the church as the subject of history never was anything but man’s corruption; the people who composed it went on, but the moment it was left to man’s responsibility it departed from God’s principles.
Let not my reader be surprised. Let us speak of man. What is man before our eyes and the subject of history and of God’s dealings? Is he, was he ever, in his actual history, God’s creature as He set him up? Never! He is the corruption of what God set up and nothing else, save that one blessed One who came to save. Let me draw attention to a great principle running through scripture, that surprise may be less at my assertion, which may naturally astound many, so much do we cling to tradition; and here even an infidel may recognize, not the truth of God of course, the principle that runs through what the believer owns, what I own, as a divine revelation: that principle is that in every case God set up that which was good positively or relatively, and the first thing man did was to corrupt and ruin it; and then history is the history of man’s corrupt condition, though, no doubt, so much the more of God’s patience and goodness.
Man was set up good: the first thing he did was to fall into sin and corrupt himself; his history is the history of a fallen race; God judged that world. I am putting the scripture account of what has always happened; not discussing its truth, but giving its view of what has taken place. Noah was spared from a ruined world and government set up as restraint to man’s passions; the first thing he does after his burnt offering, that is stated in scripture—mind I am giving its view of things—is to get drunk, and we hear no more of him, and the world goes on to Babel and confusion.
