In her Articles the Church does not expound, but witness; and, faithful to the primitive rule, she does not require assent to them as terms of communion, but as conditions of the licence to teach her people. And these chief points of doctrine (prima credibilia), which range next in importance to the fundamentals of the creed, she holds herself and delivers to us as the witness of those "who are presumable, by their antiquity, to know the truth, and, by their uniform consent, neither to mistake themselves, nor to deceive us1." This is a second rule of interpretation.

4. And after that the Creed, and the consent of the Christian Church, as expressed to us in the Articles, shall have guided us in the interpretation of holy Scripture, there will remain of the sacred text little or no part bearing on the fundamentals, or chief articles of belief, on which any serious repugnancy of judgment can arise, because the body of

The

creeds. The sixth rests the canon on tradition, and the sufficiency of holy Scripture for salvation. The eighth acknowledges the creeds. The ninth condemns the Pelagians by name. eleventh, with the homily on Justification or Salvation referred to, was evidently the result of a deep and extended search into primitive doctrine; witness the collection of passages from Scripture and the Fathers, made by Cranmer's own hand, and remarkably coinciding with the homily above cited, which is undoubtedly his. See Cranmer's Works, vol. ii. p. 121. ed. Jenkyns. The twenty-ninth quotes St. Augustin. These are the superficial evidences; a closer examination would give many more.

'Hammond's Parænesis, ch. v. sect. 4, Works, vol. i. p. 388.

Scripture directly involved in proving, or indirectly determined by the proof of each several point, is so great, that the collective proof determines the intention and tenor of nearly all that remains. And for such places as are not so involved, the Church has given a principle, on which her members, if they will follow her own practice, will proceed. In throwing herself upon the early and undivided Church, and gathering its witnesses for her own guidance, she counsels them to follow her own example. Nay more, in her canons of 1571, she expressly enjoins her clergy, "that they never teach aught in a sermon, to be religiously held and believed by the people, but what is agreeable to the doctrine of the Old or New Testament; and which the Catholic Fathers and ancient Bishops have collected from that very doctrine 1."

Witness, in all its several degrees of consent or prevalence, is her rule. Wheresoever any degree is to be found, it brings a corresponding measure of obligation. If things attested unanimously, universally, and from the beginning, are not to be doubted,

1 Wilkins's Concilia, iv. 267. It is important to observe, that this canon was framed nine years after the publication of the Thirty-nine Articles, and therefore by the same hands, under Archbishop Parker; and that it received the sanction of Bishop Jewel, whose subscription is attached to the body of canons in which it is contained; and as he died the same year, it was probably his last public act.

things which were early, and, though not everywhere traceable, yet prevalent and uncontradicted, have no small claim on our reception. And such as were early and prevalent, but contradicted by the teaching of particular Churches, or particular persons, and still more those where there is no witness, she has left free to the judgment of Churches and of persons, they being possessed of such a knowledge of interpretations that are certain, as may guide them in the analogy of faith to others that are uncertain; and of such other aids, natural and acquired, as are needful for the task. On the lowest ground, wheresoever an interpretation exists, it is at least a presumptive evidence, which must be first removed by due and sufficient reason, before before any other can be so much as admitted to consideration. Where there is no such * evidence, we have no help but to lean on our unaided private judgment.

Such, then, is the mode of using the means which God has ordained to convey to us the Gospel of His Son; or, as we technically speak, the rule of faith, and the rules of interpretation.

That God has spoken to mankind; that He spake after this manner by His Prophets and Apostles, and by His incarnate Son; that, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, His servants so preached, ordained, and wrote; that they taught these things as fundamental, and these as of prime importance; that such was the mind and intention of their several writings;

that in them collectively is contained the whole faith necessary to salvation; that besides this nothing may be as such required;-all these the Church regards as several facts, or rather as the manifold features of one and the same great fact in the dealings of God with man, and this fact she rests upon the same witness which God has ordained to reveal to the world His being and perfections.

And by this rule she protests against the claims, whether of Churches or of individuals, to such an immediate guidance of that same Spirit by whom the Scriptures were dictated, as shall supersede this witness in interpreting their sense: referring that immediate guidance to the Prophets and Apostles of the Lord, and confiding herself to the means which God has ordained, and by His providence administers, for the preservation and transmission of the faith. And in this she testifies against every exaltation, either of the Church or of self, above Holy Writ, whether in imposing upon the written word new readings of the original, or interpretations of the translated text other than those which were received from the beginning; and also against both all arbitrary distinctions into essential and non-essential points, at the will and judgment of private men, and all new additions to the rule of faith by any council of the Church.

But, in thus resting upon the external witness of the Gospel, she does not fail to apply for her own assurance the full force of internal proof. She only

forbids God's order to be reversed, knowing that He has ordained an outward evidence sufficient to leave the infidel without excuse, and reserved the inward corroboration as the privilege of faithful men: “If any man willeth to do God's will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God." She does not so rest upon outward proof the habitual belief of her own divine original, as to be for ever making a formal recurrence to the well-proved history of her beginning, but upon the inward ever-growing consciousness of supernatural life and power; neither does she linger coldly upon the outward evidence of her inspired books, but in them discerns the voice of the Beloved, and the breathings of the Holy Ghost. The witness of a fact hath long passed into the fruition of a reality. The first is but the avenue, the last the holy place; the unseen dwelling of Christ's mystical presence, into which they that humbly enter at the outward gates are drawn, and there are ever changed, and hid, and sanctified'.

Of this unerring witness, ever growing, and deepening still, and absorbing the whole inner being of the saints into a confidence which is not so much a conclusion of the mind as a consciousness of the soul, I have designedly said nothing until now. And for this reason; because it pre-supposes, as the necessary condition of its power, the faithful teachable reception of the outward proof. Not so, indeed, that S. Aug. de Utilitate Cred. c. ix.

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