First Church

“ We do not want to become partakers of other men's sins; the First Presidency will not, neither will the Twelve; the Bishops should not, for God will require it at their hands.
God intends to build up a Church here after the pattern of the one that exists in heaven; and to come down and associate himself with man upon the earth. ”

“ The Church by its very existence is a body of men and women set apart for a holy use. The New Testament word for Church, ecclesia, means a society "called out" from among other men. It exists not for common purposes, but to witness for God and for Christ, to maintain before the eyes and in all the common ways and works of men the ideal life realized in Christ and the presence and holiness of God. ”

“ The members of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Mass., in annual meeting assembled, hereby convey to you their sincere greetings and their deep love.
They desire to express their continued loyalty to your teachings, their unshaken confidence in the unerring wisdom of your leadership, and their confident assurance that strict and intelligent recognition of and obedience to the comprehensive means by you provided for the furtherance of our Cause, will result in its perpetuity as well as in the ultimate regeneration of its adherents and of mankind. ”

“ To the Church we know the New Testament was addressed: and by the Church (with all other means of grace) it was preserved. By the Church’s instrumentality we, individually, are brought to that Font where the “stewards of God’s mysteries” received us to the mystic body of the faithful. By the Church we really are taught in the truth; for notwithstanding every boast of independent thinking, the Church is practically to us, what it was to the first Christians, “the pillar and ground of truth.” (1 Tim. iii. 15.) From the Church’s voice we learn even the lessons of Holy Scripture. ”

“ On one of the afternoons, the service was conducted by the venerable and excellent Bishop of the Diocese, who preached from the same pulpit that had been occupied in the morning by the Dissenting minister; and during our stay there, we had sermons from ministers belonging to almost every evangelical denomination of the Christian church. In our own place of worship too, it has often been our privilege to contribute, in some degree, to the general communion of saints; especially at the Lord’s table, the first place at which Christians should meet, and the last at which they should separate. ”

“ This appears to have arisen out of the very circumstance of the increase of the church, through the zeal of the first Christians; and it was doubtless much more in the spirit of the very first discipline exercised by the Apostles and Evangelists, (when none of the churches were independent, but remained under the government of those who had been chiefly instrumental in raising them up,) to place themselves under a common inspection, and to unite the weak with the strong, and the newly converted with those who were “in Christ before them.” ”

“ We, bishops of Christ’s Holy Catholic Church, in visible communion with the churches of England and Ireland, professing the faith delivered to us in Holy Scripture, maintained by the primitive church and by the fathers of the blessed Reformation, now assembled by the good providence of God at the archiepiscopal palace of Lambeth, under the presidency of the Primate of All England, desire, first, to give hearty thanks to Almighty God for having thus brought us together for common counsel and united worship ”

“ Waiving every other subject that has a bearing upon this precious and necessary command of our Lord, we take up the church as one of the most interesting and important institutions of public concern. The Church in all of its branches, considered in their individual organizations, however widespread it may be, in whatever part of the habitable globe located, is one harmonious whole, forming a unit, a oneness, with Christ as its head. ”

“ It appears therefore quite evident to me that if I in all humility and sincerity accept the teachings of God, as made clear in the Bible, it becomes impossible for me to admit, or to flatter myself as a member of the Church of England, that any church of professing Christians on the earth, which denies the urgent need of inspired prophets and apostles, and the glorious and miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit, can be the {464} church which Jesus Christ founded and His Apostles built up in the first days of Christianity. ”

“ Christian people are beginning to see how much more important are those points on which the whole Church is agreed than those often obscure or trivial points which split the Church into sects. Churches are beginning to own with some sincerity that there are Christian gifts and graces in all Churches, and that no one Church comprises all the excellences of Christendom. And the only outward unity that is worth having is that which springs from inward unity, from a genuine respect and regard for all who own the same Lord and spend themselves in His service. ”

“ Holding in common with all Presbyterian Churches their distinctive doctrines, which they are devotedly attached to from a conscientious belief of their Scriptural validity, as well also as Christ as its head, God blessed forevermore, and all his ministers as one in Him, and among whom none may claim any superiority over another, for all are brethren, Jesus himself the elder brother—the chief and only Bishop of the Church universal. ”

“ Churches have always been tempted to pique themselves on their rich foundations and institutions, on producing champions of the faith, able writers, eloquent preachers, on their cultured ministry, on their rich and æsthetic services, and not on that very thing for which the Church exists: the cleansing of the morals of the people and their elevation to a truly spiritual and godly life. And it is the individuals who give character to any Church. "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump." ”

“ Nay, more, the Church itself, by reason of its marvellous extension, its eminent holiness and its in exhaustible fruitfulness in every good thing, its Catholic unity and its invincible stability, is a great and perpetual motive of credibility, and an irrefutable witness of its own divine mission. ”

“ THE Eternal Pastor and Bishop of our souls, in order to continue for all time the life-giving work of His Redemption, determined to build up the Holy Church, wherein, as in the house of the living God, all who believe might be united in the bond of one faith and one charity. Wherefore, before He entered into His glory, He prayed unto the Father, not for the Apostles only, but for those also who through their preaching should come to believe in Him, that all might be one, even as He the Son and the Father are one. ”

“ That all that is necessary to the highest state of perfection and purity of the Church upon earth is, first, that none be received as members, but such as, having that due measure of scriptural self-knowledge described above, do profess their faith in Christ and obedience to him in all things according to the Scriptures; nor, secondly, that any be retained in her communion longer than they continue to manifest the reality of their profession by their temper and conduct. ”

“ A church needs however not only a Pastor, as its Bishop, who is to “give himself continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word,” but Deacons also, to superintend its temporal affairs, and “to serve tables.” The church therefore, in the first instance, chose two of its members to that office; a number which has been increased again and again, as the necessities of the church required. ”

“ Each member of the congregation had something to contribute for the edification of the Church. The experience, the thought, the gifts, of the individual were made available for the benefit of all. One with a natural aptitude for poetry threw his devotional feeling into a metrical form, and furnished the Church with her earliest hymns. Another with innate exactness of thought set some important aspect of Christian truth so clearly before the mind of the congregation that it at once took its place as an article of faith. ”

“ And therefore we should perhaps not be far wrong if we were to gather from this that Paul would have defined the Church as the company of all those persons who "call upon the name of Jesus Christ." Calling upon the name of any [20] one implies trust in him; and those who call upon the name of Jesus Christ are those who look up to Christ as their supreme Lord, able to supply all their need. It is this belief in one Lord which brings men together as a Christian Church. ”

“ The exact form of the organisation of the early Christian Church is extremely difficult to determine, because of the lack of sufficient positive authority in the New Testament and in patristic literature. The Acts of the Apostles and the letters of Paul and others to the first Christian communities tell nearly all [56] any one can know about the origin and organisation of the Apostolic Church. From these sources it is clear that Jesus left certain great teachings, and many devoted believers in those truths. ”

“ Hence, it is the custom of the Church to erect a throne in the middle of councils, on which she places the Sacred Books as presiding over the assembly, occupying, as it were, the first place, and deciding with supreme authority. When celebrating Mass, she wishes that the faithful, during the reading of the Gospel, should all rise, and remain standing, to show their reverence for the sacred truths. ”

“ In the Church of England, with which I was first connected—inducted into it when a boy, or rather a child—they have not only ministers to read their prayers, but clerks to say amen for them, so that the people have literally nothing to do but go to meeting. ”

“ It becomes those who form the Church to meet God's purpose in calling them out of the world and to consider themselves as devoted and set apart to attain that purpose. Their destination is no longer that of the world; and a spirit set upon the [22] attainment of the joys and advantages the world gives is wholly out of place in them.
2. More particularly those who compose the Church are called to be "saints." Holiness is the unmistakable characteristic of the true Church. The glory of God, inseparable from His essence, is His holiness, His eternally willing and doing only what is the very best. ”

“ We, therefore, for the preservation, safe keeping, and increase of the Catholic flock, with the approval of the Sacred Council, do judge it to be necessary to propose to the belief and acceptance of all the faithful, in accordance with the ancient and constant faith of the universal Church, the doctrine touching the institution, perpetuity and nature of the sacred Apostolic Primacy, in which is found the strength and solidity of the entire Church ”

“ The true Church towards which my own thoughts tend will be the conscious illuminated expression of Catholic brotherhood. It must, I think, develop out of the existing medley of Church fragments and out of all that is worthy in our poetry and literature, just as the worldwide Socialist State at which I aim must develop out of such state and casual economic organizations and constructive movements as exist to-day. ”

“ The first condition of salvation is to keep the rule of the true faith. And because the sentence of our Lord Jesus Christ cannot be passed by, who said, 'Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church,' [1] these things which have been said are proved by events, because in the Apostolic See the Catholic religion has always been kept undefiled, and her well-known doctrine has been kept holy. ”

“ Of the fourteen persons who thus composed this infant church, seven are alive and remain unto this day: six hundred and sixty-eight persons have since been added to them making the whole number six hundred and eighty-two; an increase, for which devout gratitude is due to Him by whose gracious power alone sinners are constrained first to give themselves to the Lord, and then to his people according to his will. ”

“ Whether as members or external critics we have to do our best to get rid of obsolete doctrinal and ceremonial barriers, so that the churches may merge again in a universal Church, and that Church comprehend again the whole growing and amplifying spiritual life of the race. ”

“ I assure you, a day has not passed without my offering up my unworthy prayers to Almighty God in your behalf; and I cannot refrain from again saying, that I hope one day we shall be united in the same faith of the One Holy and Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ. How great is the consolation to belong to that holy Church which alone Jesus Christ has founded, which alone He has illustrated with a never-failing succession of {188} pastors and of miracles, from which all others have separated, and out of which I find in the Holy Scriptures no covenanted promise of salvation! ”

“ Wherefore, as in the days when Christ walked on the earth and companied with the clergy, the high priests, priests and Pharisees—the different grades of the priesthood—observing the traditions of their own making, and asserting that they had God for their Father and that they were of Abraham's seed, and at no time served any man and enjoying a reputation among the people, did not do all these things, so that the clergy might by antonomasia and truly be called the holy church, inasmuch as Christ himself said of them, Matt. ”

“ Whenever the word Church is used generally, without any specific qualification, expressed or necessarily implied, it means, by its own force, the visible as well as the invisible Church, the Body no less than the Soul; for the Body, the visible or external communion, is not a mere accident, but is essential to the Church. The Church, by her very definition, is the congregation of men called by God through the evangelical doctrine, and professing the true Christian faith under their infallible Pastor and Head - the Pope. ”