OMISSION OF CREEDS IN SCRIPTURE.

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we find mentioned? If not by any of these, why not by Barnabas, or Peter, or some other Apostle? or by some of their numerous fellow-labourers?

There must have been hundreds quite competent to the task; which would have been merely to write down what they saw and heard; and this would have been eagerly read by thousands, and carefully copied and preserved. Yet what it would have been, seemingly, so natural and so easy to do, by each of a great number of men, was done by no one.

And as the drawing up of such records is what would naturally have occurred to men of any nation, situated as the Apostles and their companions were, so, it seems doubly strange that this should not have occurred to Jews; to men brought up under that Law which prescribed with such minute exactness all the ceremonials of their worship,-all the Articles of their belief,—and all the rules they were to observe.

The omission, therefore, which we have been speaking of is, on all natural principles, quite unaccountable, and, indeed, incredible. And there seems no way of explaining it, except by concluding that the Apostles and their attendants were supernaturally restrained from drawing up any such written records as we have been speaking of. We must conclude that divine Providence had decreed that no Canons, Liturgies, or Creeds, &c., should form any part of Holy Scripture; and that, accordingly, the inspired Writers were withheld from committing any to paper.

And in confirmation-if any confirmation could be needed— of what we have now been saying, we find that soon after the Age of inspiration, and when men were left to act on their own judgment, they did draw up Creeds (several of which have come down to us), Liturgies, and directions for the celebration of divine Worship, called the "Apostolical Constitutions." Pliny -records the custom of the Christians in his day (in the early part of the second century), of singing "a hymn to Christ as God." This is supposed by some to have been that which we call the "Te Deum," or some portion of it. But at any rate it must have been something written down and learnt by the congregation. Whatever may be urged in behalf of extemporary prayers, a hymn at least could not be so. And these compositions, though professing to be records of what had come down by tradition

from the times of the Apostles (which is, probably, in part true), were never received by any Church as Holy Scripture.* Now, one would have expected, as most probable (humanly speaking), that many compositions of this kind, drawn up by several of the Apostles and their numerous attendants, would have come down to us as a portion of the New Testament.

But that no one of them should have committed to writing anything of the kind, is, according to the ordinary course of nature, quite incredible.

We have here, therefore, in this omission, a standing miracle; -at least, a monument of a miracle. The christian Scriptures, considered in this point of view, are in themselves a proof of their having been composed under superhuman guidance; since they do not contain what we may be certain they would have contained, had the Writers been left to themselves.

And the argument, you should observe, is complete, even though we should be quite unable to perceive the wisdom of this ordinance of Providence, or at all to conjecture why the sacred Writers were thus withheld from doing what they must naturally have been disposed to do. For if the gospel was not from man, it must have been from GOD. Though we may not be able always to explain why the christian 'Scriptures are, in each point, just such as they are, still, if we can perceive them to be such as they certainly would not have been if composed by unaided Man, we must conclude that the Writers were divinely overruled.

In the present case, however, we do find it possible to perceive, on attentive reflection, the divine wisdom displayed in thus overruling the sacred Writers.

If the Hymns and forms of Prayer, the Catechisms,—the Confessions of faith,-and the Ecclesiastical regulations, which the Apostles employed, had been recorded by themselves or their attendants, these would have all been regarded as parts of

* Even the Church of Rome, which pronounces all traditions sanctioned by itself, of equal authority with Scripture, still maintains the distinction. It has never inserted in the New Testament any of those compositions we have been speaking of. And here we have, by the way, a testimony which would, alone, completely refute the wild theory of some (so-called) Theologians, that the New Testament was a compilation drawn up in the third or fourth Century from floating Traditions. It would be a suffi. cient answer (though many other disproofs might be given), to remark, that in that case it could not have failed to contain the Liturgies, Apostolic Constitutions, &c., which were then in circulation;-and in circulation with a tradition of their being derived from the Apostles.

OMISSION OF RELIGIOUS FORMULARIES.

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Scripture and even had they been accompanied by the most express declarations of the lawfulness of altering or laying aside any of them, we cannot doubt that they would have been, in practice, most scrupulously retained, even when changes of manners, tastes, and local and temporary circumstances of every kind, rendered them no longer the most suitable. The Jewish ritual, designed for one Nation and Country, and intended to be of temporary duration, was fixed and accurately prescribed: the same divine Wisdom from which both Dispensations proceeded, having designed Christianity for all Nations and Ages, left Christians at large in respect of those points in which variation might be desirable.

And we may be sure,-as has been said,-that if they had recorded the particulars of their own Worship, the very words they wrote would have been invested, in our minds, with so much sanctity, that it would have been thought presumptuous to vary or to omit them, however inappropriate they might have become. The Lord's Prayer, the only one of general application that is recorded in the Scriptures, though so framed as to be suitable in all Ages and Countries, has yet been subjected to much superstitious abuse. The Romanist mutters his "paternosters," as a kind of sacred charm, on all occasions, however inappropriate. And our Reformers, probably in concession to a prevailing feeling that no devotions could be acceptable without it, have introduced it into every one of the Services they drew up.*

With respect to Catechisms again,-elementary introductions to the christian Faith,-nearly the same reasons will hold good. For though the Christian-religion is fundamentally "the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever," it is impossible that any one mode of introducing its truths to the mind of a learner can be the best adapted for children and adults,-the civilized and the barbarian,-and for all the other varieties of station, sex, country, intellectual culture, and natural capacity.

Each church, therefore, was left, through the wise foresight of Him who alone "knows what is in Man," to provide for its own wants as they should arise ;-to steer its own course by the

* The Decalogue also, a portion of the Mosaic Law, is introduced into our Service, to the exclusion of any compositions that might have been drawn up, of a corresponding character, but more distinctly evangelical, and thus more completely appropriate to a christian congregation.

Chart and Compass which his holy Word supplies, regulating for itself the Sails and Rudder, according to the winds and currents it may meet with.

The Apostles themselves, however, and their numerous fellow-labourers, would not, we may be sure, have been, if left to themselves, so far-sighted as to perceive (all, and each of them, without a single exception) the expediency of this procedure. Most likely, many of them, but according to all human probability, some of them, would have left us, as parts of Scripture, compositions such as we have been speaking of; and these, there can be no doubt, would have been scrupulously retained for ever. They would have left us Catechisms, which would have been like precise directions for the cultivation of some plant, admirably adapted to a particular soil and climate, but inapplicable in those of a contrary description: their Symbols would have stood like ancient sea-walls, built to repel the encroachments of the waves, and still scrupulously kept in repair, when perhaps the sea had retired from them many miles, and was encroaching on some different part of the coast.

There are multitudes, even as it is, who do not, even now, perceive the expediency of the omission; there are not a few who even now complain of it as a defect, or even make it a ground of objection. That in that day, the reasons for the procedure actually adopted, should have occurred, and occurred to all the first Christians, supposing them mere unassisted men, and men too brought up in Judaism, is utterly incredible.

But besides the reason we have now been speaking of, there is another, perhaps not less important, against the providing in Scripture of a regular systematic statement of christian doctrines. Supposing such a summary of Gospel-truths had been drawn up, and could have been contrived with such exquisite skill as to be sufficient and well-adapted for all, of every Age and Country, what would have been the probable result? It would have commanded the unhesitating assent of all Christians, who would, with deep veneration, have stored up the very words of it in their memory, without any need of laboriously searching the rest of the Scriptures, to ascertain its agreement with them; which is what we do (at least are evidently called on to do) with a human exposition of the Faith; and the absence of this labour, together with the tranquil security as to the correctness of their

belief, which would have been thus generated, would have ended in a careless and contented apathy. There would have been no room for doubt,-no call for vigilant attention in the investigation of truth,-none of that effort of mind which is now requisite, in comparing one passage with another, and collecting instruction from the scattered, oblique, and incidental references to various doctrines in the existing Scriptures; and, in consequence, none of that excitement of the best feelings, and that improvement of the heart, which are the natural, and doubtless the designed result of an humble, diligent, and sincere study of the christian Scriptures.

In fact, all study,-properly so called,-of the rest of Scripture, all lively interest in its perusal,-would have been nearly superseded by such an inspired Compendium of doctrine; to which alone, as by far the most convenient for that purpose, habitual reference would have been made, in any question that might arise. Both would have been regarded, indeed, as of divine authority; but the Compendium, as the fused and purified metal; the other, as the mine containing the crude ore. And the Compendium itself, being not, like the existing Scriptures, that from which the faith is to be learned, but the very thing to be learned, would have come to be regarded by most with an indolent, unthinking veneration, which would have exercised little or no influence on the character. Their orthodoxy would have been, as it were, petrified; like the bodies of those animals we read of incrusted in the ice of the polar regions; firm-fixed, indeed, and preserved unchangeable, but cold, motionless, lifeless. It is only when our energies are roused, and our faculties exercised, and our attention kept awake, by an ardent pursuit of truth, and anxious watchfulness against error,-when, in short, we feel ourselves to be doing something towards acquiring, or retaining, or improving our knowledge, it is then only, that that knowledge makes the requisite practical impression on the heart and on the conduct.

To the Church then has her all-wise Founder left the office of teaching, to the Scriptures, that of proving, the christian doctrines; to the Scriptures He has left the delineation of christian principles; to each Church, the application of those principles, in their Symbols or Articles of religion,-in their Forms of Worship,-and in their Ecclesiastical Regulations.