port their doctrine, and therefore it is that they have
proceeded to such, lengths in upholding the authority not of the creeds
only, but of the opinions and practices of the ancient church generally;
and that they try to explain away the clear language of our article,
that nothing "which is neither read therein (i.e. in holy Scripture,)
nor may be proved thereby, is to be required of any man that it should
be believed as an article of faith, or be thought requisite or necessary
to salvation." It would be one of the most unaccountable phenomena of
the human mind, were any man fairly to come to the conclusion that the
Scriptures and the early church were of equal authority, and that the
authority of both were truly divine. If any men resolve to maintain
doctrines and practices as of divine authority, for which the Scripture
offers no countenance, they of course are driven to maintain the
authority of the church in their own defence; and where they have an
interest in holding any particular opinion, its falsehood, however
palpable, is unhappily no bar to its reception. Otherwise it would seem
that the natural result of believing the early church to be of equal
authority with the Scripture, would be to deny the inspiration of
either. For two things so different in several points as the
Christianity of the Scriptures and that of the early church, may
conceivably be both false, but it is hard to think that they can both be
perfectly true.

I am here, however, allowing, what is by no means true, without many
qualifications, that Mr. Newman's system is that of the early church.
The historical inquiry as to the doctrines of the early church would
lead me into far too wide a field; I may only notice, in passing, how
many points require to be carefully defined in conducting such an
inquiry; as, for instance, what we mean by the term "early church," as
to time; for that may be fully true of the church in the fourth
century, which is only partially true of it in the third, and only in a
very slight degree true of it in the second or first. And again, what do
we mean by the term "early church," as to persons; for a few eminent
writers are not even the whole clergy; neither is it by any means to be
taken on their authority that their views were really those of all the
bishops and presbyters of the Christian world; but if they were, the
clergy are not the church, nor can their judgments be morally considered
as the voice of the church