mind, was no less the judgment of the Church of
England than that if he publicly disputed the interpretation of the
church, he might be punished as unruly and a despiser of government. But
then it should ever be remembered that the church, with the Reformers,
was not the clergy. And now that the right of publication is conceded by
the church, it is quite just to say that the Church of England allows
private judgment; and if that judgment differ from her own, she condemns
not the act of judging at all, but the having come to a false
conclusion.

It is urged that the act of I Elizabeth, c. 1, allows that to be heresy
which the first four councils determined to be so. This is true; but it
also adjudges to be heresy whatever shall be hereafter declared to be so
by "the high court of parliament, with the assent of the clergy in their
convocation." The Church of England undoubtedly allowed the decisions of
the first four councils, in matters of doctrine, to be valid, as it
allowed the three creeds, because it decided that they were agreeable to
Scripture; but the binding authority was that of the English Parliament,
not of the councils of Nicaea or Constantinople.

As to the canon of 1571, which allows preachers to teach nothing as
religious truth but what is agreeable to the Scriptures, "_and_ which
the catholic fathers and ancient bishops have collected from that very
doctrine of Scripture," it will be observed that it is merely negative,
and does not sanction the teaching of the "catholic fathers and ancient
bishops," generally, or say that men shall teach what they taught; but
that they shall not teach as matter of religious faith, a new deduction
from Scripture of their own making, but such truths as had been actually
deduced from Scripture before, namely, the great articles of the
Christian faith. Farther, the canons of 1571 are of no authority, not
having received the royal assent.--_See Strype's Life of Parker_, p.
322, ed. 1711.]

It is invidiously described as maintaining "the sufficiency of private
judgment." Now we maintain the sufficiency of private judgment in
interpreting the Scriptures in no other sense than that in which every
sane man maintains its sufficiency, in interpreting Thucydides or
Aristotle; we mean, that, instead of deferring always to some one
interpreter, as an idle boy follows implicitly the Latin version of his
Greek lesson, the true method is to consult all[17] accessible
authorities, and