[15]. Christianity Restored, p. 184.
[16]. Perils of Idolatry, p. 3.
THESIS III.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ in the Last Days—In the Hour of God's Judgment—Is to Be Restored to Earth by Re-opening the Heavens, and Giving a New Dispensation Thereof to the Children of Men.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE NECESSITY OF A NEW REVELATION—THE ARGUMENTS OF MODERN CHRISTIANS AGAINST IT CONSIDERED.
I shall take it for granted that those who have followed me to this point are convinced that the world has need of a new witness for God; that the Church of Christ was destroyed; that there has been an apostasy from the Christian religion so complete and universal as to make necessary a new dispensation of the gospel.
I have already remarked, in noticing the Protestant claim that the Church of Christ was re-established by the Reformers of the sixteenth century, that the gospel having once been taken from among men, and divine authority lost, the only way that either one or the other could ever be restored would be by the Lord giving a new revelation, and re-commissioning men with divine authority, both to teach the gospel and administer in its ordinances. This is a proposition so obvious to reason that I can scarcely persuade myself that it requires either argument or proofs to sustain it.