CHAPTER III.

SECTION 1.-ST. JEROME, A. D. 418.*

IN the estimation of Roman Catholic writers, the name of Jerome, "the greatest master of the Churches," stands among the highest, if not the very highest, of the early Fathers of the Christian Church. He was born in an obscure town, as his biographer assures us, he was nourished from his cradle with the pure milk of Catholic truth. He was "the friend and the oracle of Pope Damasus, and was joined (as the Roman writers say,) in an indissoluble communion with the Roman See:" and, by the canon law of Rome, not only are his books received implicitly, but of the works of others, such as Ruffinus and Origen, those only are stamped with authority which "the blessed Jerome does not reject." Nay, in the Epistle Dedicatory to Clement XII. Jerome is declared to have been pronounced by the unanimous voice of Rome, to be worthy of the highest sacerdotal dignity, even the chair of Peter itself; but he preferred the silence and retirement of a hermit's life. It is impossible for any one engaged in an inquiry into the belief and practice of the primitive Church, whatever be the immediate subject of investigation, not to look with more than ordi

The references are made to the admirable Benedictine edition of Jerome, published at Verona, from 1734 to 1742, in 11 vols. fol. See his Life, vol. xi. p. 14.

nary interest and anxiety to the sentiments of Jerome ; and on the question before us we must attach still greater importance to his testimony, from the circumstance that the state and condition of the Virgin Mary, as the Mother of our Lord, repeatedly formed the subject both of his discussions with those whose opinions he controverted, and of his instruction to those who esteemed him as their teacher in Christian doctrine. And what is the character of that evidence? From the very first to the very last page of his voluminous works, embracing every variety of theological subjects, not one single expression occurs, we do not say, to warrant the conclusion that Jerome looked with faith to the intercession of the Virgin, or ever invoked her aid or her prayers; but which would even imply his knowledge that any dependence on her intercession, or any invocation of her aid, prevailed in any part of the Catholic Church in his day. His works have been most diligently searched, and ransacked, with the view of finding some countenance in them for those practices which we call the innovations and corruptions of later times. But the search is made in vain. The evidence of this celebrated Father is all one way, and is totally incompatible with the supposition that his belief and practice coincided with the belief and practice of the Church of Rome, as fixed by the Council of Trent, as enjoined and exemplified in her authorised formularies and rituals, and as exhibited in the devotional works of her most approved authors. Indeed, we cannot discover that any of the most laborious and zealous defenders of that hyperdulia which is now professedly paid to the Virgin, has cited a single passage from Jerome in its favour. And this is the more remarkable, because on some points, which many theo

logians have considered as open questions, he is more than usually energetic in maintaining the Virgin's dignity. For example, he strenuously asserts that she was never the wife of Joseph; that those who are called in the Gospel "Christ's brethren," were not her children; that to the day of her death she remained the same pure and immaculate Virgin as she was before the birth of the Saviour. In a letter to Pammachius, written with a view to defend himself against the charge of having, in his zeal for the state of virginhood, spoken disparagingly of marriage, he employs this language: "When anything in my work appears harsh to you, look not to my words, but to the Scripture, from which my words are taken. Christ is a Virgin; the Mother of our Virgin [masculine] is a perpetual Virgin; Holy Mary is Mother and Virgina Virgin after the birth, a mother before her nuptials.*

To those questions, which have since been pursued with far more of curiosity and presumption than of humility and delicacy, we shall not allude. The Church of England, by keeping a solemn and pious silence on those mysteries in our blessed Lord's incarnation, has plainly indicated to her faithful children her mind and will that they should abstain from such bold and profitless speculations, and, practically applying the prin

*

Epist. 48 (otherwise 50), written probably A. D. 393; vol. i. p. 231. + The Benedictine editor on Jerome's fourteenth Homily on St. Luke, (vol. vii. p. 289,) aware that Jerome's words were at variance with the opinions which have been sedulously propagated by Roman writers of comparatively recent dates, refers to one of these points with painful illustrations; points these, the discussion of which can in no way benefit either our head or our heart, and can neither increase our knowledge of Gospel verity, nor strengthen our faith in Christ. This editor includes Tertullian, Basil, Ambrose, and Athanasius in the same charge of error with Jerome.

ciple of Jerome (which he sometimes seems to have himself forgotten), not to proceed a single step further in these subjects than the Scripture itself may seem to lead us by the hand.

Jerome repeatedly propounds Mary as an example to be followed by all virgins, but it is in words very far removed from the language of one who would address her by invocation.

Thus, in a letter written about the year A. D. 403,* to Læta, on the education of her daughter, he says, "Let her imitate Mary, whom Gabriel found alone in her chamber; and perhaps for this very reason was she terrified, because she beheld a man, whom she was not accustomed to see."

Thus too, in his epistle to Eustochium, written about twenty years before,† in which he says "Death came by Eve, and Life by Mary;" and in which he calls his correspondent the spouse of God, and bids her follow the example of Mary, the sister of Lazarus, who preferred Christ's doctrine to her food; after cautioning Eustochium not to follow the example of those who gave their minds to worldly affairs, he proceeds: "Let us follow the example of better persons. Propose to yourself the blessed Mary, who was of so great purity as to be thought worthy to be the mother of the Lord; who, when the angel Gabriel, in the form of a man, came down to her, saying, 'Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee,' being confounded and terrified, could not answer, for she had never been saluted by a man. At length she learned that he was a messenger, and speaks; and she who was afraid of a man, converses freely with an angel." And then so far from

* Epist. 107, p. 679.

+ Epist. 22, vol. i. p. 120.

fixing the reader's mind on Mary, as though she were the chief subject of his thoughts, he assures his female correspondent, that by the same purity of mind and body she might herself also become the mother of the Saviour; and, still withdrawing the mind from Mary, he exclaims, "The labour is great, but the prize is great, to be what the martyrs are, what the apostles are, what Christ is."

In another letter which he wrote about the year 405, to a mother and a daughter who were at variance, and whom he enjoins to be reconciled, he thus speaks:† "Mother and daughter, names of piety, words significant of duties, the bonds of nature, an alliance second after God! It is no praise if you love, it is wickedness that you hate. The Lord Jesus was subjected to his parents. He revered his mother, of whom he was himself the Father; he honoured his nourisher, the man whom he had nourished; and he remembered that he had been carried in the womb of one, and in the arms of the other. Whence also, when hanging on the cross, he commends to his disciple the parent whom, before the cross, he had never sent away."

Whilst Jerome, both in his comments on holy Scripture and in his treatise called Hebrew Questions, applies some passages to the Virgin Mary, which most commentators, ancient and modern, interpret of Christ, he applies to the Saviour himself the celebrated passage in Genesis, which the Vulgate translates so as to apply it to Mary, "He shall bruise thy head;" not, as the Vulgate renders it, "SHE shall bruise thy head;" adding, "Because our steps are hindered by the ser

66

*Potes et tu esse Mater Domini.

+ Epist. 117, vol. i. p. 777.

Vol. ix. p. 28, and vol. iii. p. 309.