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Evangelical churchmanship and evangelical eclecticism
Evangelical churchmanship and evangelical eclecticism Author:Edward Henry Bickersteth Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: EVANGELICAL CHURCHMANSHIP AND EVANGELICAL ECLECTICISM. How may Evangelical Churchmen best refuse the evil and choose the good in other Schools of Thought ? ... more » "Butter and honey shall He eat, that He may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good."—Isaiah vii. 15. These words were spoken of Emmanuel. This divine Child was a true human Infant, fed with the produce of the land which flowed with milk and honey ; and from the earliest dawn of a conscious will He learned as man to refuse the evil and choose the good. His was ever the sinless choice of the good alone. How we, as loyal and attached ministers and members of the Church of England, may herein follow most closely the footsteps of our Lord, and intelligently and deliberately refuse the evil and choose the good in other schools of thought, is our subject to-day. I use the expression " schools of thought" for want of a better, not as meaning by it that we acknowledge ourselves to be a party in any spirit of partizanship, though parties there will be in theChurch till the Master returns, and we all see eye to eye in His presence; nor as for a moment claiming that there is only good to be chosen and no evil to be refused in the doings and sayings of our own school; nor yet as conceding that there can be, in our judgment, an equality of excellence in different schools of religious thought. For if we, as Evangelical Churchmen, believed that any developments of doctrine, varying from or in advance of those which we have heretofore maintained, were indeed true and could be proved by certain warrants of Holy Scripture, I hold that we should be bound to include them not only in our private creed but also in our open confession of faith. And so if we were certified that any practices, allowed by the Word of God, were for the grea...« less