The Christian Life: Its Course, Its Hindrances, and Its Helps — John Shaqi
The Christian Life: Its Course, Its Hindrances, and Its HelpsArnold, Thomas
Religion
The Christian Life: Its Course, Its Hindrances, and Its Helps
Arnold, Thomas
Christian life; Sermons, English
[Footnote 6: This, it is well known, has been most ably maintained by
Rothe, (_Artfãnge der Christlichen Kirche und ihrer Verfassung_,
Wittenberg, 1837,) with respect to the origin of episcopacy. He contends
that it was instituted by the surviving apostles after the destruction
of Jerusalem, as an intentional change from the earlier constitution of
the church, in order to enable it to meet the peculiar difficulties and
dangers of the times. To this belongs the question of the meaning of the
expression, [Greek: oi tais deuterais ton Apostolon diataxesi
parakolouthaekotes], in the famous Fragments of Irenæus, published by
Pfaff, from a manuscript in the library of Turin, and to be found in the
Venice edition of Irenæus, 1734, vol. ii. _Fragmentorum_, p. 10. But
then Rothe would admit that if the apostles altered what they themselves
had appointed, it would follow that neither their earlier nor their
later institutions were intended to be for all times and all places, but
were simply adapted to a particular state of circumstances, and were
alterable when that state was altered: in short, whatever institutions
the apostles changed were shown to be essentially changeable; otherwise
their early institution was defective, which cannot be conceived. And
thus it may well be that the early church may have altered, in some
points, the first institutions of the apostles, and may have been guided
by God's Spirit in doing so; but the error consists in believing that
the now institutions were to be of necessity more permanent than those
which they succeeded; in supposing that either the one or the other
belong to the eternal truths and laws of Christ's religion, when they
belong, in fact, to the essentially changeable regulations of
his church.]
To such consequences are those driven who maintain the divine authority
of the system of Mr. Newman. Assuredly the thirst for "something deeper
and truer than satisfied the last century," will not be allayed by a
draught so scanty and so vapid; but after the mirage has beguiled and
disappointed him for a season, the traveller presses on the more eagerly
to the true and living well.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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