tongues have been conferred on any man.
The same Spirit which dictated the Gospel we believe to pervade the
whole spiritual universe, giving wisdom liberally to all who seek it,
and enlightening those who do the will of God respecting the doctrine
which is of God.

Since the Roman Catholic Church cannot find a basis for its claims in
the Scriptures, those claims must be founded on the 'apostolical and
ecclesiastical traditions' which she requires her members 'most firmly
to admit and embrace.' The question between the Catholic and Protestant
Churches on this subject is,--what traditions are to be received and
what rejected; for the one Church would be as unwilling to receive all
that have been current, as the other to reject all that have been
substantiated. It is evident, as the Protestant Church admits, that the
Christians who were not converted by the Apostles themselves, and who
lived before the publication of the canonical Scriptures, could have had
no other foundation for their faith than tradition; and on the same
ground we establish our belief in the genuineness of the Scriptures; _i.
e._, we declare them canonical.

When we reject traditions therefore, it is not as traditions, but in
proportion to their evidence. If they appear inconsistent with the
sacred writings, incompatible with the convictions of reason, or
disagreeing with the circumstances of the age, we feel that the balance
of evidence is against them. If they be merely vague and
inconsequential, and not contradictory to each other or to any known
truth, we hold them loosely, without firm conviction and without
positive disbelief. If they be, not only consistent with, but
corroborative of ascertained truth, clear in the origin, and early and
extensively held, our faith in them is willing and steadfast. Of the
first class are those traditions which were pleaded before the second
Council of Nice, A. D. 787, on behalf of the worship of images, which we
reject on all the grounds mentioned above; viz. because they are
inconsistent with the spirit and letter of the sacred books; because
they are incompatible with the convictions of our reason, and because
they are perfectly irreconcileable with the practice of the Apostles and
the discipline of the primitive Church. Of the second class are those
which relate the various fate of the first followers of Christ, and
which we admit in the absence of all other evidence, though on such
slight grounds as to have