great fight of faith in this matter is therefore to take heed that, not the Old Adam carnally escaping from the waters of Baptism, but the New Man risen with Christ, be that human subjectiveness which reverentially realizes and developes the things of Christ. And the fight of faith, the agonistic contending for the Faith once delivered to the saints, is the same with the individual member as with the whole body of Christ, all initiated by the same Baptism. Had this sacred symbol guided Prof. Möhler's symbolical researches, when thus adjusting the union of divine things with human functions in the Church of Christ, how different would have been his philosophy of "human agency!" Then might he have set forth a political lesson from his chosen type and illustration more worthy of a lover of wisdom; he might have pourtrayed the office of true patriotism, trained in all self-denial, guiding national and formal acts according to the primæval truths of the constitution, the objective rule of national faith, and defending this faith from the taint and corruption of a self-willed popular humanity: he might have shown how nations flourish or decay according as such patriotism contends earnestly for the national faith with or without success: and from his type thus impartially traced he might have risen to the solemner lesson, how the Church is trained to know Christ otherwise than after the flesh, and how she is developed as the Spouse of Christ, or as the great whore, accordingly as she remains faithful to the marriage vow unchangeable in the heavens, or commits adultery with every human passion and speculative opinion of the old man subtilly transformed into a creature of light. SECTION IV.-Evils of holding this Trentism instead of the Truth. THE Scriptures are closed to the holders of this Trentism as far as any comfort and hope may be expected from their perusal; for the servant of Trent must only read them with a preliminary conviction that they contain the same witness to the additional Articles of Pope Pius's Creed as to the Faith once delivered to the saints. Equally comfortless is the Trentist's impartial inquiry into Catholic Tradition as defined by Vincentius Lirinensis; and equally comfortless is his study of the Fathers in search of that unanimous consent which is at once found by the Catholic inquirer for all the objective substance of salvation. We cannot wonder that obedience to this Trentism shows itself in corruptions of the text of the Fathers and the wretched abstractions of text from context, which are used again and again by Romish controversialists since the decrees of Trent. Mr. Tyler's gentle exposure of these humiliating practices in his recent work on the Invocation of Saints, &c., and Dean Turton's Controversy with Dr. Wiseman, will show how this Trentism still works. If we take, e. g. the subject of the Papal Supremacy, after reading Dr. Wiseman's Lectures and quotations from the Fathers, and afterwards read Dr. Isaac Barrow's Treatise on the Pope's Supremacy, we shall see a practical illustration of slavery to and freedom from this corrupt Trentism. We cannot wonder that the Idiota of Rome take refuge from all such painful controversies in Rome's infallibility, and practically make that their elixir of Scripture, Tradition, and Patristic interpretation, and a sedative for all their misgivings as to the end. But who shall estimate the scandal and the divisions caused by this Trentism? Who shall estimate its baneful effects in preventing that true formal development of the Catholic Church, which is to be found, to use Möhler's own expression," in the formal acts of the whole body?" Trent has made this hopeless, and the Catholic who realizes this development in his spiritual life must patiently await a higher dispensation, ushered in by judgment, which alone will satisfy his longing to behold the Church of Christ visibly developed and grown up to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. Furthermore, this Trentism peculiarly outrages those faculties of the human mind and soul which, redeemed and sanctified by Christ, have each its own enjoyment provided in His Church. To our judgment, enlightened by faith, the Gospel is preached in the well-defined simplicity of the mystery of godliness. The facts of redemption bring with them their objective infallibility; this infallibility the redeemed judgment of man, enabled by the Holy Spirit to have a right judgment in all things, yearns after, and finding it is satisfied.* But when this gracious provision is adulterated by the dogmas of Trent the faculty of judgment is confused, and is called upon to die, as it were, a second death; and faith is no longer treated as the guide, but as the antagonist of reason, and the judgment either sinks down into a passive Optimism, or resents the outrage altogether by feeding on the dry husks of a conceited Neology. To the imagination also is the Gospel preached, and this exquisite faculty, redeemed and sanctified and expanded by faith, loves to image in its own details of blessedness all the intimations of hidden things, lying here and there in Holy Writ. On intimations such as mode of union between of the intermediate state, the "The wise, who soar, but never roam, Over these gracious intimations, however, of things not seen as yet, Popery throws the chains of her sensuous *Coloss. i. 9. N. B. πуVWσLY εν . . . συνέσει πνευματική. dogmatism; and where all should be grace, and liberty, and love, the imagination finds dogmas, controversy, and anathemas; and therefore it is that the spiritually-minded and imaginative children of Rome have only dared to think aloud far away in the waste of an indefinite mysticism, whither no messenger of the Inquisition would care to follow them. |