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dition should be received with like authority to the Scriptures of truth?

Yes! for

They have written:

"All saving truth is not contained in the Holy Scriptures, but partly in the Scriptures, and partly in unwritten traditions, which whoever doth not receive with like piety and reverence, as he doth the Scrip·tures, is ACCURSED." (Decree of the Council of Trent.)

"The Tridentine Synod professeth to receive and reverence, with no less pious affection than the books of the Old and New Testament, TRADITIONS, and that not in matter of right and history only, but of FAITH and MANNERS also." Council Trid. Sess. iv.)

Do the Tractarians in their writings teach, that tradition should be received with like authority to the Scriptures of truth?

Yes! for

They have written:

Scripture and tradition taken together are the joint rule of faith." (Tract 78, p. 2).

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"Catholic tradition is a divine informant in religious matters." (Newman, Lect. on Rom. p. 329).

"As to apostolical tradition,' as denominated and maintained by Keble, who has written a book on the subject, discoursing on those words of Paul to Timothy, 'That good thing which was committed to thee

keep,' he says, must it not be owned, on fair consideration, that Timothy's deposit did comprise matter, independent of, and distinct from, the truths which are directly scriptural?" (Tracts for the Times.)

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Now, it may be observed at first sight how the prayer-book has providentially preserved to us this TWOFOLD BOND of TRADITION and Scripture, thereby supplying us with, or intimating to us, the rule of faith, by the insertion of Catholic documents of different ages TOGETHER with SACRED SCRIPTURE." (Scripture and Tradition combined in the Prayer Book: Tracts for the Times).

"We agree with the Romanist in appealing to antiquity as our great teacher." (Newman's Lect.)

"The Church of England, in freeing herself from the corruptions of Rome, DID NOT GIVE UP HER ADHERENCE TO CATHOLIC TRADITION, and to set every man loose to interpret Scripture for himself." (Keble's Primitive Tradition).

"He wants the dogma, the Church's traditional divinely-inspired sense of the Bible to make it really a revelation to him." (Brit. Crit. for April, 1842.)

Remarks." Well," said Bishop Babington, writing upon this subject, "see the iniquity of Rome, it shall be lawful to read any man's books-si faciat pro nobis —that is, if he be a Papist; yea, and the more we have in our closets and chambers of such books, the holier

Catholics we; but the Lord's Book, that is able to make us wise unto salvation, and is sweeter than the honey, we may not touch it, we may not have it or read it, for if we do we shall be heretics, so man's works shall make us saints, and God's work devils; Popish writings Catholics, and heavenly writings heretics, if we read. O dreadful blasphemy, and "doctors of death!" As some of my readers may be unacquainted with the character of Romish traditions, I will give a few specimens in order to prove the danger there is in exchanging the word of truth for the teaching of The following are such :

men.

"St Philip Nerius, wounded with the love of God, continually languished, and his heart boiled with such ardour that when it could not be contained within its own boundaries, the Lord wonderfully enlarged his breast by breaking and elevating two of his ribs."

"St. Nicholas, when an infant, though on other days he sucked the milk of his nurse, on Wednesdays and Fridays he only sucked once, and that in the evening, which practise of fasting he always observed for the rest of his life."

......" A certain peasant of Auvergne, a province in France, perceiving that his bees were likely to die, to prevent this misfortune, was advised, after he received the communion, to keep the host, and to blow it into one of his hives, and on a sudden all the bees came forth

out of their hives, and ranking themselves in good order, lifted the host up from the ground, and carrying it upon their wings, placed it among the combs. After this, the man went about his business, and at his return found that this advice had succeeded contrary to his expectation, for all his bees were dead. Nay, when he lifted up the hive, he saw that the host was turned into a fair child among the honeycombs, and being much astonished at this change, and seeing that this infant seemed to be dead, he took it into his hands, intending to bury it privately in the church; but when he came to do it, he found nothing in his hands, for the infant was vanished away. This thing happened in the country of Claremont, which for this irreverence was awhile after chastised by divers calamities, which so dispeopled those parts, that they became like a wilderness, from which it appears that bees honoured the holy host divers ways, by lifting it from the earth and carrying it into their hives, as it were in procession." (Petrus Cluma, lib. i., c. i.)

"St. Dionysius, of whom it is recorded that he took up his own head after it was cut off, and walked two miles, carrying it in his hands." (The Breviary).

But not only do Romanists believe in absurd fables and idle tales, the Tractarians are equally credulous, as I shall proceed to prove, by giving quotations from a work in great repute amongst them:—

"There was a good réligieux employed in copying out some written paper; he was no sooner set to it and had made only one letter, but the clock struck; to comply with the call of obedience, he left in that manner, that when he returned he found it all written in letters of gold. Our Saviour Himself appeared once to another réligieux in the shape of a little child, who was no sooner come, but the bell rung for vespers, with which call the réligieux complying, he left little Jesus all alone. At his return he found him still in his cell, to whom the divine infant spoke thus :-your going was the cause of my stay; if you had stayed, I should have gone away.-Rusbrochius tells us of another réligieux, who, being favoured with a like apparition, left the little infant Jesus, to comply with obedience, and at his return to his cell, found him in the shape of a young man. Christ said to him 'Behold how much I am grown since you left me, and so much I am also grown in your soul upon the account of your punctual obedience.""

"St. Ignatius the Martyr, being asked why he pronounced the name of Jesus so often in the midst of his torments, answered that he could not hinder him, self from naming what was engraven in his heart. And opening his breast after his death, they found the sacred name of Jesus written on both sides of his heart in golden letters."

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