guide to salvation, I know not how any thing can be proved. I will tell you what I am determined to do the next time a Catholic opens his mouth to me about the insufficiency and obscurity of our rule of faith, I mean to take hold of the sword of the Spirit by this handle, 2 Tim. 3: 15, and I mean to hold on to this weapon of heavenly temper, and to wield it manfully, until my opponent surrender or retreat. He cannot stand before it.

But before I close this, I must say, that if the Scriptures which existed when Paul wrote to Timothy were able to make wise unto salvation, how much more are they with what has been added to the canon since? And here, by the way, we have an answer to the question which the Catholic asks with such an air of triumph: "How, if this be your rule of faith, did Christians get along before the New Testament was written and received?" Very well; they had Scriptures enough to make them "wise unto salvation" as early as the time of Timothy; and they had, many years before that, all the Old Testament, and a part of the New. Now, with Moses and the prophets, and the Psalms, and Matthew's Gospel, and perhaps some others, together with a large number of divinely inspired men, I think they must have got along very comfortably.

One thing more I desire to say. It is this: that there is an advantage for understanding the Bible, which does not belong to any book whose author is not personally accessible. The advantage is, that we have daily and hourly opportunity to consult the Author of the Bible on the meaning of it. We can, at any moment we please, go and ask him to interpret to us any

difficult passage. We can lift off our eyes from the word of truth, when something occurs which we do not readily comprehend, and direct them to the throne of grace. And what encouragement we have to do this! James tells us, "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him." So then we have the Bible to inform and guide us, and we have constant opportunities of consulting its Author in regard to its meaning. Is it not enough? I, for one, am satisfied. I can dispense with the fathers, &c. &c.

2. The Source of Heresies.

The Roman Catholics say it is the Bible. They trace all the errors and divisions which prevail, to the Scriptures as their fountain. Do they know whose book it is which they thus accuse? How dare they charge God with being "the Author of confusion ?" But is the Bible to blame for heresies? Christ gives a very different account of the matter. He says, Matt. 22: 29, to the Sadducees, "Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures." He makes ignorance of the Scriptures the source of heresies. He does not agree with the priests.

It is very strange, if the reading of the Scriptures is the cause of heresies in religion, that the Bereans, who searched them daily, because they would not take on trust even what Paul said, (and I suspect they would

not have treated Peter any more civilly,) did not fall into any of these errors. It would seem to have had quite a contrary effect, for it is added, "therefore many of them believed." Acts, 17: 11, 12. Whatever these Bereans were, it is clear that they were not good Catholics.

But after all it is not surprising that these noble Bereans did not fall into any fatal error by reason of reading the Scriptures, since Peter says of Paul's hardest parts, and most obscure passages, that they do nobody any harm, but such as are both "unlearned and unstable;" and that they do them no harm, except they wrest them, that is, do absolute violence to them. 2 Pet. 3: 16.

3. Private Interpretation.

'It is known to every body how strenuously the Catholics oppose the reading of the Bible, or rather, I should say, the reader exercising his mind on the Bible which he reads. He may read for himself, if he will only let the church think for him. He may have a New Testament, and he may turn to such a passage as John, 3: 16, "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son," &c. or to that, Matt. 11: 28, 30, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest," &c. and he may read the words, but then he must not attempt to put a meaning upon them, though it be very difficult

to avoid attaching a sense to them, since they are quite as easy to be understood as they are to be read. But he must not do it. At his peril he must not. He is guilty of the crime of private interpretation, if he does. Before he pretends to understand those passages. he must inquire how the church has always interpreted them, and what the popes and general councils have thought about them, and how all the fathers, from Barnabas to Bernard, not one excepted, have understood them. Well, now, it strikes me as rather hard upon the poor sinner, that he should be made to go through this long and difficult process before he is permitted to admire the love of God in the gift of his Son, and before he can go to Jesus for rest. And somehow I cannot help suspecting that it is not necessary to take this circuitous course, and that it is not so very great a sin when one reads such passages, to understand them according to the obvious import of their terms.

But the Catholic asks, "Does not Peter condemn private interpretation ?" And they point us to his 2d Epistle, 1:20. "Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation." Now you must know that Catholics, though they have no great attachment to the Bible, are as glad as any people can be, when they can get hold of a passage of it, which seems to establish some tenet of theirs. And as only a very small portion of the Bible has even the appearance of favoring them, one may observe with what eagerness they seize upon, and with what tenacity they cling to the rare passages which seem to befriend their cause. Thus they do with this passage of Peter. They quote it with an air of triumph,

and exultingly ask what Protestants can have to reply to it.

Now, in the name of Protestants, I will state in two or three particulars what we have to say in opposition to the Catholic inference from these words of Peter. We say that that passage does not make for the Catholic cause, first, because if the right of private judgment and private interpretation is taken away by it, as they affirm, yet it is taken away with respect to only a small part of the Bible, viz. the prophetic part. He does not say that any other part, the historical, the didactic, or the hortatory, is of private interpretation, but only the prophetic, that part in which something is foretold. He does not say no Scripture, but "no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation." Allowing then to the Catholic all which he contends for, we are left with by far the larger part of the Bible open to private interpretation. Peter restricts us only in the matter of prophecy !

But secondly, let me say, that to whatever the remark of the apostle has reference, it can easily be shown that it does not mean what the Catholic understands it to mean. This is evident from what follows it. I wish the reader would turn to the passage. He will perceive that Peter, having said that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation, proceeds to assign the reason of that assertion, or rather, as I think, goes into a further and fuller explanation of what he had said: "For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, (that is, it was not of human invention, it did not express the conjectures of men,) but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." Now I would ask if this reason