Читать книгу A Book of Gems, or, Choice selections from the writings of Benjamin Franklin - Бенджамин Франклин - Страница 32

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WE can not recognize the side institution, nor the officers in it, as neither the one nor the other is known to the oracles of God, or to history for ages after the sacred canon was complete. What is the use to talk of a church of which there is not a trace in the volume of God, nor in anything written for hundreds of years after the apostles? There is not a trace of Romanism, of a pope, cardinal or archbishop in the Bible, except in the prophecies that foretell the apostasy, nor in any other writing of the first three centuries. Nor is there any account of any of the others we have mentioned for a much greater length of time.

We find “the body of Christ,” “the kingdom of God,” and “the Church of God,” spoken of in Scripture. The Lord says, “On this rock I will build my church.” Here is something clear and definite. We can bring this “body” before us, this “kingdom,” or “church,” be members of it, confine our minds and hearts to it; keep it and all its grand interest in view, and not some side structure, imitation or something like it.

The apostles and first evangelists, the overseers and deacons in the first church, were all ministers or servants in the grand work of the “one body,” or “the kingdom,” and not of any side structure. All who are really ministers or servants of Jesus now, are in this “one body,” “kingdom” or “church,” and devoted to its interests and growth, and not to the building up, extending or perpetuation of any side structure, under the pretext that it is like the original or any other, but for the original itself.

All these side structures, names and laws are usurpation, and the true ministers or servants of the kingdom, can but regard them as such, and labor to melt them all away and put all the good material there is in them into “God’s building,” “the temple of God,” and thus make this material useful and acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

As to clerical airs, the peculiar cut of the coat, the white necktie, and all other such “outward signs of inward grace,” they are the offspring of shallowness, weakness and folly, and wholly incompatible with the plainness, meekness and humility of Jesus and of good taste and sense.