Page:The Church of England, its catholicity and continuity.djvu/115

Rh Cromwell's soldiers rushed to battle with the words of the old Hebrew prophets on their lips. The Puritans also differed from the standpoint of the Church of England in their view of Holy Scripture. They considered that all men were capable of interpreting it for themselves, and that they had sufficient learning for such a task. The result of this principle was that men drew very different conclusions from the same passages of Scripture, and these differences became so marked as time went on, that the Puritans split up into different parties, each holding dissimilar conceptions of the teaching of our Lord, and they formed separate sects. It was because the Bible was looked upon as the sole authority in religious matters, as interpreted by our individual preferences, that so many dissenting sects have come into existence. Nearly every Christian sect professes to follow the teaching of Scripture, though we know that the sects hold very different opinions.

The Church, of course, also teaches—and it taught the same at the time now under review—that the Bible is our authority for our Christian Faith, but it does not hold that we are all capable of understanding it in all its depth of meaning. There are many parts obscure to us. For the interpretation of the Bible the Church calls in the aid of the early Christian Fathers, several of whom were connected with Apostolic times, and who, therefore, knew more about the original meaning of many parts of Scripture than we know by ourselves to-day.

With these remarks I must proceed to speak about the History of the Puritans. This will lead us back for a short time to the age prior to Elizabeth. John Wycliffe and