Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/127

 original media themselves. Henceforward all invitations on the part of Christianity to individual thought and conviction were at an end: on the contrary, such thought became a forbidden enterprise, visited with all the punishments of the Church; so that he who could not abandon it must pursue it at his own peril.

In this condition the matter remained for a long time, until the Reformation broke forth;—the Art of Printing, the most important instrument of this Reformation, having been previously discovered. This Reformation was as far removed as the original self-constituted Church from perceiving the true ground of the degeneration of Christianity; it remained at one with the Church in its rejection of Gnosticism, and in its demand for unconditional Faith even without Understanding;—only it directed this Faith towards another object; rejecting the Infallibility of Oral Tradition and of the Decrees of Councils, and taking its stand upon that of the Written Word. The inconsistency of this position,—that the Authenticity of this Written Word itself rested upon Oral Tradition and upon the Infallibility of the Councils who collected and fixed our Canon,—was overlooked. And thus, for the first time in the world, a Written Book was formally installed as the highest Standard of Truth and the only Teacher of the way of Salvation.

Out of this Book, thus elevated to be the sole criterion of Truth, the Reformers combated whatever flowed from the other two sources of belief; thus obviously reasoning in a circle, and ascribing to their opponents a principle which they disowned; these asserting that without Oral Tradition and the Decrees of the Church it is impossible to understand the Scriptures of which they contain the only authentic interpretation. In this position of their cause, and its absolute untenableness for an educated public who were acquainted with the points at issue, they had no course remaining open to them except an appeal to the people.