....

pretation, which had a sort of sanction from Antiquity and the orthodox Church, he proceeds; "Ephrem is not as sober in his interpretations, nor could he be, since he was a zealous disciple of the orthodox faith. For all those who are most eminent in such sobriety were as far as possible removed from the faith of the Councils. . . . . On the other hand, all who retained the faith of the Church never entirely dispensed with the spiritual sense of the Scriptures. For the Councils watched over the orthodox faith; nor was it safe in those ages, as we learn especially from the instance of Theodore of Mopsuestia, to desert the spiritual for an exclusive cultivation of the literal method. Moreover, the allegorical interpretation, even when the literal sense was not injured, was also preserved; because in those times, when both heretics and Jews in controversy were stubborn in their objections to Christian doctrine, maintaining that the Messiah was yet to come, or denying the abrogation of the Sabbath and ceremonial law, or ridiculing the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, and especially that of Christ's Divine Nature, under such circumstances ecclesiastical writers found it to their purpose, in answer to such exceptions, violently to refer every part of Scripture by allegory to Christ and His Church."1

With this passage from a learned German, illustrating the bearing of the allegorical method upon the Judaic and Athanasian controversies, it will be well to compare the following passage from the latitudinarian Hales's "Golden Remains," as directed against the theology of Rome. "The literal, plain, and uncontroversable meaning of Scripture," he says, "without any addition or supply by way of interpretation, is that alone which for ground of faith we are necessarily bound to accept; except it be there, where the Holy Ghost Himself treads us out another way. I take not this to be any particular conceit of Lengerke, de Ephr. S. pp. 78-80.

mine, but that unto which our Church stands necessarily bound. When we receded from the Church of Rome, one motive was, because she added unto Scripture her glosses as Canonical, to supply what the plain text of Scripture could not yield. If, in place of hers, we set up our own glosses, thus to do were nothing else but to pull down Baal, and set up an Ephod, to run round and meet the Church of Rome again in the same point in which at first we left her. . This doctrine of the literal sense was never grievous or prejudicial to any, but only to those who were inwardly conscious that their positions were not sufficiently grounded. When Cardinal Cajetan, in the days of our grandfathers, had forsaken that vein of postilling and allegorising on Scripture, which for a long time had prevailed in the Church, and betaken himself unto the literal sense, it was a thing so distasteful unto the Church of Rome that he was forced to find out many shifts and make many apologies for himself. The truth is, (as it will appear to him that reads his writings,) this sticking close to the literal sense was that alone which made him to shake off many of those tenets upon which the Church of Rome and the reformed Churches differ. But when the importunity of the reformers, and the great credit of Calvin's writings in that kind, had forced the divines of Rome to level their interpretations by the same line; when they saw that no pains, no subtlety of wit was strong enough to defeat the literal evidence of Scripture, it drove them on those desperate shoals, on which at this day they stick, to call in question, as far as they durst, the credit of the Hebrew text, and countenance against it a corrupt translation; to add traditions unto Scripture, and to make the Church's interpretation, so pretended, to be above exception."1

He presently adds concerning the allegorical sense: "If we absolutely condemn these interpretations, 1 pp. 24-26.

then must we condemn a great part of Antiquity, who are very much conversant in this kind of interpreting. For the most partial for Antiquity cannot choose but see and confess thus much, that for the literal sense, the interpreters of our own times, because of their skill in the original languages, their care of pressing the circumstances and coherence of the text, of comparing like places of Scripture with like, have generally surpassed the best of the ancients."1

The use of Scripture then, especially its spiritual or second sense, as a medium of thought and deduction, is a characteristic principle of the developments of doctrine in the Church.

§ 2.

Supremacy of Faith.

Though, in the two preceding Chapters, our sole business was to take an external view of Christianity, as it would appear to a bystander, yet some of the principles on which it has developed came, as it were, to the surface, and were incidentally mentioned. Such was the rejection of the mere literal interpretation of Scripture on which I have been speaking; and such again was its special preference of Faith to Reason, which was so great a jest to Celsus and Julian.

The latter principle, when brought out into words, is as follows: that belief is in itself better than unbelief; that it is safer to believe; that we must begin with believing, and that conviction will follow; that as for the reasons of believing, they are for the most part implicit, and but slightly recognised by the mind that is under their influence; that they consist moreover rather of presumptions and guesses, ventures after the truth than of accurate proofs; and that probable arguments are sufficient 'p. 27.

for conclusions which we even embrace as most certain, and turn to the most important uses. On the other hand, it has ever been the heretical principle to prefer Reason to Faith, and to hold that things must be considered true only so far as they are proved. This shall be shown in the words of Locke, and will illustrate the ecclesiastical principle of Faith by the contrast:

He says,

"Whatever God hath revealed is certainly true; no doubt can be made of it. This is the proper object of Faith; but whether it be a divine revelation or no, reason must judge." Now, if he merely means that proofs can be given for Revelation, and that Reason comes in logical order before Faith, such a doctrine is in no sense uncatholic; but he certainly holds that for individuals to act on Faith without Reason, or to make Faith a primary principle of conduct for themselves, without waiting till they have got their reasons accurately drawn out and serviceable for controversy, is enthusiastic and absurd. "How a man may know whether he be [a lover of truth for truth's sake] is worth inquiry; and I think there is this one unerring mark of it, viz. the not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance, than the proofs it is built upon, will warrant. Whoever goes beyond this measure of assent, it is plain, receives not truth in the love of it; loves not truth for truth's sake, but for some other by-end. For the evidence that any proposition is true, except such as are self-evident, lying only in the proofs a man has of it, whatsoever degrees of assent he affords it, beyond the degrees of that evidence, it is plain all that surplusage of assurance is owing to some other affection, and not to the love of truth; it being as impossible that the love of truth should carry my assent above the evidence there is to me that it is true, as that the love of truth should make me assent to any proposition

1 Of Hum. Underst. iv. 18, 19.

for the sake of that evidence which it has not, that it is true; which is in effect to love it as a truth, because it is possible or probable that it may not be true.1... What I see,2 I know to be so by the evidence of the thing itself: what I believe, I take to be so upon the testimony of another; but this testimony I must know to be given, or else what ground have I of believing? . . . Enthusiasm fails of the evidence it pretends to; for men, thus possessed, boast of a light whereby, they say, they are enlightened, and brought into the knowledge of this or that truth. But if they know it to be a truth, they must know it to be so, either by its own selfevidence to natural reason, or by the rational proofs that make it out to be so." Here this author lays down, that a lover of truth is he who loves a valid argument, and that such faith as is not credulity or enthusiasm is always traceable to a process of reason, and varies with its cogency.

I will but observe on such philosophy as this, that, were it received, no great work ever would have been done for God's glory and the welfare of man. Enthusiasm may do much harm, and act at times absurdly; but calculation never made a hero. But it is not to our present purpose to examine this theory, and I have done so elsewhere. Here I have but to show that both ancient and modern Catholics reject it. For instance, it is the very objection urged by Celsus, that Christians were but parallel to the credulous victims of jugglers or of devotees, who itinerated through the pagan population. He says "that some do not even wish to give or to receive a reason for their faith, but say, Do not inquire but believe,' and 'Thy faith will save thee;' and ́ Ã bad thing is the world's wisdom, and foolishness is a good." How does Origen answer the charge? by denying the fact, and speaking of Reason as proving the Scriptures to be divine, and Faith