"nions:" he laments, that "this catholic principle, so consonant to reason and common sense, should "be rejected by Protestants; who contend, that the "Bible ALONE, without note or comment, is the SOLE rule of faith *"

It is no easy matter to satisfy those, who seem determined to misapprehend and to misrepresent: yet, since Mr. Rutter has thought fit to attack the principle in which all sound Protestants glory, I shall take this opportunity of giving what I conceive to be the true meaning of it.

1. We Protestants are not such enemies to "reason and common sense," as to maintain, that the Bible needs not an expositor, and that the Scriptures "without note or comment" may be just as well understood by this man as by that man: we design not to advance any such glaring absurdity, when we maintain that the revealed word of God is the sOLE rule of faith. But we venture to protest against any mere human interpretation being put upon THE SAME FOOTING OF AUTHORITY, as the word of God itself.

Now the golden rule of St. Vincent seems to us plainly to involve this presumptuous absurdity. For what does it modestly require of us? Not only to receive the Bible, but with it also to receive whatsoever sense a collective body of men in power may think fit to put upon its contents.

St. Vincent and Mr. Rutter talk magnificently of

* Preface to Key. p. xi.

the

the sense of the Catholic Church: but what is this Catholic Church, to which they delegate the functions of an infallible expositor? They will scarcely say, that they mean the Church as comprizing EVERY individual, lettered and unlettered: they must therefore mean, either the general body of the Priesthood, or the Pope viewed as its head. Such being the case, the sense of the Catholic Church, as St. Vincent calls it, plainly resolves itself into the sense of a certain man or of certain men who have obtained the government of the Catholic Church : and his golden rule requires us to admit whatsoever sense this man or these men, who after all are mere fallible mortals like ourselves, may please to impose upon the contents of the Bible.

According to this hypothesis, that searching of the Scriptures whether these things are so, which the inspired writer of the Acts so highly commends in the Berèans, is palpably a lamentable waste of time and labour for where is the use of searching the Scriptures, whether such and such things are indeed as we are assured they are; when, after all, we must have no judgment of our own, but must implicitly receive the sense of the Catholic Church, that is to say the sense of one or more fallible individuals who have obtained power in that Church, as the undoubted sense of Scripture? If we are to believe St. Vincent and Mr. Rutter, when Paul and Silas assured the Berèan Jews that Jesus was the Christ announced in their own Scriptures, they ought not to have searched them whether these things are so; a phrase, which undoubtedly

undoubtedly implies a decision founded upon a discursive act of the intellect: but they ought to have received the assurance without further inquiry, because it exhibited the sense of the Catholic Church. Yet St. Luke strangely differs from St. Vincent on this point, even though Paul and Silas were inspired and therefore truly infallible expositors. The Berèans are still praised for searching the Scriptures, whether those things were so; that is to say, they are praised for taking nothing upon mere trust: and yet St. Vincent has the modesty to propose what Mr. Rutter whimsically enough calls a golden rule, by which the sense of the Catholic Church, no matter whether well or ill founded, that is to say, the sense of a knot of uninspired teachers, is in all cases to be taken without further inquiry, as the undoubted mind of Holy Scripture.

Perhaps Mr. Rutter may say, that the cases are not parallel: for, in the case of the Berèans, the Gospel was then first offered to the unconverted; whereas, in the case of general decisions of the Catholic Church, those decisions are propounded to the converted.

I see not, what he would gain by such a shift, were he disposed to make it. For let me ask him, would he boldly propound to an unconverted Chinese or Hindoo to search the Scriptures, as to the orthodoxy of demonolatry and image-worship and clerical celibacy and a belief in purgatory; just as Paul and Silas left it to the Berèans to judge for themselves from the ancient prophecies, whether

Jesus

Jesus were not indeed the Christ: and would he be content, like the apostles, to rest the issue upon their decision? If he would not, he virtually confesses, that those pretended catholic doctrines cannot be discovered in the Bible without the aid of a Romish pair of spectacles.

2. How then, it may be asked, do Protestants view the matter: and why do they employ a body of men to expound the Bible to the people, if they contend that the Bible itself is the SOLE rule of faith?

(1.) Nothing is more easy than to answer such a question: because nothing is more easy than to perceive the difference, between authoritatively imposing an exposition as INFALLIBLY right, and using those helps with which we are amply provided to ascertain the real sense of Scripture.

From defect of education or from inherent dulness of apprehension, many are incapable of following an argument or of understanding a critical discussion. To them no doubt, when with humble prayer we have used the best means in our power, we must propose many things dogmatically: but to those, who are as capable of judging as ourselves, we must propose them with an earnest exhortation, to search the Scriptures whether those things be so, and not to receive our statements on our bare word alone.

Nay, in many cases, the same exhortation may be profitably addressed even to the most uninstructed, provided only they can read: and it always ought to be addressed to them, when it can. Meanwhile,

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common sense itself shews, that they, who specially devote themselves to a particular line of study, are likely to know more about it than those who do not. This preeminence in theological knowledge we Protestants ascribe to our Priesthood: but why do we ascribe it? Not because episcopal consecration or sacerdotal ordination operates as a charm; making a man at once more wise, more just, more learned, more every thing:" but simply because the subjects of those rites either have, or ought to have, qualified themselves to be teachers by fervent prayer and diligent study. Any well educated layman, if he think fit for his own private satisfaction to read as a divine, is in our opinion just as well qualified to pronounce upon the mind of Scripture; though, without a special and canonical designation to the holy work of the ministry, we Protestants (at least of the Anglican Church) hold him to be not warranted in taking that work upon himself: for, though a man out of office may be as well qualified to be an ambassador as the person who is honoured with the commission of his sovereign; that man, we apprehend, cannot lawfully assume the function of an ambassador unless the sovereign give him authority.

(2.) In short, when we say that the Bible is the SOLE rule of faith, we mean theologically just the same as an Englishman means politically, when he says that the common law of his country is the SOLE rule of obligation. But would any sober man infer from this, that the law required no exposition, or

that