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: MODERN INFIDELITY. Without od in the world.?Eph. ii. 12. As the Christian ministry is established for the instruction of men, throughout every age, in truth and holiness, it must adapt itself to the ever- shifting scenes of the moral world, and stand ready to repel the attacks of impiety and error, under whatever form they may appear. The church and the world form two societies so distinct, and are governed by such opposite principles and maxims, that, as well from this contrariety as from the express warnings of Scripture, true Christians must look for a state of warfare, with this consoling assurance, that the church, like the burning bush beheld by Moses in the land of Midian, may be encompassed with flames, but will never be consumed. When she was delivered from the persecuting power of Rome, she only experienced a change of trials. ‘ The oppression of external violence was followed by the more dangerous and insidious attacka of internal enemies. The freedom of inquiry claimed and asserted at the Reformation degenerated, in the hands of men who professed the principles without possessing the spirit of the Reformers, into a fondness for speculative refinements; and consequently into a source of dispute, faction and heresy. While Protestants attended more to the points on which they differed than to those in which they agreed?while more zeal was employed in settling ceremonies and defending subtleties than in enforcing plain revealed truths?the lovely fruits of peace and charity perished under the storms of controversy. In this disjointed and disordered state of the Christian church, they who never looked into the interior of Christianity were apt to suspect, that to a subject so fruitful in particular disputes must attach a general uncertainty; and that a religi…
