maintaining all its great fundamental truths; nay, perhaps, of preserving even the very name as well as substance of Christianity, which, humanly speaking, would probably have been long since extinct, had it not been nurtured and cherished by this its appointed guardian and protector.....
Let us take for instance, those articles of faith which have already been shown to be essential to the Christian Covenant:—the doctrines of the Trinity, of our Lord's Divinity and Incarnation, of His Atonement and Intercession, of our sanctification by the Holy Spirit, of the terms of acceptance, and the ordinances of the Christian Sacraments and Priesthood. At what period of the Church have these doctrines, or either of them, been by any public act disowned or called in question! We are speaking now, it will be recollected, of what in the language of Ecclesiastical history, is emphatically called the Church; that, which has from age to age borne rule, upon the ground of its pretensions to Apostolical succession* And to this our inquiry is necessarily restricted.....
Surely, here is something to arrest attention; something to awaken reflection; something which they who sincerely profess Christianity, and are tenacious of the inviolability of its doctrines, must contemplate with sentiments of awe and veneration. For, though a sceptic may contend that this species of evidence does not amount to a direct and demonstrative proof of the truth of the doctrines; yet if they be not true, how shall we account for their having been so uninterruptedly transmitted to these latter times? How they have withstood the assaults of continued opponents? opponents, wanting neither talents nor inclination to effect their overthrow? If these considerations be deemed insufficient, let the adversary point out by what surer tokens we shall discover any Christian community, duly answering the Apostle's description, that it is "built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief Corner-Stone?"
