Controversy on this matter—­prolonged, bitter, and fought out with the weapons of the flesh, as well as with those of the spirit—­is no new thing to Englishmen.  We have been more or less occupied with it these five hundred years.  And, during that time, we have made attempts to establish a modus vivendi between the antagonists, some of which have had a world-wide influence; though, unfortunately, none have proved universally and permanently satisfactory.

In the fourteenth century, the controverted question among us was, whether certain portions of the Supernaturalism of mediaeval Christianity were well-founded.  John Wicliff proposed a solution of the problem which, in the course of the following two hundred years, acquired wide popularity and vast historical importance:  Lollards, Hussites, Lutherans, Calvinists, Zwinglians, Socinians, and Anabaptists, whatever their disagreements, concurred in the proposal to reduce the Supernaturalism of Christianity within the limits sanctioned by the Scriptures.  None of the chiefs of Protestantism called in question either the supernatural origin and infallible authority of the Bible, or the exactitude of the account of the supernatural world given in its pages.  In fact, they could not afford to entertain any doubt about these points, since the infallible Bible was the fulcrum of the lever with which they were endeavouring to upset the Chair of St. Peter.  The “freedom of private judgment” which they proclaimed, meant no more, in practice, than permission to themselves to make free with the public judgment of the Roman Church, in respect of the canon and of the meaning to be attached to the words of the canonical books.  Private judgment—­that is to say, reason—­was (theoretically, at any rate) at liberty to decide what books were and what were not to take the rank of “Scripture”; and to determine the sense of any passage in such books.  But this sense, once ascertained to the mind of the sectary, was to be taken for pure truth—­for the very word of God.  The controversial efficiency of the principle of biblical infallibility lay in the fact that the conservative adversaries of the Reformers were not in a position to contravene it without entangling themselves in serious difficulties; while, since both Papists and Protestants agreed in taking efficient measures to stop the mouths of any more radical critics, these did not count.

The impotence of their adversaries, however, did not remove the inherent weakness of the position of the Protestants.  The dogma of the infallibility of the Bible is no more self-evident than is that of the infallibility of the Pope.  If the former is held by “faith,” then the latter may be.  If the latter is to be accepted, or rejected, by private judgment, why not the former?  Even if the Bible could be proved anywhere to assert its own infallibility, the value of that self-assertion to those who dispute the point is not obvious.  On the other hand, if