1874] WHAT TO SEEK IN THE BIBLE 221 



says, that we may gain a knowledge of God more speedily 

 and firmly, we are to believe, not only things supernatural, 

 but also things that may be investigated by the light 

 of nature. Manifestly a faith directed indifferently to 

 supernatural or natural truth must be essentially in 

 tellectual. In short, fides est cum assensu cogitare, faith is 

 thought accompanied by assent free from vacillation, 

 and in matters where sight is excluded. Thomas seeks, 

 indeed, to bring faith into connection also with the will, 

 partly in so far as assent is an act of will, and partly by 

 the famous distinction of fides informis, or faith without 

 charity, which is no virtue, and fides formata, &quot; faith 

 working by love,&quot; which turns to the divine Good (which, 

 as Augustin had already taught, is the essence of the 

 higher truths which the believer apprehends), and sees 

 in that Good its highest end. But valuable as this 

 distinction is as giving a practical escape from mere 

 intellectualism, it has no firm basis in the theory. After 

 all, caritas non per se pertinet ad fidem. The sterile fides 

 informis is at bottom the same &quot; habit &quot; as the living 

 fides formata. The possession of either delivers from the 

 crowning sin of infidelity : both are supernatural gifts, 

 the merum Dei donum, lifting a man above his nature ; 

 and both are wholly lost by the heretic who departs even 

 from one article of the Symbolum fidei put forth by the 

 Supreme Pontiff with the authority of the universal 

 Church over which he presides. How thoroughly do 

 these determinations ignore, almost exclude, a personal 

 relation to the believer to Christ ! How entirely do they 

 tend to make Christian faith a dead thing, having only 

 a secondary relation to God s Word, and resting primarily 

 on merely human authority ! For in truth only an 

 implicit belief is required in what Scripture teaches, 

 while explicit faith has for its object the ecclesiastical 

 articuli fidei. With all this it squares well that the 

 &quot; intelligible &quot; truths of Scripture are represented as 

 difficult to understand. Our rude minds can rise to 



