The true church of God, comprising all Christians, has in her normal
state under her divine head certain essential characteristics which
make her exclusively the church, the whole and not a part. These
might be expressed as follows:
1. Possession of divine spiritual life. If the church does not
possess this she is not Christ's body and therefore not the church.
She must know the Spirit of God.
2. Disposition to obey all Scripture and to let the Spirit have his
way and rule. This constitutes her safety in matters of doctrine and
government.
3. An attitude receptive to any further truth and light. This
safeguards against dogmatism and a spirit of infallibility and
intolerance, against interpreting Christianity in the light of
traditions and old ideas.
4. Acknowledgment of good wherever found and the placing of no
barrier that would exclude any who might be Christians. This makes
salvation, a holy life, and a Christian spirit the only test of
fellowship, and disapproves all human standards of church membership
and fellowship.
We repeat that these constitute the Scriptural standard of the church
and characterize her in her unity and integrity. It is by lacking in
one or more of these essentials that a sect is a sect. In the rise of
the church out of apostasy any reformation that does not develop to
the full the essentials that characterize the church in her wholeness
and completeness must necessarily fall short of being the final
reformation and must leave a cause for further reformation. This is
the explanation of the existence of the so-called Christian sects,
viewing them in the most charitable light. The Wesleys and their
early associates sought for deeper personal spirituality as well as
better spiritual association than was afforded in the state church
of England. They brought to light and gave particular prominence to
the doctrine of sanctification by faith and the witness of the Holy
Spirit. Their work was a reform; but as in that day the question of
division among Christians was not prominent, nor was the question
of the one true church understood or appreciated, their work took
definite form in a body humanly organized and called Methodist. The
Campbells had considerable light on the unity of the church, and
proposed the Scriptures alone as a basis on which all Christians
could unite. But they blindly shut themselves in on a point of
doctrine by associating entrance into the kingdom or church with
the act of immersion in such manner as to make a wall between them
and other Christians who should give evidence of having received
salvation and therefore church membership, otherwise than through
baptism. Thus they made themselves a sect. John Winebrenner had the
correct idea of the church as comprising all the saved, and his work
was on an unsectarian basis. Lacking, however, in the quality of
letting the Spirit of God rule, eldership organizations were soon set
up, a man rule came in, and they also became a sect. Inflexible as to
doctrine, they closed the door of progress on themselves, rejected
the truth on holiness, and became one of the most narrow of sects,
though bearing the Scriptural name, Church of God.