TRACTS FOR THE TIMES.
He actually has revealed His Will, and that the Book which we call the Bible contains that Revelation[1].
4. Atheists (i. e. men "without God") who deny altogether the existence of a God. These contradict the voice of nature, which, by the regularity of seasons, the succession, growth, and decay, of plants, of animals, and men, by the course of the planets and all its other wonderful works, attest the existence, power, and goodness of a Superior Being, who must have made all these things at the first, and now continues and preserves them.
These four Classes may be placed together, because to all four the same passage of St. John is applicable. "Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father[2]," and of all four it may be truly said, "They have trodden under foot the Son of God, and counted the blood of the Covenant an unholy thing, and done despite to the Spirit of Grace[3]."
II.—Those who receive and teach a part but not the whole of the truth, erring in respect of one or more fundamental doctrines.
Under this head are included most of what are called "Protestant Dissenters." The chief of these are,—
1. Presbyterians, so called from maintaining the validity of ordination by Presbyters or Elders only, in other words, by the second order of the clergy, dispensing with and superseding the first[4].
2. Independents, so called from being opposed to and independent of all ecclesiastical government[5].
3. Methodists (subdivided into an immense variety of sects; the chief are Wesleyans, Whitfieldians, or Lady Huntingdon's,
- ↑ See Leslie's Short and Easy Method with the Deists.
- ↑ 1 John ii. 23.
- ↑ Heb. ix. 29.
- ↑ From this error have sprung all Sects enumerated under this second head.
- ↑ See Hebrews xiii. 17.
