Essays on the Church of God; In Which the Doctrines of Church Membership and Infant Baptism Are Fully Discussed (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. 1843 Excerpt: ...of the Holy Ghost.'t It would be quite as reasonable to maintain, that a Christian cannot be a child of God because there is a law in his members warring against the law of his mind;j or that the world is not God's world because the tumult of those that rise up against him increaseth continually; as to maintain that a church composed partly of converts and partly of the unconverted, is not for that reason, a true nor a scriptural church. The neighbourhood and conflict of good and evil in this life is one of those depths which nothing but folly attempts to fathom; yet while the mystery is unsearchable, the doctrine is clear, and the fact notorious. Whoever, then, shall deny that God has so constituted his church here as to include concealed enemies in the midst of real friends; and has left no method of drawing, with certainty, the line of practical discrimination; must go further, and deny that he has so constituted his world as to admit the introduction of sin, and has left no method of expelling it: or has so constituted the plan of salvation, as to allow corrupt affections to reside in the hallowed breast, and has left no method of extirpating them. The objection is precisely the same in the three cases. He who can answer it in one, can answer it in all; and he who cannot answer it in all, can answer it in none. 1 John i. 8. t Rom. vii. 23. t 1 Cor. vi. 19. Ps. lxxiv. 23. On the other hand, whoever can find it consistent with the divine perfection, that wicked men should be in the world; and wicked propensities in the soul of a believer, and yet the world be acknowledged by God as his world, and the believer as his child; will find it equally consistent with his perfection that servants of sin as well as servants of righteousness should belong to the chu...