THE DECLINE OF B1BLT0LATRY. 599 



a right to reject the Apocalypse and accept the Epistle to the 

 Hebrews, and the Western an equal right to accept the Apoc- 

 alypse and reject the Epistle, down to the fourth century, any 

 other branch would have an equal right, on cause shown, to reject 

 both, or, as the Catholic Church afterward actually did, to accept 

 both. 



Thus I can not but think that the thirty-eight are hoist with 

 their own petard. Their " appeal to antiquity " turns out to be 

 nothing but a roundabout way of appealing to the tribunal the 

 jurisdiction of which they affect to deny. Having rested the 

 world of Christian supernaturalisrn on the elephant of biblical in- 

 fallibility, and furnished the elephant with standing ground on 

 the tortoise of " antiquity," they, like their famous Hindoo ana- 

 logue, have been content to look no further ; and have thereby 

 been spared the horror of discovering that the tortoise rests on a 

 grievously fragile construction, to a great extent the work of that 

 very intellectual operation which they anathematize and repudiate. 



Moreover, there is another point to be considered. It is of 

 course true that a Christian Church (whether the Christian 

 Church, or not, depends on the connotation of the definite article) 

 existed before the Christian Scriptures ; and that the infallibility 

 of these depends upon the infallibility of the judgment of the per- 

 sons who selected the books, of which they are composed, out of 

 the mass of literature current among the early Christians. The 

 logical acumen of Augustine showed him that the authority of 

 the gospel he preached must rest on that of the Church to which 

 he belonged.* But it is no less true that the Hebrew and the 

 Septuagint versions of most, if not all, of the Old Testament 

 books existed before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth; and that 

 their divine authority is presupposed by, and therefore can hardly 

 depend upon, the religious body constituted by his disciples. As 

 everybody knows, the very conception of a "Christ" is purely 

 Jewish. The validity of the argument from the Messianic proph- 

 ecies vanishes unless their infallible authority is granted; and, 

 as a matter of fact, whether we turn to the Gospels, the Epistles, 

 or the writings of the early Apologists, the Jewish Scriptures 

 are recognized as the highest court of appeal of the Christian. 



The proposal to cite Christian " antiquity " as a witness to the 

 infallibility of the Old Testament, when its own claims to au- 

 thority vanish, if certain propositions contained in the Old Testa- 

 ment are erroneous, hardly satisfies the requirements of lay logic. 

 It is as if a claimant to be sole legatee, under another kind of tes- 



* Ego vero evangelio non crederem, nisi ecclesise Catholics me coinmoveret auctoritas. 

 Contra Epistolam Manichcei, cap. v. [I would not, indeed, believe the gospel unless the 

 authority of the Catholic Church directed me. Editor.] 



