pleased to purge yourself from any objection of this kind; and if you would suffer the mighty grace of God to prevail with you to return to your first love of primitive Christianity in its purity, as becomes a true son of the primitive Church, and a true father of our Church of England, which has always professed a veneration for what could plead a precedent in those truly religious ages.""

"But, I thought," inquired Alfred Churton, "that Bishop Burnet always held sacred the voice of the Primitive Church?"

66

Always," answered Dr. Hookwell, “is a hard word, when even Origen, Tertullian, and many great bishops are not always in the right track. The love of innovation, or the want of thorough information on some points, may lead a man astray, when he may on the whole be right. Bishop Burnet certainly wrote on a prominent occasion, 'It is the glory of the Church of England that she does all things in agreement with the fathers and antiquity, and every son of the Church should make the fathers his main study.""

"Quite satisfactory," said Alfred Churton, unwilling to interrupt the Doctor a moment longer.

་

"In Dodwell's treatise there is much that is wisely," continued the Doctor," and usefully written. He says, in writing against occasional communion, So infinitely wiser are the sentiments of Christ and his apostles, as discoverable from the consentient tradition of the next ages, than the uncertain reasonings from the sacred historical books, at the distance of nearly seventeen centuries, by those who designedly exclude the help of that tradition, that very consideration makes the hypothesis now mentioned far more likely than any of our pretended new discoveries. These principles, so destructive of the licentious notions of occasional communion, can hardly fail of being apostolical, though they had no other evidence of their being so than their being received universally in the next ages to the apostles, and then being fundamental to all the discipline that was exercised in those most exemplary ages.'—' Our adversaries themselves find how difficult it is to

determine from the Scriptures what government was left in the Church by the apostles, and how miserably they are divided in their opinions concerning it, of which it was impossible for any incorporated Christian to be ignorant then; so small a share it is of what every Christian then knew that can now be recovered by the most exquisite learning.'

66

Plainly, and wisely too, speaks the learned Mr. Collier, one who exhibited the profoundest research on any subject he took in hand. Let me extract here and there from his able works. He writes,' Now, that the authority of the primitive Church may claim preference to that of the modern is sufficiently clear. The first ages were times of zeal and knowledge, of disinterestedness and courage, of miracles and martyrdom. The fathers lived nearest the apostles, and some of them conversed with them. From this circumstance they had the advantage of traditionary expositions. They must be best acquainted with the proverbial expressions of the Jewish nation, with the customs to which the Scripture alludes, with the force and

phraseology of the language; to which we may add, extraordinary illumination and supernatural effusions of the Holy Spirit were not uncommon in the first ages. And as for matters of government, worship, and ceremonies, the ancients have still a further claim to regard; for here the apostles' practice, and that of their immediate successors, was an evidence of their approbation, and the best comment on their writings.'

"Mr. Collier laid down these clear and definite rules in regard to the use of tradition: First, where there is any plain opposition between Scripture and tradition, there the Scripture must be followed. Secondly, that no such plain contradiction is to be found where tradition appears early and general. Thirdly, that tradition is necessary to explain some passages of Scripture, where the sense is not clear and indisputable; and that without this supplemental assistance neither the necessity of infant baptism, nor the obligation to keep Sunday, can be made out. Fourthly, that without tradition we cannot prove the Old and New

Testament to be the Word of God. Fifthly, that where the tradition for Christian worship is equally clear and general with that which vouches for some part of the canon of the New Testament, there the ground and origin of such worship must be allowed the same credit; for, where the attestation is equal, the authority must be so too.'

"Whether those who direct their worship by the practice of the four first centuries can fairly be called new reformers, the reader must judge. I desire to know what authority any particular society of Christians of the sixteenth century had to desert from the custom of the universal Church, from early and more enlightened ages, and which were better guides, as being much nearer the fountain's head, than those so long behind them? And if they had no good warrant for stepping out of the old paths, the fences of a modern constitution signify little.' 'That this was the practice of the universal Church, St. Augustine is clear and decisive; and, since nothing but certain evidence will satisfy our author, here he has it.