Apologeticae sive Theologiae Fundamentalis, Tomus II (Pars Altera): Demonstratio Catholica

That the Christian revelation will never yield its place to another revealed economy is evident from what we have said concerning the perpetuity of the messianic revelation and the indefectibility of the Church.¹ But just as the revelation begun in the Old Testament and perfected in the New cannot be abrogated, so neither can it be objectively increased, but it remains wholly closed from the death of the last apostle. This indeed Sacred Scripture and patristic Tradition clearly declare.

1. Sacred Scripture. The Gospel, which Christ commands to be preached to all times and to all creatures, is confined to those things which He Himself revealed to the apostles, teaching visibly and sending the Holy Spirit invisibly: "Going... teach all nations... teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you ... I have yet many things to say to you: but you cannot bear them now. But when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will teach you all truth."² Only the truth, therefore, which the apostles received from Christ and the Holy Spirit is the Christian truth to be preached to all nations and times. Besides this truth "there is no other gospel", as St. Paul writes.³ Whence also all the faithful are said to be "built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone",⁴ i. e. the doctrinal foundation of the Church is the revelation of the Old Testament through the prophets and the revelation of the New Testament completed through the apostles, whose beginning and end is Christ Jesus. Wherefore the successors of the apostles are everywhere shown forth as witnesses and teachers only of those things which they had received from the apostles. They are admonished to keep the apostolic deposit of faith inviolably: "Hold the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me in faith ... Keep the good deposit through the Holy Spirit."⁵⁶ They are forbidden to receive any new doctrine whatsoever, even if it comes under the name of supernatural revelation: "But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema."⁷ Beyond the apostolic deposit, therefore, the Church has no other revelation to hand on to the faithful.

2. Patristic Tradition. Already Tertullian says excellently: "For us there is no need of curiosity after Christ Jesus, nor of inquiry after the gospel. When we believe, we desire nothing further to believe. For this we believe first, that there is nothing which we ought to believe beyond ... This trench [boundary] He Himself [Christ] marked out for you, who does not will you to believe anything other than what He instituted, and therefore not even to seek."⁸ Augustine: "That [Cyprian] admonishes us to have recourse to the fountain, that is, to the apostolic tradition, and from there to direct the channel into our times, is best and without hesitation to be done."⁹ Jerome: "Except the apostles, whatever else shall be said afterwards, let it be cut off, let it have no authority."¹⁰ Vincent of Lérins: "To receive and follow new [post-apostolic] expressions was never [the mark] of Catholics, but always of heretics ... It is shown to all with sufficient evidence and clarity that among almost all heresies this is, as it were, a solemn and legitimate practice: that they always delight in profane novelties, disdain the ordinances of antiquity, and through the oppositions of knowledge falsely so called make shipwreck of the faith. But on the contrary, this is truly proper to Catholics: to keep the deposits and trusts of the holy fathers, to condemn profane novelties, and, as the apostle said, 'if anyone shall announce besides what has been received, let him be anathema'."¹¹

Whence it is clear that the revelations which were made after the apostles, are made, or will be made do not belong to the deposit of faith, which has been committed to the Church to be guarded, explained, and proposed. Never, therefore, can the Church pronounce, or does it intend to pronounce, an infallible judgment concerning such private revelations.¹² The deposit of the public revelation (i. e. destined for all men) was sealed by the death of the last apostle in such a way that from then on it suffers no increase in itself. Wherefore this sentence of the modernists was justly condemned: "Revelation constituting the object of the Catholic faith was not completed with the apostles."¹³

But just as ecclesiastical infallibility comprises only the apostolic deposit, so it comprises: