1146. The distinguished prelate justly treats the gospel as resting on the traditionary evidence of the church; since, as he truly urges, the church existed before the gospel, having been instituted at the time when his instructions were given to the apostles by Christ.
1147. But how much value is to be attached to the testimony of the church, may be learned from the following opinion of the learned clergyman to whom I have alluded as the other party in the controversy, (pages 35, 36:)
1148. “The unwarrantable liberties of your church with the word of God show her fallible to a deplorable degree.
1149. Your rule, if observed, requires implicit faith in the decretals and interpretations of fallible men, which is subversive of the very nature and end of religion in the soul. Faith supposes knowledge, conviction on evidence, and trust in God, founded on a belief of divine truth; but your rule requires unconditional submission to the dicta of the church in the lump. The ‘Carbonaria fides,’ or faith of the collier, is the very faith required. It is as follows: When asked, ‘What do you believe?’ he answered, ‘I believe what the church believes.’ ‘What does the church believe?’ Ans. ‘What I believe.’ ‘Then what do you and the church together believe?’ Ans. ‘We both believe the same thing.’ This is the grand catholicon for believing every thing, without knowing any thing. In this soil grew the maxim that ‘ignorance is the mother of devotion.’ It is believing by proxy, or rather not believing at all, in the true sense. Here is the secret of the unity of your church.”
1150. To conclude, I agree with the right reverend able and learned archbishop, that Christianity has no witnesses but those disciples of Christ whom he calls the church; but I also concur with his able, learned, and reverend opponent, that the said church is neither competent as a witness, nor reliable as a foundation for Christianity.
1151. Breckinridge does not perceive that the gospel on which he relies, and the recorded traditions which ascribe that work to inspiration, have no better foundation than the testimony of fallible men.
1152. Manifestly, however, the authority of the church of Rome cannot be overset without oversetting the authenticity of the Christian religion.
1153. Could any one believe that an experienced farmer would sow a field with garlic when intending to have a crop of wheat? Would not the conclusion be that if a field upon his farm were occupied by that objectionable weed, it must have been the spontaneous production of the soil, not of a mistake so gross on his part? Yet our prescient God is represented as so much inferior in foresight to an ordinary farmer, that while the religious soil of Christendom was for ages occupied with crops of Catholicism, in the Grecian or Roman modification, the seed of Protestantism was sown by God through his son and vicegerent, Christ, intending to have the soil occupied by Protestantism. Manifestly, either it was intended that Catholicism should prevail, as above described, or an omnipotent, omniscient, and prescient God did not preside over the seeding.
1154. Yet notwithstanding this diversity as to the true import of Christianity between the most distinguished Christian sectarians, each sect conceives itself justified in propagating its own peculiar opinions among ignorant pagans. The principle being thus sanctioned, that those who believe themselves to have become acquainted with religious truth, are justified in propagating a knowledge of it, wherefore should not that privilege be exercised by a spiritualist as well as a Christian?
1155. Humility is one of the virtues inculcated by Christ; but if his disciples assume to themselves a peculiar capacity to know what is true, and an exclusive right to teach what they thus assume to be truth, there will be no humility in their practice, however it may be blazoned among their professions.