It is a noble and serious office to hand down from generation to
generation the faith and traditions of the Church of God. But this
handing-down must be upright. "You must bind nothing upon your charges,"
says Jeremy Taylor, "but what God hath bound upon you." Conviction is at
the root of the lasting traditions of the Church. Only this--his
conviction--can one man really teach another. If he try to speak
otherwise, he shall have a lolling and unsteady tongue.
No soul is finally held by the indefinite, or the namby-pamby. It begins
to question, Upon what foundation does this phrase, this fine sentiment,
rest? It must stand upon a proposition. This proposition rests either
upon a scientific fact, or upon that which, for want of a more definite
term, we call the religious instinct of man. But a proposition cannot
standalone. It is connected with other propositions, arguments,
conclusions. Hence a system of logic, of philosophy, of expressed
belief, of doctrine, inevitably grows up in a thinking community, a
thinking Church.
The statement of an ecclesiastical system of doctrine may not be the
absolutely true one, nor the final one.
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