lacy which must have its foundation in the traditions and commandments of men,

We now ask whether this is not equally true of all her other peculiarities. Where in the holy scriptures do we find anything in support of their baptismal regeneration, their holy days, their preaching deacons, their rite of confirmation, their forms of prayer, their sign of the cross, and their priestly vestments? Richard Whately, D. D. archbishop of Dublin, in his "Kingdom of Christ Delineated," says, "No such a thing is to be found in our scriptures as a catechism, or elementary introduction to the christian religion; nor do they furnish us with anything in the nature of a systematic creed; nor do they supply us with any liturgy for ordinary worship, or with forms for administering the sacrament, or for conferring holy orders, nor do they give any precise direction for these and other ecclesiastical matters-anything at all corresponding to a rubric or set of cannons.'

The truth is, that every thing which is peculiar to the prelatical church, is matter of tradition and not of revelation. The tradition of

the fathers, and not the revelation of God, is the foundation on which that church, whether papal, Grecian, Anglican, or anglo-American, must rest. And who are the fathers? and what is this tradition? The fathers are a class of converted and uninspired heathen, who came into the church just as young converts do now, with all their old prejudices to contend against. They were men of some distinction. in their days, but by no means infallible either in their opinions or practice. And what is their tradition? It is all that they are reported to have believed and practiced upon apostolic authority.

Of the works of the fathers, archbishop Whately says, "That a very large portion of the works of the orthodox fathers are lost, or some fragments or reports of them by other writers alone remain." Again he says, "What has come to us is so vast in amount that a lifetime is not sufficient for the attentive study of even the chief part of it. These authors are not agreed with each other, or with themselves upon all points, and learned men are not agreed in the interpretation of them, and still less agreed as to the orthodoxy of each, and the

degree of weight due to his judgment, nor are they agreed by some centuries as to the degree of antiquity which is necessary to make the authority of each decisive." He then adds:"Every thing, in short, pertaining to this appeal, is obscure, uncertain, disputable, and actually disputed, to such a degree, that those who are not able to read the originals, may yet be able to perceive how unstable a foundation they furnish." But the reader will be better able to judge of the value of these old tomes when he is informed that the papal hierarchy palmed a book upon the people in the dark ages, "The Decretals of Isidorus," in which ancient. bishops who were the contemporaries of Tacitus and Quintillion, are made to use the barbarous latin of the ninth century; the customs and constitutions of the Franks are attributed to the Roman emperors; ancient popes, who lived three centuries before St. Jerome, are made to quote the Bible from his latin translation, and Victor, bishop of Rome in the second century, is made a correspondent of Theophilus, who was bishop of Alexandria towards the close of the fourth."

Such impostures were practiced by the pa

pists through the dark ages, and yet they were the keepers of the pretended works of the fathers, and the manufacturers of those traditions by which their successors would now make void the law of God. Who would vouch for the correctness of any work of the authenticity of which they have no other evidence than that it has come down through this polluted channel? and yet the works of the fathers, and the traditions of the church, thus handed down, and thus obscure, uncertain, and contradictory, when obtained, is the court to which our opponents would appeal, from that sure word of prophecy to which inspiration informs us we shall do well to take heed.

This appeal, you will perceive, takes the subject out of the hands of the people, and leaves them no means of determining what the polity of the church should be, or what are its ordinances, or who are authorized to administer them, but by implicitly relying on the word of their priests. If you should ask your priest, when you are about to become the godfathers and godmothers of your neighbor's child, and to covenant with the great God that that child shall forsake all the ways of the devil, where

there is any authority for your so doing, he would tell you it was supported by the tradition of the church and by the works of the fathers. If you should answer him that this was a solemn affair, and you wished to see the authority for yourselves, he would reply, if he was an honest man, that this was not possible, because, first, you could not have access to them if you could read them. Secondly, a lifetime would not suffice for your studying them. If you should ask him on what authority you must then rely, he would tell you that all the evidence you could have was that the prelatical churches now practiced in this way, and you were bound to believe that they were correct.

This is the kind of testimony on which prelatists must rely for the authority of everything that is peculiar to themselves.

The third mark of the carnal religion, allegorised by the apostle, is that it consists in rites and forms.

Is not this true of prelacy, as it is of the other two branches of the carnal system? Take away from any branch of the prelatical church those rites and forms which are not enjoined in