ous revelation, every man may and must interpret the Bible for himself. This is the weak part of this Ecclesiastical Institution considered as a finality: Each man has the right of private judgment, to determine the canon—what is Scripture; and the interpretation—what Scripture means. There may be individuality of opinion in religion as elsewhere. Within the lids of the Bible there is room for speculation. Nay, logically, the authority of the Bible itself is to be proved to the satisfaction of the individual before he accepts it as his master. Hence there can be no unity of doctrine or of form with the Protestants; and at the beginning the Teutonic individualism clove the new church into many parties, each having the general opinions of Protestantism and the special notions of Episcopalians, Congregationalists, and so forth.
The function of the Protestant minister is to administer the Bible, which contains the miraculous balm of salvation for the sin of depraved human nature; he must set forth the most important parts of the Bible, the doctrines, which are the essential and medicative substance of this balm. Hence come the efforts to distribute the Bible—the word of God—and doctrinal tracts, which contain the extract of Bible, the quintessence of the word of God. For as the strength of Samson lay not in his bones, and muscles, and sinews, but only in his hair, so the efficient and salvatory power of the Bible lies not in those beautiful parts which teach natural piety and natural morality, but only in its theological doctrines—especially in those five false ideas above set forth, which theological chemistry distils therefrom.
In both the Catholic and the Protestant churches all the fundamental theological doctrines are taught on external authority; the last appeal for the acceptance of doctrines is not to the consciousness of the individual believer pronouncing them just and true, but to the miraculous revelation declaring them Divine commands; not to the Spirit of God now in me, but what is alleged to have been the Spirit of God in some man long since dead and gone. Science rests on facts of consciousness and facts of observation, it is therefore "profane;" theology on the "said-so" of somebody, often of an anonymous writer in a rude and uncertain age, and is "Divine." One has the
