A Quote by Charles Hodge
There can, therefore, be no doubt that Presbyterians do carry out the principle that Church power vests in the Church itself, and that the people have a right to a substantive part in its discipline and government.
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The right of the people to a substantive part in the government of the Church is recognized and sanctioned by the apostles in almost every conceivable way.
Church, the spiritual power, and the executive power are working today united in a system that confronts people. This alliance or cooperation between the spiritual power and the executive power, between the church and the government, unfortunately takes away the Church's basic mission. It takes away their right to speak on moral or ethical subjects.
All Church power arises from the indwelling of the Spirit; therefore those in whom the Spirit dwells are the seat of Church power. But the Spirit dwells in the whole Church, and therefore the whole Church is the seat of Church power.
The Church of Christ is constituted in two orders, the clergy and the people, the one having the care of the Church that all may be ruled for the salvation of souls; the other contains kings, princes, and nobles who have to carry on secular government that all things may lead to the peace and unity of the Church.
If all Church power vests in the clergy, then the people are practically bound to passive obedience in all matters of faith and practice; for all right of private judgment is then denied.
Nothing on earth has greater potential to change lives and carry out His kingdom work in your community, than your local church.There's nothing like the local church when it's working right. Its beauty is indescribable. Its power is breathtaking. Its potential is unlimited. No other organization on earth is like the church. Nothing even comes close.
We must avoid the spiritual disease of the Church that can become self-referential: when this happens, the Church itself becomes sick. It’s true that accidents can happen when you go out into the street, as can happen to any man or woman. But if the Church remains closed onto itself, self-referential, it grows old. Between a Church that goes into the street and gets into an accident and a Church that is sick with self-referentiality, I have no doubts in preferring the first.
You have the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England, the Presbyterians, the Wesleyans, represented in each school, and they are each to take alternate days.
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
A healthy church is not a church that's perfect and without sin. It has not figured everything out. Rather, it's a church that continually strives to take God's side in the battle against the ungodly desires and deceits of the world, our flesh, and the devil. It's a church that continually seeks to conform itself to God's Word.
As you know, the separation of church and state is not subject to discussion or alteration. Under our Constitution no church or religion can be supported by the U.S. Government. We maintain freedom of religion so that an American can either worship in the church of his choice or choose to go to no church at all.
The church itself has got to go outside of its own borders and carry the gospel to ev'ry creature, or it is no church of Christ; and any mutual improvement club which thinks that by reading its Shakspearo, or by acting its pretty tableaux, or by having. this or that little reading from Spenser and from Chaucer, it is going to lift itself up into any higher order of culture or life, is wholly mistaken, unless as an essential part of its duty, it goes out into the world, finds those that are falling down, and lifts them up to the majesty of freemen, who are sons of God.
God has a church upon the earth, who are His chosen people, who keep His commandments. He is leading, not stray offshoots, not one here and one there, but a people. The truth is a sanctifying power, but the church militant is not yet the church triumphant.
I believe in the separation of church and state. The government has the right to say what happens in a civil case, like in a court house. And religious people have a right to say what happens in a church congregation. They are two completely separate things.
It appears likely that there was no normative pattern of church government in the apostolic age, and that the organizational structure of the church is no essential element in the theology of the church.
I'd signed up not just for Christianity but the established Church of England. That has a particular history and I think we rather lost it in the 19th Century, we became so much part of empire and colonialism, the language of the Church Of England still reflects that Victorian time. As the 20th Century developed, not surprisingly people left the church and I can see the church's role in losing people.
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