Monday, October 12, 2009

The Destructiveness of Polemic - then and now


There is something in the nature of controversial writing so corruptive of the morality, so apt to destroy some of the noblest graces of a Christian life, that I look upon the case to be much the same in [such writing], as it is in other wars, and that nothing less than an absolute necessity ought to engage a good man in either…. I would to God our own time had not given us too many instances of it; to the scandal of our religion…. But of all kinds of controversies, as there are usually none more unseasonable, so neither are there any which a man would less desire to be engaged in, than those which arise among such as are members of the same church, as well as of the same civil society; and have thereby the strictest obligations lying upon them to love and unity with one another.

William Wake (1657-1737), Archbishop of Canterbury.

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