Patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, were personally present in it, and all voluntarily assented to and signed the Creed: it certainly was the public Faith of all the Patriarchal Churches. The Bishops assembled at Nice, I repeat, declared the Faith they professed was delivered to them by their predecessors in their respective Sees, who had received the same by uninterrupted tradition from the Apostles; and; consequently, was not, like Arianism, a newly invented doctrine; but had been the public Faith of the successors of the Apostles, and of all the Apostolic Churches in the preceding ages, which indeed had been but few, as this great Council was held only 225 years after the death of St. John the Evangelist, and consequently it was very easy for them to trace the constant tradition of their doctrine through so short a period. As these Bishops taught their flocks the doctrines of the Divinity of Christ and the Trinity of Persons in God, so it cannot be doubted, but that the people believed and professed: the doctrine taught them by their Pastors, whom they believed to have been appointed by the Holy Ghost to feed and govern them. From which it will follow, that the doctrine which they professed and defined in the Council of Nice, was the public Faith of all the Churches which they governed; not merely the private opinion which the Fathers entertained in their own breasts. Even the Arians themselves, Rev. Sir, who were present in this Council (Nice), did not deny Jesus Christ was God, or that the doctrine of his Divinity was a part of the Faith which had been handed down from the Apostles. They acknowledged the title of God was due to him; they acknowledged that he was the Creator of the world, and of all things visible and invisible; -what they contended for was, that he was not consubstantial with his Father, nor equal to him, nor co-eternal with him; but that though God, he himself had been at first

created by his Father out of nothing. These very exceptions which they made, and which began only in Arius, who first broached these new opinions, which were condemned by the Fathers, are a correlative and a convincing proof, that the doctrine professed by the Fathers in the great Council of Nice, had been the uniform faith of all the Christian Churches, previous to the invention of the new opinions of Arius and his followers.

As to what is constantly advanced by Unitarians, that the Council of Nice was overawed by Constantine; in reply, I assert, Rev. Sir, that there was not the least necessity for it. Tillemont, p. 646-7, says: "that out of 318 Bishops who composed this Council, the abettors of Arius were no more than thirteen, according to Theodoret ; seventeen, according to Rufinus; and twenty-three, according to the Arian writer Philostorgius. All the rest, amongst whom there were a very great number who bore about their bodies, the marks of the torments they had undergone for the sake of Jesus Christ, were all zealous maintainers of the Catholic Faith." What need, therefore, was there for Constantine to overawe the Council in favour of the Catholics, when there were 295 Catholic Prelates against 23 Arians, which gave the ancient Faith a majority of 272.

"If Christ be only a man," says Novation, "how is he every where present to those who call upon him, since

"this is not the nature of man, but of God, that he can be present in every place? If Christ be only a man, why "does man invoke him in prayer as Mediator, since the "invocation of a man must be considered as ineffectual to "the accomplishing deliverance and salvation? If Christ "be nothing more than a mere man, why is our hope put "in him, seeing- Cursed is the hope that is placed in "man?' "—(Novation de Trinit. cap. 14.) The present Jew reads how his ancestors saw him (Jesus Christ) adored by the Christians in the first century, and he proves it from the Talmud, wherein are divers relations of R. Eleizar, the great friend of R. Akiba, who lived in the end of the first century, and the beginning of the second, concerning the Gospels, and the public worship rendered to Christ by the Christians.—Allix's Judgment, p. 432.

LETTER XX.

SECOND LETTER ON UNITARIANISM.

TO THE REV. CHARLES LE BLANC.

REV. SIR,

WHEN a few years ago the Unitarians set up their new system, by which they deny the Fundamental Doctrines of Christianity, they found the whole Christian world, as I have proved, in the possession and in the uniform belief of the said Doctrines. If from our time we

gradually remount from age to age till we arrive at the very establishment of the Church, we find in every century exactly the same uniform belief; therefore, we conclude, that that constant, that uniform, that universal belief was derived from the Apostles; consequently it contains the true and genuine meaning of the Scriptures respecting the said Doctrines; therefore, the Doctrines of the Unitarians, a doctrine of yesterday, and diametrically opposite to that constant and uniform belief of Christendom, cannot be conformable to the Sacred Scriptures. This reasoning is in perfect unison with the celebrated rule of St. Augustinea rule founded on the common sense of mankind: "That which the whole Church holds or practises, and which has not been instituted or introduced either by some Pontiff or Council, must be considered as descending from Apostolical Tradition." "Quod universa tenet Ecclesia, nec Conciliis institutum, sed semper retentum est, non nisi auctoritate Apostolica traditum rectissime creditur."-(S. Aug. de Bapt. Cont. Donat. Lib. 4, cap. 24.)—which perfectly coincides with this other maxim of St. Vincent of Lerins: "What has been believed in every place, in every age, and by all, is incontrovertibly Catholic Doctrine." "Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est, hoc est vere proprieque Catholicum."—(St. Vincent Lyrin, Commonit.)

And indeed reason dictates, that a Doctrine which is common to all Christian nations, which embraces all times and all countries, must have had a common origin; and that it cannot be traced but to the founders of Christianity itself, the Apostles of Jesus Christ. For as this Doctrine is coeval with the Christian era, it cannot have had an author posterior to the Apostolic age; and as it is universal all over the Christian world, it must have had an universal source, viz., the preaching of the Apostles all over the globe.

Hence it evidently follows, that the present uniform belief of all Christians touching original Sin, the Mysteries of the Trinity, of the Incarnation, of the Redemption of mankind, comes down to us in a lineal descent from the Apostles, and through them from Christ himself. (See St. Matthew xxviii.)

St. Luke (xxiv. 45) informs us, "That he opened their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures." On the other hand, the Apostles faithfully discharged the high trust committed to them; they, therefore, instructed their hearers, that is to say, the Christians of the first age, in the true meaning which Christ our Lord had attached to his own words. They did so, especially, with regard to the Fundamental points of his Gospel; such as the Mysteries of the Trinity, and the Divinity of Christ. Therefore the Apostles clearly explained to their primitive converts, whether their Divine Master understood by these words, "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," three distinct subsisting persons in God; and whether they were, of course, to be worshipped as true God or not. Whether Jesus Christ was no more than a creature, or whether he was true God and true man, and

so on.

Had the Apostles not done this, they would manifestly have been deficient in the discharge of their divine commission; they would have exposed their own and all future generations to the danger of going astray from the very object of their worship; to the danger of a monstrous Idolatry, in adoring three persons in God, instead of one, or a mere man in Jesus Christ, instead of a God. The Apostles of course explained to the primitive Christians the true meaning of these passages; which the Christians of the present and past ages have invariably understood to imply the mysteries of the Trinity, of the Divinity of Christ,