to promise freedom from doubt on such terms as these. I This argument of Dr. Newman's was revived some little time ago by Mr. Mallock. He had been in the habit of publishing articles in magazines, in which he criticized other people's beliefs and disbeliefs so freely, that it was hard to know what he believed or did not believe himself. At last he published an essay, of which the gist was that Romanism alone could make head against infidelity; that all attempts to defend Christianity by argument must end in failure; but that a religion which demands submission without proof may hold its ground for ever. For a time, I grant; but certainly only for a time. Was ever the cause of Christianity so treacherously defended? If infamous charges were made against my character, perhaps there are some of you who might think well enough of me to disbelieve them without examination. But suppose anyone were to defend me after this fashion: Dr. Salmon says he is a good man, and I earnestly pray you to take his own word for it; for if you permit yourself to inquire into the charges against him, you will be forced to come to an unfavourable conclusion about him, which would be so very uncomfortable for you to hold, that it will be a great deal wiser for you to make no inquiry.' Do you think I should be grateful for such a defence as that? or that I could regard the maker of it as other than an enemy who scarcely took the trouble to disguise his malignity? If this be the best that can be said for the Church of Rome, the peace of mind which she offers is just that which might be i III.] EXAMINE ROMAN CLAIMS BEFORE SUBMISSION. 61 offered by the directors of some Glasgow Bank, who had made away with their customers' money, but hoped that by bold speaking they might carry on their business prosperously, and prevent their accounts being looked into. Recently an attempt has been made to place the system of Roman Catholic belief on a more scientific foundation. Of this I shall speak in the next lecture. IV. B THE GRAMMAR OF ASSENT. EFORE coming to the immediate subject of this lecture, I find it convenient to mention a very interesting book, published several years ago by Mr. Capes, one of those who went over to Rome about the same time as Dr. Newman, but who, unlike him, did not submit to having his eyes quite blindfolded, and consequently saw reason to distrust the guide whom he had chosen, and therefore returned to the Church of England. His reasons were given in the book of which I speak. In this he tells* that he had been about five years a Roman Catholic before he fully understood the nature of the claim made by members of that communion. About that time he was taken to task by one of the leading divines in that Church for having spoken of the certainty which they had of the truths of their religion, as in its nature moral, not absolute; that is to say, as amounting to a very high kind of probability, and nothing more. He was informed that a Catholic possesses absolute certainty as to the truths of revealed religion, which are taught him by an infallible Church, in whose statements he believes with an undoubting faith, which faith is the supernatural gift of God. His knowledge, then, of the supernatural truths of Christianity is alleged to be absolute, and to admit of neither criticism nor doubt. In the next lecture I mean to say something about the theory of the supernatural gift of faith as laid down at the Vatican Council, merely remarking now that the theory of a * Reasons for Returning to the Church of England: 2nd edition, 1871, P. 56. IV.] THE GRAMMAR OF ASSENT. 63 supernatural endowment superseding in matters of religion the ordinary laws of reasoning, an endowment to question the validity of which involves deadly peril, deters Roman Catholics from all straightforward seeking for truth; for they fear lest they should trifle with that supernatural gift by seeking for that which they claim to have already. Now observe that the evidence which proves the truth of Christianity is in its nature historical, not demonstrative. That Jesus Christ lived more than eighteen centuries ago; that He died, rose again, and taught such and such doctrines, are things proved by the same kind of argument as that by which we know that Augustus was Emperor of Rome, and that there is such a country as China. Whether or not Christ founded a Church; whether He bestowed the gift of infallibility upon it; and whether He fixed the seat of that infallibility at Rome, are things to be proved, if proved at all, by arguments which a logician would class as probable, not demonstrative. It is true that Roman Catholics maintain that when a Divine revelation has been given, our assent is not a matter of opinion, but of certainty. We must receive without doubt what God has revealed. In a popular lecture, there is room for abundant declamation on the topic that whatever God has revealed must be absolutely true. It is a common rhetorical artifice with a man who has to commend a false conclusion deduced from a syllogism of which one premiss is true, and the other false, to spend an immensity of time in proving the premiss which nobody denies. If he devotes a sufficient amount of argument and declamation to this topic, the chances are that his hearers will never ask for the proof of the other premiss. Thus it is really amusing in Roman Catholic popular books of controversial teaching to see how much labour is expended on the proof that God is true; that He cannot deceive; that nothing which He has revealed can be false; and that therefore those who accept His statements without doubting cannot possibly be in error, and have infallible certainty that they are in the right. But all the time it is tried to make us forget to ask for proof of what is the real point at issue, namely, that God has revealed the doctrines which their Church teaches. It is certain enough that what God has revealed is true; but if it is not certain that He has revealed the infallibility of the Roman Church, then we cannot have certain assurance of the truth of that doctrine, or of anything that is founded on it. But it is unavoidable that the proofs that God has revealed the infallibility of the Church should be, in their nature, historical that is to say, probable, not demonstrative. The great crux, then, with Roman Catholic divines is to explain how, from probable premisses, we arrive at absolutely certain conclusions; how we can have a stronger assurance of what the infallible Church teaches than we can have of the fact of her infallibility. Dr. Newman had the merit of seeing more clearly than other champions of his Church that a solution of this problem was impossible, if the infallibility of the Church was to be proved by any logical process of reasoning, the necessary law of which is, that we cannot have greater certainty of any conclusion than we have of the premisses from which it is derived. He saw, therefore, that the thing to be done was to remove the process of finding the infallible Church into some province outside logic, in which it shall not be amenable to logical laws. And this is what he tried to do in the last of his works, called an Essay on the Grammar of Assent. The professed object of it is, leaving to works on logic the discussion of the theory of Inference to give a theory of the process by which men arrive at their beliefs. Perhaps the chief fault in the book is that Newman has not, even in his own mind, sufficiently distinguished two very different things. He has given a most interesting history of the process by which men actually arrive at beliefs; and he gives this in substitution for the answer to the question, How shall men secure that their beliefs shall be correct? Perhaps you might suppose that a sound theory of the reasoning process would give a sufficient account of all our correct beliefs. The great merit of Newman's book is, that clearly that this is as far as possible from A moment's reflection will convince you that the majority of our beliefs, true or false, have not been arrived at by any process of reasoning, but have been handed it brings out very being the case. |