On this Saint Patrick's Day, words from an 1829 sermon by Richard Mant, Bishop of Down and Connor, entitled '
The Visible Church of Christ: the United Church of England and Ireland a True and Sound Part of it'. In this extract, Mant - a noted Old High divine - sets forth a defence of
sola scriptura as patristic and catholic. And so, "no article of faith, which was not plainly laid down in Scripture" could be proclaimed by the Church or required of Christians: as affirmed by Article VI of the Articles of Religion, Scripture is "the full and perfect rule for the Church of Christ".
Agreeable to this was the universal testimony of the primitive Christians, both in the Apostolical times, and in those which immediately, and afterwards for many ages uninterruptedly succeeded. The Scriptures, which the Apostles had acknowledged or delivered, the Churches constantly received for their own direction, and regularly transmitted to their posterity. Upon these scriptures they grounded their faith: to these scriptures they still appealed as the foundation of their doctrines: they still argued from these scriptures in proof of their doctrines: they still condemned all doctrines, which were not contained in these scriptures: and if at any time they brought forward human authorities to justify their opinions or expressions, they did so for the purpose of showing that they were not chargeable with any innovation, in the doctrine or in the manner of expressing it; still referring for the origin and groundwork of their doctrine to the testimony of the written word of God.
In that word the collective body of doctrines, of which all Christians made publick confession, and on which all their hopes of salvation depended, were all contained: and they agreed in no article of faith, which was not plainly laid down in scripture. "If we inquire," observes Bishop Jeremy Taylor, "upon what grounds the primitive Church did rely for their whole religion, we shall find they knew none else but the scriptures. Ubi scriptum? was their first inquiry. Do the Prophets and the Apostles, the Evangelists or the Epistles say so? Read it there, and then teach it: else reject it". They call upon their charges in the words of Christ, "Search the scriptures": they affirm that the scriptures are a full, that they are a perfect rule; that they contain all things necessary to salvation; and from hence they confute all heresies."
In a word, by a continued succession of the most distinguished writers in the first ages of the Church; by the full and unanimous testimony of the most ancient, learned, and orthodox fathers in supporting the proposition, and by the total silence of all in denying it, proof might be easily adduced, as indeed it has been abundantly adduced by eminent men [a footnote here points to the authorities invoked by Taylor in his Second part of the Dissuasive from Popery], that the Scriptures are the word of God, and contain in them all the word of God with which we have any concern, and so are the full and perfect rule for the Church of Christ.
Nay, the very title, which the Catholick Church hath always given to the Scriptures, calling them "the Canon," the rule, the very model prescribed to Christians for the formation of their faith and practice, shows her sense of their sufficiency and completeness; and is a convincing proof that she looked to them, and to them only, for the revelation of the will, and the record of the word, of God.
Mant's Old High defence of
sola scriptura, given just four years before the Movement of 1833 commenced, is testimony to how the Old High tradition thoroughly and robustly affirmed this Reformation principle, in contrast to the account given by the Tractarians of the relationship between Scripture and 'Tradition'. Against such ambiguities and confusions, it was Mant who was to be echoed in the
Declaration of 1870, as "this the Ancient Catholick and Apostolick Church of Ireland" affirmed that the fullness of the Faith was contained - sufficient and complete - in holy Scripture:
The Church of Ireland doth, as heretofore, accept and unfeignedly believe all the Canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, as given by inspiration of God, and containing all things necessary to salvation; and doth continue to profess the faith of Christ as professed by the Primitive Church.
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