e difficulties.[146]

Cardinal Newman, in his _Arians of the Fourth Century_, has some
interesting remarks on the _Disciplina Arcani_, but, with the
deeply-rooted ingrained scepticism of the nineteenth century, he cannot
believe to the full in the "riches of the glory of the Mystery," or
probably never for a moment conceived the possibility of the existence
of such splendid realities. Yet he was a believer in Jesus, and the
words of the promise of Jesus were clear and definite: "I will not leave
you comfortless; I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world
seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also. At
that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in
you."[147] The promise was amply redeemed, for He came to them and
taught them in His Mysteries; therein they saw Him, though the world saw
Him no more, and they knew the Christ as in them, and their life as
Christ's.

Cardinal Newman recognises a secret tradition, handed down from the
Apostles, but he considers that it consisted of Christian doctrines,
later divulged, forgetting that those who were told that they were not
yet fit to receive it were not heathen, nor even catechumens under
instruction, but full communicating members of the Christian Church.
Thus he states that this secret tradition was later "authoritatively
divulged and perpetuated in the form of symbols," and was embodied "in
the creeds of the early Councils."[148] But as the doctrines in the
creeds are to be found clearly stated in the Gospels and Epistles, this
position is wholly untenable, all these having been already divulged to
the world at large; and in all of them the members of the Church were
certainly thoroughly instructed. The repeated statements as to secrecy
become meaningless if thus explained. The Cardinal, however, says that
whatever "has not been thus authenticated, whether it was prophetical
information or comment on the past dispensations, is, from the
circumstances of the case, lost to the Church."[149] That is very
probably, in fact certainly, true, so far as the Church is concerned,
but it is none the less recoverable.

Commenting on Irenaeus, who in his work _Against Heresies_ lays much
stress on the existence of an Apostolic Tradition in the Church, the
Cardinal writes: "He then proceeds to speak of the clearness and cogency
of the traditions preserved in the Church, as containing that true
wisdom of the perfect, of which S.