twenty, either wholly or partially extant, Fathers of the three first centuries?

Dr. Trevern and Mr. Berington have made the attempt: but, with what emolument, the inquirer has noticed, and Mr. Husenbeth has acknowledged. All these ancient Fathers die: and, unhappily for the cause of Romanism, they die, and make no sign. The peculiarities of the Latin Church, as Mr. Husenbeth assures us, can indeed, on EVERY point, be traced up to the Apostles, in a manner perfectly rational and satisfactory: though, as he confesses, not precisely in the singular method, that is to say, through the evidential medium of the Fathers of the three first centuries, which, with most perverse ingenuity, I have marked out for him and his painful associates.

II. No reasonable being can be required to believe A FACT, without adequate historical demonstration: yet I will readily allow, that a fact may have occurred, though we may be unable to prove its occurrence.

Hence, though the alleged FACT, of the universal reception of roman peculiarities by the Catholic Church quite up to the time of the Apostles, be utterly incapable of historical substantiation: still, in the abstract, the FACT itself may really have occurred.

Having, therefore, now shewn negatively, that The Romanists are unable to produce any evidence in favour of their peculiarities either from Scripture

or from the writings of the three first centuries: I shall next proceed to shew positively, that The ancients are not merely silent, but that they actually bear strong and direct testimony against those strange innovations, both in doctrine and in practice, which characterise the modern Church of the Latin Patriarchate.

BOOK II.

THE TESTIMONY OF HISTORY AGAINST THE

PECULIARITIES OF ROMANISM.

Hoc exigere VERITATEM, cui nemo præscribere potest; non spacium temporum, non patrocinia personarum, non privilegium regionum. Tertull. de virgin. veland. Oper. p. 490.