The Divine Thing that made itself the foundation of the Church does not seem, to judge by his comments on the religious leadership of his day, to have hoped much from officers of a church.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The divine is perhaps that quality in man which permits him to endure the lack of God.
There is a kind of thinking in the Church that wants to reduce the priest to a mere functionary, a managing director, where administration rather than doctrine and worship are to determine the form of the Church.
The faith of the church must be tried by God's word, and not God's word by the church; neither yet my faith.
As priests uphold their people in prayer, so their people are to uphold them with prayer and love, for he cannot work without his people.
Therefore, the church is not absolutely necessary as an object of faith, not even for us today, for then Abraham and the other prophets would not have given assent to those things which were revealed to them from God without any intervening help of the church.
I still consider myself a very spiritual person but the structure of the church isn't really for me.
The church, inserted and active in human society and in history, does not exist in order to exercise political power or to govern the society.
I think the Church is a conduit to God. The Church is not God. And I think that from the very beginning Jesus taught us that.
Every church is a stone on the grave of a god-man: it does not want him to rise up again under any circumstances.
The quality of the Lord's church on earth, cannot be seen by any man, so long as he lives in the world, still less how the church in process of time has turned aside from good to evil.