A Blind Eye as Dangerous as a Lame Foot

“We should as ca7’cfully avoid errors as vices; a blind eye is eve7i wo7’se than a lame foot; yea a blind eye 77iay cause a la7ne foot, for he that hath 7iot light is apt to Very few seem to think so, but there is solemn truth in this statement. Men fancy that their minds are their own, and that they may do what they will with them, thinking and believing just as their conceit suggests. But who gave them a release from the authority of God as to this part of their nature? True, they are not bound by the opinions of their fellow-men; but does this give them a dispensation from the supremacy of God. There are revealed truths: have we license to receive or reject them at our pleasure? If we set up our own conceptions as equal or superior to the teachings of the Holy Spirit, are we justified in so doing? One would fancy from the talk of the wiseacres of the period that God did not know his own mind when he wrote the Scriptures, or that, like an old almanack, divine revelation is out of date, and superseded by “modern thought.”

Doctrinal laxity has led to moral license: professors now wander in ways which their sober forefathers would have shuddered at. They will soon be given over to return to the old idolatries of Rome, since they are growing weary of the grand truths of Protestantism. Falsehoods of belief are fitly followed by superstitions in ritual: those who slay the doctrines are not ashamed to mangle the ordinances. We wonder what next, and next!

O Lord, I am willing to be thought a simpleton for believing as reformers, confessors, and martyrs believed, and as thy word teaches. Do not allow me to be blind to thy truth, lest I stumble in my daily life, and become scandalous as well as heretical.