"of men, was revealed unto them by the Spirit"." They denounce that if " even 66 66 an Angel from Heaven should preach "another Gospel than that which they "had preached, he should be accursed'." They make adherence to "the Faith once "delivered to the Saints," to be the test of sound doctrine :-" We," says St. John, "are of God: he that knoweth God, "heareth us; he that is not of God, hear"eth not us: hereby know we the Spirit (6 of truth, and the Spirit of error'." 66 These declarations, with the facts accompanying them, afford most convincing proof of the plenary inspiration of the Apostles. They serve also to establish their exclusive commission to reveal the will of God, and to complete the Sacred Canon. And upon this ground we may be warranted in extending to the whole of that Canon the threatening which St. John applies to his own Revelations in particular: "God shall add unto him the plagues that "are written in this book; and if any man "shall take away from the words of the "book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life"." Against all subsequent pretences to infallibility, for the purpose either of making further revelations of the Divine will, or of interpreting what is already revealed, these considerations may be deemed decisive. Infallibility implies an immediately Divine guidance. It is no human attribute, nor can, without flagrant impiety, be assumed by any uninspired being. Were the plea once to be admitted without preternatural evidence of the fact, it would be difficult to preclude any claim that might be grounded upon it to introduce new doctrines and new revelations. For, who should deny to acknowledged infallibility, that which would be conceded without hesitation to any other miraculous gift? Or what gift could in itself be more miraculous, or give surer testimony of Divine inspiration? From infal m Rev. xxii. 18, 19. libility, libility, therefore, in interpreting God's Word, it is but a short step to infallibility in proposing new articles of Faith, and new modes of Worship. And how readily the one pretence may succeed to the other, the practice of the Romish Church has but too evidently proved. But the Romanist is not thus to be driven out of the field. Whatever respect or deference he may acknowledge to be due to Holy Writ, he will have recourse to a species of reasoning well adapted to perplex the subject. He will contend that the Scriptures cannot be deemed an infallible rule to the unlearned, who read them in translations only, and who must, in that case, depend on the infallibility of translators; whereas translators not unfrequently disagree in rendering the sense of the original; and there is, besides, so much inherent obscurity in the original itself, as to require some authoritative and infallible interpreter to render it an unerring standard of truth. To this train of reasoning it might be sufficient to reply, that the proposed expedient F 2 pedient by no means obviates the alleged difficulty; inasmuch as the very same impediments to a right apprehension of the rule of faith would still remain. For, how shall he, whose want of learning precludes him from distinguishing an infallible translator, be qualified to distinguish an infallible interpreter? The necessity of such an infallibility would create a necessity for some infallible criterion, to ascertain where it is to be found and it would be impossible, without the continual intervention of miracles, to determine which, out of many authorities that might advance such pretensions, had substantiated the claim to an implicit faith in its decisions. But to disentangle the subject from this sophistry, let us consider the question as we are wont to do in the case of a work of merely human authority. Were the purpose simply to ascertain the sense of such a work, that sense (whatever helps might be found useful for its illustration) would be sought for in the work itself, and the book be interpreted, as far as possible, in conformity with its own declared prin ciples. ciples. Whether those principles be true or not, is a matter of distinct inquiry. But if we admit them to be true, what more is necessary for the satisfaction of the interpreter, than to make it evident that he has elicited the author's meaning? And how is that to be made evident, but by an ultimate appeal to the writing he undertakes to expound, or, if that be possible, to the author himself? The mere interpreter and the author can never stand upon one and the same footing of authority: nor can it be otherwise than that the work of interpretation must always lie open to the censure and revision of other interpreters competently qualified for the undertaking. But in this case, an appeal to the Author from the writing itself is no less than an assumption of Divine inspiration; and this assumption, whether on the part of the Church or of any of its individual members, calls for the same substantial proofs of the fact assumed as those which the Sacred Writers themselves produced, and without which no such pretensions are admissible. It is therefore a mere fallacy, to put the Church, F 3 |