same tendency, and reference to them would render the matter now under consideration more complicated and obscure.

The former class of disputants, that is the Romanists, and first division of Protestants, is that to which the following observations will chiefly apply; and to the others only incidentally. The error of both these parties is, to suppose that the question between them is merely one of antiquity, which the best theological antiquarian could most readily solve, and that it is to be settled by an appeal to old writers, ante or post Nicene. Both parties equally leave out of their consideration "What is Truth?" and both join issue on the question "What have the fathers said?”

This conduct is much like that of two travellers, who having started from London to go to Penzance, should find themselves, the one at Edinburgh, and the other at Dublin, and who should attempt to prove to their own satisfaction, and expect others to agree with them, that they must be at Penzance, to which they wished to go, because other travellers having the same intention, but who died at the end of the first stage, had set out with

them. It is very idle to discuss what Jerome and Cyprian thought or did: the question for all men to consider now is, what they are thinking and what they are doing A. D. 1844, and is that right, or is it wrong ?

When Newton published his Principia Mathematica Philosophic Naturalis, it was his intention to help scientific men to deliver themselves from the errors into which they had been led by those who had preceded them, and whose names stood as high amongst them as his has done with his posterity. He did not refer to the writings of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Ptolemy, to ascertain what support his opinions could derive from their authority; but putting aside the sentiments of all the learned who had gone before him, he sought the truth of nature's operations in her eternal abstract principles, and laid bare the elements which might serve as tests to try the correctness of his own opinions, as well as those of all his predecessors. In like manner, Berzelius and Dalton did not ransack manuscripts in order to find in the writings of Arabic alchemists, the fathers of the science of chemistry, support for their views on the definite com

binations of atoms in the formation of all substances whatever; but they opened up principles by which every chemist might determine for himself on the component parts of any substance before him. In referring, however, to these philosophers for illustrations of the correct mode of proceeding in complicated and difficult discussions, it must be remembered that the former was violently opposed, and his opinions made but little way during the whole of his life, and that the latter were little heeded during several years of their labours.

It is vain to seek to support the dogmas of to-day by the writings of the ancients, and the only way in which it is possible to clear up difficulties, is by recurrence to first principles, admitted by all in theory to be true, however extensive may be the error of their application, either in ancient or modern times.

Schools and universities no longer give to youth a common and uniform way of considering history sacred and profane. Every one reads and forms theories for himself, and there prevails throughout Christendom at the present time amongst the educated classes a

general opinion that the laity have been designedly deluded by priests in all past ages; that priests and kings might have been useful in the infancy of society when none could read but themselves; but that now it is high time for men to assert their independence, to declare themselves of age, and fit to guide their own affairs, and that they no longer require tutors and governors over them. The opinion of their having been under a system of delusions is just, but they have not hit upon the right cause; and even if they have made this discovery, in their desire to be freed from kings and priests, they are running into delusions of their own creating quite as great as any which in former times have been invented for them; and the delusion of processions and pilgrimages is not greater than that of curing moral evils by teaching all mankind to read and write, and by filling every one's hands with Bibles, tracts, or newspapers. It is useless to plead the authority of antiquity, if opinions and practices stand on no better ground than the sanction of the fathers of the church: there is a determination to tolerate nothing which cannot be upheld either by reason or by force: it matters

not whether it be the rule of the church by bishops, or the payment of tithes, or the turning towards the altar at the repeating of the creed, or the preaching in a black or white gown; if all or any such things have no foundation but in "the writings of the fathers of the first three centuries," they must be rooted up, for Christ has declared that every plant which His heavenly Father has not planted shall be rooted up (Matt. xv. 13.); and the expression implies a notice that many plants shall be found in His vineyard which He did not plant there. The more firmly rooted is the plant, and the longer it has been planted, the more in its eradication will it shake or tear the soil around, and leave a gap in the vineyard; the more the error is fenced around by parks of artillery, and supported by kings and armies, the more dire will be the carnage when it is stormed: but none of these things can save it; up it must come, amidst the screams, the terrors, the wrath of many who reposed in blind security under the shelter which it was fondly supposed would be permanent.

Some have contended with great earnestness, that it is in vain to appeal to the Holy