(theoretically, at any rate) at liberty to decide what books were and
what were not to take the rank of "Scripture"; and to determine the
sense of any passage in such books. But this sense, once ascertained
to the mind of the sectary, was to be taken for pure truth--for the
very word of God. The controversial efficiency of the principle of
biblical infallibility lay in the fact that the conservative
adversaries of the Reformers were not in a position to contravene it
without entangling themselves in serious difficulties; while, since
both Papists and Protestants agreed in taking efficient measures to
stop the mouths of any more radical critics, these did not count.

The impotence of their adversaries, however, did not remove the
inherent weakness of the position of the Protestants. The dogma of the
infallibility of the Bible is no more self-evident than is that of the
infallibility of the Pope. If the former is held by "faith," then the
latter may be. If the latter is to be accepted, or rejected, by
private judgment, why not the former? Even if the Bible could be
proved anywhere to assert its own infallibility, the value of that
self-assertion to those who dispute the point is not obvious. On the
other hand, if the infallibility of the Bible was rested on that of a
"primitive Church," the admission that the "Church" was formerly
infallible was awkward in the extreme for those who denied its present
infallibility. Moreover, no sooner was the Protestant principle
applied to practice, than it became evident that even an infallible
text, when manipulated by private judgment, will impartially
countenance contradictory deductions; and furnish forth creeds and
confessions as diverse as the quality and the information of the
intellects which exercise, and the prejudices and passions which sway,
such judgments. Every sect, confident in the derivative infallibility
of its wire-drawing of infallible materials, was ready to supply its