unsay of what was magisterially taught, there is much more to say; and the addition, like a considerable addition to a building, may give the whole structure. quite a new aspect. But it is an addition on the same lines, rei in semetipsam amplificatio, to borrow Vincent of Lerins's terminology, and therefore should rather be called a "completion" than an “addition." Such also in its way is any genuine development of doctrine that takes place. under the influence of the Holy Ghost in the Church on earth. What the Fathers said with one common Catholic consent, is never unsaid in any later stage of Catholic teaching, but it is said

more

philosophically, more completely, with still further embodiment of Catholic truth, and with a nearer approximation to "the truth as it is in Jesus" (Eph. iv. 21), to that "breastplate of doctrine and truth" which was upon the breast of Aaron at his going into the holy place before the Lord" (Exod. xxviii. 30), but is much more in the Heart of Jesus, our "great high priest who hath penetrated the heavens" (Heb. iv. 14), "in whom are all treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden" (Col. ii. 3).

§ 2. Consentient Witness

"When Tertullian confronts the Gnostics with the consent of the different Churches who derived their life and doctrine from the Apostles, in a creed the opposite of theirs; when he bids them attend to this consent of Corinth, Ephesus, and Rome; when he asks in one of his incomparable epigrams whether it is probable that so many Churches of such importance should have hit by an accident of error upon an identical creed; and adds that what is found the same amongst so many can owe its identity only to its being received by all from a single source; it is obvious that he is viewing the Church's authority as based on the convergence of independent testimonies. . . . Here then is a clear intelligible principle of consentient witness, eliminating local and individual peculiarities, and it must be allowed to be the principle of the Fathers in general and of Ecumenical Councils. . . . Thus when the Popes began to speak of the secret stores' of divine truth (arcana) committed to the See of Peter, upon which she can draw so as to be the central oracular voice of Christendom, giving replies to the Church in her need, they are beginning to speak in a quite new strain and to give the Church's authority a new

meaning. And it must be observed that this Papal idea of a central voice, while it is the natural expression of the idea of promulgative authority, and falls in with the general imperialist tendencies in the Roman Church, is disastrous to the Church's functions as a consentient witness" (pp. 40-44).

These pages are almost the best thing in the book. Before, however, discussing them and the important truth which they contain, I propose two questions-

And

(a) Suppose this method of consentient witness" were tried at the present day, should all bodies of professing Christians be called as witnesses ? if any, e.g., the Dissenters, should be left out as schismatic, upon what principle? The principle of communion with one central authority is easy and obvious, but that principle cannot be accepted by Bishop Gore.

(b) To how many truths of " common Christianity" would all the beneficed. clergymen of the Church of England at this hour bear a "consentient witness"?

I offer no answer to these questions, but, passing them by, I admit that the consentient witness of a number of episcopal Churches, all in communion with one another, forms a theological evidence

of the highest value. I further affirm that this evidence of consentient witness has ever been carefully collected and regarded with high appreciation by the Roman See. In the first eight centuries we continually read of the Roman Pontiff calling local councils of the bishops nearest to hand, and promulgating doctrines upon their concurrent advice, sacro approbante concilio, as the phrase in after-time came to run. Let us come to post-tridentine times. In the early eighteenth century Pope Clement XI was occupied with the Jansenist controversy. Never was wolf in sheep's clothing so cunningly arrayed as the Jansenist. Antiquity, piety, logical cohesion of doctrine, rigour of discipline, elegant phraseology, the adhesion of many earnest souls-above all, the great name of St. Augustine-all these advantages were claimed for Jansenism, and claimed with no little show of reason. What did Pope Clement? He sat on no oracular seat alone away from others. He called meeting after meeting of cardinals, bishops, and theologians. He diligently ascertained the traditional mind of the Church, and then published it to the world in the Bulls Vineam Domini and Unigenitus. Jansenism was marked for all time as a

heresy. Pius IX took the opinion of all the bishops of the Church before defining the Immaculate Conception; they testified, as their extant letters expressly state, to the faith of their several sees. Newman says somewhere that a Pope does not pen infallible decrees in his travelling dress at a wayside inn. He means that, in the ordinary providence of God, the Papal prerogative of Infallibility is not exercised in isolation from all advisers. No doubt, the Pope alone is judge how much consultation is necessary in each particular case before speaking authoritatively; and no utterance, otherwise bearing all the marks of being ex cathedrâ, can be set aside on the plea of its having been hastily uttered without sufficient advice taken. But though that is so, the Popes in the past have always been solicitous to collect the concurrent witness of the Churches before deciding publicly on points of faith; and no Catholic who knows Rome has any doubt but that the same will be their procedure to the end of time. The head of a body does not act in isolation.

Moreover, what the Pope defines is not truth simply, but revealed truth-the faith once given to the saints (Jude 3), the faith kept in the tradition of the Church, and