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Ancient Christianity, & the Doctrines of the Oxford Tracts for the Times ...
Ancient Christianity the Doctrines of the Oxford Tracts for the Times Author:Isaac Taylor 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: ERSITY j ADVERTISEMENT TO THE SECOND NUMBER. The candid reader, as he accompanies me, will grant, I think, that I have not mistaken the path on which a tr... more »ue notion of nicene christianity is to be obtained. He will find that the false principle—a principle borrowed from a very impure souree, whence the celibate institution resulted, when clearly understood, at once enables us to account for the early decay, and at length the total disappearance of whatever is bright, holy, and substantial in the gospel; and furthermore, that it unlocks mystery after mystery of that vast system of illusion, idolatry, and despotism, which we find embracing christendom, eastern and western, at the close of the nicene age. Confident therefore that I am pursuing the direct and the shortest path, I have not scrupled so far to deviate from my first intention, as to extend this preliminary inquiry beyond the limits of the present number. In the end, I shall not be found really to have trenched, in doing so, upon the reader's time and patience; but to have economised both. Proposing hereafter to examine separately, and with all necessary industry, the several articles of what are called ' Chureh Principles,' I feel that very much of the labour otherwise requisite in pursuing those researehes, will have been saved. This particular line of argument would have seemed to me proper, irrespective of any incidental considerations; but still more so now, as it appears that the devout and eminent persons who are at the head of the Oxford Tract system, are actually taking the course which consistency plainly imposes upon them; and are opening the way, by their writings, publicly, and (if report say true, for which I will not vouch) by their very strenuous influence, privately, for restoring, in the bosom...« less