p

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99

Cfce ftesSponsiifcilitg of Sittcllnt in
JHatters; of tfaitf):
A SERMON,
PREACHED BEFOIIE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,
t
ON ADVENT SUNDAY, 1872.
/ 8Blttf)¥an9p|>enlJtr
ON BISHOP MOBERLY'S STRICTURES ON THK WARNING
CLAUSES OP THE ATHANASIAN CREED.

E. B. PUSEY, D.D.
RKGIUH PROTKSSOR OP HRBRKW, AND CXNOtf OK CHRIST CHURCH.

SOU) BT
JAMES PARKER & CO., OXFORD,
AND 377, STRAND, 10NDON :
RIVINGTONS, WATERLOO PLACE, LONDON,
HIGH STREET, OXFORD, AND TRINITY STREET, CAMBRIDGE.
1873.

Price One Shilling.

Cfce ftetfponSifrilits of Intrllrrt in
M<Mtv& of Jfait!) :
A SERMON,
PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,
ON ADVENT SUNDAY, 1872.
Mill) an Slpprnuii
ON BISHOP MOBERLY'S STRICTURES ON THE WARNING
CLAUSES OF THE ATHANASIAN CREED.

E. B. PUSEY, D.D.
HEOIUS PROFESSOR OP HBBRKW, AND CANON OP CHRIST CHURCH.

SOLD BY
JAMES PARKER & CO, OXFORD,
AND 377, STRAND, LONDON :
RIVINGTONS, WATERLOO PLACE, LOXDON,
HIGH STREET, OXFORD, AND TRINITY STREET, CAMBRIDGE.
1873.

THE KESPONSIBILITY OF INTELLECT IN
MATTERS OF FAITH.

" He that rejecteth Me, and receiveth not My words, hath one
that judgeth him : the word that I have spoken, the same
shall judge him in the last day." — S. John xii. 48.
God, in this close of the expiring year, preaches
death, at once in the world and in the Church,
to the eye of sight and to the eye of faith, by
sights of nature and the tempered beauty of its
calm decay, by the enforced thought of those who,
in this little division of our being, have been parted
from us and have said, each in his turn, to us,
" Thou too must follow," or by Advent's trumpet-
call, " Prepare to meet thy God '." So are the
thoughts of death impressed upon the mind, that
even those who are most busied with the world's
shifting scenes, linger, at least for one little day,
upon the memories of the past rather than on
thoughts of the future, reviewing, who of those
who have, in whatever province, left some httle
1 Amos iv. 12.

4 The Responsibility of Intellect
impress of their work upon their own generation,
have in this past year sunk out of sight, to be
seen by us here no more.
And with the thought of death comes almost
spontaneously the thought of judgment. The
Apostle's words, " It is appointed unto all men
once to die, and after that the judgment 2," repeat
authoritatively what, however suppressed for a
time, is almost inextinguishably written in the
human heart. The heathen too knew of that
endless separation, whereby each should go to his
own place, each should end in that unending end,
for which all his life- was a preparation. They
who hated the doctrine, and would, if they could,
extirpate it, bear- witness to its hold upon the
hearts of men. " Now," says the Atheist Lucre
tius 3, " there is no way or power of resisting, since
in death we have to fear eternal pains." " Forth
must be driven headlong from its very base the
fear of Acheron, which troubles in its inmost
core the life of man, suffusing all things with the
dark hue of death, and leaves no pleasure un
alloyed and pure4." "Rightly," says Celsus5,
2 Heb. ix. 27.
3 " If men saw any certain end of sufferings, they might in
some way resist religions and the threats of prophesiers ; now,"
&c. De Rer. Nat. i. 107—111.
4 Ib. iii. 37—40. '
5 In Orig. e. Cels. n. 49, pp. 777, 778, ed. De la Rue. Other
passages are collected in the Christian Remembrancer, 1863,
t. xlv. pp. 464 sqq.

in Matters of Faith. 5
when writing against the resurrection of the body,
" Rightly at least do they [the Christians] think
this, that they who have lived well shall be in
bliss, but the wicked shall wholly dwell with ever
lasting suffering. And from this doctrine neither
should they nor any other among men ever de
part." Human nature too has a test of truth, —
that which has been " always, every where, and
by all " believed, and the voice of all is the voice
of the secret teaching of God in the hearts of
all. Nay, Plato, but that he speaks as a poly-
theist, would appeal to you as Solomon6 : " This "
[severance of the good and bad] " is the judgment
of the gods, 0 young man who deemest that
thou art disregarded by them, that the worser
going to the worser souls, the better to the better,
in life and in all deaths, suffer and do what
is meet that like should do to like. This judg
ment of the gods, neither thou nor any other un
fortunate shall boast that he has escaped."
Nay, this voice of nature unbelief has not been
able to quench in itself. " If you abuse your
reason," said Diderot to his soul, "you will be
unhappy, not in this hfe only, but after death in
hell." "And who told you," the soul answers,
"that there is a hell?" "If you have but a
8 De Legg., x. p. 904. The preceding context is : " The soul,
when, through its own will and strong influence it partakes of
greater evil or virtue, if, united with Divine virtue, it becomes
remarkably such, is transferred to a place wholly holy ; if
contrariwise, it passes its life contrariwise."

6 The Responsibility of Intellect
doubt," he rejoins, " you ought to act as if there
was one." " And if I am sure that there is none ?"¦
" I defy you to it." Yoltaire, cynic as to all
belief, was cynical too to those who were certain
as to their unbelief. "Happy are you," said he
to one who beheved that he had discovered the
certainty of the non-existence of hell, "most
happy are you. I am far from arriving at it7."
And not for great crimes only, as men call
great, not for crimes of passion against man only,
but for selfish greed 8, for secret unknown sins %
for rebellion against God also ', did men even in
heathenism tremble at a judgment to come and
eternal punishment. The men of Nineveh will
rise up to judgment against us, if we fear not.
Of that awful subject, I would now speak of one
aspect only; how by God's word, it will embrace
our whole selves, not .in regard only to the moral
7 Both ,are cited by Nicolas, " Etudes Philosophiques," c. 8,
t. ii. 462.
8 "Aut qui divitiis soli incubuere repertis, Nee partem
posuere suis; quse maxima turba est." j£n. vi. 610, 611.
9 " Quse quis apud superos, furto lsetatus inani, Distulit in
seram commissa piacula mortem." Ib. 568, 569.
1 Evidenced in -the Titans, the pride of Salmoneus, and in
the line put in the mouth of Theseus : " Sedet, seternumque
sedebit, Infelix Theseus ; Phlegyasque miserrimus omnes
Admonet, et magna testatur voce per umbras, ' Discite justitiam
moniti, et non temnere divos.' " Ib. 617 — 620. Virgil's state
ment may be the more taken as expressing the popular belief,
since he could not resist hinting that he believed nothing of all
which he had described. Ib. 894 — 899. Comp. the Lucretian
lines, Georg. ii. 490—492.

in Matters of Faith. 7
law, written or unwritten save by the Spirit of
God on the hearts of men, but our whole relation
to Almighty God, how we receive His declarations
about Himself, as well as how we act towards them
when we have received them.
And this I do the rather, because, while with
some of you, my sons, in the full exuberance of
early hfe, a main trial is, how you will keep the
body subdued to the mind, with others it is prin
cipally, how you will keep and order the mind
itself. You would shrink from the naked impiety
of those of old who said, " Our lips are our own ;
who is Lord over us2 ? " But you are tempted to
the beginning of a course, which ends in the same
result. Principles are afloat all around you,
which, under the name or guise of independence
of thought, carried out sometimes with a reck
less consistency, more often with inconsistency
shrinking from its terrible results, develope into
a would-be independence of Him Who endowed
you with your powers of mind, from Whom you
have all which you are or can be, to Whom you
are responsible for your use of all, and will have
to give account of the use which you have made
of all — Almighty God.
It is tacitly assumed, that intellect is a safe and
unbiassed guide ; that its determinations, though
not infallible, are sure and unblamable; that, if
any implicitly follow it, — as a Pagan philosopher
J l's. xii. 4.

8 The Responsibility of Intellect
might follow it, apart from any grace of God or
prayer for His illumining, nay abstracting oneself
for the time from the light of the Gospel, — its con
clusions, although in different minds naturally
contradictory and self-destructive, are necessarily
right for each; that, in the' things of God too,
what is newest is right, what is old is superan
nuated and wrong, forgetting that the truths of
God are eternally new as Himself, being a tran
script of a portion of His unchangeable wisdom.
Anyhow, men will have it, that no responsibility
is incurred, be the result of any process of reason
ing what it may, any more than in a proposition of
mathematics ; that there is no right or wrong
about it ; in a word, that if a person thinks he is
pursuing truth, though he be more anxious to
have truth on his side, than to be on the side of
truth, conscience and Almighty God have no voice
in the matter. The thought that each shall have
to give account for his " opinions " (as people call
them), or the 'process by which he arrived at
them, seems to them as strange an imagination,
as if the subject-matter were some proposition of
pure mathematics.
Contrariwise, I would point out to you the re
sponsibility of intellect ; that it, as well as every
other good gift of God, is capable of being abused ;
that, as " the corruption of the best is the worst,"
so the perversion of intellect has a melancholy
pre-eminence of evil, as3 in actual madness, the

in Matters of Faith. 9
sight of a mind dethroned has a sorrowfulness be
yond any guiltless sorrow ; that, not speaking now
of hereditary error, human intellect is liable to be
influenced by every wave and eddy of human
passion ; that the darkness of bribed or misguided
or perverted intellect is the more perilous because
it is our guide which we trust, a darkness irreme
diable, unless it be again illumined by light from
on high. " If the light that is in thee be dark
ness, how great is that darkness 3 !"
Intellect has, it is plain, many trials. There is
not a sin or crime of our lower nature which it
does not aggravate, or in aid of which it is not
abused. There is not a spiritual sin, of which it
is not the instrument or centre. There is nothing
so debased to which, in the service of passion, it
will not stoop ; no vastness of evil which it will
not conceive and animate. It invents ways by
which to teach or incite our lower nature to offend
against the laws of our nature. It will devise evil,
from which our lower fellow-creatures, following
blindly the laws of their limited capacities, are
exempt. It conceives and effectuates those gigan
tic crimes at which the world grows pale. All the
vices of our nature are puny and dwarfed without
it. It guides to deeper evil each varied passion
of our fallen nature. It severs off the seducer
from the coarse and vulgar profligate ; low cun
ning from common-place cheating ; sophistry from
3 S. Matt. vi. 23.

10 The Responsibility of Intellect
naked untruth ; subtle revenge from brute anger.
The worst title which we could give, to brand an
action of cruelty, or revenge, or malice, or bar
barity, or sensuality, would be to call it " refined,"
" subtle ; " meaning that intellect was more than
usually abused to the service of man's lower
passions. " Did you never observe," asks Plato 4,
" the narrow intellect flashing from the keen eye
of a clever rogue, how clearly his paltry soul sees
the way to his end ; he is the reverse of blind, but
his keen sight is taken into the service of evil, and
he is dangerous in proportion to his intelli
gence ? "
Abused intellect makes proverbs of Balaam or
Ahithophel, or Jonadab, or Simon Magus. No
world-wide evil ever existed without it. The
scourges of mankind fell not like mere avalanches,
but wielded through it their widely desolating
might. If we would describe an almost super
human abuse of intellect to evil, we call it by the
name of that being of tremendous subtlety of
talent, the fallen archangel, and term it " devilish."
The massacre of St. Bartholomew bears witness
to the wonderful talent as well as the terrible
wickedness of its author, Catherine of Medicis.
The rent of Bast and West for all these centuries 5
4 Repub. vii. p. 519 ; t. ii. p. 352, Jowett's Transl.
5 The schism became irreconcilable through the conquest of
Constantinople by the Crusaders. Fleuri, Discours 6, sur
l'Hist. Eccl. n. 5, t. 11, p. xv.

in Matters of Faith. 1 1
attests the Satanic ability, wherewith Photius,
conscious as he must have been of the weakness of
the other grounds of quarrel, cast into the scale
the allegation of heresy against our Western
formula, " Filioque," although, with his vast
reading, he could scarce be ignorant that it was
also the language of other Greek fathers6, and
specially of the most powerful defender of the
faith among themselves, recognized as such by
two general Councils, S. Cyril of Alexandria7.
But since, through the whole range of human
crime and sin, the abuse of intellect has its dis
tinct and powerful sway, and ignorance and stu
pidity, if not self-caused, seem to human justice
also a mitigation of participated guilt, and contrari
wise, clear intellect is, by universal consent, held
to be an aggravation of human crime, how comes
it to be assumed that, when brought face to face
with Almighty God, intellect has no trial, but
that, let intellect treat His revelation how it will,
' ' As S. Epiphanius, " The Holy Ghost is of the substance
of the Father and the Son." Ancorat. c. 7 ; and Theodoras of
Tarsus, our seventh Archbishop of Canterbury, in the hope of
whose coming the Vlth General Council was delayed (Ep.
A"athon. in Baronius, A. 680, iv., and the Roman Synodal letter,
where he is called " the great Archbishop and philosopher of the
Isle of Britain." Cone. Const. Act. iv. ; Ep. ii. ; T. Cone. vii.
714), in the Confession of the Council of Hatfield, Sept. 17,
A.D. 680. See Rev. G. Williams's Essay 8, on " The Church
and the Age," p. 236, and other fathers vindicated in Pctav. de
Trin. vii. 3, pp. 370 sqq.
' Sec Note A at the cud, p. 55.

1 2 The Responsibility of Intellect
let it reject, rebel, pare away, distort, ridicule,
blaspheme it, how it may ; let it substitute, if it
will, some worship of nature or of itself, for the
living God, man is blameless, because it is matter
of intellect ? If man is hurried away by passions
of his lower nature to break God's laws, he is
allowed to be (as he is) guilty; if, without passion,
he show contempt to God Himself, he is to be
held innocent ! Heat of passion is held to be an
extenuation of deeds of violence, because a man
is less master of himself. It shocks our nature
the more, if they be done in cold blood, as men
say. Cold dispassionate judgments, if directed
against Almighty God and His truth, are matter
of self-praise. - What ground can be given for these
uneven measures, but that, alas ! men are judges
in their own cause ?
In a cause which is not our own, we can judge
rightly. Take the whole history of the Jews
before the Captivity! True, that our moral nature
comes to our aid, and, let men disbelieve of God's
revelation. by Moses as they will, our moral nature
cannot but revolt at the moral abominations or
unnatural cruelties of the nature-worships of Baal
and Moloch and the calves, " the sin whereby
Jeroboam made Israel to sin." Nay, not as to
those grosser irreligions only, but in contrast with
every form of Pagan error, not in Christianity
alone, but wherever the derived heresy of Moham
medanism prevails, the whole world attests the

in Matters of Faith. 13
truth of God's revelation of Himself, " Hear, 0
Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord 8 ; " all attest
the righteousness of that first commandment of
God, " Thou shalt have no other gods beside
Me V All those irreligions, human nature attests,
were errors, and those who invented, gilded, pro
pagated them, were in antagonism to truth, known
or unknown, the makers or disciples of vanities
and hes, misleaders or misled. Human intellect
now mostly judges rightly as to the conflict of all
those centuries between the worship of nature, so
marvellously contrived by human intellect to enlist
on its side our human passions, our sense of the
grandeur of the operations of nature, or often our
perception of beauty, and the adoring love of Al
mighty God. Theism, Pantheism and Atheism
divide now the intellectual world which will not
receive the Gospel or to which it is unknown :
Polytheism, which held bound the intellect of
antiquity, although a natural offshoot of Pantheism,
is out of favour.
Modern intellect, whatever licence it may take
in criticizing the Prophets of God, will allow at
least that they were in the right in their upbraid-
ings of the revolting, degrading nature-worships of
Phoenicia and Egypt. Even those, to whom S. Paul
does not speak with authority, would concur in his
judgment as to the "undistmguishing mind '," to
which he says that those who " willed not to retain
8 Deut. vi. 4. 9 Exod. xx. 3. l Rom. i. 28.

14 The Responsibility of Intellect
God in their knowledge," were abandoned, and as
to the frightful consequences Of its perversion.
Even in Christianity men can see the perver
sions of intellect, where, as in the rigidness of
Novatianism or the Montanism of Tertullian, the
error was unamiable. It can see that the grand
strong fiery energetic, intellect of Tertullian was
warped by a self-confiding zeal which had too
little love. But then it grants, or sets out with a
presumption, that the perception of truth may be
injured by deficiency in some moral quality, the
want of love. The heart, it is admitted, may
pervert the head. We see it every day in things of
this life.
Again, in things of this world too, in every
department of human knowledge, in every prac
tical business of this life, intellect is perverted
through vain-glory. " I did not rise at four," said
one2 whose name stands almost as a proverb for
his paradoxes in criticism and his contempt of evi
dence, " to think like the rest of mankind." Truth
is a sacred thing, because it is a reflection of God.
Whoso seeks it not for its own sake, will never
find it. All the great discoverers in science, all
the benefactors of mankind, have practically
sought truth, with no thought of themselves, but
of it alone. Much more they who desire to behold
2 The P. Hardouin,"Nouv. Diet. Historique." When he did
think "like the rest of mankind," he was, by his learning and
labour, of lasting service to mankind.

in Matters of Faith. 15
the God of truth and see His ways. " How can
ye believe," our Blessed Lord asks, as of a thing
inconceivable, " which receive honour one of an
other, and seek not the honour which cometh of
God only3." "Among the chief rulers also," S.
John relates, " many believed on Him, but because
of the Pharisees they did not confess Him, lest they
should be put out of the synagogue ; for they loved
the praise of men more than the praise of God4."
Dread of shame before man made them suppress
the belief, which for the time they had. They
had seen Jesus : they had heard His words of
attractive sweetness and might and truth; they
had heard the words of Him Who spake as " never
man spake;" they had seen His works, such as
man could not do, " unless God were with him."
Their intellect was convinced. What hindered
their avowing their belief, stifled it, probably ex
tinguished it ? Alas ! probably one of the most
common of human infirmities, — human respect.
They could not bear to be esteemed less faithful
to Moses than others their equals, to be disciples
of a Galilean, to forfeit the esteem wherein they
were held as teachers of the law, to be cast out
by their f ellow-men. Was their smouldering faith,
which they suppressed for fear -of their com
peers, while these said, " See ye that we avail
nothing? behold the world is gone after Him,"
fanned into new life by the Crucifixion, that they
3 S. John v. 11. ' S. John xii. 42, 43.

1 6 The Responsibility of Intellect
who shrank from owning Jesus, the worker of
miracles, the admired and followed by the people,
were among those who worshipped the Crucified ?
If not, then they who had once believed in Him
self were among those who persecuted Him in
His members and compelled them to blaspheme
Him in Whom they had once believed. And yet
that mental fault through which they suppressed
the convictions of their intellect, is so common a
fault, that a profound observer of our nature
says5, "there is scarce anyone who doth not de
sire human glory;" nay, " vain-glory often glories
more vainly of the very contempt of vain-glory ;
for it doth not contemn when it glorieth, and
so it is no longer contempt of vain-glory 6." And
yet vain-glory all must own to be a fault. Its
name is framed to stamp it as a fault. Heathenism
too, while it idolized love of glory, framed the term
which condemns it.
Heathenism again could own that central spring
of all spiritual sin, pride, to ' be, in some shapes
and forms a fault. It was, it is thought, the, sin
which changed Satan from one of the Cherubim
arrayed with grace, into an apostate spirit. Satan,
who knew the power of the temptation on himself,
essayed it on our first parents. Through their
fall they transmitted it as a central infirmity of
our race.
Man cannot, of course, admit that pride is, in
6 S. Aug. in Ps. i. 6 Conf. x. 38, p. 219, Oxf. Tr.

in Matters of Faith. iy
his own case or in that of his compeers, the cause
of his unbelief or misbelief. It would be to con
demn themselves. No one altogether proud would
think himself proud, even as no humble man could
think himself humble. But look back then to the
origin of Christianity. None probably has any
sympathy with the Pharisee, who " counted himself
that he was righteous and despised others." Yet
this was the centre of -the Jews' rejection of the
Gospel, as is developed by S. Paul ; " going about
to establish their own righteousness, they sub
mitted themselves not to the righteousness of
God7." They who held themselves "not to be
sinners from the_Gentiles 8," what need had they of
a Redeemer ? " They that are whole need not a
physician," our Lord said to them, " but they that
are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sin
ners to repentance 9." Even in S. Augustine's time
many heathen would not be converted, on the
ground that, since they led good lives, they had
no need of Christ \
7 Rom. x. 3. 8 Gal. ii. 15. » S. Luke v. 31, 32.
1 " Many glory in their works, and you find many heathen
who on that ground are unwilling to become Christians, because
they are, as it were, self-sufficing with their good life. He
says, ' You must live well ; what will Christ teach me ? To
live well ? I live well already. For what have I need of
Christ ? I commit no homicide, no theft, no rapine ; I covet not
goods of others ; I am defiled by no adulter}' . Let any thing
blameworthy be found in my life, and he who shall find fault in
me make me a Christian.'" In Ps. xxxi. ; Enarr. II. n. 2,
Opp. iv. 171. U

1 8 The Responsibility of Intellect
In the light of the history of Christianity, we,
even apart from our faith, can discern the pride
of those who superciliously dismissed it as un
worthy of their notice. On the one side was the
Carpenter and His disciples, the fishermen, the
tax-gatherer and the tent-maker. On the other,
the great world-subduing empire, its marvellous
political sagacity, its centuries of glory, and the
hereditary wisdom of those wonderful creations of
God, those keen penetrating intellects of Greece
which still form and sharpen our own intellects.
The pride of intellect or power had temptations
which we see only as in a picture, yet uncon
querable save by the overpowering grace of God.
But how do we look back upon it ? Christian
history alone embalms the lifeless memories of
Pilate who asked, " What is truth 2 ?" or of Gallio
who " cared for none of these things 3 ;" or of the
Epicurean or Stoic philosophers, who counted
Paul " a babbler 4 ;" or of the philosophers of Mars'
hill, who mocked at the resurrection of Jesus ; or
of Festus, who held that it was a small matter that
" one Jesus, who was, dead, Paul affirmed to be
alive5." Or in these days in which free inquiry is
idolized, what think we of the terms, wherewith
Heathen intellect dismissed the claims before
which the intellect of the world has bowed ? Look
ing at the Gospel for the moment, as a power
2 S. John xviii. 38. 3 Acts xviii. 17.
* Acts xvii. 18. 5 Acts xxv. 19.

in Matters of Faith. 19
transforming mankind, what can we think of such
terms as these, employed to designate and dismiss
it, "folly6," "vain folly," "vanity," "empty
vanity," "execrable vanity," "blind error,"
"pernicious error," "vain and mad superstition,"
"old wives' superstitions" or "doctrines" or
"fables" or "inventions and absurdities," "wo
manly superstition," "puerile phrenzies " or
" follies," " things ridiculous," " foolish trifles,"
" unreasonable belief," "presumption," "credu
lity," " phrenzy ? " Or what bias was it to praise
" the just man, tenacious of his purpose, whose
firm-poised soul no tyrant's threatening mien
should shake, nor popular zeal enjoining things per
verse 7," and yet condemn for " inflexible obstinacy
which oughtto be punished8," " rash desperation9,"
" phrenzy," those who, rather than curse ' or deny
their Saviour, accounted all suffering joy, and by
three centuries of endurance conquered the world
which would exterminate 2 them. Did those who
" See the authorities in Kortholt de Cal. Pag. c. 10, and
thence in Tertull. de test, an., p. 136, n. s., Oxf. Tr.
' Hor. Carm. ii. 3, init.
8 Plin. Ep. ad Traj.
0 Sec in Kortholt in Plin. et Traj. Epp. p. 57, and de Cal.
Pag. c. 11 ; also in Tertull. Apol. n. 27, p. 67, 11. s., Oxf. Tr. ; de
Spect. n. 1, p. 1S8, n.f. Ib.
1 To " curse Christ " was required in addition to the idola
trous sacrifices, as proof that the accused were no longer Chris
tians. Plin. 1. c.
* Nomine Christianorum deleto, " superstitione Christi ubique
delcta." lnscr. Diocletian, in Hisp. ap. Huron. Ann. :302, ix.
B 2

20 The Responsibility of Intellect
used these terms leave their intellect free to appre
ciate that " power of God unto salvation," which
they kept at a distance and condemned unheard ?
Had not " the wisdom of this world " been wiser, if
it had been humbler and had listened instead of
scoffing ? But is there then no pride, whensoever
intellect dismisses beforehand the claims of the
Creator to be heard by His creature, because it is
too much occupied with the things of this world,
its politics, its passionate pursuit of material pro
sperity, its scientific investigation of the works of
Qod, Whom it ignores ? Is there no pride in
regarding the Creator as a disturbing force to the
laws of His creation, or in dismissing the proofs
which He has given of His Being, His Providence,
His revelation of Himself, because He cannot be
discerned by our senses or beheld by human
vision, until in the beatific vision it be enabled by
Himself to behold Himself.
Then strict, unwavering, unwarped justice, what
a grace it is ! Heathenism mourned that, after the
golden age of man's innocence, justice left the
earth, shining only thenceforth upon it from
her native skies. It deified the three whom it
knew of by tradition, as judges of singular up
rightness, and made them judges of each soul of
man, as it passed out of this world. But I mean
not now justice, in contrast to any overt profana
tion of it, out of greed, rare as such strict justice
is. I mean intellectual injustice, such as we all

in Matters of Faith. 2 1
perhaps have been guilty of, such as is with the
utmost difficulty or perhaps never avoided, if men
judge at all, wrong estimates of persons, actions,
motives, characters, histories, feelings. That fre
quent appeal to the judgment of posterity in
reversal of the unjust judgment of to-day ; the
almost proverbial saying, " Virtue in its good
estate we envious hate ; when withdrawn from our
eyes we long for," attest the bias which we our
selves own that passion gives to our judgment.
Yet the judgments are often rescinded as unrea
sonably as they were made. The world has ever
on its lips the words "theological prejudice,"
meaning that our understandings are obscured by
convictions which we hold indisputable, that we
are blinded to the modern lights which would
otherwise flash in upon us. But therewith it admits
against itself the liability of the human intellect to
be warped or blinded to the true Light through
prejudice or preconceived opinion or whatever
bias. Yet if, in the never-forgotten instance of
Galileo, men trusted their senses or misinterpreted
passages of Holy Scripture against conclusions
of science which they did not understand, if be
lievers have been wrongly suspicious of the inter
preters of science, of which they knew but little, it
is but part of our common human infirmity, that
some schools of scientific research may be wrongly
suspicious of interpreters of Scripture, and seem
to prefer to find disharmony rather than harmony

22 The Responsibility of Intellect
between the works and words of Almighty God,
which may alike be misinterpreted but which can
not disagree.
But more widely — I speak throughout of ten
dencies of our nature, not, God forbid, of indi
viduals—is it not violation of justice to employ
different " weights and measures" in the things
of nature and of God ; in things of God to demand
not evidence but demonstration, in theories upon
the origin of man or of species, to assume that the
possible is the real ? Or again, to question our so-
attested Scriptures, and yet to appeal "to the lost
leaves of the great book of nature" as establish
ing facts, which it is assumed that they may
have contained ; to deny the common origin of the
different races of man, notwithstanding their es
sential oneness in power of communicating thought
by speech or by writing,' or of conceiving and
worshipping God, and to affirm our common origin
with certain of the brute creation incapable of
either; to assume that miracles are impossible,
because they are " contrary to experience," and
yet to demand our assent to things in the long
past, equally " Contrary to experience ; " to assume
that in their case no " law of nature" was violated,
since those changes j dissonant as they are from
our experience j are referable to some higher, un
known law of physical development, and to deny
that the Gospel-miracles are in conformity to some
higher law of Divine Wisdom and Love, which lay

in Matters of Faith. 23
in His Mind, " before the foundation of the world,"
and in view to which He regulated the laws of His
physical creation ; or, as in the Resurrection of our
Lord, only forestall that which all we, who be
lieve in a hfe to come, hope by His mercy will be
fulfilled in ourselves ; or again, to own that in
every science, the unknown is more than the
known, and to regard the mysteries of nature, as
matters to be solved hereafter or to be left insolu
ble, but to regard mysteries in religion an irre
fragable argument against it ; in other words, to
acknowledge that finite nature can contain what
finite intelligence cannot explain, but since the
finite cannot grasp the infinite, to disbelieve God
because He is God, and to demand that God should
lay aside His infinity, as a condition of our acknow
ledging, but not adoring Him ; for how should the
finite be the object of adoration ?
What shall one say of want of love, that human
passion, the mainspring of every thing noble or
self-sacrificing in human nature, which the hea
then scarce knew of as a virtue, but which, when
engraced, soars on high to heaven from which it
came, above all other virtues, even those sister
graces, of which it alone shall abide when hope
and faith pass away, the representative above all,
and an effluence from God, for God is love ? Love
must needs be essential to the knowledge of God,
for like only can understand like, and " God is
love." " He that loveth not knoweth not God,

24 The Responsibility of Intellect
for God is love." It is the living mirror of the
Being of God, which is not mind alone or chiefly,
but Love. But how is love, without which we
cannot know God, contracted, distorted, warped,
dulled, stupefied, extinguished, nay turned into hate
by human evil passions ! The mirror of the in
visible God is clouded, darkened, troubled by every
passion of our nature ; so that it reflecteth not the
hidden sun or stars or any fair form around, but
only the dark cloud which lies heavy upon it and
oppresses it. Selfishness disputes and abridges
its realm, ambition dries it up, envy and jealousy
empoison it ; pride absorbs it and concentrates it
around itself. Love heightens self-sacrifice, but
without it self-sacrifice were but self-seeking : it
is the soul of almsgiving ; without it, profusion of
gifts even to the poor were but an empty prodi
gality : it fired S. Paul's burning eloquence ; with
out it, superhuman eloquence were but an empty
profitless sound, superhuman knowledge an useless
tinsel, miraculous power an unmeaning prodigy.
Can its absence then, wherever it is absent, not be
of mighty moment in hindering the clear sight of
things divine? "With the heart," S. Paul says,
" man believeth unto salvation 8."
What can one say of the effect of that miserable
counterfeit and antagonist of love, slavery to
sensual passion ? " Whoredom and wine and new
3 Rom. x. 10.

in Matters of Faith. 25
wine," says Hosea4, "take away the heart."
" Priest and prophet," says Isaiah 5 of his times,
" have erred through strong drink, they are out of
the way through strong drink ; they err in vision,
they stumble in judgment." Contrariwise our
Lord says, " Blessed are the pure in heart: for they
shall see God." But if it is the privilege of purity
of heart to behold God for ever, how can they see
Him in this vestibule and preparation for that
eternal and beatific vision, who subject what is
highest to what is lowest, the soul, which is most
akin to God, to the passions of the flesh, which
man has in common with the brutes ? One need
not say of it in common with all other sin, that
they who habitually transgress God's laws must,
like Felix, tremble at their awful sanction, "judg
ment to come," and wish that there were none.
Indulgence of passion in itself dulls the mind to
spiritual perceptions. " The natural (or animal)
man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God,
for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he
know them, because they are spiritually dis
cerned6." The earthly mind becoming akin to
the things which he dwells upon has no sense but
for them ; "to them he cleaves with the glue of
love and wont ; their image he carries back to his
soul and converses with them, and, inured to them,
is unable to think or imagine ought but what is
' Hosca iv. 11 ' La. xxviii. 7. " 1 Cor. ii. 11.

26 The Responsibility of Intellect
corporeal7." He realizes not, of his own will,
spiritual and divine things ; for all is foolishness
to him except what furnishes fuel to his passions,
and, in the end, he cannot know them, because they
are discerned by the God-enabled spirit of man,
which he enslaves and immerses in the flesh,
" Had they, whose intellect is now enslayed to
evil," says Plato 8, " been in their youth severed
from the leaden weights, with which they were born
into the world, which hang on to sensual pleasure
and drag them down and turn the vision of their
souls about the things which are below — had they
been released from these and turned round to the
truth, the very same faculty," by which they see
their way to their poor ends, " would have seen the
other as keenly as they now see that on which
their eye is fixed."
May you, my sons, never, by experience, know
how sensual passion withdraws energy from intel
ligence, dulls the faculties, weakens the powers of
reasoning, blunts the fineness of perception, indis
poses to all spiritual things, induces, when habi
tual, scepticism as to the real duties of man, the
reahty of virtue, the sanctions of the laws of
morality, or the freedom of the soul which it en
slaves ! Heathen mythology had a truth, which
perhaps it knew not, when it represented its gods
' Taken from the author of the " De Vita Solitaria," quoted
by a Lap. ad loc.
8 Plato, Rep. I. c. ab. p. 10.

in Matters of Faith. 27
as transforming themselves into brute creatures
when giving way to sensual passion.
Yet not active sin only, but mere inaction of
faith blinds the intellect to the truths of God.
" Faith without works is dead 9," is a deep truth
of our nature. Our faith lives in and by action ;
it was .given us for action. The Gospel is not a
philosophy, a speculation, an aggregate of opinions;
it is a "power of God unto salvation1 " putting
itself forth in acts. Acts, enabled and brought
into being by faith, nourish faith ; they are essen
tial to its health and well-being. Through acts of
faith, God gives a conviction which is felt, more
powerful than reasoning ; discerning, above nature,
Divine truth. Contrariwise inactive, unenergetic
faith is a self-contradiction. Faith in truths
above nature lawfully issues in acts above nature.
Supernatural truth and supernatural life, i.e. a life
of and from Divine Grace, belong together. A be
liever who acts not on his belief is a living lie.
The world too owns this, when it urges the incon
sistencies of a professed believer as an argument
against belief. Their outward acts belie their
inward convictions. If the acts correspond not
to the faith, the faith will sink down to the acts.
" Through this pride of rebellion against the light
it cometh," says S. Gregory2, "that because they
will not do what they know, they come not to
' S. James ii. 26. 1 Rom. i. 16.
3 S. Greg. 1. xvi. in Job xxiv. 13, n. 70; Opp. i. 527, Ben.

28 The Responsibility of Intellect
know the good which they should do, but their
own blindness shuts them out wholly from the light
of truth." Since, then, by turns, the intellect be
comes ultimately the slave of every passion and
the heightener of every crime and sin, it is clearly
no safeguard or bar against the charge of sin, that
the immediate province of any ' act or series of
acts lies in the intellect. Nor is its capacity of
being warped limited to theology or morals, the
special province of religion. It will slavishly dispute
a truth wholly abstract, so soon as it perceives
consequences, which it dislikes, which can be drawn
from it. "Is number finite or infinite?" asked
an eminent mathematician of others, the acutest
minds in the university of France. If taken un
awares, they answered " finite." " Then the uni
verse had a beginning," was the necessary infer
ence. Then forthwith those acutest intellects
faltered, and sought to throw doubt on what they
had just acknowledged as evident truth.
I have been speaking only of natural hindrances
to the reception of Divine truth, faults, which, if
unchecked, hinder the mind from seeing it, or turn
away the soul from it. Hitherto, we have been on
human ground. But there is one central under
lying truth, that indulged sins or sinful tempers
are opposed to and, in the end, repel the grace of
God, through which alone man receives Divine
faith. " No man cometh unto Me," our Lord
saith, "unless My Father which hath sent Me

in Matters of Faith. 29
draw him 3." " It is written, They shall be all
taught by God 4." " No one knoweth the Son but
the Father : neither knoweth any man the Father
save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son may
reveal Him5." "I thank Thee, 0 Father, Lord
of heaven and earth, that Thou hast hid these
things [the truths of the Gospel] from the wise
and prudent [in their own eyes] and hast revealed
them unto babes 6."
God forbid, that I should even seem to hint the
thought, that the unbelief or misbelief of any in
dividual was referable to any of these moral defects.
God alone can judge the heart Who made it, and
to Whom alone all its thoughts and intents are
known. To his own master each will stand or fall.
Enough for us to see, that moral defects are a hin
drance to the reception of Divine truth ; that those
defects may be a means of forfeiting it ; and that,
whatever be the case of others, we are individually
responsible, not only whether we have lived ac
cording to the light which God has given to each,
but whether we, by not walking in the light, al
lowed darkness to come over us. They were very
mainly spiritual faults, love of pre-eminence7, of
tokens of reverence for their learning8, their devo
tion9, their preciseness of duty, of exactness in
1 S. John vi. 44. * Ib. vi. 45.
6 S. Matt. xi. 27. ° Ib. xi. 25.
' S. Matt, xxiii. 6, 7. S. Mark xii. 38, 39. S. Luke xi. 43 ;
xx. 46.
8 S. Matt, xxiii. 7. " Ib. 14.

30 The Responsibility of Intellect
keeping or]guarding the law; their fair show of ob
servance of things which yet, our Lord says, they
"ought to have done1," which even misled those
, to whom our Lord first came, of whom chiefly
S. John so sorrowfully says, " He came unto His
own, and His own received Him not 2." And so
the more they saw, the more they were blinded.
Through envy perhaps, that His coming, Who was
to be their glory, was first made known to Gen
tiles, they directed the wise men where to find
Him, themselves sought Him not. The more He
revealed Himself, the more they hated Him. The
more miracles He wrought, the more they set
themselves against Him. They sifted His mi
racles ; they could not deny the facts ; and they
sought the more -to kill Him. The belief of the
people embittered their unbelief. The miracle
which, Spinoza said, he would believe if he saw it,
decided them as to His death. " What do we ?
For this man doeth many miracles. If we let Him
thus alone, all men will believe on Him3." " Per
ceive ye how ye prevail nothing? behold, the
world is gone after Him4." When in the end, at
the adjuration of Pilate, He declared who He was,
in the words of Daniel's prophecy which they
owned, they adjudged Him to death.
So verified they our Lord's words, "If ye were
blind, ye should have no sin ; but now ye say, We
1 S. Matt, xxiii. 23. 2 S. John i. 11.
3 S. John xi. 47, 48. ' Ib. xii. 19.

in Matters of Faith. 31
see " [they convicted themselves that they did see] ;
" therefore your sin remaineth5." " If I had not
come and spoken unto them, they had not had
sin ; but now they have no cloak for their sins6."
" If I had not done among them the works which
none other man did, they had not had sin ; but now
have they both seen and hated both Me and My
Father 7."
Every revelation of God, every interposition of
His Providence, every added light, every motion
of His grace, must needs involve a sifting time.
The more the light shines, the more, through that
free-will, with which God has endowed us, must
men come into the light or retreat into darkness.
The choice brings out what they were, and, if evil,
aggravates it. "This is the condemnation, that
light is come into the world, and men loved dark
ness rather than light, because their deeds were
evil8." Intellectually they chose, passionately
they loved darkness. The awful commission to
Isaiah, and in him to all who declare the mind of
God, " Say unto this people, Hear ye on and un
derstand not ; see ye on and know not. Make the
heart of this people fat, and their ears heavy, and
shut their eyes ; lest they see with their eyes, and
hear with their ears, and their heart understand and
convert and be healed 9," is fulfilled by man's free
will. The heart which will not receive God's
» S. John ix. 41. 6 Ib. xv. 22. ' Ib. xv. 24.
8 Ib. iii. 19. * Isa. vi. 9, 10.

3 2 The Responsibility of Intellect
truth, becomes the more hardened against it the
more it hears it.
" I am come," our Lord says, " a light into the
world, that whosoever believeth on Me should not
abide in darkness1." He came as the visible Re-
vealer of the Father. Never, until by God's mercy
we behold the Beatific Vision, and see God as He
is, the Ever-blessed Three in One, did man or
could man so closely behold God. " He that hath
seen Me," our Lord says, "hath seen the Father2."
For he saw Him, Who, under that human form
which out of love for us He took, was Almighty
God. His Godhead they could not see, but He
Whom they saw was also, at that moment, " in the
bosom of the Father 3, was "in Heaven 4." They
saw that Manhood, which had no. separate existence,
no Being, apart from Almighty God ; Who, though
He was God and Man, was not two, but one Christ;
Whose Personality was not human but Divine.
They saw Him Who shall be the joy of the blessed,
Who shall, even when we see God, be, with God,
the Light 5 of the Heavenly City. His words were
the words of God. His eyes, whose look of Di
vine love won the Magdalen, so laden with sins,
and Peter, after his awful fall, and the robber by
His side on the Cross, must have shone with a
Divine lustre on those who heard Him. His words
1 S. John xii. 46. s Ib. xiv. 9.
8 Ib. i. 18. 4 Ib. iii. 13.
6 Rev. xxi. 23.

in Matters of Faith. 33
drew those, whom inwardly the Father drew6, and
at one word they left all and followed Him. And
was there then no responsibility in leaving Him ?
Could so close a nearness to God not bring respon
sibility to those who rejected Him ? Could it be
without guilt, when men distorted those words,
charged Him with confederacy with the Evil one,
with blasphemy against His Father, Whose words
He spake ? Our Lord said, that there would be a
judgment, though not then. Then was still the
time of mercy ; then there was still room for repen
tance ; then the words spoken against the Son of
Man could still be forgiven ; nay our Lord enlarges
to the utmost bound the contumelies against Him
self which man in ignorance spake, which cquld yet
be forgiven : " All manner of sin and blasphemy
shall be forgiven unto men7," all, of which men
should repent. But if any should finally reject
Him, a judgment, beyond this world, still remained.
'" He that rejecteth Me, and receiveth not My words,
hath one that judgeth him ; the word that I have
spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day."
" He that rejecteth Me." Rejecteth Whom ? Him,
their God; Him, very God, Who " for us and our
salvation became man ; " Him, Who in the One Love
of the Father and the Son, came into the world to
save the world. " For God so loved the world
that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoso-
• S. John vi. 41. ' S. Matt. xii. 31.
C

34 The Responsibility of Intellect
ever beheveth in Him should not perish, but have
everlasting life 8."
It was not, then, only the rejection of a message
or revelation of God, as though man had still been
in a state of innocence, and God were unfolding
fresh measures of knowledge of Himself, such as
the Infinite God has in store for His saints in all
eternity. This had been great insolence to God,
could we conceive our first parents to have been
guilty of it. It would seem a more hopeless fall
than that which brought sin and death upon us, as
being a more direct rejection of God. But now
men have so come to be (as they think) on easy or
equal terms with God, that, having ceased to think
of Him as their Creator, they lose out of sight that
they are not only His creatures, but guilty, rebel
creatures ; that God sent His Son into the world,
not only or chiefly with a revelation of new truth
to them, but of truth, by receiving which they
might be saved. They forget that, by the manifold
habitual breaking of God's laws? by offences, which
they must themselves condemn and did condemn,
they are sinners, wholly unfit to enter into His
Presence, where " nothing defiled can enter 9 ;"
incapable, through their manifold indulged and
engrained evil passions, to find bliss in the presence
of the All-holy, All-pure, All-loving God. The
rejection then of Jesus was the rejection of the
way devised by the love of God for their salvation.
8 S. John iii. 16. ' Rev. xxi. 27.

in Matters of Faith. 35
Our race was, for our sins, under God's condem
nation : we had set ourselves against Him ; we had
chosen evil against His good ; we had misused His
creatures against Himself; we had become a blot
in the beauty of His creation; we had rebelled
against Him, rejected Him as our Lord, become
aliens from Him, disordered our nature, corrupted
ourselves, defiled our souls, incapacitated ourselves
for any participation in His Holiness or the bliss
which He had prepared for them who love Him, to
which in all eternity He destined each of us, if, on
His terms, we would have Him. From first to
last the object and end of the Gospel is, that man
should be saved from his sins, by belief in Jesus.
" His Name," it was said of Him before His birth,
" shall be called Jesus : for He shall save His
people from their sins '." This He declared to be
His mission ; this the prophets spake with one
mouth ; " To Him give all the prophets witness,
that through His Name whosoever believeth in
Him shall receive remission of sins 2." " The Son
of Man is come to seek and to save that which
was lost s." This was the object of His coming
into the world, " to save sinners 4." " One Me
diator there is between God and man, the Man
Christ Jesus, Who gave Himself a ransom for all5."
"Neither is there salvation in any other : for there
1 S. Matt. i. 21. 2 Acts x. 43.
3 S. Matt, xviii. 11. S. Luke xix. 10.
4 1 Tim. i. 15. s 1 Tim. ii. 5, 6.
0 2

36 The Responsibility of Intellect
is none other name under heaven given among
men, whereby we must be saved 6." It was then
no new judgment, though all rejection of light
must aggravate condemnation. They were already
under condemnation ; they refused Him through
Whom God willed them to be saved ; they remained
under condemnation. So our Lord continues,
" God sent not His Son into the world to condemn
the world, but that the world through Him might
be saved : he that believeth on Him is not con
demned ; but he that believeth not is condemned
already, because he hath not believed in the name
of the only -begotten Son of God 7." And this was
of their own will, whence our Lord says so mourn
fully, expostulatingly, to those who rejected and
blasphemed Him, " Ye will not come unto Me,
that ye might have life 8." " I will it," He says,
"but ye will it not;" as He says to Jerusalem, the
slayer of the prophets, the stoner of those sent
unto it, and soon to be His own crucifier : " How
often did I will9 to gather thee1" so tenderly
under My fostering care, " and ye willed not 2."
Oh that mournful terrible power of the human
will, which Almighty love wills to win, but which
wills not to' be won !
This, then, is the ground of that solemn sanc-
6 Acts iv. 12. ' S. John iii. 17, 18.
8 S. John v. 40. ' i)0i\Wa.
1 S. Luke xiii. 34. S. Matt, xxiii. 37.
2 ovk rjOeXyo-are.

in Matters of Faith. 37.
tion, with which our Lord accompanies His com
mission to His Apostles to teach all nations : " Go
ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to
every creature. He that believeth and is baptized
shall be saved ; he that believeth not shall be con
demned3." By the very force of the words, no one is in
cluded of all those generations who lived before
Christ came, or whom the Gospel has not indivi
dually reached. The soul of the Church includes,
we cannot doubt, " a great multitude whom no
man could number, of all nations, and kindreds,
and peoples, and tongues," who did not on earth
belong to its body ; as contrariwise believers, who
led to the end bad lives and died impenitent, be
longed, it may be, visibly to its body, but not to
its soul. Jesus "died for all4." He was " a pro
pitiation for the sins of the whole world 5 ;" for
all, who have been since Adam's sin unto the end;
for all, who have been or are or shall be ; for all
who knew Him or shall know Him, or who shall
blamelessly know Him not ; for those, who blindly
" felt after 6 " Him or for some one or something
to stand between them and their sins ; who, by
their hereditary although ignorant use of sacrifices,
still acknowledged their guilt and separation from
God ; for those who, throughout the world, looked

' S. Mark xvi. 15, 16. " 2 Cor. v. 14.
5 1 S. John ii. 2. * Acts xvii. 27.

38 TJie Responsibility of Intellect
for a Deliverer to come ; for those, who, by those
"unutterable groanings," the mute restless long
ing of the human race, looked to the common
Father of mankind. " We are taught," says St.
Justin 7, " that Christ is the first-born of God, and
we have shown above, that He is the Word, of
whom the whole human race are partakers, and
those who lived according to reason are Chris
tians, even though accounted Atheists — so also
they who have been before Him, and lived without
reason, were worthless and enemies of Christ, and
murderers of those who governed their lives by
reason ; but they who lived and five in accordance
with reason are Christians, and are fearless and
tranquil." But as to these indeed we need not
witness from man. God has ruled it for us by S.
Paul. " When the Gentiles which have not the
law do, by nature the things contained in the law,
these, having not the law, are a law unto them
selves, which show the work of the law written in
their heart 8." By whom could it be written, but
by the Spirit of God ?
But what of .those, to whom the Gospel was
preached and yet they did not receive it ? To ask
the question seems to answer it. If any one
thinks of the variety of human minds, their in-
worked prejudices, the power of transmitted error,
the startling novelty, to a Greek philosopher, of the
7 Apol. i. n. 6, p. 35, Oxf. Tr.
* Rom. ii. 14.

in Matters of Faith. 39
Creation of the world, or the resurrection of the
flesh, who would think, that our Lord's words,
" He that believeth not shall be condemned," ap
plied to all the philosophers on Mars' Hill, except
the few who clave to S. Paul ? Or, of the chosen
people, who existed for the sake of Him Who was
to be given through them, who would say that
those words of our Lord applied to all the Jews at
Rome who had only heard of Christianity as a
" sect every where spoken against 9 " ? Nay, since
S. Paul speaks of his people as having " a zeal
for God, though not according to knowledge 1,"
who could venture even to think that the blindness
which fell upon Israel was in all a guilty self-
blinding ? But if this was so when S. Paul was
the preacher, how much more, if such as we cannot
so present the truth to people's souls as to win
them, must we not think that the fault may very
probably be as much ours as theirs ? Or, to take
more distressing cases yet, who would say that the
New Zealanders who, identifying the Christianity
which they had received with the wrong dealings
of Christians about their lands, went back to their
idolatry ; or those Indians in Mexico, who called
Christianity the religion of their oppressors, and
have gone wholly back to the idolatries which they
held by a divided faith; or the Red Indians, whom
Christian dealers decimated by what the Indian
chief called our " fire-god," brandy, and who knew
• Acts xxviii. 22. i Rom. x. 2.

40 The Responsibility of Intellect
our Lord only as the God of those who had in
flamed their passions and destroyed the health both
of body and soul — who would say that, in these or
any hke cases, our Lord's words, " He that be
lieveth not shall be condemned," would apply to all
those, who, under such circumstances, hearkened
not to His message or apostatised from the faith
in Him ? Nay more, the Church, while it repeats
our Lord's warnings, would not, and has not ven
tured to pronounce upon the loss of any one indi
vidual soul of man, unless, as in the case of Judas,
God Himself seems to have declared it. " We
take good heed," says an accredited writer2, " never
to affirm positively the reprobation of any one in
particular, whatever have been his religion, country,
period, nay, his conduct. In the soul, at the last
moment of its passage on the threshold of eter
nity, there occur doubtless Divine mysteries of
justice, but above all, of mercy and of love; ' mercy
triumpheth over justice.' We abstain from sound
ing indiscreetly the Divine counsels, but we know
indubitably that on each occasion they are worthy
of God and of His infinite goodness as well as of
His justice."
Our Lord's words, then, announce a principle
of God's judgment ; they tell us where and how
we are in safety ; who, if to the end they continue
to reject Him, must be rejected by Him. As to
faith, equally with God's moral law, God tells
us what incapacitates us for His presence in bhss.
s P. Ravignan, Confer. 36, t. ii. p. 521.

in Matters of Faith. 41
But in both alike we are forbidden, under sanctions
as awful, to usurp as to individuals His prero
gative, Who is our common Judge. We dare not,
as the Heathen did, imagine in hell those stained
with crimes, of guilt undeniable 3. " Judge not,"
our Lord commands us, "judge not, that ye be not
judged 4." " Judge nothing before the time, until
the Lord come, Who both will bring to light the
hidden things of darkness and make manifest the
counsels of the hearts 5."
And if it be so as to those who did not receive
the personal faith in Jesus, whom His Divine ten
derness could not melt, His Divine love could not
win, His Divine holiness could not awe, to whom
He stretched out in vain those sacred Hands for
them, pierced, to whom He cried in vain, " Come
unto Me and I will receive you, I will cleanse you
from your sins, and give you victory and life and
love ;" if even those who wholly disbeheved in Him,
nay, it must be said disbelieved Him, may yet be
saved by Him, how much less does the Church
pronounce that any individual is lost, who,
however imperfectly, believes in Him, though
it may be, hke the Samaritan woman, they
know not who He is. He has said, "Whoso
cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out,"
and the Church could not doubt that any one who,
' Virgil wrote of Theseus, &c, according to the popular belief,
which he himself believed not. Dante names individuals, as
instances of sins, through which souls are lost, but with no
authority from the Church and against its rules.
4 S. Matt. vii. 1. 5 1 Cor. iv. 5.

42 The Responsibility of Intellect
with an honest and true heart, sought Him would
be found of Him, that He would rather appear
to such a soul invisibly, as He did to Saul when
breathing out threatenings and slaughter against
His disciples and persecuting Himself in them,
than that such a soul should perish. Such may
misbelieve of Him. It is to their great loss that
they know not Who He is Who loves them. Ac
cording to their light, they still believe Him.
The Church would not pronounce even upon
the authors of heresy, widely-desolating as their
errors have been. To their own Master they have
stood or fallen. But it is acknowledged, that here
ditary misbelief mitigates the responsibility of
individuals. Heresy loses some of its virus by
transmission. Voluntary and culpable rejection
of God's truth, bad faith, perversity of will, alone
condemn. Hereditary Nestorians or Eutychians,
although they deny the Incarnation; hereditary
Anti-Trinitarians or Mohammedans, although they
beheve in God as other than He is, are not respon
sible, unless the light comes to them from within
or from, without, and they, of their own will, shut
their eyes, and will not look at it, or turn away
from or reject it, and God in it. " They," said
the great teacher of our Western Christendom who
during his whole converted life toiled in winning
back to the faith those who had erred from it,
Manichees, Arians, Donatists, Pelagians, Priscil-
lianists, " They who without any pertinacious con-

in Matters of Faith. 43
tentiousness defend their sentiment, however false
and perverse, especially such as they did not them
selves originate by the rashness of their own pre
sumption, but have received it from parents who
were misled and fell into error, and who seek the
truth with careful solicitude, ready to be amended
when they find it, these are no wise to be ac
counted heretics6." Obviously; since the very
term " heretics " implies a perverse choice of will.
" Let those," he says again to that strange sect
who had deluded his early youth by promises of
unmixed truth, " let those be fierce towards you,
who know not with how great toil truth is found,
how difficultly errors are avoided. Let those be
fierce towards you, who know not how rare and
arduous a thing it is to overcome carnal phan
tasms by the serenity of a pious nlind, or they
who know not with how great difficulty the eye
of the inner man is healed, so that it can behold
its sun — ' the Sun of Righteousness,' the ' true
Light which lighteneth every man that cometh
into the world.' Let those be fierce towards you,
who know not, with what sighs and groans men
attain, in any ever so small a degree, to understand
God. Lastly, let those be fierce against you, who
were never deceived by the hke error whereby
they see you deceived7."
No ! That word of God stands sure, " In every
6 Ep. 43. Glorio, &c, init.
' Ep. cont. Manich. c. 2, Opp. viii. 151, 152.

44 The Responsibility of Intellect
nation he that feareth God and worketh righteous
ness is accepted with Him 8." For the Lover and
Father of mankind, Who willeth not that any
should perish, has not one way only of bringing
home His lost sheep. All who shall be saved, shall
be saved for the sake of that Precious Blood, which
has redeemed our earth and arrayed it with Divine
glory and beauty. Varied and beautiful, each with
its special loveliness, will be the choirs of His
elect. In those ever-open portals there enter, day
and night, that countless multitude of every
people, nation, and language ; they who, in the
Church, were by His grace faithful to Him, and
they who knew not the Church of God, whom the
Church below knew not how to win, or alas ! neg
lected to win them, but whom Jesus looked upon,
and the Father drew to Himself, whom His inner
hght enhghtened, and who, out qf the misery of
our fallen state, drawn by His unknown grace,
looked up yearningly to Him, their " unknown
God," yet still their God, for He made them for
Himself. There, out of every religion or irreligion,
out of every clime, in whatever ignorance steeped,
in whatever hatred or contempt or blasphemy of
Christ nurtured, God has His own elect, who
ignorantly worship Him, whose ignorant fear or
longing He Who inspired, it will accept.
No ! ask any tolerably-instructed Christian
s Acts x. 35.

in Matters of Faith. 45
person, and his instinct will respond what every
teacher of the Church every where knows to be
truth. Ask him, " Will any soul be lost, heathen,
idolater, heretic, or in any form of hereditary un
belief or misbelief, if in good faith he was what he
was, living up to the light which he had, whence-
soever it came, and repenting him where he did
amiss ?" All Christendom would answer you, God
forbid ! He would not be " saved by that law
which he professeth 9," but he would be saved in
it, by the one love of God the Father Who made
him, and of God the Son Who redeemed him, and
God the Holy Ghost Who drew, and in his mea
sure sanctified him.
It has been through a strange ignorance, I may
almost say, of Christianity itself, which at all times
has condemned the error of those who denied the
Lord Who brought them, but has never pronounced
on individuals, that this sudden storm has been
raised against,
" The Psalm that gathers in one glorious lay,
All chants that e'er from heaven to earth found way :
Creed of the Saints, and Anthem of the Blest,
And calm-breathed warning of the kindliest love
That ever heaved a wakeful mother's breast1 :"
as though it condemned to the eternal loss of God,
— at one time people said, the whole Greek Church,
though that Church would not except against the
• Article xviii.
1 Lyra Apostolica, cxv. Athanasian Creed. John Keble.

46 The Responsibility- of Intellect
truth of its formula, rightly explained ; at another,
two eminent Divines of our own, defenders of the
faith, who contradict, of course, no truth therein ;
at another, all those who without any fault of their
own are ignorant of or contradict the truth.
Strange perversion of the first principle of the
judgment of the Church, which while, following its
Lord, it condemns denials of the faith, with Him
leaves all individuals to the judgment of the great
day ; " that word shall judge him at the last day,"
on which no one will be condemned who acted in
good faith, who did not, face to face, reject his God.
" The Church," it has been well said, " has its
long list of saints ; it has not inserted one name
in any catalogue of the damned."
And against what is this sudden whirlwind
raised? Against the simplest confession which
could be made of the Being of God and of our
Lord Jesus Christ. Look well , at it. There is
not a single abstract term used ; there is not one
statement in it, in relation to the Holy Trinity or
the Incarnation, which, if it were denied, God or our
Lord Jesus Christ would remain the same Being.
If any were to deny that the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Ghost, were each Uncreate, Infinite, Eter
nal, Almighty, Lord, he would deny that they were
God : if he were to assert that there were Three,
Uncreated, Infinite, Eternal, Almighty, Lord, he
would deny that God is One. They are but so
many notes of one Divine harmony, prolonged,

in Matters of Faith. 47
because the Church loved to dwell in adoring love
upon the Being of its Author and its End, Almighty
God; because it loved to dwell on and would
impress on us the thought of the absolute perfec
tion of each ; how Each was wholly all which we
can conceive of God, and yet that God is absolutely
One. It does not raise questions ; it rests the soul
in the contemplation (as we can here) of the Co-
eternal, Co-equal, Three, in their adorable Oneness.
Or again as to the Incarnation of our Lord
Jesus Christ, that wonderful Creed explains to us
difficulties of Holy Scripture, which remain difficul
ties to those who do not receive it, as, " My Father
is greater than 1 2." Its words are a shield to our
faith, and an instruction to it. Some of the here
sies which it tacitly corrects are so natural to the
mind, and yet it corrects them so uncontroversially,
so devotionally ; every word in it is an antidote
against a heresy which would annihilate our faith,
and yet we pass over them unheeded ; they jar not
upon us, and our faith sinks the more intelligently
and deeper into our souls, while we have been
praising the unutterable mercy of our God, who
" for us men and for our salvation" " became Man."
Here again are no. abstract propositions, such as
there must be about many of the Christian truths.
Every word relates to the Person of our Lord.
They, whose wrong teaching the Creed tacitly cor-
2 S. John xiv. 28.

48 The Responsibility of Intellect
rects, taught in effect, that our Lord was not God,
or was not Man, or that if once Man He has ceased
to be Man. Not a single statement could be denied,
and our Lord yet any longer be He Whom we
love and adore, Very God, and for our sakes, Very
Man. And are not then our people to be warned, that
if we deny Him Who came to save us, we incur
the loss of our salvation ? But then why did our
Lord say, " He that believeth not is condemned
already, because he hath not believed in the name
of the Only-begotten Son of God 3 " ? Why, to the
Jews who asked, " What shall we do, that we
might work the works of God ? " did He answer,
" This is the work of God, that ye believe 4 on Him,
Whom He hath sent " ? It cannot be thought
that our Lord meant them to believe in Him, other
than He was. Why is it said, " He that beheveth
not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God
abideth on him 5 " ? or, "If ye believe not that I
am He, ye shall die in your sins 6 " ? Or why did
the Apostle of love, he whom Jesus loved, who lay
in His Bosom, sum up his Gospel, " These things,
are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the
Christ, the Son of God ; and that believing ye
might have hfe in His Name7"? Why to the
affrighted jailor, who asked, " What shall I do to be
' S. John iii 18. 4 Ib. vi. 28, 29.
s Ib. iii. 36. ° Ib. viii. 24.
7 Ib. xx. 31.

in Matters of Faith. 49
saved? " did S. Paul say, "Believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy
house 8 " ? Believe on Him, surely, as He is, not,
as He is not. Or S. Peter, " Through His Name
whosoever believeth in Him shall receive remission
of sins9 " ? Or why did S. John warn, " Every spirit
that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the
flesh is not of God ; and this is that spirit of Anti-
Christwhereof ye have heard thatit should come1 " ?
Or S.Peter, of "damnable heresies, even denying
the Lord that bought them, and bring upon them
selves quick destruction 2 " ? People talk carelessly
about " affirming that the salvation of the soul de
pends upon the assent of the intellect to this, that,
or the other theological proposition." Theology,
of course, has its province, in ordering the relation
of revealed truths ; but look well at the Athanasian
Creed, and you will find nothing in regard to our
Lord Jesus Christ, which is not essential to His
Being, in Whom you hope to be saved.
This great Creed is clearer than the other
Creeds ; it explains to the simple, or the heathen
convert, the first truths of the Christian faith.
Missionary Bishops have felt its value. The Afri
can, in his untaught simplicity, thanks God for the
glorious light which it sheds on what in the Nicene
Creed was difficult to him. I should think that well-
nigh every thoughtful believer must have felt how
¦ Acts xvi. 30, 31. * lb. x. 43.
1 1 S. John iv. 3. ' 2 S. Pet. ii. 1.
D

50 The Responsibility of Intellect
God, through it, had taught him to think aright upon
subjects upon which he must think. And for those
clauses, which press upon us our own responsibility
as to truth which God has made known to us,
that we cannot be as the Heathen who know it
not, I suppose that, not until the Day of Judg
ment shall we know their inestimable value to us.
True charity is to warn of the existence of a preci
pice ; it were unloving to men's souls to leave them
playing close to it, but unwarned.
" Who knows but myriads owe their endless rest
To thy recalling, tempted else to rove 3 ?"
Let any one fix in his mind, how he would
explain those words of the Gospel, upon which
they are founded, and he will not be at a loss how
they themselves are to be explained.
This tornado will, I trust by God's mercy, soon
pass ; it is a matter of hfe and death. To remove
those words or the Creed because it contains them,
would be emphatically to teach our people, that it
is not necessary to salvation to' believe faithfully
the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, or in our
God as He has made Himself known to us. It
would be to be ashamed of Him and of His words,
upon which those words are founded.
And for you, my sons, remember that all this
which I have said about the non-responsibility of
those, who in any way, through ignorance or preju-
3 John Keble, 1. c.

in Matters of Faith. 5 1
dice by them invincible, are hindered from receiving
the truth, has a reverse side to you. We " are not
of the darkness 4." TJs " God hath called out of
darkness into His marvellous light \" To us He
says Who is the true Light, " Walk while ye have
the light, lest darkness come upon you ; for he
that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he
goeth. While ye have light, believe in the light,
that ye may be the children of light "." God ex
cuses unblamable ignorance. He says by His
Apostle, " the times of ignorance God winked at 7."
He has recovered those who through unfavourable
circumstances of their surroundings, through the
malformation of an almost natural scepticism,
through doubt infused into them, perhaps through
rash venturingin depths which they could not sound,
or being, hke him who became S.Augustine, seduced
by those who promised him larger light, have lost
their faith. God's mercies are boundless, or bounded
only by our willingness to receive them. But of all
hopeless cases, the most hopeless would seem un
belief engendered by levity. Yet such, I hear, still
lingers among some of you, my sons. They speak
of some who become " positivists " through what
ever bias of their own ; of others, who (to use a
term of your own) " follow suit," throwing off
their faith as they would a worn-out dress, because
it is not fashionable with those, whose esti-

1 Thess. v. 5.

5 1 S. Pet. ii. 9

S. John xii. 35, 36.

' Acts xvii. 30.

D 2

52 The Responsibility of Intellect
mation of cleverness they esteem more than the
good favour of Him Who is Infinite Wisdom. A
prophet of heathenism and its .highest intellect
yet speaks to you, " My son, you are young, and
the advance of time will make you renounce many
of the opinions which you now hold. Wait there
fore until the time comes, .and do not attempt to
judge of high matters at present ; and that is the
highest of which you think nothing — to know the
gods rightly and to fear accordingly. Of one
thing of great importance I am quite certain ; you
and your friends are not the first who have held
this about the gods. There have always been per
sons more or less numerous, who have had the
same disorder. I have known many of them, and
can tell you this, that no one who had taken up in
youth this opinion, that the gods do not exist, ever
continued in the same till he was old. What may
be the true doctrine, if you are patient, you will
hereafter discover. Meantime take heed that you
offend not about the gods 3."
But you, if you despised or lightly set at nought
God's revelation of Himself, would sin against
light and love, which Plato knew not of. We have
a responsibility, wholly different in kind from that
which he had, or any one who, at this day, by
circumstances of his birth, is outside of Christianity

8 Plato de Legg. 1. x. p. 888 ; vol. iv. p. 398, Jowett's Trans
lation.

in Matters of Faith. 53
or of its full truth. In God's individual love for
each of you, He has given you the faith, whereby
you may be saved. You have not to learn it ; you
have only, not to unlearn it. No one scarcely
loses his faith at once. It is so precious to the
soul, that God does not, unless driven forth from
the soul by things or tempers incompatible with
His Presence, cease, even amid continued provoca
tion, to continue that grace whereby alone we can
retain it. But there are many preparations for
that loss. At your age, the idle word, the repeti
tion of the profane jest, the listening to, it may be,
some pointed scoff at some un-understood charac
ter or phrase of Scripture, the first ashamedness
of truth, because it is old, or, as some will tell you,
antiquated, the first wish not to seem less advanced
or enlightened than others, or less free from theo
logical prejudice, or not to be behind the age (as
it calls itself), or to be accounted as talented as
any talented equal, who may, alas! have lost his
faith : — these are the distant, and not always dis
tant, preparations for the loss of faith. For they
treat God with levity and prefer the creature to the
Creator. " How can ye beheve," our Lord said,
" which receive honour' one of another, and seek
not the honour which cometh from God only 9 ? "
It is known that not long ago the young here often
lost their faith, because they came ready to part
" S. John v. 14

54 The Responsibility of Intellect
with it. Then follow, careless reading of books
against faith, or truth, or, it may be, the being of
God, which have their answers, but which answers,
it may be, your thought or knowledge may not be
matured enough to interpose between the sug
gested doubts and your soul. Then follow, alas !
or accompany it, some of those tempers, pride or
vainglory or the like, which shut out God, because
they set up an idol, self, in His temple, your
souls. " Love truth," said an experienced writer ',
almost proverbial for gentleness and love ; " love
truth as much as you love your health, your vanity,
your pleasure, your phantasy ; you will find it." It
is a sore thing in the end to part with God, Who
made you, and redeemed you at such a price, that
you might share His endless love. Draw nigh
unto Him in truthfulness, and He Who secretly
draws you will draw nigh to you ; seek Him, and
He Who willeth to be found, He who sought you,
will be found of you; part not with Him wilfully
and because you prefer, to Him something which is
not He, and He will not depart from you.
" Of penitents sole hope and stay,
To wandering sinners kind ;
To those who seek Thou art the Way ;
But what to those who find ! "
God grant, when the time of your departure
shall be at hand, each of you may be able to say
1 Fenelon, " Lettre sur les moyens donnes aux hommes pour
arriver a la vraie Religion." (Euvres, Classe i., t. i. p. 426.

in Matters of Faith. 55
with the aged Paul, in view of his, " I have fought
the good fight ; I have finished my course, I have
kept the faith ; " and " the Lord, the righteous
Judge, give you in that day the crown of righteous
ness laid up, not for him only, but for all those
who love His appearing2."

NOTE A, on p. 11.
Passages from S. Cyril of Alexandria, in which he speaks of
the Holy Spirit as proceeding from the Son.
P. P&tau (de Trin. vii. 3. Opp. Theol. ii. 369) quotes the
following passages of S. Cyril : —
1. " The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God and the Father,
and of the Son also, being poured forth essentially from Both,
viz. from the Father through the Son " (to ouo-ua8i3s e| dp-cpolv
— Trpoxeofxevov). De Adorat. 1. i. p. 9. Aub.
2. " For in that the Son is God, and of (ck) God by nature
(for He is truly Begotten of (ex) God the Father), the Spirit
is His very Own, and in Him and from Him (i5W avrov ko! Iv
outuS Te /cat e| avrov), just as it is conceived as to God the
Father." 3. " He infused not into the baptized a Spirit foreign (to
Himself) in manner of a servant and minister ; but, as being
by nature God, with supremest power, He sent the Spirit
3 From 2 Tim. iv. 7, 8.

56 6". Cyril of Alexandria on t/ie
which was from Him and His very own " (to e£ avrov rt kch ioW
ovroi;). De Recta Fide ad Theod. Imp. Opp. t. v. P. ii. p. 33.
4. " The Only-Begotten Word of God, when He became
Man, remained then, too, God, being all which the Father is,
save being the Father, and, having as His own, the Holy
Spirit, which is from Him and essentially inexisting in Him "
(to i£ avroi! Kal ovo"«o8Ss ip/ire<pvi<b<i avrui HveS/Aa ayiov). Explau.
xii. capp. Expl. ix. Opp. vi. 154, 155.
5. In the Thesaurus, Ass. 34, " That the Spirit is God and
hath the same operation with the Son, and is not alien from
His Essence, and that, when God is said to dwell in us, it is
the Holy Spirit who indwelleth," he has a heading, " That the
Holy Spirit is of the Essence of the Father and the Son ;" and
says, " Since the Holy Spirit, coming to be in us, makes us
conformed to God, and He goeth forth from the Father and
the Son, He is manifestly of the Divine Essence, being essen
tially in It, and going forth from It ; as, in a way, that breath
which goeth forth from the mouth of man ; poor and inadequate
as the instance is, for God is above all" (Opp. vi. 345).
6. " Since Christ giveth laws, the Spirit, as being by nature
in Him and from Him (iv avrijp ko.1 i£ airov tpvo-iK&s vTrapypv)
Himself giveth laws " (Ib. p. 354).
7. " Since, when Christ reneweth us, and removeth us into a
new life, the Spirit reneweth us, we must of necessity confess
that the Spirit is of the Essence of the Son. For, as being by
nature of Him (e£ avrov koto. <pvo-iv inrdp^ov), and being sent
by Him upon the creation, He worketh the renovation, being
the Complement of the Holy Trinity. But if so, the Spirit is
God and 6f God, and not a creature " (Ib. p. 358). Where, as
P. Petau observes, S. Cyril proves that He is of God (oc 6eov)
because He is by nature of the Son. It cannot then refer to
any temporal Procession. ,
8. Some arguers inferred that " when the Son said of Him
self and of the Spirit, that ' He shall take of Mine and shall
show it unto you,' He indicated a difference of nature," S. Cyril

Holy Spirit, as proceeding from the Son. 57
answers, " Not at all. For how should that Spirit, which is
both from Him and in Him and His very own (to ii airov re.
koX iv avrZ koI ISlov airov), partake of Him, and be sanctified
relatively like those things which are without, and be by
nature alien from Him, Whose very Own He is said to be?"
De S. Trin. 1. vii. Ib. p. 657.
9. " How shall we separate the Spirit from the Son, thus
inexisting and being essentially united, Who cometh forth
through Him, and is by nature in Him ? The blessed Paul,
having named ' the Spirit of Christ dwelling in us,' forthwith
subjoined, ' If Christ is in you,' introducing an entire likeness
of the Son with the Spirit, Who is His very Own and is by
nature poured forth from Him " (to 10W avrov koI irap' avrov
Kara, tpvo-w Trpo\i6p.evov Yi.vtvp.a). In S. John i. 33, pp. 126, 127.
10. " For although the Spirit is in His own Person, and is
conceived of by Himself, in that He is Spirit and not Son, yet
is He not alien from Him ; for He is named the Spirit of truth,
and Christ is the Truth, and He is poured forth from Him,
just as He is from God the Father " (Ep. ad Nest. Opp. v.
P. ii. p. 74).
11. " He sent to us the Comforter from heaven, through
Whom and in Whom He is in us, and dwelleth in us, not in
fusing into us an alien, but the own Spirit of His Essence and of
that of His Father" (to ttJs oio-tots avrov koX t>)s toS IlaTpos
airov iSiov TLvtvp-a). De Trin. Dial. 7, p. 642.
12. " Since He is the Spirit of Christ and His Mind, He
knoweth what is in Him — wherefore, as knowing all things
which are in the counsel of the Only-Begotten, He reporteth
all things to us, not having that knowledge from learning, that
He may not seem to fulfil the rank of a minister, and to
transmit the words of another, but as His Spirit, and knowing
untaught all of Him, from Whom and in Whom He is (ii ou
ko.1 iv Unrip iorl), He revealeth to the holy the Divine
mysteries. In a manner as the human mind, knowing all
which is in it, ministereth externally by uttered word, the

58 S. Cyril of Alexandria on the
wills of the soul, whereof it is the mind, being mentally dis
cerned in the thoughts, and named as something else than
itself, but being by nature no other, but as a part, comple-
mental of the whole, both being it and being believed to go
forth from it." In S. Joann. 1. 10, p. 837.
13. My son suggests, as like to these, the last words of
his tenth book on S. John (p. 926) : " For this cause He
added, ' He shall show you the things to come,' all but say
ing, ' This shall be a sign unto you that the Spirit is. alto- ,
gether from My substance (Ik rr\% ip-rjs oicria<;) , and is, as it
were, My Mind, that He shall show you the things to come,
even as I. For this He could not have done, without being
altogether in Me, and going forth through Me, and being of
the same substance with Me."
14. And from the Commentary on S. Luke, translated by the
Very Rev. Dr. P. Smith, from a Syriac Version : " Nor has He
[the Divine Word, become Man] need of the Holy Ghost :
for the Spirit that proceedeth from the Father is of Him
and equal to Him in substance" (P. i. p. 46).
As a guarantee against the ordinary Greek imputation of
falsification of the texts by Latinizers, my son, the present
editor of S. Cyril, tells me that, of these passages, No. 3 is extant
in a contemporary translation by Rabbula, Bp. of Edessa ; No.
4 is in an old Syriac translation ; Nos. 5, 6, 7, he found in a
MS. in the Patriarchal Library at Cairo ; No. 1 is in a Bodleian
MS. which was given' to its possessor by a Greek Patriarch
about the end of the fifteenth century ; No. 14 is extant only
in the Syriac.
But, over and above the force of single passages, is their
multiplicity, showing that this was the habitual thougbt and
faith of that great Father. In the Commentary on S. John
alone, my son's Index refers to nine passages in which S. Cyril
says, that " all things are through the Son in the Holy Spirit ;"
twenty -five in which he calls Him " the own Spirit of the Son ;"
seven, in which he names Him, " the Spirit of the Father and

Holy Spirit, as proceeding from the Son. 59
the Son ;" one, in which " tbe own Spirit of the Father and the
Son ;" and twice, " the own Spirit, as of the Father so of the
Son ;" once, " inseparable from the Son ," thrice, " proceedeth
from the Father by the Son ;" twice, " is of the Essence of the
Son ;" he calls Him also in different places, " the Countenance "
(Trpoo-omor) , " the Image," "the Likeness" of the Son; five
times he says, " is in the Son and goeth forth from the
Son ;" once, that " the Spirit goeth forth from the Substance
of the Only-Begotten, being nothing else than He, as to
identity of substance, save that He exists in His own Person "
(1. xi. p. 925) ; seven times, that " He is the Spirit of Truth
because He is the Spirit of Christ, Who is the Truth."
I have accumulated these passages, because I have observed
here and there, a disposition to abandon the " Filioque " in the
Nicene Creed also, in the vain hope of conciliating the Greeks.
Among us, who have not the ancient tradition of the Greeks, that
" the Holy Spirit proceedeth from the Father through (Sia) the
Son" (which the Council of Florence acknowledged to have the
same meaning as our Western formula), the abandonment of
the " Filioque " would speedily issue in heresy, believing and
thinking of God, as other than He Is. See further, the Rev.
G. Williams's Article on " The Orthodox Greek 'Church" in "The
Church and the Age," Second Series, pp. 231 sqq.

APPENDIX.

Reply to Bishop Moberly's Argument against the
Warning Clauses of the Athanasian Greed.
Bishop Mobeely's argument against the warning clauses of
the Athanasian Creed is founded upon a misconception both
of those clauses and of the Creed itself, as strange as it is
sad and unlooked for. In these days of severance, old age
itself has no exemption from these severances between those
who hoped they had fought the good figbt together as friends.
This argument involves the following arbitrary assumptions :
— 1. That what the Apostles taught as matters of faith in
obedience to our Lord's commission, " Go ye into all the world,
and preach the Gospel to every creature," is limited to what is,
in the letter, contained in their recorded sermons in the Acts.
2. That consequently our Lord's warning words, " He that
believeth not shall be condemned," apply only to the teaching
so recorded. 3. That all other matters of faith, embodied by
the Church in her Creeds, lie in the word " baptized," and that
our Lord purposely omitted that word in the second clause, " He
that believeth not shall be condemned," in order to intimate
that the penalty of loss of salvation may be affirmed only of
those points of faith which Bishop Moberly has selected as
belonging to the word "believe," not of those which he has
relegated to the word "baptized," these being, he thinks,
mingled with human infirmity. 4. That those words of our

62 Appendix.
Lord must be understood with some restrictions as to indi
viduals, God alone being the Judge, what want of distinct faith
entails this penalty upon any one, what does not ; but that the.
same reference to the judgment of God as to individuals is not
to be allowed in regard to the sentences of the Athanasian
Creed, which are founded on these words of our Lord.
i. The faith which Bishop Moberly supposes the Apostles to
have alone preached, and alone to have been contained in our
Lord's words, " preach the Gospel to every creature," and so
alone to come under our Lord's awful sanction, he derives from
S. Peter's sermon to Cornelius L, and sums up in the following
, terms": — ¦
" It is the preaching of the great Gospel facts, the Incarnation and Birth
of the Son of God, of His holy life and example, of His Atoning Death upon
the Cross, of His Resurrection from the dead, of His Ascension into Heaven,
of the descent of the Holy Ghost tq dwell in the Church, of the certainty
of the future judgment of quick and dead."
T should have thought it more scriptural to say, that it was
to " believe in our Lord Jesus," which involves the believing in
Him, as He is, God and Man, and in what He has revealed.
The assumption that the Apostles' preaching in the Acts
represents the whole of the teaching of the Apostles, by virtue
of our Lord's commission, and so alone comes under the sanction
of His awful words, certainly does not commend itself, even at
first sight, I should think, to any simple mind.
a. The preaching, recorded in the Acts, is almost always the
first addressed to the persons there assembled, and so is very
elementary. In the one exception to this, viz-, the exhortation
to " the elders of the Church " at Ephesus 3, we have the remark
able expression, "The Church of God 4, which He.hath purchased
with His own Blood."

>- Acts x. 36-43. 2 Sermon, p. 45. » Acts xx. 18—35.
4 Dean Alford, also, after the discovery of the Sinaitic MS., acknowledged
this as the right reading.

Appendix. 63
b. Converts were, by our Lord's command, " baptized 6 into
the name of the Father and of the Son and of the. Holy
Ghost." This is implied also in» the Acts, since, when some
disciples at Ephesus answered that they did not know of the
being of the Holy Ghost, S. Paul asked, " Unto what then
were ye baptized6 ? " Had they known Christian Baptism, they
must have heard of Him, since it is Baptism " into the Name
of" the Holy Trinity, " Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." All
those who were baptized must have known the doctrine of the
Holy Trinity. Baptism was the embodying of our Creed, a
living Creed, and the safeguard against every heresy as to the
All-holy Trinity in Whom we believe, into Whose Name we are
baptized. " Jesus," S. Chrysostome says ', " commandeth the
Apostles to pour themselves over the whole world, giving into
their hands a summary of their teaching, that, namely, through
Baptism." " To those who believe," says S. Hilary *, " that word
of God were sufficient, which was poured into our ears by the
testimony of the Evangelist together with the very power of
His truth [viz. in baptism] when the Lord saith, ' Go now and
teach all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and
of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, &c.' For what of the
mystery of man's salvation is not contained therein ? Or what
is omitted or left obscure ? All things are full, as from Him who
is Fulness, and perfect, as from Perfection.' " " For neither,"
argues S. Athanasius9, " did He conjoin an angel with the God
head, nor did He unite us with Himself and the Father in one
created, but in the Holy Spirit." " Leave off," saith yet
another ', " your controversy with men, and resist, if thou
canst, the words of the Lord, which laid down for men the
invocation in Baptism."

5 St. Matt, xxviii. 19. 6 Acts xix. 2, 3. 1 Ad loc.
8 De Trin. 1. ii. init.
0 Ep. 1 ad Sernp. c 11, p. 660.
1 S. Greg. Nyss. in Bapt. Chiisti, p. 372. See more fully in the writer's
' Scriptural Doctrine of Holy Baptism," pp. G8 — 80.

64 Appendix.
Whence alike Eusebius ', while suppressing for the time the
word " of one substance," and S. Hilary declaring, that when
the Creed, as settled at Nicasa, had not reached to Gaul 8, he
understood the " of one substance," declare that they received
the faith in the Holy Trinity at their Baptism. "Thus,"
S. Hilary says to God4, "I believed in Thee; by Thee I
was thus reborn ; and thenceforth I am Thine."
c. There seems no doubt, from the text!of the Acts itself, that
S. Peter taught that repentance is the gift of God6 (which con
tradicts in principle the Pelagian heresy), and that S. Paul
taught the resurrection of the body in his disputations at Athens ;
for the mockery which he met with, attached, in the minds
of the heathen, not to the immortality of the soul, but to the
resurrection of the flesh, which indeed alone is "resurrection."
And this is spoken of as a Gospel — " he preached unto them
the good tidings of Jesus and the resurrection " " — (tqv dvdo-Tao-iv
cvrryyM^tTo). He must also have taught that Jesus is an
Object of worship, since they spoke of him as " a setter forth
of strange gods ;" and [although not as contained in that public
teaching] he taught the necessity of " continuing in the grace
of God'," and from his first conversion inculcated on Jew and
Gentile, that they should "do works meet for repentance8." Our
Lord also, in the commission which He gave him, directed him
to speak of " the inheritance among them which are sanctified
by faith which is in Me * ;" words which re-appear in his farewell
sermon, to the elders of Ephesus10, but nowhere else in the
Acts ; so elementary was that recorded teaching.
d. S. Paul is recorded sometimes to have spent long periods
at the same place. He and Barnabas " spent a whole year at "
1 " As we have received from the Bishops, who preceded us, and in our
first catechisings, and when we received the holy laver — so believing also at
the time present, we report our faith." — S. Ath. Nic. Def. App. 2, pp. 59, 60,
Oxf. Tr.
» De Synod, p. 1205. 4 De Trin. vi. 21. « Acts v. 31
' Ib. xvii. 18. ' Ib. xiii. 43. 8 Ib. xxvi. 20.
9 Ib. xxvi. 18. 10 Ib. xx. 32.

Appendix. 65
Antioch " ; some years afterwards we hear of his " continuing x "
there " teaching and preaching the word of the Lord :" at
Corinth he abode " for a year and six months teaching the word
of God among them2," and for "yet a good while3", after he
had been brought before Gallio : at Ephesus he spent a period
of " three years4," in which for three months 6 he disputed " in
the synagogues, and persuaded the things concernmg the
kingdom of God," or having "separated the disciples," still
" disputed daily in the school of Tyrannus," yet all the while,
exercising the pastoral office, " warning every one night and
day with tears, declaring unto them the whole counsel of God,"
and that in part with the view of guarding them against
heretical teachers, who, he says, " I know, will enter in after my
departure0." At Rome also he " dwelt two whole years7 in his
own hired house, and received all that came in unto him,
preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things
which concern the Lord Jesus Christ." Now it is quite im
possible to conceive that in all these long series of preaching
and teaching, S. Paul should have confined himself to those
elementary truths of the Gospel which the Apostles dwelt upon
in their first preachings to the unconverted. And accordingly,
e. The Epistles presuppose that they to whom they were
written, were already in possession of a large body of teaching
beyond those first elements which Bishop Moberly has extracted
from S. Peter's sermon. S. Paul directly asserts that he had
given such a body of teaching to the Corinthians, when he was
with them. " I praise you, that ye remember me in all things,
and keep the traditions, as I delivered them to you8." And
specifically he reminds them, how he had taught them about the
Holy Eucharist ", and in much detail about our Lord's Resurrec
tion ,0, so that some few only were found who denied it l
11 Acts xi. 26. 1 Acts xv. 35. 2 Acts xviii. 11.
3 Acts xviii. 18. 4 Acts xx. 31. a Acts xix. 8, 9.
• Acts xx. 27—31. 1 Acts xxviii. 30, 31. " 1 Cor. xi. 2.
9 1 Cor. xi. 23—26. »' 1 Cor. xv. 3—8. » Ib. 12.
E

66 Appendix.
f. Unless other doctrines than those contained in those
elementary sermons to the unconverted were essential to salva
tion in those who can know them, it is inconceivable how
S. John should sum up his Gospel, so full of doctrine, " These
things are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the
Christ, the Son of God, and that, believing, ye might have life
in His Name2." His Name surely, as He had spoken of Him in
that Gospel, " Very God," and " for us and for our salvation,
Very Man."
g. And yet even those doctrines selected by Bishop Moberly
are hot all contained in the letter of those sermons in the Acts.
" The incarnation and birth " of the Son of God are related in
the Gospels, they are not mentioned in the Acts. The descent
of the Holy Ghost is mentioned oftentimes; His abiding
"indwelling in the Church," or the souls of the faithful, is
taught in the Gospels, is a prominent teaching of the Epistles,
not of the Acts.
ii. Bishop Moberly, of course, understands the words, in
which he has drawn up the original Gospel, in their fullest
sense ; for he says, " I accept and embrace with all my heart
that exposition of faith in all its affirmative statements of
doctrine3." By the Son of God, then, he means "God the Son,"
and by the Holy Ghost, the third Person in the Holy Trinity.
But this being so, he includes, as essential teaching, the belief
in the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation, which are the very
doctrines guarded by those warning clauses of the Athanasian
Creed. The word " Incarnation " itself contains all this doctrine,
against which early heresy rebelled, that He Who was Very
God, became, in the Virgin's womb, Very Man. His words,
" atoning death upon the cross," have a more theological sound
than the simpler, though equivalent terms of the Nicene Creed,
" was crucified for us," or of the Athanasian, " suffered for our
salvation," in which some acquiesce, who rebel against the
word " atoning," " atonement."
5 St. John xx. 31. 3 App. p. 19.

Appendix. 67
But, then, on no principle can the statements of the Athanasian
Creed, which are involved in these, and bound up in them, be
relegated to another province, and that of fallibility. Had
our Lord not been, equally with the Father, Uncreate, Infinite,
Eternal, Almighty, Lord, co-equal with Him in His Godhead,
inferior to Him as to His Manhood only, He had not been God.
The Arian controversies only showed the hopelessness of trying
to make out some middle term between God and a creature.
" A second God," of which Arius spoke, involved Polytheism,
or the worship of a creature. On the other hand, had our Lord
not been " of the substance of His Mother" (which the Gnostics
and Eutyches denied) " of a reasonable soul and human flesh
subsisting" (which Apollinarius denied), God and Man without
confusion of substance, He had not been Man. The Athanasian
Creed contains not human though true developments of the
Nicene Creed, but denials of falsehood, which would contradict
and annul it. Why then make distinctions between those
facts of the Gospel, which Bishop Moberly places under
the word " faith," in his own human words, and those same
facts as vindicated and cleared by the Church against the
perversion of heretics? The Church, more in unison with
the words of the Gospel, sets forth that belief as belief,
not in any series of facts, but in the Holy Trinity and in
our Lord Jesus Christ, " Very God, and for our salvation,
Very Man," of our very nature, our Redeemer, and our
Judge. iii. The whole of Bishop Moberly's argument in favour of his
distinction turns on the supposition that the word "baptized"
includes every thing which in the Christian life follows after
Baptism. But the word baptized [j8a7rno-#ets] by its very form,
expresses a single act ; nor do I know of any writer who has
forced the word to mean any thing else. Faith and baptism are
the entrance into the Christian life ; and we pray for our newly-
baptized infants that they " may lead the rest of their life
according to this beginning." But to force into the one word
E 2

68 Appendix.
"is baptized" — an act which takes place once for all, and which
may not be repeated,
" Creeds, ordinances, chiefly the two Sacraments of the Gospel, with the
rules and methods of administration to be determined by the Church, the
powers left by the Lord in the Church, with their intelligible rules, their
methods, their duly ordered and subordinated authorities " —
to force all this into the one word " baptized '' is to do
violence to language, and contrary to its laws. It is essential
to Bishop Moberly's argument to force the Creeds into the word
"baptized;" but how the Creeds, which express the one un
changeable faith, can belong to the word " baptized," and not
to the word " believe," I cannot imagine. The faith, as stated
at Nice, was (as Bishop Moberly knows) the same which was
taught by the Apostles. They, at that time, must know better
than we, what they received, or whether they added any thing.
But it is the declaration of every Father, of every Council, that
they added nothing new. " What they wrote down was no
new discovery of theirs, but is the same as was taught by the
Apostles 4."
We know, from other words of our Lord, that in those who
are baptized a living faith is required, a " faith which worketh
by love," the keeping of God's commandments, perseverance to
the end. Our Lord cannot by this brief formula, ',' He that
believeth and is baptized shall be saved," mean to supersede
His own words, " He that shall persevere unto the end, the
same shall be saved." Belief is not a single act but a habit, a
grace, a virtue, a living principle. The " observing all things
whatsoever I have commanded you " (our Lord's words in S.
Matthew 5) are included in the word " believeth " in S. Mark,
* S. Ath. Cone. Arim. et Seleuc. § 5, p. 80, Oxf. Tr. See the like state
ments from Fathers and Councils, as given briefly in Dr. Pusey's sermon,
" The Rule of Faith."
5 Bp. Moberly makes a distinction between the word used by S. Matthew,
"make disciples of" (jiaBnTtiaaTt,) and that of S. Mark, " preach the Gospel
to," (KnpifaTe to evayye\iov) ; but they differ no otherwise than that the
word in S. Matthew expresses that that " preaching " should obtain its end
of winning to Christ, those to whom the Gospel should be preached. Both

Appendix. 69
since the faith whereby a man shall be saved is a living faith.
" Faith without works is dead." To depart from belief is
apostasy ; such become unbelievers ; and whoever they shall be,
fall under our Lord's sentence, although He alone knows who
they are, who fall finally.
iv. It is, then, of little moment whether S. Bernard's distinc
tion of the relative necessity of : faith and baptism, is hinted in
these words of our Lord, or no. For anyhow, as S. Bernard
himself applies it °, the word " is baptized," relates to the one
act, whereby a person has been made a member of Christ.
Our Lord speaks of that act in the first clause ; " He that
believes and is baptized shall be saved." In addition to the
belief in Himself, our Lord requires the outward confession of
that belief; whence S. Paul says, " With the heart man believeth
are united in the mention of those converted at Derbe. " Having preached
the Gospel to (evayyeKiaduevoi) that city, and made many disciples
(/laBriTsio-avTes iKavobs), they returned, &e." (Acts xiv. 21). aaSn-niiav
passively, is to he a disciple (S. Matt, xxvii. 57) ; actively, it is to make one
a disciple (S. Matt, xxviii. 19. Acts 1. c), the same as iiaMriTas noiCiv
(S. John iv. 21), "make disciples." The name itself, " disciple " (moSijt^s),
although occurring 250 times in the Gospels, and 30 times in the Acts as
-the title of Christians, " a disciple," " the disciples," disappears afterwards.
It no where occurs in the Epistles.
6 S. Bernard says : — " Consider whether when the Saviour said, ' He who
believeth and is baptized, shall be saved,' He did not carefully and of set
purpose omit to repeat ' But he who is not baptized,' saying only, ' But he
who believeth not, shall be condemned,' hinting that sometimes faith alone
sufficeth to salvation, and without it nothing sufficeth.' " [Tract de Bapt.
Opp. i. 629]. Tho argument does not turn on the mere omission of the word
" baptized." For had it been simply added, it would have spoken, not of
those who, believing, had yet not been baptized, but of those who not
believing were not baptized. In the first clause, the subject is one and the
same class of persons. " He who believeth and is baptized shall he saved."
The words speak of two acts, one inward, the other outward, of the same
persons. The meaning negatived by S. Bernard, could only have been intro
duced by an alteration of the construction, by which the repudiation of the
inward act [faith] should be spoken of one class of persons, the omission of
the outward act [baptism] of another. " Whosoever shall not believe, and
whosoever shall not be baptized, shall be condemned." But anyhow, his obser
vation does not yield the slightest support to Bishop Moberly, since it only
relates to baptism received or neglected, not to any thing subsequent, whether
»f faith or life.

jo Appendix.
unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made
unto salvation'." During those ages of persecution (and now,
too, for those not born of Christian parents, Jews or Heathen)
there must have often been a terrible temptation not to avow
their belief, like those " chief rulers," of whom S. John says,
" Many believed on Him, but because of the Pharisees they did
not confess Him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue,
for they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God 8."
Of such as these our Lord says, " Whosever shall be ashamed
of Me and of My words in this sinful and adulterous generation,
of him also shall the Son of Man be ashamed when He cometh
in the glory of His Father with the holy angels0."
In the second clause the mention of Baptism was superfluous,
because, except in the case of Baptism in hypocrisy (such as that
of Simon Magus), one who did not believe would obviously not be
baptized. Nay, his being baptized, would only bring additional
guilt, as involving hypocrisy. Of course, there is no question
as to the truth of what S. Bernard says, that they who believed,
yet were not baptized, either through no fault of their own (as
in the case of martyrdom), or through a repented fault (as of
the delay of Baptism and sudden death supervening) would be
accepted by God. Both come under the general law, that God,
in His mercy, accepts the will for the deed. S. Bernard would
have been not a little startled to find his words, in which he said
that " faith " might in some cases " suffice to salvation," en
listed in behalf on the surmise that the faith, as rehearsed in the
Creeds, is not necessary in those who could have it.
v. Bp. Moberly qualifies our blessed- Lord's words, " He that
beheveth not shall be condemned," by referring the whole sub
ject to the omniscience of God. He lays down very definitely
certain points, the Incarnation and Birth of the Son of God,
His Atoning Death upon the Cross, and other articles of the
Creed, as included in that Gospel message, which " when it is
preached to a man he must believe or not believe ;" but he says,
1 Bom. x. 10. 8 S. John xii. 42, 43. » Mark viii. 38. .

Appendix. 7 1
man cannot tell what is, or what is not, " real and aoceptable
belief or unbelief."
"When the Gospel facts are duly published, according to our Lord's
command, man must either believe or disbelieve, and, according as he does
one or the other, he is, pro tanto, in the condition of assured salvation or
the opposite. I wish to insist upon thiB point. The whole sphere of fitness
or unfitness for salvation, so far as this first and chief condition is concerned,
must needs be in the hands and in the judgment of the all-seeing God
alone." But our Lord's words, " He that believeth not shall be con
demned," are just as distinct as those with which the Athanasian
Creed closes ; " This is the Catholic faith, which, except a
man believe faithfully, he cannot be saved." Bishop Moberly
acknowledges that an universal proposition must, in its applica
tion, be modified by, or according to, the circumstances of each.
This is acknowledged in human law universally. The law lays
down the punishment upon murder or manslaughter. Human
law takes into account the circurnstanees which exempt any
given case from being either murder or manslaughter, and places
it either under the milder of the two, or under the class of
"justifiable homicide." It takes account of motives, i.e. moral
grounds, in weighing the character of a deed, upon which the
heaviest temporal penalty of Divine or human law rests. There
is scarcely a general proposition, upon any subject ; there is even
scarcely a general statement upon religion which does not
require such modification, and which, when apphed to indivi
dual cases, does not receive it at the hands of the common sense
of mankind. The Sermon upon the Mount, with its simple,
strong lawgiving upon large moral subjects, its code of Christian
morals, is practically modified in its application to individual
cases. A rigid unmodified interpretation, which might be
Christian humility in one case, might be provocative in
another. I should myself far extend the exemptions which Bishop
Moberly suggests in regard to that solemn admonition of our
Lord, " He that believeth not shall be condemned." And I

72 Appendix.
trust, that Bishop Moberly will himself, on further thought, see
the necessity of such an extension ; else I think that he throws
a stumbling-block in the way of those, as yet outside the Gospel,
who are feeling their way back to it. At present he suggests
as such, "the approaches with tears and inward consciousness of
feeble faith," but " with their best," " the heart and disposition
of belief, even though the intellectual conviction and sense of
assurance be imperfect '," or " eagerness to cling to Him though
mingled with inaccuracy of conception." As to such cases as
these, I could not even imagine a doubt, that they would be
accepted, since they are supposed to come to Him " with their
best." Sin being in the will, one could not doubt as to those
whose will is supposed to be right. He has said, " Whoso
cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out." One could not
doubt of His receiving those who " with an honest and true heart"
came to Him, however imperfect their convictions. For myself, I
do not doubt that Divine mercy will be extended very far beyond
these limits, and that Bishop Moberly is wrong, alike as to the
strictness of the limits which he draws as to those who have
refused the faith altogether, and as to the grounds upon which
he believes that the sentence will be relaxed to many whose
faith is unsound. I do not believe that all " unbelief is distinctly
and hopelessly condemned." In any case, I believe, that with
regard to individuals, the ground of rejection will lie, not in the
outward fact of unbelief, whether in the Gospel as a whole, or
in truths which form an integral part of the Gospel, but in the
heart and in some perversity of will, of which God alone is the
Judge. But, then, since the hke exceptions are made in all legislation,
Divine and human, since, even when there is no doubt as to the
fact and the guilt, even human justice recognizes extenuating '
circumstances, and "recommends to mercy" those whom the
strict sentence of the law condemns to death, since our Lord's
1 Bp. Moberly, App. p. 36. See above, Sermon, p. 37 sqq. .

Appendix. 73
words, "He that beheveth not shall be condemned," are the words
of our Judge, and must abide in their everlasting truth, yet we
doubt not, that He will, perhaps, to a multitude which no man
can number, own as His redeemed, those who knew Him not as
their Redeemer, why is it to be a ground of exception to the
warning words of the Athanasian Creed, which are simply an
application of them, that they lay down a general law in
absolute words, leaving all individual cases to be decided by our
Judge's Omniscience and Almighty Love ?
I much wish that Bp. Moberly had set himself, with that
clearness which was once his characteristic, to look in the face
our Lord's words, " He that believeth not shall be condemned,"
and to consider what explanation they must (in common with
so many other general declarations of Holy Scripture) receive
in regard to individuals, if we are not to understand, that our
Lord meant to declare that every individual would perish, to
whom the Gospel has been or shall be preached, and he has not,
or shall not receive it. If he does not think this, he will have no
difficulty in adapting that explanation to the Athanasian Creed.
He says : —
" If the damnatory clauses [I regret to see Bishop Moberly adopting the
coarse term of their opponents] are to be understood in what many people
regard as their understood grammatical and literal sense, that is, as pro
nouncing the eternal condemnation of all those who under any circumstances
do not accept and believe the entire frame of Divine doctrine declared in this
Creed, I, for one, do not believe them."
Notwithstanding some assertions which look the contrary
way. I think that Bp. Moberly would be startled, if any one
were to adapt his sentence to our Lord's words : —
" If the sentence, pronounced by our Lord, ' He that believeth not shall
be condemned,' is to be understood in what many people regard as its under
stood grammatical and literal sense, that is, as pronouncing the eternal
condemnation of all those who, under any circumstances, do not accept the
Gospel message preached unto them, I  "
I do not believe that such is the literal meaning either of
our Lord's words in this or other like places, or of the Athanasian

74 Appendix.
Greed, which is framed upon them. I believe that they both
mean exactly the same ; that in both a general principle is
enunciated, that " faith in God, as He Is and as He has declared
Himself, Three Divine Persons, but One God, and in our Lord
Jesus Christ, One God with the Father, and Man, of our sub
stance, Who died for our sins," is necessary to salvation in all who
can have it ; but that the application of this principle lies with
Him, Whose attributes are " mercy and judgment," but with
Whom, wherever it is possible, " mercy triumpheth over judgment."
In the first quarter of this century we used to hear of the
"perishing heathen" as an argument for missions. I can
hardly conceive any thing which should make missionary labour
so oppressive, as the thought that one was aggravating the con
dition of those who, through one's own imperfection in preaching
the Gospel, should fail to receive it. And, in fact, there is
probably no preaching of the Gospel now, which does not involve
the doctrines of the Athanasian Creed, seeing that the distinctive
part of it is the clear exposition of the belief in God as He Is;
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and in our Lord Jesus Christ,
Very God, and for us and our salvation, become Very Man.
From the way in which the attack upon the Athanasian
Creed has been carried on, I do not think that the subject of
an " explanatory note " has teally been entertained. The
assailants of the Creed have, of course, dismissed it, wishing to
get rid of the Creed altogether ; the maintainers of the Creed
have been shy of it, fearing that it would be interpreted as an
acknowledgment, that the Creed stood in need of such an
explanation, and so that its recommendation would be turned
into an argument against the Creed. The way in which the
note suggested by the Oxford Divinity Professors, as one to
which we saw no objection, was misinterpreted, certainly coun
tenanced those fears. The Professors drew up that formula,
on my representation, that, having been requested to furnish
" such a note as I could acquiesce in," I had engaged to do it,

Appendix. 75
after conference with them. They consented, some of them
rather reluctantly. It was argued in Convocation, that by
sending this explanatory note, we ourselves acknowledged the
need of one, and,- consequently, the obscurity of the Creed.
" These Professors," it was argued, " acknowledge the obscurity
of these clauses, in that they send an explanation of them. If
so, they virtually acknowledge their unfitness for use." As
though every Creed, nay many prayers, or our Catechism,
or Holy Scripture, do not require to be explained to the
uninstructed. Two chief modes of explanation have been adopted hitherto;
the one, that of the Ritual Commissioners declaring what class
of persons are not included under its — or rather our Lord's —
sentence against those who " beheve not ;" the other declaring
what class of persons alone are included under it. The Oxford
Professors adopted the negative form. For myself, I should
have preferred to combine both, that " the clauses apply
to those only, who, out of a perverse will reject the faith
contained in that Creed, not to those who, from involuntary
ignorance or invincible prejudice, do not receive it."
The explanation, " involuntary ignorance and invincible
prejudice," is but a popular substitution for the known theo
logical term, " invincible ignorance." Bishop Moberly argues
against it, partly from a sense which he affixes to the word
" invincible," viz. that " which we cannot conquer V The theolo
gical meaning is, " which the individual himself cannot conquer."
Its chief domain is in hereditary error, which a person has
imbibed as truth, from the teaching of his parents, his educators,
his ministers of irreligion or error, whom he believes to be
ministers of religion and of truth.
Bishop Moberly thinks it almost inconceivable that " there
should be prejudices conquerable which cannot be conquered8."
' " Does not this exception of unconquerable prejudice go the length of
excepting every body whose prejudice we cannot conquer ?" — App. p. 27.
3 " If there be any man— heathen, Jew, heretic, apostate — who holds fa«t

76 Appendix.
I can hardly imagine any one conversant with the prejudices of
those brought up in hereditary error, who cannot conceive it.
If not, the blame and guilt as to all error, must belong either
to those who have the truth or those who have it not. Either
we, through our own fault or guilt, do not teach the truth so as
to conquer their prejudices, or they, through their own fault or
guilt, do not use those means (whatever they be), by which,
through God's grace, they should be conquered. I do not
believe the alternative to be necessary. I believe that there is
very much prejudice, which is inculpable. The very adoption
of the term " invincible ignorance " implies that this is the
opinion of the greatest part of the Christian world. Who can
imagine that the prejudice of all the large Nestorian or Jacobite
communities is vincible, i.e. that they all are faulty, if they do
not abandon the hereditary prejudices of 1400 years ?
Bishop Moberly excepts equally to the expression of " involun
tary ignorance." I should myself have preferred " inculpable
ignorance," i.e. ignorance which did not arise in the individual's
own fault, or which he might not, had he willed, have removed.
But the term " involuntary ignorance " comes to the same.
Sin and guilt lie in the will. A person may surely not be at
pains to know the truth, from contempt of it, or indifference to
it, or from being absorbed in things of this world, or because
acknowledgment of the truth would involve consequences, from
which he shrinks. He might know it and does not. Bishop
Moberly says truly : —
" I believe that no human analysis of ignorance can define with any
accuracy the limits within and without which God, in His omniscience, will
determine the fact of innocence or guilt in ignorance." — App. p. 29.
Truly. Nor have we attempted it. The Searcher of hearts
alone can tell, in whom prejudice is invincible or ignorance
his prejudice against the Catholic faith, and refuses to allow it to be
conquered in argument, does he not escape under this unlimited amnesty ?
Who is there, or who can there be, who does not escape under it. Except such
(if it be conceivable that there are such) as entertain prejudices ' conquer
able,' but not to be conquered ?" — App. pp. 27, 28.

Appendix. 7 7
involuntary. Or, if we use the Theological term, " invincible
ignorance," He alone knows in what cases the ignorance might
be overcome. Or if (as being more popular) we use the term
" inculpable ignorance," He is the Judge, what ignorance is
culpable, what inculpable. Or if we said, " those only would be
condemned who through perversity of will reject the truth unto
the end," we condemn no one, but affirm only what character
of mind alone He would reject.
A formula might perhaps commend itself, which should draw
attention to the fact, that the Church never ventures to anti
cipate the final judgment of God, but leaves all to the All-
merciful Judge, Who alone knoweth the secrets of all hearts,
and hath compassion on the works of His Hands, whom He hath
redeemed with His Precious Blood, if only they do not, even in
their last hour, reject Him. Since, then, it has been a principle
with the Church, not to condemn individuals, it ought not to be
thought by any, that in this Creed she has departed from her
universal rule. Perhaps such a formula might fall in with one
mentioned by Bp. Moberly, as, on the whole, that with which
he is least dissatisfied, and which he even thinks " would, as a
temporary expedient, be useful," although only " as preparing
the way for4" what he believes to be " the only real remedy,"
the extirpation of the clauses by a " Pan-Anglican Synod5."
The note might perhaps run somehow thus6 : —
" When it is variously declared in the Athanasian Creed, that belief in
the truths contained therein is necessary to salvation, such declarations are
to be understood in like manner as the sayings of our Lord Jesus Christ
4 App. p. 52.
6 I know not whether Bishop Moberly contemplates that if the Anglican
Bishops were to force upon their Communion such a vital change, against
the protests of many, doubtless, of their own order, and against a continually
increasing voice of her Priests, for such an act a majority of such a Synod
would suffice, if such could be obtained. It would be not a little inconsis
tent, after all the strictures on the Vatican Council for proceeding by a
majority. 6 The formula suggested to Bp. Moberly is that " the damnatory clauses are
no otherwise to be understood than as the general sentences of God's wrath
are generally set forth to us in Holy Scripture."

78 Appendix.
concerning belief or unbelief in Himself, namely, as proclaiming the rule
of God's dealings with those to whom salvation is offered. No sentence of
the Creed may be rightly applied by men to any one human soul ; since
the Church of herself never affirms the certain perdition of any man, but
leaves all such judgment to the Searcher of hearts, Who discerneth un
erringly between sinful rejection of any truth revealed by Himself, and
blindness which, for whatever cause, is not sinful, and who will at the Great
Day pronounce accordingly."
Bishop Moberly expresses with energy his adherence to the
whole faith set forth in the Athanasian Creed. He says r ;
" I accept and embrace with all my heart that Exposition of Faith in
all its affirmative statements of doctrine. In its clear, strong, incisive
words ; in its distinct definitions ; in its repetitions (as some consider them,
but which I regard either as statements in necessary detail, which have
been first made in a general form) ; in every word of the affirmative doctrinal
declarations respecting the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation of our Lord
and Saviour Jesus Christ, I regard it as a document of inestimable value,
and one which ought to hold its place in the public worship of Almighty
God." But, so believing himself, he seems to lay down two, as it
seems to me, inconsistent grounds, why it should not be de
clared that the belief therein declared is essential to salvation : —
1. That it is a Creed, and that Creeds belong to human
agency and so to human fallibility. His whole argument turns
on the contrast of what he calls, " two spheres," the one, " the
Gospel facts," " published according to our Lord's commands 8;"
the other comprises, according to him, the whole office of the
Church consequent upon the reception of those facts by a
living faith. The " second sphere " is that of the Church in
which he specifies the Creeds °.
" Here it is plain that we pass at once into another sphere. Now we
have to do with men ; with their agency, their administration, and, of con
sequence, with their judgment. We enter, so. to speak, into the domain of the
visible Church. They whose hearts have been opened to give ear to the
good Tidings and believe in Christ, have now to pass under the teaching ot
the Church, and to be made disciples into the Holy Name " [of the Trinity,
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, into which they were, by Christ's
command, baptized].? Appendix, pp. 19, 20. 8 Sermon, pp. 5 — 10.
9 Sermon, p. 12.

Appendix. 79
" Then come in Creeds, the due and orderly development of the original
baptismal formula, enlarged in after ages to meet and overthrow the
perverse inventions of heresy.''
The ground why Creeds should not be guarded by declara
tion that they are necessary to salvation, he lays down thus ;
" In the Lord's words, regarding the first sphere [viz. the Gospel-facts],
though they are perfectly general, there is no limitation. It is undoubtedly
true that 6 airiar^aas KaraKpiOiio-eTai [He that believeth not shall he con
demned]. But when a limitation is suggested to the words of the Creed,
' Which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled without doubt
he shall perish everlastingly ;' the necessity of the limitation arises, not from
the general nature of general statements, but from the fact that the
fallibility of man enters into and is mixed with the authority of the
doctrinal clauses, to which these solemn sanctions are appended1."
In other words, they are not " certain truth," for " the fallibi
lity of man enters into them and is mixed with their authority."
This seems to me to cut at the root of all Creeds and of all
definite faith. I cannot imagine how one could recite to
Almighty God what one did not know to be certain truth. A
doubt as to its truth would canker our faith, and make our
tongue falter. The doubts which Bishop Moberly suggests
would penetrate the Nicene Creed equally with the Athanasian,
the Apostles' equally with the Nicene. Creeds are to be some
how mixed with human fallibility. Where does it he ? Not
in any one statement, but throughout, because it is human.
From the beginning to the end, from the " I believe in God,
the Father Almighty " down to " the life everlasting," all is to
be uncertain. I see not how the Church is " the pillar and
ground of the truth a," if even its Creeds are not to be exempt
from liability to error. Bishop Moberly would, if I followed
him, land me in an utter maze of scepticism. I pray that he
may not lead thither any who follow out his thoughts.
2. This whole principle (that of the' whole Sermon and Ap-
p3ndix applies equally to all Creeds. Elsewhere Bishop
Moberly makes a distinction between the Nicene and the
Athanasian. He asks,
1 Page 41. 2 1 Tim. iii. 15.

80 Appendix.
" What degree or sort of assent is requisite, in order to give any decrees
or determinations of the Church that quasi-inf allibility, that assurance of
being right and true, that confident certainty of proceeding from the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit, which carries with it full authority on the
consciences of dutiful Churchmen ? We have always been taught that
when a grave matter has been debated and decided in (Ecumenical Council
with prayer for the help of the Holy Spirit, and when, retrospectively, the
general voice of the Church, clerical and lay, has accepted and sanctioned
such determinations, then the consent is so complete, as to be really binding
upon the consciences of dutiful Church people 3."
But again the question arises, what is involved in being
" binding upon the consciences of dutiful people ?" This would
be true of any decree of the universal Church. The Council of
Nice made a decree about the time of keeping Easter ; the
whole Church obeyed and all disputings ceased. When the
question of appeals to Rome was brought, in S. Augustine's
time, before a Council of all Africa, " the whole Council said,
' All things which have been enacted in the Council of Nice
are accepted by us all.' " A legate echoed, " What has been
enacted in the Nicene Council may not in any way be violated
by any4." The decrees even of a particular Church are bind
ing on the consciences of its members, to obey them. The
question is not as to our consciences, but as to the " certain •
truth " of that which is set forth to us as " the faith." The
Council of Nice itself marked the distinction, as is impressed by
S. Athanasius who was present at it.
" They wrote concerning the Easter, ' It seemeth good as follows,' for it
did seem good that there should be a general compliance ; but about the
faith they wrote not, ' It seemeth good,' but, ' Thus believes the Catholic
Church ;' and thereupon they confessed how the faith lay, in order to shew
that their own statements were not novel, but Apostolical ; and what they
wrote down was no discovery of theirs, but is the same as was taught by the
Apostles6." The faith in the Nicene Creed is (the Fathers of Nice claim),
that which had descended from the Apostles to them, that
3 Appendix, pp. 42, 43.
4 Cod. Eccl. Afr. vii. p. 159, Ed. Bruns.
» Cone. Arim. Seleuc. n. 7 ; Treatises against Arianism, p. 80, Oxf. Tr.

Appendix. 8 1
which the Apostles preached. If it is the same, " cadit qusestio."
The Nicene Fathers, gathered from the whole world, declared
that it was the same ; and, — following the example of S. Paul,
who, full of love and of the Holy Ghost ,as he was, said, " If
any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema
Maranatha6,' and, " though we, or an Angel from heaven, preach
any other Gospel unto you than that which we have preached
unto you, let him be accursed : as we said before, so now I
say again, If any man preach any other Gospel unto you,
than that which we have preached unto you, let him be ac
cursed ',"— annexed anathemas to it.
Did then Arius or the Council of Nice, or both, teach another
Gospel ? Bishop Moberly declares those " Gospel facts," which
he has put in his human words, to be the original Gospel. To
these, he says, " our Lord's words apply without limitation."
Then to his compendium it might be added, " This he who
believeth not shall be condemned." If the Council of Nice
taught and confessed the self-same Gospel which the Apostles
preached, then the same solemn sanction applies to both. If
not, it would itself have fallen under the Apostle's Anathema.
Bishop Moberly seems to me to have confused words with
things. He could not and does not doubt that when S. Peter
said in his preaching, "the God of our fathers has glorified His
Son Jesus 8," " God, having raised up His Son Jesus," and when
S. Paul " preached Christ in the synagogues, that He is the
Son of God"," they meant to assert His Divine Nature, that He
is " His own Son \" " God of God, Very God of Very God2."
Bishop Moberly himself sets down " the Incarnation of our
Lord Jesus Christ " as one of those primal " Gospel facts :" he
must include in them the fact of the existence of the All-Holy
Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, One God.
But these are the very truths, so dwelt upon in the Athanasian
8 1 Cor. xvi. 22. 1 Gal. i. 8, 9.
8 Acts iii. 13, 26. 9 Ibid. ix. 20.
' Rom. viii. 3, 32. s Nicene Creed.

8 2 Appendix. i
Creed. No statement of it could be denied, either as to the
Holy Trinity, or the Incarnation, which would leave the Being
of God or the Person of our Lord the same. It clears those
doctrines most lustrously to our minds ; it explains to us what
might be difficulties in our Lord's own words ; it adds nothing
which does not lie in the Nicene Creed.
What Bishop Moberly pleads against it, as issuing from no
Council 8, would hold equally against the Apostles' Creed. Of
it, equally, "we' do not know by whom it was drawn, or when
or where." For although its substantial identity every where
makes it probable that it came from the Apostles themselves,
we have only the probability of the case and tradition in sup
port of this belief. The Apostles' and the Athanasian Creeds
have alike been received into the public service of the Western
Church : the Athanasian Creed has received the distinct ap
proval of the Eastern Church ; and so has the authority of
the whole Church, which every where, although separately, has
borne and bears witness to the truth 4-
Bishop Moberly proposes and anticipates that a Synod of
the Bishops of the English Communion should and would
remove the " warning clauses," including, of course, the clauses
" He therefore that would be saved, let him thus think of the
Trinity," and " Furthermore it is necessary to everlasting
salvation, that he also believe rightly the Incarnation of our
Lord Jesus Christ." For these, although in varying terms,
express exactly the same as those on which the opponents of the
Creed most dwell. For to say that " it is necessary to ever
lasting salvation to believe rightly " is, of course, identical with
* Appendix, p. 43.
4 The Rev'. G. Williams tells me : — 1. That in a kind of Appendix to the
Horologium, in which the Athanasian Creed is printed, it is stated to be
" consonant with the doctrine of the Orthodox Church." 2.' In the SwoiJiis
'Itpa, being an abbreviation of " the Hours," it is described (with the rest of
the contents on the title-page) as " useful to each Christian." 3. Macarius,
a Russian Divine of repute, places the Athanasian Creed among " the ex
positions of the faith, which, though not examined and expressly approved
by the Councils, are yet received by the whole Catholic Church."

Appendix. 83
raying that, " unless he believe it, he cannot be saved." To
say that food is necessary to support our bodily hfe, is all one
with saying, unless a man take food he will die. But, apart
from the question what right a particular Church has to alter a
Creed sanctioned by the Universal Church, the English Church
would, by removing these clauses, assert in a most emphatic
way, and teach its people, that it did net believe that a right
faith in the Holy Trinity or the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus
Christ is necessary to salvation °. For, if she believes them to
be necessary, she would not remove from the Creed the declara
tion that they are so. But, if these were not necessary, what
else could be ? For one who disbeheves in the Holy Trinity
believes in a different God. He who does not " beheve
rightly the Incarnation " does (as the instances of Nestorius,
Eutyches, and the rest have shown) not believe in the Incarna
tion at all. If any beheve not the Incarnation, neither can he
believe rightly what Bishop Moberly selects as necessary to be
» An eminent layman has said that " the Church of England would, not
withstanding the removal of the Creed, retain the same belief in the Holy
Trinity so long as it should retain the opening prayers of the Litany.'' But
how long would this be ? Why should it retain them, if it should no longer
think them " necessary to salvation" ? It would be hard to believe that the
doctrine was revealed at all ; for why should God reveal such a mystery as
to Himself, if it were unnecessary for us to believe it ?
The change would express a disbelief, which would leave those who should
acquiesce in it, no standing ground for asserting any other truth to be
essential to Christianity, or to our salvation as Christians. Bishop Moberly
has already suggested an alteration in the Nicene Creed which would change
our belief as to the Being of God. The Council of Florence rightly stated
that the two modes of expression, " the Procession of the Holy Ghost from
the Father and the Son," and "the Procession of the Holy Ghost from the
Father through the Son," mean the same. Both East and West hold the
same faith, although, since the Satanic acuteness of Photius, the Greeks have
leamt to think a mode of expression familiar to their forefathers neretical.
Were the Church of England to reject the " Filioque," I have no doubt that it
would become heretical in this also. For it has no tradition, like that of the
Greeks, to uphold its faith, and the effacing of this expression of our belief
would alter our belief itself. It would come to believe in God as existing in
a different way from that in which He does exist, i. e. it would believe in a
different God.

84 Appendix.
beheved, " the Atoning Death upon the Cross ;" if he believe
not rightly the doctrine of the Trinity, neither can he believe
" the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Church," since he
would not believe that there is any Holy Ghost. The Church
of England would become a mere aggregate of individuals, who
believed, every one, what seemed good in his own eyes, a sand
hill with no internal coherence. More than this, it would
come under our Lord's heavy words upon those, who, " in an
adulterous and sinful generation," should be " ashamed of Him
and His words :" it would, by denying His words, have denied
Himself ; and, disowning Him, would be disowned by Him.

GILBERT AND BIVINGTON, EEINTEBS, ST. JOHN'S SQTTABE, LONDON.