Reflections on a Treatise of M. Claude

I stated, in my Preface to this book, that after M. Claude had read my recital, he drew up an answer to the Instruction I had given Mademoiselle De Duras, joining to it a Relation of our Conference, which he had drawn up, as he affirms in that writing, “ on the day following our interview.”

I have received from several places, and even from the remotest provinces, this Treatise of M* Claude’s, with his Rehn tien ; but the most complete and most correct copy I have seen was communicated to me by the Duke of Chevreuse, who had it from a lady of quality-of the Reformed religion. I have seen also, in the same Duke’s hands, a declaration signed by M. Claude, in which he avows the whole writing; so that it cannot be doubted but it is his.

I find many things in this piece which manifestly confirm all that the reader has found in mine. It is not my intention here to notice all these things, nor to answer passages wherein M. Claude appears to me, through the weakness of his cause, as little in agreement with himself as with us. To make such remarks, the work must be in the hands of all people, so that every one may see whether the passages be truly related, and the sense and consecution well apprehended ; in a word, it must be public. Its publication depends on M. Claude. In the meantime I will make some reflections on things about which I think ' he cannot disagree, and which may very much assist the (i Reformed” to take a good resolution on the matter we have treated.

My first reflection is upon the answer made by M. Claude to the acts extracted out of the “ Discipline” of his Churches.

I made use of these acts to show, that it was so necessary for all private persons to submit, in questions on faith, to the

Church’s infallible authority, that the Reformed, who rejected it in speculation, were at the same time forced to acknowledge it in practice. What is most stringent in these acts is, that to the National Synod alone — to the exclusion of Consistories, Colloquies, and Provincial Synods — is attributed “ the ultimate and final resolution, by God’s word.”* But, because this is “ the ultimate and final resolution,” the Churches and provinces sending deputies to this synod swear solemnly “ to submit to whatever snail be concluded in that assembly, being persuaded that God will preside in it by his Holy Spirit and by his word.”f Thus, because they believe an entire submission due to this supreme sentence when it shall be pronounced, they swear to it before it is given : this is acting consistently. But if, after a promise confirmed by so solemn an oath, they still claim a liberty to examine, I confess I know not what words signify, and there never was any mental evasion so deceptive and equivocating.

It will readily be believed, without my saying it, that the ministers find themselves pressed by so clear an argument On such occasions, where the truth manifests itself with so much evidence, the difficulty becomes, in proportion to each one’s intelligence, the more perceptible, — the more each one finds himself embarrassed. And thus there is nothing more disceipible than the perplexity evinced in M. Claude’s answer, — even that answer he himself sets down in his Relation.

He is reduced to say, that they make this oath, because one ought to presume well of such an assembly ; and moreover, that these words, 11 We swear to submit to your assembly, being persuaded that God will preside in it,” include & condition, without which the promise thus sworn has not its effect. This is all that can be answered. The anonymous, | who dedicated his book to M. Conrart, first made me this answer. Another anonymous writer, whose book is entitled “ Disguise Unmasked,” made it after him. M. Noguier, and M. De Brueis, another author that has answered the Exposition, had no more to say. M. Jurieu kept to this answer in his “ Preservative save that he explains more simply than the rest, that all this persuasion , which serves for a ground to the oath, is “ a clause of civility, the terms whereof must not he abused.” M. Claude had no other reply, and this is the only one which still appears in his Relation. »

• Discip. chap, v., art. xxxi. f Ibid. chap, ix., art. iii.

X M. de la Bastide. — See the Introduction to the new edition of the Exposition.

ABSOLUTE SUBMISSION MUfcUIRBD BY NATIONAL SYNODS. It

Thusytbis serious and solemn oath of all oar Reformed, and their Churches in a body, to their National Synod, is reduced 1 to this proposition, which would be at bottom but a sorry com* pliment : 44 We swear before God to submit to all that you sbaU decide, if yon decide by his word, as we presume and hope you will.”

But then, for what reason is not this notable oath pronounced in these terms, if not for this, that they weU saw that adopting such terms would be saying nothing, and they would say or seem to say, something?

For my part, the more I consider what is said in the 44 Discipline” of the Reformed concerning this oath of the Churches* the farther I find it from the sense they would give it.

I find, first, as I observed in the Conference, that this oath is made only for the National Synod — that is, for the synod 44 in which the ultimate and final resolution is to be made by God’s word.” And the National Synod of Castres has declared , 44 that there should not be used, in the letters of mission brought by the deputies of particular Churches to the Colloquies and Provincial Synods, sucft absolute clauses of submission as are inserted in the letters of the provinces to the National Synod.” Why-, if not to show the difference there is between the ultimate decision and all the rest ? Indeed, upon examining in what this difference consisted, I found another sort of submission for the Cob loquies and Provincial Synods, It is, that those who are accused of altering the sound doctrine are antecedently obliged 44 to make an express promise, not to disseminate any of their opinions before the meeting of the Colloquy or the Provincial Synod.”* It is a rule of discipline and policy ; but when they oovne to the synod in which this last and final resolution is to be made, the parties reiterate indeed the same promise, but they do not stop there ; the Churches in a body add this solemn oath of submitting entirely to the decision, being persuaded that God himself will be the author of it. A 44 bare human presutaption,” as M. Claude calls it — a 44 clause of civility,” as M. Jurieu styles it, cannot be the matter and foundation of an oath. Accordingly, we find that not only private persons, but also consistories and whole provinces perceived in this oath something stronger than they will at present let us understand ; insomuch that they made a great resistance against it, which it required a considerable time and the reiterated decrees of National Synods to overcome;

6¹ OATfl SUBMBSiaK

I observe this resistance continued until the year 1631. In this year, and before, I find almost continually in the National Synods whole provinces censured because their deputation, or, as they term it, their “ missive,” had not this clause of submission. The Churches were with difficulty brought to make an oath so little agreeable to the doctrine which had been inspired into them, and to swear, against the principles of the new reformation, such a submission to an assembly which, after all, whatever name might be given it, was but an assembly of men (according to their principles) ever liable to mistake. To that issue, however, they were fain to come. It was clear that nothing was done, unless men were finally obliged to an absolute submission, and that to leave them liberty to examine, after the last and final resolution, was to nourish pride, dissension, schism. Thus, against the principles of the new Reformation, were they fain to give other ideas, and it was resolved to insist unalterably on the submission and oath in the terms we have noted. The reason used by the Synod of Rochelle to oblige the provinces to this clause of submission to such things as should be resolved in the National Synod is, that it was “necessary to the validity of the assembly’s conclusions.”² In general, to render the acts of an assembly valid, it vrould be sufficient for those of whom it should be composed to have a power of bringing to it the suffrages of those that send them ; and the deputies of the Colloquies as of the Provincial Synods, came always furnished with such powers. But there was something stronger required for the National Synod ; and since the ultimate resolution was to be made, to render such an act valid, and give it all its force, it was thought necessary it should be preceded by a submission as absolute as the resolution ought to appear irrevocable.

To this decision of the Synod of Rochelle, that of Tonneins added, that “ the submission should be promised in proper terms to all that should be concluded and decreed, without condition and modification.”³!⁴ Now, this is nothing but a “ clause of civility,” and a conditional promise, that might be made, at discretion, not only to the Provincial Synods, to the Colloquy and Consistory, but also to every particular minister. Nevertheless, they never make it to those particular ministers, nor to this Consistory, nor to these Colloquies, nor to these Provincial Synods. Why so, but to reserve something peculiar and proper to the assembly, where the final resolution is to be made, after which there remains nothing but to obey ? But if all that is here particular

OBOCttSD;

•T fend proper be, at the bottom, only word⁵, was thin word) employing the Churches of the new Reformation, and fire or six of their National Synods? This is what they ought to clear up, if they would say any thing ; yet they speak not one word about it, although it is a difficulty which at once meets the eye, and I have expressly pointed it out.

In fine, to reduce my argument to a few words : every oath ought to be founded on a certain and known truth. Now this promise made to the National Synod, and confirmed by the solemn oath of all the Reformed Churches — “ We swear and protnise to follow your decisions, being persuaded that you will judge aright’ —this promise, I say, turn it which way you will, has no certainty but in one of these two senses. The first : “ We swear and promise to follow your decisions, if we find you judge aright:” a thing indeed very certain, but at the same time illusory ; since there is no person on earth to whom one may not say as much, and, as I observed in the Conference, M. Claude may say so to me, and I to him. The second : “ We are so persuaded you will judge aright, that we swear and promise to follow your decisions:” in which case the oath is false, if we be not thoroughly assured that the assembly it is made to cannot judge amiss. All the pretended Reformed have now to do is, to choose which they will of these two senses, one of which is a manifest illusion, and the other, which seems the only natural sense, clearly supposes the Church’s infallibility. Nor must they answer here, that this submission respects only public order and discipline ; for in matters of faith, a decision obliges to nothing less than what the apostle St. Paul says — “ to believe with the heart and confess with the mouth.” And our Reformed themselves understand it so, when they declare in their “ Discipline,” that the effect of this their National Synod’s ultimate and final decision is, “ the acquiescing therein, point by

B unt, with an express disowning of the contrary doctrine.”f e, then, who swears to submit to a decision that shall be made in an assembly, swears to believe with his heart and confess with his mouth the doctrine which shall be there decided. But in order to make, and confirm with an oath, such a promise, it is requisite the assembly it is made to should have a divine promise of being assisted by the Holy Ghost; that is, that it should be infallible. At the Conference, M. Claude insinuated that there was in fact a divine promise, that those who sought should find, and that the oath of his churches might be grounded on this assurance. But this answer will not extricate him from the

68 NECESSITY Of A FINAL DECISION*

difficulty. For, to reader the oath conformable to the promise, it must be conditional, as the promise is ; and as Jesus Christ said, “ if you seek well, you shall find,” the sense of the oath would also be, u if you do your duty, we will believe you,’ Which would be to fall again into the pitiful illusion we have rejected. To the end, then, that the oath we treat of may be ihade without rashness, it must be founded on an absolute promise from God; on a promise which secures us against the infidelities of men ; on a promise, in short, such as Jesus Christ makes his Church when he indefinitely and absolutely assures her “ that the gates of hell shall not prevail against her.”* As fong m our Reformed shall persist in denying that the authority of the Church’s decisions is founded on this promise, their oath will always be an illusion ora manifest extravaganpe ; and they will find themselves forced either to defer to the Church’s authority, more than they are willing, or to acknowledge that they have by fine words imposed on the people’s credulity ; since after their having distinguished the Church’s final decision from all the rest, by so remarkable a character and the protestation of so special a submission, it will be found in the bottom that this submission, confirmed by so singular an oath, is of no other nature or kind than such as is naturally due to all ecclesiastical assemblies and every lawful pastor: that is, one may always pass from it to new doubts, and still examine after the ultimate resolution, as after all the rest.

It is so, indeed, according to the principles of the new Reformation ; but the principles of the new Reformation have not been able to change the necessary condition of human nature, which* for the hindering of divisions and quieting of rae'n’s minds, requires a final decision, independent of all new examination, either general or particular.

The Christian Church is not exempt from this law; and the more regular she is, the more her constitution depends on an entire submission of mind, the more need she has of such an authority. And therefore, from the very beginning of Christianity, God himself has put in the hearts of all true Christians, that they must no longer search nor examine after the Church has determined. This inviolable tradition has wrought its effect on the Reformed, in spite of their principles : nor do I wonder at it. St. Basilf has very wisely and very truly observed, that private romwfiurr.

tftftifiM irtl^ men speak more than they would, aifdiospired them with things contrary to their sentiments. And if our Re* formed will not confess themselves indebted to tradition for this ultimate and final resolution, and this submission so solemnly Sworn, it is then necessity and experience that has forced them to it ; it is because an end must be put to the doubts and exam* inations of private persons by an absolute authority, in order to have peace and uphold humility ; it is because if this authority be not exercised, they must make a show of possessing and ex* ercising it, and at least give the idea of it ; it is, in a word, be* cause one may indeed discourse and answer arguments by words ; but the ignorance, infirmity, and pride, natural to the human mind, require other remedies.

In the Conference, I undertook to show, that by denying the Church’s infallible authority, one falls into these two dimcul* ties; and I say not into one of the two, but inevitably into both of them. The first is, that every particular person, how ignorant soever he may be, is obliged to believe that he understands the Scripture better than the most universal synods and all the test of the Church together. The second , that there is a time ivhen a baptized Christian is not in condition to make an act of faith upon the Holy Scripture ; but that, whether he will or not* he shall find himself obliged to doubt whether it be inspired by God.

I hate not met with any one of the Reformed religion who has not shuddered at the two propositions, and who has not told me that, far from ever believing them himself, he should detest those who should. Let us see, then, how it continues fixed by the Conference, that they are consequences of the Reformed doctrine, and such manifest consequences, that they are owned by the ministers.

And indeed, to go no further than M. Claude’s Relation, he himself asserts in it, that after all ecclesiastical assemblies, every particular person ought to examine whether they have rightly understood God’s word or not. When he had spoken of human interests, which often, as he said, darken the truth in the most authentic and most universal assemblies of the Chuch ; I, to destroy this answer, and show that it was at bottom a mere cavil, asked him, whether, supposing all to pass orderly, and without the appearance of any human interest in the deliberations, every private person must not still examine ? He acknowledged he must, and he avows it still in his own Relation, maintaining that there is no absurdity, no pride, in a private person’s believing that he may understand God’s word better than any ecclesiasti-

SYNOD OF DP&Tt cal assemblies, however orderly held, and of whatsoever per* sods composed.

Here is a proposition and doctrine that will appear hideous to every teachable temper : but, to make the matter more evi? dent, let us apply this doctrine to a particular example. The Calvinistic Church, during the six score or seven score years which have elapsed since her first establishment, has held no assembly more authentic or more solemn than the Synod of Dort.* Besides all the Churches of the Low Countries, all the rest of the same belief — that of England, that of Geneva, those of the Palatinate, those of Hesse, those of Switzerland, that of Bremen, and the rest of the German language, were there by their deputies, and received it; and to the end nothing might be wanting to it, if the Reformed Churches of France were hindered from being present at it, they adopted all its doctrine in the National Synod of Charenton, in 1631, where all the articles of Dort, translated verbatim, were embraced and sworn to by the whole synod, and afterwards by all the provinces and all the particular Churches. Since that time none of the “Reform” has protested against this synod. The Arminians alone who were then condemned, blame its doctrine, and talk of its cabals, and the share which policy and the interests the house of Orange had in it. All else have yielded ; and if there be any thing that can be said to have been received with an unanimous consent by all the Churches of the “ Reformed,” it is, without doubt, the decrees of this synod. And nevertheless, I will maintain that M. Claude, being asked whether any private person whatever of his Church may rely upon an authority so great amongst them as this is, without examining any further, if he be pressed to answer positively, Yea or No, to so precise a question, and on a fact so well circumstantiated, must say No; and that, in fine, notwithstanding all this, they were but men — how able, how enlightened, how holy soever they are imagined — still subject to fail, to follow whose sentiments blindfold and without examining, would be to equal men to God.

Thus, according to the maxims of the new Reformation, every private person, even to the most ignorant woman, ought to believe that he can understand the Holy Scripture better than an assembly composed of all that is great in that whole Church which he acknowledges to be the only one where God is pure-** ly served ; and not only better than this assembly, but than all the rest of the Church, and than all that he knows in the whole universe. This is what M. Claude has acknowledged to me ;

•[A. 1618 . See NoteC.]

it is, in substance, what he still says in his own Relation ; and it is what every minister, whether he will or not, shall own in a Conference, in presence of any company that he shall desire, unless he obstinately resolve not to answer positively ; in which case he will be seen to shuffle, and this tergiversation will be stronger than an acknowledgment, since, besides showing the acknowledgment to be inevitable, it will also show' him to be sensible of its pernicious consequences.

And what I say of the Synod of Dort, M. Claude and every other minister will be forced to say of the Council of Nice, of the Council of Constantinople, of that of Ephesus, of that of Chalcedon, and of the rest, which we and they receive with common accord; and when they shall say it, they will say nothing new or unusual in their religion. Calvin has said it in formal terms. When speaking in general of all the councils of preceding ages, he writes as follows : 44 1 do not mean hereby to assert, that all the councils must be condemned, and all their decrees annulled: nevertheless, 55 proceeds he, 44 you will object to me that I so order them as to permit every one indifferently to receive or reject what the councils may have established : by no means, that is not my meaning. 55 One would suppose that he was very far from it. The majesty of councils and the authority of a great name move him at first; but the course of his doctrine makes him soon forget what he seemed willing to say to their advantage; for see how he concludes: — 44 When,” says he 44 the authority of a council is alleged, I desire first, it be considered at what time, and for what cause, it was assembled, and what persons assisted at it ; next, that the principal point be examined according to the rule of Scripture, so that the council’s definition have its weight, and be as a presumption, but be no bar to examination.”⁶ Such is the issue of all this careful inquiry after time, matter, and persons : that, at what time soever a council is held, what matter soever is there treated, and of what persons soever it is composed, every one without exception — for that was the question — should examine the principal point by the word of God, and believe he can understand the divine word better than all councils.

Such is the extreme to which these religionists push examination : they push it even much farther, since they will have one examine after the Apostles. This is not a consequence which I draw from their doctrine ; it is their own very proposition and doctrine in formal terms, and particularly that of M. Claude. For, I having observed in the Exposition⁷)* that after the Coun-

72 MONTOUS DOmiKE OP &BFORMED.

cil of Jerusalem, and the decision of the Apostles wherein they said, u It hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us,”* no one had any thing more to examine ; and that, in fact, Paul and Barnabas, with Silas, as it is written in the Acts,f ivent through the Churches, teaching them (not to examine what the Apostles had done, but) to keep the decrees they had ordained ; and having thence inferred that they gave the form to all following ages, and taught us how at all times the faithful ought to submit to the Church’s decisions without examining : — after several answers, all of them frivolous, they were fain at last to answer me clearly, that one ought yet to examine after the Apostles. It is the anonymousj waiter, who was the first to answer the Exposition, who speaks to this effect, in the following terms : — u It does not appear that the Apostles published their decisions with an absolute order for their being obeyed : but they sent Paul, Barnabas, and Silas, to instruct the faithful to keep this ordinance ; that is, evidently, to impress them with the motives and grounds of it ; which does not imply that they were forbidden to examine.”

This is what the anonymous says ; the passage is a remarkable one : you will find it in the 19th article of the first answer, in the fourth and last observation he makes on the Council of the Apostles, page 398. This is not a notion peculiar to this author, since there stands in the front of his book the approbation of the four ministers of Charenton, of whom M. Claude is one ; so that it cannot be said that I charge him with a doctrine which is not bis, in imputing to him that of this anonymous writer.

So, it is not the unbelieving Jews and Gentiles, it is the faithful, the Christian Churches, that ought to examine after the Apostles, and after the Apostles assembled, and after they have pronounced, “ It hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us and this monstrous doctrine is taught in a Church, which vaunts of hearing nothing but the pure words of the Apostlea To such extremes are the ministers and the “ Reformed,” and particularly M. Claude, forced by their belief to drive the necessity of examination.

It only remained to say, we must examine even after Jesus Christ, and that with all his miracles, and all the authority given him by his Father, he had not enough to oblige men to follow him on his word, and without examining. M. Claude said it in our Conference, and says it again in his Relation.

I beg to assure the discerning reader that, in a matter of this importance, it is my intention neither to make false allegations noi⁸ to exaggerate. Let him but follow me with attention, qnd he shall see the truth plainly appear.

It has been seen how, in the Conference, I objected, that unless a living and speaking authority were acknowledged, with an obligation on the part of every private person to submit thereunto without examining, private persons would be brought to the presumption of believing they could understand the Holy Scripture better than all the councils together, and than all the rest of the church. To prove that there was nothing so presumptuous or absurd in this, M. Claude answered me by saying, that at the time when Jesus Christ was upon earth, the case had happened when it was the duty of a private person to raise his own judgment above that of the synagogue assembled, which condemned Jesus Christ ; and that this, far from being a sentiment of pride, was the act of a perfect faith. #

This answer, I confess, struck me with horror : for, to make h good, one must say, that at the time when the synagogue judged Jesus Christ, and he himself was on earth, there was not upon earth any living or speaking authority, to which men were obliged to submit without examining ; so that one ought to examine after Jesus Christ, and it was not allowable to believe him on his word. I made this answer to M. Claude, and showed him, that far from there then being a necessity of every one’s determining himself by a particular examination, and setting himself above every living and speaking authority, th$re was at that time one, the greatest that ever was, or could be, namely, that of Jesus Christ and truth itself, to whom the Father bore witness by a voice from heaven, by the greatest and most visible miracles that ever were wrought ; and in fine, by the most resplendent, as well as the most certain means Divine Omnipotence could make use of.

If I observe, in the Conference, f that there was no reply made to this argument, it is very apparent that in effect there ought to be none. M. Claude, nevertheless, in his Relation, says he ' answered me, that Jesus Christ’s miracles constituted one of the points in dispute ; that there are false miracles which Moses in Deuteronomy! charged the Israelites to take heed of; that the synagogue had judged Jesus Christ’s miracles to be done in the name of Beelzebub ; that “ in fine, an authority decides nothing, until it be first received, and that of Jesus Christ was not so as yet, since it was in dispute, whether they should receive it or reject it.” I owe it to myself to observe, that assuredly I heard nothing of all this in the Conference ;

JESUS OHJU&t’s AUTHORITY.

n and the reader will presently see that it were better be silent thhn to speak thus. But since M. Claude avers that he did so, he must then also say, that because Jesus Christ’s miracles were rejected as deceitful signs by tbe envious, by the obstinate — in one word, by the declared enemies of the truth, these miracles .were not sufficiently convincing to oblige men to believe Jesus Christ on his word, without examining further ; and that, for example, after he had raised Lazarus, in express testimony that God had sent hiqo, # those who were even eye-witnesses to so great a miracle were, I. do not say permitted, but expressly obliged to examine whether Jesus Christ were sent by God. He must, I say, carry the necessity of the examination to this excess : otherwise it will be true, as 1 observed, that there was then a visible and palpable authority to which every one ought to submit, without examining ; so that there was never any time, when men were less exposed to the temptation of pride, by exalting themselves above all living and speaking authority, since Jesus Christ, the most living and speaking authority, as well as the greatest and most infallible that ever was, was then on earth, and men preferred themselves before the synagogue, only for the purpose of submitting to Jesus Christ, whose miracles, as himself said, took away all excuse from those that believed not in him :f this the assembly that condemned him knew so well, that they found no other answer to his miracles, nor any other means to resist him, but to make away with him and also with Lazarus,! t0 ^ they could, at once with the miracles they bad seen, the memory of him who wrought them. Frivolous answers must not be put forth to blind people on this matter : nor should irrelevant questions be introduced to make the reader Ipse the train of an argument ; l mean, that it is to no purpose to start the question concerning delusive signs, nor to answer, that the synagogue doubted of the truth of Jesus Christ’s miracles. Our sole business is to ascertain whether this doubt was not the efl'ect of evident malice, and in fine, whether it be not certain amongst Christians that there was in Jesus Christ’s miracles so full a demonstration of the Divine power, and so clear a confirmation of Jesus Christ’s mission, that every reasonable mind was bound to yield without any further examination ; so that there was then a living and speaking authority, to which there was nothing to be opposed but gross ignorance and manifest obstinacy. That is the point: and if, after this explication of the question, they think still to escape by saying, with M. Claude, “that Jesus Christ’s authority was not received,” they must go further,

Hit MISSION UVOmnONfllU.⁹

and say to Jesus Christ himself, with the Jews : “Thou bearest record of thyself, thy record is not true.” Then we will answer with Jesus Christ : “ Though I bear record of myself, yet my record is true.”¹⁰ And again : “1 am not alone, but my Father that sent me, he also beareth witness of me and again : u The works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that 1 do, bear witness of me that the Father hath sent me :” and, in fine : “ They have no cloak for their sin ; if I had not done Among them the works which no other man hath done, they had not had sin, hut they have both seen and hated both me and my Father.”! The meaning is, that the miracles are clear ; that the authority is incontestable ; and that the impugning of him can have no other ground than a blind hatred.

I expect still to be told, that Jesus Christ added after all this : “ Search the Scriptures, they are they which testify of me and to hear it boldly inferred from this text, that one might and should examine after Jesus Christ ; so that this saying he uttered shows us (not a superabundance of conviction in the Scripture, bht) an insufficiency of authority in the person of Jesus . Christ. If they make yet this objection, we have nothing to do but to hold our peace, and leave Jesus Christ to defend his owa cause.

Meanwhile, we shall conclude that it is the authority of Jesus himself that we revere in his Church. If we say the Church must be believed without examining, it is because Jesus Christ, who teaches and guides her, is above all examination. We shall not forbear to say also, after the example of Jesus Christ, to all the enemies of the Church, for their superabundant conviction, — Search the Scriptures.” We shall confound them by this Scripture, which they say they believe, and we shall see them also succumb in this examination ; but it will be after we have forced them to acknowledge, that men must submit, without examining, to the authority of the Church, in which that Spirit whom Jesus Christ has sent to hold his place always speaks.

There is, then* nothing less to the purpose than the example of the synagogue ; and our so-styled Reformed, when this example, which was their main stay, is withdrawn from them,con^ tinue alone to believe themselves, each one in particular, capa* ble of understanding the Scriptures better than whatsoever in the universe has authority to interpret it and to judge of doctrine, better than all the faithful that are before their eyes in the tvorld ; • which is just the error of the Independents, or something worse, it will be said, that this private person, who examines after the

Church, will always be well assured of not being alone in his sentiment, since there will always remain some hidden chosen one who will think as he does: as if (witl|out refuting this dream) it were # not a sufficiently detestable pride to set himself alone above all that is seen or heard to speak in the whole Church beside. It will be said still : It is no pride to believe oneself enlightened by the Holy Ghost. But on the contrary, it is the height of pride, that particular persons should believe the Holy Ghost will instruct them, and leave in error all the faithful that appear in the rest of the Church. Nor is it to any purpose to answer, as M. Claude does in his Relation, M that the Spirit breatheth where he will:”¹¹ for they must show that this Spirit, who resteth on the humble, fails not to breathe on those who believe themselves alone more capable of understanding the Scripture, than all the rest of the Church, since they examine after her ; and not only to breathe upon them, but Himself also to inspire them with this proud thought. But, in fine, be this as it may, and without disputing any farther, since this is no place for it, — we have shown that it is a doctrine acknowledged in the new r Reformation, that every particular person ought to examine after the Church, and consequently ought to believe that he may happen to understand the Scripture better than the Church and all her assemblies. Those whom such presumption revolts, or who, upon examination, do not find in themselves this false capacity, have nothing to do but to seek their salvation in another Church than that in which so monstrous a doctrine is professed.

The second absurdity I promised to make M. Claude and every sound Protestant avow is, that, unless there be acknowledged in the Church an authority after which there must be no more examining 91* doubting, one must inevitably suppose a point of time in which the believer, after he has reached the age of reason, cannot make an act of faith upon the Scripture, and in which consequently, he must doubt whether it be true or false. I assigned for this point of doubt all the time in which a Christian, for what cause soever, has not read the Holy Scripture. M. Claude here protests against so detestable a. proposition. However, I do still maintain, that he not only owned it in the Conference, but also that, whatever ingenuity he may have exerted at present, he has not been able to escape admitting it even in his Relation.

To say truth, this is one of the passages in which I least recognize what we really said at the time. But there is still enough to convict him : since, if this Relation becomes public, it will be found that he here acknowledges, in express terms, “ that he, who has not yet read the Holy Scripture . believes it to be God's word , with a human faith , because his fattier told him so, which is the state of a catechumen ; and when he has himself read this book , and felt the efficacy of it } he believes it to be God's word . no longer with a human faith , because his father told him so, but with a divine faith , because he has himself feU its divinity tmmediately , and this is the state of a believer." It is then true, that he has acknowledged that point of time I undertook to show, when a baptized Christian is pot in a condition to make an act of supernatural and divine faith upon the Holy Scripture, since he believes it to be God's word only by a human faith, and divine faith cannot come until after the reading of it.

Howsoever he may turn this human faith, it is a horrible thing that a baptized Christian, who has come to the age of reason, cannot make upon the Scripture, an act of that faith by which we are Christians. For, thence it follows, that a Christian who is about to read the Scripture for the first time, ought neither to be inclined of himself nor to be induced by any other to say, on opening the book — “ As I believe that God is, I believe that the Scripture 1 am going to read is his word.” On the contrary, he should be taught to say — “ I am going to examine, whether henceforth, during the rest of my life, I ought to read this Scripture with such a faith.” This is overthrowing the whole order of instruction ; this is losing the fruit of baptism; this is leading Christians to instruct their baptized children as if they were not baptized, and had yet to deliberate of what religion they should be.

And what M. Claude says concerning the Scripture, the same he must say regarding the faith of the Trinity, and that of the Incarnation, and that of Jesus Christ’s mission and the redemption of mankind. For, that which forces M. Claude and every Protestant to say that the believer who has not read the Holy Scripture, can believe it only with a human faith to be inspired by God, is, that otherwise, they must acknowledge an act of divine faith on the Church’s sole authority, which would be to own this authority as infallible, and ruin the very foundation of all the new Reformation. But the same argument recurs upon all the articles of our faith ; and if the faithful can assent with a divine faith to the Trinity, and the Incarnation, and the mission of Jesus Christ, on the sole authority of the Church, and before he has read the Holy Scripture, I shall still conclude with equal certainty that the Church’s authority will be infallible. As a sequel, then, of M. Claude’s principle — the principle of all Pro- testnnts — we roust, iir reducing Christians about to read the Holy Scripture to a bare human faith concerning the Scripture, reduce them at once to the like on the most essential articles of Our belief.

Such was not the method of our forefathers. It was not thus that they taught Christians to instruct their children. When they baptized them in their infancy, Credo, “ I believe,” was said iii the name of the children by their sponsors. No matter though our “ Reformed”¹² have changed this form, it descend* from primitive antiquity, and will be always holy and venerable, whatever they may do or say. But this form used towards children shows us that, when they shall have the use of reason, they must be immediately taught to make an act of faith, and no time must be lost in exciting them to it. Then they will be capable of it; they may say the same creed they would have said if they had been baptized when come to the use of reason ; and to reduce them to a barely human faith is to take from them the grace of their baptism, and justify the practice as well as the doctrine of the Anabaptists.

And I entreat the professors of the “ Reformed” religion not to suppose that I here allege the Anabaptists, f by way of exaggeration, or to render them odious ; such methods are not beseeming Christians. I strictly maintain that the doctrine taught here by M. Claude, and which all Protestants must teach with him, introduces Anabaptism. For, if the acts of divine faith must be held in suspense until such time as one has read the Holy Scripture, and be instructed by himself; if all the acts that precede this instruction be not acts of Christians, because having for their foundation only a human faith, for the same reason baptism must be deferred until that time, and we must not make Christians that at the age of reason are incapable of producing acts of their religion.

It is in vain for M. Claude to answer us that he will produce the same argument in respect of the Church as we allege against him in respect of Scripture ; for, in order to do this, as we show him a point of time which, even after the age of reason has been reached, necessarily precedes the reading of the Scripture, he must also be able to show us one that precedes the Church’s instructions: but this he will never find. Do what he will, we shall always mark him a point of time before the reading of the Scripture, which is that when the Church puts it into our hands ?

f The unchristian and anti-social doctrines abetted by these sectaries may be seen in Mosheim (Cent. xvi. ch. 3), or Mbhler’s Symbolik (479 — 482).

but before the Church there is nothing, — she obviates all our doubts bj her instructions.

It is an error to imagine that we must always examine before we believe. The happiness of those who are born, as I may say, in the bosom of the true Church is, that God has given her such an authority that we believe at once what she proposes, and that faith precedes, or rather excludes, examination*

To ask now by what motive God makes us sensible of his Church’s authority, is manifestly to depart from the question. He has abundant motives to fasten his children to his Church — a Church to which he has given marked and luminous characters. This very fact, that of all the societies in the world, she is the sole, to whom no one can show her beginning or any interruption of her visible and outward state, by any averred fact, whilst she shows all other societies that environ her theirs, by facts which themselves cannot deny : this very thing is a sensible character, that gives an inviolable authority to the true Church. God has abundant motives to make his children perceive this so marked a character of his Church. But be these motives what they may, and not to detail them here — because this is not the place to detail them, — it is certain that there are such motives ; because, after all, we must be able to believe on the Church’s word before we have read the Holy Scripture; and because in the first instruction we receive, no mention being made of Scripture, we are taught to say, as a fundamental act of our faith, “ I believe the Catholic Church.”

M. Claude tells us, that to authorize the method by which we pretend to lay the Church’s faith as the foundation of all the rest, the creed should have begun with saying, “ I believe the Church,” whereas, it begins with saying, “ I believe in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.” He does advert to the fact, that it is the Church herself which teaches us the whole creed, and it is on her word we say, “ I believe in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son;” and the rest ; which we cannot say with a firm faith, unless God at the same time puts it in our hearts, that the Church which teaches us deceives us not. After, then, we have on her word said, “ I believe in the Father, and in the Son, atad in the Holy Ghost,” and begun our profession of faith by the divine persons^ whom their majesty places above all, we add a holy reflection on the Church which proposes this belief to us, and say, “ I believe the Catholic Church to which we immediately join all the graces We receive by her ministry, “ the communion of saints, the remission of sins, the blessed resurrection,” and, in fine, “ everlasting life.”

It is embarrassing the controversy with extraneous’ topics to allege here, as M. Claude does, the Greek Church, the Armenian, the Egyptian or Ethiopian, and that of the Copts, and so many others which, equally with the Roman, put forward the claim to be the true Church. It is said: — those who are bred up in these Churches revere their authority ; every one of these Churches has followers as zealous as ours. True and pure zeal has no discernible characteristic : every one attributes his, as we do, to the grace of the Holy Ghost, and resting on the authority of the Church in which he is, says that the Holy Ghost makes use of this authority to guide him to the belief of the Scripture and all the verities of Christianity.

This is, in a manner, M. Claude’s objection ; and thus it is that sometimes when men cannot disentangle themselves, they endeavor to entoil others in the same perplexity as their own. But he will gain nothing by this manoeuvre ; for, in fact, what cause does he pretend to combat for ? Is it for indifferency of religions ? Will he say, with abandoned men, that there is no ' true Church in which divine impulses really act ? And will he, under pretence that the devil, or, if he please, nature, can imitate, or, to say better, counterfeit these impulses, — will he maintain that they are every where imaginary ? God forbid ; we both of us wish to avoid this rock. He will avow then with me, that there is a true Church, which soever it be ; a Church in which the Holy Ghost acts ; though looking only to the exterior we cannot always so easily discern who those are in whom he dwells. Up to this point we are agreed. Let us see now how far we can go together. We agree that there is one true Church, in which the Holy Ghost acts ; we agree that he makes use of outward means to put the truth in our hearts ; we agree that he makes use of the Church and of the Scripture. Our question is, to know by which he begins ; whether by the Scripture or by the Church ; whether, I say, he makes us believe the Church by the Scripture, or rather makes us believe the Scripture by the Church ? I say that the Holy Ghost begins by the Church ; and it must be so, since it is manifestly the Church that puts the Scripture in our hands. It is at this point, however, that M. Claude quits me, and begins to walk alone ; but he falls at the very first step into a precipice. For, his fear of acknowledging an infallible authority in the true Church, and of believing that on her word we may make an act of divine and supernatural faith concerning the Scripture, obliges him to say that it is not possible to begin the reading of the Holy Scripture by such an act of faith, and that every act of faith which precedes this reading is an act of human faith. To this deplorable pass he ai brings a .Christian at his first going to read the Holy Scripture. M. Claude cannot rise out of this abyss without returning to the place where he began to leave me, and saying afterwards with me, that there is a true Church, wheresoever she be, the veneration of which the Holy Ghost first inspires into true believers ; that by this veneration, which he at first puts in their hearts, he fixes them to the Scripture which this Church presents them ; that tins Church requires also of all those she can instruct that they upon her word adore the infallible truth of this Scripture, and does not acknowledge for her children those who have only a human faith for it.

But, say they, the “ Roman” Church is not the only one which attributes to herself this authority ; the Greek and other Churches will have one believe them on their word. These Churches teach that this is the means to read the Holy Scripture with the submission of divine faith. Well, if it be so, it remains only to choose between these Churches. But then at once, at a single stroke, the Calvinistic Church is fallen ; she degrades herself, as I may say, from the title of Church, since she finds not in herself authority enough to cause all those whom she begins to instruct to make an act of a Christian, and an act of divine faith, not even on the truth of the Scripture; whence it is supposed she ought to learn all the rest.

But M. Claude asks, how one shall choose between the Churches? Shall it be by enthusiasm? It would be by enthusiasm, as I observed in the Conference,¹³ if the true Church had not her characteristics that distinguish her from others. Without going further, or entering into long investigations, I say she has her succession^ any interruption, innovation, or change in which, no one can ever prove against her by any positive fact. This is a characteristic, which no false Church can so clearly glory of as the true ; because by glorying of it she would visibly con* demn herself. There will be then always, in the instruction which the true Church will give her children concerning her condition, something that no other sect can or dare say. It is by this we would convict, if it were needful, the Greeks, the Ethiopians, the Armenians, and other sects, which seem in this respect more deceiving, because of the appearance of succession that they show ; which also enables them to claim for themselves somewhat more plausibly the authority of the Church. But as for the Calvinistic Church, there is an end of her at once, because she has not so much as an apparent and colorable succession, and does not, as we have now shown by M. Claude’s

CH^tACTBftlffTIO OP Til TRUE.

acknowledgment, attribute to herself this authority, without which there can neither be any certain instruction, nor any assured foundation of divine faith, — nor, in fine, any Church.

It would then be an unprofitable waste of time for us here to discuss, with the Egyptians and Greeks, the succession of which they boast. It would be no great labor to show them the exact moment of their innovation ; the pretended Reformed know it as well as we, and do themselves show it them’ when they please. So, when they press us to do it, it is not because they believe they give us an impossible, or even an obscure and difficult task, but it is, in a word, because, with a cause so bad as theirs is, some advantage is found in shifting the question and diverting the reader from the train of an argument.

Thus, I had reason to tell Mademoiselle de Duras, in one of the instructions of this book, that if any one disgusted with the Calvinistic Church were tempted to embrace the religion of the Copts, or of the Greeks, it would then be time enough to show them in these Churches that certain period of their novelty, which they can no more deny than can other sects ; but that since the Calvinists, with whom we have to do, admitted this, and since no one thinks of leaving them but to come to us, — when we obliged any one to leave them, by showing, from their minister’s own confession, the enormous absurdities of their doctrine, the work* was done, and all the rest on that occasion would be to no purpose. And let the reader consider the method of the Conference, and the state of the question which is there treated. The direct aim of the Conference was not to establish the Roman Church, but only to show there is somewhere or other a true Church, to which we must submit without examining ; and further, that this cannot be the Calvinistic Church, since she will herself have one examine after her, which makes her acknowledge the absurdities we have remarked, and by this acknowledgment lose the title of Church.

This done, there is no further need of recommending the Roman Church — that w, that Church or body of believers whereof Rome is the head ; because whosoever wishes to choose between two Churches, and finds one disproved, finds the other established, and there is no need of disputing further. Besides that the Roman Church so evidently bears these luminous characters of the true Church, that scarce any man of good sense, even amongst our Reformed, but agrees that, if there be in this world an authority to which we must submit, it is that of thu Church.

At all events, when one sees the absurdities he is forced to own in Calvinism, for want of having acknowledged in the

CHlLDRBH’ft INSTRUCTION. '

Church’s authority the true principles of Christian instruction, he soon withdraws from a Church whose method and instruction is so manifestly defective, and a man is sufficiently solicited, by the remnant of Christianity which he feels within himself, to return to the Church which he quitted.

We see, in M. Claude’s discourses, that, pressed by this want of authority which ruins all instruction in his Church, he affects to make our dispute wholly turn upon the instruction of children, and thinks he has found an advantage by making this instruction depend on parents and nurses, who are better known at that age than the Church and her ministers. By this means he thinks to conceal from us the Church’s authority in the first exercises and the first acts of faith we make, before we have read the Holy Scripture. But he ought to have considered, first, that the argument 1 proposed to him did not regard merely children. Children are not the only Christians that have not read the Scripture. M. Claude is not ignorant that there were in the beginning of Christianity not only individuals, but also whole nations, that, according to the testimony of St. Irenaeus,¹⁴ had not the Holy Scripture, and were perfect Christians, although they did not read the Scripture. The question, then, between us regards in general all such as have not read the Holy Scripture, of what age soever they may be, and whatsoever may have been the cause of their not having read it ; for it is in respect of such, and, if you will, in respect of those whom St. Irenmus mentions, or of their like, that I inquire — on whose faith do they believe the Scripture, and enter upon the reading of it, as being inspired by God ? If they have but a human faith, as M. Claude says, they are not Christians ; and if they have a divine faith (as must be acknowledged, or an absurdity be encountered from which we recoil), it is then true that divine faith, without one’s having read the Scripture, immediately follows the Church’s doctrine, and establishes her infallible authority. It is on this authority that every Christian who takes this Scripture in hand begins by believing, with a firm faith, that all he is going to read is divine; and he, stays not the believing of this Scripture until he has read it all ; he believes the first chapter before he has read the second, and believes the whole before he has read the first letter, or so much as opened the book. Therefore, he does not form his faith by the reading of the Scripture * this reading finds his faith already formed; this reading does but confirm to a Christian all he already believed, and alt he bad dread y found in the Church’s belief. Hebelieved, then, before all, that the Church deceived him not ; it was by this he began to perform the acts of a Christian. Children are instructed in no other manner. When they hear their parents, it is the Church they hear; for our parents are our teachers only as they are children of the Church. It is for this reason the Holy Ghost refers us to them : — “ ask thy father and he will show thee; ask thy elders, and they will tell thee.” # St. Basil, so great a divine, justifies himself, and at the same time confounds heretics, by alleging to them the faith of his mother and of his grandmother, St. Macrina,f and he herein imitates St Paul, who praises Timothy]; for having an unfeigned faith, which dwelt first in his grandmother Lois, and his mother Eunice. The meaning is, that true doctrine ought always to descend from hand to hand, and that there shall always be a true Church, to which none can ever show her beginning, nor find in her state those marks of interruption and novelty which all other sects bear on their brow. Christian parents, joined to this Church, join their children to her, and put them at the feet of her ministers to be .there instructed.

It is not to be imagined that children, in whom reason begins to dawn, are incapable of feeling the impressions of truth, be¹⁵ cause they cannot reason methodically. We see them in still more tender years learning to speak ; how it is they learn, by what they make the distinction between the noun and the verb, the substantive and the adjective, neither themselves know, nor can we, who have learned by this method, well unfold : so deep and abstruse it is. Much after the same manner we learn the Church’s language. A secret light guides us in both these states ; in the one it is reason, in the other it is faith. Reason discovers itself by little and little, and so does faith infused by baptism. We must have motives to fix us to the Church’s authority; God knows them, and we know them in general : in what manner he classes them, how he makes these innocent souls perceive them, is the secret of his Holy Spirit. However, it is certain that this is done, and that by this he begins. As this is the first Christian act we perform, and as on this foundation all is built, so it subsists for ever. The time will come when we shall know more distinctly why we believe, and the Church’s authority will become from day to day stronger in our minds. Scripture itself will strengthen the bands which fasten us to her : but we must always revert to the origin — that is, to believing on the Church’s authority. What age soever we are

THE u VICIOUS CIRCLE.”

it, it is by this we begin to believe the Scripture ; we continue also on the same foundation, and St Augustine was a complete master in ecclesiastical science, when he said he should not believe the Gospel, were he not moved by the authority of the Catholic Church¹⁶ I could, were it in dispute, show the same opinion in the other Fathers. We must always re-ascend to the first principle, and this is the first principle that fixes us to the Church. Let us not be taxed with this u vicious circle *-the Church makes us believe the Scripture ; the Scripture makes os believe the Church. This on both sides is true , in different respects . The Church and the Scripture are so made for one another, and do so perfectly adapt themselves one to the other, that they support each other as the stones of an arch and of a building mutually keep each other in their place. All nature is full of such examples. 1 bear the staff on which I lean ; the flesh binds and covers the bones which sustain it ; and all things in the universe mutually aid one another. So it is with the Church and the Scripture. There was but one Church, such as Jesus Christ founded, to which such a Scripture as we have could be addressed ; that is, such a one as durst promise the Church, in which this Scripture was made, an eternal continuance. If any one receives the Scripture, by the Scripture I will prove to him the Church ; if he acknowledges the Church, by the Church I will prove to him the Scripture: but since we must begin on one side, I have clearly enough shewn, by M. Claude’s own confession, that, if we begin not by the Church, the divinity of the Scripture, and the faith we ought to have in it, is in danger; wherefore, the Holy Ghost begins our instruction by fixing us to the Church : 44 I believe the Catholic Church.” Amongst our adversaries, a man must examine before he believes ; and he must, before all things, examine the Scripture, by which he examines all the rest. It is not enough to have read some particular verses, some chapters, some books; until such time as one has read all, compared all, examined all, faith continues in suspense, since it is by this examination it is formed. Amongst true Christians, a man believes at once: 44 Thy faith hath saved thee,” said Jesus Christ ; 44 Thy faith,” observes Tertullian, in that divine work of Prescriptions, 44 and not thy being versed in the Scriptures. ”f There is no need of passing through opinions, doubts, and the uncertainties of human faith. 44 1 never changed,” said St. Basil : 44 what 1 believed from my infancy has only been strengthened in my following¹⁷ years. Without passing from one opinion to another, I have only perfected what was at first given me by my parents. As a grain, in growing, of little that it was, becomes large, but continues always the same in itself, and without changing its nature takes only increase, so is my faith increased : — and this is not a change in which one passes from worse to better, but an accomplishment of a work already begun, and the confirmation of faith by knowledge.”¹⁸ In this manner, we pass not, as amongst our Reformed, from a state of doubt to a state of certainty; or, as M. Claude prefers to express it, from a human faith to a divine. Divine faith is declared at once upon the Church’s first instructions ; and this could never be, did not her infallible authority prevent all our doubts and all examination.

44 It is thus,” as says St Augustin — u it is thus, I say, that those believe, who, not being able to arrive at understanding, secure their salvation by the simplicity of their faith.”f If we must always examine before we believe, we must begin by examining whether God exist, and hearkening for some time, with a kind of suspension of mind, to the arguments of impious men; that is, we must pass to the belief of the Divinity through Atheism ; since examination and doubt on that subject is a species of Atheism. Not so: God has placed his mark in the world, which is the work of his hands, and by this divine mark he imprints in souls, before all doubts, the sentiment of his divinity ; in like manner he has placed his mark in his Church, the most perfect work of his wisdom. By this mark, the Holy Ghost makes the true Church known to the Children of God, and this characteristic, which distinguishes her from all other assemblies, gives her so great an authority, that, before all doubts and all opinions, we without hesitation admit not only the Holy Scripture, but also all her sound doctrine. Thus are the children of the true Church instructed : those that are instructed or educated in a strange Church, as soon as they perceive her waver in any part whatever of her instruction, ought to stretch forth their arms to the Church which has reason never to waver, because she has never varied or wavered, and they feel that they ought to return to it, because it never should have been quitted.

It may now be determined, whether I was likely to be embarrassed about the promise I had made Mademoiselle de Duras, to bring M. Claude to acknowledge a moment in which, by the

[f Ceteram quippe turbam (he has just spoken of the wisdom of the few) non inteiligenai vivacitas sed credendi simplicitas tutissimam facit. Tom. viii. 111.]

principles of his religion, a Christian had buta human faith concerning the truth of the Scripture. How could I be embarrassed about a thing which M. Claude acknowledged in the Conference, and which he acknowledges still in his Relation, though he has weakened both my proof and his own admission ? It is true, he will not let the word “ doubting” cross his lips: but I never engaged to make his tongue articulate those two syllables ; the equivalent is enough for me. To make a Christian who is going to read the Holy Scriptures incapable of divine faith, is an evil of sufficient magnitude ; to content oneself in this condition with a human faith, is too evidently to renounce Christianity. I have, then, manifestly what I desired frota M. Claude’s acknowledgment. And if he reply, that the faith he here speaks of excludes doubt, resembling that which makes us believe that there is a city called Constantinople, or that there was heretofore a king named Alexander the Great, though we know it but by men; this indeed is not enough for a Christian, who ought to act by a divine faith, but it is still enough to confound M. Claude, since, according to this answer, the Church would always have an authority equal to that which all mankind, as I may say, have when they unanimously depose concerning a palpable fact. Thus, in what manner soever M. Claude explains to us his human faith, the victory of the truth I asserted will be established by his confession : sinCe, if he say that his hunjan faith excludes doubt, he supposes it an infallible truth ; and if he say that it leaves a doubt, he will in fine have pronounced these fatal syllables he so much shunned. If, when having so strong a cause, I trembled for any thing but the danger of those into whose hearts I feared that, either by reason of my own weakness, or their prepossession, I could not make the truth sufficiently enter, I ill understood the truth I defended. However, because I said, in my account of the Conference,¹⁹ that, upon M. Claude objecting to me the Greek Church and others, I trembled through apprehension, lest an objection proposed with so much address and eloquence might put a soul in peril, M. Claude has taken advantage of the moment to make me appear vanquished. “ Here,” says he, “ it may with truth be said, that the Bishop of Condom’s mind was seen not to be in its usual state, and that there was a perceptible abatement of that freedom which is so natural to him.” In reply, I may observe, that my trembling, whence this advantage is drawn, was interior, and that I can scarce believe that M. Claude could have perceived it, had I not myself sincerely related it in my recital ;

but what matter is it, wbat was either the effect or cause of my fear ? Men will say, if they please, that, disconcerted by M. Claude’s objection, I would cover the disorder into which I visk bly fell,' by feigning alarm for the salvation of one who looked for instruction from my hands. I will own it, if they please ; or rather, to avoid an untruth, I will let it pass without opposition. Let me have trembled before M. Claude, provided that even in trembling I spoke the truth. I did speak it; they need only see what were my answers, and whether after all I failed to draw from M. Claude’s mouth the acknowledgment which I purposed. After this, the more I shall have trembled, and the weaker I shall have been, the more certain it will be that it was the truth that sustained me.

There is a part of the Conference which M. Claude passes over in four words. It is that where I showed him the horrible state of his Church, which set itself up, after the example of all false Churches, by separating from all Christian Churches in the world, and without finding any Church which thought as she did at the time of her establishment : so that she was not linked by any continuity either with the time that went before or with any Church which appeared then in the world. This fact passed for evident ; and how short soever M. Claude has been m the recital of this part, he says enough to show that, in acknowledging this important fact, he has only endeavored to cover the shame of such a condition by the example of the apostles when they separated from the synagogue.

1 will not repeat what I said on this subject ; you have seen it in the Conference,²⁰ and M. Claude, who relates but a word about it, does not oblige me to any new explanation. I shall only say, that he gives a very incorrect view of this part of the discussion : — u The company rose,” says he, “ and the conversation which continued some time longer, became much more confused and various subjects were spoken of.” 1 know not why M. Claude represents our conversation as confused ; it was not so in any part, and it was less so, if possible, at this juncture than during the remaining time. It is true we had risen, and some of the company had withdrawn, but M. Claude and I kept our ground face to face. Mademoiselle de Duras seemed to have redoubled her attention ; and, after so many principles declared, the dispute became more vivid and more conclusive than ever. If we spoke of “ various subjects,” it was not ramblingly, and all tended to the same end. The reader may see that it was so and if my word be not believed on the question, it will be

AtfDlTlCiltA²¹' BB'ttLittMOlW.

found, whenever M. Claude publishes his Relation, that the little he says naturally requires all that I recite. At all events, it was admitted that the “ Reformed,” in establishing their Church, had followed a course quite the contrary to that ever followed by the orthodox, and precisely that of all heretics ; and M. Claude, when pressed upon this matter, could not show in the whole history of Christianity a single truly Christian Church founded as the Churches of the new Reformation.

It may now be determined what likelikood there is that what all heretics have done, contrary to the practice of all the orthodox, can ever be authorized by the example of the apostles when they separated from the synagogue. However, since M. Claude places the strength of his defence in this example, I desire him to add to the evident facts I alleged to him on this subject, these short Reflections : — that though Jesus Christ, authorized of himself, had no need of any succession to make himself believed, nevertheless, to inculcate to us how necessary it is for the true religion to have a succession always manifest, he would, at his coming into the world, find there a Church actually subsisting in its entire state : — that he was born, and lived, in this Church actually subsisting, that is, in the synagogue, and would so form his Church in the midst of her, that even the apostles, after his ascension and the coming down of the Holy Ghost, continued publicly in the service of the temple, which was then the most authentic mark of communion : — that whatever measures were decreed against them, the apostles are not seen ever to have withdrawn from it, as long as the temple was in being, and the synagogue could keep either its exterior form, or even any appearance of its ancient state : — that God, who would, in fine, have his children entirely separated from the Jews, had first extinguished in this ungrateful people, by a manifest reprobation, together with the sacrifice and priesthood, all the marks of a Church, so that it seemed rather, that the synagogue with its temple was falling to ruin than that the children of God were departing from it : — that then, far from leaving any hope to this people, as he had done in the ancient transmigration and ruin of the first temple, he had, on the contrary, given every mark of an implacable anger : — that , to prevent such a fall of his heretofore chosen people, and the divorce declared to the synagogue, formally his spouse, affording the least pretext of suspecting any like event in time to come, he had caused this future fall and divorce to be foretold by all his prophets, as a singular example of his wrath, and at the same time protested, that no such thing should ever befal that Church with which he made an everlasting covenant : — that besides all this, and although the reproba- 12 *

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to tion of the synagAgtie was dearly announced in the Scripture, and although the apostles, without making any innovation in the doctrine, did but follow Him who had until their time been al* ways, without any interruption, expected : nevertheless, (because there was some rupture with the synagogue, heretofore the true Church) there was required, to authorize them in this action, no less than Jesus Christ himself, present on earth with all the authority of the Eternal Father : — in a word, that to dissent from the sentiments of the synagogue, although moreover confuted by the Scriptures, it was necessary that Jesus Christ, the corner-- stone, in whom all was to be united, should appear visible on earth, with the incontestable marks of his mission.— I leave you -now to consider whether an example of this nature can give any occasion of ever separating from the Church of Jesus Christ, or of saying that this Church, founded on the rock, was to fall, or that the succession, of which Jesus Christ is the source, could suffer any interruption, or whether, on the contrary, every thing does not here denounce such an attempt.

Hitherto we have seen what concerns the Conference, and M. Claude’s manner of relating it. We are now to consider what he opposes to the Instructions that preceded it. He answers them largely in the tract we have already mentioned- This tract has no title, and is drawn up in the form of a letter. To make ourselves better understood, let us give it a name, and call it “ M. Claude’s manuscript answer.” It has been seen that the Conference was on my part preceded by two Instructions, the first of which* established the perpetual visibility of the Church ; and the secondf cleared some objections taken from the Book of Kings. M. Claude has followed this division. He, accordingly, divides his answer into two parts ; the first is subdivided into four questions. In the first , he treats of the Universal Church which the creed speaks of, and blames me for not having comprehended in it, with all the blessed spirits, the saints which shall be born even to the end of the world. In the second , he examines whether the Church can be defined by her external communion, as he supposes 1 have done. .In the third, he treats of the Church’s perpetual visibility : and, in the fourth, he inquires to which Church Jesus Christ’s promises belong ; whether to that 1 have settled, or to that he has established ? He draws afterwards eleven inferences from the doctrine he has laid down, and passes to the second part, wherein he maintains the objections taken from the Book of Kings. Such is the plan of his work.

It k in these four questions and eleven inferences that he at²² tacks, With all his might, the doctrine I have taught, concerning the perpetual visibility of the Church ; but it will presently appear that he could not do so, until he had first framed himself a false idea of it.

To show that the Church spoken of in the creed ought to be always visible, I said, that all Christians, by the term 44 Church,” understood a society making profession to believe the doctrine of Jesus Christ, and govern itself by his word, whence it follows that it is visible, and linked by an exterior and sensible communion thus I laid down my position at the outset, and this was what I had to make good.

It was not required of me, as M. Claude supposes, to give a perfect definition of the Church, nor to prove her interior union by the Holy Ghost, by faith, by charity : — for on this we are agreed. The question then being only about the outward marks of this union, I had done all in showing that these exterior marks are inseparable from the Church, and consequently that she is always visible. But because I said, that u by the word Church is understood a society making profession to believe the doctrine of Jesus Christ,” M. Claude, throughout his manuscript answer, but principally in the second and fourth questions, will persuade me, that I consider the Church as 44 a merely external society,” constituted in its essence 44 by a mere profession of believing,” without believing indeed ; 44 whose whole nature and essence consist in bare externals and appearances, without reality ; whose unity is only a unity of profession, an exterior 1 unity ; so that the interior is in it only by accident : and though there should be neither faithful nor just in it, and it should be wholly compdfeed of hypocrites, it would still be the true Church.”

This is, really, a frighful view of the Church, and I am not suprised at M. Claude’s shuddering at it : however, this notion is as far from my mind and the minds of all Catholics, as heaven is from hell ; and I know not how M. Claude could read my Instructions without seeing in them quite the contrary to what he ascribes to me. Since the reader has now these Instructions before his eyes, I desire him to pass them over again.

He will find there, indeed, that it is of the essence of the Church to be visible by preaching, and by the sacraments ; but he will find there also , 44 that the elect and the saints are the most noble part of it ; that they are there sanctified, that they are there regenerated* often even by the ministry of the repro*

»« bate ; that they must not be regarded as making a body apart, but as making the fairest and most noble portion of it.”²³

He will find there, that it is of the essence of the Church, 44 because she is holy, ever to teach steadily and invariably the holy doctrine ;”f but he will find that this holy doctrine which she incessantly teaches continually brings forth saints in her unity, and that by this doctrine she instructs and holds in her bosom the elect of God.J Do they call this a bare profession of Jesus Christ’s doctrine, without reality, and a mere mass of hypocrites ?

He will find it there stated, that hell cannot prevail against the visible and external society of the Church ; but he will find also, that it is because “ it cannot prevail against the elect, who are the purest and most spiritual part of this Church, it is, I say, “ because it cannot prevail against the elect, that it cannot prevail against the Church which teaches them, in which they confess the gospel and receive the sacraments.” Thus, instead of believing that this Church, which subsists eternally, can according to our principles, subsist without the elect; it is, on the contrary, seen that we consider the elect as making the most essential part and strength of this Church.

He will there find that it is of the essence of the Church, until the general resurrection, to have the ecclesiastical ministry, which renders her visible ;[| but he will find also, that the effect of this ministry is to bring the children of God to the perfect stature of Jesus Christ — that is, to perfection ; which, after it has rendered them holy, will render them glorious both in body and soul.

In fine, he will find 44 the exterior and interior communion of the faithful with Jesus Christ, and of the faithful amongst themselves; the interior communion by charity, and in the Holy Ghost who animates us ; but at the same time the exterior communion in the sacraments, in the confession of faith, and in all the outward ministry of the Church whence I concluded, that 44 it is not barely the society of the predestinate that shall subsist for ever ; but that it is the visible body in which the predestinate are included, which preadhes to them, which teaches them, which regenerates them by baptism, which nourishes them by the eucharist, which administers to them the keys, which governs them and keeps them united under discipline, which "forms Jesus Christ in them : it is this visible body that shall subsist for ever.” ## All this shows, that far from making a Church whose communion is of its own nature merely

&8 exterior, and “ interior only by accident ,* 5 the essence of the Church is, on the contrary, the interior communion, of which the exterior communion is the mark, and that the effect of this mark is to show that the children of God are kept and included under this seal. It is seen also, that the elect are the ultimate object for which all is done in the Church, and those whom all her ministry is principally to serve, so that they make the most essential part, and, as I may say, the very substance of the Church. „

If, then, I have spoken more of the outward communion than of the inward communion of the Church, it is plainly seen that this can be only for the reason I have mentioned, to wit, that the Reformed being agreed with us, that the substance, as I may say, of the Church is her inward union, I needed only establish the outward, the necessity whereof they contest.

Thus, when I said at first in my Instruction, that the Church was the society which confessed the true faith, M. Claude ought to have understood that this confession of the mouth did not exclude the belief of the heart, but rather supposed it in the living and essential part of the Church, of which I did not speak then, for the reason that it was not the question I had to propose and resolve. To conclude, from this silence, that I admit no other union essential to the body of the Church but this outward union, is the same as if one, that should have undertaken to explain only those external ligaments which keep human bodies united from without, and include, as I may say, in one and the same category with the living members, the nails, the hair, the peccant humours, and even the dead members, not yet cut off from the body, should be therefore represented as acknowledging no other principle of union, and under this pretence it should be said of him, that, according to this man’s principles, there might be a human body which should be only hair, nails, rotten members, and peccant humours, without having any thing living in effect. This is what M. Claude does, when he concludes, from my discourse, that the Church of Jesus Christ may be only a mass of wicked men and hypocrites. But this will appear farther in what follows, by M. Claude’s own principles; it is sufficient for me in this place to show him that this merely exterior Church, which he calls “ the Church of Cardinals Bellarmin and Du Perron, and of the Bishop of Condom,” is a Church that subsists only in his imagination ; and one may believe by his manner of judging in regard of my sentiments, that he understands those of these illustrious cardinals no better.

To show that the word Church signifies in the Apostles’ creed a visible Church, I laid for a foundation that, in a confession of faith, such as this creed was, words w r ere used in their most

« natural and most simple signification ; and 1 added that the word Church so naturally signified the visible Church, that the Reformed — the devisers of the chimera of an invisible Church — never, throughout their confession of faith, used the word Church in this sense, but solely to express the visible Church, invested with the sacraments²⁴ with the word, and with all the public miftistry. See the passages of the confession of faith I have related, % with the consequences I have drawn from them.*

I was not the first who made this remark ; it wa*s a National Synod of the u Reformed.” After having preached so much about the invisible Church, and having, when pressed upon the succession, grounded on this foundation the invisible succession of which they made use,- — the Reformed teachers wondered they had not spoken One single word of it in their confession of faith, where, on the contrary, the word Church is always taken for the visible Church. Surprised at this language, so natural to Christians, but so little in unison with the principles of their Reformation, they enacted the following decree in the year 1603, in the Synod of Gap, in the chapter which has for its title ■ — u On the Confession of Faith.” It is by this all the synods begin; and the first thing that is done in them is to review this confession of faith, which gave occasion to the printers to reprint it with this title, forbidden in the synods :f — a The confession of Faith of the Reformed Churches , revised and corrected by the National Synod” But let us come to the decree of Gap, of which these are the words : — u the provinces shall be exhorted to consider, in the Provincial Synods, in what terms the 25th article of the confession of faith ought to be couched.; forasmuch as being to express what we believe touching the Catholic Church, of which mention is made in the creed, there is nothing in the said confession that can be taken but for the militant and visible Church : as also in the 29th article they shall see whether it be fit to add the word c pure’ to the expression * true Church, 7 which is in the said^article ; and, in general, all shall come prepared on the matters of the Church.”

We have related the substance of this 25th article.J In the same place may be seen the 26th, 27th, and 28th articles ; and as for the 29th article, it says, that “ the true Church ought to be governed according to the policy which our Lord Jesus Christ established; that is, that there be pastors, overseers, and deacons* to the end the pure doctrine may have its course, and the assemblies be held in the name of God.”

The addition of the word “ pure Church,” which they deli- berated about adding to that of “ true” is founded on a doctrine of the pretended Reformed, which says that a true Church may not be pure, because with the essential truths it may have errors mixed. I say even gross and considerable errors against faith : and this is one of the mysteries of the new Reformation which M. Claude will explain for usby-and-by, but it is not to our present purpose. The important matter to note is, that these people, who say they are sent of God to revive the pure doctrine * of the gospel, having to explain, as themselves declare in their confession of faith, u the Church, of which mention is made in the creed,” had, after all, spoken only of the militant and visible Church. I could easily assign the reason : it is, that this Church, of which mention is made in the creed, is indeed the visible Church ; it is that the word Church naturally involves this visibility, and the word Catholic, far from derogating from it, presupposes it ; it is because, in a confession of faith, men often speak rather according to the natural ideas the words bear with them, than according to the refinements and evasions they invent to escape out of a difficulty. Thus, the invisible Church never occurred to our Reformed when they framed their confession of faith ; the sense of visible Church appeared only in it ; there seemed to be nothing in this but what was natural, until the year 1603. In 1603, they were roused as from a slumber ; they began to find it strange that a Church which grounded her succession on the idea of an invisible Church, and of a Church of the predestinate, should not have said one word about it in her confession of faith, but have left it as a settled point that the natural signification of the word Church always imported a visible society ; so that, correctly speaking, the succession of the Church could no longer be shown without showing the succession of her visibility ; a thing utterly impossible for the new Reformation. It was this inclined the whole synod to reconsider this article, and to exhort the provinces “ to come prepared upon the matters of the Church,” which had never been well understood amongst the new Reformed, which are not yet understood, and which will make Catholics of all those that can understand them. But this was a very delicate matter — this reconsidering of the article of the Church. It was sounding an alarm : it was too plainly pointing out a flaw, and furnishing the printers with a still better reason than ever for entitling the formulary, u The Confession , revised and corrected.” So, in the Synod of Rochelle, held in 1607, it was resolved, “ not to add or expunge any thing in the 25th and 29th articles, nor to meddle afresh with the subject of the Church.” By the decision of this synod, the visible Church alone appears in the “ Reformed”

confession of faith ; the invisible Church has no part in it, and one draws from it what consequences he can. *

That which I draw is a serious one : for if the Church appears only as visible, in the u Reformed” confession of faith, aind if, besides, they assert this confession of faith as conformable to Scripture in every point, they must tell us that this manner of explaining the Church is derived from Scripture, and that from the Scripture it has passed naturally into the ordinary language of Christians, into confessions of faith, and consequently into the creed, which is not only the best authorized of all the confessions of faith, but also the most simple.

M. Claude answers us, “ that custom changes, and that in process of time words often depart from their first and natural signification ;” and that besides, though it should be true, as I have said, that the word Church, taken simply, should signify the visible Church, the word “ universal” would change this signification. But he shall not escape us by this subterfuge; for we have still an argument left to overwhelm # the whole socalled Reformation. Here it is, taken from the very principles laid down by themselves.* The word Church ought to be taken, in the “ confession of faith” of the “ Reformed” as it is naturally taken in Scripture: else, on a fundamental article of the Christian religion, this confession of faith would not be, as it pretends it is, conformable to the Holy Scripture. Now, in this confession of faith, the word Church is taken fora visible society ; — ,this proposition is acknowledged in the Synod of Gap, as we have just seen. Therefore, it is thus that the word Church is naturally taken in Scripture. But it is taken in the creed in the same sense in which it is taken in Scripture : — this M. Claude and Protestants will not deny : — therefore equally both in Scripture and in the creed is it taken for a visible Church ; and the term Catholic or universal, inserted in the creed, as M. Claude ad- 9 mits, to distinguish the whole body of the Church truly Christian, spread over the whole earth, “ from all false Churches and all particular Churches,” instead of rendering the Church invisible, makes her so much the more visible, as it more visibly separates her from all false Churches, and expressly brings within her bosom all particular Churches, so visible and so remarkable by their common profession of faith and their common government.

But without disputing any further, we need only hearken to M. Claude and hear his concessions, in his manuscript answer, concerning the Church’s perpetual visibility. And would to God I could here transcribe the whole of this work ! A multitude of things in favor of our doctrine would appear, which I m. olaude’s evasion.

cannot make well understood until it shall be public. However, it is not for me to publish it : and 1 have deemed it sufficient to transcribe at length, forasmuch as is necessary, the passages you are going to see, such as I found them in the Duke of Chevreuse’s manuscript, acknowledged, as I have said, # by M, Claude himself.

Now, if he be found. to speak of the Church after a manner unprecedented in the so-styled Reformation, no exception should be taken against his doing so ; for two reasons. First, because, in fact, he has taught the same doctrine in his other works, though he has here explained it more fully and in better order than ever v Secondly, because he pretends to say nothing new : a circumstance at which we ought to rejoice ; there being nothing more desirable than to witness the number of principles and articles increase whereon we may agree. Let us, therefore, enter with all our heart into this charitable design : let us see in what M. Claude agrees with us, and let us relate his doctrine in the same order that he states it in his third and fourth questions, and afterwards in his eleven inferences.

The first concession I find is : — “ That it is manifest that, though the true Church be mixed with the wicked in one and the same confession, it is nevertheless visible in the mixture, at the good grain with the tares in one and the same field, and as the good fishes with the bad in one and the same net.” This goes well. Let us proceed : u This mixture hinders indeed the just discernment of persons, but it hinders not the discernment or the distinction of the classes of persons, even with certainty. We know not certainly wHq in particular are true believers or who are hypocrites : but we certainly know that there are true believers, as there are hypocrites ; which is sufficient to constitute the visibility of the true Church.” I hear this with joy : assuredly we shall get on. M. Claude concedes already as “ manifest,” that there will be always a visible body, of which one may say : “ There are the true believers.”

I continue to read his answer, and I find that he blames me for charging the Reformed with not believing that the body u in which,” according to St. Paul, “ God has placed some, apostles ; some, teachers ; some, pastors &c., is the Church of Christ. Right glad am I to be reprehended, provided we advance ! So then, it is a settled thing that the body of Jesus Christ, which is the Church, shall always be composed of pastors, of teachers, of preachers, and also of people : it is then, consequently, always very visible, and the succession of pastors, as well as that of people, ought to be manifest in it i n N²⁵

M. Claude here confirms his discourse by a passage of ML Mestresat, who determines “ that we must not seek the Church of God²⁶ out of the visible state of the ministry and the word.” So much the better; and I am overjoyed that M. Claude finds in his Church many followers of this doctrine. I was afraid the ministers were unwilling to acknowledge the visible Church to be spoken of in the passage of St. Paul to the Ephesians, where the Church is represented to us “ without spot and without blemish and I had set myself to prove that this Church, described by St. Paul, was the visible Church, because it was “ washed by baptism and by the word.” M. Claude enters into my view at once. He says, that in this passage we must understand, indeed, “ the Church which is already in heaven, but also the visible Church, which is on earth, as making together hut one and the same body ;” and here again he cites M. Mestresat. I receive this doctrine; and should any of our Reformed, be it M. Claude himself, ever object to me, that I must not rely so much on the Church’s visibility, since there is at least a part of this Church which is invisible — that is to say, that which is in heaven, — I will answer, that this ought to give us no concern, since, after all, according to this doctrine of M. Mestresat and M. Claude, being in communion with the visible part of the Church, I am sure to be so also with the invisible part, which is already in heaven with Jesus Christ ; so that it is certain that all is finally reduced to the visibility.

M. Claude passes then to the objections that may be made and he decides, at once, “that the visibility of the Church is a visibility of the ministry.” He must, therefore, as he acknowledges a perpetual visibility in the Church, end by showing us a succession in the ministry, and, in one word, a line of lawful pastors.

x He objects to himself, that “ the ministry is common to the good and the bad ;” whence it seems one might draw an inference against his doctrine, that good and bad compose the Church : — and he answers, “ that if the ministry be actually common to the good and the bad, this is only by accident and through the fraud of the enemy ; that, of right, it belongs only to the true believers, and that the supernatural destination is only for them.” All this is clear, except the expression, “ the ministry, of right, belongs only to the true believers.” For, as one might understand by this, that none but true believers are lawful pastors, each individual might find himself burdened with the difficult task of examining whether pastors are really true believers, and be led to suppose that they cease to be pas²⁷ tors when they cease to be good men, although nothing scandalous appear in their conduct. This was the pernicious doctrine of Wycliffe, which would put the whole Church in confusion. Exclusive of this erroneous sense, which cannot be in M. Claude’s mind, I grant him all he says : for, doubtless, it is not the primary intent of Jesus Christ that there should be ministers who should be deceivers : it happens only through the malice of the enemy. The destination of the ministry is for true believers. Jesus Christ did not establish it to call into the Church deceivers and hypocrites. Who can think so ? But, nevertheless, these deceivers and these hypocrites may be sufficiently of the Church, to be lawful pastors in it ; and the true believers being to live to the end of the world under the authority of this mixed ministry, there must, therefore, without examining whether the ministers be good or evil, be shown us a succession of them always manifest, under which the people of God have been perpetuated.

The more I continue my reading, the more I find this truth evidently declared. For, upon entering on the fourth question, I find, indeed, that.M. Claude there engages to show that the passages wherein Jesus Christ promises the Church to perpetuate her on earth regard only the society of true believers ; but he, nevertheless, equally admits that this Church never ceases to be visible, and that Jesus Christ has promised it should be so. I undertook to show the visible Church in these words : — 44 Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it;”* the reasons, I made use of, to prove it, may be seen.f M. Claude receives this doctrine with its proofs and he acknowledges 44 that the Church which is spoken of in this passage is, in fact, a confessing Church ; a Church which publishes the faith ; a Church to which Jesus Christ has given an external ministry ; a Church which uses the ministry of the keys, and which binds and looses; and which, consequently, has the properties of being external and visible.” It is such a Church, that Jesus Christ has, in the text cited, promised to perpetuate on earth. M. Claude will not allow any one to tell him that she ceases to be ; and thus she always is with all that ministry which is essential to her : whence M. Claude concludes with me, 44 that the ecclesiastical ministry will last without discontinuance until the general resurrection,” and grants, without difficulty, that this promise of Jesus Christ, 44 1 am with you always, regards the perpetuity too of the ecclesiastical ministry. u Jesus' Christ promises,” says he, “ to be with the Church, to baptize with her, and to teach with her, without interruption , even to the end of the world” There will, therefore, ever be teachers with whom Jesus Christ will teach, and true preaching will never cease in his Church.

But will this ministry continue for ever so pure, that none bot good men shall be admitted to it? We have seen that M. Claude does not insist that it will be so. In fact, there is no promise of this perpetual purity : the promise is — that, whatsoever the morals of these ministers may be, Jesus Christ will always act, always baptize, and always teach with them ; and the effect of this ministry, though a promiscuous one, will be such, that under its authority u the Church will be always visible ; not indeed,” feys M. Claude, “ with a distinct view, which goes so far as to say with certainty, such and such are person- . ally true believers; but with an indistinct view, which is notwithstanding, certain, and which goes so far as to say. The true believers are there, to wit, in that exterior profession .”

Let us (if they will) not designate all that exterior profession by the name of u Church let us refrain from this term, since M. Claude is averse to it; and like true reasonable and peaceable Christians, let us endeavor to agree on the thing. This u exterior profession,” which may be always marked, and, as I may say, always pointed to with the finger, is mixed of good and evil men : the ministry which governs it is also mixed. M. Claude allows all this. It may nevertheless, be said, Under this ministry, and in this exterior profession, are the true believers ; this is what we just now heard from the same minister’s mouth. If then, according to his doctrine, the society of true believers subsists for ever, and continues always visible on earth ; if it may always be shown in an exterior profession, and is there alone visible, as M. Claude says ; it not only follows, that there always will be true believers upon earth, but that this mingled profession, of good and bad men, where these true believers are found, where they are shown, where they are pointed to, shall be there also ; and on this we agree with M. Claude. — But since all these passages are scattered up and down his answer, here is one, in which he has taken care to collect all together.

It is after his fourth question, and in the seventh inference, that this minister, endeavoring to explain the 31 st article of the confession of faith, where it is said, u that in our days,” and before the Reformation, “ the state of the Church was interrupted.” He distinguishes the state of the Church interrupted for a time from the Church which is never interrupted, ac- cording to hi& principles ; and he defines the Church as follows : — “ The Church,” says he, “ are the true believers, who make profession of the Christian truth, of 'piety, and of true holiness, under a ministry which furnishes her with the aliments necessary for spiritual life, without defrauding her of any of them.” We shall discover in due time what is the hidden meaning of these u spiritual aliments.” Meanwhile, let us agree with M. Claude, that the Church always subsists, and always subsists visible, since by his definition, she is nothing else but the true believers, u who make profession of Christian truth, under the ecclesiastical ministry.” Here is an immovable foundation. Let us see what we can build on it ; but, before we build, we are going to see objections fall.

M. Claude objects to me, first, that it is in vain for me to attempt establishing my society composed of good and bad, and the eternal duration of the same, on these inviolable promises of Jesus Christ, u Thou art Peter,” and “ 1 am always with you.” V It is not,” says he, u of the wicked that it can be said, that hell shall not prevail against them ; it is «iot with wicked men and hypocrites that Jesus Christ has promised always to be, and these promises respect only true believers.” If we add, according to M. Claude’s principles, that supposing these promises respect only true believers, they respect them at least in this ministry, and in this exterior profession, the objection will at the same time be resolved. For, indeed,' if the true believers ought to be always shown and always visible, according toM. Claude, in this exterior profession, in which the good and the bad are mixed, — it follows, that this composition, by what name soever it be called, shall always appear on earth. Now, no one can be assured of a society subsisting always, and always in a visible state, unless God has promised it. His promises regard even then this mixture ; and not only the true believers, but, with them, all the society in which they are ever, according to his decrees, to appear. By consequence, we must understand these promises of Jesus Christ otherwise than M. Claude teaches. The promises of Jesus Christ respect not the wicked alone, nor were they made for their sake. If M. Claude said only this, his observation would be just. But these promises, which Jesus Christ made to his faithful, comprehend also the wicked who are mixed with them. When God by his prophets promised the ancient people to give them plentiful harvests, with the corn he promised also the chaff: and to preserve the harvest is to preserve the chaff with the corn. In like manner, to promise the Church and her eternal duration, is to promise, w^ith the elect, the wicked, in the midst of whom God encloses them. And the wicked in the Church are for the just, as the chaff in the harvest is for the corn ; and as God promises not the chaff either alone or for itself, so he promises not the wicked either alone or for themselves. But, nevertheless, all this blending will sub*sist, in virtue of the divine promise, until the final separation, when the wicked, as the chaff, will be cast into the fire that shall never be quenched. Meanwhile Jesus Christ will be always with the whole society thus composed : keeping there the sound doctrine in all the exterior, which He knows how to carry into the interior, even into the hearts, of those who live ; in the same manner as nourishment, presented to our whole body in the same way, quickens only the members which are disposed to receive it.

A second objection of M. Claude’s will fall by the same principle.

He objects to me, that, in defining the Catholic Church men* tioned in the creed, I speak only of the Church which is actually on earth, instead of comprehending in it all the elect which have been, are, and Shall be, and, in fine, with the holy angels* all the heavenly Jerusalem. I have already answered, that it was neither my intention, nor was I called upon, to define the Church but in relation to our subject and her visibility. I add, however, that in saying this, I have, ^according to M.'Claude’s own principles, said all : for, according to him, in the outward profession — that is, in what renders the Church visible — may be marked the true believers, with whom all the saints of every time and place, not excepting the holy angels, are united. u The Church which is on earth,” M. Claude says, “ is one with that which is already gathered in heaven, and with that which God will cause to spring up throughout all generations, all which three together make but one, which is called the Universal Church.” God be praised ! When I have found the outward profession which renders the Church visible, M. Claude has already told us that I shall have found the true believers — that is, according to him, the true Church actually present on earth; and he now tells us, that with this Church, I shall by the same means have both that which is already in heaven and that which God will cause to arise in all succeeding ages. We need, then, inquire only after the Church which is on earth, and the outward profession which shows her to us, being assured to have found there, without further inquiry, the perfect communion of saints and the society of all the elect.

When under the name of Catholic Church I understood the Church which is upon earth, I spoke with all the Fathers. They ordinarily join to the title of u Catholic” Church, that of

“spread all over the earth,” toto orb $ diffusa . To this tide of Catholic they join also the title of Apostolic ; and thus is it put in the Nicene creed, which exhibits the most authentic as well as the mpst perfect interpretation of the Apostles 9 creed. This title of Apostolic makes part of the Church’s Catholicity, and shows us, amongst other things, that she is descended from the apostles by the perpetual succession of her pastors, and by the episcopal sees established over all the earth. All the saints whose blessed souls are with God were conceived in this Church ; all those that are to come shall likewise be regenerated in it : so that there never shall be any. one who has not made an essential part of this body, of which Jesus Christ is the head. As lo the angels, if we regard only the direct signification of words; they never made part of this Church founded by the apostles and spread over all the earth, where she is to make her pilgrimage : and although Jesus Christ is their head, he is in a more particular manner that of the faithful^ washed * in his blood and renovated by his word. But the angels, though united to Jesus Christ in another mdhner, are our brethren, and are not alien from the Catholic Church, of which oh the contrary, they are established, after their manner, co-operators and ministers. It is an evident truth, but with which I had nothing to do in this place ; it was sufficient to remark in the creed, what our fathers found there expressly and immediately signified by the term Catholic Church²⁸ by adding to it the title Apostolic, so natural to her Catholicity, and the eulogium of being spread all over the earth. To know the doctrine of this Church, is to know the doctrine of all the creed. There is seen in heaven and in the brightness of the saints,* only what is believed in this Church, and the holy angels, who, as the apostle St. Paul says,f have learned by the Church such high secrets of the divine wisdom, respect hel* belief. Thus, all being reduced, as I have already said, to the visibility, M. Claude’s only object is to make me lose time and digress, in calling on me to treat hereof any thing else in order to make known this Catholic Church, which is confessed in the creed.

All that remains for me to do is, to exhort the professors of the “ Reformed” religion, and M. Claude himself, if he will permit me, to draw manifest conclusions, from the principles he nas laid down : then they will no longer be able to resist the truth, and will remain convinced that there is no salvation for them, but in returning to the bosom of the Roman Church.

We have seenj that, to verify the promises of the gospel, M.

Claude is obliged to acknowledge an ever visible Cburcb, because the Church which is not visible is no Church, and because; according to the definition he has given, us, w the Church is the true believers, who make profession of the Christian truth under a ministry which furnishes her with the aliments necessary for spiritual life.’ 5 * These faithful are not then a body in the air, because they make profession of the truth under an ecclesiastical ministry always subsisting, and because, as we have seen, there must be, without any interruption, an exterior profession, of which it may be said, — “ There are the true believers.”

Thus it is not sufficient vaguely to allege to us hidden believers: it is incumbent to show us, without interruption, first, a visible society, of which may be said — “ The^ are there : it is there they serve God in spirit and truth ; it is there they confess the gospel.”

Nor will it be enough to show these believers dispersed ; they must, secondly , show us them gathered together, under the authority of an ecclesiastical ministry, with the preaching of the word, with the administration of the sacraments, with the use of the keys, and all the ecclesiastical government.

By consequence, they must show us a society of pastors and people : whence it follows, in the third place, they must be able to name us these pastors, since the succession of them is manifest.

To seek all this in the pretended Reformed Church, as it is now, separated from the Roman Church — that is, from that body of the Church which acknowledges the Roman Church and the Pope for its head , — is what M. Claude does not so much as dream of; it is enough for him, that to the time of the pretended Reformed’s separation, he finds all this in the Roman Church itself. The, true believers were there as long as those that composed the pretended Reformation were there : when they went forth, they carried the Church with them, as M. Claude said in the Conference.!

This discourse, more like raillery than a serious discourse, is nevertheless that which is seriously held in the new Reformation. Up to the separation of these new Reformed, the succession of the true believers — that is, according to M. Claude, of the true visible Church — was perpetuated in the Roman Church, and it is only since their separation that she has ceased to contain them. Such is the succession of the visible Church, which M. Claude establishes in his manuscript answer. Up to the separation, the true feithful that the Roman Church contained : after²⁹ the separation, the “ Reformed” that came forth from the midst .of her.

But, whence came their pastors ? Did they also separate, with these pretended believers, from the body of the Roman Church, to perpetuate in the Church, thus Reformed, the ecclesiastical ministry? In nowise: M. Claude does not understand it so. The faithful, dissociated from the Roman Church, all on a sudden deposed the pastors that were before ; that is to say, that before, Catholic bishops and priests, with the Pope at their head, were the pastors established by Jesus Christ (for there must have been such for “ the true believers,” which they contained in their unity) : at the moment that the Reformation appeared, they were all summarily deposed, and the ministry is withdrawn from their hands.

But what right had private persons thus all summarily and in one moment to dispossess all their pastors ? It is because they are the true believers, to whom “the ministry appertains of right,”³⁰ who might consequently dispose of it, take it from some and give it to others. “ We must not,” says M. Claude, “ imagine the succession of pastors in this ordinary transmission, which ministers make from one to another, and which is called the exterior and personal succession. The question is, whether it may not sometimes happen, that the Church — that is, the true believers — shall take her ministry out of the hand of those who have too visibly abused it, and give it to others.”

This is the question in general, as M. Claude proposes it ; and the application he makes of it in particular is, that “ the Latin prelates who occupied the ecclesiastical ministry in the time of our fathers, and who were assembled in the Council of Trent, having made decisions of faith incompatible with salvation, and having pronounced anathemas against those who submitted not to them, the Reformed had reason to regard these prelates as ministers who had stripped themselves of the ministry, and to give it to other persons.”! They should then, at least, according to these principles, have waited till the decisions of Trent; and since, before these decisions, so many Churches separated from Rome had already given themselves pastors, the Reformation will have begun by a manifest usurpation. But let us not push M. Claude so much, and without insisting rigorously on the Council of Trent, let us desire him only to mark some day a little near the time in which he will allow the true believers to have continued under the ministry of the Roman Church. And in the meantime, let us content ourselves

E&TftAYAftAIlT GbAtlft liT UP with noting this novel doctrine, that it may happen that aU the pastors of the Church, dispossessed all on a sudden, may become in one moment private men, and that, without their establishing any other pastors to succeed them, “ the true believers,” in no³¹ wise pastors, but private persons, separated from every Church actually existing, may of their sole authority confer the ministry on others, establish them, ordain them, and instal them. This is what M. Claude propounds in the sequel, in these words, — that these pastors, the only ones before in office, “ are of right deprived, and the ministry reverted, of right, to that part of the Society in which are found the true believers;” that is to say, the so-styled Reformed, separated from the Roman Church, and from the whole Church then subsisting in the world . What an authority and privilege does separation give !

Such is M. Claude’s doctrine. If I alter, if I exaggerate, if I extenuate, let him without delay publish his treatise to confound me. But, if this be his doctrine, I conjure the Reformed to consider what monstrous doctrine must be taught to defend their Reformation.

For, first: Where do they read — in what gospel, in what epistle, in what Scripture of the Old or the New Testament— that all the pastors of the Church were to fall in a moment from their chair, and become private persons, whom one might and ought freely to disobey ?

Has Jesus Christ hidden this great mystery from us? and would he not have forewarned us against this fearful temptation of his Church ? But this is not all: after having shown us in the Scripture this universal fall of all the pastors, they must also find there this “ ministry’s reverting , of right,” to private persons, who were never vested with it And what is M. Claude’s meaning? Is it that these private persons become of right ministers, without receiving ordination from any one ; or that, with* out being ministers, they have a right of their sole authority to set up ministers in the Church ? Let them show it in the Scripture, or let them for ever renounce the pretence of having the Scripture alone for guide.

I find in the Scripture, that Jesus Christ said to his apostles, “ As my Father sent me, so I send you I find in the Scrip* lure, that the apostles, thus sent, send others, and consecrate men to succeed themf but that, all their successors being on a sudden fallen and deprived of the right of their ministry, this ministry of right reverts to the faithful, to whom no one had ever given if, — to dispose of at their pleasure, — this neither Scripture

MW has said, nor after-ages imagined ; the notion is a monster, the birth of which was reserved for the new Reformation.

The ministry, say they, belongs of right to the Church. Unquestionably, it does belong to the Church, as the eyes do to the body. The ministry is not for itself, no more than the eyes. The ministry is established to be the light of the Church, as the eyes are the light, or, as Jesus Christ calls them, the lamp of the body. # Does it follow that, when the body has lost its eyes, it can re-make them of itself? No, certainly ; it will have need of the Hand which made them at first ; and nothing but a new creation can ever repair the work that the first creation had formed, In the same manner, if the Catholic Church could, agreeably to the pretence of the new Reformation, lose all on a sudden all its ministers, without their having given themselves successors according to the order of Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ must come again on earth to re-establish this sacred order by a new creation.

They are ready enough to discover in the bosom of the Ro- ' man Church .those true believers to make up the Reformed Church at its commencement ; why will they not in like manner derive the pastors of this Reformed Church from the pas³² tors that were in, office in the Roman Church ? As the people, so also the ministry is to be of a mixed character ; and there are always to be good pastors amongst the bad, as there are always true believers amongst false Christians. Why then were they fain to say in the new Reformation, and in the 31st article of their confession of faith, “ that the state of the Church was interrupted ?” Why were they fain to have recourse to a men extraordinarily raised to build the Church anew, which was in ruin and desolation ?” The reason is this, they were fain to speak not according to what ought to be done in the order established by Jesus Christ, but according to what was done against all order. The reason is, that the men of the new Reformation constituted for themselves pastors, who in effect had no connection with the pastors that were before in office, and therefore they were necessitated, even against their will, to attribute to them, though without proof, an extraordinary vocation. But, after all, reason required something else : and why did they not speak according to reason, except, (once more) because they were fain to accommodate, not what was done to the rule, but, the rule to what was done.

But, it will be said, if any Church — for example the Greek Church — show us the succession of her pastors, will you hold it for a true Church ? By no means, if 1 can show in it other marks of innovation which it cannot deny, as I could do without much trouble, if it were in question. But with our Reformed, the proof is made ; since themselves confess the interruption we charge them with.

M. Claude palliates, as well as he can, “ this interrupted state of the Church,” so distinctly acknowledged in his confer sion of faith. “ We distinguish,” says he, “ the Church from her state . The Church are the true believers, who make profession of Christian truth, of piety, and of a real sanctity, under a ministry which furnishes them with the aliments necessary for spiritual life, without depriving them of any one. Her natural and legitimate state is to be discharged, as much as the condition of 4 militant 9 can permit, from the impure mixture of profane persons and worldlings; not to be overlaid, and, as it were, buried by that chaff and those tares, whence a thousand evils come upon her ; to have a ministry free from errors, from false * worships, from superstitious practices — a ministry filled by good men, who hold it by worthy means, and serve themselves as a good example. It is this state of the Church which we deem to have been interrupted.” Why does he incumber himself with so many words, and because they are pompous, not observe that they are vain, not to say fallacious, and manifestly contrary to the gospel ? For, can a more evident cheat be put on the world, than by exaggerating, as is here done, “ this ministry filled by good men, who hold it by worthy means, and serve themselves as a good example ?” Is it that the authority of the ecclesiastical ministry depends on the discussion of the life and good example of those who are vested with it ? and though they should be as scandalous and perverse as the Scribes and Pharisees, ought we not still to say (not as Jesus Christ said, they sit in Moses 9 chair, but, what is more august), they sit in the chair of Jesus Christ and his apostles ? However, let these things pass : come we to this “ interrupted state” of the 31st article, which M. Claude here undertakes to explain for us. This interrupted state of the Church is alleged here to establish the necessity of an extraordinary vocation in the pretended Reformed ; for let us hear how this article speaks : — “ It hath been sometimes necessary, and especially in these our days, wherein the state of the Church was interrupted, that God should raise up men after an extraordinary manner, to set up the Church anew.” You see, Protestants, this interrupted state of the Church is alleged only to establish tlie extraordinary vocation of your first Reformers. But, in order to establish the necessity of an extraordinary vocation, it is not sufficient that the ministry is impure ; the ministry

STATE OF THE CHUftCH.

m must have ceased. When you made your appearance, had this ecclesiastical ministry ceased ? Assuredly not, M. Claude will answer you, for then the Church would have ceased ; since the Church, according to him, as you just now heard, is nothing else but “ the true believers, who make profession of the truth, under a ministry which furnishes her with necessary aliments.” Besides, he has already told us often, that the Church is never without the ministry. So, in this place, where he endeavors to give ah account of this “ interrupted state,” after having set forth in such striking terms, the impurity which he imagines in the ministry before the Reformation, u The Church,” adds he³³ u eased not ; she did not entirely lose her visibility or her ministry ; God forbid ! See how he cries out against this abomina* tion of saying that the ministry can be lost in the Church. Then, there is never any necessity of an extraordinary vocation in the ministers, since to transmit the ministry after the ordinary manner, it is not requisite for the ministry to be pure, it is sufficient that it exists. And though for the transmitting of it there should be required, as M. Claude affirms, not only ministers of good doctrine, but also of u good life and good example,” it is as sure that there will always be such in the society of the people of God as it is sure that there will be always true believers ; since all the ministry, as well as the people, must be there mixed of good and bad, until the final separation and the last judgment Thus the extraordinary vocation is on all pides excluded from Jesus Christ’s Church and can be only a weak refuge for a desperate cause, • .

And to see what a disturbance of the order established by Jesus Christ, M. Claude here introduces, we need only consider the promises of Jesus Christ, and see in what it has pleased him that the main strength of his Church should reside. She is strong, she is invincible, because Jesus Christ has said that hell shall not prevail against her ; but he did not say that u hell should not prevail against her,” until after he had said, “ Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church ;” adding, presently after, “ I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.”* It is then in the ministry, confessing and declaring Jesus Christy and using the authority of the keys, that Jesus Christ has mainly lodged the strength of his Church. And to whom did he say, I am with you, even to the end of the world, f but to those to whom he said, Teach and baptize ? The whole Church is comprehended in this promise, as we all know. But it was the design of Jesus Christ to evidence the truth of the doctrine so well set forth by St. Cyprian, — the Church forsakes not Jesus Christ, and this is the Church, the people united with their bishop, and the flock joined to their pastor : # where it is clear that we must understand, as he says elsewhere, f this pas³⁴ tor united with his colleagues, and with the whole unity of the episcopacy so often established in his writings. It is then With reason that Jesus Christ would show the succession of his Church by that of the ministry ; and it is manifestly seen, that it was his design to say to those who teach, “ I am always with you.” And what is here more admirable is, that these promises are so evident, that M. Claude (against the prepossessions of his religion) was forced to acknowledge them such as I have now explained them. For we have heard him tell us that it is, in effect, of a confessing Church, of a Church which publishes the faith, of a Church which uses the ministry, that Jesus Christ has pronounced, that hell should not prevail against her. And because Jesus Christ, after he had said, Teach and baptize, adds* “ I am with you,” M; Claude concludes, J as we do, that Jesus Christ, in effect, points out a Church, to whom he gives the assurance that he will be with her, baptize with her, and teach with her without interruption unto the end of the world. It is then the succession and perpetuity of the ministry which is principally comprehended in this promise : it is principally in this that Jesus Christ lodges the strength and everlasting duration of his Church. And yet, in contradiction to all this order, the ministry is represented to us so weak and so forsaken by Jesus Christ as to fall altogether in one moment ; and, on the other hand, private individuals among the faithful are represented so strong, that they alone establish all the ministry extraordinarily raised^ without having regard either to the succession or to the authority of all the preceding administration. Who, then, does not see that all is overturned in the new Reformation ? and that to say with them, that it pleased God to preserve true believers in his

KflGARD CHIBFbY THE MINISTRY.

Church, ta depose by their means all the pastors, and afterwards set up others extraordinarily in their place — whereas he was not pleased to preserve good pastors, to transmit the ministry by the common ways established in his word, and always observed in his Church — is to say that he would set up a Church in a manner contrary to that he revealed, and has always caused to be followed by his Churctu Or rather, it is to say that he would have this Church, formed after a manner so unprecedented amongst Christians, bear in its origin, without ever being able to efface it, the manifest stamp of its falsity.

But let us come to those 44 true believers,” whom M. Claude parades before us. I do not rest satisfied, with disputing them the power he has given them, of deposing all their pastors, and making others : I affirm that these 44 true believers,” never existed. However, they must, by M. Claude’s admission, have been true believers, even in the bosom of the Roman Church ; for since, according to his doctrine, there must be acknowledged , without any interruption, an ecclesiastical ministry and an outward profession,³⁵ of which might have been said, 44 There are the true believers,” they were true believers under that ministry, and in that profession whence they went forth. I ask, did they join in the sacrifice where saints are invoked, where their relics and images are honored, where the Pope is named as the head of the orthodox, where Jesus Christ is adored as present in body and soul, where he is offered, where the Holy Sacrament is received under one kind ? Not to join in this sacrifice, and to refuse receiving the eucharist there, would have been a declared separation ; and they are supposed not to have done that yet : but if they joined therein, continuing all the while 44 true believers,” in wbat an error are now all our Reformed, who deem themselves true believers only since their ceasing to participate therein ?

Thus, these true believers are people in the air ; these w seven thousand,” so much boasted off in the new Reformation and by M. Claude, are not merely invisible, they have no existence : since before the separation there was no one who did not participate in the sacrifice and host, which our Reformed look upon as Baal, before whom one must not bow the knee. %

They say that these 44 true believers,” who, by their actual separating, composed the Reformation, were previously separated in heart from the public idolatry. But, first : this is not Sufficient. Secondly: it is untrue. -

This is not sufficient, according to M. Claude : since he as- lit

FICTION OF A PftOTE STANT CH0B6H mgm perpetual visibility to the Church ; since he has jest wvr defined the Church to be the “ true believers, who make profession of the truth, of piety, of real sanctity wheresoever, therefore, the profession is wanting, there are neither true believers nor a true Church.

But, moreover, the allegation is manifestly at variance with the fact. Else, when Luther appeared and Zuinglius innovated, their disciples must have made this declaration : — “ Thus have we always believed ; always had we our heart averse fromdhe Roman Faith , and from the Pope, and from bishops , and from the real presence , and from confession , and from communion under one bind, and from relics , and from images , and from prayers to saints , and from the merit of works.” Where are those who spoke in this manner ? Can M. Claude name us a single one ? On the contrary, are not all these Reformed seen, at every page of their writings, to speak as newly retired out of the darkness of the papacy ? and does not Luther glory, at their head, that be, was the first who declared the gospel ? All the Reformed applauded him, except Zuinglius, who disputes this honor with him. He in the meantime acknowledges that he was the sin- Cerest monk ; the priest most intent upon his sacrifice ; and, in a word, the “ most zealous of all the papists.” Do not the others use the same language ? Where, then, are these true believers of Mp Claude’s, who not only durst not declare their faith whilst they were in the bosom of the Roman Church, but after they were gone out of it, durst hot say they had always held 4n their heart the same faith ?

But here is a peremptory confutation of the new Reformation. In the definition that M. Claude just now gave us of the true Church, he says, “ It is the true believers, who make profession of the Christian truth under a ministry which furnishes her with necessary aliments, without depriving her of any one.” If before the Reformation there was no such Church, the true Church no longer was, which militates against M. Claude’s supposition ; and if there was such a Church, where “ profession was made of the truth, and which by her ministry furnished necessary aliments to the children of God, without depriving them of any one,” what peed was there of a separation on the part of selfstyled Reformed ?

Was it, forsooth, that the practice of saying mass had been suddenly taken up, and the teaching of all those doctrines which our Reformed have alleged as the cause .of their rupture ? The very idea would be the utmost absurdity. Or perhaps, whilst³⁶ teaching all these doctrines, the Church had not yet thought of excommunicating those that opposed them. Whence then came so many anathemas against Berengarius, against the Waldenses and Albigenses, against John Wycliffe and John Huss, whom our Reformed would reckon amongst their ancestors ? What then! Had not those who before the pretended Reformation made profession of the Christian truth — that is, according to M. Claude, of the “ Reformed” doctrine — yet found out how to make a schism ? and was all the world agreed to bear with them ? But, even were all this true, the case of the Reformation would not be bettered in any respect; because, after all, before it came into existence there must be acknowledged to have existed a ministry where — without teaching either that the sinner is justified by faith alone and the sole imputation of Jesus Christ’s justice, or that God in the New Testament abhors sacrifices celebrated in a sensible matter, or that He alone would be invocated, to the exclusion of that inferior and subordinate prayer which is addressed to saints, or, in fine, without any of these articles which distinguish our Reformed from us, although they rest their salvation on them — •“ the children of God were furnished with all the aliments necessary for spiritual life, without being deprived of any one.” What has the Reformation wrought, if all these things be not necessary aliments ; if even the sacred cup, and consequently the Lord’s Supper, which according to our pretended Reformed, cannot subsist without the cup, be none of these aliments necessary to the Christian’s faith ? What needless vexations have been endured, how preposterous have been all these commotions, and prodigal the waste of blood, if these things be not necessary !

Perhaps these necessary aliments must be reduced to the Apostles’ Creed, or in general to the Scripture. But the Socinian Church retains this creed and this Scripture ; so that the ministry of a Socinian Church would, according to this rule, “ have furnished the children of God with all necessary aliments, without depriving them of one.” What then at last will these necessary aliments be ? and if they are furnished without the subtraction of anyone, merely by proposing the Creed and the Scripture, no matter what else be taught ; — in what heresy have they been wanting ?

The more M. Claude endeavors here to disengage himself, the more he is entangled. For, after he has established as a fundamental truth, that “ God always preserves in the ministry all that is necessary to nourish there the true believers, and bring them to salvation,” he says, it does not thence follow “ that the ministry is exempt from all error,” even in its decisions ; but

Google ^ that, “ either they do not materially affect conscience, or even supposing they affect salvation, men use liberty of conscience to reject the evil and preserve what is pure.” At this rate, all would be reduced to liberty of conscience, and what error soever may be taught in the ministry, provided they force none to follow their decisions, and suffer all contrary doctrine, good or bad, it is enough to make M. Claude say that 44 the ministry furnishes the children of God with all necessary aliments, without depriving them of any of them.” But, according to this pretension, there would be no society whose ministry should better furnish all necessary aliments than a society of Socinians, who make it their boast that they will condemn no one. If it be said amongst our Reformed that a Socinian Church overthrows the foundation by denying the divinity of Jesus Christ; it is also said there, that it was no less overthrown, before their Reformation, by the idolatries, which, as they say, reigned every where. And if they contend, after all, that it is more dangerous to destroy the foundation by subtraction (with the Socinians), than (with the Roman Church) by these pretended additions which they call idolatry,— besides all the subtraction we have just now shown there, according to the principles of the Reformed, and even before their Reformation, it were an unheard of extravagance to believe that it would be more easy for these true believers, who had to make the distinction of doctrines under a ministry full of errors, to cut off what is superfluous, than to supply what is defective, or that the foundation of the faith is more certainly overthrown by diminishing than by adding; the Scripture having so often comprehended under one common malediction as well those that diminish as those that add.*

It would, therefore, be more to M. Claude’s purpose to set aside all this ministry and the perpetual visibility of the Church, and say, that it is, in fine, sufficient — all this visibility being overthrown — that God has preserved the Holy Scripture, where the faithful, whether concealed or undisguised, whether dispersed or united, whether always subsisting or sometimes wholly extinct, shall clearly find, according to his principles, without any need of the ministry, “ all necessary aliments.” For, indeed, what use is a ministry to them in. which error has the ascendancy ? and would not the Scripture alone be more commodious and more instructive to them ? This is what Protestants should say, to keep clear of the intricacies in which we involve them. But M. Claude neither durst nor ever will dare to do so, because he would have to face difficulties yet more insupporta-

• Beat. iv. 2, xii. 32; Rev. xxii. 18, &c.

ble and more manifest. The truth, in a word, is this : he feels that by pushing the authority and sufficiency, as I may say, of the Scripture, independently of all the ecclesiastical ministry, they must at last destroy the Scripture itself.

For he has found in Scripture, that the Scripture was not intended to be, like the philosophy of Plato, the rule of an ideal, republic, but of a people always existing, which this Scripture palls u the Church.” He has found that this people was to be always visible on earth, as being u not only to believe with the heart, but also to confess with the mouth,”³⁷ and, to use his own terms, u make profession of the Christian truth.” He has found that the Scripture was intrusted in the hands of such a people, to be the unchangeable rule thereof; that there should always be interpreters established by God, the author of this Scripture as well as the founder of this people ; and that so the ministry destined by God to this interpretation was as everlasting as the Church itself. .

If he expresses this solemn assurance, “ God always preserves in the public ministry all that is necessary for the guidance of true believers to salvation,” he cannot found this assurance on any human industry. Should God leave the ecclesiastical ministry to itself, it must fall. If then it be warrantably asserted that u God will always keep there all that is necessary for salvation,” God himself must have so promised, and the everlasting duration of the ministry cannot be founded but on this promise. M. Claude also finds it in those words, u Thou art Peter,” &e. It is from this text he concludes, as we do, that Jesus Christ, in speaking u to a Church that confesses,” and confesses, indubitably, by her principal ministers (since it is by St Peter in the name of the apostles), “ to a Church connected with an external ministry and using the power of the keys,” has promised her that u hell should not prevail against her,” — against her, consequently, when supported by this ministry : and therefore he affirms “ that God preserves always in the public ministry all that is necessary to the salvation of his children.”

Another promise of Jesus Christ, directed to those that baptize and those that teach, and concluded by these powerful words, u Lo, I am with you always, even unto the consummation of the world,”f makes M. Claude, as well as us, say, “ that Jesus Christ promises the Church to be with her, to baptize with her, and to teach with her , without interruption , even to the end of the world” Thus, he admits that our Lord’s promise regards the Church as connected with the ecclesiastical ministry ;

m. Claude’s admissions, and and this brings him also to conclude “ that Jesus- Christ never suffers corruption in the ministry in that degree as not to leave sufficient aids to the maintenance of the true faith of his elect, even to the end of the world.”

In fine, a third passage, to wit, that of St. Paul to the Ephesians,³⁸ makes him conclude, with us, u that the ministry will last even to the end of the world, and continue in a degree and in a state sufficient to edify the body of Christ, and bring all the elect to the perfection of which St. Paul speaks.” This, thefl, must be the work of God : without His ever-abiding assistance, it were vain to expect either such a stability or such an integrity in the ministry.

After such a beginning, the work of faith should have been completed, glory given to God even to the end. M. Claude was not far from the kingdom of God when he said that God would sufficiently overrule human infirmity, to preserve always, despite of the efforts of hell, a Church which should confess the truth, and an exterior ministry which should furnish true believers with the aliments necessary to salvation. He ought, then, to carry out the principle, and believe that the same hand which would hinder hell from prevailing so far against the ministry as to deprive it of these necessary aliments, would hinder it also from prevailing so far as to make any error to have dominion in it: and this he should do the more readily, because what he already believes comprehends what remains to believe. For if he believed, on the faith of the divine promise, that there should be always a Church with which Jesus Christ would not cease to teach — that is, obviously, that he would not cease to teach with the teachers of this Church — he ought, on the same grounds, to believe that he would there teach all truth ; Jesus Christ not having come, nor having sent his Holy Spirit to his apostles to teach them some truths, but to teach them all truth, as himself declares in his gospel.f

Nor would it avail to contend that M. Claude promises in the ministry only sufficient aliments ; a term which would comprise no more than the fundamentals of faith, just as our Reformed find them amongst the Lutherans. For Jesus Christ’s doctrine containing nothing but what is profitable, agreeably to this text, u I am the Lord, who teacheth thee profitable things, ”t if we find not the doctrine of Jesus Christ whole and entire in the ministry, we shall never find “ that degree” required by M. Claude, nor that u state sufficient to bring all the elect to the perfection of which St. Paul speaks.” *'

It would, then, be something to believe that by the promise God would always keep all essential truths, without interruption, in the ministry ; for it would be to acknowledge in the Church, with which Jesus Christ teaches, a beginning of infallible authority, by acknowledging this authority, at least, in respect of the first truths of Christianity ; but to complete the work, and not to believe by halves, we must also believe that Jesus Christ, in teaching, teaches all, and confess in his Church an absolute infallibility.

Accordingly, we should not say, with the ministers and their incredulous flock : — “ This ecclesiastical ministry is composed of men, liable to err ; one may doubt after them.” For, this would be to yield to temptation and no longer to believe the promise. We should say, It consists of men with whom Jesus Christ promises to be and teach always : then, notwithstanding human Weakness and all the endeavors of hell, “ against hope, we believe in hope,”³⁹ that we shall ever find in their common preaching not some truths, or only the principal truths, but the entire j fulness of Christian truths. Let men say what they will, it is not believing blindly, to believe thus ; or it is believing blindly like Abraham, on the word of God himself, and the faith of his promises.

How insupportable, then, is the dcTctrine of M. Claude, who, after acknowledging so many splendid promises of Jesus Christ in favor of this sacred ministry, suddenly plunging again, I know not how, into the darkness of his sect, whence he was beginning to emerge, represents the ministry so abandoned by Jesus Christ, that there is no remedy for its errors, but the deposing at once of all those who occupy the pastoral chair! What agreement have those promises, so well acknowledged, with so universal a corruption ?

M. Claude, then, need only hearken a little to himself to come over to us, after having acknowledged, in virtue of the divine promises, the everlasting duration of the ecclesiastical ministry in this “ sufficient state,” of which he speaks. To fiud all truth there, he need only consider that this imperfect assistance, and, so to speak, this half succour of Jesus Christ to his Church, is neither beseeming His wisdom nor His power ; being moreover assured, that there is no true sufficiency in the ministry but by the full manifestation of the truth revealed by God, agreeably to this saying of the apostle, u By manifestation of the truth we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God;” whence he concludes, presently after, that “ if our gos- pci” — that is, most certainly, our preaching— u be hid, it is hid to them that perish:” to the end he may make us understand, that the preaching, always clear and always sincere in the Catholic Church, has no obscurity but in rebels, of whom the devil, “ the god of this world,” and the spirit of pride, “ hath blinded the minds,” as the same apostle proceeds, 44 lest the light of the glorious gospel should shine unto them.”⁴⁰

It is now easy to see that all M. Claude’s subtilties serve only to confound him. What does he gain by endeavoring, after acknowledging the Church’s perpetual visibility, to elude the consequences of this doctrine, by reducing the Church to the true believers ? He shall have free allowance to do so : wherever he finds 44 Church,” let him understand 44 the true believers ;” let him, if he please, even expound these words, — 44 teU it unto the Church ,” tell it to the true beUevers y single them out amongst the troop, and judge before the Lord ; or because, a* himself acknowledges, here is too apparently meant 44 the Church represented by her pastors,” let him say that these pastors represent the true believers who are not known, and act in their name. ' What will these explanations, after all, avail him ? since, after all, according to his own doctrine, this true Church will always be found visible, and these true believers always under a public ministry, from which Jesus Christ, far from allowing his Church to separate, immediately subjoins to there words, 44 tell it unto the Church, but if he neglect to hear the Church, let him be unto thee as a heathen man,” a declaration of the efficiency of the ministry, for the purpose of showing how awful is the judgment of the Church, < — 44 whatsoever you bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven,” and the rest, which every one knows. Thus I deduce in any case precisely the same inference, that the Church, which must be shown without interrupt ti on, whether it be only the true believers, or, if they will, only the elect ; or whether it be, in a certain sense, the wicked mixed with them, and those that a believe for awhile,” according to the expression of *the gospel, f is a Church always gathered under a visible ministry, and a body, always subsisting, of people with their pastors, where the truth is preached, “ not in secret, but on the housetops.”! Let them turn as much as they wiH, it is a Church of this nature and this constitution we must at all times show, by M; Claude’s admission. To make her disappear for one sole moment, is utterly to annihilate her and to overthrow the promises of the gospel, in what they have moat striking and splendid ; to make her appear always, is invincibly to establish the Roman Church.

traurs view of tub chubch.

Thus, what M. Claude so elaborately propounds, besides being false, leaves the difficulty unabated⁴¹ and his cause in as bad a condition as it was before his defence. But that it may not be said that we have confined ourselves to the business of refuting him, let us tell him the truth in a few words. The main body of the Church are the true believers, and those principally, who, 44 persevering to the end,” abide eternally in Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ in them — that is, the elect. The wicked, who environ them, are, after their manner, comprehended under the name of Church, as the nails, as the hair, as an eye put out, and a withered arm, which perhaps receives no more nourishment, is comprehended under the name of body. All is for those true believers. The ministry under which they live is theirs in the same sense that St. Paul said,⁴² 44 All things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollo, or Cephas.” Not that the powerof their pastors comes from them, or that they alone can set them up and depose them ; God forbid ] This pastoral and apostolic power comes from Him who said, 44 As my Father hath sent me, so also 1 send yott.f Hence St. Paul, in the chapter just cited, asks, 44 Who then is Apollo, and who is Paul? The ministers of Him whom you have believed, and to every one as God hath given Him :”t to you to be believers, and to us to be pastors. u Wherefore,” he adds further, 44 we are God’s laborers, ”§ or, to say better, co-operators. These ministers and these workers established by God are also the ministers of the faithful, and in this sense are theirs , because they are 44 their servants, in Jesus Christ, ”B established in the chair, not for themselves, for as to them it would suffice to be simple believers, but to edify the saints. He that desires to be in the communion of saints need not anxiously io\l to distinguish them from others : for though they are known and perfectly discerned but by God alone, we are sure to find them under the public ministry, and in the external profession of the Catholic Church. We need then only stay there to be assured to find the saints ; because this profession, and the ever-fruitful word of preachers, which never fails to engender some, keeps them always inseparably united to the holy society where they received it. Wherefore, when Jesus Christ promises to teach always with his Church, be comprehends all in this word ; and rendering, by virtue of this promise, the Church infallible exteriorly in the manifestation of the truth, renders her interiorly fruitful. If the preachers of the truth be, by their corrupt living, unworthy of their ministry, God makes use of. them, notwithstanding, to sanctify his faithful ; for he is able to quicken even by the dead, and a rotten arm can become active in his hands, Moreover, these true believers, known to God alone, animate all the ecclesiastical ministry ; a small number of these concealed saints often suffices to give effect to the prayers of a whole Church ; the conversion of signers will oftentimes be as much the effect of their secret groans as the fruit of the most signal preaching. And thus, St. Augustin attributes the wholesome effects of the miniatry to these good souls, for whom and by whom the Holy Ghost is fully in the Church. But that the ecclesiastical power therefore depends on them, is what neither St. Augustin nar any of the holy Fathers ever taught ; and M. Claude, who cites them, understands them not. Of this there will be ample evidence when he shall publish his treatise ; it is sufficient for us, in the meantime, to have shown that he is of those (and God gtftnt he be not so for ever !) of whom St. Paul speaks, that condemn themselves.⁴³

This, in fact, is, according to the apostle, the true character of all heresies, and never did any society more visibly bear this character set down by St. Paul, than the so-styled Reformed Church.

She condemns herself, when, not daring to affirm that she is infallible, she sees herself, nevertheless, constrained to act as if she were, and to bear witness to the Catholic Church by imitating her.

She condemns herself, when she raises all the particular persons she teaches above her own judgment; and forcing them, how ignorant soever they find themselves, to examine after her without rendering them capable, she renders them indocile and presumptuous.

She condemns herself, since, vaunting of the Scriptures, she finds not in herself authority enough to make them be received by her followers on her word ; but leaves her own children, to whom she presents them to be read, in the uncertainties of a human faith.

She condemns herself, when, forced to own that she was not established but by breaking with all the Christian Churches which were in the world, she gives herself the proper character of all false Churches.

In fine, she condemns herself, when, forced to own the perpetual visibility of the Church- in the indefectibility of the ministry, she cannot maintain herself without acknowledging besides

Google a universal corruption in the ministry, nor without authorizing private persons against the whole succession of the Apostolic order.

Now, if she condemns herself in so many ways, how happy would it be for her to condemn herself once for all by returning into the bosom of the Catholic Church, w r hich never ceases to recal her to her unity.

Let not Protestants any longer reproach us with the abuses which make us sigh. The evils of the Church are ill-remedied by adding that of schism. Are they so happy, or, to say better, so haughty and blind, as to find nothing to deplore amongst themselves ? And will they authorize so many sects, gone forth out of their bosom, who, complaining of their disorders in the same spirit of proud discontent with which they heretofore so much exaggerated owrs, daily separate from them as they did 1 from us ? Why do they not rather hear charity itself, unity itself, and the Catholic Church, which warns them by the mouth of St. Cyprian : “ Persuade not yourselves, dear brethen and children, that you can ever defend the gospel of Jesus Christ by separating from his flock, from his unity, and from his peace. Good soldiers, that complain of the disorders they see in the army, ought to stay in the camp to remedy them by common advice under the authority of the captain in the field,” (and not go thence to expose the army, thus disunited, to the invasions of the enemy). “ Since then ecclesiastical unity ought not to be broken, and since, moreover, we cannot leave the Church to go to you, return, return rather to the Church your mother and to our fraternity, to which we exhort you with all the earnestness of a true brotherly love.”⁴⁴ Amen. Amen.

Note A. referred to at page 88.

A short historical illustration of the subject glanced at in the text may not be unwelcome to the reader.

From the year 351. the emperor Constantius had actively abetted the heresy condemned at the council of Nice, in Bithynia, twenty-six years before. After numberless aggressions on the peace of the Church and invasions of spiritual authority, he summoned, in the year 359, a council of bishops of the West to meet at Ariminum ^Rimini), a city on the coast of the Adriatic, at the same time convening those of the East to hold a simultaneous council at Seleucia, the metropolis of Isauria.

Both synods were numerously attended. One hundred and sixty sat at Seleucia, whilst a considerably greater number, whose amount is variously stated, were assembled at Rimini.

The emperor had determined to bend both councils to his purpose. He appointed the treasurer Leonas to act as his commissary at the Eastern council, the prefect Taurus to discharge a similar office at Rimini : giving a special injunction to the latter, not to allow the bishops to separate till they had come to an agreement on doctrine, and insuring his subserviency by a promise of the consulship.

The Western council opened in July. Its beginnings were auspicious. The Nicene Creed was read and approved : the formularies which the inconstant and conflicting innovators had set forth were rejected ; and “ the blasphemies of Arius, together with all heresies that had hitherto ariseu against Catholic and Apostolic doctrine,” were solemnly and explicitly anathematized. The overwhelming majority of the members were orthodox, although the Arian party, headed by the Illyrian bishops Valens and Ursacius, was far from inconsiderable. These with two others, Caius and Germinianus, the council formally condemned and cut off from ecclesiastical communion. The remainder of their adherents seem to have acquiesced in the doctrinal decisions which they pertinaciously resisted.

Ten bishops were now despatched to the emperor, the bearers of a circumstantial account of the proceedings, in a letter which, in tone and spirit, was every way worthy of an episcopal assembly. It expresses the immovable adherence of the council to the ancient scriptural faith, and the resolution to abide, without alteration, diminution, or addition, by the decrees of the Nicene council. Ursacius and Valens headed a counter deputation from the Arian party. These were received with marked attention ; whilst the envoys of the council were treated with neglect, baffled by delays and pretences of urgent business, and bidden by the emperor to await his return from a military expedition on which he was going to set out. A letter of frivolous ex- cuses was sent to Rimini. To this the fathers replied with a respectful firmness, praying to be discharged from attendance, alleging the rigor of the approaching season, and the detriment to which their protracted absence would subject their flocks.

However, Constantius was true to his design of wearing out opposition by delay. After a time, the ten Catholic deputies and four of their brethren, probably the bearers of the second letter from the council, were constrained to appear at a town called Nice (or Ustodizo), in Thrace ; and there by promises, menaces, and false representations of what had passed meanwhile at Seleucia, were prevailed upon to annul the decisions in which they had participated at Rimini, and to approve what they had there condemned.

This was an important step. Constantius was now to bring the council to follow the example of its deputies. Accordingly, he addressed a letter to it, calling for the suppression of the terms “substance” and u consubstantial,” reproachfully censuring the course taken with the Arian dissentients, and threatening to detain all the bishops till they complied. In a second letter, he charged Taurus to give effect to this menace, and further empowered him to banish any number of the refractory not exceeding fifteen.

These threats, and various artifices used in conjunction with them, had speedily the desired influence over the majority. At first, indeed, they had repelled the too-yielding deputies, as having betrayed their trust, and disobeyed their commission ; but firmness relaxed, and before loug only eighteen or twenty were found who declared themselves inflexible. These were now addressed by Taurus with remonstrances and tearful entreaties. For several days their resolution was unshaken. It may be that some appearance of vacillation in the tone of the venerable Phoebadius gave encouragement to another method which proved successful in the issue.

It was represented to him and his associates, that they were sacrificing the peace and unity of the Church for the sake of a word. Valens solemnly disclaimed Arianism and anathematized its blasphemies. He averred that the profession of faith to which they demurred had been drawn up by the bishops in the East : that, were it considered to be deficient in clearness or precision, he was ready to admit any addition they might make to it. Opposition was overcome : and after a condemnation of Arius, and a declaration of the Son’s likeness to the Father, to which declaration Valens appended the insidious proposition, u that the Son was not a creature as other creatures,” the disgraceful compact was closed, and the council dismissed.⁴⁵

The Arian faction sounded a triumph for their victory ; the Catholics were grieved and exasperated by the defection of the bishops from their duty. “ The world groaned and was amazed at its being Arian,” to use St. Jerome’sf striking expression, which, however, is not to be construed into an acknowledgment that it was so in fact : for men neither mourn over nor feel amazement at their adhesion to tenets they have embraced as true : — it is to be regarded as a complaint of the disgrace felt at the imputation of a change of doctrine, a bitter resenting of the advantage cowardly yielded to the cause of error.

St. Jerome J shall describe the after-conduct of the bishops. “ En- snared as they had been by craft, they protested by the body of the Lord, and by all that is holy in the Church, that they had no suspicion of evil in their faith. We thought, said they , that the mind agreed with the words, and never apprehended that in the Church of God, where * simplicity and a pure confession reside, the heart would harbor one thing, the lips utter another. We were deceived by thinking well of evil men !” The Church at large admitted this excuse, severe as was the censure not unfrequently passed on their behavior by ecclesiastical writers.⁴⁶ At a council held at Alexandria two years later, it was decreed, that exclusively of the prime movers and deliberate abettors of heresy, all who, whether at Rimini or elsewhere, had, whether through fraud or violence, sided with the Arians should be admitted, upon condition of their condemning Arianism and professing the faith of the council of Nice. The same healing measure was adopted in the West ; and it furnished a proof, as St. Jerome remarks, that the coerced and beguiled bishops were not regarded as heretics.

The foregoing narrative will substantiate what Bossuet asserted at the Conference. It has been seen what constraint was put upon the members of the cpuncil, and how they protested against the surprise that had been put upon them by Valens and his confederates. After the anathemas which had been uttered against Arianism, and the apparently candid offers to yield every satisfaction to the scruples of Phoebadius, it will be easy to account for the insidious proposition being suffered to pass — “ that the Son was not a creature as other creatures.”! The more so because the Son was declared to be “ God of God, the only begotten, born of the Father before all ages.” This was Catholic faith. If the formulary, suppressing the word “ consubstantial,” affirmed the Son to be “ like to his Father according to the Scriptures,” it was not on that account unsound $ although an occasion was unwarily furnished by the appended clause to an arbitrary and heterodox interpretation. The proposition, in short, is not untrue, but captious and equivocal.

However deplorable the scandal caused by the council of Rimini, and however weighty the censure passed upon the men who failed in the hour of trial, it should be remembered that the council was not oecumenical, even as regards the West; since the Bishop of Rome, the Patriarch of the West (to say nothing of his higher prerogative), was not even invited to it.

Note B. referred to at page 67.

It would be impossible to express the denial of Church authority in more emphatic terms than those of Luther.

“ I say then ; neither pope, nor bishop, nor any man, has a right to impose a single syllable upon any Christian man, save it be by his own consent : whatever is done otherwise, is done in a tyrannical spirit.” — On the Babyl. Capt. p. 288.

£ Hear St. Hilary, one of the firmest defenders of the consubstantiality : Similcm quoque Deo religiose pracdicabo ; similcm vcro ita ut similitudini hoc dictum semper antcferam, Ego ct Pater unum sumus.

However, the Reformers and their complices soon became alive to the necessity of doctrinal formularies and disciplinary enactments : and history will show that as much deference was insisted on in their behalf as the ancient Church claimed for her definitions and canons. As an instance, let us take the Protestant Church of England.

In the convocation holden in London in the year 1562, Articles of Religion, thirty-nine in number, were ageed upon — “ for the avoiding of diversity of opinion, and establishing of consent touching true religion.”⁴⁷ They were “ approved and allowed to be holden and executed within the realm, by the assent and consent” of Queen Elizabeth ; and by a statute passed nine years later, f and confirmed in the reign of Queen Anne,J a declaration of assent and subscription to all of them in presence of a bishop were required from priests or ministers. The declared purpose of this parliamentary enactment was, “ that the Churches of the Queen’s Majesty’s dominions might be served with pastors of sound religion.” And the articles were described as “only concerning the confession of a true Christian faith, and the doctrine of the sacraments.”

In the reign of her successor, appeared that declaration which is still to be found in the Book of Common Prayer : a document noticeable on several accounts. James the First, § after asserting himself to be Supreme Governor of the Church in his dominions, proceeds to “ ratify and confirm ” the Articles of Religion, and “ requires the uniform profession thereof from all his subjects,” and “ prohibits the least difference from the said Articles.”

About sixty years later came the Act of Uniformity. The operation of that Act is well known ; hundreds were excluded from the ministry of the Church for non-compliance with its provisions. Every beneficed person, preacher, &c., is required, under penalty of forfeiture, publicly to declare “his unfeigned assent and consent to all and every thing contained in and by the Book of Common Prayer,” whereof the thirty-nine Articles of Religion form a part.

Thus far as regards the clergy, upon whom principally, although by

§ At the conference at Hampton Court (January, 1601), James showed plainly what were his notions of ecclesiastical supremacy ; and neither the language nor the conduct of the prelates was of a nature to di-abuse him. Whitgift, the primate, declared that “his majesty spoke bv the special assistance of God’s Spirit;” Bancroft, bishop of London, protested that his heart melted with joy,” to think that they possessed a king, “ such as since Christ’s time the like had not been seen.” But not merely the fulsome compliments, but the acts of the bishops will show that they admitted his claim to be the supreme arbiter of controversy. A question had been raised on the aliowableness of lay baptism in certain cases. “ The prelates argued that to prohibit lay baptism was to condemn what had been sanctioned by the apostles themselves ; that the importance of the sacrament was the foundation of the custom; and that, although censured by the Church as a general practice, yet in cases of necessity it had always and very properly been admitted. To this, however, the king objected. He denied that the customs of an infant Church were an authority for the mature establishment, and maintained that the words of the ritual were so general as to place no limitation to the practice. Nor could he entirely agree with the bishops on the subject of baptism itself. True it was, he admitted its necessity, provided a lawful minister could be obtained ; but he did not admit that a child dying without the sacrament would be lost ; and he thought, therefore, that no private person should under any circumstances be permitted to administer it. Against these doctrines the bishops argued, but in vain, for three hours. At length, finding it useless to resist, they surrendered the point ; and a resolution was passed that all baptisms by lay hands should be prohibited.” — Tierney, new ed. of Dodd’s Church History, iv. 20.

no means exclusively, the obligation of subscription is imposed. Let us now see how the Church of England requires the laity to be minded in respect of these Articles, and in respect of herself. In the year 1603, sundry canons were drawn up. By the third of these, excommunication was denounced upon all such as should deny the Church of England to be a true and apostolic Church ; by the seventh, upon those who should say, “ that its government under his Majesty by archbishops, bishops, deans, archdeacons, &c., was anti-Christian or repugnant to the word of God.” But without going through the long list of censures pronounced against dissidents and impugners, it will be sufficient to cite in proof of the assertion made above, the words of the fifth canon.⁴⁸

“Whosoever shall hereafter affirm that any of the nine-and-thirty Articles are in any part superstitious or erroneous , or such as he may not with a good conscience subscribe unto ; let him be excommunicated ipso facto, and not restored but only by the archbishop, after his repentance and public revocation of such his wicked errors .”

The reader is desired to consider that the question here is not whether professing members of the establishment deem themselves bound by these enactments, or whether they, reverting to the original principle of the Reformation, admit such of the Articles as in their judgment seem agreeable to Scripture, and dissent from or neglect such as seem to be otherwise. Nor is it the question whether they hold to be guilty of “ wicked error,” and rank with the heathen man and the publican, all such as affirm any one or more of the multitudinous propositions contained in the formulary under consideration to be erroneous. The question, in short, turns not on the opinions of persons, but on the constituent principle , so to speak, of a Church. It is indeed inconceivable how a Church could, without claiming infallibility, presume to cut off summarily from Christian communion any one who should impute error to any part of its system of doctrine. This, as we have seen, the Church of England has solemnly done.

On the other hand, it appears to be a glaring inconsistency in those who recognize the competency of the Church of England so to do, to contest in limine as unwarrantable the censures which the council of Trent, after the example of preceding ones, pronounced against such as were refractory to its decisions. Nothing, however, is more common.

Note C. referred to at page 70.

James Harmesen (more commonly known by the name of Arminius), was a scholar of Theodore Beza, and upon his return to his native land became successively pastor of Amsterdam, and, after some opposition, professor of divinity at Leyden. The Calvinistic body had been long distracted by internal controversies ; and the decided part which he took against the rigid Predestinarian doctrine excited much hostility, especially from Gomer, his colleague in the University. Thus, a new and more violent controversy was enkindled, which the secular power endeavored in vain to extinguish.

Arminius died in 1609 ;f but his doctrines survived him, and found f In his last will he declared his object to have been “ the spread of Christian equally skilful and undaunted champions in Uytenbogart and Episcopius. In the following year, to shield themselves from the hostility of their adversaries, the Arminians addressed a “ Remonstrance” to the States, consisting of five articles. This was answered on the other side by a contra-remonstrance ; and hence the two parties respectively received the name of Remonstrants and Contra-Remonstrants.

Repeated conferences were held, but with no satisfactory result ; at length the Gomarists, patronized by the Stadtholder Maurice, Prince of Orange, who for political purposes had resolved the downfall of those who ruled the republic and of the Arminians who espoused their cause, succeeded in procuring a synod to be convened.

The Gomarist divines assembled at Dort, in November, 1618. King James, who had previously recommended the calling of the synod, sent four divines to represent the Church of England, and another to explain the doctrine of the Church of Scotland, providing them with detailed instructions for their guidance. Deputies appeared also from the churches of Hessia, Bremen, Switzerland, and the Palatinate, as well as from the United Provinces ; in short, from the whole Protestant body not united with the Lutherans, with the single exception of the French, who were withheld by political motives from taking any active part in the meeting. Several days were spent in adjusting preliminaries, and at length on the 13th of December, at the thirty-first sitting, the question of doctrine began to be taken into consideration.

In the fourteenth book of his history of the Variations, Bossuet has entered fully into the discussion of the points in contest. This discussion, however, is foreign to the purpose of this note, which has for its object only historical statement. To continue the narrative in the words of the Protestant historian Mosheim — *

" The Arminian deputies proposed to begin the defence of their cause by refuting the opinions of the Calvinists, their adversaries. This proposal was rejected by the synod, which looked upon the Arminians as a set of men that lay under the charge of heresy ; and, therefore, they thought it incumbent upon them first, to declare and prove their own opinions before they could be allowed to combat the sentiments of others. When all the methods employed to persuade them to submit to the manner proposed by the synod proved ineffectual, they were excluded from that assembly, and returned home, complaining bitterly of the rigor and partiality with which they had been treated. Their cause was nevertheless tried in their absence, and in consequence of a strict examination of their writings, they were pronounced guilty of pestilential errors, and condemned as corrupters of true religion. This sentence was followed by its natural effects, which were the excommunication of the Arminians, the suppression of their religious assemblies, and the deprivation of their ministers.

“ In consequence of the decision of the synod, they were deprived of all their posts and employments, whether ecclesiastical or civil, — their ministers were silenced and their meetings suppressed. They refused obedience to the order by which their pastors were prohibited from performing in public their ministerial functions ; and thus drew upon them- truth, the promotion of true worship, holy living, and concord, among all of the Christian name, excluding popery, wherewith no union of belief, no bond of affection or Christian 'peace, could be maintained * Cent. xvii. sec. ii. cliap. 3.

selves the resentment of their superiors, who punished them hy fines, imprisonment, exile, and other marks of ignominy. To avoid these vexations, many of them retired to Antwerp, others fled to France; while a considerable number, accepting the invitation sent to them by Frederick, Duke of Holstein, formed a colony, which settled in the dominions of that prince, and built for themselves a handsome town called Fredrickstadt.”

Note D. referred to at page 105.

Soon after the commencement of the “Reformation,” originated by Luther in 1517, wishes were expressed from various quarters, and urgent' solicitations addressed to the Roman See for the assembling of a general council. The political confusion which prevailed* and numerous other hindrances, which the prejudice of some writers has caused them altogether to overlook, retarded the salutary measure, and led to those frequent interruptions of the council which will be noticed in this short sketch of its history.

It was convened by Paul III. in May, 1542, but did not commence its sitting till the 13th of December, 1545. In the first seven sessions, points relating to the Holy Scriptures, original sin, free will, justification, the sacraments in general, and those of baptism and confirmation in particular, were explained and defined. The sessions took place at intervals more or less considerable : matters being meanwhile preparatively discussed in particular congregations. Questions of faith and objects of discipline were jointly considered ; and in the several sessions the decrees, for the reformation of morals and ecclesiastical discipline follow the chapters and canons of doctrine. This was its uniform practice throughout.

On account of an epidemical disorder at Trent, the council was removed to Bologna. Two sessions were held in that city ; they were, however, but meetings for adjournment, and finally the council was suspended in September, 1549.

Paul III. died in the following November. His successor, Julius III. re-assembled the synod in 1551. After two preparatory sessions, the council in its thirteenth and fourteenth explained the sacraments of the holy eucharist, penance and extreme unction. In the following, it invited the Protestants to attend, and in the sixteenth it was suspended on account of the wars iu Germany.

The ephemeral pontificate of Marcellus II., the successor of Julius, was followed by that of Paul IV. (1555—1559). The wars and political jealousies caused a protraction of the suspension, and it was reserved for his successor Pius IV., at the instigation of his holy nephew St. Charles Borromseo, to re-assemble the council, and under the same auspicious guidance to bring its labors to a successful termination. The council was re-opened in January, 1562.

After four sessions, of which it is unnecessary to speak, the fathers treated in the twenty-first the question of communion in one kind, the sacrifice of the mass in the twenty-second; and in the twenty-third and twenty-fourth the sacraments of holy orders and matrimony. In the twenty-fifth, holden on the 3d and 4th of December, 1563, the doctrine of purgatory, images, invocation of saints, and indulgences was propounded, and the council concluded with the usual acclamations and subscriptions. The decrees of the former sessions under various pontificates were confirmed and subscribed to by two hundred and fifty - five fathers. The ambassadors of kings also subscribed, as witnesses, in a different schedule. Among the subscribing bishops appear the names of three Irish and one English prelate.

The council was confirmed solemnly by the pope in January of the following year. It3 doctrinal decisions were received by the whole Catholic world with the readiest and fullest acquiescence; although its disciplinary enactments have not been in every particular allowed the force of law even in all Catholic countries. The reason of this difference is obvious. There was nothing novel in the doctrine; in the regulations of discipline, wise and wholesome as they are, there was often a strong contrast with long-established usage and locally prevailing

S rudence. It is most absurd to confound things so distinct; and fy unfair, in estimating the character of the council, to overlook the services which it rendered to morals, and the reformation (in the true sense of the word) which it accomplished in every department of ecclesiastical polity.

We should here glance at the constellation of learning and piety which shone in this celebrated assembly ; but it is time to bring this note to a close. And it cannot be more appropriately concluded than in the words of an eminent Protestant writer of the present day. They bear upon the absurd charge of innovation in doctrine by the council of Trent.

“ A strange notion,” says Mr. Hallam, in his History of Literature, “has been started of late years in England , that the council of Trent made important innovations in the previously established doctrines of the western Church; an hypothesis so paradoxical in respect to public opinion, and it may be added, so prodigiously at variance with the known facts of ecclesiastical history, that we cannot but admire the facility with which it has been taken up. It will appear by reading the accounts of the sessions of the council, either in Father Paul cr in any more favorable historian, that even in certain points, such as justification, which had not been clearly laid down before, the Tridentine decrees were most conformable with the sense of the majority of those doctors who had obtained the highest reputation, and that upon what are usually styled the distinctive characteristics of the Church of Rome — namely, transubstantiation, purgatory, and invocation of the saints and the Virgin^ they assert nothing but what has been so engrafted into the faith of this part of Europe, as to have been rejected by no one without suspicion or imputation of heresy. . . . No general council ever contained so many persons of eminent learning and ability as that of Trent; nor is there ground for believing that any other ever investigated the questions before it with so much patience, acuteness, temper, and desire of truth. The early councils, unless they be greatly belied, would not bear comparison in these characteristics. Impartiality and freedom from prejudice, no Protestant will attribute to the Fathers of Trent ; but where will he produce these qualities in an ecclesiastical synod ? But it may be said that they had only one leading prejudice, that of determining theological faith according to the tradition of the Catholic Church, as handed down to their own age. The one point of authority conceded, I am not aware that they can be proved to have decided wrong, or at least against all reasonable evidence. Let those who have imbibed a different opinion ask themselves whether they have read Sarpi through with any attention, especially as to those sessions of the Tridentine council which preceded its suspension in 1547.”

Footnotes

1. Discipl. c. v. art. 81. ↩

2. Discipl. c. ix. art. 3. f Ibid. ↩

3. Rom. x. 10. f See Note B. ↩

4. Matt. xvi. 18. ↩

5. [Ovnm c, efyuti, r»c yrapafisws l<r%vp9i bwyi ir^xatut rtve fttfytc * au vote o jxttoic AurZv Scyfxoi<m uv'rixvyw. De Spir. Sancto, ch. 29, Urn. iii. 61, ed. Ben,] ↩

6. Calvin, iv. Inst. cap. 9. f Sec. xix. ↩

7. Acts xv. 18. t Ibid. xvi. 4. J [M. d* la Bastide.] ↩

8. Supra, page 39. t Page 41 . $ Deut. xiii. ↩

9. John xi. 42. f John xv. 22, et seq. X Ibid. xi. 53 ; xii. 10. ↩

10. John viii. 13 — 16. f Ibid. v. 36 ; xv. 22, 24. ↩

11. John iii. 8. ↩

12. French Calvinists. — In the baptism service of the Protestant Church of England, the distinct profession of the creed is made by the sponsors. ↩

13. Page 46. ↩

14. [Mult* Rentes barbaroium, eorum qui in Christum credunt, sine charta et atramento scnptam habentes per Spiritum in cordibus suis salutem, et veterem Traditionem diligenter cuetoaientes. Contra Hseres. iii. 4. p. 17S. Ed. Ben.] ↩

15. Deitf. xx*ii. 7. f Epist. 223 ; T. iii. S88. | 2 Tim. i. 5. ↩

16. See page 60. ↩

17. Fides tua te salvum fecit, non exercitatio Scripturarum. ↩

18. Ep. 223, ubi supra . ↩

19. Page 48. ↩

20. Page 53. t See pages 53 — 62. ↩

21. Page 14 ft seq. f Page 26— 80. ↩

22. Page 14 et teq. ↩

23. Page 17. t Page 18. t lb- § Page 19. H Page 21. IT Page 22. ** lb. ↩

24. Page 15. f Synod of Privas, 1612. J Page 15. ↩

25. Supra, page 63. ↩

26. Eph. v. 27, ↩

27. Matt. xvi. 18, t Supra , page 20. % Matt xxvi^i. 19, 20. ↩

28. Pa. cix. 3: t Eph. iii. 10. % Supra , page 97. ↩

29. Supra, page 101. t Pag® 0®. ↩

30. Supra, page 98. t See note D. ↩

31. John xx. 21. t Titus i. 5, &c. ↩

32. Luke xi. 34 — 36. ↩

33. Matt. xvi. 18. f Matt, xxviii. 20. ↩

34. [ Loquitur illic (John vi. 68) Petrus super quem adificat^ fuerat Ecclesia ; Ecclesiae nomine docens et ostendens, quia etsi contumax ac superha obaudire volentium multitudo discedat, Ecclesia tamen a Christo non recedit,’ et ilK sunt Ecclesia plebs sacerdoti adunata, et pastori suo grex adhaerens. Unde scire debes Episcopum in Ecclesia esse, et Ecclesiam in Episcopo ; et si qui cum Episcopo non sint, in Ecclesia non esse ; et frustra sibi blandiri eos, qui pacem cum sacerdotibus Dei non habentes obrepunt, et latenter apud quosdam communicare se credunt ; quando Ecclesia, qua Catholica una est, scissa non sit, neque divisa, &c. — Epist. lxvi. ad Flor. Pupian. Ed. Oxon. p. 168.] f [ Episcopatus unus est, cujus a singulis in solidum pars tenetur. — De Unit. Ecdes. p. 108. — Episcopatus unus, Episeoporum multorum concordi numerositate diffusu3. . . Episcopatum autem tenere non posset, etiam si episcopus prius factus, a coepiscoporum suorum corpore et ab Ecclesiae unitate descisceret. — Epist. lv. ad Anton, p. 112.] t See page 100. ↩

35. See p. 98. t Pag® 26 et seq . ↩

36. Supra, p. 108 . ↩

37. Rom. x. 10. f Matt, xxviii. 20. ↩

38. Eph.iv. 12. f John xvi. 13. J Isaiah xlviii. 17. ↩

39. Rom. iv. 18 . ↩

40. 2 Cor. iv. 2 — 4. f Matt. xiii. 21. X Matt. x. 27. ↩

41. 1 Cor. iii. 22. t John xx. 21. J 1 Cor. iii. 4, 5. ↩

42. 1 Cor. iii. 9. j| 2 Cor. iv. 5. ↩

43. Titus iii. 2. ↩

44. [Nec putetis sic vos Evangeliura Christi asserere, dum vosmetipsos a Christi grege, et ab ejus pace et concordia separatis ; cum magis militibus gloriosis et bonis, congruat intra domestica castra consistere, et intus positos ea quaB in commune tractanda sunt, agere ac providere. Nam cum unanimitas et concordia nostra scindi omnino non debeat, quia nos Ecclesia derelicta foras exire, et ad vos venire non possumus, ut vos magis ad Ecclesiam matrem et ad nostram fraternitatem revertamini, quibus possumus hortamentis petimus et rogamus. — Ep. xlvi. Ed. Oxon. p. 89.] ↩

45. Hermant, ii. 268 — 306. Moliler, ii. 210 ct seq. t Dial. adv. Lucifcranos. t lb. ↩

46. St. Ambrose in Luc. r. 26. — Epist. 12. L. ii. (Ed. Colon.) f Ut qui pa rum eos cognitos haberent, putarcnt bona fide ab creatarum rerum condition® secernere filium Dei. Petavius, De Trin. ii. 12. ↩

47. Gibson’s Codex, 397. t 13 Eliz. cap. 13. * A. 1705. ↩

48. Gibson, 396. ↩