of course interesting and valuable to a theological student. And a man of modesty and candour will not fail to pay great attention to their opinions, in whatever period they may have lived. He will also inquire with peculiar interest into the belief and the practices of those who had been instructed by the immediate disciples and other contemporaries of the Apostles themselves. But the mistake is, to assume, on the ground of presumptuous conjecture (for of proof, there is not even a shadow) that these men were infallible interpreters of the Apostles, and had received from them by tradition something not contained, or not plainly set forth, in their writings, but which yet were designed by those very Apostles as a necessary portion of Christianity.

"Not only are all these assumptions utterly groundless and unwarrantable, but, on the contrary, even if there is any thing which we can be morally certain was practised in the time of the Apostles, and with their sanction (as is the case for instance with the Agapæ or Lovefeasts) we must yet consider it as not designed by them to be of universal and perpetual obligation, where they have not distinctly laid it down as such in their writings. By omitting, in any case, thus to record certain of their practices or directions, they have given us as clear an indication as we

could have looked for, of their design to leave these to the free choice and decision of each Church in each Age and Country. And there seems every reason to think that it was on purpose to avoid misapprehensions of this kind, that they did leave unrecorded so much of what we cannot but be sure they must have practised, and said, and established, in the Churches under their own immediate care.

"And it should be remembered that what some persons consider as the safe side in respect of such points, -as the extreme of scrupulous and cautious veneration-is in truth the reverse. A wise and right-minded reverence for divine authority will render us doubly scrupulous of reckoning any thing as a divine precept or institution, without sufficient warrant. Yet, at the first glance, a readiness to bestow religious veneration, with or without good grounds (which is the very characteristic of superstition) is apt to be mistaken for a sign of pre-eminent piety. Besides those who hold the double doctrine' the 'disciplina arcani'—and concerning whom therefore it would be rash to pronounce whether any particular tenet taught by them, is one which they inwardly believe, or is one of the exoteric instructions deemed expedient for the multitude,-besides these persons, there are, no doubt, men of sincere though mistaken

piety, who, as has been just intimated, consider it as the safe side in all doubtful cases, to adhere with unhesitating confidence to every thing that may possibly have been introduced or practised by the Apostles ;-to make every thing an article of Christian faith that could have been implied in any thing they may have taught. But such persons would perceive on more careful and sober reflection, that a rightly-scrupulous piety consists, as has been said, in drawing the line as distinctly as we are able, between what is, and what is not designed by our divine Instructors as a portion of their authoritative precepts and directions. It is by this careful anxiety to comply with their intention with respect to us, that we are to manifest a true veneration for them.

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Any thing that does not fall within this rule, we may believe, but not as a part of the Christian revelation;—we may practise, but not as a portion of the divine institutions essential to a Christian Church, and binding on all men in all Ages: not, in short, as something placed beyond the bounds of that 'binding and loosing' power which belongs to every Church, in reference to things neither enjoined in Scripture nor at variance with it. Otherwise, even though what we believe should be, really, and in itself, true, and though what we practise, should chance to be in fact what the Apostles did

practise, we should be not honouring, but dishonouring God, by taking upon ourselves to give the sanction of his authority to that from which He has thought fit to withhold that sanction. When the Apostle Paul gave his advice on matters respecting which he had no commandment from the Lord,' he of course thought that what he was recommending was good; but so far was he from presuming to put it forth as a divine command, that he expressly notified the contrary. Let us not think to manifest our pious humility by reversing the Apostle's procedure !

"I have thought it needful, in these times especially, to insert this caution against such mistaken efforts after advancement in Christian knowledge and practice; against the delusions of those who, while they exult in their imagined progress in the Christian course, are, in reality straying into other paths, and following a bewildering meteor."

Church

fatal to the

§ 20. Those whose "Church-principles" lead Pretended them thus to remove from a firm foundation the principles institutions of a Christian Church, and especially Christian of our own, and to place them on the sand, are moreover compelled, as it were with their own advocates. hands, to dig away even that very foundation

of sand.

For, in respect of our own Church,

hopes and privileges even of their

gps montes repeatedly and earnestly as a rinciple," that nothing is to be sin essential point of faith, that is

Scripture, any member of our ro should make essentials of points NOT found in Scripture, and who sequently make it a point of necessary believe that these are essentials, must bly be pronouncing condemnation, ru himself, or on the very Church he sto, and whose claims he is professing to

moreover, not from our own Church only, ..rom the Universal Church,-from all the ...leges and promises of the Gospel,-the rtciples I am condemning, go to exclude, if sary followed out, the very persons who advoace them. For it is certain that our own instiutions and practices (and the like may be said, I apprehend, of every other Church in the world) though not, we conceive, at variance with any Apostolical injunctions, or with any Gospelprinciple, are, in several points, not precisely coincident with those of the earliest Churches. The Agape for instance, or "Love-feasts," alluded to just above, have, in most Churches, been long discontinued. The "Widows" again,

"Besides the Articles, see, on this point, the Ordination Service.