I 



WHAT HISTORY TEACHES US TO SEEK IN 

 THE BIBLE 



Ax a time when one school of theologians is loudly calling 

 upon us to study Scripture in subordination to the 

 teachings, and in accordance with the methods, of the 

 Old Catholic Church, while another school, no less eagerly, 

 proclaims that he only can understand the Bible who 

 wholly abandons every theological standpoint, it will, I 

 think, be not amiss that we should begin our winter work 

 by endeavouring to gain a clear idea of the way in which 

 the great principles of the Reformation, which must guide 

 all our studies, bear upon the sciences that aim at a just 

 interpretation and appreciation of Scripture. Let us 

 try to understand how the defective hermeneutic and the 

 unhistorical exegesis of the pre-Reformation Church were 

 bound up with defects not less glaring in the Old Catholic 

 representation of the first principles of Christianity ; 

 and how, on the other hand, the truer conception of the 

 essential nature of the Christian faith, to which the 

 Reformation awoke, contained within it, at least im 

 plicitly, the necessary principles of all true Criticism and 

 Exegesis. 



Every one is familiar with the fact that the Reforma 

 tion vindicated for Scripture the place of the highest, 

 the only theological authority, over-against the traditions 

 of men and the decrees of the Church. At first sight this 

 principle appears to possess a purely negative character. 



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