TRADITION NO AUTHORITY.
By Joseph Clarke
In perusing lately Tytler's History, a few sentences seemed to my mind to cast light upon the present age and state of things. He says: "A supposition in many respects as absurd and irrational began to pollute the christian church in those ages, and still continues to maintain a very extensive influence. This was the worship of saints and relics. At Rome the bones of St. Peter and St. Paul, or rather, what were believed to be such, were removed from their graves one hundred and fifty years after their death, and deposited in magnificent shrines. In the following ages, Constantinople, which could boast no treasures of that kind within its own walls, had recourse to the provinces, and acquired from them the supposed bodies of St. Andrew, St. Luke and St. Timothy, after these had been dead for three hundred years. "But these sacred treasures were appropriated solely to the churches of the capitals of the empire. Other cities and their churches borrowed portions of these relics; and where they had not interest to procure these, their priests had dexterity to discover relics of their own. It was easier for the vulgar mind to approach in prayer the image, or simply the idea of a holy man—one who had been on earth, subject to like passions with themselves—than to raise their imaginations to the tremendous and incomprehensible nature of the Supreme Power: hence the prayers to the saints." The above quotation from Tytler's Universal History, vol. 3, book v, chap. iv, proves that the worship of relics, commenced in the early age of the church. Many suppose that the church was comparatively pure in those times. Another quotation from the same learned author: "In the time of Theodosius a majority of the saints voted an application to the emperor, to restore the altar and statue of victory; and the cause of Paganism was artfully and eloquently pleaded by the senator Symmachus, as that of Christianity by the celebrated Ambrose, archbishop of Milan. The dispute was managed on both sides with great ability. The argument of Symmachus was certainly the best that could be brought in support of his cause. He balances the certain effects of an adherence to ancient customs with the uncertain consequences of an innovation. If, says he, the past ages of the Roman State have been crowned with glory and prosperity—if the devout people have obtained the blessings they solicited at the altars of the gods, is it not advisable to persevere in the same salutary practices, rather than to risk the unknown dangers that may attend rash ambitions? The reasoning was plausible. But the arguments of Ambrose had a more solid foundation: he exposed the futility of that blind and indolent maxim, that ALL innovations are dangerous; he reproved that absurd veneration for antiquity which would not only maintain mankind in childhood and ignorance, but discourage every improvement of science, and replunge the human race into their original barbarism. After removing the veil which shut out the light, he displayed the beauty and excellence of the Christian system, and finally prevailed to the conviction of the senators against the able advocate of Paganism." Vol. 3, book v, chap. iv. Who does not discover in Symmachus the advocate of Paganism, the same serpentine thread of argument now used by the advocates of traditionary institutions? Shall we observe the festival Sunday because it is handed down to us from an early period by the church? By the same rule we must pay devout worship to the relics of St. Paul or St. Peter. As Symmachus maintained that the Roman empire had attained to a wonderful height of glory and renown under the patronage of heathen or pagan deities, so do the people now maintain that God has owned and blessed the festival of Sunday; and as Symmachus held that a change of their worship from Jupiter to Jesus Christ would endanger the Roman empire, so do many now fear to change from the observance of traditionary institutions, to the keeping of the holy law of Jehovah? How striking the thought the human mind has ever been rather in search of precedents than to know the Lord's will! Shall the authority of antiquity settle the question of right? If so then idolatry must be set up; for Paganism is almost as old as the race of man. What confidence can an honest, earnest, godly person place in those practices which have no foundation in the word of God, but rest wholly upon the authority of a corrupt church? so corrupt and degenerate as to seek in the earth for the decaying bones of a dead man, and so soon after the establishment of the Christian system? But we have still stronger and more conclusive evidence of the early departure of the churches from their primitive purity. I think that Christ's message to the seven churches of Asia, comprised in the iid and iiid chapters of the Revelation, gives an alarming call to them to reform, and that there existed at that early period, heresies which, if matured, would condemn those churches. The epistles of Paul and Peter, of James and John, abundantly confirm this opinion, so that we are sufficiently warned in the New Testament against putting confidence in church institutions when unsustained by revelation.
JOSEPH CLARKE.
Portage, Ohio.