To write a regular Answer to this very plausible and ingenious Performance, beginning at the beginning and ending at the end, would not only be intolerably wearisome to the undertaker of such a task, but would likewise be attended with the manifest disadvantage of driving off, in huge dismay, all save inquirers of a stubborn patience, not very common, alas, in these days of little books and railway velocity. Dogged perseverance, no doubt, might produce an Answer of this description; a theological Gemino bellum trojanum orditur ab ovo : but, I suppose, it would be read pretty much about extensively as the Fortunam Priami cantabo et nobile bellum of the indefatigable scriptor cyclicus.

My remarks, therefore, on these Lectures, are incidental and detached and any thing rather than painfully cyclical: chiefly, in fact, confined to my Introduction and to somewhat long notes appended to my Introduction. Here, an occasional appeal to Antiquity was of

considerable use: and, in truth, albeit no great admirer of the Tractarian School, I must needs say; that those modern Ultra-Protestants, who would liberally throw aside such an appeal on the unexpected ground of its being an introduction of another Rule of Faith beside that which all we of the Reformed Churches hold to be the SOLE Rule, gratuitously undertake to encounter Rome with one arm tied up.

I mean not to assert, that these gentlemen may not be themselves satisfied without any such appeal: but this, I take it, is not exactly the point. The Romanist, who, like Dr. Wiseman, is dexterously attempting to make proselytes, must be met in a fashion, which may at once shew the invalidity of latin claims, and convince the wavering protestant that he is assailed with nothing more respectable than ingenious sophistry built upon daring assertion.

I need scarcely say, my dear Sir, that, in

addressing these remarks to Dr. Turton, nothing, toward you, is intended beyond a testimony of sincere respect. Any information, which they may convey, is designed, somewhat after the manner of speeches in Parliament, not for you, but for the generally speaking less informed Public.

I shall exemplify what I mean by Dr. Wiseman's own account of the Roman Catholic Rule of Faith.

1. After stating that the sOLE Rule of Faith admitted by his Church is the Word of God, aware, I suppose, that the naked expression, Word of God, conveys to the mind of a Romanist an idea by no means the same as that which it conveys to the mind of an Anglican Catholic, he proceeds to divide that SOLE Rule into two Portions or into two conjoint Rules : the Written Word of God, in which the Council of Trent, defying evidence and antiquity, has thought fit to include the Apocrypha; and

the Unwritten Word of God. These preliminaries being laid down, he proceeds as follows.

By the UNWRITTEN WORD OF GOD, we mean a body of doctrines, which, in consequence of express declarations in the Written Word (such imaginary declarations being interpreted and applied according to the humour of Dr. Wiseman and his associates), we believe, not to have been committed to writing, but DELIVERED BY CHRIST TO HIS

APOSTLES AND BY THE

APOSTLES TO THEIR

SUCCESSORS. We believe, that no new doctrine can be introduced into the Church, but that EVERY doctrine, which we hold, HAS EXISTED, AND BEEN TAUGHT IN IT, EVER SINCE THE TIME OF THE APOSTLES, AND WAS HANDED DOWN BY THEM

TO THIER SUCCESSORS, under the only guarantee on which we receive doctrines from the Church, that is, Christ's promises to abide with it for ever, to assist, direct and instruct it, and always teach in and through it. So that, while giving our implicit credit and trusting our judgment to it, we are believing and trusting to the express teaching and

sanction of Christ himself. Tradition, therefore, or the Doctrines delivered down, and the Unwritten Word of God, are one and the same thing *.

2. Now I hold it quite clear, that the incautious Ultra-Protestant of the present day, who, from a grievous ignorance of Chillingworth's own explanation of his perpetually cited axiom, would rashly, contrary to the express advice of this very Chillingworth, throw aside all appeal to Antiquity on the vain plea of thus doing especial honour to Scripture, will find himself totally unable to raise any objection to this plausible statement of Dr. Wiseman, which a well-trained Romanist will not immediately answer without the slightest difficulty, and, what is still worse, without any possibility of a confutation by the Ultra-Protestant on his mistaken principle of reasoning.

(1.) We object, says the Ultra-Protestant,

* Lect. on the Doctr. and Pract. lect. iii. vol. i. p. 60, 61.