Elucidation
The
editor of this American Series confines himself in general to such
occasional and very brief annotations as may suggest to students
and others the practical views which are requisite to a clear
comprehension of authors who wrote for past ages; for a sort and
condition of men no longer existing, whose extinction as a class is, indeed, largely due to these writings. But he reserved to himself the privilege of correcting palpable mistakes, especially in points which bear upon questions of our own times.
That our learned translators have unaccountably
admitted a very inaccurate translation of the crucial paragraph in book
iii. cap. iii. sect. 2, I have shown in the footnote at that place. It is
evident, (1) because they themselves are not satisfied with it, and (2) because I have set it side by side with the more literal rendering of a writer who would have preferred their reading if it could have borne the test of criticism.
Now, the authors of the Latin translation may have designed the
ambiguity which gives the Ultramontane party an apparent advantage; but
it is an advantage which disappears as soon as it is examined, and hence
I am content to take it as it stands. Various conjectures have been made
as to the original Greek of Irenæus; but the Latin answers every purpose
of the author’s argument, and is fatal to the claims of the Papacy. Let me recur to the translation given, in loco, from a Roman Catholic, and this will be seen at once.
For he thus renders it:—
1. In this Church, “ever, by those who are on every side, has been preserved that tradition
which is
from apostles.” How would such a proposition have sounded to Pius
IX. in the Vatican Council? The faith is preserved by those who come to Rome, not by the Bishop who presides there.
2. “For to this Church, on account of more potent
principality, it is
necessary that every Church (that is, those who are, on every
side, faithful) resort.” The greatness of Rome, that is, as the
capital of the Empire, imparts to the local Church a superior dignity, even as compared with Lyons, or any other metropolitical Church. Everybody visits Rome: hence you find there faithful witnesses from every side (from all the Churches); and their united testimony it is which preserves in Rome the pure apostolic traditions.
The Latin, thus translated by a candid Roman Catholic, reverses the whole system of the Papacy. Pius IX. informed his Bishops, at the late Council, that they were not called to bear their testimony, but to hear his infallible decree; “reducing us,” said the Archbishop of Paris, “to a council of sacristans.”