The spectacle presented by the Modernist movement is a very interesting one. The principle of authority as the custodian of primitive tradition, which was so admirably successful in maintaining discipline and unity, ended in binding the Roman Church hand and foot in chains of her own forging. And so the Pope claimed the right to declare and interpret tradition' in his own way. Thus authority turned against itself; and the liberty of the Papacy has let loose the unbounded licence of the Modernists. 'The differences between the larval and final stages of many an insect,' says Mr. Tyrrell again, are often far greater than those which separate kind from kind.' And so this chameleon of a Church, which has changed its colour so completely since the Gospel was preached in the subterranean galleries of Rome, may undergo another transformation and come to believe in M. Loisy's God, who is never encountered in history.' The warning against putting new wine into old wine-skins is somewhat rashly introduced into such a programme !

We are, then, able to see in the Roman Church of to-day the bankruptcy of the old theory of authority. The theory of a static' revelation given to the Church long ago has been proved to be untenable, both historically and politically. And if, abandoning this old position, the inspiration of the Church is explained to mean the continuous inspiration of its earthly head, the questions cannot fail to be asked, Is autocracy the divinely ordained government for the Church? Is it so certain that the Holy Spirit speaks only through the mouth of the Bishop of Rome ? With this doubt disappears the possibility of confident reliance on the authority of the Church, as a primary ground of Faith.

The true Church,' as the depositary of inspiration in matters of belief and practice, is the whole body of men and women who have any enlightenment in such matters. This Church has no accredited organ, and claims no finality

for its utterances. It does homage to the past, not to fetter its own future, but to preserve the knowledge and experience already gained, which are easily lost through carelessness or presumption. Ideally, this Church is the Divine Spirit immanent in humanity. This identification of the Church with the indwelling Holy Spirit is ancient, but it is far too great a privilege to be claimed by any ecclesiastical corporation.

But though we cannot for a moment admit that infallibility resides in the decisions of any man or any council, present or past, it would not be easy to overestimate the advantages of venerable traditions in matters of Faith. Each age is liable to be carried away by some dominant idea, which soon becomes a superstition, as 'progress' did in the nineteenth century. Authority has a steadying influence, forbidding as to ignore doctrines which for the time are unpopular, and preserving, to some extent, the proportion of Faith.' In these high matters the dead as well as the living have a right to speak; and respect for authority is the courtesy which we pay to the voices of 'famous men and our fathers that begat us.'

CHAPTER VII

AUTHORITY AS A GROUND OF FAITH-continued

In this lecture I wish to consider further the relations of Faith and Authority. We have considered the theory of an infallible authority vested in the Church, and have shown how, just as in the Roman Empire authority became more and more centralised until the emperor became a sultan, so in the Roman Church authority has come to be vested in one man. When this one man says, 'I am tradition,' the last restrictions on autocracy have been removed, for the 'living voice of the Church' is independent of the past. Thus the principle of authority, in completing its evolution, turns against and destroys itself. At the same time, the regula fidei, in the hands of some bold reformers, has become independent of existential fact. The only authority is the course of history, and the Church is a Proteus who justifies each metamorphosis in turn by the plea Il faut vivre. These two developments may be said to constitute a reductio ad absurdum of Church authority as an independent ground of Faith.

We have now to consider the Protestant alternative to the infallible Church-the infallible Book. 'The Bible,' said Chillingworth, is the religion of Protestants."1

Plato long ago exposed the necessary limitations of the written word as a guide. When they are once written down,' he says, 'words are tumbled about anywhere

1 The words are written on his tombstone, but they do not deserve to be perpetuated, for they are false. Protestantism is the democracy of religion. Not the Bible, but belief in the inspiration of the individual is the religion of Protestants.

among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not; and if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves.'1 There is another kind of writing, he goes on, graven on the tablets of the mind, of which the written word is no more than an image. This kind is alive; it has a soul; and it can defend itself. The wisdom of these utterances has been amply proved by the history of the doctrine of Inspiration in the Christian Church.2

It was not till long after the Captivity that the religion of Israel became the religion of a Book. While prophetism flourished, the living word of the prophet was more than the written scroll; but no sooner had the fount of prophecy began to run dry than rigid and mechanical views of inspiration began to be applied to the sacred literature. The canonisation of the Law, which began in 621, was accomplished for all time in 444 B.C. The historical books, called the former prophets,' obtained nearly their final form during the exile, but the text was not inviolable till long afterwards. The list of prophetical books, the latter prophets,' was closed about 200 B.C., according to Cornill. The third section of the Canon contains second century writings, but they were all supposed to be much earlier. The Canon was practically settled more than a century before the birth of our Lord.4 It excluded certain books, like Ecclesiasticus, which revealed their late origin, while admitting the pseudonymous Daniel and Ecclesiastes. The Book of

1 Plato, Phaedrus, p. 275.

2 There is a remarkable echo of this passage in Milton (Christian Doctrine i. p. 30). 'It is difficult to conjecture the purpose of Providence in committing the writings of the New Testament to such uncertain and varying guardianship, unless it were to teach us that the Spirit which is given to us is a more certain guide than Scripture, whom therefore it is our duty to follow.'

3 Introduction to the Canonical Books of the Old Testament, p. 476. Cf. also Encyclopædia Biblica, p. 665.

4 So Bishop Ryle thinks; but no certainty has been arrived at.

Wisdom can have been excluded only because it was written in Greek. The scribes seem to have acted on the belief that the age of inspired prophecy was now past, and not to have purposely admitted any recent work. The grandson of the son of Sirach does not dare to claim for his grandfather's book so much inspiration as the latter clearly believed himself to have possessed. The Canon was being closed.

But the rigid doctrine of inspiration was not formulated at once, as is shown by the state of the text of the LXX.1 Only by degrees were the other Scriptures raised to the same position as the Law.

Meanwhile, the allegorical method of interpreting Scripture was at once making the written word more august, and removing objections to belief in its divine character. Hatch has shown that this method is Greek in its origin, and goes back as far as the fifth century B.C.2 Plato deprecates it. It would take a long and laborious and not very happy lifetime,' says Socrates, to find the allegorical value of all the old myths. It was, however, pursued by apologists for the Pagan legends; and when the Alexandrian Jews adopted Greek culture, they found the same method serviceable in meeting objections to their own sacred literature. Philo is our great instance of this, which he calls the method of the Greek mysteries.' In his hands 'every living figure who passes across the stage of Scripture ceases for all practical purposes to be himself, and becomes a dim personification. Moses is intelligence; Aaron is speech; Enoch is repentance; Noah righteousness. Abraham is virtue acquired by learning; Isaac is innate virtue; Jacob is virtue obtained by struggle; Lot is sensuality; Ishmael is sophistry; Esau is rude disobedience; Leah is patient virtue; Rachel innocence.' 3 Thus the whole Bible becomes an insipid

1 Sanday, Inspiration, p. 262.

2 Hibbert Lectures, 1888, p. 59.

2 Farrar, History of Interpretation, p. 145.