Among the heaviest of the charges which are brought against them, their regard for Antiquity and their respect for the Fathers is the most prominent. But what does this offence amount to?

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Let me state, in a few words, what their principle is. In all questions of doctrine and practice which may arise in the Christian Church they fully admit that the first and last appeal lies to Holy Scripture. To the Law and to the Testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. And where both parties agree in their interpretation of the words of Scripture, this appeal will bring all controversies to the most satisfactory determination. The private Christian, looking into this true mirror, discovers the blemishes and defects in his own conduct; and the Church puts on her ornaments, and is sanctified and cleansed by the Word.

more formidable than the Socialists; the Socialists being Atheistic sensualists. They are accused, with the Papists, of "an intense dislike of the peculiar doctrines of scripture." Comparing them with avowed Infidels, the work referred to, says: "it is not possible that the object of either party could be more plainly declared. The one would throw down the Christianity of the Bible, the other would dig up the foundations of Christianity altogether. These their purposes they loudly proclaim and fiercely pursue. They have declared a war of extermination, and the inscription on the banner of both is, I will overturn, overturn, overturn." See the Christian Spectator for September 18, 1839, and the Rev. Wm. Dalby's Letter to the Editor of the Magazine. However much in error the supporters of that Society may consider High Churchmen to be, they are surely going too far when they speak of them in such language as this.

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But a little observation will convince us that the controversies which arise in the Church can seldom be decided by this appeal. The records of past ages prove this, and daily experience shews it. Each party in a dispute claims Scripture for its own side, and, as the sense of Scripture, it zealously maintains its own interpretation. If there be, then, no further appeal, the question can never be decided. There is, therefore, another test, which, in the opinion of those I am defending, Scripture itself allows and sanctions, the testimony of the Church from the beginning. And to this test St. Paul, in our text, sets us an example of

making an appeal. We have no such custom, neither the sur T Churches of God.

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Thus these persons conceive that a way to peace is provided in harmony with the common rule of life, and the law by which society is held together; for how much of law and of the rules of society is based on precedent! They conceive that they act in the spirit of the Church of England; for it is plain to every one who has considered the language of the Church that a deference to antiquity pervades her Articles, forms the argument of some of her most instructive Homilies, and breathes

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through every portion of her Prayers: they conceive that when they stand in the ways and see and ask for the old paths where is the good way that we may walk therein, they act, as I have shewn, in accordance

with a principle provided for us in Scripture, and in accordance with which St. Paul reasoned in the words of our t our text.

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Now this it is that induces them to study the writings of the primitive Fathers of the Church. There seems, however, to be a prejudice against the very name of the Fathers; a prejudice which certainly was not t felt by Ridley, or by Cranmer, or any of the learned and pious confessors and martyrs to whom we owe the Reformation of our Church. And why should it be felt now? for, let me ask, who are the Fathers? They are merely ancient writers who lived in the earlier ages of the Church. Now one would think that there could be no great sin in our venturing to read the works of these ancient authors. It is said that we ought to refer for our divinity to the Bible and the Bible only. God knows, my Brethren, that I wish the Bible were more exclusively read than it is, and no one can regret more than I do to find the Bible so generally superseded by tracts. But those very tracts are most diligently distributed by the very persons who most vehemently blame us for venturing to read the Fathers. Nay, by those persons themselves these tracts are read : in ead in many instances they are the fountains, not always surely the purest, from which they drink in their theology. But what is a tract? It is a little treatise or sermon composed by some person or persons, not, certainly, infallible.

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Now similar treatises and sermons form the works of the Fathers. Both parties, then, you will observe, are tract readers, and why should he who reads an ancient tract be blameworthy, while he who reads a modern

tract is held worthy of praise? But it is said the modern tracts are sound in doctrine, the ancient tracts are not so. And, let me ask, who says this? Is it said by an infallible man? What proof do you bring from Scripture that modern tracts must be sound in doctrine, and ancient tracts not so? It is merely a matter of opinion, and when one man praises the ancient tracts to the disparagement of the modern, it is quite as probable that his opinion should be correct as that of another person who praises the modern tracts to the disparagement of the ancient: and more probable, if it is in the nature of truth to be better understood near to the fountain head, than after its transmission through many generations. Is it said that one is scriptural the other not scriptural? This is only repeating the last assertion in a different form. If the tract contain anything of doctrine more than an extract from Scripture without note or comment and then it is Scripture itself-it must be a deduction from or an explanation of Scripture, and we have just as much right to assert that the deduction made from Scripture in an ancient tract is scriptural, as another person has to make the same assertion as to a modern tract. Disagree with

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us, if you will, in your opinion of this matter but why object to our principle while you adopt it in another form? We are both tract readers; the only difference being that some of us go for these tracts to St. Chrysostom, St. Basil, and St. Athanasius, to whom our Prayer Book is indebted for much of its excellence; others to a modern Religious Tract Society, sanctioned, it may be, by what is called the religious world; which is, nevertheless, no more infallible than the Church of Rome, though the members of both seem to rely on their traditions with undoubting confidence.*

By the religious world I mean that conventional union of sects and parties which is formed by those who agree to merge the distinctive features of every sect, (and where Churchmen belong to it, the distinctive features of the Church itself,) in order that they may insist in common upon what that world deems to be essential truth. But the question still occurs whether that world is competent to decide what part of the Revelation of God is essential and what is not. Of this propo sition those who are called High Churchmen hold the negative. The difficulty of their present position consists in the religious world having assumed that all pious persons must belong to it. But there are persons whose zeal for the cause of religion, whatever may be their faults, is ardent, but who at the same time refuse to subscribe to many of the tra ditional doctrines and some of the practices of the religious world. The members of the religious world cannot conceive the possibility of such persons being really pious and sincere: hence the hostility to them: their real fault being their rejection of the tradition of the religious world, the controversy of the present day having reference, in fact, to this one question: according to what tradition shall Scripture be interpreted? according to the tradition of the Church of Rome? or according to the tradition of the religious world? or according to the tradition of the primitive church?—the latter being, as we contend, embodied in the formularies of the Church of England.