Page:History of Freedom.djvu/637

 HISTORICAL PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE 593

songer à un développement dogmatique?" That it was little understood, and lightly and loosely employed, is proved by Bossuet himself, \vho alludes to it in one passage as if he did not know that it was the subversion of his theology: "Quamvis ecclesia omnem veritatem funditus norit, ex haeresibus tamen discit, ut aiebat magni nominis Vincentius Lirinensis, aptius, distinctius, clariusque eandem exponere." The account of Lamennais suffers from the defect of mixing him up too much with his early friends. No doubt he owed to them the theory that carried him through his career, for it may be found in Bonald, and also in De Maistre, though not, perhaps, in the vol urnes he had already published. It was less original than he at first imagined, for the English divines commonly held it from the seventeenth century, and its dirge was sung only the other day by the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. 1 A Scottish professor \vould even be justified in claiming it for Reid. But of course it was Lamennais who gave it most importance, in his programme and in his life. And his theory of the common sense, the theory that we can be certain of truth only by the agreement of mankind, though vigorously applied to sustain authority in State and Church, gravitated towards multitudinism, and marked him off from his associates. When he said quod se11zper, quod ubz"que, quod ab o11lnz"bus, he was not thinking of the Christian Church, but of Christianity as old as the creation; and the development he meant led up to the Bible, and ended at the New Testament instead of begin- ning there. That is the theory which he made so famous, which founded his fame and governed his fate, and to which Dr. Flint's words apply when he speaks of celebrity. In that sense it is a mistake to connect Lamennais with Möhler and Newman; and I do not believe that he anticipated their teaching, in spite of one or two passages which do not, on the face of them, bear date B.C., and may, no doubt, be quoted for the opposite opinion. In the same group Dr. Flint represents De IVlaistre as 1 [Dr, Ellicott,]

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