And if you tolerate fictions at all in Christianity, where will you
stop? And if you do not stop somewhere, Christianity will disappear, and
a mass of worthless and disgusting follies will take its place. The new
creation will vanish, and chaos come again.
And again. A large proportion of the controversies of the Church are
about men's inventions. Christ's own doctrines do not so often provoke
opposition as the traditions of the elders; nor do they, when assailed,
require so much defending. They defend themselves. "The devil's way of
undoing," says Baxter, "is by overdoing. To bring religious zeal into
disrepute, he makes some zealous to madness, to persecution, to blood.
To discredit freedom he urges its advocates into lawlessness. To
discredit Christian morality, he induces some to carry it to the extreme
of asceticism. To discredit needful authority, he makes rulers of the
State into despots, and persuades the rulers of the Church to claim
infallibility. To discredit Christianity, he adds to it human
inventions." Wesley has a similar sentiment. "If you place Christian
perfection too high, you drive it out of the world." And it is certain,
that an infinite amount of hostility to Christianity is owing to the
folly of divines in supplementing its simple and practical doctrines, by
speculative and unintelligible theories.
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