Apologetics

Walshe states the aim of the present volume as a supplement to his earlier Principles of Christian Apologetics, and answers Huxley's charge that science and supernaturalism are at war. He argues that the evolutionary views of Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine leave room for an evolution from inorganic matter to the body of man, surveys the human fossil record of the Pleistocene as catalogued by Sir Arthur Keith, and draws four conclusions reconciling the antiquity of man with Genesis. He closes by answering Dean Inge and Professor J. Arthur Thomson on the validity of the transcendent inference, and explains his debt to Garrigou-Lagrange and his reasons for re-arranging the lectures.

Defines Catholic Apologetics as the rational defence of Divine Revelation, conducted by reason sub directione fidei, and locates it within Fundamental Theology alongside the theological loci. Sets out the theoretical and positive divisions of the subject as suggested by the Vatican Council's constitution de fide catholica, and reviews the erroneous methods condemned by the Church — those of the early Protestants, of Liberal Protestantism, and of Modernism as censured in Pascendi. Argues that the analytico-synthetic method of Catholic Apologetics answers to the inductive-deductive method of the physical sciences, illustrating this from Newton's law of gravitation and the determination of the orbit of Mars, and closes with a table of the motives of credibility.

Traces the unbroken appeal to the motives of credibility — external-extrinsic (A), external-intrinsic (B), and internal (C) — from the prophets of the Old Testament through Christ and the Apostles, the Fathers, and the Scholastics. Surveys the adversaries and apologists of two later periods: from the Reformation to Kant (Socinians, the spiritualistic, empirical, and biblical schools of rationalism; Protestant and Catholic apologists), and from Kant onwards (idealists, pantheists, eclectics, positivists; mythicism and the Tübingen school; Schleiermacher, Ritschl, Sabatier; the semi-rationalists Hermes and Günther and the traditionalists Bautain and Bonnetty). Closes with an account of the new apologetic of Blondel and Laberthonnière and a fourfold criticism of it.

Establishes that the primary notions and principles of human reason possess both an ontological and a transcendental value, since knowledge of supernatural truth is impossible without a foundation of natural truth. Defends the ontological value directly, by explaining that primary notions are intelligible per se and sensible only per accidens, and indirectly, by shewing that its denial makes object, idea, principle and intellect alike absurd. Defends the transcendental value through St. Thomas's doctrine of analogy, distinguishing univocal, equivocal and analogous things, analogy of proportion or attribution from analogy of proportionality, and metaphorical from real proportionality with and without determined distance. Contrasts the nominalist agnosticism of Maimonides and the exaggerated realism of Duns Scotus with the moderate realism of St. Thomas, and closes by setting out the seven first principles — Contradiction, Identity, Substance, Reason of Being, Efficient Cause, Final Cause and Change — under the four causes.

States and then criticises the doctrine that the Principle of all things is not eternal nor distinct from the world but a constant self-determining evolution. Article I sets out the negative and positive elements of the general theory, the empirical evolution or Monism of Haeckel, and the idealistic evolution running from Gnosticism through the pantheism of Spinoza, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, with Hegel's accommodation of the dogmas of creation, Trinity, Incarnation and Redemption and four objections to his system. Article II shews that Pantheistic Evolution denies in turn the principles of Efficient Cause, Final Cause, Change, Reason of Being, Substance, and Contradiction and Identity, and answers two objections drawn from twentieth-century writers concerning motion and immobility, and the addition of the finite to the Infinite.

Defines Agnosticism as the system admitting knowledge of phenomena alone, traces the name to Huxley's own account of its coining, and identifies its foundation in the denial of the ontological and transcendental value of primary notions and principles. Distinguishes empirical Agnosticism — Hume, Mill, Spencer, Comte, Ribot and William James — from the idealistic Agnosticism descending from Kant through the liberal Protestants Schleiermacher, Ritschl, Harnack and Sabatier to the Modernists Le Roy, Tyrrell and Loisy. Offers a sixfold critique of the empirical form and a threefold critique of the idealistic. Then defines Rationalism as the claim that reason is autonomous, roots it in Naturalism, and sets out its five fruits against the five corresponding goods of the Supernatural Order.

The first half of Walshe's résumé and critique of Bergson, taking the cardinal principle that being does not exist but all is becoming, and following its metaphysical, logical and criteriological consequences. Treats in turn Time and la durée; Human Freedom, where Bergson's refusal to define liberty yields a description at once too narrow and too wide; the Union of Soul and Body, where the attempt to reduce differences of kind to differences of degree is contrasted with the scholastic union of contraries without identity; Pure Becoming, set against the Eleatic, Ionian and Peripatetic solutions; and the Evolution of Worlds, where Bergson's criticisms of Spencer, Darwin, neo-Darwinism and Lamarckism are allowed their force before his own élan vital is shewn to be an action without an agent, a creation without a creator, and a movement without direction or end.

The second half of the Bergson résumé. Takes Perception, where Bergson and the New Realists are found to differ very little from the scholastic account; Intellectual Knowledge, answering the three charges that the intellect cannot grasp movement, cannot understand life, and can grasp only discontinuity, and defending the concept against the twin objections of morcelage and solidification; and Intuition, which is shewn to divide mental life in two and to need the concepts it was meant to replace. Concludes with the problem of contingence and human destiny — order, the pseudo-idea of nothing, and the Bergsonian soul as a movement without pretence to immortality — and summarises the six essential errors of the system together with five reasons for its popularity.

Opens Section II with the idea of supernatural Revelation. Distinguishes revelation substantially supernatural from revelation supernatural only in mode, and Revelation from Inspiration, then gives a scientific definition drawn from the four causes — final, efficient, formal and material — and expounds each in turn, noting that the Church's infallible teaching is a condition of Revelation rather than a cause. Reviews the heterodox notions that err per excessum in the pseudo-supernaturalism of early Protestants and Catholic traditionalists, and per defectum in the rationalism of Hegel and Kant and the semi-rationalism of Hermes and Günther. Analyses the term locutio as an analogy of proportion, real rather than metaphorical, and closes with St. Thomas on the art of teaching and a fivefold division of the kinds of Revelation.

Defines a mystery strictly as a truth above but not against reason, bearing three marks, and a dogma as a revealed truth promulgated by the Church. Sets the rationalist, Modernist and semi-rationalist accounts against the Vatican Council's condemnation of the demonstrability of mysteries. Divides mysteries natural and supernatural, hidden as to existence or as to essence, and notes with Huxley the ubiquity of natural mysteries in the physical, biological, psychological and metaphysical orders. Shews that supernatural mysteries, though incomprehensible and undemonstrable, are not unintelligible but analogically knowable, and are grasped formally only by the illumination of the Holy Ghost. Sets out their inter-connexion under the Trinity, and closes with the immutability of dogma and the threefold development of doctrine, which teaches nove and not nova.

Examines the nature of the Supernatural and of the supernatural order, distinguishing the pantheist, deist and semi-rationalist denials and the errors of naturalism, semi-rationalism, pelagianism and pseudo-supernaturalism, together with the determinist and agnostic accounts of miracle. Defines nature as essence with its passive and active powers, exigencies and merit, and the Supernatural as that which exceeds those limits while remaining suited to nature's perfectible capacity; it is above nature, not against it. Divides the Supernatural by formal, final and efficient cause into the essentially and the modally supernatural, with corollaries on the miracle, on the kinds of supernatural knowledge, and on the gratiae gratis datae enumerated by St. Paul. Closes by setting the natural and supernatural orders side by side under end, agents, means and law.

Opens Section III by proving from reason that supernatural revelation is possible, even of those truths of religion which reason could reach unaided — since the Vatican Council holds there is a moral necessity that such truths be known by all, quickly, with certitude and without admixture of error. Argues by syllogism that an action not repugnant in object, subject or agent is possible, and shews that immediate revelation is repugnant in none of the three: truths are indifferent as between discovery and instruction, the autonomy of reason is relative rather than absolute, and God's intervention involves no interference with natural law. Then defends mediate revelation, on the ground that God governs men by men so as to communicate the dignity of causality to creatures, and that grace perfects nature rather than displacing it.

Defends the existence in God of an order of supernatural truth and life against the rationalist, pelagian and Baianist denials. Since the Supernatural cannot be known naturally either in itself or in its effects, no direct proof is possible; the argument proceeds indirectly from the twofold limit of human knowledge — extension, which comes from the objective medium, and intension or penetrative power, which comes from the vigour and training of the faculty. Demonstrates by syllogism that no created intellect can know from its natural objective medium the truths of God's intimate life, with St. Thomas's direct proof from immateriality; that the supernatural order likewise exceeds the penetrative power and the exigency of the creature; and that natural and supernatural truth can neither conflict nor be pantheistically confused, being predicated of God analogically rather than equivocally or univocally. Closes with an examination of the Ontologism of Malebranche, of Ubaghs, and of Rosmini.

Answers the objections of St. Thomas, Scotus and the Modernists to the possibility of revealed mysteries, arguing that since elevation to the Supernatural is itself supernatural its possibility can be neither proved nor disproved by reason alone — to disprove it one would have to show the absurdity of one of four conditions, and none of the four can be shewn absurd. Establishes the existence of an obediential capacity in human nature from the adequate object of the intellect, distinguishing objective from subjective capacity, active from passive, and natural from obediential, with Bannez's threefold specific, generic and analogical capacity. Then treats the natural desire to see God, distinguishing natural from supernatural, innate from elicited, and necessary from free appetite, and weighs the Augustinian, Scotist, Cajetanian and Thomist accounts against the error of Baius and the Jansenists.

Closes Section III by holding the mean between the rationalists, who deny that Revelation is even suitable, and the traditionalists and fideists of de Maistre, de Bonald and Lamennais, who make it absolutely necessary even for natural truth. Distinguishes absolute from hypothetical necessity, and within the latter the strict from the moral, to establish three positions: that revelation of the natural truths of Religion is not absolutely necessary, since reason can reach God's existence from created things; that it is morally necessary for the totality of those truths, confirmed from the history of philosophy from Heracleitus to Comte and from the history of nations and religions; and that revelation of supernatural mysteries is strictly though hypothetically necessary. Concludes with the suitability of man's gratuitous elevation, and asks whether revelation would have been morally necessary in a state of pure nature.

Opens Section IV with the Catholic notion of Faith as a supernatural, most certain and free assent given on the authority of God revealing, set against the pseudo-supernaturalism of the early Protestants and fideists and the naturalism of Kant, the liberal Protestants, the Modernists, the pelagians, semi-rationalists and semi-immanentists. Analyses the act of Faith from the standpoint of object — material and formal, primary and secondary, with the preambles of Faith — and of subject, distinguishing doubt, opinion and certitude, and defending the intrinsic supernaturality of Faith against Scotists and Molinists. Weighs the solutions of St. Thomas, de Lugo and Suarez to the compatibility of freedom with certitude. Then traces Revelation as the formal motive of infused Faith through Scripture, the Fathers, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, St. Thomas himself, and the history of the question from Scotus to Joannes a S. Thoma, proving the Thomist position from objective infallibility, subjective firmness and essential supernaturality, and answering three objections.

Closes Section IV with the Catholic notion of credibility — the aptitude for belief of truths which from most certain signs appear to reason to have been revealed by God — against the pseudo-supernaturalism of the early Protestants and fideists and the naturalism of Kant, the liberal Protestants, the Modernists, Hermes and the semi-immanentists. Argues that reason must know the fact of Revelation so far as it is modally supernatural, that moral certitude suffices and is attainable by all with the help of grace, and that internal grace inclines the attention and corrects the intention without supplying any deficiency in the external proposition. Sets out the twelve acts of intellect and will in the genesis of an act of Faith, distinguishes the judgment of credibility from the speculative-practical and practico-practical judgments of credentity, and shews that an act of Faith is not the conclusion of an apologetic syllogism. Reconciles the reasonable obedience of Faith with its obscurity, freedom and supernaturality, and ends with Monsignor Moyes's eight-point summary of Catholic teaching on Divine Faith.

Opens Section V by setting out the motives of credibility in general — the three qualities each must possess, and their arrangement as external or internal to the consciousness, the external dividing again into extrinsic (miracles and prophecy) and intrinsic (sublimity of doctrine and the wonderful life of the Church). Criticises the method of Immanence for reducing Faith to religious experience and granting miracles only a symbolic value, and holds that individual internal motives yield probability alone, while the universal internal motives taken together give moral certitude. Then treats the external-intrinsic motives as the Vatican Council presents them, expounding in turn the purity and sublimity of doctrine, the sanctity of Founder, Apostles and Martyrs, the admirable propagation of the Faith, its fecundity for the individual, the family and society, its Catholic unity and its unshaken stability. Closes with the relation of the motives to one another and the resulting unity of Apologetics.

The first half of Walshe's treatment of miracles, covering their nature and their possibility. Defines a miracle with St. Thomas as a sensible fact produced by God in the world beyond the order of action of entire created nature, distinguishes it from extraordinary natural facts, diabolic deceptions and ordinary providential works, and sets out its six properties and its threefold division by substance, subject and manner of action. Reviews the determinist, deist and agnostic denials, including those of Spinoza, Leibnitz, Malebranche, Poincaré, Blondel and Le Roy. Proves the possibility of a miracle by St. Thomas's syllogism from the distinction between absolute and hypothetical necessity, and answers Hume's objection by distinguishing the suspension of a natural law from its violation, together with objections drawn from the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the Conservation of Energy.

The second half of the treatment of miracles. Answers Renan, Kant and Le Roy on whether a miracle can be discerned, distinguishing metaphysical, physical and moral certitude and their degrees. Meets the objection that we do not know all the powers of nature, first with the reply of recent Apologists and then with a deeper solution: we know negatively what nature cannot do, and certain effects — creation, immediate change of being as such, immediate action on the intellectual soul — belong to God alone. Applies this to miracles of the first, second and third order, and sets out Benedict XIV's seven physical conditions of a true miraculous cure together with the seven moral circumstances. Treats the discernment of a miracle as to its real existence, then false miracles under magic, spiritism and hypnotism, and closes with the probative force of a miracle as a most certain sign of Divine Revelation.

Closes Section V with prophecy. Traces the word through De Quincey and the Greek and Hebrew etymologies, and defines prophecy strictly as the infallible foretelling of a future contingent event which can be certainly foreseen by supernatural light alone — the proper object being things distant by indetermination rather than by place or by want of knowledge. Answers the rationalist reduction of prophecy to moral conviction in Sabatier, Spinoza and Renan, and sets out the kinds of prophecy by extent of knowledge, by the nature of the event foretold, and by the mode of cognition. Proves the possibility of prophecy from God's eternal prescience without prejudice to freedom, and its discernibility from chance and from fortuitously verified conjecture through five principles governing chance occurrence. Ends with the probative force of prophecy as a Divine seal confirming Revelation.

Opens Section VI. Weighs the progressive method against the regressive, which sets out from the life of the Church and works back to the testimony of Christ, and concludes that the two should be united, giving the plan of the remainder of the treatise. Then turns to the historical authority of the four Gospels, distinguishing the questions of genuineness, integrity and historicity from that of Inspiration, and the extrinsic method from the intrinsic — noting with Leo XIII in Providentissimus Deus that critics relying on the internal method alone merely confirm their own à priori views, as Harnack and Loisy each did. Reviews the naturalism of Paulus, the mythism of Strauss, the evolutionism of the Tübingen school and the modern critical school, sets out the rulings of the Biblical Commission, and closes with the authorship and dating of the first three Gospels, the two-source hypothesis, and the testimony of Papias as read by Westcott and Lightfoot.

Establishes the genuineness of the four Gospels from extrinsic testimony — Clement, the Didache, Barnabas, Ignatius, Hermas, Polycarp and Papias in the first century; Justin, Tatian, the Muratorian Canon, Irenæus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria and Origen in the second — together with the admissions of the Gnostics, Marcion and Celsus. Confirms it by intrinsic criteria, including Rackham's catalogue of St. Luke's exact titles for magistrates throughout the Empire, and the fivefold internal evidence that the fourth Evangelist was a Jew, an eye-witness, an Apostle, and John the son of Zebedee. Defends the substantial integrity of the text, and answers the hypotheses of hallucination, wilful deceit and gradual idealisation, before meeting the Modernist objections to the historicity of the facts and of the discourses of the Fourth Gospel.

Answers the rationalist denials of Wellhausen, Schmidt and Wrede that Christ ever claimed to be the Messiah, and the milder view of Weiss and Loisy that the consciousness came only late. Explains the word Messiah in its Hebrew, Septuagint and Vulgate forms, and shews how the Jews had corrupted the notion into that of a political deliverer, which is why Christ disclosed Himself gradually and enjoined silence on those He healed. Then follows the progressive manifestation through two stages: the beginning of the ministry, in its public declarations and private teaching to Andrew, Philip, Nathaniel, the Baptist's messengers, Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman; and the last year of His life, through Peter's confession, the discourses in the Temple, the triumphal entry, the answer to the high-priest during the Passion, and the words to the disciples at Emmaus.

Opens the synthesis of Christ's teaching against the Modernist claim that He taught no body of doctrine. Article I gathers the testimony of the Synoptics and of St. John on God the Creator, on the Fatherhood of God, on the Son equal to Himself, and on the Holy Ghost, concluding with the baptismal formula and Clement of Rome's triadic oath. Article II then answers the Modernist reduction of Son of God to a synonym for Messiah, and shews that in the Synoptic Gospels alone Christ declared His Divinity in two ways: by claiming rights that belong to God alone under seven heads — pre-eminence over every creature, the demand of faith and love even unto death, supreme legislative power, miracles in His own name, the forgiveness of sins, judgment of the living and the dead, and the sending of the Holy Ghost — and by affirming His strict Divine Filiation in six texts. Confirms this from the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of St. Paul.

Gathers the testimony of Christ to His own Divinity in the Fourth Gospel, and shews it to express the same truth as the great Synoptic text and the Johannine prologue. Estimates the three chief schools of Rationalist criticism — the Liberal Protestant of Harnack, the Apocalyptic, and the Hellenistic of Bousset and Kirsopp Lake — and finds their only common teaching to be an à priori rejection of the miraculous. Then answers the Modernist claim that the Atonement is Pauline rather than evangelical, assembling the witness of the Synoptics, of St. John and of St. Paul, together with the sacraments instituted for the application of Redemption and Christ's teaching on the good angels and on evil spirits.

Completes Chapter XX. Article III shews that the New Law perfects rather than destroys the Old, and gathers Christ's teaching on the Christian virtues under eight heads — true sanctity, faith, hope, charity, prayer, humility with mortification and patience, prudent diligence with vigilance and zeal, and the Beatitudes read as a progression from the active to the contemplative life and thence to the heroic service of the saints. Article IV answers the Apocalyptic school of Schweitzer and Loisy, which makes Christ an enthusiast who foretold the immediate end of the world, by a sevenfold examination of the three texts they rely on, and closes with the Last Judgment, eternal life, and eight points of the Church's teaching on the Resurrection of the body, including the sufficiency of the soul's identity to secure numerical identity of the risen body.

Sets out five positions on whether Christ founded a Church — those of the Rationalists and Liberal Protestants, of the Modernists, of Conservative Protestants, of the Orthodox Greeks, and of Catholics — and frames four questions from them. Shews first that the Kingdom of God preached by Christ is spiritual, requiring faith and charity for membership; second that it is also external, visible and social, described as a flock and named ἐκκλησία, and containing good and bad alike as the parables of the cockle and the net shew; and third that it is not merely eschatological, since it comes without observation, is progressive, and joins good with bad. Then proves that Christ instituted a hierarchical and monarchical society, conferring on the Apostles the triple power of teaching, ruling and sanctifying, and on Peter alone the primacy of magisterium and of jurisdiction, and that He willed this hierarchy to be perpetual.

Distinguishes doctrinal infallibility from Inspiration and from Revelation, and shews that Christ conferred it first on the College of the Apostles and their successors — a claim the Apostles themselves understood in that sense, as the decree of the Council of Jerusalem attests — and then directly and immediately on Peter and his successors, in the three texts of the rock, the prayer that Peter's faith fail not, and the charge to feed the flock. Then treats the four visible marks named in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan symbol: Unity, which belongs to the Church from the standpoint of its constitutive form and extends to Faith, government and worship; Sanctity, from the standpoint of its end; Catholicity de jure and de facto, from the standpoint of membership; and Apostolicity, from the standpoint of its efficient instrumental cause. Concludes that the association of the four is a great moral miracle, and that Christ's testimony regarding the Church accords completely with His preaching.

Closes Section VI by weighing the testimony of Christ against the suggestion of Harnack and Renan that He was mistaken through a merely vivid consciousness of union with God. Shews first that His claim was taught emphatically and unwaveringly from the beginning of His public life to the end, as even critics of the Liberal School allow, so that error here would mean a perpetual hallucination amounting to insanity. Then argues that His wisdom excludes the possibility of such error, from the admiration His teaching aroused and from His prudence under interrogation. Finally shews that His sanctity confirms His testimony, under two heads — absence of sin, attested by His enemies as well as His disciples, and the presence of all the virtues in heroic degree, including those which seem diverse — and concludes that the harmony and stability of these virtues constitute a moral miracle, since God does not witness by miraculous intervention to what is untrue.

Opens Section VII with the internal criterion: if all legitimate aspirations, including the higher, are satisfied and more than satisfied by a religious system, that system is morally certain to come from God. Sets out those aspirations — the religious and moral, the natural desire of future life, and the conditional desire of seeing God as He is — and shews the imperfect responses given by natural reason, by the philosophic systems, and by Buddhism, Brahmanism, Mahometanism and Protestantism, before tabulating the Catholic response, which exceeds rather than merely meets each. Then turns to sublimity of doctrine as an external criterion intrinsic to religion, and traces the harmony of Christian teaching through the natural truths concerning God and man, the supernatural mysteries of the Trinity, our elevation, original sin, the Incarnation and Redemption and the last things, and the excellence of the New Law over the Old.

Completes Chapter XXIII. Sets out the harmony of the whole body of Christian doctrine in a synthesis running from the Trinity through creation, elevation, original sin, Incarnation, Redemption, Church and Eucharist, and returning by the mission of the Holy Ghost, grace, the theological virtues, the Communion of Saints and eternal life to its source. Then treats Christ's exposition of that doctrine under St. Thomas's three heads of illumination, unction and efficacy. Finally argues that the teaching owed its origin to no human source: not to the Jewish doctors, from whom it differs in six respects; not to Greek or Latin philosophy, whose teachers knew nothing of the Trinity or Redemption and whose ethical system despised humility; and not to the Eastern religions, against Gunkel's syncretism hypothesis, since the resemblances are few and external and pagan mysticism had no moral effect.

Takes the Vatican Council's description of the Church as a great and perpetual motive of credibility and divides it into three. Article 1 argues the wonderful propagation of the Church from the disproportion between the result and its natural causes, under four heads: the rapid diffusion of Christianity numerically, geographically and socially, traced from Pentecost through Justin, Irenæus and Tertullian to Harnack's own admissions; its moral effect, attested by Justin, Lactantius, Eusebius and by pagan writers; the obstacles of Jewish and Gentile prejudice, the reformation of morals and three centuries of persecution; and the feebleness of the natural means available. Answers Gibbon's six natural causes from the fifteenth chapter of the Decline and Fall. Article 2 treats the sanctity of the Church in the constancy of its martyrs, under their number, social condition, motive, torments and heroic fortitude, and argues by syllogism that such fortitude is a miracle of the moral order.

Completes Chapter XXIV. Answers the rationalist objection that the constancy of the martyrs has parallels in Regulus, Scævola, the suttee and the Uganda Protestants, then shews the Church producing heroic saints unceasingly through eight classes from the great doctors to sainted kings, and sets these beside the leaders of the Reformation and of the Eastern Schism. Treats the Church's spiritual fecundity in its influence on the individual, on family life — with the dignity of woman, the education of children and the emancipation of slaves — and on civil society, citing Rerum Novarum on a living wage and Quod Apostolici Muneris against Socialism. Article 3 then argues Catholic Unity in faith, worship and discipline, its absence in Protestantism and among the Greeks; Catholicity de jure and de facto, with the Church as Alma Mater of the arts and sciences; and unshaken Stability through eight assaults from the first persecutions to the French Revolution. Concludes that the four marks cannot be explained by natural causes and are the fulfilment of prophecy.

States the rationalistic and modernistic denials of Paulus, Strauss, Renan and Harnack, then classifies the miracles of Christ after St. Thomas under five heads — those wrought in connexion with spiritual substances, with celestial bodies, on men and women, on irrational creatures, and the power of working miracles given to the Apostles — with the Gospel references for each. Proves their historical certainty from nine considerations, including the willingness of the witnesses to die, the public character of the principal miracles, the juridical enquiries held by Christ's enemies, and the admission of Jewish adversaries who attributed them to magic rather than denying them. Shews them supernatural under five heads against the hypothesis of mental suggestion, and closes by proving from Christ's own words that they were wrought in confirmation of His Divine mission.

Sets out the four theories advanced to explain away the Resurrection — fraud, exaggeration, hallucination and spiritual vision — from Reimarus and Celsus through Weizsäcker, Martineau, Strauss and Renan to Le Roy and Loisy, and shews the importance Christ Himself and the Apostles attached to this sign. Proves that Christ died, against the swoon theory of Paulus which Réville himself called a tissue of improbabilities; then that He rose, from St. Paul's testimony in 1 Corinthians xv, from the empty tomb, and from twelve recorded apparitions. Answers the hallucination hypothesis under six heads and shews the appearances corporal rather than merely spiritual. Explains how the Resurrection could be an article of Faith to those who saw it, distinguishing what the Apostles saw from what they believed. Article 3 argues that miracles continue in the Catholic Church alone, with Bertrin's figures from Lourdes, and that Luther and Calvin themselves disclaimed miraculous power.

Recalls the five marks by which a prophecy is known to exceed human conjecture, then gathers the prophecies of Christ under six heads: His knowledge of the secrets of hearts and of events at a distance; His threefold prediction of the Passion and Resurrection; His predictions concerning the disciples, the Apostles, Peter and particular incidents; His predictions concerning the Church; His predictions to the Jews; and the prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, analysed in five parts with the three signs and their fulfilment attested from Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius. Concludes that these prophecies are most certain motives of credibility, and answers two rationalistic objections — that the detail of the Jerusalem prophecy proves it written after the event, and that Christ erred in foretelling an immediate end of the world — the latter through four considerations and the various senses given to the phrase this generation.

Establishes the value of the argument from Messianic prophecy from Christ's own appeal to the Scriptures and His exposition of them on the road to Emmaus, and answers the rationalist account of Ewald, Reuss, Kuenen, Darmesteter and Renan which makes the Messianic hope a product of national subjugation. Lays down three rules of method, then expounds the prophecies in general — Monotheism and the moral law, the universal and spiritual kingdom, and the Messiah in His origin, endowments, passion and triumph — and in particular through the three periods of Patriarchs, Kings and Prophets, from Genesis iii. 15 to Malachy on the Sacrifice of the New Law. Shews the Divine origin of the prophesying to be manifest before its fulfilment, sets out that fulfilment in twenty numbered heads from the native town of the Messiah to His eternal reign, and closes with the probative force of prophecy against the appeals to chance and to natural necessity.

Opens Section VIII. Article 1 compares Christianity with the Mosaic Religion, arguing the Divine origin of the latter first from extrinsic grounds — the citation of the Old Testament by Christ and the Apostles, the decrees of the Biblical Commission of 1905 and 1906 on the historical books and the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and the miracles and prophecies of Moses and the Prophets — and then from intrinsic grounds, setting out the primitive Religion under its dogmas, precepts and worship, and the Mosaic under the same heads, with the excellence of Jewish Monotheism against the evolutionist account and Gunkel's admission to Delitzsch. Answers five difficulties, including the corruption of primitive Revelation, the multiplicity of ceremonial observances, and the Babel und Bibel thesis. Articles 2 and 3 then treat Buddhism and Mahometanism in their history, dogmas and ethics, distinguishing the merely external resemblances of Buddhism to Christianity from the differences that touch dogma.

The concluding chapter. Distinguishes absolute Indifferentism from Latitudinarianism, and traces Liberalism through three periods — Lamennais and L'Avenir met by Mirari Vos, Montalembert at Mechlin met by Quanta Cura and the Syllabus, and the confirmations of Leo XIII in Immortale Dei and Libertas and of Pius X in Pascendi — noting Leo XIII's insistence, with St. Augustine, that no man can be compelled to believe. Proves by two syllogisms the moral obligation binding each individual to profess Natural Religion, and then the duty of accepting Divine Revelation sufficiently proposed and of seeking it where there is serious probability of its existence. Expounds the principle that out of the Church there is no salvation, with the distinction between the body and the soul of the Church and the position of those who remain outside it inculpably. Closes with the obligations binding civil authority, what the Church may demand of a heretical, an indifferent or an unbelieving State, and Walshe's own final paragraph.

Walshe's own bibliography, listing some hundred and twenty works by seventy authors, arranged alphabetically with place and date of publication. It ranges from the patristic and historical scholarship of Allard, Batiffol, Duchesne, Funk, Le Blant and Ruinart, through the Thomist and apologetic tradition of Billot, Gardeil, Garrigou-Lagrange, Gonet, Lagrange, Ollé-Laprune, Scheeben and Vacant, to the writers Walshe engages as adversaries or interlocutors — Bergson, Blondel, Boutroux, Laberthonnière, Le Roy and Sabatier — and the English-language works of Bishop Gore, Huxley, Dean Inge, Sir Oliver Lodge, Wildon Carr, J. A. Gunn, Sir Arthur Keith and Sir Bertram Windle. It closes by referring the reader to the bibliographical list appended to Walshe's earlier volume, The Principles of Christian Apologetics.

Defines Revelation as an unveiling and distinguishes its three degrees — Natural Revelation through the study of creation, Supernatural or Positive Revelation by the voice of God, and the Revelation of Glory in the Beatific Vision. Treats the nature and subject-matter of Natural Revelation, explaining the patristic formulas that God is the Teacher, the Light and the Truth in which we know all truth. Distinguishes the twofold necessity of Positive Revelation: relative, hypothetical and moral for natural religious truth, absolute, categorical and physical for our supernatural end. Sets out the notion of theological mystery as subjectively above reason and objectively above nature, with the Vatican Council's definition and its scriptural basis in 1 Cor. ii. Divides the province of Revelation into four groups of truths, compared to the parts of a tree, and traces the gradual extensive and intensive progress of Revelation from Paradise through the Patriarchs, Moses and the Prophets to its completion in Christ and the Holy Ghost, after which no further public Revelation is to be made.

States the Protestant theory of transmission in its older and modern forms and sets against it the Catholic theory, that Revelation is continually proposed to mankind by God's authorized envoys — the Teaching Body, whose function is the Apostolate. Explains that the promulgation must be official, authentic and authoritative, and that it requires a threefold Divine co-operation of guarantee, legitimation and sanction. Then demonstrates the Catholic theory from four sources: our Lord's own words, taking the four Evangelists in turn and reading their closing narratives beside His earlier teaching; the writings of the Apostles, especially Romans x and Ephesians iv, together with their practice and their appointment of successors; the historical testimony of St. Irenæus, Origen and Tertullian in the first centuries; and the Divine legitimation drawn from the actual existence and working of the Apostolate in the Catholic Church.

Sets out how the Teaching Apostolate is organized. Distinguishes its two functions — authentic witnessing, which belongs to the Power of Orders, and authoritative enforcement, which belongs to the Power of Jurisdiction — and traces the degrees of each through Bishops, priests and deacons up to the Chief of the Episcopate. Explains the principles determining the composition of the Teaching Body, the eminent character of the original Apostolate chosen by Christ, and its continuation in the Episcopate, in which infallibility no longer resides in the individual members but in the unanimous testimony of the whole body and in the sovereign judgment of its Head. Treats the auxiliary members — priests, seminaries, missionaries, Religious Orders, universities and the Roman Congregations — and the organic union between the Teaching Body and the Body of the Faithful, distinguishing Active from Passive Infallibility. Distinguishes Infallibility from Indefectibility, and closes with the three phases of transmission: the Apostolic Deposit, Ecclesiastical Tradition, and the Rule of Faith.

Opens Chapter III on the Apostolic Deposit. Establishes that the Sacred and Canonical Books are such because they are the Written Word of God and have God for their Author, against the view that they are documents of Revelation merely as historically trustworthy records — proving this from Trent, Florence and the Vatican Council, from Scripture's own testimony that all Scripture is θεόπνευστος, and from the Fathers, who call the Bible an epistle from God and describe the human writer as secretary, hand, pen or lyre. Defines Inspiration as a positive and interior influence, more than the negative assistance granted to the Teaching Apostolate and less than dictation by word of mouth, and treats the human and Divine elements, the question of human authorship, and the accommodation of the sacred writer to the opinions of his time. Then treats Scripture as a source of theological knowledge, distinguishing the Literal from the Spiritual or Typical sense and weighing the demonstrative force of each.

Shews the Protestant position on Scripture to be both false and self-contradictory: false, because the Rule of Faith must be materially complete, formally perfect and universal, and Scripture is none of these; self-contradictory, because Inspiration can be known only by Revelation, so that without an external witness the appeal to Scripture moves in a vicious circle. Sets against it the Catholic position that Scripture is an Apostolic Deposit entrusted to the Church, drawing out seven consequences for its text, interpretation, custody and use. Reviews the decrees of Trent and the Vatican Council on the authenticity of the Vulgate and on interpretation, with the Vatican Council's explanation of the much-misunderstood Tridentine decree. Concludes with the oral Apostolic Deposit, proving from Scripture, the Fathers and the perpetuity of the Apostolate that unwritten Tradition is an independent and trustworthy Source of Faith, and distinguishing Divino-Apostolic from Merely-Apostolic Traditions.

The whole of Chapter IV. Distinguishes Ecclesiastical Tradition from human tradition, popular or scientific, since its organs are members of Christ's Church and its value depends not on the number or learning of the witnesses but on their rank and the assistance of the Holy Ghost; admits that the human element permits a temporary and partial eclipse of truth, and states the two laws governing its integrity. Sets out five modes of traditional testimony in descending rank — the unanimity of the whole Body expressed in creeds, catechisms and liturgy; the sensus fidelium; the universal teaching of Bishops and Priests; the Apostolic See; and the extraordinary auxiliaries, the Fathers and the Sons of the Fathers. Treats Documentary Tradition and its two classes of writings, the rules for demonstrating revealed truth from Tradition, and finally the authority of the Fathers, individually and by consent, and of the Theologians, distinguishing opinio communis from sententia communis.

Opens Chapter V. Distinguishes the remote Rule of Faith, given in the original apostolic promulgation, from the proximate Rule, the continuous promulgation by the living Apostolate, and reduces the Catholic Rule ultimately to the teaching authority of the Holy See. Explains Proposition by the Church in its ordinary unwritten and its solemn written forms, and sets out three degrees of the Rule — matters directly revealed, matters theologically connected with Revelation, and matters of discipline — against the Moderate Liberalism of Holden, Muratori and Chrismann. Classifies dogmas as Material or Formal, Defined or Undefined, and by the Necessity of Means or of Precept, gives seven criteria of a dogma of Faith, and describes the three grades of Approximative Theology. Treats definitions and judicial decisions generally — their objects, the question of opportuneness, the required investigation of the case, and the source of their binding force — and closes with the Vatican Council's definition of Papal Infallibility and the four forms an ex cathedra decision may take.

Completes Chapter V and Part I. Sets out the conditions of an œcumenical Council, why no early Western Council bore that title, the double function of Councils as witnesses and as judges, and the Pope's authoritative direction of their proceedings. Describes the six chief Roman Congregations and the Pœnitentiaria, and the authority of their decrees confirmed and unconfirmed; then Provincial, National and Plenary Councils and the difference between simple and solemn approbation. Treats dogmatic censures, their binding force, the duty to admit the contradictory doctrine, and the Church's infallibility in condemning propositions in the sense meant by an author, as in the Jansenist controversy. Then weighs four accounts of the development of dogma — nominal, the unrolled scroll, the logical, and the organic — with St. Augustine's three stages and St. Vincent of Lerins on advancement that is not change. Closes with eleven Creeds from the Apostles' Creed to the Profession for the Easterns.

Opens Part II. Traces fides, credere, πίστις and glauben to their roots, and defines Faith in the special sense as assent on authority — an act of the intellect commanded by the will. Gives the Vatican Council's definition of Theological Faith and expounds Heb. xi. 1 word by word, with the terms fides quâ and fides quæ, Explicit and Implicit, Formal and Virtual, and the three formulas Credere Deum, Credere Deo and Credere in Deum. Treats the formal object or motive, God as the First Truth in essendo, in cognoscendo and in dicendo; the subject-matter, distinguishing Divine from Ecclesiastical Faith in matters only mediately or indirectly revealed; and closes with the Motives of Credibility, distinguished from the Motives of Faith as the minor premise from the major, against the errors of Rationalism, Protestantism and those Catholic theologians who overprize inward feeling.

Completes the chapter on Faith. Shews that the act of Faith is supernatural in two ways — in its very substance, by Elevating Grace, and in its mode, by Medicinal Grace — and that it must be infused by Divine light and received from the hand of God, the external revelation being attributed to the visible Son and the internal to the invisible Father. Establishes against the Rationalists that Faith is nevertheless a human and a free act, with a primary liberty from the will's moral dispositions and a secondary liberty from the non-cogency of the motives of credibility, referred to three causes. Treats the supreme certitude of Faith, certitudo super omnia, distinguishing appreciative from felt certitude and answering the objection of conflict with reason. Closes with the twofold Necessity of Faith, of Means and of Precept, expounding Heb. xi. 6 and Suarez's solution of whether explicit Faith in Christ is indispensable since His coming.

The whole of Chapter II, closing Book I. Sets out the Vatican Council's teaching that some understanding of mysteries is possible — from the analogy of things naturally known and from the relation of mysteries with one another and with the end of man — against the Rationalists on one side and Abelard, Günther and Frohschammer on the other, and shews that this understanding adds no certitude but removes difficulties. Distinguishes Theological Knowledge and Theological Certitude from Faith and from natural science; establishes the scientific character of Theology and its rank as the Transcendental Science, the true Wisdom which Philosophy only seeks. Divides Theology into Fundamental (Apologetic and Controversial), Positive and Speculative, illustrating all five from the dogma of the Trinity. Treats the relation of Reason and Faith through three Vatican canons and the formula that Reason is the hand-maiden of Faith; then Theology as a sacred science requiring the illumination and charity of the Holy Ghost; and closes with the three directions of theological progress and the five conditions of its fruitfulness.