that, while our students are encouraged to pursue the history of classical
literature, they should also be invited to acquaint themselves with some
general facts about the canon of Holy Scripture, its history, the Jewish
canon, St. Jerome, the Protestant Bible; again, about the languages of
Scripture, the contents of its separate books, their authors, and their
versions. In all such knowledge I conceive no great harm can lie in being
superficial.
But now as to Theology itself. To meet the apprehended danger, I would
exclude the teaching _in extense_ of pure dogma from the secular schools,
and content myself with enforcing such a broad knowledge of doctrinal
subjects as is contained in the catechisms of the Church, or the actual
writings of her laity. I would have students apply their minds to such
religious topics as laymen actually do treat, and are thought praiseworthy
in treating. Certainly I admit that, when a lawyer or physician, or
statesman, or merchant, or soldier sets about discussing theological
points, he is likely to succeed as ill as an ecclesiastic who meddles with
law, or medicine, or the exchange. But I am professing to contemplate
Christian knowledge in what may be called its secular aspect, as it is
practically useful in the intercourse of life and in general conversation;
and I would encourage it so far as it bears upon the history, the
literature, and the philosophy of Christianity.
It is to be considered that our students are to go out into the world, and
a world not of professed Catholics, but of inveterate, often bitter,
commonly contemptuous, Protestants; nay, of Protestants who, so far as
they come from Protestant Universities and public schools, do know their
own system, do know, in proportion to their general attainments, the
doctrines and arguments of Protestantism. I should desire, then, to
encourage in our students an intelligent apprehension of the relations, as
I may call them, between the Church and Society at large; for instance,
the difference between the Church and a religious sect; the respective
prerogatives of the Church and the civil power; what the Church claims of
necessity, what it cannot dispense with, what it can; what it can grant,
what it cannot. A Catholic hears the celibacy of the clergy discussed in
general society; is that usage a matter of faith, or is it not of faith?
He hears the Pope accused of interfering with the prerogatives of her
Majesty, because he appoints an hierarchy. What is he to answer? What
principle is to guide him in the remarks which he cannot escape from the
necessity of making? He fills a station of importance, and he is addressed
by some friend who has political reasons for wishing to know what is the
difference between Canon and Civil Law, whether the Council of Trent has
been received in France, whether a Priest cannot in certain cases absolve
prospectively, what is meant by his _intention_, what by the _opus
operatum_; whether, and in what sense, we consider Protestants to be
heretics; whether any one can be saved without sacramental confession;
whether we deny the reality of natural virtue, or what worth we assign to
it?
Questions may be multiplied without limit, which occur in conversation
between friends, in social intercourse, or in the business of life, when
no argument is needed, no subtle and delicate disquisition, but a few
direct words stating the fact, and when perhaps a few words may even
hinder most serious inconveniences to the Catholic body. Half the
controversies which go on in the world arise from ignorance of the facts
of the case; half the prejudices against Catholicity lie in the
misinformation of the prejudiced parties. Candid persons are set right,
and enemies silenced, by the mere statement of what it is that we believe.
It will not answer the purpose for a Catholic to say, “I leave it to
theologians,” “I will ask my priest;” but it will commonly give him a
triumph, as easy as it is complete, if he can then and there lay down the
law. I say “lay down the law;” for remarkable it is that even those who
speak against Catholicism like to hear about it, and will excuse its
advocate from alleging arguments if he can gratify their curiosity by
giving them information. Generally speaking, however, as I have said, what
is given as information will really be an argument as well as information.
I recollect, some twenty-five years ago, three friends of my own, as they
then were, clergymen of the Establishment, making a tour through Ireland.
In the West or South they had occasion to become pedestrians for the day;
and they took a boy of thirteen to be their guide. They amused themselves
with putting questions to him on the subject of his religion; and one of
them confessed to me on his return that that poor child put them all to
silence. How? Not, of course, by any train of arguments, or refined
theological disquisition, but merely by knowing and understanding the
answers in his catechism.
4.
Nor will argument itself be out of place in the hands of laymen mixing
with the world. As secular power, influence, or resources are never more
suitably placed than when they are in the hands of Catholics, so secular
knowledge and secular gifts are then best employed when they minister to
Divine Revelation. Theologians inculcate the matter, and determine the
details of that Revelation; they view it from within; philosophers view it
from without, and this external view may be called the Philosophy of
Religion, and the office of delineating it externally is most gracefully
performed by laymen. In the first age laymen were most commonly the
Apologists. Such were Justin, Tatian, Athenagoras, Aristides, Hermias,
Minucius Felix, Arnobius, and Lactantius. In like manner in this age some
of the most prominent defences of the Church are from laymen: as De
Maistre, Chateaubriand, Nicolas, Montalembert, and others. If laymen may
write, lay students may read; they surely may read what their fathers may
have written. They might surely study other works too, ancient and modern,
written whether by ecclesiastics or laymen, which, although they do
contain theology, nevertheless, in their structure and drift, are
polemical. Such is Origen’s great work against Celsus; and Tertullian’s
Apology; such some of the controversial treatises of Eusebius and
Theodoret; or St. Augustine’s City of God; or the tract of Vincentius
Lirinensis. And I confess that I should not even object to portions of
Bellarmine’s Controversies, or to the work of Suarez on laws, or to
Melchior Canus’s treatises on the Loci Theologici. On these questions in
detail, however,—which are, I readily acknowledge, very delicate,—opinions
may differ, even where the general principle is admitted; but, even if we
confine ourselves strictly to the Philosophy, that is, the external
contemplation, of Religion, we shall have a range of reading sufficiently
wide, and as valuable in its practical application as it is liberal in its
character. In it will be included what are commonly called the Evidences;
and what is a subject of special interest at this day, the Notes of the
Church.
* * * * *
But I have said enough in general illustration of the rule which I am
recommending. One more remark I make, though it is implied in what I have
been saying:—Whatever students read in the province of Religion, they
read, and would read from the very nature of the case, under the
superintendence, and with the explanations, of those who are older and
more experienced than themselves.
Lecture V.
A Form Of Infidelity Of The Day.
§ 1.
Its Sentiments.
1.
Though it cannot be denied that at the present day, in consequence of the
close juxtaposition and intercourse of men of all religions, there is a
considerable danger of the subtle, silent, unconscious perversion and
corruption of Catholic intellects, who as yet profess, and sincerely
profess, their submission to the authority of Revelation, still that
danger is far inferior to what it was in one portion of the middle ages.
Nay, contrasting the two periods together, we may even say, that in this
very point they differ, that, in the medieval, since Catholicism was then
the sole religion recognized in Christendom, unbelief necessarily made its
advances under the language and the guise of faith; whereas in the
present, when universal toleration prevails, and it is open to assail
revealed truth (whether Scripture or Tradition, the Fathers or the “Sense
of the faithful”), unbelief in consequence throws off the mask, and takes
up a position over against us in citadels of its own, and confronts us in
the broad light and with a direct assault. And I have no hesitation in
saying (apart of course from moral and ecclesiastical considerations, and
under correction of the command and policy of the Church), that I prefer
to live in an age when the fight is in the day, not in the twilight; and
think it a gain to be speared by a foe, rather than to be stabbed by a
friend.
I do not, then, repine at all at the open development of unbelief in
Germany, supposing unbelief is to be, or at its growing audacity in
England; not as if I were satisfied with the state of things, considered
positively, but because, in the unavoidable alternative of avowed unbelief
and secret, my own personal leaning is in favour of the former. I hold
that unbelief is in some shape unavoidable in an age of intellect and in a
world like this, considering that faith requires an act of the will, and
presupposes the due exercise of religious advantages. You may persist in
calling Europe Catholic, though it is not; you may enforce an outward
acceptance of Catholic dogma, and an outward obedience to Catholic
precept; and your enactments may be, so far, not only pious in themselves,
but even merciful towards the teachers of false doctrine, as well as just
towards their victims; but this is all that you can do; you cannot bespeak
conclusions which, in spite of yourselves, you are leaving free to the
human will. There will be, I say, in spite of you, unbelief and immorality
to the end of the world, and you must be prepared for immorality more
odious, and unbelief more astute, more subtle, more bitter, and more
resentful, in proportion as it is obliged to dissemble.
It is one great advantage of an age in which unbelief speaks out, that
Faith can speak out too; that, if falsehood assails Truth, Truth can
assail falsehood. In such an age it is possible to found a University more
emphatically Catholic than could be set up in the middle age, because
Truth can entrench itself carefully, and define its own profession
severely, and display its colours unequivocally, by occasion of that very
unbelief which so shamelessly vaunts itself. And a kindred advantage to
this is the confidence which, in such an age, we can place in all who are
around us, so that we need look for no foes but those who are in the
enemy’s camp.
2.
The medieval schools were the _arena_ of as critical a struggle between
truth and error as Christianity has ever endured; and the philosophy which
bears their name carried its supremacy by means of a succession of
victories in the cause of the Church. Scarcely had Universities risen into
popularity, when they were found to be infected with the most subtle and
fatal forms of unbelief; and the heresies of the East germinated in the
West of Europe and in Catholic lecture-rooms, with a mysterious vigour
upon which history throws little light. The questions agitated were as
deep as any in theology; the being and essence of the Almighty were the
main subjects of the disputation, and Aristotle was introduced to the
ecclesiastical youth as a teacher of Pantheism. Saracenic expositions of
the great philosopher were in vogue; and, when a fresh treatise was
imported from Constantinople, the curious and impatient student threw
himself upon it, regardless of the Church’s warnings, and reckless of the
effect upon his own mind. The acutest intellects became sceptics and
misbelievers; and the head of the Holy Roman Empire, the Cæsar Frederick
the Second, to say nothing of our miserable king John, had the reputation
of meditating a profession of Mahometanism. It is said that, in the
community at large, men had a vague suspicion and mistrust of each other’s
belief in Revelation. A secret society was discovered in the Universities
of Lombardy, Tuscany, and France, organized for the propagation of infidel
opinions; it was bound together by oaths, and sent its missionaries among
the people in the disguise of pedlars and vagrants.
The success of such efforts was attested in the south of France by the
great extension of the Albigenses, and the prevalence of Manichean
doctrine. The University of Paris was obliged to limit the number of its
doctors in theology to as few as eight, from misgivings about the
orthodoxy of its divines generally. The narrative of Simon of Tournay,
struck dead for crying out after lecture, “Ah! good Jesus, I could
disprove Thee, did I please, as easily as I have proved,” whatever be its
authenticity, at least may be taken as a representation of the frightful
peril to which Christianity was exposed. Amaury of Chartres was the author
of a school of Pantheism, and has given his name to a sect; Abelard,
Roscelin, Gilbert, and David de Dinant, Tanquelin, and Eon, and others who
might be named, show the extraordinary influence of anti-Catholic
doctrines on high and low. Ten ecclesiastics and several of the populace
of Paris were condemned for maintaining that our Lord’s reign was past,
that the Holy Ghost was to be incarnate, or for parallel heresies.
Frederick the Second established a University at Naples with a view to the
propagation of the infidelity which was so dear to him. It gave birth to
the great St. Thomas, the champion of revealed truth. So intimate was the
intermixture, so close the grapple, between faith and unbelief. It was the
conspiracy of traitors, it was a civil strife, of which the medieval seats
of learning were the scene.
In this day, on the contrary, Truth and Error lie over against each other
with a valley between them, and David goes forward in the sight of all
men, and from his own camp, to engage with the Philistine. Such is the
providential overruling of that principle of toleration, which was
conceived in the spirit of unbelief, in order to the destruction of
Catholicity. The sway of the Church is contracted; but she gains in
intensity what she loses in extent. She has now a direct command and a
reliable influence over her own institutions, which was wanting in the
middle ages. A University is her possession in these times, as well as her
creation: nor has she the need, which once was so urgent, to expel
heresies from her pale, which have now their own centres of attraction
elsewhere, and spontaneously take their departure. Secular advantages no
longer present an inducement to hypocrisy, and her members in consequence
have the consolation of being able to be sure of each other. How much
better is it, for us at least, whatever it may be for themselves (to take
a case before our eyes in Ireland), that those persons, who have left the
Church to become ministers in the Protestant Establishment, should be in
their proper place, as they are, than that they should have perforce
continued in her communion! I repeat it, I would rather fight with
unbelief as we find it in the nineteenth century, than as it existed in
the twelfth and thirteenth.
3.
I look out, then, into the enemy’s camp, and I try to trace the outlines
of the hostile movements and the preparations for assault which are there
in agitation against us. The arming and the manœuvring, the earth-works
and the mines, go on incessantly; and one cannot of course tell, without
the gift of prophecy, which of his projects will be carried into effect
and attain its purpose, and which will eventually fail or be abandoned.
Threatening demonstrations may come to nothing; and those who are to be
our most formidable foes, may before the attack elude our observation. All
these uncertainties, we know, are the lot of the soldier in the field: and
they are parallel to those which befall the warriors of the Temple. Fully
feeling the force of such considerations, and under their correction,
nevertheless I make my anticipations according to the signs of the times;
and such must be my _proviso_, when I proceed to describe some
characteristics of one particular form of infidelity, which is coming into
existence and activity over against us, in the intellectual citadels of
England.
It must not be supposed that I attribute, what I am going to speak of as a
form of infidelity of the day, to any given individual or individuals; nor
is it necessary to my purpose to suppose that any one man as yet
consciously holds, or sees the drift, of that portion of the theory to
which he has given assent. I am to describe a set of opinions which may be
considered as the true explanation of many floating views, and the
converging point of a multitude of separate and independent minds; and, as
of old Arius or Nestorius not only was spoken of in his own person, but
was viewed as the abstract and typical teacher of the heresy which he
introduced, and thus his name denoted a heretic more complete and
explicit, even though not more formal, than the heresiarch himself, so
here too, in like manner, I may be describing a school of thought in its
fully developed proportions, which at present every one, to whom
membership with it is imputed, will at once begin to disown, and I may be
pointing to teachers whom no one will be able to descry. Still, it is not
less true that I may be speaking of tendencies and elements which exist,
and he may come in person at last, who comes at first to us merely in his
spirit and in his power.
The teacher, then, whom I speak of, will discourse thus in his secret
heart:—He will begin, as many so far have done before him, by laying it
down as if a position which approves itself to the reason, immediately
that it is fairly examined,—which is of so axiomatic a character as to
have a claim to be treated as a first principle, and is firm and steady
enough to bear a large superstructure upon it,—that Religion is not the
subject-matter of a science. “You may have opinions in religion, you may
have theories, you may have arguments, you may have probabilities; you may
have anything but demonstration, and therefore you cannot have science. In
mechanics you advance from sure premisses to sure conclusions; in optics
you form your undeniable facts into system, arrive at general principles,
and then again infallibly apply them: here you have Science. On the other
hand, there is at present no real science of the weather, because you
cannot get hold of facts and truths on which it depends; there is no
science of the coming and going of epidemics; no science of the breaking
out and the cessation of wars; no science of popular likings and
dislikings, or of the fashions. It is not that these subject-matters are
themselves incapable of science, but that, under existing circumstances,
_we_ are incapable of subjecting them to it. And so, in like manner,” says
the philosopher in question, “without denying that in the matter of
religion some things are true and some things false, still we certainly
are not in a position to determine the one or the other. And, as it would
be absurd to dogmatize about the weather, and say that 1860 will be a wet
season or a dry season, a time of peace or war, so it is absurd for men in
our present state to teach anything positively about the next world, that
there is a heaven, or a hell, or a last judgment, or that the soul is
immortal, or that there is a God. It is not that you have not a right to
your own opinion, as you have a right to place implicit trust in your own
banker, or in your own physician; but undeniably such persuasions are not
knowledge, they are not scientific, they cannot become public property,
they are consistent with your allowing your friend to entertain the
opposite opinion; and, if you are tempted to be violent in the defence of
your own view of the case in this matter of religion, then it is well to
lay seriously to heart whether sensitiveness on the subject of your banker
or your doctor, when he is handled sceptically by another, would not be
taken to argue a secret misgiving in your mind about him, in spite of your
confident profession, an absence of clear, unruffled certainty in his
honesty or in his skill.”
Such is our philosopher’s primary position. He does not prove it; he does
but distinctly state it; but he thinks it self-evident when it is
distinctly stated. And there he leaves it.
4.
Taking his primary position henceforth for granted, he will proceed as
follows:—“Well, then, if Religion is just one of those subjects about
which we can know nothing, what can be so absurd as to spend time upon it?
what so absurd as to quarrel with others about it? Let us all keep to our
own religious opinions respectively, and be content; but so far from it,
upon no subject whatever has the intellect of man been fastened so
intensely as upon Religion. And the misery is, that, if once we allow it
to engage our attention, we are in a circle from which we never shall be
able to extricate ourselves. Our mistake reproduces and corroborates
itself. A small insect, a wasp or a fly, is unable to make his way through
the pane of glass; and his very failure is the occasion of greater
violence in his struggle than before. He is as heroically obstinate in his
resolution to succeed as the assailant or defender of some critical
battle-field; he is unflagging and fierce in an effort which cannot lead
to anything beyond itself. When, then, in like manner, you have once
resolved that certain religious doctrines shall be indisputably true, and
that all men ought to perceive their truth, you have engaged in an
undertaking which, though continued on to eternity, will never reach its
aim; and, since you are convinced it ought to do so, the more you have
failed hitherto, the more violent and pertinacious will be your attempt in
time to come. And further still, since you are not the only man in the
world who is in this error, but one of ten thousand, all holding the
general principle that Religion is scientific, and yet all differing as to
the truths and facts and conclusions of this science, it follows that the
misery of social disputation and disunion is added to the misery of a
hopeless investigation, and life is not only wasted in fruitless
speculation, but embittered by bigotted sectarianism.
“Such is the state in which the world has laid,” it will be said, “ever
since the introduction of Christianity. Christianity has been the bane of
true knowledge, for it has turned the intellect away from what it can
know, and occupied it in what it cannot. Differences of opinion crop up
and multiply themselves, in proportion to the difficulty of deciding them;
and the unfruitfulness of Theology has been, in matter of fact, the very
reason, not for seeking better food, but for feeding on nothing else.
Truth has been sought in the wrong direction, and the attainable has been
put aside for the visionary.”
Now, there is no call on me here to refute these arguments, but merely to
state them. I need not refute what has not yet been proved. It is
sufficient for me to repeat what I have already said, that they are
founded upon a mere assumption. _Supposing_, indeed, religious truth
cannot be ascertained, _then_, of course, it is not only idle, but
mischievous, to attempt to do so; _then_, of course, argument does but
increase the mistake of attempting it. But surely both Catholics and
Protestants have written solid defences of Revelation, of Christianity,
and of dogma, as such, and these are not simply to be put aside without
saying why. It has not yet been shown by our philosophers to be
self-evident that religious truth _is_ really incapable of attainment; on
the other hand, it has at least been powerfully argued by a number of
profound minds that it _can_ be attained; and the _onus probandi_ plainly
lies with those who are introducing into the world what the whole world
feels to be a paradox.
5.