Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/137

Rh may be erroneous in Mahometanism." If reasoning like this ought to have availed in reconciling sincere Eutychians to the Mussulman connexion, then, and not else, it seems intelligible how those who profess to advocate a peculiarly pure and spiritual view of Christianity, should readily unite with the deniers of the that bought them; and, in other respects, more or less directly compromise the system of orthodox belief, where they think there is, humanly speaking, a fair chance of doing more good in the end.

On the whole, there is evidently no security, no rest for the sole of one's foot, except in the form of sound words; the one definite system of doctrine, sanctioned by the one Apostolical and primitive Church. People say, it is hard to bring men to agreement in this: but so is perfection hard in every part of duty. And besides, let the question be asked in all seriousness, is it not much harder to ascertain their agreement in right feeling towards our Saviour? If the illustration were not too familiar, one might say, it is like trying the temperature of a room; one man feels hot, and another cold; but those who would be precise and accurate rather settle the point by a thermometer. In truth, it should seem perfectly impossible to know whether two men exactly concur in feeling; the most that can be positively known is, that they agree in the same form of words to express their feeling. And why, then, should it be counted wrong or absurd for them to accept at the hands of Church the same form of words wherein to own her system of doctrine, which is one and the same definite thing, and quite independent, surely, of the individual receiving it?

Again: it may be said that so strict a demand of orthodoxy is scarcely consistent with the encouragement given in Scripture to the mere implicit faith of persons probably quite ignorant of doctrinal statements: such, for example, as the woman with an issue of blood, who, when she touched the hem of our Lord's garment, was so far ignorant of His true Omniscient Nature, that she thought of being healed without His knowing any thing of it. May it not, however, be reasonably said, that her pious and affectionate faith was, in fact, the very type of that which saves men in the devout use of the means of grace which bestows on us? According to her knowledge, so she received Him: and must we not receive him in like manner according to