Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/95

Rh God and His Kingdom may assemble around “an Eternal Gospel which is proclaimed to all who dwell on the face of the earth.” All other churches are too narrow for me, and do not answer the idea of Protestantism. The idea of Protestantism, the fundamental thought of Protestantism!—has the Protestant Church fully comprehended and embraced this? And that which is its highest and simplest expression? This has long been a question to myself and others. I have received for reply, when people have replied at all, the fundamental tenets of Protestantism are, “Righteousness, through faith alone on the free grace of Christ,” and “the soul's immediate communion with God through the Holy Scriptures, the fountain of all truth, of which God is the source.”

By these two principal tenets of Protestantism, are combated the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, of righteousness through outward works, and of the church as an outward ordination and authority between God and man, with the divine right of binding and releasing, and at the same time, powerful to lead souls to God.

But has Protestantism even in these tenets expressed its innermost fundamental tenet, its primeval Word!

What is it that gave Protestantism the right to protest? It is answered: “God's word in the Holy Scriptures.” But what was it that gave to the Protestant Church the right to explain this word differently to the mother church?

It is to the eternal honor of Protestantism, to have combated the false and injurious doctrines of the Romish Church; it is to its immortal honor, that it