And all because they have lost all faith in the living God—the ever-working, ever-teaching, ever-inspiring, ever-governing God whom our Lord Jesus Christ revealed to men; in whom the Apostles, and the Fathers, and the great middle-age Schoolmen, and the Reformers believed, and therefore learned more and more, and taught men more and more concerning God and the dealings of God, as time went on.
And then, when they see ignorant people running after quacks and impostors, spirit-rappers and table-turners, St. Simonians and Mormons, and false prophets of every kind, they will have nothing to say but ‘This people which knoweth not the law is accursed.’ While when they see anything like new truth, or new teaching from God appear, instead of welcoming the light, and going to meet the light, and accepting the light, they will say, ‘What shall we do? For all men will believe on him, and then the powers of this world will come and take away our station and our order?’ As if Christ could not take better care of his Church for which he died than they can in his stead! And so they will persecute God’s servants, in the name of God, and call upon the law to put down by force the men whom they cannot put down by reason.
From ever falling into that state of stupid lip-belief, and outward religion, and loss of faith in the living God: Good Lord, deliver us.
From all blindness of heart; from pride, vainglory, and hypocrisy; from envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness: Good Lord, deliver us.
From all false doctrine, heresy, and schism; from hardness of heart and contempt of thy word and commandment: Good Lord, deliver us.
For if people ever fall into that frame of mind (as did the scribes and Pharisees), and the good Lord do not deliver them from it, it will surely happen to them as it is written in the Bible.
The powers of this world will come and take away their place, and their power, and their station: but meanwhile the truth which they think that they have stifled will rise again, for Christ, who is the truth, will raise it again; and it shall conquer and leaven the hearts of men till all be leavened; and while the scribes and Pharisees shall be cast into the outer darkness of discontented and hopeless bigotry, the kingdoms of the world, which they fancied were the devil’s dominion, shall become the kingdoms of God and of his Christ, and be adopted into that holy and ever-growing Church, of which it is written, that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, for in it is the Spirit of God to lead it into all truth.
To which blessed end may God bring us, and our children after us. Amen.
SERMON XVIII. THE DEATH OF MOSES
(First Sunday after Trinity.)