Evangelicals

“ If these truths are rejected because they are evangelical, and the more fashionable doctrine of a sincere though imperfect obedience, combined with a submission to a prescribed formula of religion, which leaves the heart unrenewed, be substituted in their room, we may gain the applause of those who trust in themselves that they are righteous, but we shall be guilty of an awful departure from the spirit and the design of our commission, and justly incur the displeasure of Jesus Christ. ”

“ With regard to the composition of your sermons: first, let the matter be evangelical. The doctrine of the Gospel is a mould from heaven, and not changed. It puts its own impress and shape on the professor that is melted into it, so that his justification, sanctification, and all his salvation, flow from the merits of Christ; and all through God’s grace, and not of ourselves. The gospel, as a glass, should be kept clean and clear in the pulpit, that the hearers may see the glory of Christ, and be changed to the same image. Every duty is to be urged by evangelical motives. ”

“ The Evangelical Alliance, made up of all orthodox denominations of the world, met only a few years ago, and here is their creed: They believe in the divine inspiration, authority and sufficiency of the holy Scriptures; the right and duty of private judgment in the interpretation of the holy Scriptures, but if you interpret wrong you are damned. They believe in the unity of the godhead and the Trinity of the persons therein. They believe in the utter depravity of human nature. There can be no more infamous doctrine than that. They look upon a little child as a lump of depravity. ”

“ The Bible is very far from being the only rule of faith and practice, even among Protestants; else why so many different faiths? so many antagonistical systems of theology? So many contradictory forms of church policy? and last, but not least, so much wrath, contention, strife and rangling, all about words—which discussion only darkens, and explanations mystify? and the church of Christ, that should be the focus of peace, holiness and love, resembles the arena of vulgar politics.
To the “law and the testimony” we will go, and from them take nothing by example and precept. ”

“ Observe, reader, how adroitly they can adorn lies, and how frightfully they can suppress and despise truth under cover of virtue. All the evangelical Scriptures teach us that the church of Christ was and is, in doctrine, life, and worship, a people separated from the world. ”

“ Now it is the true religion of Jesus Christ, the true doctrine of His gospel, which is justice and light; all false doctrines are injustice and darkness: it is by our holy faith that we belong to Christ, and are temples of the living God; all false religions flow from the father of lies, and make those who embrace them unbelievers; therefore all participation, all fellowship, all communication with false religions, is here expressly forbidden by the Word of God. ”

“ Indeed, the evangelical minister requires, on the part of his adherents, a higher degree of virtue than his opponent, and he employs more powerful motives to enforce it. He requires the entire renovation of the soul, and such a conversion from all the evil habits and impure propensities of our nature, as shall constitute us new creatures in Christ Jesus. Do you enforce virtue from an appeal to the authority of God? so does your evangelical brother. Do you enforce it by a reference to its own loveliness, and its tendency to promote personal and relative happiness? ”

“ But they are also evangelical in this higher sense, that, while they build upon evangelical fact and evangelical dogma, and assume that the teachings of Christ and the Apostles are divine, they do not merely reiterate, but explain, defend, illustrate and enforce these evangelical elements. There is throughout an endeavor to show the reasonableness of gospel truth—its internal harmony—its conformableness to the fitness of things, and its agreement with the natural impressions of the human mind and the demands of the moral sense. ”

“ If therefore we would be true Christians of the Catholic church, we must put off this partiality of the carnal Jew; we must enter into a Catholic affection for all men, love the spirit of the gospel wherever we see it; not work ourselves up into an abhorrence of a George Fox, or an Ignatius Loyola; but be equally glad of the light of the gospel wherever it shines, or from whatever quarter it comes; and give the same praise to God for an eminent example of piety, wherever it appears, either in Papist or Protestant. ”

“ The law and faith in Jesus Christ—that means love towards our fellow men; it means equality; it means fraternity; it means revolt against the idolatries, in whose name the greatest malefactors are and believe themselves absolved of their crimes by the purchase of indulgences! Only through faith and the practice of the Evangelical law will our sins be remitted. ”

“ Truth, casting out evils and healing the sick; Love, fulfilling the law and keeping man unspotted from the world,—these practical manifestations of Christianity constitute the only evangelism, and they need no creed. ”

“ We must sit down humbly in the presence of God, look the whole subject in the face, examine clearly what the Lord Jesus calls sin, and what the Lord Jesus calls doing His will. We must then try to realize that it is terribly possible to live a careless, easy–going, half–worldly life, and yet at the same time to maintain evangelical principles and call ourselves evangelical people! Once we see that sin is far viler and far nearer to us and sticks more closely to us than we supposed, we will be led, I trust and believe, to get nearer to Christ. ”

“ The hand distribution of religious tracts is an age-old form of missionary evangelism-as old as the history of printing presses. [5] It has been a potent force in various religious movements down through the years. [6] This form of evangelism is utilized today on a large scale by various religious sects whose colporteurs carry the Gospel to thousands upon thousands of homes and seek through personal visitations to win adherents to their faith. [7] It is more than preaching; it is more than distribution of religious literature. ”

“ It is true that what we must perforce call by the awkward names of 'Evangelicalism' and 'Methodism' had many points in common—that they were constantly identified by the common enemies of both—that they were both parts of what we have termed in the widest sense of the term 'the Evangelical revival'—that they, in fact, crossed and interlaced one another in so many ways that it is not always easy to disentangle the one from the other—that there are several names which one is in doubt whether to place on one side of the line or the other. ”

“ The Protestant evangelical denominations have so tied up one another's hands, and their own, that, between them all, a man cannot become a preacher at all, anywhere, without [pg 389] accepting some book besides the Bible.... There is nothing imaginary in the statement that the creed power is now beginning to prohibit the Bible as really as Rome did, though in a subtler way.”641
When faithful teachers expound the word of God, there arise men of learning, ministers professing to understand the Scriptures, who denounce sound doctrine as heresy, and thus turn away inquirers after truth. ”

“ A terrible crisis has arisen in the Church. In the ministry of evangelical churches are to be found hosts of those who reject the gospel of Christ. By the equivocal use of traditional phrases, by the representation of differences of opinion as though they were only differences about the interpretation of the Bible, entrance into the Church was secured for those who are hostile to the very foundations of the faith. ”

“ If evangelical churches refuse fellowship with the Church of Christ, Scientist, or with Christian Science, they must rest their opinions of Truth and Love on the evidences of the physical senses, rather than on the teaching and practice of Jesus, or the works of the Spirit. ”

“ If by Christianity you mean the orthodox church, then I unhesitatingly answer that it does retard civilization, always has retarded it, and always will. I can imagine no man who can be benefitted by being made a Catholic or a Presbyterian or a Baptist or a Methodist—or, in other words, by being made an orthodox Christian. But by Christianity I do not mean morality, kindness, forgiveness, justice. ”

“ The plain truth is, that I see no other ground to occupy, and find no other rest for the sole of my foot. I lay no claim to infallibility, and desire to be no man's judge. But the longer I live and read, the more I am convinced and persuaded that Evangelical principles are the principles of the Bible, of the Articles and Prayer-book, and of the leading Divines of the reformed Church of England. Holding these views, I cannot write otherwise then I have written.
I now send forth this volume with an earnest prayer that God the Holy Ghost may bless it, and make it useful and helpful to many souls. ”

“ Evangelical religion, like the religion of the New Testament, requires us not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed in the renewing of our mind, and it produces a distaste for those frivolous and pernicious amusements in which the votaries of this world delight; but I am not aware that it has an antisocial tendency, unless you mean by that expression, that its tendency is to mark out the essential difference between a real Christian and one who bears only the name. ”

“ Now that they have enriched themselves, they laugh and exult over the fact that it is possible in the name of the Evangel to enjoy all sorts of evangelical freedom, and at the same time to be the Evangel’s worst enemy. ”

“ By the term evangelistic, of course, we mean preaching the gospel to the entire world. The Scriptural authority for that is found at many places in the Bible. For instance, the great commission as reported by Mark 16:15: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel unto every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. He that believeth not shall be damned.” This commandment is very comprehensive. It says “Go into all the world” and the 200 world includes the people who live here at Chapel Avenue, those who live next door to you, even those who are in the house with you. ”

“ Evangelization makes men evangelical. When you tell the gospel to a heathen sinner, you must put it in the simplest terms, or he will fail to understand it. Your effort to reach his mind and heart clarifies your own. To one condemned and lost, no mere human example in Jesus will suffice; you need an atoning Saviour. To one struggling with demonic powers and helpless in their grasp, no mere man of Nazareth, no Jesus, according to the flesh, will answer; you need the Lord of Glory, who was declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead. ”

“ Evangelical means and order they love to keep, for they diligently assemble themselves to wait upon God, to enable them to worship Him, where they both pray and prophesy, one by one, as prepared and moved in their hearts by His Spirit, and as anything is revealed to them. ”

“ They shall strive, as they hope for their soul's salvation, that the Evangelical doctrine, according to the foundation of the apostles and prophets and our symbolical books, be ever more fully apprehended by their own souls, and that it may be adorned by their godly conversation, to the end that they not only rule well their own households but also be examples to the whole congregation. ”

“ And it must be admitted that it has always been difficult to hold the average of Christians to an unfaltering faith in the evangelical doctrines of Christianity—the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the atonement, etc.—that but few have a clear conception of any of them, that many deny one or more of them, that no two understand them alike, and that all have doubts and fears with respect to them ”

“ That this evangelical righteousness and salvation shall not be confined to the Jewish nation, but shall be extended to the Gentiles; My arms shall judge the people. Those that will not yield to the judgments of God's mouth shall be crushed by the judgments of his hand. Some shall thus be judged by the gospel, for for judgment Christ came into this world; but others, and those of the isles, shall wait upon him, and bid his gospel, and the commands as well as the comforts of it, welcome. ”

“ After my long experience, after my patience and forbearance, I have surely the right to protest against the untruth (would that I could apply to it any other word!) that evangelical religion, or any religion in a violent form, is a wholesome or valuable or desirable adjunct to human life. It divides heart from heart. ”

“ It is vain to expect Christian faith to abound without Christian doctrine. Moral and philosophical and monastical instructions will not effect for men what is to be expected from evangelical doctrine. ”

“ Our evangelists must remove from the van of their evangelic force all that sharp fence of metaphysical subtlety and scholastic dogma, which, being ostentatiously paraded in creeds and catechisms, has given more just offence to those without than edification to those within the Church; the gospel must be presented to the world with all that catholic breadth, kindly humanity, and popular directness which were its boast before it was laced and screwed into artificial shapes by the decrees of intolerent councils, and the subtleties of ingenious schoolmen. ”

“ Then we will work backwards to the foundation of your society and the others, and see which reaches to Jesus Christ. Oh! no, says our author; that is one of the common methods; they are poor. “Read the New Testament. You will find the Baptist doctrine of salvation, and the resulting Baptist idea of the church, taught or implied on every page,182 and you will not find a trace of the Catholic doctrine of salvation, or of the Catholic idea of the church. ”