Synopsis
NO Christian denies that Christ founded One Church, and only One. No Christian denies that this Church was to be Catholic, i.e. universal, destined to embrace all mankind.No Christian denies that this Church is Holy, offering the means of sanctification to the believer.But here the agreement ends, for there are not a few Protestants who deny the fourth characteristic mark of Christ’s Church, viz., that she must be Apostolic. They maintain that Paul preached not the same doctrine as Peter, and that both differed from John and James. In short, they maintain that already in the Apostolic times doctrinal corruption began to spread within the pale of the Church, and continued in her ever since, till the so-called Reformers set themselves to purify her, followed by their Rationalistic successors, sweeping away whatever of dust and cobwebs they still consider to hang about. Now, the individuality and temperament of the Apostles were, indeed, different, as there are not, never have been, and never will be, two persons exactly alike in their mode of thinking and of expressing their thoughts. Thus the Apostles, though holding the same truth, look at it from different points of view, as you may look at an object from different sides. So it was wisely arranged by God, in order to exhibit His truth in the most comprehensive way. The depth of truth can never be exhausted, for it is conterminous with God, who is the truth (St. John xiv. 6). Our idea does not comprehend and encompass the fulness of any divine truth. It is the nature of a finite being that it cannot comprehend an infinite being, nor an infinite inexhaustible truth, or else the finite embracing the infinite would be greater than the latter, and consequently both change places —the individual would become God, and God would become the individual’s creature. But what we mean to affirm is this, that the individual must be able to form a correct idea of the truth revealed by God for the benefit and guidance of man. There is a great difference between a correct idea and a complete idea. A correct idea of truth is indispensable to us for attaining our end; an incorrect idea is a wrong way that cannot lead to our destination. A complete and exhaustive idea of divine truth is impossible to man, since the finite capacity of man is not commensurate to the infinite comprehensiveness of divine thought. Thus the Apostles give us different (but by no means conflicting') aspects of the same truth—like the rays of the sun converging into the same centre—they are all correct, and tend towards completing the one unfathomable idea of divine conception (if we may transfer this human expression to divine intuition). Rationalism does, not see this harmony of Apostolic teaching, because Rationalism is like a prism, the dispersive powers of which divide the ray of light, whereas Orthodoxy gathers the different rays of the one light and brings them back to its centre of unity.
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