And

former ages had accommodated the edifice. these, it might well be imagined, would hardly have been placed there by such venerable hands, without some good reason, and apparent necessity. In those days, nothing was thought to be sufficiently confirmed by scripture testimonies, without additional vouchers from the ancient worthies of the church; and accordingly Tertullian, Chrysostom, Austin, and Jerome regularly took their places on the same bench of judgment with Paul, Peter, James, and John.*

In process of time some particular persons began to see into this mistake. In our own country the learned Cartwright, in his dispute with Archbishop Whitgift, about the year 1573, took the courage to appeal from the authority of the Fathers, and to prescribe them narrower limits in the province of determining religious controversies. How this would be received in those days, might easily be conjectured without particular information. The terms, in which Cartwright had characterized these venerable doctors, were collected together in a book of Bancroft's, and set off with tragical exclamations, as if they had been little less than so much blasphemy.† ‡

* See the Catholicus Veterum Consensus, at the end of the Corpus Confessionum.

[ Cartwright was an able and zealous Puritan, and one of the most learned men of his age. He was an eloquent and popular preacher, and in 1570 was chosen Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, where he had been educated. To the high church

Some few years after this, Erasmus Johannes, a schoolmaster at Antwerp, took still greater liberties with antiquity. "He affirmed, that all the councils which had met, and all the books of the Fathers, which had been written since the death of the Apostles, were infected with antichristian errors, not exparty, however, he soon made himself obnoxious by the liberal sentiments delivered in his lectures respecting church government and discipline. When Whitgift became vice chancellor of the university, he had sufficient influence to deprive Cartwright of his professorship. A long controversy ensued between them, in which Cartwright opposed the hierarchical establishment, and the peculiar ceremonies of the Church of England.

At length, to escape the persecutions, with which he was threatened, he was obliged to leave his country. He visited many universities on the continent, and was treated with great respect. Beza wrote to a friend in England, "Here is now with us your countryman, Thomas Cartwright, than whom I think the sun doth not see a more learned man." When the excitements of the occasion bad subsided, he returned to his native country, but was not suffered to remain long in peace.

Whitgift was the vigilant and persevering enemy of every one, who did not yield humble obedience to the authority of the church. Cartwright again felt the weight of his persecution combined with that of the ruling party, and a second time sought an asylum in exile, where he remained five years. When he ventured back, he was charged with being a promoter of sedition, arraigned, and imprisoned. Notwithstanding these harsh proceedings, he continued boldly to publish and defend his sentiments; nor did he remit his zeal and exertions during the remainder of his life, although he was often thrown into prison for bearing testimony to the dictates of his conscience and judgment. He died in 1603, aged sixty-seven years.

The history of the church reveals to us the names of few persons, who were more remarkable for a spirit of independence, firmness, talents, and learning, than Cartwright. He had the

cepting the famous council of Nice." He proposed, therefore, that, in order to a perfect reformation, the new phrases and new ways of speaking, invented by the Fathers, should be wholly suppressed and laid aside, and all religious propositions expressed according to the simplicity of Christ and his Apostles. 66 If any man," says he, " finds himself obliged to use new terms to express the articles of his faith, so that the words of the Prophets and Apostles are not sufficient for him, that man's doctrines and religion are

courage to promulgate sentiments of the most unpopular kind, at a time when doubt was heresy, and disaffection to establishments was rebellion. From the beginning he denied, that civil authority could lawfully interfere in the affairs of the church, and that the power of bishops was no more than that of the other clergy. He insisted, that every minister ought to be chosen by the church, or congregation, over which he is to preside, and that the Gospel gives him no authority beyond his own congregation. The sign of the cross in baptism, festivals, and many other forms and ceremonies of the Episcopal Church, he affirmed to be unscriptural additions; and in all his labours he aimed to bring back church discipline and the modes of worship to what he believed to be the simplicity of apostolical times. In private life he was amiable, pious, and benevolent.

To show something of the spirit of the age, as well as the temper of Whitgift, the following passage is quoted, which was the language of this prelate when Cartwright and his friends petitioned for some indulgence, because they were brethren. Whitgift replied, "What signifies their being brethren? Anabaptists, and Arians, and other heretics, would be accounted brethren; their haughty spirits will not suffer them to see their error; they deserve as great punishment as Papists, because both conspire against the church." Strype's Annals of the Reformation, vol. i. chap. 57; vol. ii. chap. 1.—Neal's History of the Puritans, vol. i. ~Biographia Britan. Art. Cartwright. EDITOR.]

certainly new as well as his terms; for otherwise he would easily find, in the Scripture, language proper enough to express his notions."* But the times were not yet ripe for the toleration of these sentiments; and the poor man, who was hardy enough to venture them with the public, was obliged to fly his country.

From these days, the authority of the Fathers hath continued gradually to decline among all reasonable and consistent Protestants, and more particularly since the publication of Mr Daillé's famous book, De Usu Patrum, in 1631. But none, that I know of, ventured so far as the schoolmaster of Antwerp, till, about thirty years ago, an eminent prelate of our own church, advanced pretty much the same doctrine, concerning the explication of points of faith, by new and unscriptural phrases; for which his Lordship underwent the discipline of several orthodox pens ;t but without any loss of reputation among those who considered things with less prejudice. For, when it was seen that his lordship had reduced his antagonists to the disagreeable necessity of holding, that "new and unscriptural words would better fix the sense of scripture doctrine, than the words of Christ and his Apostles," the clamour subsided. Reasonable men began to see the inconvenience of adopting a principle, which would go near to justify the worst im

* La Roche, Abridgment, vol. i. p. 218.

+ See Dr Stebbing's Rational Enquiry, p. 25.

positions of Popery; and the practice of requiring subscription to human explications of Christian doctrine, is now considered and treated, by many different sorts of sensible writers, as an unwarrantable encroachment on christian liberty; from which, there is reason to believe, all who are capable and willing to examine the subject without partiality and without hypocrisy, heartily desire a happy deliver

ance.

Upon this state of the case, it appears, that the matter of complaint does not affect the Fathers of our Reformation by far so much as their Sons and Successors. Our first Reformers were beset with their own and other men's prejudices, to a degree that rendered them, in a great measure, incapable of conviction. It was next to impossible to convince them, that their established confessions of faith were unchristian impositions, for which there was no just authority, when they had the early practice of the Christian church to appeal to, long before the tyrannical spirit of Rome prevailed. Their veneration for antiquity prevented their seeing that these very precedents were some of the steps by which the papal power ascended to its height, and arrived at the plenitude of its usurpation.

But, since it has been made to appear, that some of the Fathers, who lived nearest to the times of the Apostles, were greatly mistaken in the sense they put upon some Scriptures, with respect to points of