OCR Text |
Show ' FAULTLESSLY LOGICAL." A Protestant writer, opposing dogmatic dog-matic utterances outside the Church, says in the St. John Sun: "The original essence of Protestantism Protestant-ism was protest against clerical authorityagainst author-ityagainst the claiir. of Pope and priests to the right and power to interpret in-terpret the Scriptures and to impose their interpretations in the form of dogma upon the laity. It was a revolt ag;iinst ecclesiastical autecracy a declaration de-claration of the right of the individual to read and to think for himself and to come to his own conclusions. Its essence es-sence was the principle unit the honest convictions of the individual are for him the right and the truth. Obviously, Obvious-ly, then. Protestant churches arrogate to themselves the same authority against which they revusteel when they, in turn, set up fixed su-.ndards of dogma dog-ma and hiss 'Heresy!' at those who venture to disagree. And the so-called higher critics themselves iitny the Pope when they set up their criticism as a thing of authority and call upon their less learned brethren to bow down and worship it. "There is no tenable .-:ildd!e ground between the absolute spiritual authority authori-ty claimed by the Roman Catholic Church and the full admission of tlie sovereignty of the individual understanding. under-standing. Catholicism at least is faultlessly fault-lessly logical. Granting its premises a divinely appointed and inspired, and hence infallible, church- yon must admit ad-mit its conclusions to the uttermost. But a Protestantitsm founded on thc-denial thc-denial of infallibility in any human agency, and yet imposing standards of biblical interpretation and religious beliefs, be-liefs, is obviously illogical. In so far as it hampers individual freedom of thought and expression in its congrega-tiors, congrega-tiors, so far it returns toward th? place ;t set out from so far !t nullifies the force of the original protest." |