11.]

CHANGES IN ROMISH CATECHISMS.

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really Protestants; they had adopted the great principle of Protestantism. And so, at the time of the formation of the Old Catholic party, I expressed my fears in a lecture here that its members would be able to find no home in the Roman Church. My fears, I say, for I count it a thing to be regretted that that Church, by casting out her most learned and most enlightened members, should lose all chance of recovering the truth by reform from within.

If, however, there could ever be a case where men should be constrained by a reductio ad absurdum to abandon a principle they had held, but which had been shown to lead to consequences certainly false, it was when the men of the Old Catholic party found that if they were to go on maintaining the infallibility of their Church, they must also assert that she never had changed her doctrine. If, previous to the Vatican Council, the Church of Rome had known the doctrine of the Pope's personal infallibility to be true, she had, somehow or another, so neglected to teach it, that though it is a doctrine relating to the very foundation of her religious system, her priests and bishops had been ignorant that it was any part of her teaching. The Infallibilist party at Rome had been obliged, at an early stage of their exertions, to get placed on the Prohibitory Index, Bailly's work on Theology, which had been used as a text-book at Maynooth. Would not any Roman Catholic say that the Church of Ireland had changed her doctrine if the text-books which you use here were not only removed from your course, but if the Irish bishops published a declaration that these books, in which their predecessors had been wont to examine candidates for orders, contained erroneous doctrine, and were on that account unfit to be read by our people?

Again, the effect of the Vatican Council was to necessitate great changes in controversial catechisms. One might think that the clergymen who might be supposed best acquainted with the doctrines of their Church are those who are selected to conduct controversy with opponents. In our Church, indeed, anyone may engage in controversy at his own discretion, and need not necessarily be the most learned or wisest of our body; but the controversial catechisms of the Roman

Church are only issued with the permission of the writer's superiors, and therefore their statements as to Roman Catholic doctrine may be supposed to tell what the best informed members of the communion believe that she teaches. Now, it had been a common practice with Roman Catholic controversial writers, when pressed with objections against the doctrine of the personal infallibility of the Pope, to repudiate that doctrine altogether, and to declare it to be a Protestant misrepresentation to assert that it was taught by their Church.

I may afterwards have occasion to say something about books which circulated in America, but will now mention one to which my own attention happened to be specially drawn. The controversial book which, thirty years ago, was most relied on in this country was ' Keenan's Catechism,' a book published with the imprimatur of Scotch Roman Catholic bishops, and recommended also by Irish prelates. This book contained the following question and answer:—

'Q. Must not Catholics believe the Pope in himself to be infallible?

A. This is a Protestant invention: it is no article of the Catholic faith no decision of his can oblige, under pain of heresy, unless it be received and enforced by the teaching body; that is, by the bishops of the Church.'

About 1869 or 1870 I had a visit from an English clergyman, who, for reasons of health, resided chiefly on the Continent, and, mixing much with Roman Catholics, took great interest in the controversy which was then agitating their Church. I showed him the question and answer in 'Keenan's Catechism'; and he was so much interested by them, that he bought some copies of the book to present to his friends abroad. A couple of years later he visited Ireland again, and purchased some more copies of 'Keenan'; but this question and answer had then disappeared. He presented me then with the two copies I have here. To all appearance they are identical in their contents. From the title-page, as it appears on the paper cover of each, the two books appear to be both of the twenty-first thousand; but when we open the books, we find them further agreeing in the singular

feature, that there is another title-page which describes each as of the twenty-fourth thousand. But at page 112 the question and answer which I have quoted are to be found in the one book, and are absent from the other. It is, therefore, impossible now to maintain that the faith of the Church of Rome never changes, when it is notorious that there is something which is now part of her faith which those who had a good right to know declared was no part of her faith twenty years ago.*

I will not delay to speak of many changes in Roman teaching consequent on the definition of Papal Infallibility; but you can easily understand that there are a great many statements officially made by several Popes which, inasmuch as they rested on papal authority alone, learned Roman Catholics had formerly thought themselves at liberty to reject, but which must now be accepted as articles of faith. But what I wish now to speak of is, that the forced confession of change, at least by way of addition, in Roman teaching has necessitated a surrender of the principles on which her system had formerly been defended; and this was what I had specially in mind when I spoke of the fortress of Infallibility as the last refuge of a beaten army, who, when driven from this, must fall into total rout.

The first revolt against Romanism took place when the Bible was made easily accessible. When, by means of trans

In reply to the above it has been said that it has been customary with heretics to accuse the Church of changing her doctrine whenever she finds it necessary, for the first time, to pass condemnation on some newly invented heresy; and that if the Church of Rome can fairly be accused of having changed her doctrine at the Vatican Council, the Church of the fourth century may, with equal fairness, be accused of having changed her doctrine at the Council of Nicæa. But in order to make the parallel a just one, it would be necessary to show that all through the first three centuries it had been a permissible opinion in the Christian Church to hold that our Blessed Lord was not truly and properly God: and further that, when heathen assailants had accused the Church of worshipping Christ as God, it had been customary with Christian apologists to answer, this is a heathen invention; the Christian Church has never regarded Christ as God in the highest sense of the word.' If such a defence had been made by the ablest of the Christian advocates, and if their apologies had been circulated with the approbation of all the leading bishops, then it would have been impossible to resist the Arian allegation that the Council of Nicæa had innovated on the ancient faith of the Church.

lations printed in the vulgar languages of Europe, a knowledge of the New Testament became general, men could not help taking notice that the Christianity then taught by the Church was a very different thing from that which was preached by the Apostles, and that a host of doctrines were taught as necessary to salvation by the modern Church, of which, as far as we could learn from the Bible, the early Church knew nothing. Whether the doctrines of Romanism can be proved from the Bible is a matter which you can judge for yourselves; but if there is any doubt about it, that doubt is removed by watching the next stage of the controversy. The Roman Catholic advocates ceased to insist that the doctrines of the Church could be deduced from Scripture ; but the theory of some early heretics, refuted by Irenæus* was revived, namely, that the Bible does not contain the whole of God's revelation, and that a body of traditional doctrine existed in the Church equally deserving of veneration.

At this time, however, all parties were agreed that through our Lord and His Apostles a revelation unique in the history of the world had been made to mankind. All parties. imagined that it was the truths then made known, neither more nor less, that the Church was to preserve and teach. All parties agreed that the Holy Scriptures might be implicitly depended on as an inspired record of these truths. The main difference was as to how far the Bible record of them could be regarded as complete. Things were taught and practised in the Roman Church for which the Bible furnished no adequate justification; and the Roman advocates

When they [the Valentinian heretics] are confuted from the Scriptures they turn round and accuse these same Scriptures as if they were not correct, nor of authority, for that they are ambiguously worded, and that the truth cannot be discovered from them by those who are ignorant of tradition. For they say that the truth was not delivered in writing but viva voce; wherefore Paul also declared "We speak wisdom among them that are perfect, but not the wisdom of this world" (Irenæus iii. c. 2.) And to make the analogy complete, Irenæus goes on to complain that when the Church met these heretics on their own ground of tradition, then they had recourse to a theory of development claiming to be then in possession of purer doctrine than that which the Apostles had been content to teach.

11.] THE ROMISH CHURCH AND THE FATHERS.

29

insisted that, though the Bible contained truth, it did not contain the whole truth, and that the Church was able, by her traditions, to supplement the deficiencies of Scripture, having in those traditions a secure record of apostolic teaching on many points on which the Bible contained only obscure indications, or even gave no information at all.

This Roman assertion might be met in two ways. Many, probably the majority, of the Protestants refused to listen at all to doctrines said to be binding on their faith, and not asserted to be taught in Scripture; and we shall afterwards see that they had the sanction of several of the most eminent Fathers for thinking that what was asserted without the authority of Holy Scripture might be 'despised as freely as approved.'* But there were champions of our Church who met the Roman case in another way. They declared that, as they had been convinced by historical proof that the books of the New Testament were written by Apostles or apostolical men, so they had no objection to examine whether similar historic proof could be given of the apostolic origin of any of the peculiar doctrines of Romanism.

Bellarmine, indeed, had given as one of his rules for knowing whether or not the proof of a Church doctrine rested on tradition,† that if a doctrine taught by the Church could not be proved by Scripture, it must be proved by tradition; for the Church could not teach wrong; and so the doctrine must be proved either in the one way or the other. But it would be too much to expect from us that we should admit a failure of Scripture proof to constitute in itself a proof by tradition. We have a right to ask, If the Church learned that doctrine by tradition, where has that tradition been recorded? Who are the ancient authors that mention it? If the thing has been handed down from the Apostles the Church of the first centuries must have believed or practised it let us inquire, as we should in the case of any other historical question, whether she did or not.

Bishop Jewel, in his celebrated challenge, enumerated

Hieron. in Matt. xxiii. + De verbo Dei, iv. 9.