1.]

THE CONTROVERSY WITH ROME.

15

writings of the Fathers were more anxious to pick out some sentence in apparent contradiction with the views of their opponents, than to weigh dispassionately whether the question at issue in the modern controversy were at all present to the mind of the author whom they quote, or to search whether elsewhere in his writings passages might not be found bearing a different aspect. The extracts thus picked out are copied, without verification, by one writer after another, so that, to one familiar with the controversy, books on it are apt to seem monotonous. And it constantly happens that at the present day controversial writers continue to employ quotations from writings once supposed to be genuine, but which all learned critics now know to be spurious. I feel little inclination to enter into a detailed exposure of errors of this kind. I have said already that, to an unlearned Christian, familiarity with the Bible affords the best safeguard against Romanism, and I will add now that a learned Christian, who makes himself familiar, by uncontroversial reading, with the thoughts of the men of the ancient Church, finds that he is breathing a different atmosphere from that of modern Romanism, and that he cannot accept many things now propounded as articles of faith, unless he is prepared to say that on many important questions we are wiser than the Fathers. That is what Roman Catholic advocates now actually say: but then they have no right to quarrel with Protestants who say the same.

In one respect I have an advantage in addressing an audience all of one way of thinking, that I am not bound to measure my words through fear of giving offence, and that when I think opinions false and absurd, I can plainly say so. Yet I should be sorry so to use this liberty of mine that my example should mislead you afterwards. In every controversy the Christian teacher should put away all bitterness, 'in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves.' In this controversy we have to deal with those whose feelings of piety and reverence have in part fastened themselves on unworthy objects; and it requires a skilful hand gently to disengage these feelings, and give them a better training-not tear them up and kill them. We assail credulity, not faith; and we cannot use the weapons of those who deny the

supernatural, and refuse to lift their thoughts above material things.

Your future success in controversy, should it be your lot to engage in it, may depend much on the strength of your faith in truths not controverted. For no one is much influenced by those with whom he has no sympathies; and your influence on those whom you would most wish to gain, and whom there is most hope of gaining-those, I mean, who truly love our Lord, and whose will to do His will has the promise of being blessed by the guidance of His Spirit into truth-must depend on yourselves being animated by the same love, and seeking for the guidance of the same Spirit.

In the interests, then, of controversy itself, I might give the concluding caution, which I should in any case have added for the sake of your own spiritual health, namely, that you should not allow the pleasure which intellectual combat has for many minds to detain you too long in the thorny paths of controversy, and out of those pastures where your soul must find its nourishment. 'I love not,' says Taylor, to be one of the disputers of this world. For I suppose skill in controversies to be the worst part of learning, and time is the worst spent in them, and men the least benefited by them.' When we must engage in controversy, it is not that we love contention, but that we love the truth which is at stake. Seek, then, in study of the Scriptures to know the truth, and pray that God will inspire you with a sincere love of it-of the whole truth, and not merely of that portion of it which it may be your duty to defend—and ask Him also to inspire you with a sincere love of your brethren: so that the end of all your controversy may be, not the display of your own skill in arguing, not the obtaining of victory for yourself or for your party, but the mutual edification of all who take part in it, and their growth in likeness to Christ.

THE CARDINAL

IMPORTANCE OF THE

QUESTION OF INFALLIBILITY.

You will easily understand that it would be absolutely

impossible for me, in the course of these lectures, to go through all the details of the Roman Catholic controversy. You have in your hands text-books which will give you information on all the most important points. But the truth is, that the issues of the controversy mainly turn on one great question, which is the only one that I expect to be able to discuss with you-I mean the question of the Infallibility of the Church. If that be decided against us, our whole case is gone, and victories on the details of the controversy would profit us as little as, to use a favourite illustration of Archbishop Whately's, it profits a chess-player to win some pieces and pawns if he gets his king checkmated. In fact, suppose we make what seems to ourselves a quite convincing proof that some doctrine of the Roman Church is not contained in Scripture, what does that avail if we are forced to own that that Church has access to other sources of information besides Scripture as to the doctrine taught by our Lord and His Apostles? Suppose we even consider that we have proved a Roman doctrine to be contrary to Scripture, what does that avail if we are compelled to acknowledge that we are quite incompetent to decide what is Scripture or what is the meaning of it, and if it belongs to the Church of Rome alone to give us the book and to teach us its true interpretation? In like manner, if our study of history should lead us to the conclusion that the teaching of the present Church is at variance

with the teaching of the Church of former days, we are forced to surrender this ill-grounded suspicion of ours if we are made to believe that the Church cannot err, and, as a necessary consequence, that her teaching must be at all times the same.

One can scarcely open any book that attempts to deal with controversy by such a Roman Catholic as, for instance, Cardinal Manning, without being forced to observe how his faith in the infallibility of the present Church makes him impenetrable to all arguments. Suppose, for example, the question in dispute is the Pope's personal infallibility, and that you object to him the case of Honorius: he replies, At most you could make out that it is doubtful whether Honorius was orthodox; but it is certain that a Pope could not be a heretic. Well, you reply, at least the case of Honorius shows that the Church of the time supposed that a Pope could be a heretic. Not so, he answers, for the Church now holds that a Pope speaking ex cathedra cannot err, and the Church could not have taught differently at any other time.

Thus, as long as anyone really believes in the infallibility of his Church, he is proof against any argument you can ply him with. Conversely, when faith in this principle is shaken, belief in some other Roman Catholic doctrine is sure also to be disturbed; for there are some of these doctrines in respect of which nothing but a very strong belief that the Roman Church cannot decide wrongly will prevent a candid inquirer from coming to the conclusion that she has decided wrongly. This simplification, then, of the controversy realizes for us the wish of the Roman tyrant that all his enemies had but one neck. If we can but strike one blow, the whole battle is won.

If the vital importance of this question of Infallibility had not been sufficiently evident from a priori considerations, I should have been convinced of it from the history of the Roman Catholic controversy as it has been conducted in my own lifetime. When I first came to an age to take lively interest in the subject Dr. Newman and his coadjutors were publishing, in the Tracts for the Times, excellent refutations of the Roman doctrine on Purgatory and on some other important points. A very few years afterwards, without making the smallest attempt to answer their own arguments, these

11.]

RECENT CHANGES IN ROMISH DOCTRINE.

19

men went over to Rome, and bound themselves to believe and teach as true things which they had themselves proved to be false. The accounts which those who went over in that movement gave of their reasons for the change show surprising indifference to the ordinary topics of the controversy, and in some cases leave us only obscurely to discern why they went at all. It was natural that many who witnessed the sudden collapse of the resistance which had been offered to Roman Catholic teaching should conclude that it had been a sham fight all along; but this was unjust. It rather resembled what not unfrequently occurs in the annals of warfare when, after entrenchments have been long and obstinately assaulted without success, some great general has taken up a position which has caused them to be evacuated without a struggle.

While the writers of the Tracts were assailing with success different points of Roman teaching, they allowed themselves to be persuaded that Christ must have provided His people with some infallible guide to truth; and they accepted the Church of Rome as that guide, with scarcely an attempt to make a careful scrutiny of the grounds of her pretensions, and merely because, if she were not that guide, they knew not where else to find it. Thus, when they were beaten on the one question of Infallibility, their victories on other points availed them nothing.

Perhaps those who then submitted to the Church of Rome scarcely realized all that was meant in their profession of faith in their new guide. They may have thought it meant no more than belief that everything the Church of Rome then taught was infallibly true. Events soon taught them that it meant besides that they must believe everything that that Church might afterwards teach; and her subsequent teaching put so great a strain on the faith of the new converts, that in a few cases it was more than it could bear.

The idea that the doctrine of the Church of Rome is always the same is one which no one of the present day can hold without putting an enormous strain on his understanding. It used to be the boast of Romish advocates that the teaching of their Church was unchangeable. Heretics, they used to say,