age is open to like condemnation, and with still greater effect, in precisely the same view.

So much for the Nicene age, according to the judgment of th's learned author. But he does not confine his view to this period. His knowledge of the laws of history could not permit him to doubt its organic union with the life of the period that went before; and his actual study of that earlier age has been of a kind to place this reasonable conclusion beyond all question. He confirms in full, accordingly, the general statement we have already made in relation to the Christianity also of the second and third centuries, as tried by the standard of modern Protestantism. The fourth century was a true continuation of the ecclesiastical forms and views of the third; and this again grew, by natural and legitimate birth, out of the bosom of the second. As far back as our historical notices reach, we find no trace this side of the New Testament of any church system at all answering to any Puritan scheme of the present time; no room or space however small in which to locate the hypothesis even of any such scheme; but very sufficient proof rather that the prevailing habit of thought looked all quite another way, and that in principle und tendency at least the infant church was carried from the very start towards the order of the third and fourth centuries, and through this, we may say, towards the medieval Catholicism in which that older system finally became complete. Listen for a moment again to the strong testimony of our English writer.

"At a time not more remote from the Apostolic age than we, of this generation, are from the times of Barrow, Tillotson, Taylor, Baxter, we find every element of the abuses of the twelfth century, and not the elements only, but some of those abuses in a ripened, nay, in a putrescent condition."—Vol. I. p. 70.

"I cannot however proceed to call in my next pair of witnesses, without adverting to a fact which forces itself upon every well informed and reflecting reader of the early Christian writers, I mean the much higher moral condition, and the more effective discipline of the Romish church in later times, than can with any truth be claimed for the ancient church, even during its era of suffering and depression. Our ears are stunned with the outcry against the 'corruptions of Popery.' I boldly say that Popery, foul as it is, and has ever been, in the mass, might yet fairly represent itself as a reform upon early Christianity. Do not accuse me of the wish to startle you with paradoxes. I will not swell my pages (which will have enough to bear) with quotations from modern books that are in the hands of most religious readers. In truth, volumes of unimpeachable evidence might be produced, establishing the fact, that

"

the later Romish church has had to boast eminent virtues, in connexion with her monastic institutions; and I think virtues, better compacted, and more consistent than belonged to the earlier church." 'Nothing can be more inequitable than to charge these horrors upon Romanism. The church of Rome has done, in these instances, the best it could, to bring the cumbrous abomination bequeathed to it by the saints and doctors and martyrs of the pristine age, into a manageable condition. And if we are to hear much more of the 'corruptions of popery,' as opposed to primitive purity,' there will be no alternative but freely to lay open the sewers of the early church, and to a low them to disgorge their contents upon the wholesome air."-" Before we reprobate popes, councils, and Romanist saints, let us fairly see what sort of system it was which the doctors and martyrs of the highest antiquity had delivered into their care and custody. We Protestants are prompt enough to condemn the pontiffs, or St. Bernard; but let inquiry be made concerning the Christianity imbodied in the writings of those to whom popes and doctors looked up, as their undoubted masters."-Vol. I. p. 77-79.

"I have undertaken to adduce proof of the assertion, not only that the doctrine of the merit of celibacy, and the consequent practices, are found in a mature state at an early age; but also-That, at the earliest period at which we find this doctrine, and these practices, distinctly mentioned, they are referred to in such a manner as to make it certain that they were, at that time, no novelties or recent innovations. Now I am aware that a statement such as this, if it shall appear to be borne out by evidence, will excite alarm in some minds; the dissipation of erroneous impressions, is always a critical and somewhat perilous operation; nevertheless dangers much more to be feared, are incurred by a refusal to admit the full and simple truth. Yet the alarm that may be felt in this instance, at the first, may soon be removed; for although it were to appear that certain capital errors of feeling, and practice, had seized the church universal, at the very moment when the personal influence of the apostles was withdrawn, yet such an admission will shake no principle really important to our faith or comfort. In fact, too many have been attaching their faith and comfort to a supposition, concerning pristine Christianity, which is totally illusory, and such as can bear no examination-a supposition which must long ago have been dispelled from all well informed minds, by the influence of rational modes of dealing with historical materials, if it had not been for the conservative accident, that the materials, which belong to this particular department of history, have lain imbedded in repulsive folios of Latin and Greek, to which very few, and those not the most independent, or energetic in their habits of mind, have had access. Certain utterly unfounded generalities, very delight

VOL. IV.-NO. I.

2.

ful had they possessed the recommendation of truth, have been a thousand times repeated, and seldom scrutinized.

"But the times of this ignorance are now passing away and I think the zeal of the Oxford writers will have the effect, as an indirect means, of disabusing effectively, and for ever, the religious mind, in this country, and perhaps throughout Europe, of the inveterate illusions that have so long hung over the fields of Christian antiquity. It will be utterly impossible, much longer to make those things believed which we have been taught to consider as unquestionable; and the result must be, (how desirable a result) the compelling the Christian church, henceforward, to rest its faith and practice on the only solid foundation.

The actual impression, moral and spiritual, made upon the Jewish and Pagan word by the preaching of the Apostles themselves, and of their personal colleagues, has, I fear, been overrated by the generality of Christians.". And then, as to the period immediately following the death of the apostles, and of the men whom they personally appointed to govern the churches, we have too easily, and without any sufficient evidence, assumed the belief that a brightness and purity belonged to it, only a shade or two less than what we have attributed to the apostolic times. This belief, is, in fact, merely the correlative of the common Protestant notion concerning the progressive corruptions of Popery, it being a natural supposition that the higher we ascend toward the apostolic age, so much the more truth, simplicity, purity, must there have been in the church. Thus it is that we have allowed ourselves to theorize, when what we should have done, was simply to examine our documents.

The opinion that has forced itself upon my own mind, is to this effect, that the period dating its commencement from the death of the last of the apostles, or apostolic men, was, altogether, as little deserving to be selected and proposed as a pattern, as any one of the first five of church history;-it had indeed its single points of excellence, and of a high order, but by no means shone in those consistent and exemplary qualities which should entitle it to the honour of being considered as a model to after ages. We need therefore neither feel surprise nor alarm, when we find, in particular instances, that the grossest errors of theory and practice, are to be traced to their origin in the first century. In such instances, for my own part, I can wonder at nothing but the infatuation of those who, fully informed as they must be of the actual facts, and benefited moreover by modern modes of thinking, can nevertheless so prostrate their understandings before the phantom-venerable antiquity, as to be inflamed with the desire of inducing the Christian world to imitate what really asks for apology and extenuation."-Vol. I. p, 102-104.

"In fact, I think, there are very few points of difference, distinguishing the Nicene church from either the earlier or the later church, within the compass of two hundred years on either side, which modern controvertists of any class would much care to insist upon, as of material consequence to their particular opinions."Vol. I. p. 144.

These are serious admissions; and coming from such a source, they are entitled certainly to serious consideration. Let it be borne in mind, that we quote them simply in confirmation of a historical fact, without any regard now to the light in which this fact may be viewed, either by Mr. Taylor himself or by others, in its theological connections. It is of the highest importance, that we should make here a clear distinction, between what actually had place and what construction should be put upon it in a theory of church history. All we are concerned with at present, is the simple fact, (explain it or judge of it as we may,) that the Christianity of the second century was in no sense of one and the same order with modern Puritanism. How far precisely it may have anticipated the several features of the later Nicene system, is not entirely clear; but that it carried in it the elements and germs of this system, and looked towards it from the first with inward natural tendency, would seem to be beyond all doubt. The third century could not be what we find it to be in Cyprian and the Apostolical Constitutions, without some corresponding preparation at least in the age immediately preceding; and both the fact of such preparation, and its general nature, can be easily enough traced, as we have already shown, not merely to the time of Tertullian and Irenæus, but away back even to the days also of Polycarp and Ignatius. Let the fart then be fairly and honestly acknowledged; or else let it be disputed and set aside, if possible, on proper historical grounds. We present it as a simple point of history. We might wish it to be otherwise; but we feel that we have no power to make it otherwise, any more than we have to stop the earth from rolling round the sun, or to hush the alphabet of geology into dead silence. Facts themselves must not be treated as heresies, however we may feel disposed to treat the conclusions which are drawn from them.

But we hear some one say-our appeal as to what constituted Early Christianity, in its oldest form, is to the New Testament itself. Let the writings of the Apostles themselves speak. The fathers sadly corrupted the truth, and mingled with it the dreams of pagan philosophy. Let those who choose rest in such false

or doubtful authority; we go at once to the original founders of the church, and are content to learn what it was in the beginning from their lips.

1

All very good, we say in reply; all very good. But the point before us just now, is not the Christianity that may be taught in the New Testament, or that may have prevailed in the Apostolical age. Our inquiry, as historical, has been directed throughout to the determination of what Christianity was after the age of the Apostles, first in the Nicene age, and then back of that again in the middle and first part of the second century. The facts regarded in these two cases, are by no means just the same; and our idea of the first must not be allowed to blind or distort our vision, as directed towards this last. You may not care indeed for any later state of the church; but that is no reason why such later state should not be allowed, as a fact of history at least, to appear in its own place and under its own form. If we do not need it for our faith, let us at all events not quarrel with it as a matter of simple knowledge.

The fact itself however, in whatever light we regard it theologically, is one of the greatest practical account, as necessarily conditioning our whole theory of church history, and more particularly the view we may take of the relation that holds between Catholicism and Protestantism.

We do

We have from it first of all this general result, that Protestantism is not at all identical with early Christianity, in the form at least which it carries after the time of the Apostles. not of course urge this as an objection to Protestantism. There are, as we shall see presently, different ways of reconciling the fact with the supposition that it is after all the purest and best style of Christianity. If we except Newman, all the distinguished writers whose works are quoted at the beginning of the present article, have in view the vindication of the Protestant Reformation, over against the pretensions of the Roman church; and yet all of them agree with Newman himself, in believing the

Those who take us to task for not ascending at once to the original records of Christianity, for the determination of what it was in its earliest and purest form, ought to remember that this whole discussion has had for its object from the beginning an altogether different inquiry-prompted in the first place by a particular position taken in the Rev. Dr. Bacon's Letter from Lyons; this namely, that the system of religion now prevalent in New England, is to be regarded as in all material points the same with that which existed at Lyons, and throughout the church generally, in the days of Pothinus and Irenæus.