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"But it is more to the point that it 18 not lawful to draw conclusions about anything else than the subject which was immediately in hand."-Ibid. p. 80.
ALLEGORY
It will be noticed that it was forbidden actually to make an appeal in discussion to the Scriptures, as will be seen from the following quotation, the reason being that allegorical allusions could not possibly lead to satisfactory results in a debate:
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Appeal, in discussion of heresy, lies not to the Scriptures. The Scriptures in fact belong only to those who believe, or have the Rule of Faith. . . . Our appeal, therefore, must not be made to the Scriptures; nor must controversy be admitted on points in which victory will either be impossible, or uncertain, or not certain enough."-(Tertullian) A.N.C.L. vol. xv. pp. 21-22.
The truth of the Biblical teaching will, then, be deemed to have been attained only when the subject ́matter the Science of Salvation-shall be the source and the basis of the explanations and elucidations reached, and when a perfectly consistent, natural, noncontradictory and self-contained theory shall have been revealed as underlying the general scheme of the teaching. This we shall endeavour to attain to in the following pages.
