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Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit and Some Miscellaneous Pieces by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
page 35 of 147 (23%)
which by means of that word is made to convey a most dangerous error.

The Bible is the appointed conservatory, an indispensable criterion,
and a continual source and support of true belief. But that the
Bible is the sole source; that it not only contains, but constitutes,
the Christian Religion; that it is, in short, a Creed, consisting
wholly of articles of Faith; that consequently we need no rule, help,
or guide, spiritual or historical, to teach us what parts are and
what are not articles of Faith--all being such--and the difference
between the Bible and the Creed being this, that the clauses of the
latter are all unconditionally necessary to salvation, but those of
the former conditionally so, that is, as soon as the words are known
to exist in any one of the canonical books; and that, under this
limitation, the belief is of the same necessity in both, and not at
all affected by the greater or lesser importance of the matter to be
believed;--this scheme differs widely from the preceding, though its
adherents often make use of the same words in expressing their
belief. And this latter scheme, I assert, was brought into currency
by and in favour of those by whom the operation of grace, the aids of
the Spirit, the necessity of regeneration, the corruption of our
nature, in short, all the peculiar and spiritual mysteries of the
Gospel were explained and diluted away.

And how have these men treated this very Bible? I, who indeed prize
and reverence this sacred library, as of all outward means and
conservatives of Christian faith and practice the surest and the most
reflective of the inward Word; I, who hold that the Bible contains
the religion of Christians, but who dare not say that whatever is
contained in the Bible is the Christian religion, and who shrink from
all question respecting the comparative worth and efficacy of the
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