5. The unauthorised practice of praying for the dead, under any aspect, being thus plainly a mere innovation upon the primitive simplicity of the Gospel; its utility, as we learn from Cyril of Jerusalem, was questioned by MANY, even so late as the middle of the fourth century. Finding not a vestige of the thing in the whole Bible, and naturally judging that we can know nothing about the matter save from a distinct revelation, they very sensibly asked: How is the soul benefited by any such mention of it, whether it depart from this world with sin or without sin? [29b]
It were well, if the Romish Clergy, when they boast of the immutability of their doctrine and practice, would account of these odd variations.
IV. Meanwhile, let the sober inquirer judge for himself, whether there be even a shadow for the idle plea: that the doctrine of Purgatory is revealed in the Bible, and that it was maintained from the beginning by all the early Fathers.
CHAPTER IV.
UNWRITTEN TRADITION AND INSUFFICIENCY OF THE WRITTEN WORD ALONE.
I SHALL next proceed to examine the Romish assertions respecting Unwritten Tradition and the Insufficiency of the Written Word alone.
I. Although the Church of Rome, speaking through the Council of Trent, claims the Written Word of God as a voucher for her doctrines; yet, as if conscious, that, from Scripture ALONE, her peculiarities cannot be established as a part of divine revelation, she asserts: that Unwritten Tradition ought to be had in EQUAL reverence with the Written Word; so that, what cannot be proved from the Written Word, must be received without hesitation, if it be propounded by Unwritten Tradition.
From this assertion it evidently results: that, Without the concurrence of a supplemental Unwritten Tradition, the Written Word or the Holy Bible is defective and insufficient as a rule of faith and practice.
The Holy Synod, say the doctors of the Council of Trent, perceiving, that this faith and discipline are contained, both in the Written Books, and in the Unwritten Traditions which have descended to us from Christ and his Apostles, receives and venerates, after the example of the orthodox Fathers, WITH AN EQUAL AFFECTION AND PIOUS REVERENCE, both all the Books of the Old and New Testaments, and likewise the Traditions themselves, whether appertaining to faith or to morals, as if orally dictated from Christ and the Holy Spirit, and as preserved by continual succession in the Church Catholic. [30]
II. Let us now hear what Scripture says on the topic at present under discussion.
1. The unwritten traditions of the Rabbins, by which they made void the Law of God, claimed to have been delivered to Moses on Mount Sinai by the Lord himself: and their pretended authenticity rested precisely upon the same mode of reasoning, as that employed, for their parallel unwritten traditions, by the Clergy of the Roman Communion. Yet Christ reprobated such vain unhallowed phantasies in language and on principles, which equally apply to the antiscriptural unwritten traditions of the Latin Church.