e literary composition, he
might interpret it rightly, and Gaius, or Papinian, might be wrong; but
if his interpretation was ever so right grammatically or critically,
yet, legally it was nothing to the purpose;--Gaius's interpretation had
superseded it, and was not the law which he was bound to obey. But, in
the church, the only point to be aimed at is the discovery of the true
meaning of the text of the divine law: no human power can invest the
comment with equal authority. The emperor said, and might say to his
judges, "You need not consider what was the meaning of the decemvirs,
when they wrote the twelve tables, or, of Aquillius, when he drew up the
Aquillian law. The law for you is not what the decemvirs may have meant,
but what their interpreters may have meant: the decemvirs' meaning, if
it was their meaning, is no longer the law of Rome." But who can dare to
say to a Christian, "You need not consider what was the meaning of our
Lord and his apostles; the law for you now is the meaning of Cyprian, or
Ambrose, or Chrysostom;--that meaning has superseded the meaning of
Christ." A Christian must find out Christ's meaning, and believe that he
has found it, or else he must still seek for it. It is a matter, not of
outward submission, but of inward faith; and if in our inward mind we
are persuaded that the interpreter has mistaken our Lord's meaning, how
can we by possibility adopt that interpretation in faith?

Here we come to a grave consideration--that this doctrine of an
infallible rule of interpretation may suit ignorance or scepticism: it
is death to a sincere and reasonable and earnest faith. It is not hard
for a sceptical mind to deceive itself by saying, that it receives
whatever the church declares to be true: it may receive any number of
doctrines, but it will not really believe them. We may restrain our
tongues from disputing them, we may watch every restless thought that
would question them, and instantly, by main force, as it were, put it
down; but all this time our minds do not assimilate to them; they do not
take them up into their own nature, so as to make them a part of
themselves, freshening and supplying the life-blood of their very being.
Truth must be believed by the mind's own act; our souls must be drawn
towards it with a reasonable love; some affinity there must be between
it and them, or else they can never really comprehend it. The sceptic
may desperately become a fanatic also, but he is not