"The Wants of the Times," J. C. Ryle (1816-1900)"that the professing Church of the nineteenth century is much damaged by laxity and indistinctness about matters of doctrine within, as much as by skeptics and unbelievers without. Myriads of professing Christians seem nowadays utterly unable to distinguish things that differ. Like people afflicted with colour blindness, they are incapable of discerning what is true and what is false, what is sound and what is unsound. Popery and Protestantism, an atonement or no atonement, a personal Holy Ghost or no Holy Ghost, future punishment or no future punishment . . . nothing comes amiss to them; they can swallow it all, if they cannot digest it! Carried away by a fancied liberality and charity they seem to think everybody is right and nobody is wrong . . . everybody is going to be saved and nobody is going to be lost. . . . They dislike distinctness and think all extreme and decided and positive views are very naughty and very wrong."
"These people live in a kind of mist or fog. They see nothing clearly and they do not know what they believe. They have not made up their minds about any great point of the Gospel and seem content to be honorary members of all schools of thought." Elsewhere he describes this "creed" as "Nothingarianism."
From the LIBERALITY which says everybody is right,
From the CHARITY which forbids us to say that anyone is wrong,
From the PEACE which is bought at the expense of truth--
May the good Lord deliver us.
J C Ryle
http://www.banneroftruth.org/pages/articles/article_detail.php?239
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