The Defence Of Professor Briggs Before The General Assembly

Author : Charles Augustus Briggs
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781331267157
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (671 download)

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Download or read book The Defence of Professor Briggs written by Charles Augustus Briggs and published by . This book was released on 2015-07-12 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Defence of Professor Briggs: Before the Presbytery of New York, December 13, 14, 15, 19, and 22, 1892 Mr. Moderator, Ministers and Elders of the Presbytery of New York. We have at last readied the stage in this protracted process when the defence can lawfully be made. I stand before a court of the Church where the same general principles of jurisprudence govern the procedure as those which are followed in the civil courts; but where there are circumstances and usages which make the administration of justice complex and difficult. This court is not only a court, it is a Presbytery, composed of ministers and representative elders within the city of New York, of the Presbyterian faith and order. You are accustomed to sit as a deliberative body and as an executive body. You are not accustomed to sit as a judicial body. Therefore there is great danger lest you unconsciously merge your functions and duties as judges in the more comprehensive and more familiar functions and duties of Presbyters. It will be necessary for you to free your minds of every feeling of party, every prejudice of opinion, every anxiety as to supposed perils to the Church, any and every thing that might influence your decision apart from the merits of the case; and you should concentrate your attention upon the Charges which have been offered for probation, the evidence that has been adduced by the prosecution and the defence, the arguments which are made to prove and disprove the Charges, and the rulings of the court itself, and make your verdict on these grounds, and on these alone. The theory of Presbyterianism is that you are now sitting as a court of Jesus Christ, that our King Messiah is present with us by His Spirit, to guide you in your decisions. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.