Both Sides of Religious Ceremonies Author:Robert Smith Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: gregate of its influence, church praying is decided inexpedient. Reason 16. The desire to please and win over other denominations can make no argument in thei... more »r favor. 1. Such conformity has not even soothed the asperities of opposers, much less won them over, and it never will. 2. Professing doctrines, or performing ceremonies merely to gratify and please men, is opposed to the spirit of Christianity, is corrupt and corrupting and altogether unworthy the character of a Christian. Reason 17. The antiquity of these ceremonies, their early use by the Christian bishops of the second and subsequent centuries, and their almost universal adoption by the church, is no evidence in their favor. There are numerous old errors in religion and the church—the early bishops adopted many absurd and foolish, as well as unauthorized and unfounded opinions and ceremonials—and almost universal usage, from the remotest antiquity, has given sanction to multitudes of very great, and very wicked errors. Reason 18. This ceremony is in the main hypocrisy. It professes to be an offering of the desires of the heart to God, while it is in fact an address to the hearers, designed to promote their moral, and spiritual edification. Reason 19. The consent and approbation of the learned and pious of all nations and ages, is no evidence in favor of this or any other rite or usage. By the consent of all the world—(priests, devotees, kings, rulers, sages, philosophers, andsaints,men and women,old and young)—vices of the most gross kind, and rites of the most vile and abominable description, were approved, practised, and prevailed, from sea Jo sea and from the rivers to the ends of the earth, during a long succession of ages. Reason 20. Prayer is equally the duty of all men. All are alike dependant on...« less