“Our whole system of operations gives an undue influence to money. Where money is the great want, numbers must be sought; and where an ambition for numbers prevails, doctrinal purity must be sacrificed. The root of the evil is the secular spirit of our ecclesiastical institutions. What we want is a spiritual body; a Church whose power lies in the truth, and the presence of the Holy Ghost. To unsecularize the Church should be the unceasing aim of all who are anxious that the ways of Zion should flourish.”
–James Henley Thornwell, in a letter dated July 24, 1846, quoted in Benjamin Morgan Palmer, Life and Letters of James Henley Thornwell (Richmond, Va.: Whittet & Shepperson, 1875), 291.
(HT: DG)
