Bible Truths Illustrated by J. C. Ferdinand Pittman

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BIBLE TRUTHS ILLUSTRATED
these horns they must be tossed; and so far as a matter of
comfort is concerned, it matters little which. In reply to this
it may be urged: "You assume that miraculous power has
departed from the church; but we insist that in all ages God
has raised up witnesses with spiritual gifts." Well, if you
assert that miraculous power has existed in all ages, as you
cannot require us to prove a negative, the onus probandi, the
burden of the proof, lies upon you. And in order either to
help you or thwart you, I will reveal another gulf, over which
you cannot leap—you must tumble in and flounder there. That
church which constitutes the heart of the apostasy, spotted over
with the leprosy of every crime, and crimsoned with the blood
of millions of saints, has invariably laid claim to miracles. On
the contrary, various protesting bodies, raised up by God from
one age to another, have laid in no such claim. . . . Surely this
looks ominous towards our miracle friends. If they are determined
to find miracles, will they pass by all the hosts of godly
men who, according to their light, were faithful to God, Christ,
truth, and holiness, and rest for refuge in the sanctuary of
atheism and blasphemy, and the sink of every iniquity?
Greenwell.
G.
568. It is generally assumed, says the above writer, by those
who look for the restoration of such gifts, that an increase of
union, love, and holiness would necessarily ensue. The only
way to dissect this assumption, is to construct an argument from
analogy. If we turn to the old dispensation, we find that the
generation most highly favored by the witness of stupendous
miracles made no corresponding progress in holiness; but, on
the contrary, perished in the wilderness, through unbelief, whilst
many of the succeeding nations (especially the next) were
strong in faith and comparatively pure in conduct. If we come
from the old to the new dispensation, we may examine the
history of the Corinthian church, where the miraculous gifts
existed in all their plenitude. What a melancholy page is
opened to us, of faction, division, impurity, presumption, disorder,
doctrine, institute, and morals, all deranged and corrupted
together by vainglorious men. It appears then, from
these facts, that the design of miracles has been misapprehended
: as arresting evidence, or authenticating marks, they
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