The Catholic Church and History

THE CALVERT SERIES
HILAIRE BELLOC, General Editor
HE LIBRARY
DEPARTMEM
gOLLEGE
St. Vincent College, Beatty, Pa,
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY

THE CALVERT SERIES
HILAIRE BELLO; General Editor
Bence : THE CATHOLIC CH17RCEI AND HISTORY

Chesterton: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND CONVERSION
McNabb: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND PHILOSOPHY
Ward: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE APPEAL TO REASON
Windle: TEE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND ITS REACTIONS
WITH SCIENCE
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
AND HISTORY
BY
HILAIRE BELLOC
D
Si!IleaISCIROE9BY
COLLEGE
LISRARY
NEW YORK
In E MACMILLAN COMPANY
1926
AU Rights Reserved
2/7 Obstat
ARTHUR J. SCANLAN, S. T. D.
Censor Librorum.
Imprimatur
PATRICK CARDINAL HAYES
Archbishop, New York.
New York, September 16, 1926.
Copyright, 1920,
BS THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped.
Published November, 19213.
Printed in the United States of Americo by

get
PREFACE
The object of the author has oeen to state and
summarise in a brief, succinct form the arguments
drawn from History in opposition to the claim of
the Catholic Church: that is, to the claim put for-
ward by that Church to spea‘. with Divine and
Infallible Authority. The author insists upon the
point that he is not attempting a positive apologetic
drawn from History in favour of this claim, but a
rebutting of the evidence drawn from History op-
posed to this claim. He is engaged in examining
the value of the arguments drawn from History to
prove that the Catholic Church has varied or erred
in her teaching or has made it depend upon immoral
methods, and in showing that they have no force.
The little book is divided into two parts, the
first dealing with the three moral arguments:
(1) that the Church has made pronouncements
which History can prove to be false: (2) that the
Church, being proved by History to be not only
material which she knew to be false: (3) that the
Church, being proved by history to be not only
5
6 PREFACE
organised but increasingly organised from the be-

ginning of its existence, is thereby shown to be
different from the simple thing which a divine insti-
tution of the sort should be.
Secondly, the intellectual argument, to wit, that
the Church can be proved by History to be man-
made, not God-made. This the author divides into
two sections: (1) the Protestant argument that
there was some original good message told by Jesus
Christ, which the Church has gradually corrupted
and from the origin of which she has deviated:
(2) the general agnostic argument that the Church
can be proved historically to be but one of many
religions, to have grown up like any other religion,
with the same illusions and similar rites and mys-
teries, and is therefore man-made—which last form
of attack the author regards as to-day by far the
most serious.
EDITOR'S PREFACE
There needs but a brief introduction from the
same pen as that which composed the essay which
follows it.
It must be to this effect.
The general subject "The Catholic Church and
History" might be treated from a hundred differ-
ent positions. Perhaps the most important in the
eyes of the cultured man of our day is the ques-
tion whether the Catholic Church is, or is not,
proved by the general story of European history
for the last two thousand years to have been a
beneficent influence. That question, however, I
cannot touch upon because the question whether
the Church be beneficent or no is, to a Catholic,
subsidiary to the point whether its claim to be
the very truth is valid or no. If this claim is justi-
fied, then certainly the Church must be beneficent.
If it be proved beneficent, that will indeed be some
support of its claim; but a weak one, because we
cannot even judge whether it be beneficent or no
until we have decided what we think better and
what worse—and this issue cannot be decided until
we are certain of our philosophy, that is, of our
religion.
7
8 EDITOR'S PREFACE
It is another and more important point to dis-

cuss whether the Church in her long history has,
or has not, shown exceptional signs of holiness and
of supernatural power, which are an evidence of her
claim. There are also, as I have said, very many
other points of discussion which the general title
suggests.
I have confined myself to one, and one only, to
wit, the rebutting of a certain argument drawn from
History against the Church. I have done so for
the reason that, in my eyes at least, much the most
formidable assault delivered against the Catholic
Church to-day is the assault delivered from the
historical argument. There remains (as I have said
in the Essay that follows) much of the old Prot-
estant argument, to wit, that an original excellent
establishment or message of divine origin was
corrupted in the course of the centuries and that
the Roman Communion still defends that corrup-
tion, so that its claim to authority fails. This I
have attempted to meet. But of far more weight
in my judgment, at the present moment, is the gen-
eral argument that, regarding History as a whole
and adding to it what little we can guess, and what
very little we positively know, about man before
EDITOR'S PREFACE 9
he began to establish records, the Faith is but an

illusion, parallel to many another such illusion to
which men have been subject by the process of pro-
jecting their own imaginations upon the void of
the universe.
This I am convinced is the chief attack which
we of the Faith have to meet in modern times. The
modern white world, the world of the European
races and their oversea expansion, is rapidly be-
coming divided into two fairly definite camps:
those who accept the full mission of the Catholic
Church and those who are convinced, by the study
of geology and recorded History, that the Catholic
Church is but one more example of man's power of
self-delusion.
Two questions may be asked of me by those
who should read the analysis which makes up my
booklet. First, why have I confined myself to
rebutting, that is, to a negative position, instead of
advancing positive evidence from History in favor
of the Catholic claim (evidence drawn from holi-
ness, continuity, unity, etc.) ? Secondly, why have
I given but a portion, and not the largest portion,
of my space to what I have called the most im-
portant part of the attack, to wit, the attack from
10 EDITOR'S PREFACE
general pre-History and History, the purely Scep-

tical attack which I deal with at the end of my
Essay? My answer to these two questions is as
follows:
First, that, in my judgment, the action of the
Catholic Church is here a defensive action. The
opponent takes it for granted that History and pre-
History disprove the Catholic claim. He must be
met as one attacking.
Secondly, that though the general Sceptical at-
tack is by far the more important, yet it needs less
space in writing for the meeting of it than does
the discussion of the old Protestant attitude. The
reason is that the issue between the Faith and mere
scepticism is narrower and sharper, and at the same
time more general. If you are debating whether
the Church declined or was corrupted you must
go into more historical detail. You must in some
degree, even in so short an essay as this, be concrete.
But on the other and larger issue you have a very
simple and direct "yes" or "no"; which is, briefly,
the answer to that old, eternal question "whether
religion be from God or from man"; and upon the
answer to that question depends the future of our
civilisation.—The Editor.
TI IE, CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY
1. By the term "The Church" I mean the Cath-

olic Church: and by the Catholic Church I mean
that visible society real, one, and clearly present
before the world to-day, which is in communion
with the Apostolic See of Rome, and accepts not
only the supremacy of that see but also the Infalli-
bility of its occupant when, as shepherd and teacher
of all Christians, and speaking in that capacity, he
defines a matter in faith or morals.
2. The Church claims Divine Authority. She
says:
"I alone know fully and teach those truths essen-
tial to the life and final happiness of the soul. I
alone am that Society wherein the human spirit
reposes in its native place; for I alone stand in the
centre whence all is seen in proportion and whence
the chaotic perspective of things falls into right
order. Mankind cannot feed upon itself—for that
is death at last. I alone provide external sustenance
from that which made mankind. The soil of my
13
14 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY
country alone can fully nourish mankind. Here,

in me, alone is reality. For I alone am not man-
made but am of direct divine foundation and am
by my divine Founder perpetually maintained."
3. Against this claim many forms of rejection
are found, each with its type of argument: as, that
the claim conflicts with the ascertained results of
Physical Science: that it advances a particular affir-
mation not based on the only proofs admissible by
reason: that the objector discovers in the Church
not the marks of holiness which should accompany
such a claim, but rather of evil, etc.
Among the chief objections is the objection from
History. It is affirmed that the records of the past,
the better they are known and the more closely
they are examined, make the more certainly for the
rejection of the Church's claim to Divine Authority,
to unique inspiration. These records (it is affirmed)
show the Church to be of merely human origin.
They yield manifold evidence that illusion, myth
and even craft have built up her structure. Her
rites are of the kind imagined by men in all ages
and places wherever men have abandoned them-
selves to emotional images divorced from reason.
Her doctrines are spun out of nothingness by men
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 15
engaged upon mere systems invented to explain

irrational statements. Her objects of worship are
but projections of the worshipper's mind and have
no real existence.
History, it is said, can prove all this. We can
trace illusion growing from step to step: the
mythical and legendary gradually accepted for fact;
the doubtful, vague, uncertain, tentative dream
hardening into fixed and absurd dogma. Supposed
contemporary evidence, enlightened History with
modern apparatus, proved to be subsequent inter-
polations. The writings traditionally ascribed to
witnesses turn out—under the examination of His-
tory—to be of a very different and later date.
Beyond all this and clinching the argument is the
discovery through History that men have always
thus created for themselves wholly fanciful beings
whom they have worshipped always in much the
same fashions. There has been a long process of
self-deception from which humanity in its advance
is gradually freeing itself, and in this process the
Catholic Church is but the last phase.
It is this objection, the argument from History,
that I propose to refute. Certain other of the main
objections—the objection from Reason, the objec-
tion from Philosophy, the objection from Physical

Science—are dealt with in other works in this series.
I am dealing with the historical objection alone. I
propose to show, not that History may convince
any man of the Church's claim, but that the sup-
posed argument from History against that claim
has failed. I propose to enquire upon the validity
of the objection from History.
II
Premises must precede such an enquiry. I lay
them down as follows:
(1) The refutation of any argument against the
Faith is not a demonstration of the truth of the
Faith. It is the removal only of an obstacle to the
Faith. For the Faith is not arrived at by demon-
stration, but by demonstration it is shown to be at
least tenable. The Faith is not a conclusion which
all can reach by the formal action of reason, but a
revelation to be defended by reason. The Faith is
not a theory, but a thing. It is rational, but not
deductively arrived at. iThere is no process whereby
all mankind can be convinced of it as of an abstract
proposition. But there is a process whereby all
mankind can be convinced that each particular
proposition against it has failed.
This principle in what is called "Apologetics"

(that is, writings in defence of Catholic truth) is
so generally neglected that it is of the first import-
ance to make it quite clear at the opening of any
discussion upon revealed religion.
A man who can see colours will never be able to
prove colour to a colour-blind man. He can show
that the colour-blind man's arguments—e.g., that
colours do not exist because if they did they would
affect surface—are false. If he proceeds to estab-
lish the presence of colours positively, he must do
so by analogy, by convergent evidence, by the mani-
fest action of others, by the proved nature of other
senses than that of sight. He can only prove (in
the strict deductive sense of the word "prove")
that the sense of colour is rational, acceptable with-
out violence to the human mind: but that it is
present he must establish by other methods.
Nearly all our modern debates in this matter are
confused by the fact that one of the parties miscon-
ceives the nature of these debates. The opponent
of Catholicism thinks that its apologist is, in argu-
ing, trying to prove Catholic truth as one proves
a case for a positive verdict. He is not. He is
rebutting the supposed value of opposing evidence;
he is pleading for a negative verdict; for acquittal

of the charge "irrational." When he comes to es-
tablishing the Faith positively, he does not do so by
following one line of deductive reason, but by a
mass of converging considerations.
History cannot be said to prove the Faith, save
in the very extended use of the word "prove" to
mean a general process of increasing conviction
from the examination of what is revealed of the
Church's action on the world, of men's attitude
towards it, of the moral and intellectual activities
of acceptors and rejectors compared. But it can be
proved that an increasing knowledge of History
does not shake the Church's claim to Divine
Authority: while, on the contrary, a lesser knowl-
edge is almost invariably more hostile to that
authority than a greater.
(2) I have used the term "reason," and this
leads me to my second premise: The human reason
is absolute in its own sphere.
That elementary truth is often denied to-day
(though the minds which deny it can only use
reason to arrive at this very conclusion!) , but it is
fundamental and I must postulate it as a necessary
prelude to any discussion. For to argue with men
who deny the basis of all argument is futile; it is

like pleading in a court where the judge is a corpse
and the jury a set of waxworks.
A man says, "The river Ohio flows eastwards."
I show by the compass, the map, and the sun, or in
any other rational way you like that it flows west-
ward. If he then answer me, "Oh! that is formal
logic—I have no use for it! Westward and east-
ward are but apparent contradictories. They can
be resolved into a higher unity. And, after all,
what is 'flowing'? And here is a bend of the river
which does flow eastward for a mile or two. And
a statement may well be true in a higher sense
than the geographical one. And anyhow, the
modern mind is no longer bound by the mediaeval
fetters of dialectic"—if he replies with this sort of
rigmarole, I must leave him to it. I am writing
not for modernists—that is, not for people who
think that a proposition can be both true and
untrue at the same time—but for men of sane tra-
dition who admit logic as a court of final appeal in
things of the mind. For we Catholics regard reason
as supreme in its own sphere and will admit nothing
contrary to reason.
(3) Lastly, I must premise that we are discuss-
ing things as they are: the real Catholic Church;

and are excluding from the discussion what is not
germane to it. We are discussing the claim of the
Catholic Church to authority, the claims of its
accredited organs to express divine truth—not what
some opponent may in ignorance regard as an
accredited organ of the Catholic Church, when it
is nothing of the kind, nor a supposed doctrine of
the Church which the Church has never taught.
Conversely, I do not admit as rebutting evidence
such phrases as "all the best authorities" or "all the
latest authorities"—they are worthless as evidence.
I examine the grounds on which the affirmations
are made, not the mere affirmation unsupported by
anything but fashion. (Thus, if an opponent ad-
vance, "Marcus, a priest, said the earth was flat: it
is proved round; therefore the Catholic Church was
wrong," it is replied that Marcus, a priest, is not
the Catholic Church. Or if it be said, "The Catho-
lic Church teaches that mankind is but six thousand
years old," it is answered, "Many heretical sects
have taught this but the Catholic Church has never
taught it." Or if it be said, "The Catholic Church
affirms the witness of the fourth Gospel but all rea-
soning men admit that it is spurious," it is replied,
"All reasoning men do not admit that it is spuri-

ous: that is but the affirmation of a fashionable
school.")
III
We must begin by establishing the main sections
into which is divided the argument from History
against the claims of the Catholic Church.
But before setting out these sections in their order
I must reject one as having no relation to the dis-
cussion, though often confused with it: I mean the
so-called historical argument from material pros-
perity.
It is advanced that the claim of the Catholic
Church to Divine Authority is negatived by a
proved historical process whereby societies rejecting
the Church's claim are blessed with material pros-
perity, while societies accepting that claim become
poor.
Such an argument no more applies to societies in
their relation to the Church's authority than it does
to individuals in relation to the authority of their
own conscience or of their own reason. My con-
viction that a course of action is morally right, or
that a given statement is intellectually true, is not
to be tested by its effect upon my income. In point
of fact, the argument is as worthless in its pre-

sumptions as in its reasoning. The historical affir-
mation is historically false. It is not true that
societies have risen in wealth through the rejection
of the Catholic Faith, or fallen in wealth through
the retention of it. The two phenomena are not
correlated in History at all, and there is as much to
be set upon the one side of the account in this brief
two hundred years over which the rises and falls
extend as on the other.
But even were the statement true, the application
of it would be clearly beside the mark: even had
every Catholic society fallen into penury and every
anti-Catholic risen to affluence, it would be utterly
without bearing upon the truth or falsehood of the
Catholic claim.
This being said, what are the respectable and
historical arguments against the Faith? What are
those arguments drawn from History of which the
intelligent man must take serious notice? They
would seem to fall into two categories:
The first argument I will call the minor argu-
ment, because it appeals only to the moral sense—
not that the moral sense is less than the intellectual,
but that in weighing questions of material evidence
(which is the matter of History) a moral test takes

the second place. Thus, in a court of justice evi-
dence to character, though of weight, counts less in
establishing a man's claim than material evidence.
Next I find, and much more cogent, a major argu-
ment, which is directly concerned with the intellec-
tual facilities of man.
(I) The minor, or moral argument, as I have
called it, is directed against the character of the
Church, and attempts to show from History that
her character is not consonant with her claims. It
has many forms: accusations of cruelty, of unsocial
neglect in material things, etc., but the main head-
ings are three:
(a) The Church has been historically confident
upon and has affirmed as truths a number of points
since proved to be erroneous: a Divine Authority
would never go wrong upon any point.
(b) The Church has relied on falsehoods and
propagated them after she had known them to be
falsehoods, and has not abandoned them until she
was compelled to abandon them by the overwhelm-
ing weight of evidence. No Divine Authority
would act in this fashion.
(c) The Church is highly organised and has
apparently always shown organisation: such organ-

isation has developed more and more from the
beginning, or at any rate from a very early stage
indeed. The Church is a body whose doctrines,
institutions and structure have perpetually' pro-
ceeded from the simpler to the more complex and
from the less to the more defined. Nothing pos-
sessing divine inspiration would be organised, for
organisation is mechanical and is of death: inspira-
tion, which is of life, remains free, at large, untram-
melled by rule.
(II) What I have called the major, intellectual
argument, which is much the more serious in all
our debate, stands thus:
The Church is man-made, as can be seen by the
appearance over and over again in History of a doc-
trine or a practice unknown to an earlier epoch,
and more largely, by a comparison between all
religions: for the Church, which seemed a unique
phenomenon to the lesser historical knowledge of
our fathers, is now discovered to be but one of
many similar phenomena, one of many religions,
with rites and doctrines not indeed identical (they
differ widely) , but all having parts in common and
all presumably of human institution. Therefore
the Church must be included in the character of all

religions: it is but one of many and man-made like
the rest.
But this major, intellectual argument falls into
two very distinct branches, which I will call the
Protestant and the purely Sceptical.
(a) The Protestant appeal to History takes the
form of saying: "The Christian revelation is indeed
divine, but at some period (earlier or later, accord-
ing to the views of the disputant) it was corrupted
by man-made accretions and illusions. History is
therefore opposed to the Catholic Church: for His-
tory bears witness to the fact that the Catholic
Church as we know it is essentially man-made. But
there does underlie it some divine foundation, some
moral revelation not man-made." (The limits of
this acceptable minimum each individual disputant
fixes for himself.)
(b) The Sceptical appeal to History—much the
most formidable to-day, and always intellectually
the most respectable—speaks in much bolder tones,
thus: "The whole of the Catholic Faith from be-
ginning to end is man-made. It is a mass of illu-
sions: of projections of the human mind thrown
by the human imagination upon the void; of decep-
tions, some of them conscious in some degree, many

more but half-conscious; by far the most uncon-
scious, implanted in the mind by early training.
What the Catholic Church affirms is false from
beginning to end, and History shows that the
affirmations of the Catholic Faith have been thus
man-made step by step from the very first origins
we can discover. The idea of a God is man-made;
so is the sacramental idea, the idea of Incarnation—
the whole affair.
Such, as it seems to me, are the historical argu-
ments against the claim of the Catholic Church to
Divine Authority. Those arguments, tabulated in
the order of their importance, that is, of the power
they wield over a rational human mind fully open
to evidence and to approaches of reason, I will here
set down in graphic form:
I propose therefore to deal with them in their
order, beginning with the least and going on to the
greatest.
IV
(I) THE MINOR OR MORAL ARGUMENT
(a) That the Church has been historically
wrong upon a number of facts: a Divine Authority
would not go wrong in this fashion.
•
We begin by defining what we mean by the

words "the Church," or that body of pronounce-
ment by the Church which we call "the Faith."
Manifestly, a corporate authority is not respon-
sible for pronouncements on which it has allowed
divergence: manifestly, again, such an authority is
not responsible for pronouncements on which it has
allowed change without protest. Manifestly, it is
not responsible for pronouncements made not by
itself through its admitted organs of universal
affirmation, but by certain of its body acting as
individuals or even as parts.
I use the word "manifestly." This may seem
too strong a term in the ears of those who have
heard precisely these false arguments repeated so
often that the statement of their falsity sounds
novel and strange.
But if we examine the propositions closely, we
shall see that this word "manifestly" exactly and
inevitably applies in the three cases.
A particular body makes the awful claim to
Divine Authority and Infallibility. That claim
may be false, and even ridiculous: but "manifestly"
it could not at the same time make the claim and
make an absolutely contradictory claim. For the
word "body" substitute the word "man"; let us

suppose a particular man to come forward and say,
"I have Divine Authority to teach. On matters
essential to ultimate human happiness I can give
replies which are infallibly true." If such a man
were asked, "What do you think the weather will
be to-morrow?" or "What was the date of the
Battle of Hastings?" and he were to answer, "The
weather may be this or that," or "I cannot tell you
when the Battle of Hastings was fought, but I seem
to remember that it was on such and such a date,"
he is not, when making such replies, acting within
the framework of his tremendous claim. If you
say, "A man making such a claim ought never to
speak at all upon any subject save as an infallible
authority," you are pre-supposing non-human con-
ditions. There is no sort of reason why such a man
should not admit his doubts or his ignorance in
things not pertinent to his authority. There is not
even any reason why he should not say with regard
to a particular proposition, "You ask my definition
in this matter: so far I have not defined it; but I
warn you that when I do define it I shall claim my
reply to be infallible." If he so answer, then the
hypotheses he may be examining in the interval
may be numerous and even contradictory one to

the other without their divergence affecting his
claim.
Tested by this very simple (and I think, con-
clusive) parallel, the historical argument drawn
from historical error attributable to the Church
fails. If any man can give a particular instance in
which a specific affirmation has been made by those
organs of affirmation which the Church solemnly
defines as hers, and can say what error, historically
proved, has since attached to such an awrmation,
then he shall be met. But no man has brought for-
ward such a case.
What such affirmation is to be found? The
history is a long one; it extends over nearly two
thousand years. It is not difficult at all, rather it
is singularly easy and definite to say in any period,
"Here was the Church, these were its accredited
organs of expression, and this was a solemn affirma-
tion of the Church, not of any individual or of any
part." For instance, you can read the acts of the
first Council of Ephesus; it was cxcumenical; it
acted overtly under Papal authority. Can you give
a point therein defined which has been proved since
to be historically erroneous? or in the Council of
Trent? or of the Fourth Lateran? or of the Vati-

can? or of Nicma? In which of them have you an
affirmation which History has disproved? There is
none. The more you contemplate that extraordi-
nary historical phenomenon the more you will be
astonished by it. But I do not advance it as a proof
of the Church's divine claim. I am here only con-
cerned with the negative argument. There has not
been in point of fact any official affirmation pro-
ceeding from the accredited organs of the Catholic
Church—not one—from the beginning to the
present day, which has received historical disproof.
Here it may be objected that such affirmations,
solemnly pronounced as the final decision of the
Church, concern matters which are not of their
nature susceptible of historical disproof; they con-
cern such matters as the immortality of the soul,
the personality of the Godhead, its triune quality,
the Incarnation, etc. In other words, since the
Church has not touched on historical matters but
only on metaphysical, she has preserved herself
from attack upon those lines.
In point of fact, the argument is not strictly con-
clusive, for there are exceptional points—for in-
stance, the Resurrection—in which the Church
might very well have been challenged by clear,

overwhelming, multiple, historical proof—and it
has not been so challenged. But take the contention
for what it is (and in the main it is true) that the
Church, not having dealt with History but with
transcendental truth, has thus escaped historical
error. It at least disposes of the historical argument
against the Faith in that particular. We must under
this particular head—a minor one I admit—accept
the fact that the Faith has not proposed through its
authoritative organs in any of its definitions of
dogma something which History has disproved.
But what of divergence, and what of change?
As to divergence, the answer to me seems simple
and brief. Where divergence is admitted, and so
long as it is admitted, infallible pronouncement is
neither claimed nor can be at work. The divergence
is openly between the judgments or affirmations of
individuals or of sections. If the Church, having
definitely pronounced by the voice of her head and
of any of the great councils with which he has been
in communion and which have acted with his
authority—the Council of Nicxa, for instance—
something which in a later age the same authori-
tative organs had to deny in the face of new his-
torical evidence, then there would be a fundamental

divergence and an historical argument against the
claim to Divine Authority. I repeat, as I shall con-
tinue to repeat throughout this brief essay, the
essential point that the argument is negative. I am
not affirming here, and for the moment, that such
consistency is proof of the divinity of the claim—
though it is certainly very remarkable; I am only
pointing out that the consistency is present through-
out History. You may say, if you will, that it is
present because even a human corporation claiming
infallibility would take great care never to contra-
dict itself. Granted (though I think it would have
its work cut out) I But at least it must be admitted
that the consistency is there, and that, therefore, an
historical argument drawn from inconsistency does
not lie.
Now what of the more formidable argument
drawn from change? It is not to be doubted as an
historical truth that in one era the general mood of
Christians with regard to a particular point lay in
one direction, in another era, in another. It is
probable, for instance, that the early Church ex-
pected the Second Advent in a more or less brief
period. It is certain that many holy men, perhaps
repeating the mood of their time, thought, in an

earlier age, of the state of the dead as one of sleep
awaiting the Resurrection, with no definition of the
Particular Judgment, and so forth. In one period
one devotion prevails: in another, another. One
great doctrine is emphasised in one era; another in a
later era.
Here, then, is change.
To which I answer that the change is never—has
never been in any particular instance which any
historian can find and point out—a change of doc-
trine. There has never been a definition, never a
pronouncement, by any organ of the Church, say-
ing "This or that is so," of which such changes of
mood have later compelled a retraction.
Had we, for instance, in the early documents of
the Church, a solemn, definite Apostolic statement
that Our Lord would come back to earth in glory
before the destruction of Jerusalem: had we any
trace or echo of a protest raised by some who, dis-
appointed in the delay of their hopes, laid their
disappointment to the Apostles: had we any echo
of voices in the Apostolic or sub-Apostolic period
saying, "Since He has not come again we are de-
ceived by the Church"—then the particular case I
have mentioned (and it is only one out of a great

number) would be arguable. But we have none
such.
Had we a solemn pronouncement registered, as
of the Faith, that the dead lay unliving and out of
communion with us or with life as a whole from
the moment of their passing to the Resurrection of
the Flesh, then the statement that this was a con-
tradiction with later defined doctrine on the Par-
ticular Judgment and with our prayers for the dead,
would be arguable. But there has been no such
pronouncement.
In other words, change, in the sense of change of
vague mood, has no more historical weight in this
department than the admitted divergence between
individuals or sections upon matters undefined.
Before authority has spoken, authority has not
committed itself. When authority has spoken, con-
tradiction must be established between itself and
itself: or there is no historical argument against the
claim of authority. You may say that there
is no such argument only because authority is
careful not to contradict itself. Well and good: but
it remains true that the contradiction has not taken
place, and that therefore the historical argument
based upon it fails. When or if it shall apparently

take place, there will be time to meet such an argu-
ment in its apparent strength. But so far—and the
period, remember, is one far longer than that
attached to any other defined human institution—
the argument does not apply.
Now, though it is not logically connected with
the strict process of reason I am here developing,
may I not ask the reader rhetorically once more
whether that is not in his eyes a very singular
phenomenon?
Here is an organised corporation, a strict society,
which has admittedly existed continuously for this
prodigious length of time, through extreme vicissi-
tudes of knowledge and of ignorance, through the
most violent revolutions of human mood: a society
which sprang up in the brilliant light of Pagan
antiquity and of the half-divine Greek power of
thought, and in the open majesty of the Empire,
which persisted through the darkest periods of our
material ignorance, which lived on through phases
of gross popular credulity and equally gross alter-
nate phases of popular scepticism; which has been
bathed in the enthusiasm of the twelfth century,
has gloried in the moral splendours of the thir-
teenth, has struggled through the filth of our

modern time; has suffered the splendid temptations
of the Renaissance; has next found itself struggling
with the base madnesses of Puritan assaults.
Through such endless variety of circumstance it
has remained consistent throughout that long, long
term of centuries; centuries filled with every con-
ceivable reaction of the human mind, with gusts of
enthusiasm blowing from every point, each in exact
contradiction to some other earlier one. Through
all these the institution which is historically the
oldest and the most permanent of political human
things cannot be discovered affected to change in
any of its final pronouncements by these human
changes. It cannot be discovered in a contradiction.
That such a phenomenom—wholly unique in
the story of mankind—should be of human origin
is logically possible. It involves no contradiction
in terms. An unbroken tradition of rigid caution,
coupled with an unceasing consultation of record,
might conceivably produce such consistency by
human agency alone and as the result of human
calculation. But the least we can say is that such
an effect would be different from anything we know
of men and of their actions.
(b) That the Church has maintained error after

knowing it to be error: that it has lied.
The second charge under this head is that the
Church has not only made, in good faith, errors
which she has had to retract, but has actually relied
on falsehood when she knew it to be falsehood and
particularly in the case of errors originally com-
mitted in good faith, but continued with the
deliberate intention to deceive. No Divine Author-
ity would do that.
Now the value of such assertions—and they are
frequently made—may be tested a fortiori, by
taking the two principal classical examples upon
which our opponents especially rely. It would be
impossible to go over the whole category of these
assertions, for they touch innumerable points. But
since they all have in common one similar mis-
understanding, it will suffice to examine two with
perhaps a brief allusion to another.
These two chief examples I take to be the Dona-
tion of Constantine and the eternal Galileo case.
Though in each case the wrongful assertion
against the Faith is based on the same fundamental
misunderstanding, yet each exemplifies one of the
two separate chief types of that misunderstanding.
The accusation in connection with the Donation of

Constantine exemplifies the supposed deliberate use
of forgery by the Church: the Galileo case exempli-
fies her supposed tenacity in demonstrated error—
an authority claiming infallibility and reluctant to
admit that it has been clearly proved fallible.
Let us see how these two test cases come out of a
close examination.
It is asserted in the case of the Donation of Con-
stantine that this document was a forgery: that on
that forgery was based a particular doctrine, to wit,
the supremacy of the see of Peter: that when it was
proved a falsehood the Church continued to defend
it, and that, since her spokesmen were compelled at
last to abandon it, with it there fell the necessary
prop of the Papal contention.
The Donation of Constantine is a document pur-
porting to be a grant by the Emperor Constantine
to Pope Sylvester, his contemporary, of civil juris-
diction over the town of Rome; of temporal sov-
ereignty over certain adjacent districts in Central
Italy; of sundry ritual dignities in dress and public
office; of the Lateran Palace for a residence in per-
petuity; and with all this the recognition of the
spiritual jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome over

the universal Church.
It first appeared about the time when the French
Monarchy was supporting the Pope against his
enemies and particularly against Byzantium, and
when that monarchy was preparing the way for
being declared the Empire of the West. It contains
episodes which in a critical age would clearly stamp
it as unauthentic. There is a ridiculous story of a
dragon, for instance, which lived in a cave under
the Capitol. The Emperor Constantine is repre-
sented as receiving baptism from the hands of St.
Sylvester before he moved his capital to Byzantium;
whereas we now know that he did not receive
baptism till long after, and then not from the Pope,
but from an Eastern Bishop. It represents the
Emperor as being cured by baptism of leprosy—a
disease which he certainly never had—and as
making the donation out of gratitude.
The whole thing is manifestly mythical and
legendary. But how does that false character affect
the claim of the Church to infallibility in doctrine?
To answer that question we must begin by grant-
ing all those points, both doubtful and actually
false, which our opponents advance as historical
fact; for we shall see that even with the fullest

admission of their imaginary facts, that case has not
a leg to stand upon.
They tell us that the document was a forgery
(that is, a falsehood) produced with deliberate
intent to support a novel claim upon the part of
the Papacy. It is in fact nothing of the sort. It is
a conglomeration of legend, arisen for the most part
in Syria, the growth of which can be traced through
the centuries. The weight of evidence would show
that it was accepted as true, not first in Rome, but
in Northern France—the policy of whose monarch
it exactly suited. It was first quoted, not in Rome,
but in Rheims. It was not brought in to support
the Papal claims even in temporal sovereignty, let
alone in spiritual jurisdiction, till long after even
the temporal claims had been universally admitted
throughout the West, and the spiritual jurisdiction,
of course, for centuries. Though not authentic, it
does contain an important substratum of truth. It
is pretty evident that the Pope obtained increased
jurisdiction in Rome after the transfer of Imperial
authority to the East. It is virtually certain that
the Lateran Palace became his official residence about
the same time, and though we have not sufficient
record of the steps whereby the Papal Government

gradually came to administrate the Roman district
in the place of the Byzantine Government, which
had less and less real power there (especially after
the Iconoclastic quarrel) , yet we do know that such
jurisdiction was exercised long before we find any
mention of the Donation.
But, I repeat, for the purpose of my argument it
is better to grant to our opponents not only what
is doubtful, but what is certainly false in their sup-
posed facts. Granted that the Donation was a
forgery, that it had for its evil purpose the arti-
ficial support of novel temporal powers in the see
of Rome, and even of confirming the ancient and
universally admitted spiritual supremacy: what
then? How would such historical facts, if they
were true (which they are not), militate against
Catholic doctrine? Catholic doctrine in the matter
may be very simply stated. You will find it ex-
pressed everywhere by all competent authorities
over a prodigious lapse of time in words almost
identical; for it is as clear as it is brief. That doc-
trine is as follows:
Our Lord constituted the Apostolic College. Of
that College he gave Peter the Primacy. This
Primacy by divine constitution successively attached

to the sees which Peter founded, first at Jerusalem,
then at Antioch, finally at Rome. Its power lies not
in the fact that Rome was the capital of the ancient
world, but in the fact that St. Peter chose it for his
final see. This Primacy of the see of Rome is
superior to, and more universal than, its patriarchate
of the West.
Now against that doctrine historical argument
must show that Primacy was not recognised until
the Donation, if the Donation be the argument in
force.
There are many other historical arguments, of
course, brought to bear against the original Primacy
of Rome; but I am examining the very strong
example of the Donation as a test case. Take any
one of the innumerable textbooks in which the
fixed and accredited doctrine is laid down, and
examine the chain of evidence, not indeed as to the
divine institution of the Papacy (for that is a mat-
ter of faith, not of History) , but as to the original
Primacy of Rome, as admitted by Christians, which
is a matter of History, not of faith.
The chain reaches down to the very beginnings
of our society. One of our most formidable op-
ponents puts what he calls the "first step in Papal

aggression" as early as St. Clement—that is, within
a lifetime of the Crucifixion. Others may propose
later dates; but no one with a pretence to elementary
historical knowledge would postpone it to the ninth
century, when the Donation of Constantine (in
its present form) appeared. All Church history
is full of Roman Primacy from the moment when
Church history becomes open to detailed examina-
tion. It is implied in the procedure of the earliest
councils; it is openly alluded to in act after act, as
the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries proceed. If
you would call it a corruption, you must put the
origin of that corruption very early; indeed, you
will be compelled to put it within the lifetime of
those who had talked familiarly with the Apostles
and knew their mind and all the tradition of the
very beginnings of the Church. The Donation of
Constantine was no more the foundation of this
Primacy of Rome than the Revolution of 1688 was
the foundation of the House of Lords in England,
or than Lincoln's Presidential pronouncements dur-
ing the Civil War were the foundation of the Presi-
dency of the United States.
The Anglican authority and scholar, Dr. Lightfoot.
But may it not be said that those who spoke for

the Church as historians claimed the Donation to be
authentic long after it had been questioned? Un-
doubtedly they did. And it would have been
astonishing, or rather incredible, if they had not,
for everybody then thought the Donation genuine.
But no doctrine was based on it. In the same way
everybody, Catholic and non-Catholic, accepts the
ecclesiastical history of the Venerable Bede as
genuine, and we use it in support of the connection
between the English Church and Rome. But if it
were proved a forgery to-morrow, the thesis of
union between the English Church and Rome
would remain. But they did not claim it after it
had been definitely proved to be legendary; and the
very fact that they officially admitted their error
and confirmed their admission in final fashion is an
excellent example of the difference between falli-
bility as expressed in doctrinal falsehood and the
misapprehension of historical fact. It is an excel-
lent example of a universal truth present through-
out all the history of the Church, that the Church
brings reason to bear upon every problem, and
regards reason in its own sphere as absolute.
The first criticisms of the Donation are of the
fifteenth century, coming from Peacock, Bishop of

Chichester, and Valla in Italy. They make no pre-
tence to being heretical; they have no connection
with any effort to destroy the unity of the Church;
they are not particularly convincing—especially the
latter.' What exploded the Donation of Constan-
tine as an historical document was a much longer
process of examination and criticism, which does
not reach its final conclusions till the seventeenth
century. During that process you will find many
who, after the breakdown of unity in the sixteenth
century, were frankly enemies of the Church from
without, not historical critics from within, using
the unauthenticity of the Donation as a weapon for
attacking the whole Catholic scheme; but I doubt
if you will find one case of a believer who regarded
the gradual establishment of the truth as in any way
shaking the doctrine of Papal supremacy. Yet you
have plenty of critics within the Catholic Church
examining the problem in full liberty, and per-
mitted to come to a right decision upon it. You
have to-day, and you will have throughout the
centuries to come, an indefinitely large body of men
1 For instance, he says there cannot have been a dragon under
the Capitol because dragons are only found in Africa!
with the fullest historical confidence, great scholars

and experts in this particular point, who are fully
convinced of the legendary character of the Dona-
tion, and yet to whose minds it is inconceivable (as
I confess it is to mine) that anyone should think the
establishment of that historical detail a cause for
doubt in the plain and most ancient doctrine of
Roman supremacy with which it was for some six
centuries out of twenty adventitiously connected.
Now for the Galileo case. It is so continually
quoted, it is so much the accepted type of such
things, that I might be tempted to go into it at
greater length; on the contrary, I shall deal with it
more briefly, because the points at issue are as re-
stricted as they are evident, and the complete mis-
understanding upon which the accusation is based
may be exposed by the most elementary statement
of it.
The accusation runs thus: "Galileo, having dis-
covered by indubitable physical proof the motion
of the earth, was condemned by the Catholic
Church for stating the same, and her condemnation
remained in force until the nineteenth century, when
she was compelled to allow the matter to lapse.'
That assertion, the commonest made in all this
department of historical attack upon the Faith, con-

tains two elementary and decisive historical errors.
First, the error that Galileo was condemned for
teaching a then novel particular doctrine which he
proved true; secondly, the error that Galileo was
condemned by authority of the the Catholic Church
upon a point of doctrine: that is, that the Catholic
Church affirmed in the seventeenth century by her
Infallible Authority as a point in doctrine that the
earth did not move.
In point of fact, Galileo's condemnation did not
turn upon his teaching a demonstrated truth, for it
was not yet demonstrated. It did not turn upon a
novel idea in Astronomy, but upon an hypothesis
which was already hoary before Galileo was born;
and the condemnation was not originated against
the idea as an hypothesis, but against the teaching
of it as an established fact. So much for point one.
Next, as to point two, the condemnation did not
proceed from the Catholic Church. It proceeded
from a particular disciplinary organ of the Catholic
Church, with no authority whatsoever for finally
establishing a point in doctrine. To confuse it with
Catholic definition of doctrine would be like con-
fusing the definition of a New York court of justice
with an amendment to the Constitution. The Pope

himself, as it happened, forbade what would have
been a grave error—though not one binding the
Church—I mean, a full definition of heresy by the
inquisitors upon the matter. But all that is neither
here nor there. There was no definition binding
upon Christians, and has been none, nor ever will
be in such a purely mechanical affair. What there
was was disciplinary action against a man who had
done everything he could to provoke the constituted
authorities of religion by querulous and bitter insult
(he was a difficult character), a man who was un-
able to support his own statements in court (noth-
ing he brought forward at his trial came near to
being conclusive on the motion of the earth, and
much that he brought forward was fantastic) ,1 and
the action came at the end of an upheaval in which,
by exactly this kind of irrational, angry attitude in
graver matters, the unity of Christendom had been
destroyed. No wonder the authorities had grown
touchy. Moreover, as anyone may see who reads
1 For instance, the absurdity about the tides, and the argument
from the phases of Venus.
the trial (and as Huxley saw) , Galileo could not

prove his case. It was still only an hypothesis.
The theory that the earth was not fixed, but
turning on its axis and moving round the sun, had
not only been familiar (as I have said) to educated'
Europe from long before Galileo was born, but had
been taught with clerical approval as an hypothesis
in Catholic universities; it was taught again in such
universities not long after the Galileo trial as evi-
dence accumulated, and became a commonplace of
all teaching in Catholic schools and colleges long
before the expunging of the Galilean treatise from
the Index—always, and necessarily, a lengthy
process.
The whole attack on the Church in connection
with Galileo turns upon these two misunderstand-
ings, of which the first is unessential, but the second
capital: First, that a proved scientific fact was at
issue; secondly, that this proved scientific fact was
denied, because it was novel, and was denied by
that authority which alone throughout the cen-
turies had been held competent to establish points
I "Educated" Europe meant a far larger body in Catholic times
than it does now. Universities were then popular institutions and
their attendance was from every class.
of doctrine, the Papacy and the councils of the

Church over which it spiritually presides. The first
is wrong and the second is wrong. The Copernican
theory was not novel in Galileo's time; it was still
only a theory. His condemnation accuses him of
returning to the oldest conception (Pythagorean).
He was not condemned by the Church, and the in-
stance of his condemnation, such as it was, by the
appointed committee, was his persistence in teach-
ing as a proved fact what was still only hypothesis.
Before leaving this overemphasised historical de-
tail, I would like to make clear to the modern
reader what our modern confused habit of mind
often fails to grasp: the difference between teaching
a thing as demonstrated fact and teaching it as
hypothesis, coupled with the difference between
teaching demonstrated fact and teaching metaphys-
ical or doctrinal conclusions supposedly, but erro-
neously, dependent upon that fact.
For that purpose I will choose a debate familiar
to all our contemporaries: the discussion on the
origins of the human body.
In the last eighty years a very large and increas-
ing body of evidence has been accumulated which
points to the probability of the human body's
having come out of some original sub-human type,

a sort of cousin to (though not descended from) the
greater anthropoids of our own day.
It may be so. There is nothing in such an
hypothesis against any Catholic doctrine. On the
other hand, it is not proved. Still less is it proved
that the process was of an inevitable sort uncon-
nected with divine Creative Will. Least of all is it
proved—and indeed, it cannot be proved, for the
thing is manifestly contradictory to our senses—
that man as we know him is not a fixed type, utterly
different in quality from the beasts.
Now this hypothesis is almost universally stated
to-day as a demonstrated fact—which as yet it
most certainly is not; indeed, the guesses at the
process continue to change year by year, as anyone
can see for himself by looking up the common
manuals of forty, thirty, twenty and ten years ago.
Further, there is quite commonly tacked on to
it a second statement, that the so-called demon-
strated fact disproves a cardinal Catholic doctrine,
to wit, the Fall of Man.
Now then, supposing a professor avowedly sub-
ject to the Catholic discipline, professing in a Cath-
olic society, were to teach (1) that the descent of
the human body was what the last of our many

successive guesses presumes it to be, and were to
teach that as now certain and indubitable fact,
comparable to the fact of the rotundity of the
earth; (2) that this origin of the human body de-
stroyed the Catholic doctrine of Original Sin. That
professor would be condemned exactly as Galileo
was condemned. He would be condemned not
because the Church desired to assert that the human
body was not of such hypothetical origin, but be-
cause he had taught as certain what was uncertain;
and he would be condemned upon the infinitely
more important second point (which plain reason
is sufficient to establish) that even if the hypothesis
were already established by indubitable proof, it
could not affect in any way the dogma of the Fall
of Man: they are on different planes and concerned
with totally different subjects.
The doctrine of the Fall of Man is a trans-
cendental doctrine. It affirms that man in his com-
pleted nature was intended for a supernatural state,
that his free-will rebelled against the will of God
and that on this account his nature is fallen from
a supernatural to a natural condition. To such a
doctrine the discovery—if ever it should be made--
as to how the body came to be is utterly indifferent.

If I say, "Young Smith was right enough till he
took to drinking," it is no answer to tell me that
Young Smith was once a baby who could not take
to any evil, that he gradually grew up, and the
whole process was one of increase and maturing, a
.
`progress," and that therefore Young Smith can't
have taken to drink. That "can't" is nonsensical.
The process of becoming full grown is no bar to a
moral fall.
So much for the second of the moral arguments
drawn from History. Let me turn to the third:
That the Church cannot be divine because it is
highly organised, with defined dogmas, a hierarchy,
a whole machinery of rites and laws, whereas a
divinely inspired thing would remain free and
simple.
, (c) That the Church is organised, therefore not
of divine character.
This last or third point made against the Church
is one which haunts the greater part of modern
minds with singular persistence. It is odd that it
should do so; because, of all historical objections
made to the Church, this is the least reasonable.
But it is characteristic of the day in which we live
that emotion should take the place of reason and

a certain emotional bias towards an indefinite enthu-
siasm (as in music) is a modern disease.
The objection is that the Church is organised,
whereas whatever is of divine authority on earth
must (so it is presumed) be of a vague, inspirational
sort without organisation or framework—loose,
attaching to the heart and imagination rather than
to the intelligence. Such is the premise—and it is
an enormity.
For let it be supposed that there be upon earth
one particular defined Divine Authority—such is
the Church's claim—how would it necessarily act
and be? What would of necessity be its structure?
The reply is no positive argument in favour of
that claim, but it is a conclusive negative argument
in proof of the contention that if such a claim be
true, then organisation and, as time proceeded, more
and more minute and detailed organisation, would
be an absolutely inevitable condition of action by
such an authority.
For consider carefully what the implications of
such an authority are?
Here we are on earth, possessed of certain general
instincts of right and wrong—instincts commonly
proceeding to very warped effects in action. We

are surrounded by an infinity of varying circum-
stances; our lives are brief; our power of inter-
communication between individual minds is limited.
Granted that there be some Corpus—some definable
get-at-able person, place, or thing—from which
absolute conclusions may be accepted; then that
thing must be in the form of a society or otherwise
it could not be continuous: it could not survive
among ephemeral beings; it must have rules, or it
could not bind beings imperfectly communicating;
it must have habits, for it must be a living organism.
Societies cannot live without differentiation of func-
tion and definition thereof; separation of one
activity from another; subordination in command;
laws more and more defined; known symbols; rit-
ual. If anything were designed to act as an institu-
tion with divine authority among men—there might
be no such design nor any such institution—but, I
say, supposing there be such, then whatever was to
act in this fashion must be a society, for it must be
continuous; must be corporate, in order to over-
come the imperfect connection between individual
minds: must tend to more and more complete defi-
nition in its character and being as time proceeds:
for otherwise it would not have a human frame-

work consonant to the human world for which it
would be designed.
Leave men in doubt as to who is and who is not
a member of such a society; let it be uncertain by
what tests membership may be recognised, acquired
or lost, and the whole character and personality of
the divinely appointed Thing disappears: with per-
sonality disappears the faculty of diction, of affir-
mation, for which (by definition) it was conceived.
And, indeed, so you find the Church from its
origins: sacraments at once appearing, communion
and excommunion, doctrine more and more defined
as the generations pass and doubts or controversies
arise, ritual embryonically present at its very outset
and rapidly stabilised; from the beginning you have
it certainly hierarchic, disciplined, bound in a strict
framework; and still more certainly (if that be pos-
sible) it shows limitation or outline, a frontier, a
boundary—whereby any man may test who is
within and who is without the Church.
And if this be true of structure, it is still more
obviously true of doctrine. Granted that there be
such a society with a claim to infallible pronounce-
ment upon the things essential to the satisfaction of
58 :THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY
the human soul, how can it proceed save by exact

definition of its pronouncements?
Begin with the vague and general, though per-
haps intense, conviction that the soul survives death.
Regard it not as a product of affection or of habit.
Accept the mere intuition. What then? Does it
survive as a person or not? The thing is debatable.
If it does not survive as a person, what connection
is there between its survival and good or evil con-
duct in this life? If it does survive as a person, how
can such survival hold of our personality, which,
being human, is manifestly of this changeable and
material world?
If it be said that no answer can be given to these
questions, then we deny the existence of such an
authority as I here presume. I do not say that
these questions and the replies to them are a proof
of the truth of such authority. I say that on the
hypothesis that such an authority is to be found on
earth, then necessarily it must of its very nature
define doctrine upon such matters as these, pro-
nouncement upon which is its whole reason for
being.
As each controversy of importance arises some
new definition will necessarily be demanded of the
authority. Therefore, though doctrine itself does

not grow—for it concerns truths outside time—
definition of doctrine will grow. The time in
which we live has so largely lost the habit of clear
thought that I must here admit a digression in order
to emphasise and put in the sharpest light the differ-
ence between the growth of doctrine and the growth
of definition.
Whenever a new definition is given by the Church
—e.g., the definition of Infallibility in 1870, the
definition of Transubstantiation in 1215—con-
fused thinkers, or men who have not read the pro-
ceedings, will assert that a new doctrine has been
invented. A little attention to what passes at the
time of such definitions should be enough to set
them right. The whole debate turns upon the
proof that the doctrine was present from the begin-
ning and that innovation lies in the denial of it.
The definition is a new thing to meet a new attack
upon an ancient truth. The truth is aboriginal.
Definition no more makes new doctrine than does
a new treatise on geometry make new mathematical
truth. Such matters are expounded and elucidated
in increasing volume; they are not invented. So it
is with the Faith.
60 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY,
From this, turn to another consequence of this

objection to organisation in the Church: the objec-
tion that its machinery and instruments of action
are continually unworthy, base, insufficient, affected
by worldly motives, and that therefore the claim
of the Church to be divine fails.
That the Church being organised and being
human will suffer from defects inherent to all
organisation and to all humanity is equally certain.
There will be bad administrators, wicked men in
holy charges, abuse of powers. But that is no
answer to the claim of the Church. For consider—
what is the alternative?
Supposing there be upon earth a definite body of
some kind—corporation, society, officer, what you
will: a definable existent Thing whereto men may
turn for ultimate and certain pronouncements upon
the chief matters of their concern (that is, the nature
of man and his destiny). If that Thing, whatever
form it were to be given, were not organised, then
must affirmation clash with affirmation and what-
ever were common to all would divide into a mere
vague mood.
Now such a mood does not fulfill the require-
ments of the Thing in question. You may indeed
say (the vast majority of English-speaking people

are saying it to-day) that true religion is of this
vague kind; an instinctive aspiration to unity with
the Divine Will; most would even put it lower still
and say "to unity with nature or the universe."
They therefore feel that all attempts to systematise
this aspiration, to regulate the enthusiasm, to define
particular dates and cases, to set up the machinery
of a society with laws, officials and decision, is a
warping of the only true living and direct religious
impulse: and certainly if that original and vague
religious impulse in man be the only true religion
and if its value be in proportion to its vagueness,
then organisation is a warping and a lessening of it.
But remember that in making this statement you
are denying at the outset the possibility of an
authority and therefore contradicting the very affir-
mation you make of some certain common truth in
religion. For any authority beyond mere indi-
vidual emotion (which changes in each individual
and varies indefinitely among many individuals)
must have a power of definition, must act with a
function, and therefore must be organised in some
degree.
The choice is unavoidable between organisation
in that which can speak with authority and the

rejection of all claim to authority—which is the
rejection of all common or general certitude on
matters not immediately and universally apparent.
In plain words, either you must admit organisation
in your religion or say that no religion is true.
I would like to make this argument quite clear,
because the great majority of our contemporaries,
at least in the English-speaking world, fail to make
acquaintance with it. I do not say organisation
proves the truth of the contention that the Church
in particular is divine. I say that if there be such a
thing as a divine Church on earth, that Church will
be increasingly organised as the ages proceed, will
perpetually define and re-define, will establish strict
tests and will maintain its vitality by excluding
what is not consonant to its nature; it will operate
through differentiation of function as does every
other living thing. It will have a multitudinous
co-ordination of detail in proportion to the exalta-
tion of its status, for only thus can it be alive with
the supremely conscious life of the highest
organisms.
I say again, this is not an argument to the effect
that organisation is a witness to divinity in the
with the practice of necromancy, the calling up of

the dead (a favourite pastime of our day among the
wealthy). The one feels in the strongest fashion
that in this exercise he is upon the confines of posi-
tive evil. He smells the Pit. The other is con-
vinced that it is indeed the blessed dead who visit
him and with whom he is in communion.
Which is right? The infallible authority can-
not abdicate in such a crux without denying its own
claim. There is no reconciliation of such a con-
tradiction: it is Hell or Heaven. It must define and
it does define; and we know on which side its
definition lies. Necromancy—or Spiritualism as its
modern name goes—is of Hell.
In general, then, the moral arguments against
the Church as drawn from History—that is, from
the record of its action—fail from one of two
causes: either they misconceive the nature of the
Church (what it is that speaks with Infallible
Authority; on what it has spoken with Infallible
Authority) , or they are confused as to the implica-
tions of religion, not perceiving that, if you are to
admit any criterion of truth other than that of
common experience, you must admit external
authority; and that, once you admit an external
authority in the final and all important questions,

you admit a Church.
Such considerations do not establish the claim of
the Catholic Church, but they destroy certain par-
ticular objections to that claim, drawn from the
supposed clash between the moral character of the
Church's claim and the historical record of the
Church making such a claim.
From these I turn to what I have called the major
objection of modern times: the intellectual objec-
tion; the objection that History shows the structure
of the Catholic Church to have proceeded from
man.
II. THE MAJOR OR INTELLECTUAL ARGUMENT
The last and much the most important division
of the arguments based upon History against the
Catholic claim is, in general, the argument that the
Church cannot be the divine thing it claims to be
because it is in its essence demonstrably man-made:
it is in its essence, and can be proved by History to
be, of human institution, betraying all those char-
acteristic illusions which man conjures up and im-
poses upon himself in all his efforts to reach out
to the unknowable and unattainable of his desire.
This—by far the most serious historical form of
Church. It is an argument to the effect that if

divinity speaks through any society, then the oracle
of truth will present all the phenomena of organi-
sation; and so far from these phenomena clashing
with the religious instinct, they alone can give that
instinct its full working value.
In other words, you admit or you deny a Church.
If you deny it, there is no certain source of truth
present amid mankind; for the religious emotion
of each man changes perpetually, and the emotions
of each among so many millions differ from those
of his neighbour. But if there be a Church, then
organisation must necessarily be the very test of its
reality, as it is the test of all the higher forms of life
we know.
When, therefore, we Catholics meet, as we do
daily and in a thousand forms, such objections as:
"If this dogma were true, it would be universally
apparent"; "If that doctrine were part of the uni-
versal truth, it would not be arrived at by special
conclaves of particular men fulfilling highly defined
functions and even dressed in a peculiar manner of
their own"; "This elaborate definition of the Real
Presence jars with true devotion to the Eucharist,
which is a thing of the heart and a mystery beyond
analysis," and so forth, in a myriad different forms

of objection, we reply: "If, of mysteries such as the
Eucharist or the continued life of man after death,
or of the more familiar mysteries of personality, of
time, of eternity, we have no definitions, then false-
hood can be present and received as truth. There
is indeed no need to define, so long as all are im-
plicitly agreed; but the moment one says (of the
Eucharist, for instance), 'There is a Presence here
but it is spiritual only; the bread remains,' then
must, of necessity, the claimer to infallible truth
(unless she is to nullify her own claim) lay down
whether that proposition be true or not: whether
the bread remains, or does not remain, after conse-
cration. Otherwise two members of a society ex-
isting to teach true doctrine will, on a fundamental
and essential doctrine, be holding two contrary
views, one of which at least must be false."
It would be easy to point to any number of other
cases of more interest to the average modern man
than the case of the Eucharist, in which he has lost
all communion; for instance, to the mystery of
immortality, and the discipline rather than the doc-
trine of our attitude towards the dead. Two mem-
bers of this society claiming infallibility are faced
attack upon the Faith—falls into two distinct

branches, which I will call for the sake of brevity
(without pretence to the full accuracy of the terms
and certainly with no intention of using them
abusively) the Protestant and the Pagan. I mean
by the Protestant argument that argument against
the Faith drawn from History which maintains that
the Church has suffered fundamental corruption
and has lost some presupposed original character
through the increasing delusions of the human
mind. I call the Pagan or purely Sceptical argument
that which denies, on the testimony of History,
that there ever has been a divine Church at all, or
any clear revelation of divine things to men at any
time or in however simple a form, and proposes
to prove that all the doctrine of the Church is of
man's own making.
These two I will take successively, maintaining
the order I have throughout, to wit, attending to
the least important before approaching the more
important.
I take it that in the times in which we live the
Protestant objection, even in its vaguest form, is the
less formidable. I shall take it first. I shall con-
clude with what is, in my own judgment, far the
most formidable attack at this moment, and likely

to become still more formidable in the near future,
the Pagan or purely Sceptical attack: the argument
from History that all religion is man-made, that
the Catholic Church must be included in the cate-
gory of man-made things, and that therefore the
Catholic Church has no claim to Divine Authority.
(a) The Protestant argument from History.
Throughout the story of the Catholic Church,
i.e. during all the last nineteen hundred years,1
there have continued recurrent protests against this
or that doctrine: recurrent affirmations that some
other doctrine, contrary to the authoritative defi-
nition, is true, and that the authoritative definition
is itself false. From these denials and affirmations
have proceeded what are called, in Catholic ter-
minology, the various heresies.
But towards the end of the Middle Ages these
protests gathered together in a new form, which
was essentially an appeal to History, and to their
general character was applied the term "Protestant."
We need not quarrel over the term or its derivation.
It has been, by universal agreement, applied during
the last four hundred years.
1 Taking the date of Pentecost as A. D. 29.
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 69,
The Protestant challenge to the Catholic Faith is

essentially a challenge based upon History. It pro-
poses to show by historical evidence that whereas
there was some original body of true revelation, this
has been distorted, corrupted and overlaid, and that
the Catholic Church with its perpetual accretions
of doctrine, ritual and office is more and more
divergent from, or even contrary to, the divine
original thus presupposed.
The Protestant argument still exists even when
it is put in its most vague and tenuous modern
form. Even those who say, as do so many to-day
(believing themselves to be pure sceptics) , "I accept
the mission of Jesus Christ as salutary to mankind
and as containing eternal verities, which it is essen-
tial that man for his good should know; but I
reject all supernatural statements in connection with
this mission," are still essentially Protestants.' They
'Thus, a man who says, "While rejecting all dogmas and creed
I revere the vaguer part of the traditional moral teaching of Jesus"
is essentially a Protestant, not a sceptic, or Pagan: for such do not
revere any part of our morals. Protestant also, not Pagan, is the
man who confines himself to "the authentic teaching of Jesus"
freed from all later stories of the marvellous and all the sophistries
of Theology, which "authentic teaching" he picks out of the heap
by his own infallibility. For the true sceptic or Pagan has no more
use for the "authentic" fragments than for all the rest. He is
equally indifferent to the whole.
presuppose some original nucleus, however re-

stricted on content and in time, which they postulate
as good and true.
The most extreme case—and to-day the most
common one—the case of the man who says he
takes the four canonical Gospels, and these alone;
that he rejects Pauline theology as a corruption, a
man-made thing proceeding from the man Paul;
that he rejects in the Gospels themselves every ele-
ment which affirms or implies the miraculous
powers of Jesus Christ, His claim to divinity, His
Resurrection and the rest, is still a Protestant case.
He affirms that the Sermon on the Mount (to which
he is oddly attached) and sundry general propo-
sitions upon humility, charity and other Catholic
virtues, are good: and in saying that they are good
he is saying that they are true. His quarrel is not
with the whole Catholic scheme, but with every-
thing in the Catholic scheme beyond what he has
chosen for himself out of the mass of Catholic
teaching.
Now let us put down at the beginning of the
debate one common element upon which all should
be agreed: there has been development; and in so
Heresy = Alpects—"Picking and choosing."
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY n
far as development involves change, there has been

in that sense, and in that alone, change. What is
more, the development continues, and in so far as
the word "change" may be applied to development,
change continues.'
The definitions of the Council of Trent are im-
mensely more elaborate than the Apostles' Creed;
the Apostles' Creed (probably dating from the
eraliest origins of the Church though it does, and
at the latest, in its essentials, a second-century
Roman form) has more exact definition in it than
the Gospel; the ritual of the Mass is not identical
in every place; it is not identical through time. The
Liturgy at once expanded and crystallised as the
generations proceeded. Even within the brief space
of a few centuries it is possible to point to portions
of the Roman Mass (to take but one form) which
began as voluntary or optional prayers and which
became incorporated in the regular structure of the
Sacrifice. One might even say that certain slight
Thus we say of a man of twenty-five that he "changes" into
the man of forty. We also say of a man gone mad that he has
"changed." But the word "change" has two very different mean-
ings in the two cases. In the one case it is change within the frame-
work, of unity, of one character and personality. In the other it
is the change against that unity, a rupture of it,
additions of quite recent origin may, in the near

future, follow the same course. The bishop, the
priest and the deacon of the original Church formed
a far simpler body than does the vast organisation
of the Hierarchy to-day, and new special worships
of this saint or that, new shrines, and all the rest
continually arise. The argument in no way turns
upon either side (for men of intelligence or in-
formation) on so obvious and elementary a truth
as that such development exists. It is common
ground upon which both must proceed. Where
they differ is upon the point whether or no such
development has introduced a fundamental change
of character into the Catholic Church with the
passage of the centuries.
A parallel will explain what I mean. Two men
observe a tree. One says, "It is an oak, in full vig-
our"; the other says, "No, it was of oaken origin,
but there has been grafted upon it another growth
and the whole is thus not only warped and trans-
formed, but in my eyes diseased. It is not an oak."
The first man, who says, "It is a living oak
consonant in all its parts," does not deny that the
acorn is different from the mature tree: the young
sapling different in form from either the original
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 73,
acorn or the tree as it now appears. He does not

deny that in a hundred years the form of the tree
will seem to have changed still more; that in the
fifty years past it has changed. What he denies is
that there has been any change in that by which an
oak is an oak. It is essentially the thing which it
has always been. That is his contention. Its
growth is normal to its nature, and in so far as
growth involves change, such change is the very
proof of identity.
His opponent denies this. He says it was an
oak once, long ago, but other plants grafted on it
have so changed its nature that it can be called an
oak no longer.
The appeal of the one is not to a supposed dead
mechanical rigidity; it is not an affirmation that he
has before him an acorn rather than an oak; it is
to that principle of one-ness by which any thing is
what it is. The appeal of his opponent is not to
the mere fact of change (at least he must be very
unintelligent if that process destroy in his eyes all
essential unity in the developing thing) ; it is rather
to the proposition that the changes were of a dis-
figuring and (to borrow a foreign word) "denatur-
ing" kind. The one says, "Here is the same original
organism, in full health and strength, growing and

vigorous before our eyes." The other says, "These
changes, which I can substantiate by the consulta-
tion of old pictures and written records of the
thing, are a proof of disease and of corruption."
It is therefore quite beside the mark for the op-
ponents, upon historical grounds, of some particular
institution essential to the Catholic Church—for
instance, the Primacy of Peter—to prove by
elaborate reference to record that the Papal power
under St. Clement was embryonic compared with
the Papal power under Innocent III. It is quite
beside the mark to bring forward, at too much
pains, evidence on, say, the doctrine of the Real
Presence to prove that its definition in the Council
of Trent is far more elaborate, exclusive and exact
than the statement of it in Justin Martyr, fourteen
hundred years earlier. The point is that the one
party to the controversy regards such change—if
you like to call it change—as an inevitable and
salutary phenomenon of life and a very proof of
unity in character and time: the other, as a phe-
nomenon opposed to the true life of the thing and
a proof of its loss of identity with its original prin-
ciple of life.
Now in my view there are two tests which one

may apply to what I have called the Protestant
argument from History: two tests by which one
may discover that it rings false. And these I would
tabulate as follows:
(1) The test of Innovation.
(2) The test of Critical Date.
By the test of Innovation I mean an historical
examination to discover whether orthodox doctrine
—not points doubtful or still controversial within
the Catholic body, but defined truth—as pro-
pounded by the Catholic Church upon any given
matter, at any given moment, had the character of
an innovation, contrasting in essence with the de-
velopment of the past; or whether on the contrary
it was the denial of such doctrine, the counter-
affirmation provoking such definition, which bore
this character of innovation and novelty. If the
first view be the true one, then the Catholic Church,
false or true, has at least been in all its life one per-
sonality consistent with its own essence, and the
successive definitions have all been in the line of
tradition. But if the opposing view be established,
then indeed corruption and error and therefore the
absence of her Infallible Authority have been

proved.
As to what I have called the test of Critical Date,
I mean (what should be surely an obvious truth)
that if the story has been a process of warping and
corruption, there should be some discoverable stage
at which this deflection began, and if the fixing of
this stage be not only doubtful, but disputed in
a hundred forms and set at widely separated epochs,
differing by centuries, then the objection is ill-
founded.
I would not be so pedantic and at the same time
so logically weak as to demand of my opponent the
fixing of a particular instant in which he discovers
error originating. All such things, whether true
developments or corruptions, take place in time;
none springs up apparent in a single moment. All
grow. But I do say that if a plain historical phe-
nomenon of corruption has taken place in this or
that—for example, the doctrine of the Eucharist—
its inception must be observable within at least a
certain range of years, a generation at the most.
Such is the test of Critical Date.
I will now examine the matter by both these
tests: Innovation and Critical Date.
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY 77.
(1) As to the first test, it is historically true—

and once again, a very strange thing—that in every
single case it is the protest against orthodoxy which
has had the character of an innovation, and never
the orthodox affirmation which has appeared as a
novelty.
I will explain in a moment how an attempt
might be made by our opponents to get over even
this difficulty; but at any rate, as far as plain History
is concerned, that remarkable fact which I have just
stated is true.
You may take the whole list, from Cerinthus,
who was a contemporary of the Apostles, down to
Brigham Young and his Mormons, or to the latest
Modernist, and you find in every case without ex-
ception the test working true. The heresiarch (as
we Catholics call him) or the reformer, or prophet,
or whatever other flattering term you may like to
use in contra-distinction to heresiarch, appears as
an innovator to the generation whom he disturbs,
or to which he appeals. His doctrine comes as a
new doctrine, with all the shock and also all the
appeal of novelty. There is not any one case in the
long story of the Church where we can trace a
doctrines, a protest appearing at the origins and

increasing as the doctrine is more and more clearly
defined. Nor is there any one case of a definition
of orthodox doctrine appearing suddenly and with
all the effect of an innovation. No doubt each
reformer makes the claim that he has rediscovered
the old original truth, long overlaid, but my point
is that, when he and his doctrine appear, it is they
—not the things they oppose—which invariably
appear as sharp and, to most men, offensive
novelties.
I have called that phenomenon in the Story of
the Catholic Church remarkable; it is even startling.
I know of no other society to which this aspect of
reform or re-action applies. If you will consider
for a moment the psychology of the affair, judging
it by your personal knowledge of the way in which
your own mind works, and the minds of the men
about you, you will, I think, perceive its unique
character.
After all, what happens in our minds with re-
gard to any form of degradation? For instance,
what happens to-day with regard to a misquotation
in literature or a warping of function in politics?
pr. . ,• •
lenged. The bad habit grows, but it is still

challenged here and there: the challenge is main-
tained. Each time it is challenged the error is
admitted, but unfortunately spreads. Sometimes
there comes at the end of the process a violent
re-action; literary men swarm together (as it were)
and insist upon the misquotation being driven out;
and sometimes they succeed.
Or again, as to the warping of a political insti-
tution. Representative institutions were founded
to be representative. People soon find out that they
are only imperfectly representative: that they tend
to represent the avarice or vanity of the individual
delegates much more than the mandate of those
who sent them to the representative assembly.
What happens? Immediate protest; repeated pro-
test; attempts at reform. Sometimes the reform
makes good, the fear of God is put into the poli-
ticians, and the representative institution is purged
and brought up with a round turn, and compelled
to do its duty.
You may take the whole range of human action
in this respect, and you will invariably find a
process of this kind. It is common sense. Men do
by falsehood or laziness or illusion without sharply

re-acting against that deflection. All History is full
of the corruption of institutions—and of men; but
all History is most emphatically not full—in fact,
in all History you will not find an example—of the
corruption taking place without its being noted and
resisted.
Now here, in the case of Catholic doctrine, you
have the singular fact that the process is the other
Way about. There is no protest till after the doc-
trine has become fixed. Take the case of the doc-
trine of the Incarnation. Whether true or false, it
is certainly present before Cerinthus. The man
who most violently combats Cerinthus' statement
that Our Lord suffered as man and not as God is
one of our Lord's own companions, St. John—a
witness who had known Our Lord on earth, which
Cerinthus never had. That is no proof that the
doctrine is true; but it is proof of the historic fact
that Apostolic society believed in the doctrine and
that the first heresy in the matter was an innovation.
Or take the doctrine of the Eucharist. For cen-
turies the Real Presence was accepted; in general
terms, it is true, but accepted none the less. You
not 4t iirtmietnleadv frrim tho nrrlo MTnet;tlit:^«.
right on for a thousand years. You can argue

against the intention of the early statements based
upon the words of institution. You can say that
those who first alluded to the Eucharist did not
intend the full doctrine of later times. You can
say that the Words of Institution in the Gospel were
only used by Our Founder metaphorically. You
may say that the famous description of the Mass in
Justin Martyr nearly eighteen hundred years ago did
not connote the exact doctrine of Transubstantia-
tion. You may quote (as Cranmer did) passages
from St. Augustine which permit the special pleader
to use them (if he leaves out the context and refuses
to mention other passages) as evidence of a subjec-
tive rather than an objective Presence. But the
plain historical fact remains that there is not one
single protest heard during all the centuries during
which the Christian Church did take the Real Pres-
ence for granted, and built up round that accepted
doctrine the whole mass of the Liturgy in East and
West. It remains true that you can find no resist-
ance against this universal attitude. Though there
is metaphysical discussion, there is not a case of a
" 171,0 /ay:et:nal tinrtrino vitae nnt that nf
Real Presence: such doctrine is a corruption only

just introduced, and I protest against it."
When the protest comes it is after thirty genera-
tions, at the end of the Dark Ages; and it produces
a violent effect of innovation, of novelty.
I submit that no matter what particular defined
doctrine in the Catholic scheme you may select, you
will find without exception this most notable char-
acter attaching to it, that when denial of it was
made within the Christian community—as when
Anus denied the consubstantiality of the Son, or as
when Nestorius denied the divine motherhood of
Our Lady—it had the effect of a stone thrown at a
pane of glass and breaking it: the startling effect of
a shock; of something quite unexpected and exceed-
ingly and unpleasantly new.
I myself who am writing this did, when I was a
young man and very imperfectly instructed, take
for granted the opposite. I thought, for instance,
that the doctrine of the Trinity had very slowly
arisen, that an original ignorance of Our Lord's full
divinity was gradually dispelled by the develop-
ment of the doctrine; that the earlier the evidence
was, the less it would confirm the doctrine; and
defending a cause which had once been vigorous

but was lapsing through the process of time. I
thought that; and I fancy most ordinary educated
men who have not had the leisure or desire to read
the evidence in detail think something of that sort
with regard to the story of almost any one of the
Christian mysteries. For, after all, the process is
exactly what one would expect. One would expect
any original statement in human affairs to be com-
monplace and straightforward, and the supernatural
interpretation of it to come in by a process of accre-
tion and illusion such as creates the innumerable
legends and myths of mankind: first the teacher is
a revered men, then vaguely thought to have some-
thing in him of the divine, then to be some sort of
divine being, and, lastly, a God.
It was when I came to read the evidence and look
closely into the matter for myself that I began to
feel the surprise which I record here and which any
one of my readers will also feel if he will read the
actual evidence instead of guessing at what sounds
most probable. The evidence is clear that the
Trinitarian doctrine, growing in definition, was
never put forward with novel and protested accre-
tions. It was the Arian challenge which was new

and immediately resisted.
It is the same with the mystery of the sacrament.
Let anyone who believes the doctrine of the Real
Presence in the Eucharist to have grown up very
gradually as a sort of legend or myth, an accretion
overlaying some originally straightforward and in
no way mysterious ceremony, read the words in
which the earliest writers who refer to the matter
at all speak of it. Let him not only read the way
in which they speak of it, but the way in which
they acted. When that young boy in the streets of
Pagan Rome allowed himself to be killed rather
than show to the profane What he carried veiled
in his hands, it is evident that he did not think it
common bread. When we find in all the very
earliest evidence of Liturgy insistence upon and
repetition of the mystery, it gives us to think. I
say again, for the twentieth time, as I have said at
so many other points in this debate, all this is not
a proof of the truth of the doctrine, but it is a proof
that the historical process with regard to the doc-
trine is not that of corruption and essential change
which our opponents have presumed it to be. It is
a proof that, true or false, the mystery of the sacra-
ment now held was originally held, and that the

attack upon this doctrine, as upon any other, came
as a novelty.
I have said that even this phenomenon, unpar-
alleled as it is in the tale of human thought, was
capable of explanation by an opponent. But I
think if we examine that explanation we shall find
it to fail.
The explanation is as follows: You are dealing
with a body of fervid believers. As time proceeds
the excesses, the delusions, the vagaries, proceeding
from their very enthusiasm, permeate their body
insensibly, and it is only when the process has gone
a considerable length that, with a shock, some
strong and lucid brain confronts the deluded with
reality. Hence (it is said) the novelty of each
heresy and the startling effect produced by the first
statement of each heretical proposition. This is
certainly true of abuses, as for instance the abuse of
image worship, when it came to such a pitch that
men accepted without question a mass of images,
supposed to have appeared in some miraculous
fashion without human workmanship. And if it
be true of abuses which are recognised to be abuses
by all, why should it not be true of fundamental
doctrines, considering the blind fervour of which

I have spoken and the natural consequences of such
fervour?
My answer to that explanation is that the cases
are not sufficiently numerous to establish a rule. It
is true that you do get some few cases, very few, of
abuses which proceed some way before they are
abolished. But they do not go on long without
being pulled up, nor are they so general and mani-
fold as to militate against our judgment that, almost
in proportion to its importance, the doctrine or
mystery, when it is challenged, is challenged by a
new force.
Moreover, there is this consideration. In the few
cases where there is the analogy of an admitted
abuse somewhat tardily reformed, all in the Church
ultimately accept the reform. But this is not at all
the case with regard to the main orthodox doctrine
—quite the other way.
In every historical case of abuse, whether it be
the erroneous acceptation of a false document (as in
the case of the Donation) or an abuse of excess, as
in the case of the exaggeration of image wovhip,
the traditional forces of this Sacred Society a( nit
the moral or clerical error, and usually they begin
to admit it in increasing numbers from the moment

of the first challenge. But in the case of orthodox
doctrine it is not so. It is just the contrary. It is
the doctrine that stands and the heresy which gradu-
ally dies out.
Of specific heresies which have attempted to
maintain but a part of truth while rejecting the
rest, all without exception have gone through a
process of rapid growth, culmination and decay,
and nearly all have at last wholly faded. That is
not true, of course, of pure scepticism. That we
shall always have with us, for it is native to the
human mind. A complete denial of the whole
Catholic scheme, that is, a complete rejection of all
that is unfamiliar and does not repose upon evi-
dent proof immediately acceptable to everyone; a
denial of all mystery and especially of specific doc-
trinal affirmation, is as natural to man as breathing,
for faith is of grace and is exceptional to Nature.
But the heresies, as distinguished from such general
rationalist denial, never have in them the vitality
which continues to urge orthodox tradition.
That is historical fact; and it is an historical fact
which should give every man who is seriously
examining these things grave food for thought.
Take the example which is most familiar to the

older members of the present generation in English-
speaking countries other than Ireland: I mean, the
attitude towards Holy Writ.
Here heresy began by setting up the literal inter-
pretation of Scripture (and the personal judgment
of the reader upon it) in opposition to the author-
ity of the Catholic Church, The Catholic tradition
in the matter was that (1) Scripture was the Word
of God; but (2) given us not as a record of science,
or even History, so much as a witness to the Church
and particularly to the Incarnation; and (3) was
only to be accepted in the sense which the authority
of the Catholic Church admitted.
As against that ancient Catholic attitude towards
the Bible came, as a novelty, the fierce affirmation of
its absolute and literal authority and of its being
plainly interpretable for himself by every reader.
We are all witnesses to what has happened in
that particular example.
The heresy, after nearly three hundred years of
vigour, has gone to pieces. The Bible outside the
Catholic Church has lost authority. The original
Catholic position remains. Indeed, there is a comic
irony in noting that it is we Catholics to-day who
are thought old-fashioned in maintaining our

respect for the text of Scripture and in being slow
to admit all the modern guess-work in derogation
of it. So much for the test of Innovation.
(2) I turn to the second test, the test of Critical
Date.
If it be true that the Catholic Church is the
warping and corruption of an originally delivered
truth, then that warping and corruption must have
had an origin.
I am walking by night along a road which is
laid out upon the map for miles due east and west;
but after so walking for some time I begin to notice
by the stars that the road is bending. It turns
more and more southward. The map has misled
me. In such a case I can, when daylight returns,
retrace my steps and I shall find the point of flexion.
I may not be able to establish it to a yard, nor even,
if the process be at first very gradual, to a quarter
of a mile; but I shall at least be able to say, "Up to
this point it was dead straight, pointing west.
After this point (say, as much as a mile further on)
it is clearly bending south of west, and I find it
bending more and more southward as I proceed."
If not a point at least a section of flexion can be

established.
Now there is this remarkable historical fact
about the process of the Catholic Church—that its
Protestant opponents, all agreeing in its loss of
direction, cannot agree as to when that loss began.
There is not and apparently cannot be any general
conclusion upon so simple an historical matter as
to even the main historical section—first century,
second, third, fourth, eleventh—in which this point
of flexion lies. For one body of Protestant thought
it is found in what they call "Counter-Reforma-
tion" of the sixteenth century. It was then that
the Catholic Church went wrong, with its exag-
geration of Papal power, of Eucharistic ritual, its
more mechanical organisation of the Sacrament of
Penance, and all the rest of it. In the fifteenth cen-
tury the Church of England, of France, of Castille
were all (rightly) in communion and their common
authority was sound. By 1600 it was lost. For
another set of Protestants the change was the open-
ing of the Middle Ages—what is called the "Hilde-
brandine Movement" of 1050-85. Until then
Christendom was proceeding in consonance with its
tradition. The see of Peter had Primacy indeed,
but had not developed a highly detailed jurisdiction

over a vast number of personal and national affairs.
The discipline of celibacy among the clergy in the
West (so they tell us) had been optional; its uni-
versal enforcement was a corruption. The monastic
institution had been free and sincere; it slowly
became, after that date, enslaved to the Papal power
and to Mammon, and was more and more a scandal
of insincerity. Others would find the point of
departure in the ignorance and loss of material
powers which mark the entry into the Dark Ages.
The fifth and sixth centuries are the wide sections
in which to seek the point of flexion and of decline.
Others are willing to accept as traditional and on
the right line the Christendom of Gregory the Great
and St. Augustine of England; but the ninth cen-
tury is a breaking point and the tenth a final col-
lapse; by the time of Marozia the Church had
clearly lost an original character which it never re-
covered, and that new and degraded thing, the
mediaeval Church, had begun to appear. The
Church was never more the same. For some few
of my own acquaintance the dreadful moment is
1870; the right way was lost with the definition of
the Infallibility of the Pope. For others again it
is the thirteenth century, with its developing organi-

sation for the repression of heresy and its too strict
definition of the sacrament. For a very great body
of men in the immediate past (now a smaller
number) things began to go wrong with the free-
dom of the Church under Constantine. Then did
lay and state corruptions, imitations or influences
of the old Pagan society, begin to thwart the divine
scheme.
The most popular of the latest Protestant the-
ories is that the thing went wrong almost at once
between Pentecost and the predication of St. Paul,
and that St. Paul was the author of the evil trans-
formation into a mystery religion of what had
before been an ethical society upon the suburban
model. As their phrase goes, "Nothing can bridge
the gulf between the Gospels and the Pauline
writings." A lifetime ago the point of flexion was
put later. In the Protestant thesis of the mid-Vic-
torian day the corruption began about the end of
the second century. St. Paul was accepted, but
already there was trouble beginning, as revealed in
the authentic epistles of St. Ignatius; and manifestly
things were becoming Catholic (and therefore cor-
rupt) by the time of the African Martyre, and were
hopeless by the time of the Thirty Tyrants. For

these scholars the Catholic taint is the natural
accompaniment of the decline of civilisation after
the Antonines.
Now I am not saying that because there is dis-
pute upon the moment of flexion in any directive
scheme, because there are debate and diverse opinion
upon the point where an upright original began to
go wrong, that therefore one may conclude it never
did go wrong. But I am free to maintain that such
enormous disparities of opinion, and such a cease-
less shifting of it, would be impossible if a plain
historical process were at work.
When we consider, for instance, the popular
monarchy of the English, that is, the government
of England by a king, aided indeed by other powers,
but having in his own hand the main force of the
executive, there may be some debate as to the mo-
ment in which these powers began to fall off, until
they reach the purely symbolic or nominal situation
in which they are to-day, when the king no longer
governs at all but is the neutral chief of society. I
myself should put it as early as the reign of
Edward VI, and I should say it had become marked
under the elder Cecil at the beginning of Elizabeth's
reign. It is more usual to say that the great

change came under Charles I, and certainly it was
clinched by the civil wars. There are even per-
haps some who maintain that monarchy was still
in the main more powerful than any other political
factor until the Dutch invasion of 1688. But at
any rate it lies within these two lifetimes-1550 to
1690. No one will deny that the process had be-
gun in the latter half of the sixteenth century; no
one will deny that it was thoroughly accomplished
before the end of the seventeenth.
It is so with all other historical phenomena of
the kind. You can put within the limits of a life-
time, and not a very long lifetime, the transforma-
tion and decline of the Roman Empire during the
third century. You can see clearly that feudalism
was a living social system under Henry III of Eng-
land and even under Edward I, but that it was no
longer the spiritual motive of society after the Black
Death. You may take any process you like
throughout History, and you will find this to be
true; not that you can always put your finger upon
a particular year or event, let alone a particular
moment, but that you can say, "Within this com-
paratively narrow limit of time the change takes
place, certainly the institution was living within its

traditions and in the direction determined by its
originals as late as such and such a moment; cer-
tainly after such and such a moment, not long sub-
sequent, it is as clearly failing to keep that original
direction."
But here, in the case of the Catholic Church, her
opponents can say nothing of the kind. If they
could, not only would scholarship be roughly
agreed among our opponents as to the Critical Date,
but we ourselves should at last be agreed, as we are
agreed with regard to attack upon abuses, in the
long run—though never with regard to the attack
on doctrine.
But there is no such agreement, and can be none;
for the simple reason that the Catholic Church has
not thus warped or veered but has remained her-
self. So by this second test I conclude that the
historical objection is false.
It seems to me that an impersonal observer, say
some historical student from the extreme Orient, to
whom the whole Catholic scheme was indifferent
and who cared nothing whether the original insti-
tution of the Catholic Church had failed (because
he had no affection for that institution and no belief
in any of its doctrines nor any respect for Jesus

Christ nor any attachment to the idea even of a per-
sonal God) —it seems to me, I say, that such a
wholly neutral observer would, upon the general
historical evidence, decide that the Catholic Church
was founded with a certain directive nineteen hun-
dred years ago, to be correct, about the year 29, and
had remained throughout the successive centuries
consonant with itself. I think he would say of it
what we cay say with regard to many an ancient
state, "Its personality has survived, its soul is still
the same, its essential unity has not been lost." He
would add the qualification "yet"; he would con-
clude, "The personality yet survives; the continu-
ous life has not yet been lost." We of the Faith of
course affirm—but not upon historical evidence—
that the word yet does not apply; that it shall
remain to the consummation of the ages. But for
the purposes of the particular argument which I am
here examining, that is neither here nor here. I
say that a mere historical examination with no
reference to the truth or falsehood of the Church's
claim will conclude that that claim has been con-
tinuous from the beginning, and that the Thing
to-day is essentially what it was when the strict
organisation, the unique phenomenon, appeared in

Syria under the principate of Tiberius. There is
nothing left contemporary with that still vigorous,
still well-favoured, ancient Thing. It has seen the
disappearance of everything in Europe save itself,
and its spring still copiously flows.
(b) The Sceptical or Pagan objection from
History.
I have said that much the most important form
of historical attack upon the Catholic position, the
most formidable, and to-day the most hardly
pressed, the most lively and the most universal, is
the Pagan or purely Sceptical, the definition of
which I will here repeat.
It is maintained that the claim of the Catholic
Church to Divine Infallible Authority is baseless,
because it is manifestly man-made. The process of
reasoning is as follows:
Man is to be discovered in history perpetually
making gods, erecting religious themes, constructing
cosmogonies. It is in his nature thus to project
himself upon the universe and to take his imagina-
tions for realities. His gods are but large reflected
images of himself; his religious doctrines, from the
petty myths of a small savage tribe to the majestic
98 :THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY
fabric of Catholicism, are one and all upon the same

model. Each is false, for each differs from the rest;
and all are false, for all are compact of the same stuff
as the others: a stuff bearing plainly the marks of
human emotion and human construction. Now
this prophet is deified, now that chief, now that
other imaginary figure, half legendary or perhaps
wholly without historical existence; and what is
true of any one of these is true also of the Catholic
scheme. The deification of its Founder is an exam-
ple of deification like any other. Its elaborate the-
ology is but a somewhat more developed specimen
of what men have done before us and will do after
us—a spinning of logical systems into the void on
premises that are without substantial basis. Its
affirmations of the miraculous are of the same
legendary sort as those to be discovered in a thou-
sand other forms; its ritual can be proved to have
cousinship in this point or in that with many an-
other ritual of sacrifice, expiation and the rest; the
very details of its liturgical life, the mere ornaments,
the host of practices, the great monastic institutions,
the pretty small devotions of light and ornament—
all these are of one material. That material has
been exhaustively examined and is now historically
known. A vast mass of evidence has been accumu-
lated and continues to accumulate. The more it is
co-ordinated the more clearly this conclusion
appears.
That is the position we have to meet. That is
the main historical argument against the divine
origin and authority of the Church of God.
Our fundamental answer to such a position is of
course not historical at all. It is the answer of
faith; as though a man should say, "Yes, this stone
is a stone and there are multitudes of stones, but I
believe this particular stone to be a talisman." Or
as though he should say, "Yes, this Man was a man,
and there have been countless millions of men; but
this one Man, and this one Man only, was also
God." The rational basis (not the positive proof)
of such a reply is based upon spiritual experience—
upon our judgment after noting the world, its
reactions towards the Faith, and the effects of the
Faith upon it, that here if anywhere is the divine;
a conclusion coupled with our further judgment
that somewhere there must be present upon earth
the visible action of the divine acting in corporate
fashion through some institution, some society,
some body.
But this main argument does not concern the

little essay which you are reading. I am dealing
only with the value of the historical argument
against the Faith, as I have put it, I think fairly,
into the lips of one of our typical, modern, well-
read opponents.
Now what is our reply?
Our reply is that the generalisation is hasty and
inaccurate, and that the more you examine it the
more you discover upon what a false and super-
ficial basis it reposes.
There is not a great number of religions, nor has
there been in the past a greater number, apparent
to men of different nations and temperaments, of
which hotchpotch the Catholic Church is but one.
There is not a multitude of systems of theology
falling under the one general category "theologies,"
of which the Catholic scheme is but a single speci-
men. Upon the contrary, there is, and has been
for these centuries past, a social and religious phe-
nomenon unique and comparable to nothing else,
called the Catholic Church. Its spirit, quality,
voice, personality is such that the line of cleavage
does not lie between it and pure scepticism, leaving
on the one side all religions (including Catholicism),
and on the other the free uncertain mind; the line

of cleavage lies between the Faith upon one side and
all other human opinions and moods upon the
other. And this unique character of the Catholic
Church is as plain an historical truth as the astro-
nomical truth of the reverse rotation of Uranus is
unique among the planets. It claims what no other
society has ever claimed. It affirms its Founder to
have been what no other society claims its founder
to have been. It functions as no other society has
functioned: by an unsupported authority, absolute
in its affirmation.
It may indeed be granted that in pure theory at
least there is an equal alternative to the unique
thing. One might say that, outside the Catholic
Church, the human mind can stand quite unat-
tached, examining all things by no criterion save
common experience and the deductive power of the
intelligence. In pure theory there might be a whole
society of such detached (but also quite unrooted)
minds with no certitudes, no ethical predicates,
living upon the void.
In practice that is not so. There is not one of
us that can point to any mind of his acquaintance,
or to any mind appearing through the pages of a
book which occupies such a position. All without

exception betray an ethical theory of some kind,
that is, doctrines which, though the holder of them
may refuse to formulate them, appear in his actions.
Every man is a theologian. Every man has his phi-
losophy of the world. And viewing man thus as
he is, always a member of some group, we do not
discover as an historical phenomenon any group
save that of the Catholic Church which possesses
the unique character of authority. Conversely, we
find in all other groups the well-known marks
attached to men in all forms of worship—rites,
doctrines, disciplines: we find in Catholicism similar
phenomena: but we do not find in any of the other
groups, into which men's attempts at satisfying this
religious sense may fall, that particular mark in
which Catholicism is quite different from all the
rest.
Let us turn to the historical evidence on the
matter and see how true this is, prefacing that
examination by the reiterated remark that such
unique quality does not of itself and unsupported
by other considerations determine the mind to accept
the authority of the Faith, but remarking that it
does provide a presumption stronger than our
modern world, even its small educated part, is

generally aware of.
In the first place, is it true that there are a mass
of religions bearing for their chief characteristic that
which is the chief characteristic of the Catholic
Church—a secure, unfailing and constant affirma-
tion of Infallible Authority?
No; it is not true. There have been many
restricted, some (very few) widespread religious
systems; to-day there are two in especial—the
Buddhist, the Mohammedan, occur at once to mind;
but not one of them makes this particular Catholic
affirmation, Mohammedan society, not a new re-
ligion but essentially an offshoot and degradation
of the Christian, taking the Catholic doctrine and
simplifying it to its last rudiments (with the excep-
tion of all in it that demands faith in mystery), is
passionate for a certain way of life and intolerant
of others. It creates a very marked and special cul-
ture which no doubt could claim in its own way to
be historically unique, just as the culture of the
Chinese is historically unique. But Islam does not
come forward with the statement, "I am a society
of divine foundation possessed of the power to
reply to question after question upon the only
things that really matter, to which questions man

has never yet of himself attained an answer." It
says indeed, "This is the way to live; and in this
way of living we are content. A disturbance of it
is odious to us, and we desire as much as we can to
turn all others into our own image—not only the
religious, but the social habits of men offend us
where very different from our own." But it does
not and cannot of its nature say, "Here alone
through this defined organisation is the voice of
God perpetually speaking, settling controversies,
defining and re-defining in ever-expanding area of
thought whatever truths may be challenged." It
is alive, but it is not alive with a life of develop-
ment; and so far from presenting any organisation
through which its doctrine can be developed as well
as affirmed, it is specifically repugnant to such
organisations. In a phrase, Mohammedanism is
essentially anti-clerical.
If it be true of Mohammedanism (the chief his-
torically active opponent of the Faith) that it has
not the peculiar marks which make the Catholic
Church different from any other society in the
world, that it has not some major quality by which
all religions are distinct and which is also the major
quality of the Catholic Church, that statement is

still more true of Buddhism.
Buddhism never pretended to make, and does not
make to-day, an affirmation to be accepted cor-
porately by the universal world. It presents a cer-
tain philosophy—which I cannot but call the phi-
losophy of despair, and which is quite certainly a
philosophy of negation. It presents this gloom for
acceptation by the individual mind. But it claims
no corporate rule; it affirms no divine authority: it
enjoys no functional power of excretion nor any
of assimilation. You cannot say of Buddhism,
"Here is orthodoxy and the living tradition search-
ing out heresy and denouncing it, maintaining its
life triumphantly by insistence upon a personality
of its own and by a corresponding power of attack
against whatever would diminish or threaten that
life."
If we turn from the great systems to the local
worships we find another character, wholly separate
from that apparent in Catholicism: that they do
not pretend to certitude; they pretend to no more
than the satisfaction of emotion and to a corpora-
tion tradition. They have their myths, but will
readily accept them as myths or compare them un-
offended with the myths of others. They have

their sanctities: but their sanctities make no pretence
at all to be universal. There was one, and only
one, historical phenomenon, which in this point did
compare with the Faith—the phenomenon of the
Jewish religion; and that is precisely why we Cath-
olics call the Jewish religion the forerunner of our
own and the preparation of the world for its Incar-
nate God.
But is it not true that there are countless cere-
monies and also major doctrines, comparable to and
some even nearly identical with those of the Faith?
It is; and to that we answer that if there is to be
such a thing as the Faith on earth, it could not but
be so. If men must worship, they will worship in
places. If men feel the pull of a religious emotion,
at once the sacramental idea must enter in. There
cannot but be a connection between the physical life
of man and any religious system whatsoever, true
or false, with which he is inmixed. And so surely
as the ministers of the true religion will breathe and
eat and walk upon their feet, each as much as the
ministers of the false, so surely you will find in a
true religion, if true religion there be, habits, prac-
tices, doctrines, which (not all combined, but here
one, there another) men have groped for or arrived

at in systems which attempted or adumbrated the
truth, but did not even claim to be the full truth.
It is not an historical argument against the
divinity of this one thing that it has the qualities
which human things must have. Upon the con-
trary, it is an argument in favour of its claim.
That the unique object here displayed, the Cath-
olic Church, is divine cannot on this account be
affirmed; but it can be affirmed that if such a unique
object exist, then it will have these characters
attaching to it.
A man making a survey of what little is known
of the old religious experiments and perversions of
mankind, and being asked, as a pure hypothesis,
"Suppose a divine society, corporate, distinct,
highly organised, and therefore of highly differen-
tiated function, were to arise on earth to bear wit-
ness to the Living God: suppose such a thing for
the sake of argument only, what, think you, would
such a body present by way of appearance, action
and thought?" could not but answer that it would
have of necessity present within it not only vital
truths, but also practices discoverable wherever man
had groped at or half remembered a revelation.
This man, with no knowledge of such a society,

but considering what his fellow beings were, what
the human mind is, what questions it poses, what
answers it demands, would reply: "In that society
you would discover the worship of a Creator, the
affirmation that he had revealed himself; a mysteri-
ous link between the divine and the human, com-
parable to the link between the unthinking matter
of our bodies and the living essence within. It
would have sacrifice and veneration combined. It
would sanctify objects, places, persons and rites; it
would have central institutions, and in proportion
to its vitality a multitude of lesser activities; it
would have symbols which it would distinguish
from realities and forms of reality which it would
attach to symbols; for man without a soul is a
corpse, and man without a body is a wraith. This
supposed society which you bid men imagine would
certainly present in their highest form such elements
as History has also discovered, disjointedly appear-
ing, often perverted, often degraded, in the various
(and ineffective) spiritual experiments or lapses of
mankind."
Then, one might say to such a man, such a gen-
eral scholar and observer of the unique animal, man,
at prayer, "Should there conceivably be such a home

upon the earth, how otherwise would you know
it?" He could but answer, "Its nature would be
such that it would satisfy to the full the demands
of men; it would be unique so as to correspond to
man himself who is unique on earth, and it would
grant him fulness and repose."
Such and such alone is the Catholic Church. If
it be not what it claims to be, then all is void.

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THE CALVERT SERIES

HILAIRE BELLOC, General Editor

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY

Bence : THE CATHOLIC CH17RCEI AND HISTORY

Printed in the United States of Americo by

organised but increasingly organised from the be-

It is another and more important point to dis-

he began to establish records, the Faith is but an

general pre-History and History, the purely Scep-

1. By the term "The Church" I mean the Cath-

country alone can fully nourish mankind. Here,

engaged upon mere systems invented to explain

tion from Philosophy, the objection from Physical

This principle in what is called "Apologetics"

he is pleading for a negative verdict; for acquittal

who deny the basis of all argument is futile; it is

ing things as they are: the real Catholic Church;

"All reasoning men do not admit that it is spuri-

of fact, the argument is as worthless in its pre-

(which is the matter of History) a moral test takes

apparently always shown organisation: such organ-

the Church must be included in the character of all

tions, some of them conscious in some degree, many

We begin by defining what we mean by the

word "body" substitute the word "man"; let us

may be numerous and even contradictory one to

Trent? or of the Fourth Lateran? or of the Vati-

might very well have been challenged by clear,

torical evidence, then there would be a fundamental

repeating the mood of their time, thought, in an

have mentioned (and it is only one out of a great

based upon it fails. When or if it shall apparently

teenth, has struggled through the filth of our

(b) That the Church has maintained error after

The accusation in connection with the Donation of

spiritual jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome over

fact; for we shall see that even with the fullest

record of the steps whereby the Papal Government

Primacy by divine constitution successively attached

ponents puts what he calls the "first step in Papal

But may it not be said that those who spoke for

fifteenth century, coming from Peacock, Bishop of

with the fullest historical confidence, great scholars

department of historical attack upon the Faith, con-

with an amendment to the Constitution. The Pope

the trial (and as Huxley saw) , Galileo could not

of doctrine, the Papacy and the councils of the

having come out of some original sub-human type,

the human body was what the last of our many

as to how the body came to be is utterly indifferent.

that emotion should take the place of reason and

proceeding to very warped effects in action. We

for otherwise it would not have a human frame-

the human soul, how can it proceed save by exact

authority. Therefore, though doctrine itself does

From this, turn to another consequence of this

say (the vast majority of English-speaking people

in that which can speak with authority and the

with the practice of necromancy, the calling up of

authority in the final and all important questions,