Book in this Manner they shall send it to the rest, to be consider'd of seriously and judiciously, for His Majesty is very careful in this Point. 10. If any Company, upon the Review of the Book so sent, doubt or differ upon any Place, to send them Word thereof; note the Place, and withal send the Reasons, to which if they consent not, the Difference to be compounded at the General Meeting, which is to be of the chief Persons of each Company, at the end of the Work. 11. When any Place of special Obscurity is doubted of, Letters to be directed, by Authority, to send to any Learned Man in the Land, for his Judgment of such a Place. 12. Letters to be sent from every Bishop to the rest of his clergy, admonishing them of this Translation in hand; and to move and charge as many as being skilful in the Tongues; and having taken Pains in that kind, to send his particular Observations to the Company, either at Westminster, Cambridge or Oxford. 13. The Directors in each Company, to be the Deans of Westminster and Chester for that Place; and the King's Professors in the Hebrew or Greek in either University. 14. These translations to be used when they agree better with the Text than the Bishops Bible. Tindoll's. Whitchurch's. 15. Besides the said Directors before mentioned, three or four of the most Ancient and Grave Divines, in either of the Universities, not employed in Translating, to be assigned by the Vice-Chancellor, upon Conference with the rest of the Heads, to be Overseers of the Translations as well Hebrew as Greek, for the better Observation of the 4th Rule above specified. APPENDIX K INFALLIBILITY THE presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church is that which makes her a divine society, and the realisation of His presence is our one hope and faith in the ceaseless warfare against the world. Who is to teach and still more to interpret? Where are we to look amid the Babel of tongues and the strivings of men for a voice which speaks of the things of God in a language which impels assent. The Craving for Infallibility. The constitution of the human mind is such that it cannot but submit to what it regards as authority. The man who makes disciples and gains followers, whether in political or religious affairs, is he who speaks with the strong force of personal conviction. This was one note in the ministry of Our Blessed Lord which caused the common people to hear Him gladly, "Never man spake like this man." "He spake with authority and not as the scribes." How then fares this natural demand at the hands of the Church of Christ? The Church of Rome has settled it for her members by declaring at the Vatican Council in 1870 "That the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when in discharge of the office of Pastor and Teacher of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the Universal Church, is, by the Divine assistance promised to him in Blessed Peter, possessed of that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed that His Church should be endowed in defining doctrine regarding faith or morals; and that therefore such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church, irreformable." The highest authorities in the Roman Church interpret this as limiting infallibility to doctrines regarding faith and morals and excluding all else, but it sets aside as unnecessary the consent of the Church. The decisions of councils, the teachings of theologians and of the Ancient Fathers, however much they may be reverenced, have no authority in opposition to the voice of him who claims to speak under the immediate guidance of the Holy Spirit by reason of his supreme apostolic authority and by the Divine assistance promised to him in Blessed Peter. The Greek Church holds to an infallibility, but lodges it in ecumenical councils which do not define until they have received the universal witness and the consensus of Christian teaching. The Council demands in the language of Vincent what is semper ubique et ab omnibus, and finds in this testimony of universal acceptance the residuum of unalterable and infallible truth. The position of our own Church has always tended towards this. When our forefathers in England, during the Reformation period, were accused of schism and of breaking the unity of the Church they appealed to a general council. They refused to attend the Council of Trent because of its constitution, by which the Italian bishops were set down at 187 and all the rest made but 83. "Any General Council shall satisfy me," said Laud, "and I presume all good Christians, that is lawfully called, continued and ended according to the same course and under the same conditions which General Councils observed in the primitive Church." At the Council of Nice, which is one of those accepted by our Church, Constantine required and the bishops assented that "things brought into question should be answered and solved by testimony out of Scripture." "We were ready," said the historian of the Council, "with the Q approval of the Holy Spirit to prove with a great mass of evidence taken from the Holy Scriptures that these things were so." Many years have passed since those days and yet the question remains the same. By what authority do we teach? Where do we look for guidance, for instruction and for power to bear witness to the truth when we have found it? This is one of the most important questions before our Church in Australia to-day. Rationalism scoffs at our creeds and declares that they fetter the free play of thought. A kindly but ill-informed public opinion asks if we cannot throw them overboard and lighten a burdened ship. Vain that we should spend our time in discussing postures and dress or give our whole energy to internal and domestic affairs when the fortress itself is assailed by an enemy which challenges us with the old question. "By what authority doest Thou these things and who gave Thee this authority? Our answer requires us to investigate the_three great fountains of authority to be found in the Reason, the Church and the Bible, each of which has its source in the Holy Spirit of God, and all of which mingle in one stream in which the human soul can pass with safety refreshed by its waters or again protected and sustained in its passage over the waves of this troublesome world. The Reason. Our Reason is a gift from God. Yea, it is a very part of our nature which links us with the Divine. God has so constituted us that He has never left Himself without witness in our hearts, and Bishop Butler rightly observes that the reason given us by God is the only power we possess of judging as to the truth of anything, even of revelation itself. If God has spoken to man in the past we hold that He still speaks, and therefore we must decide how His voice is to be heard, and what accents of human speech are divine. The science of geometry was worked out in ancient times by Euclid and Archimedes from a few principles they found in their minds. Not for long centuries afterwards did Galileo and Newton discover that the heavenly bodies have orbits which were found to be the very curves traced by Euclid on the sand of his study floor. Whence and how this identity? There is only one explanation. Man is made in the image of God; he can think the same divine thoughts; the human and divine minds correspond to each other in a wonderful manner. In the sphere of the metaphysical the intellect gives infallible decisions. The multiplication table, for instance, is infallible, and Newton's law of gravitation, whilst in its inception and since it is no more than a working hypothesis, has stood the test of so many centuries and explained such widely different phenomena that it has become an infallible truth for human minds. But man is not only a calculating machine. He is a moral agent. Love God with our mind we must, but to love Him with all the heart and soul and strength is a greater task. When men ask for a natural theology they must make it large enough to include the whole of man's nature, and of this the moral and religious reason, which is sometimes called conscience, is part. The moral reason will decide infallibly in given circumstances only upon the condition that we allow it to do so. There are consciences which are silenced or murdered, like that of Judas, until remorse and despair call forth the confession, "I have sinned"; consciences which are seared with a hot iron, as well as consciences void of offence before God and man, so that not the experience or moral consciousness of any individual nor the commonly accepted moral judgment of the best Christians is in itself a safe or infallible guide. And yet for each of us, but not for others, the Holy Spirit will decide infallibility. The gift of the Spirit is offered to individuals, "The Father will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him," "If any thirst let him come unto Me and drink." The access to the Throne of Grace is open to each one, and no one ever yet asked to be taught and guided by truth, prayed that his conscience might be illumined and his will subdued, prayed for all this |