Py Sees Ot he Pfs
. intrinsical to it, as it is proposed to the religious appre- r.
a aoe wien Pele Galt to foligictie lind it is received by Chua notionally; and again implicitly, viz. in the al assent which they give to the word of God as nore: to them through the instrumentality of His Church, —
On these points it may be right to enlarge.
Of course, as I have been saying, a man of ordinary _ intelligence will be at once struck with the apparent — contrariety between the propositions one with another which constitute the Heavenly Dogma, and, by reason of his spontaneous activity of mind and by an habitual association, he will be compelled to view the Dogmain the light of that contrariety,—so much so, that to hold one and all of these separate propositions will be to such a man all one with holding the mystery, as a mystery; and in consequence he will so hold it;—but still, I say, so far he will hold it only witha notional apprehension. He will accurately take in the meaning of each of the — | dogmatic propositions in its relation to the rest of them, combining them into one whole and embracing what he © cannot realize, with an assent, notional indeed, but as 4 genuine and thorough as any real assent can be. But the question is whether a real assent to the mystery, as _ such, is possible; and I say it is not possible, because, — ~ though we can image the separate propositions, we cannot image them altogether. We cannot, because the q _ mystery transcends all our experience; we have no | ‘experiences in our memory which we can put together, — compare, contrast, unite, and thereby transmute into an — image of the Ineffable Verity;—certainly; but what is _ in some degreea matter of experience, what is presented — for the imagination, tk ae inffoolasins the devotion, the
Bale in the Holy Tr pinily, spiritual life of the Christian to repose upon with areal assent, what stands for things, not for notions only, is ag each of those propositions taken one by one, and that, a not in the case of intellectual and thoughtful minds only, in but ofall religious minds whatever, in the case of a child or a peasant, as well as of a philosopher.
This is only one instance of a general principle which holds good in all such real apprehension as is possible to us, of God and His Attributes. Not only do we see Him at best only in shadows, but we cannot bring even those shadows together, for they flit to and fro, and are never present to us at once. We can indeed combine the various matters which we know of Him by an act — of the intellect, and treat them theologically, but such theological combinations are no objects for the imagination to gaze upon. Our image of Him never is one, but broken into numberless partial aspects, independent each of each. As we cannot see the whole starry firmament at once, but have to turn ourselves from east to west, and then round to east again, sighting first one constellation and then another, and losing these in order to gain those, so it is, and much more, with such real apprehensions as we can secure of the Divine Nature. We know one truth about Him and another truth,— but we cannot image both of them together; we cannot bring them before us by one act of the mind; we drop the one while we turn to take up the other. None of them are fully dwelt on and enjoyed, when they are viewed in combination. Moreover, our devotion is tried and confused by the long list of propositions which theology is obliged to draw up, by the limitations,
= cia.’ ‘5 pede Dade: Mee socal Ge eS ey ee Cec
132 App explanations, definitions, adjustments, balancings, cautions, arbitrary prohibitions, which are imperatively — required by the weakness of human thought and the imperfections of human languages. Such exercises of 7 reasoning indeed do but increase and harmonize our notional apprehension of the dogma, but they add little to the luminousfess and vital force with which | its separate propositions come home to our imagina-
Oke a, ee ome eae rehenston and Assent in Religion, tion, and if they are necessary, as they certainly are, they are necessary not so much for faith, as against unbelief.
Break aray of light into its constituent colours, each is beautiful, each may be enjoyed; attempt to unite them, and perhaps you produce only a dirty white. The pure and indivisible Light is seen only by the blessed inhabitants of heaven; here we have but such faint reflections of itas its diffraction supplies; but they are sufficient for faith and devotion. Attempt to combine them into one, and you gain nothing but a mystery, — which you can describe as a notion, but cannot depict as — an imagination. And this, which holds of the Divine) Attributes, holds also of the Holy Trinity in Unity.
And hence, perhaps, it is that the latter doctrine is never ~ spoken of asa Mystery in the sacred book, which is ad- a dressed far more to the imagination and affections than to the intellect. Hence, too, what is more remarkable, - in the Creeds the dogmais not called a mystery; notin ~ the Apostles’ nor the Nicene, nor even in the Athanasian, — the Ritual; they are devotional acts, and of the nature — _ of prayers, addressed to God; and, in such addresses, to ee oe aa te ey Se cea te tia abd sok es, < Ric ee
Belief in the Holy Trinity, = 133
} speak of intellectual difficulties would be out of place. | It must be recollected especially that the Athanasian
Creed has sometimes been called the “ Psalmus Quicunque.” Itisnotamere collection of notions,however momentous. It is a psalm or hymn of praise, of F confession, and of profound, self-prostrating homage, parallel to the canticles of the elect in the Apocalypse. It appeals to the imagination quite as much as to the intellect. It is the war-song of faith, with which we warn first ourselves, then each other, and then all those who are within its hearing, and the hearing of the Truth, who our God is, and how we must worship
Him, and how vast our responsibility will be, if we know what to believe, and yet believe not. It is
“The Psalm that gathers in one glorious lay All chants that e’er from heaven to earth found way; Creed of the Saints, and Anthem of the Blest, And calm-breathed warning of the kindliest love That ever heaved a wakeful mother’s breast,”
For myself, I have ever felt it as the most simple and sublime, the most devotional formulary to which ¥ Christianity has given birth, more so even than the Vent Creator and the Te Deum. Even the antithetical form of its sentences, which is a stumbling-block to so many, as seeming to force, and to exult in forcing a mystery upon recalcitrating minds, has to my apprehension, even notionally considered, a very different drift. It is intended as a check upon our reasonings, _ lest they rush on in one direction beyond the limits of the truth, and it turns them back into the opposite direction. Certainly it implies a glorying in the
. re x ae ete 3, Lao oer igi a EO eine iy oe gio Pron Meee gt y | stent
134 AY bp Sonex med Assenb 3 pi Ce
Mystery;; but itis not simplya saboieith of the Mystery for the sake of its mysteriousness.
- What is more remarkable still, alike silence as to the mysteriousness of the doctrine is observed in the successive definitions of the Church concerning it. Confession after confession, canon after canon is drawn up in the course of centuries; Popes and Councils have found it their duty to insist afresh upon the dogma; they have enunciated it in new or additional propositions; but not even in their most elaborate formularies do they use the word “ mystery,” as far as I know. The great Council of Toledo pursues the scientific ramifications of the doctrine» with the exact diligence of theology, at a length four times that of the Athanasian Creed; the fourth Lateran completes, by a final enunciation, the develop- ment of the sacred doctrine after the mind of St. —
Augustine; the Creed of Pope Pius IV. prescribes the general rule of faith against the heresies of these latter times; but in none of them do we find either — the word “mystery,” or any suggestion of mysteriousness. |
Such is the usage of the Church in its dogmatic statements concerning the Holy Trinity, as if fulfilling the maxim, “ Lex orandi, lex eredendi.” I suppose it is founded on a tradition, because the custom is otherwise as regards catechisms and theological — treatises. ‘These belong to particular ages and places, and are addressed to the intellect. In them, certainly, — | _ the mysteriousness of the doctrine is almost uniformly —; Y eros on. But, however this contrast on weg" is
Belief int he | Holy Trin ity. Or ae Feb explained, ‘the Creeds are enough to show that the dogma may be taught in its fulness for the pur- - - _ poses of popular faith and devotion without directly insisting on that mysteriousness, which is necessarily _ involved in the combined view of its separate propositions. That systematized whole is the object of * re notional assent, and its propositions, one by one, are the objects of real. | sf
To show this in fact, I will enumerate the separate propositions of which the dogma consists. They are nine, and stand as follows:—
1. There are Three who give testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word or Son, and the Holy Spirit. * 2. From the Father is, and ever has been, the Son..
_ 8. From the Father and Son is, and ever has been, the i ‘Spirit. | 4, The Father is the One Eternal Personal God. 5. The Son is the One Eternal Personal God. 6. The;
Spirit is the One Eternal Personal God. | 7. The Father is not the Son. 8. The Son is not ‘the Holy Ghost. 9. The Holy Ghost is not the
Now I think it isa fact, that, whereas these nine —
; propositions contain the Mystery, yet, taken, not as _ awhole, but separately, each by itself, they are not _ only apprehensible, but admit of a réal apprehension.
Thus, for instance, if the proposition “ There is One who bears witness of Himself,” or “reveals Himself,” | | would admit of a real assent, why does not also the
4 popopeniticn. “There are Three who bear witness”? as ae pe nueib, if if the 84 5 God.” arn create an ‘image ee
_ Word is the Son of God”?
our minds, why may not the Sapa} « The Faihan is God”? or again, “ The Son,” or “ The Holy anon is God”?; Again, to say that “ the Son is other than the Holy ‘a Ghost,” or “neither Son nor Holy Ghost isthe Father,” is not a simple negative, but also a declaration that — Each of the Divine 'Phree by Himself is complete in — Himself, and simply and absolutely God as though the a Other Two were not revealed to us. q Again, from our experience of the works of man, we accept with a real apprehension the proposition “ The Angels are made by God,” correcting the word “ made,” as is required in the case of a creating Power, and a spiritual work:—why then. may we not in like matter refine and eleyate the human analogy, yet keep the image, when a Divine Birth is set before us in terms 3 which properly belong to what is human and earthly? If our experience enables us to apprehend the essential fact of sonship, as being a communication of being and of nature from one to another, why should we not thereby in a certain measure realize the proposition “ The J
Again, we have abundant instances in nature of the
- general law of one thing coming from another or from others:—as the child issues in the man as his quasi — successor, and the child and the man issue in the old ] man, like them both, but not the same, so different as _ almost to have a fresh personality distinct from each, — so we may form some image, however vague, of the \ procession of the Holy Spirit from Father and ga i ‘This is what I should om of the propositions which ete aS gee OO Te oes a eas ee have numbered two and three, which are the least susceptible of a real assent out of the nine.
So much at first sight; but the force of what I have ' been saying will be best understood, by considering what Scripture and the Ritual of the Church witness in accordance with it. In referring to these two great store-houses of faith and devotion, I must premise, as when I spoke of the Being of a God, that I am not proving by means of them the dogma of the Holy Trinity, but using the one and the other in illustration of the action of the separate articles of that dogma upon the imagination, though the complex truth, in which, when combined, they issue, is not in sympathy or correspondence with it, but altogether beyond it; and next of the action and influence of those separate articles, by means of the imagination, upon the affections and obedience of Christians, high and low.
This being understood, I ask what chapter of St. John or St. Paul is not full of the Three Divine Names, introduced in one or other of the above nine propositions, expressed or implied, or in their parallels, or in parts or equivalents of them? What lesson is there given _us by these two chief writers of the New Testament, which does not grow out of Their Persons and Their Offices? At one time we readof the grace of the Second Person, the love of the First, and the communication of the Third; at another we are told by the Son, “I will pray the Father, and He will send you another Paraclete;” and then, “ All that the Father hath are Mine; the Paraclete shall receive of Mine.”
By (138 Ap piles and Moa 4 Raion. i
_ Then again we read of “ the fovekriowledge of the — Father, the sanctification of the Spirit, the Blood of | Jesus Christ;” and again we are to “ pray in the Holy Ghost, abide in the love of God, and look for the mercy of Jesus.’ And so, in like manner, to Each, in one — passage or another, are ascribed the same. titles and works: Each is acknéwledged as Lord; Hach is eternal; Each is Truth; Each is Holiness; Each is all in all; | Hach is Creator; Each wills with a supreme Will; Each is the Author of the new birth; Each speaks in His ministers; Each is the Revealer; Each is the Law- — giver; Each is the Teacher of the elect; in Hach the elect have fellowship; Each leads them on; Each raises them from the dead. What isall this, but “the Father — Kternal, the Son Eternal, and the Holy Ghost Eternal; the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost Omnipotent; the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost God,” of the Athanasian Creed? And if the New Testament be, as it confessedly is, so real in its teaching, so luminous, so | impressive, so constraining, so full of images, so sparing in mere notions, whence is this but because, in its references to the Object of our supreme worship, it is ever ringing the changes (so to say) on the nine propositions which I have set down, and on the particular statements into which they may be _ severally resolved?.
Take one of them as an instance, viz. the dog-
- matic sentence “The Son is God.” What an illus- — tration of the real assent which can be given to this —
“ proposition, and its power over our affections and }
Bt - emotions, is the first a of the first chapter of St.
-. ‘i Pe tpt, Tt - rile ye ‘: ' as Ax uae oe n oe it i J US ee) | Se aa oe ME ae a? aiglak t) oa my, ey Beliof in the Floly T: vinity, | the first chapter of the Apocalypse! or the first chapter of St. John’s first Epistle! Again, how burning are St. Paul’s words when he speaks of our Lord’s crucifixion and death! what is the secret of that flame, but this same dogmatic sentence, “The Son is God”? why should the death of the Son be more awful than any other death, except that He though man, was God? And so, again, all through the Old Testament, what is it which gives an interpretation and a persuasive power to so many pas_ sages and portions, especially of the Psalms and the Prophets, but this same theological formula, “The Messias is God,” a proposition which never could thus vivify in the religious mind the letter of the sacred text, unless it appealed to the imagination, and could be held with a much stronger assent than any
- that is merely notional.
This same power of the dogma may be illustrated from the Ritual. Consider the services for Christmas or Epiphany; for Easter, Ascension, and (I may say) pre-eminently Corpus Christi; what are these great
_ Festivals but comments on the words, “The Son is
God”? Yet who will say that they have the subtlety, the aridity, the coldness of mere scholastic science? Are they addressed to the pure intellect, or to the imagination? do they interest our logical faculty, or excite our devotion? Why is it that personally we often find ourselves so ill-fitted to take part in them, except that we are not good enough, that in our case the dogma is far too much a theological notion, far too ed qi we.: i A ES EG Ce ee ne oe ig Se “we
John’s gospel! or again the vision of our Lord in
‘nected with vital and personal religion as I have shown — wonder, that the Creed should proclaim aloud, hat little an image living within us? And so again, as to the Divinity of the Holy Ghost: consider the breviary offices for Pentecost and its Octave, the grandest, perhaps in the whole year; are they created out of mere abstractions and inferences, or what are sometimes called metaphysical distinctions, or has not the cate-— gorical proposition® of St. Athanasius, “The Holy Ghost is God,” such a place in the imagination and the — heart, as suffices to give birth to the noble Hymns, — Vent Creator, and Veni Sancte Spiritus?
I sum up then to the same effect as in the preceding Section. Religion has to do with the real, and the real is the particular; theology has to do with what is — notional, and the notional is the general and syste-— matic. Hence theology has to do with the Dogma of — the Holy Trinity as a whole made up of many propo- — sitions; but Religion has to do with each of those separate propositions which compose it, and lives and — thrives in the contemplation of them. In them it finds the motives for devotion and faithful obedience; while theology on the other hand forms and protects them | by virtue of its function of regarding them, not merely - one by one, but as a system of truth. |
One other remark is in place here. If the separate articles of the Athanasian Creed are so closely con- them to be, if they supply motives on which a man may ~ act, if they determine the state of mind, the special thoughts, affections, and habits, which he carries with him from this world to the next, is there cause oO
;; yo ie une a i YT a r hse Pre Wags Eee on | ghey VAS ee a * Tacrs Helle in the ’ ‘oly Trinity. ys nas 14), ais we
‘ those who are not internally such as Christ, by means 4 a 4 of it, came to make them, are not capable of the = 4 heaven to which He died to bring them? Is not the ra _ importance of accepting the dogma the very explana- | ~ i tion of that careful minuteness with which the few By simple truths which compose it are inculcated, are fs)
reiterated, in the Creed? And shall the Church of
God, to whom “the dispensation”? of the Gospel is committed, forget the concomitant obligation, ‘‘ Woe is unto me if I preach not the Gospel”? Are her ministers by their silence to bring upon themselves the Prophet’s anathema, ‘ Cursed is he that doth the work of the Lord deceitfully ”? Can they ever forget the lesson conveyed to them in the Apostle’s protestation, “God is faithful, as our preaching which was among you was not Yea and Nay.... For we are a good odour of Christ unto God in them that are in the way of salvation, and in them that are perishing. For we are not as the many, who adulterate the word of God; but with sincerity, but as from God, in the presence of God, so speak we in Christ”??
3 Vide Note II. at the end of the volume.
§ 3. Betrer in Docmatic Turotoey..
Ir is a familiar charge against the Catholic Church in the mouths of her opponents, that she imposes on her. children as matters of faith, not only such dogmas as 1 have an intimate bearing on moral conduct and — character, but a great number of doctrines which none ~ hs but professed theologians can understand, and which — in consequence do but oppress the mind, and are the — perpetual fuel of controversy. The first who made — this complaint was no less a man than the great — Constantine, and on no less an occasion than the rise | of the Arian heresy, which he, as yet a catechumen,. was pleased to consider a trifling and tolerable error. — So deciding the matter, he wrote at once a letter to — Alexander, Biskop of Alexandria, and to Arius, who was a presbyter in the same city, exhorting them to drop the matter in digpute, and to live in peace with one another. He was answered by the mect- — ing of the Council of Nicwa, and by the insertion — of the word “ Consubstantial” into the Creed of the q
_ Church. What the Emperor thought of the controversy itself; % that Bishop Jeremy Taylor thought of the insertion of the “ Consubstantial,” viz. that it was a mischievous _ f; affair, apa ought never to have taken place. He thug Ly
_ Epistle of Constantine to Alexander and Arius tells the truth, and chides them both for commencing the ques- _ tion, Alexander for broaching it, Arius for taking it up. And although this be true, that it had been better for the Church it had never begun, yet, being begun, what is to be done with it? Of this also, in that admirable epistle, we have the Emperor’s judgment (I suppose not without the advice and privity of Hosius),... for first he calls it a certain vain piece of a question, ill begun and more unadvisedly published,—a question which no law or ecclesiastical canon defineth; a fruitless contention; the product of idle brains; a matter so nice, so obscure, so intricate, that it was neither to be explicated by the clergy nor understood by the people; a dispute of words, a doctrine ‘inexplicable, but most dangerous
- when taught, lest it introduce discord or blasphemy;
and, therefore, the objector was rash, and the answer unadyised, for it concerned not the substance of faith or the worship of God, nor the chief commandment of Scripture; and, therefore, why should it be the matter of discord? for though the matter be grave, yet, because neither necessary nor explicable, the contention is trifling and toyish.... So that the matter
_ being of no great importance, but vain and a toy in» respect of the excellent blessings of peace and charity it were good that Alexander and Arius should leave contending, keep their opinions to themselves, ask
_ each other forgiveness, and give mutual toleration.”?
_ Moreover, Taylor is of opinion that “they both did 5 t Liberty of Prophesying, § 2.
quotes and comments on the Emperor’s letter: “ The
“ a, gis One. God, and the Holy Trinity;” Y pg opinio1 n the teeth of historical fact. Also he is of opinion, hal, “that faith is best which hath greatest simplicity, and _ “Ss that it is better in all cases humbly to submit, than — curiously to inquire and pry into the mystery under the — cloud, and to hazard our faith by improving knowledge.” He is, further, of opinion, that ‘if the Nicene ~, Fathers had done so too, possibly the Church would ~ never have repented it.” He also thinks that their — insertion of the ‘‘ Consubstantial ” into the Creed was a bad precedent. Whether it was likely to act as a precedent or not, it has not been so in fact, for fifteen hundred years have —: passed since the Nicene Council, and it is the one — instance of a scientific word having been introduced into the Creed from that day to this. And after all, the word in question has a plain meaning, as the — Council used it, easily stated and intelligible to all; for —
“ consubstantial with the Father,” means nothing more — than “really one with the Father,” being adopted to meet the evasion of the Arians. The Creed then remains — now what it was in the beginning, a popular form of;
the first importance, expressive of the concrete, the
_ objects of real apprehension, and the basis and rule of devotion. As to the proper Nicene formula itself,
JA excepting the one term “ Consubstantial,” it has not a word which does not relate to the rudimental facts otal Christianity. The Niceno-Constantinopolitan and the — various Tet icene Symbols, of which ihe Apostloags ifs oh 2 i eT rain Dopriatic Thesligy se as “the communion of Saints,” and “ the forgiveness of sins,” which, however, may be readily converted into real propositions. On the other hand, one chief dogma,
_ which is easy to popular apprehension, is necessarily
_ absent from all of them, the Real Presence; but the omission is owing to the ancient ‘ Disciplina Arcani,”’ which withheld the Sacred Mystery from catechumens and heathen, to whom the Creed was known.
So far the charge which Taylor brings forward has no great plausibility; but itis not the whole of his case. I cannot deny that a large and ever-increasing collection of propositious, abstract notions, not concrete truths, become, by the successive definitions of Councils, a portion of the credenda, and have an imperative claim
_ upon the faith of every Catholic; and this being the case, it will be asked me how I am borne out by facts in enlarging, as I have done, on the simplicity and directness, on the tangible reality, of the Church’s _ dogmatic teaching.
Twill suppose the objection urged thus:—why has _ not the Catholic Church limited her credenda to propositions such as those in her Creed, concrete and practical, easy of apprehension, and of a character to _ win assent? such as “ Christ is God;” “This is My _ Body;” “Baptism gives life to the soul;” “The Saints intercede for us 3” “ Death, judgment, heaven, hell, the four last things;” “There are seven gifts of the Holy Ghost,” “three theological virtues,” “ seven _ capital sins,” and the like, as they are found in her _ eatechisms. On the contrary, she makes it imperative is one, add summarily one or two notional articles, such on every one, priest and layman, to profess as revealed — truth all the canons of the Councils, and innumerable ~ decisions of Popes, propositions so various, so notional, — that but few can know them, and fewer can understand ~ them. What sense, for instance, can a child or a peasant, nay, or any ordinary Catholic, put upon the Tridentine Canons,.even in translation? such as, “Siquis dixerit homines sine Christi justitia, per quam nobis meruit, justificari, aut per eam ipsam formaliter justos esse, anathema sit;” or “ Siquis dixerit justifi- catum peccare, dum intuitu eterne mercedis bene © operatur, anathema sit.” Or again, consider the very anathematism annexed by the Nicene Council to its — Creed, the language of which is so obscure, that even theologians differ about its meaning. It runs as follows:—“ Those who say that once the Son was not, and before He was begotten He was not, and that He was made out of that which was not, or who pretend that He was of other hypostasis or substance, or that the Son of God is created, mutable, or alterable, the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes.” These doctrinal enunciations are de fide; peasants are © bound to believe them as well as controversialists, and | to believe them as truly as they believe that our Lord is God. How then are the Catholic credenda easy ae within reach of all men?
I begin my answer to this objection by recurring to what has already been said concerning the relation of — theology with its notional propositions to religious and devotional assent. Devotion is excited doubtless by the plain, vategorical truths of revelation, such as the
Belief in Dogmatic Theology. I
articles of the Creed; on these it depends; with these it is satisfied. It accepts them one by one; it is careless about intellectual consistency; it draws from each of them the spiritual nourishment which it was intended to supply. Far different, certainly, is the nature and duty of the intellect. It is ever active, inquisitive, penetrating; it examines doctrine and doctrine; it compares, contrasts, and forms them into a science; that science is theology. Now theological science, being thus the exercise of the intellect upon the credenda of revelation, is, though not directly devotional, at once natural, excellent, and necessary. It is natural, because the intellect is one of our highest faculties; excellent, because it is our duty to use our faculties to the full; necessary, because unless we apply eur intellect to revealed truth rightly, others will exercise their minds upon it wrongly. Accordingly, the Catholic intellect makes a survey and a catalogue of the doctrines contained in the depositum of revelation, as committed to the Church’s keeping; it locates, adjusts, defines them each, and brings them together into a whole. Moreover, it takes particular aspects or portions of them; it analyzes them, whether into first ‘principles really such, or into hypotheses of an illustrative character. It forms generalizations, and gives names to them. All these deductions are true, if rightly deduced, because they are deduced from what is true; and therefore in one sense they are a portion of the depositum of faith or credenda, while in another sense they are additions to it: however, additions or not, they have, I readily grant, the L 2 i. characteristic disadvantage of being abstract and—
F Nor is this all: the disavowal of error is far more 4 fruitful in additions than the enforcement of truth.
There is another set of deductions, inevitable also, and also part or not part of the revealed credenda, according as we please to view them. If a proposition is true, its contradictory is false. If then a man believes that Christ is God, he believes also, and that necessarily, that to say He is not God is false, and that those who so say are in error. Here then again the prospect opens upon us of acountless multitude of propositions, which in their first elements are close upon devotional _ truth,—of groups of propositions, and those groups divergent, independent, ever springing into life with an inexhaustible fecundity, according to the ever- germinating forms of heresy, of which they are the antagonists. These too have their place in theological science.
Such is theology in contrast to religion; and as.
follows from the circumstances of its formation, though _ some of its statements easily find equivalents in the _
| language of devotion, the greater number of them are more or less unintelligible to the ordinary Catholic, as ° law-books to the private citizen. And especially those portions of theology which are the indirect creation, not. _ of orthodox, but of heretical thought, such as the repu- —
_ diations of error contained in the Canons of Councils, j of which specimens have been given above, will ever be foreign, strange, and hard to the pious but uncontro- _ versial mind; for what have good Christians to do, in wig Sih ten tain Ste he lh iy li wc. penne: eon, Belvef mn Dogmatic Theology.
the ordinary course of things, with the subtle hallucinations of the intellect? This is manifest from the nature of the case; but then the question recurs, why should the refutations of heresy be our objects of faith? if no mind, theological or not, can believe what it can- 3 not understand, in what sense can the Canons of a Councils and other ecclesiastical determinations be ineluded in those credenda which the Church presents to every Catholic as if apprehensible, and to which every Catholic gives his firm interior assent?
In solving this difficulty I wish it first observed, that, if it is the duty of the Church to act as “the pillar and ground of the Truth,” she is manifestly. obliged from time to time, and to the end of time, | to denounce opinions incompatible with that truth, whenever able and subtle minds in her communion venture to publish such opinions. Suppose certain
Bishops and priests at this day began to teach that
Islamism or Buddhism was a direct and immediate revelation from God, she would be bound to use the authority which God has given her to declare that such a proposition will not stand with Christianity,
_ and that those who hold it are none of hers; and she would be bound to impose such a declaration on that very knot of persons who had committed themselves to the novel proposition, in order that, if they would not recant, they might be separated from her communion, as they were separate from her faith. In sf such a case, her masses of population would either not ha hear of the controversy, or they would at once take part with her, and without effort take any test, which oe or ee eee ee ss o > had secured the exclusion of the innovators; and she on the other hand would feel that what is a rule for some Catholics must be a rule for all. Who is to draw the line between who are to acknowledge that rule, and who are not? It is plain, there cannot be two rules of faith in the same communion, or rather, as the case really would be, an ‘endless variety of rules, coming into force according to the multiplication of heretical theories, and to the degrees of knowledge and varieties of sentiment in individual Catholics. There is but one rule of faith for all; and it would be a greater difficulty to allow of an uncertain rule of faith, than —
(if that was the alternative, as it is not), to impose upon uneducated minds a profession which they cannot understand.
But it is not the necessary result of unity of profession, nor is it the fact, that the Church imposes dogmatic statements on the interior assent of those who cannot apprehend them. The difficulty is removed by the dogma of the Church’s infallibility, and of the consequent duty of “implicit faith” in her word. ‘The
“One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church” is an article of the Creed, and an article, which, inclusive of her infallibility, all men, high and low, can easily master and accept with a real and operative assent. It stands in the place of all abstruse propositions in a Catholic’s mind, for to believe in her word is virtually to believe in them all. Even what he cannot understand, at least he can believe to be true; and he believes it to be true because he believes in the Church.
, Belief in Dogmatic Theology. 151
~The rationale of this provision for unlearned devotion is as follows:—lIt stands to reason that all of us, learned and unlearned, are bound to believe the whole revealed doctrine in all its parts and in all that it implies according as portion after portion is brought home to our consciousness as belonging to it; and it also stands to reason, that a doctrine, so deep and so various, as the revealed depositum of faith, cannot be brought home to usand made our own all at once. No mind, however large, however penetrating, can directly and fully by one act understand any one truth, however simple. What can be more intelligible than that “ Alexander conquered Asia,” or that “ Veracity is a duty”? but what a multitude of propositions is included under either of these theses! still, if we profess either, we profess all that itincludes. ‘Thus, as regards the Catholic Creed, if we really believe that our Lord is God, we believe all that is meant by such a belief; or, else, we are not in earnest, when we profess to believe the proposition. In the act of believing it at all, we forthwith commit ourselves by anticipation to believe truths which at present we do not believe, because they have never come before us;—we limit henceforth the range of our private judgment in prospect by the conditions, whatever they are, of that dogma. Thus the Arians said that they believed in our Lord’s divinity, but when they were pressed to confess His eternity, they denied it: thereby showing in fact that they never had believed in His divinity at all. In other words, a man who really believes in our Lord’s proper divinity, believes implicité in His eternity.
And so, in like manner, of the wie depositum of | faith, or the revealed word:—If we believe in the revelation, we believe in what is revealed, in all that is q; revealed, however it may be brought home to us, by — reasoning or in any other way. He who believes that Christ is the Truth, and that the Evangelists are truthful, believes all that He has said through them, though he has only read St. Matthew and has not read St. — John. He who believes in the depositwm of Revela- — tion, believes in all the doctrines of the depositum; and since he cannot know them all at once, he knows _ some doctrines, and does not know others; he may know only the Creed, nay, perhaps only the chief portions of the Creed; but, whether he knows little or much, he has the intention of believing all that there is to believe whenever and as soon as it is brought home to him, if he believes in Revelation at all. All — that he knows now as revealed, and all that he shall — know, and all that there is to know, he embraces it all | ~ in his intention by one act of faith; otherwise, it is but an accident that he believes this or that, not because _ it is a revelation. This virtual, interpretative, or pro-; spective belief is called a believing implicite; and it | follows from this, that, granting that the Canons of — Councils and the other ecclesiastical documents and con- — fessions, to which I have referred, are really involved — in the depositum or revealed word, every Catholic, in accepting the depositum, does implicit accept those — dogmatic decisions.
I say, “‘ granting these various propositions are vir- — tually contained in the revealed word,” for this is the or aM question left aa that itis to be eles in cnet a Wicmative, 3 is clear at once to the Catholic, from the De fact that the Church declares that they really belong - toit. To her is committed the care and the interpretation of the revelation. The word of the Church is the word of the revelation. That the Church is the - infallible oracle of truth is the fundamental dogma of the Catholic religion; and “I believe what the Church proposes to be believed”? is an act of real assent, including all particular assents, notional and real; and, while it is possible for unlearned as well as learned, it is imperative on learned as well as unlearned. And thus it is, that by believing the word of the Church implicité, that is, by believing all that that word does or shall declare itself to contain, every Catholic, according to his intellectual capacity, supplements the shortcomings of his knowledge without blunting his real assent to what is elementary, and takes upon himself from the first the whole truth of revelation, progressing from one apprehension of it to another according to his opportunities of doing so. |