divisible into many parts, or branches, and that the New Testament does not exhibit the Church as visible to the eye, numerically one, and indivisible in its unity. But before the New Testament was, the Church had expanded from east to west, visible by its organization, absolute and exclusive in its unity, which the divisions and apostasies of men could neither divide nor multiply.

We are told that there are only two sacraments of the new law, and that they do, or do not confer grace, according as the multiplicity of Protestant errors is pleased to opine; that there is no sacrifice under the Gospel, no real and personal presence of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. But the Christians throughout the world had received and professed their faith in the seven sacraments of grace, and the perpetual sacrifice and universal presence of the Word made flesh in the Holy Eucharist had already filled the Church with the consciousness of a Divine manifestation before as yet the canon of the New Testament was completed.

Finally, we are told that in the New Testament there is to be read no successor of S. Peter, no vicar of Jesus Christ. But before the New Testament was collected and diffused, all the world recognised one pastor as chief over all, reigning in the place of Peter from his See in Rome.

The faith and the Church then were the key of interpretation. They who read the New Testament,

read it in the light of the day of Pentecost and within the circle of the universal Church in which they beheld the order of divine truths or facts, which the New Testament Scriptures recognise and presuppose. This was both the actual and the scientific key to their true interpretation.

IV. From this it is further evident that the Church is the guardian both of the faith and of the Scriptures.

It received both from its divine Head. And it alone received the custody of the divine revelation and of its inspired books. It received from the Church of old, the books of the old law confirmed by the divine witness of Jesus himself; from the synagogue, the later books; and from the evangelists and apostles, their inspired writings, of which it knew the authenticity and genuineness both by extrinsic and intrinsic evidence.

And as the Church alone received both the faith and the Scriptures, it alone witnesses to both, and that with a twofold evidence; first with a human and historical testimony, resting upon its own personal knowledge of the authenticity of those books, an evidence abundant to attest their veracity; and secondly with a divine and supernatural testimony, resting upon its own spiritual consciousness of the truth contained in those books. The witness therefore of the Church is twofold, natural and supernatural, human

and divine sufficient in the lower, and infallible in the higher sphere of its testimony.'

Take it even on the lowest ground. In human jurisprudence the most certain rules of interpretation are to be drawn from the judgments of the learned, the precedents of tribunals and cotemporaneous exposition. The two first are sufficient in most cases, the last is held to be certain as an exponent of the meaning of a law and of the mind of the lawgiver. But in the Church we have all this and more. We have both the judgments of doctors and the decrees of councils; and we have more than this, the cotemporaneous exposition of the books of the New Testament by the divine facts which existed before the Scriptures, and are the key to their sense-the Faith, the Church, and the Sacraments spread throughout the world.

The tradition of the Church, then, contains in it all the principles of certainty which govern the science of human jurisprudence. But it contains more. The tradition of the Church is not human only, but

1 It is strange to read such words as the following:-' The value of internal evidence-always, perhaps, the foundation of Christian belief everywhere-drawn out into philosophy by Anselm, has now been recognised in theory as well as in practice, in theology as well as in philosophy.'-Theology of the Nineteenth Century. Fraser's Magazine, No. CCCCXXII. p. 259. What has generated the internal evidence of Holy Scripture in the mind of the Christian world, but this twofold witness of the Church? and of what avail is the alleged internal evidence apart from the Church, still less opposed to it? The Essays and Reviews are answer enough.

also divine. It has an element above nature, the presence of a divine illumination, so that not only the testimony but the discernment of the Church is supernatural. It delivers to us both the original revelation and the Scripture with an infallible certainty, and we receive both from the Church by an act of divine faith.

V. And this brings us to a last truth, that the Church is not merely the interpretation but the interpreter, and is divinely guided in applying this key to the Holy Scriptures. Before the New Testament was written, it was the living witness for the truth, the organ of the Divine and perpetual voice, which in all nations declared the original revelation. Its authority as a teacher rests upon its commission and its infalli bility, that is upon the command of its Divine head, and the assistance of the Holy Ghost. The theory that the Church can err could only arise in minds which have lost the faith of what the Church is. Can it be believed that the mystical body of Christ which is indissolubly united to its Divine Head in heaven, should go about on earth teaching falsehoods in His name? Is it credible that the Church, which is the dwelling-place of the Spirit of Truth, should wander from the revelation which radiates from His presence as light from the sun? The Church in the beginning knew the whole revelation of God, and knows it in every age with a perception which is never obscured,

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ze the Church as a whole, and is argans, is true also of its head. The he body are the prerogatives of its se centre of the Divine tradition, and s supernatural illumination. The head Tumbas also, as we have already seen, a the one to the whole body upon