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Bible, they find themselves obliged to answer strong and powerful documents in our favour.

But, in the second place, while the authority of Scripture, as a rule of faith, is thus perfectly compatible with the existence of an authority to teach, the existence of an authority to teach excludes, not indeed, the Scripture, but the all-sufficiency of Scripture. For, where there is a supreme authority given, and man is commanded to obey it, from that command there is assuredly no retreat. And therefore, the Scripture must needs be received, so as to be reconciled with the existence of a supreme authority, in matters of faith, existing in the Church.

In the third place, there must be texts, at least equally strong, brought against us, as what we adduce for our system; not nerely such as say that the Scripture is useful, good, and profitable, but such as positively assert, that the Scripture is sufficient; not such as tell us to search the Scriptures for particular objects, but such as command us to seek all things therein. There must be texts, the words of Christ or his apostles, to command us to make use of no rule but the written Word; for observe, that in sanctioning any rule or principle, whereby man is to be guided, it is necessary that the principle be somewhere laid down and explicitly defined, so that he should know what is to be the rule of his life, and the law whereby he must direct and regulate his conduct. And thus we, on our side, are not content with vague allusions to the authority of the Church, as a voucher for the doctrines therein taught: but believe that we have an express definition, that its authority is the rule of faith, and that all must obey and follow its guidance.

But there is another and more important distinction, which you can hardly fail to observe; that the moment the Catholic, in his train of argument, has taken his first step, from profane to holy ground-the moment he has come to the conclusion, that the teaching of our blessed Saviour was divinely authorized, from that moment he returns not back again to human testimony; he has the divine sanction at every subsequent step,

till he arrives at his last conclusion. Our Saviour gives a divine authority to the Church-the Church, with that authority, sanctions the book of Scripture. But analyze the other course of reasoning; suppose, that you have arrived at the knowledge of Christ's divinity, and the authority of the apostles; you then take those passages which seem to you to say, that the Scripture is the rule of faith. Be it so you have reached a vague authorization, that whatever writings are entitled to that name, are to be received as a guide in religion. Your next step must be to determine what writings have a claim to be considered inspired. But if the Church have no divine authority, you must go back to the ground you have left-of human testimony: you return from the authority of our Saviour and his apostles, in favour of studying the Scripture, back to another historical investigation, to discover what Scripture is, before you can resume the thread of the argument. This is an essential and vital flaw in the reasoning proposed as parallel to ours, and as sufficient to prove the efficacy of Scripture, as a rule of faith.

Such, therefore, is the course of argument which the Catholic Church pursues, and such is the course which any instructed Catholic would pursue, whenever he should think it necessary to refresh his mind, as to the grounds of his belief; and by it he arrives at a perfectly logical and connected consequence, upon the authority of the Holy Scriptures. But before leaving this portion of my subject-though I shall have to enlarge on this important consideration hereafter,—allow me to observe that the comparison between the old and new law, regarding the rule of faith, gives us very great and most useful lights, tending essentially to confirm the view which we have taken. For, we find, that to the Jews was given, indeed, a written law, but that there was a most express command to write it that Moses was ordered to register all those precepts which God had given, even to the most minute particulars; and that this law was to be read to the people in the most solemn manner, every seventh year, at the Feast of Taber

nacles.* Besides this, the law was purposely so interwoven with the daily actions and domestic concerns of the Jewish people, as to require that it should be ever before their eyes, that they should all possess a minute acquaintance with its provisions, so as to understand, at every turn, how to regulate their conduct. This, I conceive, we must consider characteristic of a written law, that it should not be merely formed of documents collected together, as it were, accidentally; but that provision should be taken for the rule's being drawn up, and then its being communicated to those whom it has to guide.

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One would, therefore, naturally expect, that if our Saviour had intended to direct us to a knowledge of our duties, by some written code of faith or morality, he would have expressly said to his Apostles; "All the things which hear from me, or which you see me perform, take care and register carefully; and preserve their records from all danger and risk, by multiplying and diffusing them ainong the faithful, for their future guidFor, that which you write will form a code by which their conduct may be regulated, and by which they will be one day judged." But you do not meet, in the new law, with anything of this sort; there is not a hint or intimation that our Saviour ever intended one word to be written down.

ance.

We find moreover, on examining the history of these compositions, that they were, every one of them, the offspring of casual circumstances, and written for some local or personal purpose, which seemed to call them forth; that, if errors or abuses had not arisen so early in the Church, you would probably have been deprived of the most beautiful writings in the New Testament; that, if the blessed apostle St John had not been preserved to a preternatural existence, after having suffered, what to others would have been fatal, the torments of martyrdom, he would not have been spared to complete the sacred volume. We find that St Luke, and St Matthew, wrote for a specific class of readers, for one particular country, or for even

Deut. xxxi, 10.

separate individuals; that the epistles of St Paul were manifestly directed to different Churches, and were intended merely to silence doubts, or answer difficulties, proposed by them, and also to correct and amend some accidental, or local corruptions; and if we examine them carefully, we shall find that the greater portion of our most important dogmas, instead of St Paul's defining and explaining them, are only occasionally, parenthetically, and as illustrations introduced.

Now all this seems the reverse of a settled plan; for the delivery of a code of laws, and the contrast is unquestionably greater, when placed beside the Mosaic dispensation, in which there was an explicit injunction to record, and write down, and preserve with the greatest care, both by monuments, and by the depositing of the archetype in the sanctuary, those laws which had been dictated by divine command. But this necessarily is not the whole of the difficulty; for it is singular to observe in the Mosaic law, how, although we have in it the characteristics of a written code, and an express injunction to note down whatever was taught, yet by far the most important doctrines were not committed to writing: so that among the Jews there was a train of sacred tradition, containing within itself more vital dogmas than are written in the inspired volume. I could lay before you the arguments, of a very learned living author, who has, within these few years, published a very elaborate treatise upon this subject; and who might have formed one of those instances, to which I alluded in my opening discourse, of persons brought to the Catholic religion, by the most diversified trains of argument. Here is one who, educated in the Jewish religion, had made himself perfect master of all the writings of the Jews; and who it is evident, from the whole line of argument that pervades his work, was brought to the Catholic religion, and is now one of its defenders, simply from finding, that among the Jews there was a series of traditions, which received its development only in Catholic Christianity, and a sacred system of mystical theology, which has been manifestly preserved, and continued, in our Church. The

author to whom I allude, is the learned Molitor, of Francfort, author of two volumes replete with deep research, entitled “The Philosophy of History, or on Tradition.”

Those who will take the requisite pains to trace the doctrine of the Jews in this regard, either by their own research, or in the pages of this estimable writer, will find that, from the very beginning, from the delivery of the law to Moses, there was a great mass of precepts, not written, but committed to the keeping of the priesthood, and by them gradually communicated or diffused among the people, but yet hardly alluded to, in the writings of the sacred book. A little consideration and examination will convince any one of this important fact; for it is certain, that when our Saviour came, the Jews were in possession of many doctrines, exceedingly difficult to trace in Scripture, and yet doctrines of vital importance. Many of you are doubtless aware that a divine of the Established Church (Warburton) wrote to prove the divine legation of Moses, on the extraordinary ground, that he was able to achieve the great work of organizing a republic, and constituting a law to bind the people, without the sanction of a future state. He maintains, with great show of plausibility, that you cannot discover in the writings of Moses, or of the earlier Jews, one single positive text in proof of the future existence of the soul, or of a place of rewards and punishments in another life. And I am sure that any of you who is well versed in Scripture, if he will only run through his own recollections on the subject if he will only try to gather for himself such a body of argument in Scripture as would convince any one, or teach a people those important truths, will find it extremely difficult so to construct it, as to bear the test of accurate examination. But yet did the Jews believe in them? Did they possess them? Undoubtedly they did For it is manifest, from many passages of the New Testament, and from their own works, that the doctrines of a future state, and a resurrection, were fully believed and taught. Here, then, is an important dogma, not of natural, but of revealed

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