From A Letter Addressed to the Duke of Norfolk on Occasion of Mr. Gladstone's Recent Expostulation
by Venerable John Henry Newman, C.O.
"Our Divine Master might have communicated to us heavenly truths without telling us that they came from Him, as it is commonly thought He has done in the case of heathen nations; but He willed the Gospel to be a revelation acknowledged and authenticated, to be public, fixed, and permanent; and accordingly, as Catholics hold, He framed a Society of men to be its home, its instrument, and its guarantee. The rulers of that Association are the legal trustees, so to say, of the sacred truths which He spoke to the Apostles by word of mouth. As He was leaving them, He gave them their great commission, and bade them 'teach' their converts all over the earth, 'to observe all things whatever He had commanded them;' and then He added, 'Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.'
Here, first, He told them to 'teach' His revealed Truth; next, 'to the consummation of all things;' thirdly, for their encouragement, He said that He would be with them 'all days,' all along, on every emergency or occasion, until that consummation. They had a duty put upon them of teaching their Master's words, a duty which they could not fulfil in the perfection which fidelity required, without His help; therefore came His promise to be with them in their performance of it. Nor did that promise of supernatural help end with the Apostles personally, for He adds, 'to the consummation of the world,' implying that the Apostles would have successors, and engaging that He would be with those successors as He had been with them.
The same safeguard of the Revelation?viz. an authoritative, permanent tradition of teaching, is insisted on by an informant of equal authority with St. Matthew, but altogether independent of him, I mean St. Paul. He calls the Church 'the pillar and ground of the Truth;' and he bids his convert Timothy, when he had become a ruler in that Church, to 'take heed unto his doctrine,' to 'keep the deposit' of the faith, and to 'commit' the things which he had heard from himself 'to faithful men who should be fit to teach others.'
This is how Catholics understand the Scripture record, nor does it appear how it can otherwise be understood; but, when we have got as far as this, and look back, we find that we have by implication made profession of a further doctrine. For, if the Church, initiated in the Apostles and continued in their successors, has been set up for the direct object of protecting, preserving, and declaring the Revelation, and that, by means of the Guardianship and Providence of its Divine Author, we are led on to perceive that, in asserting this, we are in other words asserting, that, so far as the message entrusted to it is concerned, the Church is infallible; for what is meant by infallibility in teaching but that the teacher in his teaching is secured from error? and how can fallible man be thus secured except by a supernatural infallible guidance? And what can have been the object of the words, 'I am with you all along to the end,' but to give thereby an answer by anticipation to the spontaneous, silent alarm of the feeble company of fishermen and labourers, to whom they were addressed, on their finding themselves laden with superhuman duties and responsibilities? "
by Venerable John Henry Newman, C.O.
"Our Divine Master might have communicated to us heavenly truths without telling us that they came from Him, as it is commonly thought He has done in the case of heathen nations; but He willed the Gospel to be a revelation acknowledged and authenticated, to be public, fixed, and permanent; and accordingly, as Catholics hold, He framed a Society of men to be its home, its instrument, and its guarantee. The rulers of that Association are the legal trustees, so to say, of the sacred truths which He spoke to the Apostles by word of mouth. As He was leaving them, He gave them their great commission, and bade them 'teach' their converts all over the earth, 'to observe all things whatever He had commanded them;' and then He added, 'Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.'
Here, first, He told them to 'teach' His revealed Truth; next, 'to the consummation of all things;' thirdly, for their encouragement, He said that He would be with them 'all days,' all along, on every emergency or occasion, until that consummation. They had a duty put upon them of teaching their Master's words, a duty which they could not fulfil in the perfection which fidelity required, without His help; therefore came His promise to be with them in their performance of it. Nor did that promise of supernatural help end with the Apostles personally, for He adds, 'to the consummation of the world,' implying that the Apostles would have successors, and engaging that He would be with those successors as He had been with them.
The same safeguard of the Revelation?viz. an authoritative, permanent tradition of teaching, is insisted on by an informant of equal authority with St. Matthew, but altogether independent of him, I mean St. Paul. He calls the Church 'the pillar and ground of the Truth;' and he bids his convert Timothy, when he had become a ruler in that Church, to 'take heed unto his doctrine,' to 'keep the deposit' of the faith, and to 'commit' the things which he had heard from himself 'to faithful men who should be fit to teach others.'
This is how Catholics understand the Scripture record, nor does it appear how it can otherwise be understood; but, when we have got as far as this, and look back, we find that we have by implication made profession of a further doctrine. For, if the Church, initiated in the Apostles and continued in their successors, has been set up for the direct object of protecting, preserving, and declaring the Revelation, and that, by means of the Guardianship and Providence of its Divine Author, we are led on to perceive that, in asserting this, we are in other words asserting, that, so far as the message entrusted to it is concerned, the Church is infallible; for what is meant by infallibility in teaching but that the teacher in his teaching is secured from error? and how can fallible man be thus secured except by a supernatural infallible guidance? And what can have been the object of the words, 'I am with you all along to the end,' but to give thereby an answer by anticipation to the spontaneous, silent alarm of the feeble company of fishermen and labourers, to whom they were addressed, on their finding themselves laden with superhuman duties and responsibilities? "
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home