Even this must be received 'cum grano salis.' To be sure, with the licences of interpretation, which the Fathers of the first three or four centuries allowed themselves, and with the 'arcana' of evolution by word, letter, allegory, yea, punning, which they applied to detached sentences or single phrases of Holy Writ, it would not be easy to imagine a position which they could not 'shew in Scripture.' Let this be elucidated by the texts even now cited by the Romish priests for the truth of purgatory, indulgence, image-worship, invocation of dead men, and the like. The assertion therefore must be thus qualified. The ancient Fathers anathematized any doctrine not consentaneous with Scripture and deducible from it, either 'pari ratione' or by consequence; as when Scripture clearly commands an end, but leaves the means to be determined according to the circumstances, as for example, the frequent assembly of Christians. The appointment of a Sunday or Lord's day is evidently the fittest and most effectual mean to this end; but yet it was not practicable, that is the mean did not exist till the Roman government became Christian. But as soon as this event took place, the duty of keeping the Sunday holy is truly, though implicitly, contained in the Apostolic text. Ib. vi. 3. p. 392. Again, with a negative argument, David is pressed concerning the purpose he had to build a temple unto the Lord: 'Thus saith the Lord, Thou shalt not build me a house to dwelt in. Wheresoever I have walked with all Israel, spake I one word to any of the judges of Israel, whom I commanded to feed my people, saying, Why have ye not built me a house?' The wisdom of the divine goodness both in the negative, the not having authorized any of the preceding Judges from Moses downwards to build a temple--and in the positive, in having commanded David to prepare for it, and Solomon to build it--I have not seen put in the full light in which it so well deserves to be. The former or negative, or the evils of a splendid temple-worship and its effects on the character of the priesthood,--evils, when not changed to good by becoming the antidote and preventive of far greater evils,--would require much thought both to set forth and to comprehend. But to give any reflecting reader a sense of the providential foresight evinced in the latter, and this foresight beyond the reach of any but the Omniscient, it will be only necessary to remind him of the separation of the ten tribes and the breaking up of the realm into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel in the very next reign. Without the continuity of succession provided for by this vast and splendid temple, built and arranged under the divine sanction attested by miracles--what criterion would there have existed for the purity of this law and worship? what security for the preservation and incorruption of the inspired writings? Ib. vii. 3. p. 403.