Popery condemned by scripture and the fathers - End Time Deception

174 POPERY CuNBEMNKD BY
" every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus
*'
Christ is come in the flesh is not of God * "
The Popish doctrine
of impUcit obedience to
the Church, by keeping the people in ignorance,
may secure the influence of the clergy ; bur it is
totally repugnant to the spirit of the gospel.
illustrate this, it will be only necessary to recur
to the very simple rule of this apostif,
To
which the
R. has quoted :
" We are of God ; he that
**
knoweth God heareth -us ; he that is not of
'*
God heareth us not." In these words we are
taught, that it is a knowledge of God which
produces submission to the faithful ministers of
the Church.
Wherever this knov\ ledge is wanting,
there may be much credulity and submission
to the clergy ; but there can neither be that
faith which is an assent of the understanding to
the truth, nor obedience to Christ which is a
reasonable service.
Nor is the R. more correct when he says,
that the unlearned are incapable of trying strange
doctrines by the rule of the scriptures. The unlearned
and the ignorant are far from being
phrases'of the same signification, A person,
who is destitute of what is called learning by
men, may possess a very accurate knowledge of
the doctrines of religion ; and, on the contrary,
men of learning are not always the fittest judges
of divine tnings ;
" Thou Iiast hid these things,*'
* I John, iv. \— 3.
says