DELIVERED AT CINCINNATI, OHIO, AT THE ANNUAL MEETING AND PUBLISHED AT THEIR REQUEST. BY GARDINER SPRING, Pastor of the Brick Presbyterian Church, in the City of New-York. NEW-YORK: LEAVITT, TROW, & CO., 194 BROADWAY. MDCCCXLIV. ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1844, by LEAVITT, TROW, & CO., in the Office of the Clerk of the District Court of the Southern District of New-York. BS 480 577 JOHN F. Trow & Co., Printers, 33 Ann-street. Gift 1-30-1932 DISSERTATION. IT is indispensable to the force of persuasion and argument, that there be some acknowledged standard, by which they may be put to the test. In moral science, it is essential that this standard be one endorsed by unerring wisdom, and bear the seal of infallibility. Are men in possession of such a standard? and if they are, where is it to be found? For centuries, this subject has been one of erudite and grave discussion; and though we had hoped it was long ago an answered question, and could never again be regarded as one of the debatable points in theology, the time has obviously come when it must again receive the attention of thinking men. The object of the present dissertation is to discuss this important subject—a subject which none may deny is vital to the cause of a common Christianity. It is not a subject selected by the writer, but one assigned to him by the associated friends and patrons of the Bible in this land, and which was originally assigned to a much abler and more experienced advocate of the Bible cause. I cannot express, in a single sentence, the entire compass of the following observations better than by saying, that the design of them is, to compare the fallibility of the church of Rome, with the infallibility of the sacred Scriptures, as a Rule of Faith. It would seem desirable, at the outset, briefly to PRESENT THE DIFFERENT VIEWS OF ROMANISTS AND PROTESTANTS ON THIS GREAT QUESTION. They are sufficiently diverse not to be misunderstood. The rule of faith, with an intelligent, consistent Romanist, is the received faith of the Papal church. No principle is better established in the church of Rome, than that which she receives to be true is the infallible criterion of truth. Her faith is not only the true faith, but the rule of faith. Nothing may be added to it, and nothing may be taken from it; nor may it be subjected to any modification. Men are bound to believe her doctrines, not because they are found in the divine oracles, but because her decisions are themselves oracular. At the same time, Rome professes to reverence the Scriptures. She maintains that the instructions of Christ and his Apostles were originally committed to her keeping, to be guarded by her councils and authority, and by her alone handed down, as the only authorized Scriptures, to future generations. She also claims the exclusive prerogative of judging of their import; and claims infallibility for her judgment, because she alone knows what they are, and has the revealed promise of unerring guidance from above. Her pretensions are also the more bold, from the hypothesis that she possesses a traditionary standard of doctrine, committed to her by the Apostles, by which all doctrine, not excepting the Scriptures themselves, is to be brought to the test. This ancient and venerable creed, she affirms to have been drawn, not from the New Testament, but from the oral instructions of the Apostles, and to have existed before the New Testament was written. While, in her view, it is said to have been held in such reverence, that it was considered no slight crime in the early church, to question its superiority to the written word. That these are no distorted views of the Papal church appears from her own representations. The celebrated Council of Trent, in the "Decree of the Edition and Use of the Sacred Books," declares that "no one confiding in his own judgment shall dare to wrest the sacred Scriptures to his own sense of them, contrary to that which hath been held, and still is held, by holy Mother Church, whose right it is to judge of the true meaning and interpretation of Sacred Writ; or contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers." The scarcely less celebrated Creed of Pope Pius IV. embodies the same thought, and with almost the same precision of language. The church of Rome regards the Christian Fathers as the only safe interpreters of the word of God; and it is one of the principal pillars of her lordly system, that their authority is sacred and decisive. Father Buffier, a learned Jesuit, and a standard author among the Romanists, affirms that "the Christian religion is no other but the body of the faithful, or the church of Christ, which testifies what God has said, or commanded.' Hermannus declares that "the Scriptures are of no more value than Æsop's Fables without the authority of the church.”† Balius says he should "give no more credit to St. Matthew than to Livy, unless the church obliged him." Tiletanus, the Bishop of Ypres, says, "this is the only way of distinguishing between canonical and apocryphal Scrip * Buffier's "First Truths," App. 372. † Jones on the Canon of the New Test. refers to Hermannus's Controversy with Whitaker. See Jones, where the reference is to Balius ad Scrip. Sac. |