An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine Part 30

8.

He presently adds concerning the allegorical sense: "If we absolutely condemn these interpretations, then must we condemn a great part of Antiquity, who are very much conversant in this kind of interpreting.

For the most partial for Antiquity cannot choose but see and confess thus much, that for the literal sense, the interpreters of our own times, because of their skill in the original languages, their care of pressing the circ.u.mstances and coherence of the text, of comparing like places of Scripture with like, have generally surpa.s.sed the best of the ancients."[346:2]

The use of Scripture then, especially its spiritual or second sense, as a medium of thought and deduction, is a characteristic principle of doctrinal teaching in the Church.

-- 5. _Dogma._

1. That opinions in religion are not matters of indifference, but have a definite bearing on the position of their holders in the Divine Sight, is a principle on which the Evangelical Faith has from the first developed, and on which that Faith has been the first to develope. I suppose, it hardly had any exercise under the Law; the zeal and obedience of the ancient people being mainly employed in the maintenance of divine wors.h.i.+p and the overthrow of idolatry, not in the action of the intellect. Faith is in this, as in other respects, a characteristic of the Gospel, except so far as it was antic.i.p.ated, as its time drew near. Elijah and the prophets down to Ezra resisted Baal or restored the Temple Service; the Three Children refused to bow down before the golden image; Daniel would turn his face towards Jerusalem; the Maccabees spurned the Grecian paganism. On the other hand, the Greek Philosophers were authoritative indeed in their teaching, enforced the "_Ipse dixit_," and demanded the faith of their disciples; but they did not commonly attach sanct.i.ty or reality to opinions, or view them in a religious light. Our Saviour was the first to "bear witness to the Truth," and to die for it, when "before Pontius Pilate he witnessed a good confession." St. John and St. Paul, following his example, both p.r.o.nounce anathema on those who denied "the Truth" or "brought in another Gospel." Tradition tells us that the Apostle of love seconded his word with his deed, and on one occasion hastily quitted a bath because an heresiarch of the day had entered it. St. Ignatius, his contemporary, compares false teachers to raging dogs; and St. Polycarp, his disciple, exercised the same seventy upon Marcion which St. John had shown towards Cerinthus.

2.

St. Irenaeus after St. Polycarp exemplifies the same doctrine: "I saw thee," he says to the heretic Florinus, "when I was yet a boy, in lower Asia, with Polycarp, when thou wast living splendidly in the Imperial Court, and trying to recommend thyself to him. I remember indeed what then happened better than more recent occurrences, for the lessons of boyhood grow with the mind and become one with it. Thus I can name the place where blessed Polycarp sat and conversed, and his goings out and comings in, and the fas.h.i.+on of his life, and the appearance of his person, and his discourses to the people, and his familiarity with John, which he used to tell of, and with the rest who had seen the Lord, and how he used to repeat their words, and what it was that he had learned about the Lord from them. . . . And in the sight of G.o.d, I can protest, that, if that blessed and apostolical Elder had heard aught of this doctrine, he had cried out and stopped his ears, saying after his wont, 'O Good G.o.d, for what times hast thou reserved me that I should endure this?' and he had fled the place where he was sitting or standing when he heard it." It seems to have been the duty of every individual Christian from the first to witness in his place against all opinions which were contrary to what he had received in his baptismal catechizing, and to shun the society of those who maintained them. "So religious," says Irenaeus after giving his account of St. Polycarp, "were the Apostles and their disciples, in not even conversing with those who counterfeited the truth."[348:1]

3.

Such a principle, however, would but have broken up the Church the sooner, resolving it into the individuals of which it was composed, unless the Truth, to which they were to bear witness, had been a something definite, and formal, and independent of themselves.

Christians were bound to defend and to transmit the faith which they had received, and they received it from the rulers of the Church; and, on the other hand, it was the duty of those rulers to watch over and define this traditionary faith. It is unnecessary to go over ground which has been traversed so often of late years. St. Irenaeus brings the subject before us in his description of St. Polycarp, part of which has already been quoted; and to it we may limit ourselves. "Polycarp," he says when writing against the Gnostics, "whom we have seen in our first youth, ever taught those lessons which he learned from the Apostles, which the Church also transmits, which alone are true. All the Churches of Asia bear witness to them; and the successors of Polycarp down to this day, who is a much more trustworthy and sure witness of truth than Valentinus, Marcion, or their perverse companions. The same was in Rome in the time of Anicetus, and converted many of the aforenamed heretics to the Church of G.o.d, preaching that he had received from the Apostles this one and only truth, which had been transmitted by the Church."[349:1]

4.

Nor was this the doctrine and practice of one school only, which might be ignorant of philosophy; the cultivated minds of the Alexandrian Fathers, who are said to owe so much to Pagan science, certainly showed no grat.i.tude or reverence towards their alleged instructors, but maintained the supremacy of Catholic Tradition. Clement[349:2] speaks of heretical teachers as perverting Scripture, and essaying the gate of heaven with a false key, not raising the veil, as he and his, by means of tradition from Christ, but digging through the Church's wall, and becoming mystagogues of misbelief; "for," he continues, "few words are enough to prove that they have formed their human a.s.semblies later than the Catholic Church," and "from that previously existing and most true Church it is very clear that these later heresies, and others which have been since, are counterfeit and novel inventions."[350:1] "When the Marcionites, Valentinians, and the like," says Origen, "appeal to apocryphal works, they are saying, 'Christ is in the desert;' when to canonical Scripture, 'Lo, He is in the chambers;' but we must not depart from that first and ecclesiastical tradition, nor believe otherwise than as the Churches of G.o.d by succession have transmitted to us." And it is recorded of him in his youth, that he never could be brought to attend the prayers of a heretic who was in the house of his patroness, from abomination of his doctrine, "observing," adds Eusebius, "the rule of the Church." Eusebius too himself, unsatisfactory as is his own theology, cannot break from this fundamental rule; he ever speaks of the Gnostic teachers, the chief heretics of his period (at least before the rise of Arianism), in terms most expressive of abhorrence and disgust.

5.

The African, Syrian, and Asian schools are additional witnesses; Tertullian at Carthage was strenuous for the dogmatic principle even after he had given up the traditional. The Fathers of Asia Minor, who excommunicated Noetus, rehea.r.s.e the Creed, and add, "We declare as we have learned;" the Fathers of Antioch, who depose Paul of Samosata, set down in writing the Creed from Scripture, "which," they say, "we received from the beginning, and have, by tradition and in custody, in the Catholic and Holy Church, until this day, by succession, as preached by the blessed Apostles, who were eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word."[350:2]

6.

Moreover, it is as plain, or even plainer, that what the Christians of the first ages anathematized, included deductions from the Articles of Faith, that is, false developments, as well as contradictions of those Articles. And, since the reason they commonly gave for using the anathema was that the doctrine in question was strange and startling, it follows that the truth, which was its contradictory, was also in some respect unknown to them hitherto; which is also shown by their temporary perplexity, and their difficulty of meeting heresy, in particular cases.

"Who ever heard the like hitherto?" says St. Athanasius, of Apollinarianism; "who was the teacher of it, who the hearer? 'From Sion shall go forth the Law of G.o.d, and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem;'

but from whence hath this gone forth? What h.e.l.l hath burst out with it?"

The Fathers at Nicaea stopped their ears; and St. Irenaeus, as above quoted, says that St. Polycarp, had he heard the Gnostic blasphemies, would have stopped his ears, and deplored the times for which he was reserved. They anathematized the doctrine, not because it was old, but because it was new: the anathema would have altogether slept, if it could not have been extended to propositions not anathematized in the beginning; for the very characteristic of heresy is this novelty and originality of manifestation.

Such was the exclusiveness of Christianity of old: I need not insist on the steadiness with which that principle has been maintained ever since, for bigotry and intolerance is one of the ordinary charges brought at this day against both the medieval Church and the modern.

7.

The Church's consistency and thoroughness in teaching is another aspect of the same principle, as is ill.u.s.trated in the following pa.s.sage from M. Guizot's History of Civilization. "The adversaries," he says, "of the Reformation, knew very well what they were about, and what they required; they could point to their first principles, and boldly admit all the consequences that might result from them. No government was ever more consistent and systematic than that of the Romish Church. In fact, the Court of Rome was much more accommodating, yielded much more than the Reformers; but in principle it much more completely adopted its own system, and maintained a much more consistent conduct. There is an immense power in this full confidence of what is done; this perfect knowledge of what is required; this complete and rational adaptation of a system and a creed." Then he goes on to the history of the Society of Jesus in ill.u.s.tration. "Everything," he says, "was unfavourable to the Jesuits, both fortune and appearances; neither practical sense which requires success, nor the imagination which looks for splendour, were gratified by their destiny. Still it is certain that they possessed the elements of greatness; a grand idea is attached to their name, to their influence, and to their history. Why? because they worked from fixed principles, which they fully and clearly understood, and the tendency of which they entirely comprehended. In the Reformation, on the contrary, when the event surpa.s.sed its conception, something incomplete, inconsequent, and narrow has remained, which has placed the conquerors themselves in a state of rational and philosophical inferiority, the influence of which has occasionally been felt in events. The conflict of the new spiritual order of things against the old, is, I think, the weak side of the Reformation."[352:1]

-- 6. _Additional Remarks._

Such are some of the intellectual principles which are characteristic of Christianity. I observe,--

That their continuity down to this day, and the vigour of their operation, are two distinct guarantees that the theological conclusions to which they are subservient are, in accordance with the Divine Promise, true developments, and not corruptions of the Revelation.

Moreover, if it be true that the principles of the later Church are the same as those of the earlier, then, whatever are the variations of belief between the two periods, the later in reality agrees more than it differs with the earlier, for principles are responsible for doctrines.

Hence they who a.s.sert that the modern Roman system is the corruption of primitive theology are forced to discover some difference of principle between the one and the other; for instance, that the right of private judgment was secured to the early Church and has been lost to the later, or, again, that the later Church rationalizes and the earlier went by faith.

2.

On this point I will but remark as follows. It cannot be doubted that the horror of heresy, the law of absolute obedience to ecclesiastical authority, and the doctrine of the mystical virtue of unity, were as strong and active in the Church of St. Ignatius and St. Cyprian as in that of St. Carlo and St. Pius the Fifth, whatever be thought of the theology respectively taught in the one and in the other. Now we have before our eyes the effect of these principles in the instance of the later Church; they have entirely succeeded in preventing departure from the doctrine of Trent for three hundred years. Have we any reason for doubting, that from the same strictness the same fidelity would follow, in the first three, or any three, centuries of the Ante-tridentine period? Where then was the opportunity of corruption in the three hundred years between St. Ignatius and St. Augustine? or between St.

Augustine and St. Bede? or between St. Bede and St. Peter Damiani? or again, between St. Irenaeus and St. Leo, St. Cyprian and St. Gregory the Great, St. Athanasius and St. John Damascene? Thus the tradition of eighteen centuries becomes a collection of indefinitely many _catenae_, each commencing from its own point, and each crossing the other; and each year, as it comes, is guaranteed with various degrees of cogency by every year which has gone before it.

3.

Moreover, while the development of doctrine in the Church has been in accordance with, or in consequence of these immemorial principles, the various heresies, which have from time to time arisen, have in one respect or other, as might be expected, violated those principles with which she rose into existence, and which she still retains. Thus Arian and Nestorian schools denied the allegorical rule of Scripture interpretation; the Gnostics and Eunomians for Faith professed to subst.i.tute knowledge; and the Manichees also, as St. Augustine so touchingly declares in the beginning of his work _De Utilitate credendi_. The dogmatic Rule, at least so far as regards its traditional character, was thrown aside by all those sects which, as Tertullian tells us, claimed to judge for themselves from Scripture; and the Sacramental principle was violated, _ipso facto_, by all who separated from the Church,--was denied also by Faustus the Manichee when he argued against the Catholic ceremonial, by Vigilantius in his opposition to relics, and by the Iconoclasts. In like manner the contempt of mystery, of reverence, of devoutness, of sanct.i.ty, are other notes of the heretical spirit. As to Protestantism it is plain in how many ways it has reversed the principles of Catholic theology.

FOOTNOTES:

[326:1] [E. g. development itself is such a principle also. "And thus I was led on to a further consideration. I saw that the principle of development not only accounted for certain facts, but was in itself a remarkable philosophical phenomenon, giving a character to the whole course of Christian thought. It was discernible from the first years of Catholic teaching up to the present day, and gave to that teaching a unity and individuality. It served as a sort of test, which the Anglican could not stand, that modern Rome was in truth ancient Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople, just as a mathematical curve has its own law and expression." _Apol._ p. 198, _vid._ also Angl. Diff. vol. i.

Lect. xii. 7.]

[328:1] University Sermons [but, more carefully in the "Essay on a.s.sent"].

[329:1] c. Cels. i. 9.

[330:1] Haer. iv. 24. Euseb. Praep. Ev. i. 5.

[330:2] [This is too large a subject to admit of justice being done to it here: I have treated of it at length in the "Essay on a.s.sent."]

[331:1] Init.

[331:2] _Vid._ also _supr._ p. 256.

[332:1] pp. 142, 143, Combe's tr.

[333:1] pp. 144, 145.

[333:2] p. 219.

[335:1] pp. 221, 223.

[336:1] pp. 229, 230.

[336:2] pp. 230, 231.