Protestantism and Scriptural Authority
THE REV. C. A. BRIGGS, once a well-known clergyman of the Presbyterian Church, but now near the end of a migration from that church to Rome, says that “the common doctrine of the present Protestant theologians would not be recognized by any of the Reformers.” The defection of Dr. Briggs and of others like him from Protestantism, is itself an evidence that the Protestantism of the churches of this day is not the Protestantism of Luther and of Wesley. Names and forms are left, but the vital spirit is gone, or is fast going. The Protestantism of the Reformers was anchored to the authority of the Word of God. Latter-day Protestantism has been led by the “higher criticism,” and other agencies of evil to question the infallible authority of that Word, and as a consequence Protestants are now seen turning for refuge to an “infallible” pope. Men like to feel solid ground beneath their feet, and when they lose faith in the infallibility of the Scripture, they naturally turn to the papal church as the only other authority that claims to be free from the possibility of error. But to those who receive God’s Word “not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God,” it remains “an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast.”