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Copes and the Cardinals. (With solemnity.) Henry! am a poor orphan; I stand alone in the world, and ave nothing but the sky above me, and the earth be eath me. You are my only friend upon earth, but I ill not conceal from you what has passed in my aind, from fear of offending you. (Earnestly.) Really, Joam become a better man, though I may be still a inner, and you have a more faithful friend in me. Listen to what happened to me, when I was leaving Rome with you. I can no longer conceal it. I was confessing once more to Father M, in Rome, who belongs to the Jesuits, and was begging his blessing upon my journey. "Go, my son," said he, "in the name of God, but forget not what you owe to the Holy Mother, the Church. You go with a stray sheep, who has but just been led to the true faith. Much of the heretical poison of his youth still cleaves to him, and it is to be feared that he will be again drawn over by his family and his friends to the accursed Lutheran heresy. The Mother of God commits to thee, as to a good Catholic, the duty of watching over his faith. Observe him narrowly, watch the conversations between him and his family and friends; if they become too confidential, endeavour dexterously to sow seeds of disunion and distrust between them. You may have even recourse to falsehood; for it is no sin, when it tends to the honour of God; and the Church absolves you from it. Above all, my son, omit not to write every particular respecting the young man to the Reverend Father N, who will then furnish you with further instructions. But you must keep this correspondence secret; and, on the whole, not let the young man perceive that you watch him. Be zealous and prudent, my son, and you will be well rewarded. The reverend Father will faithfully provide for you." de J too bed 1 se At the time, dear Henry, when I received this commission, I was much rejoiced at it; I believed I should

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I performed it faithfully. But since I, in Frankfort, received the New Testament, and have read it, I have changed my opinion. You may rest assured, I will neither watch you, nor set you at variance with your parents, nor write to Father N

Henry retired, for he did not wish Antonio to witness the emotion which he was unable to control. He felt ashamed and mortified to find that his protegée had been commissioned to watch his conduct. Father N- was a bosom friend of Rossi, who had converted Henry, and he saw clearly that both priests had acted in concert. He had so uprightly and conscientiously embraced Roman Catholicism, that it gave him the deepest pain to find his sincerity still suspected. These apprehensions appeared to him incompatible with a good cause, which trusts to its intrinsic merits. And the commission, to correspond privately, and set him at variance with his parents!With what traps was he surrounded, if Antonio had not proved honest! He felt, with pain, that not his happiness, but the honour of the Church, had been consulted; and the observation of a friend appeared to him now verified, that the Roman Catholics make proselytes, not for the sake of their salvation, but to fill the Church.

CHAPTER XI.

WHEN Henry's father had returned, the evening conversations were resumed, and the foundation of our knowledge of the Christian Religion was canvassed. Henry maintained that, besides the Holy Scriptures, there were other sources of Christian knowledge, namely, the Traditions, or verbal instructions given by the Apostles, and propagated by the Christian Bishops, which relate to matters of faith, of practice, holy rites, and Church constitution. This, he said, was an important article in the faith of Catholics; wherefore, the Council of Trent (in the first decree of the fourth session) had established:-"The Holy Council receives all the books of the Old and New Testament, and the Traditions, both those which refer to faith, and those which regard morality, with equally pious veneration, (pari pietatis affectu et reverentia.) But whosoever knowingly and deliberately rejects them, let him be cursed.'

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Henry's father declared, that he knew but little of the so called Traditions, and begged Bernhard to speak on this subject with Henry, to which he willingly consented.

Henry. You will allow, my dear Bernhard, that the Apostles, when they taught in the congregation, must have said much more than we find in their Epistles,

Bernhard. More?-certainly; but whether they said any thing else than their Epistles contain, is another question, which you cannot answer in the affirmative by any proofs.

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Henry. I am, in the mean time, satisfied with the more, which you admit. You will further allow, that all the Epistles of the Apostles were mere occasional instructions, in which they do not treat of the whole system of faith and morals, but merely partially, as the situation of the different congregations required.

Bernhard. To this I cannot perfectly agree. It, at least, does not refer to the Gospels, the Epistles to the Romans and the Hebrews, the Epistle of St. James, and the first Epistle of St. John, which have the general object in view, of instructing their readers concerning Jesus and the spirit of his doctrine.

Henry. But you will also admit, that St. Paul even refers to the verbal instructions which he has given to the congregations, 2 Thess. ii. 15; 1 Cor. ii. 2. 23. 34; 1 Tim. vi. 20.

Bernhard. I allow this. I assure you, that we Protestants would eagerly seek and reverence the contents of these verbal instructions, if we possessed them, because they would give us many elucidations on the sense of the Apostolical writings. We only lament that these instructions are lost, and that there exist no authentic accounts of them.

Henry. What! you do not know that these precisely are the Traditions of the Catholic Church ; that they have been propagated by the Bishops, and have gradually been laid down in the writings of the Fathers, and in the decrees of the Church councils.

Bernhard. So your Church maintains, but it is not so. I have read the Fathers, and know on what the Traditions are founded*.

Henry. You will admit of the general argument in favour of the Traditions, namely, what has at all times and in all places, from the beginning of Christianity, been believed by the Christians, that must necessarily be considered as taught by the Apostles

* Testimonies of the Fathers, see Appendix XI.

themselves. For it would be impossible that an erroneous doctrine could be generally received.

Bernhard. I can agree to this argument, and you will still not gain any thing. What has been taught from the beginning among all Christians, is contained in the Apostles' Creed, which our Church also acknowledges, and which forms the text of the three articles in the second part of our Lutheran Catechism. It is this which the fathers, till the third century, call the Tradition of Faith. This is the generally received faith of all Churches to which they refer, and which they oppose to the new doctrine of heretics; and nothing else. They know nothing of your mass, of the worship of saints, the Pope and his power, purga tory, confession, and absolution, the withholding of the cup at the Lord's Supper, transubstantiation, the seven sacraments, indulgences, pilgrimages, rosaries, and consecrated water; and I boldly challenge you to the proof, whether any father of the Church, during the four first centuries, has referred to the Traditions in any one of these points. You will, on the contrary, find, that what they call tradition, is the doctrine contained in the Apostles' Creed, or any similar short summary of the generally-received doctrine.

Henry. I can scarcely believe this.

Bernhard. Well, you shall hear. The great father Tertullian, who lived towards the end of the second and the beginning of the third century, contends, in his work entitled De Præscriptione, against the false teachers of his time, who pretended that their doctrine -they were the so called Gnostics, who boasted of higher wisdom-had been taught as a secret doctrine by the Apostles. Tertullian opposes to them, that those Churches which were infallibly founded by the Apostles, knew nothing of these things, but taught differently, and that the general doctrine of the Apostolical Churches ought to be regarded as the Rule of Faith, (regula fidei). He, therefore, calls the traditions the Rule of Faith, but he also specifies what they.

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