p. 36What the Divine Plan Was

(1) It is necessary to keep in mind the object the Redeemer had in view in instituting His Church. His own words make the matter clear. He said to His Apostles who represented that Church: “As the Father hath sent Me, I also send you”.¹1St. John xx. 21. Their mission was to be the same as His own. And He has not failed to tell us what that mission was: “For this was I born,” He said, “and for this came I into the world, that I might give testimony to the truth”.²2That is, He came to give testimony to the truth, that the world might be saved through the truth. We do not think that any Christian will deny that He meant His Church to continue to give testimony to the truth, after His own visible presence had been withdrawn from the eyes of men. On the other hand, it is clear that she could not continue to declare His truth, in any way that would be fruitful or effective, unless she were to be recognised as His Divinely appointed plenipotentiary, or rather as the reflex of Himself. His plan therefore was, that she should act in His name, speak with His voice, and command with His authority.

It could not be anything else but this, if she was to exist at all and to answer the end of her institution. For if she was not to act in His name, she could have no claim upon the religious homage of the nations; if she was not to speak with His voice, there could be no reason why her voice should be listened to; and unless the nations were made to feel that she commanded with His authority, obedience to her teaching and precepts would be hopelessly out of the question. With anything less than these high prerogatives, she could never compass the object for which she was originated. The nature of the work she was destined to do demanded, that she should be thus fully equipped with credentials, which had upon them the impress of Divine sanction. For her’s was to be the unceasing, stern duty to give witness to the truth, by promulgating boldly and fearlessly the Gospel which contained it; not merely in part, but in its integrity and completeness. Her’s too was to be the correlative obligation of demanding belief in the doctrine which that Gospel taught, and obedience to the precepts which it imposed.

Later the truth of these statements will be proved from the Redeemer’s own words. For the present we are looking at the plan, according to what orthodox Christians are bound to admit that it contained. They concede that certain elements in Christianity at present are of Divine origin; and whatever is of Divine origin necessarily had a place in His design of the Church.

But before proceeding farther, it is well to recall briefly what is meant by design in the sense in which it has reference to His Divine mind. We mean by it, His ideal or intention, His efficacious will or decree in the direction of founding a Church. We mean that with Him to will is to act; we mean also that in His will, intention or decree, is contained the image of the thing He intends to do, to make or create, whether as to its inception, its development, or its mature and perfect proportions. And we may add here that His act must be one of infinite wisdom, must necessarily have an object; and that there must be the impress of Divine order in the means He employs for the due attainment of that object.

We think all Christians will agree that He designed His Church to be a thing which would be apt and adequate to the end for which He established her, i.e., the acceptable worship of the Godhead in spirit and in truth, and the salvation of the souls made to the Divine likeness. But to attain this end, belief in His revelation and the practice of what that revelation taught would be required. “He that believeth and is baptised, shall be saved; He that believeth not, shall be condemned.”³3Mark xvi. 16. “But if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.”⁴4Matt. xix. 17. “Not every one that saith to Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doth the will of My Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.”⁵5Matt. vii. 21. On the other hand, that revelation could not be believed in unless it were known. It was to make it known, we repeat, that He gave His Church to the world. And that she might make it known with unerring accuracy, she was to promulgate in every century and every generation only what He would authorise; nothing more and nothing less.

The exemplar or pattern which He had in His mind, when He stood on the mountain of Galilee to issue the great command for her building up, was clear and definite. No professing Christian can deny that. It extended to and embraced all the essential elements of which she was to be composed, and all the essential prerogatives with which she was to be endowed. In that Divine exemplar He had present to His eye the entire range of doctrine which through her, as the organ of His voice, He would teach; He had present to His eye the sphere within which He would demand, through her, strict, staunch belief in the necessary object of faith, as well as the sphere within which He would allow, through her, liberty of opinion; He had present to His eye the occasions in which the object of faith, while remaining the same, should be expressed in new formulas to meet and dissipate the insidious heresies of the time. He had before Him the essential worship she was to practise, as well as the circumstances in which that worship—while remaining identical in its substance and inward significance—p. 38could be offered by ceremonies differing externally according to the manners, customs and life of different nations. He had before Him then as well the reasons, on account of which laws of discipline not of Divine origin could be and would be changed, abrogated or replaced by new ones according to the exigency of changing conditions.

He had before Him, too, the high and important place His Sacraments were to hold in her system, the external elements of which they were to consist, the particular kind of grace they were to convey, the order in which they were to be received and the essential mode of their administration.

He had before him, moreover, the position of pre-eminence, privilege and power His Bishops and Priests were to occupy, the jurisdiction they were to possess, how and within what limits that jurisdiction was to be exercised, whence it was to come, namely, from Himself, and how it was to be communicated.

All this was then present to His thoughts; else He was not God, and if so, Christianity as a revelation of new truths has no stable ground to rest upon.

Mark: We are not at present discussing which denomination presents the orthodox object of faith to its members, enforces the proper laws, practises the right worship, administers the true Sacraments as to nature and number, and possesses the rightful episcopacy and priesthood. We are only pointing to those things which were in the mind of Christ, and which orthodox Christians are forced, under pain of denying His Divinity, to admit were in His mind, when He stood on the mountain of Galilee to issue the great commission for building up His Church. For, either there was in His mind then a definite deposit of faith, definite Sacraments, definite substantial worship, a definite hierarchy and priesthood, or the things which are at present called by these names are nothing but frauds, deceits, so many human inventions, uselessly imposed on the conscience of over-credulous believers.

This would be the inevitable inference. If there was not at that moment in His design a distinct body of doctrine which He meant to have conveyed to the nations, no creed professed by any denomination in Christendom at present, can have any claim on the conscience of its members, since in such case no creed would be of Divine origin.

If it was not His intention then, that His Church, speaking in His name, should have power to trace the line of demarcation which was to mark off or separate free-thought, doubt, opinion, conjecture, from the necessary subject-matter of faith, it would be impossible to make out in detail what that body of faith contained, how far it extended, to what specific matters it had reference. In other words it would be impossible to give reliable testimony to His truth. On such a supposition there could be no certainty what that truth was: for the Apostles’ Creed gives but a relatively small nucleus of the doctrine embodied in even the least comprehensive symbol of faith professed at present by any section of the Church of England. And many of the dogmas or articles professed by various sections of that Church are not found on the surface of the Scriptures.

If it was not in His design then, that His Church, acting in His name, should have power to make, to change or to abrogate disciplinary laws and laws not Divinely instituted, and to arrange and to change the accidental forms of worship according to the exigency of the time, place and circumstances, then the power of the keys, and the power of binding and loosing which He had given to Peter a little while before was an idle formality, was simply nugatory, and meant absolutely nothing. And to say so would be blasphemy.

If Sacraments had no place then in the plan of His Church, the Sacraments which are in use now in the various branches of Christianity are not of Divine institution; they convey per se no special spiritual favour; people may be as well off without them as with them; there can be no obligation to receive them; and the reception of them is—to use the mildest language—a work of supererogation if not of superstition.

If He had not decreed then, that there should be a hierarchy and priesthood in His Church, with exclusive jurisdiction and authority from Himself to preach the Word, to instruct others unto justice, to administer sacramental rites and to secure as far as might be the due worship of the Godhead among the rank and file of the faithful,—the bishops and clergy spread through the length and breadth of Christendom have usurped or inherited privileges to which they have no rational claim; and have no right, civil or ecclesiastical, to state or voluntary support. For, on that hypothesis, they have no more power to impart spiritual favours to their fellow-creatures than the humblest members of the flock whom they profess to help in the work of sanctification.

Hence, to affirm that any of these things was absent from the mind of Christ on the day He commanded His Apostles to teach and to baptise, would be equivalent to affirming that that particular thing existing in His Church now—but having no place in His plan then—is an innovation, an abuse, a superstition, a mockery. In the essential structure of whatever Church He recognises as His own, there cannot be any essential constituent now that was not in His ideal at the moment He uttered the words of the Apostolic commission. Else that ideal has never found substantial realisation; not even in the centuries of primitive purity; at all events is not realised in any creed now existing. And to say so would be to falsify the promise He made that He Himself would be with His Church to the consummation; it would be to make void the declaration that His Divine Spirit was to dwell in her for ever to suggest and to teach; and to admit, in the face of His word of Divine promise to the contrary, that after all the gates of hell had in reality prevailed against her.

(2) What that plan necessarily excluded

It necessarily excluded private judgment. Most likely our separated brethren will agree that His design contained definite doctrine, definite Sacraments, definite substantial worship, definite hierarchy or government. It is admitted by Anglicans (at least by those of them for whom principally these arguments are intended) that these elements of Christianity are of Divine institution; and of course they must grant that whatever is of Divine institution must have formed part of the original pattern. They accompany Catholics thus far; but are they equally ready to agree when it is maintained that the principle of private judgment was of necessity and by Divine pre-arrangement excluded from that design—that it had not and could not—by possibility—have a place in it?

They may refuse or hesitate; yet it can be shown that the reason for its exclusion is quite as strong as the reason which forces us to believe that He intended to establish a Church at all.

If they claim the privilege of unrestricted private judgment, they must maintain that that privilege had a place in His design of a Church. Else it would be quite unwarrantable to claim it, and quite as unwarrantable to use it, since they could not reasonably presume to appeal to it unless on the supposition that He decreed to permit it. And we hold (we hope to make good the statement) that a Divine plan of a Church, in which private judgment should find a place, is an absolute impossibility, is equivalent to a contradiction in terms, would be quite as great an anomaly as a square circle.⁶6To prevent misunderstanding, it is well to state that private judgment has its proper function in finding the Church, i.e., in examining the motives of credibility, and ceases in the presence of the Divine authority so found. We appeal to the reason of Christendom, and we ask: could that privilege as taught by the sectaries of the Reformation, and as taught by the sectaries ever since, be a part of Christ’s design of a Church? If it could, then it would follow indisputably that in one part of that design was sketched one department of His Church teaching a series of doctrines concerning the worship of Himself and concerning the means necessary for the eternal salvation of His people, and that in another part of the very same design was sketched another department of the very same Church teaching absolutely contradictory doctrines about the worship of Himself, and the means essential to the salvation of His people. This is the natural outcome of such reasoning.

Could such an ideal exist in the mind of the One Creator, the God of unchanging truth? Unbiassed reason answers in the negative. Yet such must have been the ideal of the teaching institution He decreed to establish if our opponents are right. Such too must have been His ideal if there is to be any Divine justification for the origin of those sects which sprang from the innovations of the Reformers.

This is a point which must be pressed home. It lies at the very root of the question of true religion. p. 41If He designed the cause, He must have designed the effect; and if He intended the effect, He must have set the seal of His sanction on the cause that produced it. But can any man who claims to be a Christian undertake to say that Christ who is God—when He stood on the mountain of Galilee with the exemplar of His Church in His mind—willed with the will of desire or decree the existence and multiplication of those various contradictory creeds, which are at present professed within these shores. If He did, He willed with the will of desire or decree—in plain words, He deliberately wished—that she should teach falsehood side by side with truth from the outset; for contradiction is the characteristic of falsehood, necessarily supposes it and cannot exist without it. If He did not will them with the will of desire, then he cannot have willed their cause which was private judgment. It was this arbitrary privilege that inspired the idea of originating them, that brought them into actual being, and that has kept them in being until now. He saw as clearly then as He sees now, that contradiction was the natural offspring of that disintegrating principle; and it was quite as well known to Him then, as it is now, that the use of it would lead unavoidably to the multiplication of opposite religions.

Hence, if He meant it to have a place in His design, it would be equivalent to His positively arranging that His Church was to teach truth and falsehood simultaneously from the outset of her course to the end of it. For if it was a thing that He decreed to permit, the use of it was as lawful in the first century as in the sixteenth. And the Ebionites, Nicolaites, Cerinthians, and other sects of that early time, could quite as reasonably have invoked its aid and sheltered themselves under its wings in the very infancy of the Church, as the Reformers in England and on the Continent at the origin and during the progress of the Reformation. Again then let us appeal to the reason of Christendom, and ask: did His Divine wish or decree, which embodied the pattern of a Church, embrace the two hundred (and more) Christian sects that prevail in these countries at present, and that are splitting into subdivisions year by year. To say so is to hold that even from the beginning He intended—deliberately decreed—His religion to consist of the almost interminable multitude of antagonistic creeds which these various sects represent. If it did not embrace—but on the contrary excluded—them, then there is no reason under heaven to justify their origin. If any amongst them were right, it could be only one; for each contradicts all the others. But not even one can be right, for all owe their birth and their continuance in life, to the exercise of private judgment. And that dissolving principle, as we have seen, could not possibly have a place in the Divine pattern of a Church.

If it be urged that the fact of His permitting them to come into existence, to prosper, to command wide influence, and to secure the adhesion and obedience of many educated, respectable and devoted members, is a sign of His approval,—it may be replied that it might be argued with quite as much reason, that He approves and sanctions sin, because He tolerates its commission everywhere, at all times and in all classes of society from the highest to the lowest.

For these reasons it can be stated with truth that those who profess Christianity, and who at the same time claim the right of private judgment, practically deny that there was a definite image of a Church in His mind when He commanded His Apostles to spread themselves through the nations to propagate His Gospel. For either there was no such distinct image then before Him, or, if there was (and it would amount to blasphemy to deny it), there could not be any room in it for that thing which He saw in the clear light of His infinite knowledge would lead to endless contradiction and consequently to endless falsehood.

But perhaps some of those who differ from us, with the view of making their ground more tenable, will say that the detailed revelation which He had in His mind was something so sublime, so extensive, and, from a human point of view, so complex, that it was beyond the comprehension of the people, and therefore could not be communicated to them without the exercise of private judgment to a certain extent, in other words, without some admixture ef error.

We answer—It must have been a thing that could be adequately and accurately communicated, a thing too that was capable of being understood and grasped by average intelligence, by people of all grades, else He would not have commanded it to be taught to the nations by His Apostles. It would be incompatible with His wisdom and benevolence, as well as with His justice, to command anything that was impossible of fulfilment. On the other hand, He could not wish it to continue to be distinct and identical, if the Apostles were to convey it to the nations with the right of private judgment accompanying it. For to Him it must have been clear as noonday then, as it ought to be to all unprejudiced minds now, that, with the liberty of opinion of which such right was the index, definite doctrine could not permanently coexist.

But is there anything recorded in the Scriptures from the first verse of Genesis to the last of the Apocalypse; or is there anything in tradition from the beginning of the Christian era until now to show, that He authorised His Apostles, or intimated directly or indirectly, or hinted to them in any way, that in preaching His Gospel to the nations they were to announce simultaneously, there and then, that each individual amongst their hearers was to have the right of giving it his own private interpretation? Scripture, tradition of the right kind, and history (in so far as it is a faithful chronicle of the past) cannot attest the existence of a thing which involves a contradiction in terms. Christ could never allow such latitude in reference to His revelation without ceasing to be what He is, that is—the God of essential truth. To do so would be like writing out His revelation on parchment and then blotting it or effacing it, so as to render it almost, if not totally, illegible. Or, as a distinguished writer expresses the idea, it would be equivalent to His inscribing His doctrines with His own hand on tablets of brass, and then throwing those tablets into the melting-pot where both writing and form of material would disappear.

But others may object from a different, almost opposite, point of view. They may say: We admit that the plan of the Church was distinct and definite in the mind of Christ Himself; but we hold that He did not make it known in terms so precise or determinate as those in which the pattern of worship was given to Moses on Mount Sinai; and that therefore He could not intend or expect it to be so precisely and determinately carried out in practice.

On the mountain of Galilee, they add, there was no writing upon stone, no mention of Sacraments, hierarchy or priesthood, no exemplar or form of worship exhibited which was to be strictly and minutely adhered to. And they urge further that He could have prolonged His apparition on that holy mount, and given detailed instructions on all these matters to His Apostles if He had chosen; or He could have written such instructions during His public or private life, if He had meant such to be of obligation.⁷7It is only Broad and Low Church people who can consistently raise this objection since High Church Anglicans and those who stand by the Book of Common Prayer believe in Sacraments, hierarchy and priesthood, etc., as of Divine origin.

This objection seems formidable at first sight: yet it will be found to embody a very strong argument in our favour. While it is fatal to the system of our opponents themselves, it only tends to bring out more clearly the consistency and completeness of the teaching of the Church Catholic.

We answer (1) We grant that He did not enter into details on the mountain of the Apostolic commission. But it does not follow from that that He had not done so before. As a matter of fact, He had done so before, at least to a certain extent. His own words are evidence of it. Although the commission which He gave was expressed in general terms, yet it plainly referred to a number of clear and fixed items which He had explained to them, and “commanded” them during the three years that had preceded; “teaching them,” He said, “to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you”. These items constituted a good part of the message which He meant to be conveyed to the nations. But they did not comprise everything. The Apostles had not yet been taught the whole of what He intended them to be taught. They were to learn the remainder, the complement and the further items through the Holy Ghost, who was to come to them and to abide with them for the purpose of teaching them truth in detail, and also of bringing to their minds in the right sense and exact meaning all those portions of it which He Himself had already made known to them. “I have yet,” He said after the Last Supper, “many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now, but when the Spirit of Truth is come, He will teach you all truth … and bring all things to your mind whatsoever I have said to you.”⁸8It may be said that the words, “teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you,” connoted in general the substance of the deposit of faith, just as the oak is contained in the acorn. But it is to be added: they did not directly connote several minute and explicit details. These were to be taught later by the Holy Spirit. Franzelin’s words on the verse, “I have yet many things to say to you,” etc. (St. John xvi. 12), may be usefully quoted here: “Non utique ipso die Pentecostes, sed tempore adventus Spiritus Sancti paulatim, ac per gradus inducti sunt in omnem veritatem, ut ex manifestis factis et ex ipsis verbis constat: inducet in omnem veritatem ὁδηγήσει ὑμᾶς” (Franzelin, De Trad., p. 267, note).

We answer (2) It is true He was more minute on Sinai than he was on the mountain of Galilee, or, it might be said, than He was on any occasion in His converse with His Apostles during the years of His public life.

Neither at Cæsarea Philippi, nor on the occasion on which He spoke of hearing and obeying the Church’s commands, nor on Thabor where He was transfigured, nor in His Sermon upon the Mount in which He spoke at such length of many matters, nor even in His prolonged parting address after the Last Supper did He describe, if we are to judge by Scripture and tradition, the laws to be obeyed and the nature and forms of the worship to be followed, with as much definite detail as He deigned to employ when He placed the ceremonial of the old Law in the hands of Moses.

But this fact only serves to unfold the strength of the Catholic position, while it reveals the weakness of the system of those who are in separation from us. For we hold that unless He had provided some source of instruction, designed to preserve an identity of religion, and to teach and regulate the nature and forms of Divine worship,—instruction which would be at least equal in its precision to that given to Moses,—it would follow that He attached more importance to the Old Dispensation, which was merely typical, than to the New which was its fulfilment.

Did He leave any such source of instruction? Our opponents have none. It is impossible they could have any. In their system it would be a contradiction. Private judgment would nullify its action, paralyse and render its power useless.

It is clear that a tribunal of definite direction would be entirely out of place in an organisation, which virtually left its members free to take opposite and even absolutely contradictory forms of worship out of His revelation.

But the Church Catholic has such a tribunal. It is part of her structure. She never has been, and never could be, without it. It is found in the faculty of infallible teaching which we claim to be part of her constitution; or, to be more explicit still, it is the Holy Ghost Himself, whose abiding special presence renders her necessarily and perpetually infallible.⁹9It is true there is an Article of the Church of England saying that that Church “hath power to decree rites or ceremonies and authority in controversies of Faith”. But that Church does not claim to be unerring.

If we are asked, then, why the commission given to the Apostles on the mountain of the Apostolic delegation was less specific and less explicit than that given on Sinai, we reply: It was because our Lord had already provided, that His Church was to have a never-failing fountain of guidance, which would be quite as exact in all that pertained to His Gospel, both in substance and detail, as that given of old to Moses in reference to the commandments, the Ark and the Tabernacle. And that source was to be, we repeat, none other than the Paraclete dwelling unremittingly and for ever in His Church, to suggest, to bring to and keep in the mind of her teaching authorities, i.e., the Apostles, and their legitimate successors, “all truth,” that is, revealed truth in all its departments.¹⁰10We shall see later, in the proper place, that infallibility super-induced by the unceasing particular presence of the Holy Ghost is an essential element in the Church’s framework.

Was not this Divine arrangement an adequate equivalent for the distinct pattern shown to the leader of the chosen people, and for the minute and multiplied prescriptions of Sinai? Was it not something more? Did it not far transcend it? Did it not make clear that He was not content (if we may so speak) with giving written instructions to His Church, or with giving them as it were from a distance, but that He would condescend, and had decreed to be actually present Himself so as to give such instructions in person.

Take a very ordinary example from everyday life. It is quite unnecessary for a man to write down directions how a thing is to be done, if he himself is to be personally present all the time to direct and superintend the doing of it. And if on the mountain of Galilee the Redeemer did not, in the presence of His Apostles, write with His own hand upon stone the doctrines and laws of His new revelation, and did not unfold in detail the nature and number of His Sacraments, the dignity of His hierarchy and priesthood, and the essence of the worship which was to be thenceforward and for ever offered to the Godhead; or, if He had not done this some time before, say, during His forty days of silence and solitude in the desert—it was because He had already arranged in His plan that His Church was to give detailed and precise directions on these various items; and because, moreover, His Alter Ego, the Divine Paraclete, was to dwell constantly and unremittingly in that Church for the sole and explicit purpose of seeing that she should give those directions aright, and in perfect conformity with His Divine will in every particular.

Our separated brethren, in raising this difficulty, overlook two declarations of His which contain the answer we have given: one was uttered by Him on the very mountain and on the very occasion of which we are speaking. And it looks as if in making it there, and under the circumstances named, He meant by it to anticipate and render futile the false reasoning and hollow objections of heresies that were to come: “Behold,” He said to His Apostles, “I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.” The other declaration was part of His farewell discourse after the Last Supper: “But when He the Spirit of Truth is come, He will teach you all truth … 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”.

These memorable utterances embodied more in the line of unerring and definite guidance, immeasurably more, than the whole detailed revelation made to the great law-giver on the historic mountain of the Old Testament.

But there remains another objection which members of the Broad and Low Church may put forward. Although it has been sufficiently answered in what has been already said, yet for further elucidation it may be well to briefly notice it. They may urge: Christ meant His religion to be something so plain and so simple that no definite directions about it would be required. We answer, simple and plain though it be, let them reduce it to the least “minimum” (if it is not pleonastic to use that phrase), they cannot escape the inference already drawn. We take it that all of them, or nearly all, regard the rite called the Lord’s Supper as one of especial sacredness. We take it also that they admit that that solemn mystery, from whatever standpoint they view it, is more closely connected with Divine worship and human sanctification, than were the symbolic ceremonies which obtained in the period of the Mosaic religion. If then He left no available means of instruction as to the particular light in which that holy mystery was to be regarded, and how it was to be handled and applied, we should undoubtedly be forced to infer that the types of the Old Dispensation held in His eyes a more important place than the realities of the New. And in such case no guarantee would have been provided for the preservation of its true meaning.

We have now to see—in particular—some of the prerogatives or endowments which were essential Constituents of the Divine design.