From all that has been hitherto set forth in this letter, I think it clearly follows that revelation was

immediately changes his colours, throws aside all tradition and banishes the fathers far from him; he will have no more to do with them, because he cannot surrender himself up to the primitive Church without renouncing his dear and glorious reformation.

It had entered his head, and nothing in the world could make him put it out again; it had then forcibly entered his head, that the mass, its altars, its sacrifice, praying for the dead, and of course purgatory, the sign of the cross, the holy oils, the invocation of saints, and the honour paid to relics were superstitious and idolatrous dogmas and usages. He discovers them, however, from the time of the primitive ages; he frankly acknowledges it. Well then! these primitive and apostolic times shall no longer be considered by him but as idolatrous and superstitious ages; and according to him nothing less shall be required than all the lights and all the virtues of a Luther and a Calvin, to effect at length the disengagement of Christianity from its ancient rust, and from the stains of its origin. Does not this savour of madness and blasphemy? Who would not be alarmed at the excesses to which even the best instructed might be driven, when once left to themselves and their prejudices?

I beg you will give yourself the satisfaction for a moment of comparing Dr. Middleton with bishop Croft. This latter, far from admiring the great lights so much boasted of in modern times on subjects of theology, is of opinion that the doctrine being more immediate at its source, it must be purer and more certain: the former, on the contrary, persuades himself, that scarcely had religion been promulgated when it became generally corrupted, to such a degree as to be unable to recover its original beauty until sixteen centuries after its divine founder. The one, seized with respect and love for the great models of virtue and knowledge presented to him in such abundance by the primitive Church, falls at the feet of venerable and holy antiquity; the other, sorely offended at some miraculous facts, or at some opinions which he found up and down the writings of the fathers and which no one obliged him to adopt, is not ashamed to sully their reputation with the imputation of wilful imposition and want of talent; he protests nevertheless that he recognizes them as valid witnesses, and yet in point of fact persists in denying the authority of their testimony.

at first taught entirely by the preaching of the apostles and disciples; that in the course of their

The bishop piously declares that he shall always lend them a respectful ear, and yet never does so he remains deaf to their instructions, and in his vale of darkness he discovers not, in their writings, either the mass or sacrifice, or praying for the dead, or veneration for relics and images, or the invocation of saints, &c. The doctor, to make amends, although more deeply confined in the same dark vale, has seen, heard, and understood every thing, but takes good care not to believe any thing, or to bow to authority upon these articles.

Here certainly are two persons in whom learning abounds; and yet they agree none the better on that account. The truth is, that learning even misleads, if not engrafted upon fixed and invariable principles. Never will you find an example similar to this amongst us, whilst you will behold a thousand of the kind among your teachers. And ought not this at length to convince the prudent and moderate members of the reformed religion, that by leaving to each one the right of judging for himself, there will always be as great a diversity in opinions as in tastes, (a) and that the wholesome restraint of authority is alone able to subdue the indocility, and the proud and capricious impetuosity of the human mind. Date frænum indomito animali et impotenti naturæ.

you.

But if we are to believe all these fathers, said Middleton, we are at once necessarily drawn into popery. Give to the doctrine of the fathers whatever name you please: call it popery, if it suit Is it not better, is it not safer to be a papist with the Austins, Jeromes, Ambroses, Hilarys, Chrysostoms, Basils, Cyrils, Athanasiuses, Cyprians, Justins, Tertullians, Ignatiuses, and Clements, with those apostolic men, those unexceptionable witnesses, who have astounded the world by their virtues, and by an heroic end, and who still edify us by their writings, than to continue in protestantism in the train of Luther, Calvin, Zuinglius, Beza, Knox, and Buchanan, or, if you please, of bishops Barlow, Scory, Coverdale, Hodgskin, Kitchen, &c. who have rendered their names famous, some by their audacity in violating the vow of their first engagements, others by their servile flexibility to the will of the existing powers,

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(a) Doctor Middleton acknowledges this in express terms: "It is every man's right to judge for himself, and a difference of opinion is as natural to " us as a difference of taste." Page 38. 16.

ministry it was at different intervals and partially published in the inspired writings; and that thus it has been transmitted to the world in two manners, by word and by writing, that is to say, by tradition and by scripture, the twofold original and sacred deposit of the Christian doctrine: the one, first in point of time and long by itself, gathered together at first in the hearts and the memories of the faithful, then deposited by little and little and in detached pieces in the writings of the fathers and the acts of the councils; the other of later and gradual appearance, but fixed legibly upon paper by the apostles or their disciples, a durable and divine monument, which will speak for ever to the eyes, as well as to the minds and hearts of all the faithful: the former, requiring a longer and more laborious research and being more difficult of discovery, because it is scattered and spread through a greater number of monuments, and is often found mixed up with many subjects, which, though not absolutely foreign to revelation, are nevertheless not it: the latter, full of an inspired and heavenly doctrine, but which is some times inaccessible in its sublimities, and like every written law, never being able, without an interpreter and judge, to make itself understood and followed with uniformity. The Scripture more copious with

some by seditions, wars, and rivers of blood, all by a revolt against their mother Church, and not one of whom, to my knowledge, bas yet been remarked for an humble and tender piety, for the mortification of their senses, the abnegation of themselves, or the austerity of their manners or for an angelical and spiritual life. In truth, is it lawful, or is it reasonable to balance between the two? And have I not myself to blush here to see myself constrained to taruish the memory of these illustrious saints by so unworthy a comparison?

out comparison, more rich, more precious, more excellent, and nevertheless leaving some articles to be desired; tradition destined above all to transmit to us these same articles, by supplying what is wanting in the sacred books. Whence it follows again, that if it were permitted or expedient to make choice between these two deposits, and to accept of one without the other, the preference would undoubtedly be due to that of the scriptures: but that according to sound reason and the doctrine of wise antiquity, according to the command of St. Paul, they are absolutely inseparable; that, one presenting us with articles not to be found in the other, we must bring together and consult them both, to form a whole and know the complete system of revelation; that, as for the rest, coming to us, as on two parallel lines, they can never impede or oppose one another in their progress, but that on the contrary they render each other a mutual assistance, and reciprocally throw light upon each other; in fine that we owe equally to what they either of them contain, both our respect and our submission, because the same spirit which directed the pen of the apostles, directed also their tongue, and the words that came from their mouth are not less divine than those that they afterwards traced out with their hand.

LETTER V.

On the Doctrines Taught by the Church.

ON reading the preceding chapter, I anticipate there may probably have arisen a difficulty in your mind. How can we be certain, will you have said, that such or such a doctrine is truly of apostolic tradition, that such an article, sufficient traces of which I do not find in Scripture, has been actually taught by the apostles and faithfully transmitted from them to us? This point, I flatter myself, shalt soon be cleared up for you, if you will have the patience to examine what I have to lay before you, and if I succeed in expressing to you with perspicuity those ideas which I shall now attempt to develope.

If each of us were obliged to distinguish, among many articles, those which come from tradition and those which do not, we should find ourselves, in a general way, condemned to a labour above our strength. In fact, that part of the preaching of the apostles which they did not commit to writing, was at first confided solely to the memory of the faithful, fixed in particular Churches by the oral and successive instructions of the first bishops and afterwards collected partially and as occasion fell out, in the writings of the fathers, and in the acts of the synods and councils. Whence it follows, that to prove that such an article is truly of apostolic tra