BOOK I. THE TESTIMONY OF HISTORY IN FAVOUR OF THE PECULIARITIES OF ROMANISM. Πατρίους παραδοχὰς, ας θ' ὁμήλικας χρόνῳ Eurip. Bacch. ver. 201-203. B CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT. By the members of the earliest Church Catholic, the doctrines, taught by the Apostles, must have been received as infallibly true: and, since it is morally impossible that any very material corruptions or alterations could have universally taken place in the course of the two or three first ecclesiastical descents, the theological system, unanimously received by ALL the different branches of the mutually communicating primitive Catholic Church, must have been that, which in the course of their preaching the Apostles orally delivered, and which under their direction or by their personal instrumentality was finally committed to imperishable writing. I. On the familiar and acknowledged FACT, that All the united branches of the one Church Catholic symbolised in a system of Theology, which, through the medium of one or two or at the most three descents, they unanimously professed themselves to have received from the Apostles, was built the argument from prescription, pressed with such irresistible force against the heretics of the first and second centuries by Irenèus and Tertullian '. Each varying heresy had a commencement without the Catholic Church. Consequently, no heresy could deduce its origin from an Apostle. But the very reverse of this was the case with that system of Theology, which, on the professed and undeniable ground of apostolic derivation, was unanimously received by ALL the then mutually communicating branches of the one Church Catholic. Hence the theological system of the early Catholic Church could not but be apostolic, while the various discordant upstart systems of heresy stood self-precluded from all claim to apostolicity: and hence, while Irenèus and Tertullian distinctly lay down the system universally received by the Catholic Church on the professed ground of derivation from the Apostles; Tertullian propounds the indisputable canon, Whatever is first, is true; whatever is later, is spurious 2. II. An extension of the argument, employed by Ireneus and Tertullian, is evidently the basis For the distinct and fearless assertion of this vital FACT, without the substantiation of which the whole argument from prescription is worthless, see Iren. adv. hær. lib. i. c. 3. p. 36. edit. 1570. Tertull. de præscript. adv. hær. § 6. Oper. p. 102, edit. Rhenan. Ibid. § 11. Oper. p. 107. Ibid. § 14. Oper. Tertull. adv. 2 Iren. adv. hær. lib. i. c. 2. lib. iii. c. 4. Tertull. de præscript. adv. hær. § 4, 11. Oper. p. 100, 107. Prax. § 1. Oper. p. 405. |