1874] WHAT TO SEEK IN THE BIBLE 211 



natural issue of these tactics was the decree of Trent, 

 which, for the first time, formally denied to the Bible 

 supremacy over Tradition. 



It is plain, then, that the divergence of view as to the 

 authority of Scripture, which gradually became more 

 distinct as the contest between Rome and the Reforma 

 tion went on, really springs from the fact that the Re 

 formers had got a new way of looking at the Bible, a way 

 that enabled them to find in Scripture a living and 

 powerful Gospel, enunciated with a clearness and fulness 

 of which their opponents had no idea ; and that made 

 the Bible in their hands a weapon that could be wielded 

 for defence or attack with a readiness and effect that 

 were new to the Church and to Theology. If Scripture 

 has a higher place in the Reformed than in the Roman 

 Church, it is because the Reformation has learned to 

 wield it better, because it for the first time showed how 

 the bow of Ulysses must be bent. 



But in order thoroughly to comprehend what we owe 

 to the Reformation in this sphere, we must look back to 

 the way in which the Bible was handled in the earlier 

 ages of the Church. 



In the last generation no point of theology has been 

 discussed with keener interest than the nature and origin 

 of the Old Catholic Church. Whatever these discussions 

 have left unexplained, it can no longer be questioned 

 that the Old Catholic Christianity deviated from the 

 first from the apostolic model. 



It has been shown that the main source of this decad 

 ence lay in the incapacity of the Gentile Christians to 

 understand the Old Testament ideas on which the teaching 

 of Christ and His Apostles was built. 1 The Old Catholic 

 Church was concerned on the one hand to maintain 

 against the Gnostics that the Old Testament is a Divine 

 revelation, and therefore canonic for the Christian Church, 

 and on the other hand to assert against the Jews the 



1 See Ritschl, Die Entstehung der Altkatholischen Kirche (ed. 2). 



