5. To use in our interpretation of the inspired volume all the helps within our reach; whether spiritual or temporal; whether derivable from the living or from the dead. Among these helps, the most important and indispensable are prayer and a holy life. With respect to prayer, the promises in Holy Scripture, that guidance to the truth shall be given to him that asks it, are, as we have seen, numerous and indisputable. [34f] And as regards a holy life, or the labours of the humble and diligent individual, who, from desire to do the will of God, conscientiously exerts himself to know it, our Lord Himself expressly declares, “If any man will do (θέλει ποιεῖν, or is desirous to do) his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God.” [34g] To these helps may be added others equally obvious, so far as they are consistent with the opportunities, station, or profession of the individual—such as familiarity with Scripture in the original, knowledge of history, and particularly of the manners, laws, customs, and opinions of antiquity, Jewish as well as Christian; joined to acquaintance with sound principles of Biblical interpretation, criticism, and translation.
But a point which more particularly seems, under this rule, to require illustration, is the degree of value at which the conscientious inquirer after sound religious knowledge ought to estimate ecclesiastical antiquity. Many pious individuals (in their well-meant zeal against Romish errors) have thought themselves obliged to discard ecclesiastical antiquity, under a persuasion that by attaching any value to ancient writers, they would violate the great Protestant axiom of resting on the sole authority of God’s written word.
But it should be considered, that to use ecclesiastical antiquity for interpreting the word of God, no more violates this axiom than to use any of the other universally admitted aids to interpretation already mentioned. Whatever means the Divine promulgator of Revelation has given to his Church for ascertaining the truths revealed, ought diligently and conscientiously to be improved. Among those means, the place of highest authority belongs unquestionably to the three primitive formularies of belief, the Apostles’, the Nicene, and the Athanasian Creeds; and to the Canons of the first four general councils, which received the sanction of universal Christendom: and in which to his entire satisfaction the conscientious inquirer will find the leading truths of Christianity embodied. The same remark applies to the Episcopal constitution of the Church; for “it is evident unto all men diligently reading the Holy Scriptures and ancient authors, that from the Apostles there have been these orders of ministers in Christ’s Church, Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.” [35] But we cannot better explain how far ancient literature is to be rendered available to sacred purposes, than by a transcription of a canon set forth by the Church of England in the same year with its articles. “Preachers shall not presume to deliver any thing from the pulpit as of moment, to be religiously observed and believed by the people, but that which is agreeable to the doctrine of the Old or New Testament, and collected out of the same doctrine by the Catholic Fathers and the Bishops of the ancient Church.” [36a] “A wise regulation,” observes the judicious and able Dr. Waterland, “formed with exquisite judgment, and worded with the exactest caution. The canon does not order that they shall teach whatever had been taught by the Fathers: no; that would have been setting up a new rule of faith; neither does it say that they shall teach whatsoever the Fathers had collected from Scripture: no; that would have been making them infallible interpreters, or infallible reasoners: the doctrine must be found first in Scripture, only to be the more secure that we have found it there: the Fathers are to be called in, to be, as it were, constant checks upon the presumption or wantonness of private interpretation. But then again, as to private interpretation, there is liberty enough allowed to it. Preachers are not forbidden to interpret this or that text, or hundreds of texts, differently from what the Fathers have done; provided still they keep within the analogy of faith, and presume not to raise any new doctrine: neither are they altogether restrained from teaching any thing new, provided it be offered as opinion only, or as an inferior truth, and not pressed as necessary upon the people. For it was thought that there could be no necessary article of faith or doctrine now drawn from Scripture, but what the ancients had drawn out before from the same Scripture: to say otherwise would imply that the ancients had failed universally in necessaries, which is morally absurd.” [36b] The canon thus explained may be thought appropriate to preachers and ministers alone, exclusively of their people; but though the latter cannot, it is true, directly apply this regulation to themselves, they nevertheless may indirectly derive advantage from it. They will be prepared to perceive at once when any minister proposes to their acceptance some doctrine or exposition of Scripture, for which he can produce no ancient authority—and which he declares to be new, yet at the same time important—he declares himself, by this dangerous and un-canonical proceeding, unworthy of their confidence.
But perhaps the greatest and most alarming mistake to be avoided by all inquirers, ecclesiastical or laical, is the application of their minds to religious researches rather for the sake of curious information and philosophical entertainment, than for purposes of saving knowledge, and of sure, efficacious, practical direction. The Holy Scriptures, no doubt, are written for our learning, not however merely for such learning as consists in literary, critical, and speculative exercises of our ingenuity; but for our advancement in the school of Christian wisdom, of that wisdom from above which unites and perfects all the higher capacities of our nature, moral, intellectual, or spiritual—that wisdom which, (far removed from the jealousies and the wranglings and the violences of factious controversy,) is anxious only for the interests of truth and virtue—that wisdom which is “first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.” [37a]
In this course of wise and holy discipline, according to our diligence, will be our progress; and proportioned to our progress, will be our reward. Our anxieties, discouragements, and despondencies will be left behind us. We shall go on our way rejoicing. We shall feel a personal interest in the glorious system of Christian redemption. We shall enter daily more and more with satisfaction upon the duty of examining ourselves, “whether we be in the faith:” [37b] and the result of that examination will more and more enable us to see distinctly within our hearts the lineaments of the Christian character. All the tests from Scripture of such a progress will have a clearer application to our spiritual state. Love to God, charity to mankind, preference of divine to merely human objects, fervency in prayer, frequency in meditation, attachment to religious ordinances, self-control in the subjugation of our appetites and passions; and in one word, likeness to Christ, increasing from day to day—will assure us that to reach the gate of salvation we have only to preserve the path which we have chosen. And although, in this advanced state, enjoying “a full assurance of faith and hope,” [38a] we relax nothing of our efforts, and, like St. Paul, “count not ourselves to have apprehended the price of our high calling,” [38b] yet we exclaim triumphantly with the same Apostle: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? In all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” [38c]
THE END.
Gilbert & Rivington, Printers, St. John’s Square, London.
ADVERTISEMENT.
By the same Author.
I.