ed and developed by tradition, "It is a near thing," says Tract 85, "that they are in scripture at all; the wonder is that they are all there; humanly judging, they would not be there but for God's interposition; and therefore since they are there by a sort of accident, it is not strange they should be but latent there, and only indirectly producible thence." The same writer says, the gospel doctrine is but indirectly and covertly recorded in scripture under the surface." But besides these doctrines which are essential to salvation, there are others which are highly important which are not in the scriptures at all, which we are bound to believe. These doctrines we must learn from tradition; it is, therefore, "partly the interpretation, partly the supplement of Scripture."*

The authority due to tradition is the same as that which belongs to the written word of God. In the language of the Council of Trent," Traditiones non scriptas pari pietatis affectu, et reverentia, cum scriptura esse recipiendas." So Mr. Keble says, that consentient patristical tradition is "God's unwritten word, demanding the same reverence from us." Dr. Pusey says, "we owe faith to the decisions of the church universal." "Our controversy with Rome," he says, "is not an à priori question on the value of tradition in itself, or at an earlier period of the church, or of such traditions as, though not contained in scripture, are primitive, universal, and apostolical, but it is one purely historical, that the Romanist traditions, not being such, but on the contrary repugnant to scripture, are not to be received."

The ground on which this authority is ascribed to tradition is, that it is a practically infallible informant of the oral instructions of Christ and his apostles. "Let us understand," says Mr. Newman, "what is meant by saying that antiquity is of authority in religious questions. Both Romanists and ourselves maintain as follows: that whatever doctrine the primitive ages unanimously attest, whether by consent of fathers, or by councils, or by the events of history, or by controversies, or in whatever way, whatever may fairly and reasonably be considered the universal belief of those ages, is to be received as coming from the apostles." This is the ground commonly taken both by Romanists and the Oxford writers. Certain doctrines are to be received, not on the authority of the fathers, but upon their testimony that those doctrines were taught by the apostles. Both however rely more or less on the gift of the Holy Spirit communicated by the imposition of hands, who guides the representative church into the knowledge of the truth, and renders it infallible. "Not only," says Mr. Newman, "is the church catholic bound to teach the truth, but she is ever divinely guided to teach it; her witness of the Christian faith is a matter of promise as well as of duty; her discernment of it is secured by a heavenly as well as a human rule. She is indefectible in it, and therefore not only has authority to enforce it, but is of authority in

Newman's Lectures, p. 298.

declaring it. The church not only transmits the faith by human means, but has a supernatural gift for that purpose; that doctrine which is true, considered as an historical fact, is true also because she teaches it."* Hence he says, "that when the sense of scripture, as interpreted by reason, is contrary to the sense given to it by Catholic antiquity, we ought to side with the latter." Page 160. Such being the high office of tradition, it is a matter of great moment to decide how we are to ascertain what tradition teaches. The common answer to this question is, Catholic consent; whatever has been believed always, everywhere, and by all, must be received as derived from the apostles.

Such then is the theory. The scriptures are obscure and defective. They contain only covertly and under the surface even, some of the essential doctrines of the Gospel; and some important doctrines they do not contain at all. The oral teaching of the apostles was sufficient to explain these obscurities and to supply these defects, and was of course of equal authority with their written instructions. This oral teaching has been handed down to us by the church catholic, which is a divinely appointed and divinely guided witness of the truth. To her decisions, therefore, we owe faith. And as every particular church may err, our security is in adhering to the church universal, which is practically infallible.

It rarely if ever happens that any theory on any subject gains credence among any number of competent men, which has not a great deal of truth in it. And of the two great causes of the long-continued and extensive prevalence of faith in tradition as a divine informant, one no doubt is, that there is so much truth in the theory as above propounded; and the other is, that men find tradition to teach what they are anxious to believe. The principal elements of truth in the above theory are, first, that the testimony of God is the only adequate foundation of faith in matters of religion; second, that as much confidence is due to the oral teachings of the apostles as to their written instructions; and third, that the fact that all true Christians in every age have believed any doctrine, admits of no other satisfactory solution, than that such doctrine was derived from the apostles.

The application of these principles and the arguments founded upon them by the traditionists, are, however, full of fallacy and unfairness. They speak of the church catholic being, in virtue of the promise of God, indefectible, and practically infallible, as far as concerns fundamental truth. This every one will admit, if you take the word church in its scriptural sense. The church is the body of true believers; the company of faithful men. That this company cannot err in essential doctrines; that is, that all true Christians will, by the grace of God, ever believe all that is essential to their salvation, we have no disposition to dispute. And moreover, that the promise of our Lord secures the continued ex

* Lectures on Romanism, &c., p. 225.

istence of his church, or, in other words, a continued succession of true believers, we also readily admit. And we are consequently ready to acknowledge, that if you can ascertain what this church (i. e., true Christians) has ever, everywhere, and universally believed, you have a practically infallible rule for determining, as far as fundamentals are concerned, what is the true faith. But of what avail is all this?. How are you to ascertain the faith of all true believers in every age and in every part of the world? They have never formed a distinct, visible society, even in any one age or place, much less in all ages and places. They are scattered here and there in all visible churches, known and numbered by no eye but His who searches the heart. You might as well attempt to collect the suffrages of all the amiable men who have ever lived, as to gather the testimony of all the people of God to any one doctrine. And if it could be done, what would it amount to? You would find them agreed in receiving the doctrines which lie on the very face of scripture, and in nothing else. You would find that the plain testimony of God had been universally understood and received by his people. This would not be a source of new information, though it might be a consolation, and a confirmation of our faith.

The first fallacy and unfairness of traditionists then is, confounding the true church, or the company of faithful men, with the external and visible church. As it is an acknowledged impossibility to ascertain the opinions of the sincere people of God, they ap peal to the promiscuous mass of professing Christians, organized in different societies in various parts of the world. This proceeding is obviously fallacious and unfair. There is no promise of God, securing any or every external church from apostasy, even as to fundamental truth. As far as we know, every external organization connected with the Jewish church had apostatized in the days of Ahab; the seven thousand, who had not bowed the knee to Baal, were hid from the sight of Elias. During the prevalence of the Arian heresy, the great majority of the churches had departed from the faith; popes and councils declared in favour of Pelagianism; and in the ages before the Reformation, if the voice of the external church, or the mass of professing Christians, is to be taken as the voice of the true people of God, and a practical and infallible witness of the truth, we shall have the Bible completely superseded, and the whole mass of popish error and superstition firmly established. The rule of the traditionists, therefore, which is true in relation to "the faith of God's elect," is as false and fallacious as possible in its application to the external church.

But besides this, the voice of all professing Christians, everywhere and at all times, it is impossible to ascertain. And if it could be ascertained, the points of agreement would not include one half of the doctrines admitted to be fundamental. It is notorious that neither the doctrines of the Trinity, nor of the atonement, nor of regeneration, have been received everywhere, always, and by all; much less have all so far agreed in their explanations of these

doctrines as to retain what all admit to be essential to their integrity. To meet the former of these difficulties, that is, to obviate the difficulty arising from the impossibility of gathering the faith of the whole visible church, traditionists insist that we are bound to take the testimony of the pastors or rulers of the church. But in the first place, the pastors are not the church, and the promises given to the church were consequently not given to them. The declaration, that the church shall never perish, does not mean that the great body of its pastors shall never become unfaithful. Again, though the number of pastors is so much less than that of the whole church, the impossibility of gathering their united testimony to any one truth is not less clear and decided. This cannot be done in any one age, much less in all ages and places. Who can gather the opinions of all the present ministers of the Church of England? Their public creed does not express their opinions, for they differ fundamentally in their explanation of that creed. Some are virtually Romanists: some are Pelagians; some are Calvinists; some, we know, have been Socinians. Mr. Newman tells us, "In the English church, we shall hardly find ten or twenty neighbouring clergymen who agree together; and that, not in non-essentials of religion, but as to what are its elementary and necessary doctrines; or as to the fact whether there are any necessary doctrines at all, any distinct and definite faith required for salvation."* And on the same page, speaking of the laity, he says, "If they go to one church they hear one doctrine, in the next that comes they hear another; if they try to unite the two, they are obliged to drop important elements in each, and waste down and attenuate the faith to a mere shadow." The leading modern advocate of tradition therefore assures us that we cannot gather the faith of the English clergy, even as to "elementary and necessary doctrines," from their public creeds; that they do not in fact agree, and that it is impossible to find out what they believe. All this is said of a church with which we are contemporary; in an age of printing, of speaking, of assemblies, and of every other means of intercommunion and publication of opinions; an age of censuses and statistics, when the colour of every man's eyes may almost be ascertained and published to the world. And yet this same man would have us believe that he can tell what all pastors everywhere believed, seventeen centuries ago, not in one church, but in all churches! If the creed of the church of England does not express the faith of the English clergy, how are we to know that the creeds of the ancient church express the faith of the clergy of the early centuries? The difficulty is greatly increased by the consideration, that there was no one creed which the clergy were then obliged to adopt and subscribe, as at the present day. What is now called the apostles' creed, was only the creed of the Church of Rome, and did not assume its present form before the fourth century. Irenæus, Tertullian and

*Lectures, p. 395.

Origen have left formulas of doctrine for which they claim the consent of all the churches, but even these afford very imperfect evidence of the consent of all the pastors. In the first place, the testimony of a few men as to what all other men believe, is of no decisive weight. Let Dr. Pusey, or Mr. Newman, state the faith of the English church, and it will be one thing; let the Bishop of Chester state it, and it will be quite a different thing. In the second place, these creeds contain some things which are incorrect, and in all probability the faith of a very small part of the existing church. Thus Origen says the whole church believed, that the scriptures" have not only a sense which is apparent, but also another which is concealed from most. For those things which are described are the outlines of certain mysteries, and the images of divine things." He says, it is not clearly discerned whether the Holy Spirit is to be considered "as begotten or not," or as Jerome says the words were, "made or not made." Origen himself believed him to be a creature. Tertullian's exposition of the Trinity, if understood according to his own sense of the terms. is as little orthodox as that of Origen. Here then the very earliest creeds now extant, for which the faith of all churches was claimed, are yet infected with acknowledged error. They did not and could not represent the faith of all the pastors of the age of their authors, much less the faith of all who had preceded them.

But suppose we should admit that the early creeds ought to be taken as expressing the sense of the whole ancient church, what should we gain by it? They contain nothing beyond the simplest doctrines of the scripture, and that in such general terms as decide nothing against Arianism, Pelagianism, and various other forms of error. They have no relation to the points in dispute between Papists and Protestants, or between Oxford and the English Reformers. They yield no support to the baptismal regeneration, the sacrifice of the mass, or episcopal grace. As far as the creeds are concerned, they are an insufficient and uncertain evidence of catholic consent; and, if admitted, decide nothing as to any one of the questions between Protestants and traditionists.

Appeal however is made to the decisions of councils. These bodies, called together by public authority and representing all parts of the church, are regarded as bearing trustworthy testimony as to the Catholic faith. But to this argument it has been fairly objected that the church catholic does not admit of being represented. The delegates from the several provinces can at best represent only the majorities in the bodies deputing them. The minorities, whether large or small, must be unrepresented. Experience teaches us that truth is not always with the many. What would have been the fate of orthodoxy had it been put to the vote under Constantius or Valens? What would have become of Protestantism, had all churches sent delegates to Trent, and the cause of God been confided to the decision of the urn? Our objection, however, now is, that no general council can so represent the church as to