contained in the Bible?-Yes.

And you believe the Bible on those grounds?-Yes, I do. Tell us, then, how many things are necessary to salvation; give us a catalogue of the articles which are necessary. That, again, was a matter which exercised to some extent the ingenuity of the controversialists of those days; it was a fair enough demand. How was it answered? It was answered, my lord, in a very peculiar manner; and, I think, when my learned friends accuse us of denying that the Bible is the "rule of faith," they had overlooked the passage in the history of English literature, with which I have no doubt my friend Dr. Phillimore was familiar long before my attention had ever been directed to subjects of this kind. Some of the most eminent writers of the Church of England have expressly denied that the Bible is the rule of faith, and they have said the Apostles' creed is the rule of faith, in the sense that it contains all things necessary to salvation; and that was their answer to the Roman Catholic argument. You asked us how we got out of the difficulty -how could the Bible contain its own evidence? We answered you-by history and conscience, which affirm that it contains all things necessary to salvation. You then press us-What are the things necessary to salvation? We answer, they are contained in the Apostles' creed.

I will not trouble your lordship with many extracts on. the subject, but to recur to Chillingworth again,* the heading of chap. iv. is, " Wherein is shown that the creed con"tains all necessary points of mere belief." Then, my lord, in Jeremy Taylor, On the Liberty of Prophesying, sect. i.,† the heading of the chapter is this: "Of the nature of faith, "and that its duty is completed in believing the articles "of the Apostles' creed." I'recur again upon this point to Baxter, reserving, for the present, my observations upon * Page 199. † 7 Jer. Tay. p. 443.

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Baxter's authority. In the work already quoted* occurs this passage: "Do you not by this set the creed above the Bible?" Now, my lord, recollect that Baxter was writing this in what I may call the heyday of Calvinism, at the time when the Westminster Confession had been the creed of the Church of England, and was, as it still is, I believe, the creed of the Church of Scotland, and observe what he says: "A. No otherwise than I set the head, heart, liver, " and stomach of a man above the whole body, which con"tains them and all the rest; or than I set the Ten Com"mandments above the whole law of Moses, which includes "them; or than Christ did set loving God above all, and 66 our neighbour as ourselves, above all that law of which they were the sum. We must not take those for no "Christians, nor deny them baptism, who understand and "believe not particularly every word in the Bible, as we "must those that understand not and believe not the creed.' Imagine that written by a person who had subscribed to the Westminster Confession. The creed-not said to be inspired at all-a document not in the Bible-a document resting merely on tradition-put in the same position to the Bible as the head, heart, liver, and stomach of a man are said to occupy to the whole body! To put the creed in that position is distinctly to say the creed contains the essence of the Christian religion: it is above the Bible-it is more important than the Bible, the Bible derives its authority from the Christian religion, and the Christian religion does not derive its authority from the Bible.

I am glad, my lord, to be able occasionally to read passages in defence of Dr. Williams, which will enliven what I fear is a very dismal duty on the part of the court, and I will therefore read to your lordship a passage from Jeremy Taylor closely bearing on this subject, which I

*Words. Chr. Inst. p. 274.

may be permitted to say is one of the most eloquent and noble passages that ever was written in the English language, a passage which I hope your lordship will bear in mind when you are forming your own judgment in this case. And recollect, my lord, the time when Jeremy Taylor wrote this: it was the time of the Westminster Confession. Never forget that. It was not many years before this was written, if not at the very time, that that creed was supposed to be the law of the land; and say whether this is not an emphatic protest against it by one of the most eminent members of the church-by one of those who have exalted its literary glory to the highest pitch. The passage is a summary of Taylor's chapter on the Creed and the Bible; it is in these words: "The sum is "this. Since Holy Scripture is the repository of Divine “truths, and the great rule of faith to which all sects of "Christians do appeal for probation of their several opinions; " and since all agree in the articles of the creed as things "clearly and plainly set down, and as containing all that "which is of simple and prime necessity; and since on the "other side there are in Scripture many other mysteries "and matters of question upon which there is a veil; since "there are so many copies with infinite varieties of reading; "since a various interpunction, a parenthesis, a letter, an "accent, may much alter the sense; since some places have "divers literal senses, many have spiritual, mystical, and 66 allegorical meanings; since there are so many tropes, "metonymies, ircnies, hyperboles, proprieties and impro

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prieties of language, whose understanding depends upon "such circumstances that it is almost impossible to know " its proper interpretation now that the knowledge of such "circumstances and particular stories is irrecoverably lost; "since there are some mysteries which at the best advantage

*8 Jer. Taylor, 9.

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"of expression are not easy to be apprehended, and whose "explanation, by reason of our imperfections, must needs "be dark, sometimes weak, sometimes unintelligible; and "lastly, since those ordinary means of expounding Scrip"ture, as searching the originals, conference of places, parity of reason, and analogy of faith, are all dubious, "uncertain, and very fallible: he that is the wisest, and by consequence the likeliest to expound truest in all probability of reason, will be very far from confidence, because every one of these, and many more, are like so many "degrees of improbability and uncertainty, all depressing "our certainty of finding out truth in such mysteries and "amidst so many difficulties; and therefore a wise man that "considers this would not willingly be prescribed to by "others, and therefore, also, if he be a just man he will “not impose upon others; for it is best every man should "be left in that liberty, from which no man can justly take him, unless he can secure him from error: so that here "also there is a necessity to conserve the liberty of prophesying and interpreting Scripture; a necessity derived "from the consideration of the difficulty of Scripture in "questions controverted and the uncertainty of any internal "medium of interpretation."

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I hope I have now satisfied your lordship that the sixth and seventh articles, the most important in some respects of the whole thirty-nine, were not drawn up at random, and that the Church of England never acted more advisedly, more maturely, with fuller consideration of what it was doing, than when it left open these three questions-the question

* As an illustration of this, Taylor says (p. 8):—“Osiander observes, "there are twenty several opinions concerning justification, all drawn "from the Scriptures, by the men only of the Augustine confession.. "There are sixteen several opinions concerning original sin, and as many definitions of the sacraments as there are sects of men that "disagree about them."

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*

of inspiration, the question of criticism, the question of interpretation. They left open the question of inspiration, because they knew well the danger of drawing any harsh line between that truth which God reveals to man through Scripture, and that truth which God reveals to man through reason. They left it open, because they knew by bitter experience the danger of giving any countenance to that awful doctrine which was the characteristic doctrine of the Calvinists—that Scripture is in such sense the rule of human conduct, that whatever is not contained therein, or cannot be proved thereby, is of the nature of sin. I will quote the words which Hooker applied to that doctrine, and I have heard doctrines asserted in the present day to which they might be applied with equal justice. He says:* "Admit this, and what shall the Scripture be but a snare. "and a torment to weak consciences, filling them with "infinite perplexities, scrupulosities, doubts insoluble, and "extreme despairs." Have we seen nothing, my lord, of " doubts insoluble, and extreme despairs" in this day and generation? Have we seen nothing of "scrupulosities "and infinite perplexities," arising from the notion that war is proclaimed between the reason and the conscience; that if a man is to believe God in one capacity, he is to doubt him in the other? My lord, they left open the question of criticism for reasons which I shall show more particularly hereafter; amongst others because, though they had not our learning, they were far too learned, far too candid, to endorse that fatal and monstrous assertion of the Westminster divines, that the Greek and Hebrew text were inspired by God, and by his care kept pure and authentic. They would have blushed to have done it when in their own Bible one of the most important texts was printed in italics, in order to show that its authenticity was doubtful. * 1 Hooker, 273.