laim that I am love," Seuse
replied, "Alas! Lord, that does not suffice for a yearning soul." Faith
feels itself secure neither with universal consent, nor with tradition,
nor with authority. It seeks the support of its enemy, reason.

And thus scholastic theology was devised, and with it its
handmaiden--_ancilla theologiae_--scholastic philosophy, and this
handmaiden turned against her mistress. Scholasticism, a magnificent
cathedral, in which all the problems of architectonic mechanism were
resolved for future ages, but a cathedral constructed of unbaked bricks,
gave place little by little to what is called natural theology and is
merely Christianity depotentialized. The attempt was even made, where it
was possible, to base dogmas upon reason, to show at least that if they
were indeed super-rational they were not contra-rational, and they were
reinforced with a philosophical foundation of Aristotelian-Neoplatonic
thirteenth-century philosophy. And such is the Thomism recommended by
Leo XIII. And now the question is not one of the enforcement of dogma
but of its philosophical, medieval, and Thomist interpretation. It is
not enough to believe that in receiving the consecrated Host we receive
the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ; we must needs negotiate all
those difficulties of transubstantiation and substance separated from
accidents, and so break with the whole of the modern rational conception
of substantiality.

But for this, implicit faith suffices--the faith of the coalheaver,[23]
the faith of those who, like St. Teresa (_Vida_, cap. xxv. 2), do not
wish to avail themselves of theology. "Do not ask me the reason of
that, for I am ignorant; Holy Mother Church possesses doctors who will
know how to answer you," as we were made to learn in the Catechism. It
was for this, among other things, that the priesthood was instituted,
that the teaching Church might be the depositary--"reservoir instead of
river," as Phillips Brooks said--of theological secrets. "The work of
the Nicene Creed," says Harnack (_Dogmengeschichte_, ii. 1, cap. vii.
3), "was a victory of the priesthood over the faith of the Christian
people. The doctrine of the Logos had already become unintelligible to
those who were not theologians. The setting up of the Niceno-Cappadocian
formula as the fundamental confession of the Church made it perfectly
impossible for the Catholic laity to get an inner comprehension of the
Christian Faith, taking as t