nating law, or a power of gradual development, granted without limit, to the church; but are simply affirming the authority of traditions known, or surmised to be, apostolical.

Such, as I understand them, are the points we have to consider

in the present argument. On all hands, within the protestant pale, the usurpations and corruptions of the romish church are discarded. What have we, in England, to do with the Gregorys, the Sylvesters, the Innocents, the Urbans, of Rome, or with the notions they favoured, or with the practices they enjoined? What part hath the bishop of Rome in these western islands? Prove that he may lawfully command us, as his spiritual children, and we submit.

But it is another thing so to insulate ourselves from the broad continent of ancient and catholic christianity, as to denounce, unexamined, whatever constitutes the difference between our own christianity, and that of the times when men were living who had received their faith, at one or two removes, from the lips of the twelve. It is another thing to incur the risk of discarding all that the apostles might have recommended, or might have established, although only incidentally (or perhaps not at all) alluded to, in their extant writings.

With the indolent hope of evading laborious inquiries, and of escaping from endless discussions, and of effectively cutting every cord that ties us to romanism-with some such views as these, there may be those who would sink antiquity altogether, well content to reserve nothing but the canonical writings. To do this, is, however, as impracticable a course, as it is bold and unnecessary. Nothing remains for us, I am persuaded, but to employ all that serious diligence and discrimination which wer may be masters of, and which the importance of the occasion calls for, in an extensive research of christian antiquity.

Admitting the general principle, which, as I now state it, may be easily established-That some deference is actually due to the mind and testimony of the ancient church catholic, there remains to be determined, first-the chronological limits of that church, or the precise period within which it was in fact catholic, and entitled, as such, to respect; and secondly, what are the limitations under which this deference should be yielded, and this

testimony listened to. Is reverence due to whatever was generally or even universally believed and practised within the precincts of the ancient church? We think not indeed; but if not, what are the exceptions; and what the rules that should guide us in making them?

The writers of the Tracts for the Times have not as yet effected the indispensable preliminary work of defining the legitimate authority of the ancient church, and setting it clear of the many perplexities that attach to the subject. Until this be done, they, in asserting this authority, and others in impugning it, are beating the air. In the following pages an endeavour will be made and repeated from different starting points, so to exhibit the real religious condition, and moral and spiritual characteristics of the ancient church, as may go far in aiding us to draw the line between a due, and an undue deference to this alleged authority.

Whatever analogies may connect the doctrines of the Oxford Tracts with popery, the difference between the two is such as that those are likely to be disappointed who, hastily snatching up the rusty swords of the reformers, rush, so accoutred, upon the Oxford divines. To demolish popery (a work, as it has proved, not so easily accomplished as some had imagined) is only to leave the more ancient christianity of the Oxford writers in a fairer position.

Nevertheless, as I have already said, if we can but clearly define the respect due to the ancient church, and mark the points where suspicion is to come in the place of deference, almost every thing will have been done which mere argument can be supposed to effect in ridding the world of the illusions of the romish superstition. Our present labours then, arduous as they may be, are animated by a most cheering hope. We have indeed a single subject in view, but a double purpose; and the ulterior intention of what we are proposing, challenges to itself a solemnity which must urge every motive of exertion to the highest pitch. Once again, and under extraordinary circumstances, those questions are coming on to be discussed which involve the political destiny of nations, the social welfare of mankind, and the weal or woe of innumerable souls!

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Our subject then is not a biblical argument, or a question of interpretation; nor is it directly theological, much less metaphysical or philosophical :-it is purely historical; and what we have to inquire about is the actual condition of the christian church, from the apostolic times, and downwards, toward the seventh century.

-The history of christianity! alas the ominous words sink like a chill into the heart. Christianity has no difficulties, or none that ought for a moment to stagger a sound and well informed mind, excepting such as attach to its history; but these, although clearly separable from the question of its own divine origin, yet how serious and how disheartening are they! The christian, if he would enjoy any serenity, should either know nothing of the history of his religion; or he should be acquainted with it so thoroughly, as to have satisfied himself that the dark surmises which had tormented his solitary meditations, have no real bearing upon the principles of his faith.

In truth these difficulties, whatever they may be, when they come to be accurately examined, are found to press, not upon christianity itself; but upon certain too hastily assumed principles of natural theology, which they may appear to contradict. The general aspect of the gospel economy suggests expectations, as to the divine purposes toward mankind, at large, which not only have not hitherto been justified by the course of human affairs, but which the explicit predictions of our Lord, and of his apostles, had we properly regarded them, should have taught us not to entertain. After listening, in the first place, to the predictions of the jewish prophets concerning the reign of the Messiah, and then to the song of the angelic choir, announcing the actual birth of the Prince of Peace, if we turn, either to our Lord's public discourses, or to his private conversations with his disciples, a very remarkable contrast presents itself; and whether or not we may be successful in harmonizing the apparent discrepancy, it presents an alternative strikingly confirmatory of our faith as christians. For, in the first place, the unambiguous, and oftenrepeated announcements made by Christ to his followers, of persecutions, universal hatred, and cruel deaths, which awaited those who should promulgate his doctrine, were the very reverse of what

an uninspired founder of a new faith would either himself have admitted, or would have ventured to hold before his early adherents. Then, and in the second place, these same announcements, when compared with the facts which make up the history of the church, stand forward as prophecies, so fulfilled to the letter, as to vindicate the divine prescience of him who uttered them.

In like manner the predictions contained in the apostolic epistles, and which speak of the corruptions and the apostasies that should arise within the church, are available in this same two-fold manner, first, as evidences of truth and sincerity on the part of the apostles, and as opposed to enthusiasm and guile, which would have dictated things more fair and smooth; and, secondly, of a divinely imparted foreknowledge of the course of events.

Let it be granted then, that the history of christianity painfully contradicts the bright expectations we might have entertained of what the gospel was to be, and to do. But does it in any particle contradict our Lord's own forewarnings, or the apostles' explicit predictions concerning the fate and position of its adherents in this world of evil? Assuredly not.

These general observations, often as they have been advanced by christian writers, might be considered as impertinent in this place, as to their ordinary bearing; but they contain an inference peculiarly significant in relation to our immediate object. Let me say then, that, without prejudging the scheme of ecclesiastical principles which we are now proposing to sift, we may at least affirm that it supposes a state of things in the early church, much more in accordance with the vague expectations just referred to, than either with the well-defined predictions of Paul, Peter, and Jude, or with the pages of church history. Now this difference should be noted, and it should lead those who hitherto have overlooked it, to give the more attention to the details of an inquiry, the purport of which is to discover whether ancient christianity was, in fact, what we should have rejoiced to find it; or, on the contrary, what the apostolic prophecies would have led us sorrowfully to look for.

If, in any particular instance, the authority of the ancient church

is to be urged upon the modern church, then surely there is a pertinence in turning to the apostolic prophecies of corruptions, and apostasies, quickly to spring up within the sacred enclosure itself, which meet us at the threshold, and seem to bring us under a solemn obligation to look to it, lest, amid the fervours of an indiscriminate reverence, we seize for imitation the very things which the apostles foresaw, and forewarned the church of, as deadly errors!

No practical caution can be much more clear, as to its propriety, or important in itself, than the one I now insist upon. Say, we are about to open the original and authentic records of ancient christianity, and in doing so, have a specific intention to compare our modern christianity therewith, and to redress it, if necessary, in accordance with the pristine model. But at this moment, the apostolic predictions, like a handwriting on the wall, brighten before our eyes, in characters of terror. We are entering a wide field, upon the skirts of which a friendly hand has posted the'Beware of pits and swamps, even on the beaten paths of this sacred ground.' To addict oneself to the study of ancient christianity, with a credulous, antiquarian veneration, regardless of the apostolic predictions, is to lay oneself down to sleep upon the campagna, after having been told that the whole region exhales a malignant miasma: the fate of one so infatuated, would not be more sure, than merited.

Nevertheless these cautions, which common discretion, not less than piety, suggest and confirm, are misunderstood if they are used to discourage any researches which our extant materials afford the means of prosecuting. The scoffer and sceptic, casting a hasty glance upon church history, and looking, by instinct of his personal tastes, to the scum and the froth, turns away in arrogant disgust; but the christian may not do the same. On the other side, the unlearned believer, finding, in church history, if he looks into it at all, what revolts his feelings, clasps his bible to his bosom, with a renewed affection, and resolves to know nothing else and it may be an ill-advised zeal that would disturb such a resolution.

Yet it is certain that christians of cultivated minds, and especially all who stand forward as the teachers of religion,