Porro si in digito Dei eiicio dæmonia: profecto pervenit in vos regnum Dei. Cum fortis armatus custodit atrium suum, in pace sunt ea quæ possidet. Si autem fortior eo superveniens vicerit eum, universa arma eius auferet, in quibus confidebat, et spolia eius distribuet. Qui non est mecum, contra me est: et qui non colligit mecum, dispergit. (From the Gospel for the Third Sunday in Lent, Luke xi, 20-23: But if I by the finger of God cast out devils, doubtless the kingdom of God is come upon you. When a strong man armed keepeth his court, those things are in peace which he possesseth. But if a stronger than he is come upon him and overcome him, he will take away all his armor wherein he trusted, and will distribute his spoils. He that is not with Me, is against Me: and he that gathereth not with Me scattereth.)
Jesus Christ [did not ask] from us the sacrifice of our reason in order to establish His kingdom by faith; for He is Himself reason, and it is He who gives us ours by a reflection of His own, as it is expressly written in the Gospel of Saint John.
But He had to require from us the sacrifice of our own judgment, which is a very different thing from the sacrifice of our reason. In fact, reason does not exist in us in its pure state; were it so, enlightened as we should be by a single and an undivided light, we should advance in the most perfect unanimity. Instead of this, although participating in reason, one and universal, without which we should not be intelligent beings, we mix it up with weaknesses, obscurities, habits, resolutions, numberless mysterious obstacles which bar up its great ways, lessen its light, and make of our reason that limited and personal thing which we call private judgment. It is this judgment, the result of our servitude and liberty, which divides men in the house of their common mother, and hinders them from founding here below, by themselves, the holy republic of truth.
We cleave, in fact, to our own judgment in a twofold manner, because it is based upon reason, and nothing is more just than to hold to reason; and we cleave to it still more, perhaps, by that individuality which distinguishes us, and which is made up of the innumerable impressions which the ebb and flow of the intelligence have deposited in us from the day when we first exercised that admirable faculty of seeing, hearing, judging, reasoning, and feeling. Now, by the faith in Jesus Christ, necessary to the constitution of the kingdom of souls, we must abdicate that personal judgment which is so natural and so dear to us; we must found our reason in the superior reason of Christ, we must break in pieces the personal mold, more or less false and narrow, which makes us what we are, and enter into the wide and deep mold shaped by the Gospel, which is the very mind of Jesus Christ.
This sacrifice ... is infinitely painful to us, because, in order to tear us from ourselves, it touches the root of our spiritual being. ... Not only do we cleave to ourselves as nature and liberty have made us, but we strive also to impose ourselves upon others, to become their models, their masters, and to create a kingdom of minds in order to govern them. In whatever degree man may have received from Heaven an elevated mind, this is his inclination. In the mental order, as in all the orders of his action, the will of man is to reign. If he is favored by birth, by fortune, or by power, his will is to be supreme in them; if, however, he is gifted in the intellectual order, he thirsts to govern minds. This last royalty is the most courted of all, and its most absolute sovereigns are not satisfied if they do not bring all minds into subjection to their own.
When, therefore, Jesus Christ requires from us the sacrifice of our judgment to His supreme reason, He requires from us the abdication of the royalty which we have most at heart. He enters into a conspiracy, the object of which is to humble us before the most rightful throne to which we could aspire: for what sovereignty is more lawful than the sovereignty of the mind, that gift which does not come to us from chance or election, or the efforts of others, but from our own selves, from what is sown in us by nature and cultivated by us? And, in proportion as we possess this, whether by knowledge or philosophy, so are we the more incensed against that usurper called Christ, who pretends to nothing less than to set up His mind in the place of our own, than to cause us to think His thoughts and speak His words. This ... is the secret of that aversion which so many learned men and philosophers feel towards Jesus Christ; they are men who will not submit to be dethroned... .
Nevertheless, it has been necessary that, for eighteen centuries, all of us, whoever we may be, who are the children of Christ, should consent to be dethroned, to become little, to be taught -- not only during our childhood, but throughout our lives; and, laden with years and honours, having governed men otherwise than by the mind, in our last moments, when about to appear before God, we have again been required to abdicate that reign of the judgment, so dear to pride, in order to repose in Jesus Christ as little children, and charge Him to bear us in His blessed hands to the throne of that pure and eternal reason, who is God His Father.
None other upon earth..., none other, has obtained that supreme dictatorship of the understanding. Tyrants have oppressed human thought by hindering its manifestation, they have never governed it; it eludes all the devices of the most subtle rule. Sages have formed schools, but ephemeral schools, whose laws have been disowned even by their disciples. Should we wonder at that? The disciple of the sage is a man like himself; he idolises the idea of the master until the day comes when his own idea, ripe for an act of legitimate ingratitude, enables him to attain to the honors of teaching, and mark his place in the history of the unstable dynasties of human knowledge. The religious sects, although standing upon more solid ground, have, however, met with no better success. Heresy leaves us our own judgment, Protestantism leaves us our own judgment; all these doctrines, so far from enchaining faith, have had for object [the] emancipation [of private judgment]. Even Mohammedanism, like idolatry beforehand, was unable to constitute a doctrinal authority, and consequently it leaves its followers to the chance of their personal direction. All, save Christ, either leave to us or restore to us our judgment, and here lies the eternal charm of error.
What do we now hear around us? What does the modern age, uncertain of its course, and almost alike incapable of boldness in evil and in good, demand of Christ with supplication? Is it not to slacken the bonds of His rule, to remove certain articles of the ancient Christian constitution, to revise the primitive pact of the Gospel, to sign a compromise between time and eternity? But Christ smiles at those weak desires which do not spring from entire obedience to His adorable reason. Between Him and ourselves, nothing can exist but Himself or ourselves, the abdication of our own judgment, or the reign of our own judgment: between these we have to choose.
Henri-Dominique Lacordaire
Conférences de Notre-Dame de Paris (1846)
Conférences de Notre-Dame de Paris (1846)
