That Catholic points not yet in controversy were not argued by the Fathers yet were evident in Scripture
3 min • Digitized on May 5, 2023
From A Defense of the Teachings of Mary, page 57
By St. John Henry Newman
I mean to find it in the vision of the Woman and Child in the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse1:—now here two objections will be made to me at once; first that such an interpretation is but poorly supported by the Fathers, and secondly that in ascribing such a picture of the Madonna (as it may be called) to the Apostolic age, I am committing an anachronism.
As to the former of these objections, I answer as follows:—Christians have never gone to Scripture for proofs of their doctrines, till there was actual need, from the pressure of controversy;—if in those times the Blessed Virgin’s dignity were unchallenged on all hands, as a matter of doctrine, Scripture, as far as its argumentative matter was concerned, was likely to remain a sealed book to them.
Thus, to take an instance in point; the Catholic party in the English Church, (say, the Non-jurors,) unable by their theory of religion simply to take their stand on Tradition, and distressed for proof of their doctrines, had their eyes sharpened to scrutinize and to understand the letter of Holy Scripture, which to others brought no instruction.
And the peculiarity of their interpretations is this,—that they have in themselves great logical cogency, yet are but faintly supported by patristical commentators.
Such is the use of the word ποιεῖν or facere in our Lord’s institution of the Holy Eucharist, which, by a reference to the old Testament, is found to be a word of sacrifice.
Such again is λειτουργούντων in the passage in the Acts, “As they ministered to the Lord and fasted,” which again is a sacerdotal term.
And such the passage in Rom. xv. 16, in which several terms are used which have an allusion to the sacrificial Eucharistic rite.
Such too is St. Paul’s repeated message to the household of Onesiphorus, with no mention of Onesiphorus himself, but in one place with the addition of a prayer that “he might find mercy of the Lord” in the day of judgment, which, taking into account its wording and the known usage of the first centuries, we can hardly deny is a prayer for his soul.
Other texts there are, which ought to find a place in ancient controversies, and the omission of which by the Fathers affords matter for more surprise; those, for instance, which, according to Middleton’s rule, are real proofs of our Lord’s divinity, and yet are passed over by Catholic disputants; for these bear upon a then existing controversy of the first moment, and of the most urgent exigency.
1 Vid. Essay on Doctr. Development, p. 384, and Bishop Ullathorne’s work on the Immaculate Conception, p. 77.