we have more than twenty Epistles of the Apostles, giving an enlarged account of the same faith.

But all are not sufficient, we are told, to teach us the faith. And we are sent to what? To the monuments accidentally remaining to us of antiquity, the works of a few antient authors, borne up by chance upon the surface of the stream of time; while thousands have perished equally or better entitled to our respect; and these belonging only to what some might call the prevailing party among Christians, and confessedly, in part, (to what extent we know not,) corrupted and interpolated, and supposititious; and from these volumes we are to obtain the meaning of the Holy Scriptures; seeing, forsooth, that these volumes are to be taken as containing within them an infallible representation of the oral teaching of the Apostles; from which alone we can tell what they meant in their writings; or rather what the Holy Spirit meant, when he was professing to teach it in them.

It is at least evident, then, that such a rule of faith as Dr. Pusey and his party propose to us, can be made use of only by the learned. For, even were these volumes translated into all the languages spoken by Christians, I suppose it will be granted that such an investigation can only be carried on by learned men. And it would be a rather curious inquiry, by the way, how many there are even among the learned, who are really acquainted with their rule of faith, if patristical tradition forms part of it.

What, then, is the unlearned man to do? What is he to do? He is to learn, from his "priest," the "tradition" delivered in these volumes; and he is to put his faith in the interpretation of the Scriptures so given him, as a divine interpretation, derived from the oral teaching of the Apostles. And if, perchance, he should think the interpretation thus given him, not to be what appears to him the meaning of the Scriptures, he is to put his faith in the interpretation, and not in what appears to him to be God's truth; for such is Mr. Newman's express direction.

I pass on to observe

II. That all the doctrines of the Christian faith are as plainly delivered in the Scriptures as, to our knowledge, they are revealed.

Assuming that the arguments adduced on our last head have been satisfactory, and that the reader is disposed to admit that all the essential and fundamental points of faith are clearly and plainly delivered in the Scriptures, we have here only to consider the case of those which are not to be classed among the fundamental points of faith.

Now here even Vincent of Lerins seems to hesitate as to making a claim to any well-authenticated report of Apostolical tradition, anything which can be looked upon as delivering to us with certainty the oral teaching of the Apostles; and our opponents themselves are somewhat self-contradictory in their statements; in some places making a claim to the possession of testimony of a certain and indubitable kind,' and in others apparently admitting that we cannot be altogether certain of the correctness of the testimony we possess on these points, though this admission is accompanied with the intimation that we must "either believe or silently acquiesce in the whole" of what the "prophetical tradition" of the Church (as Mr. Newman calls it) delivers to us.

That on these points much valuable information is to be obtained from the writings of the antient Church, is what I am far from prepared to deny, but, on the contrary, firmly maintain.

But what I ask is, How can you in any case verify a doctrine, or interpretation, or statement, as an Apostolical tradition?

We have already shown the impossibility of doing so. We have shown that the tests proposed by our opponents are altogether fallible and nugatory. We have shown that there is no certain and indubitable report of any divine revelation but the Holy Scripture.

1 See Newman's Lect. p. 299, and Keble's serm. pp. 36, 7.

2 See Newman's Lect. pp. 249 and 300.

However obscure, therefore, any of the less fundamental doctrines or statements of Scripture may be considered to be, there is no plainer report of them than what we find there, that can come to us with any authority to bind the conscience to belief. They are as plainly delivered in the Scriptures as, to our knowledge, they are revealed.

I proceed to show

III. That the best and only infallible expositor of Scripture is Scripture; or, in other words, that the best mode of judging of the sense of any passage is by a comparison of it with the testimony of Scripture in other parts; first, by comparing it with the context, with passages similarly worded, with such plain places of Scripture as can illustrate its meaning, and with all that is stated in Scripture respecting the subject treated of; and secondly, by considering it in connexion with the whole scheme of doctrine clearly revealed in Scripture.

We take it for granted, that we have sufficiently demonstrated that patristical tradition cannot be considered a divine informant. Whatever, then, may be its value as a help to us in obtaining a knowledge of Christian doctrine, it must be placed in a very different rank to an inspired guide. It partakes of the imperfection of human nature. It is mixed with the dross of human imaginations.

Moreover, "the things of God knoweth no one but the Spirit of God." It is not by any peculiar powers of mind or extent of human learning, that the mysteries of God's word are to be developed. They can be known only as far as they are revealed, nor can any powers of man furnish us with a further insight into them than the Divine declarations afford us; for all beyond that is the offspring of the human imagination. Nevertheless there is, as experience shows us, a strong inclination in men to be wise above what is written; to attempt to fathom mysteries beyond their reach, and explain fully and without reserve even those more hidden spiritual truths of which

the word of God contains only some intimations, and thus bring out a system which shall be complete in all its parts; and in this attempt they are in danger at every step of being led astray by the prejudices of human nature, the bias of preconceived notions, the flights of an erratic imagination. Look at Origen, for instance, who lived at a period when, according to our opponents, the savour of Apostolical oral tradition was yet fresh in the Church. With human commentators, therefore, we must be always on our guard.

It seems obvious, then, that our first inquiry in the interpretation of Scripture should be, What has God said on this matter elsewhere in Scripture? Is there any other passage in the word of God, that either in the sentiment conveyed, or in the expressions used, is similar to the one before us? Whether the difficulty lies in the precise meaning of the terms used, or in the doctrine intended to be conveyed, there is no mode of solving the difficulty equally efficacious or satisfactory with that of putting together the parallel passages of Scripture, and judging from them as a whole what is the mind of God in the particular passage under consideration. For here alone we have the infallible records of divine teaching, the mind of the Spirit.

And while we compare it with the parallel passages, we must remember not to take an insulated view of the doctrine which it seems to inculcate, but to contemplate it in its position in the great scheme of Scripture doctrine, so as more clearly to see its true form and proportions, and ascertain that our notions of it are such as to give it that harmony with the whole which beyond doubt it possesses.

Such was the course pursued by the Fathers at the Council of Nice. When desirous of accurately describing the divine nature of the Son in opposition to the errors of the Arians, they, as we are told by Athanasius, "collected together out of the Scriptures these words, the brightness, the fountain, and the river, and the image of

the substance, and that expression, In thy light shall we see light,' and that, ' I and my Father are one;' and then at last they wrote more plainly and compendiously, that the Son was consubstantial with the Father, for all the previous expressions have this meaning." 1

This is precisely an exemplification of that for which we are here contending. The views of the Nicene Fathers were not derived (as those of the heretics were, and almost always are,) from one or two insulated passages of Scripture, still less from patristical tradition, but from a general consideration of the whole testimony of Scripture upon the point; and from this they deduced the faith, and interpreted each particular passage.

This, indeed, is a common rule of interpretation in other works, especially those that have come down to us from a remote period. There are often particular trains of thought, and particular modes of expression, characteristic of particular authors; and there is no mode of arriving at the sense of an author so efficient or satisfactory, as that of judging (if possible) from the collation of similar passages. This rule, then, applies with tenfold force to Scripture, for both as to the author and the subject it is a work altogether sui generis. It alone claims to be inspired. It alone was written at the dictation of the Holy Spirit. It alone delivers with authority divine truth.

The light, therefore, which we thus derive is altogether pure; it is divine light. The interpretation, as far as it goes, is an inspired interpretation. There is no uncertainty in it; no allowance to be made for human imperfection; no room for exceptions and limitations in our reception of it. We may embrace it with more confidence than we would a friend, whose love and faithfulness it was impossible to call in question; while everything else is to be received only as one towards whom we are bound to observe caution and reserve. Whatever mistakes may be made here, they are owing entirely to

1 Athanas. ad Afr. Episc. Epist. § 6. See the passage, c. 10, below.