By the right of Private Judgment in matters of religious belief and practice, is ordinarily meant the prerogative, considered to belong to each individual Christian, of ascertaining and deciding for himself from Scripture what is Gospel truth, and what is not. This is the principle maintained in theory, as a sort of sacred possession or palladium, by the Protestantism of this day. Rome, as is equally clear, takes the opposite extreme, and maintains that nothing is absolutely left to individual judgment; that is, that there is no subject in religious faith and conduct on which the Church may not pronounce a decision, such as to supersede the private judgment, and compel the assent, of every one of her members. The English Church takes a middle course between these two. It considers that on certain definite subjects private judgment upon the text of Scripture has been superseded, but not by the mere authoritative sentence of the Church, but by its historical testimony delivered down from the Apostles. To these definite subjects nothing more can be added 1, unless, indeed, new records of primitive Christianity, or new uninterrupted traditions of its teaching were discoverable.
The Catholic doctrines, therefore, of the Trinity, Incarnation, and others similar to these, as contained in Antiquity, are, as we maintain, the true interpretations of the notices contained in Scripture concerning those doctrines. But the mere Protestant considers that on these as well as on other subjects, the sacred text is left to the good pleasure or the diligence of private men; while the Roman Catholic, on the contrary, views it as in no degree subjected to individual judgment, except from the accident of the Church having not yet pronounced on this or that point an authoritative and final decision.
2.
Now these extreme theories and their practical results are quite intelligible; whatever be their faults, want of simplicity is not one of them. We see what they mean, how they work, what they result in. But the middle path adopted by the English Church cannot be so easily mastered by the mind, first because it is a mean, and has in consequence a complex nature, involving a combination of principles, and depending on multiplied conditions; next, because it partakes of that indeterminateness which, as has been already observed, is to a certain extent a characteristic of English theology; lastly, because it has never been realized in visible fulness in any religious community, and thereby brought home to the mind through the senses. What has never been fairly brought into operation, lies open to various objections. It is open to the suspicion of not admitting of being so brought, that is, of being what is commonly understood by a mere theory or fancy. And besides, a mean system really is often nothing better than an assemblage of words; and always looks such, before it is proved to be something more. For instance, if we knew only of the colours white and black, and heard a description of brown or grey, and were told that these were neither white nor black, but something like both, yet between them, we should be tempted to conceive our informant’s words either self-contradictory or altogether unmeaning; as if it were plain that what was not white must be black, and what was not black must be white. This is daily instanced in the view taken by society at large of those persons, now, alas! a comparatively small remnant, who follow the ancient doctrines and customs of our Church, who hold to the Creeds and Sacraments, keep from novelties, are regular in their devotions, and are, what is sometimes called almost in reproach, “orthodox.” Worldly men seeing them only at a distance, will class them with the religionists of the day; the religionists of the day, with a like superficial glance at them, call them worldly and carnal. Why is this? because neither party can fancy any medium between itself and its opposite, and connects them with the other, because they are not its own.
Feeling, then, the disadvantages under which the Anglican doctrine of Private Judgment lies, and desirous to give it something more of meaning and reality than it popularly possesses, I shall attempt to describe it, first, in theory, and then as if reduced to practice.
3.
1. Now, if man is in a state of trial, and if his trial lies in the general exercise of the will, and if the choice of religion is an exercise of will, and always implies an act of individual judgment, it follows that such acts are in the number of those by which he is tried, and for which he is to give an account hereafter. So far, all parties must be agreed, that without private judgment there is no responsibility; and that in matter of fact, a man’s own mind, and nothing else, is the cause of his believing or not believing, and of his acting or not acting upon his belief. Even though an infallible guidance be accorded, a man must have a choice of resisting it or not; he may resist it if he pleases, as Judas was traitor to his Master. Roman Catholic, I consider, agrees with Protestant so far; the question in dispute being, what are the means which are to direct our choice, and what is the due manner of using them. This is the point to which I shall direct my attention.