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reverential and holy, and as fully imbued with Ancient Truth, and as well versed in the writings of the Fathers, as they were intellectually gifted. This is God's great mercy indeed, for which we must ever be thankful. Primitive doctrine has been explored for us in every direction, and the original principles of the gospel and the Church patiently and successfully brought to light. But one thing is still wanting: our champions and teachers have lived in stormy times; political and other influences have acted upon them variously in their day, and have since obstructed a careful consolidation of their judgments. We have a vast inheritance, but no inventory of our treasures. is given us in profusion; it remains for us to catalogue, sort, distribute, select, harmonize, and complete. We have more than we know how to use; stores of learning, but little that is precise and serviceable; Catholic truth and individual opinion, first principles and the guesses of genius, all mingled in the same works, and requiring to be discriminated. We meet with truths over-stated or misdirected, matters of detail variously taken, facts incompletely proved or applied, and rules inconsistently urged or discordantly interpreted. Such indeed is the state of every deep philosophy in its first stages, and therefore of theological knowledge. What we need at present for our Church's wellbeing, is not invention, nor originality, nor sagacity, nor even learning in our divines, at least in the

first place, though all these gifts of God are in a measure needed, and never can be unseasonable when used religiously, but we need peculiarly a sound judgment, patient thought, discrimination, a comprehensive mind, an abstinence from all private fancies and caprices and personal tastes,-in a word, divine wisdom. For this excellent endowment, let us, in behalf of ourselves and brethren, earnestly and continually pray. Let us pray, that He who has begun the work for our Holy Mother with a divine exuberance, will finish it as with a refiner's fire and in the perfectness of truth.

Merely to have directed attention to the present needs of our Church, would be a sufficient object for writing the following pages. We require a recognized theology, and if the present work, instead of being what it is meant to be, a first approximation to the required solution in one department of a complicated problem, contains after all but a series of illustrations demonstrating our need, and supplying hints for its removal, such a result, it is evident, will be quite a sufficient return for whatever anxiety it has cost the writer to have employed his own judgment on so serious a subject. And, though in all greater matters of theology there is no room for error, so prominent and concordant is the witness of our great Masters in their behalf, yet he is conscious that in minor points, whether in questions of fact or of judgment, there is room

for difference or error of opinion; and while he has given his best endeavours to be accurate, he shall not be ashamed to own a mistake, nor reluctant to bear the just blame of it.

LECTURE I.

THE NATURE AND GROUND OF ROMAN AND PROTESTANT ERRORS.

ALL Protestant sects of the present day may be said to agree with us and differ from the Romanists, in considering the Bible as the only standard of appeal in doctrinal inquiries. They differ indeed from each other as well as from us in the matter of their belief; but they one and all accept the written word of God as the supreme and sole arbiter of their differences. This makes their contest with each other and us more simple; I do not say shorter,— on the contrary, they have been engaged in it almost three hundred years, as many of them, that is, as are so ancient, and there are no symptoms of its ending,—but it makes the controversy less laborious. It narrows the ground of it; it levels it to the intelligence of all ranks of men; it gives the multitude a right to take part in it; it encourages all men, learned and unlearned, religious and irreligious, to have an opinion in it, and to turn controversialists.

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The Bible is a small book; any one may possess it; and every one, unless he be very humble, will think he is able to understand it. And therefore, I say, controversy is easier among Protestants, because any one can controvert; easier, but not shorter; because, though all sects agree together as to the standard of faith, viz. the Bible, yet no two agree as to the interpreter of the Bible, but each person makes himself the interpreter, so that what seemed at first sight a means of peace, turns out to be a chief occasion or cause of discord. It is a great point to come to issue with an opponent; that is, to discover some position which oneself affirms and the other denies, and on which the decision of the controversy will turn. It is like two armies meeting, and settling their quarrel in a pitched battle, instead of wandering to and fro, each by itself, and inflicting injury and gaining advantages where no one resists it. Now the Bible is this common ground among Protestants, and seems to have been originally assumed in no small degree from a notion of its simplicity in argument. But, if this was the case in any quarter, the hope has been frustrated by this difficulty,-the Bible is not so written as to force its meaning upon the reader; no two Protestant sects can agree together whose interpretation of the Bible is to be received; and under such circumstances each naturally prefers his own;-his own" interpretation," his own "doctrine," his own "tongue," his own "revelation." Accordingly, acute