Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 3.djvu/89

 No. 72.]

great unfairness practised by Roman controversialists, has been to adduce, in behalf of their own peculiarities, doctrines or customs of the Primitive Church, which, resembling them in appearance, are really of a different character. Thus because the early Fathers spoke of the Holy Communion in such reverent and glowing terms, as became those who understood its real nature and virtue, they have tried to make it appear that they believed in their own theory of Transubstantiation. Whereas they spoke of it as a commemorative sacrifice, they have thence taken occasion to make it a real and proper sacrifice. The doctrine of ecclesiastical penances, they have converted into the theory of satisfactions to Almighty God for sins committed. The existence of Apostolical Tradition, in the early Church, in behalf of the doctrines of the Trinity, Incarnation, and the like, has been made a pretence for introducing so called Apostolical Traditions concerning various unfounded opinions in faith and practice.

But in no instance is this fallacious procedure more strikingly seen than as regards their doctrine of Purgatory, which they defend by notions and usages in the early Church, quite foreign to the distressing tenet which we challenge them to prove. This is shown with great learning and ability by the celebrated Archbishop Ussher in his Controversy with a Jesuit. At a time like the present, when many persons are in doubt whether they are not driven to an alternative of either giving up the primitive Fathers or embracing Popery, it may be useful to reprint the chapter on this subject from Ussher's work in a separate form.