109SermonsbyJCRyle (continued)
guard. Why do I say this? I say it because there is no security against the doctrine of the Pharisees—unless we resist its principles in their beginnings!
1. Beginning with a "little more about the Church"—You may one day put the Church in the place of Christ.
2. Beginning with a "little more about the ministry"—You may one day regard the minister as "the mediator between God and man."
3. Beginning with a "little more about the sacraments"—You may one day altogether give up the doctrine of justification by faith without the deeds of the law.
4. Beginning with a "little more reverence for the Prayer-book"—You may one day place it above the Holy Word of God itself.
5. Beginning with a "little more honor to Bishops"—You may at last refuse salvation to everyone who does not belong to an Episcopal Church.
I only tell an old story—I only mark out roads that have been trodden by hundreds of members of the Church of England in the last few years. They began by faultfinding at the Reformers, and have ended by swallowing the decrees of the Roman Catholic church. They began by crying about the way things were, and have ended by formally joining the Church of Rome. I believe that when we hear men asking us to "add a little more" to our good old plain Evangelical views, we should stand upon our guard. We should remember our Lord's caution: "Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees!"
I consider the most dangerous champion of the Sadducee school, is not the man who tells you openly that he wants you to lay aside any part of the truth, and to become a free-thinker and a skeptic. It is the man who begins with quietly insinuating doubts as to the position that we ought to take up about religion, doubts whether we ought to be so positive in saying "this is truth, and that falsehood," doubts