The Irish standard., 1899-01-21
dictory of whatever doctrine she pro-
pounds, even If Christ seems to be with

with a wholesale hatred of popery, was
once asked why the English church had
only two sacraments. His answer was,
We have only two sacraments because
the papists have seven Thus, too, it
will always be safe to formulate doc
For example, she breaches that the
gates of hell cannot prevail against the
church. Contradict this and you have
the true evangelical doctrine. Don't
we all know that the gates of hell have
Prevailed over her? She cites ST. Paul,
declaring her to be the pillar and the
ground of the truth The contradiction
OF that assertion made by st. Paul is
made effective by the fact that he was
speaking of the church of the, living
God in his day-not ours.
Il will have to acknowledge that in
our teaching of Christianity that rule
admits Of one exception, viz, the Lords
Day. God has hundreds of times be-
tween the covers of that book command
ed that Saturday, not Sunday, should
be kept holy, and the Savior and his
apostles never once kept any other day
Rome changed the day to Sunday, and
our reformers unfortunately left the day
as they found it, in direct opposition to
the teaching of the book. II is too late
now to make the change; hence Rome
laughs at our apostacy from the taacl-
ing of the Bible to follow her practice,
and what makes the matter worse is
that we are constantly ringing the
changes on keeping the Sabbath-each
of the 143 evangelical denominations
the Roman Sabbath, not the Sabbath of
the Bible.
Anyhow, our notifying dilemma
need not affect you. as you have always
kept Rome's Sabbath. Moreover, there
are many passages Of a prominent and
startling character in the book which
need not embarrass you. For instance,
Christ, the evening of His resurrection,
said to the apostles, Whose sins YOU
shall forgive they are forgiven them,
and whose sins you shall retain they are
retained and previously to His death
He said, Whatsoever you shall bind on
earth shall be bound in heaven and
whatsoever you shall lose on earth it
shall be loosed in heaven. We evangel-
1cals, in body, with the exception of
handful OF half Romish Epscopalians,
have concluded that Christ is not to be
nn6prStnn1
forgive sins, If He were God; but (as so
many among us believe) If He were a
mere man, then He did not have the
power Himself to forgive mems sins.
and for a better reason could NOT dala-
gate such power Again He says, This
Is My body, this is My blood The alb
surdlty of believing He meant this in a
literal sense cannot be listened to with
out a smile of pity and incredulity. We
nave corporately dismissed this delu-
SION from our creed long ago. Rome
teaches the real presence; we teach the
contrary Rome teaches the forgive
ness OF sins by man; we absolutely deny
the power has been given to man.
Rome has always taught that bap-
tlsm Is essential to salvation and that
Christ commanded it, using the words
10 Nicodemus-'Verily, verify, l say to
thee, unless man be born again of
water and the Holy Ghost he cannot en-
ter the kingdom of Cod The great
majority OF our evangelicals believe the
contrary. and while they use water in
Daptlsm, there are some who interpret
tne words of Christ as Indicating a spir-
ltual baptism, hence they dispense with
the use of water altogether. These ara
called Quakers.
Among the 143 sects of evangeicals
who constitute the great body of re-
formersS there is one sect that has a,.
ways assumed prominent position
among our members, whose leader, CAL
win, had very peculiar views of man and
God' and whose tenets have been up-
held for over three centuries. The views
OF Calvin are very decided, and thcy are
today maintained in his institutes and
III the westminster confession of faith.
It teaches explicitly these doctrines ne
cullar to CalviniSm.
Inc first of these refers to the con-
oltlon OF man after the fall, claiming
that man since then has not left to him
shred of liberty; that he is a m4re
puppet, plaything, an automatom In
the hands of God, and which, strippcd of
VerDlage means that God, after the fall
created man without that freedom nece;.
sary to enable him to be master of his
own acts, God exercising over him such
influence that he is without power to
direct and control his own actions. His
rate In the hands of God may be summed
up In the following piece of doggerel:
"Yon can, but you can't;
You will, but you won't:
You'll be ID If you do:
You'll be ID if you don't