Page images
PDF
EPUB

it to sound Christianity, in this country. In this case, the respectability of the advocates must not make us blind to the danger likely to ensue from the principles which they adopt'.

1 The following extracts from the writings of a late contributor to the "Tracts for the Times," published by his friends, will show that the feelings of at least some members of the body superintending those publications can scarcely be said to be friendly to Protestantism.

"I should like to know why you flinch from saying that the power of making the body and blood of Christ is vested in the successors of the Apostles." Froude's Remains, vol. i. p. 326.

"I verily believe that he (P.) would now gladly consent to see our Communion Service replaced by a good translation of the Liturgy of St. Peter; a name which I advise you to substitute in your notes to - for the obnoxious phrase

[blocks in formation]

"I am led to question whether justification by faith is an integral part of this doctrine (i.e. the doctrine necessary to salvation)." Ib. p. 332.

"Why do you praise Ridley? Do you know any sufficient good about him to counterbalance the fact that he was the associate of Cranmer, Peter Martyr, and Bucer?" Ib. p. 293, 294.

66 Really I hate the Reformation and the Reformers more and more." Ib. 389. "The

The integrity and sufficiency of the written revelation of God's will has been openly and systematically impugned by them. We have been told distinctly, that as the New Testament was written for the use of men previously converted to the Christian faith, it contains the scheme of the Christian doctrines only in such measure as might be expected from words intended rather to remind men of what they already know, than to instruct them in first principles. That accordingly it rather alludes to doctrines, than states what those

"The Reformation was a limb badly set. It must be broken again in order to be righted." Ib. p. 433.

[ocr errors]

"I must say a word or two on your casual remark about the unpopularity of our notions among 'Bible Christians.' Don't you think Newton's system would be unpopular among sky astronomers,' just in the same way? The phenomena of the heavens are repugnant to Newton, just in the same way as the letter of Scripture to the Church, i. e. on the assumption that they contradict every notion which they do not make self-evident, which is the basis of 'Bible Christianity' and also of Protestantism; and of which your trumpery principles about Scripture being the sole rule in fundamentals' (I nauseate the word), is but a mutilated edition." Ib. p. 412, 413.

doctrines really are. That a person, previously prepared by catechetical instruction in the orthodox teaching transmitted by tradition, may indeed find all the necessary truths of Christianity virtually announced in holy writ, but that without such previous discipline of the understanding he would probably search there for these in vain. It is assumed (and, as it appears to me, most gratuitously assumed), that, because the time once existed in the Church's infancy, when the first Apostles preached only by word of mouth, therefore that mode of arriving at truth is at this moment necessary for attaining to certainty in matters of faith, and that there must still be certain outlying doctrines, forming an integral portion of revelation, which have never yet been embodied in inspired Scripture, but are to be picked up only by an humble and laborious search into the opinions and teaching of primitive antiquity. It has been asserted, that even the fundamental doctrine of the blessed Trinity, though undoubtedly so far contained in Scripture, that every one

prepared by previous oral instruction may clearly recognise it there, is still so indistinctly stated, that the mere Bible student would almost necessarily overlook it, and proceed onwards to Socinianism; and that even where the purport of any passage of Scripture appears entirely clear and satisfactory to our own minds, still we are bound to surrender our own judgment, should our construction of the meaning of the sentence appear to be contrary to what we have reason to believe to have been the view taken of it by the primitive church 1. Now if these opinions are really such as I now describe them (and it is far from my wish to overrate or misrepresent them), then I own I see not how it is possible to adopt them without suffering a diminished respect for the sacred writings, and, instead of looking to an infallible and tangible revelation of God's will, finding ourselves left to hunt after truth among all the shifting ca

1 All the above opinions will be familiar with the present residents of this University, as having been advocated from the pulpit.

prices and inventions of human speculation. And surely we may well ask, Can this really be so? Is it, can it be, essential to a sound faith, that we should surrender the verdict of our own deliberate judgment in the attempt to understand the plain text of Scripture, merely because a certain number of uninspired human beings, like ourselves, may have thought otherwise?-men not removed indeed so far as ourselves from the apostolic age in point of time, but perhaps more separated from it than even we ourselves are at the present day, by the interrupted intercourse of man with man which prevailed at that period, by the scanty circulation of their literature, and their ignorance of the necessary canons of sound criticism. If we begin to adopt merely human dogmas, solely because they are ancient, where, it will naturally be asked, are we to stop? What is to limit us to the first seemingly unimportant deviation from or superaddition to the strict letter of Scripture, and to check us from proceeding through all the gradations of a slowly but uniformly deepening

« PreviousContinue »