an be answerable. Its safety or peril rests with God, who hath
given into no man's hand the souls of his brethren.

It is justly observed by Catholics, that many of the very persons who
complain of the discouragement by them thrown in the way of the general
perusal of the Scriptures, circulate the Book of Common Prayer of the
Church of England 'as a safeguard against the misinterpretation of the
Bible,' and by their doubt and dread of the consequences of making the
Bible common, seem to admit the probability and danger of such
misinterpretation. It is very true that such inconsistencies obtain
among Protestants, and such inconsistencies will exist as long as there
is any dread of carrying out a good principle to its full extent. If all
Protestants adhered to the grand principle of the Reformation, that the
Bible alone is the religion of Protestants, there would not only be no
damnatory clauses in their creeds, but no creeds,--no embodying in an
unchanging form of words principles which were given in no such form,
which cannot be received under the same aspect by minds differently
prepared, and which are too expansive in their nature to be long
confined within arbitrary limits of human imposition. The Church of
England forsakes its fundamental principle of dissent from the Roman
Catholic Church when it would secure uniformity of faith by framing
articles of faith, by keeping back the Bible from the feeblest
intellect, or appointing 'a safeguard,' or interfering in any way
between the Bible and the minds which are to derive their religion from
it. If uniformity of faith cannot be thus obtained, it is a necessary
consequence of the Protestant principle that uniformity of faith is not
necessary to salvation. This consequence, which we fully admit, the
Church of England, in the letter and spirit of her articles and creeds,
inconsistently denies.

It is manifestly absurd to exhort a man to derive his faith from the
Bible, if it is declared to him beforehand what he is bound at his
eternal peril to believe. Yet this is in fact done, when the Book of
Common Prayer is circulated as a safeguard to the Bible, and also when a
Catholic is made to declare on his admission to the Church, 'I also
admit the Sacred Scriptures according to the sense which the holy Mother
Church has held and does hold,' &c. For purposes of faith, all use in
reading the Bible is over when this declaration is made. The disciple
can only, while striving to l