That the Bible ought, on Protestant principles, to be a plain book, interpreting itself to every person of ordinary sense, or who has enough sense to be a moral agent, we concede, and Protestants should actually derive their doctrines from it. But nobody knows better than our author that neither is a fact. He knows that the Protestant people, however much they may read and praise the Bible, do not form their own opinions from it, but from their pastors or teachers, or the community in which they are brought up. He knows, also, that the people could never of themselves derive even the doctrines which he holds to be essential and necessary to salvation from reading the Bible alone. Unitarians and Universalists deny that the Bible teaches them, and the people, as a matter of fact, take them from the tradition of their sect, and at best only find confirmation of them in the Scriptures; and yet such are the exigencies of Protestantism that the ablest and most learned Protestant professors are obliged, in the face of these facts, to say with Chillingworth, “The Bible, the Bible alone, is the religion of Protestants.”
But Protestants should bear in mind that Catholics have the Bible as well as they—had it ages before Protestantism was ever heard of,
and that it was from Catholics that they obtained it—strictly speaking, from the church stole it. How, then, can it be their religion any more than it is the religion of Catholics? Catholics, if they have not admitted it to contain the whole revealed word, have always held it, before Protestantism and since, to be divinely inspired, and, as far as it goes, the infallible word of God. They have always held that all Christians are bound to believe whatever it teaches, and forbidden to believe anything that contradicts it. This is all that Protestantism can really say. The church contends that in no respect does her doctrine conflict with the written word, and is in most respects, if not in all, positively sustained by it. Suppose her as fallible as Protestants confess themselves to be, what can Protestants have in the Bible that Catholics have not? or what have they from any source that can override the Catholic understanding of the Scriptures, or authorize them to say that it is a misunderstanding? Catholics may have more than Protestants, but in no case have they or can they have less. By what rule or standard, then, do Protestants judge the Catholic understanding of the Scriptures to be false and the Protestant understanding to be true? Private judgment is no rule, and, if it were, Catholics have private judgment as well as Protestants; they have, too, reason, Biblical, historical, and all other sorts of learning, as well as they, and, at least, in as eminent a degree. By what rule or standard of judgment, then, is Protestantism to be pronounced more Biblical than is Catholicity?
The professor says: “The people have the right of private judgment, and are bound to read and interpret the Bible for themselves.” In matters left to private judgment,
in regard to which there is no public or catholic rule, be it so. But, when the people have a public or catholic rule, they are bound to judge by it, and the right of private judgment ceases. Protestants either have such a rule or they have not. If they have, they are bound to judge by it, and have no right of private judgment in the case. If they have not these, they have no rule or standard by which to judge, no rule of faith, and that ends the matter. We beg the professor to understand that all this Protestant rationalistic talk about private judgment is mere moonshine. He may allow it against what he calls “Romanism,” but he by no means allows it against what he holds to be the word of God. As for the people being bound to read or interpret the Bible for themselves, it is sufficient to ask what would become of the professor’s own vocation if it were so? Were the people who lived before the New Testament was written, or its several books collected into a volume as the rule of faith, bound to read and understand it for themselves? Are those bound to read or interpret the Bible for themselves who know not even how to read? These are reckoned to be at least nineteen-twentieths of mankind; shall they receive no religious instructions till they have learned to read? What shall we say of those who—and they are the bulk of mankind—obliged to toil incessantly to sustain their bodily existence, have no time to learn to read, much less to study diligently the sacred Scriptures, even if they could read? What are we to say of children who are too young to read and understand the Bible for themselves, and yet are old enough to sin? Can these all be saved without the knowledge of the truth? or are they excluded by an inexorable decree and no fault of their
own from salvation? The fact is, Protestants, whatever the fuss they may make about the Scriptures and private judgment, adopt, in practice, as their rule of faith, the Bible interpreted by the learned, or those they hold to be learned, the rule Dr. Döllinger would force the church to adopt. Catholics are not more dependent on the church than Protestants are on their pastors. But as their doctors cannot agree among themselves, they have no resource but to divide with their doctors, and divide they do, each division following its favorite doctor, and founding with him a new sect, which allows no private judgment against itself. Even Unitarians, who believe hardly anything, tolerate private judgment only when it makes for them, and are as intolerant of those who deny anything they hold to be essential as an Old or New School Presbyterian. The worst of it is that, while Protestants yield a slavish submission to their ministers, they deny that their ministers have any authority from God either to teach or to govern them, and, like the old carnal Jews, boast that they are free and in bondage to no man. The most degrading and debasing slavery into which mortals can be plunged is that of Protestants to their favorite ministers, unless it be that of the heathen to their idols or false gods.
But we are exceeding our limits. We have said enough, we think, to show that Protestants have no independent rule of faith—independent of the Catholic Church, we mean. In so far as they hold Christian truth or positive faith at all, they hold it on the authority of the Catholic rule, which they reject; and when deprived of what they stole from us, and to which they have no right, they have nothing to prevent them from running into pure rationalism on the
one hand, or into mysticism and transcendentalism on the other. The germs of both were in the original Protestant movement, and may be easily detected even in our Princeton professor. Into one or the other he must run, if he ever gets out of the vicious circle in which Protestantism, pretending to be Christian, necessarily gyrates, unless the grace of God relieves him and enables him to return to the bosom of the Catholic Church, where alone he will find true freedom and truth in its unity and integrity.
[108] Systematic Theology. By Charles Hodge, D.D., Professor in the Theological Seminary, Princeton, N. J. Vol. I. New York: Scribner & Co. 1872. 8vo, pp. 648.
[109] If the written word had been regarded as the sufficient and only rule of faith, there could have been no occasion to appeal to apostolic churches or to councils to ascertain the evangelical or apostolical traditions. It would have been simpler to appeal to the written word itself. The reason of the council, as its purpose, was to collect by the testimony of the pastors of the several churches what was the tradition that was handed over to each by its apostolic founder, and which it had preserved. By ascertaining thus by the testimony of each the traditions common to them all, the controversy was settled. The frequency of councils in the early ages proves that during those ages, at least, Christians did not adopt the Protestant rule of faith, and that they were by no means Protestants. The pretence of the Reformers that they were restoring primitive Christianity, primitive faith and usage, is to be taken as a pretence only.