LECTURE I. 21

perhaps as the private speculation of individual
doctors, for in that case there would be a pre-
sumption, amounting to moral certainty, that it
could not be contained in the plain letter of God's
Word. Whether there are any doctrines, espe-
cially those which are matters of controversy
among professed Christians, respecting which an-
tiquity, universality, and consent, can be abso-
lutely predicated — for an unlimited conclusion
must not be deduced from a limited premiss — is
a question of fact with which we are not now
concerned, but we may allow that he would be a
rash and most self-sufficient theologian, giving
little evidence that he possessed the spirit of
God, who should set his own private judgment
against that of all other Christian men. Still if, on
the other hand, a man yielded simply to authority,
even of the Universal Church, without the
personal conviction of his own judgment that
what was taught was really contained in the very
words of the Bible, he would have yielded to
man, and not to God.
It is important also to observe that even the
Monk of Lerin himself limits the negative appli-
cation of his dictum (which in fact was not his,
but had long prevailed in the Church) to recent
heresies, and allows that it will only serve to
shew that doctrines which we know, and can



22 LECTURE I.
