THE VERY EEV. H. WACE, ON AUTHORITY. 



231 



families, and in the individual conscience, and that in pro- 

 portion as we all submit ourselves to its influence with true 

 and humble minds, we may be confident that the great promise 

 will be fulfilled that we shall be guided into all the truth, not 

 only of thought and belief, but of life and action. 



Discussion. 



At the conclusion of the paper the Chairman called on Sir 

 Robert Anderson, K.C.B., to open the discussion. 



Sir Robert Anderson said that as citizens it was their duty to 

 obey authority. But in the religious sphere there was a question of 

 conscience behind the question of authority ; and looking at the 

 matter in a practical way the point in dispute was whether they 

 should obey the Bible or the Church. If the claim of Rome be just, 

 that the Church is the oracle of God, their part was not to search 

 the Scriptures for themselves but to obey the Church. Now while it 

 was only among the spiritual that they looked for spiritual intelligence, 

 they were entitled to expect ordinary intelHgence and common 

 sense in men of the world. And they demanded why should they 

 believe that the Church is the oracle of God 1 It must be either 

 because the Church made this claim for itself, or because the Bible 

 taught it. If the former, it was a flagrant case of the " confidence 

 trick." If the latter let them appeal to the Bible. And what do they 

 find 1 The figment that the Church of the Old Testament dis- 

 pensation was an oracle, was grotesquely false. The revelation 

 always came, not from or through the Church, but to the Church, 

 through men divinely appointed to that ministry. Not only so, but 

 these men were too often proscribed and persecuted by the Church. 

 And the New Testament would lead them to a like conclusion 

 respecting " the Christian Church." Rome confused the issue by 

 confounding the Church as a vital unity — the " invisible Church, 

 with the outward organisation, and by taking as addressed to that 

 Church much that was spoken to the Apostles as such. But even 

 this could not conceal the plain truth that the Church was the 

 recipient and not the source of the revelation. 



Q 



