APOLOGY FOR CREEDS.
A
APOLOGYFirst. “It is not necessary to make such an incessant war upon our creed; it is just like the Bible; it is all scriptural.” In this case admitting, for the sake of argument, what is not true of any human creed, that it is “just like the Bible,” we reply, that is useless, and will do no better than the Bible itself. If it is just like the Bible it will accomplish nothing more than the Bible, and be just as deficient. Nothing can be gained by it; nothing can be accomplished by it which the Bible itself could not accomplish, so that it must be utterly useless. In that case there can be no excuse for having it—not only so, but the person holding on to and contending for such a creed, is inexcusable on another account. To give up a creed just like the Bible, and take the Bible itself as a rule of faith and practice, a man would lose nothing, for he would find all his creed in the Bible. We insist, therefore, that one of the most inexcusable, unreasonable and unjustifiable positions a man can occupy, is to hold on to, contend for and insist that he can not do without a creed which he insists is just like the Bible, though he can have the Bible itself! The Bible will certainly accomplish all that any creed just like it can.
Apology Second.“It is useless to be contending against our creed. It contains nothing that is not in the Bible. It is simply an abstract, epitome or abridgment of Bible doctrine, so arranged as to be convenientand show at a glance what we hold.” This is quite a specious apology, and has succeeded in deluding and deceiving many persons, and silencing their consciences, and is, therefore, more especially deserving of attention. This apology is dangerous because it acknowledges that the creed contains and sets forth what the party believes—its faith. Now, we assert, without hesitation, that any man who believes no more than is set forth in any human creed on earth, and will do no more than any human creed requires, has neither faith nor obedience enough to be acceptable with God. There is not a human creed on earth, that contains thewhole Christian faith. Their faith is too narrow. We have no confidence in epitomes, abstracts, or abridgments of the faith. Nothing less than the faith, the whole faith of Christ, is sufficient to meet the divine approbation. No man’s faith not as broad as the Bible is broad enough for us. His faith must contain Moses and Jesus, the prophets of the Old Testament and the apostles of the New. There must be no abstracting, no epitomizing, no abridging. The man not willing to receive Christ, and the whole Christian faith, as God has set him and the faith forth, in the Holy Scriptures, is not a christian, and had better make no pretence to christianity. We do not wish a man to come describing how heviews every point of doctrine. We do not desire him to come declaring that he receives Christ as a Trinitarian or Unitarian, a Calvinist or an Arminian, but to come with a contrite spirit, avowing it as the desire of the heart, and his full determination, to receive Christ with all his heart, as God has revealed him in the prophecies of the Old Testament and the apostolic preaching of the New.
The advocate of a human creed says, he wants his creed to “show at a glance what we hold!” Look over your creed, then, right carefully, and seewhat you hold, and look over the New Testament with the same care, and see what an amount it contains thatyou do not hold, or that is not in your creed, and you will see that your creed is not a respectable skeleton—that it not only lacks the flesh, blood, muscles, arteries, veins, etc., of the body, but it lacks many of the bones and, what is vastly more, it lacks the life, the soul, the spirit. If it containswhat you hold, much as precious as any part of the Christian faith, and as binding as any thing God has revealed, clearly and as explicitly laid down in the New Testament, is not contained in what you hold at all. Much of as precious truth as is contained in the Bible, a vast amount as clear to the children of God as anything contained in the Christian faith, an immense deal as consoling to the dying saint as any thing in the word of God, as any man who has ever looked must admit, is not found in any human creed. We say again, and can prove at almost any length, that there is not a human creed in the world that is a respectable skeleton, that is even a perceptible shadow of the Christian faith. Indeed, no creed appears to have been intended simply to set forth theChristian faith. It does not appear to be the object of any human creed to set forth the simple faith of Christ or Christianity. None of the creeds claim to be theChristian faith,the Christian confession,Christian discipline or Christian system, but one is “The Philadelphia Confession,” another “The Westminster Confession,” and a third “The Methodist Discipline.” The object ofthese books, and all of the same kind, appears to be more to set forth the views their authors had of certain points of doctrine, or their notions of these points, than to set forth the whole Christian faith itself. Their object is much more to show how the parties adopting them held certain points of doctrine, and to distinguish their views from some others, than to set forth the Christian faith. The creeds, then, are but little more than epitomes of men’s views of certain points of Christian doctrine, their abridged understanding of these points. Now, the belief and reception ofmen’s viewsof the Christian faith will not save any man, much less the belief and reception oftheir views of a few pointsof doctrine; but to be saved, a man must believe and receive the Christian faith—the whole Christian faith itself.