to
any candid student of Christian 'origins' that the Pauline Churches were
far more Protestant than Catholic in type. But Newman had set himself to
prove that 'the Christianity of history is not Protestantism; if ever
there were a safe truth, it is this,' Accordingly, he argues that
'Christianity came into the world as an idea rather than an institution,
and had to fit itself with armour of its own providing.' Such
expressions sound very like the arguments of the Modernists; but Newman
assuredly never contemplated that they would be turned against the
policy of his own Church, in the interests of the critical rationalism
which he abhorred. His attitude towards dogma is after all not very
different from that of the older school. 'Time was needed' (he says)
'for the elucidation of doctrines communicated once for all through
inspired persons'; his examples are purgatory and the papal supremacy.
He insists that his 'tests' of true development are only controversial,
'instruments rather than warrants of right decisions.' The only real
'warrant' is the authority of the infallible Church. It is highly
significant that one of the features in Roman Catholicism to which he
appeals as proving its unblemished descent from antiquity is its
exclusiveness and intolerance.

'The Fathers (he says complacently) anathematised doctrines,
not because they were old, but because they were new; for
the very characteristic of heresy is novelty and originality
of manifestation. Such was the exclusiveness of the
Christianity of old. I need not insist on the steadiness
with which that principle has been maintained ever since.'

The Cardinal is right; it is quite unnecessary to insist upon it; but,
when the Modernists claim Newman as their prophet, it is fair to reply
that, if we may judge from his writings, he would gladly have sent some
of them to the stake.

The Modernist movement, properly so called, belongs to the last twenty
years, and most of the literature dates from the present century. It
began in the region of ecclesiastical history, and soon passed to
biblical exegesis, where the new heresy was at first called
'concessionism,' The scope of the debate was enlarged with the stir
produced by Loisy's 'L'Evangile et l'Eglise' and 'Autour d'un Petit
Livre'; it spread over the field of Christian origins generally, and
problems connected with them, such as the growth of ecclesiastical power
and the evolution