closing itself more and more, as his argument draws to a point. However, by his skill in rhetorical arrangement, and by a certain air of thorough command of his subject, which he has been very successful in assuming, he became at once the standard author for all who took that side of the question.....But though, at the bottom, DAILLÉ seems to have had no more respect for antiquity than those who came after him, he differs from them greatly, not only in his tone and manner, but also in the very ground and substance of his argument; professing, first, to confine himself to those points which are disputed between the Reformed and the Roman Church, (and, therefore, not to except against the Fathers' evidence on matters debated in their times; e. g. on the Trinitarian controversy;) and secondly, laying, or seeming to lay, the chief stress of his objections on the scantiness of their remains; the amount of corruption and interpolation; the difficulty of ascertaining their real sense, and the like. When he does proceed to challenge their authority, he is careful in pointing out their own disclaimers of such authority, before he exemplifies their supposed errors and inconsistencies; which he does largely, but with great show of unwillingness, in the concluding sections of his work. P. 1. 2.

The OXFORD TRACT gives another page on this: stating that in the beginning of the XVIIIth Century, "the Fathers were attacked

with an air of much more open defiance,and with the direct and avowed purpose of impugning their credit.

It mentions WHITBY and MIDDLETON in his flippant "Free Inquiry"; and that in our day, perhaps, the more usual course is, for persons, who do not even profess any acquaintance with

those writers, to dispose of their authority-under the notion that "the Fathers were Mystics, and need not be regarded at all." P. 3.

BLUNT.

The Rev. J. J. BLUNT, B. D., Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, has published an "Introduction to a course of lectures on the early Fathers," 8vo, Cambridge, 1840. He observes at page 12,

The admission of Roman Catholics to greater political power, has given occasion to questions of controversy, precisely such as demand an intimate acquaintance with Antiquity to settle: it has sent divines once more to their books; to the writings of the Fathers.

BLUNT says,

The writings of the Fathers, which had been almost suffered to perish out of remembrance: copies of the works, now so costly, having fallen to little more than a waste paper price : it has brought us back into something of the same position our Reformers occupied, when they regulated our Church; and as, "When we have lost one shaft,

"We shoot his fellow of the self-same flight
"The self-same way, with more devised watch,
"To find the other forth,"

So are we now guided by passing events, toward the sources they drew from: are led better to appreciate the use they made of them.

BLUNT writes, page 15;

These lectures may give them (the hearers) some notion of the treasure accessible to them, which

they have hitherto disregarded, &c. I consider it then conducive to these ends so much to be desired, that our young divines should be directed to turn their attention, next after the scriptures, to the Primitive Fathers; not with blind allegiance as Authorities, to which they must in all things bow: but with such respect, as is due to the only witnesses we have of the state and opinions of the Church, immediately after the Apostles' times: and such as the Church of England herself encourages &c.

BLUNT writes, at page 28;

So clearly does the Church of England, when she had to purge herself of Popery, and to make good her own revision, recommend us to search both the Scriptures, and the Fathers of the Primitive Church, by the language she adopts in her Homilies, &c.

BLUNT, in page 33, quotes Tertullian, from Bishop Jewel's Apology, as saying:

We have withdrawn from a Church (The Roman Catholic) which could err; of which Christ, who could not err, foretold that it would err, and which we ourselves with our own eyes saw clearly had departed— from the Holy Fathers; from the Apostles; from Christ himself; from the Primitive "Catholic Church." BLUNT writes, at page 40,

Whether therefore we have to defend our Church against the Romanist, the Puritan, or the Rationalist, &c. we shall find a magazine of arms in the writings of the Primitive Fathers; &c. But-it is not to be denied that they are to be read with caution. Sometimes, it is to be borne in mind that they are contending against heretical opinions, which have long passed away; but which, at the time, forced them

by their extravagance into positions unfriendly to the calm investigation of Truth. Sometimes, that the civil relations of Christian community were in those days so far from the same as in these, that much qualification may be fitting under this head. Sometimes, that the Fathers themselves may have been led into a snare by an over anxious desire to make their doctrines palatable to the philosophy of that age. Sometimes, that the difficulty of finding any common ground of argument with their antagonists, led them to adopt questionable principles; or to push such as were safe to an extreme that was dangerous. Sometimes, that they are themselves tainted with heresy. Sometimes, that they are inconsistent with themselves, or with one another. Sometimes, that they speak the voice of the individual rather than that of the universal Church. Sometimes, that practices to which they allude, though innocent, have been found liable to abuse; and have been discontinued in consequence. Sometimes, that they wrote before controversy had reduced the language of theology to exactness; and may on that account seem rash and unguarded. These and the like allowances, must undoubtedly be made by us, when reading the writings of the Fathers; and may be made, consistently with a very high sense of the value of their testimony in general; and a very wholesome application of it on the whole, &c. Our Church herself— though following them in most things, especially as helpers to the interpretation of Scripture, and conservators of creeds and rituals, does not blindly bind herself to them in all things; particularly on some points where the Scriptures are, not doubtful, but

altogether silent; much less, where they are, or seem to be opposed. Still we must be careful not to let our estimate of the worth or worthlessness of the Fathers be formed at second hand, from a mere perusal of such authors as DAILLE, or BARBEYRAC; whose only object is to single out whatever imperfections they present, and place them before their readers in continuous succession, and without one lucid interval of merit; nor yet from observing the value set on them by Puritan-writers of our own who, with MILTON at their head, had their reasons for describing them, as an undigested heap and fry of authors which they call Antiquity, &c. There is much distortion of the truth in such representations as these; yet churchmen have for a long time been content to know too little about the Fathers; except through some such medium; and the Church has suffered accordingly. For had not the period arrived, when the broad principle upon which our reformers went in their restoration of her, and to which I have been endeavouring to give prominence in this lecture, was so far lost sight of, even by churchmen, that it began to require some boldness to re-assert it? to make an avowal which from EDWARD THE 6th's time, for a generation afterward, few churchmen at least I believe would have cared to conceal or thought to dispute.

BLUNT also writes in a note:

As a proof of the change which has gradually come over the spirit of the Church since the times of which I here speak, I will take BISHOP HALL, a venerable name, as a fair representative, not of the high, but of