Page:Catholic Thoughts on the Church of Christ.djvu/133

115 And then again may it not be suggested, that if it be admitted that there may be scattered up and down in subsequent writings Apostolic sayings, yet it by no means follows that Apostles would have wished these to be handed down to the Church of all generations as Ecclesiastical Laws. All that the Apostles did or said was not inspired: nay, even if all that is Scripture be given by Inspiration yet all that was given even by Inspiration may not have been intended to be Scripture. Our Lord we know said and did things innumerable which are not recorded, but those which are so are sufficient, as St. John says, that we may believe. Many persons we know from St. Luke took in hand, in the Apostolic age, to set forth in order a declaration of those things which were then most surely believed, even as they had received them from those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word. Now from this fact may we not fairly argue, If these accounts were essentially untrue what guarantee can we have that the uninspired Traditions of later times are not so too? Or if we suppose their substantial accuracy, may we not presume that they have not been allowed to be preserved to us because more Traditions would be rather prejudicial to our Faith than advantageous to it? It is very noteworthy that in no single instance do writers of the age following the Apostolic profess to give us, from their own personal knowledge, a saying of JESUS, or of His Inspired Apostles, which we do not already find in substance in the New Testament; and that none before Clement of Alexandria profess to know anything of any truth not contained in it: but rather seem to deny the existence of any such, and point out the exact coincidence of Oral Tradition with that which is Written. Nay, when we reflect how natural it is to presume that much should have been handed down -concerning both their persons and their practices, surely the actual meagreness of such Traditions, and the singular darkness that rests upon the first age of the Church, might also bear out the assumption that the Providence of GOD has ordered it so expressly to proclaim to all future times the supremacy of the Written Word.