Page:Delineation of Roman Catholicism.djvu/122

 114 TllmTOS. [BOOZ I. for it was accounted so glorious a thing to have been taught by an apostle, that even good men were willing to believe any thing which their scholars pretended to have heard their masters preach; and too many were forward to say they heard them teach what they never taught. On this account the sober part appealed to Scripture. Ac- cordingly, the general sentiment among the ancient fathers was, that Scripture was the 8tanda for faith and morals. We will, therefore, adduce their testimony on this point; from which it will appear t_h_at they triumphantly support the Protestant side of this question in the main. For it must not be expected thai a complete consistency can be expected from the fathers in the agg'effate, so as to preserve a unanimous consent in all the minutim of Protestant or primitive faith and morals. We will range the testimony of these venerable men under the different centuries in which they lived; fixing, however, each under the century in which he died, so that the precise time in which he lived and flourished may the more easily be ascertained, or rather re- membered by the reader. Ieowatit.--me say he was about seven years old when Christ preached; others say he was not born till ater the death of Christ. He was called T]topAwtfs, of Asia, was made bishop of Antioch in A.D. 70, and governed that church under Vespasian and his succe 107. Euscbins informs us that Ignatius, being on his way' from Syria to Rome, where he was to suffer martyrdom, addro8sed the several churches on his journey, establishing them in the faith, and guarding them againfit the heres/es which then prevailed. "He exhorted them to Aold fray by t traditio of tl apostles, we.a, testifying that it   aluly aommitted to awitig', he declared, wa sa for 3. Fatkr of tl tldrd century. Ire,usus, a Greek, was born about the year 140, was a disciple of Polycarp and Papias, went into Gaul, was ordained priest, and after- ward bishop of Lyons in the year 178, and suffered martyrdom in the year 202 or 203. Our fn'st citation from Irenmus will be that concern- ing those barbarous nations who believed without the Scriptures. "If it had 8o happened that the apostles had left us no Scriptures, must we not then have followed the order of TRADITION, which they committed �to those with whom they intrusted the churches ? To this course many nations of illiterate barbarians, who believe in Christ, do truly assent, having salvation written in their hearts, without paper or ink, and thus preserving the ancient tradition, believing in one God, the maker of heaven and earth,"&c.t This passage is frequently quoted by the Roman Catholic divines, to show that the primitive church recognif,ed as authoritative unwritten tradition, as well as the written word; that oral insmtion is amply sufficient for the laity; and thnt, in point of �  ortonera oeqm tramtrento, quam trmtMerunt ' qu/bus committebent eccieam. (m ordination/ amentiunt multm gentes hrbarorum, qui in Chritum credunt, sine charta et atrumento scriptam !rubentee saluteat, et veterem traditionera cutod/ente9 I 8 �
 * mrs till the tenth year of Trajan, by whom he was put to death in A.D.
 * Euoeb. Ec. Hist:., lib. '/i, e. 36. See Crue's Trans., Phi., 1894, p. !l.

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