Church Authority And Personal Responsibility:
A Letter Prom Aubrey De Vere To Sara Coleridge On The Catholic Philosophy
Of The “Rule Of Faith,” Considered Especially With Reference To The
Transcendental System Of S. T. Coleridge.(149)
A letter to me, printed in the _Memoir of Sara Coleridge_, and dated
October 19, 1851, contains the following passage: “Viewing the Romish
system as you do, my dear friend, I cannot regret that you think, as you
do, of the compatibility of my father’s scheme of philosophy therewith,
assured, as I feel, that he had done that Papal system too much justice to
believe in it as a divine institution” (vol. ii. p. 401). From my youth I
had been an ardent student of Coleridge’s philosophy, to the illustration
of which his daughter, indifferent to her own literary fame, so faithfully
devoted her great powers. That philosophy had largely inspired F. D.
Maurice’s remarkable work, _The Kingdom of Christ_; and I believed firmly
that it was, at least as compared with the empirical philosophy of the
last century, in harmony with Catholic teaching, rightly understood; and
that the objections made against that teaching were such as a
transcendentalist must regard as proceeding, not from any intuitions or
ideas of the “reason,” but from the cavils of that notional understanding
called by Coleridge “the faculty judging according to sense.” I have
lately found a letter written by me to my lamented friend less than a
fortnight after her letter quoted above, and about a fortnight before I
made my submission to the Catholic Church. It may interest some of those
who have read Sara Coleridge’s letters, and who are enquirers as to the
method proper for reaching solid conclusions in the domain of truth not
scientific and discovered by man, but religious, and revealed to him.
It was my object to show that the Catholic “rule of faith” does not
oppose, but alone adequately vindicates, some great principles with which
it has been contrasted, _e.g._, personal action, the dependence of
individual souls on divine grace, religious freedom, zeal for truth, the
interior character of genuine piety, and the value of “internal
evidences.” That “rule” has been stigmatized as a bondage. This is the
illusion of those who, regarding the church from without, and under the
influence of modern and national traditions, see but a part of her system,
and have not compared it with other parts. The Catholic law of belief I
endeavored to set forth as the only one consistent with a sound philosophy
when treating of things supernatural, and as such beyond the method of
induction and experiment, while it is also both primitive and Scriptural.
I wished to show that it is the only means by which we can possess the
revealed truth with certainty and at once in its fulness and its purity;
and to illustrate it as not alone our gate of access to truth “spiritually
discerned,” but the nurse and the protectress of our whole spiritual life,
with all its redeemed affections; as opposed, not to personal action and
responsibility, or to a will free and strong, because loyal, but to an
unintelligent pride and to a feeble self‐will, the slave of individual
caprice; as the antagonist, not of what is transcendent and supernatural
in religion, but of a religious philosophy in which the philosophy exalts
itself against the religion, “running after” revelation to “_take somewhat
of it_,” but not inheriting its blessing.
Twenty‐three years have passed since my letter was written; and year after
year has deepened in me the convictions which it expresses, or rather
which it indicates in a fragmentary way, and possibly not with a technical
accuracy. In the church I have found an ever‐deepening peace, a freedom
ever widening, a genuine and a fruitful method for theological thought,
and a truth which brightens more and more into the perfect day. External
to her fold, it is but too probable that I should long since have drifted
into unbelief, though a reluctant and perhaps unconscious unbelief.
After some preliminary matter, referring to our earlier discussions, the
letter continues as follows:
Divine faith is a theological virtue, the gift of God, which raises the
spirit to believe and confess, with a knowledge absolutely _certain_,
though obscure in kind, the _whole truth which God has revealed to man_.
Such is the _description_ which Roman Catholic writers give of a grace
which cannot be _defined_. The knowledge of faith is as certain as that of
mathematics, but wholly different in kind, including a moral and spiritual
power, affecting (if it be _living_ faith) the mind and will at once, as
light and heat are united in the sunbeam, and containing, like the
sunbeam, many other secret properties also. It far transcends the
certainty of any one of our senses, each of which may deceive us. It is
also essentially different from that intellectual vision which belongs to
the kingdom of glory, not of grace or of nature. Its nearest analogon is
human faith, through which we believe that we are the children of our
reputed parents, and on which, and not on demonstration, the basis of
human life is laid. But it differs essentially also from human faith. It
is supernatural, not natural. It is certain, not uncertain. In its
application to supernatural objects it is wholly independent of
imagination or enthusiasm; and it brings us into _real_ intercourse with
objective truth. False religions rest on that which simulates divine
faith, and _may_, even among Christians, so fill its place that the
difference is not discernible to human eyes—a mixture of human faith with
aspiration, imagination, and the other natural faculties. True religion
carries with it the special faculty by which it is capable of being
realized, and thus makes a revelation which they but seemed to make. But
this faculty is not a natural one awakened, but a supernatural one
bestowed, its ordinary antecedents being the corresponding moral virtues
of humility and purity; and the exercise of _human_ faith and other devout
affections, themselves stimulated by a different and inferior kind of
grace, bestowed on the whole family even of unregenerate man. Besides the
antecedent conditions for receiving, other conditions are necessary for
the realization and right application of the divine and illuminating
grace. These conditions are not arbitrary, but spring from the necessities
of our whole nature, both individual and corporate. They are ordinarily
the individual co‐operation of will, mind, and heart, and an attitude of
willing submission to God, or the prophet _through_ whom the objects of
faith are propounded to us by him. This prophet was the Messiah himself
while he walked on earth, and was the Apostolic College from the day of
Pentecost. He continues to address us, in a manner equally distinct,
through that church in whom, as catholic and yet one, the unity of the
Apostolic College (one in union with Peter) still abides. That church is
the body of Christ; and we are introduced at once into it and him through
baptism. The visible rite corresponds with the invisible grace bestowed
through it, just as the church itself is at once the spiritual kingdom of
peace, and the visible “mountain of the Lord’s house” elevated to the
summit of the mountains, and as man himself, consists of soul and body.
That church, inheriting a belief which it never invented or discovered,
confesses Christ, and confesses also that she is Christ’s representative
on earth. She challenges individual faith, and proposes to it the one
object of dogmatic belief. That one object is the _whole_ Christian faith,
as it has hitherto been, or ever may be, authentically _defined_. Whether
it be believed _implicitly_, as by the peasant, or _explicitly_, as by the
doctor, makes no difference whatever, relatively to _faith_, though it may
affect edification, which needs a due proportion between our intellectual
and moral gifts. In each case alike (1) the _whole_ faith is held; (2) is
held _bonâ fide_, as _revealed by God_; (3) is held wholly by supernatural
_faith_; (4) affords thus a basis for the supernatural life of hope and
charity. “Fundamentals,” as distinguished from “non‐essentials,” there are
none, _i.e._, objectively. All Christian truths are in each other by
implication, as Adam’s race was in the first parent. They are yet more
transcendently in each other, for each contains all. To receive one by
divine faith is to receive all. To deny one, when competently proposed to
us by the authority which speaks in God’s name, is to deny all, unless
circumstances beyond our will have deceived our mind respecting that
authority or its message. The whole objective faith will probably never be
recognized, till in the kingdom of glory it flashes upon us in its unity.
In the kingdom of grace (_in via_, not _in patria_) it is defined in
proportion to the moral and intellectual needs of the church. It is
defined, not as a science, but from necessity, and to meet the gainsaying
of heresy. The endeavor of the church is to _preserve_ the treasure
confided to her. _It_ cannot increase, but the _knowledge_ of it must.
Subjectively, the knowledge is progressive as man is progressive; but
objectively it is unchanging as God is eternal. The whole, defined and
undefined, is essential and one. The whole is needed for the race, that
the race may retain Christ, its head. The knowledge of the whole is needed
by each according to his circumstances. The entire belief of the entire
truth, _implicitly_, is necessary for each individual. Ordinarily, and
except in the case of involuntary error, that entire belief of the whole
is realized through a submission (_absolute_ but _free_, filial, and
necessitated by all our Christian sympathies and spiritual affections, as
well as by obedience) to her who is God’s representative, visible, on
earth.
The existence of that visible church is wholly irrespective of our needing
an expositor of dogmatic faith. Its character is determined (1) by the
character of God, whom it images alike in his unity and his plurality; (2)
by the character of Christianity, which is communicated to the _race_, and
to the individual _in and with_ the body, so that _nothing_ that he holds
can be held _singly_, except what is perishable; and (3) by the character
of man, who graduates in a certain order, and who, as a mixed being, is
taught after a fashion that ever exalts the meek and raises the moral
faculties above the intellectual in endless elevation, however high the
latter may ascend. But among its other functions, the visible church has
that of presenting to the infused habit of faith what otherwise it would
seek for in vain, _i.e._, a dogmatic _authority_ which, in act, it can
rise to, cleave to, and live by. If Christ reigned visibly on earth, he
would need no such representative. If Christ, as the Eternal Reason,
_inspired_ each man, as well as enlightening him, he need never have
assumed flesh. If the Holy Ghost _inspired_ each man as he did the
prophets and apostles (instead of communicating to him the grace of faith,
planting him in the church, feeding him with the Lord’s body, quickening
his devout affections, etc.), then there would be no need for the church,
as a dogmatic authority, nor for the _Holy Scriptures_. If the Bible were
a plain book; if the nature of truth were such that it could be divided
into fundamental and non‐essential; if one doctrine could be believed,
while another, involved in it, is denied, then, perhaps, private judgment
might extract from the Bible as much as an individual requires. Again, if
supernatural faith were not requisite, but human faith, founded on
_evidence_, and generating _opinion_, sufficed, then private judgment,
availing itself of all _human_ helps suggested by prudence, could build up
on the Bible, on philosophy, on ecclesiastical traditions, and on the
public opinion of the day, a certain scheme of thought on sacred subjects,
round which the affections would cluster, to which devout associations
would cling, which the understanding might formalize, imagination
brighten, enthusiasm exult in, prudence recommend. But these are all
suppositions, not realities. Private “inspiration” is known to be a
fallacy. “Reason” cannot make reasonable men agree; and every one who has
any portion in reason knows that what is disputed for ages is disputable,
and that what is not truth to all cannot be truth absolute and certain, on
the ground of reason, to any one. Uncertain opinion cannot be supernatural
faith. Spiritual discernment cannot lead us to the finer appreciation of
doctrine while we remain ignorant as to whether it be a particular
doctrine or the opposite doctrine that challenges our faith.
But, on the other hand, if an authority speaks in God’s name, it _may_ be
really commissioned by him. If so commissioned, it _may_ be believed by
us. If believed, all parts of its message are equally certain. This
hypothesis obviously _admits_ of an objective faith certain throughout,
and only for that reason certain at all. If a revelation were to be
_founded on faith, this would afford faith a sphere_. I speak of it now as
but an hypothesis. I claim for it that it is _reasonable_.
It is objected that _such_ belief could be but an amiable and useful
credulity at best, since it would not be founded on insight and spiritual
discernment. It is thus that Hindoos and Mahometans believe; and their
belief would be worthless, but that by God’s mercy some fragments of truth
and some gleams of reason are mixed up with their systems. The objection
wholly overlooks the fact that _ex hypothesi_ the prophet and her message
are believed, not with a _human_ faith, but with a _divine_ faith. Faith
is inclusively the gift of spiritual discernment, though it is also much
more. What faith receives _must_ be spiritually discerned. It can discern
in no other way.
But, it is objected, the plain fact is that multitudes do _not_
spiritually discern or appreciate what they thus receive. No doubt.
Nothing is more possible than that they should receive with only a human
faith what yet is divinely addressed to a divine faith. They have, then,
opportunities which they have not yet used. Multitudes of Roman Catholics
have doubtless, like multitudes of Protestants, opinion only, not
certainty, while the sensation of certainty is in both cases illusory, and
proceeds from positiveness of temper or sluggishness of mind.(150) To
possess the means of realizing and maintaining faith _compels_ no man to
have faith; otherwise, like intuitions irrespective of the will, it would
merit nothing and include no probation. Faith and the guide of faith are
both offered to the Catholic; but he must co‐operate with grace, as with
Providence, to profit by either.
But how, it is asked, can we by such a process have a spiritual
discernment of the doctrine by which we are challenged? Are we not in the
position, after all, of Hindoos? I answer, Christianity resembles many
false religions in this respect: that it comes to us on what claims to be
authority, and challenges our submission; but it differs from them in this
all‐important respect: that others are false, and it is true. It being
true, the human mind, which, so far as it retains the divine image, is in
sympathy with truth, has a _moral_ appreciation of its truth, and, when
illuminated by faith, has a _spiritual_ discernment of it. No one who,
after years of wandering in erroneous paths, comes at last to contemplate
the doctrine of the Trinity from a new point of view, and accepts it on
what he trusts is a spiritual discernment of it, can doubt that he could
equally have discerned its truth years before had he been led by the
church to the same point of view, and gifted from above with that light
which removes the sensuous film. He could not indeed, on the authority of
the church, spiritually receive or hold, with genuine faith, something in
itself false and absurd. But then _part of the hypothesis_ is that the
church can propound no doctrinal error. Neither could the definition
_give_ faith. But then it does not profess to do so; it but _shapes_ and
_directs_ faith. As little could the authority of the church give faith.
It makes no such profession; it but _challenges_ faith. It is the
_inseparable condition_ of faith: God is its _source_. The human mind, co‐
operating with grace, receives faith, and at the same time is confronted
with a distinct, palpable object of faith. So touched, it becomes the
mirror of truth; and its belief is exclusively a _personal_ and _internal_
act, though performed with the instrumentality, not only of an outward
agency, but of a _specific_ external agency, _i.e._, the church. The same
Divine Spirit acts at once externally and internally—externally in the
church, which it commissions, instructs, and keeps one; internally in the
individual mind, which it kindles, illuminates, attracts, and (dissolving
the tyranny of self‐love) lifts up into freedom and power. The Holy
Spirit, then, is at once the root of faith in the individual, and of unity
in the church. This doctrine may be objected to as _ideal_; but surely not
as _carnal_. Assuredly it is Scriptural.
But, it is rejoined, “supposing that the divine message may be spiritually
discerned _when_ it is devoutly accepted, and thus accepted _as a whole_,
when it would otherwise be accepted but in part (and then, perhaps, with
but a partial faith), still how are we to know that the authority is
divine? If no belief, however sound, is faith, unless it (1st) believes,
and (2d) _truly believes_, that it rests on _divine testimony_ and listens
to God himself, how is this prophet to be recognized? The world abounds in
claimants to infallibility, though the Christian world has but one. The
apostles indeed claimed it; but then they wrought miracles, and the
miracles proved the authority.” I answer that miracles _proved_ nothing by
way of _scientific demonstration_; but that they _witnessed_ to the
supernatural character of the teacher and the doctrine. If the divine
message could be _proved_ to the reason, it would rest on science, not on
faith, and the whole Christian scheme would be reversed, belief becoming a
necessary and _natural_ act. Miracles _challenged_ faith, but could only
be received by faith, since they might always be referred to imposture or
evil spirits, both classes of agency abounding in the time of Simon Magus
as now. It is begging the question to assume that miracles do not take
place now; but, even conceding thus much, the church has still at least as
high credentials as the apostles had. Their miracles constituted but
evidence; and evidence which creates opinion can but _challenge_ faith,
not extort it. In place of that evidence we have now the “notes of the
church”: its apostolicity, its catholicity, its unity, its sanctity, its
heroic history, its wonderful promulgation, its martyrs, its doctors, its
schoolmen; communities moulded by it; races united by it; sciences and
arts first nourished by it; civilization and freedom produced by it, and,
amid all the changes of the world, the same great doctrines and sacraments
retained by it. We can hardly doubt that the one stupendous _fact_ of the
church is as strong an _appeal_ to the faith of a man (and our Lord
himself did but _appeal_ to faith) as that made by an apostle at Athens,
when, rising up in a mixed multitude of disputatious Greeks, Eastern
sorcerers, Roman conjurers, and Jewish refugees, he assured them that he
had been sent by the unknown God to preach what to the Greeks was
foolishness: that One who was crucified had also worked miracles and risen
from the dead, . . . that his kingdom, and not the Roman, was to crown the
world; and that all this was the fulfilment of Jewish prophecy, though the
Jewish nation disowned that kingdom, and had slain its Head. He spoke of
glories to come: the church speaks of triumphs that have been. He
suggested an experiment: the church has tried and proved it. He was
accused of blasphemy, superstition, atheism, insubordination; so is she.
He must have confessed that inspiration was not given to him alone, but to
the Apostolic College; and he could have brought no immediate and
scientific proof that he and his scattered brethren agreed in the same
doctrine, even as to “essentials.” The church’s practical unity of
doctrine is a matter of notoriety, and is accounted for by the imputation
of tyranny, formalism, etc. It is an understatement to affirm that, _on
the Roman Catholic hypothesis_, that church _challenges_ faith with the
aid of as strong evidential witness as an apostle possessed. But the
_quantum_ of evidence is not the question. The greatest amount of it
cannot _give_ faith, the least may _elicit_ it; and at what periods the
world requires most evidence we know not. The important fact is that the
church which claims for its centre the _apostolic_ see, does challenge
faith just as an apostle did, or as the whole apostolic college did; that
she is apostolic, not merely by having the succession, but by using the
authority, and by acting just as she _must_ act if, as she affirms, the
whole college, in union with Peter, _lived on_ in her. She too claims all
and gives all. She too says, “Through me you may exercise divine faith
when you receive, ‘by _hearing_,’ the message of God; for I am his
apostle. What I saw and heard, what I handled and tasted, that, as a sure
witness, I report. It was I who cast my nets on the Galilean shore when I
was called. I heard that question, ‘But whom say _ye_ that _I_ am?’ I
knelt on the Mount of Transfiguration when the suppressed glory broke
forth and the law and the prophets were irradiated. I joined in that Last
Supper. I stood beside his cross, and received his mother as my mother. I
reached forth my hand, and put my fingers into the print of the nails. I
received the charge, saw the ascension, felt the Pentecostal tongues,
delivered my message, sealed it with my blood, and still stand up,
delivering it for ever, and sealing it with my blood and with his.” This
is the claim the church makes, and the same was made by the apostle. Both
alike are subject to the rejoinder, “High claims do not prove themselves;
and the competitors for infallibility are many.” Both alike answer: “If my
message be false, you could not _really_ and vitally believe in me, even
though you would. If my message be true, you _may_ believe in me, but I
cannot compel you to do so.” It is not more wonderful that there should be
rival priesthoods than rival creeds. There are many false _because_ there
is one true. Authority has commonly been claimed even by spurious
religions, because the instinct of the human race, which is reason,
perceived that if God vouchsafed a revelation to man, it would be both
given and sustained through man, and not merely through a book.
From the above statements thus much at least is clear: (1) that the
Protestant controversy with Rome does _not_ respect the _ultimate source
of belief_, which, by the admission of both sides, is to be referred to
the Holy Spirit alone; but does respect this question, viz., whether,
since an external agency is admitted to be in every case _instrumentally_
but _absolutely_ necessary for faith, that aid be not given to us by God,
and given in the form of one, specific instrument, not any one that comes
to hand—something easily known by outward marks which plainly solicit
attention, not a proteus that changes almost as the individual mind
changes. The question is whether the something external confessedly
essential be the church of God and temple of the Spirit, speaking
intelligibly and with authority, in the majesty of its visible unity; or
be whatever sect or teacher may represent to plastic minds the public
opinion of the place and time.
And (2) it is equally plain that Rome, in denouncing the principle of
private judgment (except so far as, in _abnormal_ circumstances, we are
reduced to it, or something like it, while testing the claims of
authority), is in no degree disparaging _individual intuition_, but simply
_stating the conditions, external_ as well as internal, under which it can
be effectually and permanently realized. To see with another’s eyes, not
one’s own, is an absurd aspiration which could not have made itself good
for the greater part of the Christian era, over the greater part of the
Christian world. But a man may use his own eyes, though together with them
he uses a telescope, and his own ears, though he listens to the voice of a
prophet instead of his own voice, or his domineering neighbor’s.
The Roman Catholic doctrine of authority does not assume that we cannot,
even without that authority, have _some_ insight into divine things. We
can see the moon without a telescope, though not the stars of a nebula.
But in theology _partial_ gleams of intelligence are not sufficient for
even their own permanence. Implicitly or explicitly, we must hold the
whole to hold a part. Truth is a vast globe which we may touch with a
finger, but cannot clasp in both hands. It eludes us, and we possess it
but by being possessed by it. We must be drawn into the gravitation of its
sphere and made one with it. We are thus united with it if in union with
the church, to which it is given. We then _see_ it all around us, as we
see the world we live in—not by glimpses and through mists, as we see a
remote star. This is the Catholic’s faith. Everything confirms everything
in his world. “One day telleth another, and one night certifieth another.”
“Sea calleth unto sea.” The firmament above his head “declares” the glory
of God, and the chambers of the deep his statutes. A Catholic indeed has
his varying moods, and his “dry moods,” and his eager questionings on
points not revealed; but his _faith_ does not rise and fall with his
temperament. The _foundation_, at least, of his spiritual being, is a
rock.
Neither does the Roman Catholic doctrine deny that a man _might_
conceivably, though not practically, without the aid of authority, grasp
the _whole_ of theology as far as it has been yet defined. But it declares
that such knowledge, if thus acquired, would not be the knowledge
possessed by faith, but by opinion; that it would rest partly on science,
partly on mere human faith, partly on enthusiasm (so far as the
_sensitive_ appreciation of it went); and that, not being divine faith, it
could not perform the genuine functions of faith. The intellectual region
might feast with Dives, while the spiritual starved with Lazarus. This is,
in a greater or lesser degree, the case with many, both among those who
profess the principle of private judgment and those who profess to obey
authority. In the very region of faith opinion may simulate faith, just as
presumption may simulate hope and benevolence simulate charity. The most
mysterious part of our probation is this: that under all circumstances and
in all things nature may mimic grace, and pretence ape virtue. We may seem
to ourselves angels, and be nothing; even as Christ himself, and his
church no less, _seem_, to the eye of sense, the opposite of what they
are, when insight is lacking or the point of view is determined by
prejudice or a false tradition.
The Roman Catholic theory does not deny the force of internal evidence. It
but says that such evidence, being a matter of moral _feeling_, is to be
inwardly appreciated rather than logically set forth, and that it is often
most felt when most unconsciously. A parent’s authority is not the less
attested by the moral sense of the child and by his affections, though he
does not consciously reflect on that part of its evidence; while yet he
cannot be ignorant that all the _neighbors_ believe that those who claim
to be his parents are such in reality. Catholic teaching does not concede
that, as argument, any evidence is _necessary_ for those brought up in the
true fold and gifted from childhood with faith, which is itself the
evidence of things not seen. It does not believe that any gifts confined
to a few can give a higher faith than is open to all “men of good‐will.”
But it does believe that for simple and learned alike one external
condition is necessary, viz., that the doctrine to be believed should be
distinctly _proposed_ by an authority believed (on supernatural faith) to
speak in God’s name; so that from first to last faith should be, not a
credulity founded on fancy, on fear, or on self‐love, but a “_theological_
virtue” _believing in God, in all that he reveals, __ as revealed by him_,
and in nothing else. Evidences are not anything that can compel faith or
be a substitute for it; but they have commonly a very important place,
notwithstanding, in the divine economy. Their place is _among_ the
_motives_ of faith. These _intellectual_ motives are the character of
Christ and of the faith; the character of the church and its
propagation—in other words, internal and external evidence. The _moral_
motives are such as the spiritual safety of Christian obedience, the peace
and joy of believing, the dignity Christianity confers on human nature,
etc.
One circumstance which the Protestant theory forgets is that _all_
knowledge of divine things is not necessarily _faith_. Angelic knowledge
and that of the triumphant church is vision, not faith, and differs from
faith either in essence or in inseparable accidents. The knowledge we have
of God through natural theology, however true, is not, therefore,
identical with divine faith. Irrespectively of Christianity, a belief in
God _precedes_ speculations, and comes to children chiefly by faith in
what they hear from their parents. They _could_ not, indeed, believe their
parents equally if their own minds were not in _harmony_ with such a
belief; but in their case, too, authority is commonly a _condition_ of
believing. By faith, says S. Paul, “we know that the worlds were made.”
That knowledge comes to us both _through_ testimony and _by_ intuitions.
The “heavens declare the glory of God”; but they declare it, not prove it
scientifically; and the Psalmist had the patriarchal tradition and Mosaic
revelation, as well as his intuitions, and as their interpreter. Natural
theology we accept by _human_ faith concurring with natural lights and
that lower degree of grace which compasses the whole world. Divine faith,
S. Paul tells us, requires an outward organ, too, not for its promulgation
only, but for its _certainty_. “He gave some apostles, some pastors,
etc.,” “that we be not driven about with every _wind of doctrine_.” Could
_this_ effect have been realized if apostle had preached against apostle,
and each prophet had said to his neighbor “I, too, am a prophet,” and bear
an opposite message? S. Paul says that the hierarchy is ordained not only
for edification, but to make faith _certain_. It can only do that in its
unity. Had certainty been unnecessary, or had reason been its organ, no
hierarchy would have been elevated to constitute the _church
representative_.
The Protestant theory (it may be so spoken of with reference to the great
main points included in most forms of Protestantism) assumes that the one
great characteristic of faith is its being a power of “spiritual
discernment” or an intuition of spiritual truth. This is to put a part of
the truth in place of the whole. This attribute of faith is asserted by
the church also; but her conception of faith is founded on a _larger_
appreciation of the Holy Scriptures and of man’s compound nature.
Faith indeed _becomes_ a spiritual _seeing_; but it _comes_ “by hearing.”
Considered even exclusively as intuition, the “spiritual discernment” is
wholly different in kind from moral or mathematical intuitions, as those
two classes of intuition differ from each other. A spiritual intuition,
analogous to that of reason (though more exalted), would be utterly
unsuited to our needs while still laboring in our probation and toiling in
the “body of this death.” The intuition really vouchsafed to us by
supernatural grace ever retains peculiar characteristics originally
produced by the mode in which we receive it. Humility, submission, self‐
abnegation, constitute that mode; and these qualities are and remain as
essential characteristics of true faith as spiritual discernment is. No
otherwise than “as little children” is it possible for us to enter into
the kingdom of heaven. We must enter the sheep‐fold by the _door_; we
cannot otherwise profit by it; for could we climb its walls, it would
cease to be the sheep‐fold to us, since we should not bear in our breasts
the heart of the Lamb. _Opinion asserts; faith confesses._ Assertion
includes self‐assertion; confession confesses _another_. God only can
rightly assert himself. Created beings are relative beings, and the
condition of their true greatness is that they forget themselves in God.
The very essence of pride, the sin of the fallen angels, whom but a single
_voluntary evil thought_ subverted, is self‐assertion on the part of a
relative being. In taking self as a practical _ground_ of knowledge, it,
in a certain sense, creates its Creator, and involves the principle that
God himself may be but an idea. Pride is not only our strongest spiritual
temptation, but is almost the natural _instinct_ of reason, working _by
itself_, on supernatural themes, and it remains _undetected by reason,
just as water cannot be weighed in water_. The higher we soar, the more we
need to be reminded of our infirmity; therefore the glorious intuitions of
faith are, for our safety, given to us by the way of humility, and
continued to us on condition of obedience. Not only faith, as a habit, is
humble, but the peculiar species of knowledge which it conveys is such as
to preserve that character; for that knowledge is _obscure_, although
_certain_. We see, “as through a glass, darkly”; but we see steadily.
Imaginative reason gets bright flashes by rubbing its own eyes, but they
are transient. Faith, requiring docility as a habit in us, and involving
obscurity as a condition of its knowledge, is a _perpetual_ discipline of
self‐sacrifice. Christianity is the doctrine of a sacrifice; and through a
spiritual act and habit of self‐sacrifice alone can that doctrine be
“spiritually discerned.” Christian _knowledge_ is thus the opposite of the
rationalistic and of the Gnostic.
This estimate of faith is surely as Scriptural as it is philosophic. Thus
only can we reconcile the statements of our Lord and of S. Paul. The most
humble and child‐like docility is constantly referred to by our Lord as an
essential part of that faith which, on _condition of so beginning_ and of
_continuing such_, imparts to us as much spiritual discernment as is an
earnest of the Blessed Vision. Such _docility must look like credulity_.
Almost all the instances of it which met his highest praise did look like
credulity, and would have been credulity had not grace inspired them,
Providence directed them, and Truth itself rewarded them. What then? Which
part of Christianity is not thus double‐visaged? What part of it is not a
scandal to them that “judge by appearances” and do not “judge righteous
judgment”? If to all without faith the Master must _seem_ an impostor, why
should not the disciples _seem_ enthusiasts? Were they who wished that the
shadow of the apostles should fall on them, was she who touched the hem of
Christ’s garment, fanatics, because erring nature too can prompt her
children to similar acts under an erring religion? Before such a
philosophy (if philosophy can rest on such an _assumption_) the Gospel, as
well as the church of the _orbis terrarum_, and the whole ancient church,
must give way, and pure religion must be a discovery, not of the XVIth,
but of the XIXth century. Credulity itself is but a subordinate and ill‐
grounded form of _human_ faith, and is far from suppressing, though it
misdirects, the nobler faculties of the _natural_ man. Plato and Bacon had
more of it than Epicurus and Hobbes. Docility (its analogon in the
spiritual world) is the humbler element in faith. It is absolutely
necessary, and is sometimes undistinguishable, in mere _outward_ seeming,
from its natural counterpart. Milk is as necessary for babes as meat for
the mature. The mature never cease, in the kingdom of heaven, to be,
_inclusively_, children; it is their very excellence that they unite the
best characteristics of different ages, sexes, and conditions. Yet the
children of the kingdom are not fed on mortal, but on immortal, milk; and
that milk is meat in a less compact preparation. As an incredulous habit
is not a mark of true wisdom, so an indocile habit is incompatible with an
authentic faith, which cannot act except in obedience to an authentic
authority. To the rationalist the indocile habit, far from being a fault,
is a necessity; for his knowledge comes from within _only_, not from above
and from within.
Now let us turn to history and fact. Had they no spiritual discernment of
Christ who died for him? Yet did not the martyrs and the age of martyrs
abound in what to Protestantism seem credulities? The church of the
apostles, of the fathers, of the doctors, of the schoolmen, the church
that built up Christendom, invariably recognized the principle of
ecclesiastical obedience, docility, submission, as a part of faith, not as
inconsistent with the intuition of faith—its moral element, as the other
is its intellectual. It was the cement that kept the whole fabric
together, though not the amphionic power that raised the living stones.
Those who branded obedience as superstition were Arius, and Aërius, and
Vigilantius, and the Albigensian heretics, not the fathers, the doctors,
or the martyrs of the faith. The latter knew that the faith of him who
lays hold of Christ, and of her who but touches “the hem of his garment,”
are in kind the same. They knew also, that, when _truth confronts us_ and
grace is offered, the spirit which is “offended” at little things is not
edified by great. And how has it been ever since; how is it now with the
mass of the world? How does faith come to _children and to the poor_, and
to the busy and to the dull? _What makes the Bible divine to them?_ What
suggests the truths which they are to look for in the Bible? Authority,
everywhere acting through such representatives of authority as remain in
lands which decry it! If docility, obedience, a desire to believe,
submission previous to insight, be not, under _Christian conditions_,
characteristics of faith, merely because, under pagan conditions, they
might be opposed to spiritual knowledge, then have most believers believed
in vain; for error cannot be the foundation of truth. Discernment belongs,
by universal confession, to faith, and baptism is the “sacrament of
illumination”; but no proposition can be more _unreasonable_ than that
faith should begin with, or be identical with, an insight which, in a high
degree of conscious development, obviously belongs to the few, and to them
under very special circumstances.
Let us return to the philosophy of the “rule of faith.”
No one would deny that the will, even more than the mind, is the seat of
faith; but the Protestant theory does not efficiently and practically
recognize this truth. Submission is in the will; discernment in the mind.
The latter belongs to the man chiefly; the former to the child equally,
and the _child living on in the Christian man_. The whole Catholic system
is based on this fact. From it, for instance, follows, by inevitable
consequence, the _true theory_ of charity in reference to dogmatic
error—that, namely, of “invincible ignorance.” Protestants, and
Protestants who repeat the Athanasian Creed, think this expression but an
evasion. But “invincible ignorance” means _involuntary_ ignorance _of the
truth_, and is based on the known principle that heresy must be a sin of
the will, because faith is a virtue, primarily belonging to the will, when
it submits to grace. Now, granting that the internal agency of the Divine
Spirit is that which clears the faculty of spiritual discernment and
develops faith in the mind, still, assuredly, obedience is trained and
faith is rooted in the will by the same Spirit addressing us through its
outward organ, the church. “_Obedience_ to the faith” is not a principle
only, but a habit. Habits are impressed on us, not by precept only, but by
providential circumstance and divine institutions, such as the civil
power, parental rule, the weakness of infancy, the hindrances of
knowledge, those necessities for social co‐operation which train the
sympathies.
Implicit faith in the Bible only might, for such as entertained it with
absolute and childlike confidence, give rise to no small degree of moral
deference, and does so with many Protestants, though not without a
considerable alloy of error and of superstition. But a book, though
divine, is a book still. It cannot speak, except with the inquirer for an
interpreter. It cannot correct misinterpretations. It will often reveal
what is sought, and hide what is not desired, but is needed. It will
“find” those who find in it what they _brought_ to it. It is plastic in
hot and heedless hands. It may train the mental faculties, but it will not
practically exercise a habit of submission. If a country, in place of
possessing laws, with magistrates to enforce and judges to expound them,
possessed nothing but statutes on parchment, and a vast legal literature
for their exposition, statutes and comments being alike commended to the
private judgment of individuals, would it be possible that subjects could
be trained up with the habit or spirit of political obedience? Every man
might be educated till he resembled a village attorney; but loyalty would
be extinct. The statute‐book would still assert the principle of
obedience, as does the Bible in spiritual things; but the habit could not
thus be formed. To bow exclusively to that which addresses us in abstract
terms, and to bow when and how our judgment dictates—this alone is not in
reality, though it may be in words, a discipline of humility. To obey God,
_as represented by man_, is that at which pride revolts. The authority of
the church in the household and kingdom of Christ is like that of the
father in the family and the monarch in his realm. An authority thus
objectively embodied has also a special power of working through the
affections; and to train them to be the handmaids of faith is one of the
special functions of the church. “My little children of whom I travail
again,” says S. Paul to his flock. What living church can be imagined as
thus addressing her children? Surely none save that one which claims
apostolic authority, and does not shrink from proclaiming that faith
includes obedience as well as insight. This is not an idle theory. What
men in the Roman Catholic Church have entertained the most filial and
affectionate reverence for their mother? Her saints—those who had the most
ardent love for their Lord, the deepest insight into his Gospel, and the
keenest appreciation of its spiritual freedom—the S. Bernards, Thomas à
Kempises, Francis de Saleses. To retain obedience as a principle, and yet
cheat it of its object, an authentic and _real_ authority, was the “Arch
Mock” of the “Reformation.”
A faith thus confirmed and steadied by authentic authority can alone
permanently sustain the ardent and enthusiastic devotion of strong minds.
Faith, or what seems faith, if resting exclusively on internal feeling and
individual opinion, will vehemently, if but transiently, excite the light
and the impulsive; but the graver mind will distrust it, even when visited
by the more sanguine mood, from a painful sense that it has no power of
discriminating between faith and illusion. It will be sure of its own
perceptions and sensations; but it cannot contrive wholly to ignore those
of its neighbor when they are opposite. It will remember that there are
two causes of uncertainty, the first arising when our own premises admit
of alternative conclusions, the second when, the conclusions being
obvious, the premises are disputed and cannot be proved. It will remember
that mathematical and moral intuitions, “though independent of evidence,
are yet backed by a practically universal consent (the result of their
being, in a large measure, intuitions independent of the will); and it may
be disposed to say that if it happened that most people denied that the
three angles of a triangle equalled two right angles, I could not indeed
believe that they made three, but I might come to believe that I had
wandered into a region in which impressions must always _seem_ certain,
but yet in which nothing could be authentically known.” Men cannot
exchange their _tastes_; but then they know that tastes are subjective;
whereas revealed truth must be objective. Some such misgiving will chill
faith commonly in large and steady minds, and thus the whole religious
life is struck dead. Enthusiasm will commonly, under such circumstances,
belong only to those minds which boil over before they have taken in much
heat. A church which makes its censers of paper, not metal, cannot burn
incense. A religion which, _in any form_, includes a “peradventure,” has
admitted the formula of nature and lost the “amen” of supernatural truth.
It is reduced and transposed. Its raptures are but poetry, its dogma but
science, its antiquity but pedantry, its forms but formality, its freedom
but license, its authority but convention, its zeal but faction, its
sobriety but sloth. It cannot admit of enthusiasm, as it cannot generate
it in its nobler and more permanent forms, because it can neither balance
nor direct it. Such a faith _must_ install reason in the higher place. A
church founded on nothing higher _must_ serve, not rule. It will end by
worshipping its bondage.
As in theology there is no possibility of separating dogma from dogma, so
there is no possibility of separating the religious affections from a
reverence for dogmas, if the mind be an inquiring one. What has been
called “loyalty to our Lord,” and contrasted with the “dogmatic spirit,”
is a sentiment which depends wholly on what we _believe_ concerning him.
But to believe him to be God and man involves an immense mass of profound
doctrine which may be held _implicitly_ by the many, but which the student
must hold _explicitly_, or be in a condition of doubt. These subtle
questions involve metaphysical speculations; and had we to settle them for
ourselves, we must all of us have mastered philosophy before we had
learned the lore of Christian love. But how many points are there of a
different sort which yet must be certain, if our faith is to be
certain—points which no man could settle for himself, and as to which no
authority save one secure from error could give us rest! Such are the
questions as to the mode of administering sacraments; what form of baptism
is _valid_, and what is _invalid_; the canonicity of the Scriptures,
which, if it depend on our individual estimate of historic evidence only,
can rise no higher than the level of opinion, and therefore can never
afford a basis for divine faith. No reasonable man can suppose that either
directly or indirectly he can reach to intuitions on _these_ points. He
may say that they are not essential to him personally; but he cannot but
suspect that they are essential to the integrity of that whole scheme of
theology which, _as a whole_, is essential to him. A leak in the ship is
not less dangerous because low down and out of sight; and the strength of
a chain is the strength of its weakest link. When the principle of
authority ceased to be held, as a revealed doctrine (the _complement_ of
that of personal spiritual discernment), the complete circle of faith was
broken, and an element of doubt entered in. The process was unperceived
because gradual, the _inherited_ faith concealing long the ravages of
innovating opinion. Human faith succeeded also to divine, and simulated
it. Science, imagination, enthusiasm in its ever‐varying forms,
contributed their aid. Protestant churches can hardly now even conceive of
an _authority_ acting simply and humbly under divine _faith_. They can
only imagine anathemas as proceeding from passion. But S. Paul and the
early church, as well as the Roman Catholic, thought differently.
Another principle lost sight of practically on the Protestant theory of
religious knowledge is that it is necessary to hold the Christian faith,
not only (1st) _in its fulness_, and (2d) _with certainty_, but also (3d)
_in its purity_. Now, whatever truths individual intuitions and studies
may bring home to us (legitimately or accidentally), it is certain from
experience that they will not exclude many errors, which apparently have
the same sanction, and are entertained with the same confidence—nay, are
so cherished that if but one be spoken against, the whole system of
thought is felt to be endangered. But this confusion of truth and error
introduces Babel into the heart of Jerusalem, and erects altars to false
gods in the temple of the True. The soul espoused to Christ must exclude
his rivals, and preserve ever the unrelaxed girdle of purity in spiritual
things. Faith is not only the mother, but the _virgin_ mother, of all
perfect belief, devotion, and practice. Error, _in the region of faith_,
is not only hostile but fatal to truth in its spiritual unity. We are
assured that “the letter _kills_,” not merely that it is void; and we know
that a little poison may corrupt much food, while a little needful
medicine may taste as bitter as poison. Now, that the Bible, by reason of
its very excellency, abounds in passages obvious to individual
misinterpretation, no candid reader of it or of history will deny. We
need, therefore, something which will preserve us from such dangers, as
well as from evils of deficiency. Animals are protected from many dangers
by the constant presence of overpowering instincts. The soul requires
equally the constant guidance of the Holy Spirit. Experience disproves the
novel and enthusiastic notion that the Spirit is _thus_ given—viz., as
inspiration—to the individual in his isolation. He requires, therefore,
the aid of the Spirit, both acting in his soul as vital heat, and also
shedding light on him from the church, round whose head the Pentecostal
flame ever plays. Within that church which teaches “with authority, and
not as the scribes,” a firmament is drawn between matters to be believed
_de fide_ and matters of opinion. Errors in theological opinion,
recognized as opinion only, are not necessarily more hurtful than errors
in science or politics. Let us now glance at the most ordinary form of
objection.
So inveterate are traditional habits of thought that we recur to them
after their fallaciousness has been ever so clearly pointed out. A wheel
of thought moves round in our head, and the old notions recur. What
convert, for instance, has not been plagued, while approaching to Catholic
convictions, by the reiteration of that thought constantly recurring to
his mind, “Is it likely that all England should have been in error for
three hundred years?” Though he cannot but feel the weight of the answer,
“It is at least more likely than that all Christendom should have been far
more deeply steeped in worse errors and corruptions, by their nature
affecting individuals as well as the body corporate, for at least twelve
hundred years.” It is thus that in the question of the “rule of faith” we
recur to the question, “Is it not obvious that the individual mind must
lose all freedom and spontaneity, if obliged to measure its movements by
an outward authority? Is not such obedience servile, not filial; carnal,
not spiritual? Who could move freely, if _obliged_ to walk always with
another, though that other were his dearest friend?” Now, far from all
this being obvious, it is obviously founded on a misconception of the
hypothesis objected to. Why does the soul partake of a higher _freedom_ as
it advances in _submission_ to God? How is it that, in the glorified
state, perfect freedom exists without the possibility of falling? Because
the Spirit that works in the redeemed and regenerate is the Spirit of God
himself. Why is it no bondage that our two eyes must, if in a healthy
condition, move together? Because the same law acts freely in both. Why is
it that a hand that has ceased to obey the brain is called a _powerless_
hand? Because its power proceeds from sympathy with the brain. Now, on the
hypothesis of the “visible church,” just such a sympathy, such a law, and
such a Spirit _work equally and simultaneously in the individual and in
the body_. To the church the Spirit is given indefectibly, to lead her
into “all truth,” even to the “end of the world.” The individual may or
may not co‐operate with the Spirit; but if he does, he must needs, _ex
hypothesi_, co‐operate with the church, and he cannot feel as a bondage
what is the law of his life, though the _less spiritual_ part of him may
often feel it as a salutary restraint. Rightly to serve is, in things
divine, the only possible spiritual, as distinguished from merely natural,
freedom. The real question, then, respects, not either the stringency of
the law or its character as external law, but its being or not being
divine—a rightful authority, not a usurpation.
The place of faith is not determined by controversial or even intellectual
needs only. Its functions are innumerable. It is the bond between the race
and God. It must affect the whole soul and be the health of every part. It
is God’s adamant diffused through every region of our being, as the rock
on which the church is built extends, in its solidity, throughout and
under the whole fabric. Our individual faith may be weak; but it is the
nature of faith itself to be infinitely strong; and our faith must so come
to us, and so stand towards us, as to _admit of_ its own infinite
increase, as well as of its permanence. It must enlighten the mind, erect
the will, warm and chasten the heart, live in every affection, kneel in
our humility, endure in our patience. It is an armor that covers us
wholly, leaving _no spot_ exposed to the flying shafts of an enemy, to
whom one spot is as the whole body. Its shield is a mirror in which
humanity beholds the whole of its being, individual and social, imaged
after the stature of the renewed man. That image is no idol with brazen
breast and feet of earth, but the likeness, everywhere glorious, of Him
who took our whole nature, and in it was obedient to “his parents” and his
country’s law, as well as to his Father’s will. Faith, in the Protestant
acceptation of the word, is unable to discharge for us all these high
offices. No Protestant community (and many have been tried) can point to
its heroic triumphs, and say, “Behold its fruits.” They have neither
converted heathen nations nor retained as much of the faith as they
started with on their new career.
The theory of the “Bible _interpreted_ by private judgment” seems, then,
to me to have been novel, rash, crude, not sincerely thought out when
promulgated—the only position that could affect to justify the revolt from
unity, but one not itself justified by the event. _My reason_, to which
rationalism ever appeals, would not have antecedently assured me that a
book would have formed even part of a revelation. _My reason_ tells me
that if the facts of Christianity be divine, its dogmatic truths divine,
and the book which records the facts and announces the truths be divine,
it is not _unreasonable_ that the interpreter of that book should be
divine. Such is the theory which Rome maintains, but which no one will say
that Rome did more than _retain_, walking thus in the footsteps of the
primitive church, and of the general councils. The patriarchal church had
no Bible; the Hebrew church but an incomplete canon, added to from time to
time. The Christian canon was not compiled for two centuries after Christ;
Providence did not allow of its diffusion by printing for fourteen. The
Christian world is still, for the most past, unable to read. _Most_
Protestants have therefore ever been compelled to be guided by an
authority which, without pretending to confer the spiritual gifts which
Rome confers, is exposed to many of the same objections. All religious
communities say practically, “Hear me.” One only says, with the apostle,
“Hear the church.” One only delivers a distinct and consistent message.
One only unites parental authority with maternal solicitude, fear with
love, enthusiasm with steadfastness, permanence of faith with progress of
defined knowledge, the doctrines with the ethical habits of the early
church, the lore of the Fathers with the propagandism of the early
missionaries and the courage of the martyrs. It is the church of Him who
was singled from his brethren as were Judah, Shem, Seth, and made to be
unity, that in his unity all might be one, in one Lord, one _faith_, and
one baptism.