from
THE
INFALLIBILITY OF
THE CHURCH
(1888
edition)
(see Preface
in footnotes)
LECTURES DELIVERED IN THE DIVINITY SCHOOL
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN
BY
GEORGE
SALMON, D.D.
SOMETIME
PROVOST OF TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN
AND REGIUS PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN
Lecture 2
THE CARDINAL IMPORTANCE
OF THE QUESTION OF INFALLIBILITY.
YOU will easily understand that it would be
absolutely impossible for me, in the course of these lectures, to go through all
the details of the Roman Catholic controversy.
You have in your hands text-books which will give you information on all
the most important points. But the
truth is, that the issues of the controversy mainly turn on one great question,
which is the only one that I expect to be able to discuss with you—I mean the
question of the Infallibility of the Church.
If that be decided against us, our whole case is gone, and victories on
the details of the controversy would profit us as little as, to use a favourite
illustration of Archbishop Whately's, it profits a chess-player to win some
pieces and pawns if he gets his king checkmated. In fact, suppose we make what seems to ourselves a quite
convincing proof that some doctrine of the Roman Church is not contained in
Scripture, what does that avail if we are forced to own that that Church has
access to other sources of information besides Scripture as to the doctrine
taught by our Lord and His Apostles?
Suppose we even consider that we have proved a Roman doctrine to be
contrary to Scripture, what does that avail if we are compelled to acknowledge
that we are quite incompetent to decide what is Scripture or what is the
meaning of it, and if it belongs to the Church of Rome alone to give us the
book and to teach us its true interpretation?
In like manner, if our study of history should lead us to the conclusion
that the teaching of the present Church is at variance with the teaching of the
Church of former days, we are forced to surrender this ill-grounded suspicion
of ours if we are made to believe, that the Church cannot err, and, as a
necessary consequence, that her teaching must be at all times the same.
One can scarcely open any book that
attempts to deal with controversy by such a Roman Catholic as, for instance,
Cardinal Manning, without being forced to observe how his faith in the
infallibility of the present Church makes him impenetrable to all
arguments. Suppose, for example, the
question in dispute is the Pope's personal infallibility, and that you object
to him the ease of Honorius: he replies, At most you could make out that it is doubtful whether
Honorius was orthodox; but it is certain that a Pope could not be a heretic. Well, you reply, at least the ease of
Honorius shows that the Church of the time supposed that a Pope could be a
heretic. Not so, he answers, for the
Church now holds that a Pope speaking ex cathedra cannot err, and the Church could not
have taught differently at any other time.
Thus, as long as anyone really believes in
the infallibility of his Church, he is proof against any argument you can ply
him with. Conversely, when faith in
this principle is shaken, belief in some other Roman Catholic doctrine is sure also
to be disturbed; for there are some of these doctrines in respect of which
nothing but a very strong belief that the Roman Church cannot decide wrongly
will prevent a candid inquirer from coming to the conclusion that she has
decided wrongly. This simplification,
then, of the controversy realises for us the wish of the Roman tyrant that all
his enemies had but one neck. If we can
but strike one blow, the whole battle is won.
If the vital importance of this question
of Infallibility had not been sufficiently evident from a priori considerations,
I should have been convinced of it from the history of the Roman Catholic
controversy as it has been conducted in my own lifetime. When I first came to an age to take lively
interest in the subject, Dr. Newman and
his coadjutors were publishing, in the Tracts for the Times, excellent
refutations of the Roman doctrine on Purgatory and on some other important
points. A very few years afterwards,
without making the smallest attempt to answer their own arguments, these men
went over to Rome, and bound themselves to believe and teach as true things
which they had themselves proved to be false.
The accounts which those who, went over in that movement gave of their
reasons for the change show surprising indifference to the ordinary topics of
the controversy, and in some cases leave us only obscurely to discern why they
went at all. It was natural that many
who witnessed the sudden collapse of the resistance which had been offered to
Roman Catholic teaching should conclude that it had been a sham fight all
along; but this was unjust. It rather
resembled what not infrequently occurs in the annals of warfare when, after
entrenchments have been long and obstinately assaulted without success, some
great general has taken up a position which has caused them to be evacuated
without a struggle.
While the writers of the Tracts were
assailing with success different points of Roman teaching, they allowed
themselves to be persuaded that Christ must have provided His people with some
infallible guide to truth; and they accepted the Church of Rome as that guide,
with scarcely an attempt to make a careful scrutiny of the grounds of her
pretensions, and merely because, if she were not that guide, they knew not
where else to find it. Thus, when they
were beaten on the one question of Infallibility, their victories on other
points availed them nothing.
Perhaps those who then submitted to the
Church of Rome scarcely realised all that was meant in their profession of
faith in their new guide. They may have
thought it meant no more than belief that everything the Church of Rome then
taught was infallibly true. Events soon
taught them that it meant besides that they must believe everything that that
Church might afterwards teach; and her subsequent teaching put so great a
strain on the faith of the new converts, that in a few cases it was more than
it could bear.
The idea that the doctrine of the Church
of Rome is always the same is one which no one of the present day can hold
without putting an enormous strain on his understanding. It used to be the boast of Romish advocates
that the teaching of their Church was unchangeable. Heretics, they used to say, show by their perpetual alterations
that they never have had hold of the truth.
They move the ancient landmarks without themselves foreseeing whither
their new principles will lead them; and so after a while, discovering their
position to be untenable, they vainly try by constant changes to reduce their
system to some semblance of consistency.
Our Church, on the contrary, they said, ever teaches the same doctrine
which has been handed down from the Apostles, and has since been taught
'everywhere, always, and by all.' Divines of our Church used to expose the
falsity of this boast by comparing the doctrine now taught in the Church of
Rome with that taught in the Church of early times, and thus established by
historical proof that a change had occurred.
But now the matter has been much simplified; for no laborious proof is
necessary to show that that is not unchangeable which has changed under our
very eyes. The rate of change is not
like that of the hour-hand of a watch, which you must note at some considerable
intervals of time in order to see that there has been a movement, but rather
like that of the second-hand, which you can actually see moving.
The first trial of the faith of the new
converts was the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, in 1854,
when a doctrine was declared to be the universal ancient tradition of the
Church, on which eminent divines had notoriously held different opinions; so
much so, that this diversity had been accounted for by Bishop Milner and other
controversialists by the assertion that neither Scripture nor tradition
contained anything on the subject.
The manner of that decree, intended to
bind the universal Church, was remarkable.
It was not a vote of a council.
Bishops, indeed, had been previously consulted, and bishops were
assembled to hear the decision; but the decision rested on the authority of the
Pope alone. It was correctly foreseen
that what was then clone was intended to establish a precedent. I remember then how the news came that the
Pope proposed to assemble a council, and how those who had the best right to
know predicted that this council was to terminate the long controversy as to
the relative superiority of Popes and councils, by owning the personal
infallibility of the Pope, and so making it unnecessary that any future council
should be held. This announcement
created the greatest ferment in the Roman Catholic Church; and those who passed
for the men of highest learning in that communion, and who had been wont to be
most relied on, when learned Protestants were to be combated, opposed with all
their might the contemplated definition, as an entire innovation on the
traditional teaching of the Church, and as absolutely contradicted by the facts
of history. These views were shared by
Dr. Newman. His own inclinations had
not favoured any extravagant cult of the Virgin Mary, and he was too well
acquainted with Church History not to know that the doctrine of her Immaculate
Conception was a complete novelty, unknown to early times, and, when first put
forward, condemned by some of the most esteemed teachers of the Church. But when the Pope formally promulgated that
doctrine as part of the essential faith of the Church, he had submitted in
silence. When, however, it was proposed
to declare the Pope's personal infallibility, this was a doctrine so directly
in the teeth of history, that Newman made no secret of his persuasion that the
authoritative adoption of it would be attended with ruinous consequences to his
Church, by placing what seemed an insuperable obstacle to any man of learning
entering her fold. He wrote in
passionate alarm to an English Roman Catholic Bishop (Ullathorne): 'Why,' he
said, 'should an aggressive insolent faction be allowed "to make the heart
of the just sad, whom the Lord hath not made sorrowful"? Why cannot we be let alone when we have
pursued peace and thought no evil? I
assure you, my Lord, some of the truest minds are driven one way and another,
and do not know where to rest their feet one day determining to give up all
theology as a bad job, and recklessly to believe henceforth almost that the
Pope is impeccable, at another tempted to believe all the worst which a book
like Janus says:—Then, again, think of the store of Pontifical scandals in the
history of eighteen centuries, which have partly been poured forth and partly
are still to come... And then, again, the blight which is falling upon the
multitude of Anglican ritualists, &c., who themselves perhaps—at least
their leaders—may, never become Catholics, but who are leavening the various
English denominations and parties far beyond their own range, with principles
and sentiments tending towards their ultimate absorption with the Catholic
Church. With these thoughts ever before
me, I am continually asking myself whether I ought not to make my feelings
public: but all I do is to pray those early doctors of the Church, whose
intercession would decide the matter (Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome,
Athanasius, Chrysostom, and Basil), to avert this great calamity. If it is God's will that the Pope's
infallibility be defined, then it is God's will to throw back the "times
and moments" of that triumph which He has destined for His kingdom; and I
shall feel that I have but to bow my head to His adorable inscrutable
Providence.'[1]
Abundant proof that the new dogma had, until
then, been no part of the faith of the Church, was furnished by yon Dollinger
at the time deservedly reputed to be the most learned man in the Roman
communion, and amongst others by two Munich professors, who, under the name of
Janus, published a work containing a mass of historical proofs of the novelty
of the proposed decree. These arguments
were urged by able bishops at the Vatican Council itself. But the Pope carried out his project in the
teeth of historical demonstration. A
few of the most learned of the protesters against the new dogma refused to
recognize the doctrine thus defined as themselves 'Old Catholics.' But the bulk
of the people had no inclination to trouble themselves with historical
investigations, and accepted, without inquiry, what their rulers were pleased
to offer them; and a number of the eminent men, who had not only denied the
truth of the new dogma, but had proved its falsity to the satisfaction of every
reasoning man, finding no other choice open to them, unless they abandoned
every theory as to the infallibility of the Church which they had previously
maintained, and unless they joined a schism which, as was foreseen at the time,
and as the event proved, would be insignificant in numbers, preferred to eat
their words, and to profess faith in what it is difficult to understand how
they could in their hearts have had any real belief.
I own, the first impression produced by
this history is one of discouragement.
It seems hopeless to waste research or argument on men who have shown
themselves determined not to be convinced.
What hope is there that argument of mine can convince men who are not
convinced by their own arguments? As
long as there was a chance of saving their Church from committing herself to a
decision in the teeth of history, they struggled to avert the calamity; showing
by irrefragable arguments that the early Church never regarded the Pope to be
infallible, and that different Popes had made decisions glaringly false. But having clearly shown that black was not
white, no sooner had authority declared that it was, than they professed
themselves ready to believe it.
But though it is, on the first view,
disappointing that our adversaries should withdraw themselves into a position
seemingly inaccessible to argument, it is really, as I shall presently show, a
mark of our success that they have been driven from the open field, and forced
to betake themselves into this fortress.
And we have every encouragement to follow them, and assault their
citadel, which is now their last refuge.
In other words, it has now become more
clear than ever that the whole Roman Catholic controversy turns on the decision
of the one question the Infallibility of the Church. We have just seen how the admission of this principle can force
men to surrender their most deep-rooted beliefs, which they had maintained with
the greatest heat, and to the assertion of which they had committed themselves
most strongly. They surrendered these
beliefs solely in deference to external authority, though themselves unable to
see any flaw in the arguments which had persuaded them of the truth of
them. And I must say that, in making
this surrender, they were better and more consistent Roman Catholics than von
Dollinger and his friends, who refused to eat their words and turn their back
on their own arguments. For all their
lives long they had condemned the exercise of private judgment, and had
insisted on the necessity of submitting to the authority of the
Church. Now, if you accept the Church's
teaching just so long as it agrees with what you, on other grounds, persuade
yourselves to be true, and reject it as soon as it differs from your own
judgment, that is not real submission to the authority of the Church. You do not take a man as a guide, though you
may be travelling along a road in his company, if you are willing to part
company if he should make a turn of which you disapprove. It matters not what Romish doctrines the
German Old Catholic party may continue to hold. They may believe Transubstantiation, Purgatory, Invocation of
Saints, and more. But from the moment
they ventured to use their reason, and reject a dogma propounded to them by
their Church, they were really Protestants; they had adopted the great
principle of Protestantism. And so, at
the time of the formation of the Old Catholic party, I expressed my fears in a
lecture here that its members would be able to find no home in the Roman
Church. My fears, I say, for I count it
a thing to be regretted that that Church, by casting out her most learned and
most enlightened members, should lose all chance of recovering the truth by
reform from within.
If, however, there could ever be a case
where men should be constrained by a reductio ad absurdum to abandon a principle
they had held, but which had been shown to lead to consequences certainly
false, it was when the men of the Old Catholic party found that if they were to
go on maintaining the infallibility of their Church, they must also assert that
she had never changed her doctrine. If,
previous to the Vatican Council, the Church of Rome had known the doctrine of
the Pope's personal infallibility to be true, she had, somehow or another, so
neglected to teach it, that though it is a doctrine relating to the very
foundation of her religious system, her priests and bishops had been ignorant
that it was any part of her teaching.
The Infallibilist party at Rome had been obliged, at an early stage of
their exertions, to get placed on the Prohibitory Index, Bailly's work on
Theology, which had been used as a text-book at Maynooth. Would not any Roman Catholic say that the
Church of Ireland had changed her doctrine if the text-books which you use here
were not only removed from your course, but if the Irish bishops published a
declaration that these books, in which their predecessors had been wont to
examine candidates for orders, contained erroneous doctrine, and were on that
account unfit to be read by our people?
Again, the effect of the Vatican Council
was to necessitate great changes in controversial catechisms. One might think that the clergymen who might
be supposed best acquainted with the doctrines of their Church are those who
are selected to conduct controversy with opponents. In our Church, indeed, anyone may engage in controversy at his
own discretion, and need not necessarily be the most learned or wisest of our
body; but the controversial catechisms of the Roman Church are only issued with
the permission of the writer's superiors, and therefore their statements as to
Roman Catholic doctrine may be supposed to tell what the best informed members
of the communion believe that she teaches.
Now, it had been a common practice with Roman Catholic controversial
writers, when pressed with objections against the doctrine of the personal
infallibility of the Pope, to repudiate that doctrine altogether, and to
declare it to be a protestant misrepresentation to assert that it was taught by
their Church.
I may afterwards have occasion to say
something about books which circulated in America, but will now mention one to
which my own attention happened to be specially drawn. The controversial book which, thirty years
ago, was most relied on in this country was 'Keenan's Catechism,' a book published
with the imprimatur
of Scotch Roman Catholic bishops, and recommended also by
Irish prelates. This book contained the
following question and answer:—
'Q. Must not Catholics believe the Pope in
himself to be infallible?
'A. This is a Protestant intention: it is
no article of the Catholic faith: no decision of his can oblige, under pain of
heresy, unless it be received and enforced by the teaching body; that is, by
the bishops of the Church.'
About 1869 or 1870 I had a visit from an
English clergyman, who, for reasons of health, resided chiefly on the
Continent, and, mixing much with Roman Catholics, took great interest in the
controversy which was then agitating their Church. I showed him the question and answer in 'Keenan's Catechism'; and
he was so much interested by them, that he bought some copies of the book to
present to his friends abroad. A couple
of years later he visited Ireland again, and purchased some more copies of
'Keenan'; but this question and answer had then disappeared. He presented me then with the two copies I
have here. To all appearance they are
identical in their contents. From the
title-page, as it appears on the paper cover of each, the two books appear to
be both of the twenty-first thousand; but when we open the books, we find them
further agreeing in the singular feature, that there is another title-page
which describes each as of the twenty-fourth thousand. But at page 112 the question and answer
which I have quoted are to be found in the one book, and are absent from the
other. It is, therefore, impossible now
to maintain that the faith of the Church of Rome never changes, when it is
notorious that there is something which is now part of her faith which those
who had a good right to know declared was no part of her faith twenty years
ago.[2]
I will not delay to speak of many changes
in Roman teaching consequent on the definition of Papal Infallibility; but you
eau easily understand that there are a great many statements officially made by
several Popes which, inasmuch as they rested on Papal authority alone, learned
Roman Catholics had formerly thought themselves at liberty to reject, but which
must now be accepted as articles of faith.
But what I wish now to speak of is, that the forced confession of
change, at least by way of addition, in Roman teaching has necessitated a
surrender of the principles on which her system had formerly been defended; and
this was what I had specially in mind when I spoke of the fortress of
Infallibility as the last refuge of a beaten army, who, when driven from this,
must fall into total rout.
The first revolt against Romanism took
place when the Bible was made easily accessible. When, by means of translations printed in the vulgar languages of
Europe, a knowledge of the New Testament became general, men could not help
taking notice that the Christianity then taught by the Church was a very
different thing from that which was preached by the Apostles, and that a host
of doctrines were taught as necessary to salvation by the modern Church, of
which, as far as we could learn from the Bible, the early Church knew
nothing'. Whether the doctrines of
Romanism can be proved from the Bible is a matter which you can judge for
yourselves; but if there is any doubt about it, that doubt is removed by
watching the next stage of the controversy.
The Roman Catholic advocates ceased to insist that the doctrines of the
Church could be deduced from Scripture; but the theory of some early heretics,
refuted by Irenaeus,[3] was revived, namely, that the Bible does
not contain the whole of God's revelation, and that a body of traditional
doctrine existed in the Church equally deserving of veneration.
At this time, however, all parties were
agreed that through our Lord and His Apostles a revelation unique in the
history of the world had been made to mankind.
All parties imagined that it was the truths then made known, neither
more nor less, that the Church was to preserve and teach. All parties agreed that the Holy Scriptures
might be implicitly depended on as an inspired record of these truths. The main difference was as to how far the
Bible record of them could be regarded as complete. Things were taught and practised in the Roman Church for which
the Bible furnished no adequate justification; and the Roman advocates insisted
that, though the Bible contained truth, it did not contain the whole truth, and
that the Church was able, by her traditions, to supplement the deficiencies of
Scripture, having in those traditions a secure record of apostolic teaching on
many points on which the Bible contained only obscure indications, or even gave
no information at all.
This Roman assertion might be met in two
ways. Many, probably the majority, of
the Protestants refused to listen at all to doctrines said to be binding on
their faith, and not asserted to be taught in Scripture; and we shall
afterwards see that they had the sanction of several of the most eminent
Fathers for thinking that what was asserted without the authority of Holy
Scripture might be ' despised as freely as approved.'[4] But
there were champions of our Church who met the Roman case in another way, They
declared that, as they had been convinced by historical proof that the books of
the New Testament were written by Apostles or apostolical men, so they had no
objection to examine whether similar historic proof could be given of the
apostolic origin of any of the peculiar doctrines of Romanism.
Bellarmine, indeed, had given as one of
his rules for knowing whether or not the proof of a Church doctrine rested on
tradition,[5] that if a doctrine taught by the Church could not be proved by
Scripture, it must be proved by tradition; for the Church could not teach
wrong; and so the doctrine must be proved either in the one way or the
other. But it would be too much to
expect from this that we should admit a failure of Scripture proof to
constitute in itself a proof by tradition.
We have a right to ask, If the Church learned that doctrine by
tradition, where has that tradition been recorded? Who are the ancient authors that mention it? If the thing has been handed down from the
Apostles the Church of the first centuries must have believed or practised it:
let us inquire, as we should in the case of any other historical question,
whether she did or not.
Bishop Jewel, in his celebrated challenge,
enumerated twenty-seven points of the Roman Catholic teaching of his day, and
declared that if any learned man of our adversaries or all the learned men that
be alive, were able to bring any one sufficient sentence out of any old
Catholic Doctor or Father, or General Council, or Holy Scripture, or any one
example in the Primitive Church, whereby it might be clearly and plainly proved
that any of them was taught for the first 600 years, then he would be content
to yield and subscribe. Not, of course,
that Jewel meant that a single instance of a doctrine being taught during the
first six centuries was enough to establish its truth, but he meant to express
his strong conviction that in the case of the twenty-seven doctrines he
enumerated no such instance could be produced.
I do not wonder that many Protestants
looked on this historic method as a very perilous way of meeting the claims of
Romanism. In the first place, it
deserted the ground of Scripture, on which they felt sure of victory, for that
of history, on which success might be doubtful; and, in the second place, it
needed no learned apparatus to embark on the Scripture controversy. Any intelligent layman might satisfy himself
what amount of recognition was given to a doctrine in the Bible; but the battle
on the field of history could only be fought by learned men, and would go on
out of sight of ordinary members of the Church, who would be quite incompetent
to tell which way the victory had gone.
When two opposing generals meet in battle,
and both send home bulletins of victory, and Te Deums are sung in churches on
both sides, we, who sit at home, may find it hard to understand which way the
battle has gone. But if we look at the
map, and see where the next battle is fought, and if we find that one general
is making 'for strategic reasons' a constant succession of movements towards
the rear, and that he ends by completely evacuating the country he at first
undertook to defend, then we may suspect that his glorious victories were
perhaps not quite so brilliant as he had represented them to be. And so, when the Church of England champions
left the plain ground of Scripture, and proceeded to interchange quotations
from the Fathers, plain men, out of whose sight the battle now went, might be
excused for apprehension as to the result, themselves being scarcely competent
to judge of the force of the passages quoted on each side. But when they find that the heads of the
Roman Catholic Church now think it as great a heresy to appeal to antiquity, as
to appeal to Scripture, they have cause for surmising which way the victory has
gone.
The first strategic movement towards the
rear was the doctrine of development, which has seriously modified the old
theory of tradition. When Dr. Newman
became a Roman Catholic, it was necessary for him in some way to reconcile this
step with the proofs he had previously given that certain distinctive Romish
doctrines were unknown to the early Church.
The historical arguments he had advanced in his Anglican days were
incapable of refutation even by himself.
But it being hopeless to maintain that the present teaching of Roman
Catholics is identical with the doctrine held in the primitive Church, he set
himself to show that though not the same, it was a great deal better. This is the object of the celebrated Essay
on the Development
o/ Christian Doctrine, which he published simultaneously with his
submission to the Roman Church. The
theory expounded in it in substance is that Christ had but committed to His
Church certain seeds and germs of truth, destined afterwards to expand to
definite forms: consequently, that our Lord did not intend that the teaching of
His Church should be always the same; but ordained that it should go on
continually improving under the guidance of His Holy Spirit. This theory was not altogether new. Not to speak of earlier anticipations of it,
it had been maintained, not many years previously, by the German divine,
Mohler, in his work called Symbolik; and this mode of defending the Roman
system had been adopted in the theological lectures of Perrone, Professor in
the Jesuit College at Rome. But
Newman's book had the effect of making the theory popular to an extent it had
never been before, and of causing its general adoption by Romish advocates, who
are now content to exchange tradition, which their predecessors had made the
basis of their system, for this new foundation of development. You will find them now making shameless
confession of the novelty of articles of their creed, and even taunting us
Anglicans with the unprogressive character of our faith, because we are content
to believe as the early Church believed, and as our fathers believed before us.
In a subsequent lecture I mean to discuss
this theory of development: I only mention it now because the starting of this
theory exhibits plainly the total rout which the champions of the Roman Church
experienced in the battle they attempted to fight on the field of history. The theory of development is, in short, an
attempt to enable men, beaten off the platform of history, to hang on to it by the eyelids. Suppose, for instance, we have made a
strong proof that some doctrine or practice of modem Romanism was unknown to
the primitive Church, we might still find it difficult to show that this
general proposition of ours admitted of absolutely no exception. Did no one ever in the first centuries
teach or practise the thing in dispute?
or, if not absolutely the same thing, something like it? something only to be defended on the same
principles, or which, if pushed to its logical consequences, might justify the
present state of things? Then the
argument is applied, Any practice which was tolerated in the first age of the Church
cannot be absolutely wrong, and though it may have been in those days
exceptional, still the Church may, for reason that seems to her good, make it
her general rule now. And a doctrinal
principle once acknowledged, though it may be without its full import being
known, must now be accepted with all the logical consequences that can be shown
to be involved in it.
Thus, to take an example of a practice: it
is not denied that the refusal of the cup to the laity is absolutely opposed to
the custom of the Church for centuries; but it is thought to be sufficient
justification of Roman usage if we are unable to prove that in the early ages
absolutely no such thing ever occurred as communion in one element without the
other. Or, to take an example of a doctrine,
we inquire whether the Church of the first three centuries thought it necessary
to seek for the intercession of the Virgin Mary, or thought it right to pay her
the extravagant honours which Roman Catholics have now no scruple in bestowing
on her. There is no pretence of
answering these questions in the affirmative.
It is thought reply enough to ask in return, Did not the ancient Church
teach the fact of the intimate relation that existed between the Blessed Virgin
and the human nature of our Lord?
Surely yes, we confess, we acknowledge that ourselves. Then, it is urged, the later Church is
entitled to draw out by legitimate inference all that it can discover as to the
privileges which that intimate relation must needs have conferred, even though
the earlier Church had been blind to them.
When Dr. Newman's book appeared, I looked
with much curiosity to see whether the heads of the Church to which he was
joining himself would accept the defence made by their new convert, the book
having been written before he had yet joined them. For, however great the ingenuity of this defence, and whatever
important elements of truth it might contain, it seemed to be plainly a
complete abandonment of the old traditional theory of the advocates of Rome.
The old theory was that the teaching of
the Church had never varied. Scripture
proof of the identity of her present teaching with that of the Apostles might
fail; but tradition could not fail to prove that what the Church teaches now
she had also taught from the beginning.
Thus, for example, the Council of Trent, in the celebrated decree passed
in its fourth Session, in which it laid the foundation of its whole method of
proceeding, clearly taught that all saving truth and moral discipline had been
delivered either by the mouth of Christ Himself, or by His inspired Apostles,
and had since been handed down either in the Scriptures, or in continuous
unwritten tradition; and the Council, in particular decrees passed
subsequently, claimed for its teaching to have been what the Church had always
taught.[6] No phrase has been more often on the lips of Roman controversialists
than that which described the faith of the Church as what was held 'everywhere,
always, and by all.'[7]
Bishop Miller, in his well-known work, of which I shall have more to say
in another lecture, The End of Religious Controversy, writes:
'It is a fundamental maxim never to admit any tenet but such as is believed by
all the bishops, and was believed by their predecessors up to the Apostles themselves.' 'The constant language of the Church is nil innovetur, nil nisi quod traditum
est. Such
and such is the sense of Scripture, such and such is the doctrine of her
predecessors, the Pastors of the Church, since the time of the Apostles.' Dr.
Wiseman said: ' We believe that no new doctrine can be introduced into the
Church, but that every doctrine which we hold has existed and been taught in it
ever since the time of the Apostles, having been handed down by them to their
successors.' [8]
It is worth while to call attention to
another point in the decree of the Council of Trent to which I referred just
now, namely, the value it attached to the consent of the Fathers as a decisive
authority in the interpretation of Scripture.
The veneration for the Fathers so solemnly expressed at Trent has been
handed down as an essential part of popular Romanism. Let the most unlearned Romanist and an equally unlearned
Protestant get into a discussion, and let the Fathers be mentioned, and you may
probably hear their authority treated with contempt 'by the Protestant, but
assuredly it will be treated as decisive by the Romanist. Now, this making the authority of the
Fathers the rule and measure of our judgment is absolutely inconsistent with
the theory of Development. In every
progressive science the latest authority is the best. Take mathematics, which is in its nature as immutable as any
theory can represent .theology to be, and in which what has once been proved to
be true can never afterwards come into question; yet even there the older
authors are only looked into as a matter of curiosity, to illustrate the
history of the progress of the science, but have no weight as authorities. We study the science from modern books,
which contain everything of value that the older writers discovered—possibly may
correct some mistakes of theirs, but certainly will contain much of which they
are ignorant. And, in like manner, anyone who holds the theory of Development
ought, in consistency, to put the writings of the Fathers on the shelf as
antiquated and obsolete. Their
teaching, judged by the standard of the present day, must certainly be
defective, and might even be erroneous.
In point of fact, there is scarcely one of the Fathers who does not
occasionally come into collision with modern Roman teaching, and for whom it is
not necessary to find apologies. A good
deal of controversial triumph took place when, by the publication of certain
expurgatorial indices, it was brought to light that the Roman authorities
regarded certain genuine dicta of early Fathers as erroneous, and as
needing correction. But if the
Development theory be true, it is only proper that the inaccuracies of the time
when Church teaching was immature should be corrected by the light of fuller
knowledge. It follows that the
traditional veneration of the Fathers in the Roman Church is a witness of the
novelty of the theory of Development.
But, more than a century before Dr.
Newman's time, the theory of Development had played its part in the Roman
Catholic controversy; only then it was the Protestant combatant who brought
that theory forward, and the Roman Catholic who repudiated it. I shall have occasion in another lecture to
speak of the controversial work published by Bossuet, who was accounted the
most formidable champion of the Church of Rome towards the end of the
seventeenth century. The thesis of his
book called History
o/ the Variations o/ the Protestant Churches was
that the doctrine of the true Church is always the same, whereas Protestants
are at variance with each other and with themselves. Bossuet was replied to by a Calvinist minister named Jurieu. The line Jurieu took was to dispute the
assertion that the doctrine of the true Church is always the same. He maintained the doctrine of Development in
its full extent, asserting that the truth of God was only known by instalments (par parcelIes), that the theology of the Fathers was imperfect and fluctuating, and that
Christian theology has been constantly going on towards perfection. He illustrated his theory by examples of important
doctrines, concerning which he alleged the teaching of the early Church to have
been defective or uncertain, of which it is enough here to quote that he
declared that the mystery of the Trinity, though of the last importance, and
essential to Christianity, remained, 'as everyone knows,' undeveloped (informe) down
to the first Council of Nicæa and even down to that of
Constantinople. Bossuet, in replying,
had the embarrassment, if he felt it as such, that a learned divine of his own
Church and nation—the Jesuit Petau, whose name is better known under its
Latinized form, Petavius—had, in his zeal to make Church authority the basis of
all religious knowledge, made very similar assertions concerning the immaturity
of the teaching of the early Fathers. Plainly, if Jurieu could establish his case, the whole foundation
of Bossuet's great controversial work would be swept away. It would be impossible to taunt Protestants
because their teaching had not been always the same, if it must be confessed
that the same thing must be said of the Church in every age. But it would be unjust to imagine that
Bossuet was actuated merely by controversial ardour in the indignant and
passionate outcry which he raised against Jurieu's theory, or to doubt that
that theory was deeply painful and shocking to him on account of its aspersion
on the faith of the early Church. He
declared the statement that the mystery of the Trinity remained undeveloped
down to the Council of Nicæa to be a horrible libel (fletrissure) on
Christianity, to be language which could only have been expected from the mouth
of a Socinian. He appealed to the
contemporary work of our own divine, Bishop Bull (Defensio Fidei Nicenæ), in
which the doctrine of Nicæa was established by the testimony of
ante-Nicene Fathers, a work for which Bossuet had communicated the thanks of
himself and his clergy. He declared it
to be the greatest of errors to imagine that the faith of the Church only
developed itself as heresies arose, and as she made explicit decisions
concerning them. And he reiterated his
own thesis, that the faith of the Church, as being a Divine work, had its
perfection from the first, and had never varied; and that the Church never
pronounced any judgments, except by way of propounding the faith of the past.[9] The
name of Bossuet is, for reasons of which I shall speak on another day, not
popular with the Ultramontane party now dominant in the Roman Church; but there
is no doubt that, in his day, he was not only the accredited champion of that
Church, but the most successful in gaining converts from Protestantism. It seems, then, a very serious matter if the
leading authorities in the Roman Church have now )co own that, in the main
point at issue between Bossuet and Jurieu, the Calvinist minister was in the
right, and their own champion in the wrong.
Now, in Newman's Essay on Development, everything that had been said by Jurieu or by Petavius as to the
immaturity of the teaching of the early Fathers is said again, and said more
strongly. He begins by owning the
unserviceableness of St. Vincent's
maxim: ' Qued semper, qnod ubique, quod ab omnibus.' He confesses that it is
impossible by means of that maxim (unless, indeed, a very forced interpretation
be put upon it) to establish the articles of Pope Pius's creed; in other words,
impossible to show that these articles were any part of the faith of the early
Church, But he urges that the same thing may be said of the Athanasian Creed,
and he proceeds to try to pick holes in the proofs Bishop Bull had given of the
orthodoxy of the ante-Nicene Fathers.
So he declares that We need some new hypothesis for the defence of the
Athanasian Creed, for which purpose he offers his theory of Development; and
then he says that we must not complain if the same defence proves to be equally
good for the creed of Pope Pius.
I can remember my own astonishment at this
line of defence, and my wonder how it would be accepted by Roman Catholic
authorities. There appeared to be signs
that it would be received with disfavour; for Brownson's Quarterly Review, then the leading organ of American Romanism, published a series of
articles severely criticising the book, as abandoning the ground on which Roman
doctrine had previously been defended, giving up, as it did, the principles
that the Church taught nothing but what had been revealed, and that the
revelations committed to the Church had been perfect from the first.
But when I was simple enough to expect that
Roman Catholic divines generally would thus repudiate a work inconsistent with
what their teachers had constantly maintained, I failed to notice what a
temptation Newman offered by freeing the defenders of Romanism at once from a
multitude of controversies in which they felt they were getting the worst. He evacuated all the difficult posts which
they had been struggling to maintain, and promised that the captors should gain
nothing by taking them, for that he had built inside them an impregnable wall
of defence. Just imagine what a comfort
it must have been to a poor Roman Catholic divine who had been making a
despairing struggle to refute, let us say, the Protestant assertion that the
Church of the first three centuries knew nothing of the Invocation of the
Blessed Virgin, to be told that he need have no scruple in granting all that
his opponents had asserted. Dr. Newman
himself, disclaiming the doctrine that the Invocation of the Virgin is
necessary to salvation, says (Letter to Pusey, p. III): 'If it were so, there would be
grave reasons for doubting of the salvation of St. Chrysostom or St.
Athanasius, or of the primitive martyrs. Nay, I should like to know whether St.
Augustine, in all his voluminous writings, invokes her once.' But he holds (p.
63) that, though 'we have no proof that Athanasius himself had any special
devotion to the Blessed Virgin,' yet, by teaching the doctrine of our Lord's
Incarnation, ' he laid the foundations on which that devotion was to rest.'
Similarly, if perplexed by troublesome
proofs that early Fathers were ignorant of the doctrine of purgatorial fire, or
of the religious use of images, or of the supremacy of the Pope, what a comfort
to be told, You may safely answer, ' Quite true: these doctrines had not been
revealed to the consciousness of the Church of that age';—nay, to be told that
he need not quarrel with Arian representations of the doctrine of the
ante-Nicene Fathers, but might say, 'Quite true: the Church did not learn to
speak accurately on this subject until after the Council of Nicæa.'
The enlightened Roman Catholic of the new school may take the same view that a
dispassionate infidel might have taken about the controversy which Anglicans
and old-school Roman Catholics had been waging as to which of them held the
doctrines originally revealed by Christ and taught by His Apostles. An infidel might say, 'Neither of you. The doctrines taught by Jesus of Nazareth
have been since incorporated with a number of elements derived from different
sources, and the Christianity of the first century is not like what is taught
by anyone in the nineteenth.'
Thus, you will see that the doctrine of
Development concedes not only all that a Protestant, but even all that an
infidel might ask. I purpose, in a
subsequent lecture, to say something more in reference to this doctrine. At present my main object has been to show
the primary importance of the question of Infallibility, which has really
swallowed up all other controversies.
It is inevitable, indeed, that other branches of the controversy should
have a tendency to die out when a candid Roman Catholic is forced to concede
what his opponents assert. An unlearned
Protestant perceives that the doctrine of Rome is not the doctrine of the
Bible. A learned Protestant adds that
neither is it the doctrine of the primitive Church. These assertions are no longer denied, as in former days. Putting the concessions made us at the
lowest, it is at least owned that the doctrine of Rome is as unlike that of
early times as an oak is unlike an acorn, or a butterfly unlike a
caterpillar. The unlikeness is
admitted: and the only question remaining is whether that unlikeness is
absolutely inconsistent with substantial identity. In other words, it is owned that there has been a change, and the
question is whether we are to call it development or corruption.
But you must carefully observe that the
doctrine of Development would be fatal to the Roman Catholic cause if separated
from the doctrine of the Infallibility of the Church. Without the latter doctrine the former, as I have already pointed
out, leads to Protestantism or to infidelity rather than Romanism. In fact, the motto of the doctrine of
Development is 'We are much wiser men than our fathers.'
Well, surely, in many respects that is the case. Why, then, may not Protestants claim a right
to revise erroneous decisions made in days when learning was asleep and science
did not exist? Submission to the
supremacy of Rome in Europe was mainly brought about by the circulation of documents
which no one now pretends to be genuine.
Why should not an age learned enough to detect these forgeries reject
also the doctrine which was founded on them?
Or, take another Roman doctrine, that of Transubstantiation. It was built up in the middle ages, and
founded on a scholastic theory of substance and accidents which modern
philosophy rejects. Why is the building
to remain, when its foundation is discovered to be rotten? So much for the Doctrine of Development in
Protestant hands; while, in infidel it leads to the improving away of religion
altogether. We, being wiser men than
our fathers, can dispense with superstitions that amused them.
And against Protestants, at least,
Romanists gain nothing by appealing to God's promises to be ever with His
Church, and to give His Spirit to guide it into truth, and thence inferring
that such as His Church is, such her Founder intended it to become. But this principle, 'Whatever is is right,'
has to encounter the difficulty that Protestantism is: Why should not it be
right? Was it only in Rome that
Christianity was to develop itself? Was
it not also to do so in Germany and England?
Has God's Holy Spirit only a local operation, and is it to be supposed
that He had no influence in bringing about the form in which Christ's religion
has shaped itself here? May it not be
supposed, for example, that he wisely ordained that the constitution of His
Church should receive modifications to adapt it to the changing exigencies of
society; that, in times when no form of government but monarchy was to be seen
anywhere, it was necessary, if His Church was to make head successfully against
the prevalent reign of brute force, that all its powers should be concentrated
in a single hand; but that when, with the general spread of knowledge, men
refused to give unreasoning submission to authority, and claimed the right to
exercise some judgment of their own in the conduct of their affairs, the
constitution of the Church needed to be altered in order to bring it into harmony
with the political structure of modern society?
The fact is, that the doctrine of
Development has to encounter a great historical difficulty, which it can only
remove by an enormous assumption. The
doctrine is, that Christ's original revelation contained seeds and germs of
truths destined, under the Divine guidance, to expand to a certain definite
form. If this be true, that expansion
would take place wherever these germs were planted. It does not depend on where a tree is planted, whether it springs
up a cedar or a bramble-bush, or whether it brings forth figs or grapes. How is it, then, that all over the East that
doctrine which is the cardinal one of modern Romanism—the necessity of union
with the Chair of Peter—never made its appearance; nay, that the direct
opposite was held? And what reason can
be given for excluding from the list of divinely-intended developments those
which we Protestants have made—as, for instance, the importance which we attach
to the exercise of private judgment, to the individual study of Holy Scripture,
to the right of each to approach the Throne of Grace without any earthly
mediator? May it not be said that it
was the vitality which the teaching of the Holy Spirit gave to the last
doctrine, which has rescued Christianity from assuming the form of some heathen
superstitions, in which a certain caste of men was imagined to understand the
art of conciliating the .favour of the gods; to whose mediation, therefore, the
ordinary worshipper was to address himself, religion being a matter which only
his priests understood, and which required no intellectual co-operation of his
own?
If we compare Protestant with Roman
Catholic developments, we find, further, that Protestant developments are of
such a nature as to be made only in the fulness of time, as the human intellect
developed itself, and as science and learning grew. There is no shame in a Church acknowledging herself to grow wiser
with years, in such matters as these.
If the Church of Rome, for instance, were now wise enough to expel the
text of the Three heavenly Witnesses from her Vulgate, she could say in her
defence that the science of Biblical criticism was more advanced now than in
the days when this text was admitted.
But, by what means are we to suppose that the Roman Church acquired a
knowledge of historical facts concerning which there is no historical
tradition? How has she come to be wiser
now than the Church of former ages, concerning the way in which the Blessed
Virgin was conceived 1900 years ago, or concerning the removal of her body to
heaven? If there had been any
historical tradition on these subjects, the Church would always have known
it. And is it likely that God has
interfered to make any special revelation on these subjects now, if He saw there
was no inconvenience in leaving His Church for so many centuries- without
authentic information on such points?
However, without further arguing the point
whether Protestant or Roman developments are the best, it is evident that the
doctrine of Development is a many-edged weapon. There are Eastern developments and Western ones, Protestant and
Romish, even infidel developments: which is the right one? The Romanist answers, The Church of Rome is
infallible; she alone has been commissioned to develop doctrine the right way;
all other developments are wrong. Let
the Romanist prove that, and he may use the doctrine of Development, if he then
cares to do so; but it is quite plain that without the doctrine of Roman
Infallibility, the doctrine of Development is perfectly useless to a Romish
advocate.
But with the doctrine of Infallibility
once proved, or supposed to be so, the doctrine of Development becomes
needless; and Cardinal Manning, in particular, has quite got beyond it. In my own time the aspect of Romanism has
changed so rapidly that this theory of Development, so fashionable thirty years
ago, has now dropped into the background.
It was wanted while the Roman Catholic divines were attempting to make some
kind of battle on the field of history.
In those days it was still attempted to be maintained that the teaching
of the Church of the present day agrees with that of the Church of early times:
not indeed in form, but at least in suchwise that the former contains the germ
of the latter. Now, the idea of testing
the teaching of the Church of the present day, by comparison either with
Scripture or antiquity, is completely abandoned. Cardinal Manning has profited by Plutarch's story, that when
Pericles was puzzling himself what account of his expenditure he should give
the Athenian people, he got the advice from Alcibiades that it would be wiser
of him to study how he could avoid giving any account at all. The most thoroughgoing and most ignorant
Protestant cannot show greater indifference to the opinions of the Fathers than
does Cardinal Manning. If Dr. Manning
were asked whether St. Cyprian held the doctrine of the Pope's Supremacy, he
might answer much in the same way that, as the story goes, Mr. Spurgeon
answered, when asked whether St. Cyprian held the doctrine of Justification by
Faith. Either might say, ' I don't know, and I don't much care; but, for his
own sake, I hope he did; for if he didn't, so much the worse for him.'
According to Manning, it is a matter of unimportance how the
Church is to be reconciled with Scripture or antiquity, when once you
understand that the Church is the living voice of the same Being who inspired
Scripture, and who taught the ancient Church.
To look for one's creed in Scripture and antiquity is, to Manning, as
great a heresy as to look for it in Scripture alone. Either course makes the individual the judge or critic of
Revelation. The appeal to antiquity,
says Manning, is both a treason and a heresy.
It is a treason, because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour; and a
heresy, because it denies that voice to be divine.[10] According to Manning's
theory, it is our duty to accept implicitly whatever the present Church
teaches, and to be sure that, however opposed this may seem to what we find in
Scripture or antiquity, we need not trouble ourselves about the matter, and
that the opposition can only be apparent.
According to this theory, then, all the prerogatives of Scripture are
annulled: the dicta of Pius IX. and Leo XIII. are as truly inspired by God's
Spirit, and are to be received with as much reverence, as the utterances of
Peter and Paul. Thus the function of
the Church, in the latest form of Romanism, is made to be not so much to guard
and hand down securely an original revelation as to be a perpetual organ for
making new revelations.[11] Whenever a new controversy arises, the
Pope is divinely inspired to discern its true solution, and to pronounce which
of the parties is in the right and how far.
In this way Manning's party have now got beyond the old Ultramontane
doctrine of the inerrancy of the Pope.
This doctrine has been changed into that of his divine perpetual
inspiration,[12] giving
him a power of disclosing new truths as infallibly as Peter and Paul. Dr. Pusey called this theory a kind of
Llamaism, implying as it does a kind of hypostatic union of the Holy Ghost with
each successive Pope.
I think I have made good my assertion,
that the present Roman Catholic position is one taken up in desperation by men
who have been driven from every other.
And I will add that they have taken it up with immense loss; for the few
whom they have gained from us do not make up for the larger numbers, both in
our communion and their own, whom they have driven into infidelity. In their assaults on Protestantism they have
freely made Use of infidel arguments.
Their method has been that of some so-called Professors of biology:
first to bewilder and stupefy their patients, that they may be ready to believe
anything, and do anything, their mesmerise tells them. And it has happened that men who have been
thus driven to the verge of infidelity, when they saw that abyss yawning before
them, have eagerly clutched simplified for the Roman Catholic, it is not so for
you. The Romish champions, beaten out
of the open field, have shut themselves up in this fortress of Infallibility,
where, as long as their citadel remains untaken, they can defy all
assaults. Confute them by any arguments
you please, and they can still reply, 'The Church has said otherwise,' and
there is an end of the matter. But,
though the Roman Catholic has thus shut himself up in a fortress, he can at any
moment sally out on you, if he thinks he can do it with success. He will for the moment waive the question
whether the Pope Could
decide wrongly, and will undertake to show that
decisions of his which had been controverted were, in point of fact,
right. Every victory a Roman Catholic
can gain over you on particular points of controversy strengthens his faith in
the attribute of Infallibility, his Church's claim to which seems to be
verified by fact. On the other hand, if
he is beaten back into his fortress every sally he makes, if he finds it a task
of ever-increasing difficulty to reconcile with Scripture and with history the
actual decisions of this guide who is warranted never to go wrong, so heavy a
strain is put on his faith in the reality of this gift, that this faith is not
unlikely to give way. The almost
invariable history of conversions or re-conversions from Romanism is that doubt
has arisen as to the truth of some particular point of Roman Catholic doctrine
(very often not by any means the most important point), and then, as the
evidence of the falsity of this particular doctrine becomes more and more
clear, the inquirer goes on to examine whether the arguments for Infallibility
are strong enough to bear the strain laid on them. In fact, a tract on any point of Roman teaching may be regarded
as an argument on the' question of Infallibility. Clearly, there could be no more decisive proof that the Church of
Rome can err, than if you could show that she has erred.
If a Roman Catholic will discuss any point of doctrine with you, he is
really putting the Infallibility of his Church on its trial. And, consequently, a thoroughgoing
Infallibilist like Manning, is consistently a foe to all candid historical
investigation, as being really irreconcilable with faith in the Church's
authority at the only hand which they believed had power to save them from it. But for one convert made in this way, many
have been spoiled in the making; many, when offered the choice—Ultramontanism
or Infidelity—have taken the latter alternative- It is a very short way from
the doctrine that Pius IX. and Leo XIII. were as much inspired as Peter and Paul,
to the doctrine that Peter and Paul were no more inspired than Plus or Leo.
According to the theory of our Church, the
appearance of Christ, and the founding of His Church, of which He made the
Apostles the first earthly heads, were unique events in the world's
history. No argument can be drawn from
the uniformity of nature against the possibility that miracles may have
attended these events, because the uniformity of nature only assures us that in
like circumstances like results will take place; and here the circumstances are
asserted to be wholly unlike what has occurred at any other time. But the case is otherwise if it is
implicitly denied that there was anything exceptional in the mission of the
Apostles. If their divine commission
was the same in kind as that which the Pope enjoys now, we must measure what is
told of them by what our experience tells us of the Pope now. And, conversely, if we believe that they
really did authenticate the message which they delivered, by exhibitions of
miraculous power, we have a right to demand that the Pope, if he claims to be
the organ of divine revelations, as they were, should heal the sick, and raise
the dead, as they did.
It would be too late now to commence the
discussion of the question of the Infallibility of the Church. I content myself for to-day with having
shown that this is, in fact, the pivot of the whole controversy, on which
everything turns, defeat on which would make all other victories useless; and,
conversely, that a man who ceases to hold it ceases to be really a Roman
Catholic.
In conclusion, I have to warn you that,
although the reasons I have given justify me in devoting this Term's Lectures
to the question of Infallibility, to the exclusion of several important
subjects, yet you cannot safely neglect these other subjects; for, though the
controversy has been simplified for the Roman Catholic, it is not so for
you. The Romish champions, beaten out
of the open field, have shut themselves up in this fortress of Infallibility,
where, as long as their citadel remains untaken, they can defy all
assaults. Confute them by any arguments
you please, and they can still reply, 'The Church has said otherwise,' and
there is au end of the matter. But,
though the Roman Catholic has thus shut himself up in a fortress, he can at any
moment sally out on you, if he thinks he can do it with success. He will for the moment waive the question
whether the Pope could
decide wrongly, and will undertake to show that
decisions of his which had been controverted were, in point of fact,
right. Every victory a Roman Catholic
can gain over you on particular points of controversy strengthens his faith in
the attribute of Infallibility, his Church's claim to which seems to be
verified by fact. On the other hand, if
he is beaten back into his fortress every sally he makes, if he finds it a task
of ever-increasing difficulty to reconcile with Scripture and with history the
actual decisions of this guide who is warranted never to go wrong, so heavy a
strain is put on his faith in the reality of this gift, that this
faith is not unlikely to give way. The
almost invariable history of conversions or re-conversions from Romanism is
that doubt has arisen as to the truth of some particular point of Roman
Catholic doctrine (very often not by any means the most important point), and
then, as the evidence of the falsity of this particular doctrine becomes more
and more clear, the inquirer goes on to examine whether the arguments for
Infallibility are strong enough to bear the strain laid on them. In fact, a tract on any point of Roman
teaching may be regarded as an argument on the' question of Infallibility. Clearly, there could be no more decisive
proof that the Church of Rome can err, than if you could show that she has erred. If a Roman Catholic will discuss any point
of doctrine with you, he is really putting the Infallibility of his Church on
its trial. And, consequently, a
thoroughgoing Infallibilist like Manning, is consistently a foe to all candid
historical investigation, as being really irreconcileable with faith in the
Church's authority.
FOOTNOTES
PREFACE
TO THE FIRST EDITION. [October 1888]
THIS volume, like that
already published under the title of
'An Introduction to the New Testament,' contains lectures delivered in
the ordinary course of instruction to my class in the Divinity School of the
Dublin University. The character of the
audience addressed in such lectures renders necessary a mode of treatment different
from that which would be suitable in a work originally intended for
publication. A lecture does not aim at
that completeness which is demanded by the purchaser of a book, who expects to
find in it alt the information he needs on the subject with which it deals, and
who objects to be sent to look for it elsewhere. The teacher of a class of intelligent young men cannot but feel
that the knowledge which he can hope to communicate to them directly is
insignificant in comparison with what they will acquire by their own reading,
if he can only interest them in the study.
He has no wish to save them the trouble of reading books, but thinks it
would be waste of time to spend much in telling them what they are likely to
read for themselves elsewhere. It is
not his duty to write a new book for their use if he can refer them to sources
whence the same information can be satisfactorily obtained. And he naturally adopts a colloquial style
as best adapted for retaining the attention of the hearers of a long viva voce lecture.
On account of the differences I have
indicated, I had not thought my lectures suitable for publication in their
actual form, though I at times entertained intentions of writing theological
works for which these lectures might supply materials. But time went on without my finding or
making leisure to carry any of my contemplated projects into execution; until,
three or four years ago, I found reason to consider the possibility that if I
were to die, leaving lectures behind me, the pious zeal of some of m35 friends
might cause them to be published posthumously.
I felt that if any of my lectures were to be printed, I should much
prefer that it were done before they were quite out of date, and while they
could have the benefit of my own revision.
So I determined to try the experiment of printing some of them; and I
selected those on the New Testament, as being on the subject most likely to be
generally interesting. Having found by
experience that there was no likelihood of my casting my lectures into any
different form, I sent them to be printed just as they were, though in the
course of their passing through the press, I found so many points omitted, or
imperfectly treated, that I was led to make additions which considerably
increased the bulk of the volume.
The favourable reception which that volume
has met with has encouraged me to print another series of lectures. For the reasons stated in the Introductory
Lecture, I do not expect the subject to be so generally interesting as that of
the former volume; and yet I have in the same lecture, given reasons for
considering the investigation to be one that ought not to be neglected. But I frankly confess that I have had more
pleasure in that part of my professorial work which engaged me in the defence
of truths held in common by all who love our Blessed Lord, than when it was my
duty to discuss points on which Christians differ among themselves. It has, however, been a pleasant thought to
me, that in the present series of lectures I was doing what in me lay to remove
what is now the greatest obstacle to the union of Christians. There is, I think, abundant evidence that at
the present day thee pressure of the conflict with unbelief is drawing
Christians closer together. When we
regard the state of mutual feeling between members of the Anglican Church on
the one hand, and on the other the Greek Church, or the German Old Catholics,
or the Scotch Presbyterians, or the Scandinavian Churches, I think we can
discern in all cases a growing sense that there are things in which we all agree,
more important than the things on which we differ. And the prospect is not altogether unhopefuI that, by further
discussions and mutual explanations, such an approximation of opinion might be
arrived at that there would be at least no bar to intercommunion. But as the Roman Church is at present
disposed, there can be no union with her except on the terms of absolute
submission; that submission, moreover, involving an acknowledgement that we
from our hearts believe things to be true which we have good reasons for
knowing to be false. The nature of the
claims of Rome clearly shuts out that possibility of reconciliation in her case
which may be hoped for in other cases from retractations or mutual
explanations; so that, by every effort to bring about the withdrawal of these
claims, we are doing something to remove the main obstacle to the reunion of
Christendom.
I am not so silly as to imagine that any
perceptible effect can follow from adding one to the many demonstrations that
have been given that the claims of which I speak are unfounded. But no false opinion can resist for ever the
continual dropping of repeated disproofs.
We may point out instance after instance in which papal authority has
been given to decisions now known to be erroneous, and in each case some
ingenious attempt may be made to show that the attribute of infallibility did
not attach to the erroneous decision; but sooner or later men must awake to see
that the result of all this special pleading is that, whereas they expected to find
a guide who would always lead them right, they have got instead a guide who can
find some plausible excuse to make every time he leads them wrong. I do not think it absolutely impossible
that, under the pressure of historical disproof, some such modification of the
theory of Roman Infallibility may eventually be made as wilt amount to a
practical withdrawal of it. The theory of Development, which has now found
extensive acceptance in the Roman Communion, involves the belief that the
Church of the present day is, in some respects, wiser than the Church of
earlier times. When that theory has
been itself a little further developed, it may be found to give the Church the
right to review the decisions of earlier times, and to abandon claims formerly
made, but which experience has shown to be untenable.
In the present series of lectures I have
not entered into the details of the controversy with Roman Catholics. I was able to refer my class to many good
books which have been written on the subject.
But arguments are useless if addressed to those who profess to be above
argument. As the controversy is
conducted at the present day, everything turns on the power claimed for the
Pope of determining and declaring without any attempt to produce evidence, what
are or are not Apostolic traditions.
There really is but one question to be settled: Are we bound to receive
undoubtingly the Pope's unproved assertions, without any attempt to test by
argument whether they are true or not?
He may declare in words that he has no commission to make revelation of
new doctrine, but only to hand down faithfully the revelation made through the
Apostles; but what does that avail if we are bound to take his word whether a
doctrine be new or not? He may propound
a doctrine such as that of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin,
which it is certain that the Church for centuries never regarded as part of the
revelation made through the Apostles, and it is held that we are bound not only
to believe that doctrine to be true, but also to believe, on the
Pope's authority, that it is old.
These lectures were not written for Roman
Catholics; and I do not expect them to fall into the hands of any, except of
those who deal in controversy, and who, perhaps, may take up the volume in
order to see if it contains anything that needs to be answered. If any such there should be, I beg of them
to remember that they are overhearing what members of another communion say
when they are quite by themselves, and, therefore, that they must not be
offended if they meet the proverbial fate of listeners in hearing some things
not complimentary. If they should think
that I have not done justice to their side of the question in the view I have
presented of it, I earnestly request them to believe that my error has been
involuntary; that it has been my desire to know and to report fairly the
strongest arguments that can be used in defence of the Roman claims; and that
if there be stronger than those which I have attempted to answer, my omission
arises either from ignorance of them, or because the constitution of my
intellect is such that I could see no force in them.
With regard to the manner in which I have
expressed myself, it is possible they may object to my habitual use of the term
Romanists to denote the members of their Church. In the older Church of England books of controversy the word
commonly used was 'Papists,' and the religion was called 'Popery.' In modern
times the word Papist is supposed to be offensive, though I do not know why men
should be ashamed of being called after the Pope, who give him now even a more
prominent place in their religious system than he held three hundred years
ago. I have, however, avoided using a
term which, whether rightly or wrongly, is imagined to be offensive, though I
suspect that the real reason for objecting to it is a desire to be known by no
other name than 'Catholics.' Protestants who know nothing of theology are apt
freely to concede the appellation, having no other idea connected with it than that
it is the name of a sect; but those who know better feel that it is a
degradation of a noble word to limit it in such a way. And, in truth, if it is possible to convey
insult by a title, what is really insulting is that one section of Christians
should appropriate to themselves the title 'Catholic' as their exclusive right,
and thus, by implication, deny it to others.
This is so obvious that they do not now insist on being called Catholics
pure and simple, and are satisfied if other people will speak of them as Roman
Catholics. It is a compromise which I
am willing to accept in my intercourse with persons of that religion; but I
observe that when they are by themselves they always drop the 'Roman,' and call
themselves 'Catholics.' So they have no cause to be offended if, when we are by
ourselves, we drop the 'Catholic' and call them 'Roman.'
We may fairly object to an inconvenient
periphrasis. If we must not speak of
members of the Roman Church without tacking Catholic to their name, must we not
also, if we claim au equal right in the title, add it to our own name? While, however, we could describe our
brethren in England as Anglo-Catholic, how are those of us who live in Ireland
or Scotland or America to call ourselves?
If any sect—say the Unitarian—were to claim the exclusive title of
Christians, and when this were refused them, should insist, at least, in being
known, not as Unitarians, but as Unitarian Christians, would not that be felt
to be the old claim in disguise, since it would be inconvenient to us to be
obliged to make a similar addition to our own name? What I should understand by a Roman Catholic would be a member of
the Catholic Church whose home was Rome.
A member of the Catholic Church who lived in England would, of
necessity, be an Anglo-Catholic. If he
wanted there to be a Roman Catholic, he would be no Catholic at all, but a
schismatic. To speak honestly, of all
the sects into which Christendom is divided, none appears to me less entitled
to the name Catholic than the Roman. Firmilian,
long ago, thus addressed a former bishop of Rome (and this great bishop
Firmilian must be regarded as expressing the sentiments not only of the Eastern
Church of the third century, but also of St. Cyprian, to whose translation, no
doubt, we owe our knowledge of this letter): 'How great is the sin of which you
have incurred the guilt in cutting yourself off from so many Christian flocks.
For, do not deceive yourself, it is yourself you have cut off: since he is the
real schismatic who makes himself an apostate from the communion of
ecclesiastical unity. While you think
that you can cut off all from your communion, it is yourself whom you cut off
from communion with all,' At the present day the bishop of Rome has broken communion with more than
half of Christendom, merely because it will not yield him an obedience to which
he has no just right. To me he appears
to have as little claim to the title Catholic as had the Donatists of old, who,
no matter how many bishops they had in their adherence, were rightly deemed
schismatics, because they had unjustly broken communion with the rest of the
Christian world.
I might, however, have conquered my
objection to the name Roman Catholic, if it were not that it seems to draw with
it the word Romancatholicism, one of some abominable words that have been
introduced in our generation. To me, ,
Catholic' and '-ism' represent ideas which absolutely refuse to coalesce. Roman Catholics hold many doctrines which I
believe to be true and Catholic; but what is meant by Romancatholieism is that
part of the belief of Roman Catholics which is not Catholic, and is not true.
The majority of the lectures in this
volume were written about the year 1870; and as they were not intended for
publication, they contained no references to authorities. This has caused me
some inconvenience, as, since the time these lectures were written, my reading
has taken other directions. I have,
however, been able to supply references to the ancient authorities cited; but I
have not thought it worth while to give the labour necessary to recall what use
I have made of the literature current at the time the lectures were written.
I have to acknowledge the assistance given
me by my friends, Dr. Gwynn and Dr. Quarry, who have been kind enough to read
the proofs of this volume; and I have to thank the Rev. W. K. Ormsby for help
given me in the preparation of the Index.
[1]
Letter published 'by permission' in the Standard, April
7, 1870. See Letters of Quirinus, authorized translation, p. 356.
I have been reminded that Newman, in his
letter to the Duke of Norfolk, written five years later, speaks of himself as
'accepting as a dogma what he had ever held as a truth'; and I suppose that
this word 'ever,' if not to be understood quite literally, at least means that
at the time he wrote his letter to Bishop Ullathorne, he believed the doctrine
of the Pope's Infallibility to be a truth.
But a reader of that letter may be pardoned for not suspecting
this. Who could imagine that such panic
apprehensions as the letter exhibits was caused by alarm at the intelligence
that the writer was about to receive the highest assurance that what he had
ever believed to be true really was true, and that this truth was about to be
published to the world with such authority that thenceforth it would be
inexcusable to doubt it? It was natural to attach significance to
the fact that the words of Ezekiel should rise to Newman's hand: ' With lies ye
have made the heart of the righteous sad,' and natural to suppose that it was
only politeness which withheld him from quoting them in full.
No one who has read my lecture with any
attention will need to be told that I never meant to impute to Newman
insincerity in his professions of belief.
What I have been speaking of all through is the effect of the reception
of the doctrine of Infallibility—not on men's profession, but on their beliefs. External force may frighten a man into
altering his outward profession, but has no effect on his inward belief. But if he comes to persuade himself of the
existence of a guide incapable of leading him wrong, he is ready to surrender
his previous beliefs in deference to that authority, to accept as true what he had
before proved to be false, and to renounce as false what he had before proved
to be true: even though he can point out no flaw in his previous
demonstrations, and though he might find it hard to explain why he was not as
liable to error in the process by which he persuaded himself of the
infallibility of his guide as in his earlier reasonings.
Newman's letter to Ullathorne, however,
serves to illustrate what a different thing is the belief into which a man
persuades himself in deference to authority from that which is the result of
his own investigations. The former we
have seen to be a thing which winces when it is pressed too hard, and which the
holder shrinks from pressing upon others. Tats, in my opinion, does not deserve
to be called real belief, though, no doubt, it may grow into it, when in
process of time the opposing arguments come to be forgotten.
[2] In reply to the above it has been said that
it has been customary with heretics to accuse the Church of changing her
doctrine whenever she finds it necessary, for the first time, to pass
condemnation on some newly invented heresy; and that if the Church of Rome can
fairly be accused of having changed her doctrine at the Vatican Council, the
Church of the fourth century may, with equal fairness, be accused of having
changed her doctrine at the Council of Nicæa. But in order to make the parallel a
just one, it would be necessary to show that all through the first three
centuries it had been a permissible opinion in the Christian Church to hold that
our Blessed Lord was not truly and properly God: and further that when heathen
assailants had accused the Church of worshipping Christ as God, it had been
customary with Christian apologists to answer, ' this is a heathen invention;
the Christian Church has never regarded Christ as God in the highest sense of
the Word.' If such a defence had been made by the ablest of the Christian
advocates, and if their apologies had been circulated with the approbation of
all the leading bishops, then it would have been impossible to resist the Arian
allegation that the Council of Nicæa had innovated on the ancient faith of
the Church.
[3] 'When they [the Valentinian heretics] are
confuted from the Scriptures they turn round and accuse these same Scriptures
as if they were not correct, nor of authority, for that they are ambiguously
worded, and that the truth cannot be discovered from them by those who are
ignorant of tradition. For they say
that the truth was not delivered in writing but viva voce; wherefore
Paul also declared "We speak wisdom among them that are perfect, but not
the wisdom of this world "' (Irenaeus iii. c. 2). And to make the analogy
complete, Irenaeus goes on to complain that when the Church met these heretics
on their own ground of tradition, then they had recourse to a theory of
development claiming to be then in possession of purer doctrine than that which
the Apostles had been content to beach.
[4] Hieron, in Matt. xxiii.
[5] De Verbo Dei, iv.
9.
[6] So for example in the decree concerning
matrimony (Sess. xxiv.), 'Sancti patres nostri, et concilia, et universalis
ecclesiae traditio semper docuerunt.'
[7] Vincent. Lirin, Commonitorium, c. 3.
[8] Wiseman, Moorfield Lectures, i.
60. London: 1847.
[9] The statements in the text are taken from
Bossuet's Premier
avertissement aux Protestants.
[10] Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost, p.
226; see also pp. 28, 203.
[11] In theory the power of making new
revelations is disclaimed, but in practice there is no scruple about calling on
the Church to believe new truths: that is, to accept as true things previously
disputed or unknown; and the claims of theory are supposed to be satisfied by
asserting, often in direct opposition to evidence, that the revelation was net
new, for that the Church had always believed in accordance with the new ruling.
[12] A Roman Catholic critic accuses me of
forgetting here that 'the Catholic claim' is not inspiration but only
inerrancy. I consider the latter far
the stronger word. In popular language
the word 'inspired' is sometimes used in speaking of the works of a great
genius who is not supposed to be exempt from error, but no one can imagine the
utterances of a naturally fallible man to be guaranteed against possibility of
error, unless he believe that man to be speaking, not of his own mind, but as
the inspired organ of the Holy Spirit.