Monday, January 26, 2015

Prescient

Hence, while the tyranny of Rome is the supreme authority of the Church over conscience, the tyranny of liberal Protestantism is the supreme authority of every man's conscience over the Scripture and the Church. Both positions are extreme and sceptical [sic]. That of Rome distrusts the Truth in its power over the individual conscience, while that of liberal Protestantism suspects the Truth of Scripture and the Church, and does not believe that there is one objective and stable centre of truth revealed from above in which the consciences of all perfect men can believe and unite. As against the scepticism [sic] of the isolated, thinking Protestant, Rome is almost sure to win in the end, for having tried every position of solitary speculation, the mind, exhausted and unwilling to abide all alone, will yield to the fundamental craving for authority, and fall back helplessly into the strong arms that seem to offer it certainty in a guaranteed and absolute sense. The end of Protestantism without the Word of God as the one common and absolute authority is either skepticism or Romanism. 
~ Theodore Schmauk, 1911 [emphasis mine]

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