to the faith once delivered to the Saints, the Church has ever guarded it, as the apple of her eye. All Ecclesiastical History witnesses the extreme care and pains which, in ancient times, were taken by the Pastors, to instruct the faithful in the tenets and practices of their Religion, previously to their being baptized. (1) The same are generally taken by their successors, previously to the Confirmation and first Communion of their neophytes, at the present day. -Thirdly, when any fresh controversy arises in the Church, the fundamental maxims of the Bishops and Popes, to whom it belongs to decide upon it, is, not to consult their own private opinion or interpretation of Scripture, but to inquire what is and has ever been the doctrine of the Church, concerning it. Hence, their cry is and ever has been, on such occasions, as well in her councils as out of them: So we have received: so the Universal Church believes: let there be no new doctrine: none but what has been delivered down to us by Tradition. (2)—Fourthly, the Tradition of which we now treat, is not a local but an universal Tradition, as widely spread as the Catholic Church itself is, and every where found the same. Here then the maxim of the sententious Tertullian must be admitted: 'Error of course varies, but that doctrine which is one and the same among many, is not an error but a Tradition.' (3) However liable

(1) See Fleury's Mœurs de Chrét. Hartley in B. Watson's Col. vol. v. page 91.

(2) Nil innovetur: nil nisi quod traditum est.' Steph. Papa I.

(3) Variasse deberet error, sed quod unum apud multos invenitur, non est erratum, sed traditum.' Præscrip advers, Hæret.

PART I.

men, and particularly illiterate men, are to believe in fables; yet if, on the discovery of America, the inhabitants of it, from Hudson's Bay to Cape Horn, had been found to agree in the same account of their origin and general history, we should certainly give credit to them.-But, fifthly, in the present case, they are not the Catholics alone of different ages and nations, who vouch for the Traditions in question, I mean those rejected by Protestants, but all the subsisting heretics and schismatics of former ages without exception. The Nestorians and Eutychians, for example, deserted the Catholic Church, in defence of opposite errors, near 1,400 years ago, and still form regular Churches under Bishops and Patriarchs throughout the East: in like manner the Greek schismatics, properly so called, broke off from the Latin Church, for the last time, in the eleventh century. Theirs is well known to be the prevailing Religion of Christians throughout the Turkish and Russian Empires. Nevertheless, these and all the other Christian sectaries of ancient date, in every article in dispute between Catholics and Protestants (except that concerning the Pope's Supremacy) agree with the former, and condemn the latter. (1) Let Dr. Porteus and the other controvertists, who declaim against the alleged ignorance and vices of the Catholic clergy and laity during the five or six ages preceding the Reformation, and pretend to show how the tenets which they object to might have been introduced into our Church, explain how precisely the

(1) See the proofs of this in the Perpetuité de la Foi, copied from the original documents in the French King's Library.

same could have been quietly received by the Nestorians at Bagdad, the Eutychians at Alexandria, and the Russian Greeks at Moscow! All these, and particularly the last named, were ever ready to find fault with us upon subjects of comparatively small consequence, such as the use of unleavened bread in the Sacrament, the days and manner of our fasting, and even the mode of shaving our beards; and yet, so far from objecting to the pretended novelties of prayers for the Dead, addresses to the Saints, the Mass, the Real Presence, &c. they have always professed, and continue to profess, these doctrines and practices as zealously as we do.

Finally, by way of further answer to his Lordship's shameful calumny, that the ancient clergy and laity were so universally and monstrously ignorant and vicious, that nothing was too bad for them to do or too absurd for them to believe,' thereby insinuating that the former invented, and the latter were duped into, the belief of the articles on which the Catholic Church and the Church of England are divided; as also by way of further confirming the certainty of Tradition, I maintain that it would have been much easier for, the ancient clergy to corrupt the Scriptures, than the religious belief of the people. For, it is well known that the Scriptures were chiefly in the hands of the clergy, and that, before the use of printing, in the fifteenth century, the copies of it were renewed and multiplied in the Monasteries by the labour of the Monks, who, if they had been so wicked, might with some prospect of success, have attempted to alter the New Testament, in particular, as they pleased: whereas, the doctrines and practices of the Church were in the hands of the people of all

civilized nations, and, therefore, could not be altered without their knowledge and consent. Hence, whereever religious novelties had been introduced, a violent opposition to them, and of course, tumults and schisms would have ensued. If they had been generally received in one country, as for example, in France, this would have been an occasion of their being rejected with redoubled antipathy in a neighbouring hostile nation, as, for instance, England. Yet none of these disturbances or schisms do we read of, respecting any of the doctrines or practices of our religion objected to by Protestants, either in the same kingdom, or among the different states of Christianity. I said that the doctrines and practices of Religion were in the hands of all the people.' In fact, they were all, in every part of the Church, obliged to receive the Holy Sacrament at Easter; now they could not do this without knowing whether they had been previously taught to consider this as bread and wine taken in memory of Christ, or as the Real Body and Blood of Christ himself. If they had originally held the former opinion, could they have been persuaded or dragooned into the latter, without violent opposition on their part, and violent persecution on that of their clergy? Again, they could not assist at the religious services performed at the funerals of their relations, or on the festivals of the Saints, without recollecting, whether they had previously been instructed to pray for the former, and to invoke the prayers of the latter. If they had not been so instructed, would they, one and all, at the same time, and in every country, have quietly yielded to the first impostors who preached up such supposed superstitions to them; as, in this case, we are sure

they must have done? In a word, there is but one way of accounting for the alleged alterations in the doctrines of the Church, that mentioned by the learned Dr. Bailey; (1) which is, to suppose that, on some one night, all the Christians of the world went to sleep sound Protestants, and awoke the next morning rank Papists!

IV. I now come to consider the benefits derived from the Catholic Rule or Method of Religion. The first part of this Rule conducts us to the second part; that is to say, Tradition conducts us to Scripture. We have seen that Protestants, by their own confession, are obliged to build the latter upon the former; in doing which they act most inconsistently: whereas Catholics, in doing the same thing, act with perfect consistency. Again, Protestants in building Scripture, as they do, upon Tradition, as a mere human testimony, not as a Rule of Faith, can only form an act of human faith, that is to say, an opinion of its being inspired; (2) whereas Catholics, believing in the Tradition of the Church, as a Divine Rule, are enabled to believe, and do believe in the Scriptures with a firm faith, as the certain word of God. Hence the Catholic Church requires her Pastors, who are to preach and expound the word of God, to study this second part of her Rule, no less than the first

(1) He was son of the Bishop of Bangor, and becoming a convert to the Catholic Church, wrote several works in her defence; and among the rest, one under the title of these letters, and another that of A Challenge.

(2) Chillingworth, in his Religion of Protestants, chap. ii., expressly teaches, that The books of Scripture are not the objects of our faith,' and that a man may be saved, whe should not believe them to be the word of God.'