Page:A Compendium of the Chief Doctrines of the True Christian Religion.djvu/205

Rh thus turned its morning into midnight darkness, will be seen also in the appendix. This was effected by the heretics who lived before the council of Nice, and afterwards by those who succeeded that council, and derived their heretical opinions from it. But what dependence, as we said, is to be placed on councils, which do not enter by the door into the sheepfold, but , according to the words of the Lord in John, Chap. x. 1, 9? Their deliberations may be compared with the steps of a blind man walking in the day, or of a man who hath good eyes walking in the night, neither of which can see the pit, before he falls headlong into it. Have not there been councils, for instance, which have established the pope's vicarship, the canonization of the dead, the invocation of saints, the worship of their images, the authority of indulgencies, and the division of the eucharist, with many other things of a similar nature? And what dependence then Is to be placed on such councils? Hath there not also been a council which hath established the horrid doctrine of predestination, and hung it up before the doors of the temple as the palladium of religion? What dependence then is to be placed on such a council? But do you, my friend, go to the God of the Word, and thereby to the word itself, and enter by the door into the sheepfold, and you will be enlightened; and then you will see, as from a high mountain, not only the errors of many others, but also your own former bewildered wanderings in the dark wood at the foot of the mountain.

The faith of every church is as the seed from which all its doctrines spring, and may be compared to the seed of a tree from which all its parts, even to the fruit, successively derive their birth; and also to the human seed from which are produced children, and families to many generations; wherefore when we are