On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
the ritefe and ceremonies of the church . The 12 th , 29 th , 31 st and 35 th , are altogether omitted . In conformity with the third Article , Tertullian maintained that Christ descended into hell * or to that part of the invisible mansion of departed spirits prepared for the souls of the faithful . He held also , as does the fourth Article , that Christ ascended into heaven with the same body that was crucified and buried . While treating on this subject , our
author takes occasion to give a short account of the work De Resurrectione Carrds % written against those heretics who were induced to deny the doctrine chiefly on account of their opinions relating to the evil nature of matter . With the sixth Article , " Tertullian uniformly speaks of the Scriptures as containing the whole rule to which the faith and practice of Christians must be conformed in points necessary to salvation : " and though in his controversies with those who rejected the authority of Scripture , he was compelled
to appeal to tradition , it is in such circumstances and with such restrictions as not to afford any sanction to the notions on this subject which have since prevailed in the Roman Catholic church . Tertullian gives no professed catalogue of the canonical books of either the Old or the New Testament , but his quotations include nearly all the books that are now received . He also quotes the book of Enoch and some of the Apocryphal books , and
discovers in many of his citations from the canonical Scriptures , the incorrectness which is too generally and too justly chargeable on the ancient Christian Fathers . In the course qf the very interesting remarks of the learned and candid Professor in this part of his inquiry , he successfully defends Tertullian on the subject of tradition against the translator of Schleiermacher ' s Essay on the Gospel of St . Luke , and briefly refutes the theory of the author of a recent work entitled Palceoromaica . Speaking of tradition , he observes ,
" If we mistake not the signs of the times , the period is not far distant when the whole controversy between the English and Romish Churches will be revived , and all the points in dispute again brought under review . Of those points none is more important than the question respecting tradition ; and it is , therefore , most essential that they who stand forth as the defenders of the Church of England should take a correct and rational view of the subjectthe view , in short , which was taken by our divines at the Reformation . Nothing was more remote from their intention than indiscriminately to
condemn all tradition . They knew that as far as external evidence is concerned , the tradition preserved in the Church is the ouly ground on which the genuineness of the books of Scripture can be established . For though we are not , upon the authority of the Church , bound to receive as Scripture any book which contains internal evidence of its own spuriousness—such as discrepancies , contradictions of other portions of Scripture , idle fables , or precepts at variance with the great principles of morality—yet no internal evidence is sufficient to prove a book to be scripture , of which the reception , by a portion at least of the Church , cannot be traced from the earliest period of its history
to the present time . What our Reformers opposed was the notion , that men must , upon the mere authority of tradition , receive , as necessary to salvation , doctrines not contained in Scripture . Against this notion in general , they urged the incredibility of the supposition that the apostles , when unfolding in their writings the principles of the Gospel , should have entirely omitted any doctrines essential to man ' s salvation . The whole tenor , indeed , of those writings , as well as of our blessed Lord's discourses , runs counter to the supposition that any truths of fundamental importance would be suffered long to rest upon so precarious a foundation as that of oral tradition . With respect to the particular doctrines , in defence of which the Roman Catholics appeal to tradition > our Reformers contended that some were directly at variance with Sejrittturej , an < l tUat others , far from being supported by an uiu
Untitled Article
Review . —Dr . Kaye * Tertullim * 365
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1827, page 355, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1796/page/43/
-