ITS TRUTHS AND ERRORS. BY JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE. "Soleo enim in allena castra transire, non tanquam transfuga, sed tanquam "Fiat lux. Cupio refelli, ubi aberrârîm; nihil majus, nihil aliud quam veri- BOSTON: AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by the AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. THIRD EDITION. Stereotyped at the Boston Stereotype Foundry, Presswork by John Wilson and Son. BX 7841 1887 PREFACE. THE Protestant Reformation has its Principle and its Method. Its Principle is Salvation by Faith, not by Sacraments. Its Method is Private Judgment, not Church Authority. But private judgment generates authority; authority, first legitimate, that of knowledge, grows into the illegitimate authority of prescription, calling itself Orthodoxy. Then Private Judgment comes forth again to criticise and reform. It thus becomes the duty of each individual to judge the Church; and out of innumerable individual judgments the insight of the Church is kept living and progressive. We contribute one such private judgment; not, we trust, in conceit, but in the hope of provoking other minds to further examinations. (iii) |