The Law Of Ritualism Examined In Its Relation To The Word Of God To The Primitive Church To The Church Of England And To The Protestant Episcopal Church In The United States New York 1866

Author : John Henry Hopkins
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781331008798
Total Pages : 116 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (87 download)

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Download or read book The Law of Ritualism written by John Henry Hopkins and published by . This book was released on 2015-07-09 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Law of Ritualism: Examined in Its Relation to the Word of God, to the Primitive Church, to the Church of England, and to the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States The subject on which several of my esteemed brethren are pleased to ask my opinion, has been familiar to my own mind for many years, although it is only of late that it has begun to excite any general attention. Amongst a large proportion of my fellow Christians, the ritual or ceremonial part of divine worship is thought to be a matter of perfect indifference. For, since true religion is acknowledged to be a spiritual life in the soul, granted to the humble disciple of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, through Faith, they have concluded that its outward form has received no corresponding care from the Almighty. God looks on the heart. And if that be right, the external expression of devotion is left free to all the varieties of human taste and feeling. This, in the judgment of many, seems to be a very satisfactory conclusion. Yet I cannot assent to it, for several reasons. First, because it stands in opposition to the wisdom of the supreme Lawgiver, when He saw fit to dictate the ritual of the Church established for His own chosen people. Secondly, because it contradicts the analogy of all His other works, where we see that while the life is one thing and the form is another, yet both are ordained by the Word of God. The life of religion is indeed a spiritual principle, but that is no reason why the Lord should be indifferent to its form. 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.