Page:Petri Privilegium - Manning.djvu/430

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116
THE VATICAN COUNCIL.

argument that the Angel who appeared to Moses in the bush could not be the Father, but the Son, because the Father could not be manifested 'in a narrow space on earth;'[1] or even of the words of our Divine Lord Himself, 'The Father is greater than I.'[2]

Now I would ask, what course would any man of just and considerate intelligence pursue in such a case?

Would he say, one broken link destroys a chain? One such passage adverse to the divinity of Christ outweighs two hundred and fifty-six passages to the contrary?

Would this be scientific history? Or would it be scientific to assume that the one passage, however apparently explicit and adverse, can bear only one sense, and cannot in any other way be explained? If so, scientific historians are bound to the literal prima facie sense of the words of St. Justin Martyr, and of our Lord above quoted.

Still, supposing the one passage to remain explicit and adverse, and therefore an insoluble difficulty, I would ask whether any but a Socinian, ὑποθέσει δουλεύων, servilely bound, and pledged by the perverseness of controversy, would reject the whole cumulus of explicit and constructive evidence contained in two hundred and fifty-six passages, because of one adverse passage of insoluble difficulty? People must be happily unconscious of the elements which underlie the whole basis of their most confident beliefs

  1. Dialog. cum Tryph. sect. 60, p. 157. Ed. Ben. Paris, 1742.
  2. St. John xiv. 28.