Dr. Hodge makes it a grave objection to the church that she does not allow private judgment as a rule of faith; yet it is only as against the church or Catholics that he himself allows it. When his aim is to destroy Catholic faith or to detach Catholics from their fidelity to the church, he asserts the unrestricted right of private judgment; but, when he wishes to build up faith or to establish Protestantism as a positive doctrine, he restricts it, and confines it to the regenerate. It is not every one who is free to interpret the faith or the Scriptures according to his own private judgment; but only those who have been regenerated, and are enlightened and led by the Holy Ghost. But even this does not help him, for he has no public or catholic rule by which to determine who are or who are not regenerated, and the individual himself has only his own private judgment by which to test the spirits, and to determine whether the spirit by which he is led is the spirit of truth or the spirit of error. The blessed Apostle John tells us not to believe every spirit, but to try the spirits, for there are many false prophets gone out into the world. Now, what is wanted is an objective test or touchstone of truth by which to try the spirits. This cannot be the subjective leadings of the spirit, for they are precisely what is to be tested in order to determine that they are from
God, and not from the enemy of souls taking the guise of an angel of light in order to deceive. The learned professor, then, even with the restriction of private judgment to the regenerate, and the assumption of the interior assistance and guidance of the Spirit, though contradicting himself, gets no rule of faith, and has at best only the place of faith.
The learned author is aware that the Bible interpreted by private judgment is no rule, at least no adequate rule, of faith, and so he seeks to supply its deficiency by tradition. He says, “Protestants admit there has been a stream of traditionary teaching flowing through the Christian church from the day of Pentecost to the present time. This tradition is so far a rule of faith that nothing contrary to it can be true. Christians do not stand isolated, holding each his own creed. They constitute one body, having one creed. Protestants admit that there is a common faith of the church, which no man is at liberty to reject, or can reject and be a Christian” (pp. 113, 114). This would seem to make the Protestant rule not the Bible interpreted by private judgment and private illumination, but the Bible interpreted by the traditionary teaching of the church or the common faith of the Christian body. This, if it meant anything, would be fatal to Protestantism. The author says (ubi supra), “Christians constitute one body with a common creed. Rejecting this creed, or any of its parts, is the rejection of the fellowship of Christians, incompatible with the communion of saints or membership in [of] the body of Christ.” It is undeniable that the Catholic Church included at the epoch of the Reformation the whole Christian body, except those cut off from that body as heretics and schismatics; and it is equally undeniable that the Reformers
or first Protestants did reject what was then the creed of this body, or at least important parts of it, and, therefore, did reject what our Princeton professor says “no man is at liberty to reject, and which no man can reject and be a Christian.” The Reformers, then, were not, and Protestants who held from them are not and cannot be, Christians.
But the author would avoid this conclusion by making the tradition he concedes mean nothing, or at least nothing tangible. When Protestants speak of the common consent of Christians, he says (p. 115), “they understand by Christians the true people of God,” that is, “the truly regenerate, holy men, the temples of the Holy Ghost.” They understand not a public external organic body, but an invisible and inorganic body of believers, confined to no one external communion, that is, men who belong to what Catholic theologians call “the soul of the church.” Yet even these prior to Protestantism were, if not the whole body of Catholics, in the Catholic Church, and held firmly, and more firmly than others, the very creed, or the very parts of it, which Protestants reject as Roman or Papal corruption. Even conceding this restriction, the author would hardly be able to avoid the conclusion that Protestants do reject the common creed of the true people of God, for these true people of God, whoever they might be, were included in the visible Catholic Church, and held its faith. But let this pass. How is the Protestant to ascertain who these people are? Or how ascertain what is their creed or common faith, if he does not determine it by the creed publicly professed by the external or visible church in which they are concealed?
Here is a grave difficulty, and much graver than our Protestant professor
would seem to regard it. The Scriptures interpreted by unregenerate men, he holds, are no rule or criterion of faith; it is only the private judgment of the regenerate, of those who are led by the Spirit, that is to be heeded, and the common faith of all such, the true people of God, is obligatory, and the faith which no one can reject in whole or in part and be a Christian. But we cannot avail ourselves of their traditionary teaching or common consent as a rule of faith, or for the interpretation of Scripture, unless we know who they are. But, as they are not an outward visible public body, but an invisible, inorganic, and, so to speak, a private body, we cannot know who they are without some rule or criterion by which we can distinguish them from the ungodly, or from those who, according to St. Augustine, are in the church, but not of the church. Hence the difficulty. We must have, prior to the application of the Protestant rule, another rule, a catholic rule, by which to determine and apply it. We cannot use the Protestant rule unless we know what it is, and we cannot know what it is without a prior rule for determining who are the true people of God, the elect, and what is their common creed, or traditionary teaching from the day of Pentecost down to our times. But our learned professor has neglected to give us this antecedent rule, without which the one he gives us is no rule at all. He gives no mark or sign by which we can recognize the invisible people of God, and we do not think he can; for we do not believe anybody knows or will know who they are till the last judgment, when the secrets of all hearts will be laid open.
It will not do here to refer us to the Bible for the rule by which to ascertain them; for we must know
them and their common faith in order to obtain our guide to the sense of the Bible. We cannot take the sense of the Bible to determine them, and then take them to determine the sense of the Bible. It will not do, again, to say they are they who are led by the Spirit, for it is precisely those who are led by the Spirit that we wish to ascertain; nor will it do to appeal to religious experience, for it is only the religious experience of the true people of God that can avail, and that would be referring us to the people of God to tell us who are the people of God. It would be to reason like the poor Anglican, who makes orthodoxy the test of the church, and the church the test of orthodoxy. “Jack, where is the hoe?” “Wid de harrow, massa.” “Where is the harrow?” “Wid de hoe, massa.” The Protestant, in any case, gives no more satisfactory answer; for, with all his pretensions, he can only tell us that the true faith is the faith held and followed by the true people of God, and the true people of God are they who hold and follow the true faith.
The author, as we have seen, says: “When Protestants plead the common consent of Christians—the common faith of the Christian body—they mean by Christians the true people of God. Romanists, on the other hand,” he continues, “mean the company of those who profess the true faith, and who are subject to the Pope of Rome. There is the greatest difference between the authority due to the common faith of truly regenerate, holy men, the temples of the Holy Ghost, and that due to what a society of nominal Christians profess to believe, the great majority of whom may be worldly, immoral, and irreligious.” But where did the professor learn that the authority of the teaching depends on the personal