The Ever-Worshipped Bible, from Charles Marson's: God's Co-operative Society

http://www.anglocatholicsocialism.org/marson.html
from Charles Marson's God's Co-operative Society. London, 1914.

Above all things the greatest source of disunion and individualism in religion is the unreasonable and baseless view about the Bible, which is but too common among devout English people. Even in the zeal and excitement about the Divine Library which prevailed in the seventeenth century, the Second Sunday of Advent was provided with a beautiful Collect, describing the Christian use of the Scriptures. These are for learning, to teach patience, to bring the comfort of the Holy Word (which is not the Bible, but the living Christ), and to inspire hope. The Bible is not the rule of faith. We did not promise at our Baptism to believe the Bible. The Church is not founded upon it. It is not the one thing needful. It was written, composed, gathered, preserved, and translated by Churchmen for Churchmen. Many of the dead in Christ never knew there was or would be a New Testament at all. When we have it, it is not of private interpretation. It has quite other than the literal meanings, as we assert when we sing the Gloria after each psalm. These are often the exact opposite of the author's meanings. The Church has the right to contradict the Bible. For instance, in Psalm lxxxviii, verses 10, 11, and 12, the poet expected the answer No, to his questions. The Church gives the answer Yes, and uses the psalms as proper for Good Friday, If abuses were ever an argument against use, surely the misuse of the Bible would be an overwhelming reason for denying it to nearly everybody. The proud ignoramus, who thinks that a Bible in his knapsack makes him master of the highest wisdom, is in a perilous condiition indeed. He fancies that he is bound by a golden rope to the heavenly Guide, so that no precipices need now trouble him the slighest. He actually believes that he has the Eternal Word in his fingers, that the Word took print instead of flesh, that a work of human mechanics is the Divine device for his salvation. He pits the handmaidens, the writings of the holy servants, against the Mother and Mistress of Christians, against the Bride of God. He will prove to you that the Bible is inspired, because it says, or he thinks it says, that it is inspired; that it cannot err, nor he err in construing it. The plenary inspiration of the bumptious reader is the sole creed of such unfortunate wanderers. Every man becomes infallible without further ado. Let him once have an authorised or loose version, sold under cost price, he is fully equipped for heaven. No greater device was ever invented for ruining the sweetness, modesty, and graduation of the soul in the School of Christ. No wonder the ever-worshipped Bible becomes the object of the utmost contempt and derision. Often the earnest youth, trained in Bible adoration, ends as the most bitter detractor of what he ought never either to adore or to burn.