and direction; when it was so easy, as in the Romish church has been shown, to establish a centre of unity and authority in that apostolic college of which we find such clear traces in the Acts of the Apostles. We have before observed, that it is useless, and therefore idle and almost criminal, to indulge in speculations of this kind, when we have both God's own word, and the records of antiquity to boot, to instruct us as to what he was actually pleased to decide upon doing in this matter. Let us again glance at these two sources of truth, not so much for what we shall there find, as for the fullest evidence of the want of all support for the Romish hypothesis. Our opponents must certainly admit, that if one visible church, ruled over by one central authority, had been established by Christ, there must have been some distinct and visible traces of it, both in the writings of the apostles, and in the records of their Acts; and also in the history of the church during the first two centuries. And it is on the utter silence of both these sources of information that we rely, as establishing our conclusion, that this visible church, and this central authority, are nothing better than mere human inventions, constructed in some later period.

Had we, indeed, a college of apostles, or any other body of men who could raise the dead to life, or give sight to the blind,-sitting on earth at the present moment, we should not for an instant hesitate to admit their authority. But between a company of inspired men, selected and sent forth by Christ himself, and evidencing their divine commission by their miraculous power; and a college of cardinals, named by court intrigues, characterized by every shade of folly and of crime, and possessing neither infallibility in their decisions, nor power in their actions, there is a difference as wide as between heaven and earth.

But we must protest against being supposed to admit the church of Christ to be left in a desolate and helpless condition. We are not arguing against the authority of the apostles of Christ, but for it. All that they were inspired to teach men, they have left

us in the New Testament; and in the study of that unerring guide, we have also the promise of the Holy Spirit's teaching. What we protest against is the desertion of this, the only really apostolic authority, for human decisions and opinions, whether of fathers, or councils, or popes, or bishops. We cling to that apostolic code, touching the character of which there is no doubt, and refuse to admit the jarring and controverted claims of men, to be placed in any kind of competition with it.

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XV. THE IDOLATRY OF ROMANISM.

THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS.

THUS far have we gone, without being able to get beyond the first, grand, fundamental question, of the RULE OF FAITH. Our time, however, has not been wasted, nor has our progress been tardy; for that single point comprises more than one half the controversy. In fact, it involves the whole. The enmity so generally exhibited by the leaders of the Romish church towards the Holy Scriptures, sufficiently proves that, in their view, the admission of the word of God, as the rule of Christian faith and practice, must be fatal to their cause. And we are equally ready to admit, on the part of Protestants, that if the Bible be not our sole and sufficient rule-if we are under the necessity of having recourse to tradition, or the writings of the fathers, or the decisions of the church, in any matter essentially connected with the soul's salvation,-then there is little prospect of our being able to resist the establishment of the greater part of popery.

The Romanist, however, assures us that we must have recourse, at last, to the traditions of the church, for many doctrines and practices which are generally held among Protestants. How, he asks, can we possibly establish the doctrine of the Trinity, or the sacredness of the Sabbath, or the lawfulness of infant baptism, without having recourse to the writings of the fathers, and the decisions of the church?

We answer: The doctrine of the Trinity, in our view, can be abundantly established by the words of

Scripture; and, in fact, so high and vast is its dignity and its weight, that if it were not found in God's own word, we could never venture to press it upon any one's belief, on the mere ground that some ancient fathers held such a view. 2. The divine institution of the Sabbath is upheld throughout the whole Bible; and in the New Testament we have the clearest proofs that the day set apart, as the Sabbath, by the earliest Christians, under the sanction of the apostles, was the first day of the week, to which we now adhere. 3. Infant baptism is not essential to salvation; though it is clearly deducible, by way of inference, from the tenor of the Old and New Testaments, gathering from the first the practice relative to circumcision; and from the second, the substitution, in the Christian church, of baptism in its room. But neither in the case of infant baptism, nor in any other, do we wish to throw the history of the early church out of view. We admit the value and importance of such records as remain to us: we can even ascribe much, though not infallible, authority to them, when they harmonize with Scripture; but we cannot accept such records as of equal authority with the word of God; nor can we consent to be absolutely bound by the opinions and practices of men who were as fallible and erring as ourselves. However, let us now briefly review our former arguments, and endeavour to take up the question at the point at which we last left it.

It has been our chief object, in all our past discussions, to ascertain the true standard or rule of faith, by which all questions of doctrine and practice were to be tried. On the Protestant side, we asserted the Bible to be this rule; the Romanist arguing that the Bible formed, at most, only a part of the rule, and that the teaching of the church was a necessary adjunct; or rather, that the latter was the practical rule, or standard for daily use; while the Scriptures were rather to be looked upon as the fountain or source from whence the church drew her instructions.

After a large and rather discursive review of the whole argument, we came, at last, to this conclusion: that the Protestant rule, the written word of God, was abundantly established, as to its authority; and was both available and sufficient, in its intrinsic character. On the other hand, the main objection to the rule of the Romish church was not answered; to wit, that it was not available; that it could not be taken hold of and applied by a hesitating inquirer. For, on a close investigation, the matter was brought to this, either that such an inquirer must accept "the teaching of the church" at the hands of an individual priest, whom he knew to be fallible and liable to error, and in whom he therefore could not, with any satisfaction of mind, repose such implicit confidence; or else, if he hesitated to take such an individual's declaration as to what the church decided or held, he was left to wander in almost utter darkness, amidst a maze of church controversies, to find out, first, where the Catholic church was really to be seen and heard; and then, what she had said and done on all the controverted points. In this difficulty, then, we contended that the Protestant rule was, beyond all comparison, the preferable one; for here, in the Bible, we possess it, and we can consult it, with perfect ease, whenever we need its guidance; and with a feeling of perfect security that what we are reading is, truly and certainly, the unerring word of the most high God.

The Romanist, however, asks if we can really feel, without having first submitted ourselves to the judgment and instruction of the church, that we have any sufficient grounds for our certainty that that book is really what we suppose it to be, a collection of the writings of the inspired apostles and prophets, containing the whole of such inspired writings, and containing none other?

In answer to this, we demand in return, what is to be done with the full and satisfactory arguments of Bossuet, Bellarmine, Huet, La Mennais, and divers