Pius X, 1903-1914

as the plant in the seed. Moreover, since the germs live the life of the seed, all Christians are to be said to live the life of Christ. But the life of Christ according to faith is divine; thus, also, is the life of Christians. If, then, this life in the course of the ages gave origin to the Church and the sacraments, quite rightly will such an origin be said to be from Christ, and be divine. Thus they effect completely that the Sacred Scriptures also are divine, and that dogmas are divine.—With this, then, the theology of the modernists is essentially completed. Surely a brief provision, but very abundant for him who professes that science must always be obeyed, whatever it orders. Everyone will easily see for himself the application of these principles to the other matters which we shall mention.

2089. Up to this point we have touched upon the origin of faith and its nature. But since faith has many outgrowths, chiefly the Church, dogma, worship, and devotions, the Books which we call "sacred," we should inquire what the modernists teach about these also. To take dogma as a beginning, it has already been shown above what its origin and nature are [n. 2079 f.]. It arises from a kind of impulse or necessity, by virtue of which he who believes elaborates his own thoughts so that his own conscience and that of others may be the more clarified. This labor consists entirely in investigating and in refining the primitive formula of the mind, not indeed in itself, according to the logical explanation, but according to circumstances, or vitally, as they say, in a manner less easily understood. Hence it happens that around that formula certain secondary formulae, as We have already indicated, gradually come into being [cf. n. 2078]; these afterwards brought together into one body, or into one edifice of faith, as responding to the common consciousness, are called dogma. From this the dissertations of the theologians are to be well distinguished, which, although they do not live the life of dogma, are not at all useless, not only for harmonizing religion with science and for removing disagreements between them, but also for illumining and protecting religion from without, even perchance as a means for preparing material for some new future dogma.—It would by no means have been necessary to discuss worship at length, did not the sacraments also come under this term, on which the errors of the modernists are most serious. They say that worship arises from a twofold impulse or necessity; for, as we have seen, all things in their system are said to come into existence by innermost impulses or necessities. The first need is to attribute something sensible to religion; the second is to express it, which surely cannot be done without a sensible form, or consecrating acts which we call sacraments. But for the modernists sacraments are mere symbols or signs, although not lacking efficacy. To point out this efficacy, they make use of the example of certain words which are popularly said to have caught