146 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868- 



of evidence amply sufficient to satisfy every candid man, 

 so that the resistance of these doctrines proves a hatred 

 of the truth.&quot; The reasonableness of trying men in this 

 method is maintained by an appeal to the general principles 

 of God s moral government. That is, those who after 

 Butler adopt this line of argument still go on the view 

 that Scripture is essentially a revelation of doctrines 

 necessary to salvation, so that eternal blessedness follows 

 from the acceptance of these doctrines. And then it is 

 argued that man would be no longer dealt with as a moral 

 being, if the acceptance of saving doctrine was forced 

 upon him from without by the doctrines being so framed 

 that no sane man could reject them. But as it would be 

 absurd to suppose that this moral element was to be gained 

 only by an imperfection and want of clearness in the 

 book whose aim was just to reveal the doctrines necessary 

 to salvation, the explanation is compelled, on the other 

 hand, to speak as if not the ready-made doctrines but 

 their materials lay in Scripture, or, as Cunningham 

 puts it, &quot; God has given us sufficient evidence of what He 

 requires us to believe.&quot; 



And in this case either the act of faith ceases to be in 

 immediate contact with Scripture (which is unprotestant) , 

 or else it is no longer the doctrine that is the object of 

 saving faith but only the materials from which the 

 doctrine is educed and which are directly presented to 

 us in Scripture. And further these materials cannot be 

 themselves fragments of doctrines which are merely placed 

 side by side in our Confessions, for the fragments of 

 doctrines are still doctrines, and so the whole round of 

 objections just urged would begin anew. The compro 

 mise, in short, is self-contradictory, and yields on examina 

 tion no escape from the conclusion that doctrine is not 

 the object of saving faith, and that the communication 

 of doctrine is not the object of Scripture. 



And hence dogmatic theology is not an echo of 

 Scripture, nay, since like can only be deduced from like, 



