Congregationalism and church-action with principles of Christian union, etc

Contents

Notice to the Reader, - - -"-'.'*- -4 Principles, -------- 5

Positions denned, - - 20

Congregationalism, 24

Chapter I. Principles To Be Studied

SEC. I.— MORALS.

1. What ought to be done, can be done.

2. Demand only what is right : and in duty to God, sub* mit to nothing which is wrong.

3. A generation of boasters is never a generation of thinkers, still less of doers.

4. Moral Reform always begins with those least needing it.

5. Whatever goes to deny moral obligation and to confound moral distinctions, is of fatal bearing upon character and proves an effectual check upon the reformation.

6. To reform in the real and just sense is to restore original order, — to bring man back to his primitive model, — to induce him to become what his Maker intended him to be, and to act in conformity with the great principles or laws upon which his moral constitution was framed : and that the reform may be genuine, and the Reformer retain his hold on the public mind, he must admit of no compromise ; and discard the plea that the least of two evils is to be chosen, and that the end sanctifies the means.

7. Reformations live only by aggressive and onward movements.

8. A say and do-nothing philanthropy has too long deceived the hopes and mocked the miseries of men.

9. Men will not always stultify themselves by pretending to believe and disbelieve the same thing in the same breath.

10. To hold the doctrine of human rights, or the fundamental principles of justice in the abstract, and not to carry them out in practice, is, in fact, to apostatize from them.

6 MORALS.

1 1 . We are not permitted to seek the good even of the Universe at the expense of any right of any being in it. Rather than do this, evea Jehovah would take down the framework of the Kingdoms he has created, and retire as incompetent to the station he occupies.

12. Take away a man's right to worship, ivhere, and under what religious teaching he thinks proper, and you take away his right to worship according to the dictates of his own conscience.

13. To deny human rights from considerations of State policy, and to enforce this denial by the bayonet, is but one step higher in the scale of despotism, than when such denial is enforced by Church censure, founded on supposed but mistaken principles of Church organization.

14. Whatever is in accordance with and demanded by the nature and relations of moral beings is obligatory on them — is moral law, and no power in the universe can set it aside.

15. Every human right is indestructible : you may infringe it, you may bruise and mangle it, but there it is, in frowns or in smiles, weeping tears of joy or sorrow, a deathless witness against the wrong-doer.

16. To do right is the highest possible expediency.

17. That which is contrary to reason and natural justice never was and never can be law ; and no enactment whatever, which does not declare and apply the law of God, is morally obligatory.

18. To will right, to do right, for its own sake, is benevolence, is religion, is Christianity.

19. No Christian community which tolerates flagrant crimes can maintain a high moral standard.

20. Conscience is that power of the mind that affirms and enforces moral obligation : as a judge, it smiles upon obedience, and frowns upon disobedience.

21. All human events move in revolving circles, each successive age but reproducing aspects of the past ; and that age which best sustains inalienable rights, and best evolves the changeless principles of morality, bears most of the image of Divinity.

22. But revolving cycles, though similar, are not identical Each has, in itself, some characteristics of a peculiar

RELIGION. 7

nature, and to th/it extent part of its characteristics may terminate in its own period, part may revive and expand into the new revolving movement.

23. When the light shines upon any moral question, to plead ignorance of your duty is to proclaim your purpose to do wrong.

24. The gospel demands that we be not partakers of others' sins — that we abstain from the appearance of evil — * that the thoughts and desires be pure — the total abstinence from all that is wrong, and is therefore a system of the most absolute and perfect reformation, and the Saviour Himself was a Reformer without even the semblance of compromise.

SEC. II. — RELIGION.

25. He that would work for man, must also work for God, in his strength, and in use of the means he has appointed.

26. The invasion of human lights is an assault upon human salvation. The oppressor is a destroyer : and a conversion which leaves men at variance with the fundamental principles of a sound morality, leaves them unsaved.

27. To divorce the positive from the moral in religion is to destroy both.

28. Hearts dead to the claims of man, cannot be alive to the commands of God : and religion cannot flourish on the ground where humanity withers.

29. What God determines to accomplish, He will see that in some form, and at some time, and by somebody, it shall be done— all reformations from evil are of his instigation and those who engage in them are on the Lord's side.

30. The religion of Christ assumes as an essential element the doctrine of individual responsibility, and inalienable rights, upon which the whole framework of moral law and human accountability is erected.

31. Really to admit the claims of religion anywhere, is to admit them everywhere.

32. The practical Christianity of Christendom is most deplorably below the Bible standard, inasmuch as the current religion even of the Protestant and dissenting sects is, to a great extent, a religion of outward observances, of constitutional arrangements — of idolized rituals.

33. The commands of God to his people cover the whole ground of their civil and political duties, and clearly teach, that to set up the workers of iniquity and elevate oppressors to places of power, is the climax of apostasy and rebellion.

34. Religion and morality are inseparable, and the attempt to dissever them in any reformatory movements, is to err fatally in the start, and to ensure defeat in the result.

35. A revival of religion is no farther genuine than it extends its influence to overcome the sins of the community.

36. Christianity requires mankind to unite in one common brotherhood, under one common Lord; impresses the comprehensive fact of man's equality with man, and teaches him his own equality with his own mother's children.

37. The religion we propagate abroad cannot be expected to be more pure than that which is maintained at home.

38. Better that a corrupt Christianity were buried out of sight, than that it should continue to stalk abroad, and utter meaningless incantations and idle bravados, as it always does, after the vital principle is extinct ; and when, in the midst of its vain formalities, it confesses its own want of courage to look gigantic crimes in the face.

39. The religion of no people can rise higher than the theology upon which it is founded. A false philosophy cannot fail to produce a false theology. A dead-letter theology always involves a low standard of ethics, and the corruption of the public morals is a matter of course.

40. The continuance of civil liberty depends upon the maintenance of pure religion. Both civil liberty and religion involve human rights : therefore human rights should be made a test question in religion.

SEC. III. — THE CHURCH.

41. The people of God in all ages, and especially those composing the Church of the New Covenant, are appointed of God to be a perpetual band of Reformers, to contend without compromise against sin in all its forms, to begin the work, and always to move in the advance.

42. It is absurd to claim a higher degree of purity in the State, than we claim in the Church — to expect that public men in civil life will cease from crime when they find countenance among professed Christians, and their known sins go unrebuked.

43. Reforms linger from the want of purity in those engaged in them, rather than from the want of numbers.

44. When heretics begin to teach orthodoxy, it is not the time for the orthodox to deride their own faith by refusing to follow the right teaching, although coming from those deemed unsound in the faith.

45. Every Church is anti-christian whose practice denies the fundamental principles of justice, and is not conformed to the known example of Christ, and defends sentiments which encourage men in sin. To support an anti-christian Church is to support the most effective enemy of God and his law — of Christ and his gospel.

46. The question which divides those who oppose and those who countenance oppression, is a fundamental question of morality, and the church which practically stands on the wrong side of such a question is, in this respect, an anti-christian church.

47. A sound morality is an essential ingredient in the character of a Christian. The man who is guilty of theft, robbery, kidnapping, concubinage, and the withholding from the hireling his wages, lacks this ingredient ; and by these tests it may be ascertained how far the ministry and the church are or are not anti-christian.

48. To steal — to justify theft in others — to apologise for it — to keep silence in view of it, through fear of endangering other great interests, or through fear of making disturbance in the church or the neighborhood — are all acknowledged sins, and mark a man. as unworthy the confidence of the community, or membership in a Christian church, or good standing in the Christian ministry. In the same category, yet vastly more guilty, are reckoned, by the common sense of mankind, the stealers of men, women, and children, — their defenders, apologists, and silent supporters.

49. A true church of Christ is subject to His rules, and not to mere human compacts : to membership in it, evidence

2* of Christian character is necessary, and the loss of this evidence is the only forfeiture of church privileges.

50. Our blindness will not prevent unscriptural church organizations from falling, nor our supineness shelter us from being buried under their ruins.

51. We cannot carry the legislation of the country to a higher degree in morals than what is indicated by the practice of the church ; and so far as this practice connives at injustice, the CHURCH lies directly across the pathway of all attempts to reform the legislation of the country.

52. In the great work of doing good, or which is the same, in building up the true church of Christ, or which is still the same, in the work of a genuine reform, those whose principles and aims are coincident, who cherish the same temper and breathe the same spirit, should be united in their labors, and never be prevented from a sweet and efficient co-operation, by preferences for any outward forms or modes, or discrepancies on points in mental philosophy ; and this on the principle that you should never raise the formalities of religion to a level with the spiritualities of religion ; a principle on which a union of Christians universally might be secured.

53. There are certain indications in the churches, which the world never misunderstands, and by which they are never misled. One class of them is seen when churches and professed Christians are sticklers for orthodoxy and at the same time defenders of oppression ; when they connect their skill in hunting heresy with their ingenuity in evading the force of moral truth, and denounce as the worst of heresies the vindication of human rights ; when, to ward off" the appeals of Christian reformers, they contradict in detail all the fundamental doctrines of their own creed. Such indications destroy confidence in the religious integrity of such churches, and beget disgust with the system of doctrines they hold and teach ; and many wakeful and discerning minds in our country are thus induced to regard and to treat evangelical doctrine with contempt. But it is a hasty conclusion, that the leading tenets of a church are worthless or false because error and corruption are found in it.

54. The vices are a sisterhood: the blow which falls effectually upon any one, seriously affects the whole. And while a division of labor among reformers is needful , the true philosophy of reform, as confirmed by facts, teaches that every department must be sustained, and that no one can be carried to a triumph while the others are permitted to lag.

55. When new things are proposed, there should be a just discrimination. Churches may be reformed without being disorganized, and innovations are not, of course, reforms.

56. In the professing Church there is a large class who have never been born again, who have no spiritual discernment, whose sympathies are with the world and not with Christ and his cause. Hence, what is meat to one is poison to another. Most, if not all the local churches are heartdivided, and present the repel iant interests of converted and unconverted minds. A preacher, a lecturer^ or a reformer, is not therefore to be rejected because his doctrines produce divisions in such churches. But the legitimate and only correct inference is, that his labors are needed to bring kindred spirits to cluster together according to the opposite attractions of godliness and impiety : the truly spiritual to unite their energies, and those who sympathize with the world to go to their own ; that thus the Church may be purified.

57. When God rises to judgment, the churches that keep back the truth must drink a double portion, and drain the cup of trembling to the last dregs.

58. Blame incurred by the criminal acts of a Society, rests upon the individual who continues to give it his support. Christians do not lose their individual responsibility by being associated in churches ; and the question whether a man shall be made a chattel, need not perplex a Christian church many weeks.

59. Before a church can become a champion for the freedom of the world, she must herself learn to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ maketh His people free,

60. When Christians come to rely less on outward observances, and more upon Christian character — les^ on sacrifices, and more on mercy — less on rituals, and more on integrity and doing the will of God, they will turn with loathing from many things now said and done in the churches.

61. Christian or church union, is the union of all with each, and each with Christ. It is the fellowship of congenial souls united of choice and of necessity, by the fellowship of all and of each with the TRUE and the right, with the ever truthful and righteous ONE. The proper cognomen of this union is, the union of Christians.

62. Satan seldom sets up a church of his own where Christians will allow him a place in the Church of Christ : he seldom sets up an heretical church, so long as he can govern the nominally orthodox ; and the ominous cry of Church and State union will be hushed, when he can shut Christ and his poor from most of the so-called Evangelical pulpits in the land.

63. The churches in this country are in a signally critical condition. They must inevitably experience great changes. They cannot always compromise. Correct and noble in their principle they generally are, and, as churches, sadly recreant in practice. They will be compelled to come out and act up to their faith, or to abjure it. The encroachments of the enemy will drive them from their conservatism, or their fancied neutral ground. If they do not in fact sympathize with the oppressed against the wrong-doer, they must give up all pretensions of an honest, consistent regard for the distinguishing tenets of an evangelical faith.

64. To the extent in which churches are pure and spiritual will they be able to agree in labor and in practice. Where this purity does not exist, and Christians raise the formalities above the spiritualities of religion, any agreement among churches will be a deceitful truce, or an armed armistice.

65. Agitation is unavoidable ; the certain process, and the only means of a reform. Nehemiah resorted to this. By enlightening the masses, he formed a correct public sentiment against the nobles and the rulers and the priesthood, in their oppressions, and they were obliged to yield to the reformats i carried to its triumph by the popular voice. And all true Christian churches, in the midst of agitations, and to a. iy their fears, should tike for their motto and

THE MINISTRY. 13

watchword, " Trust not in princes, nor in the sons of men,'* and the divine counterpart, " Trust in the Lord, and stay : yourselves upon your God."

SEC. IV. — THE MINISTRY.

66. The Ministry is an appointed agency of God for the good of man : the Ministers of the Gospel are Christ's messengers to teach men their high duties to Him and to each other, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim deliverance to the captive, and to use the ordinances of the Gospel as the appointed modes of expressing and affirming our fealty to our common Father, and our fraternal regards for all his children.

67. The Church, to be spiritually revived, and that she may evangelize the world, must have a spiritually-baptized ministry, who can and who wilJ unfold the connection between Christian Theology and Christian Ethics, and give us their creeds in their lives, and who will fearlessly take the Bible position that Christians can have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness.

68. .Religious Teachers in the Church should occupy the foreground in all moral reformations.

69. To separate the active energies of the Church and of the Ministry from moral and religious reforms, is a conservatism which betrays religion with a kiss ; and when, in the progress of reform,, its advocates melt away and retreat, it augurs ill respecting the position occupied by the leading influences in the Church.

70. It is in vain to look for stable and steady efforts for a reformation in public morals, from a feverish, remittant, periodical religion ; or under the influence of a ministry trained in a school of worldly expediency, whose disciples will not serve God unless they can decypher on the interest board what good it will do.

71. The elevation of the poor and the oppressed is a prime and blessed feature of the gospel of Jesus Christ — Himself the friend of man, the tender sympathizer with human w t o, lifting his voice in tones of the kindest compassion amid the sighs and plaints and groans of the multitude : and the

14 THE MINISTRY.

day hastens in which the claims of a Church and ministry that do not plead openly the cause of these poor, enslaved, will be rejected.

72. Twelve years faithful and extended discussion of the doctrine of human rights, and the fundamental principles of morality and religion, have failed to induce the leading Theological Seminaries in the United States to take open ground in opposition to the system of American slavery; and on these points they seem to be receding farther into darkness. Let this excite the thinking to exclaim, if the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness ; and certain prominent influences to understand that, as in the days of Luther, an under current may effect a change in public sentiment of which men who are at the helm are not apprised.

73. When in Conventions of ministers, the strongest feelings are enlisted against what they regard as some form of heresy, and their deepest emotions excited at the prospect of denominational extension, while in fellowship with gross practical enormities, the times are ominous, especially in connection with the facts that there are two hundred thousand communicants to whom the Churches cannot give the Bible ; that they dare not petition the civil government, to which they give character ; for permission to teach their own crushed members to read the gospel, nor even remonstrate against the chattelizing of members of their own body ; that they may not proclaim the seventh commandment, nor explain the eighth ; that they cannot prevent ministers and laity from robbing, buying and selling their own Christian brethren, nor practically carry out their avowed creed from fear of popular odium: in view of all which, the verdict is unavoidable, that ecclesiastical organizations are imbecile and losing their influence over the community ; a verdict which must be heard and felt.

74. Let none be surprised at strange combinations and incongruous connections among ecclesiastics. When apparent antipodes, both in politics and in professed theological sentiments, find it necessary to combine their forces in order to resist the searching application of Divine truth, the fact shows that Satan is preparing to fight his last battles.

GOVERNMENT 15

75. The sentiment that ministers should not meddle with politics, and that to plead for the oppressed is to interfere with politics, if permitted to guide and control, would put it beyond their power to rebuke any sin which has the sanction of the State, and would release them from their responsibilities to teach the people their high and solemn duties in the choice of their rulers.

76. A tyrannical government, and all oppression under the forms of law, are invariably connected with a corrupt religion ; or the perversion of the true religion by the faithless co-operation and betrayal of its professed friends and teachers.

77. Adhesion to an ungodly ministry inevitably drags down to its own level the flock : and it has become a question of ineffable interest, whether the people of this land have virtue enough to separate themselves from all religious teachers, who do not honestly and continuously enlist in the cause of universal freedom.

78. When a minister finds that the praying and most spiritual portion of his Church are in advance of him in the divine life, he should promptly come up and lead them on or cease to be their teacher.

79. In no country, nor among any people, can either liberty or despotism prevail without the co-operation of the religious teachers.

SEC. V. — GOVERNMENT.

80. The Lord Jesus Christ has either instituted church government, or he has not : if he has not, it can be shown ; if he has, we can ascertain w^ith precision what it is, .and we have no right to substitute the inventions of men for his institutions,

81. Authority in the Church is given for edification and not for destruction — not to sustain a system of policy which shall minister to the pride of any class of men, nor to form a body with separate interests fiom the laity, but for the purity, instruction and happiness of the whole body.

82. There must be freedom in the Church, before there can be freedom in the State, for the whole question of human

16 RELIGION AND POLITICS.

liberty, political and religious, is involved in the question of Church government. No people enjoy a greater degree of religious liberty than is permitted by their church polity : and civil and political liberty springs only from pure Christianity. No people will long maintain a higher or a purer liberty in the State than exists in the Church-arrangements of their current religion.

83. Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom anywhere and everywhere. Anti- republican church government is a dangerous element in a Republican civil government.

84. All church authority, according to the 18th of Matthew, exists and resides with the assembled brotherhood in the local ghurch ; and if her powers are transferred to a select few, the members can have very little influence in church affairs.

85. When things not deemed essential to Christian character are made essential to church membership, Christian liberty as well as Christian unity is violated.

86. In a Republican government, it is the business and the duty of the people at the ballot-box, to make it conform to its own fundamental principles.

SEC. VI. — RELIGION AND POLITICS.

87. Christians are under religious bonds to sustain civil governments on the great principles of moral law ; and their only correct and consistent course on this subject is to think right, to pray right, to preach right, and to Vote right, in support of equal and exact justice to all classes and conditions of men, irrespective of color or caste, discarding the legislation which raises questions of policy above questions of right, and carrying the pure strict principles of morality into all their political actions.

88. Moral questions have to a great extent a political bearing, and all political questions have a moral bearing.

89. Political relations are subject to the same moral tests with other relations. The religion of every nation gives shape and character to its political institutions, and they become what its current religion makes them ; and to maintain that religion has nothing to do with politics, is vir-

RELIGION AND POLITICS. 17

tually to declare that integrity has nothing to do with your own character.

90. A large portion of the Bible is occupied with politics, and the religious character of a people is tested by their political acts ; and when you say that politics have nothing to do with religion, you aver that a political man is not bound to do right, and that integrity has nothing to do with legislation.

91. Your politics are wrong, of course, if the faithful presentation of the principles of righteousness cross your political path ; and to refuse in this case to change your course, is the practical avowal that you place expediency above right.

92. The Divine Law requires love ; and nothing is Law, either human or divine, that is inconsistent with universal benevolence. And the man who breathes the true Christian spirit, will feel a deep interest in the affairs of human governments, and to a greater or less extent bear a part in them : not, indeed, from mere selfish or party purposes, but to promote the public welfare, and to fulfil the political duties required of every good man, at the ballot-box, and in every other relation where his acts and opinions will further the choice of good rulers, and secure for the country a righteous legislation.

93. In the first ages of Christianity the relation and the attitude of the civil government and the Church were that of the persecutor and the persecuted.

The next stage was that in which persecution ceased, and the friendly relation of granting and receiving protection existed between the State and the Church.

In the next stage Christianity became anti- christian, raised a supreme head, aimed to control the civil magistrate even in civil matters, and the struggle resulted in the establishment of a complete spiritual and civil despotism.

The overthrow of this revolting despotism was commenced by the Reformation, but the work was not perfected.

In the succeeding ages, men have been slow to receive the truth on the subject of civil and religious liberty ; and so late as the middle of the 19th century, the alphabet on this subject is yet to be studied by leading influences in Christen- 3

SECTARIANISM, dom, and a vigilance that sleeps not is needed to keep back the triumphs of both civil and ecclesiastical domination.

The true and just theory is, that the Civil Government, uncontrolled, manage the civil concerns of the State ; but in accordance with the inalienable rights of man and the changeless principles of morality, securing to all classes under it personal protection, the rights of conscience, and the right of private judgment : the Church uncontrolled regulating her own concerns in accordance with the same principles, asking nothing of the State but protection, and demanding nothing of the State but that its legislation shall accord with the principles of righteousness. This leaves Religion untrammelled : the Church confined to her own sphere, and the State acting only within its own limits.

The Ministers of State, 01 civil rulers, will, on this theory, carefully and conscientiously apply the principles of the Divine government to the civil and political interests of human society ; and the Ministers of Religion will present Bible counsel respecting the civil and political duties of the people, and act as the faithful reprovers of iniquity and evil doers.

94. Political action, political preaching and praying, and political voting, would never have come into bad odor if

- Christians and Ministers of the Gospel had not joined with the wicked in putting vile men into civil office, and sustained oppressive legislation ; and for them to refrain from political action because politics are corrupt, is to hand over the administration of the affairs of State to the devil, — instead of which, their duty is to reform, to proclaim Bible truth, and to sustain the legislation which the Bible approves.

SEC. VII. — SECTARIANISM.

95. There is nothing so high or so holy which the touch of sectarianism will not taint and transmute into its own debased image.

96. It is the peculiarity of sectarianism to substitute the profession for the practice : hence it falls, when the Church insists upon practice, or a fair Christian character, as a test of membership ; for such a test would eventually unite all

SLAVERY. 19