they must prove the spirit by the doctrine, and not the doctrine by the spirit. Hence, no private spirit is of any authority, even to the individual who professes to have it, unless it heareth the Apostles; and, as we have seen, the proof that it heareth the Apostles is that it gathereth to the Apostolic communion. Hence, we are to take for our principle, The church proves the doctrine, the doctrine the private spirit; not the private spirit proves the doctrine, and the doctrine the church or communion. But it is due to the Observer to say that it has attempted to answer, in part, one or two of the objections we urged against its private witness. We objected, If private illumination be the witness to the fact of revelation, those not privately illuminated have not the evidence necessary to warrant faith in the revelation. But no blame can attach to a man for not believing what is not sufficiently evidenced to warrant belief. Therefore, those not privately illuminated are not to blame for not believing the revelation Almighty God has made. But whoever does not believe is to blame, for unbelief is admitted to be not merely an effect of sin, but a sin itself. Therefore, there must be, independent of private illumination, sufficient motives of credibility to warrant belief. To the argument the editor does not reply; he merely alleges, that, if any are not privately illuminated, "the fault is their own. All may have the promptings of the Spirit, if they will. The grace of God which bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men teaching," &c. - p. 327. As to the soundness of our own argument, we will here raise no question; it will suffice to show that the editor of the Observer has not refuted it. The position, that it is their own fault if not privately illuminated, is not proved. The illumination is a free gift, not dependent on our will, nor meritable by us. It is not due us in the order of nature, as something which God in our nature promises us. It must, then, be proved that Almighty God has promised it in the order of grace to all who comply with the conditions of its reception which he has instituted; or we can have no more right to say that it is our own fault if we have it not, than we should have to say it was the fault of the primitive believers that they were not all inspired as apostles and evangelists. But this the editor does not prove. The fact alleged, that all may have "the promptings of the Spirit, if they will," if admitted, does not prove the assertion; for there is a wide disparity between "the promptings of the Spirit" and the private illumination, which is a re-revelation of the whole word of God, and by which one is able to say, infallibly, what is or is not the word of God originally revealed. To prompt is not to illumine, but simply to incite or move to action. But, in point of fact, the promptings of the Spirit are not contingent on our will; for they must precede the motion of the will as its necessary conditions. The Spirit does not prompt us because we will that it should prompt us, nor because we will what is pleasing to God; but it prompts and assists us, that we may will what is pleasing to God. To deny this would be to fall into the Pelagian heresy. - The text quoted from St. Paul, Tit. ii. 11, 12, if it proves any thing to the purpose, proves too much. If the editor understands by the word grace the private illumination in question, which, which, by the way, is not its meaning, and relies on the fact that it is asserted to have appeared unto all men, it proves that all are specially and infallibly inspired, which obviously is not the fact, as he himself admits; for, if it were, no man could err as to what is and what is not the word to be believed. But, assuming that he so intends to understand the text, we demand his authority for saying that the grace spoken of is the private illumination in question. Will he allege the fact, that the grace is said to be teaching, &c.? This will not avail; because he must prove what it teaches is the word of God we are commanded to believe. But this the text itself does not assert. The text simply asserts that "the grace of God our Saviour hath appeared to all men, instructing us, that, renouncing impiety and worldly desires, we should live soberly, piously, and justly in this present world," that is, certain practical duties which presuppose a knowledge of the faith, as already possessed. But waive this. The grace teaches how? Through the body of pastors and teachers ? Then the text makes for us. By private illumination? Where are the proofs ? We objected, again, to the private witness, that, if this were the witness, the fact whether any one embraces the faith or not could never be known out of the bosom of the individual. The Observer replies, that it is not necessary that it should be. If there is to be a public faith, it is necessary, for reasons already assigned; and, if we may believe the blessed Apostle, according to the order actually adopted, it is necessary to be known, even if there is to be only a private faith; because private faith must find its authority in the public faith. The Observer asks, p. 327, "How can it be known whether this or that individual will finally be saved?" Whether this or that individual will finally be saved is not necessary to be known; because the fact whether he will or not is not a fact all men are required to believe, as an article of faith. The sneer, that "the Romish Church may devise arbitrary rules by which it may pretend to know who are sound in the faith and who are not, who are going to heaven and who to hell" (p. 328), may do for a writer who feels himself as little bound, in an argument, to tell the truth as to observe the rules of logic; but its force is all in its malice. The Catholic Church claims to be able to say what is sound faith, but not who actually is sound in the faith, any farther than the internal faith is manifested by the external profession and conduct. She claims to be able to say what one must do in order to be saved; but not whether this or that inIdividual will or will not be saved. The doctrine the editor would charge upon the Church belongs to his own Evangelical school. We do not, as Catholics, know whether we deserve love or hatred. We know if we keep the commandments we shall enter into life, and that we can keep them if we will; but whether we do keep them in the sense demanded, or whether we shall persevere unto the end in keeping them, we know not, and cannot know unless by a special revelation. We hope, but take heed lest we fall. But, if we object to the Observer's doctrine of private illumination, we by no means pretend that divine grace even to enlighten the understanding is not essential to the elicitation of faith. Faith is a theological virtue, and no theological virtue is possible by mere natural force. Faith demands the supernatural elevation of the subject as well as the supernatural revelation of the object. It would demand this, even if we were in the integrity of nature, and had suffered no damage from sin. It demands it, then, a fortiori, in our actual state; for, in consequence of sin, our will is turned away from God, and our understanding is darkened. We do not love the truth; we are not able to perceive and appreciate the motives of credibility. We have ears, but we hear not; hearts, but we understand not. Let no man dream that by mere natural force, by mere intellectual acuteness, strength, or effort, he can elicit an act of faith. Faith is the gift of God. But what is termed the grace of faith is not an inward revelation of the word, is not needed to propound the word, to supply the defect of evidence, or to strengthen, in themselves considered, the motives of credibility; but to incline the will to the truth, and to strengthen the intellect, to remove the scales which blind the eyes of the mind, so as to enable it to see and appreciate the motives of credibility which are already furnished, and which are amply sufficient to warrant the most undoubting belief. These motives are in themselves sufficient to meet the demands of reason, and ought to command our assent, and we have no excuse for not yielding it. When we do not yield it, the fault is ours; not in the defect of evidence, but in the perversity of our will, which hinders the grace of God from flowing into the understanding, and producing that state of mind in which to believe is easy, and without which to believe is morally impossible. But this gracious assistance, which inclines the will and elevates the understanding, is something very different from the private inspiration or illumination against which we have reasoned. The one merely puts us in the condition to believe a revelation already made and sufficiently accredited; the other is a new revelation, superseding the external revelation, the external evidence which accredits it, and becoming itself both the word to be believed and the authority on which it is to be believed: The grace we allege to be necessary is everywhere promised us in the Holy Scriptures; the private illumination we reject is nowhere promised us, and we have no reason to expect it. We have now replied to all that the editor of the Observer has suggested, or that is implied in his suggestions, which has or can have any bearing on the question at issue. We have re plied fairly and fully, because we have wished not merely to refute him, but to discuss the general subject, and place it in its true light before our readers. We shall expect a fair and logical reply to what we have said; and if the editor of the Observer do not give a fair and logical reply, we shall not hold ourselves bound to take any notice of what he may allege. It becomes neither him nor us to discuss any subject unfairly, for neither of us can, we should hope, feel any complacency in a victory won at the expense of candor or of truth. As to the portion of the Observer's article which attacks the Catholic Church, since it has no bearing on the real question at issue, we do not hold ourselves bound by the rules of logic to reply to it. The question at issue, we have shown, is not what is possible with the Roman Catholic Church, but what is possible without it. Should the editor of the Observer prove that faith is not elicitable by means of the Roman Catholic Church, he would not advance a single step in his argument; he would be no nearer proving that faith can be elicited without it, than when he commenced. To follow him in his attacks on the Church would only be giving him a chance to change the issue, and make the question turn on the merits of Catholicity, and not on the merits of Protestantism, to which we will neither contribute nor consent. He promised to refute our argument, and we hold him to his promise. If he succeeds in proving that he can have the faith required without the Catholic Church, he proves all that it is necessary to prove in order to refute us. If he does not prove this, no matter what else he proves, he does not refute us. When he shall admit that he cannot prove this, and frankly abandon his Protestantism, we will meet all the difficulties he can allege in the way of eliciting faith by means of the Roman Catholic Church. But till then, he has no right to call upon us, nor are we bound by the nature of the question at issue to meet them. Were it not that we will not consent to divert the discussion from the point we have made, we could easily remove all the difficulties the editor of the Observer has suggested; for they are all founded in mistake as to the actual facts of ecclesiastical history, or misapprehension of Catholic faith and theology. When he speaks of the number of books which a Catholic must read in order to ascertain what he is to believe, he denies the distinction between faith and theology to which we called his attention, and overlooks the distinction between explicit faith and implicit faith, which was recognized in our definition of faith, and which he will find explained in the early part of our present article. The whole Catholic faith may be found in the catechism, and may be learned without any book at all; for the Catholic Church does not, like Protestantism, make the knowledge of letters the condition sine qua non of salvation. Our friend forgot himself, and took up against his own side. It is not necessary to salvation that we believe explicitly all the truths Almighty God has revealed, but that we believe them explicitly or implicitly. He who believes the Church is from God and infallible, and who is in the disposition of mind and heart to believe whatever she proposes, believes, implicitly at least, the whole revelation of God, and in its "exact sense"; for, if infallible, the Church can propose it in no other than its exact sense, as it lies in the mind of the Spirit.” * * To believe something explicitly is to believe it under the proper |