TESTIMONY OF WRITERS IN THE LATER ENGLISH CHURCH TO THE DUTY OF MAINTAINING QUOD SEMPER, QUOD UBIQUE, QUOD AB OMNIBUS TRADITUM EST.
THE following extracts from English Divines, are but expositions and comments upon the celebrated Tract of Vincentius Lirinensis1 on Heresy, which has been so generally adopted by them, that it may justly be considered as the formal manifestation of our Church as regards all the controversies of the last three hundred years. In selecting them, it has been thought advisable, as in the two previous Catenas, not to include the writings of the Reformers of the 16th century, because the particular complexion of their opinions is the very subject keenly debated and claimed by opposite schools of opinion at the present day. It has been thought safer to show that the Succession of our Standard Divines ever since their times, understood them to hold that view of doctrine which it has been the endeavour of these Tracts to recommend; and that no other can be taken without contradicting both that illustrious Succession itself, and its judgment concerning the Reformers.
And in the next place, were the Reformers directly appealed to in these Catenas, it might be plausibly asked why the list stopped with them, and did not ascend to the generation
1 This Tract has just been republished, with a translation, at Oxford, and should be carefully studied by all who wish to understand in what sense the English Church upholds tradition.