Introduction

Before the reader proceeds to the following pages, I wish to detain him with a few introductory words. 1. Some time ago my intention was to publish a volume of Sermons on Eeason and Kevelation as a sequel to those on Ecclesiastical Subjects. In the preface to that volume I expressed this purpose. But when I began to write I found it impossible to throw the matter into the form of sermons. I do not imagine that the following pages have any pretensions to the character of a treatise, or any merit beyond, as I hope, correctness and conformity to Catholic theology. But I have found it necessary to treat

B the subject in a less popular form than sermons would admit, and to introduce much matter which would be out of place if addressed to any such audience as our pastoral office has to do with. I was therefore compelled to write this volume in the form of a short treatise, and though I am fully conscious of its insufficiency, nevertheless I let it go forth, hoping that it may help some who have not studied these vital questions of our times, and provoke others who have studied them to write some work worthier of the subject.

Another departure from my first intention was also forced upon me. When I began to consider the nature and relations of Eeason and Bevelation, I found myself compelled to consider the Author and Giver of both,, and the relations in which He stands to them, and they to Him. This threw the whole subject into another form, and disposed the parts of it in another order. I found myself writing on the relations of the Divine Intelligence to the human; but as these intelligent and vital powers are personal, I was led into that which seems to me, in the last analysis, to comprehend the whole question of Divine Faith, the temporal mission of the Holy Grhost, and the relations of the Spirit of Truth to the Church, to the human reason, to the Scriptures, and to the dogma of Faith. In ascending this stream of light, I found myself in the presence of its Fountain, and I have been unable, whether it be a fault or not, to contemplate the subject in any other way. It seems to me as impossible to conceive of the relations of Reason and Eevelation without including the Person and action of the Spirit of Truth, as to conceive a circle without a centre from which its rays diverge. I do not deny that by intellectual abstraction we may do so, but it would be to mutilate the diagram and the truth together.

2. Now my object, in the following pages, is to show that the reason of man has no choice but to be either the disciple or the critic of the revelation of God. The normal state of the reason is that of a disciple illuminated, elevated, guided, and unfolded to strength and perfection by the action of a Divine Teacher. The abnormal is that of a critic testing, measuring, limiting the matter of Divine revelation by his supposed discernment or intuition. The former is the true and Divine Rationalism; the latter, the false and human Rationalism.

Now as, in the following pages, the words rationalism and rationalistic occur, and always in an ill sense, it will be well to say here at the outset in what sense I •use it, and why I always use it in a bad signification.

By Kationalism, then, I do not mean the use of the reason in testing the evidence of a revelation alleged to be divine.

Again, by Eationalism I do not mean the perception of the harmony of the Divine revelation with the human reason. It is no part of reason to believe that which is contrary to reason, and it is not Eationalism to reject it. As reason is a divine gift equally with revelation — the one in nature, the other in grace — discord between them is impossible, and harmony an intrinsic necessity. To recognise this harmony is a normal and vital operation of the reason under the guidance of faith; and the grace of faith elicits an eminent act of the reason, its highest and noblest exercise in the fullest expansion of its powers.

By Eationalism I always intend an abnormal and illegitimate use of the reason, as I will briefly here explain. The best way to do so will be to give a short account of the introduction and use of the term.

Professor Hahn, in his book, ' De Eationalismi, qui dicitur, vera indole, et qua cum Naturalismo contineatur ratione,' says, 'As to Rationalism, this word was used in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by those who considered reason as the source and norm of faith. Amos Comenius seems first to have used this word in 1661, and it never had a good sense. In the eighteenth century it was applied to those who were in earlier times called by the name of Naturalists.' l

6 Naturalism, as Staiidlin says, 'is distinguished from Rationalism by rejecting all and every revelation of God, especially any extraordinary one, through certain men.... Supernaturalism consists in general in the conviction that God has revealed Himself supernaturally and immediately. What is revealed might perhaps be discovered by natural methods, but either not at all, or very late, by those to whom it is revealed.'2

Bretschneider says that the word 'Rationalism has been confused with Naturalism since the appearance of the Kantian philosophy, and that it was introduced into theology by Reinhard and Grabler. An accurate examination respecting these words gives the following results. The word Naturalism arose first in the sixteenth century, and was spread in the seventeenth. It was understood to mean the theory of those who allowed no other knowledge of religion except the natural, which man could shape out of his own strength, and consequently excluded all supernatural revelation.' He then goes on to say that theologians

1 H. T. Rose's State of Protestantism in Germany, Introd. xx.

2 Ib. XYiii.

distinguish three forms of Naturalism. First, Pelagianism, which admits revelation, but denies supernatural interior grace. Secondly, a grosser kind, which denies all particular revelation, such as modern Deism. Lastly, the grossest of all, which considers the world as God, or Pantheism.1 Upon this it is obvious to remark, that the term Kationalism has been used in Germany in various senses. It has been made to comprehend both those who reject all revelation and those who profess to receive it.2 The latter class, while they profess to receive revelation, nevertheless receive it only so far as their critical reason accepts it. They profess to receive Christianity, but they make reason the supreme arbiter in matters of faith. ' When Christianity is presented to them, they inquire what there is in it which agrees with their assumed principles (i.e. of intrinsic credibility), and whatsoever does so agree they receive as true.' Others again affect to allow fa revealing operation of God, but establish on internal proofs rather than on miracles the Divine nature of Christianity. They allow that revelation may contain much out of the power of reason to explain, but they say that it should assert nothing contrary to reason, but

1 H. T. Rose's State of Protestantism in Germany, Introd. xx. xxi.

2 Ib. xxiii.

rather what may be proved by it.' But, in fact, such divines reject the ' doctrines of the Trinity, the Atonement, the Mediation and Intercession of our Lord, Original Sin, and Justification by Faith.'

I need not prolong these quotations. They suffice to show that Rationalism has various senses, or rather various degrees; but, ultimately, it has one and the same principle, namely, that the Reason is the supreme and spontaneous source of religious knowledge. It '•' may be therefore distinguished into the perfect and imperfect Rationalism, or into the fully-developed and the incipient Rationalism, and these may perhaps be accurately described as follows:—

1. The perfect or fully-developed Rationalism is founded upon the assumption that the reason is the sole fountain of all knowledge relating to God and to the soul, and to the relations of God and of the soul. This does not mean the reason of each individual, but I of the human race, which elicits from its own intellectual consciousness a theology of reason, and transmits it as a tradition in the society of mankind.

The reason is therefore the source and the measure j or the limit of what is credible in the theology of j rational religion. This, necessarily, excludes all supernatural revelation.1

1 Rose, ut supra, xxv. xxvi.

2. The imperfect, or incipient,, Eationalism rests upon the assumption that the reason is the supreme test or judge of the intrinsic credibility of revelation admitted in the main to be supernatural. It is easy to see that nothing but the inconsequence of those who hold this system arrests it from resolving itself into its ultimate form of perfect Eationalism. In both the reason is the critic of revelation. In the latter, it rejects portions of revealed truth as intrinsically incredible; in the former, it rejects revelation as a whole for the same reason. The latter criticises the contents of revelation, accepting the evidence of the fact, and rejects portions; the former criticises both the con-, tents and the evidence, and altogether rejects both.

Now, it is evident that in England we are as yet in the incipient stage of Kationalism. Materialism, Secularism, and Deism are to be found in individuals, but not yet organised as schools. Eationalism in the perfect form is also to be found in isolated minds; but the incipient, or semi-Eationalism, has already established itself in a school of able, cultivated, and respectable men. I need not name the writers of whom Dr. Williams, Mr. Wilson, and Dr. Colenso are the most advanced examples. In this school most of the followers and disciples of the late Dr. Arnold are to be classed. It does not surprise me to see the rapid and consistent spread of these opinions; for ever since by the mercy of God I came to see the principle of divine faith, by which the human reason becomes the disciple of a Divine Teacher, I have seen, with the clearness of a self-evident truth, that the whole of the Anglican reformation and system is based upon the inconsequent theory which I have designated as incipient Eationalism. It admits revelation, but it constitutes the reason as the judge by critical inquiry of the contents of that revelation, of the interpretation of Scripture, and of the witness of antiquity.

The Church teaches that faith is an infused grace which elevates and perfects the reason; but as rationalists allege that faith detracts from the perfection of reason, my object will be to show:

1. That to believe in revelation is the highest act of the human reason.

2. That to believe in revelation, whole and perfect, is the perfection of the reason.

3. That to submit to the Voice of the Holy Spirit in the Church is the absolute condition to attain a perfect knowledge of revelation.

4. That the Divine witness of the Holy Spirit in the Church anticipates the criticism of the human reason, and refuses to be subject to it.

Lest anyone should imagine that in these propoir^f

10, INTRODUCTION.

sitions I limit the activity and office of the human reason in matters of faith, I will add also the following propositions: —

1. It would be a violation of reason in the highest i degree not to believe that there is a God. To believe that this visible world is either eternal or self-created, besides all other intrinsic absurdities in tfre hypothesis, would simply affirm the world to be God

1 in the same breath that we deny His existence. It would be a gross and stupid conception of an eternal and self-existent being; for to believe it self-created is a stupidity which exceeds even the stupidity of atheism. But if the world were neither eternal nor self-created, it was made; and, if made, it had a maker. Cavil as a man will, there is no escape from

! this necessity. To deny it is not to reason, but to violate reason; and to be rationalists, by going contrary to reason.

2. Secondly, it would be a violation of the moral sense, which is still reason judging of the relations between my Maker and myself, not to believe that He has given to me the means of knowing Him. The consciousness of what I am gives me the law by which j to conceive of One higher and better than I am. If I am an intelligent and moral being, and if my dignity and my perfection consist in the perfection of my reason and of my will, then I cannot conceive of a Being higher and better than myself, than as One who has, in a higher degree, those things which are the best and highest in myself. But my intelligent and moral nature, and the right exercise and action of its powers, is the highest and best that is in me. I know it to exceed all the other excellences which are in me. It exceeds, too, all the perfections of other creatures to whom gifts of strength and instinct have been given, without reason and the moral will.

I am certain, therefore, that my Creator is higher than I am in that which is highest in me, and therefore I know Him to be a perfect intelligence and a perfect will, and these include all the perfections of wisdom and goodness. I say then it would violate the moral sense to believe that such a Being has created me capable of knowing and of loving Him- — capable of happiness and of misery, of good and of evil, and that He has never given to me the means of knowing Him, never spoken, never broken theete7n^^iTeTac^n5y*a sign of His love to me, on which depend both my perfection and my happiness.

Now it is certain, by the voice of all mankind, that God speaks to us through His works — that He whispers to us through our "natural conscience — that He attracts us to Him by instincts, and desires, and aspirations after a happiness higher than sense, and more enduring, more changeless, than this mortal life. God speaks to me articulately in the stirring life of nature and the silence of our own being. What is all. this but a spiritual action of the intelligence, and the will of God upon the intelligence, and will of man?

and what is this but a Divine inspiration? Critically ii

/ ''»•'•• * '•« "' " ' • I|, and specifically distinct^ as inspiration and revelation i in their strict and theological sense are from this inward operation of the Divine mind upon mankind, yet generically and in the last analysis it is God speaking to man, God illuminating man to know Him, and drawing man to love Him. The inspiration and revelation granted to patriarchs, prophets, apostles, seers, and saints, are of a supernatural order, in which the lights of nature mingle and are elevated by the supernatural and divine. These manifestations of Himself to men are bestowed upon us out of the intrinsic perfections of His own Divine attributes. He created us as objects whereon to exercise His benevolence. His love and His goodness are the fountains of the light of nature. His image, in which He has created us, by its own instincts turns to Him with the rational and moral confidence that if we feel after Him, we shall find Him. And His love and His goodness are such, that our yearnings for a knowledge of Him are satisfied not only by the light of nature, but through His grace by the supernatural revelation of Himself.

3. Thirdly, I am certain, with a certainty which is higher than any other in the order of moral convictions, that if there be a revelation of God to man, that revelation is Christianity. The reason of this belief is, that I find in Christianity the highest and purest truth, on the highest and purest matter of which the human intelligence is capable; that is to say, the purest Theism or knowledge of God, the purest anthropology or science of man, and the purest morality, including the moral conduct of God towards man, and the moral action of man towards God. These three elements constitute the highest knowledge of which man is capable, and these three are to be found in their highest and purest form Christianity alone. All the fragments or gleams original truth which lingered yet in the religions and philosophies of the world are contained, elevated, and perfected in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, and of the Divine perfections revealed in it; in the doctrine of the Incarnation, and the perfections of our manhood manifested in the person of Jesus Christ; and in the Sermon on the Mount, interpreted by the example of Him who spoke it. In these three revelations of the Divine and human natures, God has made Himself known to us, as the object of our love and worship, the pattern of our imitation, and the source of our eternal bliss. Now no other pretended revelation, no other known religion, so much as approximates to the truth and purity of the Christian faith. They are visibly true and pure only so far as-they contain germs of it. They are visibly impure * and false wheresoever they depart from it. They

(bear a twofold testimony to its perfection, both where """' ' "" ' m ••««"""". ^ --_I'»U'£»CU1 they agree and where they disagree with it. And that which is true of Christianity, viewed objectively in itself, is also visibly true when viewed subjectively in its history. Christianity has created Christendom; and Christendom is the manifestation of all that is highest, purest, noblest, most God-like in the history of mankind. Christianity has borne the first-fruits fgfewrWMfWiMfc^MMWM** v ~~~~~^^^^^^MHBltitllll^^m^t11** of the human race.

4. Fourthly, Christianity, in its perfection and its ^ f* } purity, unmutilated, and full in its orb and circumference, is Catholicism. All other forms of Christianity are fragmentary. The revelation given first by Jesus Christ, and finally expanded to its perfect outline by the illumination of the day of Pentecost, was spread throughout the world. It took possession of all nations, as the dayspring takes possession of the face of the earth, rising and expanding steadily and irresistibly. So the knowledge of God and of His Christ filled the world. And the words of the prophet were fulfilled, ' The idols shall be utterly destroyed'; l not with the axe and the hammer only, but by a mightier weapon. f Are not my words as a fire, and as a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces? ' 2 Idolatry was swept from the face of the world by the inundation of the light of the knowledge of the true God. < The earth shall be filled, that men may know the glory of the Lord, as waters covering the sea.' 3 The unity and universality of Christianity, and of the Church in which it was divinely incorporated, and of Christendom, which the Church has created, exclude and convict as new, fragmentary,, and false, all forms of Christianity which are separate and local..

Now these four truths, as I take leave to call them, t3. — first, that it is a violation of reason not to believe in the existence of God; secondly, that it is a violation of our moral sense not to believe that God has made Himself known to man; thirdly, that the revelation He has* given is Christianity; and, fourthly, that Christianity is Catholicism — these four constitute a proof the certainty of which exceeds that of any other moral truth I know. It is not a chain of probabilities,

1 Isaias ii. 18. 2 Jer. xxiii. 29. 8 Hab. ii. 14.

depending the one upon the other, but each one morally certain in itself. It is not a chain hanging by a link painted upon the wall, as a great philosophical writer of the day well describes the sciences which depend upon a hypothesis.1 These four truths, considered in the natural order alone, rest upon the ~ \ reason and the conscience, upon the collective testimony of the highest and purest intelligences, and! upon the maximum of evidence in human history. 1 The intellectual system of the world bears its witness to them; the concurrent testimony of the most elevated races of mankind confirm them. They are not four links of an imaginary chain, but the four cornerstones of truth. (Sapientia sedificavit sibi domum.' And the house which the wisdom of God has built to dwell in is the cultivated intellect, or reason of the mystical body, incorporated and manifested to the world in the Visible Church. This wisdom of God has its base upon nature, which is the work of God, and its apex in the Incarnation, which is the manifestation of God. The order of nature is pervaded with primary truths which are known to the natural reason, and are axioms in the intelligence of mankind. Such, I affirm, without fear of Atheists, or Secularists, or Positivists, are the existence of God, His moral

1 "Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences, vol. i. p. 16.

perfections, the moral nature of man, the dictates of conscience, the freedom of the will. On these descended other truths from the Father of Lights as He saw fit to reveal them in measure and in season, according to the successions of time ordained in the Divine purpose.

The revelations of the Patriarchs elevated and enlarged the sphere of light in the intelligence of men by their deeper, purer, and clearer insight into the Divine mind, character, and conduct in the world. The revelation to Moses and to the Prophets raised still higher the fabric of light, which was always ascending towards the fuller revelation of God yet to come. But in all these accessions and unfoldings of the light of God, truth remained still one, harmonious, indivisible; a structure in perfect symmetry, the finite but true reflex of truth as it reposes in the (/w^«4 Divine Intelligence.

What is Christianity but the summing up and final expression of all the truths of the natural and supernatural order in the Person of Jesus Christ? God has made Him to be the ava/cefaXalcoa-is, or recapitulation, of all the Theism, and of all the truths relating to the nature of man and of the moral law, which were already found throughout the world; and has set these truths in their place and c proportion in the full revelation of ' the truth as it is in Jesus.' S. Paul compares the Incarnation to the Divine action, whereby the light was created on the first day. ' Gk>d, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.' l

And here, perhaps, I may repeat the words in which I expressed the same truth some twenty years ago.

1 2 Cor. iv. 6.¹

the infinity of goodness, wisdom, and power, the transcendent majesty, the true personality, and the moral providence of the One supreme Maker and Ruler of the world was affirmed from heaven. The scattered truths which had wandered up and down the earth, and had been in part adored, and in part held in unrighteousness, were now elected and called home, and as it were regenerated, and gathered into one blessed company, and glorified once more as the witnesses of the Eternal.

e God was manifested as the life of the world, and yet not so as to be one with the world; but as distinct, yet filling all things. God was manifested as the source of life to man. The affinity of the soul of man to (rod was revealed; and the actual participation of man, through the gift of grace, in the Divine nature, and yet not so as to extinguish the distinct and immortal being of each individual soul.

'In thus taking up into itself all the scattered family of truth, the one Faith abolished all the intermingling falsehoods of four thousand years. Therefore it follows, as a just corollary, that in affirming the unity and the sovereignty of God, it annihilated the whole system of many subordinate deities. It declared absolutely that there is no God but one; that all created being is generically distinct, and has c 2 in it no Divine prerogative. It taught mankind that the wisest and the best of earth pass not the bounds of man's nature; that the passions and energies of mankind are, by (rod's ordinance, parts of man's own being; that they are not his lords, but themselves subject to his control; that the powers of nature are no gods, but pressures of the one Almighty hand; and that the visible works of God are fellow-creatures with man, and put under his feet.' l

To say that Christianity is Catholicism, and Catholicism is Christianity, is to utter a truism. There was but One Truth, the same in all the world, until the perverse will and the perverted intellect of man broke off fragments from the great whole, and de-

0»*JT t&ine(l them in combination with error, ' holding the truth in injustice' — that is, imprisoned in bondage to human falsehood, and turned against the Eevelation r\ Pta/v4l£ God. There cannot be two Christianities, neither U<v» C<Ju-^-g can a fragment be mistaken for the whole. The mountain has filled the whole earth, and the drift and | detritus which fall from it cannot be taken, by any illusion, to be the mountain. The unity of Chris-? j tianity is its identity with its original, and its identity in all the world. It is one and the same everywhere,

The Unity of the Church, pp. 205, 206.

and therefore it is universal. The unity of Christianity is related to its universality, as theologians say of God, who is One not so much by number as by His immensity, which pervades eternity and excludes all other. So it may be said there is one truth which pervades the rational creation in various degrees from the first lights of nature, which lie upon the circumference, to the full illumination of the Incarnation of God, which reigns in its centre; and this divine order and hierarchy of truth excludes all other, and is both the reflex and the reality of the Truth which inhabits the Divine Intelligence. When then I say Catholicism, I mean perfect Christianity, undiminished, full-orbed, illuminating all nations, as S. Irenseus says, like the sun, one and the same in every place.1 It seems to me that no man can believe the doctrine of the Holy Trinity in its fulness and perfection without in the end believing in Catholicism. For in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity are revealed to us Three Persons and three offices — the Father and Creation; the Son and Eedemption; the Holy Ghost and the Church. Whosoever believes in these three Divine Works, holds implicitly the indivisible unity and the perpetual infallibility of the Church. But into this,

1 S. Iren. Contra H&ret. lib. i. cap. x. sect. 2.

as it will be the subject of the first of the following chapters, I shall not enter now.

I will make only one remark upon it in explanation of the title of this volume. By the Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost, Catholic theologians understand the sending, advent, and office of the Holy Ghost through the Incarnate Son, and after the day of Pentecost. This is altogether distinct from His Eternal Procession and Spiration from the Father and the Son. Now it is remarkable that the schismatical Greeks, in order to justify their rejection of the Filioque, interpret the passages of the Scriptures and of the Fathers in which the Holy Ghost is declared to proceed or to be sent from the Father and the Son, of His Temporal Mission into the world. On the other hand, in these last centuries, those who have rejected the perpetual office of the Holy Ghost in the Church by rejecting its perpetual infallibility, interpret the same passages, not of the Temporal Mission, but of the Eternal Procession.

The Catholic theology, with the divine tradition of faith which governs its conceptions and definitions, propounds to us both the Eternal Procession and the Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost, from the Father and the Son — the one in eternity, the other in time; the eternal completing the mystery of the Holy

TESTIMONY OF S. AUGUSTINE.

Trinity ad intra, the temporal completing the revelation of the Holy Trinity ad extra.

In commenting on the sin against the Holy Grhost,, S. Augustine says: f And for this cause both the Jews and such heretics, whatsoever they be, who believe in the Holy Grhost, but deny his presence in the body of Christ — that is, in His only Church, which is no other than the Church, one and Catholic — without doubt are like the Pharisees who, at that day, though they acknowledged the existence of the Holy Spirit, yet denied that he was in the Christ.' He then argues as follows: (For to Him [the Spirit] belongs the fellowship by which we are made the one body of the only Son of God;... wherefore,' he says again, 6 Whosoever hath not the spirit of Christ, he is none of His. For, to whom in the Trinity should properly belong the communion of this fellowship but to that Spirit who is common to the Father and the Son? That they who are sejmrated from the Church have not this Spirit, the Apostle Jude openly de- dx clared.' In these passages S. Augustine distinctly affirms that, to deny the office of the Holy Grhost in the Church, is to deny a part of the doctrine of the — Trinity. So again, speaking of the absolution of sin, S. Augustine ascribes it to the operation of the Three Persons. 'For the Holy Grhost dwells in no one n without the Father and the Son; nor the Son without the Father and the Holy Ghost; nor without them the Father. For their indwelling is inseparable whose operation is inseparable.... But, as I have already often said, the remission of sins, whereby the kingdom of the Spirit divided against Himself is over-thrown and cast out — and, therefore, the fellowship of the unity of the Church of God, out of which the remission of sins is not given — is the proper office of the Holy Ghost, the Father and the Son cooperating; for the Holy Ghost Himself is the fellowship of the Father and the Son.... Whosoever therefore is guilty of impenitence against the Spirit, in whom the unity and fellowship of the communion of the Church is held together, it shall never be forgiven him, because he hath closed against himself the way of remission, and shall justly be condemned with the spirit, who is divided against himself, being also divided against the Holy Ghost, who, against Himself, is not divided.... And, therefore, all congregations, or rather dispersions, which call themselves churches of Christ, and are divided and contrary among themselves, and to the congregation of unity which is His true Church, are enemies: nor because they seem to have His name, do they therefore belong to His congregation. They would indeed belong to it if the

Holy Grhost, in whom this congregation is associated together, were divided against Himself. But, because this is not so (for he who is not with Christ is against Him, and he who gathers not with Him scatters), therefore, all sin and all.blasphemy shall be remitted unto men in this congregation, which Christ gathers together in the Holy Ghost, and not in the spirit which is divided against himself.' l

Like as in the old world the divine tradition of the knowledge of (rod was encompassed by corrupt and fragmentary religions, so the divine tradition of the faith is encompassed by fragmentary Christianities and fragmentary churches. The belief in the unity of God, before the Incarnation, was broken up into the polytheisms of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Since the Incarnation this can not be. The illumination of the Word made flesh renders impossible all polytheism and idolatry. The unity and the spirituality of the eternal (rod are now axioms of the human reason. But, as S. Augustine profoundly observes, the analogy still holds between the errors of the old creation and of the new. Satan, as he says, c can no longer divide the true (rod, nor bring in among us false gods, therefore he has sent strifes among Christians. Because he could not fabricate

1 8. Aug. Sermo LXXI., in Matt, xii., torn. v. pp. 386, 398, 401, 403.

i many gods, therefore he has multiplied sects, and

. sowed errors, and set up heresies.' l

And here I desire to fulfil a duty which I have always hoped one day to discharge; but I have hitherto been withheld by a fear lest I should seem to ascribe importance to anything I may have ever said, — I mean, to make a formal retractation of certain errors published by me when I was out of the light of the Catholic faith, and knew no better. I do not hereby imagine that anything I may have written carries with it any authority. But an error is a denial of the truth, and we owe a reparation to the truth; for the Truth is not an abstraction, but a Divine Person. I desire therefore to undo, as far as I may, the errors into which I unconsciously fell. They are chiefly three; and these three are the only formal oppositions I can remember to have made against the Catholic Church. They were made, I believe, temperately and soberly, with no heat or passion — without, I trust, a word of invective.

1. First, in the year 1838, 1 published a small work on (The Eule of Faith/ in which, following with im-

1 'Unum Deum nobis dividere non potest. Falsos deos, nobis supponere non potest.'.,. 'Lites immisit inter Christianos quia multos deos non potest fabricare: sectas multiplicayit, errores senrinavit, hsereses instituit.' plicit confidence the language of the chief Anglican divines, I erroneously maintained that the old and true rule of faith is Scripture and antiquity, and I rejected as new and untenable two other rules of faith, — first, the private judgment of the individual; and, secondly, the interpretations of the living church.

2. Secondly, in 1841, I published a book on the ' Unity of the Church,' in which I maintained it to be one, visible, and organised, descending by succession from the beginning by the spiritual fertility of the hierarchy. But while I thought that the unity of the Church is organic and moral — that the organic unity consists in succession, hierarchy, and valid sacraments, and the moral in the communion of charity among all the members of particular churches, and all the churches of the Catholic unity, I erroneously thought that this moral unity might be permanently suspended, and even lost, while the organic unity remained intact, and that unity of communion belongs only to the perfection, not to the intrinsic essence of the Church.

3. Thirdly, in a sermon preached before the University of Oxford on November 5, 1843, speaking of the conflicts between the Holy See and the Crown of England, I used the words: (It would seem to be the will of heaven that the dominion of the Koman

Pontificate may never be again set up in this Church and realm.'

Now I feel that I owe a reparation to the truth for these three errors. Beyond these, I am not -aware that, for any published statements, I have any reparations to make. And I feel that, as the statements were not declamations, but reasoned propositions, so ought the refutation to be likewise.

The whole of the following work will, I hope, be a clear and reasoned retractation of those errors, so that I need now do no more than express, in the fewest words, what it was which led me in 1851 to revoke the statements I had made in 1841 and 1838.

It was, in one word, the subject of this volume, the Temporal Mission of the Holy Grhost. As soon as I perceived the Divine fact that the Holy Spirit of G-od has united Himself indissolubly to the mystical body, or Church of Jesus Christ, I saw at once that the interpretations or doctrines of the living Church are true because Divine, and that the voice of the living Church in all ages is the sole rule of faith, and infallible, because it is the voice of a Divine Person. I then saw that all appeals to Scripture alone, or to Scripture and antiquity, whether by individuals or by local churches, are no more than appeals from the divine voice of the living Church, and therefore essentially rationalistic. I perceived that I had imposed upon myself by speaking of three rules of faith; that the only question is between two judges — the individual proceeding by critical reason, or the Church proceeding by a perpetual Divine assistance. But as I shall have to touch upon this in the first chapter, I dismiss it now.

As to the second point, the unity of the Church, I had not understood from whence the principle of unity is derived. It had seemed to be a constitutional law, springing from external organisation, highly beneficial, but not a vital necessity to the Church. I seemed to trace the visible Church to its Founder and His apostles as a venerable and world-wide institution, the channel of grace, the witness for God, and the instrument of the discipline and probation to men.

I had not as yet perceived that the unity of the Church is the external expression of the intrinsic and necessary law of its existence; that it flows from the unity of its Head, of its Life, of its mind, and of its will; or, in other words, from the unity of the Person of the Incarnate Son, who reigns in it, and of the Holy Ghost, who organises it by His inhabitation, sustains it by His presence, and speaks through it by His voice. The external unity, therefore, is not the cause but the effect of a vital law, which informs and governs the organisation of the Mystical Body, springing from within, and manifesting itself without, like as the animation and development of the body of a man, which springs from a vital principle, one and indivisible in its operations and its essence. All this escaped me while my eyes were holden in the way of twilight where I had been born. The more I read of Anglican writers upon the Church, such as Hooker, Field, Bilson, Taylor, Barrow, the more confused all seemed to become. The air grew thick around me. When from them I came to the Fathers, the preconceived modes of interpretation floated between me and the page. The well-known words of S. Cyprian, ' Unus Deus, unus Christus, una Ecclesia,' read to me 'One God, one Christ, one Church,' of many branches, many streams, many rays; one, therefore, in the trunk, the fountain, and the source, but not one by a continuous and coherent expansion and identity. I seemed to see the old dream of organic unity surviving where moral unity is lost. I failed to see that in this I was ascribing to God a numerical unity, to Christ a numerical unity, to the Church a numerical plurality; that I was playing fast and loose, using the word One in two senses; that while I confessed that God is one to the exclusion of plurality and division, and that Christ is one to the exclusion of plurality and division, I was affirming the Church to be one, including division and plurality, and that in the same breath, and by the same syllables. Nothing but a life-long illusion, which clouds the reason by the subtleties of controversy, could have held me so long in such a bondage. But nothing, I believe, would ever have set me free if I had not begun to study the question from a higher point — that is in its fountain — namely, the Mission and Office of the Holy Grhost. When I had once apprehended this primary truth, both Scripture and the Fathers seemed to stand out from the page with a new light, self-evident and inevitable. I then, for the first time, saw a truth of surpassing moment, which for my whole life had escaped me; namely, that One means One and no more. The unity of God, and of Christ, and of the Church is predicated univocally, not ambiguously. God is one in Nature, Christ one in Person, the Church one in organisation and singularity of subsistence, depending on its Head, who is One, and animated by the Holy Grhost, who is likewise One, the principle of union to the members, who constitute the one body by the intrinsic unity of its life. I could then understand why S. Cyprian not only likens the Unity of the Church to the seamless robe of Jesus, but also the weaving of that robe to the formation of the Church, which, he says, is woven desuper, 'from the top throughout/1 by heavenly Sacraments; that is, its unity descends from its Head, who impresses upon His mystical body the same law of visible and indivisible unity which constitutes the perfection of His natural body.

Such, then, is a brief statement of the reasons why, though I still believe the Book on ' the Unity of the Church' to be in the main sound and true in what relates to the visibleness and organisation of the Church, I must retract all that relates to the loss of moral unity or communion.

Nevertheless, for an adequate expression of my reasons, I must refer the reader to the following pages.

Lastly: as to the Pontificate of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, this is neither the time nor the place to enter into the subject. I may say, however, in a word, that the point last spoken of prescribes a truer belief in the office of the Head of the Church on earth. The Primacy of honour, but f not of jurisdiction,' among

1 ' Unitatem ilia portabat de superiors parte venientem, id est de ccelo et a patre venientem, quse ab accipiente ac possidente scindi omnino non poterat, sed totam simul et solidam firmitatem inseparabiliter obtinebat.'— S. Cyp. De Unit. Eccles., Opp. p. 196. Ed. Baluz.

a plurality of divided Churches, is an illusion which disappears when the true and divine unity of the kingdom which cannot be divided against itself rises into view. I saw in this the twofold relation of the visible Head of the Church; the one to the whole Body upon earth, the other to the Divine Head, whose vicar and representative he is. A new history of Christendom then unrolled itself before me, not that of our Lord as written by the Jews, but by His own Evangelists. I understood, what I never saw before, the meaning of Supreme Pontiff, and of Vicar of Jesus Christ. I acknowledge, therefore, that in 1843 I spoke rashly, or rather ignorantly in unbelief. But into this I cannot further enter now. I may refer to a volume on the (Temporal Power of the Pope ' as expressing more fully that which I did not so much as see afar off when I uttered the words which I hereby retract.

All things around us tell of one of those periods which come, from time to time, upon the Church and the bodies which surround it. Three hundred years have revealed at length the intrinsic anarchy and rationalism of the so-called Eeformation. It is passing away before our eyes. The men of to-day reluctantly and unconsciously are undoing what their fathers did — justifying the Church of God by their unwilling testimony. The followers of human guides are disbanding and dispersing on every side; some further and further from the Light, deeper into the land ' ubi umbra mortis et nullus ordo; ' others are turning back towards the illumination which hangs over the world in the Church of God. They are wayfaring painfully and in fear towards the east, meeting the dayspring which is rising upon them, journeying into the sun, which is as the light of seven days, the Person of the Spirit in the Church of Jesus Christ.

But it is time to make an end. With these few words of introduction, therefore, I will leave the subject, with the prayer that the same Holy Spirit of Truth, Who has brought me out of darkness into the light of Divine Faith, may likewise reveal to others His perpetual office, as the Divine and Infallible Teacher among men.

Footnotes

1. By the unity of doctrine or faith the Church has taken up all philosophies, and consolidated them in one. Whether by the momentum of an original revelation, or by the continual guidance of a heavenly teaching, or by the natural convergence of the reason of man towards the UDseen realities of truth, it is certain that all thoughtful and purer minds were gazing one way. As the fulness of time drew on, their eyes were more and more intently fixed on one point in the horizon, e more than they that watch for the morning;' and all the lights of this fallen world were bent towards one central region, in which at last they met and kindled. The one Faith was the focus of all philosophies, in which they were fused, purified, and blended. The eternity, the uncreated substance, ↩