revelation is indeed of very different clearness, and of very
different importance. But neither is revealed religion of the
nature of a progressive science. All Divine truth is, according
to the doctrine of the Protestant Churches, recorded in certain
books. It is equally open to all who, in any age, can read those
books; nor can all the discoveries of all the philosophers in the
world add a single verse to any of those books. It is plain,
therefore, that in divinity there cannot be a progress analogous
to that which is constantly taking place in pharmacy, geology,
and navigation. A Christian of the fifth Century with a Bible is
neither better nor worse situated than a Christian of the
nineteenth century with a Bible, candour and natural acuteness
being, of course, supposed equal. It matters not at all that the
compass, printing, gunpowder, steam, gas, vaccination, and a
thousand other discoveries and inventions, which were unknown in
the fifth century, are familiar to the nineteenth. None of these
discoveries and inventions has the smallest bearing on the
question whether man is justified by faith alone, or whether the
invocation of saints is an orthodox practice. It seems to us,
therefore, that we have no security for the future against the
prevalence of any theological error that ever has prevailed in
time past among Christian men. We are confident that the world
will never go back to the solar system of Ptolemy; nor is our
confidence in the least shaken by the circumstance, that even so
great a man as Bacon rejected the theory of Galileo with scorn;
for Bacon had not all the means of arriving at a sound conclusion
which are within our reach, and which secure people who would not
have been worthy to mend his pens from falling into his mistakes.
But when we reflect that Sir Thomas More was ready to die for the
doctrine of transubstantiation, we cannot but feel some doubt