none effect by their traditions," so also did
apostate Christians.

In England the law is supreme. But it does
not rest with "the man in the street" to
interpret the law: that is the function of the
King's Courts. And so here. The supremacy
of the Bible was unquestioned. But the Church
was the "keeper" and the "interpreter" of
it; and it so kept it as to keep it from the
people, and it so interpreted it as to "change
the truth of God into a lie." An open
Bible was the prize at stake in the glorious
Reformation struggle. The leaders in that great
revolt proclaimed the truth of salvation in Christ
apart from the Church, and without the interven-
tion of priests. And this truth set the conscience
free from the bondage which had enthralled it.

But justification by faith was not the only
truth that had been lost in the superstitions of a
thousand years. Every truth of the Bible had
been perverted or darkened. And yet the men
who came after the Reformers were content to
maintain the ground already gained. "The
Bible the religion of Protestants" was a proverb
in the Reformation age. But in the age which
followed it, the religion of Protestants became
narrowed to the special truths which the Refor-

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