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National Church establishments examined: a course of lectures
National Church establishments examined a course of lectures Author:Ralph Wardlaw 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: LECTURE III. SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT CONTINUED. OLD TESTAMENT. JEWISH CONSTITUTION. BRIEF NOTICES OF OTHER POINTS. ANSWERS TO OBJECTIONS. In the last lecture... more », after a variety of general observations necessary to the introduction and subsequent elucidation of the Scripture argument on the great question before us, we proposed, for the sake of distinctness, to make good the three following positions:—1. That in the New Testament there is no recognition whatever of the power of civil rulers in matters of religion. 2. That in the New Testament the maintenance and progress of the church's interests are, with all clearness and ex- plicitness, authoritatively committed to the church itself. 3. That all imitation of the ancient Jewish constitution, in this particular, is, from its very nature, impossible ; and were it possible, would not be warrantable. We have disposed of the first and second, in as far as the simple illustration and proof of them is concerned, leaving general deductions till afterwards ; and, having no time for recapitulation, we now proceed directly to the third. While Dr. Chalmers, as we have seen, admits "the absence of any distinct and definite authority for anEstablished Church in the New Testament," he at the same time affirms this distinct and definite authority to " stand forth unequivocally in almost every book of the Old" I presume that, when Dr. Chalmers wrote these words, the reference, in his mind, was to the Jewish economy,—to the national constitution of the church under the dispensation of Moses. And to that it is my purpose to bend my chief attention ; being firmly convinced that, if the argument derived from that source can be satisfactorily set aside, there will be little left remaining in the Old Testament, of which our friends, on the opposit...« less