11

things from which they could not be justified by the law of Moses." From these two eminent examples, and there are more in the same book, we may conclude that this was the substance of the preaching of all the apostles. It was by the power of this word or report, when accompanied by the blessing of the Holy Ghost, that sinners, whether Jews or Gentiles, were converted; and "turned from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God." Companies of men and women so converted, were instructed to meet together, for the purpose of prayer, and for the observance of the other ordinances which God had commanded. These were the primitive churches; many of which were organized by apostles in person, others by evangelists acting under their direction. Among some of them Paul continued to preach for a considerable period; and to many of them he wrote letters in his absence, most of them, I believe, when he was a prisoner in Rome. In these letters he does not go over in detail the narrative of facts which he made the first subject of his preaching. He takes them for granted. He often alludes to them in a summary way; and again and again, he exhorts his correspondents to keep them in memory;-to hold them fast, and on no account to let them slip out of their minds. In these was the "faithful saying," "the word," "the report," the traditions, which he had delivered to them by word of mouth, and of which he reminded them in every epistle. I say he reminded them of them, for it was not necessary that he should repeat them all in his letters, seeing they were detailed in the narratives called the gospels, either published by this time, or about to be published. Before the publication of the gospels, these things were all communicated by word of mouth, but it was by the mouth of inspired men. They ceased to speak, one by one, as their Master called them to rest from their labours; but they were not all removed till they had committed to writing the things which they had so long declared by their living voice. These are what we have in the New Testament,-having which, we have their word, as really as those who heard them speak, and all the traditions which are of permanent use, and universal obligation among Christians. And I defy the church of Rome to adduce a single article of doctrine, or ordinance of worship, which she has derived from oral tradition, that is not contrary to, or inconsistent with some part of the written word; and, therefore, it cannot be of God; for it is the height of impiety and blasphemy to say, that He commanded his servants to teach one thing with their pens, and a contrary thing with their mouths. "All scripture is given by inspiration of God;-and is able to make

The reader is requested to turn to the passages and peruse them attentively. It is of more importance to be acquainted with the tenor of the apostles' preaching, than to study the style of any modern pulpit orator. It was the plain unincumbered doctrine of Christ crucified, that produced such wonderful effects by the preaching of the apostles; and it is the same doctrine, and nothing else, even now, that can be of any use in the way of converting sinners. The Moravians who went to Greenland, began to teach systematically. They descanted on the being and perfections of God;-very proper subjects, most certainly, for an enlightened Christian assembly; but they made no impression upon the poor Greenlanders, whose minds were not prepared to take in such things. Almost in despair of doing any good, the missionaries began at last to speak about Jesus Christ, and his wonderful kindness and mercy to poor sinners; and this was found to melt the hearts even of the men of Greenland. See Crantz's History. I have not the work at hand, and cannot refer to the page; but the above anecdote is well known.

the man of God perfect, thoroughly furnished unto every good work." Christians can desire no more than the word which is able to make them perfect, which must itself be a perfect word. But Papists, dissatisfied with this, and seeking for something else, have landed themselves in ignorance, superstition, idolatry, and every evil work.

CHAPTER CXC.

PASSAGES OF SCRIP

POPISH TRADITION DEFINED. VANITY OF DEPENDING UPON IT.
TURE ALLEGED IN ITS SUPPORT. CORRUPT CHANNEL THROUGH WHICH TRADITION IS

DERIVED. SPECIMEN OF TRADITIONS; IN THE APOSTLES' CREED, SO CALLED. THE
INSTRUMENT BOTH UNSUPPORTED BY EVIDENCE AND VERY INDEFINITE.

SATURDAY, March 2d, 1822.

THE true rule of faith, according to Dr. Milner, "is not merely the written word of God, but the whole word of God, both written and unwritten; in other words, scripture and tradition, and these propounded and explained by the Catholic church." In my last number I did little more than clear the way for the consideration of this proposition. Seeing, in two passages of one of his epistles, the apostle Paul makes use of a word which is rendered tradition in English, popish writers are in the habit of citing his authority in favour of their traditions; but I showed that what he referred to were communications made by himself under divine inspiration, including the apostolic testimony and report concerning Christ, as recorded in the gospel history: and, seeing Dr. Milner alleges that the ancient patriarchs received all that they knew of religion for 2400 years from tradition, I showed that the patriarchs were themselves prophets, and received from God himself that religion which they communicated to their families; and thus it is evident that the popish doctrine of tradition derives no countenance from apostles or patriarchs: and I might have added, that such traditions as the Papists plead for, were strongly condemned by Christ, in his discourses to the Pharisees, who made void the law by their traditions, just as the Papists make void the gospel by theirs.

The simple statement of what Papists mean by tradition, might be enough to convince persons of common sense of the folly of depending upon it. It consists of certain doctrines and precepts, which Christ and the apostles are said to have spoken, but which were not committed to writing. These doctrines and precepts are said to have been delivered by word of mouth from one age to another, and to have come down to us as pure and uncorrupted as the written word contained in the gospels and epistles. Those who can believe this, must believe in the existence of a perpetual miracle, without any conceivable reason for miraculous interposition, seeing the object could have been accomplished by the ordinary means of writing. Dr. Milner, however, not only believes this certainty of traditional communication, but he believes further, and stoutly maintains, that by this means, the knowledge of Christianity might have been preserved and propagated in the world, though there had not been a word of divine revelation committed to

writing. No doubt God could have done this, had he thought fit to preserve a succession of inspired men in all ages, as he did in the ages before his word was written; but what he could have done is no rule to us; our business is with what he has done; and we know that he has given us his word in the scriptures, with a command to receive and apply our minds to the understanding of it; that he has not commanded us to receive the traditions of men, but to beware of them; and therefore we feel upon sure ground when we rely on the written word alone.

The other arguments from scripture in favour of tradition, are Christ's command to all men to hear the apostles;-" He that heareth you, heareth me ;" and, "if he refuse to hear the church let him be unto thee as a heathen and a publican." Now, I have admitted that it was the duty of all men to hear what the apostles said to them; but this has nothing to do with what other men have said, or may yet say;-and popish tradition consists entirely of what other men said. I deny that the apostles spoke a word of that which the church of Rome propounds as apostolical tradition. This is not asserting a negative; for the church has condescended to mention what some of her traditions are, such as the mass sacrifice, purgatory, and prayers for the dead; and as these are directly opposed to what the apostles wrote, I am sure they formed no part of their oral teaching, for they both wrote and spoke under the influence of the divine Spirit, who cannot teach contradictions. But suppose I had no such positive evidence on the subject; suppose it were all negative on that side; I am entitled to deny that of which there is no evidence. At any rate, the burden of proof rests with those who maintain the truth of tradition; and I challenge them to prove the genuineness of a single sentence ascribed to Christ and his apostles beyond what we have in the New Testament.

Aye, but, says Dr. Milner, the apostles had their successors, and Christ included them when he said, "He that heareth you heareth me;" and these words cannot be restricted to the apostles, for as they continued only for the ordinary period of human life, it was impossible that all nations, and all ages, could receive the gospel from them personally; therefore Christ must have included their successors, who are the priests of the Catholic church, the depositaries of the faith, by whom the unwritten word of God, that is, apostolical tradition, has come down to us with infallible certainty.

These are not precisely Dr. Milner's words, but they are the substance of his argument. And I reply, first, that the apostles, as such, had no successors; which I showed at length, in my reply to the Catholic Vindicator: and now, secondly, I maintain, that there was no need of any successors to the apostles, or any to fill their place, after they had committed their words to writing, and gone to receive their reward. Hearing the apostles is not a mere acoustic operation; it is not the mere reception of sounds into the ear. Papists indeed argue as if it were nothing else; and thus it is that they degrade and carnalize every thing that they touch. They think it impossible to hear the apostles, unless the sound of their voice shall literally be received into our ears, or the sound of the voice of some person who pretends to be one of their successors. But in the scripture sense of the expression, to hear the apostles, signifies the belief of their tes timony, and submission to the ordinances which they appointed in

their master's name. Thus, they are as effectually heard in their writings as they were by their living voice; and the submission of the heart and life to what they wrote, is obedience to the divine command to hear them. When the voice from the excellent glory said, concerning Jesus himself, "This is my beloved Son, hear ye him," the divine command was, believe what he teaches, and obey what he commands; and not merely listen to the sound of his voice, which many did, who derived no benefit from it, because they would not obey his voice; and their not obeying it was the same as not hearing it. But he who really receives the truth which the apostles wrote, obeys the command to hear them; and, therefore, there was no need of successors, to tell us of something which they said but did not

write.

With regard to the priests, who call themselves successors of the apostles, and depositaries of the faith, the world is able to judge what credit is due to their testimony in relation to what the apostles are said to have communicated by word of mouth. None of them profess to have lived so long as to have been ear-witnesses of what any of the apostles personally taught; and, therefore, supposing the present race to be as honest as it is possible for men to be, there can be no certainty with regard to any thing that they say has been handed down to them from the apostolic age. This objection gathers strength from the well known character of the great body of the priests for more than a thousand years. There is a universal tradition on this subject, both oral and written, the truth of which no man can doubt; namely, that the state of morals among the priesthood was profligate in the extreme. This was so universal, and exceptions were so rare, that it was almost a miracle to find a godly man among them. Now, suppose it were admitted that tradition contained nothing but sound doctrine for an age or two after the apostles, it must necessarily have become corrupted when taken up and transmitted by such corrupt men. They could not be the means of preserving, and the medium of communicating, holy doctrines and pure precepts, which condemned them, and must have been abhorred by them. Whatever came into contact with them must have been defiled. Water from the purest fountain will be found unsavoury after passing through a dunghill.

It may be admitted that, by the increase and general diffusion of knowledge, the character of the priests of the present day is not so bad, at least in Protestant countries; yet I would not trust much to their traditions. I shall suppose Dr. Milner to be one of the best of his order; yet, when I see that he asserts in his introduction, that the bishop of St. David's wrote a catechism which taught men to "hate and persecute their elder brethren," and when I find that the said catechism contains no such thing; I am compelled to conclude, that tradition passing through such a mind, may have received a bias that makes it of no value. If a man shall mistake, and grossly misrepresent what he reads with his own eyes, I can have no confidence in the accuracy of what he professes to have received by his ears, though given only at second hand, much less when it has come through a hundred such hands; and this is the case with all that the Romish church propounds to her children, under the name of the "unwritten word of God."

The next branch of the argument is that which requires men to hear the church. Papists, with one voice, maintain that this means the church of Rome; and that all men who will not hear and submit to her must be accursed. But she has not yet made it appear, and she never can make it appear, that she is here specially intended, any more than the church of England, or that of Scotland; for she had no existence, any more than these, when our Saviour gave that commandment. And the truth is, this command, Matt. xviii. 16. does not relate to any one church more than another, but to every particular church or congregation that may unhappily have an offending or immoral person among them. They are commanded to take certain steps to recover him from his error, and if they cannot prevail upon him, that is, if he will not hear them, they are commanded to consider him as a heathen and a publican; which implies no more than being excluded from the fellowship of Christians, of which he showed himself unworthy. Any person who will read the passage carefully, will find that it contains no more than I have here stated; and yet these words are repeated by every popish writer, to prove the supreme authority of the church of Rome: "Let him hear the church;"—"If he refuse to hear the church," &c. Under these words she claims a right to propound for belief, and to enjoin for practice, whatever she pleases; and all who will not obey come under the anathema of those who refuse to hear the church!

The church of Rome has been very sparing in her information with regard to the particular doctrines and ordinances which she has received from tradition. I have mentioned one or two things which have been divulged as derived from that source, though most popish writers endeavour to find scripture for these too, which seems to intimate that mere tradition does not satisfy them. But, so far as I know, there is no publication, printed or manuscript, that contains a summary or detailed account of what the church believes under the head of tradition. It may be any thing, or it may be nothing, for what any man out of the church can tell; for the very writing of it would destroy it as a matter of oral tradition; and, therefore, Protestants can never know what it is. As for lay persons in the church of Rome, every one must receive it from the lips of his priest. It is that which theCatholic church propounds;" and as this is too large a body to propound any thing, otherwise than by the mouth of its official organs, every priest is the propounder of what he considers a Catholic tradition; which may be a mere whimsy of his own; and yet his people must receive it as infallibly true. Thus there may be as many whimsies as priests, all contradicting one another; for there is no authentic standard to which an appeal can be made, and by which an inquirer can satisfy himself who reports the tradition correctly.

But the "Catholic church;" that is, the popish priests; are not only propounders, they are also the explainers of both the written and unwritten word; and neither scripture nor tradition is to be considered the rule of faith otherwise than as propounded and explained by them. This power of explaining sets every thing to rights; for let the articles of tradition brought to view be ever so contradictory, the explanation of a priest can reconcile them to one another so completely, that he will, if necessary, swear that they are the very same; just as