Beating a Dead Horse

Many times I have written and said that if something is new (theologically speaking) it should raise a red flag in your head. For example, the Dispensational view of the relationship between Israel and the Church did not exist before the early 1800's.

Does that mean that dispensationalism is wrong? No, it does not mean it is wrong. However, I believe it is seriously in error, but that is not necessarily so. Still when you learn of it's newness it should set off a number of red flags and you should study to know how and why it is differs from the historic, orthodox, belief system.

With that in mind, I would like to give you a quote by Rev. John Nevin from his 1846 book The Mystical Presence: A Vindication of the Reformed or Calvinistic Doctrine of the Eucharist. Rev. Nevin writes,

"A strong presumption is furnished against the modern Puritan doctrine, as compared with the Calvinistic or Reformed, in the fact that the first may be said to be of yesterday only in the history of the Church, while the last, so far as the difference in question is concerned, has been the faith of nearly the whole Christian world from the beginning. It included a protest against the errors with which the truth had been overlaid in the church of Rome. It rejected transubstantiation and the sacrafice of the mass; and refused to go with Luther in his dogma of a local presence. But in all this it formed no rupture with the original doctrine of the Church. That which had constituted the central idea of this doctrine from the first, and which appears even under the perversions that have been just named, it still continued to hold with a firm grasp. It is this central idea, the true and proper substance of the ancient faith precisely, that created the difference between the Reformed doctrine and the modern Puritan. In the Reformed system it is present in all its force; in the other it is wanting. The voice of antiquity is all on the side of the Sixteenth Century, in its high view of the sacrament. To the low view which has since come to prevail, it lends no support whatever." (pg 127)

I think Rev. Nevin speaks volumes.

Coram Deo,
Kenith