[This transcript is not yet complete. More coming soon. &8212; CJ.]
What good reason can any one give for retaining a connection with a corrupt church—an anti-christian church—such a church as has been described? For what purpose should you remain? What obligation do you thus discharge? What divine precept do you thus obey? What heaven-appointed relation do you honor? It cannot be the relation between Christians and the church of Christ, for an anti-christian church is not his.
What is there to cling to, in remaining with such a church? Do you thereby fasten yourselves to the throne of the Eternal—to the great principles that form the pillars of the universe? Do you thereby cling to God, to Christ, to the Holy Comforter, the Reprover of Sin, the Revealer of Righteousness and Judgment to come? On the other hand, do you not weaken, if not sever, the cords that bind you to these, to the kingdom of heaven, by cherishing connections of so opposite and hostile a character? — Ponder, carefully, a few of the reasons why you should secede from such an apostate church.
Its credentials are fallacious, its claims are not valid. It relies on its historical documents, its parchments, its rituals, its creeds, its professions, its partizan zeal, its proselyting activity, its periodical or occasional excitements. It claims to be true, because there are true men who have not yet deserted it! It claims to be Christ’s church, because its iniquities have not yet wholly intercepted and quenched the overflowing streams of divine mercy, and driven away the Divine Spirit from all of its members, and from the entire human race! This is the full inventory of its fair claims. Here its appeal rests Farther than this, it cannot honestly go. As for performing its abundant promises, as for [...]
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