CHAPTER 2

ON THE RUIN OF THE CHURCH.
Among the points which the author of the " Examination " has left aside, I will mention the ruin of the Church; next, the doctrine of the return of Christ; finally, that which relates to the conflict with the Catholic hierarchy. It may be very convenient not to be occupied with it; but how form a sound judgment as to ministry and the Church in relation to it, if we put aside the question of the ruin of the Church?
I have insisted that ministry is a divine thing, an institution of God, all the energy of which comes from on high; that man having been unfaithful, the Church, in whose midst ministry was exercised, is in ruin, and that the external order which is connected with ministry has fallen with her. It is attempted to answer me by putting aside the subject of the ruin of the Church. That is nevertheless the very root of the question.
We insist on the fact that the house has been ruined, its ordinances perverted, its order and all its arrangements forsaken or destroyed; that human ordinances, a human order, have been substituted for them; and, what merits all the attention of faith, we insist that the Lord, the Master of the house, is coming soon in His power and glory to judge all this state of things. And here we have a disciple who, when this Master is rousing the attention of His own to the real state of things, when He is directing it to the house which He had been the one to build at the beginning, and to the judgment He intends to execute on account of the unfaithfulness which has suffered His house to fall to ruin, here, I say, is a disciple who, though he is responsible, is not occupied with these things. The one who holds this language is a member of a system; he gives out this system as the house, and those who act in it as servants of the Master.
No, no, nothing of the kind! The house is in ruin, and you are bad imitators acting from your own leading, and wrongly.
How avoid the question of the ruin of the Church? How judge of the state of the Church without entering upon the question of its ruin, the question of the abandonment of the principles on which God established it, and the position in which He had placed it?
It is not possible. It is even so impossible, that while desirous of avoiding this question, the author of the " Examination," treats it in his fashion; for he constructs a system entirely opposed to the fact of the ruin of the Church. According to him, there has always been a real progress; the suppression of the apostles was a benefit, their presence hindering the development of the Church (pp. 77, 78); blossoms fell, in order that excellent fruits should be produced.
Thus, far from seeing the Church in ruin, the author of the " Examination " finds it in a state of youth... of which faith, hope, and love form the imperishable crown." Far from finding in clerical ministry a human institution substituted for the ministry of the Spirit, he surpasses even Popery, in the judgment of the " Archives," in the position he gives to the Protestant clergy.
We are then led, in following the author of the " Examination," to consider the question of the ruin of the Church, not directly and in itself, but to take cognizance of the system which is set against it, and to judge, according to the scriptures, of the foundations on which it is endeavored to base it.