Grave Questions for the Consideration of the Government and People, of the Churchman and Dissenter [

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1847. Excerpt: ... "WHAT SAITH THE SCRIPTURE" Sts to State Dotoer, STATE SUPPORT, AND STATE GIFTS, AS THEY RELATE TO "THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD"? CHAPTER I. ON THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SUBJECT AND ITS PRECISE IDEA. On entering upon this subject, it might not be amiss to awaken the mind to a sense of its importance. Not to insist upon its being very much the question of the day, we may remark, that from the time of Constantine, the Emperor of Rome, which is now about fifteen hundred years, the true spiritual church has been in danger from a direction, influence, and control, foreign to her spirit and design. In the first instance, from the Roman civil power modelling the church's polity according to its own or the polity of the Roman empire; afterwards, from the papal ecclesiastical power assuming absolute authority over her; and then, at the Reformation, the civil power claiming dominion, making the king the supreme head of the church. This assumed authority, D'Aubigne, author of the work on the Reformation, has well expressed. Speaking of the papacy, he says--" In place of the despotism of the prince, it substituted that of the priest, and often indeed had both prince and priest been by it stirred up against the Christian people. A new emancipation was needed; the sixteenth century produced it. Wherever the Reformation established itself, the yoke of Rome was thrown off, and liberty of conscience restored. Yet," adds he, "there was such a proneness in man to exalt himself above the truth, that even among many Protestant nations of our own time, the church, freed from the arbitrary power of the priest, is S now falling again into subserviency to the civil authority. Thus, like its Divine Founder, is it bandied from one despotism to another, still passing from Caiaphas to Pi...