invicem congruunt, alius aliter edisserit." It follows, therefore, that in his final judgement Petavius' view in no way contradicts the position which I am defending. In fact it is by no means necessary for my argument that I should be prepared to maintain either the accuracy in language or even the orthodoxy of all the ante-Nicene Church writers. It is sufficient that an adequate stream of tradition bears unmistakable witness to the faith of the Church in the Catholic dogma of the Trinity from the time of the apostles to the time of the Council of Nicaea.

Cardinal Franzelin has shown with great fulness of learning that "always and everywhere it has been held in the Church as a principle that the successors of the apostles are the guardians of the apostolic doctrine, to which nothing can be added and from which nothing can be taken away." He says again that "it has always been a universal principle that whatever is new, if it is confounded with the deposit of faith, pertains not to the faith but to heresy." And he adds, "Hence apostolicity is a necessary mark of a doctrine of the faith." 3

Again, Franzelin says, "As often as it has been defined that any article of doctrine belongs to the Catholic faith, it has always been understood that such action was altogether the same as defining that that revealed doctrine came to us from the Apostles either in divine Scripture or in unwritten tradition. . . . Hence all investigation of proofs was always reduced to this one thing, namely, whether the doctrine was contained in the Scriptures or in apostolical tradition; and this is clearly demonstrated by the acts of all the councils and by the history of all the definitions of faith. This very principle that nothing can belong to the revelation, which is to be believed by Catholic faith, unless it is contained in Scripture or in apostolical tradition, is presupposed by all theologians in their demonstrations, and is also expressly asserted by them." Franzelin refers to S. Thomas, Melchior Canus, Bellarmine, Gregory de Valentia, Suarez, De Lugo, and Benedict XIV.

It is not of course for a moment to be supposed that these divines imagined that the decisions of later councils were, all of them, explicitly and totidem verbis contained either in Scripture or in apostolical tradition.

1 Petav. Praefat. in tom. secund. op. Theol. dogm., cap. vi. § i., Dogm. Theol., edit. 1865, tom. ii. p. 277.

2

Compare § cii. of Bossuet's Sixième Avertissement (Euvres, tom. xxii. pp. 146-148), in which the Bishop of Meaux gathers together the main conclusions of Petavius' preface, and shows that "il est constant, selon le Père Pétau, que toutes les différences entre les anciens et nous dépendent du style et de la méthode, jamais de la substance de la foi." Cardinal Franzelin (De Deo Trino secundum Personas, sect. i. thes. x., pp. 152, 153) points out the discrepancy between Petavius' teaching in the first book of his De Trinitate and his later teaching in his Prolegomena. Franzelin adds, "Posteriores theologi multi, et inter hos Natalis Alexander, Maranus, Lumper, Moehler (in Opere Athanasius Magnus') et ex Anglicanis Georgius Bullus locutiones vetustorum Patrum difficiliores interpretati sunt, non ut Petavius lib. i. sed alio sensu, qui conveniat cum ejusdem Petavii Prolegomenis; hancque suam interpretationem veram esse, ex ipsis Patrum principiis demonstrarunt, ita ut de pleno consensu doctrinae ante synodum Nicaenam cum professione synodi et patrum subsequentium quoad unam deitatem trium distinctarum personarum saltem inter theologos catholicos res videretur esse liquida.'

"

3 Franzelin. De Divina Traditione, th. xxii., edit. 1870, pp. 233, 234.

Cf. Franzelin. op. cit., p. 234.

But they did hold that the substance of those decisions was revealed to the apostles and was communicated by the apostles to the Church, to be by her continuously guarded, handed down, and taught; and they denied that the Church either needed or in fact received any fresh revelations in post-apostolic times to enable her to fulfil her duty in these respects.

If we compare the simple baptismal declaration of faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, which may have been all that was required from the catechumen in apostolic times, with the Nicene creed or with the Chalcedonian definition, we of course admit that a development of expression in obligatory formularies had taken place. We may compare such a development to the growth of the infant into a full-grown man, or to the up-springing of the oak tree from the acorn. But we should be under a complete misapprehension if we imagined that the Fathers of Nicaea or Chalcedon were imposing new doctrines on the Church. The whole substance of their definitions had been revealed to the apostles, and had been continuously handed on from generation to generation in the Church. The function of the Ecumenical Councils was to gather up into obligatory formulas the faith which had been traditionally taught, expressing in carefully chosen, precise words such portions of the deposit of apostolic tradition as needed from time to time to be authoritatively defined in opposition to the innovations of heretics. S. Vincent of Lerins, in the celebrated twenty-third chapter of his Commonitorium, in which he deals with the subject of doctrinal development, concludes his statement with the following weighty words. He says, "This, I say, is what the Catholic Church, roused by the novelties of heretics, has accomplished by the decrees of her councils-this, and nothing else (neque quicquam praeterea), she has thenceforward consigned to posterity in writing what she had received from those of olden times only by tradition, comprising a great amount of matter in a few syllables (paucis litteris), and generally, for the better understanding, designating the old meaning of the faith by the characteristic of a new name."1

1 S. Vincent. Lirin. Commonit. cap. xxiii., P. L., 1. 669. It is to be noted that S. Vincent, having occasion to refer to the Church's decisive judgements on doctrine, which she was moved by the innovations of heretics to formulate, says nothing of any papal definitions, but speaks only of "the decrees of her councils." Of course S. Vincent was aware that leading bishops, whether at Rome, Alexandria, or elsewhere, had often had occasion to promulgate their official condemnation of newly devised false doctrines. Instances of such episcopal decisions abound in the history of the early Church. But though decisions of individual bishops or of local synods were regarded as weighty, especially when they emanated from the great apostolic or primatial sees, yet they were not, when taken by themselves, looked upon as decisive; whereas the decrees of a council, received by the Church as ecumenical, were regarded as being the utterances of the Church herself. The introduction into theology of the idea that papal decisions are final and irreformable is not a development in any sense. It is a revolution. So that even if, for the sake of argument, we allowed the right of enforcing under anathema substantial doctrinal developments to be attributed to the Church, it would not follow that the novel theory of papal infallibility could be made obligatory. Pius IX. rightly perceived that if, as he held, papal infallibility was a true doctrine, it was necessarily not only true but fundamental; it was, as he said, "ipsum fundamentale principium Catholicae fidei ac doctrinae " (compare note 2 on p. 251). It is one thing to enforce corollaries which are evidently presupposed and implied in the traditional teaching of the Church, and it is a totally different

The development of a seed into a full-grown tree supplies an analogy which sets forth very well the growth of the Church's disciplinary regulations, and the progress which is attainable in many departments of theological science, and the increasing complexity of the expression of dogma in the Church's creeds and doctrinal definitions. But the development of a seed into a full-grown tree would be a very misleading parable, if it were used for setting forth the relation between the substance of the apostolic teaching and the substance of the Church's authoritative dogma in later times. The Church's duty is to guard the deposit of that substance, and to hand it on unchanged until her Lord's return, while at the same time she expresses and applies it in various ways according to the varying circumstances and needs of successive generations. The late Father Dalgairns, of the Brompton Oratory, has very well expressed this fundamental principle of the Church's action. "Christian truths," he says, "were thus planted whole like the trees in Paradise; they grew, they unfolded blossoms and they developed into fruit, but they never sprang from seed. If the principle [of doctrinal development] is to be of any scientific use, we must not be content with indistinct germs, any more than we could hope to satisfy a man who asked for an oak, by showing him an acorn."1

The bearing of this immutable principle of the Church's action on the questions which may be raised as to her polity is very obvious. If the society founded by our Lord is at the present time rightly believed to be constituted jure divino as a monarchy, with the pope as her divinely empowered monarch, then that society has always been so constituted. The popes must always have enjoyed a divinely given primacy of jurisdiction over the universal Church, and they must from the first have been endowed with the privilege of infallibility, when pronouncing judgement in regard to doctrinal controversies. Thoughtful Ultramontanes see clearly what is involved in the dogma, to which they are pledged by the Vatican decrees. Thus Cardinal Pitra repudiates the idea of "a slow progress of the Holy See" as being "rationalistic." 2 And the rulers of the Roman Communion in England are continually pressing upon us the primitive character of the Vatican teaching in regard to the papal prerogatives. Bishop Ullathorne, for example, in a letter addressed "to the Catholics of his diocese," says, "The pope always wielded this infallibility, and all men knew this to be the fact ;" and he goes on to say, "The infallibility can only teach and enforce the unchangeable doctrines of the Church; what was always, everywhere, and by the concurrent Fathers held." 3 Similarly Dr. Bilsborrow, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Salford, in his third lecture in reply to the Bishop of Manchester, says, "In their claims thing to bring in new fundamental principles, and thus make fundamental changes in the structure of the Church's creed. A fundamental change cannot be called a development. To speak plainly, a fundamental change is a heretical innovation.

Dalgairns' Essay on the Spiritual Life of the First Six Centuries, being the introduction to the English translation of the Countess Hahn-Hahn's Lives of the Fathers of the Desert (p. 1., edit. 1867).

2 Pitra, Analecta Novissima, p. 15.

3 Ullathorne, The Döllingerites, Mr. Gladstone, and the Apostates from the faith, p. 14.

to be the supreme and infallible teachers of Christendom, the Sovereign Pontiffs have made no advance from the Epistle of S. Clement to the Corinthians in A.D. 96 to the Pastor Aeternus of Pius IX. in our own days." Leo XIII. says very much the same in his Encyclical, Satis Cognitum, on the Unity of the Church. His words run thus, "In the decree of the Vatican Council as to the nature and authority of the primacy of the Roman Pontiff, no newly conceived opinion is set forth, but the venerable and constant belief of every age." 2

Now, it is to show that the theory about the nature and authority of the papal primacy set forth by the Vatican Council was not "the venerable and constant belief" of the early ages of the Church, that this book of mine has been written. But while I feel constrained by the claims of truth to do what I can to make it clear that Bishop Ullathorne, Bishop Bilsborrow, and Pope Leo XIII. are mistaken in their opinion that the teaching of the Vatican Council is really primitive, I thoroughly sympathize with them in their desire to claim the witness of the early Church for the doctrine which they believe to be true and obligatory.

On the other hand, the writer of a review of the first edition of this book, which appeared in the Tablet, jauntily says, "Had the Vatican decrees been laid before S. Cyprian, likely enough he would not have recognized them as his own belief, or even the legitimate deductions therefrom." 3 This of course is in plain contradiction with the assertion of Bishop Ullathorne that "the pope always wielded this infallibility, and that all men knew this to be the fact." I have no doubt that the Tablet reviewer is right, and that Bishop Ullathorne is wrong, in the statements which they respectively make. But when I remember that both accept the Vatican decrees as infallibly true, I feel that Bishop Ullathorne's underlying principle is Catholic, while the reviewer's underlying principle is, to use Cardinal Pitra's word, "rationalistic," not to say-heretical.

I would strongly urge those who are interested in the question of doctrinal development to study with care the late Dr. Mozley's treatise on the Theory of Development, and Sir William Palmer's treatise on The Doctrine of Development and Conscience.

1 See the Catholic Times for December 21, 1894.

2 See the authorized English translation of the Satis Cognitum, pp. lv., lvi. ; see also the Vatican decree itself (Constit. Dogmat. Prim. de Eccl. Christi, cap. iv., Collect. Lacens., vii. 486).

See the Tablet for September 9, 1893, p. 408.

ADDITIONAL NOTES.

ADDITIONAL NOTES ON LECTURE I.

NOTE I (see p. 8). On the date of the formation of the ecclesiastical province of Milan.-In the course of the fourth century Milan became a metropolitical see, and Northern Italy ceased to belong to the ecclesiastical province of Rome.1 It is not easy to determine the exact point of time when this change took place. It may be noted that the Council of Sardica, in 343, requests S. Julius of Rome to inform the bishops of Sicily, Sardinia, and Italy concerning its acts and definitions. The term Italy in this passage cannot, I think, be limited to Central and Southern Italy, for the bishops from those parts, who subscribed the acts of the council, speak of themselves as coming respectively from Thuscia, Campania, and Apulia; whereas Protasius of Milan, Fortunatian of Aquileia, Severus of Ravenna, Ursacius of Brixia, and Lucius of Verona, who all belonged to Northern Italy, speak of themselves as coming "ab Italia." 3 These facts seem to indicate that at the time of the Council of Sardica Milan and Northern Italy remained still within the sphere of the pope's metropolitical jurisdiction. Perhaps the metropolitical authority of Milan began during the episcopate of the Arian, Auxentius (354-374). S. Ambrose, who succeeded Auxentius, was undoubtedly a metropolitan; but we have no reason to suppose that it was in his time that the see became metropolitical. I would suggest that the consent of the see of Rome to the separation of Northern Italy from its province may have been granted, either by Felix II., who was nominated by Constantius and consecrated by Arians in 356, or by Liberius, at the time when he was yielding pliantly to the demands of that same Constantius (compare pp. 275-287). It can hardly be doubted that it was the residence of the Emperor at Milan which led to the elevation of its see to metropolitical rank. There is a certain ancient Latin version of the canons of Nicaea, in which it is stated that the Bishop of Rome has the care of the loca suburbicaria. If it were true, as Maassen supposes, that this version was brought back from the Nicene Council to Carthage by Bishop Caecilian, the position taken up by Duchesne, denying that Milan was a metropolitical see in the time of the Council of Nicaea, would be disproved; but I see no sufficient reason for accepting Maassen's theory. Compare p. 185, note 2.

Compare Bacchinius, a learned Benedictine, who seems to take this view in his De Eccl. Hierarch. Origin., p. 346.

See canon 6, quoted on p. 139, note 1.

• Geschichte der Quellen des canonischen Rechts, pp. 8-11.