02.06. Christian

Christian

Elder Stone, with heroic faith, clung to the name Christian, and worked with untiring energy and increasing zeal for the oneness of all God’s children, with the Bible as the only creed. His idea of a true church was that it was a company of Christian people, united to one another in the service of God by voluntary covenant, and under the spiritual Lordship of Jesus Christ, with the Bible as the creed, and Christian the name. On the question of the name he says, in "Address to the Churches:"

"We have taken the name Christian, not because we considered ourselves more pure than others--but because we knew it was the name first given to the disciples of Jesus by Divine authority. It better agreed with our spirit, which is to unite with all Christians, without regard to names or distinctions. There are party names too many already in the world, without our assuming another. But our brethren, unwilling for us to bear that name, have given us others we will not own--as New-lights and Schismatics. The name New-lights is not novel. It was long ago given to Whitefield, to Wesley, to the former Methodists, to the new-side Presbyterians, or New-Brunswick Presbytery, to the first Baptists in Virginia, and indeed to every sect of living Christians in my remembrance for years past. To be called by the name of such worthies we need not blush. But this name, the least of all others, agrees with our profession. We have professed no new light--but that old, unsullied light which shines in the Bible.

"Did we profess, as others, that we must be enlightened by some supernatural power, a power extraneous from the Word, before we could believe the Word, then, with propriety, we might be called New-lights. Or did we profess a great many doctrines as true, which we could not prove by the Word of God, then we might be called so; but these professions we have never made; therefore, the name does not apply to us."