1810.
In the preceding note I think I took Taylor's words in too literal a sense; the remarks, however, on the common maxim,
In rebus fidei, quod prius verius,
seem to me just and valuable.
2. March, 1824.
Ib.
p. 297.
When he talks of being infallible, if the notion be applied to his Church, then he means an infallibility antecedent, absolute, unconditionate, such as will not permit the Church ever to err.
Taylor himself was infected with the spirit of casuistry, by which saving faith is placed in the understanding, and the moral act in the outward deed. How infinitely safer the true Lutheran doctrine: God cannot be mocked; neither will truth, as a mere conviction of the understanding, save, nor error condemn; — to love truth sincerely is spiritually to have truth; and an error becomes a personal error, not by its aberration from logic or history, but so far as the causes of such error are in the heart, or may be traced back to some antecedent un-Christian wish or habit; — to watch over the secret movements of the heart, remembering ever how deceitful a thing it is, and that God cannot be mocked, though we may easily dupe ourselves: these, as the ground-work with prayer, study of the Scriptures, and tenderness to all around us, as the consequents, are the Christian's rule, and supersede all books of casuistry, which latter serve only to harden our feelings and pollute the imagination. To judge from the Roman casuists, nay, I ought to say, from Taylor's own
Ductor Dubitantium,