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build upon this lapsing church as a model? Are we not only to consult tradition, but to receive it as an authority merely because it is a tradition, and independently of its own worth and of the numberless errors, perhaps, by which we find it surrounded in the page whence we have extracted it? Surely not.

It may indeed seem strange that the Church of Rome, or any other church, should appeal to tradition as a trustworthy light, when we consider the well known fact that this authority, even in the age immediately succeeding the apostles, had been so little attended to, and was already so much obliterated, that it could not even decide when Easter ought to be kept. Though this be just one of those matters of ceremonial in regulating which the authority of tradition is principally claimed: yet on this point, and so early as the time of Polycarp, who was himself instructed by the apostles, conflicting traditions divided the Eastern and Western Churches, and began a controversy on the subject, which lasted for nearly two hundred years. Nay, if oral tradition had not. begun to be contradictory and bewildering even in the days of the evangelists, what does St Luke mean in the preface to his gospel, where he assigns as his reason for writing it, --just that Theophilus might know the certainty of those things wherein he had been instructed! Is there not plainly implied in these words a difference as to certainty, and consequently as to trust-worthiness, between what is written down, and what floats from lip to lip, and that both as a general principle, and as to the state of the case in those days?

Is it not very strange, then, that tradition should be appealed to as a guide in our days, to depart from which is declared to be guilt as great as to depart from Holy Scripture! But let us not wonder. Tradition is necessary to the Church of Rome. However worthless it may

be, she cannot part with it. Wherever the sacerdotal order is to rule supreme, either it must make good that it has power to work miracles, or else traditions of divine. authority must be claimed. Without either the one or the other, the pretension to a divine supremacy cannot be maintained. A theocracy cannot be simulated. Now, miracles cannot be had at pleasure. Every despotic priesthood, therefore, the Druidical, the Brahminical, as well as the Romish, have constantly had recourse to a divine tradition as the warrant for all their impositions.

Nay, under the Mosaic economy, the Scribes and Pharisees, as soon as the aggrandizement of their own order became a higher object with them than the ministry of true religion, had in like manner recourse to tradition. The law said, "Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it."* But in the face of this most positive commandment, the Pharisees, as we learn from our Redeemer's own lips, "made the Word of God of none effect by their traditions." If, then, even in such circumstances, the Pharisees got up traditions, let us not wonder if the similarly self-aggrandizing priesthood of the medieval church did the same. And if that priesthood did it in the middle ages, let us not wonder if the same priesthood does it still. For, not to speak of the difficulty of giving up a principle of long standing, especially in a church which claims to be infallible, the weakness of human nature teaches, that if you but grant a sufficiently urgent motive for any tenet, the necessity, for instance, of tradition in order to uphold a system to which one is bred or wedded, and for which scripture, when alone, is felt to be an insufficient warrant,-then, however untenable the pretext of tradition may obviously be when viewed by itself, you need not wonder if the advocate of that system is + Matt. xv. 6.

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*Deut. iv. 2. xii. 32.

forthwith the advocate of tradition too. The love of system is always strong. Men, otherwise of strong minds, have often brought themselves to believe the silliest things rather than give up their systems. But system, when it is the basis of our profession, and when along with it status in society and temporal interests must sink or swim, will reconcile a man to hold and even maintain any thing. However deeply it is to be deplored, therefore, still it is not a matter of wonder that even enlightened men, if only they be Romish priests, should maintain the equal authority of tradition and of the written word.

It must be admitted, however, that it is very difficult to conceive how a well educated layman, who is not under any of those necessities to which a Romish priest must reconcile himself in order to be a priest, and who is competent, in any moderate degree, to balance evidence, can regard, as equally trustworthy with the written word, the traditions brought forward by the clergy. For the written word lies before us in the very syllables penned by the inspired writers themselves; while the traditions, even supposing them to have been unquestionable at first, have to be gathered from the pages of writers, often many ages after,—writers, for whom the essential qualification of inspired guidance is not claimed, and who, to tell the truth, have often little else but the venerable name of "fathers" to recommend them. No doubt it is maintained that to prevent the degradation of that which was apostolic and divine, the church which holds these traditions has also enjoyed all along an infallible guidance. But for a well educated man, it must surely be just as difficult to believe in the infallibility of the Church of Rome in this sense, as to believe in the authenticity of its traditions. For if history be good for any thing, it is good for shewing that both Roman Pontiffs and General Councils have contradicted themselves and each other

often; and that, therefore, however necessary in theory, the doctrine of infallibility may be to a church which makes such extravagant pretensions as that of Rome, yet, in point of fact, that church has enjoyed no immunity from error. Plainly, therefore, it were contrary to every principle of good sense to place any traditions in the present day by the side of the written word as of equal authority.

And while it is contrary to good sense thus to honour oral tradition, it is no less contrary to scripture, for we have, in the Word of God, three declarations,--and, as if to give all possible emphasis and appliance to them, they are equally distributed,-one at the beginning,* one in the middle,† and one at the end of the sacred volume, all peremptorily forbidding any additions to the commandments and revelations which it contains.

The Apostle Paul does indeed, in two of his epistles, § write favourably concerning what are there called traditions. It is to be remarked, however, that the term tradition, both in scripture, and in the fathers of the church, and indeed in modern philosophy too, is used not in contradistinction to the written word, but to the discoveries of reason and observation. It is used as synonymous with testimony. The charge which the Apostle Paul gives the Thessalonians respecting traditions in the passages referred to, proves nothing in favour of the Romish tenet. It only proves, that all the instructions which the Thessalonians ought to hold were not contained in the first epistle which the apostle had addressed to them--a consideration this apart altogether from the question between the Reformed Churches and the Church of Rome. The other passage in like manner, in the second epistle to Timothy, proves nothing in favour of an oral tradition * Deut. iv. 2. + Prov. xxx. 6, § 2 Thess. ii. 15; 2 Tim. ii. 2.

Rev. xxii. 18.

superadded to the written word, and containing things not found in that word; for there is no evidence that the things which St Paul had preached to Timothy before many witnesses, and which he charges him to commit to others, were different from what we find in some part or other of that manifold revelation of God which consti

tutes the inspired volume. And after all, even granting the existence of valuable traditions in those days, how can one believe in their uncorrupted transmission down to the present day through so many ages, during which all things else have been changed? Oral tradition must be given up.

AN INFALLIBLE CHURCH.

Scripture must be taken as the only trustworthy revelation, and when it is admitted to be trustworthy it must also be admitted to be supreme. If, indeed, there were an infallible church, its authority would not only be on a level with that of Scripture, but necessarily superior, for to it would belong the interpretation of Scripture; and, consequently, whenever there was judged to be a doubt or a difficulty, we should be called upon to believe not what Scripture might appear to say (possibly plainly enough to us), but what the church said. In all cases, in short, where the church gave any deliverance at all, we should be called upon to receive its interpretations, its views. The word of God, being of an old date, could not possibly share the supremacy with any subsequent or viva voce power which claimed infallibility. The Scripture, in such a case, were worth consulting only on points (if there were any such) on which the church gave no deliverance. And, even in that case it would be incumbent on a thoughtful man, in order

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