Sunday, January 9, 2011

Not by men's apprehensions!

It is not possible to twist and compound a matter betwixt Christ and Antichrist; and, therefore, ye must either be for Christ, or ye must be against Him. It was but man's wit, and the wit of prelates and their godfather the Pope (that man without law), to put Christ and His prerogatives royal, and His truth, or the smallest nail-breadth of His latter will, in the new calender of indifferences, and to make a blank of uninked paper in Christ's testament that men may fill up; and to shuffle the truth, and matters which they call indifferent, through other, and spin both together, that Antichrist's wares may sell the better. This is but the device and forged dream of men whose consciences are made of stoutness, and who have a throat that a graven image, greater than the bounds of the kirkdoor, would get free passage into. I am sure that when Christ shall bring us all out in our blacks and whites, at that day when He shall cry down time and the world, and when the glory of it shall lie in white ashes, like a May-flower cut down and which hath lost the blossom, there shall be few, yea none, that dare make any point, which toucheth the worship and honour of our King and Lawgiver, to be indifferent. Oh that this misled and blindfolded world would see that Christ doth not rise and fall, stand or lie, by men's apprehensions!
—Samuel Rutherford