CHRONOLOGICAL ARRANGEMENT. "Where is your religion? Where is the reverence due to your fathers? You have renounced your ancestors, in your manners, your living, your teaching, your manner of thinking, finally, in your very language. You are constantly applauding antiquity, and yet daily live in novelties. Thus it appears that, whilst you depart from the good institutions of your ancestors, you keep and retain those which you ought not to do, and those which you ought to retain you do not."-Tertullian.1 THE APOSTOLIC AGE. THE foundation of the Christian religion is JESUS CHRIST. We only know of him and his precepts from the testimony of those who have recorded his acts and teaching, as eye and ear witnesses, or, as in the case of St. Luke, from the testimony of those who had the advantage of a personal intercourse with our Saviour. When the apostles whom God had singled out to build his church upon Christ, the only Foundation, were removed from their labours, they left us, in writing, an inspired book, to guide us in the right way, and teach us the saving truths entrusted to them by their Divine Master. They acknowledged no object of adoration but God, no intercessor but Christ, no expiatory sacrifice but his death, no other way of justification but through FAITH 1 "Ubi religio? ubi veneratio majoribus debita a vobis? habitu, victu, instructu, censu, ipso denique sermone proavis renuntiastis. Laudatis semper antiquitatem, et nove de die vivitis. Per quod ostenditur, dum a bonis majorum institutis deceditis, ea vos retinere et custodire quæ non debuistis, cum quæ debuistis non custoditis."-Apolog. adv. gentes., cap. vi. p. 20, vol. v. Halæ Magd. 1773. in their blessed Redeemer. We read of no altar at the supper, nor image in temples, no universal bishop in the church, no souls in purgatory, nothing of a queen in heaven, nor merits of saints, nor pompous ceremonies. The greatest ornaments of the church were simplicity of doctrine and sanctity of life. Any deviation from the written and inspired word of God must be based on human invention-and what is human is fallible. What has been added to the Word is "wood, hay, and stubble." The introduction of Jewish and heathen ceremonies by the early converts to Christianity, the pomp of paganism, the ignorance of the people, and the connivance or craft of those who would be teachers, gradually obscured the word of God, under the guise of tradition. Innovations were introduced by degrees; and, step by step, we find consummated in the sixteenth century, that huge deformity called POPERY. In the following pages, the gradual development of papal errors and corruptions will be traced in chronological order. It will be seen how, age after age, a succession of unscriptural novelties crept in, and were by degrees incorporated with the faith of the primitive church, till at length the heterogeneous mass of truth and error which makes up the creed of Rome was sanctioned and authorized by the council of Trent. THE SECOND CENTURY. THE characteristic of the apostolic age was simplicity. Justyn Martyr (A.D. 130) has left us a record of the service and worship of that day. He thus describes it : : "On the day that is called Sunday there is an assembly, in the same place, of those who dwell in towns or in the country; and the histories of the apostles and the writings of the prophets are read, whilst the time permits; then the reading ceasing, the president verbally admonishes and exhorts the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise in common and offer prayers, bread and wine and water are offered, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, as far as it is in his power to do so, and the people joyfully cry out, saying-Amen. And the distribution and the communication is to each of those who have returned thanks, and it is sent by the deacons to those who are not present. And this food is called by us the Eucharist. And in all that we offer we bless the Maker of all things by his Son Jesus Christ and by the Holy Spirit. Of those who are rich and willing, each according to his own pleasure, contributes; and what is thus collected is put away by the president, and he assists the orphans and widows, and those who through sickness or any other cause are destitute." Such was the simplicity of worship in those early days; but even here we trace an innovation, in the addition of water to the wine, not sanctioned by the sacramental institution or apostolic ordinance.2 1 Second Apology for Christians, p. 97. Paris, 1615. 2 According to Polydore Vergil, this custom was introduced by Alexander I., bishop of Rome, A.D. 109. Polydore Vergil, De Invent. Rer., B. v. c. vii. p. 108. Langley's Edition, London, 1551. Polydore Vergil was a member of the Roman church, a man of great learning and genius of the 15th century. He was sent into this country by Pope Alexander II. to collect the papal tribute. The work from which we quote, and to which we shall have frequently to refer, is the "De Inventionibus Rerum." This honest writer could not be tolerated, so his book was ordered to be corrected, and we find it accordingly expurgated in several places, both in the Expurgatory Belgic Index, and that of Madrid; and Possevine tells us in his "Apparatus Sacer," a catalogue of ecclesiastical books (tom. ii. p. 294; Cologne, 1607), that the edition which Pope Gregory XIII. commanded to be purged at Rome, 1576, might be read, which varies considerably from the edition published by Robert Stephen; printed at Paris, 1528. For further information see" Defence of Sir H. Lynd's," " Via Tuta." London, 1850, pp. 96, 97. |