Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 3.djvu/30

 time, as well as language, had been maintained in different nations." He could not, and did not, object to the disuse of a "language not understanded by the people." (Art. xxiv.) Accordingly he added, "the identity of time had been abandoned, and the identity of language could not be preserved." This last sentence would have embarrassed the fiction, and so you have omitted it.

These instances may illustrate the almost certain risk of sacrifice of truth, entailed by such a fiction as that upon which you have ventured. I need not adduce more; for I have no thought of refuting your statements: this we will do, if ever you take upon yourself seriously to maintain them; at present I would only show you the danger of such trifling in holy things.

Before, however, you venture upon serious controversy, as the champion of ultra- Protestantism, I would recommend you to review your armour;—weapons which you have not proved, however they may make a show in this counterfeit and mockery, will not hold in real earnest. You belong, Sir, to a school which would substitute individual speculation for solid learning and the knowledge of antiquity, and which, consequently, has the reputation of at times reproducing as new, and so giving undue and injurious prominence to, what all divines were before well acquainted with; and at times, also, has fallen into strange unhistorical errors. Now, whether a certain doctrine be Papistical or no, is matter of history, not df speculation; and one not versed in history will be liable, perpetually, to confound the earlier truth, or unobjectionable custom, with the later corruption; especially if he has no very clear idea of Christian theology. Thus you attack—as implying transubstantiation—expressions which convey only the doctrine of the Eucharist, as held in the early Church and our own.

The same want of acquaintance with antiquity, probably led you to confound the early practice of commemorating God's departed servants at the holy communion, and praying for their increased bliss and fuller admission to the beatific vision, with