The Eclectic Review - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1856 edition. Excerpt: ...Tune quidam vix ad extremam syllabam exper-gefacti, somnolenta voce, capite pendulo, Damxamus aiebant. Alii vero damnantium tumultu excitati, decapitata primil syllabi Kami's inquiunt." If this were ever true it were bad enough, but better even this than the malignity, falsehood, and cruel passions which have found the scene for their display amid the remorseless abominations of the ecclesiastical synod. Instead of being assemblies of spiritual persons, aiming at the prosecution of spiritual ends by purely spiritual or even mistaken means, they have been too often a sanhedrim of high priests goaded on by the instigation of the devil, and all the bad feelings which are engendered by pride and power, and fulness of bread, to an opposition to the cause of simple piety, as reckless of its measures as it was unjustified by provocation. All that vice could effect when strengthened by power, was often effected by such means of convocations as these, and names were cast out as evil, branded with infamy, and denounced with curses, which are written in the Lamb's book of life. If secular corporations and committees are notorious for doing, in their collective capacity, deeds of ruthless severity or questionable morality, from which the individual members would shrink, what is to be expected of an ecclesiastical assembly, congregating under the express control of the principle that the end justifies the means--a principle more than avowed in the Roman church--and one but too notoriously acted on, on a thousand occasions? What, in short, but what we see,--that by means of the Councils, truth, godliness, and independence were crushed, and fraud, force, slavery, and sensuality promoted, to the grief of God's people, and the scandal tf the religion of...