Church Action on Temperance [pp. 595-632]

Church Action
munion; and under these conditions, leaving each to his own
liberty with regard to man, and in view of his accountability to
God, we think demonstrable from the following considerations:
1, From the subject-matter to which it relates. It refers exclusively to the mutual duties of two classes of Christians, one
of whom regarded certain things in reality morally indifferent
as sinful, while the other, with fuller knowledge and stronger
Christian insight, regarded and treated them as innocent, and
had no scruples, on their own account, about doing them. The
former class consisted either of Jewish converts, as in Rom. xiv.,
who were still so far in the twilight of Christian knowledge as
to think the observance of the sacred days peculiar to the Jewish
dispensation, and of abstinence from certain meats prohibited
under it as ceremonially unclean, still binding upon Christians.
The case dealt with in the First Epistle to the Corinthians is that
of heathen converts who supposed that eating meats which had
been offered to idols involved some sort of homage to those idols,
or contracted the guilt of idol-worship. The more enlightened
converts, however, knew that the Jewish sacred days and forbidden meats, and meats that had been offered to idols in sacrifice, were simply like other days and other food, and that observing, using, or abstaining from them was simply indifferent.
Now the danger was, as the context shows, that a breach of
charity might be committed by the parties concerned in two
ways: a. That the better instructed would despise the less
informed for their blind scrupulosity, and repel them by their
overbearing pride of superior knowledge; and on the other,
that the weaker class would judge and condemn the others as
sinners for neglecting these uncommanded observances. This
appears clearly from the Apostle's charge to both parties, Rom.
xiv. 2, 3: "For one believeth that he may eat all things;
another, who is weak, eateth herbs. Let not him that eateth
despise him that eateth not; and let not him which eateth not
judge him that eateth: for God hath received him." b. There
was the still greater danger, because so liable to be overlooked
or ignored, that those having the superior knowledge would do
without hesitation those things which they knew to be innocent
and their weaker brethren believed sinful, in circumstances
when their example would tempt tlhe latter to imitate them by
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LOCTOBER,