be determined by tradition; and this tradition, they say, must be sought in the writings of the Fathers and ecclesiastical authors of the first three, four, five, or six centuries. Indeed! Because the interpretation of one book of moderate size is difficult, because it is capable of a thousand different interpretations, because by itself it is but a dead letter ; therefore, to interpret it, we must have recourse to a hundred thousand volumes, each of them nothing but the dead letter; each of them capable of as many different interpretations as Scripture itself; each of them containing more difficulties, each of them written by authors who were liable to error, and were not inspired; what is this but to multiply difficulties, to substitute a greater for a less impossibility? And yet this is the absurdity of Puseyites and Anglicans. What, then, is our tradition to which we appeal? The answer is simple, it is "the living voice of the Church." You will ask how do we prove this? How can we prove that the living voice of the Church ought to be the guide and rule of our faith? I answer, I will prove it in any manner you choose. If you are an extreme Protestant, and insist on having it proved by Scripture only, nothing can be clearer on the surface of Scripture than this doctrine, that the Church is the infallible guide of faith. If you are a Puseyite and Anglican, and appeal to the Fathers, we can shew the authority of all the Fathers of the Church for our position. If you are a Rationalist, and wish to have every thing proved philosophically, it can easily be shewn that this rule of faith is the most easy, the most natural, the most simple, the most logical, in fact the only possible one, if you once admit the unity of the faith once revealed. God has hedged round this first question with such a crowd of witnesses, that no one can be deceived upon it, unless he wilfully shuts his eyes, and is determined not to see. I say, first, that the Bible teaches most clearly that the living voice of the Church is the infallible guide of faith and interpreter of the revelation of God. "The Church is the pillar and ground of the truth," says St. Paul (1 Tim. iii. 15). It is its pillar; that is, the support, the maintenance. It is also its ground; that is, its foundation. The foundation of what? Of the truth; of the true religion; of the true faith. Therefore, a religion or a faith that is not built on the Church, of which the Church is not the pillar and ground, cannot be the religion, the faith, the truth of which St. Paul speaks. It may be Mahometanism, Paganism, Buddhism, Calvinism, Lutheranism, Anglicanism, or any other ism; but Christianity, the religion of Christ, of St. Paul, of the Apostles, of the Catholic Church, that it is not,-it cannot be. Moreover, this text teaches us that the Church is infallible. It is the pillar and ground of the truth; that is, that which it supports and maintains is most certainly, infallibly the truth; i. e. the Church is the infallible teacher of the truth. Christ, then, I find from Scripture, has left St. Paul often contrasts the letter with the spirit, and says that the letter kills, but the spirit gives life; not only the letter of the Old, but also of the New Testament (Rom. ii. 27, 29; vii. 6). "God hath made us ministers of the New Testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit. The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life" (2 Cor. iii. 6). on the earth a Church to be my infallible guide in my search for the truth. Now, I wish to find this guide. I go to the Church of England, and say, Church of England, are you the infallible Church? What is the answer? No, I am not; I hold the claim of infallibility to be the mark of the beast. Well, then, Church of England, you are not the infallible Church; you may be wrong; you are not certain that you are right; your doctrine may be false; therefore you are not the pillar and ground of the truth; therefore you are not the Church of the living God. The case is the same with all other Protestant sects; with the Russian and Greek Churches, and with the Eastern heresies. They do not claim to be infallible; they profess they may be wrong; therefore none of them is the pillar and ground of the truth. But Christ has somewhere upon earth an infallible Church. Where shall I look for it? Oh, Roman Catholic Church, so poor, so oppressed in this country, but, as the accounts of travellers tell me, to be found in every part of the globe,-in some places poor and persecuted, in others rich and glorious, but the same in faith every where,-speak, are you infallible? What is her answer. The Roman Catholic Church is built on the rock, Peter. In virtue of our Lord's promise, the gates of hell can never prevail against her (Matt. xvi. 18, &c.). She has the supreme power of binding and loosing; to her are given the keys of heaven (John xx. 21-23). She is the representative of Christ upon earth, the infallible, indestructible Church, the pillar and ground of the truth. What can I answer. I know that Christ has established such a society upon earth; I have asked every other Christian sect whether they even claim to have this prerogative; they all repudiate the title; all but one-one mighty Church, beloved and honoured, or else feared, suspected, hated by all; a Church to which none are indifferent, none can close their eyes; which they may call "obscure," "insignificant," but only because it is too visible, too forward, too pressing, too mighty. Oh, but, says the Puseyite, it is no living voice, but it is the Church as contained in her formularies, in her Prayer-books, in her canons, in her Fathers, that is infallible. We must have recourse to those documents for the true interpretation of Scripture; they furnish the infallible guide of faith. Certainly, a century hence, it will provoke a smile in the student of ecclesiastical history when he reads that there existed a sect rather pluming itself upon its learning and acuteness, that maintained the curious doctrine, that the Church of God, instead of being a living unity of spirits, is a dead assemblage of books, of foolscap bound in calf. However, there is another text in Scripture which makes it clear that the authoritative teaching of the Church is conveyed by a living voice, not by dead books and documents. "If thy brother sin against thee... tell it to the Church; and if he will not hear the Church, let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a publican" (Matt. xviii. 15-17). But, you will say, this is not the universal See the late "Pastoral" of the "Chief Pastor" of the parish of Clapham, directed against "Popery on the one side, and Dissent on the other." Church, it is the particular Church or congregation of each place, wherever the offence may have been committed. Well, be it so; if you teach me false doctrine, you sin against me: after trying the other means in vain, I must report your conduct to the Church, i.e. to the chief minister of the Church where the offence takes place ; that is, according to your theory, to the Pope in Rome, to the archbishop in Paris, to the Anglican bishop in London, to Dr. Hampden at Hereford, to Dr. Philpots at Exeter. Now suppose the offence consists in a brother trying to teach me and to make me believe that the presence of Christ in the Eucharist is only symbolical, not real in any way. We all know what would be said on that point at Rome and at Paris; if I wish to hear the Church there, I must subscribe to the doctrine of transubstantiation, and anathematise the tenet proposed to me, otherwise I become as a heathen and publican. If I am in London or Exeter, and have to complain of the same offence, I shall probably be told that it is certainly an error to teach that Christ is not present, for that there is a real presence, though not of His "natural body, which is in heaven, and not here;" but that even this is better than the absurd doctrine of transubstantiation. This, then, must be my faith at London or Exeter, or I am a heathen and publican. And at Hereford or York, what am I to believe? Plain Zuinglianism, that Christ is in no wise present, except to the faith of the communicant; if I go farther than this, I am a heathen and a publican. This text therefore proves that the theory of branch-churches is ridiculous; it proves that the authoritative Church must be one and universal; but it also proves that it is infallible. Because, 1, it is the last tribunal set up by Christ; there is no appeal from her decision; if we will not obey, we are as heathens and publicans : 2, if the Church is not infallible she can make false decisions; if she can give false decisions, she can make us do what is wrong and omit what is right, consequently can make us commit sins. Notwithstanding, Christ has commanded us unconditionally to "hear the Church," and, therefore, if she is not infallible, the case may occur in which Christ indirectly commands sin, because He commands us to obey the Church, which, on the supposition of fallibility, can order us to commit sin. To these absurdities are Anglicans reduced by their branch-church theories. Thus do they make the commandments of Christ of no effect by their traditions; first making the authority consist in books and documents, then in the voice of any local branch-church, without regard to its unity with any head or centre, without caring whether it teaches the same doctrine now as it did three and a half centuries ago, without caring whether it agrees with its sister churches or no. A Protestant at Geneva, in 1839,* maintained the following thesis: "The moment you admit a clergy having a divine mission, none of the members of which are individually called and inspired by God, it is evident, on the one hand, that the clergy must be one, and there. fore must have a chief to guarantee its unity; and, on the other • Ernest Naville, Thèse soutenue à Genève en 1839. hand, that this clergy must be endowed with absolute authority in the matter of doctrines, for that is the whole system. I am persuaded that this dilemma may be victoriously maintained ;—either Jesus Christ never organised a Church, or else the Catholic Church is that which He organised. As to the proof from the Fathers, it is so notorious that all of them, from St. Ignatius to St. Bernard, appealed to the living voice of the Church as the authority in matters of faith, that I need now only refer to a few books where their testimony may be found collected: "Faith of Catholics," vol. i. (Dolman, 1846); "Milner's End of Controversy," &c. I will only say, that all the Fathers agree in saying that that is, and ever shall be, the one true Church, which, by the Providence of God, is alone enabled to retain the name Catholic. Sects may call themselves Catholic, but no one else will ever call them so; they will go by the name of the man who founded them, as Arians, Calvinists, Wesleyans, Puseyites; or by the name of the place where they may be found, as Cataphrygians, Anglicans; or by some peculiarity in their teaching, as Baptists, Monophysites. They may, indeed, attempt to fix on the Catholic Church nicknames similar to their own; but they will never agree what name to call her by, nor will they ever succeed in fixing it on her. They will also persist in calling themselves Catholics, but no one else will ever call them so; they are in the same case as the unfortunate persons in Bedlam, who persist in calling themselves kings. No, by the special providence of God, there is, and always shall be, a special name by which the true Church shall be known, which He will never permit any other communion to appropriate, which even heretics and sectarians shall recognise, and by the teaching of which to their children they shall, by a special judgment of God, write their own condemnation, and direct the innocent, unsophisticated mind to the real home of truth. "I believe in the holy Catholic Church" is a sentence which, in the mouth of a Protestant, is a deliberate protestation against his own errors. A mysterious influence compels the apostate to condemn himself by his own mouth. And reason itself teaches that the rule of faith must be of this kind. If God gives a revelation which He intends for all men, especially for the poor (Luke iv. 18; vii. 22; vi. 20; xiv. 13); if it is given at a time when books were the most expensive articles of luxury which it was possible to have-at a time when not one per • Dr. Cumming rather plumes himself on his knowledge of the Fathers. I heard him say, at a former meeting at Clapham, that he had read all the Fathers! among others, he mentioned "Jerome, Vigilantius, Augustine." I interrupted him, and asked him whether Vigilantius was a Father or a heretic? He said, a Father. I asked him again whether he had read him? He answered, that he had not only read his works, but also made a little volume of extracts from them. I offered him 207. if he would produce any single treatise of this "Father," or even the "little volume of extracts" from his works. This challenge he has never responded to, and with good reason; for any common Church dictionary will tell him that no writings of the heretic Vigilantius exist, except a few extracts from his works in the writings of those Fathers who took pains to refute him. May we take this as a fair specimen of his knowledge of the Fathers, and of his accuracy in citing them? son in a thousand could read-nearly fifteen hundred years before printing was to be invented; I say that it is utterly unreasonable to suppose that God could have shut up that revelation in a book, and given that closed book to the poor, ignorant, prejudiced Pagan, and said, 'Take and read, and form your faith for yourself.' There must be some easier, some more certain method, by which the ignorant might come to the certainty of faith; and what is the easiest conceivable method? What but that which is put down in the written word itself? "This is My beloved Son; hear Him" (Matt. xvii. 5). Hear Christ, and those to whom He says, "He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me" (Luke x. 16). At the same time intimating that these Apostles were to have successors to the end of the world: "Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world" (Matt. xxviii. 20). Thus faith does not come by reading, by study, or by meditation; but "faith cometh by hearing" (Rom. x. 17). Not by hearing a pretended prophet, who says, "I come, sent by God, to teach you His will; but though I claim to be a prophet, I am not infallible. I may be deceived. I bring you the Word of God; but after all it may be a mistake." Faith, which is the most absolute moral certainty, can never be the result of an uncertain authority. The authority, then, by the hearing of which faith is to come, must be infallible; that is, it must be absolute, unwavering, the same to-day as yesterday, the same here as in Rome, in France, in Spain, in America, in Asia; teaching authoritatively, certainly, undoubtingly. Its language is, "This I believe, because God, who can neither deceive nor be deceived, has revealed it to His Church, and His Church has taught it to me; in this faith I am determined to live and die; and for it I am prepared, by God's grace, to suffer the loss of all things, even of life itself." THE END. LONDON: PRINTED BY LEVEY, ROBSON, AND FRANKLYN, |