Not every one that mistakes in judgment, though in matters of great importance, in points fundamental, but he that openly espouses such fundamental error. * * Dr. Whitby adds to the definition, the espousing it out of disgust, pride, envy, or some worldly principle, and against his conscience.
Whitby went too far; Waterland not far enough. Every schismatic is not necessarily a heretic; but every heretic is virtually a schismatic. As to the meaning of
Waterland surely makes too much of a very plain matter. What was the sentence passed on a heretic? A public declaration that he was no longer a member of—that is, of one faith with—the Church. This the man himself, after two public notices, admits and involves in the very act of persisting. However confident as to the truth of the doctrine he has set up, he cannot, after two public admonitions, be ignorant that it is a doctrine contrary to the articles of his communion with the Church that has admitted him; and in regard of his alienation from that communion, he is necessarily
—though in his pride of heart he might say with the man of old, "And I banish you."
Ib. p. 123.
—as soon as the miraculous gifts, or gift of discerning spirits, ceased.
No one point in the New Testament perplexes me so much as these (so called) miraculous gifts. I feel a moral repugnance to the reduction of them to natural and acquired talents, ennobled and made energic by the life and convergency of faith;—and yet on no other scheme can I reconcile them with the idea of Christianity, or the particular supposed, with the general known, facts. But, thank God! it is a question which does not in the least degree affect our faith or practice. I mean, if God permit, to go through the Middletonian controversy, as soon as I can procure the loan of the books, or have health enough to become a reader in the British Museum.