Chapter XXXVIII: Part VI: They Sang (34)

One circumstance which the Protestant theory forgets is that _all_ knowledge of divine things is not necessarily _faith_. Angelic knowledge and that of the triumphant church is vision, not faith, and differs from faith either in essence or in inseparable accidents. The knowledge we have of God through natural theology, however true, is not, therefore, identical with divine faith. Irrespectively of Christianity, a belief in God _precedes_ speculations, and comes to children chiefly by faith in what they hear from their parents. They _could_ not, indeed, believe their parents equally if their own minds were not in _harmony_ with such a belief; but in their case, too, authority is commonly a _condition_ of believing. By faith, says S. Paul, “we know that the worlds were made.” That knowledge comes to us both _through_ testimony and _by_ intuitions. The “heavens declare the glory of God”; but they declare it, not prove it scientifically; and the Psalmist had the patriarchal tradition and Mosaic revelation, as well as his intuitions, and as their interpreter. Natural theology we accept by _human_ faith concurring with natural lights and that lower degree of grace which compasses the whole world. Divine faith, S. Paul tells us, requires an outward organ, too, not for its promulgation only, but for its _certainty_. “He gave some apostles, some pastors, etc.,” “that we be not driven about with every _wind of doctrine_.” Could _this_ effect have been realized if apostle had preached against apostle, and each prophet had said to his neighbor “I, too, am a prophet,” and bear an opposite message? S. Paul says that the hierarchy is ordained not only for edification, but to make faith _certain_. It can only do that in its unity. Had certainty been unnecessary, or had reason been its organ, no hierarchy would have been elevated to constitute the _church representative_.

The Protestant theory (it may be so spoken of with reference to the great main points included in most forms of Protestantism) assumes that the one great characteristic of faith is its being a power of “spiritual discernment” or an intuition of spiritual truth. This is to put a part of the truth in place of the whole. This attribute of faith is asserted by the church also; but her conception of faith is founded on a _larger_ appreciation of the Holy Scriptures and of man’s compound nature.

Faith indeed _becomes_ a spiritual _seeing_; but it _comes_ “by hearing.” Considered even exclusively as intuition, the “spiritual discernment” is wholly different in kind from moral or mathematical intuitions, as those two classes of intuition differ from each other. A spiritual intuition, analogous to that of reason (though more exalted), would be utterly unsuited to our needs while still laboring in our probation and toiling in the “body of this death.” The intuition really vouchsafed to us by supernatural grace ever retains peculiar characteristics originally produced by the mode in which we receive it. Humility, submission, self‐ abnegation, constitute that mode; and these qualities are and remain as essential characteristics of true faith as spiritual discernment is. No otherwise than “as little children” is it possible for us to enter into the kingdom of heaven. We must enter the sheep‐fold by the _door_; we cannot otherwise profit by it; for could we climb its walls, it would cease to be the sheep‐fold to us, since we should not bear in our breasts the heart of the Lamb. _Opinion asserts; faith confesses._ Assertion includes self‐assertion; confession confesses _another_. God only can rightly assert himself. Created beings are relative beings, and the condition of their true greatness is that they forget themselves in God. The very essence of pride, the sin of the fallen angels, whom but a single _voluntary evil thought_ subverted, is self‐assertion on the part of a relative being. In taking self as a practical _ground_ of knowledge, it, in a certain sense, creates its Creator, and involves the principle that God himself may be but an idea. Pride is not only our strongest spiritual temptation, but is almost the natural _instinct_ of reason, working _by itself_, on supernatural themes, and it remains _undetected by reason, just as water cannot be weighed in water_. The higher we soar, the more we need to be reminded of our infirmity; therefore the glorious intuitions of faith are, for our safety, given to us by the way of humility, and continued to us on condition of obedience. Not only faith, as a habit, is humble, but the peculiar species of knowledge which it conveys is such as to preserve that character; for that knowledge is _obscure_, although _certain_. We see, “as through a glass, darkly”; but we see steadily. Imaginative reason gets bright flashes by rubbing its own eyes, but they are transient. Faith, requiring docility as a habit in us, and involving obscurity as a condition of its knowledge, is a _perpetual_ discipline of self‐sacrifice. Christianity is the doctrine of a sacrifice; and through a spiritual act and habit of self‐sacrifice alone can that doctrine be “spiritually discerned.” Christian _knowledge_ is thus the opposite of the rationalistic and of the Gnostic.

This estimate of faith is surely as Scriptural as it is philosophic. Thus only can we reconcile the statements of our Lord and of S. Paul. The most humble and child‐like docility is constantly referred to by our Lord as an essential part of that faith which, on _condition of so beginning_ and of _continuing such_, imparts to us as much spiritual discernment as is an earnest of the Blessed Vision. Such _docility must look like credulity_. Almost all the instances of it which met his highest praise did look like credulity, and would have been credulity had not grace inspired them, Providence directed them, and Truth itself rewarded them. What then? Which part of Christianity is not thus double‐visaged? What part of it is not a scandal to them that “judge by appearances” and do not “judge righteous judgment”? If to all without faith the Master must _seem_ an impostor, why should not the disciples _seem_ enthusiasts? Were they who wished that the shadow of the apostles should fall on them, was she who touched the hem of Christ’s garment, fanatics, because erring nature too can prompt her children to similar acts under an erring religion? Before such a philosophy (if philosophy can rest on such an _assumption_) the Gospel, as well as the church of the _orbis terrarum_, and the whole ancient church, must give way, and pure religion must be a discovery, not of the XVIth, but of the XIXth century. Credulity itself is but a subordinate and ill‐ grounded form of _human_ faith, and is far from suppressing, though it misdirects, the nobler faculties of the _natural_ man. Plato and Bacon had more of it than Epicurus and Hobbes. Docility (its analogon in the spiritual world) is the humbler element in faith. It is absolutely necessary, and is sometimes undistinguishable, in mere _outward_ seeming, from its natural counterpart. Milk is as necessary for babes as meat for the mature. The mature never cease, in the kingdom of heaven, to be, _inclusively_, children; it is their very excellence that they unite the best characteristics of different ages, sexes, and conditions. Yet the children of the kingdom are not fed on mortal, but on immortal, milk; and that milk is meat in a less compact preparation. As an incredulous habit is not a mark of true wisdom, so an indocile habit is incompatible with an authentic faith, which cannot act except in obedience to an authentic authority. To the rationalist the indocile habit, far from being a fault, is a necessity; for his knowledge comes from within _only_, not from above and from within.

Now let us turn to history and fact. Had they no spiritual discernment of Christ who died for him? Yet did not the martyrs and the age of martyrs abound in what to Protestantism seem credulities? The church of the apostles, of the fathers, of the doctors, of the schoolmen, the church that built up Christendom, invariably recognized the principle of ecclesiastical obedience, docility, submission, as a part of faith, not as inconsistent with the intuition of faith—its moral element, as the other is its intellectual. It was the cement that kept the whole fabric together, though not the amphionic power that raised the living stones. Those who branded obedience as superstition were Arius, and Aërius, and Vigilantius, and the Albigensian heretics, not the fathers, the doctors, or the martyrs of the faith. The latter knew that the faith of him who lays hold of Christ, and of her who but touches “the hem of his garment,” are in kind the same. They knew also, that, when _truth confronts us_ and grace is offered, the spirit which is “offended” at little things is not edified by great. And how has it been ever since; how is it now with the mass of the world? How does faith come to _children and to the poor_, and to the busy and to the dull? _What makes the Bible divine to them?_ What suggests the truths which they are to look for in the Bible? Authority, everywhere acting through such representatives of authority as remain in lands which decry it! If docility, obedience, a desire to believe, submission previous to insight, be not, under _Christian conditions_, characteristics of faith, merely because, under pagan conditions, they might be opposed to spiritual knowledge, then have most believers believed in vain; for error cannot be the foundation of truth. Discernment belongs, by universal confession, to faith, and baptism is the “sacrament of illumination”; but no proposition can be more _unreasonable_ than that faith should begin with, or be identical with, an insight which, in a high degree of conscious development, obviously belongs to the few, and to them under very special circumstances.

Let us return to the philosophy of the “rule of faith.”

No one would deny that the will, even more than the mind, is the seat of faith; but the Protestant theory does not efficiently and practically recognize this truth. Submission is in the will; discernment in the mind. The latter belongs to the man chiefly; the former to the child equally, and the _child living on in the Christian man_. The whole Catholic system is based on this fact. From it, for instance, follows, by inevitable consequence, the _true theory_ of charity in reference to dogmatic error—that, namely, of “invincible ignorance.” Protestants, and Protestants who repeat the Athanasian Creed, think this expression but an evasion. But “invincible ignorance” means _involuntary_ ignorance _of the truth_, and is based on the known principle that heresy must be a sin of the will, because faith is a virtue, primarily belonging to the will, when it submits to grace. Now, granting that the internal agency of the Divine Spirit is that which clears the faculty of spiritual discernment and develops faith in the mind, still, assuredly, obedience is trained and faith is rooted in the will by the same Spirit addressing us through its outward organ, the church. “_Obedience_ to the faith” is not a principle only, but a habit. Habits are impressed on us, not by precept only, but by providential circumstance and divine institutions, such as the civil power, parental rule, the weakness of infancy, the hindrances of knowledge, those necessities for social co‐operation which train the sympathies.

Implicit faith in the Bible only might, for such as entertained it with absolute and childlike confidence, give rise to no small degree of moral deference, and does so with many Protestants, though not without a considerable alloy of error and of superstition. But a book, though divine, is a book still. It cannot speak, except with the inquirer for an interpreter. It cannot correct misinterpretations. It will often reveal what is sought, and hide what is not desired, but is needed. It will “find” those who find in it what they _brought_ to it. It is plastic in hot and heedless hands. It may train the mental faculties, but it will not practically exercise a habit of submission. If a country, in place of possessing laws, with magistrates to enforce and judges to expound them, possessed nothing but statutes on parchment, and a vast legal literature for their exposition, statutes and comments being alike commended to the private judgment of individuals, would it be possible that subjects could be trained up with the habit or spirit of political obedience? Every man might be educated till he resembled a village attorney; but loyalty would be extinct. The statute‐book would still assert the principle of obedience, as does the Bible in spiritual things; but the habit could not thus be formed. To bow exclusively to that which addresses us in abstract terms, and to bow when and how our judgment dictates—this alone is not in reality, though it may be in words, a discipline of humility. To obey God, _as represented by man_, is that at which pride revolts. The authority of the church in the household and kingdom of Christ is like that of the father in the family and the monarch in his realm. An authority thus objectively embodied has also a special power of working through the affections; and to train them to be the handmaids of faith is one of the special functions of the church. “My little children of whom I travail again,” says S. Paul to his flock. What living church can be imagined as thus addressing her children? Surely none save that one which claims apostolic authority, and does not shrink from proclaiming that faith includes obedience as well as insight. This is not an idle theory. What men in the Roman Catholic Church have entertained the most filial and affectionate reverence for their mother? Her saints—those who had the most ardent love for their Lord, the deepest insight into his Gospel, and the keenest appreciation of its spiritual freedom—the S. Bernards, Thomas à Kempises, Francis de Saleses. To retain obedience as a principle, and yet cheat it of its object, an authentic and _real_ authority, was the “Arch Mock” of the “Reformation.”

A faith thus confirmed and steadied by authentic authority can alone permanently sustain the ardent and enthusiastic devotion of strong minds. Faith, or what seems faith, if resting exclusively on internal feeling and individual opinion, will vehemently, if but transiently, excite the light and the impulsive; but the graver mind will distrust it, even when visited by the more sanguine mood, from a painful sense that it has no power of discriminating between faith and illusion. It will be sure of its own perceptions and sensations; but it cannot contrive wholly to ignore those of its neighbor when they are opposite. It will remember that there are two causes of uncertainty, the first arising when our own premises admit of alternative conclusions, the second when, the conclusions being obvious, the premises are disputed and cannot be proved. It will remember that mathematical and moral intuitions, “though independent of evidence, are yet backed by a practically universal consent (the result of their being, in a large measure, intuitions independent of the will); and it may be disposed to say that if it happened that most people denied that the three angles of a triangle equalled two right angles, I could not indeed believe that they made three, but I might come to believe that I had wandered into a region in which impressions must always _seem_ certain, but yet in which nothing could be authentically known.” Men cannot exchange their _tastes_; but then they know that tastes are subjective; whereas revealed truth must be objective. Some such misgiving will chill faith commonly in large and steady minds, and thus the whole religious life is struck dead. Enthusiasm will commonly, under such circumstances, belong only to those minds which boil over before they have taken in much heat. A church which makes its censers of paper, not metal, cannot burn incense. A religion which, _in any form_, includes a “peradventure,” has admitted the formula of nature and lost the “amen” of supernatural truth. It is reduced and transposed. Its raptures are but poetry, its dogma but science, its antiquity but pedantry, its forms but formality, its freedom but license, its authority but convention, its zeal but faction, its sobriety but sloth. It cannot admit of enthusiasm, as it cannot generate it in its nobler and more permanent forms, because it can neither balance nor direct it. Such a faith _must_ install reason in the higher place. A church founded on nothing higher _must_ serve, not rule. It will end by worshipping its bondage.

As in theology there is no possibility of separating dogma from dogma, so there is no possibility of separating the religious affections from a reverence for dogmas, if the mind be an inquiring one. What has been called “loyalty to our Lord,” and contrasted with the “dogmatic spirit,” is a sentiment which depends wholly on what we _believe_ concerning him. But to believe him to be God and man involves an immense mass of profound doctrine which may be held _implicitly_ by the many, but which the student must hold _explicitly_, or be in a condition of doubt. These subtle questions involve metaphysical speculations; and had we to settle them for ourselves, we must all of us have mastered philosophy before we had learned the lore of Christian love. But how many points are there of a different sort which yet must be certain, if our faith is to be certain—points which no man could settle for himself, and as to which no authority save one secure from error could give us rest! Such are the questions as to the mode of administering sacraments; what form of baptism is _valid_, and what is _invalid_; the canonicity of the Scriptures, which, if it depend on our individual estimate of historic evidence only, can rise no higher than the level of opinion, and therefore can never afford a basis for divine faith. No reasonable man can suppose that either directly or indirectly he can reach to intuitions on _these_ points. He may say that they are not essential to him personally; but he cannot but suspect that they are essential to the integrity of that whole scheme of theology which, _as a whole_, is essential to him. A leak in the ship is not less dangerous because low down and out of sight; and the strength of a chain is the strength of its weakest link. When the principle of authority ceased to be held, as a revealed doctrine (the _complement_ of that of personal spiritual discernment), the complete circle of faith was broken, and an element of doubt entered in. The process was unperceived because gradual, the _inherited_ faith concealing long the ravages of innovating opinion. Human faith succeeded also to divine, and simulated it. Science, imagination, enthusiasm in its ever‐varying forms, contributed their aid. Protestant churches can hardly now even conceive of an _authority_ acting simply and humbly under divine _faith_. They can only imagine anathemas as proceeding from passion. But S. Paul and the early church, as well as the Roman Catholic, thought differently.

Another principle lost sight of practically on the Protestant theory of religious knowledge is that it is necessary to hold the Christian faith, not only (1st) _in its fulness_, and (2d) _with certainty_, but also (3d) _in its purity_. Now, whatever truths individual intuitions and studies may bring home to us (legitimately or accidentally), it is certain from experience that they will not exclude many errors, which apparently have the same sanction, and are entertained with the same confidence—nay, are so cherished that if but one be spoken against, the whole system of thought is felt to be endangered. But this confusion of truth and error introduces Babel into the heart of Jerusalem, and erects altars to false gods in the temple of the True. The soul espoused to Christ must exclude his rivals, and preserve ever the unrelaxed girdle of purity in spiritual things. Faith is not only the mother, but the _virgin_ mother, of all perfect belief, devotion, and practice. Error, _in the region of faith_, is not only hostile but fatal to truth in its spiritual unity. We are assured that “the letter _kills_,” not merely that it is void; and we know that a little poison may corrupt much food, while a little needful medicine may taste as bitter as poison. Now, that the Bible, by reason of its very excellency, abounds in passages obvious to individual misinterpretation, no candid reader of it or of history will deny. We need, therefore, something which will preserve us from such dangers, as well as from evils of deficiency. Animals are protected from many dangers by the constant presence of overpowering instincts. The soul requires equally the constant guidance of the Holy Spirit. Experience disproves the novel and enthusiastic notion that the Spirit is _thus_ given—viz., as inspiration—to the individual in his isolation. He requires, therefore, the aid of the Spirit, both acting in his soul as vital heat, and also shedding light on him from the church, round whose head the Pentecostal flame ever plays. Within that church which teaches “with authority, and not as the scribes,” a firmament is drawn between matters to be believed _de fide_ and matters of opinion. Errors in theological opinion, recognized as opinion only, are not necessarily more hurtful than errors in science or politics. Let us now glance at the most ordinary form of objection.

So inveterate are traditional habits of thought that we recur to them after their fallaciousness has been ever so clearly pointed out. A wheel of thought moves round in our head, and the old notions recur. What convert, for instance, has not been plagued, while approaching to Catholic convictions, by the reiteration of that thought constantly recurring to his mind, “Is it likely that all England should have been in error for three hundred years?” Though he cannot but feel the weight of the answer, “It is at least more likely than that all Christendom should have been far more deeply steeped in worse errors and corruptions, by their nature affecting individuals as well as the body corporate, for at least twelve hundred years.” It is thus that in the question of the “rule of faith” we recur to the question, “Is it not obvious that the individual mind must lose all freedom and spontaneity, if obliged to measure its movements by an outward authority? Is not such obedience servile, not filial; carnal, not spiritual? Who could move freely, if _obliged_ to walk always with another, though that other were his dearest friend?” Now, far from all this being obvious, it is obviously founded on a misconception of the hypothesis objected to. Why does the soul partake of a higher _freedom_ as it advances in _submission_ to God? How is it that, in the glorified state, perfect freedom exists without the possibility of falling? Because the Spirit that works in the redeemed and regenerate is the Spirit of God himself. Why is it no bondage that our two eyes must, if in a healthy condition, move together? Because the same law acts freely in both. Why is it that a hand that has ceased to obey the brain is called a _powerless_ hand? Because its power proceeds from sympathy with the brain. Now, on the hypothesis of the “visible church,” just such a sympathy, such a law, and such a Spirit _work equally and simultaneously in the individual and in the body_. To the church the Spirit is given indefectibly, to lead her into “all truth,” even to the “end of the world.” The individual may or may not co‐operate with the Spirit; but if he does, he must needs, _ex hypothesi_, co‐operate with the church, and he cannot feel as a bondage what is the law of his life, though the _less spiritual_ part of him may often feel it as a salutary restraint. Rightly to serve is, in things divine, the only possible spiritual, as distinguished from merely natural, freedom. The real question, then, respects, not either the stringency of the law or its character as external law, but its being or not being divine—a rightful authority, not a usurpation.

The place of faith is not determined by controversial or even intellectual needs only. Its functions are innumerable. It is the bond between the race and God. It must affect the whole soul and be the health of every part. It is God’s adamant diffused through every region of our being, as the rock on which the church is built extends, in its solidity, throughout and under the whole fabric. Our individual faith may be weak; but it is the nature of faith itself to be infinitely strong; and our faith must so come to us, and so stand towards us, as to _admit of_ its own infinite increase, as well as of its permanence. It must enlighten the mind, erect the will, warm and chasten the heart, live in every affection, kneel in our humility, endure in our patience. It is an armor that covers us wholly, leaving _no spot_ exposed to the flying shafts of an enemy, to whom one spot is as the whole body. Its shield is a mirror in which humanity beholds the whole of its being, individual and social, imaged after the stature of the renewed man. That image is no idol with brazen breast and feet of earth, but the likeness, everywhere glorious, of Him who took our whole nature, and in it was obedient to “his parents” and his country’s law, as well as to his Father’s will. Faith, in the Protestant acceptation of the word, is unable to discharge for us all these high offices. No Protestant community (and many have been tried) can point to its heroic triumphs, and say, “Behold its fruits.” They have neither converted heathen nations nor retained as much of the faith as they started with on their new career.

The theory of the “Bible _interpreted_ by private judgment” seems, then, to me to have been novel, rash, crude, not sincerely thought out when promulgated—the only position that could affect to justify the revolt from unity, but one not itself justified by the event. _My reason_, to which rationalism ever appeals, would not have antecedently assured me that a book would have formed even part of a revelation. _My reason_ tells me that if the facts of Christianity be divine, its dogmatic truths divine, and the book which records the facts and announces the truths be divine, it is not _unreasonable_ that the interpreter of that book should be divine. Such is the theory which Rome maintains, but which no one will say that Rome did more than _retain_, walking thus in the footsteps of the primitive church, and of the general councils. The patriarchal church had no Bible; the Hebrew church but an incomplete canon, added to from time to time. The Christian canon was not compiled for two centuries after Christ; Providence did not allow of its diffusion by printing for fourteen. The Christian world is still, for the most past, unable to read. _Most_ Protestants have therefore ever been compelled to be guided by an authority which, without pretending to confer the spiritual gifts which Rome confers, is exposed to many of the same objections. All religious communities say practically, “Hear me.” One only says, with the apostle, “Hear the church.” One only delivers a distinct and consistent message. One only unites parental authority with maternal solicitude, fear with love, enthusiasm with steadfastness, permanence of faith with progress of defined knowledge, the doctrines with the ethical habits of the early church, the lore of the Fathers with the propagandism of the early missionaries and the courage of the martyrs. It is the church of Him who was singled from his brethren as were Judah, Shem, Seth, and made to be unity, that in his unity all might be one, in one Lord, one _faith_, and one baptism.

A. DE VERE.

NOVEMBER 2, 1851.

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Our readers will certainly be thankful to us for giving them the pleasure of perusing the foregoing letter, which is a document of great interest and value for several reasons. It is the work of an author whose prose is only inferior to his poetry. It is a record of the process of reasoning by which one of the many illustrious English converts was aided to make the transition from Anglicanism to the Catholic Church, given in his own language at a time when his thoughts and sentiments about the momentous change were fresh in his memory, and remarkably different from any similar production. The value of such a document, considered in the respect just mentioned, depends on its being given precisely as it was written at the time; and we have been, therefore, scrupulously careful not to change or modify a single sentence, or even a word, in the author’s manuscript.

This letter is not, however, merely a psychological and literary curiosity. Though it is the argument, not of a Catholic theologian, but of a man of letters just recently converted to the faith, it is a remarkable presentation of some parts of Catholic doctrine, more particularly of the supernatural certainty of divine faith, and the essential difference of faith from human science or opinion, even when the object of the latter is natural or revealed theology. We think it important, however, to add a short explanation of our own as a safeguard of purely natural certitude. Sound Catholic philosophy establishes the certitude of knowledge received through the senses, the understanding, and the discursive or reasoning operation of the mind upon the concepts apprehended by both those faculties. Physical, metaphysical, and moral demonstration produce, therefore, true science, not mere opinion. The rational proof of the Catholic religion rests on these three, and is sufficient to produce a certain conviction. This is not, however, identical with divine faith. The act of faith is distinct from the merely rational assent of the mind. Yet these two acts may terminate on the same object. One may be convinced, for instance, of the spirituality of the soul, by a metaphysical demonstration, without believing in the divine revelation. If he afterward believes in the revelation, he will have also a divine faith in the spirituality of the soul. One may believe by divine faith that Christ made S. Peter the head of the church, and afterwards acquire an historical certainty of the same truth. We cannot be too careful to maintain the supernatural quality of faith and the superiority of its divine light to the natural light of reason; at the same time, we must be also careful not to weaken or diminish the certainty and the scope of natural knowledge.—ED. C. W.

The Church In F——.

Build up the church! Let its turrets rise, With cross‐crowned summits, to kiss the skies; Hollow its centre, in nave and aisle, From its walls let heaven‐rapt faces smile.

Make its fair altars to glow with light, Where priest and ministering acolyte May kneel, with incense and book and bell, The praises of God and his saints to swell.

Let the deep tones of the organ roll With thunderous music, to stir the soul, While spirits soar, as on wings of fire, ’Mid the holy chants of the surpliced choir.

But when the crowd has passed away, And the lights burn low and the church is gray, And in their solitude aisle and nave Are still and stern as a martyr’s grave,

All is not over of praise and prayer: The mourner, shrinking from crowd and glare, May kneel in the shadow, and veil her eyes Before the Lord of the sacrifice.

The sacred Presence that throws its spell— An ever‐abiding miracle— O’er the empty fane and the silent shrine, Is there at all seasons—_the Host divine._

Are You My Wife? Chapter I.

By The Author Of “A Salon In Paris Before The War,” “Number Thirteen,” “Pius VI.,” Etc.