White, William (1748-1836)
William White was the first Bishop of Pennsylvania, USA. More at Wikipedia.
THERE ought to be clearly understood the purpose, for which reference is made to an authority extraneous to holy scripture: especially as there are some, who criminate every appeal to the fathers; as if it were a removing of the cause from before the tribunal of the paramount authority of the law and the testimony.
It is accordingly here declared, that no idea is entertained of going beyond the limits of the canon, for the establishing of any opinion, not found in the books of which it is composed.
But it is conceived, that the sense of the times immediately following the apostles must, as a fact, be a strong testimony on the question of what was the faith, which the apostles handed to them; and, in that point of view, may give considerable aid in the interpreting of scripture.
This is no more than what is attributed to them, by the admission of their testimony, in regard to what books are to be received as the writings of the apostles. The argument, as applying to any leading doctrine or institution of Christianity, in proof of its having been held at the time in question, appears to the writer of this equally cogent, as when applied to the genuineness of the book, in which the doctrine or the institution is supposed to be found.
But the argument appears to him even to increase in weight, when applied in the negative form; or, when it is pleaded that a certain doctrine could not have been delivered by the apostles, because not found in the remains of early times; and especially, those of them written with the professed view of declaring their faith before the world.
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