fallen into error, but which thus will be proved to have their foundation on an authority derived from God. And therefore, however, for the sake of entirely convincing the minds of those who doubt, and of more easily satisfying their peculiar difficulties, we may be induced to treat singly such points as I have instanced, it is evident, that they are all virtually and essentially demonstrated, if this one leading fundamental proposition can be proved: and, thus, all the questions of fact are absorbed in the one touching the divine right possessed by the Church to decide, without danger of error, in all matters regarding faith.

Now, my brethren, I may observe that this line of argument is completely opposite to that pursued, if I may use the expression, on the other side; for, not considering the manner in which these questions hang together, nothing is more common than to hear, or read, of preachers who represent the fundamental question as only one on a level with the others; and, instead of at once closing with the main point, what is the rule of faith, treat the withholding of the Bible from the faithful, as it is called, or the doctrine of tradition, as one among what are to be considered the corruptions of the Church of Rome.

But, in this process of reasoning, there is, besides, a manifest logical error. For, whether or no it be a corruption to admit tradition, or to pronounce the Bible ill-calculated for a rule of faith to each individual, depends upon, or rather is identical with, the question, whether God intended the Scriptures to be the only rule of faith. This the Protestant asserts, and the Catholic denies. But, therefore, when it is pretended to disprove the truth of the Catholic religion, by taxing it with additions to God's word, or with restraining the people from its use, it is manifest that the identical question is assumed as certain on one side: namely, that Scripture is the only rule of faith. For, if this be not true, and if tradition be equally a rule of faith, the Catholic Church is not guilty of the alleged corruption. But this, as I before observed, is the whole kernel of the controversy between the two religions. So that, first, the very point in dispute is taken for granted, and then an argument is based upon it. Assuredly, it cannot be difficult to prove Catholics in the wrong, when the Protestant principle of faith is taken as a lemma.

Thus much may suffice as to the grounds which would be given, were we to interrogate any one who is separated from the Catholic Church, Why he is not a Catholic?

But, supposing now that we proceeded farther with the scru

tiny, and asked him, Why he is a Protestant? the answer must, certainly, be different; for no religion can stand upon mere negative grounds. You cannot believe one doctrine rather than another, simply because that other, which is proposed by some men, is false. Each religion must have grounds of demonstration essentially in itself, and independent of the existence of any other sect. We should have been able to prove the divinity of Christ, although Arianism and Socinianism had never arisen: and even now, if any one asked us for a demonstration of that doctrine, it would be no reply, to say that Arianism has been confuted, or that Socinianism has been proved false; but the dogma, and the system, of religion, which takes it for a foundation, must have their own essential reasons, independent of the rejection of another doctrine. Hence it is, that each one, if asked, not simply, why he is not a Catholic? but, why moreover he is a Protestant? must have positive reasons to give, wherefore he is a member of this communion.

It follows, necessarily, that, by this principle, a very common ground for being a Protestant is, at once, excluded. For preachers will too often imagine, and their hearers will follow them in the idea, that when they have held up to hatred, or rejected as impious and absurd, the tenets of Catholicity, they have thereby established the cause of Protestantism. How many works have been published "against the errors of the Church of Rome," or in confutation of Popery: how few systematic attempts are made to establish Protestant principles upon positive demonstration. Hence it is, that many consider religious belief only as based on a choice between the two religions, in which, the rejection of the one sufficiently demonstrates the other.

To such as are Protestants, on this ground, I would say-suppose that you lived in a country, or in any part of this country, where there was not within your reach a single Catholic; where, consequently, it had not been necessary to hold up our doctrines to your execration,-indeed, where there would have been no opportunity given you even of hearing them. It is evident, that you could not have been a Protestant upon this ground: but, that some positive reasons or motives, must have been proposed to you to satisfy you, that Protestantism is the true and normal state of the Christian religion; its rule of faith would have been propounded to you, based upon a series of positions and argu ments, not relative or negative, but direct and positive.

But, my brethren, for the better understanding of this point, 1 wish to draw your attention to a very important distinction, and

one which, I fear, is often not sufficiently observed; it is the distinction between the grounds of adhesion to, or communion with, any Church; and the grounds of conviction of its truth. I am sure, that, if those who have been educated Protestants would ask their own minds, why they profess that religion, many would receive such an answer as would appear a justification to themselves for remaining in that communion, but yet does not involve the acceptance of the fundamental grounds of their religion. They would say, for instance--and I am sure that many, if they search their own breasts, will find it a reason of great weightthey would say, that they were born and educated in that religion; that it is the religion of their country; and that they think it shameful to abandon the faith of their forefathers. These are so many reasons, therefore, why they are Protestants; but they are precisely the same grounds which might be given for a thousand ordinary opinions; they are the very reasons by which you might account why you are attached to your country; but they do not include, in themselves, the essential, the radical reasons, upon which Protestant doctrines are based. They are motives which justify the individual, in his own idea, for remaining in a communion; but, certainly, they contain no pledge of having adopted the principle of any. Others will tell you, that they are of that persuasion, because they take it for granted that their religion is demonstrated; they have been accustomed to hear it spoken of as a thing satisfactorily settled, and they have not thought it necessary to trouble their minds by inquiring farther; learned men have done it for them; and the principles of the Reformation have been too firmly established, and too surely demonstrated, to need reconsideration or private study.

You must perceive-and a minute examination would only serve to demonstrate it-that, whoever gives you such reasons as these, for being a Protestant, only gives you such motives as influence him to continue in the profession of his creed, but they are not reasons which touch the grounds whereon Protestantism justifies its original separation from our Church; for the fundamental principle of Protestantism is this, that THE Written word OF GOD ALONE IS THE TRUE STANDARD AND RULE OF FAITH. to arrive at this, there is required a long course of complicated and severe inquiry. You must, step by step, have satisfied yourselves, not merely of the existence of a revelation; but, that such revelation is really confided to man in these very books; that they have been transmitted to you in such a state, that is, that the originals have been so preserved, and the translations so

But,

made, as to make you confident, that in reading them you are reading the words which the Spirit of God dictated to the prophets and apostles; and, still more, that you have acquired, or that you possess, the lights necessary to understand them. You must not only be satisfied that the Bible has been given as the word of God; but you must be ready to meet the innumerable and complicated difficulties which are alleged against the inspiration of particular books, or individual passages; so that you may be able to say, that from your own knowledge and experience, you are internally convinced, that you have in that book the inspired word of God, in the first place; and, in the second, that you are not only authorized, but competent, to understand it. How few, my brethren, are there who can say, that they have gone through this important course! and, yet, it is the essential ground of Protestantism, that each one is to be considered responsible to God for every particular doctrine which he professes that each one must have studied the word of God, and must have drawn from it the faith which he holds. Unless he does all this, he has not complied with those conditions which his religion imposes upon him; and, whatever reasons or motives he may feel or quote, for being a Protestant, it is manifest that they noways lead him essentially to the practical adoption of the groundwork of his religion.

You may, perhaps, be tempted to think that I have overstrained my assertions, for the sake of an argument. You may say, that it is nowise contrary to the principles of Protestantism, to accept religious truth on the teaching received in education; so that the long and painful process I have described is by no means required from each individual. I will, therefore, justify what I have asserted, by the authority of one considered eminently orthodox among the divines of the Church of England. Dr. Beveridge, in his "Private Thoughts," has recorded most exactly the train of reasoning he pursued, regarding the necessity of individual examination in matters of religion; and you will see. that he goes much farther than I have ventured to do, in his statement of what Protestantism exacts. In the sixteenth page of that work he writes as follows, concerning the self-examination which he instituted into the grounds and motives of his belief.

"The reason of this my inquiry, is, not that I am, in the least, dissatisfied with that religion I have already embraced, but because it is natural for all men to have an overbearing opinion and esteem for that particular religion they are born and bred

.

up in. That, therefore, I may not seem biassed by the prejudices of education, I am resolved to prove and examine them all, and hold fast to that which is best, for though I do not, in the least, question but upon that inquiry, I shall find the true Christian religion to be the only true religion in the world, yet I cannot say it, unless I find it upon good grounds to be so indeed. For to profess myself a Christian, and believe that Christians only are right because my forefathers were so, is no more than the heathens and Mahomedans have to say for themselves.-To be a Christian only upon the grounds of birth and education, is all one as if I was a Turk or a heathen, for if I had been born amongst them, I should have had the same reason for their religion as now I have for my own. The premises are the same, though the conclusions be never so different. 'Tis still upon the same grounds, that I profess religion, though it be another religion." Here, then, according to this learned bishop, not only is the Protestant bound, as I said, to satisfy his mind individually on the ground of his creed, but he is no better than a heathen or Turk, if he be a Christian at all upon other grounds. But, then, he bears me out still further in my assertions, by owning that the great body of Protestants are only such, upon the unjustifiable grounds which he rejects, and which I above enumerated. For he says in continuation: "I can see but little difference betwixt being a Turk by profession, and a Christian only by education, which commonly is the means and occasion, but ought by no means to be the ground, of any religion." In which words is found the very distinction I before laid down between the motives of adherence, and the principle of conviction. But at our next meeting I shall have better occasion to quote other and stronger authorities, for all I have asserted.

From what I have said, it is evident, that those motives of adherence, do not necessarily and essentially, lead to that principle; that is to say, that a person may be all his life a member of a Protestant Church, without once taking the pains to examine, by the serious and minute, and difficult method which is required, all the doctrines which he believes; he may possess, therefore, those reasons which keep him in communion with that Church, without his ever being led by them to the adoption of that course which it requires, as fundamental to his religion. Not only so; but I will say, that these motives are contradictory to that principle. For, if any man tells me, that he remains a Protestant simply because he has been so born'and educated; that from what he has heard in sermons, or read in books, he is