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It is now accounted wisdom for men to be partners in pulling up the stakes, and loosing the cords of the tent of Christ; but I am persuaded, that that wisdom is cried down in heaven and shall never pass for true wisdom with the Lord, whose word crieth shame upon wit against Christ and truth: and accordingly it shall prove shame and confusion of face in the end.
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Alas! that men dare shape, carve, cut and clip our King’s princely testament, in length and breadth and in all dimensions answerable to the conceptions of such policy (policy against truth) as a kind of wit thinketh a safe and trim way of serving God. How have men forgotten the Lord, that they dare go against even that truth which once they preached themselves. Certainly the sweetest and safest course is, for this short time of the afternoon of this old and declining world, to stand for Jesus.
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Stand fast for Christ. Deliver the gospel off your hand and your ministry to your Master with a clean and undefiled conscience. Loose not a pin of Christ’s tabernacle: do not so much as pick with your nail at one board or border of the ark.
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When the truth is come to your hand, hold it fast. Go not again to make a new search for truth. It is easy to cause conscience believe as ye will, not as ye know. It is easy for you to cast your light into prison and detain God’s truth in unrighteousness; but that prisoner will break ward, to your incomparable torture. Fear your light and stand in awe of it; for it is from God.
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Union in judgment with men not tender of our Lord’s interest, is a conjunction; such union, I hope, you shall never think desirable. Sectarian separations I am confident you never loved, though men who are become transgressors in destroying what they have formerly been building, give it forth so . . . I am convinced that it is for conscience toward God that you suffer. The bottom of your testimony and suffering is not so narrow as some think, who study more to decline the cross than to be tender for every truth. School heads talk of fundamentals and non-fundamentals, and, say they, “The present controversy is not about fundamentals: ministers may keep their places, peace, stipends, and make less din.” But are non-fundamentals nothing? I would choose rather not to be brought up at school than to grow so subtle and wily by school distinctions, to decline the cross. Sir, you divide not from others for nothing; you contend not for nothing; you suffer not for nothing. They that will be unfaithful in little will be unfaithful in much. Mistake me not, as if I thought the ground of your testimony a little thing and a trifle. I think you and all that be faithful to God are bound to follow it to bonds and to blood.