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nied its former exercise prevent their mourning the loss. We do, however, need a revival of canonical discipline, and until it comes Papal Authority will continue to receive from many minds the credit that really belongs to the obedience of Papists.

But there is a class of Roman Catholics, including some former Anglicans, who apparently admit some of our historic arguments, and dismiss them as not germane to the case, on the hypothesis of a development of Christian doctrine which is satisfied by the Roman claims. A short time ago, if I may illustrate the point by a personal experience, I conducted an extended argument and correspondence with a fellow clergyman who was on the verge of becoming a Roman Catholic. In reply to my pressing various historical reasons against his proposed course he told me frankly that he knew little and cared less about history, but insisted that I would obtain satisfactory answers to my objections from a distinguished Roman Catholic scholar of England under whose influence he had been a short time before. In compliance with this suggestion I wrote to this gentleman and requested him to indicate to me the historical evidence for the doctrine of Papal Infallibility upon which he relied, historical evidence, of course that is, other than the so-called Petrine texts of the Gospels. In a long and courteous reply he frankly admitted that the historical evidence was slender and taken alone not convincing, a statement that he promptly sought to justify by alleging that so also was the historical evidence for the Trinity, for the Incarnation, for the doctrines of the Church and of the sacraments. Papal Infallibility had been "implicit" in ancient times, and was only made "explicit" in 1870; it had always "unconsciously" been the faith of Christendom, but "consciously" became so only as need arose, etc., etc. In short he sketched the theory of development that has so often been urged in defense of Papalism.

It has undoubtedly more to say for itself than has any other argument that can be advanced in behalf of the modern Roman Catholic position, and it is in virtue of this argument undoubtedly that many a Roman Catholic since Cardinal Newman has remained in the communion of the Pope. Indeed, it has car

ried my friend across the Tiber. It has its force precisely on the ground urged by my English correspondent, the analogy between the development of the doctrine of Papal Infallibility and the development of doctrine generally.

The subtle mind of Newman first conceived it as the way of escape from the intolerableness of the Anglicanism of his day into the haven of a church, that, whatever might be said against her, gave hospitality to Catholic ideas, practice, and devotion. The principles of the theory as Newman outlined them in his famous Essay, were and are essentially sound. Some such theory is demanded by the facts of Christian history, for look where we will, at Rome, at Moscow, at Canterbury, at Geneva (the centers of the several great types of Christianity), no one can for an instant suppose that any of them reproduce the theological atmosphere or the ecclesiastical situation of Galilee and Judea nineteen hundred years ago. There have been obvious changes and developments, a new terminology has come into existence; the mustard seed has become the great shrub. The Catholic of whatever name is concerned only to hold this development true to type, to note legitimate adaptations to changing times; for he cannot and will not admit that the faith was "once for all delivered to the saints" or that there have been additions thereto.

The theory of development has received no particular elucidation at Catholic hands since Newman. Anglicans, while they have generally accepted the premises, have contented themselves with successful comments on Newman's misapplications. Among Roman Catholics there arose a school of writers fifteen years or more ago who, while professing to follow Newman, boldly adapted his theory to suit their own conceptions and strained it to the breaking point. Under cover of defending Roman Catholicism they developed a sort of neo-Catholicism or Modernism, which Pope Pius X in a series of propositions explicitly condemned. The late Father Tyrrell of the Society of Jesus made these ideas popular for a while in the English-speaking world, as did the Abbé Loisy in France. I remember reading The Faith of the Millions when it was first published and regarding

it as the most ingenious defense of Romanism I had ever encountered. It gave a promise (a promise that Tyrrell ultimately failed to fulfil) of a Liberal Catholicism within the very Papal fold. But I ventured then to utter a prediction the exact accomplishment of which filled me with reprehensible conceit. I prophesied to a friend that within ten years Tyrrell would be condemned by the Curia.

The Faith of the Millions provided no ground for condemnation (indeed it was stamped with the Nihil obstat of the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster), but the Jesuit Father's subsequent works-The Much-abused Letter to a Professor and Medievalism-furnished ample offense. At the end he was neither Roman nor Catholic; indeed the works published after his formal condemnation made one wonder if he would long continue Christian.

The Modernist movement gave the Papal See genuine occasion for alarm, and with remarkable zeal it was to 'all appearances promptly stamped out. Indeed as far back as 1895 a quietus had been given to the theory of development, and, as I took occasion to remind him, it deprived my English Roman Catholic correspondent of the only argument he vouchsafed to advance for the Papal claims. The Pope will have none of the idea that what is now full-grown was once in the Church only in "germ," or that what is now consciously of faith was once unconsciously believed. Therefore when a Roman Catholic advances the theory of the development of doctrine as a defense of the Sovereign Power and Infallibility of the Roman Bishop, in reply it is sufficient to quote the words of Leo XIII in the Encyclical Satis Cognitum, which if not themselves infallible are nevertheless practical law for Papal subjects: . in the decree of the Vatican Council as to the nature and authority of the primacy of the Roman Pontiff, no newly conceived opinion is set forth, but the venerable and constant belief of every age.'

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*Quibus de causis, Concilli Vaticani decreto, quod est de vi et ratione primatus Romani Pontificis, non opinis est invecta nova, sed vetus et constans omnium seaculorum asserta fides. Satis Cognitum p. 39.

The Papacy itself has thus effectually declared anathema the only effective argument for its claims. And how long will it be before members of the Papal Obedience in private conversation and personal thinking cease to plead in behalf of Papal Infallibility arguments that the infallible Papacy condemns? For the continual pressing of an argument ruled out of court by the highest Roman juridical officer is unnecessarily confusing the Papal question. And, on the other hand, it may be asked, will discontented Anglicans, in the face of the demonstrated facts of history, continue to be deluded into imagining that the decrees of the Vatican Council as to the nature and authority of the primacy of the Roman Pontiff have been "the venerable and constant belief of every age?"

We ask and echo answers, for the evidence either of its antiquity or constancy. Peter and Paul and John and Luke and James are silent. The Apostolic Fathers have nothing to say. The Doctors of the Church openly disputed every point of the increasing claims of the Bishops of Rome. For centuries the occupants of the Papal See cursed three of their predecessors as heretics. Pope Gregory the Great anathematized any one who should call himself Universal Bishop. The East never acquiesced in Roman supremacy. England, without repudiating Catholic doctrine or practice, threw off the yoke that had been gradually imposed. The Roman Catholic communion itself was almost torn asunder by disputes on the question of Papal Infallibility in the generation when many pressed for the definition. The faithful of Ireland prior to 1870 were taught in a catechism which had Papal approval that "the doctrine of Papal Infallibility is an invention of Protestants."'* The greatest theologians of the day in communion with Rome protested, some even left the Church, when the definition was promulgated. He who was to be England's greatest cardinal wrote of those who desired and intrigued for the definition as "an insolent and aggressive faction." Modernism had its rise in the course of the reaction that followed, and we are told only recently by

*Keenan's Catechism (1850).

Roman ecclesiastics that their Church is still honeycombed with Modernist ideas. How in the face of these undisputed facts the theory of development can be abandoned and a Pope can solemnly say, much less believe, that Papal Supremacy and Infallibility has been the venerable and constant belief of every age passes comprehension. As Cardinal Newman felt in correspondence with Cardinal Manning, so we in controversy with Roman Catholics, feel, that we do not know whether we are standing on our heels or on our heads.

All Catholics must ultimately admit development of doctrine, and it behooves us Anglicans to set about clarifying our ideas on the subject, to estimate clearly for the thinking faithful the limits and conditions of that development, and to declare as fully as may be what we take to be explicit and implicit doctrine in the data of revelation. We all admit that the oak tree is implicit in the acorn and the plant in the mustard seed, but even the untutored decline to see an elephant implicit in an egg.

For centuries Rome has been burning her bridges behind her. Perhaps now that the way of retreat seems finally cut off a liberal pontiff of the future may perceive the necessity, so important for the unity of Christendom, of coming to terms with the Catholicism that Rome now spurns as heresy and schism. There remains little on the present line of procedure for Ultramontanism to accomplish save the deification of the Pope.

"Hell must be an integral part of the ideal world so long as the radical convictions of Christianity retain their genuine vitality. Simply to suppress it is to substitute a vapid optimism which will never satisfy men nourished upon the Christian version of the unmistakable facts of the universe. Eternal damnation is as much a necessity of the imagination as a logical deduction from the fundamental principles of the creed." Leslie Stephen.

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