But it should be considered, that to use ecclesiastical antiquity for interpreting the word of God, no more violates this axiom than to use any of the other universally admitted aids to interpretation already mentioned. Whatever means the Divine promulgator of Revelation has given to his Church for ascertaining the truths revealed, ought diligently and conscientiously to be improved. Among those means, the place of highest authority belongs unquestionably to the three primitive formularies of belief, the Apostles’, the Nicene, and the Athanasian Creeds; and to the Canons of the first four general councils, which received the sanction of universal Christendom: and in which to his entire satisfaction the conscientious inquirer will find the leading truths of Christianity embodied. The same remark applies to the Episcopal constitution of the Church; for “it is evident unto all men diligently reading the Holy Scriptures and ancient authors, that from the Apostles there have been these orders of ministers in Christ’s Church, Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.” {35} But we cannot better explain how far ancient literature is to be rendered available to sacred purposes, than by a transcription of a canon set forth by the Church of England in the same year with its articles. “Preachers shall not presume to deliver any thing from the pulpit as of moment, to be religiously observed and believed by the people, but that which is agreeable to the doctrine of the Old or New Testament, and collected out of the same doctrine by the Catholic Fathers and the Bishops of the ancient Church.” {36a} “A wise regulation,” observes the judicious and able Dr. Waterland, “formed with exquisite judgment, and worded with the exactest caution. The canon does not order that they shall teach whatever had been taught by the Fathers: no; that would have been setting up a new rule of faith; neither does it say that they shall teach _whatsoever_ the Fathers had _collected from Scripture_: no; that would have been making them _infallible_ interpreters, or infallible _reasoners_: the doctrine must be found first in Scripture, only to be the more secure that we have found it there: the _Fathers_ are to be called in, to be, as it were, constant checks upon the presumption or wantonness of private interpretation. But then again, as to _private_ interpretation, there is liberty enough allowed to it. Preachers are not forbidden to interpret this or that text, or hundreds of texts, differently from what the Fathers have done; provided still they keep within the _analogy of faith_, and presume not to raise any _new_ doctrine: neither are they altogether restrained from teaching any thing _new_, provided it be offered as opinion only, or as an _inferior_ truth, and not pressed as necessary upon the people. For it was thought that there could be no _necessary_ article of faith or doctrine now drawn from Scripture, but what the ancients had drawn out before from the same