THE restoration of the earth is as truly included in the plan of redemption as is the salvation of the believer. According to the promise of God, we look for a new earth, or the earth made new. 2 Peter 3:13.
The promise in the above reference is found in Isa. 65:17: "Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth." In commenting upon this promise the apostle shows that the new earth in the text is but our earth renewed. The world and the earth as it now is must pass away in the desolating fires of the judgment day, like unto the passing away of the antediluvian world in the waters and upheavals of the deluge. Yet beyond that period of general dissolution and destruction is seen the earth made new and glorious. It was in the earth redeemed that Peter said the righteous should dwell. It is this earth that shall be received according to the promise.
Upon Patmos John was shown scenes of surpassing interest relative to the future of the earth and its inhabitants. In his description of the same he says the earth and the heavens were new; the holy city was seen coming down from God out of heaven. The people were all happy. No pain was there, neither sorrow nor crying. He tells us that he heard Him who was seated on the throne call to His people to "BEHOLD." He629was going to do a thing for which they had long been waiting and watching.
The time at which this particular view was placed was just when the devouring fire had expended its force upon the wicked. The earth itself was in a charred, blackened condition,—a sad and terrible picture of desolation. The redeemed were looking at the sorry picture which it then presented. They seemed to have taken their position by invitation for this purpose: "Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolations he hath made in the earth." Ps. 46:8.
As their attention was all enlisted to see what was about to be done, the Creator said to them, "I make all things new." Rev. 21:5. They looked with all the powers of their immortal vision, and had the privilege of seeing with their own eyes the whole face of the earth changed into a world of life and beauty, exceeding even that which Adam saw before the fall.
The saints will actually see the new earth created or the earth recast from the materials of the old one; and while their eyes are for the first time feasting upon its loveliness, Jesus is heard to say unto them, "It is done." He will then remind them of his purpose from the beginning, and his subsequent promises to fulfill all that purpose, saying, "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely." Then he will tell them that all this beauty and the glory and the riches that they can behold are theirs. They shall inherit it all. See verses 6, 7.
Aided by the eye and the pen of the prophet, we can see over there. The desert is a blooming garden, and in it the birds are singing: "It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing; the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon." Isa. 35:2.
There those who were once feeble have become strong; those once blind, there shall see. The deaf shall hear, and the dumb shall talk. There the crooked shall be straight, and the lame be made to leap. There will be no more parched ground nor barren soil. Neither will any ravenous beast be there. It is of the earth in this restored condition that the prophet writes when he says, "The ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." Isa. 35:10.
They could not return to a place unless they had once been there. This coming to Zion is the return of the redeemed to the earth after the curse of sin has been wiped away, and the joy of eternity settled there. Then the ravenous nature of the wolf, the bear, the leopard, and the lion will be seen no more. They again will be as when they dwelt in Eden before Adam lost paradise. The prophet says:—
"The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox." Isa. 11:6, 7.
He who truly believes in and enjoys the love and power of God, will take great pleasure in contemplating the glories of that age when the righteousness of God will prevail, and all the Creator’s works will be made to praise him.
"For the Lord shall comfort Zion; he will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody." Isa. 51:3.
When the earth was cursed for man’s sake, it was to bring forth thorns and thistles; but these will not be seen in the earth renewed. "Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree." Isa. 55:13.
The offer is yet open for the homeless wanderer of Adam’s race to secure an abiding place in the earth reclaimed from the ravages of sin. This possession has been purchased by the blood of Jesus, but only for those who are willing to come by the way of the cross. Those who will have Christ to rule over and abide in them will inherit that happy land. Yet a little while, and the meek will be there.
THE NEW BIRTH.
By J. H. Durland
(Concluded.)
It is very clear to most minds that a man has no righteousness in himself before his justification. Yet there are some who confess their sins, and then act as though they thought they were the ones to do all the good after their past sins were forgiven. When they fail, they take it as an evidence that they were not forgiven, and fall back into darkness. They think God’s forgiveness depended on their future obedience, and as they have failed, he must have taken back his forgiveness. But does God’s forgiveness depend on our future obedience? God knows our future life as well as he knows our present or past life. If he showed us mercy for any foreseen works of ours, because he knew we would repent, believe the gospel, and walk worthy of it, mercy would be turned into justice and would lose both its name and its nature. Mercy is that perfection in God which disposes him to treat an offender better than he deserves; and the moment God shows us mercy because we do good, we are saved by our works. If most Christians would look over their lives since they gave themselves to the Lord, to see how much good they have done, they would be led to say, with Jacob, “Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been.”
Jesus answered the young man that came to him and called him good master, by saying, “There is none good but one, that is, God.” If God alone is good, what does man make himself to be when he thinks he is good, or has any goodness?—Equal with God. We will do well to take heed to ourselves lest we fall under the condemnation of the text that we are so free to apply to the Papacy. See 2 Thess. 2:4. But God alone is good, and it is very plain that if man ever has any righteousness either before or after his conversion, it must come from outside of himself. In other words, he must become another man. He must have a life entirely different from his natural fleshly life. This is what some express themselves as desiring. We frequently hear men and women say they are going to live a different life. But how do they begin?—They start in with the same old life of sin and weakness, and in a short time they fail. Can we expect any better results? If a man gets into debt by a lack of business tact, and some kind friend pays up all his
back debts, and you hear him say, I am going to do differently from now on, while he commences with no better plans or knowledge than before, do you expect that he will succeed any better than in his last experience? You would say, He will soon need his friend’s assistance again. Is that not the way many professed Christians are living? They run on their own resources until they are bankrupt, then come to the Lord for justification, that they may run up another bill, for which they expect to ask forgiveness.
In order for a man to live a different life from what he has been living, he must have a different life to start with. As has already been said, God alone is good. His life is goodness itself. Every act of his life is good. This cannot be said of man. One’s life is just what his ways are. “Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are they that keep his testimonies, and that seek him with the whole heart. They also do no iniquity; they walk in his ways.” Ps. 119:1–3. This is God’s life. If man walks in that way, he will have a life like God; but man cannot live God’s life. Only God can do that. Then can man be righteous?—Yes. How?—The life of God must be manifested in him, and God himself must live the life. “I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” Gal. 2:20. This can only be experienced by being born again.
The Change Wrought.
Nicodemus asked Jesus, “How can a man be born when he is old?” He desired every step so explained that it would have become a mechanical work. There are many of that same inquiring family to-day, who hesitate to accept the word of God because they cannot explain all its workings. The answer given at that time is as applicable now as it was then: “The wind bloweth where it listeth [wills, desires], and thou hearest the sound thereof, but cannot tell whence [or of what place, source, author, cause, or manner], it cometh, and whither [to what place] it goeth; so [in this manner, on this wise] is everyone that is born of the Spirit.” John 3:8. Men do not question about whether the wind blows or not because they cannot explain from whence it started or whither it will go. They may look up and see the clouds moving in one direction and the wind coming from another, and not be able to give any explanation why it is so, yet they are not disposed to dispute the fact that the wind blows. In this manner man should accept the work of the Spirit of God in the transformation of his life. There are things connected with this change, as there are in all God’s works, that cannot be explained by means of knowledge, and as God has not revealed all his workings, we can safely take what he has given, and be assured of the fact.
“But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name; which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” John 1:12, 13. It is evident that the new birth can never take place in an unbeliever. But “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” Rom. 10:17. It does not come by the will of man, but by his faith. But it does come by the will of God, which630is found in his word. But here God and man meet. God wills in his word that sinful man shall be clean, and a temple for his own self alone; man believes this word, and there is power in it to do the work. “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever.” 1 Peter 1:23. God’s word contains life, and that is just what the sinner needs. It contains power, and that is just what man has not, but needs. When Jesus went into the synagogue, he met the man with the withered hand. This man might use all the will power he had to move that arm, but to no purpose. He might long to stretch it forth, but he had no power to do so. Why?—Because there was no life in it. Had he taken the other hand and raised the lifeless member up, it would have fallen again as soon as the support was taken away. When Jesus said, “Stretch forth thine hand,” and the man believed it, he received power to have a whole arm. Just so it is with the sinner that comes to Jesus for the healing of his sins. Not only was the man’s arm restored to its original size and strength, but the word spoken put life into it.
Some will say, “I could have more faith in the word if Jesus was here personally and would say in an audible tone, ‘Thy sins be forgiven thee,’ but the word I read was spoken so long ago that my faith cannot take hold of it to appropriate it to myself.” Let us consider this point for a moment. In Gen. 1:11 we read, “And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth; and it was so.” Has that word yet failed? Why do you not refuse to put the flower seed in the ground, or plant the corn, or sow the wheat, until God shall again speak to your seed that it shall again bring forth? You know that in every seed there is a germ of life that contains the power of God, ready to spring forth as soon as connected with God’s air, earth, rain, and sunshine. You are so sure of it that you do not stop to open every kernel of wheat to see if the life is there. Were you to be as full of doubt in regard to your seeds as you are your conversion, you would not put them in the ground at all until you had opened every grain, but the working of your unbelief would destroy the life that was there.
The only way to strip God’s word of power is to doubt it. The trolly wire of an electric car line may be powerfully charged with electricity, but the car on the track will not move if the motor man waits until he can see the power before connecting his motor with the wire. So God wants us to stop looking for power, and take hold of his word, that created and upholds the world. “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.” 1 John 5:1. This is a very simple statement, and yet one that contains the whole matter. Believing the Lord—much more than giving an assent to the word of the Lord. It is to accept God’s word as the most certain thing on earth. And why?—Because everything in the universe is upheld by the word of his power. See Heb. 1:3. It is to rest the whole soul upon it, when everything seems contrary to it. It is like asking a man to step out on nothing. All feelings must be surrendered, and the word, and the word alone, be accepted. “Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.” Rom. 4:3.
We will carry this a little further. We are born by believing. 1 John 5:1. We are born by the word. 1 Peter 1:23. We are born by the Spirit. John 3:5. “It is the Spirit that quickeneth; . . . the words I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” John 6:63. What kind of life?—“Thou hast the words of eternal life.” Verse 68. “He that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation.” John 5:24. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” Rom. 8:1. These and other texts show the power of the word of God to the believer.
Now let us consider its practical workings. 1. The sinner is convicted of his sins by the word and the Spirit of God. 2. He sees his condition, and loathes it, and deplores it. The Spirit of the Lord, through the gospel, points him to the Saviour. 3. The sinner turns, and, by repentance, acknowledges that there is no good thing in him. He hears the words: “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.” He confesses, and believes they are all forgiven. He rests upon the word that his past sins are removed, and that he is counted as though he had been righteous all his life. The very thought that he stands in the sight of God as though he never had sinned, brings joy and peace to the heart. 4. God’s word, the incorruptible seed, is in his mind and heart, and he is a new creature. He does not now think of the good works he is to perform, but praises the Lord that he is surrendered to his service, and expects God, who alone is good, to work in him. His part of the work is to yield, as the clay in the hands of the potter, for God to mould his life. A new life permeates every part of the being, and love fills the heart. It is a new heart, because there are new issues. The things he formerly loved he now hates, and the things he once hated he now loves. He realizes that only the power that can make a world can do what has been done in him. All things are become new. He has new conceptions of God’s word, which he now loves to feed upon. The conversation is about the One who is keeping him moment by moment with the power that upholds the world. Every day is a new day to the newborn soul. He can say, “Christ liveth in me.” Such a soul will be constantly telling the people what the Lord has done for him.
Will he not have severe temptations?—Ah, yes, he expects them, for the word which upholds him tells him that they which “will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” This does not frighten him, for the same word that gave him his new life says, “Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world.” He rests his whole weight upon that promise, and it works righteousness in him.
Dear reader, may the Lord help you to enter into this life, if you have not yet done so. If you have experienced the change of heart that has made you his child, trust him to work in you his own righteousness.
THE PURITANS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY.
By Percy T. Magan
[This article is No. 27 in the series entitled "A Review of Sunday Legislation in Century Nineteen," but it will be of equal interest to those who have not read preceding numbers. —ED. S. OF T.]
WITH most people history is only a kind of ancestor worship. —John Fiske.
I have now reached the closing argument which I intend to produce against the conclusion arrived at by Justice Brewer, of the Supreme Court of the United States, in his famous decision in the case of "The Rector," etc., of the Holy Trinity, Plaintiffs in Error, vs. the United States. In that epoch-making document the learned judge quoted the fundamental laws of Massachusetts to prove "that this is a Christian nation." His language is as follows:—
Or like that in the constitution of Massachusetts, 1780: "It is the right as well as the duty of all men in society publicly and at stated seasons to worship the Supreme Being, the great Creator and Preserver of the universe. . . . As the happiness of a people and the good order and preservation of civil government essentially depend upon piety, religion, and morality, and as these cannot be generally diffused through a community, but by the institution of the public worship of God and of public instructions in piety, religion, and morality, therefore, to promote their happiness and to secure the good order and preservation of their government, the people of this commonwealth have a right to invest their Legislature with power to authorize and require, and the Legislature shall, from time to time, authorize and require, the several towns, parishes, precincts, and other bodies politic, or religious societies, to make suitable provision, at their own expense, for the institution of the public worship of God and for the support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers of piety, religion, and morality in all cases where such provision shall not be made voluntarily."631
It was John Adams, the second President of the United States, who denominated himself, along with all the other men of New England, as a "church-going animal." His language is certainly quaint; it may be termed homespun; but by it, nevertheless, the true status of the case is, perhaps, more clearly revealed than would be possible through the medium of a more dignified expression.
That the Puritan of Massachusetts was "church going," historians of every school agree. That he was an "animal," and in some ways an unpleasant "animal," a bigoted, cruel, narrow-minded "animal," it is the painful duty of the cosmopolitan historian to aver. The distinguishing trait of this "church-going animal" was not only that no one could stop him from going to his own church, but all the plaintive cries of Mistress Ann Hutchinson, the fervid eloquence of Roger Williams, and the lessons which the tenacity of the Quakers must have riveted upon his mind, were not potent enough to prevent him from compelling everybody to go also to his own church. Indeed, Roger Williams' poet declares that the founder of Providence preferred the wild animals of the forest—the wolf and the wild cat—to the "church-going," persecuting "animals" of Boston Bay.
"Growling they come, and in dark groups they stand,
Show the white fang, and roll the brightening eye,
Till, urged by famine's rage, the shaggy band
Seemed e'en the flame's bright terrors to defy.
Then mid the group he hurled the blazing brand;
Swift they disperse, and raise the scattered cry;
But, rallying, soon back to the siege they came,
And scarce their rage paused at the mounting flame.
"Yet Williams deemed that persecution took
A form in them less odious than in men;
He on their dreary solitude had broke—
Ay, and had trespassed on their native glen;
His human shape they scantily too might brook,
For it had been an enemy to them;
But bigot man did into conscience look,
And for the secret thought his brother struck."
The historians who have written upon the Puritans may be divided into two schools. First, there are those to whom every Puritan was a saint. They defend these rugged settlers in everything they did. They almost advocate the worship of the ground upon which they trod. They defend them in deeds for which they did not defend themselves. They are ready to anathematize as a blasphemer anyone who dares assert that the Puritan may possibly have been a little lower than the angels of light. They gloss into good acts crimes of the deepest hue, and then call themselves historians, which sacred office they have polluted, whilst in truth they are "ancestor worshipers," as verily as is the most benighted Japanese devotee to Shintoism.
The second class may be more quickly dismissed. They are those who regard the Puritans as little better than impersonations of the evil one, and as worse than papists of the Loyola or Duke of Alva type.
I find it impossible to state my own rating of the case in one brief paragraph. It is, in fact, necessary to consume the greater part of this article in order to set forth the matter fairly.
It is commonly asserted that the Puritans of New England came over to America to found an asylum where the religiously oppressed of every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, might find a Wequetonsing, or haven of quiet rest. This is the ordinary filio-pietistic theory. It is frequently canted in Fourth of July orations. It may often be heard in speeches at Thanksgiving dinners. The fact of the matter is, nevertheless, that there is not a shade of a shadow of truth in it. Indeed, it is an unmitigated falsehood of the worst sort.
To begin with, and to put the matter bluntly, Winthrop and Dudley, and the men following them to the shores of New England, came hither to establish a theocracy—an iniquitous despotism. They came here to establish their own religion, to establish it by civil law, and to make all men conform to it, or else get outside of the boundaries of Massachusetts. All of this is admirably stated by John Fiske in a single paragraph:—
"The aim of Winthrop in coming to Massachusetts was the construction of a theocratic state which should be to Christians, under the New Testament dispensation, all that the theocracy of Moses, and Joshua, and Samuel had been to the Jews in Old Testament days. They should be to all intents and purposes freed from the jurisdiction of the Stuart king, and, so far as possible, the text of the Holy Scriptures should be their guide both in weighty matters of general legislation, and in the shaping of the smallest details of daily life. In such a scheme there was no room for religious liberty, as we understand it. No doubt the text of the Scriptures may be interpreted in many ways, but among these men there was a substantial agreement as to the important points, and nothing could have been further from their thoughts than to found a colony which should afford a field for new experiments in the art of right living. The State they were to found was to consist of a united body of believers; citizenship itself was to be coextensive with church membership; and in such a state there was apparently no more room for heretics than there was in Rome or Madrid."
These words state, in a nutshell, the general idea of the scheme. In the charter granted to the Massachusetts Bay Company by King Charles, which gave them the right to "plant" New England, nothing was said about religious liberty. There were two very good reasons for this: First, King Charles belonged to the Church of England, and it was his intention that the tenets of no creed should be practiced anywhere in his domains, save that of the Church of England. So, on this score, if they had asked for religious liberty, or, rather, for leave to set up a body politic which would equally protect all beliefs, and favor none, the request would most surely not have been granted. In the second place, religious liberty was not what the Puritans wanted.
There was, however, one statement in the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company, issued by King Charles I, in 1629, which deserves notice in this connection. The officers of the company were empowered
"To make Lawes and Ordinances for the Good and Welfare of the saide Company, and for the Government and ordering of the saide Landes and Plantacon, and the People inhabiting and to inhabite the same, as to them from tyme to tyme shalbe thought meete, soe as such Lawes and Ordinances be not contrarie or repugnant to the Lawes and Statuts of this our Realme of England."
Now Charles I. belonged, of course, to the Church of England. He was one of the most ardent advocates of that system. Archbishop Laud was his right-hand man in everything; and it was in part, at least, on account of his Church of England policy that he lost his head in the struggle with the Puritans. No argument is needed here to prove that the laws of the realm of England were all intended to enforce the doctrines of the Church of England upon the people of England. Then when the charter members of the Massachusetts Bay Company accepted the charter from King Charles, they agreed to make no laws or ordinances contrary to the laws and ordinances of the realm of England. But this is the very thing which they at once set about to do. And in doing it they manifested rank dishonesty.
Their whole theocratic scheme was entirely contrary to the laws and ordinances of England, and they knew it. They could not help but know it. Had they not lived in England all their lives? Had they not lived there under the rule of Charles I, when the whole country was in a ferment over this very question of the rights of the English Church and the rights of dissenters?—To be sure they had. And, therefore, when they accepted that charter, which prohibited them from making any laws contrary to the laws of England, and at the same time cherished a plan that was diametrically opposed to all the laws of England, they acted in bad faith, and no honest man on earth can make anything else out of it.
The Puritans even went so far as to tax the members of the Church of England in Massachusetts for the support of the preachers of the Puritan faith. In the town of Braintree, not very far from Boston, there was a communion of the Church of England people. In 1713 the Rev. Thomas Eager was sent out from England to visit the church at Braintree, and he returned the following information to the authorities in England, from which I draw my information on this point:—
"The whole province has been very much disturbed on the account of my coming to this place, and, accordingly, have not failed to affront and abuse me whenever they meet me,—"atheist and papist," the best language I can get from them. The people are Independents, and have a perfect odium to those of our communion. These few which adhere to our church are taxed and rated most extravagantly to support the dissenting clergy. Had this province been called New Crete [Titus 1 : 12], instead of New England, it had better suited, for the people are very great strangers to truth, and I do really believe that I have not passed one day since my arrival without one false report or other raised upon me."
And all this, we are asked to believe, was "not contrarie or repugnant to the Lawes and Statuts of this our Realme of England." By no possible reasoning can the Puritans ever be acquitted on the charge of bad faith in the matter of the charter. Moreover, in the New Haven colony none but church members, that is, members of the Independent, or Puritan, faith, were allowed to vote. This measure in the very start-off disfranchised about one-half of the settlers in the town of New Haven, about the same proportion in Guilford, and in the neighborhood of one-fifth in Milford.
(To be continued.)
The Minister's Spirit and Manner
The spirit and manner of a minister often effect more than the matter.—Cecil.
SALVIAN'S TESTIMONY.
By Elder I. E. Kimball
BY ELDER I. E. KIMBALL.
THAT this was a pestilential era, and that the church became the cage of everything unclean, and the seat of the demon host, I have no scruple at all in asserting. The quotations I will now make from Salvian will show my assertions to be not a splenetic decision, but a necessary one, grounded upon facts, as, indeed, what I have already shown also proves. This testimony shows the product of the principles and doctrines taught by the Nicene divines, as shown in their children of the next generation. The healthful force of Christianity had all wasted away; the downward bias of sin soon plunged them headlong into temporal and spiritual ruin.
Salvian wrote about A.D. 440. His writings are authentic and reliable. Gennadius, who wrote a few years later, called him "a leader of bishops," Scaliger calls him a "most Christian writer." Cove mentions him with distinction.
I now wish to quote at length from Salvian's De Gubernatione, that the very life of the church immediately following the Nicene era may be laid bare,—the manner of life into which the church declined. He shows the divine government to be a sure fact, but that there was manifest token "of the divine displeasure, as provoked by the debauchery of the church itself." "Who is he that is not involved in the mire of fornication? And what can I say more? Severe and grievous is that which I am about to say. The very8church of God, which ought to be in every respect the pacifatrix with God, how is it other than an offense to God? Or, aside from a very few who shun evil, how is nearly every assembly of Christians other than a sink of debauchery? All the ecclesiastical people have been reduced to such a degradation of custom that, among the entire Christian people, not to be vicious is considered in a certain way a kind of sanctity. Why is the condition of barbarian nations better than our own? But you say Christians in these days are not called to suffer persecutions, princes themselves being Christians. True, but do Christians yield obedience to their Lord in those things which are of perpetual obligation? Who is it that patiently relinquishes his cloke? . . . Where are they who do not endeavor to make reprisals upon their adversaries? So far is it from being true that we resign with the cloke aught beside, if by any means we can, we snatch from others coat and cloke too."—Page 79.
As to smiting, who is there that, if he receives a blow, will not return many for one, and, far from offering the other cheek to the smiter, that he might so conquer, he cannot be satisfied in smiting merely, but must slay his adversary. . . . The Saviour has forbidden Christian men to swear; but you may find more who often perjure themselves than who swear not at all. He has said, Curse not. But of whom is not the speech of cursing? How can we wonder that God does not hearken to our prayers, seeing we listen not to his commands? Not merely do we neglect what is enjoined, but with our utmost endeavor we do the very contrary. God commands to love one another; we rend each other. He commands us all to impart our substance to the needy; we encroach upon each other's rights. God commands that the Christian should be pure, even as the eye; but who among us does not roll himself in the mire of fornication? You will find in the church scarcely one who is not either a drunkard, or a glutton, or an adulterer, or a frequenter of brothels, or a robber, or a manslayer,—and, what is worse than all, almost all these without limit. I put it now to the consciences of all Christian folks whether it be not so that you will barely find one who is not addicted to some of the vices and crimes I have mentioned, or, rather, who is it that is not guilty of all? Truly you will more easily find the man who is guilty of all than the one who is guilty of none. As to this none, my imputations perhaps may seem too serious. I will go farther. Sooner will you find those chargeable with every crime than any not chargeable with all; sooner those addicted to the greatest crimes than those guilty of the less. I mean to say more are living in the perpetration of the greater as well as the lighter vices than of the lighter ones alone. Into this shameless dissoluteness of manners is nearly the entire ecclesiastical mass so sunk that it has come to be regarded as a species of sanctity if one is a little less vicious than another. And so it is that the church, or, rather, the temples and altars of God, are by some held in less reverence than the most inferior courts and common magistrates' rooms.
The churches are outraged by indecencies and by the irreverence of those who rush thence, after the formal confession of their past sins, to the perpetration of more. You may well imagine what men have been thinking about at church, when you see them hurry off, some to plunder, some to get drunk, some to practice lewdness, some to rob on the highway. . . . What else but fraud and perjury is the course of life of all traders? What but iniquity that of those attached to halls and courts? What but false accusation that of officials? What but rapine that of all military? Do you say the behavior of these men is only answerable to their profession, nor is it to be wondered at if they be found to act in character? As if truly God willed any (in the way of their calling) to do or profess what is wicked. . . . If so, the greater portion of mankind would be excused on the plea of their profession. But you say the body of nobility is altogether free from these crimes. Far is this from being the fact. . . . For who is there, whether among the nobles or among the rich (and it is one of the miseries of these times that none is accounted so noble as he who has amassed the greatest wealth), who is there that shudders at crime? . . . Who is there, whether rich or noble, preserving innocency, holding back his hands from crimes of every kind? It were superfluous to speak of all crimes; would they were clear from the greatest. As to the less, I will say nothing, and especially as our great folks may think themselves privileged to indulge in small offenses. Let us see, then, whether any of this rank can plead exemption from one of these two capital crimes, murder and adultery. Who is there that, if his hand do not reek with human blood, is not soiled with foul impurities? And yet, although one of these burdens is enough to sink a man to perdition, hardly is there a rich man that is not chargeable with both. . . .
Wherefore, inasmuch as scarcely any one part of the Christian community, scarcely any one corner of the churches anywhere, is not full of offense, or not blotted with the stain of mortal sin, what room have we for flattering ourselves with an assumption of the Christian name?
If they had dropped that name altogether, and all professions of religion or truth, it would have been better for the world.