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Epiphany Truth Examiner

THE OFFERINGS OF THE GOSPEL-AGE PRINCES (CONTINUED)

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CHAPTER VI

THE OFFERINGS OF THE GOSPEL-AGE PRINCES (CONTINUED)

Num. 7:48-65 

THE OFFERINGS OF ANTITYPICAL ELISHAMA. OF ANTITYPICAL GAMALIEL. OF ANTITYPICAL ABIDAN. BEREAN QUESTIONS. 

IN NUM. 7 the princes of the three tribes to the west of the tabernacle are described in their offerings after those of the tribes to the south of the tabernacle are described. The three tribes to the tabernacle's west, constituting the camp of Ephraim, are Ephraim, Manasseh and Benjamin. The standard of this camp, typing God's justice as we have seen, likely had as its symbol the ox or bullock. We have already seen that Ephraim types the Lutheran Church, Manasseh the Congregational Church and Benjamin the fanatical churches, especially the Quakers. The stewardship doctrine of the Lutheran Church is justification by God's grace through faith in Christ's merit. It therefore pertains to justice. The stewardship doctrine of the Congregational Church is the equality of rights on the part of all the brethren, expressed in church government of, by and for all the brethren—also a matter of justice. And the stewardship doctrine of the fanatical sects, i.e., the Quakers, the holiness people, etc., is right living Godward and manward as opposed to all formalism—also a matter of justice. Thus we see that God's attribute of justice is the central idea of the figurative tribes to the West of the antitypical Tabernacle, even as the three corresponding typical tribes seem to have had on their standard the representation of an ox or bullock, the symbol of justice (Ezek. 1 and Rev. 4). 

(2) We have in these columns shown that Ephraim types in the tabernacle picture the Lutheran Church, while the Ephraimites type the Lutherans. In the

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Gospel-Age picture the Lutheran Church and people are typed by Jacob's son Levi in connection with Jacob's begetting and Leah's bearing him. But because the Levites were taken as the sacred tribe in the tabernacle picture, and because Joseph and Benjamin, in connection with Jacob's begetting them and Rachel's bearing them are used to type the Little Flock harvest movement and people and the Great Company movement and people respectively, and because Joseph's two sons were given separate tribal standings, we in the tabernacle picture must regard the Lutherans with the Congregationalists and the fanatical sects, being not in the picture of Jacob's sons in their begetting and birth, as being the antitype of these three tribes—the two tribes of Joseph's descendants and the tribe of Benjamin. Ephraim, the most important of the three, would naturally type the Lutheran Church, by far the most important of the three denominations under consideration. The idea of the priesthood of the consecrated giving color to the church government of all three of these denominations also shows them to be of the same camp. The precedence of Ephraim and Manasseh over Benjamin causes us to conclude that the Lutheran and Congregational Churches are typed by the first named; and the inferiority of Benjamin suggests that the fanatical sects are typed by the tribe of Benjamin. In this way we harmonize the difference in the antitypes of Jacob's sons at their begettal and birth for Gospel-Age purposes and of the tribes about the tabernacle for Gospel-Age purposes. 

(3) In the first part of this chapter on The Offerings Of The Gospel-Age Princes we desire to discuss those of the prince of antitypical Ephraim (Num. 7:48-53)—the crown-lost leaders of the Lutheran Church. Their type is Elishama, the son of Ammihud. Elishama means God hears. This name characterizes the crown-lost leaders of the Lutheran Church from the standpoint that justification by God's 

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grace through faith in Christ's merit guarantees a favorable hearing from God on behalf of those who in living, childlike trust in Christ's merit for acceptance approach God for forgiveness of sins and the imputation of Christ's merit. Ammihud means my people is majesty, i.e., glorious. It seems to indicate the high honor in which, according to the crown-lost Lutheran leaders, the faith-justified are held by God and those in harmony with Him. The following are the main crown-lost leaders who co-operated in perverting the Little Flock movement started by Luther into a sect and maintained it as such: Jonas, Bugenhagen, Chemnitz, Andreae, Gerhard, Calov, Quenstedt and Hollaz. But while considering Luther the Little Flock originator of, and Melanchthon as his Little Flock co-laborer in, the Little Flock movement that was later perverted into the Lutheran Church, we must in justice admit that they were as parts of blinded antitypical Samson more instrumental than all others, except the Protestant princes of Germany, in perverting this movement into the Lutheran denomination. 

(4) The doctrine which God made the special stewardship teaching of the Lutheran Church, and which its crown-lost leaders applied and defended, is justification by faith. If we should briefly state this doctrine in its main features, we might put it as follows: Justification by God's grace through faith in Christ's merit. Several things are implied in this doctrine: (1) that the justification of a human being is not by good works, either under the natural or under the Mosaic law; for justly condemned and imperfect man cannot by his fallen powers under the natural law or under the Mosaic law act sinlessly and perfectly, and hence cannot satisfy the demands of justice by his own works (Rom. 1:16—3:20; Gal. 2:16, 21; 3:10-12); (2) that God in grace—unmerited favor—provided His Son to be a propitiation of Divine justice on behalf of Adam's sin and all others' 

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sins resulting from Adam's sin (Rom. 3:21-26; 4:25; 5:7-21; Gal. 4:4, 5; John 3:15, 16; 1 John 1:7—2:2; 4:10); (3) that Christ freely gave Himself up to death to satisfy God's justice for the life of the race and fulfilled the Law to work out a righteousness for man (Matt. 20:28; 1 Tim. 2:5, 6; Rom. 5:15-19; 1 Cor. 15:21, 22; Gal. 3:13); (4) that God by the Word offers gratuitously justification to the repentant sinner who will heartily believe His promise that for the sake of Jesus' merit He will forgive him and account him righteous in Christ's righteousness (Luke 24:47; Acts 3:19; 13:38, 39; Rom. 3:25, 26); (5) that the repentant sinner who heartily believes this promise is freely forgiven and receives the imputed righteousness of Christ as his righteousness (Rom. 4:2-8, 22-24; 10:4; 1 Cor. 1:30; Phil. 3:9); (6) that justification is therefore God's act, not ours, and is therefore declarative and reckoned or imputative on His part, and not actually effected by and in us, i.e., we do not justify ourselves, and our justification does not actually make, it only reckons, us perfect (Rom. 8:33; 4:5-8; 3:20, 26; Gal. 2:16; 3:10-12, 21, 22; Phil. 3:9; 1 John 1:7—2:2); and (7) that in justification faith is imputed as righteousness because, holding Christ's righteousness as its own, it is the only requirement for justification asked by God from the repentant sinner (Rom. 3:28; 4:3—5:1; 10:4, 10; 1 Cor. 1:30; Gal. 2:16, 17). In harmony with the above propositions antitypical Elishama applied and defended the propositions that God is the source and effective cause of justification, that Christ is its meritorious cause and that faith is its instrumental cause. Certainly this is a true and Biblical doctrine, and because of what its constituent elements are, it is one of the most important doctrines of the Bible. Its very nature caused its reformatory propounder—Luther—to give the papacy the hardest blow of any delivered by the Reformers. 

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To make this statement apparent it will be well for us to look at several pertinent aspects of the papacy. 

(5) The papacy in its organization, teachings and practices cannot be properly understood, unless it is recognized as Antichrist. As Antichrist it is Satan's counterfeit of the Christ's organization, teachings and practices. In other words, Satan depraved in counterfeit forms the organization, teachings and practices of the Christ in their entirety. Among other things, he has in the papacy counterfeited the entire Millennial arrangement for man's recovery and has counterfeited the time of its operation, putting it into the Gospel Age. The Scriptures clearly teach that after the Christ's merit in the Millennium has freed the world from the Adamic sentence, the world through the priestly, kingly, prophetic, mediatorial, parental, healing and judging ministry of the Christ will gradually attain actual—not a reckoned—justification, and that by works, while for Gospel-Age purposes they teach that justification is by faith, apart from works. Such papal changing of "times and laws" brought in its train a multitude of errors, all in more or less opposition to justification by faith. Thus the idea of the Catholics justifying themselves by works and through them receiving forgiveness of guilt and of the penalty of sins, is in itself a counterfeit of certain Millennial trespass offerings, and of course, is an error from the standpoint of faith justification as now operative. The cancellation of the Millennial world's Adamic condemnation is counterfeited in papacy's water baptism, which is held to cancel the Adamic guilt and its resultant sins committed before baptism. The Millennial Christ as Priest, King, Prophet, Physician, Parents, Mediator and Judge, is counterfeited by the pertinently claimed offices of the papacy. The mass counterfeits the sacrifice of the Church as a part of the Sin-offering. Purgatory counterfeits the kingdom stripes purging 

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from more or less of wrong-doing. Penance counterfeits the real contrition for, confession of and satisfaction for wrongs Millennially. The monks and nuns counterfeit the Millennial Ancient and Youthful Worthies. The former's vows and asceticism counterfeit the consecration vows and self-denials of the latter. The beatified counterfeit the Millennial Great Company; and the canonized counterfeit the Millennial Little Flock. The so-called good works of the papal laity—fastings, prayers, pilgrimages, alms, deeds, contributions, etc.—counterfeit the good works of the restitution class. Papal prayers to the saints counterfeit the restitutionists' prayers to the Millennial Church, while papal prayers to Mary and Peter probably counterfeit prayers made to the two at our Lord's right and left. The intervention of Papal saints counterfeits the mediatorship of the Millennial saints. Indulgences counterfeit the Millennial forgiveness of weakness and ignorance. Confirmation counterfeits the Millennial strengthenings of the restitutionists. The papal Lord's Supper counterfeits the Millennial Memorial symbol of Christ's and the Church's death and of the benefits conferred. Ordination counterfeits the making of priests of the Gospel-Age consecrated. Extreme unction counterfeits the final help given by the Christ to the restitution class before the Little Season. The ceremony of matrimony might counterfeit making the world one with the Christ (Is. 62:5). Tradition as part of the rule and source of faith and practice is the counterfeit of the Millennial revelations on faith and practice. The papal idea of faith as only belief counterfeits the Millennial faith, which will not be one without sight. Papal reverence for relics, pictures and images of saints counterfeits the reverence of the restitution class for the acts and characters of the real saints. And papal feasts counterfeit the experiences of the restitutionists in the blessings wrought by the Christ in

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His various memorable acts. As one looks at these features of the papal counterfeit, he will see more or less of a relation between them and the papal doctrine of justification by works; for all of these things are in the papacy so taught as to be made use of to secure forgiveness of sins and eternal life by the papal laity. Therefore the entire papal scheme of salvation runs athwart the doctrine of faith justification. If the former prevails, the latter falls. If the latter prevails, the former falls. Hence the Divine wisdom in beginning through the teaching of justification by faith the Protestant Reformation assault on the papal way of salvation—justification by works. 

(6) The member of antitypical Jacob through whom the reform movement having as its keynote the doctrine of justification by faith was inaugurated was Martin Luther, who was also at the same time the hero of the entire Reformation. He was born at Eisleben, Saxony, a state of Germany, Nov. 10, 1483, and died there Feb. 18, 1546. His father was first a miner, then a slate cutter. Young Martin was educated first at Magdeburg, then later (1498-1501) at Eisenach, where singing for his food, as was then the custom of poor students, he was favored by Mrs. Ursula Cotta with a home. In 1501 he entered the University of Erfurt as a law student, graduated in 1505 and began to lecture at this University. The same year, against his parents' insistence, he became a monk of the Augustinian Order. He became a priest in 1507, and in the next year became professor of philosophy at the newly founded University of Wittenberg, Saxony. He visited Rome in 1510 on business of his order. In 1512 he was made a Doctor of the Holy Scriptures, which entitled him to lecture and write on the Bible anywhere in Christendom. Henceforth he lectured on the Bible at the University. Oct. 31, 1517, he nailed his 95 theses to the Castle Church door at Wittenberg, as a protest against Tetzel's infamous 

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indulgence traffic. These created an immense sensation throughout Christendom and started the Reformation. They were condemned as heretical by the papacy. In 1519 he debated with Dr. Eck, Rome's champion, on the powers of the papacy, and in the year 1520 he published two works that greatly forwarded the Reformation: (1) An Address to the Christian Nobles of the German Nation; and (2) The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, which latter called forth a royal reply from Henry VIII, answered crushingly by Luther. In 1520 he answered the papal bull of excommunication, by burning it and a copy of the canon law before the University's faculty and student body and the entire citizenry of Wittenberg, declaring the papacy to be Antichrist and renouncing it and its cause. Cited to appear before the Imperial Diet at Worms to answer before the emperor and the estates of the empire, he made, in a long address, April, 1521, a most humble, clear and heroic defense of his doctrines, ending with the memorable words, "Hereon I stand. I can do naught else. So help me God! Amen!" He—the papally excommunicated heretic—was now outlawed by the emperor. After leaving Worms he was, as through an understanding in which he shared, ostensibly captured by some disguised knights and taken to the Wartburg, where he remained with intermittent absences until March, 1522. Here he translated the New Testament into German from the original Greek. 

(7) Had Luther died at the Wartburg, there would have been no shadow on his reformatory work; but here he concluded that his reformatory movement would be crushed, if he would not become a partner with the friendly princes and estates of the empire; and henceforth he became increasingly the captive of the Protestant nobility as a part of antitypical blinded Samson grinding out the meal for the antitypical Philistines, sectarians. From here on Luther became 

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decidedly more conservative and compromised not a few of the logical conclusions of his principles in the interests of the shortly to be formed sectarian body named against his will after him—the Lutheran Church. More than all others, apart from the rulers, was he instrumental in sectarianizing the noble Reform movement that he had inaugurated. But despite his shortcomings, he is easily the hero of the stupendous drama called, The Reformation; and also despite his shortcomings he was adorned with very many noble qualities of the first order. He united a sublime faith and courage with a deep humility and simplicity. His self-oblivion and his generosity were as great as his companionableness and loyalty were strong. His unique firmness and aggressiveness were matched by a remarkable love and forgiveness. His mental, moral and religious qualities and his practical ability in securing wonderful results from his efforts made him a genius of the highest order, placing him among the foremost of the twenty greatest men that have ever lived. His reactionary and sectarian spirit from 1522 onward have often raised the question in our mind as to whether he retained his place in the Little Flock. From the Samson type and from the fact that he did not revolutionize against the truths that he saw we believe that he did, yet we were not without misgivings when we considered that he sectarianized his reform movement, co-operated in uniting Church and State, fought the Zwinglian truth on the Lord's Supper, the Hubmaierian truth on exclusive adult baptism and the Servetian truth on the unity of God, and invented various errors against these truths. But he could not properly be called revolutionizing on these subjects, not having ever seen the Truth on them. He was undoubtedly loyal to the great truth entrusted to him to expound, apply and defend. And he did this decidedly more ably and fruitfully than any other Reformer did with his special stewardship truth; 

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and he is the only Reformer who succeeded in stamping his stewardship truth on the other Reform movements and churches. Therefore he is the most universal of the Reformers, and is by all Protestant sects given the first place among the Reformers. We fully agree that this pre-eminence is his from the standpoint of mental, moral, and religious qualities, and of practical genius. 

(8) While we will not trace the course of Luther's life after his return to Wittenberg from the Wartburg, as we did before that return, it would be helpful to an understanding of our subject to point out how Luther was led to see and use the doctrine of justification by faith. On the one hand, by heredity and development he had a very tender conscience, which condemned the slightest recognized imperfection in his disposition, thoughts, motives, words or acts; yet, on the other hand, he had the deepest cravings for peace with God and for the sense of His approval and fellowship. Therefore under the legalistic spirit of Rome he feared and dreaded God as a hostile and revengeful Judge, whom in some way he must placate. His Church pointed to its sacraments and good works backed by the intercession of saints as the means of obtaining peace with God, and made him believe that he could best accomplish this through the meritoriousness of monastic life. Hence, despite parental objections, he became a monk, hoping by the "good works" of the Augustinian Order to obtain the coveted peace with God. Accordingly, he fasted until he was almost a skeleton and became a semi-invalid. He prayed often the whole night in agony for the desired peace. He did the most menial work for his brother monks in order to attain his quest. He begged from house to house for his order in the same hope. He performed accentuated penances with the same object in view. Thus he could truly say of himself, "If there was ever a pious monk, it was I" But he found no 

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peace by these exercises. Always the monitor within faulted him in his best endeavors and works. And if he, imperfect as he was, could see condemnable things in himself, so he reasoned, how much more could God do so. His pathetic sighs, groans and cries for God's approval were sympathetically heard by his brother monks, one of whom sought to comfort and pacify him with the words, "Bro. Martin, do you not believe the words of the creed, 'I believe in … the forgiveness of sins'?" Thus did Luther's struggles continue for years, his Church being unable to bring peace with its "sacraments and good works." 

(9) But in due time God had mercy on this deeply distressed monk, through the doctrine of faith justification. His study of the Scriptures brought him to meditate very deeply and often on the Lord's word in the passages, "the just shall live [gain life] by faith" (Gal. 3:11) and "the righteousness of God [the righteousness that God in Christ's merit provided for man] without the law [apart from the works of the law] is manifested … even the righteousness of God which is by the faith [fullness] of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe; for there is no difference; for all have sinned and come short of the glory [character-likeness] of God, being freely justified by His grace through the redemption [deliverance] that is in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 3:21-24). Gradually, like the dawn, the light began to arise on his heart until, like a sunburst it filled his soul with peace and joy. Now he realized that while none of his works, which at best were but imperfect, could satisfy God's justice and thus effect peace between God and himself, yet God in marvelous love arranged for Christ's death and righteousness to satisfy God's justice for him, and that to get the benefit of this all he had to do was heartily to believe that God graciously for Christ's merit forgave his sins and accounted him righteous. This Luther, with all the

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strength of a powerful mind and heart, seized upon as true, and from such a faith received the coveted peace with God, as a veritable sunburst from heaven after a dark and stormy night of distress. Henceforth he triumphed in the thought of Holy Writ, "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 5:1). This account of Luther's experience shows that he proved by his life's experience the falsity of papacy's way of salvation "through the sacraments and good works" and the Truth of God's way to justification—faith in the grace of God manifested in Christ's merit. Henceforth this doctrine became the center of Luther's life and teachings. Hence when Tetzel came to the neighborhood of Wittenberg selling his indulgences, he impinged against the darling doctrine of Luther's heart, and out of that impingement sprang first the 95 theses and later the Protestant Reformation. "God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform." And so closely related to faith justification is Luther's life and character that we naturally think of him when the doctrine of justification by faith comes to mind. Probably his ablest discussion of this doctrine is in his second Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians. 

(10) Let us pause awhile and contemplate how this doctrine as a veritable stump-rooter tore up the entire tree of papal error on justification and related matters. One does not usually, especially not at once, draw all the logical conclusions implied in one's principles. This was true of Luther in connection with his belief on justification. It was about 1510 when he attained peace through heartily believing God's promise of gratuitous forgiveness through faith in Christ's merit. But so far as we know, he did not draw from these premises any conclusion against any papal doctrine until the fall of 1517, when the Dominican monk, Tetzel, began in the vicinity of Wittenberg to hawk indulgences for sins at so much per. 

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In the confessional Luther, who insisted on his penitents exercising repentance toward God and faith in Christ as the conditions of absolution, learned that, without repentance and faith, solely on the basis of having paid Tetzel for indulgences, his confessants demanded absolution. This Luther refused to give on such a ground. A papal indulgence is a full or partial grant of remission of sin and its penalties in this life or in purgatory by virtue of the so-called treasury of the saints' merits, deposited with the papacy. The papal theory is that the saints merited more than their own salvation required. This surplus merit consisted of what is papally called works of supererogation. On dying, these saints bequeath these surplus works to the Church, which, keeping them in its treasury, can apply them to its members who lack sufficient merit to escape present and purgatorial punishment. Indulgences originated during the Crusades and were offered to those who would undertake a crusade against the Moslems. Then, because some could not go, they hired substitutes and thus obtained the coveted indulgences. By and by it came about that the money that was wont to go to a substitute, if paid to the Church, would effect the same purpose. Later, sins were variously catalogued at so much per, dependent on the means of those seeking indulgences. Thus the people got and lived out the thought from the indulgence hawkers that they could sin at will, if they paid for the privilege by way of indulgences. Not infrequently they would purchase indulgences for sins that they were contemplating committing in the future. Such an indulgence Tetzel sold to a nobleman, and he himself proved to be the one against whom the nobleman intended to sin in revenge for a wrong that Tetzel had done him. With this intent the nobleman asked how much an indulgence would cost granting him remission for a contemplated act of physical injury on, and robbery of, an enemy. Tetzel's price struck the

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nobleman as too high, so he "jewed" Tetzel down in the price. Finally the lowered price was acceptable to the nobleman, and paying for, and receiving the indulgence that supposedly pardoned him from the guilt and punishment of his contemplated sin, he left Tetzel. Sometime later he waylaid Tetzel, beat him up famously and robbed him of the contents of his treasury chest. Tetzel appealed to the courts, but confronted with his indulgence and pointed out by the nobleman as being the enemy meant by him when he bought the indulgence, Tetzel could obtain no redress! 

(11) The traffic in indulgences is characteristically papal, and is as revelatory of papal corruption as probably anything else in that system. No wonder that Tetzel's shameless trafficking in them shocked Luther through and through, and led him at once to question the merchandising of indulgences. Later on, through a logical deduction from the doctrine of faith justification, the whole idea of indulgences became repugnant to him, and he rejected them entirely, as contrary to God's gratuitous forgiveness through Christ's merit received by faith. When Dr. Eck, as against faith justification, defended indulgences and also the absolute authority of the pope as proven by tradition, Luther was led to reject tradition as a part of the source and rule of faith and practice in favor of the Scriptures as the sole source and rule of faith and practice. Soon the doctrine of justification by faith led Luther to reject the mass as repugnant to the merit of Christ received by faith alone; for papacy teaches that Christ's death covers only original sin, and the sins prior to water baptism, but that the mass takes care of all sins of the living and dead committed after baptism. Hence justification by faith with one stroke of the word, as a besom of destruction, overthrew the whole structure of the mass. It was but another logical step to deny purgatory; for if Christ's merit forgives all our sins (1 John 1:7), there can

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be no purgatory where a believer's sins are made good for. The meritoriousness of fasting, praying, pilgrimages, crusades, penances, vows of celibacy, poverty, and obedience to ecclesiastics, alms-deeds, endowments of masses, churches and other papal projects, etc., as means of obtaining forgiveness of sin's guilt and penalty, fell to the ground in the face of justification by faith in Christ's merit. This led Luther to reject monasticism; and his own marriage, and that with an ex-nun, put the seal of practice on such rejection. Of course, justification by faith did away entirely with the idea of the saint's merit being necessary for the believer, as it led to the rejection of the ideas that they intercede for us and that we should pray to them. Consequently their relics, pictures and images lost caste with the believer, who will ever appreciate the characters and deeds of real saints. Justification by faith soon put down the Virgin Mary from her place as queen of heaven and the special intermediary of believers in approaching God and Christ. It set aside the thought of the satisfaction of Divine justice through penitential works. It dispensed with the papal priesthood and hierarchy in their capacity of intermediary between God and the consecrated believer, who is a priest, and rightly exalted Christ as the sole Priest Godward for them. Justification by faith destroyed papal sacramentarianism, whereby the mere external use of the sacraments is supposed to convey grace. It also overthrew the papal idea of the Church and of the Romish Church as being the Church. In a word, the whole papal institution and its method of gaining life were set aside by this one doctrine. Surely it was the stump-rooter, tearing up the entire papal tree. As we see this result we marvel at God's strategic wisdom, which smote papacy with a mortal wound by that part of the Sword of the Spirit treating of justification by faith. 

(12) While Luther saw many of the features of

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faith justification clearly, there were others that he did not see. He did not see the distinction between tentative and vitalized justification. He knew nothing of tentative justification. Nor did he realize the function of faith justification in God's plan as the preparatory step for the high calling; for he thought that it made one a priest, whereas this was done in consecration and spirit-begetting. He believed that it entitled one to heaven, instead of making him acceptable for the high calling, faithfulness in which prepares for heaven. His emphasis on faith justification apart from works as entitling one to heaven, made him fail to do justice to the passages that teach that the overcoming of the consecrated and their attaining the heavenly reward are dependent on their faithful fulfillment of their consecration vows (Rev. 2:10, 25, 26; 3:21; 2 Pet. 1:5-10). For these deficiencies we are not to fault Luther; for the full Truth on faith justification was not due before the Harvest; and no one can give a truth either in part or in full until it is due as such. Rather let us praise God for the large amount of light that He gave Luther; for when we consider the deep papal darkness in which Luther, like others, was enveloped, we marvel at the amount of clear light that he saw and spread. 

(13) As said above, Luther himself was, next to his rulers, the chief one who sectarianized the noble reform movement that God inaugurated through him. Returning to Wittenberg from the Wartburg in March, 1522, with the thought that he must have the support of the civil power to retain and increase the gains of his reform movement as against the papacy, he first had to overthrow the fanatical and disorderly movement at Wittenberg led by Carlstadt, one of his fellow professors, in fact the University's rector. Carlstadt held that everything papal must be set aside. Hence he cast out the mass, the Latin language in the services, relics, images, pictures, vestments and every other

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papal symbol from the churches. This was accompanied by much disorder and rioting. Luther, a great conservative, was repelled by this course and left the Wartburg without his ruler's consent, to oppose this fanaticism. In eight discourses, on as many days, he set forth his views of the matter, won over the entire community and put an end to the disorder. This result pleased his ruler, Frederick the Wise, who sympathized with Luther, but as far as Luther's cause was concerned also tried to keep on good terms with the pope and the emperor. Luther still continued a reform work, but on much more conservative lines than before he went to Worms. Before many years had passed he had won from Rome about nine-tenths of Germany, as well as greatly furthered the Reformation in other lands. To minister to this ever-increasing following, under his ruler's general direction, he organized the Lutheran Church, giving it its order of service, its hymnals, its catechism, and with Melanchthon's co-operation, its ministry and its earlier creeds. This course and its implications led him into many controversies with those who taught differently from the creed of his Church. He always recognized his ruler as the highest official of his Church, and was used by the latter to give advice and advocacy to the policies and teachings agreed to. His activities, literary, epistolary, professorial, pulpit, pastoral, traveling and social were enormous. Few, if any, have ever done more within the same number of years as constituted the period of his reformatory activities, 1517-1546, in all about 28 years and 3⅓ months. He was literally a slave to his sect, and was the first member of the larger antitypical Samson to be captured, to have his powers taken from him, to be blinded and thus made to grind out the meal for the sectarians—the antitypical Philistines. While he shared very ably in the last three exploits of the pre-captive larger Samson, typed by Samson's three exploits done just before

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his captivity set in—overthrew (1) the new forms of papal doctrines; (2) the new forms of papal practices set forth to counteract the Reformation, and (3) the papal attacks on his doctrines; yet he slaved more and more for the antitypical Philistines from the Wartburg on; and this slavery was largely responsible for the growing irritability and intolerance of his later years. Almost every blot on his otherwise most praiseworthy course was due to this slavery. We glory in the free Luther; we weep for the enslaved Luther; and we hope for the best for the departed Luther, i.e., that he is in the Little Flock. 

(14) The galaxy of scholars that the Lutheran Church has marshaled in its universities and churches in application and defense of her stewardship truth—justification by faith—is, at least, equal to that of any other Church. We even doubt whether the equals of Chemnitz, Gerhard and Calov, the three ablest crown-lost leaders of the Lutheran Church, can be found in the ranks of any other denomination as appliers and defenders of their pertinent stewardship truths. Of Martin Chemnitz the Lutherans have the saying, "Had Martin [Chemnitz] not come, Martin [Luther] would not have stood." This was said with main reference to Chemnitz's great work, "The Examination Of The Council Of Trent," the ablest anti-Catholic work of all Protestantism, written as a check to the counter-Reformation movement led by the Jesuits. Bellarmine, the ablest of Rome's anti-Protestant writers, while answering Protestants in general, put forth his very hardest and ablest efforts to refute this work of Chemnitz, and failed. From the small Gospel-Age picture we gather that Chemnitz was a Little Flock member until after the publication of the above-mentioned work. Thereafter he devoted his labors to sect building amid the controversies that led up to the preparation of the Formula of Concord, the last of the general creeds of the Lutheran Church, and mainly 

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Chemnitz's work. In connection with this work he seems to have lost his crown. John Gerhard is the ablest of all Lutheran dogmaticians and probably the ablest dogmatician of all Christendom. Chemnitz wrote before Bellarmine, and Gerhard after Bellarmine; and when Gerhard was through with Bellarmine's arguments they were on the scrap heap. Chemnitz, though a voluminous writer, was not so much so as Gerhard, while Calov was even a more voluminous writer than Gerhard. Calov seemed to be unable to rest comfortably, if a year should pass without his having written and published at least a thousand-paged quarto—a book almost the size of Webster's Unabridged Dictionary! In a preceding paragraph we mentioned other Lutheran crown-lost leaders than these. Many others could be mentioned; for the Lutheran Church is generally recognized as being the Church of theologians. These crown-lost leaders have prepared classics on justification by faith; for it was their favorite doctrine. Gerhard's treatise on this subject in his chief work, Theological Topics, covers about 500 quarto pages of rather small type. His application and proof of this doctrine and his refutation of objections, is indescribably thorough, final and complete. Catholic theologians who have attempted to battle with it found that they were biting at something harder than adamant. 

(15) These crown-lost leaders have on this doctrine offered their charger—corrections of bad qualities and conduct. They have shown that this doctrine is peculiarly adapted to put aside pride; for it shows that fallen man can do nothing to make himself acceptable to God. They have shown that it certainly corrects self-righteousness; for it proves all our righteousness to be as filthy rags. They have thoroughly proven that it corrects self-confidence; for it proves that we have nothing of our own on which we can trust for acceptance before God. They have clearly 

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shown that it corrects every man-made scheme for self-atonement and self-justification as improper inventions of sinful humans and as making God a Falsifier in His Word. They have used it to correct man's self-sufficiency for his relations with God; for it proves that no one is able to redeem himself. They have also used it to show the folly of man's trust in his ability along evolutionary lines finally to make himself perfect; for it implies man's increasing depravity. They have used it to rebuke the insults given to Christ in seeking the intercession and merits of saints to make one right with God. They have also used it to correct the conduct that looks upon God as a hardhearted monster who seems to delight in the punishment of the wicked. They have used it to correct the arrogance of priestcraft in setting itself forth as the intermediary between God and the believer. They have used it as a correction of hierarchism as controlling man's relations to God. They have used it to correct the wickedness that would sin that grace may abound. They have used it as a correction to unbelief that would not accept God's provisions on man's behalf. They have used it to correct the despair that some have felt because of sin. They have used it to correct the lovelessness of some toward God, who has made such gracious provisions for them; and to correct some who have despised weak brethren for whom Christ died, and who have been favored by the participation in His imputed righteousness. They have used it to correct the spirit of fear that some exercise toward God because of their sense of guilt, and the spirit of ingratitude that others show toward God in not appreciating His goodness toward them. They have used it to correct the indifference of some toward others who have experienced faith justification. They have used its graciousness to correct the unkind and covetous spirit that some have exercised. They have used it to correct the spirit of those who love sin. 

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Thus on all sides they have applied this doctrine to the correction of misconduct, and in so doing they have offered their antitypical charger. 

(16) In offering their bowl—refutations—the crown-lost leaders of the Lutheran Church have had to meet the ablest and subtlest attacks that Romanist controversialists could make. And some of these were men of great talent, learning and dialectic skill. Cardinal Bellarmine in the field of dogmatics, Cardinal Baronius in the field of Church History and Bishop Bossuet in the field of elegant authorship have been Rome's chief champions, Bellarmine being easily the ablest of these three. Bellarmine made as good a showing for the bad cause that he had to champion as perhaps could have been done by any human being. Unlike most Catholic controversialists he clearly, copiously and truly stated all the Protestant arguments and then sought to refute them. This fair course of his was one of the two reasons that moved Pope Sextus VI to put Bellarmine's greatest controversial work, his Disputations, on the Index of Expurgated Books, fearing that such statements of the Protestant arguments would injure the Catholic cause. Later this work was taken off of the Index and is and has for centuries been considered by Romanists and Protestants as the ablest anti-Protestant work. It is a four-volumed quarto work. The fact that the Lutherans were in error on the point that one's faith justification admitted him to heaven, and their not seeing that carrying out one's consecration—a matter of good works—was the condition of his entering heaven, gave Roman controversialists a certain vantage point, which they improved to the utmost against the pertinent erroneous view of the Lutherans. But on the subject of justification by faith alone, which relates to the humanity, not to the New Creature, the Lutherans had the Truth and triumphantly refuted every argument against it advanced by their papal opponents. 

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(17) When the papists argued that justification means to make right, and that therefore it is by good works, antitypical Elishama replied that on this subject the word justification suggests a court scene and is used in a judicial sense, and therefore means to declare or reckon right, not to make right (Prov. 17:15; Ex. 23:7; Deut. 25:1; Is. 5:23; Rom. 4:3-8, 11, 22-24). When the papists argued that by the works of the law, through which one is not justified, St. Paul meant the ceremonial law as distinct from the ten commandments, antitypical Elishama answered that the ceremonial law in its sacrifices typically justified and did not condemn. Moreover he proved that the moral law—the law of love—set forth in the ten commandments was the law that St. Paul meant when he showed that by the works of the law man could not be justified (Rom. 7:5-8; 3:10-20; the examples of acts here cited come under the ten commandments, not under the ceremonial law). When the papists argued that the very nature of good works is to justify, antitypical Elishama answered: (1) that the religious works of the heathen—supposedly good works—provoked God's wrath and effected not His justifying but His condemning them (Rom. 1:19-25, 32); (2) that the man-made so-called good works of God's nominal people do not bring justification, but disapproval from God (Matt. 15:9; Is. 1:12); (3) that living according to the law of nature on the part of the unjustified does not justify before God, it being imperfect (Rom. 2:14, 15; 3:9, 19); and (4) that the best efforts of those under the law failed to justify them (Matt. 5:20; Acts 13:39; Rom. 3:19, 20; Gal. 3:10-12). When the papists asserted that God would not have given the law as a means of gaining life, if man could not keep it, antitypical Elishama answered that God Himself said that imperfect man could not keep the perfect law and by it gain life (Rom. 3:19, 20; 8:68; Gal. 3:10-12, 21; Acts 13:39), because the perfect

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law is the full measure of a perfect man's ability, and therefore is beyond the ability of one less than perfect, and that God gave the law for other reasons, especially that man might come to a knowledge of sin and his inability to save himself (Rom. 3:20; 7:7-13), feel the need of a Savior (Rom. 7:15-24) and have the law lead him to the Savior (Gal. 3:24). When the papists objected that faith, which they defined as belief, could not justify, antitypical Elishama proved that their definition of faith was false, since Scripturally faith is mental appreciation and heart's reliance (Heb. 11:1), and proved that God asserted that such a faith does justify (Rom. 3:215:1). When the papists objected that righteousness of one could not justify another, antitypical Elishama proved that it could (Rom. 3:25-28; 4:3-8, 11, 22-24; 10:4; 1 Cor. 1:30; Phil. 3:9), and that as logically as the sin of one could condemn another (Rom. 5:12-19; 1 Cor. 15:21, 22). 

(18) When the papists argued that God would not allow the Church to err on justification or on any other subject, antitypical Elishama answered that God had never promised to keep even the true Church, let alone the Romish Church, free from error, but that He had foretold that under Antichrist's manipulations the Roman Church would greatly err (2 Thes. 2:4-11; Rev. 13:1-10; 17:3-6; 18:2-24; 19:2, 3). When the papists quoted those passages that show good works must be performed, if one would obtain the kingdom, antitypical Elishama answered that they belonged, not to justification, but to sanctification, which was true, but which did not explain these passages in harmony with his thought that justification entitles one to a heavenly inheritance apart from good works, which he insisted resulted from a true justifying faith and which evidenced it as such. While this answer vindicated justification by faith, it did not vindicate their view that faith justification, which pertains to the humanity,

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entitles one to the eternal heavenly inheritance, a thing of the New Creature. When the papists claimed that Christ's merit does not in justification secure for us the satisfaction of God's justice, and thus the forgiveness of sins from God, but that it secures for us the infusion of charity by which we are made just, antitypical Elishama showed that the infusion of charity belongs to sanctification which comes after justification (Rom. 12:1, 2; 6:7, 3-16, 13-22; Gal. 5:22-25; Eph. 5:9; Col. 3:1, 12-14), and showed that Christ's merit satisfies God's justice and thus secures forgiveness for us (Matt. 20:28; 1 Tim. 2:5, 6; 2 Cor. 5:18, 19; Eph. 1:7; 2:13-16; Col. 1:14, 20-22; 2 14; Rom. 3:22-26; 4:6-8, 25; 5:8-11; Heb. 7:27; 9:11-15, 22, 24, 26; 10:12, 18, 19; 13:12; 1 John 1:7—2:2; 4:10). When Catholic theologians insisted that the Catholic doctrine on this subject be accepted, as being the doctrine of God's infallible "channel," antitypical Elishama declared that that "channel" not getting its waters from the reservoir of Truth—the Bible—must be getting them from the swamp of error, and therefore could not be the channel whose teachings are pure and therefore should be accepted (Gal. 1:6-9; Is. 8:20; Acts 5:29; John 17:17; 2 Tim. 3:15-17). From these standpoints and from every other standpoint unanswerably did antitypical Elishama refute every argument that was urged against the doctrine of justification by faith, and thus he offered the antitypical bowl. 

(19) Finally, he offered the antitypical spoon filled with incense—instructions in righteousness: He used this doctrine to incite his hearers to honor God for His grace to man and to honor Christ for His ministry for man. He used it to reveal God's wisdom, justice, love and power, and thus sought to arouse his hearers to the faith that implicitly trusts God, to the hope that desires and expects blessings from Him, to the love that thanks and appreciates Him for the good He does 

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and is, and to the obedience that delights to serve Him as the one who deserves their obedience. He used it to comfort the distressed and believing sinner. He applied it to stimulate self-control in temptation and patience amid obstacles to well doing. He made it the basis of exhortations to consecration. He preached it to strengthen the weak and faint. He held it up as the foundation of peace with God and the peace of faith. He presented it as the source and stimulus to joy. He based upon it exhortations to forgive as freely as God forgives. He used it to stimulate parents to greater kindness and longsuffering toward their children, especially to wayward ones, and to stimulate laborers for others' salvation to more compassion. He formed from it the ground of many an exhortation to longsuffering and forbearance. It was used by him to influence people to greater love for sinners, as being such as God loves, and as Christ died for, and thus to greater evangelistic efforts. The fact that it implies man's inability to make himself acceptable to God antitypical Elishama used to incite to humility on the part of his hearers. He used it, as revealing God's liberality, as an incitement to greater liberality for others. He employed it as an exhortation to practice righteousness, inasmuch as that would make one more in harmony with the righteousness imputed to him. He utilized it to incite to courage manward, inasmuch as in its possessors all was confidence Godward. He applied it to give courage in the face of death, since Christ's merit would free them' in due time from death. He used it to enkindle love for the brotherhood, similarly blessed by justification. He utilized it to incite to hatred of sin, since it slew the Lord, whose grace so greatly blesses. Thus he applied this doctrine as a powerful instruction in righteousness. 

(20) Fittingly did this doctrine give the Lutheran Church the chief place in the camp to the West of the antitypical Tabernacle—the direction of justice; for the

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doctrine of faith justification, more effectively than all other teachings, harmonizes with, clarifies and glorifies God's justice, as it also remarkably exhibits His wondrous wisdom and love. And let us rejoice that the crown-lost leaders of the Lutheran Church have so ably, continually and fruitfully set forth the corrections of misconduct, refutations of error and instructions in righteousness pertinent to the glorious doctrine of justification by faith. 

(21) The next set of princely offerings that we are to consider is that of the Congregational crown-lost leaders—typed by Gamaliel, the son of Pedahzur, the prince of Manasseh. The significance of his name and his father's name shows his office. The word, Gamaliel, means the recompense of God, indicative of the fact that an advocate of a right order of church government will not get a reward from the clericalists, but will from God, while at the same time his teachings will be God's recompense—spiritual punishment—on clericalists. The word, Pedahzur, means the deliverer is a rock—strong, indicative of the strength of the Scripture arguments that the Congregational crown-lost leaders used in delivering saints from all clerical bondage into the Divine order of church government. In studying the Jacob type in the generating of his sons, we noted the fact that Manasseh being a son of Joseph and not of Jacob, the Congregational Church is not represented by a particular son of Jacob, but comes under the type of Judah—the type of the Calvinistic churches. This is appropriate, because apart from church government the Congregationalists have been thoroughly Calvinistic in their doctrines and practices. Moreover, their church government principle has been accepted by the Baptists, Unitarians, Christians, Adventists and by large sections of the Lutheran Church, as we have shown above. But in the tabernacle picture the Lord has used Manasseh to type the Congregational Church. 

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(22) The Church is organized. Yea, according to the Scriptural figure of a human body as illustrating its organization, we are warranted in calling it an organism. In this organism the Lord Jesus is Head and the rest of the Faithful are the Body. But the figure is much more detailed, the general outlines of which are given in the spine. The spine consists of (1) the seven cervicals, (2) the twelve dorsals and (3) five lumbars, one sacrum and one coccyx. We understand the seven cervicals, which connect the head and body, to represent the seven angels of the seven churches, the seven connecting links between the Lord and the Church in its seven stages. We understand the twelve dorsals and their twelve sets of ribs to represent the twelve Apostles and the twelve tribes of which the Church consists, each tribe being in the Lord led by an Apostle. We understand the five lumbars, the one sacrum and the one coccyx to represent the Church in its seven stages: the five lumbars, the Church in the five stages between the two harvests; the sacrum, the Ephesus stage; and the coccyx, the Laodicean stage; and the five features of the one sacrum and of the one coccyx to symbolize that these two churches consist largely of the five groups united in one, called in the five call periods of the Jewish and Gospel Harvests, and tested by the five harvest siftings. The right arm and hand represent respectively the Christ's members in their power of expounding and defending the Truth and of serving in such work. The left arm and hand represent respectively the Christ's members in their power of refuting error and of serving in such work. The right leg and foot represent respectively the Christ's members in their power of right living and in their practice of right living. The left leg and foot represent respectively the Christ's members in their power of overcoming wrong conduct and in their practice of such overcoming. The feet considered apart 

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from the legs picture the last members. These are the generalities of this organism. 

(23) Dropping the figure, we might say that Jesus governs the Church as its Monarch; and that He uses as His servants to minister to the Church: (1) apostles, (2) prophets, (3) evangelists and (4) pastors or teachers. But these servants are not the lords of the general Church, nor of particular ecclesias. Accordingly, the apostles and prophets are not lords over the general Church, nor lords over local churches, as the evangelists are not lords of the babes that they beget, and as pastors or teachers are not lords over a local church. These brethren, instead of being lords, are servants of the Church, the former two sets, of the general Church; of the latter two sets, the first, of the babes that they beget, and the second, of the local churches. On invitation from a local church the former two sets could minister to it. The second class of the latter two sets are limited in their service to local churches, while the evangelists work on outsiders to bring them into the body. Thus the Lord Jesus alone is the Lord of the Church, the Head of the Body, the general Church, as He alone is also the Head of the local churches. Apart from His use of the Apostles and that Servant in a ruling capacity as His special representatives, His use of representatives is for servant and not rulership purposes, both in the general Church and in local churches. He has not given the general Church the rulership over local churches, nor has He given any local church the rulership over other local churches or over the general Church. Apart from the thirteen persons above-mentioned, who had certain delegated ruling powers under Christ in the general Church, Jesus made each church free from the rulership of every other church, and free under His headship to manage all its own affairs according to its understanding of His will. This makes each ecclesia mistress in its own midst, subject to its understanding 

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of the Lord's will. This makes Christ the monarch of each ecclesia in its relation to Him and makes each ecclesia a democracy as respects itself and other persons, ecclesias or ecclesiastical organizations. According to the above, the Lord used the twelve Apostles to bind and loose as to all churches and the general Church and to manage the work toward and of the general Church. And He used that Servant to interpret all things so bound and loosed and to manage the work of and toward the general Church. This they severally did in their respective Harvests as antitypical Eleazar. The Lord has used other specially authorized servants to give the meat in due season, but not to manage the work toward and of the Little Flock, though they have by Him been used with pertinent authority in the work toward the justified, the Great Company and the Youthful Worthies. 

(24) In the two foregoing paragraphs we have given a brief description of the organization of the Church, general and local, and have explained briefly the polity or church government that is of Divine authority for the general Church and for local churches. In so doing we have, among other things, touched on the things that constitute the stewardship doctrine of the Congregational Church. That stewardship doctrine may be defined as follows: Each ecclesia of the Lord's people is, under Christ's Headship, the mistress of its own affairs, in complete independence of all other persons; ecclesias and ecclesiastical organizations, but acknowledges its ties with others in Christ for Christian fellowship and helpfulness. This doctrine we consider to be a Scriptural truth. It acknowledges that in a sense each ecclesia is an absolute monarchy—Christ being its absolute Ruler. It acknowledges in another sense—in the mutual relations of its constituent members as a company of saints—that it is under Christ a pure democracy, ruling its affairs by the unanimity or majority of its members. It rejects all external parties, be they 

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individuals, churches or a combination of churches or leaders, from the right and practice of dictation or rulership in its affairs, though it welcomes other Christian individuals and churches in Christian fellowship and oneness with them in Christ and stands ready to help them in the Lord. This doctrine is briefly comprehended in the expression, Congregationalism or Ecclesiaism, one a Latin, the other a Greek derivative. 

(25) This doctrine is capable of Scripture proof. It is an undoubted fact that the ecclesias formed by the Apostles managed their own affairs and that at the direction of Jesus and the Apostles who, among other things, were obligated to "bind" a proper church government on the ecclesias. The Apostles in exercising this binding power advised and sanctioned their electing their own officers: (1) the deacons-the seven deacons (Acts 6:1-6) and the deacons of the churches to collect and carry their contributions to the poor saints at Jerusalem (2 Cor. 8:19, 23; cheirotoneo, here translated "chosen," means elected by stretching forth the hand); and (2) elders (Acts 14:23; here cheirotoneo is mistranslated "ordained"). The churches, under St. Paul's advice, decided matters of business, i.e., to contribute to the poor saints and to appoint the agents to administer the collection and delivery of the money (2 Cor. 8:1-24). Hence under apostolic sanction the churches decided their business matters. Again, at Christ's charge (Matt. 18:15-17) the administration of discipline is in the hands of the ecclesia, and St. Paul's accepted exhortation to the Corinthians unanimously to apply discipline to the incestuous brother (1 Cor. 5:1-13) proves that that Church exercised discipline. Its later receiving by vote this brother when repentant (2 Cor. 2:5-10) proves that the Church decided whether it should fellowship people or not. The ecclesias also sent out missionaries (Acts 13:1-3). These five facts—(1) the churches' electing their elders and deacons, (2) transacting business, (3)

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exercising discipline, (4) receiving people into fellowship and (5) sending out missionaries, all under the Lord's and the Apostles' sanction—prove that under the Lord each ecclesia is the manager of its own affairs. This doctrine is also proven by the doctrine of the priesthood of consecrated believers (1 Pet. 2:5, 9), which implies the equal priestly rights of the individual members of an ecclesia, and the consequent right of their settling their common interests by unanimity or majority, i.e., congregational rule. This doctrine is also true because it leads better than any other method of church government to the Divinely sanctioned development of the Christlike qualities required in the Lord's people in their relations to one another (Rom. 8:29; 12:2-8). Thus each ecclesia is by Divine institution a democracy in its government, yielding equal rights to all its members before the bar of church law, which facts are thoroughly compatible with the diversity in talent, attainment, function, etc., had by the various members of an ecclesia; even as the democracy of America is compatible with the diversity of talent, attainment, function, etc., in the American citizens, all of whom have, theoretically at least, equal rights before the law. It is this theoretical and practical recognition of the equal rights of the members of an ecclesia in church government, on the basis of the priesthood of its consecrated members, for which the Congregational Church stands, that has given it a standing at the antitypical West of the antitypical Tabernacle—it stands for Justice as its central doctrinal thought. 

(26) The Little Flock brother through whom the Lord restored the Truth on each ecclesia's being under Christ's headship the manager of its own affairs in entire independence of outside persons, ecclesias or ecclesiastical bodies and leaders, and thus initiated the movement that was perverted into the Congregational Church, was Robert Browne. He was born three miles 

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north of Stamford, Rutlandshire, England, about 1550, and died at Northampton in 1631. He came from a good family, which included such relations as the great Chancellor, Lord Burghley. He entered Corpus Christi College, a part of the Cambridge University, about 1568, and became B.A. in 1572. He taught school for three years, and made enemies by pointing out the fallen state of the Anglican Church. In 1578 he returned to Cambridge for further study and became a member of Richard Greenham's family, an eminently devout Puritan minister, who taught theology to him and encouraged him to preach. As a preacher he soon became eminent and was invited to accept one of the Cambridge pulpits. This he declined on the ground that he did not believe in Episcopal ordination and therefore would not submit to it. His pertinent mental conflicts broke down his weak bodily health. The religious formalism of his day distressed him and he greatly desired fellowship with truly consecrated people. He said of himself: "He had no rest what he might do for the name and kingdom of God. He often complained of these evil days, and with many tears sought where to find the righteous who glorify God, with whom he might live and rejoice together that they put away abomination." After his recovery he heard that there were such believers in Norfolk. Thither he went and remained some months, all the while studying the Bible and praying for light as to the way out of the formalism of the Church of England. These studies and prayers were blessed with the light that a true church consisted of consecrated believers, that its governmental powers were those of a democracy free from the dictation of outside persons, churches or groups of churches or leaders. This led him with some kindred spirits to form such a church at Norwich in 1580. He unfolded his views along the lines of what we gave above as the Bible teachings on the governmental powers of an ecclesia. With the thought of mutual help on the part of 

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the brethren he made the mistake of introducing the custom of having regular ecclesia meetings for the members to criticize one another's faults; but this custom greatly injured all concerned. Had he introduced testimony meetings, the reverse effect would have set in. 

(27) Naturally, such a theory of church government meant separation from the State-Church. Elizabeth was then on England's throne. As we saw above, she did not require as the law of the land uniformity of belief and teaching, but did require uniformity of church membership and worship, enforced by civil penalties. This law led to the persecution of Bro. Browne and his associates, who separated themselves from the State-Church and did not use the book of Common Prayer, the service which was and is in use in the Episcopal Church. Browne was penalized in no less than 32 prisons, in some of which he could not see his hand held before his face at noonday. These persecutions drove the little church to emigrate in a body to Holland, where they settled at Middelberg. Here they had freedom of faith and practice, so far as the State was concerned; and all went well with them for a time. Here Browne wrote several treatises strongly expounding and proving his doctrine on Church Democracy under Christ as Head. The pressure of hard times and the mutual criticism meetings by and by wrecked the congregation. Browne resigned his pastorate, and with a handful of followers returned to England by way of Scotland, in 1583. Soon afterward Browne ruined his Truth influence and compromised his movement by rejoining the Episcopal Church, which he did without Episcopal ordination and without repudiation of his principles, in some manner allowed this freedom through the influence of his uncle, Lord Burghley. There seems to be some reason to think that years of ill health, rigorous imprisonments, troubles in his Holland Church and the outbreak of fresh persecutions in England weakened his mind and made him "practically 

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to a degree insane and sometimes wholly irresponsible." His writings on his special truth before this had been widely circulated in England, and when as many of them as could be found were in 1583 collected and burned at the hanging of two of his associates, Copping and Thacker, the authorities thereby indicated their belief that there was a considerable response to them on the part of the people. And persecution followed every revival of this movement for nearly a century. 

(28) In ultimate analysis, Bro. Browne's teachings were a setting forth of the Truth on church government in opposition to papal error on that subject; but it was more than this. It was a protest against all the clericalistic forms of church government that have prevailed during the Gospel Age. It was a restoration of the original Apostolic form of church government to the Lord's people, so long lost to them. Thus it struck at the great apostasy's first wrong step with its further developments; for let us not forget that clericalism in the form of what later was called Presbyterianism and Episcopalianism were the first external workings of the great apostacy in church government, as its first secret working was the unholy ambition of certain leaders to become great among the brethren (2 Thes. 2:7). It will help us to a better appreciation of the offerings of the Congregational Church's crown-lost leaders, if we consider step by step the apostacy in church government—the tree—trunk of all other branches of the great apostacy, the roots being the unholy ambition of certain leaders to become "somebodies." The constitution of the local churches in that they had elders as leaders became the point of departure for this apostasy's start. The Scriptural ideal is that these local elders are servants of the Lord and of the ecclesia, chosen by the Lord through the ecclesia's vote, not to lord it over, but to serve the ecclesia. During most of the Ephesian period of the Church, the 

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warm love of the brethren for the Lord, the Truth and one another, expressing itself in much missionary activity, mutual upbuilding and relief of one another's earthly needs, and the faithful oversight of the Apostles, confined the ambition of the power-hungry leaders to the secret recesses of their own hearts. The Apostles forecast and warned against the great apostacy itself, e.g., St. Paul in Acts 20:28-31, which, however, did not begin to show itself externally until after all the Apostles except St. John had passed away. St. John recounts some of the first external acts of this apostacy in connection with Diotrephes' [foster child of Jupiter—Satan] power-grasping activities (3 John 9, 10). Of course, during the five siftings of the Jewish Harvest there were more or less power-grasping acts committed by the sifters; but these were as sifters separated from the brethren, and are not included in the apostolically predicted great apostacy, which St. Paul foretold would come after his departure, which presumably occurred in 66 or 67 A. D., after the five siftings were over. 

(29) Now to a description of the unfolding of the apostacy in church government: The apostolic churches as a rule had more than one elder or bishop—names Biblically interchangeable for the same persons (Acts 13:1; 14:23; 15:2, 22; 20:17, 28; Tit. 1:5-7; also seen from the fact that bishops and deacons were the two kinds of church servants, Phil. 1:1; 1 Tim. 3:1, 10, 12, 13). These elders or bishops differed in talent, devotion and usefulness (Rom. 12:6-8), and thus in the esteem in which they were held, and in the influence that they exerted (1 Tim. 5:17). This is in perfect harmony with the Lord's will; for He so ordained matters both as to the local elders in a local ecclesia and as to the general elders in the general Church. Moreover, the body of elders in their meetings for counseling over church matters, because of such superior talents, devotion and usefulness, gave greater esteem to

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their possessor than to the other elders, and this again was proper. And thus gradually this particular elder began to be regarded as the first one among equals, and this, too, was proper and good, as implied by the principle contained in 1 Tim. 5:17 and expressed in the greater uses the Lord makes of some than of others. This led as a rule to this particular elder being elected to the chairmanship of the elders' business meetings and the congregational business meetings. As such he was still only considered as the first among equals; and but little can be said against this, though it became the point of departure for later abuses. It would, however, have been better to have rotated alphabetically the chairmanship of the elders' meetings, as the Philadelphia Ecclesia's elders do, and to have elected for a period of time to the chairmanship of congregational meetings a less prominent elder, as the Philadelphia Ecclesia does. Soon, in the early part of the Smyrna Church, this most prominent elder or bishop began to be called by way of emphasis, the elder or the bishop, as distinct from other elders or bishops. In the New Testament the latter name, which refers to the burden of the service, and the former name, which refers to the honor of the service, apply to one and the same office incumbents (Acts 20:17, 28, the Greek for "overseers" being the word for bishops). The word bishop, however, began to be used increasingly and finally exclusively of the most prominent elder. Henceforth he alone was the bishop and was considered in office function over the other elders. This change of view, of course, was not made everywhere at one and the same time, nor without much opposition of the elders; but before the end of the second century it was practically general among the churches; for it was thought necessary, in order better to edify the church, to present a stronger front to the world and more powerfully to refute errorists, thus to put forward the ablest and most influential elder. If we should consider 

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some of the better attested epistles of Ignatius of Antioch genuine, this distinction was advocated by Ignatius for the church at Antioch, Smyrna and some other Asiatic places by 108 or 116 A. D., when Ignatius is said to have written these epistles on his way to Rome for martyrdom. But the so-called Ignatian epistles come to us in larger (15) and smaller (7) and smallest (3) numbers, the seven in longer and shorter forms, and the three in still shorter forms, and all of them with such greatly variant readings, that if any of them are genuine, their numerous interpolations greatly reduce their credibility, as witness on the subject before us, as well as on numerous other subjects. The pros and cons among devout scholars are nearly even on the genuineness of the better attested of these epistles—the shorter seven and the three. Hence they are not of certain weight as evidence of the condition of pertinent matters in 108 or 116 A. D. According to the better attested of these epistles (which are likely genuine), by 108 or 116 A. D. the viewpoint that Ignatius is alleged to have advocated was that the bishop was Christ's representative and the elders were the Apostles' representatives; and he especially emphasizes the necessity of obeying the bishop. But the progress of this error on the interrelation of elders and bishops was quite varied at different times and in different localities at the same time. In 251 A. D. Cyprian, in his book on the Unity of the Church, began to teach the doctrine that the bishops are successors of the Apostles, and that each one is a ruler over the presbyters in his Church; but as yet he did not exercise full power over the ecclesia. And this view gradually spread, and as it spread, increased the powers of the bishops, until in the fourth century the bishops were regarded not only as the ruler of the presbyters, but also largely of the ecclesias which elected him. 

(30) But side by side with the misdevelopment just described was another misgrowth, which, indeed, began 

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even a little earlier than the one just described. The one just outlined is the Episcopal development in the separate ecclesias as distinct from one another; for the bishops in Cyprian's time and previously were not diocesan, but local church bishops, because in Cyprian's time the apostacy in church government had not yet developed the diocesan bishop, who arose, however, very shortly afterward. Thus we see that the bishops robbed the elders of certain of their rights; but previous to the bishop's advancing spoliation of the elders, the elders were making spoil of the congregation's rights (3 John 9, 10), by establishing slowly and by degrees the rulership of the elders over the church, and thus gradually transacting the business that the churches formerly transacted. Thus the resolutions of the board of elders became more and more encroachments on the church's prerogatives, and were acted on as decisions to be executed, whereas they should at most have been used as recommendations to the ecclesia for acceptance or rejection, as might seem good to the church. They also spread the view that as elders they were in a different class—a ruling, "ruling elders," instead of a serving class—from the other brethren, and hence slowly and by degrees they took to themselves one prerogative after another from the ecclesia until by the time the diocesan bishop began to function, the presbyters, now called priests, ruled the ecclesia as formerly the local bishop had done. After they had begun partially to deprive the churches of their rights, Episcopal usurpations began to deprive them of their proper and their usurped ecclesial powers, which later were relinquished to the elders when the ecclesial bishops became diocesan bishops. 

(31) Astonished, we ask, What opiate did they use on the ecclesias that enabled them to quiet these while they usurped their rights? We reply, They used a variety of means to this end. First and worst, after introducing an unbiblical distinction between the elders

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and the ecclesias, they gradually set aside the doctrine of the priesthood of all the consecrated and substituted in its stead the doctrine of the clergy, quasi-clergy [deacons and the incumbents of many newly made offices] and laity, by which they meant, and deceived the brethren into believing, that only the clergy were priests, the quasi-clergy were Levites and the laity were antitypical Israelites as distinct from antitypical priests and Levites. To quiet the objections of more or less subordinately prominent brethren, they called the deacons and a host of incumbents of many subordinate offices that they invented, "Levites," thus counterfeiting the real antitypical Priests, Levites and Israelites. This led to the exaltation of the clergy to power and influence, to the measurable exaltation of the quasi-clergy over the laity and to their measurable degradation under the clergy, and to the complete degradation of the laity under the clergy and quasi-clergy. Again, we remark, this misdevelopment was not everywhere contemporaneous and equal. It was in some places more advanced than in other places. While it began in the latter part of the second century, it was not general nor was it complete anywhere until just after the middle of the third century, i.e., after the phenomenon of diocesan bishops as distinct from congregational bishops began to make its appearance. 

(32) This brings us to discuss very briefly another misdevelopment: The bringing of the churches into the union of an external body, first in the districts, then in the provinces, then in pluro-provinces—prefectures—of the Roman Empire, resulting finally in an externally organized Catholic Church, world-wide, under the pope. The point of departure for this error was the common need of help from one another on the part of various churches under the stress of doctrinal and practical difficulties. Such doctrinal and practical difficulties, e.g., led the Antioch Ecclesia to send delegates to Jerusalem to confer on the subject with the 

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Apostles, the elders and other brethren of the Jerusalem Church (Acts 15). This was perfectly proper; for sister churches in Christian fellowship should be willing to give help on request from a church in difficulties. Nor could there be any objection to the post-apostolic churches individually in their doctrinal and practical difficulties giving help on the request of one another. But where these occasions were seized upon by one church, or a number of churches, to force upon an ecclesia, and that at times on pain of disfellowshipment, their ideas, whether they had been asked for them or not, they could not plead the example of the Antioch and Jerusalem churches, where no such thing occurred. In justification of organizing the churches in a body the bishops argued that in an external union there is strength, and that such a union was necessary to combat error, defend truth and promote growth; and therefore they formed the churches of a district into an external body. They impinged against the Lord's order of the independence of each local ecclesia from all others, especially when all of these so-united churches, through their bishops in synods and councils assembled, passed doctrinal decrees and practical laws, binding on all the churches in the district. No such union of congregations existed in the Apostolic days and no such synodical or conciliar assemblies of bishops took place in the primitive Church. About 170 the first synod of this character was held in Asia Minor to dogmatize and legislate on the Montanists' teachings and practices, which were disturbing the churches there. These synods or councils gradually increased and spread everywhere, from district to provincial, from provincial to a pluro-provincial and finally to ecumenical or universal councils, dogmatizing and legislating, even as in 325 A. D. at Nice, the first so-called ecumenical council was held and, among other things, decreed the Son's co-eternity, co-equality and consubstantiality with the Father, as doctrines that

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had to be accepted by the churches and individuals on pain of anathema. And such so-called ecumenical councils were held to be infallible in their decrees. The unity of the Church was supposed to lodge in the bishops who, assembled in an ecumenical council, spoke infallibly in successorship of the Apostles as God's direct mouthpiece and as for the universal Church. Thus was the apostolic independence of the local ecclesias destroyed, and in the place of the original spiritual unity of the general Church, based on the one spirit, hope, mission, Lord, faith, baptism and God, there was substituted an external union, based on an episcopate of alleged apostolic succession. 

(33) So far we have traced the apostacy in church government unto its development into an episcopate in supposed apostolic succession over the elders; into an elderate and episcopate as a priesthood ruling over the churches, consisting of counterfeit antitypical Levites and Israelites; into the subordination of the local churches to an external organization in which the churches were parts; and into the bishops in councils assembled, dogmatizing and legislating for district, provincial, pluro-provincial and world-wide churches. But this is not all. A further part of the misdevelopment under study was the rise of diocesan bishops. This came about in a rather natural way, supposedly necessitated by a proper subjection of daughter churches to their mother churches. At first somewhat like nominal-church pastors of our day each of the supposed apostolic bishops had charge of but one church, which, in a large city, usually had one meeting place for the main services and subordinate meeting places for the less important services. E.g., Cyprian, as bishop of Carthage, had but one central church for the whole congregation, where it met for the main services; but for less important services there were chapels in various parts of the city, wherein his presbyters by his and the congregation's appointment led 

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various meetings, just as we have various meetings in our larger churches. Thus the Philadelphia Church has three prayer meetings in various sections of the city, as it also has various study meetings in different parts of the city. But Sundays all assemble in a central meeting place. From this we see that before the diocesan bishop appeared, the bishop was somewhat like the pastor of a city church, with or without branch churches, who had several assistant pastors under him. 

(34) But the diocesan bishop was a step further on in the apostacy from that which brought in the ecclesial bishop. It arose as follows: The brethren of a city church would evangelize the surrounding country, including towns, villages, etc. In the churches thus formed the presbyters of the city church under the direction and appointment of the city bishop would minister as elders, and by and by as each of these new churches would become larger, one of the ministering presbyters from the city church would be chosen by the new church as a sort of an assistant bishop (chore-piscopos, country bishop), subordinate to the city bishop. Thus in time these assistant bishoprics would increase and an ecclesiastical district would develop, all of whose assistant bishops were under the direction of the city bishop. All these churches under the city bishop would thus come to constitute a diocese, and the bishop over these churches was thus a diocesan bishop. Following 325 A. D. the country bishops lost their position as such and became the pastors (priests) of the churches where they ministered under the rulership of the diocesan bishop. 

(35) The next stage of the apostasy in organization was the creation of metropolitans, the bishops of the provincial capital cities who claimed and exercised authority over the diocesan bishops. Such metropolitans came into existence sometime before, but were not called such until at the Nicean Council, 325 A. D. To them was granted the right to call and preside over 

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provincial synods and to appoint and to ordain the bishops of their provinces. Thus each metropolitan had as his sphere of authority an entire province and was over all diocesan bishops of that province, e.g., the metropolitan of Alexandria was over all the diocesan bishops of Egypt, who functioned under him. 

(36) Late in the reign of Constantine the Great, the Roman Empire was divided into four prefectures, and later another was formed of Palestine and Arabia. The metropolitans of the five capitals of these prefectures were given the title of patriarch (chief father, formerly the title of any bishop). At first there were but three of these, the bishops of Rome, Antioch and Alexandria, as residence places of Apostles (apostolic seats). These were given these titles at the Council of Nice in 325, before Constantine formed the four prefectures. The Roman bishop refusing to have a title in common with others, declined the title and appropriated as exclusively his the title, pope (papa, father), which formerly was the title of every bishop. In 381 A. D., at the ecumenical Council of Constantinople, the bishop of Constantinople (because, as the new capital of the Roman Empire, it was called New Rome) was added as the fourth of these patriarchs, taking second rank among them, immediately following the bishop of Rome in rank. Just after the Council of Ephesus, 431 A. D., the bishop of Jerusalem as having an apostolic seat, was added as the fifth of these patriarchs. The Saracen conquests destroyed the patriarchate at Jerusalem in 637 A. D., that of Antioch in 638 A. D. and that at Alexandria in 640 A. D. The patriarch was over all the metropolitans and bishops of the respective prefecture in his part of the Roman Empire, exercising supreme authority there, and at the head of his patriarchal synod decided all the affairs of the churches of the pertinent prefecture. Some of the metropolitans however, e.g., those of Salamis, Milan, Aquileia and Ravenna were independent of the patriarchs.

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(37) Onward from the Council of Chalcedon, 451 A. D., the patriarch of Constantinople (New Rome) was constantly in controversy with the bishop of (old) Rome for equality. But the principles as to primacy already then accepted, Old Rome's greater prestige, the pope's distance from the intrigues at the Court of the Emperor in New Rome, the decline of the Empire dating from shortly after the beginning of New Rome, the West's refusal to recognize the Contantinopolitan patriarch's claim, the fact that Constantinople was actually not an apostolic seat, the prestige of Rome as being looked upon as having the Church where Sts. Paul and Peter had lived, worked, suffered and were buried, Rome's being considered as having been the see of St. Peter, reputedly the chief of the Apostles, with the Roman bishop as his successor, the favor of the emperors of the West, whose needs made the powerful pope very influential with them, his almost unfailing so-called orthodoxy contrasted with the frequent heresies of his rival, the wanderings of the nations, the sufferings entailed on the West as their consequences, which were relieved greatly by the pope's practical ability, the unity and comparative tranquility of the Western Church contrasted with the distracting controversies and divisions in the Eastern Church, the controversialists frequently requesting the mediating activity of the pope, the eventual triumph of the parties favored by the pope in these controversies, the circumstances of the times, the popes always holding the fruits of their victories and conditions as pawns in the game that was being played, and the strict hierarchial party finding the pope an unfailing rallying point as seated in St. Peter's chair—are reasons that combined to defeat the ambition of the Constantinopolitan patriarch and to favor that of the pope, who therefore early in the sixth century was legally recognized as "the head of all the holy churches of God." 

(38) Toward this headship step by step the pope 

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had advanced in ecclesiastical power for several centuries until late in the fifth and early in the sixth century he was everywhere by the State acknowledged as head of the Church. In 539 A. D. he could begin to exercise, first faintly and gradually more markedly, civil power along with supreme ecclesiastic power. In 799 A. D. he had so much political power that he could begin the counterfeit Millennial reign. Both phases of his power increasing, in Gregory VII (1073-1085) he could claim supremacy in State as well as in Church, in Innocent III (1198-1216) could actualize supremacy in State throughout Christendom, and in Pius IX (1870) could dictate through a so-called ecumenical council his absolute authority in Church and his infallibility when speaking officially as universal teacher of the Church. Thus the apostacy on organization reached its supreme climax, but it has also suffered a most humiliating eclipse in civil power, and through the reformation, first by individuals and then by sects, experienced a real limitation, as far as universality is concerned, in religious power. 

(39) Throughout this whole exhibition of power-grasping and lording it over God's heritage, there runs an irony of retribution that is a partial punishment for the wrongs committed. The power-grasping and lording elders were punished by getting a bishop to lord it over them. The power-grasping and lording bishops were scourged by receiving the metropolitans or archbishops to tyrannize over them. These power-grasping and lording metropolitans had to accept the patriarchs, and later the cardinals, who were first constituted as such by Pope Nicholas II in 1059, to trample upon them. These power-grasping and lording patriarchs and the cardinals had to bow down to the exactions of the popes, who in turn, as the head of the Antichrist, have especially since 1295 (when real civil opposition set in), 1309 (when real religious opposition set in by individuals) and 1522 (when it set in by 

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sects) suffered one humiliation and loss after another, until in 1870 they lost the last shred of temporal power, which we do not expect them to get again on a large scale, the spoliation of their religious powers increasing almost apace throughout the world. In nature every pest has its pest. The dissatisfied frogs indeed got their king, but he proved to be a stork! Israel dissatisfied with Jehovah as King received an increasingly oppressive Saul as King. The stewardship doctrine of the Congregational Church is a protest against every phase of the power-grasping and lording tactics of elders, bishops, metropolitans, patriarchs, cardinals and popes, and hence is a spiritual punishment to all of them. It is necessary to see the fearful misdevelopment, briefly sketched above, against the doctrine of an ecclesia's right, under the Lord, of ruling in its own midst and of remaining independent of other persons, ecclesias and ecclesiastical bodies and leaders, if we are properly to appreciate the Truth, and the consequent significance of the movement inaugurated by Bro. Robert Browne and sectarianized by the crown-lost leaders of the Congregational Church—antitypical Gamaliel; for the Browne movement was a complete return to apostolic teaching and practice on an ecclesia's democracy in its autonomy and in its independence from outsiders. 

(40) About 1589 Barrows and Greenfield appeared in England and began to sectarianize the movement begun by Bro. Browne. They introduced a perversion, which made their teaching a cross between real Congregationalism and Presbyterianism—the ecclesia could do whatever it pleased subject to the veto of the elders—and thus betrayed their power—grasping tendencies and their fitness for crown-losing. Their view was advocated a little later by Johnson and Ainsworth and by that Robinson who was pastor of the church many of whose members constituted the pilgrims who landed at Plymouth, Mass., 1620. In America the same view 

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was advanced in New England Congregationalism for a century by Goodwin, Cotton, Hooker, Davenport, the Mathers, etc. But this leaven of Presbyterianism was cast out by John Wise of Ipswich, Mass. (1652-1725) and Nathaniel Emmons of Franklin, Mass. (1745-1840), who with irresistible logic Scripturally vindicated the pure congregational principle as we have given it above. Henry Martyn Dexter, of Boston (1821-1890), may be cited as one of the ablest and leading later Congregationalist advocates of congregationalism as taught by Browne. These are the chief ones of the crown-lost leaders of the Congregational Church, all of whom are typed by Gamaliel, the son of Pedahzur, whose offerings in antitypical charger, bowl and spoon we will now briefly explain, remarking that within the last 75 years they have vitiated some of their principles, e.g., forming the congregations into a loose-fitting denominational organization with denominational officers and creed. 

(41) In offering his charger antitypical Gamaliel had to show how the doctrine of an ecclesia's democracy in its autonomy and in its independence from all outside persons, ecclesias and ecclesiastical organizations, under Christ, corrects misconduct and bad qualities. It certainly rebukes and corrects power-grasping; for it cuts off its exercise whenever it operates in an elder of an ecclesia. It rebukes and corrects the misconduct of bishops who lord it over ecclesias and their servants. It rebukes and corrects the misconduct of a metropolitan who lords it over bishops, elders and ecclesias. It rebukes and corrects it whenever a patriarch or cardinal lords it over metropolitans, bishops, elders and ecclesias; and it rebukes and corrects the pope in his lording it over civil and religious officials, non-officials and organizations. The pride and ambition of power-graspers find in it a standing rebuke and correction. It steadfastly protests against and corrects the sins of clerical usurpation, rulership, tyranny, 

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superstition, self-exaltation, oppression and error, to which clericalism always leads. It rebukes and corrects the indifference to real spiritual things and interests that clericalism always produces in its practicers. It protests against and corrects the people's spoliation, degradation, ignorance, weakness, formalism, worldliness, servility and sufferings that clericalism always produces. It restrains and corrects the would-be position-seekers and power-graspers in an ecclesia, by keeping them out of office in an ecclesia and by demoting a church officer who clericalistically seeks "to run the church." It reproves and corrects all scheming to control the business, elections and disciplinary administration of the church on the part of any of its members, official or unofficial. It corrects the unbrotherliness of those who seek to overthrow, circumvent, limit or evade the ecclesia's democracy in its autonomy and independence. The covetousness of those who seek place, privilege and power in the Church it rebukes and corrects. The contentiousness and ruthlessness of party spirit in an ecclesia it denounces and corrects. The vanity of an office-and-popularity lover it rebukes and corrects. The insubordination of offenders against ecclesiaism to the Lord Jesus as absolute Monarch of an ecclesia it certainly corrects. Any unelderly or undeaconly conduct on the part of its officials as such it corrects. A lazy elder, a negligent deacon and an indifferent non-official member of the ecclesia it rebukes and corrects. In disciplinary administration it corrects for purposes of repentance, and in cases of impenitence it corrects by disfellowshipment. Thus the doctrine of the ecclesia's democracy in autonomy and independence under Christ corrects all opposing acts and qualities; and times innumerable in dealing with this doctrine antitypical Gamaliel has administered these and other pertinent corrections. Thus he offered his charger. 

(42) So, too, has antitypical Gamaliel refuted all arguments against the doctrine that under Christ the 

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ecclesia is a democracy which exercises its autonomy, and which enjoys its independence from all outside persons, ecclesias and ecclesiastical organizations and leaders,—i.e., offered his antitypical bowl. To the objection that an ecclesia cannot be safely entrusted with such powers, he has answered that under Christ's Headship it can, and under that Headship always eventually works out good results, better according to the Lord's plan than can be otherwise obtained. To the objection that ecclesiaism's exercise deprives it of the service of abler, more experienced and efficient men, available under a presbyterian, episcopal, patriarchal or papal church government, he has replied that the ecclesia can dispense with them as long as it is engaged in its Divinely given work, and that such church governments have always more or less led the churches away from their Divinely assigned task, and therefore are well gotten rid of. To the objection that such church polities are conducive to order and effectiveness, antitypical Gamaliel has answered that the order and effectiveness to which they are conducive are of the devil, the world and the flesh, and undermine the Divinely charged order and effectiveness. To the objection of the Presbyterians that, not congregational democracy in autonomy and independence are the Scriptural ideal, but a church-elected aristocracy consisting of elders, local and synodal, is the Scriptural ideal of church government, he has answered that the Scriptures teach that the apostolic ecclesias elected all their servants, transacted their business, exercised their discipline, expelled the impenitent, received them again on repentance, and managed their evangelistic work, and that therefore there was not an elderate aristocracy in charge of the churches, but that there was therein under Christ a democracy acting in autonomy and independence; and as for synodal elders, he answered that apostolic churches were alike ignorant of them and of the combination of churches implied in

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synods and synodal elders. To the Presbyterian argument that their claimed aristocracy is Scripturally called by such names as imply an aristocracy [proistamenoi, presiding ones, i.e., chairmen at business meetings, mistranslated by the word rule in A. V., Rom. 12:8; 1 Thes. 5:12; hegoumenoi, leaders, misrendered rulers in the A. V., Heb. 13:7, 17, 24; presbyteroi, elders, Acts 20:17, episcopoi, overseers, Acts 20:28; poimainein, to shepherdize, i.e., God's sheep, Acts 20:28, 29; 1 Pet. 5:2], he replied that such officers are perfectly consistent with an ecclesia's democracy, exercising autonomy and independence so long as they remain what God designs them to be—servants of, and do not become lords over, God's heritage (1 Pet. 5:1-3). 

(43) To the Episcopalian argument that such ecclesia's democracy, autonomy and independence is wrong because opposed to the doctrine of apostolic succession of bishops, antitypical Gamaliel replied: (1) the Apostles in binding the Divine doctrines and practices of the Gospel Age on the churches and loosing them from all others, exercised no lordship over them, but sanctioned without any interference whatever their electing their own officers, transacting their own business, administering their own discipline, expelling impenitent persons, receiving again the repentant and sending out their own missionaries; (2) historically the bishops cannot trace their succession back to the Apostles; (3) the doctrine of the apostolic succession is an error, not only not having the slightest basis in the Scriptures, but being expressly condemned therein (Rev. 2:2; 21:14); and (4) Cyprian in 251 was the first one to set forth the doctrine of the apostolic succession of bishops. To their claim that the bishop as the ruler of both the presbyters, and of the ecclesia, is the real head of the ecclesia, under the Lord, antitypical Gamaliel answered that the names, bishop (episcopos) and elder (presbyteros), are used interchangeably in 

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the Bible (Acts 20:17, compare with verse 28; Tit. 1:5, compare with verses 6-9, where he gives the qualifications for these elders, and uses of them the name bishop, for whose appointment Titus was to arrange, according to verse 5; 1 Tim. 3:1-7, in giving the qualities of a bishop, says nothing further of elders, the following verses proceeding immediately to give the qualities of deacons; Phil. 1:1, where St. Paul addresses the saints of the Church with the bishops [plural] and deacons, not mentioning the word elders, since they are identical with bishops in St. Paul's opinion; 1 Pet. 5:2, 3, where St. Peter exhorts the elders to act as bishops [episkopountes], "take the oversight" being the A. V., an Episcopal translation). To the claims of metropolitans or archbishops, cardinals and patriarchs for their respective powers, antitypical Gamaliel answered: (1) that the Bible does not contain the slightest hint of such officials in the organization of the apostolic church; (2) that their claims fall to the ground with those of the bishops; and (3) that they are greater usurpers, power-graspers and lords over God's heritage than even the bishops. To the claims of the pope they gave the same answers as antitypical Eliasaph (the crown-lost leaders of the Episcopal Church; see Chap. V). Thus antitypical Gamaliel triumphantly refuted every objection to the Scriptural doctrine that under Christ's headship the ecclesia is a democracy, enjoying autonomy and independence from all outside persons, ecclesias and ecclesiastical organizations or leaders. So did he offer his bowl. 

(44) Finally, antitypical Gamaliel offered his spoon, i.e., instructions in righteousness. In doing this he showed that the doctrine that under Christ's headship the ecclesia is a democracy enjoying its own autonomy and its independence from all outside persons, ecclesias and ecclesiastical organizations or leaders, is conducive to righteousness; and he used this doctrine to 

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incite to righteousness. He showed that this doctrine was conducive to righteousness toward God; for it recognized and realizes God's arrangement for church government. He likewise showed that this doctrine helped on righteousness, because it recognizes and submits to Christ's leadership in all things unto the Church as His Body. Therefore he used this doctrine to induce the brethren into such recognition and acceptance of God's order for church government and into such recognition and submission of the brethren to Christ as their Head in all things in the Body. He also used this doctrine to inculcate proper recognition on the part of the brethren of one another as members of a priesthood having equal rights before God and toward one another in the ecclesia, such only enjoying special privileges as are by God through the ecclesia's vote designated thereto. He used this doctrine to inculcate to the elders the wholesome lesson that they were servants of, and not lords over, the ecclesia. Thereby he deepened their humility. He used this doctrine to sharpen each ecclesia-member's sense of responsibility in co-operating intelligently as an eye of the Lord and conscientiously as a hand of the Lord in the ecclesia's affairs, whether this be in electing officers, transacting business, administering discipline, withdrawing fellowship from those excommunicated for cause, accepting in forgiveness the repentant, or in sending out evangelists. He used this to increase brotherly love and care for one another as members of the same Body. He used it to indicate meekness, longsuffering and patience in view of differences of opinion as to what is the Lord's will. He used it to increase the brethren's love for and defense of the liberty wherewith Christ makes His priesthood free; as he also used it to increase their love to sacrifice in the interests of the Body, and to help all to recognize the unity of, diversity in, and mutuality of, the Body of Christ. He used it to stir up faith in the Lord's overrulership in all things in the ecclesia's affairs, and to incite to love and obedience 

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to law and order in the church. He used it to wean the brethren away from worldly arrangements for doing church work and to separate the brethren more and more unto that holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. He used it to incite each church to become "a burning and shining light" in its own community and abroad in evangelistic zeal. And proportionately the Congregational Church has been in the forefront in evangelistic endeavors at home and abroad. He used this doctrine to arouse elders and the ecclesia to mutual love, sympathy, fellowship and help in their mutual relations. Fruitful indeed was this symbolic spoon in its instructions in righteousness. This spoon truly was full of sweet incense—the graces of the Spirit. 

(45) It is surely a matter of gratification that this doctrine has overflown the banks of Congregationalism and has made fruitful the lands of some other denominations, like the Baptists, Unitario-Universalists, Christians, Adventists and many Lutheran bodies. It is not at all surprising that our Lord schooled in the Congregational Church as a boy him who became that Servant; as it is also gratifying to see how consistently he introduced among the Truth people this truth, both theoretically and practically. Since his death, among others, the P. B. I., and more especially the Society, have disastrously militated against this doctrinal truth. The Society's ecclesias are service-director and elderridden, these in turn are pilgrim-ridden, and these finally are Rutherford-ridden. Thus their democracy, autonomy and independence are very much compromised, and the channel doctrine, with its little pope as head, has largely destroyed ecclesiaism in the Society churches throughout the world. 

(46) Among many Truth people, therefore, clericalism is one of the burning questions. It is almost everywhere rampant. In Little Babylon we have a little presbyterial system of church government—the rule of elders. In its work-director we have its ecclesial

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bishop. In its auxiliary pilgrims we have the little diocesan bishops. In its boards we meet the little patriarchs. In the heads of the various foreign headquarters we have the little metropolitans. In the Society pilgrims we have the little cardinals, and in the Society's president we have the little pope. Trampled under the feet of these clericalists the democracy that in Bro. Russell's day exercised the autonomy and independence of the ecclesias, varyingly in the four organizational Levite subdivisions, is being destroyed. Some of the brethren have been aroused to appropriate action in this matter; some are very timidly resisting; and some have learned to wear slaves' chains, ground down, oppressed, spoiled of their rights and liberties, and enslaved under a priestcraft more subtle, yet no less real, than that which flourishes in the papal, patriarchal, metropolitan, episcopal and presbyterian sects of Christendom. How long will those who enjoyed the liberty of Christ in our Pastor's days tolerate this? Yet a few years and it will end forever; for the Epiphany movement in part is a protest against clericalism among the brethren as a form of revolutionism, and it will prevail to the utter overthrow of such clericalism in due time. 

(47) And to you, dear Epiphany-enlightened brethren, we would address a suitable exhortation: "Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again in the yoke of bondage." Dear fellow-elders, we exhort you to fulfill the admonitions of 1 Pet. 5:1-3. All others we exhort to love, support, encourage and co-operate with your elders and deacons as long as they act as your servants in and under Christ, but if they should forget that theirs is an office of 'service, and should act as though it were one of lordship, first admonish and resist and finally dismiss them as elders or deacons, if they do not mend their ways. You may, where such conduct is persisted in, in good faith, be sure that they are clericalists, and thus are being manifested as

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Levites, whose riddance will bless you, and give them needed experiences for their cleansing. We further exhort all the elders and all the others to brotherly love, longsuffering, forbearance, meekness, mutual care, mutual appreciation, mutual helpfulness in the ecclesias, and loyalty in the study, spread and practice of the Word, always looking for the will of the Head, and obeying it faithfully. Then all will be well with elders and all others. Let us work and pray wholeheartedly to this end. 

(48) Hitherto in the study of Num. 7 we have given, type and antitype, our understanding of vs. 1-59, and now we desire to study, type and antitype, the offering of Abidan, the son of Gideoni, the prince of Benjamin, typically set forth in Num. 7:60-65. In this study we treat of the offering of the prince over the last tribe on the tabernacle's west side—Benjamin (Num. 2:18, 22). We have in Chap. I given some thoughts explanatory of the antitypical Benjamites. We are to remember that they are the fanatical sects. By the expression fanatical in this connection we mean the quality that grounds belief and action, not only on Scripture, but on extra-Biblical impressions, feelings, dreams, visions, "burdens," etc., with the consequence that it prompts its subjects to do more or less unsound things. E.g., some Quakers have by their impressions been made to feel that the Lord laid upon them the "burden" (a deeply felt responsibility) to go stark naked through the streets of populous cities denouncing woes upon their inhabitants for sin, which unsound thing they, therefore, did. Joseph Smith's susceptibility to the impression that he got the book of Mormon from buried golden plates to which he was directed by a vision, and that he translated the Greek and Hebrew Scriptures into English without knowing these languages, are examples of fanatical qualities leading antitypical Benjamites to perform unsound things. Hence occultism plays more or less a part in prompting them to beliefs and actions.

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(49) In considering antitypical Benjamin and Manasseh, let us not forget our explanation of the difference between the antitype of Jacob begetting his sons (Gen. 29:3130:25; 35:16-18) and the enumeration of the descendants of these sons as tribes antitypically, in Num. 1, 2 and 26, as seen in Chap. I. Accordingly, we see that Jacob is used (however in an adoptative sense as the begetter of Ephraim and Manasseh) to type the begetting of the movements that were perverted into the Lutheran, Congregational and fanatical churches from the standpoint of the tabernacle picture; though from the standpoint of Gen. 29:3130:25, by the begettal of Levi and Benjamin, he typed the beginning of the Lutheran and Great Company movements respectively. While the Congregational movement and Church are in the Jacob picture included in antitypical Judah, the fanatical persons are apparently included in all of the movements and churches as individuals in the Jacob type, but are in the tabernacle picture as a class antitypical Benjamin. Noteworthy also is the fact that the changes in the picture affect only the three on the antitypical West side of the Tabernacle—Justice—the change from antitypical Levi to Ephraim in these two antitypes being necessitated by Levi's being chosen to type the antitypical Priests and Levites. For the other nine tribes the Jacob and tabernacle pictures are identical from the standpoint of the nine typical and antitypical tribes and their begetter. The change in respect to the three on the Justice side of the antitypical Tabernacle is perhaps suggestive of the change from justice to love in God's dealings during the Gospel Age, due to the ransom sacrifice of our Lord satisfying justice. 

(50) The prince of Benjamin (v. 60) was Abidan, the son of Gideoni. Abidan means my father (Abi) is judge (Dan); and Gideoni means my mighty warrior. Gideon, as we have already learned means mighty warrior; and the suffix i means my. The meaning of the name Abidan fits the crown-lost leaders of the 

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fanatical sects, because they have stood for justice in an all-sided application of that quality Godward and manward, and thus have insisted on God—their Father—being justly the Judge of all. Certainly the moral courage that they showed in standing for righteousness Godward and manward has caused them to be considered by the fanatical sects as their mighty warrior—Gideoni, my mighty warrior. 

(51) The stewardship truth of this antitypical tribe is this: True religion consists of love to God with all the heart, mind, soul and strength, and to others as to self. In other words, with them religion is a purely personal and individual thing along the lines of justice—duty love as distinct from disinterested love. Their emphasis on the personal and the individual, however, has been so excessive as to make them susceptible to confounding their individual peculiarities and personal idiosyncrasies with the Divine inspiration. This is very plainly manifest, especially in the Quakers—the mother sect of the fanatical sects. It is, of course, proper in the religious life to emphasize the personal and individual element, but to do so to the extreme of losing the consciousness of the need of restraint due to the Fatherhood of God speaking in the Bible and the brotherhood in the Body of Christ is bound to produce fanaticism; whereas the wholesome restraint on the individual and the personal element required by dependence on God's will as revealed in the Scriptures and the circumscription of one's own personal peculiarities in the interests of, and for association with the other Body members, gives us a balanced character, which delivers from the fanaticism produced by a religiousness not so subordinated and co-ordinated. This is the real sore spot in all the fanatical sects; and among the Quakers and others of this antitypical tribe it leads to the exaltation of their personal views, feelings, impressions, visions, dreams, etc., above the written Word, and to a consequent despising of the Scriptures in favor of these subjective states, which

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they call "the inner light," "the Christ" or "the Spirit" in their hearts, and contrary to which they will not allow the Bible to be interpreted, alleging that the same Spirit that dictated the Scriptures speaks in their own hearts and does not, they claim, contradict itself. Hence they more or less subordinate the Scriptures to their "inner light," their "Spirit within," their "Christ in the heart," which are often nothing except their own fanatical feelings. 

(52) But they did have a goodly portion of a truth as their stewardship truth. Had they defined true religion as hearty duty love and disinterested love to God and others based on, springing from and conforming to the Bible's teachings, they would have given the full Truth on the subject. But the full Truth on this subject, as on all other subjects, is a harvest matter; hence they could not get it before; and the location of this antitypical tribe on the Justice side of the antitypical Tabernacle implies that their definition of true religion was quite good so far as it went, but that it needed supplementing by higher truths than they were able to attain. A partial truth, therefore, is what God gave the brother—George Fox—whom God used to start the movement that the crown-lost leaders of the fanatical sects perverted into these sects. The main crown-lost leaders of the various branches of the fanatical sects were William Penn, Samuel Fisher, Isaac Pennington (Quakers), Edward Irving (Irvingerites), Joseph Smith (Latter Day Saints), Alexander Dowie (Dowieites), Andrew Murray (Holiness), and A. B. Simpson (Christian and Missionary Alliance). In all of these brothers we find the faults and virtues of the fanatical sects. We will pass by the former and say of the latter that they were brothers of uprightness and principle and stood out nobly for a heart's religion in contrast with formalism and legalism, insisting on upright hearts Godward and manward. And their followers as a rule, like them, are good exemplars of piety toward God and brotherly love toward man, 

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which, as St. Peter's analysis shows (2 Pet. 1:5-7), are the two elements of justice, duty love to God and man. 

(53) This truth when announced by Fox was, indeed, meat in due season; for the conditions in Christendom certainly called for emphasis to be placed on heart's religion in contrast with the evils in the world and dogmatism, formalism, rationalism and legalism in the Church. Before describing the conditions in England where George Fox, who began his preaching in 1647, mainly ministered, we desire to give a brief view of the conditions on the Continent. The Thirty Years' War, forced on by the Catholics in an attempt to destroy Protestantism, broke out in 1618 and turned Germany, Austria and the Flanders into a desolation. So terrible were its results that Germany's population at its end was only one-fourth of what it was in its beginning. Religious hate, ruthless cruelty, broken promises and oaths, open treachery, soulless bargaining, calculating selfishness, gross impiety and merciless oppression marked the Catholic side; and Protestantism, driven to desperation, fought for existence as only those who are facing almost certain extinction can. Next to the World War the Thirty Years' War was perhaps the worst ever waged. And such a war brought in its train the fruits that war always brings forth in proportion to the evil spirit in which it is waged. Everywhere in society the evil effects of a lowered standard of religious, legal and moral life could be seen as a direct outcome of the war. Piety toward God and benevolence toward man gave way to open infidelity, blasphemy and irreligiousness in growing measure, while selfishness increased in its spread of man's unkindness to man. In Spain, Italy and Austria a dead Catholicism reigned alone. In France a more or less irreligious spirit spread rapidly in secularism and growing voluptuousness. In Germany and Scandinavia Lutheran orthodoxy reduced religion to the dogmatism of the head and the formalism of the lips. 

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In parts of Germany, Switzerland and Holland Calvinism did the same, and on all sides—Catholic and Protestant—apart from certain individuals the lack of real personal heart religion was very manifest. 

(54) In England conditions bore the same general character. We recall that Queen Elizabeth established the Church of England on the principle of uniformity of worship, and not of belief, requiring on pain of fines and imprisonment the attendance at the State churches and forbidding assemblies—"conventicles"—of all dissidents. James I (1603-1625), who had the A. V. made, enforced these conditions; but his autocratic ideas of kingcraft by Divine right brought him into implacable conflict with Parliament; and he aroused much disgust in England by more or less disregarding Parliament and by ruling autocratically through selfish favorites. His son Charles I (1625-1649) showed himself as a yet worse tyrant, even dispensing with Parliament when it refused to sanction his absolutism, bringing on a revolution in England, arousing Scotland and Ireland to invade England in support of his army against that of Parliament, and perishing by beheading as a tyrant, traitor, murderer and enemy of his country. It was scarcely more than a year before this beheading that George Fox (1647) began to preach. The execution of Charles I was shortly followed by the English Commonwealth and Cromwell's Protectorate. Much excitement, strife and sectarianism with consequent misreligion marked this period and the one following, when Charles II (1660-1685), the son of Charles I, sat on the throne of England, and when wickedness in the form of infidelity, deism, atheism, prodigality, profligacy and dishonesty greatly increased, with constant clashes between the king and Parliament. 

(55) In religion, matters were at a very bad turn. In the established church a dead formalism set in. In Scotland James I and Charles I in various ways sought to hinder the religious freedom of the Scotch people, 

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who were almost entirely Presbyterian, and succeeded in foisting on them quasi-bishops. In the Church of England three parties developed: (1) the ritualistic party, which gained ascendancy, especially under Archbishop Laud, who tried to introduce a set of rites and doctrines, with persecution of dissenters, like those of the modern Anglo-Catholics. This so aroused Parliament as to lead Laud to the block; (2) the evangelical party, which, as Puritans, more and more became Presbyterian, Congregational or Baptist in their views and aims; and (3) the broad church party, which paved the way to the spread of skepticism, deism and secularism following. Thus formalism, dogmatism, legalism and rationalism spread throughout the religious atmosphere of England and Scotland a veritable miasma. The result was that all classes of society—the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie and the poor—lost more and more of the spirit of religion and went off on one or the other aberration of ritualism, dogmatism, legalism or rationalism, with the resultant loss of piety toward God and benevolence toward man. Thus in Britain and on the Continent there was great need of a revival of real religion, such as marked every reformation movement. And this made the truth that God raised up George Fox to preach meat in due season. Man's extremity became again God's opportunity to help and bless with the meat in due season: that the true religious life does not consist in ritualism, dogmatism, legalism and rationalism, but in a heart that loves God supremely and man as self. 

(56) As said above, George Fox was the Lord's instrument in announcing this phase of Truth and in inaugurating the movement that stressed piety toward God and brotherly love toward man. He was born in 1624, the year before James I died, and his formative period fell within the tumultuous times of Charles I, about a year and a half before whose execution he began to preach his special message, when 23 years of

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age. As a boy he was serious and upright: as a youth he began to hunger for the right way, which he sought first from the Ritualists, then the Presbyterians, the Congregationalists and Baptists, but found no rest of heart and mind from these. Great were his grief and uncertainty. He undertook journeys to persons and places where he thought he could get help; but human helpers he found not. He then sought solitude and a wandering life. Some recommended as a cure marriage; others, enlistment in Parliament's army against that of Charles I, offering him a captaincy in the infantry; an old minister "bade him take tobacco and sing psalms and another bade him to take physic and blood-letting." In 1647, after years of uncertainty, he says: "I heard a voice which said, 'There is One, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition.' And when I heard it, my heart did leap with joy." His final reaching of peace shows a somewhat fanatical bent in the way it was reached—his hearing a voice. In the same year he first began to preach his message in the neighborhood of Dukinfield and Manchester. 

(57) Henceforth he went from city to city and town to town, preaching (not without his error on the inner light given to all men, as a supposed proof of which he quoted the restitution passage, John 1:9) his stewardship truth—true religion is, not a matter of the head, but is an entire heart's love to God with all the mind, soul and strength and an equal love to one's neighbor. He invariably testified against the head religion of his day as it was exemplified in ritualism, dogmatism, legalism and rationalism. He sometimes interrupted the ministers in their discourses in protest against their "head religion" and their "book religion." He preached in market places, in the fields, in the churches, in church yards, on the streets, in private homes, on board ships—everywhere that he could get a hearing. He impressed the lesson of God's goodness to man on his hearers as the reason why they should love Him with all the heart, mind, soul and 

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strength, testifying against sins contrary to such love, like putting anything in the place of God in one's affections, blasphemy, perjury, unbelief, etc. He likewise impressed the lesson of equal love to fellow man, witnessing against sins against such love, like sins against parents and children, rulers and subjects, teachers and pupils, employers and employees, pastors and the flock, against murder, war, the cruel penal laws of England (which at that time sanctioned the execution of one who was convicted of stealing even a chicken), hatred, envy, implacability, against marital infidelity and the gross licentiousness of his age, against stealing, robbery, cheating in goods, in weights, in measures and in property values, oppression of the poor, paying scant wages and slavery, against lying, perjury (he even went to the extreme of denying the right of courts to require oaths of witnesses, applying Matt. 5:32-37 to all oaths and not to such as are used in private conversation, as the passage limits the prohibition), slander, evil speaking, evil surmising, etc., Thus he faithfully, amid not a few errors, preached his stewardship truth. 

(58) Not only did he do "pilgrim" work in England, but also in Scotland. In 1671 he visited Barbados and Jamaica on a preaching trip. Thence he went to America, preaching all the way from Georgia to Rhode Island, exposed to all the hardships of an unsettled or sparsely settled country, his experiences being much like certain of those of St. Paul described in 2 Cor. 11:23-28. He spent two years in this trip and accomplished much good. In 1677, with his helpers, Barclay and Penn, he visited Holland, and again in 1684, with five helpers, preaching as he had opportunity. His persecutions for his preaching were of the most trying kinds. He was imprisoned nine times, spending in all several years in jails and dungeons. While there, like St. Paul, he wrote much to spread his doctrine. By the trickery of the judges, more than once he was sentenced to jail. One of their favorite

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ways of bringing charges of disloyalty against him and his followers was this: English law required the oath of allegiance from all who dissented from the established church, who were also forbidden to hold meetings in private houses—conventicles; and Quakers, rejecting all oaths as forbidden, on refusing to take the oath of allegiance, though willing to affirm their allegiance, were accused of sedition and sentenced to prison as harboring sedition supposedly proved by their refusing to take the oath of allegiance. Their holding meetings in private buildings—"conventicles"—also brought them under charges as violating the laws of uniformity of worship. This meant imprisonment and at one time as many as 4,000 Quakers were in prison and were kept there indefinitely because of refusing to take the oath and to agree to give up their conventicles. Several thousands of them died from the rigors of their imprisonments; and George Fox was broken in health by his nine imprisonments. So treated by officials, their treatment by the rabble may be better imagined than described. Their doctrine of non-resistance and their honesty made them the more easy victims of the injustices under which they suffered so greatly and submissively. On his release from prison, George Fox preached prison reform, as required by the golden rule, and tolerance to dissenters; and his advocacy had much to do with securing the passage of the act of tolerance for Quakers by Parliament, at the advice of Charles II, whereby at once 1,800 Quakers were freed from prison. The passage of this law secured John Bunyan's release from a twelve years' imprisonment on account of holding conventicles and refusing to promise to refrain therefrom, because, while the writer of Pilgrim's Progress was a Baptist, not a Quaker, some of his friends included his name on the list of Quakers' names drawn up for their release from imprisonment in pursuance of the toleration act. 

(59) The later life of Fox was more tranquil. His

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looks, truly patriarchal and benevolent, inspired respect. His evident honesty, simplicity and self-sacrifice increased this respect. His consistency, that could not be undermined by threats, imprisonments and offers of release, gradually wore away the great enmity exercised against him. His practical measures to relieve the poor, to mellow the opposers and to spread real duty love among the people, in the long run told in his and his followers' favor; and his last years were attended by considerable honor from multitudes that formerly were extremely hostile. Only one act that indicated the fanaticism that has been widespread among his followers can be charged up against him. This was done immediately after he underwent a rigorous six months' imprisonment. It was the following: Mindful of the fact that four martyrs were burned at the stake at Lichfield he, whose mother was "of the stock of martyrs," on market day went barefoot through the streets of Lichfield crying, "Woe to the bloody city of Lichfield." He spent his last years mainly in London, continuing his preaching until a few days before his death, which occurred Jan. 13, 1691, in his 67th year. He was loved by thousands of disciples and more or less held in esteem by multitudes as a righteous man, interested in God's cause and man's welfare as life's chief aim. 

(60) The character of the stewardship truth committed to the Quakers and the other fanatical sects constituting antitypical Benjamin has made all of them a righteousness-loving people, interested in heart-religion and in philanthropies of all kinds. The influence of their example and teachings quickened the religious life of British Protestants out of more or less of ritualism, dogmatism, legalism and rationalism; and thus this reform in a religious way did the religious and social life in Britain great good. But it went further. In Holland it lent aid to men like Arminius and Grotius, and in Germany to men like Arndt, Spener and Franke, who as the despised "Pietists" had a wholesome effect against the evils of ritualism, dogmatism 

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and legalism there and an upbuilding effect on piety and brotherly love. In Belgium and France it made itself felt in such as Jansenius, Quesnel, Pascal, Arnauld, Fenelon and Madame Guyon, who stayed in part these evils in those countries and revived a heart-religion among many Romanists. Certainly their kindly treatment of the Indians in America made for brotherly love, e.g., Penn in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia [brotherly love], as their dealings religiously with others softened the dogmatism and legalism of Puritanism, etc., even if it was won at the cost of four Quaker martyr deaths on Boston's Commons. Much of the alleviation of the hardness of war and of calamities (Elizabeth Fry, etc.) on the wounded and noncombatants and on calamity-sufferers is due to the Quakers, as much of the cruelties of penal life has also been set aside through their efforts. They were the earliest and most consistent advocates of the abolition of slavery and the saloon traffic, and the continual supporters of hospitals, orphanages and other benevolent institutions. 

(61) In all the sects of antitypical Benjamin—Quakers, Latter Day Saints, Irvingerites, Dowieites, Holinessites, Christian Alliancists, etc.—the leaders—antitypical Abidan—have used their stewardship doctrine for correction of sin—their charger (for the opposite of duty love or justice is sin), for refutation of attacks of opposing error—their bowl, and for instruction in righteousness—their spoon. Hence Abidan's charger—correction of misconduct—was a witness against sin in all its forms, with pertinent rebukes and corrections; his bowl was a defense of justice against attacks and his spoon was a setting forth of the claims and qualities of justice as duty love. It will be found that antitypical Abidan cultivated learning less than the crown-lost leaders of any other denomination. Indeed, as a rule, they decried book learning and "book religion," by which latter term they meant religion based on a study of the Bible. In this slighting

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estimate of Biblical and non-Biblical study we see one of the faults of antitypical Abidan, and consequently of antitypical Benjamin. But this blemish did not much interfere with their offering their charger, bowl and spoon; for the correction of sin (Abidan's charger), the defense of a heart-religion based on duty love (Abidan's bowl) and instruction in righteousness (Abidan's spoon), do not call for much learning. Hence, with more or less unlearned members—Penn, Pennington and Irving, their best read men, were only moderately educated men—antitypical Abidan could yet offer his charger, bowl and spoon. 

(62) Accordingly, we find that he did offer well his charger. His sermons and writings are filled with correction of misconduct. He corrected every idolatrous affection and object which the sinful heart is prone to serve instead of God—self, the world, rank, position, popularity, safety, ease, life, health, anger, wrath, possessions, hypocrisy, stomach, the opposite sex, work, office, husband, wife, parents, children, friends, home, country, society, superiors, pleasure, pomp, etc., etc. These he rebuked and corrected as an injustice against God, which proved that God was not loved supremely. He inveighed against and corrected all irreverent, false and blasphemous uses of God's person, character, word and works. Unbelief and irreligion found corrections of their wickedness at his hands. The formalism of ritualism, whether Episcopalian or Catholic, met rebuke and correction at his hands. The neglect of Christ's sheep and lambs by hireling shepherds met his rebuke and correction. The legalism of Puritanism found him ever ready to correct its externalizing religion. Scholastic doctrinarianism was shown by him to be little better than human philosophy that should be put aside. And none the less did he chastise the rationalistic concessions that the latitudinarians made to infidelity. Agnosticism and deism felt the sting of his rebukes and the appeal of his corrections.

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(63) And none the less thorough where his corrections of man's sins against his fellows. The abuses of civil officers met his correction. He spoke out plainly against the bribery of judges, ministers and legislators, against the tyranny of rulers, against the cruelty of judges, constables, sheriffs and prison officials, against the warlike temper of rulers, politicians, officers and soldiers, and against their disregard or neglect of the duties that their positions called upon them to fulfill, and that because these were violations of equal love to the neighbor. He likewise corrected the sins committed against the family relations. Husbands' sins against their wives—failure to love, respect, cherish, provide for and to be faithful to their wives—he denounced and corrected. Wives' sins against their husbands—failure to love, to respect, to obey, to care for and to be faithful to their husbands—he treated in the same way. Parental failure to love, companion, support and train their children for this life and the next, he also rebuked and corrected. He sought to set aside children's disobedience, disrespect, lovelessness and distrustfulness toward parents. He corrected peace-destroying conduct between man and man, between citizens and rulers, between parties and parties, and between nations and nations. All injuries to life, health and limb he corrected. The murderer, the hater, the injurious, the implacable, the unforgiving, the angry, the vindictive and the malicious were, one and all, corrected by him. The adulterer, the fornicator, the white slaver and inciter to unchastity received his rebuke and correction. The robber, the thief, the cheat, the counterfeiter, the usurer, the plunderer, the briber and the devastator, were all rebuked and corrected for doing against brotherly love. The falsifier, the perjurer, the slanderer, the evil-surmiser and the scandalmonger, were corrected unto brotherly love. The covetous, the over-reacher, the hard-bargainer, the ruthless creditor and dishonest debtor, alike, felt his rebukes and corrections, as not acting as they would be acted by. Hence, antitypical Abidan offered his charger, in 

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correction of sin in general and of sins in particular. 

(64) So, too, did he offer his bowl. He defended his stewardship doctrine from attacks. The many errors that he cherished on various subjects laid him open to many attacks which he could not answer, but when he was attacked on his stewardship doctrine, that true religion is the heart going out in supreme love to God and equal love to man, he was invincible. When the ritualist said that without forms and ceremonies the unlearned could not express religious devotion, nor worship God with propriety, he pointed out that the spirit made intercession with unuttered groans and that the true worship was that given in spirit and in truth, as the only thing desired by God in the way of prayer and worship (John 4:23). When the ritualist required worship to be given in churches, as consecrated places, antitypical Abidan reminded him that the Spirit was not restricted to time and place (John 4:20, 21). He likewise told the ritualist that a service not understood and appreciated by the participant was no Divine worship (John 4:22). When the ritualist insisted on clerical regalia, incense, etc., he answered that all the Faithful were God's priesthood and that they needed nothing more than Christ's embroidered robe as their garments and the incense of the graces as their prayers to God. Thus he refuted the ritualist with unanswerable argument. 

(65) When the dogmatist came with his philosophizing on religion, he answered that his was a science falsely so called that hid God from view and left the heart cold Godward and manward; that what was needed for the Christian life was a heart full of love to God and man, against which there was not only no law, but no philosophy. The legalist who attacked his heart-religion, as consisting of supreme love for God and equal love for man, was refuted by the statement that one could do all kinds of good works and perform all sorts of external moralities, without the heart being touched with love, hence such works would be unprofitable 

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(1 Cor. 13:3). He was shown that the strictest punctuality in observing precepts often left the heart untouched in its selfishness, worldliness and hardness, while the religion of the heart and of the spirit made the life new indeed. The rationalistic attacks of the latitudinarians fell to the ground by the assertion of the superiority of the spiritual heart to the rationalistic head of the skeptical. The latter left the heart cold to God and man, the former made it a living fire, burning perpetual incense as a sweet-smelling savor to God. Certainly this stewardship doctrine refuted every objection that was urged against it; and it today overthrows the objections of the so-called fundamentalists and modernists. Its principle taken into the heart would care for the chief evils now prevalent in Laodicea, as it can refute all arguments brought against it by modern ritualism, dogmatism, higher criticism, legalism and infidelity. 

(66) He also offered his spoon, and it was one full of the antitypical sweet incense; for it contained all of the graces in so far as they flow out of justice and many that flow out of charity. What earnest pleas he made for the love that goes out toward God with all the heart, mind, soul and strength! He taught the grace of putting God first, cost what it may. He magnified the life that trusts God where it cannot trace Him. He held out the hope of a better time coming than this evil day which the Faithful must undergo. He encouraged the persecuted, tried and distressed by this hope. He taught all to submit quietly to injustice, and to exercise forgiveness to enemies and inflictors of evil. The meeting of evil, not by evil, but by good, he commended at all times. He commended peaceableness to individuals, officials and nations, as against war. He preached tolerance of others' religious opinions as against intolerance, and benevolence instead of persecution. He held up kindness to man and beast as against cruelty and oppression. He advocated mercy for the fallen, the imprisoned, the war-wounded, the impoverished and the enslaved, as against inhumanity. 

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He upheld square dealings, honesty and truthfulness as against over-reaching, defrauding and deceiving the neighbor. He showed the blessedness of self-control and patience in thought, motive, word and act. He preached (and practiced) the exercise of righteousness, even when it led to loss of liberty, and so prevailed as to make the word of a Quaker as good as a bond, as can be seen from the fact that in moving them from one prison to another, they, on their promise to go to the other, were often let go there alone of their own accord, without the need of a guard to convey them. To this day the people of the fanatical sects, so greatly have they been influenced to practice these virtues by antitypical Abidan, are recognized as a God-fearing and man-loving people, who can be depended upon to fulfill the requirements of righteousness Godward and manward. Thus, not only has antitypical Abidan offered his spoon with sweet incense, but has been fruitful in securing the practice of all virtues. 

(67) This chapter closes our consideration of the offerings of the Gospel-Age princes on the antitypical West of the Tabernacle. The stewardship doctrines of all three show that the camp to the west of the tabernacle typifies those denominations that stand for the principle of justice as one of God's attributes. For the idea of justice underlies the doctrine of justification by faith—the stewardship doctrine of the Lutheran Church; the doctrine of the ecclesia as, humanly considered, the ruler in her midst as an assembly of brethren, each conceding equal—just—rights to others, the stewardship doctrine of the Congregational Church; and the doctrine that true religion is a heart's love to God supremely and to the neighbor as self—duty love, or justice—the stewardship doctrine of the fanatical sects. Thus we have another confirmation of the correctness of our understanding of the twelve tribes about the tabernacle as typical of the twelve denominations of Christendom about the true Church: with the standard of the east camp typing power; of the south camp, wisdom; and of the west camp, justice.

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BEREAN QUESTIONS

(1) How many chapters on the present subject have we had? Give a brief description of these. How many princes' offerings yet remain for treatment? In what order are the offerings of the tribal princes to the tabernacle's west described? What were the pertinent tribes? What did their standard type? What symbol did it likely have? What Churches were respectively typed by Ephraim, Manasseh and Benjamin? What are the stewardship doctrines of these three Churches? How are they related to justice? What does this prove as to the standard of the tribes west of the tabernacle—type and antitype? 

(2) In the Gospel-Age picture by what one of Jacob's sons were the Lutheran Church and people typed? Why does this thought not fit the tabernacle setting? Why does the tabernacle setting yield a different type in connection with Joseph and Benjamin than the Jacob picture? Explain the differences of viewpoint in the antitype as applicable to the tribes to the tabernacle's west. Why should we take Ephraim, Manasseh and Benjamin to type the three Churches respectively to the antitypical Tabernacle's West? What results from this setting? 

(3) Whose offerings are to be discussed in this installment? Who types them? What do the names of Elishama and Ammihud mean? How do their meanings suggest the Lutheran crown-lost leaders? Who are the main representatives of these? Who were the main ones responsible for sectarianizing Luther's Reform movement? 

(4) What, briefly stated, is the special stewardship doctrine of the Lutheran Church? What is a more ample statement of it? What seven things are implied in this doctrine? What is the source and efficient cause of justification? Its meritorious cause? Its instrumental cause? What are some characteristics of this doctrine? What did its nature cause it to do to the papacy? 

(5) Of what and in what respects is the papacy a counterfeit? What does such counterfeit make it? By whom was it so made? In what particular pertinent to our subject did he make a counterfeit? How will salvation be obtained in the next Age? With what kinds of acts will the Christ assist? What is the difference between Gospel-Age and Millennial-Age justifications? Of what is papal

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justification a counterfeit? What proves it an error? Wherein is the counterfeit in papacy's baptism, its offices, its mass, its purgatory, its penance, its monasticism, the latter's vows, asceticism, its beatification, its canonization, its good works, invocation of saints, especially of Mary and Peter, its indulgences, its confirmation, its Lord's Supper, its ordination, its extreme unction, its matrimony, its tradition as part of the source and rule of faith, its idea of faith, its relic, picture and image worship and its feasts? How are these things related to papal justification? How is papacy's scheme of things related to faith justification? What is the contrast between its and the Bible justification? What strategy is manifest in the Reformation's striking papacy with the truth on justification? 

(6) Who mainly acted as antitypical Jacob in the begetting of antitypical Levi? What was his position in the Reformation? What are the chief events of his early life? What university did he enter and pass through? What did he do on his graduation? What else did he do that year? What were his chief activities until he became a Reformer? When and by what did he begin the Reformation? With whom and on what did he debate in 1519? What are the titles of two of his leading reformatory works? What did he do in 1520? What are the main events in his life connected with the Diet of Worms? What did the emperor do? What happened to Luther immediately thereafter? What did he do during the next ten months? 

(7) What would have been the character of Luther's work, had he died at the Wartburg? To what reactionary view did he there surrender himself? With what result? What did he do with the Reform movement that he began? Of what is he the hero? What were some of his leading characteristics? How does he rank among the world's twenty greatest men? What have his reactionary and sectarian sprit and errors from 1522 onward raised? To what great truth was he loyal? How does his work on it compare with the work of other Reformers as to their stewardship truths? What did he give to the other Reformers? How does he rank in comparison with them? 

(8) What in Luther will help us to appreciate his relation to faith justification? What were two marked characteristics of his, predisposing him to lay hold on justification 

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by faith as a psychological necessity for him? How did papacy's legalism affect his feeling toward God? How did the papacy propose to satisfy his heart's cravings? What did he first do in harmony with papacy's method of salvation? What papal exercises did he perform to attain justification? What did they fail to give him? Why? What effects did this have on him? How did a brother monk seek to help him? How long did his distress last? 

(9) What brought him relief? What Scriptures especially instructed and blessed him? What truths did he thereby see? What did they move him to do? What was the effect on him? What did his experience prove? What position did this doctrine take in his life and teaching? What was the result of the impingement of Tetzel's sale of indulgences against this doctrine, as to Luther? In what work of his is his probably ablest exposition, application and defense of this doctrine found? 

(10) As a figurative stump-rooter what has this doctrine done? What does not the average person do with his principles? How did Luther do on this point? When did he attain peace with God through faith justification? How long was it before he began to draw conclusions from this doctrine against papal error? Under what circumstances? What did Luther as a confessor require? How did he act toward his penitents who demanded absolution on the basis of Tetzel's indulgences? What is the papal theory of indulgence? What was the origin and degeneration of indulgences? For what kind of sins were indulgences sometimes granted? What was Tetzel's experience on this line with a certain nobleman? 

(11) Of what are indulgences characteristic and revelatory? How did Tetzel's course affect Luther? What occasioned him to reject the idea of indulgences? Why was this? How was Luther advanced in the Truth in debates with Dr. Eck? How did faith justification lead Luther to reject the mass, purgatory, the meritoriousness of "good works," monasticism, celibacy, the availability of the saints' merits for canceling sin, their invocation and intercession, superstitious reverence for their relics, images and pictures, the exaltation of Mary as queen of heaven and intermediary of believers and God and Christ, "satisfaction of works," papal priesthood and hierarchy, papal sacramentarianism, the papal idea of the Church 

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and the Romish Church as the Church? Briefly what did it do with the papal system? What does this use of it reveal as to God's methods? 

(12) What was the quality of Luther's insight into justification by faith? On what four special features of it did he not see clearly? What should not be done to him for this? Why? How should we do regarding his insight into the doctrine? 

(13) What great mistake did Luther make? Under whom did he make it? How did he come to make it? How did he begin this mistake? What did Carlstadt and his followers do? How did they therein act? How did their course affect Luther? What did he do in opposition? How did this affect Frederick the Wise? What was his course? How did Luther thenceforth proceed in Reform matters? How successful was he in winning people from Rome? What did he do to keep his following? Under whose supervision? With whose co-operation? What resulted from this course toward other Reformers and his ruler? What lines did his activities follow? What was their comparative immensity? In this of what antitype was he a part? What were-his parts in three of such activities? How did his slavery affect his character and work? How should we do as to Luther? 

(14) What is a proper estimate of the abilities of the Lutheran theologians? Who were the three greatest of Lutheran crown-lost leaders? How do they compare with the leading crown-lost leaders of other Churches? Briefly describe Chemnitz, Gerhard and Calov, in their writings and activities. How were Chemnitz, Bellarmine and Gerhard active toward one another? Who are some of the other Lutheran crown-lost leaders? What did these do as to the doctrine of justification by faith? Describe Gerhard's treatise on this subject. How did Catholics find it? 

(15) What was the charger of these crown-lost leaders? How did it correct misconduct along lines of pride, self-righteousness, self-confidence, self-atonement, selfjustification, self-sufficiency, self-development unto perfection, insults to Christ, God-dishonoring views, arrogance of priestcraft and hierarchism, tempting God by 

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sin, unbelief, despair, lovelessness, despising others, the spirit of fear and ingratitude, indifference toward others, unkindness, covetousness and love of sin? In doing this, what did they offer? 

(16) What kind of foes did antitypical Elishama have to meet? Who were the three ablest of these foes? In what sphere did each of these work? Who was the ablest of them? What were his leading characteristics as a controversialist? What did Sextus VI do with his "Disputations"? How is his "Disputations" regarded by both Catholic and Protestant scholars? What error did the Lutherans hold as to a purpose of faith justification to their disadvantage against the Roman controversialists? What did antitypical Elishama achieve in his controversies with Rome? 

(17) How did antitypical Elishama refute the following arguments of papal controversialists: (1) Justification means to make right and, therefore, is by good works; (2) The works of the law, whose justifying possibilities St. Paul denies, mean those of the ceremonial law, not the moral law; (3) The very nature of good works is to justify; (4) God would not have given a law with the offer of life, unless man could realize its offer; (5) Faith does not have a sufficient content to justify; (6) One's righteousness could not justify another? 

(18) How did antitypical Elishama refute the following claims of papal controversialists: (7) God would not allow the Church to err on justification; (8) Good works are the condition of entering heaven; (9) Christ's merit does not satisfy justice and secure forgiveness, but it is the infusion into the heart of charity, which makes just; and (10) The Catholic doctrine on justification is true, coming as it does from God's infallible "channel"? What was the character of antitypical Elishama's refutations? 

(19) What finally did he offer? How did he use the doctrine of justification by faith to incite to glorifying God and Christ? To faith, hope, love and obedience? To comfort? To self-control and patience? To consecration? To strength? To peace? To joy? To forgiveness? To parental kindness and longsuffering and evangelistic compassion? To longsuffering and forbearance? To love for sinners? To humility? To liberality? To

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righteousness? To courage? In the presence of death? To brotherly love? To hatred for sin? In so doing, how did he use the doctrine of justification by faith? 

(20) What place did this doctrine fittingly give the Lutheran Church? Why? How should we feel toward the services of antitypical Elishama? 

(21) What is the next set of princely offerings to be considered? Who types its offerers? What do the words, Gamaliel and Pedahzur, mean? How do their meanings apply antitypically? From what type is the Congregational Church omitted? Where does it belong in that type? Why? In what denominations it its special teaching held? In what type is it indicated? By what tribe? 

(22) What figure illustrates the Church organizationally? What is the Church from this standpoint? What is illustrated by the human spine? The seven cervicals? The twelve dorsals and their sets of ribs? The five lumbars? The one sacrum and one coccyx? The right arm and hand? The left arm and hand? The right leg and foot? The left leg and foot? The feet apart from the legs? 

(23) Who governs the Church? What classes of servants does He use in the Church? What are their separate functions? Those of the Apostles and that Servant? All others? What is not their function? What cannot a local church do to another local church or to the general Church, or vice versa? How are they related to one another? Who is the Head of a local church? Who under Him is the manager of its affairs? What three things are implied in this? Define the authority of the Twelve and of that Servant on this head, and the privileges and limitations of all others. 

(24) Summarize the thoughts of the two preceding paragraphs. How are these things related to the stewardship doctrine of the Congregational Church? Define that doctrine. What three things does it imply? How does an ecclesia stand related to all other Christians and ecclesias? What terms designate this doctrine? 

(25) of what is this doctrine capable? Who sanctioned this doctrine? What seven things prove its truth, so far as a congregation's managing its own affairs is concerned? What conclusion should be drawn from these proofs? What other fact is compatible with this conclusion? What

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illustrates this compatibility? Why does the Congregational Church stand on the antitypical Tabernacle's West? 

(26) Who initiated the movement later perverted into the Congregational Church? What are the salient features of his history and activities up to 1578? From 1578 to 1580? 

(27) What did his activities provoke? Why? In how many jails was he confined? What did his persecution occasion? What were his activities and misfortunes in Holland? What things did he do in 1583? What seems to explain his strange course? What was done in England with his followers and books, and that for many years? 

(28) Against what errors did he protest in general and in particular? What did he restore? Against what? What were the root, the trunk and the branches of the great apostacy? What was the apostasy's point of departure? What is, and what is not, the Scripturally designated office of an elder? What was the condition of the elders during the Ephesus period? Why? What effect had these things on the power-hungry elders? What did the Apostles, especially St. Paul, do as to the apostacy? What was the result? In whose days did it first work openly? Explain the case. How were the activities of the Jewish Harvest sifters related to this apostacy? Prove this answer. 

(29) Prove that the apostolic churches as a rule had more than one elder or bishop. How did these differ? How is this to be regarded? How did the elders regard this difference? How is this to be justified? To what did this usually lead? How is this to be regarded? What would have been a preferable way of doing for the chairmanship of elders' and congregational meetings? How did the brethren early in the Smyrna period begin to speak of this elder or bishop? How does the New Testament use the terms, elder and bishop? Prove it. What name gradually began to be applied exclusively to the leading elder? What did this bring with it? What variations occurred in this misdevelopment? When was this viewpoint general? Why was such an officer considered necessary? Describe the epistles of Ignatius. Of what character is their authenticity? If authentic, what view of bishops and elders would they prove to have been held by Ignatius by 116 A. D.? What was the character of the prevalence of this

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error? What view did Cyprian advocate in 251 A. D.? About what time did this view prevail everywhere? 

(30) What other error accompanied this one? In Cyprian's time what kind of bishops functioned and what kind did not yet function? What wrong did the bishops do to the elders? What similar wrong did the elders do to the ecclesias? How and by what means did they do this? What distinction did they make between themselves and their brethren? In what did this result? Especially when? 

(31) What was the first means of accomplishing this end? What was the second means? What was the third? In what did this result for the clergy, the quasi-clergy and the laity? How did this work in point of time in the different localities? When was it fairly general? In connection with what event? 

(32) What was the next misdevelopment? Through what stages did it advance? What was its point of departure? Give an apostolic example of the right use of neighborly congregational help in time of need. Wherein did the misdevelopment differ from this case in principle? How did the bishops feel in relation to this misdevelopment? Why? What did they do? What did this do with the Lord's order as to the independence of each ecclesia? What assemblies did the bishops hold? What did these assemblies do toward the churches? Where do we not find such a union of churches and such synods or councils? When and why were the first synods held? Describe the development of these councils. What two sets of things did they determine for the churches? Where and when was the first ecumenical council held? What doctrines especially did it decree? On what pain were they enforced? What qualities did such a council supposedly have? What was the theory underlying it? What special two things resulted from this phenomenon? 

(33) Summarize the apostacy so far studied. What other misdevelopment set in? How was it justified? How did it come about? Describe the bishop's sphere before this misdevelopment set in. Give several illustrations picturing various aspects of the pre-diocesan bishop. 

(34) How does the diocesan bishop stand as to the ecclesial bishop? How did the diocesan bishop originate? What was a diocese? What in this connection was a country bishop? How did he become a pastor in a church? 

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(35) What was the next stage of the apostasy in organization? Who were the metropolitans? When did they originate? When and where did they get their name, metropolitan? What were their powers and the extent of their jurisdiction? Cite an example to the point. 

(36) Into how many prefectures did Constantine divide the empire? What one was a little later added to these? What title was given to the metropolitans of these prefectures' capital cities? What positions were three of these considered to hold? What council therefore gave them these titles? How did the Roman bishop act toward this title? Why? What did he take instead? When and where was a fourth patriarchate created? How did its incumbent rank? When was a fifth patriarchate created? What patriarchates were within three years' time destroyed? By whom? What was the jurisdiction and powers of the patriarchs? What metropolitans were exempt from the authority of the patriarchs? 

(37) What controversy for equality set in? What 18 reasons led to the pope's emerging from this controversy as the head of all the churches. In what century? 

(38) How did the pope's civil power originate, increase and come to a climax? How did it wane and end? How did his religious power wane over many people? 

(39) How was retribution for power-grasping wrought on the presbyters, bishops, metropolitans, cardinals, patriarchs and popes? How is the stewardship doctrine of the Congregational Church related to every phase of the organizational apostacy? What must be kept in mind properly to appraise the Browne movement? Why? 

(40) When, by whom and by what teaching did the sectarianizing of this movement set in? Who a little later advocated this new view? Who transplanted it to America? Who here were its chief American advocates? What two men restored pure congregationalism in America? What later advocate of it wrought in the 19th century? Who is their type? What congregational principles did they vitiate in making an organized denomination of the Browne movement and in making a written creed? 

(41) What did antitypical Gamaliel have to do in offering his charger? How did he offer this charger toward power-grasping and lording elders, bishops, metropolitans, patriarchs, cardinals and popes? How does it correct 

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clerical pride, unholy ambition, usurpation, tyranny, priestcraft, superstition, self-exaltation, oppression and error? The spoliation, degradation, ignorance, weakness, formalism, worldliness and servility of the people produced by clericalism? Position-seekers and power-graspers in a local ecclesia? Scheming to run the church in its various functions? Unbrotherliness? Covetousness? Contentiousness? Ruthlessness? Vanity? Insubordination? Unelderly and undeaconly conduct? Laziness? Negligence? Indifference? How does it act disciplinarily in offenses, disfellowshipment and restoration? In summary, what did antitypical Gamaliel do by such activity? 

(42) What else did antitypical Gamaliel do? In what respects? How did he answer the objection to ecclesiaism on the irresponsibility of an ecclesia? On its need of abler and more efficient helpers, available in clericalism's variations? On its need of the orderliness of these other polities? On the supposed Scripturalness of the aristocracy of Presbyterianism in local and synodal elders? On the Presbyterians' arguments as to Scriptural names and words descriptive of elders and their work? 

(43) In what four ways did antitypical Gamaliel refute the Episcopal arguments on apostolic succession as against ecclesiaism? In what five ways did he Scripturally disprove the bishops' claims that as rulers over the presbyters they were rulers over the ecclesias? In what three ways did he refute the claims of metropolitans (archbishops), cardinals and patriarchs? What answers did they give to the pope's pretentions to powers? What did he accomplish by these refutations? 

(44) What is meant by his offering his spoon? How did he show that ecclesiaism is conducive to righteousness toward God? Christ? The brethren? The ecclesia's officers? In the ecclesia's officers? To humility? To increase the sense of individual responsibility in the ecclesia's affairs? To brotherly love and care? To meekness? To longsuffering? To patience? To love and defense of liberty? To sacrifice? To proper relations in the Body? To faith? To love and obedience to law and order? To unworldly methods? To holiness? To witnessing at home and abroad? (What were some of the results of the latter activity?) To the mutual relations of the elders and the ecclesia? What is a summary of antitypical Gamaliel's offering his spoon? 

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(45) In what other denominations has ecclesiaism found acceptance and wrought blessings? What did it do to that Servant? What did he do with it? Who since his death have militated against it? What organization is the chief offender? How? What special error advanced this misdevelopment? 

(46) Describe the various forms of clericalism as it works among many Truth people. What have they done with ecclesiaism? What counteractive movements are abroad among some Truth people? How have others submitted to clericalism? Of what does this remind us? How long will clericalism reign among Truth people? 

(47) What exhortation is appropriate to Epiphany-enlightened brethren? To their elders? To their ecclesias as to faithful elders? As to power-grasping elders? To all alike? What will result from heeding these exhortations? 

(48) How much of Num. 7 has been hitherto studied? What is the subject of this installment on Num. 7? Over what antitypical tribe do the crown-lost leaders now to be studied preside? Where are the antitypical Benjamites discussed? What is the force of the word fanatical as applied to antitypical Benjamin? Who furnish special examples of this? Explain various features of these examples. What evil thing attends these manifestations? 

(49) What should be kept in mind in studying antitypical Benjamin and Manasseh and Ephraim? Explain the distinction between the Jacob and the tabernacle pictures of these, type and antitype. What notable thing is connected with the three tribes west of the typical and antitypical tabernacle? Why were the changes made? What does this probably signify? 

(50) Who was the prince of Benjamin? What do the names Abidan and Gideoni mean? What does their meaning type? 

(51) What is the stewardship truth of the fanatical sects? What is the peculiarity of their view of true religion? To what does this expose them? Among whom is this manifest? What is wrong and right in this view? How is a happy balance in this matter obtained? What is the sore spot in the religiousness of the fanatical sects? What do they call that which is this "sore spot"? 

(52) What is a general estimate of their view of their

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stewardship truth? What does it need as a supplement? Why could they not furnish it? How is this typed by their tabernacle location? What kind of a truth did God give them? Who are their main crown-lost leaders? To which sect did each belong? What do they exemplify? What is good in them? 

(53) What made their truth meat in due season? What were the conditions in Continental Europe in the times of George Fox: in state? church? society? 

(54) What were the conditions and the rulers in Scotland and England at that time in the state? 

(55) What were the conditions in the church in Scotland and England in the times of George Fox? What were the three parties in the Church of England? What four evils resulted from these parties? In what did these evils result? What religious need was there then throughout Europe? How did God meet this need? 

(56) Who was used to bring out the needed truth? When was he born? Over what period did his formative years stretch? What was his character as a boy? As a youth? What did he do to obtain religion? Whom did he consult thereon? What was the result? What did he then do? What was he advised to do to still his heart's hunger? How and when did he find peace? What did he do the same year? 

(57) What did George Fox henceforth do? Against what did he testify? To what extreme did he go at church services? Where did he preach? What did he specially stress? Against what sins did he witness? 

(58) In what foreign countries did he preach? Like whose were many of his experiences? Who accompanied him on two trips to Holland? In what ways was he persecuted? What did he do while in prison? To what trickery did English judges resort to jail him and his brethren as disloyal? On what other charge were they frequently imprisoned? How many of them were at one time in prison? What happened to several thousand of them there? What conduced to their conviction? For what did Fox agitate after his releasings from prison? What resulted therefrom? What great writer benefited from their good fortune? How so? 

(59) What was the character of Fox's later life? What caused this? Of what act of fanaticism was he guilty?

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Where were his last years spent? What did he continue to the end of life? When and at what age did he die? How has he come to be regarded? 

(60) What has made antitypical Benjamin a righteousness-loving denomination? In what are they especially active? What influence did they exert on the religious and social life of Britain? Of Holland and Germany? Through whom? Of Belgium and France? Through whom? Of America? At what cost? Among whom? What effects did they work as to war, prison life, slavery and the saloon? What very celebrated Quakeress was active in philanthropy, especially in war? 

(61) For what did antitypical Abidan use his stewardship doctrine? What is his view as to human learning and even Biblical learning? What did this betray? What did it not prevent? Who were their best read men? 

(62) What did he first offer? What does this mean? How wide a sphere did his stewardship doctrine permit him to cover in his corrections? What forms of idolatry did he correct? What did he correct as to sins against God? Ritualism? Pastoral conduct? Legalism? Dogmatism? Rationalism? Agnosticism and Deism? 

(63) What did he do as to man's sins against man? In the state? In what particulars? In the family? In what particulars? As to peace? As to sins of violence? Unchastity? Dishonesty? Untruthfulness? Covetousness? 

(64) What else did antitypical Abidan offer? What does this mean? What handicapped him therein? On what did he refute well? In what four ways did he refute the attacks of ritualists? 

(65) In what four ways did he refute the dogmatist? The legalist? The rationalist? What does he do with the contrary errors of our day? 

(66) What else did he offer? What does this mean? What ground did it cover: as to God? Man? Love? Faith? Hope? Courage? Meekness? Forgiveness? Doing good for evil? Peaceableness? Tolerance? Benevolence? Kindness? Mercy? Honesty? Self-control and patience? Right? With what fruits was this accompanied? In what has this resulted? 

(67) What does this chapter do? What is the central thought of the camp to the West of the antitypical Tabernacle? How do their stewardship truths prove this? What does this confirm?