ple in effecting those reforms, in emancipating them from the tyranny under which they groan, may emancipate herself from the secular power, and secure her freedom and independence. Therefore he would urge upon all Catholics who are afraid of revolutions not to oppose the popular movements, but to seek to bring them under the influence and direction of religion. This we suppose is his real thought, and this in the main is sound and just. We wish, however, that for our sakes here, where our greatest danger is from radicalism, from an exaggerated democracy, he had been a little more careful to mark the place of religion as that of sovereign, and not have presented her in the character of an ally. The error, in this view of his meaning, into which Padre Ventura falls, if he errs at all, is in supposing that popular governments will be more favorable to the freedom and independence of the Church than are the existing governments of Europe. For ourselves, we have full confidence in the Church; but we have as little in the intelligence and virtue of a people bent only upon the acquisition of temporal goods, as we have in infidel and licentious kings, and half-mad and imbecile emperors. The government in the hands of the people, unless they are profoundly religious, will be hardly less hostile to the real freedom and independence of the Church, than in the hands of royal tyrants and their minions. We have seen enough of popular governments to be aware that the people, as well as the king, need a master, and a master, too, that is under the special protection of Almighty God, and able at all times and in all places to command with Divine authority.

ART. VII. The Dublin Review, No. XLVI., Art. VI. London: Richardson & Son. January, 1848.

THIS is the first part of an attempted reply to the papers we have published against Mr. Newman's theory, especially to the article in this journal for last October, entitled The Dublin Review on Developments. We have read it, as far as it goes, with attention, and as little prejudice as possible; but we have found it exceedingly unsatisfactory. It is written after the manner of an Oxford student or an Anglican controversialist, rather than after the manner we are accustomed to in Catholic theologians. The author evades the real questions in debate, and seeks to make up a foreign issue, not necessarily involving either the truth or the falsehood of the theory to which we have objected. He evidently wishes to abandon the defence of the theory to itself, and to make the whole controver34

NEW SERIES.

VOL. II. NO. II.

sy turn on the exactness or inexactness of our statement of Catholic teaching; in other words, to abandon the defensive and assume the offensive. This undoubtedly is creditable to him as a strategist, but it can be of little avail. It is not difficult either to see through his manoeuvring, or to meet and thwart it. Too much art sometimes defeats itself, and fails, when a simple and natural method would lead on to victory.

As far as proving us to have been inexact is proving the truth of the theory of development, the method of the Reviewer is legitimate enough, but no farther. Perhaps we might be inexact in our statement of Catholic teaching, and yet that theory not be true; and if so, proving us in the wrong would not be proving the Reviewer in the right. If we are right in our statement of that teaching, the theory is most unquestionably false; but we are much mistaken, if we may not be decidedly in the wrong on the points on which the Reviewer labors to prove us so, and yet the theory be wholly inadmissible. To all he alleges against us, possibly we could reply, Concedo, quid inde?

But it is necessary to bear in mind that the doctrine which the Reviewer ascribes to us, and against which alone he brings his heavy artillery to bear, does not happen to be ours or any body's we ever heard of. It is his own invention, and he has the exclusive right to it. If we understand him, he asserts that we maintain, or would persuade his readers that we maintain, that the whole Christian doctrine has been explicitly believed from the first, not only by the Church, but also by all the faithful, and that nothing can be defined of faith which has not been so believed from the beginning by every one, whether simple or learned, a rustic or a doctor. But this is a grave mistake. We hold no such doctrine; we have said nothing, fairly interpreted, to authorize the supposition that we do, but enough to warrant the assertion that we do not, as the Reviewer cannot be unaware, if he has done us the honor to read the articles on which he professes to comment. We are exceedingly humbled that any one should suppose us either so ignorant or so disingenuous as to deny, what every Catholic of ordinary intelligence knows, that large portions of Christian doctrine are believed by the rude and simple only implicitly, or that there are many things not explicitly believed at all times and in all places, by every one of the learned even. To say that we do not deny this would seem to us very much like saying that we do not deny that a triangle is not a circle.

The doctrine we have opposed to the theory of developments is, that the revelation made to and through the Apostles was an explicit and perfect revelation of the whole Christian faith, save, as Suarez maintains, certain things which in the times of the Apostles had not yet happened, and which were formally revealed in the explicit revelation, as the particular in the universal, or the part in the whole, and that this revelation was explicitly and completely delivered over by the Apostles to their successors, and has been at all times explicitly held and believed by the Church. This is the doctrine we have set forth as that of all our theologians, and this is the precise doctrine to be disproved, before we can be convicted of inexactness in our statement of Catholic teaching. But, thus far, the Reviewer has not disproved this doctrine, nor has he succeeded in adducing a single authority, respectable or otherwise, against it. Some of the authorities he cites, undoubtedly, disprove the doctrine he is pleased to tell his readers is ours; but to disprove what we do not hold is not precisely to disprove what we do hold. Neverthe

less, the Reviewer must disprove this doctrine before his offensive operations can begin to avail him any thing. Not as yet having done this, he has as yet made no advance in the argument, either against us or for himself.

It is clear now what the Reviewer must do in order to place us in the wrong; let us see what he must do in order to place himself in the right, or to defend the theory of development in the sense in which we have set it forth and objected to it. He must maintain,-1. The original revelation committed to the Apostles, and through them to the Church, was imperfect, inchoate, containing gaps to be filled up in the process of time by the uninspired action of the human mind; 2. It is impossible to make a revelation which the uninspired human mind can take in or apprehend, except through long and laborious processes of thought, which can go on only successively, and be completed only after a considerable lapse of time; 3. Christian doctrine, or the object embraced in the act of believing, is not the revealed fact, but the mind's idea of it, always more or less inadequate, or the form which the mind by its own uninspired action imposes upon it; 4. It is no objection to a theory, that it degrades Christianity to the level of sects and human philosophy; 5. No provision was made in the Apostolic revelation, as originally delivered to the Church, for Infant Baptism, or post-baptismal sins; 6. The Sacrament of Penance was not an original Apostolic institution, but a development effected after the establishment of the Church, and after the faithful had become corrupt; 7. Purgatory was a development effected subsequently to the first ages, as a form of Penance due for sins committed after Baptism; 8. The doctrine of the Trinity was only imperfectly understood by the AnteNicene Fathers, and not fully formed till the fourth century, and that of the Incarnation remained imperfect till the sixth; 9. Excepting some of the elements of the principal mysteries, nothing is formally of faith till controverted, and judicially defined and declared by the Church. These and many other propositions hardly less startling to the Christian are contained in that theory of development which we have opposed, and these, or the theory in the sense of these, the Reviewer must defend, or he does not defend that to which we have objected. To defend developments in some other sense, or some other theory of developments, is nothing to the purpose; for it is only this theory, or developments in the sense of this theory, that we have opposed.

We regret to perceive that the Reviewer overlooks this fact, and proceeds as if the question turned on developments in general, and as if he could conclude against us in case he should prove developments anywhere, in any sense, and on no matter what ground. But this is a grave error. We object to developments in a specific subject, in a specific sense, asserted on a specific ground, and to certain particular developments. If he shows that we misapprehend the theory, that it does not assert the particular developments to which we object, nor developments in the subject, in the sense, and on the ground to which we take exceptions, well and good; we have nothing more to say; for then he shows that the theory contended for is something which we have not opposed, and to prove it is to prove nothing against us. He must take one of two courses. He may disavow the theory in the sense in which we oppose it, or he may attempt to defend it from the objections we bring against it; but he must do the one or the other. He cannot prove it in one sense, clude its truth in another. If he will not disavow it in the sense object

and con

ed to, he must defend it in that sense. No evasion, no manœuvring, will avail him. He must come at last to one or the other, or forfeit all claims to be considered a fair and honest controversialist.

And why should he hesitate to do it? He either holds the theory in the sense of the propositions we have given, or he does not. If he does, is it necessary to tell him that he must defend it in that sense, and that to defend it, as he seeks to do, in some other sense is nothing to his purpose? If he does not, can he not say so, and tell us precisely what it is he does mean to defend under the head of developments? Why not meet the question directly, fairly, honestly, like a good Christian? Is not truth his object? Would it be just to conclude that he loves his theory more than truth, or that he would rather play the sophist than acknowledge that he has erred? Is there any hardship or humiliation in saying that we have been in the wrong? Who is there that has not erred? and what more manly, when convinced that we have erred, than to say so, frankly, and without a wry face? Out upon the contemptible pride that would make us blush to confess our errors! It is a privilege, a precious privilege, to be allowed to confess our errors; for by doing so we may make some reparation for the injury they may have done.

In looking over the Reviewer's article, we cannot perceive that he has made the least advance, either in proving what we objected to, or in disproving what we asserted to be the Catholic doctrine. He remains where we placed him last October. He introduces no additional authorities, adduces no new arguments, and fails utterly to vindicate to himself those of his own authorities which we turned against him. In the very few instances in which he may appear to some of his readers who are not also our readers to have done something, his apparent success is due solely to his keeping the true issue out of sight, to his misrepresenting our doctrine, and his representing what we adduced to prove one point as adduced to prove another, to prove which we did not adduce it or rely on it. This is especially true of his reply to our exposition of the long extract from Suarez. Some of his assertions are so extraordinary as to transcend the bounds of sophistry, and, unless he retains the old Tractarian habit of using words in "a non-natural sense," are downright-misstatements. His boldness, not to say unscrupulousness, surprises us not a little. If he believes he has truth on his side, how can he believe it necessary to resort to sophistry, to misrepresentation, and misstatement? All men of ordinary morality prefer, when they can, to maintain their cause by fair and honorable means; and whenever one resorts to other means, he raises a suspicion that his cause is weak, and that he feels it to be so.

Thus far we have simply stated what the Reviewer must do in order either to refute what we maintain or to defend what we oppose, and given our estimate of the character and value of his reply as far as it has proceeded. A more particular examination we reserve till we receive the concluding portion of his article, in which we shall rejoice to find something definite and to the purpose. We hope in that we shall find what it is he really wishes to defend, and be relieved of our present uncertainty, whether it is the theory we oppose, or something else, to which we may or may not object.

There are, however, a few incidental topics introduced by the Reviewer, of no great importance in themselves, indeed, which we wish to dispose of now, that we may have nothing to divert our attention hereafter

from the main issue. The Reviewer represents us as mistaken in regarding his former article as intended to be a reply to us. He did not profess, he says, to reply to us. That he did not profess to do so in just so many words is true; that he did substantially, we thought, and we still think, we had reason for supposing. He placed our article at the head of his, and gave as his reason for doing so his "wish to offer a few comments on it, which, according to our understanding of editorial usage, is equivalent to expressing an intention "to offer a reply." Moreover, he assigned as his reason for commenting on our article at all, the fact that we had included in the censure we bestowed certain gentlemen besides Mr. Newman, and "these had a right to be heard in their own defence." This either was a reason, or it was not. It would not be respectful to say it was not. If it was, the purpose of the Reviewer was to defend these gentlemen from the censure in which we had included them. But we had included them in no censure except that which we bestowed upon Mr. Newman's theory, and in that only so far as they embraced it. The only possible way of defending them from that censure was either to show that they did not embrace the theory in the sense in which we censured it, or by defending the theory itself against us. The Reviewer did not defend or attempt to defend them in the former way, and therefore must have attempted to do it in the latter way; which was to attempt a reply to us. That he waived Mr. Newman's Essay and Mr. Newman's name is true, but this amounted to nothing; because what we objected to in Mr. Newman was not his name or his book, as a mere book, but the theory we found in a book bearing his name. That he did not undertake to defend that theory as Mr. Newman's, we grant; but he either did undertake to defend it against us as the theory of certain other gentlemen, and therefore to reply to us, or he made an unwarrantable use of our name. If he proposed simply to defend some other theory, a theory we had not assailed, and against other opponents, what in the world had we to do with the matter, and by what right did he make an article of ours the subject of his comments?

The Reviewer complains that we expressed a regret that the task of replying to us had not been committed to some learned Catholic doctor, and adds, rather tartly, "Surely, what a layman and a recent convert is at liberty to write, a layman and a recent convert is at liberty to answer." Unquestionably; yet a certain layman and recent convert may be competent to write what another may not be competent to answer. The question is not as to the liberty, but as to the competency. But the Reviewer mistakes the source of our regret. We did not wish for a Catholic doctor because we thought ourselves entitled to an opponent of a higher grade than the Reviewer; we did not dream of instituting a comparison between him and ourselves, for we have long been of Dogberry's opinion, that "comparisons are odorous." We wished the doctor in the place of the recent convert, because we wished the truth to be elicited and the controversy brought to a speedy and satisfactory termination; because the learned Catholic doctor would have studied, not to darken, but to elucidate, the subject; because he would have understood his authorities, perceived the precise points on which the controversy turns, and have spoken to them directly and logically; because it was error, not defeat, we dreaded, truth, not victory, we desired. The Reviewer's second article, we are sorry to say, has served only to justify and increase the regret we expressed.