02.07. On the Bible as Authoritative
On the Bible as Authoritative On the subject of Christian Union, and the Bible as a sufficient rule for faith and practice, many pages could be taken from his writings, all of which would be pleasing and profitable reading, but the following must suffice:
"As man-made creeds have always divided Christians, and stood in the way of union, these must all be abandoned, and the Bible alone received as the only foundation and rule of faith and practice. On no other platform can all Christians meet. Here the Church rested in her best days. Here she would have rested, and remained in sweet union, had not human creeds been introduced and established as authoritative. From this period we may date the apostasy of the church. From this period Christians were divided, and many inspired with the fury of hell, persecuted each other to death, fighting under their great leader, the devil, ’transformed into an angel of light.’ From this period the reign of darkness and ignorance commenced, called the age of darkness; for as the attention of the people were drawn to the creeds of the councils, it was of course drawn away from the Bible. They might believe the Bible, but must believe the creed. They might believe the Bible, but if their belief differed from the creed, anathemas and death were their doom. Happy for the people, in a worldly point of view, that they were soon after prohibited entirely from reading the Bible! There was then no more danger of losing their lives; for they now believed the creed alone, because this alone they knew, or could know. All Protestants with one voice condemn this conduct of our fathers, and highly extol the reformers of the sixteenth century for restoring to the people the Bible, and the divine right of reading and judging for themselves. But does not every Protestant see that the creed-making business is but the recommencement of the same tragic drama? Shall they plead for that which divides Christians, promotes strife, engenders hatred, impels to persecution, war, blood and death, and set up their own devices in the place of the Bible to judge and condemn a fellow Christian? Is not this like setting up the man of sin in God’s judgment seat? Will any Christian plead for the life of his creed, when he must know that others cannot unite on it without hypocrisy? No! no! Let it die the death. Will any plead for the retention of his creed, because it has never promoted war, bloodshed and death? We may thank our God and our happy government for this. The lion is chained, but it lives, and secretly, raves and thirsts for blood. The Bible, the BIBLE ALONE, is the only religion in which Christians can all unite. Not on the opinions formed by man of the truths and facts stated in the Bible, but upon the facts themselves.
"If every one would read the Scriptures for himself, as by them he will be judged at last; if all would act up to their conviction of truth, independently, the great obstacle to Christian union would be removed. All would soon flow together in one body. If every humble Christian, the life of whose religion is divine, whose heart sighs for union, and whose lips speak the meaning of his heart in humble prayer to God, that all those who believe in Jesus according to the Scriptures might be one as the Father and Son are one--if every humble Christian of every sect, wearing this character, were to exert himself, not in wishing and praying only, but also in acting, the work would, like an overflowing flood, sweep off all refuges of lies, and the good of every name would flow together into one glorious body."