The Church of Rome at the Bar of History
by William Webster. The Banner of Truth Trust. Hardback, 254 pages, price £13.95 from the Free Presbyterian Bookroom, 133 Woodlands Road, Glasgow G3 6LE.
THE Church of Rome is a massive organisation which claims to have a monopoly of religious truth. This book examines that claim, concentrating on Rome’s assertion that she enjoys for its doctrines “the universal consent of the Fathers” (the leading writers in the Church during the first Christian centuries). The author concludes: “Unanimous consent on the major doctrines of the Christian creed does exist. But unanimous consent for the teachings of the Roman Catholic traditions does not exist.”
The fundamental difference between true Protestantism and Roman Catholicism lies in the question of authority. True Protestantism relies completely on the authority of Scripture, which it recognises as the inspired and inerrant Word of God. Roman Catholicism is not content with that, but demands that the Church’s Tradition be given an equal place with Scripture, and sets itself and its own, often perverse, interpretation of Scripture and tradition as the supreme authority.
Webster examines how Christ denounced the Pharisees for their traditions and concludes, “What Jesus is saying is that tradition is not inspired and therefore not inherently authoritative.” And the same conclusion applies to Roman tradition. The special value of the book lies in the mass of quotations from the Fathers which show clearly that on this point and on many others the Fathers did not hold to Rome’s false doctrines.
The Fathers were not perfect interpreters of Scripture. False doctrines and false practice were increasingly creeping into the Church over these first Christian centuries. But it is not difficult for Webster to show that Rome cannot at any point claim the unanimous consent of the Fathers. Basic to Rome’s pretensions is the interpretation of Matthew 16:18f which makes Peter himself to be the rock and so the foundation on which the Church is built. Webster, however, can quote from 20 different Fathers and, while their understanding of the text varies somewhat, none of them supports the current Roman interpretation.
Webster goes on to examine some particular doctrines, including justification and the sacraments, and is consistently able to produce pages of quotations giving the Fathers’ more Scriptural views. It all goes to show that at the bar of history, just as surely as at the bar of Scripture, Rome fails completely in her claim to a monopoly of truth.
The author is an American business man and a former Roman Catholic. He has already written Salvation, the Bible and Roman Catholicism (Banner of Truth Trust, paperback, 183 pages, £3.95) in which he gives a more popular answer to Roman Catholic errors while quoting extensively from current authoritative Roman Catholic documents.
K.D.M.
THE ENGLISH POPISH CEREMONIES
by George Gillespie. Naphtali Press. Hardback, 575 pages, £16.85 from the Free Presbyterian Bookroom, 133 Woodlands Road, Glasgow G3 6LE.
THIS volume is the first in a series entitled 17th Century Presbyterians. First published in 1637, it originally carried the longer title, A Dispute Against the English Popish Ceremonies Obtruded on the Church of Scotland. Gillespie (1613-48) was first the minister of Wemyss, in Fife, and later one of the ministers in Edinburgh. He spent four years of his short life as one of the Scottish commissioners to the Westminster Assembly. One of his fellow-Scots declared of him, “None of all the company did reason more, and more pertinently, than Mr Gillespie. That is an excellent youth; my heart blesses God in his behalf.”
This volume shows that even at an earlier stage of his life Gillespie displayed a rare excellence, for the book was published before he was ordained to the ministry. It was written when attempts, under Charles I and Archbishop Laud, to make the Scottish Church Episcopalian and ritualistic were nearing their climax. Rev Donald Beaton described the book as “remarkable, not only as the work of a young man . . . but also because of its learning and incisive logic”.
The foundation stone of Gillespie’s arguments is the fact that the Bible alone is the Church’s rule for the worship of God; she is not to add to, or take away from, what God has revealed. So thorough was Gillespie’s reasoning that it completely demolished all that was said from the other side, and none of even the most learned bishops ever attempted a reply. All that the Scottish bishops did was to get an edict passed that all copies which could be found were to be burned by the public hangman! Various defenders of the ceremonies had argued that they were necessary, expedient, lawful, and indifferent. These points feature in Gillespie’s work as the titles of his four main sections, as he demolishes every lingering thought that anything can be justified in the Church of God which He has not Himself commanded.
Today’s questions about the worship of God are not identical to those of the seventeenth century. The principles, however, are exactly the same. And one is probably on safe ground in saying that Gillespie expounds these principles more thoroughly and more successfully than anyone else in the history of the Christian Church.
The text of this edition was taken from the 1844 edition of Gillespie’s Works but has been corrected by comparing it with the first edition. It also “has been revised in so far as possible without marring the author’s work, to reflect contemporary (American) spelling, punctuation and usage”. Mr Roy Middleton of Barnoldswick has contributed an excellent 25-page introduction in which he outlines Gillespie’s life and sketches the historical background to show why the book was written.
K.D.M.