TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART ONE
!esis I Christ founded a visible Church that replaced the Mosaic economy and spread a"er Pentecost. 57
!esis II !e Church is essentially visible, indefectible, and necessary for salvation. 103
!esis III !e true Church is one in governance, faith, and communion; this is veri#ed in Rome. 169
!esis IV !e Church is holy in principles and members, and holiness is a mark. 206
!esis V True holiness is found only in the Roman communion. 218
!esis VI !e Church is catholic by mission and by worldwide di$usion and growth. 245
!esis VII Only the Roman communion ful#lls catholicity and thereby shows divine origin. 263
!esis VIII !e Church is apostolic by visible continuity from the apostles, chie%y in Rome. 281
!esis IX Apostolic ministry is shown by Roman episcopal succession; sects lack it. 306
PART ONE
DEMONSTRATION OF THE TRUTH OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH AND OF THE FALSITY OF ALL THE SECTS THAT SEPARATE THEMSELVES FROM HER
§ 4 On how the Church is demonstrated and how she is believed First of all, note what is imported by the name "Church," both in the Creed and in the language of all Christians. And most certainly the name "Church" is not understood to mean a religious society of any kind whatever, united under some authority by external bonds of confession and communion. For in these most common respects the Church is on a par with 31 A DOGMATIC MANUAL OF THEOLOGY all religious societies, whether true or false; and so understood, she cannot be an object of faith, all the more since under this description she falls under the immediate experience of even the external senses. Furthermore, the name "Church" is not understood to mean precisely a religious society founded by God —both because being founded by God indicates only an extrinsic e'cient cause and in no way determines the intrinsic characteristics of the thing, and because again this note can be and is common to others, since we acknowledge that even the ancient Synagogue was founded by God, even though in the faith of all Christians the Church is distinguished most carefully from the Synagogue. Hence, even if we could see from the properties proper to the Church—such as her miraculous unity, her unconquerable stability, and other things of this kind—by resting upon the principle of causality alone, the character of divine institution with complete evidence, it would still by no means follow that the Church is not, and that per se, an object of divine faith. (Note that what belongs to faith per se is only that which absolutely and simply transcends natural reason. "It must be said," says St. #omas in In III Sent., Dist. 24, Q. 1, a. 2, "that faith is compared to something in two ways, namely per se and per accidens. And what pertains to faith per se pertains to it always and everywhere. #erefore what pertains to faith by reason of this or that is not a matter of faith per se, but per accidens. #us, then, what simply exceeds the human intellect as pertaining to God and divinely revealed to us belongs per se to faith. But what exceeds the intellect of this or that person, and not every man's intellect, does not per se but only per accidens belong to faith. Now the things that simply exceed every human intellect cannot be proved by demonstration, and therefore such things cannot be known. But certain things which are preambles to faith—which 32 THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST are matters of faith only per accidens, inasmuch as they exceed the intellect of this or that man but not of man simply—can be demonstrated and known, such as the existence of God, which indeed is believed insofar as it concerns the man whose intellect cannot attain to demonstration.") For the intimate character of the Church would not yet have become accessible to reason. It must therefore be considered that by the name "Church" is understood a society which is not merely somehow from God, but is ordered to the end of that supernatural beatitude which the blood of Jesus Christ merited for us: a society possessing in itself all the means e$ectively conducive to the aforesaid end, in which therefore there is true remission of sins and the bestowal of interior grace through those external rites which we call sacraments; a society also indefectible, both as regards the infallibility of doctrine and the attainment of its end and the immobility of the form which Jesus Christ gave to it; and a society, "nally, which all men must enter under pain of losing their salvation. #ese are the things we understand when we think of the Church; these are what come to mind when we elicit an act of faith about her. For we believe that there is in the world a certain supernatural, indefectible, and necessary society in which alone is the way to eternal life, and that this society is the one called the Roman Catholic Church. Now none of these things are what we undertake to demonstrate—not, that is, by a demonstration that produces intrinsic evidence of the truth. For they are of things unseen, hidden in impenetrable darkness until the day dawns and the morning star rises in our hearts. For supernatural beatitude, consisting in the vision of God, is a mystery in the proper sense, as I now assume from other places in theology. But if the end is on every side impervious to reason —both as to its existence and as to its possibility—then 33 A DOGMATIC MANUAL OF THEOLOGY necessarily the existence of the means, under the character of true means toward such an end, must have the same invisibility. We do not, therefore, intend by natural arguments to demonstrate that the Church exists—that is, that supernatural society just described—still less where she is; but only that a divine revelation has been made, proposing to us for belief all the aforesaid invisible characteristics of the Church, and indeed concerning this determinate and visible community over which the Bishop of Rome presides. In a word, the proper object of demonstration is contained within the following two questions: whether God revealed the existence of the Church—that is, of the supernatural society as described above—and, if the answer is a'rmative, to which community this revelation applies. Just as, if speaking of the Trinity, I were to say: I undertake to demonstrate that there is a divine testimony concerning the truth of the Trinity, and that this testimony does not belong to the Trinity posited by Plato or Trismegistus, but to that alone which Christians preach. In which case, the demonstration would do nothing more than produce evidence of credibility—evidence, that is, which is preliminary to faith and preservative of faith, as has been shown above, far from being incompossible with it. And so too it happens in the present case; and accordingly the Catholic Church is demonstrated as regards the testimony which the First Truth, God, has given concerning her, while she is believed as regards the intrinsic characteristics which belong to the concept of the true Church. It remains at last to declare brie&y the norm of the intended demonstration.
§ 5 On the manner and means of undertaking the demonstration #e di'culty declared at the beginning of this Introduction consists in the fact that the adversaries say the process of the Catholic demonstration is vicious, both because we postulate as a principle the very thing that is in question— namely, the divine authority of the Gospel—and because we move in a circle by demonstrating the Church through Scripture, while Scripture, according to us, becomes known only through a Church already known, from which it also receives the rule of its interpretation. #e "rst objection is raised by rationalists, the second by Protestants. But these objections rest upon a false presupposition, as well as upon a de"ciency of the distinction of the di$erent formalities that must be accurately discerned in the books of the New Testament. In the "rst place, it is falsely presupposed that there is no other instrument of demonstration besides the books of the New Testament. For there is one kind of argument—in itself entirely su'cient—which rests upon no authority, either divine or human, but assumes only what falls under our experience. It is constructed by the same process and order that we employed in the preceding volume to demonstrate the credibility of the Incarnation. And there the process was certainly as follows: Christ, dwelling on earth, asserted himself to be the true God. Moreover, this attestation of his was sealed by signs that can only come from God—namely, the miracles which Christ himself performed, or the prophecies that were marvelously ful"lled in him. #erefore there is a divine testimony concerning the true 35 A DOGMATIC MANUAL OF THEOLOGY divinity of Christ. And in a similar way, the following mode of argumentation presents itself spontaneously in the present case: #e Roman Catholic Church attests herself to be a supernatural society, the infallible teacher of faith, and the necessary means of eternal salvation. Moreover, the miraculous marks that exist in her—such as Catholic unity, unconquerable stability, and other things of the same kind that entirely surpass the capacity and powers of nature—seal this attestation of hers as descending from the mouth of God. #erefore, concerning the Roman Catholic Church as the true Church, there is a divine testimony. In this process the principle of argumentation is taken from facts alone that are exposed to the eyes of all, and the entire labor of the demonstration consists in the interpretation of those facts themselves: namely, that it should be shown by reason how those facts which belong to the Catholic Church a!er the manner of properties do not have a cause proportionate to themselves in natural forces, but of their own accord and by their very nature manifest the intervention of God as founder, and thereby the divine origin of the Church's testimony about herself. And this is the kind of demonstration that the First Vatican Council indicates in Session 3, Chapter 3, where it says: "Moreover, the Church herself, by reason of her marvelous propagation, her eminent holiness, and her inexhaustible fruitfulness in all good things, by her Catholic unity and invincible stability, is a certain great and perpetual motive of credibility and an irrefutable testimony of her divine mission." #is also is the kind of demonstration of which we shall not fail to give an accurate exposition to the best of our ability; in which assuredly no semblance of a vicious circle or of a gratuitous assumption will "nd any place. 36 THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST Now, if the question be about that kind of argument—of longer exposition and chief practical use—which proceeds from the testimonies of the books of the New Testament, the following must be observed before all else: the formality of inspiration by no means excludes from the Gospels the purely historical formality, which is prior as far as we are concerned, and independent of the other, and becomes known in precisely the same way as the historical value of the Commentaries of Caesar, or the Annals of Tacitus, or any other work of the kind. For in truth, when the Gospels were written, they were to be read and examined also by men not yet believing, with respect to whom their authors could have no other title than that of being honest historians, reporting from their own observation—or at least according to the tradition received from those who had observed —the things that the Lord Jesus did and said among us. Moreover, it was their destiny to be subjected to all the tests that human ingenuity could devise, to be compared with every kind of document—geographical, physical, historical, philological—and in the end to sustain the full assault of criticism. An inquiry was to be made concerning each writer: to what period and region did he belong? what means did he have for knowing the truth? what language and idiom? what purpose, what interest? And indeed in truth, people invited to renounce all that corrupt nature covets and loves, and that under trust in facts surpassing nature, were not to be supposed so disposed in mind as to submit to the yoke of Christ merely because men who had set out from Judea boasted of being inspired. On the contrary, it was infallibly going to happen that they would seek human evidence concerning these facts, and indeed with that severity employed by those who, naturally resistant to submission, have resolved not to yield except upon a matter that has been thoroughly examined. 37 A DOGMATIC MANUAL OF THEOLOGY Hence John: "What we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we looked upon and our hands have touched, concerning the Word of life… we testify and announce to you." (1 John 1:1–2.) And again: "#is is the disciple who bears testimony to these things, and who wrote these things, and we know that his testimony is true." (John 21:24.) And again: "And he who saw has borne testimony, and his testimony is true." (John 19:35.) And again Luke: "Even as they who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely from the beginning, to write them out in order for you, most excellent #eophilus." (Luke 1:2–3.) Truly, therefore, the Gospels are documents historical in the fullest rigor of the term. Indeed you will con"dently assert that there is no other monument of history that so thoroughly withstands the tests of the most severe criticism and possesses such evident arguments of authenticity and "delity, whether the external or the internal criterion be considered. Now, whether in them there is also a higher authority—insofar as the suggestion of the dictating Holy Spirit has been added to the natural knowledge and exposition of the facts—is an altogether di$erent question. And whatever be the case concerning the mode in which the inspiration of these books can become known, it is at least most certainly true that the certainty of their historical value does not depend, even according to us, upon the divine teaching authority of the Church. But this knowledge belongs among those cognitions that precede faith and are comprehended entirely within the sphere of natural knowledge. It was therefore under this purely historical formality that the Gospels were taken in that part of the treatise on the Incarnate Word in which the credibility of the Incarnation was demonstrated. For there the question was 38 THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST whether it is historically established, both concerning the attestation by which Jesus Christ asserted himself to be God, and concerning the miraculous facts sealing this attestation. And they will also be taken in this way in the present case, so that, a!er the divinity of Christ has been proved in the preceding volume, it may further be known what Christ himself said or revealed concerning the Church and by what marks he showed her to be distinguished. For this purpose it will now be permissible to add to the Gospels the other apostolic writings—again, not as inspired or written under the dictation of God, but purely and simply as reporting the genuine mind of Christ and expounding his revelation concerning the Church. For if Christ, the true God, came into the world to found the Church, it was entirely impossible that he should permit the apostles sent by him to err in the execution of his work, or allow them to deviate from the norm he had established. From this it also follows that the more ancient Fathers can rightly and suitably be adduced to declare the sense of Christ's revelation more and more clearly—namely, as simple depositaries of the apostolic teaching, and all the more acceptable the nearer to the source they are known to have drawn. You see, therefore, how the demonstration that proceeds from the testimonies of the books of the New Testament entirely abstracts from their inspiration—that is, from that formality under which alone they could be said to presuppose, as far as we are concerned, knowledge of the true Church and her infallible authority. For the argument in summary is this: #e historical record of the revelation which Jesus Christ brought to us—whose divinity and mission have already been demonstrated by incontrovertible arguments—proposes a certain Church founded by him, in which alone we would obtain the 39 A DOGMATIC MANUAL OF THEOLOGY fruit of redemption and reach the blessed end of eternal life. Moreover, it assigns to this Church such characteristics and marks as are in fact found in the Catholic Church alone. #erefore, concerning the Roman Catholic Church as the only true Church, a divine testimony exists. #ere is certainly nothing there in which the calumny of a circle could "nd even an apparent pretext. I add "nally that the norm and method of undertaking the demonstration has been declared thus far as it is valid absolutely against any adversary and is suited to show the credibility of the Catholic Church to every person in whatever hypothesis. But if we attend only to the controversy with Protestants and other heretics or schismatics, then nothing prevents us from using Scripture as the instrument also insofar as it is divinely inspired, since the dogma of the inspiration of the sacred books is common to us and to them, and nothing is more legitimate than to demonstrate by means of one article of our faith in which we agree with them, the truth of another article in which they themselves di$er from us. For in this way an argument is made to the person, along these general lines: "You confess with us that the Scriptures of the New Testament are inspired by God; indeed you say that you trust solely in the authority of the sacred books and that you wish every controversy to be decided from them. Now it is those very inspired Scriptures themselves that attest the Catholic Church as the one true Church. It remains, therefore, that holding fast to the written word of God, you should believe, hear, and hold fast to the Catholic Church with us." (I do not think I need to pause here to refute what Protestants sometimes object: that according to us the Scripture is to be interpreted through the Church, and therefore it avails nothing if in the Catholic demonstration we 40 THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST take the Scripture of the New Testament in the character of a purely historical monument of the coming and preaching of Jesus Christ, since independently of a Church already known we are unable, standing by our own principles, to arrive at even the sense of this document. For these objections also proceed from a false presupposition. For when we say that the Church is the judge of controversies concerning the sense of Scripture, we are by no means dreaming that this sense can never be certainly established independently of ecclesiastical de"nitions, especially in places that are of themselves most clear—as are those which assign the visible marks and characteristics of the Church that we are to hear, as we shall see in due course.) #us far the Introduction on the object and manner of proceeding with the demonstration.
QUESTION I ON THE INSTITUTION OF THE VISIBLE CHURCH OF CHRIST OUTSIDE OF WHICH THERE IS NO SALVATION
#is question concerns the original fact which was assigned above (p. 55) as the foundation, in the order of the Catholic demonstration as it is to be carried out from the monuments of history. For unless it were "rst established that Jesus Christ, for the perpetuity of his work—or rather, for the ongoing dispensation of his redemption—instituted a visible Church as a means necessary for all to enter, and thereby discernible by all, a disputation about the marks by which he rendered it recognizable would be in vain. For this reason, the mode of demonstration indicated in the "rst place (p. 52)— namely, from the miraculous signs by which the Catholic Church 41 A DOGMATIC MANUAL OF THEOLOGY shines on every side—would still remain; but not so that other mode which takes the history of the New Testament as its instrument, and which, while it clearly surpasses the "rst, if not in the evidence of truth, then certainly in its adaptation to the demands of the present controversy, must for this reason be set forth with greater care and diligence. #erefore, the historical truth of the revelation and foundation of the visible Church of Christ presents itself "rst to be vindicated; and since several adversaries are already encountered at the very threshold, before coming to the arguments it is necessary to recount brie&y what is said by the various parties, so that, with the state of the whole question rightly understood, the demonstration may be more easily grasped. First, therefore, what Catholics hold is to be set forth, and then secondly what is the position of those who oppose us in this matter—who are chie&y Protestants and Rationalists. #e Catholic view concerning the succession of religion from the beginning of the world, under the patriarchal law, the Mosaic law, and the evangelical law, is contained in the following heads. #e center of all religion in the state of fallen nature is the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. For from the time of Adam's transgression there has never been salvation in any other, no access to God through anyone else, no hope of eternal life and no derivation of grace from any other source. But since Christ came in the midst of time, those of ancient times were related to him as to a redeemer who was promised, while we are related to that same one as to a redeemer already sent. And from this follow all the di$erences between the past and present state of religion, whose wonderful unity, continued through the course of the ages, appears the more illustrious by the very 42 THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST variety, in that it is held to consist not in some material uniformity, but in a constant orientation toward one head now at last existing, previously awaited, prophesied, and pre"gured. And truly, even though the coming of the Savior was bound to a certain epoch predetermined by divine Wisdom, yet the mystery of the incarnate Word "lls all times, because where Christ was not yet present in truth, he was already there through promise, desire, expectation, and manifold types—so that Tertullian rightly exclaims (in book 4 against Marcion, chapter 21): "O Christ, both old and new!" #at is, how ancient is Christ in the newness of the Gospel! Indeed, he is new in that we honor him, because Christ was not personally present from the beginning; and equally ancient, because promise, hope, and "gure preceded him from the earliest times. Immediately a!er the fall, therefore, the Savior was promised (Genesis 3:15), and in our "rst parents there was established the society of true religion to be propagated among their descendants, which could already be called Christian insofar as its principal concern was faith in the Christ who was to come, by whose foreseen merits the interior gi!s of sancti"cation were then conferred by God. #is society was visible, bound together by external profession of faith and by exterior sacri"ces and sacraments, under the governance of the patriarchs (that is, the heads of families), whom Scripture calls preachers of righteousness (2 Peter 2:5). #is society is mentioned in Genesis, where the sons of God are commemorated, distinct and separated in religion from the sons of men (Genesis 6:2); Augustine traces this society in the books of De Civitate Dei up to the &ood and the ark; he then shows that it persisted in the sons of Noah through their blessings, and especially in the posterity of Shem. Yet the visible unity of the Church was still more loose and 43 A DOGMATIC MANUAL OF THEOLOGY inchoate, as be"tted these beginnings. For in the dispensation of revelation and in the corresponding form of religion, God willed by his most wise counsel that, in accordance with the condition of human nature, progress should be made from less perfect to more perfect things up to the fullness of time. #e constitution of the ancient Church received an increase of perfection in the Mosaic covenant; by which covenant, however, the promise made by God in Adam to the whole human race was not abolished or restricted, but only more specially preserved in one chosen people and more distinctly unfolded. For while the earlier economy of patriarchal religion persisted and remained always in force for the other nations, the Synagogue was established in Israel, in which, just as prophetic revelation became progressively clearer and the rationale of types more manifest, so too the form of the Church would be more explicit. But in the Mosaic law there was still no end, indeed nothing but a preparation for the new covenant—a shadow preceding the body, and a guardian unto the faith that was to be revealed. #erefore the "nal and de"nitive constitution of religious society belonged to Christ, of whom there was vision and prophecy. He at last coming, and abrogating the entire Old Testament not by repudiating it but by ful"lling it, instituted his Church: a Church plainly distinct from the Synagogue (though it stands in relation to it as the antitype to the type and the "gured to the "gure), a visible and universal Church to be entered by all men from that time forward until the end of the world, which, remaining an immovable kingdom, as it is said in Hebrews 12:28, awaits no other consummation of its state than the passage from faith to vision in the heavenly Church (as Cardinal Franzelin treats at length in De Ecclesia, #esis 3). 44 THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST #e Church, therefore, in which the succession of all religion terminates—as being that which no longer has a shadow of good things to come, but the very image of the realities—is asserted to have been truly and immediately founded by Christ; is asserted to be essentially visible by the institution of its founder; and is asserted to be a means necessary by his law for all to obtain salvation. First, I say, it is asserted to have been founded by Christ, in such a way that it is called the Church of Christ in a most special sense. Here it must be known that the word "church" in its literal signi"cation means the assembly of those who, having been called out, have gathered into some unity. And because supernatural things are reached only by divine vocation, therefore in the usage of the New Testament, "Church" generally denotes a supernatural society whose head is Christ. When you hear "supernatural society," understand a society that has a supernatural end and means conducive to such an end—namely, interior sancti"cation by grace and its ultimate consummation, which is eternal life. Now, the ancient congregations of the faithful, whether within or outside the Synagogue, were in a true sense already the Church, and the Church of Christ, so that St. #omas did not hesitate to say: "#e holy fathers did not cleave to the legal sacraments as things in themselves, but as images and shadows of things to come. But the movement toward an image insofar as it is an image, and the movement toward the thing itself, are the same. And therefore the ancient fathers, by observing the legal sacraments, were borne toward Christ through the same faith and love by which we are borne toward him; and so the ancient fathers belonged to the same body of the Church to which we belong" (Summa #eologiae, Part III, Question 8, article 3, reply to objection 3). Yet the name "Church" 45 A DOGMATIC MANUAL OF THEOLOGY or "Church of Christ" belonged to them only imperfectly and in part, because since Christ, through whom grace and truth were made, was not yet actually present, the social organism was neither instituted by him nor drew from him the e'cacy of its power, but regarded him only as its terminus or object, on account of whose foreseen goodness the anticipated dispensation of justi"cation &owed back from God. But now, the existence of that Church is a'rmed which is simply and adequately called and is the Church of Christ—related to Christ no longer as to a desired and promised object, but as to a founder and actively in&uencing head, insofar as from his institution it has its form, its hierarchy, its sacraments, and whatever pertains to the constitution of a social body. And likewise, insofar as it is continually governed by him as its supreme ruler, of whose ministers and instruments are all those who hold authority in it or preside over its sacred functions. #is Church is furthermore asserted to be visible by the institution of Christ. Here note that the word "vision" was ""rst imposed to signify the act of the sense of sight, but on account of the dignity and certainty of this sense, this word has been extended, by the usage of speakers, to signify every cognition of the other senses (for we say, see how it tastes, or how it smells, or how warm it is), and further also to intellectual cognition, according to that text of Matthew 5:8: Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God" (St. #omas, Summa #eologiae, Part I, Question 67, article 1). But since in the present life all our cognition begins from sense, nothing is said to be visible with respect to us unless it in some way falls under the senses, or can at least become known to the intellect from sensible marks by which it is a$ected. Visibility is therefore predicated of something in several ways. Certainly in one way visible are bodily accidents, 46 THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST to which the cognition of the exterior sense is directed per se; and in another way, corporeal substances, which fall under sense only by reason of their properties. In yet another way, a human being is said to be visible according to his intellective soul, on account of exterior operations which by their very nature reveal the in&uence of the intellective principle; and in yet another way, the presence of Christ under a host in which a miraculous image of &esh or blood appeared would be said to be visible—namely, visible only insofar as it is attested by God (which would add no more than a visibility of credibility)—and so on. Now therefore, when the Church is in question, a distinction is needed, for it can and must be considered in two ways: "rst as a religious society simply, and then second as a true society of believers in which the principles of supernatural life and the way of eternal salvation truly exist. Under each of these formalities, a distinct mode of visibility is attributed to it. If it is considered as a religious society simply, Catholics say it is visible by the institution of Christ as regards its very intrinsic being, insofar as its social form consists in those things which fall under the senses or can be reached through the external senses—for example, in the deputation to Christian worship through the sacrament of baptism, together with the binding bond of external profession of one faith and one communion, under dependence upon a determinate and designated hierarchy, to which the o'ce of teaching, governing, and administering the sacraments has been committed. But if it is considered as a true supernatural society, Catholics say that it is visible by the institution of Christ only in its revealed being, or as divinely attested, insofar as this very body of the Church described above—consisting of a governing hierarchy and a governed multitude—is distinguished by those external marks by 47 A DOGMATIC MANUAL OF THEOLOGY which it becomes known as that revealed society to which the word of God attributes the promises of the kingdom of heaven and the keys of eternal life. #e latter mode of visibility, therefore, which necessarily presupposes the former, ultimately posits nothing in the Church beyond a visible credibility. Finally, this same visible Church of Christ is asserted to be a means necessary by divine law for all to obtain salvation— not, however, necessary determinately in fact, but either in fact or in desire, so that all those who are separated from its body by invincible ignorance are not on that account believed to be outside the way of salvation, provided they belong to said body by desire: by desire, I say, at least implicit in the will to serve God in the manner that is pleasing to him and acceptable to him. And these are what Catholics hold concerning the institution of the Church under the evangelical law. On the opposing side there are various opinions contradicting the preceding position either in part or entirely, which, to mention only those that are current today, reduce to two. #e "rst and more celebrated is the one asserted by the Reformers of the sixteenth century, who abolished the visibility of the Church of Christ. #is opinion, already pre"gured by the Hussites condemned at the Council of Constance ("#e one holy universal Church is the totality of the predestinate. #e foreknown are not parts of the Church, since no part of it "nally falls away from it, for the charity of predestination which binds it does not fall away"—from among the articles of John Huss condemned by the Council of Constance), and a!erwards held in great favor among the Jansenists (see the "!eenth proposition of the Pistoians, condemned by Pius VI in the bull Auctorem "dei), 48 THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST has always pleased those who, under the guise of Christianity, burn to shake o$ the yoke of authority. Moreover, it would be impossible to reduce the positions of the Protestants on this matter to one certain body of doctrine, because as regards the Church, they varied greatly, always remaining in the greatest confusion. Indeed, they employed contradictory and mutually con&icting principles, according as the necessity was either polemic against Catholics, or political against the sects springing up from their own midst and attempting to carry the doctrines of the Reformation to their extreme. For once the authority and governance of the visible Church was set aside, the descent to every manner of division was easy; and therefore Luther and a!er him Calvin, while appealing to principles about the invisible Church in order to extricate themselves from the questions of Catholics asking where the Church of Christ had been before the Reformation, simultaneously asserted the visible Church with true authority and legitimate ministry in order to restrain their followers and oppose the nascent new sects (see Bellarmine, De Concilio et Ecclesia, book 3, chapter 2; Möhler, La Symbolique, book 1, chapter 5, sections 48–51; and note also that from the very beginning of the so-called Reformation, there were never wanting those who would reform the Reformation itself and press its principles against its "rst parents and teachers. Among whose sects the fruit of Protestant doctrine appeared most conspicuously—namely, illuminism and fanaticism. For it is fatal that men who, having abandoned the rule of authority and natural reason, count themselves to be under the immediate inspiration of the Holy Spirit and constantly yearn for heavenly inspirations, should lapse into hallucination and even frenzied madness. Among these sects the following deserve special 49 A DOGMATIC MANUAL OF THEOLOGY mention: "rst, the Anabaptists, so called from rebaptizing, who had their beginning under Müntzer as their leader in 1522; second, the Remonstrants or Arminians, so called from Arminius, a Dutch teacher, or from their act of remonstrating, in 1560; third, the Quakers, so called from the English word "to quake," meaning to tremble, whose initiator was George Fox, born in England in 1624; fourth, the Pietists, so called from piety (colleges of piety), whose father was Spener, born in Germany in 1635; "!h, the Methodists or Wesleyans, so called from their author Wesley, an Englishman by nation (1729), or also from method, because they professed to advance in asceticism by a rigorous method). It is therefore fruitless to seek anything "xed and selfconsistent in Protestant doctrine; and it will be enough to recount the fundamental heads, more or less connected among themselves, on which they now more commonly agree, asserting a double Church: one visible which, since it is not of divine institution, is variable and diverse according to the circumstances of times and places; the other invisible, which lies hidden within the former and is the only true and genuine Church of Christ. For the cardinal principle of Protestantism is that individual men have their salvation through their own immediate relation to Christ, that individuals have within themselves the saving principle, that individuals are priests unto themselves, and that they accomplish the work of their justi"cation with God alone by the aid of that internal faith alone by which each one believes that his sins are no longer imputed to him on account of the merits of Christ. Hence the true Church of Christ is nothing other than the collection of those who, on account of the trust inwardly conceived regarding the remission of their sins, hold as imputed to them by God the justice of Christ, and are thereby 50 THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST foreordained to eternal life. And this Church, known to God alone, is the only Church which they call the Church of promises —the one to which, they say, Christ promised that he would be present all days until the consummation of the world. But because true believers, instructed by the Holy Spirit, can manifest their faith externally, communicate their own sentiments, and even make use of the external symbols of the sacraments for the arousal of faith, they thereby give rise to a visible church; yet this church is not instituted by Christ, nor is it necessary for salvation for anyone; indeed it takes various forms according to the variety of circumstances, and "nally it always has hypocrites mixed into it, in whose mass the true Church lies hidden and is utterly indiscernible. And if you oppose to this that the dispute about the Church is then vain, and that it is futile to condemn the Catholic Church as the Synagogue of Satan and the kingdom of Antichrist, they will respond: all visible forms of churches are of merely human institution, but some are founded on principles utterly contrary to the sincerity of the Gospel, while others are in harmony with the doctrine of Christ. And in this sense they say that one visible form deserves legitimacy and the name of the true Church over another, assigning as its distinctive marks the pure preaching of the word of God and the legitimate use of the sacraments (Cardinal Franzelin expounds the entire origin and genesis of this doctrine admirably in De Ecclesia, Section IV, Historical Prenotice: "For at "rst the Reformers were wholly intent on destroying the Church, a'rming that it had corrupted the true faith of Jesus Christ over many centuries already, and had introduced many human errors into the world in place of divine faith, that it was entirely mired in idolatry, that the Roman Ponti$ was Antichrist, that Catholic bishops, priests, and monks were apostles of Antichrist himself in the proper sense in which 51 A DOGMATIC MANUAL OF THEOLOGY Antichrist is foretold in the Scriptures. But if these things were so, the Church founded by Jesus Christ and redeemed by his blood would have perished entirely many centuries before. #ere would therefore have been nothing le! to reform, but an entirely new church would have had to be instituted—which for that very reason would not have been the Church of Jesus Christ, but another church of a new founder, and hence the work of a mere man. On the other hand, Christ God evidently promised that his Church, founded by himself, would be indefectible, and thereby infallible in faith and doctrine under his own protection all days until the consummation of the world. Pressed by these straits, those apostates, lest they confess what was evident—namely, that they had fallen away from the indefectible and therefore still existing Church of Jesus Christ—were compelled to fabricate a new doctrine about the very nature of the Church, or rather to deny the thing itself while retaining the name of Church alone: a "ction no less evidently contrary to the Scriptures, but in the meantime su'cient to provide some appearance of justi"cation for the ignorant masses regarding their impious rebellion. #e Church of promises, they said, which alone is the true Church of Christ, indefectible by his promises, holy and universal, consists only of holy members (according to the Lutherans) or of the predestinate (according to the Calvinists). #rough their own special faith, individual Christians apprehend the merits of Christ and that justice by which he himself is just, and through this imputed justice they are not individually just in themselves, but are held before God as if just. #ese therefore are the holy, and from the number of all and only these is the true Church of promises constituted. #ey are not formed and generated from the Church through some divinely instituted power or ministry, but they themselves form and generate the Church; and 52 THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST individuals are priests unto themselves, not through the ministry of the Church but through each one's own special faith immediately conceived by the virtue of the Holy Spirit which inheres in the word, apprehending the merit of Christ, and thus united to Christ the head as its only true members. According to this theory, therefore, men are indeed visible, and Scripture and the preaching of the word are sensible, and the aids of the word— the sacraments—are sensible. But these are merely external signs, and insofar as they are visible, they are not proper attributes of the true Church, but common also to the mass of the damned, which is called the Church of Christ only in name, not in reality, not in truth, but through dissimulation of the truth. For all those things by which men are united to Christ and so enter into the number composing the true Church are known to God alone, hidden from men and utterly invisible—and for this very reason the true Church is invisible, since it is nothing other than the numbered count of all the saints or predestinate. Since therefore those authors of rebellion, who raved furiously in their preaching against the entire Church throughout the world as an enemy of Christ and the synagogue of Antichrist, were obliged to reconcile this with the institution and promises of Christ, by which we are assured that he will be present all days with his Church, which is indefectible through this very institution and presence—and so it was necessary for them to show, or at least to say something, as to where the true Church of promises was and had been throughout so many centuries—they responded that God had always preserved for himself some saints, but hidden ones, lying concealed in the midst of a wicked nation, and that the number of these, di$used throughout the world, had been and was the true Church. To this their dogma, together with the others connected with it concerning the clear word of God needing no 53 A DOGMATIC MANUAL OF THEOLOGY interpretation, they adhered in the "rst stage, when they were striving with all their strength to turn peoples away from the Church. But when the overturning of all things, the in"nite multitude of diverse sects, and the bloody rebellions of fanatical crowds arising from those very principles soon made it manifest that on such foundations no religious society, no ecclesiastical order even in appearance, could be constituted, and that civil a$airs themselves were being dragged toward ruin—then at last they began to be concerned about ecclesiastical ministry and its authority, and consequently about the visible Church and about a Church constitution to be newly substituted for the old. But this was the task, this the toil—that evidently contradictory things should be reconciled at the same time! What they sometimes attempted, and what the few survivors who still call themselves orthodox Protestants continue to attempt down to the present day, is too absurd: namely, in the struggle against Catholics, to retain the notion of the invisible Church expressed in the fundamental principles of the whole heresy, while at the same time, in order to maintain their own religious society and defend it against other sects of the same origin, to assert and seriously claim for themselves a visible and indefectible Church instituted by Christ and continuing from the Apostles down to these orthodox ones themselves. For once the Catholic notion of the visible Church of promises is established, it is evident even to the blind, from the very origin and history of the Reformation, that the entire defection of the sixteenth century, and consequently all those sects including the orthodox one, are nothing other than synagogues in rebellion against the true indefectible Church of Jesus Christ. In order to escape this evident consequence, which it is "rst and foremost their "xed and settled resolve to remove by whatever means, most of them preserve intact the fundamental 54 THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST principle from which, as from a matrix, they draw their origin— namely, that the Church of promises instituted by Christ was and is invisible. #en from this true Church of saints or predestinate they distinguish the ecclesiastical mass which is indeed visible. To contain this visible mass, in which the true invisible Church lies hidden, certain ministries and ecclesiastical institutions are required by which the constitution of the Church is composed. But this constitution is of human origin, and therefore mutable, diverse for diverse times and places. #is being so, there was certainly no reason to distinguish this visible Church with its human constitution as something of its own right, di$erent from the earthly city and political governance. Whence it necessarily followed what we see has been done everywhere in Protestantism —that political kings or princes, under a name borrowed from the Catholic Church, govern as supreme bishops the so-called national church no less and by the same right as, under the title of prince, they govern other political and civil matters. As for their claim that the prince exercises that supreme episcopate not by royal power but as a leading member of the Church, it is clear that this "ction, devised to deceive the common people, is of no worth in the matter itself, especially since from the principles of Protestantism just set forth, it cannot be established of any king or magistrate that he is a member of the true Church. But if they say that he is only the leading member of that mass which is not the true Church, it is evident that this whole business of the supreme episcopate is political, founded on royal and civil power, and by no means on the prerogative of a member of the Church." #us far Cardinal Franzelin, faithfully setting out the state of the question among Protestants). But it will be easy to see how in this manner of speaking, what is asserted in words is in reality destroyed. For they say the 55 A DOGMATIC MANUAL OF THEOLOGY Church of Christ was founded by Christ, in order not to deny what the Scriptures teach too openly and too evidently. But on the other hand they reduce the institution of Christ to the invisible Church, to which the name and nature of a church does not even apparently belong with respect to the reality, since it is nothing more than a number of individuals utterly independent of one another and entirely unknown to each other. But in such a number of units, it is impossible to "nd the structure and cohesion of a social body, which is evidently part of the concept of a Church. #erefore, the pure Rationalists are in a better condition in this regard, since their radical denial of every Church instituted by Christ has at least spared them from Protestant incoherence. #ese, then, remove from the picture every supernatural communication of God to men and of men to God, and assert that the only rational worship is that which, free from every positive dogma, is o$ered to God inwardly in thought alone. And they praise Christ because he was the "rst or certainly the foremost initiator of this spiritual worship. Moreover, this same Christ never had any thought of abrogating the Jewish worship in order to substitute a new exterior form of religion for it; on the contrary, he kept the observances of the Mosaic law until his death, to accommodate himself to the times. But a!er his passion, it came about through the rivalry of the apostles Peter and Paul that a Church emerged distinct from the Synagogue, formed from the mixture of two elements: the Jewish element, whose champion was Peter, and the spiritual element brought by Paul—as those learned men endeavor to persuade on the basis of what are admittedly the slenderest indications from the Acts of the Apostles and from Paul's own epistles, especially to the Galatians. 56 THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST Tus far the simple exposition of the state of the question. this must now be followed by the demonstration of the Catholic position, which will be carried out in the following two propositions.
THESIS VI #e Church of Christ is essentially catholic with the catholicity of right—that is, of destination and mission—received from her Founder. From this there follows as a necessary property the catholicity of fact, which consists in two things: !rst, in a permanent and simultaneous di$usion throughout the world, by which the true Church always gathers to her bosom a vast number of the faithful from among the multitude of the nations; and second, in a successive growth by which she must spread herself more and more until the end of the world through all the regions of the earth and all the kindred of mankind.
#e catholicity of right, enumerated in the "rst place, scarcely provides any material for dispute, both because it is too plainly contained in the Gospel—especially in Matthew 28:19— and because it can give rise to no doubtful question and has never had any speci"c adversaries. #e entire inquiry therefore reduces to catholicity of fact, and in treating this it seems "tting to proceed as follows: "rst, to set forth the principal testimonies of Scripture from both the Old and New Testaments; and then, from a summary of those same testimonies, to draw out the conclusion regarding the two conditions of catholicity proposed in the thesis. Both tasks can be accomplished with ease.
§ 1
Augustine, in the above-mentioned letter against the Donatists (commonly known as the single book De Unitate Ecclesiae, in volume 9 of Augustine's works), brings forward from the Law, the Prophets, the Psalms, the Gospels, and the Apostolic 245 A DOGMATIC MANUAL OF THEOLOGY writings a great many authorities bearing on the present truth— and this with such coherence and clarity that a demonstration complete in every respect emerges. Nothing, then, is more "tting or more expedient than to give place to Augustine himself, transcribing here at least the principal points of his argument. #e beginning is taken from the Law of Moses: "O Donatists, he says, read Genesis: By myself I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this thing and have not spared your only-begotten son for my sake, I will bless you and multiply your seed as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is on the shore of the sea; your seed shall possess the gates of your enemies, and in your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed (Genesis 22:16–18). What do you say to this? Do you contend with us in the perversity of the Jews, so as to say that the seed of Abraham is to be understood only of the people born of Abraham's &esh? But the Jews do not read Paul the Apostle in their synagogues, whereas you read him in your conventicles. Let us then hear what the Apostle says. For we are now inquiring how the seed of Abraham is to be understood. Brothers, I speak a3er the manner of men: yet even a man's con"rmed covenant no one sets aside or adds to. Now to Abraham were the promises spoken and to his seed. He does not say: and to seeds, as of many, but as of one: and to your seed, which is Christ (Galatians 3:15–16). Behold, in which seed all nations are blessed. Behold the testament of God; open your ears. A man's con"rmed covenant, he says, no one makes void or adds to. Why do you make void the testament of God by saying that it has not been ful"lled in all nations, and that the seed of Abraham has already perished from the nations in which it was? Why do you add to it by saying that Christ retains no heir in any land unless he could have Donatus as co-heir? We envy no one. Read us this from the Law, from the Prophets, from the 246 THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST Psalms, from the Gospel itself, from the apostolic letters: read it and we will believe it, just as we read to you from Genesis and from the Apostle that in the seed of Abraham, which is Christ, all nations are blessed." Next come the Prophets: "What in the Prophets, how many and how manifest are the testimonies of the Church di$used through all nations throughout the whole world?... Let Isaiah say where he foresaw by God's revelation the holy Church, so that in the words of one foretelling the future we may now see the present. #e earth is "lled, he says, with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. In that day the root of Jesse who stands as a sign for the peoples, the nations shall entreat him (Isaiah 11:9–10). #at the root of Jesse is Christ born of the seed of David according to the &esh, no one who is a Christian in any way is ignorant of; and if he is contentious, let him contend with the Apostle, who uses this testimony in his own letters, Romans 15:12.—Likewise Isaiah says: And now the Lord who formed me from the womb to be his servant says: It is too little for you to be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to convert the remnants of Israel. Behold I have given you as a light to the nations, to be my salvation to the ends of the earth. Certainly, when the Apostle Paul recalled these words (Acts 13:47), he showed that they are ful"lled only among Christians. Let us therefore hear what Isaiah adds: I have given you as a covenant for the people, to raise up the earth and to possess scattered inheritances. And then, a!er an interval, he continues and says: Behold these shall come from afar, and behold those from the north and from the sea, and these from the southern land... #en, because all nations would be joined to the Church, it follows and he says: Li! up your eyes round about and see, all these are gathered together, they have come to you (O Zion). As I live, says 247 A DOGMATIC MANUAL OF THEOLOGY the Lord, because you shall be clothed with all these as with an ornament, and you shall bind them on as a bride. Because your deserted places and your wildernesses and your ruined land shall now be too narrow for the inhabitants. And they shall yet say in your ears: #e place is too small for me; make room for me to dwell in. And you shall say in your heart: Who has begotten me these, when I was barren and did not bear; and who has brought up these? I was forsaken and alone, and where were these? #us says the Lord God: Behold I will li! up my hand to the nations and exalt my sign to the peoples. And they shall bring your sons in their arms and carry your daughters on their shoulders. And kings shall be your nursing fathers and queens your nursing mothers; with their face toward the ground they shall worship you and lick the dust of your feet. And you shall know that I am the Lord, in whom they who hope shall not be confounded (Isaiah 49:5–23).... #en in what follows Isaiah adds and says: Rejoice and praise together, O deserts of Jerusalem, because the Lord has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem. #e Lord has laid bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God (Isaiah 52:9–10). Who is so deaf, who so reckless, who so blind in mind, as to contradict such evident testimonies?—But let us come to plainer things. Certainly we know from the Scriptures of the most sacred marriage: the bridegroom and the bride, Christ and the Church. Isaiah describes both, lest perhaps we go astray in either, which would mean losing both; for of this union in the sacrament it is said, as the Apostle attests: #ey shall be two in one &esh. #us then is the bridegroom himself described "rst. A!er many things which Isaiah says of him in such a way that even the Jews are silenced—not to be tedious in recalling all of it, take note of this small part: And he will bear their iniquities, 248 THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST therefore I will distribute to him very many, and he shall divide the spoils of the strong, because he delivered his soul unto death, and was counted with the transgressors, and he bore the sins of many and made intercession for transgressors (Isaiah 53:11–12). You confess that these things were predicted and prophesied of our Lord Jesus Christ so long before. Why then was this bridegroom delivered to death, why was he numbered among the wicked with such great humility of his excellence? What did he do, what did he acquire?... What is it, O heretics, that you boast of your fewness, if the Lord Jesus Christ was therefore delivered to death, so that he might possess many by inheritance? And who these many are, and how widely they occupy the earth, let us hear what follows.—With the bridegroom foretold and described, let the bride come forward in the words of Isaiah; let us read her in the truth of the sacred pages and recognize her throughout the world: Rejoice, O barren one that does not bear; break forth into singing and cry aloud, you who have not been in labor, for the children of the desolate one will be more than the children of her who has a husband (Isaiah 54:1). #is testimony predicted of the holy Church was also cited by the Apostle Paul in Galatians 4:27.... Where is it, I ask, that you boast of your fewness? Are these not the many, of whom it was said a little before: #erefore I will distribute to him very many? For what is his inheritance but his Church? Many, he says, are the children of the desolate one, more than of her who has a husband—meaning the Synagogue of the Jews by the one who has a husband, since she had received the law. From this what we are saying can already be judged,... namely that this prophecy has been ful"lled in the Catholic Church di$used throughout the whole world. But whether the one who had a husband was surpassed by the desolate one in the multitude of children—let that remain obscure, let it remain an 249 A DOGMATIC MANUAL OF THEOLOGY enigma; but whoever contradicts the claim that this Church is the Church of Christ, of which it was said, many are the children of the desolate one, more than of her who has a husband—that person contradicts not me but the Apostle.—From what source she was to have many children, he subsequently adds and says: Enlarge the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; do not spare; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes. For you shall spread abroad to the right and to the le!, and your seed shall inherit the nations, and shall dwell in the desolate cities. Fear not, for you shall not be put to shame; neither be confounded, for you shall not blush; for you shall forget the shame of your youth, and shall remember no more the reproach of your widowhood. For he who made you shall rule over you, the Lord of hosts is his name, and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel; he shall be called the God of the whole earth (Isaiah 54:2–5). Behold to what extent she has been commanded to lengthen her cords, until her God is called the God of the whole earth.... What more evident statement is still to be required? Behold from one prophet alone, how many, how clear things!... Indeed, if I wished to gather into this letter the testimonies of all the prophets regarding the foretold Church, I fear I would seem to judge as few things that are so many, that if I wished to collect them all from Isaiah alone, I would exceed the proper measure of my letter." #ird come the authorities from the Psalms: "Let us now hear a few things from the Psalms, sung so long ago. And "rst, let those hear and judge what manner of countenance Petilianus showed in putting that very passage in his letter. !e Lord said to me: You are my son, this day have I begotten you. Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession (Psalm 2:7–8). For what Christian ever 250 THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST doubted that this was predicted of Christ, or understood this inheritance to mean anything other than the Church?—Who is so far astray from the divine eloquences that he does not recognize the Gospel itself when that Psalm is sung in which it is written: !ey pierced my hands and my feet; they have numbered all my bones. !ey themselves have looked and stared upon me; they parted my garments among themselves and cast lots upon my vesture (Psalm 22:17–19)? And even when the Evangelist narrated this event (Matthew 27:35 and John 19:24), he was mindful of this testimony. But what was purchased by the price of this cross, by so great a humility of so great a majesty, by that most innocent and divine blood—what was it, if not what is said next in the same place: All the ends of the world shall remember and be converted to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship in his sight; for the kingdom is the Lord's, and he shall rule over the nations.—Did not the Apostle expound as spoken of the preachers of the New Testament what is written: !eir sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world (Psalm 19:5, Romans 10:18)? Of whom other than Christ is it understood: !e God of gods, the Lord, has spoken and has called the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting; out of Zion, the perfection of his beauty (Psalm 50:1–2)? Whose voice is it but Christ's: I slept troubled? And whence troubled, he follows and says: !e sons of men—their teeth are weapons and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword—whose but those who cried: Crucify, crucify? Why all this? To what good, to what pro"t? Hear what follows: Be exalted above the heavens, O God, and let your glory be over all the earth (Psalm 57:5–6). Behold, you have Christ sleeping in his passion and ascending above the heavens in his resurrection. And whence his glory over all the earth, unless because his Church is throughout all the earth?—Psalm seventy251 A DOGMATIC MANUAL OF THEOLOGY one bears the title For Solomon, but because things have been said there which cannot be appropriate to that temporal king who a!erwards sinned gravely, they are defended as predictions of Christ even against the Jews themselves with irresistible force. No Christian, however, denies this: for such things have been said there that it cannot be doubted they pertain to Christ. #ere too are said things by which the Church di$used throughout the whole world is recognized: And he shall rule, he says, from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth. From the river, certainly, where the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove and the voice from heaven manifested him. #en it follows: Before him the Ethiopians shall fall down, and his enemies shall lick the earth. !e kings of Tarshish and the islands shall o4er gi3s, the kings of Arabia and Saba shall bring presents, and all kings of the earth shall adore him, all nations shall serve him. And a little later: And in him shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed, all nations shall magnify him. Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, who alone does wonderful things. And blessed be the name of his majesty forever, and the whole earth shall be "lled with his majesty. So be it, so be it. Go now, O Donatists, and cry: Let it not be so, let it not be so. #e word of God saying: So be it, so be it has overcome you. Behold, the Church di$used throughout the whole world is made manifest in the Psalms, upon which rests the glory of her King. Hence she is also the queen his bride, of whom it is said to him in Psalm forty-four: !e queen stood at your right hand in goldembroidered robes, surrounded with variety. And toward her herself, to encourage her, the divine word is immediately directed: Hear, O daughter, and see.... Instead of your fathers, sons are born to you, you shall make them princes over all the earth.— What shall they say to these things which I have recalled from the 252 THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST Law and the Prophets and the Psalms, concerning the Church of Christ which is di$used throughout the whole world?" Fourth comes the testimony of Christ himself in the Gospel. "But let us hear the voice of the Word itself expressed by the mouth of his own &esh. Certainly when a!er the resurrection he presented himself to be handled and felt by the hands of his doubting disciples, and when he had received and eaten before them what they had o$ered him, he said to them: #ese are the words which I spoke to you while I was yet with you, that all things must be ful"lled which are written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning me. #en he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. And he said to them: #us it is written, and thus it was necessary for Christ to su$er, and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem (Luke 24:44–47). What is more manifest than this voice?.... Let them say that the testimonies I have set forth from the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms are obscure and that, having been spoken "guratively, they can be understood in other ways—though I have done what I could even there so that they should not dare to say this; but let them say so. Surely, however, this was not spoken obscurely or veiled by the covering of an enigma, what Christ himself said: #us it is written, and thus it was necessary for Christ to su$er, and to rise from the dead, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem? If I slept troubled is obscure, surely it was necessary for Christ to su$er is not obscure? If Be exalted above the heavens, O God is obscure, surely and to rise on the third day is not obscure? If let your glory be over all the earth is obscure, surely and that repentance and remission of sins should be 253 A DOGMATIC MANUAL OF THEOLOGY preached in his name to all nations is not obscure? If out of Zion, the perfection of his beauty is obscure, surely beginning from Jerusalem is not obscure? For Zion itself is Jerusalem.... Let us therefore hold fast the Church as described by the mouth of the Lord, from where she was to begin and how far she was to reach: beginning, that is, from Jerusalem, and reaching to all nations." But in the Acts of the Apostles, "the future Church throughout the world is foretold by the same clarity of the Lord's own words, where no one is permitted to doubt at all that this is the visible city of Jerusalem, from which the Church began a!er the resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that he wished to indicate nothing other than the places of this land from which he would give it its beginning and how from there he would di$use it through all things. For thus it is written in the Acts of the Apostles: And while lodging with them, he commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to await the promise of the Father, which, he said, you have heard through my mouth.... You shall receive the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon you, and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the uttermost part of the earth. Behold, even here it is made manifest from where the Church was to begin and how far she was to reach. We hold this Church; against these divine voices we admit no human accusations. For it moves us very greatly that our Lord, in his last words which he spoke on earth, le! these saving and "nal teachings to the primitive Church. For having said these things, he straightway ascended into heaven; he wished to fortify our ears against those whom he had foretold would arise in the course of time and say: Behold, here is Christ, behold there. He warned us not to believe them. Nor have we any excuse if we believe against the voice of the Shepherd—so clear, so open, 254 THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST so manifest—that no one, even the dull and slow of heart, could say: I did not understand." Finally, let there be the history of Acts, corresponding to what the Lord had said in order: You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the uttermost part of the earth. For there it is narrated how the Church began in Jerusalem (Acts 2), from there going out to all languages, as was foreshadowed in those who, having been gathered there and received the Holy Spirit, spoke in all tongues. #en (Acts 8) it is shown how the Gospel was preached through the cities of Judea and Samaria. "It remained, therefore, that it should be preached in order also to all nations.... Before this happened, Peter saw in a rapture of mind, while he was praying, the heaven opened and a certain vessel like a clean sheet, tied at the four corners, in which were all kinds of quadrupeds and wild beasts and birds of the air. And a voice was heard: Rise, Peter, kill and eat. But Peter said: Far be it, Lord, for I have never eaten anything common or unclean. And the voice again to him: What God has cleansed, do not call common. Now that the nations that were to believe were signi"ed by this vision, there is no need for us to conjecture; the apostle himself explains this as having been shown to him in that vessel. For when he had entered the house where Cornelius was, and many had assembled, he said to them: You know how it is unlawful for a Jewish man to join or come near to a foreigner, but God has shown me not to call any man common or unclean. #us he explained that voice which he had heard speaking through the animals shown in that sheet: What God has cleansed, do not call common. Who does not already see that by that vessel the world was signi"ed with all its nations? Hence it was also tied at the four corners, because of the most well-known four parts of the world—East and West, South and North—which Scripture very 255 A DOGMATIC MANUAL OF THEOLOGY frequently commends. Now, as for Paul sent to the nations: what places he traversed sowing the word of God and con"rming the churches that had been born—it would take too long to recount. When the Jews had resisted him at Antioch, he and Barnabas said to them: It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken "rst to you, but since you reject it, behold we turn to the nations. For so the Lord has commanded us: I have set you as a light for the nations, that you may be salvation to the ends of the earth.... Behold, here also the testimony from the Prophet Isaiah is recalled, which we too have cited, that there should be salvation to the ends of the earth." In this way therefore the Church is clearly known in the Scriptures, beginning from Jerusalem and growing through other nations until it occupies all of them, even to the end of the age, according to Matthew 24:14: And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then shall the consummation come.
§ 2
#ese things must now be reduced to a summary under the main headings. And "rst, from the cited authorities this is established with the greatest certainty: that all nations were promised to the Church (note well: all nations were promised, not all men of all nations; "In those nations therefore where the Church does not yet exist, it is necessary that she should be, not that all who are there should believe; for all nations were promised, not all men of all nations... For how else shall that word be ful"lled: You shall be hated by all nations for my name's sake, unless there are both those who hate and those who are hated in all nations?" Augustine, Epistola 199, n. 48), as well as 256 THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST di$usion through all places to the ends of the earth (the promise of all nations is connected with the promise of di$usion through all places: "How shall that other prophecy otherwise be ful"lled: All the nations that you have made shall come and adore before you, O Lord? For they shall not come by migrating from their own places, but by believing in their own places." Augustine, as above, n. 47). But second, there immediately arises the question how this promise is to be understood: whether perhaps in this way, that it was to be seen as entirely ful"lled from the very beginning, say before the death of the apostles. Nor were there lacking among the ancients those who thought so, relying on the testimony of Paul in Romans 10:18: Have they not heard? Indeed, their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world. But Augustine refuted these men with the facts themselves—notwithstanding the most imperfect state of geographical knowledge even in his own day—asserting that in the most remote parts of Africa there were innumerable peoples to whom the Gospel had not yet been preached ("#at what Your Venerable Holiness believes, that this was already accomplished through the apostles themselves, is not so, I have proved with certain evidence. For there are, among us—that is, in Africa— innumerable barbarous peoples among whom the Gospel has not yet been preached, as we are daily able to learn readily from those who are brought from there as captives and are now mixed into the service of the Romans." Augustine, as above, n. 46). On the other hand, setting aside any arguments from fact, the sole assertion of Christ was su'cient: he expressly foretold that the consummation of the age would come only when the work of evangelization had "rst been completed throughout the whole world. It was therefore necessary to acknowledge a certain 257 A DOGMATIC MANUAL OF THEOLOGY successive growth over the course of the ages, by which, according to the oracle of Isaiah, the place of the tent of the Church would be ever more and more enlarged, and the Church herself would inherit the nations, gradually and imperceptibly penetrating to le! and to right, until the glory of the Holy One of Israel her Redeemer shone forth over the whole earth (Augustine: "It was not said to the apostles: You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the uttermost part of the earth, as if those alone to whom he was then speaking would ful"ll so great a mission. But just as he seems to have said to them alone what he said: Behold I am with you even to the consummation of the age—which, however, who does not understand he promised to the whole Church, which is to remain here unto the consummation of the age as some die and others are born?—so also must this be understood." Augustine, as above, n. 49). Nevertheless, third, no one will doubt that the words you shall be my witnesses even to the uttermost part of the earth were said in some sense also personally to the apostles themselves. For otherwise, how would Paul say in Colossians 1:6: For the hope which you heard in the word of the truth of the gospel, which has come to you, as it has also in the whole world, and is bearing fruit and growing? How would he exhort them to remain in the faith of that very same gospel which was preached to every creature under heaven, of which I Paul was made a minister (Colossians 1:23)? How would he attest that the faith of the Romans is announced in the whole world (Romans 1:8)? Why also would the apostles have received the gi! of tongues, if the Church was not to be planted and propagated among the multitude of nations through their own e$orts? It remains therefore that the whole world, the whole earth, the uttermost part of the earth, and all similar expressions 258 THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST of this kind are to be taken in a double sense: namely, in an absolute sense and in a relative sense. In the absolute sense they signify the entire breadth of the globe. In the relative sense, however, they include only those regions and provinces which, according to the means of communication existing at the time, are in relation with that center—that navel of the earth, so to speak—where the preaching of the gospel began and from which it spread. #erefore in the absolute sense, it will only be said with truth at the consummation of the age that the Church has come to all nations and occupied all the earth. But in the relative sense, from the very apostolic age itself she had to spread everywhere and to be gathered from all nations. Hence, fourth, once that brief interval of time had passed during which, by Christ's command, the dissemination of the word had to remain within the bounds of Judea and Samaria, an inseparable character of the true Church of Christ has been catholicity of fact—consisting in her simultaneous and constant di$usion throughout the whole known world and the peoples dwelling in it—such that from that point forward and thenceforth the Church could be called and truly was the Church of the gathering of the nations: surpassing every contraction of particularity, having sons gathered from north and sea and southern land, and ever illustrious with the glory of a most numerous o$spring, beyond the ancient Synagogue con"ned to a single nation, however much it excelled in carnal fecundity (I judge it "tting to abstract here from the singular opinion of Bellarmine, who says in volume 4, De Ecclesia, chapter 7, that simultaneous di$usion is not required, such that at any given time there must necessarily be some faithful in all provinces, but that it su'ces if this is accomplished successively. From this, he says, it follows that if a single province alone retained the true 259 A DOGMATIC MANUAL OF THEOLOGY faith, she would still truly and properly be called the Catholic Church, provided it were clearly shown that she is one and the same as the one which existed at some time, or at various times, throughout the whole world—just as any diocese is now called Catholic, because it is in continuity with the others that form the one Catholic Church. From these opinions, I say, it is "tting to abstract, because if there were any foundation whatsoever for such an opinion, it would be nothing other than what is read about the end of the world and the persecution of Antichrist (Luke 18:8; Matthew 24:21–29; 2 #essalonians 2, etc.). Moreover, even setting aside the interpretation that Bellarmine appears to have followed, the conclusion would still remain intact, because it would still be true that simultaneous catholicity, being from the will and promise of God, is a necessary endowment of the Church, at least by the ordinary law—which would not be hindered by the exception foretold for a certain determinate time. For in moral matters, everything is denominated simply from what ordinarily a$ects it or ought to a$ect it.). In addition to this constant di$usion—which in certain parts can sometimes be greatly diminished on account of the heresies and schisms so expressly foretold in the sacred writings —there must be joined a continuous movement of growth up to the occupation of all parts of the earth without exception, until the consummation of the ages. From all this, therefore, the two conditions of catholicity proposed in the thesis are demonstrated, and all that remains is to make certain observations about each. Regarding the "rst, then, you will note that a vast number of the faithful considered in isolation does not su'ce, because if that vast number were con"ned to one part of the world and to one kindred of men, not even a beginning of 260 THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST catholicity would be had. Not even a beginning, I say—whether one considers the character of universality which the very name catholicity imports, or also the character of miracle which is contained in this mark. Does a number considered in purely material terms present anything divine? Certainly the Catholic Church appears to surpass in the number of her faithful every other religion existing in the world; but considering number simply, a religion is neither shown to be divine by superiority in numbers, nor would it be shown to be non-divine by inferiority in numbers. Moreover, if number alone were the issue, since Buddhism approaches closely in terms of multitude, it would also approach in terms of credibility—which God forbid. For this reason it has been said with precise intent that simultaneous catholicity consists in a vast number gathered from the multitude of nations. For when a vast number is gathered from men of the same lineage or natural character, and is owed chie&y to the carnal fecundity of the people, there is nothing at all surprising or divine to be found in it. But if it is a number of men belonging to the most diverse kindreds of the earth—kindreds which it is known cannot be contained in the communion of one fold by any worldly cause—then there shines forth that splendid sign which Isaiah had expressed "guratively when, prophesying of the messianic kingdom, he said: !e wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the lion and the sheep shall dwell together, and a little child shall lead them (Isaiah 11:6). #ese are the things to be noted regarding the "rst condition of catholicity. Now as regards that other condition which consists in the movement of expansion through all the earth to the end of the age, it is to be observed how it is described by the same Isaiah in the place cited above: Rejoice, O barren one that does not bear... 261 A DOGMATIC MANUAL OF THEOLOGY for many are the children of the desolate one, more than of her who has a husband. Enlarge the place of your tent.... For you shall spread to the right and to the le3, and your seed shall inherit the nations..., and your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, shall be called the God of the whole earth. Here is signi"ed "rst a propagation by which the Church ever acquires new sons—not, to be sure, by way of natural generation, for which the sacrament of matrimony is known to have been instituted, but by way of acquiring those who were outside, that is, by the conversion of unbelievers. #en is signi"ed a continuous propagation from a certain vital power of expansion and from a fecundity not at all subject to the in"rmity of old age, and not at all dependent upon the accidental circumstances of times or places. Finally there is signi"ed a propagation for which no human means would su'ce, and which can only be explained by the abundance of divine blessing, so that fecundity itself is proportionally related in the moral order as virginal fecundity is in the physical order—being, that is, of one who has no husband. #is therefore has nothing in common with the propagation of Protestantism among Catholics, for which natural causes were altogether su'cient. For Protestantism consists entirely in the relaxation of the principles by which licentiousness is restrained among us, and this kind of removal implies negation rather than a positive e$ect. Hence also it is worth noting in passing that if an adversary wished to draw any argument whatsoever from the propagation of Protestantism, he would have to show the unbelievers whom Protestantism made Christian, not the Catholics whom it drew over to its side. So much for the mark of catholicity, considered as it were in the abstract. To which communion this mark belongs, however, and in how many ways it constitutes a positive sign of the true Church, must now be added.
THESIS VII #e Church of the Roman communion alone possesses all the conditions of catholicity, and by the splendor of this mark, independently even of the positive authority of the Scriptures, she makes herself known in the supreme theater of the world as founded by God.
§ 1
First, if the discussion concerns simultaneous and constant di$usion throughout the world (in the sense declared above), it immediately appears that this has been proper to the Roman communion from its very beginnings, since from that source this communion derives the very name Catholic by which it has always been adorned as its distinctive title and is still to this day commonly called by all—or at least, when it is so called, it is recognized without ambiguity. For who, reading or hearing the words "Catholic Church," does not immediately understand our Church? Or who, declaring himself a Catholic anywhere at all, would need a more ample explanation, as if his profession of religion were still ambiguous? Indeed, down to the present day what Augustine wrote of the Roman communion is found to be most true: "In the Catholic Church... there are many things which most justly hold me. It holds me, the succession of priests from the very seat of the Apostle Peter down to the present episcopate. It holds me the name itself of Catholic, which, not without reason, this Church alone, among so many heresies, has so held that, although all heretics want to be called Catholics, yet when a stranger asks where to assemble for the Catholic Church, none of the heretics would dare to point out his own basilica or house" (Augustine, Contra Epistolam Fundamenti, chapter 4). And again: 263 A DOGMATIC MANUAL OF THEOLOGY "Whether they will or not, even the heretics themselves and the o$spring of schisms, when they are speaking not with their own people but with outsiders, call it nothing other than Catholic. For they cannot be understood unless they distinguish it by this name, by which the whole world calls it" (Augustine, De Vera Religione, chapter 12). Now a fact of this kind, from itself alone, would be plainly su'cient for our demonstration, because names that are held in peaceful possession by the whole world cannot possibly be false. Nothing is easier, indeed, than for someone to attribute to himself by his own authority a "ctitious name; but nothing is more di'cult—indeed, nothing is more impossible— than to obtain for his usurpation the consecration of common usage. #e Church of Russia, to be sure, calls herself Orthodox, but she is so named only by herself ("It is well known that these Churches call themselves Orthodox, and it is through Russia that this ambitious epithet will come to be read in French in the West; for until our day these Orthodox Churches have attracted little attention among us, all our religious polemic having been directed only against Protestants... #en for the "rst time shall we hear spoken in our languages of the Orthodox Church. Everyone will ask on all sides: What is the Orthodox Church? And every Christian of the West, saying: It must be mine, will allow himself to laugh at the error of one who addresses to herself a compliment that she takes for a name. Since everyone is free to give himself whatever name suits him..., the great point is to force others to give us such and such a name; which is not quite so easy as to adorn oneself with a name by one's own authority; and yet the only true name is the name that is recognized." J. de Maistre, Du Pape, book 4, chapter 5). Others have called themselves Evangelical, Reformed, Apostolic, and similar names, but the whole world calls them nothing other than Protestants ("General 264 THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST rule. All sects have two names: one which they give themselves, and another by which they are called. #us the Photian Churches which call themselves Orthodox are called outside their own sphere schismatic, Greek, or Eastern—synonyms without their being aware of it. #e "rst Reformers styled themselves no less boldly evangelical, and the second, reformed; but all who are not them call them Lutherans and Calvinists. #e Anglicans try to call themselves apostolic; but all Europe will laugh at this, and even part of England. #e Russian raskolnik gives himself the name of old believer, but for anyone who is not a raskolnik, he is a raskolnik. #e Catholic alone is called what he calls himself, and has but one name for all men. Whoever would attach no value to this observation has meditated little on the "rst chapter of "rst philosophy, that dealing with names." J. de Maistre, as above). Our Church, however, both calls herself Catholic and has always been called by that same name as her own by the whole world ("It is a very remarkable thing that while every Christian is obliged to confess in the creed that he believes in the Catholic Church, nevertheless no dissenting Church has ever dared to adorn itself with this title and call itself Catholic, even though nothing was easier than to say: It is we who are Catholics, and truth moreover evidently depends upon this quality of being Catholic. But in this matter as in a thousand others, all the calculations of ambition and politics yielded to an invincible conscience. No innovator ever dared to usurp the name of the Church, whether none of them re&ected that in changing their name they condemned themselves, or whether all sensed, even if obscurely, the absolute impossibility of such a usurpation. Like that unique book of which she is the sole repository and the sole legitimate interpreter, the Catholic Church is vested with a character so great, so striking, so perfectly inimitable, that no one 265 A DOGMATIC MANUAL OF THEOLOGY will ever think to dispute her name against the conscience of the universe." J. de Maistre, Du Pape, book 4, chapter 5). #erefore this name is not one of usurpation but of truth; therefore the Roman communion, and she alone, has and has had from the beginning the conspicuous character and mark of catholicity. But, to come to particulars: it will certainly be beyond doubt to no one that it was of the Roman communion—that is, of that communion to which all the faithful from everywhere are obliged to come together on account of her more potent preeminence (Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, book 3, chapter 3)— that Irenaeus was speaking when, at the close of the second century, he attested that the Church had been sown throughout the whole world to the ends of the earth (Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, book 1, chapter 10). #e same was later reported by Cyprian of his own time, in his book De Unitate Ecclesiae. #e same later by Athanasius, in his book De Humanitate Verbi. #e same later by Chrysostom and Jerome in their commentaries on Matthew 24. #e same by Augustine, Epistola 199 to Hesychius; the same by Leo the Great in his "rst sermon on Saints Peter and Paul, and by St. Prosper who sang in his book De Ingratis: !e seat of Rome, Peter's see, made the head of the world in pastoral honor, holds by religion what it does not possess by arms. And these things the adversaries will perhaps freely concede. But we, Bellarmine continues (De Notis Ecclesiae, chapter 1), will show the same for later centuries. #at our Church was in the whole world at the time of St. Gregory—that is, in all the provinces then known—is plain from the letters of Gregory himself to the bishops of the East, Africa, Spain, Gaul, England, Sicily, and so on, and likewise from Bede in his commentary on Canticles chapter 6. Indeed, even at the height of Protestantism's spread, the Roman Church—apart from Italy and Spain and nearly all of 266 THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST France, apart from Germany, England, Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, Greece, Syria, Ethiopia, and Egypt, in all of which very many Catholics were to be found—had, in the new world itself, churches free from any admixture of heretics in all four parts of the world: to the East in the Indies, to the West in America, to the North in Japan, and to the South in Brazil and the outer parts of Africa. In our own days, some forty years ago, a magni"cent sign of the catholicity of the Roman communion was shown at the Vatican Council, in which more than a thousand bishops from all parts of the world without exception sat together. In any case, it would be a complete waste of e$ort to try to explain at greater length what is clearer than the noonday sun and established by facts of the highest notoriety: how this very Roman communion today embraces the universality of languages; how, remaining compact and undivided in itself, she has her faithful in all the kindreds of men and all the regions of the earth; how "nally in point of numbers she exceeds any other sect in the world— indeed, exceeds all the other fragments glorying in the Christian name even taken together and collectively. #ere is therefore no room whatsoever for doubt regarding simultaneous catholicity. Now, what shall I say of her perennial fecundity and successive growth from the very beginning? I pass over the very origins of the Church up to the invasion of the Barbarians, because on these points there would be no special controversy with the adversaries. But beginning from the sixth century, three periods may be distinguished, the "rst extending to the time of the Reformation, the second to the end of the last century, and the third being the one which is now running. Now as regards the "rst period, Bellarmine shows, even from the confessions of the Centuriators of Magdeburg alone, that all the conversions of pagan peoples made in that period are 267 A DOGMATIC MANUAL OF THEOLOGY to be attributed exclusively to the Roman communion. "#at many were converted by ours from the time of St. Gregory to our own days can be proved by the testimony of adversaries. For that in the sixth century, at the behest of Blessed Gregory, pagan English were converted to the faith of Christ not by heretics— who were not lacking even then—but by Ponti"cal monks, is attested by the Centuriators, Century 6, chapter 2. #en in the time of Pope Conan, St. Kilian, sent by the Pope, converted the Franconians, as the Centuriators themselves say, Century 7, chapter 2. #en in the time of the Ponti$s Gregory II and Gregory III and Zacharias, a great part of Germany was converted to the faith, not by the iconoclast heretics who then abounded in the world, but by St. Boniface, bishop and martyr, whom Pope Gregory II had sent, as the Centuriators confess, Century 8, chapter 2.... #en Century 9, chapter 2, they confess that the monks of Corbie converted the Vandals; and below they confess that the Bulgarians, Slavs, Poles, Danes, and Moravians, converted in that century, were subject to the Roman Ponti$s, which shows they were converted by the Papists. Likewise Century 10, chapter 2, they teach that several kings and peoples were converted to the faith through the e$orts of the Emperor Henry I and of Adalbert of Bohemia and Methodius, archbishop of Moravia—none of whom they can deny to have been Papists, since it is established that they were subject to the Roman Ponti$s. Finally, Century 11, chapter 2, they teach that the Hungarians were largely converted in this century and that the bishops given to that people were con"rmed by the Roman Ponti$ at the request of St. Stephen, their recently converted king. A!er those times there were likewise similar conversions in the Catholic Church, inasmuch as Adrian IV, before his ponti"cate, having been sent by Pope Eugenius, converted Norway to the 268 THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST faith, as Platina and others attest, and if I am not mistaken, the Centuriators themselves in Century 12, which together with Century 13 I hear has been published but have not yet seen. By St. Vincent of the Order of Preachers alone, twenty-"ve thousand are known to have been converted to the faith, partly Jews and partly Saracens, as St. Antoninus, who &ourished in the same period, writes" (Bellarmine, De Notis Ecclesiae, chapter 12). #us far Bellarmine, but it is not enough. For how, from the sixteenth century on, a!er the discovery of the new world, the Roman Church has most greatly enlarged the place of her tent and widely extended the curtains of her tabernacles, is to be seen in the lives of the more celebrated missionaries—St. Francis Xavier, Joseph Anchieta, Robert de Nobili, Antonio Ricci, Isaac Jogues, Jean de Brébeuf, and others. See also the history of the heroic Church of Japan, by Charlevoix. Add the testimonies of the bitterest enemies of the Catholic religion, who, even against their will, praised our missions in Paraguay, Brazil, and New France with the highest commendation. For the contemporary growth, there can be consulted the distinguished demonstration of Cardinal Wiseman (in Migne, Démonstrations évangéliques, volume 15, Conference VII: On the successes obtained by the Catholic rule of faith in the conversion of pagans), in which the most illustrious author, drawing chie&y from the reports of the Protestant missionaries themselves, shows clearly that the Catholic missions in India, China, Oceania, and North America are in continuous progress and expanding day by day; that the conversions of these pagans are not "ctitious but solid—even though Catholic missionaries are scarcely equipped at all with human resources, and indeed by a kind of ordinary law are exposed along with their neophytes to persecutions of every kind. And of the Roman communion, enough for now. 269 A DOGMATIC MANUAL OF THEOLOGY By way of contrast, consider the separated communions. I think it not worth dwelling upon the Eastern communions, which so obviously lack di$usion through the multitude of nations that nothing even apparently occurs to palliate their particularity—their limitation to one part of the world alone. Every single one of them, moreover, from the time of its separation, is found to be so sterile in the work of converting unbelievers that it displays an utter likeness to cut-o$ branches which, when they fall, remain where they fell when they were cut, while meanwhile the true Church, like a living vine, extends her branches everywhere ("#e "rst symptom of the nullity that strikes these Churches is that of suddenly and at once losing both the power and the will to convert men and to advance the divine work. #ey make no more conquests, and indeed a$ect to disdain them. #ey are sterile, and nothing is more just: they have rejected the bridegroom." J. de Maistre, Du Pape, book 4, chapter 5). #erefore, if by any chance catholicity were to be found with any semblance of probability outside the Roman communion, the question could only be raised about Protestantism alone. But catholicity is most evidently absent from Protestantism. First, because catholicity not only concerns the universality of places but also the universality of times from the ascension of Christ and the descent of the Holy Spirit—and the unwelcome question immediately comes to mind: where in the world Protestantism was for fourteen centuries before Luther.— Second, because the presupposition of catholicity is the unity of communion, as was said at the outset. But Protestantism does not denote one communion but a multitude of sects, which are bound together only by negations and agree only in their 270 THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST protestation against the Church from whose bosom the Reformers separated themselves at the time of the Reformation (this negative essence of Protestantism is signi"ed by the very name: "If Protestantism always bears the same name, even though its faith has immensely varied, it is because its name being purely negative and signifying only a renunciation of Catholicism, the less it believes and the more it protests, the more it is itself. Its name becoming therefore truer every day, it must subsist until the moment when it will perish, as the ulcer perishes with the last atom of living &esh it has devoured." J. de Maistre, Du Pape, book 4, chapter 5).—#ird, because even if Protestantism be taken as a whole according to that negative unity which is proper to it, it still lacked any semblance of di$usion outside the northern parts of Europe until the middle of the eighteenth century. "#e heresies of the Lutherans," said Bellarmine, "never crossed the sea, nor saw Asia or Africa, Egypt or Greece." And a!er Bellarmine, this same thing remained literally true for a long series of years.—Fourth, because from the time when Protestants, and especially Anglicans, struck by the glorious successes of Catholics, began to think about missions among unbelievers (it was in 1701 that the "rst missionary society was formed in England, authorized by royal charter: the Society for the Di$usion of Christian Knowledge. Around the same time the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts was also fully organized and put into activity. From that period to toward the end of the last century nothing was done worthy of notice in institutions of this kind. It was in 1792 that the Anabaptist Missionary Society—since become so celebrated for the great number of translations of Scripture into Eastern languages published by it at its headquarters in Serampore—was originally founded and consolidated; and in 1795 the London 271 A DOGMATIC MANUAL OF THEOLOGY Missionary Society, which belongs to the Congregationalists, was also formed, followed the following year by the Scottish Missionary Society. In 1800 the Church Missionary Society set to work. Wiseman, Conferences on the Doctrines and Principal Practices of the Catholic Church, 6th Conference), nothing positive has been obtained by them—this must now be taken as established fact. On this subject there exists the demonstration of the aforementioned Cardinal Wiseman in the conference entitled On the Successes of the Protestant Rule of Faith in the Conversion of Pagans (in Migne, Démonstrations évangéliques, volume 15), in which the most distinguished author weighs the means employed for the work, the great number of ministers and the great expenses, the external resources with which the missions abound, the condition of the regions in which the missionaries for the most part reside—which are either under British dominion or at least under its protectorate—and also the apparatus of periodicals, free schools, prizes o$ered, and so on ("I am going to cite further by way of con"rmation the remarks of Doctor Buchanan regarding India, one of the most important theaters of the labors of the (Anglican) missionaries in our day. No Christian nation, according to him, ever possessed so vast a "eld for the propagation of the faith as that which is o$ered to us by our in&uence over the hundred million natives who people Hindustan. Never has any other nation enjoyed such great resources... as those which the authority we exercise over a passive people provides us—a people which bows its head in submission under the so light yoke of our power, reverences our principles, and regards our dominion as a blessing. #us the missionaries do not go, as the apostles did, to carry the faith into barbarous and untamed lands; they do not throw themselves at once into the midst of savage and "erce peoples like lambs among 272 THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST wolves, with no other defense than their innocence and trust in God, preaching a Gospel entirely opposed to all the ideas, interests, and customs of those to whom they announce it. But most ordinarily they advance surrounded by every possible kind of protection and all the resources that can facilitate the work they have undertaken." Wiseman, as above). He then sets against this the fruits according to authentic documents sent to the Bible societies, and from these reaches the following conclusion: that in the East Indies scarcely a few can be counted who have embraced the Protestant religion—driven out by their own countrymen or allured by the hope of a more comfortable life; that the missionaries themselves lose heart on account of invincible and insuperable di'culties; that the reports of the missionaries almost always pass over in silence the conversions that have been made and extend themselves in exaggerating hopes for the future, so that the sterility of this church—which nevertheless has a husband, that is, is abundantly equipped with all human means— shows itself everywhere by an inexorable law, not in one or another part of the world but in all parts, and more and more day by day. Among other things is cited the example of islanders who of their own accord, having perceived the superiority of the Christians, had asked for missionaries, and a!er being instructed by them fell back into a worse state and prepared to shake o$ the intolerable yoke (Account of nine months' residence in New Zealand, by Aug. Toole, in Wiseman, as above). Indeed, if you give credence to those rumors that are becoming widespread from every side and seem, by their very consistency and universality, to possess every mark of credibility, it appears that Protestant missionaries are in no way distinguishable from those whom Tertullian even in his own day noted in his book De Praescriptionibus adversus Haereticos, chapter 12: "But what shall 273 A DOGMATIC MANUAL OF THEOLOGY I say about the administration of the word, when their business is not to convert pagans but to subvert our own people? #ey seek greater glory if they work the ruin of those who stand, not the elevation of those who lie fallen, since even their work comes not from their own building but from the destruction of truth. #ey undermine ours in order to build their own." #is character of heresy was also observed by Augustine in Against Faustus, book 13, chapter 12, comparing the preachers of the sects to partridges gathering chicks they did not hatch. And in this same way Protestantism conducted itself from the very beginning: when it had maritime dominion in various States and could have used this resource to disseminate the faith of Christ among pagans, it preferred to use it to destroy the Catholic missions (as the Dutch, especially in Japan and the East Indies, accomplished with all too happy success). But now, in view of the changed circumstances— with books scattered and temporal advantages held out—it undermines ours in order to build its own, or more truthfully, to "nd at last some palliative for its own sterility. In every respect, then, it is evident that the mark of catholicity is proper to that Church alone which always retained the very name Catholic as her distinctive title, and which in all truth shows ful"lled in herself the words of the ancient prophecy: "Li! up your eyes round about and see, all these are gathered together, they have come to you. As I live, says the Lord, because you shall be clothed with all these as with an ornament, and they shall surround you as a bride, because your deserted places and your wildernesses shall now be too narrow for the inhabitants. And they shall yet say in your ears: #e place is too small for me, make room to dwell in. And you shall say in your heart: Who has begotten me these.... and where were these? #us says the Lord God: Behold I will li! up my hand to the nations and set my sign 274 THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST to the peoples. And they shall bring your sons in their arms and carry your daughters on their shoulders.... And you shall know that I am the Lord, in whom they who hope shall not be confounded."—But now it remains to see in how many ways the catholicity thus far declared demonstrates the divinity of the Roman Church.
§ 2
First and foremost, catholicity is proposed in the Scriptures as an altogether positive mark of the Church—one that would belong to the true Church alone and would never be shared by any false sect. For it is given in all the prophecies of the Old Testament, con"rmed by the authority of the Gospel, as the supremely distinctive sign of the messianic kingdom which is the Church of Christ. But a distinctive sign is nothing other than a proper mark, and not at all a promiscuous one. #erefore, by following the signs shown beforehand by God, the Church is certainly found where catholicity is found. But this same catholicity demonstrates the divinity of the Church even from the nature of the matter alone. For "rst, a positive religion adapted to all the varieties of the human species is not to be said to have had a human author, but him alone who, towering above all things, was able in his most wise dispensation to give a law that would suit all peoples and kindreds of the earth. And certainly, whatever is human retains the stamp of the particular conditions of the environment in which the human inventor exercised his activity; whatever is free from such constriction thereby shows itself to be divine (#e argument is eloquently expounded by Cardinal Wiseman at the end of the 7th Conference praised above: "All the other religious systems 275 A DOGMATIC MANUAL OF THEOLOGY (besides Christianity) could only suit a particular climate or people. Neither art nor talent could succeed in making a savage Huron embrace the amphibious and abstemious religion of the Ganges, in making him employ half his days in long and frequent ablutions in his frozen lakes and place in these practices the hope of his salvation... #e so! and voluptuous inhabitants of Tibet would never have transplanted into their scented groves the dark enchantments and bloodthirsty divinities of the forests of Scandinavia, nor found pleasure in listening to the tales of blood and glory that in&amed the courage of the sea-king amid the storms of the north. And this one would never have consented to be instructed in the religions of the East, with their brilliant pagodas, their sumptuous paintings, their varied perfumes, and their e$eminate customs.... #e religious cult of Egypt was born from its very soil and had to perish as soon as it came to be transplanted beyond the limits reached by the &oods of the Nile. #e religion of Greece, with its poetic mythology, its Muses, its Dryads, and its whole Olympus, could only be the worship of the people that had been capable of producing Anacreon, Homer, Phidias, and Apelles. What more need I say? Even the Jewish legislation bears evident characters announcing that its divine author had not intended to establish it as a permanent and universal worship. Christianity alone is the religion of all places and all peoples. From pole to pole, from China to Peru, we see it practiced and loved by innumerable varieties of the great human family, without distinction of their diverse constitutions, intellectual capacities, civil usages, political institutions, and even their color and physiognomy. But let us do ourselves justice. To the Catholic religion alone belongs the glorious privilege of suiting together all national and individual characters, by becoming all things to all men, of uniting by a common bond the 276 THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST most discordant elements, and of fashioning on the same model of virtue the most diverse dispositions, without erasing a single trait of national di$erences. Lutheranism is imposed by force for long years upon the docile inhabitants of Ceylon, and has there engendered the most horrible of religious monstrosities: the worship of Christ united to the service of demons! #e Independents have worked long and zealously for the conversion of the peoples of the Sandwich and Society Islands—so pure in their morals and so apt to receive instruction—and have completely succeeded in ruining their industrious habits, in exposing the country to invasions from without and dissensions from within, and in disgusting all those who at "rst had tolerated them. #e Catholic religion, on the contrary, seems to have within itself a particular grace and e'cacy that permits it to take root in all the diverse situations and conditions. It seems to act like the secret virtue of certain springs of water, which gradually drive away the fragments of withered and faded &owers or branches that come to mingle with their waves and convert them into a solid and lasting substance without any alteration of the lines and veins that preserve their individuality... Its action is independent of civilization. At times it precedes it and is its forerunner, at other times it follows it and becomes its corrective. You have seen it raise the savage in his deserts to the admiration and belief of the most sublime mysteries; you have seen it in India strengthen its members against the demoralizing in&uence of the climate." In Migne, Démonstrations évangéliques, volume 15, pages 909 and following.). Moreover, in catholicity one considers not only the aptitudinal suitability of the religion to each and every di$erence of the human race—in which the sign of divine origin already shines out brightly—but attention is given above all to the actual 277 A DOGMATIC MANUAL OF THEOLOGY gathering in the profession of this very religion (and indeed under the governance of one head) of a vast multitude of men whom natural character, mode of civilization, distance of places, diversity of origins, and political divisions entirely separate from one another. Now against this gathering there stand so many and such great obstacles that without the most special intervention of God it manifestly appears impossible. For each people, just as it has its own character and its own life, so it naturally craves independence from any external principle, both in the political order and in the religious order. And if political unity is sometimes brought about among peoples diverse in language, character, and lineage, this is indeed attributed to force and arms, and does not even so endure for a long time, unless perhaps autonomy in their own customs remains intact. But religious unity, over and above the fact that it is known to be far more intimate, imports by its nature a spontaneous and not at all coerced adherence—no principle of which is to be found in the forces of nature alone. Consider then what a prodigy it was when in the ark of Noah there were all the living creatures of the earth, as it is written: On that very day Noah entered, and his sons, and their wives, and the wives of his sons with him, and every animal a3er its kind, and all cattle a3er their kind, and every creature that moves upon the earth a3er its kind, and every 5ying thing, and all birds and every winged creature entered into the ark with Noah, two and two of all 5esh in which there was the spirit of life—and see there a certain foreshadowing of the permanent prodigy which for eighteen centuries has been seen in the Catholic Church and is moreover extended more and more day by day, since the same things that naturally stood in the way of its "rst constitution still stand in the way of the continual propagation of Catholic unity. 278 THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST #e "nal consideration, lastly, is this: before the Catholic Church, the propagation of a single religion throughout the whole world was not even conceived or attempted. A!er the Catholic Church and outside her, the absence of any attempt of this kind has persisted for seventeen centuries. But at the beginning of the last century, Protestants yield to the itch to imitate Catholics and to make trial of their own powers. #e absence of any attempt over such long intervals of time—even though occasions and motives for attempting it were not lacking —is an argument that men always felt the impossibility of success. But that this judgment was correct is now demonstrated by the fruitless e$ort of the Protestants, to whom, however, all imaginable human means are ready at hand, whether one considers the number of missionaries, or their wealth, or the authority of political power. #ere is added also the fact that they had found the way demonstrated by ours. #ere is added above all the fact that they join the faith of Christ with independence of reason and an easy manner of living, and with the fewest possible religious observances. Truly therefore does God demonstrate to us there, in our adversaries, and con"rm us with a new proof, that whatever is permitted to happen in the separated communions is permitted so that the Catholic Church herself may stand out by the contrast of their opposites. Behold, from of old God made the barren woman dwell in a house, the joyful mother of children—granting her a wondrous fecundity in expanding to all the kindreds of men. But since the annals of history o$ered no other attempt anywhere, it was perhaps not so clearly apparent that this was the "nger of God. Now, however, by the contrast of the opposite, the matter itself is set in a splendid light altogether
