PROTESTANTISM OLD AND NEW.

FROM "THE INDEX," TOLEDO, OHIO.

[1878.]

IN N the great controversy which divided Europe between Catholic and Protestant, the clearest and most powerful minds on the Protestant side appealed to the Bible as the authoritative arbiter; and with excellent reason. The matter in debate was not whether Christianity was true and divine, nor whether the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments were in harmony, nor whether the Scriptures were inspired and infallible; for on such topics all were agreed. The question was, "What is Christianity? What beliefs and practices are Christian ?" The Romanist replied, "You must consult tradition, and of that tradition the Church (i. e. the clergy, the hierarchy) are the depositary and guardian." But the Protestant said, "Nay, but we must consult the Scriptures of the New Testament. You of Rome concede, you even maintain, that these are earlier than any other Christian documents by studying them we learn what doctrines the apostles themselves taught; and if the pope and bishops claim to be successors of the apostles, they cannot or must not claim to set their doctrines aside and teach things new." The Romanist had no rejoinder, but that the laity were unable to interpret the Scriptures aright, and that no interpretation was sound, which was not sanctioned by the Church. To this Luther had his answer: "Bonus grammaticus bonus theologus;" which in such argument means: whoever understands Greek grammar well enough to make out what is written in the Greek Testament, may understand that book as well as any bishop. But to be more guarded against undervaluing the aid given by learning to the interpretation of ancient writings, it sufficed to say that the claim of an authoritative interpretation by the clergy was preposterous in itself; and much more when it rested on an alledged unwritten tradition, under the cover of which any superstitious and monstrous absurdity might creep in, and many had crept in, to the great damage of truth, piety, and morals. History shows how conscious the Church of Rome was that the New Testament was

against her; for, so far as she was able and dared, she kept the book out of the hands of the laity. Down to the most recent years, no English traveller within the pope's dominions was allowed to carry in his portmanteau more than one copy of the New Testament in the Italian language; any second copy was taken away by the search-officers, on the presumption that it was intended for the reading of Italians. While suppression was the policy of Rome, publicity and multiplication of copies was the obvious policy of the Reformers; and no one who is not willing to run behind the pretence of occult divine powers communicated to Church-officers by the carnal imposition of hands, can hesitate to justify the appeal of Protestants to the oldest and acknowledged documents of Christianity. When the question was, Which shall we accept as the authoritative standard of apostolic teaching,the writings of the apostles and of their personal coadjutors, or the later assertions of Church-officers ? common sense lay on the side of the Protestant reply: We take the New Testament writings as our arbiter.

A minor difficulty indeed arose, when the Protestants so far tampered with the received canon of Scripture, as to exclude from it certain later Jewish writings, because, no Hebrew original being extant, apparently the Greek which we have is their original. This suggested to a Romanist the sarcasm: "So then! you decide by your own private judgment what shall be accepted as Sacred Scripture, and then claim to appeal to it against us!" This would have been a just and formidable remark, if Protestants had added to the received canon; but as they only took away, and what they took away was Jewish, not Christian, and no cardinal point of the controversy was thereby affected, the sole result of such a reply was to suggest a far deeper question, disagreeable to both the combatants-how either of them knew that the canon of Scripture (so called) was authentic, primitive, or composed by persons deserving trust so absolute. But the more cautious and thoughtful Protestants, in their appeal to Holy Scripture, were less anxious to impose belief than to claim freedom hence the negative side only was dwelt on in the sixth of the thirty-nine Anglican articles; namely, "nothing that cannot be clearly proved from Holy Writ," ought to be accounted as necessary of belief.

It is not wonderful that those Christians who have no idea of a controversy with any but fellow Christians, have become accustomed to regard the Bible" as the final court of appeal

and actual arbiter of truth. I will here take occasion to advert to a doctrine of probability, in direct opposition to Herbert Spencer; a man for whom in external science I have a profound admiration, but with whom I find myself in perpetual and hopeless collision, as soon as he gets into metaphysics, mathematical philosophy, or history. He says that when two opposite beliefs are in long conflict, "there is usually something between them in common, -something taken for granted by each; and this something, if not to be set down as an unquestionable verity, may yet be considered to have the highest degree of probability." [Herbert Spencer, First Principles Part I., chap. i., § ii., p. 10.] On the contrary, when honest and able men, within the same circle of thought and literature, continue in fixed schism of opinion, the facts suggest that neither side has the consistency and energy of truth, or it would manifestly win upon its opponent; the great probability therefore is that they hold some false principle in common, which dooms both of them to internal contradictions. Hence, what they alike "take for granted," and regard as axiomatic, needs, above all other things, to be suspected and severely searched into, as the probable nidus of error damaging them both. Such is the assumption of certainty and perfection in what the Christian churches call Holy Scripture.

The three centuries and a half which have passed since Luther, have made enormous additions to European knowledge, alike in breadth and accuracy. However vast the erudition of a few scholars, who devoured indiscriminately all remaining scraps of Latin literature before any European modern literature could compete with the ancient; however keen the zest with which the newly opened mine of Greek literature was explored,yet even the most learned then read with puerile credulity, or, if they attempted criticism, criticized childishly. The discrimination of fable from truth, in what passed as history, scarcely began before the end of the seventeenth century. Our Milton believed in "Brutus the Trojan" as the founder of Britain. Sound criticism of the classical writers of history attained no great perfection until the eighteenth century, and has been carried further in this nineteenth century, especially by the German Universities. The criticism directed to the detection of spurious books, or to decide on the age of literary documents, was quite in its infancy in Luther's time, but was soon discerned to be of immense importance. After attaining consciousness of power by much exercise on the literature entitled "profane," it gradually

addressed itself to the books of Hebrew and Christian Scripture, with results which make the intellectual position of the modern Evangelical widely different from that of the Puritan two centuries ago.

The appeal to the New Testament is of course still open, in controversy with the Romanist; but the Romanist has ceased to be the principal or most dreaded adversary. He can no longer wield the iron arm of the State against those who reject the papal creed. France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Poland, Mexico, Brazil, all disown the office of persecuting for the Church; and while Catholicism is weak in the hearts of the cultivated laity of nominally Catholic countries, we see the clear marks of decaying power, however many isolated converts it makes from those Protestant churches which have retained some of its characteristic doctrines. The modern English Evangelical has to encounter objections and difficulties which the Puritan never met. The adversaries of the old Puritan admitted and maintained the genuineness and authority of the received canon; but the very first objection which meets the modern Puritan is, "Why am I to believe what you call Holy Writ, when it teaches something opposed to reason and good sense? What do I know of the writers ?"-and, in fact, the intense study of the books by professors of Divinity is precisely that which has fundamentally sapped their authority.

The modern Evangelical creed has tried to discard all the niceties of the Trinitarian controversy, and in so doing has generally run upon something which of old was denounced as "heresy," whether by holding three or two Gods, as do the vulgar; or by teaching that the divinity of Jesus consisted in an indwelling of the one God in the body of a mere man. To two Gods they have in general no objection, provided they be not called two Gods; call them "two Persons in the Godhead" and all is right. But the emphasis of the creed is placed on the "atonement by blood." When the devotee of "the blood" is asked from what Scripture he learns his doctrine, he naturally cites the Epistle to the Hebrews as his decisive authority; but encounters (perhaps with dismay) the objection that it is anonymous, and certainly is not the composition of Paul, as the English version dishonestly asserts. He thus finds he can no longer insist that the New Testament shall be taken as a whole, but that the task rests on him to prove, book by book separately, that each is "inspired,”which is understood to mean infallible. To the ignorant some

teachers will daringly or ignorantly cite as proof: "All Scripture is written by inspiration of God,"-words addressed by Paul to Timothy concerning the Hebrew Scriptures, before the Christian books existed or were collected; moreover there is fraud in the translation, which has foisted on us the sacred English word Scripture. Paul certainly never meant to say that "Every writing is divinely inspired," which this punctuation of the text makes him say; for scripture and writing are the same word in Greek. But, after all, why are we to trust to Paul's authority, when so many apostolic Christians were in violent controversy with him? Paul himself minutely informs us of his intense opposition to the Church of Jerusalem; which, as the earliest, and as presided over by the immediate disciples of Jesus, was more likely to hold the true doctrine of Jesus than Paul. He entitles brethren who belonged to the school of Jerusalem-Christians, certain false brethren, who had bewitched his converts by teaching them a different gospel; and bids them count every one accursed who taught any other gospel than his. That these brethren were received as equals and coadjutors by the Apostle James and the other actual disciples of Jesus went for nothing with him. Indeed, how little Paul cared for the apostles, he was most anxious that his Galatian converts should know. He minutely tells what a bitter public rebuke he had given to Peter; and concerning "those who seemed to be somewhat," that is, the three great apostles at Jerusalem "who seemed to be pillars," he declares that "whatsoever they were, it was no matter to him." Every chief epistle of Paul shows, more or less distinctly, the sharp controversy between him and the Church of Jerusalem, who are now contemptuously called "the Judaizers;" though they were the original Christian body and form the only historical connection with Jesus himself. That they were fundamentally opposed as to the doctrine of the Atonement, is more than indicated by Paul, when he gives such prominence to "glorying in the cross;" implying that his opponents from Jerusalem did not glory in the cross: nay, he actually says they preached circumcision to the Gentiles in hope of avoiding persecution for the cross. From the Epistle of James himself the "peculiar doctrines" of Pauline Christianity are wholly absent. That apostle makes true religion to consist in right acting, not in a right creed. The creed of the "devils," belief in God's Unity,-satisfies him without a Trinity; only as in the creed of Islâm it is added, "and Mohammed is God's prophet," so in the creed of James it was contained, "and Jesus