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CREEDS

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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 29, 1861

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 18, No. 22.

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CREEDS.

By John Norton Loughborough

BRO. WHITE: The following excellent testimonies against creeds are taken from the discussion between Summerbell and Flood on the subject of "Church Constitutions and Discipline." Please insert them in the Review:
"The only God-given rule of faith and practice is the Bible." M. E. Church Scripture Manual.
"The Bible contains the whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, or man's salvation, faith and life." Westminster Assembly Conf. of Faith.
"There is nothing relative to the actions, words, or thoughts of men, nor anything respecting our duty to God or men, but what is included or inculcated in the sacred oracles. . . . The Bible is the Christian's store-house of all supplies; his museum of the greatest rarities and curiosities; his sanctuary and hiding-place; his glass, through which are seen all objects, both of time and eternity, and in which the sinner may ever see reflected the moral image of the soul." Butterworth's Concordance Improved by Dr. A. Clarke.
"The rule that all must agree in, must be one that is above all. Never will the church have full unity till the scripture sufficiency be more generally acknowledged. You complain of many opinions and ways; and many you will still have, till the one rule—the Scriptures—be the standard of our religion. Two things have set the church on fire, and been the plague of it above one thousand years. First. Enlarging our creed, and making more fundamentals than God ever made; and second, composing, and so imposing, our creeds and confessions in our own words and phrases." Richard Baxter.
"For my part, I adhere to the holy Scriptures alone." John Milton.
"The first Christians had no written creed—they expressed their belief in the language of Scripture—therefore their variations were without schism, and their differences without acrimony." Waddington.
"The all-sufficiency of the word of God is clearly established. If, therefore, any offer you as a rule, tradition, either of the earlier ages, or of the Reformation, reject them. Endure, I implore you, my re-iterated entreaties in regard to it." M. D'Aubigne.
"The Bible is all pure, all sincere; nothing too much, nothing wanting. How that can be called the Church of Christ which is established upon laws which are not his, and which excludes such persons from its communion as he will one day receive into the kingdom of heaven, I understand not." John Locke's Christian Philosopher.
"The sacred writings, and they alone, contain what is necessary for faith and practice; and no man, number of men, society, church, council, presbytery, consistory, or conclave, has dominion over any man's faith. The word of God alone is his rule." Dr. Adam Clarke.
"The Bible is the great and only standard of Christian faith and practice." Robert Hall.
"Wesley was called 'Homo unius libri,' a man of one book." J. N. Loughborough.