Page:Catholic Thoughts on the Bible and Theology.djvu/11

 but little interest, save of a painful kind: they can only regard it as an unlawful concession to the presumptuous claims of the natural mind, to be protested against on all fitting occasions, and if possible counteracted. But at the same time such should remember that in proportion to the greatness of the sin with which they charge their brethren ought to be not only their confidence in their own integrity, but the carefulness of their inquiries into the reasonableness of their own belief. So long as they merely follow the human traditions which they have received from their predecessors, and attach to them an uninquiring reverence, they are but too nearly repeating errours which have been Divinely rebuked to be worthy of especial respect: and if while suspecting the truth, they refuse to seek it because they fear that it may be dangerous to their old habits of thought and feeling, or to any merely personal interests, their belief or unbelief, their assent or dissent, concerning the matters to be herein treated of, must be regarded by the present writer as alike indifferent.

As regards the second portion of the inquiries with which these Pages will be engaged, there will probably be found to exist the same difficulties and disadvantages, as Theology is with us so largely based on the Letter of Scripture, and must of consequence be correspondingly affected by whatever may affect our hermeneutical and exegetical principles in our Scriptural studies. But whoever is, or has been, a student of popular English Theology, and has had an opportunity of comparing it with that of other churches, will assuredly deem it capable of improvement in many ways, and more especially by expansion. By such an one it cannot but be regarded as too much a product of our insular culture, and as bearing traces throughout it all of the various epochs which have characterised the progress of our national history. Nor will such an one fail to remark how singularly rigid it is: how it is textual, verbal, every way literal, beyond all others: not simply based upon Biblical principles, but chiefly constructed of Biblical elements; treating the Bible as the whole Revelation of the ways of, and professing to be governed equally by its letter and its spirit.