An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine
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Title: An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine
Author: John Henry Newman
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN ESSAY ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE ***
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Transcriber's Notes: Greek words in this text have been transliterated
and placed between +plus signs+. Words in italics in the original are
surrounded by _underscores_. A row of asterisks represents a thought
break.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been left as in the
original. Words with and without accents appear as in the original. In
this text, semi-colons and colons are used indiscriminately. They appear
as in the original. Ellipses match the original.
A few typographical errors have been corrected. A complete list follows
the text.
AN ESSAY
ON THE
DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN
DOCTRINE.
BY
JOHN HENRY CARDINAL NEWMAN.
_SIXTH EDITION_
UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS
NOTRE DAME, INDIANA
TO THE
REV. SAMUEL WILLIAM WAYTE, B.D.
PRESIDENT OF TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD.
MY DEAR PRESIDENT,
Not from any special interest which I anticipate you will take in this
Volume, or any sympathy you will feel in its argument, or intrinsic
fitness of any kind in my associating you and your Fellows with it,--
But, because I have nothing besides it to offer you, in token of my
sense of the gracious compliment which you and they have paid me in
making me once more a Member of a College dear to me from Undergraduate
memories;--
Also, because of the happy coincidence, that whereas its first
publication was contemporaneous with my leaving Oxford, its second
becomes, by virtue of your act, contemporaneous with a recovery of my
position there:--
Therefore it is that, without your leave or your responsibility, I take
the bold step of placing your name in the first pages of what, at my
age, I must consider the last print or reprint on which I shall ever be
engaged.
I am, my dear President,
Most sincerely yours,
JOHN H. NEWMAN.
_February 23, 1878._
PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1878.
The following pages were not in the first instance written to prove the
divinity of the Catholic Religion, though ultimately they furnish a
positive argument in its behalf, but to explain certain difficulties in
its history, felt before now by the author himself, and commonly
insisted on by Protestants in controversy, as serving to blunt the force
of its _primâ facie_ and general claims on our recognition.
However beautiful and promising that Religion is in theory, its history,
we are told, is its best refutation; the inconsistencies, found age
after age in its teaching, being as patent as the simultaneous
contrarieties of religious opinion manifest in the High, Low, and Broad
branches of the Church of England.
In reply to this specious objection, it is maintained in this Essay
that, granting that some large variations of teaching in its long course
of 1800 years exist, nevertheless, these, on examination, will be found
to arise from the nature of the case, and to proceed on a law, and with
a harmony and a definite drift, and with an analogy to Scripture
revelations, which, instead of telling to their disadvantage, actually
constitute an argument in their favour, as witnessing to a
superintending Providence and a great Design in the mode and in the
circumstances of their occurrence.
Perhaps his confidence in the truth and availableness of this view has
sometimes led the author to be careless and over-liberal in his
concessions to Protestants of historical fact.
If this be so anywhere, he begs the reader in such cases to understand
him as speaking hypothetically, and in the sense of an _argumentum ad
hominem_ and _à fortiori_. Nor is such hypothetical reasoning out of
place in a publication which is addressed, not to theologians, but to
those who as yet are not even Catholics, and who, as they read history,
would scoff at any defence of Catholic doctrine which did not go the
length of covering admissions in matters of fact as broad as those which
are here ventured on.
In this new Edition of the Essay various important alterations have been
made in the arrangement of its separate parts, and some, not indeed in
its matter, but in its text.
_February 2, 1878._
ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION.
OCULI MEI DEFECERUNT IN SALUTARE TUUM.
It is now above eleven years since the writer of the following pages, in
one of the early Numbers of the Tracts for the Times, expressed himself
thus:--
"Considering the high gifts, and the strong claims of the
Church of Rome and her dependencies on our admiration,
reverence, love, and gratitude, how could we withstand her, as
we do; how could we refrain from being melted into tenderness,
and rushing into communion with her, but for the words of
Truth, which bid us prefer Itself to the whole world? 'He that
loveth father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me.'
How could we learn to be severe, and execute judgment, but for
the warning of Moses against even a divinely-gifted teacher
who should preach new gods, and the anathema of St. Paul even
against Angels and Apostles who should bring in a new
doctrine?"[ix-1]
He little thought, when he so wrote, that the time would ever come when
he should feel the obstacle, which he spoke of as lying in the way of
communion with the Church of Rome, to be destitute of solid foundation.
The following work is directed towards its removal.
Having, in former publications, called attention to the supposed
difficulty, he considers himself bound to avow his present belief that
it is imaginary.
He has neither the ability to put out of hand a finished composition,
nor the wish to make a powerful and moving representation, on the great
subject of which he treats. His aim will be answered, if he succeeds in
suggesting thoughts, which in God's good time may quietly bear fruit, in
the minds of those to whom that subject is new; and which may carry
forward inquirers, who have already put themselves on the course.
If at times his tone appears positive or peremptory, he hopes this will
be imputed to the scientific character of the Work, which requires a
distinct statement of principles, and of the arguments which recommend
them.
He hopes too he shall be excused for his frequent quotations from
himself; which are necessary in order to show how he stands at present
in relation to various of his former Publications. * * *
LITTLEMORE,
_October 6, 1845_.
POSTSCRIPT.
Since the above was written, the Author has joined the Catholic Church.
It was his intention and wish to have carried his Volume through the
Press before deciding finally on this step. But when he had got some
way in the printing, he recognized in himself a conviction of the truth
of the conclusion to which the discussion leads, so clear as to
supersede further deliberation. Shortly afterwards circumstances gave
him the opportunity of acting upon it, and he felt that he had no
warrant for refusing to do so.
His first act on his conversion was to offer his Work for revision to
the proper authorities; but the offer was declined on the ground that it
was written and partly printed before he was a Catholic, and that it
would come before the reader in a more persuasive form, if he read it as
the author wrote it.
It is scarcely necessary to add that he now submits every part of the
book to the judgment of the Church, with whose doctrine, on the subjects
of which he treats, he wishes all his thoughts to be coincident.
FOOTNOTES:
[ix-1] Records of the Church, xxiv. p. 7.
CONTENTS.
PART I.
DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENTS VIEWED IN THEMSELVES.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 3
CHAPTER I.
The Development of Ideas 33
Section 1. The Process of Development in Ideas 33
Section 2. The Kinds of Development in Ideas 41
CHAPTER II.
The Antecedent Argument in behalf of Developments in Christian
Doctrine 55
Section 1. Developments to be expected 55
Section 2. An infallible Developing Authority to be expected 75
Section 3. The existing Developments of Doctrine the probable
Fulfilment of that Expectation 92
CHAPTER III.
The Historical Argument in behalf of the existing Developments 99
Section 1. Method of Proof 99
Section 2. State of the Evidence 110
CHAPTER IV.
Instances in Illustration 122
Section 1. Instances cursorily noticed 123
§ 1. Canon of the New Testament 123
§ 2. Original Sin 126
§ 3. Infant Baptism 127
§ 4. Communion in one kind 129
§ 5. The Homoüsion 133
Section 2. Our Lord's Incarnation, and the dignity of His
Mother and of all Saints 135
Section 3. Papal Supremacy 148
PART II.
DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENTS VIEWED RELATIVELY TO DOCTRINAL CORRUPTIONS.
CHAPTER V.
Genuine Developments contrasted with Corruptions 169
Section 1. First Note of a genuine Development of an Idea:
Preservation of its Type 171
Section 2. Second Note: Continuity of its Principles 178
Section 3. Third Note: Its Power of Assimilation 185
Section 4. Fourth Note: Its Logical Sequence 189
Section 5. Fifth Note: Anticipation of its Future 195
Section 6. Sixth Note: Conservative Action upon its Past 199
Section 7. Seventh Note: Its Chronic Vigour 203
CHAPTER VI.
Application of the First Note of a true Development to the
Existing Developments of Christian Doctrine: Preservation
of its Type 207
Section 1. The Church of the First Centuries 208
Section 2. The Church of the Fourth Century 248
Section 3. The Church of the Fifth and Sixth Centuries 273
CHAPTER VII.
Application of the Second: Continuity of its Principles 323
§ 1. Principles of Christianity 323
§ 2. Supremacy of Faith 326
§ 3. Theology 336
§ 4. Scripture and its Mystical Interpretation 338
§ 5. Dogma 346
§ 6. Additional Remarks 353
CHAPTER VIII.
Application of the Third: its Assimilative Power 355
§ 1. The Assimilating Power of Dogmatic Truth 357
§ 2. The Assimilating Power of Sacramental Grace 368
CHAPTER IX.
Application of the Fourth: its Logical Sequence 383
§ 1. Pardons 384
§ 2. Penances 385
§ 3. Satisfactions 386
§ 4. Purgatory 388
§ 5. Meritorious Works 393
§ 6. The Monastic Rule 395
CHAPTER X.
Application of the Fifth: Anticipation of its Future 400
§ 1. Resurrection and Relics 401
§ 2. The Virgin Life 407
§ 3. Cultus of Saints and Angels 410
§ 4. Office of the Blessed Virgin 415
CHAPTER XI.
Application of the Sixth: Conservative Action on its Past 419
Section 1. Instances cursorily noticed 420
Section 2. Devotion to the Blessed Virgin 425
CHAPTER XII.
Application of the Seventh: its Chronic Vigour 437
CONCLUSION 445
PART I.
DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENTS VIEWED IN THEMSELVES.
INTRODUCTION.
Christianity has been long enough in the world to justify us in dealing
with it as a fact in the world's history. Its genius and character, its
doctrines, precepts, and objects cannot be treated as matters of private
opinion or deduction, unless we may reasonably so regard the Spartan
institutions or the religion of Mahomet. It may indeed legitimately be
made the subject-matter of theories; what is its moral and political
excellence, what its due location in the range of ideas or of facts
which we possess, whether it be divine or human, whether original or
eclectic, or both at once, how far favourable to civilization or to
literature, whether a religion for all ages or for a particular state of
society, these are questions upon the fact, or professed solutions of
the fact, and belong to the province of opinion; but to a fact do they
relate, on an admitted fact do they turn, which must be ascertained as
other facts, and surely has on the whole been so ascertained, unless the
testimony of so many centuries is to go for nothing. Christianity is no
theory of the study or the cloister. It has long since passed beyond the
letter of documents and the reasonings of individual minds, and has
become public property. Its "sound has gone out into all lands," and its
"words unto the ends of the world." It has from the first had an
objective existence, and has thrown itself upon the great concourse of
men. Its home is in the world; and to know what it is, we must seek it
in the world, and hear the world's witness of it.
2.
The hypothesis, indeed, has met with wide reception in these latter
times, that Christianity does not fall within the province of
history,--that it is to each man what each man thinks it to be, and
nothing else; and thus in fact is a mere name for a cluster or family of
rival religions all together, religions at variance one with another,
and claiming the same appellation, not because there can be assigned any
one and the same doctrine as the common foundation of all, but because
certain points of agreement may be found here and there of some sort or
other, by which each in its turn is connected with one or other of the
rest. Or again, it has been maintained, or implied, that all existing
denominations of Christianity are wrong, none representing it as taught
by Christ and His Apostles; that the original religion has gradually
decayed or become hopelessly corrupt; nay that it died out of the world
at its birth, and was forthwith succeeded by a counterfeit or
counterfeits which assumed its name, though they inherited at best but
some fragments of its teaching; or rather that it cannot even be said
either to have decayed or to have died, because historically it has no
substance of its own, but from the first and onwards it has, on the
stage of the world, been nothing more than a mere assemblage of
doctrines and practices derived from without, from Oriental, Platonic,
Polytheistic sources, from Buddhism, Essenism, Manicheeism; or that,
allowing true Christianity still to exist, it has but a hidden and
isolated life, in the hearts of the elect, or again as a literature or
philosophy, not certified in any way, much less guaranteed, to come from
above, but one out of the various separate informations about the
Supreme Being and human duty, with which an unknown Providence had
furnished us, whether in nature or in the world.
3.
All such views of Christianity imply that there is no sufficient body of
historical proof to interfere with, or at least to prevail against, any
number whatever of free and independent hypotheses concerning it. But
this surely is not self-evident, and has itself to be proved. Till
positive reasons grounded on facts are adduced to the contrary, the most
natural hypotheses, the most agreeable to our mode of proceeding in
parallel cases, and that which takes precedence of all others, is to
consider that the society of Christians, which the Apostles left on
earth, were of that religion to which the Apostles had converted them;
that the external continuity of name, profession, and communion, argues
a real continuity of doctrine; that, as Christianity began by
manifesting itself as of a certain shape and bearing to all mankind,
therefore it went on so to manifest itself; and that the more,
considering that prophecy had already determined that it was to be a
power visible in the world and sovereign over it, characters which are
accurately fulfilled in that historical Christianity to which we
commonly give the name. It is not a violent assumption, then, but rather
mere abstinence from the wanton admission of a principle which would
necessarily lead to the most vexatious and preposterous scepticism, to
take it for granted, before proof to the contrary, that the Christianity
of the second, fourth, seventh, twelfth, sixteenth, and intermediate
centuries is in its substance the very religion which Christ and His
Apostles taught in the first, whatever may be the modifications for good
or for evil which lapse of years, or the vicissitudes of human affairs,
have impressed upon it.
Of course I do not deny the abstract possibility of extreme changes.
The substitution is certainly, in idea, supposable of a counterfeit
Christianity,--superseding the original, by means of the adroit
innovations of seasons, places, and persons, till, according to the
familiar illustration, the "blade" and the "handle" are alternately
renewed, and identity is lost without the loss of continuity. It is
possible; but it must not be assumed. The _onus probandi_ is with those
who assert what it is unnatural to expect; to be just able to doubt is
no warrant for disbelieving.
4.
Accordingly, some writers have gone on to give reasons from history for
their refusing to appeal to history. They aver that, when they come to
look into the documents and literature of Christianity in times past,
they find its doctrines so variously represented, and so inconsistently
maintained by its professors, that, however natural it be _à priori_, it
is useless, in fact, to seek in history the matter of that Revelation
which has been vouchsafed to mankind; that they cannot be historical
Christians if they would. They say, in the words of Chillingworth,
"There are popes against popes, councils against councils, some fathers
against others, the same fathers against themselves, a consent of
fathers of one age against a consent of fathers of another age, the
Church of one age against the Church of another age:"--Hence they are
forced, whether they will or not, to fall back upon the Bible as the
sole source of Revelation, and upon their own personal private judgment
as the sole expounder of its doctrine. This is a fair argument, if it
can be maintained, and it brings me at once to the subject of this
Essay. Not that it enters into my purpose to convict of misstatement, as
might be done, each separate clause of this sweeping accusation of a
smart but superficial writer; but neither on the other hand do I mean
to deny everything that he says to the disadvantage of historical
Christianity. On the contrary, I shall admit that there are in fact
certain apparent variations in its teaching, which have to be explained;
thus I shall begin, but then I shall attempt to explain them to the
exculpation of that teaching in point of unity, directness, and
consistency.
5.
Meanwhile, before setting about this work, I will address one remark to
Chillingworth and his friends:--Let them consider, that if they can
criticize history, the facts of history certainly can retort upon them.
It might, I grant, be clearer on this great subject than it is. This is
no great concession. History is not a creed or a catechism, it gives
lessons rather than rules; still no one can mistake its general teaching
in this matter, whether he accept it or stumble at it. Bold outlines and
broad masses of colour rise out of the records of the past. They may be
dim, they may be incomplete; but they are definite. And this one thing
at least is certain; whatever history teaches, whatever it omits,
whatever it exaggerates or extenuates, whatever it says and unsays, at
least the Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there
were a safe truth, it is this.
And Protestantism has ever felt it so. I do not mean that every writer
on the Protestant side has felt it; for it was the fashion at first, at
least as a rhetorical argument against Rome, to appeal to past ages, or
to some of them; but Protestantism, as a whole, feels it, and has felt
it. This is shown in the determination already referred to of dispensing
with historical Christianity altogether, and of forming a Christianity
from the Bible alone: men never would have put it aside, unless they had
despaired of it. It is shown by the long neglect of ecclesiastical
history in England, which prevails even in the English Church. Our
popular religion scarcely recognizes the fact of the twelve long ages
which lie between the Councils of Nicæa and Trent, except as affording
one or two passages to illustrate its wild interpretations of certain
prophesies of St. Paul and St. John. It is melancholy to say it, but the
chief, perhaps the only English writer who has any claim to be
considered an ecclesiastical historian, is the unbeliever Gibbon. To be
deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.
6.
And this utter incongruity between Protestantism and historical
Christianity is a plain fact, whether the latter be regarded in its
earlier or in its later centuries. Protestants can as little bear its
Ante-nicene as its Post-tridentine period. I have elsewhere observed on
this circumstance: "So much must the Protestant grant that, if such a
system of doctrine as he would now introduce ever existed in early
times, it has been clean swept away as if by a deluge, suddenly,
silently, and without memorial; by a deluge coming in a night, and
utterly soaking, rotting, heaving up, and hurrying off every vestige of
what it found in the Church, before cock-crowing: so that 'when they
rose in the morning' her true seed 'were all dead corpses'--Nay dead and
buried--and without gravestone. 'The waters went over them; there was
not one of them left; they sunk like lead in the mighty waters.' Strange
antitype, indeed, to the early fortunes of Israel!--then the enemy was
drowned, and 'Israel saw them dead upon the sea-shore.' But now, it
would seem, water proceeded as a flood 'out of the serpent's mouth,' and
covered all the witnesses, so that not even their dead bodies lay in the
streets of the great city.' Let him take which of his doctrines he will,
his peculiar view of self-righteousness, of formality, of superstition;
his notion of faith, or of spirituality in religious worship; his denial
of the virtue of the sacraments, or of the ministerial commission, or
of the visible Church; or his doctrine of the divine efficacy of the
Scriptures as the one appointed instrument of religious teaching; and
let him consider how far Antiquity, as it has come down to us, will
countenance him in it. No; he must allow that the alleged deluge has
done its work; yes, and has in turn disappeared itself; it has been
swallowed up by the earth, mercilessly as itself was merciless."[9:1]
That Protestantism, then, is not the Christianity of history, it is easy
to determine, but to retort is a poor reply in controversy to a question
of fact, and whatever be the violence or the exaggeration of writers
like Chillingworth, if they have raised a real difficulty, it may claim
a real answer, and we must determine whether on the one hand
Christianity is still to represent to us a definite teaching from above,
or whether on the other its utterances have been from time to time so
strangely at variance, that we are necessarily thrown back on our own
judgment individually to determine, what the revelation of God is, or
rather if in fact there is, or has been, any revelation at all.
7.
Here then I concede to the opponents of historical Christianity, that
there are to be found, during the 1800 years through which it has
lasted, certain apparent inconsistencies and alterations in its doctrine
and its worship, such as irresistibly attract the attention of all who
inquire into it. They are not sufficient to interfere with the general
character and course of the religion, but they raise the question how
they came about, and what they mean, and have in consequence supplied
matter for several hypotheses.
Of these one is to the effect that Christianity has even changed from
the first and ever accommodates itself to the circumstances of times and
seasons; but it is difficult to understand how such a view is compatible
with the special idea of revealed truth, and in fact its advocates more
or less abandon, or tend to abandon the supernatural claims of
Christianity; so it need not detain us here.
A second and more plausible hypothesis is that of the Anglican divines,
who reconcile and bring into shape the exuberant phenomena under
consideration, by cutting off and casting away as corruptions all
usages, ways, opinions, and tenets, which have not the sanction of
primitive times. They maintain that history first presents to us a pure
Christianity in East and West, and then a corrupt; and then of course
their duty is to draw the line between what is corrupt and what is pure,
and to determine the dates at which the various changes from good to bad
were introduced. Such a principle of demarcation, available for the
purpose, they consider they have found in the _dictum_ of Vincent of
Lerins, that revealed and Apostolic doctrine is "quod semper, quod
ubique, quod ab omnibus," a principle infallibly separating, on the
whole field of history, authoritative doctrine from opinion, rejecting
what is faulty, and combining and forming a theology. That "Christianity
is what has been held always, everywhere, and by all," certainly
promises a solution of the perplexities, an interpretation of the
meaning, of history. What can be more natural than that divines and
bodies of men should speak, sometimes from themselves, sometimes from
tradition? what more natural than that individually they should say many
things on impulse, or under excitement, or as conjectures, or in
ignorance? what more certain than that they must all have been
instructed and catechized in the Creed of the Apostles? what more
evident than that what was their own would in its degree be peculiar,
and differ from what was similarly private and personal in their
brethren? what more conclusive than that the doctrine that was common to
all at once was not really their own, but public property in which they
had a joint interest, and was proved by the concurrence of so many
witnesses to have come from an Apostolical source? Here, then, we have a
short and easy method for bringing the various informations of
ecclesiastical history under that antecedent probability in its favour,
which nothing but its actual variations would lead us to neglect. Here
we have a precise and satisfactory reason why we should make much of the
earlier centuries, yet pay no regard to the later, why we should admit
some doctrines and not others, why we refuse the Creed of Pius IV. and
accept the Thirty-nine Articles.
8.
Such is the rule of historical interpretation which has been professed
in the English school of divines; and it contains a majestic truth, and
offers an intelligible principle, and wears a reasonable air. It is
congenial, or, as it may be said, native to the Anglican mind, which
takes up a middle position, neither discarding the Fathers nor
acknowledging the Pope. It lays down a simple rule by which to measure
the value of every historical fact, as it comes, and thereby it provides
a bulwark against Rome, while it opens an assault upon Protestantism.
Such is its promise; but its difficulty lies in applying it in
particular cases. The rule is more serviceable in determining what is
not, than what is Christianity; it is irresistible against
Protestantism, and in one sense indeed it is irresistible against Rome
also, but in the same sense it is irresistible against England. It
strikes at Rome through England. It admits of being interpreted in one
of two ways: if it be narrowed for the purpose of disproving the
catholicity of the Creed of Pope Pius, it becomes also an objection to
the Athanasian; and if it be relaxed to admit the doctrines retained by
the English Church, it no longer excludes certain doctrines of Rome
which that Church denies. It cannot at once condemn St. Thomas and St.
Bernard, and defend St. Athanasius and St. Gregory Nazianzen.
This general defect in its serviceableness has been heretofore felt by
those who appealed to it. It was said by one writer; "The Rule of
Vincent is not of a mathematical or demonstrative character, but moral,
and requires practical judgment and good sense to apply it. For
instance, what is meant by being 'taught _always_'? does it mean in
every century, or every year, or every month? Does '_everywhere_' mean
in every country, or in every diocese? and does 'the _Consent of
Fathers_' require us to produce the direct testimony of every one of
them? How many Fathers, how many places, how many instances, constitute
a fulfilment of the test proposed? It is, then, from the nature of the
case, a condition which never can be satisfied as fully as it might have
been. It admits of various and unequal application in various instances;
and what degree of application is enough, must be decided by the same
principles which guide us in the conduct of life, which determine us in
politics, or trade, or war, which lead us to accept Revelation at all,
(for which we have but probability to show at most,) nay, to believe in
the existence of an intelligent Creator."[12:1]
9.
So much was allowed by this writer; but then he added:--
"This character, indeed, of Vincent's Canon, will but recommend it to
the disciples of the school of Butler, from its agreement with the
analogy of nature; but it affords a ready loophole for such as do not
wish to be persuaded, of which both Protestants and Romanists are not
slow to avail themselves."
This surely is the language of disputants who are more intent on
assailing others than on defending themselves; as if similar loopholes
were not necessary for Anglican theology.
He elsewhere says: "What there is not the shadow of a reason for saying
that the Fathers held, what has not the faintest pretensions of being a
Catholic truth, is this, that St. Peter or his successors were and are
universal Bishops, that they have the whole of Christendom for their one
diocese in a way in which other Apostles and Bishops had and have
not."[13:1] Most true, if, in order that a doctrine be considered
Catholic, it must be formally stated by the Fathers generally from the
very first; but, on the same understanding, the doctrine also of the
apostolical succession in the episcopal order "has not the faintest
pretensions of being a Catholic truth."
Nor was this writer without a feeling of the special difficulty of his
school; and he attempted to meet it by denying it. He wished to maintain
that the sacred doctrines admitted by the Church of England into her
Articles were taught in primitive times with a distinctness which no one
could fancy to attach to the characteristic tenets of Rome.
"We confidently affirm," he said in another publication, "that there is
not an article in the Athanasian Creed concerning the Incarnation which
is not anticipated in the controversy with the Gnostics. There is no
question which the Apollinarian or the Nestorian heresy raised, which
may not be decided in the words of Ignatius, Irenæus and
Tertullian."[13:2]
10.
This may be considered as true. It may be true also, or at least shall
here be granted as true, that there is also a _consensus_ in the
Ante-nicene Church for the doctrines of our Lord's Consubstantiality and
Coeternity with the Almighty Father. Let us allow that the whole circle
of doctrines, of which our Lord is the subject, was consistently and
uniformly confessed by the Primitive Church, though not ratified
formally in Council. But it surely is otherwise with the Catholic
doctrine of the Trinity. I do not see in what sense it can be said that
there is a _consensus_ of primitive divines in its favour, which will
not avail also for certain doctrines of the Roman Church which will
presently come into mention. And this is a point which the writer of the
above passages ought to have more distinctly brought before his mind and
more carefully weighed; but he seems to have fancied that Bishop Bull
proved the primitiveness of the Catholic doctrine concerning the Holy
Trinity as well as that concerning our Lord.
Now it should be clearly understood what it is which must be shown by
those who would prove it. Of course the doctrine of our Lord's divinity
itself partly implies and partly recommends the doctrine of the Trinity;
but implication and suggestion belong to another class of arguments
which has not yet come into consideration. Moreover the statements of a
particular father or doctor may certainly be of a most important
character; but one divine is not equal to a Catena. We must have a whole
doctrine stated by a whole Church. The Catholic Truth in question is
made up of a number of separate propositions, each of which, if
maintained to the exclusion of the rest, is a heresy. In order then to
prove that all the Ante-nicene writers taught the dogma of the Holy
Trinity, it is not enough to prove that each still has gone far enough
to be only a heretic--not enough to prove that one has held that the
Son is God, (for so did the Sabellian, so did the Macedonian), and
another that the Father is not the Son, (for so did the Arian), and
another that the Son is equal to the Father, (for so did the Tritheist),
and another that there is but One God, (for so did the Unitarian),--not
enough that many attached in some sense a Threefold Power to the idea of
the Almighty, (for so did almost all the heresies that ever existed, and
could not but do so, if they accepted the New Testament at all); but we
must show that all these statements at once, and others too, are laid
down by as many separate testimonies as may fairly be taken to
constitute a "_consensus_ of doctors." It is true indeed that the
subsequent profession of the doctrine in the Universal Church creates a
presumption that it was held even before it was professed; and it is
fair to interpret the early Fathers by the later. This is true, and
admits of application to certain other doctrines besides that of the
Blessed Trinity in Unity; but there is as little room for such
antecedent probabilities as for the argument from suggestions and
intimations in the precise and imperative _Quod semper, quod ubique,
quod ab omnibus_, as it is commonly understood by English divines, and
is by them used against the later Church and the see of Rome. What we
have a right to ask, if we are bound to act upon Vincent's rule in
regard to the Trinitarian dogma, is a sufficient number of Ante-nicene
statements, each distinctly anticipating the Athanasian Creed.
11.
Now let us look at the leading facts of the case, in appealing to which
I must not be supposed to be ascribing any heresy to the holy men whose
words have not always been sufficiently full or exact to preclude the
imputation. First, the Creeds of that early day make no mention in
their letter of the Catholic doctrine at all. They make mention indeed
of a Three; but that there is any mystery in the doctrine, that the
Three are One, that They are coequal, coeternal, all increate, all
omnipotent, all incomprehensible, is not stated, and never could be
gathered from them. Of course we believe that they imply it, or rather
intend it. God forbid we should do otherwise! But nothing in the mere
letter of those documents leads to that belief. To give a deeper meaning
to their letter, we must interpret them by the times which came after.
Again, there is one and one only great doctrinal Council in Ante-nicene
times. It was held at Antioch, in the middle of the third century, on
occasion of the incipient innovations of the Syrian heretical school.
Now the Fathers there assembled, for whatever reason, condemned, or at
least withdrew, when it came into the dispute, the word "Homoüsion,"
which was afterwards received at Nicæa as the special symbol of
Catholicism against Arius.[16:1]
Again, the six great Bishops and Saints of the Ante-nicene Church were
St. Irenæus, St. Hippolytus, St. Cyprian, St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, St.
Dionysius of Alexandria, and St. Methodius. Of these, St. Dionysius is
accused by St. Basil of having sown the first seeds of Arianism;[16:2]
and St. Gregory is allowed by the same learned Father to have used
language concerning our Lord, which he only defends on the plea of an
economical object in the writer.[16:3] St. Hippolytus speaks as if he
were ignorant of our Lord's Eternal Sonship;[17:1] St. Methodius speaks
incorrectly at least upon the Incarnation;[17:2] and St. Cyprian does
not treat of theology at all. Such is the incompleteness of the extant
teaching of these true saints, and, in their day, faithful witnesses of
the Eternal Son.
Again, Athenagoras, St. Clement, Tertullian, and the two SS. Dionysii
would appear to be the only writers whose language is at any time exact
and systematic enough to remind us of the Athanasian Creed. If we limit
our view of the teaching of the Fathers by what they expressly state,
St. Ignatius may be considered as a Patripassian, St. Justin arianizes,
and St. Hippolytus is a Photinian.
Again, there are three great theological authors of the Ante-nicene
centuries, Tertullian, Origen, and, we may add, Eusebius, though he
lived some way into the fourth. Tertullian is heterodox on the doctrine
of our Lord's divinity,[17:3] and, indeed, ultimately fell altogether
into heresy or schism; Origen is, at the very least, suspected, and must
be defended and explained rather than cited as a witness of orthodoxy;
and Eusebius was a Semi-Arian.
12.
Moreover, it may be questioned whether any Ante-nicene father
distinctly affirms either the numerical Unity or the Coequality of the
Three Persons; except perhaps the heterodox Tertullian, and that chiefly
in a work written after he had become a Montanist:[18:1] yet to satisfy
the Anti-roman use of _Quod semper, &c._, surely we ought not to be left
for these great articles of doctrine to the testimony of a later age.
Further, Bishop Bull allows that "nearly all the ancient Catholics who
preceded Arius have the appearance of being ignorant of the invisible
and incomprehensible (_immensam_) nature of the Son of God;"[18:2] an
article expressly taught in the Athanasian Creed under the sanction of
its anathema.
It must be asked, moreover, how much direct and literal testimony the
Ante-nicene Fathers give, one by one, to the divinity of the Holy
Spirit? This alone shall be observed, that St. Basil, in the fourth
century, finding that, if he distinctly called the Third Person in the
Blessed Trinity by the Name of God, he should be put out of the Church
by the Arians, pointedly refrained from doing so on an occasion on which
his enemies were on the watch; and that, when some Catholics found fault
with him, St. Athanasius took his part.[18:3] Could this possibly have
been the conduct of any true Christian, not to say Saint, of a later
age? that is, whatever be the true account of it, does it not suggest to
us that the testimony of those early times lies very unfavourably for
the application of the rule of Vincentius?
13.
Let it not be for a moment supposed that I impugn the orthodoxy of the
early divines, or the cogency of their testimony among _fair_ inquirers;
but I am trying them by that _unfair_ interpretation of Vincentius,
which is necessary in order to make him available against the Church of
Rome. And now, as to the positive evidence which those Fathers offer in
behalf of the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity, it has been drawn out by
Dr. Burton and seems to fall under two heads. One is the general
_ascription of glory_ to the Three Persons together, both by fathers and
churches, and that on continuous tradition and from the earliest times.
Under the second fall certain _distinct statements_ of _particular_
fathers; thus we find the word "Trinity" used by St. Theophilus, St.
Clement, St. Hippolytus, Tertullian, St. Cyprian, Origen, St. Methodius;
and the Divine _Circumincessio_, the most distinctive portion of the
Catholic doctrine, and the unity of power, or again, of substance, are
declared with more or less distinctness by Athenagoras, St. Irenæus, St.
Clement, Tertullian, St. Hippolytus, Origen, and the two SS. Dionysii.
This is pretty much the whole of the evidence.
14.
Perhaps it will be said we ought to take the Ante-nicene Fathers as a
whole, and interpret one of them by another. This is to assume that they
are all of one school, which of course they are, but which in
controversy is a point to be proved; but it is even doubtful whether, on
the whole, such a procedure would strengthen the argument. For instance,
as to the second head of the positive evidence noted by Dr. Burton,
Tertullian is the most formal and elaborate of these Fathers in his
statements of the Catholic doctrine. "It would hardly be possible," says
Dr. Burton, after quoting a passage, "for Athanasius himself, or the
compiler of the Athanasian Creed, to have delivered the doctrine of the
Trinity in stronger terms than these."[19:1] Yet Tertullian must be
considered heterodox on the doctrine of our Lord's eternal
generation.[20:1] If then we are to argue from his instance to that of
the other Fathers, we shall be driven to the conclusion that even the
most exact statements are worth nothing more than their letter, are a
warrant for nothing beyond themselves, and are consistent with
heterodoxy where they do not expressly protest against it.
And again, as to the argument derivable from the Doxologies, it must not
be forgotten that one of the passages in St. Justin Martyr includes the
worship of the Angels. "We worship and adore," he says, "Him, and the
Son who came from Him and taught us these things, and the host of those
other good Angels, who follow and are like Him, and the Prophetic
Spirit."[20:2] A Unitarian might argue from this passage that the glory
and worship which the early Church ascribed to our Lord was not more
definite than that which St. Justin was ready to concede to creatures.
15.
Thus much on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Let us proceed to another
example. There are two doctrines which are generally associated with the
name of a Father of the fourth and fifth centuries, and which can show
little definite, or at least but partial, testimony in their behalf
before his time,--Purgatory and Original Sin. The dictum of Vincent
admits both or excludes both, according as it is or is not rigidly
taken; but, if used by Aristotle's "Lesbian Rule," then, as Anglicans
would wish, it can be made to admit Original Sin and exclude Purgatory.
On the one hand, some notion of suffering, or disadvantage, or
punishment after this life, in the case of the faithful departed, or
other vague forms of the doctrine of Purgatory, has in its favour almost
a _consensus_ of the four first ages of the Church, though some Fathers
state it with far greater openness and decision than others. It is, as
far as words go, the confession of St. Clement of Alexandria,
Tertullian, St. Perpetua, St. Cyprian, Origen, Lactantius, St. Hilary,
St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Ambrose, St. Basil, St. Gregory of
Nazianzus, and of Nyssa, St. Chrysostom, St. Jerome, St. Paulinus, and
St. Augustine. And so, on the other hand, there is a certain agreement
of Fathers from the first that mankind has derived some disadvantage
from the sin of Adam.
16.
Next, when we consider the two doctrines more distinctly,--the doctrine
that between death and judgment there is a time or state of punishment;
and the doctrine that all men, naturally propagated from fallen Adam,
are in consequence born destitute of original righteousness,--we find,
on the one hand, several, such as Tertullian, St. Perpetua, St. Cyril,
St. Hilary, St. Jerome, St. Gregory Nyssen, as far as their words go,
definitely declaring a doctrine of Purgatory: whereas no one will say
that there is a testimony of the Fathers, equally strong, for the
doctrine of Original Sin, though it is difficult here to make any
definite statement about their teaching without going into a discussion
of the subject.
On the subject of Purgatory there were, to speak generally, two schools
of opinion; the Greek, which contemplated a trial of fire at the last
day through which all were to pass; and the African, resembling more
nearly the present doctrine of the Roman Church. And so there were two
principal views of Original Sin, the Greek and the African or Latin. Of
the Greek, the judgment of Hooker is well known, though it must not be
taken in the letter: "The heresy of freewill was a millstone about those
Pelagians' neck; shall we therefore give sentence of death inevitable
against all those Fathers in the Greek Church which, being mispersuaded,
died in the error of freewill?"[22:1] Bishop Taylor, arguing for an
opposite doctrine, bears a like testimony: "Original Sin," he says, "as
it is at this day commonly explicated, was not the doctrine of the
primitive Church; but when Pelagius had puddled the stream, St. Austin
was so angry that he stamped and disturbed it more. And truly . . I do
not think that the gentlemen that urged against me St. Austin's opinion
do well consider that I profess myself to follow those Fathers who were
before him; and whom St. Austin did forsake, as I do him, in the
question."[22:2] The same is asserted or allowed by Jansenius, Petavius,
and Walch,[22:3] men of such different schools that we may surely take
their agreement as a proof of the fact. A late writer, after going
through the testimonies of the Fathers one by one, comes to the
conclusion, first, that "the Greek Church in no point favoured
Augustine, except in teaching that from Adam's sin came death, and,
(after the time of Methodius,) an extraordinary and unnatural sensuality
also;" next, that "the Latin Church affirmed, in addition, that a
corrupt and contaminated soul, and that, by generation, was carried on
to his posterity;"[22:4] and, lastly, that neither Greeks nor Latins
held the doctrine of imputation. It may be observed, in addition, that,
in spite of the forcible teaching of St. Paul on the subject, the
doctrine of Original Sin appears neither in the Apostles' nor the Nicene
Creed.
17.
One additional specimen shall be given as a sample of many others:--I
betake myself to one of our altars to receive the Blessed Eucharist; I
have no doubt whatever on my mind about the Gift which that Sacrament
contains; I confess to myself my belief, and I go through the steps on
which it is assured to me. "The Presence of Christ is here, for It
follows upon Consecration; and Consecration is the prerogative of
Priests; and Priests are made by Ordination; and Ordination comes in
direct line from the Apostles. Whatever be our other misfortunes, every
link in our chain is safe; we have the Apostolic Succession, we have a
right form of consecration: therefore we are blessed with the great
Gift." Here the question rises in me, "Who told you about that Gift?" I
answer, "I have learned it from the Fathers: I believe the Real Presence
because they bear witness to it. St. Ignatius calls it 'the medicine of
immortality:' St. Irenæus says that 'our flesh becomes incorrupt, and
partakes of life, and has the hope of the resurrection,' as 'being
nourished from the Lord's Body and Blood;' that the Eucharist 'is made
up of two things, an earthly and an heavenly:'[23:1] perhaps Origen, and
perhaps Magnes, after him, say that It is not a type of our Lord's Body,
but His Body: and St. Cyprian uses language as fearful as can be spoken,
of those who profane it. I cast my lot with them, I believe as they."
Thus I reply, and then the thought comes upon me a second time, "And do
not the same ancient Fathers bear witness to another doctrine, which
you disown? Are you not as a hypocrite, listening to them when you will,
and deaf when you will not? How are you casting your lot with the
Saints, when you go but half-way with them? For of whether of the two do
they speak the more frequently, of the Real Presence in the Eucharist,
or of the Pope's supremacy? You accept the lesser evidence, you reject
the greater."
18.
In truth, scanty as the Ante-nicene notices may be of the Papal
Supremacy, they are both more numerous and more definite than the
adducible testimonies in favour of the Real Presence. The testimonies to
the latter are confined to a few passages such as those just quoted. On
the other hand, of a passage in St. Justin, Bishop Kaye remarks, "Le
Nourry infers that Justin maintained the doctrine of Transubstantiation;
it might in my opinion be more plausibly urged in favour of
Consubstantiation, since Justin calls the consecrated elements Bread and
Wine, though not common bread and wine.[24:1] . . . We may therefore
conclude that, when he calls them the Body and Blood of Christ, he
speaks figuratively." "Clement," observes the same author, "says that
the Scripture calls wine a mystic _symbol_ of the holy blood. . . .
Clement gives various interpretations of Christ's expressions in John
vi. respecting His flesh and blood; but in no instance does he interpret
them literally. . . . His notion seems to have been that, by partaking
of the bread and wine in the Eucharist, the soul of the believer is
united to the Spirit, and that by this union the principle of
immortality is imparted to the flesh."[24:2] "It has been suggested by
some," says Waterland, "that Tertullian understood John vi. merely of
faith, or doctrine, or spiritual actions; and it is strenuously denied
by others." After quoting the passage, he adds, "All that one can
justly gather from this confused passage is that Tertullian interpreted
the bread of life in John vi. of the Word, which he sometimes makes to
be vocal, and sometimes substantial, blending the ideas in a very
perplexed manner; so that he is no clear authority for construing John
vi. of doctrines, &c. All that is certain is that he supposes the Word
made flesh, the Word incarnate to be the heavenly bread spoken of
in that chapter."[25:1] "Origen's general observation relating to
that chapter is, that it must not be literally, but figuratively
understood."[25:2] Again, "It is plain enough that Eusebius followed
Origen in this matter, and that both of them favoured the same mystical
or allegorical construction; whether constantly and uniformly I need not
say."[25:3] I will but add the incidental testimony afforded on a late
occasion:--how far the Anglican doctrine of the Eucharist depends on the
times before the Nicene Council, how far on the times after it, may be
gathered from the circumstance that, when a memorable Sermon[25:4] was
published on the subject, out of about one hundred and forty passages
from the Fathers appended in the notes, not in formal proof, but in
general illustration, only fifteen were taken from Ante-nicene writers.
With such evidence, the Ante-nicene testimonies which may be cited in
behalf of the authority of the Holy See, need not fear a comparison.
Faint they may be one by one, but at least we may count seventeen of
them, and they are various, and are drawn from many times and countries,
and thereby serve to illustrate each other, and form a body of proof.
Whatever objections may be made to this or that particular fact, and I
do not think any valid ones can be raised, still, on the whole, I
consider that a cumulative argument rises from them in favour of the
ecumenical and the doctrinal authority of Rome, stronger than any
argument which can be drawn from the same period for the doctrine of the
Real Presence. I shall have occasion to enumerate them in the fourth
chapter of this Essay.
19.
If it be said that the Real Presence appears, by the Liturgies of the
fourth or fifth century, to have been the doctrine of the earlier, since
those very forms probably existed from the first in Divine worship, this
is doubtless an important truth; but then it is true also that the
writers of the fourth and fifth centuries fearlessly assert, or frankly
allow that the prerogatives of Rome were derived from apostolic times,
and that because it was the See of St. Peter.
Moreover, if the resistance of St. Cyprian and Firmilian to the Church
of Rome, in the question of baptism by heretics, be urged as an argument
against her primitive authority, or the earlier resistance of Polycrates
of Ephesus, let it be considered, first, whether all authority does not
necessarily lead to resistance; next, whether St. Cyprian's own
doctrine, which is in favour of Rome, is not more weighty than his act,
which is against her; thirdly, whether he was not already in error in
the main question under discussion, and Firmilian also; and lastly,
which is the chief point here, whether, in like manner, we may
not object on the other hand against the Real Presence the words
of Tertullian, who explains, "This is my Body," by "a figure of
my Body," and of Origen, who speaks of "our drinking Christ's
Blood not only in the rite of the Sacraments, but also when we
receive His discourses,"[26:1] and says that "that Bread which
God the Word acknowledges as His Body is the Word which nourishes
souls,"[26:2]--passages which admit of a Catholic interpretation when
the Catholic doctrine is once proved, but which _primâ facie_ run
counter to that doctrine.
It does not seem possible, then, to avoid the conclusion that, whatever
be the proper key for harmonizing the records and documents of the early
and later Church, and true as the dictum of Vincentius must be
considered in the abstract, and possible as its application might be in
his own age, when he might almost ask the primitive centuries for their
testimony, it is hardly available now, or effective of any satisfactory
result. The solution it offers is as difficult as the original problem.
20.
Another hypothesis for accounting for a want of accord between the early
and the late aspects of Christianity is that of the _Disciplina Arcani_,
put forward on the assumption that there has been no variation in the
teaching of the Church from first to last. It is maintained that
doctrines which are associated with the later ages of the Church were
really in the Church from the first, but not publicly taught, and that
for various reasons: as, for the sake of reverence, that sacred subjects
might not be profaned by the heathen; and for the sake of catechumens,
that they might not be oppressed or carried away by a sudden
communication of the whole circle of revealed truth. And indeed the fact
of this concealment can hardly be denied, in whatever degree it took the
shape of a definite rule, which might vary with persons and places. That
it existed even as a rule, as regards the Sacraments, seems to be
confessed on all hands. That it existed in other respects, as a
practice, is plain from the nature of the case, and from the writings of
the Apologists. Minucius Felix and Arnobius, in controversy with Pagans,
imply a denial that then the Christians used altars; yet Tertullian
speaks expressly of the _Ara Dei_ in the Church. What can we say, but
that the Apologists deny altars _in the sense_ in which they ridicule
them; or, that they deny that altars _such as_ the Pagan altars were
tolerated by Christians? And, in like manner, Minucius allows that there
were no temples among Christians; yet they are distinctly recognized in
the edicts of the Dioclesian era, and are known to have existed at a
still earlier date. It is the tendency of every dominant system, such as
the Paganism of the Ante-nicene centuries, to force its opponents into
the most hostile and jealous attitude, from the apprehension which they
naturally feel, lest if they acted otherwise, in those points in which
they approximate towards it, they should be misinterpreted and overborne
by its authority. The very fault now found with clergymen of the
Anglican Church, who wish to conform their practices to her rubrics, and
their doctrines to her divines of the seventeenth century, is, that,
whether they mean it or no, whether legitimately or no, still, in matter
of fact, they will be sanctioning and encouraging the religion of Rome,
in which there are similar doctrines and practices, more definite and
more influential; so that, at any rate, it is inexpedient at the moment
to attempt what is sure to be mistaken. That is, they are required to
exercise a _disciplina arcani_; and a similar reserve was inevitable on
the part of the Catholic Church, at a time when priests and altars
and rites all around it were devoted to malignant and incurable
superstitions. It would be wrong indeed to deny, but it was a duty to
withhold, the ceremonial of Christianity; and Apologists might be
sometimes tempted to deny absolutely what at furthest could only be
denied under conditions. An idolatrous Paganism tended to repress
the externals of Christianity, as, at this day, the presence of
Protestantism is said to repress, though for another reason, the
exhibition of the Roman Catholic religion.
On various grounds, then, it is certain that portions of the Church
system were held back in primitive times, and of course this fact goes
some way to account for that apparent variation and growth of doctrine,
which embarrasses us when we would consult history for the true idea of
Christianity; yet it is no key to the whole difficulty, as we find it,
for obvious reasons:--because the variations continue beyond the time
when it is conceivable that the discipline was in force, and because
they manifest themselves on a law, not abruptly, but by a visible growth
which has persevered up to this time without any sign of its coming to
an end.[29:1]
21.
The following Essay is directed towards a solution of the difficulty
which has been stated,--the difficulty, as far as it exists, which lies
in the way of our using in controversy the testimony of our most natural
informant concerning the doctrine and worship of Christianity, viz. the
history of eighteen hundred years. The view on which it is written has
at all times, perhaps, been implicitly adopted by theologians, and, I
believe, has recently been illustrated by several distinguished writers
of the continent, such as De Maistre and Möhler: viz. that the increase
and expansion of the Christian Creed and Ritual, and the variations
which have attended the process in the case of individual writers and
Churches, are the necessary attendants on any philosophy or polity which
takes possession of the intellect and heart, and has had any wide or
extended dominion; that, from the nature of the human mind, time is
necessary for the full comprehension and perfection of great ideas; and
that the highest and most wonderful truths, though communicated to the
world once for all by inspired teachers, could not be comprehended all
at once by the recipients, but, as being received and transmitted by
minds not inspired and through media which were human, have required
only the longer time and deeper thought for their full elucidation. This
may be called the _Theory of Development of Doctrine_; and, before
proceeding to treat of it, one remark may be in place.
It is undoubtedly an hypothesis to account for a difficulty; but such
too are the various explanations given by astronomers from Ptolemy to
Newton of the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies, and it is as
unphilosophical on that account to object to the one as to object to the
other. Nor is it more reasonable to express surprise, that at this time
of day a theory is necessary, granting for argument's sake that the
theory is novel, than to have directed a similar wonder in disparagement
of the theory of gravitation, or the Plutonian theory in geology.
Doubtless, the theory of the Secret and the theory of doctrinal
Developments are expedients, and so is the dictum of Vincentius; so is
the art of grammar or the use of the quadrant; it is an expedient to
enable us to solve what has now become a necessary and an anxious
problem. For three hundred years the documents and the facts of
Christianity have been exposed to a jealous scrutiny; works have been
judged spurious which once were received without a question; facts have
been discarded or modified which were once first principles in argument;
new facts and new principles have been brought to light; philosophical
views and polemical discussions of various tendencies have been
maintained with more or less success. Not only has the relative
situation of controversies and theologies altered, but infidelity itself
is in a different,--I am obliged to say in a more hopeful position,--as
regards Christianity. The facts of Revealed Religion, though in their
substance unaltered, present a less compact and orderly front to the
attacks of its enemies now than formerly, and allow of the introduction
of new inquiries and theories concerning its sources and its rise. The
state of things is not as it was, when an appeal lay to the supposed
works of the Areopagite, or to the primitive Decretals, or to St.
Dionysius's answers to Paul, or to the Coena Domini of St. Cyprian.
The assailants of dogmatic truth have got the start of its adherents of
whatever Creed; philosophy is completing what criticism has begun; and
apprehensions are not unreasonably excited lest we should have a new
world to conquer before we have weapons for the warfare. Already
infidelity has its views and conjectures, on which it arranges the facts
of ecclesiastical history; and it is sure to consider the absence of any
antagonist theory as an evidence of the reality of its own. That the
hypothesis, here to be adopted, accounts not only for the Athanasian
Creed, but for the Creed of Pope Pius, is no fault of those who adopt
it. No one has power over the issues of his principles; we cannot manage
our argument, and have as much of it as we please and no more. An
argument is needed, unless Christianity is to abandon the province of
argument; and those who find fault with the explanation here offered of
its historical phenomena will find it their duty to provide one for
themselves.
And as no special aim at Roman Catholic doctrine need be supposed to
have given a direction to the inquiry, so neither can a reception of
that doctrine be immediately based on its results. It would be the work
of a life to apply the Theory of Developments so carefully to the
writings of the Fathers, and to the history of controversies and
councils, as thereby to vindicate the reasonableness of every decision
of Rome; much less can such an undertaking be imagined by one who, in
the middle of his days, is beginning life again. Thus much, however,
might be gained even from an Essay like the present, an explanation of
so many of the reputed corruptions, doctrinal and practical, of Rome, as
might serve as a fair ground for trusting her in parallel cases where
the investigation had not been pursued.
FOOTNOTES:
[9:1] Church of the Fathers [Hist. Sketches, vol. i. p. 418].
[12:1] Proph. Office [Via Media, vol. i. pp. 55, 56].
[13:1] [Ibid. p. 181.]
[13:2] [British Critic, July, 1836, p. 193. Vid. supr. vol. i. p. 130.]
[16:1] This of course has been disputed, as is the case with almost all
facts which bear upon the decision of controversies. I shall not think
it necessary to notice the possibility or the fact of objections on
questions upon which the world may now be said to be agreed; _e. g._ the
arianizing tone of Eusebius.
[16:2] +schedon tautêsi tês nyn perithylloumenês asebeias, tês kata to
Anomoion legô, outos hestin, hosa ge hêmeis hismen, ho prôtos anthrôpois
ta spermata paraschôn.+ Ep. ix. 2.
[16:3] Bull, Defens. F. N. ii. 12, § 6.
[17:1] "The authors who make the generation temporary, and speak not
expressly of any other, are these following: Justin, Athenagoras,
Theophilus, Tatian, Tertullian, and Hippolytus."--_Waterland_, vol. i.
part 2, p. 104.
[17:2] "Levia sunt," says Maran in his defence, "quæ in Sanctissimam
Trinitatem hic liber peccare dicitur, paulo graviora quæ in mysterium
Incarnationis."--_Div. Jes. Christ._ p. 527. Shortly after, p. 530, "In
tertiâ oratione nonnulla legimus Incarnationem Domini spectantia, quæ
subabsurdè dicta fateor, nego impiè cogitata."
[17:3] Bishop Bull, who is tender towards him, allows, "Ut quod res est
dicam, cum Valentinianis hic et reliquo gnosticorum grege aliquatenus
locutus est Tertullianus; in re ipsâ tamen cum Catholicis omninò
sensit."--_Defens. F. N._ iii. 10, § 15.
[18:1] Adv. Praxeam.
[18:2] Defens. F. N. iv. 3, § 1.
[18:3] Basil, ed. Ben. vol. 3, p. xcvi.
[19:1] Ante-nicene Test, to the Trinity, p. 69.
[20:1] "Quia et Pater Deus est, et judex Deus est, non tamen ideo Pater
et judex semper, quia Deus semper. Nam nec Pater potuit esse ante
Filium, nec judex ante delictum. Fuit autem tempus, cum et delictum et
Filius non fuit, quod judicem, et qui Patrem Dominum faceret."--_Contr.
Herm._ 3.
[20:2] Vid. infra, towards the end of the Essay, ch. x., where more will
be said on the passage.
[22:1] Of Justification, 26.
[22:2] Works, vol. ix. p. 396.
[22:3] "Quamvis igitur quam maximè fallantur Pelagiani, quum asserant,
peccatum originale ex Augustini profluxisse ingenio, antiquam vero
ecclesiam illud plane nescivisse; diffiteri tamen nemo potest, apud
Græcos patres imprimis inveniri loca, quæ Pelagianismo favere videntur.
Hinc et C. Jansenius, 'Græci,' inquit, 'nisi caute legantur et
intelligantur, præbere possunt occasionem errori Pelagiano;' et D.
Petavius dicit, 'Græci originalis fere criminis raram, nec disertam,
mentionem scriptis suis attigerunt.'"--_Walch_, _Miscell. Sacr._ p. 607.
[22:4] Horn, Comment. de Pecc. Orig. 1801, p. 98.
[23:1] Hær. iv. 18, § 5.
[24:1] Justin Martyr, ch. 4.
[24:2] Clem. Alex. ch. 11.
[25:1] Works, vol. vii. p. 118-120.
[25:2] Ibid. p. 121.
[25:3] Ibid. p. 127.
[25:4] [Dr. Pusey's University Sermon of 1843.]
[26:1] Numer. Hom. xvi. 9.
[26:2] Interp. Com. in Matt. 85.
[29:1] [_Vid._ Apolog., p. 198, and Difficulties of Angl. vol. i. xii.
7.]
CHAPTER I.
ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF IDEAS.
SECTION I.
ON THE PROCESS OF DEVELOPMENT IN IDEAS.
It is the characteristic of our minds to be ever engaged in passing
judgment on the things which come before us. No sooner do we apprehend
than we judge: we allow nothing to stand by itself: we compare,
contrast, abstract, generalize, connect, adjust, classify: and we view
all our knowledge in the associations with which these processes have
invested it.
Of the judgments thus made, which become aspects in our minds of the
things which meet us, some are mere opinions which come and go, or which
remain with us only till an accident displaces them, whatever be the
influence which they exercise meanwhile. Others are firmly fixed in our
minds, with or without good reason, and have a hold upon us, whether
they relate to matters of fact, or to principles of conduct, or are
views of life and the world, or are prejudices, imaginations, or
convictions. Many of them attach to one and the same object, which is
thus variously viewed, not only by various minds, but by the same. They
sometimes lie in such near relation, that each implies the others; some
are only not inconsistent with each other, in that they have a common
origin: some, as being actually incompatible with each other, are, one
or other, falsely associated in our minds with their object, and in any
case they may be nothing more than ideas, which we mistake for things.
Thus Judaism is an idea which once was objective, and Gnosticism is an
idea which was never so. Both of them have various aspects: those of
Judaism were such as monotheism, a certain ethical discipline, a
ministration of divine vengeance, a preparation for Christianity: those
of the Gnostic idea are such as the doctrine of two principles, that of
emanation, the intrinsic malignity of matter, the inculpability of
sensual indulgence, or the guilt of every pleasure of sense, of which
last two one or other must be in the Gnostic a false aspect and
subjective only.
2.
The idea which represents an object or supposed object is commensurate
with the sum total of its possible aspects, however they may vary in the
separate consciousness of individuals; and in proportion to the variety
of aspects under which it presents itself to various minds is its force
and depth, and the argument for its reality. Ordinarily an idea is not
brought home to the intellect as objective except through this variety;
like bodily substances, which are not apprehended except under the
clothing of their properties and results, and which admit of being
walked round, and surveyed on opposite sides, and in different
perspectives, and in contrary lights, in evidence of their reality. And,
as views of a material object may be taken from points so remote or so
opposed, that they seem at first sight incompatible, and especially as
their shadows will be disproportionate, or even monstrous, and yet all
these anomalies will disappear and all these contrarieties be adjusted,
on ascertaining the point of vision or the surface of projection in each
case; so also all the aspects of an idea are capable of coalition, and
of a resolution into the object to which it belongs; and the _primâ
facie_ dissimilitude of its aspects becomes, when explained, an argument
for its substantiveness and integrity, and their multiplicity for its
originality and power.
3.
There is no one aspect deep enough to exhaust the contents of a real
idea, no one term or proposition which will serve to define it; though
of course one representation of it is more just and exact than another,
and though when an idea is very complex, it is allowable, for the sake
of convenience, to consider its distinct aspects as if separate ideas.
Thus, with all our intimate knowledge of animal life and of the
structure of particular animals, we have not arrived at a true
definition of any one of them, but are forced to enumerate properties
and accidents by way of description. Nor can we inclose in a formula
that intellectual fact, or system of thought, which we call the Platonic
philosophy, or that historical phenomenon of doctrine and conduct, which
we call the heresy of Montanus or of Manes. Again, if Protestantism were
said to lie in its theory of private judgment, and Lutheranism in its
doctrine of justification, this indeed would be an approximation to the
truth; but it is plain that to argue or to act as if the one or the
other aspect were a sufficient account of those forms of religion
severally, would be a serious mistake. Sometimes an attempt is made to
determine the "leading idea," as it has been called, of Christianity, an
ambitious essay as employed on a supernatural work, when, even as
regards the visible creation and the inventions of man, such a task is
beyond us. Thus its one idea has been said by some to be the restoration
of our fallen race, by others philanthropy, by others the tidings of
immortality, or the spirituality of true religious service, or the
salvation of the elect, or mental liberty, or the union of the soul with
God. If, indeed, it is only thereby meant to use one or other of these
as a central idea for convenience, in order to group others around it,
no fault can be found with such a proceeding: and in this sense I should
myself call the Incarnation the central aspect of Christianity, out of
which the three main aspects of its teaching take their rise, the
sacramental, the hierarchical, and the ascetic. But one aspect of
Revelation must not be allowed to exclude or to obscure another; and
Christianity is dogmatical, devotional, practical all at once; it is
esoteric and exoteric; it is indulgent and strict; it is light and dark;
it is love, and it is fear.
4.
When an idea, whether real or not, is of a nature to arrest and possess
the mind, it may be said to have life, that is, to live in the mind
which is its recipient. Thus mathematical ideas, real as they are, can
hardly properly be called living, at least ordinarily. But, when some
great enunciation, whether true or false, about human nature, or present
good, or government, or duty, or religion, is carried forward into the
public throng of men and draws attention, then it is not merely received
passively in this or that form into many minds, but it becomes an active
principle within them, leading them to an ever-new contemplation of
itself, to an application of it in various directions, and a propagation
of it on every side. Such is the doctrine of the divine right of kings,
or of the rights of man, or of the anti-social bearings of a priesthood,
or utilitarianism, or free trade, or the duty of benevolent enterprises,
or the philosophy of Zeno or Epicurus, doctrines which are of a nature
to attract and influence, and have so far a _primâ facie_ reality, that
they may be looked at on many sides and strike various minds very
variously. Let one such idea get possession of the popular mind, or the
mind of any portion of the community, and it is not difficult to
understand what will be the result. At first men will not fully realize
what it is that moves them, and will express and explain themselves
inadequately. There will be a general agitation of thought, and an
action of mind upon mind. There will be a time of confusion, when
conceptions and misconceptions are in conflict, and it is uncertain
whether anything is to come of the idea at all, or which view of it is
to get the start of the others. New lights will be brought to bear upon
the original statements of the doctrine put forward; judgments and
aspects will accumulate. After a while some definite teaching emerges;
and, as time proceeds, one view will be modified or expanded by another,
and then combined with a third; till the idea to which these various
aspects belong, will be to each mind separately what at first it was
only to all together. It will be surveyed too in its relation to other
doctrines or facts, to other natural laws or established customs, to the
varying circumstances of times and places, to other religions, polities,
philosophies, as the case may be. How it stands affected towards other
systems, how it affects them, how far it may be made to combine with
them, how far it tolerates them, when it interferes with them, will be
gradually wrought out. It will be interrogated and criticized by
enemies, and defended by well-wishers. The multitude of opinions formed
concerning it in these respects and many others will be collected,
compared, sorted, sifted, selected, rejected, gradually attached to it,
separated from it, in the minds of individuals and of the community. It
will, in proportion to its native vigour and subtlety, introduce itself
into the framework and details of social life, changing public opinion,
and strengthening or undermining the foundations of established order.
Thus in time it will have grown into an ethical code, or into a system
of government, or into a theology, or into a ritual, according to its
capabilities: and this body of thought, thus laboriously gained, will
after all be little more than the proper representative of one idea,
being in substance what that idea meant from the first, its complete
image as seen in a combination of diversified aspects, with the
suggestions and corrections of many minds, and the illustration of many
experiences.
5.
This process, whether it be longer or shorter in point of time, by which
the aspects of an idea are brought into consistency and form, I call its
development, being the germination and maturation of some truth or
apparent truth on a large mental field. On the other hand this process
will not be a development, unless the assemblage of aspects, which
constitute its ultimate shape, really belongs to the idea from which
they start. A republic, for instance, is not a development from a pure
monarchy, though it may follow upon it; whereas the Greek "tyrant" may
be considered as included in the idea of a democracy. Moreover a
development will have this characteristic, that, its action being in the
busy scene of human life, it cannot progress at all without cutting
across, and thereby destroying or modifying and incorporating with
itself existing modes of thinking and operating. The development then of
an idea is not like an investigation worked out on paper, in which each
successive advance is a pure evolution from a foregoing, but it is
carried on through and by means of communities of men and their leaders
and guides; and it employs their minds as its instruments, and depends
upon them, while it uses them. And so, as regards existing opinions,
principles, measures, and institutions of the community which it has
invaded; it developes by establishing relations between itself and
them; it employs itself, in giving them a new meaning and direction, in
creating what may be called a jurisdiction over them, in throwing off
whatever in them it cannot assimilate. It grows when it incorporates,
and its identity is found, not in isolation, but in continuity and
sovereignty. This it is that imparts to the history both of states and
of religions, its specially turbulent and polemical character. Such is
the explanation of the wranglings, whether of schools or of parliaments.
It is the warfare of ideas under their various aspects striving for the
mastery, each of them enterprising, engrossing, imperious, more or less
incompatible with the rest, and rallying followers or rousing foes,
according as it acts upon the faith, the prejudices, or the interest of
parties or classes.
6.
Moreover, an idea not only modifies, but is modified, or at least
influenced, by the state of things in which it is carried out, and is
dependent in various ways on the circumstances which surround it. Its
development proceeds quickly or slowly, as it may be; the order of
succession in its separate stages is variable; it shows differently in a
small sphere of action and in an extended; it may be interrupted,
retarded, mutilated, distorted, by external violence; it may be
enfeebled by the effort of ridding itself of domestic foes; it may be
impeded and swayed or even absorbed by counter energetic ideas; it may
be coloured by the received tone of thought into which it comes, or
depraved by the intrusion of foreign principles, or at length shattered
by the development of some original fault within it.
7.
But whatever be the risk of corruption from intercourse with the world
around, such a risk must be encountered if a great idea is duly to be
understood, and much more if it is to be fully exhibited. It is elicited
and expanded by trial, and battles into perfection and supremacy. Nor
does it escape the collision of opinion even in its earlier years, nor
does it remain truer to itself, and with a better claim to be considered
one and the same, though externally protected from vicissitude and
change. It is indeed sometimes said that the stream is clearest near the
spring. Whatever use may fairly be made of this image, it does not apply
to the history of a philosophy or belief, which on the contrary is more
equable, and purer, and stronger, when its bed has become deep, and
broad, and full. It necessarily rises out of an existing state of
things, and for a time savours of the soil. Its vital element needs
disengaging from what is foreign and temporary, and is employed in
efforts after freedom which become more vigorous and hopeful as its
years increase. Its beginnings are no measure of its capabilities, nor
of its scope. At first no one knows what it is, or what it is worth. It
remains perhaps for a time quiescent; it tries, as it were, its limbs,
and proves the ground under it, and feels its way. From time to time it
makes essays which fail, and are in consequence abandoned. It seems in
suspense which way to go; it wavers, and at length strikes out in one
definite direction. In time it enters upon strange territory; points of
controversy alter their bearing; parties rise and fall around it;
dangers and hopes appear in new relations; and old principles reappear
under new forms. It changes with them in order to remain the same. In a
higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and
to be perfect is to have changed often.
SECTION II.
ON THE KINDS OF DEVELOPMENT IN IDEAS.
To attempt an accurate analysis or complete enumeration of the processes
of thought, whether speculative or practical, which come under the
notion of development, exceeds the pretensions of an Essay like the
present; but, without some general view of the various mental exercises
which go by the name we shall have no security against confusion in our
reasoning and necessary exposure to criticism.
1. First, then, it must be borne in mind that the word is commonly used,
and is used here, in three senses indiscriminately, from defect of our
language; on the one hand for the process of development, on the other
for the result; and again either generally for a development, true or
not true, (that is, faithful or unfaithful to the idea from which it
started,) or exclusively for a development deserving the name. A false
or unfaithful development is more properly to be called a corruption.
2. Next, it is plain that _mathematical_ developments, that is, the
system of truths drawn out from mathematical definitions or equations,
do not fall under our present subject, though altogether analogous to
it. There can be no corruption in such developments, because they are
conducted on strict demonstration; and the conclusions in which they
terminate, being necessary, cannot be declensions from the original
idea.
3. Nor, of course, do _physical_ developments, as the growth of animal
or vegetable nature, come into consideration here; excepting that,
together with mathematical, they may be taken as illustrations of the
general subject to which we have to direct our attention.
4. Nor have we to consider _material_ developments, which, though
effected by human contrivance, are still physical; as the development,
as it is called, of the national resources. We speak, for instance, of
Ireland, the United States, or the valley of the Indus, as admitting of
a great development; by which we mean, that those countries have fertile
tracts, or abundant products, or broad and deep rivers, or central
positions for commerce, or capacious and commodious harbours, the
materials and instruments of wealth, and these at present turned to
insufficient account. Development in this case will proceed by
establishing marts, cutting canals, laying down railroads, erecting
factories, forming docks, and similar works, by which the natural riches
of the country may be made to yield the largest return and to exert the
greatest influence. In this sense, art is the development of nature,
that is, its adaptation to the purposes of utility and beauty, the human
intellect being the developing power.
2.
5. When society and its various classes and interests are the
subject-matter of the ideas which are in operation, the development may
be called _political_; as we see it in the growth of States or the
changes of a Constitution. Barbarians descend into southern regions from
cupidity, and their warrant is the sword: this is no intellectual
process, nor is it the mode of development exhibited in civilized
communities. Where civilization exists, reason, in some shape or other,
is the incentive or the pretence of development. When an empire
enlarges, it is on the call of its allies, or for the balance of power,
or from the necessity of a demonstration of strength, or from a fear for
its frontiers. It lies uneasily in its territory, it is ill-shaped, it
has unreal boundary-lines, deficient communication between its principal
points, or defenceless or turbulent neighbours. Thus, of old time,
Euboea was necessary for Athens, and Cythera for Sparta; and Augustus
left his advice, as a legacy, to confine the Empire between the
Atlantic, the Rhine and Danube, the Euphrates, and the Arabian and
African deserts. In this day, we hear of the Rhine being the natural
boundary of France, and the Indus of our Eastern empire; and we predict
that, in the event of a war, Prussia will change her outlines in the map
of Europe. The development is material; but an idea gives unity and
force to its movement.
And so to take a case of national politics, a late writer remarks of the
Parliament of 1628-29, in its contest with Charles, that, so far from
encroaching on the just powers of a limited monarch, it never hinted at
the securities which were necessary for its measures. However, "twelve
years more of repeated aggressions," he adds, "taught the Long
Parliament what a few sagacious men might perhaps have already
suspected; that they must recover more of their ancient constitution,
from oblivion; that they must sustain its partial weakness by new
securities; that, in order to render the existence of monarchy
compatible with that of freedom, they must not only strip it of all it
had usurped, but of something that was its own."[43:1] Whatever be the
worth of this author's theory, his facts or representations are an
illustration of a political development.
Again, at the present day, that Ireland should have a population of one
creed, and a Church of another, is felt to be a political arrangement so
unsatisfactory, that all parties seem to agree that either the
population will develope in power or the Establishment in influence.
Political developments, though really the growth of ideas, are often
capricious and irregular from the nature of their subject-matter. They
are influenced by the character of sovereigns, the rise and fall of
statesmen, the fate of battles, and the numberless vicissitudes of the
world. "Perhaps the Greeks would be still involved in the heresy of the
Monophysites," says Gibbon, "if the Emperor's horse had not fortunately
stumbled. Theodosius expired, his orthodox sister succeeded to the
throne."[44:1]
3.
Again, it often happens, or generally, that various distinct and
incompatible elements are found in the origin or infancy of politics, or
indeed of philosophies, some of which must be ejected before any
satisfactory developments, if any, can take place. And they are commonly
ejected by the gradual growth of the stronger. The reign of Charles the
First, just referred to, supplies an instance in point.
Sometimes discordant ideas are for a time connected and concealed by a
common profession or name. Such is the case of coalitions in politics
and comprehensions in religion, of which commonly no good is to be
expected. Such is an ordinary function of committees and boards, and the
sole aim of conciliations and concessions, to make contraries look the
same, and to secure an outward agreement where there is no other unity.
Again, developments, reactions, reforms, revolutions, and changes of
various kinds are mixed together in the actual history of states, as of
philosophical sects, so as to make it very difficult to exhibit them in
any scientific analysis.
Often the intellectual process is detached from the practical, and
posterior to it. Thus it was after Elizabeth had established the
Reformation that Hooker laid down his theory of Church and State as one
and the same, differing only in idea; and, after the Revolution and its
political consequences, that Warburton wrote his "Alliance." And now
again a new theory is needed for the constitutional lawyer, in order to
reconcile the existing political state of things with the just claims
of religion. And so, again, in Parliamentary conflicts, men first come
to their conclusions by the external pressure of events or the force of
principles, they do not know how; then they have to speak, and they look
about for arguments: and a pamphlet is published on the subject in
debate, or an article appears in a Review, to furnish common-places for
the many.
Other developments, though political, are strictly subjected and
consequent to the ideas of which they are the exhibitions. Thus Locke's
philosophy was a real guide, not a mere defence of the Revolution era,
operating forcibly upon Church and Government in and after his day. Such
too were the theories which preceded the overthrow of the old regime in
France and other countries at the end of the last century.
Again, perhaps there are polities founded on no ideas at all, but on
mere custom, as among the Asiatics.
4.
6. In other developments the intellectual character is so prominent that
they may even be called _logical_, as in the Anglican doctrine of the
Royal Supremacy, which has been created in the courts of law, not in the
cabinet or on the field. Hence it is carried out with a consistency and
minute application which the history of constitutions cannot exhibit. It
does not only exist in statutes, or in articles, or in oaths, it is
realized in details: as in the _congé d'élire_ and letter-missive on
appointment of a Bishop;--in the forms observed in Privy Council on the
issuing of State Prayers;--in certain arrangements observed in the
Prayer-book, where the universal or abstract Church precedes the King,
but the national or really existing body follows him; in printing his
name in large capitals, while the Holiest Names are in ordinary type,
and in fixing his arms in churches instead of the Crucifix; moreover,
perhaps, in placing "sedition, privy conspiracy, and rebellion," before
"false doctrine, heresy, and schism" in the Litany.
Again, when some new philosophy or its instalments are introduced into
the measures of the Legislature, or into the concessions made to a
political party, or into commercial or agricultural policy, it is often
said, "We have not seen the end of this;" "It is an earnest of future
concessions;" "Our children will see." We feel that it has unknown
bearings and issues.
The admission of Jews to municipal offices has lately been
defended[46:1] on the ground that it is the introduction of no new
principle, but a development of one already received; that its great
premisses have been decided long since; and that the present age has but
to draw the conclusion; that it is not open to us to inquire what ought
to be done in the abstract, since there is no ideal model for the
infallible guidance of nations; that change is only a question of time,
and that there is a time for all things; that the application of
principles ought not to go beyond the actual case, neither preceding nor
coming after an imperative demand; that in point of fact Jews have
lately been chosen for offices, and that in point of principle the law
cannot refuse to legitimate such elections.
5.
7. Another class of developments may be called _historical_; being the
gradual formation of opinion concerning persons, facts, and events.
Judgments, which were at one time confined to a few, at length spread
through a community, and attain general reception by the accumulation
and concurrence of testimony. Thus some authoritative accounts die away;
others gain a footing, and are ultimately received as truths. Courts of
law, Parliamentary proceedings, newspapers, letters and other
posthumous documents, the industry of historians and biographers, and
the lapse of years which dissipates parties and prejudices, are in this
day the instruments of such development. Accordingly the Poet makes
Truth the daughter of Time.[47:1] Thus at length approximations are made
to a right appreciation of transactions and characters. History cannot
be written except in an after-age. Thus by development the Canon of the
New Testament has been formed. Thus public men are content to leave
their reputation to posterity; great reactions take place in opinion;
nay, sometimes men outlive opposition and obloquy. Thus Saints are
canonized in the Church, long after they have entered into their rest.
6.
8. _Ethical_ developments are not properly matter for argument and
controversy, but are natural and personal, substituting what is
congruous, desirable, pious, appropriate, generous, for strictly logical
inference. Bishop Butler supplies us with a remarkable instance in the
beginning of the Second Part of his "Analogy." As principles imply
applications, and general propositions include particulars, so, he tells
us, do certain relations imply correlative duties, and certain objects
demand certain acts and feelings. He observes that, even though we were
not enjoined to pay divine honours to the Second and Third Persons of
the Holy Trinity, what is predicated of Them in Scripture would be an
abundant warrant, an indirect command, nay, a ground in reason, for
doing so. "Does not," he asks, "the duty of religious regards to both
these Divine Persons as immediately arise, to the view of reason, out of
the very nature of these offices and relations, as the inward good-will
and kind intention which we owe to our fellow-creatures arises out of
the common relations between us and them?" He proceeds to say that he is
speaking of the inward religious regards of reverence, honour, love,
trust, gratitude, fear, hope. "In what external manner this inward
worship is to be expressed, is a matter of pure revealed command; . .
but the worship, the internal worship itself, to the Son and Holy Ghost,
is no further matter of pure revealed command than as the relations they
stand in to us are matter of pure revelation; for, the relations being
known, the obligations to such internal worship are obligations of
reason, arising out of those relations themselves." Here is a
development of doctrine into worship, of which parallel instances are
obviously to be found in the Church of Rome.
7.
A development, converse to that which Butler speaks of, must next be
mentioned. As certain objects excite certain emotions and sentiments, so
do sentiments imply objects and duties. Thus conscience, the existence
of which we cannot deny, is a proof of the doctrine of a Moral Governor,
which alone gives it a meaning and a scope; that is, the doctrine of a
Judge and Judgment to come is a development of the phenomenon of
conscience. Again, it is plain that passions and affections are in
action in our minds before the presence of their proper objects; and
their activity would of course be an antecedent argument of extreme
cogency in behalf of the real existence of those legitimate objects,
supposing them unknown. And so again, the social principle, which is
innate in us, gives a divine sanction to society and to civil
government. And the usage of prayers for the dead implies certain
circumstances of their state upon which such devotions bear. And rites
and ceremonies are natural means through which the mind relieves itself
of devotional and penitential emotions. And sometimes the cultivation
of awe and love towards what is great, high, and unseen, has led a man
to the abandonment of his sect for some more Catholic form of doctrine.
Aristotle furnishes us with an instance of this kind of development in
his account of the happy man. After showing that his definition of
happiness includes in itself the pleasurable, which is the most obvious
and popular idea of happiness, he goes on to say that still external
goods are necessary to it, about which, however, the definition said
nothing; that is, a certain prosperity is by moral fitness, not by
logical necessity, attached to the happy man. "For it is impossible," he
observes, "or not easy, to practise high virtue without abundant means.
Many deeds are done by the instrumentality of friends, wealth and
political power; and of some things the absence is a cloud upon
happiness, as of noble birth, of hopeful children, and of personal
appearance: for a person utterly deformed, or low-born, or bereaved and
childless, cannot quite be happy: and still less if he have very
worthless children or friends, or they were good and died."[49:1]
8.
This process of development has been well delineated by a living French
writer, in his Lectures on European civilization, who shall be quoted at
some length. "If we reduce religion," he says, "to a purely religious
sentiment . . . it appears evident that it must and ought to remain a
purely personal concern. But I am either strangely mistaken, or this
religious sentiment is not the complete expression of the religious
nature of man. Religion is, I believe, very different from this,
and much more extended. There are problems in human nature, in human
destinies, which cannot be solved in this life, which depend on
an order of things unconnected with the visible world, but which
unceasingly agitate the human mind with a desire to comprehend them. The
solution of these problems is the origin of all religion; her primary
object is to discover the creeds and doctrines which contain, or are
supposed to contain it.
"Another cause also impels mankind to embrace religion . . . From whence
do morals originate? whither do they lead? is this self-existing
obligation to do good, an isolated fact, without an author, without an
end? does it not conceal, or rather does it not reveal to man, an
origin, a destiny, beyond this world? The science of morals, by these
spontaneous and inevitable questions, conducts man to the threshold of
religion, and displays to him a sphere from whence he has not derived
it. Thus the certain and never-failing sources of religion are, on the
one hand, the problems of our nature; on the other, the necessity of
seeking for morals a sanction, an origin, and an aim. It therefore
assumes many other forms beside that of a pure sentiment; it appears a
union of doctrines, of precepts, of promises. This is what truly
constitutes religion; this is its fundamental character; it is not
merely a form of sensibility, an impulse of the imagination, a variety
of poetry.
"When thus brought back to its true elements, to its essential nature,
religion appears no longer a purely personal concern, but a powerful and
fruitful principle of association. Is it considered in the light of a
system of belief, a system of dogmas? Truth is not the heritage of any
individual, it is absolute and universal; mankind ought to seek and
profess it in common. Is it considered with reference to the precepts
that are associated with its doctrines? A law which is obligatory on a
single individual, is so on all; it ought to be promulgated, and it is
our duty to endeavour to bring all mankind under its dominion. It is
the same with respect to the promises that religion makes, in the name
of its creeds and precepts; they ought to be diffused; all men should be
incited to partake of their benefits. A religious society, therefore,
naturally results from the essential elements of religion, and is such a
necessary consequence of it that the term which expresses the most
energetic social sentiment, the most intense desire to propagate ideas
and extend society, is the word _proselytism_, a term which is
especially applied to religious belief, and in fact consecrated to it.
"When a religious society has ever been formed, when a certain number of
men are united by a common religious creed, are governed by the same
religious precepts, and enjoy the same religious hopes, some form of
government is necessary. No society can endure a week, nay more, no
society can endure a single hour, without a government. The moment,
indeed, a society is formed, by the very fact of its formation, it calls
forth a government,--a government which shall proclaim the common truth
which is the bond of the society, and promulgate and maintain the
precepts that this truth ought to produce. The necessity of a superior
power, of a form of government, is involved in the fact of the existence
of a religious, as it is in that of any other society.
"And not only is a government necessary, but it naturally forms
itself. . . . When events are suffered to follow their natural laws,
when force does not interfere, power falls into the hands of the most
able, the most worthy, those who are most capable of carrying out the
principles on which the society was founded. Is a warlike expedition
in agitation? The bravest take the command. Is the object of the
association learned research, or a scientific undertaking? The best
informed will be the leader. . . . The inequality of faculties and
influence, which is the foundation of power in civil life, has the same
effect in a religious society. . . Religion has no sooner arisen in the
human mind than a religious society appears; and immediately a religious
society is formed, it produces its government."[52:1]
9.
9. It remains to allude to what, unless the word were often so vaguely
and variously used, I should be led to call _metaphysical_ developments;
I mean such as are a mere analysis of the idea contemplated, and
terminate in its exact and complete delineation. Thus Aristotle draws
the character of a magnanimous or of a munificent man; thus Shakspeare
might conceive and bring out his Hamlet or Ariel; thus Walter Scott
gradually enucleates his James, or Dalgetty, as the action of his story
proceeds; and thus, in the sacred province of theology, the mind may be
employed in developing the solemn ideas, which it has hitherto held
implicitly and without subjecting them to its reflecting and reasoning
powers.
I have already treated of this subject at length, with a reference to
the highest theological subject, in a former work, from which it will be
sufficient here to quote some sentences in explanation:--
"The mind which is habituated to the thought of God, of Christ, of
the Holy Spirit, naturally turns with a devout curiosity to the
contemplation of the object of its adoration, and begins to form
statements concerning it, before it knows whither, or how far, it will
be carried. One proposition necessarily leads to another, and a second
to a third; then some limitation is required; and the combination of
these opposites occasions some fresh evolutions from the original idea,
which indeed can never be said to be entirely exhausted. This process is
its development, and results in a series, or rather body, of dogmatic
statements, till what was an impression on the Imagination has become a
system or creed in the Reason.
"Now such impressions are obviously individual and complete above other
theological ideas, because they are the impressions of Objects. Ideas
and their developments are commonly not identical, the development being
but the carrying out of the idea into its consequences. Thus the
doctrine of Penance may be called a development of the doctrine of
Baptism, yet still is a distinct doctrine; whereas the developments in
the doctrines of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation are mere portions
of the original impression, and modes of representing it. As God is one,
so the impression which He gives us of Himself is one; it is not a thing
of parts; it is not a system; nor is it anything imperfect and needing a
counterpart. It is the vision of an object. When we pray, we pray, not
to an assemblage of notions or to a creed, but to One Individual Being;
and when we speak of Him, we speak of a Person, not of a Law or
Manifestation . . . Religious men, according to their measure, have an
idea or vision of the Blessed Trinity in Unity, of the Son Incarnate,
and of His Presence, not as a number of qualities, attributes, and
actions, not as the subject of a number of propositions, but as one and
individual, and independent of words, like an impression conveyed
through the senses. . . . Creeds and dogmas live in the one idea which
they are designed to express, and which alone is substantive; and are
necessary, because the human mind cannot reflect upon that idea except
piecemeal, cannot use it in its oneness and entireness, or without
resolving it into a series of aspects and relations."[53:1]
10.
So much on the development of ideas in various subject matters: it may
be necessary to add that, in many cases, _development_ simply stands
for _exhibition_, as in some of the instances adduced above. Thus both
Calvinism and Unitarianism may be called developments, that is,
exhibitions, of the principle of Private Judgment, though they have
nothing in common, viewed as doctrines.
As to Christianity, supposing the truths of which it consists to admit
of development, that development will be one or other of the last five
kinds. Taking the Incarnation as its central doctrine, the Episcopate,
as taught by St. Ignatius, will be an instance of political development,
the _Theotokos_ of logical, the determination of the date of our Lord's
birth of historical, the Holy Eucharist of moral, and the Athanasian
Creed of metaphysical.
FOOTNOTES:
[43:1] Hallam's Constit. Hist. ch. vii. p. 572.
[44:1] ch. xlvii.
[46:1] _Times_ newspaper of March, 1845.
[47:1] Crabbe's Tales.
[49:1] Eth. Nic. i. 8.
[52:1] Guizot, Europ. Civil., Lect. v., Beckwith's Translation.
[53:1] [Univ. Serm. xv. 20-23, pp. 329-332, ed. 3.]
CHAPTER II.
ON THE ANTECEDENT ARGUMENT IN BEHALF OF DEVELOPMENTS IN CHRISTIAN
DOCTRINE.
SECTION I.
DEVELOPMENTS OF DOCTRINE TO BE EXPECTED.
1. If Christianity is a fact, and impresses an idea of itself on our
minds and is a subject-matter of exercises of the reason, that idea will
in course of time expand into a multitude of ideas, and aspects of
ideas, connected and harmonious with one another, and in themselves
determinate and immutable, as is the objective fact itself which is thus
represented. It is a characteristic of our minds, that they cannot take
an object in, which is submitted to them simply and integrally. We
conceive by means of definition or description; whole objects do not
create in the intellect whole ideas, but are, to use a mathematical
phrase, thrown into series, into a number of statements, strengthening,
interpreting, correcting each other, and with more or less exactness
approximating, as they accumulate, to a perfect image. There is no other
way of learning or of teaching. We cannot teach except by aspects or
views, which are not identical with the thing itself which we are
teaching. Two persons may each convey the same truth to a third, yet by
methods and through representations altogether different. The same
person will treat the same argument differently in an essay or speech,
according to the accident of the day of writing, or of the audience, yet
it will be substantially the same.
And the more claim an idea has to be considered living, the more various
will be its aspects; and the more social and political is its nature,
the more complicated and subtle will be its issues, and the longer and
more eventful will be its course. And in the number of these special
ideas, which from their very depth and richness cannot be fully
understood at once, but are more and more clearly expressed and taught
the longer they last,--having aspects many and bearings many, mutually
connected and growing one out of another, and all parts of a whole, with
a sympathy and correspondence keeping pace with the ever-changing
necessities of the world, multiform, prolific, and ever
resourceful,--among these great doctrines surely we Christians shall not
refuse a foremost place to Christianity. Such previously to the
determination of the fact, must be our anticipation concerning it from a
contemplation of its initial achievements.
2.
It may be objected that its inspired documents at once determine the
limits of its mission without further trouble; but ideas are in the
writer and reader of the revelation, not the inspired text itself: and
the question is whether those ideas which the letter conveys from writer
to reader, reach the reader at once in their completeness and accuracy
on his first perception of them, or whether they open out in his
intellect and grow to perfection in the course of time. Nor could it
surely be maintained without extravagance that the letter of the New
Testament, or of any assignable number of books, comprises a delineation
of all possible forms which a divine message will assume when submitted
to a multitude of minds.
Nor is the case altered by supposing that inspiration provided in behalf
of the first recipients of the Revelation, what the Divine Fiat effected
for herbs and plants in the beginning, which were created in maturity.
Still, the time at length came, when its recipients ceased to be
inspired; and on these recipients the revealed truths would fall, as in
other cases, at first vaguely and generally, though in spirit and in
truth, and would afterwards be completed by developments.
Nor can it fairly be made a difficulty that thus to treat of Christianity
is to level it in some sort to sects and doctrines of the world, and to
impute to it the imperfections which characterize the productions of
man. Certainly it is a sort of degradation of a divine work to consider
it under an earthly form; but it is no irreverence, since our Lord
Himself, its Author and Guardian, bore one also. Christianity differs
from other religions and philosophies, in what is superadded to earth
from heaven; not in kind, but in origin; not in its nature, but in its
personal characteristics; being informed and quickened by what is more
than intellect, by a divine spirit. It is externally what the Apostle
calls an "earthen vessel," being the religion of men. And, considered as
such, it grows "in wisdom and stature;" but the powers which it wields,
and the words which proceed out of its mouth, attest its miraculous
nativity.
Unless then some special ground of exception can be assigned, it is as
evident that Christianity, as a doctrine and worship, will develope in
the minds of recipients, as that it conforms in other respects, in its
external propagation or its political framework, to the general methods
by which the course of things is carried forward.
3.
2. Again, if Christianity be an universal religion, suited not simply to
one locality or period, but to all times and places, it cannot but vary
in its relations and dealings towards the world around it, that is, it
will develope. Principles require a very various application according
as persons and circumstances vary, and must be thrown into new shapes
according to the form of society which they are to influence. Hence all
bodies of Christians, orthodox or not, develope the doctrines of
Scripture. Few but will grant that Luther's view of justification had
never been stated in words before his time: that his phraseology and his
positions were novel, whether called for by circumstances or not. It is
equally certain that the doctrine of justification defined at Trent was,
in some sense, new also. The refutation and remedy of errors cannot
precede their rise; and thus the fact of false developments or
corruptions involves the correspondent manifestation of true ones.
Moreover, all parties appeal to Scripture, that is, argue from
Scripture; but argument implies deduction, that is, development. Here
there is no difference between early times and late, between a Pope _ex
cathedrâ_ and an individual Protestant, except that their authority is
not on a par. On either side the claim of authority is the same, and the
process of development.
Accordingly, the common complaint of Protestants against the Church of
Rome is, not simply that she has added to the primitive or the
Scriptural doctrine, (for this they do themselves,) but that she
contradicts it, and moreover imposes her additions as fundamental truths
under sanction of an anathema. For themselves they deduce by quite as
subtle a method, and act upon doctrines as implicit and on reasons as
little analyzed in time past, as Catholic schoolmen. What prominence has
the Royal Supremacy in the New Testament, or the lawfulness of bearing
arms, or the duty of public worship, or the substitution of the first
day of the week for the seventh, or infant baptism, to say nothing of
the fundamental principle that the Bible and the Bible only is the
religion of Protestants? These doctrines and usages, true or not, which
is not the question here, are surely not gained by the direct use and
immediate application of Scripture, nor by a mere exercise of argument
upon words and sentences placed before the eyes, but by the unconscious
growth of ideas suggested by the letter and habitual to the mind.
4.
3. And, indeed, when we turn to the consideration of particular
doctrines on which Scripture lays the greatest stress, we shall see that
it is absolutely impossible for them to remain in the mere letter of
Scripture, if they are to be more than mere words, and to convey a
definite idea to the recipient. When it is declared that "the Word
became flesh," three wide questions open upon us on the very
announcement. What is meant by "the Word," what by "flesh," what by
"became"? The answers to these involve a process of investigation, and
are developments. Moreover, when they have been made, they will suggest
a series of secondary questions; and thus at length a multitude of
propositions is the result, which gather round the inspired sentence of
which they come, giving it externally the form of a doctrine, and
creating or deepening the idea of it in the mind.
It is true that, so far as such statements of Scripture are mysteries,
they are relatively to us but words, and cannot be developed. But as a
mystery implies in part what is incomprehensible or at least unknown, so
does it in part imply what is not so; it implies a partial manifestation,
or a representation by economy. Because then it is in a measure
understood, it can so far be developed, though each result in the
process will partake of the dimness and confusion of the original
impression.
5.
4. This moreover should be considered,--that great questions exist in
the subject-matter of which Scripture treats, which Scripture does not
solve; questions too so real, so practical, that they must be answered,
and, unless we suppose a new revelation, answered by means of the
revelation which we have, that is, by development. Such is the question
of the Canon of Scripture and its inspiration: that is, whether
Christianity depends upon a written document as Judaism;--if so, on what
writings and how many;--whether that document is self-interpreting, or
requires a comment, and whether any authoritative comment or commentator
is provided;--whether the revelation and the document are commensurate,
or the one outruns the other;--all these questions surely find no
solution on the surface of Scripture, nor indeed under the surface in
the case of most men, however long and diligent might be their study of
it. Nor were these difficulties settled by authority, as far as we know,
at the commencement of the religion; yet surely it is quite conceivable
that an Apostle might have dissipated them all in a few words, had
Divine Wisdom thought fit. But in matter of fact the decision has been
left to time, to the slow process of thought, to the influence of mind
upon mind, the issues of controversy, and the growth of opinion.
6.
To take another instance just now referred to:--if there was a point on
which a rule was desirable from the first, it was concerning the
religious duties under which Christian parents lay as regards their
children. It would be natural indeed in any Christian father, in the
absence of a rule, to bring his children for baptism; such in this
instance would be the practical development of his faith in Christ and
love for his offspring; still a development it is,--necessarily
required, yet, as far as we know, not provided for his need by direct
precept in the Revelation as originally given.
Another very large field of thought, full of practical considerations,
yet, as far as our knowledge goes, but only partially occupied by any
Apostolical judgment, is that which the question of the effects of
Baptism opens upon us. That they who came in repentance and faith to
that Holy Sacrament received remission of sins, is undoubtedly the
doctrine of the Apostles; but is there any means of a second remission
for sins committed after it? St. Paul's Epistles, where we might expect
an answer to our inquiry, contain no explicit statement on the subject;
what they do plainly say does not diminish the difficulty:--viz., first,
that baptism is intended for the pardon of sins before it, not in
prospect; next, that those who have received the gift of Baptism in fact
live in a state of holiness, not of sin. How do statements such as these
meet the actual state of the Church as we see it at this day?
Considering that it was expressly predicted that the Kingdom of Heaven,
like the fisher's net, should gather of every kind, and that the tares
should grow with the wheat until the harvest, a graver and more
practical question cannot be imagined than that which it has pleased the
Divine Author of the Revelation to leave undecided, unless indeed there
be means given in that Revelation of its own growth or development. As
far as the letter goes of the inspired message, every one who holds that
Scripture is the rule of faith, as all Protestants do, must allow that
"there is not one of us but has exceeded by transgression its revealed
Ritual, and finds himself in consequence thrown upon those infinite
resources of Divine Love which are stored in Christ, but have not been
drawn out into form in the appointments of the Gospel."[62:1] Since then
Scripture needs completion, the question is brought to this issue,
whether defect or inchoateness in its doctrines be or be not an
antecedent probability in favour of a development of them.
7.
There is another subject, though not so immediately practical, on which
Scripture does not, strictly speaking, keep silence, but says so little
as to require, and so much as to suggest, information beyond its
letter,--the intermediate state between death and the Resurrection.
Considering the long interval which separates Christ's first and second
coming, the millions of faithful souls who are waiting it out, and the
intimate concern which every Christian has in the determination of its
character, it might have been expected that Scripture would have spoken
explicitly concerning it, whereas in fact its notices are but brief and
obscure. We might indeed have argued that this silence of Scripture
was intentional, with a view of discouraging speculations upon the
subject, except for the circumstance that, as in the question of our
post-baptismal state, its teaching seems to proceed upon an hypothesis
inapplicable to the state of the Church after the time when it was
delivered. As Scripture contemplates Christians, not as backsliders, but
as saints, so does it apparently represent the Day of Judgment as
immediate, and the interval of expectation as evanescent. It leaves on
our minds the general impression that Christ was returning on earth at
once, "the time short," worldly engagements superseded by "the present
distress," persecutors urgent, Christians, as a body, sinless and
expectant, without home, without plan for the future, looking up to
heaven. But outward circumstances have changed, and with the change, a
different application of the revealed word has of necessity been
demanded, that is, a development. When the nations were converted and
offences abounded, then the Church came out to view, on the one hand as
a temporal establishment, on the other as a remedial system, and
passages of Scripture aided and directed the development which before
were of inferior account. Hence the doctrine of Penance as the
complement of Baptism, and of Purgatory as the explanation of the
Intermediate State. So reasonable is this expansion of the original
creed, that, when some ten years since the true doctrine of Baptism was
expounded among us without any mention of Penance, our teacher was
accused by many of us of Novatianism; while, on the other hand,
heterodox divines have before now advocated the doctrine of the sleep of
the soul because they said it was the only successful preventive of
belief in Purgatory.
8.
Thus developments of Christianity are proved to have been in the
contemplation of its Divine Author, by an argument parallel to that by
which we infer intelligence in the system of the physical world. In
whatever sense the need and its supply are a proof of design in the
visible creation, in the same do the gaps, if the word may be used,
which occur in the structure of the original creed of the Church, make
it probable that those developments, which grow out of the truths which
lie around it, were intended to fill them up.
Nor can it be fairly objected that in thus arguing we are contradicting
the great philosopher, who tells us, that "upon supposition of God
affording us light and instruction by revelation, additional to what He
has afforded us by reason and experience, we are in no sort judges by
what methods, and in what proportion, it were to be expected that this
supernatural light and instruction would be afforded us,"[64:1] because
he is speaking of our judging before a revelation is given. He observes
that "we have no principles of reason upon which to judge _beforehand_,
how it were to be expected Revelation should have been left, or what was
most suitable to the divine plan of government," in various respects;
but the case is altogether altered when a Revelation is vouchsafed, for
then a new precedent, or what he calls "principle of reason," is
introduced, and from what is actually put into our hands we can form a
judgment whether more is to be expected. Butler, indeed, as a well-known
passage of his work shows, is far from denying the principle of
progressive development.
9.
5. The method of revelation observed in Scripture abundantly confirms
this anticipation. For instance, Prophecy, if it had so happened, need
not have afforded a specimen of development; separate predictions might
have been made to accumulate as time went on, prospects might have
opened, definite knowledge might have been given, by communications
independent of each other, as St. John's Gospel or the Epistles of St.
Paul are unconnected with the first three Gospels, though the doctrine
of each Apostle is a development of their matter. But the prophetic
Revelation is, in matter of fact, not of this nature, but a process of
development: the earlier prophecies are pregnant texts out of which the
succeeding announcements grow; they are types. It is not that first one
truth is told, then another; but the whole truth or large portions of it
are told at once, yet only in their rudiments, or in miniature, and they
are expanded and finished in their parts, as the course of revelation
proceeds.
The Seed of the woman was to bruise the serpent's head; the sceptre was
not to depart from Judah till Shiloh came, to whom was to be the
gathering of the people. He was to be Wonderful, Counsellor, the Prince
of Peace. The question of the Ethiopian rises in the reader's mind, "Of
whom speaketh the Prophet this?" Every word requires a comment.
Accordingly, it is no uncommon theory with unbelievers, that the
Messianic idea, as they call it, was gradually developed in the minds of
the Jews by a continuous and traditional habit of contemplating it, and
grew into its full proportions by a mere human process; and so far seems
certain, without trenching on the doctrine of inspiration, that the
books of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus are developments of the writings of
the Prophets, expressed or elicited by means of current ideas in the
Greek philosophy, and ultimately adopted and ratified by the Apostle in
his Epistle to the Hebrews.
10.
But the whole Bible, not its prophetical portions only, is written on
the principle of development. As the Revelation proceeds, it is ever
new, yet ever old. St. John, who completes it, declares that he writes
no "new commandment unto his brethren," but an old commandment which
they "had from the beginning." And then he adds, "A new commandment I
write unto you." The same test of development is suggested in our Lord's
words on the Mount, as has already been noticed, "Think not that I am
come to destroy the Law and the Prophets; I am not come to destroy, but
to fulfil." He does not reverse, but perfect, what has gone before. Thus
with respect to the evangelical view of the rite of sacrifice, first the
rite is enjoined by Moses; next Samuel says, "to obey is better than
sacrifice;" then Hosea, "I will have mercy and not sacrifice;" Isaiah,
"Incense is an abomination onto me;" then Malachi, describing the times
of the Gospel, speaks of the "pure offering" of wheatflour; and our Lord
completes the development, when He speaks of worshipping "in spirit and
in truth." If there is anything here left to explain, it will be found
in the usage of the Christian Church immediately afterwards, which shows
that sacrifice was not removed, but truth and spirit added.
Nay, the _effata_ of our Lord and His Apostles are of a typical
structure, parallel to the prophetic announcements above mentioned, and
predictions as well as injunctions of doctrine. If then the prophetic
sentences have had that development which has really been given them,
first by succeeding revelations, and then by the event, it is probable
antecedently that those doctrinal, political, ritual, and ethical
sentences, which have the same structure, should admit the same
expansion. Such are, "This is My Body," or "Thou art Peter, and upon
this Rock I will build My Church," or "The meek shall inherit the
earth," or "Suffer little children to come unto Me," or "The pure in
heart shall see God."
11.
On this character of our Lord's teaching, the following passage
may suitably be quoted from a writer already used. "His recorded words
and works when on earth . . . come to us as the declarations of a
Lawgiver. In the Old Covenant, Almighty God first of all spoke the Ten
Commandments from Mount Sinai, and afterwards wrote them. So our Lord
first spoke His own Gospel, both of promise and of precept, on the
Mount, and His Evangelists have recorded it. Further, when He delivered
it, He spoke by way of parallel to the Ten Commandments. And His style,
moreover, corresponds to the authority which He assumes. It is of that
solemn, measured, and severe character, which bears on the face of it
tokens of its belonging to One who spake as none other man could speak.
The Beatitudes, with which His Sermon opens, are an instance of this
incommunicable style, which befitted, as far as human words could befit,
God Incarnate.
"Nor is this style peculiar to the Sermon on the Mount. All through the
Gospels it is discernible, distinct from any other part of Scripture,
showing itself in solemn declarations, canons, sentences, or sayings,
such as legislators propound, and scribes and lawyers comment on. Surely
everything our Saviour did and said is characterized by mingled
simplicity and mystery. His emblematical actions, His typical miracles,
His parables, His replies, His censures, all are evidences of a
legislature in germ, afterwards to be developed, a code of divine
truth which was ever to be before men's eyes, to be the subject of
investigation and interpretation, and the guide in controversy. 'Verily,
verily, I say unto you,'--'But, I say unto you,'--are the tokens of a
supreme Teacher and Prophet.
"And thus the Fathers speak of His teaching. 'His sayings,' observes St.
Justin, 'were short and concise; for He was no rhetorician, but His word
was the power of God.' And St. Basil, in like manner, 'Every deed and
every word of our Saviour Jesus Christ is a canon of piety and virtue.
When then thou hearest word or deed of His, do not hear it as by the
way, or after a simple and carnal manner, but enter into the depth of
His contemplations, become a communicant in truths mystically delivered
to thee.'"[67:1]
12.
Moreover, while it is certain that developments of Revelation proceeded
all through the Old Dispensation down to the very end of our Lord's
ministry, on the other hand, if we turn our attention to the beginnings
of Apostolical teaching after His ascension, we shall find ourselves
unable to fix an historical point at which the growth of doctrine
ceased, and the rule of faith was once for all settled. Not on the day
of Pentecost, for St. Peter had still to learn at Joppa that he was to
baptize Cornelius; not at Joppa and Cæsarea, for St. Paul had to write
his Epistles; not on the death of the last Apostle, for St. Ignatius had
to establish the doctrine of Episcopacy; not then, nor for centuries
after, for the Canon of the New Testament was still undetermined. Not in
the Creed, which is no collection of definitions, but a summary of
certain _credenda_, an incomplete summary, and, like the Lord's Prayer
or the Decalogue, a mere sample of divine truths, especially of the more
elementary. No one doctrine can be named which starts complete at first,
and gains nothing afterwards from the investigations of faith and the
attacks of heresy. The Church went forth from the old world in haste, as
the Israelites from Egypt "with their dough before it was leavened,
their kneading troughs being bound up in their clothes upon their
shoulders."
13.
Further, the political developments contained in the historical parts of
Scripture are as striking as the prophetical and the doctrinal. Can any
history wear a more human appearance than that of the rise and growth of
the chosen people to whom I have just referred? What had been determined
in the counsels of the Lord of heaven and earth from the beginning, what
was immutable, what was announced to Moses in the burning bush, is
afterwards represented as the growth of an idea under successive
emergencies. The Divine Voice in the bush had announced the Exodus of
the children of Israel from Egypt and their entrance into Canaan; and
added, as a token of the certainty of His purpose, "When thou hast
brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this
mountain." Now this sacrifice or festival, which was but incidental and
secondary in the great deliverance, is for a while the ultimate scope of
the demands which Moses makes upon Pharaoh. "Thou shalt come, thou and
the elders of Israel unto the King of Egypt, and ye shall say unto him,
The Lord God of the Hebrews hath met with us, and now let us go, we
beseech thee, three days' journey into the wilderness, that we may
sacrifice to the Lord our God." It had been added that Pharaoh would
first refuse their request, but that after miracles he would let them go
altogether, nay with "jewels of silver and gold, and raiment."
Accordingly the first request of Moses was, "Let us go, we pray thee,
three days' journey into the desert, and sacrifice unto the Lord our
God." Before the plague of frogs the warning is repeated, "Let My people
go that they may serve Me;" and after it Pharaoh says, "I will let the
people go, that they may do sacrifice unto the Lord." It occurs again
before the plague of flies; and after it Pharaoh offers to let the
Israelites sacrifice in Egypt, which Moses refuses on the ground that
they will have to "sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians before
their eyes." "We will go three days' journey into the wilderness," he
proceeds, "and sacrifice to the Lord our God;" and Pharaoh then concedes
their sacrificing in the wilderness, "only," he says, "you shall not go
very far away." The demand is repeated separately before the plagues of
murrain, hail, and locusts, no mention being yet made of anything beyond
a service or sacrifice in the wilderness. On the last of these
interviews, Pharaoh asks an explanation, and Moses extends his claim:
"We will go with our young and with our old, with our sons and with our
daughters, with our flocks and with our herds will we go, for we must
hold a feast unto the Lord." That it was an extension seems plain from
Pharaoh's reply: "Go now ye that are men, and serve the Lord, for that
ye did desire." Upon the plague of darkness Pharaoh concedes the
extended demand, excepting the flocks and herds; but Moses reminds him
that they were implied, though not expressed in the original wording:
"Thou must give us also sacrifices and burnt offerings, that we may
sacrifice unto the Lord our God." Even to the last, there was no
intimation of their leaving Egypt for good; the issue was left to be
wrought out by the Egyptians. "All these thy servants," says Moses,
"shall come down unto me, and bow down themselves unto me, saying, Get
thee out and all the people that follow thee, and after that I will go
out;" and, accordingly, after the judgment on the first-born, they were
thrust out at midnight, with their flocks and herds, their kneading
troughs and their dough, laden, too, with the spoils of Egypt, as had
been fore-ordained, yet apparently by a combination of circumstances, or
the complication of a crisis. Yet Moses knew that their departure from
Egypt was final, for he took the bones of Joseph with him; and that
conviction broke on Pharaoh soon, when he and his asked themselves, "Why
have we done this, that we have let Israel go from serving us?" But
this progress of events, vague and uncertain as it seemed to be,
notwithstanding the miracles which attended it, had been directed by Him
who works out gradually what He has determined absolutely; and it ended
in the parting of the Red Sea, and the destruction of Pharaoh's host, on
his pursuing them.
Moreover, from what occurred forty years afterwards, when they were
advancing upon the promised land, it would seem that the original grant
of territory did not include the country east of Jordan, held in the
event by Reuben, Gad, and half the tribe of Manasseh; at least they
undertook at first to leave Sihon in undisturbed possession of his
country, if he would let them pass through it, and only on his refusing
his permission did they invade and appropriate it.
14.
6. It is in point to notice also the structure and style of Scripture, a
structure so unsystematic and various, and a style so figurative and
indirect, that no one would presume at first sight to say what is in it
and what is not. It cannot, as it were, be mapped, or its contents
catalogued; but after all our diligence, to the end of our lives and to
the end of the Church, it must be an unexplored and unsubdued land, with
heights and valleys, forests and streams, on the right and left of our
path and close about us, full of concealed wonders and choice treasures.
Of no doctrine whatever, which does not actually contradict what has
been delivered, can it be peremptorily asserted that it is not in
Scripture; of no reader, whatever be his study of it, can it be said
that he has mastered every doctrine which it contains. Butler's remarks
on this subject were just now referred to. "The more distinct and
particular knowledge," he says, "of those things, the study of which the
Apostle calls 'going on unto perfection,'" that is, of the more
recondite doctrines of the Gospel, "and of the prophetic parts of
revelation, like many parts of natural and even civil knowledge, may
require very exact thought and careful consideration. The hindrances too
of natural and of supernatural light and knowledge have been of the
same kind. And as it is owned the whole scheme of Scripture is not
yet understood, so, if it ever comes to be understood, before the
'restitution of all things,' and without miraculous interpositions, it
must be in the same way as natural knowledge is come at, by the
continuance and progress of learning and of liberty, and by particular
persons attending to, comparing, and pursuing intimations scattered up
and down it, which are overlooked and disregarded by the generality of
the world. For this is the way in which all improvements are made, by
thoughtful men tracing on obscure hints, as it were, dropped us by
nature accidentally, or which seem to come into our minds by chance. Nor
is it at all incredible that a book, which has been so long in the
possession of mankind, should contain many truths as yet undiscovered.
For all the same phenomena, and the same faculties of investigation,
from which such great discoveries in natural knowledge have been made in
the present and last age, were equally in the possession of mankind
several thousand years before. And possibly it might be intended that
events, as they come to pass, should open and ascertain the meaning of
several parts of Scripture."[72:1] Butler of course was not contemplating
the case of new articles of faith, or developments imperative on
our acceptance, but he surely bears witness to the probability of
developments taking place in Christian doctrine considered in themselves,
which is the point at present in question.
15.
It may be added that, in matter of fact, all the definitions or received
judgments of the early and medieval Church rest upon definite, even
though sometimes obscure sentences of Scripture. Thus Purgatory may
appeal to the "saving by fire," and "entering through much tribulation
into the kingdom of God;" the communication of the merits of the Saints
to our "receiving a prophet's reward" for "receiving a prophet in the
name of a prophet," and "a righteous man's reward" for "receiving a
righteous man in the name of a righteous man;" the Real Presence to
"This is My Body;" Absolution to "Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are
remitted;" Extreme Unction to "Anointing him with oil in the Name of the
Lord;" Voluntary poverty to "Sell all that thou hast;" obedience to "He
was in subjection to His parents;" the honour paid to creatures, animate
or inanimate, to _Laudate Dominum in sanctis Ejus_, and _Adorate
scabellum pedum Ejus_; and so of the rest.
16.
7. Lastly, while Scripture nowhere recognizes itself or asserts the
inspiration of those passages which are most essential, it distinctly
anticipates the development of Christianity, both as a polity and as a
doctrine. In one of our Lord's parables "the Kingdom of Heaven" is even
compared to "a grain of mustard-seed, which a man took and hid in his
field; which indeed is the least of all seeds, but when it is grown it
is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree," and, as St. Mark
words it, "shooteth out great branches, so that the birds of the air
come and lodge in the branches thereof." And again, in the same chapter
of St. Mark, "So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed
into the ground, and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed
should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how; for the earth bringeth
forth fruit of herself." Here an internal element of life, whether
principle or doctrine, is spoken of rather than any mere external
manifestation; and it is observable that the spontaneous, as well as the
gradual, character of the growth is intimated. This description of the
process corresponds to what has been above observed respecting
development, viz. that it is not an effect of wishing and resolving, or
of forced enthusiasm, or of any mechanism of reasoning, or of any mere
subtlety of intellect; but comes of its own innate power of expansion
within the mind in its season, though with the use of reflection and
argument and original thought, more or less as it may happen, with a
dependence on the ethical growth of the mind itself, and with a reflex
influence upon it. Again, the Parable of the Leaven describes the
development of doctrine in another respect, in its active, engrossing,
and interpenetrating power.
17.
From the necessity, then, of the case, from the history of all sects and
parties in religion, and from the analogy and example of Scripture,
we may fairly conclude that Christian doctrine admits of formal,
legitimate, and true developments, that is, of developments contemplated
by its Divine Author.
The general analogy of the world, physical and moral, confirms this
conclusion, as we are reminded by the great authority who has already
been quoted in the course of this Section. "The whole natural world and
government of it," says Butler, "is a scheme or system; not a fixed, but
a progressive one; a scheme in which the operation of various means
takes up a great length of time before the ends they tend to can be
attained. The change of seasons, the ripening of the fruits of the
earth, the very history of a flower is an instance of this; and so is
human life. Thus vegetable bodies, and those of animals, though possibly
formed at once, yet grow up by degrees to a mature state. And thus
rational agents, who animate these latter bodies, are naturally directed
to form each his own manners and character by the gradual gaining of
knowledge and experience, and by a long course of action. Our existence
is not only successive, as it must be of necessity, but one state of our
life and being is appointed by God to be a preparation for another; and
that to be the means of attaining to another succeeding one: infancy to
childhood, childhood to youth, youth to mature age. Men are impatient,
and for precipitating things; but the Author of Nature appears
deliberate throughout His operations, accomplishing His natural ends by
slow successive steps. And there is a plan of things beforehand laid
out, which, from the nature of it, requires various systems of means, as
well as length of time, in order to the carrying on its several parts
into execution. Thus, in the daily course of natural providence, God
operates in the very same manner as in the dispensation of Christianity,
making one thing subservient to another; this, to somewhat farther; and
so on, through a progressive series of means, which extend, both
backward and forward, beyond our utmost view. Of this manner of
operation, everything we see in the course of nature is as much an
instance as any part of the Christian dispensation."[75:1]
SECTION II.
AN INFALLIBLE DEVELOPING AUTHORITY TO BE EXPECTED.
It has now been made probable that developments of Christianity were but
natural, as time went on, and were to be expected; and that these
natural and true developments, as being natural and true, were of course
contemplated and taken into account by its Author, who in designing the
work designed its legitimate results. These, whatever they turn out to
be, may be called absolutely "the developments" of Christianity. That,
beyond reasonable doubt, there are such is surely a great step gained in
the inquiry; it is a momentous fact. The next question is, _What_ are
they? and to a theologian, who could take a general view, and also
possessed an intimate and minute knowledge, of its history, they
would doubtless on the whole be easily distinguishable by their own
characters, and require no foreign aid to point them out, no external
authority to ratify them. But it is difficult to say who is exactly in
this position. Considering that Christians, from the nature of the case,
live under the bias of the doctrines, and in the very midst of the
facts, and during the process of the controversies, which are to be the
subject of criticism, since they are exposed to the prejudices of birth,
education, place, personal attachment, engagements, and party, it can
hardly be maintained that in matter of fact a true development carries
with it always its own certainty even to the learned, or that history,
past or present, is secure from the possibility of a variety of
interpretations.
2.
I have already spoken on this subject, and from a very different point
of view from that which I am taking at present:--
"Prophets or Doctors are the interpreters of the revelation; they unfold
and define its mysteries, they illuminate its documents, they harmonize
its contents, they apply its promises. Their teaching is a vast system,
not to be comprised in a few sentences, not to be embodied in one code
or treatise, but consisting of a certain body of Truth, pervading the
Church like an atmosphere, irregular in its shape from its very
profusion and exuberance; at times separable only in idea from Episcopal
Tradition, yet at times melting away into legend and fable; partly
written, partly unwritten, partly the interpretation, partly the
supplement of Scripture, partly preserved in intellectual expressions,
partly latent in the spirit and temper of Christians; poured to and fro
in closets and upon the housetops, in liturgies, in controversial works,
in obscure fragments, in sermons, in popular prejudices, in local
customs. This I call Prophetical Tradition, existing primarily in the
bosom of the Church itself, and recorded in such measure as Providence
has determined in the writings of eminent men. Keep that which is
committed to thy charge, is St. Paul's injunction to Timothy; and for
this reason, because from its vastness and indefiniteness it is
especially exposed to corruption, if the Church fails in vigilance. This
is that body of teaching which is offered to all Christians even at the
present day, though in various forms and measures of truth, in different
parts of Christendom, partly being a comment, partly an addition upon
the articles of the Creed."[77:1]
If this be true, certainly some rule is necessary for arranging and
authenticating these various expressions and results of Christian
doctrine. No one will maintain that all points of belief are of equal
importance. "There are what may be called minor points, which we may
hold to be true without imposing them as necessary;" "there are greater
truths and lesser truths, points which it is necessary, and points which
it is pious to believe."[77:2] The simple question is, How are we to
discriminate the greater from the less, the true from the false.
3.
This need of an authoritative sanction is increased by considering,
after M. Guizot's suggestion, that Christianity, though represented in
prophecy as a kingdom, came into the world as an idea rather than an
institution, and has had to wrap itself in clothing and fit itself with
armour of its own providing, and to form the instruments and methods of
its prosperity and warfare. If the developments, which have above been
called _moral_, are to take place to any great extent, and without them
it is difficult to see how Christianity can exist at all, if only its
relations towards civil government have to be ascertained, or the
qualifications for the profession of it have to be defined, surely an
authority is necessary to impart decision to what is vague, and
confidence to what is empirical, to ratify the successive steps of so
elaborate a process, and to secure the validity of inferences which are
to be made the premisses of more remote investigations.
Tests, it is true, for ascertaining the correctness of developments in
general may be drawn out, as I shall show in the sequel; but they are
insufficient for the guidance of individuals in the case of so large and
complicated a problem as Christianity, though they may aid our inquiries
and support our conclusions in particular points. They are of a
scientific and controversial, not of a practical character, and are
instruments rather than warrants of right decisions. Moreover, they
rather serve as answers to objections brought against the actual
decisions of authority, than are proofs of the correctness of those
decisions. While, then, on the one hand, it is probable that some means
will be granted for ascertaining the legitimate and true developments of
Revelation, it appears, on the other, that these means must of necessity
be external to the developments themselves.
4.
Reasons shall be given in this Section for concluding that, in
proportion to the probability of true developments of doctrine and
practice in the Divine Scheme, so is the probability also of the
appointment in that scheme of an external authority to decide upon them,
thereby separating them from the mass of mere human speculation,
extravagance, corruption, and error, in and out of which they grow. This
is the doctrine of the infallibility of the Church; for by infallibility
I suppose is meant the power of deciding whether this, that, and a
third, and any number of theological or ethical statements are true.
5.
1. Let the state of the case be carefully considered. If the Christian
doctrine, as originally taught, admits of true and important
developments, as was argued in the foregoing Section, this is a strong
antecedent argument in favour of a provision in the Dispensation for
putting a seal of authority upon those developments. The probability of
their being known to be true varies with that of their truth. The two
ideas indeed are quite distinct, I grant, of revealing and of
guaranteeing a truth, and they are often distinct in fact. There are
various revelations all over the earth which do not carry with them the
evidence of their divinity. Such are the inward suggestions and secret
illuminations granted to so many individuals; such are the traditionary
doctrines which are found among the heathen, that "vague and unconnected
family of religious truths, originally from God, but sojourning, without
the sanction of miracle or a definite home, as pilgrims up and down the
world, and discernible and separable from the corrupt legends with which
they are mixed, by the spiritual mind alone."[79:1] There is nothing
impossible in the notion of a revelation occurring without evidences
that it is a revelation; just as human sciences are a divine gift, yet
are reached by our ordinary powers and have no claim on our faith. But
Christianity is not of this nature: it is a revelation which comes to us
as a revelation, as a whole, objectively, and with a profession of
infallibility; and the only question to be determined relates to the
matter of the revelation. If then there are certain great truths, or
duties, or observances, naturally and legitimately resulting from the
doctrines originally professed, it is but reasonable to include these
true results in the idea of the revelation itself, to consider them
parts of it, and if the revelation be not only true, but guaranteed as
true, to anticipate that they too will come under the privilege of that
guarantee. Christianity, unlike other revelations of God's will, except
the Jewish, of which it is a continuation, is an objective religion, or
a revelation with credentials; it is natural, I say, to view it wholly
as such, and not partly _sui generis_, partly like others. Such as it
begins, such let it be considered to continue; granting that certain
large developments of it are true, they must surely be accredited as
true.
6.
2. An objection, however, is often made to the doctrine of infallibility
_in limine_, which is too important not to be taken into consideration.
It is urged that, as all religious knowledge rests on moral evidence,
not on demonstration, our belief in the Church's infallibility must be
of this character; but what can be more absurd than a probable
infallibility, or a certainty resting on doubt?--I believe, because I am
sure; and I am sure, because I suppose. Granting then that the gift of
infallibility be adapted, when believed, to unite all intellects in one
common confession, the fact that it is given is as difficult of proof as
the developments which it is to prove, and nugatory therefore, and in
consequence improbable in a Divine Scheme. The advocates of Rome, it has
been urged, "insist on the necessity of an infallible guide in religious
matters, as an argument that such a guide has really been accorded. Now
it is obvious to inquire how individuals are to know with certainty that
Rome _is_ infallible . . . how any ground can be such as to bring home
to the mind infallibly that she is infallible; what conceivable proof
amounts to more than a probability of the fact; and what advantage is an
infallible guide, if those who are to be guided have, after all, no
more than an opinion, as the Romanists call it, that she is
infallible?"[81:1]
7.
This argument, however, except when used, as is intended in this
passage, against such persons as would remove all imperfection in
the proof of Religion, is certainly a fallacious one. For since,
as all allow, the Apostles were infallible, it tells against their
infallibility, or the infallibility of Scripture, as truly as against
the infallibility of the Church; for no one will say that the Apostles
were made infallible for nothing, yet we are only morally certain that
they were infallible. Further, if we have but probable grounds for the
Church's infallibility, we have but the like for the impossibility of
certain things, the necessity of others, the truth, the certainty of
others; and therefore the words _infallibility_, _necessity_, _truth_,
and _certainty_ ought all of them to be banished from the language. But
why is it more inconsistent to speak of an uncertain infallibility than
of a doubtful truth or a contingent necessity, phrases which present
ideas clear and undeniable? In sooth we are playing with words when we
use arguments of this sort. When we say that a person is infallible, we
mean no more than that what he says is always true, always to be
believed, always to be done. The term is resolvable into these phrases
as its equivalents; either then the phrases are inadmissible, or the
idea of infallibility must be allowed. A probable infallibility is a
probable gift of never erring; a reception of the doctrine of a probable
infallibility is faith and obedience towards a person founded on the
probability of his never erring in his declarations or commands. What is
inconsistent in this idea? Whatever then be the particular means of
determining infallibility, the abstract objection may be put
aside.[81:2]
8.
3. Again, it is sometimes argued that such a dispensation would destroy
our probation, as dissipating doubt, precluding the exercise of faith,
and obliging us to obey whether we wish it or no; and it is urged that a
Divine Voice spoke in the first age, and difficulty and darkness rest
upon all subsequent ones; as if infallibility and personal judgment were
incompatible; but this is to confuse the subject. We must distinguish
between a revelation and a reception of it, not between its earlier and
later stages. A revelation, in itself divine, and guaranteed as such,
may from first to last be received, doubted, argued against, perverted,
rejected, by individuals according to the state of mind of each.
Ignorance, misapprehension, unbelief, and other causes, do not at once
cease to operate because the revelation is in itself true and in its
proofs irrefragable. We have then no warrant at all for saying that an
accredited revelation will exclude the existence of doubts and
difficulties on the part of those whom it addresses, or dispense with
anxious diligence on their part, though it may in its own nature tend
to do so. Infallibility does not interfere with moral probation; the two
notions are absolutely distinct. It is no objection then to the idea of
a peremptory authority, such as I am supposing, that it lessens the task
of personal inquiry, unless it be an objection to the authority of
Revelation altogether. A Church, or a Council, or a Pope, or a Consent
of Doctors, or a Consent of Christendom, limits the inquiries of the
individual in no other way than Scripture limits them: it does limit
them; but, while it limits their range, it preserves intact their
probationary character; we are tried as really, though not on so large a
field. To suppose that the doctrine of a permanent authority in matters
of faith interferes with our free-will and responsibility is, as before,
to forget that there were infallible teachers in the first age, and
heretics and schismatics in the ages subsequent. There may have been at
once a supreme authority from first to last, and a moral judgment from
first to last. Moreover, those who maintain that Christian truth must be
gained solely by personal efforts are bound to show that methods,
ethical and intellectual, are granted to individuals sufficient for
gaining it; else the mode of probation they advocate is less, not more,
perfect than that which proceeds upon external authority. On the whole,
then, no argument against continuing the principle of objectiveness into
the developments of Revelation arises out of the conditions of our moral
responsibility.
9.
4. Perhaps it will be urged that the Analogy of Nature is against our
anticipating the continuance of an external authority which has once
been given; because in the words of the profound thinker who has already
been cited, "We are wholly ignorant what degree of new knowledge it were
to be expected God would give mankind by revelation, upon supposition
of His affording one; or how far, and in what way, He would interpose
miraculously to qualify them to whom He should originally make the
revelation for communicating the knowledge given by it, and to secure
their doing it to the age in which they should live, and to secure its
being transmitted to posterity;" and because "we are not in any sort
able to judge whether it were to be expected that the revelation should
have been committed to writing, or left to be handed down, and
consequently corrupted, by verbal tradition, and at length sunk under
it."[84:1] But this reasoning does not apply here, as has already been
observed; it contemplates only the abstract hypothesis of a revelation,
not the fact of an existing revelation of a particular kind, which may
of course in various ways modify our state of knowledge, by settling
some of those very points which, before it was given, we had no means of
deciding. Nor can it, as I think, be fairly denied that the argument
from analogy in one point of view tells against anticipating a
revelation at all, for an innovation upon the physical order of the
world is by the very force of the terms inconsistent with its ordinary
course. We cannot then regulate our antecedent view of the character of
a revelation by a test which, applied simply, overthrows the very notion
of a revelation altogether. Any how, Analogy is in some sort violated by
the fact of a revelation, and the question before us only relates to the
extent of that violation.
10.
I will hazard a distinction here between the facts of revelation and its
principles:--the argument from Analogy is more concerned with its
principles than with its facts. The revealed facts are special and
singular, not analogous, from the nature of the case: but it is
otherwise with the revealed principles; these are common to all the
works of God: and if the Author of Nature be the Author of Grace, it may
be expected that, while the two systems of facts are distinct and
independent, the principles displayed in them will be the same, and form
a connecting link between them. In this identity of principle lies the
Analogy of Natural and Revealed Religion, in Butler's sense of the word.
The doctrine of the Incarnation is a fact, and cannot be paralleled by
anything in nature; the doctrine of Mediation is a principle, and is
abundantly exemplified in its provisions. Miracles are facts;
inspiration is a fact; divine teaching once for all, and a continual
teaching, are each a fact; probation by means of intellectual
difficulties is a principle both in nature and in grace, and may be
carried on in the system of grace either by a standing ordinance of
teaching or by one definite act of teaching, and that with an analogy
equally perfect in either case to the order of nature; nor can we
succeed in arguing from the analogy of that order against a standing
guardianship of revelation without arguing also against its original
bestowal. Supposing the order of nature once broken by the introduction
of a revelation, the continuance of that revelation is but a question of
degree; and the circumstance that a work has begun makes it more
probable than not that it will proceed. We have no reason to suppose
that there is so great a distinction of dispensation between ourselves
and the first generation of Christians, as that they had a living
infallible guidance, and we have not.
The case then stands thus:--Revelation has introduced a new law of
divine governance over and above those laws which appear in the natural
course of the world; and in consequence we are able to argue for the
existence of a standing authority in matters of faith on the analogy of
Nature, and from the fact of Christianity. Preservation is involved in
the idea of creation. As the Creator rested on the seventh day from the
work which He had made, yet He "worketh hitherto;" so He gave the Creed
once for all in the beginning, yet blesses its growth still, and
provides for its increase. His word "shall not return unto Him void, but
accomplish" His pleasure. As creation argues continual governance, so
are Apostles harbingers of Popes.
11.
5. Moreover, it must be borne in mind that, as the essence of all
religion is authority and obedience, so the distinction between natural
religion and revealed lies in this, that the one has a subjective
authority, and the other an objective. Revelation consists in the
manifestation of the Invisible Divine Power, or in the substitution of
the voice of a Lawgiver for the voice of conscience. The supremacy of
conscience is the essence of natural religion; the supremacy of Apostle,
or Pope, or Church, or Bishop, is the essence of revealed; and when such
external authority is taken away, the mind falls back again of necessity
upon that inward guide which it possessed even before Revelation was
vouchsafed. Thus, what conscience is in the system of nature, such is
the voice of Scripture, or of the Church, or of the Holy See, as we may
determine it, in the system of Revelation. It may be objected, indeed,
that conscience is not infallible; it is true, but still it is ever to
be obeyed. And this is just the prerogative which controversialists
assign to the See of St. Peter; it is not in all cases infallible, it
may err beyond its special province, but it has in all cases a claim on
our obedience. "All Catholics and heretics," says Bellarmine, "agree in
two things: first, that it is possible for the Pope, even as pope, and
with his own assembly of councillors, or with General Council, to err in
particular controversies of fact, which chiefly depend on human
information and testimony; secondly, that it is possible for him to err
as a private Doctor, even in universal questions of right, whether of
faith or of morals, and that from ignorance, as sometimes happens to
other doctors. Next, all Catholics agree in other two points, not,
however, with heretics, but solely with each other: first, that the Pope
with General Council cannot err, either in framing decrees of faith or
general precepts of morality; secondly, that the Pope when determining
anything in a doubtful matter, whether by himself or with his own
particular Council, _whether it is possible for him to err or not, is to
be obeyed_ by all the faithful."[87:1] And as obedience to conscience,
even supposing conscience ill-informed, tends to the improvement of our
moral nature, and ultimately of our knowledge, so obedience to our
ecclesiastical superior may subserve our growth in illumination and
sanctity, even though he should command what is extreme or inexpedient,
or teach what is external to his legitimate province.
12.
6. The common sense of mankind does but support a conclusion thus forced
upon us by analogical considerations. It feels that the very idea of
revelation implies a present informant and guide, and that an infallible
one; not a mere abstract declaration of Truths unknown before to man, or
a record of history, or the result of an antiquarian research, but a
message and a lesson speaking to this man and that. This is shown by the
popular notion which has prevailed among us since the Reformation, that
the Bible itself is such a guide; and which succeeded in overthrowing
the supremacy of Church and Pope, for the very reason that it was a
rival authority, not resisting merely, but supplanting it. In
proportion, then, as we find, in matter of fact, that the inspired
Volume is not adapted or intended to subserve that purpose, are we
forced to revert to that living and present Guide, who, at the era of
our rejection of her, had been so long recognized as the dispenser of
Scripture, according to times and circumstances, and the arbiter of all
true doctrine and holy practice to her children. We feel a need, and she
alone of all things under heaven supplies it. We are told that God has
spoken. Where? In a book? We have tried it and it disappoints; it
disappoints us, that most holy and blessed gift, not from fault of its
own, but because it is used for a purpose for which it was not given.
The Ethiopian's reply, when St. Philip asked him if he understood what
he was reading, is the voice of nature: "How can I, unless some man
shall guide me?" The Church undertakes that office; she does what none
else can do, and this is the secret of her power. "The human mind," it
has been said, "wishes to be rid of doubt in religion; and a teacher who
claims infallibility is readily believed on his simple word. We see this
constantly exemplified in the case of individual pretenders among
ourselves. In Romanism the Church pretends to it; she rids herself of
competitors by forestalling them. And probably, in the eyes of her
children, this is not the least persuasive argument for her
infallibility, that she alone of all Churches dares claim it, as if a
secret instinct and involuntary misgivings restrained those rival
communions which go so far towards affecting it."[88:1] These sentences,
whatever be the errors of their wording, surely express a great truth.
The most obvious answer, then, to the question, why we yield to the
authority of the Church in the questions and developments of faith, is,
that some authority there must be if there is a revelation given, and
other authority there is none but she. A revelation is not given, if
there be no authority to decide what it is that is given. In the words
of St. Peter to her Divine Master and Lord, "To whom shall we go?" Nor
must it be forgotten in confirmation, that Scripture expressly calls the
Church "the pillar and ground of the Truth," and promises her as by
covenant that "the Spirit of the Lord that is upon her, and His words
which He has put in her mouth shall not depart out of her mouth, nor out
of the mouth of her seed, nor out of the mouth of her seed's seed, from
henceforth and for ever."[89:1]
13.
7. And if the very claim to infallible arbitration in religious disputes
is of so weighty importance and interest in all ages of the world, much
more is it welcome at a time like the present, when the human intellect
is so busy, and thought so fertile, and opinion so manifold. The
absolute need of a spiritual supremacy is at present the strongest of
arguments in favour of the fact of its supply. Surely, either an
objective revelation has not been given, or it has been provided with
means for impressing its objectiveness on the world. If Christianity be
a social religion, as it certainly is, and if it be based on certain
ideas acknowledged as divine, or a creed, (which shall here be assumed,)
and if these ideas have various aspects, and make distinct impressions
on different minds, and issue in consequence in a multiplicity of
developments, true, or false, or mixed, as has been shown, what power
will suffice to meet and to do justice to these conflicting conditions,
but a supreme authority ruling and reconciling individual judgments by a
divine right and a recognized wisdom? In barbarous times the will is
reached through the senses; but in an age in which reason, as it is
called, is the standard of truth and right, it is abundantly evident to
any one, who mixes ever so little with the world, that, if things are
left to themselves, every individual will have his own view of them, and
take his own course; that two or three will agree to-day to part company
to-morrow; that Scripture will be read in contrary ways, and history,
according to the apologue, will have to different comers its silver
shield and its golden; that philosophy, taste, prejudice, passion,
party, caprice, will find no common measure, unless there be some
supreme power to control the mind and to compel agreement.
There can be no combination on the basis of truth without an organ of
truth. As cultivation brings out the colours of flowers, and
domestication changes the character of animals, so does education of
necessity develope differences of opinion; and while it is impossible to
lay down first principles in which all will unite, it is utterly
unreasonable to expect that this man should yield to that, or all to
one. I do not say there are no eternal truths, such as the poet
proclaims,[90:1] which all acknowledge in private, but that there are
none sufficiently commanding to be the basis of public union and action.
The only general persuasive in matters of conduct is authority; that is,
(when truth is in question,) a judgment which we feel to be superior to
our own. If Christianity is both social and dogmatic, and intended for
all ages, it must humanly speaking have an infallible expounder. Else
you will secure unity of form at the loss of unity of doctrine, or unity
of doctrine at the loss of unity of form; you will have to choose
between a comprehension of opinions and a resolution into parties,
between latitudinarian and sectarian error. You may be tolerant or
intolerant of contrarieties of thought, but contrarieties you will have.
By the Church of England a hollow uniformity is preferred to an
infallible chair; and by the sects of England, an interminable
division. Germany and Geneva began with persecution, and have ended in
scepticism. The doctrine of infallibility is a less violent hypothesis
than this sacrifice either of faith or of charity. It secures the
object, while it gives definiteness and force to the matter, of the
Revelation.
14.
8. I have called the doctrine of Infallibility an hypothesis: let it be
so considered for the sake of argument, that is, let it be considered to
be a mere position, supported by no direct evidence, but required by the
facts of the case, and reconciling them with each other. That hypothesis
is indeed, in matter of fact, maintained and acted on in the largest
portion of Christendom, and from time immemorial; but let this
coincidence be accounted for by the need. Moreover, it is not a naked or
isolated fact, but the animating principle of a large scheme of doctrine
which the need itself could not simply create; but again, let this
system be merely called its development. Yet even as an hypothesis,
which has been held by one out of various communions, it may not be
lightly put aside. Some hypothesis, this or that, all parties, all
controversialists, all historians must adopt, if they would treat of
Christianity at all. Gieseler's "Text Book" bears the profession of
being a dry analysis of Christian history; yet on inspection it will be
found to be written on a positive and definite theory, and to bend facts
to meet it. An unbeliever, as Gibbon, assumes one hypothesis, and an
Ultra-montane, as Baronius, adopts another. The School of Hurd and
Newton hold, as the only true view of history, that Christianity slept
for centuries upon centuries, except among those whom historians call
heretics. Others speak as if the oath of supremacy or the _congé
d'élire_ could be made the measure of St. Ambrose, and they fit the
Thirty-nine Articles on the fervid Tertullian. The question is, which
of all these theories is the simplest, the most natural, the most
persuasive. Certainly the notion of development under infallible
authority is not a less grave, a less winning hypothesis, than the
chance and coincidence of events, or the Oriental Philosophy, or the
working of Antichrist, to account for the rise of Christianity and the
formation of its theology.
SECTION III.
THE EXISTING DEVELOPMENTS OF DOCTRINE THE PROBABLE FULFILMENT OF THAT
EXPECTATION.
I have been arguing, in respect to the revealed doctrine, given to us
from above in Christianity, first, that, in consequence of its
intellectual character, and as passing through the minds of so many
generations of men, and as applied by them to so many purposes, and as
investigated so curiously as to its capabilities, implications, and
bearings, it could not but grow or develope, as time went on, into a
large theological system;--next, that, if development must be, then,
whereas Revelation is a heavenly gift, He who gave it virtually has not
given it, unless He has also secured it from perversion and corruption,
in all such development as comes upon it by the necessity of its nature,
or, in other words, that that intellectual action through successive
generations, which is the organ of development, must, so far forth as it
can claim to have been put in charge of the Revelation, be in its
determinations infallible.
Passing from these two points, I come next to the question whether in
the history of Christianity there is any fulfilment of such anticipation
as I have insisted on, whether in matter-of-fact doctrines, rites, and
usages have grown up round the Apostolic Creed and have interpenetrated
its Articles, claiming to be part of Christianity and looking like those
additions which we are in search of. The answer is, that such additions
there are, and that they are found just where they might be expected, in
the authoritative seats and homes of old tradition, the Latin and Greek
Churches. Let me enlarge on this point.
2.
I observe, then, that, if the idea of Christianity, as originally given
to us from heaven, cannot but contain much which will be only partially
recognized by us as included in it and only held by us unconsciously;
and if again, Christianity being from heaven, all that is necessarily
involved in it, and is evolved from it, is from heaven, and if, on the
other hand, large accretions actually do exist, professing to be its
true and legitimate results, our first impression naturally is, that
these must be the very developments which they profess to be. Moreover,
the very scale on which they have been made, their high antiquity yet
present promise, their gradual formation yet precision, their harmonious
order, dispose the imagination most forcibly towards the belief that a
teaching so consistent with itself, so well balanced, so young and so
old, not obsolete after so many centuries, but vigorous and progressive
still, is the very development contemplated in the Divine Scheme. These
doctrines are members of one family, and suggestive, or correlative, or
confirmatory, or illustrative of each other. One furnishes evidence to
another, and all to each of them; if this is proved, that becomes
probable; if this and that are both probable, but for different reasons,
each adds to the other its own probability. The Incarnation is the
antecedent of the doctrine of Mediation, and the archetype both of the
Sacramental principle and of the merits of Saints. From the doctrine of
Mediation follow the Atonement, the Mass, the merits of Martyrs and
Saints, their invocation and _cultus_. From the Sacramental principle
come the Sacraments properly so called; the unity of the Church, and the
Holy See as its type and centre; the authority of Councils; the sanctity
of rites; the veneration of holy places, shrines, images, vessels,
furniture, and vestments. Of the Sacraments, Baptism is developed into
Confirmation on the one hand; into Penance, Purgatory, and Indulgences
on the other; and the Eucharist into the Real Presence, adoration of the
Host, Resurrection of the body, and the virtue of relics. Again, the
doctrine of the Sacraments leads to the doctrine of Justification;
Justification to that of Original Sin; Original Sin to the merit of
Celibacy. Nor do these separate developments stand independent of each
other, but by cross relations they are connected, and grow together
while they grow from one. The Mass and Real Presence are parts of one;
the veneration of Saints and their relics are parts of one; their
intercessory power and the Purgatorial State, and again the Mass and
that State are correlative; Celibacy is the characteristic mark of
Monachism and of the Priesthood. You must accept the whole or reject the
whole; attenuation does but enfeeble, and amputation mutilate. It is
trifling to receive all but something which is as integral as any other
portion; and, on the other hand, it is a solemn thing to accept any
part, for, before you know where you are, you may be carried on by a
stern logical necessity to accept the whole.
3.
Next, we have to consider that from first to last other developments
there are none, except those which have possession of Christendom; none,
that is, of prominence and permanence sufficient to deserve the name. In
early times the heretical doctrines were confessedly barren and
short-lived, and could not stand their ground against Catholicism. As to
the medieval period I am not aware that the Greeks present more than a
negative opposition to the Latins. And now in like manner the Tridentine
Creed is met by no rival developments; there is no antagonist system.
Criticisms, objections, protests, there are in plenty, but little of
positive teaching anywhere; seldom an attempt on the part of any
opposing school to master its own doctrines, to investigate their sense
and bearing, to determine their relation to the decrees of Trent and
their distance from them. And when at any time this attempt is by chance
in any measure made, then an incurable contrariety does but come to view
between portions of the theology thus developed, and a war of
principles; an impossibility moreover of reconciling that theology with
the general drift of the formularies in which its elements occur, and a
consequent appearance of unfairness and sophistry in adventurous persons
who aim at forcing them into consistency;[95:1] and, further, a
prevalent understanding of the truth of this representation, authorities
keeping silence, eschewing a hopeless enterprise and discouraging it in
others, and the people plainly intimating that they think both doctrine
and usage, antiquity and development, of very little matter at all; and,
lastly, the evident despair of even the better sort of men, who, in
consequence, when they set great schemes on foot, as for the conversion
of the heathen world, are afraid to agitate the question of the
doctrines to which it is to be converted, lest through the opened door
they should lose what they have, instead of gaining what they have not.
To the weight of recommendation which this contrast throws upon the
developments commonly called Catholic, must be added the argument which
arises from the coincidence of their consistency and permanence, with
their claim of an infallible sanction,--a claim, the existence of which,
in some quarter or other of the Divine Dispensation, is, as we have
already seen, antecedently probable. All these things being considered,
I think few persons will deny the very strong presumption which exists,
that, if there must be and are in fact developments in Christianity, the
doctrines propounded by successive Popes and Councils, through so many
ages, are they.
4.
A further presumption in behalf of these doctrines arises from the
general opinion of the world about them. Christianity being one, all its
doctrines are necessarily developments of one, and, if so, are of
necessity consistent with each other, or form a whole. Now the world
fully enters into this view of those well-known developments which claim
the name of Catholic. It allows them that title, it considers them to
belong to one family, and refers them to one theological system. It is
scarcely necessary to set about proving what is urged by their opponents
even more strenuously than by their champions. Their opponents avow that
they protest, not against this doctrine or that, but against one and
all; and they seem struck with wonder and perplexity, not to say with
awe, at a consistency which they feel to be superhuman, though they
would not allow it to be divine. The system is confessed on all hands to
bear a character of integrity and indivisibility upon it, both at first
view and on inspection. Hence such sayings as the "Tota jacet Babylon"
of the distich. Luther did but a part of the work, Calvin another
portion, Socinus finished it. To take up with Luther, and to reject
Calvin and Socinus, would be, according to that epigram, like living in
a house without a roof to it. This, I say, is no private judgment of
this man or that, but the common opinion and experience of all
countries. The two great divisions of religion feel it, Roman Catholic
and Protestant, between whom the controversy lies; sceptics and
liberals, who are spectators of the conflict, feel it; philosophers feel
it. A school of divines there is, I grant, dear to memory, who have not
felt it; and their exception will have its weight,--till we reflect that
the particular theology which they advocate has not the prescription of
success, never has been realized in fact, or, if realized for a moment,
had no stay; moreover, that, when it has been enacted by human
authority, it has scarcely travelled beyond the paper on which it was
printed, or out of the legal forms in which it was embodied. But,
putting the weight of these revered names at the highest, they do not
constitute more than an exception to the general rule, such as is found
in every subject that comes into discussion.
5.
And this general testimony to the oneness of Catholicism extends to its
past teaching relatively to its present, as well as to the portions of
its present teaching one with another. No one doubts, with such
exception as has just been allowed, that the Roman Catholic communion of
this day is the successor and representative of the Medieval Church, or
that the Medieval Church is the legitimate heir of the Nicene; even
allowing that it is a question whether a line cannot be drawn between
the Nicene Church and the Church which preceded it. On the whole, all
parties will agree that, of all existing systems, the present communion
of Rome is the nearest approximation in fact to the Church of the
Fathers, possible though some may think it, to be nearer still to that
Church on paper. Did St. Athanasius or St. Ambrose come suddenly to
life, it cannot be doubted what communion he would take to be his own.
All surely will agree that these Fathers, with whatever opinions of
their own, whatever protests, if we will, would find themselves more at
home with such men as St. Bernard or St. Ignatius Loyola, or with the
lonely priest in his lodging, or the holy sisterhood of mercy, or the
unlettered crowd before the altar, than with the teachers or with the
members of any other creed. And may we not add, that were those same
Saints, who once sojourned, one in exile, one on embassy, at Treves, to
come more northward still, and to travel until they reached another fair
city, seated among groves, green meadows, and calm streams, the holy
brothers would turn from many a high aisle and solemn cloister which
they found there, and ask the way to some small chapel where mass was
said in the populous alley or forlorn suburb? And, on the other hand,
can any one who has but heard his name, and cursorily read his history,
doubt for one instant how, in turn, the people of England, "we, our
princes, our priests, and our prophets," Lords and Commons,
Universities, Ecclesiastical Courts, marts of commerce, great towns,
country parishes, would deal with Athanasius,--Athanasius, who spent his
long years in fighting against sovereigns for a theological term?
FOOTNOTES:
[62:1] Doctrine of Justification, Lect. xiii.
[64:1] Butler's Anal. ii. 3.
[67:1] Proph. Office, Lect. xii. [Via Med. vol. i. pp. 292-3].
[72:1] ii. 3; vide also ii. 4, fin.
[75:1] Analogy, ii. 4, _ad fin._
[77:1] Proph. Office, x. [Via Med. p. 250].
[77:2] [Ibid. pp. 247, 254.]
[79:1] Arians, ch. i. sect. 3 [p. 82, ed. 3].
[81:1] Proph. Office [Via Med. vol. i. p. 122].
[81:2] ["It is very common to confuse infallibility with certitude, but
the two words stand for things quite distinct from each other. I
remember for certain what I did yesterday, but still my memory is not
infallible. I am quite clear that two and two makes four, but I often
make mistakes in long addition sums. I have no doubt whatever that John
or Richard is my true friend; but I have before now trusted those who
failed me, and I may do so again before I die. I am quite certain that
Victoria is our sovereign, and not her father, the Duke of Kent, without
any claim myself to the gift of infallibility, as I may do a virtuous
action, without being impeccable. I may be certain that the Church is
infallible, while I am myself a fallible mortal; otherwise I cannot be
certain that the Supreme Being is infallible, unless I am infallible
myself. Certitude is directed to one or other definite concrete
proposition. I am certain of propositions one, two, three, four, or
five, one by one, each by itself. I can be certain of one of them,
without being certain of the rest: that I am certain of the first makes
it neither likely nor unlikely that I am certain of the second: but,
were I infallible, then I should be certain, not only of one of them,
but of all."--_Essay on Assent_, ch. vii. sect. 2.]
[84:1] Anal. ii. 3.
[87:1] De Rom. Pont. iv. 2. [Seven years ago, it is scarcely necessary
to say, the Vatican Council determined that the Pope, _ex cathedrâ_, has
the same infallibility as the Church. This does not affect the argument
in the text.]
[88:1] Proph. Office [Via Med. vol. i. p. 117].
[89:1] 1 Tim. iii. 16; Isa. lix. 21.
[90:1] +Ou gar ti nyn ge kachthes, k.t.l.+
[95:1] [_Vid._ Via Media, vol. ii. pp. 231-341.]
CHAPTER III.
ON THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT IN BEHALF OF THE EXISTING DEVELOPMENTS.
SECTION I.
METHOD OF PROOF.
It seems, then, that we have to deal with a case something like the
following: Certain doctrines come to us, professing to be Apostolic, and
possessed of such high antiquity that, though we are only able to assign
the date of their formal establishment to the fourth, or the fifth, or
the eighth, or the thirteenth century, as it may happen, yet their
substance may, for what appears, be coeval with the Apostles, and be
expressed or implied in texts of Scripture. Further, these existing
doctrines are universally considered, without any question, in each age
to be the echo of the doctrines of the times immediately preceding them,
and thus are continually thrown back to a date indefinitely early, even
though their ultimate junction with the Apostolic Creed be out of sight
and unascertainable. Moreover, they are confessed to form one body one
with another, so that to reject one is to disparage the rest; and they
include within the range of their system even those primary articles of
faith, as the Incarnation, which many an impugner of the said doctrinal
system, as a system, professes to accept, and which, do what he will,
he cannot intelligibly separate, whether in point of evidence or of
internal character, from others which he disavows. Further, these
doctrines occupy the whole field of theology, and leave nothing to be
supplied, except in detail, by any other system; while, in matter of
fact, no rival system is forthcoming, so that we have to choose between
this theology and none at all. Moreover, this theology alone makes
provision for that guidance of opinion and conduct, which seems
externally to be the special aim of Revelation; and fulfils the promises
of Scripture, by adapting itself to the various problems of thought and
practice which meet us in life. And, further, it is the nearest
approach, to say the least, to the religious sentiment, and what is
called _ethos_, of the early Church, nay, to that of the Apostles and
Prophets; for all will agree so far as this, that Elijah, Jeremiah, the
Baptist, and St. Paul are in their history and mode of life (I do not
speak of measures of grace, no, nor of doctrine and conduct, for these
are the points in dispute, but) in what is external and meets the eye
(and this is no slight resemblance when things are viewed as a whole and
from a distance),--these saintly and heroic men, I say, are more like a
Dominican preacher, or a Jesuit missionary, or a Carmelite friar, more
like St. Toribio, or St. Vincent Ferrer, or St. Francis Xavier, or St.
Alphonso Liguori, than to any individuals, or to any classes of men,
that can be found in other communions. And then, in addition, there is
the high antecedent probability that Providence would watch over His own
work, and would direct and ratify those developments of doctrine which
were inevitable.
2.
If this is, on the whole, a true view of the general shape under which
the existing body of developments, commonly called Catholic, present
themselves before us, antecedently to our looking into the particular
evidence on which they stand, I think we shall be at no loss to
determine what both logical truth and duty prescribe to us as to our
reception of them. It is very little to say that we should treat them as
we are accustomed to treat other alleged facts and truths and the
evidence for them, such as come to us with a fair presumption in their
favour. Such are of every day's occurrence; and what is our behaviour
towards them? We meet them, not with suspicion and criticism, but with a
frank confidence. We do not in the first instance exercise our reason
upon opinions which are received, but our faith. We do not begin with
doubting; we take them on trust, and we put them on trial, and that, not
of set purpose, but spontaneously. We prove them by using them, by
applying them to the subject-matter, or the evidence, or the body of
circumstances, to which they belong, as if they gave it its
interpretation or its colour as a matter of course; and only when they
fail, in the event, in illustrating phenomena or harmonizing facts, do
we discover that we must reject the doctrines or the statements which we
had in the first instance taken for granted. Again, we take the evidence
for them, whatever it be, as a whole, as forming a combined proof; and
we interpret what is obscure in separate portions by such portions as
are clear. Moreover, we bear with these in proportion to the strength of
the antecedent probability in their favour, we are patient with
difficulties in their application, with apparent objections to them
drawn from other matters of fact, deficiency in their comprehensiveness,
or want of neatness in their working, provided their claims on our
attention are considerable.
3.
Thus most men take Newton's theory of gravitation for granted, because
it is generally received, and use it without rigidly testing it first,
each for himself, (as it can be tested,) by phenomena; and if phenomena
are found which it does not satisfactorily solve, this does not trouble
us, for a way there must be of explaining them, consistently with that
theory, though it does not occur to ourselves. Again, if we found a
concise or obscure passage in one of Cicero's letters to Atticus, we
should not scruple to admit as its true explanation a more explicit
statement in his _Ad Familiares_. Æschylus is illustrated by Sophocles
in point of language, and Thucydides by Aristophanes, in point of
history. Horace, Persius, Suetonius, Tacitus, and Juvenal may be made to
throw light upon each other. Even Plato may gain a commentator in
Plotinus, and St. Anselm is interpreted by St. Thomas. Two writers,
indeed, may be already known to differ, and then we do not join them
together as fellow-witnesses to common truths; Luther has taken on
himself to explain St. Augustine, and Voltaire, Pascal, without
persuading the world that they have a claim to do so; but in no case do
we begin with asking whether a comment does not disagree with its text,
when there is a _primâ facie_ congruity between them. We elucidate the
text by the comment, though, or rather because, the comment is fuller
and more explicit than the text.
4.
Thus too we deal with Scripture, when we have to interpret the
prophetical text and the types of the Old Testament. The event which is
the development is also the interpretation of the prediction; it
provides a fulfilment by imposing a meaning. And we accept certain
events as the fulfilment of prophecy from the broad correspondence of
the one with the other, in spite of many incidental difficulties. The
difficulty, for instance, in accounting for the fact that the dispersion
of the Jews followed upon their keeping, not their departing from their
Law, does not hinder us from insisting on their present state as an
argument against the infidel. Again, we readily submit our reason on
competent authority, and accept certain events as an accomplishment of
predictions, which seem very far removed from them; as in the passage,
"Out of Egypt have I called My Son." Nor do we find a difficulty, when
St. Paul appeals to a text of the Old Testament, which stands otherwise
in our Hebrew copies; as the words, "A body hast Thou prepared Me." We
receive such difficulties on faith, and leave them to take care of
themselves. Much less do we consider mere fulness in the interpretation,
or definiteness, or again strangeness, as a sufficient reason for
depriving the text, or the action to which it is applied, of the
advantage of such interpretation. We make it no objection that the words
themselves come short of it, or that the sacred writer did not
contemplate it, or that a previous fulfilment satisfies it. A reader who
came to the inspired text by himself, beyond the influence of that
traditional acceptation which happily encompasses it, would be surprised
to be told that the Prophet's words, "A virgin shall conceive," &c., or
"Let all the Angels of God worship Him," refer to our Lord; but assuming
the intimate connexion between Judaism and Christianity, and the
inspiration of the New Testament, we do not scruple to believe it. We
rightly feel that it is no prejudice to our receiving the prophecy of
Balaam in its Christian meaning, that it is adequately fulfilled in
David; or the history of Jonah, that it is poetical in character and has
a moral in itself like an apologue; or the meeting of Abraham and
Melchizedek, that it is too brief and simple to mean any great thing, as
St. Paul interprets it.
5.
Butler corroborates these remarks, when speaking of the particular
evidence for Christianity. "The obscurity or unintelligibleness," he
says, "of one part of a prophecy does not in any degree invalidate the
proof of foresight, arising from the appearing completion of those other
parts which are understood. For the case is evidently the same as if
those parts, which are not understood, were lost, or not written at all,
or written in an unknown tongue. Whether this observation be commonly
attended to or not, it is so evident that one can scarce bring one's
self to set down an instance in common matters to exemplify it."[104:1]
He continues, "Though a man should be incapable, for want of learning,
or opportunities of inquiry, or from not having turned his studies this
way, even so much as to judge whether particular prophecies have been
throughout completely fulfilled; yet he may see, in general, that they
have been fulfilled to such a degree, as, upon very good ground, to be
convinced of foresight more than human in such prophecies, and of such
events being intended by them. For the same reason also, though, by
means of the deficiencies in civil history, and the different accounts
of historians, the most learned should not be able to make out to
satisfaction that such parts of the prophetic history have been minutely
and throughout fulfilled; yet a very strong proof of foresight may arise
from that general completion of them which is made out; as much proof of
foresight, perhaps, as the Giver of prophecy intended should ever be
afforded by such parts of prophecy."
6.
He illustrates this by the parallel instance of fable and concealed
satire. "A man might be assured that he understood what an author
intended by a fable or parable, related without any application or
moral, merely from seeing it to be easily capable of such application,
and that such a moral might naturally be deduced from it. And he might
be fully assured that such persons and events were intended in a
satirical writing, merely from its being applicable to them. And,
agreeably to the last observation, he might be in a good measure
satisfied of it, though he were not enough informed in affairs, or in
the story of such persons, to understand half the satire. For his
satisfaction, that he understood the meaning, the intended meaning, of
these writings, would be greater or less, in proportion as he saw the
general turn of them to be capable of such application, and in
proportion to the number of particular things capable of it." And he
infers hence, that if a known course of events, or the history of a
person as our Lord, is found to answer on the whole to the prophetical
text, it becomes fairly the right interpretation of that text, in spite
of difficulties in detail. And this rule of interpretation admits of an
obvious application to the parallel case of doctrinal passages, when a
certain creed, which professes to have been derived from Revelation,
comes recommended to us on strong antecedent grounds, and presents no
strong opposition to the sacred text.
The same author observes that the first fulfilment of a prophecy is no
valid objection to a second, when what seems like a second has once
taken place; and, in like
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