We are all required to “speak the same thing,” to “teach no other
doctrine,” to “preach the word,” to preach no “other gospel,” to teach
the things that become “sound doctrine,” and if we “speak not according
to his word it is because there is no light in us.” In one word, we are
not to have “all sorts of doctrine from all sorts of teachers,” but to
“earnestly contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints.”
IV. “How shall we reconcile the right of private judgment with the
right of the Church to maintain the faith in its purity, and still
preserve the unity of the faith which the word of God enjoins?”
The way we have done it for fifty years past. We have had the light of
private judgment, and, at the same time, maintained the faith in its
purity and preserved the unity of the faith as enjoined in Scripture.
Demonstration is better than theory. We have brought the people from
all parties, united them in the one faith, made them one in the unity
of the Spirit, with the exception of a few erratic spirits, but we
have not had more of these than they had in the time of the apostles.
They and their mission were predicted in Scripture, and they have come
and fulfilled the predictions of the Lord and the apostles without
intending or knowing it, and thus furnished an additional evidence that
the Scriptures are divinely inspired.