STATEMENT

OF

DISTINCTIVE PRINCIPLES.

THIS Society was organized at a meeting of several of the Bishops, and a respectable number of the Clergy and Laity of the Protestant Episcopal Church, during the session of the General Convention in the year 1847. At that time a brief statement of the distinctive principles of the Society was presented to the public. The subsequent appointment of a new officer, as General Secretary, whose whole time is to be devoted to the affairs of the Society; and the consequent removal of the seat of its operations from Philadelphia to New-York, present a fit occasion for a somewhat fuller enunciation of the principles on which the Society is based; and as the hope is indulged of an increasingly liberal patronage in support. of its operations, it is no more than right that the Church should be put in full possession of the views, by which the Society proposes to govern itself.

Without further preface, then, these views may be

presented under the two great divisions of religious teaching,

and,

The Elements of Christian Theology;

The Constitution of the Christian Church.

I. THE ELEMENTS OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. In themselves, these are identical with the whole and true body of the doctrines of the Gospel. In relation to these doctrines, the Society desires to be known as, DISTINCTIVELY EVANGELICAL. It starts not on its course under the banner of Calvinism, of Arminianism, of Lutheranism, or of any other human School for training in religious controversy. It wishes. to move under the single banner of Christ and his Gospel. It would be known as simply and distinctively Evangelical.

Under this head, however, it is not necessary to the purposes of the following Exposition, to set forth a complete Body of Divinity. What the Society understands by distinctively Evangelical, may be made to appear by stating and illustrating those points, which have had a leading influence in its organization.

The religious doctrines of any individual Christian, or of any body of Christians, so far as those doctrines are intelligently received and held, take their distinctive character from the Rule of Faith which they adopt; that is, from the authority, to which they appeal in settling and proving their doctrines. The same is true of the views taken of the Constitution of the Christian Church. Hence the necessity of defining, at the outset, the Rule of Faith,

which the Society adopts. This, indeed, is not strictly one of the doctrines of Christ's religion. Nevertheless, being a guide to the determination of those doctrines, it may with propriety head the list of the Society's Distinctive Principles.

1. On this point, then, the Society takes the well known ground of The Bible, as the sole Rule of Faith; in distinction from the equally well known ground of The Bible and Tradition as the joint Rule.

Strictly speaking, Divine Testimony is the only authoritative rule of faith. This Testimony, whereever it may be certainly and clearly found, is decisive in all questions of religious truth. It admits of no appeal, or doubt. The Divine Testimony was communicated in olden times, by "holy men, who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." Being thus infallibly secured against error, the communications of these men were unquestionable Truth. Originally their communications were transmitted to others both by writing and by word of mouth; and, in either case, they were perfectly reliable. Their written communications from God, safely handed down from age to age, we now possess in the several books of the Canonical Scriptures. These Scriptures, therefore, are Divinely authoritative in all matters of Faith. From the nature of the case, however, the oral communications of inspired men were strictly confined to those whom they originally addressed. When transmitted by these latter, either orally or in writing, they ceased to be the oral communications of the Divine Testimony by inspired men; and passed into the form of a professed report of such communications; true, only in proportion as they were truly re

ported. But, as all such reports, in passing from man to man, and from age to age, are liable to deep corruption, or to total loss, even these have become wholly untrustworthy. Indeed, we have no evidence that any of them, as they came from God, have ever reached our times. Hence it is manifest that the Canonical Scriptures alone remain as the Church's Rule of Faith. They are the only standard of Divine authority, to which we can appeal in settling and proving the true doctrines of Christianity.

But the Church of Rome, having overlaid "The faith once delivered to the Saints" with various corrupt and corrupting dogmas, and being unable to defend her additions by a fair appeal to the Bible; holds that this sacred Book needs an infallible Interpreter, and that this interpreter is her own infallible self. She claims to hold certain ancient traditions,-the alleged oral teachings of the Apostles,-which have been handed down in several of her ancient writings, or embodied in a portion of her peculiar observances. These Traditions she regards as of equal inspiration, and therefore, of equal authority, with the Canonical Scriptures and with this assumed character of those Traditions, she attempts to bolster her claims as an Infallible Interpreter of these Scriptures. With her,not the Bible alone, but the Bible and Tradition jointly, are the Rule of Faith: the Bible and Tradition; each of equal inspiration and authority; the latter necessary to the right interpretation of the former; and herself possessed of sole, exclusive right to use the one in settling the sense of the other.

With this monstrous and fallacious claim there are, unhappily, in our own Church, not a few, who more

or less deeply sympathise; and from whom this Society is constrained most emphatically to differ. To admit that the alleged Traditions are of co-ordinate inspiration and authority with the Canonical Scriptures, and in this character necessary to a right interpretation of those Scriptures, is, in effect, to place Tradition above the Bible: inasmuch as that which interprets, is of higher rank than that which is interpreted. This accounts for the practical regard for Tradition, and the virtual disregard for the Bible, which so notoriously characterize the Church of Rome, and which she cherishes notwithstanding the total want of proof that her Traditions have any Inspiration; notwithstanding the manifest corruptions and falsehoods with which they abound; and notwithstanding the demonstrable truth, that, instead of being either less obscure, or more accessible, they as really need interpretation as the Lively Oracles themselves, and for all practical purposes, are far less easily approached.

For Tradition, in the sense of our thirty-fourth Article, this Society cherishes the proper regard. It considers Tradition as entitled to conscientious respect, whenever embodied in such "Ceremonies of the Church as be not repugnant to the Word of God, and as have been ordained and approved by common authority." It goes farther, and regards written or historic Tradition as useful in ascertaining what were the actual teachings of the ancient Christian authors, and the actual decisions of the ancient Christian Councils, whether these teachings and decisions were agreeable or contrary to the Word of God;-nay, as valuable, like all other appropriate human aids, in attaining to a