They do not start with their private judgment in that one special
direction which Scripture allows or requires. Scripture speaks of a
certain pillar or ground of truth, as set up to the world, and describes
it by certain characteristics; dissenting teachers and bodies, so far
from professing to be themselves this authority, or to contain among
them this authority, assert there is no such authority to be found
anywhere. When, then, we deny that they are the Church in our meaning of
the word, they ought to take no offence at it, for we are not denying
them any thing to which they lay claim; we are but denying them what
they already put away from themselves as much as we can. They must not
act like the dog in the fable (if it be not too light a comparison), who
would neither use the manger himself, nor relinquish it to others; let
them not grudge to others a manifest Scriptural privilege which they
disown themselves. Is an ordinance of Scripture to be fulfilled nowhere,
because it is not fulfilled in them? By the Church we mean what
Scripture means, "the pillar and ground of the truth"; a power out of
whose mouth the Word and the Spirit are never to fail, and whom whoso
refuses to hear becomes thereupon to all his brethren a heathen man and
a publican.
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