Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

COLLPOWER OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPH 5religious truth which the Church is charged to communicate.It is a word spoken by authority, the concurrentwitness of the whole Church, not the speculationof an individual, not a literature, but the deduction ofa whole intellectual creation from its first source, aprocess in which all gifts of the human intellect areto be used. It is a perpetual work from generationto generation, lodged in the whole priesthood, to dis-charge which a line of men consecrates its mind.At the same time it is a work executed under strictlaws of order, wherein the priest is subordinate to thebishop, and every bishop to the Apostolic See of Peterin its occupant. Thus there is unity in the truth tobe so communicated, which extends through all timesand places, and with unity there is all the force derivedfrom impact. The philosophic school scattersitself into endless divergencies; the Christian priesthoodremains one and indivisible in its propagation ofthe truth with which it is charged. But within theselines of unity and order there is room for the play ofevery human faculty, and the free exercise of everyintellectual gift. The truth thus endless in itsapplication, offering so rich and inexhaustible asubject for the labour of every mind, springs indeedfrom a mystery which is received only by faith. ThatGod the Son has condescended so to touch His creationas to enter Himself into the line of human nature, tohave a Mother, and to call men His brethren, as wellas God His Father, this is a fact to which the order ofmen above mentioned bears witness for ever. Itsreception nevertheless rests upon a gift of God, anillumination of the mind to which we give the nameof faith. When once so received, the development ofthe truth offers scope to the most rigorous philosophiciC