E.M.A. 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 or THE 
 
 Theological Seminar 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
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 BX 
 
 Dal 
 Pre 
 
 4810 .D35 187AX 
 
 e, R. W. 1829-1895. 
 
 >testantism 
 
 
 ■ III 
 
PROTESTANTISM : 
 
 ITS ULTIMATE PRINCIPLE. 
 
PROTESTANTISM 
 
 |fs TOimafe UrmcipU, 
 
 BY 
 
 R. W. ' DALE, M.A, 
 
 BIRMINGHAM. 
 
 Hontion : 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 
 
 27, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 MDCCCLXXIV, 
 
Butler & Tanner, 
 
 The Selwood Printing Works, 
 
 Frome, and London. 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 HE substance of this little volume 
 was delivered, as a Lecture, in 
 Exeter Hall, on March 2nd, 1874, and was 
 repeated in the same place on March 23rd. 
 
 Several friends of mine, who heard the 
 Lecture, have requested me to print it. 
 
 In complying with their request I have 
 thrown aside some of the rhetorical accesso- 
 ries of the Lecture ; but without re-writing it 
 from end to end, it would have been impos- 
 sible to redeem the argument from the rhe- 
 torical form which might have been allowable 
 in a spoken address, but which is hardly 
 suitable for a printed book. 
 
 It should be clearly understood, that the 
 Committee of the Young Men's Christian 
 
vi PREFATORY NOTE, 
 
 Association, which did me the honour of re- 
 questing me to deliver and to re-deliver the 
 Lecture, has no kind of responsibility for 
 what is now published. It is probable that 
 in the Lecture itself there were a few things 
 from which some members of the Committee 
 would dissent ; and there are many sentences 
 and paragraphs in these pages which were 
 not written till the Lecture was revised for 
 publication. 
 
 R. W. DALE. 
 
 Birmingham, 
 
 March 13, 1874. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 IPREFATORY Note 
 
 Introductory . ... 
 
 I. The Right of Private Judgment . 
 
 II. The Authority of Holy Scripture 
 
 III. Justification by Faith 
 CONCLUSIOI^ . . . ^ • • 
 
 PAGE 
 V 
 
 > 18 
 
 . 45 
 
 » 75 
 
 ^ 87 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 ITHIN the last five-and-twenty years 
 a great change has passed upon the 
 spirit and temper of the English nation. I 
 can remember the time when the anta- 
 gonism with which for more than three hun- 
 dred years the vast majority of the English 
 people had regarded the Church of Rome, was 
 one of the most powerful elements of our 
 national life. It controlled our theological 
 controversies ; it was appealed to with confi- 
 dence by the chiefs of political parties ; its 
 influence was obvious in .our social intercourse. 
 Roman Catholic priests were regarded with 
 mingled distrust, contempt, and dread. The 
 characteristic doctrines of the Roman Catholic 
 
4 PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 Church were spoken of with intellectual scorn ; 
 the pretensions of the Pope to infallibility, 
 for instance — pretensions which at those times 
 were not sustained by the authority of a 
 General Council, — and the dogma of transub- 
 stantiation, were supposed to be too monstrous 
 to require serious discussion ; the invocation 
 of saints and the homage offered to the 
 Virgin Mary were treated as nothing better 
 than idolatry, and reverence for relics as a 
 childish superstition. All the instruments and 
 apparatus of Romish worship, decorated altars, 
 consecrated wafers, crucifixes, the gorgeous 
 robes of the priests, were regarded as things 
 which carried infection with them ; and the 
 worship itself as a profane insult to the 
 majesty of God. 
 
 In those days it was customary to speak 
 of the Jesuits as men who had reduced 
 equivocation and lying to a science, and con-* 
 secrated falsehood in the name of religion \ 
 
INTRODUCTORY. - 5 
 
 nor was there any crime from which it was 
 imagined that a Jesuit would shrink if the 
 ' interest of the Church appeared to require it. 
 Most English people regarded the confes- 
 sional with horror and disgust ; it was an 
 abomination not to be tolerated in a free 
 and Christian community ; an institution for 
 corrupting the morals of women and for 
 investing the priesthood with a dark and 
 terrible power oyer the happiness of families 
 and the liberties of nations. The Roman 
 Catholic Church was the very symbol and 
 representative of all the worst evils which can 
 desolate Christendom ; it had plunged Europe 
 into darkness for centuries ; it was the irrecon- 
 cilable foe of intellectual freedom ; it was the 
 ally of political despotism ; it had been guilty 
 of falsehood and treachery^ covetousness and 
 ambition, and of cruelties more atrocious than 
 had ever disgraced the worst form of pa- 
 ganism ; it had repressed with fire and sword, 
 
6 PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 with the branding iron, the gibbet, and the 
 stake, every noble struggle for truth and 
 liberty ; it had cursed, imprisoned, tortured, 
 and burnt men of illustrious genius and heroic 
 goodness ; it had massacred thousands and 
 tens of thousands of the common people who 
 had dared to challenge its authority ; it was 
 drunk with the blood of saints. Atheism 
 itself had an apology and a palliation in the 
 superstition and crimes of this corrupt and 
 tyrannical Church. 
 
 Speaking broadly, this was the creed of at 
 least the vast majority of the English peo- 
 ple a quarter of a century ago. Even then, 
 indeed, in some quarters the ancient loyalty 
 of the nation to Protestantism had begun to 
 give way. There were clergymen and scholars 
 who had learnt to look upon Romanism, 
 not only with charity, but with sympathy. 
 Among the aristocratic classes there was al- 
 ready a disposition to tolerate and even to 
 
INTRODUCTOR\, 7 
 
 admire the external forms of Romish wor- 
 ship and certain Romish institutions. Some 
 of the leaders of political parties, though 
 willing enough at times to take advantage 
 of the popular hatred of Romanism, were 
 very much disposed to attempt the solution 
 of English difficulties in Ireland by taking 
 the Roman Catholic priesthood into the pay 
 of the State. But the manufacturers, the 
 tradesmen, and the professional men of the 
 country seemed, at least, to be faithful to 
 the principles and traditions of the Refor- 
 mation ; dnd the great masses of the working 
 people had an intense abhorrence of Rome. 
 What Dr. Newman has called the "Protes- 
 tant prejudice" was, no doubt, to a very 
 large extent both ignorant and unjust, but 
 its intensity and depth can hardly be ques- 
 tioned. 
 
 It would take a long time to discuss the 
 causes of the great change through which 
 
8 PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 the public mind has passed since then. The 
 reality of the change is apparent. Crucifixes 
 have become a common ornament of libraries 
 and drawing-rooms. The services of hundreds 
 of churches not belonging to the Roman com- 
 munion approximate very closely to the Ro- 
 man type. The doctrine of the Real Presence 
 is openly taught from thousands of Anglican 
 pulpits ; and although that doctrine may not 
 be identical with the doctrine of Transub- 
 stantiation, the difference between the two is 
 philosophical and not religious. We hear of 
 the ** sacrifice of the Mass" where we used 
 to hear of the "Holy Communion" or the 
 "Lord's Supper." .All over the country con- 
 fession is recommended and practised as an 
 aid to devoutness and purity of life. The 
 odium which once attached to Roman Catho- 
 lic persecutors is now heaped on their vic- 
 tims, the martyrs of the Reformation. Luther 
 and Calvin are denounced as the worst of 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 9 
 
 men ; and their influence on the religious 
 thought and life of Europe is described as 
 an unmixed calamity. The very name of 
 Protestant is regarded with loathing. And 
 while a powerful and rapidly increasing party 
 in the English Church are striving to undo 
 what they regard as the mischievous revo- 
 lution of the sixteenth century, their efforts 
 provoke no deep and general hostility. Their 
 energy and zeal are spoken of with admira- 
 tion in newspapers ; their characteristic doc- 
 trines and practices, if condemned at all, are 
 condemned faintly and with hesitation, even 
 by the bishops of what we used to call a 
 Protestant Church. Pleasant music and fer- 
 vent preaching will draw crowded congrega- 
 tions to churches in which the great articles 
 of the Protestant faith are vehemently as- 
 saulted and the Roman creed as vehemently 
 maintained. The whole tone of our popular 
 literature, the spirit of popular assemblies. 
 
lo PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 and the current conversation of society, indi- 
 cate that hostility to Rome is rapidly pass- 
 ing away, and that in many quarters it has 
 already quite disappeared. 
 
 If I were a politician, and nothing more, this 
 singular change in the spirit of the nation 
 would awaken my deep concern. It is true, 
 that the foundations of English greatness were 
 laid long before the Reformation, and that in 
 the early periods of our history the bishops 
 of the Roman Church resisted the tyranny 
 of kings, and encouraged the nobles and the 
 people to contend for the authority of law. 
 But the true glory of the nation began with 
 its great controversy with Rome. It \^as 
 during that protracted struggle that the genius 
 of our ancestors revealed for the first time 
 all its splendour, and that the English nation 
 gave to Europe the first decisive proof of its 
 heroic temper. Three periods in our history 
 are for ever memorable — the reign of Elizabeth, 
 
INTRODUCTORY. ii 
 
 the Commonwealth, the Revolution of 1688 ; 
 and in every one of these the fiery hatred of 
 the English people for Rome was at white heat. 
 Our Protestantism has become one of the 
 chief bonds of our national unity ; the achieve- 
 ments of our ancestors in the Protestant cause 
 have been cherished among our most glorious 
 national traditions. Shakspere is Protestant 
 through and through. Milton was not only a 
 Protestant but a Puritan. Our most famous 
 statesmen were statesmen who counted it 
 their chief business to maintain the Protestant 
 interest. The sovereigns whose names are on 
 the lips of the common people and whose reigns 
 we regard with the greatest pride, Elizabeth, 
 Cromwell, William III., are all identified with 
 the triumphs of Protestantism. If England 
 ceases to be Protestant, the change must affect 
 the chief monuments of our national literature ; 
 we shall have to re-write our national history ; 
 and to break with our national traditions. The 
 
12 PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 change involves a revolution in our whole 
 national life which must have far graver issues 
 than any change in the mere form of our con- 
 stitution. Under a monarchy and under a re- 
 public the spirit and manners of a people 
 may remain the same ; but let Protestantism 
 lose its hold on this country, and the old life 
 of the nation, which for three centuries has 
 manifested itself in such energetic and noble 
 forms, has created the virtues which constitute 
 the strength and stability of the English cha- 
 racter, has inspired our intellectual triumphs, 
 has built up our material prosperity, has made 
 our reverence for the authority of law a prin- 
 ciple and a habit, and our love for political 
 freedom a passion, has given to our arms 
 imperishable renown, and placed at our feet 
 a wider and a prouder empire than ancient 
 Rome ever governed ; — this life, so rich, so 
 deep, so robust, will pass for ever away. Let the 
 nation cease to be Protestant, and the England 
 
INTROD VCTOR Y. 1 3 
 
 which, notwithstanding her faults, we have so 
 passionately admired, will , cease to exist; she 
 will pass through a transformation so deep and 
 fundamental that as an Englishman I cannot 
 contemplate it without perplexity and dismay. 
 What she may become I cannot tell ; but what 
 she has been during the splendid years of her 
 loyalty to Protestantism I know; and God 
 forbid that her magnificent history should 
 suddenly come to a close. 
 
 But as a Christian man I look upon this 
 change in the national mind with still deeper 
 concern. The controversy between Romanism ^ 
 and Protestantism is not a controversy on the 
 mere details of a creed, on the mere circum- 
 stances of worship, or on the mere mechanism 
 of ecclesiastical polity. There is one great and 
 vital principle which underlies all the external 
 differences between' these two systems. In the 
 theology of Rome, in her discipline of the 
 moral and spiritual life, in her ecclesiastical 
 
14 PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 polity, in the forms of her worship, this 
 v^ principle is systematically violated. I do not 
 propose to develop in detail the proof of this 
 position. I shall be satisfied if I can make 
 clear to my readers what appears to me to be 
 the ultimate principle of Protestantism, and if 
 I can disentangle it from some misconceptions. 
 
 TJie Ultimate Principle of Protestantism^ — 
 what is it.-* 
 
 Ask this question of the first half-dozen 
 men you happen to meet, and five out of the 
 six will probably reply, the right of private 
 judgment. You will get the same answer 
 from most popular books which refer incident- 
 ally to the history and results of the Protest- 
 ant Reformation. Some Roman Catholic 
 writers will tell you the same. 
 
 Ask the same question of men who have 
 given some attention to theological contro- 
 versy, and most of them, speaking in the 
 
. INTROD UCTOR Y. 15 
 
 sense of Chillingworth's famous sentence, 
 " The Bible and the Bible alone is the re- 
 ligion of Protestants," will tell you that the 
 characteristic and fundamental principle of 
 Protestantism is the assertion of the sole or 
 supreme authority of Holy Scripture as the rule 
 of religious faith and practice. The Protestant 
 theologians of Germany, many of them at 
 least, will give you a fuller answer ; they 
 will say that the formal principle of Protest- 
 antism consists in the assertion of the sole 
 or supreme authority of Holy Scripture, and 
 its material principle in the doctrine of jfusti- 
 fication by Faith. 
 
 We might get other accounts of the prin- 
 ciple which is supposed to be the very root 
 of Protestantism ; but these three — the Right 
 of Private Judgment, the Sole or Supreme 
 Authority of Holy Scripture, the doctrine of 
 Justification by Faith, are sufficient for my 
 immediate purpose. They contain, between 
 
i6 PROTESTANTISM, 
 
 them, a tolerably full and fair account of 
 the characteristic position and faith of the 
 Protestant Churches. 
 
 The first two principles, — the Right of 
 Private Judgment and the Authority of Holy 
 Scripture, — do not form, or do not seem to 
 form, any part of the actual contents of 
 Protestant theology. In asserting the Author- 
 ity of Holy Scripture, Protestantism declares 
 whence we are to obtain the evidence of the 
 truth of any doctrine, or the obligation of 
 any duty ; in asserting the Right of Private 
 Judgment, Protestantism declares who is to 
 judge of the evidence ; and it is perfectly 
 conceivable that two men who begin by ac- 
 cepting these principles may soon arrive at 
 very different conclusions, and construct two 
 very different theological systems. 
 
 The doctrine of Justification by Faith, on 
 the other hand, which some of the Germans 
 call the material principle of Protestantism, 
 
INTROD UCTOR Y. 1 7 
 
 supposes that the Right of Private Judg- 
 ment has been exercised, and the Authority 
 of Holy Scripture consulted, and one of the 
 gravest of all theological questions actually 
 solved. 
 
 But one great Idea controls and inspires 
 the whole Protestant movement, and I pro- 
 pose in these pages to show how this Idea 
 illustrates the precise sense in which Pro- 
 testantism asserts the Right of Private 
 Judgment, maintains the Authority of Holy 
 Scripture, and teaches that men are justified 
 by Faith. 
 
 I do not mean to imply that- Protestant 
 Churches and Theologians have distinctly ap- 
 prehended this Idea, or that you will find it 
 articulately developed in Protestant systems of 
 Theology and categorically affirmed in Pro- 
 testant Confessions or that the teaching of 
 great Protestant authorities has never contra- 
 dicted it. The Reformation was a greater 
 
 C 
 
 h 
 
i8 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 work than the Reformers themselves knew, 
 as every divine work transcends the thought 
 of the human agents by whom it is accom- 
 plished. What I hope to prove is, that one 
 great principle gives to the Protestant contro- 
 versy unity, dignity, and enduring spiritual 
 significance. 
 
THE RIGHT OF PRIVATE 
 JUDGMENT. 
 
I. 
 C6e aaisftt of ^rifaate Suigmmt 
 
 |HE Right of Private Judgment, — this 
 has been one of the battle cries of the 
 Protestant Churches : — what does it mean ? 
 
 As sometimes interpreted, no claim can be 
 more preposterous. There are very many 
 persons who are always saying, "Thought 
 should be free. To think as we like is one of 
 the fundamental rights of man. All restraints 
 on freedom of belief are but relics of dark and 
 superstitious days which have now for ever 
 passed away. It is the curse of all the 
 Churches, Protestant and Catholic alike, that 
 they refuse us the right to think as we please." 
 
 If declamation of this kind is intended to be 
 
22 PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 simply a protest against inflicting human pains 
 and penalties on men for their honest con- 
 victions, against the .attempt on the part of 
 human governments to enforce the acceptance 
 of a creed and to limit the freedom of dis- 
 cussion, I will unite in it as heartily as any 
 man. But the claim to freedom of thought on 
 all questions relating to Religion, is sometimes 
 asserted in a form which passes far beyond 
 a mere protest against the encroachments of 
 human authority on the province of religious 
 conviction. You might almost suppose that 
 those who indulge in it intended to favour a 
 recommendation with regard to religious be- 
 lief that I read the other day, and which ran 
 in these words : — " Whatever you believe, if 
 you believe anything, you should at all events 
 believe nothing that was ever believed by 
 anybody else," and even this advice hardly 
 represents the temper which is sometimes 
 manifested by very " advanced " thinkers, and 
 
RIGHT OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 2 3 
 
 it is necessary to add, "as soon as anybody 
 else believes the same thing as yourself, take 
 care to believe something different." Very 
 much, indeed, of the talk on this subject is 
 absolutely frivolous. There is no real thought 
 behind it. It means nothing. When it does 
 mean something, its meaning is often most per- 
 nicious and absurd. But there are men who 
 confuse this supposed right of thinking as they 
 please on religious questions, with the Right of 
 Private Judgment. Now I deny that any man 
 has a right to think as he pleases, either 
 about Religion or about any other subject of 
 speculation and inquiry. 
 
 It is the great distinction of modern science 1^ 
 that men have given up the freedom to think 
 of the universe as they please. All its triumphs ' 
 have come from renouncing that false and mon- 
 strous pretension. There was a time when men 
 made schemes of the material universe out of 
 
24 PROTESTANTISM, 
 
 their own heads, very much as some men now- 
 a-days make schemes of the spiritual universe. 
 They fancied a universe for themselves, and 
 worked out their fancies with most elaborate 
 ingenuity. They thought for instance that a 
 circle was the most perfect figure, and therefore 
 they maintained that the planets must move 
 in a circle. They constructed theories of the 
 origin of all things, some insisting that fire 
 is the ultimate principle, some asserting that 
 honour for air, and some for water. 
 
 Even in the earliest times, indeed, men felt 
 that some regard must be had for facts, and a 
 true science has only been developed as men 
 have been controlled by the conviction that on 
 all scientific questions, instead of thinking as 
 they please, their thoughts must be constantly 
 limited and governed by the facts. No human 
 authority has a right to restrain them, but the 
 authority of the facts is absolute. The liberty 
 of speculation is sternly restrained. There are 
 
RIGHT OF PRIVA TE JUDGMENT. 2 5 
 
 boundaries which it must not pass. As soon 
 as a man begins to think as he pleases about 
 the distance of the earth from the sun, or 
 about the masses of the planets, or about the 
 elements into which a compound chemical sub- 
 stance can be resolved, or about the structure 
 of any plant or any animal, he loses all claim 
 to be regarded as a reasonable person. / 
 
 No true man of science asks for liberty to 
 think as he likes, or to believe as he likes. 
 The one merit of every scientific theory consists 
 in this, that it is rigorously subjected to the 
 authority of facts. 
 
 Consider how this claim to think as we 
 please would work in another direction. 
 
 Suppose a man were to commence his his- 
 torical studies by informing us that he had a 
 right to think as he pleased, and that he re- 
 cognized no "authorities," — what kind of con- 
 fidence should we repose in the result of his 
 investigations ? 
 
26 PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 It is a long time since I thought anything 
 about the controversies on the early history of 
 Rome ; but in my early days there was a general 
 disposition to regard a great part of Livy as 
 mere fiction; he was set aside because he was 
 believed to have hardly any authority at all. 
 But suppose a man were to say that he 
 would utterly disregard the speeches of Cicero, 
 and Caesar's Commentaries, and Tacitus, and 
 Suetonius, and all ancient Roman monuments 
 and inscriptions, and write a history of the em- 
 pire on the principle of Freedom of Thought ; 
 or suppose he were to attempt a history of 
 Greece, with a similar resolution to set aside 
 Thucydides, and the coins and inscriptions of 
 ancient Greece, — what kind of a history would 
 / be the result of his labours ? The business 
 of a true historian is to discover authorities 
 on which he can rely, and to form his con-^ 
 ception of history by them. He must not 
 claim the right to think as he likes, and to 
 
RIGHT OF PRIVA TE JUDGMENT, 2 7 
 
 believe as he likes : he must do precisely what 
 the scientific man does in another sphere : 
 he must conform his thinking and his belief 
 to the facts. 
 
 Now, in the region of religious truth there 
 are also restraints on the liberty of specula- 
 tion. A man may determine that he will 
 construct out of his own head a theory of 
 the universe which shall be in harmony with 
 his own feelings and preferences ; he may pro- 
 test against all restrictions on his liberty of 
 thought ; he may build up a theory of religion 
 for himself, just as the old philosophers built 
 up for themselves a theory of the material 
 universe, and he may make it, as he thinks, 
 very grand, very noble, and very lovely. No 
 human authority has a right to punish him 
 for it ; but if he thinks that, in constructing a 
 belief of this sort, he is exercising what Pro- 
 testantism means by the Right of Private 
 Judgment, I venture to tell him that he is 
 
28 PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 altogether mistaken ; and if he claims my 
 intellectual respect or my moral respect for 
 the result of his speculations, I am obliged 
 to refuse it. 
 
 / Exercise your right of Private Judgment in 
 matters of Religion, and I will honour you 
 from my heart, whatever may be the con- 
 clusions at which you may arrive ; but if on 
 those great and awful questions involved in 
 the relations of God to the universe, and the 
 duty and destiny of man, you exercise, not 
 your Private Jttdgnienty but your private Fancy^ 
 you are guilty of the most frivolous trifling, 
 
 , where trifling is not only a folly but a crime. 
 There is an ambiguity in the phrase, Free- 
 dom of Thought, by which many persons are 
 
 j misled. Strictly speaking, thought is free only 
 
 1 in those directions in which we are ignorant. 
 I know nothing about the possible inhabitants 
 of the planet Jupiter ; I may, if I plea^, 
 fancy that Jupiter is inhabited, and I am free 
 
RIGHT OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT 29 
 
 to give its inhabitants what forms I please 
 and what occupations I please. I may think 
 of them as feeding on air or on water ; I 
 may think of them as quadrupeds or bipeds ; 
 as ^ winged creatures or as creeping things. 
 But I am not free to think as I please of 
 the inhabitants of Paris, of Vienna, or of 
 Rome. Where knowledge begins, freedom of 
 thought, in the sense in which the phrase is 
 sometimes used, ceases. It is while the scien- 
 tific man has no facts to determine unresolved 
 questions that his speculation is unrestricted ; 
 till the decisive facts are known he is at 
 liberty to construct one hypothesis after another 
 to account for the phenomena which he is in- 
 vestigating ; and it is while the historian has 
 no trustworthy testimony that he is at liberty 
 to speculate on the secret action taken by 
 great men in relation to important public 
 events. But both the scientific man and the^ 
 historian welcome the arrest of their liberty. 
 
30 PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 They rejoice when the fact or the testimony 
 is discovered that regulates and controls their 
 thought. We ought to be equally grateful 
 when in the region of religious truth specula- 
 
 \ tion ends and knowledge begins. 
 
 ^ Sometimes the Right of Private Judgment is 
 spoken of as though it were the great sanction 
 of universal scepticism, and meant nothing more 
 than the Right to Doubt. If that were a true 
 representation of what is commonly held to 
 be the fundamental principle of Protestantism, 
 then Protestantism and Christianity would be 
 in irreconcilable antagonism ; for Christianity 
 insists on faith as the supreme duty of man, 
 the condition of restoration to God and of all 
 moral and spiritual perfection in this world, 
 and of eternal blessedness in the world to 
 come. But the Reformers never intended to 
 maintain the Right to Doubt. To doubt is to 
 be ignorant, and ignorance is to be deplored 
 
 \as a calamity, not defended as a right. There 
 
RIGHT OF PRIVA TE JUDGMENT. 3 1 
 
 are many questions indeed on which no wise 
 man can arrive at any certainty ; the mate- 
 rials for solving them are not within our reach. 
 There are some questions on which it is the 
 misfortune of some men to remain in invincible 
 doubt after everybody else has seen adequate 
 reasons for reaching definite conclusions. But \ 
 on all questions which gravely affect our duty 
 either to God or man, the same obligations 
 that require us to discharge our duty when it 
 is known, require us to arrive at clear and 
 definite results, whenever such results are 
 accessible to us. We have no right to re- 
 main ignorant of duties which we might 
 discover by a strenuous and laborious effort 
 to discover them, and, therefore, we have no 
 right to remain in doubt about great facts by 
 which our duty is determined, when it is pos- 
 sible to discover whether the facts are sustained 
 by adequate evidence. The Right of Private 
 Judgment is not the right to form no judg- 
 
32 PROTESTANTISM, 
 
 ment at all on matters of transcendent prac- 
 tical importance. If it were it would be an 
 apology for intellectual indolence, and for 
 
 \ moral cowardice. 
 
 What then is the real nature of the Right 
 of Private Judgment, and on what does the 
 Right rest ? It has been justly said, that 
 every Right worth contending for is only the 
 guarantee of a Duty ; and of no Right that 
 men have ever claimed is the saying more true 
 than of this. Protestantism affirms and de- 
 fends the Right of Private Judgment in mat- 
 ters of Religion on religious grounds, and 
 because the Right is necessary to the discharge 
 
 / of a great religious duty. God has revealed 
 Himself to our race in many forms ; His 
 supreme revelation is contained in the life, 
 the death, and the resurrection of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ. One of the great controversies 
 between Protestantism and Romanism turns 
 on the point whether that revelation is indeed 
 
RIGHT OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT, 33 
 
 and of a truth a revelation to the human race 
 or not. May I, for myself, see God manifest 
 in the flesh? When He speaks does He 
 speak to mef When He gives sight to the 
 blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to the 
 dumb ; when the withered arm becomes strong 
 at His word ; when the hot brow of fever 
 becomes cool at His touch ; when He calls 
 the dead back to life again, — may / stand by, 
 and see with my own eyes the wonderful 
 manifestations of His mercy and His power ? 
 When He discourses to Nicodemus about the 
 new birth, may / listen ? When He delivers 
 the sermon on the Mount, may / push in 
 among the crowd and hear Him for myself? 
 When He speaks about the lost sheep, and 
 the lost piece of silver, and the Prodigal Son, 
 — may-/, a lost and sinful man, listen to Him, 
 and from His own words receive hope and com- 
 fort and eternal life ? May I stand and watch 
 Him while He breaks the bread in the upper 
 
 D 
 
34 PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 chamber at Jerusalem ? May I, for myself, 
 hear Him say, when He takes the cup : — " This 
 is the new covenant in my blood which is shed 
 for you for the remission^of sin ? " May I fol- 
 low Him, even though it be afar off, as He 
 passes from the Judgment Hall to Calvary ? 
 
 He loves me with so great a love that to 
 rescue me from sin and from the pains of 
 eternal death His hands are pierced with nails, 
 His head is crowned with thorns. His soul is 
 oppressed with an awful desolation, and He 
 cries, "My God, my God ! why hast Thou for- 
 saken me?" May I stand there, while He 
 hangs on the cross, and watch Him in the 
 sufferings which He endures for my salvation, 
 and may this transcendent expression of infinite 
 love act directly on my conscience, my in- 
 tellect, and my heart ? 
 
 May I ? I must. The appeal which God 
 makes is to me — directly to me ; and if priests, 
 or bishops, or synods, or councils, or popes, 
 
RIGHT OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT 35 
 
 are guilty of thrusting themselves between me 
 and my God, I revolt against their blasphemous 
 pretensions. In Christ, God speaks to 7ne ; for 
 myself I must listen to Him. To listen to 
 them instead of to Him is a crime, — a crime 
 which His Majesty must avenge, and which - 
 may change His very love into fiery indignation. / 
 If I stand alone, with all Christendom against 
 me, I will receive at first hand the glorious 
 revelation of the infinite love of God. 
 
 The defence of this supreme duty is what ^^ 
 Protestantism means when it vindicates the 
 Right of Private Judgment. The revelation 
 which God has made in Christ of His inner- 
 most thought and deepest life, of His Justice, 
 His Holiness, His Compassion, and His Grace, 
 is a revelation to all mankind ; , and Protes- 
 tantism afiirms that when God reveals Him- 
 self to every man, it is the duty of every 
 man to receive the revelation as God gives it. ^ 
 
 But it may be said that there are parts ^of 
 
36 PROTESTANTISM, 
 
 this revelation which are hard to be understood ; 
 that even honest men may be betrayed into 
 grievous errors ; and that some permanent 
 and living organ of the divine thought and 
 will is necessary in order that we may be 
 protected from mistake. Our Lord Himself 
 has anticipated this difficulty. Among the 
 Jewish people there were religious teachers 
 who, on the ground of their superior - know- 
 ledge of the ancient Scriptures and of the 
 traditions by which the Scriptures were supple- 
 mented, asserted authority over the common 
 people. They regarded the unlearned with 
 contempt — " This people that knoweth not the 
 law are cursed." Their knowledge was of a kind 
 which could be acquired only by men who could 
 devote many years to the study of it, and who 
 could attend the great rabbinical schools. It 
 was beyond the reach of the great mass of 
 the nation, and those who had it, claimed the 
 reverence and the implicit submission of the 
 
RIGHT OF PRIVATE TUDGMENT 37 
 
 unlearned. Christ taught His disciples that it 
 was not to be so among them. " Be not ye 
 called Rabbi, for one is your Teacher, and all 
 ye are brethren." 
 
 There might be dififerences in the extent of 
 their knowledge of religious truth. More was 
 revealed to apostles than to the ordinary 
 members of the Churches which they es- 
 tablished. Among the apostles themselves 
 there were similar inequalities. St. Paul and 
 St. John had a knowledge of the truths and 
 principles of the Christian faith far larger 
 than that which appears in the writings of 
 St. Peter ; and St. Peter probably knew much 
 more than some of -his apostolic brethren. 
 The same dififerences have continued among 
 Christian men ever since. In the early cen- 
 turies, Athanasius, Augustine, Chrysostom, 
 Gregory, were doctors of the Church. In 
 the middle ages the same great distinction 
 belonged to Anselm and to Aquinas. Later 
 
38 PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 still, in the times of the Reformation, it was 
 the large knowledge as well as the intense 
 zeal of Luther and Calvin which enabled them 
 to render such illustrious service to the Church. 
 
 / In every age and under all circumstances 
 there must be some members of the Church 
 whose acquaintance with Divine truth is 
 deeper and richer than that possessed by most 
 of their brethren. These inequalities arise from 
 differences of natural power ; from the greater 
 leisure which is given to some men for medi- 
 tation, for study, and for prayer; and from 
 the larger measure of the special illumination 
 of the Holy Ghost which is conferred on 
 
 \ some elect saints. These differences partly 
 determined the organization of the Church 
 in apostolic times, and should partly deter- 
 mine it still. 
 
 ^ But as soon as there is any pretension to 
 exclusive knowledge on the part of any Christian 
 man or any class of Christian men, any claim 
 
RIGHT OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 39. 
 
 to speak to the Church with an authority 
 requiring implicit faith and obedience, the 
 pretension must be resisted, the claims must 
 be trampled under foot. There are many ^ 
 Christian men who are holier than I am and 
 wiser than I am ; but if they assert authority 
 over my faith, I resent the claim. To all 
 their pretensions I reply, One is our Teacher : 
 you may have been a better scholar than I 
 have been ; you may have more native power ; 
 you may have been more diligent ; you may 
 have made greater progress because you have 
 been more saintly and devout ; but we sit 
 on the same form, and we belong to the 
 same class, though you may be at the top 
 and I at the bottom. One is our Teacher, 
 and if you claim to be anything more than 
 a scholar like myself, I am bound to protest 
 and to refuse submission. If you have a 
 brotherly spirit, you will share with me your 
 larger knowledge, and will assist me in master- 
 
40 PROTESTANTISM, 
 
 ing difficulties which I have never been able 
 to master for myself, and I shall be grateful. 
 I gladly recognise and willingly reverence 
 your superior attainments, I confess, my own 
 inferiority, and shall be thankful for your 
 help ; but if you leave the form where we 
 sit side by side, and get a desk of your own, 
 and claim to be a teacher yourself, and to 
 speak with authority, then I decline to follow 
 you. I remain in the class under the great 
 Teacher of us all, who, according to Christ's 
 promise, will lead us into all the truth. 
 
 ^ Protestantism affirms that the illumination of 
 the Holy Ghost is granted, not merely to priests, 
 or to bishops, or to councils, but to all Chris- 
 tian men. We are all taught of God. It was 
 to ordinary Christian people that St. John was 
 writing when he said, "We have an unction 
 
 ^^ from above, and know all things." 
 
 First of all, the external revelation which 
 God has made in Christ is a revelation to all 
 
RIGHT OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT 41 
 
 men ; and secondly, the inner light of the Spirit, 
 by which the soul is made capable of receiv- 
 ing and apprehending that revelation, is given 
 to all Christians. 
 
 In Auguste Comte's remarkable discussion 
 of the influence of the Church of Rome on 
 the intellectual life of Christendom, he ob- 
 serves that the Church rendered one great 
 service to what he regards as the healthy 
 development of European thought,— it restricted 
 the limits of inspiration. The founder of the 
 Positive Philosophy saw very clearly that ac- 
 cording to the original idea of the Christian 
 faith, the supernatural illumination of the 
 Holy Spirit is the prerogative of every 
 man that believes in Christ. He regarded as 
 visionary the noble faith that there is a living 
 God, the Fountain of life and light, in whom 
 His creatures " may find strength and wisdom 
 and blessedness, He supposed that the in- 
 tellectual progress of the race was impeded 
 
42 PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 so long as men imagined that any knowledge 
 of regions of truth lying beyond the province 
 of science was possible to them — knowledge 
 derived from the immediate illumination of the 
 Spirit of God ; and since the Church of Rome 
 created an elaborate system, by which the 
 sphere of supernatural illumination was gradu- 
 ally brought within narrower and still narrower 
 limits, until at last it was practically limited 
 to the Pope, he believed that the Church 
 contributed to the emancipation of the in- 
 tellect of Europe from a mischievous super- 
 stition. We Protestants, on the other hand, 
 re-assert the ancient rights of the commonalty 
 of the Christian Church. We reclaim the pre- 
 rogatives which the Bishop of Rome has 
 usurped. 
 
 The right of private judgment for which Pro- 
 testantism contends, is neither the right to 
 doubt, nor the right to "think as we please." 
 It is the right to listen to God when God 
 
RIGHT OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 43 
 
 speaks to us, and the right to receive that 
 direct teaching of the Spirit of God which is 
 one of the noblest prerogatives that Christ 
 confers upon all who believe in Him. 
 
 No such spiritual illumination, indeed, is 
 granted to any man as that which is implied 
 in the vast pretensions which are asserted for 
 the Pope by the Vatican Council, but to every 
 devout soul there comes light from the upper 
 Heaven. The Spirit of Truth is near to us 
 all, to guide us into all the truth, and when 
 we vindicate the right of private judgment, we 
 are but insisting on the duty and the privilege 
 of every Christian soul to receive the teaching 
 of the Spirit of God. The revelation which 
 God has made to our race is a revelation 
 to every man^ and every man may receive 
 the illumination of the Spirit, to enable him 
 to apprehend its meaning. When God speaks 
 to me through Christ, no ecclesiastical authority 
 has a right to come between God and my 
 
44 PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 soul. When the light of God is shining upon 
 me direct from heaven, I am under the most 
 solemn and awful obligations to walk in it. 
 This is what we are pleading for in the Right 
 of Private Judgment. ^ It is the most sacred 
 of Rights because it guarantees the most sacred 
 of Duties. 
 
THE AUTHORITY OF HOLY 
 SCRIPTURE.' 
 
II. 
 
 MAY be told that in protesting 
 against the intervention of any inferior 
 authority between the soul and God, I am 
 destroying the second great principle of Pro- 
 testantism — the sole or supreme authority of 
 Holy Scripture as the Rule of Christian faith 
 and practice. Romanism, it may be urged, 
 puts the Church, the decrees of Councils, the 
 infallibility of the Pope, between the soul and 
 God, and Protestantism puts a book between 
 the soul and God ; and it may be argued 
 that in neither case is man left alone in 
 the immediate presence of Him "in whom 
 we live and move and have our being.'^ 
 
48 . PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 The objection is plausible. It derives con- 
 siderable strength from the manner in which 
 many Protestant theologians have dealt with 
 Holy Scripture. When the mighty spiritual 
 impulse which originated the Reformation 
 had begun to spend itself, there was a dis- 
 position on the part of the great dogmatic 
 writers who built up and organized the struc- 
 ture of Protestant theology to place the in- 
 fallible book in precisely the same position 
 in which Rome had placed the infallible 
 Church. From this error have come some 
 of the most serious religious perils through 
 which Protestant nations have passed, perils 
 which still awaken the keen anxiety of all 
 who are loyal to the truth of Christ. The 
 error was a very natural one : it was almost 
 inevitable. I cannot discuss fully the com- 
 plicated questions which are involved in this 
 part of my subject ; I must be content to 
 state the case in mere outline. 
 
AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 49 
 
 Remember the exact nature of the ob- 
 jection under discussion. I have contended 
 that the Right of Private Judgment really 
 asserts that no authority ought to come be- 
 tween the soul and God. It is objected, that 
 while we have got rid of an infallible Church 
 or an infallible Pope, we retain an infallible 
 Book, and that we are guilty therefore of 
 violating our fundamental principle. / 
 
 For the sake of reducing the discussion 
 within necessary limits, I will consider the 
 objection in relation to the New Testament 
 alone. The New Testament is to us by far 
 the most important part of the Bible ; and 
 substantially the same considerations which 
 show that the objection is untenable in relation 
 to the New Testament, will also show that it is 
 untenable in relation to the Old Testament ; 
 but in relation to the Old Testament the dis- 
 cussion in detail would be more intricate. 
 
 First of all, I think that there is a prac- 
 
 E 
 
50 PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 tical answer to the objection. When I read 
 the Syllabus issued a few years ago by the 
 Pope, or the Decrees of any of the great 
 Councils, I am conscious, all the time, of the 
 presence of an external authority that is 
 claiming my submission. The validity of the 
 claim is a question which is constantly emerg- 
 ing : I -must settle that question or everything 
 remains doubtful. What I am required to 
 believe, I am required to believe because the 
 Council or the Pope affirms it. I am never 
 left alone with God. 
 
 I think that the universal experience of 
 devout Christians will sustain me, when I say 
 that in reading the New Testament the idea 
 of the authority of the book, as a book, is 
 hardly ever thought of. The book — explain 
 it how we may — vanishes. The truth I 
 read there, shines in its own light. I forget 
 Matthew, and Mark, and Luke, and John. 
 I see Christ face to face ; I hear His 
 
AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 51 ' 
 
 voice ; I am filled with wonder and joy. I 
 forget St. Paul, and am thrilled with gratitude 
 for the infinite mercy which justifies me 
 freely for Christ's sake, and for His sake 
 grants me the free gift of eternal life. I 
 forget St. James, and think only of the au- 
 thority of the divine law. I forget St. John 
 in the vision of the divine love. The '^ 
 infallibility of the Council, or of the Pope, 
 recurs to me constantly when I am consider- 
 ing their definitions of truth ; it comes be- 
 tween me and the truth itself Whether the 
 writers of the New Testament are infallible or 
 not, is a question which rarely occurs to me. 
 Somehow, when they tell me a truth, I come 
 to know it for myself; the truth is mine and 
 not merely theirs. Practically, the Bible does | 
 not come between me and God. i 
 
 And now let us try to discover the ex- 
 planation of this. 
 
 The New Testament begins with the earthly 
 
52 PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 life of our Lord Jesus Christ four times re- 
 peated. The story is told in a very wonder- 
 ful way — in a way that I hardly know how 
 to describe except by saying that the story 
 seems to tell itself. The personality of the 
 four biographers hardly ever appears. There 
 is scarcely anything to remind us of them. 
 There is neither criticism nor eulogy. Only 
 in one or two instances is there anything that 
 can be called a comment on what our Lord 
 said or what He did. If for a moment it 
 occurs to us that even apart from comment 
 and criticism the story of a life must be 
 coloured by the feeling and faith of the 
 writer, all distrust disappears when we look 
 at the wonderful portrait which every one of 
 the evangelists presents. 
 
 If we had been living in the Holy Land 
 during Christ's earthly ministry, to have 
 listened to Him would have been to listen 
 to God Himself, for He was God manifest 
 
AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 53 
 
 in the flesh. He Himself said, " He that 
 hath seen me hath seen the Father." Now 
 I cannot tell how it may be with others, 
 but to rne, when I read the gospels, the 
 eighteen centuries which lie between ourselves 
 and the earthly life of our Lord sometimes 
 seem to vanish away. I can hardly claim 
 the blessedness which He pronounced on 
 those that have not seen Him and yet have 
 believed. I walk with Him through the corn- 
 fields ; I stand on the shore of the sea of 
 Galilee while He teaches the people from the 
 boat ; by the side of the woman of Samaria, 
 I listen with wonder to the words of the 
 Stranger at the well; I hear Him cry in the 
 Temple, " If any man thirst, let him come unto 
 me and drink ; " I see Him after a weary 
 day in Jerusalem, passing over the limestone 
 ridge of the Mount of Olives into the peace 
 and stillness of the corn-fields and olive-trees 
 which lie round the village of Bethany; and 
 
54 PROTESTANTISM, 
 
 as the twilight is deepening around Him I 
 follow Him into the house of Mary and 
 Martha. I listen to Him in Gethsemane; I 
 see Him crucified between the two thieves ; I 
 go with the women to the sepulchre on the 
 morning of the resurrection ; with the disci- 
 ples I gaze upon Him as He ascends into 
 heaven. The infallible book come between 
 me and Christ ! I never think of the book ; 
 I fall at His feet, and exclaim with Thomas, 
 " My Lord, and my God ! " 
 
 Let us pass to the Epistles. Here, it may 
 be urged, I am on different ground. The 
 Pope claims to be the successor of the chief 
 of the Apostles ; and it may be maintained 
 that the fundamental principle of Protestant- 
 ism is violated just as fatally by the authority 
 with which Protestants invest the Epistles of 
 St. Peter, contained in the New Testament, 
 as by the authority with which Romanists in- 
 vest the rescripts of the Pope, whom they 
 
, AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 55 
 regard as the successor of St. Peter. In both 
 cases, it may be affirmed that a human 
 presence comes between the soul and God — 
 the only difference being, that St. Peter is 
 dead and the Pope still living. As I have 
 said before, the argument is a very plausible 
 one to look at, but it falls to pieces as soon 
 as you touch it. 
 
 Read the epistles of the New Testament, 
 take what is in some respects the most re- 
 markable of them all— the Epistle to the 
 Romans. To me it seems to matter very 
 little, what measure of authority you ascribe 
 to it. The force of the Epistle depends very 
 little, if at all, upon the personal claims of 
 the writer. He first illustrates, in a wonderful 
 manner, the gross superstitions and grosser vices 
 of the heathen world. These superstitions and 
 vices are notorious. Every one knows about 
 them. The natural reason and conscience of 
 mankind condemn them. He then reminds 
 
56 PROTESTANTISM, 
 
 the Jews, that the condemnation which they 
 pronounced on the sins of the Gentiles, only 
 aggravates their own guilt m committing the 
 same transgressions ; and that a man who 
 does wrong is no better off, but only the worse 
 off, for having a clear knowledge of what is 
 right. In affirming these principles he still 
 appeals to the natural reason and conscience 
 of men. The heathen are sinful, and the 
 clearer knowledge of the Jews does not ex- 
 cuse the sins of which the Jews are guilty. 
 The sacred books to which the Jews appealed 
 as the glory of their race, condemned in lan- 
 guage of terrible severity the sins which Jews 
 themselves committed. The whole world, there- 
 fore, is guilty before God. Up to this point, 
 there is no question of apostolic authority, and 
 there is nothing to come between me and the 
 very truth of God. 
 
 St. Paul then declares that God meets us 
 in our sin and peril, provides for us a pro- 
 
AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 57 
 
 pitiation for sin, and offers us, for Christ's 
 sake, remission of sins. There is a sense 
 in which, no doubt, I am required to accept 
 these statements, on apostolic testimony ; 
 but what the Apostle tells me, Christ Him- 
 self has told me already. St. Paul does 
 but remind me of what I have already heard 
 from the lips of God manifest in the flesh : 
 moreover, what the Apostle tells me, is con- 
 firmed by the testimony of millions upon mil- 
 lions of Christian people who have trusted in 
 God for salvation through Christ, and who de- 
 clare that He has saved them. What is still 
 more important is, that if I trust in God to 
 save me for Christ's sake, I can at once dis- 
 pense with all testimony, for I, too, become 
 conscious that I have peace with God through 
 our Lord Jesus Christ ; and I am conscious that 
 I have immediate access to God in response 
 to my faith. My hope of the Divine glory is 
 not built merely on the foundation of apostolic 
 
58 PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 declarations and promises, but on my personal 
 consciousness that God has come to me, has 
 shed abroad His love in my heart, as the 
 light and heat of the sun are shed abroad 
 through the heavens and the earth at mid- 
 day. Conscious of being justified through 
 Christ, I can infer for myself that I shall be 
 ultimately saved by Him. What the Apostle 
 writes, becomes true to me, as I dwell upon 
 it : I know for myself, that he is uttering the 
 thought of God. 
 
 Let me state the principle under another 
 form. 
 
 There is a difference between the first four 
 books of the New Testament and the rest. 
 The first four, in which we come face to face 
 with Christ, and see the works and listen to 
 the words of the Son of God, bear a noble 
 name, given to them by a true instinct of the 
 Christian Church. They are the four Gospels. 
 They constitute the substance of the message, 
 
AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 59 
 
 the good news, to be delivered to all man- 
 kind. The Epistles are addressed to Christian 
 Churches, to Societies composed of persons 
 who have already received the good news, 
 and who have been restored to God in re- 
 sponse to their faith in Christ ; and the 
 teaching peculiar to the Epistles, with some 
 possible exceptions, on which in the general 
 argument I cannot dwell, is verified point by- 
 point in the spiritual consciousness of all who 
 have received Christ ; so that the question of 
 their authority, and of the measure of inspira- 
 tion granted to their writers, although of great 
 speculative interest, is of secondary practical 
 importance. 
 
 To put the whole case, for the sake of clear- 
 ness, in a somewhat exaggerated form : when 
 I read the Gospels, I think nothing of the 
 authority of the book which contains them, 
 for the glory of God revealed in Christ shines 
 directly upon me ; and when, having received 
 
6o PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 Christ, I read the Epistles, I think nothing of 
 the authority of the writers, for I myself, know- 
 that what they say is true. 
 
 No doubt theological writers have often 
 been mistaken in their treatment of the Holy 
 Scriptures, and have really put these sacred 
 books between the soul and God, — contending, 
 first, for the authority of the books on purely 
 external grounds, and then requiring us to 
 receive their contents. That was not the 
 method of the original leaders of the Protes- 
 tant Reformation. I am glad to be able to 
 support this statement by the authority of one 
 of the most illustrious of the evangelical theo- 
 logians of Germany now living — Dr. Dorner. 
 
 In his " History of Protestant Theology" there 
 are two very remarkable passages. He says, — 
 
 "The apostolic and prophetic writings only 
 came to be regarded by Luther as the 
 decisive rule and judge, after the saving 
 matter, which the Church still had in common 
 
AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 6i 
 
 with the Scriptures, had approved itself to 
 his heart by its own inherent power. Before 
 the decisive turning-point of his Hfe, the 
 Scriptures only influenced him as a means of 
 grace similar to preaching, but not as a rule 
 recognised by him as independent." * 
 
 Again, — " It is clear that for Luther the great 
 original certainty which attests all other truths^ 
 as it is not the authority of the Church, so 
 also it is not the authority of the canon of the 
 Holy Scriptures handed down by the Church. 
 It is rather the subject-matter of the Word of 
 God, which, however different may be its 
 forms of expression, is able to attest itself to 
 the hearts of men as the Word of God by 
 itself and its divine power." -[■ 
 
 I need hardly remind you of one striking 
 illustration of the truth of this. For some 
 
 * Dorner's " History of Protestant Theology," vol, i., 
 
 p. 221. 
 
 t Ibid., vol i., p. 231. 
 
62 PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 time Luther rejected the Epistle of St. James. 
 Why did he reject it } Because it seemed to 
 him that the Epistle was antagonistic to the 
 great truth that we are justified by Faith, 
 and not by works. That he was justified by 
 Faith, Luther knew ; — he knew it for him- 
 self; — it was impossible for him to doubt it. 
 He had cast himself, with all his sins, on 
 the infinite mercy of God revealed through 
 Christ ; and he was conscious that God had 
 received him, and that the light of God's 
 presence was shining round about him. Of 
 two things he was certain — that he was a 
 sinful man with nothing in him on the ground 
 of which it was possible for God to justify 
 him, and that he had been justified by God's 
 free grace. If an angel, if a legion of angels 
 with all. their glory about them, had come to 
 tell Luther that works were necessary before 
 he could be justified, he would have protested 
 against them just as firmly and vehemently 
 
AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE, 63 
 
 as he protested against the Pope., He had 
 no "works," and yet he was justified. And 
 when a letter, which claimed to be apostolic, 
 appeared to him to teach that without works 
 justification is impossible, he threw the letter 
 aside. He knew better. Without works he 
 himself had been justified. 
 
 To put the whole case once more as briefly 
 as possible : Protestantism, according to its 
 fundamental principle, does not accept the 
 truth of the teaching of Holy Scripture- 
 merely because it acknowledges the mUhority 
 of Holy Scripture ; it would be more accurate 
 to say that it acknowledges the authority of 
 Holy Scripture, because it accepts the truth 
 of its teaching. 
 
 Hence it was not in the earlier days of 
 Protestantism that Protestant theologians wrote 
 treatises on the external evidences of Christian- 
 ity and on the historical proofs of the certainty 
 of the Christian revelation. I do not mean 
 
64 PROTESTANTISM, 
 
 to undervalue such treatises ; they fill an 
 important place in the controversy with 
 unbelief ; , but when John Owen, the great 
 Puritan, defended the divine origin of the Holy 
 Scriptures, it was his object to demonstrate 
 that the Bible depended on no external aids 
 and supports for its supreme place in the 
 religious thought of mankind, but possesses, 
 to quote the forcible words of Dr. Chalmers, in 
 describing Owen's treatise, " a self-evidencing 
 light and power for manifesting its own 
 divine original, superior to the testimony of 
 eye-witnesses, or the evidence of miracles, or 
 those supernatural gifts with which the first 
 teachers of Christianity were endowed for ac- 
 crediting their divine mission." * 
 
 There have been millions of Christian people 
 
 who have known for themselves the truth of 
 
 the revelation recorded in Holy Scripture, but 
 
 who would have been altogether unable to 
 
 * See Note A. 
 
AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 65 
 
 give any reason for acknowledging the autho- 
 rity of the book itself. And if for a moment 
 I may turn aside from my immediate subject, 
 I should like to express my strong conviction 
 that we commit a very serious error in suppos- 
 ing that in our great controversy with unbelief 
 it is our first business to demonstrate to 
 those who reject the Christian Faith, the 
 authority of the books in which it is recorded. 
 The authority of the books of the New Testa- 
 ment is a question to be determined, not 
 before we have received the Christian Faith, 
 but afterwards ; and even then the question 
 of their authority has a theological rather than 
 a practical interest. Men are not unbelievers 
 in the great truths contained in the Bible 
 because they reject the authority of the Bible ; 
 they reject its authority because they dis- 
 believe the truths. They do not believe that 
 sin is so great and appalling an evil that it 
 can be justly punished with terrible suffer- 
 
 F 
 
66 PROTESTANTISM, 
 
 ing and shame, and with the eternal death 
 with which impenitent men are threatened in 
 the New Testament; they have no such sense 
 of desolation arising from a consciousness that 
 they are far away from God as makes them 
 long for God to come near to our race as He 
 has actually come in the person of Christ 
 Jesus our Lord ; they denounce the doctrine 
 of Justification by Faith, and reject the doc- 
 trine of the New Birth, because they have 
 never discovered their utter moral helplessness, 
 their inability to begin to live a really good life 
 until God has first of all forgiven their sins, 
 taken sides with them against their sins, and 
 granted them the new and supernatural life 
 which comes from the inspiration of the Holy 
 Ghost. They ddny the authority of the Bible, 
 not because they have investigated the external 
 evidences that it contains a divine revelation, 
 and have discovered that those evidences are 
 unsatisfactory, but because the teaching of 
 
AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 67 
 
 the Bible is offensive to them. It may seem 
 paradoxical, but I believe it is substantially 
 the truth, that men first believe in the con- 
 tents of Holy Scripture and then confess its 
 authority. 
 
 I appeal once more to the experience of 
 all devout Christians. We have never found 
 that this great Book — which indeed is a library 
 rather than a book — comes between us and God. 
 To treat it as an external rule, is to misunder- 
 stand its purpose and to do violence to its 
 character. Young people may, perhaps, feel 
 dissatisfied with it, precisely because it has 
 not assumed the form of a definite code for the 
 regulation of human life, an elaborate creed 
 for the regulation of human faith. I remember 
 that in my earlier years I felt dissatisfaction 
 of this kind myself It seemed to me that 
 the Bible would have more perfectly met my 
 necessities if it had contained an organized 
 system of moral laws, authoritatively deter- 
 
68 PROTESTANTISM, 
 
 mining my duty in all the varying circum- 
 stances of human life, leaving nothing doubtful, 
 and resolving all practical difficulties by a 
 definite commandment invested with the au- 
 thority of God. In the course of my ministry 
 I have again and again met with Christian 
 men who have had the same feeling. They 
 would have liked to have had their duty defined 
 for them in the Bible with all the exactness 
 and rigour of an Act of Parliament. Had God 
 given us a Bible of that sort, the position 
 assigned to it by Protestantism would no doubt 
 have placed a book between the soul and God. 
 But the Bible is altogether unlike an 
 Act of Parliament. "The entrance of Thy 
 words," — this was the testimony of an ancient 
 saint, — "giveth light." This is the function 
 which the Holy Scriptures were intended to 
 perform. By poetry and prophecy, by the 
 story of the sins and sufferings as well as of 
 the holiness and joy of good men, and, above 
 
AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 69 
 
 all, by the transcendent grace and gentleness 
 and majesty of the life of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ Himself,— God manifest in the flesh,— 
 the conscience receives that light from the 
 upper heaven, in which it discerns for itself 
 the will of God. We are not asked to put 
 our hand into the hand of any authoritative 
 guide, and to walk blindfold. We are " taught 
 of God,'' and do not merely receive command- 
 ments from Him, which have no authority 
 for us apart from an external demonstration 
 that they are His. In God's light we see light. 
 What is true in relation to duty is true in 
 relation to belief. One of the grounds on which 
 Romanists rest the necessity of the decrees 
 of Councils and Popes to define the creed of 
 the Church, is precisely the absence of such 
 authoritative definitions in Holy Scripture as 
 they affirm to be essential to the truth and 
 stability of the creed of Christendom. They 
 insist that the contents of the Bible prove that 
 
70 PROTESTANTISM, 
 
 it was never meant to be a Rule of Faith in 
 the sense in which the canons of a Council are 
 meant to be a Rule of Faith. We agree with 
 them. The Bible was not intended to take the 
 place which they assign to the authoritative 
 creeds and definitions and decrees of Councils 
 and Popes ; and to those who use it wisely, it 
 can never become what we say that these creeds 
 and definitions and decrees must be, by their 
 very nature, their form, and their design. 
 The Bible was meant, not to give us a theo- 
 logy ready-made, in which we might have been 
 able to rest as a complete system of faith, 
 but " to make us wise unto salvation," opening 
 our vision, filling the soul with light, revealing 
 God, and leaving us to construct a theology 
 for ourselves. 
 
 This wonderful work the Holy Scriptures 
 actually accomplish. To investigate the histori- 
 cal evidence that the original writers claim our 
 confidence as men filled with the Holy Ghost, 
 
AUTHORITY 01 HOLY SCRIPTURE, 71 
 
 is an interesting and necessary part of Christian 
 learning; but the authority of the Book, its 
 supreme place in the thought of the Church, 
 has long ago become almost independent of 
 evidence of that kind. 
 
 I do not very much care to dig into the 
 mounds which cover the wealth and splendour 
 of ancient cities, or to re-investigate the 
 fragmentary remains of ancient literature in 
 order to discover fresh evidence of the trust- 
 worthiness of Holy Scripture. The proof of 
 the divine origin of the religious contents 
 of these sacred books lies nearer at hand,, and 
 is accessible to the ignorant as well as to 
 scholars. In every heart- that is won from 
 the love of sin to the love of God, that is 
 consoled in sorrow and strengthened in the 
 presence of temptation, by the writings of 
 Psalmists, Prophets, and Apostles, I find 
 evidence that "holy men of old spake as they 
 were moved by the Holy Ghost" If through 
 
72 PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 their writings I find my way to God, what 
 further proof do I need that they were taught 
 by God by Himself in order that I too 
 might come to know Him whom to know is 
 eternal life ? 
 
 In the beginning, when God created the 
 heavens and the earth. He filled the sun with 
 heat and light. I am thankful for the won- 
 derful history of creation contained in the first 
 chapter of the Book of Genesis, if indeed it 
 be not a psalm rather than a history ; but I 
 do not need the authority of Moses to assure 
 me that the splendour of the sun was kindled 
 by the JDivrne hand. Its glory is the sufficient 
 evidence of its origin ; and as it shines on, 
 giving life and light to the world through one 
 century after another, the demonstration of 
 the majesty and power of its Creator becomes 
 more and more wonderful. And so, through 
 many centuries, in many lands, among differ- 
 ent races, in nations varying in their traditions. 
 
AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 73 
 
 theu- laws, and their civilization, wherever the 
 Holy Scriptures have been freely read, whether 
 by learned or by uncultivated men, by the rich 
 or by the poor, by laymen or by priests, they 
 have drawn innumerable hearts to God, they 
 have filled the soul with a light which, wher- 
 ever it is received, is known to be Divine. 
 They have given to the troubled a peace which 
 the world cannot give ; they have purified 
 the vision of conscience, and strengthened its 
 control over the inferior passions of our nature ; 
 they have inspired faltering faith in the Divine 
 love with firmness and vigour ; they have 
 changed cowards into heroes, and sinners into 
 saints. The proof of their Divine origin does 
 not become weaker as the times in which they 
 were written recede farther and still farther 
 into the past ; every new generation bears 
 fresh and independent testimony to their 
 unique glory and power ; the evidence that 
 they contain the very Word of God is 
 
III. 
 Susitifiratiott 6p ffmtt)* 
 
 |HE direct access of the soul to God — 
 the direct access of God to the soul — 
 this is the ultimate principle of Protestantism. 
 The whole controversy between ourselves and 
 Rome turns on whether the intercourse be- 
 tween God and man is direct and immediate, 
 or whether between Him and us there are 
 priests, and saints, and the decrees of Councils, 
 and the authority of Popes. 
 
 It is this which invests with such transcen- 
 dent importance the controversy concerning 
 Justification. Luther was right in speaking of 
 the doctrine of Justification by Faith as the 
 crucial doctrine, the real test of the fidelity 
 
78 PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 of a Church to the Gospel of Christ ; by accept- 
 ing or rejecting it a Church stands or falls. 
 Theologians are right in treating it as the 
 characteristic doctrine of Protestantism. The 
 deepest question in controversy between our- 
 selves and Rome, — between ourselves and all 
 those who are drifting towards Rome, and try- 
 ing to carry the nation with them, — lies here. 
 Those who refuse to be called Protestants, 
 denounce this doctrine. . Yes, clergymen of 
 the Anglican Church denounce it — not only 
 as false but as immoral. ^^ contend that it 
 belongs to the very essence and substance of 
 the Gospel. 
 
 What is it that comes between a man and 
 God, when once the heart is restless to find 
 Him .? It is the remembrance of the sins which 
 have provoked the Divine anger — anger so 
 terrible that it is spoken of in Holy Scripture 
 as the wrath of God — anger which is not incon- 
 sistent with love, for our anger against sin is 
 
JUS2IFICATI0N BY FAITH. 79 
 
 most intense when those whom we love are 
 guilty of it. Nor is it only the remembrance of 
 the sins of former years which fills the soul 
 with terror. There is the consciousness of 
 present inability to resist temptation, and to 
 love and serve God perfectly. Penitence gives 
 no comfort ; for the deeper our distress be- 
 comes on account of our past sins and of our 
 present sinfulness, the more deeply we feel 
 that we are not penitent enough, and that as 
 yet we cannot venture, on the ground of our 
 penitence, to enter into the presence of God. 
 Endeavours to do better give us no comfort ; 
 for when we earnestly try to do well, we 
 become more and more dissatisfied with all 
 our doings, and instead of relieving ourselves 
 from the sense of the guilt which we have 
 incurred " already, we do but discover that the 
 terrible and mysterious infection of sin has 
 poisoned our life more completely than we 
 thought. 
 
8o PROTESTANTISM, 
 
 Direct access to God ! That may be possible 
 to angels, possible to a few elect saints after 
 years of discipline, of watching, and fasting, 
 and prayer ; but as yet it is not possible to 
 us. Far on in the future there seems to shine 
 a faint glory, which may perhaps some day 
 be ours, if only we have strength and endu- 
 rance to travel along the rugged way of pain 
 ^and suffering and self-denial ; but as yet and 
 for ourselves, access to the light in which God 
 dwells is impossible.' 
 
 It was revealed to Luther as it had been 
 revealed to St. Paul^ that the Divine mercy 
 transcends all the measures of human- hope; and 
 he declared that at once, for Christ's sake, the 
 weakest and guiltiest of our race may receive 
 absolution from the very lips of God, and have 
 access by Christ into that grace wherein all 
 saintly souls have stood. God is " nigh at 
 hand," not **afar off." This was the Gospel 
 which Luther preached, and which came to 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 8i 
 
 the heart of Europe like the light of the morn- 
 ing after a dark and desolate night, and made 
 those who receive it glad with an unutterable 
 joy. Penances, ascetic discipline, the scourging 
 of the body and the worse scourging of the 
 soul, a cheerless life of tears and conflict, 
 ungladdened by the glory which shines from 
 the face of God — these, he said, are not 
 necessary, before God will be at peace with 
 you, and justify you from all your sins. You 
 can come to God at once ; only trust in Him, 
 and the chains of your guilt will fall from 
 you as the chains t)f Peter fell at the touch of 
 the angel ; and you shall pass out of the 
 gloom in which you have been imprisoned, 
 into the clear light and perfect freedom of 
 the kingdom of heaven. That was a Gospel 
 worth preaching ; and it- was the very sub- 
 stance of all that the .Reformers had to say to 
 Christendom. They proclaimed direct access 
 to God, not for saints alone, but for sinners ; 
 
 G 
 
82 PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 sinners need it almost more than saints. They 
 need it, to be sure that their sins are forgiven, 
 and to inspire them with strength to sin no 
 more. 
 
 As in the third generation of Protestantism 
 the Bible gradually came to be treated as 
 though it were only an authoritative and 
 external rule, instead of a fountain of light, 
 so the doctrine of Justification by Faith was 
 gradually hardened into a mere dogma, with 
 no power or glory in it. I cannot indeed read, 
 without keen intellectual interest, the intricate 
 discussions on the great article of the Protest- 
 ant Faith which are to be found in the books 
 of the Protestant theologians of the seventeenth 
 century — their rigorous statements of the doc- 
 trine, as though it were a mathematical formula, 
 their exact definitions of the objections 
 to it, their formidable confutations of all who 
 opposed it, their massive demonstrations of 
 its truth ; but for me, to speak of it calmly, 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. %i 
 
 to explain it, to argue about it, seems hardly 
 possible. When once it is seen and known, 
 it thrills the heart with rapture, the soul bursts 
 into thanksgiving, and all that we can say of 
 it seems almost inevitably to pass into song. 
 
 Come home to God, and come at once ; and 
 as soon as you come, the Father you have 
 forgotten will throw His arms around you, 
 and tell you that there is still a place for 
 you in the fair mansions of the heavenly 
 city, and that in His own heart your place 
 has never been lost; — transform this into a 
 doctrine, and you have the doctrine of Justi- 
 fication by Faith. 
 
 To all hesitating questions, Protestantism 
 has but one reply — You may trust God, and 
 trust Him perfectly, and trust Him now. If you 
 think that the Holy One must express His 
 sense of the evil of sin before He forgives you, 
 Protestantism reminds you that He expressed 
 it fully when He surrendered His own Son 
 
84 PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 to death as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. 
 If you think that before He forgives, there must 
 be on your part adequate repentance for sin, 
 Protestantism tells you that when you begin 
 to repent of sin you must not wilfully continue 
 in sin, and that the first sin that you should 
 abandon is the sin of distrusting the infinite 
 love of God. If you ask whether your faith 
 must not be of the right kind. Protestantism 
 answers that there can be no faith of the right 
 kind while you hesitate to commit yourself to 
 the Divine mercy and power revealed through 
 Christ, that God asks you to leave everything 
 to Him and to receive everything from Him 
 — to go home to Him at once, without a single 
 argument why He should save you but this, 
 that Christ died to save all mankinu. If you 
 say, " But surely I must go to God in a right 
 state of mind, or God will not receive me," 
 Protestantism answers that it is easy enough 
 to believe that God will receive you if you go 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 85 
 
 to Him in a right state of mind ; but that the 
 wonderful manifestation of His love through 
 Christ assures us that He will receive us 
 although we go to Him with imperfect peni- 
 tence, faltering faith, and with no. firmness 
 of purpose to sin no more. The only "right 
 state of mind " in which to go to God, is to 
 go to Him, confessing that there are innu- 
 merable reasons why He should reject you, 
 and only one why He should receive you — 
 that your sins have been atoned for by His 
 own infinite love. 
 
 The doctrine, when the life passes out of it 
 becomes, not immoral, but powerless. While 
 the life is in it, it is the mightiest of all forces 
 in redeeming men from a sinful life. What a 
 sinful man who desires to do better most sorely 
 needs, is the assurance, that for him, — sinner 
 as he is, and before he becomes any better, — 
 there is direct access, not to a priest, who will 
 speak to Him in God's name, but to God Him- 
 
S6 PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 self. Let a sinful man once have faith enough 
 to return to God, and to commit himself to 
 God's great love, and I can leave him in 
 God's presence and in God's hands, with the 
 full conviction that God will teach and incline 
 him to forsake all sin. 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
€ontlmion. 
 
 T would be easy to show that the prin- 
 ciple which assumes one form in our 
 vindication of the Right of Private Judgment, 
 another in our contention for the authority of 
 Holy Scripture, and another in the doctrine 
 of Justification by Faith, is implicated in every 
 controversy between Protestantism and Rome. 
 We reject the invocation of saints and the 
 intercession of the Virgin, because we know 
 that we can speak to God for ourselves. We 
 refuse to confess our sins to a man, because 
 we can confess them to God and receive ab- 
 solution direct from His lips. We deny that 
 the priests of any Church are necessary to 
 
90 PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 secure the Real Presence of Christ when we 
 gather round His table; for wherever "two 
 or three are gathered together" in the name 
 of Christ, the Real Presence of Christ is with 
 them ; and when we sit as guests at His table, 
 we are sure — whether a priest is present or 
 not— that the Lord who invited us is there. 
 The pageantry of the Romish ritual offends 
 us ; for when we worship we desire to forget 
 all external pomp in the awful and glorious 
 presence of the Most High. We refuse the 
 excitement of an elaborate service, and believe 
 that the reverence and wonder and rapture of 
 worship should come, not from the solemn 
 majesty of sacred buildings, nor the spectacle 
 of gorgeous processions, nor even the perfec- 
 tion of noble music, but from the immediate 
 vision of the Divine glory and the inspiration 
 of the Holy Ghost. It is because Romanism 
 and Ritualism — which is but Romanism with- 
 out its logic, without its dignity, without its 
 
CONCLUSION. 91 
 
 great traditions— attempt to bar the immediate 
 access of the soul to God, that I plead for 
 loyalty to the Protestant faith. It is a faith 
 which vindicates the infinite compassion and 
 condescension of God. It reclaims from the 
 usurpation of the priesthood the great pre- 
 rogatives which are the inheritance of every 
 Christian soul. It invests the Christian life 
 with celestial dignity, and inspires it with 
 transcendent power. 
 
 The Roman Church is not only unjust to 
 the individual Christian ; it strips the Church — 
 the organised society of Christian men — of the 
 honours and powers which are conferred on it 
 by Christ, and which are necessary for the full 
 manifestation of . the glory of that kingdom 
 of God on earth of which Christ is the 
 Prince. In the Roman communion, the Church 
 vanishes and only a priesthood is left ; and by 
 the recent decisions of the Vatican Council, 
 the priesthood itself, in all its ranks, from the 
 
92 PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 lowest' to the highest, is bound hand and foot, 
 and delivered over to the despotic caprice of the 
 Pope. To illustrate the intimate and direct 
 relation of the ultimate principle of Protest- 
 antism to the true idea of the Church, and 
 to show how that idea is, not so much traves- 
 tied as suppressed, by Sacerdotal and Papal 
 usurpations, would be to open another line 
 of argument for fidelity to Protestantism and 
 for resolute hostility to Rome. 
 
 In England and in some parts of the Euro- 
 pean continent, the severity of the conflict is 
 increasing every day. It is the duty of every 
 man that recognises in Protestantism the ex- 
 pression of the very spirit of the Gospel, 
 to use all his resources to win for the right 
 faith a real and enduring victory. 
 
 But we must use in this conflict only those 
 weapons which are appropriate to a spiritual 
 struggle and a struggle for spiritual freedom. I 
 
CONCLUSION. 93 
 
 confess that I am alarmed by the undiscriminat- 
 ing sympathy which has been shown in this 
 country with the attempt of a great continental 
 State to repress Romanism by means which 
 appear to me altogether illegitimate. Some of 
 the recent measures which have been adopted 
 by Prussia are, indeed, sound in principle and 
 in harmony with the true spirit of Protestant- 
 ism ; but others seem to me to violate the 
 simplest maxims of political equity. Prince 
 Bismark is, no doubt, in a position of extreme 
 difficulty. To a people like the Germans, so 
 rich in genius and in culture, and so passionate 
 in their desire for the development of their 
 characteristic national life and the vindication 
 of their national unity, the pretensions of the 
 Papacy are supremely irritating. Nor do I 
 forget that the position of the Roman Catholic 
 Bishops and Priests, as stipendiaries of the 
 State, involves very , intricate and perplexing 
 questions as to the measure of ecclesiastical 
 
94 PROTESTANTISM, 
 
 freedom which they have a right to claim. 
 The temptations of the Prussian Government 
 to lay a heavy hand on Ultramontanism are 
 very strong ; but it is the duty of Englishmen, 
 who can look on the German struggle with a 
 calmness of judgment which Germans them- 
 selves can hardly be expected to command, 
 and who inherit the noble results of our pro- 
 tracted struggle for religious liberty, to let their 
 voice be heard on the side of Justice. 
 
 The course which a Government should 
 follow is plain. Whenever, and under whatever 
 pretext, men invade each other's civil rights 
 and disturb the peace of the State, the 
 authority of the State should interfere. If a 
 priest at the altar provokes resistance to the 
 civil authority, the sanctity of the altar should 
 not shelter him ; I would try the priest before 
 the common tribunals, and I would punish 
 him just as severely as I would punish any 
 other man for using the same language in any 
 
CONCLUSION. 95 
 
 other place. If a priest conspires against the 
 State, I would not let his priestly character 
 protect him against the penalties inflicted on 
 other men for conspiracy. If, under the name 
 of excommunication, a priest utters a public 
 slander on the character of any citizen, let the 
 priest be tried for slander, and let him be 
 punished for it. 
 
 But to pass special laws for the restraint 
 of the priesthood, to impose oaths and restric- 
 tions which invade the sanctuary of conscience, 
 to submit strictly ecclesiastical censures to 
 review by -civil courts,^ to oppose the preten- 
 sions of the Papacy by interfering with the 
 education of priests and the nomination of 
 bishops — this is a monstrous violation of the 
 fundamental principles of Protestantism. 
 
 It is to follow the evil traditions which 
 descend to us from those evil times when 
 Rome ruled Europe with a rod of iron, and 
 used the secular power to crush and to 
 
96 PR02ESTANTISM. 
 
 destroy the truths which are dearest to us. 
 Protestantism is the natural ally of justice, 
 of equal rights, of the largest freedom. It 
 rejects with loathing and scorn the instruments 
 of oppression — the manacles and the fetters 
 which were forged in other days to enslave 
 the conscience of mankind. * 
 
 It is necessary to warn even English Pro- 
 testants against the guilt and danger of ap- 
 pealing to the civil power for the repression 
 of ecclesiastical and theological opinions. 
 When men's blood is heated by controversy, 
 they are apt to forget the maxims and laws 
 to which they did homage in their better 
 moments. Already I have seen demands for 
 the repeal of the Act which emancipated our 
 Roman Catholic fellow-subjects from political 
 disabilities. 
 
 Let us have faith in Truth. Let us have faith 
 in God. Let us ask for nothing from human 
 * See Note B. 
 
CONCLUSION. 97 
 
 Governments but liberty to preach the glorious 
 Gospel of the blessed God. Let us not rely 
 on the patronage of Thrones or the legislation 
 of Parliaments. Let us reject for ourselves 
 the deceptive and perilous and corrupting 
 support which comes from alliance with 
 political powers, and let us protest against 
 inflicting any political disabilities on those who 
 are opposed to us. Let us ask for Freedom, 
 and nothing more. Asking for that^ and only 
 for thaty on behalf of Protestantism, we shall 
 have a right to protest against all concessions, 
 on the part of our own Government or on the 
 part of any of the Governments of Europe, 
 to the lofty claims of the Papacy. We shall 
 be especially able to protest against the em- 
 ployment of the national resources for the 
 propagation in this country, either in churches 
 or schools, of doctrines which must corrupt 
 the national faith and prepare the way for 
 the triumph of Romanism. 
 
 H 
 
98 PROTESTANTISM, 
 
 These are critical times; and even those 
 whose hearts are loyal to the Protestant Faith 
 may shrink from discharging the great duty of 
 the hour. Quiet men are troubled by the 
 agitation and tumult of conflict ; kindly men 
 dislike the bitterness which is too often pro- 
 voked by theological discussion ; timid men 
 are afraid to avow their faith in principles 
 which may seem to imperil the peace and 
 even the existence of august and venerable 
 institutions which are consecrated to them by 
 a thousand pathetic and sacred associations. 
 But in the presence of the dangers which 
 now menace the fair inheritance of Truth and 
 Freedom which we have received from our 
 Protestant ancestors, — an inheritance which was 
 won for us by the blood of martyrs, and for 
 the defence of which, again and again, in her 
 glorious history, England has put her very 
 life in hazard, — no considerations of ecclesi- 
 astical or political expediency, no natural 
 
CONCLUSION. 99 
 
 reluctance to confront the storm and tempest 
 of controversy, no cowardly dread of being 
 charged with intellectual narrowness and 
 bigotry, should hold us back from the great 
 conflict and compel us by the restraints of an 
 ignominious prudence, to hold our peace. 
 
 There is, perhaps, some reason to fear that 
 in this country the great Protestant argument 
 will suffer from being entangled with innumer- 
 able disputes which have only a legal or an 
 historical interest. The nation generally cares 
 very little for controversies about the true inten- 
 tion of the documents which define the theolo- 
 gical compromise accepted by the English 
 reformers three hundred -years ago. Contro- 
 versies about the colour and shape of priestly 
 vestments and the position and genuflexions of 
 the "celebrant" in the Lord's Supper, are equally 
 destitute of all power to touch the deeper life 
 and thought of the country. We must fight, 
 not for the symbols of Protestantism, but 
 
ICO PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 for its realities. To permit the questions 
 which are controverted between ourselves and 
 those who are endeavouring to Romanize 
 the faith and worship of the nation, to 
 sink into the hands of lawyers and eccle- 
 siastical antiquarians will be to deprive our 
 cause of all its spiritual grandeur and power. 
 The battle must be fought on broader and 
 deeper issues. We must preach the Gospel, 
 and must entreat Christ to reveal how near 
 He is to every human soul, and to manifest 
 in our times as He has manifested in former 
 days the greatness of His mercy and His 
 might. The true defence of the nation 
 against the power of* the Papacy does not lie 
 with politicians, nor with ecclesiastical courts, 
 nor with controversialists. We must constantly 
 reiterate that it is at once the duty and the right 
 of every man to listen for himself to the voice 
 of God, and to appeal for himself to the infinite 
 mercy which in the death of Christ atoned for 
 
CONCLUSION. loi 
 
 the sins of mankind; and we must make it 
 clear that in the whole of our controversy both 
 with Romanism and Ritualism we are but 
 vindicating this right and enforcing this duty. 
 
Note A. 
 
 The exigencies of the argument on pages 5 1-64 would 
 have been satisfied if I had hmited it to maintaining, 
 that to a Christian man to whom the glory of Christ 
 has been revealed, and who is personally conscious of 
 having received redemption through Him, the question 
 of the authority of the Gospels and of the Epistles has a 
 speculative rather than a practical interest. The docu- 
 mentary evidence, that a particular painting is the work 
 of Titian, or of Correggio, may be very necessary to a 
 man in the earlier years of his Art studies; but the 
 time comes, when he recognises for himself the manner 
 of the great Master, as ordinary men recognise the 
 hand-writing of their friends. The direct intuition of 
 the glory of God in the Christ of the Gospels, practically 
 supersedes all discussions on the trustworthiness of the 
 Evangehsts ; and the immediate knowledge of the Divine 
 grace and power which are illustrated in the Epistles, 
 relegates into a very secondary place all inquiries con- 
 cerning the authority of the writers. 
 
 And I suppose that the faith of the vast majority of 
 Christian people is a response to the direct appeal of the 
 truths contained in the New Testament to their moral 
 and spiritual nature. They were taught that it was 
 
104 
 
 possible to find their way to God through Christ, and, 
 without staying to consider on what evidence this rested, 
 they verified the truth for themselves, and as soon as 
 they .verified it, their faith became independent of testi- 
 mony. 
 
 But when the question of the historical trustworthiness 
 of the four Gospels is once intelligently raised, it is pro- 
 bable that most men have to settle it on critical and 
 historical grounds ; although I believe that there are 
 many whose intellectual difficulties are overborne by the 
 moral and spiritual power of the history of Christ, and 
 who, as the result of direct access to God through Him, 
 have an immediate knowledge of the great spiritual facts 
 of the Christian revelation long before their difficulties 
 about the Christian documents receive a final solution. 
 
 Where faith falters, because the external evidence that 
 we have in the New Testament a trustworthy account 
 of the history of the Lord Jesus Christ seems inad- 
 equate, that external evidence should be fearlessly in- 
 vestigated, and I believe that, if there is no moral an- 
 tagonism to the Christian revelatidn, the evidence will 
 in most cases be ultimately accepted as satisfactory. In 
 our times, and perhaps it was the -same in most previous 
 ages, the real difficulties of men are not with the evidence, 
 but with \^Q facts ^ and with the truths to which the facts 
 bear testimony. 
 
Note B. 
 
 A very able article by M. de Pressense on the recent 
 religious policy of Prussia appeared in the Revue des 
 Deux Mondes for May 15th, 1873. 
 
 It may be contended that there are periods in the* 
 history of all nations when ecclesiastical and political 
 affairs are so entangled with each other, that it beconies 
 absolutely necessary for statesmen to depart from the 
 pohtical neutrality which I have contended they should 
 observe in relation to rival creeds and churches. At the 
 close of the sixteenth century, for instance, it may be 
 plausibly argued that a Protestant prince was compelled 
 to use all the resources of the State for the defence of 
 Protestantism. I am not disposed to deny that there 
 have been times in the history of Europe, and especially 
 in the history of our own country, when it seemed at least 
 absolutely necessary that, for their own protection, Protes- 
 tant statesmen should adopt a poHcy which violated the 
 principle which I have maintained on pages 96-98. Such 
 great services were rendered, not to Protestantism alone, 
 but to all the highest interests both of our own country 
 and of Europe generally, by EHzabeth and WilHam III,, 
 that the task of criticizing their policy and discriminating 
 between what was justifiable and what was not, is rather 
 an ungracious one. 
 
io6 
 
 But I am unable to discover that the defence which 
 might fairly be urged for these great sovereigns can be 
 urged on behalf of the recent legislation of Prussia. It is 
 clearly the intention of the Prussian Government to use 
 the whole power of the State in order to break down 
 the faith of its Roman Catholic subjects in the Roman 
 Catholic Church. The Government is using the power 
 which it has acquired over the Church by subsidizing the 
 priesthood, to separate both priest and people from com- 
 munion with the Pope. That the State was in any real 
 peril from its Roman Catholic subjects before this coercive 
 legislation began, I do not beheve ; and the attempt, in 
 our times, to crush a faith by political power appears to 
 me to be an indication of how slowly men learn those 
 great lessons of justice which some of us had supposed 
 had been illustrated with irresistible force in the history 
 of Europe during the last century or two. It is also, I 
 think, a proof that those persons who had imagined that 
 " a religious war" was henceforth impossible in Christen- 
 dom, were mistaken. 
 
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BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 Third Edition. Crown 8vo, ss.Sd., cloth. 
 
 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, 
 
 ' ' The simple, nervous, lucid style, the clear discrimination, the pointed, 
 practical faithfulness, and especially the manly, fearless honesty of Mr. yale s 
 expositions, demand the very highest eulogy. It is a vigorous, useful, and 
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 a reflection of the intelligence and cultivation of the Nonconformity of the 
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 ALSO, BY THE SAME AUTHOR, 
 
 Second and Cheaper Edition, crown Bvo, 6s., cloth. 
 
 THE JEWISH TEMPLE AND THE 
 CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 
 
 ^ %zm% of discourses on tje Epistle to tje f^eBreftis. 
 
 Contents.— Introductory.— The Son and the Prophets.— The Son and the 
 Angels.— Drifting from Christ.— The Dignity of Man.— Christ Perfected 
 through Sufferings.- The Humanity of Christ.— The Sin in the Wilderness. 
 —The Rest of God.— The Sympathy of Christ.— The Priesthood of Christ.— 
 Ignorance and Apostacy.— Hopefulness.— Melchisedec— What is a Type ?— 
 The New Covenant.— The Old Sanctuary.— Jewish Sacrifices.— Access to 
 God.— The Testament.— Atonement.— The Great Appeal.— The Cloud of 
 Witnesses.— Chastisement.— Mount Sinai and Mount Ziou.— Precepts.— 
 Conclusion. 
 
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 discourses are eminently practical, but a vein of strong reasoning runs through 
 them ; and we constantly feel that we are In converse with a mascuUne and 
 sagacious mtG\\e.ct."— Literary World. 
 
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 Body by the President of the Conference. Principal Tulloch is the writer of 
 the paper on the Church of Scotland, whilst that on Nonconformity is from 
 the pen of the Rev. R. W. Dale, M.A. 
 
 The History of Christian Theology in the Apos- 
 
 tolic_ Age. By Edward Reuss, Professor in the Theological Faculty, 
 and in the Protestant Seminary of Strasburg. With Preface and Notes 
 by R. W. Dale, M.A., 2 vols., 8vo, cloth, price z-zs. each. 
 
 "Another valuable contribution to our theological literature. M. Reuss 
 is earnest and reverent, thoughtful and instructive, and we can hardly imagine 
 any one reading the book without feeHng that he has learned much from it." 
 — Literary CJni7-chinaji. 
 
 The Reformation. By George P. Fisher, D.D., Pro- 
 fessor of Ecclesiastical History in Yale College, U.S., Author of "The 
 Supernatural Origin of Christianity," etc. 8vo, cloth, i$s. 
 
 " The general reader will find nowhere else, in so small a space, so satis- 
 factory and so comprehensive a history of the Reformation. The main inci- 
 dents are presented with singular fidelity, and with singular candour and 
 moderation. " — Stajidard. 
 
 Christian Dogmatics: A Text Book for Academical 
 
 Instruction and Private Study. By J. J. Van Oosterzee, D.D., Pro- 
 fessor of Theology in the University of Utrecht. Translated by Rev. J. 
 Watson Watson, B.A., and Rev. J. M. Evans, B.A. Royal 8vo, zu. 
 
 The Sunday Afternoon. Fifty- two Brief Sermons. 
 
 , By J. Baldwin Brown, B.A. Second Thousand. Crown 8vo, cloth, 
 Ts. 6d. 
 
 "We know of no sermon literature mor^ worthy to take rank with the four 
 volumes of the late F. W. Robertson, than the published discourses of the 
 Rev. J. Baldwin Brown. There is about them an intellectual freshness and 
 moral vigour that render them instructive and stimulating in no ordinary 
 degree."— 772^ St7idy. 
 
 An ' Expositor's Note Book ; or, Brief Essays on 
 
 Obscure or Misread Scriptures. By Samuel Cox, Author of "The 
 Resurrection," "The Private Letters of St. Paul and St. John," etc. 
 Second Edition. Crown 8vo, Zs. 6d. 
 
 LONDON : HODDER & STOUGHTCN, 
 27 & 31, Paternoster Row. 
 
Date Due 
 
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Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 
 
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