An Appeal to the People in Behalf of Their Rights as Authorized Interpreters of the Bible

by Catharine Esther Beecher

The experience of mankind has shown that the most effective way to extend and perpetuate any religion is to have a body of men supported who shall [pg 266] give their chief energies and time to this object. Social gatherings at regular periods have also been found effective to this end. In short, were a system of religion established, founded exclusively and consistently on experience and common sense, it would include sabbaths of interrupted worldly affairs, social gatherings to promote worshipful obedience to the Creator and a body of men educated and sustained for the express purpose of discovering, instructing in and perpetuating the intellectual, social, moral and religious interests of humanity. Such a ministry would be not dogmatic teachers, but leaders in discussions and investigations.

The great aim of all these arrangements would be to discover by inquiry and discussion what is best in all human interests and affairs, in view of the immortality of man, and the risks and dangers of eternity, and also to devise the best modes of influencing all to right action.

Were this life the end of our being, and were all questions of right and wrong to be settled in reference to the well-being of our race in this short span, no such separate class of religious leaders and organized instrumentalities would be needful. But if men are to be trained to act with reference to the invisible state as the chief concern, then organized instrumentalities to resist the overruling tide of worldliness become indispensable.

The full tendencies of such organizations, based exclusively on the principles of common sense, must be a matter of speculation merely, for the world has had no experience of this kind. As yet we have only the experience of mankind as to systems in which the [pg 267] teachings of common sense have been combined with contradictory influences of false dogmas, which have been sustained by the strongest organizations, civil and ecclesiastical.

We will now trace some of the tendencies of the Augustinian system as they have been exhibited in the history of church organizations.

It has been shown that the Augustinian theory of a depraved nature is the foundation doctrine alike of the Catholic and the Protestant churches. All agree that man by nature is so miserably misformed that the gift of the Holy Spirit purchased by Christ to re-create is his sole hope of escape from everlasting perdition, while there is little or no ability to understand or obey God's revealed will until this gift is imparted. From this originated a priesthood as the medium through which this renewing gift is to be obtained, and who are the only authorized interpreters of God's revealed will. The transmission of this power through the rite of ordination, preserved in direct succession from the apostles, is the leading point in the Episcopal organization. Still more is this carried out to extreme results in the Catholic church.

Both organizations assume that “the church” which has this power, does not include the people, but is the priesthood alone. It is the ecclesiastics of these churches who are to interpret the Bible for the people, and the people are to receive these decisions as from God. This is the theory, while common sense and the Bible have more or less modified its practical adoption, especially in the Episcopal churches.

The Puritans of England were the first among the Protestants who organized churches as consisting solely [pg 268] of those who “profess” to be “regenerated” on the theory of the renewal of the depraved nature derived from Adam. To this profession in most cases must be added an examination by persons who are regenerated in order to ascertain whether the true signs of a new nature, according to their pattern, really exist. Such churches are a close corporation, having a minister to preach and administer baptism and the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and deacons, elders, or committees to decide who shall be received as regenerate or turned out as unregenerate.

Among the Puritans and their descendants originated another practice which has become prevalent, by which the churches thus organized as regenerated persons, also claim the right of infallible interpreters of the Bible, so far as to exclude all from their communion who do not profess to agree with their interpretations. That is to say, all persons, in order to be admitted to their corporation and to the Lord's table, must not only profess to be regenerate in the nature transmitted from Adam, but must confess that they interpret the Bible according to the notions of the church they seek to join.

It will now be shown that most of our large denominations in this country are so founded on the Augustinian dogma that were the people all to give up this theory the whole basis of sectarianism would be destroyed.