ent the same as that by which we prove the genuineness and
authority of the four gospels. The unanimous tradition of all the
churches to certain articles of faith is surely an irresistible
evidence, more trustworthy far than that of witnesses to certain facts
in a court of law, by how much the testimony of a number is more cogent
than the testimony of two or three. That this really is the ground on
which the narrow line of orthodoxy was maintained in ancient times, is
plain from an inspection of the writings of the very men who maintained
it, Ambrose, Leo, and Gregory, or Athanasius and Hilary, and the rest,
who set forth its Catholic character in more ways than it is possible
here to instance or even explain.

4.

However, in order to give the general reader some idea of the state of
the case, I will make some copious extracts from the famous tract of
Vincent of Lerins on Heresy, written in A.D. 434, immediately after the
third Ecumenical Council, held against Nestorius. The author was
originally a layman, and by profession a soldier. In after life he
became a monk and took orders. Lerins, the site of his monastery, is one
of the small islands off the south coast of France. He first states what
the principle is he would maintain, and the circumstances under which he
maintains it; and if his principle is reasonable and valuable in itself,
so does it come to us with great weight under the circumstances which he
tells us led him to his exposition of it:[367]

"Inquiring often," he says, "with great desire and attention, of
very many excellent, holy, and learned men, how and by what means I
might assuredly, and as it were by some general and ordinary way,
discern the true Catholic faith from false and wicked heresy; to
this question I had usually this answer from them all, that whether
I or any other desired to find out the fraud of heretics, daily
springing up, and to escape their snares, and to continue in a
sound faith himself safe and sound, that he ought, by two ways, by
God's assistance, to defend and preserve his faith; that is, first,
by the authority of the law of God; secondly, by the tradition of
the Catholic Church."--_Ch._ 2.

It will be observed he is speaking of the _mode_ in which an
_individual_ is to seek and attain the truth; and it will be observed
also, as the revered Bishop Jebb has pointed out, that he is
allowing[368] and sanctioning the u