THE DUBLIN REVIEW. AUGUST, 1861. ART. I.-1. The Communion of Saints. 2. An Introduction to the Study of Dogmatic Theology. By the Rev. Robert Owen, B. D., Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. London. 1858. " Tis difficult for Catholics to understand how discourses in themselves apparently so feeble as the Bampton Lectures of Mr. Wilson, could have produced a sensation in such a place as Oxford. Even now that Mr. Wilson bas become famous as one of the writers of "Essays and Reviews," we are as unable to see anything particularly striking in these discourses as when we first read them. The author, indeed, tells us plainly that he does not believe in the Communion of Saints," in the sense in which these words were introduced into the Creed. When the clause is first found........it is expounded, not in reference to the general community of interests which belong to Christian people, but in regard to supposed particular relations between the living saints and the dead." P. 14. It implied" a hope that the living might be of avail In some way to the dead," p. 16. "It was also supposed that the dead could benefit the living," p. 17. "Far different from such views are those which are presented to us in Protestant theology," p. 19. old doctrine, he proposes VOL. L.-No. C. 66 As a substitute for the the true principles of Christian 1 union;" instead of believing in the "Communion of Saints," he believes in "Multitudinism," as contrasted 66 with " sectarianism. Mr. Wilson has peculiarities of style and expression, but we think his best things have been said before him. Mr. Owen belongs to a totally different school of theology. He sympathises to a considerable extent with the old doctrine, but is evidently afraid of the truth, like a certain old divine whom he quotes, as it seems to us, with a somewhat malicious intention. Pearson, in his celebrated work" on the Creed," says, " The saints of God living in the Church of Christ are in communion with all the saints departed out of this life and admitted to the presence of God," but reserves for a note this important fact-" This is that part of the Communion of Saints which those of the ancients especially insisted upon, who first took notice of it in the Creed." Pearson proceeds-" But what they do in heaven in relation to us on earth particularly considered, or what we ought to perform in reference to them in heaven, beside a reverential respect and study of imitation, is not revealed unto us in the Scriptures, nor can be concluded by necessary deductions from any principle of Christianity." Mr. Owen shows by a number of short quotations from ancient ecclesiastical writers, that there was no doubt whatever as to what was meant by the Communion of Saints" in the minds of those who "first took notice of it in the Creed;" but he is careful not to say whether he agrees with them or not. When he undertakes to prove that the Invocation of Saints grew gradually out of a belief in this Intercession, we cannot admit that he is at all successful in producing evidence of the gradualness; and when he appeals to the fact that all the authorities quoted by Petavius are Post-Nicene, we must beg leave to ask him how many Ante-Nicene invocations of the second and third Persons of the Holy Trinity can be quoted. There is, perhaps, no portion of the "Apostles' Creed" on which Protestants of all denominations differ so much, not only from the Catholic Church, but from all the ancient divisions of Christendom, as the clause about which we have been speaking. The Catholic interpretation (both dogmatical and practical) of this clause is not different in principle from that of the separated Greek Church, nor was it ever disputed by Monophysites or Nestorians. And, in spite of the paucity of documents which throw light upon the practices of the Arian, Novatianist, and Donatist communions, there is evidence sufficient to show that even these ancient heretics agreed in this point with their more orthodox contemporaries. isolated cases can be pointed out of revolt against the Only rare and universal belief of Christendom in the efficacy of Prayers for the Dead, and in the lawfulness of the " cultus Sanc torum. Mr. Owen must be aware that even his numerous citations give but the faintest notion of the extent and fervour of the devotion to the saints in the Church of the Fathers. The only English book in which something like justice is done to the historical fact, though from a hostile point of view, is Mr. Isaac Taylor's" Ancient Christianity;" and yet even this book contains but a comparatively small amount of the evidence which might have been produced. There are many rare works which bear upon the subject but are never quoted. Such, for instance, is the work of Basil of Seleucia upon St. Thecla, which we think would be startling even to persons prepared by the reading of Ancient Christianity. 66 ,, The To the historical enquirer, who knows anything of the laws of his science, one circumstance connected with this devotion to the saints is of the most decided importance. We find the same doctrine prevailing, not only in every part of the Church of the Fathers, from the extreme East to the extreme West, but everywhere in the same form. It matters not whether we look to the Balearic Isles, the valley of the Nile, the banks of the Tigris, or the shores of Pontus. The hymns of Synesius give the same evidence for Cyrenaica as those of Prudentius for Spain. ascetics of the Thebais, the rival doctors of Alexandria and Antioch, the monks and the courtiers of Constantinople, the rustic populations of Africa, which were ignorant of the Latin tongue, the inhabitants of northern Gaul, men differing from each other as much as it is possible for men to differ in race, manners, language, and ideas, are found teaching doctrines and practising rites as unmistakeably identical, and as unmistakeably derived from a single origin as were the Doric rites of Apollo in Delphi, Cnosus and Delos. Of the different Protestant hypotheses on the subject, that which ascribes the origin of the "cultus Sanctorum to diabolical agency is the least absurd in a scientific point of view; because, although it sets aside science altogether, the origin it assigns to the Catholic doctrine and practice is at least sufficiently ubiquitous to meet the historical difficulties of the case. But the more commonly received theory that Christianity was corrupted by heathenism, is consciously or unconsciously based upon the exploded and unscholarlike hypothesis of one definite cecumenical heathenism, from which all the first Christian populations were converted. Most books written before the present century imply the existence in ancient times of such an ocumenical polytheism. It is within the memory of the present generation, that the distinctions were first drawn, in this part of the world at least, between Hermes and Mercury, or between Artemis and Diana. Even persons who really know better still speak and write as if the gods of ancient Latium had been worshipped by the natives of Egypt or of Assyria. It is true that both Greeks and Romans identified all foreign divinities with their own; but every learned man knows that they often did so on the most superficial grounds, and that conclusions founded on an uncritical admission of classical authorities are simply fallacious. Greeks and Romans gave the names of their gods to the gods of India, and would undoubtedly have done so to the gods of Mexico or Peru. In reality, the Polytheistic systems of ancient times, like those still existing in our days, were so utterly unlike each other that they may be said to have had nothing in common except those notions which are the necessary logical consequences of a belief in supernatural beings powerful for good or evil. When people tell us, therefore, that Christianity was corrupted by heathenism, they forget that heathenism was different in different parts of the Christian world, and particularly so in those classes of society from which the great mass of converts were derived. The Celtic religions had nothing in common with the Egyptian. The Christian populations of Spain were subjected to very different polytheistic influences from those which affected the Christian populations of Armenia or Asia Minor. And what heathen system can be sup posed to explain the identity, on all matters of doctrine, of Ethiopic, Syrian, and Italian Christianity? Yet, documents in many languages prove that, wherever Christianity is found in the ages of which we are speaking, one and the |