[Footnote 17:  Of course no reasonable man can doubt the importance of studying the early Christian writers, as illustrating not only the history of their own times, but the New Testament also.  For the Old Testament, indeed, they do little or nothing, and for the New they are of much less assistance than might have been expected; but still there is no doubt that they are often useful.]

But if another man maintains that a different meaning is the true one, how are we to silence him, and how are we justified in calling him a heretic?  If by the term heretic we are to imply moral guilt, I am not justified in applying it to any Christian, unless his doctrines are positively sinful, or there is something wicked, either in the way of dishonesty or bitterness, in his manner of maintaining them.  The guilt of any given religious error, in any particular case, belongs only to the judgment of Him who reads the heart.  But if we mean by heresy “a grave error in matters of the Christian faith, overthrowing or corrupting some fundamental article of it,” then we are as fully justified in calling a gross misinterpretation of Scripture “heresy,” as we should be justified in calling a gross misinterpretation of a profane Greek or Latin author, ignorance, or want of scholarship.  There is no infallible authority in points of grammar and criticism, yet men do speak confidently, notwithstanding, as to learning and ignorance; Porson and Herman are known to have understood their business, and a writer who were to set their decisions at defiance, and to indulge in mere extravagances of interpretation, would be set down as one who knew nothing about the matter.  So we judge daily in all points of literature and science; nay, we in the same manner venture to call some persons mad, and on the strength of our conviction we deprive them of their property, and shut them up in a madhouse:  yet if madmen wore to insist that they were sane, and that we were mad, I know not to what infallible authority we could appeal; and, after all, what are we to do with those who deny that authority to be infallible? we must then go to another infallible authority to guarantee the infallibility of the first, and this process will run on for ever.

But, in truth, there is more in the matter than the being justified or not justified in calling our neighbour a heretic.  The real point of anxiety, I imagine, with many good and thinking men is this:  whether a reasonable belief can be fairly carried through; whether the notion of the all-sufficiency of Scripture is not liable to objections no less than the system of church-authority; whether, in short, our Christian faith can be consistently maintained without a mortal leap at some part or other of the process; nay, whether, in fact, if it were otherwise, our faith would not seem to stand rather on the wisdom of man than on the power of God.