Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 3.djvu/79

Rh lowing remarks are made with a view of showing how far, if necessary, we may safely go in our admissions.

1. We may grant in the argument that the English Church has committed mistakes in the practical working of its system; nay is incomplete even in its formal doctrine and discipline. We require no enemy to show us the probability of this, seeing that her own Article expressly states that the primitive Churches of Antioch and Alexandria, as well as that of Rome, have erred, "not only in their living and manner of ceremonies, but also in matters of faith." Much more is a Church exposed to imperfection, which embraces but a narrow portion of the Catholic territory, has been at the distance of 1500 to 1800 years from the pure fountains of tradition, and is surrounded by political influences of a highly malignant character.

2. Again, the remark may seem paradoxical at first sight, yet surely it is just, that the English Church is for certain deficient in particulars, because it does not profess itself infallible. I mean as follows. Every thoughtful mind must at times have been beset by the following doubt; "How is it that the particular Christian body to which I belong happens to be the right one? I hear every one about me saying his own society is alone right, and others wrong: is not every one as much justified in saying so as every one else? is not any one as much justified as I am? In other words, the truth is surely no where to be found pure, unadulterate and entire, but is shared through the world, each Christian body having a portion of it, none the whole of it." A certain liberalism is commonly the fruit of this perplexity. Men are led on to gratify the pride of human nature, by standing aloof from all system, forming a truth for themselves, and countenancing this or that denomination of Christians according as each maintains portions of that which they have already assumed to be the truth. Now the primitive Church answered this question, by appealing to the simple fact that all the Apostolic Churches all over the world did agree together. True there were sects in every country, but they bore their own refutation on their forehead, in that they were of recent origin; but all those societies in every country, which the Apostles had founded, did agree together in