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CRITICAL NOTICES.
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C 465 ]
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Art . I . —A Series of Discourses on the principal controverted Points of Catholic Doctrine , lately delivered at the Catholic Chapel , Si . John * * , Maddermarh&t , Norwich . By the Rev . T . L . Green . London : Keating' and Brown .
We do not notice these Discourses , as will readily be supposed , from any sympathy of our minds towards the doctrines of the Romanists . But we are glad to find any religious body coming manfully forwards to advocate its sentiments , and to bring them to the test of reason and Scripture . " This series of Sermons was occasioned by a challenge on the part of certain Protestants , at a
meeting of the Irish Sunday-School Society , held in Norwich , in July , 1829 , inviting the Catholics of that city to hold a public discussion with them on certain points of religious controversy . The author of these Sermons , iti a letter addressed to each of the newspapers , publicly declined such a challenge on the part of the Catholics ; and he has the satisfaction to believe that his reasons
therein assigned were generally approved of by Protestants as well as Catholics . To prevent a suspicion , however , that he declined the proposed discussion from the slightest apprehension for bis creed , or the least reluctance to submit every article of Catholic faith to the severest
scrutiny , he at the same time announced that a series of argumentative discourses should be delivered , at stated intervals , which should always be previously made known by public advertisement in each of the Norwich newspapers . These Sermons having been attended by crowded congregations , and having excited considerable interest iu the city , the author only yields to the repeated solicitations of many in thus presenting them in the moat accessible forni to the public . "
The first Sermon is on Private Judgment , a topic on which our readers may expect a few remarks . The preacher lays down the Protestant principle which he sets himself to oppose , in these words : " The Bible only is the rule of faith , and each one ' s private judgment is the only authorized interpreter o ( it . "—l \ 5- For ourselves , we should deem it necessary
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to add certain qualifications to this role . To an interpreter of the Bible there must be previous information and preparation . To study the Bible to the highest advantage , there is required an intimate acquaintance with the language * in which it is written , and with the customs and history of the numerous persons who are introduced ; much information connected
with the authors of the several books of Scripture , with the age and circumstances in which they were written , and with the proofs of their genuineness and credibility . This cannot fall to the lot of the majority of Christians , and hence we would concede that , in this sense , the majority are not fitted to be " interpreters of the Bible /* But when we maintain that the Bible , the Bible only , is the religion of Protestants , and that that
religion is sufficient for salvation , we distinguish the Bible , as the great authority , from human articles and creeds , which are of no authority but as they conform with it . And when private judgment is maintained to be the criterion of scrip * tural truth , we have in view the few plain principles of morals and religion which ' * he that runs may read , " which it is scarcely possible to mistake , and which are accordingly admitted alike by the members of all the different sects of
Christians , by the wildest Methodist , whose idea of Scripture is influenced by his . own wayward fancy , as well as by the Catholic , who looks up with the profoun-dest reverence to the legitimate arbiter of opinions . With these explanations it follows , that we can perceive
no force m the preacher ' s objections that , before the invention of printing , it was practically impossible that the great proportion of mankind should hare been able to read the Bible ; that in this country , in the reign of Edwaid the First , a fairly written copy of the whole Scri |> - ture was worth not less than 300 / . of
our present money . An equally conclusive argument against " private judgment" might be derived from the fact , that there are Christians in our own country , and in others , even in the present day , so disadvantageous ^ placed , that they have no opportunity of peruain § the Bible . But how does this affect the applicability of the principle to the large
Critical Notices.
CRITICAL NOTICES .
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VOL . IV . 2 L
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1830, page 465, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2586/page/33/
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