ministers of that Church, as to the esti mation in which our Church holds Tra dition, a controversy in the presence of our Article declaring the sufficiency of Scripture to salvation, and excluding every thing not contained in Scripture from being required of any man as ne. cessary to salvation. But the strange ness of all this disappears, when we look to the freedom of discussion which our Church allows-to the wayward ness of the human mind, to the love of contradiction, to the tendency of men to obviate error, or supposed error, by insisting on some principle the most opposite to that which they would im pugn, the tendency again, to contract statements of a truth into the most precise form, or to take advantage of the absence of extreme precision, to interpret a given statement according to some peculiar view. These, and other natural principles of human conduct, acted on by the force of circumstances, -situated as our Church is in relation to that of Rome on the one hand, and the various Protestant Communions on the other, must be expected to produce alternations of opinion within the Church itself, on such points more especially as belong to its distinctive character. And as our Church, from its very moderation, may seem, when viewed from the opposite extreme either of ultra-protestantism, or of ultra-catholicism, to approximate to the other ;or again, from that very moderation, is liable to be claimed by either of the extremes as agreeing with it in principle; it is not to be wondered at that, in such a position, we should be subject to agitations from within, even on questions deeply affecting our existence as a Catholic, and yet Reformed and Protestant Church. May we hope and pray, that, by the Divine blessing, this agitation of the waters may result in their purification; and that the Church, as a tree of God's planting, may both firmly stand the shaking of the tempest without, and present a heart of oak to the gnawings of the canker that would consume it within.

"I have referred to the moderation of our Church, its distinctive character, as it is separated from the extremes to which it may appear to approximate. I need not state that, at this period, the prevailing disposition, or rather the tendency of that energy which is most busily working among us, is to represent the Church in its points of resemblance to Roman-catholicism, and throw it into strong contrast with the spirit of Protestantism. Thus it is, that we find the subject of Tradition now so studiously brought into notice, and elaborate

arguments drawn from the stores of ancient controversy, adduced to prove the traditionary derivation of the doctrines of the Church, or the insufficiency of Scripture for salvation, until its treasures have been unlocked by the key of a supposed Divine Tradition of Doctrines and Interpretations, and Rites."

The lecturer goes on to speak of the uses and abuses of tradition.

"Let me be understood then, as one most ready to concede very great importance to Tradition, taken in its most comprehensive and popular sense, as an authentic collection of Doctrines, Inter pretations, and Rites, existing in the Christian Church by the side of the Bible. But then I attribute no Divine authority to it in itself. It is divine only as it is shone upon by Scripture. Like the giant of heathen story, it has strength only as it touches the solid and holy ground of Scripture. Take it by itself, as something existing independently of the Bible, and it has no vita. lity in it. I will go along with the most ardent admirer of antiquity, in expressing my veneration for truth that comes down to us with the hoar of ages upon it, and for whatever is associated with the piety and constancy of our forefathers in the faith. But I remember, that I must not make my religion a matter of imagination, or even of feeling exclusively, that because I am disposed to love and cherish a precious relic of antiquity, I must not suffer it to tempt me to superstition and an idolatrous reverence of itself. If some are inclined, like those objectors in the time of Ignatius, to rest the whole cause of the Gospel on the appeal to antiquity, I would reply with Ignatius ;— έμοι δε άρχαια ἐστιν Ιησους Χριστος, τα άθικτα αρχαια ο σταυρός αυτού και ο θάνατος, και ἡ ἀναστασις αυτού, και ἡ πίστις ἡ δ' arou.

and

"Whilst therefore I fully receive all the information which ecclesiastical antiquity can impart, as most valuable evidence of the truths of the Gospel, I deny to it the prerogative which belongs to Scripture alone of revealing to me what I am religiously bound to believe. I will accept it as confirmation, most important confirmation,- of what I am bound to believe as taught by Scripture; but I will not absolutely resign myself to its teaching, as a primary authentic revelation from God in itself. Its witness to the truth of what is set forth in Scripture, shall be respectfully, nay devoutly heard and attended to; but it must not dictate what I am to

believe, as Scripture does, or require my unquestioning submission to its authority without further appeal. Nor if I scrupulously examine into it, and require that it should be proved to be divine by the evidence of Scripture, am I to be accounted as one slow to believe, and as demanding an impossible evidence for supernatural truth. For I am most ready to believe all that has the evidence of its being God's Truth, with whatever difficulties it may be accompanied to my understanding. I require nothing more than the evidence, that it is His Truth. Further, I will readily take the Tradition of Christian Truth along with me, as my guide to the knowledge of what Scripture reveals; but I will not exalt my guide into an oracle; nor, because the training hand and voice of the Church have been my first introduction to the Gospel, will I regard this my ecclesiastical education, as essential to the due understanding of the Scriptures in order to salvation.'

These solid and Scriptural views the learned Professor convincingly shows, in the following passage, are those of the Church of England.

"The 6th Article speaks clearly enough as to the exclusion of any other authority but that of Scripture in matters of faith. The first Homily also declares, that, 'There is no truth nor doctrine necessary for our justification and everlasting salvation, but that is, or may be, drawn out of that fountain and well of truth;' and forbids our running to 'men's traditions, devised by men's imaginations, for our justification and salvation;' since in Holy Scripture is fully contained what we ought to do, and what to eschew, what to believe, what to love, and what to look for at God's hands, at length."

"The Church speaks to the same purport, when it requires no other divine knowledge of the candidate for Deacons' orders, but that he be sufficiently instructed in Holy Scripture;' and of its ministers of every order no submission to any authority in matters of faith, but to the Canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testament.' It is very remarkable too, how, throughout the Ordination Services, the Church sets its seal on the Bible as the only Word of God.' Controversial statements would not find a place in offices of prayer; but the Church seems throughout these admirable services protesting against the error of dividing God's word into two partial rules; and very pointedly so, when it gives the New Testament into the hands of its Deacons,

with authority to read and to preach the Gospel, and the whole Bible into the hands of its fully-commissioned minis. ters, its Priests and Bishops, as the Word of God' which they are to preach, and the warrant of their ministrations, Had our Church held Tradition as an authority co-ordinate with Scripture, it would surely have introduced some reference to such an authority in the Services of Ordination. It would have spoken of the Doctrine or Faith of the Church,-not simply, as it does, of 'the Doctrine and Sacraments, and the Discipline of Christ, as the Lord hath commanded, and as this Church and Realm hath received the same, according to the commandments of God;' and would have expressly required its minister to believe as the Church believes, or to receive nothing but what the Church receives; instead of pointing with such impressive solemnity to Prayer, in conjunction with 'reading' and exercise in the Scriptures,' and in them, as the means in order to "the Ithinking upon the things contained true understanding of the same.'

"But the silence, not only of the Ordination Services, but of the Articles, on the subject of Tradition, is very emphatic. Here again, had Tradition been regarded by the framers of the Articles as in any respect authoritative in matters either of discipline or faith, its in conjunction with that of Scripture. authority would surely have been stated But the subject is not even mentioned with the rites and ceremonies of the in the Articles, except as it is connected Church."

The documents of the Church having been thus made to speak for themselves, Dr. Hampden proceeds to answer several arguments in favour of the authority of tradition, professing to be grounded on those documents. The following reference to Bellarmine is singularly apposite to prove the restricted sense in which the phrase "Ecclesiastical Traditions was used, not as implying, but as excluding, authoritative tradition; and it is very neatly and fairly applied to show that our Church, in passing by all mention of Divine or authoritaof Church tradition, refused to tive tradition, and speaking only recognise the traditions of the

sessing their evidence on the ground of Tradition; and that Scripture coming subsequently, only serves the office of confirming and establishing the original existing evidence from Tradition. Our Article speaks of doctrines being' established' by Scripture, when it excludes the Apocryphal books; or, as the Latin Article speaking of these books says, the Church does not apply them ad dogmata confirmanda; assuming, that is, that we have the doctrines already before us when we come to the investigation of Scripture. But clearly the Article is here describing what takes place actually,-the state of the case as it is, and drawing from it a practical criterion for discriminating between Canonical and Apocryphal books. No one would deny, that we, who are brought up in the faith, have the great leading doctrines in hand when we search the Scriptures, and that practically we do establish or confirm them as known to us already by Scripture. Nor would any of us who undertake to teach the Gospel to others, admit, that its truths were yet to be searched out; for this would imply, that we had not already assured ourselves that what we teach are its truths.

But the true theory of the use of Scrip. ture is the reverse of this. Scripture is our source. As Tertullian says, what we are, that the Scriptures are from their beginning; out of them we are;' quod sumus, hoc sunt Scripturæ

ab initio suo; ex illis sumus. The truths of Religion, according to our Article, are all there; being either expressly contained in Scripture, or manifestly to be collected from it. If so, they may be discovered there, as in their proper source, though our experience may not inform us of any one who has so dis

covered them."

This is a very solid answer to a very flimsy objection; for when a teacher asks his pupil to prove some doctrine from Scripture, he does not mean that Scripture is only to corroborate his own assertion, or that the doctrine could not have been discovered in the text, if it had not first been propounded by the teacher. With regard to what Dr. Hampden says of Scripture being the proper source of the doctrines in the creeds, even though our experience should never have informed us of any person who discovered them-the oral teacher,

orcatechism, or religious manual, having usually gone before-we receive the statement only as meaning, that should our experience not happen to suggest such an instance, the effect is not therefore to be doubted; but not as meaning that, in point of fact, experience does not furnish such instances. We feel assured that it does; the annals of Christian missions, of Bible societies, and of pastoral intercourse, exhibit cases; and we have many such ourselves known remarkable instances of persons who, with scanty sources of religious instruction, except what they derived from the study of the word of God, with faith and prayer, have been led to a very intimate acquaintance with "the deep

things of God." To disbelieve

this were to doubt the truth of the innumerable passages which declare the sufficiency of the inspired Word, under the teaching of the Holy Spirit, to make men" wise unto salvation;" as well as such promises as that "the meek he will guide in judgment, the meek he will teach his way;' -"Whoso will do the will of God, shall know of the doctrine." Dr. Hampden will not dissent from this statement, if we rightly gather his meaning in the following passage.

"After all it must be acknowledged that the Bible speaks plainly enough as to all the fundamentals of salvation. 'Practical Christianity,' says Augustine, · or that faith and behaviour which renders man a Christian, is a plain and obvious thing, like the common rules of conduct with respect to our ordinary temporal affairs.' And though it would be folly and arrogance in any of us to whom helps are afforded, to despise those helps, who can deny to the pious searcher into Scripture, that blessing

which God's word itself has attached to the work? If there be the disposition which Christ requires of those who come to him,-and if the Holy Spirit is ever ready, as we know, to assist those who earnestly seek his aid, who shall say, that the Bible may not in some instances, at once, speak its own

divine instructions to the heart and understanding of its devout reader, without the intervention of the human expositor ?"

Large as have been our extracts we must not withhold from our readers the following important remarks and arguments.

"So far then from asserting, as some do, that we must bring our researches into the Bible under the supervision of Tradition, Tradition must be evidenced, corrected, purified, determined, by Scripture. Scripture exhibits, so far as anything finite can approximate to the infinite, the eternal ideas of the Divine Mind in their own fixed unvarying character, ever the same. Tradition only very imperfectly represents the Divine sameness of God's truth, reproducing it, as it may, by successive repetitions. And though in the stream of Tradition, as in the successions of time itself, there may be no pause, and the succession of doctrines may have been continuous throughout, still this is nothing, in point of truth and excellence, to that eternal invariableness that everlasting present-which, as it belongs to eternity itself, belongs analogously to the one standing record of the Divine counsels.

"Would you then fix the passing, ever-flowing Tradition of the truth, would you correct the illusions which belong to its temporary evanescent form, would you not mistake shadows for realities-a science of the variable, for the eternal knowledge of the invariable and divine-study Tradition in the light of Scripture, fix the shifting forms of Tradition by looking to the realities contained in Scripture. You will be told that Scripture is obscure and difficult, and capable of an infinite variety of interpretations. But how idle is it to impute the imperfection and weakness and perversity of man to the Divine record itself! If Scripture is difficult, seek an instructor and guide; listen to the expositions of those set over you in the Lord; examine your own motives and capacities for interpreting it; pray for a right understanding of it. And is not Tradition far more difficult and obscure in itself, than Scripture is in itself? To understand Tradition rightly, you require a far more voluminous reading, than for a competent knowledge of the Bible in order to salvation. For unless, with the Roman Catholics, you resolve Tradition into the authority of the present Church, you must go through all the ecclesiastical writers of the primitive ages, and interpret a variety of state

ments consistently with one another, and so trace the chain of truth in unbroken series up to its first link. And should you, after all this labour, doubt of an interpretation at any point, what is to fix the sense for you,-what is to several interpretations and doctrines, decide for you the true tradition, out of which will necessarily be brought before you in such a search? You will be answered; look to what has been taught at all times, and in all places, and by all persons; an interminable and impracticable labour, and even, were it accomplished, incapable of giving positive satisfaction as to the truth, though it may negatively conclude as to what is not the truth. But what is the answer which the Articles of the Church of England give in such a case -Search the Scriptures. The voice of Scripture will fix for you what is the true tradition, whether it be a doctrine, or a comment, about which you are in doubt. Difficulties may be thrown out to perplex you in the use of the Scripture criterion. But you may answer, it is the best you have, and by God's appointment, and the order of our Church, the ultimate one. Doubtless, you may err in the use of it; but it is in itself infallible. You may err also in the use of the Tradition criterion; but then it is further in itself fallible; or, at any rate, you cannot be sure of its infallibility. There is labour too in proving the authenticity and canonicity of Scripture. But this is the simple labour of verifying the documents of Scripture, as to their integrity, and number, and reception among Christians. Whereas, in verifying Tradition, you must authenticate every point, one after the other. You must prove that each traditionary doctrine regularly descends from Apostolic times, without any interruption whatever;-an interminable and impracticable labour, as I have said."

"It is a vain parade of ingenious illustrations of the difficulties accompanying the rejection of Tradition, to point out, and dilate to the utmost, seeming inconsistencies or difficulties in Scripture. The analogy, you should reply, does not hold; and no illustration, much less argument, can be drawn from one case to the other. Such representations may act as means to awe down pious and susceptible minds into submission to the authority of Tradition. I fear, however, the general effect, so far as they are attended to, will be, to weaken the just impression of the exclusive sanctity of the Scripture-records, by placing them on the level of disputable Tradition. But I trust your