Sermon Central
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Not Pure Enough
Contributed by Jeff Strite on Feb 6, 2011 (message contributor)
NOT PURE ENOUGH
Back in the 1600's a man named Roger Williams who left England and came over to join the Puritans. He was a very gifted preacher and many churches asked him to come fill their pulpits. But Williams had one major flaw - an overwhelming desire to have purist doctrine he could manage.
One writer said that "William's insistence upon absolute purity in the Church, beyond all normal extremes, grew out of his own personal obsession with having to be right -- in doctrine, in conduct, in church associations -- in short, in every area of life. This need to be right colored everything he did or thought; indeed it drove him into one untenable position after another..."
Eventually this passion made him believe the Puritans weren't pure enough for him. So he moved down to Plymouth to join the Pilgrims -- believers who referred to themselves as Separatists. And for a while he was welcomed amongst them. But after a while, the Separatists weren't separated enough for him. His obsession with purity caused him to separate himself from more and more people until the only person he deemed fit to take Communion with him was his wife, and one historian says that even she was finally found to be "impure."
(From "The Light and the Glory" by Peter Marshall, David Manuel, p. 192 ff)
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