The only instance in which
St. Sulpice has been moved to anger since the extinction of Jansenism
was when M. de Lamennais declared that the starting-point should be
faith, and not reason. And what is to be the test in the last resort
of the claims of faith if not reason!
Moral theology consists of a dozen treatises comprising the whole body
of philosophical ethics and of law, completed by the revelation and
decisions of the Church. All this forms a sort of encyclopaedia very
closely connected. It is an edifice, the stones of which are attached
to one another by iron clamps, but the base is extremely weak. This
base is the treatise _De la vraie Religion_, which treatise does not
hold together. For not only does it fail to show that the Christian
religion is more especially divine and revealed than the others, but
it does not even prove that in the field of reality which comes within
the reach of our observation there has occurred a single supernatural
fact or miracle. M. Littre's inexorable phrase, "Despite all the
researches which have been made, no miracle has ever taken place where
it could be observed and put upon record" is a stumbling-block which
cannot be moved out of the path. It is impossible to prove that a
miracle occurred in the past, and we shall doubtless have a long time
to wait before one takes place under such conditions as could alone
give a right-minded person the assurance that he was not mistaken.
Admitting the fundamental thesis of the treatise _De la vraie
Religion_, the field of argument is narrowed, but the argument is a
long way from being at an end.
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