VI.

IN

MILNER'S AXIOMS.-PART II.

N the last Lecture I tried to show that, if Milner's axiom were limited to an assertion about saving truth-that is to say, truth an explicit knowledge of which is necessary to salvation-it would be perfectly useless to one desirous to establish the necessity of an infallible guide. I wish now to show that, if Milner's axiom be asserted not only with regard to truths necessary to salvation, but also to truths highly important and useful, then the axiom is not true. There is an immense amount of knowledge, both secular and religious, highly important for man to possess, but for which God has not seen fit to provide certain neverfailing means whereby men may attain to it, and consequently which, as a matter of fact, many men do fail of obtaining. I am the more particular in stating this, because I should be sorry if the previous discussion had led you to think that I represented the great bulk of God's Revelation as useless, and that I taught that, provided a man be made acquainted with that minimum of knowledge which is absolutely necessary to salvation, it is a matter of small importance whether any further knowledge be communicated to him. I hold the gaining of such knowledge to be of the very highest use and importance; but I say that all we know of God's dealings forbids us to take for granted that, because knowledge of any kind is of great value to man, God will make it impossible for him to fail to acquire it.

There is one piece of vitally important knowledge which Roman Catholics must own God has not given men neverfailing means for attaining: I mean the knowledge what is the

VI.] DIFFICULTY OF FINDING THE TRUE CHURCH.

99

true Church. They must own that the institution of an infallible Church has not prevented the world from being overrun with heresy. They do not number in their communion half of those who profess the name of Christ. We need only call to mind our own Church, with its important ramifications in Scotland, the Colonies, and America; the dissenting bodies in England and America; foreign Protestants in Scandinavia and Germany; the Greek Church in Russia, and other Eastern communities. We need not discuss how much of essential truth is preserved by each of these bodies. Their very existence shows that it is as hard to find the true Church as the true doctrine; for it would be grossly unfair to deny that there are among these different bodies many sincere inquirers after truth. In whatever else these Churches disagree, they agree in denying that Rome has made out her claim to infallibility and supremacy. It is plain, then, that God has not endowed His Church with credentials so convincing as irresistibly to command men's assent; and, according to Roman theory, He works a stupendous miracle in vain. To guard Christians against error, He works a perpetual miracle in order to provide them with an infallible guide to truth, and yet He neglects to furnish that guide with sufficient proof of his infallibility. Nay, He allows that infallibility to be wielded by men who have made themselves so distrusted through deceit and imposture and other evil practices, that a prejudice is excited against their pretensions. This one consideration is sufficient to overturn the a priori proof that there must be an infallible guide, because we want one, and because it seems incredible that God should leave us without any means necessary for the attainment of religious truth. The proof equally shows that such a guide ought to be able to produce unmistakeable credentials; and the claims of one who has been rejected by half the Christian world are by that very rejection disproved.

But we may further show in the case of secular knowledge how much there is very desirable for us to possess, which God has given us no certain means of attaining. Man is left in a variety of cases to act on his own responsibility and to the

best of his fallible judgment; exposed to various dangers, and called on for the exercise of diligent care, which, in point of fact, very often is not exercised. No one who has read Butler's Analogy can be at a loss to expose the fallacy of inferring that because a thing seems to us desirable, God must therefore have constituted His world so that we shall be sure to have it. To quote one of his analogies, take the case of disease and the remedies for it. If we might have indulged our conjectures, we should have imagined that there would have been no such thing as disease in the world. But, at least, we might argue that, if God did, in His mercy, provide remedies for disease, these remedies would, to parody Milner's words, have been certain, never-failing, such, in short, as to free those who use them from ill-health of every kind'; and if a quack were to present himself, declaring that such were the remedies he was possessed of, and that we ought to acknowledge the justice of his pretensions without examination, because no one else claimed to have such remedies as we should have expected God to provide for us, while he alone spoke with confidence, and never admitted the possibility of his falling into error;-such a quack would have all the titles to our obedience that the Church of Rome has, according to the arguments of many of its advocates, who seem to think that we are bound to receive him who talks biggest and brags loudest, and will not own that he may sometimes make a mistake.

But analogy furnishes us with a still better answer to the Roman Catholic argument about Infallibility. One simple test will expose the fallacy of any of these arguments. Substitute the word 'sin' for the word 'error,' and examine whether the argument will then lead to true conclusions. It is not only our own speculations that would lead us to think God would have provided means to banish sin from the world. The Scriptures would certainly, at first sight, lead us to conclude that it would, at least, be banished from the Church. There is not a single promise to the Church that does not speak even more distinctly of her members being led into the ways of holiness than into the way of truth. The name 'holy' is the distinctive title of the Church, 'saints'

VI.] THE HOLINESS OF THE CHURCH NOT PERFECT. 1OI

that of her members. She is described as 'a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing.' And it is true that the Church has done this great work in the world, that she has made a degree of holiness possible, which was not so before: and not only possible, but common; that being now ordinary among Christians which before had been only the attainment of some distinguished saints. But it is not true that this holiness is either perfect or universal. Roman Catholic historians themselves acknowledge the moral corruption which at times overspread the highest places of the Church, not excepting him whom they account its head. I will quote the well-known words with which Baronius begins his account of the tenth century: A new age begins, which, from its asperity and barrenness of good, has been wont to be called the Iron Age; from the deformity of its overflowing wickedness, the Leaden Age; and, from its paucity of writers, the Dark Age. Standing on the threshold of which, we have thought it necessary to premise something, lest the weak-minded should be scandalized if he should happen to behold the abomination of desolation in the Temple. . . .* The case is plainly such, that scarcely anyone can believe, nay, scarcely ever shall believe, unless he see it with his own eyes, and handle it with his own hands, what unworthy, foul, and deformed, yea, what execrable and abominable things the sacred Apostolic See, upon whose hinge the universal Catholic Church turns, has been compelled to

In the passage which I here omit, Baronius turns it into an argument in favour of the Roman Church, that the fact that she survived a period which, according to all human calculation, ought to have been fatal to her, proves that she must have been ander Divine protection. He borrowed this paradox from Boccaccio, who had presented it in the shape of a tale about a Jew, who, being pressed to embrace Christianity, declared his intention of visiting Rome, and judging of the religion by the lives of Christ's Vicar, his cardinals and bishops. His Christian friends were horrified, knowing that the spectacle of the sensuality, avarice, and simony which tainted all at Rome, from the least to the greatest, was better calculated to make a Christian turn Jew than a Jew become a Christian. But the Jewish visitor, on his return, presented himself for baptism, declaring himself convinced of the divinity of a religion which survived, notwithstanding that its chief ministers were doing their very best to destroy it. The popularity of this tale in pre-Reformation times shows that, if the Bishop of Rome was then believed to be a guide to truth, he was not imagined to be an example of moral purity.

suffer. O shame! O grief! how many monsters, horrible to be seen, were intruded by secular princes into that seat which is to be reverenced by angels; how many tragedies were consummated; with what filth was it her fate to be spattered, who was herself without spot or wrinkle; with what stench to be infected; with what loathsome impurities to be defiled, and by these to be blackened with perpetual infamy!” And, again, the same historian writes (Ann. 912): 'What was then the face of the Holy Roman Church? How most foul, when harlots, at once most powerful and most base, ruled at Rome, at whose will Sees were changed, bishops were presented, and, what is horrible to hear and unutterable, pseudobishops, their paramours, were intruded into the See of St. Peter, who are enrolled in the catalogue of Roman pontiffs only for the sake of marking the times!'

Thus, with respect to Christ's promises that the gates of hell should not prevail against His Church, that He would be with it always, even to the end of the world, and so forth, we see what they do not mean. We see that they contained no pledge that ungodliness should never assault His Church; that overflowing wickedness should not abound in her; nay, that monsters of impiety and immorality should not be seen sitting in her highest places. The question is, therefore, whether God hates error so very much more than He hates sin, that He has taken precautions against the entrance of the one which He has not seen fit to use in order to guard against the other. We hold that what He has done in both cases is strikingly parallel. First, His great gift to His people, that of the Holy Spirit, is equally their safeguard against sin and against error. He is equally the Spirit of Truth and the Spirit of Holiness. It is His office to inform our understanding, by taking of the things of Christ and showing them to us; and to direct our wills, and make them conformed to that of Christ. And the means He uses for both ends are the same. The Scriptures are equally guides to truth and to holiness. They make us wise unto salvation. They are 'a light unto our feet, and a lamp unto our paths.' 'Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to Thy word.' And the Church also is used by