De immutabilitate traditionis contra modernam haeresim evolutionismi

That the authentic organ of tradition was instituted by Jesus Christ in His Church, namely the apostolic hierarchy with which He promised that He would be present unto the end of the ages. And that tradition itself is the preaching continued from age to age through the successors of the apostles under the charism of the assistance of the Holy Spirit, of the revelation first received orally from the same Jesus Christ and His apostles.

Here first recall the gospel history, and whatever is contained in it concerning the origins of Christian doctrine: Which when it had begun, says Heb. II-3, to be declared by the Lord, was confirmed unto us by those who heard. And note that word, declared, and again, by those who heard. In which indeed is briefly recapitulated that which in the above-mentioned history is altogether evident and open: namely, that the saving doctrine of Christ was brought forth and published by the same Lord Jesus Christ, not by published writings, but by the word of preaching, by personal teaching, by the oracle of the living voice. For He Himself, the Son of God made man, having conversed with men on earth, took up the part of master and teacher. He, shown to all the people by the prophecies fulfilled in Himself, approved by works and miracles as by divine seals, finally declared by the heavenly Father, in the solemn inauguration of His teaching, to be heard before all others, « having taken the garb of a teacher, taught us the manner of living well, that afterwards, as God, He might bestow eternal life »¹. And now He had accomplished the work which the Father had given Him, now for three years in Galilee and Judea He had announced the gospel of the kingdom in every direction, now He had formed His disciples, now by His blood He had established the new and eternal testament, and risen from the dead He was preparing His ascension into heaven. Looking forward, however, to the perpetuity and the propagation of the revelation which He had brought to the world, He addressed those whom He was leaving on earth as vicars of His work with these last words: All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Going therefore, teach ye all nations, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and behold I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world. These last words, I say, are the words of Christ, who by an efficacious ordinance disposes the means whereby His revealed doctrine should reach the whole world and all future generations; words spoken after the resurrection in the solemn appearance on the mountain of Galilee, to which, besides the chief apostles, He had summoned all the other disciples², so that the whole Church which then existed might be witness of the things which He was commanding at the last.

There, moreover, is first the institution of the authentic organ of tradition. Of tradition, I say, of a doctrine not taken from anywhere at all, but received from Christ; a doctrine not to be acquired but committed, not to be gained but entrusted; in which not authors are sought but guardians, not inventors, but faithful stewards. Teaching, He says, to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. But Christ commanded to be believed the whole doctrine of the gospel which He Himself had personally preached while He conversed among us, and which through His Holy Spirit, as to its final complement, He had promised that He would reveal to His disciples, saying: « I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when that Spirit of truth shall come, whom I will send you from the Father, He shall teach you all truth »³.

There is secondly the institution of an organ of tradition which was to endure even unto the end of the world. For everywhere in the gospel, and especially in Matthew, συντέλεια αἰῶνος signifies the consummation of this present world, and the final advent of Christ, and the time of the universal judgment. Nor assuredly is the sense changed by the fact that the discourse is directed to those who were present, because it is directed to those present as about to remain always in their successors. Hence also here, all nations are bidden to be taught without any restriction either of places or even of times; and afterwards we see the apostles, executing the command of Christ, appointing in their place others who should be guardians of the doctrine received and teachers, through the Holy Spirit communicated to them and remaining in them⁴; to whom again it is prescribed that what they themselves have received they should commit to faithful men, fit also to teach others⁵; and that, until the advent of D. N. I. C., whom in His own times He shall show, the blessed and only mighty one, the King of kings and Lord of lords⁶.

There is thirdly the institution of an organ of tradition which is endowed with the charism of indefectibility. And behold, He says, I am with you. For what it is for God to be with someone, the most frequent and best-known testimonies of Scripture show. For it is an expression everywhere in use to signify the certain and invincible protection of God; an expression in which every kind of efficacious help is implied, and by which that assistance is asserted which, in the matter for which it was promised, admits no fall, and guards against every defection from the intended end. But to the apostles, and to their successors forever, is promised the assistance of Christ, not indeed for any effect whatsoever which human thought could perchance fashion for itself, when the kingdom of God is at issue; not precisely for the rooting out of all vices, not for the preventing of all scandals. Nay, these things are elsewhere expressly foretold as to come. It is expressly foretold that in the Lord's field there will be tares together with the wheat, and that both will grow until the harvest. Known is the net cast into the sea which gathers of every kind of fish. Known is the little boat of which that wonderful thing is observed, that though it is loaded and pressed with so great a multitude, yet it is not submerged. Known are the other parables of the gospel aiming at the same sense. Hence He does not say: I am with you founding a kingdom of righteousness already consummate, and of sanctity already absolute. But He says: I am with you teaching those things which are contained in the revelation of my gospel. Therefore the promised assistance, and the indefectibility answering to it, must without doubt be acknowledged in order to the undefiled tradition of the genuine doctrine of Christ.

There is fourthly the institution of an organ of tradition, to which continuously, and not only at intervals, Christ will lend the aforesaid assistance. For again, He does not say that He will be present on certain days and in certain circumstances, as for instance when categorical definitions of faith are to be drawn up, or when it will be necessary by an express decree to correct what was formerly falsely handed down, or to restore to purity the sense of revelation adulterated by the injury of the times. But, all days, He says. And what is all days? It is: in the ordinary and daily ministry of the magisterium, no otherwise than in its more solemn exercise. For by saying, all days, He removed every interruption whatsoever, however small, even of a single day, and left no room for deviation. What is all days? It is: in every age, at every time. The age of the primitive Church will pass; its origins will no longer be seen so near at hand; it will not be possible to measure the series of succession, as it were at a single glance of the eye, by counting the hands through which the treasure of heavenly doctrine has been transmitted, and still and always I am with you. Still and always will that same Spirit of truth be present who was present from the beginning⁷. Still and always, until the consummation of the saints comes, will be found those same pastors and teachers placed by Christ, so that we may not be little children wavering, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, in the cunning to the circumvention of error⁸. Still and always will that same apostolic hierarchy survive, which, by reason of the indefectible tradition of the gospel received from Christ, is the pillar and ground of the truth⁹.

There is fifthly and lastly the institution of an organ of tradition, not of any kind whatsoever, but by way of oral and always living preaching. — This indeed is shown in the first place by all that has just been said of the reason, the nature, and the perpetuity of the instituted ministry. For where, I ask, in the biblical system of the Protestants is there a place for that permanent, ordinary, perpetual organ, to which continuously, all days, unto the end of the ages, Christ should lend His assistance? None assuredly, because once the treasure of heavenly doctrine had been deposited by those who had heard, in the fixed instrument of Scripture, nothing further remained to be done, and the whole work of teaching all things whatsoever I have commanded you necessarily came to an end with the age of the apostles or of the apostolic men. — To this also the words teach, preach sound, understood in their obvious and natural sense, since Scripture is nothing but an artificial medium, accommodated to few, and introduced accessorily in aid or supplement of oral discipline. Hence also we learn from the most certain testimony of history that the apostles (whom no one will imagine either never to have attained the mind of Christ, or not to have obeyed His command) wrote nothing ex professo as executing their own proper and special office, but only occasionally, and as it were moved by some accidental reason. « Matthew, writes Eusebius l. 3 hist. c. 24, wrote on this occasion, because when he had preached to the Hebrews and was preparing to go to the Gentiles, he judged it useful, if to those whom he was leaving in body he should leave some memorial of his preaching. Mark, the same Eusebius relates l. 2, c. 15, wrote the gospel neither of his own accord, nor commanded by Peter whose disciple he was, but compelled by the entreaties of the Romans. Luke, the same Eusebius hands down l. 3, c. 24, wrote for this reason only, because he had seen many others rashly presume to commit to writing the things which they did not perfectly know, that he might namely draw us away from the uncertain narrations of others. John, Eusebius writes in the same place, preached the gospel without any writing even to his extreme old age, and Jerome adds in his book de Script. Eccl., that at length he was compelled by the bishops of Asia to write the gospel on account of the heresy of the Ebionites then arising. And so, had the heresy of Ebion not existed, we should perhaps not have the gospel of John, just as we should not have the other three, had the aforesaid occasions not been offered. For Eusebius rightly writes that only two of the twelve apostles wrote the gospel, and that they were provoked to this by a kind of necessity. From which it is manifestly gathered that the apostles thought, with a primary intention, not of writing but of preaching »¹⁰. Add also that if the apostles had wished ex professo to consign their doctrine to letters, they would certainly have composed a catechism or a similar book coalescing into a body of doctrine, whereas they wrote either a history, as the evangelists, or epistles on some occasion, as Peter, Paul, James, Jude, John, as Bellarmine added, l. c. It is therefore a sign, and indeed an unmistakable one, that they had been placed by Christ to hand down and transmit the revealed truth of the gospel, first and principally through living and personal preaching. But if the apostles, then also all their successors forever, who, as far as pertains to the present, evidently constitute one moral person with them. — It is confirmed lastly, and most manifestly, from the supreme commendations which the same apostles left to the Church in place of a testament. For what is it that Paul, with his passion now at hand, writes to Timothy, in whose person the whole body of superiors is understood? O Timothy, guard the deposit. And again: Hold the form of sound words which thou hast heard from me...... Guard the good deposit through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us. And again: Thou therefore, my son..... the things which thou hast heard from me through many witnesses, these commit to faithful men who will be fit also to teach others. And yet: « In these places Scripture cannot be understood, but the treasure of doctrine, the understanding of the divine dogmas, that is, both the sense of the Scriptures and of other dogmas. Which whole doctrine he wished to be propagated through Tradition, as Chrysostom and Theophylact explain in this place. To which Irenaeus also alludes, l. 4, c. 43, when he says: Wherefore, it is fitting to obey the presbyters who are in the Church, those who have succession from the apostles, .... who with the succession of the episcopate have received the sure charism of truth according to the pleasure of the Father. And it is easily gathered from the very words. For if he were speaking of written words, he would not so anxiously commend the deposit. For Scriptures are easily preserved in chests, and by copyists; but the apostle wishes it to be kept through the Holy Spirit in the breast of Timothy. And then he would not add: These things commit to faithful men who will be fit also to teach others; but he would say, commit them to copyists, that they may transcribe many copies. Nor would he say: Which thou hast heard from me through many witnesses, but, which I have written to thee. And so, not the words only, but also the sense, and much more this than those, the apostle commends to Timothy, and bids him hand it on by the hands of his successors »¹¹.

We have therefore in the Christian religion, by divine institution, an organ of tradition, and that of an oral and always living tradition; an organ, I say, authentic, perpetually to endure, endowed with the charism of continuous assistance. I add also, undivided in itself, and in its individuality always visible; and this especially on account of the one designated centre and head, Peter, who is necessarily present in the apostolic hierarchy as first, (Matth. X-2); necessarily present with the mysterious name imposed on him by Christ, whereby the unshaken solidity of his ministry was signified, (Ioan. 1-42); necessarily present as the confirmer of the brethren, (Luc. XXII-32); as the rock upon which the Church is built, (Matth. XVI-18), understanding all these things here according to what is supposed as demonstrated and proved in the proper treatise. But now, if such is the organ of tradition as has been described thus far from the solemn document itself of the institution of the Church, it appears at once, and is understood without difficulty, that tradition itself, of which the present disputation runs, is nothing other than the preaching continued from age to age through the successors of the apostles under the charism of indefectibility, of that revelation which was first received from the mouth of Jesus Christ, or of His apostles, the Holy Spirit dictating.

This is the tradition which all Christian antiquity acknowledges. This is the tradition which is called by Ignatius, ad Ephes. n. 1, the sentence of Jesus Christ, in which the bishops are established throughout the bounds of the earth; by Polycarp, ad Philipp. n. 7, the doctrine delivered to us from the beginning; by Irenaeus, l. 3, c. 2, the tradition which is from the apostles, which is kept in the churches through the successions of the presbyters; by Tertullian, Praescript. c. 37, the rule which the Church delivered from the apostles, the apostles from Christ, Christ from God; by Origen, de Princip. Praef. n. 2, the ecclesiastical preaching delivered from the apostles through the order of succession, and remaining in the Church even to this day. This is the tradition to which, against the first heretics or Gnostics, the Fathers of the first and second centuries appeal. And the Gnostics indeed, when they were argued against from the Scriptures, answered: « Because the truth cannot be found from these by those who do not know the tradition. For they did not deliver it by letters, but by the living voice »¹². Nor on this principle did the Fathers have any contradicting them, but rather consenting, and in all things unanimous. But when they were again recalled to tradition itself, then they threw out a hidden tradition, derived to themselves alone, either from Valentinus, or from Marcion, or from Cerinthus, or from Basilides¹³. To whom was opposed the authentic tradition, which is public in the Church, and which has as its organ the continuous succession of bishops from the apostles, and especially from the prince of the apostles in the Roman See. An outstanding passage in this matter is that of Irenaeus, which it will be pleasing to transcribe here in full, so that what has thus far been laid down as a foundation may have both a recapitulation and an invincible confirmation.

« The tradition of the apostles manifested throughout the whole world is present to be seen in every Church by all who wish to see the truth; and we are able to number those who were appointed bishops in the churches by the apostles, and their successors even to us, who taught nothing of this kind, nor knew anything such as these men rave about... But since it would be very long in a volume such as this to enumerate the successions of all the churches, pointing to the greatest, and most ancient, and universally known church, founded and constituted at Rome by the two most glorious apostles Peter and Paul, and showing the tradition which it has from the apostles, and the faith announced to men, coming down through the successions of bishops even to us — by this we confound all those who in any way, whether through self-complacency, or vain glory, or through blindness and evil opinion, gather together otherwise than they ought. For to this church, on account of its more powerful principality, it is necessary that every church should come together, that is, the faithful who are from everywhere; in which the tradition which is from the apostles has always been preserved by those who are from everywhere. The blessed apostles therefore, founding and instructing the church, delivered the episcopate of administering the church to Linus. Of this Linus Paul makes mention in the epistles which are to Timothy. To him succeeds Anacletus. After him, in the third place, Clement obtains the episcopate from the apostles, who also saw the very apostles and conferred with them, and with the preaching of the apostles still sounding and the tradition before his eyes, not alone; for many were still surviving who had been taught by the apostles... By this ordination and succession, the tradition which is from the apostles in the Church, and the proclamation of the truth, has come down even to us. And this is a most full demonstration, that one and the same life-giving faith is that which has been preserved in the Church from the apostles even now, and delivered in truth... Since therefore there are demonstrations so great, it is not fitting to seek the truth any longer among others, which it is easy to take from the Church, since the apostles, as into a rich depository, most fully conferred into it all things which are of the truth... But what if the apostles had not even left us the Scriptures? Would it not have been fitting to follow the order of the tradition which they delivered to those to whom they committed the churches? To which ordination many nations of barbarians assent, of those who believe in Christ, having salvation written in their hearts through the Spirit without paper and ink, and diligently guarding the ancient tradition, believing in one God, the creator of heaven and earth, and of all things that are in them, through Jesus Christ the Son of God ».¹⁴

And tradition indeed in the Church stands thus according to the institution of Christ. Whence it is now easy, before we proceed to further matters, to bring out the following conclusion, which in the business proposed to us is most of all to be attended to.

That tradition, taken in the true and Catholic sense, is the rule of faith; and that the concept of tradition under the aspect of a bare human fact, or of a preaching proceeding from Christ and the apostles with historical authority alone, is a false and Protestant concept, bearing the mark of heresy.

First of all it must be observed what the difference is between the object and the rule of faith. The object is the truth to be believed. The rule, formally as such, is that which contains the truth to be believed, and to which we must conform ourselves in believing, insofar as we believe that which is proposed in it as to be believed. Hence the truths preached through tradition, which we may call tradition in the objective sense, are indeed the object of faith. But the ecclesiastical preaching itself, or tradition itself taken in the formal sense, is the rule of faith¹. But again it must be observed that the rule directs not in any way whatsoever, but infallibly. For whoever follows a rule in any order whatsoever, insofar as it has the force and act of a rule, not only does not err, but cannot err. To that extent, therefore, in the matter of faith, tradition obtains the character of a rule, insofar as it infallibly guards, infallibly preserves, and infallibly conveys to our knowledge the revealed truths; and this by reason of that divine element which, according to the institution and promise of Christ, must necessarily be recognized in it, as the preceding proposition taught us. Now I call divine the element which has been called by the Fathers by various names: now, the sure charism of truth in the succession of the episcopate from the apostles (Iren. l. 4, c. 26); now, the operation of the Spirit of truth, not suffering the churches to understand otherwise, or believe otherwise, than what He Himself preached through the apostles (Tertull. Praescript. c. 28); now, the influx of the Lord inhabiting the Church, lest any most studious speculation go astray (August. Enarr. in Ps. 9, n. 12); now, the inspiration of the Holy Spirit lest one depart from the truth (Cyrill. Alex. epist. 1 ad monachos Aegypti); now, the grace of the Spirit, taught by which, all men, even those separated by the division of mountains and seas, agree in the same thing (Theodoret. Dial. de Incommutabili); now, the effect of the sentence of D. N. I. C., by which it comes about that in the apostolic see the Catholic religion is always inviolably preserved (Profess. fidei sub Hormisda ab Orientalibus subscripta). And many other things converging to the same sense are to be found everywhere in the Fathers, which there is no time to recount one by one. Meanwhile, however, no doubt is left that tradition, taken in that genuine and Catholic notion which all the monuments of the Christian institution supply to us, is both called and is the true rule of faith.

But far different is the Protestant concept, in which the divine element is entirely cut away, so that tradition is now nothing more, nor can be anything more, than a bare and simple fact to be reckoned among the common facts of history: a fact, namely, of men continuing the school of Christ and of His apostles through successive ages by their own cleverness, their own industry, their own genius. This supposition once made, it is at once evident that no question about the rule of faith any longer remains. For first, as was observed a little above, the rule of faith, properly speaking, is not that which preserves the genuine and undefiled doctrine of revelation only possibly, or casually, or contingently, but that which preserves it also by right, and necessarily, and per se. But at the very first glance there occurs the evident disproportion of human cleverness and human industry to an effect of this kind, especially in the matter of divine dogmas, in which, above all, the argument of the Protestants in Bellarmine, l. 4 de verbo Dei, c. 12, is always pressing: that very many impediments stand in the way, or certainly can stand in the way — forgetfulness, ignorance, negligence, perversity — which are never lacking in the human race. But these things, if you please, I pass over. Grant that the aforesaid impediments have in fact had no place; grant that the divine doctrine has in fact been preserved in the purity of its truth through the course of so many ages and amid so many vicissitudes of things; grant that this preservation resting on fact alone is enough for the rule of faith considered in itself. Grant this, I say, since there is now no place for disputing these matters at greater length; and even with any most generous concession made, you must at least admit this, that it is not enough for the rule as far as we are concerned. For as far as we are concerned, a human tradition of this kind will obtain no other value than that which the demonstration of its coherence with the original utterance of God in Christ or in the apostles will procure for it, compiled from the common criteria and sources of history alone: namely, through collation, discussion, and scientific crisis of the monuments of past ages from ancient times onward. And who, I ask, is equal to this study, when the matter at hand is not a few certain facts, and those most celebrated, most famous, and existing in the proper domain of history, but doctrines most abstruse? Who, amid so great a multitude of rivulets, will distinguish the pure waters that flow straight from the source from those that are spurious and adulterated? Who will separate the precious from the vile amid so many confessions disagreeing among themselves and destroying one another? In every way, therefore, it appears most manifestly that tradition taken according to the Protestant conception neither is nor can be the rule of faith, and that in this part at least the old Reformers were consistent with themselves, when they established Scripture as the one sole and only rule, tradition being excluded.

But that this conception, which sums up in itself the whole heresy of Protestantism, is in complete opposition to the gospel and its fundamental economy, has already been sufficiently shown; and if anyone desires more, he will find more also in the treatise on the Church, where we treat of the power of the magisterium. That it also openly contradicts the sense of all Christian antiquity is easy to gather even from the few documents cited above. Indeed, the Protestants affirm: « The earlier Church appealed to tradition only historically, namely by demonstrating in the apostolic churches, to which the apostles themselves had preached, through a continuous succession down to their own times in the second or third century, that the faith handed down by the apostles had not yet been corrupted but was still entire. But in later times, the Church strove to supply what was lacking to the testimony of tradition considered historically, by the authority that she claimed for herself² ». This, I say, they affirm, but gratuitously and without any foundation.

To make this evident, one must consider that the promised assistance for the incorrupt custody of the deposit, and for the infallible course of tradition in the straight path of the original revelation, in no way excluded the ordering of secondary causes accommodated to this same end, and their fitting cooperation. For the sweet providence of God always so disposes itself that it aptly tempers the instruments to the principal cause, and whatever the human instrument can render of its own by its proper activity, this it not only does not take away, but procures and employs even more. We do not, therefore, intend to deny the connaturalness to the effect of which we speak, which truly exists in the succession and continuous series of bishops transmitting to one another, in the same see, as it were from hand to hand, the deposit of religion. Nor do we dream that the human element, human safeguards, human industry and solicitude, must be removed from tradition. For if we judged that these were to be removed, we would have the apostle himself as an objector, exclaiming: O Timothy, guard the deposit. For why this entreaty, why this so urgent commendation, if nothing was required on Timothy's part? But we wish only this, that the supreme and sufficient reason of certitude concerning the preserved integrity of the revealed doctrine is not yet found in these things, as long as one prescinds from the charism of perpetual assistance promised and conferred by Christ³. Accordingly it must be understood that the human element is subordinated to the divine and so joined to it that, in the use of the theological locus of tradition, a twofold argument occurred to the Fathers. One from the consideration of the charism perpetually accompanying the apostolic succession. The other from the consideration of that succession itself according to the historical conditions preserved in the Church from the beginning; and although this, from itself alone, would not be, absolutely speaking, ultimate and apodictic, yet polemically it was most efficacious against the manifold authors of sects, who had all begun to dogmatize anew from themselves: « This wisdom, says Irenaeus l. 3, c. 2, (which Paul speaks among the perfect), each one of them says is his own, which he has found out from himself.... For each one of them, altogether perverse, is not ashamed to preach himself, corrupting the rule of truth ». Both arguments, therefore, were used by the Fathers, both earlier and later. For not only the later, but also the most ancient — Ignatius, Irenaeus, Tertullian, cited a little above — ultimately referred the supreme reason by which it is established that the divine doctrine has been preserved sincerely and integrally through the order of succession to the charism of truth communicated with the succession of the episcopate, to the communication of Christ, to the Spirit of truth promised and sent as teacher. And similarly, not only the earlier but also the later — for example Athanasius (de decr. Nicaen. n. 27), Epiphanius (l. 1, Haeres. 27, n. 6), Optatus (l. 2 de schism. Don. n. 2), Augustine (epist. 53, n. 2, etc.) — equally appeal to the sentence transmitted from fathers to fathers, to the doctrine handed down from the beginning, to the continuous succession of priests in the Church, especially the Roman Church, since through that succession, the words are Epiphanius's, the truth is perpetually made manifest. And therefore, from first to last, there appears no trace of the opposition falsely imagined by the Protestants for the necessity of their cause. So much, approximately, Card. Franzelin, de Trad. thes. 10.

Thus, then, you have in tradition, understood in the true and Catholic sense, the most certain rule of faith. But because Scripture is also assigned as another rule, the very continuation of the matter leads us to the consideration of the relation that one bears to the other. Hence the third proposition, which now follows.

That tradition, which is the rule of faith, is prior to Scripture in the order of time, of knowledge, and of comprehension; and differs from it especially in this, that it exists not only as a remote rule but also as a proximate and immediate one, according to the twofold consideration under which it can be taken.

1. — In the first place, it is no task at all to show that tradition precedes Scripture in the chronological order. This is already to be observed in the Old Testament. For Scriptures did not exist from the beginning of the world, and yet from the beginning there was a rule to which the holy men of God conformed their faith. « From Adam to Moses there was some Church of God in the world, and men worshipped God by faith, hope, and charity, and by external rites, as is clear from Genesis, where Adam, Abel, Seth, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Melchisedech, and other just men are introduced. But there was no divine Scripture before Moses, as is clear..., because in Genesis there is no mention of written doctrine, but only of tradition: I know, says God, Gen. XVIII-19, that Abraham will command his sons, and his household after him, that they keep the way of the Lord. Therefore for two thousand years religion was preserved by tradition alone.... Then from Moses to Christ, among the people of God itself, although Scriptures existed, the Jews nevertheless used tradition more than Scripture, as is clear from Exod. XVIII-8, Deuter. XXXII-7, Iudic. VI-13, Psalm. XLIII-1, LXXVII-5, Eccli. VIII-II. »¹ In this is also the solution of the common difficulty, why in the Mosaic books so few things occur concerning the future life, and concerning the rewards or punishments established therein, and, speaking universally, concerning many truths that are held as the foundations of the moral and religious life. For the solution is largely drawn from this, that the Scripture coming afterwards presupposed the antecedent rule of tradition, and left it in its full strength, and always remaining in full vigour. But perhaps you think it happened otherwise in the economy of the New Testament? Nay rather, in the New Testament the same precedence of tradition is demonstrated by even more luminous facts, since all the monuments of Christian origins show that the churches were first founded by the apostles without Scriptures, and were already living their own life. Matthew had not yet written, and already the Church throughout all Judaea and Galilee and Samaria was being built up, walking in the fear of the Lord (Act. IX-31). Mark had not yet written, and already there was the Roman church, whose faith was proclaimed in the whole world (Rom. I-8). John had not yet written, and already he had founded and was governing all the churches of Asia, as Jerome writes in l. de script. eccles. All the apostolic epistles were directed to churches already existing, as is more than sufficiently clear from their very inscriptions. Finally, Paul did not appeal to any written instrument when he said to the Galatians, whom certain men were trying to draw away from the right way of the gospel: If anyone has preached to you a gospel besides that which you have received, let him be anathema (Gal. I-9). And to the Corinthians: But I praise you, brethren, that in all things you are mindful of me, and that as I delivered to you, you keep my precepts. And again: For I received from the Lord that which also I delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night in which He was betrayed, etc. It must therefore be said that from the beginning there pre-existed the rule of tradition alone, and that the subsequent addition of Scripture could not be that which would overturn the fundamental means once for all established in the Church for preserving and propagating the revealed doctrine, but that it was rather subordinated to it and even more served it.

2. — But even if the rule of Tradition did not precede the rule of Scripture in the order of time, it always does so in the order of knowledge. And indeed, tradition becomes known as the rule of faith by the very arguments by which the credibility of the Christian religion, or of the Catholic Church, becomes known. For from the moment you have demonstrated that the Catholic Church is revealed as instituted by God, by one and the same argument you have demonstrated that that organ of perpetual and ever-hearing magisterium was placed by God which is on the base and foundation of the same Church². You have demonstrated that the preaching of this magisterium was divinely ordered, so that the faith of believers must conform to it forever. You have therefore demonstrated tradition in the character of an obligatory rule of faith, since ecclesiastical preaching and the authentic tradition of which we now speak are really the same, as is clear and open from what has been said thus far. Nor does it matter what method or what process you employed in the demonstration of the true religion: whether you took the principle of arguing from the divine notes that are in the Church and inseparably adhere to it, or rather from the historical monuments of the mission, advent, and work of Jesus Christ, according to the twofold norm indicated in the Council of the Vatican, Sess. 3, cap. 3³. For always, and in the same way, the rule of Tradition is and remains demonstrated by that very fact.

But it is not so with sacred Scripture. For once that initial demonstration which is set out in the preambles of faith, or in what they call fundamental theology, has been completed, it is still, per se loquendo, altogether unknown to you whether there are or are not Scriptures inspired by God. For even if none such existed, the principles of the demonstration would be the same and unchanged; and the adequate conclusion to which those principles lead would also be the same. But if perhaps in the course of the demonstration, while treating the historical monument of the revelation that Jesus Christ brought us, you came upon those testimonies of Christ by which the faith of the Jews concerning the Law and the Prophets is confirmed, then indeed concomitantly, and as it were per accidens, there could have come to you a knowledge of those Scriptures of the Old Testament which are called protocanonical; but concerning the Scriptures that are proper to the New Testament, you still know nothing, and nothing besides. And if concerning these too, nay concerning these especially, you seek suitable testimony outside the authentic Tradition, there is nowhere to find it except in the apostolic writings. But apart from the fact that the knowledge of the authority of the apostles as organs for promulgating revelation presupposes the already known rule of Tradition which wholly runs down from them: what, I ask, will you find in the apostolic writings concerning the inspired Scriptures of the New Testament, formally as inspired? Nothing at all beyond that well-known passage of the second [epistle] of Peter, III-16, concerning the epistles of Paul. But the epistles of Paul are not all, nay not even the principal, Scriptures of the New Testament. Moreover, which epistles of Paul had already been published at the time when Peter was writing, someone might perhaps say it is uncertain. Finally, this very second epistle of Peter is rejected as supposititious and not genuine by those precisely who profess to depend solely on written documents. In every way, therefore, the biblical system of the Protestants appears to hang in the air, lacking base and foundation. Nor is it badly compared to the system of the world in the cosmogony of the Indians, who assert that the universe is like an elephant placing its feet on four tortoises, without saying what that is on which the tortoises themselves rest. But we, from the organ of tradition to which the office of teaching all truth was committed by Christ, rightly and deservedly receive the revealed truth of the whole canon of inspired Scripture, so that thus, through Tradition, Scripture becomes known, and is by that very fact posterior in the order of knowledge.

3. — Hence it is further established that Tradition precedes Scripture also in the order of comprehension, insofar as, namely, the revealed doctrine was integrally deposited, in a true sense, not in Scripture but in Tradition. — I say, not in Scripture: first, because, as was just premised, not even the truth about Scripture itself, that is, about the catalogue of books that are to be received as sacred, is contained in it; secondly, because it itself sends us back many times to tradition, as to the source of certain dogmas that are not written, as Bellarmine shows from 1 Cor. XI-2, 2 Thess. II-14, 2 Tim. I-13, 3 Ioan. 13⁴; thirdly and finally, because the mere writing of the books of the New Testament, which we saw above was occasioned by contingent circumstances, is a luminous sign by which God made plain that it was not His counsel that we should have in the sacred books a full and adequate depository of revealed truth. — But on the contrary, you will rightly and deservedly recognize such a depository as rich in Tradition. For it is Tradition that was placed by Christ as the primitive, principal, and primary instrument of doctrine. It is to Tradition that Scripture was consequently entrusted; entrusted, I say, not only in order to make known what is to be accepted as truly inspired by God as Scripture, but also in order to make known the sense which, without the key of understanding, either remains closed or is uncertain⁵. Whence it follows that in the deposited tradition there is also contained, in a true sense, the written revelation; and if also the written revelation, then the whole revelation entire.

Thus, therefore, tradition is the rule of faith prior in every way: in time, in knowledge, in comprehension. Last you will ask: is it a remote rule, or a proximate one? I say: both remote and proximate, under different considerations.

4. — And indeed, that unceasing preaching of the Church, persevering through the course of the ages even to us, is taken in two ways. First, in the intervening links of antecedent ages on which it depends, and through which it is always continued with the preaching of those who were the first and immediate promulgators of the revealed word.

Then, however, according to itself absolutely, in any separately designated difference of time. In the first way, therefore, ecclesiastical preaching is tradition under the precise aspect of the transmission of the revealed doctrine as it were from hand to hand from the apostles, or tradition reduplicatively as flowing from the source through an unbroken channel from ages past, and under this consideration it is no more than the remote rule of the Catholic faith. For thus it becomes known only through the investigation of the monuments of past ages, that is, through the study of works left from antiquity, which lead to the knowledge of the sentence, profession, and faith that once existed concerning Christian doctrine, considered either as a whole or in individual chapters. And if it is only by mediation of investigation and of a process proper to theological science that one knows that what it contains are dogmas, then it neither has nor can have the character of a proximate rule. Wherefore one must come to ecclesiastical preaching, no longer considered in the coherence of the continuous succession from the first origin of revelation, but absolutely in its exercise for this designated time now. Under this respect, it is indeed always tradition, insofar as it always hands down what it has received explicitly or implicitly from the fathers, but it is now tradition under the precise formality of the authoritative magisterium clearly proposing and explaining what must be believed according to the revelation running down from the apostles. And thus also, it is the proximate and immediate rule of faith, which is adequately convertible with the infallible and ever-living magisterium of the Catholic Church, formally as it is the magisterium.

But indeed, in whatever way you take tradition, whether as the proximate rule or as the remote, I would have this accurately noted: that its authentic organ was not instituted by Christ to preserve or propose material and inert formulas, but the true sense of revealed truth; and that accordingly, the office of infallibly transmitting, guarding, and proposing the deposit of faith is inseparable from the office of infallibly defining, declaring, and explaining what is contained in it. But now, if tradition is not only conservative but also explicative of the whole word of God, both written and unwritten, then some progress in it through the course of the ages is beyond doubt to be acknowledged: such progress, however, as in no way contradicts the immutability of dogma, and takes away nothing at all from the nature of the deposit, in which it is not lawful to change anything, still less to diminish or to add. And it will now be worthwhile, if we declare this same point somewhat more fully in the conclusion of the present chapter.

That from what has been said it follows that tradition has indeed a certain evolution in the course of time, but one joined with complete immutability and consensus in the same dogma always and the same sense: so, namely, that as regards the investigation of the traditional sense, special rules, and those far different from those which govern historical science, were rightly and deservedly laid down by the Fathers.

Therefore it pleases [us] to complete the exposition of the true and genuine concept of tradition by setting before our eyes those things which follow or do not follow from what has been said. And lest a free faculty of wandering be granted us, we must begin from those things which do not follow.

In the first place, it by no means follows that all truths pertaining to the deposit of faith must have been in one and the same way in the primitive preaching of the apostles, and in one and the same way also in the consequent tradition, for every stage and every difference of times. For it is one thing that all matters of faith and morals of which Christian doctrine consists were from the beginning and always transmitted under the charism of infallibility; another thing, however, that all were always proposed equally explicitly¹, equally expressly², equally clearly³. For this indeed has nothing in common with indefectibility from the norm of truth, as is evident in the terms, apart from the fact that so plenary a proposition of the whole doctrine immediately from the beginning would scarcely have been connaturally possible, and on the other hand it was so much the less necessary because, together with the deposit of dogmas, the charism of the Holy Spirit for their explanation according to the occurring necessities of individual ages passed to the successors of the apostles by the promise and institution of Christ. Recall what was premised a little above concerning the twofold office of the guardians and teachers of the faith in the body of those set over [the Church], by considering it accurately.

Now, if from the infallibility of tradition it by no means follows that all and singular truths indiscriminately pertaining objectively to the deposit of faith must at every time shine on the lampstand of the Church as regards the distinct and explicit perspicuity of their notes, neither does it follow that there could have been none concerning which at some time there existed within the very bosom of Catholic unity and communion a diversity either of senses or of opinions. « Indeed, that there are some such truths is demonstrated from all those definitions of Councils or Pontiffs which declared as truths of faith those doctrines concerning which, before the definition, Catholic doctors followed different sentences without loss of faith and communion, agreeing moreover in this, that they confessed that those doctrines did not yet pertain to the deposit of faith sufficiently manifested. The same is gathered also from the fact that even now there are several theological questions by no means defined, which nevertheless turn upon the sense of some chapters of revealed doctrine in such a way that they seem able to be solved from the analysis of the same revealed doctrine, and thus to be defined by the infallible magisterium. Hence there are in the Fathers the distinctions between the substance of the faith, which is one among all, and the questions of deeper understanding (Iren. l. 1, c. 10, n. 23); between those things which are most manifestly preached in the churches, which are defined in ecclesiastical preaching, concerning which there is one sentence of the whole Church, and other things which are still to be inquired into from sacred Scripture and investigated by sagacious research, which are not manifestly discerned, which are not distinguished by sufficiently manifest preaching, which are not evident in ecclesiastical preaching (Origen., de princip. in praefatione). A distinction is drawn in Christian doctrine between the rule of faith, which among us has no questions, and that which, without prejudice to the rule of faith, can come into question (Tertull., Praescript. c. 13). One thing is what pertains to the very foundations of the faith, and other things are those in which at some time even the most learned and best defenders of the Catholic rule, without prejudice to the bond of faith, do not agree, and one says something better and truer about one thing than another. (August., lib. 1 contr. Iulian. c. 6). A distinction is drawn between the error to be tolerated in questions not diligently digested, not yet confirmed by the full authority of the Church, and the error not to be tolerated, which strives to shake the very firmament of the Church (August., Serm. 294, n. 4). A distinction is drawn, finally, between some small portion of our faith that is less clearly bright, and that which the Lord willed no one in His Church to be ignorant of (Leo M., epist. 30 ad Pulcheriam, c. 2) ». In sum: at any time there were certain further determinations of revealed doctrine which, contained more or less obscurely in the deposit handed down by the apostles, and not yet illustrated by the full light of diligent inquiry, had not yet passed into the proximate rule of faith, or the sufficient proposition of the ecclesiastical magisterium. Concerning these, accordingly, there could at some time be no concordant sentence in the bosom of unity, before the controversy was terminated by the authority of the Church⁴. Nor is there anything to see in this that is opposed in any way to the previously asserted infallibility of tradition.

But now, other things are those which follow by complete necessity from the promised assistance of God even to the end. And first indeed it follows that it is impossible for any opinion deriving its origin from any man or private doctor whatsoever to obtain ever a common consent as though it were doctrine of faith, and to prevail in the Church under the false name of divine tradition. Concerning this matter you have an example in the opinion of the millenarians, which, first introduced by Papias out of his excessive simplicity, and received and published, on account of reverence for the man who had conversed with the apostles, by some even of the more illustrious Fathers of the second and third centuries, soon had against it the consenting sentence of all, and from the fourth century onward, by common calculation, was to be banished among fables⁵.

Secondly, it follows, on the other hand, that it is necessary that if any point of doctrine, at first more obscurely retained in the profession of some more universal principle, or preserved rather by practical use than by express and formal preaching, began afterwards to come into controversy as regards its origin from divine tradition, while different men thought different things and even contended among themselves, until at last, the question being settled, it was brought to the strength of full consensus: it follows, I say, that it is altogether necessary that such doctrine truly belong to the genuine and authentic deposit of which the Church is the guardian. And this indeed because of that praised providence of God which does not permit tradition to wander from the straight path; because of that sure charism of truth of which Irenaeus speaks, l. 4, c. 26; because of the Paraclete, the teacher of truth who does not suffer the churches to understand otherwise, or believe otherwise, than they received from the apostles, as Tertullian says, Praescript. c. 28; because of the Holy Spirit inhabiting the Church, lest any most studious inquiry go astray, as Augustine says in Ps. 9, n. 12, and very often elsewhere.

Thirdly, it follows that whatever is preached by the organ of tradition as dogma is indeed not only infallibly true with the truth revealed by God, but also immutably proposed to the faith of all following ages in that very sense in which it was preached from the beginning. For preaching, like truth, consists in the sense, not in the words; and it is the proper mark of heretics to bring in, under the words and formulas of Catholic tradition, senses different from those which they found established and fixed in the Church. For Sabellius too retained the Trinity, but a nominal one. And Arius confessed the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, but as three hypostases of diverse substance, not however of one supreme, individual, and creative essence. And Nestorius preached one person of God and man in Christ, but in such a way as not to declare the Word united to the flesh according to subsistence. And Pelagius asserted divine grace, but by understanding by grace free will, which indeed in its own order is also a gratuitous gift of God. And Berengarius conceded the sacramental presence, but a mystical, not a real one, according to symbolic representation, not according to the truth of substance. And so of the rest, to whom this was always common, that, a new sense being brought in against the Catholic sense, they separated themselves, and by that very fact fell into error, because that sense from which one departs is immutably true. Hence it is that false doctrine is called in the style of Scripture another doctrine: « I besought you, he says, to remain at Ephesus..., to charge certain men not to teach otherwise »⁶. And again: « I wonder that you are so quickly transferred to another gospel, which is not another, except that there are some who trouble you and wish to turn away the gospel of Christ »⁷. For at whatever time it is said of a dogma of faith something other than what was said before of the same dogma, there will be heterodoxy by opposition to orthodoxy, and every heretical sentence will easily and without discussion be known by innovation alone, insofar as it introduces a sense different from the sense sanctioned in the tradition and preaching of those to whom Christ says: Behold, I am with you all days. But in vain will they appeal to the Scriptures. For Tertullian will rightly and deservedly reply that the Scriptures did not form the churches, but were directed to churches already formed, so that one must first examine whose the Scriptures are, and among whom resides the key of their interpretation⁸. In vain again will they appeal to a more sublime gnosis and a higher understanding. For even this pretext of the Gnostics the most ancient Fathers excluded, by showing the royal road against all heresies, the ancient Church which precedes all sects, and saw them separating themselves. Those are the schools in which one disputes; this alone is the Church worthy of the name in which God is believed. Whoever therefore rises up under any pretext against the tradition of the Church, with new senses invented, has ceased to be a believer, and is cast back from the tranquil port of divine truth into the tempestuous sea of human opinions⁹. In vain, finally, will they plead the length of time elapsed since the first origins, since the exception would perhaps be valid if the immutability of tradition in the same sense and the same sentence had another foundation than the assistance of Christ and the promise of Christ. But now the argument is valid in the same way at every time, and it was opposed to the innovators by the later Fathers with the same firmness as by the earlier. « And so you say: The gospel has been preached in all nations, the world has believed, the Church has been made, has grown, has borne fruit, but the ignorance of those who understand badly afterwards erred, and perished; in us alone and in those who follow us the holy Church has remained on earth. This sacrilegious vanity the truth of the gospel overturns, and the authority of the prophets and holy Fathers, which must not be violated. Hence the Lord promises to His holy Church in His gospel, saying: Behold, I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world.... False, therefore, is what is believed and asserted by you concerning the body of Christ »¹⁰.

Fourthly and finally, it follows that when the question is about those dogmas in which the sum of the whole Christian religion consists, and which therefore were from the very beginning of the Church formally and explicitly proposed as dogmas, the theological demonstration through the argument from tradition cannot be a matter of much labour. But Augustine will give you four rules which greatly simplify the whole matter. The first rule is that it will certainly not be necessary to discuss individually the testimonies of the Fathers, if at any time the tradition is established by public, authentic, and universal acts, of which kind, for example, are those in the matter of original sin, the baptism of infants for the remission of sins, and also the exorcisms which are performed over them according to the rite of the Church¹¹. The second rule is that if the matter is to be decided from special testimonies, you may rightly and deservedly be content with the testimony of the Western Church alone. And the reason is given, not only because there is a special privilege of this church on account of the apostolic see which it has in its bosom, and with which it is more closely joined, but also, and especially, because in the faith of the Latins the faith of the Orientals already shines sufficiently, since they too are certainly Christians, and there is one Christian faith and tradition of both parts of the world¹². The third rule, and one closely akin to the preceding: that whether you wish to bring authorities from the Latins or from the Greeks, there is no need to cite many authors, but one or another doctor pre-eminent in fame and authority suffices for the sense of the others to be perceived in him, and this again on account of the unanimity of the Church, led by one spirit and one tradition. And this is what Lirinensis also noted in the second Commonitorium n. 30, where, after he had enumerated those ten Fathers whose testimonies were recited in the Council of Ephesus, he continues: « These, then, are all at Ephesus, in the sacred number of the decalogue, produced as masters, counsellors, witnesses, and judges; whose blessed Synod, holding their doctrine, following their counsel, believing their testimony, obeying their judgment, without weariness, presumption, and partiality, pronounced concerning the rules of faith. Although a much larger number of the ancients could have been brought forward, yet it was not necessary, because neither was it fitting that the time of business be occupied by a multitude of witnesses, and no one doubted that those ten truly thought nothing other than all their other colleagues »¹³. The fourth rule is then added, that the unanimous sense of the present Church is a suitable proof of the sense of antiquity, insofar as, when the knowledge of what is now held in the Church has been had, it is impious to think that the faith was otherwise in past ages¹⁴.

Now this latter rule of Augustine is the one that most pertains to our matter, insofar as it establishes that the sense of the contemporary Church concerning the dogmas of our religion is a most certain sign of a sense by no means different which antiquity had concerning the same. Hence it pleases [us] to rest on this point as on the last consequence of the premises concerning the infallibility of tradition. And if indeed we prescind from those further determinations of faith which only in the course of time, as was noted above, passed into settled dogmas, (because that consideration would lead us too far from the purpose of our intention), but speak again only of those things which constitute the sum of the Christian religion, which pertain to the very foundations of revealed doctrine, which the Lord willed no one in His Church to be ignorant of, as the Fathers cited above said, the truth of the conclusion will at once be evident. For these things were from the very beginnings proposed explicitly as dogmas in the tradition and magisterium of the Church; moreover, whatever is once proposed in tradition as dogma necessarily remains, always in the same sense, both handed down and believed. Therefore it is necessary that that sense still be in fact retained which was firmly held from the beginning; and by that very fact, it is altogether impossible that those who come among us under the name of orthodox Fathers, and who as such always had authority in the Church, should ever have thought in reality anything other than what is today both believed by us and taught, and commended to posterity as an inviolable deposit.

But now the neocritics come forward, pleading that nothing prevails against a positive fact. But many ancient Fathers are found who in fact thought otherwise than we do concerning the dogmas of religion, even the primary ones, such as the Trinity, the Incarnation, original sin, grace, and other such things. For the ante-Nicenes expressed the procession of the Son and of the Holy Spirit in ways that exhibit most false ideas and plainly different from ours, for example tritheism, inequality of persons, nay even a corporeal divinity. The same ancients, down to Cyril of Alexandria inclusive, think no more correctly about the Incarnation than Eutyches thought afterwards, and only after long contentions do we see delineated the previously formless dogma of the hypostatic union. Most even before Augustine are true Pelagians, or certainly Semi-Pelagians. Chrysostom and the other Greeks know nothing of original sin, etc. etc. So now our critics think, who nevertheless bring nothing new, but follow in the footsteps of the Socinians and Calvinists, collecting with easy erudition the patristic passages which they used, in Petavius, or in Bossuet in his polemical works against Jurieu and Richard Simon¹⁵.

St Thomas says in the prologue of the little work contra errores Graecorum: « Errors that have arisen concerning the faith have given the holy doctors of the Church occasion to hand down the things of faith with greater circumspection, in order to eliminate the errors that have arisen; as is evident, the holy doctors who lived before the error of Arius did not speak so expressly of the unity of the divine essence as the doctors who followed; and the same happens in other errors, which appears expressly not only in different doctors but in one eminent doctor, Augustine. For in the books he published after the Pelagian heresy arose, he spoke more cautiously of the power of free will than in the books he published before the rise of that heresy, in which, defending the freedom of the will against the Manichees, he brought forward certain things which the Pelagians, adversaries of divine grace, took up in defence of their error. And therefore it is not surprising if modern doctors of the faith, after various errors have arisen, speak more cautiously and, as it were, more refinedly about the doctrine of faith, in order to avoid every heresy. Hence if anything is found in the sayings of the ancient doctors which is not said with as much caution as is observed by the moderns, such things are not to be despised or rejected, nor indeed ought they to be extended, but reverently explained ». Thus the Angelic Doctor in the cited passage, who had taken this doctrine, as he is wont, from Augustine himself: « We have learned, he says, in de dono persev. n. 53, that each heresy brought into the Church its own questions, against which divine Scripture would be defended more diligently than if no such necessity compelled. » And elsewhere the same Augustine notes that one ought not to look for so exact a manner of speaking in the Fathers who wrote before the heresies were born as in those who came afterwards: both because, not yet assailed by any question, and thinking that in the Catholic Church they were understood in a good sense, they spoke more securely¹; and because, touching briefly and in passing on matters not yet discussed, they lingered rather on the things they were then disputing against the enemies of the Church, and also in the exhortations to the various virtues by which God is served for obtaining true happiness². And this too is the common response, not only of theologians, but also of Athanasius, Jerome, Vincent of Lérins, and others. This is the rule in theology, and the solution of difficulties concerning tradition, whose doctrine is indeed always the same, but not always clear and expressed in the same way. For it receives in the course of time, as Vincent of Lérins says, evidence, light, distinction or precision, and that principally on the occasion of heresies newly arising. For the heresies themselves are those which create the most pressing necessity of scrutinizing the dogmas, of unfolding the concepts of which they consist, of distinctly proposing the notes that are to be discerned in them, of separating the modes of understanding and signifying from the things themselves understood and signified, of finding also suitable terms by which the highest things may be fittingly expressed — in a word, of perfecting all that pertains to theological explanation, and these can be obtained only by the most laborious and studious inquiry³.

For it is evident that one thing is that simple notion of the dogmas which is also retained by simple faith, and another the unfolded, polished, refined notion which the theologian seeks for the understanding of the faith. It is evident also that in theological speculation there is always something that creates the difficulty and something that creates the solution of the difficulty. Whence it had to happen that, before the laborious study which individual heresies provoked and made necessary in each matter, Catholic writers fell into certain ambiguities which are no longer found in later writers⁴. If, for example, the Son of God is God, no less than the Father, the attestations of this perpetual faith are clear in every age. But when one comes to consider that God is from God, God proceeding from the Father, God begotten of God begetting, speech is often confounded. Before the concept of the divine origins has been purified by the twofold way of remotion and excellence, and refined into a distinct notion of subsistent relations, every explanation of the mystery will be maimed and imperfect. Concerning the unbegotten and innascible, they will seem to speak as if this innascibility contained something of greater perfection; concerning divine generation, as if it had an admixture of efficiency, which indeed every act of begetting implies among us; concerning God begotten, as if the begotten one depended on his principle, as among creatures the originated depends on its originator. And this imperfection in the manner of expounding and speaking is not altogether dissolved, except when the necessity of answering the most troublesome questions of heretics reduces minds to more precise modes of speech⁵. The same will also appear in the dogma of the Incarnation. One and the same is the Son of God and the Son of man, Son of God from eternity, Son of man in time, who, remaining what he was, began to be what he was not. This is the bare and simple faith. But when one comes to consider how the humanity was joined — by a union, indeed, that is physical and substantial — to him who pre-existed and remained in the form of God, no easy exposition will occur, since it all depends on unfolded and polished concepts of union in nature, union in person, and the formal differences of each. Wherefore, in that initial state of theological knowledge which preceded the categorical heresies concerning the hypostatic union, especially in view of the difficulty of expressing matters for which there was not yet a settled and fixed terminology, certain things cannot but be found which, to later writers already instructed by the knowledge and solutions of subsequent doctors, will appear ambiguous and, to all appearance, irreconcilable with the faith of the unconfused union of divinity and humanity in the one supposit of the Word⁶. The same again you will see in the dogma of original sin. It is indeed truly and properly called sin, but it is a sin of its own kind, which is not predicated univocally with the sin most known to all. A sin, I say, of nature, not of person; a voluntary sin, not by its own will, but by the will of the sole head of the human race; a sin which passes from the first parent to posterity, but as regards guilt, not as regards act; a sin, finally, which is in a certain way called another's, and in a certain way ours: another's by the propriety of the action, ours by the contagion of propagation. Therefore a newborn child is in one sense innocent and in another sense a sinner; therefore that great sin of Adam passes in some measure to posterity and in some measure does not pass; therefore, lastly, if before the rise of the Pelagian heresy there are patristic passages in which the truth of original sin shines forth, there will also be others where the doctrine will seem to be confounded and in some way obscured⁷. Nor must one speak otherwise about the dogma of grace, because if grace simply precedes the merit of good will, yet the good will of man still precedes many gifts of God, and especially the gift by which we are made and are just: namely, while man himself, by freely assenting and cooperating with the grace that stirs him, must dispose himself for his own justification. And therefore in the sacred writings it is said not only: Convert us, O Lord, to thee, and we shall be converted, but also: Be converted to me, and I will be converted to you.

Accordingly, just as you will find in the writings of the ancient Fathers testimonies where infants are said to be without sin, so you will also find others where it is said that God gives grace to those whom he finds worthy, or prepared to receive it. This indeed is in a certain way true, although it is true that by the help of grace itself they are made worthy, whoever are found worthy. And this last point is not altogether passed over in the doctrine of those same ancients, although it is not set out with that clarity and precision with which, after a diligent examination of the question, Augustine said that the whole is to be attributed to God: « He who both prepares the good will of man to be helped and helps it when prepared. For the good will of man precedes many gifts of God, but not all; and those which it does not precede, in them it is itself also. For both are read in the holy utterances: His mercy will go before me, and: His mercy will follow me. He goes before the unwilling so that he may will; he follows the willing so that he may not will in vain. For why are we admonished to pray for our enemies, who are certainly unwilling to live piously, unless that God may work in them also the will? And again, why are we admonished to ask that we may receive, unless that what we will may be done by him by whom it has been brought about that we will? We pray therefore for our enemies that the mercy of God may go before them as it also went before us; and we pray for ourselves that his mercy may follow us »⁸. And so it is also with the others.

Not therefore from the imperfection of explanations or the ambiguity of certain assertions may one conclude that the more ancient Fathers were, with regard to the dogmas of our religion, of another sense and another view than the later ones. For plainly a different solution presents itself: Either that they had not yet advanced so far in the penetration and intimate understanding of revealed truth as those who wrote on individual matters after the heresies were born; or that, intent on confuting one error, they were not solicitous about the opposite error (for in every dogma one walks between opposing crags, and he easily seems to stumble on one who expends all his care on avoiding the other); or finally, that they sometimes employed modes of speech ambiguous in themselves and less polished without any added declaration, doubting not at all that they would be understood and accepted by their hearers in a Catholic sense. That this solution, moreover, is not only probable and likely, but is in fact uniquely true and firmly to be retained, must now be demonstrated more diligently.

But that we may proceed in a certain order, we must first consider those three states of doctrine enumerated in the thesis, according to which the testimonies and learned works of the Fathers can conveniently be reduced to three categories likewise.

1. The first is what we may call the state of simple faith. This is reported in the first place by the letters or confessions of the most ancient bishops and martyrs, in that golden age in which, still having the first-fruits of the Spirit and, as new wineskins, full of that new wine which was poured out at Pentecost, they did not yet have the most laborious occupation which God gave to the sons of men that they might be occupied in it — namely, disputing and dialecticizing; but from the treasury of their heart they brought forth the ingenuous doctrine which they had received from the apostles. Indeed, Ignatius, as he was going to martyrdom, clearly testified the simple faith concerning the Trinity, when he wrote to the Magnesians, c. 13: « Strive therefore to be confirmed in the doctrines of the Lord and of the apostles, that all things you do may prosper for you in faith and charity in the Son and the Father and the Spirit... Be subject to the bishop and to one another, as Jesus Christ was to the Father according to the flesh, and the apostles to Christ and to the Father and to the Spirit »¹. The same most holy martyr testified the simple faith concerning the Incarnation, epist. to the Ephesians c. 7: « There is one physician, both carnal and spiritual, made and not made, God existing in man, true life in death, both from Mary and from God, first passible and then impassible, Jesus Christ our Lord »². And to Polycarp, c. 3: « Await him who is above time, the timeless one; invisible, for us visible; impalpable, impassible, for us passible, who in every way endured for us »³. The simple faith concerning both mysteries was reported by that last prayer of Polycarp himself, when the pyre had already been kindled: « Lord God almighty, Father of thy beloved and blessed Son Jesus Christ, through whom we have received the knowledge of thee,... I bless thee, because thou hast deemed me worthy this day and this hour to receive a part in the number of thy martyrs, in the cup of thy Christ... Wherefore for all things I praise thee, I bless thee, I glorify thee with the eternal and heavenly Jesus Christ thy beloved Son, with whom to thee and to the Holy Spirit be glory both now and for ages to come. Amen »⁴. And that confession of blessed Epipodius, who, with teeth mingled with blood, uttered these words: « I confess that Christ is God with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and it is fitting that I pour out my soul to him who is both my creator and my redeemer. Nor does it matter by what end the bodily weakness is dissolved, provided that the soul, carried to heaven, returns to its author »⁵.

To this also pertain the passages of the more ancient writers, where it is set forth simply and without amplification what was the preaching of the Church, and what rule of believing was to be held. Such is that passage of Irenaeus, l. 1, c. 10: « The Church, sown throughout the whole world even to the ends of the earth, and having received from the apostles and their disciples that faith which is in one God, the Father almighty, who made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; and in one Jesus Christ, the Son of God, incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who through the prophets preached the dispensations of God, and the advent, and the generation that is from the Virgin, and the passion..., and that all flesh of the human race is to be raised, so that to Christ Jesus our Lord, and God and Saviour and King, according to the good pleasure of the invisible Father, every knee should bow of things in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth ». Such also is that passage of Gregory Thaumaturgus, in the Exposition of the Faith which he left to his church at his death, and which Nyssen testifies that he read in the autograph itself: « One God, the Father of the living Word, of subsistent wisdom..., perfect begetter of the perfect, Father of the only-begotten Son. One Lord, alone from the alone, the Word accomplishing all things, wisdom comprehending all things, and the power by which the whole creation was able to be made: true Son of the true, and invisible from the invisible, and incorruptible from the incorruptible, and immortal from the immortal, and eternal from the eternal. One Holy Spirit, having his substance from God, the perfect cause of things living, the holiness that bestows sanctification... The perfect Trinity, in majesty and eternity and kingdom is in no way divided or alienated. Therefore neither anything made nor anything servile is in the Trinity, nor anything superinduced.... Nor was the Son ever lacking to the Father, nor the Holy Spirit to the Son, but the same Trinity is ever unchangeable and immutable » ⁶.

In the same category you will still count those testimonies in which the Fathers, before the heresies arose, outside all ardor of disputation and necessity of controversy, not speculating, not glossing, not arguing, not assuming the patronage of some special cause, but discoursing from the sole abundance of a faithful heart, assert a dogma not yet attacked by any negation so ingenuously that it plainly appears that it is not so much they who speak as the native spirit of faith and tradition which speaks in them. Testimonies of this kind concerning the dogma of original sin Augustine brings forward in l. 1 c. Iulianum, n. 5-20. These, afterwards briefly resumed by him in n. 32-33, will serve you as an example: « Saint Irenaeus says that the ancient wound of the serpent is healed by the faith of Christ and the cross, and that by the sin of the first parent we were bound as it were with chains. Saint Cyprian says that a little child perishes unless it has been baptized, although there are remitted to it not its own sins but another's. Saint Reticius says that the sins of the old man, whom we put off through the bath of regeneration, are not only old but inborn. Saint Olympius says that the vice spread from the first parent into the offspring, so that sin is born with man. Saint Hilary says that all flesh is from sin, except that of him who came in the likeness of flesh of sin, without sin. He says that he was born under the origin of sin and under the law of sin, whose voice is: I was conceived in iniquities. Saint Ambrose says that little children who have been baptized are reformed from malice into the beginnings of their nature. He says that in Adam we all die, because through one man sin entered into the world, and his guilt is the death of all. He says that in his wound the whole human race had died, unless that Samaritan, coming down, had healed his grievous wounds. He says that Adam existed, and that all existed in him; that Adam perished, and that all perished in him. He says that we are stained by contagion before we are born, and that human conception is not free from iniquity, because, he says, we are conceived in the sin of our parents, and in their transgressions we are born... Saint Innocentius says to you that by the bath of regeneration every past vice is purged, which came through him who, falling by free will, was plunged into the depths. Saint Gregory (of Nazianzus) says that it would have been better not to have fallen from the tree of life by the most bitter taste of sin, but that we ought to be amended after the fall... He says that by regeneration from water and the Spirit the stains of the first birth are purged, by which we are conceived in iniquities. Saint Basil says that we have contracted the disease of sin, because Eve was unwilling to fast from the forbidden tree.... Finally, the holy bishop John (Chrysostom) says...., he too says that Adam so sinned that great sin as to condemn the whole human race in common. He says that Christ wept at the death of Lazarus because mortality, shaken from its everlasting state, had loved the lower world. He says that Christ found us bound by our ancestral bond which Adam wrote, and by our own subsequent debts. He says that Adam was therefore called the figure of him who was to come, because just as he became the cause of death, which was brought in through food, to those born of himself, although they did not eat of the tree, so Christ became the provider of justice for those who are from him, although they have done nothing just, which he bestowed on all through the cross. He says that it does not seem to have much reason that one should be condemned for another, and yet it was done through Adam; whence he rather persuades us to believe what appears more fitting and reasonable, that one is saved for another, which is fulfilled in Christ, etc. ». These things indeed the more ancient Fathers said concerning original sin, under the sole guidance of the primitive tradition, still running in its native simplicity. But you will also take splendid examples of testimonies of the same kind from those things which Augustine himself left written concerning divine grace, before all theological inquiry, in his first works. Such is that passage of the Confessions, l. 10, c. 29, 31, 37: « O love, who ever burnest and art never extinguished, charity, my God, set me on fire. Thou commandest continence. Give what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt... I hear the voice of my God commanding: Let not your hearts be weighed down with surfeiting and drunkenness. But remember, Lord, that we are dust, and that thou madest man from dust, and he had perished, and was found. Strengthen me that I may be able. Give what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt... We are tempted by these temptations (of human praises) daily, Lord; without ceasing we are tempted. Our daily furnace is the human tongue. Thou commandest us continence also in this kind. Give what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt ». Likewise that passage in l. 2 de Ordine, n. 52, where, addressing his mother Monica, he says: « Let us pray therefore, not that riches may come to us, but that those things may come which make us good and blessed. That these vows may be most devoutly fulfilled, I entrust this business especially to thee, mother, by whose prayers I believe without doubt and affirm that God has given me this mind, that I should prefer nothing at all to the finding of truth, wish nothing else, think nothing else, love nothing else ». But lest it be thought that the prayer itself by which other gifts are obtained from God is from us, and not descending from divine grace: « O God, creator of the universe, he says in l. 1 Soliloq. n. 2, grant me first that I may pray to thee well, then that I may conduct myself as worthy to be heard by thee, and finally that thou mayest set me free ». Certainly, not incited by the ardor of disputation, not preoccupied by some preconceived end, not even instructed by profound theological study, did Augustine say these things, but led by the sole doctrine which he had learned as a neophyte in the Church, and full of the spirit of grace which he had received in baptism, what he simply believed he also simply professed, according to that saying: I believed, and therefore I spoke.

Now he knew that everything by which we are made good is a gift of God, and that faith together with works is a gift of God, making no distinction between first and subsequent things, between beginning and end, but comprehending the very beginning of piety, whose foundation is faith, the very first desire and thought of conversion, and finally the prayer itself through which the rest are obtained. Nevertheless, what difference there is between those simple confessions of simple faith and the books in which afterwards, copiously, clearly, and learnedly, he expounded and defended the same dogma of grace against the rising Pelagian heresy, there is no one who will not see. There, therefore, is a new example of those testimonies which report the simple faith of primitive tradition, prescinding from every explanation or consideration of difficulties⁷.

2. But now the second state of doctrine comes to be considered, in which explanations still imperfect are joined to simple faith. This is especially to be seen in some Fathers of the second and third centuries concerning the dogma of the Trinity, namely when they intended to declare somewhat and expound credibly the most high mystery to pagans or Jews, or when they refuted the Sabellians, who said that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit were one and singular God not only in nature but also in person; and that (which must be carefully noted) before the heresies of Arius and Macedonius arose, which denied the divine nature to the Son and the Holy Spirit and attributed to them a created nature.

Athenagoras in his Legation for the Christians wishes to clear the Christians themselves of the crime of atheism with which they were accused by the pagans, by showing that they are not atheists, « who assert God the Father, and the Son God, and the Holy Spirit, and demonstrate their power in unity and distinction in order »⁸. Behold, you have a simple and pure confession of the Christian faith. But lest anyone should think it ridiculous that God has a Son of his own, or that Christians think of God the Father and the Son as the poets fabled, who introduced gods no better than men, lo, the explanation subjoined: « The Son of God is the Word of the Father in idea and operation; for from him and through him all things were made, while the Father and the Son are one. But since the Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father, by the unity and power of the Spirit, the Son of God is the mind and word of the Father. But if it occurs to you, according to your supreme intelligence, to inquire what the Son means, I shall say briefly that he is the first offspring of the Father, not because he was made (for God had the Word in himself from eternity, as being rational from eternity), but because he came forth so that he might be the idea and act of all material things which lay like formless nature and inert earth »⁹. In this explanation it is obscure, first, that the Son is called the mind of the Father, and then that he is said to have come forth so as to be the idea and act of that empty and void earth of which Moses speaks in the beginning of Genesis.

Justin, disputing with Trypho the Jew (n. 36), had asserted in most weighty words that Christ is true God, and is called in the old Scripture the Lord of hosts. But after the discourse had turned to other things, Trypho resumes the question (n. 48): « Resuming therefore the discourse at which you stopped, complete it. For it seems to me wonderful indeed, and one that cannot be demonstrated at all. For what you say, that this Christ pre-existed as God before the ages, and then endured to be born and made man, that seems to me not only abhorrent to opinion, but even foolish ». Then Justin answers that this doctrine truly seems abhorrent to opinion to those who are never willing to understand or do the things of God, and he premises that there are two distinct questions: whether Jesus was the true Messiah foretold in the Law, and whether he is true God; for there are some (namely the Ebionites) who confess him as Christ, although they pronounce him a man born of men: « To whom I do not assent, nor would I assent, even if the greatest part (of Christians) which agrees with me said the same. For we have been commanded by Christ to believe not human doctrines, but those which were preached by the blessed prophets and handed down by him ». Behold again a most firm and by no means ambiguous profession of the Catholic faith. But now, in order to expound this truth credibly to a Jewish man, Justin sets about showing that there is another besides the Father, the creator of all things, who is called God in the ancient Scripture, and who foreshadowed the future Incarnation by the theophanies of the Old Testament. He recognizes him in one of the three angels who appeared to Abraham under the oak of Mamre; in that mysterious angel, I say, of whom it is afterwards read: The Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah sulphur and fire from the Lord out of heaven. He sees the same in him who appeared to Jacob, and then to Moses among the flames¹⁰ of the burning bush, testifying of himself: I am who am. Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: He who is, sent me to you. Then he concludes, n. 60-61: « He who said to Moses that he was the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob will not be the creator God of the universe, but the same as he who was shown to you to have appeared to Abraham and Jacob, and to minister to the will of the creator of the universe, and by his counsel to have ministered in the judgment of Sodom, so that, even if, as you say, the angel and God were two, no one not altogether deprived of mind would dare to say that the author and parent of the universe, leaving the supercelestial things, was seen in a small part of the earth... By another testimony also from the Scriptures I will demonstrate to you that God, before all created things, begot from himself a certain rational power, which is called both the glory of the Lord by the Holy Spirit, and now Son, now Wisdom, now Angel, now God, now Lord and Word... For it has all these appellations from the fact that it ministers to the will of the Father, and was begotten by the will from the Father... Such is what we see, that from fire another fire is born, without that from which this one is kindled being diminished, etc. » ¹¹. Where it is equally obscure and difficult that Justin says it is absurd if anyone thinks that the unbegotten Father himself appeared in a small part of the earth, and therefore that the apparitions of God must be referred to another person; likewise that the Son ministers to the will of the Father, and was begotten by the will from the Father¹².

The martyr Hippolytus, writing against the heresy of Noetus, which is the same as that of Sabellius, says in c. 8: « It is necessary therefore that, whether he will or not, he confess the Father God almighty, and Christ Jesus the Son of God, God made man to whom the Father subjected all things except himself, and the Holy Spirit, and that these are truly three. But if he wishes to know how one God is demonstrated, let him know that there is one virtue or power of this ». Can what we believe, I ask, be said more expressly? But coming to explanations, Hippolytus says among other things in c. 10: « When God was alone, and had nothing coeternal with himself, he willed to make the world. And thinking and willing and speaking the world, he made it... But of the things that were made, he begot the Word as leader, counsellor, and worker. And when the Word had it in himself, and was invisible to the created world, he made him visible, sending forth the prior voice, and generating light from light, he brought forth for creation itself the Lord, his own sense; and he who before was visible to himself alone, but invisible to the world, he made this one visible, so that the world, seeing him who appeared, might be able to be saved ». And below, c. 14: « If the Word was with God, and was God, what then? Will anyone say that John says two Gods? Two Gods indeed I will not say, but one, and two persons... The economy of consent is reduced to one God. For there is one God who commands, the Father. He who obeys, the Son. He who teaches knowledge, the Holy Spirit. The Father who is above all, the Son through all, the Holy Spirit in all. Otherwise we cannot understand one God, unless we truly believe in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit » ¹³. Where again it is obscure what is said about the generation of the Word made visible in the creation of the world; difficult, what is added about the Father who commands and the Son who obeys. — Still more difficult perhaps might seem the things which Dionysius of Alexandria wrote against the same Sabellians; whose refutation is to be found in the fragments that survive of the apology sent by the same Dionysius to Pope Dionysius¹⁴. Nevertheless, since in it the holy bishop clearly clears himself of the errors objected, far from a new difficulty being added in this part, help is rather supplied, whence the others are washed away. And the Benedictine editors rightly note that this apology of Dionysius is of greater moment in that it is an example to us of what the other Fathers before the Council of Nicaea would have done, to whom certain things fell out that were in appearance akin to Arian impiety, if a similar necessity had compelled them to explain their mind more openly.

These things therefore will exhibit to you a kind of specimen of that state in which the explanations of dogmas were still imperfect, that is, the manner of expounding and speaking was not yet so precise, because the heresies had not yet arisen against which afterwards, with greater clarity of concepts and propriety of terms, the divine truth was defended. For what happened in the dogma of the Trinity, it will be easily understood, with due proportion preserved, happened also in the others. The same in the dogma of the Incarnation, concerning which before Nestorius and Eutyches there are found in the writings of the Fathers modes of speaking which, if they were tested by the strict rigor of dialectic, would imply a distinction of the supposits of God and man, or on the contrary, and more frequently, could provide an occasion for the perverse understanding of a certain mixture of the two natures coalescing into one third¹⁵. The same in the dogma of original sin, in which the Pelagians, its attackers, seemed to themselves to triumph, fortifying themselves with certain sayings of Chrysostom, which Augustine reduces to their legitimate sense in the first book against Julian¹⁶. The same in the dogma of grace, in which Augustine himself, as soon as he began to descend to the theological scrutiny of this matter, confesses ingenuously that he sometimes slipped, not indeed by a settled and fixed view, but as it were by inquiring, opining, examining less accurately¹⁷. The same also in the rest, nor is it necessary to linger longer in bringing forward examples.

3. Now therefore the third state of doctrine remains, to which a third class of testimonies also corresponds: namely the state of precise explanation, in which, to use the words of Vincent of Lérins, what was formerly believed more obscurely is understood more clearly, and posterity rejoices that what ancient times venerated without understanding is now unfolded. This stage, as regards most dogmas, begins with the peace of the Church given by Constantine. For from that time onward there was a great advance of knowledge in the penetration of revealed truths, and it was most conspicuous in the fourth and fifth centuries especially, according as the occasions of rising errors brought. Then in the works of Athanasius, Hilary, Basil, and Nazianzen there is a full treatment of the divine processions; which attains its perfection in the fifteen books of Augustine on the Trinity, that principle now being clearly enunciated which in the most high mystery supplies the key of understanding, as far as the condition of mortals allows: namely, that all things in God are the same where the opposition of relation does not stand in the way. Then shines forth the doctrine concerning the sacraments, grace, original sin, and the new economy of the Gospel in relation to the Old Testament, in the controversies of Augustine with the Donatists, the Pelagians, and the Manichees. Then come forth the Ephesine definitions concerning the hypostatic union, and that splendid letter of Leo the Great to Flavian, where the whole dogma of the Incarnation is expounded so clearly and with such precise terms and formulas.

But neither will it be doubtful to you that the authorities of this later age are absolutely to be preferred. For after the resolutions of the Fathers who fought against the heresies, always to appeal to the more ancient is nothing else than to spread a snare for the simple, so that they may prefer what is more obscure and more confused to what is clearer and more distinct, and what was said in passing to what has been more accurately unfolded. And this snare is known to be more dangerous because it is proposed under the appearance of antiquity. For what is more plausible, and in its depths truer, than to say with Vincent of Lérins that antiquity is to be followed? And who would believe that there is deception in this principle? And yet so it is. Antiquity is to be followed — this indeed is the rule of Vincent of Lérins. But one ought to add that, according to the same Vincent, posterity often speaks more clearly. And this is what the critics are wont to conceal, declining so far from the rule of Catholic understanding as not to fear to say that after controversies have arisen, the Fathers are not so easily to be heard, because the ardor of disputation drove them to say more than they wished. But one must not oppose the manner of speaking of the Fathers before and after disputations with heretics. Each is true, and each profits the Church, while in the first she sees the natural simplicity and wondrous perpetuity of her faith, but in the other she is instructed unto a deeper understanding and a more exact notion of the articles of the same faith. For heresies make doctors more solicitous. Although on the other hand it is also most certain that the Fathers who wrote before the heresies arose have something stronger, because they appear more evidently free from all partisanship¹⁸. Therefore these two modes complete one another, and in different respects each excels the other.

Thus therefore, since the truth of the distribution of the testimonies of tradition into the three classes mentioned above now sufficiently appears, and no difficulty occurs concerning the first and the third, but only concerning that intermediate one which marks the transition from simple faith to explanations either of deeper understanding or of more diligent caution against the novelties of heretics: it is now to be seen what is the legitimate interpretation with regard to those things which in that state of transition seemed to bear the appearance of heterodoxy.

And the whole inquiry will be reduced to two observations. The first and preliminary will be that those passages of the Fathers that now come under consideration can be understood in a plainly orthodox sense. The second and principal, that they not only can but must be taken in that sense, prescinding even from the explicit professions of the authors, if account be taken of the criteria alone that are proper to Catholic tradition.

1. And as to the first, it is not worthwhile to descend to a discussion of individual passages; it will suffice to bring forward an example from those that are the most difficult, and that could offer the better handle for calumny — I mean those testimonies of the ancients concerning the mystery of the Trinity reported above, from which the critics wish to persuade us that those same ancients were ignorant of the consubstantiality of the persons, and that besides the highest and supreme God they acknowledged two other inferior gods, according to the dogma of the pagans! In which exegesis of theirs they perhaps had the causes of their deception in the neglect of the principles of scholastic theology.

Certainly consubstantiality not only does not conflict with the order of origin among the persons, but rather so necessarily coheres with it that, if once several unproceeding persons were thought in God, by that very fact the dogma of one God in three persons would evidently become absurd. On this matter see the treatise On the Trinity, theses 9 and 31, with the prologue to Q. 28. For this reason the Gospel inculcates this very order of origin so insistently and so studiously, employing even formulas that might seem to carnal understanding to be to the detriment of equality — as when it is said of the Son that he can do nothing of himself, and of the Holy Spirit that he will not speak of himself, that whatever he shall hear he shall speak, and other things of the kind. The dogma of the Trinity therefore posits one unproceeding person, from whom is the Son; from whom together with the Son, as from one principle, is the Holy Spirit. For thus and not otherwise are the divine persons distinguished among themselves by the relations of origin alone, and not at all by anything absolute — that is, by the essence or substance, which together with the operative power and the operation itself, both within and without, is one and the same. So too the operation of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is the same, but it is in the Father with the relation of one communicating, it is in the Son with the relation of one receiving from the Father, it is in the Holy Spirit with the relation of one receiving from both. Now therefore it must be seen whether there have a place there the incriminated expressions of the Father to whom the Son and the Holy Spirit minister in all things (Iren. l. 4, c. 7; Justin, in Tryph. n. 61); of the Father who commands, of the Son who obeys (Hippol. ubi supra); of the Father who makes, of the Son through whom it is made, or of the Father who is the whole substance, of the Son who is the derivation of the whole and a portion (Tertull. in apolog. c. 21, and c. Praxeam c. 9). And that in such expressions there cannot be propriety of words — on that there will surely be no question between us. But we too sometimes say of God things that do not carry with them a greater propriety of terms. For we say that God repents, and that God is angry; nor do we fear to attribute to God hands and arms and eyes. Do we therefore make God corporeal? Do we make him mutable in his counsels, or subject to human passions? Far be it. For if from those expressions there be removed whatever is human, nothing else will remain signified by hands and arms but power and might; nothing else by anger but the efficacious will to punish sins; nothing else by repentance but a change, not of counsel, but of the things that are subject to counsel. Say the same in the present matter. For in one who ministers, in respect of him whom he serves; in one who obeys, in respect of him whom he obeys; and finally in an instrument, in respect of him whose instrument it is — two things are considered: first, that from him whom he serves, whom he obeys, whose instrument he is, he has derived either the operative power or the will to operate; second, that he has it as different from that which is in the principal agent — namely, as participated, dependent, and subject. Now remove from such terms, if haply they be transferred to divine things, all that sounds the imperfection of dependence, and nothing else will remain signified but the order of origin alone, according to which, as was said a little before, the operation in the Son, although the same as the operation of the Father, is nevertheless in him with the relation of one receiving from the Father, as it is in the Holy Spirit with the relation of one receiving from both. And you will say that the modes of speaking of Irenaeus, of Justin, of Hippolytus (nay, even of Tertullian, whose style is always hyperbolic and labours under an exaggerated realism) — you will say, I repeat, that these modes of speaking do not admit an orthodox sense, especially when the Arians, who were to abuse them, did not yet exist, and the principles common among Christians concerning the divinity of themselves sufficiently excluded the grossness of carnal understanding?¹.

Further, consubstantiality stands very well with appropriation, whereby some essential attribute, although in reality common to the three persons, is nevertheless considered as if it belonged to one before the others. And this appropriation, being used both in the Scriptures and in all the symbols of faith and among all the Fathers, doctors, and theologians, belongs so manifestly to the Catholic² treatment of the Trinity that it is a wonder if it can be either ignored or rejected by our critics. « It must be said, says St Thomas, that for the manifestation of the faith it was fitting that essential attributes be appropriated to the persons. For although the trinity of persons cannot be proved by demonstration, it is fitting that it be declared through certain things more manifest. But essential attributes are more known to us according to reason than the properties of the persons, because from creatures, from which we receive knowledge, we can arrive with certainty at the knowledge of essential attributes, but not at the knowledge of personal properties. As therefore we use the similitude of a vestige or image found in creatures for the manifestation of the divine persons, so also essential attributes. And this manifestation of the persons through essential attributes is called appropriation ». Nor indeed can the matter be arbitrary, but having its foundation most of all in a certain peculiar fitness between the essential attribute and the property of the person, it supplies the best solution to the many difficulties that occur in the present matter.

Indeed, the appropriation of power, wisdom, and goodness is most usual, and that too is better known than to need much explanation. For power has the character of a principle, and is appropriated to the Father, who is the principle among the divine persons. Wisdom, exemplarity, idea, art, shines in the conception of the intellect, and is appropriated to the Son, who proceeds as the word. But goodness is the reason and object of love, and is appropriated to the Holy Spirit, who proceeds as love. Just as, therefore, the ancients attributed to the Father the work of the first creation, of which it is said in Genesis: In the beginning God created heaven and earth; but the earth was void and empty, and the spirit of God was borne over the waters, because in this work the omnipotence that draws the world from nothing absolute shines forth: so they attributed to the Son, as the Word of the Father, the work of the second creation — that is, of the formation, distinction, and adornment of things — because that work is the work of wisdom. Moreover, the procession of the Word from the Father in order to the adorning of the world was considered by them as a certain sending forth into the light, or bringing forth ad extra, of the Word himself conceived from eternity. In this sense Athenagoras said that the Word came forth in order to be the idea and act of all material things, which were like unformed matter and an inert earth. And Hippolytus said that the Father, creating the world, begot the Word, making him visible and capable of being seen, whereas before he was incapable of being seen and invisible. For just as an architect who has in his mind the idea of a building that no one previously saw makes it visible when he begins to form the building out of unformed materials, so the Father brought forth ad extra his Word begotten from eternity, when he said: Let there be light, let there be a firmament, and the rest that is recorded in Genesis. And just as the art of the craftsman in some way goes forth outside in order to impress and figure itself in the artifact, and to become its act and form: so in the work of the adorning of the world there went forth that uncreated art appropriated to the Word, of which Prov. VIII-27: When he prepared the heavens, I was present; when he enclosed the abyss with a sure law and compass; when he established the ether above, and weighed the fountains of waters; when he surrounded the sea with its limit, and set a law to the waters that they should not pass their bounds; when he hung the foundations of the earth, I was with him, composing all things. Hence, from first to last, this second and temporal generation of the Word, about which the critics raise so great a question, is in the mind of the ancients nothing but the manifestation of God in the creation of things, as regards that uncreated idea or understood reason of the universe which is specially appropriated to the Word because of the mode of its procession. That such a manifestation adds nothing new to the Word, but posits a change on the part of the creature alone, can be doubtful to him only to whom even the first principles of natural theology were still unknown — nay rather, to whom it would not even be perspicuous that the interior idea of the architect is in no way changed in itself when, through the execution of the work, it is brought forth ad extra³. How then could the expressions of the ancients concerning the Word proceeding forth from the Father to the making of the world seem to anyone irreducible to an orthodox sense?

But what shall we now say of all the passages of Justin in which the theophanies of the Old Testament are attributed to the Son, for the reason that « no one who is not altogether out of his mind would dare to say that the author of the universe and the Father, leaving all things supercelestial, was seen in a little part of the earth? » This reason too is set forth still more expressly below, in the same dialogue with Trypho (n. 127), where it is said: « Do not think that the unbegotten God himself descended or ascended from any place. For that ineffable Father and Lord of the universe neither comes into any place, nor walks, nor sleeps, but remains in his own region, whatever that be, seeing keenly and hearing keenly, not with eyes indeed or ears, but with an ineffable power, and he sees all things and knows all things, nor does any of us escape him, nor is he moved, nor can he be contained in a place — nay, not even in the whole world, since he was even before the world was made. How then should he either speak to anyone, or appear to anyone, or be seen in the narrowest part of the earth? » Here at least, you will say, we must surrender, so that even unwilling we confess that Justin acknowledged in the Father and the Son a nature plainly dissimilar. Nay rather, I say, so dissimilar that the conclusion would follow which you yourself would shrink from — namely, that the nature of the Son was in Justin's mind corporeal and animal, in which, to be sure, he could have ascended, descended, walked, slept, and performed the other things that are denied of the Father. And what, I ask, is more inadmissible? How would Justin everywhere preach the Son as God begotten before the ages and in time incarnate of the Virgin? How would he understand those most magnificent words of Scripture: I am who am, the Lord of hosts, the Lord strong and mighty, the Lord has reigned, and other such things which so often, both in the First Apology and in this very Dialogue, he contends are to be referred to Christ? But do not forget, I pray, that Justin is disputing with a Jew, and while he wishes to persuade the Jew that the theophanies of the Old Testament are not to be referred to that single divine person whom the Jews admitted, he first intends to destroy the absurd and carnal opinion of the Jews concerning those theophanies themselves: Even as, he says at n. 114, it pleases your teachers, who think that the parent of the universe and unbegotten God has hands and feet and fingers and a soul, after the manner of a composite animal, and who therefore teach that it was the Father himself who was seen by Abraham and Jacob. And against this Jewish and crude imagination do battle all the things that were reported above. He intends, then, that the theophanies are not so to be taken as if God had been seen in his own proper substance, but according as visible species and audible voices were formed by divine operation. But now this operation, together with the representative species, Justin attributes to a person distinct from the person of the Father: namely, to that person who in operating bears himself as the minister of the Father; to that person who, being one day to be incarnate, even then assumed the part of announcing to men the wills of the Father; to that person to whom could fit the names of angel and of sent one, which continually occur in the theophanies of the Old Scripture; to that person of whom from the beginning of the disputation (n. 56) he had said: « I shall endeavour to persuade you, since you understand the Scriptures, of what I say — namely, that another is and is called, under the creator of the universe, God and Lord, who is also called angel, because he announces to men whatever the Creator of the universe wishes to announce to them, above whom there is no God »⁴. Finally, to that person of whom at the end (n. 127) he concludes: « Neither Abraham, therefore, nor Isaac, nor Jacob, nor any one of men saw that utterly ineffable Father and Lord of all, but him who, according to his will, is both God, his Son, and angel, from the fact that he ministers his will, whom he also willed to be born a man of the virgin, who was also once fire in the conversation with Moses from the bush ». Nor let it be troublesome to you in these things that Justin subjects the Son to the Father. For he does not subject him as a servant to the creator, but as a son to the fountain of divinity, so that according to our manner of conceiving — (for lisping as we can, we resound the sublime things of God) — the order of origin may be expressed⁵. Nor charge it as a crime against Justin that he said the same Son was begotten of the Father according to the will of the Father, or by the will of the Father. For besides that this is rightly understood in the sense that St Thomas sets forth in the First Part, Q. 41, a. 2⁶, lest namely in this generation of the Son from the substance of the Father someone imagine a necessity dominating the Father and imposed on him unwilling, as the Marcionites feigned concerning their second and fictitious god — Justin explains himself in the same dialogue with Trypho, at n. 128, saying: « But that power, which the prophetic word calls both God and angel, is not to be counted a mere name, like the light of the sun, but is also another thing in number (understand: something subsisting and distinct); I have also briefly discussed this above, when I said that that power was begotten from the Father, by his power and will, not however by an abscission, as if the substance of the Father were divided, as all other things that are divided and cut are not the same as before they were cut; and by way of example I took the fires which we see kindled from another fire, that fire not being diminished from which many can be kindled, but remaining the same. » Where you see that the generation of the Son by the will of the Father is opposed to the generation that is among us by the division of substance — that is, the spiritual generation to the material one. Toward this too tends the similitude of fire last adduced, in which Justin in some way anticipates the Nicene definition: « God of God, light of light ».

We have, then, in all these things obscure explanations, conceptions not sufficiently precise, and finally improper expressions, which, if they had not preceded the time of the Arian impiety that arose, could seem suspect. But we certainly do not have any that would not receive an orthodox interpretation on fair and equitable terms. And the same must be said in the matters of other dogmas. See for example the letter of Cyril of Alexandria to John of Antioch, in which he refutes the calumnies of his adversaries concerning what he held — that a concretion or confusion or commixture of the Word of God with the flesh had taken place, that the divinity is passible, etc.⁷. See also Augustine, l. de praedest. SS. n. 27, where there is a most excellent observation concerning the tradition of the dogma of grace down to Pelagius.

2. Since these things are so, it now remains to ask whether those same more difficult testimonies of the Fathers not only can but also must be understood in that Catholic sense of which we have spoken. Nor must the answer be sought from afar, for the conclusion of what was premised in ch. 1 is sufficient. For in those things that constitute the very sum of the faith, the sense of the present Church is a most certain argument of the sense of the primitive Church, as was proved above. Moreover, all those Fathers whose authority has always been received, and is received even now, could not in fact have deflected from that sense. It is necessary, therefore, that if you find anything in their sayings that is not said with all the caution that the moderns observe, you nevertheless, adhering to the criteria that are proper to the interpretation of sacred tradition and of its monuments, take it without doubt in that orthodox sense in which it can be understood, whatever be the probabilities that, from the viewpoint of a bare and simple scientific criticism, might still seem to you to occur to the contrary.

And this was Augustine's most solid manner of arguing with regard to Chrysostom, whose authority Julian was bringing forward against the dogmas of original sin. For Augustine observed that it was impossible for Chrysostom to have believed otherwise than the others whose consent he had already shown — surely in a matter that did not admit a diversity of views, but concerned the very foundations of religion. For if he had truly held otherwise in so great a cause, where the sum of the Christian religion consists, he would not have obtained and preserved so great an authority in the Church. And therefore, from the fact that his authority had remained entire, it was taken as a sign that his sense had been Catholic. « Do you dare, then, says he in l. 1 c. Iul. n. 22, to oppose these words of the holy bishop John, as though by way of contrary, to the sentences of so many and such great colleagues of his, and to separate him from their most concordant society, and to set him up as their adversary? Far be it, far be it to believe or to say this evil of so great a man. Far be it, I say, that John of Constantinople should resist so many and such great fellow bishops of his — and especially the Roman Innocentius, the Carthaginian Cyprian, the Cappadocian Basil, the Nazianzen Gregory, the Gallic Hilary, the Milanese Ambrose — concerning the baptism of little children and their liberation by Christ from the paternal handwriting. There are other things in which even the most learned and best defenders of the Catholic rule, with the frame of the faith safe, sometimes do not agree among themselves, and one says something better and truer than another about one and the same thing. But this matter of which we now treat pertains to the very foundations of the faith... Comparing therefore John with the elders, whose own sins are forgiven in baptism, he said that they have no sins; not, as you yourself set down his words, that they are not defiled by sin, since you wish, certainly, to be understood that they are not defiled by the sin of the first man... I will set down the very Greek words that were spoken by John: Διὰ τοῦτο καὶ τὰ παιδία βαπτίζομεν, καὶ τοι ἁμαρτήματα οὐκ ἔχοντα. Which is in Latin: Therefore we also baptize infants, although they have no sins. You see certainly that it was not said by him that little children are not defiled by sin, but that they have no sins: understand, their own; and there is no contention. But, you will say, why did he not himself add 'their own'? Why, do we think, unless because, disputing in the Catholic Church, he did not think himself to be understood otherwise, was assailed by no one with such a question, and spoke the more securely while you were not yet litigating? »

Where you see that Augustine does not cling to the rules of textual criticism, as our moderns say, but to higher principles that must govern all legitimate patristic exegesis. Those principles, I say, whose rejection or neglect constitutes the principal vice of the criticism of which certain things are now to be observed in the following chapter.