Now if what precedes means anything at all,--(I am by no means certain however that it does!)--it means that the writer does not believe in the Divinity of our LORD JESUS CHRIST. Unless the sentence which is without a reference to the foot of the page be not a denial of the fundamental Doctrine of the Faith[219],--I do not understand it. But look at _all_ which precedes; and then say if those are the remarks of a man entitled to dogmatize "On the Interpretation of Scripture." ... If Mr. Jowett really means that the Creeds _cannot be reconciled with the Bible_,--how can he himself subscribe to the VIIIth Article? If he means nothing of the kind,--why does he write in such a weak, cloudy, illogical way? But the whole of the case has not even yet been stated. Down from the remote period of which we have been hitherto speaking,--the age of primitive Creeds, and oecumenical Councils, and ancient Fathers,--in every country of the civilized world to which the Gospel has spread,--the loftiest Intellect, the profoundest Learning, the sincerest Piety, have invariably endorsed the ancient and original method of interpretation. I am not implying that such corroboration was in any sense _required_; but the circumstance that it has been _obtained_, at least deserves attention. Modes of thought are dependent on times and countries. There is a fashion in all things. Great advances in Science,--grand epochs in civilization,--vicissitudes of opinion,--difference of institutions, national traditions, and the like,--might be supposed to have wrought a permanent change even in this department of Sacred Science. But it is not so. The storm has raged from one quarter or other of the heavens, but has ever spent its violence in vain. Still has the Church Catholic retained her own unbroken tradition. To keep to the history of that Church to which we, by GOD'S mercy, belong:--The constant appeal, at the time of our own great Reformation, was to the Fathers of the first four centuries. Ever since, the temper and spirit of our Commentators has been to revert to the same standard, to reproduce the same teaching. The most powerful minds and the most holy spirits,--English Divines of the deepest thought and largest reading,--let me add, of the soundest judgment and severest discrimination,--have, in every age, down to the present, gratefully accepted not only the method, but even the very details of primitive Patristic Interpretation. But "the acceptance of a hundred generations and the growing authority arising from it,"--like "the institutions based upon such ancient writings, and the history into which they have entwined themselves indissolubly for many centuries,"--all conspire to "constitute a perpetually increasing and strengthening[220]" body of evidence on the subject of Sacred Interpretation.