The Mercersburg Review (Volume 4) - Softcover

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. 1852. Excerpt: ... EVANGELICAL RADICALISM. The Church Member's Manual Of Ecclesiastical PrinCiples, Doctrine And Discipline: Presenting a systematic view of the structure, polity, doctrines, and practices of Christian Churches, as taught in the Scriptures. By William Crowell, &c. Boston: Gould and Lincoln. 1852. A truly interesting and suggestive book--though not exactly in the way of its own intention. The author is a Baptist, who proposes to set forth a scheme of the Church to suit the rationalistic standpoint of his own sect; "his only desire being to follow truth, wherever it may lead." To answer the question, "What and where is the church?" he scorns the thought of taking counsel of the Church itself. "I might as well go to Delphi or Dodona," he tells us, " or the shrine of Jupiter Amnion, to inquire who is the god, and where is his temple." Pagan and Christian theocracies, it seems, are alike without truth and entitled to no trust. The whole appeal must be "to the Bible-" which means, of course, to the Bible as read by William Crowell and his Baptist brethren, in distinction from the reading of Presbyterians, Lutherans, ifcc., «fcc., as well as from the sense attached to it by the ancient Fathers and the Catholic Church of all past ages. "Hitherto Baptists have paid but little attention to the subject of church polity;" too busy with the interests of "spiritual Christianity in iis primitive form," to give much attention to any such outward concern. We will not pretend here to go minutely into the theory now concocted out of the Bible, for their special accommodation and use, by this Church Member's Manual Suffice it to say, that it is preeminently rationalistic. The idea of a general church, save in the sense of a mere abstraction, is discarded; the only true ord...