The Reformation not yet Complete.
By Uriah Smith
Four hundred years ago Christendom was lost in the darkness of the great apostasy. A power foretold ages before by the prophets of God, had long held all western Europe in absolute subjection to its spiritual control. The period known as the dark ages was the golden age of Romanism. The little horn of Dan. 7:24 had plucked up three other horns, and was more stout than his fellows. The saints, times, and laws, were in his hands. Paul’s man of sin, 2 Thess. 2:3, had been developed, and held his seat as God, in the temple of God. Christianity, through the working of the mystery of iniquity, had gone into partnership with paganism, and the hybrid firm was the papacy. The doctrines of Christ had been obscured. Errors and superstition of the grossest form were rampant and unrestrained. Upon this scene of darkness happily the light of the Reformation began to dawn. Multitudes began to throw off the shackles of papal superstition, and emerge from the darkness of its teaching. No marvel if in that time of transition, everything did not at first assume its permanent and proper form. But truth is progressive; and the work went on. But all the theology of our day has come from the era of error, darkness, and corruption, here described. It would be too much to expect that every Romish perversion in doctrine, or error in practice, should be at once discovered and discarded. Something certainly is wrong in the Protestant bodies that have come out from the Romish church; for schism has become wide spread, and sects have multiplied. God designed that his people should be one. The Son of God so prayed. And the word of God, which he has given us as the source of our instruction, and the basis of our belief, is not yea and nay. This confusion of sentiment is the work of the enemy. It has its source, substantially, in three great errors. 1. A wrong principle of interpretation. 2. An effort to bring the Bible to support what we have pre-determined to believe. 3. Reforming in part, and then barring the way to all further progress by a human creed. This last is perhaps the worst error of all, for it is a step backward toward the spiritual tyranny of Rome. If a church before it becomes free from Romish errors, adopts a creed, these errors are stereotyped into its belief; and that this is the case with most Protestant churches, is the testimony of discerning men. Alexander Campbell, (Baptism, p. 15) says:— “All of them [the Protestant sects] retain in their bosom, in their ecclesiastical organizations, worship, doctrines, observances, various relics61of popery. They are at best a reformation of popery, and reformation only in part. The doctrines and traditions of men yet impair the power and progress of the gospel in their hands.” The terrible evil of the creed power is well set forth in the following extract from a sermon by Chas. Beecher:— “Our best, most humble, most devoted servants of Christ, are fostering in their midst what will one day, not long hence, show itself to be the spawn of the dragon. They shrink from any rude word against creeds with the same sensitiveness with which those holy fathers would have shrunk from a rude word against the rising veneration of saints and martyrs which they were fostering. . . . The Protestant evangelical denominations have so tied up one another’s hands, and their own, that, between them all, a man cannot become a preacher at all, anywhere, without accepting some book besides the Bible.” “And is not the Protestant church apostate? . . . Oh! remember, the final form of apostasy shall rise, not by crosses, processions, baubles. We understand all that. Apostasy never comes on the outside. It develops. It is an apostasy that shall spring into life within us; an apostasy that shall martyr a man who believes his Bible ever so holily; yea, who may even believe what the creed contains, but who may happen to agree with the Westminster Assembly that, proposed as a test, it is an unwarrantable imposition. That is the apostasy we have to fear, and is it not already formed? . . . Will it be said that our fears are imaginary? Imaginary? Did not the Rev. John M. Duncan, in the years 1825–6, or thereabouts, sincerely believe the Bible? Did he not even believe substantially the confession of faith? And was he not, for daring to say what the Westminster Assembly said, that, to require the reception of that creed as a test of ministerial qualification was an unwarrantable imposition, brought to trial, condemned, excommunicated, and his pulpit declared vacant? There is nothing imaginary in the statement that the creed-power is now beginning to prohibit the Bible as really as Rome did, though in a subtler way.” “Oh! woeful day! Oh! unhappy church of Christ! fast rushing round and round the fatal circle of absorbing ruin! . . . . Daily does every one see that things are going wrong. With sighs does every true heart confess that rottenness is somewhere; but, ah! it is hopeless of reform. We all pass on, and the tide rolls down to night. The waves of coming conflict which is to convulse Christendom to her center are beginning to be felt. The deep heavings begin to swell beneath us. ‘All the old signs fail.’ ‘God answers no more by Urim and Thummim, nor by dream, nor by prophet.’ Men’s hearts are failing them for fear and for looking after those things that are coming on the earth. Thunders mutter in the distance. Winds moan across the surging bosom of the deep. All things betide the rising of that final storm of divine indignation which shall sweep away the vain refuge of lies.” Hopkins on the Millennium says:— “There is no reason to consider the anti-Christian spirit and practices confined to that which is now called the church of Rome. The Protestant churches have much of anti-Christ in them, and are far from being wholly reformed from the corruptions and wickedness.” Simpson in his “Plea for Religion,” speaking of the doctrines and ceremonies of the Romish church, which are “inimical to the pure and unadulterated gospel of Jesus Christ,” says:— “That Protestant churches should imitate the church of Rome in this worst part of its conduct, can never be sufficiently bewailed.” In this condition are the professed churches of Christ found as the last days come down upon us. But it would be inconsistent to suppose that God would suffer his gospel to close, and the end to come without bringing forth a church in whose belief and practice the errors of the Romish apostasy would find no place. The church which is to be prepared for the second coming of Christ, must be entirely free from papal errors and corruptions. We accordingly find a movement in progress in these last days, designed of God to accomplish this result. In future numbers we will speak of the means employed, and the reception with which it has met. U. S.