United States or São Tomé and Príncipe ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In the matter of the Sabbath and of the Mosaic Law, of Infant Baptism, of Episcopacy, of the doctrine of the Lord's return, I had successively found the prevalent Protestantism to be unapostolic. Hence arose in me a conscious and continuous effort to read the New Testament with fresh eyes and without bias, and so to take up the real doctrines of the heavenly and everlasting Gospel.
Two texts were quoted in proof, 1 Pet. ii. 21, and Heb. iv. 15. Of these, the former did not necessarily mean anything more than that Jesus was unjustly put to death; and the latter belonged to an Epistle, which my new friend had already rejected as unapostolic and not of first-rate authority, when speaking of the Atonement.
Yet I had not an easy conscience, nor can I now defend my compromise; for I believe that my repugnance to Infant Baptism was really intense, and my conviction that it is unapostolic as strong then as now. The topic of my "youth" was irrelevant; for, if I was not too young to subscribe, I was not too young to refuse subscription.
The priority of the so-called gospel of Matthew, the Pauline purpose of "Luke," the second in date of our gospels, the derivative and second-hand character of "Mark," and the unapostolic origin of the fourth gospel, are points which may for the future be regarded as wellnigh established by circumstantial evidence.
Men who have been reared in a system of ecclesiastical endowments are apt to cherish the very unapostolic belief that money is a sacred thing; but even they are coming, though by slow degrees, to realize that the Faith may be still more sacred.
The Church revenues were drawn through these unapostolic prelates, and came into the hands of the State, or at least of Morton. With these bishops, superintendents co-existed, but not for long. "The horns of the mitre" already began to peer above Presbyterian parity, and Morton is said to have remarked that there would never be peace in Scotland till some preachers were hanged.
Word Of The Day