e both Papists and Protestants agreed in taking
efficient measures to stop the mouths of any more radical critics, these
did not count.

The impotence of their adversaries, however, did not remove the inherent
weakness of the position of the Protestants. The dogma of the
infallibility of the Bible is no more self-evident than is that of the
infallibility of the Pope. If the former is held by "faith," then the
latter may be. If the latter is to be accepted, or rejected, by private
judgment, why not the former? Even if the Bible could be proved anywhere
to assert its own infallibility, the value of that self-assertion to
those who dispute the point is not obvious. On the other hand, if the
infallibility of the Bible was rested on that of a "primitive Church,"
the admission that the "Church" was formerly infallible was awkward in
the extreme for those who denied its present infallibility. Moreover, no
sooner was the Protestant principle applied to practice, than it became
evident that even an infallible text, when manipulated by private
judgment, will impartially countenance contradictory deductions; and
furnish forth creeds and confessions as diverse as the quality and the
information of the intellects which exercise, and the prejudices and
passions which sway, such judgments. Every sect, confident in the
derivative infallibility of its wire-drawing of infallible materials,
was ready to supply its contingent of martyrs; and to enable history,
once more, to illustrate the truth, that steadfastness under persecution
says much for the sincerity and still more for the tenacity, of the
believer, but very little for the objective truth of that which he
believes. No martyrs have sealed their faith with their blood more
steadfastly than the Anabaptists.

Last, but not least, the Protestant principle contained within itself
the germs of the destruction of the finality, which the Lutheran,
Calvinistic, and other Protestant Churches fondly imagined they had
reached. Since their creeds were professedly based on the canonical
Scriptures, it followed that, in the long run, whoso settled the canon
defined the creed. If the private judgment of Luther might legitimately
conclude that the epistle of James was contemptible, while the epistles
of Paul contained the very essence of Christianity, it must be
permissible for some other private judgment, on as good or as bad
grounds, to reverse these conclusions; the critical process which
excl