Excerpt from Essays on the Church of God: In Which the Doctrines of Church Membership and Infant Baptism Are Fully Discussed The doctrine of the Unity and Visibility of the Church is most strikingly presented. Overstepping all natural boundaries of space, and all artificial ones of human creation, preserving a strict analogy Wlth the divine arrange ments over men as social beings, it makes its direct and powerful appeal to every christian heart; it identifies him with the people of God in all ages, and in all places; concentrates their energies of prayer, and faith, and hope - they move not isolated - forsaken - or despairing; but every uplifted hand nerves every other hand; and every warm heart sends its purifying savour over every other heart, - the mutual pledges of sustained conflict, and certain success. The doctrine delivers fromthe dilemma of good and honest men, the contracting notion of an perfectly pure Church, elect and holy; and the loose notion of a Church exposed to the devouring of every ravening beast and the pollution of every unclean bird. The Church is suited to the nature of men, and is possessed of those inherent and es sential properties of government, of protection, rewards and punishments; which every organized society requires. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.