"When he announced, 'I will send the Holy Ghost, and he shall guide you into all truth,' it is clearer than the day that he wished to tell them, 'The Holy Ghost will teach you just so much of truth as each individual can gather from the private study of the Scriptures.'
"When he made the wonderful statement, 'The gates of hell shall never prevail against the church,' even children can see that he meant, 'Hell shall triumph over the church for eight hundred years and more.'"
The question is raised whether the Fathers and the first four General Councils cannot be taken as guides, and it is shown that they are as hard to interpret as the Bible itself. But cannot the clergy be appealed to as authorized interpreters? In replying to this query, the professor of theology said:
"There was not, he conceived, in the annals of human religion—of which the number was now almost beyond arithmetical calculation—so singular a paradox as that which was displayed in Puseyite theology. The claims of a Leo the Great, or a Gregory the Seventh, which, at least, whatever Protestants might think of them, were cordially admitted both in their own generation and in those which followed it, were only the utterances of timid self-abasement, compared with the super-oecumenical dogmatism of their high-church friends. 'Obey me,' said these gentlemen to their disciples, 'for obedience is the prerogative of the laity; but I obey nobody except my own interpretation of the fathers, or of such of them as I approve, because my church is not yet sufficiently catholic to deserve my obedience. At present I am obliged to create a church for you, because nothing worthy of the name is found just now on earth. The day will come when she will have been sufficiently taught by me, will cease to be Protestant without becoming Roman, and then I shall be able to obey the church, because, having learned from me the exact form of primitive Christianity, which exists nowhere at present but in my own ideal conception, the church will have come again into corporate existence, and will be worthy of your dutiful regard. It will then no longer be necessary for me, as it is unfortunately at present, to cumulate in my own person the functions of the pope, the saints, the fathers, the general councils, and Almighty God.'
"(Considerable agitation followed this speech, during which the sitting was suspended for some minutes.)
"The Rev. Lavender Kidds observed, as soon as the composure of the assembly was restored, that, however forcible the remarks of the learned professor might be as applied to Puseyism, he had shown that he was unwilling to grapple with the grand principle of Bible Christianity, of which he was the humble advocate.
"The professor intended no disrespect to Mr. Kidds and his party. Bible Christianity, since he must speak of it, (though he thought that former speakers had sufficiently disposed of the subject,) was only less preposterous than the rival theory which he had just ventured to describe. It required personal infallibility in all who professed it. It simply transferred to the individual the supernatural prerogative which the Romanist attributed to his church. It was obvious to common sense that, if Mr. Kidds could interpret a particular translation of the Scriptures, so as to know infallibly both how much was necessary to be salvation, and exactly what was necessary to believed about it, he must himself be personally infallible.
"The professor must decline to give his own opinion, though of course he had one, on the question proposed by Dr. Easy; but he had no objection to state how he conceived it ought to be answered by the so-called Bible-Christian. That answer might be as follows:
"The existence of a church assumes the existence of a God; therefore, the denial of a God would be the same with the denial of a church. But the Church of England is a fact. Her teaching may be doubtful or contradictory, but her existence as a politico-ecclesiastical institution, professing belief in a God, is beyond dispute. It would, therefore, be heresy in the Bible Christian to deny the existence of a God; but it was quite open to him to believe in any kind of divinity he might prefer, and to clothe him with whatever attributes the Privy Council had permitted him to retain. …
"Archdeacon Jolly doubted whether the universal Nego of Mr. Kidds and his friends could combat successfully the eternal Credo of two hundred millions of Catholics. However, he was quite willing to consider Mr. Kidd's proposition; but he must be excused if he did so from his own point of view.