Benjamin Church

“ Has the Holy Spirit of God abandoned the church? Is the human race mad, insane and ruined, so that all pleadings and entreaties to turn to God must fail? Must the holy religion of Christ be set aside for the silly disputes of these times? Shall that holy religion that saved such vast multitudes in the days of the apostles, fired the hearts of the missionaries of the cross and supported the holy martyrs in passing through all the cruel scourgings, tortures and privations for the name of the Lord, be contemned, despised and rejected by the people of our day? ”

“ THE evangelist is not an officer in a church, or for a church, but his work is at large, to build up the churches, strengthen them and turn sinners to the Lord. He should introduce the gospel into new places, establish churches, and in due time set them in order. He is not an ecclesiastic, an official dignitary, who has much to say about his office and authority, but a gospel man, a man of influence, and can command respect and do a good work. ”

“ The editor of the following abridgment of the Liturgy of the Church of England thinks it but decent and respectful to all, more particularly to the reverend body of clergy, who adorn the Protestant religion by their good works, preaching, and example, that he should humbly offer some reason for such an undertaking. He addresses himself to the serious and discerning. He professes himself to be a Protestant of the Church of England, and holds in the highest veneration the doctrines of Jesus Christ. He is a sincere lover of social worship, deeply sensible of its usefulness to society ”

“ These are not now raised up and qualified by miracle, but by ordinary means; nor is the work gone that they are severally to do. The evangelizing is now needed as much as ever; so is [321] taking care of the churches and teaching the disciples all things that Jesus commanded. True, as our brother has said, there is no office in the church except overseer and deacon. The office of an evangelist is not a church office.
We have a glorious army of young men now called into the field, capable of one of the noblest works ever done by men. They have it in their hearts to do that work ”

“ And they healed the sick, for they used to wash the sick in water from the well of the church, and they were healed of their sicknesses straightway. And at the time when death was drawing nigh to their father, the priest Benjamin was putting on the priestly vestments in order to go up into the sanctuary, to consecrate the Offering; and one told him saying, “Thy father is nigh unto death and he is asking for thee.” And Saint Benjamin said, “I cannot take off the priestly vestments until I have finished the Office ”

“ The Family continu’d all of the Church of England till about the End of Charles the 2ds Reign, when some of the Ministers that had been outed for Nonconformity, holding Conventicles in Northamptonshire, Benjamin & Josiah adher’d to them, and so continu’d all their Lives. The rest of the Family remain’d with the Episcopal Church. ”

“ There are no landlords, head-lessees, main-masters, or butties in Wodgate. No church there has yet raised its spire; and as if the jealous spirit of Woden still haunted his ancient temple, even the conventicle scarcely dares show its humble front in some obscure corner. There is no municipality, no magistrate, no local acts, no vestries, no schools of any kind. The streets are never cleaned; every man lights his own house; nor does any one know anything except his business.
More than this, at Wodgate a factory or large establishment of any kind is unknown. Here Labour reigns supreme. ”

“ Neh. vi. 10. Benjamin, dwelling by the temple of God, dwelt in safety by him. Note, It is a happy thing to be in the neighbourhood of the temple. This situation of Benjamin, it is likely, was the only thing that kept that tribe in adherence with Judah to the divine institutions, when the other ten tribes apostatized. Those have corrupt and wicked hearts indeed who, the nearer they are to the church, are so much the further from God.
II. The blessing of Joseph, including both Manasseh and Ephraim. In Jacob's blessing (Gen. xlix.) that of Joseph is the largest, and so it is here ”

“ But in the succeeding centuries, as we have seen, clouds of misinterpretation, the clouds of tri-personalism, of vicarious atonement, and of salvation by faith alone, had hidden His face from men's minds. The dispersion of these clouds, the re-appearance of the face—the grace and truth—of the Son of Man, even in the letter of His written Word, was to effect the judgment on the declining age of the Church and reveal the dawning light of the new age. ”

“ The vast form of the spreading factory, the roofs and gardens of the village, the Tudor chimneys of the house of Trafford, the spire of the gothic church, with the sparkling river and the sylvan hack-ground, came rather suddenly on the sight of Egremont. They were indeed in the pretty village-street before he was aware he was about to enter it. Some beautiful children rushed out of a cottage and flew to Sybil, crying out, "the queen, the queen;" one clinging to her dress, another seizing her arm, and a third, too small to struggle, pouting out its lips to be embraced. ”

“ Must the public mind be wholly occupied with the useless distinctions between the views of men, the useless comparisons of doctrines and commandments of men, the comparative merits of different human systems, and an eternal train of customs unknown to the primitive church, thus bewildering the people and blinding their minds that they may neither see the Lord nor regard his authority? Is it impossible to bring the authority of the Almighty again to bear upon the world, to lift up the Lord before the people, that he may draw all men unto him, convert them to the Lord and place them under him? ”

“ But, gentlemen, the Constitution of England is not merely a Constitution in State, it is a Constitution in Church and State. The wisest Sovereigns and statesmen have ever been anxious to connect authority with religion — some to increase their power, some, perhaps, to mitigate its exercise. ”

“ This Divine Human presence manifesting itself by the Holy Spirit, calling all things to our remembrance whatsoever He has said unto us in all the Scriptures, the Church has been slow to apprehend. Only in love can it be apprehended. An age must pass of faulty apprehension in which the love of the many will wax cold. ”

“ This unreasonableness of doctrine and lack of Christian charity, wars and massacres under the flag of Christian faith, with the profligate luxury of church officials in contrast with the desperate poverty of the people, easily bred contempt for religion at a time when by the art of printing great strides had been made in popular education. ”

“ There has been no longer charity upon earth, Sir, since Christians left the Gospel simplicity; from that time charity began to wax cold; and when the Church would needs establish herself in pomp, riches, and magnificence, this outward splendor has utterly destroyed the spirit of the Gospel. Studies have banished the Holy Spirit, and the learning of men has stifled the wisdom of God" (p. 19) . ”

“ Let a man of talent, influence and energy, fall from his station, and become an apostate and enemy, let the cause be made to bleed and suffer from his want of reputation, while he hurls back his javelins with all the malice and fury of the Prince of the bottomless pit; and then, compute the change made in the condition of the church and the world? No one, short of the Infinite Being Himself, can compute the vast number that will be seriously injured, in one century, by such a miserable being. ”

“ What time more probable, when we take into view the nearness and the connection of the one world with the other, than the time when the old life of the Church came to its end, there was a pause, and then new life with astonishing power began to spring forth? ”

“ In the tumult of life, a few minutes occasionally passed in the solemn shadow of some lofty and ancient aisle, exercise very often a salutary influence: they purify the heart and elevate the mind; dispel many haunting fancies, and prevent many an act which otherwise might be repented. The church would in this light still afford us a sanctuary; not against the power of the law but against the violence of our own will; not against the passions of man but against our own. ”

“ The quick intelligence and the ardent imagination of Sybil had made her comprehend with fervor the two ideas that had been impressed on her young mind; the oppression of her church and the degradation of her people. Educated in solitude and exchanging thoughts only with individuals of the same sympathies, these impression had resolved themselves into one profound and gloomy conviction, that the world was divided only between the oppressors and the oppressed. With her, to be one of the people, was to be miserable and innocent; one of the privileged, a luxurious tyrant. ”

“ Faith without works is a dead faith: a flower which does not live is nothing but lifeless dust; and faith which does not live in every action of man is a dead faith—it is no faith at all. Here, my friends, see what this Christian world really does. They call indeed upon Him, the only Son, in their times of need, but they forget both His teaching and His life. Like an obstinate child who despises warning, they rush into all manner of lusts, into pride and wickedness, which are like a thin, frail covering over an abyss ”

“ At a time when the spirit of the theology of the Church was eminently rationalistic, they were generally repudiated, and by the middle of the eighteenth century they had already fallen into neglect. . . . A latent scepticism and a wide-spread indifference might be everywhere traced among the educated classes. There was a common opinion that Christianity was untrue, but essential to society, and that on this ground alone it should be retained. . . . The old religion seemed everywhere loosening around the minds of men, and it had often no great influence even on its defenders. ”

“ Since we are saved of free grace without any merit of our own, what need is there of any faith but this—that God the Father sent the Son to take away the curse of the law, to impute his merit to us, and so to justify us in His sight, and absolve us from our sins by the declaration of a priest, and then give the Holy Ghost to operate all good in us? ”

“ Doubtless in this claim for reward in His kingdom the Lord saw the tares sown with the wheat and foresaw the sad end of this first age of His Church. None knew so well as He the slow and painful steps by which man must be led out of the natural self-seeking life of this world into the spiritual self-devoting life of the Father's kingdom. ”

“ Swedenborg says, "the intellect unless from what is revealed contributes nothing, but faith springing from God does the work. And so, His will being invoked, His spirit flows into the soul and changes its state, or perfects it; but the work is one of long discipline, if the soul is evil, that it may become good. . . . Hence it is plain how difficult it is to turn an evil soul into a good one, and that this is of the Divine grace alone, though there must be persevering application on the part of man." ”

“ Every morning, as soon as the sun rises, let all the bells in every church be set ringing: and if that is not sufficient, let cannon be fired in every street, to wake the sluggards effectually, and make them open their eyes to see their true interest. ”

“ Leibnitz in the earlier part of the century had said, "The state to which we are approaching is one of the signs by which will be recognized that final war announced by Jesus Christ: Nevertheless, when the Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?" ”

“ For when I shall have demonstrated truths themselves by the analytic method, I hope that those debasing shadows or material clouds which darken the sacred temple of the mind will be dispersed; and that thus at last under the favor of God, who is the Sun of Wisdom, an access will be opened and a way laid down to faith. ”

“ If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have [453] not, in their turns, been persecutors and complainers of persecution. The primitive christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the pagans, but practised it on one another. The first protestants of the church of England blamed persecution in the Romish church, but practised it against the puritans: ”

“ Their system was violently opposed by the Orthodox, for they taught that regeneration was not effected by baptism, as Luther and Calvin held with the Mother Church, but was an awakening or conversion, which was conditioned in subsequent life by the Word of God; that only living faith attained justification, and that it must be active in preserving it, a sure guarantee existing only in a faith which gave evidence of being alive in a pious life and active Christianity. ”

“ This have I learned, that the only thing . . . is in all humility to thank God for His grace and to pray for it, and to recognize our own unworthiness and God's infinite grace. . . . The sum of all I found to be this, that the one thing needful is to cast one's self in all humility on our Lord's grace, to recognize one's own unworthiness, and to thank God in humility for His grace; for if there is a feeling of glorification contained in it, the tendency of which is toward our own honor—whether it is a glorification of God's grace or of anything else—such a feeling is impure. ”