alluded to Doctrines, unrecorded when he wrote to the Thessalonians, but that he alluded to Doctrines left unrecorded in his subsequent Epistles. For, if he recorded them any where, they are not at present apostolical traditions. And what they were, when he wrote to the Thessalonians, is a question foreign to the purpose. There is also another possibility, which is sufficient to destroy the inference. They may have been afterwards recorded in other Apostolical Epistles; or they may have been Doctrines, taught by Christ himself, and recorded in the Gospels. In either case they are at present constituent parts of the written Word; and consequently they afford no argument for the present existence of an unwritten Word.

Having shewn, in what manner the bare possibility that Doctrines, unrecorded at one time, were recorded at another, is sufficient to defeat the appeal in question, we may proceed to consider the extreme improbability, that an all-wise Providence, imparting a new Revelation to mankind, would suffer any Doctrine, or Article of Faith, to be transmitted to posterity by so precarious a vehicle, as that of Oral Tradition. It is not with Doctrines, as it is with Ceremonies, or even with the usages of Civil Law. The daily practice of the Church, or the daily practice of Courts of Justice, may preserve unaltered, through a succession of ages, the forms, which are apparent to the external senses. But Articles of Faith, which are objects only of the inward sense, must unavoidably, when transmitted only from mouth to mouth, undergo, in a very short period, material alterations. It is therefore in the

highest degree improbable, that any Doctrine, coming from Christ and his Apostles, should have been left unrecorded in the New Testament, and confided to the future record of the Fathers.

8

But, were the existence of these apostolical traditions subject to no doubt, they must be useless to us, unless we have some means of knowing them when we find them. Now, if we were searching for a few single pearls, dispersed in a vast heap of rubbish, the task, though arduous, would not be desperate. For, if perchance we found a place, where one of them lay buried, the form, and the colour of the object, which we were seeking, would enable us to distinguish it from the surrounding mass. But when we are searching for apostolical traditions in the Works of the Fathers, there is nothing in those traditions, which particularly marks their apostolical origin. And when we take into consideration the magnitude of the mass, in which we have to search, it is sufficient to deter us from even making the attempt. For if we select only one Greek Father, and one Latin Father, Chrysostom and Jerom, their works alone, in their best editions, amount to four and twenty folio volumes.

But, (say the Romanists) the Fathers themselves have afforded a criterion, by which apostolical traditions may be known. Now it cannot be denied,

As the term apostolical,' is used frequently as a generic term to include the Doctrines received by the Apostles, as well from Christ, as from the Holy Spirit, Bossuet himself speaks in general terms of traditions coming from the Apostles; and the term apostolical is here and in the following paragraphs taken in the same extensive sense.

that the Fathers have, in various passages, spoken of traditions, as coming from the Apostles. These passages were, soon after the Reformation, collected with great industry: they were published all together in an early edition of the Rhemish Testament; and they form a treasure, from which examples have been quoted ever since. But if we carefully examine these passages, we shall find, that they do not always relate to Doctrines, with which alone we are at present concerned. Some of them are mere allusions to customs or ceremonies, supposed to have been observed since the time of the Apostles. And the passages, which do relate to Doctrines, relate, for the most part, to Doctrines contained in the New Testament. In such cases therefore the Fathers spake of Tradition, not in the confined sense of an unwritten Doctrine, but in its most extensive sense, which includes, as well written, as unwritten Doctrines. Indeed Bellarmine himself says, Nomen Traditionis generale est, et significat omnem doctrinam, sive scriptam, sive non scriptam ". On the other hand, if among the Doctrines, so quoted, there be any which are not contained in the New Testament, the mere circumstance, that they were called apostolical traditions, shews nothing more, than, that the writer, who quoted them, supposed them to be such. But, when we are concerned with the proof of a fact, it is not mere opinion, which can satisfy We must have evidence of its truth; and no one

us.

• See Dr. Fulke's edition of the Rhemish Testament, with remarks on the Rhemish Annotators, especially in the second Epistle to the Thessalonians.

10 De Verbo Dei, Lib. IV. cap. 2.

can bear evidence of what was said or done by another, unless what was said or done has come within his own observation. He gives merely a report, when he states what was said by another, a hundred years before he himself was born. And if the saying, thus reported, has been trusted, during all that period, to oral tradition, the hundreds of mouths, through which it had passed, before it came to the ears of the reporter, must have so changed it, that the original saying, and the reported saying would be two different things. But what is the interval of one century, or even of two centuries in comparison of that interval, which elapsed between the apostolic age, and the age or ages, when such Doctrines were first recorded, as those of Transubstantiation, the Worshipping of the Host, the propitiatory sacrifice of the Mass, the Communion under one kind, the grant of Indulgences, the praying of souls out of Purgatory, the Invocation of Saints, and the remission of sin through their intercession and merits? Were these Doctrines recorded by any Father of the four first centuries? And as for writers of the eighth, ninth, and tenth, centuries, they had no other sources of information, than such as are equally open to writers of the present day.

When we descend therefore to particulars, and examine severally the Doctrines, which the Church of Rome has dignified with the appellation of apostolical traditions, we perceive at once, that the pretensions of that Church are devoid of foundation. Indeed Bossuet himself was aware of the consequences resulting from minute examination. He wisely therefore deals in generals. And knowing the

impracticability of tracing the traditions of his Church to the place from which they are said to come, he has ingeniously converted the very uncertainty of their origin, into an argument for their apostolical origin. He says, "A most certain mark, that "a Doctrine comes from the Apostles, is, when all "Christian Churches embrace it, without its being "in the power of any one to shew where it had

a beginning." Now of the Doctrines, recorded in the New Testament, we know the beginning: and this very knowledge is a sufficient reason for our receiving them. But when Bossuet says of the apostolical traditions, that it is not in the power of any one to shew, where they had a beginning, our very ignorance about where they had a beginning, is a sufficient reason for our refusing to receive them, as Doctrines having an apostolical beginning. Nor can this uncertainty be removed by his other criterion, namely, that "all Christian Churches embrace" them for the argument is here applied to the reception of those very things, which all Protestant Churches, with exception, reject. When Bossuet, in the next sentence, argues to the impossibility, "that a doctrine, received from the very "commencement of the Church, could ever come "from any other source, than from that of the Apostles," he varies from the argument, which he had founded on the uncertainty of origin. But it was merely for the sake of giving some colour to that argument, that the additional observation was made about Doctrines received from the very commencement of Christianity. For the learned Bishop of Meaux was certainly not ignorant, that the

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