SECT. III. HOLY WRIT SUFFICIENT, WITHOUT THE DICTA OF CHURCHES OR OF INDIVIDUALS, TO BE A RULE OF FAITH AND COMMUNION. [Our] champions are the Prophets and Apostles; SHAKSPEARE. § 1. SUFFICIENCY OF THE SACRED SCRIPTURES. Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation; so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. Articles of the Church of England, Art. 6. All synods or councils, since the apostles' times, whether general or particular, may err, and many have erred: therefore they are not to be made the rule of faith or practice, but to be used as an help in both. The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are the word of God, the only rule of faith and obedience. WESTMINSTER DIVINES: Confession of Faith, chap. xxxi. 4; and Larger Catechism, Quest. 3. All Protestants agree that the Scripture is sufficient to salvation, and contains in it all things necessary to it. ARCHBISHOP LAUD: Conf. with Fisher, p. 34; as quoted in Short and Safe Expedient. If ministers, or councils called general, do err and contradict the word of God, we must do our best to discern it; and, discerning it, must desert their error rather than the truth of God. RICHARD BAXTER Christian Directory, part i. chap. iv. 10; in Practical Works, vol. ii. p. 554. No true Protestant considers him [Luther], or any of the Reformers, as either apostle or evangelist. It is a fundamental principle with such to call no man upon the earth master; knowing that we have one Master, one only infallible Teacher, in heaven, who is Christ. All human teachers are no further to be regarded, than they appear, to the best of our judgment, on impartial examination, to be his interpreters, and to speak his words. The right of private judgment, in opposition to all human claims to a dictatorial authority in matters of faith, is a point so essential to Protestantism, that, were it to be given up, there would be no possibility of eluding the worst reproaches with which the Romanist charges the Reformation; namely, schism, sedition, heresy, rebellion, and I know not what. But if our Lord, the great Author and Finisher of the faith, had ever meant that we should receive implicitly its articles from any human authority, he would never have so expressly prohibited our calling any man upon the earth master, leader, or guide. — DR. GEO. CAMPBELL: Lectures on Ecclesiastical History, Lect. 28. We must not, if we would profit by the examples of Christ and his apostles, refer the people as a decisive authority, on the essential and immutable points of Christian faith and duty, to the declarations or decrees of any class or body of fallible men,—of any who have not sensibly miraculous proofs of inspiration to appeal to. Whether it be to a council or to a church that reference is made, — whether to ancient or to later Christian writers, whether to a great or to a small number of men, however learned, wise, and good, — in all cases the broad line of distinction between inspired and uninspired must never be lost sight of. . . . . . . “When they shall say unto you, Lo, here! or Lo, there! believe it not." If they shall say, Behold! he is in the secret chambers" (of some conclave or council of divines), "or, Behold! he is in the wilderness" (inspiring some enthusiastic and disorderly pretender to a new light), "go not after them." Whether they fix on this or that particular church as the abode of such inspired authority; or on the universal church, — which, again, is to be marked out either as consisting of the numerical majority, or the majority of those who lived within a certain (arbitrarily fixed) period, or a majority of the sound and orthodox believers, i. e. of those in agreement with the persons who so designate them, all these, in their varying opinions as to the seat of the supposed inspired authority, are alike in this, that they are following no track marked out by Christ or his apostles, but merely their own unauthorized conjectures. While one sets up a golden image in Bethel, and another in Dan, saying, “These be thy gods, O Israel!" all are, in fact, "going astray after their own inventions,” and “worshipping the work of their own hands." For, however vehemently any one may decry "the pride of intellect," and the presumption of exercising private judgment, it is plain that that man is setting up, as the absolute and ultimate standard of divine truth, the opinions held by himself or his party, if these are to be the decisive test of what is orthodoxy, and orthodoxy again the test of the genuine church, and the church the authoritative oracle of gospel truth. And yet this slightly circuitous mode of setting up the decrees of fallible man as the object of religious veneration and faith will often be found to succeed in deluding the unwary. — ARCHBISHOP WHATELY: Essays on Dangers to Christian Faith, pp. 130–2, 138–40. We know of no standard but the Bible, nothing that can serve to show the truth of a religious tenet, except the infallible word of God. Councils may change; Fathers of the church may be mistaken; the Reformers were fallible; and shall we who enjoy the benefit resulting from the light and learning of past ages stand still where they stopped, or appeal to them as our guides, just because they attained to eminence at a time when surrounding circumstances were unfavorable to the progress of truth? We were not made to sleep over the Bible, or to stereotype those principles, civil and religious, which it is the glory of our forefathers to have transmitted to their posterity. While rendering due respect to the Reformers, and honoring the men of past times who defended the great truths lying at the foundation of Christian hope, we regard it as nothing less than Popery in principle that very thing in essence which we profess to abhor to call up the names of illustrious dead as the infallible expounders of the Bible, or to give our language the semblance of assuming, that to differ from current opinions is to disown Protestantism and to favor Romanism. When shall the various sections of the Protestant church learn fully, and act out with earnest honesty, the lesson of heaven, "Call no man your father upon the earth; for one is your Father, which is in heaven"? In some instances the Reformers were wrong; in others they were but partially enlightened. They wrote not a few things that cannot be received. Their reasoning is often inconsequential, sometimes absurd; and we should as readily believe in the inspiration of the apocryphal books of the Maccabees as adopt all their opinions with implicit faith. Verily the principle of Romanism is of far wider range and more extended influence than the church of Rome. The church of England, with all her excellence, has something of it. Nonconformists have much of it. Its leaven may be seen quietly impregnating the minds of stereotyped Dissenters, in phases and forms innumerable. DR. SAMUEL DAVIDSON: Introduction to the New Testament, vol. iii. pp. 512-13. Any use of a creed, or a constitution, or a church court, or a council, tending to discountenance the free investigation of the Bible on any and every article whether of belief or of practice, or to shield any portion of the church against those changes to which she ever has been and still is constantly liable from the progressive advancement of biblical knowledge, is a usurpation of the rights of God over the consciences and understandings of men. It is religious despotism under whatever specious forms it may be exercised, and with whatever semblance of earnest contention for the faith once delivered to the saints it may be advocated. New Englander for April, 1844 ; vol. ii. pp. 207–8. § 2. INEFFICACY AND PERNICIOUS RESULTS OF REQUIRING AN ASSENT OR A SUBSCRIPTION TO CREEDS AND ARTICLES OF FAITH. Their urging of subscription [the urging of subscription by church governors] to their own articles, is but lacessere et irritare morbos ecclesiæ, which otherwise would exercise and spend themselves.... He seeketh not unity, but division, who exacteth that in words which men are content to yield in action. And it is true there are some which, as I am persuaded, will not easily offend by inconformity, who, notwithstanding, make some conscience to subscribe. LORD BACON : Advertisement concerning Controversies; in Works, vol. ii. p. 418. The requiring subscriptions to the Thirty-nine Articles is a great imposition. . . . The greater part [of those that serve in the church] subscribe without ever examining them; and others do it because they must do it, though they can hardly satisfy their consciences about some things in them. BISHOP BURNET: History of His Own Time, vol. iv. p. 410. With respect to the doctrine of the Trinity, as explained by Athanasius or any other man, I cannot look upon it to be so fundamental in religion as to think we should be guilty of sin, in consenting to revise, or even to change it. If in this I differ from some, I have others to support me; nay, I have the great principle of all the Protestant churches in the world in my favor; for it is a principle with them all to admit the fallibility of all human explications of Scripture. Every human explication, then, of the Trinity may be an erroneous explication; and what may be an error cannot and ought not to be imposed as a fundamental Christian verity.-BISHOP WATSON: Expediency of Revising the Liturgy, p. 67; apud Christ. Reformer for June, 1839. Subjects purely speculative should be left free. If some are so bold as to determine, who hath a right so to do, in matters of whose nature, it is generally allowed, no one can have any intuition, perception, or knowledge? Who, then, will presume to say positively what a man is or is not to believe? To attempt an explanation of these things, or to make men understand them, is equally ridiculous as to bid the blind to see, or the deaf to hear. How necessary it is, therefore, to read the Scripture, that we might with certainty know what we should believe, and might not be loaded with articles, which, if not altogether useless, are indifferent, and will not make us either the wiser or the better! Our time will be more properly employed in learning our duty, than in exercising a vain curiosity after mysteries. Bad actions are worse than erroneous opinions. The latter flow. from a weak and mistaken judgment: the former proceed. from a wicked and corrupt heart. The one will be forgiven; the other, without repentance, never. Articles of faith should be few in number, and such as are apparently and absolutely necessary, so that to refuse assent to them would be absurd. JAMES PENN, B. A., Under-master of Christ's Hospital: Tracts, p. 13; apud Manning's Vindication of Dissent, pp. 25–6. A long course of experience has clearly demonstrated the inefficacy of creeds and confessions to perpetuate religious belief. Of this the only faithful depository is not that which is "written with ink," but on the "fleshly tables of the heart." The spirit of error is too subtile and volatile to be held by such chains. Whoever is acquainted with ecclesiastical history must know, that public creeds and confessions have occasioned more controversies than they have composed; and that, when they ceased to be the subject of dispute, they have become antiquated and obsolete. A vast majority of the Dissenters of the present day hold precisely the same religious tenets which the Puritans did two centuries ago, because it is the instruction they have uniformly received from their pastors; and, for the same reason, the articles of the national church are almost effaced from the minds of its members, because they have long been neglected or denied by the majority of those who occupy its pulpits. We have never heard of the church of Geneva altering its confession, but we know that Voltaire boasted there was not in his time a Calvinist in the city; nor have we heard of any proposed amendment in the creed of the Scotch, yet it is certain the doctrines of that creed are preached by a rapidly decreasing minority of the Scottish clergy. From these and similar facts, we may fairly conclude, that the doctrines of the church, with or without subscription, are sure to perpetuate themselves where they are faithfully preached; but that the mere circumstance of their being subscribed will neither secure their being preached nor believed. ROBERT HALL: Review of Zeal without Innovation; in Works, vol. ii. pp. 261-2. |