of the Protestant Divine, that "he must regard his system of Divinity as merely a branch, or application of philological science *."

In general, the Church applies to the interpretation of Scripture those fundamental rules which hold in jurisprudence, and the neglect of which is characteristic of all doctrinal opposition to her authority. Thus the canonist says with the theologian, "Verba clara non admittunt interpretationem, neque voluntatis conjecturam." The latter says, with the text of the Pandects, "Si de interpretatione legis quæratur, in primis inspiciendum est, quo jure civitas, retro in hujusmodi casibus usa fuisset ; optima enim est legum interpres consuetudo." The legal maxim, "stare decisis," and the profound observation of Savigny, that “to understand any system of law, you must look at it in the same point of view in which it was regarded by those who made it," are found no less applicable in the Church than in the courts; while, in general, the rules of Catholic Scriptural interpretation resemble those which men of legal minds employ in the construction of statutes †.

Again, the views of Catholic expositors pierce far beyond what the mere letter of the sacred text conveys; and thereby do they recommend their biblical studies to those men of science who, when left with only Protestant interpretations, find contradictions and difficulties that they deem insurmountable. Non me capio præ lætitia," says St. Thomas of Villanova, "quoties sacrarum literarum inter se et cum ratione tantam consonantiam intueor +."

66

But then the object of the Scriptures is to express religious and moral truth, by means of apt images; not to convey a knowledge of geology, or astronomy, or any other branch of natural science; and even, in regard to religion, their end is to instruct man in his duties, not to feed his curiosity. Therefore these Catholic expositors are prepared for finding things ineffable only sketched, as it were, with light touches. "Accordingly," brother Giles used to say, "all things that can be thought, related, seen, or touched, are nothing in comparison of what cannot be thought, seen, or touched.—Tota sacra Scriptura loquitur nobis quasi balbutiendo; sicut mater balbutit cum filio suo parvo, qui aliter non posset verba intelligere §.”

The interpretations, again, of the Catholic authority, are moral, and consonant with the purest and noblest ideas of the

* Donaldson, The New Cratylus, 18.

† M. Bowyer, Readings before the Mid. Temple.

In Die Nat. Dom. Serm. v.

§ Bucchius, Liber Aureus Conformitatum Vitæ B. Pat. Francisci ad Vitam J. Christi, 68.

Divine goodness. To each of these expositors may be addressed the poet's words,

"Tu parlerais ainsi dans des livres austères,
Comme parlaient jadis les anciens solitaires,
Comme parlent tous ceux devant qui l'on se tait,

Et l'on te écouterait comme on les écoutait."

Here are no pure anthropomorphisms, ascribing human passions to God,‚—no sanguinary invitations; no inhuman proposals, arising from a false interpretation, and a total misapprehension of the Bible, as when the followers of Luther and Calvin made it a stalking horse for rebellion and persecution.

Thomassinus cites instances to show how differently the sacred text is explained when the holy Fathers of the Church are heard. "The intention of all just men's prayer in the Holy Scriptures," says St. Gregory of Nyssen, "was the extermination of sin. For the Psalmist, when he said Tollantur peccatores et iniqui de terra, ut non sint;' prays that sin may be taken away; so also when he prays for confusion to his enemies, he shows to you the spiritual foes which attack human life, of whom St. Paul also speaks; and this is nothing else than that the man may be preserved *." So Cassian, explaining the Psalmist's words respecting his enemies, says, "he speaks either affirmatively, not deprecatively, of the enemies of Christ, or he speaks of demons, or else of his sins; or he prays that enemies may perish, and the men remain. Take away malice from your brother, and he will no more persecute you. Destroy him thus, by your winning charity." In the same manner also speaks St. Thomas of Villanova †.

Above all, one must remark the charity which Catholic expositors display before us, tracing its bright form in every page of the Holy Scriptures, which are so explained to the people, that all after hearing them concur in teaching it; as in the lines of old Rutebeuf,

"Encor raconte li escriz

Que charitez c'est Jhésu-criz,
Por ce dient maintes et maint
Que cil qui en charité maint

Il maint en Dieu et Dieu en lui."

Charity from a pure heart," says Thomassin, "having two precepts, the love of God, and the love of man, must be the end of the whole canonical office;" for "in no part of the

* Orat. i. de Oratione.

In Fer. 6, ante 1 Dom. Quad.

Scriptures," says St. Augustin, "should you seek any thing else. In whatever is obscure in the Scriptures, this lies hidden. In whatever is plain in Scripture, this is manifest. If never manifest, it would not nourish you. If never obscure, it would not exercise you *.”

As for controversy on the Scriptures, from which Catholicism alone delivers you, hear what St. Augustin says, “Nolo verbis contendere; ad nihil enim utile est, nisi ad subversionem audientium. Ad ædificationem autem bona est lex, quia finis ejus est charitas de corde puro, et conscientia recta, et fide non ficta. Et novit Magister noster in quibus duobus præceptis totam legem prophetasque suspenderit +."

"The most horrible effect of the judgment of God," says St. Cæsarius of Arles, "is a spiritual famine of the Divine word." Within the Catholic Church, by well-ordered study of the Bible, by learned commentaries, by accurate or at least faithful versions, by sermons, conferences, pastorals, and familiar discourses, by catechisms of perseverance, sacred histories, and epitomies, the supernatural food of souls is regularly and abundantly, with order and fidelity, and in the most natural way possible, dispensed. "The use and science of dialectics and philosophy would not be allowed to us," says a Franciscan, “unless that the sacred page of Scripture may be better learned and taught ."

Aided from above, and wanting no subsidiary help from learning, these Catholic expositors show from the Bible the whole scheme of the Divine wisdom, in the work of human redemption and sanctification in the Catholic Church. They show that deliverance by the death of Christ forms the key to unlock all its mysteries; that as the Jews were to meditate on the law for the secret sense and the predictions of the Saviour, the letter and the ceremonial precepts, as Peter of Blois says, "having never been intended to vivify the soul, and give true wisdom §," so Christians should discern, in all parts of the sacred volume, the same great doctrine, without which nothing in the Catholic Church would be intelligible. St. Odo cites the instance furnished by the words of Job, "Cur non tollis peccatum meum, et quare non aufers iniquitatem meam ?" and remarks that "they are to be understood as expressing the desire of a Saviour." They show, with Henry Suso, that "to study the

&c.

* In Ps. 140, ap. Thomass. de l'Offic. Div. et de sa Liaison,

+ Confess. xii. 18.

Bucchius, Liber Aureus Conform., &c., 165.

§ Pet. Bles. Cont. Perfid. Judæor.

Mor. in Job, lib. viii.

sacred humanity of Christ is the most compendious way to eternal beatitude; that the sacred humanity of Christ is the road, and His passion the door, by which men can pass to the true felicity*." They show how reasonable and conformable to what is read in Scripture are all the pious opinions respecting it entertained in the Church, as when Rupertus says, "what more agreeable to the evangelic faith, than to believe that our Lord appeared after His resurrection to His mother, whose soul had been pierced with a sword during His passion, though the Evangelists do not say when or where He appeared to her, while it cannot be supposed that He did not appear to her †?” This rational, profound, and reverential interpretation of Scripture by Catholicism, supplies, therefore, an avenue to the Church, which nourishes and transmits it; and it might be thought that no man of good sense, and of religious mind, could pass it by unmoved.

66

In fine, we come to the avenue effected by the contents of the Sacred Scriptures themselves, which in almost every page reveal the Church, and proclaim her gracious mission. "It is a double chastisement," says the Count de Maistre," when men are condemned to see in the Holy Scriptures what is not there, and not to see in them what they most clearly contain ." The blindness of those who cannot see the Catholic Church in the Bible, though one may be resolved never to blame others, must be traced to the will, at least as much as to the judgment, however weak may be its powers, and however tangled the chain of circumstances which enslave it. The Church is there spoken of in clearer language than any thing else; even than the first elements of faith, the Trinity, which some Protestants profess to believe. Moreover, as the Gospel," to use the expression of Rupert, "is the head of every day's office in the Church, and as the other parts of it, as members of the body to the head, are adapted and conjoined §," it may be said justly, that the Sacred Scriptures lead men not only to the Church metaphysically, but positively and practically, within the very material Church, and enable them, with the clearest intelligence, to assist at the cele bration of her mysteries, the ritual itself, according to which these are conducted, having its types and originals in the Bible; for who does not perceive that the Catholic rites and ceremonies, the vestments and the fixed enactments which determine every thing, are admirably designed to answer the very object which must have been in the Divine view, when the children of Israel were enjoined to use certain distinctions of raiment and colour, for the reason expressed, "that when they

* Dialog. 1 and 2. Lettres, &c. ii. 376.

+ De Div. Officiis, lib. vii. 25.
§ De Divinis Officiis, lib. viii. 7.

shall see them they may remember all the commandments of the Lord, and not follow their own thoughts and eyes, going astray after divers things, but rather being mindful of the precepts of the Lord, may do them, and be holy to their God?" It is only a profound spiritual agreement with the Sacred Scriptures that can explain the Catholic offices and festivals, and their relative importance; as when the votive mass De Beata Maria, in time of advent, solemnly sung on the 18th of December, to commemorate the incarnation, by an observance transferred from the month of March, for the same reason that caused the festival of Corpus Christi to be instituted notwithstanding its previous celebration in holy week, was called Missa Aurea, to denote the pre-eminence of that mystery. Similarly Pentecost, having no octave day, but the whole of Whitsun week being the octave of Easter, which is celebrated, not during eight days, but during eight weeks, the paschal time only ending after nones, on the Saturday after Pentecost, directs the mind to the doctrine of the resurrection, as qualified by St. Paul when he said, "that if Christ were not risen, our faith would be in vain." The daily repetition of the beginning of the Gospel of St. John, and the mysterious effects ascribed by all Christian antiquity to its repetition, signify the profound acceptance by the Church of all the mysteries contained in the Holy Scriptures, that chapter being a compendium of them all, as the holy Trinity, the creation of the world, and the incarnation of Christ +.

"While our Lord," says St. Thomas of Villanova, "expounded the Scriptures to the sorrowing disciples, their hearts, we read, burned within them. This lasted the whole way, so that they did not feel the length of the road. O, if we had heard that long conversation by the way! What a blessed pilgrimage was their's!" Gently led by those whom Jesus Christ has sent to continue, age after age, that Divine homily, the reader of the Bible beholds in its sacred pages the whole magnificent history and glorious destiny of the Catholic Church, existing from the first; or, as Balduine says, "before and after the law."

"Our religion," says St. Thomas of Villanova, "is from the beginning of the world. A great Christian was Abraham; a great Christian Moses; so also David and all the patriarchs. They adored the same God, believed the same mysteries, and expected the same resurrection and judgment. They had the same precepts, manners, affections, desires, thoughts, and modes of life ; so that if you saw Abraham, and Moses, and David,

* Numbers xv.

Fest. Res. Fer. 11.

Burius, Rom. Pont. Notitia.

§ Balduinus, Ecclesia ante Legem et post Legem.