Page:Darby - Christianity Not Christendom.djvu/5



The universal confession, Greek rejecting Rome, puseyites coyly flirting with it, protestants abhorring it, dissenters seeking to pull down what exists, because it stands in their way, joining Rome for this purpose, episcopalians trying to keep it together, truth or no truth, Rome itself divided through idolatry of the Virgin, and infallibility of the pope, which notoriously contradicts all history, yet increasing her sway in the world, all in confusion as all admit from the pope to dissenters, all wanting to have the church right, though all for very different reasons thinking its state wrong; making the inquiry as to which is right hopeless. They have raised the question: what is it they are fighting about? Each party, no doubt, trust themselves; but every man’s hand is against his neighbour, and how is the sober looker-on to trust them?

I am well aware that the good churchman will tell me that this is the effect of schism, and that people have what calls itself the church to look to; but how am I to know which is the church? I am told there are marks of it, yet who is to assign the true ones? But be it so, catholicity is one of them, that is universality; but more than half professing Christendom is outside what pretends to be it, and hundreds of thousands of its most respectable members leaving it as corrupt. Sanctity? But history shews it to have been the most unholy thing that ever existed. Apostolic succession? A man must be a learned man to know if it exist, and if he is, he will know it did not; that nothing is more uncertain, if not certain that it is broken; besides, to make my salvation depend on the right succession of a set of wicked men, who put down one another in the dark ages, is rather too strong. Then, unity? The oldest churches,