Men become enraged when told that the calamities that befall them are His righteous judgments, even when His hand is as visible in them as it was in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The doctrines of grace are denied by many of those who, for generations, have acknowledged the Westminster Confession of Faith to be the symbol of their profession, and these persons, under the name of revision, are endeavoring utterly to pervert that venerable exhibition of Divine truth. We know not how to characterize the attempt to make that grand attainment of the Second Reformation teach what it does not, and what was abhorred by the great and good men who framed it. The Protestant Churches are fast symbolizing with the Church of Rome. Witness their carrying the dead into the house of public worship, preaching funeral and Easter sermons, and gradually conforming their mode of praising God to the forms of that Church by introducing choirs, organs, theatrical modes of singing in public worship, avowedly to attract carnal men to the house of God.
Men are lovers of themselves.
This, as well as their covetousness, is seen in their trusts and in the various means they employ to obtain the property of their fellow men without an equivalent. No class of men, at the present time, is more covetous than the ministry. Nor can this charge be denied because they are demanding this money, not for their own use, but for that of the Church. Ecclesiastical history shows that just in proportion to the advances of the Romish Church in apostacy, the more importunate were the demands of her clergy for property to enrich her. While outwardly this worldly wealth was sought for the glory of the Church, the controlling motive was, that in the worldly grandeur of the Church, the honor and dignity of the clergy might be greatly augmented.