Ecclesiography on the Biblical Church Analytically Delineated (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1852. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER III ECCLESIASTICAL OPERATION. The church operates, or ought to operate, according to its nature, origin and relations; as Christian and local human society; as the vehicle of divine truth and the eliciter of divine power; as the body or social living instrument of Christ, in subservience to its originating and controlling head, and therefore in exact conformity to his written law.s and in due regard to his pneumatical and providential sway. Ecclesiastical operation, which comprehends ecclesiastical polity, is a web which cannot be disentangled, a labyrinth that can never be threaded, except with a single or local church, as the point of departure and the line of progressive inquiry, and with scripture only, as the sufficient and infallible guide. The controversies between episcopalians, presbyterians and independents have filled the air with clouds of dust and fogs of prejudice; and our only method of escape is to climb the hill of revealed truth, which "midway leaves the storm," and upon whose glorious summit "eternal sunshine settles." Aids to biblical interpretation should be thankfully but independently consulted, while practical rivals of biblical truth, such as elaborate sectarian theories and party pretensions, should be quietly discarded. The inquiry is not what is old but what is true; not what is customary but what is canonical; not what churches say but what Christ himself says. And just as all social science presupposes individual, so all comprehensive churchism presupposes particular churchism. To know man generally we must know man particularly. To know men we must know a man, we must begin with an individual of the human species, and we must never lose sight of an individual specimen. We may multiply but not disuse individual specim...