human exposition which lie within our reach. And why, in the use of such resources, should less importance be attached to the practice of men contemporary, or nearly contemporary, with the Apostles, than to the dogmas of a Lutheran or Calvinistic doctor? though the latter may not impossibly be alleged with great veneration by those, who shew little deference to the writings of primitive saints and apostolical

men.

But I repeat, that they who maintain this objection, are bound to display the arguments on their side of the question. They insist on a distinction: let them point out the time when this distinction was first understood in the Church. If this time be later than the completion of the writings of the New Testament: then they must prove their point, if they prove it at all, from the ancient fathers and historians of the Church. If they will admit no reference except to the canonical Scripture, then, I

would still ask them, Why is the apostolical confirmation thought inapplicable to the present state of the Church? Is it because it is supposed to have related only to the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit? But surely the Scripture has no where said so. I grant, that in one instance, we are expressly told, that these gifts became manifest *; and I will grant, also, that in another instance it seems to be obviously implied that they did. But what then? Are not the ordinary graces of Christian piety explicitly ascribed by the Word of God, to the operation of the same Divine Being? But these latter, it may be said, are not, like the others, alleged in connexion with the apostolical imposition of hands. I ask, then, how can it be reasonably expected that they should be alleged in a case, where the things required were, a miraculous and a

Acts xix. 6.

Acts viii. 18. "When Simon saw that through laying on of the Apostles' hands," &c.

visible attestation of a new religion, and the visible signs of an apostle's authority? I am ready to grant that the ordinary graces were as much supernatural as the extraordinary; but all men must allow, that the former were not suited like the latter, in each case in which they were bestowed, to the purpose of evidence. In each case, I say; because the collective influence of them, as they discovered themselves in the moral conduct of the early believers, was powerfully operative towards the conversion of the heathens and the enlargement of the Church.

If this will not satisfy the maintainers of this objection, it is for them to produce from Scripture any proof, that the apostolical usage was intended to cease together with the cessation of those gifts of sensible miracle, to which they suppose it to have had an exclusive relation. This they certainly cannot do; and yet I think it will not be very difficult to produce a

strong scriptural intimation to the contrary. For there is a passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews* which is frequently alleged to this effect and I cannot help thinking that, when it is viewed in connexion with the foregoing considerations, it carries with it. an irresistible force of application to the subject.

I repeat, then, with respect to this notion of Confirmation, that it can be justly viewed only as a doctrinal novelty, introduced in opposition to that persuasion of the Catholic Church, which had previously been settled and uniform, as well as grounded on the true sense of Scripture.

Before I quit this subject, I am anxious to submit to the reader one further remark. In the choice of human methods for the exposition of Scripture, it appears to me, that there are few things more conducive to a just estimate of theological dogmas,

Chap. vi. ver. 1, 2.

than a study of Ecclesiastical history, and of the writers belonging to the ancient times of the Church. I do not say, that this is necessary for the conviction or the edification of private Christians: but I will maintain that, for the benefit of those who are intrusted with the guidance and instruction of such Christians, it throws a mighty power of illustration on the great subject which they are bound to teach and to explain. To explain my meaning by examples, I will refer to the doctrines of Papal Supremacy and Transubstantiation. Suppose it shall appear that, in the midst of voluminous records and writings, the former of these doctrines was not received during the first six centuries of the Church; nor of the second during the first twelve: that, during several hundred years from the commencement of Christianity, many millions who had lived and died in the profession of the faith, and great multitudes who had adorned its doctrine by the sanctity of their lives,