84

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had already found in the Church's belief. He believed, then, before all, that the Church deceived him not; it was by this he began to perform the acts of a Christian. Children are instructed in no other manner. When they hear their parents, it is the Church they hear; for our parents are our teachers only as they are children of the Church. It is for this reason the Holy Ghost refers us to them :-" ask thy father and he will show thee; ask thy elders, and they will tell thee."* St. Basil, so great a divine, justifies himself, and at the same time confounds heretics, by alleging to them the faith of his mother and of his grandmother, St. Macrina,† and he herein imitates St. Paul, who praises Timothy for having an unfeigned faith, which dwelt first in his grandmother Lois, and his mother Eunice. The meaning is, that true doctrine ought always to descend from hand to hand, and that there shall always be a true Church, to which none can ever show her beginning, nor find in her state those marks of interruption and novelty which all other sects bear on their brow. Christian parents, joined to this Church, join their children to her, and put them at the feet of her ministers to be there instructed.

It is not to be imagined that children, in whom reason begins to dawn, are incapable of feeling the impressions of truth, because they cannot reason methodically. We see them in still more tender years learning to speak; how it is they learn, by what they make the distinction between the noun and the verb, the substantive and the adjective, neither themselves know, nor can we, who have learned by this method, well unfold: so deep and abstruse it is. Much after the same manner we learn the Church's language. A secret light guides us in both these states; in the one it is reason, in the other it is faith. Reason discovers itself by little and little, and so does faith infused by baptism. We must have motives to fix us to the Church's authority; God knows them, and we know them in general: in what manner he classes them, how he makes these innocent souls perceive them, is the secret of his Holy Spirit. However, it is certain that this is done, and that by this he begins. As this is the first Christian act we perform, and as on this foundation all is built, so it subsists for ever. The time will come when we shall know more distinctly why we believe, and the Church's authority will become from day to day stronger in our minds. Scripture itself will strengthen the bands which fasten us to her but we must always revert to the origin—that is, to believing on the Church's authority. What age soever we are

* Deut. xxxii, 7,

Epist. 223; T. iii. 338.

2 Tim. i. 5.

at, it is by this we begin to believe the Scripture; we continue also on the same foundation, and St. Augustine was a complete master in ecclesiastical science, when he said he should not believe the Gospel, were he not moved by the authority of the Catholic Church. I could, were it in dispute, show the same opinion in the other Fathers. We must always re-ascend to the first principle, and this is the first principle that fixes us to the Church. Let us not be taxed with this vicious circle :"-the Church makes us believe the Scripture; the Scripture makes us believe the Church. This on both sides is true, in different respects. The Church and the Scripture are so made for one another, and do so perfectly adapt themselves one to the other, that they support each other as the stones of an arch and of a building mutually keep each other in their place. All nature is full of such examples. I bear the staff on which I lean; the flesh binds and covers the bones which sustain it; and all things in the universe mutually aid one another. So it is with the Church and the Scripture. There was but one Church, such as Jesus Christ founded, to which such a Scripture as we have could be addressed; that is, such a one as durst promise the Church, in which this Scripture was made, an eternal continuance. If any one receives the Scripture, by the Scripture I will prove to him the Church; if he acknowledges the Church, by the Church I will prove to him the Scripture: but since we must begin on one side, I have clearly enough shewn, by M. Claude's own confession, that, if we begin not by the Church, the divinity of the Scripture, and the faith we ought to have in it, is in danger; wherefore, the Holy Ghost begins our instruction by fixing us to the Church: "I believe the Catholic Church." Amongst our adversaries, a man must examine before he believes; and he must, before all things, examine the Scripture, by which he examines all the rest. It is not enough to have read some particular verses, some chapters, some books; until such time as one has read all, compared all, examined all, faith continues in suspense, since it is by this examination it is formed. Amongst true Christians, a man believes at once: "Thy faith hath saved thee," said Jesus Christ; "Thy faith," observes Tertullian, in that divine work of Prescriptions," and not thy being versed in the Scriptures."+ There is no need of passing through opinions, doubts, and the uncertainties of human faith. "I never changed," said St. Basil: "what I believed from my infancy has only been strengthened in my following

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years. Without passing from one opinion to another, I have only perfected what was at first given me by my parents. As a grain, in growing, of little that it was, becomes large, but continues always the same in itself, and without changing its nature takes only increase, so is my faith increased :—and this is not a change in which one passes from worse to better, but an accomplishment of a work already begun, and the confirmation of faith by knowledge." In this manner, we pass not, as amongst our Reformed, from a state of doubt to a state of certainty; or, as M. Claude prefers to express it, from a human faith to a divine. Divine faith is declared at once upon the Church's first instructions; and this could never be, did not her infallible authority prevent all our doubts and all examination.

"It is thus," as says St. Augustin" it is thus, I say, that those believe, who, not being able to arrive at understanding, secure their salvation by the simplicity of their faith." If we must always examine before we believe, we must begin by examining whether God exist, and hearkening for some time, with a kind of suspension of mind, to the arguments of impious men; that is, we must pass to the belief of the Divinity through Atheism; since examination and doubt on that subject is a species of Atheism. Not so: God has placed his mark in the world, which is the work of his hands, and by this divine mark he imprints in souls, before all doubts, the sentiment of his divinity; in like manner he has placed his mark in his Church, the most perfect work of his wisdom. By this mark, the Holy Ghost makes the true Church known to the Children of God, and this characteristic, which distinguishes her from all other assemblies, gives her so great an authority, that, before all doubts and all opinions, we without hesitation admit not only the Holy Scripture, but also all her sound doctrine. Thus are the children of the true Church instructed: those that are instructed or educated in a strange Church, as soon as they perceive her waver in any part whatever of her instruction, ought to stretch forth their arms to the Church which has reason never to waver, because she has never varied or wavered, and they feel that they ought to return to it, because it never should have been quitted.

It may now be determined, whether I was likely to be embarrassed about the promise I had made Mademoiselle de Duras, to bring M. Claude to acknowledge a moment in which, by the

* Ep. 223, ubi supra.

[† Ceteram quippe turbam (he has just spoken of the wisdom of the few) non intelligendi vivacitas sed credendi simplicitas tutissimam facit. Tom. viii. 111.]

principles of his religion, a Christian had but a human faith concerning the truth of the Scripture. How could I be embarrassed about a thing which M. Claude acknowledged in the Conference, and which he acknowledges still in his Relation, though he has weakened both my proof and his own admission? It is true, he will not let the word " doubting" cross his lips: but I never engaged to make his tongue articulate those two syllables; the equivalent is enough for me. To make a Christian who is going to read the Holy Scriptures incapable of divine faith, is an evil of sufficient magnitude; to content oneself in this condition with a human faith, is too evidently to renounce Christianity. I have, then, manifestly what I desired from M. Claude's acknowledgment. And if he reply, that the faith he here speaks of excludes doubt, resembling that which makes us believe that there is a city called Constantinople, or that there was heretofore a king named Alexander the Great, though we know it but by men; this indeed is not enough for a Christian, who ought to act by a divine faith, but it is still enough to confound M. Claude, since, according to this answer, the Church would always have an authority equal to that which all mankind, as I may say, have when they unanimously depose concerning a palpable fact. Thus, in what manner soever M. Claude explains to us his human faith, the victory of the truth I asserted will be established by his confession: since, if he say that his human faith excludes doubt, he supposes it an infallible truth; and if he say that it leaves a doubt, he will in fine have pronounced these fatal syllables he so much shunned. If, when having so strong a cause, I trembled for any thing but the danger of those into whose hearts I feared that, either by reason of my own weakness, or their prepossession, I could not make the truth sufficiently enter, I ill understood the truth I defended. However, because I said, in my account of the Conference,* that, upon M. Claude objecting to me the Greek Church and others, I trembled through apprehension, lest an objection proposed with so much address and eloquence might put a soul in peril, M. Claude has taken advantage of the moment to make me appear vanquished. "Here," says he, "it may with truth be said, that the Bishop of Condom's mind was seen not to be in its usual state, and that there was a perceptible abatement of that freedom which is so natural to him." In reply, I may observe, that my trembling, whence this advantage is drawn, was interior, and that I can scarce believe that M. Claude could have perceived it, had I not myself sincerely related it in my recital;

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but what matter is it, what was either the effect or cause of my fear? Men will say, if they please, that, disconcerted by M. Claude's objection, I would cover the disorder into which I visibly fell, by feigning alarm for the salvation of one who looked for instruction from my hands. I will own it, if they please; or rather, to avoid an untruth, I will let it pass without opposition. Let me have trembled before M. Claude, provided that even in trembling I spoke the truth. I did speak it; they need only see what were my answers, and whether after all I failed to draw from M. Claude's mouth the acknowledgment which I purposed. After this, the more I shall have trembled, and the weaker I shall have been, the more certain it will be that it was the truth that sustained me.

There is a part of the Conference which M. Claude passes over in four words. It is that where I showed him the horrible state of his Church, which set itself up, after the example of all false Churches, by separating from all Christian Churches in the world, and without finding any Church which thought as she did at the time of her establishment: so that she was not linked by any continuity either with the time that went before or with any Church which appeared then in the world. This fact passed for evident; and how short soever M. Claude has been in the recital of this part, he says enough to show that, in acknowledging this important fact, he has only endeavored to cover the shame of such a condition by the example of the apostles when they separated from the synagogue.

I will not repeat what I said on this subject; you have seen it in the Conference,* and M. Claude, who relates but a word about it, does not oblige me to any new explanation. I shall only say, that he gives a very incorrect view of this part of the discussion: The company rose," says he, "and the conversation which continued some time longer, became much more confused and various subjects were spoken of." I know not why M. Claude represents our conversation as confused; it was not so in any part, and it was less so, if possible, at this juncture than during the remaining time. It is true we had risen, and some of the company had withdrawn, but M. Claude and I kept our ground face to face. Mademoiselle de Duras seemed to have redoubled her attention; and, after so many principles declared, the dispute became more vivid and more conclusive than ever. If we spoke of "various subjects," it was not ramblingly, and all tended to the same end. The reader may see that it was so;t and if my word be not believed on the question, it will be