One Lawgiver

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 7, 1895

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 21, No. 44.

One Lawgiver.—“The true church,” says a Roman Catholic writer, “like the true state, is ever on the alert to detect and condemn error. She makes new laws, new definitions, to meet new errors. What should we say of a state that never legislated for three hundred years?—Why, that it was no state. So of a church.” But the true church never legislates at all. “There is one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy.” James 4:12. “For the Lord is our Judge, the Lord is our Lawgiver, the Lord is our king; he will save us.” Isa. 33:22. The true church never usurps the place of its head, by presuming to make laws for itself. And the difference between the laws which the Lord has laid down for the church, and those which men make, is that while the latter require continual amending to meet new conditions, the former, coming from Him who sees the end from the beginning, are never out of date. Nothing can possibly arise that has not been foreseen and provided for in the Bible.