***Quite frankly, when people use the Church’s Scriptures to try vainly to disprove what the Church has always taught, I am strongly tempted to adopt the position of Tertullian, that those outside the Church have no right to use her books.***
Are you suggesting that I have not right to use the Bible?
Tertuallian would have said you are not (unless you are a Catholic Christian — and by “Catholic” I mean an Orthodox Christian though others on the board would mean a Latin Christian). But, notice, I only said I was strongly tempted to adopt Tertullian’s position, not that I have.
I find it vexing that in these latter days some seem to think that all previous generations of Christians, including those who themselves heard the preaching of Holy Apostles, managed to get things wrong, not individually — that surely happened — but in unison, in their consensus. Such folk seem to think Christ’s promise that the Spirit would lead his followers into all truth was somehow void down until the present day, or perhaps sometime in the 19th century when whatever innovation they are hawking, be it denial of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary or the existence of a “pre-tribulation rapture”, was first conceived. In both those cases, not only the Orthodox, but the Latins, the monophysites, the Nestorians, and the original protestant “reformers” are all in agreement against the innovation.
And, as the folks who push these innovations, unlike Joseph Smith, don’t do so on the basis of adding a new revelation or “Scripture”, but on the basis of purported fidelity to the Church’s Scriptures, the vexation presents a strong temptation to adopt Tertullian’s view.