inspiration implies supernatural assistance, and nothing short of miracles or prophecy can constitute its supernatural proofthis evidence must be given before receiving as apostolic, the church polity and doctrines framed by councils, fathers, and the gradual, and altered practice of the early church. If "the church," as is asserted, "has a supernatural gift for the purpose of transmitting the faith;" so that it is made true, "because she teaches it" then what we ask her to give us, is supernatural proof for these supernatural claims.

The propriety of this demand is admitted by the Roman (prelatical) church, "who are fond of arguing that the performance of miracles is a sign of the true church." Such miracles are pretended to, not only by the Roman, but by the oriental church. This claim, Mr. Palmer also does not reject as unreasonable," but allows that there is every "probability, nay certainty, that such signs have been wrought since the time of the apostles."5 Now the line of demarcation between documents which are authoritative, and such as are unauthoritative, however otherwise valuable and instructive, is that drawn between those which are "attested by miracles, and all without exception not so attested." Making appeals of the same kind, therefore, to the one, as to the other, to man and to Godis giving the glory of Jehovah to another-canonizing the writings of fallible men-and thus making the word of God of none effect, through vain traditions. And to have recourse to such self-constituted prophets, as to provoke God to give us up to believe a lie.

8

If this principle was so acknowledged in the Nicene age, as that, in support of the church principles and practices then es

1) See Hinds (of Queen's College, Oxford) on Inspiration.

Mr. Newman, in his argument for the "indefectibility (infallibility) of the church," says, "we must have recourse to such sources as will enable us to agree, and such, I would contend, is ecclesiastical antiquity;" "and the evidence of its being apostolic is in kind the same as that on which we believe the apostles lived, labored, and suffered." See on Romanism, p. 232 and p. 233.

2) Newman on Romanism, p. 233. 3) Palmer, vol. i. p. 499, says: "It is evident, then, that the authority of catholic tradition, and of the universal church, as opposed to the unlimited freedom of private inven

tions, (judgment?) was continually recognized in the church of England during the whole reformation, and always afterwards." Again, in vol. ii. p. xv. he shows their agreement with the synod of Trent, so that when it taught "the christian truth and discipline are contained in unwritten traditions, also," he says, "WE ADMIT IT."

4) Palmer on the Ch. vol. i. p. 141, 142; also Dr. Rosbury in Notes of the Ch. Ex. and Ref. p. 279. 5) Ibid, p. 143.

6) Ibid, p. 145.

7) Hinds on Inspiration, p. 185. See from p. 174, p. 184.

8) See Ancient Christianity, vol. i. p. 347, &c. et passim.

LECT. IV.] SUPERNATURAL EVIDENCE REQUIRED.

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tablished-although these were in glaring contrariety to the word of God-such miraculous evidence was freely boasted;1— and if such gifts are proclaimed also by the existing hierarchy of the Romish church; then on what principle can it be denied by those other inheritors of apostolic powers and gifts, who assert their identity with the church of the Nicene age?

"For, moreover," says Archbishop Whateley, "we must not (if we would profit by the examples of Christ and his apostles) refer the people, as a decisive authority, on the essential and immutable points of Christian faith and duty, to the declarations or decrees of any class or body of fallible men; of any who have not sensibly miraculous proofs of inspiration to appeal to. Whether it be to a council or to a church, that reference is made; whether to ancient or to later christian writers; whether to a great or to a small number of men, however learned, wise, and good, in all cases the broad line of distinction between inspired and uninspired, must never be lost sight of; and (if we would profit by what Christ and his apostles have taught us) we must neither make, nor admit, claims to inspiration, unless supported (as theirs were) by miraculous proofs."

But even were this requisition set aside as extravagant,though to those whose eternal destiny is to be decided by it as by the Lord, it must appear no more than what is reasonable— we are still called upon to heave off from us the imposed yoke of patristical authority, by the very fact that, once beyond the region of inspiration, we find "no end in wandering mazes lost." There is, confessedly, no certainty as to the practice of the universal church, after the time of the apostles. This is allowed by Eusebius, the primitive historian of all that can be known, and affirmed by Joseph Scaliger1 and other learned in

1) See Anc't Christianity, vol. i. p. 347, &c. et passim.

2) Whateley's Dan. to the Christ. Faith, p. 130, and see the whole of the subsequent discussion.

That this system, requiring implicit faith in its teaching, as much as in the scriptures themselves, must therefore produce the same miraculous evidence, is also most ably argued by Professor Powell, in his Tradition Unveiled, pp. 29, 34, 36, 39, 40. Nay, this evidence is actually claimed, for it is said, "the lives and deaths of the great framers of the articles attested a supernatural assistance." Sewell on Subscription, in Ibid, p. 31.

"Thus," says Mr. Powell, on p. 38, "the manifest consequence of

the system of tradition and church authority, is to obliterate the boundary line of distinctive evidence between the New Testament and the fathers and councils; between the apostles and their successors to the present day. In this view, both are placed on the same footing; both must be equally inspired and divine; or (we have the alternative) both equally uninspired and human."

3) See Life of Henderson, p. 638.

4) On the obscurity of ecclesiastical history, at the very period when most needed, i. e. the first ages, see Scaliger, Silenus, Potavius, and Stillingfleet, in Ayton's Constit. of the Ch. p. 480. Hegesippus in Euseb. 1. 3, c. 29.

quirers. It is just as easy to quote these early writers on the one side of this question as on the other-against, as for the prelacy. There is among them an endless diversity and confusion. And we believe this latter "confusion of tongues" has been as wisely ordered as was that of Babel. The descendants of Noah (as is supposed) proposed to themselves to make such a provision as should render them, in any future deluge, independent of divine assistance. Exactly similar is the attempt now making to raise such a pile of human authorities, as may enable its architects to dispense with the Word of God, as completely as they of old proposed to dispense with any future ark. The attempt is equally presumptuous, and its result will equally frustrate the expectations of its authors.2

LECT. IV.]

THE FATHERS MISREPRESENTED.

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But there are other grounds on which we would protest against that most unfair use which is made by Romanists and prelatists, of these ancient records. They are perverted to their own purposes.1 They are subjected to just the same treatment which the scriptures are wont to receive at their hands. For as these oracles of God are made to receive their meaning and interpretation, from the rites, forms, usages, and opinions of the Nicene and later ages, so that the canonical meaning of scripture can only be ascertained through the comments and explanations of the church; just in the same manner these ancient records of the Nicene and proximate ages are to be understood, and their terms explained, by the meaning attached to these terms, and by the principles adopted, in the church now. It is utterly forgotten, that "names, rites, and formularies may remain unchanged, when their spirit and meaning have been essentially altered; and that much of what the Romanists (or prelatists) confidently appeal to in the early ages of christianity, carried quite a different import to a contemporary from that which it suggests under the dominancy and in the nomenclature of the hierarchy."

And, finally on this part of our subject, we remark, that it would be easy, with no other assistance than what is rendered by these writers themselves, to array the fathers in manifest support of this sole supremacy of scripture.

"The holy and divinely inspired scriptures, are sufficient of themselves to the discovery of truth," says Athanasius.

"It is an instinct of the devil to think any thing divine without the authority of the scriptures," says Theophilus of Alexandria.

"That which the holy scripture hath not said, by what means should we receive and account it among these things that be true?" says Cyril of Alexandria.

Basil declares, "It is a manifest falling from the faith, and

1) To use the words of a member of the English church: (Dr. Payne in Notes of the Ch. pp. 163 and 164) "Besides the correcting, or rather corrupting of SO many fathers, which were genuine monuments of antiquity, the counterfeiting of so many false ones, and obtruding of so many spurious authors upon the world, is a plain evidence of the want of true antiquity." "Thus the decretal epistles were counterfeited to prop up the pope's spiritual power, and Constantine's donation to establish his temporal."

"But there are great numbers of forged and spurious authors, whose testimonies are still produced by these writers, for those doctrines and opinions, which are destitute of true antiquity, a collection of which is given us by our King James, in his Bastardy of the False Fathers; and all those critics who have written censures upon the fathers' works cannot but own it."

2) We quote from the London Chr. Ob. 1840, p. 48, an evangelical episcopal periodical.

3) See also Note A.

an argument of arrogancy, either to reject any point of those things that are written, or to bring in any of those things that are not written."

"Forasmuch," says Gregory Nyssene, "as this is unholden with no testimony of scripture, we will reject it as false."

"Nothing at all ought to be delivered concerning the divine and holy mysteries of faith without the holy scriptures," saith Cyril of Jerusalem.

"If it be not written," said Tertullian, "let them fear that woe which is allotted to such as add or take away."

"As we deny not," says Jerome, "these things that are written, so we refuse those things that are not written."

"Whatsoever ye hear," says Augustine, "(from the holy scriptures,) let that savour well unto you; whatsoever is without them refuse."'

"It would be superfluous," says Mr. Palmer, from different portions of whose learned work these authorities are chiefly taken, "to cite additional testimonies to the same truth, from Clemens Alexandrinus, Hippolytus, Cyprian, Optatus, Hilary, Vincentius Lirinensis, Anastasius, Prosper, Theodoret, Antony, Benedict, Theophylact, which have been collected by our writers."

On the authority therefore of the fathers—that is, by all the weight and influence attached to tradition by prelatists themselves; we are required to receive or to reject this doctrine, as it shall, or shall not make good its title, from the clear and certain testimony of God's Holy Word. The apostolic writings are certainly not more obscure on this point than those of the early fathers; for the meaning of the one, is as much controverted, and their authority as variously claimed, as is the case with the Bible. And the whole obscurity on this subject, which is charged upon scripture, arises from the fact that the assumed practice of the early church, as prelatical and not presbyterian, is made to justify the most forced construction of certain passages of God's Holy Word. But let that word speak out in its plain unvarnished phrase, and this obscurity will in a great measure vanish.2

VII. A seventh ground on which we rest this claim to an unquestionable scripture authentication of these exclusive powers, is the unreasonableness of the whole scheme, in itself considered.

1) Lee on the Church, vol. ii. p. 13, and p. 74. See also Newman on Romanism, Lect. xiii. and also at pp. 274, 281. Also Oxf. Tr. vol. i. pp. 556, 560, and 563. Faber's Albi

genses, pp. 264, 491, 492; see also Note B.

2) See

Henderson's Rev. and Consid., Edinb. 1706, 4to. p. 53.