to notice those very Apostles themselves?

Can it be doubted that, if relics, purgatory, invocation of saints, &c. were to be found in their writings, or if they could be even inferred by the utmost torture of language, the Irish Gentleman would have quoted them with at least as much complacency as he does the meagre and perverted testimonies of Ignatius and Hermas? With what consistency can we build orthodoxy on the free perusal of the Fathers, while nothing but heresy can result from free access to the New Testament? Were not the Apostles and Evangelists themselves Fathers? is not the title indeed applicable to them pre-eminently? Is Paul inferior to Clement? John to Polycarp? On the principle laid down by the Irish Gentleman, the writers of the New Testament are surely worthy a hearing.

Our Irish Gentleman, however, in the course of his researches, made the discovery that the Gnostics had perverted Scripture, and that "the multiplication of heresies, schisms, and innovations in faith has been, at all times, in direct proportion to the diffusion of the Scriptures among the people." Under these circumstances, he was naturally nervous, and took good care, whatever other sources he might consult, to avoid that fruitful parent of error, the Bible. But our traveller is no exception to the proverb relative to great wits. After telling us that Gnosticism resulted from a free access to the Scriptures, he writes thus :

The Gnostic sects had each their special Gospels, either forged, or corrupted from those of the Evangelists;"* and each also adopted a peculiar Canon of Scripture, rejecting (as did Luther afterwards, in the case of the Epistle of St. James, t) whatever happened not to suit their respective purposes.—Vol. I. pp. 265, 266.

So then, it appears that Gnosticism did not result from reverence of Scripture, but from contempt and corruption of it! The Gnostics did not bind their faith upon Scripture, but tried to bind Scripture to their persuasions, and when it would not bend, they broke it. They made their own Bible; and their worship of this idol is facetiously identified with the implicit submission of the Church of England to the uncorrupted, unmutilated, word of God. These are the people, who, we were told a little while ago, cried out for the whole Bible and nothing but the Bible. As to schisms and heresies resulting from the

*Thus the Ebionites made use of the Hebrew Gospel of St. Matthew, leaving out, however, as contrary to their belief in the simple humanity of Christ, the three first chapters. Marcion composed a Gospel for himself by mutilating and altering that of St. Luke;-and a question as to which was the most authentic, Marcion's Gospel or St. Luke's, has long been contested among the German Rationalists. The heretic, Tatian, instead of choosing, like the rest, some one of the four Evangelists, or some apocryphal relation, made a Code out of the four Gospels, which he called the Harmony of the Gospels.

+ Luther did not ultimately reject this Epistle.-ED. CHRIST. REMEMB.

In like manner he makes Valentinus a fanciful interpreter and perverter of Scripture, and yet says that he derived his doctrines from "secret communications of Christ to his Apostles." Vol. I. p. 243.

diffusion of Scripture, we deny the fact. The Scriptures authoritatively denounce schism, and can alone instruct us what heresy is. The submission of ignorance, as in Ireland, or of fear, as in Spain or Italy (not to say as in Ireland also), our traveller represents as an intelligent acquiescence in all the dogmata of the Romish Church! Let him remove inquisitions and censorships, and then take at random the educated population of any Popish country, and a like number of the educated population of this, and see amongst which the greatest discordance of religious opinion prevails. And, even were his position true, it would no more impeach the right of every man to read the Scripture, than it would invalidate his right to purchase a dozen of wine, because some men. 66 put an enemy into their mouths to steal away their brains."*-There is perfect harmony between Eph. v. 18, and 1 Tim. v. 23; and so there is between John v. 39, and 2 Pet. iii. 15, 16.

By the same defect of memory whereby our traveller first makes the Gnostics clamour for the whole Bible and nothing but the Bible, and then mutilate the Bible, and add to the Bible, so does he first make the Fathers arbiters of all orthodoxy, and then proceeds to show that they could not secure themselves even from the most outrageous heresies.

Nor can we wonder that light, ordinary minds should have been whirled into these great Maelstroms of heresy, when, even among THE CATHOLIC FATHERS THEMSELVES, Some of THE ABLEST were sucked into the vortex. In the Clementine Homilies, a work which though not of that high parentage its assumed name imports, seems acknowledged to have been the production of some eminent Christian of the second age, it is said of the Sophia of the Gnostics, that God himself rejoices in her alliance. The language in which Clement of Alexandria speaks of the Gnosis breathes all the spirit of that sect; and, so late as the beginning of the fifth century, we find in the Odes of the Bishop Synesius such a display of Gnostic thoughts and phrases, as renders them far more like the compositions of a Valentinian or Marcosian than of a Catholic Pastor.

Of the catching influence of some of the other great heresies, we have yet more signal examples. The shrewd Tertullian was induced to believe in Montanus as the Paraclete promised by Christ, and, for a time, surrendered his strong mind to the gross delusions of that impostor and his two inspired women of quality. St. Augustin remained attached to the sect of the Manichees till his thirtieth year; and through him has the dark infection of this HERESY been transmitted to succeeding ages, EVEN TO THE TINGING OF THE SACRED WATERS OF CATHOLICITY WITH ITS STAIN.-Vol. I. pp. 266-268.

If then Peter and Paul may be perverted by private judgment, what must be the danger of relying on the Clementine Homilies, Clement of Alexandria, Synesius, Tertullian, and Augustin?-Why take these as authorities, when the former must not be heard? Will it be pretended that heresy ever infected the writers of the New Testament, which, it is here confessed, has STAINED THE SACRED WATERS OF CATHOLICITY!!!?

Othello. Act II. Scene 3.

The Scriptures alone, it is here virtually admitted, are unpolluted with that "dark infection." And how then should they propagate it? How can a healthy body propagate a disease? "Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt; for the tree is known by his fruit."* If the Scripture makes heretics, call it, as staunch Transalpine Romanists would not scruple to call it, a heretical book at once. It is not Scripture, but the contempt and desertion of Scripture, that is the parent of error, heresy, and schism. The Scriptures never told Tertullian that Montanus was the Paraclete, nor Augustin that Satan was a rival of the Supreme.

Having thus determined the relative value of the Scriptures and the Fathers, and settled the danger of meddling with the former, and the necessity of being implicitly guided by the latter, our traveller advances to his task. We shall not be suspected of any inclination to depreciate the genuine monuments of christian antiquity. As witnesses of the opinions of the Church, they are of the highest value; and (though on far, far different grounds) we would not at all object to have any theological tenet tried by the Romish test-" the unanimous consent of the Fathers;" for we are convinced that this cannot be pleaded for any doctrine which has not the full acceptance of the Church of England. But their testimony as witnesses, and their opinions as individuals, rest on very different foundations. The former must be tried by their opportunities and their character; the latter, by their abilities and information. The authority of the same Father, in these two regards, is sometimes completely opposite; and a respectable voucher for facts is often small authority for belief, when he speaks the opinion, not of the Church, but of himself. Hermas and Chrysostom may serve as illustrations. This is indeed admitted by the Irish traveller in the passage we have already cited: yet does he not hesitate to take the opinions of the Fathers, including those who were "sucked into the vortex of heresy," as proof complete of the truth of doctrines, while he passes by the Scriptures in silent contempt.

It is evident, indeed, that, with the exception above noticed, our author was unable, by any process of ingenuity, to elicit Popery from Scripture. His difficulties are, in reality, as great with the Apostolic Fathers, although these he thinks himself bound to notice. How successfully we proceed to show —

Great, then, was my surprise,-not unaccompanied, I own, by a slight twinge of remorse, when, in the person of one of these simple, apostolical writers, I found that I had popped upon a Pope-an actual Pope;-being the third Bishop after St. Peter, of that very Church of Rome which I was now about to desert for her modern rival. This primitive occupant of the See of Rome was St. Clement, one of those fellow-labourers of St. Paul, whose "names are written in the Book

of Life;" and it was by St. Peter himself, as Tertullian tells us, that he had been ordained to be his successor. This proof of the antiquity and apostolical source of the Papal authority startled me not a little. "A Pope! and ordained by St. Peter!" exclaimed I, as I commenced reading the volume: now, by St. Peter's Church, and Peter too,' this much surpriseth me."-Vol. I. pp. 14, 15.

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Poor young gentleman! we want not to be told that he was ignorant on all matters of religion!" So ignorant, it should seem, that he thought Protestants quarrelled with Popery on account of the name! We doubt not that Clement was Bishop of Rome. He possibly might have received the title of Papa, which was common to all Bishops at an early period of the Church. But we have no quarrel with the Pope on account of his title. If it could be shewn that Clement called himself, or suffered himself to be called, " Bishop of Bishops," "Christ's Vicar on earth," "Our Lord God the Pope," &c. &c.; or that he sold indulgences for sin, prospective and retrospective; that he claimed a right of making and unmaking kings, and dispensing with oaths; infallibility of judgment, &c. &c., then indeed would there be primitive authority for Popery. But nothing of this kind is attempted to be shewn. Clement was a Pope, and that, it seems, is quite enough to prove that he put forth all the blasphemous pretensions of the modern Bishops of Rome! Besides, Clement wrote an epistle to the Corinthians; and, therefore, those simple, unpolemic times, when the actual exercise of authority could be so little called for, THE JURISDICTION OF THE SEE OF PETER WAS FULLY ACKNOWLEDGED!"* Why did not our young gentleman quote the passage of this epistle from which any such doctrine could be inferred? The Corinthians asked the judgment of Clement; and well they might. The authority of his piety, his connexion with the Apostles, his important situation in the Church, all pointed him out as the person to be consulted. No one doubts that the Church of Rome, in very early times, had a primacy allowed her, on account of her local situation in the metropolis of the world. While the world continued under the Roman yoke, it was natural enough. She was then a pure and eminently intelligent Church, and frequently consulted on religious matters. But it is rather too much to convert this circumstance into a full acknowledgment of the jurisdiction of the See of Peter, and to claim for modern Rome, wallowing in superstitions and corruptions, the deference paid by the primitive Christians to the Church whose faith was spoken of throughout the whole world.

Such is all the testimony our author can extract from Clement. In Ignatius, he finds "a Pope or Bishop of Rome, presiding over the whole christian world." The passage from which he extracts this marvellous intelligence he translates thus in a note (p. 16): "The Epistle of

* Vol. I. p. 15.

St. Ignatius to the Romans, which was written in the first century, is addressed to the Church that presides (poкá@nra) in the country of the Romans.'" So "the Church that presides in the country of the Romans," means 66 the Church that presides over the whole christian world!" But further :—

In speaking of the Docetæ, or Phantasticks, a sect of heretics who held that Christ was but, in appearance, Man,—a mere semblance or phantasm of humanity,-Ignatius says, "They stay away from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they will not acknowledge the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, that flesh which suffered for our sins." Now, when it is considered that the leading doctrine of the Docetæ was that the body assumed by Christ was but apparent, there cannot be a doubt that the particular opinion of the orthodox to which they opposed themselves was that which held the presence of Christ's body in the Eucharist to be real.—Vol. I. pp. 17, 18.

Strange reasoning! Does the doctrine of a spiritual presence in the Eucharist deny the reality of Christ's body? Does it not rather affirm it? Can the bread be a sign of that which has no existence? It must surely be evident to any mind more practised in argument than that of our youthful traveller, that, to a person who disbelieved the reality of Christ's body, the commemoration of that body must be a mockery, as being the solemn celebration of what he deemed a nonentity.

But if Ignatius can do nothing for Popery alive, let us see whether his corpse may not be turned to some account.

Ignatius, as is well known to all readers of martyrology, was delivered up to be devoured by lions in the amphitheatre at Rome. After the victim had been despatched, the faithful deacons who had accompanied him on his journey gathered up, as we are told, the few bones which the wild beasts had spared, and carrying them back to Antioch deposited them there religiously in a shrine, round which annually, on the day of his martyrdom, the Faithful assembled, and, in memory of his self-devotion, kept vigils round his relics!-Vol. I. pp. 20, 21.

What a lucky word, relics! hence, by a dexterous transition, we are, of course, to conclude that the primitive practice avers the power of bones, nails, hairs, &c. &c. to operate cures, and to forgive sins; and, moreover, their right to adoration; for this is the sense in which the Popish doctrine of relics is to be understood. If any thing like this could be produced, it might be argued that the doctrine of relics is primitive. But the alchemy which can extract this opinion from honours paid to the remains of a venerable martyr, bids fair indeed to discover the philosopher's stone.*

* How is it that our traveller never bethought him of the genuine words of Ignatius himself, which put the Father's opinion on this subject beyond doubt or question? “ Κολακεύσατε τὰ θήρια, ἵνα μοι τάφος γένωνται, καὶ ΜΗΔΕΝ ΚΑΤΑΛΙΠΩΣΙ ΤΟΥ ΣΩΜΑΤΟΣ ΜΟΥ, ἵνα μὴ κοιμηθεὶς βαρύς τινι γένωμαι. Τότε ἔσομαι ἀληθῶς μαθητὴς τοῦ Χριστοῦ, ὅτε οὐδὲ τὸ σῶμά μου ὁ κόσμος ὄψεται.” Could any believer in the Romish doctrine of relics have written thus?