Col. Ingersoll and Cardinal Manning.
The Gladstone-Ingersoll Controversy.
THE CHURCH ITS OWN WITNESS, By Cardinal Manning.
THE Vatican Council, in its Decree on Faith has these words: "The
Church itself, by its marvelous propagation, its eminent sanctity, its
inexhaustible fruitfulness in all good things, its catholic unity and
invincible stability, is a vast and perpetual motive of credibility, and
an irrefragable witness of its own Divine legation."* Its Divine Founder
said: "I am the light of the world;" and, to His Apostles, He said also,
"Ye are the light of the world," and of His Church He added, "A city
seated on a hill cannot be hid." The Vatican Council says, "The Church
is its own witness." My purpose is to draw out this assertion more
fully.
* "Const. Dogm. de Fide Catholica, c. iii.
These words affirm that the Church is self-evident, as light is to the
eye, and through sense, to the intellect. Next to the sun at noonday,
there is nothing in the world more manifest than the one visible
Universal Church. Both the faith and the infidelity of the world bear
witness to it. It is loved and hated, trusted and feared, served and
assaulted, honored and blasphemed: it is Christ or Antichrist, the
Kingdom of God or the imposture of Satan. It pervades the civilized
world. No man and no nation can ignore it, none can be indifferent to
it. Why is all this? How is its existence to be accounted for?
Let me suppose that I am an unbeliever in Christianity, and that some
friend should make me promise to examine the evidence to show that
Christianity is a Divine revelation; I should then sift and test the
evidence as strictly as if it were in a court of law, and in a cause of
life and death; my will would be in suspense: it would in no way
control the process of my intellect. If it had any inclination from the
equilibrium, it would be towards mercy and hope; but this would not
add a feather's weight to the evidence, nor sway the intellect a hair's
breadth.
After the examination has been completed, and my intellect convinced,
the evidence being sufficient to prove that Christianity is a divine
revelation, nevertheless I am not yet a Christian. All this sifting
brings me to the conclusion of a chain of reasoning; but I am not yet
a believer. The last act of reason has brought me to the brink of the
first act of faith. They are generically distinct and separable. The
acts of reason are intellectual, and jealous of the interference of the
will. The act of faith is an imperative act of the will, founded on and
justified by the process and conviction of the intellect. Hitherto I
have been a critic: henceforward, if I will, I become a disciple.
It may here be objected that no man can so far suspend the inclination
of the will when the question is, has God indeed spoken to man or no? is
the revealed law of purity, generosity, perfection, divine, or only the
poetry of imagination? Can a man be indifferent between two such sides
of the problem? Will he not desire the higher and better side to be
true? and if he desire, will he not incline to the side that he desires
to find true? Can a moral being be absolutely indifferent between two
such issues? and can two such issues be equally attractive to a moral
agent? Can it be indifferent and all the same to us whether God has
made Himself and His will known to us or not? Is there no attraction
in light, no repulsion in darkness? Does not the intrinsic and eternal
distinction of good and evil make itself felt in spite of the will?
Are we not responsible to "receive the truth in the love of it?"
Nevertheless, evidence has its own limits and quantities, and cannot be
made more or less by any act of the will. And yet, what is good or bad,
high or mean, lovely or hateful, ennobling or degrading, must attract
or repel men as they are better or worse in their moral sense; for an
equilibrium between good and evil, to God or to man, is impossible.
The last act of my reason, then, is distinct from my first act of
faith precisely in this: so long as I was uncertain I suspended the
inclination of my will, as an act of fidelity to conscience and of
loyalty to truth; but the process once complete, and the conviction once
attained, my will imperatively constrains me to believe, and I become a
disciple of a Divine revelation.
My friend next tells me that there are Christian Scriptures, and I go
through precisely the same process of critical examination and final
conviction, the last act of reasoning preceding, as before, the first
act of faith.
He then tells me that there is a Church claiming to be divinely founded,
divinely guarded, and divinely guided in its custody of Christianity and
of the Christian Scriptures.
Once more I have the same twofold process of reasoning and of believing
to go through.
There is, however, this difference in the subject-matter: Christianity
is an order of supernatural truth appealing intellectually to my reason;
the Christian Scriptures are voiceless, and need a witness. They
cannot prove their own mission, much less their own authenticity or
inspiration. But the Church is visible to the eye, audible to the ear,
self-manifesting and self-asserting: I cannot escape from it. If I go to
the east, it is there; if I go to the west, it is there also. If I stay
at home, it is before me, seated on the hill; if I turn away from it, I
am surrounded by its light. It pursues me and calls to me. I cannot deny
its existence; I cannot be indifferent to it; I must either listen to
it or willfully stop my ears; I must heed it or defy it, love it or
hate it. But my first attitude towards it is to try it with forensic
strictness, neither pronouncing it to be Christ nor Antichrist till I
have tested its origin, claim, and character. Let us take down the case
in short-hand.
1. It says that it interpenetrates all the nations of the civilized
world. In some it holds the whole nation in its unity, in others it
holds fewer; but in all it is present, visible, audible, naturalized,
and known as the one Catholic Church, a name that none can appropriate.
Though often claimed and controversially assumed, none can retain it; it
falls off. The world knows only one Catholic Church, and always restores
the name to the right owner.
2. It is not a national body, but extra-national, accused of its foreign
relations and foreign dependence. It is international, and independent
in a supernational unity.
3. In faith, divine worship, sacred ceremonial, discipline, government,
from the highest to the lowest, it is the same in every place.