And as no continued miracle has ever been alleged, as having guarded the minds of the successive Christian generations from these easily besetting fallacies, I know not why we should shrink from at once asserting the real truth, and stating explicitly what are, and what are not, the true foundations on which alone we are to rest our eternal hopes.

In the early part of those remarks I took a hasty survey of the writings of the primitive Fathers, for the first 180 years of the Christian æra. I there attempted to show that those good and single-minded men acknowledged no standard of faith, excepting that comprehended in the written Scriptures, but at the same time I hinted, that practical deviations from the purity and soundness of the Christian doctrines had become, even in that simple age, slightly perceptible; and that those deviations, continually added to by the innovations of after-ages, were in fact the forerunners of popery, in its worst and darkest form. It shall now be my endeavour to show more in detail the gradual process of that accumula

tion of human inventions, which in the course of time effected so entire a change in the character of Christianity. In doing this, I shall fortunately have to point out, not any moral defects, but solely the errors and ignorances of good, but not always well judging men. At the same time, it will be my object to demonstrate that the primitive ages of Christianity, after the close of the apostolical period, did not possess those peculiar advantages for arriving at divine truth, which, at the present day, we are so apt to suppose.

It is a fallacious argument which would urge their nearness in time to the age of the Apostles, as a proof that no mistakes of importance could be fallen into by the early Christians. Traditional truth, among imperfectly educated persons, does not pass from mouth to mouth, with that accuracy and certainty, even during a very limited period of time, which we are inclined to imagine. On the contrary, at a period when knowledge circulates slowly, and the collisions of well informed minds with each other are comparatively rare,

(and such was the period now alluded to) it is surprising how many erroneous opinions, well intentioned, perhaps, but not therefore the less dangerous, may grow up within the space of a very few years. When the short season of actual contact is gone by, mere proximity or indefinite remoteness of time make, in fact, little or no difference in the degrees of evidence, which historical events are capable of receiving from the labours of literary men. A manuscript, for instance, of the gospels of the date of the fourth or fifth centuries, is as complete a record at this moment, as it was on the day in which it was written; and, if preserved two thousand years longer, will be as completely so to future generations, as it is to the present. A well informed historian at this moment has a far more accurate knowledge of the events connected with the Norman conquest, than was possessed by ninetenths of the villagers of this country, who lived at that period. And yet it is upon this very fallacious, though plausible assumption, that knowledge must necessarily grow clearer

and more certain in exact proportion as we approach to the fountain, that the argument in favour of tradition almost exclusively rests.

Why, one is naturally impelled to ask, should the primitive ages have possessed a privilege which our own times have not, of escaping one of the most besetting infirmities of human nature, and of transmitting unmixed truth orally from one generation to another, without any taint or superaddition of mere human speculation? If, with the preservative restraint of a written revelation, our own age has launched forth into extreme notions with scarcely any common centre in which to agree, why are we to measure the simple and unsuspecting Fathers of the primitive Church by a different rule, and argue that, because they meant well, therefore divine truth orally transmitted, must necessarily have passed from them pure and unaltered? Dr. Middleton has observed, that learned men have reckoned about ninety different heresies, which all sprang up within the first three centuries. That the Holy Scriptures should

have existed unaltered through the whole of that disturbed period, and "like a light shining in a dark place," should have served to check, in some degree, the eccentricities of human speculation, and to direct men's footsteps in the midst of so many conflicting opinions, we can well believe, and must feel thankful, that such no doubt was the case. But that person must have much more confidence in the general good sense and judgment of mankind than I am disposed to feel, who can suppose the oral communications of those successive ages to have descended to us equally pure; and yet, unless we admit them to have so descended, the whole argument which would set up their authority as equivalent to Scripture, falls of course at once to the ground.

Justin and Irenæus, we are told, flourished within the space of about 150 years from the close of our Lord's ministry, and, therefore, their authority on points of doctrine must be far superior to that of the best informed theologians of the present day. Without wishing