De immutabilitate traditionis contra modernam haeresim evolutionismi

That the historical method, in opposition to the method of immanence, is the only legitimate method in the preambles of faith, when what must be proved is the fact of revelation, namely: whether the Christian preaching is from God revealing, and as such credible and to be believed.

The historical method generally consists in two things. First, in this: that it deals with texts, or monuments, or external facts.

Second, in this: that it uses experimental criteria alone, which can be of use to the natural faculty of human reason. In both ways, however, it will at once, and even at first sight, appear suited to the demonstration of which we treat in the preambles of faith. Suited, indeed, in the part where it takes the principle of its process from external facts. For, « in order that the obedience of our faith might be consonant to reason, says the Vatican Council, Sess. 3, cap. 3, God willed that the external arguments of his revelation be joined with the interior aids of the Holy Spirit — namely, divine deeds, and in the first place miracles and prophecies ». Suited also in the part where it uses those criteria alone that are taken from the order of natural experience. For revelation is not yet supposed as known. Nay rather, the very existence of revelation is the object of the whole inquiry, and therefore, lest we commit the sin of an inept and vicious circularity, we must set aside any and every rule or norm descending from revelation itself, so that the estimation and criticism of the facts that are assumed as arguments be committed to the dictate of right reason alone. You have, then, in the said historical method all the conditions required in the present matter. Nor is this all. But, what is more, you have in it alone a rational process leading to a solid conclusion of the proposed demonstration. For revelation is a fact; it is a fact most free on the part of God; it is a supernatural fact — that is, one demanded by no exigency of nature at all; it is, finally, a fact that cannot be known by us directly in itself. Where then, do you think, is the argument demonstrating such a fact? That, for example, what was said by Jesus Christ — who in his outward appearance surely did not differ from other men — was truly said by God? That what was preached by the apostles, what was received from them and transmitted from mouth to mouth even to us through the Church, was truly said by God? Think and think again. Unless you wish to erect an absurd apriorism into a principle, a divine fact not knowable in itself must be demonstrated through other divine facts knowable in themselves — namely, those that can have for us the value of signs, as being proposed to our experience and estimation, both in their transcendence beyond the powers of nature and in their relation to the Christian revelation, to be sealed and authenticated, if it be truly divine. And these facts can be of many kinds, and indeed will be. The fact of prophecies fulfilled by their event; those physical facts that are called miracles simply and without addition; and likewise very many other facts, marvellously eminent above all the laws that history discovers — of the kind that are reported by the Vatican Council in the passage cited, toward the end: the wonderful propagation of the Church, her eminent sanctity and inexhaustible fecundity in all good things, Catholic unity, invincible stability, and other like things. For these too are contained in the order of facts; these too are known as divine by historical criteria, and therefore are suited to the demonstration of which we now treat — although its principal foundation must surely be taken from miracles and prophecies, because those signs are more evident for us and more accommodated to the common understanding of all. Such, then, was the process always employed up to now, beginning from Christ the Lord himself and his apostles, as the whole evangelical narrative from beginning to end testifies: God bearing witness, says Heb. II-4, with signs and wonders, and various powers, and distributions of the Holy Spirit¹.

But now that process has been found to labour under some defect or other, and a new method is substituted, taking the principle of demonstration no longer from external facts, but from the subjective state of the soul alone: insofar, namely, as Christian dogmas are postulated by that state and are so adjusted to it that the soul can foresee them in itself, or at least of its own accord enter into them, and by its own energy assimilate them to itself as soon as they are proposed, provided only that it strive to rectify and purify itself by moral honesty. For the progress of our will compels us to confess our insufficiency, leads us to feel the need of some superaddition, and gives us the wherewithal to look into, acknowledge, and at last receive the supernatural order. Now this alone is the legitimate method, because every dogma proved from without sets an undue limit to the rights of reason, and takes away its necessary autonomy, which wills that we acquire truth from those things alone that are immanent to us. For the rest, there is no reason why you should be solicitous about this very principle. For it is enough that you know that the general principle of immanence is the definitive acquisition of modern philosophy. Moreover: « Whoever refuses to admit this principle is no longer counted among philosophers. Whoever has not arrived at an understanding of it thereby demonstrates that he has no philosophical sense ». And do you still doubt? If, however, those rhetorical declamations, in which the whole demonstration consists from beginning to end, do not suffice for someone, he will perhaps marvel at the imaginary basis of the system, its fantastic construction, and its emptiness full of void. And indeed, if judgment were to be passed on the new-fangled theory from a properly theological viewpoint, it would appear wholly to be condemned as corruptive of the fundamental notion of supernatural being — nay, as destructive of all faith whose motive is the authority of God revealing, as has been noted elsewhere. These things, however, being for the present passed over, consider for a little now how vain it is as to the foundation that it presupposes, how inept as to the fact that it assumes, how especially worthy of laughter as to the pretension that it carries — of eliminating, or at least of surpassing, the solidity of the traditional apology from miracles and the other external arguments of revelation.

Vain, I say, as to the foundation that it has set before itself. For wishing to know nothing of the arguments by which the one and true God, creator and our Lord, is known through the things that are made as through effects; closing its eyes to all the deeds of God in the world, to the life, preaching, and works of Jesus Christ, to the preparation and consequences of his advent, to all other objective facts whatsoever by which from the beginning until now the divine testimonies have been made credible beyond measure: it contends to dig out the whole complex of religious truth, even revealed truth, with the existence of God itself included, from the sole inspection of the insufficiency, need, restlessness, and aspirations of the human soul. You would think you were truly hearing somnambulists philosophizing. For what kind of argument, I ask, what sort of reasoning is this: I am in need, therefore there truly exists on the side of the thing that of which I am in need, or of which I seem to myself to be in need? Someone led by the sole dictate of common sense would say: It will be in the desire, it will be in the aspiration, it will also be — and very often — in that fantastic objectivity whose cause and principle is the soul itself, so easily creating and calling to existence the things it desires. For those are what are called the illusions of the soul: « How many, then, are the illusions of the soul, says Augustine, if I should wish to tell, when will time suffice? For whose soul does not suffer these? Brief is what I suggest: how our soul is filled with illusions ». And yet from that imagined objectivity to objective objectivity the distance is as great as between reality and a dream. Finally, desire, aspiration, and whatever else of the kind, of itself shows nothing other than a need; a need nothing other than a void; but a void, so far as I know, can never demonstrate that that by which it is to be filled really exists. These things both appear manifest and are so, whatever that philosophical sense may say by which we are, to our extreme misfortune, deprived. But if haply you object to these things that all those who before us wrote eloquently and wisely about the soul, beatitude, and the end of man deduced many most solid conclusions from the desire of nature, which cannot be illusory or remain in vain: attend, I pray, diligently, that the conditions of their argument are far, far removed from the foundation of the method of immanence. For they consider nature as it is the work of God, the most wise creator and provider — of God, I say, the principle and end of all things, whom they know altogether from elsewhere than from their own aspirations: namely, from the fact of the existence of mundane effects, which do not have in themselves the sufficient reason of their being, of their order, and of their evolution. Then, therefore, the desire of nature is not taken as a bare and simple desire, but as a desire rooted in nature by God its author, to whose wisdom it is manifestly repugnant that he should have implanted in his creature a proportion and exigency and tendency that cannot be fulfilled. Then natural aspiration is formally taken as the inclination of a thing toward its natural end, which is from the direction of the one instituting nature². Then too, from the appetite of the soul an efficacious argument can be formed — although not from any appetite whatsoever, but only from the appetite, as they say, innate, or even elicited without exceeding the terms of the innate³. But in truth, from the moment you shut me up within aspirations, insofar as they are (as you say) immanent aspirations; from the moment you wish the whole building of religious truth to emerge from the depth of aspirations; from the moment you contend that God exists, that revelation exists, that a higher order exists, insofar as — neither more nor less — all these things answer to the aforesaid aspirations of the heart: I laugh within myself, and I say the foundation is vain, illusory, fantastic, empty, like a dream.

But let us omit these things, if you please. Let us admit the foundation for a little, and grant the major premise of the whole process: that there is a necessary connexion between the aspirations of the soul precisely as such, and the concrete existence of the things that are postulated through them. Now let us come to the fact that the new apologetic method places in the position of the minor: namely, that the aspirations of the heart truly require, demand, and postulate revelation. For there perhaps — again a dream, and again a sport of the imagination. Certainly a fact of this kind is far from all positive experience. That, first, all rationalists deny. Second, all Catholic theologians deny it to a man. Third, the Vatican Council denies it, expressly stating and defining that revelation was absolutely necessary only insofar as it pleased God out of his infinite goodness to confer an undue benefit on man, ordaining him to partake of divine goods that wholly surpass the understanding of the human mind, since eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who love him. But, what is more, those who ought to be the first of all to deny it are the immanentists themselves, since they have no legitimate acquisition of truth except that which comes from the proper fund of the soul. For nothing is thought more foreign to the fund of the human soul than revelation; and one immediately asks what kind of chimera the soul is, if it can receive no truth except an autochthonous one, and at the same time needs nothing more than instruction and doctrine coming to it from without — that is, from God revealing, coming upon it beyond and above all the laws of nature.

What now, if we descend to concrete application! For the revelation that they say is postulated by the aspirations of the heart is not revelation in general, but this revelation marked out in the individual, which is called the Catholic faith. « Now the Catholic faith is this: that we venerate one God in the Trinity and the Trinity in unity, neither confounding the persons nor separating the substance. One person is the Father's, another the Son's, another the Holy Spirit's; but the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit have one divinity, equal glory, coeternal majesty... God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit; and yet not three gods, but one God... The Father is made by no one, neither created nor begotten. The Son is from the Father alone, not made, nor created, but begotten. The Holy Spirit is from the Father and the Son, not made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding... It is also the right faith that we believe and confess that D. N. I. C., the Son of God, is God and man... Who although he is God and man, is yet not two but one Christ; one, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person... Who suffered for our salvation, descended into hell, rose again the third day from the dead, ascended into heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father... This is the Catholic faith, which unless everyone believe faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved ». Now therefore, inquire and consider. See you, what common ground there can be between this Catholic faith and the aspirations, exigencies, and postulates that lie hidden in the depth of the human soul. If you see it, well and good; I certainly am not able to see it. But you will say that the Christian faith is not to be taken from this side, when judgment must be passed on its correspondence with the aspirations of the heart: not from the theoretical side, but rather from the moral, which affects the practical sense. Let it be, then, as you wish. But even in this way, I say that the argument would be as efficacious and as rigorous by which some Turk would demonstrate the credibility of the revelation brought by his prophet Mahomet. For Mahomet too brought a revelation to the world, and had converse with the archangel Gabriel, according as it is found written in the Alcoran, just as we find it written in the Gospel that J. C. descended from heaven to bring us the words of him who sent him. Moreover, if the judgment rests with the exigencies and tendencies of the heart, how many are there to whom, while they consult their aspirations, the revelation of Mahomet will seem truer than the revelation of Christ! Nor does it avail if you answer that the aspirations to which the paradise of Mahomet responds are not good, and therefore do not demonstrate the truth of its postulates. For, other things being now passed over, who taught you this distinction between good and not good aspirations? And I indeed, as long as I do not put off the real man, as long as I apprehend my nature as constituted under the order of the first cause, the first principle, and the ultimate end of all things, so long can I and do I judge of the goodness or depravity of my aspirations by respect to this supreme end of my will. But again, once you shut me up in my aspirations as in the first principle from which all truth is to be drawn out and compared, I no longer know what good or not good aspirations are. I know nothing else than true and real aspirations. But I find in myself aspirations that postulate the paradise of Mahomet, and others that postulate the paradise of Christ, and I conclude that the revelation of the Alcoran is as true as the revelation of the Gospel is true, the one as receivable as the other is receivable. Do you see an empty system, without subsistence, leading to contradictions?

There is also something worse, in that it trusts so much in its own solidity as to be persuaded that the traditional apology, with miracles and the other external arguments of revelation, already vanishes in the splendour of its light — arguments of which it does not hesitate to affirm that they are no longer accommodated to the modern mentality, and that for men of our age they have lost their demonstrative force. For in this a crowning piece is added to the fantastic judgments of which the whole system consists from beginning to end. You would think them so devoted to immanence that they know nothing at all of what is done outside, and have never heard anything of the new and splendid signs by which it has pleased God in this very age of ours, in the light of the sun and on the stage of the greatest publicity, to confirm the credibility of the Catholic faith. To the history of these facts, then, in which is the full confutation of the ridiculous assertion, we shall refer them⁴. It is indeed most true that the modern spirit of unbelief resists miracles, and attempts impossibilities in order not to admit the reality of miracles, and voluntarily closes its eyes lest it be confounded by the irrecusable testimony of miracles⁵ But, besides that — O immortal gods! — there is no modern novelty there, unless perchance you wish the modern era to begin from the time of the scribes and Pharisees, the conclusion would be diametrically opposite to the one they wish to bring out. For the enemies of revelation strive against its solid demonstrations; but against the light and nebulous apology of immanence, who would turn his arms and his strength? At it they laugh and will always laugh, and the devil with them.

Thus, then, it appears how absurdly the historical method is expelled from what they call fundamental theology. But now the question arises whether, having been unjustly driven from the vestibule, it is rightly admitted into the inmost sanctuary of sacred science. For the solution of which let the following be the proposition.

That the historical method, in opposition to the theological method, is not only wholly insufficient and disproportionate, but also productive of positive errors of every kind, when, after the preambles of faith, the question is no longer whether there is a Christian revelation, but what its sense is, and what the interpretation of those things that are contained in its sources. And that the same method, if it be carried so far that, under the deceitful guise of abstraction from the higher rules, it uses the same independence in constructing its customary hypotheses or conjectures as if those higher rules did not exist, has at its base a heresy the more pernicious the more artfully it is dissembled, and the graver the freer a way it opens to every denial of the revealed dogmas.

The general ground of this assertion is so evident that there is no need of a long explanation. For in whatever order of exegesis, the first and most necessary criterion of interpretation must always be taken from the things that are proper to the author or the school whose doctrines are under inquiry. Even ordinary good common sense surely dictates this; a quite obvious reasoning demonstrates it. For what, I ask, would you say of one who set about a commentary on the books of Aristotle, or an exposition of the tenets of the Peripatetic school, caring nothing for the terminology proper to Aristotle, nothing for the rules, nothing for the method, nothing for the principles that govern his school? When, therefore, you approach the interpretation, whether of the books that have God as their revealing author, or of the works which, although not inspired by God, are yet, if one may so speak, of the school founded and instituted by God for the custody and propagation of the revealed doctrine: you must attend before all else to all the norms descending from revelation itself, and to the special rules that revelation either implies by its nature or has assigned in fact. Now these are called theological criteria. But the historical method is precisely the one that ignores criteria of this sort, and uses exclusively only those that are taken from profane usage and the ordinary course of human affairs. How then is it sufficient and proportionate to the inquiry now in hand? Nay rather, how is it not conducive to positive and most grave errors, as regards the true sense of many texts? Let us now illustrate this by some examples.

For example, you read in Matthew that before Joseph and Mary came together, Mary was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit; you read that Joseph did not know her until she brought forth her firstborn son; the mention of the brothers and sisters of Jesus also occurs to you several times. And you, enclosed within the historical method, easily conclude that uterine brothers and sisters are understood here; that firstborn is said not only of one before whom there was none, but also of one after whom there were others; finally, that the sense of the evangelist is that Mary was at some time known by Joseph, that she had sons and daughters, and that consequently she lost her virginity. You err, nay rather you fall into formal heresy. Had you attended to the higher criteria of faith, you would most certainly have excluded that sense. You would have understood that the evangelist removed the coming together as far as it could come into thought; you would have understood that he left it as indubitable and as it were placed beyond every possible suspicion, that after such and so great a conception by the Holy Spirit, the sanctuary of the divinity remained inviolate; you would have understood finally that it is said in the same sense, he did not know her until, etc., in which sense I would say, that man did not repent until he died, because when repentance is in question, the question can be only of the time of the present life, and he who affirms that someone did not repent as long as he lived here removes repentance from him for ever.

You read in Luke that Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and grace with God and men, and because this is said of Jesus no otherwise than of any well-behaved boy, you conclude that the sense of the evangelist is that Jesus grew inwardly in virtue, that little by little and imperceptibly he acquired consciousness of himself, that after the manner of the rest he became, from ignorant, wise. You err. Certainly Luke there bears witness, playing the part of a historian, to an external, sensible, experimental fact, seen by those among whom Jesus grew up; the fact, namely, of a certain progress observed in external actions, according as in them, whether they were of duties toward God or of duties toward men, with the evolution of the years wisdom and grace were more and more manifested. And if indeed one were to judge of the sense of the evangelist and of the fact attested by him according to the common rules, there would be, to be sure, a legitimate transition, a legitimate inference to an interior progress, inasmuch as in the ordinary course of things it is connected with the external phenomenon as a cause with an effect. But in truth, something forbids you now to pass judgment according to this common and ordinary norm. As regards the fact, the revealed principle forbids it, from which we are taught that the actions of the adolescent Christ did not proceed from a growing wisdom and virtue, but were only growing manifestations of the wisdom and virtue with which he was full from the beginning. As regards the sense of the evangelist, however, the most certain faith concerning the inspiration of the gospel forbids it, from which indeed it is sometimes permissible to abstract, but against which it is never permissible to hold anything.

You read in Mark that Jesus, coming into Nazareth, could not there do any mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk and healed them, and thence you conclude that the writer was of the persuasion that the power of miracles in Christ was limited, and that in truth a defect of power was the cause why the benefit of healing was not bestowed on more of the sick. Again you err. For, the rules of faith being presupposed, without which the books of God have no right interpretation: « It must be said that what is said here, he could not there do any mighty work, is not to be referred to absolute power, but to what can be done congruously »¹. Not that, says Jerome, he could not do many mighty works for those unbelievers, but that, lest by doing many mighty works he should condemn the unbelieving citizens. According to which manner it is said in Gen. XVIII-17: Can I hide from Abraham the things I am about to do? And XIX-22: I cannot do anything until thou enter in thither. — Again you read in Matthew that Christ marvelled, hearing the centurion speak, and because with us wonder is wont to arise from this, that something happens contrary to our expectation, you transfer the same cause of wonder to Christ, and consequently you affirm him to be a partaker of our common defect or ignorance. Thus you, led by human sense alone; but higher criteria will supply another explanation: « It must be said that wonder is properly about something new and unusual. But in Christ there could be nothing new and unusual as regards the knowledge by which he knew things in the Word, nor even as regards the knowledge by which he knew things through infused species. Yet something could be new and unusual to him according to experimental knowledge, according to which new things could occur to him daily. And therefore if we speak of him as regards beatific or even infused knowledge, there was no wonder in Christ. If, however, we speak of him as regards experimental knowledge, then wonder could be in him, and he assumed this affect for our instruction, namely that he might teach that what even he marvelled at is to be marvelled at »².

You experience a difficulty in reconciling the evangelists with one another as regards the order and circumstances of Christ's appearances to the women after the resurrection, and relying on your method, which always has recourse to the more likely or easier hypotheses, you think that the evangelists have erred on this point, either all or some. That would perhaps be probable if the matter were human books; it is not probable, but most certainly to be excluded if it is divine. — You compare the gospel of John with the synoptics, and the comparison made, you judge that if Christ spoke as in John, he could not have spoken as in the synoptics, or conversely, if he spoke as in the synoptics, he could not have spoken as in John. It is a conjecture, a very weak one, whose whole probability, if it had any, is taken away by the most certain doctrine of faith, which sets before us four books altogether of one and the same holy gospel of Jesus Christ. And so on in many other matters, for the day would almost fail me in enumerating all similar cases.

But if you now object, in defence of your method, that the gospels are also truly historical documents, and as such are to be accepted, neither more nor less, among the preambles of faith in order to the judgment of credibility, when the rules and criteria that are derived from faith have not yet come into use, nor can they, lest — God forbid — a vicious circle be manifestly incurred: I will reply that this is most true, but that it must be added at once that in this inadequate acceptance of the gospel, an adequate and complete judgment about gospel matters is altogether impossible. You will therefore accept the external, visible facts of the experimental order that are attested in the gospel; but as regards their intimate reason, you will recall that from common criteria alone you will often arrive at conclusions only hypothetically true; hypothetically, I say, that is, according to the order of things commonly contingent alone, an order which the higher light of faith will afterwards teach you had no place there. You will also accept the substance of the historical narrative, which is most evidently the same, and most constant with itself in all our books, and such as to exhibit to every sincere man a most solid foundation of persuasion concerning miracles and the other signs. But as regards the manner of the narrative and its accidental circumstances, it must be remembered that the customary method of historical criticism will be able to lead you to many conjectures more or less likely, which nevertheless will be nothing more than conjectures, until the faith of inspiration, transcending your art, perhaps shows them to be false³. You will accordingly very often have reason to suspend judgment, and to say that from the sole view of historical science it does not appear that everything is so which sacred doctrine holds and hands down concerning the facts of sacred history, or concerning its absolute infallibility. But in every mode, the way of treating and interpreting the gospel with that same freedom and independence which is admitted in profane historical documents is a false, vicious, and error-leading method.

Now, further, the same defect occurs, proportion preserved, as regards the interpretation of tradition: namely, when they accept tradition as though it were stored up in a common historical fact, that is, in the fact of the transmission of any doctrine whatever according to the forces and industry of human minds alone; and to such a degree do they leave entirely aside the higher criteria which in the case would be necessary for passing a legitimate judgment about the sense of the ancient Fathers in many passages that are obscure to us and, absolutely speaking, could give occasion for various interpretations — among which the critics, in accordance with their itch for free and independent opinion, always choose those that incline to the heterodox side, so as to arrive at the desired conclusion: that the sense of the primitive Church was other than the sense which prevailed in a later age. And if tradition were guided by the human spirit alone, then surely nothing would stand in the way a priori of admitting the possibility of a change made in the sense and understanding of the dogmas. Then it would not be necessary to take from the clear explanations of the later Fathers a safe and certain norm for interpreting the more obscure expositions of the earlier ones. Then it would be lawful to pit the successors against their predecessors. Then you could perhaps say that those great doctors of the fourth and fifth centuries either deceived or were deceived, when they profess so asseveratingly and so insistently that they depend in all things on the sense and sentence of their predecessors. That Augustine did not understand the authors about whom he wrote in the exordium of the books on the Trinity: All those whom I have been able to read, who wrote before me concerning the Trinity which is God, the catholic expounders of the divine books, intend to teach according to the Scriptures that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, by the inseparable equality of one and the same substance, insinuate the divine unity, and therefore are not three gods, but one God⁴. That the writers, finally, of the first age acknowledged, under the highest and supreme God, in the Son and the Holy Spirit inferior gods or demiurges, and through this introduced a new paganism differing from the old one only by an accidental form. These things, I say, you could perhaps say; and although they seem harsh enough, they would still be acceptable conclusions for that discipline which is wont for the most part to rest in conjectures and hypotheses⁵. But now there, no less than in Scripture, an element greater than the human must be acknowledged; and what was just now the cause why the historical method and criticism must be called plainly insufficient for interpreting the gospel, will equally be the cause why it is called unequal to interpreting the monuments of sacred tradition.

But note well that we are not dreaming, in saying that if any things are found certainly demonstrated according to the legitimate criteria of historical discipline, those same things can sometimes be shown to be false according to the higher principles of faith and the proper criteria of theology. Far be it; this is not the sense of what has been premised. But we say only that the rules customary in the art of criticism very often lead to merely probable judgments, to conjectures more or less likely, not to say wholly imaginary. But now, what from the sole view of historical criticism could be conjectural or even probable, is no longer probable if it be opposed to a truth that is most certainly made known by another way. Nay rather, it is heretical or erroneous, and no longer falls under the licitness of opinion, if it contradicts those things that either faith teaches or theological criteria demonstrate. Accordingly, if under the appearance of precision with respect to the higher rules you attempt to treat the documents of Sacred Scripture or of Tradition with that same freedom and independence which is conceded in profane matters, you will not only not avoid heretical depravity, but you will add even the crime of a most artfully contrived fallacy. The author of the little book L'Evangile et l'Eglise wrote in the introduction of his work: « In this little book the intention proposed is to consider all things from the sole view of history; not, however, to compose an apology for Catholicism and traditional dogma. If this had been the proposed intention, the present work, especially as regards the divinity of Christ and the authority of the Church, would be very defective and incomplete... We do not intend here to demonstrate either the truth of the Gospel or the truth of Catholic Christianity, but only to define the relation by which the Gospel and the Catholic Church are united in history. A reader of good faith will not be deceived in this »⁶. It can scarcely be said how many of the incautious this deceitful profession has deceived. Was it not, they said, one thing to prescind, another to deny? Is not an axiom received among all that says: there is no lie in abstractions? Is not one thing the view of the historian, another that of the theologian? Certainly. And coming to the end of the book, you see all the dogmas of the Christian faith destroyed, one after another; you see them to be utterly abjured, unless perhaps he posits at the same time as most certain that the contrary of what is admitted and approved by the historian is to be received by the believer. Therefore I say: that the historical method, carried so far that under the deceitful guise of abstraction from the higher rules it uses the same independence in constructing its customary hypotheses or conjectures as if those higher rules did not exist, has at its base a heresy the more pernicious the freer a way it opens to the destruction of all the revealed dogmas.