Then there is a further issue, which would have riveted the attention of any really scientific thinker. Janus denies that God instituted the Church as essentially and indefectibly one, preserved in unity by the Primacy. A scientific thinker would have at once inquired, what then is the Church's divinely given constitution? under what circumstances are bishops at liberty to separate from the Church's Primate? Are there similar circumstances, under which presbyters may separate from their bishop and laymen from their presbyter? These questions lie at the very root of his whole subject: yet it is little to say that he has not attempted their solution; for he has not even caught a glimpse of the fact, that their solution can be expected at his hands.

Our readers then will have seen this writer's intellectual character. He does not aspire to effect a positive historical result, or to investigate the Church's constitution by help of the Church's history his highest ambition is to bring together from every quarter every material, which presents on the surface some appearance injurious to the Holy See.

We must not fail to enter an energetic protest against this purely negative warfare. In the present day those extreme thinkers, who lay their axe at the root of all philosophy, all religion, and all morality, are mustering in unprecedented numbers, and are cheered to their task by sanguine anticipations of coming victory. We have not the faintest suspicion, that Janus regards their movement with less abhorrence than we do: yet he is directly playing into their hands. If he proposed some theory of his own on the Church's constitution in place of that which he would explode, the case would be different. But he does his utmost to overthrow what is certainly at present by far man's strongest barrier against the rapid and violent inflowing atheistic tide, without attempting to substitute another in its place. If his book could exercise any real power, that power would be put forth in favour of those, whom the author agrees with us in regarding as the most dangerous enemies of every highest human interest.

There is, alas! another issue to be considered, which, as personally regards Janus and his approvers, is even more serious and momentous. In what possible sense can they be called Catholics?

According to Janus, the Church is no longer one corporate society, but on the contrary (p. xxii) divided into three great ecclesiastical bodies:* she no longer teaches one harmonious

* Janus here says, that the Church during the early ages was united, and possessed a centre of unity in the Pope. But in p. 81 he lays down that according to "the ancient constitution of the Church," those admitted by the Pope into his own communion were by no means thereby "brought into communion with any other church." Rather a strange "centre of unity"!

doctrine, but, on the contrary, her constituent parts are "at enmity with each other." Janus frankly professes himself (p. xv) to be "inwardly separated by a great gulf" from multitudes with whom he is in " outward communion"; in fact, from Pius IX. and an enormous majority of Catholic bishops. As regards indeed. the Church in communion with Rome, so far from submitting his intellect to her practical teaching, he feels it a sacred duty to revolt indignantly against that teaching, and hold it up to the world's opprobrium. He considers that "since the eleventh century"—that is, for some seven or eight hundred years-a corruption of doctrine has been in progress-not permitted only, but fostered and promoted, by the Ecclesia Docens herself-which "hinders and decomposes the action of her vital power" (p. xix). Nay, so completely has she permitted human inventions to obscure the divine original, that (so far as regards the Primacy) all records of the true doctrine are irrecoverably lost.*

Now, as the Archbishop points out (p. 32), it has hitherto "been believed by all Catholics" as of faitht that the Ecclesia Docens, "whether congregated in council or dispersed thoughout the world, but in the Successor of Peter always one, is always infallible." In harmony with this judgment, we submit with great confidence that the Church has from the first taught as of faith her own corporate unity and infallibility: though she has not formally defined either dogma, for the simple reason that all her children have imbibed and accepted it as a matter of course. We submit accordingly that (even if no more could be said than has already been adduced) Janus and his approvers are as simply heretical, as Arians were before they had been formally condemned.

But more can be said than has already been adduced; for Janus denies infallibility even to Ecumenical Councils. Take any Council you please, the question may be raised "whether freedom and unbiassed truthfulness have prevailed among the assembled bishops"; and "on that point the Church herself"-i.e. as comprising priests and laymen together with bishops-"is the ultimate judge by her acceptance or rejection of the Council or its decision" (p. 411). And so he completes that inversion of the Church's order, which Gallicans have begun. Gallicans have laid down, that bishops are to teach the Pope; and Janus caps Gallicans, by laying down that the laity are to teach the Episcopate.

* "Propositio quæ asserit 'postremis hisce sæculis sparsam esse generalem obscurationem super veritates gravioris momenti spectantes ad religionem et quæ sunt basis Fidei et moralis doctrinæ Jesu Christi,' hæretica."- "Auctorem Fidei," prop. I.

+ We add the words "as of faith," because the Archbishop's context shows him to mean that he uses the word "believed" in its strictest sense; as "creditum fide Catholicâ."

VOL. XIV.—NO. XXVII. [New Series.]

The Rule of Faith then, set forth by Janus and accepted by his approvers, comes to this. They hold that no other dogmata are to be accepted on the Church's authority as divinely revealed, except those which are unanimously accepted by the members, lay and clerical, of those "three great ecclesiastical bodies" (p. xxii)the Papal, the Photian, and the Anglican-which jointly constitute the Church of Christ. This is the book of which Mr. Oxenham gravely informs the world ("Academy," p. 18) that its "writers are careful to exclude all possibility of mistake as to the fact of their being Catholic." His words are true in the very opposite sense to that which he intended. The writers have "excluded all possibility of mistake" on the subject; and have shown that they are just as much and just as little Catholics, as are Dean Stanley and Professor Jowett.*

*We think it well worth while to extract from the "Spectator" of November 6 the following remarks, for the sake of showing how Janus's position strikes an impartial and thoughtful outsider :

:

"If the liberal Catholicism of Janus and his friends is an infallible system, it is an infallible system which has succumbed at once to a false pretence of infallibility on one side, and an openly-admitted fallibility on the other. Now, infallibility which is beaten for centuries, both by a sham infallibility and by admitted incapacity for true infallibility, is infallibility of a very novel kind, very difficult to imagine. It looks, at the first glance, very like a rather specially fallible kind of fallibility with a taste for calling itself by grand names. If Janus and his friends are right, no paradox of the Christian faith is half as great as theirs, which maintains that the true infallibility of the Church has not only lain perdu for centuries, but has been impersonated by a growth of falsehood without any interposition on the part of the divine source of infallibility. That, we confess,-with all our respect for the wish of the authors of 'Janus' to enter a protest on behalf of liberty and civilization, we do find an hypothesis somewhat hard even to listen to. A dumb infallibility that cannot find its voice for centuries even to contradict the potent and ostentatious error which takes its name in vain, is that a sort of divine authority to which human reason will willingly go into captivity? But we might sympathize with the authors of Janus,' in spite of their utterly untenable intellectual position, if they seemed to us to have any clear advantage in moral earnestness and simplicity over their opponents. But, while there is certainly a school of Ultramontanes that simply and profoundly believes in the infallibility of the Pope, in spite of all the critical and historical difficulties which the Liberals ably parade and sometimes even over-state, we find it hard to believe that the latter believe cordially in any Church infallibility at all. That they are sincerely attached to the patristic theology and are not crypto-sceptics, is obvious enough. But looking to the numerous and difficult conditions which they insist upon as indispensable to any mode of ascertaining what the infallible teaching of the Church-so long suppressed really is, and the triumph with which they prove that Councils held, or to be held, under far less disturbing influences than the first Council of Ephesus for example (universally held as oecumenical), fail to satisfy those conditions, we can hardly help suspecting that their attitude of mind in relation to the difficulty of ascertaining the infallible judgment of the Church on any theological point strongly resembles that expressed in Dr. Johnson's celebrated

Janus then is an openly anti-Catholic writer; and this is the circumstance on which we lay stress in reference to our general argument. We have already mentioned however that, his work having been translated into English and made some stir in this country, we must review it much more carefully than would otherwise be necessary. We will proceed therefore, in accordance with our intention already expressed, to examine the objections therein brought together against Pontifical infallibility: though such examination must occupy half our article. These objections fall naturally under two classes; the one consisting in a recital of certain alleged individual Papal errors in doctrine, while the other class is based on a broad and general view of ecclesiastical history. The latter is in itself, of course, the more important and fundamental; but we shall better prepare our way for its treatment if we begin with the former.

Janus then diligently brings forward a series of alleged Papal errors, any one of which he maintains to be incompatible with the dogma of Papal infallibility. But the whole of his argument on this head rests on a fundamental misconception of what Ultramontanes maintain; and the chief part of our reply therefore will be occupied with exhibiting this fact. We shall assume, for the purposes of our argument, that corporate unity is one of the Church's essential attributes; and we shall assume also that the dispersed Episcopate, when teaching in connection with its visible Head, is doctrinally infallible. We shall assume these truths, we say, in our argument against Janus, because it is impossible in one article to demonstrate everything; and because, though Janus indubitably denies them, yet he has not so much as attempted, either to meet the proofs of them repeatedly alleged, or even to adduce against them one single argument or citation. And these two truths being assumed as common ground, we arrive at such a view as the following a view which may be held alike by Ultramontanes and Gallicans.

:

When the Church received from the Apostles charge of the

dictum as to the 'difficult' piece of music which he had just heard. Difficult! madam; I wish it had been impossible!' The Liberal Catholics seem to us, in short, to be crypto-Anglicans, who reluctantly accept, in addition to Anglicanism, the abstract principle of a dogmatic infallibility inherent in their Church-an infallibility bound over, however, under the heaviest possible recognizances, never to appear and claim the authority it ought to have."

We would only add one comment. The "Spectator" thinks that these men "are sincerely attached to the patristic theology"; but we must maintain, that the very animating principle of patristic theology was belief in the Church's infallible and ever-active magisterium.

Since the above was in type, the "Month" has also quoted this very remarkable passage. We cannot be surprised.

Deposit, she found herself (if we may so speak) teaching as of faith a large body of dogma, which she has ever since enforced as a condition of communion. But this dogma was of far too arresting and stimulating a character, to permit that it should passively remain a kind of caput mortuum. On the contrary, a most active intellectual fermentation was ever in process. Whether under the pressure of circumstances or otherwise, one dogma after another was analyzed more profoundly and formulized more clearly; one part of the Deposit was combined with another, or with the dictates of reason, and carried forward to innumerable legitimate conclusions; the sources of tradition were more and more diligently explored; and the Apostolic doctrine in its fulness more adequately understood. As this process continued among individuals, the Church herself found it necessary from time to time to put forth successive definitions; whether by way of analyzing what had always been enforced as of faith, or of declaring what had now been ascertained to be a portion of Apostolic teaching. Nay, after some centuries had elapsed, she found that various errors started up which, without actually contradicting the Deposit, were nevertheless seriously injurious thereto; and so her habit began of issuing those minor infallible judgments, which are not definitions of faith. Meanwhile,-underneath these various definitions and as the foundation on which they were built,—the vast and solid structure of Catholic theology has been gradually built up by profound thinkers and active inquirers, who are ever placing in clearer light and exhibiting in wider relations those great verities which the Apostles taught.

It may happen then again and again, that in some earlier stage of theological development, the Church's exigencies require this or that disciplinary decision, before the relevant doctrine has been duly explored; before the relevant doctrine, we say, has been brought into consistent and complete shape in all its details. Marriage questions, and again questions concerning ordination, afford abundant instances of the phenomenon to which we refer.* In such cases, the Church's rulers act on that view which appears to them more probable, without in any way imposing that view on Catholics as certainly the true one. The Church issues a command, or a sanction, that such or such a thing may be done; but she issues no command whatever, nor is understood by any one as issuing a command, that such or such a doctrine should be believed.

Take, e. g., F. Perrone's words on the Sacrament of Order. "Whether" ordinations performed by an unlawful minister" are to be esteemed null and void, was formerly a most intricate question," so that the Master of the Sentences calls it "perplexed and almost insoluble." "Almost innumerable ecclesiastical documents" may be adduced "for either opinion, since the thing had not yet been cleared up. Now, for many ages," the doctrine has been determined.-De Ordine, n. 136.