"We are even prepared to go so far as to claim that, as human nature has been divinely constituted, it is a psychological impossibility for any man to waive this prerogative of being the supreme authority over himself in regard to his religion; for if he decides to accept the pope and his dictum as conveying to him the sure will of God, that infallibility can only be received as such by an express volition of his own thus to receive it; that is, the man infallible stands behind the pope infallible, and decrees that he shall become to him an infallible pope; so that all the infallibility which the pope can have is just only what the man had before, and gives to him by his volition."
In this it is not only conceded that the internal, as we have seen, does not give infallibility, but asserted that man is so constituted that he is incapable of having an infallible faith. Consequently, there can be no infallible teaching. It goes farther, and denies the supreme authority of God in matters of religion; and, like all error, puts man in the place of God. It says: "It is a psychological impossibility for any man to waive his prerogative of being the supreme authority over himself in regard to his religion." This is the necessary conclusion from the writer's assumption in the outset, that the infallible authority is inside the soul, not outside of it; therefore, purely subjective and human. Consequently, man is his own law, his own sovereign; therefore independent of God, and the author and finisher of his own faith. This is pretty well for a Calvinist, and the organ of New England Puritanism! But we charitably trust that the writer hardly understands the reach of what he says. He confounds the action or office of reason in receiving the faith, or the internal act of believing, with the authority on which one believes, or on which the faith is received. The act is the act of the rational subject, and therefore internal. The authority on which the act is elicited is accredited to the subject, and therefore necessarily objective or external. I believe on testimony which comes to me from without, or a fact or an event duly accredited to me. I believe the messenger from God duly accredited to me as his messenger, although he announces to me things far above my own personal knowledge, and even mysteries which my reason is utterly unable to comprehend. Hence, Christians believe the mysteries recorded in the Holy Scriptures, because recorded by men duly instructed and authorized by God himself to teach in his name.
The Puritan writer will hardly deny that St. Peter was a duly accredited apostle of our Lord, and therefore, that what he declares to be the Word of God is the Word of God, and therefore true, since God is truth itself. Suppose, then, the pope to be duly accredited to us as the divinely authorized and divinely assisted teacher and interpreter of the teaching of our Lord, whether in person or by the mouth of the apostles, would reason find any greater difficulty in believing him than in believing St. Peter himself? Of course not. Now, Catholics look upon the pope as the successor or the continuator of Peter, and therefore as teaching with precisely the same apostolic authority with which Peter himself would teach if he were personally present. It is not more difficult to prove that the pope succeeds to Peter than it is to prove that Peter was an apostle of our Lord, and taught by his divine authority. The same kind of evidence that suffices to prove the one suffices to prove the other. Suppose it proved, should we not then have an infallible authority for faith other than that which is inside the soul? Should we not be bound by reason itself to believe whatever, in the case supposed, the pope should declare to be "the faith once delivered to the saints"?
Our Puritan psychologist, and Protestants very generally, contend that, since the authority of the pope is accredited to reason, and we by reason judge of the credentials, therefore we have in the pope only the authority of our own reason. This is a mistake. We might as well argue that an ambassador accredited to a foreign court can speak only by authority of the court to which he is accredited, since it judges of the sufficiency of the credentials he presents, and not at all by the authority of the court that sends him. This would be simply absurd. The ambassador represents the sovereign that sends him, not the sovereign to whom he is sent or accredited. The credentials of the pope are presented to our judgment, but what the pope, the accredited ambassador from God, announces as the will of his sovereign and ours, must be taken not on the authority of our own judgment, but on the authority of the ambassador. The pope is not, indeed, commissioned to reveal the truth, for the revelation is already made by our Lord and his apostles, and deposited with the church. The pope simply teaches what is the faith so revealed and deposited, and settles controversies respecting it. Our own reason, operating on the facts of the case, judges the credentials of the pope or the evidences of his divine commission, but not of the revelation to which he bears witness. The fact that God has revealed and deposited with the church what the pope declares God has so revealed and deposited, we take on his authority. It is a mistake, then, to say that there can be no authority in faith or religion but the authority which every man has even of himself. To deny it is simply to deny the ability of God to make us a revelation through inspired messengers, or otherwise than through our natural reason.
It is equally a mistake to suppose that belief or an external infallible authority is simply a volition or an act of the will, without any intellectual assent. We might as well argue that the credit a jury yields to the testimony of a competent and credible witness is simply a volition without any conviction of the understanding. Infallible authority convinces the understanding as well as moves the will. We do not believe the revealed truth on the authority of the pope; we believe it on the word of God, who can neither deceive nor be deceived; but we believe on the authority of the pope or church the fact that God has revealed it. The church or the pope is not authority for the truth of what is revealed—for God's word suffices for that; and we believe it on his veracity—but is the infallible witness of the fact that God has revealed or said it. If God has made a revelation of supernatural truth, as all Christians hold, the fact that he has made it, since it confessedly is not made to us individually, must be received by us, if at all, on the testimony of a witness. This is what is meant by believing on authority. If we believe the fact at all, we must believe it either on some authority or on no authority. If on no authority, we have no reason for believing it, and our belief is groundless. If on some authority, then either on a fallible or an infallible authority. A fallible authority is no authority for faith. Then an infallible authority, and as the authority must be duly accredited to us—therefore, be itself outside of us—it must be an infallible external authority. The Puritan journal should therefore have headed its article, not Pope or People, but, Pope or no Faith. Without the infallible authority or witness, we may have opinions, conjectures, guesses, more or less probable, but not faith, which excludes doubt, and is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. The Puritan is able, but has not mastered his subject. There are many things for him yet to learn.
We have called attention to the article we have reviewed, as one of the signs of what is going on in the Protestant evangelical world. It is beginning to learn that there is no resting in the infallible Book without an infallible interpreter. It begins to see that it has therefore no authority for dogmas, and it is gradually giving them the go-by. Dogmas discarded, Christianity, as a revelation of mysteries or of truth for the intellect, goes with them, and Christianity becomes a truth only for the heart and conscience. Then it is resolved into love, and love without understanding, therefore a sentimental love, and, with the more advanced party, purely sensual love. This is whither Protestantism is undeniably tending, and well may Dr. Ewer say that, as a system of religion, it has proved a failure. It has lost the church, lost practically the Bible, lost faith, lost doctrine, lost charity, lost spirituality, fallen into a sickly sentimentalism, and is plunging into gross sensuality. Here endeth the "glorious reformation."