British Quarterly Review, American Edition, Vol. LIV: July and October, 1871Various
History
British Quarterly Review, American Edition, Vol. LIV: July and October, 1871
Various
English periodicals
This writer is anxious to impale, not only Canon Liddon, but all who
hold substantially the Catholic doctrine of the Person of our Lord
Jesus, on one or other horn of the following dilemma:--Either Pure
Rationalism is our adequate guide, or the Catholic Church is the true
divine informant of man. 'Repudiate,' he virtually says, 'orthodox
doctrine, or admit that the Church is the depository and organ of
Divine revelation.' Protestant orthodoxy confessing Catholic
exposition of Holy Scripture, is, to our author's mind, inconsistent
in method and fundamentally insecure. He professes not to debate 'the
truth or falsehood of a doctrine, but the security or insecurity of a
foundation on which a minority of Christians have attempted to erect
that doctrine.' In every variety of phrase our author charges upon
Protestant interpreters of Holy Scripture, and on Mr. Liddon, as the
principal illustration of the painful phenomenon, the prepossession
and bias which blunt their exegetical tact; the traditionary and
apparently invincible blindness which prevents their understanding the
contents of the Bible; and the prejudice which so obfuscates their
spiritual perceptions that they continually wrest the true
significance of God's Word written, into irrational agreement with the
creeds of the Church. Orthodox believers 'never read the other side.'
The mastery of standard Unitarian books is no part of clerical
preparation in the Church of England, and orthodox Nonconformist
ministers are 'not genuinely and honestly acquainted with the
adversary at all.' The moral results of Protestant orthodoxy are, in
this writer's opinion, deplorable. Where anything has been effected by
it, according to our anonymous author, it has not been 'in virtue of
the dogma that God is three Persons rather than one Father, but in
virtue of truths which are the property of Theism as much as of
Ecclesiasticism.' We think he is just when he urges that 'no man or
society of men, while abjuring the Church's authoritative,
interpreting, and revealing functions, is legitimately empowered to
bind on the conscience doctrines which have not reasonable evidence
and do not admit of reasonable detailed exhibition.' He is extremely
vigorous, if not bitter, in his denunciation of those Protestant
divines who, according to him, already surcharged with Catholic or
ecclesiastical traditions, pretend to find on Protestant principles
the doctrines they know and love in the Holy Scriptures. Repeated
examinations of the Bampton lecture of Dr. Liddon have convinced him
that the lecturer's method is vicious and unsound, and that no
'unbiased individual judgment, rationally exercised, can deduce from
the Bible the doctrines of Christ's co-equal deity.' The work which
follows is a searching attempt to grapple with the Scriptural argument
as presented by Mr. Liddon. There is great ingenuity in the method of
attack. The author lays hold of the most consummate expression of Mr.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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