human and fallible opinion, whereas the majestic glory of Holy Scripture is like the steady light of the day, being the glory and effulgence of Him who is the Sun of the Eternal Truth. These, then, are the words of the Canon: 'In the Catholic Church we must take all care that we hold what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all (quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus). For this is truly and properly Catholic.'

Now, in Reformation-times this Canon was very fairly employed in the holy cause of truth, but only in a negative way, as, in fact, a weapon wrested out of the hands of the enemy, and to be used, not for the positive establishing of any doctrine, but only as a refutation of all novel dogma, -such as transubstantiation, for this has been generally confessed as medieval, and as much later, therefore, than primitive, for many dogmas can be defended only upon the theory of development, in the (pretended) 'catholic' Roman Church. This was a lawful use of the Canon, and one not easily to be turned aside or resisted. Now, unhappily, this venerable defence of truth has become an engine of attack upon the very truth which it once defended from the novelties of heresy, and it is used to promote the reintroduction of superstitions that had their germs in the earlier ages of the Church; not, therefore, any longer to expose the novelties of medievalism, but to re-establish the errors and corruptions which, we must sadly confess, existed, at least seminally, in the later primitive ages of Christianity. But on the Protestant citadel, which we know to be invincible, the standard of the faith is displayed with this golden legend:

'The Word of God, and the Divine Word only, is the true Judge of controversies.'

It is in defiance of this absolute supremacy of the Holy Word that leave is now claimed, under the shield of the

Vincentian Canon, to recommend certain errors, which arise like doubtful shapes from the twilight-border of the late primitive times, where the growing dimness was already shadowing off into the actual night of medieval superstition. Alas! it cannot be denied that in the Church of the third and fourth centuries there was a most unhappy and general declension from the simplicity and truth of the Apostolic and post-Apostolic purity, both in doctrine and ecclesiastical practice. This claim, therefore, neither conscience nor reason can allow, and the Vincentian Canon, although it did good yeoman-service in the attack upon Roman novelty, must be disallowed any other than its then-negative authority, lest it become a positive mischief and evil.

It is also attempted to impose upon the universal conscience of the Church, in the impatience so unhappily prevalent of the sole supremacy of Holy Scripture and the craze for ecclesiasticism, not the creeds only of the first four general councils, but even the beliefs, not expressly taught in those admirable creeds, but supposed to have been prevalent during the times which uttered those great symbols and witnessed those councils. Now, the determination of that epoch which saw those four general councils, beginning with Nicea and closing with that of Chalcedon (A.D. 451), not only carries us far into the late-primitive times, but is too purely an artificial one to be made with any serious demand that those times, and none other, should be constituted a supreme court in the judging and determining of religious uses and opinions. There are not even wanting signs of the general ecclesiastical corruption in the canons of the Council of Chalcedon.* For instance, the monastic life had already been introduced into the Church, with all

*

Canons of Chalcedon. Cf. Canons 4, 7, 8, 15, 16, 23, 24. The same spirit is seen in the 13th canon of Nicæa. 'Canons of the First Four General Councils,' Oxford, 1880.

its grievous train of intolerable abuses and evils, whether in the direction of moral or spiritual degeneracy. Yet it is to this council that Canon Luckock especially appeals,* calling in witness the third act of the council. The date of the Council of Chalcedon is 451 A.D., that is 126 years after that of Nice. Nor is the history of those times and of their councils very edifying or very reassuring in any endeavour to establish for them such a claim of paramount spiritual authority. We most thankfully receive their great creeds, and their decisions upon the consubstantial glory of the Eternal Word and upon the eternal procession of the most Blessed Spirit, and we most devoutly acknowledge the dialectic skill and the theological clearness of their definitions. But we cannot consent to bow our necks to the yoke of their purely ecclesiastical dicta, still less to the tendencies of thought and custom in those centuries; for Christendom, which had been newly patronised by the imperial power, and fascinated by its worldly splendour, had become already too forgetful of its purely spiritual and unworldly origin, and the disastrous custom of baptising en masse multitudes of scarcely-instructed and only nominal converts from heathenism was already sowing the seeds of the later apostasy. For that apostasy is, after all, only a relapse into paganism, falsely christened with the name of the religion of

Christ.

Moreover, if the Vincentian Canon in its last clause is honestly pressed upon our acquiescent submission, what shall we say to the complaint of St. Athanasius, that in his times, at one crisis, 'all the world groaned to find itself

*After Death,' p. 98. The very circumstances detailed in this Act, which concerns a breach of trust by a certain Dioscurus, whom a rich widow had left as a trustee to her will, having in that will left money to charities in the hope that many would thus pray for her soul, shows sufficiently the growth of superstition.

Arian'? When we sadly learn, from the study of the history of the Church, how the new Christian world seethed with schisms and heresies, we fancy it would astonish many to know what heterodox opinions-not to speak of vain and superstitious customs-would become of permanent authority if these tests were pressed into an absolute trial of doctrine and ecclesiastical practice, and that 'custom without truth is only the antiquity of error' is the true and admirable saying of St. Cyprian himself.* We have Apostolic testimony that, even in the days when the earliest of the Pauline Epistles were written, the leaven of the great apostasy was already secretly corrupting the faith. So early were the tendencies of Christian thought infected by the contagion of those pagan superstitions that have been the destruction of the purity of the faith. Let us hear the unhappy admission made by the very Tertullian, who, except Origen, is the only pre-Nicene witness, if we exclude all doubtful evidence-for Arnobius is only just pre-Nicenefor the usage of prayer for the dead. In his impassioned treatise, 'De Coronâ,' he speaks thus :

'Let us inquire, therefore, whether tradition, unless it be written, should not be admitted. . . . To deal with this matter briefly, I shall begin with baptism. When we are going to enter the water but a little before, in the presence of the congregation and under the hand of the president, we solemnly profess that we disown the devil and his pomp and his angels. Hereupon we are thrice immersed, making a somewhat ampler pledge than the Lord has appointed in the Gospel. Then, when we are taken up (as new-born children), we taste first of all a mixture of milk and honey, and from that day we refrain from the daily bath for a whole week. We take also, in meetings before daybreak, and from the hand of none but the presidents, the sacraEp. 73 (Oxford ed., 74).

*

ment of the Eucharist, which the Lord both commanded to be eaten at meal-times, and enjoined to be taken by all alike. As often as the anniversary comes round, we make offerings for the dead as birthday honours. We count fasting or kneeling in worship on the Lord's day to be unlawful. We rejoice in the same privilege also from Easter to Whitsunday. We feel pained should any wine or bread, even though our own, be cast upon the ground. At every forward step and movement, at every going in and out, when we put on our clothes and shoes, when we bathe, when we sit at table, when we light the lamps, on couch, on seat, in all the ordinary actions of daily life, we trace upon the forehead the sign (ie., the cross). If, for these and other such rules, you insist upon having positive Scripture-injunction, you will find none.'

Such is the candid admission of this early apologist for traditional observance to the growing disuse of the appeal to Holy Scripture alone. We shall know, then, how to value his acceptance of the use of praying for the dead, and the offering of oblations for them on the anniversary of their death,—another adoption of pagan custom. To these practices he alludes in his certainly post-Montanist treatises, 'On the Military Crown' and 'On Monogamy,'* after, therefore, he had left the communion of the Catholic Church. But to return to the councils and the Canon. The union of both these tests, which we may call, severally, the Conciliar and the Catholic test, is urged by Bishop Harold Browne, who makes the remarkable acknowledgment, and the author of the notorious Tract XC. (§ 5) was compelled to the same conclusion :—

'If, indeed, all the chief pastors of the Church could meet together and all agree, we might, perhaps, be justified in considering their decision as the voice of the universal

*De Cor. Milit.,' c. 3; 'De Monog.,' c. 10.