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the true account, in plain terms, of the palmary argument of Mr. Faber, whereby he would supersede Mr. M'Neile's direct reasoning on the words of Scripture, and on those of Clement, Ignatius and Hermas themselves, his own earliest witnesses. This seems very like a reductio ad absurdum of his favourite principle-" a strictly evidential" appeal to the Fathers. We leave it

Quenched in a boggy Syrtis, neither sea
Nor good dry land,

and should be glad if our valued correspondent would withdraw
his feet from it, and place them on surer and firmer ground.
What a pile of uncertainties compose the argument !
We do not
know that Augustine had read all these passages. If he had read
them, we do not know that he remembered them at the time of
the appeal. If he remembered them, we do not know but he
might put them by, because Cyprian, Ambrose and Gregory were
more suited to his purpose. If he thought them neutral, we do
not know but he might be mistaken, as Mr. Faber believes him to
be in the three others. If these passages were neutral, we do not
know but the writers might hold the doctrine, since they nowhere
contradict it. Finally, if these writers had rejected the doctrine,
we should still be uncertain whether they might not be in error.

But "the assertion of Augustine's contemporaries remains, that no such view of Scriptural election had, to the best of their knowledge, been ever heard of in the church before. That this assertion was correct, is distinctly shewn by historical testimony. Augustine had not been taught it by his catechist, as the universally-received doctrine of the Church from the beginning, but had discovered it by his insulated private judgment." We reply, that the assertion on which Mr. Faber builds, is the insulated private judgment of Augustine's contemporaries; that his own re-assertion of it is also his "insulated private judgment,” and in our opinion, flatly against the existing evidence; that an universal negative, in its very nature, can never be proved; and that it is strange fallacy to infer that a doctrine has been universally rejected, because it is not found in the catechism, and universally received. Mr. F. indeed supposes that the denial of the doctrine "had been delivered to Augustine, as the universal and unbroken interpretation of the Church." But this is another private judgment of Mr. Faber against all reason; for if a contradictory doctrine had been taught Augustine, as part of the universal faith of the Church, who that knows his sentiments on Church authority will believe for one moment that he could have cast it aside? The fact that he adopted his actual views, and reasoned long and power

fully in their favour, proves that, in his decided judgment, it was an open question, so far as mere authority and tradition were concerned. To sum up the whole there is an ecclesiastical election to privileges, which, as Mr. Faber, and Mr. M'Neile and ourselves agree, is taught in Scripture, and generally received by early Christian writers. There is, in our judgment and that of Mr. M'Neile, a further doctrine of personal election to eternal life, which is also taught in Scripture, and recognized also by plain statements in Clement, Ignatius and Hermas. Other writers, before Augustine, were mostly silent upon it; some of them clearly disowned it; but Augustine himself revived it with great force of Scriptural reasoning. Now if any maintain that the doctrine is a fundamental article of the faith, universally received from the beginning, Mr. Faber's negative evidence, from all the writers in the second, third and fourth centuries who do not affirm it, and one or two who reject it, will be apposite and conclusive. For any other purpose it is quite useless. It cannot decide what were the opinions of all the millions of the church in those ages, by the mere silence of ten or twenty writers. It cannot even decide what were, on this point, the complete views of these writers themselves. They might hold both an ecclesiastical and personal election, and think the former only to be suited for their public teaching. Still less can it justify us in expounding Ignatius or Hermas contrary to their plain words, or supersede a direct and closely-reasoned appeal to the sacred writings themselves. This would be assuredly to reject what may prove to be a revealed truth, on "very defective and worse than defective evidence."

We may close with the words of Luther, in his vigorous reply to the Bull of Leo; fearing that our friend, in his first letter, and even in his last, has exposed himself, in some measure, to their stirring and powerful rebuke.

Is not

"Wonderful, then, is our perverseness, who seek to prove our sayings by other testimonies than Scripture, while Christ and all the Apostles sought in the Scriptures testimonies to their own sayings. Nay, to make our madness more intolerable, those Scriptures from which we ought to seek testimonies for ourselves, we endeavour to prove and defend by the testimonies of men. this to defend by the flesh of our own arm that sword of the Spirit by which we need to be defended? I do not wish that authority should be taken away from the Holy Fathers, but that the majesty of the Word of God should be preferred to them. Let them be holy men, and Fathers of the churches, but still men, unequal to the apostles and prophets, and not preferred or made equal to their authority. So far let them be an example to us, that as they in

their time laboured in the word of God, so should we in our age labour in the same. There is one vineyard, but different workmen of various hours; yet all laboured in the vineyard itself, and not on the tools and pruning-knives of the workmen. It is enough to have learned of the Fathers the diligent study of labouring in the Scriptures. It is not needful that every thing they have wrought be approved, since even diligence sometimes may not grant to several, what opportunity alone, and some impulse of the Spirit gives even to one.

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By the example, then, of St. Bernard, let us rather drink from the fountain itself than from the streams; otherwise, if we must trust doctors only, and they may not be called to the tribunal of Scripture, why do we not discard the Holy Oracles as superfluous, and too obscure for us to understand them? By the same pattern we may next reject the Fathers themselves, the scholastic theologians, plainer as they pretend, being received in their room; till rejecting these also, we shall have for our guides Aristotle, and whoever is most remote from the sacred writings and the Fathers; as in truth we have had, and have still. Then forsooth we shall not merely not interpret Scriptures by an insulated private spirit, but we shall have remaining nothing except a private spirit, and the Scriptures be altogether unknown, and shall be tossed without end in the whirlwinds and storms of our own opinions, as it is this day."

We trust that our honoured correspondent will acquit us, in those observations, of all feelings but deep regard, and an earnest desire that his talents and learning may be employed, purely and entirely, on the side of Scripture truth; and that his dread of insulated private judgment may not lead him unconsciously, and contrary to his own deliberate convictions, into a practical exaltation of fallible writings above the sure word and testimony of the living God.

THE

CHURCHMAN'S MONTHLY REVIEW

AND CHRONICLE.

OCTOBER, 1846.

THE CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF THE SECOND ADVENT. By the Rev. FRANCIS CLOSE, A.M. London: Hatchards. 1846.

THIS is, beyond all doubt, the most unfortunate production that ever emanated from the excellent Incumbent of Cheltenham; and the best advice we can give him, is, that when the first edition shall have been sold off, (which of course will shortly be the case,) -he will take care that the work be not reprinted; but will quietly consign it to oblivion. We advise this, not expecting him to be rapidly converted from the view which he now holds, to the opposite, or a full confession and recantation would be his duty; but from a conviction that in this little publication he has placed both himself and the system which he advocates, in a very unfavourable light. The faults we find with the book are these three :

1. He has rested the whole argument on ground which it is most undesirable, in these days of Tractarian and Romish error, that any sincere Protestant should take.

2. He has utterly blundered, and that in the most inconceivable manner, on a dry point of history, in stating what he terms "the faith of the Catholic or Universal Church of all ages."

3. His appeal to Scripture, which of course he does not forget or omit, is not conducted in the only legitimate and proper mode; -i. e., he does not take all Scripture into his view, and submit with equal reverence to every part of it.

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At the first opening, then, we have to object,—and this is our chief reason for entering this immediate protest,-against the ground on which he has chosen to rest his case. So serious do we consider this error to be, that we feel sure that even victory in the argument would be no compensation for the damage inflicted on the Protestant cause by his mode of arguing.

The citadel of Protestantism in the present day, over which it is needful to keep a constant watch, is, SCRIPTURE ALONE, as the sole rule of Faith. Here only we are safe and invincible. Hence the constant attempts of Papists and Tractarians, to draw us out of this stronghold. Scripture and Tradition, proposes the Papist ; -Scripture and Antiquity, suggests the Tractarian. And here comes in the one error of Mr. Faber, (recently adverted to) by which he mistakenly passes the Protestant boundary, and proposes, "Scripture as interpreted by the early Fathers."

We doubt if Mr. Close is quite prepared to enlist under Mr. Faber's standard, or to give up the only safe standing, SCRIPTURE ALONE. But he has unwarily (we imagine) been led by controversial eagerness, to conduct his present argument on unsafe ground.

He begins, indeed, and we are sure that he begins honestly and sincerely, by appealing to Scripture, as the sole rule. He says"Here we must follow step by step God's written word. It is a matter of pure revelation. For if we know absolutely nothing, even of the future moment, how much less do we know of the grand consummation of all things!-it is an entire blank, except so far as God has been pleased to reveal it to us in his Holy Word. It becomes therefore a matter of interpretation of scripture; and since there are diversities of opinion in the church, and have been in bye-gone days, even with respect to the great Catholic doctrines of the second personal coming of Christ, and of the final judgment, it becomes us with all wisdom, with all humility, and with earnest prayer to the Divine Teacher, that we may be led and guided into all truth,-to search the Holy Scriptures, to know what this second coming of Christ may mean, and what this glorified Saviour will do when he comes."-(p. 8.)

So far Mr. Close is perfectly orthodox, and we should gladly have followed him through an enquiry so carried out. But, unhappily, he has stepped off from this safe footing, and has repeatedly appealed to another principle, on which both Papist and Tractarian will be only too glad to meet him.

For immediately after this simple appeal to Scripture, we find Mr. Close dropping the use of all such Protestant language, and beginning to talk as a Wiseman or a Palmer would wish to hear him. Only two pages after the passage we have quoted, he says, "We are met by a variety of interpretations, hostile, as we humbly "believe, to the faith of the Catholic or universal church of all ages." (p. 10.) Then-" entrenched as we are in the Catholic

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