The Faith of Our Fathers

not so earnestly proposed, may be overlooked, misunderstood, called in question; consequently, it may happen that some articles are now universally believed in the Church, in regard to which doubts and controversies existed in former ages, even within the bosom of the Church. “Those who err [pg 014] in belief do but serve to bring out more clearly the soundness of those who believe rightly. For there are many things which lay hidden in the Scriptures , and when heretics were cut off they vexed the Church of God with disputes; then the hidden things were brought to light , and the will of God was made known.” (St. Augustine on the 54th Psalm, No. 22.) This kind of progress in faith we can and do admit; but the truth is not changed thereby. As Albertus Magnus says: “It would be more correct to style this the progress of the believer in the faith than of the faith in the believer.” To show that this kind of progress is to be admitted only two things are to be proved: 1: That some divinely revealed truths should be contained in the Apostolic teaching implicitly, less clearly explained, less urgently pressed . And this can be denied only by those who hold that the Bible is the only rule of Faith, that it is clear in every part, and could be readily understood by all from the beginning. This point I shall consider farther on in this work. 2. That the Church can, in process of time, as occasions arise, declare, explain, urge . This is proved not only from the Scriptures and the Fathers, but even from the conduct of Protestants themselves, who often boast of the care and assiduity with which they “search the Scriptures,” and study out their meaning, even now that so many Commentaries on the sacred Text have been published. And why? To obtain more light; to understand better what is revealed. It would appear from this that the only question which could arise on this point is, not about the possibility of arriving by degrees at a clearer understanding of the true sense of revelation, as circumstances may call for successive developments, [pg 015] but about the authority of the Church to propose and to determine that sense. So that, after all, we are always brought back to the only real point of division and dispute…