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mas than are written in the inspired volume. I could lay before you the arguments of a very learned living author, who has, within these few years, published a very elaborate treatise upon this subject; and who might have formed one of those instances, to which I alluded in my opening discourse, of persons brought to the Catholic religion, by the most diversified trains of arguHere is one who, educated in the Jewish religion, had made himself perfect master of all the writings of the Jews; and who, it is evident from the whole line of argument that pervades his work, was brought to the Catholic religion, and is now one of its defenders, simply from finding that among the Jews there was a series of traditions, which received its development only in Catholic Christianity, and a sacred system of mystical theology, which has been manifestly preserved and continued, in our Church. The author to whom I allude, is the learned Molitor, of Francfort, author of two volumes replete with deep research, entitled, "The Philosophy of History, or on Tradition."

Those who will take the requisite pains to trace the doctrine of the Jews in this regard, either by their own research, or in the pages of this estimable writer, will find that, from the very beginning, from the delivery of the law to Moses, there was a great mass of precepts, not written, but committed to the keeping of the priesthood, and by them gradually communicated or diffused among the people, but yet hardly alluded to in the writings of the sacred book. A little consideration and examination will convince any one of this important fact; for it is certain, that when our Saviour came, the Jews were in possession of many doctrines exceedingly difficult to trace in Scripture, and yet doctrines of vital importance. Many of you are doubtless aware that a divine of the Established Church (Warburton) wrote to prove the divine legation of Moses, on the extraordinary ground, that he was able to achieve the great work of organizing a republic, and constituting a law to bind the people, without the sanction of a future state. He maintains, with great show of plausibility, that you cannot discover in the writings of Moses, or of the earlier Jews, one single positive text in proof of the future existence of the soul, or of a place of rewards and punishments in another life. And I am sure that any of you who is well versed in Scripture, if he will only run through his own recollections on the subject-if he will only try to gather for himself such a body of argument in Scripture as would convince any one, or teach a people those important truths, will find it extremely difficult so to construct it, as to bear the test of accu

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rate examination. But yet did the Jews believe in them? Did they possess them? Undoubtedly they did. For it is manifest, from many passages of the New Testament, and from their own works, that the doctrines of a future state, and a resurrection, were fully believed and taught. Here, then, is an important dogma, not of natural, but of revealed religion, and one which is expressly received, repeated, and confirmed, by additional sanctions, in the New Law, which must have been handed down by secret teaching and tradition. So true is this, that the Sadducees, followed in later times by the Karaites, formed a sect among the Jews, who rejected traditional doctrines, and consequently the resurrection of the dead, and the existence of a spiritual soul in men.* And thus we find St. Paul join himself to the Pharisees, who held the two, not as to a sect, but as to the true orthodox portion of the Jewish Church. "I am a Pharisee, the son of Pharisees: concerning the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question. For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, nor angel, nor spirit; but the Pharisees confess both." And as such our Saviour acknowledges them: although he clearly distinguishes between their authority in teaching dogma, and their corruptions in matters of practical morality, and bases the former on their descent, as teachers, from the legislator Moses.‡

When our Saviour deduces the sublime doctrine of a future resurrection, from the Almighty's being styled the God of Abraham and of Jacob-the God, not of the dead, but of the living; it is, perhaps, difficult to discover the link between these two members of the argument. For how can the resurrection be proved from God's calling himself the God of Abraham? But by knowing the Jewish forms of reasoning, and the manner in which they connect the two dogmas of the soul's survival, and the body's resurrection, we understand how his hearers were satisfied by the argument.

In the same way, our Saviour tells us that Moses bore testimony of him; and in conversing with his two disciples on the road to Emmaus, quoted the authority of Moses for the necessity of his suffering, and so entering into glory; and yet you will in vain search the books of Moses to discover this important dogma, of the necessity of the Messiah's dying to redeem his people. Where, then, had these points been preserved, save in * See Molitor, tom. i. cap. 3.

† Acts xxiii. 5-8; xxvi. 5. Comp. Matt. xxii. 23. Matt. xxii. 32.

Matt. xxiii. 3.

Luke xxiv. 26.

the traditions of the Jews, as may be proved from their later works?

Another example may be drawn from the New Testament. When our Saviour proposed to Nicodemus the doctrine of a spiritual birth, or regeneration, and he truly or affectedly understood it not, he reproved him in these words: “Art thou a master in Israel, and knowest not these things?"* What does this rebuke imply, but that a teacher among the Jews ought to have been acquainted with this important doctrine, from his very office as a teacher? Yet tell me where it is ever taught in the old law, or whence could he have possessed it, except from the traditional lore preserved among the priests and learned?

In the later writings of the Jews, we observe clear manifestations of their belief in the Trinity, and in the mystery of the Incarnation, and this couched in the very terms made use of by St. John. For in the earliest uninspired writings of the Jews, we have the Word of God spoken of as something co-equal and co-existing with Him,† and yet scarcely a trace of such doctrines is to be found in the written law, although they belong not to natural but to revealed religion. They must therefore have been delivered as a deposit into the hands of the priesthood, and by them preserved inviolate to the time of Christ. I need hardly add, that the Jews themselves acknowledge this delivery by tradition, of a secret and more important doctrine. The learned author to whom I refer puts this quite out of doubt: and I will content myself with saying, that in the first page of one of their most esteemed and most ancient treatises, which, at least in Italy, is put into the hands of Jewish children for elementary education, it is expressly stated that Moses received on Sinai, besides the written, an oral and traditional revelation, which he delivered to the priests.‡

I have brought these instances by way of illustration, to show what a strong class of arguments it must require to prove that rule of faith which excludes traditional teaching; because we see that, even when the written law is expressly enjoined, it is far from excluding the existence of an unwritten law; yea, and of one to which is committed the exclusive preservation of most important doctrines. In like manner, therefore, when we come

*John ii. 11.

† In the Targumim, or Chaldee raraphrases, wherever God is said to speak within himself. this is rendered by "God said to his Word."

Pirke Aboth.

to examine authorities, we shall find that it requires reasons exceedingly strong to prove, not merely that the Scripture is the rule of faith, but that it is an all-sufficient-the exclusive rule: and however strong the terms may otherwise be, we cannot easily admit them to be exclusive of that other traditional teaching, even though backed by a formal command to have a written code.

II. Such, my brethren, is the simple and usual train of argument whereby we arrive at the possession of the Holy Scriptures, and of its entire canon and inspiration. But you will say, What have we gained, and in what is our condition better than that of others? Even here is a train of argument requiring considerable investigation; by it we are equally left to inquire into the authenticity of the sacred books, and the faith we should put in the circumstances they relate; because we have first to learn what Christ taught regarding his Church. Another explanation must therefore be made, of the manner in which our rule is applicable; and here the doctrine of the Catholic Church is such as obviously to remove these difficulties, and make the rule one of the simplest acceptance, and yet able to bear the investigation of the most learned. For the Catholic Church teaches and believes (I beg to observe that I am not proving our doctrines, but only stating them, that you may understand what I shall hereafter by argument establish)—that faith is not the production of man's ingenuity, not the result of his study or investigation, but a virtue essentially infused by God in baptism; and such must be, more or less, the belief of every Church that adopts the practice of infant baptism. True, the article of the Church of England regarding this sacrament, which says that by baptism "faith is confirmed and grace increased," would seem to suppose that faith exists in the soul before baptism is administered; but however that anomaly has to be explained, it is certain that the very idea of infant baptism, as a sacrament, supposes a living and vivifying principle communicated in it-that is, a communication to the person so baptized of the faith of the Church into which he is admitted. And therefore, assuming faith to be a principle infused by God, it follows that in a soul purged of sin, and adorned by him with the graces given in baptism, that virtue becomes an active and living principle, and ready, on the presentation of its proper object, to come into complete and perfect action. The moment, therefore, that the doctrines of religion are proposed, and the understanding, now able to apprehend the truths revealed by God, is presented with them, no

matter in what order, or by what means, provided the doctrines are true, there is a proper object presented to the action of that virtue; the two necessary elements are brought together-the actual truth and the faculty or virtue which God has given us for its apprehension: and the consequence is, that truth is believed on substantial grounds, and under the influence of a living and heavenly principle. Whereas, if we admit the supposition that no man has a right to believe any thing but that which he has himself investigated, and of whose truth he is personally satisfied, we must presume that, before the first act of faith, there existed an interval of infidelity positive or negative, during which fundamental truth, not having been discovered, was consequently not believed. This simple process allows the child and the most illiterate to perform an act of faith grounded on proper motives. We are subsequently led by the Church to the full knowledge of the grounds and motives of our belief; we are encouraged to exercise our abilities, research, and learning, in demonstrating and confirming, in every way we can, the doctrines which it teaches, and which that preliminary instruction had brought us to believe. And thus, as I before remarked, while by its simplicity it is adapted to the weakest and lowest, it leaves room for the exercise of the faculties of the most able and learned

men.

III. This may suffice as to the simplicity of the principle in its application; a few words more will prove its adequacy to its natural ends. I observed, when we last met, that the end of every rule and law, and consequently of every rule of faith, was to bring men into a unity of principle and action. I showed you that the rule proposed by others is proved by experience to lead to exactly opposite results; in other words, that it removes men farther from that union towards which it must be intended to bring them; for it leads them to the most contradictory opinions, professing to be supported and proved by precisely the same principle of faith. But now, if you will only examine, in its action, the principle which the Catholic Church admits, you will see that it is fully equal to those objects for which the rule was given: inasmuch as its necessary tendency is to bring all the opinions and understandings of men into the most perfect unity, and to the adoption of one only creed. For, the moment any Catholic doubts, not alone the principle of his faith, but any one of those doctrines which are thereon based-the moment he allows himself to call in question any of the dogmas which the Catholic Church teaches as having been handed down within

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