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that he understands to represent not religion, but rather temptation" (c. 20). "Whatever opinion any one adopts away from all, or even contrary to all, though the man be a saint and doctor, or even a confessor and martyr, let that take rank among singular and secret and private vapourings; let it have no share in the dignity and authority of a common and public and generally accepted tenet" (c. 28).1

Vincent remarks that this, his canon, has its application at the first rise and earliest stage of a new heretical opinion. "Heresies are not always to be assailed in this way, nor are all heresies thus to be met, but only new and fresh heresies at their first origin." Clearly Vincent's

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'Quidquid universaliter antiquitus Ecclesiam Catholicam tenuisse cognoverit, id solum sibi tenendum credendumque decernit: quidquid vero ab aliquo deinceps uno praeter omnes vel contra omnes novum et inauditum subindici senserit, id non ad religionem sed ad tentationem potius intelligit pertinere” (c. 20). “Quidquid vero quamvis ille sanctus et doctus, quamvis confessor et martyr, praeter omnes aut etiam contra omnes senserit, id inter proprias et occultas et privatas opiniunculas a communis ac publicae ac generalis sententiae auctoritate secretum sit" (c. 28).

2 "Neque semper neque omnes haereses hoc modo impugnandae sunt, sed novitiae recentesque tantummodo cum primum scilicet exoriuntur" (c. 28).

words have no application in our day to such a doctrine as the Immaculate Conception, which was the "common and public and generally accepted tenet" of the greater portion of Christendom for centuries before it was defined. We shall see presently that his words never really bore at all upon that doctrine, not even in the earliest stages of its history -although at that time they might have been quoted against it with some plausibility. What Vincent had in his mind to condemn was something very different from a clearer recognition of the preroga tives of the Holy See or of the Blessed Virgin, as the following passage shows. He represents his adversaries saying: "Come ye silly fools of the common sort called Catholics, and learn the true faith which none but us understands; the truth which has lain hid for many ages, but has recently been laid bare and shown forth: but learn stealthily and secretly you will

1 Dr. Pusey in his Eirenicon, Note B, pp. 351 sq., quotes a number of Bishops, whose replies to Pius IX's inquiries were adverse to the definition of the Immaculate Conception. Of these the Archbishops of Rouen, Bourges, and Dublin, with the Bishops of Evreux and Cervia, and the Vicar-Apostolic of Mysore, ground their objections on the Vincentian canon.

find the lesson interesting. And when you have learnt it, teach it privately, that the world may not hear, that the Church may not know: for to few is it granted to grasp the secret of such a mystery" (c. 21).1

There are Christians in all ages wiser than their mother the Catholic Church. For some she moves not fast enough, for others it is a fault that she moves at all. Vincent's words might well be alleged against views like those put forward by Günther in 1860, and condemned by Pius IX and by the Vatican Council: which (sess. 3, can. 3) anathematized the saying that "in time, by the progress of science, a new sense may have to be assigned to dogmas proposed by the Church, different from that which the Church has hitherto understood and at present understands." But the developments of doctrine in regard of Papal

1 "Venite O insipientes et miseri, qui vulgo Catholici vocamini, et discite veram fidem, quam practer nos nullus intelligit, quae multis ante saeculis latuit, nuper vero revelata et ostensa est: sed discite furtim atque secretim, delectabit enim vos. Cum didisceritis, latenter docete, ne mundus audiat, ne Ecclesia sciat; paucis namque concessum est tanti mysterii capere secretum" (c. 21).

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Infallibility and our Lady's immaculate prerogative not only suffer no hindrance from Vincent's Commonitorium, nay, they are actually allowed for there. We turn to chapter xxiii. of that work. Bishop Gore says: "The whole chapter should be read" (p. 56). We do read the whole, and devour it with appetite, certain words especially which the Bishop has thought unnecessary for quotation. Vincent says, he welcomes development of doctrine, provided it be a true advance of faith, and not a change for the advance of a being is the enlargement of that being upon its own lines, but a change would mean its transformation into something else. If the shape and hue of man is changed into some figure not of its own kind; if there be any addition to the number of limbs, or diminution of that number; then the whole body must either perish, or become a monster, or anyhow be weakened and maimed. Men have the same number of limbs as children. Any constituent parts of man that are brought out as age ripens into maturity, are already put forth in him beforehand germinally; thus in elderly people there is no new feature afterwards produced that had not previously been

latent in them while they were still children." I

Dogma, then, is not a set of dead crystallized notions, only the verbal setting of which can ever be changed, as though one were to move a collection of minerals from one case and rearrange them in another: such is the view of Protestantism and Jansenism, ever unavailingly harking back from the living present to early ages; and such I regret to say is the Protestant attitude assumed in this inquiry by Dr. Pusey, Canon Liddon, and Bishop Gore. But according to Vincent of Lerins, according to John Henry Newman, and according to the rule which has guided the Catholic Church in her definitions, dogma lives. and thrives as an infant growing to man

"Ut vere profectus sit ille fidei, non permutatio; siquidem ad profectum pertinet ut in semetipsam unaquaeque res amplificetur, ad permutationem vero ut aliquid ex uno in aliud permutetur : quia si humana species in aliquam deinceps non sui generis vertatur effigiem, aut certe addatur quippiam membrorum numero vel detrahatur, necesse est ut totum corpus vel intercidat, vel prodigiosum fiat, vel certe debilitetur. Quot parvulorum artus, tot virorum: et si qua illa sunt quae aevi maturioris aetate pariuntur, jam in seminis rationc proserta sunt, ut nihil novum postea proferatur in senibus quod non in pueris jam antea latitaverit” (c. 23.)

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