On some of the medico-legal relations of the habit of intemperance / by Robert Christison.

  • Christison, Robert, Sir, 1797-1882.
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On some of the medico-legal relations of the habit of intemperance / by Robert Christison. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    wide phrase was adapted and intended to comprehend the public authorities of all the Reformed Churches, and could never have been selected by one who wished to narrow the idea of a legitimate minister to Episcopalian Orders; besides that we know Lutheran and Calvinistic ministers to have been actually admitted in the early times of the Reformed English Church, by the force of that very Article. To this, the only genuine Protestant view cf a Church, I gave my most cordial adherence: but when I turned to the Ordination Service, I found the Bishop there, by his authoritative voice, absolutely to bestow on the candidate for Priesthood the power to forgive or retain sins!— Receive ye the Holy Ghost! Whose sins ye forgive, they are forgiven: whose sins ye retain, they are retained. If the Bishop really had this power, he of course had it only as Bishop, that is, by his consecration; thus it was formally transmitted. To allow this, vested in all the Romish bishops a spiritual power of the highest order, and denied the legitimate priesthood in nearly all the Continental Protestant Churches;—a doctrine irreconcilable with the article just re- ferred to and intrinsically to me incredible. That an unspi- ritual—and it may be, a wicked—man, who can have no pure insight into devout and penitent hearts, and no communion with the Source of holy discernment, could never receive by an outward form the divine power to forgive or retain sins, or the power of bestowing this power, was to me then, as now, as clear and certain as any possible first axiom. Yet if the Bishop had not this power, how profane was the pretension! Thus again I came into rude collision with English Prelacy. The year after taking my degree, I made myself fully master of Paley's acute and original treatise, the Horse Pau- linse, and realized the whole life of Paul as never before. This book greatly enlarged my mind as to the resources of historical criticism. Previously, my sole idea of criticism was that of the direct discernment of style; but I now began to understand what powerful argument rose out of combinations: and the very complete establishment which this work gives to the narrative concerning Paul in the latter half of the Acts, appeared to me to reflect critical honour* on the whole New * A critic absurdly complains that I do not account for this. Account for what ? I still hold the authenticity of nearly all the Pauline epistles, and that the Pauline Acts are compiled from some valuable source, from chap. xiii. onward ; but it was gratuitous to infer that this could accredit the four gospels.