social importance which they have procured for men occupied in pacific employments, in diminishing the power and the influence of the temporal authority— that impious authority, which naturally tends to bring mankind in subjection to physical force, and to govern nations to its own advantage. Luther prescribed to the Protestants the study of Christianity in the books which were written at the epoch of its foundation, and particularly in the Bible; he declared that he acknowledged no other doctrines than those which were revealed in the sacred Scriptures.
This declaration on his part was as absurd as would be that of the mathematicians, physicians, chemists, or any other species of scientific men, who should assert that the sciences which they cultivated ought to be studied only in the first works which treated of the subject.
That which I have now said is by no means in opposition to a belief in the divinity of the founder of Christianity. Jesus could employ only that sort of language which men could comprehend at the epoch when he addressed them. He placed in the hands of his apostles the germ of Christianity; he charged his church with the development of this precious germ; he charged it with the care of annihilating all the political rights derived from the law of the strongest, and all the institutions which formed obstacles to the amelioration of the moral and physical existence of the poorest class.
It is in studying effects, and analysing them with the greatest care, that we acquire sufficient data to form a firm and decided judgment upon causes. I shall follow this method. I shall examine singly the principal errors which followed from Luther's having fixed the attention of Protestants too exclusively upon the Bible. This investigation will naturally substantiate the truth of my third accusation of heresy against the Protestants.
Four great mistakes have resulted to the Protestants from their exclusive study of the Bible:
