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift!" "O! the unsearchable riches of Christ!" "Christ in us the hope of glory!!" THE CHURCH. Q. 93. What is the church of Christ? A. The congregation of saints on earth and in heaven. Q. 94. What is meant by a church of Christ? A. An assembly of persons meeting statedly in one place; built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus himself the chief corner stone. Q. 95. Who are the members of a church of Christ? A. Those only who voluntarily and joyfully submit to him as lawgiver, prophet, priest, and king: who assume him as their Saviour, die to sin, are buried with him, and rise to walk in a new life. Q. 96. What is the constitution of a christian congregation? A. None for a christian congregation. Jesus is king and lawgiver. Q. 98. How are the articles of the christian constitution to be acceded to and adopted? A. The articles of the christian constitution are all adopted by every individual, in his immersion into the death and resurrection of the Lord. Q. 99. Are christians born into Christ's kingdom by being born of water and the Spirit? A. Yes. Thus they become citizens of the kingdom of Jesus. Q. 100. But does this make them members of every christian community. A. No: their particular membership in any one community is an after act. Their being members in Jerusalem, Rome, or Corinth, depends upon their location, personal application, and reception. Q. 101. Can any Christian congregation, by any order from the King, refuse to receive any citizen of his kingdom? A. No: unless he act in a manner unworthy of a citizen. Q. 102. But must he not always prove his citizenship before he can be received as a citizen? A. The congregation which receives him, must have evidence that he is a citizen. Q. 103. Of what nature is this evidence? A. The community must either have seen him naturalized, or have testimony from such members of it as have seen him regenerated; but if he have not been born in that place, he must produce letters of recommendation, or written testimony of his naturalization and demeanor as a citizen, before he is worthy of the confidence of any community. Q. 104. What constitutes the regeneration or naturalization of a citizen? A. His being born of water and of the Spirit. Q. 105. What are the social privileges of a citizen in the congregation? A. He has certain natural and inalienable rights in this kingdom; amongst which are a christian education, a place at the Lord's table, the affection of all the brotherhood, the right of being heard on all matters which concern his individual spiritual interest, or that of the community; and a part in every privilege, honor, and immunity which belongs to the whole society; for whatever belongs to the whole belongs to each individual member of the body of Christ. Q. 106. How may he lose his citizenship in this kingdom? A. By committing treason against the King. Q. 107, What constitutes treason against the King? A. The placing, or an attempt to place upon the throne of legisla tion and government any rival of the King; or what is in effect the same, a renunciation of Jesus as Prophet, Priest, and King. Q. 108. Is not any moral outrage upon a fellow-citizen an act of rebellion against the King? A. Unless repented of, abandoned, and redressed, as far as in the power of the aggressor, it is an act of rebellion, and may amount in the end to a renunciation of the King. Q. 109. Does not the possibility of such occurrences require government or presidency in every congregation? A. Every christian community, large or small, is an organized society-not a mob, not a popular assembly-in which there are persons whose business it is to preside over the community, and to execute the laws of the King. Q. 110. What are these persons called? A. Presidents or bishops, elders or seniors, and deacons or servants of the congregation. Q. 111. How are they appointed to office? A. By the election or appointment of the community. Q. 112. What are the qualifications of the presidents or overseers9 A. The art of teaching, the art of governing or presiding with effect, and a high reputation for piety and humanity. Q. 113. What are the qualifications of the deacons or public servants of the congregations? A. That they be business men of known fidelity and integrity. A. Yes; every thing in the christian kingdom that is done is to be done in some manner. Every thing is to be done in the name of the King, or by calling upon his name. Authority is always conferred by the voice and by the hands of the community over which the supervision or presidency is to be exercised. Their own voice and their own hands, their election and their separation and consecration to the work, are necessary to the appointment of all public functionaries. Q. 115. What is meant by the discipline of a congregation? A. The application of the laws of the Christian King to the behavior of the citizens. Q. 116. Are there general laws from the King for the exercise of discipline in the christian assemblies? A. There are general rules and special examples found in the apostolic epistles to the congregations; and the Saviour himself for private offences propounded rules of universal acceptance, adapted to all ages and all conditions of men. But experience and prudence will, in reference to all specialities, guide in the application of these laws and precedents, for the preservation of the purity and unity of the congregation. 117. When the members of any community sin against one another, or commit offences of a private and personal character; and when they are not adjusted in private, but brought into the congregation, are they not to be managed in the public assembly as public misdemeanors or offences against the Christian profession. A. Yes, so far as this:-that the congregation, or those appointed by the congregation to judge such grievances, must act upon good and valid testimony. Q. 118. Are christian congregations to have any matter decided by a committee? A. Not ultimately. The whole congregation must finally act in all cases which come before it. But as the whole congregation could not in all cases be judges of many matters, they are to appoint what Paul calls "judges," or "secular sects of judicature," for the arbitrament or adjustment of such matters as could not be correctly examined by females and minors. Q. 119. But are not the presidents of a congregation appointed, not only to preside in the meeting on the Lord's day, but also to see that the laws of the King be executed in reference to those who offend? A. They are indeed called rulers, presidents, overseers and elders, in the New Testament; which terms, in the then current acceptation of them, implied as much as that they had in charge the discipline of the congregation, but not in such a sense as to preclude the necessity of all cases of discipline being ultimately decided by the whole community whose organs they are. Q. 120. Is there any peculiar meaning in the forms in which the discipline of a christian community shall be praticised, which calls for a divine model? A. No. The object is to preclude all injustice, unrighteousness, partiality and impurity, from christian communities. The things to be avoided are all pointed out, and the general principles which are to govern a community are propounded; but as there are no supernatural objects to be accomplished, there are no supernatural or extraordinary rules submitted. The only difference between the discipline of the church and any other society is this, that it aims at greater purity in its members, and to secure that object it proposes a more elevated code, and takes the most efficient measures to preclude partiality or injustice in the execution of its laws. Q. 121. Is there no divine model of decency and order? A. Yes, the visible universe, nature and society, are models of order, and suggest to us our first conceptions of decency. "Go to the ant, thou sluggard!" "Consider the ravens," you that are anxious for the morrow; "Observe the guests who seat themselves at the tables of public entertainments," you that aspire to high places; "Put new wine into new bottles," you that would confound things ancient and modern; "Look at nature," you men who wear long hair. In every great house there are vessels of wood, earth, iron, silver and gold. "Have you not houses to eat in?" &c. &c. &c. But there is no divine model of the mode in which every offence shall be tried and decided in a christian congregation. But whether it shall be decided upon the testimony of two, upon the first hearing, by the whole congregation; or whether it shall be communicated first to the presidents of the congregation, and stated by them to the congregation; or whether a committee, or judges be appointed; or whether these shall again report their decision to the whole congregation, are matters which are not decided by a positive law, as if the discipline of a church was, like the ritual of Moses, full of symbolic import, or a part of the positive worship of God. But one thing is evident, that that man is to be treated as a heathen or a publican who will not hear the congregation, whether it speak, every one in turn, or through its tongue-the president for the day; or by a committee appointed for the purpose by the parties, if parties there be; or by the congregation; or by the elders whom the congregation has cho sen. Q. 122. But would it not appear expedient, and scriptural too, that when there are presidents appointed in a congregation, no matter of discipline come before the congregation until they are apprized of it, and until the case is prepared for the ears of all who ought to act upon it? A. There is no positive law that says so: but Paul puts to the blush the Corinthians, for not following their own reason and sense of propriety in a case not more clear nor evident than this. See 1 Cor. vi, 4, 5. Q. 123, What are to be the objects of discipline, of reproof, admonition and correction, in a christian community? A. Unchristian words and deeds: not men's private opinions, but their individual practices. OPINIONS. Q. 124. Are men never to be called to an account for their opinions? A. No. There is no instance of this kind in the Jewish or Christian scriptures-God alone is judge of thoughts and private opinions. Q. 125. But if private opinions are expressed, are they not to become matters of discipline? A. By no means, unless a person express them for the sake of compelling others to receive them, or to exclude them from their fellowship if they do not receive them. In that case he is answerable, not for his opinions, but his practices. He is a factionist, is seeking his own honor, making a party, and on these accounts sins against the christian constitution; and such a person, after a second admonition, is to be rejected, Q126. Are not opinions purely intellectual matters, and not to be regarded as moral principles? A. They are purely intellectual matters, and ought to be so regarded; but when any person makes them principles of action, he places them upon the same footing with divine oracles, and demands as much for his own reasonings as for the express commandments of the Great King. Q. 127. How do you distinguish between faith, opinion, and knowledge? 器 Ă. Faith is the belief of 'facts testified, or of testimony; knowledge is the assurance derived from actual and sensible perception, by the exercise of our own senses; and opinion is the view which the mind takes of all matters not certified to us by testimony, or our own experience. Thus Newton knew that bodies specifically lighter than water, would swim in it; he believed that king Harry VIII. seceded from the Roman Catholic institution; and he was of opinion that the planet Saturn was inhabited. Q. 128. Does not the correctness of a person's opinions depend upon the amount of information which chance may have thrown in his way, or upon the strength and activity of his own mind, and consequently are not necessarily a part of his moral character? A. As the man who opines that the earth was once a metallic ball, and he who regards it as having always been as flat as a plate, may be equally good citizens, so he that opines that free agency and rationality are the same thing, and he that opines that God in some mysterious way, "Binding nature fast in fate, Left free the human will," may be equally good citizens in the kingdom of Messiah. |