p. 48That Plan Contained an Element of Indefectibility

Indefectibility may be popularly described as the prerogative in virtue of which the Church must continue to the end of time in possession of all her Divinely instituted attributes.

According to this description she can never fail to be what her Divine Founder made her at the beginning, and had originally designed her to be throughout. In other words, Catholics hold that she can never cease to be one, to be potentially universal and visible, to be holy, apostolic; and, to say much in one word, unerring. It is not our intention, however, to speak of this prerogative (of indefectibility) in the comprehensive bearings suggested by a strict theological definition. It will, we think, be more popular and practical, and at the same time more in harmony with the scope of this book, if we look at it in the light in which it meets directly the Reformation theory of defection; that is, in the light in which it necessarily removes from her all danger of lapse into false worship and false teaching. Besides, the consideration of it from this point of view will be a preparation for the formal treatment of the distinguishing prerogative of unerringness which is contained in it.

This portion of the Divine plan brings us face to face with the principles of the Reformers of the sixteenth century. We hope to show in our method of treating it, that the assumption on which their Reformation was based was absolutely and necessarily false.

A Reformation was impossible if her lapse, in the sense in which they maintained she lapsed, was impossible; and her indefectibility, as we shall see, means such impossibility.

We deem it expedient to dwell on this matter at some length for several reasons:—

(1) Because that erroneous and misleading supposition of the Reformers struck straight at this essential endowment of the Church.

(2) Because that supposition was the beginning, out of which has grown nearly all the religious controversy that has raged in Europe for the last 300 years.

(3) Because, through the present agitation in the Church of England, there is a pronounced tendency on the part of many to go back and keep to the pure Protestantism of the Reformation.

The Reformers boldly insisted upon not merely the possibility of the Church’s lapse, but her actual and utter lapse, as the justifying motive of their spiritual revolt. We do not wish to take any undue advantage of their position. We shall contend with their adherents as to this part of the Divine design, according to their admissions and assumptions in fair argument; and we shall see which side is right and which wrong.

But that we may not be labouring in vain, we must first of all clear the ground by stating their position as well as our own. They admitted that, till somewhere about the middle of the sixth century, the Church continued to stand upright in justice and truth; but they maintained that about that time she showed signs of decay, began to fail of the object of her institution, soon fell headlong, not only into errors of an ordinary kind, but into idolatry; and that she persisted in teaching and practising idolatry for 800 years.

Hence, they held that during the whole of that period, while she professed to act in the name of Christ, she was acting against His name; that while she professed to speak with His voice, she was positively teaching downright idolatry; and that while she pretended to command by His authority, she was imposing precepts which He, as the God of justice and truth, must loathe and repudiate.

This, of course, was practically to hold that during the whole of that prolonged interval, the true Church of Christ did not exist at all, at least visibly; that what was taken to be the Church by the people who lived in those so-called unhappy centuries, was not the Institution which He had established; and that what remained or was found at the era of reform, was nothing but the outward, misleading semblance of the Church of the early centuries; for He (Christ) could not be supposed to have anything to do with an organisation which not only failed to teach His Gospel in its integrity and purity, but had persisted in teaching idolatrous doctrine and in practising idolatrous worship.¹1Reformers held that the true Church of Christ existed all the while, as invisible, i.e., in the souls of true believers. But this invisible Church is merely an abstraction.

On the other hand, since they undertook to reform the Church, they must have believed that a Church was there at least in appearance to be reformed. Lest, however, we should be accused of overstating their contention, we can reduce the matter to this: Whatever they held, or did not hold in reference to the alleged defection, or in whatever language their views are to be expressed, one thing is certain, and they did not shrink from loudly affirming it, that during the long term of 800 years the voice of what was called or what was supposed to be the Church was not unerring, but on the contrary was fallible and fallible in the last degree.

This one statement is sufficient for our purpose; on it we intend to build the chief part of our argument.

We wish to show that the inconveniences and impossible conclusions which would follow from the supposition of the Church’s defection, in this sense, are equivalent to a demonstration that the absolute impossibility of such defection, in other words, positive indefectibility, was a necessary element in her structure; that if she ever at any time, from the day the Divine Spirit came to dwell in her, ceased to be the unerring organ of His voice and His accredited plenipotentiary, there could not be any certainty now that any Church in Christendom is His; and that consequently without such certainty we should all of us be living in an atmosphere of mitigated agnosticism.

This, as we shall show later, would be about the most favourable inference that could be drawn. But before putting forward the argument, we have to state the Catholic position.

Catholics hold that perpetual indefectibility, or the impossibility of her lapse from the Divine favour in the sense mentioned above, was an essential element in the plan of her construction: that she was so planned and so framed by her Divine Founder that she could never cease to be His one only recognised and approved representative on earth, and that, therefore, her voice was as unerring during the eight centuries in question, as it had been in the years of admitted primitive purity or even in the age of the Apostles. In other words, they maintain that her structure was such that there could not take place in her any split, division, severance—not even a severance of such large dimensions as that which sundered the East from the West—that could deprive her of the prerogatives with which she was originally endowed.

Perhaps the nature of our contention will be more clearly understood by another allusion to the history of the deluge. The ark which bore Noe and his family over the waters of that deluge did not cease, at any time during its prolonged course, to be the vessel of safety which God Himself had commanded to be built for the preservation of earthly life. Nor is there anything to incline us to believe, that it would have ceased to be recognised by Him as His own handiwork and to be sustained by His strength, even though some of those within it had fallen into grave sin during the tedious days of that terrible catastrophe. For it was His fixed decree that it should save without fail the lives of the privileged persons whom it carried.

He foresaw that some of them would transgress greviously some time after the waters had subsided; and we have no reason to think that the knowledge of their actual or present sins would have been a greater disqualification in His eyes for the preservation of bodily life than the foreknowledge of their future ones.

We do not read anywhere that, before they entered that ship of miraculous refuge, continuous stainlessness on the part of each individual during the hundred and forty days was made a necessary condition of safety. Once it was finished according to His direction and sailed upon the swelling flood, it was even Divinely sea-worthy; storm, tempest, hurricane could not send it beyond the range of His vision or the strength of His arm. He had taken it by special promise under His Omnipotent protection; and it was His to see that, neither in the rising of the waters, nor in their continuance upon the earth, nor in their subsidence, it should strike against any rock, or mountain, or débris, that would fatally disable it. It was as easy for Him to do so as it was to walk on the sea, or to pass through the solid rock—as He did—on the morning of His Resurrection.

Could that ship by possibility perish while infinite wisdom was promised to guide it, and infinite power was pledged to protect it?

Our thesis, however, will be more thoroughly grasped when we have explained what we do not hold with regard to this matter. We do not hold that the Church in her members has been free from sin. We maintain that she has been free from error in teaching and worship. But we do not maintain that she has always or ever been morally stainless in her members.

No one holds this; no one could hold it with reason. There was sin in her members in the first century of her life; such sin, St. Paul says, as was not found among the Gentiles. “It is absolutely heard,” he says, “that there is fornication among you, and such fornication, as the like is not among the heathens”.²21 Cor. v. 1.

There was sin in her members all through the years of primitive purity; there is sin in her members now; and there will be till she has closed her career, so long as human nature is what it is.

The Divine Founder could not—in His ordinary Providence—establish a universal Church, whose adherents would be exempt from sin, unless He meant them to be angels and not men, or unless He were to confirm them in grace, or deprive them of the endowment of free will.

He foresaw that wickedness would coexist in her members side by side with sanctity from her very beginning down to the consummation; and foreseeing this, He meant her to be the minister of His mercy in reference to the forgiveness of it. Yes, to give His people an abundant and efficacious means of repenting of their misdeeds was one of the motives He had in instituting her.

Further, He knew that not merely numbers of the rank and file of the faithful would transgress, but that some even of those who would be lifted to the highest positions would transgress as well.

It could not be hidden from His view; that sin—visible and unmistakable—would be found in some of those who would hold His place as her visible Head.

Nay, we will go a step still farther in the way of concession. In the long line of supreme Pontiffs there may have been, in addition to those few whom history rightfully accuses, some others, who were looked upon as holy, and yet whose private lives were criminal before the eye of heaven.

If such has been the case, He foreknew it; and the foreknowledge of all this would not disqualify her in His eyes for the work He meant her to do, that is, to teach and to save: for He never intended to make her authority for teaching His Gospel, and her capacity for teaching it aright, to depend on the personal sanctity of her members, or even of her visible Head.

It is true He wished all His people to be holy, but He knew that many would not be holy. He wished all His Priests to be holy, He knew that a proportion of them would lead lives of wickedness. He wished all the Supreme Pontiffs to be holy, He foresaw that some even amongst these would be guilty of crimes, grievous, public and scandalous.

But the foresight of positive sin in her, not merely on the part of the laity, but even on the part of Priests, Bishops, Patriarchs, Cardinals and Popes, would go no way towards proving that there was not in His mind a definite purpose to make her essentially and everlastingly indefectible; just as the foreknowledge of Peter’s denial did not prevent Him from decreeing to make him (Peter) her foundation.

For He framed her in such fashion that He was bound to see that whatever amount of wickedness was to be found amongst her members, or whoever was to be her visible Head for the time, whether saint or sinner, she should never, in her character of universal teacher, teach error either in faith or morals, practise a false worship, pass a law involving immorality, or do anything which would force Him to forsake her.

We concede, moreover, that there may have been occasions in the past (and such intervals may occur in the future) when, through the opposition of anti-popes and a variety of untoward circumstances, it was difficult for individuals for the moment to tell where the right source of authoritative teaching was to be found.

This, however, does not change the state of the case in the least; the one true Church was in the world somewhere all the same, and in full possession of all her essential prerogatives, although, for the passing hour—from transient causes—she may not have been easily discernible to the less observant.

Just as there have been times when some dense fog or mist made it impossible for the ordinary observer to tell the exact spot the sun occupied in the sky, although everybody knew that he was there somewhere; knew, too, that he would in due course make the exact location of his presence visible to all, and that, as soon as the mist lifted, his rays would come straight to the earth again, and every one would see that he was identically the same luminous orb that had shone before.

Now, we have cleared the ground; and having thus stated the opposing views as fairly as we could, it remains to see where the truth is to be found.

Till the sixth century, it is admitted, the Church continued to be the satisfactory fulfilment of the design of her Founder. Did she cease to be the fulfilment of it then and run counter to it for 800 years?

Who is to prove for certain that she did? since in such supposition she herself could no longer speak infallibly, and no other voice that was infallible was to be found.

In what particular year did the cessation or fall take place?

What species of vice or iniquity was it, or what act of treason on her part was it, that brought about her lapse from the Divine favour?

What word of warning did the nations receive that she was no longer heaven’s representative, and therefore was no longer to be trusted or listened to?

Did all the nations, which till then obeyed her voice, turn their back upon her, renounce her as a false teacher, and as an Apostate from the Faith?

What accredited teacher rose when she fell?

What infallible voice is there now or has there ever been to tell how long she remained in her fallen state?

Was there any voice more reliable than her own even after she had fallen? Did heaven give any visible sign of the time at which and the manner in which she was to be delivered from that idolatry which was called “damnable”; or were any striking miracles wrought to mark the men who were to effect her rescue?

Whence came their authorisation?

Were their hands clean?

Did they succeed beyond any shadow of doubt? Did they make her better than she had been during the period of alleged apostasy?

Were the fruits of their work a clear proof that they had been Divinely sent?

Each question here suggests its own answer. We shall reply to one only, but that reply will, we hope, cover all.

Not only did she not cease in the sixth century, or in any other century, to be His chosen representative on earth, but, being built according to His eternal design, she could not possibly ever cease to be such.

The guarantees He placed within her, and the safeguards with which he surrounded her, were too great for that; they were unlimitedly and unconditionally perpetual; that is, His own unremitting presence and the abiding presence of the Holy Ghost.

After the Last Supper, the night before He died, He promised that when His visible presence had disappeared and gone to the right hand of the Father, His Divine Spirit, the Paraclete, would come into His Church to dwell in her for ever, and to dwell in her for ever to suggest and to teach.

“And I will ask the Father, and He shall give you another Paraclete, that He may abide with you for ever. … These things I have spoken to you, abiding with you. But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you.”³3Gospel St. John xiv. 16, 25, 26.

Some weeks later He said on a mountain of Galilee to the same Apostles:—

“Going, therefore, teach ye all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.”⁴4Matt. xxviii. 19, 20.

Later we shall have occasion to dwell more at length on the full significance of these memorable words than it is necessary to do now.

For the present we ask the reader to mark, that the presence of these two Divine Persons was not promised in the style of a lease which is granted by the head-owner of a property to a tenant, or to a tenant’s heirs, for a term of fifty or nine hundred and ninety-nine years.

The promises were explicit and absolute. No condition was mentioned, or even intimated, on which the fulfilment of the promised indwelling was made to depend.

Nor was there expressed or implied any limit to the continuance of its fulfilment. And that the nations might be assured that no such limit was intended, He was not content (if we may so speak) with saying: “I shall be with you all days” (which meant of course all time); He imparted additional emphasis to the promise by saying: “I shall be with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.”

There was not pointed out any lapse of centuries or generations to fix the date when the Divine assisting presence (carrying with it the prerogative of indefectibility) should be withdrawn; when, the measure of her iniquities being filled up, she would be cast off, at least for a time, as an unfaithful servant, as a renegade and a traitor.

On the other hand, He did not speak these words of promise without a complete and perfect knowledge of the area they covered, and the duration over which they extended. As has been shown elsewhere, at the moment He spoke them, her whole career was as clear to His eye as the angels who stood before the eternal throne. Everything she would do and teach in His name up to the sixth century, and everything she would profess to do and teach in His name from that century down to the day of doom was then known to Him. And yet, with this universal knowledge of her history, from the outset to the finish, plain and distinct in His mind, He made the unequivocal and conditionless promises alluded to above.

Now, if ever there was to come a time at which, through her prevarication or unfaithfulness, she should cease to be His mouthpiece in teaching and in ruling, He must have had that date marked out in his plan, that is, He must have foreseen it when He stood on the mountain of the Apostolic commission to issue the command for her propagation throughout the world. Else He would not be God.

But did He mark it, could He mark such date? We mean, could He by any possibility contemplate the arrival of such a time without seeing that He Himself must have ceased to be united to her as her teacher and her guide and to be the light of the world for the period in question, and without seeing, moreover, that He would be leaving the nations to grope in doubt and darkness for the true meaning of His revelation throughout the term of alleged failure?

If the advocates of the theory of lapse insist that He did foresee and mark such date in His design, they are obliged to show that He notified or intimated it to the world in some way or other. He must have made it known, at least to His Apostles or to their successors. For it would be unjust, even cruel, on His part (would it not?) to allow the faithful, from the time such defection began, to continue to look upon her as the authorised teacher of His truth, when she had already become a teacher of palpable error and even a practiser of idolatrous worship: it would be to encourage and propagate the reign of idolatry, instead of condemning it and providing for its destruction.

But search the Scriptures, tradition, history, and inquire if there is any such notification on record. Examine diligently the wording of the great Apostolic commission itself, and see if there be anything there to justify any supposition of the kind. Look at that Divine utterance from what standpoint you like, and say if there be a syllable to give the faintest hint that at a certain epoch He would take away from her all Divine credentials, that His Divine Spirit would cease to dwell in her, that He would abandon her to an idolatrous bent, leave her in a helpless, deplorable, God-forsaken condition which would last up to the sixteenth century, and that He would then raise up men after His own heart—men, whom like Jeremias, Jonas, John the Baptist, or like His first Apostles, He would fill with His Spirit, strengthen with supernatural grace, enlighten with exceptional knowledge from on high, and entrust to them the sacred mission of purging her of error, of raising her up to the exalted state she had held before, and of effecting her real and permanent reconciliation with Himself.

Do not the very terms of that world-wide commission, embracing as they do all time, as well as all earthly territory, exclude the idea?

It must be kept well in mind that the promise was expressed in the language of Him whose language was ever weighed in the scales of Divine wisdom, never a syllable too much, never one too little.

He foresaw the theory of total corruption, and it may have been to make clear that it had no foundation to rest upon that He deigned to add, with noteworthy emphasis, the significant words, “even to the consummation of the world”.

The institution which was His Church in the first, second, third, fourth and fifth centuries, is His Church now (in whatever denomination it is embodied), and ever has been His Church since the day He founded it; for if that institution was really and without a shadow of doubt His Church in the year ending 500, then the things which it did in the hundred years following, and the things which it continued to do in the centuries succeeding, could not tear it asunder, break it to pieces, and render it powerless or inadequate to the Divine mission He had given it.

Neither could anything that happened in it or happened to it, during the supposed period of Divine disfavour, deprive it of the tokens, clear and well-defined, by which it was to be distinguished from rival claimants. For He foresaw the tenor of its life from the fifth to the sixteenth century as clearly as He foresaw it from the first to the fifth. And if He judged at the outset that anything it has done, or anything that has taken place in it, or in connection with it, would wreck it and render it unfit to be His accredited ambassador, He could not have made the explicit and unrestricted promises quoted above. If He made them with a full and complete knowledge of the assumed defection, and without saying a word as to putting her on her good behaviour; and if at the same time He intended to suspend the fulfilment of them at and during a certain period, He would have been bound to give notice of it in some way or other, and in some way clear and incontrovertible; else He who came to be the light of the world would be deceiving the nations of those ages of darkness instead of enlightening them, would be allowing them to be led into error without providing them with any available means of deliverance from it. But we must insist still further on this conclusion.

Suppose that in the sixth century He abandoned His Church, and that He did so on account of her iniquities and enormities, into what other existing institution did He then go and take up His abode, or what other ecclesiastical organisation did He begin in her stead?

The question rises naturally out of the state of the controversy. For surely opponents will grant, that some institution in which He dwelt and taught, and which had upon it the seal of His Divine sanction as the true witness of His Gospel, subsisted somewhere or other all through the ages of alleged failure.

A continuous authorised “external” teacher there must have been from the sixth till the sixteenth, as well as from the first till the sixth, unless His promise failed, unless the nations were to be left in impenetrable darkness so far as spiritual light was concerned, and unless also—people of good-will were to be punished by such privation equally with those who were perverse.

If this be not admitted, they must be prepared to accept the inference: that there is not at present under heaven any Church, of any denomination, which can claim with certainty to be of Divine origin, whether their own or any other.

For to all claimants it could then be said: The Church which was Christ’s throughout the first five centuries fell away in the course of the sixth, and in consequence lost her credentials and prerogatives; since that time there has been no certainty that any Church has been His.

Hence, we urge the question: When at that eventful period He cast her off on account of her errors and sins, into what other ecclesiastical establishment did He go which was free of error and sin? What evidence was there of the change? Who could show beyond dispute that such transition had ever taken place? And who was to prove that the new institution, into which He had gone, was clear of the crimes of which the old one had been accused?

Once again we repeat, her original building up was such and the guarantees of her unfailing permanence were such that, as His Church, she never would, and never could, teach any error, do any act, pass any law that would force Him to renounce her, disown her, or brand her as unfit to hold the torch of His truth before the eyes of the nations of all time.

Had she failed, or could she ever fail, it would follow that He had built her upon that shifting, unreliable foundation of sand which He had so emphatically condemned in His parables; and not upon the firm, enduring rock against which no power human or infernal was ever to prevail.

Now in the light of this Divine endowment of indefectibility, let us look for a moment into certain words spoken by the Archbishop of Canterbury in his final visitation charge at Croydon, October, 1898. We quote from the Manchester Guardian.

Alluding to the religious divisions of Christendom he said: “It has pleased God to break up the Church into fragments, and apparently to give a different mission to each part”.⁵5Manchester Guardian, 15th October, 1898.

This is a strange statement; and one that sounds startling in the ears at least of Catholics. Taken as it stands (and the context does not extenuate its significance) it amounts to virtual blasphemy, although nothing blasphemous, we feel confident, was intended by the distinguished prelate who uttered it. To say that it has been the pleasure or will of God that the institution which He had given to the world for His own adoration and for the eternal beatitude of His people, and which, for these reasons, He meant to hold together for all time, should be divided into antagonistic parts, that could not, under any circumstances coalesce is, undoubtedly, to do an injury to the Divine attributes. It is an implicit affirmation that our Divine Lord either did not foresee the adverse agencies which would, in the course of time, contend against His Church in the direction of disruption, or that, if He did, He was not able to keep the solemn pledge He had given: “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it”.

For it must be conceded these words were not merely a promise but a prophecy as well. And to hold in the teeth of them that the Church has been torn asunder into opposite factions or parties is to hold that the prophecy was false, and that the Divine Omnipotence was not equal to the fulfilment of the promise.

No doubt the Archbishop would try to justify the fact of these divisions on the old stereotyped ground that they were necessary for the reformation of errors and abuses. The answer can be given in the words of another Archbishop,—one who in his earlier life saw things pretty much in the light in which the Primate of the Church of England appears to see them now, but who came later to look at them from a very different point of view. We mean Cardinal Manning.

In his book entitled, The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost, he says: “All bodies in separation from the Church justify their separation on the alleged necessity of reforming the corruptions of doctrine which had infected the Church and fastened upon the dogma of faith.⁶6The italics are mine. But if the same Person who revealed the truth still preserves it, then it is as unreasonable for man to profess to reform the Church of God as it would be to uphold or renew the world. Men may gird a dome, or reform a political society, but they can no more reform the Church of God than they can give cohesion to the earth, or control the order of the seasons or the precessions of the equinox. God alone can reform His Church, and He reforms it by itself acting upon itself, never by those who refuse to obey it, and oppose its Divine voice. … A great part of the Pontifical law, and the greater part of the decrees of Councils, as for instance of Constance and of Trent, are occupied with the reformation, not of the doctrines of the Church, but the sins of men. As each man can reform himself alone, so the Church alone can reform itself. But this reformation does not enter into the Divine sphere of faith or the law of Jesus Christ, which is always pure and incorrupt, but into the wilderness of human action, human tradition, and the sins which by human perversity are always accumulating.

“Now my purpose is to show that the confusions, contentions and spiritual miseries which have fallen upon England, and which afflict us all, both in public and private, have come from the pretension of reforming the Church of God. And to do so, it will be enough to show that God has so provided for His Church as to render such a reformation not only needless but impossible.”

Having dwelt upon this at some length, he proceeds:—

“But the doctrines of the Church are not only incorrupt, but incorruptible. To be incorruptible is not only a fact, but a law of their nature.”

“For this cause we deny the possibility of a reformation of the Church as a witness or teacher of faith and morals.”

“The need of such reformation can never exist. It is the permanent and incorruptible doctrine of the Church which is the instrument of all reformation.”

“I am not denying the existence of error and corruption in Christendom. There has been enough of all kinds in every age, but they have been the errors and corruptions of individuals, not of the Church.”

“They have existed within the Church till the Church cast them out.”

“They never fastened on the Divine tradition of dogma, nor mingled themselves in the Divine utterances or enunciations of the doctrines of faith.”

“The errors of individuals cannot prevail against the Church. Individuals depend on the Church, not the Church on individuals. The Church depends on its Divine Head, and upon the perpetual presence of the Divine Person who inhabits it.”

“The Church, therefore, has an independent, absolute and objective existence. It is a Divine Creation depending on the Divine will alone, the instrument of probation to mankind. It is the Sacrament of Truth which remains always the same, whether men believe or no. …”

“The real ultimate question between the Catholic Church and all Christian bodies separated from it, is not one of detail but of principle.”

“It is not a controversy about indulgences or purgatory or invocations and the like, but of the Divine tradition of dogma, its certainty and its purity.”

“The Catholic Church teaches, that as the preservation of the world is creation produced and a continuous action of the same omnipotence by which the world was made, so the perpetuity of revelation is sustained by the continuous action of the same Divine Person from whom it came.”⁷7Temp. Miss. of Holy Ghost, pp. 226, 227, 228, 231, 232.

The argument in this chapter may be summed up as follows: To say that Christ instituted a Church, which was meant to make provision for ever for the adoration of the Godhead and for the eternal welfare of the people, and which, nevertheless, was to fail in its object after the first five or six centuries, would be equivalent to saying that He made the ark with the clear foreknowledge it would perish after the first five or six days of the deluge. The same idea may be expressed in a still stronger form: They who maintain that He established an institution which He decreed and foretold was to last to the world’s end, and that He at the same time established it with the seeds of disintegration in it, i.e., with the liability, capability or possibility of decaying, are maintaining a thesis which, from a logical point of view, is a contradiction in terms.