Chapter V. The Relation of the Holy Ghost to the Divine Tradition of the Faith

There now remains but one other subject on which I purpose to speak. It has been affirmed in the last chapter that Christianity whole and perfect was anterior to the records of Scripture and independent of them. It remains now to show that Christianity has been preserved (pure... and unspotted from the world,' that the illumination of Divine Truth, in the midst of which the written record lies encompassed as by a living and intelligent light, sustained by a living and Divine Teacher, is at this day as it was when it came from the Father of lights, without change or shadow of alteration. And this we shall see more clearly by tracing the relation of the Holy Spirit to the tradition of the dogma of faith.

But before I enter upon this point I am irresistibly drawn to say a few words on the analogy between the

Church in Eome in the fourth century, and in England in the present.

For three hundred years the mightiest empire the world ever saw strove with all its power to drive the Church of God from off the face of the earth. All that force could do was tried, and tried in vain. The Church withdrew itself, but was still visible. It worshipped in catacombs, but bore its witness by martyrdom. When the storm was over-past, it ascended from the windings of the catacombs to worship in the basilicas of the empire. It must have been a day full of supernatural joy, a resurrection from the grave, when the Christians of Eome met each other in the streets of the city by the light of the noonday sun. In those three hundred years a change altogether divine had passed upon the empire. The world from which the Church withdrew itself was compact, massive, irresistible in its material power, its gross paganism, and its profound immorality. The world which met the gaze of the Church at its rising was altogether changed. Christianity had penetrated on every side. It was in all its provinces, in all its cities, in Eome above all, in its legions, and its fleets, in the forum, in the senate, and in the palace of the CaBsars. The heathen world was dissolving and passing away by the two-fold action of an internal disintegration, and of the expansion of the light of faith. The outlines of the Christian world were already traced upon the earth, and its rudiments were rising into visible unity and order. The image of the city of (rod hovered above the tumults and confusions of mankind, awaiting the time when the Divine will should clear from the circuit of the Kornan world that which hindered its peaceful possession.

Like to this in many ways is the change which is now before our eyes. I pass by the history of wrongs and sufferings which are now no more. It is a grievous and fearful tale, to be forgotten, if it may. Let us turn to brighter things. For three hundred years the Church in England has worshipped in secret, withdrawn from the sight of man. After all its wounds it lived on, a vigorous and imperishable life, and came forth once more, ascending from the catacombs to offer the Holy Sacrifice in stately sanctuaries, and the light of noon.

It is now thirty years since it rose again from its hiding-place; and the world which meets its view is far other than the world which drove it before its face. It sees no more the whole people of England, under a dominant hierarchy, armed with the power of law to persecute even to death the priest who offers the holy sacrifice, and to force an outward uniformity upon the whole population. It does not any longer see the Anglican Church sole and exclusive in its privileges, and asserting authority over the English people. The days of its supremacy are long gone. England is now in the possession of a multitude of sects, among which the Church of the Eeformation finds its place and its kindred as one among many, richer and more favoured by the higher classes, but content with its wealth and place, and the toleration which it shares with others.

There are signs upon the horizon over the sea. Protestantism is gone in Grermany. The old forms of religious thought are passing away. They are going in England. Separation has generated separation. The rejection of the Divine Voice has let in the flood of opinion, and opinion has generated scepticism, and scepticism has brought on contentions without an end. What seemed so solid once is disintegrated now. It is dissolving by the internal action of the principle from which it sprung. The critical unbelief of dogma has now reached to the foundation of Christianity, and to the veracity of Scripture. Such is the world the Catholic Church sees before it at this day. The Anglicanism of the Eeformation is upon the rocks, like some tall ship stranded upon the shore, and going to pieces by its own weight and the steady action of the sea. We have no need of playing the wreckers. It would be inhumanity to do so. God knows that the desires and prayers of Catholics are ever ascending that all which remains of Christianity in England may be preserved, unfolded and perfected into the whole circle of revealed truths and the unmutilated revelation of the faith. It is inevitable that if we speak plainly we must give pain and offence to those who will not admit the possibility that they are out of the faith and Church of Jesus Christ. But if we do not speak plainly, woe unto us, for we shall betray our trust and our Master. There is a day coming, when they who have softened down the truth or have been silent, will have to give account. I had rather be thought harsh than be conscious of hiding the light which has been mercifully shown to me. If I speak uncharitably let me be told in what words. I will make open reparation if I be found in fault.

Now what I wish to show in this chapter is, that the real ultimate question between the Catholic Church and all Christian bodies separated from it, is not one of detail, but of principle. It is not a controversy about indulgences, or purgatory, or invocations and the like, but of the divine tradition of dogma, its certainty and its purity. The Catholic Church teaches that, as the preservation of the world is creation produced, and a continuous action of the same omnipotence by which the world was made, so the perpetuity of revelation is sustained by the continuous action of the same Divine Person from whom it came.

All bodies in separation from the Church justify their separation on the alleged necessity of reforming the corruptions of doctrine which had infected the Church and fastened upon the dogma of faith. But if the same Person who revealed the truth still preserves it, then it is as unreasonable for man to profess to reform the Church of God as it would be to endeavour to uphold or to renew the world. Men may gird a dome, or reform a political society, but they can no more reform the Church of (rod than they can give cohesion to the earth, or control the order of the seasons or the precessions of the equinox.

(rod alone can reform His Church, and He reforms it by itself acting upon itself, never by those who refuse to obey it, and oppose its divine voice. God has reformed the Church by its Pontiffs, and its Councils. A great part of the Pontifical law, and the greater part of the decrees of Councils, as for instance, of Constance and of Trent, are occupied with the reformation not of the doctrines of the Church, but the sins of men. As each man can reform himself alone, so the Church alone can reform itself. But this reformation does not enter into the divine sphere of the faith or law of Jesus Christ, which is always pure and incorrupt, but into the wilderness of human action, human traditions, and the sins which by human perversity are always accumulating.

Now my purpose is to show that the confusions, contentions, and spiritual miseries which hare fallen upon England, and which afflict us all both in public and in private, have come from the pretension of reforming the Church of God. And to do so, it will be enough to show, that God has so provided for His Church as to render such a reformation not only needless but impossible.

S. John writing to the faithful at the close of the first century, says: — e You have the unction from the Holy One, and know all things.. I. Let the unction which you have received from Him abide man teach all things, and is truth, and is no lie: and as it has aught you, abide in Him.' 1

These words plainly affirm:—

1. That they had already received the unction of the Spirit of Truth; and therefore that they had no

1 1 S. John ii. 20-27.

in you. And you have no need that you; but as His unction teacheth you ol need to seek for a knowledge which they did not possess, because they had already received it.

2. That they had no need of human teachers, because they were already under the guidance of a teacher who is Divine.

3. That this unction was not partial but plenary, and taught them f all things,' that is the ivhole revelation of the Faith.

4. That this unction is truth, absolute and perfect.

5. That it is f no lie,' is unmixed with any falsehood, error, or doubt. But this unction is the Holy Ghost, who, as we have abundantly seen in the first chapter, rested first upon the head of our Great High Priest Jesus, the Head of the Church, and from Him descends upon His body which is the Church, and goes down to the skirts of His clothing, to the least of His members, so long as they faithfully abide in Him their head, through the Church which is His body.

I do not know in what words the infallibility of the Church and the immutability of its doctrines can be more amply affirmed. For they declare — (1.) that by virtue of the perpetual presence of this unction which is the Holy Ghost, the Church possesses the whole revelation of God; (2.) that it is preserved by Divine assistance, unmixed, and in all its purity; and, (3.) that it is enunciated perpetually through the same guidance by a voice which cannot lie.

Now let us draw out the consequences of this truth.

1. The first is that all the doctrines of the Church to this day are incorrupt. I mean that they are as pure to-day as on the day of Pentecost; and that, because they are the perpetual utterances of the Spirit of Truth, by whom the Church both in teaching and believing is preserved from error. Individuals may err, but the Church is not an individual. It is the body of a Divine head united indissolubly to Him. It is the temple of the Holy Grhost united inseparably to His presence. The illumination of the Spirit informs the collective and continuous intelligence of the Church with adequate and precise conceptions of revealed truth, and the assistance of the Holy Spirit guides and sustains the Church in the adequate and precise enunciation of those conceptions. And this, as we have seen, constitutes the active infallibility of the Church as a teacher, exempt from error because guided by a Divine Person. The Church being the organ of His voice, the articulations are human but the voice is Divine.

To deny this is to deny the perpetuity of truth, and the office of the Holy Spirit as the perpetual guide of the faithful. But if there be no Divine teacher there is no Divine certainty, and faith descends to opinion based upon human evidence and criticism. But this, as we have seen, is rationalism, incipient or absolute, explicit or implicit.

2. But the doctrines of the Church are not only incorrupt but incorruptible. To be incorruptible is not only a fact but a law of their nature. For this cause we deny the possibility of a reformation of the Church as a witness or teacher of faith and morals. The need of such a reformation can never exist. It is the permanent and incorruptible doctrine of the Church which is the instrument of all reformation. If it be corrupted, how shall it reform or restore others from corruption? If the salt have lost its savour, wherewithal shall it be salted?

I am not denying the existence of error and corruption in Christendom. There has been enough of all kinds in every age; but they have been the errors and corruptions of individuals, not of the Church. They have existed within the Church till the Church cast them out. They never fastened upon the Divine tradition of dogma, nor mingled themselves in the Divine utterances or enunciations of the doctrines of faith. The errors of individuals cannot prevail against the Church. Individuals depend on the Church, not the Church on individuals. The Church depends on its Divine Head, and upon the perpetual presence of the Divine Person who inhabits it. The Church, therefore, has an independent, absolute, and objective existence. It is a Divine creation depending upon the Divine will alone, the instrument of probation to mankind. It is the Sacrament of Truth which remains always the same whether men believe or no. Just as the Holy Eucharist is always the same in the fulness of its Divine sanctity and grace, even though the priest who consecrates and the multitude who receive it be in sacrilege; and as the light of the sun is always the same in unchanging splendour though all men were blind; so with the truth and sanctity of the Church., No human error can fasten upon the supernatural consciousness of the truth which pervades the whole mystical body, and this passive infallibility preserves the doctrines of the faith whole and incorruptible in every age.

All this is more emphatically true of the Teaching Church. The pastors of the Church may err one by one, but the pastoral body can never err. The chief Pastor is in the midst of them, and they, as His witnesses and messengers, constitute the magi&terium Ecclesice, the authoritative voice of the Church speaking in His Name. Here and there individuals among them, one by one, have erred, but their error has never fastened itself upon the authoritative mind and voice of the Church. Every age of the Church has had its heresy; some ages have had many; almost every heresy has had a pastor of the Church for its author; sometimes a heresy has spread wide both among pastors and flock; multitudes have been infected by it. But the mind and voice of the Church has never changed, never varied by an accent or by an iota. As every age has had its heresy, so every heresy has been cast out; some sooner, some later, some with ease, because they were superficial and weak; some with difficulty, because they were tenacious and strong, like the diseases of a living body, of which some are upon the skin, some in the substance, but all alike are cast out by the vigour of health and life. In this way every heresy has been expelled. What mark did Sabellianism, Arianism, Nestorianism, leave upon the mind or voice of the Church? Not a trace nor a tarnish of falsehood or of evil, but only a new precision of conception and expression, a new definition in the mouth of its pastors, and a more explicit faith in the hearts of its people. The Church is the teacher of the pastors, as the pastors are the teachers of the flock. Doctores fide-Hum discipulos Ecclesice, as S. Gregory says, and the collective body of its pastors is the organ of the Holy Spirit of truth, and their voice is the active infallibility of the Church. And the mind and voice of the Church are supernatural. I mean the world- wide and continuous intelligence of the Church of all nations and in all ages, which testifies as a witness both natural and supernatural, to the facts of the Incarnation and of Pentecost; and decides as a judge with a supernatural discernment, and enunciates the whole revelation of God as a teacher having authority because of the divine illumination, the divine certainty, and the divine assistance which abides with it. From what I have said it will be understood how any individuals, people, or pastors may err, and yet their error leave no stain or trace upon the mind and voice of the Church, either in its belief or in its teaching; and how not only the truth in itself is incorruptible, as it must be, and also its revelation, for that is God's act, but likewise its tradition and enunciation in the world, for these also are divine actions within the sphere of the human intelligence and human speech, whereby both the thoughts and words of the Church are divinely assisted to perpetuate the original revelation of the continuous operation of the same Divine Person who revealed the faith to men.

3. But that which is incorruptible is immutable, and the doctrines of the Church are the same to-day as in the beginning. All corruption is change, but not all change corruption: there is a change which destroys, and a change which perfects the identity of things. All growth is change. A forest tree in its majesty of spread and stature, has perfect identity with the acorn from which it sprung, but the change of ages which has passed upon it, perfects its identity by unfolding its stateliness and beauty.

But all decay is change. When the tree of the forest droops its branches, dies, and falls into the dust about its root, this change is corruption.

Now in this latter sense change is impossible in the doctrines of the Church, for God is not the God of the dead but of the living. His Church is the body of His Son, and has life in itself, and all its doctrines and sacraments are the expressions of the character of His life which quickens it.

Take the history of any doctrine in proof. Trace the dogma of the Holy Trinity from the Baptismal formula to the Baptismal creed, to the definitions of Nice and Constantinople, and to the precision of the creed of S. Athanasius. There is here growth, expansion, maturity, and therefore change, but absolute identity of truth. So again trace the doctrine of the Incarnation from the simple formula, ' the Word was made flesh,' to the definitions against the Monophysites, the Monothelites, the Apollinarians, to the Cur Deus Homo of S. Anselm, and the treatises of Suarez; the intellectual conception and verbal expression have received a vast expansion, but the truth is identical, namely, God Incarnate, two perfect natures in one Divine person. Or once more, the doctrine of the Blessed Eucharist in all its aspects as a Sacrament, and as a Sacrifice, and as an object of adoration is no more than the words ' This is My body,' in the fulness of their intellectual conception. And lastly, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is no more than the last analysis in a long series of intellectual processes by which the belief of the whole Church from the beginning in the absolute sinlessness of the mother of (rod has found its ultimate expression. These four doctrines, as they are propounded now, are identical with the same four doctrines as they were propounded in the beginning. They have been unfolded into more explicit enunciation by a more precise intellectual conception and a more exact verbal expression, but they are the same in all their identity. Just as the gold from the mine is always the same though in the succession of times and dynasties it receive new images and superscriptions. So far, then, truth may grow but never change.

Such, however, is not the case with doctrines which are separated from the unity of the Church and the custody of the Divine Teacher who sustains the Faith. Trace the history of the Holy Trinity from Sabellius to Socinus, or of the Incarnation from Nestorius to Strauss, or of the Holy Eucharist from Luther to the present sacramentarian unbelief which overspreads England; or the article of the One Holy Catholic Church from the Reformation to this day in England alone, and in the Anglican Church only, in which no definition can be obtained whether the Church be visible or invisible, numerically one or only morally one, that is, divisible into many parts and yet called one, though it be a plurality of independent and conflicting bodies. This is change indeed, in which the identity of doctrine is lost. The oak has mouldered and fallen into its dust.

This then is what I mean by the immutability of doctrines. jffney are identical in number and in kind. Their disc and circumference are now as they were when they were first traced on the minds of the Apostles by the light of the Spirit of God. They have come down to us through all ages, and in the

Q midst of all heresies, illuminating all intelligences and conforming them to the truth, but receiving no, tarnish or soil from the human intellect, just as the light of heaven pierces through the mists and pestilences of the world, and is in contact with all its corruptions and impurities without a shadow of stain or alteration.

The doctrines of the Church then are as unmixed as the light; and undiminished in all the perfections of truth, which like Jesus ' is yesterday and to-day, and the same for ever.'

4. And from this a fourth truth immediately follows, that the doctrines of the Church in all ages are primitive. It was the charge of the Eeformers that the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine. How can we know what antiquity was except through the Church? No individual, no number of individuals can go |ack through eighteen hundred years to reach the doctrines of antiquity. We may say with the woman of Samaria, 6 Sir, the well is deep, and thou hast nothing to draw with.' No individual mind now has contact with the revelation of Pentecost, except through the Church. Historical evidence and biblical criticism are human after all, and amount at most to no more than opinion, probability, human judgment, human tradition.

It is not enough that the fountain of our faith be Divine, It is necessary that the channel be divinely constituted and preserved. But in the second chapter we have seen that the Church contains the fountain of faith in itself, and is not only the channel divinely created and sustained, but the very presence of the spring-head of the water of life, ever fresh and ever flowing in all ages of the world. I may say in strict truth that the Church has no antiquity. It rests upon its own supernatural and perpetual consciousness. Its past is present with it, for both are one to a mind which is immutable. Primitive and modern are predicates, not of truth, but of ourselves. The Church is always primitive and always modern at one and the same time; and alone can expound its own mind, as an individual can declare his own thoughts. ' For what man knoweth the things of a man, but the spirit of a man that is in him? So the things also that are of God no man knoweth, but the Spirit of God.' l The only Divine evidence to us of

1 1 Cor. ii. 11. Q2 what was primitive is the witness and voice of the Church at this hour.

5. But lastly, though the Catholic doctrines are incorrupt, incorruptible, immutable, and therefore always primitive by virtue of the Divine custody and enunciation of the Spirit of Truth, nevertheless they are transcendent; that is, they pass beyond the limits and horizon of our reason, and that because they are truths of the supernatural order. They belong to a world of which all the proportions surpass and overwhelm our powers of thought. They are not discoveries of the reason but revelations of God, and as such, to be received by faith. They must first be believed before they can be understood, for faith generates intelligence. S. Augustine said to the heretics of his day, ' Intellige ut credas verbum meum: sed crede ut intelligas verbum Dei.' 'Understand what I say that you may believe it. Believe what (rod says that you may understand it.' How should we know the supernatural order, its limits, operations, and doctrines except God had revealed it?

And these truths are but revealed in part, and can therefore only be known in part. They are like the path of a comet which eludes our calculation, or like electricity which renders no account of itself, or like the pencil by which the sun draws the images of nature: all these are facts undoubted, indubitable, yet inexplicable; and, if they were not known scientific truths, would be incredible. So it is with the truths of revelation: for instance, the origin of evil, the freedom of the will under the operation of grace; the end of evil; the eternity of punishment; the solution of the world and of the life of man as a probation for eternity.

And yet these very doctrines, because they are transcendent, are all the more evidently divine. They have the perfection of God upon them. They surpass our finite intelligence, because they are the outlines of truths proportionate to the infinite intelligence. If they presented nothing that I cannot understand, they would present nothing that I might not have invented. ' Credo quia impossibile ' is a great truth, though a paradox. If it were possible to man, there would be no need of the revelation of God. The footprint of a man betokens man. The footprints of God point to a Divine Presence as their only cause. The only feet which could impress them are those which walked upon the water. For instance, the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, of the Communion of Saints, of the Church, one, visible, indivisible, with its supernatural light and divine infallibility, all these point to a wisdom which transcends our reason, as heaven transcends the earth.

Such, then, is the tradition of dogma which descends perpetually in the Church, and such the relation of the Holy Spirit of Truth to that tradition. He is its Author and its Guardian. He both diffuses the light by which it is known and conceived, and presides over the selection of the terms in which it is defined and enumerated.

And here I might leave the subject, but that, in this day, the old pretension of reforming the dogmatic teaching of the Church has been renewed under a more specious form. It is now alleged that the old dogmatic formulas were a true expression of the rude and uncultured religious thought of the early or Middle Ages: that the progress of the human intelligence in the matter of Christian thought demands a new expression; that this expression will not be dogmatic, but f moral and spiritual; ' that the nineteenth century has a theology of its own, which, if not already formed, is forming under intellectual and spiritual impulses, the momentum of which is irresistible. The old Catholic dogmatism is said to be dead and only cumbering the ground. This is a reformation upon the Reformation. All dogmatism — Lutheran, Calvinistic, and Anglican — must yield to a newer, deeper, more spiritual insight into the moral idea of Christianity. Let us examine these pretensions a little, and then conclude.

In a former chapter I have affirmed that the truths known to the natural reason, or by the light of nature, have been transmitted as an intellectual tradition in the society of mankind. These truths, which relate to the existence and perfection of (rod, and to the moral nature of man, are 'permanent and immutable. They constitute what is called natural theology and philosophy. Upon the basis of these certain, fixed, and permanent truths has been raised a structure of metaphysical and ethical systems, which are related to the primary philosophy as dialects are related to a language. Such are the philosophies which have multiplied themselves both before the faith entered into the world and since. Now these secondary formations or philosophies are, in great part, tentative, uncertain, mutable, and transient. They arise and pass away without at all shaking the permanence of the primary stratum upon which they all repose. The enunciation of these primary truths may be called the axioms or dogmas of philosophy. I affirm that these dogmas of philosophy are fixed and immutable, because the truths they express are so. For instance, the existence of (rod, His moral perfections, the moral nature of man, his freedom of moral action, his responsibility, and the like, are fixed and immutable truths. They are as true and certain now as they were in the beginning. They can never become more or less true, fixed, or certain, but continue permanently in the same certainty and veracity. For this reason the verbal expression or dogmatic form of them is likewise fixed and permanent. The cry or the pretension of a new philosophy to replace the old, contains a tacit denial of the certainty of these primary truths. It is scepticism under a mask. In the order or sphere of the secondary or deductive philosophies there may be many modifications and steps of progressive exactness. The former are the axioms of the human reason, which stand for ever, like the lights of the firmament, steadfast and changeless.

The same may be said of the scholastic theology, which consists in a scientific treatment of revealed truths, both of the primary and of the secondary order. Those of the primary order are the truths which are expressly revealed; those of the secondary, the conclusions which are deduced from them by process of reasoning.

Now the former order of primary truths is permanent and immutable. In the secondary order of deductions it is possible that verifications and modifications may from age to age be admitted. But the tradition or transmission of this whole order of truths, both primary and secondary, constitutes the theology of the Church. And this c Science of God? distributes itself according to its subject matter into dogmatic, which treats of God and His works in nature and grace; into moral, which treats of the relations of man to God and to his fellows; into ascetical, which treats of the discipline of penance and obedience; and into mystical, which treats of the union of the soul with God, and its perfection. Now all these four branches of theology have their primary and their secondary truths. The latter spring from the former and repose upon them. In the latter we may conceive of a progressive exactness, always retaining their contact with the primary truths, which are the base of all. But the primary truths are truths of revelation, the knowledge of which resides immutably in the intelligence of the Church. They are fixed truths, and their verbal expressions are fixed dogmas, true in every age, and not less or more true than they were, nor ever will be. For what is dogma but the intellectual conception and verbal expression of a divine truth? But as these truths can never vary, so neither the conception and expression of them. An immutable body casts an immutable shadow. A fixed form describes a fixed outline upon a mirror. The original never varies, therefore the reflection cannot. Of an eternal truth the image must be always the same. For instance, the unity of God is an eternal truth. The proposition that God is One is a dogma; that He is One in nature, Three in person; that the Three Persons are co-equal and co-eternal; that God is infinite in His perfections; that the Father is the fountain of Godhead; that the Son is eternally begotten of the Father alone; that the Holy Ghost eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son, and the like, which might be indefinitely multiplied in enumeration, are eternal truths, and their outlines reflections and images on the human intelligence, both of the Church and of the individual, are fixed and immutable dogmas.

So again to take another order of truths. That God created the world; that God is present with His creation; that He governs it in the order of nature; that His mind and will are its laws both in their permanent operations and in their exceptional suspension and change — all these are divine truths, and the verbal expression of them are dogmas; permanent because the truths are immutable, and immutable because true.

Again, that God has redeemed the world; that the Son was made man of a virgin mother; that He lived on earth, taught, worked miracles, chose and ordained apostles, founded His Church, instituted sacraments, died, rose again, ascended into heaven, sent the Holy Ghost to abide and to teach in His stead for ever — all these are both divine truths in their own objective subsistence, in the order of divine facts, and also dogmas in their intellectual conception and verbal expression; and as these truths can never become less true, nor lose their value or place or relation to the will of God, and to the soul of man, so neither can the dogmas which express them.

And lastly, that I may not waste more time over a subject which, but for the almost incredible confusions of thought and language now prevalent, I should not so much as have introduced — that the Church is one and indivisible, singular in existence, the temple of the Holy Ghost, and the organ of His voice; indefectible in its life, immutable in its knowledge of the truths revealed, and infallible in its articulate enunciation of them; that the sacraments are channels of grace, each after its kind; that the operations of the Holy Ghost as the illuminator and sanctifier of the Church and of its members are perpetual: to go no further — all these are divine and permanent and immutable truths, and therefore the intellectual conception and verbal expression of them become fixed and unchangeable dogmas.

What then is dogmatic theology, taken as a whole, with all its contents, but the intellectual conception and verbal expression of the revelation of God, truth by truth, and therefore dogma by dogma; a fixed, permanent, and immutable transcript upon the human mind, and a perpetual and changeless enunciation of the same truth with all its intrinsic truths which constitute its perfect outline and complete integrity?

I can perfectly understand the consistent rationalist when he rejects dogmatic theology, because he disbelieves the whole order of divine truths and facts which it expresses. When the body falls the shadow vanishes. When the original ceases to exist, the reflection passes away. This is intelligible and coherent. Again, when the inconsistent and incipient rationalist rejects those facts of dogmatic theology, or those particular dogmas which express certain particular truths and facts which he disbelieves, this also is intelligible and consistent. But when he, professing to retain a belief in the divine truths arid facts of Christianity, denounces dogmatic theology and the tradition of dogma, this in educated and cultivated men is an intellectual obliquity which suggests one of two solutions, either that from want of systematic and orderly study he has only an incomplete and fragmentary knowledge of what dogmatic theology is, or that a warp in the moral habits and temper which influence the intellect, or at least the tongue, makes him less than his own proper stature as a reasoner. And yet this language is not only heard from writers of high name and true cultivation, but is becoming prevalent, and rising into the ascendent at this time.1

1 An instance of this may be seen in a paper entitled Theology of the Nineteenth Century, in the number of Fraser's Magazine already quoted, in which the writer, after everywhere denouncing dogmatic theology, especially the scholastic, speaks as follows: — ' May I take as an illustration the very corner-stone of Christianity, the Divine subject of the Gospel of history? A common mode of dealing with this sacred topic has been to take certain words — Christ — Messiah — Son of God — Son of Man — two natures. — one Person — two wills — one substance, and without defining the meaning of these words, without describing what moral or spiritual truths were intended to be conveyed by them, to arrange them in the most logical way that could be found, and to justify that arrangement by separate Scripture texts ' (p. 262). This kind of theology the writer designates as ' barren.' But in this passage the writer seems to show, either that he has never studied dogmatic theology, in which every term such as nature, person, will, substance, &c., has as precise and definite a value as the algebraic symbols; or, that he does not know the limits of dogmatic and mystical theology, under which ' the moral and spiritual truths ' are classed and treated.

If such writers and reasoners would only be so good as to state positively what truths and facts of Christianity they do really hold, we should be better able to understand them. But it is to be feared that to extract this confession would lay open a great waste of unbelief which lies hid under a cloud of words. Such a test would inevitably produce one of two consequences. Either it would show that under the rejection of dogmatic theology lies concealed a tacit denial of the Divine truths and facts which it expresses; or that such theologians, when constrained to put into definite words what Divine truths and facts they do believe, would be convicted, within that circle, of being as dogmatic as those they assail. None but obscure or inconsecutive minds can long play fast and loose between affirming Divine truths and denouncing dogmatic theology.

One frequent cause of all.this confusion is to be found in the fact, that among non-Catholic writers, above all in England, the distinctions and boundaries of dogmatic, moral, ascetic and mystical theology are lost. Men speak of theology, meaning dogma only; and seem to be unconscious of the other branches of Divine truth, and the separate cultivation which the Church has given to them. Nothing proves this more evidently than the astonishing assertion that a dogmatic treatise on the Incarnation is barren because it does not teach us what was (the real mind ' and (the delineation of the character ' of our Divine Lord: l and again, ' It is about as true to say that a human friend raises and benefits us in proportion to the correctness of our theory of his character, as to say that (rod does so in proportion to the accuracy of our speculative creed.' 2 As a parallel to these statements I would say: * Astronomical demonstrations are barren because they do not teach us "the real mind," nor " delineate the character " of God. Correct knowledge is useless because it does not alone raise and benefit those who possess it.' Can there be found in all the writers and preachers — out of reverence to the saints, fathers, doctors, theologians of the Catholic Church I will not so much as name them — anyone so senseless as to imagine that dogmatic theology is directed to the delineation of the character of our Divine Master, or that correct intellectual knowledge of the whole science of God without the illumination and correspondence of the heart and will could 'raise and benefit,' if that means sanctify and save, those who possess it? This seems to be a solemn or a superficial

1 Theology of the ^Nineteenth Century, Fraser's Magazine ut supra, p. 282.

2 Spectator, March 25, 1865, p. 331.

trifling with sacred things; in which men might learn if they had the will, and are therefore culpable, if being ignorant they affect to criticise or to teach. If they would give themselves the trouble to open the first book of elementary theology, they would learn that dogmatic theology is directed to the intellect and mystical theology to the will: that dogmatic theology is said to perfect the intellect because it elevates and informs it with revealed truth, and thereby conforms it to the Divine intelligence in so far as these truths of revelation are known. It is therefore both true and evident that dogmatic theology does most luminously and supernaturally (raise and benefit ' the human intelligence. It makes a man capable of serving God by the 'reasonable service' of faith. Whether he does so or not, depends upon moral conditions, that is, upon the conformity of the will to the dictates of his reason, which has thus been already conformed to the truth and mind of God.

But it is not from dogmatic theology, but from moral theology, that a man must learn the obligations of the Divine will upon the human will. Dogmatic theology enunciates to us the Divine truth: moral theology expounds to us the Divine law. The first formation of the will is accomplished by moral theology. Its maturity is committed to ascetic, its perfection to mystical theology. But these last three provinces of theology, under which falls all that relates to the moral character of God and of our Divine Lord, and all that relates to the interior and spiritual life of God in the soul, and of the soul in God, seem to be wholly unknown to the confident critics of these days. In all the theology, so to speak, of the Anglican Church, I know of no attempt to treat of moral theology or to supply the blank and void which the Eeformation has made in this province of the Divine truth, except Andrewes' ' Exposition of the Ten Commandments,' Taylor's 'Ductor Dubitantium,' and Sanderson's ' Cases of Conscience.' And I know of no three works that have fallen into more utter oblivion. The other writings of all three are known, read and quoted, but most rarely are these moral or ethical writings so much as named. And yet Taylor staked his fame on the 'Ductor Dubitantium:' but the atmosphere in which he left it was fatal, and would not suffer it to live. Of the ascetical and mystical theology, excepting Taylor's (Holy Living and Dying,' what one book can be named which presents a detailed treatment, or so much as an outline, of the spiritual and interior life? And yet it is out of the midst of this barrenness and desolation that the voices are lifted up to denounce dogmatic ft theology because it does not direct itself to fulfil that which the Church accomplishes with an exuberance of culture in its moral, ascetical and mystical theology, while the Protestant and Anglican systems never accomplish at all. It is a significant fact that the devotional books in the hands of Protestants are to a great extent translations or adaptions of Catholic works.

Now I have been led to say thus much in order to preclude certain objections which may be expected to what I have affirmed in this and the previous chapters on the tradition of dogma, and the dogmatic theology of the Catholic Church; and I do so the more carefully, because the scope of this work has hitherto limited our thoughts to the truths of revelation, as they are impressed by the divine intelligence upon the human reason. But it is impossible for me to do more than recognise in passing the vast and wonderful structure of moral wisdom rising from the basis of the revealed perfection and law of God which is contained in the moral theology of the Church. The works of the moral theologians form a library by themselves. One of them alone in his writings has quoted and consulted nearly eight hundred authors of all nations. The elaborate and perpetual study of jurists upon the common and statute law of the realm is a faint analogy of the scientific and exact treatment of the natural and revealed law of God by the councils and theologians of the Church; which, in expounding that law, has a divine assistance guarding it from error.

Of the ascetical theology I will not here attempt to speak; but if any one will trace down the line of writers from S. Nilus and Cassian to the present day, who have treated specifically and in minute detail of the way and instruments of conversion and penance, and of the example and character of our Divine Lord in His active life, they will seem to survey the reaches of a great river from some height, where the breadth, depth, and fulness of the stream can be seen at a glance.

But the exhibition of the moral and spiritual significance of Christianity is to be seen in its fulness and maturity nowhere as in the mystical theology of the Catholic Church. First of all in the devotions of which the Incarnation is the object, as, for instance, in the devotion of the Holy Name of Jesus, of which S. Bernard, and S. Bernardine of Sienna, the B. John Colombini, and S. Ignatius are the four chief fountains.

Next in the devotion of the Blessed Sacrament in all its forms and manifestations, of which S. Anselm, and S. Bonaventure, and S. Thomas are luminous

B2 examples, in the midst of a cloud of saints and servants of God, who by their lives, their preaching, and their writings, have exhibited the mind and delineated the character of Jesus, both as God and man, with a fulness, vividness, tenderness, intimacy and truth, to which no uncatholic writer upon record, in any age of the world, has ever approached so much as afar off.

Again, in the devotion of the Sacred Heart, which is emphatically and articulately the expression of that aspect of the Incarnation and of the Blessed Sacrament which exhibits the mind and character, the personal love and personal relation of our Divine Lord to us, and ours to Him again. From S. Augustine to the Blessed Margaret Mary, there is an unbroken line of saints and writers who not only exhibit this personal aspect of our Saviour to us, but who are witnesses of what the Church, all through those centuries, was teaching to its children. From the time of the Blessed Margaret Mary to this day, the multitude of writers who have brought out this moral and spiritual idea of the Incarnation is literally almost without number. There is hardly a spiritual writer who has not treated or touched upon it. There is not a manual of devotion or a book of prayer in which it is not prominently set forth.

Moreover, every year by the festivals of the Holy Name, the Blessed Sacrament, and of the Sacred Heart, this spiritual teaching is made perpetual and universal.

It is beyond my present purpose to do more than mention the Devotions of the Crucifix, of the Five Sacred Wounds, of the Passion, of the Most Precious Blood with all the feasts and practices of mental prayer founded upon them. What are these but the most vivid and intimate delineations of the mind and character of our Divine Eedeemer?

Lastly, for I cannot here pursue the subject, let any one with the least claim to be a scholar examine the four families of mystical writers, saints, and theologians, which, like the four rivers of Paradise, water the Church of (rod; namely, the Benedictine, the Dominican, the Franciscan, and the Jesuit; especially the last, in its innumerable works on the spiritual exercises of S. Ignatius; and if he be a competent scholar and a candid man, I am confident that he will acknowledge first, that no communion or body separated from the Catholic and Eoman Church has ever produced any exhibition of the mind and character of Jesus, or of the moral and spiritual idea of Christianity, I will not say equal in proportion or in fulness, but so much as like in kind, to the mystical theology which, traceably from the fifth century to the nineteenth, has watered the Church of God. The words of the psalmist may be truly said of this stream of the waters of life, ever full and overflowing its banks — e fluminis impetus laetificat civitatem Dei.' And next, he will be constrained to confess that all this exuberance of the interior spiritual life has diffused itself throughout the Church under the direction of the most rigorous and inflexible dogmatic theology, which has hung suspended with all its constellations of truths over the surface of this inundation of spiritual life, like the firmament over the sea. Certainly dogmatic theology does not treat of the interior life either of the Head or the members of the Church; but it generates the piety and the prayer which sanctifies the soul through the truth, and the mystical theology which directs and sustains it.

Thus much I have thought it necessary to say, in order to anticipate the objection that the tradition of dogma is a tradition of dry and lifeless formulas; and to show that while dogmatic theology is progressive in all the secondary operations of deduction and definition, it is fixed and permanent in all the primary dogmas which express the eternal and immutable order of divine truths and facts. In all the expansion and advancing analysis of theological science it never parts from its base. It reposes immutably upon the foundation of divine truths and facts, which being divine, are changeless.

To what has been hitherto advanced, I will only add one general conclusion. Unless all that I have said be false, then the accusation against the Catholic doctrines as corruptions, and innovations, as dry, lifeless, transient formulas, cannot by the necessity of the case be true. If God had so given and left His revelation, that the custody of it depends upon the intellect and the will of man, wounded as both are by sin, then corruptions, changes, and innovations would be not only inevitable, but the law of its transmission. But this i$ contrary not only to the divine procedure and perfections, but to the explicit terms of the revelation itself. God has declared Himself to be, not only the Giver, but the Guardian of His own truth; not only the Promulgator, but the Perpetuator of the light of Pentecost. Now it is this which is denied, when the Catholic doctrines are denounced as corrupt, and the dogma of faith as out of date. It is, as I said, no question of detail, but of the whole Christian dispensation. Either God the Holy Ghost inhabits the Church for ever, and His unction full and perfect, which e is truth and no lie,' that is the whole truth unmixed and pure, is with the

Church at this hour, or it is not. If He be not with it, and if that unction does not abide with it, then its doctrines may be as corrupt, as novel, as distorted, as lifeless, as arbitrary as the perversity of the intellect and will of man can make them. The line of heresies from Gnosticism to Protestantism are example and proof.

But if He still abide in the Church as its Divine Teacher and Guide, then it follows beyond all controversy that the doctrines of the Church are His utterances, and that in all ages they abide as the radiance of His presence, incorrupt, incorruptible, immutable, and primitive, as on the day when He descended on His apostles. And the words of God by the prophet are fulfilled in Jesus the Head, and in the Church His body: ' My Spirit that is in thee, and my words that I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth and for ever l; ' that is, of the Holy Catholic and Eoman Church, and of the Vicar of the Incarnate Word on earth.

1 Isaias lix. 21.