Religious possession

“ The possession of both sides is regarded as incomplete, for what we have is the 'earnest' of the 'inheritance,' and 'God's own possession' has yet to be 'redeemed,' in the fullest sense of that word, at some point in the future. ”

“ And, in Protestant countries, how many men are there, who cheat, starve, and oppress all their life long, to leave an estate at their death to religious uses? As if men were to be rogues for God's sake. ”

“ It has been alleged that the Pope, the bishops, the priests, and the monks and nuns form the estate spiritual or ecclesiastical; while the princes, nobles, burgesses, and peasantry form the secular estate or laity. Let no man, however, be alarmed at this. All Christians constitute the spiritual estate: and the only difference among them is that of the functions which they discharge. We have all one baptism, one faith, and it is this which constitutes the spiritual man. ”

“ What a contrast that forms to our ordinary notions of what religion is! High above all creeds which are valuable as leading up to this enthusiasm of longing and rapture of possession, high above all preliminaries and preparations in the way of outward services and ceremonial or united acts of worship, which are only helps to this inward possession, rises such a thought of religion as this. You are not a Christian because you believe a creed. The very death of Jesus Christ is a means to this end. ”

“ The possession of Christ for ourselves imposes upon us the obligation to impart Him. All property in this world is trust property, and everything that a man has that can help or bless the moral or spiritual or intellectual condition of his fellows, he is thereby under solemn obligation to impart. ”

“ And one would think, that property assigned for the purpose of providing for a people's religious worship when that worship was one, the State should, when that worship is split into several forms, apportion between those several forms, with due regard to circumstances, taking account only of great differences, which are likely to be lasting, and of considerable communions, which are likely to represent profound and widespread religious characteristics ”

“ The present possession by the Church, of the Holy Spirit as a guide into all truth, according to the promise of Christ to His disciples, is a doctrine that no branch of the Church would readily surrender, and her right, under that guidance, to seek the good of the body of Christ on lines which, while consistent with the principles of Scripture, commend themselves to her as more suitable to present conditions than former methods, this right is one which she can part with only at the risk of endangering her usefulness to her own age. ”

“ The Christian community is God's possession. Then, in my second text, we have the converse thought—'the earnest of our inheritance.' What is the Christian's possession? The same God whose possession is the Christian. So, then, there is a deep and a wonderful relation between the believing soul and God, and however different must be the two sides of that relation, the resemblance is greater than the difference. Surely that is the deepest, most blessed, and most strength-giving conception of the Christian life. ”

“ It must, however, not be overlooked that the views of possession have changed essentially in different nations and ages. At the time of Christ's coming the belief in actual possession, the dwelling of real demons in the body of human beings, was universal, and to this belief the language of Holy Writ naturally adapts its records of miracles. ”

“ The most frequent symptom in possession is a strong antipathy against everything connected with religion; the holy names of God and Christ, the presence of priests, the singing of hymns and the reciting of prayers, excite intense pain, and provoke outbursts of fury. ”

“ In order that he may comply with his contract, your worship will put him in possession of the land he may solicit, for the exploration, benefit and enjoyment of the mines; for which purpose he is to present a memorial directed to me, and which your worship will transmit, that I may give him the corresponding decree of concession, being understood, in the mean time, your worship will put him in possession. God preserve your worship many years. ”

“ Not merely the layman, but even more acutely, the student of ethics and moral theology has long desired a competent treatise on the Catholic doctrine of property, applying the traditional principles of our authorities to present day problems and conditions. ”

“ Hence the apostle asserts that the Lord’s people are heirs p. 264of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; being interested in God as the covenant God of his people in Christ, and with Christ, as the head of the Church, and heir of all things, and although they are put into the possession of some of the all things to which they are heirs,—and their spirits, or consciences, can witness the fact—yet there are sad seasons, when we are permitted to doubt it ourselves, and in which this may be disputed by Satan. We have indeed much to accuse ourselves of. ”

“ The laws given by the Almighty to the children of men, by which we can preserve our spirits and our bodies to all eternity, are what the world call "Mormonism." Those laws are what this people believe and are in possession of. ”

“ If we are compelled to do justice to the merits of those who serve us, how much greater reason is there that we should care for the property set apart for the redemption of our souls and the worship of God, and preserve it intact by the authority of the law. Wherefore, we decree that all property which has been given, either by kings, or by any other believers whomsoever, to houses devoted to Divine worship, shall eternally and irrevocably belong to said churches. ”

“ Let me remind you that if you are a Christian man you have in your possession the thing which will cure the world's woe, and possession involves responsibility. What would you think of a man that had a specific for some pestilence that was raging in a city, and was contented to keep it for his own use, or at most for his family's use, when his brethren were dying by the thousand, and their corpses polluting the air? And what shall we say of men and women who call themselves Christians, who have some faith in that great Lord and His mighty sacrifice ”

“ But every one is aware that, according to the titles of church property, as well as according to the various laws of the church, which explain the spirit and meaning of these titles, the only part of church property to which the ecclesiastic has any individual right is that necessary for his honest subsistence: the remainder has to be applied to the relief of the poor, or to the maintenance of places of worship. ”

“ It is time the privilege of consecrating their property was given to the people, it is the will of the Lord they should enjoy this blessing and privilege, those who choose to hand over their property; to whom? To Him who has given them everything they possess: He owns all they possess, and they have no property, more or less, only that which actually belongs to the Lord, and He deals it out and bestows it where it seemeth Him good. ”

“ We are tempted to defer the doing of that which we know to be our duty, and to put if off to some other time. When we have got clear of such a care and difficulty, when we have despatched such a business, raised an estate to such a pitch, then we will begin to think of being religious ”

“ Each one is to be considered as possessor of all things in the Church: but if it be all common property, how is it that the Saints can get along and give an account of their stewardship of property? Will not one brother go and pick up his brother's plow, and take it off, without asking him for it, imagining that he is the possessor of all things? ”

“ Each of these Gods, including Jesus Christ and his Father, being in possession of not merely an organized spirit, but a glorious immortal body of flesh and bones, is subject to the laws which govern, of necessity, even the most refined order of physical existence. ”

“ Ecclesiastical leaders within the Reformed Churches might strive as they liked to draw the line between the possessions of the Church, which they willingly placed under the control of civil law, and its discipline in matters of faith and morals, which they declared to be the inalienable possession of the Church ”

“ We ordain, therefore, that all things whatsoever which shall appear righteously to belong to the churches, whether the property consist of houses or fields and gardens, or whatever the nature of it may be, shall be restored in their full value and integrity, and with undiminished right of possession. ”

“ In an age which settled back upon the Scriptures as the only basis of authority in religious faith and practice, they boldly challenged that course as a dangerous return to a lower form of religion than that to which Christ had called men and as only legalism and scribism in a new dress. ”

“ But surely rights of property (we can recognize germs of them in the lower animals) are long antecedent to religion, and offences against them are recognized as offences against man before they became sins against God. ”

“ It is true that such gifts are exercised, such works performed, in the name of Christ, and that the gifts are granted to none but individuals in the Church of Christ, and yet the possessor may not be altogether righteous, may even be a false Christian. ”

“ You will be good enough to remember that the Church in this land is established, that it enjoys great privileges and possessions; that to wrest from her those possessions would be to leave her suddenly in a condition of destitution for which she is wholly unprovided, and to rob her of her privileges will be to subject her to an indignity from which it is your place to shield her, as your spiritual mother and the bride of Christ. ”

“ Religion for substance was ever one and unchangeable, and such as were truly religious walked in the same way, and waited for the same heavenly Inheritance and everlasting crowne of glory. The Church before Christ may be considered as an heire, or as an Infant, according to the substance of the Covenant, or according to the manner of administration. In the first respect the Church is under the Covenant or Promise, and her people are called a free and willing people, an heire of heavenly and spirituall blessings. ”

“ And so, says the Psalmist allusively, in a similar manner, the Divine Power surrounds the man who chooses God for his heritage, and nothing shall take that heritage from him.
The lower forms of possession, by which men are called the owners of material goods, are imperfect, because they are all precarious and temporary. Nothing really belongs to a man if it can be taken from him. What we may lose we can scarcely be said to have. ”

“ It must, however, be added that myths have influenced mainly the dogmas and ceremonies of religion—their part in more intimate or spiritual worship, the converse of the worshiper with the deity, has been comparatively slight. Religious ceremonies are ordinary social customs and forms transferred to dealings with supernatural Powers. ”

“ The land, and the church standing on it, must be conveyed through a type representing the true nature of the gift; a type morally and spiritually inalienable, but materially questionable — even after the manner that all spiritual good comes to Christian Scientists, to the end of taxing their faith in God, and their adherence to the superiority of the claims of Spirit over matter or merely legal titles. ”

“ And respecting religious attainments the matter is equally plain; if life or eternal glory be the end predestinated, the previous steps of purity of heart, justification and a new birth unto righteousness, preservation in Christ, and every individual event and circumstance preceding, is included in the decree, as far as there is any goodness in them. ”

“ And the word "spiritual" is so stretched as to cover temporal possessions, not the possessions which are truly spiritual because of faith, but those which are in the second or external Church, [39] and such possessions are called "spiritual" or Church possessions. [40] Again, the possessions of the laity are called "worldly," although the laymen who are in the first or spiritual Church [39] are much better than the worldly clergy and are truly spiritual. After this fashion it now goes with almost all the works and the government of the Church ”

“ God taught men by the forbidden tree that he was owner, that man was occupier. He selected the matter of property to be the test of man's obedience, the outward and sensible sign of a right state of heart toward God; and when man put forth his hand and did eat, he denied God's ownership and asserted his own. ”

“ The theory of justification by works, to which the Church owed so much of its power and wealth, had, in its development, to a great extent deprived religion of all spiritual vitality, replacing its essentials with a dry and meaningless formalism. ”

“ Of the great time of release, the Gospel dispensation, when all who believe in Christ Jesus are redeemed from the bondage of sin - repossess the favor and image of God, the only inheritance of the human soul, having all debts cancelled, and the right of inheritance restored. ”

“ It is as clear as day that by means of smooth and crafty words the clergy have deprived us of our rightful possessions. For they blinded the eyes of our forefathers, and persuaded them to buy the kingdom of heaven with their lands and possessions. If you priests give the poor and the chosen children of God their paternal inheritance, which before God you owe them, God will perhaps grant you such grace that you will know yourselves. ”