\u201cJustification by faith, I have said, is a fundamental doctrine of the gospel. It is vital. It is \u2018the faith once delivered to the saints.\u2019 No system from which it is excluded, can ever be justly regarded as embodying the religion of Christ. It was taught by the apostles, and early ministers, constantly, forcibly, emphatically. It was cherished by the primitive churches as a priceless truth. How can we account for its abandonment by the professed followers of Jesus Christ? There is, I answer, an inherent tendency in human nature, renewed though it may be, to pass from the substance to the forms of religion. The transition is so easy that it can only be prevented by perpetual vigilance. The influence of this propensity the early churches did not very long escape. Among the first of the corruptions they admitted and embraced, was the undue importance which became attached to religious ceremonials. They gradually exalted the rites above the doctrines of Christianity, while both were perverted and misapplied. Baptism, especially, was imagined to possess great and peculiar virtues. Thus justification through grace by faith, was ultimately displaced by justification through grace by baptism. Popery was the result, the doctrine of which, on this subject, is thus expressed by the Council of Trent: \u2014 \u2018Justification is by means of the sacraments, either originally infused into us, or subsequently increased, or when lost, again restored.\u2019 Thus the Christian world was plunged into darkness, which remained unbroken for a thousand years.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
R. B. C. Howell, Evils of Infant Baptism<\/i> (Roger Williams Heritage Archives, 1851), 102-103.<\/font><\/p>\n A few points to highlight:<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been doing a little research on the phrase \u2018the faith once delivered\u2019. In the process I\u2019ve found a few gems. Here\u2019s the first: \u201cJustification by faith, I have said, is a fundamental doctrine of the gospel. It is vital. It is \u2018the faith once delivered to the saints.\u2019 No system from which it is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[78,93,43],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2fYWj-tC","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1836"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1836\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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