He fails, because he proceeds on the supposition that the Catholic Church teaches that her creeds contain the whole body of truth of the Christian faith. The Catholic Church at no time or nowhere taught this. Her creeds never did contain explicitly the whole body of the Christian faith, they do not even now; for such was not her intention or purpose. Had it not been for the errors of Arius and his followers, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity might not have been contained in the creeds of the church explicitly, even down to our own day. The supposition, however, that the mystery of the Trinity was not believed in the church “before
Constantine” is as absurd as to suppose that the necessity of good works for salvation, or there being a purgatory, was not believed and maintained in the Catholic Church before the time of Charles V., or that Papal Infallibility was not believed and held in the church before the time of William of Prussia, the German kaiser! The discussions and definitions of the councils render Christian truths more explicit and intelligible than they were before; this is a matter of course, but who is so ignorant as to suppose that the councils originated these truths?
That the creeds “before Constantine” implied the Trinity and intended it Dr. Newman would have taught the Rev. Edward E. Hale, if he had ingenuously quoted the two sentences which follow his extract. Dr. Newman continues thus: “Of course we believe that they [the early creeds] imply it [the Trinity]. God forbid we should do otherwise!”[90] Rev. Edward E. Hale ought to know that the Catholic Church repudiates with instinctive horror the idea of adding to, or taking away from, or altering in the least, the body of the Christian truth delivered once and for all to her keeping by her divine Founder when upon earth. The mistakes he makes on these points arise from his viewing the church solely as an assembly, overlooking that she is also a corporated body, informed by the indwelling Holy Spirit, and the constitution given to her by Christ includes the commission to “teach all things whatsoever he commanded.”
Following what has gone before, the Rev. Mr. Hale makes another surprising statement. He says:
“It was not to be expected—nor, in fact, did anybody expect—that a religion so simple and so radical should sweep the world without contaminating its own simplicity and blunting the edge of its own radicalism in the first and second contact, nay, in the contact of centuries. Least of all did Jesus Christ himself expect this. Nobody so definite as he in the statement of the obscurities and defilements which would surround his simple doctrine of ‘Love God and love men.’”
In all deference to Mr. Hale, this is precisely what everybody did expect from the church of Christ—to teach the truth with purity and unswerving fidelity, “without contamination in the contact,” for all “centuries.” For this is what the promises of Christ led them precisely to expect when he founded his church. He promised that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”[91] He promised also that he would be with his church through all ages: “Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.”[92] Does Mr. Hale read the Holy Scriptures and believe what he reads? Listen, again, to St. Paul’s description of the church. After saying that “Christ is the head of the church,” and “the church is subject to Christ,” he adds: “Christ also loved the church, and delivered himself up for it, that he might sanctify it, cleansing it by the laver of water in the word of life; that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, nor any such thing.”[93] Now, although the Rev. E. E. Hale has thrown overboard the belief in the divinity of Christ and the supernatural inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, nevertheless the words of Christ and his apostle, measured
only by the standard of personal holiness and learning, ought to be esteemed, when speaking of God’s church, of equal authority, at least, to his statement, even though he ranks “as one of the few thoroughly-furnished and widely-experienced men” among Unitarians.
But how did the church of Christ become “contaminated”? This is an important point, and here is the Rev. E. E. Hale’s reply to it:
“And, in truth, so soon as the church met with the world, it borrowed while it lent, it took while it gave. So, in the face of learned Egypt, it Egyptianized its simple Trinity; in the face of powerful Rome it heathenized its nascent ritual; in the face of wordy Greece it Hellenized its dogmatics and theology; and by way of holding well with Israel it took up a rabbin’s reverence even for the jots and tittles of its Bible. What history calls ‘Christianity,’ therefore, is a man-adorned system, of which the methods can be traced to convenience, or even to heathen wisdom, if we except that one majestic method by which every true disciple is himself ordained a king and a priest, and receives the charge that in his daily life he shall proclaim glad tidings to every creature.”
The common error of the class of men to whom the Rev. E. E. Hale belongs, who see the church, if at all, only on the outside, is to “put the cart before the horse.” It is not the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, who teach the church of Christ, but the church of Christ which teaches the truth to the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans. Christ came to teach all nations, not to be taught by them. Hence, in communicating his mission to his church, he said: “All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Going, therefore, teach ye all nations.”[94] The church, in fulfilling this divine commission