Church bells, we say at once that such critics thus give their measure as interpreters of the true sense of the Bible. The moment we think seriously and fairly, we must see that the Patristic interpretations of prophecy give, in like manner, their authors measure as interpreters of the true sense of the Bible. Yet this is what the dogma of the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds professes to be, and must be if it is to be worth anything,—the true sense extracted from the Bible; for, 'the Bible is the record of the whole revealed faith,' says Cardinal Newman. But we see how impossible it is that this true sense the dogma of these creeds should be.
Therefore it is, that it is useful to give signal instances of the futility of patristic and mediæval criticism; not to raise an idle laugh, but because our whole dogmatic theology has a patristic and mediæval source, and from the nullity of the deliverances of this criticism, where it can be brought manifestly to book, may be inferred the nullity of its deliverances, where, from the impalpable and incognisable character of the subjects treated, to bring it manifestly to book is impossible. In the account of the Creation, in the first chapter of Genesis, 'the greater light to rule the day,' is the priesthood; 'the lesser light to rule the night,'[1] borrowing its beams from the greater, is the Holy Roman Empire. When the disciples of Jesus produced two swords and Jesus said: 'It is enough,'[2] he meant, we are told, the temporal and the spiritual power, and that both were necessary and both at the disposal of the Church; but by saying afterwards to Peter, after he had cut off the ear of Malchus: 'Put up thy sword into the sheath,'[3] he meant that the Church was not to wield the temporal power itself, but to employ the secular government to wield it. Now, this is the very same force of criticism which in the Athanasian Creed
