But, on the other hand, if an authority speaks in God's name, it may be really commissioned by him. If so commissioned, it may be believed by us. If believed, all parts of its message are equally certain. This hypothesis obviously admits of an objective faith certain throughout, and only for that reason certain at all. If a revelation were to be founded on faith, this would afford faith a sphere. I speak of it now as but an hypothesis. I claim for it that it is reasonable.
It is objected that such belief could be but an amiable and useful credulity at best, since it would not be founded on insight and spiritual discernment. It is thus that Hindoos and Mahometans believe; and their belief would be worthless, but that by God's mercy some fragments of truth and some gleams of reason are mixed up with their systems. The objection wholly overlooks the fact that ex hypothesi the prophet and her message are believed, not with a human faith, but with a divine faith. Faith is inclusively the gift of spiritual discernment, though it is also much more. What faith receives must be spiritually discerned. It can discern in no other way.
But, it is objected, the plain fact is that multitudes do not spiritually discern or appreciate what they thus receive. No doubt. Nothing is more possible than that they should receive with only a human faith what yet is divinely addressed to a divine faith. They have, then, opportunities which they have not yet used. Multitudes of Roman Catholics have doubtless, like multitudes of Protestants, opinion only, not certainty, while the sensation of certainty is in both cases illusory, and proceeds from positiveness of temper or sluggishness of mind.[150] To possess the means of realizing and maintaining faith compels no man to have faith; otherwise, like intuitions irrespective of the will, it would merit nothing and include no probation. Faith and the guide of faith are both offered to the Catholic; but he must co-operate with grace, as with Providence, to profit by either.
But how, it is asked, can we by such a process have a spiritual discernment [pg 582] of the doctrine by which we are challenged? Are we not in the position, after all, of Hindoos? I answer, Christianity resembles many false religions in this respect: that it comes to us on what claims to be authority, and challenges our submission; but it differs from them in this all-important respect: that others are false, and it is true. It being true, the human mind, which, so far as it retains the divine image, is in sympathy with truth, has a moral appreciation of its truth, and, when illuminated by faith, has a spiritual discernment of it. No one who, after years of wandering in erroneous paths, comes at last to contemplate the doctrine of the Trinity from a new point of view, and accepts it on what he trusts is a spiritual discernment of it, can doubt that he could equally have discerned its truth years before had he been led by the church to the same point of view, and gifted from above with that light which removes the sensuous film. He could not indeed, on the authority of the church, spiritually receive or hold, with genuine faith, something in itself false and absurd. But then part of the hypothesis is that the church can propound no doctrinal error. Neither could the definition give faith. But then it does not profess to do so; it but shapes and directs faith. As little could the authority of the church give faith. It makes no such profession; it but challenges faith. It is the inseparable condition of faith: God is its source. The human mind, co-operating with grace, receives faith, and at the same time is confronted with a distinct, palpable object of faith. So touched, it becomes the mirror of truth; and its belief is exclusively a personal and internal act, though performed with the instrumentality, not only of an outward agency, but of a specific external agency, i.e., the church. The same Divine Spirit acts at once externally and internally—externally in the church, which it commissions, instructs, and keeps one; internally in the individual mind, which it kindles, illuminates, attracts, and (dissolving the tyranny of self-love) lifts up into freedom and power. The Holy Spirit, then, is at once the root of faith in the individual, and of unity in the church. This doctrine may be objected to as ideal; but surely not as carnal. Assuredly it is Scriptural.
But, it is rejoined, “supposing that the divine message may be spiritually discerned when it is devoutly accepted, and thus accepted as a whole, when it would otherwise be accepted but in part (and then, perhaps, with but a partial faith), still how are we to know that the authority is divine? If no belief, however sound, is faith, unless it (1st) believes, and (2d) truly believes, that it rests on divine testimony and listens to God himself, how is this prophet to be recognized? The world abounds in claimants to infallibility, though the Christian world has but one. The apostles indeed claimed it; but then they wrought miracles, and the miracles proved the authority.” I answer that miracles proved nothing by way of scientific demonstration; but that they witnessed to the supernatural character of the teacher and the doctrine. If the divine message could be proved to the reason, it would rest on science, not on faith, and the whole Christian scheme would be reversed, belief becoming a necessary and natural act. Miracles challenged faith, but could only be received by faith, since they might always be referred to [pg 583] imposture or evil spirits, both classes of agency abounding in the time of Simon Magus as now. It is begging the question to assume that miracles do not take place now; but, even conceding thus much, the church has still at least as high credentials as the apostles had. Their miracles constituted but evidence; and evidence which creates opinion can but challenge faith, not extort it. In place of that evidence we have now the “notes of the church”: its apostolicity, its catholicity, its unity, its sanctity, its heroic history, its wonderful promulgation, its martyrs, its doctors, its schoolmen; communities moulded by it; races united by it; sciences and arts first nourished by it; civilization and freedom produced by it, and, amid all the changes of the world, the same great doctrines and sacraments retained by it. We can hardly doubt that the one stupendous fact of the church is as strong an appeal to the faith of a man (and our Lord himself did but appeal to faith) as that made by an apostle at Athens, when, rising up in a mixed multitude of disputatious Greeks, Eastern sorcerers, Roman conjurers, and Jewish refugees, he assured them that he had been sent by the unknown God to preach what to the Greeks was foolishness: that One who was crucified had also worked miracles and risen from the dead, . . . that his kingdom, and not the Roman, was to crown the world; and that all this was the fulfilment of Jewish prophecy, though the Jewish nation disowned that kingdom, and had slain its Head. He spoke of glories to come: the church speaks of triumphs that have been. He suggested an experiment: the church has tried and proved it. He was accused of blasphemy, superstition, atheism, insubordination; so is she. He must have confessed that inspiration was not given to him alone, but to the Apostolic College; and he could have brought no immediate and scientific proof that he and his scattered brethren agreed in the same doctrine, even as to “essentials.” The church's practical unity of doctrine is a matter of notoriety, and is accounted for by the imputation of tyranny, formalism, etc. It is an understatement to affirm that, on the Roman Catholic hypothesis, that church challenges faith with the aid of as strong evidential witness as an apostle possessed. But the quantum of evidence is not the question. The greatest amount of it cannot give faith, the least may elicit it; and at what periods the world requires most evidence we know not. The important fact is that the church which claims for its centre the apostolic see, does challenge faith just as an apostle did, or as the whole apostolic college did; that she is apostolic, not merely by having the succession, but by using the authority, and by acting just as she must act if, as she affirms, the whole college, in union with Peter, lived on in her. She too claims all and gives all. She too says, “Through me you may exercise divine faith when you receive, ‘by hearing,’ the message of God; for I am his apostle. What I saw and heard, what I handled and tasted, that, as a sure witness, I report. It was I who cast my nets on the Galilean shore when I was called. I heard that question, ‘But whom say ye that I am?’ I knelt on the Mount of Transfiguration when the suppressed glory broke forth and the law and the prophets were irradiated. I joined in [pg 584] that Last Supper. I stood beside his cross, and received his mother as my mother. I reached forth my hand, and put my fingers into the print of the nails. I received the charge, saw the ascension, felt the Pentecostal tongues, delivered my message, sealed it with my blood, and still stand up, delivering it for ever, and sealing it with my blood and with his.” This is the claim the church makes, and the same was made by the apostle. Both alike are subject to the rejoinder, “High claims do not prove themselves; and the competitors for infallibility are many.” Both alike answer: “If my message be false, you could not really and vitally believe in me, even though you would. If my message be true, you may believe in me, but I cannot compel you to do so.” It is not more wonderful that there should be rival priesthoods than rival creeds. There are many false because there is one true. Authority has commonly been claimed even by spurious religions, because the instinct of the human race, which is reason, perceived that if God vouchsafed a revelation to man, it would be both given and sustained through man, and not merely through a book.
From the above statements thus much at least is clear: (1) that the Protestant controversy with Rome does not respect the ultimate source of belief, which, by the admission of both sides, is to be referred to the Holy Spirit alone; but does respect this question, viz., whether, since an external agency is admitted to be in every case instrumentally but absolutely necessary for faith, that aid be not given to us by God, and given in the form of one, specific instrument, not any one that comes to hand—something easily known by outward marks which plainly solicit attention, not a proteus that changes almost as the individual mind changes. The question is whether the something external confessedly essential be the church of God and temple of the Spirit, speaking intelligibly and with authority, in the majesty of its visible unity; or be whatever sect or teacher may represent to plastic minds the public opinion of the place and time.
And (2) it is equally plain that Rome, in denouncing the principle of private judgment (except so far as, in abnormal circumstances, we are reduced to it, or something like it, while testing the claims of authority), is in no degree disparaging individual intuition, but simply stating the conditions, external as well as internal, under which it can be effectually and permanently realized. To see with another's eyes, not one's own, is an absurd aspiration which could not have made itself good for the greater part of the Christian era, over the greater part of the Christian world. But a man may use his own eyes, though together with them he uses a telescope, and his own ears, though he listens to the voice of a prophet instead of his own voice, or his domineering neighbor's.
The Roman Catholic doctrine of authority does not assume that we cannot, even without that authority, have some insight into divine things. We can see the moon without a telescope, though not the stars of a nebula. But in theology partial gleams of intelligence are not sufficient for even their own permanence. Implicitly or explicitly, we must hold the whole to hold a part. Truth is a vast globe which we may touch with a finger, but cannot clasp in both hands. It eludes us, and we possess it but by being [pg 585] possessed by it. We must be drawn into the gravitation of its sphere and made one with it. We are thus united with it if in union with the church, to which it is given. We then see it all around us, as we see the world we live in—not by glimpses and through mists, as we see a remote star. This is the Catholic's faith. Everything confirms everything in his world. “One day telleth another, and one night certifieth another.” “Sea calleth unto sea.” The firmament above his head “declares” the glory of God, and the chambers of the deep his statutes. A Catholic indeed has his varying moods, and his “dry moods,” and his eager questionings on points not revealed; but his faith does not rise and fall with his temperament. The foundation, at least, of his spiritual being, is a rock.
Neither does the Roman Catholic doctrine deny that a man might conceivably, though not practically, without the aid of authority, grasp the whole of theology as far as it has been yet defined. But it declares that such knowledge, if thus acquired, would not be the knowledge possessed by faith, but by opinion; that it would rest partly on science, partly on mere human faith, partly on enthusiasm (so far as the sensitive appreciation of it went); and that, not being divine faith, it could not perform the genuine functions of faith. The intellectual region might feast with Dives, while the spiritual starved with Lazarus. This is, in a greater or lesser degree, the case with many, both among those who profess the principle of private judgment and those who profess to obey authority. In the very region of faith opinion may simulate faith, just as presumption may simulate hope and benevolence simulate charity. The most mysterious part of our probation is this: that under all circumstances and in all things nature may mimic grace, and pretence ape virtue. We may seem to ourselves angels, and be nothing; even as Christ himself, and his church no less, seem, to the eye of sense, the opposite of what they are, when insight is lacking or the point of view is determined by prejudice or a false tradition.
The Roman Catholic theory does not deny the force of internal evidence. It but says that such evidence, being a matter of moral feeling, is to be inwardly appreciated rather than logically set forth, and that it is often most felt when most unconsciously. A parent's authority is not the less attested by the moral sense of the child and by his affections, though he does not consciously reflect on that part of its evidence; while yet he cannot be ignorant that all the neighbors believe that those who claim to be his parents are such in reality. Catholic teaching does not concede that, as argument, any evidence is necessary for those brought up in the true fold and gifted from childhood with faith, which is itself the evidence of things not seen. It does not believe that any gifts confined to a few can give a higher faith than is open to all “men of good-will.” But it does believe that for simple and learned alike one external condition is necessary, viz., that the doctrine to be believed should be distinctly proposed by an authority believed (on supernatural faith) to speak in God's name; so that from first to last faith should be, not a credulity founded on fancy, on fear, or on self-love, but a “theological virtue” believing in God, in all that he reveals, [pg 586]as revealed by him, and in nothing else. Evidences are not anything that can compel faith or be a substitute for it; but they have commonly a very important place, notwithstanding, in the divine economy. Their place is among the motives of faith. These intellectual motives are the character of Christ and of the faith; the character of the church and its propagation—in other words, internal and external evidence. The moral motives are such as the spiritual safety of Christian obedience, the peace and joy of believing, the dignity Christianity confers on human nature, etc.