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nication from God, would be sufficient to guarantee this Divine fact of the inspiration of the Bible. It is a fact not cognizable by human reason, which could only be known to God in the first instance, and to man only in case God should have communicated it to him either directly or through an infallible church. Even supposing Protestants take the Old Testament on trust from the Jews, a Divine witness is still required to attest the fact of the inspiration of the New Testament. No proof of the inspiration of the New Testament can be drawn from the Old, and no proof can be drawn from the New Testament, since it cannot give witness to itself. But Protestants acknowledge no Divine witness but the Bible; and as nothing less than a Divine witness is required for the fact of inspiration, it follows that Protestants have no grounds for believing in the inspiration of the New Testament. Hooker, who is a great authority with Protestants, says in his "Ecclesiastical Polity," book ii. No. 4, "If any one book of Scripture did give testimony to all, yet still that Scripture which giveth testimony to the rest, would require another Scripture to give testimony to it, neither should we come to any pause whereon to rest, unless, besides Scripture, there was something else acknowledged." This is quite conclusive about the Protestant doctrine of the Bible and the Bible only." But I have heard some Protestants say, that faith proves to them the inspiration of the Scriptures; that is, faith proves to them the inspiration of the volume upon which alone they profess to build their faith! Is there not a vicious circle here ? If there be any among my readers who rely upon this argument, I would ask them, how would they proceed in trying to convince a pagan? Others, with a greater degree of plausibility, say that they know what books are inspired, by what they are pleased to call "internal evidence," which is equal to saying that they have, in their own minds, a rule whereby to test all books for which inspiration is claimed, and distinguish between such as can and such as cannot make out their claim. I will merely ask them to compare Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon, which Protestants believe to be inspired, with the Book of Wisdom, which they reject as apocryphal, or the Epistle to Philemon with the Epistle of St. Barnabas. Others, again, have attempted to prove the inspiration of the Bible from the holy doctrine it contains; the change of life in many sinners after perusing it, and similar arguments. By proving too much, this argument proves nothing at all; for on the same principle, most sermons, commentaries, and religious books, might be proved to be inspired. Some will give as their reason for believing in the inspiration of the New Testament, that it was written by the Apostles; and yet receive as inspired the Gospels of St. Mark and St. Luke, who were not Apostles, and reject the Epistle of St. Barnabas, who was an Apostle (Acts xiv. 13), in the

Our Lord even could not give testimony of Himself; "If I give testimony of myself, my testimony is nothing."

same position as St. Paul, and who is declared, in Acts xi. 24, to have been "full of the Holy Ghost, and of faith."

It may be remarked, also, that those who have recourse to this line of argument would require some infallible assurance that the books of the New Testament were really written by the persons whose names they bear; for it is obvious that in this case the historical evidence whereby we know, for instance, that Horace wrote the "Ars Poetica," would be insufficient as a foundation for the Divine faith. The other method, which some Protestants adopt, of looking upon the Bible as a whole, and arguing from one book to another, saying, for instance, that the Epistle of St. James must necessarily be inspired, because Isaiah contains true prophecies, is so absurd as not to require any notice. For my own part, I can only say with St. Augustine, and I am sure every Catholic will say the same, "I would not believe that the Scriptures were inspired, unless the Catholic Church informed me of the fact."-(Contra Ep. Fundam.)

I will now say a few words with regard to the canon of Scripture. For sake of brevity, and also not to prolong this discussion by the introduction of the controversy about the so-called Apocrypha, I will confine myself entirely to the New Testament. It was about ninety-seven years after the birth of our Lord, before the Gospel of St. John appeared.* * By this time there were more than twenty gospels current among the faithful; there was an epistle by St. Barnabas, another by St. Clement (Phil. iv. 3), and another work called the "Shepherd," by Hermes, one of St. Paul's friends (Rom. xvi. 14). Several of these gospels, and all the epistles, are still extant, and may be bought as "The Apocryphal New Testament." There were also many other writings attributed to the Apostles and their contemporaries, which have not come down to us,-such as an epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians, which was written before that which is now called the first (1 Cor. v. 9), and the Epistle to the Laodiceans, which St. Paul commands the Colossians to read (iv. 16). Now, many of the treatises which I have mentioned were accepted in various parts of the early church as the inspired word of God; and many of the books which Protestants now receive, such as the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Epistles of St Peter, St. James, St. Jude, the last two of St. John, and the Apocalypse, were rejected in some churches as not inspired. Ample evidence of this fact may be found in Eusebius, or any of the early ecclesiastical historians. During the first three centuries, we have as many as fourteen or fifteen lists, drawn up by eminent authors, of the books which they conceived to constitute the sacred Scriptures. Scarcely any two agree, and, what is most remarkable, not one ancient author can be quoted, who enumerates precisely the same books which Protestants now enumerate as making up the Bible. The Loadicean canon, which comes nearest to that of the Church of England,

St. John's Gospel was written after all the other books of the New Testament.

admitted Baruch, and excluded the Apocalypse. None of the authors I have mentioned assert that their canon was the only true one; they might lawfully differ on the question, for it had not yet been defined by the Church. I ask, then, how on Protestant principles could all this variety of opinion come to an end? On Protestant principles, I do not see how it ever could come to an end; in fact, I do not see how it ever came to have a beginning; for if the Bible was really designed by God to be the sole instructor of mankind, it is surely not too much to expect that He would not have left Christians during a period of three or four centuries in a state of utter uncertainty as to what really was the Bible, and left them, moreover, without any means of coming to a certain decision about it. He would have set some mark upon every part of His written word, so that it should have been recognized at once and without dispute; whereas, all that we know concerning the Christians of the first four centuries, shows that there was nothing upon which there was so much difference of opinion as this very point. They all held the same faith and believed the same doctrines, but were not agreed as to the number of books which constituted the canon of Scripture. Moreover, if the Protestant doctrine, that the Bible is a sufficient Rule of Faith, be true, it is impossible that they ever should come to an agreement on this matter, since the Bible nowhere gives a table of its own contents; and so this controversy regarding the very foundation of the faith must needs remain for ever unsettled. The controversy was set at rest by the unerring voice of the Catholic Church, and was not renewed until the period of the Reformation. Protestants having then rejected the tradition and authority of the Catholic Church, were of course exposed to the most hopeless uncertainty. Luther rejected the Epistle of St. James and the Apocalypse; and were all the books, which were rejected or doubted by the Reformers and their followers, expunged from the canon of Scripture, very little of the Bible would be left. But, providentially, the majority of Protestants have been content to leave the decision of the Catholic Church, on the New Testament at least, unquestioned. I defy any of my Protestant readers to show that they have any other basis whereon to rest their belief in the canonicity of the various books of the New Testament, except the authority of the Catholic Church. Curiously enough, some of the most eminent Protestant writers have been forward in avowing this. Luther, in his Commentary to the 16th chapter of St. John, says, "We are obliged to yield many things to the Papists; with them is the word of God, which we received from them, otherwise we should have known nothing at all about it." Bell, in his "Downfall of Popery,' p. 134, says, As the Papists admit the Jews' tradition of the canon of the Old Testament to be God's word, and withal refuse many other traditions of theirs, so Protestants admit this tradition (the canon and inspiration of the New Testament), and reject all others. Chillingworth, in his "Religion of Protestants," says, in chap. II., No. 25, "We do not believe the Scriptures to be canonical because

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they say so, the credibility of universal tradition." And again, in No. 27, he says, The question whether such and such a book be canonical Scripture, though it may be decided negatively out of Scripture, yet affirmatively it cannot be decided, but only by the testimony of the ancient churches.' To crown all, Hooker, in his "Ecclesiastical Polity," book ii., sec. 14, says, "Of things necessary, the very chiefest is to know what books we are to esteem holy, which point is confessed impossible for the Scripture itself to teach." The Rule of Faith, then, adopted by Protestants condemns itself; their own conduct, and the confessions of their most eminent writers, show that the Bible only is not a sufficient Rule of Faith. Protestants must have recourse to tradition for the most important article of their belief.

But let me not be misunderstood. Fam not blaming Protestants for acting in this matter on the true and right principle, that is, on the Catholic principle; what I blame them for is not their inconsistency in acting occasionally upon a right principle, but their adoption, as a general rule, of a false one. They say that the Bible alone is a sufficient Rule of Faith. They know, therefore, what books are inspired, either from the Bible alone, or from some other unerring authority. If from the Bible alone, where is the list of inspired books given in the Bible? If from some other authority, do they not deny that the Bible only is a sufficient Rule of Faith? Let Protestants, if they can escape from this dilemma,-let them show that they have any real and trustworthy grounds whereon to rest their belief in the canon of Scripture. Until they do this, all their appeals to the Bible are vain. They are fighting with armour which they have not proved, and which they cannot prove; they are building before they have laid the necessary foundation; they appeal to the Bible, and yet are unable, on their own principles, to prove that what they call the Bible really is the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible. IGNATIUS.

Politics.

OUGHT THE INDIAN OPIUM TRADE TO BE

SUPPRESSED?

AFFIRMATIVE ARTICLE.-II.

THE remarks of "Poppy" on this question, in your last number, are so full of mis-statements that it would take more time and space than we have to refute them. The principal points only will now be referred to. "Poppy" says that the Chinese are dram drinkers, that drunkenness produces greater evils than opium smoking, and that if we take from them the opium pipe-the lesser evil, we drive them to the dram glass-the greater evil.

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Now, allowing that every nation must have its stimulants, and remembering that opium smoking in China is not 100 years old, whereas China as a nation is about 4,000 years old, how did the people exist without opium so long? The answer to this is that they have had their legitimate stimulants in tea, tobacco, and wine, from time immemorial, and that opium is a modern exotic, which is fastening on the vitals of the nation like a cancer. As for spirits, they are very moderately used indeed, and, in spite of Sir J. Bowring's statement to the contrary, it may safely be affirmed that dram-drinking never has been a Chinese vice.

"Poppy" affirms that in China the poorer classes cannot afford to use tea, and therefore it is absurd to suppose that the masses in China can afford to smoke opium, and hence it does not call for British interference.

Notwithstanding this thorough-going way of disposing of the question, it is an undeniable fact that from the highest to the lowest the Chinese enjoy the luxury of tea; and as to their use of opium, the Times' correspondent, writing from China, observes:-"In the first house we visited, no man spent on an average less than 80 cash a day on his opium pipe. One man said he spent 120. The chair Coolie spends 80, and his average earnings are 100 cash a day. English physicians, unconnected with missionary societies, have assured me that the Coolie opium smoker dies not from opium but from starvation. If he starves himself for his pipe, we need not ask what happens to his family."

To prove the evils of opium smoking one has only to turn to the testimony of every impartial witness from China, the opposing testimony is invariably from interested parties. "Poppy" says that opium "as a luxury (if not abused), or as a medicinal drug, is a perfectly legitimate source of gain.' Of course it is, "if not abused;" but, unfortunately, its entire consumption in China, with the smallest possible fraction of an exception, is abused, and therefore it is not a legitimate source of gain. But, in spite of this, Christian Britain supplies Heathen China with the means of indulging in a vice which is sapping the foundations of health, wealth, and morality.

But "Poppy" appears to hold that zeal, and philanthropy, and even Christianity itself, although very good things in their way. have no right to interfere with his favourite science of political economy. Now, it must never be forgotten, that political economy is only to be trusted so long as it is content to remain the humble handmaid of religion and morality, and the moment she disowns these as her superiors, she becomes a mischievous, self-conceited jade, that will inevitably lead her votaries into error. What is wrong in the region of morality can never be right in the region of political economy.

Opium smoking is rapidly spreading in China, and in other parts of the East-like a moral cancer, producing unmixed evil-and it is, therefore, wrong for Christian Britain to pander to the vice by

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