Romanism. In fact, the motto of the doctrine of Development is πατέρων μέγ ̓ ἀμείνονες εὐχόμεθ ̓ εἶναι— We are much wiser men than our fathers'. Well, surely, in many respects that is the case. Why, then, may not Protestants claim a right to revise erroneous decisions made in days when learning was asleep and science did not exist? Submission to the supremacy of Rome in Europe was mainly brought about by the circulation of documents which no one now pretends to be genuine. Why should not an age learned enough to detect these forgeries reject also the doctrine which was founded on them? Or, take another Roman doctrine, that of Transubstantiation. It was built up in the middle ages, and founded on a scholastic theory of substance and accidents which modern philosophy rejects. Why is the building to remain, when its foundation is discovered to be rotten? So much for the doctrine of Development in Protestant hands; while, in infidel it leads to the improving away of religion altogether. We, being wiser men than our fathers, can dispense with superstitions that amused them.

And against Protestants, at least, Romanists gain nothing by appealing to God's promises to be ever with His Church, and to give His Spirit to guide it into truth, and thence inferring that such as His Church is, such her Founder intended it to become. But this principle, 'Whatever is is right,' has to encounter the difficulty that Protestantism is : Why should not it be right? Was it only in Rome that Christianity was to develop itself? Was it not also to do so in Germany and England? Has God's Holy Spirit only a local operation, and is it to be supposed that He had no influence in bringing about the form in which Christ's religion has shaped itself here? May it not be supposed, for example, that He wisely ordained that the constitution of His Church should receive modifications to adapt it to the changing exigencies of society; that, in times when no form of government but monarchy was to be seen anywhere, it was necessary, if His Church was to make head successfully against the prevalent reign of brute force, that all its powers should be concentrated in a single hand; but that when, with the general spread of knowledge, men refused to

II.]

THE THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT SUPERseded.

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give unreasoning submission to authority, and claimed the right to exercise some judgment of their own in the conduct of their affairs, the constitution of the Church needed to be altered in order to bring it into harmony with the political structure of modern society?

The fact is, that the doctrine of Development has to encounter a great historical difficulty, which it can only remove by an enormous assumption. The doctrine is, that Christ's original revelation contained seeds and germs of truths destined, under the Divine guidance, to expand to a certain definite form. If this be true, that expansion would take place wherever these germs were planted. It does not depend on where a tree is planted, whether it springs up a cedar or a bramble-bush, or whether it brings forth figs or grapes. How is it, then, that all over the East that doctrine which is the cardinal one of modern Romanism-the necessity of union with the Chair of Peter-never made its appearance; nay, that the direct opposite was held? And what reason can be given for excluding from the list of divinelyintended developments those which we Protestants have made—as, for instance, the importance which we attach to the exercise of private judgment, to the individual study of Holy Scripture, to the right of each to approach the Throne of Grace without any earthly mediator? May it not be said that it was the vitality which the teaching of the Holy Spirit gave to the last doctrine, which has rescued Christianity from assuming the form of some heathen superstitions, in which a certain caste of men was imagined to understand the art of conciliating the favour of the gods; to whose mediation, therefore, the ordinary worshipper was to address himself, religion being a matter which only his priests understood, and which required no intellectual co-operation of his own? If we compare Protestant with Roman Catholic developments, we find, further, that Protestant developments are of such a nature as to be made only in the fulness of time, as the human intellect developed itself, and as science and learning grew. There is no shame in a Church acknowledging herself to grow wiser with years, in such matters as these. If the Church of Rome, for instance, were now wise enough

to expel the text of the Three heavenly Witnesses from her Vulgate, she could say in her defence that the science of Biblical criticism was more advanced now than in the days when this text was admitted. But, by what means are we to suppose that the Roman Church acquired a knowledge of historical facts concerning which there is no historical tradition? How has she come to be wiser now than the Church of former ages, concerning the way in which the Blessed Virgin was conceived 1900 years ago, or concerning the removal of her body to heaven? If there had been any historical tradition on these subjects, the Church would always have known it. And is it likely that God has interfered to make any special revelation on these subjects now, if He saw there was no inconvenience in leaving His Church for so many centuries without authentic information on such points? However, without further arguing the point whether Protestant or Roman developments are the best, it is evident that the doctrine of Development is a many-edged weapon. There are Eastern developments and Western ones, Protestant and Romish, even infidel developments: which is the right one? The Romanist answers, The Church of Rome is infallible; she alone has been commissioned to develop doctrine the right way; all other developments are wrong. Let the Romanist prove that, and he may use the doctrine of Development, if he then cares to do so; but it is quite plain that without the doctrine of Roman Infallibility, the doctrine of Development is perfectly useless to a Romish advocate.

But with the doctrine of Infallibility once proved, or supposed to be so, the doctrine of Development becomes needless; and Cardinal Manning, in particular, has quite got beyond it. In my own time the aspect of Romanism has changed so rapidly that this theory of Development, so fashionable thirty years ago, has now dropped into the background. It was wanted while the Roman Catholic divines were attempting to make some kind of battle on the field of history. In those days it was still attempted to be maintained that the teaching of the Church of the present day agrees with that of the Church of early times: not indeed in form.

II.] INFIDEL TENDENCY OF INFALLIBILIST ARGuments.

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but at least in such wise that the former contains the germ of the latter. Now, the idea of testing the teaching of the Church of the present day, by comparison either with Scripture or antiquity, is completely abandoned. Cardinal Manning has profited by Plutarch's story, that when Pericles was puzzling himself what account of his expenditure he should give the Athenian people, he got the advice from Alcibiades that it would be wiser of him to study how he could avoid giving any account at all. The most thoroughgoing and most ignorant Protestant cannot show greater indifference to the opinions of the Fathers than does Cardinal Manning. If Dr. Manning were asked whether St. Cyprian held the doctrine of the Pope's Supremacy, he might answer much in the same way that, as the story goes, Mr. Spurgeon answered, when asked whether St. Cyprian held the doctrine of Justification by Faith. Either might say, 'I don't know, and I don't much care; but, for his own sake, I hope he did; for if he didn't, so much the worse for him.' According to Manning, it is a matter of unimportance how the Church is to be reconciled with Scripture or antiquity, when once you understand that the Church is the living voice of the same Being who inspired Scripture, and who taught the ancient Church. To look for one's creed in Scripture and antiquity is, to Manning, as great a heresy as to look for it in Scripture alone. Either course makes the individual the judge or critic of Revelation. The appeal to antiquity, says Manning, is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason, because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour; and a heresy, because it denies that voice to be divine.* According to Manning's theory, it is our duty to accept implicitly whatever the present Church teaches, and to be sure that, however opposed this may seem to what we find in Scripture or antiquity, we need not trouble ourselves about the matter, and that the opposition can only be apparent. According to this theory, then, all the prerogatives of Scripture are annulled: the dicta of Pius IX. and Leo XIII. are as truly inspired by God's Spirit, and are to be received with as much reverence, as the utterances of

* Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost, p. 226: see also pp. 28, 203.

Peter and Paul. Thus the function of the Church, in the latest form of Romanism, is made to be not so much to guard and hand down securely an original revelation as to be a perpetual organ for making new revelations.* Whenever a new controversy arises, the Pope is divinely inspired to discern its true solution, and to pronounce which of the parties is in the right, and how far. In this way Manning's party have now got beyond the old Ultramontane doctrine of the inerrancy of the Pope. This doctrine has been changed into that of his divine perpetual inspiration,† giving him a power of disclosing new truths as infallibly as Peter and Paul. Dr. Pusey called this theory a kind of Llamaism, implying as it does a kind of hypostatic union of the Holy Ghost with each successive Pope.

I think I have made good my assertion, that the present Roman Catholic position is one taken up in desperation by men who have been driven from every other. And I will add that they have taken it up with immense loss; for the few whom they have gained from us do not make up for the larger numbers, both in our communion and their own, whom they have driven into infidelity. In their assaults on Protestantism they have freely made use of infidel arguments. Their method has been that of some so-called Professors of biology first to bewilder and stupefy their patients, that they may be ready to believe anything, and do anything, their mesmerizer tells them. And it has happened that men who have been thus driven to the verge of infidelity, when they saw that abyss yawning before them, have eagerly clutched

In theory the power of making new revelations is disclaimed, but in practice there is no scruple about calling on the Church to believe new truths: that is, to accept as true things previously disputed or unknown; and the claims of theory are supposed to be satisfied by asserting, often in direct opposition to evidence, that the revelation was not new, for that the Church had always believed in accordance with the new ruling.

† A Roman Catholic critic accuses me of forgetting here that 'the Catholic claim' is not inspiration but only inerrancy. I consider the latter far the stronger word. In popular language the word 'inspired' is sometimes used in speaking of the works of a great genius who is not supposed to be exempt from error, but no one can imagine the utterances of a naturally fallible man to be guaranteed against possibility of error, unless he believe that man to be speaking, not of his own mind, but as the inspired organ of the Holy Spirit.