2. It is the Church’s office to hold and to transmit the entire Deposit, written and oral, in its integrity, and to deal with it as the Apostles themselves would if they were still living. This action of the Church is called Active Tradition; the doctrines themselves are called Objective Tradition. The term “Ecclesiastical Tradition” is sometimes used in a narrow sense for the unwritten truths of Revelation, and stands in the same relation to the Holy Scriptures as the oral teaching of the Apostles stood. In the course of time this Tradition has also been committed to writing, and as a written Tradition its position with regard to the living Active Tradition is now analogous to that occupied by the Holy Scriptures.
3. But the Church has a further office. The heirs of the Apostles have the right and duty to prescribe, promulgate, and maintain at all times and in behalf of the whole Church the teaching of the Apostles and of the Church in former ages; to impose and to enforce it as a doctrinal law binding upon all; and to give authoritative decisions on points obscure, controverted, or denied. In this capacity the Church acts as regulator of the Faith, and these doctrinal laws, together with the act of imposing them, are called the Rule of Faith. All the members of the Church are bound to submit their judgment in matters of Faith to this rule, and thus by practising the “obedience of Faith” to prove themselves living members of the one kingdom of Divine truth.
Thus we see that the Divine economy for preserving and enforcing Christian truth in the Church possesses in an eminent degree all the aids and guarantees which are made use of in civil society for the safe custody and interpretation of legal documents. In both there are documents of various kinds, witnesses, public and private, and judges of different rank. But in the Church the judges are at the same time witnesses, administrators, and legislators. In the Protestant theory there are written documents and nothing more.
