For the same reason i left out the one before that, and the one before that, etc. etc. Because my point was, nothing more or less, that history is what Rome says it is, which the quote by Manning affirmed. The rest that you included does not change that one iota, and was not pertinent to it. That someone may understand Manning as actually denying his church had any antiquity (which though never even crossed my mind from the first time i ever read it) seems absurd to me, as does going bananas over it, and charging me with dishonesty or stupidity makes Rome looks even worse.
“For the same reason i left out the one before that, and the one before that, etc. etc. Because my point was, nothing more or less, that history is what Rome says it is, which the quote by Manning affirmed.”
And you actually don’t see how Manning’s attestation to the ancientness of the Church undercuts your claim that Manning was saying that the Church’s history is whatever it is as if it were not ancient?
Let’s look at the passage again:
“4. And from this a fourth truth immediately follows,
that the doctrines of the Church in all ages are
primitive. It was the charge of the Reformers that
the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their
pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the appeal
to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a
treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the
Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies
that voice to be Divine. How can we know what
antiquity was except through the Church ?”
Let’s stop here for a second: “How can we know what
antiquity was except through the Church ?” What we know of the history of Christianity we know from the Catholic Church. There essentially is no other history of the earliest ages of the Church.
“No individual,
no number of individuals can go back through
eighteen hundred years to reach the doctrines of antiquity.”
And that’s true. You can’t go back to the first century to reach the first century doctrines as if they exist or existed outside the Church.
“We may say with the woman of Samaria,
‘Sir, the well is deep, and thou hast nothing to draw
with.’ No individual mind now has contact with
the revelation of Pentecost, except through the
Church.”
Again, that has to be true. What the Holy Spirit led the Apostles to know cannot be known outside of the body of the Christ, the Church.
“Historical evidence and biblical criticism
are human after all, and amount at most to no more
than opinion, probability, human judgment, human
tradition.”
True again. What the Church has, and no Protestant can, is the tradition of the Apostles from Christ.
“It is not enough that the fountain of our faith be
Divine, It is necessary that the channel be divinely
constituted and preserved. But in the second chapter
we have seen that the Church contains the fountain
of faith in itself, and is not only the channel
divinely created and sustained, but the very presence
of the spring-head of the water of life, ever fresh
and ever flowing in all ages of the world. I may say
in strict truth that the Church has no antiquity. It
rests upon its own supernatural and perpetual consciousness.”
That last line cannot be separated from what came before it in the passage I posted or else the context will be lost. Manning makes it clear that the Church is ancient, its teachings are the original, the “primitive” teachings of the Apostles. That the Church is the fount of the faith - and he devoted a whole chapter to this and you make no comment on that of course. And, thus, the Church has a supernatural aspect as a teacher and guide - which is entirely scriptural (Ephesians 3:10).
“Its past is present with it, for both are
one to a mind which is immutable. Primitive and
modern are predicates, not of truth, but of ourselves.
The Church is always primitive and always modern
at one and the same time; and alone can expound
its own mind, as an individual can declare his own
thoughts.”
The Church essentially is timeless - as it must be as the Body of Christ.
‘ For what man knoweth the things of a
man, but the spirit of a man that is in him ? So the
things also that are of Grod no man knoweth, but the
Spirit of Grod.’ l The only Divine evidence to us of what was primitive is the witness and voice of the
Church at this hour.”
Only the Church was there, guided by the Holy Spirit, and sent to teach for all ages until the end of the world.
Without those opening and closing sentences, the edit you posted makes no sense and in no way expresses Manning’s clear meaning.