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whole Christian Church, and on the other, that the process by which they effected that revolution was so silent and imperceptible, as to have attracted no observation in any quarter, and to have left behind. no traces of its operation. It is not merely the promulgation of the Trinitarian Creed throughout the Christian world, nor the rapidity with which this must be supposed to have been effected, nor yet the circumstance of its having met with no recorded opposition, marvellous as each of these things would be to all, to which we have in the present instance to reconcile our incredulity; we have likewise to persuade ourselves that, after having been so promulgated and received, all record, or even tradition of such promulgation, was in the course of a very few years entirely swept away in every Church; and that another belief respecting its origin came at the same time to be universally prevalent, viz. that it had been traditionary from the first.

To do justice to this argument, would require more space than our limits allow. Enough, however, may perhaps have been said, to suggest to persons disposed to follow the thought out for themselves, the moral certainty that the interpretations of Scripture, witnessed by the Nicene Fathers, have an origin altogether different from the speculations of mere human wisdom; and that they do not come within the range of the censures directed by Mr. Blanco White against confessions and articles resting on fallible authority, or human hiero

giphus distorting or encumbering divine ones. Ett Nicent creed really does, as its framers beieved, rest of a direct Apostolic tradition, its metaphors cannot be looked on as human and secondary, ary more that those which occur in St. Paul's Episties: nor car its authority be, in that case, consistently regarded as less than infallible. thus, in requiring assent to the truth of this creed, Protestant Churches, though admitting themselves fallible, will not be more justly chargeable with inconsistency, than in requiring a similar assent to the truth of the Canonical Scriptures.

And

A paralel argument might, if necessary, be drawn out respecting the creed commonly called Athanasian.

Thus, it appears on the whole, that even such persons as are disposed to go considerable lengths with Mr. Blanco White in many parts of his argument, may, nevertheless, without making one step towards the Popish doctrine of a standing infallible judge of controversies, place such reliance on the ancient Catholic formulæ, as to find in them a protection against the varied assaults of Latitudinarianism. Whatever, then, becomes of his theory, the high theological tenets of the Gospel are beyond its reach, and can excite no anxiety for their safety. As to the modern formulæ, such as our Articles and the like, they certainly, as far as they contain additions to the Creeds, stand on distinct grounds, which, as being sufficiently understood, it was not our intention to have alluded to here. In order,

however, to avoid any misconception of our meaning, it may be advisable briefly to observe that such confessions have never been considered by our divines to be of more than secondary authority, nor to be portions, as such, of necessary faith; and that, while they are venerable as being professed by an ever-increasing number of pious and learned men, they are justified on the ground of a strong and imperative expediency. But on this subject it will be best to convey our meaning in words which will come with more weight than any arguments we could urge in explanation of it, viz. those of Bishop Stillingfleet and the present Bishop of Peterborough :

"I deny not," says the former of these learned champions of our Church against the Romanists, "but that, in cases of great divisions in the Christian world, and any national Church's reforming itself, that Church may declare its sense of those abuses in articles of Religion, and require of men a subscription to them; but then we are to consider, that there is a great deal of difference between the owning some propositions in order to peace, and the believing them necessary articles of faith. And this is clearly the state of the difference between the Church of Rome and the Church of England. The Church of Rome imposeth new articles of faith to be believed. as necessary to salvation, as appears by the formerly cited Bull of Pius IV...... But the Church of England makes no articles of faith, but such as have the testimony and approbation of the

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whole Christian world of all ages, and are acknowledged to be such by Rome itself; and in other things, she requires subscription to them, not as articles of faith, but as inferior truths, which she expects a submission to in order to her peace and tranquillity. So the late Lord Primate of Ireland, (Bramhall,) often expresseth the sense of the Church of England, as to her thirty-nine Articles. ther doth the Church of England,' saith he, 'define any of these questions as necessary to be believed, either necessitate medii, or necessitate præcepti, which is much less; but only hindereth her sons, for peace' sake, not to oppose them.' And in another place more fully. We do not suffer any man to reject the thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England at his pleasure; yet, neither do we look upon them as essentials of saving faith, or legacies of Christ and his Apostles; but in a mean, as pious opinions fitted for the preservation of unity: neither do we oblige any man to receive them, but only not to contradict them." "-Grounds of Protestant Religion, part i., chap. 2.

This doctrine, indeed, even goes farther than we should be willing to admit, in making the articles merely articles of peace; but the main argument is clearly and convincingly put, and indisputably true.

The same general doctrine, on another side of it, with some inconsiderable difference of terms, is expressed in the following extracts from Bishop Marsh's Comparative View of the Churches of England and Rome, chapter viii. :

"How," he asks, "is the Church of England to be vindicated, in the end, from the charge of acting like the Church of Rome in the exercise of its authority? How can it be rescued from the charge of trenching on the right of private judgment, which is the glory and pride of Protestants? Arduous as the task may seem, it is still a task to be performed...... The Church of England carries its authority no further than is absolutely necessary for its own preservation. When the twentieth Article gives authority to the Church in controversies of faith, it gives no more authority than such as is possessed by every civil society in controversies of civil import......At the time of the Reformation, the sense of Scripture, in regard to various doctrines, was disputed. The Convocation, therefore, which is our highest judicial authority in spiritual concerns, as the Judges are the highest judicial authority in temporal concerns, assembled and determined, in the name of the Church which it represented, what the sense of Scripture, in regard to the disputed points really was...... But is there no difference, it will be said, between the interpretation of a human law, and the interpretation of a divine law ?......Shall any man, therefore, be bound to accept an interpretation of Scripture, imposed on him by the will of another, if on mature deliberation he himself is convinced that such interpretation is false? Undoubtedly, he is not bound: nor does our Church impose the obligation......If our consciences will not allow us to comply with those

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