Lectures : The four great evils of the day, The sovereignty of God, The grounds of faith

J!

LECTUKES

BY THE

MOST REVEREND

HENRY EDWARD MANNING,

ARCHBISHOP OF WESTMINSTER.

THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY;

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD;

THE GROUNDS OF FAITH.

P. J. KENEDY & SONS

44 BARCLAY STREET, NEW YORK

THE FOUR

GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY.

BY

HENRY EDWARD,

P. J. KENEDY & SONS

44 BARCLAY STREET, NEW YORK

THESE pages are intended to complete, in
outline, the subject of the Lectures on the
Four Great Evils of the Day. In speaking
of those evils, I was often aware that the posi-
tive truths ought to have been stated first, and
that the Sovereignty of God must be under-
stood before the Revolt of Man can be mea-
sured. These Lectures, like the last, are printed
as they were taken down at the time. Believ-
ing the truths and principles contained in
them to be of vital moment always, and more
than ever in these days, I let them go with all
their faults, in the hope that some one with
more ability and greater leisure wiJ1 fill up the

outline I have tried to draw.

l* tr

CONTENTS.

LECTURE I.

•Mi

turn BBVOLT OF THB INTEIJJSCT AOAisarr GOD . 9

LECTURE II.
TH» REVOLT OJT THE "WILL JLOAINST GOD ... 41

LECTURE III.
TH« REVOLT OF SOCIETY FBOM GOD . . . . 71

LECTURE IV.
TB» SFIBIT OF Axrunaan 101

4496

LECTURE I.

THE EEVOLT OF THE INTELLECT
AGAINST GOD.

ST. LUKE xviii. 8.

"But yft the Son of Man, when He cometh, shall He find,
think you, faith on earth ? "

BY this question our Divine Lord intends us to
understand that, when He comes, He shall find
many who do not believe, many who have fallen
from the faith. It foretells that there shall be
apostasies ; and if apostasies, therefore that He
shall still find the truth ; but He will find also
those that have fallen from it. And this is what
the Holy Ghost, speaking by the Apostle, has
distinctly prophesied. St. Paul says, " Now the
Spirit, manifestly saith that, in the last times,
some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to
spirits of error, and doctrines of devils." * And
again, St. John says, "Little children, it is the
last hour ; and as you have heard that Antichrist

10 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY.

cometh, even now there are become many Anti-
christs, whereby we know that it is the last
hour."* The meaning therefore of our Lord is
this ; not that when He comes He will not find
the Church He founded in all the plenitude of its
power, and the faith He revealed in all the ful-
ness of its doctrine. " The city seated upon the
hill cannot be hid." The Holy Catholic Church
is the " light of the world," and so shall be to the
end. It can never be separated from its Divine
Head in heaven. The Spirit of Truth, who came
on the day of Pentecost, according to our Divine
Lord's promise, will abide with it forever ; there-
fore when the Son of God shall come at the end
of the world, there shall be His Church as in the
beginning, in the amplitude of its Divine author-
ity, in the fulness of its Divine faith, and the
immutability of its teaching. He will find then
the light shining in vain in the midst of many
who will be willingly blind ; the teacher in the
midst of multitudes, of whom many will be will-
ingly deaf: they will have eyes, and see not ; and
ears, and hear not ; and hearts that will not un-
derstand. As it was at His first coming, so shall
it be at His second. This, then, is the plain
meaning of our Lord's words.

And now, before I enter upon this subject, I
wish to say a word of a superstition which,

•lSt.Johnii.18,

THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OP THE DAY. H

strange to say, pervades those who are willing to
believe but little else. For in its incredulity the
human mind is liable to fall into the greatest of
all credulities ; and one credulous superstition of
these days is this : That faith and reason are at
variance ; that the human reason, by submitting
itself to faith, becomes dwarfed ; that faith inter-
feres with the rights of reason ; that it is a viola-
tion of its prerogatives, and a diminution of ita
perfection. Now I call this a pure superstition •
and those who pride themselves upon being men
of illumination and of high intellect, or, as we
have heard lately, in the language of modern
Gnosticism, " men of culture," are, after all, both
credulous and superstitious.

God, who is the perfect and infinite intelli-
gence— that is, the infinite and perfect reason —
created man to His own likeness, and gave him a
reasonable intelligence, like His own. As the face
in the mirror answers to the face of the beholder,
BO the intelligence of man answers to the intelli-
gence of God. It is His own likeness. What,
then, is the revelation of faith but the illumina-
tion of the Divine reason poured out upon the
reason of man ? The revelation of faith is no
discovery which the reason of man has made for
himself by induction, or by deduction, or by
analysis, or by synthesis, or by logical process, or
Hy experimental chemistry. The revelation of

12 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAT.

faith is a discovery of itself by the Divine Rea*
son, the unveiling of the Divine Intelligence, and
the illumination flowing from it cast upon the in-
telligence of man ; and if so, I would ask, how
can there be variance or discord ? How can the
illumination of the faith diminish the stature of
the human reason ? How can its rights be inter-
fered with? How can its prerogatives be vio-
lated ? Is not the truth the very reverse of all
this ? Is it not the fact that the human reason is
perfected and elevated above itself by the illu-
mination of faith?

There have been three periods of the human
reason in the history of mankind. The first pe-
riod was when the reason of man wandered alone,
without revelation, as we see in the heathen
world, and most especially in the two most cul-
tivated races of the heathen world ; I mean the
Greek and the Roman. The second period was
that in which the human reason, receiving the
light of revelation, walked under the guidance
of faith ; that is to say, by the revelation of Gcd
of old to His prophets, and by His revelation
through the incarnation of His Son in Christian-
ity. Lastly, there is a period setting in — not for
the whole world, not for the Church of God, but
for individuals, races, and nations — of a depar-
ture from faith, in which the human reason will
have to wander once more alone, without guide

THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THIS DAT. IS

or certainty ; not indeed as it did before, but, as
I shall be compelled hereafter to show, in a worse
state, in a state which is in truth a dwarfing and
a degradation of the human intelligence.

The first state, then, in which the reason of man
wandered without revelation was the state of the
heathen world. They had no knowledge of God,
except by an obscured tradition which came dimly
from the beginning. But the condition of the
human reason under faith is an elevated and a
nobler state. No man can read the Old Testa-
ment — the Book of Psalms, the Book of Prov-
erbs, to say nothing of the prophetical books of
the Old Testament — without perceiving at once
that, in the most elaborate literature of Greece
and Rome, there is nothing which, for intellec-
tual elevation, refinement, and power, is compar-
able with them. When we come on to the period
of Christianity, I may say, in one word, that the
history of the progress and the perfection of the
human intellect is the history of Christianity
itself; and that Christianity has elevated, culti-
vated, developed, invigorated, and perfected the
human intellect. Apart from all hopes of eternal
life, and in its mere effect on this world, upon
man as man, as a rational being, faith has been
his elevation. Lastly, we come to that period of
which it is my purpose now to speak. St. Paul,
writing to the Thessalonians, «ays : " Be not easily
2

14 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OP THE DAT.

moved from your mind, nor be frighted, iieithef
by spirit, nor by word, nor by epistle, as sent from
us, as if the day of the Lord were at hand ; " be-
cause, he says, that it shall not come "unless
there come a revolt first, and the man of sin be
revealed, the son of perdition, who opposeth, and
is lifted up above all that is called God, or that
is worshipped." *

Now, I am not going to enter into the question
of when that day will come ; that is not a part
of the message committed to me. Neither am I
going to enter into an exposition of unfulfilled
prophecies about the man of sin. But out of this
epistle I take one word and one idea. Before
that day comes there shall be " a revolt." Now,
a revolt means a rebellion, a rising, a casting-ofF
of obedience, and the erection of a self-constituted
authority in its place. I will try to bring before
yoxi the signs and marks of this rising or revolt
of the intellect of men that were once Christians,
and to show that the intelligence of Christian
nations has, in these last ages, begun to manifest
the phenomena and signs of a departure from
faith, which, though it can in no way affect the
immutability, stability, and imperishable cer-
tainty of the revelation of truth, any more than
blindness can cloud the sun at noon-day, never-
theless shows that there is a current carrying the
•2Thess.ii.2-C

THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY. 15

minds of men away from faith in Christ and in
God into the darkness of unbelief.

1. First of all, there exists at this day, and
there has existed for two centuries, a certain num-
ber of men — few indeed — who profess themselves
to be Atheists, or not to believe the existence of
God. I am sorry to say we have among us a
certain number of such men who, by their
speeches and writings, profess this, which I must
call not only a blasphemous, but a stupid impi-
ety. I call it stupid for this reason. A man
whom Englishmen are fond of calling the great-
est philosophical intellect that England ever pro-
duced, in one of his essays, has used these words :
Quoting the book of Psalms, he says, " The fool
hath said in his heart, There is no God." It is
not said, " The fool hath thought in his heart : "
that is, the fool did say so in his heart, because
he hoped there might be no God. He did not
eay it in his head, because he knew better. And
this explanation is exactly what the Apostle has
written, speaking of the ancient world : " The in-
visible things of Him, from the creation of the
world, are clearly seen, being understood by the
things that are made : His eternal power also and
divinity : so that they " (that is, the nations who
know not God) " are inexcusable ; " " for, pro-
fessing themselves to be wise, they became fools." *
* lorn. i. 20, 22.

16 THE FOUR OBEAT EVILS OF THE DAT.

And he goes on to explain the reason of it; "as
they liked not to have God in their knowledge : "
they had no love, no liking for Him ; there was
no moral sympathy with his perfections of purity,
justice, mercy, sanctity, and truth. These things
were out of harmony with their degraded nature;
and because they had no love to retain this knowl-
edge of a pure and holy God, therefore their in-
tellects were darkened. And yet, notwithstand-
ing all this, even these, who not knowing God,
and not glorifying Him as God, worshipped and
served the creature more than the Creator, these
were not Atheists. So far from it, they were
Polytheiste: they believed in a multitude of
gods. So profoundly rooted in human nature
was a belief in God, that when they lost the
knowledge of the one only true God, they multi-
plied for themselves a number of false gods. The
human mind was incapable of conceiving the
perfection of the one only true God, and it di-
vided the Divine idea into a multitude of gods ;
but it was so profusely and instinctively filled
with the notion of the existence of God, that it
multiplied God, instead of rejecting His exist-
ence. The heathen world, therefore, is a witness
and a testimony to the existence of God. It be-
came superstitious, credulous, anything you will,
but atheistic it could not be. Nay, more than
this: even the learned men, the more refined and

THE FOITO GREAT EVILS OP THE DAT. 17

the more cultivated, they also did not reject the
notion of God ; they became Pantheists, that is
to say, they invested everything with divinity.
The thought of God was so kindred to their na-
ture, it had such a response in them, their intel-
lect and their conscience testified with such con-
stant accord to the reasonableness of believing in
God, or in gods, that they invested all things
round about them with a participation in the
Divine nature. How, then, has it come to pass
that men, in these last times, after receiving the
illumination of the Faith, and knowing "tha
only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has
sent," knowing Him in His perfections, in His
attributes, and by His works and grace, — that
they should have fallen lower, I must say, than
even the heathen world, that they should have
come to deny the very existence of God ?

They are, indeed, few in number ; but, never-
theless, they are active and full of zeal to propa-
gate their opinions. In France, there exists a
school of Atheism which has a few disciples also
in England ; I mean the Positivist school of phi-
losophy. The founder of it, Comte, taught that
the human intellect has three periods : the first is
the period of childhood, the second is the period
of youth, and the third the period of manhood.
Now, it says the period of childhood is the theo-
logical period, in which the human reason be»
2* B

18 THE FOUB GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY.

lieves in gods or m God. The second period of
the human reason is that which the founder of
this school of philosophy calls the metaphysical
period ; and here is a refinement well worthy of
note. He says, when men are men, they give up
the superstition of believing in God; neverthe-
less, they fall into the superstition of believing in
cause and effect, in law and principle, that is, in
the metaphysical conceptions which are intrinsic
through the inevitable action of the human rea-
son. He treats these as superstitions. As the
belief in God was a theological superstition, so
the belief in cause and effect, and consequence,
and principle, and law — all this is a metaphysi-
cal superstition. Well, the third state of the
human reason, which is the perfect state of man-
hood, in what does it consist ? In believing that
which we can see, feel, touch, handle, test, weigh,
measure, or analyze by chemistry. We may test
the facts, but we must not connect them together.
We must not say that one thing follows after an-
other by a law, or is caused by it. An explosion
of fire-damp is not caused by the candle being
carried into the pit ; it follows after the carrying
of it into the pit, but it is a metaphysical super-
stition to believe that it is caused by it. This is
what is called the scientific state of the human
mind. And this scientific state of the human
mind is when, having pushed over the horizon

THE FOUB GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY. 19

and out of sight the idea of God, the idea of
cause and effect, of law and principle, and all
mental philosophy, we are reduced to this — that
we may count and number and distinguish the
things we see as phenomena and facts, but we
must not connect them together, we must not
form conceptions as to why they follow one upon
another. And this is Science, the perfection of
human reason I The immediate result of this,
of necessity, is Atheism. I would ask, Is this
the elevation of the human reason ? Does this
Philosophy dignify, or perfect, or exalt, or unfold
it, or confer upon it knowledge greater than it
had before? If there can be anything which
dwarfs, and stunts, and diminishes, and distorts
the human reason, it is this. Atheism, then, is a
lower abasement of the intellect than was ever
reached by the heathen world. More than this,
it is a degradation and distortion of the human
intelligence ; and in proportion as the human in-
telligence departs from the knowledge of God, in
that same degree it departs from its own perfec-
tion. Nevertheless, this school does exist among
us ; and this is the first form, or rather the worst
form, of the revolt of the intellect, because it is
the revolt of the intellect from God altogether,
from His existence, and from all that He has
made known to us by the light of revelation, and
even from that which He has made known to iu

20 THE FOT7K GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY.

by the light of nature, which is the light of
reason.

2. Secondly, there is another and a modified
form of this revolt. There are men (and I am
§orry to say they are more numerous than the
last) who, though they do not reject the existence
of God, do nevertheless reject the knowledge cf
God ; that is, they profess to believe in a God,
because they see with all mankind (except a few
who are isolated and abnormal) that the light
of reason, the light of nature itself, obliges a man
to believe in a first cause, and that this first
cause must be a personal cause, an intelligence,
and a will. To doubt of this is, as I said before,
£o be an anomaly in the rational order of man.
But, while these men believe in a God of nature,
nevertheless they reject the revelation which He
has given them of Himself. And how did they
come to this state ? Not all at once. They came
by progressive stages ; and I protest that, in what
I am about to say, I say it in a sorrow which I
cannot put in words, still more, without the least
tinge of controversy ; because the longer I live,
and the more I see of the state of our own coun-
try, the less I am disposed to utter one word
which can make wider the unhappy divisions
which exist among those who still believe in
Christianity as a Divine revelation. Neverthe«
less, I must tell the truth. The first cause of

THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAT. Jl

Rationalism (that is, the rejection of Christianity
in the present day) was the rejection of the
Divine authority of the Church of Jesus Christ
three hundred years ago : and that by a law of
production so legitimate, by an intellectual law
BO certain, that, I think, any one who would give
himself sufficient time and apply sufficient indus-
try to follow the history of unbelief in the last
three hundred years would see it to demonstra-
tion. When, three hundred years back, certain
nations in the north and west of Europe had
rejected the authority of the Church as a Divine
teacher, they immediately began to examine the
human evidences upon which the doctrines of
Christianity reposed. Christianity can only rest
either upon a Divine authority — that is, a
Divine basis of certainty — or upon a human and
historical basis. Having rejected the Divine
authority, or the Divine basis, they had nothing
left to them but the human and historical basis ;
and that human and historical basis was the his-
tory of Christianity as found in the inspired
books of Holy Scripture and in the works of un-
inspired writers. They began to apply human
reason to criticise, to test, to measure the credi-
bility, both extrinsic and intrinsic, of every arti-
cle of the Faith. I say, first, the extrinsic credi-
bility; that is, whether it could be historically
proved that this or that doctrine was believed in

22 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAT.

the beginning and has been believed ever since:
secondly, the intrinsic credibility ; that is to say,
whether this or that doctrine was in itself recon-
cilable with the human reason. And applying
this critical test, they rejected doctrine after doc-
trine. We all know how many fragmentary
Christianities sprung from what was called the
Reformation, differing from each other; the
German form of the Reformation differing from
the English, the English differing from the
Scotch, and the Swiss from both. These frag-
mentary Christianities were so many exhibitions
of the criticism of the human reason working out
for itself what seemed to be credible or probable
as to the original revelation of God.

It was not difficult to foresee that one man
would go farther than another, that one would
reject more than another; and that one man
would begin early in life in believing a great deal
more than he believed at the end of it, and there-
fore that all things would be in a perpetual flux
of mutation and uncertainty ; so that for three
hundred years the amount of Christianity that
has been believed on this human and critical
basis has been perpetually diminishing, and the
residuum which is left upon that foundation now
is incalculably less than that with which men
started three hundred years ago. I hardly like
to go into positive proofs of this, for fear of

THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY. 28

wounding where I desire to leave no wound ; but
it is only this last week when, in one of the high-
est places of this realm, evidence was quoted
from a most unsuspicious and impartial corre-
spondent, writing from Germany, who declared
the state of religious belief in that country to be
such that neither Kome nor Luther would recog-
nize it as Christianity. And yet that was a
country in which, only three hundred years ago,
before the intellectual revolt against the Divine
authority of Faith arose, Christianity was once
perfect. Of England, I had rather not speak at
all. I pray every day of my life for England. I
never say the Holy Mass without praying ear-
nestly that light may be poured out over England,
and that the eyes of men may be purged of their
film, to see that they are contending one with
another to the destruction of their common in-
heritance; and that we may one day be all
united again, in the unity of the only Faith as it
is in Jesus. This is my prayer, and I desire
most earnestly to refrain from saying a word
which can cause the least estrangement in any
one who hears me.

But is it not undeniable that at this moment
Christianity in England is being undermined?
Is it not certain that Rationalism in every form,
whether speculative and cultivated, or gross and
vulgar, is, in every generation that passes, ex*

24 THE FOTTB GREAT EVILS 0V THE DAT.

panding and establishing itself more widely
among the people of England ? Moreover, I am
old enough to know that, forty years ago, men
believed more than they believe now, that doc-
trines were then held as indisputable which are
now openly disputed.

The rejection of the Divine authority necessa-
rily throws men upon the only alternative —
human criticism applied to Scripture, to anti-
quity, to Fathers, to history, to Councils, and to
the acts of the Holy See. There is nothing on
the face of the earth which the human reason
does not claim to subject to itself, to sit in judg-
ment upon, to test as if it were the creation of
man, to decide its credibility as if man were the
measure of truth, to pronounce upon whether it
be Divine or not. The result of this anarchy of
criticism is, that multitudes of men have rejected
Christianity altogether: men, whom but a few
years ago I knew firmly to believe in Christian-
ity, are now, to my certain knowledge, Rational-
ists. They now believe nothing of Christianity,
because, having applied the false principle of
human criticism to the matter of Divine revela-
tion, they have logically and consistently carried
out the application of a false premise, to the
destruction of Christianity altogether. The pre-
mise is false, its result is logical.

Let us now apply to this subject the teaching

THE FOUR GBEAT EVILS OF THE DAT. 25

of the Syllabus. Two of the errors condemned
in it are :

1st. " That the human reason, without any re-
gard to the revelation of God, is the sole and
sufficient judge of truth and of falsehood, of right
and of wrong, and is a law of itself and in itself,
sufficient for the welfare of individuals and of
states."

2d, " That the human reason is the source of
mil the truths of religion." *

In the beginning of the last century, there was
a book written called Christianity as old as the
Creation. I need not tell you that that book
contained no Christianity. It denied all super-
natural revelation, and professed to show that
all truth was in the natural reason of man. If
we should desire to see the fruit of these princi-
ples, we may go back to the end of the last cen-
tury. See what Paris was in the year 1793 ; see
what Paris is again in the year 1871. Tell me
whether the human reason, without Christianity,
is a law of itself, and the sole judge of truth and
falsehood, and of right and wrong, and sufficient
for the welfare of individuals and of states. It
was only yesterday I read in a public despatch
from Paris, that the Commune had decreed that
all religious teaching should cease in the schools.
We know that the churches, which a short time

• Syllabus, Prop. Hi. iv.

26 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY

ago were employed for sacred uses, are now
political clubs, in which, in the course of the last
ten days, death was unanimously voted to the
chief pastor of that Christian city. These are
the fruits of the rejection of Christianity. Such,
then, is the second step in the revolt of the intel-
lect— the revolt which begins with the rejection
of the Divine authority of the Church of God,
and then goes on to reject evidences, next to
reject doctrines, and lastly to reject Christianity.
3. The third kind of intellectual revolt, and it
is the last of which I will speak, in respect to
those who are without, is a form of false philoso-
phy, which in the Syllabus is described as
" moderate " Rationalism, as compared with that
of which we have been hitherto speaking, which
is there called "absolute" Rationalism. Now
the moderate Rationalism consists in this : in the
retaining a belief of Christianity, or the profess-
ing to believe it ; but the believing of it only so
much as, upon private criticism and its own
judgment, the individual mind is disposed to
retain. But is it not obvious at once that the
human reason can only stand related to the reve-
lation of God, either as a critic, or as a disciple
in the presence of a Divine Teacher ? The mo-
ment the human reason begins to criticise, to
test, to examine, to retain, or to reject, it haa
ceased to be a disciple ; it has become the critic ;

THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE ^-*^Xi

•ha

it has ceased to be the learner, it has become the
judge ; and yet find me, if you can, any middle
point where the reason of man can stand between
the two extremes of submitting to the Divine
authority of faith as a disciple, and of criticising
the whole revelation of God as a judge. There
is nothing between the two. Now this kind of
intellectual revolt (I must call it by a hard
name, but it is an old one, and used by the
Apostles) is heresy. What is the meaning of
heresy ? It means the choosing for ourselves, as
contra-distinguished from the receiving with do-
cility from the lips of a teacher — the choosing
for ourselves what we will believe and how much
we will believe. St. James says, "Whosoever
shall keep the whole law, but offend in one point,
is become guilty of all ; " * and that, for this rea?
son : He that said, Thou shalt not kill, said
also, Thou shalt not steal ; but if I steal my
neighbor's goods without taking his life, I vio-
late the Divine authority which runs through
both the commandments. In the same way, he
who shall believe all the articles of faith, and
yet reject one of them, in that rejection rejects
the whole Divine authority upon which all the
articles of faith alike depend. This spirit of
criticism begins, as I said before, in the rejection
of the principle of Divine authority and the

* St. James il. 10.

28 THE rOUR GREAT EVILS OP THE DAT.

adoption of private judgment, which is essen-
tially, though at first covertly, a violation of that
Divine authority. The human reason thereby
unconsciously assumes to itself to be the test and
the measure of that which is to be believed. For
instance : in interpreting Holy Scripture, if I
interpret the Book according to the light of my
individual judgment, the interpretation that I
attach to it is my own. The text may be Divine,
but the interpretation is human. And this must
be, wheresoever the Divine authority of the
Church is not recognized as a principle of faith.
You know how the rejection of this Divine
authority has shattered the unity of faith in
England. I say this, as I said before, with
sorrow. I do not charge all those who are out of
the unity of the Catholic faith with heresy. The
English people are indeed in heresy, but I do
not call them heretics. God forbid ! They
were born into that state of privation. They
found themselves disinherited. They have never
known their rightful inheritance. They have
grown up, believing what has been set before
them by parents and by teachers ; their state of
privation has been caused by the sin of others
three hundred years ago, and by no act of rejec-
tion of their own. The millions of our people,
the children, the unlearned, the simple, the do-
cile, the humble, the wives and mothers and

THE FOUR GREAT EViLS OF THE DAY. 2ft

daughters, the great multitude who live lives of
prayer and of charity and of mutual kindness,
who never had the opportunity of knowing the
truth — to call them heretics would be to wound
charity. They have never made a perverse elec-
tion against the truth; and I heartily believe
that millions of them, if the light of the Catholic
Church were sufficiently before them, would, as
multitudes have done in every age, forsake all
things to take up their cross and follow their
Master.

4. 1 must now make application of what I have
said, more nearly to ourselves. What I am going
to add, I address most especially to those who are
of my flock.

We live in a country which for three hundred
years has been pervaded by a spirit of opposition
to the Catholic Church. Everything round about
us is full of antagonism to the Faith. The whole
literature of this country is written by those who,
sometimes unconsciously, sometimes consciously,
assume an attitude of hostility to it. I say, some-
times unconsciously, because, being born in that
state, they often do so without being aware that
they have received an heirloom of false princi-
ples and of false histories respecting the Holy
Catholic Church. Without knowing it, they are
perpetually incorporating them with what they
write ; so that the greater part of the literature
»*

SO THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAT.

of this country, which is in the hands of ui all,
contains a systematic contradiction of that which
we believe. The newspapers, which fill the whole
country, day by day are animated by a spirit
which is against us ; and they are filled by de-
tails, and narratives, and correspondence, and
they must forgive me if I say, fables, fictions,
fabrications, absurdities — anything that can pan-
der to the morbid appetite, to the craving for
scandals against Catholic institutions, Catholic
priests, Catholic nuns. Only the other day we
read attacks against certain nuns in Paris which,
for studied but transparent falsehood, were worthy
of the Commission of Henry VIII. How is it
possible that Catholics can read these things day
by day, and their eyes, and imaginations, and
hearts receive insensibly no stain from them?
They who walk in the sun cannot help being
tanned. You go to and fro in the midst of all
this literature, and all these daily calumnies, you
breathe this atmosphere charged with untruths —
how is it possible that you should be unaffected by
them ? Do we not frequently hear Catholics say :
" Am I to believe this ?" " Can I contradict it? "
" If it be not contradicted, there must be some
truth in it." Little by little it gets into the minds
of men with, "I suppose, then, it cannot be de-
nied ; " " Where there is smoke there is fire." In
this way, falsehoods are insinuated. They ire

THE FOUR GREAT EVIlfi OF THE DAY. 81

either never contradicted, or the contradiction is
never published, or if published, hardly seen.
The slander has done its work, and the stain re-
mams. We live where Catholics are few, where
those who are not Catholics are the great multi-
tude ; we are bound up with them in kindred, in
affinity, in friendship, in business, in duty, in so-
ciety. It is impossible that we should not live
among them, work with them, and have friend-
ships with them. Charity obliges us to converse
with them, and we hear much that certainly does
not tend to confirm the faith. There was growing
up in the minds of some men a disposition, which,
I am happy to say, is nearly cast out again, to di-
minish and to explain away, to understate and
reduce to a minimum that which Catholics ought
to believe and to practise. This spirit began in
Germany. It says: "I believe everything which
the Church has defined. I believe all dogmas —
everything which has been defined by a General
Council." This sounds a large and generous pro-
fession of faith ; but they forget that whatsoever
was revealed on the day of Pentecost to the
Apostles, and by the Apostles preached to the
nations of the world, and has descended in the
full stream of universal belief and constant tra-
dition, though it has never been defined, is still
matter of Divine faith. Thus there are truths
of faith which have never been defined ; and they

32 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAT.

have never been defined because they have never
been contradicted. They are not defined because
they have not been denied. The definition of the
truth is the fortification of the Church against
the assaults of unbelief. Some of the greatest
truths of revelation are to this day undefined.
The infallibility of the Church has never been
defined. The infallibility of the Head of the
Church was only defined the other day. But the
infallibility of the Church, for which every Cath-
olic would lay down his life, has never been de-
fined until now ; the infallibility of the Church
is at this moment where the infallibility of the
Pope was this time last year : an undefined point
of Christian revelation, believed by the Christian
world, but not yet put in the form of a definition.
When, therefore, men said they would only believe
dogmas, and definitions by General Councils, they
implied, without knowing it, that they would not
believe in the infallibility of the Church. But
the whole tradition of Christianity comes down
to us on the universal testimony and the infalli-
bility of the Church of God ; which, whether de-
fined or not, is a matter of Divine faith. I will
make application of what I have said when I sum
up the argument I am stating. Next, people
began to say : " I can admit that the Head of the
Church has a supreme authority, but that author-
ity is not without its limits, and the limits art

THE FOUR GBEAT EVILS OP FHE DAT. 33

here and there." Now who, I ask, can limit the
jurisdiction of a supreme authority ? Who can
prescribe the limits of any jurisdiction but one
who in authority is superior to him who holds
the jurisdiction? This spirit of insubordination
was coming in among us; it has no existence
now, because the Council of last year struck it
dead. I should have thought that a generous
heart, filled with the love of God, would have
desired to know more and more of Divine truth,
and would have said, " Let me know everything
which God has revealed, let me have the fullest
and the amplest knowledge," rather than be jeal-
ous and niggardly in limiting the growth of that
knowledge.

5. Lastly, and this is the only other point I
will at present touch on, the effect of such an
atmosphere as that we live in, breathing all the
day long the cold air of a country which for
three hundred years has been opposed to the
Holy Catholic Faith, is to produce that which
must be called practical unbelief, even in many
who would lay down their lives for the dogmas
of the Faith. And that practical unbelief is
this : their faith resides in their intellect whole
and perfect, but it is cold and unenergetic in
their life, and it does not govern and mould the
character and the will. They get acclimatized
to the temperature rcund about them. You all
C

84 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAT.

know how we become acclimatized to a foreign
country, how we can learn the habits and the
language and the accent of a foreign people.
Such is the state of many who intellectually re-
tain their faith, but practically seem not to be-
lieve. They become, for instance, unconscious
of the Communion of Saints, of the presence of
God, of the operation of the unseen world, of
the working of the Holy Spirit of God in the
Church, and of the personal agency and subtlety
of the enemy of truth. I have given these last
two examples, because they are the two stealthy
and secret approaches whereby the enemy of
truth first assails those who sincerely believe.
When opening his trenches against the faith of
those who never doubted, he begins with the
least noise, and under cover.

I will now sum up what I have said. The re-
volt of the intellect against God is against His
existence, or against His revelation, or against
His Divine authority. And there are the two
stealthy and incipient forms of intellectual revolt
to which Catholics are tempted ; the one of di-
minishing what they believe to a minimum, the
other in reducing to the least that which thej
are bound to submit to in point of authority, or
to practise in point of devotion.

I can make but one application of what has
been said. Two years ago, when the CEcumeni-

THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY. 30

cal Council was summoned to meet in Rome,
immediately through all European countries,
both those which are within the unity of the
Church and those which are separated from it,
there arose a conspiracy against the Council.
Men of the character I have been describing,
with those called " liberal Catholics," and, strange
to say, Christians of all sects, and Israelites not
a few, revolutionists, rationalists, chiefly out of
the Church, but some within it, professors, de-
claimers, secret political societies, discontented
and fractious minds already out of harmony
with authority and the Church in all parts of
Europe, combined against the Vatican Council.
This general conspiracy strove, by correspond-
ence, and by articles, pamphlets, and newspa-
pers, to avert one thing, which all alike instinc-
tively felt to be fatal to their pretensions. They
all alike feared lest the infallible authority of the
Head of the Church should be defined as a doc-
trine of faith. An unerring instinct taught them
that such a definition would require of critics the
submission of disciples. They were perfectly
right ; so perfectly right, indeed, that those who
desired to see this definition made, desired it for
the same explicit reason for which others op-
posed it. It was well known on either side that
we were contending for the Divine authority of
faith — the world against it, the Church for it —

$6 THE FOUR GEE AT EVILS OP THE DAI.

and that the axe was laid to the root of the tree.
The conflict was not for this doctrine or that
doctrine, nor for a fragment in detail, but for
the Divine certainty of the whole. Well, that
opposition was encouraged, flattered, counte-
nanced by the favor of governments and diplo-
matists, statesmen and philosophers. All the
newspaper press and the whole public opinion
of the world was united against the Vatican
Council. It tried to write it down, to make it
ridiculous, to hold it up to contempt ; men staked
their literary credit and their authority over men
upon the issue of the effort to turn the Vatican
Council aside from its purpose, and to hinder it
from doing its work. I am not surprised that
no little disappointment should be in the minds
of those who so conspired. I am not the least
surprised at their saying and writing sharp and
bitter things against us; for a more complete
overthrow of a very powerful conspiracy was
never seen. Well, that being over, we next
heard that after publication of the definition, in
every Catholic country, I know not how many
bishops, how many priests, how many professors,
how many learned men, how many of the Cath-
olic laity, were to rise up to begin a new refor-
mation. We held our peace; we knew better.
The time was not come. Words do little;
events do everything. We waited. What ii

THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE PAT. 87

the result? Every bishop of the Church of
God acknowledges the authority of that (Ecu-
menical Council. If there be here and there a
priest who does not acknowledge its authority,
they may be counted on your fingers. I do in-
deed hear of a professor here and there ; but it
is not all learned men that are professors, and it
is not all professors that are learned men. Among
the bishops and among the priests of the Church
there are many profound theologians who have
never sat in a professor's chair. It is not the
habit that makes the monk, nor is it the title of
professor that makes the learned man ; and many
that have never sat in the chair of a professor
are more profoundly learned than many who
have; and there are many sitting in those chairs
who, to speak with profuse respect, are not
learned. If, therefore, I find that in Germany
some professors have been making declarations
against the Council, that does not surprise, still
less alarm, me. It is against this same rational-
istic spirit — that is, the pretensions of perverted
intellect — that the whole pontificate of Pius IX.
has contended. And it was perfectly foreseen,
that the moment this intellectual Gnosticism was
touched, it would rise ; and the rising has been
incomparably less than was expected.

There never was a General Council of the
Church after which there followed less of e?ntra-
4

38 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY.

diction. After the great Council of Nice, Arian«
ism became a formal heresy which afflicted the
Church for centuries. After the Council of
Ephesus, Nestorianism became a formal heresy
which is not extinct at this day. After the
Council of Constance, the spirit of national in-
subordination sowed the seeds of Gallicanism,
which was only extinguished last year in the
Vatican Council. After the Council of the
Vatican, or at least its first sessions, it is no sur-
prise that a handful of professors in Germany
should rise up against it; and when I analyze
the list and find out who these professors really
are, I am still further from surprise. There are,
I believe, only two professors of theology ; but
we find professors of botany, mineralogy, chemis-
try, anatomy, physic, and of I know not what.
The other day we saw an address from the Uni-
versity of Rome to an aged and celebrated pro-
fessor at Munich. Well, there came an address
from the University of Rome ; and there went
up a cry of exultation in England, that even
within sight of the windows of the Vatican,
Rome had protested against the Vatican Coun-
cil. I have to-day read the names of the men
who signed that address: and I find that they
were, with hardly an exception, men intruded by
the Italian Government since last September, and
that they style themselves professors of botany

THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OP THE DAY. 39

of mineralogy, of chemistry, of surgery, and one
describes himself as professor of Veterinary Pa-
thology.

Before the Council met, a great preacher in
France, whose natural gifts had filled the land
with his fame, in an evil hour lifted up the elo-
quent voice which God had given him, against
the Vicar of Jesus Christ. Where is he now?
Lost, powerless, unknown.

The venerable professor in Germany — more
learned, indeed, in history sacred and profane,
than either in Christian philosophy or in the-
ology, the founder of a school, and the master of
many disciples — through the whole of the Coun-
cil exercised his influence with a skill and a bold-
ness which would have made itself sensibly felt
against any authority which was not Divine.
We looked forward with anxiety to what might
be his future career. I was fully prepared to
hear that which I have heard ; and I feared too
that his eminent example might have led astray
a multitude of his disciples. What do I see?
Not a bishop, though many were his disciples.
A few priests, and a handful of professors ; and
this is all that comes after the Council of the
Vatican. A little momentary agitation, a little
transient noise, and a passing sorrow. The
Council has extinguished the last remaining
divergence of thought in respect to faith, to be

40 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY.

found among Catholics. It has compacted and
consolidated the Divine authority of the Church
in its head, and therefore in the whole body,
both in the active and passive infallibility. The
authority of the Vatican Council is fatal to the
semi - rationalism which had crept within the
Church. The antagonists knew it well, and the
Council knew it likewise when it made that defi-
nition. There never was a time when the faith
of the Catholic Church was more firm, complete,
and universal than at this time. And if in the
course of ages a revolt of the intellect has car-
ried away individuals from the Faith, in the
course of the same ages, the manifestations of the
Divine authority of the Church in the midst of
mankind have been made more luminous and
•elf-evident than ever.

LECTURE II

THE REVOLT OF THE WILL AGAINST GOD

KOMANS viii. 7.

" The wisdom of the flesh is an enemy to God ; for it is not
subject to the law of God, neither can it be."

ON looking back at what I have hitherto said,
I feel more than ever the difficulty under which
I have been, in laying before you a subject which,
if it had been treated in detail, with the exact-
ness which a philosophical or a theological argu-
ment would require, must have become entirely
impossible in such a popular form. But the treat-
ing it in a popular form may perhaps lay my
•tatements open to question and to cavil. Be-
tween these two difficulties I can only attempt to
give a correct outline. I will therefore remind
you briefly of what I have said.

I have spoken of the revolt of the intellect
from God as one of the chief evils of these latter
times; and I instanced in proof of it the rise
4* 41

42 THE FOUB GREAT EVILS OP THE DAY.

of Atheism — a negation of the existence of God
— which I then said, and say again, is character-
istic of these latter days ; because the earlier ages
of the world were so profusely penetrated with
the traditionary belief in a Divine being, that,
though they fell into Polytheism, Pantheism, and
idolatry, yet into Atheism, as we know it now,
they never fell. The other intellectual evils of
these times are, Deism, or the rejection of revela-
tion ; heresy, or the rejection of the Divine voice
of the Church, the jealous and ungenerous lim-
itation of the doctrinal authority of the Church,
even in those who believe in the revelation of the
Faith ; and lastly, the practical unbelief of luke-
warm and heartless Catholics. These last two
being what may be called the premonitory symp-
toms of rationalistic doubt and of final unbelief.
The next subject before us ie the revolt of the
will of man from the authority of God. The con-
nection between the two subjects is evident. We
never will anything which we have not first
thought. There is an action of the intellect pre-
ceding every act of the will; for the will that
acts without the previous guidance of the intel-
lect is an irrational will. It may be the action
of a man, but it is not a human action, because
it is not under the guidance of reason. Therefore,
before every act of the will, there must be an act
of the intellect or reason. The connection be-

THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY. 48

tween the last and the present subject is this:
that if the reason or intellect be rightly directed
by the truth, which is the intelligence of God,
the will will be directed according to the law of
God But if the intellect be perverted or obscured,
then the perversion or the obscurity will descend
from the intellect into the will, and the will
will be likewise perverted or enfeebled. Now the
words which I have taken from St. Paul's Epis-
tle to the Romans express this truth. He had
already said, "There is now, therefore, no con-
demnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, who
walk not according to the flesh," but according
to the Spirit. " For the law of the Spirit of life
in Christ Jesus hath delivered me from the law
of sin and death ; for what the law could not do,
in that it was weak through the flesh, God, send-
ing His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh
and of sin, hath condemned sin in the flesh ; that
the justification of the law might be fulfilled in
us, who walk not according to the flesh, but ac-
cording to the Spirit. For they that are accord-
ing to the flesh, mind the things that are of the
flesh ; but they that are according to the Spirit,
mind the things that are of the Spirit. For the
wisdom of the flesh is death ; but the wisdom of
the Spirit is life and peace. Because the wisdom
of the flesh is an enemy to God ; for it is not sub-
ject to the law of God, neither can it be. And

44 THE FOUB GREAT EVILS OF THE DAT.

they who are in the flesh cannot please God." *
Now the word " flesh " here means simply man
kind, human nature, man as he is without God,
man as he is, with the affections, the passions, the
intellect, the will, and the three wounds which
came by the fall ; that is, ignorance in the intel-
lect, disorder in the passions, and weakness in the
will. This is what the Apostle calls the " flesh."
Now, he says the wisdom of the flesh ; and in the
Latin version in one place it is translated " the
prudence of the flesh ; " in another, " the wisdom
of the flesh ; " and in the original Greek it is the
" mind ; " that is to say, the aggregate of affec-
tions, passions, and thoughts acting upon the
will, disturbing and perverting it. Human na-
ture in its fallen state is declared to be an enemy
of God, not subject to the law of God. St. Paul
says that it cannot be subject to the law of God,
for this reason : so long as it is in that state of
disorder, it must be intrinsically opposed to the
will of God ; for it is unholy, and God is holy ;
it is false, and God is true ; it is unjust, and God
is just ; and therefore, like as a crooked line can-
not be a straight line — and if the line can be
straightened, its crookedness has ceased to exist,
for crookedness can never be straight — so it is
with human nature, unless it is changed, re-
newed, and elevated. In renewal it puts off its

•BOB.ffii.lrt.

THE FOUB GREAT EVILS OF THE DAT. 45

former disorder, which cannot be subject to the
law of God. The disorder ceases to exist.

Now, such was not the state of man when God
made him in the beginning. Man was created
perfect, both in body and soul. The passions and
affections were in perfect subjection to his will,
and his will to the will of God. From the first
moment of his creation he was constituted in a
state of grace, and the Spirit of God dwelt in
him, illuminating him with the knowledge of
God, ordering his affections and passions accord-
ing to the law of God, and subjecting his will to
the will of God ; so that there was a supernatu-
ral unity and harmony in his soul, and his soul
was, as it were, the Kingdom of God within him.
Such was the state of man in the beginning ; and
the wisdom of the flesh then >had no existence —
the wisdom of the Spirit reigned in him, which
is both life and peace. When sin entered, and
death by sin, then the wisdom of the flesh devel-
oped itself; that is, human nature in its fallen
state, deprived by its own sin of the Spirit of
God, became darkened, troubled, disordered, un-
holy. The unity and harmony which existed
before, the dominion of the soul over itself, was
shattered and destroyed. The rebellion of the
passions and affections against the soul at once
arose. As soon as the will of man revolted
against the will of God, the passions and affeo

46 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY.

tions in him, which till then had been subject to
him, revolted. He was punished for his revolt
against God by an internal revolt against himself.
Now this rebellion of the soul is healed by the
redemption of the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ.
In the regeneration of the soul by the Sacrament
of holy Baptism, the Spirit of God is once more
communicated to the nature of man. God makes
the soul His dwelling-place ; the order and har-
mony of the soul begin to be renewed in Him.
The wisdom of the Spirit is the mind of one who,
being under the guidance and government of the
Spirit of God, has subjected his intellect to the
truth of God, and his will to the will of God.
He is therefore in friendship with Him. St.
John and St. James both say that the friendship
of this world is enmity against God, because
there is an essential enmity between the state of
fallen man and God. But when, by regenera-
tion, the will of man is restored to union with
God, friendship with God is restored to man.
This, then, is the meaning of the Apostle's words.
Now, let us make application of them. A rock
of crystal resolves itself into a multitude of
crystals, every one of which bears the type of
the whole. The primitive form pervades the
whole block. In like manner, every regenerate
soul restored to friendship and union with God,
by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, is com

THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY. 47

pacted in the Body of Christ : " unto whom com-
ing," as St. Peter says, " be you also as living
stones built up, a spiritual house."* And aa
every stone is shaped and squared and fashianed
and fitted to the place that it is to occupy, so
Bvery Christian soul, built up into the unity of
the Church of Jesus Christ, grows into a temple
in which God dwells by His Spirit. In this
kingdom the will of God is supreme, and the
Holy Spirit perpetually dwells, pervading the
Church with sanctity. The Church incorporates
the will of God, and makes it visible among men.
The sins of individuals notwithstanding, the
Church is conformed by its interior subjection to
the will of God, because it is a spiritual society
made up of individuals, called from all races
and languages, compacted and built together in
indissoluble unity, as they subject themselves,
one by one, to the wisdom of the Spirit, who
dwells in the Church forever. But the Church
has a twofold mission. The first part of its work
— the highest and the noblest — is the salvation
of individual souls, as I have described. But it
lias another : the second part of the mission of
the Church to the world is the sanctification of
the civil society of the world, that is, of the
households and families of men ; then of peoples,

• 1 St. Peter ii. 4, 6.

48 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY.

nations, states, legislatures, kingdoms, empire^
and the whole civil order of mankind.

The Church has had three periods. The first
was the period of three hundred years, while it
was accomplishing its spiritual mission for the
conversion and salvation of individuals, under
persecution. The second period began with the
cessation of persecution in the conversion of the
first emperor, by whom, it may be said, the civil
power of the world first paid homage to the
Church of God. From that date down to the
sixteenth century, the civil society of the world
was pervaded by the Christian law, by Christian
faith, by Christian unity, by Christian worship.
The laws of God became the laws of Christian
nations; the laws of the Church were tran-
scribed into the statutes of Christian people ; and
the civil and spiritual authorities of the world
were united together in peace and harmony.
There never was a period in history when the
world, as such, was so conformed to the will of
God as in that period, from the cessation of the
last persecution until the sixteenth century. Do
not misunderstand me to say that the world hud
the note of sanctity. No ; sanctity is the note
of the Church alone. But even the world then
acknowledged God and His revelation, the unity
of His worship, the unity of His Church, the
lupreme authority of faith, and pf its laws,

THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OP THE DAY. 49

Even the world — the kingdoms and empires of
the world — acknowledged these things; and
that was a time when, howsoever the passions
and affections of man rebelled, yet the public
order of society was Christian, and the wisdom
of the flesh was, at least so far as public laws
could reach, in subjection to the wisdom of the
Spirit. I know that the history of those times
is full of outrages, horrors, violence, and the
worst of crimes ; nevertheless, I reaffirm what I
have said, that in those ages the world was Chris-
tian and society was Christian. We have now
entered into the third period of the history of
the Church. From the sixteenth century down-
wards to the present time there has been an un-
doing of that work which the Church, for the
previous fourteen hundred vears, had been
accomplishing; there has been a pulling down
of the whole fabric ; a disintegration of the
Christian society; an erasing of Christian laws
from the statute-books of nations ; a breaking-up
of the unity of faith, worship, and communion ;
a rejection of the spiritual authority of the
Church over men. I am not now entering into
any examination of this, which will fall more
naturally under our next subject ; but I am com-
pelled in outline to state it, in order to bring out
the subject which is now before us.
I would ask, then, what is it that has been
5 P

50 TI1E FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAT.

going on for the last three hundred yeais ? A
revolt of the will of man from the will of God, as
expressed and embodied in the whole work of
the Church for the previous fourteen hundred
years. When, three hundred years ago, individ-
uals one by one revolted from the authority of
the Church, they laid the first seeds of the revo-
lutions which, in these later ages, have separated
whole nations from the unity of the Faith. In-
dividuals began the work in the sphere of private
judgment, or of their private conscience before
God. But that which begins in the private con-
science of men one by one, becomes little by
little the collective and public opinion of a
people, and is at last forced upon governments
and legislatures, and changes the public laws in
conformity to itself. Now, for the last three
hundred years, there has been a continual ex-
punging of the law of Christianity, of the faith
and the doctrines of Christianity, from the lawa
of Christian peoples ; so that I may say that at
this moment there does not remain one single
people that has not separated itself formally from
its old relations of unity with the Christian
Church. Many, as in the north and west of
Europe, have formally separated themselves
altogether from the unity of the Catholic Church.
Other nations, that remain at least united in
faith and in outward worship, nevertheless have

THE FOTJB GREAT EflLS OF THE DAY. 51

broken all bonds and relations with it, except in
the bare retaining of dogma and of spiritual dis-
cipline. And now this revolt against the will of
God, as expressed and embodied by His provi-
dence in the work of the fourteen centuries pre-
ceding, has received its momentary completion.
The people most favored among Christian nations,
as having in the midst of them the throne of the
Vicar of Jesus Christ, have revolted, and with a
sacrilegious and violent invasion have usurped
the city of Rome which, from the beginning of
Christianity, has been the centre and the head
of the Christian Church, and, ever since persecu-
tion ceased, has been the visible throne from
which the Vicars of Christ have reigned, by faith
and the Divine law, over the nations of the world,
1. The first mark, then, of these times is law-
lessness. This revolt of the will from God is
signally manifested in the rejection of that order
of Christian civilization which the Divine provi-
dence has built up in the whole past history of
Christendom. St. Paul, in his Epistle to Timo-
thy, says : " In the last da) s shall come on dan-
gerous times. Men shall be lovers of themselves,
covetous, haughty, proud, blasphemers, disobe-
dient to parents, ungrateful, wicked, incontinent,
traitors, stubborn, puffed-up, and lovers of pleas-
ures more than of God." * " Evil men and se-

• 2 Tim. iii. 1-4.

52 tHJ5 FOUR GBEAT EVILS OP THE DAT.

ducers shall grow worse and worse, erring," *
and driving the world into error. Now these
words are a prophecy of the latter times of the
world ; and if these be not the latter times, they
have at least the marks already upon them. St.
Paul also, writing to the Thessalonians, and
speaking again of the latter times, says that
* the man of sin," " that wicked one, shall be
revealed." f Now, I shall not enter into the
question of who that wicked one may be ; but
we can distinctly understand why St. Paul calls
him that wicked one. The word in the original
is, " that lawless " one, that is, one who will not
recognize any law but his own will, who will pull
down and destroy the work of God. Now, if
there be any one thing which is a more power-
ful solvent of the Christian world than another,
it is lawlessness, the rejection of law, the rebel-
lion of the human will, the human will making
a law to itself, that is, each individual becoming
his own legislator, and each legislator making
laws at variance with the wills of others, causing
perpetual change, universal discord, isolation of
man from man, and because isolation, therefore
conflict endless and suicidal.

Now, we hear, day by day, the glorification of
revolutions. And what are revolutions ? They
are the violent disintegration of that order which

•JTim.iii. 13. f 2 TheM. ii 3, 8,

THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAT. 6S

is based upon authority and obedience ; or, in
other words, they are the extinction of the idea
of law and of obligation, the overthrow of the
supremacy of law, of the duties of the human
conscience and of the human will to law : first
to the law of God, for that is the sole foundation
and basis of all authority, and then to the civil
and political laws of society, which spring from
that Divine law and are sanctioned by it. The
first and broadest mark that is upon these days,
then, is lawlessness.

I should be anticipating what I have to say
hereafter if I were to take for example any par-
ticular people, or any particular nation ; but I
think no man that has read, be it ever so little,
of the modern books upon what is called " de-
mocracy," of its gradual and steady advance, its
perpetual and irresistible development, in coun-
tries separated indeed from us by a wide sea, but
closely allied to us by all that acts and reacts
upon peoples of the same origin, will misunder-
stand my meaning. This lawlessness shows itself
in these three ways :

First, in individuals ; that is to say, men have
ceased to govern their conduct with reference to
the laws of God and His Church. Many have
BO completely ceased to do this, that any one who
does so is marked as fanatical or bigoted or a
believer. We have come to the days when in
6*

54 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY.

some countries the man who professes faith is
marked for reproach as a clerical, or soft-headed,
or a reactionist. Even in our own country this
is true. You may not meet it, perhaps, in the
society in which you live ; a certain refinement
represses it. But there are classes more out-
spoken, where the truth is told more boldly.
Fi^ty years ago, if a man did not believe iD
Christianity he held his peace, not only out of
respect for others, but out of respect for himself.
Now, men have no shame to profess infidelity.
Then, the masses professed to be what their
fathers were. Now, when, out of some hundreds
of working-men, one was known to go to church,
his companions gave him a nickname, and that
name was the most sacred Name that was ever
heard on earth. The laws of that Divine Person
cannot be vivid in the minds of those who could
BO disclaim their share in Him.

There is, further, a deliberate and legal depar-
ture from the Divine law which lies at the very
foundation of social life. Christian matrimony
is a Sacrament, and creates an indissoluble bond,
which death alone can knse. Such was the law
of England, not only till three hundred years
ago, but until fifteen years ago, though by Acts
of Parliament it was violated ; that is, by privi-
leges, or private laws for private cases, persona
were protected from the penalties of the law,

THE POUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAT. 55

The .aw of Christendom was the law of England
down to fifteen years ago, and the bond of mar-
riage was indissoluble. But the indissoluble bond
of marriage is the foundation of the domestic life
of Christendom. It was out of that principle of
authority and order that Christendom arose in its
unity and purity, in the midst of the unimagin-
able evils of the heathen world. And in these
days a blow has been struck at this first principle
of Christian homes, which are the foundation of
political society.

Moreover, in the whole civil and political or-
der there has risen up in the last century a formal
rebellion against authority. About eighty years
ago was published to the world a new gospel for
the political order of men. It has been called
" the Principles of '89." Read it for yourselves,
and you will find it full of what is called " the
rights of man." But there are two things of
which you will find nothing. First, you will
find nothing there about the rights of God j and
surely they ought to have precedence; and,
secondly, you will find nothing there about the
duties of man; but surely men have duties.
When men rise for their rights, forgetting to say
a word about their duties, they are already in
rebellion. But again I am anticipating what
belongs to our next subject. I cannot, however,
fail to notice, in order to make this point clear,

66 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OP THE DAY.

that we now are hearing of the rights of women ;
and if there can be a sign of a society inverted,
and of the moral order of the world reversed, it
is the putting of woman out of her proper sphere
*-— the domestic life — where she is a sovereign,
and the putting her in that sphere where she
ought never to set her foot — the public life of
nations. To put man and woman upon an equal-
ity is not to elevate woman, but to degrade her.
I trust that the womanhood of England — to say
nothing of the Christian conscience which yet
remains — will resist, by a stern moral refusal,
the immodesty which would thrust women from
their private life of dignity and supremacy into
the public conflicts of men. This, again, is a
part of the lawlessness of these days, and shows
a decline of the finer instincts of womanhood,
and a loss of that decisive Christian conscience
which can distinguish not only between what is
right and wrong, but between what is dignified
and what is undignified both for women and for
men. This clamor about women's rights may be
taken as one of the most subtle and most certain
marks of a lawlessness of mind which is now
invading society. This, then, is the first exam-
ple I will give of lawlessness in general.

2. And, secondly, this lawlessness is invading
the domestic and private life of men in the form
of luxury ; and perhaps there is no country which

THE POUB GEBAT EVILS OF THE DAY. 67

is in greater danger from this cause than ours.
We are the wealthiest people in the world. The
personal and the national wealth of England ii
something incomparable in the history of man-
kind. I must, however, bear witness — and it
is fall of consolation to know it — that there ia
still tc be found a common good sense, a firm
resisting manliness, in the English character —
and it prevails also in the characters of some of
the women of England — a determination not to
be softened and pampered. Men refuse to be
made effeminate, and women to be self-indulgent.
There is, then, something to resist it ; and I hope,
for that reason, that the pestilence of luxury may
not prevail over us. But we are in danger lest
our superabundant wealth should create a mate-
rial civilization, so advanced, so refined, and car-
ried out with such extraordinary subtlety of in-
vention, that it will need a very strong and firm
will not to be softened by it. There is no doubt
that, in dress, in pleasures, and in amusements,
there is an invasion of luxury in our higher
society which is very dangerous, and for this
reason : when people have allowed themselves to
go up to the brink of all that is lawful, it is very
easy to trespass, and go over the line that is for-
bidden. The line between what is lawful and
unlawful in such minds is very faint and sha-
dowy ; and those who are always walking on the

58 THE FOUB GREAT EVILS OF THE DAT.

brink of the precipice, will not be long before
they go over. The Apostle, speaking of women,
gays : " She that liveth in pleasures, is dead while
she is living." * The taint of mortality is upon
a refined and luxurious life, though on the out-
side, like the whited sepulchre, it seems un-
spotted. There is no doubt that the precept of
the Apostle is very necessary in our day and in
jur country. He says : " All things are lawful
to me, but all things are not expedient." | I
know I have the liberty ; I may do a multitude
of things with perfect safety of conscience ; but
I know this — that it might be an example for
others which would be dangerous to them, and
it might also be a danger to myself. At all
events, it is more generous, it is more in con-
formity with the example set me by my Divine
Lord and Master, to deny myself in many things
that are lawful. Apply this to dress, to pleasures,
to amusements, to the expenditure you make on
yourself, to your domestic and private life, and
you will find a wide field for its application.

3. Once more. The lawlessness of our times
is to be found in our profuse worldliness. What
is the world but the aggregate of that wisdom of
the flesh, which is declared to be an enemy of
God? The world always was and always will
be at variance with the sanctity, the purity, the

• 1 Tim. v. 6. f 1 Cor. vi. 12.

THE FOUB GBEAT EVILS OF THE DAY. 58

justice of God; and therefore St. John says:
" Love not the world, nor the things which are
in the world. If any man love the world, the
charity of the Father is not in him. For all
that is in the world, is the concupiscence of the
flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, arid the
pride of life, which is not of the Father, but is
of the world." * And the world is upon us all
who live in it : its sun shines upon us, we breathe
its atmosphere, we are in contact with it, we eat
its food, we converse with it all the day long,
and happy are we if we are not tainted by it.
Now for the forms in which the world presents
itself to us. First, in its ambitions. You per-
haps will think that ambition belongs only to
public life. There is ambition everywhere, am-
bition in domestic life ; in some form or other,
ambition in every one. The desire to strain up-
ward and to strain onward, to possess more, to be
more, to rise, to get into another place, on an-
other level, on another elevation, to outstrip
neighbors, to be more than they — what is this
but ambition ? We recognize it and call it by
its name, when it is in great and noble examples,
and we are ashamed of it when it has manifested
itself in the pettiness of our own private life ; but
it is ambition still. And this ambition of the
world corrupts the hearts of multitudes, because,

• 1 St. John ii. 15, 16.

60 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAT.

where this ambition is, a multitude of passioni
spring up round about it — envies, jealousies,
rivalries, contentions, bickerings, rash judgments,
detraction of neighbors, depreciations, running
down those who are competing with us and per-
haps outstripping us. All this is the lawlessness
of the heart. Its passions are not subject to the
law of God, neither, unless it be changed, can
be. These must be cast out as so many unclean
spirits, before the heart can be subject to the law
of God. Another form of worldliness cleaves to
the material interests of men ; such as rivalries
in business, in trade, in commerce, in tke haste
to get rich, in the ravenous buying and selling
and bargaining, in the market, on the stock-ex-
change, in the bank, in the counting-house;
overreaching of neighbors, gambling specula-
tions, enterprises of doubtful integrity, in which
the conscience is strained and honor sacrificed ;
hardness to those who labor, undue profits
made out of the flesh and blood of those who are
scantily paid for toil, and then, it may be, fraud*
ulent actions with public ruin, and all coming
from what cause? From the love of money —
from that of which the Holy Ghost thus speaks :
" The desire of money is the root of all evila ;
which some coveting after have erred from the
faith, and have entangled themselves in many
Borrows."* Such is the end of lawlessness-—

• lTim.vi.10.

THE FODB GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY. 61

the passions, not under the government of holy
fear and of justice, tempted all day long by the
spirit of gain, in the hope of laying up and of
being rich in this world ; forgetting the warning,
" They that will become rich, fall into tempta-
tion, and into the snare of the devil, and into
many unprofitable and hurtful desires, which
drown men into destruction and perdition."*
Now, is there any country in the world — ex-
cept, it may be, a country which has sprung
from our own lineage — in which what I have
been describing is to be found more dominant
and more ruinous than in our own ?

And there is still another form of worldliness,
which also is a form of lawlessness ; that is, the
concealing of the law of God and the taking of
the laws of the world instead ; or, in other words,
the fear and worship of the world. The flattery,
the adulation, the sycophancy, with which peo-
ple will wait upon the world to catch its favor,
to be admitted into society, to sit at the tables of
rich men, to be known as the acquaintance of
those who bear titled names, the mean fawning
obsequiousness of those who wait upon the world
— where this is in a man's heart, he is not the
disciple of Jesus Christ Our Lord Himself has
warned us : " How can you believe, who receive
glory one from another, and the glory which ii
• 1 Tim. ri. 9.

62 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY.

from God alone, you do not seek ? " * The wor-
ship of the world, and the bondage of the world,
the fear of losing its favor, or the fear of in-
curring its ridicule, degrades millions of men
who were created to the image of God, and aa
men, if not as Christians, ought to be ashamed
of such meanness. Surely, if the law of God
were in them, as a living and constraining prin-
ciple governing their conscience, it would elevate
them above the world and all its works.

4. One more example of this subtle worldli-
ness may be found where it is least suspected. It
has invaded not only society, it has also invaded
religion ; it has entered into the sanctuary. In
the beginning, Christians worshipped God in
catacombs at the peril of their lives ; they offered
the Holy Sacrifice in vaults of the earth, in damp
dark caverns with altars of rough-hewn stone,
and with lamps which hardly gave light ; in hard-
ness, and in austerity, and in poverty. There
was the spirit of martyrdom in those days. After-
wards, when the peace of the Church began, the
world turned to shine upon it, and the Church
then worshipped God in basilicas in the noonday
sun. Once, as the Fathers said, its vessels were
wood, and its priests were gold. Now, its ves-
sels at least were of gold. Heresies and schisms
sprung up in the midst of splendor ; men fled into

* St. John v. 44.

THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY. 63

the deserts, and set up once more altars of stone
and crucifixes of wood, that they might worship
God in the severity and sanctity of spirit and of
truth. External splendor of worship is good, but
internal truth and reality in the worship of God
is better. It is right, indeed, and according both
to the Divine law and to the pattern of God's
own appointment, that the noblest and the best
gifts of human skill and of human wealth should
be consecrated to His honor. The Christian
Church, as soon as it was able to follow the ex-
ample of the saints of the Old Law, offered its
costliest and best to the worship of God. The
murmuring and declaiming that we hear about
the simplicity of worship has in it the spirit of
him who cast up for how much the ointment
might have been sold ; not that he cared for the
poor. This carping against the Catholic Church
for the splendor of its worship covers a disposition
to carp against the truth. No, the Church of God
by its history bears witness that the service of
God in spirit and in truth requires no external
splendor. It accepts, indeed, all that the art of
man can do in architecture, in painting, in sculp-
ture, in music, because all these come from God
and ought to be consecrated to God. The warn-
ing of the Lord by the prophet rings in the eara
of Christians : " Is it time for you to dwell in
railed houses, and this house lie desolate ? " * It
* Aggaras i. 4.

64 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY.

is true of us also that the wealth spent upon the
private dwellings of men exceeds ten thousand-
fold that which is spent upon the honor and wor-
ship of God. The Church, therefore, both con-
secrates all things to God's service, and also sus-
tains the same spirit of austere interior worship
as in the beginning ; and the Church has in all
ages, by its chief Orders, kept up its testimony
that the worship of God, in spirit and in truth,
does not need external splendor. St. Francis laid
down as the law for his children — the most
numerous family in the Catholic Church — that
upon the altar there should be candlesticks of
wood, and that the vestments of the priest should
have no silk. You will not misunderstand me,
then, when I say that the spirit of the world will
often enter into the splendor of the sanctuary
and that the sounds which fill the ear, and the
beauty which fills the eye, may take away the
heart and the mind. Unless there be the spirit
of prayer and union with our Divine Lord in the
heart, men may come and go without worship-
ping God in spirit and in truth. This is one of
our most subtle dangers. Satan knows well how
to pass off the intellectual simulation of religious
opinion for Divine faith ; how to pass off imagi-
native dreamings about the perfections of saints
for practical obedience; how to fill men's imagi-
nations with ideas of asceticism while their livet

THE FOUE QREA1 EVILS OF THE DAT. 65

are self-indulgent ; and to make even the splen-
dors, sweetness, beauty, and majesty of Catholic
worship a fascination of the sense and a distrac-
tion of the soul. The tempter is always busy,
and nowhere changes himself into an angel of
light so easily as in church. Now, I ask, have
you been enough on your guard against this?
The Catholic Church, lavish as it is in all splen-
dors, because all things are due to Him who is
the Giver of all, has sure and deep correctives to
recall its children from the mere fascinations of
sense by the eye, or the ear, or the imagination,
to the presence of God. Where Jesus is present
in the Blessed Sacrament, no splendor can easily
withdraw the mind from Him ; or if any become
lukewarm, there is a prompt and strong remedy
in the confessional. They who live in spirit and
in truth will adore in spirit and in truth, as well
in the majesty of a basilica as in the austerity of
a catacomb. The interior spirit vivifies all ex-
terior forms. Ceremonies are a mere mask to the
unbelieving and the undevout. They are the
folds of the Divine Presence, the countenance of
the unseen Majesty, to those that believe and
love.

5. The last and the only other point on which

I will speak is one which threatens us all, and

that is, compromise. The days in which we live

are not days of firmness. People who still retain

C* B

66 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAT.

a belief in revelation, nevertheless hear so much
against dogma, that they are often tempted to use
the same language, and to disclaim dogmatism.
They hear so much said against asceticism, that
they try to show their freedom from it by a lib-
erty which is dangerous. But religion without
dogma is not Christianity, and religion without
asceticism is not the religion by which we can be
saved. The religion of Jesus Christ began in
the preaching of John — " Do penance ; for the
kingdom of heaven is at hand." * There can be
no repentance without the mortification of the
senses. The times in which we live are perhaps,
of all times since the beginning of the Church,
the least ascetic. The luxury, the worldliness,
the superabundance of all that is grand and
beautiful even in the external worship of the
Church, may help to lead men away. The fault
indeed is theirs. They can turn anything into
temptation ; everything will be a snare if they
will not correct it by a spirit of obedience to the
law of God. Now, there are many marks of this
shallow mind among us. First, there is little
mortification of the intellect ; the intellect ranges
without check and without limit ; men read every
book that comes to hand, every newspaper they
find on the table. They do not ask whether it is
for the Faith, or against the Faith ; is it hereti-

•St Matt. iii. 2.

THE FOUB GKEAT EVILS OF THE DAT. 67

cal, or is it sound ; is it pure, or is it impure.
They begin without discrimination ; they read on
without fear ; they find the book to be heretical.
erroneous, scandalous, licentious, and yet they do
not burn it ; they do not even put it down. The
Catholic Church strictly and wisely prohibits the
reading of any books that are written by those
who have fallen from the Faith, or teach a false
doctrine, or impugn the Faith, or defend errors.
And that for this plain and sound reason : the
Church knows very well that it is not one in a
thousand who is able to unravel the subtlety of
infidel objections. How many of you have gone
through for yourselves the evidence upon which
the authenticity, genuineness, and inspiration of
the Book of Daniel rests ? Have you verified the
canon of the Old and New Testament ? or have
you mastered the philosophical refutation of
Atheism? Would you advise your children to
read sceptical criticisms of Holy Scripture, or the
arguments of Deists? If not, why read them
yourselves? You know perfectly well that the
human mind is capable of creating many difficul-
ties of which it is incapable of finding a solution.
The most crude and ignorant mind is capable of
taking in what can be said against truth. De-
struction is easy ; construction needs time, indus-
try, and care. To gather evidence or to ascer-
tain the traditions of the Church, needs learning

TO THE FOUB, GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY.

and labor, of which only they are capable whosn
life is given to it.

This indiscriminate and fearless reading is in-
tellectual license ; but if the intellect be not mor-
tified, where will be the mortification of the will ?
Look at society, as it is called. What signs
are there of mortification of the will among us ?
When do men willingly forego anything which
is for their interest or their pleasure? When
do they leave anything undone simply for con-
science, or do anything contrary to their interest
for the sake of Jesus Christ ? I am afraid that
it is the individual and the unit that does these
things. But is this religion without the Cross the
religion of Jesus Christ ? Let us put it to the
test. Take the Holy Scriptures in your hands,
read them as they stand, do not explain them
away : they are the word of God. Do not say it
only means this, or it only means that. It means
what it says — what God has written — and noth-
ing else. Now hear what is written: "How
hardly shall they that have riches enter into the
kingdom of God ! It is easier for a camel to pass
through the eye of a needle than for a rich man
to enter into the kingdom of God." * Again, our
Lord has said : " Woe to you that are rich ; for
you have received your consolation." f Again, He
said : " Enter ye in at the narrow gate ; for wide

• St. Mark z. 23, 25. f St. Lake vi. 24.

THE FOTJB GREAT EVILS OF THE DAT. 69

is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to
destruction, and many they are who go in thereat.
How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that
leadeth to life ; and few there are that find it." *
And once more, when a man asked Him : Are
they few that are saved? He said: "Strive to
enter in by the narrow gate ; for many, I say to
you, shall seek to enter and shall not be able.
But when the master of the house shall be gone
in, and shall shut to the door, you shall begin
to stand without, and knock at the door, say-
ing, Lord, open to us : and He answering shall
say to you, I know you not, whence you are."f
Once more, He says : " Whosoever doth not
carry his cross and come after Me, cannot be My
disciple." J

These are the warnings of our Lord and Sa-
viour. Take the crucifix in your hand, and ask
yourself whether this is the religion of the soft,
easy, worldly, luxurious days in which we live ;
whether the crucifix does not teach you a lesson
of mortification, of self-denial, of crucifixion of
the flesh, with its affections and lusts, as the
Apostle says ; or as our Divine Lord Himself
has said : " If thy right hand offend thee, cut it
off and cast it from thee. If thy right eye of-
fend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee ; for

•St. Matt. vii. 13, 14.

| St. Luke xiii 24,25. * Ib. xlr. V.

70 THE FOUB GREAT EVID3 OP THE DAY.

it is better to enter into life haying one eye and
one hand, than having two eyes and two hands
to be cast into hell-fire." These are the words
of God, of Jesus, our merciful, loving, compas-
sionate Lord. They are not the words of severe
and heartless men. They are the words of Di-
vine pity, warning us that " the wisdom of the
flesh is death," because the wisdom of the flesh
is an enemy against God, and cannot be subject
to the law of God.

Let us, then, be on our guard against these
things, which, in their subtlety and strength, have
power over us all. If we had one foot in heaven,
and were to leave off mortifying ourselves, wt
should fall from grace.

LECTURE III.

THE REVOLT OF SOCIETY FEOM GOD.

ISAIAS IX. 11.

* The nation and the kingdom that will not serye thee shall
perish."

THESE words are the promise of God to His
Incarnate Son, the King of kings, and Lord of
all the earth, which He has redeemed with His
precious blood. It was to Him also that the
words were spoken : " Sit Thou at My right hand,
until I make Thy enemies Thy footstool." * The
Son of God declares of Himself: "I am ap-
pointed King by Him over Sion His holy moun-
tain." f Before He ascended into heaven, our
Lord said to His disciples, " All power in heaven
and on earth is given unto Me ; " and He prom-
ised them, saying, " I dispose " — that is, I give
— " unto you a kingdom, as My Father has dis-
posed unto me." J This kingdom, then, is the

• Ps. cix. 1, 2. t IWd. ii. «.

t St. Matt, xxviii. 18 ; St. Luke xxii. 29.

71

72 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY.

kingdom of Jesus Christ ; and the prophecy here
is, that any nation or any kingdom that will not
serve Him shall perish. Any nation or kingdom
that says, " We will not have this Man to reign
over us," refuses the sovereignty of Jesus Christ,
and thereby shall fall.

It was on the day of Pentecost that the proc-
lamation of the coming of this kingdom was first
made in a multitude of tongues, and from Jeru-
salem was spread throughout the world. God
the Holy Ghost on that day came as the " sound
of a mighty wind," and by tongues of fire, speak-
ing to the eye and to the ear, in witness of His
Royal presence, Majesty, and power.

I have already spoken of the revolt of the
intellect from truth, and also of the revolt of
the will from God. Our present subject is the
revolt of man from the authority of God. When
I say the revolt of man, I do not only mean of
individuals, one by one, but of mankind in ite
organized and corporate state. It is therefore of
the revolt of society from the authority of God
that I am about to speak.

I have said before, that the history of the
Christian society of the world may be divided
into three periods : the first, when the Church as
a spiritual society stood alone, separate from the
world, and made up of individuals gathered from
oil nations, cities, and households, as a spiritual

THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAT. 78

iociety without contact with the civil or political
society of mankind ; the second, when the Church
and the civil society of the world, being in har-
mony and union, after the Empire had become
Christian, were associated together in the govern-
ment and sanctification of the world ; the third
is the period which for the last three hundred
years has set in, of divorce, departure, and sepa-
ration, between the spiritual society of the Church
and the civil or political society of nations. Or
in other words, the first period since the coming
of our Lord may be called the period of the
•world under false gods, for the world was hea-
then ; the second was the period of the world
under the one true God ; and this last period, on
which we have now entered, I am afraid must
be truly and justly named the world without
God, the world departing from the true God.

The other day a book fell into my hands, de-
scribing the progress of the world in these three
divisions. The writer says that there are three
chief cities which have affected the destinies of
the civilized world. The first is Jerusalem, from
which the Law, the religion of Israel, flowed by
tradition into the world. The second is the city
of Rome, which, as the writer said — he was cer-
tainly not a Catholic, and I believe not a Chris-
tian, and i? he were not of the house of Israel, I
believe he must have been a sceptic — was the
7

74 THE POUK GREAT EVILS OF THE DAT.

source of the Christian and Catholic religion, and
of the society which belongs to the Middle Ages.
The third city is the city of Paris, the new Jeru-
salem, the leader of civilization, the city of pro-
gress, and the city of the future. While I recite
these words, your own thoughts are beginning to
make their application.

At the outset of these subjects I said that the
Syllabus, published by the Sovereign Pontiff
some six or eight years ago, seems to have turned
the world upside down. It has created commo-
tion among peoples and kingdoms, governments
and legislatures, newspapers and politicians, of
whom perhaps not one in a hundred has seen
even the outside of the Syllabus, and certainly
not one in ten would take time to understand its
meaning. This Syllabus is supposed to be a vio-
lent and mediaeval aggression upon the civil
order of the world. Let me tell you simply
what the Syllabus is. The Gospel of Jesus
Christ — that is, Christianity — reveals a multi-
tude of truths, and lays down a multitude of
laws. Now, the world has been perpetually deny-
ing these truths, and violating these laws, both
intellectually and in act. The Syllabus is a col-
lection of eighty condemnations. Eighty of the
chief intellectual and moral errors which have
sprung up in the modern world, contrary to the
faith and morals of Christianity, have been con-

THE FOTJB GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY. 75

demned, as they arose, by the Head of the
Church in express and explicit terms. The Syl-
labus is a summary of those condemnations. For
example, I will recite to you five of the errors
that are therein condemned.

They are as follows : first of all, that the civil
society of man — that is, the political order of
civil society — is the fountain and origin of all
right, and that it can be circumscribed by no
authority ; secondly, that in conflicts between the
spiritual and civil authorities, the civil authority
is supreme, and must determine; thirdly, that
education belongs to the State, as being what is
called matter of civil competence, and ought to
be strictly secular; fourthly, that kings and
princes are exempt from ecclesiastical jurisdic-
tion ; lastly, that the State ought to be separated
from the Church, and the Church from the
State.* Now, these are five of the errors which
are condemned in the Syllabus; and you will
easily understand that the remaining seventy-
five propositions of the Syllabus are errors simi-
lar in kind. What I purpose to do is, incident-
ally, and without again reciting them, to show
that these are five falsehoods, and are justly con-
demned.

There is a common axiom that passes from
mouth to mouth in these days, that religion and

* Syllabus Pii IX., Propp. 39, 42, 45, 54, 56.

76 THE FOim GREAT EVILS OF THE DAT

politics have nothing to do with each other -»
that the Church has nothing to do with politics;
that the Church must submit to the civil au-
thorities as supreme ; that politics may go their
own way by themselves, and that priests and
bishops, if they touch politics, go beyond their
limits and exceed their powers. We hear a great
deal of this talk.

Now, in the name of not only Christianity, but
of common sense, I would ask you to consider
for one moment the following questions : Is not
the law of morals the same for a thousand men
as for one ? Is not the law of morals the same
for a nation as for an individual? Are men
bound by the moral law one by one, and are na-
tions and kingdoms not bound by the moral law ?
Is it to be supposed that individuals, one by one,
are under obligation to keep the law of God, and
that states and kingdoms are not so bound ? Are
peasants bound to keep the law of the Gospel
and of the Church, and are princes and kings not
bound to keep that law? Are individuals who
happen to be poor and unlearned under the obli-
gation to obey Christian morality, and are not
legislatures and executive governments equally
obliged? Nay, I will say more; are they not
more strictly bound and under heavier responsi-
bility to conform themselves to the moral law ?
Well, then, whence comes the moral law ? From

THE FOUB GBEAT EVILS OF THE DAT. 77

reason and from Christianity ; from the light of
reason elevated and perfected by the Christian
revelation. And to whose custody was the
Christian revelation committed ? To the Apos-
tles and their successors, to whom our Lord said :
" Go ye, and make disciples of all nations : teach-
ing them to observe whatsoever I have command-
ed you." Who, then, are the guardians of the
moral law ? The Apostles and their successors.
And who are their successors? The pastors of
the Church of God. And the things which He
commanded include His moral precepts as well
as the doctrines of Faith ; and they bind indi-
viduals, and peoples, and nations, and kingdoms,
and those who rule over them. To talk about
the separation between religion and politics is to
talk at random in those who know no better ; it
is to talk impiety, or it is to talk apostasy, in
those who have understanding; for what are
politics but the morals of society, the morals of
men collected and living together under public
law ? The same law which governs the individ-
ual governs households, and the law that governs
households governs the State. The legislature is
as much bound to observe the moral law of the
Gospel as the individual, as any private man;
and therefore politics, so far from being separate,
are a part of morals. They are morals applied
to the public society of men, to the public action
7«

78 THE FOUR GBEAT EVILS OF THE DAY;

of nations to the legislation of governments, to
the executive authority of princes; for which
reason, to attempt to separate between religion
and politics, to shut up the priest, as it is said, in
the sacristy, is a revolt of the world endeavor-
ing to shake off the yoke of Jesus Christ. If
He be the King of the world, which He has re-
deemed with His precious blood, He will judge
the kings, and the princes, and the legislatures,
and the nations of this world for the laws which
they have made. And this is our present subject.
1. First of all, then, what is human society,
or the political society of the world ; and who
created it? "We read in histories, that such a
one was the founder of this kingdom, and such
another was the founder of that empire ; but they
did not create the society. The civil order, or
political society of man, is the creation of God.
The God of nature, in the day in which He cre-
ated man, created him with an innate necessity
of living a social life. Society sprang from our
first parents. As soon as the family arose, the
outlines of the political order were traced upon
the earth. In the multiplication of men and of
families, sprang up the civil and political order
of the world ; and that civil and political order,
whatsoever form it may take, and howsoever it
may be modified, has in it three immutable prin-
ciples. It has the principle of authority, which

THE FOUE GKEAT EVILS OP THE DAY. 79

rules ; it has the principle of obedience, which
subjects those who are under authority to its gov-
ernment ; it has the principle of equal and recip-
rocal justice between those who are united under
the same authority. These three principles are
the principles of the family, and of the house-
hold, and of the whole civil and political order
of the world. They may be variously clothed •
they may be embodied in different forms of law,
according to ages and nations ; but essentially all
governments and constitutions resolve themselves
at last into these three simple laws. It is of this
that the Holy Ghost, speaking by the Apostle,
says : " Let every soul be subject to higher pow-
ers ; for there is no power but from God ; and
those that are, are ordained of God. He that
resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of
God ; and they that resist, purchase to themselves
damnation. For princes are not a terror to the
good work, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not
be afraid of the power ? Do that which is good.
If thou do that which is evil, fear ; for he bear-
eth not the sword in vain. For he is God's min-
ister: an avenger to execute wrath upon him
that doth evil.* From what other source could
the authority to inflict capital punishment be
derived, save only from Him who is the Author
and Giver of life ? Society recognizes the Divine

• Rom. xiii. 1.

80 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY.

foundation of its authority every time that jus«
tice condemns a man to die. This authority in
not of human creation ; it is of Divine creation.
It comes from God ; and civil society is therefore
in itself of Divine foundation. In the order of
nature, it has God for its Author. Sovereignty,
then, was immediately committed by God to the
society of mankind, in the act of creating it
The particular form of government, whether it
be by one or by many, whether it be empire, or
kingdom, or republic — these mutable and inci-
dental forms of government may be determined
by man ; but the authority which they embody,
and by which alone they exist, is always from
God. Now, such is civil society. Bear in mind
the principles we have laid down ; because upon
them all depends; all public morality and all
public law, the duty of loyalty and of civil obe-
dience, the power of capital punishment, and the
mutual justice between man and man. To call
in question the Divine foundation of authority,
and to talk only of the rights of men, is to vio-
late the first laws of human society. We are in
the century of revolutions, inaugurated by the
gospel of the rights of man and of the sover-
eignty of the people, preached by the false
prophets of this world to deceive the nations.
Men have come to believe that the freak and
caprice of the public will is sovereign, and may

THB FOUB, GREAT EVILS OP THE DAY. 81

at any time revoke the authority which God has
providentially ordained in the powers that are.
The word of God declares that authority is from
God, and that they who resist the authority pur-
chase to themselves damnation. Now, that su-
preme civil authority, being of God's own creat-
ing, is sacred, and was not left in the world to
reel and to stagger in the darkness and instability
of human ignorance and human license. When
God became incarnate, He founded His own king-
dom in the world ; He instituted an authority in
which are incorporated the rights of God; He
promulgated a law which governs the conscience
of all mankind.

2. The kingdom of Jesus Christ is His Church
one and universal, and by it He exercises His
sovereignty over the nations. The commission
of His Apostles was to found a universal king-
dom, which should never be destroyed ; of which
the prophet has said, " It shall not be delivered
up to another people." * Empires have passed
from people to people, kingdoms have vanished
from off the face of the earth ; but the kingdom
of Jesus Christ can never pass to any hand from
that which was pierced on Calvary. His king-
dom shall endure to all eternity. The Church
of God on earth is a true kingdom, reigning by
its own right. It has a right to its own existence^

* Daniel ii. 44.

I

82 THE FOUR GREAT EVIL<5 OF THE DAT,

to its own possessions, to its own legislature, to
its own executive, and to its own tribunals. It
receives these prerogatives neither from king, nor
prince, nor people ; and no human authority can
circumscribe its limits. Nay, it circumscribes
the limits of all other authority, and is itself
subject to none but God only. When the Church
came into this world, it suffered its ten persecu-
tions. The world, if it had been possible, would
have stifled it in its own blood ; but an indefect-
ible life cannot perish. For three hundred years
it spread, and penetrated and pervaded the whole
civil society of the world : it entered into house-
holds, and peoples, and nations, and cities, and
kingdoms. It reached, at last, to the palace of
the Csesars; it took possession of the imperial
family ; it converted the emperor on his throne ;
and when it had pervaded the senate, and the
tribunals, and the whole civil life of Borne, the
empire was elevated above itself. It became re-
generate by grace, and lived by a new life, and
was guided by new laws, and confirmed by new
authorities; and the civil society of the world
was born again. That which God had created
in the natural state was elevated, by its union
with the Church, to the supernatural order ; the
members of it were regenerated by water and the
Holy Ghost, and became members of the king-
dom of God, illuminated by faith under the guid-

THE FOUR GREAT ETILS OF THE DAY. 83

ance of the pastors of the Universal Church
and the Vicar of Jesus Christ. Then came to
pass a change so terrible, that the world does
not contain in history anything more fearful.
Rome, which had governed the world by its laws,
and its warfare, and its civilization, was purged
by fire and by blood. The kingdom of Jesus
Christ then took possession of the civil society
of the world. Then passed away the old civili-
tation, which was corrupt to the very marrow ;
BO corrupt, that nothing could have changed it
but the baptism of fire, by which it was cleansed.
The most terrible judgments of God fell upon
Borne, upon the city, and upon the provinces of
the Roman Empire. They were purged by wars,
massacres, and pestilence; the old world was
burned down to the roots, that the new civiliza-
tion and the new Christian world might spring
from the earth purified by fire.

And nothing could be more beautiful, nothing
more like to the vision of the Heavenly City,
than the rise of this Christian civilization.
When, in the love of God, slavery began to melt
away ; when fathers with horror cast from them
the power of life and death over their children
and their slaves as a thing too hideous for Chris-
tian men ; when husbands renounced with
thanksgiving to their Redeemer the power of
life and death over wives ; when the horrors, and

84 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF TE.E DAT.

injustice, and abominations of the pagan domes
tic life gave place to the charities of Christian
homes, then the whole world was lifted to a
higher sphere. It had come under the light and
jurisdiction of the sovereignty of Jesus Christ.
Such was the growth of the world ; beginning, I
will say, from the time of St. Gregory the Great,
the apostle of our Christianity, who reigned with
a patriarchal sway over the three-and-twenty
patrimonies of the Church — over Italy and the
north of Africa, and the coasts of the Adriatic,
and the south of France, and Sicily, and the
islands of the Mediterranean. This new Chris-
tian world was the germ of modern Europe. The
Pontiffs laid the foundations of a world which is
now passing away — a Christian commonwealth
of nations, about which men vaunt themselves as
if they were its saviours, though they never ceaoe
to destroy it.

3. And then came another epoch, when, in
the solemnities of Christmas-day of the year 800,
St. Leo III. crowned Charlemagne at the tomb
of the Apostle, and made him the Emperor of
the West. That act, done in the midst of tribu-
lation and danger, when the times were dark
with all manner of evil, was the beginning of a
new era. There sprang up in the world for some
seven hundred years a Christendom in which the
kings and princes of Europe acknowledged the

THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OP THE DAY. 86

lovereignty of Jesus Christ ; the nations and the
kingdoms served Him, and inherited the bene-
diction promised to those that acknowledge His
supreme rights. In order that we may better
understand what, in those ages of faith, was the
belief of men as to the civil power, let us look
at the ceremony of the consecration of a king
Nowadays we hear of coronations, but we hear
no more of the consecration of kings. But a
coronation, even in the tradition of England,
takes place in the old Abbey of Westminster, and
with certain rights which remain, mutilated in-
deed, but taken chiefly from the ancient Catholic
ritual. I will shortly describe what the ancient
ritual was. The prince who was to be conse-
crated, for three days before, fasted as a prepara-
tion. On the day of his consecration he came to
the sanctuary of the church, where the metro-
politan and his suffragans received him. He
then, first upon his knees before the altar made
solemn oath to Almighty God, to observe and
cause to be observed, according to his knowledge
and his power, for the sake of the Church and
of his people, law, justice, and peace, according
to the laws of the land and the canons of the
Church. He then lay prostrate before the altar,
like a bishop when he is consecrated ; the litanies
were chanted, the same litanies which are sung
in our solemn ordinations. Then, kneeling be-
8

86 THE POUR GEEAT EVILS OF THE DAT.

fore the altar, he received the unction. He wag
anointed in the right arm, which is the arm of
strength, and on the shoulder, typical of royal
power ; as in the prophecy, " The government is
upon His shoulder."* He then received tl*
sword, with this admonition, "Remember that
the saints conquered kingdoms not by the sword,
but by faith." After this, the crown was put
upon his head, with the prayer that he might
wear it in mercy and in justice ; and the sceptre
was then placed in his hands, in token of the
authority of law. After that, the Holy Mass
was celebrated ; and in that Mass he received
the Holy Communion of the precious body and
blood of Jesus Christ, from the hands of the con-
secrating bishop. These solemn acts in them-
selves portrayed what were the relations cf
Christian law and fidelity between the chief
rulers of nations and of kingdoms, and the
sovereignty of Jesus Christ.

4. Such was once the Christian world. What
is it now? Look at Christian Europe. Head
history for the last three hundred years. Briefly,
for briefly it must be, I will touch upon ita
main points. Three hundred years ago, Ger-
many and the greater part of northern Europe
— Sweden, Norway, Denmark, England, Scot-
land, to say nothing of other smaller countries

• laaiaB ix. 6.

THE POUR GREAT EVILS OF TI/E DAT. 87

— separated themselves formally from the unity
of the Faith and Church, and therein of the
supreme authority of the Vicar of Jesus Christ
What straightway followed? The civil power,
which until that time had been obedient to the
laws of faith and of Christian morality, thence-
forward went its way alone, choosing and deter-
mining for itself. The most terrible persecu-
tions, to prison and to death, for the sake of
religion, sprang up in every country; and the
two authorities, civil and spiritual, which God
has made distinct and has committed to separate
hands, were united in the person of princes. The
civil supremacy and the ecclesiastical supremacy
were claimed for the crown, and civil rulers in-
vested themselves with prerogatives which can
be borne by the Vicar of Jesus Christ alone.
The authority over conscience, religion, and the
worship of God belongs only to those to whom
He has committed it. Wheresoever the con-
science and the soul enter in, man is free from
all authority of men. No king, nor prince, nor
legislature, has power to make law or ordinance
over my conscience. He may take my life, but
my faith he cannot touch. It was a violation
of the Divine law ; and bitterly and in blood the
people that were torn from the unity of the
Church suffered for that deed. I will say noth-
ing of Ireland — the memories of Ireland are too

SS THE FOUB GKEAT ETLIS OF THE DAY.

mournftd, too profoundly dark — but England,
which then was united, which then had one faith
and one worship, has been miserably rent, cut
asunder in religion, until one half of the English
people no longer belong to the religion which
was set up by law three hundred years ago. And
those who have separated from it are divided
and subdivided again into innumerable religious
fractions ; and in that one body, which is held
together by the law, what a dying out of faith,
what denials of Christianity, what oppositions of
teachers against each other, what separations,
what bondage of conscience, what violations of
Christian liberty! From what source are all
these evils ? From the usurpation of the civil
authority, which assumed to itself to be the head
and supreme judge in religion.

But I pass this by. These were only the be-
ginning of troubles which fell upon the nations
separated from the unity of the Church. There
was also a flood of evils in countries that still
continued to be of that unity. In France, in
Austria, in parts of Italy, in Spain, in Portugal,
princes who still professed to be Catholic, as-
sumed authority to meddle with religion, with
worship, with education, though not with faith.
They did indeed profess that they could not touch
faith; but discipline and all things outside of
faith they claimed as subject to their jurisdiction.

THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY. 89

I have said that there is, in all countries, a
disposition to depart from the unity of the Chris-
tian civilization which the providence of God has
ordained. The conflicts which began three hun-
dred years ago have been everywhere accomplish-
ing themselves. In Austria some twenty years
ago, in Italy the other day, it was declared that
the Church and the State were no longer united ;
that is to say, that the sovereignty of Jesus Christ
was no longer acknowledged by the civil power,
and that the political order of the world was
claimed by man for himself. The "kingdoms
and the nations" would no longer serve the
sovereignty of Jesus Christ. The other day, two
laws were passed in Italy, the one to forbid the
teaching of Christian doctrine (that is, the Cate-
chism) in the schools of the poor, the other to
forbid the teaching of theology in the universities
of the kingdom.

5. Thus far, I have touched upon the creation
of the civil power ; secondly, upon its consecra-
tion by Christianity ; thirdly, upon the harmony
and union between the civil and the spiritual
powers when united ; fourthly, on the separation
and divorce which has been accomplishing itself
between them. I now come to the last point,
which is a consequence of that divorce — the
desecration of civil society, the stripping-off, the
8*

$0 THB FOUR QBEAT EVILS OF THE DAT.

effacing of the sacred and Christian character
from all political institutions.

For clearness, I will give an example of what
I mean ; and I do it sadly, and with the greatest
tenderness of sympathy. If any word I speak
should seem to be wounding to nohle, Christian,
Catholic, chivalrous France, I disclaim before-
hand whatever may seem to come from my lips.
In the year 1789, as I told you the other night,
was ptblished to the world a document called
the Principles of the Rights of Man. I told you
then, that in that document we find nothing about
the duties of man, or the rights of God. The
rights of man, indeed, are there ; as if man were
the lord and king of all things — as if he had no
duties to anybody, and no one had rights over
him. What was the consequence of this begin-
ning ? There were two of the greatest pestilences
at that time spreading in France, the forerunners
and causes of its downfall — the infidel phil-
osophy of Voltaire, and the flagrant immorality
of Rousseau ; the two false prOphets, who de-
stroyed the one the faith, the other the morals
of society. You will remember how the wor-
ship of Christianity was then abolished, the name
of Jesus Christ blasphemed, the church of Notre
Dame profaned ; Reason, personified as my tongue
refuses to describe, set upon the altar. Atheism
took possession of men's minds, or rather of their

THE FOUR GKBAT EVILS OF THE DAT.

;»i

lives. And there came a day when, as by a con-
cession towards belief, the Assembly voted the
existence of the Supreme Being. You know
what followed : a reign of terror, blood, blas-
phemy ; horrors beyond the imagination of man ;
revolutions in every city ; civil war in the streets ;
an infidel empire. At last, Christianity was re-
stored as a public policy ; and no doubt, under
that politic device, faithful men and faithful pas-
tors began once more to do their work. Souls
once more were saved ; but the heart of faith was
tick unto death.

Such was France for a long period of years ;
and the seeds of infidelity were cast far and wide.
They sank so deep, that never to this day has
A-theism been finally eradicated. In the midst
of that noble, Christian, Catholic people, the
roots of infidelity are now so deeply set, and the
taint of indifierentism is so wide, that all the
prayers, labors, sufferings of the faithful and
fervent cannot restore to France its Christian
laws, and the sovereignty of Jesus Christ. After
awhile came a restoration ; you know with what
results. I will not go into detail. We have seen,
I think, some five revolutions, and in three of
them blood running in the streets. But all this
has passed away ; and the horrors of the past are
pale in the horrors before us at this moment. We
used to look back upon the first French revolu-

92 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY.

tion as a time of such exquisite terror, that I,
for my part, have often wondered how our fore-
fathers could have endured the daily tidings of
misery and blood so near to their doors; but
you and I have been hearing worse, day by
day, for weeks, and in this last week worse than
all. The other day we read these words : " In a
little while all religion will disappear from the
schools of the Commune ; the crucifix will disap-
pear as a violation of liberty of conscience." A
little while afterwards there was a question whe-
ther or not the churches should be closed ; and
it was answered, "That the churches be kept
open, and that in them Atheism shall be taught^
to disabuse the minds of men from the prejudice
of belief." And do we, then, wonder that the
chief pastor of that flock and some score of his
faithful clergy are cast into prison ? and in this
moment of horrible suspense God only knows
whether they be among the living or the dead.

It is almost out of place to quote the words I
now repeat ; but they are so intensely horrible,
that lest I should seem to exaggerate, I here
transcribe them. They are from Comte, one of
the false prophets who has been contributing to
the ruin of France by the moral and intellectual
action of his false philosophy for the last thirty
years. He is held in honor by some in England,
and has disciples among us, who teach the same

THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY. 93

intellectual enormities. These are his words;
"In the name of the past and the future, the
servants of humanity, both its philosophical and
practical servants — come forward to claim as
due the general direction of this world. Their
object is to constitute at length a real Providence
in all departments, moral, intellectual, and mate-
rial. Consequently, they exclude once for all,
from political supremacy, all the different ser-
vants of God, Catholic, Protestant, or Deist, as
being at once behindhand and a cause of dis-
turbance." * I told you in the beginning, of the
three cities typical of civilization, and that the
new Jerusalem of progress is Paris. We see that
new Jerusalem at this moment illuminated, not
with the light of God and of the Lamb, but by
the flames of its burning palaces, and by the con-
flagration of its homes. And to what one su-
preme cause is this to be ascribed ? To the re-
jection of God and of His Christ, to the rejec-
tion of the sovereignty of our Divine Redeemer.
" The nation and the kingdom that will not serve
Him shall perish ; " and noble, Christian, Cath-
olic France, except it acknowledge once more the
sovereignty of Jesus Christ, by that Divine law
of prophecy must perish. But I have better
hopes. I know, from my own personal knowl-
edge, that through the provinces of that noble
• Catechism of Positive Religion, preface.

•4 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY.

people there are millions who are true and faith-
ful. They are casting off, by the almighty help
of God, the tyranny and dominion of a corrupt
and infidel sect.

It is more than time to make an end : I will
therefore draw a general conclusion from what I
have said, that the unimaginable horrors, of
which Paris is at this moment the field, come
from the revolt of civil society from God. They
are the offspring, the legitimate, the lineal work-
ing out, of the principles of infidelity and im-
piety which were set in motion a century ago.
And let statesmen and politicians lay to heart,
that the first rising, in 1789, was a rising against
the king and those that surrounded him ; the next
rising, in 1830 and 1848, was of the middle class
against those that were immediately above them :
but the rising now is the rising of the masses, of
the multitudes, who, having been neglected, out-
cast, and therefore morally outlawed, have been
robbed of their Christian education. They have
grown up a terrible generation, to be the scourge
and the overthrow of civil society. I need not,
then, repeat that Pius IX., in the Syllabus,
taught wisely and well, that it is a falsehood,
and an error to be condemned by Christian men,
to say that the civil society of the world is the
fountain and origin of all right, and cannot be
circumscribed. The Church of God and God

THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY. 95

Himself are the fountain and the origin of rights
higher than the civil state ; and the authority of
God and of His laws circumscribes the authority
of the civil order. Next, it is a falsehood, and
an error justly condemned, to say that, when the
spiritual and the civil authorities are in conflict,
the contention shall be determined by the superior
authority of the civil power. The spiritual au-
thority of God and of the Christian laws must
circumscribe and limit the claims of the civil au-
thority. Thirdly, it is a falsehood and an error
to say that education is a matter of civil compe-
tence and ought to be secular. The education of
Christian men must be Christian. The education
of baptized children must be according to the
faith of their baptism. Nothing can educate the
heart, the soul, and the conscience, but the laws
of God. Again, it is a falsehood and an error to
say that kings and princes are exempt from the
superior jurisdiction of God and of His Church.
They are bound like others, and bound with a
heavier responsibility thai others, and will have
to give a heavier reckoning before the tribunal
of the King of kings. And, lastly, to say that
the Church ought to be separated from the State,
and the State from the Church, is a falsehood and
an error to be condemned ; because, in the natural
order, the State is God's creation, and, in the
supernatural order, the Church is God's creation,

96 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY.

and these two ought to be in harmony and in
union. They ought to act in concord, co-operat-
ing with one another to the highest ends of man.
And now there are two plain truths which I
will add by way of corollaries from all that I
have said. The civil powers of the world, in
separating themselves from the authority of God
and of His Church, are committing suicide ; it
is political self-murder. They are condemning
themselves to one of two inevitable results —
either to the despotism of military dictators, or
to the worst form of tyranny, the tyranny of revo-
lutions. The civil powers of the world at this
moment; are standing between two great move-
ments, and between them they must make their
choice. There is, on the one hand, the One Holy
Catholic Church, with its Divine authority, its
Divine faith, its Divine laws, and its Divine obli-
gations, spreading throughout the world, pene-
trating into all nations. This there is on one
side — and this is in the noonday light. But
there is on the other a society which is in the
darkness of midnight: the deadly antagonist of
the Church. It is one, because it is compactly
united : it is unholy, for it springs from Satan :
it is universal, for it is international : it is in-
visible, because it is hid out of the sight of men ;
and that is the universal international revolution
of secret societies, allied together for the common

THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY. 97

purpose of overturning, if it were possible ^as it
is not), the Church of God, and of overturning
(as it is easily possible) all civil governments on
earth. Between these two alternatives, the civil
rulers of to-day have to make their choice. "O
ye kings, understand: receive instruction, you
that judge the earth."* The choice is before
you ; civil life or death : choose promptly, that
you may live.

But, I fear, the choice is already made. If
there be one thing that has been derided, scoffed
at, cast out, misrepresented, in these last twenty
years, it is the Temporal Power of the Pope.
Yet what is it but the recognition of the sover-
eignty of Jesus Christ over men and over races,
over public law, over the whole of Christendom
— the recognition that there is a King in heaven,
Who is represented upon earth, and that on earth
there is one from whom the interpretation of His
law, and the sentence of His truth, comes with
supreme authority? In this person alone are
united together the two authorities, civil and
spiritual ; in order that, in all other nations of
the world, those two authorities shall be separate :
so that tyranny over the consciences of men and
violation of the freedom of religious conviction
shall be rendered impossible, because kings and
princes and rulers are limited by a superior au-

•Pi.il. 10.
9 Q

$8 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY.

thoritj in all things that are spiritual. And
inasmuch as that supreme spiritual authority has
been, by Divine Providence, in a visible and
marvellous manner, freed from all subjection to
emperors or kings, having a perfect independence
of his own, owing only to his Divine Master in
heaven the account that he must give — that
Providence of God is being visibly justified at
this moment by the revolutions, now assailing all
countries which have cast off their allegiance to
the Christian Church. I see no hope for the
Christian civilization of the world, unless men
turn back again to the true foundation of Chris-
tian society, and acknowledge that this dark and
bitter period of revolution has sprung from a
rising against the authority of the Church of
God, and that revolt and unbelief are the curse
and scourge of Europe.

In the beginning I said that this subject,
though it seems to be of a public and political
kind, is also intrinsically moral and religious.
It comes home to our consciences. To-morrow,
it may be, in the first newspaper that falls in
your way, you will hear the principles of which
I have been speaking denied and denounced. It
is necessary, therefore, that we should, from time
to time, turn back again to these great laws and
principles of faith. They sprang from faith, and
they belong to the morality of faith.

THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAT. 99

I have said these things because I am con-
vinced that it is necessary you should be on your
guard. Do not be deceived by the silvery sounds
of " liberty," of " freedom," of" public rights," of
" the rights of man," and of those rights which
I spoke of last time, and for very shame I will
not utter again. Be on your guard. Do not be
seduced or carried away by the talk and clamor
of a revolting and unbelieving age. Remember
the words of the Son of God : " You shall know
the truth, and the truth shall make you free." *
" If the Son shall make you free, you shall be
free indeed." f

Liberty without Jesus Christ is the worst of
bondage. The service of Jesus Christ is true
liberty. Remember His own words : " Come to
Me, all you that labor, and are burdened, and I
will refresh you. Take up My yoke upon you,
and learn of Me ; because I am meek, and hum-
ble of heart, and you shall find rest for your
souls. For My yoke is sweet, and My burden
light." { This alone is the way of liberty. Lib-
erty is in the heart. True liberty is in the ser-
vice of Him who must " reign until He hath put
all His enemies under His feet." §

• St. John viii. 32. f Ibid. 36.

t Bt Matt. xi. 28-30. \ 1 Cor. XT. «5.,

LECTURE IV.

THE SPIRIT OF ANTICHRIST.

ST. JOHN xv. 18, 19.

"If the world hate you, know ye that it hath hated Mt
before you. If you had been of the world, the world
would love its own ; but because you are not of the world,
but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the
world hateth you."

MASK it as we may, there is an irreconcilable
enmity between God and the world. The Chris-
tian world may put on the vestments and bear
the name of Christianity, but it is the world,
after all. Not that there is enmity on God's
part against the world ; for " God so loved the
world as to give His only-begotten Son; that
whosoever believeth in Him may not perish, but
may have life everlasting." * But " the friend-
ghip of this world is an enemy against God," as
we have already seen, because it is not subject to
the law of God, nor can be.

* St. John iii. 16.

100

THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAT. 101

This then is the meaning of our Lord's worda
when He said to the Apostles, who were becom-
ing daily conscious of the hatred of men against
them : " If the world hate you, know ye that it
hath hated Me before you." * If you had been
of the world — servants, friends, flatterers of the
world — the world would have loved its own, it
would have recognized its own reflection, its own
mind, its own livery ; but because you are not of
the world, but I, by grace and special election,
have chosen you out of the world, therefore, for
that very reason, because you have My mark, be-
cause you bear My name, because, in some degree,
you share my likeness; therefore the world
hateth you. This enmity is perpetual : it exists
at this day, it will exist to the end. Between
God and the world there may be an apparent
truce ; there never can be peace. God is immu-
table; His perfections cannot change. The
world is malicious, and from its malice it will
not change ; and therefore, as the Apostle says,
" What participation hath justice with injustice ?
what concord hath Christ with Belial? " f God,
then, when manifest in the flesh, in the peison
of the eternal Son, was the object of the world's
chief hatred ; and the world, after wreaking upon
Him all that scorn, derision, insults could effect,
nailed Him upon the cross. The shame and the

* St. John XT. 18. f 2 Cor. vi. 14, 15.

»*

102 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY.

passion of the Incarnate Son of God has been the
inheritance of His Church. For what is the
Church of Christ but the body of Christ ? Or,
in other words, it is Christ mystical, the mystical
person made up, as St. Augustine says, of the
divine Head in heaven and of the body spread
throughout the world ; " one man, one collective
person." The enmity and the hatred which the
world bore to Him has descended from genera-
tion to generation, as the heirloom of His body.
This, then, is Christ. Now what is Antichrist ?
In the beginning I disclaimed all intention of
entering into the exposition of unfulfilled pro-
phecies. I am speaking of patent facts under
our eyes. They are sufficient, because they give
us principles and warnings to govern our con-
duct. Nevertheless, I must say, in passing, that
if there be anything evident in the plain words
of Holy Scripture, if there be anything explicitly
declared by the Christian Fathers, and any-
thing distinctly taught by the theologians of the
Church, it is this : that Antichrist, though taken
to express a diffused spirit which pervades sys-
tems and incorporates itself in various forms in
all ages, nevertheless will be, towards the latter
days, impersonated in one who shall be the head
and the chief of that Antichristian spirit and
system, and shall use all his power against the
Name and the Church of Jesus Christ. This

THE FOUR GBEAT EVILS OF THE DAY. 108

I now set aside, as being beyond my purpose. I
am speaking of the Antichristian spirit which
manifests itself either in individuals or in whole
systems, sometimes in whole nations. Just as
the electricity which is suspended in the air is
breathed unconsciously, so the Antichristian
spirit exists in what is called the Christian
world in its present fragmentary and divided
state. And this is the subject with which to-
night I must conclude that which I have endeav-
ored, but very imperfectly, to say.

I have already drawn out before you the dis-
tinction between the world as it was before it had
faith in Christ, and as it became when the Chris-
tian Faith was received by the nations which
were federated in what we call Christendom,
and lastly, as it is now, since the world, having
once been Christian, has for the last three hun-
dred years been ceasing to be so. •

Now, the Apostle has given us three marks of
this final and Antichristian apostasy from the
Faith. The first mark is given by St. John,
where he says that " they went out from us, but
they were not of us ; for if they had been of us,
they would no doubt have remained with us ; " *
that is to say, separation or schism, actual and
visible departure from the unity of the Church.
The second mark is a denial of the Incarnation

• 1 Si John ii. 19.

104 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY.

of the Son of God. St. John says in liis second
epistle: "Many seducers are gone out into the
world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come
La the flesh. This is a seducer and an antichrist" *
The third mark is given by St. Jude : " These are
they who separate themselves, sensual men;"
which word signifies, in the original, men of nat-
ural intellect and natural reason : it does not ne-
cessarily mean sensual in the grosser sense, though
it leads to it. "These are they who separate
themselves, sensual, not having the Spirit," f that
is, they reject the Holy Ghost, and the work of
the Spirit of God in the world. This third mark
is the rejection of the revelation of the day of
Pentecost, with all those truths, laws, and au-
thorities, which took their rise from the coming
of the Spirit of Truth. These then are the three
marks of the world departing from Christianity.
If you look back over the last three hundred
years, you will see that whole nations have de-
parted from the visible unity of the Church.
They have come to deny that any visible unity
was ever instituted ; they deny their separation
by denying the law. " Where there is no law,
there is no transgression," J the Apostle says ; and
it is necessary to deny the law of unity in order
to justify the separation. Springing up from
those bodies separated from the unity of the

• 2 St. John 7. f St. Jude 19. t Bom. iy. 15.

THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAT. 105

Church, has come, first, Socinianism, or Unita*
rianism, as it is commonly called — rejection of
the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, of the
Godhead of the Incarnate Son, of the work of
the Holy Spirit of God, first in His Divine au-
thority, perpetually and infallibly guiding and
speaking through the Church ; next, in His ope-
ration through the Holy Sacraments ; and thirdly,
His workings of grace in the individual soul.
How extensively, both in speculation and in
practice, these truths are at this time rejected by
many who retain the name of Christians, you
well know. And once more, if you look at na-
tions in which these departures from truth are to
be found, you will find that the whole course of
legislation for the last three hundred years has
been, as I have already pointed out, a perpetual
departure from the laws of Christianity. For-
asmuch, then, as men are interminably and irre-
concilably divided, it is impossible that the legis-
lature can touch upon matters of Christianity or
of religion without conflicting with the private
convictions or the private opinions of some men
or some bodies of men ; and therefore the civil
powers of the world in despair have taken refuge
in the policy of eliminating and excluding alto-
gether from the public laws of the land all refer-
ence to anything but those fundamental moral
Axioms which are to be found not only in Chris*

106 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAT.

tianity, but, almost without exception, in the
order of nature.

There is to be found in such individuals as I
have been describing, in such nations and in such
governments, a worldly character, which partakes
of the Antichristian spirit. These may seem to
be harsh and severe terms, but " He that is not
with Me, is against Me." * They are the words
of Jesus Christ Himself. There is no neutrality
in matters of faith ; and the tendency of all peo-
ples, nations, and governments that have ceased
to legislate positively in a Christian sense, is to
legislate at last in a sense that is, first beside,
then contrary to, Christianity.

What I have now to do is to draw out the
particular points in which the Antichristian spirit
is to be found working in society, and therefore
round about us.

1. The first illustration I will give is this : the
impatience of all revealed authority, as entering
in any degree into the control of the thoughts or
the will of men, or into the action of govern-
ment. There is a disposition in public opinion,
and in public men, and in the masses, to say:
"Politics have nothing to do with religion/'
This I have answered before ; and I am going on
to show one more application of this false maxim.
Tt is commonly said, that what is called " dogma "

* St. Matt. xii. 30.

THE FOUR GBEAT BVILS OF THE DAY. 107

ia a limitation of the liberty of the human rea-
son ; that it is degrading to a rational being to
allow his intellect to be limited by dogmatic
Christianity ; that liberty of thought, liberty of
discovery, the progress of advancing truth, apply
equally to Christianity, if it be true, as to all
other kinds of truth ; and therefore a man, when
he allows his intellect to be subjected by dogma,
has allowed himself to be brought into an intel-
lectual bondage. Well, now, let me test the accu-
racy and the value of this supposed axiom. The
science of astronomy has been a traditional sci-
ence for I know not how many generations of
men. It has been perpetually advancing, ex-
panding, testing, completing its discoveries, and
demonstrating the truth of its theories and its in-
ductions. Now, every single astronomical truth
imposes a limit upon the intellect of man. When
once the truth has been demonstrated there is no
further question about it. The intellect of man
is thenceforward limited in respect of that truth.
He cannot any longer contradict it without losing
his dignity as a man of science — I might say, as a
rational creature. It appears, therefore, that the
certainty of every scientific truth imposes a certain
limitation upon the intellect ; and yet scientific
men tell us that, in proportion as science is ex-
panded by new discoveries and new demonstra-
tions, the field of knowledge is increased. Well,

108 THE FOUB GREAT EVILS OF THE DAT.

then, I ask, in the name of common justice and
of common sense, why may I not apply this to
revelation ? If the possession of a scientific truth,
with its complete scientific accuracy, be not a
limitation, and is therefore no degradation of the
human intellect, but an elevation and an expan-
sion of its range, why should the defined and pre-
cise doctrines of revelation be a bondage against
which the intellect of man ought to rebel ? On
the contrary, I affirm that every revealed doc-
trine is a limitation imposed upon the field of
error. The regions in which men may err be-
come narrower, because the boundaries of truth
are pushed farther, and the field of truth is en-
larged. The liberty of the human intellect ia
therefore greater, because it is in possession of a
greater inheritance of certainty. And yet, if
there be one superstition which at the present
day is undermining more than any other the faith
of men, it is the notion that belief in the posith e
dogma of Christianity is a slavish limitation cf
the intellectual freedom of man.

Once more, it is said that the revealed moral-
ity of Christianity is a limitation of the freedom
of the human will. I must ask your forbearance
for speaking of such a topic to you ; for I ought
to suppose that there is no one here so darkened,
I must say, in heart as well as in understanding,
as to think that Christian morality, by limiting

THE FOUB GBLAT EVILS OF THE DAT. 109

the actions and even the thoughts, and regulating
the freedom of the will, imposes upon them a
bondage unworthy of men. Nevertheless, there
are some who cry out against the laws of morality
which are taught by the Church of Jesus Christ,
as being an interference with human liberty.
Now, what does the morality of the Christian
law forbid? First, all things that are unjust.
Surely no man will plead for a liberty to act un-
justly. Secondly, all things that are hurtful to
himself or to his neighbor. A man will not
plead for liberty to do hurt to his neighbor. Will
he plead for liberty to do hurt to himself? to
commit suicide, for instance — that is, for the
liberty of self-murder? Lastly, it forbids the
commission of those things that are mortal before
God, of acts that are deadly in their consequences.
In the name of reason I would ask you, is there
any limit imposed upon the liberty of men in
taking from them the freedom to drink poison,
and laying upon them the bondage of living on
food ? And yet the laws of the Church impose
no }ther limitation on any man. Nevertheless,
the spirit of insubordinate intellect and insubor-
dinate will, fostered by schism and by unbelief,
is spreading fast at this day ; and men are crying
out against the authority of revelation as a yoke
and a bondage.

And it is further said, that revelation has no-
10

110 THE FOUB GREAT EVILS OF THE DAT.

thing to do with the civil authority of the
I hope that I have already given reason enough
for affirming that the civil authority of the world,
if it be not founded upon revelation, is, neverthe-
less, so guided, confirmed, and strengthened by it,
that it cannot long subsist without it. If it lose
the support and guidance of revelation, it soon
falls into the natural order, with all the penalties
of dissolution. Now, what limit does revelation
impose upon the civil power ? It limits author-
ity, in those that bear it, to the execution of jus-
tice and mercy ; it forbids tyranny and despotism
It limits the freedom of subjects by the law of
conscience, to obedience and submission ; and it
teaches man to observe the equal rights of other
men and the duties which he owes to his fellows.
It teaches to all men the sacred law which lies
at the base of all just legislation: "Do to
others as you would have men do to you." These
are the primary laws of justice and of charity.
I ask whether these are limitations hostile to the
freedom or to the prosperity of states ? In one
word, the only conservative spirit, a phrase we
hear even to weariness — that which alone up-
holds, confirms, and renders indissoluble the civil
society of mankind — is Christianity, or the reve-
lation and the laws of Jesus Christ. Neverthe-
less, if there be anything which the public opin-
ion of most countries, separated from the unity

FOUR GREAT ETILS OP THE DAT. Ill

z>f the Church — and, I am sorry to say, the pub-
lic opinion of some countries which profess still
to be within that unity — resents, it is the entrance
of the laws of revelation into the sphere of their
legislature. I shall not say too much by adding,
that there exists a wide-spread animosity against
the one only Church which will not accept of
royal or legislative supremacy. There is in the
world one Church which has never accepted of
royal supremacy in faith or morals. It has never
ac ^epted Acts of Parliament or legislative enact-
ments as superior to its own canonical legislation
and to its own spiritual executive. Now, I be-
lieve, that is the only Church against which pub-
lic animosity and even private hostility is levelled
in any marked degree. All other bodies are
treated as national, domestic, and innocuous. They
are not to be feared. If they have a will of their
own, they have no power to exert it. But the
Church which absolutely refuses the supremacy
of all civil powers is looked upon at once aa
aggression, invasion, and a menace to the supreme
authority of public opinion, and, it may be, of
princes.

2. Why is this? In one word, because the
enmity which assails revelation falls upon it
chiefly as incorporated in the Church. It exists
there as in a definite, visible, palpable form. In
the sphere of intellect men cannot lay their hands

112 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAT.

on revelation. It is, like the light of day, im-
palpable. In the order and the sphere of ideas
it is intangible altogether ; but, embodied in the
Church, it becomes a visible and palpable imper-
sonation, standing in the place of its Divine
Head, on whom men laid their hands while He
was within arm's length. But now, at the right
hand of God, He is beyond their reach. His
body, however, is here ; and therefore He cried
out to Saul on the way to Damascus, "Saul, Saul,
why persecutest thou Me ? " — that is to say, His
Church upon earth is Himself. The same spirit,
therefore, which was directed against Him while
He was within the reach of men is now directed
against His Church, which is still palpable and
within their grasp. It incorporates dogma, it
enforces discipline, it wields authority, it legis-
lates, it decrees, it inflicts censures, it Bits in judg-
ment upon the conduct of men, of private per-
sons, of professors, of nations, of prinoes. Come
what may, it will not be silent.

Let men threaten as they will, it still speaks as
the Prince of the Apostles, who said : " If it be
just in the sight of God to hear you rather than
God, judge ye." *

This Divine liberty of speech, which began in
the lips of the Son of God Himself, passed to His
Apostles, and from them has passed to His

•Acteiv. 19.

THE FOUR OEEAT EVILS OF THE DAY. 118

Church. It has spoken freely throughout all
ages, and throughout all the world. The pre-
rogatives of the Church are especially offensive
to the world. Our Lord said to the chief of the
Apostles, and through him to them all, and
through them to their successors to the end of
the world : " I will give to thee the keys of the
kingdom of heaven ; and whatsoever thou shalt
bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven ;
and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it
shall be loosed also in heaven."* We do not
explain away these words. We teach them as
we received them from our Divine Master. They
mean that what the authority of His Church
binds on earth, is by Him ratified in heaven;
that there is a twofold and concurrent action,
which in effect is identical, between the authority
of the Church on earth, and the authority of its
Divine Head in heaven. And therefore, when
the Apostle said, "If any man love not our
Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema mara-
natha," he pronounced a judicial sentence which
had its effect, though it was not yet seen to follow,
as when our Divine Master said to the barren fig-
tree, " May no fruit grow on thee henceforward
forever" f aa(i tne fig-tree withered away ; and as
when Peter rebuked Ananias and Sapphira, his
sentence was straightway executed. We may

* St. Matt. xyi. 19. f Ibid. xxi. 19.

10* H

114 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAT

not see, indeed, these palpable and immediate
results ; but we know with Divine certainty thaf
the effects of excommunication will surely follow
In the Epistle to the Corinthians the Apostle,
writing of the incestuous man, said : " I, indeed
absent in body, but present in spirit, have already
judged, as though I were present, him who hath
so done : in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
you being gathered together with my spirit, with
the power of the Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver
such a one to Satan for the destruction of the
flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of
our Lord Jesus Christ." * These are not empty
threats; they are judicial pronouncements of a
Divine authority. Will any one tell me that this
power has ceased in the world? Read the history
of sacrilege against the Holy See ; or read, if you
will, the history of sacrilege written by a well-
known writer of the Church of England two hun
dred years ago, who believed this Christian law,
and verified it in the history of those who, three
hundred years back, committed or partook of
sacrilege in England. Search through history,
and find me an example of sacrilege which has
not sooner or later met its doom. There is a God
who judgeth the earth ; and He judges it through
those laws which He incorporated in the authority
of His Church. He executes His judgments by

« 1 Cor. v. 3-6.

THE FOUR GREAT EVIL8 OF THE DAY. 116

His own Divine providence, when and hew He
wills. Now, against that which I have said,
there is a spirit of hostility and contempt, at
least assumed. I say assumed contempt; be-
cause, under the appearance of derision, there ia
a sharpness in the tone which shows the animosity
of fear.

3. There is yet another kind of Antichristian
enmity, which finds its way into the hearts of
many who would be startled and wounded if they
were told that their spirit is Antichristian. If
there be a subject against which public writers,
public speakers, and public talkers are per-
petually declaiming, it is what is called the re-
ligious life — the life of monks and of nuns.
The whole literature of countries that are not
Catholic is full of all manner of tales, calumnies,
slanders, fables, fictions, absurdities, on the sub-
ject of monks and nuns. Now, why should men
trouble themselves so much about it ? Why can-
not they leave peaceful people to use their own
liberty ? No man or woman is compelled to be
monk or nun ; and if by perversion of light, if
by idiocy, as the world calls it, any should be
found who desire to live the life of monk or nun,
why should public opinion trouble itself so much
about the matter ? Men may become Mormons ;
they may settle down at Salt Lake ; they may
ioin any sect ; they may adopt any practicei

i!6 THE FOUR GEEAT EVILS OF THE DAY.

which, do not bring them under the hands of the
police, and the public opinion of this country
does not trouble itself about them. What, then,
is the reason why it troubles itself about the re-
ligious life? Because it is a life of perfection;
because it is a life which is a rebuke to the world,
a direct and diametrical contradiction of the
axioms and maxims by which the world governs
itself. The world is therefore conscious of the
rebuke, and uneasy under that consciousness.
When the Son of God came into the world, all
men turned against Him except the few whom
He called to be His disciples. Even a heathen
philosopher has recorded this belief: that if a
perfectly just man were ever to be seen on earth,
he would be out of place and a wonder ; or, as
we may say, a monster among men. And why ?
Because, in the universal injustice of mankind,
he would stand alone, and his life would be a re-
buke. In Holy Scripture this is described, as it
were, with a pencil of light. In the Book of
Wisdom, the men of this world say : " Let us lie
in wait for the just ; because he is not for our
turn, and he is contrary to our doings, and up-
braideth us with transgressions of the law, and
divulgeth against us the sins of our way of
life ... he abstaineth from our ways as from
filthiness, and he preferreth the latter end of the
just „ . . he calleth himself the Son of God ... he

THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY. 117

is grievous unto us even to behold." * The fingei
of the Holy Spirit has here traced the real anal-
ysis of this animosity against the religious life.
Some years ago I remember reading a paper
upon "The Extinct Virtues," and what were
they? Obedience, chastity, voluntary poverty.
If so, then, the eight beatitudes are extinct. I
do not suppose the world would accept this.
T.bey would count me a severe and an unjust ac-
cuser if I were to say that disorder, unchastity,
and the love of riches are the ascendant virtues
of modern society. But if obedience, chastity,
and voluntary poverty are extinct, their opposites
must be in the ascendant. Of this I am sure :
that the prevalent spirit among men at this day
is to feel a secret hostility against a life which
surpasses their own ; and therefore it is that we
hear these tales, fables, slanders, fictions about
monks and nuns ; and that we have books like
La Eeligieuse and Le Maudit ; or romances about
the acts of ex -Benedictine nuns at Naples, and
such like ; or that which is the gospel of a multi*
tude of people — though it has been exposed a
hundred times over as a stupid self-refuting im-
posture, condemned and exposed by positive local
proof and distinct documentary evidence — the
history of "Maria Monk." Nevertheless, thii
abomination is printed and reprinted and bought

* Wisd. ii. 12-16.

118 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY.

and sold, because there is a gross morbid taste to
which it panders, and a diseased hatred which it
gratifies. It is not only against the life of per-
fection, but against every reflection of God, where-
soever it may be seen, that this Antichristian ani-
mosity directs itself. And there are two things
which, perhaps, are more hated, more intensely
and more bitterly attacked, than any others.

The first is the confessional, because in it the
priest sits in the name of God, hearing all things
in His stead, with his lips closed, and ready to
shed his blood rather than break that seal. He
holds a power which was given him in the Apos-
tles on that night when our Divine Lord breathed
upon them, and said, " Receive ye the Holy Ghost;
whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven
them, and whose sins you shall retain, they are
retained." * He sits there invested with that au-
thority, a witness to the day of judgment ; and
the self-accusation of men is the prelude and the
preparation for the last day. The world, if it
could, would pull the Last Judge off His throne ;
but, because He is beyond the reach of its arm,
they pull the priest out of the confessional.

The other thing against which the enmity of
men is directed, is the presence of Jesus in the
Blessed Sacrament. The Sacrament of the Altar
U the manifestation of the Divine presence ; it if

• St. John xz. 22, 23.

THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY. Ill

the incorporation of the Divine love, sanctity,
and power ; and against these things the Anti-
christian revolt hurls itself as the chief object of
its hatred : as but the other day, if our tidings
speak the truth, the Blessed Sacrament was sacri-
legiously mocked and scattered in the midst of
blaspheming men and weeping women.

4. There is yet another object of this animos-
ity. What I said last leads on immediately to
the priesthood. Englishmen have heard from
childhood so much about priestcraft, and about
being priest-ridden, and about bad priests, that
they grow up with a belief that a priest is a nox-
ious creature, a sort of fera natura, something
specially venomous, anti-social, perilous to the
commonwealth of men. What is the priesthood ?
The priesthood is a body of men, instituted by
our Saviour, into which any man of you, if he
has the will and the fitness, may freely enter to-
morrow. It is not a caste ; it is not Freemasonry ;
it is not a secret society of moral assassins, nor a
close corporation of tyrannous men. It is open
to all ; it has no secrets but the sins of those that
repent. It is the most democratic of all the gov-
ernments on earth : the sons of peasants and of
Dloughmen are at this day standing at our altars
and sitting upon the throne of Apostles. The
Holy Council of Trent lays upon the conscience
of bishops, in founding their seminaries, to re*

120 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OP THE DAY.

plenish them rather with the children of the
poorer classes. The priesthood, therefore, is so
open to every man, that if there be a secret craft,
a priestcraft, to be learnt, let him come and learn
it ; he has only to blame himself if he does not know
all about us. We have no mysteries, or ciphers,
or Masonic signs. The priesthood and the theol-
ogy which makes the priest are open to every-
body ; it is not like secret societies, which hide
themselves from the light and labor underground.
The priesthood is in noonday, standing at the
altar, and everybody may know what it is ; and
yet we hear of " sacerdotalism " as if it were the
Black Death or a plague of Egypt, or a pesti-
lence which walks in darkness. In the public
newspapers men are warned, and hopes are ex-
pressed that the world at last may be saved from
" sacerdotalism." In the fourth chapter of St.
Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, we read these
words : " He led captivity captive, He gave gilla
to men," " and He gave some Apostles, and some
prophets, and other some evangelists, and other
some pastors and doctors (or teachers), for the
perfecting of the saints, for the work of the min-
istry, for the edifying of the body of Christ." *
Here is the priesthood : a body of men chosen
first by our Lord, illuminated, trained, and con-
formed to Himself,, to be the guardians and the

» Eph. iv. 8, 11, 12.

THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DJ.Y. 121

transmitters of the truths which He revealed to
them, and of the laws which He gave into their
custody. They were charged afterwards to de-
liver the same to others whom they should select,
whom they, in turn, should illuminate and train
to the same likeness, thereby transmitting to the
end of the world, undiminished, the custody of
Divine Truth which was delivered to their charge.
This, then, is the priesthood ; and there is no doubt
that it must be an object of special animosity ;
and for the very reason with which I began: "If
the world hate you, know ye that it hath hated
Me before you." This was said to the first priests.
" If you had been of the world, the world would
love its own ; but because you are not of the
world, but I have chosen you out of the world,
therefore the world hateth you." * They are
witnesses of the truth, and they have power to
deliver it; and they have power to deliver it,
because they have a Divine certainty of the truth
they deliver ; and they have a Divine certainty
of that truth, because they are the disciples of
the Church which is divinely guided, before they
become the teachers of the faithful. To them is
committed the power of applying that truth to
men — that is, of guiding their thoughts and
consciences, and of distinguishing truth from
falsehood in matters of faith, of judging the ao-

» St. John xv. 18, 19.

122 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAT.

tions of men, of distinguishing between right
and wrong in questions of the Divine law, and
of pronouncing upon them censure, if need be ;
giving or withholding absolution by their sen-
tence before God. I do not wonder, therefore,
that there should be an animosity in those who
do not love the Master, from whose side the
priesthood springs; and I do not wonder that a
bad priest — if he can be found — is the hero and
the saint of the world. And it never happens
that an unhappy priest, either by loss of faith or
by loss of fidelity, falls from his sacred state, but
he is straightway glorified as a theologian,
preacher, doctor, and I know not what besides.
The world receives him as its own, and because
he is its own, loves him.

5. Lastly, there is one person upon whom this
Antichristian spirit concentrates itself, as the
lightning on the conductor. There is one person
upon earth who is the pinnacle of the temple,
which is always the first to be struck. It is the
Vicar of Jesus Christ ; and that for the most
obvious of reasons. There is no man on earth so
near to Jesus Christ as His own Vicar. Two
hundred and fifty-seven links, and we arrive at
the Person of the Son of God. Two hundred
and fifty-seven Pontiffs, and we are in the pres-
ence of the Master whom His Vicar represents.
That chain runs through the ages of

POI7B GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY. 12*

history, and connects us with the day when, on
the coasts of Decapolis, Jesus said to Peter,
" Thou art Peter, and upon this i ock I will build
My Church, and the gates of hell shall not pre-
vail against it." No man therefore brings us so
near to the Person of the Son of God as His
V*car upon earth, and no man is to be made so
Hie to Him in suffering for His sake. The
fir it nine-and-twenty Pontiffs were crowned with
mirtyrdom. Five-and-forty times, since then,
the Pontiffs have either been driven out of Rome
by violence, or by violence have been hindered
from setting their foot in it. Their lives have
been lives of wandering, like those the Apostle
describes in the Epistle to the Hebrews: "Of
whom the world was not worthy ; wandering in
deserts, in mountains, and in dens, and in caves
of the earth." * Their whole life has been a life
of the Cross, and that because they bear the
office, and stand in the place, of their Divine
Master. The Evangelists write of Jesus, and
those that were with Him; as in the Book of
Acts it is Peter, and those that were with him.
He had taken his Master's place. And to Peter
were given the two great prerogatives which con-
itituted the plenitude of his Master's office. To
hi n first, and to him alone, before all the others,
though in the presence of the others, was given

* Heb. xi. 38.

124 THE FOUR GBEAI EVILS CF THE DAT.

the power of the keys. To him, and to him alone*
and in the presence of the others, was given also
the charge of the universal flock : " Feed My
sheep." To him, and to him alone, exclusively,
were spoken the words, " Simon, Simon, behold,
Satan hath desired to have you, that he might
gift you as wheat " (that is, all the Apostles) ;
" but I have prayed for thee " — in the singular
number: for thee, Peter — "that thy faith fail
not ; and thou being once converted, confirm thy
brethren ; " * and therefore the plenitude of juris-
diction, and the plenitude of truth, with the
promise of Divine assistance to preserve him in
that truth, was given to Peter, and in Peter to
his successors.

Compare together Home and Constantinople.
Rome, at all times assailed by a warfare so man-
ifold that the world has hurled upon it every
weapon that man could forge or direct ; Constan-
tinople, under imperial protection, fostered and
endowed, sank into schism, and is in bondage to
the false prophet. Rome suffering, but free ; free
and royal ; royal and reigning over the Christian
world. Make another contrast. Poor Ireland,
with its unbroken tradition of immaculate Cath-
olic Faith. Poor Ireland — what preserved it
three hundred years ago, and during three hun-
dred years of suffering for the Faith ? Fidelity

* St. Luke xxii. 31, 32.

THE FOUR GEEAT EVILS OF THE DAT. 12ft

to the Vicar of Jesus Christ, fidelity to Rome,
fidelity to the changeless See of Peter. The arch
of the Faith is kept fast by that keystone, which
the world would fain strike out if it could, but
never has prevailed to do so; and Ireland has
been sustained by it : and to this day among the
nations of the Christian world there is not to be
found a people so instinct with faith and so gov-
erned by Christian morality as the people of Ire-
land. Driven abroad into 'all the nations of the
world, into the colonies of the British Empire,
into the great northern continent of America —
wheresoever they go they carry with them their
faith, and sow it broadcast in works of a magni-
tude and generosity which we here, in the midst
of all our wealth, cannot attempt to imitate.
Compare with poor Ireland imperial and prosper-
ous England. The picture would be too sad ;
and, as I have said before, I refrain from all that
could needlessly wound any that are not of my
flock. You know the past divisions and estrange-
ments, the animosities which, I hope, are now
slackened, the contentions which, I trust, are now
at an end. But what a history has been the reli-
gious history of England for the last three hun-
dred years! What is its religious state now?
WTiat will be its future? The majestic cathe-
drals of England, the noble abbeys, the churches
of ten thousand parishes, the lofty structures
11*

126 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE BIT.

of our ancient towns, the sweeter, if humbler
churches in our green hamlets, and in our wood-
lands, and on our solitary downs, show that Faith
had penetrated everywhere through the English
people, and that the people were profoundly
Christian. I have been reading lately the booka
of piety written here in England some two hun-
dred years before what men call the Reformation,
in which, if the tracing of the Spirit of God in
the human heart, transcribing itself upon the
page, can anywhere be found, it is in the revela-
tions of Divine love and the interior conscious-
ness of the soul which are left to us by our ances-
tors. Are Englishmen never any more to return
to the unity of the Faith ? Are we never again
to worship at one altar ? Are Englishmen to be
united in everything but faith, and in faith to be
forever divided? God forbid! I rejoice to know
that the English people believe profoundly in
God ; that, as yet, the plague of Atheism has not
made its havoc among them. They believe, too,
in Christianity as a Divine revelation, and there-
fore they believe in Jesus Christ their Saviour ;
and " no man can say, the Lord Jesus, but by
the Holy Ghost," * and " every spirit which con-
fesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is :f
God." f Tne7 believe, too, that Holy Scripture
is the written word of God. It is true, there are

• 1 Cor. xU. 3. f 1 Si, John iv. 2.

THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OP THE DAY. 127

to be found here and there rationalists and critic*
and sceptics, and shallow heads, who may have
rejected the written word of God : but these are
not the English people. They hold it fast aa
their birthright. I rejoice to know it. Ay, more
than this ; they have declared themselves in these
last years, and will all the more inflexibly de-
clare themselves, to be Christians, being sharply
warned and taught by what is now before our
eyes. They will demand that their children too
shall be brought up as Christians. I rejoice to
know all this. May God strengthen those things
that remain I May He preserve them where they
exist, and revive them where they are declining I
May He once more unite what is divided, in the
charity of truth !

Let us now sum up what has been said of the
four great evils of the day. First, we have seen
that one great evil of this day is the revolt of the
intellect from God. I pointed out to you how
that revolt manifested itself in Atheism, in Deism,
in heresy, in the diminishing and explaining away
of Christian doctrine, and in practical unbelief
Secondly, I showed you the revolt of the will from
the law of God. I traced it out in the lawless-
ness which is characteristic of these later days,
in the world-worship which is a moral apostasy
from God, in the luxury which is eating out the
heart of morals, in the sensuous piety which para-

128 THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THB DAY.

lyzes and taints even the devout, and in the soft*
ness and self-indulgence which makes us unworthy
of the Cross. Thirdly, I endeavored to sketcn
out the revolt of society from the authority of
God. I pointed out that civil society is a Divine
creation in the order of nature ; that God elevated
and consecrated the order of nature and of poli-
tics by instituting His Church in the world, and
by uniting the authority of civil government with
the Christian authority of the Church. I traced
out also the rebellion, the divorce, the separation,
which has taken place between these two divine
creations — the State, as it is called, and the
Church — and as a consequence, the desecration
of the civil power, the stripping of the civil
society of the world of its Christian character,
and the reducing it once more fco the mere state
of nature. In those ages when society was Chris-
tian, the public opinion, public laws, public
axioms, the influence all around, sustained the
individual, raised him upwards, and supported
him in his higher life. Now it is society that
drags the individual down ; Christianity lingers
in individuals, but it has departed from society.
And, lastly, I have endeavored to draw out what
the Antichristian spirit is. It is the spirit of the
world, which has separated itself altogether from
the Church and from Christianity, or retain* only
a fragmentary Christianity, and is, sometimes

THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAT. 129

consciously, sometimes unconsciously, penetrated
by the Antichristian enmity. I have marked
also the special objects against which this spiri*
directs itself: Revelation, the Catholic and Bo-
man Church, the life of perfection, the priesthood,
and the Vicar of Jesus Christ

The general conclusion from all that I have
said is this: there is no hope for man or for
society but in returning to God. There is no
other hope. There is nothing but God on which
the soul can rest, on which society can stand.
The most perfect legislation, the most refined
human laws, the most acute human philosophy,
political economy, benevolence, and beneficence
in all its forms, all the social sciences of which
we hear so much — all these are powerless with-
out God. The most finished time-piece, in which
every minute articulation is complete and perfect,
cannot strike one note or measure one moment
unless a living hand communicate to it the fund
of motion which it afterwards exhausts. The
mightiest machine which will lift a hammer of
surpassing weight, break bars of iron, or cut them
as if they were the branches of the fir-tree, the
most wonderful structures of mechanical skill,
are nothing until the momentum is given, and
that momentum must be sought elsewhere. Me-
chanics can do nothing without dynamical pow-
ers; and these dynamical powers, for men and
I

180 THE FOUB GREAT EVILS OF THE DAT.

for society, are to be found in God alone. They
can be found only in Him to whose image man
is made ; they can be found nowhere but in Hia
truth, which is the key of the human intellect,
and in His grace, which is the only hand that
can touch the heart in man ; and if this be so,
they can be found only in Christianity. Neither
adults nor children can be touched by the laws
of states, except externally. The state may con-
trol the external actions of men — it can im-
prison, it can fine, it can inflict capital punish-
ment; but it cannot convert the sinner, nor
change the will, nor illuminate the intellect, nor
guide the conscience, nor shape a character. It
cannot educate a child. All this is internal, not
external ; it is not mechanism ; it belongs to the
living powers of the soul ; and God alone, by
truth and grace, can accomplish this work in
man.

I implore you, in God's name, and all the more
because of the events, full of sorrow and of shame
to Christian men, which have crowded so thick
upon us in these last months, I may say in this
fast week, that, with all your heart and will, and
all the weight of your soul, you cast yourselves
on God. He alone can save. Use all your in-
fluence with those around you, in your homes,
your households, your friendships ; and if you
have public influence, public trust, public author*

THK FOUB OBBAT EVILS OP THE DAT. 181

ity, strive that all who bear responsibility shall
oast themselves on God, as the only hope for so-
ciety and for the people. Do you want to see
what man without God can do ? Read the his-
tory of the last eighty years in Paris. You have
there one simple phenomenon — generation rising
after generation without God in the world. And
why? Because without Christian education. First,
an atheistical revolution ; next, an empire pene-
trated through and through with a mocking phi-
losophy and a reckless indifferentism ; afterwards
came governments, changed in name and in form,
but not in practice nor in spirit. The Church,
trammelled by protection, its spiritual action
faint and paralyzed, could not penetrate the
masses of the people nor form the rising youth.
It labored fervently ; its sons fought nobly for
Christian freedom; thousands were saved; but
for eighty years the mass of men has grown up
without God and without Christ in the world.
My whole soul pities them. These outbursts of
horror, strife, outrage, sacrilege, bloodshed, are
the harvest reaped from the rank soil in which
•uch seed was cast. All this is true. But how
did souls created to the image of God grow up in
§uch a state ? They were robbed : robbed before
they were born, robbed of their inheritance, and
reared up in an education without Christianity.
Let this be a warning to ourselves. We are on

182 THE FOUR GEEAT EVILS OF THE DAY,

the turn of the tide. A few active, busy, confi-
dent, and eloquent men were a year ago carrying
us away with theories of state education without
religion. We were told that a child might be
taught to read and to write and to spell and to
sum without Christianity. Who denies it ? But
what does this make of them ? To what would
they grow up? The formation of the will and
heart and character, the formation of a man, ia
education, and not the reading and the writing
and the spelling and the summing. For fifteen
hundred years, Christians served God and loved
man, before as yet they received this cultivation ;
and we, because we have it profusely, we are for-
getting the deeper and diviner lessons. The tra-
dition of Christian education in England is as
yet unbroken. It is threatened now for the first
time. In God's name, stand fast, and save it. I
can add no more. Do not be afraid if you find
yourselves in the minority. " Woe to you when
men shall bless you ! " * You must be censured
if you are the disciples of Jesus Christ. The
world that hated Him will not love you. " Tne
disciple is not above his master, nor the servant
above his lord. It is enough for the disciple that
he be as his master, and the servant as his lord."f
"If they have called the master of the houM
Beelzebub, how much more them of his house'

• St Luke vi. 26. f St. Matt x. 24, 25.

THE FOUR GBEAT EVILS OF THE DAT. 131

hold?" And therefore, if you have the mark
of the world's hatred upon you, accept it ; press
it to your bosom. It is the token that you are
the disciples of the true and only Master. If
you have the world's favor and sunshine, look to
yourselves. There is a dark future before the
world. What it may be, God alone knows. The
Church will have to suffer ; but there is a light
upon it, and that light can never fade. We are
in evil times, marked deeply by the four great,
evils of which I have spoken. Around us are
"evil men and seducers, who grow worse and
worse, erring, and driving into error." * " Many
shall come in My name," our Lord has said, " and
seduce many ; " and because of their iniquity, the
love and the charity of the many shall wax cold.
Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom
against kingdom; and there shall be wars and
pestilences in many places. But the end is not
yet. This is only the beginning of troubles.
Keep close to the footsteps of the Master who
spoke those words ; and, when these signs are in
the sky and upon the earth, remember that He
also said, " When these things begin to come to
pass, look up, and lift up your heads ; for yout
redemption is at hand." f

• 2 Tim. iii. 14. f St. Luke ud. 28.

12

THE ENIX

THE FOURFOLD

SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

BY

HENRY EDWARD,

P. J. KENEDY & SONS

44 BARCLAY STREET, NEW YORK

CONTENTS.

UECTUEE I.

IA01

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD OVEB THE INTELLECT
OF MAN t

LECTURE II.

THB SOVEBEIGNTY OF GOD OVEB THE WlLL OF

MAN S6

LECTURE III.

THE SOVEBBiGNTY OF GOD OVEB SOCIRTY . . 81

LECTURE IV.

THE SOVEBEIGNTY OF THE DlVINE HEAD OF THB

CHURCH 87

LECTURE V.

THE SOVEBEIGNTY OF THE CHUBCH DERIVED FBOM
ITS DIVINE HEAD ....... 108

LECTURE VI.

THE SOVBBEIGNTY OF GOD OVEB THE COFBSB OF

THB WOBLD 189

Tii

LECTURE L

THE SOVEEEIGNTY OF GOD OVER THE
INTELLECT OF MAN.

ACTS xvii. 30, 31.

•* And God indeed, having winked at the times of this igno-
rance, now declareth unto men, that all should every-
where do penance. Because He hath appointed a day
wherein He will judge the world in equity, by the Man
whom He hath appointed, giving faith to all, by raising
Him from the dead."

THESE were the words of St. Paul to the Athe-
nians, when their philosophers called him a
"word-sower" and a "publisher of new gods,"
because he preached to them Jesus and the resur-
rection from the dead. This was his meaning :
God, in times past, shut His eyes to the idola-
tries and polytheism of men. Those times are
past now, for God has manifested Himself to the
world. He has made Himself known, and has
therefore commanded all men everywhere to do
penance — that is, to believe in him, and to repent

9

10 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

of their sins — under pain of eternal judgment ;
for he has appointed a day in which He will judge
the world by that Man, whom he hath appointed
to be the Judge of the living and the dead ; and
for this end He has given faith — that is, a wit-
ness and an illumination to believe His word by
the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
In this declaration, the Apostle distinctly asserts
the sovereignty of God as the Creator, and as the
Judge of all mankind ; His sovereignty over man
both in body and soul, over the intellect in all its
faculties, over the will in all its powers. As
Maker and Lord, God has dominion and sov-
ereignty over man, whom He made to His own
image and likeness ; and man being of a rational,
a moral nature, is therefore a responsible being.

Last year, the Council of the Vatican made a
decree in these words : " Forasmuch as God is
the Creator, and the Lord of all things, there-
fore man altogether depends upon Him ; and
every created intellect is subject to the Uncre-
ated Truth, and owes to it a perfect obedience
both of reason and of will." * Attached to that
Decree are these two canons : " If any man shall
say, that the reason of man is so independent of
God that God cannot command faith, let him be
anathema." And again : " If any man shall say,
that the act of faith in man is not free, let him

• First Constitution on Catholic Faith, chap. iii.

THE FOURFOLD 8OVEBBIQNTY OF GOD. 11

be anathema ; " and this enunciates the subject
of which I purpose to speak : The sovereignty
of God over the intellect, that is, the rights of
God over the rational creatures He has made.
He requires of them a perfect obedience of their
rational and moral nature ; and holds them re-
sponsible to render that obedience. The way in
which God requires the obedience of the rational
nature of man is by faith.

Faith is belief in truth : but not of all truth,
for of truth there are two distinct kinds. There
is one kind which is necessary, and therefore
compels the assent of the intellect. For instance,
that things which are equal to the same, are
equal to one another ; that two parallel lines can
never intersect; that the whole is greater than
the part ; that the three angles of a triangle are
equal to two right-angles, and the like : — these
are necessary truths, which the intellect of man
is constrained by an intrinsic law of its nature to
assent to. In these truths, therefore, there is
knowledge, but not faith. There is about them
no obscurity, and no intervention of the Divine
authority. But all moral truths, that is, all
those truths which relate to the world unseen, to
the nature of God, to the moral duty of man, to
his future destiny — all these are truths which
are not intrinsically necessary. They depend
upon the will of God, and upon the constitution

12 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

and order of His revelation. They are therefore
believed upon the authority of God, who has re-
vealed them. The authority of God intervenes
to require of us the submission of our intellect
and of our will to the revelation He has made

It is thus, then, that God exercises His sover-
eignty in requiring faith. He commands faith
under the penalty of eternal death. The words
of our Divine Lord expressly declare this law :
"He that believeth, and is baptized, shall be
saved : but he that believeth not, shall be con-
demned." * That is, the voluntary act of faith
is taken as the test of obedience; and according
to the obedience or disobedience of the rational
nature will the judgment be hereafter.

We are confidently told in these days that faith
is a weakness and a blindness ; that it is unwoi-
thy of man ; that it is servility and degradation,
and I know not what besides. I will affirm, then,
that faith is the most perfect act of the human
reason ; that the most reasonable act of man is
to believe in the Uncreated Reason of God ; that
the highest act of an intellectual nature, next
only to the eternal contemplation of the Uncre-
ated Truth hereafter, is to believe that Uncreated
Truth now; and this is what I shall endeavor to
draw out.

1. First, God exercises His sovereignty over

•St. MarkxvL 16.

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD! IS

the human intellect, even by the lights of nature.
There is in the natural world a manifestation of
God which lays all men under the obligation of
knowing Him. They who, with the lights of
nature before them, remain in ignorance of God,
are not only intellectually in error, they are also
morally in error, and they are responsible for that
moral error. Not to know God is sin. The
Apostle says to the Romans, " The invisible things
of Him " — that is, of God — " from the creation
of the world, are clearly seen, being understood
by the things that are made, His eternal power
also and divinity ; so that they are inexcusable.
Because that, when they had known God, they
have not glorified Him as God, nor gave thanks ;
but became vain in their thoughts, and their fool-
ish heart was darkened. For, professing them-
selves to be wise, they became fools. And they
changed the glory of the incorruptible God into
the likeness of the image of a corruptible man." *
Here, then, is an express declaration, that the
lights of nature are sufficient to prove to us the
existence of God, His power, His Divinity, and,
therefore, His perfections ; so that they are inex-
cusable who do not know God, and, therefore, do
not believe and make an act of faith in Him, and
of submission to His sovereignty, as their Maker
and Lord.

• Bom. i. 20-23.

14 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

Again, the Apostle says : " When the Gentile^
who have not the law, do by nature those thinga
that are of the law, these, having not the law,
are a law to themselves : who show the work of
the law written in their hearts, their conscience
bearing witness to them, and their thoughts
within themselves accusing them, or else defend-
ing them."* That is, there is in every man a
moral sense, or instinct, or judgment, or testi-
mony to right and wrong, which rebukes him
when he does wrong, which sustains him when he
does right. There is therefore an inward light,
whereby the human reason may perceive the
moral law of God ; and if so, then every man has
within him a testimony to know that he has an
intellectual and moral nature ; and if he has an
intellectual and moral nature, he has a soul —
that is, the image of God — within him, and th.it
image has an immortality. They, then, who,
amidst the lights of nature, do not know God, or
the distinctions of right and wrong, or that they
have a soul which is immortal and responsible,
are guilty for that ignorance. To be ignorant of
these things is sin, because such ignorance is vin-
cible. The lights of nature are sufficient to prove
these things, and they who are ignorant of them
are willingly ignorant of them ; that is, ignorant
through their own will, and therefore culpable

• Bom. ii. 14, 1&

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 15

before God ; and for that culpable ignorance will
have to give account at the last day.

2. But, secondly, there is another world by
which God has revealed Himself. The lights of
the natural creation on all sides testify to the
truths of which I have already spoken ; but there
is a supernatural world at this moment round
about us, against which the disputers of this world
rail, as the philosophers at Athens. They who
preach of this supernatural world are "word-
Bowers," babblers, "publishers of new gods."
Nevertheless, there exists in the midst of man-
kind a kingdom, present, visible, and audible,
manifesting itself with sufficient evidence, through
which God demands the submission of faith,
through which He manifests His sovereignty over
the intellect of man. That kingdom has about
it certain marks, properties, and prerogatives,
which no human institution, kingdom, or empire
ever possessed.

For instance, its indefectible existence. The
history of mankind is the history of successive
dynasties. Like shadows they have come and
passed away ; they have each one contained the
principle of its own dissolution. Not one of them
was intrinsically changeless and incorruptible.
The Church of Jesus Christ, from its foundation
to this hour, continues incorruptible in itself.
The worldly accidents around it are human, and

id THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF OOD.

cleave to it like the dust to our feet. As the light
of heaven is changeless, incorruptible, unsoiled
in its purity, though it looks upon all the corrup-
tions of the earth, so is the Church of God in the
world ; and as the Presence of our Divine Lord
in the Blessed Sacrament abides in its immutable
sanctity in the midst of the sins of men, so the
Church of Jesus Christ abides incorruptibly the
same, the sins and corruptions of those who visi-
bly belong to it notwithstanding. It also has an
indissoluble unity, and an immutability in the
law of morals and in the doctrines of the faith,
which it has taught from the beginning, and now
at this time teaches in every place.

If I affirm that the faith has never changed,
men may say : " If you speak of past time, how
can you prove it ? " I affirm, therefore, that the
faith is the same now in all the world. This is a
fact of the present, and may be easily tested.
Now this changeless identity of one truth in all
places at this time is the countersign of the im-
mutable perpetuity of the same truth in all times.
Things which spring from one law have one type.
Corruption is change, and breeds diversity. Iden-
tity points to a changeless principle which is
above the order of nature.

Now these are phenomena manifesting a super-
natural kingdom in this natural world. The rea-
»on of man, if it be consistent, can ascribe the

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 17

existence of that fact to none but the Divine
Creator. If man had made it, man might rid
himself of it. If man had founded it, he might
destroy it. If man had set it up, he might sweep
it off the face of the earth ; but man has striven
to sweep it away, and cannot, any more than he
can sweep away the mountains which God has
rooted in the earth. God perpetually defies man
by the existence of His Church. He manifests
His sovereignty over the reason of man by this
witness, which man can neither deny nor explain
aTray. He can in no way account for its exist-
ence and changeless identity, if he will not ac-
count for it by the only solution which is true.
God shows His sovereignty by baffling the reason
and will of men, which cannot rid the world of
the presence of God, manifested in the super-
natural order of His power.

The mere lights of nature, then — for I am
thus far treating the question as a matter of
human reason, of human history — these testify,
both in the natural and in what I will call the
Christian world, to the existence of God's sover-
eignty. But this is not all. The Christian world
which testifies to the sovereignty of God, testifies
to the coming of the Son of God in the flesh — •
that is, to the Incarnation. It testifies to the per-
petual presence of God the Holy Ghost. As a
fact of history, it is certain that it has spoken and
2* B

18 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

still speaks to mankind with a voice which nevei
ceases, and the world tells us that its pretensions
never change ; that is to say, it teaches always
the same things, and claims for that which it
teaches a Divine authority. It calls on men to
submit their intellect to its Divine voice. It
claims, in virtue of God's authority over his crea-
tures, that we should render to Him that worship
of the reason, "that reasonable service," which the
Apostle declares to be the true sacrifice of man to
God.* When St. Paul preached to the Athenians,
BO long as they believed him only to be a disputer
like themselves, and that his teaching was based
only on human philosophy, they called him a
" word-sower ; " but in the day when they knew
that he was a teacher sent from God, that he
had Divine assistance in what he taught, that the
message he uttered was a Divine message, that
the authority by which he spoke was the au-
thority of God, from that moment they received
all he said as coming from a fountain of Divine
certainty. They believed ; that is, they offered
the obedience of faith to what he said. They
knew that, in hearing him, they heard the word
of God ; that what he delivered, he delivered not
from himself, but from the Master that sent him.
So is it now with the Church in the world.
The sovereignty which God claims over our Intel-

* Rom. xM. 1.

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OP GOD. 19

lect is the obedience of faith rendered to the
Divine voice of His Church.

We can stand in relation to God and His truth
only in one of two ways. We are either the
critics who examine, test, and choose, who accept
or reject for ourselves by our own lights and our
own judgment ; or we are the disciples who sit at
the feet of a Divine teacher, receiving by faith,
with the simple adhesion of our whole nature, in-
tellectual and moral, that which He teaches. We
owe Him the submission of our intellect, because
we know that all revealed truth comes from the
uncreated intelligence of God. The highest act
of the reason of man is to submit itself, and to be
conformed to the intelligence of God. We owe
to Him the submission of our reason, because the
Uncreated Truth is the original of our intelli-
gence, and will be the law of our judgment here-
after. We owe Him also the love of our hearts,
because that manifestation of the truth of God is
the manifestation also of His grace and His love.

What has been said may, I think, suffice to
show that the obedience of faith is not servile,
nor degrading, nor irrational, nor unworthy of an
intellectual being. Nay, I shall show hereafter
that the argument turns the other way ; as may
readily be seen by a moment's consideration of
the effects of this submission of faith to a Divine
teacher.

*) THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF OOD.

3. The first and immediate effect is the illumi-
nation of the reason. The reason is pervaded by
a light which, without faith, it could not possess.
And the intellect is dignified by that illumina-
tion. How, then, can it be degraded ? What is
the illumination which we receive by faith ? The
Apostle says : " Every best gift, and every perfect
gift, is from above, coming down from the Father
of lights, with whom there is no change, nor
shadow of vicissitude,"* forasmuch as He is the
immutable truth. It is, therefore, a participa-
tion of the light of God. Again : "That was the
true Light, which enlighteneth every man that
cometh into the world." f The light of God is
the dignity of the intellect of man. In what,
then, does it consist ? It may be said to consist
in three things.

First, in the most pure and perfect knowledge
mankind has ever had of God : of His nature,
personality, and perfections ; of His wisdom, sanc-
tity, purity, love, mercy, power ; and also of His
relations to us, as our Father, our Redeemer, our
Sanctifier. Secondly, in the most perfect knowl-
edge of the nature of man; because God was
manifested in our manhood. The original and
the image were united in One Person ; and in th«
Person of Jesus Christ the most perfect manifes-
tation of the image of God in our manhood, glo-

• fit, James i. 17. f St. John i. 9.

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGN!! OF GOD. 21

rifled by the incarnation of the Divine Original,
and enveloped in the splendor of the Eternal Son
of God, was revealed to the world. In the vision
of the Word made flesh, we see not only the hu-
manity of the first Adam, but the elevation, per-
fection, and glory of our manhood in the second
Adam, from whom we derive life and immortal-
ity : Thirdly, in the most perfect morality, the
most pure and most elevated ; as, for example,
the Sermon on the Mount. Does there exist in
the whole history of mankind, in all the philoso-
phies of man, anything to compare for moral per-
fection with the eight Beatitudes ? Where will
you find in all the teachings of man this one
simple precept : " All things, whatsoever ye would
that men should do to you, do you also to them " ? *
Where did you ever find the precept: "Love
your enemies: bless them that curse you," —
where, except only in the mouth of Jesus Christ ?
Was it ever heard : " Be ye therefore perfect, as
also your Father, which is in heaven, is perfect,"
"who maketh His sun to rise upon the good and
bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust " ? f
Here is a perfect morality, to which nothing that
ever came from the unaided intellect or will of
man bears any comparison. Where in the morals
of mankind can be found anything to compare
with the two precepts of loving God with all our

• St. Matt. vii. 12. f Ibid. y. 48, 46

22 THE IOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OP GOD.

heart and our neighbor as ourselves? Where
can be found anything to compare in generosity,
in tenderness of love, in sacrifice of self, with the
Oblation of our Lord upon the Cross ? There is,
then, an illumination given to us by the light of
faith, which no created intellect can possess from
any other source. But once more :

4 This illumination elevates the reason of
man. It raises it to a state and order of dignity
otherwise unattainable ; and, in so doing, it con-
firms even its natural perfection.

First, the truths of the natural order are con-
firmed and made clear, and a Divine certainty ia
added to them by the light of revelation. The
.existence of God, the law of right and wrong, the
coul and its immortality — these truths of the
natural order are confirmed both in clearness and
certainty by the light of faith.

Secondly, there are superadded to the truths
of the natural order the truths of the superna-
tural order : for instance, the knowledge of God
through the Incarnation ; the knowledge of ou*
relations to Him through the adoption of grace ;
of our brotherhood and consanguinity with Jesus
Christ, the Incarnate Son of God ; of the indwell-
ing of God the Holy Ghost in the intellect and
will of man, making man His temple; besides
this, the presence of God, not only in nature, but
in grace, and that pervading the whole world and

THE FOUKF01 D SOVEREIGNTY OP GOD. 28

present in ourselves. St. Augustine, describing
his condition before he believed, said, " I sought
Thee everywhere and found Thee not ; for Thou
wast within me, and I was out of myself. I
Bought Thee everywhere but in that place where
Thou wast to be found — in my own soul." We
know by faith that the presence of God inhabits
each one of us ; that we are united to the unseen
world and to the communion of the spirits of just
men made perfect ; and that the vision of God
hereafter is our inheritance.

These are supernatural truths added to the
lights of the natural order. Surely the reason
possessing them is elevated above both nature
and itself. St. John says, " Behold what manner
of charity the Father hath bestowed upon us,
that we should be named, and should be the sons
of God. Therefore, the world hath not known
us, because it hath not known Him. We are
now the sons of God ; and it hath not yet ap-
peared what we shall be. We know, that when
He shall appear, we shall be like to Him ; because
we shall see Him as He is." * Is it possible to
conceive of any elevation greater than the con-
sciousness that we are sons of God ? But it is
this that faith gives to the reason of man.

5. Lastly, faith makes the reason perfect. The
reason itself, as a faculty or an intellectual power

* 1 St. John iii. 1, 2.

24 THE FOUKFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

is perfected by the action of faith upon it. Just
as tLe hand by experience is strengthened and
acquires skill, and is able to execute the most
powerful or the finest operations ; and as the ear
may be attuned and cultivated to harmony, and
the eye to an exquisite perfection of sight ; so is
it with the action of faith upon the intellectual
faculties of the soul. Take, for example, the
whole history of the Old Testament, and compare
the intellectual condition of Israel with the intel-
lectual condition of the Gentile world. No man
has ever yet ventured to say that, as compared
with the intellectual state of the chief philoso-
phers of the Gentile world, the Hebrew patriarchs,
prophets, and saints were not, in intellectual
stature, a head and shoulders above them. No
man can fail to see that the very intellect of the
Jewish race was elevated by the illumination of
faith, and that personal character, domestic life,
and the public commonwealth of Israel, all boie
the marks of an elevation derived from faith.
Submission to the sovereignty of God was the
cause of this elevation, and therefore of the dig-
nity of Israel.

Among the Gentile world, it is true that intel-
lects such as those of Plato and Aristotle, to
mention no others — the one the great example
of natural theology or knowledge of divine things,
the other the most perfect example of ethical or

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF QOD. 16

moral philosophy — exhibit a logical cultivation
not to be found in the splendor and dignity of
Isaias or Ezechiel ; but if we compare with them
the majesty and sublimity of the Prophets, who
will hesitate in saying that the moral dignity and
grandeur of Isaias and Ezechiel far transcend
them in moral elevation ? But this I will further
affirm, that wheresoever the belief in God was
low, intellect was low ; and that just in propor-
tion as elevation and cultivation of intellect waa
attained by mankind, in that proportion they ap-
proached a purer knowledge of God and of
morals. Plato stands at the head of all the intel-
lects of the ancient world for culture and lofty
speculation. In him, I may say, the speculative
intellect of the order of nature culminated ; and
in him, above all, we see a Theism which for
purity and truth approaches nearest to the the-
ology of Israel. In like manner Aristotle, for
subtlety and dialectical precision, stands alone
among the intellects of antiquity ; and in him we
find the purest and truest morality the world
without revelation has ever known. The ethics
of Aristotle remain to this day as the basis on
which the moral theology of Christendom reposes.
It is a pure and accurate delineation of the
morals of mankind known by the light of nature;
and St. Thomas builds upon it as a sure founda-
tion. The world therefore bears testimony to
8

26 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF OOD.

this, that in proportion as the intellect of mm
approaches the knowledge of God and of self, it is
dignified, and its mental and moral faculties are
strengthened and expanded towards their per-
fection.

The same truth is still more manifest in the
Christian world. The intellectual histoiy of the
modern world is to be found written in the his-
tory of Christianity. The intellectual powers of
mankind are to be found in their highest perfec-
tion in Christendom. It is no objection whatso-
ever for men of the present day, who believe
nothing and who profess to have rejected even
the existence of God, to say, " Look at our men
of science — are they in intellectual dignity or
power inferior to those whom you call your
doctors ? " The answer is this : Their intellectual
dignity is derived from the culture of the
Christian world. They would never be what
they are, if they had not been nurtured and
ripened upon that same mystical vine from which
they have fallen. They retain after their fall
the savor and the quality of the tree from which
they fell. But can they reproduce it ? let them
try : and how long will they transmit it ? Those
who have fallen from the knowledge of God and
of His revelation, have fallen from the tradition
of intellectual culture. " If any one abide not in
Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shal J

THE FOUBFOLD SOVEREIGN FY OP GOD. J7

wither." * This is true, both spiritually and inteL
lectually. The intellectual standard of sceptics
and infidels has no perpetuity. They die out as
individuals, and their few disciples are scattered.

On the other hand, I would ask, is there in
luhs history of mankind anything, for intellectual
power, precision, amplitude, fertility, to be com-
ppred with Saint Thomas Aquinas or Suarez, to
mention two only out of a multitude? The pro-
found and pretentious ignorance of this day will
no doubt think that these two examples belong
.to the Middle Ages, or that the latter was only
emerging from those times of obscurity ; but the
nun who so speaks cannot know the books on
which he passes judgment. The intellectual sys-
tem of the world, in its refinement and culture,
will be found passing through the unbroken tra-
dition of such minds ; and the philosophers and
men of science of this day, who tell us that we
can know nothing with certainty but that which
is within the reach of sense, have not dignified
the human intellect, but have degraded it. They
reject the intellectual system of the whole world,
and the highest truths which it proclaims.

The obedience of faith, therefore, which is due
to the sovereignty of God, is the most reasonable
act of which the human intellect in this state of
»ortality is capable. There remains after it

* St. John xv. 6.

38 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

nothing but the vision of the Uncreated Truth
without a veil. "After the Summa of St.
Thomas there remains nothing but the light of
glory," is not an academical exaggeration, but a
very truth.

Faith, then, is the illumination, the elevation,
and the perfection even, of the faculty of reason
itself. Faith gives power to the human reason,
by giving to it principles of certainty from which
to start. As in the pure sciences the axioms and
demonstrations give firmness, strength, solidity,
and onward progress to the scientific intellect, so
in the knowledge of God, and of man, and of
morals, the revelation of God gives the first
axioms and primary principles of Divine cer-
tainty, which unfold, elevate, and strengthen
even the reason itself.

I said before that this argument turns the
other way. If faith be the elevation, unbelief is
the degradation of the human intellect : and that
for two reasons. First, because it deprives it of
the illumination of truth ; and, secondly, because
it paralyzes the intellectual faculties.

It deprives it of the illumination of truth ; it
robs it at once of all the truths of revelation.
All the lights of the supernatural order are alike
extinguished: God and His kingdom, the com-
munion of saints, and our relations to it ; faith,
hope, and charity; the Church of God in the

fHB FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 29

world ; the mysteries of grace, — everything rest-
ing on the supernatural order is darkened. Just
as, if light were withdrawn from the world, sight
would cease to be, for the eye in midnight can
see nothing; so the deprivation of the human
reason by unbelief leaves it in midnight. But it
is not only the lights of the supernatural order
that at once are clouded — the lights even of the
natural order become dim. The intellect loses
certainty and firmness of belief, even in those
principles of the natural order to which the
lights of nature testify. It is certain that Deists
lose much of the light of the knowledge of God
when they reject revelation, because even nature
ceases to testify as luminously, and to speak a?
articulately, of the existence of God, His eterna
power and Divinity, to those in whom the scep-
tical spirit is at work. Again, if they do not
lose the knowledge of their own soul, and of its
immortality, they begin to doubt about it.

Day after day, we hear the confident talk of
men who tell us that we have no evidence to
believe in anything but the material mechanism,
which we can trace by physiology, chemistry, or
comparative anatomy ; that beyond this we have
no power to ascertain anything about the exist-
ence of the soul, or will, or life. There are men
at this day, who consider themselves intellectual,
openly denying the existence of the soul ; and
8*

80 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

wh , having denied the existence of the soul,
deny the existence of right and wrong. They
tell us that right and wrong, and the instincts,
dictates, and rebukes of our conscience, are arbi-
trary associations of pleasure and pain connected
with certain actions, by the conventional tradi-
tions in which we are brought up. If so, then
there is no such thing as law, either human or
Divine : and if no such thing as law, then no
such thing as sin or crime, and therefore no such
thing as justice ; and if there be no such thing as
justice, there is no such thing as injustice ; and
if there be no such thing as intrinsic right, there
is no such thing as intrinsic wrong ; and if not,
then we are in a world which has no more right,
order, sweetness, or beauty, but we are turned
back again into the inorganic state of creation,
" void and empty," and darkness rests upon the
face of the deep.

But there is something more degrading than
this. If I have not a soul, then am I like the
cattle. Nay, more ; if I have not a soul, I have
no immortality ; then, so far, I am as the beasts
that perish.

This gospel is preached to us by way of mani-
festing the dignity of the human reason. Choose
for yourselves, whether this be dignity or debase-
ment.

But unbelief is net only a privation of the

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

lights of truth, it is a paralysis of the reason
itself.

For I would ask: What is scepticism or doubt?
It is a partial denial of the truth or existence of
things. A denial is a bold assertion that the
thing is not true, or does not exist. A doubt is
half way to a denial. And on what is it founded ?
It is founded on the supposed uncertainty of evi-
dence; but this again is founded on the assertion
that the senses are fallible, so that we cannot de-
pend on them ; and that the faculties of the rea-
son may also go astray, and that their interpreta-
tion of the senses cannot be trusted. And this
philosophy is preached to us as the dignity of the
human reason. To me it appears to be intellec-
tual paralysis, tending to intellectual idiocy.
To tell me my senses do not report to me truly
the existence and facts of the external world in
a way that I can depend on, and to tell me that
my reason cannot interpret them, and that I
cannot know with a perfect certainty the internal
facts of my own consciousness, is to shake my
whole being, and to reduce me first to a state of
paralysis, and afterwards to a state of idiocy.
And yet this is the result of sceptical unbelief.
In the face of this we are told that faith is degra-
dation to the human intellect, and that unbelief
is its dignity.

I must now go no further ; and will add but
one only word more.

82 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNS OF OOD.

Last year, the Council of the Vatican made
the Decree which I have already recited. The
Council of the Vatican has been a sign, against
which the contradiction of the whole world has
been directed. The reason is evident. In past
times, every Council of the Church had to deal
with some one particular heresy, by which some
one specific doctrine of the faith had been de-
nied. The Council of the Vatican has had to
deal with the whole principle of unbelief. It is
not one doctrine only of Christianity that is at
stake now, but the whole of Christianity — the
whole revelation of God, the whole principle of
faith. The axe is laid to the root of the tree.
The Council of the Vatican, knowing this full
well, made and promulgated, before the tumults
of the world rendered necessary the suspension
of its labors, two Constitutions, which, if it never
add another word, will be inscribed in the history
of the Church — ay, and upon the intellect of the
world too — as a luminous record of Divine truth
that can never be effaced.

The First Constitution of Catholic faith may
be called the philosophy of faith in the lights of
nature and the order of nature, in the grounds
and the preambles upon which Divine faith
rests, as the most perfect and most reasonable act
of man.

The Second Constitution is the declaration of

THE FOTJRFCLI SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. S8

the Rule of faith, or the Authority upon which
faith reposes. This doctrinal authority was de-
fined to be the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff.
The infallibility of the Church has been at all
times, and by all Catholics, believed as a doctrine
of Divine revelation. Till controversy had
clouded truth, no one doubted that the infalli-
bility of the Church contains also the infallibility
of the Head, as the reasonableness of man ie-
aiies eminently in the head which governs the
body. It had become evident, that they who at-
tempted to deny the infallibility of the Head of
the Church were covertly — and I believe many
unconsciously — denying the Divine guidance of
tlie whole Church. The Council of the Vatican,
then, with the fearless liberty of truth which
belongs to the kingdom of God, and comes from
God alone, promulgated these most opportune
and necessary Constitutions of Faith. It has de-
clired, in the midst of an unbelieving age, that
faith is due to God, because He is Sovereign, and
because as Sovereign He commands it ; and that
to know what we are to believe, He has insti-
tuted upon earth a witness, which is itself a suffi-
cient evidence of its own Divine commission,
that is, His visible Church ; a witness that may
be seen as the representative of His Incarnation ;
a witness that may be heard, because the voice
of that Church speaks to the world, and is His
C

84 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

voice. The Council of the Vatican, therefore,
calls to us all, as St. Paul called to the Corin-
thians : " And I, brethren, when I came to yon,
came not in loftiness of speech or of wisdom, de-
claring unto you the testimony of Jesus Christ
For I judged not myself to know anything among
you, but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. And
my teaching was not in the persuasive words of
man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit
and of the power of God. That your faith
might not stand on the wisdom of man, but on
the power of God." * And to obtain that Divine
certainty, there is one simple condition : to be-
lieve in the Divine Teacher whom He has sent
• 1 Cor. tt. 1-*

LECTURE II.

THF SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD OVER THB
WILL OF MAN.

HEBREWS x. 7.

* Behold, I come : in the head of the book it is written of
Me, that I should do Thy will, O God."

THESE words, taken by the Apostle from the
Book of Psalms, are the words of the Son of
God, speaking in prophecy, of His advent and
His mission in the world : " Behold, I come : in
the head of the book" — that is, in the outset
of prophecy — " it is written of Me." It was of
this that God spoke in the beginning, when He
foretold that the seed of the woman should crush
the serpent's head. The coming of Jesus Christ
into the world was for the fulfilment of the will
of God. Throughout the Gospels we read from
His own lips that His work on earth was to do
His Father's will. " I came down from heaven
but to do My own will, but the will of Him that

ftf

S6 THE FOLRFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

sent Me." * " My food is to do the will of Him
that sent Me." f The obedience of Jesus Christ
to the will of God was the recognition of the
sovereignty of God over the will of man. Obe-
dience to the Divine will is the first law of the
soul of man, and in this is his perfection, which ifl
our next subject.

Our last subject was the sovereignty of God
over the intellect ; and the sovereignty of God
over the intellect is the means and condition to
the sovereignty of God over the will ; for God,
being Perfect Intelligence, requires of no man an
irrational obedience. He requires of all men an
obedience according to the laws and perfections
of the human reason, and to the laws and perfec-
tions of truth. It is a law of our nature that we
can will nothing that we have not first known.
Our intellect must first know the object upon
which we would set our will, or the will can make
no act either of desire or aversion. The intel-
lect, therefore, is the channel through which the
sovereignty of God reaches the will of man. In
proportion as we know God more perfectly, our
will ought to be more perfectly conformed to the
will of God. The will in man is defined to be a
rational desire, and it is made up of two things.
There is in it the desire after good, and there is
the reason guiding that desire : so that the will

• St. John vi. 38. f Ibid. iv. 34.

THE FOURFOLD 80\ EREIGNTY OF GOD. 87

is, as philosophers call it, a rational appetite ; but
with this peculiar office and power, it can control
the appetite ; it has the power of originating our
actions, and of controlling itself. Now the intel-
lect of man has analogy to the eye. The eye,
which is the organ of sight, is under the control
of the will. We may fix the eye on any given
object, or we may turn the eye away from it, or
we may either look intently or languidly at it.
All the day long we see a multitude of things
without looking at them. The eye is filled with
the light of day, and with the objects round about
it ; but the eye can be fixed for the time only
upon one, and that one is the only object upon
which we can be said to look. We see a multi-
tude of objects, which, perhaps, we do not recog-
nize at the time, nor remember a moment after.
So it is with the intellect. It is controlled by the
will, which can determine on what object it shall
be fixed ; and whether it shall look fixedly and
steadfastly at truth, or whether it shall turn the
intellect away from truth, or make it look at
^truth so cursorily and languidly as not to recog-
nize it. Now this constitutes our personal respon-
sibility in regard to truth. As I have said before,
the words of our Divine Lord, " He that believeth
and is baptized shall be saved, and he that be-
lieveth not shall be condemned," express the
voluntariness of the act of faith. Faith is a vir-
4

88 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

tue and a grace of the Holy Spirit ; but it is also
an act of obedience on the part of man : and we
are responsible for our unbelief, and shall be
judged for it, because God has given a sufficient
light and evidence, both for the truths of the
natural and supernatural order. He will not
require of any man to know any truth which is
physically beyond his power to know ; He will
only require of man to answer for the truth which
he knew, and that which he might have known.
He will not require that which is impossible ; for
God never commands impossible things. He is
a God of justice, and His justice is perfect equity.
"He weigheth the spirits," and he knows with
Divine precision what is possible and what is not
possible to each one of us. He may require, in-
deed, that which is morally difficult, because that
which is only difficult is not impossible. We are
responsible to know all truth which is sufficiently
proposed to us, and all that by diligent search
we may find; and therefore we shall be inex-
cusable at the last day if we do not see the lights
of nature, which are so abundant, inundating the
world, and if we have not known the truths to
which they testify — that is to say, the existence
of God, His eternal power and Divinity, His per-
fections, the distinction of right and wrong, the
law of conscience, our own free will, the soul and
its immortality — and therefore our responsi-

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 89

bility to our Creator. These are truths of the
natural order, apart from and anterior to revela-
tion. They are within our reach to know. All
men, even those who are not only out of the
Catholic Church, but most remote from it, are
bound to know these truths. To those who are
within the unity of the Catholic Church, there in
not a doctrine of revelation which is not within
their reach. God has given sufficient light and
evidence for all who are within the unity of the
Catholic Church to know all the truths of reve-
lation. To those who are out of the unity of the
Church, their probation- depends on this — whether
their separation from that unity and the light
contained therein be a conscious and voluntary
act of their own. If so, then they are respon-
sible. But if it be an inherited state of priva-
tion, as I have said before, like the condition of
people robbed, by the sin of forefathers, of their
inheritance of perfect light, such as our own
country, then many are not responsible. They
will not be called to answer for light they have
never known, and never could have known. By
them the visible Church has never been seen, the
voice of the Church has never been heard ; and
things that do not appear are as things that do
not exist. They have never stood face to face
with it as we do ; the light of Catholic faith has
never fallen upon them. They have been brought

40 THE FOUBFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF QOD.

up repeating the baptismal creed, " I believe in
the Holy Ghost, the holy Catholic Church ;" but
between that article of creed and their conscience
has intervened a colored medium and a fake
object. They have believed themselves to be in
the Catholic Church, because they have mistaken
a system of human creation for the Church of
Jesus Christ.

The law of God, then, is this : that in propor-
tion as we possess sufficient evidence to know the
truth, He will require of us to give an account of
that truth at the last day. We must give an
account of what we have known, and what we
have not known, and the reasons why we have
not known that which we might have known
In this, therefore, consists the sovereignty of God
over the will ; and I wish you to bear in mind,
that when I speak of faith as of the highest act
of the human reason, and the most rational exer-
cise of the human intellect, such faith is not a
blind and obscure act of the superstitious and the
credulous, who hide their heads in twilight.
Faith is an act of the human reason, expanding
itself towards God its Maker, and receiving the
noontide light of revelation with the fullest de-
velopment of its intellectual powers. And in
proportion as it receives the truth, and submits
its created intelligence to the uncreated wisdom
of God, it is elevated and made perfect

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 41

We will now go on to our next subject, namely,
the sovereignty of God over the will. To make
it as clear as I can, let us consider the relations
in which the human will has hitherto stood, and
will stand, to the sovereignty of God.

1. The first relation was when God made man
" to his own image and likeness ; " that is, He im-
parted to him a spiritual nature. He gave him
an intelligence and a will like His own. Man
was the image or reflection of his Maker. The
will, as I have said, consists in this : it has the
power of originating our own actions. The lower
animals have a power of spontaneity in following
their natural desires, such as for food and rest ;
but they have no will. Everything voluntary is
spontaneous, but not everything which is sponta-
neous is voluntary. The lower animals, though
they have this spontaneous power, have no will,
because the will, as I said in the beginning, is a
rational desire, or appetite guided and elevated
by the reason ; and as the lower animals, though
they have instincts, are irrational — that is, have
no reason — they have no will. The will, then,
is the power of originating rational actions, and
those rational actions are the actions of a will in
conformity with the reason, and of the reason in
conformity with the intelligence of God. But
we are wont, also, to speak of the freedom of the
Will. Now, everything that is free is voluntary,
4*

42 THE FOUBFOLD SOVBEEIQNTY OF GOD.

but not everything which is voluntary is free,
because the blessed in heaven voluntarily love
God and voluntarily worship Him ; but they are
not free not to love Him or not to worship Him.
The very perfection of their nature necessitates
their love and worship ; and yet the will in its
voluntary action is perfect. It is the most per-
fect and entire spontaneousness, elevated and
guided by reason, and by the illumination of the
whole soul of the blessed. There is therefore
a kind of freedom or liberty which does not
belong to the perfection of the will.

When God made man in the beginning, He
gave him a perfect liberty. He was not con-
strained by any external authority which deprived
him of his freedom ; he was not necessitated as
the blessed are, by final perfection. He had
therefore these three kinds of liberty : first, he
had the power either to do or not to do, to
act or to refrain from acting ; secondly, he had a
power, within the limits of good and justice, to do
this or that act — he was not compelled to any
specific acts of goodness or of justice; lastly, he
had a power which the blessed in heaven have
not — of doing good and evil. But this power
of doing good and evil is indeed a part of our
liberty in our present state of probation and of
imperfection ; but it is not a part of the perfect
liberty of the will. The use of the will is to do

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OP GOD. 48

good ; but the abuse of the will is to do evil. It
is an abuse of the power of originating our actions
if we act contrary to reason, contrary to justice,
contrary to the will of God. In the beginning,
God created man with this threefold liberty, to
put him upon trial or probation ; and yet there
was no cause or need or excuse why he should
sffend and fall, for God constituted him in
original justice. There never was a moment
when the created will of the first man was not
Bf .notified and sustained by the Holy Ghost, when
hs had not the presence of abundant grace within
him to sustain him in the full equilibrium of his
liberty. There was, then, no necessity — nay, no
reason whatsoever except the abuse of his free-
dom — why he should do evil. His whole soul
was under the dominion of the Divine knowledge
and love, and his heart was the throne of God
reigning supreme within it. This, then, was the
first relation of the will to the sovereignty of
God.

2. The second relation was introduced by the
Fall of man ; and see how it came about. The
entrance of sin into the world was by the abuse
of the will. Sin came through the intellect.
The temptation was addressed to the reason,
which, being perverted, perverted the will ; but
the will was free to listen or not. The tempta-
tion was addressed with an exquisite subtlety of

44 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GO1>.

malice. It began by a question, and that ques
tion began by the word " Why," which was then
spoken for the first time. The tempter came and
said, " Why hath God commanded ? " This was
a temptation to criticise the ways and to question
the justice of God. "Why hath God com-
manded you, that you shall not eat of every tree
of Paradise ? " This awakened a questioning,
perhaps a murmuring, spirit. The next step of
the temptation was a contradiction. " Ye shall
not die the death." In this was insinuated a
contradiction of the known truth. Thirdly, there
was an insinuation of injustice against God.
" For God doth know that in what day soever
you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened,
and you shall be as gods ; " as if to say, God is
jealous lest a creature of His hands should be
equal to Himself. Now, the first temptation
came through the intellect, and as it passed
through the thoughts it wrought upon the soul,
it undermined the steadfastness of the will, it in-
flamed the passions, it made them impatient of re-
straint, and thereby it inclined the will to abuse its
liberty and power. The abuse of its liberty and
power was this : to do evil, to break the known law,
to violate the commandment of God. In doing
BO, it acted irrationally ; the will, in doing evil,
then lost its rational character. It was an abuse
and debasement of its nature ; and the will being

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 40

debased by this irrational action, deprived of its
supernatural perfection, forfeited the grace of the
Spirit of God. It biassed its own working, it
warped its own nature. As a perfect machine, if
it be rudely jarred, loses its perfect action, and
all its operations are thrown out of gear, so with
the soul of man, when by a wilful abuse of his
rational power he acted irrationally. In the mo-
ment when he rebelled against the sovereign will
of God, his passions and affections — which before
wire in subjection, and in perfect harmony and
conformity to his will, obeying its dominion and
government — rose up and rebelled against him.
The passions were both disordered and inflamed ;
they were no longer within the range and control
of reason. The affections, losing their reason-
able character, became internal temptations, so
that the words of the prophet were verified in the
first man : " The wicked are like the raging sea,
which cannot rest, and the waves thereof cast up
dirt and mire." * The tumultuous passions and
affections of the heart cast up desires and crav-
ings which are irrational, and destructive of the
soul of man. Just as one poisonous root will
propagate and spread over a fertile garden, and
one spark of fire will kindle a boundless confla-
gration, so one perverse will, beginning in irra-
tional disobedience, has multiplied itself through-

• loaiaa Ivii. 20.

46 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

out mankind, and the whole world is set en fire
by its perversity. The human will, becoming
carnal and irrational in the Fall of our first
parents, has been reproduced in all their children.
"That which is born of the flesh is flesh."* We
inherit that nature as children of wrath. This,
then, is the second relation of the will to the sov-
ereignty of God, by the irrational abuse of its
own freedom.

3. Then, thirdly, as man fell by irrational dis-
obedience, he is redeemed by an obedience which
is in perfect conformity to the intelligence and
will of God. St. Irenseus says : " The obedience
of Mary broke the chains forged by the disobe-
dience of Eve. What Eve had bound by unbe-
lief, Mary has unbound by faith." f That is to
say: the will fell by the unbelief of Eve, the
first virgin, and was restored through the faith
of Mary, the second virgin. The first Eve lis-
tened to the tempter, and fell ; the second Eve
listened to the angel, and believed. When the
angel saluted her with, " Hail, full of grace, the
Lord is with thee ! " and revealed to her the mys-
tery of the Incarnation, her intelligence, over-
come for a moment by the splendor of supernat-
ural light, asked, "How shall this be done?" J
But at once she made an act of perfect submis-

• St. John iii. 6. f St. Iren. Adv. HOT. Ml M.

I St. Luke i 34.

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 47

sion and of perfect faith : " Behold the handmaid
of the Lord, be it done to me according to thy
word." Here was a perfectly obedient will re-
stored to mankind, a will reconstituted in that
state of perfect submission to the sovereignty of
God in which man was in the beginning. Of her
was born One more perfect still, because He is
the Incarnate Son of God, in Who*n tne words
of prophecy were fulfilled : " Behold, I come, to
do Thy will, O God."

The fulfilment of the will of God was the whole
work of redemption. Obedience unto death was
the restoration of mankind. When the Son of
God took our humanity, He took a human soul ;
and in that soul a human intelligence and a hu-
man will, in all things like our own. But be-
tween the Sacred Humanity and ours there was
this difference : the human will of Jesus had in
it no rebellions. It had what we distinguish as
a superior and an inferior will ; that is, He had
s, reason and conscience like our own, but both
were perfect. He had also affections and infirmi-
ties, and, as the theology of the Catholic Churcfc
says, not passions — for the word by tradition
has an evil meaning — but " pro-passions ; " that
is, those affections of our humanity which are
passions in us, in Him are perfections. Never-
theless, the superior and the inferior will of the
Son of God in the Garden of Gethsemane were

48 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

seen, not in conflict, but each exerting its proper
and natural perfections. The sensitive or inferiof
will shrank from the vision of sin, from the fore-
sight of the death of the world, from the antici-
pation of the Passion, from the agony which He
then already suffered, from the Divine fore-
knowledge of the anguish of that night, and of
the desolation on Calvary. Human nature in
Him shrank from pain and death, just as we do;
but the superior will stood steadfast. Knowing
that it was for the glory of God, and the redemp-
tion of the world, that He should accept and
drink the chalice of His Passion, He said : " O
My Father, if it is possible, let this chalice pass
from Me ; nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou
wilt." * There was no wavering of imperfection
in that agony of our Divine Lord. He being
God, the will that was in Him was deified. It
was united to the perfections of the Son of God ;
it was sanctified by the presence of the Holy
Ghost ; it was constituted in the Divine perfec-
tions of freedom and obedience ; it could be used
with the utmost liberty of human freedom; it
could never be abused, because of His perfection
both as God and as man. That which constituted
the merit of our Lord's Passion was this : though
it was necessary, from His twofold perfection,
human and Divine, that He should love God and

* St. Matt. xxvi. 39.

THE FOURFOLD SO\EREIGNTY OF OOD. 49

ooey Him, and fulfil His will with perfection, it
fras not necessary that He should suffer the agony
in the Garden, nor the Crucifixion upon Calvary.
These things were freely chosen by Him, out of
love to mankind. "Greater love than this no
man hath, that a man lay down his life for hia
friends." * It was an act of the love of the Son
of God to give Himself for three-and-thirty years
to mental sorrow, and to His agony on the Cross,
for our redemption. He freely chose that way
of redemption — the way of blood-shedding, pas-
sion, humiliation — because it was a more pro-
fuse revelation of perfect love. This way of re-
demption was not required by any necessity, but
freely ordained in the wisdom of God.

4. Fourthly, there is still another relation of
the will to the sovereignty of God, and it is that
in which we all stand now to Him. We are not
like the first Adam, in a state of original justice.
We are not like Adam after the Fall, in a state
deprived of grace. We are not like the second
Adam in His Divine perfections ; but we are re-
generate members of the second Adam, and there
is a perfection which comes by the Holy Ghost
tc all those who are united as members of the
Body of Christ. The will of their Divine Head
pervades the will of those that are born again.
You, in your baptism, passed from the state of

• St. John XT. 18.
6 D

50 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

nature to the state of grace. "That which in
born of the flesh is flesh, but that which is born
of the Spirit is spirit." * You have been born of
water and of the Holy Ghost, and " Christ Jesus
is in you, unless perhaps you be reprobates." f
Your will is a regenerate will. It is the will of
the Son of God. What Jesus had by nature,
because He is the Son of God, consubstantial
with the Father, you have by grace, because by
adoption you are made the sons of God. St. John
writes : " As many as received Him, to them He
gave power to be made the sons of God." J The
power has been given to you all ; not to become
equal and co-eternal with the Incarnate Son of
God, but to be sons of God by adoption. Again,
St. Paul says : " You have not received the spirit
of bondage again in fear ; but you have received
the spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we cry :
Abba (Father)." "For whosoever are led by
the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God/' §
And as many as are led by the Spirit of God,
they have a regenerate will, elevated by faith,
hope, and charity, raised by the sanctifying grace
of God, to a union with God Himself. The
Apostle says : " He who adheres to the Lord if
one spirit ; " || and they who are united, by the
Spirit of God dwelling in them, to our Divine

» St. John iii. 0. f 2 Cor. xiii. 6. J St. John i. 12.
$ Bom. viii. 15, 14. j 1 Cor. vi. 17.

FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OP OOD. 51

Lord and Saviour, the Head of the mystical Body,
partake of the sanctity and strength of His will.
His will is transcribed into them ; they become
partakers of the loves and the hatreds of Jesua
Christ. Together with Him they love God and
their neighbor, they hate sin and falsehood in all
its forms. The will, according to the promise of
God, becomes a law to itself. " This is the tes-
tament which I will make unto them after those
days, saith the Lord ; giving My laws in their
hearts, and in their minds I will write them." *
And the Apostle says : " The law is not made for
the just man, but for the unjust and disobe-
dient." f As the seven notes of the octave are
not to be perpetually learned by the skilful mu-
sician, and the twenty-four letters of the alphabet
are left behind by the cultivated intellect, so the
law of commandments is no longer necessary to
those who have the law of God written by the
Holy Ghost upon their hearts. They fulfil,
indeed, the letter of the commandments, because
that is the least thing they can do; but that
which is required of them is more than this. St.
John says: "Every one that is born of God,
doth not commit sin, for His seed remaineth in
him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of
God;"J that is, there grows up a moral impos-
iibility to commit wilful sin. The love of God
• Hcb. x 16. f 1 Tim- * 9. £ 1 St. John iii. 9.

52 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

and our neighbor makes it morally impossible
that we should abuse the freedom of our will by
disobedience to God, and injustice to our neigh-
bor. The hatred of sin, falsehood, impurity,
jealousy, malice, and the like, makes it morally
impossible for the soul, renewed by the indwell-
ing of the Spirit of God, to violate its own
renewed nature by willingly doing these things.
Therefore, the will becomes a law to itself, and it
is so strengthened in the state of regeneration
that the Apostle could say : " I can do all things
in Him who strengthened me." * When buffeted
by the messenger of Satan, he thrice prayed to be
delivered from temptation; but the answer of
God to him was, " My grace is sufficient for thee :
for power is made perfect in infirmity ; " and lit
adds : " Gladly, therefore, will I glory in my in-
firmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in
me."f And again, " Work your salvation with
fear and trembling ; " and for what reason ? " For
it is God who worketh in you both to will and to
accomplish, according to His good will." J The
supremacy of the good will of God, holy, pure,
just, and mighty, flows into the soul, and per-
vades the will of those who, being born again,
are subject to the sovereignty of God by the tree
action and use of their own deliberate will.
5. Lastly, there is, as I have said before, a

• PhU. iv. 13. f 2 Cor. xii. 9. t PW1. & 12, 13.

THE FOUBFOLD SOVEBEIQNTY OF QOD. 68

final relation of the will to God ; and that is the
state of the blessed, when there will be no more
temptation without, no more conflict within. We
shall then have passed from a state of warfare,
and from the condition of wayfarers, into the
eternal rest and peace, in the vision of God. The
intellect, illuminated by the Light of God, which
is the Holy Ghost Himself, shall see Him. The
will, united with the eternal love of God by the
Holy Ghost, who is the Charity of God, will be
eternally and indissolubly united to Him in obe-
dience and adoration of His perfect sovereignty,
when God shall be all in all. This is the last
and eternal perfection of the will.

To draw from this one practical conclusion,
let us remember what is our probation now. It
is to subject our will to the will of God. And
how does God illuminate us to know what that
sovereignty is? I have already said, by faith.
I have said that our submission to Him is the
most rational and perfect act of our reason.
Take, for example, the lights of nature, the exist-
ence of God, the distinctions of morality, the im-
mortality of the soul. You would all hold, that
any man who should refuse to submit his will to
the sovereignty of God, revealing these things to
us by the light of nature, would be guilty before
Him of pride and infidelity. And why, but be-
cause the evidence for them is sufficient ? Let us
6*

54 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

go one step farther. Is there not sufficient e\>
dence in the world, by the lights of Christendom
and by the effulgence of the Universal Church,
which is " like the lightning which cometh out
of the east, and shineth also to the west " ? Is
not the testimony of the "Universal Church
throughout the world a sufficient light, or motive
of credibility, to convince the intellect of man
that that Church is the Church of God, and,
therefore, that He founded it? Is not the world-
wide testimony of the Church sufficient to con-
vince any reasonable intellect, that He who
founded it was the Son of God Incarnate ; and
that, according to the promise of the Son of God,
the Holy Ghost descended upon that Church, and
made it His dwelling-place and the organ of His
voice, in which he preserves the original revela-
tion of God ; and through which, as the organ of
His voice, He makes that revelation known to
the world ? And if there be a sufficient light to
know these things, is not the intellect bound to
submit itself to the uncreated reason of God, by
whom these things are revealed ? And if so, is
not the will, through the intellect, bound to sub-
mit itself to the light and sovereignty, which is
thus made known ? And if so, the voice of the
Church is the voice of God Himself: "He that
heareth you, heareth Me ; " and the authority of
that voice is Divine, and the unity of truth if

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 65

Divine, and the duty of submitting to it is from
God. This light of faith comes to us through
the most rational action of the human intellect,
and this act of faith is an act reasonable and free
in all its parts. Faith is not a credulity, nor a
superstition ; but they who will not believe are
truly irrational and superstitious. They fall
from perfect light into the twilight, where half-
truths are seen, as " men like trees walking ; " *
and believing in them, the intellect is warped and
narrowed. They who reject Divine faith credu-
lously believe in human opinions, which are both
false and superstitious. What, then, is the whole
of our life on earth but an education ? Is not the
sovereignty of God round about us ? Are we not
under its guidance, training, and discipline ? Is
it not training us up to dwell in our Father's
house ? Are not all the visitations and chastise-
ments of our lot so many teachings of His Di-
vine hand ? In joy and sorrow, prosperity and
poverty, sickness or strength, — are not all these
distinctly Divine agencies around us and upon
us ? Are they not the manifestations of the Divine
sovereignty over the course of our life? And
they who recognize, by the light of faith, the sov-
ereignty of God in all things, will recognize the
sovereignty of God in the daily and hourly de-
tails of their own personal life, and in the

• St. Mark viii. 24.

56 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

changes of their lot. They will not chafe against
His will when He chastises them, nor wear them-
selves out, nor break their hearts by contending
with impossibilities ; but, conforming their will to
the sovereign will of God, and submitting gladly
to it, they will be sustained and sanctified in
their faith.

And, further, there are two other ways in
which the sovereignty of God works in us. The
one is by the silent, secret, and sweet inspirations
of His grace, by the lights that fall upon our in-
tellect without our asking for them, and the love
that is poured out in the Divine superabundance
of His generosity and tenderness. As He makes
the sun to rise upon the evil and the good, so He
sends down the lights of truth on the intellects
of those who have not sought for Him ; and He
pours out over their hearts the drops of consolatioi
of which the Psalmist speaks when he says, " Thou
hast prevented him with blessings of sweetness."*
This is something which, in experience, you all
will know. You will understand me, though I
cannot put it in words. There have been in
your life times and seasons — sometimes in joy,
sometimes in sorrow, sometimes in prayer, some-
times in solitude, sometimes in the midst of the
world — when there has come down almost a sen-
sible sweetness to your taste, almost a perceptible
• Ps. xx. 4

THE FOUBFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF dOD. 57

fragrance in your thoughts. And what is this
sweetness and fragrance? It is the Divine
Presence scattering abroad " the benedictions of
sweetness." That fragrance comes from the
golden censer which is in the hand of the angel
before the throne. And why are these things
sent to us ? To win and to persuade our will
freely to submit itself to His sovereignty. The
throne of His sovereignty is the Blessed Sacra-
ment upon the altar. The Sacred Heart of Jesus
Christ our Lord and King is there always reign-
ing* by the power of His love, attracting the
human will in all its freedom to Himself. Out
of the unwilling, He creates the willing ; not by
constraint, but by the sweetness of His Presence,
which makes them voluntarily cast off their un-
belief and disobedience, and of their own free will
submit themselves to Him.

Lastly, when hereafter we shall stand before
Him as our King and Judge, the Apostle St.
James declares that we shall be "judged by the
law of liberty." * He bids us, therefore, to use
it wisely : " So speak ye and so do, as being to
be judged by the law of liberty." In that day
we shall not be judged for anything we could not
do or leave undone, nor for anything we could
not know. We shall be judged for that which
we might have known, and might have done 01

•St. Jameaii. 12.

68 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

refrained from doing. We shall be tried by that
which we have known and done ; and wa shall
be compelled to lay our hand upon our mouth,
and to confess that, in all our life, we never did
evil in thought, word, or deed, but we might have
refrained from doing it, and might have done
good instead, if we had had the will ; that every
act of evil was a free act, and an irrational and
immoral abuse of our will.

Time forbids me now to draw out examples of
this evident truth. Take any habit in which at
this moment you may be entangled, — such as
ambition, pride, sloth, self-indulgence, jealousy,
insincerity, be it what it may, — tell me whether
the first acts of it were not altogether voluntary,
and the second and the third — ay, and the first,
second, and third years of its continuance ? If
now it has become ingrained in your character —
if now you have become, and are at this time,
proud, ambitious, slothful, jealous, insincere, so
that you cry in secret, " I am fast bound in these
chains of iron; how can I ever bieak these
bonds ? " — know that you have forged them for
yourselves, and at the last day will have to give
an account of every several and voluntary act,
whereby you have willingly wrought those links.
You laid them upon the anvil, and have delib-
erately welded them with your own hand, until by
your own will you have fastened them upon your-
•elves

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 59

Lastly, we shall have to give an account of all
the good we have left undone ; and it is certain
that we neglect, all day long, opportunities of
doing good, of making acts of love of God and
of our neighbor. In that day our Lord will
§ay to each one of us : "I was hungry, and you
gave Me not to eat ; I was thirsty, and you gave
Me not to drink ; I was a stranger, and you took
Me not in; naked, and you clothed Me not; sick,
and in prison, and you did not visit Me." * All
the day long, our life and lot are full of these op-
portunities, and we allow them to pass away.
They are golden opportunities, like the seed-
time and the harvest, which, with all their
treasures, pass with the year and return no more.
We shall have to give an account in that day of
the free use we have made of all our manifold
stewardship : of the gifts of nature ; of the facul-
ties of the soul ; of the graces of the Holy Ghost ;
of the providences of God over our life ; of the
opportunities which have been so countless and
BO fertile, surpassing even our recognition ; and
of all the loving visitations of God, whereby He
would have brought us to Himself.

Remember the words you have said this morn-
ing, and before you lie down will say again to-
night. Remember the obedience of Jesus, when
on your knees you say the prayer which He has

• St. Matt xxv. 42, 43.

60 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

taught us: "Thy kingdom come" — let Thy
sovereignty reign over my will. " Thy will be
done on earth, as it is in heaven," — let Thy
most holy, most sweet, most perfect will be done
in me, and by me, and about me, in all thingp,
and always, now and forever.

LECTURE III.

fHE SOVEREIGNTY OP GOD OVER
SOCIETY.

Is A I AS xxx ii. 1.

* Behold, a King shall reign in justice, and princes •hal)
rule in judgment."

WHATSOEVER may be the first and typical ful-
filment of this prophecy, no one can fail to see
its true and ultimate fulfilment in the kingdom
of Jesus Christ. It is a vision of that which is
singular upon earth — a just king; that is, a
king who, holding supreme power, reflects not
only the authority of the King of kings, but also
His character. Such a one is a king after God's
own heart. Justice is the sum of the perfections
of God, the bond of all the Divine attributes of
wisdom, power, mercy, and sanctity. A just
king, therefore, is one who, having supreme au-
thority, uses it in wisdom, mercy, and equity.
David's highest title of glory was, that he was a
man after God's own heart. His heart was con*
6 61

62 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

formed to the King of kings, and in the exercia
of his power, in making and in executing his laws,
he manifested that heart of justice to his people.
Such a kingdom is a kingdom of order, peace,
liberty, and equality ; because, whatever be their
social and accidental inequalities, all subjects are,
by the supreme authority, treated equally before
the law.

Such, then, is the vision of the prophecy ; and
it is more than a prophecy — it is a promise. It
not only foretells that such a kingdom of justice
shall be, but it promises that that kingdom shall
exist on earth.

Now, I have already spoken to you of the sov-
ereignty of God over the intellect and over the
will of individual men. Our submission to this
sovereignty is, I explained, by the act of faith, in
response to the command of God that we should
believe ; and by an act of obedience to His Di-
vine will, as it is revealed to us, in response to
the commandment that we should obey. What
I have now to do is to extend this subject ; and
these two primary truths lie at the base of what
I am about to add — I mean, the sovereignty of
God over society.

Society is a collection of individuals, not told
by number, but united, ordered, and organized
by an intrinsic law of their nature. For when
God made man, He made society. Society wa§

THE FOlKFOIxD SOVEREIGNTY OP GOD.

COLLEGE

2£LA,

63

a part of the first creation ; society springs out
of the creation of man, because from man comes
the family, and from the family come the peo-
ple, and from the people comes the State. The
whole civil order of the world is nothing but the
growth of that society which lay in the first man,
as the tree lies in the seed. Therefore in our
V€'.ry nature there is the society of mankind ; and,
as I said before, society does not mean merely
men told by the head. Numbers do not consti-
tute a people. That which constitutes a people
is the principle of order, authority, and law,
social relations, social rights, social duty. Where
those things are not, or are trampled down, there
may be a multitude, but there cannot be a peo-
ple. The gospel of the present day is not the
gospel of the society which God created, but the
gospel of anarchy. It declares that the multi
tude of men, told by number and voting by ple-
biscites, constitutes society. Therefore when I say
that God has a sovereignty over society, I mean
that He has a sovereignty over those ordered re-
lations of man to man, constituted by Himself in
the creation of mankind. The first principle,
then, of society is authority ; the second is obedi-
ence , and the third is mutual justice, whatsoever
be the varied, accidental, and providential ine-
qualities between man and man.
I affirm, then, that there is in this world, in

64 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

the order of nature, such a society as I have de-
scribed. And as the Son of God Incarnate re-
deemed mankind by His precious blood, so He
has purchased for Himself, not only man with
his individual intellect and will, but also the col-
lective society of man as God created it. What
we call Christianity is, in fact, the sovereignty of
Jesus Christ over mankind. In so far as men
are Christian, they are subjects of Jesus Christ ;
and in so far as they revolt from Him, they are
but rebels, because He is the King of that so-
ciety dejure, that is, by right, and de facto, that
is, in fact. He is de jure, by right, King over
every baptized soul; and He is not only dejure,
but de facto, King over all those that are faithful
to His laws. Those who, being baptized, rebel
against His laws, are no longer subject to Him
de facto; but they are subject dejure, that is, by
right, because they have been redeemed by Him
and regenerated in baptism. What, then, I pur-
pose to show is, that there exists in the world a
kingdom of which Jesus Christ is the King, and
that He has a sovereignty, and exercises that
sovereignty over it. The confusions we see in the
world are no contradiction to what I have said
— that He is, both by right and by fact, King
and Sovereign over those who are faithful to His
laws. He is sovereign still by right — though,
through their rebellion, not sovereign by fact — •
over thos'3 who break those laws.

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 65

Bear in mind, I am speaking of this kingdom
as God has made it, and not as man has marred it.
The kingdom, as God has made it, I will now go
on to describe ; that kingdom, as man has marred
it, will be our subject hereafter.

1. First, then, when the Son of God became in-
carnate, He came into the world, and gathered
His disciples about Him. In that act He founded
His kingdom. The preaching of John was:
"The kingdom of heaven is at hand/'* The
kingdom of heaven came when God was mani-
fested in the flesh, by His death redeemed the
world, by His resurrection vindicated His sover-
eignty, and by His ascension took possession of
His throne. By His Incarnation He had deified
the nature of man, and not only restored, but
elevated, man above his previous state in crea-
tion. He elevated not only man, but the society
of man, which, as I said, lies in man's very na-
ture. The first Adam was mere man, united with
God indeed; but through his disobedience he
wrecked himself, and in himself, all the society
of mankind. The second Adam is the Son of
God Incarnate, in whom man is not only re-
deemed and elevated, but the whole society of
mankind also ; and neither man nor the society
of man can again be wrecked, in so far as it is
obedient and faithful to the Incarnate Son of God.

•St. Matt. ui. 2,
ft. fi

66 THE FOT7BFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OP GOD.

I will say, then, for clearness* sake, that the
society He founded is His mystical Body, or the
Church, as we shall hereafter see. Our Divine
Lord restored man and society in His person
when He deified our manhood, our intelligence,
heart, will, our whole nature, soul and body.
When He gathered His disciples about Him, He
elevated them also. He illuminated them with
the knowledge of God and His kingdom ; He in-
fused into them the grace of His Holy Spirit ; He
shed abroad in their heart the law of love to God
and man ; He inspired their will with the law of
obedience ; He elevated them above the natural
state in which they were born. " That which is
born of the flesh is flesh," and such they were at
their first birth. "That which is born of the
Spirit is spirit," and such they were by contact
with the Son of God in the regeneration. And
being elevated to a higher state of faith, light,
love, and obedience, He assimilated them to
Himself; He changed them into His own like-
ness. The first Adam was defaced and dis-
figured, the image and likeness of God in him
were shattered ; but the likeness and image of
God were manifested again, in their perfection, in
the face of Jesus Christ. As St. Paul says:
" God, who commanded the light to shine out of
darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the
light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 67

the face of Jesus Christ." * Again he says : " We
all, beholding the glory of the Lord with face
uncovered, are transformed into the same image
from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the
Lord." f And St- John writes : " We saw His
glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten of the
Father, full of grace and truth. . . . And of His
fulness we all have received, and grace for
grace;" { that is to say, the fellowship of the dis-
ciples with their Lord, His daily conversation
with them, the assimilating power of His life and
of His example, transformed them. Their heart,
mind, and will were gradually transfigured into
His own likeness ; and as He changed them into
His own likeness, so He united them together.
They became of one mind, one heart, one will ;
they had one faith, one vision of God, one Guide,
one Teacher, one law. There was wrought in
them an internal change, which perfectly united
them one with another ; so that their thoughts,
affections, volitions, being subject by faith to the
sovereignty of their Divine Master, were assimi-
lated to each other. There grew up an internal
unity in the hearts of the disciples ; and there-
fore the external unity with which they adhered
to Him and to one another, was the result and
consequence of this intrinsic unity of mind and

* 2 Cor. iv. 6. f Ibid. iii. 18.

% St. John i. 14, 16.

68 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF «OD.

will. He thus organized them together. He
made one of them to be the first, and all the rest
to be equal. He gave to that one a chief au-
thority, and He gave to them all a participation,
not of that sole primacy, but of all other powers
which He gave to Peter, and so knit them into
one perfect society, of which He Himself was the
visible Head while on earth, and His Vicar
when He ascended into heaven. This is what we
call His Church, or Mystical Body.

When he ascended into heaven and sent the
Holy Ghost, his disciples and all who believed in
Him were united to Him by the indwelling of the
Spirit of God. He thereby became their Head.
They became His members, and were members
one with another in one organized body, so
compacted and fitted together, that as the body
of a man, quickened and animated by one life,
grows to its perfection, so with the Mystical Body
of Christ. He bestowed on it a participation of
His own prerogatives: it became imperishable,
because He has immortal life ; it became indisso-
lubly one, because He is the only Son of God ;
it became infallible, because He is the Divine
Truth, and cannot err; it became sovereign .n
the world, because it is the representative of
Himself, and, in His Name, exercises His sover-
eignty among the nations of the earth.
Such, then, was the first founding of His king-

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGN!* OF GOD. 63

dom. In its expansion afterwards, when He said
to His disciples, "All power in heaven and earth
is given unto Me : go ye, therefore, and teach
all nations," He claimed sovereignty in the
most ample and explicit terms. He who has
all authority, lacks nothing. There is no power
supreme over Him who has all authority. And
having all power, He therefore said to them : " I
dispose unto you a kingdom, as My Father hath
disposed unto Me." More explicit language
could not be found to declare that the power
which He gave to His Apostles was a royal
power ; that it was a participation of His own
sovereignty, and given in virtue of the right of
delegation which He received from His Father.
When He said, "My kingdom is not of this
world," He did not intend — as some blindly and
almost incomprehensibly misunderstand Him —
that he denied His kingdom to be in this world.
He affirmed it to be in this world, but not of it ;
that is, that the source of its authority, the foun-
tain of its jurisdiction, the sanctions of its laws,
the powers of its executive, are from His Eternal
Father. It therefore does not derive its authority,
sovereignty, jurisdiction, powers, rights, from this
world. All these are not of men, but of God.
They are not the grants or concessions of kings,
princes, legislatures ; nor do they come from the
multitude by universal suffrage. They are of

70 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

God, delegations of the Eternal King to His In-
carnate Son. They are supernatural, Divine,
intangible by human control, imperishable, sov-
ereign over all.

2. When, therefore, He sent out His Apostles
it was to execute the same commission He had
received Himself. "What He was among the
Apostles, they were to be among the nations of
the world. They began by elevating men and
families wheresoever they went. They commu-
nicated the same light, faith, grace, and laws,
which they had first received. The illumination
of faith, the gift of regeneration, the grace of the
Holy Sacraments, the laws of the kingdom of
God, the Ten Commandments interpreted not in
the letter only but in the spirit, the Two Precepts
of Charity, the Eight Beatitudes ; these were the
laws of the heavenly kingdom, and these the
Apostles gave to the nations of the world. The
nations of the world, so far as they received those
laws, were elevated to a higher order, and were
assimilated to the Master from whom those laws
were derived. As the faith and the laws of
Christianity took possession of men, of house-
holds, and of people, they were conformed to the
same pattern and the same perfection. When
the Apostle said, " Be ye also followers of me,
as I also am of Christ/' * he meant to say : " In

* 1 Cor. xi. L

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 71

me you see the dimmed and imperfect reflection
of that perfect image and pattern which I am
bid to represent ; foljow me, as I follow Christ.
I am indeed among you as an example, so far a*
I truly represent Him to whom all men, illumi-
nated by faith, are to be conformed — the Second
Adam, the Son of God, who is now at the right
hand of His Father." As they were assimilated
to that type, they were united together by the in-
fused grace of charity, and by the supernatural
union, which drew the world to believe in the
Unity of God. That supernatural and miracu-
lous union of the first Christians was the testi-
mony and proof of the Unity of God, from whom
they received their law. As our Divine Lord
prayed to His Father, " That they also may be
one in Us, that the world may believe that Thou
hast sent Me."* And the world beheld in
wonder, if it did not yet believe. The world
acknowledged this supernatural unity, saying:
" See how these Christians love one another." It
was a phenomenon never seen before, a fruit that
never grew on any other tree, since sin cursed the
earth. As they were united, so they were organ-
ized together; and there grew up in the world
the true Vine and the branches, — the one world-
wide organization, the one life-giving society of
men — united by baptism, faith, and worship;

• 8t John zrii. 21.

72 THE FOUBFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF OOI>.

by submission to one authority ; by the recogni*
tion of one visible Head — the sole fountain of
supernatural knowledge and supernatural power.
There was one hand which held the two keys of
jurisdiction and of science — that is, of supreme
power and of the perfect knowledge of faith ;
and that one hand was the hand of him who
bears the representative character of the Vicar
of his Divine Master. In this organization —
which, being visible, speaks to the eye, and hav-
ing a living voice speaks audibly to the ear —
there was a work of God's grace, even more
supernatural, more perfect, and more marvellous
The Church has a visible body; so had the
old Roman Empire ; so has now the Empire of
Britain ; but the Church has what they had not
— it has a soul, and that soul consists in a
spiritual unity, which emanates from God the
Holy Ghost, who dwells in it, and animates it by
faith, hope, and charity — by the seven gifts of
the Holy Ghost, by the eight Beatitudes in their
ripeness and perfection, by the law of charity to
God and man — thereby producing a perfect in-
ternal unity of mind, intellect, conscience, and
will, which God alone can create. This unity
of the Church, both external and internal, which
the world is always endeavoring to destroy, yet
can neither destroy nor deny, stands perpetually
in the world as the Visible Witness of the sover-

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 78

eignty of Jesus Christ. But we have not yet
reached to the full meaning of these words.

3. I have, thus far, described the Church in its
root, as our Lord planted it ; and in its exten-
sion, as the Apostles spread it abroad. Thence-
forward it has grown as a tree, rising in stature
and strength, overshadowing the whole world.
But the action of the Church among the nations
has been to create the Christian world. By the
Christian world, I mean that the Church has
pervaded, penetrated, and outwardly governed
races and nations of men, who are not all inter-
nally obedient by faith and charity to the laws
of grace. More than this, it has controlled the
material power, the physical or brute force of
mankind. There are but two kinds of force in
the world — material and moral ; and the force
of the sovereignty of Jesus Christ is the moral
force of law and right. The force of man is the
force of his arm, of his will, of combination, co-
ercion, criminal codes, capital punishment, war-
fare, conflicts between nation and nation until
one beats the other down and tramples in its
blood. This is the sovereign power of mankind,
unrestrained by the sovereignty of Jesus Christ.
Such it was before that sovereignty was revealed
from heaven ; such it would be again, if that
sovereignty could ever cease ; such it is always
and everywhere, in proportion as that sover-
7

74 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF OOP.

eignty grows weak in its control over the hearts
of men.

This moral power of law and right, first act-
ing upon individuals, then upon households, then
upon cities, then upon races, began to create the
new Christian civilization. The Church possessed,
in the time of St. Gregory the Great, three-and-
twenty provinces. The possessions over which
the Vicar of Jesus Christ ruled, until sacrilege
robbed him the other day, were called the Patri-
mony of the Church ; and some twenty-three like
to it were possessed by St. Gregory the Great.
They extended over the greater part of Italy, the
south of France, along the shores of the Adri-
atic, the north of Africa, Sicily, the islands of
the Mediterranean. Divine providence so or-
dered that these patrimonies, being committed
to the patriarchal care and government of the
Vicar of Jesus Christ, should become the first
portions of human society which were reduced
to obedience to the Christian law. In these pat-
rimonies the germs of Christian civilization were
planted. They first received the Christian law
of marriage, the abolition of slavery, Christian
education of children, just arbitration of Chris-
tian judges, mutual respect, fair dealing between
man and man. They became the first provinces
of that Christian world which has now grown up
into the maturity of Christendom. There is not

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 75

to be found in history anything more beautiful,
more patriarchal, or reflecting more brightly the
peaceful and majestic justice of our Divine Lord
in the Mountain, legislating in the eight Beati-
tudes, than the paternal sway of St. Gregory the
Great, the Apostle of England. Those twenty-
three patrimonies of the Church, as I have said
elsewhere,* wrought as the leaven in the meal ;
and the Christian civilization ripened in them,
became the germ of the Christian civilization
which afterwards formed the nations of Christian
Europe. Where, then, were Spain, France, Ger-
many, and England ? They were races divided
in conflict. Some were wild in their ferocity ;
others had sunk again into Paganism ; some had
not yet emerged from it. There was then no
Christian Europe, such as we now know it St.
Gregory the Great ruled over those patrimonies,
and ripened the first spring of the Christian
world. He sowed broadcast in the furrows of
Europe those seeds of Christian progress and
order of which men at this day are so proud,
though they are trampling them down. Then
the nations began to spring — Lombard y, Spain,
France, Germany, and England. It was the
action of the Vicar of Jesus Christ which made
them what they are. Spain was torn by heresy,
invaded by Saracens, infected by Judaism, divided
• Four Evils of the J)ay, p. 84.

76 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF OOD.

into conflicting kingdoms, when the Councils of
Toledo, legislating by the precepts of the Chris-
tian law, knit together the many races of the
Peninsula into one great people. So it was in
England. The Heptarchy was in perpetual con-
flict, seven kingdoms warring against each other,
until Christianity, entering and subduing them to
one faith, one law, one supreme Pastor, blended
them into one ; and the Christian monarchy of
England arose, and endures to this day. So
was it with other nations of our Christian world.
And after this was done, another work began:
they were then united together, and Christendom
arose. What the Church had done in Spain and
England, it did throughout the whole of Europe.
It knit the nations together into a federation of
Christian kingdoms and people, and created the
unity and order of Christendom, which is the
manifestation of the sovereignty of Jesus Christ
over the civil powers of the world. But this
subject is too large : I can but sum it up in these
few words.

What has the world, then, gained by the
sovereignty of Jesus Christ ? The extinction of
slavery, — and let any man weigh what those
words mean, remembering what slavery was in
the ancient world. Secondly, the sanctificatiou
of Christian households by the laws of domestic
parity and the laws of marriage. Thirdly, the

FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 77

Christian education of children. Fourthly, the
redemption of woman ; the raising her from the
degradation in which she was before her regenera-
tion in Christ, to be the handmaid of the Immac-
ulate Mother of God, and to be respected by
men, as being the image of the Mother of their
Redeemer. Once more, the restraining of war-
fare, which before was the lawless and brute vio-
lence of men and nations, without recognition of
mercy and justice. War itself was tempered
with mercy under the legislation of the Church
and the supreme arbitrament of the Vicar of
Jesus Christ. Again, the civil code of every
country, which still retained, even in its Chris-
tianity, the severity and sanguinary rigor of its
past, was gradually mitigated from age to age,
until the severities of the old world were in great
measure effaced. In passing, let me protest
against a common and monstrous inversion of
the truth. The Church is accused of sanctioning
and encouraging severities in the criminal code,
which the milder legislation of princes has miti-
gated. The Church always restrained the severi-
ties of law to the utmost of its power, from age
to age ; but the hands of men in iron mail were
too heavy to be stayed by the light pastoral staff
of the Church. The Church would have extin-
guished long ago the cruelties of the penal code,
If it had obtained the power. There was also in-
I*

78 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD,

troduced into the society of men a quality never
known before — the charity of the Sacred Heart
of Jesus. The manifold compassion of the Good
Shepherd and of the Good Physician, — tender-
ness to the sick, to the sorrowing, to the orphan,
to the widow, to the prisoner, to the outcast, to
the poor, — these are the ripe fruits of the Ser-
mon on the Mount, and come from no other tree.
Again, mutual respect among all classes and
ranks of men. When I say respect, I do not
mean only or chiefly the respect of the lower for
those above them, but I mean emphatically the
respect of those in authority for those who are
beneath them, because they see in them the
image of God, and the purchase of the Precious
Blood of Jesus Christ.

These, then, are some of the fruits of the Chris-
tian civilization, which the world had never
known before. The sovereignty of Jesus Christ
consists therefore in this : that whereas in the
order of nature, there was a human society such
as I first described, and whereas, in the order
which is supernatural there is a society created
by our Divine Lord Himself — which is His
Church — the sovereignty of Jesus Chrat con-
sists in the union of those two creations of God ;
in their perfect amity, intimate concord, mutual
co-operation, united recognition of One Master,
One Lord One Sovereign ; or, in other words.

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 79

that what is called the Church and State form
one sovereignty, under one Supreme Head. Woe
to the man, woe to the people, that preach their
separation ! Woe to the world, when they shall
be separated! The prophet Isaias, foretelling
the sovereignty of this Just King, describes it
thus : " The land that was desolate and impas-
sable shall be glad; and the wilderness shall
rejoice, and shall flourish like the lily. It shall
bud forth and blossom, and shall rejoice with joy
and praise. The glory of Libanus is given to it;
the beauty of Carmel, and Saron ; they shall see
the glory of the Lord, and the beauty of our
God." * And again he says, speaking of the man
of faith: "His eyes shall see the king in his
beauty." f Who is the king but Jesus Christ ?
what is the beauty but the manifestation of His
kingdom? Perhaps some will say, "Yes, in
heaven." I answer, "Yes; but also upon earth;
or, what do you mean day by day in praying,
' Thy kingdom come ; Thy will be done on earth
as it is in heaven ' ? " To be blind to God's king-
dom in the midst of us is Judaism. When the
Messias came, the men of Jerusalem were looking
for a king of glory. When He came in humilia-
tion, they did not know Him. As the Apostle
Bays : " For, if they had known it, they would
never have crucified the Lord of glory." J Men

* Isaias xxxv. 1, 2. f H>. xxxiii- J-7. 1 * Cor. u, 8.

60 THE FOUBFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OP OOD.

are now going the same way ; they are postpon-
ing the manifestation of His kingdom to the
future, — shutting it up in the unseen world, that
it may not trouble our peace with its justice or
disturb our politics with its authority.

There are two consequences to be drawn from
what I have said. The one is this : that though
His kingdom — as our Lord Himself said — Li
not of this world, it is nevertheless here as the
sphere of its manifestation. The kingdom of
Jesus Christ, then, the Church and the Christian
world, are here and visible; and they are not
only here and visible, but they are local. Under
the Old Law, Jerusalem was the head of Israel,
the centre from which the Law went forth ; there
was the sanctuary and the priesthood ; there too
was the Temple, in which the high-priest minis-
tered ; and all this was typical. " For the law
having a shadow of good things to come, not th*
very image of the things," * the substance came
under the New Law. What, then, corresponds
now to Jerusalem under the Old Law ? It is the
cant of controversy, it is the affectation of scepti-
cism, for any man to shut his eyes and pretend
that Christendom, which he admits to have a cir-
cumference, has no centre. It is the audacity of
unbelief to say, that the centre has been any
other than Rome. No man, with the page of
* Heb. z. 1.

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OP OOD. &.

history before him, can find any other solatioL,
of the things I have been saying, except in the
history of the Pontiffs, the Vicars of Jesus Christ.
Rome is visibly and self-evidently the head and
centre of the Christian order. Rome is as surely
the seat of the sovereignty of God in the Church
of all nations, as Jerusalem was in that of the
Jews. The Vicar of the Incarnate Word dwells
there by the dispensation of Divine Providence.
The world has striven to cast him out for eighteen
centuries, and has never been able to displace
him. Five-and-forty times it has striven to drive
him out, or to keep him out, or to overturn the
throne of the Vicar of Jesus Christ ; but in vain.
If he disappear for a moment, in a little while
he is to be found once more reigning at the Tomb
of the Apostles. If he be absent for half a cen-
tury, his return is only the more supernatural.
Such is the mere matter of fact. But I will go
on to something that men will not deny. Rome
has been the Mother of Churches. It may not,
indeed, have been the Mother of all the Churches,
because the Apostles went out from Jerusalem,
and the disciples were first called Christians at
Antioch. But if Rome has not been the Mother
of all the Churches of the East, assuredly it is
the Mother of the Churches of the West. It is
the Mother of the Christianity of Ireland, of
England, of Germany; and so I might go on.

82 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

It has been the Mother of the Churches of the
West, and the Foster-mother of the Churches of
the world. It has ever been, and ever must be,
the Teacher and Guide of Churches, the Chief
Witness of the Incarnation, the Chief Apostle
of what our Lord taught, of what our Lord com-
manded ; the Chief Judge of all controversies,
the Chief Interpreter of the faith, the Chief
Doctor and Pastor of the Universal Church. So
the Council of Florence declares, and so the
Council of the Vatican the other day expounded,
with a voice which is infallible, in virtue of that
same special promise of Divine assistance made
by the Son of God to Peter, and in him to all
who sit in his seat forever.

Not only so, but, as I have already very briefly
traced, Home is the mother of nations. If it be
Christianity which has civilized the world, it is
Rome which has sustained Christianity. The
patrimonies of the Church were the seed-plot of
Europe. And for all these causes and reasons,
Rome is the capital of Christendom. It was
never the capital of Italy. When Italy and
Rome were one, Italy was united to Rome, and
not Rome to Italy. Rome had a world-wide em-
pire, of which Italy was a part. The claim of
that part to appropriate Rome is a stupendous
usurpation. It is a usurpation upon your rights,
and upon mine, and upon the rights of every

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 88

Christian nation and every Christian man under
heaven.

From east to west, the whole of Christendom
claims Rome as its head and as its home ; and
every nation throughout the world goes up to
Rome, as the tribes of Israel went up to Jeru-
salem. God has so ordered it. There are two
special reasons why we hold it so to be, both as
matter of faith and as matter of principle.

First, God has so ordered the organization, con-
stitution, and authority of His visible Church on
earth. He has made Rome the seat of the Vicar
of His Incarnate Son ; and from that seat or
throne goes forth the supreme authority both of
jurisdiction and of doctrine, whereby the purity
and the liberty of the Church throughout the
world are perpetually preserved. Satan is wise
enough to know that, if he can strike a blow on
the head, he is inflicting a deadly wound upon
the whole body ; and for that reason the warfare
from the beginning has been against Rome. This
is one reason.

The other is, that Rome is the bond or link
between the two societies, natural and super-
natural, of which I have been speaking. In the
one person who is both Pontiff and King, the two
societies and the two authorities, in the world,
spiritual and temporal, are united. The union
of these is, as we have seen, the will and purpose

84 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

of our Divine Redeemer. We therefore insist
upon it as a matter of principle. Every power,
whatsoever it be, that attempts to dissolve the
union which God has created, is fighting against
God. We contend for this, not so much for the
sake of the Church, which is imperishable and
will live to the end of the world in all the plen-
itude of its majesty, as for the sake of the civil
society of mankind, which, as we shall see here-
after, when separated from Christianity, will go
to dissolution.

What, then, is it that men call the temporal
power of the Pope ? We are weary of the words.
It simply means this, — the union, in one person,
of the supreme authority which links together
the two societies God has created for the sanctifi-
cation of mankind. You know full well there
never was any period of Christianity in which the
spiritual authority of Rome first, and next its
temporal power, has not been the special object
of assault. You know the events at this mo-
ment. Do not be afraid. Fear nothing. As
long as the Christian world exists, the Christian
world will recognize Jesus Christ to be the Son
of God, and the Pontiff to be His Vicar. It will
obey the law of justice which consecrates the prov-
idential order whereby he is a sovereign among
kings. Though this may be overclouded for a
moment! as it has been forty times before, and

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF SOD. 85

may be a hundred, it will not be destroyed. If
it were, the Christian world would have com-
mitted suicide ; but I have better hopes. Let us
not fear, then. The Scottish nation, when, by an
unhappy vehemence, they cast off their obedience
to the Vicar of Jesus Christ, and also the au-
thority of the bishops who were set over them,
had the faith and the wisdom to retain two
things, which tney hold fast to this day — the
absolute independence of man and of conscience,
in all things spiritual, of all civil powers ; and
also what they call, in true and expressive lan-
guage, " the crown-rights of Jesus Christ ; " that
is to say, the sovereignty of our Divine Lord, and
of His kingdom, over all rulers and civil laws.
Seeing a great nation retain these two principles,
we may hope for it.

You, as children of the Catholic Church, have
not only retained these things, but you have re-
tained them with the pastoral care of the Apos-
tles, and with the supreme authority of the Vicar
Jesus Christ. You owe him, therefore, fidelity,
obedience of heart, mind, and will, submission of
intellect and of all your powers to the revealed
law of God. You owe him a generous obedience.
That which we call the spirit of a good Catholic
means a generous love and a generous fidelity, as
to the Delegate of a Divine Master and a Divine
King, who is our King by right and by fact
a

86 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY Of GOD.

Honor him, then; love him, and obey him
The desolate and impassable land, which one*
blossomed as the lily, is growing desolate and im-
passable once more. Wars choke up its high-
ways, armed men are upon all its paths, desola-
tion and barrenness are where the smiling fields
and waving harvests were a year ago ; and this
is a type of the Christian world as it is before
God. The glory of Libanus, and the beauty of
Saron and of Carmel, are trampled down : but
be not afraid. The words of the prophet are the
words of God : " I beheld in the visions of the
night, and lo, one like the Son of Man came in
the clouds of heaven, and He came even to the
Ancient of Days ; and they presented Him before
Him. And He gave Him power, and glory, and
a kingdom ; and all peoples, tribes, and tongues
shall serve Him: His power is an everlasting
power, that shall not be taken away ; and Hii
kingdom that shall not be destroyed. ' *

* Daniel rii. IS, 14.

LECTURE IV.

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE DIVIKB
HEAD OF THE CHURCH.

ST. JOHN xi. 25, 26.

11 1 am the Resurrection and the Life ; he that believeth in
Me, although he be dead, shall live : and every one that
liveth, and believeth in Me, shall not die forever."

IN the end of the Sabbath, and in the dawn
of the morning, Mary Magdalene and the other
Mary came to the sepulchre. And there was a
great earthquake. The angel of the Lord de-
scended from heaven, and rolled away the stone
from the door of the sepulchre, and sat upon
it. His face was as the lightning, and his
raiment white as snow : and for fear of him, the
soldiers who kept the sepulchre trembled, and
were as dead men. And he said to the women :
Fear not you, for ye seek Jesus who was crucified.
He is not here. He is risen. Come, see th«

olace where the Lord was laid.

87

S3 THE FO/BFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

In this was fulfilled the declaration of Jesus by
the tomb of Lazarus : " I am the Resurrection
and the Life." He did not say: "I will give
life, I will raise from the dead." He said : "lam
the Life, I am the Resurrection ; the Life and
the Resurrection are Myself." That is : "I am
Who am, the Self-existent, the Life and the Life-
giver." The Life is God, and God is the Life of
all things. He is the Fountain of life ; and He
who is the Fountain of life is alone the Resurrec-
tion. He who can give life is alone He who can
restore life. To do this is a Divine and sovereign
act, and is the prerogative of God only. There-
fore, by the Resurrection, our Divine Lord is
manifested in His Godhead, in the sovereignty
of His power, in His victory over sin and death,
and in His royalty over the creation of God.
This is also the meaning of His words when He
said: "I am the Good Shepherd. The Good
Shepherd giveth His life for His sheep. . . .
Therefore doth My Father love Me, because 1
'lay down My life, that I may take it again. No
man taketh it away from Me ; I lay it down
of Myself, and I have power to lay it down, and
I have power to take it up again." * His Incar-
nation, His Death, His Resurrection, were all alike
sovereign acts of Divine will and of Divine power.

1. In His Incarnation, by an act of His own

» St. John x. 11-18.

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 89

Divine will, He took our humanity, assuming the
intelligence of a human soul, and uniting it with
the Uncreated Intelligence, which is the Son of
God ; and in assuming a human soul like ours —
a soul perfect in reason, heart, and will — He
beatified it : that is, it was admitted to the Beatific
Vision and to the Beatific Union. His manhood
was elevated above the order of nature. It was
deified, but it was human still. In assuming a
human soul, He likewise assumed a human body,
and in all things a body like our own — with the
same flesh, and bones, and nerves, and blood j
with the same susceptibility of suffering, the same
capacity of pain, of hunger, thirst, sorrow, weari-
ness, passion, and death. And because He took
to Himself a human nature whole and perfect,
there were two natures alike whole and perfect
— Godhead and manhood united in One Person.
No human person was there, but One only Person,
and that Divine — God Himself Incarnate. Over
the Divine countenance He drew the veil of His
humanity, so that the splendor and glory of His
Person were hidden from the eyes of men. On
Mount Tabor, for a moment, the light of His
majesty was seen ; but in the years of His humil-
iation, His humanity alone was manifest to sense.
The veil was upon the face of His Godhead.

2. As, then, the assumption of our humanity
was an act of His free and sovereign will, so also
8*

90 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

was the laying down of His life. He gave Him
self to suffer. He gave His Body to the scourge,
and to the thorns, and to the nails. He was fur-
rowed, pierced, and wounded by the instruments
of passion. His Precious Blood streamed from
Him, His vital spirit was drained away. He
gave His Soul to three-and-thirty years of mental
sorrow, and to His dereliction in the Garden, and
to the darkness of His agony. When the hour
was come, by His own free sovereign will He
untied the knot of Almighty power, whereby body
and soul, in man, are joined together. The
"silver cord" was broken, and He bowed His
head, and by a sovereign act gave up the ghost.
The Passion was indeed a sufficient cause of
death to any human nature; nevertheless, His
dying was voluntary ; for He had power to sus-
tain His human life ; but by His own free sover-
eign will, He withheld that sustaining power, and
by a voluntary act gave up the ghost.

3. And as He laid down His life by a free act
of His own will, so He resumed it again. In the
moment when the Divine Soul of Jesus parted
from the Body, it passed forever from the desola-
tion of His agony into the light of the Vision of
God. Throughout His earthly life of sorrow He
was at all times in the Vision of God. In the
hour of His desolation, He willingly hid it from
Him ; but when that passing cloud upon the light

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 91

of His soul was over, He entered again and fof
ever intc the light of bliss. The deified human
soul of Jesus in that moment entered, in our be-
half, into the final possession and the eternal
fruition of the glory of God. The light of the
Sun of Justice then arose upon the world unseen.
The realms beyond the grave — where the patri-
archs, prophets, saints, martyrs, penitents of the
Old Law, waited for the Redeemer — were illu-
minated by His coming; the invisible world,
which in our Creed we call Hell ; the realm of
the departed, in which were waiting together —
though separate and distinct in state — the saints
of the kingdom of grace, though the kingdom of
God was not yet opened; those also who were
purifying and expiating for the Vision of God,
to be revealed hereafter ; and those who were lost
eternally.

To all He was made known : to the saints a*
their Redeemer, fulfilling the promise made to
the faithful who had looked for Him from the be-
ginning of the world ; to the penitent, who had
turned in hope to the promise of a Redeemer;
and to the lost, who would not believe the Word
of God. To them was revealed the light of the
truth and of the majesty of God against whom
they had sinned. They had in their day received
light enough to know Him, and grace enough in
all hours, and in all temptations, to have turned

92 THE FOUKFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

from sin to God, and to have attained salvation
had they only been willing to be saved.

While this Divine work was accomplishing, the
Body was taken from the Cross ; but never foi
one moment was either the body or the soul of
His humanity separated from the Godhead of the
Eternal Son. The body and soul were parted in-
deed from each other in natural death, but the
body and soul were alike united indissolubly by
the Hypostatic Union — that is, by the personal
assumption of our manhood into God — to the
Person of the Eternal Son. From the moment
of the Incarnation to all eternity, Jesus remains
the same indissolubly, two natures in one Person.
As the Soul of Jesus in the world unseen was a
manifestation of God, so the Body which hung
lifeless on the Cross — the lifeless form which,
when the nails were drawn from the hands and
feet, was lowered into the bosom of His Immacu-
late Mother — was the Body of the Incarnate
Son of God. With loving care it was swathed
in the grave-clothes, it was anointed with the
ointments, it was embalmed with the spices, it
was borne lovingly to the tomb, and laid in the
sepulchre upon the mouth of which the stone was
laid. But it was not ointments or spices that
embalmed that Sacred Body : there was no need
of them to stay corruption ; over that Body cor-
ruption had no power, because union with tn«

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GO1>. 98

Godhead sustained its in corruption. The true
embalming of that Sacred Flesh was its union
with the Godhead ; and that Sacred Flesh was
incorruptible because the Son of God, by Hia
sovereign will, stayed the progress of the dis-
honors of the grave.

Then came the re-assumption, by the same free
act of His sovereign power. All through that
night, while the watches were set, and the guards
kept the sepulchre, and the seals remained un-
bi oken upon the stone, there was light, and wor-
ship, and watching, and energy within the tomb.
"Within that closed sepulchre there was a Divine
power, the presence of the Son of God, who,
having laid down His life, was preparing to take
it up again. The Divine creating power which
had fashioned His own humanity, restored it
again from the wounds and dishonors of His Pas-
sion. The Divine will smoothed out the furrows
of the scourge, healed the piercing of the thorns,
closed the wounds of the nails, and effaced from
His Sacred Flesh all tokens of humiliation, save
only the five Sacred Wounds in hands, and feet,
and side, which still remain, and in eternity will
remain forever, as the tokens of our redemption
and the pledges of His everlasting love. When
that Sacred Flesh was once more restored to its
perfection and glory, the Divine soul of Jesua
clothed itself therewith as with a garment.

As in the moment of the Incarnation He ar-

94 THB FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

rayed Himself in our humanity, so once more, in
the tomb, He took up again that Sacred Body,
reanimated it, quickened it again in every pulse,
and in every vibration of its human life. He
raised it to a state of immortality ; He elevated
it above the condition of nature. He passed out
of that tomb before the stone was rolled from
its mouth, before the seals were broken. By Hia
Divine Omnipotence He passed forth, because
that which was mortal had become immortal ; that
which had been passible was now impassible;
that which was before as our nature in the state
of death, had become subtile and glorious. He
endowed His Body with the four gifts of glory
which He has promised to us all. That which
shall be the inheritance of all His members, He
first assumed to Himself.

Such, then, was the resurrection of Jesus
Christ. He had laid down His life, and He took
it up again, fulfilling His promise, "I am the
Resurrection, I am the Life." In Him all men
shall rise. "As in Adam all die, even so in
Christ shall all be made alive. The first man is of
the earth, earthly ; the second man from heaven,
heavenly. As is the earthly, so are the earthly ;
as is the heavenly so are the heavenly."

In His Resurrection we all partake. " Christ
is risen from the dead, the first-fruits of them
that sleep."* All who live by Him, and by

• 1 Cor, xv. 20.

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF 8OD. 96

Tital union are united with Him, rise together
with Him; and therefore the Apostle says: "If
you be risen with Christ, seek the things that
are above: where Christ is sitting at the right
hand of God. Mind the things that are above,
not the things that are on the earth; for you
are dead, and your life is hidden with Christ in
God." * And again he says, that God has raised
Him up, " and hath raised us up together, and
hath made us sit together in the heavenly
places." f

The power of the resurrection of Jesus is
upon every member of His Body: it is upon
every one of you. In your baptism you were
grafted into Christ ; and if you be living mem-
bers of His Body, the life of the Resurrection
flowed into you : " Know you not that you are
the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God
dwelleth in you ? " J If any man have not the
Spirit of Christ in him, he is none of His ; but
if He be in you, then being buried by baptism
to death, you will also rise up with Him, by the
power of Him who raised Jesus from the dead.

The plain consequence of this teaching is full
of joy and consolation.

First, it pledges to every one of us a resurrec-
tion hereafter to perfection and glory, the same
*9 that of Jesus Himself, identical in all its cir-

• Col. ui. 1-3. t Ephes. ii- 6. $ 1 Cor. iii. 16.

96 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

cumstances. We are conquerors in Him, by
Him, with Him, and through Him, over sin and
death. If sin have no power over our will, death
will have no power over our body or our soul, for
we are made partakers of the first resurrection ;
and " Blessed and holy is he that hath part in
the first resurrection ; in these the second death
hath no power." * That is, if the resurrection of
your baptism, and the indwelling of the Holy
Ghost, and the risen life of Jesus Christ in your
mortal body, be the law, and the rule, and the
power which sustains you, then the death of
the body is but a resting, a momentary passing
sleep.

Jesus has plucked out the sting of death ; for
the sting of death is sin, and He has thereby
turned death into slumber. Therefore Christians
call their burial-places " cemeteries," — sleeping-
places, places of rest, of sweet, kindly, refreshing
repose, after the toil of life is done. Therefore
the living memory of those whom the world calls
dead, and the Church knows to be alive, are
ever fresh and vivid in the hearts of Christiana
Therefore also the Communion of Saints — which
the dull - hearted, cold - hearted world, with its
clogged understanding, cannot comprehend — is
to those who live by faith a family, a household,
an eternal home, on the very threshold of which
• Apoo. zz. 6.

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 97

our feet now stand. There is a resurrection
pledged to us all, and with that resurrection the
perfect personal identity which we bear in this
life. We shall be the same men, having the
iame minds, hearts, wills, — only with this
change, that whereas here we are imperfect,
there we shall be in perfection; whereas here,
if the image of God be impressed upon us — aa
indeed it is — it is dim and faint, there we shall
be as He has promised: " The just shall shine as
the sun, in the kingdom of their Father." * But
we shall be the same men still. The very same
that have suffered, sorrowed, struggled, labored,
hungered, and thirsted in this life, the same we
shall be in the kingdom of the resurrection. And
therefore there shall be a perfect and universal
recognition one of another, and of all those
bonds whereby we are united here. Jesus and
Mary, the Mother and the Son, will be Mother
and Son to all eternity : maternal and filial love
will be glorified in the kingdom of heaven.
Mary and Lazarus will be likewise brother and
sister; Andrew and Peter, and James and John,
in like manner will be bound together in eternal
kindred : fraternal love and friendship shall then
be glorified. So shall it be with all of you in
the kingdom of God, in perfect personal identity,
and perfect mutual recognition in that eternal

• St. Matt. xiii. 43.
• G

08 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

home in the everlasting hliss of our Father's
house.

Such, then, is the personal sovereignty of Jesus
Christ, manifested in Himself, and in His victory
over death and the grave ; and this sovereignty
of life and immortality pervades His whole mys-
tical Body now, and quickens every member of
it. This is the meaning of St. John's words :
" Grace be unto you and peace from Him, who is,
and who was, and who is to come ; and from the
seven spirits which are before His throne : and
from Jesus Christ, who is the Faithful Witness,
the First Begotten of the dead, and the Prince of
the kings of the earth ; who hath loved us, and
washed us from our sins in His own blood, and
hath made us a kingdom, and priests to God and
His Father: to Him be glory and empire for-
ever and ever. Amen." * The Church on earth
is the kingdom of the resurrection, and the sov-
ereignty of its Divine Head is exercised through
it, as the instrument of His power and the mani-
festation of His government over the nations.
This power He delegated in chief to His Vicar
upon earth : the witness of the Divine Head of
the mystical Body.

We have already traced this sovereignty over
the intellect and the will of man. We have
traced it also over the civil society of the world,

• Apoo. L 4H.

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 99

through that which is both the type and bond of
all societies — His Church. For this end, He has
provided His Church with a supreme authority
residing in its visible head, and with supernatural
endowments, derived from Himself. On these
two points it may be well a little longer to delay;
but at this time we can only touch on the former.
The presence of a supreme authority, delegated
by Jesus Christ to His Vicar, has been ever ac-
knowledged by the world by a twofold recogni-
tion. It recognizes it both by submission and by
antagonism.

And here I would fain make an end, but for
o bher thoughts which are forced upon me. Yes-
tor day I read a notable example of this homage
of antagonism — a scornful, petulant attack upon
those devoted sons of the Catholic Church in
England, who during this Holy Week have knelt
at the feet of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, testify-
ing, in the name of us all, our fidelity and love
to him and to the Master whom he represents.
The writer of the article stated he did not wonder
— and perhaps those who receive the teaching of
such a writer may, like him, not wonder — if in
the heart of some devout Catholics there may rise
a doubt whether the temporal power of the Pope
will ever again be restored, and if not restored,
whether the spiritual power of the Pope will long
survive In the name of the Catholics of Eng-

100 THE FOURFOLr SOVEREIGNTY OP «OD.

land, in whose name I have a right to speak, and
in the name of Ireland, for whom I have no right
but that Ireland gives it me, and will not refuse
my words, I protest against the folly and false-
hood of this senseless insinuation. There is no
living Catholic in Great Britain or Ireland who
for one moment doubts that the power in worldly
things, with which our Divine Master has in-
vested His Vicar on earth, will continue undi-
minished until the hour in which it shall have
fulfilled its mission ; and then, in the wreck of
kingdoms and the desolation of the world, it will
be rendered back to Him who gave it.

In the name, then, of every Catholic here and
everywhere, I bear witness that he who thinks
any Catholic child to imagine that the temporal
power over temporal things is the basis or
strength of the spiritual prerogatives of the
Vicar of Jesus Christ, or that those things are
other than dust under his feet, that man, if he be
not senseless, must be malicious. It is either the
incapacity of the mind to understand, or the in-
sincerity of the will that refuses to understand.

It may seem as if I have introduced a note of
discord, and struck, upon this day, a sound out
of harmony with the joy of the Resurrection.
Not so : for He who, when He had risen from the
dead, declared : " I am alive, and was dead ; and
behold, I am living forever and ever, and hava

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 101

the keys of death and of hell,"* is the same
who said : " Thou art Peter, and upon this rock
I will build My Church, and the gates of hell" —
the keys of which I hold — " shall not prevail
against it." It is the power of the resurrection
of Jesus Christ which quickens the Church of
God. As the Head is Divine, and as the Head is
the " Resurrection and the Life," so is the Body
imperishable, and its authority indefectible and
infallible. The universality, sanctity, structure,
and unity of that one Body of Christ is indis-
soluble and imperishable. It cannot die; and
that because its Head is the " Kesurrection and
the Life," Not only so, but it can never be bound.
Jesus was bound with grave-clothes and laid in
the grave, the stone upon the mouth of it was
sealed, and guards set to watch it. The world
would have hindered Him from rising.

Turn now to the history of the Church. When
has king, or prince, or people, or revolution, ever
prevailed to bind the Church of the living God?
At this hour, the Church, living and giving
ijlife, is more widely spread, more rooted in the
hearts of mankind, more fruitful beyond all
example in its spiritual mission and power. Its
^Episcopate reaches beyond all bounds and limits
of its former extent : its authority is universally
obeyed by the loving hearts of its pastors and

•Apoo.i.18.
9*

102 THB FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

people: greater unity with its Head has never
yet been seen in the history of Christendom.
Princes and legislatures, penal laws, laws of
prohibition, imperial despotisms, royal corruption,
sanguinary revolutions, have done their worst to
bind the liberty of the Church of God ; but th«
bonds have been broken, as the threads and the
withes were broken by the hands of the " Deliv-
erer of Israel." So it has been, and so it shall
be. Let no man believe, then, that if the tem-
poral rights of the Church be for a moment
wrested from it, the Vicar of Christ will not go
onward without wallet or staff, scrip or shoes, if
need be. His work will be done : for it is God's
work, and none can hinder it.

But there is another lesson these censors bring
to mind, and for your sakes I must speak of
it. In the same senseless and clamorous article
I read, for the thousandth time, that "The
government of the Pope must go, because it is
opposed to progress and modern civilization."

For the present, it is enough to say that
"progress" and "modern civilization" mean
this : the world going its own way without God
and without Christ ; banishing Christianity from
legislation; excluding religion from the educa-
tion of children ; dissolving the bonds of mar-
riage; tampering with the tables of sanctity
and purity, whereby the marriage state has been

FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 103

protected; proclaiming that the public life of
nations has no religion. This is " progress," this
is " modern civilization," I acknowledge. Nations
may grow cultivated and rich, scientific and
prosperous; they may devote all their energies
to this world; but they cannot serve God and
mammon ; and for that reason they serve mam-
mon mightily, and they serve God never. Verily
they have their reward : they prosper in this life,
and that prosperity is all the recompense before
them. Such, indeed, is "modern civilization"
and " progress." And then they invite the Vicar
of Jesus Christ, the representative of the Good
Shepherd, the witness of truth upon earth, the
teacher of the doctrines of Redemption, the ex-
positor of the law of God, the guardian of the
Seven Sacraments, the supreme judge of the law
of domestic life, the chief father and pastor of
th-3 little ones of the flock — they invite him to
conform himself to "progress" and "modern
civilization," under the pain of losing his tem-
poral power. Be it destroyed seventy times
seven, before a compromise of truth be made!
No Pontiff who has ever reigned in the chair of
Peter, no head of the Catholic Church who rep-
resents the Incarnate Son of God, ever did, or
can, or ever will compromise, for all the world
contains, jot or tittle of the faith or law of Christ
Here I would fain conclude ; but I must press

104 THE FOUKFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

this " progress " and " modern civilization n a
little farther. Let me trace it to its fountain;
and that I may not detain you too long, I will
only go a century back to show what it has
produced. In the last century, a new code of
legislation was promulgated to the civilized and
Christian world, called " The Principles of 1789."
Those principles were laid down as the basis of
the civil order of France : and not only so ; they
were intended to make France the apostle of
civilization and progress throughout the Chris-
tian world. The example of perfection, and the
capital of the modern world in its civilization
and progress, was to be Paris. I need hardly say
more. In eighty-two years there have been five
revolutions in that city, all of them with blood-
shed. No doubt you have all read of the blood
which flowed during the First Revolution, as the
first libation to those principles. I am old enough
to remember the blood shed in Paris in the years
1830, 1848, and 1852. And how do you think
Palm Sunday was kept this year in the centre of
"modern civilization"? By the inauguration
of a civil war. How has this Holy Week been
sanctified ? By daily battles of brother against
brother. And Good Friday ? By a fiercer en-
counter, by the seizure of the Archbishop and
pastors of the flock, by the closing of the churches,
by the spoiling of sanctuaries, by the prohibition

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 105

of religion. The last tidings we heard were, that
it was expected a decisive assault would be made
last night, that is, on Easter eve. Verily, this is
the Easter of progress ! To-day is Easter-day ;
and who knows but that the moment I speak,
blood may not be running in the paths of that
city? If this be "progress," and if this be
" modern civilization," may God in His infinite
mercy keep it forever from the shores of this
cc untry !

The first great French Revolution was the
inauguration of the reign of Antichrist, of the
denial of Christian faith, of the ruin of the
Christian order, of the subversion of the author-
ity of the Church of God, both in public and
private life ; and from that day to this, the prin-
ciples of turbulence and apostasy have scourged
and tormented kingdoms. At that time they all
but entered England; at this time they may
strive to enter again. Be firm, and fear not the
clamorous talk of those who write to pander to
the public opinion of the day. We know that
He in whom we believe is the " Resurrection and
the Life," the Head of His Church on earth, the
sovereignty of which shall never fail. Whether
the Church be clothed with temporal power or
not, so long as the world is Christian, the world
will believe in Jesus Christ and in His Vicar. So
long as it believes He has a Vicar upon earth, no

106 TH* FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

king, prince, or sovereign whatsoever will ven-
ture to claim him as a subject. Even at this
moment, the unjust and sacrilegious revolution
of Italy has not dared to call him subject, but,
with pretences and guarantees, which are mere
illusion, has attempted to throw dust in the eyea
of the Christian world, and deceive those who
cannot be deceived. So long as the world is
Christian, the Chief Pastor of the Christian
world will remain as he is — subject to no
human authority. This is his temporal power.
It is not the possession of a bit of land or of a
city ; it is independence of all power on earth ;
being the delegation of Him who said: "All
power on earth is given to Me ; go ye, therefore
and teach all nations."

There may, indeed, be another alternative;
and I acknowledge, looking to the stream of
events, the time may come when the nations,
governments, and legislatures may cease to be-
lieve that Jesus Christ has a Church upon earth ;
and in the day when they cease so to believe
(and I am bound to say, their acts lead us to
think they are not far off from that state of un-
belief)., then the world will not be Christian, and
then I acknowledge that the Vicar of Jesus Christ
will have no temporal power over the world that
has rejected his Master. Though I am no prophet,
and no expositor of prophecy, and know nothing

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 107

of what is to come, save only as the Catholic
Church and faith guide me, of this I am sure,
from the lips of Jesus Christ ; that in those days
which we call the latter times, " kingdom shall
rise against kingdom, and nation against nation,
and brother betray brother to death ; " and the
world shall be in misery it never knew before.
When these things shall come to pass, the tyr-
anny of the world will be well-nigh over, and the
despotism of man will no more sway the Church
of God ; revolutions will not long prosper, be-
cause there is One at the door who must reign
until He puts all enemies under His feet ; and
when that time shall come, will come also the
44 resurrection of the just"

LECTURE V,

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE CHURCH
DERIVED FROM ITS DIVINE HEAD.

ST. JOHN xx. 29.

" Because thou hast seen Me, Thomas, thou hast believed :
blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed/1

ON the night of the first day of the week, when
our Lord rose from the dead, He came, the doors
being shut, and appeared suddenly in the midst
of His disciples. Thomas was not with them;
either through fear, or from doubt, or from human
infirmity, he had parted from the Apostles. He
lost, therefore, the manifestation of our Divine
Master, when he came to assure His Apostles of
His resurrection from the dead. He lost, also,
the communication of the royalties of the king-
dom of God, which Jesus conveyed to His disci-
ples in the words : " As My Father hath sent Me,
even so send I you." He lost his share in the
power of the keys, and the gift of the Holy Ghost,
which was conferred when our Lord breathed

108

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 109

upon His Apostles, and said, "Receive ye the
Holy Ghost ; " and " whosesoever sins ye shall
retain, they are retained." * Such was the loss
incurred by Thomas through his transient unbe-
lief.

He also exposed himself to two great dangers :
to the blindness of incredulity, and to the sin of
obstinacy. For, when the disciples told him,
" We have seen the Lord," he answered, " Unless
I put my finger into the print of the nails, and
thrust my hands into His side, I will not believe."
He had the presumption to prescribe the kind
and degree of evidence upon which alone he
would believe. Nevertheless, such is the tender-
ness and condescension of our Divine Lord, that
on the first day of the following week, and again
at night, when the Apostles were gathered to-
gether, and Thomas with them, He came once
more. The air seemed to give up His bodily pres-
ence. At once, by Divine intuition, and before
a word was spoken, fixing His eyes on Thomas,
He said : " Put forth thou thy finger ; put it into
the print of the nails, and thrust thy hand into
My side ; and be not incredulous, but faithful."
And Thomas answered, " My Lord and my God."
And Jesus answered him, "Because thou hast
seen Me, Thomas, thou, hast believed ; blessed are
they that have not seen, and have believed ; *

• St. John zx. 22, 23.
10

110 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

— a benediction shall be on thee ; but a greater
benediction shall be on them who, with docility
and generosity of faith, shall hereafter, without
seeing, believe in Me.

This benediction has descended upon us, and
upon all who to the end shall believe in the res-
urrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. I have al-
ready spoken of the mystery and of the effects of
the resurrection of our Divine Saviour, of the re
assumption of His deified humanity, which is the
pledge and productive principle — that is, the
cause — of our rising again to immortality of life.
Thus far I have spoken of the rising of His
natural body, which is now at the right hand of
God, in the proper stature and dimensions of His
person. I will now take up again another part
of the subject, on which I then touched only in
passing — I mean, the power of the resurrection
of Jesus Christ now, in this world, and in this
mortal state, in His mystical Body, which is the
Church. My object will be to show that the
powers of the resurrection, " The powers of the
world to come," as St. Paul writes to the He-
brews,* are at this moment present and in action
in the mystical Body of Christ, that is, in the
visible Church on earth.

Saint Augustine, answering the cavils and pre-
tensions of the Donatists in Africa, who, separat-

• Hebrews vi, &

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. Ill

ing themselves from the unity of the Universal
Church, claimed to be the Catholic Church,
argued as follows: "The Body of Christ is spread
throughout all nations: you are shut up and con-
fined in Africa. The true Body of Christ is uni-
versal ; we see the Body, and we believe in the
Head. The Body and the Head are one, united
in one mystical Person. The Apostles saw the
Head ; but they did not see the Body, which was
afterwards to be revealed. Seeing the Head, they
believed in the future, that is, in the universality
of the Body, which should one day be spread
throughout the world. They then saw the Di-
vine Head, they believed in the universality of
the Church which should be. We now see the
universality of the Church, and believe in the
Dwine Head enthroned in heaven."

As the Head and the Body make up one mys-
tical Person, so the prerogatives and sovereignty
of that Head are communicated to the Body. As
in the one person of Jesus Christ the prerogatives
and perfections of the Godhead were attributed
to Him as man, and as the sufferings and the
passion of the manhood were attributed also to
Him as God, by reason of the unity of the Per-
Bon, so it may be said of the Head and the Body
of the Church.

1. Our Divine Lord declared that He is the
Resurrection; and because He is the Kesurrec-

112 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF OOD.

tion, His Body upon earth has in it the principle
of immortality. Though temporal death, that ia,
the separation of body and soul, must pass upon
all the members of the Church, there is in the
mystical Body of Christ the principle of the res-
urrection and of immortality. The sentence of
death includes not only the separation of the soul
from the body, but also the eternal separation of
the body and the soul from God. But this can
never take place in the Body of Christ. All the
individual members of the mystical Body of
Christ upon earth will pay the penalty of tem-
poral death ; they will die, and be buried in the
earth. Multitudes of these members will die also
spiritually, and will never see eternal life, because
they will have been separated from God in this
world by apostasy or by mortal sin. They who
have been in the unity of the Church, but have
apostatized from it, are cut off from God ; they
who, whether they be in the Church or not, com-
mit mortal sin, are thereby separated from God,
and, if they so die, will be separated eternally.
Nevertheless, there always has been, and always
will be, in the one Church of God, which is the
Body of Christ, a line, a chain, a fellowship of
those who believe and are united vitally and by
the Holy Ghost to their Divine Head in heaven.
In them, therefore, life and immortality and the
pledge of the resurrection always abide. This ia

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF QOD. 113

what is called the indefectibility of the Church,
or, in the words of the promise of our Divine
Lord, " The gates of hell shall not prevail against
it ; " it shall never succumb to the powers of sin
and death. As the Apostle Paul writes: "There
is new no condemnation to them who are in Christ
Jesus, who walk not according to the flesh. For
the law of the Spirit of life, in Christ Jesus, hath
delivered me from the law of sin and of death." *
Therefore the Church of God is indefectible. It
partakes of the property of its Head ; it has an
imperishable life, and the pledge of immortality.
2. Secondly, because the Head of the Church
is Holy, the Body is holy. Now, the Head of the
Church is the Son of God, and therefore He has
the uncreated sanctity of God. In His Incarna-
tion He was anointed with the Holy Ghost, that
is, with the fulness of sanctifying grace ; and He
is the Head or Fountain from whom sanctity de-
scends upon all His members. As the unction on
the head of the high-priest descended to the hem of
his garment, so does the sanctity of the Son of God
descend through all the members of His Body ; that
is to say, we are made the members of His Body
by regeneration, through the Sacrament of Bap-
tism, by water and the Holy Ghost ; we are sanc-
tified in living union with Him by the Holy Sacra*
ments and the indwelling of the Spirit of Grace.

»Eom.riiil,2.
10* H

114 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOI*

There is, then, a sanctity pervading the whole
Church ; and yet how much of sin attaches to it;
how many sinners are within its unity. Our Lord
has told us to expect both good fish and bad in
the one net, and both tares and wheat in the one
field. Such is the mixture of good and evil in
the visible Church. Some are scandalized at it,
not knowing the Scriptures, nor believing the
Word of God. They think to form to themselves
a Church which shall be pure before the last day,
and now in this mortal state cleansed from every
stain ; a thing contrary to the word 'of prophecy
and the parables of our Divine Lord. The mix-
ture of good and evil is permitted in the turbu-
lent sea of this world ; but they shall be separated
on the eternal shore. And yet though there be
an evil mixture in the visible Church of Christ
— bad Christians, bad Catholics, men whose lives
are a scandal and a shame — nevertheless, the
sanctity of the Church is never tainted.

The Body of Christ is the dwelling-place of the
Holy Ghost, the Sanctifier. It is the Body of a
Divine Head ; and in that Body are the Sacra-
ments, or channels of sanctity, immutable and
undefiled. In that Body are the works oi the
Holy Ghost, the fruits of sanctity ; and they are,
first, innocent souls who have preserved their
baptismal grace, and have grown up from the
waters of baptism as the willows by the water^

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF OOP. 115

courses, straight and -igorous ; or penitent soils,
once broken like the bruised reed, raised up again
by penance, and restored to the life of God.
These are the twofold operations of the Holy
Ghost, working through the Church. St. John
is the type of the one, St. Mary Magdalen of the
other; and this supernatural grace is verified
throughout all ages in the unity of the Church ;
and the sanctity of the Church manifests itself
p< >rpetually in the innocent and the penitent, who
are the fruits of sanctity.

3. And further : when Pilate asked of our
Pivine Lord, "What is truth?" He answered
not a word ; but when He taught His disciples,
He said, " I am the Truth ; " that is, " The Truth-
it is I." For God is Truth, and Jesus is God.
The truth is revealed in Jesus Christ; and to
know Him, His mind, and His will, is to know
the truth of God. The revelation of Christianity
is the knowledge of God in Jesus Christ. To
know the mind of Jesus Christ is to know the
doctrines of the faith. To know the will of
Jesus Christ is to know His laws and His Church.
Dogma is the clear, definite, mental perception,
and the precise, logical, scientific expression in
words, of those eternal, immutable, and Divine
truths which are revealed to us. For people to
gay, " I believe in truth, but I do not believe in
dogma," is like saying, " I believe in substances.

116 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

but only when they cast no shadows." Every
substance casts its shadow, and every truth leaves
its definite impression upon the reason of man ;
and the enunciation of that definite impression is
dogma.

If the men of the nineteenth century would
be a little more consecutive — or, if that is ask-
ing too much, a little more patient — they would
not be scared by the word "dogma." The Church
of Jesus Christ possesses the truth ; it possesses
His mind, it knows it always, it enunciates it
clearly, and can never err in its enunciation. It
is in possession of His revelation ; and it applies
that revelation, as the test of truth, to the opin-
ions, the teachings, and the errors of men. As
the leprosy disappeared from the body of Naa-
man, and as the scales fell from the eyes of the
blind, so, when the truth of the revelation is
brought in contact with error, straightway error
is detected, and is healed.

In the Church no error has ever established
itself. In these eighteen hundred years, during
which the restless activity of the human intel-
lect has been perpetually devising for itself new
modes of conception and of expression, — thereby
perpetually either going beyond the truth or
falling short of it, thus producing heresies, —
never yet in the Catholic Church has a heresy
been able to establish itself or to effect a lodg»

THE rOUBFOLD SOVEBEIGNTY OP CiOD. 117

ment. Always and invariably has it been ex-
pelled. As a morbid humor of the body is
expelled by the vigor of life, so everything con-
trary to the perfect life of the body and the
perfect purity of truth has been sooner or later
cast out — so completely eliminated, that not a
taint remains behind. The Church is in all ages
what it was in the beginning — the witness,
judge, and teacher of the whole revelation of
God.

It bears witness to the truth it has received.
It is the judge, applying that revelation as a test
to the teachings of men, condemning the errors,
and accepting what is true. It is the teacher,
not as scribes and Pharisees, by quotations and
criticisms and contradictions among themselves,
but by the voice of authority — as one having
power. As it is written of our Divine Master,
"the people heard Him gladly:" and for this
reason, that " He taught as one having power —
that is, authority — and not as the scribes." And
what is this but that which men rail at, the infal-
libility of the Church ? That is, the Church does
not err. Individuals may err, as individuals
may die; but the Church cannot err, as the
Church cannot die. Why does not the Church
err ? Because it is the Body of a Divine Head ;
and that Divine Head is Truth. It is the dwell-
ing-place of the Spirit of Truth, who, inhabiting

118 THE FOURFOLD SOVEKEIGMY OP GOD.

the Body, always sustains it in the knowledge
and enunciation of truth.

4. Again — for I do not purpose to enter into
this argument in detail ; I am merely touching
on points of it for a purpose that will hereafter
appear — there is another property of our Divine
Lord, which is also communicated to His Body.
Christ is One. The Godhead and the manhood
are united in the Unity of the One Person of the
Eternal Son, and the Godhead and the manhood
are indissolubly united for all eternity. Christ
cannot be divided ; and as the Head is indivisi-
ble, so is the Body; and the Unity of the Body
excludes the possibility of division. Fragmentary
portions may be broken off from it, as fragments
and boulders may roll from a mountain side, but
the mountain remains immovable and indivisible
in its perfect identity. So is it with the Universal
Church. Its unity both within and without can-
not be dissolved.

Of the external unity of the Church, some
people speak as if they thought it were a con-
stitution, or the result of legislation. The out-
ward and visible unity of the Church is the result
of its inward unity, which is invisible ; and no
external unity could exist — or, if it, for a time
could be put together, would endure- — unless it
spring from an internal unity, which in itself is
imperishable. For what is the cause of the visi-

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 119

ble and outward unity of the Catholic Church ?
The unity of faith, the unity of doctrine, the
unity of intellect, the fusion, I may say, of the
lights of the supernatural illumination, as the
gun's rays all mingle together in the splendor
of the noonday light. So all the intelligences of
the Church, throughout its whole expanse, and
throughout all its eighteen hundred years of du-
ration, are all united and concentrated in the
belief of one truth and of one faith, which cornea
from a Divine voice. And because the intellects
of men are thus indissolubly one, therefore their
hearts are one : having one truth, they have one
charity ; and their hearts being one, they have
one will ; and therefore in the unity of the Church
of God, there is an internal unity so vital and
creative, that it impresses itself upon its external
structure. Thus the visible unity is the outward
expression of that internal unity from which it
springs. But from what source is this unity de-
rived? It comes from the Person of its Head.
He is the one and only source of all truth ; the
one and only source of all jurisdiction and of all
authority ; and that jurisdiction and authority
spreads itself throughout the whole circle of His
Universal Church, from the sunrise to the sunset.
It follows therefore as a direct consequence, that
as Christ is not divided, so neither is His Church
divided. There can be divisions from it, but

120 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

divisions in the Church of Christ or in any part
of it are impossible. He Himself has said:
•' Every kingdom divided against itself shall be
made desolate ; and every city or house divided
against itself shall not stand ; " * and this affirms
that its unity is indivisible ; as St. Bede says, with
a terse simplicity : " The kingdom of God is not
divided, because the kingdom of God can never
fall."

5. There is one more point, to which all I
have said directly leads. Our Lord has delegated
to His Church a share of His sovereignty ; and
the supernatural properties which He has com-
municated to His Body constitute that sov-
ereignty. He said to His Apostles : " You who
have followed Me, in the regeneration, when the
Son of Man shall sit on the seat of His majesty,
you also shall sit on twelve seats, judging the
twelve tribes of Israel." f

This does not mean only in the heavenly state
hereafter. The regeneration is now in the world ;
working always from the time our Lord said,
" Go, and baptize all nations." Then was begun
the regeneration of mankind. The Son of God
now sits on the throne of His glory, and the
Apostles sit upon their thrones on earth. Peter
Btill sits upon the chief throne of the Universal
Church. This prophecy and promise are being

• 8L Matt xii. 25. f Ibid. ziz. 38.

THE FOU&FOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 121

fulfilled now upon earth, in the midst of us. We
are a part of its fulfilment ; for the twelve tribes
of Israel are the mystical tribes of the faithful
throughout the whole world, and the true seed
promised to Abraham.

Again, our Lord said : " I appoint to you, aa
My Father hath appointed to Me, a kingdom ; " *
and in the Apocalypse: "The kingdom of this
world is become our Lord's and His Christ's." f
That is to say, there is a delegated sovereignty
upon earth, derived from the Son of God, repre-
senting His person, and invested with His pre-
rogatives of immortality, sanctity, infallibility,
unity, and, therefore, of Divine authority. Sov-
ereignty is the supremacy of these supernatural
endowments over the whole natural course and
order of this world. And the throne of this sov-
ereignty is the Church, by which Christ reigns
among men.

The sovereignty, then, of our Lord Jesus
Christ, sitting at the right hand of God, to
whom "all power in heaven and on earth" is
given, consists hot only in His sovereignty over
individual souls. He has, as we have seen, a
eovereignty over the intellect by faith, and over
the heart by love, and over the will by obedience ;
but His is a sovereignty which extends itself to

• St Luke xxii. 29. f Apoo. zi. 15.

11

122 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF OOD.

families and to households : it guides the author-
ity of parents, it directs the obedience of chil-
dren, it inspires the charity of brethren. Chris-
tian households have our Divine Lord as their
head ; and not only households, but peoples : for
what are they but the aggregate of families?
they make states, they therefore constitute gov-
ernments. Governments make laws, and rulers
execute laws. But who is the Head and Foun-
tain of their power? From whom is derived
the authority and direction for the civil gov-
ernment over mankind? From Him who is
the Lord and Redeemer of men, who is also the
Head even of the natural order, or, as we call it,
of political society. He is the supreme ruler and
chief; and by Him kings reign, and princes de-
cree judgment.

The Son of God is the Head of all power in
heaven and in earth, both of the spiritual and of
the political or civil order of the world; and
when the sovereignty or kingship of Jesus Christ
began to work throughout the nations of the world,
what were its effects ? First of all, as I have said
before,* slavery was steadily extinguished. The
greatest tyranny of man over man, the claim of
man to hold man as a chattel, and to have pos-
session in the flesh and blood of a fellow-creature,
this greatest debasement of man by man, was ex-

«SeeLect.III.p.7««

THE I-OUBFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OP GOD. 12

tinguished by "the freedom wherewith Christ
hath made us free." * Next : woman was raised
again to her true dignity. Woman, who had
been the toy, the tool, and the prey of man, was
elevated and made to be, conjointly with man,
the head over the families and households of
Christendom. Thirdly, wars, which before had
bean sanguinary and brutal beyond all that im-
agination can conceive, were restrained by laws
of mercy and by arbitrations of justice. Once
more, — the criminal code, whereby the life of
man was taken, for the protection of society, was
cruel and unrelenting, until under the action of
the sovereignty of Jesus Christ and the legislation
of the Church, it was mitigated and tempered
from age to age. Again, a quality, unknown
before Christianity came on earth, save only in
Israel, and there only in part — unknown alto-
gether in the heathen world — was infused into
the hearts of men ; that is, charity — a tenderness,
and a human sympathy of man for man. It is a
feet, too well known to dwell upon, that in the
heathen world not a hospital was to be found.
Even in its most advanced civilization, before
Christianity, the sick died without mercy.
Another effect of Christianity in the civil order
of the world is mutual respect, — the respect of
inferiors for the superior, of the subject for au-

• Gal. iy. 31.

124 THE FOUBFOLD SOVEKEIGNTY OF GOD.

thority, the respect of authority for the subject,
of the higher for the lower, of equal for equal,
and of all men for those around and even below
them ; because all alike bear the image of Jesus
Christ ; because all alike were redeemed in the
Blood of the same Saviour ; because all alike
were the temples of the Holy Ghost; because
they all alike received the same Precious Body
and Blood of Jesus Christ at the Altar. The
poor servant that did the bidding of a Christian
master, it may be that morning had been to the
Altar, and had been made a tabernacle of the
Son of God. And this participation by all alike
of the same Precious Body and Blood of Jesus
Christ infused throughout society a mutual re-
spect, which is the foundation of all justice and
equity, charity and mercy. And from all these
sprang up the commonwealth of Christian men,
not only of individuals and of households, but
of nations, states, and empires, which we call
Christendom. From this Divine root was pro-
duced the civilization and progress of mankind ;
which to be such must be Christian, and can be
accomplished only by the Son of God, and by His
sovereignty alone. I can but touch, and that
briefly, on this subject, of which I spoke before,
and broke off then as I needs must now. I can
do no more than sketch the mere outline of certain
great truths, which nevertheless will, I hope, be

THE FOUBFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 125

of use in putting you on your guard against the
silver sounds which are chimed and chanted in our
ears every morning about civilization, progress,
advancement, dignity, and I know not what; as if
the "Golden Age" were before us, into which we
ars all advancing, while — as I will show here-
after — the world is rejecting the sovereignty of
Jesus Christ.

My purpose, then, in pointing out that the
Church on earth partakes of the properties and
prerogatives of its Divine Head, and therefore, of
His sovereignty, is to draw two plain conclusions.

The first is this : That civilization can be per-
fect only when it is Christian ; that civilization,
or the culture and ripening of the civil and
political society of man, is never perfect, and can
never be perfect, unless elevated by union with
the laws of Christianity under the sovereignty of
the Son of God.

The civil and domestic society of man in the
order of nature existed before Christianity came
on earth. This also is God's work, and in this
order there may be a natural civilization. Let
anybody, who desires to know what was the
civilization of man before Christianity, read any
work on the literature and the morals of Home
and Athens. And if you desire the name or title
of a book on this subject, I will say, read a book
on The Formation of Christendom, lately published
11*

126 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

among us; or, if you wish something more de-
tailed and extensive, read a work called Tne
Gentile and the Jew, by a well-known professoi
of history in Germany. A rankness of corrup-
tion, intellectual and moral, is depicted in the
pages of the latter book, which no Christian heart
could conceive. Such was civilization without
Christianity.

When the supernatural society of the Church
descended upon the natural society of the world,
the order of nature was elevated by regeneration,
by baptism, by grace, by faith, by light, and by
guidance. Then there was a union between those
two societies, natural and supernatural; or, as
men commonly say, " Church and State." That
is to say, they mutually recognized each other as
creations of God in different spheres, mutually
recognized each other's office, mutually respected
each other's functions, and, being united to-
gether, they co-operated for the welfare of man
under one and the same Head, one and the same
Sovereign. When the civil order of the world
acknowledged Jesus Christ as its true Head and
Sovereign, then civilization was Christian, and
then there was progress. Progress signifies an
advance in the order of perfection, both internal
in states, and external with their neighbors.
This includes intellectual cultivation, knowledge,
ooth scientific and spiritual; justice —that is,

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 127

just laws, and just administration of laws ; and
lastly, the arts and the fruits of peace in indus-
tries of every kind of human skill and toil. This
progress, I assert, was steadily advancing, so
long as the world was Christian. This is our
first conclusion.

And the second is self-evident : That what is
called modern civilization, is civilization without
Christianity. I believe, indeed, that the men, or
at least many of them, who use these words do
not know what they imply, and would reject it
if they saw it. But civilization without the
sovereignty of Jesus Christ, is the rejection of
the Christian order under which the progress of
the world has hitherto steadily advanced.

In order to make this as clear as I can, and in
as few words, let me remind you that there are
three causes which have broken up the Christian
civilization of Europe and of the world.

In the fifteenth century, the study and cultiva-
tion of classical literature excited in the minds
of the leading men of European countries a sort
of admiration, which I may call a worship, of
the models of Pagan antiquity, of its philosophy
and its policy, of its patriots, and of its public
morality. That which is styled the Renaissance,
or the New Birth of the Christian world, pro-
foundly infected the men of that day. The anti-
Chrvstian reaction has spread down to the present

128 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

time. People were deceived into thinking that
the Renaissance was the measure of all that is
cultivated and civilized. This was the first step,
as I will show, to the rejection of Christian
civilization.

It introduced Paganism into books, into lan-
guage, into art, into education. On the testi-
mony of multitudes of men, in which I bear
my own part, the education of Christian nation*
has been based and formed on what is called
classical literature. The examples, maxims, prin-
ciples, the deeds, the crimes, personal, private,
and public, even to the assassination of princes
and revolt of peoples, glorified in classical lite-
rature, have been taken in unconsciously by boys
in their early education for these three hundred
years. In Italy and France this is already
bearing its fruits.

Next came a period, of which I have no wish
to speak controversially, but I must speak
clearly. It called itself the Reformation. This
will be found to be a second step towards the
rejection of Christian civilization.

The first work of this Reformation was to
shatter the unity of faith : to render impossible
the unity of worship, to excite individuals to
withdraw their obedience from the one Church
of Jesus Christ, to tempt families and house-
holds to withdraw their obedience frcm the truth •

THE FOTTBFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 129

then states, peoples, and g(/vernments. Finally,
governments set up, in the place of the one and
undivided religion, I know not how many forma
of Christianity established by law. Into this I
will not further enter. The work of disintegra-
tion was begun ; the unity of faith and worship
among the nations was shattered. Then national
religions and their sub-divisions rendered unity
impossible. So far as the Reformation extended
itself, it carried religious conflict throughout the
Christian society of men.

Thirdly. I have already spoken of what aro
culled the principles of 1789. I will not say
more of them now, than to add that they are th«
legitimate application of the principles of the
Reformation to States. They are Lutheranism
in politics, and they have done for the civil ordei
that which the Reformation did for the ecclesias-
tical. The Reformation broke up the religioua
unity, and the principles of 1789 broke up th*
political unity, of Christian Europe. From thai
day a perpetual dissolution, crumbling, and decay
in the foundations of society has undermined
every country where these principles have take*
root.

One main cause of it is this, that those prin-
ciples were not a development or a progressive
expansion of the existing traditional institutions
of Europe. They began with destruction, by

*30 THE FOURFOLD iJOVEREIGNTY OF QO1X

cutting through the roots, by pulling down the
tree. It was a work of ruin, and in place of
Christian civilization were substituted principles
that were directly subversive of it.

Two plain conclusions follow from what has
just been said.

First. That the differentia of modern civiliza-
tion is the exclusion from the political order of
religious unity in faith, worship, and education ;
the separation of Church from State, and State
from Church. It is the separation of the civil
and political order of the world from Christianity,
and from the sovereignty of its Divine Head.

The second conclusion is this: that what is
called progress, in this kind of civilization, is not
progress, but regress ; it is not going onward, but
backward. As the Renaissance of which I spoke
was a return to the political state of the world
before Christ, and because before Christ, neces-
sarily without Christ, so the civilization which
springs from it is a civilization which goes its
own way without regard to the faith or the laws
of Jesus Christ : that is to say, it is a return into
the state of the world before Christ. I deny to
this the name of Progress. It is a going back-
ward, not onward. It is a relapse into the civili-
zation of Paganism.

Let us take an example of the day. We are
hearing all day long of that which is called the

/

(C

COLLEGER

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. ISi

Religious Difficulty: the poor children of our
streets cannot be educated together — and why ?
Because of the religious difficulty. And legisla-
tors meet, night after night, to debate the reli-
gious difficulty, and know not what to do for the
education of the poor, because of the religious
difficulty. What is the religious difficulty?
Where was the religious difficulty before the
unity of the Faith was shattered ? What has
caused the religious difficulty ? The shattering
of the Faith, and the shattering of the Unity of
the Church. But who did these things? and
what has reduced us to secular education without
Christianity ? The religious difficulty, and they
who made it. Tell me, is this progress? I
should as soon call the turning off from the
straight sea-line homeward, into an ocean full of
rocks and shoals, a homeward voyage. It is not
progress, it is regress; it is error, deviation,
wandering : and the further and faster men go in
this direction, the further and faster they are
leaving the sovereignty of Jesus Christ.

We are told what great things modern civili-
zation has done. It has abolished penal laws.
But who made them ? I thank no man for abol-
ishing penal laws against the Catholic Faith. I
accuse those who enacted them, and set up the
tyranny and persecution under which the Faith
has suffered. I accuse the forefathers of those,

132 THE FOUBFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

who, happily for themselves, by the working of
a higher and nobler spirit, have undone the deeda
of their forefathers. I am not grateful, except
for the kindly feeling of those who may be
moved in sympathy to do it. But I recognize
nothing noble in this. I recognize nothing ia
the man who has done me a wrong, and then re-
tracts the wrong, but that he has at last done
that which was right. To be just is simple duty.
To thank men for doing a duty implies a doubt
of their integrity.

I am told also, I know not what, of the ad-
vantages of progress, of electric telegraphs, rail-
ways, and the prohibition of intramural burial.
Do men desire to make so grave a subject as this
to be contemptible ?

This, then, is the truth : The world under the
constant action of Christianity and the sov-
ereignty of Divine law was advancing in civili-
zation and making true progress, until a blight
fell upon it. The disorders and anarchies of
three hundred years ago came to check and to
overthrow the course of its advance. Christian-
ity would have abolished all social evils with
greater speed and certainty if its onward course
had not been stayed. As for the abolition of old
tyrannies, it was this very departure from Chris-
tianity which caused them. There never could
have been State Churches to be disestablished, if

THE FOUEFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD, 138

dominant heresies and schisms had not first estab-
lished them.

We have not yet seen to what modern civili-
zation is on its way. It is making progress, it is
true ; but what will it progress to ? To the utter
and entire rejection of Christianity ; to the aboli-
tion of the "religious difficulty " from legislation,
from education, and from domestic life ; to the
relegating and banishing of religion from all
public life to the individual conscience and pri-
vate life of man. Civilization before Christian-
ity was bad enough : but civilization which is
apostate from Christianity is worse than all. Be-
fore it became Christian, civilization persecuted
Christianity with the blind brute force of the
heathen ; but apostate civilization will know how
to persecute with refined and cunning procedure,
which nothing but a knowledge of Christianity
could have given.

Look into the words and deeds — I will not
say of the first French Revolution — that hideous
masquerade of Feasts of the Supreme Being and
worship of reason, with the abominable personi-
fications of that worship — I will not go so fax
back : what did we read yesterday ? A man at
the head of the movement in Paris — and yet a
moderate — who has separated himself from the
eaders of the extreme Revolution, wrote such
words as these : " Why should not the churchei
12

184 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

be robbed? Why should not the treasures of
Notre Dame be taken ? How were they obtained ?
By teaching the people to believe in heaven and
hell. It is money obtained under false pretences ;
there is no heaven and no hell ; Frenchmen have
ceased to believe in them." That is not yet the
last word of civilization without Christianity;
but to that, and more, it has already come.

There is as yet a time of stillness and indiffer-
ence. Liberalism is a twilight state in which all
errors are softened, in which no persecution for
religion will be countenanced. It is the stillness
before the storm. There is a time coming when
nothing will be persecuted but truth ; and if you
possess the truth, you will share it.

We were told yesterday, again: "As for the
temporal power of the Pope" — that is, as we have
seen, the public recognition of the sovereignty of
Jesus Christ over both orders, civil and spiritual,
the union of pontiff and king in one person, as
pontiff and king are united in the Divine Head
whom he represents — we were told, " This strange
anomaly has gone down in the tide of advancing
civilization and progress." There is, indeed, a
tide rising on every side ; and a wiser than the
writer of those words has said : " As in the days
before the flood, they were eating and drinking,
and marrying and giving in marriage, and they
knew not till the flood came and took them all

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 135

auay." So assured .y this rising tide of civiliza*
tion and progress will carry away the blind apos-
tles who are now preaching it.

There remains in England, and I thank God
to know it, much of the Christian and Catholic
tradition of our civil order still unbroken. The
foundations of our civil state were laid in times
before regenerations and reformations and the
worship of Pagan life and its examples had
turned the heads of men. The foundations of
our civil order date back a thousand years.
Our monarchy, popular freedom, open tribunals,
maxims of just judgment, and the broad base
upon which the public order of England re-
poses, were solidly and peacefully compacted,
before modern civilization and modern progress
had its name or being. There is in England a
belief in Christianity as a Divine revelation, and
in the written Word of God as part of it, and a
recognition of the duty of public worship, and a
respect for the first day of the week, sacred to
our Lord's Resurrection ; and above all, there is
that which Englishmen love, and which even the
poor and the working-men last year publicly tes-
tified to be their desire — Christian education for
their children. They desire that they be educat-
ed, indeed, but as Christians. The voice of the
people of England has been decisively heard on
this, and I bless God for it. I speak not only to

136 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

you who are of my flock, but to all who hear me,
though they be not of my flock — I would to God
they were. Hold fast to those Catholic traditions
of our land ; they are more precious than life
itself. Hold fast to them, and hand them on aa
the true and only inheritance of Christian civili-
•ation, and of progress to mankind.

LECTURE VI.

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD OVER THE
COURSE OF THE WORLD.

APOO. XIX. 5, 6.

M And a voice came out from the throne, saying : Give praise
to our God, all ye His servants ; and you that fear Him,
little and great. And I heard as it were the voice of a
great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and aa
the voice of great thunders, saying, Alleluia: for the
Lord our God, the Almighty, hath reigned."

AFTER all that the world can do, God is still
upon His throne ; and after all the rebellions of
man, He sits above the water-floods, and abides a
King forever. The last subject which remains
for us is the sovereignty of God over the course
of the world.

This vision which St. John describes, is the
summing up of the whole history of the world,
and of the conflict between the sovereignty of
God and the rebellious will of man. This conflict
pegan in Paradise, and will never cease until the
12* 137

188 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

Son of God shall come to judge the living and
the dead.

In these days, any man who quotes the statutes
of an earthly kingdom is listened to; for an
immediate, prompt, and inexorable power exe-
cutes, at once, its sentence upon all gainsayers ;
but any man who quotes the laws of Holy Scrip-
ture is derided, because the Divine judgment tar-
ries, and the sovereignty of God bides its time; be-
cause judgment is not speedily executed upon earth,
the heart of man is set to do evil. But we are
not ashamed to quote the words of Holy Writ ;
for Holy Writ is the word of God, and heaven
and earth shall pass away, but His word shall
not pass away.

The history written in Holy Scripture is God's
history of His own sovereignty. From first to
last, it is the annals of the reign of God over the
world ; from the Creation, to the manifestation
of His kingdom in Jesus Christ, the whole narra-
tive of the sacred Books is the revelation of the
sovereignty of God over men and nations. It is,
therefore, the history of the world written by a
supernatural light ; and an interpretation of the
history of the world as it is read by the princi-
palities and powers in heavenly places, to whom
is made known by the Church the manifold wis-
dom of God. I take, therefore, the page of Holy
Scripture as the witness of the sovereignty of God

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 135

over the course of this world. To illustrate my
subject — because I can do no more than give its
outline — it is enough to remind you that, from
Adam to Noe, God had His servants on earth,
who did His will in the midst of those who re-
belled against Him. He was sovereign over both ,
in grace over the faithful, in justice over the re-
bellious. The Flood, which purged the earth,
was an act of God's judicial sovereignty upon
the sins of man. From Noe to Abraham, from
Abraham to Moses, from Moses to the Messias
— that is, to the coming of God in our man-
hood— the sovereignty of God was more and
more visibly displayed among men, until it was
incorporated in the priesthood and the kingdom
of Israel. But the theocracy of Israel was only
a shadow: a type and prophecy of a more manifest
revelation and of a sovereignty yet to come. The
law was the shadow, the gospel is the substance ;
that which was typified in the theocracy of Israel
was fulfilled in the manifestation of God in Jesus
Christ. The coming of our Divine Lord into the
world was the foundation of His kingdom and the
revelation of His sovereign power, which, by the
line of His Vicars upon earth, He exercises at
this day.

Let us here take up again our last subject
We have seen that God has created two societies
for the sanctification of man, — the natural BOCI-

140 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

ety, or the human and political or civil order;
the supernatural society, or the order of grace,
which is His Church ; and that His will and pre-
destination was, that these two societies should
be united together ; so that as the body and soul
in man constitute one perfect humanity, so the
natural and the supernatural societies should be
united together in their full integrity and perfect
amity under one Head, Jesus Christ, each re-
taining its due proportions of power, and both
mutually co-operating for the welfare and sancti-
fication of mankind. This was our last conclu-
sion. And I then pointed out that the civilization
of mankind, to be true, must be Christian ; that
no civilization is real but that which is Christian ;
that civilization, if it puts off its Christianity,
returns again to the order of nature, and becomes
merely human, and incurs all the penalties of its
relapse ; that all progress in the world, intellec-
tual, moral, social, civil, and political, depends,
as upon its chief condition, on the direction and
the laws of Christianity ; and that when civiliza-
tion departs from Christianity, instead of pro-
gressing, it goes backward, and falls from the
order which God has instituted for its perfection.
It relapses into the state of man before the Son
of God came into this world, and the kingdom
of God was revealed. When, therefore, we hear
the Catholic Church, and above all, the head of

THE POUBFDLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 141

the Catholic Church, denounced as an obstacle to
civilization and to progress, it is the whispering
of that same tempting voice which, in the garden,
said, " Why hath God commanded you ? " and,
"For God doth know."* Civilization, as the
world preaches it, is the will and the intellect
claiming independence of the laws of God ; and
progress is. man going where he wills and doing
as he lists. From the conclusion of our last sub-
ject, this follows as a corollary — that civilization
without Christianity is degradation, and that
social progress out of the line of that civilization
is a going backward.

1. There is no doubt that the Christian civili-
zation of the world is, in part, broken up, and,
in part, threatened: and that throughout the
whole of Christendom. I am met therefore, at
the outset, with the objection, " Where, then, is
this sovereignty ? The nations of the world are
casting it off. People that were Christian are
Christian now no longer. Those who were highly
Catholic have rejected, if not the Catholic Church,
at least the temporal power of the Vicar of Jesus
Christ. You are too late in the day to talk of
the sovereignty of God. In the Middle Ages it
may have been superstitiously believed, but the
illumination of these latter ages has cast it off."
To this I reply : It is most true, as a fact, that

• Gen. iii. 1-5.

142 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

these two societies, natural and supernatural,
which ought to be united for the welfare of man-
kind, are at this moment almost everywhere dis-
united. Tins separation began when the Oriental,
or Eastern Church, severed itself from the unity
of the Catholic Church, and fell under the su-
premacy of the Imperial power. From that time
the civil power of the empire fostered, encour-
aged, and abetted the spread of schism for its
own purposes. Religion, under the direction of
the civil power, becomes a powerful instrument
of political government. It becomes a depart-
ment of the State, and a vast field for patronage.
Such the separated Eastern Church became in
the hands of the Byzantine Emperors. From
that time it became intensely Erastian — that is
to say, the supreme fountain of its jurisdiction,
and the supreme guide of its legislation and of
its executive power, was in the civil authority.
Flowing from this came unimaginable corruptions,
which exist to this day. Perhaps there is no
part of Christendom which exhibits a sterility so
utter, or a fixedness so rigid and death-like, as
the Oriental Church separated from the Holy See.
Next, the same usurpation by the civil powera
manifested itself in the north and in the west of
Europe. It would be against my will to go into
any detail Of matters nearer home; but for
clearness it must be said that for the last three

THE FOT7BFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OP GOD. 14*

hundred years, in Germany and in these coun-
tries, the relation of the two societies, civil and
spiritual, and the order which God had instituted,
have been inverted. Religion has been made a
part of legislation and of government. Religion
and State Churches have been, as it is called,
" established." But this is the inversion of the
whole Divine order. It is the State that needs
to be established by the Church, not the Church
by the State; the inferior cannot sustain the
superior. It is not the order of nature that up-
holds the order of grace ; it is the order of grace
that upholds and perfects the order of nature.
All human power, human authority, human
legislation, human society, depends, as I have
shown, for its perfection, its perpetuity, its pro-
gress, its welfare, its peace, upon the sovereignty
of God, by and through His Church. The Church
may hold and use temporal power, but it will
not be established by it. In other countries,
which profess to remain within the unity of the
Catholic Church, has appeared a pernicious illu-
sion, which has blinded and seduced many better
minds. It is called the " Free Church in the
Free State." This imagination rests on the
assumption that the two societies are perfectly
free and independent one of another, which is
absolutely true of the Church, but absolutely
false of the State ; that they are two societies

144 THE FOUBFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

upon a perfect equality. This again is absolutely
false, because the supernatural or Divine order is
higher than the natural and human. Lastly, it
assumes that they may go each their way with-
out reciprocal duties and mutual co-operation;
which is contrary to the law of God, both in
nature and in grace. "We have seen that the
supernatural society elevates and perfects the
natural, even in the order of civilization. The
separation of these two works of God is the loss
and fall of the civil and political society of the
world. But in the east, the north, the west, and
now in the south of Christendom, there are not
only theories and principles, but actual policies
and systems of legislation, the ultimate object c f
which is to divorce and to separate the two socie-
ties which God has created to be united together
You are aware that, in the Syllabus, the Ho!}
See has condemned the following proposition
"That the Church ought to be separated frou
the State, and the State from the Church." *

2. Such are the historical facts. Let us no#
see what is the cause, what has brought about
this separation of the two societies which ought
to be united. In one word, it is the rejection of
the sovereignty of God : first, individuals hai «
rejected, one by one, the prerogative of God over
the intellect and over the will; then, as they

• Sjllab. Pii IX. Prop. 55.

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 146

grow in number and in activity, they form a
public opinion, which at last directs the course
of legislation and rejects the sovereignty of God
over society. And every Christian nation, Eng-
land included, has reached an advanced point in
this departure from God. You will ask, " How
could this have ever come to pass ? How was it
that the work of God's providence, which was
rising like sap in a vigorous and living tree,
should have sunk down again to the root, and
that the tree, once so green and widespread,
should have begun to wither ? " The truth must
be told without fear. It was because in Chris-
tendom the salt had begun to lose its savor.
The blood of Christian nations was tainted. Do
not confound Christian nations with the Church
of Jesus Christ. The Church is imperishable,
immutable in its sanctity. Every heresy and
schism, every pestilence, moral, intellectual, and
spiritual, the Church expels from its living sys-
tem, as the living and healthful action of the hu-
man body expels the morbid humors which
threaten its life : but in every nation individuals
may corrupt and accumulate in number, and may
at last do all manner of evil against the Church.
For example : in the period before the Council
of Constance, the nations of Europe were begin
ning, from national pride and mutual jealousy, to
rise against the spiritual authority of the Church,
13 K

146 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

and to separate themselves and their laws froii
the laws of the Church, into what by a strange
irony was called "obediences." This spirit of
schismatical nationality caused what is called the
great western schism : out of the great western
schism came, ultimately, what is called the Re-
formation, or the final separation of many nations
from the unity of the Catholic Church. But you
may again ask, " What was the cause of this
schismatical nationalism ? " The truth must be
told, " The salt had lost its savor." Kings and
princes, pastors and people, had forsaken their
first charity. They were led by the spirit of the
world rather than by the Spirit of God. Zeal,
self-denial, mortification, devotion, fidelity, piety,
generosity, compassion for the poor, love of souls,
were faint and low. Christian men lived lives
that were not Christian ; society was corrupted :
and the course of kingdoms and of legislation
swerved out of the track of faith. This is not to
be denied. And what came next ? Heresies and
schisms. There is not a heresy, so far as I can
remember, in the history of the Church, which
has not begun in some Bishop or priest. Some
man, ordained to be a witness of truth, and a
preacher of justice, has fallen from the Church
which is divinely guided to teach the faithful, as
Satan fell like lightning from heaven. They
who should have been as a light to guide the in-

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 147

tellect of men became a wildfire to blast and
wither the soul. And whence came these here-
sies ? From intellectual pride ; that is, from the
revolt of the intellect against the sovereignty of
faith, springing from a perverse will and confirm-
ing its perversion. From heresies came schisms
like that which has separated England these
three hundred years from the unity of the Church.
Si ace that evil day, the spiritual life of England
has withered. We are told by public authority,
that one-half of the people of England never set
their foot in a place of worship. Whether that
calculation be true or not, I leave to those who
made it to determine ; but we are told, and I re-
peat what I have heard, that in this city of Lon-
don, one-half — that is, a million and a half of
men — on this very day, and at this very hour at
which I am speaking, neither have been, nor in
the course of this day will be, in any place of
Christian worship. May I not well say, then,
the salt has lost its savor ? And what is the re-
eult upon the public life and laws of England ?
To legislate for a people divided in religion is im-
possible, unless we exclude religion from legisla-
tion. Christianity must be shut out of the sphere
of legislation before you can make laws applica-
ble to those who are divided in religion. What
is the effect of such legislation ? Truth and error
are put upon the same footing. Toleration be-

148 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

comes a duty, and under cover of toleration it
has come to pass that the civil society of the world
has ceased to distinguish truth from error
Christianity is left to the individual conscience ;
it is no longer a matter of public law. Again, in
the education of children, religion must be ex-
cluded from the school ; or, in other words, the
baptized child cannot be educated in the faith
of his baptism : that is to say, he must be robbed
of his inheritance. And why ? Because men
will wrangle about religion, and therefore their
poor children are to grow up without the knowl-
edge of God and their Redeemer. Men have
broken the bonds of faith ; and the penalty falls
upon their children's children.

3. The civil society of the world, then, has
been departing in its legislation, in its public
laws, in the education of the young, from the sov-
ereignty of God through His Church. Now the
consequences of this are twofold. First of all, as
to the Church. The Church has two offices : the
one is to convert and to save individuals, and the
other is to sanctify and to uphold the civil order
of mankind. But when the civil society of man
refuses any longer to be guided and upheld by
the sanctifying grace and the sovereignty of God,
the Church shakes off the dust from its feet, and
goes back to its apostolic work of saving men one
by one. It is at this time doing that work, and

THE FOURFOLD SOVEEEIGNTY OF GOD 149

will do it ; and in doing it the Church becomes
more free, more independent, more separate from
all contacts and embarrassments of this world.
It may indeed be persecuted, perhaps it may
Decome less in numbers, because nations and
races go out from it. But it becomes once more,
what it was in the beginning, a society of indi-
viduals, vigorous, pure, living, and life-giving.
So much for the consequences to the Church.
For the Church, then, we have no fear. But
what is its consequence on the State or political
society of men ? I may sum it up in these three
words : it is privation, degradation, and dissolu-
tion.

First, as man, when he separates himself from
God, is deprived of supernatural grace, which
sustains his whole moral and spiritual life ; even
so the civil society of a nation, when it separates
from the Church, in like manner is deprived of its
supernatural perfection. It no longer has the
support and guidance, the light and sanctification,
which the Kingdom of God bestowed upon it.
Just as men are born, through the sin of Adam,
into a state of privation, so the kingdom or peo-
ple, which has separated itself from the Church,
is thereby deprived of the truth and grace of
Christianity. Generation after generation are
born into that state of public privation of the
light and grace of faith.
13 «

150 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

Secondly, if Christianity be the elevation of a
people, to fall from it is a degradation ; because,
as I said in the beginning, it is a retrograde move-
ment, a going backward from the state of Chris-
tian civilization into the state of nature before
Christianity entered into the civil life of men.

And, thirdly, it is dissolution; because the
bonds of civil society are loosened. As man, who
came out of the dust, when his living spirit
departs, returns to dust again, so, most assuredly,
every state or kingdom which rejects the sover-
eignty of God, in due time will dissolve and turn
again into its original confusion. How this may
happen, we need not seek to know ; whether by
revolutions or internal disorders, or loss of cohe-
rence, or the impossibility of maintaining its social
state, or by foreign aggression, by warfare, by
conquest, by whatsoever means I know not ; but
the word of God stands plain, and sooner or later
shall be fulfilled : " The nation and the kingdom
that will not serve Thee, shall perish ; " * and
that, not only by a judicial sentence, but by an
intrinsic law of its own being, which works out
its own dissolution.

And if such be the effect of this revolt upon
the civil society of the world, what is its effect
upon men one by one? When families and
households have lost their domestic Christianity,

•Iwuaslx. 12.

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OP GOD. 151

which illuminated and sanctified parents and
children, brothers and sisters, the result can be
easily foreseen. If, as has been said before, sub-
mission to the sovereignty of God by faith be the
perfection and the dignity of the intellect, then,
most assuredly, the loss of that submission is its
abasement. If submission of the will to the sov-
ereignty of God, to the laws of faith and of
charity, be the perfection of the human heart,
then, certainly, any man or woman who refuses
to submit to that sovereignty is degraded. If to
be a disciple of Jesus Christ be the highest and
most perfect state to which we can attain, they
who fall from that state of discipleship fall from
their dignity and welfare. And when that is the
condition of households, God help such a peo-
plu, for there is no help left in themselves.

4. Such, then, being the first consequences
upon states, families, and men, what must be the
future of the world, in the course upon which
nations and people have now entered ? First of all,
the moral powers of the civil society of the world
will become weaker and weaker. The moral au-
thority, the moral sanctions, the moral influence,
the power of prevailing over subjects to live in
civil obedience, become less and less potent and
persuasive in proportion as the State departs from
its public profession and practice of Christianity.
As the government becomes weak, its power of

152 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

coercing is paralyzed, its power of conciliating is
lost. The same befalls the authority of parents
over their children ; the moral self-control in
which men ought to be trained up becomes im-
possible. Philosophers describe a man who has
lost self-control — that is, the government over
himself — as an intemperate man. And when
men have lost the government over their passions,
lusts, anger, avarice, and the like, what will be
the state of society and of the commonwealth ?
Next, while the moral power diminishes, the ma-
terial power must be perpetually increased —
laws of coercion, penalties, police, standing armies.
When men can no longer be governed by the free
assent of the reason convinced of duty, and by
the spontaneous obedience of the will submitted
to the law, what remains to government but brute
force? At this moment, five or six millions of
men are under arms in the heart of this Christian
Europe of ours, and are looking in each other's
face, watching to see who shall make the first
spring. St. Paul, describing the state of men in
the last times, says that they shall be " faithless ; "
the word in the original means men with whom
you can make no treaties ; wjrfov&w,* men in whose
fidelity you cannot trust; with whom you can
make neither convention nor truce, whom no in-
ternational law, no respect of mutual rights oan

• 2 Tim. hi. 3.

THE FOTrai'OLD SOVEREIGNTY OP GOD. 15S

bind. And are not these last days now upon us?
What treaty, or law, or obligation binding nations
to respect the rights of weaker neighbors is re-
spected now ? Treaties bind no one, if interest
intervene. Compacts and conventions perish,
where there is hope to extend a frontier, or to an-
nex a province, or sacrilegiously to usurp a city.
Then it is sufficient to put the sword through all
treaties and all conventions. The fruit of this is
no anifest — perpetual danger of external war, and
the most horrible conflicts which this world has
ever seen. And the conflicts which were external
bocome internal too. A spirit of strife is poured
out upon men ; class is set against class, interest
against interest, household against household,
man against man, men against their rulers,
against law, against authority. In the shock
and disorder of contentions, society is dissolved.
When the masses learn to know their power, the
day is come to use it. From all this results one
of two things : either the tyranny of a multitude,
blind to everything but the freaks and gusts of
its own will, or the iron despotism of a military
dictator. Woe to the world when the Legislator,
wh:>, on the mountain, promulgated the eight be-
atitudes, is no longer acknowledged as the Law-
giver and Sovereign of mankind ! There remains
nothing for the nations but the raging sea ot
popular lawlessness, or the iron rule of despot*

154 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF 3OD.

6. If such be the effect upon the world, what
will be the effect upon the Church ? Let us sum
up what is the state of the Church at this mo-
ment. There never was a time, from the begin-
ning of Christianity, when the Catholic Church
was so wide-spread as it is now, when it had so
nearly attained to that universal sway which is
its Divine prerogative. Though the number of
nations and of men that are external to Christi-
anity still be vast, yet the wide-spread missions
of the Church, extending beyond its visible pale,
are at this day penetrating into all races and
peoples upon earth. The circle of its unity, the
spread and sway of its Episcopate, the apostolic
thrones of the Church, at this moment not only
reach throughout the Old World, but overshadow
the New. It has taken possession not only of the
four continents known to our ancestors, but it holdf
also a fifth, with the islands of the Southern Seas.
The sovereignty which began in the guest-cham-
ber at Jerusalem, and afterwards spread through
the dispersion of Israel, and then extended to the
fulness of the Gentiles, and then formed Christian
Europe, has taken possession of America in the
North and in the South, and has penetrated into
Asia ; is surrounding Africa, has obtained for its
possession the great continent of Australia, and
has made its home in the islands of the Pacific.
There is no part of the world in which the one

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF OOD< 156

Church, Catholic and Roman, united to its one
visible Head, is not at this moment to be found.
Be sure of it, whatsoever may befall the civil
society of the world, nothing can wither the
mystical vine. There never was a moment when
that world-wide Church was so perfectly united
— its pastors to its people, and both to their visi-
ble Head.

The union of the pastors with their people is
nsyer so intense as when the world rejects them.
Take Ireland, for example. The pastors of Ire-
land have been not only the spiritual shepherds
of that inviolate Catholic people, but they have
been the friends, the counsellors — I may say the
guardians and the rulers of Ireland, through
three hundred years of suffering. And that
which has taken place in Ireland is taking place
at this moment all over the Christian world. In
France, in Germany, in Italy, in Spain, whereso-
ever the civil society of the world turns against
the faith and against the Holy See, there at once
the people rally round their pastors with an in-
tensity of union and fidelity which has never been
surpassed. When the winds rave and the sun is
covered, then the sheep and their shepherds draw
together. And there is the same unity among
the pastors one with another. The bishops of
the Church were never more of one mind and of
one heart than they are now. We read every

156 THE FOURFOLD SOVEBEIGNTY OF OOD.

day, in papers that profess to know the inmost
mind of the Catholic Church, and yet know noth-
ing, because they are either misled or they will-
ingly go astray from truth — and which it may
be I am not the judge to say, — we read every
day that, among the bishops of the Catholic
Church who met last year in the (Ecumenical
Council, there were oppositions, debates, divi-
sions. True it is, that in matters of prudence
and legislation we had our divergences of judg-
ment; but in matters of Catholic doctrine and
faith none existed. The result is proof. The
world has endeavored to find among the bishops
of the Church some patron or abettor of its re-
bellion against the Holy See. But not one can
be found. Almost every one who, in the liberty
which we all enjoyed, judged and spoke with
freedom on matters outside the faith, have ex-
plicitly and publicly declared their perfect and
entire submission to the Divine authority of the
Council. The unity of the pastors of the Teach-
ing Church was never more solid and compact.
I say it without hesitation, and I repeat it again
— the Episcopate never was so unanimous as at
this hour. After the Councils of Nice, Chad-
cedon, Constance, and Trent, there were bishops
of the Church who forsook its unity, who fell, as
J said before, like lightning from heaven. Now,
at this moment, the unity of the bishops of the

THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OJf GOD. 167

Church throughout the whole world is such, that
I know not of one who has withdrawn his obedi-
ence from its Divine authority. I know not, I
say, of one, and until I see the fact, I shall be-
lieve there will be none. But, more than this :
the unity of faith at this moment throughout the
Catholic Church is such that there does not exist
(what is rife elsewhere) an open question touch-
ing the matter of faith. There was a question,
not open indeed, but not defined until the other
day, and that question was this : " Did our Di-
vine Saviour promise to St. Peter that he and his
successors, by the Divine assistance, should con-
tinue to the end of time to be the supreme and
unerring teachers of the faith which He de-
livered ? " There were a few who thought that
the promise was made to the successors of St.
Peter, to be enjoyed by him only when acting
with the bishops throughout the world ; but the
Church ever believed that the promise was made
not only to the successors of Peter together with
the bishops, but to the successors of Peter as
such ; and that, as the Pontiff holds the supreme
authority and jurisdiction attached to the Pri-
macy, so he has also a Divine assistance perpet-
ually guiding him, in order that, in the exercise
of his supreme authority, upon which the whole
Church of God depends, the successor of St. Peter
and the Vicar of the Good Shepherd shall nevex
H

168 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF OOD.

go astray. There was, indeed, a divergence a) far.
and within that narrow limit : a divergence now
closed for ever by the Divine authority of the
Church, and sealed with the signet of the Spirit
of Truth. I say, then, there never was a time
when, in faith, the Church throughout the world
was so united ; and united not only in what it be-
lieves, but in the principle upon which it believes ;
because it holds with one heart the infallibility
of the supreme and Divine authority from which
all teaching flows. And, further, the Church is
at this moment more self-evident in the eyes of
men than in any previous age of the world. There
never was a time when the words of our Lord were
more emphatically, I may say, more articulately
fulfilled, "A city that is set on a mountain cannot
be hid ; " * and most assuredly the Catholic and
Roman Church at this moment stands out with a
definite universality, with a visible unity, with *.n
effulgence of light, never seen before. I do not
think that anybody who professes to believe in a
Church at all can stand for a moment in doubt
whether the Church of Jesus Christ be the Greek
Church, or the Anglican Church, or the Church
Catholic and Roman, which alone spreads from
sunrise to sunset. Our Lord said to His Apos-
tles, " You are the light of the world," and never
has that light shone out of darkness with BO

• St. Matt. v. 14.

THB FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 151

luminous a splendor, giving evidence of itself, and
testifying so clearly to its own existence and to
its own authority, as at this hour. The sover-
eignty, therefore, of God, manifested through his
Church, is at this moment more than ever re-
veal sd to the intellect and to the heart of men.
Whether they will believe or whether they will
net believe, there is a system spreading from east
to west, not only claiming 1800 years of tradi-
tionary history, but exercising its prerogatives
at this day, and manifestly seen to exercise them :
known also never to have abdicated them for an
hour ; inflexible in its fidelity to the Divine rev-
elation, requiring of all men — from its highest
pastor, the supreme Pontiff, who sits on the
throne as Vicar of Jesus Christ, down to the little
Catholic child in the school — the same act of
faith, the same submission of the intellect and of
the will to the sovereignty of God. No one ia
exempt from that changeless law of faith and of
submission. It is one and the same for all.
Now, a system like this is so unlike anything
human, it has upon it notes, tokens, marks so
altogether supernatural, that men now acknowl-
edge it to be either Christ or Antichrist. There ia
nothing between these extremes. Most true ia
this alternative. The Catholic Church is either
tb* masterpiece of Satan, or the kingdom of the
f God.

,160 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF OOD.

Now I will conclude by drawing two very
plain consequences : first, that all things are ful-
filling the will of God. All things are for the
sake of His elect, and He is accomplishing in
the world His sovereignty in a way so unerring
and so luminous, that they who believe can see
it, and they who will not believe, in their blind-
ness seem to be reduced to railing instead of
reasoning against it. I have pointed out that
there has been a line of the faithful servants of
God, in all ages, from the beginning, — an un-
broken chain, link within link ; from just Abel
down to the present day. This line of faithful ser-
vants became a people, chosen and preserved, by
the grace of God, before and after the Incarna-
tion ; organized and knit together into one king-
dom of faith. The typical Church of Israel was
a shadow; the substance of the shadow is the
Church of Jesus Christ. This family of grace is
the special object for the salvation of which all
the order of God's sovereignty has been and is
directed. The empires of the ancient world were
employed to chastise, or to liberate, or to restore,
or to scatter it. The kingdoms and revolutions
of the Christian world, in like manner, fulfil Hig
purpose towards His elect. God willed all men
to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the
Truth. He willed also that all men should be
called to the unity of the Church. His Apostlea

COLLEGE

THE FOUKFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 161\i_

were sent to make disciples of all nations. Whose
will believe, he may freely enter into it ; whose
will not believe, he closes the door against him-
self. The gates of the heavenly city stand open
day and night; God never shuts them. They
who have never heard of the kingdom of God
will not have to give an account of it. They
will be judged by the little they knew, and not
by that which they could not have known.
Those who might have known it, will be judged
according to the way in which they received or
rejected the light that was offered to them. All
things are ordered for this work of salvation.
God knows from all eternity who will be saved,
and how many they will be. He does not
diminish the number by refusing salvation to
the willing, and He will not multiply the number
by forcing the free will of those who will not
believe. It is a mystery of sovereign grace and
of human freedom. All things are working for
the accomplishment of the mystery of salvation :
" all things work together for good to those who
love God." * Even the sins and the wickedness
and the persecutions of this world, all tend to the
salvation of those who believe. This world is
the wine-press, in which the grapes are trodden ;
it is the threshing-floor, on which the wheat is
beaten and winnowed from the chaff. The wine

* Rome riii. 28.
14*

142 THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF <3O1>.

and the wheat are being made ready for the
gupper of the Lamb in the kingdom of God.
These are the elect of God, whc are faithful, and
persevere in faith unto the end. The words,
therefore, of John the Baptist are true at this
hour. Our Divine Lord is in the midst of His
Church, and " His fan is in His hand, and He
will thoroughly cleanse His floor, and gather
His wheat into the barn ; but the chaff He will
burn with unquenchable fire." * If this be not
sovereignty, in what does it consist ? And it is
of this the Apostle spoke when he said, in his
own name and in the name of his successors,
" We are unto God the good odor of Christ, in
them who are saved and in them who perish:
to some, indeed, the odor of death unto death :
but to the others, the odor of life unto life." f
That work of separation is going on now. It is
not stayed, but accomplished by the apostasy of
the civil order of men. They may go to their
way in the civilization they have chosen, and in
the progress of which they boast, but they will not
diminish by one jot or tittle the sovereignty of
God over the world. No ; nor will they dimmish
the manifestation of that sovereignty in the con-
fusions and torments of the world, to which it in
hastening in speed. Its disorders, its revolutions,
the rising of people against people and kingdom
• St. Matt, lit 12. t 2 Cor. U. 15, 16.

FOURFOLD aovEBEioamr OF GOD. 16S

against kingdom, the dissensions among brethren,
the treason against laws, the conspiracies which
undermine the social order of the world, the
visible changing into death and into dust, which
is upon the whole political order of men who have
renounced Christianity, — all this manifests, by
an unconscious acknowledgment, the sovereignty
of God. The Church, by its unity, its universal-
ity, its luminous action upon the intellect of men,
whether they will believe or not ; the Holy See,
imperishable in the midst of eighteen hundred
years of conflict, imperial over the intellect and
will of men, reigning in the supernatural order
over nations, races, and people; — these things
also manifest the sovereignty of God. When St.
Paul was shipwrecked upon the coast of Malta,
a viper came out of the fire and fastened on his
hand. The people at first said, " This is a mur-
derer, whom the vengeance of God will not suffer
to live." But when they saw that he neither
swelled, nor fell down dead, when unhurt he
shook the deadly beast into the fire, they changed
their minds, and said that he was a god. Surely
the reason of man, seeing that the endless, mani-
fold, world-wide, unrelenting enmity of the ser-
pent has never prevailed over the Catholic and
Roman Church ; that' all the power and malice
of the world have never been able to overthrow
the sovereignty of the Holy See, even though

164 THE FOURFOLE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

revolutions may sacrilegiously occupy the city
of Rome, which the providence of God has given
to be the throne of His Vicar — though at
first they think the Church of Jesus Christ to
je Antichrist, reason must, on calmer, wise?
thoughts, conclude that there is in it a life which
is not of man, and a power which is not for evil,
but for good ; and if so, that it must be the life
and the power of God.

We have come now to the end of what I have
endeavored to say. You will recollect that we
have seen, first, that the sovereignty of God over
the intellect by faith illuminates, elevates, and
perfects the reason of man, and that to reject
faith is to degrade the reason. Secondly, that
the sovereignty of God over the will by the law
and grace of charity, perfects the image of God
in man. Thirdly, that the sovereignty of God,
over the whole civil order and collective com-
monwealth of men, is the principle from which
the welfare and well-being, the civilization, the
progress of human society depends. And now
we have traced out, slightly and faintly, and only
in outline, as I well know, the sovereignty of God
over the whole world, — enough, at least, to show
that the apostasy of the world does in no way
diminish that sovereignty, but that in its rebel-
lien it is accomplishing and perfecting the work
to which that sovereignty is directed ; and, fur-

I
THE FOURFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. 166

liver, that at this time there are tokens which, I
might almost say, are like the voices and thun-
derings in heaven, and the writings of a man's
hand upon the wall, warning the world of those
things which are coming upon the earth. There
are voices as the voices of a great multitude, not
only in heaven, but among men. These earthly
voices are discordant, harsh, and terrific. They
Are the cries of anti-Christian and anti-social
revolutions, visible on the face of nations, of dark
and sanguinary conspiracies, hiding themselves
under the surface of the earth — more perilous,
because not seen. The time is come, when the
only safety for nations and for men is in the re-
cognition of the sovereignty of God. There is
nothing else that can save the Christian society
of the world — nothing else that can save the soul
in the day of the great account.

" There were great voices in heaven, saying :
The kingdom of this world is become our Lord's
and His Christ's, and He shall reign for ever and
ever. Amen.

"We give Thee thanks, O Lord God Al-
mighty, who art, and who wast, and who art to
come; because Thou hast taken to Thee Thy
great power, and Thou hast reigned.

" And the nations were angry, and Thy wrath
is come, and the time of the dead, that they
thould be judged, and that Thou sheuldst render

166 THE FOLRFOLD SOVEREIGNTY OF <X>1>.

reward to Thy servants, the prophets, and tht
saints, and to them that fear Thy Name, little and
great ; and shouldst destroy them who have cor-
rupted the earth." *

" Great and wonderful are thy works, O Lord
God Almighty ; just and true are Thy ways, O
King of Ages.

" Who shall not fear Thee, 0 Lord, and mag.
nify Thy Name ? For Thou only art holy : for
all nations shall come and shall adore in Thy
right, because Thy judgments are manifest." f

• Apoc. xt 15, 17 18. tIbid.xr.S,t

0f «

FOUR LECTURES

ST. GEORGE'S CHURCH, SOUTHWABK

HENRY EDWARD MANNING.

P. J. KENEDY & SONS

44 BARCLAY STREET, NEW YORK

THE four following Lectures are now printed,
in compliance with the request of many who
desired their publication. They are printed as
they were taken down, with only such correc-
tions as were necessary for the sake of clear-
ness.

1*

CONTENTS.

LECTURE I.
BiriALBD wrrm DMIHITB AND OTRTAIN «

LECTURE H.

THl OH0BCH 1 HMIOBICAI, WITNM8 •*

LECTUKE ffL

TH» CHTT»OT A DITIH1 WITNESS ....

LECTURE IV.
RATIOHALMM THI LBSITIMATB OOKSIQOTNOT Of FBITATI

LECTURE 1.

BEVBALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN

ST. Jon* jnrii 3.

"lids is life ererlasting, that they may know Thee, the only tnu
God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.

MY purpose is to speak of the grounds of Faith ;
I do not mean of the special doctrines of the Catholic
theology, but of the grounds or foundation upon
which all Faith rests.

This is a subject difficult to treat : partly, because
it is of a dry and preliminary nature ; and partly,
because it is not easy to touch upon a matter so long
controverted, without treating it likewise in a con-
troversial tone. But I should think it a dishonor
to the sacredness of truth itself, if I could treat a
matter so sacred and so necessary in a tone of mere
argument. I desire to speak, then, for the honor
of our Lord, and, if God so will, for the help of
those who seek the truth. To lay broad and sure
!• 6

K1Y1ALBD TEUTH DKFINITJ! AND CEJLTAIJf.

the foundations on which we believe IB necessary at
all times, because as the end of man is life eternal,
and as the means to that end is the knowledge of
God, and of Jesus Christ whom He hath sent, our
whole being, moral, intellectual, and spiritual de-
mands that we should rightly know, and by know*
ledge be united with, the mind and will of God.
And what is necessary at all times is especially so
at this. For this land, once full of light, once
united to the great commonwealth of Christendom,
and grafted into the mystical vine, through whose
every branch and spray life and truth circulate,
three hundred years ago, by evil men for evil ends,
was isolated from the Christian world, and torn from
the unity of Christ Since that time, what has been
the religious history of England? The schism
which rent England from the Divine Tradition of
Faith, rent it also from the source of certainty; the
division which severed England from the unity of
the Church throughout the world planted the prin-
ciple of schism in England itself. England, carried
away from Catholic unity, fell as a landslip from
the shore, rending iteelf by ita weight and mass.
England, Scotland, Ireland, parted from each other,
each with a religion of its own, each with its rul«
of faith. With schism came contradiction; with
contradiction uncertainty, debate, and doubt
Nor did it stop here. That same principle of

REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN. 7

Bchism which rent asunder these three kingdoms
propagated itself still farther. In each country
division followed division. Each Protestant church,
as it was established, contained within itself the
principle both of its creation and dissolution, namely,
private judgment. And private judgment, work-
ing out its result in individual minds, caused schism
after schism; until we are told by a writer, Pro-
testant himself, that in the seventeenth century,
during the high time of Protestant ascendency, the
Beots of England amounted to between one and two
nuadred.

But there are causes and events nearer to our
day which render it more than ever necessary to
turn back again to the only foundations of certainty,
and lay once more the basis of faith The estab-
lishment so long by many believed to be a Church,
a body with a tradition of three hundred years,
upheld by the power of this mighty nation, main-
tained by the sanction of law and legislature,
invested with dignity and titles of state, possessing
vast endowments, not of land or gold alone, but of
that which is more precious, of treasures which the
Catholic Church had gathered, and of which it was
rudely spoiled ; universities, colleges, and schools :
that vast body, cultivated in intellect, embracing
the national life in all its strength and ripeness, in
an hour of trial was questioned of its faith, and

8 BEVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN.

prevaricated in its answer. It was bid to speak as
a teacher sent from God; it could not, because God
bad not sent it. And thus tbe last remaining bope
of certainty among Protestant bodies in this land
revealed its own impotence to teach. The body
which men fondly believed to partake of the divine
office of the Church, proclaimed that alike in its
mission and its message it was human.

What then do we see in this land ? Sects without
number, perpetually subdividing; each equally con-
fident, all contradictory; and that dominant com-
munion which claims to be authoritative in teaching,
itself confounded by internal contradictions of its
own. How has this come to pass ? It is because
the Kule of Faith is lost, and the principle of
certainty destroyed. Put a familiar illustration:
suppose that in this teeming commercial city, where
men, in fret and fever from sunrise to sunset, buy
and sell, barter and bargain, the rules of calculation
and the laws of number were to become extinct ;
what error would ensue, what litigation, what bank-
ruptcy, and what ruin ! Or suppose that in this
great mercantile empire, whose fleets cover the seas,
the science of astronomy and the art of navigation
were to perish ; the shores of all the world would
be strewn with our wrecks. So it is in the spiritual
world. The Rule of Faith once lost, souls wander
and perish. The effect of this is that men hav«

REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN. 9

come to state, as scientifically certain, that there is
no definite doctrine in revelation. As if, indeed,
truth had no definite outline. And we find in
serious and even good men an enmity against the
definite statement of religious truth. They call it
dogmatism. The Athanasian Creed they cannot
away with. It is too precise and too presumptuous.
They feel as men who turn suddenly upon the
image of our crucified Lord. They start at it from
its very definiteness ; and as the sight of a crucifix
unexpectedly produces a shock, so will the definite
statement of truth. It forces home the reality of
faith. People now-a-days assume that religious
truth can have no definite outline, and that each
man must discover and define it for himself. And
however definite he may choose to be, one law is
binding equally upon us all. No one must be
certain. Each must concede to his neighbor as
much certainty as he claims for himself. The ob-
jective certainty of truth is gone. The highest rale
of certainty to each is the conviction of his own
understanding. And this, in the revelation of God ;
in that knowledge which is life eternal.

I. In answer, then, I say, that all knoweledge
must be definite ; that without definiteness there is
no true knowledge. To tell us that we may have
religious knowledge which is not definite, is to telj
us that we may have color which is not distinguish-

-10 REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN,

able. Every several truth is as distinct as the
several colors in the rainbow. Blend them, and
you have only confusion. So it is in religious know-
ledge. Doctrines definite as the stars in heaven,
when clouded by the obscurities of the human mind,
lose their definiteness, and pass from sight

Is not this true in every kind of knowledge ?
Take science, for example. What would a mathe-
matician think of a diagram which is not definite ?
What would any problem of physical science be, as
in optics, or in mechanics, or engineering, or in
any of the arts whereby man subjugates nature to
nis use, if it were not definite ? How could it be
expressed, by what calculus could it be treated?
What, again, is history which is not definite ? His-
tory which is not the record of definite fact is my-
thology, fable, and rhapsody. Where history ceases
to be definite, it begins to be fabulous. Or take
moral science; what are moral laws which are not
definite ? A law which is not definite carries wi'.h
it no obligation. If the law cannot be stated, it
cannot be known ; if not known, it has no claim on
our obedience. Unless it definitively tell me what I
am to do and what I am not to do, it has no juris-
diction over my conscience. And as in human
knowledge, so, above all, in divine. If there be any
knowledge which is severely and precisely definite,
it is the knowledge which God has revealed of Him

KEVBALID TRLTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN. 11

self. Finite indeed it is, but definite always : finite
as our sight of the earth, the form of which is
round ; and yet because our narrow sight can com
pass no more, to us it seems one broad expanse.

Again, take an example from the highest know-
.edge. When we speak of wisdom, goodness, or
power, we carry our mind upward to the attributes
of God. When we see these moral qualities repro-
duced in a finite being, we call them still by the
same titles. So with knowledge. What is know-
ledge in God but an infinite and definite apprehen-
sion of uncreated and eternal truth ? The knowledge
which God has of himself and of His works is a
science divine, the example and type of all. To
descend from the divine perfection ; what is know-
ledge in the angels but equally definite, though in a
finite intelligence ? And what was the knowledge of
man before the fall, but, though finite, definite still ?
What, then, is the knowledge which God has re-
stored to man through revelation but a definite
knowledge, a participation of His own ? The truth
which has been revealed, what is it in the mind of
God who reveals it, but one, harmonious and distinct?
What was that knowledge as revealed by the Holy
Spirit on the day of Pentecost, but one, harmonious
and distinct? What was the conception of that
Knowledge in inspired men, but one, harmonious and
distinct also ? And what was that knowledge when

12 BJCYBALKD TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN.

communicated by those who were inspired to those
who believed, but one, harmonious and distinct as
before ? And what is this unity and harmony and
distinctness of knowledge, which God revealed of
Himself through Jesus Christ, but the faith we con-
fess in our creed ? Our baptismal faith, its substance
and its letter, the explicit and the implicit meaning,
article by article, is as definite, severe, and precise,
as any problem in science. It is of the nature of
truth to be so; and where definiteness ends, know-
ledge ceases.

Observe, then, the distinction between finite know-
ledge and definite knowledge. Is not science defi-
nite? Yet it is also finite. The theory of gravitation,
definite as it is, is finite too. The theory of elec-
tricity is definite as far as we know it, but finite also.
Go through the whole range of physical sciences,
what is it but an example of the same condition of
knowledge, definiteness in conception with finitencss
of reach? What has astronomy revealed to us?
The starry heavens, in which we trace the laws and
revolutions of heavenly bodies. We find centre,
after centre, and orbit beyond orbit, until at last we
reach what has been long fixed upon as the centre
of the universe ; and yet even here, science new
tells us that probably this, our central point, which
we believed to be fixed, is again itself a planet re-
rolving around some mightier centre which science

REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN. 13

cannot attain. Here, then, are the conditions of
definiteness and finiteness combined. So in revealed
truth. If we have not a definite knowledge of what
we believe, we may be sure we have no true know-
ledge of it.

II. But, further, it is evident that knowledge
must also be certain. When we speak of certainty,
we mean one of two things. Sometimes we say, that
a thing is certain ; at other times, that we are cer-
tain. When we say a truth is certain, we mean,
that the proofs of that truth are either self-evident,
or so clear as to exclude all doubt. This is certainty
on the part of the object proposed to our intelligence.
But when we say we are certain, we mean that we
aro inwardly convinced, by the application of our
reason to the matter before us, of the sufficiency of
the evidence to prove the truth of it In us, cer-
tainty is rather a moral feeling, a complex state of
mind. As light manifests itself by its own nature,
but sight is the illumination of the eye ; so certain-
ty means truth with its evidences illuminating the
intelligence, or, in other words, the inteligence pos-
sessed by truth with its evidences.

This we call certainty. I ask, then, is there not
this twofold certainty in the revelation which God
has given? Was not the revelation which God
gave of Himself through Jesus Christ made certain
on His part by direct evidence of the Divine act
2

14 REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN.

which revealed it? Is it not also certain on our
part by the apprehension and faith of the Church ?
Wai not God manifest in the flesh that He might
reveal Himself? Did not God dwell on earth that
He might teach His truth ? Has not God spoken
to man that man might know Him ? Did not God
work miracles that man might believe that He was
present? What evidence on the part of God was
wanting that men might know that Jesus Christ
was indeed the Son of God ?

And if there was certainty on the part of God
who revealed, wae there not certainty also on the
part of those that heard? Look back into the
sacred history. Had not Prophets and Seers cer-
tainty of that which they beheld and heard ? Had
not Abraham certainty when he aaw a dark mist
and a smoking furnace, and a fiery lamp moved
between the portions of the sacrifice ? Was not
Moses certain when he beheld the pattern shewn
to him on the Mount? Was not Daniel certain
when the angel Gabriel flew swiftly and touched
him at the time of the evening sacrifice ? Were
not Apostles and Evangelists certain when they
eompanied with our Lord, and said, " That which
was from the beginning, which we have heard,
which we have seen with our eyes, which we have
diligently looked upon, and our hands have handled,
toncerning the Word of Life?" Were not th«

REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN. 15

Twelve certain in the upper chamber ? Were they
not certain on the day of Pentecost? Was not
Paul certain in Arabia, when he learned the Gospel,
not of man, nor of flesh and blood, but " by the re-
velation of Jesus Christ?" Was not John cer-
tain in Patmos, when heaven was opened, and the
vinion of the future was traced before his eye?
Aad were not they certain to whom Patriarchs,
Prophets, Seers, Apostles, Evangelists, preached and
wiote? Has not the Church of God been certain
fr;m that hour to this of the revelation given and
received at the first ?

What, then, is the first condition of faith but
certainty ? He that has not certain faith has no
faith. We are told that to crave for certainty im-
plies a morbid disposition. Did not Abraham, and
Moses, and Daniel, the Apostles and Evangelists
desire certainty in faith, and crave to know beyond
doubt that God spake to them, and to know with
definite clearness what God said? Was this a mor-
bid craving? Surely this is not to be reproved.
But rather the contrary disposition is worthy of re-
buke. How can we venture to content ourselves
with uncertainty in matters where the truth and
honor of God and the salvation of our own souli
are at stake ? This truly is not without sin.

We are told, indeed, that to be certain if incon-
sistent with faith, that probability is the atmospkere

16 REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN.

in which faith lives, and that if you extinguish
probabilities, faith dies. Did the Apostles then
believe the doctrine of the ever-blessed Trinity upon
a probability? Did they believe the doctrine of
the Incarnation upon conjecture ? Was it because
they walked in twilight that their faith in their
Divine Lord was acceptable ?

To what are we come? In this Christian land,
once full of light, once in unity with the Church of
God, once replenished with truth, — to what are we
come ? A new virtue is promulgated ; to be uncer-
tain of the truth and of the will of God; to hold
our faith on probabilities. And yet, what is the
very idea of Revelation but a Divine assurance of
Truth? Where faith begins uncertainty ends
Because faith terminates upon the veracity of God ;
and what God has spoken and authenticated to UK
by Divine authority cannot be uncertain.

I am aware, brethren, that much of what I have
said has no application to you. You are the heirs
of a Divine inheritance. As the science of astrono-
my, in its severity and truth, has descended by
intellectual tradition from the first simple observa-
tions made on the plains of Chaldea down to the
abstract and complex demonstrations of these later
times, BO has the tradition of faith, the science of
God, come down to you. You have been born
within its sphere. You know it by a manifold

REVKALKD TBUTH DJSJU NITK AND CERTAIN. 17

assurance, by the certainty of God revealing it, the
Scriptures of God recording it, the Church of God
preserving it, the Councils of the Church defining
it, the Holy See from age to age condemning error
and setting its seal upon the faith. You have it
brought down to you with imperishable certainty.
Your guide is not human but Divine. Why then
do I speak to you? Because you have a mission to
fulfil. You have to bring others to a share of the
same inheritance. I bespeak your charity and your
patience in their behalf. I cannot better put before
yuu the state of those who have lost what to you
hsis been preserved, than by a parallel. Suppose I
were to write an inscription, and shew it to you.
Having read it, the meaning of that inscription
p«-ases, so to speak, into the very substance of your
mind. It is ineffaceably impressed upon your
memory. Then tear it into twenty pieces, and give
one piece to twenty men respectively; set them to
discover the whole. I know it, because I wrote it ;
you know it, because you have seen and read it.
They know it only in part. They have each a
fragment; but they cannot conjecture the rest So
is it with the sects that are around the Church of
God. The one inscription, written, not by man, but
by the Spirit of God upon the illuminated reason of
the Church, has descended perfect and entire until
now. But each several sect as it departed from
2«

18 REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN.

unity carried away a fragment The children of
schismatics inherit a fragment only. As "faith
tometh by hearing," so theology cometh by hearing,
and the doctrine of the Catholic Church in its
harmony, unity, and distinctness, comes by hearing.
They who never heard that faith, to whom the
science in its fulness has not descended, have but •
fragment, from which they labor in vain to conjec-
ture the remainder. You can help them. Not by
controversy; not by destroying what they have
already. To destroy even a fragment of the Truth if
Satan's controversy. The divine way of establishing
faith among men is not to throw down, but to build
up: to add, to develop, to perfect. Every truth
that a man possesses is so far a pledge that you
have a share in him, that so far he is with you.
Hold him fast by that truth. Add to it the next
which follows in Divine order; and so in patience
and in charity lead him on from truth to truth, at
by the links of a chain, and bind him to the altar
of God.

And now, of those who reject the principle!
I have stated, and deny to theology the character
of definiteness and certainty, I would ask two
questions:—

1. First, I would ask, What do you believe?
Put it in words. Conceive it in thought. Fix your
mind's eye upon it. Put it in writing in somt

REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN. 19

silent hour: know at least what it is. As yon value
your eternal soul, as yon believe that the end of
your being is to be united with God eternally, and
that the means to that eternal union is the know-
ledge of God in Christ Jesus, be not content a day
to abide in uncertainty and indefiniteness concerning
the truth, which you know to be vitally necessary
to your salvation.

Again, I say put it in words. First, what do you
believe of the Godhead ? You believe in the Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost? This you hold definitely
and without a doubt What do you believe of the
Incarnation of the Son of God ? That in Him two
whole and perfect natures are united in one person,
never to be divided. You believe the Godhead,
presence, and office of the Holy Ghost ? But there
remain other articles of your creed. We come next
to " the Holy Catholic Church." What do you
believe in this article of Faith? Will you say,
" W*e have definite and certain knowledge of the
former articles, but not of the latter. When I come
to • the Holy Catholic Church* I come to a region
where uncertainty is lawful ?" But uncertainty ia
doubt, and doubt and faith are contradictory. You
tuay not doubt in your baptismal faith, or be uncer-
tain as to the articles of your creed. May we make
an open question, for example, of the resurrection
of the dead ? Why not be also uncertain whether

20 REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIH.

!>r no the Holy Spirit of God be in the world now ,
or, being now in the world, whether He have a
present office to teach ? You believe this ; but why
believe this, and doubt of other doctrines of the
game creed? And if you believe that the Holy
Spirit does still teach the world, how does He
teach ? Each several man by immediate inspiration ?
If not, then how ? You will say perhaps, that He
teaches through the Church. But if through the
Church, through what Church ? How are we the
better or the wiser by knowing that the Spirit of
God teaches the world at this hour, and that He
has an organ through which to speak, if we know
not which, nor where that organ is? How then
shall you know that you hear His voice ? If you
knew that of twelve men who stood before you, one
only possessed a secret upon which your life de-
pended, would you be careless to know which man
bore the treasure in his possession? Why then
may you be indifferent to ascertain which is the ac-
credited messenger upon whom your faith depends ?
Try therefore to define your meaning. You say
you believe a Church, because your baptismal faith
says, " I believe one Holy Catholic Church :" holy,
because the Holy Spirit teaches in it ; Catholic, be-
cause throughout all the world; and one. Why
one f Why do you say that you believe in one God ?
Because there is not more than one God. Why otM

REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN. 21

Lord ? Because not two. Why one baptism ? Be-
cause one alone. Why one faith? Because no
other. All these are numerically one. Why then
one Church ? Because numerically one ; two there
cannot be. Through that one Church speaks the
one Spirit of the one God, teaching the one faith
in which is salvation. Which then is this true and
only Teacher sent from God ? You look about you,
and see a Church in Greece, in Russia, in America,
in England, and in Rome. Which of all these is
the one only true ? Can you be content with this
guess-work instead of faith ?

2. And further: I would ask another question.
I have asked you what you believe ; I will now ask
you why you believe it ; upon what basis of certainty
you are convinced of it, and why? Do you say
that you have applied the best powers of your un-
derstanding to it ? So have others who contradict
you. Why are you more surely right than they are ?
You have not had a message from heaven, sent by
special indulgence to make you sure, while others
wander. What then is the basis of your certainty ?
The persuasion of your own mind is not enough.
At that rate all men are certain. False coins pass
in every land; false miracles take the semblance
of true. The whole world is full of counterfeits.
What I ask you is this : How do you distinguish
between your certainty and the certainty of othet

22 REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN.

men, so as to know that their certainty is human,
and yours divine ? Why are they wrong, and you
right ? Where is the test to determine this ? You
know it oonnot exist within you, for every body may
claim the same. You look then without you and
around to find it.

Well, you will perhaps tell us that you have in-
herited the faith you hold. The inheritance of faith,
that is a divine principle. We bow before the
principle of inheritance. But why did you cut off
the entail of your forefathers ? Why, three hundred
years ago, did you cut off the entail of that inheri-
tance ? If it be not cut oSj why is the contest ?
If it be cut off, why was it cut off? To inherit the
faith is the divine rule. It needs only one thing
infallibility, to secure it. It needs only one support
to give it substance and certainty ; a divine tradition
flowing from the Throne of Grod through Prophets,
Seers, Apostles, Evangelists, Martyrs, Saints, aid
Doctors in one world-wide stream, ever deepening,
never changing, from the beginning until now.
Shew this divine certainty as the basis of your con-
viction, and then inherit both truth and faith. But
the inheritance of opinion in a family, or a diocess,
or a province, or a nation, what is it ? Human in
the beginning, and human to the end : " the tradi-
tions of men."

You say you have inherited the faith, and that

RBYBALED TRUTH MFINITE AND CERTAIN. 23

this is the Church of your forefathers. Go back
three hundred years ago, and ask those priests of
God who stood then at the altar how they would
expound the faith you still profess to hold. Ask
them what they believed while they ministered in
cope and chasuble. Go back to the Apostlo of
England who first bore hither again the light of the
Gospel after Saxon paganism had darkened this fair
land. Ask St. Augustin what he believed of those
words, " Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will
build My Church." Give your exposition, and ask
his. What would he have taught you of visible
unity ? What would he teach you of the Church
of God? Ask him, Is it one numerically, or one
only by metaphor ? Is it visible, that all men may
see " the City seated on a mountain," or invisible,
that men may weary themselves, and never find it ?
Has it a head on earth, representing its Divine Head
in heaven ? Or has it no head, and may it set up
many of its own ? What would he have taught you
of your baptismal creed ? Or that great saint who
fent him from the Apostolic throne, what would he
tave testified to you of those doctrines of faith which
you are taught to look upon as errors? Ask
Gregory, first and greatest of the name, what he
believed of the powers left by the Incarnate Son to
His Church on earth : what he taught of the power
of the keys transmitted by his predecessors in lineal

24 REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN.

descent from the hands of his Divine Lord ? Ask
what he taught of the power of absolution in the
sacrament of penance; what he believed of the
Reality on the altar, and of the Holy Sacrifice daily
offered in all the world ; of the Communion of
Saints ever interceding, by us ever invoked ; of the
intermediate state of departed souls, purifying for
the kingdom of God. Ask Gregory, saint and
doctor, to whom we owe the faith, what he taught
of those doctrines which you have rejected.

If the disciple and his master, if he that was
sent, and he that sent him, were to come now and
tread the shore of this ancient river, whither would
they turn to worship ? Would they go to the stately
minister, raised by their sons in the faith, where
even now rests a sainted king of Catholic England ?
Would they bend their steps thither to worship the
God of their fathers, and their Incarnate Lord from
whom their mission and their faith descended ? Or
would they not rather go to some obscure altar in
its neighborhood, where an unknown despised priest
daily offers the Holy Sacrifice in communion with
the world- wide Church of God ?

If, then, you claim inheritance as the foundation
of your faith, be true to your principle, and it will
lead you home. Trifle not with it Truth bears
the stamp of God, and truth changes man to the
likeness of God. Trifle not with the pleadings of

REVEALED TRUTH DEFINITE AND CERTAIN. 25

the Holy Spirit within you ; for He has a delicate
touch, and sensitively shrinks from wilfulness and
unbelief. If truth struggle within you, follow it
faithfully. Tread close upon the light that you pos-
sess. Count all things loss that you may win truth,
without which the inheritance of God's kingdom is
not ours. Labor for it, and weary yourselves until
you find it. And forgot not that if your religion
be indefinite, you have no true knowledge of your
Siviour ; and if your belief be uncertain, it U not
fee faith bj which we can be Bayed,
t

LECTURE II.

THE CHURCH A HISTORICAL WITNESS.

ST. JOHN zvii. 5.

'<Thia if life everlasting, that they may know Thee, the only trot
God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.**

BEFORE we go on to the subject that stands next
In order, it will be well to re-state the conclusions
at which we have thus far arrived.

From these words of our Divine Lord, we have
seen that the end of man is eternal life, and the
means to that end the knowledge of God in Jesus
Christ. Union with God in knowledge, love, and
worship, is life eternal. And that man might attain
to this end of his creation, God has revealed Him-
self to us in His Son. We have, therefore, noted
the error of those who say that in Revelation doc-
trine is either not definite, or not certain. It is
manifest that all knowledge must be definite ; for if
it be not definite, we may have guess, or conjecture,
26

THE CHURCH A HISTORICAL WITN1SS. 27

or probability, but true knowledge we cannot have.
We have seen also that it must be certain; and
that unless we have certainty we can have no faith,
because the mind cannot rest upon uncertainty, as
Hunger cannot sate itself on air.

We have obtained, then, two principles ; the one,
that knowledge, though indeed it be finite, as it
must be in a finite intelligence, is nevertheless, so
far as it is known to us, perfectly definite. It is as
a complex mathematical figure which we see only in
part, but in all we can see is perfect, harmonious,
and proportionate, capable of being understood, cal-
culated, and expressed. Being in the mind of God
one, harmonious and distinct, it is cast on the
limited sphere of man's intelligence in its unity,
harmony, and distinctness. The other principle is
that the knowledge which God has given us of
Himself is, in every sense, certain. We cannot
conceive that the contradictory of that which God
has spoken can be true, or that Prophets and Apos-
tles were uncertain of what they believed and
taught.

And now we will go on to examine what is the
foundation upon which this certainty descends to us.
It is, in one word, the authority of the Church of
God. But this authority of the Church is twofold :
it is either the outward and extrinsic, which I may
call the human and historical authority ; or it is the

28 THE CHURCH A HISTORICAL WITNESS.

inward and intrinsic, that is, the supernatural and
the divine authority. The latter we must consider
hereafter. For the present we will examine only
the outward or historical authority of the Church,
npon which the certainty of revelation as a fact in
history is known to us.

All who have traced the history of the faith know
that there is no doctrine which has not been made
the subject of controversy. Look at the records of
Christianity, and you will find that heresy began
with the first publication of the truth. In the first
age, we find heresies assailing the doctrine of the
Godhead of the Father, the Creator of the world.
In the next age heresies assailed the doctrine of the
Godhead of the Son ; later again, the doctrine of
the Godhead of the Holy Ghost ; next the doctrine
of holy Sacraments ; later still, the doctrine of the
Church itself. A vast schism arose, justifying itself
by denying the existence and the authority of the
visible Church as such. And because the existence
and authority of the visible Church was so denied,
the foundation of certainty was broken up, and the
principle of uncertainty introduced. Age by age,
and article by article, the faith has been denied,
until we come down to a period when the character-
istic heresy of the day is, not a denial of the Godhead
of the Father, or of the Son, or of the Holy Ghost
and the like, though these too are denied, but tht

THE CHURCH A HISTCtelOAL WITNESS 29

denial of the foundation of certainty in faith. The
master-heresy of this day, the fountain and source
of all heresy, is this, that men have come first to
deny, and then to disbelieve the existence in the
world of a foundation, divinely laid, upon which
revealed truth can certainly rest.

Let us ask those who deny the existence of this
basis of certainty, upon what do they rest when they
believe in the fact of a revelation ? The revelation
was not made to them personally. It was not made
to-day. It was made to others: it was made
eighteen hundred years ago. By what means, I ask,
arc men now certain that eighteen hundred years
ago, to other men, in other lands, a revelation from
God was given? They are forced back upon
history. They were not there to see or hear.
Revelation does not spring up by inspiration in
their inward consciousness. They are, therefore,
thrown upon history ; they are compelled to go to
the testimony of others. All men who at this hour
believe in the Advent of the Son of God, and in
the fact of the day of Pentecost, all alike rest upon
history. Not but that Catholics rest on more (of
this, however, hereafter) ; but they who do not rest
upon the divine office of the Church rest on history
alone. Then, I ask, by what criterion are they
certain that their historical views are true? Let
them throw the rule of their examination into some
3»

3C THE CHURCH A HISTORICAL WITNESS

form of words. Unless they can put into intelligible
words the principle of certainty upon which they
rest, it is either useless or false : useless, if it cannot
be stated, for if it cannot be stated, it cannot be
applied; false, if the nature of it be such that it will
not admit of expression.

I would beseech any who are resting upon such a
certainty as this, not to confound a sensation of
positiveness with the sense of certainty. The sense
of certainty is a Divine gift. It is the inward tes-
timony of our whole intelligent nature. A sensa-
tion of positiveness springs out of obstinacy, or
prejudice. Let them not confound the resolution
to believe themselves in the right with the reason
for knowing that they are in the truth. Let them
analyse deeper, and find what is their principle, and
state that principle in intelligible words. To take
an example. We all believe, apart from revelation,
that the world was created. How so ? We proceed
to prove it The world is not eternal, for then it
would be G-od. It did not make itself, for that is
contradiction. Therefore, it remains of necessity that
it had a maker. I ask them only to be as definite
as this : for life is short and eternity is long, and we
are saved by truth ; and truth which is not definite
is no truth to us ; and indefinite statements have no
certainty ; and without certainty there is no faith.

In answer to this we are told that all men can

THE CHURCH A HISTORICAL WITNESS. 81

read the Holy Scriptures, and that this is enough.
I reply, Scripture is not Scripture except in the right
sense of Scripture. Your will after you are dead is
not your testament unless it be interpreted accord-
ing to your intention. The words and syllables of
your testament may be so interpreted as to contra-
dict your purpose. The will of the deceased is the
intention of the deceased known by his testament.
So of Holy Scripture. Holy Scripture is Holy
Scripture only in the right sense of Holy Scripture.
But we are further told, that notwithstanding
thsse superficial contradictions, all good men agree
in essentials. First, then, I ask, What are essen-
ti&lsY Who has the power to determine what i§
esuential and what is not ? By whose judgment are
we to ascertain it ? The Church knows only one
essential truth, and that is, the whole revelation of
God. It knows of no power to determine between
truth and truth, and to say, " though God has re-
vealed this, we need not believe it." The whole
revelation of God comes to us with its intrinsic
obligation on our faith, and we receive it altogether
as God's word. They who speak of all good men
agreeing in essentials, mean this : " I believe what
I think essential, and I give my neighbor leave to
believe what he thinks essential." Their agreement
is only this, not to molest each other : but they mu-
tilate the revelation of God.

82 THE C&URCH A HISTORICAL WITNESS.

In opposition to these opinions, let us state th«
grounds of our own certainty.

I. We believe, then, that we have no knowledge
of the way of salvation through grace, except from
the revelation of God. No one can deny this. It
IB a truism that we have no knowledge of the way
of redemption by grace except through divine reve-
lation. The whole world is witness of the fact
For four thousand years the world wandered on,
and knew not the way of grace except by a thread
of light which from Adam to Enoch, and from Enoch
to Noe, and from Noe to Abraham, and from Abra-
ham to Moses, and from Moses to the promised
Seed, ran down, keeping alive in the world the ex-
pectation of a Redeemer. Outside this path of light
the way of grace was not known ; nor was it known
even there except by revelation.

And round about that solitary light, what was
there ? Was there a knowledge of the way of sal-
vation through grace ? The heathen nations, their
polytheism, their idolatry, their morality, their litera-
ture, their public and their private life, do these
give testimony to the way of grace? Take their
tchools, their philosophies, their greatest intellects,
what do they prove ? One of the greatest practical
intellects of the Eastern world believed that matter
was eternal, and that the soul of the world was God.
The loftiest of all in speculation was blind when ha

THB CHURCH A HISTORICAL WITNESS. 3Sx

came to treat of the first laws of purity. In the
west, the greatest orators, poets, and philosophers,
either believed in no God at all, or in a blind and
imaginary deity, stripped of personality. This was
all that Nature could do. Nature without revela-
tion had no true knowledge of God, and absolutely
none of salvation through grace.

It was not until four thousand years had passed
that the way of salvation through grace was re-
vealed. Look at the mightiest effort Nature in ita
own strength ever made, — the empire of Rome ;
that vast power extending itself in all the world ;
the whole earth wondering at the onward march of
its victorious armies ; races falling back before its
legions ; its frontiers expanding whithersoever they
trod ; a mighty, world-wide dominion, whose capital
spread from the Mediterranean to the Alban hills,
in circuit sixty or seventy miles, within which na-
tions dwelt together : the palace of the aristocracy
of the earth ; for magnificence, splendor, and civili-
zation, never exceeded among mankind. Human
nature here was taxed to its utmost strength : hu-
man intelligence reached its utmost bound; and
what knew Rome of the way of grace, or of salvation
through Jesus Christ ? What was the morality of
Rome? What was its religion ? It was the high
place of all the gods; the deities of the greater
and lesser nations, and of the surrounding citieg

34 THE CHURCH A HISTORICAL WITNESS

which it conquered, were incorporated with its cwn
superstitions. All impieties were in veneration, and
every falsehood had its shrine. Only truth was
persecuted, only one worship was forbidden; and
that, the only doctrine and the only worship not
of this world. Nature did its utmost ; the intelli-
gence of man bore testimony to all it could attain.
The Babel of confusion was built to teach man-
kind for ever that human nature without God could
never rise to a knowledge of the way of grace.

The manifestation of God in the flesh ; the effu-
sion of light and revelation through the Holy Spirit ;
the setting up of the mystical ladder at the head
of which the Lord stands, and on which Angela
ascend and descend; the gathering together of
truths that had wandered to and fro on earth ; and
the uniting of all in one hierarchy of faith : nothing
less was needed before man could know the way of
eternal life.

It is certain, then, that we have no natural know-
ledge of the way of salvation through grace ; that
is, through the Incarnation, the Atonement, the
mystical Body of Christ ; through the Sacraments,
which are the channels of the Holy Spirit. With-
out revelation we have no true knowledge of sin,
whereby we forfeited our sonship ; nor of regenera-
tion, whereby we regain it ; nor of the relation of
grace to the free-will of man ; and the like. But

THE CHURCH A HISTORICAL WITNESS. 35

all these are doctrines upon which union with God
and eternal life depend, and yet of these not a
whisper was heard on earth until revelation came
by Jesus Christ.

II. But, further, we believe, in the second place,
that as we have no knowledge of the way of salva-
tion through grace, except from the revelation of
God, so neither have we any certainty what that
revelation was, except through the Church of God
As the fountain is absolutely one and no other, so
the channel through which it flows is absolutely one
and no other. As there is no source of certainty
but revelation, so there is no channel through which
it can flow but the Church of God. For certainty
as to the revelation given eighteen hundred years
ago, of the Church we needs must learn. To what
other can we go ? Who besides has the words of
eternal life ? Shall we go to the nations of the
world ? Can they teach the faith which they knew
not before Christ came, neither have since believed ?
Shall we go to the fragments of Christendom broken
off from age to age by heresy and schism ? Their
testimony is but local, limited, and contradictory.
What certainty can the Monophysite, Eutychian,
Nestorian, or Protestant, give of the day of Pente-
eost? To whom, then, shall we go? To that one
mystical body which came down from the upper
chamber to possess the earth; to that one moral

86 THE CHURCH A HISTORICAL WITNESS.

person upon whom the Holy Spirit then descended ;
to that kingdom of the God of heaven, which, spread-
ing from Jerusalem throughout all lands, penetrated
into every country, province, and city, erecting ita
thrones, ascending in might and power, expanding
throughout the earth, gathering together its cir-
cumference, filling up the area of its circuit, until
the world became Christian ; and then sat in sov-
ereignty, displacing and replacing the empire of the
world. This universal kingdom, one and indivisi-
ble, reigning continuous and perpetual in unbroken
succession from the day of Pentecost, was the eye-
witness and the ear-witness of revelation. This
one moral person alone can say, " When the Word
made flesh spake, I heard ; when the tongues of
fire descended from heaven, I saw : with my senses
I perceived the presence of God ; with my intelli-
gence I understood His voice; with my memory
I retain to this hour the knowledge of what I
then heard and saw ; with my changeless concious-
ness I testify what was spoken." To this one, and
this one only witness in the world, can we go for
certainty.

Put the case thus. Will you go to the Mono*
physite, Eutychian, or Nestorian heresies, ancient M
they are, which separated from the Church of Christ
in the fifth and sixth centuries ? Will they bear
witness ? Yes ; but only a partial testimony. They

THE CHURCH A HISTORICAL WITNESS. Ol

were witnesses so long as they were united to th«
one Church ; but their testimony ceased when they
separated from it They are witnesses so far as
they agree with that one Church, but not when they
contradict it. The testimony derived from separated
bodies amounts to this: it is the borrowed light
which even in separation they receive from the
Church itself.

And as with early, so with later heresies. Shall
wa go to the separated Greek communion, which
clfcims to be the only orthodox Church ? Will that
give a trustworthy testimony ? Yes ; so far as it
agrees with the body from which it departed. Its
witness after the separation is but local. Shall we
go to the great division of these later times, to the
huge crumbling Protestantism of the last three
centuries ? Is there in it any sect descending from
the day of Pentecost? When did it begin? A
hundred years ago, probably, or it may be two, or
at most three hundred years ago. At that time a
traceable change produced it. Does Protestantism
reach upward to the original revelation ? Has it a
succession of sense, reason, memory, and conscious-
ness, uniting it with the day of Pentecost ?

If, then, what has been said as to the only source
and channel of knowledge and certainty be true,
sufficient reason has been shewn to make every one
who is resting on the testimony of bodies separated

gb THE CHURCH A HISTORICAL WITNESS

from the universal Church mistrust his confidence.
Must he not say, " Eighteen hundred years ago a
revelation was given ; my life reaches but a span,
my memory but a few years ; how do I know what
passed on that day ? How shall they tell me whose
life, like my own, touches only upon the last genera-
tion ? I go to this and to that separated communion,
but they all fall short. There is one and one only
living witness in the world, which, as it touches on
the present hour in which I live, unites me by a
lineal consciousness, by a living intelligence, with
the moment when, in the third hour of the day,
1 there came a sound from heaven as of a might j
wind coming, and filled the whole house/ "

Let it be remembered that I am speaking of the
external authority of the Church simply as an his-
torical argument. We will confine ourselves for the
present to this alone. I put it forward as it was
cited by a philosophical historian, one of the greatest
of this age, who, having passed through the wind-
ings of German unbelief, found at last his rest in
the one True Fold. Explaining the ground of his
submission, Schlegel gave this reason ; that he found
the testimony of the Catholic Church to be the
greatest historical authority on earth for the event*
of the past. It is in this sense I am speaking.

And therefore, when I use the word authority, I
mean evidence. The word "authority" may bf

THB CHUBCH A HISTOEKJAL WITNESS. 89

used in two senses. It may either signify power,
Buch as the jurisdiction which the Church has over
the souls committed to its trust; or it may mean
evidence, as when we say, we have a statement on
the authority, or evidence, of an eye-witness.

Suppose, then, we were to reject this highest
historical evidence ; suppose we were to say that the
authority of the Catholic Church, though of great
weight, is not conclusive: I would ask, what his-
torical evidence remains beyond it? To whom else
shall we go? Is there any other authority upon
which we can rest? If we receive not the authority
of the Universal Church, we must descend from
higher to lower ground, we must come down to the
partial authority of a local church. Will this be to
ascend in the scale of certainty? If the testimony
of the Universal Church be not the maximum of
historical evidence in the world, where shall we find
it? Shall we find it in the church of Greece, or of
America, or of England ? Shall we find it in the
church of a province, or in the church of a diocess ?
If the Universal Episcopate be not the maximum
of external evidence, where shall it be found ? And,
in fact, they who reject the evidence of the Universal
Church for the primitive faith, necessarily rest their
belief on the authority of a local body, or on the
authority of a man. It was by divine intuition that
our Lord said, " Call none your father upon earth;**

40 THE CHURCH A HISTORICAL WITNESS.

fbr they who will not believe the Church of God
must be in bondage to human teachers. If they
are Calvinists, they must be in bondage to Calvin ;
or Lutherans, to Luther ; or Arians, to Arius ; or if
they be members of a church separated from Catho-
lic unity, they must be in bondage to its self-con-
stituted head. The ultimate authority in which
they trust is human. From this false confidence in
man the Catholic Church alone can redeem us. We
trust not in the judgment of an individual, howso-
ever holy or wise, but in the witness of an universal
and perpetual body, to which teachers and taught
alike are subject ; and because all are in subjection
to the Church, all are redeemed from bondage to
individual teachers and the authority of men.

Thus far we have spoken of the Church as a
mere human witness. To us, indeed, brethren, its
voice is not mere human testimony. God has
provided for faith a certainty which cannot fail ; the
mystical Body of Christ, changeless and indestruc-
tible, spread throughout the world. Wonderful
creation of God; but far more wonderful if it be
the creation of man : if, after all man's failures to
construct an imperishable kingdom, to hold together
the human intelligence in one conviction, the human
will in one discipline, and the human heart in one
bond of love ; if, after four thousand years of failure,
mere human power framed the Catholic Church,

THE CHURCH A HISTORICAL WITNESS.

41

endowed it with resistless power of expansion, and
quickened it with the life of universal charity.
More wonderful far, if it was man's work to create
the great science of theology, in which the baptismal
formula, " I baptise thee in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," expands
into the creed, and the creed again expands into the
science of God on which the illuminated reason of
eighteen hundred years has spent itself. Wonderful,
Indeed, if this be a mere human creation ! To us
it is the work and voice of God ; to us the line of
B:.shops and of Councils by which the Faith has
been declared in perpetual succession is the testimony
w'aich God Himself has countersigned, the witness
Gad Himself has sent. This continuous testimony
from the Council of Aries to the Council of Nice,
from the Council of Nice to that of Chalcedon, from
Chalcedon to Lateran, from Lateran to Lyons, and
from Lyons to Trent, is one harmonious science,
ever expanding as a reflection of the mind of God ;
preserving and unfolding before us the one Truth
revealed in the beginning, in its unity and har-
mony and distinctness. This is the basis of our
certainty.

What is the history of the Catholic Church but
the history of the intellect of Christendom ? What
do we see but two lines, the line of faith and the
line of heresy, running side by side in every age ;

42 THE OHDKCH A HISTORICAL VTITNESI.

and the Church, as a living Judge, sitting sovereign
and alone with unerring discernment, dividing truth
from error with a sharp two-edged sword ? Every
several altar, and every several See, gives testimony
to the same doctrines; and all conspiring voices
ascend into the testimony of that One See, which in
its jurisdiction is universal, and in its presence every
where ; that one See, the foundation-stones of which
were cemented in the blood of thirty Pontiffs ; that
See which recorded its archives in the vaults of
catacombs, and when the world was weary with per-
secuting, ascended to possess itself of imperial
basilicas. This is the witness upon whose testimony
we securely rest. The Church is a living history of
the past Cancel this, and what record is there left?
If Borne be gone, where is Christendom ?

LECTURE III.

THE CHUECH A DIVINE WITNESS.

ST. JOHN xvii. 3.

•• tb !• life everlasting, that they may know Thee, the only trat
God, and Jesus Christ whom Thon hast Bent."

THE truths which we have already affirmed are
these : that the end of man is eternal life through
ths knowledge of God revealed in Jesus Christ ;
thut this knowledge of God, being a participation of
tho Div-ine knowledge, is definite and certain ; and
that as there is but one fountain of £2iis Divine
knowledge in Revelation, so there is but one channel
of this Divine certainty in the Church. We have
Been also that the authority of the Church of God
on earth is the highest, or maximum of evidence,
even in a human and historical sense, of the past ;
that unless we rest upon this evidence, we must
descend in the scale of certainty.

But we have as yet considered the Church only ic
43

44 THIS CHURCH A DIVINB WITNESS.

fts external, human, and historical character : there
still remains for us a deeper and diviner truth. I
have spoken of the authority of the Church only ag
history of the past ; but, be it ever remembered,
that between the Protestant and the Catholic there
is this difference. To the Protestant, history must
be a record of the past gathered from documents by
criticism, fallible as the judge who applies it. To the
Catholic, history, though it be of the past, is of the
present also. The Church is a living history of the
past. It is the page of history still existing, open
before his eyes. Antiquity to the Catholic is not a
thing gone by ; it is here, still present. As childhood
and youth are summed up by manhood in our per-
sonal identity, so is antiquity ever present in the
living Church. If Christianity, then, be historical,
Catholicism is Christianity.

Let us therefore proceed to the deeper and diviner,
that is, to the interior and intrinsic authority of the
Church of Christ. We believe, then, that the in-
terior and intrinsic authority of the Church is the
presence of the Holy Spirit; that the ultimate
authority upon which we believe is no less than the
perpetual presence of our Lord Jesus Christ teaching
always by His Spirit in the world.

I. And, first, let us ascertain what points of
agreement exist between us and those who are in
separation from us. We are all agreed that the

THE CHURCH A DIT1NB WITNESS. 45

•nly subject-matter of faith is the original revelation
of God. They who most oppose us profess to be
jealous above all men to restrain all doctrine to the
bounds of the original revelation.

We agree, then, at the outset, that the subject-
matter of our faith is, and can only be, the original
revelation of God. To that revelation nothing may
be added ; from it nothing may be taken away. As
God in the beginning created the sun in the heavens
with its perfect disc, and no skill or power of man
can make its circumference greater or less, so Divine
revelation is a work of God's omnipotence, and no
man can add to it, or take from it. In this also we
are agreed. But there are other principles no less
vital than these. Let those who are so jealous for
this law of truth remember, that as we may neither
take from nor add to revelation, so neither may we
misinterpret or pervert it ; neither fix upon it our
private meaning, nor make it speak our sense. We
must receive it as God gave it, in its perfect ful-
ness ; with its true sense and purport as it was
revealed.

It were good, then, if they who are so jealous of
supposed additions to the faith, were equally jealous
of evident and manifold perversions of the same.
It would be well if those who are so hostile to in-
terpretations of Holy Scripture made by the Catholic
Church, were equally hostile to interpretations mad*

46 rm CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS.

by every man severally of that same book. Let ui
proceed more exactly ; and as we agree that nothing
may be added to or taken from that revelation, so
let us jealously demand that nothing in it shall be
misinterpreted, nor its sense wrested aside, nor its
meaning perverted.

But here begin our differences. How are we to
attain the right sense of Holy Scripture ? It is a
divine book, and contains the mind of God. How,
then, shall we know what is His mind ? By what
rule or test shall we know with certainty that we
have attained the meaning which the Divine Spirit
intended in that revelation ? We have here many
tests and many rules offered to us. Some tell us
that Scripture is so self-evident that the man who
reads it must understand. If that be so, why do
they that read it contradict each other? Far.ts
refute the theory. If Holy Scripture be so clejir,
why are there so many contradictory interpretation § ?

But is it so clear? When the English reador
has before him for the New Testament the Greek
text, and for the Old Testament the Hebrew text
—neither of which languages he reads— where ia
the self-evidence of his text then ? How does he
know that the book before him truly represents the
original? How can he prove it? How can he
establish the identity between the original and the .
translation ? How can he tell that the book before

THE CHURCH A DITINB WITNESS. 47

him is authentic or genuine, or that the text is purt ?
For all this he depends on others.

But let us take this argument as it is stated. If
Scripture, then, so self-evident that no one who
reads it can mistake its sense ? If it be self-evident
to the individual, it is self-evident to the Church.
If the text is so clear to every man who reads it,
then it has been clear to every Saint of God from
the beginning. If this book is so plain that men
cannot mistake it, then the Pastors and Teachers
of the Church have handed down its clear and cer-
tain interpretation. Why are individuals so sharp-
sighted and unerring, and the Saints of God at all
times blind ? This is but the recoil of their own
argument Let Holy Scripture be as clear and
self-evident as they say, then I claim in virtue of
that clearness that the Saints of God in all ages
have rightly understood its sense.

II. But let us pass onward. We see that they
who claim to interpret this book, with all its clear-
ness, contradict each other, and that their rule fails
in their own hand. Therefore, the wiser among
Protestants say, that to the text of Scripture must
be added right reason to interpret it Right reason,
no doubt : but whose reason is right reason ? Every
man's reason is to himself right reason. The reason
of Calvin was right reason to Calvin, and the reason
of Luther to Luther ; but the misfortune is, that

48 THE CHUECH A DIVINE WITNESS.

what is right reason to one man is not so to another
man. What then is this right reason ? It meani
a certain inward intellectual discernment which each
man claims for himself. But how did he become
possessed of it ? Whence did he receive this endow-
ment ? And if he has it, have not others the same ?
This right reason which men claim whereby to in-
terpret Scripture for themselves must be one of two
things : either the individual or the collective rea-
son ; that is, the reason of each man for himself,
or the accumulated reason of Christians taken to-
gether. But will any man say that his reason is to
him so certain and unerring a rule that he is able
to take the page of Scripture, and by the powers of
his understanding infallibly interpret it ? For such
a claim as this a man must have either a particular
inspiration, which considerate men dare not profess,
or be must substitute a sensation of positiveness for
a sense of certainty.

If, then, this right reason comes to nothing in the
individual, does it mean the collective reason of the
many ? If so, it falls back into a principle valid and
certain. What is the collective reason of Christiana
but the tradition of Christendom ? The intellectual
agreement of the Saints of God, what is it but tho
illuminated reason of those that believe ? Here we
touch upon a great principle; let us follow iti
guidance.

THE CHURCH A DIVINE ^ITNBSS. 49

After the division which rent England from the
unity of the Church, and therefore from the cer-
tainty of faith ; when men began to re-examine the
foundations which Protestantism had uprooted, there
arose in the Anglican Church a school of writers,
•cute and sincere enough both to see and to confess
that the principle of private judgment is the prin-
ciple of unbelief. They began to reconstruct a
foundation for their faith, and were compelled to
return once more to the old basis of Catholic the-
ology. We can trace from about the middle of the
roign of Elizabeth down to the great revolution of
1'3 88, a theological school which sprung up within
the Established Church, basing itself upon Catholic
ti idition, and claiming to found its faith not upon
p-.'ivate judgment, but upon the rule of St. Vincent
oi? Lerins, namely, on that which was believed " at
all times, everywhere, and by all men." This school,
for it never indeed was more, has in it names honored
and loved, names ever dear to those who have been
partakers with them. They were no common men ;
their lives were ascetic, their intellects capacious,
and their erudition deep. They inherited a position
which they would never have chosen ; a position in
many respects vague, and for which time had not
yet supplied a practical comment; and they en-
deavored to defend by learning that which had owed
its origin to violence; their position created their
5

50 THE CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS.

theory. They suffered for their opinions, and passed
through trying times with great integrity. Had
they not had these virtues, they would not have
been so long received as authority. They kept
alive an illusion that the Anglican church was in-
deed a portion still of the great Catholic empire
which rests upon the unity and infallibility of the
Church of Grod ; an illusion indeed, but not without
its providential use. For look at the countries
where such a belief has been extinct from the be»
ginning; at the Socinianism of Switzerland, the
Protestantism of France, the Rationalism of Ger-
many ; and say whither England might have gone
down if this illusion had not been permitted to
exist ? They, while they knew it not, did a work
for England : a counterwork against the license of
Protestant reformation. They were the leaders of
a reaction, the fruit of which will be seen hereafter.
They laid again in part the foundations of belief;
they demonstrated that private judgment is no ade-
quate rule for the interpretation of the faith. They
cast men back again upon authority : and put once
more into their hands a test. And what is that
test, but the historical tradition of the Church,
namely, that whatsoever was revealed in the begin-
ning, and believed every where by all men and at
all times, is, beyond a doubt, the faith of Pentecost ?
But here we touch upon another difficulty even

TUB CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS. 51

more pressing and more vital. We have now the
test by which to discover the truth ; but where is
the mind by which that test shall be applied ? If
the individual reason be not enough in its own
powers of discernment to interpret the books of
Evangelists and Apostles, one small volume written
with the perspicuity of inspiration — if the individual
reason be not enough for this, is it able to take the
literature of eighteen, or even of the first six cen-
turies, volumes written in many tongues and in all
Christian lands, to make survey and analysis of
them, to gather together and to pronounce what has
been believed by all men, and every where, and at
all times ? Even in ordinary things, if the question
wore, What are those universal principles of the
common law of England which have been held
every where, at all times, and by all common-law
julges, would any individual in ordinary life think
himself a competent critic? Would he not go to
Westminster ? Or if the question were, What is
the pronunciation or idiom of a language ? would
he go to books and not to natives ? Or, if the
question related to the grounds of scientific conclu-
sions, would he buy and pore over treatises of science,
instead of asking those whose lives have been de-
voted to science ? Even in music, there are melodies,
the accentuation and time of which cannot be writ-
ten ; they can be transmitted only from the voice to

52 THE CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS.

the ear. So is it with the transmission of the faith.
Though in subjects where the Church has not
spoken, individuals may investigate, yet the applica-
tion of the rule of St. Vincent needs more than the
discernment of an individual mind. It needs a
judge whose comprehensive survey penetrates the
whole matter upon which it judges. And where \*
the individual that can compass the whole experience
of Christendom ? Nay, more ; it needs a judge who
can not only discern for one age, but for the next,
and the age succeeding. What benefit is there in
a judge that judges in his day, and dies ? A per-
petual doctrine tested by a perpetual rule needs a
perpetual judge. Who judged in the times following
the Apostles but the Church in their next successors ?
Who in the century after, when heresy arose, but
the Church in Councils ? Who in the heresy of
Arius, the heresy of Eutyches, the schism of the
Greek Church ? Who judged in the middle ages ?
who in later times ? who judges to-day ? The same
judge always sitting; the same one living body
which by the illumination of Pentecost received the
Truth. Is it not plain that as every age needs the
truth for its redamption, and as our Divine Lord hai
made provision that every age through the trutk
shall be redeemed, so at no time from the beginning
until now has the world ever been, and at no time
from now until the end, shall the world ever be,

THE CHUECH A DIVINE WITNESS. 53

without a teacher and a judge to declare with final
certainty what is the tradition of the faith?

Here then we find ourselves in the presence of
the Church. As the subject-matter demands a test,
so the test demands a judge. What other judge is
there? What other can there be, but that one
moral person, continuous from the beginning, the
one living and perpetual Church ?

And here even antagonists have made great
admissions. Chillingworth, a name in the mouths
of all men as the first propagator of what is vaunted
as the great rule of Protestantism, " the Bible, and
th3 Bible only," that same Chillingworth says that
there is a twofold infallibility, — a conditional and
at absolute. " The former," namely, a conditional
infallibility, he, " together with the Church of Eng-
laad," attributes " to the Church, nay to particular
churches." " That is, an authority of determining
controversies of faith according to plain and evident
Scripture and universal tradition, and infallibility
while they proceed according to this rule"* But in
whose judgment ? In the judgment of the individual ?
In the judgment of each member of the local and
particular church ? or in the judgment of the Church
Universal ? for there can be no other judge to de-
termine whether the particular church moves still
in the path of universal tradition. Is the individual

* Chillincrworth's Works, vol. i. pp. 276, 277. ed. Oxon.

5*

54 THE CHURCH A DIVINE WITNB68.

to be judge of his church ? This would be fc> bid
water rise above its source. What then remains ?
The Universal Church alone can be the judge to
pronounce whether or no a local church still keept
within the sphere of universal tradition.

But if this be so, the Universal Church must be
infallible; for if it may err, who shall determine
whether it errs or no ? " Can the blind lead the
blind? do they not both fall into the ditch?" It
comes, then, by the force of rigorous argument to
this, that either the Universal Church cannot err,
or that there is on earth no certainty for faith. If,
then, the Church Universal be unerring, whence has
it this endowment ? Not from human discernment,
but from Divine guidance ; not because man in it is
wise, but because God over it is mighty. Though
the earth which moves in its orbit may be scarred
by storms, or torn by floods ; though upon its sur-
face nations may be wasted, cities overthrown, and
races perish, yet it keeps ever in its path, because
God ordained its steadfast revolutions : so, though
individuals may fall from truth, and nations from
unity, yet the Catholic Church moves on, because
God created it and guides it

HI. And now we must advance one step further.
For in dealing with those who are separated from
us, I believe that nothing I have yet touched upon
really probes the difficulty in their minds. The

THE CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS. 55

•ore lies deeper still : and it will be found that the
reluctance of too many, even among good men, to
receive the doctrine of the infallibilty of the Church
of God springs from this, that they base their re-
ligious opinions upon human reason, either in the
individual or upon a large scale, as upon the mere
intellectual tradition of Christendom, and not upon
the illumination and supernatural guidance of Christ
ever present and ever dwelling as a Teacher in the
Church. It will be found to involve a doubt as to
the office of the third Person of the Ever-Blessed
Trinity.

Let us proceed to examine this more closely.
We believe that Holy Scripture and the Creeds
contain our faith ; that for the meaning of these we
may not use private interpretation, or wrest them
from their divine sense, but must receive them in
the sense intended by God when they were given in
the beginning. To ascertain that sense, we must
go to the Universal Church. Universal tradition
we believe to be the supreme interpreter of Scrip-
ture. When we come to this point, I ask the
objector, Do you believe that this universal tradi-
tion of Christendom has been perpetuated by the
human reason only ? Or do you believe it to be a
traditional, divine illumination in the Church ? Do
you believe that the Holy Spirit is in the Church ;
and that His Divine Office is perpetual ? Tf you

56 THE CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS.

gay that individuals may judge the meaning of
Scripture by their own reason: the Church has
collective reason, and what the individual has tne
Church has more abundantly. If individuals are
guided by the illumination of the Holy Spirit in the
interpretation of Scripture, the Church much more.
That which is collective contains all that is indi-
vidual

But further than this. " As the sensual man,"
proceeding, that is, by the natural discernment only,
" peroeiveth not these things that are of the Spirit
of God," because they are " spiritually examined,"*
so the Church itself in council depends for its dis-
cernment in identifying the original faith, inter-
preting the original documents, and defining the
original truth, on the presence of the Holy Ghost,
Whom it invokes at the opening of every session.
What is the Church in the mouth of those separated
from Catholic unity? Is it more than a human
society? Is it not the religious organization of
national life? If it be not, like the schools of
Athens, collected round the voice of some potent
and persuasive teacher, it is at most, like the Jewish
people, an organized government of men, as in tem-
poral matters so in ecclesiastical. This is the idea
of the Church among those separated from unity.
But what do you believe when you speak of th«
•ICor. it 14.

THE OHUBOH A DJYINB WITNESS. 67

Church of God ? You believe that as the Eternal
Father sent the Eternal Son to be incarnate, and as
the Eternal Son for thirty-three years dwelt here on
earth : as for three years by His public ministry,
He preached the kingdom of God in Jerusalem and
JudaBa, so, before He went away, He said, " I will
ask the Father, and He shall give you another
Paraclete, that He may abide with you for ever, the
Spirit of truth."* The gain we have by His de-
parture is this, that what was then local is now
universal ; that what was partial then is now in ful-
ness ; that when the second Person of the Ever-
Blessed Three ascended to the throne of His Father,
the third Person of the Holy Trinity descended to
dwell here in His stead ; that as in Jerusalem the
second Person in our manhood visibly taught, so
now in the mystical body of Christ the third Person
teaches, though invisibly, throughout the world;
that the Church is the incorporation of the presence
of the Holy Spirit teaching the nations of the
earth.

Is not this our meaning when in the Creed before
the altar we say, "I believe One Holy Catholic
Apostolic Church?" And this touches the point
where we differ from those who are without. The
discernment they ascribe to the Church is human,
proceeds from documents, and is gathered by
• St. John «T. 18.

58 THE CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS.

Boning. We rise above this, and believe that tnt
Holy Spirit of God presides over the Church, illum-
inates, inhabits, guides, and keeps it; that its voice
is the voice of the Holy Spirit Himself; that when
the Church speaks, God speaks; that the outward
and the inward are one ; that the exterior and the
interior authority are identified; that what the
Church outwardly testifies, the Spirit inwardly
teaches ; that the Church is the body of Christ, so
united to Christ its Head, that he and it are one, as
St. Paul declares, " He gave some apostles, and some
prophets, and other some evangelists, and other
some pastors and doctors, for the perfecting of the
saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying
of the body of Christ ; until we all meet into the
unity of faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of
God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the
age of the fulness of Christ;"* "from whom the
whole body being compacted and fitly joined togethor
by what every joint supplieth, according to the
operation in the measure of every part, maketh
increase of the body, unto the edifying of itself in
charity."

The ultimate authority, then, on which we believe,
is the voice of God speaking to us through the
Church. We believe, not in the Church, but through
it: and through the Church, in God
* Eph. ir. 11, 12, !«.

THE CHUEOH A DIVINE WITNESS. 59

And now, if this be so, I ask what Church is it
that so speaks for God in the world ? What Church
on earth can claim to he this teacher sent from
God ? Ask yourselves one or two questions.

What Church hut one not only claims, but pos-
sesses and puts forth at this hour an universal
jurisdiction ? What Church is it which is not shut
up in a locality or in a nation, nor bounded by a
river or by a sea, but interpenetrates wheresoever
the name of Christ is known? What Church, as
the light of heaven, passes over all, through all, and
is in all? What Church claims an universal au-
thority ? What one sends missions to the sunrise
and to the sunset ? What Church has the power of
harmonizing its universal jurisdiction, so that there
can be no collision when its pastors meet? What
Church is there but one before whom kingdoms and
states give way? When yet did the Church of
Greece, for instance, make a whole nation rise?
When did a voice issue from Constantinople before
which even a civilized people forgot its civilization ?
Why came not such a voice from the East ? Because
there was no Divine mission to speak it.

We are told that all other sects are religions, and
may be safely tolerated, but that the Catholic Church
is a polity and kingdom, and must therefore be cast
out. We accept this distinction. What is this cry
but the cry of those who said of old, " We will not

60 THE CHUBCH A DIVINE WITNESS.

have this man to reign over us ?" It is the acknow-
ledgment that in the Catholic Church there is a
Divine mission and a Divine authority ; that we are
not content with tracing pictures on the imagination,
or leaving outlines on the mere intellect, but that, in
the name of God, we command the will; that we
claim obedience, because we first submit to it From
the highest pastor to the lowest member of Christ's
Church, the first lesson and the first act is submission
to the faith of God.

How blind, then, are the statesmen of this world:
the Catholic Church an enemy of civil kingdoms !
What created modern Europe? What laid the
foundations of a new empire when the old had
withered in the East? What was the mould from
which Christian nations sprang ? What power was
it that entered into England when it was divided by
seven jarring, conflicting kingdoms, and harmonized
them as by the operation of light into one empire j ?
What power is it that, as it created all these, shall
also survive them all? What created the very
constitution of which we are so proud? Whence
came its first great principles of freedom? Why do
we hear, then, that because the Catholic Church has
a polity and is a kingdom, because it claims supre-
macy, and is found every where supreme, therefor*
it is not to be tolerated ?

Tt has indeed a power from heaven which admit!

THE CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS. 61

no compromise. There is before it this, and this
only choice. In dealing with the world, it says:
All things of the world are yours; in all things
pertaining to you, in all that is temporal, we are
Bubmissive ; we are your subjects ; we love to obey
But within the sphere of the truth of God, within
the sphere of the unity and discipline of God's
kingdom, there is no choice for the Catholic Church
but mastery or mjtrtyrdom.

Let us ask another question. What Church but
oiie has ever claimed a primacy over all other
Churches instituted by Jesus Christ? Did any
Church before the great division, three hundred
years ago, save that one Church which still possesses
it, ever dream of claiming it? Has any separate
body since that time ever dreamed of pretending to
euch a primacy? Has there ever been in the world
any but one body only, which has assumed such a
power as derived to it from Jesus Christ?

In answer it is said, " Yes ; but the primacy of
Rome has been denied from the beginning." Then
it has been asserted from the beginning. Tell me
that the waves have beaten upon the shore, and I
tell you that the shore was there for the waves to
beat upon. Tell me that St. Irenseus pleaded with
St. Victor, that he would not excommunicate the
Asiatic Churches ; and I tell you that St. Irenaeus
thereby recognised the authority of St. Victor to

62 THE CHUBCH A DITINK WITNEU

excommunicate. Tell me that Tertullian mocked «ti
the " Pontifex maximus," " the Bishop of Bishops,"
and I tell you he saw before him a reality that bare
these titles. Tell me that St. Cyprian withstood St.
Stephen in a point not yet defined by the Church,
and I tell you that, nevertheless, in St Stephen's
See, St. Cyprian recognised the chair of Peter, in
unity with which he died a martyr. What do wars
of succession prove but the inheritance and succes-
sion of the crown ? What does a process of eject-
ment prove but that a man is in possession of the
disputed property? What truth is there that haa
not been disputed? Let us apply the argument.
Has not the doctrine of the Holy Trinity been
denied? Has not the Incarnation been denied?
Is there any doctrine that has not been denied?
But what is our answer to the Arian and Socinian ?
Because from the beginning these truths have been
denied, therefore from the beginning they have been
both held and taught.

To go over the field of this argument would be
impossible ; I will therefore take only one witness
of the primacy of the See of Peter. And I will
•elect one, not from a later age, because objectors
say, " We acknowledge that through ambition and
encroachment this primacy in time grew up;" nor
shall he be chosen from the centuries which followed
the division rf the East and West, because we are

THE CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS. 08

told that the exorbitant demands of the West in
this very point caused the East to revolt from unity.
It shall be a witness whose character and worth,
whose writings and life have already received the
praise of history. It shall be one taken from the
centuries which are believed even by our opponent*
to be pure, — from the six first centuries, while the
Church was still undivided, and, as many are still
re.idy to admit, was infallible, or at least had never
erred. It shall be a name known not only in the
roll of Saints, but one recognized in Councils, and
not in Councils of obscure name, but in one of the
four Councils which St. Gregory the Great declared
were to him like the four Gospels, and the Anglican
Church by law professed to make its rule whereby to
judge of heresy. In the Council of Chalcedon, then,
was recognised the primacy of St. Leo. Throughout
his writings, and especially in his epistles, St. Leo's
tone, I may say his very terms, are as follows:
44 Peter was Prince of our Lord's Apostles. Peter's
See was Rome. Peter's successor I am. Peter
dev6lved upon his successors the universal care of
all the Churches. My solicitude has no bounds but
the whole earth. There is no Church under heaven
which is not committed to my paternal care. There
is none that the jurisdiction of St. Peter does not
govern." We not only hear him claim, but see him
exercise acts of jurisdiction in Gaul, in Spain, in

64 THE CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS.

Italy, in Africa, in Greece, in Palestine, and in
Constantinople. We find him convening and pre-
siding in Councils; confirming or annulling the
eanons of those Councils ; judging Bishops, deposing
and restoring them. Even of Constantinople, the
only rival ever put forward to the primacy of Rome,
he writes to the Emperor, speaking of the ambition
of the Patriarch then in possession : " The nature
of secular and of divine things is different, neither
shall any fabric be stable but that one rock which
the Lord has wondrously laid in the foundation. He
loses his own who covets what is another's. Let it
suffice for him of whom we have spoken" (i. e. the
Patriarch of Constantinople), " that by the help of
thy piety, and the assent of my favor, he has ob-
tained the episcopate of so great a city. Let him
not despise the imperial city, which he cannot make
an Apostolic See."* There is no act of primacy
exercised at this hour by the Pontiff who now rules
the Church which may not be found in its principles
in the hands of St. Leo. They who refuse obedience
to this primacy must refute St. Leo's claim. Until
they do this, they stand in the presence of an authori-
ty which no other Church has ever dared to exercise.
We will ask but one question more. What other
Church is there that has ever spread itself through
all the nations of the world as speaking with the
• S. Leon, ad Marc. Epiit Ixxriii.

THE CHUBCH A DIVINE WITNESS. 66

Toice of God ? Does Protestantism ever claim in
any form to be heard by nations or by individuals
as the voice of God ? Do any of their assemblies,
or conferences, or convocations, put forth their defi-
nitions of faith as binding the conscience with the
keys of the kingdom of heaven ? Do they venture
to loose the conscience, as having the power of ab-
solving men ? The practical abdication of this claim
proves that they have it not. Their hands do not
venture to wield a power which in any but hands
divinely endowed would be a tyranny as well as a
profanation.

And what do we see in this but the fulfilment of
a divine example? Of whom is it we read that
" i.he people were in admiration at His doctrine,"
for this very reason, because " He was teaching them
as one having power, and not as their scribes?"
He spake not as man, that is, not by conjecture, nor
by reasoning, nor by quoting documents, nor by
bringing forth histories, but in the name of God,
being God Himself. So likewise the Teacher whom
He hath sent, comes not with labored disquisitions,
not with a multitude of books, not with texts drawn
from this passage and from that treatise, but with
the voice of God, saying: "This is the Catholio
faith, which unless man believe faithfully, he cannot
be saved " It comes with the voice of authority
ling to the conscience, leaving argument and

00 THE CHURCH A DIVINE WITNESS.

controversy to those who have too much time U
save their souls, and speaking to the heart in man,
yearning to be saved.

Take Home from the earth, and where is Chris-
tendom ? Blot out the science of Catholic theology
and where is faith ? Where is the mountain of th«
Lord's house which Isaias the prophet saw? Where
is the stone cut out without hands, which, in the
vision of Daniel, grew and filled the whole earth ?
Where is the kingdom which the God of Heaven
hath set up? Where is the "city seated on a
mountain" that cannot be hid ? If Rome be taken
out of Christendom, where are these ? I do not ask
what churches have laid claim to represent those
prophecies. Your own reason says it is impossible.
But where, I ask, if not here, is the fulfilment of
the words, " Lo, I am with you all days, even unto
the consummation of the world ?" Where, if not
here, is the witness of God now speaking ? Where,
if not here, is the perpetual presence of the faith of
Pentecost?

We stand not before a human teacher when we
listen to the Catholic Church. There is One
speaking to us, not as scribes and pharisees, but as
the voice of God : " He that heareth you heareth
Me ; and he that despiseth you despiseth Me ; and
he that despiseth Me despiseth Him that sent Me.""

•ft.Lakex.lt

LECTURE IV.

NATIONALISM THE LEGITIMATE OON8R-
QUENCE OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT.

ST. JOHN xriL 3.

" fhifl is life everlasting, that they may know Thee, the only tern
God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent."

I WOULD fain leave the subject where we broke
oJF in the last lecture. So far as I am able, I have
fulfilled the work that I undertook. Hitherto the
path that we have trodden has been grateful and
onward. We have followed the steps of truth
affirmatively ; we have been occupied in constructing
the foundation and in building up the reasons of our
faith. To construct is the true office and work of
the Church of God, as of Him from whom it comes.
I would fain, therefore, leave the subject here. And
yet it is perhaps necessary that we should turn our
hand and put to the test what we have hitherto said,
Vf supposing a denial of the truths and principles

68 RATIONALISM THE LEGITIMATE

which we have stated. We began, then, from the
first idea of faith ; that God, in His mercy to man-
kind, fallen and in ignorance, again revealed Him-
self; to the end that through the knowledge of
Himself and of His Son incarnate, we might attain
life everlasting. We have seen, too, that the very
idea of revelation involves the properties of definite-
ness and certainty, because the knowledge divinely
revealed is presented to us as it exists in the mind
of God ; that, flowing from Him as the only fountain,
it descends to us through His Church as the only
channel ; and that the Church, though universal in
its expanse, is absolutely one: a living and lineal
body whereby the present is linked with the past,
and to-day is united with the day of Pentecost
Wherefore, we do not believe that God spake once,
and now speaks no more, but that, beginning to
speak then, He speaks still ; that what He spake by
inspiration when the tongues of fire descended, He
speaks yet in the perpetuity of His Church. The
teaching of the One, Holy, Universal, Roman
Church, the living and present history of the past,
is to us the voice of God now, and the foundation
of OUT faith.

Having proceeded, step by step, to this point, it
becomes necessary, distasteful as it must be, to turn
back, and to undo what we have done : necessary,
because truth is often more clearly manifested bf

CONSEQUENCE Of PRIVATE JUDGMINT. 69

contradictories, for in those contradictories we touch
at last upon some impossibility, or some absurdity,
which refutes itself.

Let it, then, be denied first of all, that the Church
whose centre is in Koine, whose circumference ii
from the sunrise to the sunset — let it be denied that
the Church of Home is the One Universal Church,
the Teacher sent from God; and what follows?

No other Church but this interpenetrates in all
nations, extends its jurisdiction wheresoever th<»
name of Christ is known, has possessed, or, I will
eay, has claimed from the beginning, a divine pri-
macy over all other Churches ; has taught from the
first with the claim to be heard as the Divine
Teacher, or speaks now at this hour in all the world.
Whatever may be said in theory, no other, as a
matter of fact, from the east to the west, from the
north to the south, claims to be heard as the voice
of God.

Deny this and to what do we come ? If we depart
from this maximum of evidence, this highest testi-
mony upon earth, to the revelation of God, we must
descend to lower levels. Deny the supreme and
divine authority of the Universal Church, and in
the same moment the world is filled with rival
teachers. They spring up in the East and in the
West. The East with all its ancient separations,
Nestorian, Eutychian, Monophysite, claims to teach

70 RATIONALISM THE LEGITIMATE

The West, with all its schisms of later centuries,
the Calvinist, the Lutheran, and the Anglican, urge
the same demand. Deny the supreme office of this
one Teacher, and all others claim equally their priv-
ilege to be heard. And why not? It is not for ust
indeed, to find arguments in bar of their claim.
It is for those who adopt this principle of indepen-
dence to supply the limitation. We stand secure ;
but they who, by denying the Catholic rule of faith,
introduce these contradictions, are bound to discover
the test whereby to know who speaks truth and who
speaks falsehood in the conflict of voices.

If fleeing for your life you came to a point where
many roads parted, and but one could lead to safety,
would it be a little matter not to know into which
path to strike ? If among many medicines one alone
possessed the virtue to heal some mortal sickness,
would you be cold and careless to discover to whi >h
this precious quality belongs? If Apostles were
again on the earth, would you be unconcerned to
distinguish them from rivals or deceivers ? If there
should come again many claiming to be Messiah,
would you deem it a matter of indifference to know
from among the false Christs which is the true ? If
one comes saying, "You shall be saved by faith
only;" and another, "You shall be saved by faith
and pious sentiments ;" and another, " You shall be
laved by faith without sacraments ;" and another,

CONSEQUENCE OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT.

" There is a divine law of sacramental grace where-
by yot must partake of the Word made Flesh ;" is
it a matter of indifference to you to know with cer-
tain proof which of all these teachers comes from
God? Are we not already in the days of which
our Lord forewarns us, that " many shall come in My
name, saying, * I am Christ ?' " Is it not of such
times as these that the warning runs, " If they shall
say to you, Behold He is in the desert, go ye not
out," — that is, to seek the messenger sent from God ;
" for as lightning cometh out of the east, and ap-
peareth even into the west, so shall also the coming
of the Son of Man be ?"* The true messenger of
God is already abroad in all the earth.

To avoid this impossible theory, a view has been
proposed since the rise of the Anglican Church as
follows : The Church, it is said, does not consist of
those who are condemned for heresy, as the Euty-
chian, the Monophysite, and the like; neither of
those who have committed schism, as the Protestant
sects ; but it consists of the Greek, the Roman, and
the Anglican Churches.

Let me touch this theory with tenderness, for it
is still a pleasant illusion in many pious minds.
Many have believed it as they believe revelation
itself. And if we would have this illusion dispelled,
it must be not by rough handling or by derision,

•St. Matt. xxiy. 23-27.

72 RATIONALISM THE LEQITIMATJ

but by the simple demonstration of its impossibility.
If these three bodies, then, be indeed the one Church,
the Church is divided. For the moment pass that
by. If these three be indeed parts of the same
Church, then, as that one Church is guided by one
Spirit, they cannot so far as that guidance extends,
contradict each other. However directly their defi-
nitions may be opposed, yet in substance of faith
they must be in agreement. Such are the straits to
which men under stress of argument or of events
are driven. But these three bodies so united in un-
willing espousals divorce each other. The Greek
will not accept the Anglican with his mutilation of
sacraments ; nor will the Anglican accept the Greek
with his practice of invocation. Neither does the
Holy See accept either with their heresy and th )ii
schism. These three bodies, brought by theory ii to
unwilling combination, refuse, in fact, to be com-
bined. They can be united only upon paper.

The present relation of the Anglican and Catholia
Churches is a refutation final and by facts of this
arbitrary theory.

The impossibility of this view has compelled many
plain and serious minds to reject altogether the
notion of a visible church, and to take refuge in
the notion of a church invisible. But this too
destroys itself. How shall an invisible church carry
on the revelation of God manifest in the flesh, or

CONSEQUENCE OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 73

be the representative of the unseen God : the suc-
cessor of visible apostles, the minister of visible
sacraments, the celebrator of visible councils, the
administrator of visible laws, and the worshipper in
visible sanctuaries ? Here is another impossibility
to which the stress of argument drives reasonable
men.

Abandoning the scheme of an invisible church,
others have come to adopt another theory, namely,
that the Church of God is indeed a visible body, the
great complex mass of Christendom, but that it has
no divine authority to propose the faith, no perpetual
office, or power to declare with unerring certainty
what is the primitive doctrine. They say that during
the first six hundred years, while the Church was
united, it possessed this office, to decide, and that in
th9 discharge of this office, it was even infallible, or
th it, at least, it never erred ; but that by division it
has forfeited the power of exercising this office, that
by reunion it may yet one day regain it ; and that,
in the meantime, every particular church appeals to
a general council yet to come. This, too, is believed
by some, and with sincerity.

And yet they have never been able to say how
it is that a divine office which flows from the Divine
Presence should suddenly come to nothing, the
Divine Presence still abiding. If, indeed, the third
Person of the Holy Trinity dwell in the Church in

74 RATIONALISM THE LEGITIMATE

the stead of the second Person of the Ever-Blessed
Three ; if the Spirit of truth be come to guide ancl
to preserve the Church in all truth, how is it that
the Divine office faithfully fulfilled during six hun-
dred years, in the seventh century began to fail ?
They turn to the state of the world in ancient times*
and say, that as the light of truth possessed before
the flood faded until the sin of man brought in the
deluge; that as the revelation possessed by Noe
decayed until Abram was called out of idolatry ;
that as the truth revealed by Moses fell into corrup-
tion, and the Jewish Church became unfaithful ; so
the Church of Christ, following the same law of
declension, may likewise become corrupt.

But is it possible that men versed in the Scrip-
tures can thus argue from the shadows to the sub-
stance ; that because in the ancient world, in the
old and fallen creation, before as yet the Word was
incarnate, or the Holy Ghost yet given ; because in
those " days of the flesh," men failed and forfeited
God's gifts of grace, therefore now, after that the
second Person of the Holy Trinity has come on
earth in our manhood, and sits at the right hand of
God, the glorious Head of His mystical body, up-
holding by His Godhead the order of grace ; that
now when the Holy Ghost dwells in His stead as
the imperishable life and light of the new creation,
the game laws of our fallen nature still prevail, Dot

OONBBQUINCI Of PBITATS JUDGMJENT. 75

against men, not against the human element, which
no one denies, but against the Divine element and
office of the Church? But although every indi-
vidual man may fail, yet the Church is still infal-
lible; although every man, being defectible, may
fall away, yet " the gates of hell shall never pre-
vail against the Church." Although promises to
individuals are conditional, yet to the Church, as
a Divine creation, they are absolute. Before the
Incarnation of the Son of God, the mystical body
did not exist. Therefore, in one word, we answer,
that the old world has no analogy or precedent to
the new creation of God.

Again, it is said that the notes of the Church,
sanctity and unity, are to be put in parallel There
are promises we are told, that all the children of
God shall be holy, and that every one shall be
taught of God. The promises of sanctity, there-
fore, being absolute, we should have expected a
perfect Church without spot or blemish. But we
see the visible Church full of scandals and corrup-
tions. Our expectation then in the promise of
sanctity not being literally fulfilled, when we read
of absolute unity, we ought not to look for a literal
fulfilment.

This is an error in which many minds still are
held. They forget that unity means one in number,
and that sanctity is a moral quality. Again, they

76 RATIONALISM THE LEGITIMATE

do not distinguish between the sanctity which is OB
God's part, and the sanctity which is on the part of
man. The note of sanctity, as it exists on the part
of God, consists in the sanctity of the Pounder of
the Church, the sanctity of the Holy Spirit by whom
it is inhabited, the sanctity of its doctrine, and the
sanctity of holy Sacraments as the sources of grace.
But sanctity on the part of man is the inward
quality or state of the heart sanctified by the Holy
Ghost. This inward sanctity varies, of necessity,
according to the measure and probation of man ;
but the presence of God the Sanctifier ; the power
of holy Sacraments, the fountains of sanctification :
these divine realities on God's part are changeless ;
they are ever without spot or blemish, even to the
letter of the prophecy. Only the effect upon those
who receive them varies according to the faith of the
individual. This is the true parallel. The Church
is numerically one as God is one. Individuals and
nations may fall from unity as from sanctity, but
unity, as a Divine institution, stands secure : " The
gifts and calling of God are without repentance."*
Unity is changeless, whoever falls away: it does
not admit of degrees. One cannot be more or les§
than one.

But if, as it is said, the office of the Church to
dooidt questions of faith has been suspended, then
•Kom. xi. 29.

CONSEQUENCE OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 77

the world at this hour has no teacher. Then the
command, " Going, therefore, teach ye all nations,"
10 expired. The "nations" mean, not only the
nations then dwelling on earth, but the nations in
succession, with their lineage and posterity, until the
world's end. There is no longer, then, a divine
teacher upon earth. If the office of the Church to
teach the truth and to detect falsehood, to define
the faith and condemn heresy, be suspended, we
know not now with certainty what is the true sense
even of the Articles of the Creed. Between the
East and the West, that is between the universal
Koman Church and the local Greek Church, there
are two questions open, both of which touch an
article of the baptismal faith. One point of doctrine
taught by the Catholic Church is this: that the
Holy Ghost proceeds both from the Father and from
th« Son. The Greek Church denies the procession
from the Son. Who is right and who is wrong ?
On which side is the truth in this controversy?
Where is the faith and where heresy between the
two contending parties ? If the office of the Church
be suspended, there exists no judge on earth to say
who has the truth in this dispute: and that not
touching an inferior article of doctrine, but an ar-
ticle of the highest mystery of all, the Ever-Blessed
Trinity.
But to take another, and a vital question, namely

78 RATIONALISM T&fi LEGITIMATE

the primacy of the Church itself, — the power
18 vested in the See of Peter to control bj it§
jurisdiction all Churches upon earth. In the bap-
tismal faith we profess to believe in one Holy
Catholic Church. Surely the question whether OP
no there be on earth a supreme head of the Church
divinely instituted, is as much a part of the substance
and exposition of that article as any other point.
But yet between the Catholic and the Greek Churches
this point is disputed. And if the office of the
Church be suspended, there is no power on earth to
determine who is right and who is wrong in this
contest

But let us turn from the Greek Church. Let us
apply the same tests to the Anglican communion.
How many points of doctrine are open between the
Anglican and the Universal Church. In the thirty-
nine articles of religion, how many points are dis-
puted. How many controverted questions, not with
the Roman Church alone, but with the Greek Church
also. For instance, the whole doctrine of the
Sacraments, their number and their nature, the
power of the keys, the practice of invocation, and the
like. Then, 1 ask, if indeed the office of the Church
be suspended, who now at this day can declare who
is right and who is wrong in these disputed ques-
tions?

Nay, we may go yet further, and say, that even

CONSEQUENCE Of PR1TAT1 JUDGMENT. T9

the points of faith decided by Councils when the
Church was yet one are no longer safe. There
needs only an individual of sufficient intelligence
and sufficient influence to rise up and call them in
question. If the interpretation of the decrees of the
Councils of Nice or Ephesus be disputed, an au-
thoritative exposition of these ancient definitions ia
required. But this cannot be obtained unless there
still sit on earth a judge to decide the law. Suppose
a dispute to arise as to the interpretation of a statute
passed in the reign of Edward HI, and that there
were no judges in Westminster to expound it, the
la ? would be an open question, that is, a dead letter.
So with the decrees of ancient Councils. It needs,
then, nothing but a controversy on each article of the
faith to destroy their certainty. Twelve disputes on
the twelve Articles of the Baptismal Faith would
destroy all certainty. And on earth there would be
no judge to say who is right and who is wrong, to
declare what was originally revealed on the day of
Pentecost, and the meaning of that revelation. To
what impossibilities does this theory reduce those
who hold it: impossibilities which they perhaps can
speak of best who have felt them most. But from
this a way of escape is thought to lie in appealing to
a future General Council. And yet this brings no
present certainty. The faith might be, as in Eng-
land it is, uncertain for centuries while the General

80 RATIONALISM THE LEGITIMATE

Council is still future. In truth, this appeal is no
more than a plea for insubordination. To appeal
from the reigning sovereignty to one to come is
simple treason. But besides, the theory is in itself
impossible. For who is to convene this future
Council? And of whom shall it be composed?
Who shall sit in it ? Who shall be excluded ? And
by whose judgment shall the admission and exclusion
be determined ? Every divided Church will demand
its vote and voice. Who shall judge its claim?
The office of the judge is in abeyance. But a
General Council presupposes the existence and office
of the supreme judge of faith and unity. And this
the appellants tell us is suspended.

Let us pass on from this point. To deny, then,
that the One Universal and Roman Church is now
the Teacher sent from God on earth, leads to a
denial that there exists in the world any Teacher at
all; and to deny the existence of this universal
Teacher involves two consequences so impossible,
that they need only to be stated to be refuted. If
there exists in the world no teacher invested with
divine commission to guide all others, either every
several local church is invested with a final and
supreme authority to determine what is true and
what is false ; that is, possesses the infallibility de-
nied by objectors to the Universal Church itself;

CONSEQUENCE OF PHIYATJB JUDGMENT.

81

or else, no authority under heaven respecting divine
truth is more than human

Let us examine this alternative. We may pass
by the Greek Church, for it had discernment enough,
when it began its schism, to put forward the claim
to be not a part of the Church, but the true Church ;
not to be in communion with others, but to be the
sole preserver of the Faith. The Greek Church
has at all times claimed to be the temple of the
Holy Spirit, and " the orthodox," that is, the only
faithful teacher of the truth. It claims also infalli-
bility by guidance of the Holy Ghost. It does not
affect to participate with Rome, but to be exclusively
the one true Catholic Church. It denounces the
Holy See as both in error and in schism. We may
then pass over this case, because its very consist-
ency, while it makes the pretensions of the East
more unreasonable, confirms our position. We will
take a local body which has claimed for itself to be,
not exclusively the Church, but a part of it, and
within its own sphere to be sufficient to determine
controversies, to perpetuate its orders, to confer and
to exercise jurisdiction ; that is, which has claimed
to have within its own sphere all that the Catholic
Church possesses from its Divine Founder.

I will not weary you by tracing out historically
the theory upon which the highest and most honored
Barnes of the Anglican body have attempted to

82 RATIONALISM TH1 L1QITIMAT1

justify the Reformation. It will be sufficient to say
that pious and learned men have believed as follows :
That in the time of our Saxon ancestors the Catho-
lic Church in this country possessed a freedom of
its own ; that, though in union with the Holy Se«,
it was under no controlling jurisdiction ; that when
the Normans came in they established a civil state
upon the basis of the existing ecclesiastical order,
and therein perpetuated the freedom and privilege!
of the Catholic Church in England. They further
believed that every Christian kingdom, such as ours,
had laws, privileges, and rights of its own; and
that these among us were usurped upon, interfered
with, and taken away by a foreign power, the Bishop
of Borne. They taught, then, that the Reformation
was nothing but a removal of usurpation and a
restoring of our ancient freedom ; that the Church
which existed before and after the Reformation
was one and the same, a continuous and living body,
mutilated, indeed, in the wreck of that age, but still
preserving its orders, its jurisdiction, and its doa-
trines; being sufficient in itself to determine fell
questions, as the notable act of parliament, passed
at the beginning of the schism, in its preamble
declares.

What was the effect of this theory ? It at onoe
invested the local church with all the final preroga-
tives of the universal. It claimed for it the power

3058IQUENCJ Of PBITAT1 JUDGM1NT. 88

within its own sphere to terminate everything that
can be terminated only by the Universal Church
under Divine guidance. Though it dared not to
enunciate the claim, it had practically assumed the
possession of infallibility. It would have been too
unreasonable and too absurd to state it, but it acted
as if it really were infallible. And what were the
effects ? No sooner did the Anglican Church begin
to determine the controversies of its members than
they began to dispute its determinations.

The first separation from the Anglican establish-
ment was made by the Independents. They carried
their appeal beyond the local church, and because
they had been taught to acknowledge upon earth
no superior before whom to lay it, they appealed to
Scripture and to reason, or, as they thought, to the
unseen Head of the Church, but in truth to their
own interpretations. The first effect of investing a
local body with universal sovereignty in jurisdiction
and discipline, was to make truthful and earnest
men, who saw the impossibility of such a claim,
break out into disobedience. Hence have come the
•eparations from the Anglican Church which now
divide England from one end to the other. The
•ource of these divisions is the impossibility of be-
lieving that a body formed by private judgment and
established by civil power can possess a divine au-
thority to terminate controversies of faith.

84 RATIONALISM THE LEQITIMAT1

We have lately had this theory of local churches
tested before our eyes. History told us that in the
Anglican Church, during the three hundred years
of its existence, there have been two schools of
theology, one bearing the appearance of Catholio
doctrine and of Catholic tradition ; another, earlier
in date, springing from the very substance of the
Reformation itself, pre-occupying the Anglican com-
munion, a school of pure Protestant theology. These
two schools have existed, struggling, conflicting, and
denouncing each other from that day to this. Yet
it was believed that the Catholic school was the
substance of the Anglican Church, and the Pro-
testant a parasite : a malady which, though clinging
closely to it, might yet be expelled and cast off.

Such was the belief of many. Then came a
crisis. You know, and I will do no more than
remind you distantly, how a question touching the
first sacrament of the Church, touching, therefore,
the first grace of Christian life, original sin, and the
whole doctrine of the work of grace in the soul of
man — a doctrine fundamental and vital, if any can
be— was brought into dispute between a priest and
his bishop. The bishop refused to put him in charge
with cure of souls. The priest, not content with th«
decision of his bishop, appealed to the jurisdiction
of the archbishop ; the archbishop, that is, his court,
confirmed the decision of the bishop. The appeal

CONSEQUENCE CF PRIVATE JUDOM1NT. 85

was then farther carried to the civil power sitting
in council. Observe the steps of this appeal. The
bishop here is a spiritual person possessing spiritual
authority, sitting as a spiritual judge in a spiritual
question. The archbishop to whom the appeal is
carried sits likewise as a spiritual judge in a spiritual
question, with this only difference, that whereas his
jurisdiction is co-extensive with the jurisdiction of
the bishop, it is superior to it. When the appeal,
then, is carried from the archbishop to the civil
power in council, what does that appeal disclose ?
That the civil power sitting in council sits as a
spiritual person to judge in a spiritual question with
a jurisdiction likewise co-extensive, and absolutely
superior both to bishop and archbishop, an office
which in the Church of God is vested in a patriarch.
There is no possibility of mistaking this proceeding.
It is one of those proofs which are revealed, not in
arguments, but in facts.

And now, to what does this reduce the theory of
local churches ? It shews that local churches possess
in themselves no power to determine finally the truth
or falsehood of a question of faith. An attempt
was made at that time by men, whom I must ever
remember with affection and respect, to heal this
wound by distinguishing in every such appeal
between the temporal element relating to benefice,
property, and patronage, and the spiritual element
8

86 RATIONALISM THE LEGITIMATE

civil power sitting in council, as the natural judgt
that the temporal element should be carried to the
touching the doctrine of faith. It was proposed
in a matter of benefice or temporalities; and that
the spiritual element, or the question of doctrine,
should be carried to the bishops of that local church.
When this proposal was under discussion, these
questions were asked : Suppose that when a question
of doctrine is carried to the united council of the
bishops of that local church, a bare majority of them
should decide one way, and a large minority should
decide the other ; will the minds of a people stirred
from the depths, excited by religious controversy,
moved as no other motive in the world can move
them, by dispute on a point of religious opinion-
will they be pacified? will they be assured? will
they hold as a matter of divine faith the decision of
this majority? Again, suppose that mere number
be on the side of the majority, and that theological
learning be on the side of the minority; if the
majority have greater number, the minority will have
greater weight. And will not people adhere to the
few whom they trust rather than to the many whom,
as theologians, they less esteem? And another
question, not asked then, may be asked now by us:
Suppose the whole body of the assembled bishops
of a local church were unanimous, what guarantee
or security is there that their decision shall infallibly

CONSKQUBNC* Of PlifATB JUDGMENT. 87

be TO. accordance with the faith of the Church of
Christ? A local body has no prerogative of infalli-
bility. If "the Churches of Jerusalem and of
Antiooh have erred," every local church may err.
If these local churches, notwithstanding their an-
tiquity and magnitude, have erred, shall not a body
three hundred years old err too? If "General
Councils may err," so, much more readily, may a
provincial synod. The church which has recorded
these assertions has prepared its own sentence. It
disclaims an infallible guidance. And if its assem-
bled fathers, with one mind and voice, should declare
with unity on any point of doctrine, what security
is there that their united decision shall express the
faith of the Universal Church? Torn from the
Catholic unity, the mind and spirit of the Universal
Church has no influx into the Anglican communion.
The channel is cut asunder. It has no authority
that is more than human, and thereby revealed itself.
Some indeed believe that it was a church for three
hundred years, and became a schism two years back ;
that the Anglican position was tenable till then, and
has become untenable only since the change was
made.

But there is another alternative. The crisis we
speak of was either a change or a revelation. They
who can look into history aud see existing these two
•ohools from the reign of Edward the Sixth, and tht

88 RATIOH ALIbM THff LBGITIMAW

supremacy of the crown from the reign oi Henry
the Eighth; they who can follow the religious
contests of England for three centuries, and still
say that a change has been lately made for the fir i
time, may say it; but they who believe that Ue
judgment then pronounced by the highest legal
authorities in this land was a true and accurate
historical criticism of the religious compromise called
the Anglican Reformation, will also believe that the
issue of the appeal of which I speak was not a
change but a revelation of what the Established
Church has been from its beginning ; that from the
first the Anglican communion, though clothed in
ecclesiastical aspect, appropriating the organization
of Catholic times, sitting in Catholic cathedrals,
professing to wield in its own name Catholic juris-
diction, has never been more than a human society,
sprung from human will, with definitions framed by
human intellect, possessing no divine authority to
bind the conscience or to lay obligations upon the
soul.

To deny, then, the authority of the Universal
Church as final and sovereign, is to do one of two
things: either to invest wery local church with
infallibility, which is absurd ; or to declare that no
authority for faith in the world is more than human.

But we must now hasten over one or two other
consequences which might well detain us longer

COMBJEQU1NCX 07 PBIVATE JUDGMEMT.

To deny that there exists for the faith 47 hight
than human authority, is to destroy the objectivity
of truth. As the firmament is an object to the eye
and as every several light in it is of divine creation ;
and though all men were blind, the firmament
would stand sure, and its lights still shine no less ;
so the faith is a divine revelation, and every doctrine
in it is a divine light; and though all men were
unbelieving, the revelation and its lights would
shine the same. The objective reality of truth then
does not depend on the will or the intellect of man ;
it has its existence in God, and is proposed to us by
the revelation and authority of God. But how can
this be, if the basis upon which the truth rests for
us be human? Man could not attain to it, else why
did God reveal it? Man cannot preserve it, else
why did he lose it of old? Men cannot assure it to
us, for men contradict each other. Truth never
varies, it is always the same, always one and change-
less; contradictions spring from the human mind
alone. The one fountain of tfath is God ; the only
sure channel of truth is His Church, through which
God speaks still. Cancel the perpetual divine au-
thority which brings truth down to us through the
successions of time, and what is the consequence ?
Truth turns into the opinion or imagination of every
several man. The polytheism of the ancient world
was only the idea of God reproduced in the human
8*

' 0 BATIONALIBM TH1 LEQITIMAIffl

understanding after the true knowledge of GoJ waa
lost. The mind of man which could not exist with-
out the image of God, formed for itself monstrous
conceptions of its own A shifting, moving imagi-
nation, ever revolving in its own thoughts, gave
forth polytheism. Polytheism was the subjective
distortion of truth after its objectivity was obscured.

Let us come to the present time. What are tho
sects of England but offspring of the subjective
working of the human mind, striving to regain the
divine idea of the Church as a teacher sent from
God? The Reformation destroyed the objective
reality of that idea, and the human mind has created
it afresh in eccentric forms for itself. In like
manner, false doctrines, fanatical extravagances, and
perversions of the truth, what are they but struggles
of the mind of man to recreate within his own sphere
the truths of which the objectivity is lost ?

To deny, then, the divine authority of the Uni-
versal Church, and thereby to make all authority
for faith merely human, is to convert all doctrine
into the subjective imagination of each several man.
It becomes a kind of waking dream. For what
is dreaming but the perpetuity of human thought
running on unchecked by waking consciousness,
which pins us down to order and rule by fact and
by reality? In sleep the mind never rests; it still
weaves on its own imaginations. When we sleep

30MUQUENCS 07 PKITAT1 JUDGMENT l

perfectly, we are unconscious of what is passing in
our minds ; when we sleep imperfectly we say we
dream, that is, we remember. When we awake,
these visions fly, because matter-of-fact, the eye of
our fellow-creatures, common sense, that is, our
waking consciousness, brings us back In like
manner, the visible Church, with its rule of faith,
iti» authoritative teaching, its order, its discipline,
ita worship, is that outer world in which we move.
It keeps the spiritual mind in limit and in measure.
Dissolve it, and the mind weaves on in its own fan*
cios, throwing off heresies, eccentricities, and false-
hood. Let Germany and England be the witness.
Take, for example, the Rationalism of Germany.
In its first age, after the Reformation, Lutheranism
was rigorously orthodox until it became insufferably
dry; and then the soul in man, thirsting for the
waters of life, of which it had been robbed, sought
to satisfy itself in a sentimental piety, and by recoil
cast off orthodoxy as a thing dead and intolerable.
This reaction against definite statements of doctrine
at a later stage produced the theory that the whole
truth may be elicited out of the human consciousness.
From whence in the end came two things : one, the
theory that sin had no existence ; that it is a philo-
sophical disturbance of the general relations of the
Creator and the creature ; the other, that a historical
Christ had never any existent* Inch are th«

93 EATJCNALI8M THE LEGITIMATE

results of the subjective states of the human mind
when the objective teaching of divine authority is
lost.

And now, one more consequence must be noted.
When the objectivity of truth is lost, the obligation
of law is gone. What is it that binds us by the
laws of moral obligation ? I pass by the mere laws
of nature. I speak now of those higher laws which
come from revelation, and I ask, What is it which
binds the conscience? The Divine will revealed in
those laws. But on what authority are these laws
assured to us ? and by whom interpreted ? Is it by
human authority ? Can one man bind another by
moral obligation to take his view or interpretation
of the will or law of God under pain of sin? Can
he put forth his view as a term of communion, if
communion be a condition of life eternal ? Is it
possible for a creature to bind his fellow-creatures
under pain of sin unless he possess Divine authority
to do so? The laws of God do not bind His crea-
tures unless they are made known to them ; though,
in right, they bind all creatures eternally, yet, in
fact, they need revelation to bring home and apply
their obligations to the conscience A doubtful
law is not present to the conscience. If a law is
uncertain, it is no law to us. It must be clear and
definite both in its injunctions and its authority. I
ask. then, what is the source of dtaniesft and defi-

CONSEQUENCE OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 93

niteness in the law and truth of God bnt the Difine
authority of God, not eighteen hundred years ago,
but in every century since, in everj year, in every
day, in every hour, brought home to and in contact
with the moral being of each man! Let us take an
example. Is it not a law, binding under pain of
sin and eternal death, that we should believe the
faith? Then no human authority can be the im-
poser of that law on us. Is it not a law on which
we shall inherit eternal life, that we be subject to
the authority of God's Church on earth? Then that
authority must be divine. Is it not also binding,
under pain of sin, that we preserve the unity of the
Church ? Then the law of unity is a divine law, deliv-
ered and applied to us by a present Divine authority.
Let us pass to one more point, and it shall be the
last When the divine authority, the objectivity of
truth, and the obligation of law applied to us by
that divine authority, are gone, where then, I ask, is
revelation ? " This is life everlasting, that they may
know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ
whom Thou hast sent-'* Hither have we come down,
step by step. We have descended as we ascended.
We have come down from the highest found of the
mystical ladder, at the head of which is the Divine
Presence, to the cold ground, barren and bleak, to
natural morality and natural society, to human in-
tellect and human conjecture.

94 RATIONALISM THE LBGITIMAT1

We read in prophecy that Antichrist shall come.
And in the heated imagination of schismatics and
heretics Antichrist has been enthroned in the chair
of the Vicar of Christ Himself. But if I look for
Antichrist, I look for him by this token, "Every
spirit that dissolveth Jesus fc not of God, and this
is Antichrist."* This, then, is the mark of Anti-
christ, to deny the Incarnation of the eternal Son ;
to deny the Revelation of God springing from it ;
to deny the mystical body of Christ, the universal
Church, and the Divine empire of faith. " Every
spirit that dissolveth Jesus," every spirit that looseth
the bonds of this unity of Jesus ; every theory that
reduces man from the kingdom of God founded
upon the incarnation of His Son, from the guidance
of the Holy Ghost, to mere natural society and mere
natural reason ; this is Antichrist. And if so, where
shall we look for it ? I look for it where Protes-
tantism has blighted the earth.

And now, finally ; when I began I said that I
spoke not as a controversialist. I should feel tLis
subject were dishonored, if I were to treat it as a
mere argument. Greater things than argument are
at stake, — the honor of our Divine Lord and the
eternal salvation of souls, flow great is the dis-
honor, of which men think so little ; as if truth were
a sort of coin, that they may stamp and change, and
* 1 St. John ir. 3.

OONBBQUlflOl OT PAIVAT1 JUDGMBKl. 95

vary its die and fix its value, and make it in metal
or paper as they will ! They treat the truth as one
of the elements of human barter, or as an indulgence
which a man may hold and use for himself alone,
leaving his neighbor to perish. " This is truth to
me; look you to what you believe." What dis-
honor is this to the person of our Lord I Picture
to yourselves this night upon your knees the throne
of the Son of God ; cherubim and seraphim adoring
the glory of Eternal Truth, the changeless light of
the Incarnate Word, "yesterday, to-day, and for
ever the same ;" the heavenly court replenished with
the illumination of God ; the glorified intelligences,
in whose pure spirit the thought of falsehood ia
hateful as the thought of sin ; — then look to earth
on those whom the blood of Christ hath redeemed ;
look on those who in this world should have in-
herited the faith ; look at their controversies, their
disputes, their doubts, their misery ; and in the midst
of all these wandering, sinning, perishing souls, look
at those who stand by in selfish, cold complacency,
wrapping themselves in their own opinion, and say*
ing, This is truth to me.

Think too of the souls that perish. How many
Are brought into the very gulf of eternal death
through uncertainty! How, as every pastor can
tell you, souls are torn from the hand which would
•ave them by being sedulously taught that the dead-

96 RATIONALISM THB LKGITIMATI

liest sins have no sin in them ; by the specious and
poisonous insinuation that sin has no moral quality ;
how souls have first been sapped in their faith at
Satan began in Paradise, "Yea, hath God said?"
that is, God hath not said. This is perpetually at
this hour going on around us ; and whence comes
it? Because men have cast down the divine autho-
rity, and have substituted in its place the authority
of men, that is, of each man for himself.

And now, what shall I say of England, our own
land, which a Catholic loves next to the kingdom of
his Lord ? It is now in the splendor and majesty
of its dizzy height, all the more perilous because so
suddenly exalted. What is the greatness of Eng-
land ? Is it founded on Divine truth, or on human
strength and will ? Is it material, or is it moral ?
Has it attained this mighty altitude among nations
by the power of moral elevation, or is it the upgrowth
of mere material strength? Let us analyse it.
What is it that makes England great in the world ?
Colonies which fill the earth What are the morals
of those colonies ? How were they won, how have
they been kept? Armies. What are the morals
of armies ? Fleets. What are the morals of fleets ?
Commerce. What is the morality of traders?
Wealth. " The desire of money is the root of all
evils." Manufacture. What is the state of our
ines and factories? And whence comes the in-

30NBXQUENCE OF PRIYATE JUDGMENT 97

dustry or England? The nerve, the sinew, the
strength, and the perseverance are moral ; but what
is the purity, the truth, the meekness, and the faith
of those who wield this industry? And whence
comes this mighty power of manufacture ? Shall I
not trace it- to its one true source if I find it in the
•kill of applying science to subdue the powers of
nature to the dominion of man ? The mighty bub-
ble of wealth, commerce, and splendor, may be
traced back to this : that the skill of an intellect
and the tact of a hand have taught the English
paople more cunningly than any nation of the world
to apply physical and mathematical science to the
production of material results. But where ia the
morality of this? I deny not to England great
moral qualities, which we may also trace back to
Catholic days. We see them in times past, in the
Norman and the Saxon ages. Nay, we may go
further. We may find the same love of truth and
social order, with other great moral laws, in the
German race, as described ia Pagan history. We
deny not these ; but moral virtues which existed
before faith are not the fruits of faith; and the
greatness of England, so far as I have traced it, is
material and not moral.

And now, last of all, let me ask another question.
What, for three centuries, has been the history of
the Faith in England ? I pass over the cor troversy
9

98 RATIONALISM THE LEGITIMATE

of the Reformation, first, because we are ot one
mind about it, and next, because it would but beg
the question of an objector. I would ask, Is it not
an undeniable historical fact, that from the time of
Queen Elizabeth down to the time of the revolution
of William the Third, there was a perpetual diminu-
tion of belief in England, and a perpetual growth
of infidelity and scepticism, until, after 1688, the
free-thinking philosophy formed for itself a literature
that stood high in the public favor of England?
The Established Church had wasted itself by internal
conflicts. It lost its most zealous members by
perpetual secession and by the formation of a mul-
titude of sects. Though the Prayer-book and the
Articles were unchanged, the living voice of the
Church, that is, its true doctrine, varied continually
from doctrinal puritanism to Arminian Anglicanism.
The clergy spent themselves in domestic controversy ;
while the laity became worldly, latitudinarian, and
unbelieving. And yet it was not from among the
laity, but from among the clergy and the hierarchy,
that the hardly concealed Socinianism of Hoadly
fcrose and spread in force. Such was thi» internal
state of the Establishment. Without and around it
the doctrine of faith decayed faste* ind deeper.
Doctrine after doctrine was disputed and gave way ;
the doctrine of Sacraments, of the Atonement, and
of inspiration, perpetually lost ground, until we

OONiBQUBNOl 01 PRJVAT1 JUWMINT,

descend to the level Of the Deist in the beginning
of the last century. Can these facts be denied ?
The course of England was downward in faith,
because human authority, in the stead of divine, had
enthroned itself in the Reformation. That which
in Germany produced pure Rationalism, in England,
but for the interposition of God, would have produced
the same general unbelief of Christianity.

Then began a reaction. Take the history of
the last century and of the present, and tell me
whether I do not truly describe the intellectual
progress of England when I say that there has been
one continuous and ascending controversy from the
beginning of the last century to this hour ? First,
it was a controversy against Deists, to establish the
fact of revelation. Next it was a controversy against
sceptics, to prove the inspiration and authenticity
of Holy Scripture. Then it was against Arians in
proof of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Then
it was against Socinians on the doctrine of the In*
tarnation. Then the controversy of the day was
on the doctrines of grace. At a later period of the
last century it was on the doctrines of conversion,
repentance, contrition, th* Interior life of God in
the soul of man. What has been the controversy
of the last twenty years but an effort to restore faith
in the Divine institution and supernatural grace of
Sacraments ? What is all this but the remnant of

100 RATIONALISM THE LEGITIMATE

faitk struggling to recover the inheritance It had
lost ? And what has come now to put a complement
and close to this upward movement ? Now, when
the mere human origin and authority of all other
teachers has been revealed by their visible departure
from the faith, comes one truth more to fill up the
order and series of our Baptismal Creed, and to
give Divine certainty to all that had been re-
established. The Divine authority of the Universal
Church has again reconstituted its visible witness
in this land. The See of Peter has restored what
?ur fathers forfeited ; and after three hundred years
the Divine Voice speaks to faith through the Catho-
lic Episcopate of England once more.

Are these things without a purpose ? If there
be any here who is still without the Divine tradition
of the faith, let him see in these facts the tracings
of the finger of God, which, as the hand of a man
upon the wall, shew His purpose. The Divine
authority of the Universal Church is again among
us, and lays again its obligation upon your con-
science. He calls you, whoever you be, to submit
to his teaching, to exercise the most reasonable act
of all your life, to bow your reason to a Divine
teacher, and to fulfil the highest act of the human
intelligence — to learn of its Maker.

Out of the Catholic Church two things cannot
be found, reality and certainty; in the Catholic

CONSEQUENCE OF PRIV4*! JUDGM1HT. 101

Church these two things are your inheritance. Then
tarry no longer. "With the heart we believe."
It is not a struggle of the intellect, and I am not
contending with you in an intellectual contest. I
call upon your will to make an act of faith. Pre-
venting grace illuminates the understanding, and
there tarries. It tarries that it may put man on
his probation, to see whether he will correspond or
no to the light that has been granted. Correspond,
then, with the light you have received. Answer
while yet you may : " Speak, Lord, for Thy servant
heareth. My heart is ready. Not Thy truth fail*,
but my faith is weak. I do believe Lord: help
my unbelief"

Date Due

L. •. CAT. NO. 1137