Page:AManualOfCatholicTheology.djvu/76

 they received, and to listen only to the Church (2 Tim. 2:2, and 3:14). And the epistle ascribed to St. Barnabas contains the well-known formula: “The rule of light is, to keep what thou hast received without adding or taking away.” Moreover, the Church has always rejected the pretension of those who claimed to have received new revelations of a higher order from the Holy Ghost, e.g. the Montanists, Manichæans, Fraticelli, the Anabaptists, Quakers, and Irvingites.

The finality of the present Revelation does not, however, exclude the possibility of minor and subsidiary revelations made in order to throw light upon doctrine or discipline. The Church is the judge of the value of these revelations. We may mention as instances of those which have been approved, the Feast of Corpus Christi and the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

From the above we deduce the existence of a gradual progress, both extensive and intensive, in Revelation. The extensive progress does not start from Adam or Noah, but from Abraham, the patriarch selected among fallen mankind. Patriarchal Revelation was made to a family, Mosaic Revelation to a people, Prophetical Revelation to several peoples, Christian Revelation to the whole world. The intensive progress consists in a higher degree of illumination and a wider range of the revealed truths. The intensive progress likewise begins with Abraham and ascends through Moses and the Prophets to Christ, Who leads us to the bright day of eternity (infra, pp. 71, 105).