Scripture and the Authority of the Church.
I. St. Luke tells Theophilus that it seemed good to him to write in order an account of our Lord's life and death, that Theophilus might know the certainty of those things in which he had been instructed; and this, as a general rule, might well describe one great use of the Scripture to each of us: as individual members of Christ's Church, it enables us to know the certainty of the things in which we have been instructed.
II. Our individual faith, although grounded in the first instance on parental authority, yet rests afterwards on wholly different grounds; namely, on the direct evidence in confirmation of it which is presented to our own minds. But with regard to those who are called the Fathers of the Church, it is contended sometimes that we do receive the Scriptures, in the end, upon their authority; and it is argued that, if their authority is sufficient for so great a thing as this, it must be sufficient for everything else; that if, in short, we believe the Scriptures for their sake, then we ought also to believe other things which they may tell us, even though they are not to be found in Scripture; In this argument there is the great fault that it mistakes the question at the outset. The authority of the Fathers, as they are called, is never to any sound mind the only reason for believing in the Scriptures. In truth, the internal evidence in favour of the authenticity of the Scriptures is that on which the mind can rest with far greater satisfaction than on any external testimonies, however valuable. It has been wonderfully ordered, that the books, generally speaking, are their own witness. When, therefore, we are told that, as we believe the Scriptures themselves upon tradition, so we should believe other things also, the answer is, that we do not believe the Scriptures either entirely or principally upon what is called tradition; but upon their own internal evidence, and that the opinions of the early Christians, like those of other men, may be very good on certain points, and to a certain degree, without being good in all points and absolutely.
T. Arnold, Sermons,vol. iv., p. 236.