Among those means, whilst we
regard the Holy Scriptures as paramount and supreme, we appeal to the
witness and mind of the Church as secondary and subsidiary; a witness
not at all competing with Scripture, never to be balanced against it;
but competing with our own less able and less pure apprehension of
Scripture. In ascertaining the testimony of this witness, we examine the
sentiments and practice of the ancient teachers of the Church; not as
infallible guides, not as uniformly holding all of them the same
opinions, but as most valuable helps in our examination of the evidence
of the Church, who is, after all, our appointed instructor in the truths
of the Gospel,--fallible in her individual members and branches, yet the
sure witness and keeper of Holy Writ, and our safest guide on earth to
the mind and will of God. When we have once satisfied ourselves that a
doctrine is founded on Scripture, we receive it with implicit faith, and
maintain it as a sacred deposit, entrusted to our keeping, to be
delivered down whole and entire without our adding {5} thereto what to
us may seem needful, or taking away what we may think superfluous.
The state of the Christian thus employed, in acting for himself in a
work peculiarly his own, is very far removed from the condition of one
who labours in bondage, without any sense of liberty and responsibility,
unconscious of the dignity of a free and accountable agent, and
surrendering himself wholly to the control of a task-master.
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