Posted by Francis Turretin on FB, yet without an academic
citation. Nevertheless, these are
excellent thoughts on the church under age, obscured and rent asunder and
asore.
Our opinion is confirmed by various reasons. The first is
drawn from the condition of the church under the Old Testament, under which it
is evident that she was not rarely obscured and destitute of all splendor
(which can easily be demonstrated by her various intervals). Who can deny that
she was without splendor before the flood, when all flesh had corrupted its way
(Gen. 6:12), and in the flood when reduced to eight souls, she was included in
the ark? In the time of Abraham before his call from Ur of the Chaldees, she
lay concealed in a paternal family given to idolatry (Jos. 24:1, 2). What was
the splendor of the church in Egypt, where she was so long a captive without
any form either of a state or of a sacred ministry? What was her splendor under
the judges, when after the death of Joshua the Israelites, having left the God
of their fathers, went after other gods (Jdg. 2:7; 3:8, 12), concerning which
times Azariah says, "Now for a long season...
Israel hath been without the true God, and without a teaching
priest, and without law" (2 Ch. 15:3)? What appearance and splendor did
the church have in the time of Elijah, when he thought that he was left alone
to worship God (1 K. 19:10); God in the meantime consoling him with this-that
he had preserved seven thousand believers known to himself alone who had not
bowed the knee to Baal? What splendor had the Jewish church under Ahaz,
Manasseh, Ammon and other wicked kings under whom the sacrifice was interrupted
by law, the gates of the temple closed, an altar built after the form of those
of Damascus by Uriah the high priest and idolatry introduced everywhere (as we
read in 2 K. 16:11, 12, 14; 2 Ch. 28:3, 4, 24, 25)? And if we come down to the
Babylonian captivity, where was the splendor of the church after the city had
been razed, the temple polluted, the sacred vessels taken away, sacrifice
abolished, the worship of God interrupted (which could not be performed except
at Jerusalem) and the people brought into the most direful servitude? Hence the
pious most mournfully lamented that the prophets and all the signs had been
taken away (Ps. 74:9). In fine, what appearance and prominence could the church
have had under the most dreadful persecutions of Antiochus and his successors,
mentioned in the book of Maccabees and by Josephus (JW 1.30-40 [Loeb,
2:16-23]). In that time, Paul says believers "were stoned...were slain
with the sword...being destitute...tormented, they wandered about in sheepskins
and goatskins; in deserts, and in mountains and in caves of the earth" (Heb.
11:37, 38).
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