The Bible is authority, and the only authority in religion, the sole and sufficient rule of faith and practice. This is the fundamental principle of Protestantism. For this principle the battle of the Reformation was fought. This principle the victory of the Reformation established. This principle Luther wielded as a thunderbolt against the church of Rome and all her advocates. "As to me,' says he, "I do not cease my cry of The gospel! the gospel! Christ! Christ-and my enemies are as ready with their answer, Custom! custom! ordinances! ordinances! fathers! fathers!' To all the decisions of Fathers, of men, of angels, of devils, I oppose, not the antiquity of custom, not the habits of the many, but the word of the eternal God." This principle the fathers of New England cherished. It finds a congenial air on these hills and plains where they placed the foundations of these free institutions, and a home in the free minds and hearts of their sons and daughters. This principle, ours by inheritance from ancestors whom we revere, we would defend with all the earnestness which its great importance demands. We hardly need say that it calls for defense at the present time in this country, being frequently and variously assailed. It is assailed of course by the Papists.* It is assailed in the writings

"I most steadfastly admit and embrace apostolical and ecclesiastical traditions, and all other observances and constitutions of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. I also admit the Holy Scriptures, according to that sense in which our Holy Mother the Church has held and does hold; to which it belongs to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Scriptures: neither will I ever take and interpret them otherwise than according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers."-Creed of Pius IV.

of the Oxford Tractarians, which are widely scattered on this as well as on the other side of the Atlantic. "The true creed," they say, "is the catholic interpretation of Scripture......Scripture and tradition are the joint rule of faith." It is assailed in the writings of the High Church party in the Protestant Episcopal church in the United States. One of their "diocesans" says: The pastor should "guide himself by the Holy Scriptures, not as he understands them, but as catholic antiquity has revealed, and catholic consent has kept their meaning." Another of their "diocesans"-one born and bred under Puritan teaching, and exercising his office on New England soil-puts down the Protestant principle as one of "the errors of the times," against which "his clergy" are to be solemnly warned. He affirms that the Bible is not to be interpreted by each man with what aid he can obtain and under his individual responsibility to God, but that he must take the interpretation given by the church during the first two centuries after the death of Christ.t He must read

*Bishop Doane of New Jersey.

t Bishop Brownell of Connecticut. His language is, "The Holy Scriptures as they were interpreted by the church during the first two centuries after the as

cension of the Savior, not as they may chance to be interpreted by the wayward fancies of individuals, constitute the only sure basis for us to rest upon." This amounts to the addition of human opinion or tradition to the Bible. For, says Archbishop Whately, "if any or every part of the Scripture is to be interpreted according to a supposed authoritative tradition from which there is no appeal, it is plain that to all practical purposes, this comes to the same thing as an independent tradition, (a tradition independent of the Bible.) For, on this system, any thing can be made out of any thing. The Jews may resort, whenever it suits their purpose, (and they often do,) to an

the Scriptures not with his own eyes, but with the eyes of the Fathers. He must look for the meaning of God's word through the glass of "church interpretation." "The church" must be placed between him and the Scriptures. The opinion of human authors as to the import of the Bible is the authoritative rule, and not the Bible itself which he has in his hands. Scripture and tradition, the Oxford Tractators tell us, are the joint rule of faith. Scripture and tradition during the first two centuries, this New England "diocesan" declares, are the joint rule of faith. There is no difference worth caring for between the two on this point. Both deny the right of private interpretation-the right of each man, on his personal responsibility to God, to interpret God's word. Both send us, not to the Bible, but to human interpretations of the Bible. Both reject and condemn the great Protestant principle, the sufficient and sole authority of the Holy Scriptures as a rule of faith and practice; and both adopt in its stead the principle which Wilson, the learned and evangelical Bishop of Calcutta, justly calls "the fundamental position of Popery."

We behold these attacks in this country on the Protestant principle with surprise. It is indeed to be expected that papists will assail it wherever they are. But we had not expected, that they would be here, to assail it. Who of our fathers supposed that their sons would have to contend for Protestantism? Who, forty years since, had any apprehension that the great struggle of the nineteenth century in this land, would be against the doctrines and influence of the papists? But lo! they come hither, by thousands every month, swarming from the

papal hives of the old world, and, spreading themselves in all quarters of our land, even on New England soil, among the graves of the Pilgrims and hard by Plymouth rock, they are becoming one of its most numerous and powerful denominations, and an object of fear and hope, adulation and intrigue, to political parties. Still less did we expect, that a "diocesan" of the Protestant Episcopal church in New England, with the approbation of "his clergy," expressed "almost by acclamation," would, in the face of the thirty nine articles, reassert "the fundamental position of Popery," and, amid our free institutions, so favorable to spiritual freedom and to individual responsibility before God, would deny to the individual, the right to interpret the Bible for himself, or to believe otherwise than the Fathers have believed.

And the surprise with which we witness these attacks on the fundamental principle of Protestanism, is a painful surprise. They startle us like the reappearance of enemies long since vanquished, slain and buried. They tell us that the moral world is not moving forward as fast and as surely as we had hoped. They speak to us of work to be done, which we had supposed already finished. They warn us of a second battle of Reformation at hand, and summon us from our pleasant contemplation and application of the blessed truths of the gospel, to the sterner work of its defense. They seem like one of the black clouds of the dark ages rising in our bright horizon. They call up before us the ghastly train of evils which have resulted from the denial of the Protestant principle-the disfranchisement, incarceration and degrada tion of the human mind—the contempt of God's ordinance of mar riage, forced celibacy and its results of pollution-the cell, the cave, the vigil, the bloody girdle, the

scourge, the brand-the dungeon, the pillory, the thumbscrew, the iron boot, the wheel, the rack, the axe, the stake, the massacre-the whole horrid history of religious fanaticism, crime and misery.

We regard this question as to the "rule of faith," altogether the most important question now before the public mind. It is a question between Protestantism and Popery; between a religion of faith and a religion of forms; between a religion founded on divine inspiration, and a religion founded on human tradition-a religion with the Bible, and a religion without the Bible; between personal responsibility to God alone, and personal responsibility to men alone; between spiritual freedom and spiritual despotism; between spiritual vitality and purity, and spiritual death and corruption; between general intellectual enterprise, energy and eminence, and general intellectual sloth, stupidity, and degradation—a ques tion intimately related to the eternal life and eternal death of the soul; in a word, a question involving all that is of chief value to man in this world or the world to come. We therefore consider the denial of the Protestant principle, as altogether the most dangerous feature of the Tractarian movement, and the cognate movement of the high church party in this country. There are other features more offensive, but none so alarming. Their exclusive claim to all the privileges of the Christian church, and all the covenants and promises of the gospel, their declaration, that all non-Episcopalians are "dissenters," "without a ministry, without sacraments, and without a church,' ,"* and their consignment of them to uncovenanted and unknown mercy,t

* See Watson's missionary sermon, preached in Trinity Church, New Haven.

See the writings of Bishop Hobart, the charge of Bishop Brownell, and the works of other high churchmen, passim.

their reception of Romish priests to their ministry on a simple declaration of conformity, while they rebaptize and reordain Presbyterian and Congregational ministers, in order to fit them for their "apostolic priesthood"*-these features are more insolent, more in violation of Christian charity, but they are by no means so alarming as this setting up of a false rule of faith. Take away the Bible from the people, displace it by human tradition, and you take away Christianity from them-you make them heathen. The name of Christianity may remain, but not its power. The or dinances of Christianity may be ob served, but they will be only the ceremonies of superstition. There may be temples nominally Christian, but they will be temples of idolatry falsely dedicated to Christ. There may be imposing modes of worship, but they will be only baptized heathen rites. And, that the Bible will be taken away from the people, by this principle of churchinterpretation, who can doubt? This is its inevitable tendency. By denying that individuals may interpret the Bible for themselves, and making it their duty to receive implicitly the interpretations of the Fathers, you take from them the Bible as a book to be studied. why should they study it? They are not to interpret it. If their idea of its meaning differs from that of the Fathers, they must be mistaken. They have no object in reading the Bible on this principle. God's revelation is to be learned from the Fathers! And just so far as this principle affects men, they will neglect the Bible. Their prac tical connection with the sacred word, it wholly severs. This is not mere theory. It is the voice of history. This principle-the subjection of individual judgment to the

For

* See last annual address of Bishop Onderdonk.

opinion of the church-is the very principle, which, in the hands of the papal power, has taken away the Bible from the people. When the Bible Society commenced its operations in Paris, a few years since, not a copy of the Scriptures was found in the hands of the laity. Go to Spain, to Portugal, to Italy, to any papal country, you find that the word of God is to the people an unknown and forbidden book. And who is ignorant that the Roman hierarchy has imprisoned, tortured, mutilated, and burned, thousands of human beings, because they interpreted the Bible for themselves, and would not in the matter of their eternal salvation, yield their judgment and personal responsibility to the Fathers. Yet this principle, the source of so much evil, is published and approved in this nineteenth century, and in one of the commonwealths of New England! The operation of this principle is indeed gradual, because the minds even of its advocates, still more the mind of the community, can not bear at once its full development. Yet it operates surely. The learned and liberal minded Whately says: "Tradition and church-interpretation are made, according to this system, subordinate to and dependent on Scripture, much in the same way that some parasite plants are dependent on the trees that support them. The parasite at first clings to and rests on the tree, which it gradually overspreads with its own foliage, till by little and little it weakens and completely smothers it."

Not less certain is this principle to produce general intellectual imbecility. It takes away from man the most important source not only of moral but of intellectua! elevation and strength. Religion is the subject which concerns the most important interests of men, appeals

See Borrow's Bible in Spain.

to their strongest feelings, and more than any other, is fitted to call out the energies of their minds. And the Bible, by presenting this great subject in just the proportions in which God in his wisdom has unfolded it-by summoning every man to study and interpret it for himself, and to subject all human. opinions to its test-the Bible, tasking the powers of their minds to grasp its ennobling truths, has done more to strengthen and elevate the intellect of individuals and communities than all other causes. But this principle of church-interpretation, requiring a pusillanimous surrender of individual judgment on these invigorating themes, and turning the public mind from the Bible, that word, whose entrance giveth light, and giveth understanding to the simple, to a mixture of truth and error, sophistry, absurdity, and puerility, takes away almost wholly this source of intellectual life and power. It is this ennobling principle of individual interpretation on the one hand, and the incubus of church-interpretation on the other, which have made such a striking dif ference in the intellectual development of Papal and Protestant countries.

The inestimable importance of the Protestant principle, and the fact, to which we have alluded, that it is frequently placed among "the errors of the times," in this home of spiritual freedom, not only by Papists, but by nominal Protestants, distinguished by official station and the respect of the community, render its defense a duty "of the times."

The great reason why the Bible should be made the only authoritative rule of faith-the reason which is good against all the forms in which this truth is or can be assailed-is, that the Bible alone is inspired by God. "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God," and nothing else is. In the Bible alone is truth

revealed by God. The signet of the Omniscient is on that book, and on no other. They who spake its words, spake as they were moved and infallibly directed by the Holy Spirit. No other men in any age have been thus moved and directed. There have been wise men since, but no inspired men. And human wisdom, what is it compared with the divine? Just what man is compared with God. To place the decisions, the interpretations of men, even the holiest and wisest, as authority by the side of divine revelation, in other words, to "blend Scripture and tradition," is to place man in wisdom by the side of the Omniscient God.

The rule of faith-the Bible-is man's guide to heaven. On the adoption of that rule, and its right interpretation, depend the everlasting welfare of his soul. He should receive nothing as authoritative in religion but the word of God that "shall stand forever." Man's word, man's opinions or interpretations, must not be added to it or blended with it. For to err is human. The wisdom of the wisest men, even their combined wisdom, is fallible, and hence a very insecure basis on which to rest our faith and hope of salvation. We need an inspired rule of faith. No other can be an infallible guide to a better world. Accordingly, God directs us to go to his word as our rule. "Search the Scriptures," is his command. And so far from permitting us to blend tradition with his word, he bids us try, by that infallible standard, all human opinions-whether they are opinions of fathers or cotemporaries, whether they are opinions of the church in the first or the nineteenth century-saying, "To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them." He even rebukes men for "teaching for doctrines the commandments of men," saying, that

they "make the word of God of none effect through their tradition." So strong is his feeling on this subject, that he in effect pronounces his curse on all those who blend tradition with Scripture, in these fearful words: "If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book!"

But the form in which the old error of church-interpretation, raised from the grave in which the reformers buried it, has of late been presented, requires our more particular attention; because it is new and somewhat plausible, and because, being set forth by nominal Protestants, it is a foe to Protestantism within her own pale.

The rule is church-interpretation during the first few centuries. Duthe first few centuries. We state it thus indefinitely, because it is thus indefinite in the writings of those to whom we refer. There is no agreement among them as to the length of the authoritative period. Some extend it so as to embrace the first six general councils, i. e. the first seven centuries. Others insist that it goes no farther than the end of the fifth. Others claim that it extends to the time when the unity of the church was broken by the great schism between the east and the west-the Greeks and the Latins, which some authors decide to have taken place in the seventh and some in the ninth century. Others say the first two. While others still, like Bishop Doane, Mr. Newman, and Dr. Pusey, declare that it embraces the whole eighteen centuries" the Holy Scriptures, as Catholic antiquity has revealed, and Catholic consent has kept, their meaning." So that the authoritative period is rather indefinite-either two centuries, or eighteen, or an intermediate number! The period however most frequently spoken of, as nearly as we can ascertain from these writers, is that pre