'arranged, sentence after sentence,' that doctrine of the Godhead of the Eternal Son for which the Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester are so anxious to 'do something.'
The Schoolmen themselves are but the same false criticism developed, and clad in an apparatus of logic and system. In that grand and instructive repertory founded by the Benedictines, the Histoire Littéraire de la France, we read that in the theological faculty of the University of Paris, the leading mediæval university, it was seriously discussed whether Jesus at his ascension had his clothes on or not. If he had not, did he appear before his apostles naked? if he had, what became of the clothes? Monstrous! everyone will say.[1] Yes, but the very same criticism, only full-blown, which produced: 'Neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the Substance.' The very same criticism, which originally treated terms as scientific which were not scientific; which, instead of applying literary and historical criticism to the data of popular Aberglaube, took these data just as they stood and merely dressed them scientifically.
Catholic dogma itself is true, urges, however, Cardinal Newman, because intelligent Catholics have dropped errors and absurdities like the False Decretals or the works of the pretended Dionysius the Areopagite, but have not dropped dogma. This is only saying that men drop the more palpable blunder before the less palpable. The adequate criticism of the Bible is extremely difficult, and slowly does the 'Zeit-Geist' unveil it. Meanwhile, of the premature and false criticism to which we are accustomed, we drop the evidently weak parts first; we retain the rest, to drop it gradually and piece by piece as it loosens and breaks up.
- ↑ Be it observed, however, that there is an honest scientific effort in the Schoolmen, and that to this sort of thing one really does come, when one fairly sets oneself to treat miracles literally and exactly; but most of us are content to leave them in a half light.
