If we break down all subscription
and include them in the great National Church, we will approach the
Scriptural ideal. Unless this be done they will fall into Dissenting
hands, and die outside the Church of Christ. There are several proofs of
the Scriptural indorsement of Nationalism; Christ's lament over
Jerusalem declares that he had offered Multitudinism to the inhabitants
nationally, while the three thousand souls converted on the day of
Pentecost cannot be supposed to have been individual converts, but
merely a mass of persons brought in as a body. Some of the converts of
the apostolic age did not believe in the resurrection, which fact
implies that the early Churches took collective names from the
localities where they were situated, and that doubt of the resurrection
should now be no bar to communion in the National Church. Even
heathenism in its best form proceeded on the Multitudinist principle,
for all were included as believers in the faith of the times. The
approval of reason and conscience, and not verbal adherence to human
interpretation of Scripture, should be the great test of membership.
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