Samuel Miller on the rise of heresy
I found this quotation attributed to Samuel Miller in a recent article by a URCNA minister. Checking his footnote I found that it’s from a volume I have in my library and I reproduce that quotation here for your edification. Miller’s words are as remarkably insightful as they are timely.
When heresy rises in an evangelical body, it is never frank and open. It always begins by skulking, and assuming a disguise. Its advocates, when together, boast of great improvements, and congratulate one another on having gone greatly beyond the “old dead orthodoxy,” and on having left behind many of its antiquated errors: but when taxed with deviations from the received faith, they complain of the unreasonableness of their accusers, as they “differ from it only in words.” This has been the standing course of errorists ever since the apostolic age. They are almost never honest and candid as a party, until they gain strength enough to be sure of some degree of popularity. (Introductory Essay by Samuel Miller, 1841. As found in Scott, Thomas, The Articles of the Synod of Dort. Harrisonburg, Virginia: Sprinkle Publications, 1993, pp. 16-17.)