earn his duty from the sacred pages, wonder
at what he finds there;--at the appeals to individual judgment; at the
addresses to the intimate consciousness of every man; at the freedom
allowed and encouraged among the first Christians; at the absence of all
pretension to authority in matters of opinion, of all wish to prescribe,
of all tendency to domineer. If he be intelligent, it will occur to him
as surprising that no creed, if creeds be good things, was given by our
Saviour to his Apostles before he left them, weak and divided in the
faith as they at that time were. And again, when they were strong and
united, but when doubt and disagreement were creeping into their
churches, it must seem strange that Christ, who manifestly watched over
the interests of his Church, should not have authorized and communicated
a profession of faith more ample and particular than that which had
hitherto accompanied baptism; viz. that Jesus was the Christ, and that
remission of sins came by repentance.

Finding no trace of the Apostles' Creed among all the sacred books, he
will inquire into its origin, and discover that it was not composed by
the Apostles,[A] and that when, in an evil hour, it was proposed for
general adoption, its main purpose was to exclude the Gnostics, who
would have mixed up their false philosophy and vain deceits with the
simple faith in Christ which then, as now, constituted a man a
Christian. Having gone thus far, the disciple begins to doubt whether he
has hitherto possessed and exercised the spiritual liberty which is his
birthright. If he pursue the inquiry he will, undoubtedly cast off the
restraints which man's wisdom has imposed on his faculties, and
interpret, judge, and believe for himself. If he look back to his
promise to admit the sense of Scripture only as the Church declares it,
and renews that promise, he must lay aside every hope of purifying and
strengthening his faith by his scriptural studies. Henceforth it will
indeed be, as Fenelon declares, the same thing to him to read the words
of Christ, and to hear an explanation of them from his pastor. Not for
this were the Beraeans cited as an example by Paul; not by these means
was Timothy prepared for his extensive labors; not thus did Apollos
learn how to apply his vigorous talents to the service of the infant
churches. All these men searched the Scriptures, knew the Scriptures
from their youth up, were learned in the Scriptures, from which they
asc