Art. 12.-THE MEANING OF MODERNISM.

1. Decree of the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition, 'Lamentabili sane exitu,' July 3, 1907.

2. Encyclical, Pascendi dominici gregis,' Sept. 8, 1907. 3. L'Évangile et l'Église. Autour d'un petit Livre. By Alfred Loisy. Paris: Picard, 1902-3

4. Simples Réflexions. Les Évangiles Synoptiques. By Alfred Loisy. Chez l'Auteur: Ceffonds, 1908.

5. Lex Orandi, or Prayer and Creed. A much-abused Letter. Through Scylla and Charybdis. Medievalism, or the old Theology and the new. By George Tyrrell, London: Longmans, 1903-8.

6. Le Réalisme Chrétien et l'Idéalisme Grec. Laberthonnière. Paris: Lethielleux, 1904.

By L. 7. Dogme et Critique. By Édouard le Roy. Fourth edition. Paris: Librairie Bloud, 1907.

8. Quello che vogliamo. Privately printed.

Translated

by A. L. Lilley under the title,What we want; an open Letter to Pius X from a group of priests.' London: Murray, 1907.

9. The Programme of Modernism, a Reply to the Encyclical of Pius X. Translated from the Italian by A. L. Lilley. London: Fisher Unwin, 1908.

10. Modernismus. By Prof. Karl Holl (Berlin). Tübingen: Mohr, 1908.

THE Liberal movement in the Roman Church is viewed by most Protestants with much the same mixture of sympathy and misgiving with which Englishmen regard the ambition of Russian reformers to establish a constitutional government in their country. Freedom of thought and freedom of speech are almost always desirable; but how, without a violent revolution, can they be established in a State which exists only as a centralised autocracy, held together by authority and obedience? This sympathy, and these fears, are likely to be strongest in those who have studied the history of Western Catholicism with most intelligence. From the Edict of Milan to the Encyclical of Pius X, the evolution which ended in papal absolutism has proceeded in accordance with what looks like an inner necessity of growth and decay. The task of predicting the policy of the Vatican is surely

not so difficult as M. Renan suggested, when he remarked to a friend of the present writer, 'The Church is a woman; it is impossible to say what she will do next.' For where is the evidence of caprice in the history of the Roman Church? If any State has been guided by a fixed policy, which has imposed itself inexorably on its successive rulers, in spite of the utmost divergences in their per sonal characters and aims, that State is the Papacy.

Beneath all the eddies which have broken the surface, the great stream has flowed on, and has flowed in one direction. The same logic of events which transformed the constitutional principate of Augustus into the sulta nate of Diocletian and Valentinian, has brought about & parallel development in the Church which inherited the traditions, the policy, and the territorial sphere of the dead Empire. The second World-State which had its seat on the Seven Hills has followed closely in the footsteps of the first. It is not too fanciful to trace, as Harnack has done, the resemblance in detail-Peter and Paul in the place of Romulus and Remus; the bishops and archbishops instead of the proconsuls; the troops of priests and monks as the legionaries; while the Jesuits are the Imperial bodyguard, the protectors and sometimes the masters of the sovereign. One might carry the parallel further by comparing the schism between the Eastern and Western Churches, and the later defection of northern Europe, with the disruption of the Roman Empire in the fourth century; and in the sphere of thought, by comparing the scholastic philosophy and casuistry with the Summa of Roman law in the Digest.'

The fundamental principles of such a government are imposed upon it by necessity. In the first place, progressive centralisation, and the substitution of a graduated hierarchy for popular government, came about as inevitably in the Catholic Church as in the Mediterranean Empire of the Cæsars. The primitive colleges of presbyters soon fell under the rule of the bishops, the bishops under the patriarchs; and then Rome suffered her first great defeat in losing the Eastern

* Bishop Creighton always emphasised this view of Roman Catholicism. The Roman Church,' he wrote, is the most complete expression of Erastianism, for it is not a Church at all, but a state in its organisation; and the worst form of state-an autocracy.' ('Life and Letters,' ii, 375.)

patriarchates, which she could not subjugate. The truncated Church, no longer universal,' found itself obliged to continue the same policy of centralisation, and with such success that, under Innocent III, the triumph of the theocracy seemed complete. The Papacy dominated Europe de facto, and claimed to rule the world de jure. Boniface VIII, when the clouds were already gathering, issued the famous Bull Unam sanctam,' in which he said: 'Subesse Romano pontifici omnes humanas creaturas declaramus, definimus, et pronuntiamus omnino esse de necessitate salutis.' The claim is logical. A theocracy (when religion is truly monotheistic)* must claim to be universal de jure; and its ruler must be the infallibly inspired and autocratic vicegerent of the Almighty. He is the rightful lord of the world, whether he gives a continent to the King of Spain by a stroke of the pen, or whether his secular jurisdiction is limited by the walls of his palace. In the fourteenth century the Pope is already called 'dominus deus noster'-precisely the style in which Martial adulates Domitian. In the Bull of Pius V (1570) the claim of universal dominion is reiterated; it is asserted that the Almighty,

'cui data est omnis in caelo et in terra potestas, unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam, extra quam nulla est salus, uni soli in terris, videlicet apostolorum principi Petro Petrique successori Romano pontifici in potestatis plenitudine tradidit gubernandam.'

But the final victory of infallibilism was the achievement of the nineteenth century Jesuits, who completed the dogmatic apotheosis of the Pope at the moment when the last vestiges of his temporal power were being snatched from him.

Now, a government of this type is always in want of money. The spiritual Roman Empire was as costly an institution as the court and the bureaucracy of Diocletian and his successors. The same necessity which suppressed democracy in the Church drove it to elaborate an oppressive system of taxation, in which every weakness of human nature was systematically exploited for gain, and every morsel of divine grace placed on a tariff. But

* In contrast with 'henotheism' or 'monolatry,' such as the worship of the early Hebrews,

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germinare non poterit. wrescit. . . . Quisquis ab #r, & promissis ecclesiae Habere non potest Deum

whose lives are forfeit es are in no better allible interpreter and to differ from de from her jurisdicI should not believe hureh did not deterwhich a modern ultraWithout the authorit Bible higher than the bsolute monopoly of on the ground that solic succession beyond which heretics deserve,

1

mischief than any pirate

nay more, they subvert I the commonwealth with follow religious differences. ament inflicted on them has sons. Many whom impunity used by these executions to of the heresy which attracts t to end their earthly lives in happiness. Thirdly, it is a kindo remove them from this life. For, › more errors they devise, the more the greater damnation they acquire

vhich are not essential for the safety an absolutist Church will consult the

of its subjects. If the populace are at nd hanker after sensuous ritual, dramatic rich mythology, these must be provided. ctuals,' being few and weak, may be safely r disregarded until their discoveries are y popularised. The pronouncements of the aquisition in the case of Galileo are typical.

eory that the sun is in the centre of the world, tionary, is absurd, false in philosophy, and formally cal, because it is contrary to the express language of Scripture. The theory that the earth is not the centre he world, nor stationary, but that it moves with a daily tion, is also absurd and false in philosophy, and, theologilly considered, it is, to say the least, erroneous in faith.'

The exigencies of despotic government tl us supply the key to the whole policy and history of the Papacy. 'The worst form of State' can only be bolstered up by the worst form of government. The should therefore be no difficulty in distinguishing between the official policy of the Roman See-which has been almost uniformly odious-and the history of the Christian religion in the Latin countries, which has added new lustre to human nature. The Catholic saints did not fly through the air, nor were their hearts pierced with supernatural darts, as the mendacious hagiology of their Church

* Bellarmine, De Laicis,' III, xxi, 22.