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ART. II.-Lectures on the Right Use of the Early Fathers. By the Rev. J. J. BLUNT, B.D., late Margaret Professor of Divinity. London: John Murray, Albemarle-street.

DAILLÉ, in his elaborate but unfair and sophistical work on what he pleases to term 'the right use' of the Fathers, holds, that whether as witnesses to fact, or interpreters of Scripture, they are worth nothing. Sanders, in his De Schismate Anglicano,' says, that the question is not whether we are to follow God or man; the Holy Scriptures or uninspired teachers; but whether on the 'whole it be not safer to trust to the guidance of the most ancient, holy, and learned Fathers of the Church, whether taken singly 'or altogether, than to follow in the steps of a few unlearned 'moderns.' Between the Puritan and the Romanist who is to

decide?

Our own Anglican Professor, whose learned and very valuable work heads our article, may, we think, be well admitted to discharge this responsible office; as far, that is, as any individual teacher can be received as the final authority in a question so vast and momentous. We are at least sure that he has many of the gifts and attainments requisite for the due performance of such a duty, rarely to be found united in one man; a long and intimate acquaintance with his subject, unwearied industry, great powers of argument, much constructive skill, and a simple desire of eliciting truth; and from the vast repertory of learning which the lamented author has bequeathed to us in this valuable work, we now propose to select for discussion a few subjects which may appear to admit of further examination or to require additional

support.

Professor Blunt does not take in the whole list of Fathers, but, following the plan of Daillé, confines himself exclusively to the Ante-Nicenes. His work is divided into two parts. The first part is chiefly, but not exclusively, employed in answering the objections raised by Daillé to the use of the Fathers, and the sophisms of his countryman Barbeyrac on the same subject. Of the second part, the first five lectures are occupied with the refutation of certain assertions of Gibbon. From the sixth

to the ninth, is discussed the authority of the Fathers as witnesses to the power and constitution of the early Church and as assistants in ascertaining the canon and text of the Scriptures of the New Testament. In the tenth and four following is contained a careful and elaborate examination of their opinions on the doctrines of the Holy Trinity; the Atonement; the Sacraments;

Predestination, and other subjects which were afterwards called into discussion by Calvin and the Socinians; and in proving that they were wholly different to those which are laid down in the Anti-Christian systems, as we believe them to be, of those moderns. The fifteenth, and last, shows that much light has been thrown by them on passages of the New Testament, from the information they give us of the early heresies, which are not only alluded to by the Apostles, but which, if we may so say, almost at times mould their expressions.

Daillé compares the early Church to some ancient city, now so thoroughly ruined that it is impossible to distinguish with accuracy any one building in it.

'Do but fancy' (he says) 'to yourselves a city that hath lain ruinated a thousand years, no part whereof remains, save only the ruins of houses, lying all along here and there confusedly, all the rest being covered all over with thorns and bushes. Imagine then that you have met with one that will undertake to show precisely where the public buildings of the city stood, and where the private; which were the stones which belonged to one, and which belonged to the other; and, in a word, who in these confused heaps, where the whole lies all together, will notwithstanding separate ye the one from the other. The very same task in a manner doth he undertake, whoever shall go about, truly, and precisely to distinguish the opinions of the ancient Church. This antiquity is now of eleven or twelve hundred years' standing, and the ruins of it are now only left us, in the books of the writers of that time, which also have met with none of the best entertainment, in their passage through the several ages down to our time, as we have showed before. How then can we entertain the least hope, that amidst this so great confusion, we should be able yet to distinguish the pieces, and to tell which of them honoured the public temple, and which went to the furnishing of private chapels only? especially considering that the private ones have each of them ambitiously endeavoured to make their own pass for public.'-English Version, 1651, Part I. p. 149.

If this be a true statement, of course there is an end at once of all hope of good from any attempt to make way through ruins so confused, and paths so impenetrable; and we can only wonder that any man has ever thought of undertaking a labour so hopeless and so profitless. But the truth is far otherwise. We accept indeed Daillé's comparison, but we say, that so far from being the devastated wilderness he describes, the Church, of whatever age it matters not (for it is one and the same), is that 'city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God;' it is the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem;' and He, its founder and chief corner-stone, will never suffer it to be so given over to the enemy as to become of a city a heap, of a defenced city a ruin, a palace of strangers to be no city.'

If Daillé, however, had intended to abide by his own words, he would have spared himself the trouble of composing, and his readers the pain of perusing, his work. As it is, he knows that

if the earlier links in the chain can be proved untrustworthy, the later ones will be rendered worthless; and accordingly he bends all his strength to the accomplishment of this object.

He divides his work into two parts. The object of the whole is to prove that the Fathers are no real, trustworthy authorities, either in the controversies with Romanists, or on any other subjects. His reasons are as follows. First, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to discover their opinions on the questions at issue; and, secondly, as they are not infallible, their opinions are not of sufficient weight to command acquiescence on subjects in which we neither can nor ought to believe anything but that of the verity of which we are certain. And he proceeds to prove these assertions by a series of reasons, in the force and applicability, and even occasionally in the essential truth of which it is difficult to think he himself could have had any confidence. Nor does it seem to have occurred to him that these two assumptions on which his work rests are inconsistent with each other. If we have a number of authorities, real or pretended, to a fact or opinion, and their testimony is, from whatever cause, so obscure that we can by no care or pains decide what they really would say-and this, if anything, is what Daillé means to assert it remains for him to inform us what is the value of any after question of their fallibility or infallibility; and this he has not done. To enter upon the latter, you must tacitly, at least, abandon the former question. The former thesis is not true in fact; and the latter we wholly deny. It proves too much, and therefore results in proving nothing at all. Neither Daillé himself, nor any other man, say what they may, ever confined their religious belief to those guides alone whom they believe to be inspired. The argument of probability has ever practically weighed with mankind, as it ought to do. Nay, as Daillé puts it, it is impossible that we should have any religious guides or religious faith at all; for we do not absolutely know, as he requires us to do, that our Lord Himself was God the Son, or that His apostles themselves were inspired; we only believe it; but on that belief we are willing and thankful to act, and to risk the greatest stake we can risk, even our eternal salvation. Such knowledge as Daillé demands is not for this life, which is one of probation, not merely in fleshly ills and trials, but also in religious faith. According to him, S. Thomas was right; and faithful Christians coming after him are less and not more blessed than he, because having not seen, and therefore not knowing, they still believe. With such a fatal flaw in the very outset of his argument, the reader might well be justified in closing his work at once; and we are convinced that nothing but a foregone conclusion, and an utter hostility to the real

substance of Church teaching, could ever have given this work even the place it does hold in theological literature.

Professor Blunt has given as complete an exposure of its many fallacies, and morally, if not literally, untrue statements, as it deserves; perhaps a more complete one than such a book is worth.

Daillé, in fact, requires, as he avows, infallibility in his religious guides (and so far, at least, he is honest, if not reasonable); nothing short of this will suit him. For the infirmities of human nature, the lapse of memory, an error of reasoning, a mistake of fact; in a word, for—

'Maculas quas aut incuria fudit, Aut humana parum cavit natura,'

he can make no allowance. We do not see how, if his theory could be carried out (a thing that is simply impossible), there can be any history of the Church, or any trustworthy commentary on the Scriptures; or how in any of the great controversies, the Arian, for instance, or the Nestorian, there can be either a right or a wrong. None of the Fathers engaged in either ever, that we know of, pretended to infallibility; and no apostle has come back to decide the question. We do not see what right he has logically or consistently to praise S. Augustin and S. Jerome, or to blame S. Hilary or Tertullian. He admits himself to be liable to err, and if we are to be indeed his pupils, his teaching upon his own ground can only end in this, that we follow his opinions in no respect. We wish indeed that he had informed us whether he does or does not receive the directions of S. Paul himself, when he speaks not as an apostle, but as a private individual only.

One of Daille's proofs of the assumed difficulty of learning the opinions of the early Fathers, is that we have so few of their writings, especially of those of the first three centuries. But he does not say whether or not he would have us on this account reject what we have and know to be genuine. We have their opinions, let us say, on so many points; we wish for them on others; but these, if recorded, are now lost to us; are we then to throw away what we have, because it is not more? to refuse a part because we cannot have all? Did Daillé himself, or any man in his senses, ever act on such a principle in the affairs of this world? He has, moreover, given us a list of extant works of Ante-Nicene authors, which, although imperfect, is still sufficient to form something of a record of the opinions of each age and generation. To further his own argument, he should have proved that at least some one vital truth, as we consider it, is known to have been without record, long

enough to cause it to become matter of doubt when it is afterwards found to be asserted. This he has not done; if we be asked why, we can only reply that it must be because he knows that among all the accidents which have happened to the writings of those earlier ages of the Church, whether by the injury of time, which consumeth all things, or the malice of men;' and all the errors, differences, and divarications which are granted to exist, which it would be irrational and preposterous not to expect in the volumes of fallible men, and which tend, indirectly at least, rather to establish than to disparage their general truth; there is no point necessary to salvation, nothing, in a word, which a Christian ought to know and believe to his soul's health,' which cannot be proved to have been held as such from our own days to those of the Apostles themselves; no heresy perilous to the soul, but the holder of it, if he only search and look (and in many cases he who runs may read), may find ample warning against it.

But, as if conscious that this objection would not hold, Daillé suddenly shifts his ground, and informs us that if all other disadvantages were overcome, we still cannot be sure that even the writings we have are really those of the men whose names they bear for corruptions are known to have been frequent from the earliest ages, and therefore, he says, forgeries may be presumed to have been so. Without examining the sequence of this conclusion, let us see how he deals with it and endeavours to establish it. He dwells on it and labours at it for more than twenty closely printed quarto pages. He wishes earnestly that a lost treatise of S. Amphilochius of Iconium, the friend of the great S. Basil, in which he discussed the forgeries that were in existence in his day, were now extant,' as he thinks it would be a great aid to us in distinguishing the true writings of the Fathers from their spurious imitations. But, to say nothing of the probability of such a work telling against Daillé himself, who. could, on his principles, assure us that if the book were in our hands to-morrow, we had the very work of its author? Who is to test the test? Again, he supports his opinion by the authority of S. Jerome, who says that 'the transcribers write not what they find, but what they understand; and while they endeavour to correct the errors of others, they display their own.' This is a very fair specimen of Daillé's manner of arguing. The statement is very loose, and is moreover suicidal in result. Daillé applies S. Jerome's words in a sense quite different to that in which he wrote them. To say nothing of the partial corrective which S. Jerome in the last clause admits to exist, in