This treatment of the Law and the Prophets, contrary to the canonical judgment of those, to whom they had been committed as the oracles of God, was in harmony with Rome's treatment of the Dispensation of her own times and of her sister Churches, which, in conjunction with herself, are the ordained witnesses and keepers of Holy Writ. The whole system of Rome may be described as adding Apocryphas to the Word of God. She apocryphises the Faith of the Church, the Sacraments, the Ministry, and devotes to anathemas all, who receive not her various Apocryphas as the very word of God, the ordinances of Christ and the faith of God's elect. This anathema is not escaped by certain in her own communion, who presume to speak of canonical in the secondary sense used by a portion of the ancient Church. Professor Möhler, e. g. who talks of the Apocrypha "as those Scriptures which the Catholics call the deutero-canonical," is under the curse of Trent; he may not have been aware of this, or he may have begun to consider that the Tridentine anathemas are comparatively harmless from their wondrous profusion, and may have learned to think lightly of Eumenides in Christendom.

We must not forget the Ultra-Protestant tendencies of Rome in estimating her motives for decreeing this Trentism it was known that the Reformers were most strenuous in protesting for the Canon of Scripture. The protest against their protest was therefore made by de

* Vol. ii. p. 57, Möhler's Symbolism, by Robertson.

creeing that the Apocrypha was Canonical Scripture and was the inspired Word of God.

SECTION IV. The evil of holding this Romanism instead of the hidden Catholic truth.

THE first effect of considering the Apocrypha equal to

the Scriptures, is the depreciation of Scripture, not the?

exaltation of the Apocrypha. No arbitrary decree could change or make the Apocrypha worthy of such preferment; and if with its unfitness to "establish any doctrine" it was thus voted to be on a par with Holy Writ,wherein all the doctrines of salvation, the whole mystery of godliness, are witnessed plainly, solemnly, certainly,— the natural effect must be, that the sufficiency and integrity of this Witness are impaired. There was, moreover, always the name, Apocrypha, expressive of the thing, and the very name is a testimony against the dishonesty or absurdity of the Tridentine assembly daring to tamper with the inspired Canon. We may consider this Trentism as the pattern of all subsequent abuses of private judgment, setting itself against the solemnly spoken and recorded voice of the Church, a sort of mother of all similar abominations. It is a common notion, that the abuse of private judgment is found exclusively among those, who make an idol of the Reformation, but an attentive examination of all the proceedings at Trent will show us that in no place has the recklessness of private

judgment been carried further. The Council of Trent is the great image of private judgment. Not only was a private judgment of the Pope's legates incessantly interfering, either secretly or openly, with all the deliberations and preventing the assembly from being-even if it had been canonically convened from the Church universal—the voice of the Holy Ghost speaking by the result of the free deliberations of the Church, but also the greatest part of the deliberations was carried on and the effective proceedings, as it were, rehearsed by certain friars or divines in classes, theologians extra concilium.*

We may trace also the evils of this Trentism diffusing itself through the other corruptions of the Romish system. The Written Word in the Canonical Scriptures bears a sacred and defined relation to the Incarnate Word: the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy, and this is found throughout the whole proportion or analogy of the faith. If then the inspired Written Word be tampered with or classed with other writings, this divine relation is disturbed; and can we wonder at the Mediatorship, the Headship, and other offices of the Incarnate Word, being invaded in a like degree?

The evil branches out furthermore into dishonour to the Third Person in the Godhead: holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, and the

* See Memoirs of the Council of Trent, derived from MSS. and unpublished Records, by the Rev. S. Mendham. Duncan: Paternoster Row.

Romans, xii. 6.

New Testament is written by the pen of the same ready writer. If then other writings are voted equal to the Canonical Scriptures, is not the Inspirer of the Canon grieved, and so far dishonoured? And thus the Holy Spirit is grieved, as He is the Spirit of Truth, dwelling in the Church, and enabling her to bear witness to the Word of God; and also as He leads every member of the Church, who receives the Word of God from her maternal hand, into a spiritual* conviction of the divine origin of Holy Writ.

Another evil of this Trentism is, that it poisons the waters at their very source, which are intended to refresh the Church and satisfy her so that she betake not herself to broken cisterns, which can hold no water. The very medicine ordained for healing ecclesiastical disorders is hereby adulterated; once admit the Apocrypha and oral Traditions equal to Holy Writ, and every thing may be admitted. The subjective becomes paramount to the objective. The admission may appear but a little leaven; it is sufficient, however, to leaven the whole lump. And the history of the Romish Apologies since the Council of Trent illustrates this evil; the Apocrypha and Roman Tradition are treated as primary authorities, which are able to establish all the subsequent dogmas of the Council of Trent.

See Archbishop Laud's Conference.

The Second Trentism in this First Article assigns to unwritten Traditions, which are the oral possessions of Rome, the same dignity and value as to the Holy Scrip

tures.

SECT. II. 2nd Part.-Truths hidden under Tradition equal to the Scriptures.

A TRUTH hidden under this Trentism is, that the Gospel, preached or proclaimed by the Apostles and Evangelists, and committed to every Church when planted as the deposit of the Faith, was a Tradition of the same truths which the Holy Scriptures contained. This deposit was a table of contents of the Gospels,-a summary of the things of Christ and of His Body from the Incarnation to the Judgment; which things are expanded in detail, explained in all their consequences and fully developed in the written Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles, and the Apocalypse. We know that Evangelists by the Holy Spirit heralded or preached the Gospel before they, by the same Spirit, committed it to writing in the form of the Four Gospels: and this original Tradition (1 Cor. xv. 1, 2, &c.) is of the same dignity and value as the Holy Writ of the New Testament, because essentially identical with it, seminally and potentially the very same. And the right enjoyment of this truth is a peaceful conviction that salvation, whether witnessed orally or scripturally by the Holy Ghost, was and is and will be always the same; in the words of the 6th