LECTURE I.

REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN.

ST. JOHN xvii. 3.

“This is life everlasting, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.”

MY purpose is to speak of the grounds of Faith; I do not mean of the special doctrines of the Catholic theology, but of the grounds or foundation upon which all Faith rests.

This is a subject difficult to treat: partly, because it is of a dry and preliminary nature; and partly, because it is not easy to touch upon a matter so long controverted, without treating it likewise in a controversial tone. But I should think it a dishonour to the sacredness of truth itself, if I could treat a matter so sacred and so necessary in a tone of mere argument, I desire to speak, then, for the honour of our Lord, and, if God so will, for the help of those who seek the truth. To lay broad and sure the foundations on which we believe is necessary at all times, because as the end of man is life eternal, and as the means to that end is the knowledge of God, and of Jesus Christ whom He hath sent, our whole being, moral, intellectual, and spiritual, demands that we should rightly know, and by knowledge be united with, the mind and will of God. And what is necessary at all times is especially so at this. For this land, once full of light, once united to the great commonwealth of Christendom, and grafted into the mystical vine, through whoso every branch and spray life and truth circulate, three hundred years ago, by evil men for evil ends, was isolated from the Christian world, and torn from the unity of Christ. Since that time, what has been the religious history of England? The schism which rent England from the Divine Tradition of Faith, rent it also from the source of certainty; the division which severed England from the unity of the Church throughout the world planted the principle of schism in England itself. England, carried away from Catholic unity, fell as a landslip from the shore, rending itself by its weight and mass. England, Scotland, Ireland, parted from each other, each with a religion of its own, each with its rule of faith. With schism came contradiction; with contradiction uncertainty, debate, and doubt.

Nor did it stop here. That same principle of schism which rent asunder these three kingdoms propagated itself still further. In each country division followed division. Each Protestant church, as it was established, contained within itself the principle both of its creation and dissolution, namely private judgment. And private judgment, working out its result in individual minds, caused schism after schism; until we are told by a writer, Protestant himself, that in the seventeenth century, during the high time of Protestant ascendency, the sects of England amounted to between one and two hundred.

But there are causes and events nearer to our day which render it more than ever necessary to turn back again to the only foundations of certainty, and lay once more the basis of faith. The establishment so long by many believed to be a Church, a body with a tradition of three hundred years, up held by the power of this mighty nation, maintained by the sanction of law and legislature, in vested with dignity and titles of state, possessing vast endowments, not of land or gold alone, but of that which is more precious, of treasures which the Catholic Church had gathered, and of which it was rudely spoiled; universities, colleges, and schools: that vast body, cultivated in intellect, embracing the national life in all its strength and ripeness, in an hour of trial was questioned of its faith, and prevaricated in its answer. It was bid to speak as a teacher sent from God; it could not, because God had not sent it. And thus the last remaining hope of certainty among Protestant bodies in this land revealed its own impotence to teach. The body which men fondly believed to partake of the divine office of the Church, proclaimed that alike in its mission and its message it was human.

What then do we see in this land? Sects with out number, perpetually subdividing; each equally confident, all contradictory: and that dominant communion which claims to be authoritative in teaching, itself confounded by internal contradictions of its own. How has this come to pass? It is because the Rule of Faith is lost, and the principle of certainty destroyed. Put a familiar illustration: suppose that in this teeming commercial city, where men, in fret and fever from sunrise to sunset, buy and sell, barter and bargain, the rules of calculation and the laws of number were to be come extinct; what error would ensue, what litigation, what bankruptcy, and what ruin! Or suppose that in this great mercantile empire, whose fleets cover the seas, the science of astronomy and the art of navigation were to perish; the shores of all the world would be strewn with our wrecks. So it is in the spiritual world. The Rule of Faith once lost, souls wander and perish. The effect of this is that men have come to state, as scientifically certain, that there is no definite doctrine in revelation. As if, indeed, truth had no definite outline. And we find in serious and even good men an enmity against the definite statement of religious truth. They call it dogmatism. The Athanasian Creed they cannot away with. It is too precise and too presumptuous. They feel as men who turn suddenly upon the image of our crucified Lord. They start at it from its very definiteness; and as the sight of a crucifix unexpectedly produces a shock, so will the definite statement of truth. It forces home the reality of faith. People now-a-days assume that religious truth can have no definite out line, and that each man must discover and define it for himself. And however definite he may choose to be, one law is binding equally upon us all. No one must be certain. Each must concede to his neighbour as much certainty as he claims for him self. The objective certainty of truth is gone. The highest rule of certainty to each is the conviction of his own understanding. And this, in the revelation of God; in that knowledge which is life eternal.

I. In answer, then, I say, that all knowledge must be definite; that without definiteness there is no true knowledge. To tell us that we may have religious knowledge which is not definite, is to tell us that we may have colour which is not distinguishable. Every several truth is as distinct as the several colours in the rainbow. Blend them, and you have only confusion. So is it in religious knowledge. Doctrines definite as the stars in heaven, when clouded by the obscurities of the human mind, lose their definiteness, and pass from sight.

Is not this true in every kind of knowledge? Take science, for example. What would a mathematician think of a diagram which is not definite? What would any problem of physical science be, as in optics, or in mechanics, or engineering, or in any of the arts whereby man subjugates nature to his use, if it were not definite? How could it be expressed, by what calculus could it be treated? What, again, is history which is not definite? History which is not the record of definite fact is mythology, fable, and rhapsody. Where history ceases to be definite, it begins to be fabulous. Or take moral science; what are moral laws which are not definite? A law which is not definite carries with it no obligation. If the law cannot be stated, it cannot be known; if not known, it has no claim on our obedience. Unless it definitely tell me what I am to do and what I am not to do, it has no jurisdiction over my conscience. And as in human knowledge, so, above all, in divine. If there be any knowledge which is severely and precisely definite, it is the knowledge which God has revealed of Himself. Finite indeed it is, but definite al ways: finite as our sight of the earth, the form of which is round; and yet. because our narrow sight can compass no more, to us it seems one broad expanse.

Again, take an example from the highest knowledge. When we speak of wisdom, goodness, or power, we carry our mind upward to the attributes of God. When we see these moral qualities reproduced in a finite being, we call them still by the same titles. So with knowledge. What is knowledge in God but an infinite and definite apprehension of uncreated and eternal truth? The knowledge which God has of Himself and of His works is a science divine, the example and type of all. To descend from the divine perfection; what is knowledge in the angels but equally definite, though in a finite intelligence? And what was the knowledge of man before the fall, but, though finite, definite still? What, then, is the knowledge which God has restored to man through revelation but a definite knowledge, a participation of His own? The truth which has been revealed, what is it in the mind of God who reveals it, but one, harmonious and distinct? What was that knowledge as revealed by the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, but one, harmonious and distinct? What was the conception of that knowledge in inspired men, but one, harmonious and distinct also? And what was that knowledge when communicated by those who were inspired to those who believed, but one, harmonious and distinct as before? And what is this unity and harmony and distinctness of knowledge, which God revealed of Himself through Jesus Christ, but the faith we confess in our creed? Our baptismal faith, its substance and its letter, the explicit and the implicit meaning, article by article, is as definite, severe, and precise, as any problem in science. It is of the nature of truth to be so; and where definiteness ends, knowledge ceases.

Observe, then, the distinction between finite knowledge and definite knowledge. Is not science definite? Yet it is also finite. The theory of gravitation, definite as it is, is finite too. The theory of electricity is definite as far as we know it, but finite also. Go through the whole range of physical sciences, what is it but an example of the same condition of knowledge, definiteness in conception with finiteness of reach? What has astronomy revealed to us? The starry heavens, in which we trace the laws and revolutions of heavenly bodies. We find centre after centre, and orbit beyond orbit, until at last we reach what has been long fixed upon as the centre of the universe; and yet even here, science now tells us that probably this, our central point, which we believed to be fixed, is again itself a planet revolving around some mightier centre which science cannot attain. Here, then, are the conditions of definiteness and finiteness combined. So in revealed truth. If we have not a definite knowledge of what we believe, we may be sure we have no true knowledge of it.

II. But, further, it is evident that knowledge must also be certain. When we speak of certainty, we mean one of two things. Sometimes we say, that a thing is certain; at other times, that we are certain. When we say a truth is certain, we mean, that the proofs of that truth are either self-evident, or so clear as to exclude all doubt. This is certainty on the part of the object proposed to our intelligence. But when we say we are certain, we mean that we are inwardly convinced, by the application of our reason to the matter before us, of the sufficiency of the evidence to prove the truth of it. In us, certainty is rather a moral feeling, a complex state of mind. As light manifests itself by its own nature, but sight is the illumination of the eye; so certainty means truth with its evidences illuminating the intelligence, or, in other words, the intelligence possessed by truth with its evidences.

This we call certainty. I ask, then, is there not this twofold certainty in the revelation which God has given? Was not the revelation which God gave of Himself through Jesus Christ made certain on His part by direct evidence of the Divine act which revealed it? Is it not also certain on our part by the apprehension and faith of the Church? Was not God manifest in the flesh that He might reveal Himself? Did not God dwell on earth that He might teach His truth? Has not God spoken to man that man might know Him? Did not God work miracles that man might believe that He was present? What evidence on the part of God was wanting that men might know that Jesus Christ was indeed the Son of God?

And if there was certainty on the part of God who revealed, was there not certainty also on the part of those that heard? Look back into the sacred history. Had not Prophets and Seers certainty of that which they beheld and heard? Had not Abraham certainty when he saw a dark mist and a smoking furnace, and a fiery lamp moved between the portions of the sacrifice? Was not Moses certain when he beheld the pattern shown to him on the Mount? Was not Daniel certain when the angel Gabriel flew swiftly and touched him at the time of the evening sacrifice? Were not Apostles and Evangelists certain when they companied with our Lord, and said, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have diligently looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of Life”? Were not the Twelve certain in the upper chamber? Were they not certain on the day of Pentecost? Was not Paul certain in Arabia, when lie teamed the Gospel, not of man, nor of flesh and blood, but “by the revelation of Jesus Christ?” Was not John certain in Patmos, when heaven was opened, and the vision of the future was traced before his eye? And were not they certain to whom Patriarchs, Prophets, Seers, Apostles, Evangelists, preached and wrote? Has not the Church of God been certain from that hour to this of the revelation given and received at the first?

What, then, is the first condition of faith but certainty? He that has not certain faith has no faith. We are told that to crave for certainty implies a morbid disposition. Did not Abraham, and Moses, and Daniel, the Apostles and Evangelists desire certainty in faith, and crave to know beyond doubt that God spake to them, and to know with definite clearness what God said? Was this a morbid craving? Surely this is not to be reproved. But rather the contrary disposition is worthy of rebuke. How can we venture to content ourselves with uncertainty in matters where the truth and honour of God and the salvation of our own souls are at stake? This truly is not without sin.

We are told, indeed, that to be certain is in consistent with faith, that probability is the atmosphere in which faith lives, and that if you extinguish probabilities, faith dies. Did the Apostles then believe the doctrine of the ever-blessed Trinity upon a probability? Did they believe the doctrine of the Incarnation upon conjecture? Was it because they walked in twilight that their faith in their Divine Lord was acceptable?

To what are we come? In this Christian land, once full of light, once in unity with the Church of God, once replenished with truth,—to what are we come? A new virtue is promulgated; to be uncertain of the truth and of the will of God; to hold our faith on probabilities. And yet, what is the very idea of Revelation but a Divine assurance of Truth? Where faith begins uncertainty ends. Because faith terminates upon the veracity of God; and what God has spoken and authenticated to us by Divine authority cannot be uncertain.

I am aware, brethren, that much of what I have said has no application to you. You are the heirs of a Divine inheritance. As the science of astronomy, in its severity and truth, has descended by intellectual tradition from the first simple observations made on the plains of Chaldea down to the abstract and complex demonstrations of these later times, so has the tradition of faith, the science of God, come down to you. You have been born within its sphere. You know it by a manifold assurance, by the certainty of God revealing it, the Scriptures of God recording it, the Church of God preserving it, the Councils of the Church defining it, the Holy See from age to age condemning error and setting its seal upon the faith. You have it brought down to you with imperishable certainty. Your guide is not human but Divine. Why then do I speak to you? Because you have a mission to fulfil. You have to bring others to a share of the same inheritance. I bespeak your charity and your patience in their behalf. I cannot better put before you the state of those who have lost what to you has been preserved, than by a parallel. Suppose I were to write an inscription, and show it to you. Having read it, the meaning of that inscription passes, so to speak, into the very substance of your mind. It is ineffaceably impressed upon your memory. Then tear it into twenty pieces, and give one piece to twenty men respectively; set them to discover the whole. I know it, because I wrote it; you know it, because you have seen and read it. They know it only in part. They have each a fragment; but they cannot conjecture the rest. So is it with the sects that are around the Church of God. The one inscription, written, not by man, out by the Spirit of God upon the illuminated reason of the Church, has descended perfect and entire until now. But each several sect as it departed from unity carried away a fragment. The children of schismatics inherit a fragment only. As “faith cometh by hearing,” so theology cometh by hearing, and the doctrine of the Catholic Church in its harmony, unity, and distinctness, comes by hearing. They who never heard that faith, to whom the science in its fullness has not descended, have but a fragment, from which they labour in vain to conjecture the remainder. You can help them. Not by controversy; not by destroying what they have already. To destroy even a fragment of the Truth is Satan’s controversy. The divine way of establishing faith among men is not to throw down, but to build up: to add, to develop, to perfect. Every truth that a man possesses is so far a pledge that you have a share in him, that so far he is with you Hold him fast by that truth. Add to it the next which follows in Divine order; and so in patience and in charity lead him on from truth to truth, as by the links of a chain, and bind him to the altar of God.

And now, of those who reject the principles I have stated, and deny to theology the character of definiteness and certainty, I would ask two questions:—

1. First, I would ask, What do you believe? Put it in words. Conceive it in thought. Fix your mind’s eye upon it. Put it in writing in some silent hour: know at least what it is. As you value your eternal soul, as you believe that the end of your being is to be united with God eternally, and that the means to that eternal union is the knowledge of God in Christ Jesus, be not content a day to abide in uncertainty and indefiniteness concerning the truth, which you know to be vitally necessary to your salvation.

Again I say, put it in words. First, what do you believe of the Godhead? You believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost? This you hold definitely and without a doubt. What do you believe of the Incarnation of the Son of God? That in Him two whole and perfect natures are united in one person, never to be divided. You believe the Godhead, presence, and office of the Holy Ghost? But there remain other articles of your creed. We come next to “the Holy Catholic Church.” What do you believe in this article of Faith? Will you say, “We have definite and certain knowledge of the former articles, but not of the latter. When I come to ‘the Holy Catholic Church’ I come to a region where uncertainty is lawful”? But uncertainty is doubt, and doubt and faith are contradictory. You may not doubt in your baptismal faith, or be uncertain as to the articles of your creed. May we make an open question, for example, of the resurrection of the dead? Why not be also uncertain whether or no the Holy Spirit of God be in the world now; or, being now in the world, whether He have a present office to teach? You believe this; but why believe this, and doubt of other doctrines of the same creed? And if you believe that the Holy Spirit does still teach the world, how does He teach? Each several man by immediate inspiration? If not, then how? You will say perhaps, that He teaches through the Church. But if through the Church, through what Church? How are we the better or the wiser by knowing that the Spirit of God teaches the world at this hour, and that He has an organ through which to speak, if we know not which, nor where that organ is? How then shall you know that you hear His voice? If you knew that of twelve men who stood before you, one only possessed a secret upon which your life depended, would you be careless to know which man bore the treasure in his possession? Why then may you be indifferent to ascertain which is the accredited messenger upon whom your faith depends?

Try therefore to define your meaning. You say you believe a Church, because your baptismal faith says, “I believe one Holy Catholic Church:” holy, because the Holy Spirit teaches in it; Catholic, because throughout all the world; and one. Why one? Why do you say that you believe in one God? Because there is not more than one God. Why one Lord? Because not two. Why one baptism? Because one alone. Why one faith? Because no other. All these are numerically one. Why then one Church? Because numerically one; two there cannot be. Through that one Church speaks the one Spirit of the one God, teaching the one faith in which is salvation. Which then is this true and only Teacher sent from God? You look about you, and see a Church in Greece, in Russia, in America, in England, and in Rome. Which of all these is the one only true? Can you be content with this guess-work instead of faith?

2. And further: I would ask another question. I have asked you what you believe; I will now ask you why you believe it; upon what basis of certainty you are convinced of it. and why? Do you say that you have applied the best powers of your understanding to it? So have others who contradict you. Why are you more surely right than they are? You have not had a message from heaven, sent by special indulgence to make you sure, while others wander. What then is the basis of your certainty? The persuasion of your own mind is not enough. At that rate all men are certain. False coins pass in every land; false miracles take the semblance of true. The whole world is full of counterfeits. What I ask you is this: How do you distinguish between your certainty and the certainty of other men, so as to know that their certainty is human, and yours divine? Why are they wrong, and you right? Where is the test to determine this? You know it cannot exist within you, for every body may claim the same. You look then without you and around to find it.

Well, you will perhaps tell us that you have inherited the faith you hold. The inheritance of faith, that is a divine principle. We bow before the principle of inheritance. But why did you cut off the entail of your forefathers? Why, three hundred years ago, did you cut off the entail of that inheritance? If it be not cut off, why is the contest? If it be cut off, why was it cut off? To inherit the faith is the divine rule. It needs only one thing, infallibility, ii secure it. It needs only one support to give it substance and certainty; a divine tradition flowing from the Throne of God through Prophets, Seers, Apostles, Evangelists, Martyrs, Saints, and Doctors in one world-wide stream, ever deepening, never changing, from the beginning until now. Show this divine certainty as the basis of your conviction, and then inherit both truth and faith. But the inheritance of opinion in a family, or a diocese, or a province, or nation, what is it? Human in the beginning, and human to the end: “the traditions of men.”

You say you have inherited the faith, and that this is the Church of your forefathers. Go back three hundred years ago, and ask the priests of God who stood then at the altar how they would expound the faith you still profess to hold. Ask them what they believed while they ministered in. cope and chasuble. Go back to the Apostle of England who first bore hither again the light of the Gospel after Saxon paganism had darkened this fair land. Ask St. Augustine what he believed of those words, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church.” Give your exposition, and ask his. What would he have taught you of visible unity? What would he teach you of the Church of God? Ask him, Is it one numerically, or one only by metaphor? Is it visible, that all men may see “the City seated on a mountain,” or invisible, that men may weary themselves, and never find it? Has it a head on earth, representing its Divine Head in heaven? Or has it no head, and may it set up many of its own? What would he have taught yon of your baptismal creed? Or that great saint who sent him from the Apostolic throne, what would he have testified to you of those doctrines of faith which you are taught to look upon as errors? Ask Gregory, first and greatest of the name, what he believed of the powers left by the Incarnate Son to His Church on earth: what he taught of the power of the keys transmitted by his predecessors in lineal descent from the hands of his Divine Lord? Ask what he taught of the power of absolution in the sacrament of penance; what he believed of the Reality on the altar, and of the Holy Sacrifice daily offered in all the world; of the Communion of Saints ever inter ceding, by us ever invoked; of the intermediate state of departed souls, purifying for the kingdom of God. Ask Gregory, saint and doctor, to whom we owe the faith, what he taught of those doctrines which you have rejected.

If the disciple and his master, if he that was sent, and he that sent him, were to come now and tread the shore of this ancient river, whither would they turn to worship? Would they go to the stately minster, raised by their sons in the faith, where even now rests a sainted king of Catholic England? Would they bend their steps thither to worship the God of their fathers, and their Incarnate Lord from whom their mission and their faith descended? Or would they not rather go to some obscure altar in its neighbourhood, where an unknown despised priest daily offers the Holy Sacrifice in communion with the world-wide Church of God?

If, then, you claim inheritance as the foundation of your faith, be true to your principle, and it will lead you home. Trifle not with it. Truth bears the stamp of God. and truth changes man to the likeness of God. Trifle not with the pleadings of the Holy Spirit within you; for He has a delicate touch, and sensitively shrinks from wilfulness and unbelief. If truth struggle within you, follow it faithfully. Tread close upon the light that you possess. Count all things loss that you may win truth, without which the inheritance of God’s kingdom is not ours. Labour for it, and weary your selves until you find it. And forget not that if your religion be indefinite, you have no true knowledge of your Saviour; and if your belief be uncertain, it is not the faith by which we can be saved.

LECTURE II.

THE CHURCH A HISTORICAL WITNESS.

ST. JOHN xvii. 3.

This is life everlasting, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.”

BEFORE we go on to the subject that stands next in order, it will be well to re-stale the conclusions at which we have thus far arrived.

From these words of our Divine Lord, we have seen that the end of man is eternal life, and the means to that end the knowledge of God in Jesus Christ. Union with God in knowledge, love, and worship, is life eternal. And that man might attain to this end of his creation, God has revealed Himself to us in His Son. We have, therefore, noted the error of those who say that in Revelation doctrine is either not definite, or not certain. It is manifest that all knowledge must be definite; for if it be not definite, we may have guess, or conjecture, or probability, but true knowledge we cannot have. We have seen also that it must be certain, and that unless we have certainty we can have no faith, because the mind cannot rest upon uncertainty, as hunger cannot sate itself on air.

We have obtained, then, two principles; the one, that knowledge, though indeed it be finite, as it must be in a finite intelligence, is nevertheless, so far as it is known to us, perfectly definite. It is as a complex mathematical figure winch we see only in part, but in all we can see is perfect, harmonious, and proportionate, capable of being under stood, calculated, and expressed. Being in the mind of God one, harmonious and distinct, it is cast on the limited sphere of man’s intelligence in its unity, harmony, and distinctness. The other principle is, that the knowledge which God has given us of Himself is, in every sense, certain. We cannot conceive that the contradictory of that which God has spoken can be true, or that Prophets and Apostles were uncertain of what they believed and taught.

And now we will go on to examine what is the foundation upon which this certainty descends to us. It is, in one word, the authority of the Church of God. But this authority of the Church is twofold: it is either the outward and extrinsic, which I may call the human and historical authority; or it is the inward and intrinsic, that is, the super natural and the divine authority. The latter we must consider hereafter. For the present we will examine only the outward or historical authority of the Church, upon which the certainty of revelation as a fact in history is known to us.

All who have traced the history of the faith know that there is no doctrine which has not been made the subject of controversy. Look at the records of Christianity, and you will find that heresy began with the first publication of the truth. In the first age, we find heresies assailing the doctrine of the Godhead of the Father, the Creator of the world. In the next age heresies assailed the doc trine of the Godhead of the Son; later again, the doctrine of the Godhead of the Holy Ghost; next the doctrine of holy Sacraments; later still, the doctrine of the Church itself. A vast schism arose, justifying itself by denying the existence and the authority of the visible Church as such. And because the existence and authority of the visible Church was so denied, the foundation of certainty was broken up, and the principle of uncertainty introduced. Age by age, and article by article, the faith has been denied, until we come down to a period when the characteristic heresy of the day is, not a denial of the Godhead of the Father, or of the Son, or of the Holy Ghost, and the like, though these too are denied, but the denial of the foundation of certainty in faith. The master-heresy of this day, the fountain and source of all heresy, is this, that men have come first to deny, and then to disbelieve the existence in the world of a foundation, divinely laid, upon which revealed truth can certainly rest.

LECTURE III.

THE CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS.

ST. JOHN xvii. 3.

This is life everlasting, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.”

THE truths which we have already affirmed are these: that the end of man is eternal life through the knowledge of God revealed in Jesus Christ;. that this knowledge of God, being a participation of the Divine knowledge, is definite and certain; and that as there is but one fountain of this Divine knowledge in Revelation, so there is but one channel of this Divine certainty in the Church. We have seen also that the authority of the Church of God on earth is the highest, or maximum of evidence, even in a human and historical sense, of the past; that unless we rest upon this evidence, we must descend in the scale of certainty.

But we have as yet considered the Church only in its external, human, and historical character: there still, remains for us a deeper and diviner truth. I have spoken of the authority of the Church only as history of the past; but, be it ever remembered, that between the Protestant and Catholic there is this difference. To the Protestant, history must be a record of the past gathered from documents by criticism, fallible as the judge who applies it. To the Catholic, history, though it be of the past, is of the present also. The Church is a living history of the past It is the page of history still existing, open before his eyes. Antiquity to the Catholic is not a thing gone by; it is here, still present. As childhood and youth are summed up by manhood in our personal identity, so is antiquity ever present in the living Church. If Christianity, then, be historical, Catholicism is Christianity.

Let us therefore proceed to the deeper and diviner, that is, to the interior and intrinsic authority of the Church of Christ. We believe, then, that the interior and intrinsic authority of the Church is the presence of the Holy Spirit; that the ultimate authority upon which we believe is no less than the perpetual presence of our Lord Jesus Christ teaching always by His Spirit in the world.

I. And, first, let us ascertain what points of agreement exist between us and those who are in separation from us. We are all agreed that the only subject-matter of faith is the original revelation of God. They who most oppose us profess to be jealous above all men to restrain all doctrine to the bounds of the original revelation.

LECTURE IV.

RATIONALISM THE LEGITIMATE CONSEQUENCE OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT

ST. JOHN xvii. 3.

“This is life everlasting, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.”

I WOULD fain leave the subject where we broke off in the last lecture. So far as I am able, I have fulfilled the work that I undertook. Hitherto the path that we have trodden has been grateful and onward. We have followed the steps of truth affirmatively; we have been occupied in constructing the foundation and in building up the reasons of our faith. To construct is the true office and work of the Church of God, as of Him from whom it comes. I would fain, therefore, leave the subject here. And yet it is perhaps necessary that we should turn our hand and put to the test what we have hitherto said, by supposing a denial of the truths and principles which we have stated. We began, then, from the first idea of faith; that God, in His mercy to mankind, fallen and in ignorance, again revealed Himself; to the end that through the knowledge of Himself and of His Son incarnate, we might attain life everlasting. We have seen, too, that the very idea of revelation involves the properties of definiteness and certainty, because the knowledge divinely revealed is presented to us as it exists in the mind of God; that, flowing from Him as the only fountain, it descends to us through His Church as the only channel; and that the Church, though universal in its expanse, is absolutely one: a living and lineal body whereby the present is linked with the past, and today is united with the day of Pentecost. Wherefore, we do not believe that God spoke once, and now speaks no more, but that, beginning to speak then, He speaks still; that what He spoke by inspiration when the tongues of fire descended, He speaks yet in the perpetuity of His Church. The teaching of the One, Holy, Universal, Roman Church, the living and present history of the past, is to us the voice of God now, and the foundation of our faith.

Having proceeded, step by step, to this point, it becomes necessary, distasteful as it must be, to turn back, and to undo what we have done: necessary, because truth is often more clearly manifested by contradictories, for in those contradictories we touch at last upon some impossibility, or some absurdity, which refutes itself.

Let it, then, be denied first of all, that the Church whose centre is in Rome, whose circumference is from the sunrise to the sunset—let it be denied that the Church of Rome is the One Universal Church, the Teacher sent from God; and what follows?

No other Church but this interpenetrates in all nations, extends its jurisdiction wheresoever the name of Christ is known, has possessed, or, I will say, has claimed from the beginning, a divine primacy over all other Churches; has taught from the first with the claim to be heard as the Divine Teacher, or speaks now at this hour in all the world. Whatever may be said in theory, no other, as a matter of fact, from the east to the west, from the north to the south, claims to be heard as the voice of God.

Deny this, and to what do we come? If we depart from this maximum of evidence, this highest testimony upon earth, to the revelation of God, we must descend to lower levels. Deny the supreme and divine authority of the Universal Church, and in the same moment the world is filled with rival teachers. They spring up in the East and in the West. The East, with all its ancient separations, Nestorian, Eutychian, Monophysite, claims to teach. The West, with all its schisms of later centuries, the Calvinist, the Lutheran, and the Anglican, urge the same demand. Deny the supreme office of this one Teacher, and all others claim equally their privilege to be heard. And why not? It is not for us, indeed, to find arguments in bar of their claim. It is for those who adopt this principle of independence to supply the limitation. We stand se cure; but they who, by denying the Catholic rule of faith, introduce these contradictions, are bound to discover the test whereby to know who speaks truth and who speaks falsehood in the conflict of voices.

If fleeing for your life you came to a point where many roads parted, and but one could lead to safety, would it be a little matter not to know into which path to strike? If among many medicines one alone possessed the virtue to heal some mortal sickness, would you be cold and careless to discover to which this precious quality belongs? If Apostles were again on the earth, would you be unconcerned to distinguish them from rivals or deceivers? If there should come again many claiming to be Messiah, would you deem it a matter of indifference to know from among the false Christs which is the true? If one comes saying, “You shall be saved by faith only;” and another, “You shall be saved by faith and pious sentiments;” and another, “You shall be saved by faith without sacraments;” and another, “There is a divine law of sacramental grace whereby you must partake of the Word made Flesh;” is it a matter of indifference to you to know with certain proof which of all these teachers comes from God? Are we not al ready in the days of which our Lord forewarns us, that “many shall come in My name, saying, ‘I am Christ?’” Is it not of such times as these that the warning runs, “If they shall say to you, Behold He is in the desert, go ye not out,”—that is, to seek the messenger sent from God; “for as lightning cometh out of the east, and appeareth even into the west, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be?”

St. Matt. xxiv. 23-27.

To avoid this impossible theory, a view has been proposed since the rise of the Anglican Church as follows: The Church, it is said, does not consist of those who are condemned for heresy, as the Eutychian, the Monophysite, and the like; neither of those who have committed schism, as the Protestant sects; but it consists of the Greek, the Rom n, and the Anglican Churches.

Let me touch this theory with tenderness, for it is still a pleasant illusion in many pious minds. Many have believed it as they believe revelation itself. And if we would have this illusion dispelled, it must be not by rough handling or by derision, but by the simple demonstration of its impossibility. If these three bodies, then, be in deed the one Church, the Church is divided. For the moment pass that by. If these three be indeed parts of the same Church, then, as that one Church is guided by one Spirit, they cannot, so far as that guidance extends, contradict each other. How ever directly their definitions may be opposed, yet in substance of faith they must be in agreement. Such are the straits to which men under stress of argument or of events are driven. But these three bodies so united in unwilling espousals divorce each other. The Greek will not accept the Anglican with his mutilation of sacraments; nor will the Anglican accept the Greek with his practice of invocation. Neither does the Holy See accept either with their heresy and their schism. These three bodies, brought by theory into unwilling combination, refuse, in fact, to be combined. They can be united only upon paper.

The present relation of the Anglican body to the Catholic Church is a refutation final and by facts of this arbitrary theory.

The impossibility of this view has compelled many plain and serious minds to reject altogether the notion of a visible church, and to take refuge in the notion of a church invisible. But this too destroys itself. How shall an invisible church carry on the revelation of God manifest in the flesh, or be the representative of the unseen God: the successor of visible apostles, the minister of visible sacraments, the celebrator of visible councils, the administrator of visible laws, and the worshipper in visible sanctuaries? Here is another impossibility to which the stress of argument drives reasonable men.

Abandoning the scheme of an invisible church, others have come to adopt another theory, namely, that the Church of God is indeed a visible body, the great complex mass of Christendom, but that it has no divine authority to propose the faith, no perpetual office, or power to declare with unerring certainty what is the primitive doctrine. They say that during the first six hundred years, while the Church was united, it possessed this office, to decide, and that in the discharge of this office, it was even infallible, or that, at least, it never erred; but that by division it has forfeited the power of exercising this office, that by reunion it may yet one day regain it; and that, in the mean time, every particular church appeals to a general council yet to come. This, too, is believed by some, and with sincerity.

And yet they have never been able to say how it is that a divine office which flows from the Divine Presence should suddenly come to nothing, the Divine Presence still abiding. If, indeed, the third Person of the Holy Trinity dwell in the Church in the stead of the second Person of the Ever-Blessed Three; if the Spirit of truth be come to guide and to preserve the Church in all truth, how is it that the Divine office, faithfully fulfilled during six hundred years, in the seventh century began to fail? They turn to the state of the world in ancient times, and say, that as the light of truth possessed before the flood faded until the sin of man brought in the deluge; that as the revelation possessed by Noe decayed until Abram was called out of idolatry; that as the truth revealed by Moses fell into corruption, and the Jewish Church became unfaithful; so the Church of Christ, following the same law of declension, may likewise become corrupt

But is it possible that men versed in the Scriptures can thus argue from the shadows to the sub stance; that because in the ancient world, in the old and fallen creation, before as yet the Word was incarnate, or the Holy Ghost yet given; because in those “days of the flesh,” men failed and forfeited God’s gifts of grace, therefore now, after that the second Person of the Holy Trinity has come on earth in our manhood, and sits at the right hand of God, the glorious Head of His mystical body, upholding by His Godhead the order of grace; that now when the Holy Ghost dwells in His stead as the imperishable life and light of the New Creation, the same laws of our fallen nature still prevail, not against men, not against the human element, which no one denies, but against the divine element and office of the Church? But although every individual man may fail, yet the Church is still infallible; although every man, being defectible, may fall away, yet “the gates of hell shall never prevail against the Church.” Although promises to individuals are conditional, yet to the Church, as a Divine creation, they are absolute. Before the Incarnation of the Son of God, the mystical body did not exist. Therefore, in one word, we answer, that the old world had no analogy or precedent to the new creation of God.

Again, it is said that the notes of the Church, sanctity and unity, are to be put in parallel. There are promises, we are told, that all the children of God shall be holy, and that every one shall be taught of God. The promises of sanctity, therefore, being absolute, we should have expected a perfect Church without spot or blemish. But we see the visible Church full of scandals and corruptions. Our expectation then in the promise of sanctity not being literally fulfilled, when we read of absolute unity, we ought not to look for a literal fulfilment.

This is an error in which many minds still are held. They forget that unity means one in number, and that sanctity is a moral quality. Again, they do not distinguish between the sanctity which is on God’s part, and the sanctity which is on the part of man. The note of sanctity, as it exists on the part of God, consists in the sanctity of the Founder of the Church, the sanctity of the Holy Spirit by whom it is inhabited, the sanctity of its doctrine, and the sanctity of holy Sacraments as the sources of grace. But sanctity on the part of man is the inward quality or state of the heart sanctified by the Holy Ghost. This inward sanctity varies, of necessity, according to the measure and probation of man; but the presence of God the Sanctifier; the power of holy Sacraments, the fountains of sanctification: these divine realities on God’s part are changeless; they are ever without spot or blemish, even to the letter of the prophecy. Only the effect upon those who receive them varies according to the faith of the individual. This is the true parallel. The Church is numerically one as God is one. Individuals and nations may fall from unity as from sanctity, but unity, as a Divine institution, stands secure: “The gifts and calling of God are without repentance.”

Rom. xi. 29.

But if, as it is said, the office of the Church to decide questions of faith has been suspended, then the world at this hour has no teacher. Then the command, “Going, therefore, teach ye all nations,” is expired. The “nations” mean, not only the nations then dwelling on earth, but the nations in succession, with their lineage and posterity, until the world’s end. There is no longer, then, a divine teacher upon earth. If the office of the Church to teach the truth and to detect falsehood, to define the faith and condemn heresy, be suspended, we know not now with certainty what is the true sense even of the Articles of the Creed. Between the East and the West, that is between the universal Roman Church and the local Greek Church, there are two questions open, both of which touch an article of the baptismal faith. One point of doc trine taught by the Catholic Church is this: that the Holy Ghost proceeds both from the Father and from the Son. The Greek Church denies the pro cession from the Son. Who is right and who is wrong? On which side is the truth in this controversy? Where is the faith and where heresy between the two contending parties? If the office of the Church be suspended, there exists no judge on earth to say who has the truth in this dispute: and that not touching an inferior article of doctrine, but an article of the highest mystery of all, the Ever-Blessed Trinity.

But to take another, and a vital question, namely, the primacy of the Church itself,—the power that is vested in the See of Peter to control by its jurisdiction all Churches upon earth. In the baptismal faith we profess to believe in one Holy Catholic Church. Surely the question whether or no there be on earth a supreme head of the Church divinely instituted, is as much a part of the sub stance and exposition of that article as any other point. But yet between the Catholic and the Greek Churches this point is disputed. And if the office of the Church be suspended, there is no power on earth to determine who is right and who is wrong in this contest.

But let us turn from the Greek Church. Let us apply the same tests to the Anglican communion. How many points of doctrine are open between the Anglican and the Universal Church. In the thirty-nine articles of religion, how many points are disputed. How many controverted questions, not with the Roman Church alone, but with the Greek Church also. For instance, the whole doctrine of the Sacraments, their number and their nature, the power of the keys, the practice of invocation, and the like. Then, I ask, if indeed the office of the Church be suspended, who now at this day can declare who is right and who is wrong in these disputed questions?

Nay, we may go yet further, and say, that even the points of faith decided by Councils when the Church was yet one are no longer safe. There needs only an individual of sufficient intelligence and sufficient influence to rise up and call them in question. If the interpretation of the decrees of the Councils of Nice or Ephesus be disputed, an authoritative exposition of these ancient definitions is required. But this cannot be obtained unless there still sit on earth a judge to decide the law. Suppose a dispute to arise as to the interpretation of a statute passed in the reign of Edward III., and that there were no judges in Westminster to expound it, the law would be an open question, that is, a dead letter. So with the decrees of ancient Councils. It needs, then, nothing but a controversy on each article of the faith to destroy their certainty. Twelve disputes on the twelve Articles of the Baptismal Faith would destroy all certainty. And on earth there would be no judge to say who is right and who is wrong, to declare what was originally revealed on the day of Pentecost, and the meaning of that revelation. To what impossibilities does this theory reduce those who hold it: impossibilities which they perhaps can speak of best who have felt them most. But from this a way of escape is thought to lie in appealing to a future General Council, And yet this brings no present certainty. The faith might be, as in England it is, uncertain for centuries while the General Council is still future. In truth, this appeal is no more than a plea for insubordination. To appeal from the reigning sovereignty to one to come is simple treason. But besides, the theory is in itself impossible. For who is to convene this future Council? And of whom shall it be composed? Who shall sit in it? Who shall be excluded? And by whose judgment shall the admission and exclusion be determined? Every divided Church will demand its vote and voice. Who shall judge its claim? The office of the judge is in abeyance. But a General Council presupposes the existence and office of the supreme judge of faith and unity. And this the appellants tell us is suspended.

Let us pass on from this point. To deny, then, that the one Universal and Roman Church is now the Teacher sent from God on earth, leads to a denial that there exists in the world any Teacher at all; and to deny the existence of this universal Teacher involves two consequences so impossible, that they need only to be stated to be refuted. If there exists in the world no teacher invested with divine commission to guide all others, either every several local church is invested with a final and supreme authority to determine what is true and what is false; that is, possesses the infallibility denied by objectors to the Universal Church itself; or else, no authority under heaven respecting divine truth is more than human.

Let us examine this alternative. We may pass by the Greek Church, for it had discernment enough, when it began its schism, to put forward the claim to be not a part of the Church, but the true Church; not to be in communion with others, but to be the sole preserver of the Faith. The Greek Church has at all times claimed to be the temple of the Holy Spirit, and “the orthodox,” that is, the only faithful teacher of the truth. It claims also infallibility by guidance of the Holy Ghost. It does not affect to participate with Rome, but to be exclusively the one true Catholic Church. It denounces the Holy See as both in error and in schism. We may then pass over this case, because its very consistency, while it makes the pretensions of the East more unreasonable, confirms our position. We will take a local body which has claimed for itself to be, not exclusively the Church, but a part of it, and within its own sphere to be sufficient to determine controversies, to perpetuate its orders, to confer and to exercise jurisdiction; that is, which has claimed to have within its own sphere all that the Catholic Church possesses from its Divine Founder.

I will not weary you by tracing out historically the theory upon which the highest and most honoured names of the Anglican body have attempted to justify the Reformation. It will be sufficient to say that pious and learned men have believed as follows: That in the time of our Saxon ancestors the Catholic Church in this country possessed a freedom of its own; that, though in union with the Holy See, it was under no controlling jurisdiction that when the Normans came in they established a civil state upon the basis of the existing ecclesiastical order, and therein perpetuated the freedom and privileges of the Catholic Church in England. They further believed that every Christian kingdom, such as ours, had laws, privileges, and rights of its own; and that these among us were usurped upon, interfered with, and taken away by a foreign power, the Bishop of Rome. They taught, then, that the Re formation was nothing but a removal of usurpation and a restoring of our ancient freedom; that the Church which existed before and after the Reformation was one and the same, a continuous and living body, mutilated, indeed, in the wreck of that age, but still preserving its orders, its jurisdiction, and its doctrines; being sufficient in itself to deter mine all questions, as the notable act of parliament, passed at the beginning of the schism, in its preamble declares.

What was the effect of this theory? It at once invested the local church with all the final prerogatives of the universal. It claimed for it the power within its own sphere to terminate every thing that can be terminated only by the Universal Church under Divine guidance. Though it dared not to enunciate the claim, it had practically assumed the possession of infallibility. It would have been too unreasonable and too absurd to state it, but it acted as if it really were infallible. And what were the effects? No sooner did the Anglican Church begin to determine the controversies of its members than they began to dispute its determinations.

The first separation from the Anglican establishment was made by the Independents. They carried their appeal beyond the local church, and because they had been taught to acknowledge upon earth no superior before whom to lay it, they ap pealed to Scripture and to reason, or, as they thought, to the unseen Head of the Church, but in truth to their own interpretations. The first effect of investing a local body with universal sovereignty in Jurisdiction and discipline, was to make truthful and earnest men, who saw the impossibility of such a claim, break out into disobedience. Hence have come the separations from the Anglican Church which now divide England from one end to the other. The source of these divisions is the impossibility of believing that a body formed by private judgment and established by civil power can possess a divine authority to terminate controversies of faith. We have lately had this theory of local churches tested before our eyes. History told us that in the Anglican Church, during the three hundred years of its existence, there have been two schools of theology, one bearing the appearance of Catholic doc trine and of Catholic tradition; another, earlier in date, springing from the very substance of the Re formation itself, pre-occupying the Anglican communion, a school of pure Protestant theology. These two schools have existed, struggling, conflicting, and denouncing each other from that day to this. Yet it was believed that the Catholic school was the substance of the Anglican Church, and the Protestant a parasite: a malady which, though clinging Closely to it, might yet be expelled and cast off.

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