"Dean Critical: Thirty-nine opinions, one of which declares of all others, that they are human and fallible.
"Archdeacon Jolly did not know that he could offer any further suggestion, but, at least, one of the articles declared, 'the church hath authority in matters of faith.'
"Dean Critical was not unmindful of the fact, which had always appeared to him to be a device of the framers to express this idea: 'We admit that the church we are forming has no authority, but we recognize that if it were a church, it would have authority.' For it should be observed that while they said, 'the church hath authority,' they at the same time enjoined the clergy not to believe a single word she taught them, unless they found their own interpretation of the Scriptures to agree with hers! Thus they made the Church of England say to all her members: 'If you should accidentally be right in your interpretation of the Bible, put that down to me, for I am the church that teaches you; but if, which is far more probable, you should be wrong, put that down to yourself, for I have warned you to believe in nothing which you cannot prove for yourself out of the Bible.' ('Hear, hear,' from the Rev. Lavender Kidds.)"
This Rev. Lavender Kidds is the comic man of the drama. His one principle is "Bible Christianity," his one passion a dread of the pope.
"The Rev. Lavender Kidds (who seemed much excited, and rose amidst cries of 'order, order,' and considerable laughter) observed that he now assisted for the first time at the assembly of convocation, and had been deeply shocked by the unscriptural tone of the discussion. (Suppressed merriment.) For his part, he gloried in the thirty-nine articles of their pure and reformed church, and especially in their noble testimony to the grand truth that the religion of Protestants was 'the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible.' This was the true 'authority' of vital Christians, and he cared for no other. This was the simple and grand lesson of those venerable formularies which had been that day so grievously under-valued and calumniated. Really, it seemed to him to be preposterous in any Protestant assembly to talk so much of 'church-authority.' Authority, indeed! Who wanted it? And if they had it, who would obey it? Certainly no member of that house with whom he had the happiness of being acquainted—(laughter and ironical cheers)—least of all the high-church party, who had recently been forming a society to protect themselves against their bishops. (Renewed disapprobation.) He contended that their forefathers had done without authority, and had wisely regarded it as a mark of the beast. He was for the Bible and the Bible only. Perish the articles, and the church itself—no, his zeal was perhaps carrying him too far. What he meant to say was—in fact, he wished to observe—as long as they had the Word they wanted nothing else. He knew, indeed, that Dean Primitive and Archdeacon Chasuble preferred authority to Scripture—as long, that was, as they could keep the former entirely in their own hands; but he had invariably remarked that they refused to their bishops and superiors the obedience they required from their curates and parishioners. But Englishmen, he felt convinced, were not to be cajoled by a spurious popery; and if they must renounce their liberty, it would not be to those who used that liberty themselves to resist the very church they copied, in everything but their obedience. (General cries of 'Enough, enough,' amid which Mr. Kidds resumed his seat, with the air of one who had delivered a solemn and suitable protest.')
"Dean Primitive was unwilling that the observations of Mr. Kidds should pass without any other reply than Dean Blunt had thought fit to give them. He had spent thirty years of his life in combating the errors of that party in the church to which Mr. Kidds belonged, and he hoped to continue the same holy warfare to to the end. He was aware that the so-called evangelicals insisted upon the plainness of Scripture, and were accustomed to assume, with strange disregard of notorious facts, that nobody need find any difficulty in deciding the true meaning of any text whatever. With the permission of the house, he would give a few illustrations of the evangelical method of dealing with the inspired book; from which it would very clearly appear, that when they boasted of appealing to the Bible, they only appealed to their own version of it, that is, to themselves; and their favorite shibboleth, 'the Bible, and the Bible only,' meant simply, as Dean Blunt had well observed, 'my interpretation of the Bible, and not yours.'
"Thus, when our Lord said to his priests, 'I give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven,' it is plain, according to the evangelicals, that he meant, 'I give to no man the keys of the kingdom of heaven.'
"When He declared, 'Whosesoever sins you remit, they are remitted,' beyond doubt he wished them to understand, 'I particularly withhold from you the power to remit sin.'
"When he gave the promise to his church, 'I am with you always, even to the end of the world,' manifestly he designed to say, 'I am with you only to the end of the third or fourth century, after which I shall desert you until the sixteenth.'