s belief in
his Church. This possession of truth, moreover, thus lightly won, is
given to him as infallible. It is a system. There is nothing to add to
it. At his peril let him question or take from it. To start a convert in
life with such a principle is unspeakably degrading. All through life
instead of working toward truth he must work from it. An infallible
standard is a temptation to a mechanical faith. Infallibility always
paralyzes. It gives rest; but it is the rest of stagnation. Men perform
one great act of faith at the beginning of their life, then have done
with it forever. All moral, intellectual and spiritual effort is over;
and a cheap theology ends in a cheap life.

The same thing that makes men take refuge in the Church of Rome makes
them take refuge in a set of dogmas. Infallibility meets the deepest
desire of man, but meets it in the most fatal form. Men deal with the
hunger after truth in two ways. First by Unbelief--which crushes it by
blind force; or, secondly, by resorting to some external source credited
with Infallibility--which lulls it to sleep by blind faith. The effect
of a doctrinal theology is the effect of Infallibility. And the
wholesale belief in such a system, however accurate it may be--grant
even that it were infallible--is not Faith though it always gets that
name. It is mere Credulity. It is a complacent and idle rest upon
authority, not a hard-earned, self-obtained, personal possession. The
moral responsibility here, besides, is reduced to nothing. Those who
framed the Thirty-nine Articles or the Westminster Confession are
responsible. And anything which destroys responsibility, or transfers
it, cannot be other than injurious in its moral tendency and useless in
itself.

It may be objected perhaps that this statement of the paralysis
spiritual and mental induced by Infallibility applies also to the Bible.
The answer is that though the Bible is infallible, the Infallibility is
not in such a form as to become a temptation. There is the widest
possible difference between the form of truth in the Bible and the form
in theology.

In theology truth is propositional--tied up in neat parcels,
systematized, and arranged in logical order. The Trinity is an intricate
doctrinal problem. The Supreme Being is discussed in terms of
philosophy. The Atonement is a formula which is to be demonstrated like
a proposition in Euclid. And Justification is to be worked out as a
question of jurisprudenc