| 212 the New Testament accounts as the model of an Apostolical church, and then turning to contemplate the sect to which the writer belongs, we feel certain it will be sufficient to
"Look on this picture and on that."
"The leaders of this sect," says the archdeacon, "profess to believe in God the Eternal Father, and in his Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost; and so far as this is expressed it is the truth, but it may not be discovered by many who read or hear it, that it is not the whole truth."
With regard to our views of the Godhead they are before the public, being lately published in the STAR, in the fifth lecture on faith; and those views are not the results of human ingenuity or fanciful theory, but what the Lord has been pleased to reveal. And in this matter we rejoice that we have not been left to speculate with the unholy zeal of modern religionists on this important subject.
"They have blasphemed," continues the writer, "the holy name of Jesus, by recording of him ;things which he never did, and words which he never spoke, and making the belief of these lies necessary to man's salvation." "They have arrogantly pronounced, that for sixteen or seventeen hundred years there has been no true church of Christ extant upon the earth; that all the doctrines of the gospel have been corrupted, and the ordinances of our holy religion all polluted; and they have assumed to themselves to be sent by the power of the Most High, thus taking the name of the Lord in vain, by running when he hath not sent them."
The last quotations we have made are as miserable a piece of mere assertion as we ever read; we trust we have recorded nothing of the sayings of Jesus contrary to the principles of eternal truth, and we believe we are a little more jealous of the honor and authority of Jesus than the reverend gentleman, and are more willing to teach, and more ready to obey those precepts of the Redeemer, recorded in that book which he acknowledges, than either his reverence or any members of his "church apostolic."
What we make necessary to man's salvation is what the Lord Jesus Christ has taught us and declared necessary and we would warn the writer himself to give heed to his teachings, and receiving them in humility, obey them, or his present dignified standing in Babylon will not avail him in the day of trial.
That the doctrines of the gospel have been corrupted, and the ordinances of the house of the Lord have been changed, we not only assret [assert] but confidently maintain, and feel no hesiation [hesitation] in stating that the protestant church has not been far behind her ancient mother in committing this great sin for which "the curse shall devour the earth, and the inhabitants thereof shall be burnt up and few men left."-We would faithfully warn the reverend gentleman to bring his own church to the standard of the New Testament, and let him take heed that he be not one of those priests that shall be overwhelmed in the general destruction, when it shall be "as with priest so with the people."
"We have assumed to ourselves," says he, "to be sent by the power of God, thus taking the name of our Lord in vain, by running when he hath not sent them." This is a mere begging of the question. We assume nothing; but if the work with which we are connected have a divine origin, we cannot cease to know it, we dare not deny it. Who could have persuaded the apostle Paul that the work of the Lord was not true; could any one have made him believe that on his road to Damascus, he had not seen a light and heard a voice? So we rejoice to say it is with the Saints of God in the last days, manifold are his mercies, numerous are his blessings, and no power of man or satan can compel us to cease to know and confess the truths of the work of the lord.
"They have erred from the 'one faith,' once for all delivered unto the saints, and caused to err those who follow them. Thus they profess a belief that 'men will be punished for their own sins only, not for Adam's transgression,' which is the old heresy of Pelagius, condemned by the Church Catholic as soon as it arose, and by our church in the ninth article of religion: being contrary to the doctrine of the scriptures, that 'by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin,' and that 'death,' the 'wages of sin,' 'reigned even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression; that is to say, over infants, who having done no actual sin, are yet subject to the inborn taint which they inherit.' And therefore, the church, according to scriptures, has ever held, what these heretics deny, that infants equally need purification and remission of this original sin, as grown persons need remission of actual offences [offenses]."
Of all doctrines that ever were ushered into the world or suggested by satan, surely that of the liability of infants who die, to go into punishment to suffer the vengeance of eternal fire, is certainly the most horrible that can possibly be conceived, and it is the greatest outrage upon the principles of truth that ever was propounded unto man; and yet such is the doctrine advocated by this reverend divine. The gentleman quotes the passage that "by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin,'
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