the deposit of faith. They are not the "dicta" of a particular school or a particular class, or of men of the same locality; they were spoken by men of different countries, the representatives of the faith of churches widely separated: one of them a Phrygian bishop, another an Egyptian priest, a third the bishop of Antioch, a fourth the bishop of Lyons. They are rays of light emanating from different periods and different parts of the Catholic Church, but converging to one point, when they reveal to us a conviction of the actual inerrancy of the Christian people. They do not by any means decide the question peremptorily; this is quite obvious. No one of these writers, for instance, undertakes to say in terms that the Church of the second century did not lose the meaning of any dogma committed to her, and substitute a false meaning in its stead, or add to the deposit of faith by introducing a falsehood as a revealed dogma. They wrote these passages casually, and in treating of other subjects besides the preservation of the deposit of faith. One of them, Irenæus, is arguing against a heretic, who introduced a god as the author of evil, and consequently admitted the existence of two principles. He appeals for the decision of the question to the traditions which had come down from the Apostles; and the object of this appeal would be sufficiently attained if these tradition were correct on the elementary principle of the unity of God. The others speak generally, without giving us grounds to judge of the comprehensiveness or details of the body of traditional doctrine to which they refer, nevertheless the fact of their affirming that the doctrine of the Apostles had been delivered to the Church, and was preserved in the Church, and that there were men in the Church who had listened to the Apostles, and the additional fact of their referring to these truths, with a view to the refutation of heresies, or with a view to the exaltation of the Church, are sufficient proofs, even abstracting from the tenor of the words they used, that it was their firm conviction that the deposit of faith was preserved in its integrity undefiled. They believed in their own perfect orthodoxy; they believed in the orthodoxy of the Church;

though widely separated, their Churches were in communion with each other. Their words would appear the echo of a general conviction that the Church was perfectly sound in faith. Might this conviction be without foundation? We shall seek for the answer by considering other facts which are detailed in the documents of the age.

DIVISION III.

HOW THE CHURCH ACTED IN REFERENCE TO THE
DEPOSIT OF FAITH.

REGARDING the subject in a purely human view, it must appear surprising to us, that individuals and communities, bishops and priests, and even the whole Church could have come to so absolute and unwavering a conclusion as to their perfect adherence to the doctrine delivered to them, when the truths were so new, and some of them so obscure, when the subjects were so varied, and when the points of faith were so detailed, and the articles so numerous. It would not be difficult perhaps to transmit the leading facts of Christianity from generation to generation, for the space of a couple of centuries; but how could its numerous episodes, its histories, its precepts, its examples be recollected, retained, and observed? The Church, nevertheless, believed, in the second century, that it had retained the revelation in its integrity, and without going beyond the human view of the subject, we need not search very deep to discover that the Church had good reason for entertaining such a belief.

Christianity is, in a great measure, a practical science. It might be humanly impossible for a large community to retain in its mind the elements of a vastly extensive speculative science for a long period of time; but if the leading facts of this science be practical dogmas, the

difficulties to the recollection of it are to some extent removed, for it is daily brought before the mind in the public ceremony or the private observance, and it is daily represented to the eyes-it is tasted as it were, it is heard, it is touched daily.

Christianity is a practical science. It is likewise a speculative science: but it is by no means reasonable to suppose that all the speculative parts of Christianity were explicitly believed, or explicitly handed down from bishop to bishop, and from church to church during the term of the two first centuries.

The bishops believed they were orthodox, and the Church, the priests and the laity, believed in their own perfect orthodoxy and in believing so they did not believe that they were perfect masters of the whole science of Christianity in all its details, just as a school-boy would be convinced that he knew all the demonstrations of geometry or astronomy; but their conviction of their orthodoxy amounted to this: they had not added error to the deposit of faith delivered to them, nor had they taken from it, by introducing a false untransmitted meaning for any article it contained; but they had it there in its integrity-its practical dogmas, unchanged since they came from the mouths of the Apostles-its speculative dogmas, as far as they were explicitly believed, neither changed, impaired, nor augmented.

This was the substance of the Church's belief in her own orthodoxy; and there are two classes of facts in the history of these centuries to which the Church might refer with pride, as affording convincing proofs that this belief was not without foundation. The first consisted of the actual evidences of her faithful adherence to the tradition on all occasions. The second consisted of the evidences, that she had always repudiated error.

1st. From the very days of the Apostles, the faithful and the bishops of the Church had been exhorted unceasingly to "hold fast" to the doctrine that had been delivered to them. Nothing in language could be stronger than the advices on this subject, which are found in the

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earliest Christian writers. "Remember your prelates," says St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Hebrews, "who have spoken the Word of God to you: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation;"1 and again in the Epistle to Timothy, the same Apostle says: "Hold the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me in faith, and in the love which is in Christ Jesus: keep the good thing committed to thy trust by the Holy Ghost who dwelleth in us.' "O Timothy," he adds in another place, "keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding the profane novelties of words, and oppositions of knowledge falsely so called."3 In the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians he says: "Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you have learned, whether by word or by our epistle." The object of some of the Apostolic exhortations appears to be to compel them to advert to the truth they had received, to keep it fresh in their memories. Thus St. Peter-" Behold this second epistle I write to you, my dearly beloved, in which I stir up by way of admonition your sincere mind. That you may be mindful of those words which I told you before, from the holy Prophets, and of the Apostles, of the precepts of the Lord and Saviour."5 And St. John-"I have not written to you, as to them that know not the truth, but as to them that know it;"6 scil., to stir up their knowledge of it. "As for you, let that which you have heard from the beginning abide with you. And you have no need that any one should teach you: but as His unction teacheth you of all things, and is truth and is no lie, And as it hath taught you, abide in Him."7

The Apostles exhorted the faithful and the bishops whom they had constituted to unity in faith, and to adhere strictly to the doctrines that had been delivered to them: and the views of their successors in the episcopacy were, as far

as we are able to judge of them, equally strong and decided. We have not many documents of this second age: but the few that have come down to us are full of admonitions to the faithful, to preserve the faith in its integrity. In the Epistles of Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch, this lesson is forcibly inculcated. In his Epistle to the Church of Magnesia he has the following words:-"Wherefore study to confirm yourselves in the dogmas of the Lord and the Apostles, to the end that everything you do may succeed with you, by the flesh and the spirit, by faith and charity, in the Father and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, in the beginning and the end." And again, in his Epistle to the Church of Ephesus-"Wherefore it becometh you to run according to the judgment of your bishop, which you do." And in his Epistle to the Trullians"Refrain from such (heretics); which you will do, if you remain united to God, Jesus Christ, and the bishop, and the precepts of the Apostles." In the Epistles of Polycarpe, the Bishop of Smyrna, the same precept is strongly enforced-"Wherefore, giving up vanity and false doctrines, let us return to the doctrine that has been delivered to us from the beginning."

These were the sort of exhortations which were wont to be made to the Church, faithful and clergy, by the Apostles and those who succeeded them. Did the Church profit by these exhortations? Did the people of God, on all occasions during the first and second centuries, exhibit a zeal for the faith, and an anxiety to preserve it in its purity? Did they actually preserve it in its integrity, unchanged, as they had received it from the mouths of the Apostles? The Church of the third century could answer all these questions in the affirmative. She could point to her thousands of martyrs who had suffered in Rome torments the most cruel and excruciating, deaths the most barbarous and revolting, for the profession of the 1 Ignat. Ep. ad Magnes. No. xiii. ed. Cot.

2 Ep. ad Ephes. No. 4, tom. ii. ibid.

3 Ep. ad Trul. No. 8, ibid.

4 Pol. Ep. ad Phill. No. 7, p. 188, ibid.