No attention is to be paid to arbitrary assertion: we must
submit to the dictates of reason: inconsistency is a sign of
error (§§ 94, 95, 97, 100, 103). The heretics refuse to listen to
argument, though they do not formally deny the possibility of
proof. They refuse to meet us because they are afraid of
being confuted, and meanwhile they impose on their fellows by
sophisms (§ 91). The heretics profess to find their doctrines in
Scripture, but they reject some of the sacred writings, and
they lay stress on isolated passages, without regard to the
context or the natural sense of words; whereas the true way
to get at the meaning of Scripture, and so to learn what is the
teaching of the Holy Spirit, is to compare one part with
another, the Prophets with the Gospel and Epistles; and to
consider that no interpretation can be true, which is incon-
sistent with the character of God, and with the tradition
handed down in the Church from the Apostles (§§ 38, 96, 97,
99, 104). ᾿

Dr Bigg says (p. 51) that ‘the great Platonic maxim’ of the
Alexandrines, ‘that nothing is to be believed which is unworthy
of God,’ ‘makes reason a judge of revelation.’ It is balanced, as
we have seen, by another maxim, viz. the respect due to Church
or Apostolic tradition. But it is of great importance in
reference to the employment of the system of allegorical inter-
pretation. Marcion and others had laid stress on the fact of
the difference between the idea of God in the O.T. and in the
N.T., and explained this by the supposition of an inferior and


XXXVI ‘ INTRODUCTION. CH. II.
