see on the table around me. In short, they reinstated the Church on the basis of primitive antiquity'.

RIDLEY.

I clearly perceive the great advantage which a knowledge of Christian antiquity must afford in such an emergency; or, indeed, at any time, to the theological student, who, like yourself, desires to go to the fountain-head. But such investigations are evidently far beyond the scope of laymen, whose years must be given to secular pursuits.

HERBERT.

Nevertheless I am prepared to show that the principle which I have been asserting, namely, the authority of primitive antiquity in the settle

1 Bishop Jewel says: "We have resorted, as much as we possibly could, to the Church of the Apostles and of the ancient Catholic Bishops and Fathers; and we have carefully directed, to their rites and institutes, not only our doctrinal system, but also our sacraments and the form of our public prayers. For we judged, that we ought to take our commencement from that precise quarter, whence the first beginnings of religion were derived." (Enchir. Theol., vol. i. p. 340.) And the following is the language of the Church in the nineteenth canon: "In the first place let preachers take care that they never teach any thing in the way of preaching which they wish to be retained religiously, and believed by the people, except what is agreeable to the doctrine of the Old and New Testament, and what the Catholic Fathers and ancient Bishops have collected from the same doctrine."

ment of Scriptural doctrine, is the only sure foundation of the Scriptural faith of every man, woman, and child, in the Church of Christ; and that the neglect of this principle must lead to infinite error and schism.

RIDLEY.

I pray you explain your meaning.

HERBERT.

The Church of England, as we have seen, reformed itself after the model of the ancient Church; altering nothing but what was contrary to God's word. It is, in fact, the ancient Church revived. And her creeds and formularies have been received from the highest antiquity. According to them it is that our clergy are bound to instruct the people ;—not interpreting Scripture by their private judgment, but conforming their instructions to the doctrines of the Church of which they are ministers. If their private judgment differs from this, they must yield their office to sounder teachers. I am speaking, of course, of great and fundamental truths; for there is a host of minor doctrines on which the Church has pronounced no decided judgment, and which therefore may be

variously entertained without any disparagement of her unity. But the great and fundamental doctrines have been received from the remotest ages, and these are the doctrines which are preached in our pulpits, and taught in our Sunday schools. All Churchmen, of every rank or degree of intellect, alike admit them. It is by the teaching of God's ordained ministers, according to these truths, that the unlettered villager is kept from error and dissent. If he interprets the Bible for himself in opposition to his appointed teacher, the chances of his falling into error are very great. The man of business and of the world, who is, in point of talent and general information, on a par with his minister, and cannot but form some judgment on his teaching, but who has little leisure for the deep investigation of truth, will find his surest safeguard in the formularies and liturgies of his own Church; which, as we have seen, are based on the doctrine of Scripture, as received from primitive antiquity. The man of erudition who may have leisure for study, and whose duty it may be to investigate the grounds on which his own reformed Church was built, is best preserved from vain imagining and speculation by a due deference to Christian antiquity. In

short, the highest intellect will be shipwrecked, if it rashly navigates the ocean of controversy, and pays no regard to the landmarks which God has provided. The lowest may be safe, if it keeps to them with reverence. It is from deference to the authority of the ancient Church— little, perhaps, as the debt is felt that many a man is a believer in our Lord's divinity, instead of a Socinian; an Episcopalian, and not a Presbyterian; a Churchman, and not a Dissenter; a Protestant, and not a Romanist. For Protestantism itself, at least English Protestantism, was built on the Scriptural interpretation of a pure antiquity, discarding the modern innovations of the Church of Rome.

RIDLEY.

Your reasoning appears to me sound; and if I make any objection to it, believe me it is more for the sake of hearing your answer, than because I perceive any force in it myself. What I allude to is the common assertion that the views and studies which you advocate have a tendency to Popery.

HERBERT.

That is a plausible objection; but I do not

think that I shall have much difficulty in showing you its fallacy. Suppose that I set out from Westminster Bridge to go to the Temple, but am carried by the tide half-way down to London Bridge. Well: in order to get to the Temple, I must turn the head of my boat round again towards Westminster; still it would be very incorrect to say that I was going wrong, or going back to Westminster. Look here (said he, drawing with a pencil on a blank piece of paper).

A

E

B

F

D

Let A be Popery; B the sound doctrine of the Church; C Socinianism; D dissent or schism. If, in departing from Popery (A), I go beyond the mark of sound doctrine (B), and am getting on towards schism and Socinianism (say as far as E or F), then evidently I must turn back, in order to arrive at sound doctrine.

RIDLEY.

Your illustrations are clear enough, but how do they apply to the facts? Have we really gone beyond the mark of sound doctrine?