The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1907-08-15

%. 1t is lawful to believe that the
Christ of history is far interior to
the Christ who is an object of faith.
80. In all the evangelical texts the
name Son of God is equivalent only
to Messiah, and does not at all mean
that Christ is the true and natural
Son of God.
81. The doctrine concerning Christ
taught by Paul, John, the Councils
of Nicea, Ephesus and Chalcedon is
not that which Jesus taught, but that
which the Christian conscience con-
ceived concerning Jesus.
so. 1t is not possible to reconcile
the natural sense of the Gospel texts
with the sense taught by cur theo-
! logians concerning the conscience and
the infallible knowledge of Jesus
Christ.
SO. 1t is evident to everybody who
is not led by preeonceived opinion that
either Jesus professed an error con-
corning the immediate Messianic COM
ing or that the greater part of His
doctrine as contained In the Gospels is
destitute of authenticity.
"a. The critic cannot ascribe to Christ
a knowledge eircumscribed by no linn
| its except on a hypothesis which cannot
be historically conceived and which is
repugnant to the moral sense, viz:
That Christ as man had the knowledge
Of God and yet was unwilling to com
mu.,fCate the knowledge of a great
many things to His disciples and to
posterity.
IS. Christ had not always the con-
seriousness of His Messianic dignity
96. The Resurrection of the Savior is
not properly a fact of the historical
order, but a fact of merely supernat-
ural order, neither demonstrated nor
demonstable, which the Christian sci
ence gradually derived from other facts.
RESURRECTION OF CHRIST.
ST. Faith in the resurrection of Christ
was III the beginning not 50 much in the
fact itself Of the resurrection as in the
immortal life of Christ with God,
SO. The doctrine of the expiatory
death Of Christ is not evangelical but
Pauline.
SO. The opinions concerning the origin
of the sacraments with which the faith
ers of Trent were imbued and which
ccrtainly influenced their dogmatic can
1 ons are very different from those which
now rightly obtain among historians
who examine into Christianity.
! 20. The sacraments had their origin
in the fact that the apostles and their
successors, swayed and moved by cir
Icumstances and events, interpreted
some idea or intention of Christ,
Al. The sacraments are merely intend
ed to bring before the mind Of man tht
ever beneficent presence of the Creator
a. The Christian community imposed
the necessity of baptism, adopting ii
! as q necessary rite, and adding to il
the obligations Of the Christian profess
sion.
4S. The practice of comforting
baptism on infants was disciplinary
evolution, which was one of the
causes why the sacrament was divid-
ed into two, viz, baptism and pen
ance
A. There is nothing to prove
that the rite of the sacrament of con-
flrmation was employed by the apos-
ties, but the formal distinction of two
sacraments, baptism and contlrma-
ton. does not belong to the history of
primitive Christianity.
As. Not everything that Paul mar
rates concerning the institution Of tho
eucharist Q. Corinthians, XII, 23-25)
is to be taken historically.
46. In the primitive church the
conception of the Christian sinner rec
onciled by the authority Of the church
did not exist but it was only very
slowly that the church accustomed, it
self to this conception. Even after
penance was recognized as an institu-
ton of the church it was not called a
sacrament, for it would have been
held an ignominious sacrament.
AL The words Of the Lord, IRE
ceive We the Holy Ghost Whose sins
We shall forgive, they are forgiven
them, and whose sins We shall retain
they are retained" (John XXX. %, 23),
do not at all refer to the sacrament of
penance, whatever the fathers of
Tfent may have been pleased to say.
4S. James in the Epistle w., IA
15) did not intend TO promulgate a
sacrament of Christ, but to condemn
a pious custom, and IL in this custom
he happens to distinguish a means of
grace it is not in that rigorous man
ner in which it was received by the
thologians who laid down the notion
and the number Of the sacraments.
40 The Christian supper gradually
assuming the nature of a liturgical ac-
ton, those who were wont to preside
at the supper acquired the sacerdotal
character
Priests or Bishops.
so. The elders who filled the office
of watching over the gatherings of the
faithful were instituted by the apostles
as priests or bishops to provide for
the necessary orderings of the increas-
ing communities, not properly for per-
petuating the apostolic mission and
power.
81. 1t is not possible that matri-
mony could have become a sacrament
by the new law until later in the
church, for in order that matrimony
should be held as q sacrament it was
necessary that full theological de-
Ivelopment of the doctrine of grace
and the sacraments should first take
place.
So. It was foreign to the mind OF
Christ to found a church as a society
which was to last on the earth for 9
long course of centuries; nay, in the
mind of Christ the kingdom of heaven
together with the end of the worlC
was about to come Immediately.
SO. The organic constitution of the
church is not immutable, but Chris
tan society, like human society, is
subject to perpetual evolution.
"a. Dogmas, sacraments, hierarchy
both as regards the notion of then
and the reality, are but Interpretations