CH?. lI.! wef. PTumt. ?T vantage ground for the present, and answer distinctly to every text not ' yet answered by me.e This is telling us plainly what the claims of the Church of Pome are, and what she is ready to enforce when power or policy will furnish aproper opportunity. We have no right to dis- pute with her; she neednot descend to argue with us; she is the sole judge of every text in the Bible, not one of which can have a meaning different from her own. By this snrnmary process any Romanist, as well as Dr. Milner, can ?A euety ergomont. Truly, according to this, there is no use in reasoning with her. But the arrogant sentiment con- tained in the above quotation nil'orals its own confutation to every Pro- testant, and indeed to many serious Roman Catholics. 7. Against the Bible mlone as the rule of faith the following objections have been urged by the members of the Church of Rome :m It is objected, "If the Scril?ures had been the rule of faith, the church would always have had them in writing; but before Moses there was no writing." To this we answer, that they had the revelations of the ancient patriarchs, which were transmitted to thom by a tradition supe- rior to that which Pome now makes a principal part of her rule of faith. But they certainly had no such rule as Romanists deem necessary. It is also said, "that the books of the New Testament were not written till long after the establishment of Scripture, and therefore Christians had not the Bible for their directory and rule." But the binding obligation of the Old Testament remained fill the cruci6rlon: and in the interval the church was favoured with the personal presence of the apostles, whose living voice supplied a rule of faith of equal authority with that of Christ; for, accord?g to his own declaratioil, they that heard them heard him. The apostles left their wrifinogs as their only successors; and until these writings were completed some of them remained alive to give instruction, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, with regard to every doctrine and practice respecting which a question might be agitated in any of the churches. And when they had not personal intercome, they were consulted by writing. "The Hebrews were without the written word of God for fourteen generations. Hence the Scriptures could not have been their rule of faith."But we learn, ? a certainty, that the Jews did possess the book of the law; for Ezra read it to the people, and, as a preacher, gave the sense, and made the people to understand it. Aid whether all of them understood the Hebrew or not, some of them certainly did; and for the sake of all, Ezra gave such instructions as enabled all to understand the truths of religion, whether he expounded in Hebrew, or translated and. expounded in Chaldse. In his example we have a just condemna- tion of the practice of praying, teaching, or reading a service in an unknown tougue, which is the practice in the Romish Church. It is also sn.id, by wayof objection to the Bible as the only rule, "that twenty books of the Old Testament are lost." If this be so, how did it come to pass that the Church of Eome permitted them to be lost when she boasts to be the preserver of Holy Scripture ? Besides, as she makes the church, and not the Scripture, to be the infallible rule, the church must have committed a mortal sin in allowing these portions of Scripture to be lost. But the allusion to these books is no evidence of their inspiration, any more than allusions to the poet Aratus, before
- End of Coup, let. xii, p. 76.
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