Page:Darby - Christianity Not Christendom.djvu/40

 local episcopacy, then in diocesan episcopacy and the hierarchy, and then in Popery.

We are called on by God to go to the scriptures, “which are abiding truth, knowing the Holy Ghost was to abide with us for ever. Our choice is between, on one side, the authority of the word and the Holy Ghost, connected with what is called the universal priesthood of Christians, an incorrect application of an important truth; on the other, the infallible pope, or infidelity, the crown of the system of the clergy; or the no longer disguised enmity of the human heart against God and His word. Only remark, the word of God and the Spirit of God, as acting in all saints, is alike set aside by both. The abominations in which the departure I signalize, abominations worthy of, yea, worse than heathenism, in the professing church resulted, are known to those acquainted with ecclesiastical history, but that is not my object now; but it is well that he who is not familiar with that history should know, that the very vilest and most degraded evil of which history has preserved the record is found in the history of what is called the church of God.