In laying down the principles of Christian truth, Thorndike, as an Anglican, somewhat startles his reader by his first position, that reason is to decide controversies of faith[376]--a form of words which, taken alone, certainly conveys an idea very different from what the writer intends. Any rationalistic interpretation is prevented by what follows. He proceeds, indeed, to explain that neither the private teaching of the Spirit of God to the individual soul on the one hand, nor the authority of the Church in relation to men in general on the other, can be the ground of believing. But, on that account, he does not enthrone human reason. He adds, that there is obscurity in Scripture, all truth being in it _not explicitly_ but only _implicitly_; and he argues that whilst the Bible is sufficient in one sense, it is not so in another, and that it therefore needs such interpretation as is supplied by the traditions of the Church.[377] The use of reason (or reasoning) in matters of faith is resolved by him into this--that by it “all undertake to persuade all,” and its only scope is in the examination of evidence. Yet what are commonly called the evidences of Christianity are very much overlooked in Thorndike’s writings. There are numerous incidental allusions to the opinions of Herbert and Hobbes. Sometimes these writers are grappled with; but reliance on reasoning is abandoned when, by this Divine, outlawry is maintained to be “the penalty of the Leviathan, and all that have or may follow him either into apostasy or atheism.”[378] Thorndike, indeed, touches on both the external and internal proofs of revealed religion, but he nowhere, that I can find, thoroughly and at length discusses the matter. I may here observe, in passing, that he speaks with approval of the way in which the Jewish Doctors resolve inspiration into different degrees.[379] But the interpretation of Christianity is, in his view, the office of the Church. The Church, he maintains, is a permanent teacher, its permanence depending upon Apostolical succession, and its tuition finding expression in the decisions of Councils and in the writings of Fathers; the authority of the latter being explained as not arising out of personal qualities of learning and holiness, but out of ecclesiastical position. Tradition limits the interpretation of Holy Writ; but this principle “pretends not any general rule for the interpretation of Scripture, even in those things which concern the rule of faith, but infers a prescription against anything that can be alleged out of Scripture, that, if it may appear contrary to that which the whole Church hath received and held from the beginning, it cannot be the true meaning of that Scripture which is alleged to prove it.” At the same time Thorndike says, that the power of the Church limits the tradition of Apostles only in matters of ceremony and order, such as are indifferent in themselves; changes in circumstances, and in the usages of society,