not reach by their own exertions. I should feel no hesitation in accepting as correct a plan prepared by a competent surveyor, or a statement of the result of a set of voluminous accounts prepared by an accountant, or statements made in the Nautical Almanac by, or by the authority of, the Astronomer Royal, but this is because every person of common education knows enough of surveying, arithmetic, and astronomy to know the methods employed and to be aware that they can be trusted to work out recondite and difficult inquiries. If, however, the principles of a science, or of the methods by which those who profess it proceed, are denied or are obscure, the principles must be proved to be true and the method to be legitimate before the conclusions of an expert are of any value at all. Before an expert on astrology can testify he must first prove that the principles of astrology are true, and then that the method by which his conclusions are reached will lead to legitimate conclusions from them. So of theology: before you can rely on any person or body of persons as authoritative exponents of it, you must first believe that the principles of theology are true and that the method by which the authoritative exponent of them proceeds is correct, and then that both their knowledge and good faith are such as to give their enunciations the weight claimed for them-such weight in this case, that it can be rebutted only by conclusive proof of the contradictory of what is alleged; and upon the proof of each of these matters, the improbability or hardness' of each and every one, and of all the doctrines enunciated, will be a relevant objection.

Three leading Catholic dogmas-the Resurrection, the Birth from a Virgin, and the Ascension-are admitted by Mr. Mivart to be 'utterly impossible' to be believed by him on mere historical and critical grounds. This is an argument to show that the principles of the so-called science of theology are false, or that if they are true its method is false, or that if that is true the expert is not skilful, or that if he is skilful he is not in good faith; and any one of these inferences is fatal to the value of the enunciation of doctrine. Who would believe a chemist or a medical man or a natural philosopher who was obliged to admit that some of his leading doctrines would but for his assertion of their truth be wholly incredible? Every one would say there must be a mistake somewhere. A crane requires a solid foundation, but if it is intended to lift a heavy weight, an additional degree of strength in the foundation must be added for every addition to the maximum weight to be lifted, for when the weight is lifted it must be supported as well as the crane and the tackle.

It is not easy to prove the appearance of ghosts, but it must be far more difficult to prove that any given man knows so much about them that, if he says a ghost appeared, the burden of proving that it did not is thrown on every one who denies it.

There are some particular difficulties about the proof of his rule of evidence which Mr. Mivart lies under, and of which he has taken no notice. He does not specifically define what he means by the infallibility of the Church. He does not say in whom it is vested, or how it is exercised, or how it is limited. It may be supposed, however, that he believes it to be vested in the Pope and the bishops and clergy of the Roman Catholic Church, or some of them when acting in some special capacity. Mr. Mivart will not say, of course, that it is a self-evident truth that Leo the Thirteenth is infallible when he acts in a certain capacity and on certain occasions. Such a statement would be as absurd as that any other person is infallible. It cannot conceivably be proved otherwise than by independent historical evidence, conclusive in its nature, that Leo the Thirteenth is the actual holder of powers of the sort claimed, given to some person or persons and their successors by God himself nearly nineteen hundred years ago. I will not be exacting. I will say nothing about the irrelevancy of the text 'Thou art Peter.' I will consent to sweep the New Testament out of existence if Mr. Mivart wishes it, but he must give us a πоû σTŵ of some kind; surely there must be some sort of historical foundation somewhere. Mr. Mivart surely believes that Jesus Christ founded the Church and gave it infallibility, being a Divine Person able to do so. He must believe this for some reason other than that Leo the Thirteenth and other living men say so, or he begs the question. What then is his reason? Ultimately it must be that history proves it. But where is any historical proof at all? and even if there were any such proof, what could it come to except that Jesus Christ said, or wrote, or did this or that? and even if that should be proved, what would it matter unless it were proved that Jesus Christ knew more about such things than others? and how could that be proved unless you could prove by historical evidence the doctrines of the Apostles' Creed which Mr. Mivart tells us are on such evidence alone to him absolutely incredible? His whole theory is thus nothing more or less than a petitio principii disguised. I believe the Church to be infallible because the infallible Church says it is infallible.

What makes the contrast between Mr. Mivart's rule of evidence and his admission of the common principles of science and criticism more startling, is that his rule of evidence requires a specially distinct proof of the infallibility of the Church as defined at the Vatican Council, whereas his scientific principles have led him to impute broadcast the grossest errors to all sorts of ecclesiastical and theological authorities on all sorts of religious questions not actually forming a part of the set of intellectual conceptions which he says are dogmas of the faith.

If this view of the results of Biblical criticism is true, all the works of all the most famous theologians must be discredited; for

whatever may have been the doctrine of the Church, every page of their writings is written on the supposition that, so far from being unhistorical and untrustworthy, the whole of the Old and New Testaments, as interpreted by the Church, is absolutely true. It is impossible to open Aquinas without seeing that the Summa is a mixture of philosophy, as Aquinas understood it, with Scripture, interpreted according to certain rules and precedents. The same is true of Bellarmine, but a single instance from Bossuet is so instructive that I will say a word of it. I refer to his celebrated controversy with Père Simon the Oratorian, one of the earliest forerunners of the modern school of criticism. Simon, a man of great learning, wanting elbow-room,' like Mr. Mivart, criticised the Bible as he would criticise other books-that is, he read the originals, or what claimed to be such, in Greek and Hebrew, and made out their meaning as well as he could in the ordinary way. He would not accept the interpretations of Augustine and others. Bossuet denounced him almost as a criminal, and declared in every form and repeatedly that to attack the traditional interpretation of the Scriptures was to attack both tradition and Scripture, and led straight to that religious indifference which he regarded as the height and consummation of all impiety. It is impossible to read Bossuet without feeling that he would have regarded Mr. Mivart's view about the criticism of the Scripture, and the results to which it has led, with equal horror and astonishment. It would have stultified all he wrote.

Mr. Mivart tells us himself that councils, doctors, Church tribunals, and ecclesiastical authorities of all sorts have grievously erred in morals and in doctrines not forming part of the actual dogmas of the Church. He says, 'In matters of morals, what could have been more unequivocal than the most authoritative and distinct decrees of popes and councils against usury, yet what ecclesiastic has now a word to say against it?' He gives a long account of the proceedings against Galileo, which he denounces,3 and he sums up a long passage thus: Authority can be justified only by reason, and it cannot therefore be justified if it opposes reason 94 -as it did in the cases of usury and persecution. I mention this in order to show the strange position in which Mr. Mivart has placed himself about his rule of evidence. His fundamental proposition is that the authority, defined at the Vatican Council, is infallible. If this is not proved beyond all doubt by historical evidence, he either falls into a petitio principii, or fails to establish his rule of evidence. The evidence must also be adjusted with extraordinary delicacy. It must be exactly what is necessary to prove that the Church is infallible on those articles of faith which cannot be tested by reason, and not enough to show that it is infallible on matters which can be so July 1885, p. 46.

July 1887, p. 46; July 1885, pp. 38-41.

4

tested; for on those matters he himself admits it has been shown to be wrong. To prove too much is as fatal to Mr. Mivart's views as to prove too little, for he expressly admits that the Church has repeatedly been proved to be wrong on matters which can be tested by reason, though it has, he says, been providentially restrained from erecting such errors into articles of faith. The evidence must prove clearly that the Church is entitled to belief, in the absence of a negative demonstration, when it asserts the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin, but that all the Doctors of the Church, from the early Fathers down to the present day, may have been utterly wrong in their views about Biblical criticism; that tribunals and councils may have been wrong when they denounced usury, wrong when they practised persecution, wrong, in short, whenever they opposed reason,' but that they were infallible when they pronounced upon the Monothelite controversy, the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the like. In short, that they were always right when they could not be tested, and generally wrong when they could. It is as difficult to my mind to prove this as it would be to prove that a man's memory was so bad that he could never remember a letter accurately unless it had been burnt, in which case it was so good that he must be believed in whatever he said unless the contradictory of it could be proved by the production of the letter itself.

Mr. Mivart is the more bound to be precise upon this because of the language which he holds about the early Church.

Let us allow, for argument's sake, that evidence tends to show the Church of the first century to have differed profoundly in aspect from that of the third, which latter every competent person knows to be essentially the same as the Catholic Church of to-day. Let it also be similarly admitted that there was at first no distinction between bishops and priests. . . . Let us admit that primitive services were sometimes accompanied by the utterances of an irrational jargon claiming to be a gift of tongues, that epileptics were taken to be persons possessed of devils, and that, instead of the modern mass, there was a service consisting in part of a common meal, in partaking of which great abuses and excesses occurred. Would such admissions as these be destructive to Catholic faith or be fatal to the authoritative character of the Church as the exponent of a divine, supernatural revelation? Sir James Stephen of course thinks they would be thus fatal.

I think they certainly are the strongest evidence to show that the present Church and the primitive Church differed widely, both in doctrine and in discipline, and Mr. Mivart does not say how he means to avoid this conclusion, nor does he appear to me to understand the importance of it. To me it seems to cut at the root of the modern claim.

Before leaving this subject, I must observe that, when a matter depends upon the evidence of an expert or experts, the question of good faith is more important than in any other questions of evidence whatever. Engineers, surgeons, chemists, can always

be found to swear to nearly anything. Theologians differ even more. From the days of St. Paul to those of Dr. Döllinger their disputes have filled the world. A decision by a number of theologians that the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception or the Infallibility of the Pope is true, is like a decision by Mr. Gladstone as an expert in politics that Home Rule is wise, or by Lord Salisbury that it is unwise. It is merely a passionate expression of personal opinion in the maintenance of which the person who expresses it has an overwhelming personal interest.

I now turn to the foundations on which Mr. Mivart builds his whole theory. He does not expressly tell us what they are, but he gives us a sketch (and it is all that could be expected in so short an essay) of the sort of way in which he believes in the existence of God and in the existence of the Infallible Church.

As to the existence of God, he says, with some impatience at my supposed ignorance of the opinions of Catholics, 'Of course the existence of God is a question to be settled by reason.' It is most true, as my critic says, that ordinary human reason in the last resort is the supreme judge of all controversies whatever. Sir James Stephen would have learnt this if he had only consulted the first priest he met in the street.'5 (I think the priest would have been a good deal surprised at being stopped with such a question, but let this pass.)

Let us see, then, what, according to Mr. Mivart, reason tells him of the existence of God." Though he asserts that the existence of God is a question to be determined by reason, he gives us no hint as to the reasons by which he is determined in deciding it in the affirmative. He says he approaches the examination of what professes to be revealed. with a profound absolute conviction that the universe is ruled by a personal God.' Where he gets this belief he does not hint. He seems to connect it in some way with a belief about free will, which many, perhaps most, people do not share. He gives some information, however, as to what his belief about God is. 'Our reason makes God so far known to us as to appreciate His utter incomprehensibility, since it is only God who can know what the word God really means.' 'Existence in God and creatures is indescribably and incomprehensibly different.' The proposition 'God exists' is thus reduced to an assertion that an unmeaning predicate may be attached to an unknown subject, that something unintelligible may be said of something unknown. Further, we are told that all words applied to God are utterly inadequate symbols.' The term goodness as applied to God is utterly inadequate, but is infinitely more true than badness.' These words convey to my mind no meaning at all. There is other language of this kind, of which I will quote only this: "Though reason is enough to make • Pp. 859-60.

5 P. 851.