5. It is obedient to one Head, outside of all nations, except one only;
and in that nation, his headship is not national but world-wide.
6. The world-wide sympathy of the Church in all lands with its Head has
been manifested in our days, and before our eyes, by a series of public
assemblages in Rome, of which nothing like or second to it can be
found. In 1854, 350 Bishops of all nations surrounded their Head when he
defined the Immaculate Conception. In 1862, 400 Bishops assembled at the
canonization of the Martyrs of Japan. In 1867, 500 Bishops came to keep
the eighteenth centenary of St. Peter's martyrdom. In 1870, 700 Bishops
assembled in the Vatican Council. On the Feast of the Epiphany, 1870,
the Bishops of thirty nations during two whole hours made profession of
faith in their own languages, kneeling before their head. Add to this,
that in 1869, in the sacerdotal jubilee of Pius IX., Rome was filled for
months by pilgrims from all lands in Europe and beyond the sea, from the
Old World and from the New, bearing all manner of gifts and oblations
to the Head of the Universal Church. To this, again, must be added the
world-wide outcry and protest of all the Catholic unity against the
seizure and sacrilege of September, 1870, when Rome was taken by the
Italian Revolution.
7. All this came to pass not only by reason of the great love of
the Catholic world for Pius IX., but because they revered him as the
successor of St. Peter and the Vicar of Jesus Christ. For that undying
reason the same events have been reproduced in the time of Leo XIII. In
the early months of this year Rome was once more filled with pilgrims of
all nations, coming in thousands as representatives of millions in all
nations, to celebrate the sacerdotal jubilee of the Sovereign Pontiff.
The courts of the Vatican could not find room for the multitude of gifts
and offerings of every kind which were sent from all quarters of the
world.
8. These things are here said, not because of any other importance,
but because they set forth in the most visible and self-evident way the
living unity and the luminous universality of the One Catholic and Roman
Church.
9. What has thus far been said is before our eyes at this hour. It is no
appeal to history, but to a visible and palpable fact. Men may explain
it as they will; deny it, they cannot. They see the Head of the Church
year by year speaking to the nations of the world; treating with
Empires, Republics and Governments. There is no other man on earth that
can so bear himself. Neither from Canterbury nor from Constantinople can
such a voice go forth to which rulers and people listen.
This is the century of revolutions. Rome has in our time been besieged
three times; three Popes have been driven out of it, two have been shut
up in the Vatican. The city is now full of the Revolution. The whole
Church has been tormented by Falck laws, Mancini laws, and Crispi laws.
An unbeliever in Germany said some years ago, "The net is now drawn so
tight about the Church, that if it escapes this time I will believe in
it." Whether he believes, or is even alive now to believe, I cannot say.
Nothing thus far has been said as proof. The visible, palpable
facts, which are at this moment before the eyes of all men, speak for
themselves. There is one, and only one, worldwide unity of which
these things can be said. It is a fact and a phenomenon for which an
intelligible account must be rendered. If it be only a human system
built up by the intellect, will and energy of men, let the adversaries
prove it. The burden is upon them; and they will have more to do as we
go on.
Thus far we have rested upon the evidence of sense and fact. We must now
go on to history and reason.
Every religion and every religious body known to history has varied
from itself and broken up. Brahminism has given birth to Buddhism;
Mahometanism is parted into the Arabian and European Khalifates;
the Greek schism into the Russian, Constantinopolitan, and Bulgarian
autocephalous fragment; Protestaritism into its multitudinous
diversities. All have departed from their original type, and all
are continually developing new and irreconcilable, intellectual and
ritualistic, diversities and repulsions. How is it that, with all
diversities of language, civilization, race, interest, and conditions,
social and political, including persecution and warfare, the Catholic
nations are at this day, even when in warfare, in unchanged unity of
faith, communion, worship and spiritual sympathy with each other and
with their Head? This needs a rational explanation.
It may be said in answer, endless divisions have come out of the Church,
from Arius to Photius, and from Photius to Luther.
Yes, but they all came out. There is the difference. They did not remain
in the Church, corrupting the faith. They came out, and ceased to belong
to the Catholic unity, as a branch broken from a tree ceases to belong
to the tree. But the identity of the tree remains the same. A branch is
not a tree, nor a tree a branch. A tree may lose branches, but it rests
upon its root, and renews its loss. Not so the religions, so to call
them, that have broken away from unity. Not one has retained its members
or its doctrines. Once separated from the sustaining unity of the
Church, all separations lose their spiritual cohesion, and then their
intellectual identity. _Ramus procisus arescit_.
For the present it is enough to say that no human legislation, authority
or constraint can ever create internal unity of intellect and will; and
that the diversities and contradictions generated by all human systems
prove the absence of Divine authority. Variations or contradictions are
proof of the absence of a Divine mission to mankind. All natural causes
run to disintegration. Therefore, they can render no account of the
world-wide unity of the One Universal Church.
Such, then, are the facts before our eyes at this day. We will seek out
the origin of the body or system called the Catholic Church, and pass at
once to its outset eighteen hundred years ago.
I affirm, then, three things: (1) First, that no adequate account can be
given of this undeniable fact from natural causes; (2) that the history
of the Catholic Church demands causes above nature; and (3) that it has
always claimed for itself a Divine origin and Divine authority.
I. And, first, before we examine what it was and what it has done, we
will recall to mind what was the world in the midst of which it arose.
The most comprehensive and complete description of the old world, before
Christianity came in upon it, is given in the first chapter of the
Epistle to the Romans. Mankind had once the knowledge of God: that
knowledge was obscured by the passions of sense; in the darkness of the
human intellect, with the light of nature still before them, the nations
worshiped the creature--that is, by pantheism, polytheism, idolatry;
and, having lost the knowledge of God and of His perfections, they lost
the knowledge of their own nature and of its laws, even of the natural
and rational laws, which thenceforward ceased to guide, restrain, or
govern them. They became perverted and inverted with every possible
abuse, defeating the end and destroying the powers of creation. The
lights of nature were put out, and the world rushed headlong into
confusions, of which the beasts that perish were innocent. This is
analytically the history of all nations but one. A line of light still
shone from Adam to Enoch, from Enoch to Abraham, to whom the command was
given, "Walk before Me and be perfect." And it ran on from Abraham
to Caiaphas, who crucified the founder of Christianity. Through all
anthropomorphisms of thought and language this line of light still
passed inviolate and inviolable. But in the world, on either side of
that radiant stream, the whole earth was dark. The intellectual and
moral state of the Greek world may be measured in its highest excellence
in Athens; and of the Roman world in Rome. The 'state of Athens--its
private, domestic, and public morality--may be seen in Aristophanes.
The state of Rome is visible in Juvenal, and in the fourth book of St.
Augustine's "City of God." There was only one evil wanting-. The world
was not Atheist. Its polytheism was the example and the warrant of all
forms of moral abominations. Imitary quod colis plunged the nations
in crime. Their theology was their degradation; their text-book of an
elaborate corruption of intellect and will.
Christianity came in "the fullness of time." What that fullness may
mean, is one of the mysteries of times and seasons which it is not for
us to know. But one motive for the long delay of four thousand years
is not far to seek. It gave time, full and ample, for the utmost
development and consolidation of all the falsehood and evil of which the
intellect and will of man are capable. The four great empires were each
of them the concentration of a supreme effort of human power. The second
inherited from the first, the third from both, the fourth from all
three. It was, as it was foretold or described, as a beast, "exceeding
terrible; his teeth and claws were of iron; he devoured and broke in
pieces; and the rest he stamped upon with his feet." * The empire of
man over man was never so widespread, so absolute, so hardened into one
organized mass, as in Imperial Rome. The world had never seen a military
power so disciplined, irresistible, invincible; a legislation so just,
so equitable, so strong in its execution; a government so universal,
so local, so minute. It seemed to be imperishable. Rome was called
the eternal. The religions of all nations were enshrined in Dea Roma;
adopted, practiced openly, and taught. They were all _religiones
licitae_, known to the law; not tolerated only, but recognized. The
theologies of Egypt, Greece, and of the Latin world, met in an empyreum,
consecrated and guarded by the Imperial law, and administered by the
Pontifex Maximus. No fanaticism ever surpassed the religious cruelties
of Rome.. Add to all this the colluvies of false philosophies of every
land, and of every date. They both blinded and hardened the intellect
of public opinion and of private men against the invasion of anything
except contempt, and hatred of both the philosophy of sophists and of
the religion of the people. Add to all this the sensuality of the most
refined and of the grossest luxury the world had ever seen, and a moral
confusion and corruption which violated every law of nature.
* Daniel, vii. 19.
The god of this world had built his city. From foundation to parapet,
everything that the skill and power of man could do had been done
without stint of means or limit of will. The Divine hand was stayed, or
rather, as St. Augustine says, an unsurpassed natural greatness was the
reward of certain natural virtues, degraded as they were in unnatural
abominations. Rome was the climax of the power of man without God, the
apotheosis of the human will, the direct and supreme antagonist of God
in His own world. In this the fullness of time was come. Man built all
this for himself. Certainly, man could not also build the City of God.
They are not the work of one and the same architect, who capriciously
chose to build first the city of confusion, suspending for a time his
skill and power to build some day the City of God. Such a hypothesis is
folly. Of two things, one. Disputers must choose one or the other.
Both cannot be asserted, and the assertion needs no answer--it refutes
itself. So much for the first point.
II. In the reign of Augustus, and in a remote and powerless Oriental
race, a Child was born in a stable of a poor Mother. For thirty years He
lived a hidden life; for three years He preached the Kingdom of God, and
gave laws hitherto unknown to men. He died in ignominy upon the Cross;
on the third day He rose again; and after forty days He was seen no
more. This unknown Man created the world-wide unity of intellect and
will which is visible to the eye, and audible, in all languages, to the
ear. It is in harmony with the reason and moral nature of all nations,
in all ages, to this day. What proportion is there between the cause
and the effect? What power was there in this isolated Man? What unseen
virtues went out of Him to change the world? For change the world He
did; and that not in the line or on the level of nature as men had
corrupted it, but in direct contradiction to all that was then supreme
in the world. He taught the dependence of the intellect against
its self-trust, the submission of the will against its license,
the subjugation of the passions by temperate control or by absolute
subjection against their willful indulgence. This was to reverse what
men believed to be the laws of nature: to make water climb upward and
fire to point downward. He taught mortification of the lusts of the
flesh, contempt of the lusts of the eyes, and hatred of the pride of
life. What hope was there that such a teacher should convert imperial
Rome? that such a doctrine should exorcise the fullness of human pride
and lust? Yet so it has come to pass; and how? Twelve men more obscure
than Himself, absolutely without authority or influence of this world,
preached throughout the empire and beyond it. They asserted two facts:
the one, that God had been made man; the other, that He died and
rose again. What could be more incredible? To the Jews the unity and
spirituality of God were axioms of reason and faith; to the Gentiles,
however cultured, the resurrection of the flesh was impossible. The
Divine Person Who had died and risen could not be called in evidence as
the chief witness. He could not be produced in court. Could anything be
more suspicious if credible, or less credible even if He were there to
say so? All that they could do was to say, "We knew Him for three years,
both before His death and after He rose from the dead. If you will
believe us, you will believe what we say. If you will not believe us,
we can say no more. He is not here, but in heaven. We cannot call him
down." It is true, as we read, that Peter cured a lame man at the gate
of the Temple. The Pharisees could not deny it, but they would not
believe what Peter said; they only told him to hold his tongue. And yet
thousands in one day in Jerusalem believed in the Incarnation and the
Resurrection; and when the Apostles were scattered by persecution,
wherever they went men believed their word. The most intense persecution
was from the Jews, the people of faith and of Divine traditions. In
the name of God and of religion they stoned Stephen, and sent Saul to
persecute at Damascus. More than this, they stirred up the Romans in
every place. As they had forced Pilate to crucify Jesus of Nazareth, so
they swore to slay Paul. And yet, in spite of all, the faith spread.
It is true, indeed, that the Empire of Alexander, the spread of the
Hellenistic Greek, the prevalence of Greek in Rome itself, the Roman
roads which made the Empire traversable, the Roman peace which sheltered
the preachers of the faith in the outset of their work, gave them
facilities to travel and to be understood. But these were only external
facilities, which in no way rendered more credible or more acceptable
the voice of penance and mortification, or the mysteries of the faith,
which was immutably "to the Jews a stumbling-block and to the Greeks
foolishness." It was in changeless opposition to nature as man had
marred it; but it was in absolute harmony with nature as God had made
it to His own likeness. Its power was its persuasiveness; and its
persuasiveness was in its conformity to the highest and noblest
aspirations and aims of the soul in man. The master-key so long lost
was found at last; and its conformity to the wards of the lock was its
irrefragable witness to its own mission and message.
But if it is beyond belief that Christianity in its outset made good
its foothold by merely human causes and powers, how much more does this
become incredible in every age as we come down from the first century to
the nineteenth, and from the Apostolic mission to the world-wide Church,
Catholic and Roman, at this day.
Not only did the world in the fullness of its power give to the
Christian faith no help to root or to spread itself, but it wreaked all
the fullness of its power upon it to uproot and to destroy it, Of the
first thirty Pontiffs in Rome, twenty-nine were martyred. Ten successive
persecutions, or rather one universal and continuous persecution of two
hundred years, with ten more bitter excesses of enmity in every province
of the Empire, did all that man can do to extinguish the Christian name.
The Christian name may be blotted out here and there in blood, but the
Christian faith can nowhere be slain. It is inscrutable, and beyond the
reach of man. In nothing is the blood of the martyrs more surely the
seed of the faith. Every martyrdom was a witness to the faith, and the
ten persecutions were the sealing of the work of the twelve Apostles.
The destroyer defeated himself. Christ crucified was visibly set forth
before all the nations, the world was a Calvary, and the blood of the
martyrs preached in every tongue the Passion of Jesus Christ. The world
did its worst, and ceased only for weariness and conscious defeat.
Then came the peace, and with peace the peril of the Church. The
world outside had failed; the world inside began to work. It no longer
destroyed life; it perverted the intellect, and, through intellectual
perversion, assailed the faith at its centre, The Angel of light
preached heresy. The Baptismal Creed was assailed all along the line;
Gnosticism assailed the Father-and Creator of all things; Arianism,
the God-head of the Son; Nestorianism, the unity of His person;
Monophysites, the two natures; Monothelites, the divine and human wills;
Macedonians, the person of the Holy Ghost So throughout the centuries,
from Nicaea to the Vatican, every article has been in succession
perverted by heresy and defined by the Church. But of this we shall
speak hereafter. If the human intellect could fasten its perversions
on the Chris tian faith, it would have done so long ago; and if the
Christian faith had been guarded by no more than human intellect, it
would long ago have been disintegrated, as we see in every religion
outside the unity of the one Catholic Church. There is no example in
which fragmentary Christianities have not departed from their original
type. No human system is immutable; no thing human is changeless.
The human intellect, therefore, can give no sufficient account of the
identity of the Catholic faith in all places and in all ages by any
of its own natural processes or powers. The force of this argument is
immensely increased when we trace the tradition of the faith through the
nineteen OEcumenical Councils which, with one continuous intelligence,
have guarded and unfolded the deposit of faith, defining every truth
as it has been successively assailed, in absolute harmony and unity of
progression.
What the Senate is to your great Republic, or the Parliament to our
English monarchy, such are the nineteen Councils of the Church, with
this only difference: the secular Legislatures must meet year by year
with short recesses; Councils have met on the average once in a century.
The reason of this is that the mutabilities of national life, which are
as the water-floods, need constant remedies; the stability of the Church
seldom needs new legislation. The faith needs no definition except in
rare intervals of periodical intellectual disorder. The discipline
of the Church reigns by an universal common law which seldom needs a
change, and by local laws which are provided on the spot. Nevertheless,
the legislation of the Church, the _Corpus Juris_, or _Canon Law_, is
a creation of wisdom and justice, to which no Statutes at large or
Imperial pandects can bear comparison. Human intellect has reached its
climax in jurisprudence, but the world-wide and secular legislation
of the Church has a higher character. How the Christian law corrected,
elevated, and completed the Imperial law, may be seen in a learned and
able work by an American author, far from the Catholic faith, but in the
main just and accurate in his facts and arguments--the _Gesta Christi_
of Charles Loring Brace. Water cannot rise above its source, and if the
Church by mere human wisdom corrected and perfected the Imperial law,
its source must be higher than the sources of the world. This makes a
heavy demand on our credulity.
Starting from St. Peter to Leo XIII., there have been some 258
Pontiffs claiming to be, and recognized by the whole Catholic unity as,
successors of St. Peter and Vicars of Jesus Christ. To them has been
rendered in every age not only the external obedience of outward
submission, but the internal obedience of faith. They have borne the
onset of the nations who destroyed Imperial Rome, and the tyranny of
heretical Emperors of Byzantium; and, worse than this, the alternate
despotism and patronage of the Emperors of the West, and the
substraction of obedience in the great Western schisms, when the unity
of the Church and the authority of its Head were, as men thought, gone
for ever. It was the last assault--the forlorn hope of the gates of
hell. Every art of destruction had been tried: martyrdom, heresy,
secularity, schism; at last, two, and three, and four claimants, or, as
the world says, rival Popes, were set up, that men might believe that
St. Peter had no longer a successor, and our Lord no Vicar, upon earth;
for, though all might be illegitimate, only one could be the lawful and
true Head of the Church. Was it only by the human power of man that the
unity, external and internal, which for fourteen hundred years had been
supreme, was once more restored in the Council of Constance, never to be
broken again? The succession of the English monarchy has been, indeed,
often broken, and always restored, in these thousand years. But here
is a monarchy of eighteen hundred years, powerless in worldly force or
support, claiming and receiving not only outward allegiance, but inward
unity of intellect and will. If any man tell us that these two phenomena
are on the same level of merely human causes, it is too severe a tax
upon our natural reason to believe it.
But the inadequacy of human causes to account for the universality,
unity, and immutability of the Catholic Church, will stand out more
visibly if we look at the intellectual and moral revolution which
Christianity has wrought in the world and upon mankind.
The first effect of Christianity was to fill the world with the true
knowledge of the One True God, and to destroy utterly all idols, not
by fire but by light. Before the Light of the world no false god and no
polytheism could stand. The unity and spirituality of God swept away all
theogonies and theologies of the first four thousand years. The stream
of light which descended from the beginning expanded into a radiance,
and the radiance into a flood, which illuminated all nations, as it had
been foretold, "The earth is filled with the knowledge of the Lord,
as the covering waters of the sea;" "And idols shall be utterly
destroyed."* In this true knowledge of the Divine Nature was revealed to
men their own relation to a Creator as of sons to a father. The Greeks
called the chief of the gods _Zeus Pater_, and the Latins _Jupiter_; but
neither realized the dependence and love of sonship as revealed by the
Founder of Christianity.
* Isaias, xi. 9-11, 18.
The monotheism of the world comes down from a primeval and Divine
source. Polytheism is the corruption of men and of nations. Yet in
the multiplicity of all polytheisms, ont supreme Deity was always
recognized. The Divine unity was imperishable. Polytheism is of human
imagination: it is of men's manufacture. The deification of nature and
passions and heroes had filled the world with an elaborate and tenacious
superstition, surrounded by reverence, fear, religion, and awe.
Every perversion of what is good in man surrounded it with authority;
everything that is evil in man guarded it with jealous care. Against
this world-wide and imperious demon-ology the science of one God, all
holy and supreme, advanced with resistless force. Beelzebub is not
divided against himself; and if polytheism is not Divine, monotheism
must be. The overthrow of idolatry and demonology was the mastery of
forces that are above nature. This conclusion is enough for our present
purpose.
A second visible effect of Christianity of which nature cannot offer
any adequate cause is to be found in the domestic life of the Christian
world. In some nations the existence of marriage was not so much as
recognized. In others, if recognized, it was dishonored by profuse
concubinage. Even in Israel, the most advanced nation, the law of
divorce was permitted for the hardness of their hearts. Christianity
republished the primitive law by which marriage unites only one man and
one woman indissolubly in a perpetual contract. It raised their mutual
and perpetual contract to a sacrament. This at one blow condemned all
other relations between man and woman, all the legal gradations of
the Imperial law, and all forms and pleas of divorce. Beyond this the
spiritual legislation of the Church framed most elaborate tables of
consanguinity and affinity, prohibiting all marriages between persons in
certain degrees of kinship or relation. This law has created the purity
and peace of domestic life. Neither the Greek nor the Roman world
had any true conception of a home. The _Eoria_ or Vesta was a sacred
tradition guarded by vestals like a temple worship. It was not a law
and a power in the homes of the people. Christianity, by enlarging the
circles of prohibition within which men and women were as brothers and
sisters, has created the home with all its purities and safeguards.
Such a law of unity and indissolubility, encompassed by a multitude of
prohibitions, no mere human legislation could impose on the the passions
and will of mankind. And yet the Imperial laws gradually yielded to its
resistless pressure, and incorporated it in its world-wide legislation.
The passions and practices of four thousand years were against the
change; yet it was accomplished, and it reigns inviolate to this day,
though the relaxations of schism in the East and the laxities of the
West have revived the abuse of divorces, and have partially abolished
the wise and salutary prohibitions which guard the homes of the
faithful. These relaxations prove that all natural forces have been, and
are, hostile to the indissoluble law of Christian marriage. Certainly,
then, it was not by natural forces that the Sacrament of Matrimony and
the legislation springing from it were enacted. If these are restraints
of human liberty and license, either they do not spring from nature, or
they have had a supernatural cause whereby they exist. It was this that
redeemed woman from the traditional degradation in which the world had
held her. The condition of women in Athens and in Rome--which may be
taken as the highest points of civilization--is too well known to need
recital. Women had no rights, no property, no independence. Plato looked
upon them as State property; Aristotle as chattels; the Greeks wrote of
them as [--Greek--].
They were the prey, the sport, the slaves of man. Even in Israel, though
they were raised incomparably higher than in the Gentile world, they
were far below the dignity and authority of Christian women. Libanius,
the friend of Julian, the Apostate, said, "O ye gods of Greece, how
great are the women of the Christians!" Whence came the elevation of
womanhood? Not from the ancient civilization, for it degraded them; not
from Israel, for among the Jews the highest state of womanhood was the
marriage state. The daughter of Jepthe went into the mountains to mourn
not her death but her virginity. The marriage state in the Christian
world, though holy and good, is not the highest state. The state of
virginity unto death is the highest condition of man and woman. But this
is above the law of nature. It belongs to a higher order. And this life
of virginity, in repression of natural passion and lawful instinct, is
both above and against the tendencies of human nature. It begins in a
mortification, and ends in a mastery, over the movements and ordinary
laws of human nature. Who will ascribe this to natural causes? and, if
so, why did it not appear in the first four thousand years? And when has
it ever appeared except in a handful of vestal virgins, or in Oriental
recluses, with what reality history shows? An exception proves a rule.
No one will imagine that a life of chastity is impossible to nature; but
the restriction is a repression of nature which individuals may acquire,
but the multitude have never attained. A religion which imposes chastity
on the unmarried, and upon its priesthood, and upon the multitudes of
women in every age who devote themselves to the service of One Whom they
have never seen, is a mortification of nature in so high a degree as
to stand out as a fact and a phenomenon, of which mere natural causes
afford no adequate solution. Its existence, not in a handful out of the
millions of the world, but its prevalence and continuity in multitudes
scattered throughout the Christian world, proves the presence of a cause
higher than the laws of nature. So true is this, that jurists teach that
the three vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience are contrary to "the
policy of the law," that is, to the interests of the commonwealth, which
desires the multiplication, enrichment, and liberty of its members.
To what has been said may be added the change wrought by Christianity
upon the social, political, and international relations of the world.
The root of this ethical change, private and public, is the Christian
home. The authority of parents, the obedience of children, the love of
brotherhood, are the three active powers which have raised the society
of man above the level of the old world. Israel was head and shoulders
above the world around it; but Christendom is high above Israel. The new
Commandment of brotherly love, and the Sermon on the Mount, have wrought
a revolution, both in private and public life. From this come the laws
of justice and sympathy which bind together the nations of the Christian
world. In the old world, even the most refined races, worshiped by our
modern philosophers, held and taught that man could hold property in
man. In its chief cities there were more slaves than free men. Who has
taught the equality of men before the law, and extinguished the impious
thought that man can hold property in man? It was no philosopher: even
Aristotle taught that a slave was [--Greek--]. It was no lawgiver, for
all taught the lawfulness of slavery till Christianity denied it. The
Christian law has taught that man can lawfully sell his labor, but that
he cannot lawfully be sold, or sell himself.
The necessity of being brief, the impossibility of drawing out the
picture of the old world, its profound immoralities, its unimaginable
cruelties, compels me to argue with my right hand tied behind me. I can
do no more than point again to Mr. Brace's "Gesta Christi," or to Dr.
Dollinger's "Gentile and Jew," as witnesses to the facts which I have
stated or implied. No one who has not read such books, or mastered their
contents by original study, can judge of the force of the assertion that
Christianity has reformed the world by direct antagonism to the human
will, and by a searching and firm repression of human passion. It has
ascended the stream of human license, _contra ictum fluminis_, by a
power mightier than nature, and by laws of a higher order than the
relaxations of this world.
Before Christianity came on earth, the civilization of man by merely
natural force had culminated. It could not rise above its source; all
that it could do was done; and the civilization in every race and
empire had ended in decline and corruption. The old civilization was not
regenerated. It passed away to give place to a new. But the new had
a higher source, nobler laws and supernatural powers. The highest
excellence of men and of nations is the civilization of Christianity.
The human race has ascended into what we call Christendom, that is,
into the new creation of charity and justice among men. Christendom was
created by the worldwide Church as we see it before our eyes at this
day. Philosophers and statesmen believe it to be the work of their own
hands: they did not make it; but they have for three hundred years
been unmaking it by reformations and revolutions. These are destructive
forces. They build up nothing. It has been well said by Donoso Cortez
that "the history of civilization is the history of Christianity, the
history of Christianity is the history of the Church, the history of the
Church is the history of the Pontiffs, the greatest statesmen and rulers
that the world has ever seen."
Some years ago, a Professor of great literary reputation in England, who
was supposed even then to be, as his subsequent writings have proved, a
skeptic or non-Christian, published a well-known and very candid book,
under the title of "Ecce Homo." The writer placed himself, as it were,
outside of Christianity. He took, not the Church in the world as in
this article, but the Christian Scriptures as a historical record, to be
judged with forensic severity and absolute impartiality of mind. To the
credit of the author, he fulfilled this pledge; and his conclusion shall
here be given. After an examination of the life and character of the
Author of Christianity, he proceeded to estimate His teaching and its
effects under the following heads:
1. The Christian Legislation.
2. The Christian Republic.
3. Its Universality.
4. The Enthusiasm of Humanity.
5. The Lord's Supper.
6. Positive Morality.
7. Philanthropy.
8. Edification.
9. Mercy.
10. Resentment.
11. Forgiveness.
He then draws his conclusion as follows:
"The achievement of Christ in founding by his single will and power a
structure so durable and so universal is like no other achievement which
history records. The masterpieces of the men of action are coarse and
commonplace in comparison with it, and the masterpieces of speculation
flimsy and unsubstantial. When we speak of it the commonplaces of
admiration fail us altogether. Shall we speak of the originality of
the design, of the skill displayed in the execution? All such terms are
inadequate. Originality and contriving skill operate indeed, but, as it
were, implicitly. The creative effort which produced that against which
it is said the gates of hell shall not prevail cannot be analyzed. No
architect's designs were furnished for the New Jerusalem; no committee
drew up rules for the universal commonwealth. If in the works of
nature we can trace the indications of calculation, of a struggle with
difficulties, of precaution, of ingenuity, then in Christ's work it may
be that the same indications occur. But these inferior and secondary
powers were not consciously exercised; they were implicitly present in
the manifold yet single creative act. The inconceivable work was done
in calmness; before the eyes of mea it was noiselessly accomplished,
attracting little attention. Who can describe that which unites men? Who
has entered into the formation of speech, which is the symbol of their
union? Who can describe exhaustively the origin of civil society? He who
can do these things can explain the origin of the Christian Church.
For others it must be enough to say, 'The Holy Ghost fell on those that
believed'. No man saw the building of the New Jerusalem, the workmen
crowded together, the unfinished walla and unpaved streets; no man
heard the clink of trowel and pickaxe: 'it descended out of heaven from
God.'"*
* "Ece Homo," Conclusion, p. 329, Fifth Edition. Macmillan,
1886.
And yet the writer is, as he was then, still outside of Christianity.
III. We come now to our third point, that Christianity has always
claimed a Divine origin and a Divine presence as the source of its
authority and powers.
To prove this by texts from the New Testament would be to transcribe the
volume; and if the evidence of the whole New Testament were put in, not
only might some men deny its weight as evidence, but we should place our
whole argument upon a false foundation. Christianity was anterior to
the New Testament and is independent of it. The Christian Scriptures
presuppose both the faith and the Church as already existing, known, and
believed. _Prior liber quam stylus_: as Tertullian argued. The Gospel
was preached before it was written. The four books were written to
those who already believed, to confirm their faith. They were written
at intervals: St. Matthew in Hebrew in the year 39, in Greek in 45. St.
Mark in 43, St. Luke in 57, St. John about 90, in different places and
for different motives. Four Gospels did not exist for sixty years, or
two generations of men. St. Peter and St. Paul knew of only three of
our four. In those sixty years the faith had spread from east to west.
Saints and Martyrs had gone up to their crown who never saw a sacred
book. The Apostolic Epistles prove the antecedent existence of the
Churches to which they were addressed. Rome and Corinth, and Galatia
and Ephesus, Philippi and Colossae, were Churches with pastors and people
before St. Paul wrote to them. The Church had already attested and
executed its Divine legation before the New Testament existed; and when
all its books were written they were not as yet collected into a volume.
The earliest collection was about the beginning of the second century,
and in the custody of the Church in Rome. We must, therefore, seek to
know what was and is Christianity before and outside of the written
books; and we have the same evidence for the oral tradition of the faith
as we have for the New Testament itself. Both alike were in the custody
of the Church; both are delivered to us by the same witness and on the
same evidence. To reject either, is logically to reject both. Happily
men are not saved by logic, but by faith. The millions of men in
all ages have believed by inheritance of truth divinely guarded and
delivered to them. They have no need of logical analysis. They
have believed from their childhood. Neither children nor those who
_infantibus oquiparantur_ are logicians. It is the penance of the
doubter and the unbeliever to regain by toil his lost inheritance. It
is a hard penance, like the suffering of those who eternally debate on
"predestination, freewill, fate."
Between the death of St. John and the mature lifetime of St. Irenaeus
fifty years elapsed. St. Polycarp was disciple of St. John. St. Irenaeus
was disciple of St. Polycarp. The mind of St. John and the mind of St.
Irenaeus had only one intermediate intelligence, in contact with each. It
would be an affectation of minute criticism to treat the doctrine of
St. Irenaeus as a departure from the doctrine of St. Polycarp, or the
doctrine of St. Polycarp as a departure from the doctrine of St. John.
Moreover, St. John ruled the Church at Ephesus, and St. Irenaeus was
born in Asia Minor about the year A. D. 120--that is, twenty years after
St. John's death, when the Church in Asia Minor was still full of the
light of his teaching and of the accents of his voice. Let us see how
St. Irenaeus describes the faith and the Church. In his work against
Heresies, in Book iii. chap. i., he says, "We have known the way of our
salvation by those through whom the Gospel came to us; which, indeed,
they then preached, but afterwards, by the will of God, delivered to us
in Scriptures, the future foundation and pillar of our faith. It is not
lawful to say that they preached before they had perfect knowledge,
as some dare to affirm, boasting themselves to be correctors of the
Apostles. For after our Lord rose from the dead, and when they had been
clothed with the power of the Holy Ghost, Who came upon them from on
high, they were filled with all truths, and had knowledge which was
perfect." In chapter ii. he adds that, "When they are refuted out
of Scripture, they turn and accuse the Scriptures as erroneous,
unauthoritative, and of various readings, so that the truth cannot be
found by those who do not know tradition"--that is, their own. "But when
we challenge them to come to the tradition of the Apostles, which is in
custody of the succession of Presbyters in the Church, they turn against
tradition, saying that they are not only wiser than the Presbyters, but
even the Apostles, and have found the truth." "It therefore comes
to pass that they will not agree either with the Scriptures or with
tradition." (Ibid. c. iii.) "Therefore, all who desire to know the truth
ought to look to the tradition of the Apostles, which is manifest in all
the world and in all the Church. We are able to count up the Bishops who
were instituted in the Church by the Apostles, and their successors
to our day. They never taught nor knew such things as these men
madly assert." "But as it would be too long in such a book as this to
enumerate the successions of all the Churches, we point to the tradition
of the greatest, most ancient Church, known to all, founded and
constituted in Rome by the two glorious Apostles Peter and Paul, and to
the faith announced to all men, coming down to us by the succession
of Bishops, thereby confounding all those who, in any way, by
self-pleasing, or vainglory, or blindness, or an evil mind, teach
as they ought not. For with this Church, by reason of its greater
principality, it is necessary that all churches should agree; that is,
the faithful, wheresoever they be, for in that Church the tradition of
the Apostles has been preserved." No comment need be made on the
words the "greater principality," which have been perverted by every
anti-Catholic writer from the time they were written to this day. But if
any one will compare them with the words of St. Paul to the Colossians
(chap. i. 18), describing the primacy of the Head of the Church in
heaven, it will appear almost certain that the original Greek of St.
Irenaeus, which is unfortunately lost, contained either [--Greek--], or
some inflection of [--Greek--] which signifies primacy. However this
may be, St. Irenaeus goes on: "The blessed Apostles, having founded
and instructed the Church, gave in charge the Episcopate, for the
administration of the same, to Linus. Of this Linus, Paul, in his
Epistle to Timothy, makes mention. To him succeeded Anacletus, and
after him, in the third place from the Apostles, Clement received the
Episcopate, he who saw the Apostles themselves and conferred with them,
while as yet he had the preaching of the Apostles in his ears and the
tradition before his eyes; and not he only, but many who had been taught
by the Apostles still survived. In the time of this Clement, when no
little dissension had arisen among the brethren in Corinth, the Church
in Rome wrote very powerful letters _potentissimas litteras_ to the
Corinthians, recalling them to peace, restoring their faith, and
declaring the tradition which it had so short a time ago received from
the Apostles." These letters of St. Clement are well known, but have
lately become more valuable and complete by the discovery of fragments
published in a new edition by Light-foot. In these fragments there is
a tone of authority fully explaining the words of St. Irenaeus. He then
traces the succession of the Bishops of Rome to his own day, and adds:
"This demonstration is complete to show that it is one and the same
life-giving faith which has been preserved in the Church from the
Apostles until now, and is handed on in truth." "Polycarp was not only
taught by the Apostles, and conversed with many of those who had seen
our Lord, but he also was constituted by the Apostles in Asia to be
Bishop in the Church of Smyrna. We also saw him in our early youth, for
he lived long, and when very old departed from this life most gloriously
and nobly by martyrdom. He ever taught that what he had learned from
the Apostles, and what the Church had delivered, those things only are
true." In the fourth chapter, St. Irenaeus goes on to say: "Since, then,
there are such proofs (of the faith), the truth is no longer to be
sought for among others, which it is easy to receive from the Church,
forasmuch as the Apostles laid up all truth in fullness in a rich
depository, that all who will may receive from it the water of life."
"But what if the Apostles had not left us the Scriptures: ought we not
to follow the order of tradition, which they gave in charge to them to
whom they intrusted the Churches? To which order (of tradition) many
barbarous nations yield assent, who believe in Christ without paper
and ink, having salvation written by the Spirit in their hearts, and
diligently holding the ancient tradition." In the twenty-sixth chapter
of the same book he says: "Therefore, it is our duty to obey the
Presbyters who are in the Church, who have succession from the Apostles,
as we have already shown; who also with the succession of the Episcopate
have the _charisma veritatis certum_," the spiritual and certain gift of
truth.
I have quoted these passages at length, not so much as proofs of the
Catholic Faith as to show the identity of the Church at its outset with
the Church before our eyes at this hour, proving that the acorn has
grown up into its oak, or, if you will, the identity of the Church at
this hour with the Church of the Apostolic mission. These passages show
the Episcopate, its central principality, its succession, its custody of
the faith, its subsequent reception and guardianship of the Scriptures,
Its Divine tradition, and the charisma or Divine assistance by which its
perpetuity is secured in the succession of the Apostles. This is almost
verbally, after eighteen hundred years, the decree of the Vatican
Council: _Veritatis et fidei nunquam deficientis charisma_.*
* "Const. Dogmatica Prima de Ecclesia Christi," cap. iv.
But St. Irenaeus draws out in full the Church of this day. He shows the
parallel of the first creation and of the second; of the first Adam and
the Second; and of the analogy between the Incarnation or natural body,
and the Church or mystical body of Christ. He says:
Our faith "we received from the Church, and guard.... as an excellent
gift in a noble vessel, always full of youth, and making youthful the
vessel itself in which it is. For this gift of God is intrusted to the
Church, as the breath of life (_was imparted_) to the first man, so this
end, that all the members partaking of it might be quickened with life.
And thus the communication of Christ is imparted; that is, the Holy
Ghost, the earnest of incorruption, the confirmation of the faith, the
way of ascent to God. For in the Church (St. Paul says) God placed
Apostles, Prophets, Doctors, and all other operations of the Spirit, of
which none are partakers who do not come to the Church, thereby
depriving themselves of life by a perverse mind and worse deeds. For
where the Church is, there is also the Spirit of God; and where the
Spirit of God is, there is the Church, and all grace. But the Spirit is
truth. Wherefore, they who do not partake of Him (_the Spirit_), and are
not nurtured unto life at the breast of the mother (_the Church_), do
not receive of that most pure fountain which proceeds from the Body of
Christ, but dig out for themselves broken pools from the trenches of the
earth, and drink water soiled with mire, because they turn aside from
the faith of the Church lest they should be convicted, and reject the
Spirit lest they should be taught."* Again he says: "The Church,
scattered throughout the world, even unto the ends of the earth,
received from the Apostles and their disciples the faith in one God the
Father Almighty, that made the heaven and the earth, and the seas, and
all things that are in them." &c.**
*St. Irenaeus, Cont. Hezret lib. iii. cap. xxiv.
** Lib. i. cap. x.
He then recites the doctrines of the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, the
Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, and His
coming again to raise all men, to judge men and angels, and to give
sentence of condemnation or of life everlasting. How much soever
the language may vary from other forms, such is the substance of the
Baptismal Creed. He then adds:
"The Church having received this preaching and this faith, as we have
said before, although it be scattered abroad through the whole world,
carefully preserves it, dwelling as in one habitation, and believes
alike in these (doctrines) as though she had one soul and the same
heart: and in strict accord, as though she had one mouth, proclaims,
and teaches, and delivers onward these things. And although there may be
many diverse languages in the world, yet the power of the tradition is
one and the same. And neither do the Churches planted in Germany believe
otherwise, or otherwise deliver (the faith), nor those in Iberia, nor
among the Celtae, nor in the East, nor in Egypt, nor in Libya, nor
they that are planted in the mainland. But as the sun, which is God's
creature, in all the world is one and the same, so also the preaching of
the truth shineth everywhere, and lightened all men that are willing to
come to the knowledge of the truth. And neither will any ruler of the
Church, though he be mighty in the utterance of truth, teach otherwise
than thus (for no man is above the master), nor will he that is weak in
the same diminish from the tradition; for the faith being one and the
same, he that is able to say most of it hath nothing over, and he that
is able to say least hath no lack."*
* St. Irenaeus, lib. i. c. x.
To St. Irenaeus, then, the Church was "the irrefragable witness of its
own legation." When did it cease so to be? It would be easy to multiply
quotations from Tertullian in A. D. 200, from St. Cyprian a. d. 250,
from St. Augustine and St. Optatus in A. d. 350, from St. Leo in a. d.
450, all of which are on the same traditional lines of faith in a divine
mission to the world and of a divine assistance in its discharge. But I
refrain from doing so because I should have to write not an article
but a folio. Any Catholic theology will give the passages which are now
before me; or one such book as the Loci Theologici of Melchior Canus
will suffice to show the continuity and identity of the tradition of
St. Irenaeus and the tradition of the Vatican Council, in which the
universal church last declared the immutable faith and its own legation
to mankind.
The world-wide testimony of the Catholic Church is a sufficient witness
to prove the coming of the Incarnate Son to redeem mankind, and to
return to His Father; it is also sufficient to prove the advent of the
Holy Ghost to abide with us for ever. The work of the Son in this world
was accomplished by the Divine acts and facts of His three-and-thirty
years of life, death, Resurrection, and Ascension. The office of the
Holy Ghost is perpetual, not only as the Illuminator and Sanctifier of
all who believe, but also as the Life and Guide of the Church. I may
quote now the words of the Founder of the Church: "It is expedient to
you that I go: for if I go not, the Paraclete will not come to you; but
if I go, I will send Him to you."* "I will ask the Father, and He shall
give you another Paraclete, that He may abide with you for ever."** "The
Spirit of Truth, Whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not
nor knoweth Him; but you shall know Him, because He shall abide with you
and shall be in you."***
* St. John, xvi. 7.
** Ibid, xiv. 16.
*** St.John, xiv. 16, 17.
St. Paul in the Epistles to the Ephesians describes the Church as a body
of which the Head is in heaven, and the Author of its indefectible life
abiding in it as His temple. Therefore the words, "He that heareth you
heareth Me." This could not be if the witness of the Apostles had been
only human. A Divine guidance was attached to the office they bore. They
were, therefore, also judges of right and wrong, and teachers by Divine
guidance of the truth. But the presence and guidance of the Spirit of
Truth is as full at this day as when St. Irenaeus wrote. As the Churches
then were witnesses, judges, and teachers, so is the Church at this hour
a world-wide witness, an unerring judge and teacher, divinely guided and
guarded in the truth. It is therefore not only a human and historical,
but a Divine witness. This is the chief Divine truth which the last
three hundred years have obscured. Modern Christianity believes in the
one advent of the Redeemer, but rejects the full and personal advent of
the Holy Ghost. And yet the same evidence proves both. The Christianity
of reformers, always returns to Judaism, because they reject the full,
or do not believe the personal, advent of the Holy Ghost. They deny that
there is an infallible teacher, among men; and therefore they return to
the types and shadows of the Law before the Incarnation, when the Head
was not yet incarnate, and the Body of Christ did not as yet exist.
But perhaps some one will say, "I admit your description of the Church
as it is now and as it was in the days of St. Irenaeus; but the eighteen
hundred years of which you have said nothing were ages of declension,
disorder, superstition, demoralization." I will answer by a question:
was not this foretold? Was not the Church to be a field of wheat and
tares growing together till the harvest at the end of the world? There
were Cathari of old, and Puritans since, impatient at the patience
of God in bearing with the perversities and corruptions of the human
intellect and will. The Church, like its Head in heaven, is both human
and divine. "He was crucified in weakness," but no power of man could
wound His divine nature. So with the Church, which is His Body. Its
human element may corrupt and die; its divine life, sanctity, authority,
and structure cannot die; nor can the errors of human intellect fasten
upon its faith, nor the immoralities of the human will fasten upon
its sanctity. Its organization of Head and Body is of divine creation,
divinely guarded by the Holy Ghost, who quickens it by His indwelling,
and guides it by His light. It is in itself incorrupt and incorruptible
in the midst of corruption, as the light of heaven falls upon all the
decay and corruption in the world, unsullied and unalterably pure. We
are never concerned to deny or to cloak the sins of Christians or of
Catholics. They may destroy themselves, but they cannot infect the
Church from which they fall. The fall of Lucifer left no stain behind
him.
When men accuse the Church of corruption, they reveal the fact that to
them the Church is a human institution, of voluntary aggregation or of
legislative enactment. They reveal the fact that to them the Church is
not an object of Divine faith, as the Real Presence in the Sacrament of
the Altar. They do not perceive or will not believe that the articles of
the Baptismal Creed are objects of faith, divinely revealed or divinely
created. "I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the
Communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins," are all objects of faith
in a Divine order. They are present in human history, but the human
element which envelops them has no power to infect or to fasten upon
them. Until this is perceived there can be no true or full belief in the
advent and office of the Holy Ghost, or in the nature and sacramental
action of the Church. It is the visible means and pledge of light and
of sanctification to all who do not bar their intellect and their will
against its inward and spiritual grace. The Church is not on probation.
It is the instrument of probation to the world. As the light of
the world, it is changeless as the firmament As the source of
sanctification, it is inexhaustible as the Rivex of Life. The human and
external history of men calling themselves Christian and Catholic has
been at times as degrading and abominable as any adversary is pleased
to say. But the sanctity of the Church is no more affected by human sins
than was Baptism by the hypocrisy of Simon Magus. The Divine foundation,
and office, and mission of the Church is a part of Christianity. They
who deny it deny an article of faith; they who believe it imperfectly
are the followers of a fragmentary Christianity of modern date. Who can
be a disciple of Jesus Christ who does not believe the words? "On this
rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it;" "As the Father hath sent Me, I also send you;"* "I dispose
to you, as My Father hath disposed to Me, a kingdom;"** "All power in
heaven and earth is given unto Me. Go, therefore, and teach all
nations;"*** "He that heareth you heareth Me;"**** "I will be with you
always, even unto the end of the world;"(v) "When the days of Pentecost
were accomplished they were all together in one place: and suddenly
there came a sound from heaven as of a mighty wind coming, and there
appeared to them parted tongues, as it were, of fire;" "And they were
all filled with the Holy Ghost;" (vi) "It seemed good to the Holy Ghost
and to us to lay upon you no other burdens."(vii) But who denies that
the Apostles claimed a Divine mission? and who can deny that the
Catholic and Roman Church from St. Irenaeus to Leo XIII. has ever and
openly claimed the same, invoking in all its supreme acts as witness,
teacher, and legislator the presence, light, and guidance of the Holy
Ghost? As the preservation of all created things is by the same creative
power produced in perpetual and universal action, so the indefectibility
of the Church and of the faith is by the perpetuity of the presence and
office of the Third Person of the Holy Trinity. Therefore, St. Augustine
calls the day of Pentecost, Natalis Spiritus Sancti.
*St. John, xx. 21.
** St. Luke, xxii. 29.
*** St. Matthew, xxviii. 18, 19.
**** St. Luke, x. 10.
(v) St. Matthew, xxviii. 20.
(vii)Acts, ii. 1-5.
(viii) Acts, xv. 28.
It is more than time that I should make an end; and to do so it will be
well to sum up the heads of our argument. The Vatican Council declares
that the world-wide Church is the irrefragable witness of its own
legation or mission to mankind.
In proof of this I have affirmed:
1. That the imperishable existence of Christianity, and the vast and
undeniable revolution that it has wrought in men and in nations, in the
moral elevation of manhood and of womanhood, and in the domestic, social
and political life of the Christian world, cannot be accounted for by
any natural causes, or by any forces that are, as philosophers say,
_intra possibilitatem natures_, within the limits of what is possible to
man.
2. That this world-wide and permanent elevation of the Christian world,
in comparison with both the old world and the modern world outside of
Christianity, demands a cause higher than the possibility of nature.
3. That the Church has always claimed a Divine origin and a Divine
office and authority in virtue of a perpetual Divine assistance. To this
even the Christian world, in all its fragments external to the Catholic
unity, bears witness. It is turned to our reproach. They rebuke us for
holding the teaching of the Church to be infallible. We take the rebuke
as a testimony of our changeless faith. It is not enough for men to say
that they refuse to believe this account of the visible and palpable
fact of the imperishable Christianity of the Catholic and Roman Church.
They must find a more reasonable, credible, and adequate account for
it. This no man has yet done. The denials are many and the solutions
are many; but they do not agree together. Their multiplicity is proof
of their human origin. The claim of the Catholic Church to a Divine
authority and to a Divine assistance is one and the same in every age,
and is identical in every place. Error is not the principle of unity,
nor truth of variations.
The Church has guarded the doctrine of the Apostles, by Divine
assistance, with unerring fidelity. The articles of the faith are to-day
the same in number as in the beginning. The explicit definition of
their implicit meaning has expanded from age to age, as the everchanging
denials and perversions of the world have demanded new definitions
of the ancient truth. The world is against all dogma, because it
is impatient of definiteness and certainty in faith. It loves open
questions and the liberty of error. The Church is dogmatic for fear of
error. Every truth defined adds to its treasure. It narrows the field
of error and enlarges the inheritance of truth. The world and the Church
are ever moving in opposite directions. As the world becomes more vague
and uncertain, the Church becomes more definite. It moves against wind
and tide, against the stress and storm of the world. There was never
a more luminous evidence of this supernatural fact than in the Vatican
Council. For eight months all that the world could say and do, like
the four winds of heaven, was directed upon it. Governments, statesmen,
diplomatists, philosophers, intriguers, mockers, and traitors did their
utmost and their worst against it. They were in dread lest the Church
should declare that by Divine assistance its Head in faith and morals
cannot err; for if this be true, man did not found it, man cannot reform
it, man cannot teach it to interpret its history or its acts. It knows
its own history, and is the supreme witness of its own legation.
I am well aware that I have been writing truisms, and repeating trite
and trivial arguments. They are trite because the feet of the faithful
for nearly nineteen hundred years have worn them in their daily life;
they are trivial because they point to the one path in which the
wayfarer, though a fool, shall not err.
Henry Edward, (Cardinal Manning), Card. Archbishop of Westminster.