it which would
encourage us to draw immediate and crude deductions from Holy Scripture,
subject only to the control and the colouring of our own minds,
responsible for nothing further than our own consciousness of an honest
intention. Whilst we claim a release from that degrading yoke which
neither are we nor were our fathers able to bear, we deprecate for
ourselves and for our fellow-believers that licentiousness which in
doctrine and practice tempts a man to follow merely what is right in his
own eyes, uninfluenced by the example, the precepts, {4} and the
authority of others, and owning no submissive allegiance to those laws
which the wise and good have established for the benefit of the whole
body. The freedom which we ask for ourselves, and desire to see imparted
to all, is a rational liberty, tending to the good, not operating to the
bane of its possessors; ministering to the general welfare, not to
disorder and confusion. In the enjoyment of this liberty, or rather in
the discharge of the duties and trusts which this liberty brings with
it, we feel ourselves under an obligation to examine the foundations of
our faith, to the very best of our abilities, according to our
opportunities, and with the most faithful use of all the means afforded
to us by its divine Author and finisher. Among those means, whilst we
regard the Holy Scriptures as paramount and supreme, we appeal to the
witness and mind of the Church as secondary and subsidiary; a witness
not at all competing with Scripture, never to be balanced against it;
but competing with our own less able and less pure apprehension of
Scripture. In ascertaining the testimony of this witness, we examine the
sentiments and practice of the ancient teachers of the Church; not as
infallible guides, not as uniformly holding all of them the same
opinions, but as most valuable helps in our examination of the evidence
of the Church, who is, after all, our appointed instructor in the truths
of the Gospel,--fallible in her individual members and branches, yet the
sure witness and keeper of Holy Writ, and our safest guide on earth to
the mind and will of God. When we have once satisfied ourselves that a
doctrine is founded on Scripture, we receive it with implicit faith, and
maintain it as a sacred deposit, entrusted to our keeping, to be
delivered down whole and entire without our adding {5} thereto what to
us may seem needful, or taking away what we may think superfluous.

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