Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/339

292 Church, its popes and councils, and more eminent Fathers; in the very face of Reason, that all its doctrines were true and divine; so did the Protestant, in the teeth of facts equally notorious, deny there was any contradiction in the doctrines of the Bible, its prophets, evangelists, apostles; in the very face of Reason, declared that every word of Scripture was the word of God, and eternally true! Nay, more, the Protestants maintained that the record of Scripture was so sacred, that a divine Providence watched over it and kept all errors from the manuscript. What a cry the Protestants made about the “various readings.” Could Cappellus get his book on the textual variations of the Old Testament printed under Protestant favour? A perpetual miracle, said Protestantism, kept the text of the Old Testament and New Testament from the smallest accident. But that doctrine would not stand against the noble army of various readings—thirty thousand strong.

“Where there is no vision, the people perish.” The Protestants, denying there was inspiration now as in Paul's time, yet knowing they must have religious truth or the Word of God, clung like dying men to the letter of the Bible, as their only hope. The words of the Bible had but one meaning, not many; that was to be got at by the usual methods—pious and honest study of the grammatical, logical, rhetorical sense thereof. With its word, man must stop, for he has reached the fountain-head. But has the word of God become a letter; is all truth in the Bible, and is no error, no contradiction therein? Was the doctrine once revealed to the saints, revealed once for all? Is the Bible a Finality, and man only provisional? So said Protestantism. This was its vice. But God has set one thing against another, so that all work together for good. It was a great step to get back to the Bible, and freedom of conscience, and good sense in its exposition.

Protestantism wrought wonders, and overthrew the magi-