Archbishop Manning's pastoral letter to his clergy on the first council,The Vatican and its Definitions, to which are appended the two constitutions the council adopted—the one theConstitutio de Fide Catholica, and the other theConstitutio Dogmatica Prima de Ecclesia—the case of Honorius, and the Letter of the German bishops on the council, though containing little that is new to our readers, is a volume which is highly valuable in itself, and most convenient to every Catholic who would know the real character of the council and what is the purport of its definitions. Few members of the council were more assiduous in their attendance on its sessions or took a more active part in its deliberations than the illustrious Archbishop of Westminster, and no one can give a more trustworthy account of its dispositions or of its acts. We are glad, therefore, that the volume has been republished in this country, and hope it will be widely read both by Catholics and non-Catholics.
The character of the book and of the documents it contains renders any attempt by us either to review it or to explain it alike unnecessary and impertinent. The pastoral is addressed officially by the Archbishop to his clergy; the constitutions or definitions adopted by the Holy Synod declare, by the assistance of the Holy Ghost, what is, and always has been, and always will be the Catholic faith on the matters defined; and we need not say that we cordially accept it as the word of God, and as the faith which all must acceptex animo, and without which it is impossible to please God. What the council has defined is the law of God, and binds us as if spoken to us directly by God himself in a voice from heaven. He speaks to us by his church, his organ, and her voice is in fact his voice, and what we take on her authority we take on his authority, for he assists her, vouches for her, and commands us to believe and obey her.
There are, indeed, enemies of the faith who pretend that Catholics believesolely on the authority of the church as an organic body; but this is a misapprehension. We believe what is revealed on the veracity of God alone, because it is his word, and it is impossible for his word to be false; and we believe that it is his word on the authority or testimony of the church, with whom the word is deposited, and who is its divinely commissioned keeper, guardian, witness, and interpreter. The word of God is and must be true, and there is and can be no higher ground of faith or even of knowledge than the fact that God says it. Nothing can be more consonant to reason than to believe God on his word. Certainly, it is answered, if we have his word; but how do I know that what is proposed to me as his word is his word? We take the fact that it is his word on the authority of the Catholic Church; we believe it is his word because she declares it to be his word. It is permitted no one to doubt the word of God is conceded; but whence from that fact does it follow that I am not permitted to doubt the word of the church? Or why should I believe her testimony or her declaration rather than that of any one else?
To this question the general answer is, that she has been divinely instituted, and is protected and assisted to bear true witness to the revelation which it has pleased God to make, to proclaim it, declare its sense, and condemn whatever impugns or tends to obscure it. Supposing she has been instituted and commissioned by our Lord himself, for this very purpose, her authority is sufficient for believing whatever she teaches and declares or defines to be the word of God is his word or the truth he has revealed; for the divine commission is the divine word pledged for her veracity and infallibility. This is plain enough and indubitable; but how am I to know or to be assured that she has been so instituted or commissioned, and is so assisted?
There are several answers to this question; but we would remark, before proceeding to give any answer, that the church is in possession, has from the moment of the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost claimed to be in possession of the authority in question, and has had her claim acknowledged by the whole body of the faithful, and denied by none except those who deny or impugn authority itself. Being in possession, it is for those who question her right to show that she is wrongfully in possession. They are, to use a legal term, the plaintiffs in action, and must make out their case. Every one is presumed in law to be innocent till proven guilty. The church must be presumed to be rightfully in possession till the contrary is shown. They who question her possession must, then, adduce at leastprima facieevidence for ousting her before she can be called upon to produce her title-deeds. This has never been done, and never can be done; for, if it could be done, some of our able and learned Protestant divines would, in the course of the last three hundred years and over, have done it. There is, then, in reality no need, in order to justify the faith of Catholics, to prove by extrinsic testimony the divine institution and commission of the church to teach all men and nations all things whatsoever God has revealed and commanded to be believed.
But we have no disposition to avail ourselves just now of what some may regard as a mere legal technicality. We answer the question by saying the church is herself the witness in the case, and accredits herself,or her existence itself proves her divine institution, commission, and assistance or guidance.
The church was founded by our Lord on the prophets and apostles, being himself the chief corner-stone. This is asserted here as a simple historical fact. Historically, the church has existed, without any break or defect of continuity, from the apostles down to our times. Its unbroken existence from that time to this cannot be questioned. It has been a fact during all that period in the world's history, and too momentous a fact to escape observation. Indeed, it has been the one great fact of history for over eighteen hundred years; the central fact around which all the facts of history have revolved, and without which they would be inexplicable and meaningless. This assumed or granted, it must be conceded that she unites as one continuous fact, in one body, the apostles and the believers of to-day. She is a continuous fact; a present fact during all the period of time that has elapsed between the apostles and us, and therefore is alike present to them and to us. Her existence being unbroken, she has never fallen into the past; never been a past fact; but has always been and is a present fact; and therefore as present with the apostles to-day as she was on the day of Pentecost, when they received the Holy Ghost; and therefore presents us not simply what they taught, but what they teach her now and here. She bridges over the abyss of time between our Lord himself and us, and makes us and the apostles, so to speak, contemporaries; so that, as it is our Lord himself we hear in the apostles, so it is the apostles themselves that we hear in her.
This continuity or unity of the church in time is a simple historical fact, and as certain as any other historical fact, and even more so, for it is a fact that has never fallen into the past, and to be established only by trustworthy witnesses or documents. By it the church to-day is and must be as apostolic and as authoritative as in the days of the apostles Peter, James, and John. Individuals die, but the church dies not; individuals are changed, as are the particles of our bodies, but the church changes not. As in the human race individuals pass off, but the race remains always the same; so in the church individuals pass away, but the church remains unchanged in all its integrity; for the individuals die not all at once, and the new individuals born in their places are born into the one identical body, that does not die, but remains ever the same. No matter, then, how many generations succeed one another in their birth and death, the body of the church is subject to no law of succession, and remains not only one and the same church, but always the one and the same present church. The church of to-day is identically the church of yesterday, the church of yesterday is identically the church of the day before, and thus step by step back to the apostles; on the other hand, the church in the time of the apostles is identically the church of their successors down through all succeeding generations of individuals to us. There has never been an interval of time when it was not, or when it lost its identity as one and the same body. The church is precisely as apostolic now as it was in the beginning, or as were the apostles themselves.
Now, if we suppose our Lord communicated the whole revelation to the apostles either by his personal teaching or by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, then he communicatedit to her, and she is an eye and ear witness to the fact of revelation in the same sense that the apostles were, and her historical identity with the apostles makes her a perpetual and contemporary witness to the fact of revelation and to what is revealed. What misleads not a few on this point is that they regard the church as a mere aggregation of individuals, born and dying with them, or succeeding to herself with the succession of each new generation of individuals. But this is no more the case with the church than with the human race itself, or with any particular nation that has an historical existence through several generations. In all historical bodies the generations overlap one another, and no generation of individuals is either aggregated to the body or segregated from it all at once. The body does not die with the receding nor is it born anew with the acceding generation. The church, indeed, is an organism, not a mere aggregation of individuals, but even if it were the conclusion would not follow; for though the individuals are successively aggregated or affiliated, they are aggregated or affiliated to her as a persistent body, and though they pass off successively, they leave the body standing, one and identical. This is the simple historical fact. The church, as an ever-present body, remains one and the same identical body amid all the successive changes of individuals, and is just as much the depositary of the revelation and an eye-witness of the facts recorded in the Gospels, as were the apostles themselves.
We say, then, the church is herself the witness, and a competent and credible witness, to her own divine commission to teach and declare the word of God which he has revealed, and no better, no more competent or credible witness is needed or, in fact, conceivable. She is competent because she is the identical apostolical body, the contemporary and the eye-witness through the successive ages of the facts to which she testifies. She is a credible witness, because even as a human body it would be hardly possible for her either to mistake or to misrepresent the facts to which she testifies, since they are always present before her eyes, since, however her individual members may change, she herself knows no change with lapse of time, and no succession. She could not forget the faith, change it, or corrupt it, because there is at all times in her communion an innumerable body of living witnesses to its unity, purity, and integrity, who would detect the change or alteration and expose it. It is not with her as it would be with a book having a limited circulation. Copies of the book could easily be altered or interpolated without detection; but the living testimony of the church, spread over the whole world and teaching all nations, cannot be interpolated or corrupted. It is on the fidelity of the church, her vigilant guardianship, and uniform testimony that we depend for our confidence in the genuineness and authenticity of our copies of the sacred writings, and it is worthy of note that in proportion as men throw off the authority of the church, and reject her traditions, they lose that confidence, and fail to agree among themselves what books, if any, are inspired; so that without the testimony of the church the Holy Scriptures themselves cease to be an authority in matters of faith.
In human tribunals the supreme court is presumed to know the law which constitutes it, and it defines its own jurisdiction and powers. It declares the law of which it is thedepositary and guardian, and though the judges have only their human wisdom, learning, and sagacity, it is remarkable how few mistakes through a long series of ages they commit as to what is or is not the law they are appointed to administer, and nearly all the mistakes they do commit are due to the changes the legislature makes in the law or in the constitution of the court. Why should the church be less competent to judge of the law under which she is constituted, and to define her jurisdiction and powers? And since her constitution, as well as the law she administers, changes not, why should she be less exempt, even as a human court, from mistakes in interpreting and declaring the law, than the supreme court of England or the United States? What higher authority can there be to judge of her own constitution and the law given her to administer than the church herself?
The church received her constitution in the commission given to the apostolic body with whom she is one and identical, and the law or revealed word in the reception of it by the apostles. Being one and identical body with them, she has received what they received, and knows what they knew, is taught what they were taught, understands it in the same sense that they did, and has the same authority to interpret and declare it that they had. If they were commissioned to teach all nations to observe all things whatsoever our Lord commanded them, she is commissioned in their commission to do the same. If he promised them his efficacious presence and assistance to the consummation of the world, he made the promise to her; if he made Peter the prince of the apostles, the father and teacher of all Christians, and gave him plenary authority to feed, rule, and govern the universal church, he made the successor of Peter the visible head of the church, and gave him the same authority. The church, being the apostolic body persisting through all times, knows what the apostles received, knows therefore both her own constitution and the law deposited with her, and is as competent to judge of them as the apostles were, and has full authority to interpret and declare both, and it is to her, as to the supreme court of a nation, to judge what they are, and to define her constitution, jurisdiction, and powers.
The objection which many make to this conclusion arises from their confounding the authority of the church to interpret and define the law—and, as a part of the law, her own constitution, jurisdiction, and powers or functions—with the authority to make the law: a mistake like that of confounding the supreme court of the United States with Congress. The church, like the court or the supreme executive, may make her own rules and orders—what are called the orders and rules of court, for the purpose of carrying out the intent of the law—but she no more makes the law than does the civil court make the law under which it is constituted, and which it administers. God alone is the lawgiver or lawmaker, and his revealed word is the law—the law for the human reason and will, and which binds all men in thought, word, and deed. We want no church, as the supreme judge of the law, to tell us this, for it is a dictamen of reason itself. It is the revealed word of God, which again is only his will, the will of the supreme Lawgiver—that is the law under which the church is constituted, and which she guards, interprets, and declares, whenever a question of law arises. She does not make the law;she keeps, interprets, declares, and defends or vindicates it. Even with only human wisdom, she can no more make the law, or declare that to be law which is not, than the supreme civil court can declare that to be civil law which is not civil law. The objection, therefore, is not well taken.
The law, it is agreed on all hands—that is, the revelation, whether written or unwritten—was deposited with the apostles, then it was deposited, as we have seen, with the church identical with the apostolic body. Now, she knows, as the apostles knew, what she received, the law committed to her charge, and, as she is constituted by the law she has received, she knows, and cannot but know, her own constitution and powers, also what promises, if any, she has received from her divine Lawgiver and Founder. The promises of God cannot fail; and if he has promised her his assistance as an immunity from error she knows it, and knows that her judgments of law, or in matters of faith, are through that assistance infallible. Of all these questions she is the divinely constituted judge. She is the judge of the law constituting her, of her own appointment and commission, and of her rights, powers, and jurisdiction, no less than of the law or revelation committed to her charge, for all this is included in the law. If she defines that in her commission is included the promise of the divine assistance to protect her from error in interpreting and declaring the law—that is, the faith, the revealed word of God—then of all this she judges infallibly, and she is the infallible authority, not for believing what God has revealed—for that is believed on the veracity of God alone—but for believing that what she teaches as his revealed word is his revealed word, and therefore the law we are to obey in thought, word, deed, as the supreme court is the authority for defining its own constitution and powers, and what is or is not the law of the state. Say we not, then, truly that the church is her own witness and accredits herself? Say we not truly, also, that she is the faithful and infallible witness to the fact of revelation, and teacher and judge of what God has or has not revealed? The fact, then, that the church defines that she is the divinely appointed guardian and infallible teacher and judge of revelation, is all we need to know in order to know that it is God we believe in believing her.
None of the sects can apply this argument to themselves; for no one of them can pretend to be the identical apostolical body, or to span the distance of time from the apostles to us, so as to be at once their contemporary and ours. They all have either originated too late or have died too soon for that. Not one of them can pretend to have originated in the apostolic communion, and to have existed as one continuous body down to us. There were sectaries in the lifetime of the apostles, but they were not in the apostolic communion, but separated from it; and there is, as far as we know, no sect in existence that originated in apostolic times. Some of the Gnostic sects sprang up at a very early day, but they have all disappeared, though many of their errors are revived in our day. The Nestorian and Jacobite sects still subsist in the East, but they were born too late to be of apostolic origin, and our modern Unitarians are not the old Arians continued in one unbroken body. The Lutheran and Calvinistic sects are of yesterday, and they and their numerous offshoots are out of the question. The poor Anglicans talk of apostolic succession indeed, but they separated or were cut off from the apostolicbody in the sixteenth century, and, with all the pretensions of a few of them, are only a Protestant sect, born of the Reformation, as the greater part of them strenuously contend. There is something in people's instincts; and it is worthy of note that no people who have cast off the authority of the Holy See have ever ventured to assume as their official name the title ofAPOSTOLIC. Even the schismatic Greeks, while they claim to be orthodox, do not officially call their church apostolic; and the American Anglicans assume only the name of Protestant Episcopal.Protestant apostolicwould strike the whole world as incongruous, and very much as a contradiction in terms.
Let the argument be worth little or much, the only body claiming to be the church of Christ that has or has had an uninterrupted historical existence from the apostles to us, is the body that is in communion with the See of Rome, and recognizes the successor of Peter in that see as the Vicar of Christ, the teacher of the nations, supreme pastor of the faithful, with plenary authority from our Lord himself to feed, rule, and govern the universal church. The fact is too plain on the very face of history for any one who knows history at all to deny it. Nor, in fact, does any one deny it. All in reality concede it; and the pretence is that to be in communion with that see is not necessary in order to be in communion with Christ, or with the universal church.
But this is a question of law or of its interpretation, and can itself be determined only by the supreme court instituted to keep, interpret, and declare the law. The court of last resort has already decided the question. It isres adjudicata, and no longer an open question. The court has decided thatextra ecclesiam, nulla salus, or, that out of communion with the church there is no communion with Christ; and that out of communion with the Holy See there is no communion with the universal church, for there is no such church. Do you appeal from the decision of the court? To what tribunal? To a higher tribunal? But there is no higher tribunal than the court of last resort. None of the sects are higher than the church, or competent to set aside or overrule her decisions. Do you appeal to the Bible? But this were only appealing from the law as expounded by the church or the supreme court to the law as expounded by yourself or your sect. Such an appeal cannot be entertained, for it is an appeal, not from an inferior court to a superior, but from the highest court to the lowest. The law expounded by the individual or the sect is below, not above, the law expounded and declared by the church. The sect has confessedly no authority, and the law expounded and applied by the sect is no more than the law expounded and applied by the private individual; and no private individual is allowed to expound and apply the law for himself, but must take it as expounded and applied by the court, and the judgment as to what the law is of the court of last resort is final, and from it, as every lawyer knows, there lies no appeal. To be able to set aside or overrule the judgment of the church, it is necessary, then, to have a court of superior jurisdiction, competent to revise her judgments and to confirm or to overrule them. But, unhappily for those who are dissatisfied with her judgments, there is and can be no such court to which they can appeal.
There might be some plausibility in the pretended appeal from the church to the Bible, if the church hadnot the Bible, or if she avowedly rejected its divine authority; but as the case stands, such an appeal is irregular, illegal, and absurd. The church has and always has had the Bible ever since it was written. It was, as we have seen, originally deposited with her, and it is only from her that those outside of her communion have obtained it or their knowledge of it. She has always held and taught it to be the divinely inspired and authoritative written word of God, which none of her children are allowed to deny or question. There is no opposition possible between her teaching and the Bible, for the Bible is included in her teaching, and consequently no appeal from her teaching to the Bible. It would be only an appeal from herself to herself. The only appeal conceivable in the case is from her understanding of the sacred Scriptures or the revealed word of God to—your own; but as you at best have confessedly no authority to expound, interpret, or declare the law, your understanding of the written word can in no case override or set aside hers.
The Reformers, when they pretended to appeal from the church to the Bible, mistook the question and proceeded on a false assumption. There never was any question between the church and the Bible; the only question there was or could be was between her understanding of the Bible and theirs, or, as we have said, between the Bible as expounded by the church and the Bible as expounded by private individuals. This the Reformers did not or would not see, and this their followers do not or will not see to this day. Now, count the authority of the church for as little as possible, her understanding cannot be below that of private individuals, and the understanding of private individuals can never override it, or be a sufficient reason for setting it aside. The Reformers had recognized the church as the supreme authority in matters of faith, and the question was not on admitting her authority as something hitherto unrecognized, but on rejecting an authority they had hitherto acknowledged as divine. They could not legally reject it except on a higher authority, or by the judgment of a superior court. But there was no superior court, no higher authority, and they could oppose to her not the authority of the Bible, as they pretended, but at best only their private opinion or views of what it teaches, which in no case could count for more than her judgment, and therefore could not overrule it or authorize its rejection.
It is all very well to deny the divine commission and authority of the church to expound the word and declare the law of God; but a denial, to serve any purpose, or to be worth anything, must have a reason, and a higher reason than has the affirmation denied. One can deny only by an authority sufficient to warrant an affirmation. It needs as much reason to deny as to affirm. The authority of the church can really be denied only by opposing to her a truth that disproves it. A simple negation is nothing, and proves or disproves nothing. Yet the Reformers opposed to the church only a simple negation. They opposed to her no authority, no affirmative truth, and consequently gave no reason for denying or unchurching her. Indeed, no individual or sect ever opposes either to the church or to her teaching anything but simple negation, and no one ever makes an affirmation or affirms any truth or positive doctrine which she does not herself affirm or hold and teach. Every known heresy, from that of the Docetæ downto the latest development of Protestantism, simply denies what the church teaches, and affirms nothing which she does not herself affirm, as Catholics have shown over and over again. These denials, based as they are on no principle or affirmative truth, are gratuitous, and count for nothing against the church or her teaching. Who would count the denial by a madman that the sun shines in a clear sky at noonday?
The simple fact is that whoever denies the church or her judgments does it without any authority or reason but his own private opinion or caprice, and that is simply no authority or reason at all. It is not possible to allege any authority against her or her teaching. Men may cavil at the truth, may by their sophistries and subtleties obscure the truth or involve themselves in a dense mental fog, so that they are unable to see anything distinctly, or to tell where they are or in what direction they are moving. They may thus imagine that they have some reason for their denials, and even persuade others that such is the fact; but whenever the fog is cleared away, and they haveeastedthemselves, they cannot, if they have ordinary intelligence, fail to discover that the truth which in their own minds they opposed to her or her teaching is a truth which she herself holds and teaches as an integral part of her doctrine, or as included in the depositum of faith she has received. Do you say there is truth outside of the church; truth in all religions; in all superstitions, even? Be it so; but there is no truth outside of her in any religion or superstition that she denies or does not recognize and hold, and hold in its unity and catholicity. There may be facts in natural history, in physics, chemistry, in all the special sciences, as in the several handicrafts, that she does not teach; but there is no principle of science of any sort that she does not hold and apply whenever an occasion for its application occurs. None of the special sciences have their principles in themselves, or do or can demonstrate the principles on which they depend, and from which they derive their scientific character. They all depend for their scientific character on a higher science, the science of sciences, which the church and the church alone teaches. The principles of ethics, and therefore of politics as a branch of ethics, all lie in the theological order, and without theology there is and can be no science of ethics or politics; and hence we see that both, with those who reject theology, are purely empirical, without any scientific basis. An atheist may be moral in his conduct, but if there were no God there could be no morality; so may an atheist be a geometrician, but if there were no God there could be no geometry. Deny God, and what becomes of lines that may be infinitely projected, or of space shading off into immensity, on which so much in the science of geometry depends? Nay, deny God, and what would become even of finite space? Yet without the conception of space, which is in truth only the power of God to externize his acts, geometry would be impossible. All the special sciences are secondary, and are really science only when carried up to their first principles and explained by them. What more absurd, then, than the attempt of scientists to prove by science there is no God, or to oppose science to the theology of the church, without which no science is possible?
We need but look at the present state of men's minds to see how the world gets on without the church. Never were men more active or indefatigable in their researches: they sendtheir piercing glances into all subjects, sacred and profane; they investigate the heavens and the earth, the present and the past, and leave no nook or corner of nature unexplored, and yet there is not a principle of ethics, politics, or science that is not denied or called in question. In the moral and political world nothing is fixed or settled, and moral and intellectual science, as well as statesmanship, disappears. Doubt and uncertainty hang over all questions, and the distinctions between right and wrong, just and unjust, as well as between good and evil, are obscured and well-nigh obliterated. The utmost confusion reigns in the whole world of thought, and "men," as a distinguished prelate said to us the other day, "are trying the experiment of governing the world without conscience." All this proves what we maintain, that they who deny the church, or reject her teaching, have no truth to oppose to her, no reason for their denial, and no principle on which they base their rejection of her authority. Their rejection of the church and her teaching is purely gratuitous, and therefore, if not sinful, is at least baseless.
This much is certain, that it is either the church or nothing. There is no other alternative. Nothing is more absurd than for those who reject the church and her teaching to pretend to be Christian teachers or believers. They cannot believe the revelation God has made on the veracity of God alone, for they have no witness, not even an unassisted human witness, of the fact of revelation, of what God has revealed, or that he has or has not revealed anything, since they have no witness who was the contemporary of our Lord and his apostles—they were none of them born then—and they have no institution that dates from apostolic times, and that has continued without break down to the present. In fact, what they profess to believe, in so far as they believe it at all, they believe on the authority of the church, or of that very tradition which they reject and deny to be authority. They agree among themselves in their doctrinal belief only when and where they agree with the church; whenever and wherever they break from Catholic tradition, preserved and handed down by her, they disagree and fight with one another, are all at sea, and have neither chart nor compass. Do they tell us that they agree in the essentials of the Christian faith? Yet it is only so far as they follow Catholic tradition that they know or can agree among themselves as to what are or are not essentials. There is a wide difference between what Dr. Pusey holds to be essential and what is held to be essential by Dr. Bellows. Nearly the only point in which the two agree is in rejecting the infallible authority of the successor of Peter; and, in rejecting that authority, neither has any authority for believing what he believes, or for denying what he denies. Deny the church, and you have no authority for asserting divine revelation at all, as your rationalists and radicals conclusively prove.
But, happily, the other alternative saves us from all these logical inconsistencies. The church meets every demand, removes every embarrassment, and affords us the precise authority we need for faith, for she is in every age and every land a living witness to the fact of revelation, and an ever-present judge competent to declare what God reveals, and to teach us what we have, and what we have not, the veracity of God for believing. She can assure us of the divine inspiration and authority of the Holy Scriptures, which withouther tradition is not provable; for she has received them through the apostles from our Lord himself. She can enable us to read them aright, and can unfold to us by her teaching their real sense; for the Holy Ghost has deposited with her the whole revelation of God, whether written or unwritten. Outside of her, men, if they have the book called the Bible, can make little or nothing of it, can come to no agreement as to its sense, except so far as they inconsistently and surreptitiously avail themselves of her interpretation of it. They have no key to its sense. But she has the key to its meaning in her possession and knowledge of all that God reveals, or in the divine instruction she has received in the beginning. The whole word of God, and the word of God as a whole, is included in the depositum she has received, and therefore she is able at all times and in all places to give the true sense of the whole, and of the relation to the whole of each and every part. In her tradition the Bible is a book of divine instruction, of living truth, of inestimable value, and entitled to the profoundest reverence, which we know it is not in the hands of those who wrest it from her tradition, and have no clue to its meaning but grammar and lexicon.
The notion that a man who knows nothing of the Christian faith, and is a stranger to the whole order of Christian thought and life, can take up the Bible, even when correctly translated into his mother-tongue, and from reading and studying it arrive at an adequate knowledge, or any real knowledge at all, of Christian truth or the revelation which God has made to man, is preposterous, and contradicted by every day's experience. Just in proportion as men depart from the tradition of faith preserved by the church, the Bible becomes an unintelligible book, ceases to be of any use to the mind, and, if reverenced at all, becomes, except in a few plain moral precepts, a source of error much more frequently than of truth. One of the most precious gifts of God to man becomes instead of a benefit a real injury to the individual and to society. Our school-boards may, then, easily understand why we Catholics object to the reading of the Bible in schools where the church cannot be present to enlighten the pupil's mind as to its real and true sense. It is the court that keeps the statute-books, and interprets and applies the law, whether thelex scriptaor thelex non scripta.
The church, existing in all ages and in all nations as one identical body, is a living witness in all times and places, as we have said, of the fact that God has revealed what she believes and teaches, and is through his assistance a competent and sufficient authority for that fact, and to interpret and declare the revealed law, as much so, to say the least, as the supreme court of a nation is to declare what is the law of the state. The objection made by rationalists and others to believing on the authority of the church, or to recognizing her authority to declare the faith, is founded on the false assumption that the church makes the faith, and can make anything of faith she pleases, whether God has revealed it or not. We have already answered this objection. The church bears witness to the fact of revelation, and declares what is or is not the faith God has revealed, as the supreme court declares what is or is not the law of the state; but she can declare nothing to be of faith that is not of faith, or that God has not revealed and commanded all men to believe, for through the divine assistance she isinfallible, and therefore cannot err in matters of faith, or in any matters pertaining in any respect to faith and morals. Since she cannot err in declaring what God has revealed and commanded, we are assured that what she declares to be revealed is revealed, or to be commanded is commanded, and therefore we know that whatever we are required to believe as of faith, or to do as commanded of God, we have the authority of God himself for believing and doing, the highest possible reason for faith, since God is truth itself, and can neither deceive nor be deceived; and the highest possible law, for God is the Supreme Lawgiver. It is they who reject the church or deny her authority that have only an arbitrary and capricious human authority, and who abdicate their reason and their freedom, and make themselves slaves, and slaves of human passion, arrogance, and ignorance. The Catholic is the only man who has true mental freedom, or a reason for his faith. His faith makes him free. It is the truth that liberates; and therefore our Lord says, "If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." Who can be freer than he who is held to believe and obey only God? They whom the truth does not make free may fancy they are free, but they are not; they are in bondage, and abject slaves.
The church in affirming herself is not making herself the judge in her own cause, is not one of the litigants, as some pretend, for the cause in which she judges is not hers, but that of God himself. She is the court instituted by the Supreme Lawgiver to keep, interpret, and declare his law, and therefore to judge between him and the subjects his law binds. She, in determining a case of faith or morals, no more judges in her own cause than the supreme court of a nation does in defining its own jurisdiction, and in determining a case arising under the law of which it is constituted by the national authority the judge. She has, of course, the right, as has every civil court, to punish contempt, whether of her orders or her jurisdiction, for he who contemns her contemns him who has instituted her; but the questions to be decided are questions of law, which she does not make, and is therefore no more a party to the cause litigated, and no more interested or less impartial, than is a civil court in a civil action. Indeed, we see not, if it pleases Almighty God to make a revelation, and to set up his kingdom on earth with that revelation for its law, how he can provide for its due administration without such a body as the church affirms herself to be, nor how it would be possible to institute a higher or more satisfactory method of determining what the law of his kingdom is, than by the decision of a court instituted and assisted by him for that very purpose. In our judgment, no better way is practicable, and no other way of attaining the end desired is possible. We repeat, therefore, that the church meets every demand of the case, and removes every real difficulty in ascertaining what is the faith God has revealed, as well as what is opposed to it, or tends to obscure or impair it.
It is agreed on all hands, by all who hold that our heavenly Father has made us a revelation and instituted a church, that the Church of Rome, founded by Saints Peter and Paul, was in the beginning catholic and apostolic. If she was so in the beginning, she is so now; for she has not changed, and claims no authority which she has not claimed and exercised, as the occasion arose, from the first. She is the same identical body as she has been from the beginning.All the sectarian and schismatical bodies that oppose or refuse to submit to her authority acknowledged her authority prior to rejecting it, and were in communion with her. The change is not hers, but theirs. They have changed and gone out from her, because they were not of her, but she has remained ever the same. Take the schismatic Greeks. They originally were one body with her, and held the successor of Peter in the Roman See as primate or head of the whole visible church. They got angry or were perverted, and rejected the authority of the Roman Pontiff, and have never even to this day ventured to call themselves officially the Catholic or the Apostolic church. The men who founded the Reformed Churches so-called—Anglican among the rest—were brought up in the communion of the Catholic Church, and acknowledged the supremacy of the Roman Pontiff, and the Church of Rome as the mother and mistress of all the churches. The separation was caused by their change, not by hers. She held and taught at the time of the separation what she had always held and taught, and claimed no authority which she had not claimed from the first. Evidently, then, it was they and not she that changed and denied what they had previously believed. She lost individuals and nations from her communion, but she lost not her identity, or any portion of her rights and authority, as the one and only church of Christ, for she holds from God, not from the faithful. She has continued to be what she was at first, while they have gone from one change to another, have fallen into a confusion of tongues, as their prototypes did at Babel; and Luther and Calvin could hardly recognize their followers in those who go by their name to-day.
In the very existence of the church through so many changes in the world around her, the rise and fall of states and empires, assailed as she has been on every hand, and by all sorts of enemies, is a standing miracle, and a sufficient proof of her divinity. She was assailed by the Jews, who crucified her Lord and stirred up, wherever they went, the hostility of the people against his holy apostles and missionaries; she was assailed by the relentless persecution of the Roman Empire, the strongest organization the world has ever seen, and the greatest political power of which history gives any hint—an empire which wielded the whole power of organized paganism; she was driven to the catacombs, and obliged to offer up the holy sacrifice under the earth, for there was no place for her altars on its surface. Yet she survived the empire; emerged from the catacombs and planted the cross on the Capitol of the pagan world. She had then to encounter a hardly less formidable enemy in the Arian heresy, sustained by the civil power; then came her struggle with the barbarian invaders and conquerors from the fifth to the tenth century—the revolt of the East, or the Greek schism; the great schism of the West; the Northern revolt, or the so-called Reformation of the sixteenth century; and the hostility since of the greatest and most powerful states of the modern world; yet she stands erect where she did nearly twenty centuries ago, maintaining herself against all opposition; against the power, wealth, learning, and refinement of this world; against Jew, pagan, barbarian, heretic, and schismatic, and preserving her identity and her faith unchanged through all the vicissitudes of the world in the midst of which she is placed. She never could have done it if she had been sustained only by human virtue,human wisdom, and human sagacity; she could not have survived unchanged if she had not been under the divine protection, and upheld by the arm of Almighty God. The fact that she has lived on and preserved her identity, especially if we add to the opposition from without the scandals that have occurred within, is conclusive proof that under her human form she lives a divine and supernatural life; therefore that she is the church of God, and is what she affirms herself to be.
Believing the church to be what she affirms herself to be; believing the Roman Pontiff to be the successor of Peter, the Vicar of Christ on earth, the father and teacher of all Christians, we have no fear that she will not survive the persecution which now rages against her, and that the Pope will not see his enemies prostrate at his feet. Through all history, we have seen that the successes of her enemies have been short-lived, and the terrible losses they have occasioned have been theirs, not hers. It will always be so. Kings, emperors, potentates, states, and empires may destroy themselves by opposing her, but her they cannot harm. See we not how the wrongs done to the Holy Father by Italian robbers, obeying the dictates of the secret societies, some of which, like theMadre Natura, date almost from apostolic times, are quickening the faith and fervor of Catholics throughout the world? Not for centuries has the Holy Father been so strong in the love and devotion of his faithful children as to-day. Never is the church stronger or nearer a victory than when abandoned by all the powers of this world, and thrown back on the support of her divine Spouse alone.
One of the first objects that strikes the mariner ascending the Garonne towards Bordeaux is the ancient tower of St. Michel. I visited it the very morning after my arrival in that city. It is the belfry of a church of the same name, but is separated from it, being about forty yards distant. It was built in 1472, and is two hundred and fifty feet high. Formerly, it was over three hundred feet in height, but the steeple was blown down by a hurricane on the 8th of September, 1768. The view from the top is superb. Before you, like a map, lies the whole city—a noted commercial centre from the time of the Cæsars—encircling a great bend of the river. The eye is at first confused by the mass of roofs, spires, and streets, but in a moment singles out the great cruciform churches of St. André, Ste. Croix, and St. Michel. They lie beneath like immense crosses with arms stretched out—a perpetual appeal to heaven. Such remembrances of Calvary must ever stand between a sinful world and the justice of Almighty God. How can he look down upon all the iniquity of a great city, and not feel the silentParce nobisof these sacred arms extended over it, repeating silently, as it were, the divine prayer, "Father,forgive them, for they know not what they do!" Oh! what a love for the Passion dwelt in the heart of the middle ages which built these churches. Absorbed in the thought, I lost sight of the city. Its activity, its historical associations, the fine buildings and extensive view, all disappear before the cross. Bordeaux is generally thought of only as a wine-mart, but it also has holier associations. "Every foot-path on this planet may lead to the door of a hero," it is said, and very few paths there are in this Old World that do not bring us upon the traces of the saints—the most heroic of men, who have triumphed over themselves, which is better than the taking of a strong city. They it was that made these great signs of the cross on the breast of this fair city, hallowing it for ever.
Beneath the tower of St. Michel is acaveau, around which are ranged ninety mummies in a state of preservation said to be owing to the nature of the soil. Why is it that every one is enticed down to witness so horrid a spectacle? Dust to dust and ashes to ashes is far preferable to these withered bodies, and a quiet resting-place, deep, deep in the bosom of mother earth till the resurrection. Edmond About says the twelfth century would have embroidered many a charming legend to throw around these bodies, but the moderns have less imagination, and the guardian of the tower, who displays them by the light of his poor candle, is totally deficient in poesy. Had this writer been at Bordeaux on the eve of All Souls' day, he would have been invited at the midnight hour, "when spirits have power," to listen to the lugubrious cries and chants that come up from thecaveau, where, as the popular voice declares, these ninety forms are having their yearly dance—the dance of death! I wonder if the mummy next the door, as you gladly pass out into the upper air, has his hand still extended like anau revoir.... Yes, there is one place where we shall meet, but not in this repulsive form. May we all be found there with glorified bodies!
The church of St. Michel is older than the tower, having been built in the twelfth century. It is of the Gothic style, and one of those antique churches that speak so loudly to the heart of the traveller from the New World—one in which we are penetrated with