Popes presided over this happy family; and that, during the first nine centuries, there was no division whatever among those who called themselves followers of Christ. Of course we know very well that Janus meant nothing of the kind: and since we must now further suppose that he did not mean what he said, our necessary conclusion is that the whole passage is a mass of unmeaning nonsense. This forsooth is the writer who talks (p. xxix) of devoting "objective and scientific investigation" to "the weighty questions which he treats! Why his whole argumentative character might be destroyed to the satisfaction of all reasonable men, by merely begging them to read p. xxii, and then assuring them that he never intended there to affirm that the Church once lost her corporate unity.

"

As for Mr. Oxenham at all events,-we have his own testimony, that he so understood Janus's words without losing his intellectual respect for so puzzle-headed a blunderer. In regard to his first accusation against us we may briefly point out, that we had explained very clearly in p. 194 the particular "sponsorship with which we credited him. He stands sponsor for the (supposed) fact that the writers of Janus are true Catholics, by saying that their work "excludes all possibility of mistake" on the subject. As to our alleged misstatement about Photians and Anglicans since Janus had expressly said that the Church had been split up into three bodies, we interpreted his words in the most favourable sense which they legitimately admit. It has been thought by many, that Englishmen as well as Germans have had a share in the authorship of Janus: and we considered that the reference to the "three bodies" gave probability to the supposition.

We may observe by the way that at length we are able to see how it is, that Mr. Oxenham has come to charge us with what he calls "dishonest criticism :" meaning thereby the extreme of controversial unfairness. He must himself be capable of that intellectual self-stultification, which he contemplates acquiescently in Janus. Our theory therefore is this. Mr. Oxenham has a great command of language; and he is sometimes led away by this facility to indite some sonorous paragraph, which has literally no sense at all. His critics however do not at once apprehend this peculiarity; and, until they have learned better to appreciate him, they continually fall into the mistake of supposing that in every case he must mean something or other. But (by hypothesis) whatever intelligible interpretation they ascribe to such an unmeaning paragraph as we have indicated, he starts back in unaffected surprise,

* Why does Mr. Oxenham describe this word as a "nickname"? Are we no longer to speak of Arians, Eutychians, Lutherans, Calvinists ? What more appropriate appellation can be given to heretics and schismatics, than that derived from their respective founders ?

and declares that no such proposition was ever in his thoughts. From this he is naturally led one further step. It is far more obvious to suppose that his critics have been guilty of "dishonest criticism," than that his own words have been simple nonsense. Whoever will take the trouble of looking back at our notice of Mr. Oxenham in January, 1866 (pp. 274-281) will see several amusing instances of the characteristic we describe.

However, enough of this. At last, what Janus and Mr. Oxenham lose in intellectual character, they gain in the much more important respect, of lessening the amount of heterodoxy for which they are responsible. And though (as we shall immediately say) we still consider Janus's position to be distinctly and unequivocally heretical, we have much pleasure in withdrawing from our indictment that particular count, which charges him with regarding Photians and Anglicans as included in the Visible Church.

After Mr. Oxenham's letter, we are unable to say with confidence what Janus means to affirm on any imaginable subject. In regard therefore to our next allegation against him-viz. that he vests infallibility not in Pope and bishops but in the body of the faithful— we cannot pretend to say confidently that he intends anything of the kind. He has not denied even Papal infallibility at all more clearly, than he has affirmed the dissolution of the Church's corporate unity and yet this affirmation turns out to have been entirely at variance with his real opinion. Still, we must provisionally take our interpretation as accurate: and we are the rather disposed to do so, because in this particular Mr. Oxenham has not alleged that we were mistaken. Before we consider however in whom Janus vests infallibility, let us inquire how much he understands to be included in that prerogative.

:

The Church in its totality is secured against false doctrine; it will not fall away from Christ and the Apostles, and will not repudiate the doctrine it has once received, and which has been handed down within it. When a Council passes sentence on doctrine, it thereby gives testimony to its truth. The bishops attest, each for his own portion of the Church, that a certain defined doctrine has hitherto been taught and believed there, or they bear witness that the doctrines hitherto believed involve, as their logical and necessary consequence, some truth which may not yet have been expressly formulized. As to whether this testimony has been rightly given, whether freedom and unbiassed truthfulness have prevailed among the assembled bishops, [this is the only question which has to be considered.] Here, therefore, the certainty and infallibility rest entirely on the solid ground of facts.

The meaning of a judgment passed by the assembled bishops is simply this, thus have our predecessors believed, thus do we believe, and thus will they that come after us believe. . . . [A great community] being left to itself naturally keeps within the limits of the traditional faith which has been constantly and everywhere received (pp. 411, 412).

Now first observe, how impossible Janus finds it to be consistent with himself even for two consecutive pages. The bishops must "keep within the limits of the traditional Faith which has been constantly and everywhere received" (p. 412); they must testify "thus have our predecessors believed" (ib.): yet on the other hand they can infallibly define truths, which follow from revealed dogmata by "logical and necessary consequence" (p. 411). Surely when they define certain newly-observed consequences of revealed truth, they can no longer testify "thus have our predecessors believed"; nor yet are they keeping "within the limits of what has constantly been received."

Yet on one point Janus does avoid self-contradiction: for he consistently says that infallibility extends no further than to the testification of truths, which are already universally received by Catholics throughout the orbis terrarum. He adds also almost in so many words—what is of itself abundantly plain-that for such infallibility as this, no supernatural intervention whatever is required: such infallibility "rests entirely on the solid ground of facts"; and consists merely in testifying a visible phenomenon, which no one in his senses can possibly deny. According to Janus, the Church is infallible in declaring Catholic dogma, no otherwise than mankind is infallible in declaring that fire burns and that night succeeds day. Each man testifies for himself, that such is his experience and in like manner, according to Janus, all which happens in a council is, that each bishop testifies for himself the existence of such and such beliefs throughout his diocese.

But let this view be accepted, and we do not see how any council which ever sat can be accounted infallible in its most important and critical judgments; however cordially (to use Janus's phrase) the Church may have afterwards accepted its decrees. Take the first of all, the Nicene. Indubitably the 318 Fathers "attested, each for his own portion of the Church, that" the dogma denied by Arius "had hitherto been taught and believed there." But they also took a very important further step; and unless they had taken it, they would have done nothing worthy of mention towards protecting the Deposit. They acted, not only as witnesses of a dogma, but as judges on the propriety of a term. They infallibly decided, under the Holy Ghost's assistance, that the word "Homoousion was an appropriate expression, for the Catholic verity which had been assailed. This was no matter of testimony at all: no one has ever pretended, that the term sanctioned at Nicæa had hitherto been in universal use. If therefore, as Janus's words imply, a Council never becomes infallible except so far as it has testified an indubitable fact, the Nicene Council was not infallible in the one most essential and vital portion of its dogmatic proceeding. And our remarks apply, not to the Nicene

only, but to every Council in the Church's history which ever put forth a dogmatic definition. The infallibility of such a definition precisely means, that the bishops have not merely testified infallibly the universal belief in this or that dogma, but have judged infallibly on its true analysis and expression.

We pass to another particular. Theologians and canonists declare that without complete freedom the assembly is only a pseudoSynod" (p. 425). But just before he had said (p. 424) that 66 even at Trent the results of a want of freedom have been displayed." The Council of Trent then was, in Janus's judgment, "only a pseudo-Synod." But in fact Janus leaves his readers in doubt, whether a true Ecumenical Council has ever been held since the Church was founded. "In early times . . . it was the Emperors who sometimes trenched too closely on this freedom: but from Gregory VII.'s time [he does not say Saint Gregory VII.] the weight of Papal power has pressed ten times more heavily" (ib.). Neither earlier nor later councils then have been certainly Ecumenical. As to the Vatican Council, Janus tells us beforehand that under no circumstances will he regard it as Ecumenical: "whatever course the Synod may take, one quality can never be predicated of it; namely that it has been a really free Council" (ib.).

This is the book for which Mr. Oxenham has stood sponsor; the book of which he has gravely stated, that "its writers are careful to exclude all possibility of mistake as to the fact" of their being Catholics. It is not our present purpose however to say more of such disgraceful statements as we have now placed before our readers; we mean disgraceful as coming from professed children of the Church we think it more important to dwell on a different error,-not more serious indeed than these-but more dangerous, because more peculiarly in harmony with the worst tendencies of our time. We refer to Janus's doctrine, that infallibility resides, not in Pope and bishops, but in the body of believers. He expresses this as distinctly as he ever expresses any doctrine whatever.* early centuries, he says (p. 78), "the force and authority of councils depended on the consent of the Church as expressed in the synod, and afterwards on the fact of its being generally received." Again (p. 411) as to whether the "bishops assembled" in council have "rightly given their testimony "-"on that point the Church herself is the ultimate judge by her acceptance or rejection of the council or its decision." We understand him to mean here by the word "Church"-as his context implies-not what Catholics call the "Ecclesia Docens," but the "cœtus fidelium." We so interpreted

In

* Unless indeed when he says the contradictory of what he means: for in that case, as we have seen, he manages to speak with quite exceptional clearness.

sensus

him in our last number (p. 193), and Mr. Oxenham on this point has made no protest. We may add that Mr. Oxenham himself on a former occasion used similar language, as we pointed out in July, 1866 (p. 245). We understood him to speak of the fidelium" as the Church's ultimate guarantee for the dogma of the Immaculate Conception; nor has he ever alleged that we understood him wrongly. Mr. Renouf again, in his first pamphlet on Pope Honorius (p. 34, note), called it "the old view, that both Popes and Councils may err, and that the Church alone is infallible" and though we have twice called his attention to the circumstance that these words will naturally be understood as vesting infallibility in the body of the faithful, he has never disowned the tenet. On the whole then, we fear there can be no doubt that this doctrine is professed by certain soi-disant Catholics.

In our last number (pp. 205-6) we exhibited the extravagant contradiction to the most obvious historical facts, which is involved in such a tenet. Our present concern is with the judgment which must be formed of it by true Catholics.

We must maintain then-speaking entirely under correction— that it is not merely a heresy, such e.g. as the Arian or Nestorian, but that it is in some sense the very embodied principle of heresy. Ask a well-instructed Catholic what constitutes a heresy,—and he will reply, that heresy is involved in the denial of any dogma, which Pope and bishops unite in teaching as revealed truth. Arians, Nestorians, Eutychians and the rest were heretics, because on one particular point they so offended. But the false brethren whom we are now criticising, refuse intellectual submission to Pope and bishops, not on one particular dogmatic question, but on all dogmatic questions without exception: whatever dogma they may happen to regard as revealed, their reason for so regarding it is not the proposition of the Ecclesia Docens, but some different ground altogether. No one can be surprised therefore at the truly remarkable severity of language used towards such persons, in the memorial, signed at Rome in January by so many bishops, and invoking a definition of Pontifical infallibility. This memorial will be seen entire in another part of our present number. There are men, it says, "who boast indeed of the Catholic name," but "abuse that name to the ruin (perniciem) of those weak in faith." Certain persons "calling themselves Catholics" are "most bitter opponents

* These were his words. "When Anglicans become aware how completely the recent definition-apart from any question about the binding authority of Papal Bulls as such-was endorsed or rather anticipated by the verdict of the sensus fidelium, they will not be unwilling to accept it as a doctrine."" Mr. Oxenham assigned this as the reason, why the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception should not prevent Anglicans from uniting themselves with the Roman Catholic Church.