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           Title: The Grounds of Faith: Four Lectures.
      Creator(s): Manning, Henry Edward (1808-1892)
     Print Basis: London: James Burns (1843)
   CCEL Subjects: All;
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                             THE GROUNDS OF FAITH.

Four Lectures

    BY

HENRY EDWARD,

    SECOND CARDINAL ARCHBISHOP OF WESTMINSTER

  NINTH EDITION.

  LONDON: BURNS & GATES, LD.

    NEW YORK, CINCINNATI, CHICAGO: BENZIGER BROTHERS.
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CONTENTS.

   LECTURE I.

   REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN
                                                             1

   LECTURE II.

   THE CHURCH A HISTORICAL WITNESS
                                                             20

   LECTURE III.

   THE CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS
                                                             36

   LECTURE IV.

   RATIONALISM THE LEGITIMATE CONSEQUENCE OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT
                                                             59
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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.
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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.

   Let us ask those who deny the existence of this basis of certainty,
   upon what do they rest when they believe in the fact of a revelation?
   The revelation was not made to them, personally. It was not made
   to-day. It was made to others: it was made eighteen hundred years ago.
   By what means, I ask, are men now certain that eighteen hundred years
   ago, to other men, in other lands, a revelation from God was given?
   They are forced back upon history. They were not there to see or hear.
   Revelation does not spring up by inspiration in their inward
   consciousness. They are, therefore, thrown upon history; they are
   compelled to go to the testimony of others. All men who at this hour
   believe in the Advent of the Son of God, and in the fact of the day of
   Pentecost, all alike rest upon history. Not but that Catholics rest on
   more (of this, however, hereafter); but they who do not rest upon the
   divine office of the Church rest on history alone. Then, I ask, by what
   criterion are they certain that their historical views are true? Let
   them throw the rule of their examination into some form of words.
   Unless they can put into intelligible words the principle of certainty
   upon which they rest, it is either useless or false: useless, if it
   cannot be stated, for if it cannot be stated, it cannot be applied;
   false, if the nature of it be such that it will not admit of expression

   I would beseech any who are resting upon such a certainty as this, not
   to confound a sensation of positiveness with the sense of certainty.
   The sense of certainty is a Divine gift. It is the inward testimony of
   our whole intelligent nature. A sensation of positiveness springs out
   of obstinacy, or prejudice. Let them not confound the resolution to
   believe themselves in the right with the reason for knowing that they
   are in the truth. Let them analyse deeper, and find what is their
   principle, and state that principle in intelligible words. To take an
   example. We all believe, apart from revelation, that the world was
   created. How so? We proceed to prove it. The world is not eternal, for
   then it would be God. It did not make itself, for that is
   contradiction. Therefore, it remains of necessity that it had a maker.
   I ask them only to be as definite as this: for life is short and
   eternity is long, and we are saved by truth; and truth which is not
   definite is no truth to us; and indefinite statements have no
   certainty; and without certainty there is no faith.

   In answer to this we are told that all men can read the Holy
   Scriptures, and that this is enough. I reply, Scripture is not
   Scripture except in the right sense of Scripture. Your will after you
   are dead is not your testament unless it be interpreted according to
   your intention. The words and syllables of your testament may be so
   interpreted as to contradict your purpose. The will of the deceased is
   the intention of the deceased known by his testament. So of Holy
   Scripture. Holy Scripture is Holy Scripture only in the right sense of
   Holy Scripture.

   But we are further told, that notwithstanding these superficial
   contradictions, all good men agree in essentials. First, then, I ask,
   What are essentials? Who has the power to determine what is essential
   and what is not? By whose judgment are we to ascertain it? The Church
   knows only one essential truth, and that is, the whole revelation of
   God. It knows of no power to determine between truth and truth, and to
   say, "though God has revealed this, we need not believe it." The whole
   revelation of God comes to us with its intrinsic obligation on our
   faith, and we receive it altogether as God's word. They who speak of
   all good men agreeing in essentials, mean this: "I believe what I think
   essential, and I give my neighbour leave to believe what he thinks
   essential." Their agreement is only this, not to molest each other: but
   they mutilate the revelation of God.

   In opposition to these opinions, let us state the grounds of our own
   certainty.

   I. We believe, then, that we have no knowledge of the way of salvation
   through grace, except from the revelation of God. No one can deny this.
   It is a truism that we have no knowledge of the way of redemption by
   grace except through divine revelation. The whole world is witness of
   the fact. For four thousand years the world wandered on, and knew not
   the way of grace except by a thread of light which from Adam to Enoch,
   and from Enoch to Noe. and from Noe to Abraham, and from Abraham to
   Moses, and from Moses to the promised Seed, ran down, keeping alive in
   the world the expectation of a Redeemer. Outside this path of light the
   way of grace was not known; nor was it known even there except by
   revelation.

   And round about that solitary light, what was there? Was there a
   knowledge of the way of salvation through grace? The heathen nations,
   their polytheism, their idolatry, their morality, their literature,
   their public and their private life, do these give testimony to the way
   of grace? Take their schools, their philosophies, their greatest
   intellects, what do they prove? One of the greatest practical
   intellects of the Eastern world believed that matter was eternal, and
   that the soul of the world was God. The loftiest of all in speculation
   was blind when lie came to treat of the first laws of purity. In the
   west, the greatest orators, poets, and philosophers, either believed in
   no God at all, or in a blind and imaginary deity, stripped of
   personality. This was all that Nature had done. Nature without
   revelation had no true knowledge of God, and absolutely none of
   salvation through grace.

   It was not until four thousand years had passed that the way of
   salvation through grace was revealed. Look at the mightiest effort
   Nature in its own strength ever made,--the empire of Rome; that vast
   power extending itself in all the world; the whole earth wondering at
   the onward march of its victorious armies; races falling back before
   its legions; its frontiers expanding whithersoever they trod; a mighty,
   world-wide dominion, whose capital spread from the Mediterranean to the
   Alban hills, in circuit sixty or seventy miles, within which nations
   dwelt together: the palace of the aristocracy of the earth; for
   magnificence, splendour, and civilisation, never exceeded among
   mankind. Human nature here was taxed to its utmost strength: human
   intelligence reached its utmost bound; and what knew Rome of the way of
   grace, or of salvation through Jesus Christ? What was the morality of
   Rome? What was its religion? It was the high place of all the gods; the
   deities of the greater and lesser nations, and of the surrounding
   cities which it conquered, were incorporated with its own
   superstitions. All impieties were in veneration, and every falsehood
   had its shrine. Only truth was persecuted, only one worship was
   forbidden; and that, the only doctrine and the only worship riot of
   this world. Nature did its utmost; the intelligence of man bore
   testimony to all it could attain. The Babel of confusion was built to
   teach mankind for ever that human nature without God could never rise
   to a knowledge of the way of grace.

   The manifestation of God in the flesh; the effusion of light and
   revelation through the Holy Spirit; the setting up of the mystical
   ladder at the head of which the Lord stands, and on which Angels ascend
   and descend; the gathering together of truths that had wandered to and
   fro on earth; and the uniting of all in one hierarchy of faith: nothing
   less was needed before man could know the way of eternal life.

   It is certain, then, that we have no natural knowledge of the way of
   salvation through grace; that is, through the Incarnation, the
   Atonement, the mystical Body of Christ; through the Sacraments, which
   are the channels of the Holy Spirit. Without revelation we have no true
   knowledge of sin, whereby we forfeited our sonship; nor of
   regeneration, whereby we regain it; nor of the relation of grace to the
   free-will of man; and the like. But all these are doctrines upon which
   union with God and eternal life depend, and yet of these not a whisper
   was heard on earth until revelation came by Jesus Christ.

   II. But, further, we believe, in the second place, that as we have no
   knowledge of the way of salvation through grace, except from the
   revelation of God, so neither have we any certainty what that
   revelation was, except through the Church of God. As the fountain is
   absolutely one and no other, so the channel through which it flows is
   absolutely one and no other. As there is no source of certainty but
   revelation, so there is no channel through which it can flow but the
   Church of God. For certainty as to the revelation given eighteen
   hundred years ago, of the Church we needs must learn. To what other can
   we go? Who besides has the words of eternal life? Shall we go to the
   nations of the world? Can they teach the faith which they knew not
   before Christ came, neither have since believed? Shall we go to the
   fragments of Christendom broken off from age to age by heresy and
   schism? Their testimony is but local, limited, and contradictory. What
   certainty can the Monophysite, Eutychian, Nestorian, or Protestant,
   give of the day of Pentecost? To whom, then, shall we go? To that one
   mystical body which came down from the upper chamber to possess the
   earth; to that one moral person upon whom the Holy Spirit then
   descended; to that kingdom of the God of heaven, which, spreading from
   Jerusalem through out all lands, penetrated into every country,
   province, and city, erecting its thrones, ascending in might and power,
   expanding throughout the earth, gathering together its circumference,
   filling up the area of its circuit, until the world became Christian;
   and then sat in sovereignty, displacing and replacing the empire of the
   world. This universal kingdom, one and indivisible, reigning continuous
   and perpetual in unbroken succession from the day of Pentecost, was the
   eye-witness and the ear- witness of revelation. This one moral person
   alone can say, "When the Word made flesh spake, I heard; when the
   tongues of fire descended from heaven, I saw: with my senses I
   perceived the presence of God; with my intelligence I understood His
   voice; with my memory I retain to this hour the knowledge of what I
   then heard and saw; with my changeless consciousness I testify what was
   spoken." To this one, and this one only witness in the world, can we go
   for certainty.

   Put the case thus. Will you go to the Monophysite, Eutychian, or
   Nestorian heresies, ancient as they are, which separated from the
   Church of Christ in the fifth and sixth centuries? Will they bear
   witness? Yes; but only a partial testimony. They were witnesses so long
   as they were united to the one Church; but their testimony ceased when
   they separated from it. They are witnesses so far as they agree with
   that one Church, but not when they contradict it. The testimony derived
   from separated bodies amounts to this: it is the borrowed light which
   even in separation they receive from the Church itself.

   And as with early, so with later heresies. Shall we go to the separated
   Greek communion, which claims to be the only orthodox Church? Will that
   give a trustworthy testimony? Yes; so far as it agrees with the body
   from which it departed. Its witness after the separation is but local.
   Shall we go to the great division of these later times, to the huge
   crumbling Protestantism of the last three centuries? Is there in it any
   sect descending from the day of Pentecost? When did it begin? A hundred
   years ago, probably, or it may be two, or at most three hundred years
   ago. At that time a traceable change produced it. Does Protestantism
   reach up ward to the original revelation? Has it a succession of sense,
   reason, memory, and consciousness, uniting it with the day of
   Pentecost?

   If, then, what has been said as to the only source and channel of
   knowledge and certainty be true, sufficient reason has been shown to
   make every one who is resting on the testimony of bodies separated from
   the Universal Church mistrust his confidence. Must he not say, Eighteen
   hundred years ago a revelation was given; my life reaches but a span,
   my memory but a few years; how do I know what passed on that day? How
   shall they tell me whose life, like my own, touches only upon the last
   generation? I go to this and to that separated communion, but they all
   fall short. There is one and one only living witness in the world,
   which, as it touches on the present hour in which I live, unites me by
   a lineal consciousness, by a living intelligence, with the moment when,
   in the third hour of the day, "there came a sound from heaven as of a
   mighty wind coming, and filled the whole house."

   Let it be remembered that I am speaking of the external authority of
   the Church simply as a historical argument. We will confine ourselves
   for the present to this alone. I put it forward as it was cited by a
   philosophical historian, one of the greatest of this age, who, having
   passed through the windings of German unbelief, found at last his rest
   in the one True Fold. Explaining the ground of his submission, Schlegel
   gave this reason; that he found the testimony of the Catholic Church to
   be the greatest historical authority on earth for the events of the
   past. It is in this sense I am speaking.

   And therefore, when I use the word authority, I mean evidence. The word
   "authority" may be used in two senses. It may either signify power, as
   the jurisdiction which the Church has over the souls committed to its
   trust; or it may mean evidence, as when we say, we have a statement on
   the authority, or evidence, of an eye-witness.

   Suppose, then, we were to reject this highest historical evidence;
   suppose we were to say that the authority of the Catholic Church,
   though of great weight, is not conclusive: I would ask, what historical
   evidence remains beyond it? To whom else shall we go? Is there any
   other authority upon which we can rest? If we receive not the authority
   of the Universal Church, we must descend from higher to lower ground,
   we must come down to the partial authority of a local church. Will this
   be to ascend in the scale of certainty? If the testimony of the
   Universal Church be not the maximum of historical evidence in the
   world, where shall we find it? Shall we find it in the church of
   Greece, or of America, or of England? Shall we find it in the church of
   a province, or in the church of a diocese? If the Universal Episcopate
   be not the maximum of external evidence, where shall it be found? And,
   in fact, they who reject the evidence of the Universal Church for the
   primitive faith, necessarily rest their belief on the authority of a
   local body, or on the authority of a man. It was by divine intuition
   that our Lord said, "Call none your father upon earth;" for they who
   will not believe the Church of God must be in bondage to human
   teachers. If they are Calvinists, they must be in bondage to Calvin; or
   Lutherans, to Luther; or Arians, to Arius; or if they be members of a
   church separated from Catholic unity, they must be in bondage to its
   self-constituted head. The ultimate authority in which they trust is
   human. From this false confidence in man the Catholic Church alone can
   redeem us. We trust not in the judgment of an individual, howsoever
   holy or wise, but in the witness of an universal and perpetual body, to
   which teachers and taught alike are subject; and because all are in
   subjection to the Church, all are redeemed from bondage to individual
   teachers and the authority of men.

   Thus far we have spoken of the Church as a mere human witness. To us,
   indeed, brethren, its voice is not mere human testimony God has pro
   vided for faith a certainty which cannot fail; the mystical Body of
   Christ, changeless and indestructible, spread throughout the world.
   Wonderful creation of God; but far more wonderful if it be the creation
   of man: if, after all man's failures to construct an imperishable
   kingdom, to hold together the human intelligence in one conviction, the
   human will in one discipline, and the human heart in one bond of love;
   if, after four thousand years of failure, mere human power framed the
   Catholic Church, endowed it with resistless power of expansion, and
   quickened it with the life of universal charity. More wonderful far, if
   it was man's work to create the great science of theology, in which the
   baptismal formula, "I baptise thee in the name of the Father, and of
   the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." expands into the creed, and the creed
   again expands into the science of God on which the illuminated reason
   of eighteen hundred years has spent itself. Wonderful, indeed, if this
   be a mere human creation! To us it is the work and voice of God; to us
   the line of Bishops and of Councils by which the Faith has been
   declared in perpetual succession is the testimony which God Himself has
   counter signed, the witness God Himself has sent. This continuous
   testimony from the Council of Aries to the Council of Nice, from the
   Council of Nice to that of Chalcedon, from Chalcedon to Lateran, from
   Lateran to Lyons, and from Lyons to Trent, is one harmonious science,
   ever expanding as a reflection of the mind of God; preserving and
   unfolding before us the one Truth revealed in the beginning, in its
   unity and harmony and distinctness. This is the basis of our certainty.

   What is the history of the Catholic Church but the history of the
   intellect of Christendom? What do we see but two lines, the line of
   faith and the line of heresy, running side by side in every age; and
   the Church, as a living Judge, sitting sovereign and alone with
   unerring discernment, dividing truth from error with a sharp two-edged
   sword? Every several altar, and every several see, gives testimony to
   the same doctrines; and all conspiring voices ascend into the testimony
   of that One See, which in its jurisdiction is universal, and in its
   presence every where; that one See, the foundation-stones of which were
   cemented in the blood of thirty Pontiffs; chat See which recorded its
   archives in the vaults of catacombs, and when the world was weary with
   persecuting, ascended to possess itself of imperial basilicas. This is
   the witness upon whose testimony we securely rest. The Church is a
   living history of the past. Cancel this, and what record is there left?
   If Rome be gone, where is Christendom?
     __________________________________________________________________

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.

   We agree; then, at the outset, that the subject- matter of our faith
   is, and can only be, the original revelation of God. To that revelation
   nothing may be added; from it nothing may be taken away. As God in the
   beginning created the sun in the heavens with its perfect disc, and no
   skill or power of man can make its circumference greater or less, so
   Divine revelation is a work of God's omnipotence, and no man can add to
   it, or take from it. In this also we are agreed. But there are other
   principles no less vital than these. Let those who are so jealous for
   this law of truth remember, that as we may neither take from nor add to
   revelation, so neither may we misinterpret or pervert it; neither fix
   upon it our private meaning, nor make it speak our sense. We must
   receive it as God gave it, in its perfect fullness; with its true sense
   and purport as it was revealed.

   It were good, then, if they who are so jealous of supposed additions to
   the faith, were equally jealous of evident and manifold perversions of
   the same. It would be well if those who are so hostile to
   interpretations of Holy Scripture made by the Catholic Church, were
   equally hostile to interpretations made by every man severally of that
   same book. Let us proceed more exactly; and as we agree that nothing
   may be added to or taken from that revelation, so let us jealously
   demand that no thing in it shall be misinterpreted, nor its sense
   wrested aside, nor its meaning perverted.

   But here begin our differences. How are we to attain the right sense of
   Holy Scripture? It is a divine book, and contains the mind of God, How,
   then, shall we know what is His mind? By what rule or test shall we
   know with certainty that we have attained the meaning which the Divine
   Spirit intended in that revelation? We have here many tests and many
   rules offered to us. Some tell us that Scripture is so self-evident
   that the man who reads it must understand. If that be so, why do they
   that read it contradict each other? Facts refute the theory. If Holy
   Scripture be so clear, why are there so many contradictory
   interpretations?

   But is it so clear? When the English reader has before him for the New
   Testament the Greek text, and for the Old Testament the Hebrew
   text--neither of which languages he reads--where is the self-evidence
   of his text then? How does he know that the book before him truly
   represents the original? How can he prove it? How can he establish the
   identity between the original and the translation? How can he tell that
   the book before him is authentic or genuine, or that the text is pure?
   For all this he depends on others.

   But let us take this argument as it is stated. Is Scripture, then, so
   self-evident that no one who reads it can mistake its sense? If it be
   self-evident to the individual, it is self-evident to the Church. If
   the text is so clear to every man who reads it, then it has been clear
   to every Saint of God from the beginning. If this book is so plain that
   men cannot mistake it, then the Pastors and Teachers of the Church have
   handed down its clear and certain interpretation. Why are individuals
   so sharp-sighted and unerring, and the Saints of God at all times
   blind? This is but the recoil of their own argument. Let Holy Scripture
   be as clear and self-evident as they say, then I claim in virtue of
   that clearness that the Saints of God in all ages have rightly
   understood its sense.

   II. But let us pass onward. We see that they who claim to interpret
   this book, with all its clearness, contradict each other, and that
   their rule fails in their own hand. Therefore, the wiser among
   Protestants say, that to the text of Scripture must be added right
   reason to interpret it. Right reason, no doubt: but whose reason is
   right reason? Every man's reason is to himself right reason. The reason
   of Calvin was right reason to Calvin, and the reason of Luther to
   Luther; but the misfortune is, that what is right reason to one man is
   not so to another man. What then is this right reason? It means a
   certain inward intellectual discernment which each man claims for
   himself. But how did he become possessed of it? Whence did he receive
   this endowment? And if ho has it, have not others the same? This right
   reason which men claim whereby to interpret Scripture for themselves
   must be one of two things: either the individual or the collective
   reason; that is, the reason of each man for himself, or the accumulated
   reason of Christians taken together. But will any man say that his
   reason is to him so certain and unerring a rule that he is able to take
   the page of Scripture, and by the powers of his understanding
   infallibly interpret it? For such a claim as this a man must have
   either a particular inspiration, which considerate men dare not
   profess, or he must substitute a sensation of positiveness for a sense
   of certainty.

   If, then, this right reason comes to nothing in the individual, does it
   mean the collective reason of the many? If so, it falls back into a
   principle valid and certain. What is the collective reason of
   Christians but the tradition of Christendom? The intellectual agreement
   of the Saints of God, what is it but the illuminated reason of those
   that believe? Here we touch upon a great principle; let us follow its
   guidance.

   After the division which rent England from the unity of the Church, and
   therefore from the certainty of faith; when men began to re-examine the
   foundations which Protestantism had uprooted, there arose in the
   Anglican Church a school of writers, acute and sincere enough both to
   see and to confess that the principle of private judgment is the
   principle of unbelief. They began to reconstruct a foundation for their
   faith, and were compelled to return once more to the old basis of
   Catholic theology. We can trace from about the middle of the reign of
   Elizabeth down to the great revolution of 1688, a theological school
   which sprung up within the Established Church, basing itself upon
   Catholic tradition, and claiming to found its faith not upon private
   judgment, but upon the rule of Vincent of Lerins, namely, on that which
   was believed "at all times, every where, and by all men." This school,
   for it never indeed was more, has in it names honoured and loved, names
   ever dear to those who have been partakers with them. They were no
   common men; their lives were ascetic, their intellects capacious, and
   their erudition deep. They inherited a position which they would never
   have chosen; a position in many respects vague, and for which time had
   not yet supplied a practical comment: and they endeavoured to defend by
   learning that which had owed its origin to violence; their position
   created their theory. They suffered for their opinions, and passed
   through trying times with great integrity. Had they not had these
   virtues, they would not have been so long received as authority. They
   kept alive an illusion that the Anglican Church was indeed a portion
   still of the great Catholic empire which rests upon the unity and
   infallibility of the Church of God; an illusion indeed, but not without
   its providential use. For look at the countries where such a belief has
   been extinct from the beginning; at the Socinianism of Switzerland, the
   Protestantism of France, the Rationalism of Germany; and say whither
   England might have gone down if this illusion had not been permitted to
   exist? They, while they knew it not, did a work for England: a
   counterwork against the license of Protestant reformation. They were
   the leaders of a reaction, the fruit of which will be seen here after.
   They laid again in part the foundations of belief; they demonstrated
   that private judgment is no adequate rule for the interpretation of the
   faith. They cast men back again upon authority: and put once more into
   their hands a test. And what is that test, but the historical tradition
   of the Church, namely, that whatsoever was revealed in the beginning,
   and believed every where by all men and at all times, is, beyond a
   doubt, the faith of Pentecost?

   But here we touch upon another difficulty even more pressing and more
   vital. We have now the test by which to discover the truth; but where
   is the mind by which that test shall be applied? If the individual
   reason be not enough in its own powers of discernment to interpret the
   books of Evangelists and Apostles, one small volume written with the
   perspicuity of inspiration--if the individual reason be not enough for
   this, is it able to take the literature of eighteen, or even of the
   first six centuries, volumes written in many tongues and in all
   Christian lands, to make survey and analysis of them, to gather
   together and to pronounce what has been believed by all men, and every
   where, and at all times? Even in ordinary things, if the question were,
   What are those universal principles of the common law of England which
   have been held every where, at all times, and by all common-law judges,
   would any individual in ordinary life think himself a competent critic?
   Would he not go to Westminster? Or if the question were, What is the
   pronunciation or idiom of a language, would he go to books and not to
   natives? Or, if the question related to the grounds of scientific
   conclusions, would he buy and pore over treatises of science, instead
   of asking those whose lives have been devoted to science? Even in
   music, there are melodies, the accentuation and time of which cannot be
   written; they can be transmitted only from the voice to the ear. So is
   it with the transmission of the faith. Though in subjects where the
   Church has not spoken, individuals may investigate, yet the application
   of the rule of Vincent needs more than the discernment of an individual
   mind. It needs a judge whose comprehensive survey penetrates the whole
   matter upon which it judges. And where is the individual that can
   compass the whole experience of Christendom? Nay, more; it needs a
   judge who can not only discern for one age, but for the next, and the
   age succeeding. What benefit is there in a judge that judges in his
   day, and dies? A perpetual doctrine tested by a perpetual rule needs a
   perpetual judge. Who judged in the times following the Apostles but the
   Church in their next successors? Who in the century after, when heresy
   arose, but the Church in Councils? Who in the heresy of Arius, the
   heresy of Eutyches, the schism of the Greek Church? Who judged in the
   middle ages? who in later times? who judges to-day? The same judge
   always sitting; the same one living body which by the illumination of
   Pentecost received the Truth. Is it not plain that as every age needs
   the truth for its redemption, and as our Divine Lord has made provision
   that every age through the truth shall be redeemed, so at no time from
   the beginning until now has the world ever been, and at no time from
   now until the end, shall the world ever be, without a teacher and a
   judge to declare with final certainty what is the tradition of the
   faith?

   Here then we find ourselves in the presence of the Church. As the
   subject-matter demands a test, so the test demands a judge. What other
   judge is there? What other can there be, but that one moral person,
   continuous from the beginning, the one living and perpetual Church?

   And here even antagonists have made great admissions. Chillingworth, a
   name in the mouths of all men as the first propagator of what is
   vaunted as the great rule of Protestantism, "the Bible, and the Bible
   only," that same Chillingworth says that there is a twofold
   infallibility, a conditional and an absolute. "The former," namely, a
   conditional infallibility, he, "together with the Church of Eng land,"
   attributes "to the Church, nay to particular churches." "That is, an
   authority of determining controversies of faith according to plain and
   evident Scripture and universal tradition, and infallibility while they
   proceed according to this rule" [1] But in whose judgment? In the
   judgment of the individual? In the judgment of each member of the local
   and particular church? or in the judgment of the Church Universal? for
   there can be no other judge to determine whether the particular church
   moves still in the path of universal tradition. Is the individual to be
   judge of his church? This would be to bid water rise above its source
   What then remains? The Universal Church alone can be the judge to
   pronounce whether or no a local church still keeps within the sphere of
   universal tradition.

   But if this be so, the Universal Church must be infallible; for if it
   may err, who shall determine whether it errs or no? "Can the blind lead
   the blind? do they not both fall into the ditch?" It comes, then, by
   the force of rigorous argument to this, that either the Universal
   Church cannot err, or that there is on earth no certainty for faith.
   If, then, the Church Universal be unerring, whence has it this
   endowment? Not from human discernment, but from Divine guidance; not
   because man in it is wise, but because God over it is mighty. Though
   the earth which moves in its orbit may be scarred by storms, or torn by
   floods; though upon its surface nations may be wasted, cities over
   thrown, and races perish, yet it keeps ever in its path, because God
   ordained its steadfast revolutions: so, though individuals may fall
   from truth, and nations from unity, yet the Catholic Church moves on,
   because God created it and guides it.

   III. And now we must advance one step further. For in dealing with
   those who are separated from as, I believe that nothing I have yet
   touched upon really probes the difficulty in their minds. The sore lies
   deeper still: and it will be found that the reluctance of too many,
   even among good men, to receive the doctrine of the infallibility of
   the Church of God springs from this, that they base their religious
   opinions upon human reason, either in the individual or upon a large
   scale, as upon the mere intellectual tradition of Christendom, and not
   upon the illumination and supernatural guidance of Christ ever present
   and ever dwelling as a Teacher in the Church. It will be found to
   involve a doubt as to the office of the third Person of the
   Ever-Blessed Trinity.

   Let us proceed to examine this more closely. We believe that Holy
   Scripture and the Creeds contain our faith; that for the meaning of
   these we may not use private interpretation, or wrest them from their
   divine sense, but must receive them in the sense intended by God when
   they were given in the beginning. To ascertain that sense, we must go
   to the Universal Church. Universal tradition we believe to be the
   supreme interpreter of Scripture. When we come to this point, I ask the
   objector, Do you believe that this universal tradition of Christendom
   has been perpetuated by the human reason only? Or do you believe it to
   be a traditional, divine illumination in the Church? Do you believe
   that the Holy Spirit is in the Church; and that His Divine Office is
   perpetual? If you say that individuals may judge the meaning of
   Scripture by their own reason: the Church has collective reason, and
   what the individual has the Church has more abundantly. If individuals
   are guided by the illumination of the Holy Spirit in the interpretation
   of Scripture, the Church much more. That which is collective contains
   all that is individual.

   But further than this. "As the sensual man," proceeding, that is, by
   the natural discernment only, "perceiveth not these things that are of
   the Spirit of God," because they are "spiritually examined," [2] so the
   Church itself in council depends for its discernment in identifying the
   original faith, interpreting the original documents, and defining the
   original truth, on the presence of the Holy Ghost, Whom it invokes at
   the opening of every session. What is the Church in the mouth of those
   separated from Catholic unity? Is it more than a human society? Is it
   not the religious organisation of national life? If it be not, like the
   schools of Athens, collected round the voice of some potent and
   persuasive teacher, it is at most, like the Jewish people, an organised
   government of men, as in temporal matters so in ecclesiastical. This is
   the idea of the Church among those separated from unity. But what do
   you believe when you speak of the Church of God? You believe that as
   the Eternal Father sent the Eternal Son to be incarnate, and as the
   Eternal Son for thirty-three years dwelt here on earth: as for three
   years by His public ministry, He preached the kingdom of God in
   Jerusalem and Judaea, so, before He went away, He said, "I will ask the
   Father, and He shall give you another Paraclete, that He may abide with
   you for ever, the Spirit of truth." [3] The gain we have by His
   departure is this, that what was then local is now universal; that what
   was partial then is now in fullness; that when the second Person of the
   Ever-Blessed Three ascended to the throne of His Father, the third
   Person of the Holy Trinity descended to dwell here in His stead; that
   as in Jerusalem the second Person in our manhood visibly taught, so now
   in the mystical body of Christ the third Person teaches, though
   invisibly, throughout the world; that the Church is the incorporation
   of the presence of the Holy Spirit teaching the nations of the earth.

   Is not this our meaning when in the Creed before the altar we say, "I
   believe One Holy Catholic Apostolic Church?" And this touches the point
   where we differ from those who are without. The discernment they
   ascribe to the Church is human, proceeds from documents, and is
   gathered by reasoning. We rise above this, and believe that the Holy
   Spirit of God presides over the Church, illuminates, inhabits, guides,
   and keeps it; that its voice is the voice of the Holy Spirit Himself;
   that when the Church speaks, God speaks; that the outward and the
   inward are one; that the exterior and the interior authority are
   identified; that what the Church outwardly testifies, the .Spirit
   inwardly teaches; that the Church is the body of Christ, so united, to
   Christ its Head, that He and it are one. as St. Paul declares, "He gave
   some apostles, and some prophets, and other some evangelists, and other
   some pastors and doctors, for the perfecting of the saints, for the
   work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ; until we
   all meet into the unity of faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of
   God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fullness of
   Christ;" [4] "from whom the whole body being compacted and fitly joined
   together by what every joint supplieth, according to the operation in
   the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body, unto the
   edifying of itself in charity."

   The ultimate authority, then, on which we believe, is the voice of God
   speaking to us through the Church. We believe, not in the Church, but
   through it: and through the Church, in God.

   And now, if this be so, I ask what Church is it that so speaks for God
   in the world? What Church on earth can claim to be this teacher sent
   from God? Ask yourselves one or two questions.

   What Church but one not only claims, but possesses and puts forth at
   this hour an universal jurisdiction? What Church is it which is not
   shut up in a locality or in a nation, nor bounded by a river or by a
   sea, but interpenetrates wheresoever the name of Christ is known? What
   Church, as the light of heaven, passes over all, through all, and is in
   all? What Church claims a universal authority? What one sends missions
   to the sunrise and to the sunset? What Church has the power of
   harmonising its universal jurisdiction, so that there can be no
   collision when its pastors meet? What Church is there but one before
   whom kingdoms and states give way? When yet did the Church of Greece,
   for instance, make a whole nation rise? When did a voice issue from
   Constantinople before which even a civilised people forgot its
   civilisation? Why came not such a voice from the East? Because there
   was no Divine mission to speak it.

   We are told that all other sects are religions, and may be safely
   tolerated, but that the Catholic Church is a polity and kingdom, and
   must therefore be cast out. We accept this distinction. What is this
   cry but the cry of those who said of old, "We will not have this man to
   reign over us?" It is the acknowledgment that in the Catholic Church
   there is a Divine mission and a Divine authority; that we are not
   content with tracing pictures on the imagination, or leaving outlines
   on the mere intellect, but that, in the name of God, we command the
   will; that we claim obedience, because we first submit to it. From the
   highest pastor to the lowest member of Christ's Church, the first
   lesson and the first act is submission to the faith of God.

   How blind, then, are the statesmen of this world: the Catholic Church
   an enemy of civil kingdoms! What created modern Europe? What laid the
   foundations of a new empire when the old had withered in the East? What
   was the mould from which Christian nations sprang? What power was it
   that entered into England when it was divided by seven jarring,
   conflicting kingdoms, and harmonised them as by the operation of light
   into one empire? What power is it that, as it created all these, shall
   also survive them all? What created the very constitution of which we
   are so proud? Whence came its first great principles of freedom? Why do
   we hear, then, that because the Catholic Church has a polity and is a
   kingdom, because it claims supremacy, and is found every where supreme,
   therefore it is not to be tolerated?

   It has indeed a power from heaven which admits no compromise. There is
   before it this, and this only choice. In dealing with the world, it
   says: "All things of the world are yours; in all things pertaining to
   you, in all that is temporal, we are submissive; we are your subjects;
   we love to obey. But within the sphere of the truth of God, within the
   sphere of the unity and discipline of God's kingdom, there is no choice
   for the Catholic Church but mastery or martyrdom."

   Let us ask another question. What Church but one has ever claimed a
   primacy over all other Churches instituted by Jesus Christ? Did any
   Church, before the great division, three hundred years ago, save that
   one Church which still possesses it, ever dream of claiming it? Has any
   separate body since that time ever dreamed of pretending to such a
   primacy? Has there ever been m the world any but one body only, which
   has assumed such a power as derived to it from Jesus Christ?

   In answer it is said, "Yes; but the primacy or Rome has been denied
   from the beginning." Then it has been asserted from the beginning Tell
   me that the waves have beaten upon the shore, and I tell you that the
   shore was there for the waves to beat upon. Tell rue that St. Irenaeus
   pleaded with St. Victor that he would not excommunicate the Asiatic
   Churches; and I tell you that St. Irenaeus thereby recognised the
   authority of St. Victor to excommunicate. Tell me that Tertullian
   mocked at the "Pontifex maximus," "the Bishop of Bishops," and I tell
   you he saw before him a reality that bare these titles. Tell me that
   St. Cyprian with stood St. Stephen in a point not yet denned by the
   Church, and I tell you that, nevertheless, in St. Stephen's See, St.
   Cyprian recognised the chair of Peter, in unity with which he died a
   martyr. What do wars of succession prove but the inheritance and
   succession of the crown? What does a process of ejectment prove but
   that a man is in possession of the disputed property? What truth is
   there that has not been disputed? Let us apply the argument. Has not
   the doctrine of the Holy Trinity been denied? Has not the Incarnation
   been denied? Is there any doctrine that has not been denied? But what
   is our answer to the Arian and Socinian? Because from the beginning
   these truths have been denied, therefore from the beginning they have
   been both held and taught.

   To go over the field of this argument would be impossible; I will
   therefore take only one witness of the primacy of the See of Peter. And
   I will select one, not from a later age, because objectors say, "We
   acknowledge that through ambition and encroachment this primacy in time
   grew up;" nor shall he be chosen from the centuries which followed the
   division of the East and West, because we are told that the exorbitant
   demands of the West in this very point caused the East to revolt from
   unity. It shall be a witness whose character and worth, whose writings
   and life have already received the praise of history. It shall be one
   taken from the centuries which are believed even by our opponents to be
   pure,--from the six first centuries, while the Church was still
   undivided, and, as many are still ready to admit, was infallible, or at
   least had never erred. It shall be a name known not only in the roll of
   Saints, but one recognised in Councils, and not in Councils of obscure
   name, but in one of the four Councils which St. Gregory the Great
   declared were to him like the four Gospels, and the Anglican Church by
   law professed to make its rule whereby to judge of heresy. In the
   Council of Chalcedon, then, was recognised the primacy of St. Leo.
   Throughout his writings, and especially in his epistles, St. Leo's
   tone, I may say his very terms, axe as follows: "Peter was Prince of
   our Lord's Apostles. Peter's See was Rome. Peter's successor I am.
   Peter devolved upon his successors the universal care of all the
   Churches. My solicitude has no bounds but the whole earth. There is no
   Church under heaven which is not committed to my paternal care. There
   is none that the jurisdiction of St. Peter does not govern." We not
   only hear him claim, but see him exercise acts of jurisdiction in Gaul,
   in Spain, in Italy, in Africa, in Greece, in Palestine, and in
   Constantinople. We find him convening and presiding in Councils;
   confirming or annulling the canons of those Councils; judging Bishops,
   deposing and restoring them. Even of Constantinople, the only rival
   ever put forward to the primacy of Rome, he writes to the Emperor,
   speaking of the ambition of the Patriarch then in possession: "The
   nature of secular and of divine things is different, neither shall any
   fabric be stable but that one rock which the Lord has wondrously laid
   in the foundation. He loses his own who covets what is another's. Let
   it suffice for him of whom we have spoken" (i.e. the Patriarch of
   Constantinople), "that by the help of thy piety, and the assent of my
   favour, he has obtained the episcopate of so great a city. Let him not
   despise the imperial city, which he cannot make an Apostolic See." [5]
   There is no act of primacy exercised at this hour by the Pontiff who
   now rules the Church which may not be found in its principles in the
   hands of St. Leo. They who refuse obedience to this primacy must refute
   St. Leo's claim. Until they do this, they stand in the presence of an
   authority which no other Church has ever dared to exercise.

   We will ask but one question more. What other Church is there that has
   ever spread itself through all the nations of the world as speaking
   with the voice of God? Does Protestantism ever claim in any form to be
   heard by nations or by individuals as the voice of God? Do any of their
   assemblies, or conferences, or convocations, put forth their
   definitions of faith as binding the conscience with the keys of the
   kingdom of heaven? Do they venture to loose the conscience, as having
   the power of absolving men? The practical abdication of this claim
   proves that they have it not. Their hands do not venture to wield a
   power which in any but hands divinely endowed would be a tyranny as
   well as a profanation.

   And what do we see in this but the fulfilment of a divine example? Of
   whom is it we read that "the people were in admiration at His
   doctrine," for this very reason, because "He was teaching them as one
   having power, and not as their scribes?" He spake not as man, that is,
   not by conjecture, nor by reasoning, nor by quoting documents, nor by
   bringing forth histories, but in the name of God, being God Himself. So
   likewise the Teacher whom He hath sent, comes not with laboured
   disquisitions, nor with a multitude of books, nor with texts drawn from
   this passage and from that treatise, but with the voice of God, saying:
   "This is the Catholic faith, which unless man believe faithfully, he
   cannot be saved." It comes with the voice of authority appealing to the
   conscience, leaving argument and controversy to those who have too much
   time to save their souls, and speaking to the heart in man, yearning to
   be saved.

   Take Rome from the earth, and where is Christendom? Blot out the
   science of Catholic theology, and where is faith? Where is the mountain
   of the Lord's house which Isaias the prophet saw? Where is the stone
   cut out without hands, which, in the vision of Daniel, grew and filled
   the whole earth? Where is the kingdom which the God of Heaven hath set
   up? Where is the "city seated on a mountain" that cannot be hid? If
   Rome be taken out of Christendom, where are these? I do not ask what
   Churches have laid claim to represent those prophecies. Your own reason
   says it is impossible. But where, I ask, if not here, is the fulfilment
   of the words, "Lo, I am with you all days, even unto the consummation
   of the world?" Where, if not here, is the witness of God now speaking?
   Where, if not here, is the perpetual presence of the faith of
   Pentecost?

   We stand not before a human teacher when we listen to the Catholic
   Church. There is One speaking to us, not as scribes and pharisees, but
   as the voice of God: "He that heareth you heareth Me; and he that
   despiseth you despiseth Me; and he that despiseth Me despiseth Him that
   sent Me." [6]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [1] Chillingworth's Works, vol. i. pp. 276, 277. ed. Oxon.

   [2] 1 Cor. ii. 14.

   [3] St. John xiv. 16.

   [4] Eph. iv. 11, 12, 16.

   [5] S. Leon. ad Marc. Epist. lxxviii.

   [6] St. Luke x. 16.
     __________________________________________________________________

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?" [7] The true messenger of God is al
   ready abroad in all the earth.

   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." [8] Unity is changeless, whoever falls away: it does not
   admit of degrees. One cannot be more or less than one.

   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.

   Such was the belief of many. Then came a crisis. You know, and I will
   do no more than remind you distantly, how a question touching the first
   sacrament of the Church, touching, therefore, the first grace of
   Christian life, original sin, and the whole doctrine of the work of
   grace in the soul of man--a doctrine fundamental and vital, if any can
   be--was brought into dispute between a priest and his bishop. The
   bishop refused to put him in charge with cure of souls. The priest, not
   content with the decision of his bishop, appealed to the jurisdiction
   of the archbishop; the archbishop, that is, his court, confirmed the
   decision of the bishop. The appeal was then further carried to the
   civil power sitting in council. Observe the steps of this appeal. The
   bishop here is a spiritual person possessing spiritual authority,
   sitting as a spiritual judge in a spiritual question The archbishop to
   whom the appeal is carried sits likewise as a spiritual judge in a
   spiritual question, with this only difference, that whereas his
   jurisdiction is co-extensive with the jurisdiction of the bishop, it is
   superior to it. When the appeal, then, is carried from the arch bishop
   to the civil power in council, what does that appeal disclose? That the
   civil power sit ting in council sits as a spiritual person to judge in
   a spiritual question with a jurisdiction like wise co -extensive, and
   absolutely superior both to bishop and archbishop, an office which in
   the Church of God is vested in a patriarch. There is no possibility of
   mistaking this proceeding. It is one of those proofs which are
   revealed, not in arguments, but in facts.

   And now, to what does this reduce the theory of local churches? It
   shows that local churches possess in themselves no power to determine
   finally the truth or falsehood of a question of faith. An attempt was
   made at that time by men, whom I must ever remember with affection and
   respect, to heal this wound by distinguishing in every such appeal
   between the temporal element relating to benefice, property, and
   patronage, and the spiritual element touching the doctrine of faith. It
   was proposed that the temporal element should be carried to the civil
   power sitting in council, as the natural judge in a matter of benefice
   or temporalities; and that the spiritual element, or the question of
   doctrine, should be carried to the bishops of that local church. When
   this proposal was under discussion, these questions were asked: Suppose
   that when a question of doctrine is carried to the united council of
   the bishops of that local church, a bare majority of them should decide
   one way, and a large minority should decide the other; will the minds
   of a people stirred from the depths, excited by religious controversy,
   moved as no other motive in the world can move them, by dispute on a
   point of religious opinion--will they be pacified? will they be
   assured? will they hold as a matter of divine faith the decision of
   this majority? Again, suppose that mere number be on the side of the
   majority, and that theological learning be on the side of the minority;
   if the majority have greater number, the minority will have greater
   weight. And will not people adhere to the few whom they trust rather
   than to the many whom, as theologians, they less esteem? And another
   question, not asked then, may be asked now by us: Suppose the whole
   body of the assembled bishops of a local church were unanimous, what
   guarantee or security is there that their decision shall infallibly be
   in accordance with the faith of the Church of Christ? A local body has
   no prerogative of infallibility. If "the Churches of Jerusalem and of
   Antioch have erred," every local church may err. If these local
   churches, not withstanding their antiquity and magnitude, have erred,
   shall not a body three hundred years old err too? If "General Councils
   may err," so, much more readily, may a provincial synod. The church
   which has recorded these assertions has prepared its own sentence. It
   disclaims an infallible guidance. And if its assembled fathers, with
   one mind and voice, should declare with unity on any point of doctrine,
   what security is there that their united decision shall express the
   faith of the Universal Church? Torn from the Catholic unity, the mind
   and spirit of the Universal Church has no influx into the Anglican
   communion. The channel is cut asunder. It has no authority that is more
   than human, and thereby revealed itself. Some indeed believed that it
   was a church for three hundred years, and became a schism two years
   back; that the Anglican position was tenable till then, and has become
   untenable only since the change was made.

   But there is another alternative. The crisis we speak of was either a
   change or a revelation. They who can look into history and see existing
   these two schools from the reign of Edward the Sixth, and the supremacy
   of the crown from the reign of Henry the Eighth; they who can follow
   the religious contests of England for three centuries, and still say
   that a change has been lately made for the first time, may say it; but
   they who believe that the judgment then pronounced by the highest legal
   authorities in this land was a true and accurate historical criticism
   of the religious compromise called the Anglican Reformation, will also
   believe that the issue of the appeal of which I speak was not a change
   but a revelation of what the Established Church has been from its
   beginning; that from the first the Anglican communion, though clothed
   in ecclesiastical aspect, appropriating the organisation of Catholic
   times, sitting in Catholic cathedrals, professing to wield in its own
   name Catholic jurisdiction, has never been more than a human society,
   sprung from human will, with definitions framed by human intellect,
   possessing no divine authority to bind the conscience or to lay
   obligations upon the soul.

   To deny, then, the authority of the Universal Church as final and
   sovereign, is to do one of two things: either to invest every local
   church with infallibility, which is absurd; or to declare that no
   authority for faith in the world is more than human.

   But we must now hasten over one or two other consequences which might
   well detain us longer. To deny that there exists for the faith any
   higher than human authority, is to destroy the objectivity of truth. As
   the firmament is an object to the eye, and as every several light in it
   is of divine creation; and though all men were blind, the firmament
   would stand sure, and its lights still shine no less; so the faith is a
   divine revelation, and every doctrine in it is a divine light; and
   though all men were unbelieving, the revelation and its lights would
   shine the same. The objective reality of truth then does not depend on
   the will or the intellect of man; it has its existence in God. and is
   proposed to us by the revelation and authority of God. But how can this
   be, if the basis upon which the truth rests for us be human? Man could
   not attain to it, else why did God reveal it? Man cannot preserve it,
   else why did he lose it of old? Men cannot assure it to us, for men
   contradict each other. Truth never varies, it is always the same,
   always one and change less; contradictions spring from the human mind
   alone. The one fountain of truth is God; the only sure channel of truth
   is His Church, through which God speaks still. Cancel the perpetual
   divine authority which brings truth down to us through the successions
   of time, and what is the consequence? Truth turns into the opinion or
   imagination of every several man. The polytheism of the ancient world
   was only the idea of God reproduced in the human understanding after
   the true knowledge of God was lost. The mind of man which could not
   exist without the image of God, formed for itself monstrous conceptions
   of its own. A shifting, moving imagination, ever revolving in its own
   thoughts, gave forth polytheism. Polytheism was the subjective
   distortion of truth after its objectivity was obscured.

   Let us come to the present time. What are the sects of England but
   offspring of the subjective forking of the human mind, striving to
   regain the divine idea of the Church as a teacher sent from God? The
   Reformation destroyed the objective reality of that idea, and the human
   mind has created it afresh in eccentric forms for itself. In like
   manner, false doctrines, fanatical extravagances, and perversions of
   the truth, what are they but struggles of the mind of man to recreate
   within his own sphere the truths of which the objectivity is lost?

   To deny, then, the divine authority of the Universal Church, and
   thereby to make all authority for faith merely human, is to convert all
   doctrine into the subjective imagination of each several man. It
   becomes a kind of waking dream. For what is dreaming but the perpetuity
   of human thought running on unchecked by waking consciousness, which
   pins us down to order and rule by fact and by reality? In sleep the
   mind never rests; it still weaves on its own imaginations. When we
   sleep perfectly, we are unconscious of what is passing in our minds;
   when we sleep imperfectly, we say we dream, that is, we remember. When
   we awake, these visions fly, because matter-of-fact, the eye of our
   fellow-creatures, common sense, that is, our waking consciousness,
   brings us back. In like manner, the visible Church, with its rule of
   faith, its authoritative teaching, its order, its discipline, its
   worship, is that outer world in which we move. It keeps the spiritual
   mind in limit and in measure. Dissolve it, and the mind weaves on in
   its own fancies, throwing off heresies, eccentricities, and falsehood.
   Let Germany and England be the witness.

   Take, for example, the Rationalism of Germany. In its first age, after
   the Reformation, Lutheranism was rigorously orthodox until it became
   insufferably dry; and then the soul in man, thirsting for the waters of
   life, of which it had been robbed, sought to satisfy itself in a
   sentimental piety, and by recoil cast off orthodoxy as a thing dead and
   intolerable. This reaction against definite statements of doctrine at a
   later stage produced the theory that the whole truth may be elicited
   from the human consciousness. From whence in the end came two things:
   one, the theory that sin had no existence; that it is a philosophical
   disturbance of the general relations of the Creator and the creature;
   the other, that a historical Christ had never any existence. Such are
   the results of the subjective states of the human mind when the
   objective teaching of divine authority is lost.

   And now, one more consequence must be noted. When the objectivity of
   truth is lost, the obligation of law is gone. What is it that binds us
   by the laws of moral obligation? I pass by the mere laws of nature. I
   speak now of those higher laws which come from revelation, and I ask,
   What is it which binds the conscience? The Divine will revealed in
   those laws. But on what authority are these laws assured to us? and by
   whom interpreted? Is it by human authority? Can one man bind another by
   moral obligation to take his view or interpretation of the will or law
   of God under pain of sin? Can he put forth his view as a term of
   communion, if communion be a condition of life eternal? Is it possible
   for a creature to bind his fellow-creatures under pain of sin unless he
   possess Divine authority to do so? The laws of God do not bind His
   creatures unless they are made known to them; though, in right, they
   bind all creatures eternally, yet. in fact, they need revelation to
   bring home and apply their obligations to the conscience. A doubtful
   law is not present to the conscience. If a law is uncertain, it is no
   law to us. It must be clear and definite both in its injunctions and
   its authority. I ask, then, what is the source of clearness and
   definiteness in the law and truth of God but the Divine authority of
   God, not eighteen hundred years ago, but in every century since, in
   every year, in every day, in every hour, brought home to and in contact
   with the moral being of each man? Let us take an example. Is it not a
   law, binding under pain of sin and eternal death, that we should
   believe the faith? Then no human authority can be the imposer of that
   law on us. Is it not a law on which we shall inherit eternal life, that
   we be subject to the authority of God's Church on earth? Then that
   authority must be divine. Is it not also binding, under pain of sin,
   that we preserve the unity of the Church? Then the law of unity is a
   divine law, delivered and applied to us by a present Divine authority.

   Let us pass to one more point, and it shall be the last. When the
   divine authority, the objectivity of truth, and the obligation of law
   applied to us by that divine authority, are gone, where then, I ask, is
   revelation? "This is life everlasting, that they may know Thee, the
   only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." Hither have we
   come down, step by step. We have descended as we ascended. We have come
   down from the highest round of the mystical ladder, at the head of
   which is the Divine Presence, to the cold ground, barren and bleak, to
   natural morality and natural society, to human intellect and human
   conjecture.

   We read in prophecy that Antichrist shall come: and in the heated
   imagination of schismatics and heretics Antichrist has been enthroned
   in the chair of the Vicar of Christ Himself. But if I look for
   Antichrist, I look for him by this token, "Every spirit that dissolveth
   Jesus is not of God, and this is Antichrist." [9] This, then, is the
   mark of Antichrist, to deny the Incarnation of the eternal Son; to deny
   the "Revelation of God springing from it; to deny the mystical body of
   Christ, the universal Church, and the Divine empire of faith. "Every
   spirit that dissolveth Jesus," every spirit that looseth the bonds of
   this unity of Jesus; every theory that reduces man from the kingdom of
   God founded up on the incarnation of His Son, from the guidance of the
   Holy Ghost, to mere natural society and mere natural reason; this is
   Antichrist. And if so, where shall we look for it? I find it where
   Protestantism has blighted the earth.

   And now, finally; when I began I said that I spoke not as a
   controversialist. I should feel this subject were dishonoured, if I
   were to treat it as a mere argument. Greater things than argument are
   at stake,--the honour of our Divine Lord and the eternal salvation of
   souls. How great is the dishonour, of which men think so little; as if
   truth were a sort of coin, that they may stamp and change, and vary its
   die and fix its value, and make it in metal or paper as they will! They
   treat the truth as one of the elements of human barter, or as an
   indulgence which a man may hold and use for himself alone, leaving his
   neighbour to perish. "This is truth to me; look you to what you
   believe." What dishonour is this to the person of our Lord! Picture to
   yourselves this night upon your knees the throne of the Son of God;
   cherubim and seraphim adoring the glory of Eternal Truth, the
   changeless light of the Incarnate Word, "yesterday, to-day, and for
   ever the same;" the heavenly court replenished with the illumination of
   God, the glorified intelligences, in whose pure spirit the thought of
   falsehood is hateful as the thought of sin; then look to earth on those
   whom the blood of Christ hath redeemed; look on those who in this world
   should have inherited the faith; look at their controversies, their
   disputes, their doubts, their misery; and in the midst of all these
   wandering, sinning, perishing souls, look at those who stand by in
   selfish, cold complacency, wrapping themselves in their own opinion,
   and saying, This is truth to me.

   Think too of the souls that perish. How many are brought into the very
   gulf of eternal death through uncertainty! How, as every pastor can
   tell you, souls are torn from the hand which would save them by being
   sedulously taught that the deadliest sins have no sin in them; by the
   specious and poisonous insinuation that sin has no moral quality; how
   souls have first been sapped in their faith as Satan began in Paradise,
   "Yea, hath God said?" that is, God hath not said. This is perpetually
   at this hour going on around us; and whence comes it? Because men have
   cast down the divine authority, and have substituted in its place the
   authority of men, that is, of each man for himself.

   And now, what shall I say of England, our own land, which a Catholic
   loves next to the kingdom of his Lord? It is now in the splendour and
   majesty of its dizzy height, all the more perilous because so suddenly
   exalted. What is the greatness of England? Is it founded on Divine
   truth, or on human strength and will? Is it material, or is it moral?
   Has it attained this mighty altitude among nations by the power of
   moral elevation, or is it the upgrowth of mere material strength? Let
   us analyse it. What is it that makes England great in the world?
   Colonies which fill the earth. What are the morals of those colonies?
   How were they won, how have they been kept? Armies. What are the morals
   of armies? Fleets. What are the morals of fleets? Commerce. What is the
   morality of traders? Wealth. "The desire of money is the root of all
   evils." Manufacture. What is the state of our mines and factories? And
   whence comes the industry of England? The nerve, the sinew, the
   strength, and the perseverance are moral; but what is the purity, the
   truth, the meekness, and the faith of those who wield this industry?
   And whence comes this mighty power of manufacture? Shall I not trace it
   to its one true source if I find it in the skill of applying science to
   subdue the powers of nature to the dominion of man? The mighty bubble
   of wealth, commerce, and splendour, may be traced back to this: that
   the skill of an intellect and the tact of a hand have taught the
   English people more cunningly than any nation of the world to apply
   physical and mathematical science to the production of material
   results. But where is the morality of this? I deny not to England great
   moral qualities, which we may also trace back to Catholic days. We see
   them, in times past, in the Norman and the Saxon ages. Nay, we may go
   further. We may find the same love of truth and social order, with
   other great moral laws, in the German race, as described in Pagan
   history. We deny not these; but moral virtues which existed before
   faith are not the fruits of faith; and the greatness of England, so far
   as I have traced it, is material and not moral.

   And now, last of all, let me ask another question What, for three
   centuries, has been the history of the Faith in England? I pass over
   the controversy of the Reformation, first, because we are of one mind
   about it, and next, because it would but beg the question of an
   objector. I would ask, Is it not an undeniable historical fact, that
   from the time of Queen Elizabeth down to the time of the revolution of
   William the Third, there was a perpetual diminution of belief in
   England, and a perpetual growth of infidelity and scepticism, until,
   after 1688, the free-thinking philosophy formed for itself a literature
   that stood high in the public favour of England? The Established Church
   had wasted itself by internal conflicts. It lost its most zealous
   members by perpetual secession and by the formation of a multitude of
   sects. Though the Prayer-book and the Articles were unchanged, the
   living voice of the Church, that is, its true doctrine, varied
   continually from doctrinal puritanism to Arminian Anglicanism. The
   clergy spent themselves in domestic controversy; while the laity became
   worldly, latitudinarian, and unbelieving. And yet it was not from among
   the laity, but from among the clergy and the hierarchy, that the hardly
   concealed Socinianism of Hoadly arose and spread in force. Such was the
   internal state of the Establishment. Without and around it the doctrine
   of faith decayed faster and deeper. Doctrine after doctrine was
   disputed and gave way; the doctrine of Sacraments, of the Atonement,
   and of inspiration, perpetually lost ground, until we descend to the
   level of the Deist in the beginning of the last century. Can these
   facts be denied? The course of England was downward in faith, because
   human authority, in the stead of divine, had enthroned it self in the
   Reformation. That which in Germany produced pure Rationalism, in
   England, but for the interposition of God, would have produced the same
   general disbelief of Christianity.

   Then began a reaction. Take the history of the last century and of the
   present, and tell me whether I do not truly describe the intellectual
   progress of England when I say that there has been one continuous and
   ascending controversy from the beginning of the last century to this
   hour? First, it was a controversy against Deists, to establish the fact
   of revelation. Next it was a controversy against sceptics, to prove the
   inspiration and authenticity of Holy Scripture. Then it was against
   Arians in proof of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Then it was
   against Socinians on the doctrine of the In carnation. Then the
   controversy of the day was on the doctrines of grace. At a later period
   of the last century it was on the doctrines of conversion, repentance,
   contrition, the interior life of God in the soul of man. What has been
   the controversy of the last twenty years but an effort to restore faith
   in the Divine institution and supernatural grace of Sacraments? What is
   all this but the remnant of faith struggling to recover the inheritance
   it had lost? And what has come now to put a complement and close to
   this upward movement? Now, when the mere human origin and authority of
   all other teachers has been revealed by their visible departure from
   the Faith, comes one truth more to fill up the order and series of our
   Baptismal Creed, and to give Divine certainty to all that had been
   re-established. The Divine authority of the Universal Church has again
   reconstituted its visible witness in this land. The See of Peter has
   restored what our fathers forfeited; and after three hundred years the
   Divine Voice speaks to faith through the Catholic Episcopate of England
   once more.

   Are these things without a purpose? If there be any here who is still
   without the Divine tradition of the Faith, let him see in these facts
   the tracings of the finger of God. which, as the hand of a man upon the
   wall, show His purpose The Divine authority of the Universal Church is
   again among us, and lays again its obligation upon your conscience. He
   calls you, whoever you be, to submit to his teaching, to exercise the
   most reasonable act of all your life, to bow your reason to a Divine
   teacher, and to fulfil the highest act of the human intelligence--to
   learn of its Maker.

   Out of the Catholic Church two things cannot be found, reality and
   certainty; in the Catholic Church these two things are your
   inheritance. Then tarry no longer. "With the heart we believe." It is
   not a struggle of the intellect, and I am not contending with you in an
   intellectual contest. I call upon your will to make an act of faith.
   Preventing grace illuminates the understanding, and moves the will, but
   there tarries. It tarries that it may put man on his probation, to see
   whether he will correspond or no to the light that has been granted.
   Correspond, then, with the light you have received. Answer while yet
   you may: "Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth, My heart is ready. Not
   Thy truth fails, but my faith is weak. I do believe, Lord; help my
   unbelief."

  THE END
     __________________________________________________________________

   [7] St. Matt. xxiv. 23-27.

   [8] Rom. xi. 29.

   [9] 1 St. John iv. 3.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

                                    Indexes
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Scripture References

   Matthew

   [1]24:23-27

   Luke

   [2]10:16

   John

   [3]14:16   [4]17:3   [5]17:3   [6]17:3

   Romans

   [7]11:29

   1 Corinthians

   [8]2:14

   Ephesians

   [9]4:11   [10]4:12   [11]4:16

   1 John

   [12]4:3
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Pages of the Print Edition

   [13]i  [14]ii  [15]iii  [16]iv  [17]1  [18]2  [19]3  [20]4  [21]5
   [22]6  [23]7  [24]8  [25]9  [26]10  [27]11  [28]12  [29]13  [30]14
   [31]15  [32]16  [33]17  [34]18  [35]19  [36]20  [37]21  [38]22  [39]23
   [40]24  [41]25  [42]26  [43]27  [44]28  [45]29  [46]30  [47]31  [48]32
   [49]33  [50]34  [51]35  [52]36  [53]37  [54]38  [55]39  [56]40  [57]41
   [58]42  [59]43  [60]44  [61]45  [62]46  [63]47  [64]48  [65]49  [66]50
   [67]51  [68]52  [69]53  [70]54  [71]55  [72]56  [73]57  [74]58  [75]59
   [76]60  [77]61  [78]62  [79]63  [80]64  [81]65  [82]66  [83]67  [84]68
   [85]69  [86]70  [87]71  [88]72  [89]73  [90]74  [91]75  [92]76  [93]77
   [94]78  [95]79  [96]80  [97]81  [98]82  [99]83  [100]84  [101]85
   [102]86  [103]87  [104]88  [105]89  [106]90
     __________________________________________________________________

            This document is from the Christian Classics Ethereal
               Library at Calvin College, http://www.ccel.org,
                   generated on demand from ThML source.

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