to do with the doctrine of the invocation of Saints, or the Suvaus with holy water, or the opwveots with purgatory, or the vous with the sacrifice of the mass? There was much error and strong opposition to it, but the very articles into which error might be most easily infused were almost entirely out of the field of polemics.

Nevertheless her manner of speaking about heretics, and the mode of treatment which she adopted towards all the abettors of error, put the perfect orthodoxy of the primitive Church in the strongest possible light. The exhortations of the Apostles and their successors to the members of the Church, warning them to avoid error, are couched in general terms. It is not one error they are to avoid, but every error. It is not falsehood on the subject of the creation that they are to reject, but everything contrary to the doctrine that has been delivered to them. They cannot make any change in the doctrines of faith which have been delivered to them; they are even to hold the very form of sound words in which these doctrines have been dictated by the Holy Ghost. Then it is not true to say that the majority of the doctrines of the Church were unassailed by the heretics of these ages. The heretics divided from the Church on general questions touching the foundations of religion, but they did not stop here. They renounced the practices of the Church. They perverted the discipline of the Church. They abandoned its ancient usages; and, in the opinion of the controversialists who attacked them, they were not less heretics for their speculative errors in the questions on which they first split, than for their abuse in practice of the rites of religion1 and their introduction of untransmitted forms in the worship of God. From Irenæus and Epiphanius we learn that the unity of marriage and the merit of virginity were denied ;3 the lawfulness of polygamy maintained; the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin impugned.5 One sect denied that

1 Iren. de Heres.

4

2 Clem. Alex. Strom. lib. i. s. xix. p. 121, ed. post Pot.

3 Nicholaites.

4 Ebionites.

5 Cerinthians.

3

marriage was lawful; and the same sect prohibited the use of wine in the Eucharist. Another sect allowed a first marriage, but pronounced a second marriage unlawful; and, at the same time, denied that there existed in the Church a power of remitting certain enormous sins. On principle, the followers of one sectary abstained from animal food, and equally on principle the followers of another partook of meat offered to idols. There was a class of heretics who held that faith and good works were necessary for some, and that others could not better secure salvation than by giving way to the criminal desires and passions of the flesh. Cerdon denied the resurrection of the flesh, and rejected the Gospel of St. Luke as not authentic. Appelles introduced a new revelation in the treatises, called Pavɛpwoɛs, which he circulated amongst his followers. On the subject of baptism alone there were many errors. One heretic would have his followers baptized in his own name. Another rejected the ordinary baptism as useless, pretending that his followers, according to the Scripture, should be baptized after a new and extraordinary manner by fire and the Holy Ghost. There was scarcely a point of belief or practice of the Church which was not, some way or the other, touched upon by the heretics. Fasting -the sacrament of confirmation9 -the Persons of the Trinity 10-martyrs and their relics 11 -the divinity of Christ.12

The controversy which was carried on in these first centuries, therefore, did not regard primary or elementary points alone, nor was it occupied merely with the opposition between Christianity and philosophy on such questions as the nature of God and the creation of matter, but it entered into the most subtle disputes on the plan and method of the redemption-the ceremonies and usages of religion-public observances and individual

practice-morals and worship-discipline and belief. The guardians of the faith were well practised in every description of spiritual warfare. They were men of acute observation and philosophical minds. Many of them had learned dialectics in the Roman schools, and were adepts in disputation before they embraced Christianity. The bishops among them were the seniors of the Churches over which they presided, selected for this office in consequence of their irreproachable lives, their thorough acquaintance with the doctrines of Christianity, their facility in communicating knowledge, and their ability to confute error. It is useless to say that there are no records of their having disputed on such questions as the spiritual efficacy of extreme unction or the intercessory power of the saints. They were occupied with questions fully as detailed and obscure, and if errors were broached on these points, they were equally competent to meet and refute them. They were watching for novelty. They were in readiness to attack and dispute everything that savoured of error. They were learned. They were subtle. They were zealous. It is difficult to understand how the Church in these times, so well lectured to beware of heretics and defended by such champions as these, could have fallen into error on any point of the revealed doctrine committed to her. Certain it is that she did not fall wilfully. was there an intrinsic weakness in the constitution of the Church, by which she might have lost any portion of the deposit of faith, innocently, it is true, but fatally for the interests of posterity?

But

DIVISION IV.

INFALLIBILITY OF THE CHURCH IN THESE AGES.

§ 1. The Old Testament.-Let us make the supposition that, through a fallibility inherent in her constitution, the Church had fallen into error before the days of Tertullian. General errors have many times pervaded society. The Church had fallen and had lost the faith; tried to preserve it entire, but was not able, lost a portion of it, and she lost it in all her members-the priests, the bishops, and the laity. It was the Church that lost it, too, and not a particular congregation. It was not the Church of Jerusalem, or the Church of Alexandria, or the Church of Corinth, but the aggregation of all the particular Churches that then existed. It was the Church of Christ-that congregated mass of all believers which constituted what the Scripture designates "the kingdom of God on earth." An error in some particular dogma originated with some teacher, or bishop, or it began to manifest itself in a religious practice in some particular locality, and from this centre it had gone out, in ever-widening circles, over the surface of the Church, until it had settled down in the minds of all and become a fixed conviction, and other storms blew over and agitated that multitude, but, so far as the truth lost, the error received, it was unconscious, calm, unruffled as the ocean reposing under a summer sun.

The supposition made, reduces itself to this: The mass of Christians, and of that class of Christians which we look upon as "the orthodox," believed, in the third century, some article to be "of faith" which was not "of faith," something to be revealed which in fact was a falsehood, something to be the word of Christ which was the suggestion of the enemy of God. Could such a supposition be admitted consistently with the view of this Church which we are constrained to adopt from the Scriptures?

The scriptural idea of the Church is-a congregation of people collected from all the nations of the earth : "The kingdom of heaven is like to a net cast into the sea, and gathering together all kinds of fishes." A vast society in which wanderers might come to dwell: "The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard-seed, which a man took and sowed in the field. Which is the least indeed of all seeds; but when it is grown up, it is greater than all herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and dwell in the branches thereof." A dominion extending over the whole world: "He (the Messiah) shall rule from sea to sea, and from the river even to the uttermost bounds of the earth."3 This Church to be perpetual -never to fail, never to fall away-different from human societies, which, sooner or later, break up and form new combinations-this vast assemblage of true believers to remain in its integrity until the end of time: "But in the days of those kingdoms, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, and his kingdom shall not be delivered up to another people; and it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms; and itself shall stand for ever." 4 These two characteristics of the Church-universality and perpetuity-are referred to again and again in the scriptural prophecies which foretold the reign of the Messiah. Universality: "Ask of me, and I will give the Gentiles for thy inheritance, and I. C the uttermost parts of the earth for thy dominion." "All the ends of the earth shall remember and shall be converted to the Lord. And all the kindred of the Gentiles shall adore in his sight."6 "Behold! I have given thee to be the light of the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation even to the farthest part of the earth.”7 "Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of a

1 Matthew xiii. 47.

3 Psalm lxxi. 8.

5 Psalm ii. 8.

7 Isaias xlix. 6.

2 Ibid. 31, 32.

4 Daniel ii. 44.

6 Psalm xxi. 28, 29.

8