If I were to classify in three chapters the whole Christian institution, after the fashion of the modern schools, for the sake of being understood, I would designate them Christian faith, Christian /103/worship, and Christian morality. To these the moderns have added two others, which, using the same license, I would call human philosophy and human traditions. Now, in the first chapter, we and all Christians are agreed: for as Christian faith has respect to the matters of fact recorded - to the direct testimony of God found in the New Testament concerning himself - concerning his Son and Spirit concerning mankind - what he has done and what he will do - on it there is no debate. I find all confessions of FAITH, properly so called, like the four Gospels, tell the same story so far as matters of fact or faith are concerned.
In the second chapter we are also agreed, that God is to be worshiped through the Mediator - in prayer, in praise, public and private - in the ordinances of Christian baptism, the Lord's day, the Lord's supper, and in the devotional study of his word and of his works of creation and providence.
In the third chapter we all acknowledge the same moral code. What is morality is confessed and acknowledged by all; but in the practice of it there are great subtractions.
We repudiate the two remaining chapters as having any place in our faith, worship, or morality; because we think we have discovered that all the divisions in Protestant Christendom - that all the partyism, vain jangling, and heresies which have disgraced the Christian profession - have emanated from human philosophy and human tradition. It is not faith, nor piety, nor morality, but philosophy and tradition, that have alienated and estranged Christians, and prevented the conversion of the world. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle deserved not the reputation of philosophers, if Calvin, Arminius, and Wesley were not worthy of it. The former philosophized morally on nature and ancient tradition - the latter, on the Bible, and human society.
Religious philosophers on the Bible have excogitated the following doctrines and philosophical distinctions: -
We choose to speak of Bible things by Bible words, because we are always suspicious that if the word is not in the Bible the idea which it represents is not there; and always confident that the things taught by God are better taught in the words and under the names which the Holy Spirit has chosen and appropriated, than in the words which man's wisdom teaches.
There is nothing more essential to the union of the disciples of Christ than purity of speech. So long as the earth was of one speech, the human family was united. Had they been then of a pure speech as well as of one speech, they would not have been separated. God, in his just indignation, dispersed them; and before he scattered them he divided their language. One of his prophets, who lived in a degenerate age, who prophesied against the corruptions of his day, when he spoke of better times, of an age of union and communion, was commanded to say, in the name of the Lord, "Then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may call upon he name of Lord, to serve him with one consent." [NOTE: Zephaniah iii. 9] Purity of speech is here declared to be prerequisite to serving the Lord with one consent.
"The words of the Lord are pure words." [NOTE: Psalm xii. 6] To have a pure speech we must choose the language of Canaan, and abandon that Ashdod. And if we would be of one mind we must "speak the same thing." This was Paul's scheme of union, and no man can suggest better.
It requires but little reflection to discover that the fiercest disputes about religion are about what the Bible does not say, rather /105/than about what it does say - about words and phrases coined in mint of speculative theology. Of these the homoussos and the homousios of the ever-memorable Council of Nice are a fair sample. Men are neither wiser, more intelligent, nor better, after, than before, they know the meaning of these words. As far as known on earth there is not, in "the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world," the name of any person who was either converted or sanctified to God by any of these controversies about human dogmas, nor by anything learned from the canons or creeds of all Councils, from that of Nice to the last Methodist Conference.
It is a virtue, then, to forget this scholastic jargon, and even names of the dogmas which have convulsed Christendom. It is a concession due to the crisis in which we live, for the sake of peace, to adopt the vocabulary of Heaven, and to return the borrowed nomenclature of the schools to its rightful owners - to speculate no more upon the opinions of Saint Austin, Saint Tertullian, Saint Origen - to speak of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit - of the gospel, of faith, of repentance, of baptism, of election of the death of Christ, of his mediation, of his blood, of the reconciliation, of the Lord's supper, of the atonement, of the church of God, etc., etc., in all phrases found in the Record, without partiality - to learn to love another as much when we differ in opinion as when we agree, an distinguish between the testimony of God, and man's reasonings philosophy upon it.
I need not say much upon the chapter of human traditions. They are easily distinguished from the apostles' traditions. Those of the apostles are found in their writings, as those of men are found in their own books. Some human traditions may have a show of wisdom, but is only an appearance. So long as it is written, "In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men," so long will it be presumptuous folly to add the commandments of men to the precepts of Jesus Christ. I know of but one way in which all believers in Jesus Christ, honorably to themselves, honorably to the Lord, and advantageously to all the sons of Adam, can form one communion. All have two chapters too many in their present ecclesiastic constitutions. The contents of the aforesaid two chapters are various and different in all the sects, but they all have these two chapters under some name. In some they are long, and some they are short; but whether long or short, let every one agree to tear them out of his book and burn them, and be satisfied with faith piety, and morality. Let human philosophy and human tradition, as any part of the Christian institution, be thrown overboard into the sea, and then the ship of the church will make a prosperous, safe, and happy voyage across the ocean of time, and finally, under /106/the triumphant flag of Immanuel, gain a safe anchorage in the haven of eternal rest.
I would appeal to every honorable, good, and loyal citizen of the kingdom of heaven, - to everyone that seeks the good of Zion, that loves the kingdom and the appealing of our common Lord and Saviour, whether such a concession be not due to the Lord, to the saint in heaven and on earth, and to the whole human race in the crisis in which we are now placed; and whether we could propose less, or ought to demand more, than to make one whole burnt-offering of all our "empty and deceitful philosophy," - our "science, falsely so called," - and our traditions received from our fathers. I would leave it to the good sense of every sane mind to say, whether such whole burnt-offering would not be the most acceptable peace-offering which, in this our day, could be presented on the altar of the Prince of Peace; and whether, under the teachings of the apostles of the Great Prophet, the church might not again triumphantly stand up on the holy ground which she so honorably occupied before Origen, Austin, Athanasius, or the first pope, was born! [NOTE: Millennial Harbinger, vol. vi., pp. 139-142.]