But, say the advocates of tradition, it is far from our wish to attach an infallible authority to all those oral transmissions of doctrine or of usage indiscriminately, which have descended to us from the primitive times. Our theory is far more cautious and discriminating than the one above supposed. The canon of Vincentius of Lerins, "quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus," constitutes our rule. Those traditions only which have been received in all ages of the Church, in all parts of Christendom, and by the great mass of Christians, we acknowledge as binding upon the conscience, and as really constituting a standard of faith. Be it so. Undoubtedly this is an important limitation. But then, unfortunately, this is a limitation so extensive, that, if acted upon, it would make the exception entirely exclude the rule. For, after all,. what are the doctrines connected in any way with tradition which can in strictness be said to have been thus adopted, "semper, ubique, et ab omnibus?" Can any one article of a Christian man's belief, not expressly enun

ciated in Scripture, be said to come under this category? We hear the institution of the celebration of our Lord's day, and the nonobservance of the Jewish sabbath quoted as a case in point. I deny that it is so. We have authority in Scripture for the celebration of the Lord's day, and we read enough in Scripture to justify our non-observance of the Jewish sabbath. But so far is tradition from being uniform on this question, that we know that for a considerable period after our Lord's ascension a large body of Christians continued to celebrate both days; and that it was only by slow degrees that the former entirely superseded the latter. Again, we are told that it is to tradition that we must look for our warrant for the adoption of the rite of infant baptism. This instance is, however, as defective as the former. Here, as Bishop Taylor observes, we have again the sanction of Scripture in the analogous case of infant circumcision, whilst that of tradition fails us, the practice of infant baptism having been, as is well known, by no means universal in the early

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Church. Even the great fundamental doctrine of the blessed Trinity, in its orthodox acceptation, clearly as it is conveyed by Scripture to those who will submit to accept it according to the obvious meaning of the language, can scarcely be asserted to have the sanction of tradition limited by the rule just now quoted, when we recollect how very large a portion of mankind at one time adhered to the Arian heresy. But the fact is, that plausible as the canon of Vincentius may appear, it is one which practically is never very rigorously enforced by the champions of tradition. It will generally be found to relax itself when required, so as to include almost every favourite speculation of the parties quoting it. Who, for instance, would ever have supposed that the Church of Rome, with its masses-its image worship-its purgatory and its indulgences-would gravely appeal to this very test by which to try the validity of its own traditions? And yet, so it is. Nothing can be more modest or cautious than the rule which it prescribes to itself. Take,

for example, the words of the Romanist Moreri, as given in his General Dictionary, under the head" Tradition." They are as follows:"Parmi les Chrétiens on distingue deux moïens de connoître la parole de Dieu, et la doctrine de Jésus Christ; qui sont l'Ecriture Sainte, et la tradition. Les Catholiques les croient tous deux de même autorité, et les hérétiques n'oseroient pas nier que la tradition ne soit d'une grande autorité; mais il faut comprendre sous le nom de tradition les écrits des pères, qui rendent témoignage de la doctrine, qu'ils ont reçue de leurs ancêtres, et enseignée à ceux qui leur ont succédé, comme la doctrine de l'Eglise Catholique. Et afin que les traditions soient la règle de la Foi, il faut qu'elles aient les conditions marquées par Vincent de Lerins dans son mémoire, qui sont l'antiquité, l'universalité, et l'uniformité, qu'il paroisse que c'est une doctrine enseignée dans toute l'Eglise, en tout tems, et par tous les docteurs Catholiques. Les traditions qui n'ont pas ces caractères sont sujettes à l'erreur et il ne faut pas se fier à des traditions

populaires, dénuées de preuves et de témoins." Such is the security afforded against the possible adulteration of the Christian doctrine by the adoption of this celebrated canon. Can we for a moment question the authenticity and soundness of the Romish traditions, after their having been tested by so safe a criterion?

But the final, and, as it is imagined, the most cogent argument is yet to come. It is, we are told, to nothing more or less than the tradition of the early Church, that we owe our belief in the authenticity of the canonical Scriptures themselves. In other words, that the New Testament itself is but primitive tradition in another form. Now this often quoted argument, I own, appears to me nothing more than a piece of captious sophistry. True it is, that the New Testament, like every other permanent gift of Providence, has descended through successive generations to our time; but then, it has descended as an acknowledged historical fact, believed in by the early Fathers of the Church, but