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-LIBRARY 
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
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 Received 
 Accessions No.ZJ.Z'&r Shelf No. 
 
THE GROUNDS OF FAITH. 
 
 BY 
 
 HENET EDWAED MANNING, D.D. 
 
 LONDON: 
 BURNS AND LAMBERT, 17 PORTMAN STREET, 
 
 POETMAN SQUAEE. 
 
2% 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 COX AND WYMAN, PRINTERS, GREAT QUEEN STREET, 
 LINCOLN'S-INN FIELDS. 
 
> C- : i* 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 / PAGE 
 
 REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN 1 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 MPHB CHURCH A HISTORICAL WITNESS.., 20 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS 36 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 RATIONALISM THE LEGITIMATE CONSEQUENCE OF 
 
 PRIVATE JUDGMENT 59 
 
LEOTUEE I. 
 
 REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN. 
 
 ST. JOHN xvii. 3. 
 
 "This is life everlasting, that they may know Thee, the only 
 true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." 
 
 MY purpose is to speak of the grounds of Faitli ; I 
 do not mean of the special doctrines of the Catho- 
 lic theology, but of the grounds or foundation upon 
 which all Faith rests. 
 
 This is a subject difficult to treat : partly, be- 
 cause it is of a dry and preliminary nature \ and 
 partly, because it is not easy to touch upon a matter 
 so long controverted, without treating it likewise in 
 a controversial tone. But I should think it a dis- 
 honour to the sacredness of truth itself, if I could 
 treat a matter so sacred and so necessary in a tone 
 of mere argument. I desire to speak, then, for the 
 honour of our Lord, and, if God so will, for the help 
 of those who seek the truth. To lay broad and sure 
 the foundations on which we believe is necessarv at 
 
2 REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN. 
 
 all times; because as the end of man is life eternal, 
 and as the means to that end is the knowledge of 
 God, and of Jesus Christ whom He hath sent, our 
 ,,. whole being, moral, intellectual, and spiritual, de- 
 mands that we should rightly know, and by know- 
 ledge be united with, the mind and will of God. 
 And what is necessary at all times is specially so 
 at this. For this land, once full of light, once 
 united to the great commonwealth of Christendom, 
 and grafted into the mystical vine, through whose 
 every branch and spray life and truth circulate, 
 three hundred years ago, by evil men for evil ends, 
 was isolated from the Christian world, and torn 
 from the unity of Christ. Since that time, what 
 has been the religious history of England? The 
 schism which rent England from the Divine Tra- 
 dition of Faith, rent it also from the source of cer- 
 tainty ; the division which severed England from 
 the unity of the Church throughout the world 
 planted the principle of schism in England itself. 
 England, carried away from Catholic unity, fell as 
 a landslip from the shore, rending itself by its 
 weight and mass. England, Scotland, Ireland, parted 
 from each other, each with a religion of its own, 
 each with its rule of faith. "With schism came con- 
 tradiction ; with contradiction uncertainty, debate,, 
 and doubt. 
 
 Nor did it stop here. That same principle of 
 schism which rent asunder these three kingdoms 
 propagated itself still further. In each country di- 
 vision followed division. Each Protestant church. 
 
REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN. 3 
 
 as it was established, contained within itself the prin- 
 ciple both of its creation and dissolution, namely, 
 private judgment. And private judgment, work- 
 ing out its result in individual minds, caused schism 
 after schism ; until we are told by a writer, Pro- 
 testant himself, that in the seventeenth century, 
 during the high time of Protestant ascendancy, the 
 sects of England amounted to between one and two 
 hundred. 
 
 But there are causes and events nearer to our 
 day which render it more than ever necessary to 
 turn back again to the only foundations of certainty, 
 and lay once more the basis of faith. The establish- 
 ment so long by many believed to be a Church, a 
 body with a tradition of three hundred years, up- 
 held by the power of this mighty nation, main- 
 tained by the sanction of law and legislature, in- 
 vested with dignity and titles of state, possessing 
 vast endowments, not of land or gold alone, but of 
 that which is more precious, of treasures which the 
 Catholic Church had gathered, and of which it was 
 rudely spoiled j universities, colleges, and schools : 
 that vast body, cultivated in intellect, embracing 
 the national life -in all its strength and ripeness, in 
 an hour of trial was questioned of its faith, and 
 prevaricated in its answer. It was bid to speak as 
 a teacher sent from God; it could not, because God 
 had not sent it. And thus the last remaining hope ' 
 of certainty among Protestant bodies in this land 
 revealed its own impotence to teach. The body 
 which men fondly believed to partake of the divine 
 B 2 
 
4 REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN. 
 
 office of the Church, proclaimed that alike in its 
 mission and its message it was human. 
 
 What, then, do we see in this land ? Sects with- 
 out number, perpetually subdividing ; each equally 
 confident, all contradictory ; and that dominant 
 communion which claims to be authoritative in 
 teaching, itself confounded by internal contradic- 
 tions of its own. How has this come to pass 1 It 
 is because the Kule of Faith is lost, and the prin- 
 ciple of certainty destroyed. Put a familiar illus- 
 tration : suppose that in this teeming commercial 
 city, where men, in fret and fever from sunrise to 
 sunset, buy and sell, barter and bargain, the rules 
 of calculation and the laws of number were to be- 
 come extinct ; what error would ensue, what liti- 
 gation, what bankruptcy, and what ruin ! Or sup- 
 pose that in this great mercantile empire, whose 
 fleets cover the seas, the science of astronomy and 
 the art of navigation were to perish ; the shores of 
 all the world would be strewn with our wrecks. So 
 it is in the spiritual world. The Kule of Faith once 
 lost, souls wander and perish. The effect of this is 
 that men have come to state, as scientifically cer- 
 tain, that there is no definite doctrine in revelation. 
 As if, indeed, truth had no definite outline. And 
 we find in serious and even good men an enmity 
 against the definite statement of religious truth. 
 They call it dogmatism. The Athanasian Creed 
 they cannot away with. It is too precise and too 
 presumptuous. They feel as men who turn sud- 
 denly upon the image of our crucified Lord. They 
 
REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE ANT> CERTAIN. 5 
 
 start at it from its very definiteness ; and as the 
 sight of a crucifix unexpectedly produces a shock, 
 so will the definite statement of truth. It forces 
 home the reality of faith. People nowadays as- 
 sume that religious truth can have no definite out- 
 line, and that each man must discover and define it 
 for himself. And however definite he may choose 
 to be, one law is binding equally upon us all. No 
 one must be certain. Each must concede to his 
 neighbour as much certainty as he claims for him- 
 self. The objective certainty of truth is gone. The 
 highest rule of certainty to each is the conviction 
 of his own understanding. And this, in the reve- 
 lation of God j in that knowledge which is life . 
 eternal. 
 
 I. In answer, then, I say, that all knowledge I 
 must be definite ; that without definiteness there is 1 
 no true knowledge. To tell us that we may have 
 religious knowledge which is not definite, is to tell 
 us that we may have colour which is not distin- 
 guishable. Every several truth is as distinct as the 
 several colours in the rainbow. Blend them, and 
 you have only confusion. So is it in religious 
 knowledge. Doctrines definite as the stars in hea- 
 ven, when clouded by the obscurities of the human 
 mind, lose their definiteness, and pass from sight. 
 
 Is not this true in every kind of knowledge? 
 Take science, for example. What would a mathe- 
 matician think of a diagram which is not definite ? 
 What would any problem of physical science be, as 
 in optics, or in mechanics, or engineering, or in any 
 
G REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN. 
 
 of the arts whereby man subjugates nature to his 
 use, if it were not definite 1 How could it be ex- 
 pressed, by what calculus could it be treated ? 
 / What, again, is history which is not definite ? His- 
 tory which is not the record of definite fact is my- 
 thology, fable, and rhapsody. Where history ceases 
 to be definite, it begins to be fabulous. Or take 
 moral science ; what are moral laws which are not 
 definite ? A law which is not definite carries with 
 it no obligation. If the law cannot be stated, it 
 cannot be known ; if not known, it has no claim on 
 our obedience. Unless it definitely tell me what I 
 am to do and what I am not to do, it has no juris- 
 diction over my conscience. And as in human 
 knowledge, so, above all, in divine. If there be 
 any knowledge which is severely and precisely de- 
 finite, it is the knowledge which God has revealed 
 of Himself. Finite indeed it is, but definite al- 
 ways : finite as our sight of the earth, the form of 
 which is round ; and yet, because our narrow sight 
 can compass no more, to us it seems one broad ex- 
 panse. 
 
 Again, take an example from the highest know- 
 ledge. When we speak of wisdom, goodness, or 
 power, we carry our mind upward to the attributes 
 of God. When we see these moral qualities repro- 
 duced in a finite being, we call them still by the 
 same titles. So with knowledge. What is know- 
 ledge in God but an infinite and definite apprehen- 
 sion of uncreated and eternal truth ? The know- 
 ledge which God has of Himself and of His works 
 
REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN. 7 
 
 is a science divine, the example and type of all. 
 To descend from the divine perfection ; what is 
 knowledge in the angels but equally definite, though 
 in a finite intelligence ? And what was the know-- 
 ledge of man before the fall, but, though finite, de- 
 finite still ? What, then, is the knowledge which 
 God has restored to man through revelation but a 
 definite knowledge, a participation of His own? 
 The truth that has been revealed, what is it in 
 the mind of God who reveals it, but one, harmo- 
 nious and distinct 1 What was that knowledge as 
 revealed by the Holy Spirit on the day of Pente- 
 cost, but one, harmonious and distinct 1 What was 
 the conception of that knowledge in inspired men, 
 but one, harmonious and distinct also ? And what 
 was that knowledge when communicated by those 
 who were inspired to those who believed, but one, 
 harmonious and distinct as before ? And what is 
 this unity and harmony and distinctness of know- 
 ledge, which God revealed of Himself through Jesus 
 Christ, but the faith we confess in our creed ? Our 
 baptismal faith, its substance and its letter, the ex- 
 plicit and the implicit meaning, article by article, is 
 as definite, severe, and precise, as any problem in 
 science. . It is of the nature of truth to be so ; and 
 where definiteness ends, knowledge ceases. 
 
 Observe, then, the distinction between finite 
 knowledge and definite knowledge. Is not science 
 definite ? Yet it is also finite. The theory of gra- 
 vitation, definite as it is, is finite too. The theory 
 of electricity is definite as far as we know it, but 
 
8 REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN. 
 
 finite also. Go through the whole range of phy- 
 sical sciences, what is it but an example of the same 
 condition of knowledge, definiteness in conception 
 with finiteness of reach 1 What has astronomy 
 revealed to us 1 The starry heavens, in which we 
 trace the laws and revolutions of heavenly bodies. 
 We find centre after centre, and orbit beyond orbit, 
 until at last we reach what has long been fixed 
 upon as the centre of the universe ; and yet even 
 here, science now tells us that probably this, our 
 central point, which we believed to be fixed, is again 
 itself a planet revolving around some mightier centre 
 which science cannot attain. Here, then, are the 
 conditions of definiteness and finiteness combined. 
 So in revealed truth. If we have not a definite 
 knowledge of what we believe, we may be sure we 
 have no true knowledge of it. 
 
 IT. But, farther, it is evident that knowledge 
 must also be certain. When we speak of certainty, 
 we mean one of two things. Sometimes we say, 
 that a thing is certain ; at other times, that we 
 are certain. When we say a truth is certain, we 
 mean, that the proofs of that truth are either self- 
 evident, or so clear as to exclude all doubt. This 
 is certainty on the part of the object proposed to 
 our intelligence. But when we say ive are certain, 
 we mean that we are inwardly convinced, by the 
 application of our reason to the matter before us, of 
 the sufficiency of the evidence to prove the truth of 
 it. In us, certainty is rather a moral feeling, a 
 complex state of mind. As light manifests itself 
 
REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN. 
 
 by its own nature, but sight is the illumination of 
 the eye ; so certainty means truth with its evi- 
 dences illuminating the intelligence, or, in other- 
 words, the intelligence possessed by truth with its 
 evidences. 
 
 This we call certainty. I ask, then, is there 
 not this twofold certainty in the revelation which 
 God has given ? Was not the revelation which 
 God gave of Himself through Jesus Christ made 
 certain on His part by direct evidence of the Di- 
 vine act which revealed it ? Is it not also certain 
 on our part by the apprehension and faith of 
 the Church ? Was not God manifest in the flesh 
 that He might reveal Himself? Did not God 
 dwell 011 earth that He might teach His truth ? 
 Has not God spoken to man that man might know 
 Him ? Did not God work miracles that man might 
 believe that He was present ? What evidence on 
 the part of God was wanting that men might know 
 that Jesus Christ was indeed the Son of God ? 
 
 And if there was certainty on the part of God 
 who revealed, was there not certainty also on the 
 part of those that heard 1 Look back into the 
 sacred history. Had not Prophets and Seers cer- 
 tainty of that which they beheld and heard ? Had 
 not Abraham certainty when he saw a dark mist 
 and a smoking furnace, and a fiery lamp moved 
 between the portions of the sacrifice ? Was not 
 Moses certain when he beheld the pattern shown 
 to him on the Mount ? Was not Daniel certain 
 when the angel Gabriel flew swiftlv and touched 
 
10 REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN. 
 
 him at the time of the evening sacrifice 1 Were 
 not Apostles and Evangelists certain when they 
 companied with our Lord, and said, "That which 
 was from the beginning, which we have heard, 
 which we have seen with our eyes, which we have 
 diligently looked upon, and our hands have han- 
 dled, concerning the Word of Life ? " Were not 
 the Twelve certain in the upper chamber 1 Were 
 they not certain on the clay of Pentecost 1 Was 
 not Paul certain in Arabia, when he learned the 
 Gospel, not of man, nor of flesh and blood, but 
 " by the revelation of Jesus Christ 1 " Was not 
 John certain in Patmos, when heaven was opened, 
 and the vision of the future was traced before his 
 =eye ? And were not they certain to whom Pa- 
 triarchs, Prophets, Seers, Apostles, Evangelists, 
 preached and wrote ? Has not the Church of God 
 been certain from that hour to this of the revela- 
 tion given and received at the first ? 
 
 What, then, is the first condition of faith but 
 certainty ? He that has not certain faith has no 
 faith. We are told that to crave for certainty 
 implies a morbid disposition. Did not Abraham, 
 and Moses, and Daniel, the Apostles and Evan- 
 gelists desire certainty in faith, and crave to know 
 beyond doubt that God spake to them, and to know 
 with definite clearness what God said 1 Was this 
 a morbid craving ? Surely this is not to be re- 
 proved. But rather the contrary disposition is 
 worthy of rebuke. How can we venture to content 
 ourselves with uncertainty in matters where the 
 
REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN. 11 
 
 truth and honour of God and the salvation of our 
 own souls are at stake ? This truly is not without 
 sin. 
 
 We are told, indeed, that to be certain is in- 
 consistent with faith, that probability is the at- 
 mosphere in which faith lives, and that if you ex- 
 tinguish probabilities, faith dies. Did the Apostles 
 then believe the doctrine of the ever-blessed Trinity 
 upon a probability ? Did they believe the doctrine 
 of the Incarnation upon conjecture ? Was it be- 
 cause they walked in twilight that their faith in. 
 their Divine Lord was acceptable ? 
 
 To what are we come 1 In this Christian land, 
 once fall of light, once in unity with the Church 
 of God, once replenished with truth, to what are 
 we come ? A new virtue is promulgated ; to be 
 uncertain of the truth and of the will of God ; to 
 hold our faith on probabilities. And yet, what is 
 the very idea of Kevelation but a Divine assurance 
 of Truth ? Where faith begins uncertainty ends. 
 Because faith terminates upon the veracity of God ; 
 and what God has spoken and authenticated to us 
 by Divine authority cannot be uncertain. 
 
 I am aware, brethren, that much of what I 
 have said has no application to you. You are the 
 heirs of a Divine inheritance. As the science of 
 astronomy, in its severity and truth, has descended 
 by intellectual tradition from the first simple ob- 
 servations made on the plains of Chaldea down to 
 the abstract and complex demonstrations of these 
 later times, so has the tradition of faith, the science 
 
1 2 REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN. 
 
 of God, come down to you. You liave been born 
 within its sphere. You know it by a manifold 
 assurance, by the certainty of God revealing it, the 
 Scriptures of God recording it, the Church of God 
 preserving it, the Councils of the Church denning 
 it, the Holy See from age to age condemning error 
 and setting its seal upon the faith. You have it 
 brought down to you with imperishable certainty. 
 Your guide is not human but Divine. Why then 
 do I speak to you 1 Because you have a mission to 
 fulfil. You have to bring others to a share of the 
 same inheritance. I bespeak your charity and your 
 patience in their behalf. I cannot better put be- 
 fore you the state of those who have lost what to 
 you has been preserved, than by a parallel. Sup- 
 pose I were to write an inscription, and show it to 
 you. Having read it, the meaning of that inscrip- 
 tion passes, so to speak, into the very substance of 
 your mind. It is ineifaceably impressed upon your 
 memory. Then tear it into twenty pieces, and give 
 one piece to twenty men respectively ; set them to 
 discover the whole. I know it, because I wrote it; 
 you know it, because you have seen and read it. 
 They know it only in part. They have each a frag- 
 ment ; but they cannot conjecture the rest. So is 
 it with the sects that are around the Church of 
 God. The one inscription, written, not by man, 
 but by the Spirit of God upon the illuminated rea- 
 son of the Church, has descended perfect and entire 
 until now. But each several sect, as it departed 
 from unity, carried away a fragment. The chil- 
 
REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN. 1O 
 
 dren of schismatics inherit a fragment only. As 
 " faith cometh by hearing," so theology cometh by 
 hearing, and the doctrine of the Catholic Church in 
 its harmony, unity, and distinctness, conies by hear- 
 ing. They who never heard that faith, to whom 
 the science in its fulness has not descended, have 
 but a fragment, from which they labour in vain ' to 
 conjecture the remainder. You can help them. 
 Not by controversy ; not by destroying what they 
 have already. To destroy even a fragment of the 
 Truth is Satan's controversy. The divine way of 
 establishing faith among men is not to throw down, 
 but to build up : to add, to develop, to perfect. 
 Every truth that a man possesses is so far a pledge 
 that you have a share in him, that so far he is with 
 you. Hold him fast by that truth. Add to it the 
 next which follows in Divine order ; and so in pa- 
 tience and. in charity lead him on from truth to 
 truth, as by the links of a chain, and bind him to 
 the altar of God. 
 
 And now, of those who reject the principles I 
 have stated, and deny to theology the character of 
 definiteness and certainty, I would ask two ques- 
 tions : 
 
 1. First, I would ask, What do you believe ? 
 Put it ia words. Conceive it in thought. Fix 
 your mind's eye upon it. Put it in writing in 
 some silent hour : know at least what it is. As 
 you value your eternal soul, as you believe that 
 the end of your being is to be united with God eter- 
 nally, and that the means to that eternal union is 
 
14 REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN. 
 
 the knowledge of God in Christ Jesus, be not con- 
 tent a day to abide in uncertainty and indefinite- 
 ness concerning the truth, which you know to be 
 vitally necessary to your salvation. 
 
 Again I say, put it in words. First, what do 
 you believe of the Godhead ? You believe in the 
 Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ? This you hold de- 
 finitely and without a doubt. What do you believe 
 of the Incarnation of the Son of God 1 That in 
 Him two whole and perfect natures are united in 
 one person, never to be divided. You believe the 
 Godhead, presence, and office of the Holy Ghost ? 
 But there remain other articles of your creed. We 
 come next to " the Holy Catholic Church." What 
 do you believe in this article of Faith ? Will you 
 say, " We have definite and certain knowledge of 
 the former articles, but not of the latter. When 
 I come to 'the Holy Catholic Church' I come to a 
 region where uncertainty is lawful"? But uncer- 
 tainty is doubt, and doubt and faith are contradic- 
 tory. You may not doubt in your baptismal faith, 
 or be uncertain as to the articles of your creed. 
 May we make an open question, for example, of the 
 resurrection of the dead ? Why not be also un- 
 certain whether or not the Holy Spirit of God be in 
 the world now ; or, being now in the world, whe- 
 ther He have a present office to teach ? You be- 
 lieve this ; but why believe this, and doubt of other 
 doctrines of the same creed ? And if you believe 
 that the Holy Spirit does still teach the world, how 
 does He teach 1 Each several man by immediate 
 
REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN. 15 
 
 inspiration. ? If not, then how "? You will say 
 perhaps, that He teaches through the Church. But 
 if through the Church, through what Church? 
 How are we the better or the wiser by knowing 
 that the Spirit of God teaches the world at this 
 hour, and that He has an organ through which to 
 speak, if Yv r e know not which, nor where that organ 
 is ? How then shall you know that you hear His 
 voice 1 If you knew that of twelve men who stood 
 before you, one only possessed a secret upon which 
 your life depended, would you be careless to know 
 which man bore the treasure in his possession ? 
 Why then may you be indifferent to ascertain which 
 is the accredited messenger upon whom your faith 
 depends ? 
 
 Try therefore to define your meaning. You 
 say you believe a Church, because your baptismal 
 faith says, " I believe one Holy Catholic Church : Jr 
 holy, because the Holy Spirit teaches in it ; Ca- 
 tholic, because throughout all the world ; and one. 
 Why one? Why do you say that you believe in 
 one God? Because there is not more than one 
 God. Why one Lord ? Because not two. Why 
 one baptism ? Because one alone. Why one faith ? 
 Because no other. All these are numerically one. 
 Why, then, one Church ? Because numerically one ; 
 two there cannot be. Through that one Church 
 speaks the one Spirit of the one God, teaching the 
 one faith in which is salvation. Which then is 
 this true and only Teacher sent from God ? You 
 look about you, and see a Church in Greece, in 
 
16 REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN. 
 
 Russia, in America, in England, and in Rome. 
 Which of all these is the one only true? Can 
 you be content with this guess-work instead of 
 faith ? 
 
 2. And further : I would ask another ques- 
 tion. I have asked you what you believe ; I will 
 now ask you wAy you believe it ; upon what basis 
 of certainty you are convinced of it, and why ? 
 Do you say that you have applied the best powers 
 of your understanding to it ? So have others who 
 contradict you. Why are you more surely right 
 than they are ? You have not had a message from 
 heaven, sent by special indulgence to make you 
 sure, while others wander. What, then, is the 
 basis of your certainty ? The persuasion of your 
 own mind is not enough. At that rate all men 
 are certain. False coins pass in every land ; false 
 miracles take the semblance of true. The whole 
 world is full of counterfeits. What I ask you is 
 this : How do you distinguish between your cer- 
 tainty and the certainty of other men, so as to 
 know that their certainty is human, and yours 
 divine ? Why are they wrong, aud you right ? 
 Where is the test to determine this 1 ? You know 
 it cannot exist within you, for everybody may 
 claim the same. You look then without you and 
 around to find it. 
 
 Well, you will perhaps tell us that you have 
 inherited the faith you hold. The inheritance of 
 faith, that is a divine principle. We bow before 
 the principle of inheritance. But why did you cut 
 
REVEALED TRUTH BEFINITE AND CERTAIN. 17 
 
 off the entail of your forefathers ? Why, three 
 hundred years ago, did you cut off the entail of 
 that inheritance 1 If it be not cut off, why is the 
 contest ? If it be cut off, why was it cut off ? To 
 inherit the faith is the divine rule. It needs only 
 one thing, infallibility, to secure it. It needs only 
 one support to give it substance and certainty ; a 
 divine tradition flowing from the Throne of God 
 through Prophets, Seers, Apostles, Evangelists, 
 Martyrs, Saints, and Doctors in one world-wide 
 stream, ever deepening, never changing, from the 
 beginning until now. Show this divine certainty 
 as the basis of your conviction, and then inherit 
 both truth and faith. But the inheritance of opi- 
 nion in a family, or a diocese, or a province, or 
 nation, what is it ? Human in the beginning, and 
 human to the end : " the traditions of men." 
 
 You say you have inherited the faith, and that 
 this is the Church of your forefathers. Go back 
 three hundred years ago, and ask the priests of 
 God who stood then at the altar how they would 
 expound the faith you still profess to hold. Ask 
 them what they believed while they ministered in 
 cope and chasuble. Go back to the Apostle of 
 England who first bore hither again the light of 
 the Gospel after Saxon po gam sin had darkened this 
 fair land. Ask St. Augustine what he believed of 
 those words, " Thou art Peter, and upon this rock 
 I will build My Church." Give your exposition, 
 and ask his. What would he have taught you of 
 visible unity ? What would he teach you of the 
 c 
 
18 REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN. 
 
 Church, of God ? Ask him, Is it one numerically-, 
 or one only by metaphor ? Is it visible, that all 
 men may see " the City seated on a mountain," or 
 invisible, that men may weary themselves, and 
 never find it ? Has it a head on earth, represent- 
 ing its Divine Head in heaven ? Or has it no 
 head, and may it set up many of its own ? What 
 would he have taught you of your baptismal creed ? 
 Or that great saint who sent him. from the Apos- 
 tolic throne, what would he have testified to you 
 of those doctrines of faith which you are taught 
 to look upon as errors ? Ask Gregory, first and 
 greatest of the name, what he believed of the 
 powers left by the Incarnate Son to His Church on 
 earth : what he taught of the power of the keys 
 transmitted by his predecessors in lineal descent 
 from the hands of his Divine Lord ? Ask what he 
 taught of the power of absolution in the sacrament 
 of penance ; what he believed of the Reality on the 
 altar, and of the Holy Sacrifice daily offered in all 
 the world j of the Communion of Saints ever inter- 
 ceding, by us ever invoked ; of the intermediate 
 state of departed souls, purifying for the kingdom 
 of God. Ask Gregory, saint and doctor, to whom 
 we owe the faith, what he taught of those doctrines 
 which you have rejected. 
 
 If the disciple and his master, if he that was 
 sent, and he that sent him, were to come now and 
 tread the shore of this ancient river, whither would 
 they turn to worship ? "Would they go to the 
 stately minster, raised by their sons in the faith r 
 
KEVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN. 19 
 
 where even now rests a sainted king of Catholic 
 England *? Would they bend their steps thither to 
 worship the God of their fathers, and their Incar- 
 nate Lord from whom their mission and their faith 
 descended ? Or would they not rather go to some 
 obscure altar in its neighbourhood, where an un- 
 known despised priest daily offers the Holy Sacri- 
 fice in communion with the world-wide Church of 
 God? 
 
 If, then, you claim inheritance as the foundation ( 
 of your faith, be true to your principle, and it will j 
 lead you home. Trifle not with it, Truth bears 
 the stamp of God, and truth changes man to the 
 likeness of God. Trifle not with the pleadings of 
 the Holy Spirit within you ; for He has a delicate 
 touch, and sensitively shrinks from wilfulness and I 
 unbelief. If truth struggle within you, follow it 
 faithfully. Tread close upon the light that you 
 possess. Count all things loss that you may win 
 truth, without which the inheritance of God's king- 
 dom is not ours. Labour for it, and weary your- 
 selves until you find it. And forget not that if 
 your religion be indefinite, you have no true know- 
 ledge of your Saviour ; and if your belief be uncer- 
 tain, it is not the faith by which we can be saved. 
 
 c 2 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 THE CHURCH A HISTORICAL WITNESS. 
 
 ST. JOHN xvii. 3. 
 
 " This is life everlasting, that they may know Thee, the only 
 true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." 
 
 BEFORE we go on to the subject that stands next 
 in order, it will be well to re-state the conclusions 
 at which we have thus far arrived. 
 
 From these words of our Divine Lord, we have 
 seen that the end of man is eternal life, and the 
 means to that end the knowledge of God in Jesus 
 Christ. Union with God in knowledge, love, and 
 worship, is life eternal. And that man might 
 attain to this end of his creation, God has revealed 
 Himself to us in His Son. We have, therefore, 
 noted the error of those who say that in Revelation 
 doctrine is either not definite, or not certain. It 
 is manifest that all knowledge must be definite ; for 
 if it be not definite, we may have guess, or conjec- 
 ture, or probability, but true knowledge we cannot 
 
THE CHURCH A HISTORICAL WITNESS. 21 
 
 have. We have seen also that it must be certain ; 
 and that unless we have certainty we can have no 
 faith, because the mind cannot rest upon uncer- 
 tainty, as hunger cannot sate itself on air. 
 
 We have obtained, then, two principles ; the 
 one, that knowledge, though indeed it be finite, as 
 it must be in a finite intelligence, is nevertheless, 
 so far as it is known to us, perfectly definite. It 
 is as a complex mathematical figure which we see 
 only in part, but in all we can see is perfect, har- 
 monious, and proportionate, capable of being under- 
 stood, calculated, and expressed. Being in the 
 mind of God one, harmonious and distinct, it is 
 cast on the limited sphere of man's intelligence in 
 its unity, harmony, and distinctness. The other 
 principle is, that the knowledge which God has 
 given us of Himself is, in every sense, certain. We 
 cannot conceive that the contradictory of that 
 which God has spoken can be true, or th^t Prophets 
 and Apostles were uncertain of what they believed 
 and taught. 
 
 And now we will go on to examine what is the 
 foundation upon which this certainty descends to 
 us. It is, in one word, the authority of the Church 
 of God. But this authority of the Church is two- 
 fold : it is either the outward and extrinsic, which 
 I may call the human and historical authority ; or 
 it is the inward and intrinsic, that is, the super- 
 natural and the divine authority. The latter we 
 must consider hereafter. For the present we will 
 examine only the outward or historical authority of 
 
22 THE CHURCH A HISTORICAL WITNESS. 
 
 the Church, upon which the certainty of revelation 
 as a fact in history is known to us. 
 
 All who have traced the history of the faith 
 know that there is no doctrine which has not been 
 made the subject of controversy. Look at the re- 
 cords of Christianity, and you will find that heresy 
 began with the first publication of the truth. In 
 the first age, we find heresies assailing the doctrine 
 of the Godhead of the Father, the Creator of the 
 world. In the next age heresies assailed the doc- 
 trine of the Godhead of the Son ; later again, the 
 doctrine of the Godhead of the Holy Ghost ; next 
 the doctrine of holy Sacraments; later still, the 
 doctrine of the Church itself. A vast schism arose 
 justifying itself by denying the existence and the 
 authority of the visible Church as such. And 
 because the existence and authority of the visible 
 Church was so denied, the foundation of certainty 
 was broken up, and the principle of uncertainty 
 introduced. Age by age, and article by article, the 
 faith has been denied, until we come down to a 
 period when the characteristic heresy of the day 
 is, not a denial of the Godhead of the Father, or of 
 the Son, or of the Holy Ghost, and the like, though 
 [these too are denied, but the denial of the foun- 
 dation of certainty in faith. The master-heresy of 
 this day, the fountain and source of all heresy, is 
 this, that men have come first to deny, and then to 
 disbelieve the existence in the world of a founda- 
 tion, divinely laid, upon which revealed truth can 
 certainly rest. 
 
THE CHURCH A HISTORICAL WITNESS. 23 
 
 Let us ask those who deny the existence of this 
 basis of certainty, upon what do they rest when 
 they believe in the fact of a revelation ? The reve- 
 lation was not made to them personally. It was 
 not made to-day. It was made to others : it was 
 made eighteen hundred years ago. By what means, 
 I ask, are men now certain that eighteen hundred 
 years ago, to other men, in other lands, a revelation 
 from God was given ? They are forced back upon 
 history. They were not there to see or hear. 
 Revelation does not spring up by inspiration in 
 their inward consciousness. They are, therefore, 
 thrown upon history ; they are compelled to go to 
 the testimony of others. All men who at this hour 
 believe in the advent of the Son of God, and in 
 the fact of the day of Pentecost, all alike rest upon 
 history. Not but that Catholics rest on more (of 
 this, however, hereafter); but they who do not rest 
 upon the divine office of the Church rest on history 
 alone. Then, I ask, by what criterion are they 
 certain that their historical views are true. Let 
 them throw the rule of their examination into 
 some form of words. TJnless they can put into 
 intelligible words the principle of certainty upon 
 which they rest, it is either useless or false : useless, 
 if it cannot be stated, for if it cannot be stated, it 
 cannot be applied ; false, if the nature of it be such 
 that it will not admit of expression. 
 
 I would beseech any who are resting upon such 
 a certainty as this, not to confound a sensation of 
 positiveness with the sense of certainty. The sense 
 
24 THE CHUKCH A HISTORICAL WITNESS. 
 
 of certainty is a Divine gift. It is the inward 
 testimony of our whole intelligent nature. A sen- 
 sation of positiveness springs out of obstinacy, or 
 prejudice. Let them not confound the resolution 
 to believe themselves in the right with the reason 
 for knowing that they are in the truth. Let them 
 analyze deeper, and find what is their principle, and 
 state that principle in intelligible words. To take 
 an example. We all believe, apart from revelation, 
 that the world was created. How so ? We proceed 
 to prove it. The world is not eternal, for then it 
 would be God. It did not make itself, for that is 
 contradiction. Therefore, it remains of necessity 
 that it had a maker. I ask them only to be as 
 definite as this : for life is short and eternity is 
 long, and we are saved by truth ; and truth which, 
 is not definite is no truth to us ; and indefinite 
 statements have no certainty ; and without cer- 
 tainty there is no faith. 
 
 In answer to this we are told that all men can 
 read the Holy Scriptures, and that this is enough. 
 I reply, Scripture is not Scripture except in the 
 right sense of Scripture. Your will after you are 
 dead is not your testament unless it be interpreted 
 according to your intention. The words and syl- 
 lables of your testament may be so interpreted as 
 to contradict your purpose. The will of the de- 
 ceased is the intention of the deceased known by 
 his testament. So of Holy Scripture. Holy Scrip- 
 ture is Holy Scripture only in the right sense of 
 Holy Scripture. 
 
THE CHUKCH A HISTORICAL WITNESS. 25 
 
 But we are further told, that notwithstanding 
 these superficial contradictions, all good men agree 
 in essentials. First, then, I ask, What are essentials'? 
 Who has the power to determine what is essential 
 and what is not ? By whose judgment are we to 
 ascertain it ? The Church knows only one essential 
 truth, and that is, the whole revelation of God. It 
 knows of no power to determine between truth and 
 truth, and to say, "though God has revealed this,. 
 we need not believe it." The whole revelation of 
 God comes to us with its intrinsic obligation on 
 our faith and we receive it altogether as God's 
 word. They who speak of all good men agreeing 
 in essentials, mean this : " I believe what I think 
 essential, and I give my neighbour leave to believe 
 what he thinks essential." Their agreement is only 
 this, not to molest each other : but they mutilate 
 the revelation of God. 
 
 In opposition to these opinions, let us state the 
 grounds of our own certainty. 
 
 I. We believe, then, that we have no knowledge 
 of the way of salvation through grace, except from 
 the revelation of God. No one can deny this. It 
 is a truism that we have no knowledge of the way 
 of redemption by grace except through divine 
 revelation. The whole world is witness of the fact. 
 Eor four thousand years the world wandered on, 
 and knew not the way of grace except by a thread 
 of light which from Adam to Enoch, and from 
 Enoch to Noe, and from JSToe to Abraham, and 
 from Abraham to Moses, and from Moses to the 
 
26 THE CHUKCH A IIISTOKICAL WITNESS. 
 
 promised Seed, ran down, keeping alive in the 
 world the expectation of a Redeemer. Outside this 
 path of light the way of grace was not known ; nor 
 was it known even there except by revelation. 
 
 And round about that solitary light, what was 
 there? Was there a knowledge of the way of 
 salvation through grace? The heathen nations, 
 their polytheism, their idolatry, their morality, their 
 literature, their public and their private life, do 
 these give testimony to the way of grace ? Take 
 their schools, their philosophies, their greatest in- 
 tellects, what do they prove ? One of the greatest 
 practical intellects of the Eastern world believed 
 that matter was eternal, and that the soul of the 
 world was God. The loftiest of all in speculation 
 was blind when he came to treat of the first laws 
 of purity. In the west, the greatest orators, poets, 
 and philosophers, either believed in no God at all, 
 or in a blind and imaginary deity, stripped of per- 
 sonality. This was all that Nature had done. Na- 
 ture without revelation had no true knowledge of 
 God, and absolutely none of salvation through grace. 
 
 It was not until four thousand years had passed 
 that the way of salvation through grace was re- 
 vealed. Look at the mightiest effort Nature in its 
 own strength ever made, the empire of Home ; 
 that vast power extending itself in all the world ; 
 the whole earth wondering at the onward march of 
 its victorious armies ; races falling back before its 
 legions; its frontiers expanding whithersoever they 
 trod ; a mighty, world-wide dominion, whose capital 
 
THE CHURCH A HISTORICAL WITNESS. 27 
 
 spread from the Mediterranean to the Alban hills, 
 in circuit sixty or seventy miles, within which 
 nations dwelt together : the palace of the aristo- 
 cracy of the earth ; for magnificence, splendour, and 
 civilization, never exceeded among mankind. Hu- 
 man nature here was taxed to its utmost strength : 
 human intelligence reached its utmost bound ; and 
 what knew Rome of the way of grace, or of salva- 
 tion through Jesus Christ ] What was the morality 
 ,of Eome? What was its religion? It was the 
 high place of all the gods ; the deities of the greater 
 and lesser nations, and of the surrounding cities 
 which it conquered, were incorporated with its own 
 superstitions. All impieties were in veneration, 
 and every falsehood had its shrine. Only truth was 
 persecuted, only one worship was forbidden ; and 
 that, the only doctrine and the only worship not of 
 this world. JSTature did its utmost j the, intelligence 
 of man bore testimony to all it could attain. The 
 Ba,bel of confusion was built to teach mankind for 
 ever that human nature without God could never 
 rise to a knowledge of the way of grace. 
 
 The manifestation of God in the flesh ; the 
 effusion of light and revelation through the Holy 
 Spirit ; the setting up of the mystical ladder at 
 the head of which the Lord stands, and on which 
 Angels ascend and descend; the gathering together 
 of truths that had wandered to and fro on earth ; 
 and the uniting of all in one hierarchy of faith : 
 nothing less was needed before man could know 
 the way of eternal life. 
 
28 THE CHURCH A HISTORICAL WITNESS. 
 
 It is certain, then, that we have no natural 
 knowledge of the way of salvation through grace ; 
 that is, through the Incarnation, the Atonement, 
 the mystical Body of Christ ; through the Sacra- 
 ments, which are the channels of the Holy Spirit. 
 Without revelation we have no true knowledge of 
 sin, whereby we forfeited our sonship ; nor of 
 regeneration, whereby we regain it ; nor of the 
 relation of grace to the free-will of man ; and the 
 like. But all these are doctrines upon which union 
 with God and eternal life depend, and yet of these 
 not a whisper was heard on earth until revelation 
 came by Jesus Christ. 
 
 II. But, further, we believe, in the second place, 
 that as we have no knowledge of the way of salva- 
 tion through grace, except from the revelation of 
 God, so neither have we any certainty what that 
 revelation Was, except through the Church of God. 
 As the fountain is absolutely one and no other, so 
 the channel through which it flows is absolutely 
 one and no other. As there is no source of cer- 
 tainty but revelation, so there is no channel through 
 which it can flow but the Church of God. For 
 certainty as to the revelation given eighteen hun- 
 dred years ago, of the Church we needs must learn. 
 To what other can we go ? Who besides has the 
 words of eternal life 1 Shall we go to the nations 
 of the world ? Can they teach the faith which they 
 knew not before Christ came, neither have since 
 believed ? Shall we go to the fragments of Chris- 
 tendom broken off from age to age by heresy and 
 
THE CHUECH A HISTORICAL WITNESS. 29 
 
 schism ! Their testimony is but local, limited,- and 
 contradictory. What certainty can the Monophy- 
 site, Eutychian, Nestorian, or Protestant, give of 
 the day of Pentecost 1 To whom, then, shall we 
 go ? To that one mystical body which came down 
 from the upper chamber to possess the earth ; to 
 that one moral person upon whom the Holy Spirit 
 then descended ; to that kingdom of the God of 
 heaven, which, spreading from Jerusalem through- 
 out all lands, penetrated into every country, pro- 
 vince, and city, erecting its thrones, ascending in 
 might and power, expanding throughout the earth, 
 gathering together its circumference, filling up the 
 area of its circuit, until the world became Chris- 
 tian ; and then sat in sovereignty, displacing and 
 replacing the empire of the world. This universal 
 kingdom, one and indivisible, reigning continuous 
 and perpetual in unbroken succession from the day 
 of Pentecost, was the eye-witness and the ear- 
 witness of revelation. This one moral person alone 
 can say, ""When the Word made flesh spake, I 
 heard ; when the tongues of fire descended from 
 heaven, I saw ; with my senses I perceived the pre- 
 sence of God ; with my intelligence I understood 
 His voice ; with my memory I retain to this hour 
 the knowledge of what I then heard and saw ; with 
 my changeless consciousness I testify what was 
 spoken." To this one, and this one only witness in 
 the world, can we go for certainty. 
 
 Put the case thus. VWill you go to the Mono- 
 physite, Eutychian, or Nestorian heresies, ancient 
 
30 THE CHURCH A HISTORICAL WITNESS. 
 
 as they are, which separated from the Church of 
 Christ in the fifth and sixth centuries ? Will they 
 bear witness ? Yes ; but only a partial testimony. 
 They were witnesses so long as they were united to 
 the one Church j but their testimony ceased when 
 they separated from it. They are witnesses so far 
 as they agree with that one Church, but not when 
 they contradict it. The testimony derived from 
 separated bodies amounts to this : it is the bor- 
 rowed light which even in separation they receive 
 from the Church itself. 
 
 And as with early, so with later heresies. Shall 
 we go to the separated Greek communion, which 
 claims to be the only orthodox Church ? Will that 
 give a trustworthy testimony ? Yes ; so far as it 
 agrees with the body from which it departed. Its 
 witness after the separation is but local. Shall we 
 go to the great division of these later times, to the 
 huge crumbling Protestantism of the last three cen- 
 turies ? Is there in it any sect descending from the 
 day of Pentecost 1 When did it begin 1 A hundred 
 years ago, probably, or it may be two, or at most 
 three hundred years ago. At that time a traceable 
 change produced it. Does Protestantism reach up- 
 ward to the original revelation ? Has it a succes- 
 sion of sense, reason, memory, and consciousness, 
 uniting it with the day of Pentecost ? 
 
 If, then, what has been said as to the only 
 source and channel of knowledge and certainty be 
 true, sufficient reason has been shown to make 
 every one who is resting on the testimony of bodies 
 
THE CHUECH A HISTORICAL WITNESS. 31 
 
 separated from tlic Universal Church mistrust his 
 confidence. Must he not say, Eighteen hundred 
 years ago a revelation was given ; my life reaches 
 but a span, my memory but a few years ; how do I 
 know what passed on that day 1 How shall they 
 tell me whose life, like my own, touches only upon 
 the last generation ? I go to this and to that sepa- 
 rated communion, but they all fall short. There is 
 one and one only living witness in the world, which, 
 as it touches on the present hour in which I live,, 
 unites me by a lineal consciousness, by a living in- 
 telligence, with the moment, when, in the third 
 hour of the day, " there came a sound from heaven 
 as of a mighty wind coming, and filled the whole 
 house." 
 
 Let it be remembered that I am speaking of the 
 external authority of the Church simply as a his- 
 torical argument. "We will confine ourselves for 
 the present to this alone. I put it forwar$ as it 
 was cited by a philosophical historian, one of the 
 greatest of this age, who, having passed through the 
 windings of German unbelief, found at last his rest 
 in the one True Fold. Explaining the ground of 
 his submission, Schlegel gave this reason ; that he 
 found the testimony of the Catholic Church to be 
 the greatest historical authority on earth for the 
 events of the past. It is in this sense I am speaking. ] 
 
 And therefore, when I use the word authority, 
 I mean evidence. The word "authority" may be 
 used in two senses. It may either signify power, 
 such as the jurisdiction which the Church has over 
 
32 THE CHURCH A HISTORICAL WITNESS. 
 
 the souls committed to its trust ; or it may mean 
 violence, as when we say, we have a statement on 
 the authority or evidence, of an eye-witness. 
 
 Suppose, then, we were to reject this highest 
 historical evidence ; suppose we were to say that 
 the authority of the Catholic Church, though of 
 great weight, is not conclusive : I would ask what 
 historical evidence remains beyond it ? To whom 
 else shall we go ? Is there any other authority 
 upon which we can rest ? If we receive not the 
 authority of the Universal Church, we must descend 
 from higher to lower ground, we must come down 
 to the partial authority of a local church. Will 
 this be to ascend in the scale of certainty 1 If the 
 testimony of the Universal Church be not the 
 maximum of historical evidence in the world, where 
 shall we find it ? Shall we find it in the church of 
 Greece, or of America, or of England? Shall we 
 find it in the church of a province, or in the church 
 of a diocese ? If the Universal Episcopate be not 
 the maximum of external evidence, where shall it 
 be found ? And, in fact, they who reject the evi- 
 dence of the Universal Church for the primitive 
 faith, necessarily rest their belief on the authority of 
 a local body, or on the authority of a man. It was 
 by divine intuition that our Lord said, " Call none 
 your father upon earth ;" for they who will not be- 
 lieve the Church of God must be in bondage to 
 human teachers. If they are Calvinists they must 
 be in bondage to Calvin ; or Lutherans, to Luther 5 
 or Arians, to Arias ; or if they be members of a 
 
THE CHURCH A HISTORICAL WITNESS. 33 
 
 church separated from Catholic unity, they must be 
 in bondage to its self-constituted head. The ulti- 
 mate authority in which they trust is human. From 
 this false confidence in man the Catholic Church 
 alone can redeem us. "We trust not in the judg- 
 ment of an individual, howsoever holy or wise, but 
 in the witness of a universal and perpetual body, 
 to which teachers and taught alike are subject ; and 
 because all are in subjection to the Church, all are 
 redeemed from bondage to individual teachers and 
 the authority of men. 
 
 Thus far we have spoken of the Church as a 
 mere human witness. To us, indeed, brethren, its 
 voice is not mere human testimony. God has pro- 
 vided for faith a certainty which cannot fail ; the 
 mystical Body of Christ, changeless and indestruc- 
 tible, spread throughout the world. Wonderful 
 creation of God ; but far more wonderful if it be 
 the creation of man : if, after all man's failure* to 
 construct an imperishable kingdom, to hold together 
 the human intelligence in one conviction, the hu- 
 man will in one discipline, and the human heart in 
 one bond of love ; if, after four thousand years of 
 failure, mere human power framed the Catholic 
 Church, endowed it with resistless power of expan- 
 sion, and quickened it with the life of universal 
 charity. More wonderful far, if it was man's work 
 to create the great science of theology, in which the 
 baptismal formula, " I baptize thee in the name of 
 the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," 
 expands into the creed, and the creed again ex- 
 
 D 
 
34 THE CHURCH A HISTORICAL WITNESS. 
 
 pands into the science of God on which the illumi- 
 nated reason of eighteen hundred years has spent 
 itself. Wonderful, indeed, if this be a mere human 
 creation ! To us it is the work and voice of God ; 
 to us the line of Bishops and of Councils by which 
 the Faith has been declared in perpetual succession 
 is the testimony which God Himself has counter- 
 signed, the witness God Himself has sent. This 
 continuous testimony from the Council of Aries to 
 the Council of Nice, from the Council of Nice to 
 that of Chalcedon, from Chalcedon to Lateran, from 
 Lateran to Lyons, and from Lyons to Trent, is one 
 harmonious science, ever expanding as a reflection 
 of the mind of God ; preserving and unfolding be- 
 fore us the one Truth revealed in the beginning, in 
 its unity and harmony and distinctness. This is 
 the basis of our certainty. 
 
 What is the history of the Catholic Church but 
 the history of the intellect of Christendom 1 What 
 do we see but two lines, the line of faith and the 
 line of heresy, running side by side in every age ; 
 and the Church, as a living Judge, sitting sovereign 
 and alone with unerring discernment, dividing truth 
 from error with a sharp two-edged sword 1 Every 
 several altar, and every several see, gives testimony 
 to the same doctrines ; and all conspiring voices 
 ascend into the testimony of that One See, which in 
 its jurisdiction is universal, and in its presence every- 
 where; that One See, the foundation-stones of which 
 were cemented in the blood of thirty Pontiffs ; 
 that See which recorded its archives in the vaults 
 
THE CHURCH A HISTORICAL WITNESS. 35 
 
 of catacombs,, and when the world was weary with 
 persecuting, ascended to possess itself of imperial 
 basilicas. This is the witness upon whose testimony 
 we securely rest. The Church is a living history of 
 the past. Cancel this, and what record is there 
 left ? If Rome be gone, where is Christendom ? 
 
 D 2 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 THE CHUKCH A DIVINE WITNESS. 
 
 ST. JOHN xvii. 3. 
 
 " This is life everlasting, that they may know Thee, the only 
 true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." 
 
 truths which we have already affirmed are 
 \ these : that the end of man is eternal life through 
 the knowledge of God revealed in Jesus Christ 
 that this knowledge of God, being a participation 
 of the Divine knowledge, is definite and certain ; 
 and that as there is but one fountain of this Di- 
 vine knowledge in Revelation, so there is but one 
 channel of this Divine certainty in the Church. 
 ? We have seen also that the authority of the Church 
 of God on earth is the highest, or maximum of 
 evidence, even in a human and historical sense, of 
 the past ; that unless we rest upon this evidence, 
 we must descend in the scale of certainty. 
 
 But we have as yet considered the Church only 
 in its external, human, and historical character: 
 there still remains for us a deeper and diviner 
 
THE CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS. 6i 
 
 truth. I have spoken of the authority of the 
 Church only as history of the past ; but, be it ever 
 remembered, that between the Protestant and Ca- 
 tholic there is this difference. To the Protestant, 
 history must be a record of the past gathered from 
 documents by criticism, fallible as the judge who 
 applies it. To the Catholic, history, though it be 
 of the past, is of the present also. The Church is 
 a living history of the past. It is the page of his- 
 tory still existing, open before his eyes. Antiquity 
 to the Catholic is not a thing gone by ; it is here, 
 still present. As childhood and youth are summed 
 up by manhood in our personal identity, so is 
 antiquity ever present in the living Church. If 
 Christianity, then, be historical, Catholicism is 
 Christianity. 
 
 Let us, therefore, proceed to the deeper and 
 diviner, that is, to the interior and intrinsic autho- 
 rity of the Church of Christ. We believe, then, that 
 the interior and intrinsic authority of the Church 
 is the presence of the_Holy Spirit j that the ulti- 
 mate authority upon which we believe is no less 
 than the perpetual presence of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ teaching always by His Spirit in the world. 
 
 I. And, first, let us ascertain what points ot 
 agreement exist between us and those who are in 
 separation from us. "We are all agreed that the 
 only subject-matter of faith is the original revela- 
 tion of God. They who most oppose us profess to 
 be jealous above all men to restrain all doctrine to- 
 the bounds of the original revelation. 
 
38 THE CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS. 
 
 We agree, then, at the outset, that the subject- 
 matter of our faith is, and can only be, the original 
 revelation of God. To that revelation nothing may- 
 be added ; from it nothing may be taken away. 
 As God in the beginning created the sun in the 
 heavens, with its perfect disc, and no skill or power 
 of man can make its circumference greater or less, 
 so Divine revelation is a work of God's omnipo- 
 tence, and no man can add to it, or take from it. 
 In, this also we are agreed. But there are other 
 principles no less vital than these. Let those who 
 are so jealous for this law of truth remember, that 
 as we may neither take from nor add to revelation, 
 so neither may we misinterpret or pervert it ; nei- 
 ther fix upon it our private meaning, nor make it 
 speak our sense. We must receive it as God gave 
 it, in its perfect fullness ; with its true sense and 
 purport as it was .revealed. 
 
 It were good, then, if they who are so jealous 
 of supposed additions to the faith, were equally 
 jealous of evident and manifold perversions of the 
 same. It would be well if those who are so hostile 
 to interpretations of Holy Scripture made by the 
 Catholic Church, were equally hostile to interpre- 
 tations made by every man severally of that same 
 book. Let us proceed more exactly ; and as we 
 agree that nothing may be added to or taken from 
 that revelation, so let us jealously demand that no- 
 thing in it shall be misinterpreted, nor its sense 
 wrested aside, nor its meaning perverted. 
 
 But here begin our differences. How are we 
 
THE CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS. 39 
 
 to attain the right sense of Holy Scripture 1 It 
 is a divine book, and contains the mind of God. 
 How, then, shall we know what is His mind ? By 
 what rule or test shall we know with certainty 
 that we have attained the meaning which the Di- 
 vine Spirit intended in that revelation ? We have 
 here many tests and many rules offered to ITS. 
 Some tell us that Scripture is so self-evident that 
 the man who reads it must understand. If that 
 be so, why do they that read it contradict each 
 other ? Facts refute the theory. If Holy Scrip- 
 ture be so clear, why are there so many contradic- 
 tory interpretations 1 
 
 But is it so clear? When the English reader 
 has before him for the New Testament the Greek 
 text, and for the Old Testament the Hebrew text 
 neither of which languages he reads where is 
 the self- evidence of his text then 1 How does he 
 know that the book before him truly represents 
 the original 1 How can he prove it 1 How can 
 he establish the identity between the original and 
 the translation ? How can he tell that the book 
 before him is authentic or genuine, or that the text 
 is pure ? For all this he depends on others. 
 
 But let us take this argument as it is stated. 
 Is Scripture, then, so self-evident that no one who 
 reads it can mistake its sense 1 If it be self-evi- 
 dent to the individual, it is self-evident to the 
 Church. If the text is so clear to every man who 
 reads it, then it has been clear to every Saint of 
 God from the beginning. If this book is so plain 
 
40 THE CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS. 
 
 that men cannot mistake it, then the Pastors and 
 Teachers of the Church have handed down its clear 
 and certain interpretation. Why are individuals 
 so sharp-sighted and unerring, and the Saints of 
 God at all times blind ? This is but the recoil of 
 their own argument. Let Holy Scripture be as 
 clear and self-evident as they say, then I claim in 
 virtue of that clearness that the Saints of God in 
 all ages have rightly understood its sense. 
 
 II. But let us pass onward. We see that they 
 who claim to interpret this book, with all its clear- 
 ness, contradict each other, and that their rule fails 
 in their own hand. Therefore, the wiser among 
 Protestants say, that to the text of Scripture must 
 be added right reason to interpret it. Eight rea- 
 son, no doubt : but whose reason is right reason ? 
 Every man's reason is to himself right reason. The 
 reason of Calvin was right reason to Calvin, and 
 the reason of Luther to Luther ; but the misfor- 
 tune is, that what is right reason to one man is 
 not so to another man. What then is this right 
 reason 1 It means a certain inward intellectual 
 discernment which each man claims for himself. 
 But how did he become possessed of it 1 Whence 
 did he receive this endowment ? And if he has it, 
 have not others the same *? This right reason which 
 men claim whereby to interpret Scripture for them- 
 selves must be one of two things : either the indi- 
 vidual or the collective reason ; that is, the reason 
 of each man for himself, or the accumulated reason 
 of Christians taken together. But will any man 
 
THE CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS. 41 
 
 say that his reason is to him so certain and un- 
 erring a rule that he is able to take the page of 
 Scripture, and by the powers of his understanding 
 infallibly interpret it 1 For such a claim as this 
 a man must have either a particular inspiration, 
 which considerate men dare not profess, or he must 
 substitute a sensation of positiveness for a sense of 
 certainty. 
 
 If, then, this right reason comes to nothing in 
 the individual, does it mean the collective reason 
 of the many ? If so, it falls back into a principle 
 valid and certain. What is the collective reason 
 of Christians but the 'tradition of Christendom 1 
 The intellectual agreement of the Saints of God, 
 what is it but the illuminated reason of those that 
 believe 1 Here we touch upon a great principle ; 
 let us follow its guidance. 
 
 After the division which rent England from the 
 unity of the Church, and therefore from the c^r- 
 tainty of faith ; when men began to re-examine 
 the foundations which Protestantism had uprooted, 
 there arose in the Anglican Church a school of 
 writers, acute and sincere enough both to see and 
 to confess that the principle of private judgment 
 is the principle of unbelief. They began to re- 
 construct a foundation for their faith, and were 
 compelled to return once more to the old basis of 
 Catholic theology. We can trace from about the 
 middle of the reign of Elizabeth down to the great 
 revolution of 1688, a theological school which 
 sprung up within the Established Church, basing 
 
42 THE CHUKCH A DIVINE WITNESS. 
 
 itself upon Catholic tradition, and claiming to found 
 its faith, not upon private judgment, but upon the 
 rule of Vincent of Lerins, namely, on that which 
 was believed " at all times, everywhere, and by 
 all men." This school, for it never indeed was 
 more, has in it names honoured and loved, names 
 ever dear to those who have been partakers with 
 them. They were no common men ; their lives 
 were ascetic, their intellects capacious, and their 
 erudition deep. They inherited a position which 
 they would never have chosen ; a position in many 
 respects vague, and for which time had not yet 
 supplied a practical comment : and they endea- 
 voured to defend by learning that which had owed 
 its origin to violence ; their position created their 
 theory. They suffered for their opinions, and 
 passed through trying times with great integrity. 
 Had they not had these virtues, they would not 
 have been so long received as authority. They 
 kept alive an illusion that the Anglican Church 
 was indeed a portion still of the great Catholic 
 empire which rests upon the unity and infallibility 
 of the Church of God ; an illusion indeed, but not 
 without its providential use. For look at the 
 countries where such a belief has been extinct from 
 the beginning ; at the Socinianism of Switzerland, 
 the Protestantism of France, the Eationalism of 
 Germany ; and say whither England might have 
 gone down if this illusion had not been permitted 
 to exist 1 They, while they knew it not, did a work 
 for England ; a counterwork against the license 
 
THE CHUKCH A DIVINE WITNESS. 43 
 
 of Protestant reformation. They were the leaders 
 of a reaction, the fruit of which will be seen here-, 
 after. They laid again in part the foundations of 
 belief; they demonstrated that private judgment is 
 no adequate rule for the interpretation of the faith. 
 They cast men back again upon authority : and 
 put once more into their hands a test. And what' 
 is that test, but the historical tradition of the; 
 Church, namely, that whatsoever was revealed in; 
 the beginning, and believed everywhere by all men^ 
 and at all times, is, beyond a doubt, the faith of 
 Pentecost 1 
 
 But here we touch upon another difficulty even 
 more pressing and more vital. We have now the . 
 test by which to discover the truth ; but where is 
 the mind by which that test shall be applied ? If 
 the individual reason be not enough in its own 
 powers of discernment to interpret the books of 
 Evangelists and Apostles, one small volume written 
 with the perspicuity of inspiration if the indi- 
 vidual reason be not enough for this, is it able to 
 take the literature of eighteen, or even of the first 
 six centuries, volumes written in many tongues and 
 in all Christian lands, to make survey and analysis 
 of them, to gather together and to pronounce what 
 has been believed by all men, and everywhere, and 
 at all times ? Even in ordinary things, if the ques- 
 tion were, What are those universal principles of 
 the common law of England which have been held 
 everywhere, at all times, and by all common-law 
 judges, would any individual in ordinary life think 
 
44 THE CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS. 
 
 himself a competent critic? Would he not go to 
 Westminster ? Or if the question were, What is 
 the pronunciation or idiom of a language, would he 
 go to books and not to natives 1 Or, if the question 
 related to the grounds of scientific conclusions, 
 would he buy and pore over treatises of science, 
 instead of asking those whose lives have been de- 
 voted to science ? Even in music there are melo- 
 dies, the accentuation and time of which cannot be 
 written ; they can be transmitted only from the 
 voice to the ear. So is it with the transmission of 
 the faith. Though in subjects where the Church 
 has not spoken, individuals may investigate, yet the 
 application of the rule of Vincent needs more than 
 the discernment of an individual mind. It needs 
 a judge whose comprehensive survey penetrates 
 the whole matter upon which it judges. And 
 where is the individual that can compass the whole 
 experience of Christendom ? Nay, more ; it needs 
 a judge who can not only discern for one age, 
 but for the next, and the age succeeding. What 
 benefit is there in a judge that judges in his day, 
 and dies? A perpetual doctrine tested by a per- 
 petual rule needs a perpetual judge. Who judged 
 in the times following the Apostles but the Church 
 in their next successors ? Who, in the century 
 after, when heresy arose, but the Church in Coun- 
 cils ? Who, in the heresy of Arius, the heresy of 
 Eutyches, the schism of the Greek Church ? Who 
 judged in the middle ages? who in later times ? 
 who judges to-day ? The same judge always sitting ; 
 
THE CHUECH A DIVINE WITNESS. 45 
 
 the same one living body which by the illumination 
 of Pentecost received the Truth. Is it not plain 
 that as every age needs the truth for its redemp- 
 tion, and as our Divine Lord has made provision 
 that every age through the truth shall be re- 
 deemed, so at no time from the beginning until 
 now has the world ever been, and at no time from 
 now until the end, shall the world ever be, without 
 a teacher and a judge to declare with final cer- 
 tainty what is the tradition of the faith ? 
 
 Here then we find ourselves in the presence of 
 the Church. As the subject-matter demands a 
 test, so the test demands a judge. What other judge 
 is there ? What other can there be, but that one 
 moral person, continuous from the beginning, the 
 one living and perpetual Church ? 
 
 Arid here even antagonists have made great 
 admissions. Chillingworth, a name in the mouths 
 of all men as the first propagator of what is vaunted 
 as the great rule of Protestantism, " the Bible, and 
 the Bible only," that same Chillingworth says that 
 there is a twofold infallibility, a conditional and 
 an absolute. " The former," namely, a conditional 
 infallibility, he, " together with the Church of Eng- 
 land," attributes " to the Church, nay to particular 
 churches." " That is, an authority of determining- 
 controversies of faith according to plain and evident 
 Scripture and universal tradition, and infallibility 
 while they proceed according to this rule"* But in 
 whose judgment? In the judgment of the incli- 
 
 * Chillingworth's Works, vol. i. pp. 276, 277. ed. Oxon. 
 
46 THE CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS. 
 
 vidual ? In the judgment of each member of the 
 local and particular church? or in the judgment of 
 the Church Universal ? for there can be no other 
 judge to determine whether the particular church 
 moves still in the path of universal tradition. Is 
 the individual to be judge of his church? This 
 would be to bid water rise above its source. "What 
 then remains? The Universal Church alone can 
 be the judge to pronounce whether or no a local 
 church still keeps within the sphere of universal 
 tradition. 
 
 But if this be so, the Universal Church must 
 be infallible ; for if it may err, who shall determine 
 whether it errs or no? "Can the blind lead the 
 blind ? do they not both fall into the ditch ?" It 
 comes, then, by the force of rigorous argument to 
 this, that either the Universal Church cannot err, 
 or that there is on earth no certainty for faifch. 
 If, then, the Church Universal be unerring, whence 
 has it this endowment ? Not from human discern- 
 ment, but from Divine guidance ; not because man 
 in it is wise, but because God over it is mighty. 
 Though the earth which moves in its orbit may be 
 scarred by storms, or torn by floods ; though upon 
 its surface nations may be wasted, cities over- 
 thrown, and races perish, yet it keeps ever in its 
 path, because God ordained its steadfast revolu- 
 tions : so, though individuals may fall from truth, 
 and nations from unity, yet the Catholic Church 
 moves on, because God created it and guides it. 
 
 III. And now we must advance one step further. 
 
THE CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS, 47 
 
 For in dealing with, those who are separated from 
 us, I believe that nothing I have yet touched upon 
 really probes the difficulty in their minds. The 
 sore lies deeper still: and it will be found that 
 the reluctance of too many, even among good men, 
 to receive the doctrine of the infallibility of the 
 Church of God springs from this, that they base 
 their religious opinions upon human reason, either 
 in the individual or upon a large scale, as upon the 
 mere intellectual tradition of Christendom, and not 
 upon the illumination and supernatural guidance of 
 Christ ever present and ever dwelling as a Teacher 
 in the Church. It will be found to involve a 
 doubt as to the office of the third Person of the 
 Ever-Blessed Trinity. 
 
 Let us proceed to examine this more closely. 
 We believe that Holy Scripture and the Creeds 
 contain our faith; that for the meaning of these 
 we may not use private interpretation, or wr^st 
 them from their divine sense, but must receive 
 them in the sense intended by God when they were 
 given in the beginning. To ascertain that sense, 
 we must go to the Universal Church. Universal 
 tradition we believe to be the supreme interpreter 
 of Scripture. When we come to this point, I ask 
 the objector, Do you believe that this universal 
 tradition of Christendom has been perpetuated by 
 the human reason only ? Or do you believe it to 
 be a traditional, divine illumination in the Church 1 
 Do you believe that the Holy Spirit is in the 
 Church ; and that His Divine Office is perpetual ? 
 
48 THE CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS. 
 
 If you say that individuals may judge the meaning 
 of Scripture by their own reason : the Church has 
 collective reason, and what the individual has the 
 Church has more abundantly. If individuals are 
 guided by the illumination of the Holy Spirit in 
 the interpretation of Scripture, the Church much 
 more. That which is collective contains all that is 
 individual. 
 
 But further than this. " As the sensual man," 
 proceeding, that is, by the natural discernment 
 only, " perceiveth not these things that are of the 
 Spirit of God," because they are " spiritually exa- 
 mined,"* so the Church itself in council depends 
 for its discernment in identifying the original faith, 
 interpreting the original documents, and defining 
 the original truth, on the presence of the Holy 
 Ghost, Whom it invokes at the opening of every 
 session. "What is the Church in the mouth of those 
 separated from Catholic unity ? Is it more than a 
 human society ? Is it not the religious organization 
 of national life ? If it be not, like the schools of 
 Athens, collected round the voice of some potent 
 and persuasive teacher, it is at most, like the Jewish 
 people, an organized government of men, as in tem- 
 poral matters so in ecclesiastical. This is the idea 
 of the Church among those separated from unity. 
 But what do you believe when you speak of the 
 Church of God 1 You believe that as the Eternal 
 Father sent the Eternal Son to be incarnate, and as 
 the Eternal Son for thirty-three years dwelt here 
 * 1 Cor. ii. 14. 
 
THE CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS. 49 
 
 on earth : as for three years by His public ministry, 
 He preached the kingdom of God in Jerusalem and 
 Judaea, so, before He went away, He said, " I will 
 ask the Father, and He shall give you another 
 Paraclete, that He may abide with you for ever, 
 the Spirit of truth." * The gain we have by His 
 departure is this, that what was then local is 
 now universal ; that what was partial then is now 
 in fullness ; that when the second Person of the 
 Ever-Blessed Three ascended to the throne of His 
 Father, the third Person of the Holy Trinity de- 
 scended to dwell here in His stead ; that as in 
 Jerusalem the second Person in our manhood visibly 
 taught, so now in the mystical body of Christ the 
 third Person teaches, though invisibly, throughout 
 the world ; that the Church is the incorporation of 
 the presence of the Holy Spirit teaching the nations 
 of the earth. 
 
 Is not this our meaning when in the Creed 
 before the altar we say, "I believe One Holy Ca- 
 tholic Apostolic Church ? " And this touches the 
 point where we differ from those who are without. 
 The discernment they ascribe to the Church is 
 human, proceeds from documents, and is gathered 
 by reasoning. We rise above this, and believe that 
 the Holy Spirit of God presides over the Church, 
 illuminates, inhabits, guides, and keeps it ; that its 
 voice is the voice of the Holy Spirit Himself; that 
 when the Church speaks, God speaks; that the 
 outward and the inward are one ; that the exterior 
 * St. John xiv. 16. 
 
50 THE CHUKCH A DIVINE WITNESS. 
 
 and the interior authority are identified; that what 
 the Church outwardly testifies, the Spirit inwardly 
 teaches ; that the Church is the body of Christ, so 
 united to Christ its Head, that He and it are one, 
 as St. Paul declares, " He gave some apostles ? and 
 some prophets, and other some evangelists, and 
 other some pastors and doctors, for the perfecting 
 of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the 
 edifying of the body of Christ ; until we all meet 
 into the unity of faith, and of the knowledge of the 
 Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure 
 of the age of the fullness of Christ ;" * " from whom 
 the whole body being compacted and fitly joined 
 together by what every joint supplieth, according 
 to the operation in the measure of every part, 
 maketh increase of the body, unto the edifying of 
 itself in charity." 
 
 The ultimate authority, then, on which we be- 
 lieve, is the voice of God speaking to us through 
 the Church. We believe, not in the Church, but 
 through it : and through the Church, in God. 
 
 And now, if this be so, I ask what Church is it 
 that so speaks for God in the world ? What Church 
 on earth can claim to be this teacher sent from 
 God ? Ask yourselves one or two questions. 
 
 What Church but one not only claims, but pos- 
 sesses and puts forth at this hour a universal juris- 
 diction ? What Church is it which is not shut up 
 in a locality or in a nation, nor bounded by a river 
 or by a sea, but interpenetrates wheresoever th e 
 * Eph. iv. 11, 12, 16. 
 
THE CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS. 51 
 
 name of Christ is known 1 What Church, as the 
 light of heaven, passes over all, through all, and is 
 in all ? What Church claims a universal authority ? 
 What one sends missions to the sunrise and to the 
 sunset 1 What Church has the power of harmo- 
 nizing its universal jurisdiction, so that there can be 
 no collision when its pastors meet 1 What Church 
 is there but one before whom kingdoms and states 
 give way ? When yet did the Church of Greece, for 
 instance, make a whole nation rise ? When did a 
 voice issue from Constantinople before which even a 
 civilized people forgot its civilization ? Why came 
 not such a voice from the East ? Because there was 
 no Divine mission to speak it. 
 
 We are told that all other sects are religions, 
 and may be safely tolerated, but that the Catholic 
 Church is a polity and kingdom, and must therefore 
 be cast out. We accept this distinction. Wl^at is 
 this cry but the cry of those who said of old, " We 
 will not have this man to reign over us ? " It is the 
 acknowledgment that in the Catholic Church there 
 is a Divine mission and a Divine authority ; that we 
 are not content with tracing pictures on the ima- 
 gination, or leaving outlines on the mere intellect, 
 but that, in the name of God, we command the 
 will ; that we claim obedience, because we first 
 submit to it. From the highest pastor to the lowest 
 member of Christ's Church, the first lesson and the 
 first act is submission to the faith of God. 
 
 How blind, then, are the statesmen of this 
 world : the Catholic Church an enemy of civil 
 E 2 
 
52 THE CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS. 
 
 kingdoms ! What created modern Europe 1 What 
 laid the foundations of a new empire when the old 
 had withered in the East ? What was the mould 
 from which Christian nations sprang ? What power 
 was it that entered into England when it was di- 
 vided by seven jarring, conflicting kingdoms, and 
 harmonized them as by the operation of light into 
 one empire ? What power is it that, as it created all 
 these, shall also survive them all ? What created 
 the very constitution of which we are so proud ? 
 Whence came its first great principles of freedom ? 
 Why do we hear, then, that because the Catholic 
 Church has a polity and is a kingdom, because it 
 claims supremacy, and is found everywhere supreme, 
 therefore it is not to be tolerated 1 
 
 It has indeed a power from heaven which ad- 
 mits no compromise. There is before it this, and 
 this only choice. In dealing with the world, it 
 says : " All things of the world are yours ; in all 
 things pertaining to you, in all that is temporal, we 
 are submissive ; we are your subjects ; we love to 
 x)bey. But within the sphere of the truth of God, 
 within the sphere of the unity and discipline of 
 God's kingdom, there is no choice for the Catholic 
 ,Church but mastery or martyrdom." 
 
 Let us ask another question. What Church 
 .but one has ever claimed a primacy over all other 
 Churches instituted by Jesus Christ ? Did any 
 Church, before the great division, three hundred 
 years ago, save that one Church which still pos- 
 sesses it, ever dream of claiming it 1 Has any sepa- 
 
THE CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS. 53 
 
 rate body since that time ever dreamed of pretend- 
 ing to such a primacy ? Has there ever been in 
 the world any but one body only, which has as- 
 sumed such a power as derived to it from Jesus 
 Christ ? 
 
 In answer it is said, "Yes ; but the primacy of 
 Home has been denied from the beginning." Then 
 it has been asserted from the beginning. Tell me 
 that the waves have beaten upon the shore, and I 
 tell you that the shore was there for the waves to 
 beat upon. Tell me that St. Irenaeus pleaded with 
 St. Victor that he would not excommunicate the 
 Asiatic Churches ; and I tell you that St. Irenseus 
 thereby recognized the authority of St. Victor to 
 excommunicate. Tell me that Tertullian mocked at 
 the " Pontifex maximus," " the Bishop of Bishops,' 5 
 and I tell you he saw before him a reality that 
 bare these titles. Tell me that St. Cyprian with- 
 stood St. Stephen in a point not yet defined by the 
 Church, and I tell you that, nevertheless, in St. 
 Stephen's See, St. Cyprian recognized the chair of 
 Peter, in unity with which he died a martyr. What 
 do wars of succession prove but the inheritance and 
 succession of the crown ? What does a process of 
 ejectment prove but that a man is in possession of 
 the disputed property ? What truth is there that 
 has not been disputed ? Let us apply the argument. 
 Has not the doctrine of the Holy Trinity been de- 
 nied ? Has not the Incarnation been denied ? Is 
 there any doctrine that has not been denied ? But 
 what is our answer to the Arian and Socinian ? 
 
54 THE CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS, 
 
 Because from the beginning these truths have been 
 denied, therefore from the beginning they have been 
 both held and taught. 
 
 To go over the field of this argument would be 
 impossible ; I will therefore take only one witness 
 of the primacy of the See of Peter. And I will 
 select one, not from a later age, because objectors 
 say, " We acknowledge that through ambition and 
 encroachment this primacy in time grew up ;" nor 
 shall he be chosen from the centuries which followed 
 the division of the East and West, because we are 
 told that the exorbitant demands of the West in 
 this very point caused the East to retolt from unity. 
 It shall be a witness whose character and worth, 
 whose writings and life have already received the 
 praise of history. It shall be one taken from the 
 centuries which are believed even by our opponents 
 to be pure, from the six first centuries, while the 
 Church was still undivided, and as many are still 
 ready to admit, was infallible, or at least had never 
 erred. It shall be a name known not only in the 
 roll of Saints, but one recognized in Councils, and 
 not in Councils of obscure name, but in one of the 
 four Councils which St. Gregory the Great declared 
 were to him like the four Gospels, and the Anglican 
 Church by law professed to make its rule whereby 
 to judge of heresy. In the Council of Chalcedon, 
 then, was recognized the primacy of St. Leo. 
 Throughout his writings, and especially in his epis- 
 tles, St. Leo's tone, I may say his very terms 
 are as follows : " Peter was Prince of our Lord's 
 
THE CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS. 55 
 
 Apostles. Peter's See was Rome. Peter's succes- 
 sor I am. Peter devolved upon his successors the 
 universal care of all the Churches. My solicitude 
 has no bounds but the whole earth. There is no 
 Church under heaven which is not committed to my 
 paternal care. There is none that the jurisdiction 
 of St. Peter does not govern." We not only hear 
 him claim, but see him exercise acts of jurisdiction 
 in Gaul, in Spain, in Italy, in Africa, in Greece, in 
 Palestine, and in Constantinople. We find him 
 convening and presiding in Councils ; confirming 
 or annulling the canons of those Councils ; judging 
 Bishops, deposing and restoring them. Even of 
 Constantinople, the only rival ever put forward to 
 the primacy of Rome, he writes to the Emperor, 
 speaking of the ambition of the Patriarch then in 
 possession : " The nature of secular and of divine 
 things is different, neither shall any fabric be stable 
 but that one rock which the Lord has wondromly 
 laid in the foundation. He loses his own who 
 covets what is another's. Let it sufiice for him of 
 whom we have spoken" (i. e. the Patriarch of Con- 
 stantinople), "that by the help of thy piety, and 
 the assent of my favour, he has obtained the epis- 
 copate of so great a city. Let him not despise the 
 imperial city, which he cannot make an Apostolic 
 See.*" There is no act of primacy exercised at this 
 hour by the Pontiff who now rules the Church 
 which may not be found in its principles in the 
 * S. Leon, ad Marc. Epist. Ixxviii. 
 
56 THE CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS. 
 
 hands of St. Leo. They who refuse obedience to 
 this primacy must refute St. Leo's claim. Until 
 they do this, they stand in the presence of an au- 
 thority which no other Church has ever dared to 
 exercise. 
 
 We will ask but one question more. What 
 other Church is there that has ever spread itself 
 through all the nations of the world as speaking 
 with the voice of God ? Does Protestantism ever 
 claim in any form to be heard by nations or by 
 individuals as the voice of God ? Do any of their 
 assemblies, or conferences, or convocations, put forth 
 their definitions of faith as binding the conscience 
 with the keys of the kingdom of heaven ? Do they 
 venture to loose the conscience, as having the power 
 of absolving men ? The practical abdication of this 
 claim proves that they have it not. Their hands 
 do not venture to wield a power which in any but 
 hands divinely endowed would be a tyranny as well 
 as a profanation. 
 
 v And what do we see in this but the fulfilment 
 of a divine example ? Of whom is it we read that 
 "the people were in admiration at His doctrine," 
 for this veryreason, because " He was teaching them 
 as one having power, and not as their scribes T 
 He spake not as man, that is, not by conjecture, 
 nor by reasoning, nor by quoting documents, nor 
 by bringing forth histories, but in the name of God, 
 being God Himself. So likewise the Teacher whom 
 He hath sent, comes not with laboured disquisi- 
 
THE CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS. ^ 57 
 
 tions, nor with a multitude of books, nor with texts 
 drawn from this passage and from that treatise, 
 but with the voice of God, saying : " This is the 
 Catholic faith, which unless man believe faithfully, 
 he cannot be saved." It comes with the voice of 
 authority appealing to the conscience, leaving argu- 
 ment and controversy to those who have too much 
 time to save their souls, and speaking to the heart 
 in man, yearning to be saved. 
 
 Take Rome from the earth, and where is Chris- 
 tendom ? Blot out the science of Catholic theology, 
 and where is faith 1 Where is the mountain of the 
 Lord's house which Isaias the prophet saw 1 ? "Where 
 is the stone cut out without hands, which, in the 
 vision of Daniel, grew and filled the whole earth ? 
 Where is the kingdom which the God of Heaven 
 hath set up 1 Where is the " city seated on a 
 mountain" that cannot be hid ? If Home be taken 
 'Out of Christendom, where are these ? I do not^ask 
 what Churches have laid claim to represent those 
 prophecies. Your own reason says it is impossible. 
 But where, I ask, if not here, is the fulfilment of 
 the words, " Lo, I am with you all days, even unto 
 the consummation of the world?" Where, if not 
 here, is the witness of God now speaking 2 Where, 
 if not here, is the perpetual presence of the faith of 
 Pentecost ? 
 
 We stand not before a human teacher when 
 we listen to the Catholic Church. There is One 
 speaking to us, not as scribes and pharisees, but 
 
58 THE CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS. 
 
 as the voice of God : " He that lieareth you hear- 
 eth Me ; and he that despiseth you despiseth Me ; 
 
 . and he that despiseth Me despiseth Him that sent 
 
 1 Me."* 
 
 * St. Luke x. 16. 
 
LECTURE IY. 
 
 RATIONALISM THE LEGITIMATE CONSEQUENCE 
 OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 
 
 ST. JOHN xvii. 3. 
 
 "This is life everlasting, that they may know Thee, the only 
 true God, and Jesua Christ whom Thou hast sent." 
 
 I WOULD fain leave the subject where we broke off 
 in the last lecture. So far as I am able, I have 
 fulfilled the work that I undertook. Hitherto the 
 path that we have trodden has been grateful land 
 onward. We have followed the steps of truth af- 
 firmatively; we have been occupied in constructing 
 the foundation and in building up the reasons of 
 our faith. To construct is the true office and work 
 of the Church of God, as of Him from whom it 
 comes. I would fain, therefore, leave the subject 
 here. And yet it is perhaps necessary that we 
 should turn our hand and put to the test what we 
 have hitherto said, by supposing a denial of the. 
 truths and principles which we have stated. "We 
 began, then, from the first idea of faith ; that God, 
 
GO RATIONALISM THE LEGITIMATE CONSEQUENCE 
 
 in His mercy to mankind, fallen and in ignorance, 
 again revealed Himself ; to the end that through 
 the knowledge of Himself and of His Son incarnate, 
 we might attain life everlasting. We have seen, 
 too, that the very idea of revelation involves the 
 properties of definiteness and certainty, because the 
 knowledge divinely revealed is presented to us as 
 it exists in the mind of God ; that, flowing from 
 Him as the only fountain, it descends to us through 
 His Church as the only channel ; and that the 
 Church, though universal in its expanse, is abso- 
 lutely one : a living and lineal body whereby the 
 present is linked with the past, and to-day is united 
 with the day of Pentecost. "Wherefore, we do not 
 believe that God spoke once, and now speaks no 
 more, but that, beginning to speak then, He speaks 
 still ; that what He spoke by inspiration when the 
 tongues of fire descended, He speaks yet in the 
 perpetuity of His Church. The teaching of the 
 One, Holy, Universal, Roman Church, the living 
 and present history of the past, is to us the voice 
 of God now, and the foundation of our faith. 
 
 Having proceeded, step by step, to this point, it 
 becomes necessary, distasteful as it must be, to turn 
 back, and to undo what we have done : necessary, 
 because truth is often more clearly manifested by 
 contradictories, for in those contradictories we touch 
 at last upon some impossibility, or some absurdity, 
 which refutes itself. 
 
 Let it, then, be denied first of all, that the 
 Church whose centre is in Rome, whose cireuin- 
 
OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 61 
 
 ference is from the sunrise to the sunset let it be 
 denied that the Church of Rome is the One Uni- 
 versal Church, the Teacher sent from God ; and 
 what follows 1 
 
 No other Church but this interpenetrates in 
 all nations, extends its jurisdiction wheresoever the 
 name of Christ is known, has possessed, or, I will 
 say, has claimed from the beginning, a divine pri- 
 macy over all other Churches ; has taught from 
 the first with the claim to be heard as the Divine 
 Teacher, or speaks now at this hour in all the 
 world. Whatever may be said in theory, no other, 
 as a matter of fact, from the east to the west, from 
 the north to the south, claims to be heard as the 
 voice of God. 
 
 Deny this, and to what do we come ? If we 
 depart from this maximum of evidence, this highest 
 testimony upon earth, to the revelation of God, we 
 must descend to lower levels. Deny the supreme 
 and divine authority of the Universal Church, and 
 in the same moment the world is filled with rival 
 teachers. They spring up in the East and in the 
 West. The East, with all its ancient separations, 
 Nestorian, Eutychian, Monophysite, claims to teach. 
 The West, with all its schisms of later centuries, 
 the Calvinist, the Lutheran, and the Anglican, urge 
 the same demand. Deny the supreme office of this 
 one Teacher, and all others claim equally their pri- 
 vilege to be heard. And why not 1 It is not for 
 us, indeed, to find arguments in bar of their claim. 
 It is for those who adopt this principle of iride- 
 
C2 RATIONALISM THE LEGITIMATE CONSEQUENCE 
 
 pendence to supply the limitation. We stand 
 secure ; but they who, by denying the Catholic rule 
 of faith, introduce these contradictions, are bound 
 to discover the test whereby to know who speaks 
 truth and who speaks falsehood in the conflict of 
 voices. 
 
 If fleeing for your life you came to a point 
 where many roads parted, and but one could lead 
 to safety, would it be a little matter not to know 
 into which path to strike ? If among many me- 
 dicines one alone possessed the virtue to heal some 
 mortal sickness, would you be cold and careless to 
 discover to which this precious quality .belongs ? 
 If Apostles were again on the earth, would you be 
 unconcerned to distinguish them from rivals or de- 
 ceivers 1 If there should come again many claim- 
 ing to be Messiah, would you deem it a matter of 
 indifference to know from among the false Christs 
 which is the true ? If one comes saying, " You 
 shall be saved by faith only ;" and another, " You 
 shall be saved by faith and pious sentiments ;" and 
 another, " You shall be saved by faith without sa- 
 craments /' and another, " There is a divine law of 
 sacramental grace whereby you must partake of the 
 Word made Flesh ;" is it a matter of indifference 
 to you to know with certain proof which of all 
 these teachers comes from God ? Are we not al- 
 ready in the days of which our Lord forewarns us, 
 that " many shall come in my name, saying, ' I am 
 Christ ? '" Is it not of such times as these that the 
 warning runs, " If they shall say to you, Behold 
 
OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 63 
 
 He is in the desert, go ye not out," that is, to 
 seek the messenger sent from God ; " for as light- 
 ning cometh out of the east, and appeareth even 
 into the west, so shall also the coming of the Son 
 of Man be ? " * The true messenger of God is 
 already abroad in all the earth. 
 
 To avoid this impossible theory, a view has been 
 proposed since the rise of the Anglican Church as 
 follows : The Church, it is said, does not consist of 
 those who are condemned for heresy, as the Euty- 
 chian, the Monophysite, and the like ; neither of 
 those who have committed schism, as the Protestant 
 sects; but it consists of the Greek, the Eonian, and 
 the Anglican Churches. 
 
 Let me touch this theory with tenderness, for 
 it is still a pleasant illusion in many pious minds. 
 Many have believed it as they believe revelation 
 itself. And if we would have this illusion dis- 
 pelled, it must be not by rough handling or by 
 derision, but by the simple demonstration of its 
 impossibility. If these three bodies, then, be in- 
 deed the one Church, the Church is divided. For 
 the moment pass that by. If these three be indeed 
 parts of the same Church, then, as that one Church 
 is guided by one Spirit, they cannot, so far as that 
 guidance extends, contradict each other. How- 
 ever directly their definitions may be opposed, yet 
 in substance of faith they must be in agreement. 
 Such are the straits to which men under stress of 
 argument or of events are driven. But these three 
 * St. Matt. xxiv. 23-27. 
 
64 RATIONALISM THE LEGITIMATE CONSEQUENCE 
 
 bodies so united in unwilling espousals divorce each 
 other. The Greek will not accept the Anglican 
 with his mutilation of sacraments ; nor will the 
 Anglican accept the Greek with his practice of 
 invocation. Neither does the Holy See accept either 
 with their heresy and their schism. These three 
 bodies, brought by theory into unwilling combina- 
 tion, refuse, in fact, to be combined. They can be 
 united only upon paper. 
 
 The present relation of the Anglican body to 
 the Catholic Church is a refutation final and by 
 facts of this arbitrary theory. 
 
 The impossibility of this view has compelled 
 many plain and serious minds to reject altogether 
 the notion of a visible church, and to take refuge 
 in the notion of a church invisible. But this too 
 destroys itself. How shall an invisible church carry 
 on the revelation of God manifest in the flesh, or be 
 the representative of the unseen God: the successor 
 of visible apostles, the minister of visible sacra- 
 ments, the celeb rator of visible councils, the ad- 
 ministrator of visible laws, and the worshipper in 
 visible sanctuaries 1 Here is another impossibility 
 to which the stress of argument drives reasonable 
 men. 
 
 Abandoning the scheme of an invisible church, 
 others have come to adopt another theory, namely, 
 that the Church of God is indeed a visible body, 
 the great complex mass of Christendom, but that 
 it has no divine authority to propose the faith, no 
 perpetual office, or power to declare with unerring 
 
OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 65 
 
 certainty what is the primitive doctrine. They say 
 that during the first six hundred years, while the 
 Church was united, it possessed this office, to decide, 
 and that in the discharge of this office, it was even 
 infallible, or that, at least, it never erred; but 
 that by division it has forfeited the power of exer- 
 cising this office, that by reunion it may yet one 
 day regain it ; and that, in the meantime, every 
 particular church appeals to a general council yet 
 to come. This, too, is believed by some, and with 
 sincerity. 
 
 And yet they have never been able to say how 
 it is that a divine office which flows from the Divine 
 Presence should suddenly come to nothing, the Di- 
 vine Presence still abiding. If, indeed, the third 
 Person of the Holy Trinity dwell in the Church in 
 the stead of the second Person of the Ever-Blessed 
 Three ; if the Spirit of truth be come to guide and 
 to preserve the Church in all truth, how is it that 
 the Divine office, faithfully fulfilled during six hun- 
 dred years, in the seventh century began to fail ? 
 They turn to the state of the world in ancient times, 
 and say, that as the light of truth possessed before 
 the flood faded until the sin of man brought in the 
 deluge ; that as the revelation possessed by Noe 
 decayed until Abram was called out of idolatry ; 
 that as the truth revealed by Moses fell into cor- 
 ruption, and the Jewish Church became unfaithful; 
 so the Church of Christ, following the same law of 
 declension, may likewise become corrupt. 
 
 But is it possible that men versed in the Scrip- 
 F 
 
60 RATIONALISM THE LEGITIMATE CONSEQUENCE 
 
 tures can thus argue from the shadows to the sub- 
 stance ; that because in the ancient world, in the 
 old and fallen creation, before as yet the Word was 
 incarnate, or the Holy Ghost yet given ; because in 
 those " days of the flesh," men failed and forfeited 
 God's gifts of grace, therefore now, after that the 
 second Person of the Holy Trinity has come 011 
 earth in our manhood, and sits at the right hand 
 of God, the glorious Head of His mystical body, 
 upholding by His Godhead the order of grace ; that 
 now when the Holy Ghost dwells in his stead as 
 the imperishable life and light of the New Creation, 
 the same laws of our fallen nature still prevail, not 
 against men, not against the human element, which 
 no one denies, but against the divine element and 
 office of the Church 1 But although every indi- 
 vidual man may fail, yet the Church is still infal- 
 lible ; although every man, being defectible, may 
 fall away, yet " the gates of hell shall never prevail 
 against the Church." Although promises to indi- 
 viduals are conditional, } 7 et to the Church, as a 
 Divine creation, they are absolute. Before the In- 
 carnation of the Son of God, the mystical body did 
 not exist. Therefore, in one word, we answer, that 
 the old world had no analogy or precedent to the 
 new creation of God. 
 
 Again, it is said that the notes of the Church, 
 sanctity and unity, are to be put in parallel. There 
 are promises, we are told, that all the children of 
 God shall be holy, and that every one shall be 
 taught of God. The promises of sanctity, therefore, 
 
OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT, 67 
 
 being absolute, we should have expected a perfect 
 Church without spot or blemish. But we see the 
 visible Church full of scandals and corruptions. Our 
 expectation then in the promise of sanctity not 
 being literally fulfilled, when we read of absolute 
 unity, we ought not to look for a literal fulfilment. 
 This is an error in which many minds still are 
 held. They forget that unity means one in number, 
 and that sanctity is a moral quality. Again, they 
 do not distinguish between the sanctity which is on 
 God's part, and the sanctity which is on the part of 
 man. The note of sanctity, as it exists on the part 
 of God, consists in the sanctity of the Founder of 
 the Church, the sanctity of the Holy Spirit by 
 whom it is inhabited, the sanctity of its doctrine, 
 and the sanctity of holy Sacraments as the sources 
 of grace. But sanctity on the part of man is the 
 inward quality or state of the heart sanctified by 
 the Holy Ghost. This inward sanctity varies, of 
 necessity, according to the measure and probation 
 of man ; but the presence of God the Sanctifier ; 
 the power of holy Sacraments, the fountains of 
 sanctification : these divine realities on God's part 
 are changeless ; they are ever without spot or 
 blemish, even to the letter of the prophecy. Only 
 the effect upon those who receive them varies ac- 
 cording to the faith of the individual. This is the 
 true parallel. The Church is numerically one as 
 God is one. Individuals and nations may fall from 
 unity as from sanctity, but unity, as a Divine insti- 
 tution, stands secure : " The gifts and calling of 
 F 2 
 
63 RATIONALISM THE LEGITIMATE CONSEQUENCE 
 
 God are without repentance."'"' Unity is changeless, 
 whoever falls away : it does not admit of degrees. 
 One cannot be more or less than one. 
 
 But if, as it is said, the office of the Church to 
 decide questions of faith has been suspended, then 
 the world at this hour has no teacher. Then the 
 command, " Going, therefore, teach ye all nations," 
 is expired. The " nations" mean, not only the na- 
 tions then dwelling on earth, but the nations in 
 succession, with their lineage and posterity, until 
 the world's end. There is no longer, then, a divine 
 teacher upon earth. If the office of the Church to 
 teach the truth and to detect falsehood, to define 
 the faith and condemn heresy, be suspended, we 
 know not now with certainty what is the true sense 
 even of the Articles of the Creed. Between the 
 East and the West, that is, between the universal 
 Eoman Church and the local Greek Church, there 
 are two questions open, both of which touch an 
 article of the baptismal faith. One point of doc- 
 trine taught by the Catholic Church is this : that 
 the Holy Ghost proceeds both from the Father and 
 from the Son. The Greek Church denies the pro- 
 cession from the Son. Who is right and who is 
 wrong ? On which side is the truth in this contro- 
 versy ? Where is the faith and where heresy be- 
 tween the two contending parties ? If the office of 
 the Church be suspended, there exists no judge on 
 earth to say who has the truth in this dispute : and 
 that not touching an inferior article of doctrine, but 
 * Rom. xi. 29. 
 
OF PKIVATE JUDGMENT. 69 
 
 an article of the highest mystery of all, the Ever 
 Blessed Trinity. 
 
 But to take another, and a vital question, namely, 
 the primacy of the Church itself, the power that 
 is vested in the See of Peter to control by its 
 jurisdiction all Churches upon earth. In the bap- 
 tismal faith Yv^e profess to believe in one Holy Ca- 
 tholic Church. Surely the question whether or no 
 there be on earth a supreme head of the Church 
 divinely instituted, is as much a part of the sub- 
 stance and exposition of that article as any other 
 point. But yet between the Catholic and the Greek 
 Churches this point is disputed. And if the office 
 of the Church be suspended, there is no power on 
 earth to determine who is right and who is wrong 
 in the contest. 
 
 But let us turn from the Greek Church. Let us 
 apply the same tests to the Anglican communion. 
 How many points of doctrine are open between the 
 Anglican and the Universal Church. In the thirty- 
 nine articles of religion, how many points are dis- 
 puted. How many controverted questions, not 
 with the Roman Church alone, but with the Greek. 
 Church also. For instance, the whole doctrine of 
 the Sacraments, their number and their nature, the 
 power of the keys, the practice of invocation, and 
 the like. Then, I ask, if indeed the office of the 
 Church be suspended, who now at this day can de- 
 clare who is right and who is wrong in these dis- 
 puted questions r ( 
 
 IN ay, we may go yet further, and say, that even 
 
70 RATIONALISM THE LEGITIMATE CONSEQUENCE 
 
 the points of faith decided by Councils when the 
 Church was yet one are no longer safe. There 
 needs only an individual of sufficient intelligence 
 and sufficient influence to rise up and call them in 
 question. If the interpretation of the decrees of 
 the Councils of Nice or Ephesus be disputed, an 
 authoritative exposition of these ancient definitions 
 is required. But this cannot be obtained unless 
 there still sit on earth a judge to decide the law. 
 Suppose a dispute to arise as to the interpretation 
 of a statute passed in the reign of Edward III., and 
 that there were no judges in Westminster to ex- 
 pound it, the law would be an open question, that 
 is, a dead letter. So with the decrees of ancient 
 Councils. It needs, then, nothing but a controversy 
 on each article of the faith to destroy their cer- 
 tainty. Twelve disputes on the twelve Articles 
 of the Baptismal Eaith would destroy all certainty. 
 And on earth there would be no judge to say who 
 is right and who is wrong, to declare what was ori- 
 ginally revealed on the day of Pentecost, and the 
 meaning of that revelation. To what impossibilities- 
 does this theory reduce those who hold it :, impossi- 
 bilities which they perhaps can speak of best who 
 have felt them most. But from this a way of escape 
 is thought to lie in appealing to a future General 
 Council. And yet this brings no present certainty. 
 The faith might be, as in England it is, uncertain 
 for centuries while the General Council is still 
 future. In truth, this appeal is no more than a 
 plea for insubordination. To appeal from the reign- 
 
OF PKIVATE JUDGMENT. 71 
 
 ing sovereignty to one to come is simple treason. 
 But besides, the theory is in itself impossible. For 
 who is to convene this future Council t And of 
 whom shall it be composed ] Who shall sit in it ? 
 Who shall be excluded 1 And by whose judgment 
 shall the admission and exclusion be determined 1 
 Every divided Church will demand its vote and 
 voice. Who shall judge its claim ? The office of 
 the judge is in abeyance. But a General Council 
 presupposes the existence and office of the supreme 
 judge of faith and unity. And this the appellants 
 tell us is suspended. 
 
 Let us pass on from this point. To deny, then, 
 that the one Universal and Roman Church is now 
 the Teacher sent from God on earth, leads to a 
 denial that there exists in the world any Teacher 
 at all ; and to deny the existence of this universal 
 Teacher involves two consequences so impossible, 
 that they need only to be stated to be refuted. If 
 there exists in the world no teacher invested with 
 divine commission to guide all others, either every 
 several local church is invested with a final and 
 supreme authority to determine what is true and 
 what is false ; that is, possesses the infallibility de- 
 nied by objectors to the Universal Church itself; or 
 else, no authority under heaven respecting divine 
 truth is more than human. 
 
 Let us examine this alternative. We may pass 
 by the Greek Church, for it had discernment enough, 
 when it began its schism, to put forward the claim 
 to be not a part of the Church, but the true Church ; 
 
72 RATIONALISM THE LEGITIMATE CONSEQUENCE 
 
 not to be in communion with others, but to be the 
 sole preserver of the Faith. The Greek Church has 
 at all times claimed to be the temple of the Holy 
 Spirit, and " the orthodox," that is, the only faith- 
 ful teacher of the truth. It claims also infallibility 
 by guidance of the Holy Ghost. It does not affect 
 to participate with Home, but to be exclusively the 
 one true Catholic Church. It denounces the Holy 
 See as both in error and in schism. "We may then 
 pass over this case, because its very consistency, 
 while it makes the pretensions of the East more 
 unreasonable, confirms our position. "We will take 
 a local body which has claimed for itself to be, not 
 exclusively the Church, but a part of it, and within 
 its own sphere to be sufficient to determine contro- 
 versies, to ( perpetuate its orders, to confer and to 
 exercise jurisdiction ; that is, which has claimed to 
 have within its own sphere all that the Catholic 
 Church possesses from its Divine Founder. 
 
 I will not weary you by tracing out historically 
 the theory upon which the highest and most hon- 
 oured names of the Anglican body have attempted 
 to justify the Reformation. It will be sufficient to 
 say that pious and learned men have believed as 
 follows : That in the time of our Saxon ancestors 
 the Catholic Church in this country possessed a 
 freedom of its own ; that, though in union with the 
 Holy See, it was under no controlling jurisdiction ; 
 that when the Normans came in they established a 
 civil state upon the basis of the existing ecclesias- 
 tical order, and therein perpetuated the freedom and 
 
OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 73 
 
 privileges of the Catholic Church in England. They 
 further believed that every Christian kingdom, such 
 as ours, had laws, privileges, and rights of its own ; 
 and that these among us were usurped upon, inter- 
 fered with, and taken away by a foreign power, the 
 Bishop of Rome. They taught, then, that the Re- 
 formation was nothing but a removal of usurpation 
 and a restoring of our ancient freedom ; that the 
 Church which existed before and after the Refor- 
 mation was one and the same, a continuous and 
 living body, mutilated, indeed, in the wreck of that 
 age, but still preserving its orders, its jurisdiction, 
 and its doctrines ; being sufficient in itself to deter- 
 mine all questions, as the notable act of parliament, 
 passed at the beginning of the schism, in its pre- 
 amble declares. 
 
 What was the effect of this theory ? It at once 
 invested the local church with all the final preroga- 
 tives of the universal. It claimed for it the power 
 within its own sphere to terminate everything that 
 can be terminated only by the Universal Church 
 under Divine guidance. Though it dared not to 
 enunciate the claim, it had practically assumed the 
 possession of infallibility. It would have been too 
 unreasonable and too absurd to state it, but it acted 
 as if it really were infallible. And what were the 
 effects ? No sooner did the Anglican Church begin 
 to determine the controversies of its members than 
 they began to dispute its determinations. 
 
 The first separation from the Anglican esta- 
 blishment was made by the Independents. They 
 
74 RATIONALISM THE LEGITIMATE CONSEQUENCE 
 
 carried their appeal beyond the local church, and 
 because they had been taught to acknowledge upon 
 earth no superior before whom to lay it, they ap- 
 pealed to Scripture and to reason, or, as they thought, 
 to the unseen Head of the Church, but in truth to 
 their own interpretations. The first effect of in- 
 vesting a local body with universal sovereignty in 
 jurisdiction and discipline, was to make truthful 
 and earnest men, who saw the impossibility of such 
 a claim, break out into disobedience. Hence have 
 come the separations from the Anglican Church 
 which now divide England from one end to the 
 other. The source of these divisions is the impossi- 
 bility of believing that a body formed by private judg- 
 ment and established by civil power can possess a 
 divine authority to terminate controversies of faith. 
 We have lately had this theory of local churches 
 tested before our eyes. History told us that in the 
 Anglican Church, during the three hundred years 
 of its existence, there have been two schools of theo- 
 logy, one bearing the appearance of Catholic doc- 
 trine and of Catholic tradition j another, earlier in 
 date, springing from the very substance of the Re- 
 formation itself, pre-occupying the Anglican com- 
 munion, a school of pure Protestant theology. These 
 two schools have existed, struggling, conflicting, 
 and denouncing each other from that day to this. 
 Yet it was believed that the Catholic school was 
 the substance of the Anglican Church, and the Pro- 
 testant a parasite : a malady which, though clinging 
 closely to it, might yet be expelled and cast off. 
 
OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 75 
 
 Such was the belief of many. Then came a 
 crisis. You know, and I will do no more than remind 
 you distantly, how a question touching the first 
 sacrament of the Church, touching, therefore, the 
 first grace of Christian life, original sin, and the 
 whole doctrine of the work of grace in the soul of 
 man a doctrine fundamental and vital, if any can 
 be was brought into dispute between a priest and 
 his bishop. The bishop refused to put him in charge 
 with cure of souls. The priest, not content with 
 the decision of his bishop, appealed to the jurisdic- 
 tion of the archbishop ; the archbishop, that is, his 
 court, confirmed the decision of the bishop. The 
 appeal was then further carried to the civil power 
 sitting in council. Observe the steps of this appeal. 
 The bishop here is a spiritual person possessing 
 spiritual authority, sitting as a spiritual judge in a 
 spiritual question. The archbishop to whom the 
 appeal is carried sits likewise as a spiritual judge 
 in a spiritual question, with this only difference, 
 that whereas his jurisdiction is co-extensive with 
 . the jurisdiction of the bishop, it is superior to it. 
 "When the appeal, then, is carried from the arch- 
 bishop to the civil power in council, what does 
 that appeal disclose? That the civil power sit- 
 ting in council sits as a spiritual person to judge 
 in a spiritual question, with a jurisdiction like- 
 wise co-extensive, and absolutely superior both to 
 bishop and archbishop, an office which in the Church 
 of God is vested in a patriarch. There is no pos- 
 sibility of mistaking this proceeding. It is one of 
 
76 RATIONALISM THE LEGITIMATE CONSEQUENCE 
 
 those proofs which are revealed, not in arguments, 
 but in facts. 
 
 And now, to what does this reduce the theory 
 of local churches? It shows that local churches 
 possess in themselves no power to determine finally 
 the truth or falsehood of a question of faith. An 
 attempt was made at that time by men, whom I 
 must ever remember with affection and respect, to 
 heal this wound by distinguishing in every such 
 appeal between the temporal element relating to 
 benefice, property, and patronage, and the spiritual 
 element touching the doctrine of faith. It was 
 proposed that the temporal element should be car- 
 ried to the civil power sitting in council, as the 
 natural judge in a matter of benefice or temporali- 
 ties; and that the spiritual element, or the question 
 of doctrine, should be carried to the bishops of that 
 local church. "When this proposal was under dis- 
 cussion, these questions were asked : Suppose that 
 when a question of doctrine is carried to the united 
 council of the bishops of that local church, a bare 
 majority of them should decide one way, and a large 
 minority should decide the other ; will ,tbe minds 
 of a people stirred from the depths, excited by reli- 
 gious controversy, moved as no other motive in the 
 world can move them, by dispute on a point of re- 
 ligious opinion will they be pacified? will they 
 be assured 1 will they hold as a matter of divine 
 faith the decision of this majority ? Again, suppose 
 that mere number be on the side of the majority, 
 and that theological learning be on the side of the 
 
OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 77 
 
 minority; if the majority have greater number, the 
 minority will have greater weight. And will not 
 people adhere to the few whom they trust rather 
 than to the many whom, as theologians, they less 
 esteem 1 And another question, not asked then, 
 may be asked now by us : Suppose the whole body 
 of the assembled bishops of a local church were una- 
 nimous, what guarantee or security is there that 
 their decision shall infallibly be in accordance with 
 the faith of the Church of Christ 1 A local body 
 has no prerogative of infallibility. If " the Churches 
 of Jerusalem and of Aritioch have erred," every 
 local church may err. If these local churches, not- 
 withstanding their antiquity and magnitude, have 
 erred, shall not a body three hundred years old 
 err too ? If " General Councils may err," so, much 
 more readily, may a provincial synod. The church 
 which has recorded these assertions has prepared its 
 own sentence. It disclaims an infallible guidance. 
 And if its assembled fathers, with one mind and 
 voice, should declare with unity on any point of 
 doctrine, what security is there that their united 
 decision shall express the faith of the Universal 
 Church 1 Torn from the Catholic unity, the mind 
 and spirit of the Universal Church has 110 influx 
 into the Anglican communion. The channel is cut 
 asunder. It has no authority that is more than 
 human, and thereby revealed itself. Some, indeed, 
 believed that it was a church for three hundred 
 years, and became a schism two years back ; that 
 the Anglican position was tenable till then, and 
 
78 RATIONALISM THE LEGITIMATE CONSEQUENCE 
 
 has become untenable only since the change was 
 made. 
 
 But there is another alternative. The crisis we 
 speak of was either a change or a revelation. They 
 who can look into history and see existing these 
 two schools from the reign of Edward the Sixth, 
 and the supremacy of the crown from the reign of 
 Henry the Eighth ; they who can follow the reli- 
 gious contests of England for three centuries, and 
 still say that a change has been lately made for the 
 first time, may say it j but they who believe that 
 the judgment then pronounced by the highest legal 
 authorities in this land was a true and accurate his- 
 torical criticism of the religious compromise called 
 the Anglican Reformation, will also believe that 
 the issue of the appeal of which I speak was not a 
 change but a revelation of what the Established 
 Church has been from its beginning ; that from the 
 first the Anglican communion, though clothed in 
 ecclesiastical aspect, appropriating the organization 
 of Catholic times, sitting in Catholic cathedrals, 
 professing to wield in its own name Catholic juris- 
 diction, has never been more than a human society, 
 sprung from human will, with definitions framed by 
 human intellect, possessing no divine authority to 
 bind the conscience or to lay obligations upon the 
 soul. 
 
 To deny, then the authority of the Universal 
 Church as final and sovereign, is to do one of two 
 things : either to invest "every local church with 
 infallibility, which is absurd ; or to declare that 
 
OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 79 
 
 no authority for faith in the world is more than 
 human. 
 
 But we must now hasten over one or two other 
 consequences which might well detain us longer. 
 To deny that there exists for the faith any higher 
 than human authority, is to destroy the objectivity 
 of truth. As the firmament is an object to the eye, 
 and as every several light in it is of divine creation ; 
 and though all men were blind, the firmament would 
 stand sure, and its lights still shine no less ; so the 
 faith is a divine revelation, and every doctrine in 
 it is a divine light ; and though all men were un- 
 believing, the revelation and its lights would shine 
 the same. The objective reality of truth then does 
 not depend on the will or the intellect of man ; it 
 has its existence in God, and is proposed to us by 
 the revelation and authority of God. But how can 
 this be, if the basis upon which the truth rests for 
 us be human ? Man could not attain to it, else why 
 did God reveal it 1 Man cannot preserve it, else 
 why did he lose it of old ? Men cannot assure it to 
 us, for men contradict each other. Truth never 
 varies, it is always the same, always one and change- 
 less ; contradictions spring from the human mind 
 alone. The one fountain of truth is God ; the only 
 sure channel of truth is His Church, through which 
 God speaks still. Cancel the perpetual divine 
 authority which brings truth down to us through the 
 successions of time, and what is the consequence ? 
 Truth turns into the opinion or imagination of 
 every several man. The polytheism of the ancient 
 
80 KATIONALISM THE LEGITIMATE CONSEQUENCE 
 
 world was only the idea of God reproduced in the 
 human understanding after the true knowledge of 
 God was lost. The mind of man which could not 
 exist without the image of God, formed for itself 
 monstrous conceptions of its own. A shifting, mov- 
 ing imagination, ever revolving in its own thoughts, 
 gave forth polytheism. Polytheism was the sub- 
 jective distortion of truth after its objectivity was 
 obscured. 
 
 Let us come to the present time. What are the 
 sects of England but offspring of the subjective 
 working of the human mind, striving to regain the 
 divine idea of the Church as a teacher sent from 
 God 1 The Reformation destroyed the objective 
 reality of that idea, and the human mind has created 
 it afresh in eccentric forms for itself. In like man- 
 ner, false doctrines, fanatical extravagances, and per- 
 versions of the truth, what are they but struggles 
 of the mind of man to recreate within his own 
 sphere the truths of which the objectivity is lost ? 
 
 To deny, then, the divine authority of the Uni- 
 versal Church, and thereby to make all authority 
 for faith merely human, is to convert all doctrine 
 into the subjective imagination of each several man. 
 It becomes a kind of waking dream. For what is 
 dreaming but the perpetuity of human thought run- 
 ning on unchecked by waking consciousness, which 
 pins us down to order and rule by fact and by 
 reality 1 In sleep the mind never rests ; it still 
 weaves on its own imaginations. When we sleep 
 perfectly, we are unconscious of what is passing in 
 
OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 81 
 
 gur ininds; when we sleep imperfectly, we say we 
 dream, that is, we remember. "When we awake, 
 these visions fly, because matter of fact, the eye of 
 our fellow-creatures, common sense, that is, our 
 waking consciousness, brings us back. In like man- 
 ner, the visible Church, with its rule of faith, its 
 authoritative teaching, its order, its discipline, its 
 worship, is that outer world in which we move. 
 It keeps the spiritual mind in limit and in measure. 
 Dissolve it, and the mind weaves on in its own 
 fancies, throwing off heresies, eccentricities, and 
 falsehood. Let Germany and England be the wit- 
 ness. 
 
 Take, for example, the Rationalism of Germany. 
 In its first age, after the Reformation, Lutheranism 
 was rigorously orthodox until it became insufferably 
 dry ; and then the soul in man, thirsting for the 
 waters of life, of which it had been robbed, sought 
 to satisfy itself in a sentimental piety, and by recoil 
 cast off orthodoxy as a thing dead and intolerable. 
 This reaction against definite statements of doctrine 
 at a later stage produced the theory that the whole 
 truth may be elicited from the human conscious- 
 ness. From whence in the end came two things : 
 one, the theory that sin had no existence ; that it is 
 a philosophical disturbance of the general relations 
 of the Creator and the creature; the other, that an 
 historical Christ had never any existence. Such are 
 the results of the subjective states of the human 
 mind when the objective teaching of divine autho- 
 rity is lost. 
 
 G 
 
82 RATIONALISM THE LEGITIMATE CONSEQUENCE 
 
 And now, one more consequence must be noted. 
 "When the objectivity of truth is lost, the obligation 
 of law is gone. What is it that binds us by the 
 laws of moral obligation 1 I pass by the mere laws 
 of nature. I speak now of those higher laws which 
 come from revelation, and I ask, What is it which 
 binds the conscience 1 The Divine will revealed in 
 those laws. But on what authority are these laws 
 assured to us ? and by whom interpreted ? Is it by 
 human authority ? Can one man bind another by 
 moral obligation to take his view or interpretation 
 of the will or law of God under pain of sin ? Can 
 he put forth his view as a term of communion, if 
 communion be a condition of life eternal? Is it 
 possible for a creature to bind his fellow- creatures 
 under pain of sin unless he possess Divine authority 
 to do so ? The laws of God do not bind His crea- 
 tures unless they are made known to them ; though, 
 in right, they bind all creatures eternally, yet, in 
 fact, they need revelation to bring home and apply 
 their obligations to the conscience. A doubtful law 
 is not present to the conscience. If a law is uncer- 
 tain, it is no law to us. It must be clear and de- 
 finite both in its injunctions and its authority. I 
 ask, then, what is the source of clearness and defi- 
 niteness in the law and truth of God but the Divine 
 authority of God, not eighteen hundred years ago, 
 but in every century since, in every year, in every 
 day, in every hour, brought home to and in contact 
 with the moral being of each man ? Let us take an 
 example. Is it riot a law, binding under pain of sin 
 
OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 83 
 
 and eternal death, that we should believe the faith ? 
 Then no human authority can be the imposer of that 
 law 011 us. Is it not a law on which we shall in- 
 herit eternal life, that we be subject to the autho- 
 rity of God's Church on earth ? Then that authority 
 must be divine. Is it not also binding, under pain 
 of sin, that we preserve the unity of the Church ? 
 Then the law of unity is a divine law, delivered and 
 applied to us by a present Divine authority. 
 
 Let us pass to one more point, and it shall be the 
 last. "When the divine authority, the objectivity 
 of truth, and the obligation of law applied to us 
 by that divine authority, are gone, where then, I 
 ask, is revelation ? " This is life everlasting, that 
 they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus 
 Christ whom Thou has sent." Hither have we 
 come down, step by step. We have descended as 
 we ascended. We have come down from the highest 
 round of the mystical ladder, at the head of which 
 is the Divine Presence, to the cold ground, barren 
 and bleak, to natural morality and natural society, 
 to human intellect and human conjecture. 
 
 We read in prophecy that Antichrist shall come : 
 and in the heated imagination of schismatics and 
 heretics Antichrist has been enthroned in the chair 
 of the Vicar of Christ Himself. But if I look for 
 Antichrist, I look for him by this token, " Every 
 spirit that dissolveth Jesus is not of God, and this 
 is Antichrist."* This, then, is the mark of Anti- 
 christ, to deny the Incarnation of the eternal Son; 
 * 1 St. John, iv. 3. 
 * G 2 
 
84 RATIONALISM THE LEGITIMATE 
 
 to deny the Kevelation of God springing from it ; 
 to deny the mystical body of Christ, the universal. 
 Church, and the Divine empire of faith. " Every 
 spirit that dissolveth Jesus," every spirit that looseth 
 the bonds of this unity of Jesus ; every theory that 
 reduces man from the kingdom of God founded 
 upon the incarnation of His Son, from the guidance 
 of the Holy Ghost, to mere natural society and mere 
 natural reason ; this is Antichrist. And if so, 
 where shall we look for it 1 I find it where Pro- 
 testantism has blighted the earth. 
 
 And now, finally ; when I began I said that I 
 spoke not as a controversialist. I should feel this 
 subject were dishonoured, if I were to treat it as 
 a mere argument. Greater things than argument 
 are at stake, the honour of our Divine Lord and 
 the eternal salvation of souls. How great is the 
 dishonour, of which men think so little ; as if truth 
 were a sort of coin, that they may stamp and 
 change, and vary its die and fix its value, and make 
 it in metal or paper as they will ! They treat the 
 truth as one of the elements of human barter, or 
 as an indulgence which a man may hold and use 
 for himself alone, leaving his neighbour to perish. 
 " This is truth to me ; look you to what you "be- 
 lieve." What dishonour is this to the person of our 
 Lord ! Picture to yourselves this night upon your 
 knees the throne of the Son of God ; cherubim and 
 seraphim adoring the glory of Eternal Truth, the 
 changeless light of the Incarnate Word, " yester- 
 day, to-day, and for ever the same ;" the heavenly 
 
OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 85 
 
 court replenished with the illumination of God ; 
 the glorified intelligences, in whose pure spirit the 
 thought of falsehood is hateful as the thought of 
 sin ; then look to earth on those whom the blood 
 of Christ hath redeemed ; look on those who in 
 this world should have inherited the faith ; look 
 at their controversies, their disputes, their doubts, 
 their misery ; and in the midst of all these wan- 
 dering, sinning, perishing souls, look at those who 
 stand by in selfish, cold complacency, wrapping 
 themselves in their own opinion, and saying, This 
 is truth to me. 
 
 Think too of the souls that perish. How many 
 are brought into the very gulf of eternal death 
 through uncertainty ! How, as every pastor can 
 tell you, souls are torn from the land which would 
 save them by being sedulously taught that the dead- 
 liest sins have no sin in them ; by the specious and 
 poisonous insinuation that sin has no moral quality; 
 how souls have first been sapped in their faith as 
 Satan began in Paradise, "Yea, hath God said?" 
 that is, God hath not said. This is perpetually at 
 this hour going on around us ; and whence comes 
 it ? Because men have cast down the divine au- 
 thority, and have substituted in its place the autho- 
 rity of men, that is, of each man for himself. 
 
 And now, what shall I say of England, our own 
 land, which a Catholic loves next to the kingdom 
 of his Lord ? It is now in the splendour and ma- 
 jesty of its dizzy height, all the more perilous be- 
 cause so suddenly exalted. What is the greatness 
 
86 RATIONALISM THE LEGITIMATE CONSEQUENCE 
 
 of England ? Is it founded on Divine truth, or on 
 human strength and will ? Is it material, or is it 
 moral 1 Has it attained this mighty altitude among 
 nations by the power of moral elevation, or is it 
 the upgrowth of mere material strength 1 Let us 
 analyze it. What is it that makes England great 
 in the world 1 Colonies whicli fill the earth. What 
 are the morals of those colonies ? How were they 
 won, how have they been kept ? Armies. What 
 are the morals of armies ? Fleets. What are the 
 morals of fleets ? Commerce. What is the' mo- 
 rality of traders ? Wealth. " The desire of money- 
 is the root of all evils." Manufacture. What is 
 the state of our mines and factories? And whence 
 comes the industry of England ? The nerve, the 
 sinew, the strength, and the perseverance are moral; 
 but what is the purity, the truth, the meekness, 
 and the faith of those who wield this industry 1 
 And whence comes this mighty power of manufac- 
 ture ? Shall I not trace it to its one true source 
 if I find it in the skill of applying science to 
 subdue the powers of nature to the dominion of 
 man ? The mighty bubble of wealth, commerce, 
 and splendour, may be traced back to this : that 
 the skill of an intellect and the tact of a hand 
 have taught the English people more cunningly 
 than any nation of the world to apply physical 
 and mathematical science to the production of ma- 
 terial results. But where is the morality of this ? I 
 deny not to England great moral qualities, which 
 we may also trace back to Catholic days. We 
 
OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 87 
 
 see them, in times past, in the Norman and the 
 Saxon ages. Nay, we may go further. We may 
 find the same love of truth and social order, with 
 other great moral laws, in the German race, as de- 
 scribed in Pagan history. "We deny not these ; but 
 moral virtues which existed before faith are not the 
 fruits of faith ; and the greatness of England, so far 
 as I have traced it, is material and not moral. 
 
 And now, last of all, let me ask another ques- 
 tion. What, for three centuries, has been the his- 
 tory of the Faith in England ? I pass over the con- 
 troversy of the Reformation, first, because we are of 
 one mind about it, and next, because it would but 
 beg the question of an objector. I would ask, Is 
 it not an undeniable historical fact, that from the 
 time of Queen Elizabeth down to the time of the 
 revolution of William the Third, there was a per- 
 petual diminution of belief in England, and a per- 
 petual growth of infidelity and scepticism, until, 
 after 1688, the free-thinking philosophy formed for 
 itself a literature that stood high in the public 
 favour of England ? The Established Church had 
 wasted itself by internal conflicts. It lost its most 
 zealous members by perpetual secession and by the 
 formation of a multitude of sects. Though the 
 Prayer-book and the Articles were unchanged, the 
 living voice of the Church, that is, its true doctrine, 
 varied continually from doctrinal puritanism to Ar- 
 minian Anglicanism. The clergy spent themselves 
 in domestic controversy ; while the laity became 
 worldly, latitudinarian, and unbelieving. And yet 
 
88 RATIONALISM THE LEGITIMATE CONSEQUENCE 
 
 it was not from among the laity, but from among 
 the clergy and the hierarchy, that the hardly con- 
 cealed Socinianism of Hoadly arose and spread in 
 force. Such was the internal state of the' Establish- 
 ment. Without and around it the doctrine of faith 
 decayed faster and deeper. Doctrine after doctrine 
 was disputed and gave way ; the . doctrine of Sa- 
 craments, of the Atonement, and of inspiration, 
 perpetually lost ground, until we descend to the 
 level of the Deist in the beginning of the last cen- 
 tury. Can these facts be denied ? The course of 
 England was downward in faith, because human 
 authority, in the stead of divine, had enthroned it- 
 self in the Reformation. That which in Germany 
 produced pure Rationalism, in England, but for the 
 interposition of God, would have produced the same 
 general disbelief of Christianity. 
 
 Then began a reaction. Take the history of the 
 last century and of the present, and tell me whe- 
 ther I do not truly describe the intellectual pro- 
 gress of England when I say that there has been 
 one continuous and ascending controversy from the 
 beginning of the last century to this hour 1 First, 
 it was a controversy against Deists, to establish the 
 fact of revelation. Next it was a controversy against 
 sceptics, to prove the inspiration and authenticity 
 of Holy Scripture. Then it was against Arians in 
 proof of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Then it 
 was against Socinians on the doctrine of the In- 
 carnation. Then the controversy of the day was on 
 the doctiines of grace. At a later period of the last 
 
OF PHI V ATE JUDGMENT. 89 
 
 century it was on the doctrines of conversion, re- 
 pentance, contrition, the interior life of God in the 
 soul of man. What has been the controversy of 
 the last twenty years but an effort to restore faith 
 in .the Divine institution and supernatural grace of 
 Sacraments ? What is all this but the remnant of 
 faith struggling to recover the inheritance it had 
 lost 1 And what has come now to put a comple- 
 ment and close to this upward movement ? Now, 
 when the mere human origin and authority of all 
 other teachers has been revealed by their visible 
 departure from the Faith, comes one truth more to 
 fill up the order and series of our Baptismal Creed, 
 and to give Divine certainty to all that had been 
 re-established. The Divine authority of the Uni- 
 versal Church has again reconstituted its visible 
 witness in this land. The See of Peter has restored 
 what our fathers forfeited ; and after three hundred 
 years the Divine Voice speaks to faith through the 
 Catholic Episcopate of England once more. 
 
 Are these things without a purpose ? If there 
 be any here who is still without the Divine tradi- 
 tion of the Faith, let him see in these facts the 
 tracings of the finger of God, which, as the hand of 
 a man upon the wall, show His purpose. The Di- 
 vine authority of the Universal Church is again 
 among us, and lays again its obligation upon your 
 conscience. He calls you, whoever you be, to sub- 
 mit to his teaching, to exercise the most reasonable 
 act of all your life, to bow your reason to a Divine 
 
90 RATIONALISM THE CONSEQUENCE, ETC. 
 
 teacher, and to fulfil the highest act of the human 
 intelligence to learn of its Maker. 
 
 Out of the Catholic Church two things cannot 
 be found, reality and certainty ; in the Catholic 
 Church these two things are your inheritance. 
 Then tarry no longer. " With the heart we be- 
 lieve." ' It is not a struggle of the intellect, and I 
 am not contending with you in an intellectual con- 
 test. I call upon your will to make an act of faith. 
 Preventing grace illuminates the understanding, 
 and moves the will, but there tarries. It tarries 
 that it may put man on his probation, to see whether 
 he will correspond or no to the light that has been 
 granted. Correspond, then, with the light you have 
 received. Answer while yet you may : " Speak, 
 Lord, for Thy servant heareth. My heart is ready. 
 Not Thy truth fails, but my faith is weak. I do 
 believe, Lord ; help my unbelief." 
 
 IE END. 
 
 Y 
 
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