selves off from all dependence upon their predecessors, any more than he has left them free so to act, as if their conduct, as Christians, would not have an influence over the religious well-being of their successors. The church is one church, stretching throughout the ages that are to elapse between the first, and the second advent.

But now this dependence of the modern church upon the ancient Church, has, in fact, been misunderstood, and abused, in an extreme degree; and, moreover, it involves some real and serious difficulties in all occasions of controversy. What then remains to be done? Not to cut the knot by renouncing the dependence:-this we are not free to do; but, and there is no alternative, we are summoned to exercise, although at the cost of painful labours, a necessary discrimination, by the aid of which we may avail ourselves, without abusing it, of the TESTIMONY and JUDGMENT of the ancient church. Some may indeed resent this alleged necessity, and may have recourse to various expedients to evade it; but their struggles will be to no purpose in regard to the cause they wish to serve; while there will be not wanting some, quick to perceive, and prompt to turn to their advantage, the argumentative boon, thus unwisely surrendered to them. It has been nothing so much as this inconsiderate "Bible alone" outcry, that has given modern popery so long a reprieve in the heart of protestant countries; and it is now the very same zeal, without discretion, that opens a fair field for the spread of the doctrines of the Oxford Tracts.

I venture, then, not without diffidence, and yet with a calm confidence in the soundness of the course I am pursuing, to invite those who already feel the moment of the controversy set on foot by the writers of those tracts, and who perceive the double consequence which

it carries, to enter upon such researches, in the field of Christian antiquity, as may be found requisite, whether more or less laborious, for obtaining a well-defined conviction as to the extent and conditions of the deference that is due to the practices and opinions of the early church. May He who giveth liberally, and without upbraiding, as well wisdom as strength, to those who are conscious that both must be given from above, graciously, in this instance, aid our endeavours!

A TEST OF THE MORAL CONDITION

OF THE ANCIENT CHURCH.

So far as we may have in view the usurpations and the lying pretensions of Rome, nothing can be clearer than the course to be pursued by protestants. Such and such practices, or opinions, and in which POPERY consists, may be proved to be of such or such a date; they are, therefore, not apostolic; they are not catholic; they are not even ancient, any more than they are scriptural: why, then, should we receive and submit to them? "I am catholic, not you," may every protestant say to every Romanist, and with as full an assurance as that with which the genuine Cambrian may say to the Fitzwilliams, the Walters, the Villiers, the Godfreys, "I am British, not you; I had turned this soil ages before you Normans had set a foot on the island." We are not compelled, by any logical or argumentative obligation,

to do more than passively to reject, and resolutely to resist, Romanism, that is to say, the false, debauched, and tyrannous superstition of the middle ages. Protestantism, as opposed to popery, is a refusal to accept innovations, bearing an ascertained date.

Or, we might confine our protest against popery within the pithy denunciations of the Romanists' own saint, Vincent of Lerins-Annuntiare ergo aliquid Christianis catholicis, præter id, quod acceperunt, nunquam licuit, musquam licet, nunquam licebit; et anathematizare eos, qui annunciant aliquid, præterquam quod semel acceptum est, nunquam non oportuit, nusquam non oportet, nunquam non oportebit.

But, after thus remanding popery until it can show some cause why it should, for a moment, be listened to, serious difficulties meet us in our upward course toward apostolic Christianity; nor does there appear to be any summary process by which these difficulties may be surmounted. By the determined opponents of antiquity they will be stated in terms so strong as must, if we listen to them, lead to the conclusion they desire, namely, an utter rejection of whatever comes to us through the contaminated channels of ecclesiastical tradition. Such a one will not fail briskly to put the question— "Why draw a line, where there is no important distinction, between the religion of the tenth century and that of the ninth, or of the eighth, or of the seventh?" or he will demand that we should show that Christianity was in a much purer state in the sixth century than in the seventh; or that it had not become vitally corrupted even in the fifth; or that, in the fourth, it retained its essential purity and if these questions, put in broad terms, are pushed on toward the earliest years to which our ex

tant materials extend, a real perplexity will attach to the answer that is to be given to them: in truth, we shall never be able to deal with the subject in the abstract, or in mass; for it means nothing, or nothing as to any practical bearing, either to say, vaguely, the ancient church was in error; or, as vaguely, to deny such a charge. We must descend to the particulars, and must sift the evidence with a minute and impartial scrupulosity, and the result, which we may confidently anticipate, is precisely what a true knowledge of human nature, supported by the evidence of all history, would lead any calm and philosophic mind to expect, namely, that, while the testimony of the pristine church, concerning certain facts and doctrines, remains unimpeached, and is in the highest degree important, and while its faith, its constancy, its courage, its charity, its heavenly-mindedness, are the objects of just admiration and imitation, it had admitted certain specific errors, and had yielded itself to some natural but pernicious impressions, which make a blind obsequiousness toward it, on our part, equally dangerous and absurd. There is, surely, no mystery in all this, nor any miracle; but simply what is in analogy with the uniform course of human affairs, even when benefited by the intervention of heavenly influences. Either to worship the pristine church, or to condemn it, in the mass, would be just as unwise as to treat the church of our own times, or of any other times, in a manner equally undiscriminating. But, although there be neither miracle nor mystery in the facts which an impartial research brings to light, concerning the religious and moral condition of our Christian predecessors of the early ages, how much of mystification has darkened the minds of many, in their notions of anti

quity, and how much of what must have been, had it had place, really miraculous, has virtually and silently been attributed to the course of events, in the church, from the death of the apostles, to the time when it ceases to be any longer practicable even to imagine any such supernatural control of ecclesiastical affairs!

In truth, there have been, and are, many (and as it seems, some of those that embrace the opinions of the Oxford writers are of the number) who, while they might perhaps deny the claim of the martyr church to the possession of miraculous powers, and disallow the entire series of legends, of the healing the sick, and raising the dead, yet cling to the fond belief that the church, during the early centuries, was favoured by some more inmediate divine superintendence than is the church of our own times; or, in a word, that a species of theocracy, with its Urim and Thummim, and its Shekinah, had an existence-vigorous at the first, and gradually fading and melting away, into the merely human hierarchical economy of the papacy. A vague notion, such as this, may indeed appear to be sanctioned by certain of our Lord's expressions; but those who entertain it should not forget that, unless those expressions were intended to be limited to the apostles and first teachers, they are undoubtedly the property of the church in all ages, and without any privilege in behalf of the early ages. And then it will follow that they confer no claim to deference, or general authority, for the ancient church, than what belongs to the modern; and thence also it follows that, if we actually find, within the precincts of the modern church, strange and unsightly combinations of high and sacred truths, and solid virtues, with preposterous errors, and sad delinquencies, so may it have been, and so was