Chapter X: Inference And Assent In The Matter Of Religion (4)

At that time Polycarp, the familiar friend of St. John, and a contemporary of Ignatius, suffered in his extreme old age. When, before his sentence, the Proconsul bade him “swear by the fortunes of Cæsar, and have done with Christ,” his answer betrayed that intimate devotion to the self-same Idea, which had been the inward life of Ignatius. “Eighty and six years,” he answered, “have I been His servant, and He has never wronged me, but ever has preserved me; and how can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour?” When they would have fastened him to the stake, he said, “Let alone; He who gives me to bear the fire, will give me also to stand firm upon the pyre without your nails.”

Christians felt it as an acceptable service to Him who loved them, to confess with courage and to suffer with dignity. In this chivalrous spirit, as it may be called, they met the words and deeds of their persecutors, as the children of men return bitterness for bitterness, and blow for blow. “What soldier,” says Minucius, with a reference to the invisible Presence of our Lord, “does not challenge danger more daringly under the eye of his commander?” In that same outbreak at Smyrna, when the Proconsul urged the young Germanicus to have mercy on himself and on his youth, to the astonishment of the populace he provoked a wild beast to fall upon him. In like manner, St. Justin tells us of Lucius, who, when he saw a Christian sent off to suffer, at once remonstrated sharply with the judge, and was sent off to execution with him; and then another presented himself, and was sent off also. When the Christians were thrown into prison, in the fierce persecution at Lyons, Vettius Epagathus, a youth of distinction who had given himself to an ascetic life, could not bear the sight of the sufferings of his brethren, and asked leave to plead their cause. The only answer he got was to be sent off the first to die. What the contemporary account sees in his conduct is, not that he was zealous for his brethren, though zealous he was, nor that he believed in miracles, though he doubtless did believe; but that he “was a gracious disciple of Christ, following the Lamb whithersoever He went.”

In that memorable persecution, when Blandina, a slave, was seized for confessorship, her mistress and her fellow-Christians dreaded lest, from her delicate make, she should give way under the torments; but she even tired out her tormentors. It was a refreshment and relief to her to cry out amid her pains, “I am a Christian.” They remanded her to prison, and then brought her out for fresh suffering a second day and a third. On the last day she saw a boy of fifteen brought into the amphitheatre for death; she feared for him, as others had feared for her; but he too went through his trial generously, and went to God before her. Her last sufferings were to be placed in the notorious red-hot chair, and then to be exposed in a net to a wild bull; they finished by cutting her throat. Sanctus, too, when the burning plates of brass were placed on his limbs, all through his torments did but say, “I am a Christian,” and stood erect and firm, “bathed and strengthened,” say his brethren who write the account, “in the heavenly well of living water which flows from the breast of Christ,” or, as they say elsewhere of all the martyrs, “refreshed with the joy of martyrdom, the hope of blessedness, love towards Christ, and the spirit of God the Father.” How clearly do we see all through this narrative what it was which nerved them for the combat! If they love their brethren, it is in the fellowship of their Lord; if they look for heaven, it is because He is the Light of it.

Epipodius, a youth of gentle nurture, when struck by the Prefect on the mouth, while blood flowed from it, cried out, “I confess that Jesus Christ is God, together with the Father and the Holy Ghost.” Symphorian, of Autun, also a youth, and of noble birth, when told to adore an idol, answered, “Give me leave, and I will hammer it to pieces.” When Leonidas, the father of the young Origen, was in prison for his faith, the boy, then seventeen, burned to share his martyrdom, and his mother had to hide his clothes to prevent him from executing his purpose. Afterwards he attended the confessors in prison, stood by them at the tribunal, and gave them the kiss of peace when they were led out to suffer, and this, in spite of being several times apprehended and put upon the rack. Also in Alexandria, the beautiful slave, Potamiæna, when about to be stripped in order to be thrown into the cauldron of hot pitch, said to the Prefect, “I pray you rather let me be dipped down slowly into it with my clothes on, and you shall see with what patience I am gifted by Him of whom you are ignorant, Jesus Christ.” When the populace in the same city had beaten out the aged Apollonia’s teeth, and lit a fire to burn her, unless she would blaspheme, she leaped into the fire herself, and so gained her crown. When Sixtus, Bishop of Rome, was led to martyrdom, his deacon, Laurence, followed him weeping and complaining, “O my father, whither goest thou without thy son?” And when his own turn came, three days afterwards, and he was put upon the gridiron, after a while he said to the Prefect, “Turn me; this side is done.” Whence came this tremendous spirit, scaring, nay, offending, the fastidious criticism of our delicate days? Does Gibbon think to sound the depths of the eternal ocean with the tape and measuring-rod of his merely literary philosophy?

When Barulas, a child of seven years old, was scourged to blood for repeating his catechism before the heathen judge—viz. “There is but one God, and Jesus Christ is true God”—his mother encouraged him to persevere, chiding him for asking for some drink. At Merida, a girl of noble family, of the age of twelve, presented herself before the tribunal, and overturned the idols. She was scourged and burned with torches; she neither shed a tear, nor showed other signs of suffering. When the fire reached her face, she opened her mouth to receive it, and was suffocated. At Cæsarea, a girl, under eighteen, went boldly to ask the prayers of some Christians who were in chains before the Prætorium. She was seized at once, and her sides torn open with the iron rakes, preserving the while a bright and joyous countenance. Peter, Dorotheus, Gorgonius, were boys of the imperial bedchamber; they were highly in favour with their masters, and were Christians. They too suffered dreadful torments, dying under them, without a shadow of wavering. Call such conduct madness, if you will, or magic: but do not mock us by ascribing it in such mere children to simple desire of immortality, or to any ecclesiastical organization.

When the persecution raged in Asia, a vast multitude of Christians presented themselves before the Proconsul, challenging him to proceed against them. “Poor wretches!” half in contempt and half in affright, he answered, “if you must die, cannot you find ropes or precipices for the purpose?” At Utica, a hundred and fifty Christians of both sexes and all ages were martyrs in one company. They are said to have been told to burn incense to an idol, or they should be thrown into a pit of burning lime; they without hesitation leapt into it. In Egypt a hundred and twenty confessors, after having sustained the loss of eyes or of feet, endured to linger out their lives in the mines of Palestine and Cilicia. In the last persecution, according to the testimony of the grave Eusebius, a contemporary, the slaughter of men, women, and children, went on by twenties, sixties, hundreds, till the instruments of execution were worn out, and the executioners could kill no more. Yet he tells us, as an eye-witness, that, as soon as any Christians were condemned, others ran from all parts, and surrounded the tribunals, confessing the faith, and joyfully receiving their condemnation, and singing songs of thanksgiving and triumph to the last.

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

Thus was the Roman power overcome. Thus did the Seed of Abraham, and the Expectation of the Gentiles, the meek Son of man, “take to Himself His great power and reign” in the hearts of His people, in the public theatre of the world. The mode in which the primeval prophecy was fulfilled is as marvellous, as the prophecy itself is clear and bold.

“So may all Thy enemies perish, O Lord; but let them that love Thee shine, as the sun shineth in his rising!”

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

I will add the memorable words of the two great Apologists of the period:—

“Your cruelty,” says Tertullian, “though each act be more refined than the last, doth profit you nothing. To our sect it is rather an inducement. We grow up in greater numbers, as often as you cut us down. The blood of the martyrs is their seed for the harvest.”

Origen even uses the language of prophecy. To the objection of Celsus that Christianity from its principles would, if let alone, open the whole empire to the irruption of the barbarians, and the utter ruin of civilization, he replies, “If all Romans are such as we, then too the barbarians will draw near to the Word of God, and will become the most observant of the Law. And every worship shall come to nought, and that of the Christians alone obtain the mastery, for the Word is continually gaining possession of more and more souls.”

One additional remark:—It was fitting that those mixed unlettered multitudes, who for three centuries had suffered and triumphed by virtue of the inward Vision of their Divine Lord, should be selected, as we know they were, in the fourth, to be the special champions of His Divinity and the victorious foes of its impugners, at a time when the civil power, which had found them too strong for its arms, attempted, by means of a portentous heresy in the high places of the Church, to rob them of that Truth which had all along been the principle of their strength.

10.

I have been forestalling all along the thought with which I shall close these considerations on the subject of Christianity; and necessarily forestalling it, because it properly comes first, though the course which my argument has taken has not allowed me to introduce it in its natural place. Revelation begins where Natural Religion fails. The Religion of Nature is a mere inchoation, and needs a complement,—it can have but one complement, and that very complement is Christianity.

Natural Religion is based upon the sense of sin; it recognizes the disease, but it cannot find, it does but look out for the remedy. That remedy, both for guilt and for moral impotence, is found in the central doctrine of Revelation, the Mediation of Christ. I need not go into a subject so familiar to all men in a Christian country.

Thus it is that Christianity is the fulfilment of the promise made to Abraham, and of the Mosaic revelations; this is how it has been able from the first to occupy the world and gain a hold on every class of human society to which its preachers reached; this is why the Roman power and the multitude of religions which it embraced could not stand against it; this is the secret of its sustained energy, and its never-flagging martyrdoms; this is how at present it is so mysteriously potent, in spite of the new and fearful adversaries which beset its path. It has with it that gift of staunching and healing the one deep wound of human nature, which avails more for its success than a full encyclopedia of scientific knowledge and a whole library of controversy, and therefore it must last while human nature lasts. It is a living truth which never can grow old.

Some persons speak of it as if it were a thing of history, with only indirect bearings upon modern times; I cannot allow that it is a mere historical religion. Certainly it has its foundations in past and glorious memories, but its power is in the present. It is no dreary matter of antiquarianism; we do not contemplate it in conclusions drawn from dumb documents and dead events, but by faith exercised in ever-living objects, and by the appropriation and use of ever-recurring gifts.

Our communion with it is in the unseen, not in the obsolete. At this very day its rites and ordinances are continually eliciting the active interposition of that Omnipotence in which the Religion long ago began. First and above all is the Holy Mass, in which He who once died for us upon the Cross, brings back and perpetuates, by His literal presence in it, that one and the same sacrifice which cannot be repeated. Next, there is the actual entrance of Himself, soul and body, and divinity, into the soul and body of every worshipper who comes to Him for the gift, a privilege more intimate than if we lived with Him during His long-past sojourn upon earth. And then, moreover, there is His personal abidance in our churches, raising earthly service into a foretaste of heaven. Such is the profession of Christianity, and, I repeat, its very divination of our needs is in itself a proof that it is really the supply of them.

Upon the doctrines which I have mentioned as central truths, others, as we all know, follow, which rule our personal conduct and course of life, and our social and civil relations. The promised Deliverer, the Expectation of the nations, has not done His work by halves. He has given us Saints and Angels for our protection. He has taught us how by our prayers and services to benefit our departed friends, and to keep up a memorial of ourselves when we are gone. He has created a visible hierarchy and a succession of sacraments, to be the channels of His mercies, and the Crucifix secures the thought of Him in every house and chamber. In all these ways He brings Himself before us. I am not here speaking of His gifts as gifts, but as memorials; not as what Christians know they convey, but in their visible character; and I say, that, as human nature itself is still in life and action as much as ever it was, so He too lives, to our imaginations, by His visible symbols, as if He were on earth, with a practical efficacy which even unbelievers cannot deny, to be the corrective of that nature, and its strength day by day, and that this power of perpetuating His Image, being altogether singular and special, and the prerogative of Him and Him alone, is a grand evidence how well He fulfils to this day that Sovereign Mission which, from the first beginning of the world’s history, has been in prophecy assigned to Him.

I cannot better illustrate this argument than by recurring to a deep thought on the subject of Christianity, which has before now attracted the notice of philosophers and preachers,(55) as coming from the wonderful man who swayed the destinies of Europe in the first years of this century. It was an argument not unnatural in one who had that special passion for human glory, which has been the incentive of so many heroic careers and of so many mighty revolutions in the history of the world. In the solitude of his imprisonment, and in the view of death, he is said to have expressed himself to the following effect:—

“I have been accustomed to put before me the examples of Alexander
and Cæsar, with the hope of rivalling their exploits, and living
in the minds of men for ever. Yet, after all, in what sense does
Cæsar, in what sense does Alexander live? Who knows or cares
anything about them? At best, nothing but their names is known;
for who among the multitude of men, who hear or who utter their
names, really knows anything about their lives or their deeds, or
attaches to those names any definite idea? Nay, even their names
do but flit up and down the world like ghosts, mentioned only on
particular occasions, or from accidental associations. Their chief
home is the schoolroom; they have a foremost place in boys’
grammars and exercise-books; they are splendid examples for
themes; they form writing-copies. So low is heroic Alexander
fallen, so low is imperial Cæsar, ‘ut pueris placeant et
declamatio fiant.’

“But, on the contrary” (he is reported to have continued), “there
is just One Name in the whole world that lives; it is the Name of
One who passed His years in obscurity, and who died a malefactor’s
death. Eighteen hundred years have gone since that time, but still
it has its hold upon the human mind. It has possessed the world,
and it maintains possession. Amid the most varied nations, under
the most diversified circumstances, in the most cultivated, in the
rudest races and intellects, in all classes of society, the Owner
of that great Name reigns. High and low, rich and poor,
acknowledge Him. Millions of souls are conversing with Him, are
venturing on His word, are looking for His presence. Palaces,
sumptuous, innumerable, are raised to His honour; His image, as in
the hour of his deepest humiliation, is triumphantly displayed in
the proud city, in the open country, in the corners of streets, on
the tops of mountains. It sanctifies the ancestral hall, the
closet, and the bedchamber; it is the subject for the exercise of
the highest genius in the imitative arts. It is worn next the
heart in life; it is held before the failing eyes in death. Here,
then, is One who is _not_ a mere name, who is not a mere fiction,
who is a reality. He is dead and gone, but still He lives,—lives
as the living, energetic thought of successive generations, as the
awful motive-power of a thousand great events. He has done without
effort what others with life-long struggles have not done. Can He
be less than Divine? Who is He but the Creator Himself; who is
sovereign over His own works, towards whom our eyes and hearts
turn instinctively, because He is our Father and our God?(56)”

Here I end my specimens, among the many which might be given, of the arguments adducible for Christianity. I have dwelt upon them, in order to show how I would apply the principles of this Essay to the proof of its divine origin. Christianity is addressed, both as regards its evidences and its contents, to minds which are in the normal condition of human nature, as believing in God and in a future judgment. Such minds it addresses both through the intellect and through the imagination; creating a certitude of its truth by arguments too various for enumeration, too personal and deep for words, too powerful and concurrent for refutation. Nor need reason come first and faith second (though this is the logical order), but one and the same teaching is in different aspects both object and proof, and elicits one complex act both of inference and of assent. It speaks to us one by one, and it is received by us one by one, as the counterpart, so to say, of ourselves, and is real as we are real.

In the sacred words of its Divine Author and Object concerning Himself, “I am the Good Shepherd, and I know mine, and Mine know Me. My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them everlasting life, and they shall never perish; and no man shall pluck them out of My hand.”

NOTE.

1. On the first publication of this volume, a Correspondent did me the favour of marking for me a list of passages in Chillingworth’s celebrated work, besides that which I had myself quoted, in which the argument was more or less brought forward, on which I have animadverted in ch. vii. § 2, p. 226. He did this with the purpose of showing, that Chillingworth’s meaning, when carefully inquired into, would be found to be in substantial agreement with the distinction I had myself made between infallibility and certitude; those inaccuracies of language into which he fell, being necessarily involved in the _argumentum ad hominem_, which he was urging upon his opponent, or being the accidental result of the peculiar character of his intellect, which, while full of ideas, was wanting in the calmness and caution which are conspicuous in Bishop Butler. Others more familiar with Chillingworth than I am must decide on this point; but I can have no indisposition to accept an explanation, which deprives controversialists of this day of the authority of a vigorous and acute mind in their use of an argument, which is certainly founded on a great confusion of thought.

I subjoin the references with which my Correspondent has supplied me:—

(1.) Passages tending to show an agreement of Chillingworth’s
opinion on the distinction between certitude and infallibility
with that laid down in the foregoing essay:—

1. “Religion of Protestants,” ch. ii. § 121 (vol. i. p. 243, Oxf.
ed. 1838), “For may not a private man,” &c.

2. _Ibid._ § 152 (p. 265). The last sentence, however, after “when
they thought they dreamt,” is a fall into the error which he had
been exposing.

3. _Ibid._ § 160 (p. 275).

4. Ch. iii. § 26 (p. 332), “Neither is your argument,” &c.

5. _Ibid._ § 36 (p. 346).

6. _Ibid._ § 50 (p. 363), “That Abraham,” &c.

7. Ch. v. § 63 (vol ii. p. 215).

8. _Ibid._ § 107 (p. 265).

9. Ch vii. § 13 (p. 452). _Vide_ also vol. i. pp. 115, 121, 196,
236, 242, 411.

(2.) Passages inconsistent with the above:—

1. Ch. ii. § 25 (vol. i. p. 177). _An argumentum ad hominem._

2. _Ibid._ § 28 (p. 180).

3. _Ibid._ § 45 (p. 189). _An argumentum ad hominem._

4. _Ibid._ § 149 (p. 263). _An argumentum ad hominem._

5. _Ibid._ § 154 (p. 267). Quoted in the text, p. 226.

6. Ch. v. § 45 (vol. ii. p. 391). He is arguing on his opponent’s
principles.

2. Also, I have to express my obligation to another Correspondent, who called my attention to a passage of Hooker (“Eccles. Pol.” ii. 7) beginning “An earnest desire,” &c., which seemed to anticipate the doctrine of Locke about certitude. It is so difficult to be sure of the meaning of a writer whose style is so foreign to that of our own times, that I am shy of attempting to turn this passage into categorical statements. Else, I should ask, does not Hooker here assume the absolute certainty of the inspiration and divine authority of Scripture, and believe its teaching as the very truth unconditionally and without any admixture of doubt? Yet what had he but probable evidence as a warrant for such a view of it? Again, did he receive the Athanasian Creed on any logical demonstration that its articles were in Scripture? Yet he felt himself able without any misgiving to say aloud in the congregation, “Which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled, _without doubt_ he shall perish everlastingly.” In truth it is the happy inconsistency of his school to be more orthodox in their conclusions than in their premisses; to be sceptics in their paper theories, and believers in their own persons.

3. Also, a friend sends me word, as regards the controversy on the various readings of Shakespeare to which I have referred (_supra_, ch. viii. §1, p. 271) in illustration of the shortcomings of Formal Inference, that, since the date of the article in the magazine, of which I have there availed myself, the verdict of critics has been unfavourable to the authority and value of the Annotated Copy, discovered twenty years ago. I may add, that, since my first edition, I have had the pleasure of reading Dr. Ingleby’s interesting dissertation on the “Traces of the Authorship of the Works attributed to Shakespeare.”

FOOTNOTES

1 “The Oxford Spy,” 1818; by J. S. Boone, p. 107.

2 Vide “Discussions and Arguments on Various Subjects,” art. 4.

3 On the Formation of Images, _vide supr._ ch. iii. 1, pp. 27, 28.

4 Liberty of Prophesying, § 2.

5 This passage is already quoted in my “Essay on Development of
Doctrine,” vi. 1, § 2.

6 Gambier on Moral Evidence, p. 6.

7 “Supernaturalis mentis assensus, rebus fidei exhibitus, cùm præcipuè
dependeat à gratiâ Dei intrinsecus mentem illuminante et commovente,
potest esse, et est, major quocunque assensu certitudini naturali
præstito, seu ex motivis naturalibus orto,” &c.—Dmouski, Instit. t.
i. p. 28.

8 “Hoc [viz. multo certior est homo de eo quod audit à Deo qui falli
non potest, quàm de eo quod videt propriâ ratione quâ falli potest]
intelligendum est de certitudine fidei secundum appretiationem, non
secundum intentionem; nam sæpe contingit, ut scientia clariùs
percipiatur ab intellectu, atque ut connexio scientiæ cum veritate
magis appareat, quàm connexio fidei cum eâdem; cognitiones enim
naturales, utpote captui nostro accommodatæ, magis animum quietant,
delectant, et veluti. satiant.”—Scavini, Theol. Moral. t. ii. p.
428.

9 “Suppono enim, veritatem fidei non esse certiorem veritate
metaphysicâ aut geometricâ quoad modum assensionis, sed tantum quoad
modum adhæsionis; quia utrinque intellectus absolutè sine modo
limitante assentitur. Sola autem adhæsio voluntatis diversa est;
quia in actu fidei gratia seu habitus infusus roborat intellectum et
voluntatem, ne tam facilè mutentur aut perturbentur.”—Amort, Theol.
t. i. p. 312.

“Hæc distinctio certitudinis [ex diversitate motivorum] extrinsecam
tantum differentiam importat, cùm omnis naturalis certitudo,
formaliter spectata, sit æqualis; debet enim essentialiter erroris
periculum amovere, exclusio autem periculi erroris in indivisibili
consistit; aut enim babetur aut non habetur.”—Dmouski, ibid. p. 27.

10 “Fides est certior omni veritate naturali, etiam geometricè aut
metaphysicè certâ; idque non solum certitudine adhæsionis sed etiam
assentionis.... Intellectus sentit se in multis veritatibus etiam
metaphysicè certis posse per objectiones perturbari, e. g. si legat
scepticos.... E contrà circa ea, quæ constat esse revelata à Deo,
nullus potest perturbari.”—Amort, ibid. p. 367.

11 ii. n. 154. _Vide_ Note at the end of the volume.

12 I have assumed throughout this Section that all verbal argumentation
is ultimately syllogistic; and in consequence that it ever requires
universal propositions and comes short of concrete fact. A friend
refers me to the dispute between Des Cartes and Gassendi, the latter
maintaining against the former that “Cogito ergo sum” implies the
universal “All who think exist.” I should deny this with Des Cartes;
but I should say (as indeed he said), that his dictum was not an
argument, but was the expression of a ratiocinative instinct, as I
explain below under the head of “Natural Logic.”

As to the instance “Brutes are not men; therefore men are not
brutes,” there seems to me no consequence here, neither a _præter_
nor a _propter_, but a tautology. And as to “It was either Tom or
Dick that did it; it was not Dick, ergo,” this may be referred to
the one great principle on which all logical reasoning is founded,
but really it ought not to be accounted an inference any more than
if I broke a biscuit, flung half away, and then said of the other
half, “This is what remains.” It does but state a fact. So, when the
1st, 2nd, or 3rd proposition of Euclid II. is put before the eyes in
a diagram, a boy, before he yet has learned to reason, sees with his
eyes the fact of the thesis, and this _seeing_ it even makes it
difficult for him to master the mathematical proof. Here, then, a
_fact_ is stated in the form of an _argument_.

However, I have inserted parentheses at pp. 277 and 283, in order to
say “transeat” to the question.

13 “Aids to Reflection,” p. 59, ed. 1839.

14 Taylor’s Translation, p. 131.

15 Ibid. pp. 108-110.

16 Ibid. pp. 429-436.

17 “North and South.”

18 Serm. xi. init.

19 Vide supr._ ch. v. § 1, pp. 109, 113.

20 Pp. 84, 85.

21 “Analogy,” pp. 329, 330, ed. 1836.

22 Ibid. p. 278.

23 “Mechanics,” p. 31.

24 Phillipps’ “Law of Evidence,” vol. i. p. 456.

25 “Orley Farm.”

26 Guardian_, June 28, 1865.

27 History, vol. x. pp. 286, 287.

28 “Peveril of the Peak.”

29 “Life of Mother Margaret M. Hallahan,” p. vii.

30 Eth. Nicom. vi. 11, fin.

31 Though Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, speaks of φρόνησις as
the virtue of the δοξαστικὸν generally, and as being concerned
generally with contingent matter (vi. 4), or what I have called the
concrete, and of its function being, as regards that matter,
ἀληθεύειν τῷ καταφάναι ἢ ἀποφάναι (_ibid._ 3), he does not treat of
it in that work in its general relation to truth and the affirmation
of truth, but only as it bears upon τὰ πρακτά.

32 Niebuhr, “Roman History,” vol. i. p. 177; vol. iii. pp. 262. 318.
322. “Lectures,” vol. iii. App. p. xxii. Lewis, “Roman History,”
vol. i. pp. 11-17; vol. ii. pp. 489-492. F. W. Newman, “Regal Rome,”
p. v. Grote, “Greece,” vol. ii. pp. 67, 68. 218. 630-639. Mure,
“Greece,” vol. iii. p. 503; vol. iv. p. 318. Clinton, ap. Grote,
suprà.

33 “Prophetical Office of the Church,” pp. 347, 348, ed. 1837.

34 Supra_, p. 105, &c. _Vide_ also Univ. Serm. ii. 7-13.

35 Penny Cyclopædia_, art. “Atonement” (abridged).

36 On these various subjects I have written in “University Sermons”
(Oxford), No. vi. “Idea of the University,” Disc. viii. “History of
Turks,” ch. iv. “Development of Doctrine,” ch. i. sect. 3.

37 Vide_ “Apologia,” p. 241.

38 Vide_ “Callista,” ch. xix.

39 “Analogy,” Pt. ii. ch. 5 (abridged).

40 “Scopus operis est, planiorem Protestantibus aperire viam ad veram
Ecclesiam. Cùm enim hactenus Polemici nostri insudarint toti in
demonstrandis singulis Religionis Catholicæ articulis, in id ego
unum incumbo, ut hæc tria evincam. Primo: Articulos fundamentales
Religionis Catholicæ esse evidenter credibiliores oppositis, &c.
&c.... Demonstratio autem hujus novæ, modestæ, ac facilis viæ, quâ
ex articulis fundamentalibus solùm probabilioribus adstruitur summa
Religionis certitudo, hæc est: Deus, cùm sit sapiens ac providus,
tenetur, Religionem à se revelatam reddere evidenter credibiliorem
religionibus falsis. Imprudenter enim vellet, suam Religionem ab
hominibus recipi, nisi eam redderet evidenter credibiliorem
religionibus cæteris. Ergo illa religio, quæ est evidenter
credibilior cæteris, est ipsissima religio a Deo revelata, adeoque
certissimè vera, seu demonstrata. Atqui, &c.... Motivum aggrediendi
novam hanc, modestam, ac facilem viam illud præcipuum est, quòd
observem, Protestantium plurimos post innumeros concertationum
fluctus, in iis tandem consedisse syrtibus, ut credant, nullam dari
religionem undequaque demonstratam, &c.... Ratiociniis denique
opponunt ratiocinia; præjudiciis præjudicia ex majoribus sua,” &c.

41 “Docet naturalis ratio, Deum, ex ipsâ naturâ bonitatis ac
providentiæ suæ, si velit in mundo habere religionem puram, eamque
instituere ac conservare usque in finem mundi, teneri ad eam
religionem reddendam evidenter credibiliorem ac verisimiliorem
cæteris, &c. &c.... Ex hoc sequitur ulterius; certitudinem moralem
de verâ Ecclesiâ elevari posse ad certitudinem metaphysicam, si homo
advertat, certitudinem moralem absolutè fallibilem substare in
materiâ religionis circa ejus constitutiva fundamentalia speciali
providentiæ divinæ, præservatrici ab omni errore.... Itaque homo
semel ex serie historicâ actorum perductus ad moralem certitudinem
de auctore, fundatione, propagatione, et continuatione Ecclesiæ
Christianæ, per reflexionem ad existentiam certissimam providentiæ
divinæ in materiâ religionis, à priori lumine naturæ certitudine
metaphysicâ notam, eo ipso eadem infallibili certitudine intelliget,
argumenta de auctore,” &c.—Amort. Ethica Christiana, p. 252.

42 “De hac damnatorum saltem hominum respiratione, nihil adhuc certi
decretum est ab Ecclesiâ Catholicâ: ut propterea non temerè, tanquam
absurda, sit explodenda sanctissimorum Patrum hæc opinio: quamvis à
communi sensu Catholicorum hoc tempore sit aliena.”—Petavius de
Angelis, fin.

43 Vide supra_, p. 302.

44 Vide_ the author’s Occasional Sermons, No. 5.

45 Vide supra_, p. 84.

46 History, vol. viii.

47 Before and apart from Christianity, the Samaritan Version reads,
“donec veniat Pacificus, et ad ipsum congregabuntur populi.” The
Targum, “donec veniat Messias, cujus est regnum, et obedient
populi.” The Septuagint, “donec veniant quæ reservata sunt illi” (or
“donec veniat cui reservatum est”), “et ipse expectatio gentium.”
And so again the Vulgate, “donec veniat qui mittendus est, et ipse
erit expectatio gentium.”

The ingenious translation of some learned men (“donec venerit Juda
Siluntem,” i. e. “the tribe-sceptre shall not depart from Judah till
Judah comes to Shiloh”), with the explanation that the tribe of
Judah had the leadership in the war against the Canaanites, _vide_
Judges i. 1, 2; xx. 18 (i. e. after Joshua’s _death_), and that
possibly, and for what we know, the tribe gave up that war-command
at Shiloh, _vide_ Joshua xviii. 1 (i. e. in Joshua’s _life-time_),
labours under three grave difficulties: 1. That the patriarchal
sceptre is a temporary war-command. 2. That this command belonged to
Judah at the very time that it belonged to Joshua. And 3. That it
was finally lost to Judah (Joshua living) before it had been
committed to Judah (Joshua dead).

48 He appeals to the prophecies in evidence of His Divine mission, in
addressing the Nazarites (Luke iv. 18), St. John’s disciples (Matt.
xi. 5), and the Pharisees (Matt. xxi. 42, and John v. 39), but not
in details. The appeal to details He reserves for His disciples.
_Vide_ Matt. xi. 10; xxvi. 24, 31, 54: Luke xxii. 37; xxiv. 27, 46.

49 Vide supra, pp. 341, 375, 413-416.

50 Vide supra.

51 Had my limits allowed it, I ought, as a third subject, to have
described the existing system of impure idolatry, and the wonderful
phenomenon of such multitudes, who had been slaves to it, escaping
from it by the power of Christianity,—under the guidance of the
great work (“On the Gentile and the Jew”) of Dr. Döllinger.

52 On the subjects which follow, _vide_ Lami, _De Eruditione
Apostolorum_; Mamachius, _Origines Christ._; Ruinart, _Act. Mart._;
Lardner, _Credibility_, &c.; Fleury, _Eccles. Hist._; Kortholt,
_Calumn. Pagan._; and _De Morib. Christ._, &c.

53 Ep. ad Diognet.

54 Essay on Development of Doctrine, ch. iv. § 1.

55 Fr. Lacordaire and M. Nicolas.

56 Occas. Serm., pp. 49-51.

<pre id="pg-footer">