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THE ANCIENT ARMENIAN CHURCH.

The history of the Armenian Greek church is very interesting. Of all the Christians in central Asia, they have withstood the persecutions of the Mahometans, even when the seven churches, who had the immediate communication with the apostle, almost exhausted by suffering and death, had at length been compelled to receive the religion of the impostor at the point of the sword. "The Armenians have maintained their independence, their ancient scripture, doctrines, and worship, to this day." Their proper country is Armenia, from which they are called ARMENIANS.

Armenia is under the Persian government, and professes to be of the ancient patriarchal church, which first received the New Testament translated into the Greek after the dispersion of the Jews. Dr. Buchanan in his Christian Researches in Asia, says, "The Bible was translated into the Armenian language in the fifth century, under very auspicious circumstances. It has been allowed by competent judges of the language to be a most faithful translation: La Croze calls it, queen of versions."

1 Christian Researches, p. 239.

ARMINIANS.

The modern Arminians have been sometimes mistaken for the people of Armenia, who are of the Greek church, and have their own patriarchs; but Christian sects do not take their denomination from the country they inhabit.

They were a sect so called from Arminius, who was a divine of Leyden, and in 1605, he caused a separation from the Calvinists. They believe in free-will; they believe that man has a power to resist the offers of mercy, and that election to eternal life is grounded in the will of God to save such, as he knows about to believe and continue in obedience; consequently, that reprobation is only the result of his fore-knowledge concerning those, who live and die in violation of the precepts of the sacred scriptures that though Christ by his temptations, sufferings, and death, made an atonement for all mankind, yet none but those, who were foreseen would be faithful to death, can possibly obtain everlasting life.

That, as every good and perfect gift cometh from the Father of Light, so they say that this divine grace is a gift, that man cannot have any merit, and that good works are of God only. But they like

wise hold that this grace may be so resisted, and rejected by man, as to be ineffectual in procuring for him the salvation of his soul. They also believe that those who have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, who have been regenerate in heart and life, may finally fall from this state of grace and die in sin; agreeably to those words of the apostle, "But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a cast-away."

SUPRALAPSARIANS

Also believe in the doctrine of predestination. They are the most rigid of all those, who profess to receive the doctrine of election.

They hold that God had no other view than to magnify his attributes; by the salvation of some, his mercy; and by the condemnation of others, his justice; and therefore that he ordained the fall of man from eternity. But as this was also the belief of the ancient sect called the Predestinati, and as it is consistent with the belief of the modern professors of Calvinism, to that head I refer the reader.

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SUBLAPSARIANS

Believe in the doctrine of predestination. But they hold that Adam was created in full liberty to stand or fall; that by an abuse of that liberty, God permitted him to fall, and that all men, having thus fallen in Adam, are eternally lost, except such, as by the determinate council of God were predestinated to eternal life.

PURITANS.

About the same time that the Socinians began to form themselves into a body, a sect arose in England, called PURITANS. But this was only a new name for an old profession. They were Calvinists, and the name Puritan was given, because, like them, they pretended to be purer than the professors of the day. Nevertheless, they are said by respectable writers to have been an upright, and a sincere people.

INDEPENDENTS

Are so named, because, as to their church-government, every congregation is independent of each other. They are neither subject to synods, assemblies, nor presbyteries; but the elders of each congregation govern their own members.

With regard to their opinions, they are much the same as the Calvinists, and the Presbyterians. They allow all to preach who think themselves capable, and will not baptise any who are not of their own congregation. They receive the sacrament sitting, and will not communicate with those who are of another persuasion.

They were not known as a body or sect, until the time of Elizabeth. They were called Puritans by way of reproach, because they were particular in inculcating a purer kind of life than the professors of the time. They were also stigmatised by the term Novatians, for as Novatius formed a distinct sect, on account of the dissolute abuses prevailing in the church of Rome, so the Independents separated from the established church of England about the year 1580.

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