character, and their claim to be the Word of God, were authoritatively determined. By the same appeal is the genuineness and apostolic origin of tradition ascertained, or the meaning of either, if doubtful, decided. Both portions of the divine word thus prefer an equal claim to acceptance on the same authority; and this authority is by consequence manifestly independent of both. Whatever corroboration it may find in them, it is in itself distinct from and superior to them, and belongs inherently to the church, by powers vested in her directly by her divine head. By the essential nature of such a claim as the ground of faith, when pushed to its consistent extent, every other consideration of right and of truth is, in fact, absorbed and overruled. It must be supreme in everything; it can tolerate no appeal elsewhere; and if vagueness and uncertainty be for a moment supposed to attach to the undecided question, "Where is the precise depository of infallibility ?"-if the existence of apparent differences, conflicting decisions and inconsistent decrees should raise a suspicion as to its sufficiency,-if so vast an assumption should be imagined to require some evidence in its support, it must be remembered that the plenitude of infallibility is all-sufficient: it extinguishes at once all doubt, it relieves its votaries from all harassing difficulties, it discards all reference to reason, and requires only a dutiful subjection; it puts an end to all controversy or inquiry, by the simple demand of an unhesitating, unreserved submission; it denounces the very entertaining of any question as a direct act of heresy and rebellion. All private judgement is but private infatuation,— individual conviction but individual delusion!

If there be on earth a real, living, divine authority in matters of faith, the claim at once follows for implicit subjection of the reason to it. To resist or object, is not error but sin: to reject its guidance for our own judgement, is not a mistake but a crime faith becomes a virtue, instead of virtue being the fruit of faith. Belief is a matter of duty, not of evidence; and there may be an intelligible meaning in what is termed the responsibility of the understanding: that is, after all, a responsibility in the individual to resign his understanding and passively adopt whatever the infallible authority dictates.

Such were the lofty pretensions which the self-styled Ca

tholic church by slow degrees put forth, and at length established in uncontrolled supremacy. Not, indeed, that it has been the practice of the church always to fall back on these high claims; but, without ever really dropping them, she has shown a judicious wisdom in waiving them as occasion required; adapting herself to the capacities of all her children, and condescending, whenever it seemed desirable, to employ the milder weapons of argument, in the use of which many of her advocates have shown themselves pre-eminently skilful.

A perception of the importance of thus claiming alliance with philosophy was the origin of the scholastic theology. Modern research into medieval literature has presented us with a distinct picture of the progress of this method of theologizing, and has traced the original jealousy of the church against the peripatetic system, gradually converted into a guarded adoption of it, and ending in an intimate union of its spirit with the whole scheme of dogmatic theology. The leaders of the church soon perceived how admirable an ally this system might be made; how completely all real independent inquiry into the simple truths of Revelation might be sunk in this subtil generalization upon terms; under whose dominion, all religious doctrine being reduced into systematic dogmas, and made the subject of interminable logical disputations, all higher views of truth would gradually be lost, and thus the subjection of all discussion to ecclesiastical authority would be ensured; while under the shelter of its name the utmost reverence would be paid to those abstractions, even though, under this orthodox disguise, little else than an infidel philosophy might be really concealed.

But with the world at large, the more effective line of argument was that systematic exhibition of texts and authoritative dicta, which constituted the "positive," as distinguished from the "scholastic" theology of the middle ages. The main defence of the Catholic doctrines is the plea of antiquity. The more popular Catholic theology has always mainly consisted in the accumulation of authorities from a succession of writers up to early times, who with more or less distinctness evince an agreement in the doctrines in question; or who, if they do not always explicitly assert them, at least present such indications as, to the well-trained disciple of the church, will VOL. XVI.-No. XXXI.

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easily bear the desired interpretation. Should captious opponents urge the insufficiency of such testimony, a ready source of reply is furnished in the consideration, that if in remoter antiquity these doctrines were not so precisely maintained in express forms, yet, from hints which are occasionally given, it is manifest that they were not the less really held and taught, though spoken of only in an "economical reserve;" that the tenets themselves always existed, and were held as it were in the breast of the true church, though the formal and precise expression of them was only extorted by the necessity of the case, to refute the arrogant speculations and repress the profane audacity of heretics. These true doctrines had all along been implicitly continued, though hidden, in the belief of the church; the emergencies of heretical assaults did but call forth the expression of them, or, to adopt the singularly happy illustration of Mr. Newman *, heresy did but "precipitate the truths before held in solution;”—a method of argument which must be allowed on all hands the most difficult to refute! The unbroken continuance of observances, rituals and articles of faith in the Catholic church, through all ages up to that of the Apostles, at once supplies the proof of those tenets, as the interruption of it is the test of heretical apostasy. Authentic history clearly traces some such forms up to very early times; statements occur in the apostolic writings which may be understood so as to be not inconsistent with similar institutions; hence on Catholic principles it follows that they are of apostolic origin, and by consequence are to be recognised as the unequivocal characteristics of the true church.

A rational inquirer might, indeed, trace the origin and progress of forms, creeds and rites in the church to certain tendencies of human nature; the small accessions which the ritual was always receiving, might imperceptibly overlay the original institution, so that it might at length be impossible to recognise its genuine features under the cumbrous dress of ecclesiastical ordinances, or to identify the reference to it in vague allusions to something perhaps bearing the same name, or of the same general import; much less could it be shown

*Letter to Bishop of Oxford, p. 30.

that the same institutions were referred to in the incidental allusions or very general precepts of the New Testament. Indeed it might not unreasonably be supposed, from the absence of any precise injunction of them in the New Testament, that they were not designed to be there taught; even, as from the want of positive testimony in the earlier writers, it might be urged that they formed no part of the received Christian system of that day. But this is quite at variance with true Catholic logic.

With a view to any critical deduction, our great ignorance of the entire condition of the church at the period immediately succeeding that of the apostolic ministrations would render it unsafe to adopt any line of argument in which the practice and testimony of that age must be the most material of all links, if we are to prove a real transmission from the Apostles. Moreover, were the apostolic origin of any tenet ever so completely traced, does this in the least prove the design of the founders of Christianity to make such institutions permanently and universally obligatory?

But on Catholic principles all these seeming difficulties are overcome, all these deficiencies in proof are supplied, the very allusion to them is rendered superfluous, by the infallible testimony which "the Church" bears to its own unbroken integrity, the indivisible union and connexion by which the propagation of order and truth has been continued in unimpaired succession from the first.

The idea of the inherent authority of the church once established, cannot admit of the slightest modification without involving an entire dereliction of the very principle itself. Yet among the supporters of the Anglican Reformation a considerable party still adhered to such principles, professing to maintain the Catholic faith alone. Testimonies to this effect from their writings are triumphantly dwelt upon by writers of the Anglo-Catholic school; and it cannot be denied that some of the most distinguished of the reformers, Cranmer and Ridley, even Bradford and Coverdale, as afterwards Hooker and many others, all refer expressly to primitive and Catholic antiquity as well as to Scripture. In many instances it is sufficiently clear that this appeal was only an argumentum ad hominem, a defence of their opinions on grounds which would

be conceded by their opponents (as is indeed manifestly the case in several passages even in the homilies which are expressly put forth by the church as containing "a wholesome doctrine, necessary FOR THESE TIMES"); still there is much in their tenets which proves how little they understood the broad principles which such a movement must really involve: and the same principles have been ever since maintained by a section of the English church, who, if they have not been able entirely to assert the supremacy of their system, have at least borne continued testimony to it as far as circumstances permitted. For the inconsistency of such proceedings it is less easy to account, than for the motives of their adoption or the means of their introduction.

In their arduous attempt to compel all parties by law to conform to one established creed, the Reformers at least saw the imperative necessity of not making their terms of admission too restricted. They knew the difficulties of their task and the untoward, heterogeneous and refractory materials on which they had to work; and this not only among theologians, but the legislature, who alone can decide what form is to be recognised as the state religion.

In such a movement, those who foresaw the impossibility of stopping the Reformation, and resolved, by siding with it, to moderate and guide the current, were the foremost to join in measures which they skilfully managed to turn considerably in favour of the old principles; while at a later period their successors sought to push the same system to a more exclusive pre-eminence and shattered the whole edifice in the attempt. And if, in still more modern times, these opinions appeared to slumber, they were not altogether without advocates, though little generally known or popularly attended to. At the present day, the widely extended revival which we have witnessed of this lingering adherence to the principles of the church before the Reformation, on the part of those who yet conform to that Reformation, is remarkable from their apparent forgetfulness, that on Catholic principles, by the very act of conforming, they have cast off all claim to Catholic unity or real participation in the succession to apostolic functions.

But however unwilling men may be to acknowledge this,