Church of England -- Sermons; Sermons, English -- 19th century
But, as for Christian people, this I will tell you, that unless you
hold true doctrines, you will _not_ lead good lives. My experience
is, that people are often wrong, when they say false doctrine is a
mistake of the head and not of the heart. I believe false doctrine
is very often not bred in the head at all, but in the heart, in the
very bottom of a man's soul; that it rises out of his heart into his
head; and that if his heart was right with God, he would begin at
once to have clearer and truer notions of the true Christian faith.
I do not say that it is always so; God forbid! But I do say that it
is often so, because I see it so; because I see every day false
doctrines about God making men lead bad lives, and commit actual
sins; take God's name in vain, dishonour their fathers and mothers,
lie, cheat, bear false witness against their neighbours, and covet
other men's goods. I say, I see it, and I must believe my own eyes
and ears; and when I do see it, I begin to understand the text which
says, 'This is eternal life, to know thee, the only God, and Jesus
Christ, whom thou hast sent;' and I begin to understand the
Athanasian Creed, which says, that if a 'man does not believe
rightly the name of God, and the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus
Christ, he will perish everlastingly; his soul will decay more and
more, become more and more weak, unhealthy and corrupt, till he
perishes everlastingly. And whatsoever that may mean, it must mean
something most awful and terrible, worse than all the evil which
ever happened to us since we were born.
There is a very serious example of this, to my mind, in what is
called the Greek Church; the Greeks and Russians. They split off
from the rest of Christ's Catholic Church, many hundred years ago,
because they would not hold with the rest of the Church that the
Holy Spirit proceeded from the Son as well as from the Father. They
said that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father alone. Now that
may seem a slight matter of words: but I cannot help thinking that
it has been a very solemn matter of practice with them. It seems to
me--God forgive me if I am judging them hardly!--that because they
denied that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Son, they forgot that
he was the Spirit of the Son, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, by whom he
says for ever, 'Father, not my will but thine be done!' and so they
forgot that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Sonship, the Spirit of
adoption, which must proceed and come from Christ to us, that we may
call God our Father, and say with Christ, 'Father, I come to do thy
will;' and so, in course of time, they seem to have forgotten that
Christian men were in any real practical sense, God's children; and
when people forget that they are God's children, they forget soon
enough to behave like God's children, and to live righteous and
Godlike lives.
I give you this as an example of what I mean; how not believing
rightly the Athanasian Creed may make a man lead a bad life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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