Part 4

Such considerations do not establish the claim of the Catholic Church, but they destroy certain particular objections to that claim, drawn from the supposed clash between the moral character of the Church’s claim and the historical record of the Church making such a claim.

From these I turn to what I have called the major objection of modern times: the intellectual objection; the objection that History shows the structure of the Catholic Church to have proceeded from man.

II. THE MAJOR OR INTELLECTUAL ARGUMENT

The last and much the most important division of the arguments based upon History against the Catholic claim is, in general, the argument that the Church cannot be the divine thing it claims to be because it is in its essence demonstrably man-made: it is in its essence, and can be proved by History to be, of human institution, betraying all those characteristic illusions which man conjures up and imposes upon himself in all his efforts to reach out to the unknowable and unattainable of his desire.

This--by far the most serious historical form of attack upon the Faith--falls into two distinct branches, which I will call for the sake of brevity (without pretence to the full accuracy of the terms and certainly with no intention of using them abusively) the _Protestant_ and the _Pagan_. I mean by the _Protestant_ argument that argument against the Faith drawn from History which maintains that the Church has suffered fundamental corruption and has lost some presupposed original character through the increasing delusions of the human mind. I call the _Pagan_ or purely Sceptical argument that which denies, on the testimony of History, that there ever has been a divine Church at all, or any clear revelation of divine things to men at any time or in however simple a form, and proposes to prove that all the doctrine of the Church is of man’s own making.

These two I will take successively, maintaining the order I have throughout, to wit, attending to the least important before approaching the more important.

I take it that in the times in which we live the Protestant objection, even in its vaguest form, is the less formidable. I shall take it first. I shall conclude with what is, in my own judgment, far the most formidable attack at this moment, and likely to become still more formidable in the near future, the Pagan or purely Sceptical attack: the argument from History that _all_ religion is man-made, that the Catholic Church must be included in the category of man-made things, and that therefore the Catholic Church has no claim to Divine Authority.

(a) _The Protestant argument from History._

Throughout the story of the Catholic Church, i.e. during all the last nineteen hundred years,[5] there have continued recurrent protests against this or that doctrine: recurrent affirmations that some other doctrine, contrary to the authoritative definition, is true, and that the authoritative definition is itself false. From these denials and affirmations have proceeded what are called, in Catholic terminology, the various heresies.

But towards the end of the Middle Ages these protests gathered together in a new form, which was essentially an appeal to History, and to their general character was applied the term “Protestant.” We need not quarrel over the term or its derivation. It has been, by universal agreement, applied during the last four hundred years.

The Protestant challenge to the Catholic Faith is essentially a challenge based upon History. It proposes to show by historical evidence that whereas there was some original body of true revelation, this has been distorted, corrupted and overlaid, and that the Catholic Church with its perpetual accretions of doctrine, ritual and office is more and more divergent from, or even contrary to, the divine original thus presupposed.

The Protestant argument still exists even when it is put in its most vague and tenuous modern form. Even those who say, as do so many to-day (believing themselves to be pure sceptics), “I accept the mission of Jesus Christ as salutary to mankind and as containing eternal verities, which it is essential that man for his good should know; but I reject all supernatural statements in connection with this mission,” are still essentially Protestants.[6] They presuppose some original nucleus, however restricted on content and in time, which they postulate as good and true.

The most extreme case--and to-day the most common one--the case of the man who says he takes the four canonical Gospels, and these alone; that he rejects Pauline theology as a corruption, a man-made thing proceeding from the man Paul; that he rejects in the Gospels themselves every element which affirms or implies the miraculous powers of Jesus Christ, His claim to divinity, His Resurrection and the rest, is still a Protestant case. He affirms that the Sermon on the Mount (to which he is oddly attached) and sundry general propositions upon humility, charity and other Catholic virtues, are good: and in saying that they are good he is saying that they are true. His quarrel is not with the whole Catholic scheme, but with everything in the Catholic scheme beyond what he has chosen for himself out of the mass of Catholic teaching.[7]

Now let us put down at the beginning of the debate one common element upon which all should be agreed: there _has_ been development; and in so far as development involves change, there has been in that sense, and in that alone, change. What is more, the development continues, and in so far as the word “change” may be applied to development, change continues.[8]

The definitions of the Council of Trent are immensely more elaborate than the Apostles’ Creed; the Apostles’ Creed (probably dating from the earliest origins of the Church though it does, and at the latest, in its essentials, a second-century Roman form) has more exact definition in it than the Gospel; the ritual of the Mass is not identical in every place; it is not identical through time. The Liturgy at once expanded and crystallised as the generations proceeded. Even within the brief space of a few centuries it is possible to point to portions of the Roman Mass (to take but one form) which began as voluntary or optional prayers and which became incorporated in the regular structure of the Sacrifice. One might even say that certain slight additions of quite recent origin may, in the near future, follow the same course. The bishop, the priest and the deacon of the original Church formed a far simpler body than does the vast organisation of the Hierarchy to-day, and new special worships of this saint or that, new shrines, and all the rest continually arise. The argument in no way turns upon either side (for men of intelligence or information) on so obvious and elementary a truth as that such development exists. It is common ground upon which both must proceed. Where they differ is upon the point whether or no such development has introduced a fundamental change of character into the Catholic Church with the passage of the centuries.

A parallel will explain what I mean. Two men observe a tree. One says, “It is an oak, in full vigour”; the other says, “No, it was of oaken origin, but there has been grafted upon it another growth and the whole is thus not only warped and transformed, but in my eyes diseased. It is not an oak.”

The first man, who says, “It is a living oak consonant in all its parts,” does not deny that the acorn is different from the mature tree: the young sapling different in form from either the original acorn or the tree as it now appears. He does not deny that in a hundred years the form of the tree will seem to have changed still more; that in the fifty years past it has changed. What he denies is that there has been any change in that by which an oak is an oak. It is essentially the thing which it has always been. That is his contention. Its growth is normal to its nature, and in so far as growth involves change, such change is the very proof of identity.

His opponent denies this. He says it was an oak once, long ago, but other plants grafted on it have so changed its nature that it can be called an oak no longer.

The appeal of the one is not to a supposed dead mechanical rigidity; it is not an affirmation that he has before him an acorn rather than an oak; it is to that principle of one-ness by which any thing is what it is. The appeal of his opponent is not to the mere fact of change (at least he must be very unintelligent if that process destroy in his eyes all essential unity in the developing thing); it is rather to the proposition that the changes were of a disfiguring and (to borrow a foreign word) “denaturing” kind. The one says, “Here is the same original organism, in full health and strength, growing and vigorous before our eyes.” The other says, “These changes, which I can substantiate by the consultation of old pictures and written records of the thing, are a proof of disease and of corruption.”

It is therefore quite beside the mark for the opponents, upon historical grounds, of some particular institution essential to the Catholic Church--for instance, the Primacy of Peter--to prove by elaborate reference to record that the Papal power under St. Clement was embryonic compared with the Papal power under Innocent III. It is quite beside the mark to bring forward, at too much pains, evidence on, say, the doctrine of the Real Presence to prove that its definition in the Council of Trent is far more elaborate, exclusive and exact than the statement of it in Justin Martyr, fourteen hundred years earlier. The point is that the one party to the controversy regards such change--if you like to call it change--as an inevitable and salutary phenomenon of life and a very proof of unity in character and time: the other, as a phenomenon opposed to the true life of the thing and a proof of its loss of identity with its original principle of life.

Now in my view there are two tests which one may apply to what I have called the Protestant argument from History: two tests by which one may discover that it rings false. And these I would tabulate as follows:

(1) The test of Innovation.

(2) The test of Critical Date.

By the test of Innovation I mean an historical examination to discover whether orthodox doctrine--not points doubtful or still controversial within the Catholic body, but defined truth--as propounded by the Catholic Church upon any given matter, at any given moment, had the character of an innovation, contrasting in essence with the development of the past; or whether on the contrary it was the denial of such doctrine, the counter-affirmation provoking such definition, which bore this character of innovation and novelty. If the first view be the true one, then the Catholic Church, false or true, has at least been in all its life one personality consistent with its own essence, and the successive definitions have all been in the line of tradition. But if the opposing view be established, then indeed corruption and error and therefore the absence of her Infallible Authority have been proved.

As to what I have called the test of Critical Date, I mean (what should be surely an obvious truth) that if the story has been a process of warping and corruption, there should be some discoverable stage at which this deflection began, and if the fixing of this stage be not only doubtful, but disputed in a hundred forms and set at widely separated epochs, differing by centuries, then the objection is ill-founded.

I would not be so pedantic and at the same time so logically weak as to demand of my opponent the fixing of a particular instant in which he discovers error originating. All such things, whether true developments or corruptions, take place in time; none springs up apparent in a single moment. All grow. But I do say that if a plain historical phenomenon of corruption has taken place in this or that--for example, the doctrine of the Eucharist--its inception must be observable within at least a certain range of years, a generation at the most. Such is the test of Critical Date.

I will now examine the matter by both these tests: Innovation and Critical Date.

(1) As to the first test, it is historically true--and once again, a very strange thing--that in every single case it is the protest against orthodoxy which has had the character of an innovation, and never the orthodox affirmation which has appeared as a novelty.

I will explain in a moment how an attempt might be made by our opponents to get over even this difficulty; but at any rate, as far as plain History is concerned, that remarkable fact which I have just stated is true.

You may take the whole list, from Cerinthus, who was a contemporary of the Apostles, down to Brigham Young and his Mormons, or to the latest Modernist, and you find in every case without exception the test working true. The heresiarch (as we Catholics call him) or the reformer, or prophet, or whatever other flattering term you may like to use in contra-distinction to heresiarch, appears as an innovator to the generation whom he disturbs, or to which he appeals. His doctrine comes as a _new_ doctrine, with all the shock and also all the appeal of novelty. There is not any one case in the long story of the Church where we can trace a steady protest against _any_ one of her fundamental doctrines, a protest appearing at the origins and increasing as the doctrine is more and more clearly defined. Nor is there any one case of a definition of orthodox doctrine appearing suddenly and with all the effect of an innovation. No doubt each reformer makes the claim that he has rediscovered the old original truth, long overlaid, but my point is that, when he and his doctrine appear, it is _they_--not the things they oppose--which invariably appear as sharp and, to most men, offensive novelties.

I have called that phenomenon in the story of the Catholic Church remarkable; it is even startling. I know of no other society to which this aspect of reform or re-action applies. If you will consider for a moment the psychology of the affair, judging it by your personal knowledge of the way in which your own mind works, and the minds of the men about you, you will, I think, perceive its unique character.

After all, what happens in our minds with regard to any form of degradation? For instance, what happens to-day with regard to a misquotation in literature or a warping of function in politics?

The first misquotation takes place, and is challenged. The bad habit grows, but it is still challenged here and there: the challenge is maintained. Each time it is challenged the error is admitted, but unfortunately spreads. Sometimes there comes at the end of the process a violent re-action; literary men swarm together (as it were) and insist upon the misquotation being driven out; and sometimes they succeed.

Or again, as to the warping of a political institution. Representative institutions were founded to be representative. People soon find out that they are only imperfectly representative: that they tend to represent the avarice or vanity of the individual delegates much more than the mandate of those who sent them to the representative assembly. What happens? Immediate protest; repeated protest; attempts at reform. Sometimes the reform makes good, the fear of God is put into the politicians, and the representative institution is purged and brought up with a round turn, and compelled to do its duty.

You may take the whole range of human action in this respect, and you will invariably find a process of this kind. It is common sense. Men do not allow their conception of a thing to be deflected by falsehood or laziness or illusion without sharply re-acting against that deflection. All History is full of the corruption of institutions--and of men; but all History is most emphatically _not full_--in fact, in all History you will not find an example--of the corruption taking place without its being noted and resisted.

Now here, in the case of Catholic doctrine, you have the singular fact that the process is the other way about. There is no protest till after the doctrine has become fixed. Take the case of the doctrine of the Incarnation. Whether true or false, it is certainly present before Cerinthus. The man who most violently combats Cerinthus’ statement that Our Lord suffered as man and not as God is one of our Lord’s own companions, St. John--a witness who had known Our Lord on earth, which Cerinthus never had. That is no proof that the doctrine is true; but it is proof of the historic fact that Apostolic society believed in the doctrine and that the first heresy in the matter was an innovation.

Or take the doctrine of the Eucharist. For centuries the Real Presence was accepted; in general terms, it is true, but accepted none the less. You get it unmistakably from the Words of Institution right on for a thousand years. You can argue against the _intention_ of the early statements based upon the words of institution. You can say that those who first alluded to the Eucharist did not intend the full doctrine of later times. You can say that the Words of Institution in the Gospel were only used by Our Founder metaphorically. You may say that the famous description of the Mass in Justin Martyr nearly eighteen hundred years ago did not connote the exact doctrine of Transubstantiation. You may quote (as Cranmer did) passages from St. Augustine which permit the special pleader to use them (if he leaves out the context and refuses to mention other passages) as evidence of a subjective rather than an objective Presence. But the plain historical fact remains that there is not one single protest heard during all the centuries during which the Christian Church did take the Real Presence for granted, and built up round that accepted doctrine the whole mass of the Liturgy in East and West. It remains true that you can find no resistance against this universal attitude. Though there is metaphysical discussion, there is not a case of a man saying, “The original doctrine was not that of Real Presence: such doctrine is a corruption only just introduced, and I protest against it.”

When the protest comes it is after thirty generations, at the end of the Dark Ages; and it produces a violent effect of innovation, of novelty.

I submit that no matter what particular defined doctrine in the Catholic scheme you may select, you will find without exception this most notable character attaching to it, that when denial of it was made within the Christian community--as when Arius denied the consubstantiality of the Son, or as when Nestorius denied the divine motherhood of Our Lady--it had the effect of a stone thrown at a pane of glass and breaking it: the startling effect of a shock; of something quite unexpected and exceedingly and unpleasantly new.

I myself who am writing this did, when I was a young man and very imperfectly instructed, take for granted the opposite. I thought, for instance, that the doctrine of the Trinity had very slowly arisen, that an original ignorance of Our Lord’s full divinity was gradually dispelled by the development of the doctrine; that the earlier the evidence was, the less it would confirm the doctrine; and that Arius was fighting a sort of rear-guard action: defending a cause which had once been vigorous but was lapsing through the process of time. I thought that; and I fancy most ordinary educated men who have not had the leisure or desire to read the evidence in detail think something of that sort with regard to the story of almost any one of the Christian mysteries. For, after all, the process is exactly what one would expect. One would expect any original statement in human affairs to be commonplace and straightforward, and the supernatural interpretation of it to come in by a process of accretion and illusion such as creates the innumerable legends and myths of mankind: first the teacher is a revered man, then vaguely thought to have something in him of the divine, then to be some sort of divine being, and, lastly, a God.

It was when I came to read the evidence and look closely into the matter for myself that I began to feel the surprise which I record here and which any one of my readers will also feel if he will read the actual evidence instead of guessing at what sounds most probable. The evidence is clear that the Trinitarian doctrine, growing in definition, was never put forward with novel and protested accretions. It was the Arian challenge which was new and immediately resisted.

It is the same with the mystery of the sacrament. Let anyone who believes the doctrine of the Real Presence in the Eucharist to have grown up very gradually as a sort of legend or myth, an accretion overlaying some originally straightforward and in no way mysterious ceremony, read the words in which the earliest writers who refer to the matter at all speak of it. Let him not only read the way in which they speak of it, but the way in which they acted. When that young boy in the streets of Pagan Rome allowed himself to be killed rather than show to the profane What he carried veiled in his hands, it is evident that he did not think it common bread. When we find in all the very earliest evidence of Liturgy insistence upon and repetition of the mystery, it gives us to think. I say again, for the twentieth time, as I have said at so many other points in this debate, all this is not a proof of the truth of the doctrine, but it is a proof that the historical process with regard to the doctrine is not that of corruption and essential change which our opponents have presumed it to be. It is a proof that, true or false, the mystery of the sacrament now held was originally held, and that the attack upon this doctrine, as upon any other, came as a novelty.

I have said that even this phenomenon, unparalleled as it is in the tale of human thought, was capable of explanation by an opponent. But I think if we examine that explanation we shall find it to fail.

The explanation is as follows: You are dealing with a body of fervid believers. As time proceeds the excesses, the delusions, the vagaries, proceeding from their very enthusiasm, permeate their body insensibly, and it is only when the process has gone a considerable length that, with a shock, some strong and lucid brain confronts the deluded with reality. Hence (it is said) the novelty of each heresy and the startling effect produced by the first statement of each heretical proposition. This is certainly true of abuses, as for instance the abuse of image worship, when it came to such a pitch that men accepted without question a mass of images, supposed to have appeared in some miraculous fashion without human workmanship. And if it be true of abuses which are recognised to be abuses by all, why should it not be true of fundamental doctrines, considering the blind fervour of which I have spoken and the natural consequences of such fervour?

My answer to that explanation is that the cases are not sufficiently numerous to establish a rule. It is true that you do get some few cases, very few, of abuses which proceed some way before they are abolished. But they do not go on long without being pulled up, nor are they so general and manifold as to militate against our judgment that, almost in proportion to its importance, the doctrine or mystery, when it is challenged, is challenged by a new force.

Moreover, there is this consideration. In the few cases where there is the analogy of an admitted abuse somewhat tardily reformed, all in the Church ultimately accept the reform. But this is not at all the case with regard to the main orthodox doctrine--quite the other way.