Church Action on Temperance [pp. 595-632]

Church Action
ever we may be moved by the impulses of Christian love
to abstain from the one or the other, and however there may in
some circumstances be sin in not so abstaining from them, or
either of them, such abstinence is not enforceable by church
discipline, and could not be made a bar to comniunion without
danger of excluding some whom Christ has received. For who
but Romanists would think of enforcing abstinence from meat,
and this on certain days, by exclusion from the Lord's table?
3. Still further, this conclusion respecting the Apostle's
meaning is clinched by his forbidding either party to judge
or condemn the other. "Let not him which eateth not,
judge him that eateth, for God hath received him." So far,
therefore, as Paul's argument for abstaining from things indifferent which may wound weak Christians is concerned, it in its
very nature precludes making excommunication its penalty for
refusing so to abstain. It forbids those who abstain to judge
those who do not. Instead of excommunication of one party by
the other, he forbids it alike to both.
Unless, therefore, we are utterly astray in our whole conception of the scriptural view of expediency and liberty with
respect to the disuse of things indifferent, it is only applicable
where excommunication is inapplicable. Whatever may be
true, therefore, of the doctrine of the deliverance of 1865 with
respect to the disciplinable character of the pure and simple
making, selling, and drinking of intoxicating beverages, the
argument adopted to prove it is fallacious. It is always
hazardous for deliberative bodies to vote not only doctrines or
measures, but extended arguments to sustain them, especially
without thorough discussion. New judges have often been
advised by their seniors that they will be less likely to go far
astray if they do not amplify the reasons for their decisions.
Documents of that length, importance, and difficulty, ought to be
circulated in print among the members of a church court some
time before voting upon them, that they may be thoroughly understood, examined, criticised and perfected preparatory to final
action upon them. So was it with the basis of reunion adopted by
the Assemblies of 1869; so is it with every act of any importance
before our legislatures, State and national.
It is an incidental confirmation of the view we have taken of
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