Lecture I. The Sovereignty of God over the Intellect of Man

1 And God indeed, having winked at the times of this ignorance, now declareth unto men, that all should everywhere do penance. Because He hath appointed a day wherein He will judge the 'world in equity, by the Man whom He hath appointed, giving faith to all, by raising Him from the dead? Acts xvii. 30, 31.

These were the words of St. Paul to the Athenians, when their philosophers called him a ' word-sower' and a ' publisher of new gods,' because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection from the dead. This was his meaning: God, in times past, shut His eyes to the idolatries and polytheism of men. Those times are past now, for God has manifested Himself to the world. He has made

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Himself known, and has therefore commanded all men everywhere to do penance — that is, to believe in Him, and to repent of their sins — under pain of eternal judgment; for He has appointed a day in which He will judge the world by that Man, whom He hath appointed to be the Judge of the living and the dead; and for this end He has given faith — that is, a witness and an illumination to believe His word by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. In this declaration, the Apostle distinctly asserts the sovereignty of God as the Creator, and as the Judge of all mankind; His sovereignty over man both in body and soul, over the intellect in all its faculties, over the will in all its powers. As Maker and Lord, God has dominion and sovereignty over man, whom He made to His own image and likeness; and man being of a rational, a moral nature, is therefore a responsible being.

Last year, the Council of the Vatican made a decree in these words: ' Forasmuch as God is the Creator, and the Lord of all things, therefore man altogether depends upon Him; and every created intellect is subject to the Uncreated Truth, and owes to it a perfect obedience both of reason and

OVER THE IXTELLECT OF MAN.

of will.'1 Attached to that Decree are these two canons: ' If any man shall say, that the reason of man is so independent of God that God cannot command faith, let him be anathema.' And again: ' If any man shall say, that the act of faith in man is not free, let him be anathema;' and this enunciates the subject of which I purpose to speak: The sovereignty of God over the intellect, that is, the rights of God over the rational creatures He has made. He requires of them a perfect obedience of their rational and moral nature; and holds them responsible to render that obedience. The way in which God requires the obedience of the rational nature of man is by faith.

Faith is belief in truth: but not of all truth, for of truth there are two distinct kinds. There is one kind which is necessary, and therefore compels the assent of the intellect. For instance, that things which are equal to the same, are equal to one another; that two parallel lines can never intersect; that the whole is greater than the part; that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right -angles, and the like: — these are necessary truths, which the intellect of man is constrained by 1 First Constitution on Catholic Faith, chap. iii.

an intrinsic law of its nature to assent to. In these truths, therefore, there is knowledge, but not faith. There is about them no obscurity, and no intervention of the Divine authority. But all moral truths, that is, all those truths which relate to the world unseen, to the nature of God, to the moral duty of man, to his future destiny — all these are truths which are not intrinsically necessary. They depend upon the will of God, and upon the constitution and order of His revelation. They are therefore believed upon the authority of God, who has revealed them. The authority of God intervenes to require of us the submission of our intellect and of our will to the revelation He has made.

It is thus, then, that God exercises His sovereignty in requiring faith. He commands faith under the penalty of eternal death. The words of our Divine Lord expressly declare this law: ' He that believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not, shall be condemned.'2 That is,' the voluntary act of faith is taken as the test of obedience; and according to the obedience or disobedience of the rational nature will the judgment be hereafter.

2 St. Mark xvi. 16.

We are confidently told in these days that faith is a weakness and a blindness; that it is unworthy of man; that it is servility and degradation, and I know not what besides. I will affirm, then, that faith is the most perfect act of tfre human reason; that the most reasonable act of man is to believe in the Uncreated Reason of God; that the highest act of an intellectual nature, next only to the eternal contemplation of the Uncreated Truth hereafter, is to believe that Uncreated Truth now; and this is what I shall endeavour to draw out.

1. First, God exercises His sovereignty over the human intellect, even by the lights of nature. There is in the natural world a manifestation of God which lays all men under the obligation of knowing Him. They who, with the lights of nature before them, remain in ignorance of God, are not only intellectually in error, they are also morally in error, and they are responsible for that moral error. Not to know God is sin. The Apostle says to the Romans, ' The invisible things of Him' — that is, of God — 'from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, His eternal power also and divinity;

so that they are inexcusable. Because that, when they had known God, they have not glorified Him as God, nor gave thanks; but became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened. For, professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. And they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of a corruptible man.'3 Here, then, is an express declaration, that the lights of nature are sufficient to prove to us the existence of God, His power, His Divinity, and, therefore, His perfections; so that they are inexcusable who do not know God, and, therefore, do not believe arid make an act of faith in Him, and of submission to His sovereignty, as their Maker and Lord.

Again, the Apostle says: ' When the Gentiles, who have not the law, do by nature those things that are of the law, these, having not the law, are a law to themselves: who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness to them, and their thoughts within themselves accusing them, or else defending them.'4 That is, there is in every man a moral sense, or instinct, or judgment, or testimony to 3 Rom. i. 20-23. 4 Ibid. ii. 14, 15.

right and wrong, which rebukes him when he does wrong, which sustains him when he does right. There is therefore an inward light, whereby the human reason may perceive the moral law of God; and if so, then every man has within him a testimony to know that he has an intellectual and moral nature; and if he has an intellectual and moral nature, he has a soul — that is, the image of God — within him, and that image has an immortality. They, then, who, amidst the lights of nature, do not know God, or the distinctions of right and wrong, or that they have a soul which is immortal and responsible, are guilty for that ignorance. To be ignorant of these things is sin, because such ignorance is vincible. The lights of nature are sufficient to prove these things, and they who are ignorant of them are willingly ignorant of them; that is, ignorant through their own will, and therefore culpable before God; and for that culpable ignorance will have to give account at the last day. 2. But, secondly, there is another world by which God has revealed Himself. The lights of the natural creation on all sides testify to the truths of which I have already spoken; but there is a supernatural world at this moment round about us, against which the disputers of this world rail, as the philosophers at Athens. They who preach of this supernatural world are ' word-sowers,' babblers, ' publishers of new gods.' Nevertheless, there exists in the midst of mankind a kingdom, present, visible, and audible, manifesting itself with sufficient evidence, through which God demands the submission of faith, through which He manifests His sovereignty over the intellect of man. That kingdom has about it certain marks, properties, and prerogatives, which no human institution, kingdom, or empire ever possessed.

For instance, its indefectible existence. The history of mankind is the history of successive dynasties. Like shadows they have come and passed away; they have each one contained the principle of its own dissolution. Not one of them was intrinsically changeless and incorruptible. The Church of Jesus Christ, from its foundation to this hour, continues incorruptible in itself. The worldly accidents around it are human, and cleave to it like the dust to our feet. As the light of heaven is changeless, incorruptible, unsoiled in its purity, though it looks upon all the corruptions of the earth, so is the Church of God in the world;

and as the Presence of our Divine Lord in the Blessed Sacrament abides in its immutable sanctity in the midst of the sins of men, so the Church of Jesus Christ abides incorruptibly the same, the sins and corruptions' of those who visibly belong to it notwithstanding. It also has an indissoluble unity, and an immutability in the law of morals and in the doctrines of the faith, which it has taught from the beginning, and now at this time teaches in every place.

If I affirm that the faith has never changed, men may say: ' If you speak of past time, how can you prove itf I affirm therefore that the faith is the same now in all the world. This is a fact of the present, and may be easily tested. Now this changeless identity of one truth in all places at this time is the countersign of the immutable perpetuity of the same truth in all times. Things which spring from one law have one type. Corruption is change, and breeds diversity. Identity points to a changeless principle which is above the order of nature.

Now these are phenomena manifesting a supernatural kingdom in this natural world. The reason of man, if it be consistent, can ascribe the existence of that fact to none but the Divine Creator. If man had made it, man might rid himself of it. If man had founded it, he might destroy it. If man had set it up, he might sweep it off the face of the earth; but man has striven to sweep it away, and cannot, any more than he can sweep away the mountains which God has rooted in the earth. God perpetually defies man by the existence of His Church. He manifests His sovereignty over the reason of man by this witness, which man can neither deny nor explain away. He can in no way account for its existence and changeless identity: if he will not account for it by the only solution which is true. God shows His sovereignty by baffling the reason and will of men, which cannot rid the world of the presence of God, manifested in the supernatural order of His power.

The mere lights of nature, then — for I am thus far treating the question as a matter of human reason, of human history — these testify, both in the natural and in what I will call the Christian world, to the existence of God's sovereignty. But this is not all. The Christian world which testifies to the sovereignty of God, testifies to the coming of the Son of God in the flesh — that is, to the In-mr nation. It testifies to the perpetual presence jf God the Holy Ghost. As a fact of history, it is certain that it has spoken and still speaks to mankind with a voice which never ceases, and the world tells us that its pretensions never change; that is to say, it teaches always the same things, and claims for that which it teaches a Divine authority. It calls on men to submit their intellect [to its Divine voice. It claims, in virtue of God's authority over His creatures, that we should render to Him that worship of the reason, that i reasonable service/ which the Apostle declares to be the true sacrifice of man to God.5 When St. Paul preached to the Athenians, so long as they believed him only to be a disputer like themselves, and that his teaching was based only on human philosophy, they called him a ' word-sower;' but in the day when they knew that he was a teacher sent from God, that he had Divine assistance in what he taught, that the message he uttered was a Divine message, that the authority by which he spoke was the authority of God, from that moment they received all he said as coming from a fountain of Divine certainty. They believed; that is, 5 Romxii. 1.

they offered the obedience of faith to what he said. They knew that, in hearing him, they heard the word of God; that what he delivered, he delivered not from himself, but from the Master that sent him.

So is it now with the Church in the world. The sovereignty which God claims over our intellect is the obedience of faith rendered to the Divine voice of His Church.

We can stand in relation to God and His truth only in one of two ways. We are either the critics who examine, test, and choose, who accept or reject for ourselves by our own lights and our own judgment; or we are the disciples who sit at the feet of a Divine teacher, receiving by faith, with the simple adhesion of our whole nature, intellectual and moral, that which He teaches. We owe Him the submission of our intellect, because we know that all revealed truth comes from the uncreated intelligence of God. The highest act of the reason of man is to submit itself and to be conformed to the intelligence of God. We owe to Him the submission of our reason, because the Uncreated Truth is the original of our intelligence, and will be the law of our judgment hereafter.

We owe Him also the love of our hearts, because that manifestation of the truth of God is the manifestation also of His grace and His love.

What has been said may, I think, suffice to show that the obedience of faith is not servile, nor degrading, nor irrational, nor unworthy of an intellectual being. Nay, I shall show hereafter;that the argument turns the other way; as may -readily be seen by a moment's consideration of the effects of this submission of faith to a Divine •teacher.

3. The first and immediate effect is the illumi-;nation of the reason. The reason is pervaded by a ilight which, without faith, it could not possess. And the intellect is dignified by that illumination. iHow, then, can it be degraded? What is the illumination which we receive by faith? The Apostle says: * Every best gift, and every perfect gift, is ifrom above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change, nor shadow of vicissitude/6 forasmuch as He is the immutable 1 truth. It is, therefore, a participation of the light of God. Again: ' That was the true Light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the 6 St. James i. 17.

world.'7 The light of God is the dignity of the intellect of man. In what, then, does it consist? It may be said to consist in three things:

First, in the most pure and perfect knowledge mankind has ever had of God: of His nature, personality, and perfections; of His wisdom, sanctity, purity, love, mercy, power; and also of His relations to us, as our Father, our Redeemer, our Sanctifier: Secondly, in the most perfect knowledge of the nature of man; because God was manifested in our manhood. The original and the image were united in One Person; and in the Person of Jesus Christ the most perfect manifestation of the image of God in our manhood, glorified by the incarnation of the Divine Original, and enveloped in the splendour of the Eternal Son of God, was revealed to the world. In the vision of the Word made flesh, we see not only the humanity of the first Adam, but the elevation, perfection, and glory of our manhood in the second Adam, from whom we derive life and immortality: Thirdly, in the most perfect morality, the most pure and most elevated; as, for example, the Sermon on the Mount. Does there exist in the wThole histoiy of mankind, in 7 St. John i. 9.

all the philosophies of man, anything to compare for moral perfection with the eight Beatitudes? Where will you find in all the teaching of man this one simple precept: ' All things, whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do you also to them"?8 Where did you ever find the precept: ' Love your enemies: bless them that curse you,' — where, except only in the mouth of Jesus Christ? Was it ever heard: 'Be ye therefore perfect, as also your Father, which is in heaven, is perfect,' 'who maketh His sun to rise upon the good and bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust'?9 Here is a perfect morality, to which nothing" that ever came from the unaided intellect or will of man bears any comparison. Where in the morals of mankind can be found anything to compare with the two precepts of loving God with all our heart and our neighbour as ourselves? Where can be found anything to compare in generosity, in tenderness of love, in sacrifice of self, with the Oblation of our Lord upon the Cross 1 There is, then, an illumination given to us by the light of faith, which 110 created intellect can possess from any other source. But once more:

8 St. Matt. vii. 12. » Ibid. v. 48, 45.

4. This illumination elevates the reason of man. It raises it to a state and order of dignity otherwise unattainable; and in so doing, it confirms even its natural perfection.

First, The truths of the natural order are confirmed and made clear, and a Divine certainty is added to them by the light of revelation. The existence of God, the law of right and wrong, the soul and its immortality — these truths of the natural order are confirmed both in clearness and certainty by the light of faith.

Secondly, there are superadded to the truths of the natural order the truths of the supernatural order: for instance, the knowledge of God through the Incarnation; the knowledge of our relations to Him through the adoption of grace; of our brotherhood and consanguinity with Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of God; of the indwelling of God the Holy Ghost in the intellect and will of man, making man His temple; besides this, the presence of God, not only in nature, but in grace, and that pervading the whole world and present in ourselves. St. Augustine, describing his condition before he believed, said, (I sought Thee everywhere and found Thee not; for Thou wast within me, and I was out of myself. I sought Thee everywhere but in that place where Thou wast to be found — in my own soul.' We know by faith that the presence of God inhabits each one of us; that we are united to the unseen world and to the communion of the spirits of just men made perfect; and that the vision of God hereafter is our inheritance.

These are supernatural truths added to the lights of the natural order. Surely the reason possessing them is elevated above both nature and itself. St. John says, ' Behold what manner of charity the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be named, and should be the sons of God. Therefore, the world hath not known us, because it hath not known Him. We are now the sons of God: and it hath not yet appeared what we shall be. We know, that when He shall appear, we shall be like to Him: because we shall see Him as He is.'10 Is it possible to conceive of any elevation greater than the consciousness that we are sons of God? But it is this that faith gives to the reason of man.

5. Lastly, faith makes the reason perfect. The

10 1 St. John iii. 1, 2.

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Teason itself, as a faculty or an intellectual power, is perfected by the action of faith upon it. Just as the hand by experience is strengthened and acquires skill, and is able to execute the most powerful or the finest operations; and as the ear may be attuned and cultivated to harmony, and the eye to an exquisite perfection of sight; so is it with the action of faith upon the intellectual faculties of the soul. Take, for example, the whole history of the Old Testament, and compare the intellectual condition of Israel with the intellectual •condition of the Gentile world. No man has ever yet ventured to say that, as compared with the intellectual state of the chief philosophers of the Gentile world, the Hebrew patriarchs, prophets, and saints were not, in intellectual stature, a head and shoulders above them. No man can fail to see that the very intellect of the Jewish race was elevated by the illumination of faith, and that personal character, domestic life, and the public commonwealth of Israel, all bore the marks of an elevation derived from faith. Submission to the sovereignty of God was the cause of this elevation, and therefore of the dignity of Israel.

Among the Gentile world, it is true that intellects such as those of Plato and Aristotle, to mention no others — the one the great example of natural theology or knowledge of divine things, the other the most perfect example of ethical or moral philosophy — exhibit a logical cultivation not to be found in the splendour and dignity of Isaias or Ezechiel; but if we compare with them the majesty and sublimity of the Prophets, who will hesitate in saying that the moral dignity and grandeur of Isaias and Ezechiel far transcend them in moral elevation? But this I will further affirm, that wheresoever the belief in God was low, intellect was low; and that just in proportion as elevation and cultivation of intellect was attained by mankind, in that proportion they ^approached a purer knowledge of God and of morals. Plato stands at the head of all the intellects of the ancient world for culture and lofty speculation. In him, I may say, the speculative intellect of the order of nature culminated; and in him, above all, we see a Theism which for purity and truth approaches nearest to the theology of Israel. In like manner Aristotle, for subtlety and dialectical precision, stands alone among the intellects of antiquity; and in him we find the purest and truest morality the world without revelation has ever known. The ethics of Aristotle remain to this day as the basis on which the moral theology of Christendom reposes. It is a pure and accurate delineation of the morals of mankind known by the light of nature; and St. Thomas builds upon it as a sure foundation. The world therefore bears testimony to this, that in proportion as the intellect of man approaches the knowledge of God and of self, it is dignified, and its mental and moral faculties are strengthened and expanded towards their perfection.

The same truth is still more manifest in the Christian world. The intellectual history of the modern world is to be found written in the history of Christianity. The intellectual powers of mankind are to be found in their highest perfection in Christendom. It is no objection whatsoever for men of the present day, who believe nothing and who profess to have rejected even the existence of God, to say, ' Look at our men of science — are they in intellectual dignity or power inferior to those whom you call your doctors f The answer is this: Their intellectual dignity is derived from the culture of the Christian world. They would never be what they are, if they had not been nurtured and ripened upon that same mystical vine from which they have fallen. They retain after their fall the savour and the quality of the tree from which they fell. But can they reproduce it? let them try: and how long will they transmit it? Those who have fallen from the knowledge of God and of His revelation have fallen from the tradition of intellectual culture. * If any one abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither.'11 This is true, both spiritually and intellectually. The intellectual standard of sceptics and infidels has no perpetuity. They die out as individuals, and their few disciples are scattered.

On the other hand, I would ask, is there in the history of mankind anything, for intellectual power, precision, amplitude, fertility, to be compared with Saint Thomas Aquinas or Suarez, to mention two only out of a multitude? The profound and pretentious ignorance of this day will no doubt think that these two examples belong to the middle ages, or that the latter was only emerging from those times of obscurity; but the man who so speaks cannot know the books on

11 St. John xv. 6.

•which he passes judgment. The intellectual system of the world, in its refinement and culture, will be found passing through the unbroken tradition of such minds; and the philosophers and men of science of this day, who tell us that we can know nothing with certainty but that which is within the reach of sense, have not dignified the human intellect, but have degraded it. They reject the intellectual system of the whole world, and the highest truths which it proclaims.

The obedience of faith, therefore, which is due to the sovereignty of God, is the most reasonable act of an intellectual being, the most perfect act of which the human intellect in this state of mortality is capable. There remains after it nothing but the vision of the Uncreated Truth without a veil. * After the Summa of St. Thomas there remains nothing but the light of glory,' is not an academical exaggeration, but a very truth.

Faith, then, is the illumination, the elevation, and the perfection even, of the faculty of reason itself. Faith gives power to the human reason, by giving to it principles of certainty from which to start. As in the pure sciences the axioms and demonstrations give firmness, strength, solidity, and on-

OVER THE INTELLECT OF MAX. 23- ward progress to the scientific intellect, so in the knowledge of God, and of man, and of morals, the revelation of God gives the first axioms and primary principles of Divine certainty, which unfold, elevate, and strengthen even the reason itself.

I said before that this argument turns the other way. If faith be the elevation, unbelief is the degradation of the human intellect: and that for two reasons. First, because it deprives it of the illumination of truth; and, secondly, because it paralyses the intellectual faculties.

It deprives it of the illumination of truth; it robs it at once of all the truths of revelation. All the lights of the supernatural order are alike extinguished: God and His kingdom, the communion of saints, and our relations to it; faith, hope, and charity; the Church of God in the world; the mysteries of grace, — everything resting on the supernatural order is darkened. Just as, if light were withdrawn from the world, sight would cease to be, for the eye in midnight can see nothing; so the deprivation of the human reason by unbelief leaves it in midnight. But it is not only the lights of the supernatural order that at once are clouded — the lights even of the natural order become dim. The intellect loses certainty and firmness of belief, even in those principles of the natural order to which the lights of nature testify. It is certain that Deists lose much of the light of the knowledge of God when they reject revelation, because even nature ceases to testify as luminously, and to speak as articulately, of the existence of God, His eternal power and Divinity, to those in whom the sceptical spirit is at work. Again, if they do not lose the knowledge of their own soul, and of its immortality, they begin to doubt about it.

Day after day, we hear the confident talk of men who tell us that we have no evidence to believe in anything but the material mechanism, which we can trace by physiology, chemistry, or comparative anatomy; that beyond this we have no power to ascertain anything about the existence of the soul, or will, or life. There are men at this day, who consider themselves intellectual, openly denying the existence of the soul; and who, having denied the existence of the soul, deny the existence of right and wrong. They tell us that right and wrong, and the instincts, dictates, and rebukes of our conscience, are arbitrary associations of pleasure and pain connected with certain actions, by the conventional traditions in which we are brought up. If so, then there is no such thing as law, either human or Divine: and if no such thing as law, then no such thing as sin or crime, and therefore no such thing as justice; and if there be no such thing as justice, there is no such thing as injustice; and if there be no such thing as intrinsic right, there is no such thing as intrinsic wrong; and if not, then we are in a world which has no more right, order, sweetness, or beauty, but we are turned back again into the inorganic state of creation, 'void and empty/ and darkness rests upon the face of the deep.

But there is something more degrading than this. If I have not a soul, then am I like the cattle. Nay, more; if I have not a soul, I have no immortality: then, so far, I am as the beasts that perish.

This gospel is preached to us by way of manifesting the dignity of the human reason. Choose for yourselves, whether this be dignity or debasement.

But unbelief is not only a privation of the

LIBRARY ST MAPV'c rnn lights of truth, it is a paralysis of the reason itself.

For I would ask: What is scepticism or doubt? It is a partial denial of the truth or existence of things. A denial is a bold assertion that the thing is not true, or does not exist. A doubt is half way to a denial. And on what is it founded? It is founded on the supposed uncertainty of evidence; but this again is founded on the assertion that the senses are fallible, so that we cannot depend on them; and that the faculties of the reason may also go astray, and that their interpretation of the senses cannot be trusted. And this philosophy is preached to us as the dignity of the human reason. To me it appears to be intellectual paralysis, tending to intellectual idiotcy. To tell me my senses do not report to me truly the existence and facts of the external world in a way that I can depend on, and to tell me that my reason cannot interpret them; and that I cannot know with a perfect certainty the internal facts of my own consciousness, is to shake my whole being, and to reduce me first to a state of paralysis, and afterwards to a state of idiotcy. And yet this is the result of sceptical unbelief. In the face of this we are told that faith is degradation to the human intellect, and that unbelief is its dignity.

I must now go no farther; and will add but one only word more.

Last year, the Council of the Vatican made the Decree which I have already recited. The Council of the Vatican has been a sign, against which the contradiction of the whole world has been directed. The reason is evident. In past times, every Council of the Church had to deal with some one particular heresy, by which some one specific doctrine of the faith had been denied. The Council of the Vatican has had to deal with the whole principle of unbelief. It is not one doctrine x only of Christianity that is at stake now, but the whole of Christianity — the whole revelation of God, the whole principle of faith. The axe is laid to the root of the tree. The Council of the Vatican, knowing this full well, made and promulgated, before the tumults of the world rendered necessary the suspension of its labours, two Constitutions, which, if it never add another word, will be inscribed in the history of the Church — ay, and upon the intellect of the world too — as a luminous record of Divine truth that can never be effaced.

The First Constitution of Catholic faith may be called the philosophy of faith in the lights of nature and the order of nature, in the grounds and the preambles upon which Divine faith rests, as the most perfect and most reasonable act of man.

The Second Constitution is the declaration of the Rule of faith, or the Authority upon which faith reposes. This doctrinal authority was defined to be the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff, The infallibility of the Church has been at all times, and by all Catholics, believed as a doctrine of Divine revelation. Till controversy had clouded truth, no one doubted that the infallibility of the Church contains also the infallibility of the Head, as the reasonableness of man resides eminently in the head which governs the body. It had become evident, that they who attempted to deny the infallibility of the Head of the Church were covertly — and I believe many unconsciously — denying the Divine guidance of the whole Church. The Council of the Vatican, then, with the fearless liberty of truth which belongs to the kingdom of God, and comes from God alone, promulgated these most opportune and necessary Constitutions of Faith. It has declared, in the midst of an unbelieving age, that faith is due to God, because He is Sovereign, and because as Sovereign He commands it; and that to know what we are to believe, He has instituted upon earth a witness, which is itself a sufficient evidence of its own Divine commission, that is, His visible Church; a witness that may be seen as the representative of His Incarnation; a witness that may be heard, because the voice of that Church speaks to the world, and is His voice. The Council of the Vatican, therefore, calls to us all, as St. Paul called to the Corinthians: ' And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not in loftiness of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of Jesus Christ. For I judged not myself to know anything among you, but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. And my teaching was not in the persuasive words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of the power of God. That your faith might not stand on the wisdom of man, but on the power of God.'12 And to obtain that Divine certainty, there is one simple condition: to believe in the Divine Teacher whom He has sent. » 1 Cor. ii. 1-5. '