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BOOK I.

THE TESTIMONY OF HISTORY IN FAVOUR OF THE PECULIARITIES OF ROMANISM.

Πατρίους παραδοχὰς, ἃς θ' ὁμήλικας χρόνῳ
Κεκτήμεθ', οὐδεὶς αὐτὰ καταβαλεῖ λόγος,
Οὐδ ̓ ἂν δι ̓ ἄκρων τὸ σοφὸν εὕρηται φρενῶν.

Eurip. Bacch. ver. 201-203.

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By the members of the earliest Church Catholic, the Doctrines, taught by the Apostles, must have been received as infallibly true: and, since it is morally impossible that any very material corruptions or alterations could have universally taken place in the course of the two or three first ecclesiastical descents, the Theological System, unanimously received by ALL the different Branches of the mutually communicating primitive Catholic Church, must have been that, which in the course of their preaching the Apostles orally delivered, and which under their direction or by their personal instrumentality was finally committed to imperishable writing.

I. On the familiar and acknowledged FACT, that All the United Branches of the one Church Catholic symbolised in a System of Theology, which, through the medium of one or two or at the most three descents, they unanimously professed themselves to have received from the Apostles, was built the argument from Prescription, pressed with such irresistible force against the heretics of the first and second centuries by Ireneus and Tertullian1.

Each varying Heresy had a commencement without the Catholic Church. Consequently, no Heresy could deduce its origin from an Apostle.

1 For the distinct and fearless assertion of this vital FACT, without the substantiation of which the whole argument from Prescription is worthless, see Iren. adv. hær. lib. i. c. 3.

p. 36. edit. 1570. Tertull. de præscript. adv. hær. § 6. Oper. p. 102, edit. Rhenan. Ibid. § 11. Oper. p. 107. Ibid. § 14. Oper. p. 109.

But the very reverse of this was the case with that System of Theology, which, on the professed and undeniable ground of apostolic derivation, was unanimously received by ALL the then mutually communicating Branches of the one Church Catholic. Hence the Theological System of the early Catholic Church could not but be apostolic, while the various discordant upstart systems of Heresy stood self-precluded from all claim to apostolicity and hence, while Ireneus and Tertullian distinctly lay down the System universally received by the Catholic Church on the professed ground of derivation from the Apostles'; Tertullian propounds the indisputable canon, Whatever is FIRST, is true; whatever is LATER, is spurious?.

II. An extension of the argument, employed by Ireneus and Tertullian, is evidently the basis of that Scheme of Oral Tradition, which, under the character of the Unwritten Word of God, the Roman Church holds to be authoritatively concurrent with his Written Word3.

The Catholics of the present age (it is contended) deliver nothing, save what was unanimously delivered to them by their predecessors and their predecessors professed, that they, in like manner, delivered nothing, save what had been unanimously delivered to them by a yet prior generation.

Now this same unanimous profession (it is alleged, as an indisputable matter of FACT) runs back all the way to the apostolic age itself: nor, in any one particular step of transmission, can it ever be falsified.

The necessary conclusion, therefore, is: that the Oral Tradition of the Catholic Church cannot but set forth the Doctrines and

Iren. adv. hær. lib. i. c. 2. lib. iii. e. 4. Tertull. de præscript. adver. hær. § 4. Oper. p. 100.

2 Quo peræque adversus universas hæreses jam hinc præjudicatum sit: Id esse verum, quodcunque PRIMUM; id esse adulterum, quodcunque PosTERIUS. Tertull. adv. Prax. § 1. Oper. p. 405. Ita ex ipso ordine manifestatur: Id esse dominicum et verum, quod sit PRIUS traditum; id autem extraneum et falsum, quod sit PosTERIUS immissum. Tertull. de præscript. adv. hær. § 11. Oper. p. 107.

Hanc veritatem et disciplinam contineri in libris scriptis, et sine scripto traditionibus, quæ ipsius

Christi ore ab Apostolis acceptæ, aut ab ipsis Apostolis, Spiritu Sancto dietante, quasi per manus traditæ, ad nos usque pervenerunt, orthodoxorum Patrum exempla secuta, omnes libros tam Veteris quam Novi Testamenti, cum utriusque unus Deus sit auctor, nec non traditiones ipsas, tum ad fidem, tum ad mores, pertinentes, tanquam vel ore tenus a Christo vel a Spiritu Sancto dictatas et continua successione in Ecclesia Catholica conservatas (Sacrosancta Synodus), PARI

PIETATIS AFFECTU AC REVERENTIA, SUs

cipit et veneratur. Concil. Trident. sess. iv. p. 7, 8. Antwerp. 1644.

Practices taught and enjoined by the Apostles from the very beginning.

1. Such reasoning, like the exactly similar reasoning of the Jews in favour of those traditions by which they made void the Law, is doubtless, at the first glance, highly plausible; and it may serve to deceive an incautious Protestant, if he looks no further than the surface: but, as it professedly and indeed necessarily appeals, precisely as the Rabbins appeal, to a FACT; by the establishment, or the non-establishment, of that FACT, it must obviously be judged, as to its admissibility or its inadmissibility'1.

When Ireneus and Tertullian, in the second century, first employed the argument before us; if the heretics of the day could by sufficient evidence have set aside the FACT upon which it claimed to repose, we instinctively feel and perceive that the argument itself would have been altogether worthless.

This, accordingly, is acknowledged by Tertullian: for he very justly tells us; that Truth is a thing, against which no person can prescriptively set up either space of time or patronage of individuals or privilege of countries.

Hence, if direct Historical Testimony contradicts any part of the Oral Tradition advocated by the Church of Rome, even though at later periods the Tradition may have been committed to Writing; it is clear, that the argument from Prescription, as now employed in the cause of Oral Tradition, becomes palpably null and inconclusive: for the argument

It must, however, be confessed, that the Jews make out a much more plausible case for their Oral Law, than the Romanists can do for their Oral Tradition yet we all know, how this same Oral Law, notwithstanding it professed to be built upon a FACT, was treated by our Lord.

The matter stands thus.

Maimonides, in the way of authority, claims to discover, in Exod. xxiv. 12, both the Written Law and the Oral Law and then he extracts from that text a divine injunction, that the former should always be interpreted according to the latter.

:

But how are we to be certain, that the genuine Oral Law now exists?

Maimonides answers the question by the stout production of a FACT.

He gives us seriatim and nominatim, nothing less than a Regular Pedigree of the indubitable transmission of the Oral Law, from Moses himself down to Rabbi Judah the son of Rabbi Simeon, who was honourably distinguished by the title of Rabinu Hakadosh, or Our Rabbin the Holy Man. Maimon. in Præf. Summ. Talmud. apud de Voisin. Observ. in Proam. Raymund. Martin. Pug. Fid. p. 7, 8.

If such a FACT will not satisfy us, what will?

Hoc exigere veritatem, cui nemo præscribere potest, non spatium temporum, non patrocinia personarum, non privilegium regionum. Tertull. de virgin. veland. Oper. p. 490.

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