Primitive Christian Worship

Chris

t acceptably fulfil their duty by abstaining from active and personal inquiries into the foundations of their faith; and by giving an implicit credence to whatever the Roman Church pronounces to be the truth1. Should this book fall into the hands of any who have adopted that maxim for the rule of their own conduct as believers, its pages will of course afford them no help; nor can they take any interest in our pursuit, or its results. Whilst, however, I am aware, that until the previous question (involving the grounds on which the Church of Rome builds her claim to be the sole, exclusive, and infallible teacher of Christians in all the doctrines of religion,) sha

will of the authorities of Rome. Instances are of very frequent occurrence. Thus Joannes de Carthagena, a very voluminous writer of homilies, closes different parts of his work in these words, "These and all mine I willingly subject to the judgment

ith the nature of the present address, to dwell in any way corresponding with the magnitude and delicacy of the subject, on the duty, the responsibility, and the privilege of private judgment; on the dangers to which an unchastened exercise of it may expose both an individual, and the cause of Christian tru

of the whole body. The freedom which we ask for ourselves, and desire to see imparted to all, is a rational liberty, tending to the good, not operating to the bane of its possessors; ministering to the general welfare, not to disorder and confusion. In the enjoyment of this liberty, or rather in the discharge of the duties and trusts which this liberty brings with it, we feel ourselves under an obligation to examine the foundations of our faith, to the very best of our abilities, according to our opportunities, and with the most faithful use of all the means afforded to us by its divine Author and finisher. Among those means, whilst we regard the Holy Scriptures as paramount and supreme, we appeal to the witness and mind of the Church as secondary and subsidiary; a witness not at all competing with Scripture, never to be balanced against it; but competing with our ow

to the opinions of others, boldly and proudly sets up his own will and pleasure as the only standard to which he will submit. For the model which we would adopt, as members of the Church, in our pursuit of Christian truth, we find a parallel and analogous case in a well-principled and well-disciplined son, with his way of life before him, exercising a large and liberal discretion in the choice of his pursuits; not fettered by peremptory paternal mandat

pticism, and infidelity: it is represented as rending the Church of Christ, and totally subverting Christian unity, and snapping asunder at once the bond of peace. So also it has been often maintained, that the same cause robs individual Christians of

d by man's waywardness into an instrument of evil? Nay, what doctrine of our holy faith has not the wickedness or the folly of unworthy men employed as a cloke for unrighteousness, and a vehicle for blasphemy? But by a consciousness of this liability in all things human, must we be tempted to suppress the truth? to disparage those moral duties? or to discountenance the cultivation of those gifts and faculties? Rather would not sound philosophy and Christian wisdom jointly enforce the necessity of improving the gifts zealously, of discharging the moral obligation to the full, and of maintaining the doctrine in all its integrity; but guardi

and in very deed prove a far more prolific source of disguised infidelity. Doubts repressed as they arise, but not solved, silenced but not satisfied, gradually accumulate in spite of all external precaution; and at length (like streams pent back by some temporary barrier) break forth at onc

a man may doubtless be far more enviable than theirs, who have no settled fixed principles, and who wander from creed to creed, and from sect to sect, just as their fickle and roving minds suggest some transitory preference. But the believer must not be driven by the evils of one extreme to take refuge in the opposite. The whirlpool may be the more perilous, but the Christian mariner must avoid the rock also, or he

edit afford a most pleasing and happy security to any one who depends upon them; but which, when adverse fortune puts their responsibility to the test, may prove utterly worthless, and be traced only by losses and disappointments. Such a blind reliance on authority may doubtless be more easy and more free from care, than it is to gird up the loins of our mind

a still more unshaken conviction. Thus, too, when the misbeliever charges us with an undue and an unauthorized ascription of the Divine attributes to our Redeemer and to our Sanctifier, which he would confine to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, exclusively of the Eternal Son and the Blessed Spirit, it well becomes every Catholic Christian to assure himself of the evidence borne by the Scriptures to the divinity of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, together with the inseparable doctrines of redemption by the blood of Christ, and sanctification by the Spirit of grace; appealing also in this investigation to the tradition of the Church, and

ibe that we should bear with each other, allowing a free and large discretion in any body of Christians, and not severing ourselves from them because we deemed our views preferable to theirs. In such a case we might well walk in the house of God as friends, without any interruption of the harmony which should exist between those who worship the true God with one heart and one mind, ever striving to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. But when the points at issue are of so vast moment;

ft the communion of Rome, or have continued to offer prayers to angels, and the spirits of departed mortals. Unless I had resolved at once to shut my eyes upon my own personal responsibility, and to surrender myself, mind and reason, soul and body, to the sovereign and undisputed control of others, never presuming to inquire into the foundation of what the Church of Rome taught; I must have sought some purer portion of the Catholic Church, in which her members addressed the One Supreme Being exclusively, without contemplating any other in the act of religious invocation. The distinction invented in comparatively late years, of the three kinds of wor

ave left on my mind the indelible conviction that I could never have passed my life in communion with that Church whose articles of fellowship maintained the duty of invok

ught the most convenient and satisf

ead us to make; both in the times of the elder covenant, when "holy men of old spake as they

practice of the Primitive Church, beginni

ference to three periods; the first immediately preceding the Reformation; the second comprising the Reformati

and for various reasons the most important and interesting portion of the whole inquiry, for separate and distinct examinat

ide us to