July 17, 2025 • 32 mins
Delve into the riveting religious autobiography of Apologia Pro Vita Sua. Experience the simple yet profound narrative that drastically shifted public perception of its author and solidified his deep convictions leading him to the Roman Catholic Church. Revered as one of the most widely read autobiographies in the English language, it holds a significant place in the 19th century, akin to Boswells Johnson in the 18th century.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter five of Apology of pro Vita Sua by John
Henry Cardinalnaumann. This Librivok's recording is in the public domain
recording by Bill mc gillivray, Chapter five, Position of my
Mind since eighteen forty five, Part one, from the time
that I became a Catholic. Of course, I have no
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further history of my religious opinions to narrate. In saying this,
I do not mean to say that my mind has
been idle, or that I have given up thinking on
theological subjects, but that I have no variations to record,
and have had no anxiety of heart. Whatever I have
been in perfect peace and contentment, I never have had
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one doubt. I was not conscious to myself on my
conversion of any change intellectual or moral wrought in my mind.
I was not conscious of firmer faith in the fundamental
truth of revelation, or of more self command. I had
not more fir but it was like coming into a
port after a rough sea. And my happiness on that
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score remains to this day without interruption. Nor had I
any trouble about receiving those additional articles which are not
found in the Anglican Creed. Some of them I believe already,
but not any one of them was a trial to me.
I made a profession of them upon my reception with
the greatest ease, and I have the same ease in
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believing them now. I am far, of course, from denying
that every article of the Christian creed, whither is held
by Catholics or Protestants, is beset with intellectual difficulties. And
it is simple fact that for myself I cannot answer
those difficulties. Many persons are very sensitive of the difficulties
of religion. I am as sensitive of them as any one,
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But I have never been able to see a connection
between apprehending those difficulties, however keenly and multiplying them to
any extent, and on the other hand, doubting the doctrines
to which they are attached. Ten thousand difficulties do not
make one doubt, as I understand the subject, difficulty and
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doubt are in commensurate. There of course, may be difficulties
in evidence, but I am speaking of difficulties intrinsic to
the doctrines themselves, or to their relations with each other.
A man may be annoyed that he cannot work out
a mathematical problem of which the answer is or is
not given to him without doubting that it admits of
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an answer, or that a certain particular answer is the
true one of all points of faith, the being of
a God is, to my own apprehension, encompassed with most difficulty,
and yet borne in upon our minds with most power.
People say that the doctrine of transubstantiation is difficult to believe.
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I did not believe the doctrine till I was a Catholic.
I had no difficulty in believing it as soon as
I believe that the Catholic Roman Church was the oracle
of God, and that she had declared this doctrine to
be part of the original revelation. It is difficult, impossible
to imagine, I grant, But how is it difficult to believe? Yet?
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Macaulay thought it was so difficult to believe that he
had need of a believer in it, of talents as
eminent as Sir Thomas Moore, before he could bring himself
to conceive that the Catholics of an enlightened age could
resist the overwhelming force of the arguments against it. Sir
Thomas Moore, he says, is one of the choice specimens
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of wisdom and virtue, and the doctrine of transubstantiation is
a kind of proof charge. A faith which stands that
test will stand any test. But for myself I cannot
indeed prove it. I cannot tell how it is. But
I say, why should it not be? What's to hinder it?
What do I know of substance or matter? Just as
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much as the greatest philosophers, and that is nothing at all?
So much is this the case that there is a
rising school of philosophy now which considers phenomena to constitute
the whole of our knowledge in physics? The Catholic Doctrine
leaves phenomenon alone. It does not say that the phenomena
go on. The contrary, it says that they remain, Nor
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does it say that the same phenomena are in several
places at once. It deals with what no one on
earth knows anything about the materials substance themselves, And in
like manner of that majestic article of the Anglican as
well as of the Catholic Creed, the doctrine of the
Trinity in unity? What do we know of the essence
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of the Divine Being? I know that my abstract idea
of three is simply incompatible with my idea of one.
But when I come to the question of concrete fact,
I have no means of proving that there is not
a sense in which one and three can equal be
predicated of the incommunicable God. But I am going to
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take upon myself the responsibility of more than the mere
creed of the Church. As the parties accusing me are
determined I shall do. They say that now in that
I am a Catholic. Though I may not have offenses
of my own against honesty to answer for, yet at
least I am answerable for the offenses of others, of
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my co religionists, of my brother priests, of the Church herself.
I am quite willing to accept the responsibility, and as
I have been able, as I trust my means of
a few words to dissipate in the minds of all
those who do not begin with disbelieving me the suspicion
with which so many Protestants start in forming their judgment
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of Catholics, namely that our creed is actually set up
in inevitable superstition and hypocrisy as the original sin of Catholicism.
So now I will proceed as before, identifying myself with
the Church in vindicating it, not of course denying the
enormous mass of sin and error which exists of necessity
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in that world wide, multiform communion, but going to the
proof of this one point, that its system is in
no sense dishonest, and that therefore the upholders and teachers
of that system as such have a claim to be
acquitted in their own persons of that odious imputation, stating, then,
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with the being of a God, which, as I have said,
is as certain to me as a certainty of my
own existence. Though when I try to put the grounds
of that certainty intological shape, I find a difficulty in
doing so. In mood and figure, to my satisfaction, I
look out of myself into the world of men, and
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there I see a sight which fills me with unspeakable distress.
The world seems simply to give the lie to that
great truth of which my whole being is so full,
And the effect upon me is, in consequence, as a
matter of necessity, as confusing as if it denied that
I am in existence myself. If I looked into a
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mirror and did not see my face, I should have
the sort of feeling which actually comes upon me when
I look into this living, busy world and see no
reflection of its creator. This is to me one of
those great difficulties of this absolute primary truth to which
I referred just now. Were it not for this voice
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speaking so clearly in my conscience, in my heart, I
should be an atheist, or a pantheist, or a polytheist.
When I looked into the world, I am speaking for
myself only, and I am far from denying the real
force of the argument in proof of a God, drawn
from the general facts of human society and the course
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of history. But these do not warm me or enlighten me.
They do not take away the winter of my desolation,
or make the bud unfold and the leaves grow within me,
and my moral being rejoice. The sight of the world
does nothing else than the prophets grow full of lamentations
and mournings and woe. To consider the world, in its
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length and breath, its various history, the many races of man,
their stats, their fortunes, their mutual alienations, their conflicts, and
then their ways, habits, governments, forms of worship, their enterprises,
their aimless courses, their random achievements and acquirements, the impotent
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conclusions of long standing facts, the tokens so faint and broken,
of superintending design, the blind evolution of what turns out
to be great powers or truth, the progress of things
as if from unreasoning elements, not towards final causes. The
greatness and littleness of man, his far reaching aims, his
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short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity, the dis
appointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil,
physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and intensity of sin,
the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary, hopeless irreligion, that
condition of the whole race, so fearful, yet exactly described
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in the Apostle's words, having no hope and without God
in the world. All this is a vision to dizzy
and appall and inflict upon the mind the sense of
a profound mystery which is absolutely beyond human solution. What
shall be said to this heart piercing reason, bewildering fact?
I can only answer that either there is no creator,
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or this living society of men is, in a true
sense discattered from his presence. Did I see a boy
of good make and mind, with the tokens on him
of a refined nature, cast upon the world without provision.
Unable to say whence he came, his birthplace, or his
family connections, I should conclude that there was some mystery
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connected with his history, and that he was one of whom,
from one cause or another, his parents were ashamed. Thus
only should I be able to account for the contrast
between the promise and the condition of his being. And
so I argue about the world if there be a God.
Since there is a God, the human race is implicated
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in some terrible aboriginal calamity. It is out of joint
with the purpose of its creator. This is a fact.
A fact is true as the fact of its existence.
And thus the doctrine of what is theologically called original
sin becomes to me almost as certain as that the
world exists, and as the existence of God. And now,
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supposing it were a blessed and loving will of the
Creator to infer in this anarchical condition of things, what
are we to suppose would be the methods which might
be necessarily are naturally involved in his purpose of mercy.
Since the world is in so abnormal a state, surely
it would be no surprise to me if the interposition
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were of necessity equally extraordinary, or what is called miraculous.
But this subject does not directly come into the scope
of my present remarks. Miracles as evidence involve a process
of reason or an argument, and of course I am
thinking of some mode of inference which does not immediately
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run into argument. I am rather asking what must be
the face to faced antagonist by which to withstand and
baffle the fierce energy of passion and the all corroding,
all dissolving skepticism of the intellect in religious inquiries. I
have no intention at all of denying that truth is
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the real object of our reason, and that if it
does not attain to truth, either the premise or the
process is in fault. But I am not speaking here
of right reason, but of reason as it acts in
fact and concretely, in fallen man. I know that even
the unaided reason, when correctly exercised, leads to a belief
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in God, in the immortality of the soul, and in
a future retribution. But I am considering the faculty of
reason actually and historically, and in this point of view,
I do not think I am wrong in saying that
its tendency is towards a simple unbelief in matters of religion.
No truth, however sacred, can stand against it in the
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long run. And hence it is that in the pagan world,
when our Lord came, the last traces of the religious
knowledge of the former times were all but disappearing from
those portions of the world in which the intellect had
been active and had had a career. And in these
latter days, in like manner, outside the Catholic Church, things
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are tending with far greater rapidity than in the old
time from the circumstances of the age to eighthsm in
one shape or other, What a scene, what a prospect
does the whole of Europe present as this day, and
not only Europe, but every government and every civilization through
the world which is under the influence of the European mind,
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especially for it most concerns us. How sorrowful in the
view of religion, even taken in its most elementary, most
attenuated form, is the spectacle presented to us by the
educated intellect of England, France and Germany, lovers of their
country and of their race. Religious men external to the
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Catholic Church have attempted various expedients to arrest fierce, wilful
human nature in its onward course and to bring it
into subjection. The necessity of some form of religion for
the interest of humanity has been generally acknowledged. But where
was the concrete representation of things invisible which would have
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the force and the toughness necessary to be a brain
against the deluge? Three centuries ago? The establishment of religion, material, legal,
and social was generally adopted as the best expedient for
the purpose in those countries which separated from the Catholic Church,
and for a long time it was successful. But now
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the crevices of those establishments are admitting the enemy. Thirty
years ago, education was relied upon. Ten years ago there
was a hope that wars would cease forever under the
influence of commercial enterprise and the reign of the youthful
and fine arts. But will anyone venture to say that
there is anything anywhere on this earth which will afford
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a folkroom for us whereby to keep the earth from
moving onwards. The judgment which experience passes, whether on establishments
or on education as a means of maintaining religious truth
in this inarchical world must be extended even to scripture,
though scripture be divine. Experience proves surely that the Bible
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does not answer a purpose for which it was never intended.
It may be accidentally the means of the conversion of individuals.
But a book, after all, cannot make a stand against
the wild, living intellect of man. And in this day
it begins to testify, as regards its own structure and contents,
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to the power of that universal solvent which is so
successfully acting upon religious establishments. Supposing then it to be
the will of the Creator to interfere in human affairs
and to make provisions for retaining in the world a
knowledge of himself so definite and distinct as to be
proof against the energy of human skepticism. In such a case,
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I am far from saying that there was no other way.
But there is nothing to surprise the mind if he
should think fit to introduce the power into the world
in trusted with the prerogative of infallibility in religious matters,
such a provision would be a direct, immediate, active, and
prompt means of Withstanding the difficulty, it would be an
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instrument suited to the need. And when I find that
This is the very claim of the Catholic Church. Not
only do I feel no difficulty in admitting the idea,
but there is a fitness in it which recommends it
to my mind. And thus I am brought to speak
of the Church's infallibility as a provision adapted by the
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mercy of the Creator to preserve religion in the world,
and to restrain that freedom of thought, which, of course,
in itself is one of the greatest of our natural gifts,
and to rescue it from its own suicidal excesses. And
let it be observed that neither here nor in what follows,
shall I have occasion to speak directly of revelation in
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its subject matter, but in reference to the sanction which
it gives to true truth, which may be known independently
of it, as it bears upon the defense of natural religion.
I say that the power possessed of infallibility in religious
teachings is happily adapted to be a working instrument in
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the course of human affairs, for smiting hard and throwing
back the immense energy of the aggressive, capricious, untrustworthy intellect.
And in saying this, as in the other things that
I have to say, it must still be recollected that
I am all along bearing in mind my main purpose,
which is a defense of myself. I am defending myself
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here from a plausible charge brought against Catholics. As will
be seen better as I proceed. The charge is this,
that I, as a Catholic, not only make profession to
hold doctrines which I cannot possibly believe in my heart,
but that I also believe in the existence of a
power on earth, which at its own will impose upon
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men any new set of credenda when it pleases, by
a claim to infallibility. In consequence, that my own thoughts
are not my own property, that I cannot tell that
tomorrow I may not have to give up what I
hold to day, and that the necessary effect of such
a condition of mind must be a degrading bondage, or
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a bitter inward rebellion, relieving itself in secret infidelity, or
the necessity of ignoring the whole subject of religion in
a sort of disgust, and of mechanically saying everything that
the Church says and leaving to others the defense of it.
As then I have spoken of the relation of my
mind towards the Catholic creed. So now I shall speak
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of the attitude which it takes up in view of
the Church's infallibility. And first, the initial doctrine of the
infallible teacher must be emphatic protest against the existing state
of mankind. Man had rebelled against his maker. It was
this that caused a divine interposition, and to proclaim it
must be the first act of the divinely accredited messenger.
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The Church must denounce rebellion as of all possible evils
the greatest. She must have no terms with it. If
she would be true to her master, she must ban
and anathematize it. This is the means of the statement
of mind which has furnished matter for one of those
special accusations to which I am at present replying. I have, however,
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no fault at all to confess in regard to it.
I have nothing to withdraw, And in consequence I here
deliberately repeat it. I said, the Catholic Church holds it
better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven,
for the earth to fail, and for all the many
millions on it to die of starvation. In extremest agony,
as far as temporal affliction goes than that one soul,
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I will not say should be lost, but should commit
one single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, or
should steal one poor fathing. Without excuse, I think the
principle here enunciated to be the mere preamble in the
formal credentials of the Catholic Church, and as an act
of parliament might begin with a whereas it is because
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of the intensity of the evil which has possession of mankind,
that a suitable antagonist has been provided against it, and
the initial act of that divinely commissioned power is, of
course to deliver her challenge and to defy the enemy.
Such a preamble then gives a meaning to her position
in the world, and an interpretation to her whole course
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of teaching and action. In like manner she has ever
put forth with most energenic distinctness, those other great elementary truths,
which either are an explanation of her mission or give
a character to her work. She does not teach that
human nature is irreclaimable. Else wherefore should she be sent
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not that it is to be shattered and reversed, but
to be extract it, purified and restored. Not that it
is a mere mass of hopeless evil, but that it
has the promise upon it of great things, and even now,
in its present state of disorder and excess, has a
virtue and a praise proper to itself. But in the
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next place, she knows and she preaches, that such a
restoration as she aims at affecting in it, must be
brought about, not simply through certain outward provisions of preaching
and teaching, even though they be her own, but from
an inward spiritual power or grace imparted directly from above,
and of which she is the channel. She has it
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in charge to rescue human nature from its misery, but
not simply by restoring it on its own level, but
by lifting it up to a higher level than its own.
She recognizes in it real moral excellence, though degraded, but
she cannot set it free from earth except by exalting
it towards Heaven. It was for this end that a
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renovating grace was put into her hands, And therefore, from
the nature of the gifts, as well as from the
reasonableness of the case, she goes on as a further
point to insist that all true conversions must begin with
the first springs of Thut, and to teach that each
individual man must be in his own person, one whole
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and perfect temple of God, while he is also one
of the living stones which build up a visible religious community.
And thus the distinctions between nature and grace, and between
outward and inward religion become two further articles in what
I have called the Preamble of her Divine Commission. Such
truths as these she vigorously reiterates and pertinaciously inflicts upon mankind.
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As to such she observes no half measure, no economical reserve,
no delicacy or prudence. He must be born again, is
a simple direct form of war words which she uses
after her divine master. Your whole nature must be reborn.
Your passions and your affections, and your aims, and your
conscience and your will must all be based in a
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new element and reconsecrated to your maker, and the last,
not the least, your intellect. It was for repeating these
points of her teaching in my own way that certain
passages of one of my volumes have been brought into
the general accusations which has been made against my religious opinions.
The writer has said that I was demented if I believed,
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and unprincipled if I did not believe in my own
statement that a lazy, ragged, filthy, storytelling beggar woman, if chaste, sober, cheerful,
and religious, had a prospect of heaven such as was
absolutely closed to an accomplished statesman or lawyer, or noble
be he, ever so just upright, generous, honorable, and conscientious,
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unless he had also some point of the divine Christian graces.
Yet I should have thought myself defended from criticism by
the words which our Lord used to the chief priests,
the publicans, and harlots go into the Kingdom of God
before you, And I was subjected again to the same
alternative of imputations for having ventured to say that consent
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to an unchaste wish was indefinitely more heinous than any
lie viewed apart from its causes, its motives, and its consequences.
Though alive, viewed under the limitation of these conditions. Is
a random utterance and almost outward act not directly from
the heart, however disgraceful and despicable. It may be, however,
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prejudicial to the social contract, however deserving of public reprobation,
whereas we have the express words of our Lord to
the doctrine that whoso looketh on a woman to lust
after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.
On the strength of these texts, I have surely as
much ro to believe in these doctrines, which have caused
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so much surprise, as to believe in original sin, or
that there is a supernatural revelation, or that a divine
person suffered, or that punishment is eternal. Passing now from
what I have called the preamble of that grant of
power which is made to the Church, to that power
itself infallibility, I promise two brief remarks. One, on the
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one hand, I am not here determining anything about the
essential seat of that power, because that is a question doctrinal,
not historical and practical. Two, Nor, on the other hand,
am I extending the direct subject matter over which that
power of infallibility has jurisdiction beyond religious opinion. And now,
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as to the power itself, this power, viewed in its fullness,
is as tremendous as the giant evil which has called
for it. He claims, when brought into exercise but in
the legitimate manner. For otherwise, of course, it is but
quiescent to know for certain the very meaning of every
portion of that divine message in detail, which was committed
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by our Lord to his apostles. He claims to know
its own limit and to decide what it can determine
absolutely and what it cannot. It claims moreover to have
a hold upon statements not directly religious, so far as this,
to determine whether they indirectly relate to religion, and, according
to its own definitive judgment, to pronounce whether or not,
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in a particular case they are simply consistent with revealed truth.
It claims to decide magisterially whether, as within its own
province or not, that such and such statements are or
are not prejudicial to the depositive of faith, in their
spirit or in their consequence, and to allow them or
to condemn and forbid them accordingly. It claims to impose
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silence at will on any matters or controversies of deary
doctrine which, on its own ipsey digs it it pronounces
to be dangerous, or inexpedient, or inopportune. It claims that
whatever may be the judgments of Catholics upon such acts.
These acts should be received by them with those outward
marks of reverence, submission, and loyalty which Englishmen, for instance,
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pay to the presence of their sovereign without expressing any
criticism on them on the ground that in their manner
they are inexpedient, or in their manner violent or harsh.
And lastly, it claims to have the right of inflicting
spiritual punishment, of cutting off from the ordinary channels of
the divine life, and of simply excommunicating those who refuse
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to submit themselves to its formal declarations. Such is the
infallibility lodged in the Catholic Church, viewed in the concrete,
as closed and surrounded by the appendages of its high sovereignty.
It is to repeat what I have said above, a
super eminent prodigious power sent upon earth to encounter and
master a giant evil. And now having thus described it,
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I profess my own absolute submission to its claim. I
believe the whole revealed dogma, as taught by the Apostles,
as committed by the Apostles to the Church, and as
declared by the Church to me. I receive it as
it is infallibly interpreted by the authority to whom it
is thus committed, and implicitly as it shall be in
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like manner further interpreted by that same authority till the
end of time. I submit moreover to the universally received
tradition of the Church, in which lies the matter of
those new dogmatic definitions, which are from time to time made,
and which in all times are the clothing and the
illustration of the Catholic dogma as already defined. And I
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submit myself to those other decisions of the Holy See,
theologically or not, through the organs which it has itself appointed, which,
waiving the question of their infallibility on the lowest ground,
come to me with a claim to be accepted and obeyed. Also,
I consider that gradually and in the course of ages,
Catholic inquiries has taken certain definite shapes, and has thrown
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itself into the form of a science with a method,
in a phraseology of its own, under the intellectual handling
of great minds such as Saint Athanasius, Saint Augustine and
Saint Thomas. And I feel no temptation at all to
break in pieces the great legacy of thought. Thus committed
to us for these later days, all this being considered
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as the profession which I made ex animo as for myself,
so also on the part of the Catholic body, as
far as I know it will at first sight be
said that the restless intellect of our common humanity is
utterly weighed down to the repression of all independent effort
and action whatever, so that if this is to be
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the mode of bringing it into order, it is brought
into order only to be destroyed. But this is far
from the result, far from what I conceive to be
the intention of that high Providence who has provided a
great remedy for a great evil, far from borne out
of the history of the conflict between infallibility and reason
in the past and the prospect of it in the future.
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The energy of the human intellect does from opposition grow.
It strives and is joyous, with a tough, elastic strength
under the terrible blows of the divinely fashioned weapon, and
is never so much itself as when it has lately
been overthrown. It is the custom with the Protestant writers
to consider that whereas there are too great principles in
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action in the history of religion, authority and private judgment.
They have all the private judgment to themselves, and we
have the full inheritance and the superincumbent oppression of authority.
But this is not so. It is the vast Catholic
body itself, and it only which affords an arena for
both combatants in that awful, never dying duel. It is
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necessary for the very life of religion, viewed in its
large operations and its history, that the warfare should be
incessantly carried on. Every exercise of infallibility is brought out
into act by an intense and varied operation of the reason,
both as its ally and as its opponent, and provokes again,
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when it has done its work, a reaction of reason
against it. And as in a civil polity, the state
exists and endures by means of the rivalry and collision,
the encroachments and defeats of its constituent parts. So, in
like manner, Catholic Christendom is no simple exhibition of religious absolutism,
but presents a continuous picture of authority and private judgment,
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alternately advancing and retracting. As the ebb and flow of
the tide. It is a vast assemblage of human beings
with wilful intellects and wild passions, together into one, by
the beauty and the majesty of a superhuman power, into
what may be called a large reformatory or training school.
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Not as if into a hospital or into a prison,
in order to be sent to bed, not to be
buried alive, But if I may change my metaphor brought together,
as if into some moral factory, for the melting, refining,
and molding by the incessant, noisy process of the new
material of human nature, so excellent, so dangerous, so capable
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of divine purposes. End of Chapter five, Part one,
Chapter five of Apology of pro Vita Sua by John
Henry Cardinalnaumann. This Librivok's recording is in the public domain
recording by Bill mc gillivray, Chapter five, Position of my
Mind since eighteen forty five, Part one, from the time
that I became a Catholic. Of course, I have no
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further history of my religious opinions to narrate. In saying this,
I do not mean to say that my mind has
been idle, or that I have given up thinking on
theological subjects, but that I have no variations to record,
and have had no anxiety of heart. Whatever I have
been in perfect peace and contentment, I never have had
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one doubt. I was not conscious to myself on my
conversion of any change intellectual or moral wrought in my mind.
I was not conscious of firmer faith in the fundamental
truth of revelation, or of more self command. I had
not more fir but it was like coming into a
port after a rough sea. And my happiness on that
(01:05):
score remains to this day without interruption. Nor had I
any trouble about receiving those additional articles which are not
found in the Anglican Creed. Some of them I believe already,
but not any one of them was a trial to me.
I made a profession of them upon my reception with
the greatest ease, and I have the same ease in
(01:27):
believing them now. I am far, of course, from denying
that every article of the Christian creed, whither is held
by Catholics or Protestants, is beset with intellectual difficulties. And
it is simple fact that for myself I cannot answer
those difficulties. Many persons are very sensitive of the difficulties
of religion. I am as sensitive of them as any one,
(01:50):
But I have never been able to see a connection
between apprehending those difficulties, however keenly and multiplying them to
any extent, and on the other hand, doubting the doctrines
to which they are attached. Ten thousand difficulties do not
make one doubt, as I understand the subject, difficulty and
(02:11):
doubt are in commensurate. There of course, may be difficulties
in evidence, but I am speaking of difficulties intrinsic to
the doctrines themselves, or to their relations with each other.
A man may be annoyed that he cannot work out
a mathematical problem of which the answer is or is
not given to him without doubting that it admits of
(02:32):
an answer, or that a certain particular answer is the
true one of all points of faith, the being of
a God is, to my own apprehension, encompassed with most difficulty,
and yet borne in upon our minds with most power.
People say that the doctrine of transubstantiation is difficult to believe.
(02:53):
I did not believe the doctrine till I was a Catholic.
I had no difficulty in believing it as soon as
I believe that the Catholic Roman Church was the oracle
of God, and that she had declared this doctrine to
be part of the original revelation. It is difficult, impossible
to imagine, I grant, But how is it difficult to believe? Yet?
(03:15):
Macaulay thought it was so difficult to believe that he
had need of a believer in it, of talents as
eminent as Sir Thomas Moore, before he could bring himself
to conceive that the Catholics of an enlightened age could
resist the overwhelming force of the arguments against it. Sir
Thomas Moore, he says, is one of the choice specimens
(03:36):
of wisdom and virtue, and the doctrine of transubstantiation is
a kind of proof charge. A faith which stands that
test will stand any test. But for myself I cannot
indeed prove it. I cannot tell how it is. But
I say, why should it not be? What's to hinder it?
What do I know of substance or matter? Just as
(03:59):
much as the greatest philosophers, and that is nothing at all?
So much is this the case that there is a
rising school of philosophy now which considers phenomena to constitute
the whole of our knowledge in physics? The Catholic Doctrine
leaves phenomenon alone. It does not say that the phenomena
go on. The contrary, it says that they remain, Nor
(04:22):
does it say that the same phenomena are in several
places at once. It deals with what no one on
earth knows anything about the materials substance themselves, And in
like manner of that majestic article of the Anglican as
well as of the Catholic Creed, the doctrine of the
Trinity in unity? What do we know of the essence
(04:43):
of the Divine Being? I know that my abstract idea
of three is simply incompatible with my idea of one.
But when I come to the question of concrete fact,
I have no means of proving that there is not
a sense in which one and three can equal be
predicated of the incommunicable God. But I am going to
(05:05):
take upon myself the responsibility of more than the mere
creed of the Church. As the parties accusing me are
determined I shall do. They say that now in that
I am a Catholic. Though I may not have offenses
of my own against honesty to answer for, yet at
least I am answerable for the offenses of others, of
(05:26):
my co religionists, of my brother priests, of the Church herself.
I am quite willing to accept the responsibility, and as
I have been able, as I trust my means of
a few words to dissipate in the minds of all
those who do not begin with disbelieving me the suspicion
with which so many Protestants start in forming their judgment
(05:47):
of Catholics, namely that our creed is actually set up
in inevitable superstition and hypocrisy as the original sin of Catholicism.
So now I will proceed as before, identifying myself with
the Church in vindicating it, not of course denying the
enormous mass of sin and error which exists of necessity
(06:07):
in that world wide, multiform communion, but going to the
proof of this one point, that its system is in
no sense dishonest, and that therefore the upholders and teachers
of that system as such have a claim to be
acquitted in their own persons of that odious imputation, stating, then,
(06:27):
with the being of a God, which, as I have said,
is as certain to me as a certainty of my
own existence. Though when I try to put the grounds
of that certainty intological shape, I find a difficulty in
doing so. In mood and figure, to my satisfaction, I
look out of myself into the world of men, and
(06:48):
there I see a sight which fills me with unspeakable distress.
The world seems simply to give the lie to that
great truth of which my whole being is so full,
And the effect upon me is, in consequence, as a
matter of necessity, as confusing as if it denied that
I am in existence myself. If I looked into a
(07:09):
mirror and did not see my face, I should have
the sort of feeling which actually comes upon me when
I look into this living, busy world and see no
reflection of its creator. This is to me one of
those great difficulties of this absolute primary truth to which
I referred just now. Were it not for this voice
(07:30):
speaking so clearly in my conscience, in my heart, I
should be an atheist, or a pantheist, or a polytheist.
When I looked into the world, I am speaking for
myself only, and I am far from denying the real
force of the argument in proof of a God, drawn
from the general facts of human society and the course
(07:51):
of history. But these do not warm me or enlighten me.
They do not take away the winter of my desolation,
or make the bud unfold and the leaves grow within me,
and my moral being rejoice. The sight of the world
does nothing else than the prophets grow full of lamentations
and mournings and woe. To consider the world, in its
(08:14):
length and breath, its various history, the many races of man,
their stats, their fortunes, their mutual alienations, their conflicts, and
then their ways, habits, governments, forms of worship, their enterprises,
their aimless courses, their random achievements and acquirements, the impotent
(08:34):
conclusions of long standing facts, the tokens so faint and broken,
of superintending design, the blind evolution of what turns out
to be great powers or truth, the progress of things
as if from unreasoning elements, not towards final causes. The
greatness and littleness of man, his far reaching aims, his
(08:55):
short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity, the dis
appointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil,
physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and intensity of sin,
the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary, hopeless irreligion, that
condition of the whole race, so fearful, yet exactly described
(09:18):
in the Apostle's words, having no hope and without God
in the world. All this is a vision to dizzy
and appall and inflict upon the mind the sense of
a profound mystery which is absolutely beyond human solution. What
shall be said to this heart piercing reason, bewildering fact?
I can only answer that either there is no creator,
(09:40):
or this living society of men is, in a true
sense discattered from his presence. Did I see a boy
of good make and mind, with the tokens on him
of a refined nature, cast upon the world without provision.
Unable to say whence he came, his birthplace, or his
family connections, I should conclude that there was some mystery
(10:02):
connected with his history, and that he was one of whom,
from one cause or another, his parents were ashamed. Thus
only should I be able to account for the contrast
between the promise and the condition of his being. And
so I argue about the world if there be a God.
Since there is a God, the human race is implicated
(10:23):
in some terrible aboriginal calamity. It is out of joint
with the purpose of its creator. This is a fact.
A fact is true as the fact of its existence.
And thus the doctrine of what is theologically called original
sin becomes to me almost as certain as that the
world exists, and as the existence of God. And now,
(10:44):
supposing it were a blessed and loving will of the
Creator to infer in this anarchical condition of things, what
are we to suppose would be the methods which might
be necessarily are naturally involved in his purpose of mercy.
Since the world is in so abnormal a state, surely
it would be no surprise to me if the interposition
(11:06):
were of necessity equally extraordinary, or what is called miraculous.
But this subject does not directly come into the scope
of my present remarks. Miracles as evidence involve a process
of reason or an argument, and of course I am
thinking of some mode of inference which does not immediately
(11:26):
run into argument. I am rather asking what must be
the face to faced antagonist by which to withstand and
baffle the fierce energy of passion and the all corroding,
all dissolving skepticism of the intellect in religious inquiries. I
have no intention at all of denying that truth is
(11:46):
the real object of our reason, and that if it
does not attain to truth, either the premise or the
process is in fault. But I am not speaking here
of right reason, but of reason as it acts in
fact and concretely, in fallen man. I know that even
the unaided reason, when correctly exercised, leads to a belief
(12:09):
in God, in the immortality of the soul, and in
a future retribution. But I am considering the faculty of
reason actually and historically, and in this point of view,
I do not think I am wrong in saying that
its tendency is towards a simple unbelief in matters of religion.
No truth, however sacred, can stand against it in the
(12:31):
long run. And hence it is that in the pagan world,
when our Lord came, the last traces of the religious
knowledge of the former times were all but disappearing from
those portions of the world in which the intellect had
been active and had had a career. And in these
latter days, in like manner, outside the Catholic Church, things
(12:53):
are tending with far greater rapidity than in the old
time from the circumstances of the age to eighthsm in
one shape or other, What a scene, what a prospect
does the whole of Europe present as this day, and
not only Europe, but every government and every civilization through
the world which is under the influence of the European mind,
(13:15):
especially for it most concerns us. How sorrowful in the
view of religion, even taken in its most elementary, most
attenuated form, is the spectacle presented to us by the
educated intellect of England, France and Germany, lovers of their
country and of their race. Religious men external to the
(13:36):
Catholic Church have attempted various expedients to arrest fierce, wilful
human nature in its onward course and to bring it
into subjection. The necessity of some form of religion for
the interest of humanity has been generally acknowledged. But where
was the concrete representation of things invisible which would have
(13:56):
the force and the toughness necessary to be a brain
against the deluge? Three centuries ago? The establishment of religion, material, legal,
and social was generally adopted as the best expedient for
the purpose in those countries which separated from the Catholic Church,
and for a long time it was successful. But now
(14:18):
the crevices of those establishments are admitting the enemy. Thirty
years ago, education was relied upon. Ten years ago there
was a hope that wars would cease forever under the
influence of commercial enterprise and the reign of the youthful
and fine arts. But will anyone venture to say that
there is anything anywhere on this earth which will afford
(14:42):
a folkroom for us whereby to keep the earth from
moving onwards. The judgment which experience passes, whether on establishments
or on education as a means of maintaining religious truth
in this inarchical world must be extended even to scripture,
though scripture be divine. Experience proves surely that the Bible
(15:04):
does not answer a purpose for which it was never intended.
It may be accidentally the means of the conversion of individuals.
But a book, after all, cannot make a stand against
the wild, living intellect of man. And in this day
it begins to testify, as regards its own structure and contents,
(15:25):
to the power of that universal solvent which is so
successfully acting upon religious establishments. Supposing then it to be
the will of the Creator to interfere in human affairs
and to make provisions for retaining in the world a
knowledge of himself so definite and distinct as to be
proof against the energy of human skepticism. In such a case,
(15:50):
I am far from saying that there was no other way.
But there is nothing to surprise the mind if he
should think fit to introduce the power into the world
in trusted with the prerogative of infallibility in religious matters,
such a provision would be a direct, immediate, active, and
prompt means of Withstanding the difficulty, it would be an
(16:12):
instrument suited to the need. And when I find that
This is the very claim of the Catholic Church. Not
only do I feel no difficulty in admitting the idea,
but there is a fitness in it which recommends it
to my mind. And thus I am brought to speak
of the Church's infallibility as a provision adapted by the
(16:32):
mercy of the Creator to preserve religion in the world,
and to restrain that freedom of thought, which, of course,
in itself is one of the greatest of our natural gifts,
and to rescue it from its own suicidal excesses. And
let it be observed that neither here nor in what follows,
shall I have occasion to speak directly of revelation in
(16:55):
its subject matter, but in reference to the sanction which
it gives to true truth, which may be known independently
of it, as it bears upon the defense of natural religion.
I say that the power possessed of infallibility in religious
teachings is happily adapted to be a working instrument in
(17:15):
the course of human affairs, for smiting hard and throwing
back the immense energy of the aggressive, capricious, untrustworthy intellect.
And in saying this, as in the other things that
I have to say, it must still be recollected that
I am all along bearing in mind my main purpose,
which is a defense of myself. I am defending myself
(17:38):
here from a plausible charge brought against Catholics. As will
be seen better as I proceed. The charge is this,
that I, as a Catholic, not only make profession to
hold doctrines which I cannot possibly believe in my heart,
but that I also believe in the existence of a
power on earth, which at its own will impose upon
(17:59):
men any new set of credenda when it pleases, by
a claim to infallibility. In consequence, that my own thoughts
are not my own property, that I cannot tell that
tomorrow I may not have to give up what I
hold to day, and that the necessary effect of such
a condition of mind must be a degrading bondage, or
(18:19):
a bitter inward rebellion, relieving itself in secret infidelity, or
the necessity of ignoring the whole subject of religion in
a sort of disgust, and of mechanically saying everything that
the Church says and leaving to others the defense of it.
As then I have spoken of the relation of my
mind towards the Catholic creed. So now I shall speak
(18:42):
of the attitude which it takes up in view of
the Church's infallibility. And first, the initial doctrine of the
infallible teacher must be emphatic protest against the existing state
of mankind. Man had rebelled against his maker. It was
this that caused a divine interposition, and to proclaim it
must be the first act of the divinely accredited messenger.
(19:05):
The Church must denounce rebellion as of all possible evils
the greatest. She must have no terms with it. If
she would be true to her master, she must ban
and anathematize it. This is the means of the statement
of mind which has furnished matter for one of those
special accusations to which I am at present replying. I have, however,
(19:26):
no fault at all to confess in regard to it.
I have nothing to withdraw, And in consequence I here
deliberately repeat it. I said, the Catholic Church holds it
better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven,
for the earth to fail, and for all the many
millions on it to die of starvation. In extremest agony,
as far as temporal affliction goes than that one soul,
(19:50):
I will not say should be lost, but should commit
one single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, or
should steal one poor fathing. Without excuse, I think the
principle here enunciated to be the mere preamble in the
formal credentials of the Catholic Church, and as an act
of parliament might begin with a whereas it is because
(20:13):
of the intensity of the evil which has possession of mankind,
that a suitable antagonist has been provided against it, and
the initial act of that divinely commissioned power is, of
course to deliver her challenge and to defy the enemy.
Such a preamble then gives a meaning to her position
in the world, and an interpretation to her whole course
(20:35):
of teaching and action. In like manner she has ever
put forth with most energenic distinctness, those other great elementary truths,
which either are an explanation of her mission or give
a character to her work. She does not teach that
human nature is irreclaimable. Else wherefore should she be sent
(20:55):
not that it is to be shattered and reversed, but
to be extract it, purified and restored. Not that it
is a mere mass of hopeless evil, but that it
has the promise upon it of great things, and even now,
in its present state of disorder and excess, has a
virtue and a praise proper to itself. But in the
(21:17):
next place, she knows and she preaches, that such a
restoration as she aims at affecting in it, must be
brought about, not simply through certain outward provisions of preaching
and teaching, even though they be her own, but from
an inward spiritual power or grace imparted directly from above,
and of which she is the channel. She has it
(21:39):
in charge to rescue human nature from its misery, but
not simply by restoring it on its own level, but
by lifting it up to a higher level than its own.
She recognizes in it real moral excellence, though degraded, but
she cannot set it free from earth except by exalting
it towards Heaven. It was for this end that a
(22:00):
renovating grace was put into her hands, And therefore, from
the nature of the gifts, as well as from the
reasonableness of the case, she goes on as a further
point to insist that all true conversions must begin with
the first springs of Thut, and to teach that each
individual man must be in his own person, one whole
(22:23):
and perfect temple of God, while he is also one
of the living stones which build up a visible religious community.
And thus the distinctions between nature and grace, and between
outward and inward religion become two further articles in what
I have called the Preamble of her Divine Commission. Such
truths as these she vigorously reiterates and pertinaciously inflicts upon mankind.
(22:49):
As to such she observes no half measure, no economical reserve,
no delicacy or prudence. He must be born again, is
a simple direct form of war words which she uses
after her divine master. Your whole nature must be reborn.
Your passions and your affections, and your aims, and your
conscience and your will must all be based in a
(23:12):
new element and reconsecrated to your maker, and the last,
not the least, your intellect. It was for repeating these
points of her teaching in my own way that certain
passages of one of my volumes have been brought into
the general accusations which has been made against my religious opinions.
The writer has said that I was demented if I believed,
(23:35):
and unprincipled if I did not believe in my own
statement that a lazy, ragged, filthy, storytelling beggar woman, if chaste, sober, cheerful,
and religious, had a prospect of heaven such as was
absolutely closed to an accomplished statesman or lawyer, or noble
be he, ever so just upright, generous, honorable, and conscientious,
(23:58):
unless he had also some point of the divine Christian graces.
Yet I should have thought myself defended from criticism by
the words which our Lord used to the chief priests,
the publicans, and harlots go into the Kingdom of God
before you, And I was subjected again to the same
alternative of imputations for having ventured to say that consent
(24:20):
to an unchaste wish was indefinitely more heinous than any
lie viewed apart from its causes, its motives, and its consequences.
Though alive, viewed under the limitation of these conditions. Is
a random utterance and almost outward act not directly from
the heart, however disgraceful and despicable. It may be, however,
(24:40):
prejudicial to the social contract, however deserving of public reprobation,
whereas we have the express words of our Lord to
the doctrine that whoso looketh on a woman to lust
after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.
On the strength of these texts, I have surely as
much ro to believe in these doctrines, which have caused
(25:03):
so much surprise, as to believe in original sin, or
that there is a supernatural revelation, or that a divine
person suffered, or that punishment is eternal. Passing now from
what I have called the preamble of that grant of
power which is made to the Church, to that power
itself infallibility, I promise two brief remarks. One, on the
(25:26):
one hand, I am not here determining anything about the
essential seat of that power, because that is a question doctrinal,
not historical and practical. Two, Nor, on the other hand,
am I extending the direct subject matter over which that
power of infallibility has jurisdiction beyond religious opinion. And now,
(25:46):
as to the power itself, this power, viewed in its fullness,
is as tremendous as the giant evil which has called
for it. He claims, when brought into exercise but in
the legitimate manner. For otherwise, of course, it is but
quiescent to know for certain the very meaning of every
portion of that divine message in detail, which was committed
(26:08):
by our Lord to his apostles. He claims to know
its own limit and to decide what it can determine
absolutely and what it cannot. It claims moreover to have
a hold upon statements not directly religious, so far as this,
to determine whether they indirectly relate to religion, and, according
to its own definitive judgment, to pronounce whether or not,
(26:32):
in a particular case they are simply consistent with revealed truth.
It claims to decide magisterially whether, as within its own
province or not, that such and such statements are or
are not prejudicial to the depositive of faith, in their
spirit or in their consequence, and to allow them or
to condemn and forbid them accordingly. It claims to impose
(26:56):
silence at will on any matters or controversies of deary
doctrine which, on its own ipsey digs it it pronounces
to be dangerous, or inexpedient, or inopportune. It claims that
whatever may be the judgments of Catholics upon such acts.
These acts should be received by them with those outward
marks of reverence, submission, and loyalty which Englishmen, for instance,
(27:21):
pay to the presence of their sovereign without expressing any
criticism on them on the ground that in their manner
they are inexpedient, or in their manner violent or harsh.
And lastly, it claims to have the right of inflicting
spiritual punishment, of cutting off from the ordinary channels of
the divine life, and of simply excommunicating those who refuse
(27:43):
to submit themselves to its formal declarations. Such is the
infallibility lodged in the Catholic Church, viewed in the concrete,
as closed and surrounded by the appendages of its high sovereignty.
It is to repeat what I have said above, a
super eminent prodigious power sent upon earth to encounter and
master a giant evil. And now having thus described it,
(28:07):
I profess my own absolute submission to its claim. I
believe the whole revealed dogma, as taught by the Apostles,
as committed by the Apostles to the Church, and as
declared by the Church to me. I receive it as
it is infallibly interpreted by the authority to whom it
is thus committed, and implicitly as it shall be in
(28:27):
like manner further interpreted by that same authority till the
end of time. I submit moreover to the universally received
tradition of the Church, in which lies the matter of
those new dogmatic definitions, which are from time to time made,
and which in all times are the clothing and the
illustration of the Catholic dogma as already defined. And I
(28:49):
submit myself to those other decisions of the Holy See,
theologically or not, through the organs which it has itself appointed, which,
waiving the question of their infallibility on the lowest ground,
come to me with a claim to be accepted and obeyed. Also,
I consider that gradually and in the course of ages,
Catholic inquiries has taken certain definite shapes, and has thrown
(29:12):
itself into the form of a science with a method,
in a phraseology of its own, under the intellectual handling
of great minds such as Saint Athanasius, Saint Augustine and
Saint Thomas. And I feel no temptation at all to
break in pieces the great legacy of thought. Thus committed
to us for these later days, all this being considered
(29:33):
as the profession which I made ex animo as for myself,
so also on the part of the Catholic body, as
far as I know it will at first sight be
said that the restless intellect of our common humanity is
utterly weighed down to the repression of all independent effort
and action whatever, so that if this is to be
(29:54):
the mode of bringing it into order, it is brought
into order only to be destroyed. But this is far
from the result, far from what I conceive to be
the intention of that high Providence who has provided a
great remedy for a great evil, far from borne out
of the history of the conflict between infallibility and reason
in the past and the prospect of it in the future.
(30:18):
The energy of the human intellect does from opposition grow.
It strives and is joyous, with a tough, elastic strength
under the terrible blows of the divinely fashioned weapon, and
is never so much itself as when it has lately
been overthrown. It is the custom with the Protestant writers
to consider that whereas there are too great principles in
(30:40):
action in the history of religion, authority and private judgment.
They have all the private judgment to themselves, and we
have the full inheritance and the superincumbent oppression of authority.
But this is not so. It is the vast Catholic
body itself, and it only which affords an arena for
both combatants in that awful, never dying duel. It is
(31:03):
necessary for the very life of religion, viewed in its
large operations and its history, that the warfare should be
incessantly carried on. Every exercise of infallibility is brought out
into act by an intense and varied operation of the reason,
both as its ally and as its opponent, and provokes again,
(31:24):
when it has done its work, a reaction of reason
against it. And as in a civil polity, the state
exists and endures by means of the rivalry and collision,
the encroachments and defeats of its constituent parts. So, in
like manner, Catholic Christendom is no simple exhibition of religious absolutism,
but presents a continuous picture of authority and private judgment,
(31:48):
alternately advancing and retracting. As the ebb and flow of
the tide. It is a vast assemblage of human beings
with wilful intellects and wild passions, together into one, by
the beauty and the majesty of a superhuman power, into
what may be called a large reformatory or training school.
(32:09):
Not as if into a hospital or into a prison,
in order to be sent to bed, not to be
buried alive, But if I may change my metaphor brought together,
as if into some moral factory, for the melting, refining,
and molding by the incessant, noisy process of the new
material of human nature, so excellent, so dangerous, so capable
(32:32):
of divine purposes. End of Chapter five, Part one,
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