ITS TRUTHS AND ERRORS. BY JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE. Soleo enim in allena castra transire, non tanquam transfuga, sed tanquam "Fiat lux. Cupio refelli, ubi aberrârim; nihil majus, nihil aliud quam veri- FIFTEENTH EDITION. BOSTON: AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION. HARVAR Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by the AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. Stereotyped at the Boston Stereotype Foundry, University Press; John Wilson & Son, Cambridge. PREFACE. THE Protestant Reformation has its Principle and its Method. Its Principle is Salvation by Faith, not by Sacraments. Its Method is Private Judgment, not Church Authority. But private judgment generates authority; authority, first legitimate, that of knowledge, grows into the illegitimate authority of prescription, calling itself Orthodoxy. Then Private Judgment comes forth again to criticise and reform. It thus becomes the duty of each individual to judge the Church; and out of innumerable individual judgments the insight of the Church is kept living and progressive. We contribute one such private judgment; not, we trust, in conceit, but in the hope of provoking other minds to further examinations. (iii) CONTENTS. 1. Object and Character of this Book.. 2. Progress requires that we should look back as well as forward. 3. Orthodoxy as Right Belief. . . . . 8. Orthodoxy as Convictions underlying Opinions. 9. Substantial Truth and Formal Error in all great Doctrinal Systems. §1. The Principle of Orthodoxy defined. 2. Logical Genesis of the Principle of Orthodoxy. 5. The Doctrine of Essentials and Non-essentials leads to Rome. 6. Fallacy in this Orthodox Argument. 7. The three Tendencies in the Church. 9. The Party of Emotion in Christianity. 23 |