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William Whitaker cites the Apostle Paul’s praise of the Bereans against the Roman Catholic doctrine of sola ecclesia:
 Our seventh argument [demonstrating that scripture, and not the church, is the interpreter of scripture] is taken from Acts xvii. 11, where the Bereans are praised for searching the scriptures whether those things which Paul taught were so. From which place we argue thus: If the doctrine of the apostle was examined by scripture, then the doctrine of the church should also be examined by scripture. The antecedent is true; therefore also the consequent. The Jesuit here hath but one reply. He says that the person of the apostle was not known to the Bereans, and that they did not understand whether Paul was an apostle or not; and therefore that they did well in judging his doctrine by the scriptures: but we do know (says he) that the church cannot err, and therefore we ought not to examine its teaching. I answer: It makes little matter whether the Bereans knew Paul to be an apostle or not. The question is not about persons, but about the kind of teaching. The Bereans are praised for not rashly and hastily receiving whatever Paul taught them, but diligently examining his doctrine by scripture. Whence we draw two inferences: First, that all doctrine is to be judged by the scriptures. For, if the Bereans compared the preaching of an apostle with the rule of scripture, shall we embrace without any examination whatever the pope may please to maintain? Secondly, That the apostles preached nothing which could not be established by the scriptures of the prophets, and did perfectly agree with them. But we (says he) know that the church cannot err. But we (say I) know that the pope errs shamefully, and they who think otherwise err also to the eternal ruin of their own souls. . . . Verily, the church, that is, the pope, would be a kind of God if he could not err. —William Whitaker, Disputations on the Holy Scriptures (Soli Deo Gloria, 2005), 457.
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