The following is the continuation of an article written by J. R. Howard and originally published in the American Christian Review, edited then by elder Benjamin Franklin (not the statesman). I will present more of this article at a later time. Please review the previous posts to get the complete context.
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CREEDS

Such documents as human “creeds,” “Confessions of Faith,” “Disciplines,” “Articles of Faith,” “Abstracts of Doctrine,” etc., were totally unknown to the Apostles, never permitted by them, and have no authority whatever, not the least shadow of authority anywhere in the Bible or New Testament, but are subversive of its authority, full of evil tendencies, and supplant that volume by their uninspired, unauthorized human legislation, and usurping and nullifying the ordinances and commandments of God, by their assumed authority over the minds and consciences of men. “In vain do they worship me,” says Christ, “teaching for doctrine the commandments of men.” “Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition.” “Making the word of God of none effect through your traditions.” These written and published creeds virtually “add to” or “take from” the Bible, and incur the Divine malediction for so doing, pronounced there for all such conduct. They create and continue parties, foment disunion, and keep up and perpetuate divisions.

The primitive Christians had no other creed but the Bible, nor did those who lived for ages after them. This alone kept them united for three hundred years, kept out heresy, and was all-sufficient to perfect them in holiness and character. And if the Bible was sufficient then for all these purposes, it is amply so now; and we have no need of human creeds.

The Church now which has no creed but the Bible, which owns and recognizes none other, whose motto is, “The Bible, the Bible alone, and nothing but the Bible,” is, all things else being equal, the true Church of Christ.

UNITY

Another mark of the genuine Church of Christ is its unity… It was but one–a unit. Jesus calls it “my Church,” thus implying that it could be but one, a unit, and not “churches” in the plural. Wherever it is mentioned in the New Testament, in the general or abstract, it is only as one. “There is one body and one Spirit”–“the Church, which is his body.” “By one Spirit we are all baptized into one body.” “We have many members in one body.” ” Now they are many members, yet but one body.” “Ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.” Hence the Church is composed of one general body, and not many sectarian bodies, and had no sectarian “branches.” How would a cedar tree look, with here an apple branch, there a peach branch, yonder a pear branch, and yonder a cherry branch? How odd, unnatural and grotesque would it appear! And how would the old Jerusalem trunk look, with a Roman Catholic branch, an Episcopalian branch, a Baptist branch, a Presbyterian branch, a Methodist branch, etc. What an odd, unnatural and heterogeneous appearance would it present? But it neither has, and never had, any of these sectarian branches growing from it. Its branches are all homogeneous with itself-—of the same nature, and nothing more than its members, or the organizations composing the true Church of Christ.

Eric L. Padgett