The Place of Authority in Matters of Religious Belief
(This historic book may have numerous typos and missing te...)
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1891 Excerpt: ... De examinatione doctrinarum; Consid. 'prim." Cf. also his De Sensu Litterali. It is evident that the difficulty of knowing whether a Council was to be held to be general or not, and the necessity of looking to tha subsequent confirmation of the Ohuroh at large, did not present itself to the minds of those who used such language. The Councils themselves declared their own ceeumenicity and infallibility. The following passage from The Oxford Movement, by the late Dean of St. Paul's will help to give a cleafTdea oi Ifie'psltlBTrmaintained in this essay in regard to the authority of the Church. I am also glad to claim for it his powerful support. "The creed and dogmas of the Christian Church are, at least in their broad features, not a speculation, but a fact. That not only the Apostles' Creed, but the Nicene and Constantinopolitan Creeds, are assumed as facts by the whole of anything that can be called the Church, is as certain as the reception by the same body, and for the same time, of the Scriptures. Not only the Creed, but, up to the sixteenth century, the hierarchy, and not only Creed and hierarchy and Scriptures, but the sacramental idea as expressed in the liturgies, are equally in the same clas3 of facts. Of course it is open to any one to question the genuine origin of any of these great portions of the constitution of the Church; but the Church is so committed to them that he cannot enter on his destructive critioism without having to criticize, not one only, but all these beliefs, and without soon having to face the question whether the whole idea of the Church, as a real and divinely ordained society, with a definite doctrine and belief, is not a delusion, and whether Christianity whatever it is, is addressed solely to each individual, one by one, ...
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