Page:Delineation of Roman Catholicism.djvu/111

 III.] - ?a,DmoN. 103 Carmelite friar, wisely said: "The fathers served themselvas of this topic only in case of necessity, never thinking to make use of it in competition against Holy Scripture."They who had received the Scriptures among the first Christians refied upon them; they that had not 'eceived Scripture were to use tradition and the argument from succession, to prove their doctrine to have come from the apesties: that is, they would call /tnses where they could not prove a will by mr/t/ng. The Romanists now assume the same ground which these ancient heretics occupied. The heretics said, "Jesus in mystery said to his disciples and apostles some things in secret and apart, be- cause they were worthy."" So Bellarmine: "They preached not to the people all things, but those which were necessary to them, or profitable, but other things they delivered apart to the more perfect." Thus the pretence of the old heretics and modern Roman Catholics is precisely the same. IV. Argume aga/nst ra/tradition. 1. The Scripture plainly overturns the authority of oral tradition. St. Peter says, "Moreover I will endcavour that you may be able after my decease to hsve these things always in remembrance," 2 Pet. i, 15. St. Peter wa not of the opinion that era/tradition was a better way than writing to preserve the memo of these things; or that without ��ry wr/ting they nnght be preserved. Accordingly Moses was commanded o write the Pentateuch: the prophets afterward committed to writing their revelations. The evangelists and the writers of the New Testament did the same. We have, therefore,the examjo/es of inspired men and the com- arand of God to commit to writing the communications ofhis will to man. 2. Besides, oral tradition in its very nature is so uncertain and change. ab/z as not at all to be capable of becoming a rule of faith. Common sense dictates that tradition, after any lapse of time, having gone through so many hands naturally unsettled and changeable, must have altered, increased, or lessened, since that happens in process of time to all things, and thus it becomes entirely too vague to regulate men's con- duct The follow/ng quotation from one of our oldEnglish divines will place this in a very strong fight :m- Suppose but the earliest corn- men story were to be told from one person to another, without being written down, for only one hundred or two hundred years, and let each person as he received it have ever so strict s charge to tell it in the same manner; yet long before the end of that time what security could we possibly have that it was true at first and unaltered still .* And you cannot but see there is much less security that a considerable number of doctrines, especially such as compose the popish creed, should be brought down safe for seventeen hundred [eighteen hundred] years together, through so many millions of hands, that were all liable, tlmmgh ignorance, forgetfulness, and superstition, to mistake them, or through Irnsvery or design to alter them. "But it will b said, in a case of so much importance as religion, men would be more carefid in delivering truth than in others. Un- Jesuns &centes in mysterio diseipulis suis et apostolis soorsim 1ocutum, et illos exlx)stulasso, ut dighis et assentientibus, set)nuns hmc traderent, per fidera enim et chritatens nlvari."lrom,, lib. i, c. 24, p. 122, d. See also At., Tract Belial De verb., Dei non Script., fib. iv, c. 11, sect. Hic notaris. 1

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