A CHURCH ACTING TO THE EXTENT OF HER POWER
The following is a resolution, of the St. Lawrence (N. Y.) Baptist Association, passed in its session of Nov. 12 and 13, 1856. It has taken upon itself, as will be seen, to declare what opinions are heretical, and then to act against the holders of such opinions, as far as they yet have power to proceed, namely, to exclude them from their communion. Go one step further, and let the church have power, not only to denounce heretics, but to correct them, as was granted to the Papacy, and how long before we should have in this country a Protestant hierarchy following in her very steps—an image to the beast. But to the resolution. There is no mistaking its spirit. "Resolved—That in our estimation, the Baptists, as a denomination, do not believe in the annihilation of the wicked, but that all men are immortal, and will live forever in happiness or misery, according to their improvement or misimprovement, of this state of probation; and therefore that those who believe and propagate the above named error, and its usual concomitants—the nonexistence of Satan, the bestowment of immortality in regeneration, the unconsciousness of all the dead from death to the resurrection, &c., should be excluded from the fellowship of our church as heretics."