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which could be proved to be apostolical; nor does our accepting the traditions of the universal Church in their day, involve our accepting those of the particular Church of Rome, after so many centuries of corruption, in the present.
In your Romanist character it is natural to say,
"These are the principles which have ever guided the Catholic Church; by deviating from these the nations of Europe have fallen into anarchy and confusion; and it is only by zealous efforts, such as our children of the University are now making for the restoration of those principles, that peace and harmony and unity can be reproduced."
But in your real character how will you excuse the fallacy which your assumed one palmed upon your readers? especially when the writer had accompanied his citations with the remark:
"Tertullian is, on the one hand, a very early witness for the existence of the general doctrine which this passage contains, while on the other he gives no sanction to the claims of those later customs on our acceptance, which the Church of Rome upholds, but which cannot be clearly traced to primitive times."
Do you really believe that Tertullian and St. Basil bear out the claims of modern Rome? If not, your assumed character was too hard for your honesty—if you do, I leave you to arrange the question with a really learned divine and Bishop of our day;
"In the passage to which reference has just been made, Tertullian speaks of written and unwritten tradition; but the cases in which he lays any stress upon the authority of the latter, are precisely those which our reformers allowed to be within its province—cases of ceremonies and ritual observances. Of these he enumerates several for which no express warrant can be found in Scripture, and which must consequently have been derived solely from tradition; the forms, for instance, observed in baptism, in the administration of the Lord's Supper, and in public prayer."
Bishop Kaye is here referring to the very passage of Tertullian, the quotation of which, together with that of St. Basil, calls forth your reprobation; and we cannot do better than refer you, and ultra-Protestants generally, to the masterly
