138 REV. CHANCELLOR LIAS, M.A., ON MODERNISM. 



been said by a believing man of science (Lionel Beale) — ' Science can 

 no more submit to be controlled than theology can allow herself to 

 be fretted at every little alteration in scientific opinion. Intellectual 

 work of every kind must be free.' And the New Testament is still 

 the one volume of religious books, which accepts the whole state- 

 ment " — (see The Spirit of Enq^iiry, a sermon preached before the 

 British Association in 1882, by the Bishop of Truro, Dr. Benson, 

 afterwards Primate). 



To this I will venture to add some remarks introductory to a 

 sermon by myself on the Papal Encyclical, De Unifate, of 1896, 

 published in the Clergyman's Magazine : — 



" Wi^en the Papacy gathered the 'catholic ' world around it in the 

 sixteenth century at the Council of Trent, and added twelve new 

 doctrines to the Creed of Christendom (as the great Christopher of 

 Lincoln used to say) it virtually made itself ' a new church,' and 

 took up a position antagonistic to that ' forward movement of the 

 human mind,' which, beginning with the Renaissance, has been going 

 on ever since. Whatever chance was left to it of retreating from 

 that position would seem to have taken away by the decrees of the 

 Vatican Council of 1870. So it has come to pass that there is a 

 fixity, we might almost say, a petrifaction of thought, which 

 characterizes the teaching of the Roman Church, and has tended to 

 place her more and more outside of human progress and of sympathy 

 with the march of the human intellect, which has marked the 

 nineteenth century. With ideas and modes of thought still cast in 

 an Italian mould she bids fair to be left ' high and dry ' by the great 

 Teutonic races, who have become readers of their Bibles, and 

 investigators of Nature, and to whom the future of the world seems 

 to belong." 



Even the late Lord Acton saw this ; and I remark {loc. cit.) that 

 " it is a pity the leaders of thought in his Church cannot share his 

 enlightenment." 



