Читать книгу Swedenborg: Harbinger of the New Age of the Christian Church онлайн | страница 6

Man was yet but in early youth. A great step was gained in teaching him to set his heart, not on the riches and honors of earth where moth and rust doth corrupt, but on the treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt and thieves do not break through nor steal. The tares must be let alone until a riper age, when their fruit should be manifest and the developed reason should be ready to bind them in bundles and burn them. But this acceptance of the Gospel mainly through fear of torment or hope of reward in heaven gave every opportunity to self-seeking leaders for gaining control of their converts to their own personal advantage. Retaining the Gospel in their own hands, in a language which none but themselves could read, they devised creeds and canons to maintain their own supremacy. They took away the key of ​knowledge. Entering not into the kingdom themselves, them that would enter they hindered, all to their own worldly gain.

Luther and his associates revolted from this prostitution of the religion of our Lord, so graphically represented to John in vision as Babylon the great adulteress. And in two centuries they and their followers did much to restore a true conception of the life of the kingdom and of the duty of the Church. But in controverting the error that heaven could be merited by undergoing the penances and paying the tribute imposed by the Church of Rome, substituting therefor belief only in the saving grace of Jesus Christ, Luther went too far. To emphasize the distinction between his Reformed Church and the Roman Catholic, he declared charity and good works to be of no avail for salvation.

In the Protestant wing of the Church belief in the vicarious sacrifice of Jesus Christ was the only means of attaining heaven, and the condemnation of all who had not this grace was proclaimed with a severity equal to that of the anathemas of the Church of Rome. Either wing of the Lord's Church was ready to burn the ​other. The errors of both were sustained by a fundamental misunderstanding of the Trinity, which was unfortunately conceived as of distinct persons with different attributes. The Father was regarded as avenging justice and the Son as loving mercy, by which He atoned for the never-forgiven sin of Adam in taking upon Himself the punishment of the cross, the Father accepting the sacrifice so far as to pardon those whom the Son should elect.