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The constitution of the visible church of Christ
The constitution of the visible church of Christ Author:Richard Parkinson 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: PREFACE. In the Introductory Lecture, the author has explained, at some length and with all the clearness in his power, his own views with regard to the prese... more »nt position of the Church of Christ—the causes which have led to that position—and the remedies which might be proposed for some of the evils which attend it. The considerable interval which has elapsed since the composition of that Lecture, while, from the excitement which now exists on all great questions of Theology, it has daily thrown some additional light on that position, has not tended to alter the author's views regarding it, but rather to confirm them by the concurrent testimony of almost every successive writer on these questions. It is now evident to all, that the external Constitution of the Church of Christ had received from the Clergy, (and especially during the last quarter of a century) much less attention than its essential importance demanded. The exigency of the times had a tendency to lead men to neglect every thing in the study of Theology which was not evidently indispensable; and a school had gradually sprung up in the Church, which held that system was of little consequence compared with personal sincerity and zeal. Every man can be assured that he possesses the latter: the former is of difficult attainment : and thus it came to pass that each minister took that view of the Gospel which was suggested to him by the accidental impressions of his early years, or the bent of his natural disposition and turn of mind. As might have been expected, the theology which thus originated, soon developed itself under two tolerably distinct aspects—what may be called sentimental and common-sense divinity. The imaginative adopted the one, the argumentative teacher the other system ; each taking the direction of hi...« less