An Inquiry Into the Use of Church Authority Tradition and Private Judgement

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General Books, 2013 - 84 páginas
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1838 edition. Excerpt: ...Believers who possess the complete canon of Scripture, have facilities for arriving at a correct understanding of the doctrines of revelation, which were beyond the reach of the first followers of the apostles. By the light of the written word, they are enabled to give a life and reality of form to their vague traditionary recollections; to penetrate into the expressions which they have heard, but which for want of fuller explanation, have been hitherto as a sealed book; to reconcile apparent contradictions; to distinguish between what is and What is not fundamental, between duties and practices which applied only to the primitive believers, and those which are obligatory upon all generations; to exchange the dim, uncertain light of tradition, for the full, bright, and undying brightness of the blessed Scriptures. 3. Again; the degree of instruction which the inspired teachers could bestow upon the vast majority of their converts, was exceedingly limited. In a very large proportion, it must necessarily have been confined to an occasional discourse or exposition of the Old Testament Scriptures. It was physically impossible that the apostles could give to all their followers that careful and repeated teaching, without which every hearer might have wholly mistaken their words. Many of those who were converted in apostolic days, never saw the apostles themselves; and of those who did so, not one in a hundred could have enjoyed the benefit of that private conversation, in which alone the teacher can adapt his language and explanations to the manifest difliculties of the mind which he is instructing. Those who were so amply taught, as that their teaching might be looked upon as an exact transcript of the doctrine of the apostles, must have been...

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