Now, all English readers would, from this passage, understand all the books of the New Testament. St. Irenæus minutely mentions the four gospels (as we now call the evangelical histories) and their writers; and does not so much as allude to any other part of the New Testament. And the importance of this extraordinary misstatement will appear when we consider that Dr. Shuttleworth claims St. Irenæus as witnessing in this passage to "the sufficiency and completeness of the written works of the first [i. e., all the first] teachers of Christianity as a summary of Christian doctrine. For if, in fact, St. Irenæus does witness only to the written works of St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke (except the Acts), and St. John (except his Epistles and Revelation), a large part of the Warden's argument falls to the ground, for we are left, as far as St. Irenæus is concerned, to take any view that may otherwise be made good, as to the residue of the New Testament. As, for example, with regard to the epistlesthat they are letters meant for specific purposes, appearing on the face of them, or, however, to be found in them by those who are competent to the search; and neither are, nor are professed by the writers to be, "a summary of Christian doctrine." I request very particular attention to this mistake, and an impartial consideration of its decisive effect on, at least, the Warden's argument.

But I do not mean to avoid collision with the apparent force of the testimony of St. Irenæus to "the sufficiency and completeness of the [four] written works" of the four evangelists. The question, with regard to his testimony, turns upon the word "evangelium." And it will not, I suppose, be denied, that the best authority for its meaning may be expected in the writings of the evangelists themselves. St. Luke, in the second chapter of his gospel, relates, that the angel began the wondrous revelation to the shepherds, saying, "vayyελíčoμaι vμiv Xapàv_μeyáλnv.” "I preach you the gospel, a subject of great joy," or, "I bring you tidings of great joy," as our version has it. I infer from this use of “ ἐυαγγελίζομαι” that the ἐυαγγέλιον is specifically the announcement, that unto us "is born a SAVIOUR, which is CHRIST THE LORD." He confirms this view when he says, in answer to John the Baptist's enquiry, "Trwyoì évayyeλížovтai," "the poor have the gospel preached unto them." "Yet the "evangelium," the gospel, could not possibly then have been the summary of Christian doctrine in the Warden's sense; it could not have meant any sort of church government, any baptism in the name of the most holy Trinity,any account whatever of the Eucharist. Neither does the occasion on which the evangelists write the word "évayyeλov" itself, as our LORD'S expression, at all countenance the notion, that it had any fuller sense than that which I have supposed-the occasion, namely, of the woman anointing his head; ὅπου ἂν κηρυχθῇ τὸ ἐυαγγέλιον τοῦτο, this gospel. What gospel? Certainly not any relation of the particulars just mentioned. And now, having seen that évayyetov is used by the evangelists, I have no objection, although not at all bound by the Warden's citation from St. Irenæus, to see how St. Paul uses it. I cannot doubt that he and the other apostles did most fully give out "a summary of Christian doctrine;" but I think they neither profess

to find "a summary" in the writings of their fellow apostles, nor to give one in their own. In the third chapter of the Epistle to the Galations, he says, "The scripture, foreseeing that GOD would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel (poεvnyyελioαTO) to Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed." In this passage, for instance, I remark, first, that St. Paul used the identical word (for the pò, of course, is merely an adjunct adverb of time) which St. Luke relates as used by the angel; secondly, that the word is used to mean the same thing-namely, the incarnation of the LORD JESUS; thirdly, that at the time of the event recorded by St. Paul, it was impossible that there could be "a summary of Christian doctrine;" and that, in fact, the Old Testament does not give one; and therefore, that St. Paul's use of the word does not imply one. Again, in the first chapter of the same epistle, he says, "Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." Here again we have St. Luke's word used by the apostle; and can we avoid believing that he was alluding specifically to the one appearance of that angel from heaven who had once for all preached the gospel at the blessed hour of the nativity?

My inference from holy scripture, and from the passage of St. Irenæus, on which the Warden has built his argument, is, that the Evangelium, the good tidings, the gospel, is summarily the LORD JESUS incarnate, conceived by the HOLY GHOST, born of the Virgin Mary, with its consequences of salvation to us; that the evangelists wrote with the specific design of recording these "good tidings;" that they did not write to give a scheme of ritual, or church-government, and that their writings do not in any degree profess to give one; that therefore all allusions to ritual and church-government are purely incidental; that we must consequently, according to their intentions, look for a scheme of ritual and church-government elsewhere; and that we do, in fact, find one elsewhere-namely, in the unbroken tradition of the church. And I mean to apply this view to all the epistles, as well as to the gospels. And now, before quitting Irenæus, I will quote another passage from him, to which I will, mutatis mutandis, apply the words of the Warden upon the passage which he has quoted; and I also make the quotation in the Latin:

"Ecclesia enim per universum orbem usque ad terræ fines seminata, et ab apostolis et a discipulis eorum accepit eam fidem quæ est in unum DEUM, PATREM Omnipotentem, qui fecit cœlum, et terram, et mare, et omnia quæ in eis sunt, et in unum JESUM CHRISTUM Filium DEI, Incarnatum pro nostra Salute, et in SPIRITUM SANCTUM, qui per prophetas prædicavit dispositiones DEI, et adventum, et eam quæ est ex Virgine generationem, et passionem, et resurrectionem a mortuis, et in carne in cœlos ascensionem dilecti JESU CHRISTI DOMINI nostri, et de cœlis in gloria PATRIS adventum ejus ad recapitulanda universa, et resuscitandam omnem carnem humani generis, ut CHRISTO JESU DOMINO nostro, et DEO, et SALVATORI, et REGI Secundum placitum PATRIS Invisibilis omne genu curvet cœlestium, et terrestrium, et infernorum, et omnis lingua confitentur ei et judicium justum in omnibus faciat......Hanc prædicationem quum acceperit, et hanc fidem, quemadmodum prædiximus, ecclesia et quidem in universum mundum disseminata, diligenter custodit, quasi unam domum inhabitans: et similiter credit iis videlicet quasi unam animam habens, et unum cor, et consonanter hæc prædicat et docet et tradit quasi unum possidens os.”— Contra Hæreses, lib. i. c. 10.

The language of the Warden, with the necessary alterations, will apply well to this passage:

"Such is the testimony of Irenæus, as given in the words of his Latin translator, to the sufficiency and completeness of the tradition of the first teachers of Christianity as a summary of Christian doctrine......Here is not the slightest intimation that their oral instruction was dependent upon the written record which has descended to our own times. So far is the primitive author from asserting, that the first (?) apostles did not trust any of their doctrines to the uncertain vehicle of mere tradition, that his expressions are scarcely compatible with such a supposition."

And as the passage quoted by me contains the creed, I will quote, before leaving this part of the subject, the opinion of a writer who will not, I believe, be thought likely to favour anything which implied an over-assertion of the catholic faith, or even what is now called popery; I mean the " teacher of the church at Kederminster," Richard Baxter.

In an Introduction placed before the Preface of his "Catholick Theologie," (folio, London, MDCLXXV.,) after a recital of many passages of holy scripture addressed to the "wrathful, contentious, zealous dogmatists, he lays down fourteen Assertions, apparently intended as conclusions from the preceding passages. Of these Assertions, the fifth is this

"Though I am not of their mind that think the twelve apostles each one made an article of the creed, or that they formed and tyed men to just the very same syllables and every word that is now in the creed; yet that they still kept to the same sense, and words so expressing it, as by their variation might not endanger the corrupting of the faith by a new sense, is certain, from the nature of the case, and from the agreement of all the antient creeds, which were ever professed at baptism, from their dayes; that cited by me (Append. to the Reformed Pastor) out of Irenæus, two out of Tertullian, that of Marcellus in Epiphanius, that expounded by Cyril, that in Ruffinus, the Nicene, and all mentioned by Usher and Vossius, agreeing thus far in sense; and no one was baptized without the creed professed."

And further, (Assertion 7)

"The church had a summary and symbol of Christianity (as I said before) about twelve years before any book of the New Testament was written, and about sixty-six years before the whole was written: and this of God's own making: which was yet ever agreed on, when many books of the New Testament were not yet agreed on."

And (Assertion 11)

"A thousand texts of scripture may be not known and understood by one that is justified, but all the baptismal articles and covenant must be understood competently by all that will be saved."

Perhaps the Warden means the creed when he speaks, as quoting St. Irenæus (p. 4), of "the sound traditions derived by the church directly from the apostles themselves." I quote these passages from Baxter to shew what was even his opinion of the existence of a rule of faith independent of the scriptures, and for the sake of his mention of the creed as given by St. Irenæus and now here quoted. I shall bring forward some other statements of his as to tradition in their proper place.

I come now to consider the passage quoted from Justin Martyr by the Warden, passing by his notices of Clemens Romanus, Polycarp, and Ignatius, with this remark only,-that I see nothing in their silence, if they are silent, as to tradition but what was to be expected;

the very disciplina arcani, the existence of which Dr. Shuttleworth impugns, being an answer in full to his objection; it was not to be expected that what was taken for granted by those who knew it, and was to be otherwise imparted to those who were yet catechumens, would be made a topic of a hortatory epistle, or in the hour of public martyrdom.

And in order to bring before the reader the full force of what Justin Martyr has said, I will first set down what the Warden has quoted, and his remark on the passage quoted by himself

"On the day which is called Sunday," says he [Justin Martyr], “an assembly of believers, through town and country, takes place upon some common spot, where the writings of the apostles, or the books of the prophets, are publicly read so long as the time allows; after which, the presiding minister in a sermon exhorts his hearers to the practical adoption of the good precepts which they have thus heard recited." The Warden's remark is

"In this short account we might fancy that we are reading a description of the mode of performing divine worship in any modern protestant congregation."

What the Warden means by a "protestant congregation" he does not say.

But waving this point for the present, I must draw the attention of the reader to a circumstance about the quotation and the remark which has an air of unfairness very remote, I sincerely believe, from the intention of Dr. Shuttleworth. The quotation stands as if the subject were exhausted, and the argument amounts to this:-You see here Justin Martyr's description of Sunday worship in his day; there is no fuss about ritual, no particular ceremony observed, no mention of the necessity of frequent or regular Sunday communion; no-we might fancy that we are reading a description of the mode of performing divine worship in any modern protestant congregation.

Will the Warden's English readers believe, that in this very tract of Justin Martyr's, a little before, there is a long description of the celebration of the holy communion,* yet avowedly leaving unsaid the larger part of its detail; and that the tract goes on with the subject, immediately after the last words in the Warden's quotation, as follows

"We then all stand up together, and put forth prayers. Then, as we have already said, when we cease from prayer, bread is brought, and wine, and water; and our head in like manner offers up prayers and praises with his utmost power; and the people express their assent by saying, Amen. The consecrated elements are then distributed, and received by every one; and a portion is sent by the deacons to those who are absent. Each of those also, who have abundance and are willing, according to his choice, gives what he thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with him who presides, who succours the fatherless and the widows, and those who are in necessity from disease or any other cause."

Except in the circumstances of using water in the celebration, which the church of England nowhere disallows, and has been done by some of her greatest divines, and the reservation of the sacrament for the absent, we here have an account of what takes place on Sunday

A part of it will be found quoted further on.

+ Referring to the description of the celebration of the holy communion which he has given a little before.

when the holy communion is celebrated in our churches. The time seems to be at hand when our church's reproach will be wiped away, and her priests will do as she enjoins them, and no Sunday will pass of which Justin's account will be untrue. If the Warden's book reaches another edition, as doubtless it will, he is bound in candour, after this notice, to give Justin Martyr's statement in full, and not by continuing the suppression of the part which I have now quoted to convey the suspicion, that Justin Martyr was at one with that cankered protestantism which can placidly acquiesce in the passing of a Sunday without a celebration of the great act of the Christian religion.

And I take occasion from this sentence of the Warden to notice his use of the words "protestant" and "protestantism." Now it is not possible to predicate protestantism of the church of England absolutely; for she is not protestant absolutely, but only relatively. The church of England, as is well known, nowhere calls herself protestant, but teaches faith in the one catholic and apostolic church of which she is herself a part. There is, however, no injustice done to her, when she is called protestant in such a manner as not to make her cause the same with heretical protestantism. Geneva, Scotland, and France, have each a protestant religious establishment, but without any apostolical succession of ministry, and so heretical. The term "protestantism" therefore, in a work by an English divine, ought at least to be so guarded as not to mislead incautious popular readers into a vague idea; but, on the contrary, so as to let them see distinctly when the Anglican church is included in it, and when not. I greatly regret to say, that Dr. Shuttleworth has not taken this necessary care, and that it might be inferred from his manner of writing that the Anglican church was absolutely protestant. The unfinished quotation from Justin Martyr may, for anything that I know, apply to Genevese or Scotchkirk worship: did Dr. Shuttleworth mean that it applied, so as to describe exhaustively, the worship of the church of England? I confess that, as far as I can gather from Dr. Shuttleworth's book, the pure protestantism (p. 67.) of which he speaks as identified with the cause of sound Christianity is meant by him to be a protestantism against Rome, by the church of England, in unity with the presbyterians and every other religious society. If such is the protestantism of which he is the advocate, I hope that not only the compilers of the Tracts for the Times, but all sincere members of the church of England, are its hearty enemies. Protestantism such as this has once already caused the king to be murdered, and the church uprooted in England; and has perpetuated the disestablishment of the church in Scotland; and causes the Scotch kirk still to publish, with such authority as it has, its revilings of bishops and catholic church-government. How far men who lean only upon protestantism may "proceed onwards to Socinianism," I think I can exhibit in a very striking manner, by two instances. The first is the late Adam Clarke, the learned Wesleyan preacher and author. In his "Succession of Sacred Literature," speaking of St. Gregory of Nyssa, (p. 445, vol. i.,) he says, analyzing the contents of the epistle to Eustathia, Ambrosia, and Basilissa," Towards the end, Gregory speaks of our Lord's birth, and asks, Who can be so bold as