ORGANIC CHRISTIANITY; ов, THE CHURCH OF GOD, WITH ITS OFFICERS AND GOVERNMENT, AND ITS DIVISIONS AND CLEVELAND, OHIO: JEWETT, PROCTOR & WORTHINGTON. 1854. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by LEICESTER A. SAWYER, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. STEREOTYPED BY New England Type and Stereotype Foundry, BOSTON. INTRODUCTION. THE author has bestowed much labor on this work, and hopes it will be found a valuable contribution to the literature of the times. The work was begun some years since, with a view to furnish a text-book for the study of Ecclesialogy and Church Polity in theological seminaries. It embraces a critical examination of the church, as instituted by its divine founder, and as it was administered and extended by the apostles. This occupies the First Part. The Second Part relates to the churches of the first five hundred years after the age of the apostles, and describes the gradual rise of the Episcopacy and Papacy in the West, and the Episcopacy and Patriarchy in the East, together with Monachism, and other deviations from apostolic usage. Part Third relates to the Patriarchal and Papal churches, and exhibits concisely their principles and polities, demonstrating their great corruptions, and their incompetency to meet the demands of weak, erring and suffering humanity, and to accomplish its renovation and necessary improvement. Part Fourth relates to the revolutionary churches of mod-" ern times: the Lutheran church, the church of England, the Episcopal church of the United States, the Methodist Episcopal churches, the Presbyterian churches, the Congregational churches, and several minor sects. Presbyterianism |