As man has no life but that which is breathed into him by God, so he has no knowledge of spiritual truth but that which has been revealed from heaven.
The Church is the depository and guardian of revealed truth, and the bond of connection between heaven and earth, between God and man.
The Church, as an external organization, is responsible for the interpretation of revealed truth. As genuine truth leads to spiritual goodness, so the least corruption or falsification of it leads to a correspondingly inferior degree of good, until at last false doctrines beget false lives.
Falsification of doctrine begins always with some evil of life in the men of the Church, who justify, palliate, or confirm their wrong-doing by a corresponding perversion of truth. Thus the love of spiritual dominion developed the theory of an infallible church, etc.
When a Church has falsified the central doctrines of divine truth it goes on from bad to worse, until it is consummated with great and terrible judgments without and within.
"When nations are to perish in their sins,
'Tis in the church the leprosy begins."
