Page images
PDF
EPUB

when many would have disputed the supreme priesthood with the house of Aaron, and some, jealous, as it were, of the authority which they arrogated to themselves as alone appointed by God, would claim a share in the priesthood, the Almighty commanded Moses to get a rod for each of the tribes, whereon the name of the head of the tribe should be written, and that they all should be placed in the presence of the Lord; and, on the next morning it was found that the rod of Aaron had blossomed, and had brought forth fruit; and then God commanded, also, that this rod-which was as an emblem of authority, and a testimony that he had confined the teaching of his people, under the care of their spiritual ministry, in one line-should also be laid in the same place, as a testimony in like manner unto the people of Israel. And, even upon another occasion, Moses commanded Aaron to take a certain portion of the manna, of that heavenly and spiritual food sent down from the clouds to feed the people of Israel; that, likewise, he directed, should be treated with the same distinction, and should be entitled to stand in the sanctuary, before the propitiatory or mercy-seat of God.

Now, my brethren, this is precisely, if I may so say, symbolical of the elements which the Catholic supposes to enter into the composition of the ground-work of his faith. On the one hand, he admits to the full extent, with the same reverence, and the same feelings of deference, the high authority of the sacred volume revealed by God, which he places as the first ground-work of all his faith in the temple of his God; but, beside that, there is also the rod of the children of Aaron, the sceptre of power and authority, the badge of dignity and command, which God has given to the rulers and pastors of his church; and, in this also, we recognise a power and an authority, an honour and a right to claim, accordingly, a place beside the other; although with such distinction as I shall just now point out. In the third place, we believe also, as I shall hereafter explain, that the necessary and the most important ingredient in the formation of the faith of each one, is the sustaining and lifegiving grace which God sends down into the soul, which makes the virtue of faith an infused virtue, a virtue communicated by God, and ready to be exercised the moment its objects are properly placed before it.

What, then, my brethren, is the rule of faith which our church admits? The word of God; the word of God alone and exclusively. But it is upon this point that we differ; namely, what is the extent of the word of God. The churches which separated from us at the time of the Reformation, separated, I may say, upon the principle that the Catholic church had introduced another word as the word of God; and had admitted the tradition of men, and had given to that the title, the name, and the dignity, of God's holy word. Now, therefore, it is necessary for us to enter into a few simple and explanatory distinctions. You often hear of Catholics admitting tradition; you sometimes hear of their

receiving what they call the unwritten word of God; you perhaps, have not a clear apprehension regarding these two terms. And, sometimes, you hear of the power of the church to decree doctrines; the power of general councils to define matters of faith; and the authority of the Holy See, or the Pope, and the authority of the universal church; and a number of other terms, vaguely, and sometimes equivocally used, which, to the well-instructed-indeed, I may say, to the reasonably instructed-Catholic, are sufficiently simple; but which should be used with great caution, and with great definitiveness when explaining our doctrines to those to whom they are not familiar.

We believe then, in the first place, that there is no other foundation whatsoever of faith, except the written word of God; because we allow no force to any doctrine, we allow no power to any living authority, except inasmuch as the root of that defining power and authority is to be found in God's holy word. It is even precisely in the same manner as we do not allow that there is any doctrine which is not in Christ Jesus, the incarnate word of God, the eternal wisdom of the Father: and yet we do admit of other doctrines only remotely, as it were, connected with him, and only based on him, and yet they may be said to be all referrible to our belief in him, and of him, inasmuch as no other form of doctrine can have any force, can possibly command the attention of mankind, save insomuch as it rests upon his authority. If, therefore, you hear, that the church claims authority to define articles of faith, or to point out to the faithful what they must believe, you must not, for one moment, think that the church pretends to any authority for that power, that it gives it any sanction whatsoever, but that which it conceives itself to derive from the clear, express, explicit words of Scripture. Thus, therefore, it may be said, that, whatever else is believed by Catholics, when we acknowledge that it is not expressly in the written word of God, is by them believed, because the principle on which they adopt it is there expressly inculcated. This, therefore, at once accounts for what we mean by the unwritten word of God. We mean, a body of doctrines, which we believe not to have been committed to writing, but to have been delivered by Christ to his apostles, and by his apostles to their successors; and we believe that no new doctrine can be introduced into the church; that, if it can be shown, that any of these doctrines are not traceable to the times of the apostles, they can have no foundation; and, that the only guarantee to any authority whereby we can receive these doctrines from the church is, that Christ has promised to his church that he will always abide with her, that he will always assist her, that he will always protect and instruct her, and will himself teach her: so that we believe that, in giving our implicit credit, and in trusting our judgment to it, we are believing and trusting the express teaching or sanctioning of Christ himself.

Tradition, therefore, my brethren, and the unwritten word, are one

and the same thing; but it must not be thought, on account of this expression, that Catholics conceive that there is a mass, as it were, of vague and floating opinions which may, at the option of the Pope, or of a general council, or of the whole church, be turned into articles of faith. By the unwritten word, it is not meant, that these articles of faith are no where recorded; because, on the contrary, supposing any difficulty to arise regarding any matter, that men were to differ, and did not know what precisely they should believe, and the church thought it prudent and necessary to examine into this point, and define what was to be held; the method proceeded in would be, to examine most accurately the writings of the oldest fathers of the church; to see what, in different countries and different ages, had been upheld by them all as believed in their times; and then, by collecting, as it were, the suffrages of all the world, and of all times, to define-not indeed to create, an article of faith—but to define, that this had always been the faith of the Catholic church. It is a matter of historical inquiry in every instance, and all human prudence is used to arrive at a just decision; and then we believe, that when the church is so assembled, in consequence of those promises of Christ which I shall develop to you at full length hereafter, we believe that it is impossible that the church can be allowed to fall into an error. Thus, then, we allow no authority but the word of God, and that written or unwritten; and we believe the control over the latter to exist in its depositary, that is in the church of Christ, which has been appointed by God to take charge of, and keep safe, those doctrines which were committed to it from the beginning to teach to the faithful at all times.

Now, therefore, proceeding upon the plan which I followed in analyzing, and tracing to its first principle, the rule of faith which is proposed by others, I shall briefly point out to you, what are the grounds of this principle, what is its application, and what are its ends! You will, I trust, see the consistency of the whole reasoning, from the beginning, and its adaptation for the purposes for which any rule of faith must be given.

In the first place, therefore, as to the grounds of this rule. I do not mean, in using this word, to enter now into the arguments whereby it is supported, because it would form the subject of two or three, probably, very lengthy discourses; I only wish to show what the train of reasoning is, whereby we arrive at the individual possession of this principle. Supposing, therefore, that instead of the compendious method whereby we believe that God, through the aid of his sacraments, brings man into the possession of faith, every one was disposed to investigate the whole theory, as it were, and the progressive development of these Catholic principles, we begin with the Scriptures, and we take up the gospel as any one in such an inquiry must, in the first instance; we look at it abstractedly, for a moment, from our belief in its inspiration or

divine authority, and simply looking to them as works, historical works, intended for our information, from which we are anxious to gain such truths as may be useful for our improvement. We find here, in the first place, that to these works, and to the other writings of the apostles, are attached, all those motives for human credibility which we can possibly require; that there is, throughout them, an absence of every element which could for a moment suggest, that there had been either the desire to deceive, or the possibility of having been mistaken. We find a body of external testimony, sufficient to satisfy us, that these are documents produced at the time when they profess to be written, and by those authors whose names they bear; and that they have been written by persons fully able, and fully willing to give an accurate statement of all which they relate. We thus come to be in possession of historical and other documents, unfolding to us a system of religion, professing to be preached by one who wrought the most stupendous miracles, in order to confirm the divinity of his mission. In other words, we are led by the simple principle of human investigation, to an acknowledgment of the authority of Christ, to teach as one come from God; and we are thus led to the necessity of yielding implicit credence to all that he shall be found to have taught. And now, upon this point, we can require nothing more than mere historical grounds, nothing more than simply human evidence-evidence to prove those grounds on which the divinity, or the divine authority, of Christ is established. It is then that we inquire, what is it that Christ has taught? and we find that he was not contented merely with teaching certain general principles of morality; that he was not even satisfied with unfolding to mankind doctrines superior to their discovery, and which none before him had attempted to teach; he was not contented merely with solving important difficulties, and making man more intimately acquainted with his own nature and future destinies; but we find that he did take means to preserve these doctrines to mankind; we find that it was obviously his intention, that the system which he established should be beneficial, not merely to those who lived in his own days, but to all the world, till the end of time; that it was intended to be something permanent, something commensurate with the existence of those wants of humanity which he came to relieve; and consequently, we naturally ask, what is the way in which these blessings were to be preserved-where is the place wherein they were to be deposited? Now, the Catholic falls in with a number of very strong passages in which our Saviour, not content with promising the continuation of the doctrines-that is to say, the continued obligation of them upon man-but also pledges himself for their actual preservation among them. We see that he selects a certain body of men; that he invests them, not merely with great authority, but with authority equal to his own; that he makes them a promise of continuing with them, and speaking through them even unto the end of time; and thus

D 2

it is that the Catholic naturally looks around him; he naturally concludes, that there must have existed for ever, and must exist, as yet, the means for the preservation of these doctrines, and for the perpetuation of those blessings which our Saviour seems so manifestly to have established.

Thus, then, merely proceeding upon the historical grounds which guide the infidel to a belief in Christ's superior mission, he comes from the words of Christ (whom these historical grounds oblige him to believe), to acknowledge the existence of a body, as the depositary of those doctrines which he came to establish among men. The succession of persons constituted to preserve these doctrines, are the faithful, appointed as the successors of the apostles, having within them the guarantee for Christ's teaching among them for ever, and this is what we call the church. He then is in possession, from this moment, of divine authority; and in the whole of his investigation, he has no need to turn back, to call in the evidence of men. For the moment he is satisfied, that Christ has appointed a perpetual succession of men, destinedthrough the assistance of his heavenly light, and his supernatural assistance to preserve inviolable those doctrines which he delivered; from that moment, whatever these men teach him, is invested with the divine authority which he had found in Christ, through the means of his miracles. This body, then, so constituted, immediately takes upon itself the office of teaching, and informs him, that that which he has been regarding as merely historical-that those events which he has been perusing merely with a deep and solemn interest-command much greater attention and respect than any human motives can possibly give. For then it stands forth and says, "Upon the authority wherewith you yourself, by your previous reasoning have been forced to acknowledge, that I am invested with the guarantee of divine assistance which the words of Christ himself, in whose divinity you believe, have given me ; with that authority I pronounce, that this book is the revealed word of God, and that those parts which compose the volume, are all and every one which should enter into the collection." And thus it is, therefore, that the Catholic receives, upon the authority of the church, these two important doctrines, the canonicity and inspiration; which I endeavoured to show you, at our last meeting, it would be almost, if not quite, impossible to reach, by a course of ordinary logical reasoning. You will say, that there is mutual testimony; you believe, therefore, first of all, that the Scripture teaches you the church, and the church then teaches you the Scripture. To this, I might remark, that there is even a fallacy in the form of reasoning; for I will put a case. When an ambassador presents himself before a sovereign, it is said, “Where are your credentials?" He presents his credentials, and upon the strength of those very credentials which he himself brings, he is acknowledged as the ambassador; so that he himself first presents the

« PreviousContinue »