The great question
which it puts before us for the exercise of private judgment is,--Who
is God's prophet, and where? Who is to be considered the voice of the
Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church?
4.
Having carried our train of thought as far as this, it is time for us to
proceed to the thesis in which it will be found to issue, viz., that, on
the principles that have been laid down, Dissenters ought to abandon
their own communion, but that members of the English Church ought not to
abandon theirs. Such a position has often been treated as a paradox and
inconsistency; yet we hope to be able to recommend it favorably to the
reader.
Now that seceders, sectarians, independent thinkers, and the like, by
whatever name they call themselves, whether "Wesleyans," "Dissenters,"
"professors of the national religion," "well-wishers of the Church," or
even "Churchmen," are in grievous error, in their mode of exercising
their private judgment, is plain as soon as stated, viz., because they
do not use it in looking out for a teacher at all. They who think they
have, in consequence of their inquiries, found the teacher of truth, may
be wrong in the result they have arrived at; but those who despise the
notion of a teacher altogether, are already wrong before they begin
them.
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