Orthodoxy: Its Truths And ErrorsClarke, James Freeman
Religion
Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors
Clarke, James Freeman
Unitarianism
Two tendencies have joined in teaching salvation by works, or, more
strictly, in teaching _the initiative of the will in religion_. These are
the Church-tendency and the Moral-tendency in Christianity. The Church
party in Christianity teaches that the first duty towards a child is to
make it a member of the Christian Church by baptism, and that the first
duty of every baptized person is to obey the commands of the Church. The
Church thus becomes a school, in which baptized persons are educated as
Christians. The Church of Rome, and the High Church party in the Church of
England and in the Episcopal Church of the United States, teach this
doctrine of salvation by works. This system by no means dispenses with
Christian belief or Christian feeling, but makes them both subordinate.
The Church says to its faithful, We do not require you to believe or to
feel, but to obey. If we said, “Believe,” or “Feel,” you might justly
reply, “We cannot believe or feel when we choose, and you have therefore
no right to ask us to do so.” Therefore the Church only demands obedience,
which it is in the power of all to render. It, indeed, requires an assent
to its creed, and forbids heresy. But this only means, “Receive the creed
as true until you are able to see _how_ it is true.” The Church also
insists greatly on love, and its saints have been filled with the highest
raptures of piety. But it never _requires_ feeling. It says, “Use the
means we put into your hands, and feeling will come. Pray, as we command
you to do, whether you feel deeply or not. Feeling will come by and by.”
Discipline, therefore, and not illumination, has been the method of the
Church of Rome, and is also the method of all other Churches, so far as
they are ecclesiastical Churches. All such Churches teach that by a
faithful conformity to their ritual, methods, sacraments, services,
discipline, the Christian life will surely come. The one thing needful and
primary with them all is obedience, and the result of obedience is
knowledge and love.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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