virtue of the teacher? How does he know that they who recognize the authority of the Pope are only nominal Christians? or that the Pope is not led and assisted by the Spirit in his office of teacher of the universal church? Nay, how does he know, or how can he prove to us or anybody else, that there are any of the true people of God among Protestants at all? He must prove his rule of faith before proceeding to apply it.
Dr. Hodge continues, on the same page (115): “The common consent for which Protestants plead concerns only essential doctrines; that is, doctrines which enter into the very nature of Christianity as a religion, and which are necessary to its subjective existence in the heart, or which, if they do not enter essentially into the religious experience of believers, are so connected with vital doctrines and precepts as not to admit a separation from them.”
Here is the same difficulty again. What is the Protestant rule for distinguishing among revealed doctrines those which are essential and those which are not essential? Will the author tell us the essentials are those doctrines which all Protestants agree in teaching, and that those in which they do not agree in teaching are non-essentials? But who are Protestants? All those who agree in teaching the essentials? Where is the hoe? With the harrow. Where is the harrow? With the hoe. This would be only to adopt the principle of poor Jack’s replies to the questions of his master.
But no. The essentials are “those doctrines which enter into the very nature of Christianity as a religion, and which are necessary to its subjective existence in the heart.” But how determine what these are, unless we know the very nature of Christianity? And how can we know or
determine what is the very nature of Christianity, unless we have a rule or standard of faith? But the essentials are those doctrines which “are necessary to its subjective existence in the heart.” What doctrines are these? Have Protestants any objective rule for determining them? The professor gives none except the Scriptures, which do not suffice, because, as we have seen, the Scriptures are the place, not the rule of faith, and what we are seeking is the rule or authority for determining what is the faith they contain. Among Protestants there is a very great diversity of views as to what is necessary to the subjective existence of religion in the heart. Schleiermacher, in his Discourses on Religion, addressed to the Cultivated among its Despisers, maintains that only the sense of dependence is necessary to the subjective existence of religion; Twesten, as cited by the author, maintains the same, and that in a subjective sense all religions are equally true, though not equally pure; some Protestants place the essence of religion in reverence; Dr. Channing seemed to place it in philanthropy, or in a sense of the dignity of man; others in “self-culture,” in “self-worship”; and a distinguished Protestant minister maintained to us, some years ago, that a pantheist, like Spinoza, or an atheist, like Shelley, might not only be truly religious, but a good Christian. There are thousands and thousands in all Protestant denominations who, virtually at least, regard the subjective existence of religion in the heart as nearly, if not totally, independent of all objective doctrines or faith. Such is at least the tendency of modern Evangelicalism, Bushnellism, Beecherism, and from which even our author himself is not always free. He makes, indeed, a brave fight for dogmatic theology or objective faith, but
his concessions to Whitfieldian and Wesleyan notions of religious experience place him on the declivity to pure religious subjectivism. All these have the Scriptures, and profess to take them for their rule of faith and practice; but it is evident from what we have said that the Scriptures are not a sufficient rule by which to determine what are essentials and what are not. What rule, then, have Protestants by which to make the distinction?
Dr. Hodge says, in refutation of the Catholic rule, which, by the way, he does not correctly state: “Our Lord, in promising the Spirit to guide his people into the knowledge of truths necessary to their salvation, did not promise to preserve them from error in subordinate matters, or to give them a supernatural knowledge of the organization of the church, the number of the sacraments, or the power of bishops” (pp. 115, 116). Then, on these matters, the organization of the church, the number of the Sacraments, and the power of bishops, Protestants have no promise of exemption from error, and hence it is quite possible that they err in rejecting the Catholic doctrine of the church, of the hierarchy and the sacraments. But the professor’s limitation of the promise of our Lord is not warranted by his own professed rule. The promise, as recorded by the Evangelists is unlimited: “But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind whatsoever I shall have said to you” (St. John xiv. 26). This is explicit enough. But, again, “But he, the Spirit of truth, when he shall come, will teach you all truth” (ib. xvi. 13). Therefore, our Lord said to his apostles, “Go ye, and teach all nations ... to observe all things whatsoever I
have commanded you, and behold, I am with you all days, even unto the consummation of the world” (St. Matt, xxviii. 19, 20). This is a promise of guidance of the Spirit into all truth, and of exemption from error, in anything which our Lord has said or commanded.
If we were defending the Catholic rule, we should remind the author that this promise was made to the ecclesia docens, and only through that to the ecclesia credens; but, as we are not defending the Catholic rule, we suffer him to apply it to what he calls the true people of God. Yet, if he accepts the plain declaration of our Lord himself as recorded in the Gospels, he has no authority for distinguishing between essentials and non-essentials in the revelation of God, and none at all for restricting the promise of spiritual guidance and assistance to a promise of preservation from error only in certain fundamental truths of revelation. The author must either give us the rule or authority on which he makes the distinction and limitation, or concede that he makes it by no rule, and, therefore, on no authority.
Dr. Hodge tells us (p. 151) that “all Protestants agree in teaching that the word of God, as contained in the Old and New Testaments, is the infallible rule of faith.” He should have said some Protestants; for many who claim to be Protestants do not agree in teaching that. Will the professor say that those who do not so agree are not Protestants? By what authority? By the authority of the Bible, interpreted by private judgment? But they have the Bible and private judgment as well as he, or those who agree with him. Will he appeal to tradition? But tradition taken as a whole condemns him as well as those who differ from him. Then he must discriminate in tradition