III. Holy Scripture in its relation to the Catholic Creed

Lecture 1. Difficulties in the Scripture Proof of the Catholic Creed

 I PROPOSE in the following Lectures to suggest some thoughts by way of answering an objection, which often presses on the mind of those who are inquiring into the claims of the Church, and the truth of that system of doctrine which she especially represents, and which is at once her trust and her charter. They hear much stress laid upon that Church system of doctrine; they see much that is beautiful in it, much that is plausible in the proof advanced for it, much which is agreeable to the analogy of nature which bespeaks the hand of the Creator, and is suitable to the needs and expectations of the creature, much that is deep, much that is large and free, fearless in its course, sure in its stepping, and singularly true, consistent, entire, harmonious, in its adjustments; but they seem to ask for more rigid proof in behalf of the simple elementary propositions on which it rests; or, in other words, by way of speaking more clearly, and as a chief illustration of what is meant (though it is not quite the same thing), let me say, they desire more adequate and explicit Scripture proof of its truth. They find that the proof is rested by us on Scripture, and therefore they require more explicit Scripture proof . They say, "All this that you say about the Church is very specious, and very attractive; but where is it to be found in the inspired Volume?" And that it is not found there (that is, I mean not found as fully as it might be), seems to them proved at once by the simple fact, that all persons (I may say all, for the exceptions are very few), all those who try to form their Creed by Scripture only, fall away from the Church and her doctrines, and join one or other sect or party, as if showing that, whatever is or is not scriptural, at least the Church, by consent of all men, is not so.

 I am stating no rare or novel objection: it is one which, I suppose, all of us have felt, or perhaps still feel: it is one which, before now (I do not scruple to say), I have much felt myself, and that without being able satisfactorily to answer: and which I believe to be one of the main difficulties, and (as I think) one of the intended difficulties, which God's providence puts at this day in the path of those who seek Him, for purposes known or unknown, ascertainable or not. Nor am I at all sanguine that I shall be able, in what I have to say, to present anything like a full view of the difficulty itself, even as a phenomenon; which different minds feel differently, and do not quite recognize as their own when stated by another, and which it is difficult to bring out even according to one's own idea of it. Much less shall I be able to assign it its due place in that great Catholic system which nevertheless I hold to be true, and in which it is but a difficulty. I do not profess to be able to account for it, to reconcile the mind to it, and to dismiss it as a thing which was in a man's way, but henceforth behind him; yet, subdued as my hopes may be, I have too great confidence in that glorious Creed, which I believe to have been once delivered to the Saints, to wish in any degree to deny the difficulty, or to be unfair to it, to smooth it over, misrepresent it, or defraud it of its due weight and extent. Though I were to grant that the champions of Israel have not yet rescued this portion of the sacred territory from the Philistine, its usurping occupant, yet was not Jerusalem in the hands of the Jebusites till David's time? and shall I, seeing with my eyes and enjoying the land of promise, be over-troubled with one objection, which stands unvanquished (supposing it); and, like haughty Haman, count the King's favour as nothing till I have all my own way, and nothing to try me? In plain terms, I conceive I have otherwise most abundant evidence given me of the divine origin of the Church system of doctrine: how then is that evidence which is given, not given because, though given in Scripture, it might be there given more explicitly and fully, and (if I may so say) more consistently?

 One consideration alone must create an anxiety in entering on the subject I propose. It is this: Those who commonly urge the objection which is now to be considered, viz., the want of adequate Scripture evidence for the Church creed, have, I feel sure, no right to make it; that is, they are inconsistent in making it; inasmuch as they cannot consistently find fault with a person who believes more than they do, unless they cease to believe just so much as they do believe. They ought, on their own principles, to doubt or disown much which happily they do not doubt or disown. This then is the direct, appropriate, polemical answer to them, or (as it is called) an argumentum ad hominem . "Look at home, and say, if you can, why you believe this or that, which you do believe: whatever reasons you give for your own belief in one point, this or that article, of your Creed, those parallel reasons we can give for our belief in the articles of our Creed. If you are reasonable in believing the one, we are reasonable in believing the other. Either we are reasonable, or you are not so. You ought not to stand where you are; you ought to go further one way or the other." Now it is plain that if this be a sound argument against our assailants, it is a most convincing one; and it is obviously very hard and very unfair if we are to be deprived of the use of it. And yet a cautious mind will ever use it with anxiety; not that it is not most effective, but because it may be (as it were) too effective: it may drive the parties in question the wrong way, and make things worse instead of better. It only undertakes to show that they are inconsistent in their present opinions; and from this inconsistency it is plain they can escape, by going further either one way or the other by adding to their creed, or by giving it up altogether. It is then what is familiarly called a kill-or-cure remedy. Certainly it is better to be inconsistent, than to be consistently wrong to hold some truth amid error, than to hold nothing but error to believe than to doubt. Yet when I show a man that he is inconsistent, I make him decide whether of the two he loves better, the portion of truth or the portion of error, which he already holds. If he loves the truth better, he will abandon the error; if the error, he will abandon the truth. And this is a fearful and anxious trial to put him under, and one cannot but feel loth to have recourse to it. One feels that perhaps it may be better to keep silence, and to let him, in shallowness and presumption, assail one's own position with impunity, than to retort, however justly, his weapons on himself; better for oneself to seem a bigot, than to make him a scoffer.

 Thus, for instance, a person who denies the Apostolical Succession of the Ministry, because it is not clearly taught in Scripture, ought, I conceive, if consistent, to deny the divinity of the Holy Ghost, which is nowhere literally stated in Scripture. Yet there is something so dreadful in his denying the latter, that one may often feel afraid to show him his inconsistency; lest, rather than admit the Apostolical Succession, he should consent to deny that the Holy Ghost is God. This is one of the great delicacies of disputing on the subject before us: yet, all things considered, I think, it only avails for the cautious use, not the abandonment, of the argument in question. For it is our plain duty to preach and defend the truth in a straightforward way. Those who are to stumble must stumble, rather than the heirs of grace should not hear. While we offend and alienate one man, we secure another; if we drive one man further the wrong way, we drive another further the right way. The cause of truth, the heavenly company of saints, gains on the whole more in one way than in the other. A wavering or shallow mind does perhaps as much harm to others as a mind that is consistent in error, nay, is in no very much better state itself; for if it has not developed into systematic scepticism, merely because it has not had the temptation, its present conscientiousness is not worth much. Whereas he who is at present obeying God under imperfect knowledge has a claim on His Ministers for their doing all in their power towards his obtaining further knowledge. He who admits the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, in spite of feeling its difficulties, whether in itself or in its proof, who submits to the indirectness of the Scripture evidence as regards that particular doctrine, has a right to be told those other doctrines, such as the Apostolical Succession, which are as certainly declared in Scripture, yet not more directly and prominently, and which will be as welcome to him, when known, because they are in Scripture, as those which he already knows. It is therefore our duty to do our part, and leave the event to God, begging Him to bless, yet aware that, whenever He visits, He divides.

 In saying this, I by no means would imply that the only argument in behalf of our believing more than the generality of men believe at present, is, that else we ought in consistency to believe less far from it indeed; but this argument is the one that comes first, and is the most obvious and the most striking. Nor do I mean to say far from it also that all on whom it is urged, will in fact go one way or the other; the many will remain pretty much where education and habit have placed them, and at least they will not confess that they are affected by any new argument at all. But of course when one speaks of anxiety about the effect of a certain argument, one speaks of cases in which it will have effect, not of those in which it will not. Where it has effect, I say, that effect may be for good or for evil, and that is an anxious thing.

 1.

 Now then, first, let me state the objection itself, which is to be considered. It may be thrown into one or other of the following forms: that "if Scripture laid such stress, as we do, upon the ordinances of Baptism, Holy Eucharist, Church Union, Ministerial Power, Apostolical Succession, Absolution, and other rites and ceremonies, upon external, or what is sometimes called formal religion, it would not in its general tenor make such merely indirect mention of them; that it would speak of them as plainly and frequently as we always speak of them now; whereas every one must allow that there is next to nothing on the surface of Scripture about them, and very little even under the surface of a satisfactory character." Descending into particulars, we shall have it granted us, perhaps, that Baptism is often mentioned in the Epistles, and its spiritual benefits; but "its peculiarity as the one plenary remission of sin," it will be urged, "is not insisted on with such frequency and earnestness as might be expected chiefly in one or two passages of one Epistle, and there obscurely" (in Heb. vi. and x.) Again, "the doctrine of Absolution is made to rest on but one or two texts (in Matt. xvi. and John xx.), with little or no practical exemplification of it in the Epistles, where it was to be expected. Why," it may be asked, "are not the Apostles continually urging their converts to rid themselves of sin after Baptism, as best they can, by penance, confession, absolution, satisfaction? Again, why are Christ's ministers nowhere called Priests? or, at most, in one or two obscure passages (as in Rom. xv. 16)? Why is not the Lord's Supper expressly said to be a Sacrifice? why is the Lord's Table called an Altar but once or twice (Matt. v. and Heb. xiii.), even granting these passages refer to it? why is consecration of the elements expressly mentioned only in one passage (1 Cor. x.) in addition to our Lord's original institution of them? why is there but once or twice express mention made at all of the Holy Eucharist, all through the Apostolic Epistles, and what there is said, said chiefly in one Epistle? why is there so little said about Ordination? about the appointment of a Succession of Ministers? about the visible Church (as in 1 Tim. iii. 15)? why but one or two passages on the duty of fasting?"

 "In short, is not (it may be asked) the state of the evidence for all these doctrines just this a few striking texts at most, scattered up and down the inspired Volume, or one or two particular passages of one particular Epistle, or a number of texts which may mean, but need not mean, what they are said by Churchmen to mean, which say something looking like what is needed, but with little strength and point, inadequately and unsatisfactorily? Why then are we thus to be put off? why is our earnest desire of getting at the truth to be trifled with? is it conceivable that, if these doctrines were from God, He would not tell us plainly? why does He make us to doubt? why does 'He keep us in suspense?' [John x. 24.] it is impossible He should do so. Let us, then, have none of these expedients, these makeshift arguments, this patchwork system, these surmises and conjectures, and here a little and there a little, but give us some broad, trustworthy, masterly view of doctrine, give us some plain intelligible interpretation of the sacred Volume, such as will approve itself to all educated minds, as being really gained from the text, and not from previous notions which are merely brought to Scripture, and which seek to find a sanction in it. Such a broad comprehensive view of Holy Scripture is most assuredly fatal to the Church doctrines." "But this (it will be urged) is not all; there are texts in the New Testament actually inconsistent with the Church system of teaching. For example, what can be stronger against the sanctity of particular places, nay of any institutions, persons, or rites at all, than our Lord's declaration, that 'God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him, must worship Him in spirit and in truth'? or against the Eucharistic Sacrifice, than St. Paul's contrast in Heb. x. between the Jewish sacrifices and the one Christian Atonement? or can Baptism really have the gifts which are attributed to it in the Catholic or Church system, considering how St. Paul says, that all rites are done away, and that faith is all in all?"

 Such is the sort of objection which it is proposed now to consider.

 2.

 My first answer to it is grounded on the argumentum ad hominem of which I have already spoken. That is, I shall show that, if the objection proves anything, it proves too much for the purposes of those who use it; that it leads to conclusions beyond those to which they would confine it; and if it tells for them, it tells for those whom they would not hesitate to consider heretical or unbelieving.

 Now the argument in question proves too much, first, in this way, that it shows that external religion is not only not important or necessary, but not allowable. If, for instance, when our Saviour said, "Woman, believe Me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father ... The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth," [John iv. 21-24.] if He means that the external local worship of the Jews was so to be abolished, that no external local worship should again be enjoined, that the Gospel worship was but mental, stripped of everything material or sensible, and offered in that simple spirit and truth which exists in heaven, if so, it is plain that all external religion is not only not imperative under the Gospel, but forbidden. This text, if it avails for any thing against Sacraments and Ordinances, avails entirely; it cuts them away root and branch. It says, not that they are unimportant, but that they are not to be. It does not leave them at our option. Any interpretation which gives an opening to their existing, gives so far an opening to their being important. If the command to worship in spirit and truth is consistent with the permission to worship through certain rites, it is consistent with the duty to worship through them. Why are we to have a greater freedom, if I may so speak, than God Himself? why are we to choose what rites we please to worship in, and not He choose them? as if spirituality consisted, not in doing without rites altogether, (a notion which at least is intelligible,) but in our forestalling our Lord and Master in the choice of them. Let us take the text to mean that there shall be no external worship at all, if we will (we shall be wrong, but we shall speak fairly and intelligibly); but, if there may be times, places, ministers, ordinances of worship, although the text speaks of worshipping in spirit and in truth, then, what is there in it to negative the notion of God's having chosen those times, places, ministers, and ordinances, so that if we attempt to choose, we shall be committing the very fault of the Jews, who were ever setting up golden calves, planting groves, or consecrating ministers, without authority from God?

 And what has been observed of this text, holds good of all arguments drawn, whether from the silence of Scripture about, or its supposed positive statements against, the rites and ordinances of the Church. If obscurity of texts, for instance, about the grace of the Eucharist, be taken as a proof that no great benefit is therein given, it is an argument against there being any benefit. On the other hand, when certain passages are once interpreted to refer to it, the emphatic language used in those passages shows that the benefit is not small. We cannot say that the subject is unimportant, without saying that it is not mentioned at all. Either no gift is given in the Eucharist, or a great gift. If only the sixth chapter of St. John, for instance, does allude to it, it shows it is not merely an edifying rite, but an awful communication beyond words. Again, if the phrase, "the communication of the Body of Christ," used by St. Paul, means any gift, it means a great one. You may say, if you will, that it does not mean any gift at all, but means only a representation or figure of the communication; this I call explaining away, but still it is intelligible; but I do not see how, if it is to be taken literally as a real communication of something, it can be other than a communication of His Body . Again, though the Lord's Table be but twice called an Altar in Scripture, yet, granting that it is meant in those passages, it is there spoken of so solemnly, that it matters not though it be nowhere else spoken of. "We have an Altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle." We do not know of the existence of the Ordinance except in the knowledge of its importance; and in corroboration and explanation of this matter of fact, let it be well observed that St. Paul expressly declares that the Jewish rites are not to be practised because they are not important.

 This is one way in which this argument proves too much; so that they who for the sake of decency or edification, or from an imaginative turn of mind, delight in Ordinances, yet think they may make them for themselves, in that those ordinances bring no special blessing with them, such men contradict the Gospel as plainly as those who attribute a mystical virtue to them, nay more so; for if any truth is clear, it is, that such ordinances as are without virtue are abolished by the Gospel, this being St. Paul's very argument against the use of the Jewish rites.

 3.

 Now as to the other point of view in which the argument in question proves too much for the purpose of those who use it: If it be a good argument against the truth of the Apostolical Succession and similar doctrines, that so little is said about them in Scripture, this is quite as good an argument against nearly all the doctrines which are held by any one who is called a Christian in any sense of the word; as a few instances will show.

 (1.) First, as to Ordinances and Precepts. There is not a single text in the Bible enjoining infant baptism: the Scripture warrant on which we baptize infants consists of inferences carefully made from various texts. How is it that St. Paul does not in his Epistles remind parents of so great a duty, if it is a duty?

 Again, there is not a single text telling us to keep holy the first day of the week, and that instead of the seventh. God hallowed the seventh day, yet we now observe the first. Why do we do this? Our Scripture warrant for doing so is such as this: " since the Apostles met on the first day of the week, therefore the first day is to be hallowed; and since St. Paul says the Sabbath is abolished, therefore the seventh day (which is the Sabbath) is not to be hallowed:" these are true inferences, but very indirect surely. The duty is not on the surface of Scripture. We might infer, though incorrectly, still we might infer, that St. Paul meant that the command in the second chapter of Genesis was repealed, and that now there is no sacred day at all in the seven, though meetings for prayer on Sunday are right and proper. There is nothing on the surface of Scripture to prove that the sacredness conferred in the beginning on the seventh day now by transference attaches to the first.

 Again, there is scarcely a text enjoining our going to Church for joint worship. St. Paul happens in one place of his Epistle to the Hebrews, to warn us against forgetting to assemble together for prayer. Our Saviour says that where two or three are gathered together, He is in the midst of them; yet this alludes in the first instance not to public worship, but to Church Councils and censures, quite a distinct subject. And in the Acts and Epistles we meet with instances or precepts in favour of joint worship; yet there is nothing express to show that it is necessary for all times, nothing more express than there is to show that in 1 Cor. vii. St. Paul meant that an unmarried state is better at all times, nothing which does not need collecting and inferring with minute carefulness from Scripture. The first disciples did pray together, and so in like manner the first disciples did not marry. St. Paul tells those who were in a state of distress to pray together so much the more as they see the day approaching  and he says that celibacy is "good for the present distress ." The same remarks might be applied to the question of community of goods. On the other hand, our Lord did not use social prayer: even when with His disciples He prayed by Himself; and His directions in Matt. vi. about private prayer, with the silence which He observes about public, might be as plausibly adduced as an argument against public, as the same kind of silence in Scripture concerning turning to the east, or making the sign of the Cross, or concerning commemorations for the dead in Christ, accompanied with its warnings against formality and ceremonial abuses, is now commonly urged as an argument against these latter usages.

 Again: there is no text in the New Testament which enjoins us to "establish" Religion (as the phrase is), or to make it national, and to give the Church certain honour and power; whereas our Lord's words, "My kingdom is not of this world" (John xviii. 36), may be interpreted to discountenance such a proceeding. We consider that it is right to establish the Church on the ground of mere deductions, though of course true ones, from the sacred text; such as St. Paul's using his rights as a Roman citizen.

 There is no text which allows us to take oaths. The words of our Lord and St. James look plainly the other way. Why then do we take them? We infer that it is allowable to do so, from finding that St. Paul uses such expressions as "I call God for a record upon my soul" "The things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not" (2 Cor. i. 23; Gal. i. 20); these we argue, and rightly, are equivalent to an oath, and a precedent for us.

 Again, considering God has said, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed," it seems a very singular power which we give to the Civil Magistrate to take away life. It ought to rest, one might suppose, on some very clear permission given in Scripture. Now, on what does it rest? on one or two words of an Apostle casually introduced into Scripture, as far as anything is casual, on St. Paul's saying in a parenthesis, "he (the magistrate) beareth not the sword in vain;" and he is speaking of a heathen magistrate, not of Christian.

 Once more: On how many texts does the prohibition of polygamy depend, if we set about counting them?

 (2.) So much for ordinances and practices: next, consider how Doctrine will stand, if the said rule of interpretation is to hold.

 If the Eucharist is never distinctly called a Sacrifice, or Christian Ministers never called Priests, still, let me ask (as I have already done), is the Holy Ghost ever expressly called God in Scripture? Nowhere; we infer it from what is said then; we compare parallel passages.

 If the words Altar, Absolution, or Succession, are not in Scripture (supposing it), neither is the word Trinity.

 Again: how do we know that the New Testament is inspired? does it anywhere declare this of itself? nowhere; how, then, do we know it? we infer it from the circumstance that the very office of the Apostles who wrote it was to publish the Christian Revelation, and from the Old Testament being said by St. Paul to be inspired.

 Again: whence do Protestants derive their common notion, that every one may gain his knowledge of revealed truth from Scripture for himself?

 Again: consider whether the doctrine of the Atonement may not be explained away by those who explain away the doctrine of the Eucharist: if the expressions used concerning the latter are merely figurative, so may be those used of the former.

 Again: on how many texts does the doctrine of Original Sin rest, that is, the doctrine that we are individually born under God's displeasure, in consequence of the sin of Adam? on one or two.

 Again: how do we prove the doctrine of justification by faith only? it is nowhere declared in Scripture. St. Paul does but speak of justification by faith, not by faith only, and St. James actually denies that it is by faith only. Yet we think right to infer, that there is a correct sense in which it is by faith only; though an Apostle has in so many words said just the contrary. Is any of the special Church doctrines about the power of Absolution, the Christian Priesthood, or the danger of sin after Baptism, so disadvantageously circumstanced in point of evidence as this, "articulus," as Luther called it, "stantis ut cadentis ecclesiæ"?

 On the whole, then, I ask, on how many special or palmary texts do any of the doctrines or rites which we hold depend? what doctrines or rites would be left to us, if we demanded the clearest and fullest evidence, before we believed anything? what would the Gospel consist of? would there be any Revelation at all left? Some all-important doctrines indeed at first sight certainly would remain in the New Testament, such as the divinity of Christ, the unity of God, the supremacy of divine grace, our election in Christ, the resurrection of the body, and eternal life or death to the righteous or sinners; but little besides. Shall we give up the divinity of the Holy Ghost, original sin, the Atonement, the inspiration of the New Testament, united worship, the Sacraments, and Infant Baptism? Let us do so. Well: I will venture to say, that then we shall go on to find difficulties as regards those other doctrines, as the divinity of Christ, which at first sight seem to be in Scripture certainly; they are only more clearly there than the others, not so clearly stated as to be secured from specious objections. We shall have difficulties about the meaning of the word "everlasting," as applied to punishment, about the compatibility of divine grace with free-will, about the possibility of the resurrection of the body, and about the sense in which Christ is God. The inquirer who rejects a doctrine which has but one text in its favour, on the ground that if it were important it would have more, may, even in a case when a doctrine is mentioned often, always find occasion to wonder that still it is not mentioned in this or that particular place, where it might be expected. When he is pressed with such a text as St. Thomas's confession, "My Lord and my God," he will ask, But why did our Lord say but seven days before to St. Mary Magdalen, "I ascend to My Father and your Father, to My God and your God"? When he is pressed with St. Peter's confession, "Lord, Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love Thee," he will ask, "But why does Christ say of Himself, that He does not know the last day, but only the Father?" Indeed, I may truly say, the more arguments there are for a certain doctrine found in Scripture, the more objections will be found against it; so that, on the whole, after all, the Scripture evidence, even for the divinity of Christ, will be found in fact as little able to satisfy the cautious reasoner, when he is fairly engaged to discuss it, as that for Infant Baptism, great as is the difference of strength in the evidence for the one and for the other. And the history of these last centuries bears out this remark.

 I conclude, then, that there must be some fault somewhere in this specious argument; that it does not follow that a doctrine or rite is not divine, because it is not directly stated in Scripture; that there are some wise and unknown reasons for doctrines being, as we find them, not clearly stated there. To be sure, I might take the other alternative, and run the full length of scepticism, and openly deny that any doctrine or duty, whatever it is, is divine, which is not stated in Scripture beyond all contradiction and objection. But for many reasons I cannot get myself to do this, as I shall proceed to show.

 Lecture 2. The Difficulties of Latitudinarianism

 NO one, I think, will seriously maintain, that any other definite religious system is laid down in Scripture at all more clearly than the Church system. It may be maintained, and speciously, that the Church system is not there, or that this or that particular doctrine of some other system seems to be there more plainly than the corresponding Church doctrine; but that Presbyterianism as a whole, or Independency as a whole, or the religion of Lutherans, Baptists, Wesleyans, or Friends, as a whole, is more clearly laid down in Scripture, and with fewer texts looking the other way that any of these denominations has less difficulties to encounter than the Creed of the Church, this I do not think can successfully be maintained. The arguments which are used to prove that the Church system is not in Scripture, may as cogently be used to prove that no system is in Scripture. If silence in Scripture, or apparent contrariety, is an argument against the Church system, it is an argument against system altogether. No system is on the surface of Scripture; none, but has at times to account for the silence or the apparent opposition of Scripture as to particular portions of it.

 1.

 This, then, is the choice of conclusions to which we are brought:  either Christianity contains no definite message, creed, revelation, system, or whatever other name we give it, nothing which can be made the subject of belief at all; or, secondly, though there really is a true creed or system in Scripture, still it is not on the surface of Scripture, but is found latent and implicit within it, and to be maintained only by indirect arguments, by comparison of texts, by inferences from what is said plainly, and by overcoming or resigning oneself to difficulties; or again, though there is a true creed or system revealed, it is not revealed in Scripture, but must be learned collaterally from other sources. I wish inquirers to consider this statement steadily. I do not see that it can be disputed; and if not, it is very important. I repeat it; we have a choice of three conclusions. Either there is no definite religious information given us by Christianity at all, or it is given in Scripture in an indirect and covert way, or it is indeed given, but not in Scripture. The first is the Latitudinarian view which has gained ground in this day; the second is our own Anglican ground; the third is the ground of the Roman Church. If then we will not content ourselves with merely probable, or (what we may be disposed to call) insufficient proofs of matters of faith and worship, we must become either utter Latitudinarians or Roman Catholics. If we will not submit to the notion of the doctrines of the Gospel being hidden under the text of Scripture from the view of the chance reader, we must submit to believe either that there are no doctrines at all in Christianity, or that the doctrines are not in Scripture, but elsewhere, as in Tradition. I know of no other alternative.

 Many men, indeed, will attempt to find a fourth way, thus: they would fain discern one or two doctrines in Scripture clearly, and no more; or some generalized form, yet not so much as a body of doctrine of any character. They consider that a certain message, consisting of one or two great and simple statements, makes up the whole of the Gospel, and that these are plainly in Scripture; accordingly, that he who holds and acts upon these is a Christian, and ought to be acknowledged by all to be such, for in holding these he holds all that is necessary. These statements they sometimes call the essentials, the peculiar doctrines, the vital doctrines, the leading idea, the great truths of the Gospel, and all this sounds very well; but when we come to realize what is abstractedly so plausible, we are met by this insurmountable difficulty, that no great number of persons agree together what are these great truths, simple views, leading ideas, or peculiar doctrines of the Gospel. Some say that the doctrine of the Atonement is the leading idea; some, the doctrine of spiritual influence; some, that both together are the peculiar doctrines; some, that love is all in all; some, that the acknowledgment that Jesus is the Christ; and some, that the resurrection from the dead; some, that the announcement of the soul's immortality, is after all the essence of the Gospel, and all that need be believed.

 Moreover, since, as all parties must confess, the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity is not brought out in form upon the surface of Scripture, it follows either that it is not included in the leading idea, or that the leading idea is not on the surface. And if the doctrine of the Trinity is not to be accounted as one of the leading or fundamental truths of Revelation, the keystone of the mysterious system is lost; and, that being lost, mystery will, in matter of fact, be found gradually to fade away from the Creed altogether; that is, the notion of Christianity as being a revelation of new truths, will gradually fade away, and the Gospel in course of time will be considered scarcely more than the republication of the law of nature. This, I think, will be found to be the historical progress and issue of this line of thought. It is but one shape of Latitudinarianism. If we will have it so, that the doctrines of Scripture should be on the surface of Scripture, though I may have my very definite notion what doctrines are on the surface, and you yours, and another his, yet you and he and I, though each of us in appearance competent to judge, though all serious men, earnest, and possessed of due attainments, nevertheless will not agree together what those doctrines are; so that, practically, what I have said will come about in the end, that (if we are candid) we shall be forced to allow, that there is no system, no creed, no doctrine at all lucidly and explicitly set forth in Scripture; and thus we are brought to the result, which I have already pointed out: if we will not seek for revealed truth under the surface of Scripture, we must either give up seeking for it, or must seek for it in Tradition, we must become Latitudinarians or Roman Catholics.

 2.

 Now of these alternatives, the Roman idea or the Latitudinarian, the latter I do really conceive to be quite out of the question with every serious mind. The Latitudinarian doctrine is this: that every man's view of Revealed Religion is acceptable to God, if he acts up to it; that no one view is in itself better than another, or at least that we cannot tell which is the better. All that we have to do then is to act consistently with what we hold, and to value others if they act consistently with what they hold; that to be consistent constitutes sincerity; that where there is this evident sincerity, it is no matter whether we profess to be Romanists or Protestants, Catholics or Heretics, Calvinists or Arminians, Anglicans or Dissenters, High Churchmen or Puritans, Episcopalians or Independents, Wesleyans or Socinians. Such seems to be the doctrine of Latitude. Now, I can conceive such a view of the subject to be maintainable, supposing God had given us no Revelation, though even then, (by the way,) and were we even left to the light of nature, belief in His existence and moral government would, one should think, at least be necessary to please Him. "He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them which diligently seek Him." [Heb. xi. 6.] But however, not to press this point, one may conceive that, before God had actually spoken to us, He might accept as sufficient a sincere acting on religious opinions of whatever kind; but that, after a Revelation is given, there is nothing to believe, nothing (to use an expressive Scripture word) to "hold," to "hold fast," that a message comes from God, and contains no subject-matter, or that, containing it (as it must do), it is not important to be received, and is not capable of being learned by any one who takes the proper means of learning it, that there is in it nothing such, that we may depend on our impression of it to be the true impression, may feel we have really gained something, and continue in one and one only opinion about it, all this is so extravagant, that I really cannot enter into the state of mind of a person maintaining it. I think he is not aware what he is saying. Why should God speak, unless He meant to say something? Why should He say it, unless He meant us to hear? Why should we be made to hear if it mattered not whether we accepted it or no? What the doctrine is, is another and distinct question; but that there is some doctrine revealed, and that it is revealed in order that it may be received, and that it really is revealed, (I mean, not so hidden that it is a mere matter of opinion, a mere chance, what is true and what is not, and that there are a number of opposite modes of holding it, one as good as another, but) that it is plain in one and the same substantial sense to all who sincerely and suitably seek for it, and that God is better pleased when we hold it than when we do not, all this seems a truism. Again, where it is given us, whether entirely in Scripture, or partly elsewhere, this too is another and secondary question; though, if some doctrine or other is really given, that it must be given somewhere, is a proposition which cannot be denied, without some eccentricity or confusion of mind, or without some defect in seriousness and candour. I say, first, if there be a Revelation, there must be some essential doctrine proposed by it to our faith; and, if so, the question at once follows, what is it, and how much, and where ? and we are forthwith involved in researches of some kind or other, somewhere or other; for the doctrine is not written on the sun.

 For reasons such as the above, I really cannot conceive a serious man, who realized what he was speaking about, to be a consistent Latitudinarian. He always will reserve from the general proscription his own favourite doctrine, whatever it is; and then holding it, he will be at once forced into the difficulty, which is ours also, but which he would fain make ours only and not his, that of stating clearly what this doctrine of his is, and what are those grounds of it, such, as to enable him to take in just so much of dogmatic teaching as he does take in, and nothing more, to hold so much firmly, and to treat all the rest as comparatively unimportant.

 Revelation implies a something revealed, and what is revealed is imperative on our faith, because it is revealed. Revelation implies imperativeness; it limits in its very notion our liberty of thought, because it limits our liberty of error, for error is one kind of thought.

 If then I am not allowed to hold that Scripture, however implicit in its teaching, is really dogmatic, I shall be led to be, not a Latitudinarian, but a Roman Catholic. You tell me, that "no creed is to be found in Scripture,  therefore, Christianity has no creed." Indeed! supposing the fact to be as stated (which I do not grant, but supposing it), is this the necessary conclusion? No: there is another. Such an inference indeed as the above is a clever controversial way of settling the matter; it is the sort of answer which in the schools of disputation or the courts of law may find a place, where men are not in earnest; but it is an answer without a heart. It is an excuse for indolence, love of quiet, or worldliness. There is another answer. I do not adopt it, I do not see I am driven to it, because I do not allow the premisses from which the Latitudinarian argument starts. I do not allow that there is no creed at all contained in Scripture, though I grant it is not on the surface. But if there be no divine message, gospel, or creed producible from Scripture, this would not lead me one inch toward deciding that there was none at all anywhere . No; it would make me look out of Scripture for it, that is all. If there is a Revelation, there must be a doctrine; both our reason and our hearts tell us so. If it is not in Scripture, it is somewhere else; it is to be sought elsewhere. Should the fact so turn out, (which I deny,) that Scripture is so obscure that nothing can be made of it, even when the true interpretation is elsewhere given, so obscure that every person will have his own interpretation of it, and no two alike, this would drive me, not into Latitudinarianism, but into Romanism. Yes, and it will drive the multitude of men. It is far more certain that Revelation must contain a message, than that that message must be in Scripture. It is a less violence to one's feelings to say that part of it is revealed elsewhere, than to say that nothing is revealed anywhere. There is an overpowering antecedent improbability in Almighty God's announcing that He has revealed something, and then revealing nothing; there is no antecedent improbability in His revealing it elsewhere than in an inspired volume.

 And, I say, the mass of mankind will feel it so. It is very well for educated persons, at their ease, with few cares, or in the joyous time of youth, to argue and speculate about the impalpableness and versatility of the divine message, its chameleon-like changeableness, its adaptation to each fresh mind it meets; but when men are conscious of sin, are sorrowful, are weighed down, are desponding, they ask for something to lean on, something external to themselves. It will not do to tell them that whatever they at present hold as true, is enough. They want to be assured that what seems to them true, is true; they want something to lean on, holier, diviner, more stable than their own minds. They have an instinctive feeling that there is an external, eternal truth which is their only stay; and it mocks them, after being told of a Revelation, to be assured, next, that that Revelation tells us nothing certain, nothing which we do not know without it, nothing distinct from our own impressions concerning it, whatever they may be, nothing such, as to exist independently of that shape and colour into which our own individual mind happens to throw it. Therefore, practically, those who argue for the vague character of the Scripture informations, and the harmlessness of all sorts of religious opinions, do not tend to advance Latitudinarianism one step among the many, they advance Romanism. That truth, which men are told they cannot find in Scripture, they will seek out of Scripture. They will never believe, they will never be content with, a religion without doctrines. The common sense of mankind decides against it. Religion cannot but be dogmatic; it ever has been. All religions have had doctrines; all have professed to carry with them benefits which could be enjoyed only on condition of believing the word of a supernatural informant, that is, of embracing some doctrines or other.

 And it is a mere idle sophistical theory, to suppose it can be otherwise. Destroy religion, make men give it up, if you can; but while it exists, it will profess an insight into the next world, it will profess important information about the next world, it will have points of faith, it will have dogmatism, it will have anathemas. Christianity, therefore, ever will be looked on, by the multitude, what it really is, as a rule of faith as well as of conduct. Men may be Presbyterians, or Baptists, or Lutherans, or Calvinists, or Wesleyans; but something or other they will be; a creed, a creed necessary to salvation, they will have; a creed either in Scripture or out of it; and if in Scripture, I say, it must be, from the nature of the case, only indirectly gained from Scripture. Latitudinarianism, then, is out of the question; and you have your choice, to be content with inferences from texts in Scripture, or with tradition out of Scripture. You cannot get beyond this; either you must take up with us, (or with some system not at all better off, whether Presbyterianism or Independency, or the like,) or you must go to Rome. Which will you choose? You may not like us; you may be impatient and impetuous; you may go forward but back you cannot go.

 3.

 But, further, it can scarcely be denied that Scripture, if it does not furnish, at least speaks of, refers to, takes for granted, sanctions, some certain doctrine or message, as is to be believed in order to salvation; and which, accordingly, if not found in Scripture, must be sought for out of it. It says, "He who believeth shall be saved, and he who believeth not shall be damned;" it speaks of "the doctrine of Christ," of "keeping the faith," of "the faith once delivered to the saints," and of "delivering that which has been received," recounting at the same time some of the articles of the Apostles' Creed. And the case is the same as regards discipline; rules of worship and order, whether furnished or not, are at least alluded to again and again, under the title of "traditions." Revelation then will be inconsistent with itself, unless it has provided some Creed somewhere. For it declares in Scripture that it has given us a Creed; therefore some creed exists somewhere, whether in Scripture or out of it.

 Nor is this all; from the earliest times, so early that there is no assignable origin to it short of the Apostles, one definite system has in fact existed in the Church both of faith and worship, and that in countries far disjoined from one another, and without any appearance (as far as we can detect) of the existence of any other system anywhere; and (what is very remarkable) a system such, that the portion in it which relates to matters of faith (or its theology), accurately fits in and corresponds to that which relates to matters of worship and order (or its ceremonial); as if they were evidently parts of a whole, and not an accidental assemblage of rites on the one hand, and doctrines on the other; a system moreover which has existed ever since, and exists at the present day, and in its great features, as in other branches of the Church, so among ourselves; a system moreover which at least professes to be quite consistent with, and to appeal and defer to, the written word, and thus in all respects accurately answers to that to which Scripture seems to be referring in the notices above cited. Now, is it possible, with this very significant phenomenon standing in the threshold of Christian history, that any sensible man can be of opinion that one creed or worship is as good as another? St. Paul speaks of one faith, one baptism, one body; this in itself is a very intelligible hint of his own view of Christianity; but as if to save his words from misinterpretation, here in history is at once a sort of realization of what he seems to have before his mind.

 Under these circumstances, what excuse have we for not recognizing, in this system of doctrine and worship existing in history, that very system to which the Apostles refer in Scripture? They evidently did not in Scripture say out all they had to say; this is evident on the face of Scripture, evident from what they do say. St. Paul says, " The rest will I set in order when I come." St. John, "I had many things to write, but I will not with ink and pen write unto thee; but I trust I shall shortly see thee, and we shall speak face to face." This he says in two Epistles. Now supposing, to take the case of profane history, a collection of letters were extant written by the founders or remodellers of the Platonic or Stoic philosophy, and supposing those masters referred in them to their philosophy, and treated of it in some of its parts, yet without drawing it out in an orderly way, and then secondly, supposing there did exist other and more direct historical sources of various kinds, from which a distinct systematic account of their philosophy might be drawn, that is, one account of it and but one from many witnesses, should we not take it for granted that this was their system, that system of which their letters spoke? Should not we accept that system conveyed to us by history with (I will not say merely an antecedent disposition in its favour, but with) a confidence and certainty that it was their system; and if we found discrepancies between it and their letters, should we at once cast it aside as spurious, or should we not rather try to reconcile the two together, and suspect that we were in fault, that we had made some mistake; and even if after all we could not reconcile all parts (supposing it), should we not leave the discrepancies as difficulties, and believe in the system notwithstanding? The Apostles refer to a large existing fact, their system, "the whole counsel of God"; history informs us of a system, as far as we can tell, contemporaneous with, and claiming to be theirs; what other claimant is there?

 Whether, then, the system of doctrine and worship, referred to but not brought out in Scripture, be really latent there or not, whether our hypothesis be right or the Roman view, at any rate a system there is; we see it, we have it external to Scripture. There it stands, however we may determine the further question, whether it is also in Scripture. Whether we adopt our Sixth Article or not, we cannot obliterate the fact that a system does substantially exist in history; all the proofs you may bring of the obscurities or of the unsystematic character of Scripture cannot touch this independent fact; were Scripture lost to us, that fact, an existing Catholic system, will remain. You have your choice to say that Scripture does or does not agree with it. If you think it actually disagrees with Scripture, then you have your choice between concluding either that you are mistaken in so thinking, or that, although this system comes to us as it does, on the same evidence with Scripture, yet it is not divine, while Scripture is. If, however, you consider that it merely teaches things additional to Scripture, then you have no excuse for not admitting it in addition to Scripture. And if it teaches things but indirectly taught in Scripture, then you must admit it as an interpreter or comment upon Scripture. But, whether you say it is an accordant or a discordant witness, whether the supplement, or complement, or interpreter of Scripture, there it stands, that consistent harmonious system of faith and worship, as in the beginning; and, if history be allowed any weight in the discussion, it is an effectual refutation of Latitudinarianism. It is a fact concurring with the common sense of mankind and with their wants. Men want a dogmatic system; and behold, in the beginning of Christianity, and from the beginning to this day, there it stands. This is so remarkable a coincidence that it will always practically weigh against Latitudinarian views. Infidelity is more intelligible, more honest than they are.

 Nor does it avail to say, that there were additions made to it in the course of years, or that the feeling of a want may have given rise to it; for what was added after, whatever it was, could not create that to which it was added; and I say that first of all, before there was a time for the harmonious uniform expansion of a system, for the experience and supply of human wants, for the inroads of innovation, and the growth of corruption, and with all fair allowance for differences of opinions as to how much is primitive, or when and where this or that particular fact is witnessed, or what interpretation is to be given to particular passages in historical documents, from the first a system exists. And we have no right to refuse it, merely on the plea that we do not see all the parts of it in Scripture, or that we think some parts of it to be inconsistent with Scripture; for even though some parts were not there, this would not disprove its truth; and even though some parts seemed contrary to what is there, this appearance might after all be caused simply by our own incompetency to judge of Scripture.

 4.

 But perhaps it may here be urged, that I have proved too much; that is, it may be asked "If a system of doctrine is so necessary to Revelation, and appears at once in the writings of the Apostles' disciples, as in the Epistles of St. Ignatius, how is it that it is not in the writings of the Apostles themselves? how does it happen that it does appear in the short Epistles of Ignatius, and does not in the longer Epistles of St. Paul? so that the tendency of the foregoing argument is to disparage the Apostles' teaching, as showing that it is not adapted, and Ignatius's is adapted, to our wants." But the answer to this is simple: for though the Apostles' writings do not on their surface set forth the Catholic system of doctrine, they certainly do contain (as I have said) a recognition of its existence, and of its principle, and of portions of it. If, then, in spite of this, there is no Apostolic system of faith and worship, all we shall have proved by our argument is, that the Apostles are inconsistent with themselves; that they recognize the need of such a system, and do not provide one. How it is they do not draw out a system, while they nevertheless both recognize its principle and witness its existence, has often been discussed, and perhaps I may say something incidentally on the subject hereafter. Here, I do but observe, that on the one side of the question we have the human heart expecting, Scripture sanctioning, history providing, a coincidence of three witnesses; and on the other side only this, Scripture not actually providing by itself in form and fulness what it sanctions.

 Lastly, I would observe, that much as Christians have differed in these latter or in former ages, as to what is the true faith and what the true worship and discipline of Christ, yet one and all have held that Christianity is dogmatic and social, that creeds and forms are not to be dispensed with. There has been an uninterrupted maintenance of this belief from the beginning of Christianity down to this day, with exceptions so partial or so ephemeral as not to deserve notice. I conclude, then, either that the notion of forms and creeds, and of unity by means of them, is so natural to the human mind as to be spontaneously produced and cherished in every age; or that there has been a strong external reason for its having been so cherished, whether in authority, or in argumentative proof, or in the force of tradition. In whatever way we take it, it is a striking evidence in favour of dogmatic religion, and against that unreal form, or rather that mere dream of religion, which pretends that modes of thinking and social conduct are all one and all the same in the eyes of God, supposing each of us to be sincere in his own.

 Dismissing, then, Latitudinarianism once for all, as untenable, and taking for granted that there is a system of religion revealed in the Gospel, I come, as I have already stated several times, to one or other of two conclusions: either that it is not all in Scripture, but part in tradition only, as the Romanists say, or, as the English Church says, that though it is in tradition, yet it can also be gathered from the communications of Scripture. As to the nondescript system of religion now in fashion, viz., that nothing is to be believed but what is clearly stated in Scripture, that all its own doctrines are clearly there and none other, and that, as to history, it is no matter what history says and what it does not say, except so far as it must of course be used to prove the canonicity of Scripture, this will come before us again and again in the following Lectures. Suffice that it has all the external extravagance of Latitudinarianism without any gain in consistency. It is less consistent because it is morally better: Latitudinarianism is less inconsistent because it is intellectually deeper. Both, however, are mere theories in theology, and ought to be discarded by serious men. We must give up our ideal notions, and resign ourselves to facts. We must take things as we find them, as God has given them. We did not make them, we cannot alter them, though we are sometimes tempted to think it very hard that we cannot. We must submit to them, instead of quarrelling with them. We must submit to the indirectness of Scripture [n.], unless we think it wiser and better to become Romanists: and we must employ our minds rather (if so be) in accounting for the fact, than in excepting against it.

 Note

 [It may require explanation, why it was that the author, in this argument against Latitudinarianism, should so earnestly insist on the implicit teaching of Scripture, with history for its explicit interpreter, instead of boldly saying that, not Scripture, but history, is our informant in Christian doctrine. But he was hampered by his belief in the Protestant tenet that all revealed doctrine is in Scripture, and, since he could not maintain that it was on the surface of the inspired Word, he was forced upon the (not untrue, but unpractical) theory of the implicit sense, history developing it. Vide infr . p. 149.]  

 Lecture 3. On the Structure of the Bible, antecedently considered

 ENOUGH perhaps has now been said by way of opening the subject before us. The state of the case I conceive to be as I have said. The structure of Scripture is such, so irregular and immethodical, that either we must hold that the Gospel doctrine or message is not contained in Scripture (and if so, either that there is no message at all given, or that it is given elsewhere, external to Scripture), or, as the alternative, we must hold that it is but indirectly and covertly recorded there, that is, under the surface. Moreover, since the great bulk of professing Christians in this country, whatever their particular denomination may be, do consider, agreeably with the English Church, that there are doctrines revealed (though they differ among themselves as to what), and next that they are in Scripture, they must undergo, and resign themselves to an inconvenience which certainly does attach to our Church, and, as they often suppose, to it alone, that of having to infer from Scripture, to prove circuitously, to argue at disadvantage, to leave difficulties unsolved, and to appear to the world weak or fanciful reasoners. They must leave off criticising our proof of our doctrines, because they are not stronger in respect to proof themselves. No matter whether they are Lutherans or Calvinists, Wesleyans or Independents, they have to wind their way through obstacles, in and out, avoiding some things and catching at others, like men making their way in a wood, or over broken ground.

 If they believe in consubstantiation with Luther, or in the absolute predestination of individuals, with Calvin, they have very few texts to produce which, in argument, will appear even specious. And still more plainly have these religionists strong texts actually against them, whatever be their sect or persuasion. If they be Lutherans, they have to encounter St. James's declaration, that "by works a man is justified, and not by faith only;" [James ii. 24.] if Calvinists, God's solemn declaration, that "as He liveth, He willeth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should live;" if a Wesleyan, St. Paul's precept to "obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves;" [Heb. xiii. 7.] if Independents, the same Apostle's declaration concerning the Church's being "the pillar and ground of the Truth;" if Zuinglians, they have to explain how Baptism is not really and in fact connected with regeneration, considering it is always connected with it in Scripture; if Friends, why they allow women to speak in their assemblies, contrary to St. Paul's plain prohibition; if Erastians, why they forget our Saviour's plain declaration, that His kingdom is not of this world; if maintainers of the ordinary secular Christianity, what they make of the woe denounced against riches, and the praise bestowed on celibacy. Hence, none of these sects and persuasions has any right to ask the question of which they are so fond, "Where in the Bible are the Church doctrines to be found? Where in Scripture, for instance, is Apostolical Succession, or the Christian Priesthood, or the power of Absolution?" This is with them a favourite mode of dealing with us; and I in return ask them, Where are we told that the Bible contains all that is necessary to salvation? Where are we told that the New Testament is inspired? Where are we told that justification is by faith only? Where are we told that every individual who is elected is saved? Where are we told that we may leave the Church, if we think its ministers do not preach the Gospel? or, Where are we told that we may make ministers for ourselves?

 All Protestants, then, in this country, Churchmen, Presbyterians, Baptists, Arminians, Calvinists, Lutherans, Friends, Independents, Wesleyans, Unitarians, and whatever other sect claims the Protestant name, all who consider the Bible as the one standard of faith, and much more if they think it the standard of morals and discipline too, are more or less in this difficulty, the more so, the larger they consider the contents of Revelation to be, and the less, the scantier they consider them; but they cannot escape from the difficulty altogether, except by falling back into utter scepticism and latitudinarianism, or, on the other hand, by going on to Rome. Nor does it rid them of their difficulties, as I have said more than once, to allege, that all points that are beyond clear Scripture proof are the mere peculiarities of each sect; so that if all Protestants were to agree to put out of sight their respective peculiarities, they would then have a Creed set forth distinctly, clearly, and adequately, in Scripture. For take that single instance, which I have referred to in a former Lecture, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Is this to be considered as a mere peculiarity or no? Apparently a peculiarity; for on the one hand it is not held by all Protestants, and next, it is not brought out in form in Scripture. First, the word Trinity is not in Scripture. Next I ask, How many of the verses of the Athanasian Creed are distinctly set down in Scripture? and further, take particular portions of the doctrine, viz., that Christ is co-eternal with the Father, that the Holy Ghost is God, or that the Holy Ghost proceedeth from the Father and the Son, and consider the kind of texts and the modes of using them, by which the proof is built up. Yet is there a more sacred, a more vital doctrine in the circle of the articles of faith than that of the Holy Trinity? Let no one then take refuge and comfort in the idea that he will be what is commonly called an orthodox Protestant, I mean, that he will be just this and no more; that he will admit the doctrine of the Trinity, but not that of the Apostolic Succession, of the Atonement, but not of the Eucharist, of the influences of grace, but not of Baptism. This is an impossible position: it is shutting one eye, and looking with the other. Shut both or open both. Deny that there is any necessary doctrine in Scripture, or consent to infer indirectly from Scripture what you at present disbelieve.

 2.

 The whole argument, however, depends of course on the certainty of the fact assumed, viz., that Scripture is unsystematic and uncertain in its communications to the extent to which I have supposed it to be. To this point, therefore, I shall, in the Lectures which follow, direct attention. Here, however, I shall confine myself to a brief argument with a view of showing that under the circumstances the fact must be so. I observe, then, as follows:

 In what way inspiration is compatible with that personal agency on the part of its instruments, which the composition of the Bible evidences, we know not; but if anything is certain, it is this, that, though the Bible is inspired, and therefore, in one sense, written by God, yet very large portions of it, if not far the greater part of it, are written in as free and unconstrained a manner, and (apparently) with as little apparent consciousness of a supernatural dictation or restraint, on the part of His earthly instruments, as if He had had no share in the work. As God rules the will, yet the will is free, as He rules the course of the world, yet men conduct it, so He has inspired the Bible, yet men have written it. Whatever else is true about it, this is true, that we may speak of the history or the mode of its composition, as truly as of that of other books; we may speak of its writers having an object in view, being influenced by circumstances, being anxious, taking pains, purposely omitting or introducing matters, leaving things incomplete, or supplying what others had so left. Though the Bible be inspired, it has all such characteristics as might attach to a book uninspired, the characteristics of dialect and style, the distinct effects of times and places, youth and age, of moral and intellectual character; and I insist on this, lest in what I am going to say, I seem to forget (what I do not forget), that in spite of its human form, it has in it the Spirit and the Mind of God.

 I observe, then, that Scripture is not one book; it is a great number of writings, of various persons, living at different times, put together into one, and assuming its existing form as if casually and by accident. It is as if you were to seize the papers or correspondence of leading men in any school of philosophy or science, which were never designed for publication, and bring them out in one volume. You would find probably in the collection so resulting many papers begun and not finished; some parts systematic and didactic, but the greater part made up of hints or of notices which assume first principles instead of asserting them, or of discussions upon particular points which happened to require their attention. I say the doctrines, the first principles, the rules, the objects of the school, would be taken for granted, alluded to, implied, not directly stated. You would have some trouble to get at them; you would have many repetitions, many hiatuses, many things which looked like contradictions; you would have to work your way through heterogeneous materials, and, after your best efforts, there would be much hopelessly obscure; and, on the other hand, you might look in vain in such a casual collection for some particular opinions which the writers were known nevertheless to have held, nay to have insisted on.

 Such, I conceive, with limitations presently to be noticed, is the structure of the Bible. Parts, indeed, are more regular than others; parts of the Pentateuch form a regular history. The book of Job is a regular narrative; some Prophecies are regular, one or two Epistles; but even these portions are for the most part incorporated in or with writings which are not regular in their form or complete; and we never can be sure beforehand what we shall find in them, or what we shall not find. They are the writings of men who had already been introduced into a knowledge of the unseen world and the society of Angels, and who reported what they had seen and heard; and they are full of allusions to a system, a course of things, which was ever before their minds, which they felt both too awful and too familiar to them to be described minutely, which we do not know, and which these allusions, such as they are, but partially disclose to us. Try to make out the history of Rome from the extant letters of some of its great politicians, and from the fragments of ancient annals, histories, laws, inscriptions, and medals, and you will have something like the state of the case, viewed antecedently, as regards the structure of the Bible, and the task of deducing the true system of religion from it.

 This being, as I conceive, really the state of the case in substance, I own it seems to me, judging antecedently, very improbable indeed, that it should contain the whole of the Revealed Word of God. I own that in my own mind, at first sight, I am naturally led to look not only there, but elsewhere, for notices of sacred truth; and I consider that they who say that the Bible does contain the whole Revelation (as I do say myself), that they and I, that we, have what is called the onus probandi, the burden and duty of proving the point, on our side. Till we prove that Scripture does contain the whole Revealed Truth, it is natural, from its prima facie appearance, to suppose that it does not. Why, for instance, should a certain number of letters, more or less private, written by St. Paul and others to particular persons or bodies, contain the whole of what the Holy Spirit taught them? We do not look into Scripture for a complete history of the secular matters which it mentions; why should we look for a complete account of religious truth? You will say that its writers wrote in order to communicate religious truth; true, but not all religious truth: that is the point. They did not sit down with a design to commit to paper all they had to say on the whole subject, all they could say about the Gospel, "the whole counsel of God"; but they either wrote to correct some particular error of a particular time or place, or to "stir up the pure minds" of their brethren, or in answer to questions, or to give direction for conduct, or on indifferent matters. For instance, St. Luke says he wrote his Gospel that Christians might know "the certainty of the things in which they had been instructed." Does this imply he told all that was to be told? Anyhow he did not ; for the other Evangelists add to his narrative. It is then far from being a self-evident truth that Scripture must contain all the revealed counsel of God; rather, the probability at first sight lies the other way.

 Nevertheless, at least as regards matters of faith, it does (as we in common with all Protestants hold) contain all that is necessary for salvation; it has been overruled to do so by Him who inspired it. By parallel acts of power, He both secretly inspired the books, and secretly formed them into a perfect rule or canon. I shall not prove what we all admit, but I state it, to prevent misapprehension. If asked how we know this to be the case, I answer, that the early Church thought so, and the early Church must have known. And, if this answer does not please the inquirer, he may look out for a better as he can. I know of no other. I require no other. For our own Church it is enough, as the Homilies show. It is enough that Scripture has been overruled to contain the whole Christian faith, and that the early Church so taught, though the form of Scripture at first sight might lead to an opposite conclusion. And this being once proved, we see in this state of things an analogy to God's providence in other cases. How confused is the course of the world, yet it is the working out of a moral system, and is overruled in every point by God's will! Or, take the structure of the earth; mankind are placed in fertile and good dwelling-places, with hills and valleys, springs and fruitful fields, with metals and marbles, and coal, and other minerals, with seas and forests; yet this beautiful and fully-furnished surface is the result of (humanly speaking) a series of accidents, of gradual influences and sudden convulsions, of a long history of change and chance.

 3.

 Yet while we admit, or rather maintain, that the Bible is the one standard of faith, there is no reason why we should suppose the overruling hand of God to go further than we are told that it has gone. That He has overruled matters so far as to make the apparently casual writings of the Apostles a complete canon of saving faith, is no reason why He should have given them a systematic structure, or a didactic form, or a completeness in their subject-matter. So far as we have no positive proof that the Bible is more than at first sight it seems to be, so far the antecedent probability, which I have been insisting on, tells against its being more. Both the history of its composition and its internal structure are opposed to the notion of its being a complete depository of the Divine Will, unless the early Church says that it is. Now the early Church does not tell us this. It does not seem to have considered that a complete code of morals, or of Church government, or of rites, or of discipline, is in Scripture; and therefore so far the original improbability remains in force. Again, this antecedent improbability tells, even in the case of the doctrines of faith, as far as this, viz., it reconciles us to the necessity of gaining them only indirectly from Scripture, for it is a near thing (if I may so speak) that they are in Scripture at all; the wonder is, that they are all there; humanly judging, they would not be there but for divine interposition; and, therefore, since they are there by a sort of accident, it is not strange they are there only in an implicit shape, and only indirectly producible thence. Providence effects His greatest ends by apparent accidents. As in respect to this earth, we do not find minerals or plants arranged within it as in a cabinet as we do not find the materials for building laid out in order, stone, timber, and iron as metal is found in ore, and timber on the tree, so we must not be surprised, but think it great gain, if we find revealed doctrines scattered about high and low in Scripture, in places expected and unexpected. It could not be otherwise, the same circumstances being supposed. Supposing fire, water, and certain chemical and electrical agents in free operation, the earth's precious contents could not be found arranged in order and in the light of day without a miracle; and so without a miracle (which we are nowhere told to expect) we could not possibly find in Scripture all sacred truths in their place, each set forth clearly and fully, with its suitable prominence, its varied bearings, its developed meaning, supposing Scripture to be, what it is, the work of various independent minds in various times and places, and under various circumstances. And so much on what might reasonably be expected from the nature of the case.

 Lecture 4. Structure of the Bible in matter of fact

 I HAVE above insisted much upon this point, that if Scripture contains any religious system at all, it must contain it covertly, and teach it obscurely, because it is altogether most immethodical and irregular in its structure; and therefore, that the indirectness of the Scripture proofs of the Catholic system is not an objection to its cogency, except as it is an objection to the Scripture proofs of every other form of Christianity; and accordingly that we must take our choice (Romanism being for the time put aside) between utter Latitudinarianism and what may be called the Method of Inferences. Now this argument depends evidently on the fact, that Scripture is thus unsystematic in its structure a fact which it would not be necessary to dwell upon, so obvious is it, except that examining into it will be found to give us a much more vivid apprehension of it, and to throw light upon the whole subject of Scripture teaching. Something accordingly, I have just been observing about it from antecedent probability, and now I proceed, at some length, to inquire into the matter of fact.

 I shall refer to Scripture as a record both of historical events and of general doctrine, with a view of exhibiting the peculiar character of its structure, the unostentatious, indirect, or covert manner, which it adopts, for whatever reason, in its statements of whatever kind. This, I say, will throw light on the subject in hand; for so it is, as soon as we come to see that anything, which has already attracted our notice in one way, holds good in others, that there is a certain law, according to which it occurs uniformly under various circumstances, we gain a satisfaction from that very coincidence, and seem to find a reason for it in the very circumstance that it does proceed on a rule or law. Even in matters of conduct, with which an external and invariable standard might seem to interfere, the avowal, "It is my way," "I always do so," is often given and accepted as a satisfactory account of a person's mode of acting. Order implies a principle; order in God's Written Word implies a principle or design in it. If I show that the Bible is written throughout with this absence of method, I seem to find an order in the very disorder, and hence become reconciled to it in particular instances. That it is inartificial and obscure as regards the relation of facts, has the effect of explaining its being obscure in statement of doctrines; that it is so as regards one set of doctrines, seems naturally to account for its being so as regards another. Thus, the argument from analogy, which starts with the profession of being only of a negative character, ends with being positive, when drawn out into details; such being the difference between its abstract pretension and its actual and practical force.

 First I propose to mention some instances of the unstudied and therefore perplexed character of Scripture, as regards its relation of facts ; and to apply them, as I go, to the point under discussion, viz., the objection brought against the Church doctrines from the mode in which they too are stated in Scripture; and I shall begin without further preface.

 1.

 An illustration occurs in the very beginning of the Bible. However we account for it, with which I am not concerned, you will find that the narrative of the Creation, commenced in the first chapter, ends at the third verse of the second chapter; and then begins a fresh narrative, carrying on the former, but going back a little way. The difference is marked, as is well known, by the use of the word "God" in the former narrative, and of "Lord God" in the latter. According to the former, God is said to create man "in His own image; male and female created He them" on the sixth day. According to the latter, the Lord God created Adam, and placed him in the garden of Eden, to dress and keep it, and gave him the command about the forbidden fruit, and brought the beasts to him; and afterwards, on his finding the want of a helpmeet, caused him to sleep, and took one of his ribs, and thence made woman. This is an instance of the unsolicitous freedom and want of system of the sacred narrative. The second account, which is an expansion of the first, is in the letter opposed to it. Now supposing the narrative contained in the second chapter was not in Scripture, but was the received Church account of man's creation, it is plain not only would it not be in, but it could not even be gathered or proved from the first chapter; which makes the argument all the stronger. Evidently not a pretence could be made of proving from the first chapter the account of the dressing the garden, the naming the brutes, the sleep, and the creation of Eve from a rib. And most persons in this day would certainly have disbelieved it. Why? Because it wanted authority ? No. There would be some sense in such a line of argument, but they would not go into the question of authority. Whether or not it had Catholic tradition in its favour, whether Catholic tradition were or were not a sufficient guarantee of its truth, would not even enter into their minds; they would not go so far, they would disbelieve it at once on two grounds: first, they would say Scripture was silent about it, nay, that it contradicted it, that it spoke of man and woman being created both together on the sixth day; and, secondly, they would say it was incongruous and highly improbable, and that the account of Adam's rib sounded like an idle tradition. If (I say) they were to set it aside for want of evidence of its truth, that would be a fair ground; but I repeat, their reason for setting it aside (can it be doubted?) would be, that it was inconsistent with Scripture in actual statement, and unlike it in tone. But it is in Scripture. It seems then that a statement may seem at variance with a certain passage of Scripture, may bear an improbable exterior, and yet come from God. Is it so strange then, so contrary to the Scripture account of the institution, that the Lord's Supper should also be a Sacrifice, when it is no interference at all with the truth of the first chapter of Genesis, that the second chapter also should be true? No one ever professed to deduce the second chapter from the first: all Anglo-Catholics profess to prove the sacrificial character of the Lord's Supper from Scripture. Thus the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist is not unscriptural, unless the book of Genesis is (what is impossible, God forbid the thought!) self-contradictory.

 Again, take the following account, in the beginning of the fifth chapter of Genesis, and say whether, if this passage only had come down to us, and not the chapters before it, we should not, with our present notions, have utterly disallowed any traditional account of Eve's creation, the temptation, the fall, and the history of Cain and Abel: "This is the book of the generation of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God created He him; male and female created He them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created. And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image, and called his name Seth." If the contrast between God's likeness and Adam's image be insisted on as intentional, then I would have it observed, how indirect and concealed that allusion is.

 Again: I believe I am right in saying that we are nowhere told in Scripture, certainly not in the Old Testament, that the Serpent that tempted Eve was the Devil. The nearest approach to an intimation of it is the last book of the Bible, where the devil is called "that old serpent." Can we be surprised that other truths are but obscurely conveyed in Scripture, when this hardly escapes (as I may say) omission?

 Again: we have two accounts of Abraham's denying his wife; also, one instance of Isaac being betrayed into the same weakness. Now supposing we had only one or two of these in Scripture, and the others by tradition, would we not have utterly rejected these others as perversions and untrustworthy? On the one hand, we should have said it was inconceivable that two such passages should occur in Abraham's life; or, on the other, that it was most unlikely that both Abraham and Isaac should have gone to Gerar, in the time of a king of the same name, Abimelech. Yet because St. James says, "Confess your faults one to another," if we read that in the early Church there was an usage of secret confession made to the priest, we are apt to consider this latter practice, which our Communion Service recognizes, as a mere perversion or corruption of the Scripture command, and that the words of St. James are a positive argument against it.

 In Deuteronomy we read that Moses fasted for forty days in the Mount, twice; in Exodus only one fast is mentioned. Now supposing Deuteronomy were not Scripture, but merely part of the Prayer Book, should we not say the latter was in this instance evidently mistaken? This is what men do as regards Episcopacy. Deacons are spoken of by St. Paul in his Epistles to Timothy and Titus, and Bishops; but no third order in direct and express terms. The Church considers that there are two kinds of Bishops, or, as the word signifies, overseers; those who have the oversight of single parishes, or priests, and those who have the oversight of many together, or what are now specially called Bishops. People say, "Here is a contradiction to Scripture, which speaks of two orders, not of three." Yes, just as real a contradiction, as the chapter in Deuteronomy is a contradiction of the chapter in Exodus. But this again is to take far lower ground than we need; for we all contend that the doctrine of Episcopacy, even granting it goes beyond the teaching of some passages of Scripture, yet is in exact accordance with others.

 Again: in the history of Balaam we read, "God came unto Balaam at night, and said unto him, If the men come to call thee, rise up and go with them, but yet the word which I shall say unto thee, that shalt thou speak." [Numb. xxii. 20.] Presently we read, "And God's anger was kindled, because he went; and the Angel of the Lord stood in the way for an adversary against him." Now supposing the former circumstance (the permission given him to go) was not in Scripture, but was only the received belief of the Church, would it not be at once rejected by most men as inconsistent with Scripture? And supposing a Churchman were to entreat objectors to consider the strong evidence in Catholic tradition for its truth, would not the answer be, "Do not tell us of evidence; we cannot give you a hearing; your statement is in plain contradiction to the inspired text, which says that God's anger was kindled. How then can He have told Balaam to go with the men? The matter stands to reason; we leave it to the private judgment of any unbiassed person. Sophistry indeed may try to reconcile the tradition with Scripture; but after all you are unscriptural, and we uphold the pure word of truth without glosses and refinements." Now, is not this just what is done in matters of doctrine? Thus, because our Lord represents the Father saying, in the parable of the Prodigal Son, "Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet," [Luke xv. 22.] it is argued that this is inconsistent with the Church's usage (even supposing for argument's sake it has no Scripture sanction) of doing penance for sin.

 Again: the book of Deuteronomy, being a recapitulation of the foregoing Books, in an address to the Israelites, is in the position of the Apostolic Epistles. Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, being a very orderly and systematic account of events, are somewhat in the position of Catholic tradition. Now Deuteronomy differs in some minute points from the former books. For example: in Exodus, the fourth commandment contains a reference to the creation of the world on the seventh day, as the reason of the institution of the Sabbath: in Deuteronomy, the same commandment refers it to the deliverance of the Israelites out of Egypt on that day. Supposing we had only the latter statement in Scripture, and supposing the former to be only the received doctrine of the Church, would not this former, that is, the statement contained in Exodus, that the Sabbatical rest was in memory of God's resting after the Creation, have seemed at once fanciful and unfounded? Would it not have been said, "Why do you have recourse to the mysticism of types? here is a plain intelligible reason for keeping the Sabbath holy, viz., the deliverance from Egypt. Be content with this: besides, your view is grossly carnal and anthropomorphic. How can Almighty God be said to rest? And it is unscriptural; for Christ says, 'My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.'" Now is it not a similar procedure to argue, that since the Holy Eucharist is a "communication of the body and blood of Christ," therefore it is not also a mysterious representation of His meritorious Sacrifice in the sight of Almighty God?

 2.

 Let us proceed to the history of the Monarchy, as contained in the Books of Samuel and Kings, and compare them with the Chronicles. Out of many instances in point, I will select a few. For instance:

 In 2 Kings xv. we read of the reign of Azariah, or Uzziah, king of Judah. It is said, "he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his father Amaziah had done;" and then that "the Lord smote the king, so that he was a leper unto the day of his death;" and we are referred for "the rest of the acts of Azariah, and all that he did," to "the book of the Chronicles of the kings of Judah." We turn to the Chronicles, and find an account of the cause of the visitation which came upon him. "When he was strong, his heart was lifted up to his destruction; for he transgressed against the Lord his God, and went into the temple of the Lord to burn incense upon the altar of incense. And Azariah the priest went in after him, and with him four-score priests of the Lord that were valiant men. And they withstood Uzziah the king, and said unto him, It appertaineth not unto thee, Uzziah, to burn incense unto the Lord, but to the priests, the sons of Aaron, that are consecrated to burn incense: go out of the sanctuary, for thou hast trespassed; neither shall it be for thine honour from the Lord God. Then Uzziah was wroth, and had a censer in his hand to burn incense; and while he was wroth with the priests, the leprosy even rose up in his forehead, before the priests in the house of the Lord, from beside the incense altar. And Azariah, the chief priest, and all the priests, looked upon him, and behold he was leprous in his forehead, and they thrust him out from thence; yea, himself hasted also to go out because the Lord had smitten him. And Uzziah the king was a leper unto the day of his death, and dwelt in a several house, being a leper." [2 Chron. xxvi. 16-21.]

 Now nothing can be more natural than this joint narrative. The one is brief, but refers to the other for the details; and the other gives them. Suppose, then, a captious mind were to dwell upon the remarkable silence of the former narrative, magnify it as an objection, and on the other hand should allude to the tendency of the second narrative to uphold the priesthood, and should attribute it to such a design. Should we think such an argument valid, or merely ingenious, clever, amusing, yet not trustworthy? I suppose the latter; yet this instance is very near a parallel to the case as it stands, between the New Testament and the doctrine of the Church. For instance, after St. Paul has declared some plain truths to the Corinthians, he says, "Be ye followers of me: for this cause have I sent unto you Timotheus, who is my beloved son, and faithful in the Lord, who shall bring you into remembrance of my ways, which be in Christ, as I teach everywhere in every Church." [1 Cor. iv. 17.] He refers them to an authority beyond and beside his epistle, to Timothy, nay to his doctrine as he had taught in every Church. If then we can ascertain, for that I here assume, what was that doctrine taught everywhere in the Church, we have ascertained that to which St. Paul refers us; and if that doctrine, so ascertained, adds many things in detail to what he has written, develops one thing, and gives a different impression of others, it is no more than such a reference might lead us to expect, it is the very thing he prepares us for. It as little, therefore, contradicts what is written, as the books of Chronicles contradict the books of Kings; and if it appears to favour the priesthood more than St. Paul does, this is no more than can be objected to the Chronicles compared with the Kings.

 Again, after, not teaching, but reminding them about the Lord's Supper, he adds, " the rest will I set in order when I come." When then we find the Church has always considered that Holy Sacrament to be not only a feast or supper, but in its fulness to contain a sacrifice, and to require a certain liturgical form, how does this contradict the inspired text, which plainly signifies that something else is to come besides what it has said itself? So far from its being strange that the Church brings out and fills up St. Paul's outline, it would be very strange if it did not. Yet it is not unusual to ascribe these additional details to priestcraft, and without proof to call them corruptions and innovations, in the very spirit in which freethinkers have before now attributed the books of Chronicles to the Jewish priests, and accused them of bigotry and intolerance.

 It is remarkable how frequent are the allusions in the Epistles to other Apostolic teaching beyond themselves, that is, besides the written authority. For instance; in the same chapter, "I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the traditions, as I delivered them to you." Again, "I have also received," or had by tradition, "of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you," that is, which I gave by tradition unto you. This giving and receiving was not in writing. Again, "If any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God:" he appeals to the received custom of the Church. Again, "I declare unto you the Gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand, and for I delivered unto you (gave by tradition) first of all that which I also received" (by tradition). Again, "Stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word or our epistle." [1 Cor. xi. 2, 16, 23; xv. 1-3; 1 Thess. ii. 15.] Such passages prove, as all will grant, that at the time there were means of gaining knowledge distinct from Scripture, and sources of information in addition to it. When, then, we actually do find in the existing Church system of those times, as historically recorded, such additional information, that information may be Apostolic or it may be not; but however this is, the mere circumstance that it is in addition, is no proof against its being Apostolic; that it is extra-scriptural is no proof that it is unscriptural, for St. Paul himself tells us in Scripture, that there are truths not in Scripture, and we may as fairly object to the books of Chronicles, that they are an addition to the books of Kings. In saying this, I am not entering into the question which lies between us and the Romanists, whether these further truths are substantive additions or simply developments, whether in faith or in conduct and discipline.

 Further: the Chronicles pass over David's great sin, and Solomon's fall; and they insert Manasseh's repentance. The account of Manasseh's reign is given at length in the second book of Kings; it is too long of course to cite, but the following are some of its particulars. Manasseh [2 Kings xxi.] "used enchantments and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards;" he "seduced them to do more evil than did the nations whom the Lord destroyed before the children of Israel." "Moreover Manasseh shed innocent blood very much, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another." Afterwards, when Josiah had made his reforms, the sacred writer adds [2 Kings xxiii. 26.], "Notwithstanding the Lord turned from the fierceness of His great wrath, wherewith His anger was kindled against Judah, because of all the provocations that Manasseh had provoked him withal." And again in Jehoiakim's time [2 Kings xxiv. 3, 4.], "Surely, at the commandment of the Lord came this upon Judah, to remove them out of His sight for the sins of Manasseh, according to all that he did; and also for the innocent blood, that he shed; for he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, which the Lord would not pardon ." And again in the book of Jeremiah [Jer. xv. 4.], "I will cause them to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth, because of Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, for that which he did in Jerusalem." Who would conjecture, with such passages of Scripture before him, that Manasseh repented before his death, and was forgiven? but to complete the illusion (as it may be called), the account of his reign in the book of Kings ends thus [2 Kings xxi.]: "Now the rest of the acts of Manasseh, and all that he did, and his sin that he sinned, are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the kings of Judah?" not a word about his repentance. Might it not then be plausibly argued that the books of Kings precisely limited and defined what the Chronicles were to relate, " the sin that he sinned ;" that this was to be the theme of the history, its outline and ground plan, and that the absolute silence of the books of Kings about his repentance was a cogent, positive argument that he did not repent? How little do they prepare one for the following most touching record of him: "When he was in affliction, he besought the Lord his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers, and prayed unto Him. And He was entreated of him, and heard his supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord He was God ... And he took away the strange gods, and the idol out of the house of the Lord, and the altars that he had built in the mount of the house of the Lord, and in Jerusalem, and cast them out of the city," etc. ... "Now the rest of the acts of Manasseh, and his prayer unto his God, and the words of the seers that spake to him in the name of the Lord God of Israel, behold they are written in the book of the kings of Israel ... So Manasseh slept with his fathers." [2 Chron. xxxiii. 12-20.] If then the books of Kings were the only canonical account, and the book of Chronicles part of the Apocrypha, would not the latter be pronounced an unscriptural record, a legend and a tradition of men, not because the evidence for their truth was insufficient, but on the allegation that they contradicted the books of Kings? at least, is not this what is done as regards the Church system of doctrine, as if it must be at variance with the New Testament, because it views the Gospel from a somewhat distinct point of view, and in a distinct light?

 Again; the account given of Jehoash in the Kings is as follows [2 Kings xii.]: "Jehoash did that which was right in the sight of the Lord all his days, wherein Jehoiada the priest instructed him." And it ends thus: "His servants arose and made a conspiracy, and slew Joash in the house of Millo:" there is no hint of any great defection or miserable ingratitude on his part, though, as it turns out on referring to Chronicles, the words "all his days, wherein," etc., are significant. In the Chronicles we learn that after good Jehoiada's death, whose wife had saved him from Athaliah, and who preserved for him his throne, he went and served groves and idols, and killed Zechariah the son of Jehoiada, when he was raised up by the Spirit of God to protest. Judgments followed, the Syrians, and then "great diseases," and then assassination. Now, if the apparently simple words, "all the days wherein," etc., are emphatic, why may not our Saviour's words, "If thou bring thy gifts to the altar," be emphatic, or "If thou wouldst be perfect," suggest a doctrine which it does not exhibit?

 3.

 Now let us proceed to the Gospels; a few instances must suffice.

 Considering how great a miracle the raising of Lazarus is in itself, and how connected with our Lord's death, how is it that the three first Gospels do not mention it? They speak of the chief priests taking counsel to put Him to death, but they give no reason; rather they seem to assign other reasons, for instance, the parables He spoke against them [Matt. xxi. 45.]. At length St. John mentions the miracle and its consequences. Things important then may be true, though particular inspired documents do not mention them. As the raising of Lazarus is true, though not contained at all in the first three Gospels, so the gift of consecrating the Eucharist may have been committed by Christ to the priesthood, though this is only indirectly stated in any of the four. Will you say I am arguing against our own Church, which says that Scripture "contains all things necessary to be believed to salvation"? Doubtless, Scripture contains all things necessary to be believed ; but there may be things contained in it, which are not on the surface, and things which belong to the ritual and not to belief . Points of faith may lie under the surface, points of observance need not be in Scripture at all . The rule for consecrating is a point of ritual; yet it is indirectly taught in Scripture, though not brought out, when Christ said, "Do this," for He spoke to the Apostles who were priests, not to His disciples generally.

 Again: I just now mentioned the apparent repetition in Genesis of the account of Abraham's denying his wife; a remark which applies to the parallel miracles which occur in the histories of Elijah and Elisha, as the raising of the dead child and the multiplication of the oil. Were only the first of these parallel instances in Scripture, and the second in tradition, we should call the second a corruption or distorted account; and not without some plausibility, till other and contrary reasons were brought. And in like manner, as regards the Gospels, did the account of the feeding of the 4,000 with seven loaves rest on the testimony of Antiquity, most of us would have said, "You see how little you can trust the Fathers; it was not 4,000 with seven loaves, but 5,000 with five." Again, should we not have pronounced that the discourses in Luke vi., xi., and xii., if they came to us through the Fathers, were the same, only in a corrupt form, as the Sermon on the Mount in Matt. v.-vii. and as chapter xxiii.? Nay, we should have seized on Luke xi. 41, "But rather give alms of such things as ye have, and behold all things are clean unto you," as a symptom of incipient Popery, a mystery already working. Yes, our Saviour's own sacred words (I fear too truly) would have been seized on by some of us as the signs of the dawn of Antichrist. This is a most miserable thought.

 Again: St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke say, that Simon of Cyrene bore Christ's cross; St. John, that Christ Himself bore it. Both might be true, and both of course were true. He bore it part of the way, and Simon part. Yet I conceive, did we find it was the tradition of the Church that Simon bore it, we should decide, without going into the evidence, that this was a gloss upon the pure scriptural statement. So, in like manner, even supposing that, when St. Paul says, "Ye do shew forth the Lord's death till He come," he meant, which I do not grant, by "shew forth," preach, remind each other of, or commemorate among yourselves, and nothing more, (which I repeat I do not grant,) even then it may be that the Holy Eucharist is also a remembrance in God's sight, a pleading before Him the merits of Christ's death, and, so far, a propitiatory offering, even though this view of it were only contained in the immemorial usage of the Church, and were no point of necessary faith contained in Scripture.

 Again: Judas is represented as hanging himself in St. Matthew, yet in the Acts as falling headlong, and his bowels gushing out. I do not mean to say, of course, that these accounts are irreconcilable even by us; but they certainly differ from each other: do not they differ as much as the explicit Scripture statement that Confirmation imparts miraculous gifts, differs from the Church view, not clearly brought out in Scripture, that it is also an ordinary rite conferring ordinary gifts?

 We know how difficult it is to reconcile the distinct accounts of the occurrences which took place at the Resurrection with each other, and our Lord's appearances to His disciples. For instance: according to Matt. xxviii., it might seem that Christ did not appear to His disciples, till He met them on the mountain in Galilee; but in St. Luke and St. John His first appearance was on the evening of the day of Resurrection. Again: in the Gospel according to St. Mark and St. Luke, the Ascension seems to follow immediately on the Resurrection; but in the Acts our Lord is declared to have shown Himself to His disciples for forty days. These forty days are a blank in two Gospels. And in like manner, even though Scripture be considered to be altogether silent as to the intermediate state, and to pass from the mention of death to that of the Judgment, there is nothing in this circumstance to disprove the Church's doctrine, (if there be other grounds for it,) that there is an intermediate state, and that it has an important place in the scheme of salvation, that in it the souls of the faithful are purified and grow in grace, that they pray for us, and that our prayers benefit them.

 Moreover, there is on the face of the New Testament plain evidence, that often the sacred writers are but referring to the circumstances it relates, as known, and not narrating them. Thus St. Luke, after describing our Lord's consecration of the bread at supper time, adds immediately, " Likewise also the cup after supper, saying," etc. [Luke xxii. 20.]; he does not narrate it in its place; he does but allude to it as a thing well known, in the way of a note or memorandum. Again: St. Mark, in giving an account of St. John Baptist's martyrdom, says, "When his disciples heard of it, they came and took up his corpse and laid it in the tomb." [Mark vi. 29. [n.]] He is evidently speaking of an occurrence, and of a tomb, which were well known to those for whom he wrote. If historical facts be thus merely alluded to, not taught, why may not doctrines also? Here again it will be replied, that Scripture was written to teach doctrine, not history; but such an answer will not hold good for many reasons. First, is it true that the Gospels were not written to teach us the facts of Christ's life? Next, is it true that the account of the institution of the Lord's Supper is a mere abstract historical narrative, and not recorded to direct our practice? Further, where is the proof that Scripture was intended to teach doctrine? This is one of the main points in dispute. But enough in answer to a gratuitous proposition; and enough indeed in exemplification of the characteristic of Scripture, which I proposed to consider.

 Note

 [In the revised Version of 1881, it is translated "in a tomb;" but [ mnemeion ] is more than a tomb, it implies a place of remembrance.]  

 Lecture 5. The Impression made on the Reader by the Statements of Scripture

 THE characteristics then, of the narrative portion of Scripture are such as I have described; it is unsystematic and unstudied; from which I would infer, that as Scripture relates facts without aiming at completeness or consistency, so it relates doctrines also; so that, if it does after all include in its teaching the whole Catholic Creed, (as we of the English Church hold,) this does not happen from any purpose in its writers so to do, but from the overruling providence of God, overruling just so far as this: to secure a certain result, not a certain mode of attaining it, not so as to interfere with their free and natural manner of writing, but by imperceptibly guiding it; in other words, not securing their teaching against indirectness and disorder, but against eventual incompleteness. From which it follows, that we must not be surprised to find in Scripture doctrines of the Gospel, however momentous, nevertheless taught obliquely, and capable only of circuitous proof; such, for instance, as that of the Blessed Trinity, and, among them, the especial Church doctrines, such as the Apostolical Succession, the efficacy of the Holy Eucharist, and the essentials of the Ritual.

 The argument, stated in a few words, stands thus: Since distinct portions of Scripture itself are apparently inconsistent with one another, yet are not really so, therefore it does not follow that Scripture and Catholic doctrine are at variance with each other, even though there may be sometimes a difficulty in adjusting the one with the other.

 Now I propose to go over the ground again in somewhat a different way, not confining myself to illustrations from Scripture narrative, but taking others from Scripture teaching also, and that with a view of answering another form which the objection is likely to take.

 1.

 The objection then may be put thus: "We are told, it seems, in the Prayer Book, of a certain large and influential portion of doctrine, as constituting one great part of the Christian Revelation, that is, of Sacraments, of Ministers, of Rites, of Observances; we are told that these are the appointed means through which Christ's gifts are conveyed to us. Now when we turn to Scripture, we see much indeed of those gifts, viz., we read much of what He has done for us, by atoning for our sins, and much of what He does in us, that is, much about holiness, faith, peace, love, joy, hope, and obedience; but of those intermediate provisions of the Revelation coming in between Him and us, of which the Church speaks, we read very little. Passages, indeed, are pointed out to us as if containing notices of them, but they are in our judgment singularly deficient and unsatisfactory; and that, either because the meaning assigned to them is not obvious and natural, but (as we think) strained, unexpected, recondite, and at best but possible, or because they are conceived in such plain, unpretending words, that we cannot imagine the writers meant to say any great thing in introducing them. On the other hand, a silence is observed in certain places, where one might expect the doctrines in question to be mentioned. Moreover, the general tone of the New Testament is to our apprehension a full disproof of them; that is, it is moral, rational, elevated, impassioned, but there is nothing of what may be called a sacramental, ecclesiastical, mysterious tone in it.

 "For instance, let Acts xx. be considered: 'Upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread' who would imagine, from such a mode of speaking, that this was a solemn, mysterious rite? The words 'break bread' are quite a familiar expression.

 "Or again: 'Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us, therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.' Here, if the Church system were true, one might have expected that in mentioning 'keeping the feast,' a reference would be made to the Eucharist, as being the great feast of Christ's sacrifice; whereas, instead of the notion of any literal feast occuring to the sacred writer, a mental feast is the only one he proceeds to mention; and the unleavened bread of the Passover, instead of suggesting to his mind the sacred elements in the Eucharist, is to him but typical of something moral, 'sincerity and truth.'

 "Or again: 'Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.' [Matt. xxviii. 20.] This means, we are told, that Christ is with the present Church: for when Christ said 'with you,' He meant with you and your descendants; and the Church, at present so called, is descended from the Apostles and first disciples. How very covert, indirect, and unlikely a meaning!

 "Or, to take another instance: How is it proved that the Lord's Supper is generally necessary to salvation? By no part of Scripture except the sixth chapter of St. John. Now, suppose that a person denies that this passage belongs to that Sacrament, how shall we prove it? And is it any very strong step to deny it? Do not many most excellent men now alive deny it? have not many now dead denied it?"

 This is the objection now to be considered, which lies it would seem in this: that after considering what I have been saying about the statement of facts in Scripture, after all allowances on the score of its unstudied character, there is still a serious difficulty remaining, that the circumstance that its books were written at different times and places, by different persons, without concert, explains indeed much, explains indeed why there is no system in it, why so much is out of place, why great truths come in by-the-bye, nay, would explain why others were left out, were there any such; but it does not explain the case as it stands, it does not explain why a doctrine is not introduced when there is an actual call for it, why a sacred writer should come close up to it, as it were, and yet pass by it; why, when he does introduce it, he should mention it so obscurely, as not at all to suggest it to an ordinary reader; why, in short, the tone and character of his writing should be just contrary to his real meaning. This is the difficulty, strongly, nay almost extravagantly put, but still plausible, on which I shall now attempt some remarks.

 2.

 Now there are two attributes of the Bible throughout, which, taken together, seem to meet this difficulty, attributes which, while at first sight in contrast, have a sort of necessary connexion, and set off each other simplicity and depth. Simplicity leads a writer to say things without display; and depth obliges him to use inadequate words. Scripture then, treating of invisible things, at best must use words less than those things; and, as if from a feeling that no words can be worthy of them, it does not condescend to use even the strongest that exist, but often take the plainest. The deeper the thought, the plainer the word; the word and thought diverge from each other. Again, it is a property of depth to lead a writer into verbal contradictions; and it is a property of simplicity not to care to avoid them. Again, when a writer is deep, his half sentences, parentheses, clauses, nay his words, have a meaning in them independent of the context, and admit of exposition. There is nothing put in for ornament's sake, or for rhetoric; nothing put in for the mere sake of anything else, but all for its own sake; all as the expressions and shadows of great things, as seeds of thought, and with corresponding realities. Moreover, when a writer is deep, or again when he is simple, he does not set about exhausting his subject in his remarks upon it; he says so much as is in point, no more; he does not go out of his way to complete a view or to catch at collateral thoughts; he has something before him which he aims at, and, while he cannot help including much in his meaning which he does not aim at, he does aim at one thing, not at another. Now to illustrate these remarks, and to apply them.

 One of the most remarkable characteristics of Scripture narrative, which I suppose all readers must have noticed, is the absence of expressions by which the reader can judge whether the events recorded are presented for praise or blame. A plain bare series of facts is drawn out; and whether for imitation or warning, often cannot be decided except by the context, or by the event, or by our general notions of propriety often not at all. The bearing and drift of the narrative are not given.

 For instance, when the prophet Isaiah told Ahaz to ask a sign, he said, "I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord." Was this right or wrong?

 When Elisha said to Joash, "Smite on the ground," the king "smote thrice and stayed." What was the fault of this? We should not know it was faulty but by the event, viz., that "the man of God was wroth with him, and said, Thou shouldest have smitten five or six times." [2 Kings xiii. 18, 19.]

 What was David's sin in numbering the people? Or take the account of Moses striking the rock: "And Moses took the rod from before the Lord, as He commanded him. And Moses and Aaron gathered the congregation together before the rock, and he said unto them, Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock? And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice: and the water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their beasts also." [Numb. xx. 9-11.] I really do not think we should have discovered that there was anything wrong in this, but for the comment that follows: "Because ye believed Me not, to sanctify Me," etc.; though, of course, when we are told, we are able to point out where their fault lay.

 And in that earlier passage in the history of Moses, when his zeal led him to smite the Egyptian, we are entirely left by the sacred narrative to determine for ourselves whether his action was good or bad, or how far one, how far the other. We are left to a comment, the comment of our own judgment, external to the inspired volume.

 Or consider the account of Jeroboam's conduct from first to last in the revolt of the ten tribes; or that of the old prophet who dwelt in Samaria. Is it not plain that Scripture does not interpret itself?

 Or consider the terms in which an exceeding great impiety of Ahaz and the high priest is spoken of; and say, if we knew not the Mosaic law, or if we were not told in the beginning of the chapter what the character of Ahaz was, whether we should be able to determine, from the narrative itself, whether he was doing a right or a wrong, or an indifferent action. There is no epithet, no turn of sentence, which betrays the divine judgment of his deed. It passes in the Scripture narrative, as in God's daily providence, silently. I allude to the following passage: "And king Ahaz went to Damascus to meet Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria, and saw an altar that was at Damascus: and king Ahaz sent to Urijah the priest the fashion of the altar, and the pattern of it, according to all the workmanship thereof. And Urijah the priest built an altar according to all that king Ahaz had sent from Damascus: so Urijah the priest made it against king Ahaz came from Damascus. And when the king was come from Damascus, the king saw the altar; and the king approached to the altar, and offered thereon. And he burned his burnt-offering, and his meat-offering, and poured his drink-offering, and sprinkled the blood of his peace-offerings upon the altar. And he brought also the brasen altar, which was before the Lord, from the fore-front of the house, from between the altar and the house of the Lord, and put it on the north side of the altar. And king Ahaz commanded Urijah the priest, saying, Upon the great altar burn the morning burnt-offering ... and the brasen altar shall be for me to inquire by. Thus did Urijah the priest, according to all that king Ahaz commanded." [2 Kings xvi. 10-16.]

 Or, again, how simple and unadorned is the account of St. John Baptist's martyrdom! "Herod had laid hold of John, and bound him and put him in prison for Herodias' sake, his brother Philip's wife; for John said unto him, It is not lawful for thee to have her. And when he would have put him to death, he feared the multitude, because they counted him as a prophet. But when Herod's birthday was kept, the daughter of Herodias danced before them, and pleased Herod. Whereupon, he promised with an oath, to give her whatsoever she would ask. And she, being before instructed of her mother, said, Give me here John Baptist's head in a charger. And the king was sorry: nevertheless for the oath's sake, and them which sat with him at meat, he commanded it to be given her. And he sent, and beheaded John in the prison. And his head was brought in a charger, and given to the damsel; and she brought it to her mother. And his disciples came, and took up the body, and buried it, and went and told Jesus." [Matt. xiv.] Not a word of indignation, of lament, or of triumph! Such is the style of Scripture, singularly contrasted to the uninspired style, most beautiful but still human, of the ancient Martyrologies; for instance, that of the persecution at Lyons and Vienne.

 St. Paul's journey to Jerusalem, against the warnings of the prophets, is the last instance of this character of Scripture narrative which shall be given. The facts of it are related so nakedly, that there has been room for maintaining that he was wrong in going thither. That he was right would seem certain, from the way in which he speaks of these warnings: "Behold, I go bound in the  Spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there, save that the Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city, saying, that bonds and afflictions abide me;" [Acts xx. 22, 23.] and also from Christ's words in the vision: "Be of good cheer, Paul; for as thou hast testified of Me in Jerusalem," [Acts xxiii. 11.] etc. Yet though this be abundantly enough to convince us, nevertheless, the impression conveyed by the warning of the disciples at Tyre saying, "through the Spirit, that he should not go up to Jerusalem," [Acts xxi. 4.] and by that of Agabus at Cæsarea, and, when he got to Jerusalem, by his attempt to soften the Jews by means of a conformity to the Law, and by his strong words, seemingly retracted, to Ananias, and by his cleverly dividing the Jewish council by proclaiming himself a Pharisee, the impression, I say, conveyed by all this would in itself be (a very false one,) that there was something human in his conduct.

 3.

 Thus the style of Scripture is plain and colourless, as regards the relation of facts; so that we are continually perplexed what to think about them and about the parties concerned in them. They need a comment, they are evidently but a text for a comment, they have no comment; and as they stand, may be turned this way or that way, according to the accidental tone of mind in the reader. And often the true comment, when given us in other parts of Scripture, is startling. I think it startling at first sight that Lot, being such as he is represented to be on the whole in the Old Testament, should be called by St. Peter "a just man." I think Ehud's assassination of Eglon a startling act, the praise given to Jael for killing Sisera, startling. It is evident that the letter of the sacred history conveys to the ordinary reader a very inadequate idea of the facts recorded in it considered as bodily, substantial, and (as it were) living and breathing transactions.

 Equal simplicity is observed in the relation of great and awful events. For instance, consider the words in which is described the vision of God vouchsafed to the elders of Israel. "Then went up Moses and Aaron, and Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; and they saw the God of Israel: and there was under His feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel He laid not His hand: also they saw God, and did eat and did drink." [Exod. xxiv. 9-11.] Or consider the account of Jacob's wrestling with the Angel. Or the plain, unadorned way in which the conversations, if I may dare use the word, between Almighty God and Moses are recorded, and His gracious laments, purposes of wrath, appeasement, repentance. Or between the Almighty and Satan, in the first chapter of Job. Or how simply and abruptly the narrative runs, "And [the Serpent] said unto the woman ... and the woman said unto the serpent;" or, "And the Lord opened the mouth of the ass, and she said to Balaam ... and Balaam said unto the ass." [Numb. xxii. 28-29.] Minds familiarized to supernatural things, minds set upon definite great objects, have no disposition, no time to indulge in embellishment, or to aim at impressiveness, or to consult for the weakness or ignorance of the hearer.

 And so in like manner the words in which the celebration of the holy Eucharist is spoken of by St. Luke and St. Paul, viz., "breaking bread," are very simple: they are applicable to a common meal quite as well as to the Sacrament, and they only do not exclude, they in no respect introduce that full and awful meaning which the Church has ever put on them. "As He sat at meat with them, He took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them; and their eyes were opened." [Luke xxiv. 30, 31.] "They continued stedfastly in the breaking of bread, and in prayers." [Acts ii. 42.] "The first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread ... When he therefore was come up again and had broken bread, and eaten, and talked a long while even till break of day, so he departed." [Acts xx. 7-11.] "When he had thus spoken, he took bread, and gave thanks to God in the presence of them all; and when he had broken it, he began to eat." [Acts xxvii. 35.] "The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the Body of Christ?" [1 Cor. x. 16.] "The Lord Jesus, the same night in which He was betrayed, took bread; and when He had given thanks, He brake it." [1 Cor. xi. 23, 24.] Now no words can be simpler than these. What is remarkable is the repeated mention of the very same acts in the same order taking, blessing or giving thanks, and breaking. Certainly the constant use of the word "break" is very remarkable. For instance, in the ship, why should it be said, "And when He had thus spoken, He took bread, and gave thanks; and when He had broken it, He began to eat," since he alone ate it, and did not divide it among his fellow-passengers? But supposing the passages had been a little less frequent, so as not to attract attention by their similarity, what could be more simple than the words, what less adapted to force on the mind any high meaning? Yet these simple words, blessing, breaking, eating, giving, have a very high meaning put on them in our Prayer Book, put on them by the Church from the first; and a person may be tempted to say that the Church's meaning is not borne out by such simple words. I ask, are they more bare and colourless than the narrative of many a miraculous transaction in the Old Testament?

 Such is the plain and (as it were) unconscious way in which great things are recorded in Scripture. However, it may be objected that there is no allusion to Catholic doctrines, even where one would think there must have been, had they been in the inspired writer's mind; that is, supposing them part of the Divine Revelation. For instance, if Baptism is so indispensable for the evangelical blessings, why do we hear nothing of the baptism of the Apostles? If Ordinances are so imperative now, why does not our Lord say so, when He says, "Neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father"? That is, the tone of the New Testament is unsacramental; and the impression it leaves on the mind is not that of a Priesthood and its attendant system. This may be objected: yet I conceive that a series of Scripture parallels to this, as regards other matters, might easily be drawn out, all depending on this principle, and illustrating it in the case before us; viz., that when the sacred writers were aiming at one thing, they did not go out of their way ever so little to introduce another. The fashion of this day, indeed, is ever to speak about all religious things at once, and never to introduce one, but to introduce all, and never to maintain reserve about any; and those who are imbued with the spirit which this implies, doubtless will find it difficult to understand how the sacred writers could help speaking of what was very near their subject, when it was not their subject. Still we must submit to facts, which abundantly evidence that they could. This omission of the Sacraments in St. Paul and St. John, so far as distinct mention is omitted (for in fact they are frequently mentioned), as little proves that those Apostles were not aware and thinking of them, as St. James's Epistle is an evidence that he did not hold the doctrine of the Atonement, which is not there mentioned. Or consider how many passages there are in the history, in which some circumstance is omitted which one would expect to be inserted. For instance: St. Peter struck off the ear of Malchus when our Lord was seized. St. John gives the names; St. Matthew and St. Mark relate the occurrence without the names. This is commonly explained on the ground that St. John, writing later than his brother Evangelists, and when all parties were dead, might give the names without exposing St. Peter, if indeed he was still alive, to any civil inconveniences. True, this is an explanation so far; but what explains their omitting, and St. John omitting, our Lord's miracle in healing the ear, while St. Luke relates it? Was not this to deliver a half account? is it not what would be called unnatural, if it were a question, not of history, but of doctrine?

 4.

 Now let us review cases in which matters of doctrine, or the doctrinal tone of the composition, is in question. Is the tone of Scripture more unfavourable to the doctrine of a Priesthood than it is to the idea of Christianity, such as we have been brought up to regard it, I mean of an established, endowed, dignified Church; and, if its establishment is not inconsistent (as it is not) with the New Testament, why should its mysticalness be? Certainly, if anything is plain, it is that Scripture represents the very portion of Christians, one and all, to be tribulation, want, contempt, persecution. I do not, of course not, far from it, I do not say that the actual present state of the Church Catholic and the text of the New Testament, are not reconcilable; but is it not a fact, that the first impression from Scripture of what the Church should be, is not fulfilled in what we see around us?

 Again: I suppose another impression which would be left on an unbiassed reader by the New Testament would be, that the world was soon to come to an end. Yet it has not. As, then, we submit to facts in one case, and do not exercise our so-called right of private judgment to quarrel with our own consciousness that we do live, and that the world does still go on, why should we not submit to facts in the other instance? and if there be good proof that what the Church teaches is true, and is conformable to given texts of Scripture, in spite of this vague impression from its surface to the contrary, why should we not reconcile ourselves to the conclusion that that impression of its being opposed to a Sacramental or Priestly system is a false impression, is private and personal, or peculiar to a particular age, untrustworthy, in fact false, just as the impression of its teaching that the world was soon to come to an end is false, because it has not been fulfilled?

 Again: I suppose any one reading our Lord's discourses, would, with the Apostles, consider that the Gentiles, even if they were to be converted, yet were not to be on a level with the Jews. The impression His words convey is certainly such. But of this more presently.

 Again: it is objected that little is said in the New Testament of the danger of sin after baptism, or of the penitential exercises by which it is to be remedied. Well: supposing it for argument's sake: yet let me ask the previous question. Is there much said in the New Testament of the chance of sin after baptism at all? Are not all Christians described as if in all important respects sinless? Of course, falling away is spoken of, and excommunication; but grievous sin has no distinct habitat among those who are "called to be saints" and members of the Church in the Epistles of St. Paul and St. John. Till we examine Scripture on the subject, perhaps we have no adequate notion how little those Apostles contemplate recurring sin in the baptized. The argument then proves too much: for if silence proves anything, it will prove either that Christians who now live do not fall into gross sin, or that those who have so fallen have forfeited their Christianity.

 Again: the first three Gospels contain no declaration of our Lord's divinity, and there are passages which tend at first sight the other way. Now, is there one doctrine more than another the essential and characteristic of a Christian mind? Is it possible that the Evangelists could write any one particle of their records of His life, without having the great and solemn truth steadfastly before them, that He was their God? Yet they do not show this. It follows, that truths may be in the mind of the inspired writers, which are not discoverable to ordinary readers in the tone of their composition. I by no means deny that, now we know the doctrine, we can gather proofs of it from the three Gospels in question, and can discern in them a feeling of reverence towards our Lord, which fully implies it; but no one will say it is on the surface, and such as to strike a reader. I conceive the impression left on an ordinary mind would be, that our Saviour was a superhuman being, intimately possessed of God's confidence, but still a creature; an impression infinitely removed from the truth as really contained and intended in those Gospels.

 Again: is the tone of the Epistle of St. James the same as the tone of St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians? or that of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans as that of the same Apostle's Epistle to the Hebrews? Might they not be as plausibly put in opposition with each other, as the Church system is made contrary to Scripture?

 Again: consider what the texts are from which Calvinists are accustomed to argue, viz., such as speak of God's sovereign grace, without happening to make mention of man's responsibility. Thus: "He who has begun a good work in you will perform it unto the day of the Lord Jesus," and, "Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation," are taken as irrefragable arguments for final perseverance. If mention in Scripture of God's electing mercy need not exclude man's moral freedom, why need the stress laid in Scripture upon faith and love exclude the necessity of sacraments as instruments of grace?

 Again: if silence implies denial or ignorance of the things passed over; if nothing is the sense of Scripture but what is openly declared; if first impressions are everything, what are we to say to the Book of Canticles, which nowhere hints, (nor Scripture afterwards anywhere hints either,) that it has a spiritual meaning? Either, then, the apparent tone of passages of Scripture is not the real tone, or the Canticles is not a sacred book.

 Again: is not the apparent tone of the Prophecies concerning Christ of a similarly twofold character, as is shown by the Jewish notion that there were to be two Messiahs, one suffering and one triumphant?

 Another illustration which deserves attention, lies in the impression which David's history in the Books of Samuel conveys, compared with that derived from the Chronicles and the Psalms. I am not speaking of verbal discrepancies or difficulties to be reconciled, the subject which I have already discussed, but of the tone of the narrative, and the impression thence made upon the reader; and I think that it must be allowed that the idea which we have of David's character from the one document, is very different from that gained from the other two. In the Books of Samuel we have the picture of a monarch, bold, brave, generous, loyal, accomplished, attractive, and duly attached to the cause, and promoting the establishment, of the Mosaic law, but with apparently little permanent and consistent personal religion; his character is sullied with many sins, and clouded with many suspicions. But in the First Book of Chronicles, and in the Psalms, we are presented with the picture of a humble, tender, devotional, and deeply spiritual mind, detached from this world, and living on the thought and in the love of God. Is the impression derived from the New Testament more unfavourable to the Church system (admitting that it is unfavourable), than that of the Books of Samuel to David's personal holiness?

 5.

 I just now reserved the doctrine of the admission of the Gentiles into the Church, for separate consideration; let us now turn to it. Their call, certainly their equality with the Jews, was but covertly signified in our Lord's teaching. I think it is plainly there signified, though covertly; but, if covertly, then the state of the evidence for the Catholicity of the Christian Church will lie in the same disadvantage in the Gospels as the state of the evidence for its ritual character in the Epistles; and we may as well deny that the Church is Gentile, on the ground that our Lord but indirectly teaches it, as that it is sacramental on the ground that His Apostles indirectly teach it. It is objected that the Church system, the great Episcopal, Priestly, Sacramental system, war an after-thought, a corruption coming upon the simplicity of the primitive and Apostolic religion. The primitive religion, it is said was more simple. More simple! Did objectors never hear that there have been unbelievers who have written to prove that Christ's religion was more simple than St. Paul's that St. Paul's Epistles are a second system coming upon the three Gospels and changing their doctrine? Have we never heard that some have considered the doctrine of our Lord's Divinity to be an addition upon the "simplicity" of the Gospels? Yes: this has been the belief not only of heretics, as the Socinians, but of infidels, such as the historian Gibbon, who looked at things with less of prejudice than heretics, as having no point to maintain. I think it will be found quite as easy to maintain that the Divinity of Christ was an after-thought, brought in by the Greek Platonists and other philosophers, upon the simple and primitive creed of the Galilean fishermen, as infidels say, as that the Sacramental system came in from the same source as rationalists say. But to return to the point before us. Let it be considered whether a very plausible case might not be made out by way of proving that our Blessed Lord did not contemplate the evangelizing of the heathen at all, but that it was an after-thought, when His Apostles began to succeed, and their ambitious hopes to rise.

 If texts from the Gospels are brought to show that it was no after-thought, such as the mustard-seed, or the labourers of the vineyard, which imply the calling and conversion of the Gentiles, and the implication contained in His discourse at Nazareth concerning the miracles of Elijah and Elisha wrought upon Gentiles, and His significant acts, such as His complying with the prayer of the Canaanitish woman, and His condescension towards the centurion, and, above all, His final command to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature, "and to go teach all nations, baptizing them;" still it may be asked, Did not the Apostles hear our Lord, and what was their impression from what they heard? Is it not certain that the Apostles did not gather this command from His teaching? So far is certain: and it is certain that none of us will deny that nevertheless that command comes from Him. Well then, it is plain, that important things may be in Scripture, yet not brought out: is there then any reason why we should be more clear-sighted as regards another point of doctrine, than the Apostles were as regards this? I ask this again: Is there any reason that we, who have not heard Christ speak, should have a clearer apprehension of the meaning of His recorded discourses on a given point, than the Apostles who did? and if it be said that we have now the gift of the Holy Spirit, which the Apostles had not during our Lord's earthly ministry, then I ask again, where is there any promise that we, as individuals, should be brought by His gracious influences into the perfect truth by merely employing ourselves on the text of Scripture by ourselves? However, so far is plain, that a doctrine which we see to be plainly contained, nay necessarily presupposed, in our Lord's teaching, did not so impress itself on the Apostles.

 These thoughts deserve consideration; but what I was coming to in particular is this; I wish you to turn in your mind such texts as the following: "Ye shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem and in all Judæa and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth ." An objector would say that "the uttermost part of the earth" ought to be translated "uttermost part of the land " that is, the Holy Land. And he would give this reason to confirm it. "How very unlikely that the whole of the world, except Judæa, should be straitened up into one clause ! Jerusalem, Judæa, Samaria, mentioned distinctly, and the whole world brought under one word!" And I suppose the Apostles did at the time understand the sentence to mean only the Holy Land. Certainly they did not understand it to imply the absolute and immediate call of the Gentiles as mere Gentiles.

 You will say that such texts as Luke xxiv. 47, are decisive: "that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His Name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem." Far from it; as men nowadays argue, they would say it was not safe to rely on such texts. " Among all nations:" " into or to all nations," this need not mean more than that the Jews in those nations should be converted. The Jews were scattered about in those days; the Messiah was to collect them together. This text speaks of His doing so, according to the prophecies, wherever they were scattered. To this, the question of the populace relates, "Whither will He go that we shall not find Him? will He go unto the dispersed among the Gentiles, and teach the Gentiles" [John vi. 35.] or Greek Jews? And St. John's announcement also, that He died "not for that nation only, but that also He should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad." [John xi. 51, 52.] And St. Peter's address "to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia." And especially on the day of Pentecost, when the same Apostle addressed the Jews, devout men dwelling at Jerusalem, "out of ever nation under heaven." [Acts ii. 5.]

 Again: if the words "preach the Gospel to every creature," were insisted on, an objector might say that creature or creation does not mean all men any more than it includes all animals or all Angels, but one part of the creation, the elect, the Jews [n. 1].

 Here then are instances of that same concise and indirect mode of stating important doctrine in half sentences, or even words, which is supposed to be an objection to the peculiar Church doctrines only. For instance, it is objected that the sacred truth of the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father, is only contained in the words, "the Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father:" [John xv. 26.] the co-equality of the Son to the Father, in the phrase, "who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God," and in the Jews' inference from our Lord's words, "He said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God." [Philip. ii. 6; John v. 18.] The doctrine of original sin depends on a few implications such as this, " As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." [1 Cor. xv. 22.] And in like manner the necessity of the Holy Eucharist for salvation, upon the sixth chapter of St. John, in which the subject of Christ's flesh and blood is mentioned, but not a word expressly concerning that Sacrament, which as yet was future. So also, 1 Cor. x. 16, "The cup of blessing," etc., is almost a parenthesis: and the ministerial power of Absolution depends on our Lord's words to His Apostles, "Whosesoever sins ye remit," [John xx. 23.] etc.; and the doctrine of the Christian Altar, upon such words as, "If thou bring thy gift to the Altar," etc. Now I say all these are paralleled by the mode in which our Lord taught the call of the Gentiles: He said, "Preach the Gospel to every creature." These words need have only meant, "Bring all men to Christianity through Judaism:" make them Jews, that they may enjoy Christ's privileges, which are lodged in Judaism; teach them those rites and ceremonies, circumcision and the like, which hereto have been dead ordinances, and now are living: and so the Apostles seem to have understood them. Yet they meant much more than this; that Jews were to have no precedence of the Gentiles, but the one and the other to be on a level. It is quite plain that our Saviour must have had this truth before His mind, if we may so speak, when He said, "Preach to every creature." Yet the words did not on the surface mean all this. As then they meant more than they need have been taken to mean, so the words, "I am with you alway," or, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost," may mean much more than they need mean; and the early Church may, in God's providence, be as really intended to bring out and settle the meaning of the latter, as St. Peter at Joppa, and St. Paul on his journeys, to bring out the meaning of the former.

 To this there are other parallels. For instance: who would have conceived that the doctrine of the Resurrection of the Dead lay hid in the words, "I am the God of Abraham," etc.? Why may not the doctrines concerning the Church lie hid in repositories which certainly are less recondite? Why may not the Church herself, who is called the pillar and ground of the Truth, be the appointed interpreter of the doctrines about herself?

 Again: consider how much is contained, and how covertly, in our Saviour's words, "But ye are clean, but not all;" or in His riding on an ass, and not saying why; or in His saying "Destroy this Temple," when "He spoke of the Temple of His Body." Let it be borne in mind, that a figurative, or, what may be called a sacramental style, was the very characteristic of oriental teaching; so that it would have been a wilful disrespect in any hearer who took the words of a great prophet in their mere literal and outside sense.

 Here, too, the whole subject of prophecy might be brought in. What doctrine is more important than that of the miraculous conception of our Lord? Yet how is it declared in prophecy? Isaiah said to Ahaz, "Behold, a Virgin shall conceive, and bear a Son, and shall call His Name Immanuel." The first meaning of these words seems not at all to allude to Christ, but to an event of the day. The great Gospel doctrine is glanced at (as we may say) through this minor event.

 6.

 These remarks surely suffice on this subject, viz., to show that the impression we gain from Scripture need not be any criterion or any measure of its true and full sense; that solemn and important truths may be silently taken for granted, or alluded to in a half sentence, or spoken of indeed, yet in such unadorned language that we may fancy we see through it, and see nothing; peculiarities of Scripture which result from what is the peculiar character of its teaching, simplicity and depth. Yet even without taking into account these peculiarities, it is obvious, from what meets us daily in the course of life, how insufficient a test is the surface of any one composition, conversation, or transaction, of the full circle of opinions of its author. How different persons are, when we know them, from what they appeared to us in their writings! how many opinions do they hold, which we did not expect in them! how many practices and ways have they, how many peculiarities, how many tastes, which we did not imagine! I will give an illustration; that great philosopher, Bp. Butler, has written a book, as we know, on the Analogy of Religion. It is distinguished by a grave, profound, and severe style; and apparently is not the work of a man of lively or susceptible mind. Now we know from his history, that, when Bishop, he put up a Cross in his chapel at Bristol. Could a reader have conjectured this from that work? At first sight would it not have startled one who knew nothing of him but from that work? I do not ask whether, on consideration, he would not find it fell in with his work; of course it would, if his philosophy were consistent with itself; but certainly it is not on the surface of his work. Now might not we say that his work contained the whole of his philosophy, and yet say that the use of the Cross was one of his usages ? In like manner we may say that the Bible is the whole of the Divine Revelation, and yet the use of the Cross a divine usage.

 But this is not all. Some small private books of his are extant, containing a number of every-day matters, such as of course one could not expect to be able to conjecture from his great work: I mean, matters of ordinary and almost household life. Yet those who have seen these papers are likely to feel a surprise that they should be Butler's. I do not say that they can give any reason why they should not be so; but the notion we form of any one whom we have not seen, will ever be in its details very different from the true one.

 Another series of illustrations might be drawn from the writings of the ancients. Those who are acquainted with the Greek historians know well that they, and particularly the gravest and severest of them, relate events so simply, calmly, unostentatiously, that an ordinary reader does not recognize what events are great and what little; and on turning to some modern history in which they are commented on, will find to his surprise that a battle or a treaty, which was despatched in half a line by the Greek author, is perhaps the turning-point of the whole history, and was certainly known by him to be so. Here is the case of the gospels, with this difference, that they are unsystematic compositions, whereas the Greek historians profess to be methodical.

 Again: instances might easily be given of the silence of contemporary writers, Greek or Roman, as to great events of their time, when they might be expected to notice them; a silence which has even been objected against the fact of those events having occurred, yet, in the judgment of the mass of well-informed men, without any real cogency.

 Again: as to Greek poetry, philosophy, and oratory, how severe and unexceptionable is it for the most part; yet how impure and disgraceful was the Greek daily life! Who shows a more sober and refined majesty than Sophocles? yet to him Pericles addressed the rebuke recorded in the first book of Cicero's Offices [n. 2].

 7.

 I conclude with two additional remarks. I have been arguing that Scripture is a deep book, and that the peculiar doctrines concerning the Church, contained in the Prayer Book, are in its depths. Now let it be remarked in corroboration, first, that the early Church always did consider Scripture to be what I have been arguing that it is from its structure, viz., a book with very recondite meanings; this they considered, not merely with reference to its teaching the particular class of doctrines in question, but as regards its entire teaching. They considered that it was full of mysteries. Therefore, saying that Scripture has deep meanings, is not an hypothesis invented to meet this particular difficulty, that the Church doctrines are not on its surface, but is an acknowledged principle of interpretation independent of it.

 Secondly, it is also certain that the early Church did herself conceal these same Church doctrines. I am not determining whether or not all her writers did so, or all her teachers, or at all times, but merely that, viewing that early period as a whole, there is on the whole a great secrecy observed in it concerning such doctrines (for instance) as the Trinity and the Eucharist; that is, the early Church did the very thing which I have been supposing Scripture does, conceal high truths. To suppose that Scripture conceals them, is not an hypothesis invented to meet the difficulty arising from the fact that they are not on the surface; for the early Church, independent of that alleged difficulty, did herself in her own teaching conceal them. This is a second very curious coincidence. If the early Church had reasons for concealment, it may be that Scripture has the same; especially if we suppose, what at the very least is no very improbable idea, that the system of the early Church is a continuation of the system of those inspired men who wrote the New Testament.

 Notes

 1. Vide Rom. viii. 19.  

 2. i. 40.  

 Lecture 6. External Difficulties of the Canon and the Catholic Creed, compared

 I AM now proceeding to a subject which will in some little degree take me beyond the bounds which I had proposed to myself when I began, but which, being closely connected with that subject, and (as I think) important, has a claim on our attention. The argument which has been last engaging us is this: Objection is made to the indirectness of the evidence from Scripture on which the peculiar Church doctrines are proved; I have answered, that sacred history is for the most part marked by as much apparent inconsistency, as recorded in one part of Scripture and another, as there is inconsistency as regards doctrine in the respective informations of Scripture and the Church; one event being told us here, another there; so that we have to compare, compile, reconcile, adjust. As then we do not complain of the history being conveyed in distinct, and at times conflicting, documents, so too we have no fair reason for complaining of the obscurities and intricacies under which doctrine is revealed through its two channels.

 I then went on to answer in a similar way the objection, that Scripture was contrary to the teaching of the Church ( i.e ., to our Prayer Book), not only in specific statements, but in tone; for I showed that what we call the tone of Scripture, or the impression it makes on the reader, varies so very much according to the reader, that little stress can be laid upon it, and thapression it makes would tell against a variety of other points undeniably true and firmly held by us, quite as much as against the peculiar Church doctrines.

 In a word, it is as easy to show that Scripture has no contents at all, or next to none, as that it does not contain the special Church doctrines I mean, the objection which is brought against the Apostolical Succession or the Priesthood being in Scripture, tells against the instruction and information conveyed in Scripture generally. But now I am going to a further point, which has been incidentally touched on, that this same objection is prejudicial not only to the Revelation, whatever it is, contained in Scripture, but to the text of Scripture itself, to the books of Scripture, to their canonicity, to their authority. I have said, the line of reasoning entered on in this objection may be carried forward, and, if it reaches on point, may be made to reach others also. For, first, if the want of method and verbal consistency in Scripture be an objection to the "teaching of the Prayer Book," it is also an objection equally to what is called "Orthodox Protestantism." Further, I have shown that it tells also against the trustworthiness of the sacred history, to the statement of facts contained in any part of Scripture, which is in great measure indirect. And now, lastly, I shall show that it is an objection to the Bible itself, both because that Book cannot be a Revelation which contains neither definite doctrine nor unequivocal matter of fact, and next because the evidence, on which its portions are received, is not clearer or fuller than its own evidence for the facts and doctrines which our Article says it "contains." This is the legitimate consequence of the attempt to invalidate the scripturalness of Catholic doctrine, on the allegation of its want of Scripture proof an invalidating of Scripture itself; this is the conclusion to which both the argument itself, and the temper of mind which belongs to it, will assuredly lead those who use it, at least in the long run.

 There is another objection which is sometimes attempted against Church doctrines, which may be met in the same way. It is sometimes strangely maintained, not only that Scripture does not clearly teach them, but that the Fathers do not clearly teach them; that nothing can be drawn for certain from the Fathers; that their evidence leaves matters pretty much as it found them, as being inconsistent with itself, or of doubtful authority. This part of the subject has not yet been considered, and will come into prominence as we proceed with the present argument.

 I purpose, then, now to enlarge on this point; that is, to show that those who object to Church doctrines, whether from deficiency of Scripture proof or of Patristical proof, ought, if they acted consistently on their principles, to object to the canonicity and authority of Scripture; a melancholy truth, if it be a truth; and I fear it is but too true. Too true, I fear, it is in fact, not only that men ought, if consistent, to proceed from opposing Church doctrine to oppose the authority of Scripture, but that the leaven which at present makes the mind oppose Church doctrine, does set it, or will soon set it, against Scripture. I wish to declare what I think will be found really to be the case, viz., that a battle for the Canon of Scripture is but the next step after a battle for the Creed, that the Creed comes first in the assault, that is all; and that if we were not defending the Creed, we should at this moment be defending the Canon. Nay, I would predict as a coming event, that minds are  to be unsettled as to what is Scripture and what is not; and I predict it that, as far as the voice of one person in one place can do, I may defeat my own prediction by making it. Now to consider the subject.

 1.

 How do we know that the whole Bible is the word of God? Happily at present we are content to believe this, because we have been so taught. It is our great blessedness to receive it on faith. A believing spirit is in all cases a more blessed spirit than an unbelieving. The testimony of unbelievers declares it: they often say, "I wish I could believe; I should be happier, if I could; but my reason is unconvinced." And then they go on to speak as if they were in a more exalted, though less happy state of mind. Now I am not here to enter into the question of the grounds on which the duty and blessedness of believing rest; but I would observe, that Nature certainly does give sentence against scepticism, against doubt, nay, against a habit (I say a habit ) of inquiry, against a critical, cold, investigating temper, the temper of what are called shrewd, clear-headed, hard-headed, men, in that, by the confession of all, happiness is attached, not to their temper, but rather to confiding, unreasoning faith. I do not say that inquiry may not under circumstances be a duty, as going into the cold and rain may be a duty, instead of stopping at home, as serving in war may be a duty; but it does seem to me preposterous to confess, that free inquiry leads to scepticism, and scepticism makes one less happy than faith, and yet, that such free inquiry is a merit. What is right and what is happy cannot in the long run and on a large scale be disjoined. To follow after truth can never be a subject of regret; free inquiry does lead a man to regret the days of his childlike faith; therefore it is not following after truth. Those who measure everything by utility, should on their own principles embrace the obedience of faith for its very expedience; and they should cease this kind of seeking, which begins in doubt.

 I say, then, that never to have been troubled with a doubt about the truth of what has been taught us, is the happiest state of mind; and if any one says, that to maintain this is to admit that heretics ought to remain heretics, and pagans pagans, I deny it. For I have not said that it is a happy thing never to add to what you have, but that it is not happier to take away . Now true religion is the summit and perfection of false religions: it combines in one whatever there is of good and true, severally remaining in each. And in like manner the Catholic Creed is for the most part the combination of separate truths which heretics have divided among themselves, and err in dividing. So that, in matter of fact, if a religious mind were educated in and sincerely attached to some form of heathenism or heresy, and then were brought under the light of truth, it would be drawn off from error into the truth, not by losing what it had, but by gaining what it had not, not by being unclothed, but by being "clothed upon," "that mortality may be swallowed up of life." That same principle of faith which attaches it to its original human teaching, would attach it to the truth; and that portion of its original teaching which was to be cast off as absolutely false, would not be directly rejected, but indirectly rejected in the reception of the truth which is its opposite. True conversion is of a positive, not a negative character. This was St. Paul's method of controversy at Athens; and, if Apologists after him were wont to ridicule the heathen idolatries, it must be considered that belief in the popular mythology was then dying out, and was ridiculed by the people themselves.

 All this is a digression: but before returning to my subject, I will just add, that it must not be supposed from my expressing such sentiments, that I have any fear of argument for the cause of Christian truth, as if reason were dangerous to it, as if it could not stand before a scrutinizing inquiry. Nothing is more out of place, though it is too common, than such a charge against the defenders of Church doctrines. They may be right or they may be wrong in their arguments, but argue they do; they are ready to argue; they believe they have reason on their side; but they remind others, they remind themselves, that though argument on the whole will but advance the cause of truth, though so far from dreading it, they are conscious it is a great weapon in their hands; yet that, after all, if a man does nothing more than argue, if he has nothing deeper at bottom, if he does not seek God by some truer means, by obedience, by faith prior to demonstration, he will either not attain truth, or attain a shallow, unreal view of it, and have a weak grasp of it. Reason will prepare for the reception, will spread the news, and secure the outward recognition of the truth; but in all we do we ought to seek edification, not mere knowledge. Now to return.

 I say, it is our blessedness, if we have no doubts about the Canon of Scripture, as it is our blessedness to have no doubts about the Catholic Creed. And this is at present actually our blessedness as regards the Canon; we have no doubts. Even those persons who unhappily have doubts about the Church system, have no doubts about the Canon, by a happy inconsistency, I say. They ought to have doubts on their principles; this I shall now show, in the confidence that their belief in the Canon is so much stronger than their disbelief of the Church system, that if they must change their position, they will rather go on and believe the Church system, than go back to disbelieve the Canon.

 2.

 Now there are two chief heads of objection made against the Catholic or Church system of doctrine and worship, external and internal. It is said, on the one hand, to be uncertain, not only what is in Scripture, but what is in Antiquity, and what not; for the early Fathers, it is objected, who are supposed to convey the information, contradict each other; and the most valuable and voluminous of them did not live till two or three hundred years after St. John's death, while the earlier records are scanty; and moreover that their view of doctrine was from the first corrupted from assignable external sources, pagan, philosophical, or Jewish. And on the other hand, the system itself may be accused of being contrary to reason and incredible. Here I shall consider the former of these two objections.

 Objectors, then, speak thus: "We are far from denying," they say, "that there is truth and value in the ancient Catholic system, as reported by the Fathers; but we deny that it is unmixed truth. We consider it is truth and error mixed together: we do not see why the system of doctrine must be taken together as a whole, so that if one part is true, all is true. We consider that we have a right to take it piecemeal, and examine each part by itself; that so far as it is true, it is true not as belonging to the ancient system, but for other reasons, as being agreeable to our reason, or to our understanding of Scripture, not because stated by the Fathers; and, after all, the Church system in question (that is, such doctrines as the mystical power of the Sacraments, the power of the keys, the grace of Ordination, the gifts of the Church, and the Apostolical Succession), has very little authority really primitive. The Fathers whose works we have, not only ought to be of an earlier date, in order to be of authority, but they contradict each other; they declare what is incredible and absurd, and what can reasonably be ascribed to Platonism, or Judaism, or Paganism."

 Be it so: well, how will the same captious spirit treat the sacred Canon? in just the same way. It will begin thus: "These many writings are put together in one book; what makes them one? who put them together? the printer. The books of Scripture have been printed together for many centuries. But that does not make them one; what authority had those who put them together to do so? what authority to put just so many books, neither more nor less? when were they first so put together? on what authority do we leave out the Wisdom, or the Son of Sirach, and insert the book of Esther? Catalogues certainly are given of these books in early times: but not exactly the same books are enumerated in all. The language of St. Austin is favourable to the admission of the Apocrypha [n. 1]. The Latin Church anciently left out the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Eastern Church left out the book of Revelation. This so-called Canon did not exist at earliest till the fourth century, between two and three hundred years after St. John's death. Let us then see into the matter with our own eyes. Why should not we be as good judges as the Church of the fourth century, on whose authority we receive it? Why should one book be divine, because another is?" This is what objectors would say. Now to follow them into particulars as far as the first head; viz., as to the evidence itself, which is offered in behalf of the divinity and inspiration of the separate books.

 For instance; the first Father who expressly mentions Commemorations for the Dead in Christ (such as we still have in substance at the end of the prayer for the Church Militant, where it was happily restored in 1662, having been omitted a century earlier), is Tertullian, about a hundred years after St. John's death. This, it is said, is not authority early enough to prove that that Ordinance is Apostolical, though succeeding Fathers, Origen, St. Cyprian, Eusebius, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, etc., bear witness to it ever so strongly. "Errors might have crept in by that time; mistakes might have been made; Tertullian is but one man, and confessedly not sound in many of his opinions; we ought to have clearer and more decisive evidence." Well, supposing it: suppose Tertullian, a hundred years after St. John, is the first that mentions it, yet Tertullian is also the first who refers to St. Paul's Epistle to Philemon, and even he without quoting or naming it. He is followed by two writers; one of Rome, Caius, whose work is not extant, but is referred to by Eusebius, who, speaking of thirteen Epistles of St. Paul, and as excluding the Hebrews, by implication includes that to Philemon; and the other, Origen, who quotes the fourteenth verse of the Epistle, and elsewhere speaks of fourteen Epistles of St. Paul. Next, at the end of the third century, follows Eusebius. Further, St. Jerome observes, that in his time some persons doubted whether it was St. Paul's (just as Aerius about that time questioned the Commemorations for the Dead), or at least whether it was canonical, and that from internal evidence; to which he opposes the general consent of external testimony as a sufficient answer. Now, I ask, why do we receive the Epistle to Philemon as St. Paul's, and not the Commemorations for the faithful departed as Apostolical also? Ever after indeed the date of St. Jerome, the Epistle to Philemon was accounted St. Paul's, and so too ever after the same date the Commemorations which I have spoken of are acknowledged on all hands to have been observed as a religious duty, down to three hundred years ago. If it be said that from historical records we have good reasons for thinking that the Epistle of St. Paul to Philemon, with his other Epistles, was read from time immemorial in Church, which is a witness independent of particular testimonies in the Fathers, I answer, no evidence can be more satisfactory and conclusive to a well-judging mind; but then it is a moral evidence, resting on very little formal and producible proof; and quite as much evidence can be given for the solemn Commemorations of the Dead in the Holy Eucharist which I speak of. They too were in use in the Church from time immemorial. Persons, then, who have the heart to give up and annul the Ordinance, will not, if they are consistent, scruple much at the Epistle. If in the sixteenth century the innovators on religion had struck the Epistle to Philemon out of Scripture, they would have had just as much right to do it as to abolish these Commemorations; and those who wished to defend such innovation as regards the Epistle to Philemon, would have had just as much to say in its behalf as those had who put an end to the Commemorations.

 If it be said they found nothing on the subject of such Commemorations in Scripture, even granting this for argument's sake, yet I wonder where they found in Scripture that the Epistle to Philemon was written by St. Paul, except indeed in the Epistle itself. Nowhere; yet they kept the one, they abolished the other as far, that is, as human tyranny could abolish it. Let us be thankful that they did not also say, "The Epistle to Philemon is of a private nature, and has no marks of inspiration about it. It is not mentioned by name or quoted by any writer till Origen, who flourished at a time when mistakes had begun, in the third century, and who actually thinks St. Barnabas wrote the Epistle which goes under his name; and he too, after all, just mentions it once, but not as inspired or canonical, and also just happens to speak elsewhere of St. Paul's fourteen Epistles. In the beginning of the fourth century, Eusebius, without anywhere naming this Epistle," (as far as I can discover,) "also speaks of fourteen Epistles, and speaks of a writer one hundred years earlier, who in like manner enumerated thirteen besides the Hebrews. All this is very unsatisfactory. We will have nothing but the pure word of God; we will only admit what has the clearest proof. It is impossible that God should require us to believe a book to come from Him without authenticating it with the highest and most cogent evidence."

 Again: the early Church with one voice testifies in favour of Episcopacy, as an ordinance especially pleasing to God. Ignatius, the very disciple of the Apostles, speaks in the clearest and strongest terms; and those who follow fully corroborate his statements for three or four hundred years. And besides this, we know the fact, that a succession of Bishops from the Apostles did exist in all the Churches all that time. At the end of that time, one Father, St. Jerome, in writing controversially, had some strong expressions against the divine origin of the ordinance. And this is all that can be said in favour of any other regimen. Now, on the other hand, what is the case as regards the Epistle to the Hebrews? Though received in the East, it was not received in the Latin Churches, till that same St. Jerome's time. St. Irenæus either does not affirm or actually denies that it is St. Paul's. Tertullian ascribes it to St. Barnabas. Caius excluded it from his list. St. Hippolytus does not receive it. St. Cyprian is silent about it. It is doubtful whether St. Optatus received it. Now, that this important Epistle is part of the inspired word of God, there is no doubt. But why? Because the testimony of the fourth and fifth centuries, when Christians were at leisure to examine the question thoroughly, is altogether in its favour. I know of no other reason, and I consider this to be quite sufficient: but with what consistency do persons receive this Epistle as inspired, yet deny that Episcopacy is a divinely ordained means of grace?

 Again: the Epistles to the Thessalonians are quoted by six writers in the first two hundred years from St. John's death; first, at the end of the first hundred, by three Fathers, Irenæus, Clement, and Tertullian; and are by implication acknowledged in the lost work of Caius, at the same time, and are in Origen's list some years after. On the other hand, the Lord's table is always called an Altar, and is called a Table only in one single passage of a single Father, during the first three centuries. It is called Altar in four out of the seven Epistles of St. Ignatius. It is called Altar by St. Clement of Rome, by St. Irenæus, Tertullian, St. Cyprian, Origen, Eusebius, St. Athanasius, St. Ambrose, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Optatus, St. Jerome, St. Chrysostom, and St. Austin [n. 2]. It is once called Table by St. Dionysius of Alexandria. (Johnson's U. S., vol. i., p. 306.) I do not know on what ground we admit the Epistles to the Thessalonians to be the writing of St. Paul, yet deny that the use of Altars is Apostolic.

 Again: that the Eucharist is a Sacrifice is declared or implied by St. Clement of Rome, St. Paul's companion, by St. Justin, by St. Irenæus, by Tertullian, by St. Cyprian, and others. On the other hand, the Acts of the Apostles are perhaps alluded to by St. Polycarp, but are first distinctly noticed by St. Irenæus, then by three writers who came soon after (St. Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and the Letter from the Church of Lyons), and then not till the end of the two hundred years from St. John's death. Which has the best evidence, the Book of Acts, or the doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice?

 Again: much stress, as I have said, is laid by objectors on the fact that there is so little evidence concerning Catholic doctrine in the very first years of Christianity. Now, how does this objection stand, as regards the Canon of the New Testament? The New Testament consists of twenty-seven books in all, though of varying importance. Of these, fourteen are not mentioned at all till from eighty to one hundred years after St. John's death, in which number are the Acts, the Second to the Corinthians, the Galatians, the Colossians, the Two to the Thessalonians, and St. James. Of the other thirteen, five, viz., St. John's Gospel, the Philippians, the First of Timothy, the Hebrews, and the First of John, are quoted but by one writer during the same period. Lastly, St. Irenæus, at the close of the second century, quotes all the books of the New Testament but five, and deservedly stands very high as a witness. Now, why may not so learned and holy a man, and so close on the Apostles, stand also as a witness of some doctrines which he takes for granted, as the invisible but real Presence in the Holy Eucharist, the use of Catholic tradition in ascertaining revealed truth, and the powers committed to the Church?

 If men then will indulge that eclectic spirit which chooses part and rejects part of the primitive Church system, I do not see what is to keep them from choosing part and rejecting part of the Canon of Scripture.

 3.

 There are books, which sin as it would be in us to reject, I think any candid person would grant are presented to us under circumstances less promising than those which attend upon the Church doctrines. Take, for instance, the Book of Esther. This book is not quoted once in the New Testament. It was not admitted as canonical by two considerable Fathers, Melito and Gregory Nazianzen. It contains no prophecy; it has nothing on the surface to distinguish it from a mere ordinary history; nay, it has no mark on the surface of its even being a religious history. Not once does it mention the name of God or Lord, or any other name by which the God of Israel is designated. Again, when we inspect its contents, it cannot be denied that there are things in it which at first sight startle us, and make demands on our faith. Why then do we receive it? Because we have good reason from tradition to believe it to be one of those which our Lord intended, when He spoke of "the prophets." [Luke xxiv. 44.]

 In like manner the Book of Ecclesiastes contains no prophecy, is referred to in no part of the New Testament, and contains passages which at first sight are startling. Again: that most sacred Book, called the Song of Songs, or Canticles, is a continued type from beginning to end. Nowhere in Scripture, as I have already observed, are we told that it is a type; nowhere is it hinted that it is not to be understood literally. Yet it is only as having a deeper and hidden sense, that we are accustomed to see a religious purpose in it. Moreover, it is not quoted or alluded to once all through the New Testament. It contains no prophecies. Why do we consider it divine? For the same reason; because tradition informs us that in our Saviour's time it was included under the title of "the Psalms": and our Saviour, in St. Luke's Gospel, refers to "the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms ."

 Objections as plausible, though different, might be urged against the Epistles of St. James, St. Jude, the Second of St. Peter, the Second and Third of St. John, and the Book of Revelation.

 Again: we are told that the doctrine of the mystical efficacy of the Sacraments comes from the Platonic philosophers, the ritual from the Pagans, and the Church polity from the Jews. So they do; that is, in a sense in which much more also comes from the same sources. Traces also of the doctrines of the Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement, may be found among heathens, Jews, and philosophers; for the Almighty scattered through the world, before His Son came, vestiges and gleams of His true Religion, and collected all the separated rays together, when He set Him on His holy hill to rule the day, and the Church, as the moon, to govern the night. In the sense in which the doctrine of the Trinity is Platonic, doubtless the doctrine of mysteries generally is Platonic also. But this by the way. What I have here to notice is, that the same supposed objection can be and has been made against the books of Scripture too, viz., that they borrow from external sources. Unbelievers have accused Moses of borrowing his law from the Egyptians or other Pagans; and elaborate comparisons have been instituted, on the part of believers also, by way of proving it; though even if proved, and so far as proved, it would show nothing more than this, that God, who gave His law to Israel absolutely and openly, had already given some portions of it to the heathen.

 Again: an infidel historian accuses St. John of borrowing the doctrine of the Eternal Logos or Word from the Alexandrian Platonists.

 Again: a theory has been advocated, by whom I will not say, to the effect that the doctrine of apostate angels, Satan and his hosts, was a Babylonian tenet, introduced into the Old Testament after the Jews' return from the Captivity; that no allusion is made to Satan, as the head of the malignant angels, and as having set up a kingdom for himself against God, in any book written before the Captivity; from which circumstance it may easily be made to follow, that those books of the Old Testament which were written after the Captivity are not plenarily inspired, and not to be trusted as canonical. Now, I own I am not at all solicitous to deny that this doctrine of an apostate Angel and his host was gained from Babylon: it might still be divine, nevertheless. God who made the prophet's ass speak, and thereby instructed the prophet, might instruct His Church by means of heathen Babylon [n. 3].

 In like manner, is no lesson intended to be conveyed to us by the remarkable words of the governor of the feast, upon the miracle of the water changed to wine? "Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine, and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse; but Thou hast kept the good wine until now." [John ii. 10.] Yet at first sight they have not a very serious meaning. It does not therefore seem to me difficult, nay, nor even unlikely, that the prophets of Israel should, in the course of God's providence, have gained new truths from the heathen, among whom those truths lay corrupted. The Church of God in every age has been, as it were, on visitation through the earth, surveying, judging, sifting, selecting, and refining all matters of thoughts and practice; detecting what was precious amid what is ruined and refuse, and putting her seal upon it. There is no reason, then, why Daniel and Zechariah should not have been taught by the instrumentality of the Chaldeans. However, this is insisted on, and as if to the disparagement of the Jewish Dispensation by some persons; and under the notion that its system was not only enlarged but altered at the era of the Captivity. And I certainly think it may be insisted on as plausibly as pagan customs are brought to illustrate and thereby to invalidate the ordinances of the Catholic Church; though the proper explanation in the two cases is not exactly the same.

 The objection I have mentioned is applied, in the quarter to which I allude, to the Books of Chronicles. These, it has already been observed, have before now been ascribed by sceptics to (what is called) priestly influence: here then is a second exceptional influence, a second superstition. In the Second Book of Samuel it is said, "the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel: and He moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah." [2 Sam. xxxiv. 1.] On the other hand, in Chronicles it is said, " Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel." [1 Chron. xxi. 1.] On this a writer, not of the English Church, says, "The author of the Book of Chronicles ... availing himself of the learning which he had acquired in the East, and influenced by a suitable tenderness for the harmony of the Divine Attributes, refers the act of temptation to the malignity of the evil principle." You see in this way a blow is also struck against the more ancient parts of the Old Testament, as well as the more modern. The books written before the Captivity are represented, as the whole discussion would show, as containing a ruder, simpler, less artificial theology; those after the Captivity, a more learned and refined: God's inspiration is excluded in both cases.

 The same consideration has been applied to determine the date and importance of the Book of Job, which has been considered, from various circumstances, external and internal, not to contain a real history, but an Eastern story.

 But enough has been said on this part of the subject.

 4.

 It seems, then, that the objections which can be made to the evidence for the Church doctrines are such as also lie against the Canon of Scripture; so that if they avail against the one, they avail against both. If they avail against both, we are brought to this strange conclusion, that God has given us a Revelation, yet has revealed nothing, that at great cost, and with much preparation, He has miraculously declared His will, that multitudes have accordingly considered they possessed it, yet that, after all, He has said nothing so clearly as to recommend itself as His to a cautious mind; that nothing is so revealed as to be an essential part of the Revelation, nothing plain enough to act upon, nothing so certain that we dare assert that the contrary is very much less certain.

 Such a conclusion is a practical refutation of the objection which leads to it. It surely cannot be meant that we should be undecided all our days. We were made for action, and for right action, for thought, and for true thought. Let us live while we live; let us be alive and doing; let us act on what we have, since we have not what we wish. Let us believe what we do not see and know. Let us forestall knowledge by faith. Let us maintain before we have demonstrated. This seeming paradox is the secret of happiness. Why should we be unwilling to go by faith? We do all things in this world by faith in the word of others. By faith only we know our position in the world, our circumstances, our rights and privileges, our fortunes, our parents, our brothers and sisters, our age, our mortality. Why should Religion be an exception? Why should we be unwilling to use for heavenly objects what we daily use for earthly? Why will we not discern, what it is so much our interest to discern, that trust, in the first instance, in what Providence sets before us in religious matters, is His will and our duty; that thus it is He leads us into all truth, not by doubting, but by believing; that thus He speaks to us, by the instrumentality of what seems accidental; that He sanctities what He sets before us, shallow or weak as it may be in itself, for His high purposes; that most systems have enough of truth in them, to make it better for us, when we have no choice besides, and cannot discriminate, to begin by taking all (that is not plainly immoral) than by rejecting all; that He will not deceive us if we thus trust in Him. Though the received system of religion in which we are born were as unsafe as the sea when St. Peter began to walk on it, yet "be not afraid." He who could make St. Peter walk the waves, could make even a corrupt or defective creed a mode and way of leading us into truth, even were ours such; much more can He teach us by the witness of the Church Catholic. It is far more probable that her witness should be true, whether about the Canon or the Creed, than that God should have left us without any witness at all.

 Notes

 1. De Doctr. Christ., ii. 13.  

 2. It is perhaps unnecessary to say that the sense of the word Altar ([ thusia sterion ]) in some of these passages has been contested; as it has been contested whether the Fathers' works are genuine, or the Books of Scripture genuine, or its text free from interpolations. There is no one spot in the territory of theology but has been the scene of a battle. Anything has been ventured and believed in the heat of controversy; but the ultimate appeal in such cases is the common sense of mankind. Ignatius says, "Be diligent to use one Eucharist, for there is one Flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup for the union of His Blood; one Altar, as one Bishop, together with the Presbytery and deacons, my fellow-servants."  Ad Phil . 4. Would it have entered into any one's mind, were it not for the necessities of his theory, to take Eucharist, Flesh, Cup, Blood, Bishop, Presbytery, Deacon, in their ecclesiastical meaning, as belonging to the Visible Church, and the one word Altar figuratively?  

 3. [This principle seems here too broadly enunciated.]  

 Lecture 7. Internal Difficulties of the Canon and the Catholic Creed, considered

 I SHALL now finish the subject I have commenced, the parallel between the objections adducible against the Catholic system, and those against the Canon of Scripture. It will be easily understood, that I am not attempting any formal and full discussion of the subject, but offering under various general heads such suggestions as may be followed out by those who will. The objections to the evidence for the Canon have been noticed; now let us consider objections that may be made to its contents.

 1.

 Perhaps the main objection taken to the Church system, is the dislike which men feel of its doctrines. They call them the work of priestcraft, and in that word is summed up all that they hate in them. Priestcraft is the art of gaining power over men by appeals to their consciences; its instrument is mystery; its subject-matter, superstitious feeling. "Now the Church doctrines," it is urged, "invest a certain number of indifferent things with a new and extraordinary power, beyond sense, beyond reason, beyond nature, a power over the soul; and they put the exclusive possessions and use of the things thus distinguished into the hands of the Clergy. Such, for instance, is the Creed; some mysterious benefit is supposed to result from holding it, even though with but a partial comprehension, and the Clergy are practically its sole expounders. Such still more are the Sacraments, which the Clergy only administer, and which are supposed to effect some supernatural change in the soul, and to convey some supernatural gift." This then is the antecedent exception taken against the Catholic doctrines, that they are mysterious, tending to superstition, and to dependence on a particular set of men. And this object is urged, not merely as a reason for demanding fair proof of what is advanced, but as a reason for refusing to listen to any proof whatever, as if it fairly created an insurmountable presumption against the said doctrines.

 Now I say, in like manner, were it not for our happy reverence for the Canon of Scripture, we should take like exception to many things in Scripture; and, since we do not, neither ought we, consistently, to take this exception to the Catholic system; but if we do take such grounds against that system, there is nothing but the strength of habit, good feeling, and our Lord's controlling grace, to keep us from using them against Scripture also. This I shall now attempt to show, and with that view, shall cite various passages in Scripture which, to most men of this generation, will appear at first sight strange, superstitious, incredible, and extreme. If then, in spite of these, Scripture is nevertheless from God, so again, in spite of similar apparent difficulties, the Catholic system may be from Him also; and what the argument comes to is this, that the minds of none of us are in such a true state, as to warrant us in judging peremptorily in every case what is from God and what is not. We shrink from the utterances of His providence with offence, as if they were not His, in consequence of our inward ears being attuned to false harmonies. Now for some instances of what I mean.

 2.

 1. I conceive, were we not used to the Scripture narrative, that we should be startled at the accounts there given us of demoniacs. For instance: "And He asked him, What is thy name? And He answered, My name is Legion, for we are many." [Mark v. 9.] Again, consider the passage, "When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none," [Matt. xii. 43.] etc.; and in like manner, the account of the damsel who was "possessed of a spirit of divination," or "Python," that is, of a heathen god, in Acts xvi.; and in connexion with this, St. Paul's assertion "that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils and not to God," [1 Cor. x. 20.] and this as being so literally true that he deduces a practical conclusion from it: "I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils." But, as regards this instance, we are not at all driven to conjecture, but we know it is really the case, that they who allow themselves to treat the inspired text freely, do at once explain away, or refuse to admit its accounts of this mysterious interference of evil spirits in the affairs of men. Let those then see to it, who call the Fathers credulous for recording similar narratives. If they find fault with the evidence, that is an intelligible objection; but the common way with objectors is at once and before examination to charge on the narrators of such accounts childish superstition and credulity.

 2. If we were not used to the narrative, I conceive we should be very unwilling to receive the account of the serpent speaking to Eve, or its being inhabited by an evil spirit; or, again, of the devils being sent into the swine. We should scoff at such narratives, as fanciful and extravagant. Let us only suppose that, instead of being found in Scripture, they were found in some legend of the middle ages; should we merely ask for evidence, or simply assume that there was none? Should we think that it was a case for evidence one way or the other? Should we not rather say, "This is intrinsically incredible? it supersedes the necessity of examining into evidence, it decides the case." Should we allow the strangeness of the narrative merely to act as suspending our belief, and throwing the burden of proof on the other side, or should we not rather suffer it to settle the question for us? Again, should we have felt less distrust in the history of Balaam's ass speaking? Should we have been reconciled to the account of the Holy Ghost appearing in a bodily shape, and that apparently the shape of an irrational animal, a dove? And, again, though we might bear the figure of calling our Saviour a lamb, if it occurred once, as if to show that He was the antitype of the Jewish sacrifices, yet, unless we were used to it, would there not be something repugnant to our present habits of mind in calling again and again our Saviour by the name of a brute animal? Unless we were used to it, I conceive it would hurt and offend us much to read of "glory and honour" being ascribed to Him that sitteth upon the Throne and to the Lamb, as being a sort of idolatry, or at least an unadvised way of speaking. It seems to do too much honour to an inferior creature, and to dishonour Christ. You will see this, by trying to substitute any other animal, however mild and gentle. It is said that one difficulty in translating the New Testament into some of the oriental languages actually is this, that the word in them for Lamb does not carry with it the associations which it does in languages which have had their birth in Christianity. Now we have a remarkable parallel to this in the impression produced by another figure, which was in use in primitive times, when expressed in our own language. The ancients formed an acrostic upon our Lord's Greek titles as the Son of God, the Saviour of men, and in consequence called Him from the first letters ¹Ç¸ÅÂ, or "fish." Hear how a late English writer speaks of it. "This contemptible and disgusting quibble originated in certain verses of one of the pseudo-sibyls ... I know of no figure which so revoltingly degrades the person of the Son of God." Such as this is the nature of the comment made in the farther east on the sacred image of the Lamb.

 But without reference to such peculiar associations, which vary with place and person, there is in the light of reason a strangeness, perhaps, in God's allowing material symbols of Himself at all; and, again, a greater strangeness in His vouchsafing to take a brute animal as the name of His Son, and bidding us ascribe praise to it. Now it does not matter whether we take all these instances separate or together. Separate, they are strange enough; put them together, you have a law of God's dealings, which accounts indeed for each separate instance, yet does not make it less strange that the brute creation should have so close a connexion with God's spiritual and heavenly kingdom. Here, moreover, it is in place to make mention of the "four beasts" spoken of in the Apocalypse as being before God's throne. Translate the word "living thing," as you may do, yet the circumstance is not less startling. They were respectively like a lion, calf, man, and eagle. To this may be added the figure of the Cherubim in the Jewish law, which is said to have been a symbol made up of limbs of the same animals. Is it not strange that Angels should be represented under brute images? Consider, then, if God has thus made use of brutes in His supernatural acts and in His teaching, as real instruments and as symbols of spiritual things, what is there strange antecedently in supposing He makes use of the inanimate creation also? If Balaam's ass instructed Balaam, what is there fairly to startle us in the Church's doctrine, that the water of Baptism cleanses from sin, that eating the consecrated Bread is eating His Body, or that oil may be blessed for spiritual purposes, as is still done in our Church in the case of a coronation? Of this I feel sure, that those who consider the doctrines of the Church incredible, will soon, if they turn their thoughts steadily that way, feel a difficulty in the serpent that tempted Eve, and the ass that admonished Balaam.

 3.

 3. We cannot, it seems, believe that water applied to the body really is God's instrument in cleansing the soul from sin; do we believe that, at Bethesda, an Angel gave the pool a miraculous power? What God has done once, He may do again; that is, there is no antecedent improbability in His connecting real personal benefits to us with arbitrary outward means. Again, what should we say, unless we were familarized with it, to the story of Naaman bathing seven times in the Jordan? or rather to the whole system of mystical signs: the tree which Moses cast into the waters to sweeten them; Elisha's throwing meal into the pot of poisonous herbs; and our Saviour's breathing, making clay, and the like? Indeed, is not the whole of the Bible, Old and New Testament, engaged in a system of outward signs with hidden realities under them, which in the Church's teaching is only continued? Is it not certain, then, that those who stumble at the latter as incredible, will stumble at the former too, as soon as they learn just so much irreverence as to originate objections as well as to be susceptible of them? I cannot doubt that, unless we were used to the Sacraments, we should be objecting, not only to the notion of their conveying virtue, but to their observance altogether, viewed as mere badges and memorials. They would be called Oriental, suited to a people of warm imagination, suited to the religion of other times, but too symbolical, poetical, or (as some might presume to say) theatrical for us; as if there were something far more plain, solid, sensible, practical, and edifying in a sermon, or an open profession, or a prayer.

 4. Consider the accounts of virtue going out of our Lord, and that, in the case of the woman with the issue of blood, as it were by a natural law, without a distinct application on His part; of all who touched the hem of His garment being made whole; and further, of handkerchiefs and aprons being impregnated with healing virtue by touching St. Paul's body, and of St. Peter's shadow being earnestly sought out, in the age when religion was purest, and the Church's condition most like a heaven upon earth. Can we hope that these passages will not afford matter of objection to the mind, when once it has brought itself steadily to scrutinize the evidence for the inspiration of the Gospels and Acts? Will it not be obvious to say, "St. Luke was not an Apostle; and I do not believe this account of the handkerchiefs and aprons, though I believe the Book of Acts as a whole." Next, when the mind gets bolder, it will address itself to the consideration of the account of the woman with the issue of blood. Now it is not wonderful that she, poor ignorant woman (as men speak), in deplorable ignorance of spiritual religion (alas! that words should be so misused), dark, and superstitious, it is not wonderful, I say, that she should expect a virtue from touching our Lord's garment; but that she should obtain it by means of this opus operatum of merely touching, and again that He should even commend her faith, will be judged impossible. The notion of virtue going out of Him will be considered as Jewish, pagan, or philosophical.

 Yes; the outline of the story will be believed, the main fact, the leading idea, not the details. Indeed, if persons have already thought it inherently incredible that the hands of Bishop or priest should impart a power, or grace, or privilege, if they have learned to call it profane, and (as they speak) blasphemous to teach this with the early Church, how can it be less so, to consider that God gave virtue to a handkerchief, or apron, or garment, though our Lord's? What was it, after all, but a mere earthly substance, made of vegetable or animal material? How was it more holy because He wore it? He was holy, not it ; it did not gain holiness by being near Him. Nay: do they not already lay this down as a general principle, that, to suppose He diffuses from His Person heavenly virtue, is a superstition? do not they, on this ground, object to the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist; and on what other ground do they deny that the Blessed Virgin, whom all but heretics have ever called the Mother of God, was most holy in soul and body, from her ineffable proximity to God? He who gave to the perishing and senseless substances of wool or cotton that grace of which it was capable, should not He rather communicate of His higher spiritual perfections to her in whose bosom He lay, or to those who now possess Him through the Sacramental means He has appointed?

 5. I conceive that, if men indulge themselves in criticizing, they will begin to be offended at the passage in the Apocalyse, which speaks of the "number of the beast." Indeed, it is probable that they will reject that book of Scripture altogether, not sympathizing with the severe tone of doctrine which runs through it. Again: there is something very surprising in the importance attached to the Name of God and Christ in Scripture. The Name of Jesus is said to work cures and frighten away devils. I anticipate that this doctrine will become a stone of stumbling to those who set themselves to inquire into the trustworthiness of the separate parts of Scripture. For instance, the narrative of St. Peter's cure of the impotent man, in the early chapters of the Acts: first, "Silver and gold," he says, "have I none; but such as I have, give I thee; In the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk." Then, "And His Name, through faith in His Name, hath made this man strong." Then the question, "By what power, or by what name, have ye done this?" Then the answer, "By the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth ... even by it doth this man now stand here before you whole and there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved." Then the threat, that the Apostles should not "speak at all, nor teach in the Name of Jesus." Lastly, their prayer that God would grant "that signs and wonders might be done by the Name of His Holy Child Jesus." In connexion with which must be considered, St. Paul's declaration, "that in the Name of Jesus every knee should bow." [Acts iii. 4. Phil. ii. 10.] Again: I conceive that the circumstances of the visitation of the Blessed Virgin to Elizabeth would startle us considerably if we lost our faith in Scripture. Again: can we doubt that the account of Christ's ascending into heaven will not be received by the science of this age, when it is carefully considered what is implied in it? Where is heaven? Beyond all the stars? If so, it would take years for any natural body to get there. We say, that with God all things are possible. But this age, wise in its own eyes, has already decided the contrary, in maintaining, as it does, that He who virtually annihilated the distance between earth and heaven, on His Son's ascension, cannot annihilate it in the celebration of the Holy Communion, so as to make us present with Him, though He be on God's right hand in heaven.

 4.

 6. Further, unless we were used to the passage, I cannot but think that we should stumble greatly at the account of our Lord's temptation by Satan. Putting aside other considerations, dwell awhile on the thought of Satan showing " all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time." [Luke iv. 5.] What is meant by this? How did he show all, and in a moment? and if by a mere illusion, why from the top of a high mountain?

 Or again: consider the account of our Saviour's bidding St. Peter catch a fish in order to find money in it, to pay tribute with. What should we say if this narrative occurred in the Apocrypha? Should we not speak of it as an evident fiction? and are we likely to do less, whenever we have arrived at a proper pitch of unscrupulousness, and what is nowadays called critical acumen, in analyzing and disposing of what we have hitherto received as divine? Again: I conceive that the blood and water which issued from our Saviour's side, particularly taken with the remarkable comment upon it in St. John's Epistle, would be disbelieved, if men were but consistent in their belief and disbelief. The miracle would have been likened to many which occur in Martyrologies, and the inspired comment would have been called obscure and fanciful, as on a par with various doctrinal interpretations in the Fathers, which carry forsooth their own condemnation with them. Again: the occurrence mentioned by St. John, "Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it (My Name), and will glorify it again. The people, therefore, that stood by, and heard it, said that it thundered; others said, An Angel spake to him:" [John xii. 28, 29.] this, I conceive, would soon be looked upon as suspicious, did men once begin to examine the claims of the Canon upon our faith.

 Or again: to refer to the Old Testament. I conceive that the history of the Deluge, the ark, and its inhabitants, will appear to men of modern tempers more and more incredible, the longer and more minutely it is dwelt upon. Or, again, the narrative of Jonah and the whale. Once more, the following narrative will surely be condemned also, as bearing on its face evident marks of being legendary: "And the sons of the prophets said unto Elisha, Behold now, the place where we dwell with thee is too strait for us. Let us go, we pray thee, unto Jordan, and take thence every man a beam, and let us make us a place there, where we may dwell. And he answered, Go ye. And one said, Be content, I pray thee, and go with thy servants. And he answered, I will go. So he went with them. And when they came to Jordan, they cut down wood. But as one was felling a beam, the axe-head fell into the water; and he cried, and said, Alas, master! for it was borrowed. And the man of God said, Where fell it? And he showed him the place. And he cut down a stick, and cast it in thither; and the iron did swim. Therefore said he, Take it up to thee. And he put out his hand, and took it." [2 Kings vi. 1-7.]

 5.

 7. Having mentioned Elisha, I am led to say a word or two upon his character. Men of this age are full of their dread of priestcraft and priestly ambition; and they speak and feel as if the very circumstance of a person claiming obedience upon a divine authority was priestcraft and full of evil. They speak as if it was against the religious rights of man (for some such rights are supposed to be possessed by sinners, even by those who disown the doctrine of the political rights of man), as if it were essentially an usurpation for one man to claim spiritual power over another. They do not ask for the voucher of his claim, for his commission, but think the claim absurd. They so speak, that any one who heard them, without knowing the Bible, would think that Almighty God had never "given such power unto men." Now, what would such persons say to Elisha's character and conduct? Let me recount some few passages in his history, in the Second Book of Kings, and let us bear in mind what has been already observed of the character of the Books of Chronicles. When the little children out of Bethel mocked him, "he cursed them in the name of the Lord." [2 Kings ii. 23.] This was his first act after entering on his office. Again: Jehoram, the son of Ahab, put away Baal, and walked not in the sins of his father and his mother; but because he did not put away the false worship of Jeroboam, but kept to his calves, his self-appointed priests, altars, and holy days, which he probably thought a little sin, when he was in distress, and called upon Elisha, Elisha said, "What have I to do with thee? Get thee to the prophets of thy father, and to the prophets of thy mother:" [2 Kings iii. 13.] and went on to say, that, but for the presence of good Jehoshaphat, "I would not look toward thee nor see thee." This was taking (what would now be called) a high tone. Again: the Shunammite was a great woman; he was poor. She got her husband's leave to furnish a "little chamber" for him, not in royal style, but as for a poor minister of God. It had "a bed and a table and a stool and a candlestick," and when he came that way he availed himself of it. The world would think that she was the patron, and he ought to be humble, and to know his place. But observe his language on one occasion of his lodging there. He said to his servant, "Call this Shunammite." When she came, she, the mistress of the house, "stood before him." He did not speak to her, but bade his servant speak, and then she retired; then he held a consultation with his servant, and then he called her again, and she "stood in the door;" then he promised her a son. Again: Naaman was angered that Elisha did not show him due respect: he only sent him a message, and bade him wash and be clean. Afterwards we find the prophet interposing in political matters in Israel and Syria.

 Now, it is not to the purpose to account for all this, by saying he worked miracles. Are miracles necessary for being a minister of God? Are miracles the only way in which a claim can be recognized? Is a man the higher minister, the more miracles he does? Are we to honour only those who minister temporal miracles, and to be content to eat and be filled with the loaves and fishes? Are there no higher miracles than visible ones? John the Baptist did no miracles, yet he too claimed, and gained, the obedience of the Jews. Miracles prove a man to be God's minister; they do not make him God's minister. No matter how a man is proved to come from God, if he is known to come from God. If Christ is with His ministers, according to His promise, even to the end of the world, so that he that despiseth them despiseth Him, then, though they do no miracles, they are in office as great as Elisha. And if Baptism be the cleansing and quickening of the dead soul, to say nothing of Holy Eucharist, they do work miracles. If God's ministers are then only to be honoured when we see that they work miracles, where is place for faith? Are we not under a dispensation of faith, not of sight? Was Elisha great because he was seen to work miracles, or because he could, and did, work them? Is God's minister a proud priest now, for acting as if he came from God, if he does come from Him? Yet men of this generation, without inquiring into his claims, would most undoubtedly call him impostor and tyrant, proud, arrogant, profane, and Antichristian, nay, Antichrist himself, if he, a Christian minister, assume one-tenth part of Elisha's state. Yes, Antichrist; "If they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of His household?" [Matt. x. 25.]

 8. St. John the Baptist's character, I am persuaded, would startle most people, if they were not used to Scripture; and when men begin to doubt about the integrity of Scripture, it will be turned against the authenticity or the authority of the particular passages which relate to it. Let us realize to ourselves a man living on locusts and wild honey, and with a hair shirt on, bound by a leathern girdle. Our Lord indeed bids us avoid outward show, and therefore the ostentation of such austerity would be wrong now, of course; but what is there to show that the thing itself would be wrong, if a person were moved to do it? Does not our Saviour expressly say, with reference to the austerities of St. John's disciples, that after His departure His own disciples shall resemble them, "then shall they fast"? Yet, I suppose, most persons would cry out now against the very semblance of the Baptist's life; and why? Those who gave a reason would perhaps call it Jewish. Yet what had St. John to do with the Jews, whose religion was one, not of austerity, but of joyousness and feasting, and that by divine permission? Surely the same feeling which would make men condemn an austere life now, if individuals attempted it, which makes them, when they read of such instances in the early Church, condemn it, would lead the same parties to condemn it in St. John, were they not bound by religious considerations; and, therefore, I say, if ever the time comes that men begin to inquire into the divinity of the separate parts of Scripture, as they do now scrutinize the separate parts of the Church system, they will no longer be able to acquiesce in St. John's character and conduct as simply right and religious.

 6.

 9. Lastly, I will mention together a number of doctrinal passages, which, though in Scripture, they who deny that the Fathers contain the pure Gospel, hardly would consider parts of it, if they were but consistent in their free speculations. Such are St. Paul's spiritualizing the history of Sarah and Hagar; his statement of the fire trying every man's work in the day of judgment; his declaring that women must have their heads covered in church, "because of the Angels;" his charging Timothy "before the elect Angels;" his calling the Church "the pillar and ground of the Truth;" the tone of his observations on celibacy, which certainly, if written by any of the Fathers, would in this day have been cited in proof of "the mystery of iniquity" (by which they mean Romanism) "already working" in an early age; St. John's remarkable agreement of tone with him in a passage in the Apocalypse, not to say our Lord's; our Lord's account of the sin against the Holy Ghost, viewed in connexion with St. Paul's warning against falling away, after being enlightened, and St. John's notice of a sin which is unto death (this would be considered opposed to the free grace of the Gospel); our Lord's strong words about the arduousness of a rich man's getting to heaven; what He says about binding and loosing; about a certain kind of evil spirit going out only by fasting and prayer; His command to turn the left cheek to him who smites the right; St. Peter's saying that we are partakers of a divine nature; and what he says about Christ's "going and preaching to the spirits in prison;" St. Matthew's account of the star which guided the wise men to Bethlehem; St. Paul's statement, that a woman is saved through childbearing; St. John's directions how to treat those who hold not "the doctrine of Christ;" these and a multitude of other passages would be adduced, not to prove that Christianity was not true, or that Christ was not the Son of God, or the Bible not inspired, or not on the whole genuine and authentic, but that every part of it was not equally divine; that portions, books, particularly of the Old Testament, were not so; that we must use our own judgment. Nay, as time went on, perhaps it would be said that the Old Testament altogether was not inspired, only the New nay, perhaps only parts of the New, not certain books which were for a time doubted in some ancient Churches, or not the Gospels according to St. Mark and St. Luke, nor the Acts, because not the writing of Apostles, or not St. Paul's reasonings, only his conclusions. Next, it would be said, that no reliance can safely be placed on single texts; and so men would proceed, giving up first one thing, then another, till it would become a question what they gained of any kind, what they considered they gained, from Christianity as a definite revelation or a direct benefit. They would come to consider its publication mainly as an historical event occurring eighteen hundred years since, which modified or altered the course of human thought and society, and thereby altered what would otherwise have been our state; as something infused into an existing mass, and influencing us in the improved tone of the institutions in which we find ourselves, rather than as independent, substantive, and one, specially divine in its origin, and directly acting upon us.

 This is what the Age is coming to, and I wish it observed. We know it denies the existence of the Church as a divine institution: it denies that Christianity has been cast into any particular social mould. Well: but this, I say, is not all; it is rapidly tending to deny the existence of any system of Christianity either; any creed, doctrine, philosophy, or by whatever other name we designate it. Hitherto it had been usual, indeed, to give up the Church, and to speak only of the covenant, religion, creed, matter, or system of the Gospel; to consider the Gospel as a sort of literature or philosophy, open for all to take and appropriate, not confined to any set of men, yet still a real, existing system of religion. This has been the approved line of opinion in our part of the world for the last hundred and fifty years; but now a further step is about to be taken. The view henceforth is to be, that Christianity does not exist in documents, any more than in institutions; in other words, the Bible will be given up as well as the Church. It will be said that the benefit which Christianity has done to the world, and which its Divine Author meant it should do, was to give an impulse to society, to infuse a spirit, to direct, control, purify, enlighten the mass of human thought and action, but not to be a separate and definite something, whether doctrine or association, existing objectively, integral, and with an identity, and for ever, and with a claim upon our homage and obedience. And all this fearfully coincides with the symptoms in other directions of the spread of a Pantheistic spirit, that is, the religion of beauty, imagination, and philosophy, without constraint moral or intellectual, a religion speculative and self-indulgent. Pantheism, indeed, is the great deceit which awaits the Age to come.

 7.

 Let us then look carefully, lest we fall in with the evil tendencies of the times in which our lot is cast. God has revealed Himself to us that we might believe: surely His Revelation is something great and important. He who made it, meant it to be a blessing even to the end of the world: this is true, if any part of Scripture is true. From beginning to end, Scripture implies that God has spoken, and that it is right, our duty, our interest, our safety to believe. Whether, then, we have in our hands the means of exactly proving this or that part of Scripture to be genuine or not, whether we have in our hands the complete proofs of all the Church doctrines, we are more sure that hearty belief in something is our duty, than that it is not our duty to believe those doctrines and that Scripture as we have received them. If our choice lies between accepting all and rejecting all, which I consider it does when persons are consistent, no man can hesitate which alternative is to be taken.

 So far then every one of us may say, Our Heavenly Father gave the world a Revelation in Christ; we are baptized into His Name. He wills us to believe, because He has given us a Revelation. He who wills us to believe must have given us an object to believe. Whether I can prove this or that part to my satisfaction, yet, since I can prove all in a certain way, and cannot separate part from part satisfactorily, I cannot be wrong in taking the whole. I am sure that, if there be error, which I have yet to learn, it must be, not in principles, but in mere matters of detail. If there be corruption or human addition in what comes to me, it must be in little matters, not in great. On the whole, I cannot but have God's Revelation, and that, in what I see before me, with whatever incidental errors. I am sure, on the other hand, that the way which the Age follows cannot be right, for it tends to destroy Revelation altogether. Whether this or that doctrine, this or that book of Scripture is fully provable or not, that line of objection to it cannot be right, which, when pursued, destroys Church, Creed, Bible altogether, which obliterates the very Name of Christ from the world. It is then God's will, under my circumstances, that I should believe what, in the way of Providence, He has put before me to believe. God will not deceive me. I can trust Him. Either every part of the system is pure truth, or, if this or that be an addition, He will (I humbly trust and believe) make such addition harmless to my soul, if I thus throw myself on His mercy with a free and confiding spirit. Doubt is misery and sin, but belief has received Christ's blessing.

 This is the reflection which I recommend to all, so far as they have not the means of examining the Evidences for the Church, Creed, and Canon of Scripture; but I must not be supposed to imply, because I have so put the matter, that those who have the means, will not find abundant evidence for the divinity of all three.

 Lecture 8. Difficulties of Jewish and of Christian Faith compared

 I HAVE been engaged for some time in showing that the Canon of Scripture rests on no other foundation than the Catholic doctrines rest; that those who dispute the latter should, if they were consistent, will, when they learn to be consistent, dispute the former; that in both cases we believe, mainly, because the Church of the fourth and fifth centuries unanimously believed, and that we have at this moment to defend our belief in the Catholic doctrines merely because they come first, are the first object of attack; and that if we were not defending our belief in them, we should at this very time be defending our belief in the Canon. Let no one then hope for peace in this day; let no one attempt to purchase it by concession; vain indeed would be that concession. Give up the Catholic doctrines, and what do you gain? an attack upon the Canon, with (to say the least) the same disadvantages on your part, or rather, in fact, with much greater; for the circumstance that you have already given up the Doctrines as if insufficiently evidenced in primitive times, will be an urgent call on you, in consistency, to give up the Canon too. And besides, the Church doctrines may also be proved from Scripture, but no one can say that the Canon of Scripture itself can be proved from Scripture to be a Canon; no one can say, that Scripture anywhere enumerates all the books of which it is composed, and puts its seal upon them ever so indirectly, even if it might allowably bear witness to itself.

 1.

 But here, before proceeding to make some reflections on the state of the case, I will make one explanation, and notice one objection.

 In the first place, then, I must explain myself, when I say that we depend for the Canon and Creed upon the fourth and fifth centuries. We depend upon them thus: As to Scripture, former centuries certainly do not speak distinctly, frequently, or unanimously, except of some chief books, as the Gospels: but still we see in them, as we believe, an ever-growing tendency and approximation to that full agreement which we find in the fifth. The testimony given at the latter date is the limit to which all that has been before given converges. For instance, it is commonly said, Exceptio probat regulam ; when we have reason to think, that a writer or an age would have witnessed so and so, but for this or that, and this or that were mere accidents of his position, then he or it may be said to tend towards such testimony. In this way the first centuries tend towards the fifth. Viewing the matter as one of moral evidence, we seem to see in the testimony of the fifth the very testimony which every preceding century gave, accidents excepted, such as the present loss of documents once extant, or the then existing misconceptions, which want of intercourse between the Churches occasioned. The fifth century acts as a comment on the obscure text of the centuries before it, and brings out a meaning which, with the help of that comment, any candid person sees really to belong to them.

 And in the same way as regards the Catholic Creed, though there is not so much to explain and account for. Not so much, for no one, I suppose, will deny that in the Fathers of the fourth century it is as fully developed, and as unanimously adopted, as it is in the fifth century; and, again, there had been no considerable doubts about any of its doctrines previously, as there were about the Epistle to the Hebrews or the Apocalypse: or if any, they were started by individuals, as Origen's about eternal punishment, not by Churches, or they were at once condemned by the general Church, as in the case of heresies, or they were not about any primary doctrine, for instance, the Incarnation or Atonement; and all this, in spite of that want of free intercourse which did occasion doubts about portions of the Canon. Yet, in both cases, we have at first an inequality of evidence as regards the constituent parts of what was afterwards universally received as a whole, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, for instance, and, on the other hand, the four Gospels being generally witnessed from the first; but certain other doctrines, (as the necessity of infant baptism,) being at first rather practised and assumed, than insisted on, and certain books, (as the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Apocalypse,) doubted, or not admitted, in particular countries. And as the unanimity of the fifth century as regards the Canon, clears up and overcomes all previous differences, so the abundance of the fourth as to the Creed interprets, develops, and combines all that is recondite or partial, in previous centuries, as to doctrine, acting in a parallel way as a comment, not, indeed, as in the case of the Canon, upon a perplexed and disordered, but upon a concise text. In both cases, the after centuries contain but the termination and summing up of the testimony of the foregoing.

 2.

 So much as to the explanation which I proposed to give; the objection I have to notice is this. It is said, that the Fathers might indeed bear witness to a document such as the books of Scripture are, and yet not be good witnesses to a doctrine, which is, after all, but an opinion. A document or book is something external to the mind; it is an object that any one can point at, and if a person about two or three hundred years after Christ, said, "This book of the New Testament has been accounted sacred ever since it was written," we could be as sure of what he said, as we are at the present day, that the particular church we now use was built at a certain date, or that the date in the title-page of a certain printed book is trustworthy. On the other hand, it is urged, a doctrine does not exist, except in the mind of this or that person, it is not a thing you can point at, it is not a something which two persons see at once, it is an opinion; and every one has his own opinion. I have an opinion, you have an opinion; if on comparing notes we think we agree, we call it the same opinion, but it is not the same really, only called the same, because similar; and, in fact, probably no two such opinions really do coincide in all points. Every one describes and colours from his own mind. No one then can bear witness to a doctrine being ancient. Strictly speaking, that which he contemplates, witnesses, speaks about, began with himself; it is a birth of his own mind. He may, indeed, have caught it from another, but it is not the same as another man's doctrine, unless one flame is the same as a second kindled from it; and as flame communicated from spirit to sulphur, from sulphur to wood, from wood to coal, from coal to charcoal, burns variously, so, true as it may be that certain doctrines originated in the Apostles, it does not follow that the particular form in which we possess them, originated with the Apostles also. Such is the objection; that the Fathers, if honest men, may be credible witnesses of facts, but not, however honest, witnesses to doctrines.

 It admits of many answers: I will mention two.

 1. It does not rescue the Canon from the difficulties of its own evidence, which is its professed object; for it is undeniable that there are books of Scripture, which in the first centuries particular Fathers, nay, particular Churches did not receive. What is the good of contrasting testimony to facts with testimony to opinions, when we have not in the case of the Canon that clear testimony to the facts in dispute, which the objection supposes? Lower, as you will, the evidence for the Creed; you do nothing thereby towards raising the evidence for the Canon. The first Fathers, in the midst of the persecutions, had not, as I have said, time and opportunity to ascertain always what was inspired and what was not; and, since nothing but an agreement of many, of different countries, will prove to us what the Canon is, we must betake ourselves of necessity to the fourth and fifth centuries, to those centuries which did hold those very doctrines, which, it seems, are to be rejected as superstitions and corruptions. But if the Church then was in that miserable state of superstition, which belief in those doctrines is supposed to imply, then I must contend, that blind bigotry and ignorance were not fit judges of what was inspired and what was not. I will not trust the judgment of a worldly-minded partizan, or a crafty hypocrite, or a credulous fanatic in this matter. Unless then you allow those centuries to be tolerably free from doctrinal corruptions, I conceive, you cannot use them as witnesses of the canonicity of the Old and New Testament, as we now have them; but, if you do consider the fourth and fifth centuries enlightened enough to decide on the Canon, then I want to know why you call them not enlightened in point of doctrine. The only reason commonly given is, that their Christianity contains many notions and many usages and rites not in Scripture, and which, because not in Scripture, are to be considered, it seems, as if against Scripture. But this surely is no sound argument, unless it is true also that the canonicity itself of the Old and New Testament, not being declared in Scripture, is therefore unscriptural. I consider then that the man, whether we call him cautious or sceptical, who quarrels with the testimony for Catholic doctrine, because a doctrine is a mere opinion, and not an objective fact, ought also in consistency to quarrel with the testimony for the Canon, as being that of an age which is superstitious as a teacher and uncritical as a judge.

 2. But again: the doctrines of the Church are after all not mere matters of opinion; they were not in early times mere ideas in the mind to which no one could appeal, each individual having his own, but they were external facts, quite as much as the books of Scripture; how so? Because they were embodied in rites and ceremonies. A usage, custom, or monument, has the same kind of identity, is in the same sense common property, and admits of a common appeal, as a book. When a writer appeals to the custom of the Sign of the Cross, or the Baptism of infants, or the Sacrifice or the Consecration of the Eucharist, or Episcopal Ordination, he is not speaking of an opinion in his mind, but of something external to it, and is as trustworthy as when he says that the Acts of the Apostles is written by St. Luke. Now such usages are symbols of common, not individual opinions, and more or less involve the doctrines they symbolize. Is it not implied, for instance, in the fact of priests only consecrating the Eucharist, that it is a gift which others have not? in the Eucharist being offered to God, that it is an offering? in penance being exacted of offenders, that it is right to impose it? in children being exorcised, that they are by nature children of wrath, and inhabited by Satan? On the other hand, when the Fathers witness to the inspiration of Scripture, they are surely as much witnessing to a mere doctrine, not to the book itself, but to an opinion, as when they bear witness to the grace of Baptism.

 Again, the Creed is a document the same in kind as Scripture, though its wording be not fixed and invariable, or its language. It admits of being appealed to, and is appealed to by the early Fathers, as Scripture is. If Scripture was written by the Apostles, (as it is,) because the Fathers say so, why was not the Creed taught by the Apostles, because the Fathers say so? The Creed is no opinion in the mind, but a form of words pronounced many times a day, at every baptism, at every communion, by every member of the Church: is it not common property as much as Scripture?

 Once more; if Church doctrine is but a hazy opinion, how is it there can be such a thing at all as Catholic consent about it? If, in spite of its being subjective to the mind, Europe, Asia, and Africa could agree together in doctrine in the fourth and fifth centuries (to say nothing of earlier times), why should its subjective character be an antecedent objection to a similar agreement in it between the fourth century and the first? And does not this agreement show that we are able to tell when we agree together, and when we do not? Is it a mere accident, and perhaps a mistake, that Christians then felt sure that they agreed together in creed, and we now feel sure that we do not agree together?

 Granting, then, that external facts can be discriminated in a way in which opinions cannot be, yet the Church doctrines are not mere opinions, but ordinances also: and though the books of Scripture themselves are an external fact, yet they are not all of them witnessed by all writers till a late age, and their canonicity and inspiration are but doctrines, not facts, and open to the objections, whatever they are, to which doctrines lie open.

 3.

 And now, having said as much as is necessary on these subjects, I will make some remarks on the state of the case as I have represented it, and thus shall bring to an end the train of thought upon which I have been engaged. Let us suppose it proved, then, as I consider it has been proved, that many difficulties are connected with the evidence for the Canon, that we might have clearer evidence for it than we have; and again, let us grant that there are many difficulties connected with the evidence for the Church doctrines, that they might be more clearly contained in Scripture, nay, in the extant writings of the first three centuries, than they are. This being assumed, I observe as follows:

 1. There is something very arresting and impressive in the fact, that there should be these difficulties attending those two great instruments of religious truth which we possess. We are all of us taught from the Bible, and from the Creed or the Prayer Book: it is from these that we get our knowledge of God. We are sure they contain a doctrine which is from Him. We are sure of it; but how do we know it? We are sure the doctrine is from Him, and (I hesitate not to say) by a supernatural divinely inspired assurance; but how do we know the doctrine is from Him? When we go to inquire into the reasons in argument, we find that the Creed or the Prayer Book with its various doctrines rests for its authority upon the Bible, and that these might be more clearly stated in the Bible than they are; and that the Bible, with its various books, rests for its authority on ancient testimony, and that its books might have been more largely and strongly attested than they are. I say, there is something very subduing to a Christian in this remarkable coincidence, which cannot be accidental. We have reason to believe that God, our Maker and Governor, has spoken to us by Revelation; yet why has He not spoken more distinctly? He has given us doctrines which are but obscurely gathered from Scripture, and a Scripture which is but obscurely gathered from history. It is not a single fact, but a double fact; it is a coincidence. We have two informants, and both leave room, if we choose, for doubt. God's ways surely are not as our ways.

 2. This is the first reflection which rises in the mind on the state of the case. The second is this: that, most remarkable it is, the Jews were left in the same uncertainty about Christ, in which we are about His doctrine. The precept, " Search the Scriptures," and the commendation of the BerSans, who " searched the Scriptures daily," surely implies that divine truth was not on the surface of the Old Testament. We do not search for things which are before us, but for what we have lost or have to find. The whole system of the prophecies left the Jews (even after Christ came) where we are in uncertainty. The Sun of Righteousness did not at once clear up the mists from the Prophetic Word. It was a dark saying to the many, after He came, as well as before. It is not to be denied that there were and are many real difficulties in the way of the Jews admitting that Jesus Christ is their Messiah. The Old Testament certainly does speak of the Messiah as a temporal monarch, and a conqueror of this world. We are accustomed to say that the prophecies must be taken spiritually; and rightly do we say so. True: yet does not this look like an evasion, to a Jew? Is it not much more like an evasion, though it be not, than to say (what the Church does say and rightly) that rites remain, though Jewish rites are done away, because our rites are not Jewish, but spiritual, gifted with the Spirit, channels of grace? The Old Testament certainly spoke as if, when the Church expanded into all nations, still those nations were to be inferior to the Jews, even if admitted into the Church; and so St. Peter understood it till he had the vision. Yet when the Jews complained, instead of being soothed and consoled, they were met with language such as this: "Friend, I do thee no wrong ... Is it not lawful for Me to do what I will with Mine own? Is thine eye evil because I am good?" And, "Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to Him that formed it, Why hast Thou made me thus?" [Matt. xx. 13-15. Rom. ix. 20.]

 Again; why were the Jews discarded from God's election? for keeping to their Law. Why, this was the very thing they were told to do, the very thing which, if not done, was to be their ruin. Consider Moses' words: "If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful Name, The Lord thy God; then the Lord will make thy plagues wonderful, and the plagues of thy seed, even great plagues, and of long continuance, and sore sicknesses, and of long continuance." [Deut. xxviii. 58, 59.] Might they not, or rather did they not, bring passages like this as an irrefragable argument against Christianity, that they were told to give up their Law, that Law which was the charter of their religious prosperity? Might not their case seem a hard one, judging by the surface of things, and without reference to "the hidden man of the heart"? We know how to answer this objection; we say, Christianity lay beneath the letter; that the letter slew those who for whatever cause went by it; that when Christ came, He shed a light on the sacred text and brought out its secret meaning. Now, is not this just the case I have been stating, as regards Catholic doctrines, or rather a more difficult case? The doctrines of the Church are not hidden so deep in the New Testament, as the Gospel doctrines are hidden in the Old; but they are hidden; and I am persuaded that were men but consistent, who oppose the Church doctrines as being unscriptural, they would vindicate the Jews for rejecting the Gospel.

 Much might be said on this subject: I will but add, by way of specimen, how such interpretations as our Lord's of "I am the God of Abraham," etc., would, were we not accustomed to them, startle and offend reasoning men. Is it not much further from the literal force of the words, than the doctrine of the Apostolical Succession is from the words, "I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world"? In the one case we argue, "Therefore, the Apostles are in one sense now on earth, because Christ says 'with you alway ;'" in the other, Christ Himself argues, "therefore in one sense the bodies of the patriarchs are still alive; for God calls Himself ' their God.'" We say, "therefore the Apostles live in their successors." Christ implies, "therefore the body never died, and therefore it will rise again." His own divine mouth hereby shows us that doctrines may be in Scripture, though they require a multitude of links to draw them thence. It must be added that the Sadducees did profess (what they would call) a plain and simple creed; they recurred to Moses and went by Moses, and rejected all additions to what was on the surface of the Mosaic writings, and thus they rejected what really was in the mind of Moses, though not on his lips. They denied the Resurrection; they had no idea that it was contained in the books of Moses.

 Here, then, is another singular instance of the same procedure on the part of Divine Providence. That Gospel which was to be "the glory of His people Israel," [Luke ii. 32.] was a stumblingblock to them, as for other reasons, so especially because it was not on the surface of the Old Testament. And all the compassion (if I may use the word) that they received from the Apostles in their perplexity was, "because they knew Him not, nor yet the voice of the Prophets which are read every Sabbath day, they have fulfilled them in condemning Him." [Acts xiii. 27.] Or again: "Well spake the Holy Ghost by Esaias the prophet unto our fathers, saying, Go unto this people, and say, Hearing, ye shall hear, and shall not understand," [Acts xxviii. 25, 26.] etc. Or when the Apostles are mildest: "I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsman according to the flesh;" or "I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge." [Rom. ix. 2, 3; x. 2.] Moreover, it is observable that the record of their anxiety is preserved to us; an anxiety which many of us would call just and rational, many would pity, but which the inspired writers treat with a sort of indignation and severity. "Then came the Jews round about Him, and said unto Him, How long dost Thou make us to doubt?" [John x. 24.] or more literally, "How long dost Thou keep our soul in suspense? If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly ." Christ answers by referring to His works, and by declaring that His sheep do hear and know Him, and follow Him. If any one will seriously consider the intercourse between our Lord and the Pharisees, he will see that, not denying their immorality and miserable pride, still they had reason for complaining (as men now speak) that "the Gospel was not preached to them," that the Truth was not placed before them clearly, and fully, and uncompromisingly, and intelligibly, and logically, that they were bid to believe on weak arguments and fanciful deductions [n. 1].

 This then, I say, is certainly a most striking coincidence in addition. Whatever perplexity any of us may feel about the evidence of Scripture or the evidence of Church doctrine, we see that such perplexity is represented in Scripture as the lot of the Jews too; and this circumstance, while it shows that it is a sort of law of God's providence, and thereby affords an additional evidence of the truth of the Revealed System by showing its harmony, also serves to quiet and console, and moreover to awe and warn us. Doubt and difficulty, as regards evidence, seems our lot; the simple question is, What is our duty under it? Difficulty is our lot, as far as we take on ourselves to inquire; the multitude are not able to inquire, and so escape the trial; but when men inquire, this trial at once comes upon them. And surely we may use the parable of the Talents to discover what our duty is under the trial. Do not those who refuse to go by the hints and probable meaning of Scripture hide their talent in a napkin? and will they be excused?

 3. Now in connexion with what has been said, observe the singular coincidence, or rather appositeness, of what Scripture enjoins, as to the duty of going by faith in religious matters. The difficulties which exist in the evidence give a deep meaning to that characteristic enunciation. Scripture is quite aware of those difficulties. Objections can be brought against its own inspiration, its canonicity, its doctrines in our case, as in the case of the Jews against the Messiahship of Jesus Christ. It knows them all: it has provided against them, by recognizing them. It says, "Believe," because it knows that, unless we believe, there is no means of our arriving at a knowledge of divine things. If we will doubt, that is, if we will not allow evidence to be sufficient for us which mainly results, considered in its details, in a balance preponderating on the side of Revelation; if we will determine that no evidence is enough to prove revealed doctrine but what is simply overpowering; if we will not go by evidence in which there are (so to say) a score of reasons for Revelation, yet one or two against it, we cannot be Christians; we shall miss Christ either in His inspired Scriptures, or in His doctrines, or in His ordinances.

 4.

 To conclude: our difficulty and its religious solution are contained in the sixth chapter of St. John. After our Lord had declared what all who heard seemed to feel to be a hard doctrine, some in surprise and offence left Him. Our Lord said to the Twelve most tenderly, "Will ye also go away?" St. Peter promptly answered, No: but observe on what ground he put it: "Lord, to whom shall we go?" He did not bring forward evidences of our Lord's mission, though he knew of such. He knew of such in abundance, in the miracles which our Lord wrought: but, still, questions might be raised about the so-called miracles of others, such as of Simon the sorcerer, or of vagabond Jews, or about the force of the evidence from miracles itself. This was not the evidence on which he rested personally, but this, that if Christ were not to be trusted, there was nothing in the world to be trusted; and this was a conclusion repugnant both to his reason and to his heart. He had within him ideas of greatness and goodness, holiness and eternity, he had a love of them he had an instinctive hope and longing after their possession. Nothing could convince him that this unknown good was a dream. Divine life, eternal life was the object which his soul, as far as it had learned to realize and express its wishes, supremely longed for. In Christ he found what he wanted. He says, "Lord, to whom shall we go?" implying he must go somewhere. Christ had asked, "Will ye also go away ?" He only asked about Peter's leaving Himself ; but in Peter's thought to leave Him was to go somewhere else. He only thought of leaving Him by taking another god. That negative state of neither believing nor disbelieving, neither acting this way nor that, which is so much in esteem now, did not occur to his mind as possible. The fervent Apostle ignored the existence of scepticism. With him, his course was at best but a choice of difficulties  of difficulties perhaps, but still a choice. He knew of no course without a choice, choice he must make. Somewhither he must go: whither else? If Christ could deceive him, to whom should he go? Christ's ways might be dark, His words often perplexing, but still he found in Him what he found nowhere else, amid difficulties, a realization of his inward longings. "Thou hast the words of eternal life."

 So far he saw. He might have misgivings at times; he might have permanent and in themselves insuperable objections; still, in spite of such objections, in spite of the assaults of unbelief, on the whole, he saw that in Christ which was positive, real, and satisfying. He saw it nowhere else. "Thou," he says, "hast the words of eternal life; and we have believed and have known that thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God." As if he said, "We will stand by what we believed and knew yesterday, what we believed and knew the day before. A sudden gust of new doctrines, a sudden inroad of new perplexities, shall not unsettle us. We have believed, we have known: we cannot collect together all the evidence, but this is the abiding deep conviction of our minds. We feel that it is better, safer, truer, pleasanter, more blessed to cling to Thy feet, O merciful Saviour, than to leave Thee. Thou canst not deceive us: it is impossible. We will hope in Thee against hope, and believe in Thee against doubt, and obey Thee in spite of gloom."

 Now what are the feelings I have described but the love of Christ? Thus love is the parent of faith [n. 2]. We believe in things we see not from love of them: if we did not love, we should not believe. Faith is reliance on the word of another; the word of another is in itself a faint evidence compared with that of sight or reason. It is influential only when we cannot do without it. We cannot do without it when it is our informant about things which we cannot do without. Things we cannot do without, are things which we desire. They who feel they cannot do without the next world, go by faith (not that sight would not be better), but because they have no other means of knowledge to go by. "To whom shall they go?" If they will not believe the word preached to them, what other access have they to the next world? Love of God led St. Peter to follow Christ, and love of Christ leads men now to love and follow the Church, as His representative and voice.

 Let us then say, If we give up the Gospel, as we have received it in the Church, to whom shall we go? It has the words of eternal life in it: where else are they to be found? Is there any other Religion to choose but that of the Church? Shall we go to Mahometanism or Paganism? But we may seek some heresy or sect: true, we may; but why are they more sure? are they not a part, while the Church is the whole? Why is the part true, if the whole is not? Why is not that evidence trustworthy for the whole, which is trustworthy for a part? Sectaries commonly give up the Church doctrines, and go by the Church's Bible; but if the doctrines cannot be proved true, neither can the Bible; they stand or fall together. If we begin, we must soon make an end. On what consistent principle can I give up part and keep the rest? No: I see a work before me, which professes to be the work of that God whose being and attributes I feel within me to be real. Why should not this great sight be,  what it professes to be His presence? Why should not the Church be divine? The burden of proof surely is on the other side. I will accept her doctrines, and her rites, and her Bible, not one, and not the other, but all, till I have clear proof, which is an impossibility, that she is mistaken. It is, I feel, God's will that I should do so; and besides, I love all that belong to her, I love her Bible, her doctrines, her rites, and therefore I believe.

 September, 1838.

 Notes

 1. [This is too strongly worded.]  

 2. [To say that "love is the parent of faith" is true, if by "love" is meant, not evangelical charity, the theological virtue, but that desire for the knowledge and drawing towards the service of our Maker, which precedes religious conversion. Such is the main outline, personally and historically, of the inward acceptance of Revelation on the part of individuals, and does not at all exclude, but actually requires, the exercise of Reason, and the presence of grounds for believing, as an incidental and necessary part of the process. The preliminary, called in the text "love," but more exactly, a "pia affectio," or "bona voluntas," does not stand in antagonism or in contrast to Reason, but is a sovereign condition without which Reason cannot be brought to bear upon the great work in hand.  Vid . Univ. Serm. xii., 20.]