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HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH: FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
VOLUME 1 |
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/Instructions sur les etats d'oraison/, which he submitted to Fenelon
in the hope of obtaining his approval. This Fenelon refused to give,
partly because he thought Madame Guyon had been punished severely
enough and should not be attacked once she had made her submission,
and partly also because he believed the views of Bossuet on charity
and self-interest were unsound. Before Bossuet's book could be
published Fenelon anticipated him in a work entitled /Explication des
maximes des Saints sur la vie interieure/, in which he defended many
of Madame Guyon's views. This book was submitted to the Archbishop of
Paris, to Tronson, and to some of the theologians of the Sorbonne,
from all of whom it received the highest commendations.
The Bishop of Meaux, annoyed at the action of Fenelon, denounced the
book to Louis XIV., who appointed a commission to examine it (1697).
Fenelon, fearing that a commission, one of the members of which was
his rival Bossuet, would not be likely to give an impartial judgment,
forwarded his book to Rome for judgment. While the Roman authorities
were at work a violent controversy was carried on between Fenelon and
Bossuet, which, however much it may have added to the literary
reputation of the combatants, was neither edifying nor instructive. On
the side of Bossuet especially it is clear that personalities played a
much greater part than zeal for orthodoxy. In Rome opinion was very
much divided about the orthodoxy of Fenelon's work. Louis XIV. left no
stone unturned to secure its condemnation. In the end Innocent XII.
condemned twenty propositions taken from the book (1699).[2] This
sentence was handed to Fenelon just as he was about to mount the
pulpit in his own cathedral on the Feast of the Annunciation. After
mastering its contents he preached on the submission that was due to
superiors, read the condemnation for the people, and announced to them
that he submitted completely to the decision of the Pope, and besought
his friends earnestly neither to read his book nor to defend the views
that it contained.
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[1] Denzinger, op. cit., nos. 1221-88.
[2] In the Brief, /Cum alias/, Denzinger, op. cit., nos. 1327-49.
CHAPTER VIII
RATIONALISM AND ITS EFFECTS
(a) Anti-Christian Philosophy of the Eighteenth Century.
Lecky, /History of the Rise and Influence of Rationalism in
Europe/, 1913. Windleband-Tufts, /A History of Philosophy/, 1898.
Uberweg-Morris, /History of Philosophy/, 2nd edition, 1876.
Turner, /History of Philosophy/, 1906. Binder, /Geschichte der
philosophie ... mit Rucksicht auf den Kirchlichen Zustande/, 1844-
45. Lanfrey, /L'Eglise et les philosophes au XVIIIe siecle/, 1879.
Faguet, /Etude sur le XVIIIe siecle/, 1890. Lange, /History of
Materialism/, 1877 (Tr. from German). Stephen, /History of English
Thought in the XVIIIth Century/, 1881. Taine, /Les origines de la
France contemporaine/ (vol. ii.), 1907.
In the Middle Ages the theory that human reason was to be placed above
faith found able exponents, and more than once men arose who
questioned some of the fundamental principles of Christianity, or who
went farther still by rejecting entirely the Christian revelation. But
such views were expounded in an age when the outlook of society was
markedly religious, and they exercised no perceptible influence on
contemporary thought. Between the fourteenth century and the
eighteenth, however, a great change had taken place in the world.
Dogmatic theology had lost its hold upon many educated men. The
Renaissance movement ushering in the first beginnings of literary and
historical criticism, the wonderful progress made in the natural
sciences, revolutionising as it did beliefs that had been regarded
hitherto as unquestionable, and the influence of the printing press
and of the universities, would in themselves have created a dangerous
crisis in the history of religious thought, and would have
necessitated a more careful study on the part of the theologians to
determine precisely the limits where dogma ended and opinion began.
But the most important factor in arousing active opposition to or
studied contempt of revealed religion was undoubtedly the religious
revolution of the sixteenth century, and more especially the dangerous
principles formulated by Luther and his companions to justify them in
their resistance to doctrines and practices that had been accepted for
centuries by the whole Christian world. They were driven to reject the
teaching authority of the visible Church, to maintain that Christ had
given to men a body of doctrines that might be interpreted by His
followers in future ages as they pleased, and to assert that
Christians should follow the dictates of individual judgment instead
of yielding a ready obedience to the decrees of Popes and Councils.
These were dangerous principles, the full consequence of which the
early Reformers did not perceive. If it was true, as they asserted,
that Christ had set up no visible authority to safeguard and to
