Page:Petri Privilegium - Manning.djvu/429

Rh we all left to private judgment alone? If any one say, that there is no judge but right reason or common, sense, he is only reproducing in history what Luther applied to the Bible.

This theory may be intellectually and morally possible to those who are not Catholics. In Catholics such a theory is simple heresy. That there is an ultimate judge in such matters of history as affect the truths of revelation, is a dogma of faith. But into this we will enter hereafter.

For the present, I will make only one other observation.

Let us suppose that the divinity of our Lord were in controversy. Let us suppose that two hundred and fifty-six passages from the Fathers were adduced to prove that Jesus Christ is God. These two hundred and fifty-six passages, we will say, may be distributed into three classes; the first consisting of a great number, in which the divinity of our Lord is explicitly and unmistakably declared; the second, a greater number which so assume or imply it as to be inexplicable upon any other hypothesis; the third, also numerous, capable of the same interpretation, and incapable of the contrary interpretation, though in themselves inexplicit.

We will suppose, next, one passage to exist in some one of the Fathers, the aspect of which is adverse. Its language is apparently contradictory to the hypothesis that Jesus Christ is God. Its terms are explicit; and, if taken at the letter, cannot be reconciled with the doctrine of His divinity.

I need only remind you of St. Justin Martyr's