Scripture only that we are to derive the articles of our faith?

No: and that for several reasons.

1. Neither the Scriptures nor the creed teach any such doctrine.

2o. There is no proof that all the doctrines of Christianity are recorded in the Scripture.

true of the Scriptures: for they contain not a single passage in which this Protestant maxim is inculcated. Thus, then, it furnishes a complete refutation of itself: because, if it be true, it must necessarily be found in the Scriptures.

2. All the doctrines.-Not only is there no proof that all the doctrines of Christianity are contained in the Scripture, but there is proof to the contrary. Neither the obligation of keeping the Sunday, nor the validity of infant baptism, both admitted by most Protestants, is mentioned in Scripture. In fact, the Scripture is not a doctrinal record. Read attentively and without prejudice the Tracts of which the New Testament is composed; and you will see that the writers had only their contemporaries before their eyes, and that, instead of meaning to leave behind them a code of Christian doctrine for future generations, they pre-supposed in their readers of that day a previous knowledge of such doctrine. Now and then, indeed, they may make mention of doctrinal matters; but it is only incidentally, or by way of explanation. Hence it happens that, when men seek to form a theological system from the sacred writings, they are compelled to go backward and forward from tract to tract; to take part of a passage from one tract, and part from another; to string the several fragments together, and out of

3°. If they were recorded there, those who cannot read, could not learn them from the Scriptures.

:

them all to form a piece of patchwork, which they call the religion taught by Christ and his apostles. Now it is plain that in a creed, compiled after this fashion, much must depend on the skill and judgment of the workman: and, as it is very seldom that we meet with any two men possessing exactly the same skill and judgment, we must expect to meet with very great difference in the religious systems formed by different teachers. And thus it is in fact. The Church-of-England man pronounces from the Scripture that Christ is God: the unitarian that he is not God but man only the presbyterian infers from it that episcopacy is an accursed thing: the independant that the presbyterian system is as antichristian as the episcopalian; the baptist is convinced that the baptism of infants is antiscriptural, the quaker that it is neither to be administered to infants nor to adults, because it must be understood spiritually of the baptism of the soul. Thus it is with all the religious sects of which the Reformation has proved the prolific parent: they all, on the testimony of Scripture, contradict one another, betraying by such contradiction the insecurity of that common principle on which they found their respective creeds, and renouncing all claim to that certainty of belief, which is due to the truths revealed by God to man.

4o. Even those who can read, cannot for the most part know, whether the versions put into their hands, correctly convey the true sense of the Scriptures.

for fourteen hundred years were unable to read. Will any man say that God abandoned such multitudes of Christians for so long a period without a rule? Perhaps it may be replied that their pastors explained the Scriptures to them; but then you contradict yourself, establishing two rules in the place of an only rule, and making the Church the rule for the ignorant, and the Scriptures the rule for the learned.

4. Those who can read. It flatters the pride, but at the same time deceives the simplicity of those who do not understand the learned languages, to bid them search the Scriptures, and judge for themselves from the word of God. A moment's consideration will shew that the versions put into their hands are not the word of God, but the work of men, of uninspired men, of fallible men, of men prepossessed in favour of particular doctrines; and therefore liable, without intending it, to misinterpret passages bearing on their own peculiar doctrines. What security then can the English reader have that by seaching in such versions he is doing what he is told to do, that is, culling the doctrines of his creed from the inspired word of God? Evidently he has none.

PART II.

THE COMMANDMENTS, &c.

CHAP I.

OF THE COMMANDMENTS OF GOD.

1. Does God require of us anything more than faith?

Yes that we do his holy will: "if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments." (Matt. xix. 17.)

2. How has he made his will known to us?

1o. By the moral law, that sense of right and wrong which he has implanted in us. 2°. By revelation, in his covenant with the Israelites.

3°. By the teaching of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

3. Is there then a moral law independently of revelation?

Yes: so we are assured by the apostle St. Paul. (Rom. ii. 14, 15.)

3. Assured by St. Paul.-When the Gentiles, who have not the law, do by nature those things that are of the law, these having not the law, are a law to themselves, shewing the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness to them. (Rom. ii. 14-15.) This moral sense, how

4. And what was the covenant of God with the Israelites?

That he would be their God, and they should be his people.

ever, proved but a feeble and fallible guide among people of turbulent habits and uncultivated minds; and God was pleased to vouchsafe to the Israelites under Moses a written revelation of his will, in a code of laws, sanctioned with the promise of reward to the obedient, and the threat of punishment to the refractory; which code was afterwards raised to a higher state of purity and holiness by our blessed Lord, and enforced by him. with the assurance of everlasting reward or everlasting punishment in the world to come. 4. He would be their God-I will take you to myself for a people, and I will be to you a God. And ye shall know that I, Jehovah, am your God, who bring you out from under the burthens of the Egyptians. (Ex. vi. 7.)

In those days or tutelary God. goddess of the

every nation had its own Elohim Thus we read of Astarthe, the Sidonians; Chamos, the god of Moab; Moloch, the god of the Ammonites (3 Kings, xi. 33), of Beelzebub, the god of Accaron (4 Kings, i. 3), of the god of Amath, the god of Sepharvaim, &c. (4 Kings, xviii. 34.) All these were false gods, the gods of other nations, and therefore, with respect to the Israelites, strange gods.

The Israelites, during their long sojourn in Egypt, appear to have forgotten the God of their fathers. When Moses was sent to them by God, he said: When I come to the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, the God of your fathers hath sent me unto you, and they shall say to