THE

CHURCH QUARTERLY REVIEW.

No CXXXV. APRIL 1909.

ART. I.-MODERNISM.

1. Propositiones a SS. Universali Inquisitioni, feria IV., Die 3 Julii, 1907, Damnatae. (Romae: Pustet, 1907.) 2. Sanctissimi Domini nostri PII Divina Providentia Papae X Litterae Encyclicae . . . . de Modernistarum Doctrinis. (Romae : Typis Vaticanis, 1907.)

And many other Works.

SHOULD the question be asked, why an Anglican Review should concern itself with an internal difficulty in an alien Church, the obvious answer is that the Anglican Church does not regard the Roman as alien. Estranged we may be, as brethren are often estranged, but the bond of common blood was not ours to tie or to loose. It would be impossible for us to stand unmoved when the welfare of the great and venerable Latin Communion is at stake. Nor could we fail to be interested in an episode in the age-long struggle between the claims of the individual and the claims of society: each ordained of God, too lightly opposed, only perfected in reconciliation, yet never adequately reconciled. The struggle which we are to observe is a struggle which exists, has existed, and will exist, among ourselves; and by watching Ucalegon's fire, we may learn how to deal with our own.

Needless to say that our study must be impartial. We shall not learn unless we have been candid observers of facts. Moreover, we shall remember that both parties in the present contest are our brothers. If perhaps our sympathy with the party of progress is keenest, there is much

VOL. LXVIII.-NO. CXXXV.

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that deserves respect on the conservative side. We ought to be tender with the spirit which shrinks from the criticism of what our fathers held to be true and adorned with the splendour of holy lives; and the conservative should be jealous not to degrade his cause with bigotry or injustice. Justice and charity are not beyond our reasonable grasp; and we are fairly confident that they will be sought in these pages. And possibly it will be the easier for us to be fair because the contest is not actually our own. Englishmen are charged with a love of compromise, but it is possible that what is blamed under this name is sometimes a distrust of hasty conclusions and a sense that there are few contentions in which there is not something to be said on both sides. Only, if on either side we find malice or untruthfulness, we shall hold it the duty of servants of truth and charity to 'hate wickedness which hinders loving,' and to denounce it.

Our task has not been a light one. It has involved the collection and the study of numerous books, pamphlets, and newspaper articles, many of them intrinsically not worth reading, and a diligent search for information not readily found. Much help we owe to personal friends; and as most of these are members of the Roman Catholic Church we are constrained to deny ourselves the pleasure of thanking them by name, and to weaken our assertions by the lack of their authority, lest we should drag men who love peace into unwelcome controversy. One name happily escapes this embargo, and we may freely offer our thanks to M. Paul Sabatier. Space forbids a detailed review of the books which we shall notice, nor is it necessary to our purpose of giving rather a general view than a complete account of the question. It so happens that circumstances have given us better opportunities of studying the matter in Italy and France than in England or other countries. We regret that there has not been in France, since the suppression of Demain (1907), and has never been in Italy, an organ which gives a fairly accurate account of religious events as they occur and books as they are published, offering liberal hospitality to correspondents. Such a publication we should covet,

were it the part of a wise man to covet what he is not likely to obtain.

Before the eyes of Anglicans, weary of dissension, has been placed a picture of the Roman Catholic Church as a land of peace and unity. There, we are assured, the belief of all men is the same: an infallible shepherd leads the way, and the sheep have nothing to do but to follow in gladsome docility. To the student of history the picture does not look lifelike. He is haunted by memories of conflict between Realists and Nominalists, between Thomists and Scotists; clouds of battle between Pope and Council hang over the hills of Constance; at times it is hard to see which of two or three claimants is indeed the Vicar of Christ; controversies between Gallicans, Jansenists, Ultramontanes, were at least as bitter as those in which we are entangled. Nearer to the present time, echoes of strife reverberate from the Vatican Council; and if we are assured that then the coping-stone was set on the palace of authority, and that now at least a Guide is recognized who can settle all controversies by an infallible decision, we are perhaps surprised to note the variance between those who think that the Pope may have spoken infallibly once or twice in the course of history and those who claim for his every word submission as if it were the word of God. The topics of dissension may differ among us and among the Romanists, but the fact of dissension exists alike in both Communions; and the convert who has not chosen to close his ears will hear in Italy echoes of the surge on the English shore.

We mention this fact not for the purpose of pressing a silly tu quoque on our Roman brothers, but to point out that the Church can never be free from controversy unless men can be obliged not to think. Supposing every controversy could be settled within a month of its emergence, a new controversy would arise out of its ashes to engage the coming month. In a village, in a little sect, so speedy a settlement might be possible, but in a world-wide community things will hardly march so quickly. That religious controversy is inevitable wherever men are to think about religion points not to the absence of any positive truth but to the imper

fection of the faculties by which we try to reach it, and to the fact that these faculties need to be developed by exercise, and are worth exercise even at the risk of error. It is well for us to be reminded that the real evil in controversy is not difference of opinion but cowardice which dares not seek, and pride which seeks amiss, and selfishness which forgets that above accuracy of doctrine is love.

And now the strife in the Roman Church is clamorous. The Pope himself assures us that very many persons, not only among the laity but among the clergy and the Religious Orders, are infected with a heresy which is the synthesis of all heresies; and those who are accused are by no means disposed to go out quietly. The landlocked lake is white with billows.

For some centuries after the Reformation the method which prevailed in controversy was what may be termed catena theology. The Bible was accepted on all hands as an authoritative standard, and in spite of differences as to the value of tradition no one was prepared to own that his own doctrine had not been held by the early Fathers. Therefore strings of texts were compiled and discussed to prove that the Church had never modified its conception of the Holy Eucharist, or that Tertullian had wonderfully anticipated the Thirty-nine Articles. We are far from depreciating this method. It stimulated a diligent study of ancient writers, and it checked the inclination of theologians to make each for himself a new theology. But it had its defects; texts were cited with little regard to history and context; a phrase from an Old Testament writer was used to establish a Christian doctrine, and a sentence of St. Augustine was made to decide some question which did not come fully into view until long after his time. To remedy its defects a Protestant invented, and Romanists eagerly welcomed, the fiction of a disciplina arcani, which supplemented what the Fathers actually said with what they must surely have held but did not think it reverent to utter.

The person who in the Roman Communion did most to introduce another method was John Henry Newman. He had already done valuable work according to the old method,