IX. Another matter of history, and I have done.

The tract-writers profess great zeal for the purity of history, and rate us roundly for believing and teaching doctrines in defiance of historical facts.

They have given us a little bit of contemporary history. Let us look at it.

They say-'One word in conclusion: according to an epigrammatic sentence, ascribed to a very eminent Anglo-Roman prelate, a conspicuous promoter of the Vatican Council, and a Papalist of the extremest type, the dogma of Papal Infallibility, when defined by the Pope in the Council, "triumphed over history.""

This passage seems to point to the Archbishop of Westminster. His Grace at any rate satisfies the outline, and might stand for the picture.

That he ever said those words, or gave utterance to any idea which might be legitimately expressed by those words, I know to be untrue, for I have ascertained it. But suppose this statement goes uncontradicted, and that it is copied by other writers, and by the process of repetition acquires a wide circulation, and a few generations pass away, and all have gone hence who could of their own knowledge have given it denial, and then in the far future some one argues a priori thus: 'This epigrammatic sentence contains a folly which could never possibly have been uttered by any Catholic in his senses, and certainly not by the Archbishop to whom it is imputed;' that man will be accused and convicted of arguing in contradiction and defiance of historical facts. The learning and truthfulness, and opportunities of information of the tract- writers, as well as the number of other writers who have taken

the statement from them at second hand, will be adduced as irrefragable proof of its historical truth!*

Such is the fate of history, even at the hands of historical purists.

The tract-writers may excuse themselves by saying that they have only given the 'epigrammatic sentence' as ascribed to the prelate in question. If so, they have made their case worse. They have left an impression on the minds of their readers, and, on their own showing, an injurious impression, by the retailing of a story which they themselves have only on hearsay.

But more than this: not only have they contributed towards identifying his name in the minds of their coreligionists with an inconceivable folly; but Catholics who hear the saying unquestioningly ascribed to one whose ecclesiastical position, whose personal character, and whose well-weighed and measured utterance gives authority and value to his words, may be led to adopt the idea, and make it their own, and disseminate it,

* Since writing the above my anticipations have been confirmed. I have by chance come across a sermon, just published, and preached a few weeks ago by the Rev. W. H. Cleaver, of St. Mary Magdalene's, Paddington, in which I find a passage which circulates this slander. It does not ascribe the saying to the Archbishop of Westminster. It does more; it quotes it, as if it were a matter of course and everyday dictum amongst Catholics. Mr. Cleaver says: 'Does history tell us of Pontiffs anathematised by their successors, anathematised by Councils? Yes; but then it is maintained to be the chiefest, the most conspicuous glory of this latest addition to the faith of Pentecost, that it is a triumph over history. Four pages farther on he reiterates the phrase.

This sermon, along with passages full of bitter animosity against the Catholic Church, contains others of much beauty. May its author, before he dies, obtain the light of Divine faith, and become a loyal subject of him, a passage from whose protestant sermons he has, with a grim pleasantry, placed, by way of motto, on his title-page!

-that the Vatican definition triumphed over history.'

The names which the initials signed by the tractwriters represent and 'H. P. L.' and 'W. B.' when found in conjunction, vouching for a tract like this, can signify but two persons in the Church of England—are revered by their party, by those who agree with them within that Church; but the name of the prelate into whose mouth they have put words which were never his, is revered beyond the limits of the British Empire, and his words carry weight throughout the world.

Thus have the individuals who accuse a General Council, headed by the Vicar of Christ, of having formulated and issued a statement 'conspicuously unhistorical' and 'utterly false,' themselves, and that in the very document of their accusation, propagated a statement which is at variance with fact.

So much for historical accuracy, and the value of even contemporary history by way of evidence.

What the Archbishop of Westminster has really said, may be found in the fourth chapter of his Pastoral Letter to his Clergy, entitled 'The Vatican Council, and its Definitions.' Among other things he there says as follows:

'Is there any tribunal of appeal in matters of history? or is there no ultimate judge? Is history a road where no one can err? or is it a wilderness in which we must wander without guide or path? Are we all left to private judgment alone? If any one say that there is no judge but right reason or common sense, he is only reproducing in history what Luther applied to the Bible. This theory may be intellectually and

morally possible to those who are not Catholics. In Catholics such a theory is simple heresy. That there is an ultimate judge in such matters of history as affect the truths of revelation, is a dogma of faith.'

Again: 'I would ask, Is it scientific or passionate to reject the cumulus of evidence surrounding the line of two hundred and fifty-six Pontiffs, because one case may be found which is doubtful? doubtful, too, be it remembered, only on the theory that history is a wilderness without guide or path; in no way doubtful to those who, as a dogma of faith, believe that the revelation of faith was anterior to its history and is independent of it, being divinely secured by the presence and assistance of Him who gave it. And this is a sufficient answer to the case of Honorius, which of all controversies is the most useless, barren, and irrelevant.' Again: Whensoever any doctrine is contained in the divine tradition of the Church, all difficulties from human history are excluded, as Tertullian lays down, by prescription. The only source of revealed truth is God, the only channel of His revelation is the Church. No human history can declare what is contained in that revelation. The Church alone can determine its limits, and therefore its contents. The city seated on a hill cannot be hid, and is its own evidence, anterior to its history, and independent of it. Its history is to be learned of itself. It is not therefore by criticisms on past history, but by acts of faith in the living voice of the Church at this hour, that we can know the faith.'

Again, examining the relations of history to faith, His Grace continues: 'The objection from history has been stated in these words: There are grave difficulties,

from the words and acts of the Fathers of the Church, from the genuine documents of history, and from the doctrine of the Church itself, which must be altogether solved, before the doctrine of the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff can be proposed to the faithful as a doctrine revealed by God. Are we to understand from this that the words and acts of the Fathers, and the documents of human history, constitute the Rule of Faith, or that the Rule of Faith depends upon them, and is either more or less certain as it agrees or disagrees with them? or, in other words, that the rule of faith is to be tested by history, not history by the rule of faith? If this be so, then they who so argue lay down as a theological principle, that the doctrinal authority of the Church, and therefore the certainty of dogma, depends, if not altogether, at least in part, on human history. From this it would follow, that when critical or scientific historians find, or suppose themselves to find, a difficulty in the writings of the Fathers or other human histories, the doctrines proposed by the Church as of divine revelation are to be called into doubt, unless such difficulties can be solved. The gravity of this objection is such, that the principle on which it rests is undoubtedly either a doctrine of faith or a heresy.'

Again: The revelation of the faith, and the institution of the Church, were both perfect and complete, not only before human histories existed, but even before the inspired Scriptures were written. The Church itself is the divine witness, teacher, and judge of the revelation intrusted to it. There exists no other; there is no tribunal to which appeal from the Church can lie ;