Note 174 — Chapter LXX
Reading edition
— As to the precise teaching of the theologians of Father Oldcorne’s Church respecting the famous dictum of St. Augustine of Hippo, “Extra ecclesiam nulla salus,” see the book of the once celebrated Douay theologian, Dr. Hawarden, entitled, “Charity and Truth; or Catholics not uncharitable in saying that none are saved out of the Catholic Communion, because the rule is not universal” (1728). And, again, that great Yorkshire son of St. Philip Neri, Dr. Frederic William Faber, an ultramontane papist of the ultramontane papists, has thus recorded his own potent testimony on this subject in his singularly able and beautiful work, entitled, “The Creator and the Creature,” first edition, p. 368.
Dr. Faber says: “We are speaking of Catholics. If our thoughts break their bounds and run out beyond the Church, nothing that has been said has been said with any view to those without. I have no profession of faith to make about them, except that God is infinitely merciful to every soul; that no one ever has been, or ever can be, lost by surprise or trapped in his ignorance; and as to those who may be lost, I confidently believe that our Heavenly Father threw His arms round each created spirit, and looked it full in the face with bright eyes of love in the darkness of its mortal life, and that of its own deliberate will it would not have Him.”