And if they had no good warrant for stepping out of the old paths, the fences of a modern constitution signify little. That this was the practice of the Universal Church, St. Augustin is clear and decisive. And since nothing but certain evidence will satisfy our author, here he has it. Here is the attestation of all Christendom. Here is number, weight, and authority, with a witness; and is not the practice of the Universal Church a good ground for reliance? What? Not in those early and unblemished ages? In those happy times when learning, and piety, and right belief, had so visible an ascendant? - It was a maxim with Luther and his adherents, to resign to nothing but a text of Scripture, of which themselves were to be the expositors. The Bible was GOD's, but the comment was their own; as for Antiquity, they had no regard for it. Calvin likewise was much of the same mind. He gives no deference to Antiquity, and seems to confine the rule of worship to express declarations of Scripture. These men, though they discovered some errors, fell into others. Particularly Calvin and his followers held some principles very destructive of the public peace. - Knox rails upon the Emperor and our Queen Mary. - Part 2. pp. 72. 81. 164-166.

LESLIE, PRESBYTER AND CONFESSOR. - Letter to a Gentleman converted from Deism.

But there is an infallibilty in this Church, not personal in any one or all of Christians put together? for millions of fallibles can never make an infallible. But the infallibility consists in the nature of the evidence, which having all the four marks mentioned in the Short Method with the Deists, cannot possibly be false. As you and I believe there is such a town as Constantinople, that there was such a man as Henry VIII. as much as if we had seen them with our eyes: not from the credit of any historian or traveller, all of whom are fallible; but from the nature of the evidence, wherein it is impossible for men to have conspired and carried it on without contradiction if it were false.

Thus, whatever doctrine has been taught in the Church, (according to the rule of Vincentius Lirinensis,) semper, ubique, et ab omnibus, is the Christian doctrine; for in this case, such doctrine is a fact, and having the aforesaid marks must be a true fact, viz. that such doctrine was so taught and received.

This was the method taken in the Council called at Alexandria against Arius. It was asked by Alexander, the Archbishop who presided, Quis unquam talia audivit? who ever heard of this doctrine before? And it being answered by all the Bishops there assembled in the negative, it was concluded a novel doctrine, and contrary to what had been universally received in the Christian Church. Thus every doctrine may be reduced to fact; for it is purely fact, whether such doctrine was received or not.

And a council assembled upon such an occasion stands as evidence of the fact, not as judges of the faith: which they cannot alter by their votes or authority.

A council has authority in matters of discipline in the Church; but in matters of faith, what is called their authority, is their attestation to the truth of fact: which if it has the marks before mentioned, must be infallibly true: not from the infallibility of any or all of the persons, but from the nature of the evidence, as before is said.

And this is the surest rule whereby to judge of doctrines, and to know what the Catholic Church had believed and taught as received from the Apostles.

And they who refuse to be tried by this rule, who say we care not what was believed by the Catholic Church, either in former ages or now, we think our own interpretation or criticisms upon such a text of as great authority as theirs; these are justly to be suspected, nay it is evident, that they are broaching some novel doctrines which cannot stand this test. Besides the monstrous arrogance in such a pretence, these overthrow the foundation of that sure and infallible evidence upon which Christianity itself does stand, and reduce all to a blind enthusiasm. - Works, vol. i. p. 70.

Ibid. Dissertation concerning Ecclesiastical History.

In Ecclesiastical History, and there only, I may say, is the decision of all controverted points in Divinity, either as to doctrine or discipline. For every one of them must be determined by matter of fact. It is not refining, and criticisms, and our notions of things, but what that faith was, which at first was delivered to the saints. This is matter of fact, and must be determinated by evidence. And where any text of the New Testament is disputed, the best evidence is from those Fathers of the Church, who lived in the Apostolical age, and learned the faith from the mouths of the Apostles themselves, such as St. Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, &c. These must know the best sense and meaning of the words delivered by the Apostles. And next to them, they to whom they did deliver the same, and so on through the several ages of the Church to this day. And those doctrines and that government of the Church, which has this evidence, must be the truth. And they who refuse to be determined by this rule, are justly to be suspected, nay, they give evidence against themselves, that they are departed from the truth.p. 411.

WATERLAND, PRESBYTER. - Use and Value of Ecclesiastical

Antiquity.

It is not at all likely, that any whole Church of those early times should vary from Apostolical Doctrine in things of moment: but it is, morally speaking, absurd to imagine that all the Churches should combine in the same error, and conspire together to corrupt the doctrine of CHRIST. This is the argument which Irenæus and Tertullian insist much upon, and triumph in over the heretics of their times and it is obliquely glanced upon by Hegesippus and Clemens Alexandrinus of the same second century, and by Origen also of the third. The argument was undoubtedly true and just as it then stood, while there were no breaks in the succession of doctrine, but a perfect unanimity of the Churches all along, in the prime articles: though, afterwards, the force of this argument came to be obscured, and almost lost, by taking in things foreign to it, and blending it with what happened in later times. The force of it could last no longer than such unanimity lasted. I say, while the Churches were all unanimous in the main things, (as they were in Irenæus's time and Tertullian's, and for more than a century after,) that very unanimity was a presumptive argument that their faith was right, derived down to them from the Apostles themselves. For it was highly unreasonable to suppose, that those several Churches, very distant from each other in place, and of different languages, and under no common visible head, should all unite in the same errors, and deviate uniformly from their rule at once. But that they should all agree in the same common faith, might easily be accounted for as arising from the same common cause, which could be no other but the common delivery of the same uniform faith and doctrine to all the Churches by the Apostles themselves. Such unanimity could never come by chance, but must be derived from one common source; and therefore the harmony of their doctrine was in itself a pregnant argument of the truth of it. As to the fact, that the churches were thus unanimous in all the prime things, in those days, Irenæus, who was a very knowing person, and who had come far east to settle in the west, bears ample testimony to it. Tertullian, in the two passages last cited from him, testifies the same thing, as to the unanimity of the Churches of those times, in the fundamentals of Christian doctrine. Hegesippus, contemporary with Irenæus, gives much the same account of the succession of true doctrine, down to his own time, in the several Churches. Clemens of Alexandria means the same thing, where he recommends the faith of the Universal Church as one, and as more ancient than heresies. And Origen, of the third century, testifies the same of the Church in his time, and argues in the same manner from it. Irenæus and Tertullian were both of them so strongly persuaded of the certainty; first of the fact, and next of the inference from it, that they scrupled not to urge it as a very full and convincing proof of the Apostolical faith singly considered, and abstracting from Scripture proof; an argument which there is no need to be jealous of, if it be but rightly understood, and limited to such circumstances as it was grounded upon. For the meaning was not, that Apostolical Churches could never err, nor that tradition would be always a safe rule to go by: but such tradition as that was, which might easily be traced up to the Apostles, by the help of writings then extant, as easily (as we may now trace up, the doctrine of our Church to the reign of Charles, or of James the First,) such a tradition might be depended upon. Besides that the unanimity of the Churches all the world over (which could not be rationally accounted for on any other supposition but that they had been so taught from the beginning) confirmed the same thing. The argument in this light, and in those circumstances, was a very good one. But when those circumstances came to be altered, and there had been several breaks in the succession of doctrine, and that too even in the Apostolical Churches, then there could be no arguing in the same precise way as before: only thus far they might argue in after times )upon a supposition that their faith could be proved to be the same as in the former ages), that since their doctrine was still that very doctrine which the churches held while they were unanimous, and had admitted no breaks, therefore it is such as was from the beginning in the Church of CHRIST. In this manner we can reason even at this day, and can thereby make Irenæus's or Tertullian's argument our own: provided we have first proved that the faith we contend for is the very same that obtained in the Churches of that age.

....

It has been obtained, that our sixth Article condemns the method of interpreting Scripture by antiquity, or at least supersedes it; because it says, "Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation; so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an Article of Faith, or necessary to salvation." The Article says nothing but what is perfectly right, and perfectly consistent with all we have been pleading for. We allow no doctrine as necessary, which stands only on Fathers, or on tradition, oral or written; we admit none for such, but what is contained in Scripture, and proved by Scripture, rightly interpreted. And we know of no way more safe in necessaries to preserve the right interpretation, than to take the ancients along with us. We think it a good method to secure our rule of faith against impostures of all kinds; whether of enthusiasm or false

criticism, or conceited reason, or oral tradition, or the assuming dictates of an infallible chair. If we thus preserve the true sense of Scripture, and upon that sense build our faith, we then build upon Scripture only; for the sense of Scripture is Scripture. Suppose a man were to prove his legal title to an estate; he appeals to the laws; the true sense and meaning of the laws must be proved by the best rules of interpretation; but, after all, it is the law that gives the title, and that only. In like manner, after using all proper means to come at the sense of Scripture, (which is Scripture,) it is that, and that only, which we ground our faith upon, and prove our faith by. We allege not Fathers as grounds, or principles, or foundations of our faith, but as witnesses, and as interpreters, and faithful con

veyers.

That the Church of England has a very particular regard to antiquity, may sufficiently appear from a canon set forth in the same year when our Articles were first perfected and authorized by Act of Parliament, namely, in the year 1571. By that canon it is provided, "that preachers shall not presume to deliver any thing from the pulpit, as of moment, to be religiously observed and believed by the people, but that which is agreeable to the doctrine of the Old or New Testament, and collected out of the same doctrine by the Catholic Fathers and the Bishops of the ancient Church." A wise regulation, formed with exquisite judgment, and worded with the exactest caution. The canon does not order, that they shall teach whatever had been taught by Fathers; no, that would have been setting up a new rule of faith; neither does it say that they shall teach whatsoever the Fathers had collected from Scripture: no, that would have been making them infallible intrepreters, or infallible reasoners: the doctrine must be found first in Scripture: only to be the more secure that we have found it there, the Fathers are to be called in, to be, as it were, constant checks upon the presumption or wantonness of private interpretation; but then again as to private interpretation, there is liberty enough allowed to it. Preachers are not forbidden to interpret this or that text, or hundreds of texts, differently from what the Fathers have done; provided still they keep within the analogy of faith, and presume not to raise any new doctrine: neither are they altogether restrained from teaching any thing new, provided it be offered as opinion only, or an inferior truth, and not pressed as necessary upon the people. For it was thought that there could be no necessary article of faith or doctrine now drawn from Scripture, but what the ancients had drawn out before, from the same Scripture: to say otherwise, would imply that the ancients had failed universally in necessaries, which is morally absurd.

From this account it may appear that the Church of England

1