trines opposed to one another, and will hear many professing to know the truth, and different traditions respecting it." What then, I ask, would have been Origen's opinion of the doctrine of our opponents, that there was universal consent among all the teachers of the Catholic Church, in all the important doctrines of Christianity, for the first four or five centuries?

2

JEROME. (fl. a. 378.)

Again, what is the testimony of Jerome? "While," saith he, "the blood of Christ was yet but recently shed in Judæa, it was maintained that the Lord's body was but an appearance," &c. And after enumerating several cases of error, he points out, as other instances, that "To the angel of Ephesus there is imputed the loss of love. In the angel of the Church of Pergamos the eating of things offered to idols, and the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, are blamed;" &c., showing that he held that there were many, even at that time, in the nominal Catholic Church, involved in serious error. And as to any notion that he could have supported the doctrine of our opponents as to the truth having been delivered in the catholic consent of the writers of the preceding ages, it is summarily overthrown by his language respecting the testimony of those writers on the great question that formed the subject of the Arian controversy. He admits fully that their works contain erroneous statements; and when asked how he accounts for it, he replies, "It may be that they merely erred or wrote with another meaning, or their writings were gradually corrupted by unskilful copyists; or certainly before that that meridian dæmon, Arius, arose in Alexandria, they may have spoken some things innocently and incautiously: and that cannot escape the calumny of perverse men." He, then, who wrote thus, could not have supposed that the Catholic consent of these writers formed part of the rule of faith.

AUGUSTINE. (fl. a. 396.)

Let us pass on to Augustine. Having stated that to the Scriptures alone he had learned to give such honour as to suppose the writers of them certainly inerrable, he adds, respecting all other authors," But others, however distinguished they may be for holiness and learning, I so read as not to think anything true, because they thought it to be so, but because they are able to persuade me, either by those canonical authors, or by some probable

See vol. i. p. 335.

1 See vol. i. p. 336.

3 See vol. i. p. 290.

reason, that it is agreeable to the truth." Now these words are quite irreconcileable with the notion that Augustine supposed the consent of those writers formed part of the rule of faith, and was a practically infallible informant of the oral tradition of the Apostles.

And, as we have already shown, we find the Fathers of the Nicene and subsequent ages frequently blaming earlier Fathers of the catholic Church for unorthodox statements.

Here, then, whatever statements may be made elsewhere, we have at least sufficient evidence that no such doctrine as that of our opponents-that the catholic consent of all the teachers of the primitive Church forms part of the rule of faith—was a received doctrine of the early Church.

We are far, indeed, from denying that the Fathers were in the habit of appealing to those who had preceded them in confirmation of the correctness of their doctrines. Such appeals we ourselves make. Nay, such evidence might fairly be required by us for doctrines proposed to us as fundamental, not from any obscu rity or insufficiency in the Scripture proof, but from its being impossible to suppose that all who went before were in error in fundamentals. But unless we can show real catholic consent, the testimony of a few witnesses on the subject is anything but infallible. Now such catholic consent the Fathers generally did not pretend to claim. Nor consequently did they put forward the patristical testimonies to which they referred as any divine informant, or authoritative witness, or practically infallible record of the oral teaching of the Apostles.

A remarkable passage in proof of this occurs in a fragment of a work called "the little Labyrinth," generally attributed to Caius, and written in the early part of the third century, against the heresy of Artemon. In this passage, which we have given at length in a preceding page, it is said, "the heretics say that all the antients and the Apostles themselves both received and taught those things which they now affirm, and that the truth of the gospel was preserved until the times of Victor, who was the thirteenth bishop of Rome from Peter; but that from the time of his successor, Zephyrinus, the truth was adulterated. And the remark would perhaps be probable, but for that first the divine Scriptures opposed them, and that there are writings of certain brethren older than the times of Victor, which they wrote against the heathen in defence of the truth, and against the heresies of that time. . . . How, therefore, is it possible, that

when the doctrine received by the Church was preached so many years ago, all up to the time of Victor should have preached such doctrine as they say?"

Now here (as we have already observed) the claim of the heretics, that their doctrine was held and preached by the Apostles and all their earliest followers, is denied, first, because the divine Scriptures delivered a different doctrine, and secondly, because some of the earliest followers of the Apostles had left writings in which the contrary was maintained. In a word, the silly claim to catholic consent, or the every body-always-every where-agreed-with-me argument, is left with the heretics, who, as we here see, could even then venture to make use of it, and heresy is refuted first by Scripture, and then antiquity is appealed to in confirmation, to show that what is considered the orthodox doctrine, the correct interpretation of Scripture, is no novelty, but has been held by many from the earliest times.

Further, that our opponents' doctrine on this subject was no received doctrine of the Church, is evident from the account given. us by Socrates1 of the proceedings at the Council of Constantinople in 381. For there we find the person put forward by the orthodox party as their champion, advising them, as a matter of prudence, and an expedient method of dealing with the heretics, to appeal to the writings of the Fathers, and make them the Judge of the controversy in hand. And the way in which this proposition was received by Nectarius, the bishop of Constantinople, and the Emperor, shows that the notion, so far from being a received doctrine of the Church, had not before occurred to them.

Moreover, when the appeal is made by the Fathers to those that preceded them, we find no claim made to the universal consent of all the teachers of the catholic Church. The statements of the Fathers above quoted show us how preposterous such a claim would have been, when there is hardly a Father who does not more or less find fault with some of those who had preceded him, as involved in some error. Their appeal was made to those whom they considered most worthy of being followed. And if in the heat of controversy they may have sometimes used words that seem to have a wider scope, those words must be interpreted with a recollection of their own admissions elsewhere.

Let us observe in what way Augustine introduces his reference to the Fathers in the Pelagian controversy. After having refuted the Pelagian errors by the testimony of Scripture, he proceeds to say," But since they say that their enemies have adopted our language from hatred to the truth, &c. . . . . when rather the Church of Christ, both of the West and the East, has

1 Hist. Eccles. lib. v. c. 10.

been horror-struck at their profane and novel language; I think it concerns us not only to produce the testimony of the sacred canonical Scriptures against them, which we have already sufficiently done, but also to bring forward some testimonies from the writings of the saints who before our time have, with very great honour and renown, expounded those Scriptures; not that the authority of any disputant is put by us on a level with the canonical books, or, which could not be, that the opinion of one catholic is not as good and true as that of another catholic, but that those who think that such persons have some ground for what they say may be admonished, how on these points, before the Pelagians introduced their new and foolish phrases, catholic prelates followed the divine declarations, and may know that the true and antiently established catholic faith is defended by us against the new presumption and destructive error of the Pelagian heretics." And he then proceeds to quote Cyprian and others in defence of his doctrines. Now this language, as the reader will have observed, is altogether different to that of our opponents.

In short, the mode of arguing adopted by the Fathers was like that of the Church of England. They said, The Scripture clearly affirms such and such a doctrine, therefore it is the orthodox faith. But to those who denied the correctness of their interpretation of Scripture, they urged this argument among others, to show that it was the true one, namely, that such and such catholic Fathers had maintained it, and therefore that it was a doctrine that had been all along held in the catholic Church. And they probably recognized in general the necessity, in vital points, of having some authority in the teaching of those who went before them for their interpretation of Scripture, and therefore they referred to patristical tradition in support of the doctrines they advocated on such points; though even here the remarks of Basil upon the silence of the preceding Fathers on the

1 Sed quoniam dicunt, Inimicos suos dicta nostra in veritatis odium suscepisse, &c. cum potius eorum profanas vocum novitates Ecclesia Christi et occidentalis et orientalis horruerit; ad curam nostram existimo pertinere, non solum Scripturas sanctas canonicas adversus eos testes adhibere, quod jam satis fecimus, verum etiam de sanctorum litteris, qui eas ante nos fama celeberrima et ingenti gloria tractaverunt, aliqua documenta proferre: non quo canonicis libris a nobis ullius disputatoris æquetur auctoritas, [? add here, aut, or, nec] tamquam omnino non sit quod melius seu verius ab aliquo catholico quam ab alio itidem catholico sentiatur, sed ut admoneantur, qui putant istos aliquid dicere, quemadmodum de his rebus ante nova istorum vaniloquia catholici antitistes [antistites] eloquia divina secuti sint; et sciant a nobis rectam et antiquitus fundatam catho licam fidem adversus recedentem [recentem] Pelagianorum hæreticorum præsumtionem perniciemque defendi. AvGUST. contr. duas epist. Pelag. lib. iv. sc. 8. tom. x. col. 480. ed. Ben.

doctrine of the divinity of the Holy Ghost,1 show that the existence of such testimony was not always esteemed essential. But as it respects such a "catholic consent" as our opponents talk of, and the uses to be made of it, they evidently recognized nothing of the kind; still less did they dream of there being any such patristical testimony as could be proposed to all as a divine informant. In fact, many of them have expressly declared, directly or indirectly, (as we shall see in the next section,) that the only divine revelation we possess is that contained in the Scriptures.

The Fathers might say, as we should now, Such and such is the faith of the Church in fundamental points, and he who does not embrace that faith is in fundamental error. But this is not putting forward the dictum of that which we choose to call "the Church," as the ground upon which such doctrines are to be believed. It is merely an expression of our views, a bearing witness to what we hold to be the true Church and the true faith. And such alone is the character of the teaching which it becomes the Church on earth to offer. She is a witness for the truth. But never ought she to forget that the treasure of the gospel has been committed to earthen vessels, to those who are encompassed with infirmity, and that her delivery of the message is subject to all the drawbacks upon its authority to which the imperfection of a frail and fallible messenger renders it justly liable.

The truth of this is more especially apparent, when we recollect that "the Church" cannot teach as "the Church," but only through the agency of individuals. There is scarcely anything extant which can be called the teaching of "the catholic Church;" nothing, indeed, that in strictness of speech is essential to that character. Because the catholic Church cannot be represented. Its suffrages never were and never could be collected on any one point. The utmost that was ever accomplished was a probable representation of the sentiments of the majority. The teaching of the Church, therefore, is practically the teaching of individuals belonging to the Church; and how uncertain it is what that teaching may be, even where definite articles of belief on all the important points of the Christian religion have been voluntarily signed, has been proved to demonstration by the writings of our opponents themselves.

1 See vol. i. p. 193.

VOL. II.