Page:Complete Works of Menno Simons.djvu/392

92 church; as if God was well pleased with such a dead shadow of false preaching and of infant baptism; and, as if the church of Christ, the bride of God and of the Lamb, could be supported by adulterated doctrines and unscriptural sacraments. O, dear Lord! How long shall such errors yet endure? Who cannot understand such palpable deceit? He must have an extremely obdurate and perverse heart, or he must be a very ignorant and blunt man, I think.

Answer. By the side of this I will place my syllogism: Where true religion and worship, as required of the Scriptures, are trampled under foot, there is not the church of Christ. Anti-Christ has, Gellius testifies, trampled under foot the true religion and worship required by the Scriptures, in the church of which Gellius speaks; therefore, the beforementioned church is not the church of Christ. All Scriptures teach that my first proposition is true; for Moses says, "Whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he" (meaning Christ) "shall speak in my name, I will require it of him," Deut. 18: 19. Christ says, "If ye continue" (mark, "continue"), "in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed," John 8: 31. Again, Paul says, "If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed," Gal. 1: 9. John, also, says, "Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God," 2 John 1: 9.

My second proposition, Gellius admits to be true; for he says, that anti-Christ has trampled religion and worship under his feet, as heard.

Since, then, that the first proposition can be substantiated by the Scriptures, and the second is acknowledged by Gellius to be right, therefore, my conclusion must also be right, namely, that the church to which he refers, is not the church of Christ. For she does not accept the word of Christ, but a strange gospel; and does not abide in the pure doctrine of his holy apostles; therefore they have not God in power, and are not the disciples of Christ; or else the cited sayings must be wrong and false.

As regards the first proposition of Gellius, Paul testifies in plain words, that it is false, for he says, "That day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition," 2 Thess. 2: 3. Here Paul teaches in tolerably plain words that the falling away of faith would first come as was also the case here, 2 Thess. 2: 3.

Since Paul openly testifies by the Spirit of God, that the falling away would come before the day of the Lord, and also shows through whom it would come, namely, through the man of sin (son of perdition); and since it is clearly visible that this son of perdition has placed himself in the temple of God, that is, in the hearts of man, or rather, in the stead of God in the beforementioned church, and has quite demolished and destroyed it, and through deceit has changed it, under the semblance of the name of Christ, from the doctrine and ordinances of God to his own doctrine and ordinances, therefore, I would leave the attentive reader to judge if this church, which is quite demolished and destroyed by him, can be called God's temple. If he judge that it cannot be so called, then he judges rightly; otherwise many passages of the Scriptures would be fallible and false; and, as a consequence, God and the devil, Christ and anti-Christ must have been seated in one temple, and reigned in one church. But, if they deny this, then I would again say that