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The Church as Established in Its Relations With Dissent
The Church as Established in Its Relations With Dissent Author:James Clark General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1866 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: Chapter II. THE THEOKY OF CHUECH AND STATE. The general doctrine, which we shall here seek to establish is, that the profession and establishment of the purest form of christian doctrine and polity, and none other, is the duty universally of all governments whatsoever. By the profession of any form of christian faith is meant the legal adoption of its ordinances, articles, formularies, and symbols on the part of the governing body; and by its establishment, the securing to it by pecuniary and other provisions, of a machinery commensurate with the wants of the nation; Doubtless some may think this a somewhat hazardous position to assume. In an age characterized, in too culpable a degree, by the spirit of vacillancy and concession, it mayappear to some to be too extreme to be defensible. But be that as it may, we cannot forget that the concessions made by past theorists have operated more injuriously upon the interests of "church and state," than the combined strategy of those who have been, overtly and covertly, its most implacable opponents. Nay, moreover, when truth is implicated -- concession is treachery. The merest seedling of truth is too precious to be lost, since it may unfold the embryon of the most momentous issues. There is one grand fact which underlies the whole fabric of political power, that, namely, of its derived character. Civil government is, in no case, autocratic. No kind of political power can exist per se. It is by a mere convention of speech that any imperium can be called supreme. No human authority, whether ecclesiastical or political, is in any true sense of the words,...« less