outbreak, do appear to have held their ground for some time, and to have been the means of conveying to later Greek philosophy many of the older traditions, which Pythagoras had learned in the East. The later Platonists endeavoured to establish a "golden chain" of ordained teachers, xpuoca σɛpá,1 for the evident purpose of rivalling the Apostolical Succession of the Christian Church. But only one or two links were formed. And no individuals could preserve uncorrupted any system whatever of doctrines; nor was there any system committed to them, so definite and precise as to be intended for such preservation.

In modern times, men have enlisted themselves voluntarily under the banners of particular teachers, and formed sects and schools, and sometimes secret societies for the propagation of doctrines. But here, also, there can be no obligation to keep the system uniformly unchanged; and rather there is every facility and temptation to corrupt it, as circumstances may seem to require. But the newest invention of the day is printing. Books by themselves, thrown out before the public eye, without any body of men to preserve them from being tampered with, or to point out their one true interpretation, are supposed to be a sufficient guarantee for the transmission of definite truth from age to age. And this in the face of the fact, that scarcely a book can be named, which has thus come down to us, about which the most violent disputes have not arisen as to its authenticity and the meaning of its contents. But, perhaps, what I said at the beginning, on the nature of written teaching, may throw some little light on this notion.

Now compare all these plans with the plan of

1 Eunapius, Vit. Philosoph.

F

the Catholic Church. It is, in the first place, essentially independent of any human power. It is founded by God; and God has promised to protect it, if it will not trust to any arm of flesh. It is prohibited from trespassing on the rights of kings and legislatures, that it may not be tempted to reduce them into subjection, and so, being left without a check, may abuse its power. Its rulers are individual bishops, assisted by councils of clergy in each diocese; because monarchies are far less subject to change than popular bodies. Its supreme authority lies in a council of these bishops, that no individual bishop may be at liberty to exceed his privileges, or tamper with the truth. Each diocesan church is especially enjoined to lay the one true doctrine publicly before men, that it may not be suppressed or perverted. And thus, though each separate branch is liable to error, yet all together as a Catholic body they would preserve the truth, just as nature has formed different lenses in the eye, in order to transmit the light; and as the aberrations of the planets are corrected by their mutual influences, so that while no one goes wholly right, the whole system does not go wrong; and as human art puts together a variety of metals of different degrees of expansion, in order to frame a machine which shall not expand at all. Each portion of the Church is under solemn obligations neither to add nor take away. Unlike a human invention, the truth which they hold from God cannot be amended or enlarged. It may be illustrated, applied, developed, enforced, but nothing more. The Church is to witness and keep what has been committed to it. And this is enough. And it must hold up the truth before the world at all risks; not trusting to any power but God to write it on the heart; and leaving every thing to Him: so that no temptation is held out to exaggerate, or suppress, or

modify the message which it delivers, with the view of alluring men. Popery (remember, I entreat you, the difference between Catholicism and Popery)--Popery first broke up this beautiful system, by merging all the separate channels for conveying the truth into one-by converting the federal union of independent bishops, acting together as a council, into one monarchy in the person of the pope-by claiming for that pope an extravagant authority over the civil arm; so that with the acquisition of temporal wealth and power, religion became corrupted-by assuming a right in successive generations to add to the body of truth received from the Apostles;-and lastly, by shutting up the Bible. For the Bible is another important feature in this contrivance for the unbroken transmission of truths, just as written laws guard judges against wrong decisions-as written instructions limit, confirm, and explain an oral message -as written history is a support to the ordinary testimony of mankind to traditional facts. It would seem that in the first of God's revelations to Adam there was a Church, or society of men, appointed to convey the truth from age to age; but without any written word. In the next, delivered to the Jews, there was both a society and a written word; but the society was not Catholic. It was confined to one nation and country; and when the Jews went astray, the light became lost; until, in the later period of their history, some approach was made to a Catholic Church by the dispersion of the Jews over the world, and the formation of numerous independent communities, each with their own synagogue and teachers, in a variety of places. Then came the Catholic Church, with its written word likewise. And thus, notwithstanding the usurpation of Popery, and the still worse

errors of modern Dissent, which would blot out the testimony of the Church from the plan, as Popery blotted out its Catholic character and the written Word, and would thus leave every man with his own judgment alone to guide him in interpreting, or rather misinterpreting, the Bible-notwithstanding this, the great truths of the Gospel have been handed down to our own time unimpaired from their original integrity, as delivered to the Church by the apostles. 1800 years have past, and yet still they are in our hands, and God's promise has been thus far fulfilled, that he would be with his Church unto the end of the world. And even now, in these evil days, when men are scoffing at truth, and harassing God's ministers, and despising his word; boasting each one his own conscience as the only rule of action, and his own understanding as the one judge of truth, until all action has become self-indulgence, and the very name of truth a farce,—it may be, that, if Englishmen do their duty, God has yet a blessing in store for us. And the light which, of his great goodness, he has yet kept alive in the Church of this land, burning constantly, though dimly and in darkness, instead of being extinguished, as men threaten, may be fed with oil from heaven, and once more break forth, and spread abroad-"a light to lighten the gentiles, and the glory of his people Israel."

CHAPTER VI.

WHY, then, you will ask, if we have all the ethical truth which we require to know contained in the system of the Church, and in the words of the Bible, why go to mere heathens-to Aristotle and Platoto study inferior systems, only because they are thrown into a more technical and scientific form of demonstration? And this question of the connexion between Christian and heathen ethics, or, as it is commonly termed, between faith and reason, is of the greatest importance.

I answer, then, first, that although almighty God has been pleased to place before us a whole system of moral truths in an irregular and unscientific form, scattered through the pages of the Bible, and delivered separately, and, as it were, by fits and starts, and only on the ground of authority, and as circumstances required, by the voice of the Church-so that the system, as it comes before us with precept and promise, history and prophecy, sacraments and preaching, poetry and narrative, ceremonies and liturgies, all confusedly mixed together, scarcely seems a system at all; and though there may be many reasons given why this should be the wisest plan, yet He by no means would exclude us from trying in some degree to arrange these dismembered fragments, to discover their mutual dependence, to trace general principles running throughout them, to classify them under heads, to put them into form and order. He has not prohibited this, when done reverently and modestly.