has
displaced the style of the living oracles, and affixed to the sacred
diction ideas wholly unknown to the apostles of Christ.

To remedy and obviate these aberrations, they propose to ascertain from
the holy Scriptures, according to the commonly-received and
well-established rules of interpretation, the ideas attached to the
leading terms and sentences found in the holy Scriptures, and then to use
the words of the Holy Spirit in the apostolic acceptation of them.

By thus expressing the ideas communicated by the Holy Spirit, in the terms
and phrases learned from the apostles, and by avoiding the artificial and
technical language of scholastic theology, they propose to restore a pure
speech to the household of faith; and, by accustoming the family of God to
use the language and dialect of the heavenly Father, they expect to
promote the sanctification of one another through the truth, and to
terminate those discords and debates which have always originated from the
words which man's wisdom teaches, and from a reverential regard and esteem
for the style of the great masters of polemic divinity; believing that
speaking the same things in the same style, is the only certain way to
thinking the same things.

They make a very marked difference between faith and opinion; between the
testimony of God and the reasonings of men; the words of the Spirit and
human inferences. Faith in the testimony of God, and obedience to the
commandments of Jesus, are their bond of union, and not an agreement in
any abstract views or opinions upon what is written or spoken by divine
authority. Hence all the speculations, questions, debates of words, and
abstract reasonings, found in human creeds, have no place in their
religious fellowship. Regarding Calvinism and Arminianism, Trinitarianism
and Unitarianism, and all the opposing theories of religious sectaries, as
_extremes_ begotten by each other, they cautiously avoid them, as
equidistant from the simplicity and practical tendency of the promises and
precepts, of the doctrine and facts, of the exhortations and precedents,
of the Christian institution.

They look for unity of spirit and the bonds of peace in the practical
acknowledgment of one faith, one Lord, one immersion, one hope, one body,
one Spirit, one God and Father of all; not in unity of opinions, nor in
unity of forms, ceremonies, or modes of worship.

The holy Scriptures of both Testaments they regard as containing
revelatio