those days which we designate "the dark ages," when pious bishops and holy priests of God, and so-called vicegerents of the Prince of Peace, sold, for fixed prices, the right to commit sins; and when an emperor of Germany was compelled to beg Papal pardon for maintaining his civil rights! A good Vatican Catholic, in the strict sense of the word, cannot, by any possibility, be a good citizen. His Church so binds and straitens him, that, in certain emergencies, he cannot be true to his country without becoming false to his religion!

And, again, the life of Sedlnitzky shows that, if not utterly antagonistic to genuine spiritual life, the Church of Vaticanity (if we may make a word) is, at the least, a very inadequate means for fostering that life. The good bishop furnishes a type of the intelligence of Europe, asking spiritual nutriment and receiving the indigestible petrifactions of Ultramontane and unscriptural dogmas, absolutely subversive of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. It may not unfairly be said that an intelligent man, honest to the core, cannot possibly be a serviceable member of the Church of Rome. His reason and his conscience must (as they did the Bishop of Breslau) repel him from a communion whose "rule of faith and practice" is not Holy Scripture, but a collection of the dogmas and moralities of fallible, if not ungodly, men.

NOTICES OF THE JEWS AND THEIR COUNTRY, by the Classic Writers of Antiquity; being a collection of statements and opinions from the works of Greek and Latin authors, previous to A. D. 500. By John Gill. Second edition, revised and enlarged. London: Longmans & Co. 1872.

WE

E do not select this book for special consideration, though it would be well worthy of it; but for a needless slant, let off in a notice of it by the "British Quarterly." That journal takes occasion to show how little could be known of Judaism, if we were dependent upon its scattered monuments of tradition; and then goes purposely out of its way to have a fling at those Churchmen whom it supposes to use the Fathers and other relics of antiquity, as if ultimate and independent authorities. It sneers at them in the following terms: "A lesson of great worth might be taught thus to those who criticise the New Testament as well as the Old, by the few fragments of Christian antiquity furnished during the commencement of the second century."

Now, in our simplicity, we had begun to think that the measured and moderate, if specific, use which we make of Christian antiquity had become an understood and appreciated affair. But we are sadly mistaken; and we see that a proper estimate and a just employment of the relics of this antiquity, are, every now and then, to be vindi

cated afresh, even for reputably literate, for at least pretentiously cultivated minds.

Thus, even the "Westminster Review," in its harsh criticisms of Mr. Gladstone, snarls at his references to the Nicene Creed, as if he esteemed that Creed a mere self-willed dictum, or personal enactment of the Nicene Fathers. And Mr. (perhaps Dr.) Haven, a man of high standing among the Congregationalists, treats that Creed as he would a Creed of the pettiest society of his own ecclesiastical circle, as if a thing which a few individuals concocted out of their own brains, and would impose upon others, because agreeable to their own predilections,-"hammered on their anvil."

And here comes the Philadelphia "Episcopalian," with the rudest sort of dash at the good old rule for interpretations of Vincent of Lirins, about the united suffrage of universality, antiquity, and consent; a rule which even such a famous evangelical as George Stanley Faber stoutly contended for.1 It finds this rule among the muniments of the Alt-Catholics; and anti-popish as is the company it is found in, brushes it away with the contemptuous repudiation that the sponsors for such a rule "accept next to nothing."

It does seem strange, passing strange to us, that people wise enough, apparently, according to Solomon, to have their eyes in their heads (Eccl. ii. 14) instead of less promising portions of their bodies, that such people cannot, or will not, admit that a Churchman clings to the Scriptures, as a supreme and ultimate authority, with as much steadiness and firmness as the greatest glorifier of the word "Protestant" throughout the land; that he holds the Scriptures, and the Scriptures only, to be the organic law, and the statute law, and the entire law, under God's great Covenant, for the redemption and salvation of sinful men.

Still, while doing so, he not unnaturally, or inconsiderately, or vainly, asks—as a man would do who acknowledged the Constitution and the statutes of the United States as the whole of our law, for citizens of the United States (as such)-Who is to pronounce upon the meaning of such law, when its construction becomes a questionable matter?

1 The rule of Vincent is supposed to be one which he learned in the School, or College, of Lirins. It may fairly be believed that the rule was suggested by the Book of Deuteronomy. The identity, perpetuity, and spread of the Jewish people are referred to, for verification, in the way of antiquity and universality (chap. iv. 32). In the way of general consent, "the sight of the nations," in verse 6, same chapter. So those who call the rule monkish had better look a little further into their Bibles. A rule which would verify Judaism is a good rule whereby to verify Christianity.

Some have read our national Constitution and our national statutes so differently-with such extreme antipathies that we have actually had to plunge into a dreadful and desolating war, to determine which construction shall be uppermost and overruling. Diverse readings of our ultimate law have, then, brought on civil war! Aye, and diverse readings of the Bible keep up a civil war in Christendom, to this very hour. Christendom has nothing but Christians in it,-if you will be content to let them all say they receive the naked Bible, and say no more. But begin to interpret that Book, and at once these (so-called Christians) become belligerent Latins, or Greeks, or Armenians, or Protestants, as changeful in hue as the chameleon.1

Wherefore, as the Bible alone does not produce unity, and, still less, uniformity, we Churchmen have got into the habit of trying to make history bear upon its interpretation, to see if that will not have some effect in bringing the civil war of Christendom to a truce, if not to a settled peace. We all know that when an article of a constitution, a statute-law, a treaty, a contract, a last will and testament, are disputed upon their very face (as they continually are,—only remember what a contest there was between two nations, over the Treaty of Washington), that courts of law and equity go into the history of such documents, to glean, if possible, their proper construction, from the usages and practices to which they have been subjected; in other words, to see if the history under which they came into existence, and with which they have travelled, will not throw the needful light upon their doubtful phraseology.

All which amounts to the following (to a juridical mind) simple postulate courts and jurists settle disputed constructions by traditive interpretation.2

Now, this is just what we expect and aim to do, by calling in the Fathers, the councils, the creeds, the canons, the liturgies, and the customs of ancient and formative Christian times. There is no

'Supposing men to treat the Constitution of the United States with the same irresponsible freedom with which they treat the Bible, the result would be as follows, according to one of our former Presidents: "The Constitution is not worth one straw, if every man is to be his own interpreter, disregarding the exposition of the Supreme Court." We can see how such treatment nullifies human law. One would suppose that it would also nullify Divine law. Practically, it does so.

2

2 Or, as Mr. Selden expressed it: "Say what you will against tradition, we know the signification of words by nothing but tradition (“Tab. Talk," Art. Tradition). Hence the legal maxim, Contemporanea expositio optima est, et fortissima, in lege.

creed-maker but the Sovereign Thinker of the universe, the allwise and the never-erring God.1 A council has no more right to manufacture a creed-as the "Westminster Review" supposes the Council of Nice to have done, out of its own self-willed brainsthan it has to originate a Church, or to inaugurate an empire.

But while councils, as the acting legislatures and representative assemblies of the Church, and sometimes of the Church Catholic, have no creative faculties, they certainly have ministerial faculties, like authorized trustees or vicars. They become-if their action is accepted and adopted by the Church as an ecclesiastical body politic -they become the Church's virtual voice, and Christendom itself can speak by and through them. Their preservation of the faith, as handed down to them, and their attestations of its verity, when thus accepted, become an expression, not of an individual's opinions, but of the public Christian mind,—its proclamations, its ruling precedents, its assent and consent to go upon an abiding record, for the appeals and references of all future times.

And they certainly are this, and all this, when, having first represented the whole Christian world, the whole Christian world has subsequently sustained and ratified their action. Then their action becomes a high precedent, which is tantamount to organic law.

1 Man thinks for himself, and for the little sphere in which he moves; and accordingly it is hit or miss with him continually. God thinks for the universe, and under all its circumstances; and so He, and He alone, has the right to say, authoritatively, how others ought to think. This is no new position; the Psalmist understood the two cases perfectly, and contrasts them in the twelfth Psalm. "We," says man, "are they that ought to speak." No, is the answer; the words of the Lord are the only pure ones, i. e., pure truth, without any mixture of dross or alloy. The illustration by silver purified seven times, brings out his idea as graphically and beautifully as possible. The quotations are from the Prayer Book Psalter. In the Bible translation it is, "our lips are our own;" that is, no one has a right to control them,- -a sentiment very fashionable in times as late as ours.

* We once asked an exceedingly well read lawyer (an author) if his profession did not make much of precedents. "Oh, yes, they are sometimes equivalent to law." "Suppose they run ever so far back, and meet with little or no contradiction?" "Then, sir, they are law, absolute law." "Thank you," said we to our friend, who belonged to the Dutch Church; "that is the way in which our folks figure out Episcopacy!" Lawyers are used to such gibes, and know how to take them better than divines. Our friend laughed heartily, and said he was fairly caught. Jeremy Taylor, in his "Ductor Dubitantium, expressed a similar idea about precedents in interpreting: "Nothing is more reasonable in questions concerning the interpretation of a law, than to inquire how the practice of people was in times by-gone; because what they did when