four; if we take in the sixth and seventh centuries, we have
then, in all, six general councils. Will the decisions of any, or all,
of these six councils furnish us with an authoritative interpretation of
Scripture? They give us the Nicene and the Constantinopolitan creeds;
they condemn various notions with respect to the person of our Lord, and
to some other points of belief; and they contain a variety of
regulations for the discipline and order of the church; but, with the
exception of some particular passages, there is no authority in the
creeds, or canons, or anathemas of those councils, for the
interpretation of Scripture; they leave its difficulties just where they
were before. It is but little then, which the first six general
councils will do towards providing the student of Scripture with an
infallible standard of interpretation.

Where, however, except in the councils, can we find any thing claiming
to be the voice of the church? Neither individual writers, nor yet all
the writers of the first seven centuries together, can properly be
called the church. They form, even altogether, but a limited number of
individuals, who, in different countries, and at different periods,
expressed, in writing, their own sentiments, but without any public
authority. Origen, one of the ablest and most learned of them all, was
anathematized by the second council of Constantinople; Tertullian was
heretical during a part of his life; Lactantius was taxed with
heterodoxy. How are we to know who were sound? And if sound generally,
that is to say, if they stand charged with no heretical error, yet it
does not follow that a man is infallible because he is not heretical;
and none of these writers have been distinguished like the five great
Roman lawyers whom the edict of Theodosius[15] selected from the mass,
and gave to their decisions a legal authority. Or again, if it be said
that the agreement of the great majority of them is to be regarded as
decisive, we answer, that as no individual amongst them is in himself an
authority legally, so neither can any number of them be so; and if a
moral authority only be meant, such as we naturally ascribe to the
concurring judgment of many eminent men, then this is a totally
different question, and is open to inquiry in every separate case; for
as, on the one hand, no one denies that such a concurring judgment is
_an_ authority, yet, on the other hand, it may be outweighed, either by
the worth of