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AND ITS CORRUPTIONS.

VOL. III.

DEPARTMENT OF ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY.

A SERIES OF DISCOURSES

DELIVERED IN HOPEDALE, MASS.,

A. D. 1871-72,

BY ADIN BALLOU.

EDITED BY WILLIAM S. HEYWOOD.

"For ye were as sheep going astray, but are now returned unto
the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.". -1 Pet. ii. 25.

"My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow
me."- John x. 27.

"Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all
iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good
works. These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke, with all author.
ity."— Titus ii. 14, 15.

LOWELL, MASS.:

THOMPSON & HILL, PRINTERS. — THE VOX POPULI PRESS.

1900.

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EDITOR'S PREFACE.

This Volume is the third and concluding one of the series projected by the author and prepared in part for publication some years before his decease. Like those already issued, it is composed of certain Discourses written and delivered in the usual order of Sunday service, while he was Minister of an independent Religious Society in Hopedale, Mass., his place of residence for nearly fifty years. In its completed form the work may be regarded as embodying his mature and undoubted convictions touching the great questions of truth and duty which engaged his attention and taxed his energies during the greater portion of his long and active life; as his last contribution to the religious literature of the world; his legacy to inquiring and progressive minds in generations that were to come when he should have passed beyond the scenes of earth and time. It is the fruit of a definite and disinterested purpose on the part of the writer to serve his Maker and his fellow-men in some substantial, enduring way. a purpose which dominated his whole being and which gave meaning, dignity, and worth to his character and career.

The three volumes which make up the series, all bearing the common title of "PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY AND ITS CORRUPTIONS," follow each other in the natural and logical order of succession. The first, under the sub-title of "THEOLOGICAL DOCTRINES," treating of the Divine Order of the world and universe and the Moral Government under which all rational and responsible beings therein exist, constitutes the foundation upon which the theory and practice set forth in the subsequent ones rest. The second, devoted to that

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