But let it signify any length of time we choose, I ask, next, where is its authority to be found?  In the decisions of the general councils?  But if we call the first four centuries “primitive antiquity,” we find in this period only two general councils; if we include the fifth century, we get four; if we take in the sixth and seventh centuries, we have then, in all, six general councils.  Will the decisions of any, or all, of these six councils furnish us with an authoritative interpretation of Scripture?  They give us the Nicene and the Constantinopolitan creeds; they condemn various notions with respect to the person of our Lord, and to some other points of belief; and they contain a variety of regulations for the discipline and order of the church; but, with the exception of some particular passages, there is no authority in the creeds, or canons, or anathemas of those councils, for the interpretation of Scripture; they leave its difficulties just where they were before.  It is but little then, which the first six general councils will do towards providing the student of Scripture with an infallible standard of interpretation.

Where, however, except in the councils, can we find any thing claiming to be the voice of the church?  Neither individual writers, nor yet all the writers of the first seven centuries together, can properly be called the church.  They form, even altogether, but a limited number of individuals, who, in different countries, and at different periods, expressed, in writing, their own sentiments, but without any public authority.  Origen, one of the ablest and most learned of them all, was anathematized by the second council of Constantinople; Tertullian was heretical during a part of his life; Lactantius was taxed with heterodoxy.  How are we to know who were sound?  And if sound generally, that is to say, if they stand charged with no heretical error, yet it does not follow that a man is infallible because he is not heretical; and none of these writers have been distinguished like the five great Roman lawyers whom the edict of Theodosius[15] selected from the mass, and gave to their decisions a legal authority.  Or again, if it be said that the agreement of the great majority of them is to be regarded as decisive, we answer, that as no individual amongst them is in himself an authority legally, so neither can any number of them be so; and if a moral authority only be meant, such as we naturally ascribe to the concurring judgment of many eminent men, then this is a totally different question, and is open to inquiry in every separate case; for as, on the one hand, no one denies that such a concurring judgment is an authority, yet, on the other hand, it may be outweighed, either by the worth of the few who differ from the judgment, or by the reason of the case itself; and the concurring judgment of the majority may show no more than the force of a general prejudice, which only a very few individuals were sensible enough to resist.