o^ ««^1 ^^ taivERfo ro ^ APR -7180?^ \- LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. '~^)(n^ Chap. Co pyri ght No. Shelf.-Jl:-^i5 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THE FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH EXPLAINED AND DISCUSSED FOR PROTESTANTS AND CATHOLICS BY FRANK HUGH FOSTER « » PH.D. (LEIPZIG), HON. D. D. (CHICAGO THEO. SEM.) Professor of Theology in Pacific Theological Seminary (Congre- gational), Oakland, Cal. ^ PHILADELPHIA PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION AND SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK 1899 Ths Lurart OP CwveRsss WASmNOTOM 28548 Copyright, 1898, by The Trustees of The Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath- School Work. ^O COPIES REC IVEO. ft^'^'" rED-61899 >vv PREFACE The following work is the outgrowth of many years of study and teaching. The writer's interest in the subject began in youth. During his residence in Germany he formed the purpose of preparing a manual upon the controversy between the CathoHc and Protes- tant Churches, and at one time thought of translating Hase's Handbuch der protestantischen Poleinik gegen die roinisch-katholische Kirche, That work is a mar- vel of fullness, historical knowledge, accurate defini- tion, acuteness, and wit. But its size, its tone, and its general style, as well as the proportionate attention given to topics of greater interest in Germany than in America, led to an early abandonment of this idea. It has, however, been freely employed as a source of suggestion and material, and the ensuing work is constructed upon the general lines laid down by Hase (edition of 1878, the fourtli). An acquaint- ance with Mohler's Symbolik determined the introduc- tion of a new element into the discussion, the effort to present the Catholic " ideal '' of every important topic ; that is, to present each doctrine from the point of view and under the light which render it con- vincing and precious to the CathoHc. Under the guidance of this great and noble mind, the Catholic writers selected as the exponents of their system iii iv Preface, have been those who occupy the higher ranges of thought, and present their system in its more ideal aspects. It was a piece of great good fortune that, just as the more serious study was to begin, Hein- rich's Dogmatische Theologie^ a monumental work of the most comprehensive character, and of the finest spirit, began to issue from the press. This work, now extended to seven volumes, comprising nearly 6000 pages, has been the chief authority for the Catholic position upon the topics which it covers. It is greatly to be lamented that its author's death suspended its pubHcation in 1889, and that it must now be continued by another (though very able) hand. For a certain massiveness, positiveness, and cogency, and for its large infusion of the genuine German spirit of nobility and childlike simplicity, this work bears comparison with the very best in its department, whether Protestant or Catholic. The spirit, and even the forms of expression which Hein- rich employs, remind one forcibly of the great Leip- zig historian, Kahnis. Heinrich's treatise now stops with the atonement. Where he has failed, the Prcelectiones Theologicce of the Jesuit, John Per- rone, in the briefer edition (four volumes, Paris, A. Roger et F. Chernoviz, 1 894), has been employed, as representing more nearly than any other work the standard Roman theology of the present day. And from our own country, the little work of Cardinal Gibbons, entitled The Faith of our Fathers (reprint of 1890), a very succinct, clear, and able presentation of the Catholic system, which has had an enormous circulation, has received constant attention. For the Preface, v original authorities, the confessions and creeds, the Creeds of Christendom, by Prof. Philip Schaff, supple- mented by the Roman Catechism, has been gener- ally employed. The early Church fathers have been generally quoted after the English translation in the Libraries of the Christian Literature Co., though with constant reference to the original texts. Of Protestant controversialists, a MS. copy of lectures by Kahnis, the Lehrsystem der romischen Kirche by the early deceased and brilliant Johannes Delitzsch, son of Prof Franz Delitzsch, Littledale's Plain Reasons against foining the Church of Rome (edition of 1886), in addition to Hase, have given the most fruitful suggestions; but the main reliance has been upon the standard treatises of exegesis and theology, in which the fundamental considerations bearing upon this subject have been drawn out at length. In all this work it has been the constant purpose to set forth the Catholic doctrine fully and fairly from the authoritative sources, to present its ideal form, and to state the arguments for it in their full force and at as great length as the limits of this work permitted. It is hoped that no Catholic will be able to complain of misrepresentation or injustice. It has been the writer's desire to state the Catholic case as strongly and as well as a CathoHc could do it. But he has then attempted to refute what he beheved to be wrong with equal clearness and completeness. He has hit error as hard as he could. He believes that strenuous conflict will be appreciated by great- hearted souls. The antagonism between Catholic and Protestant is at bottom founded upon a difference vi Preface. in convictions, in ideas. Nothing but a thorough understanding between the parties, and nothing but a surrender by either party of what it may find to be wrong, will ever produce harmony or promote the triumph of the truth. It is for these reasons that the theme has been chosen, and in this spirit that the controversy has been waged in the present vol- ume. One limitation that may be unexpected to some the author has laid upon himself The numerous practical questions between Catholics and Protestants, for example, in this country, the question of the pub- he schools, have been left substantially untouched. They would have led the discussion too far, and would have been outside the theme chosen, which has to do with the fundamental ideas upon the oppo- sition of which all superficial opposition is based. Correct the fundamental disagreements, and the details of adjustment will be easy between the parties. To Catholics and Protestants alike, then, the author commends his effort, with the prayer for the divine blessing upon them both. CONTENTS. PART I. THE CHURCH. PAGE ^ I. Agreement of the Protestant and Catholic systems. — J 2. Subject of this work I CHAPTER I. THE ATTRIBUTES OF THE CHURCH. 2 3. Definition of the Church as visible. — § 4. Proof. Mohler's ideal proof. Biblical proof. — ^ 5. Reply. Circular reasoning. The true New Testament Church is composed of saints, and is invisible. — ^ 6. Depotentiation of the spiritual contact of the Christian with God.— | 7. Notes of the Church.— g 8. Apostolicity. — ^ 9. Relation of Peter to Rome. Not known that he was ever there. Not bishop. Not martyred there. — § 10. Catholicity. Missions, Catholic and Protestant. — § II. Holiness. Characters of the Reformers. — ^ 12. Unity, — I 13. Ideal of Church unity. — ^ 14. Rome does not pos- sess unity. The mother of schism. — § 15. Necessity of the unproved idea of the authority of Rome to all the fore- going argumentation 3 CHAPTER H. THE INFALLIBLE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH. § 16. Division of the subject. — I. Definition OF the Infalli- bility OF THE Church. — g 17. Definition of Trent. — § 18. Heinrich's explanations. — § 19. Definition of ^^ ex cathe- dra^ cathedratic. — \ 20. Ideal. — 11. Dogmatic Proof vii viii Contents. PAGfi AND Reply. — \ 21. General arguments. — \ 22. The three main texts. — \ 23. Luke xxii. 32 and John xxi. 15-17. — \ 24. Matt. xvi. i8. — \ 25. Atmosphere of the Scriptures. — \ 26. Nature of Revelation. — \ 27. Logical requirements of an argument for infallibility. — \ 28. Duty of private judgment. — III. Historical Proof and Reply. — \ 29. Irenseus IIL iii. — \ 30. Heinrich's argument from the passage. — \ 31. Tertullian de Prescrip. xxxvi. — \ 32. Ar- gument. — \ 2)Z' Roman historical method. — \ 34. Argu- ment from Cyprian. Interpolations. — \ 35. Cyprian's real position. — \ 36. Doctrine of infallibility after the Council of Nice (325). — \ 37. The case of Honorius, sketch. — \ 38. The doctrine of Sergius' letter to Honorius. — \ 39. Honorius' reply. — \ 40. Was it a letter ^jr cathedra ? — \ 41. Conflicting Catholic interpretations of the Honorius episode. — \ 42. Summary. Protestant idea of Christian certainty .... 29 CHAPTER III. THE NECESSITY OF THE CHURCH. g 43. Membership in the Roman Catholic Church essential to salvation. — \ 44. Proof that this is a doctrine of the Roman Church. — \ 45. Proof offered for the doctrine. — g 46. Apolo- getic modifications. — \ 47. " Invincible ignorance." — \ 48. Ambiguity and inconsistency of the Roman system ... 75 CHAPTER IV. THE HIERARCHY. J 49. Connection of the ideas of a visible church and a hier- archy. — \ 50. Definition of the priesthood. Universal priest- hood of believers. — \ 5 1 . Proof, principally from the sacrifice. \ 52. Reply to the main argument. — \ 53. Protestant doc- trine of the priesthood. — \ 54. Criticism of the historical argu- ment. — \ 55. Extravagant expressions. — \ 56. The episco- pate. — \ 57. Nevi^ Testament bishops and presbyters equal. — = § 58. Patristic argument. — \ 59. The celibacy of the clergy. Not in the New Testament. — \ 60. Ideal view of celibacy. Celibacy monastic and dangerous. — \ 61. Practical argu- ment. — \ 62. Protestant ideal of the pastorate. — \ 63. In- consistencies ^^ Contents, ix . CHAPTER V. THE PAPACY. ^ PAGE \ 64. Division of the theme. — \ 65. Vatican definitions of papal supremacy. — \ 66. Development of the present and curial system of the Church. — \ 67. The Gallican theory incon- sistent and impracticable. — \ 68. The Gallican theory yields to the curial. — \ 69. Elements of the curial system. — \ 70. Cardinal Gibbons' argument for the supremacy of the pope. — § 71. Historical view of the development of the papacy. — \ 72. The papacy and the State. — \ 73. Necessity of the temporal power. — § 74. Dependence of the State upon the Church. Bull Uttam Sanctam. — \ 75. The Roman Church and toleration. — § 76. The public schools 113 CHAPTER VI. THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY WITHIN THE CHURCH. § 77. What authority does Rome acknowledge binding upon her-' self? — \ 78. Scripture and tradition. — \ 79. The ideal view of tradition. — \ 80. The Protestant reply. — \ 81. The Catho- lic doctrine of the Scriptures. — \ 82. Heinrich's attack on the Protestant doctrine of the Scriptures. Witness of the Spirit. — \ ^2i' Need of an Interpreter. Perspicuity. — \ 84. Roman view of the Vulgate. Popular use of the Bible. — \ 85. Cardinal Gibbons on the Church and the Bible 148 PART II. THE SYSTEM OF DOCTRINES PERTAINING TO SALVATION. CHAPTER I. JUSTIFICATION, FAITH, AND WORKS. 86. Definitions of the Council of Trent. — \ 87. Mohler's discus- sion of original righteousness and original sin. — \ 88. Mohler's description of justification. — \ 89. Criticism. — \ 90. Protes- tant view of saving faith. — \ 91. Good works. Purgatory. Contents, PAGE \ 92. Protestant view of their relations to justification. Purgatory. — \ 93. Externality of the Catholic view, and consequent depotentiation of Christianity. — \ 94. Resump- tion and completion of the proof that salvation is not con- fined to the Roman Church 169 CHAPTER II. OUTGROWTHS OF THE DOCTRINE OF MERIT. J 95. Supererogatory works. — \ 96. Scriptural proof. — \ 97. Ideal view and Protestant reply. — \ 98. Monasticism. Its history. The Jesuits. — \ 99. Protestant objections. — \ 100. Worship of the saints.^ — \ loi. Catholic ideal. — \ 102. The real ques- tion. — § 103. Protestant answer. — \ 104. Canonization . . 191 CHAPTER III. THE VIRGIN MARY. \ 105. Recent development of this doctrine. — \ 106. The Council of Trent. — \ 107. The encyclical of Pope Pius IX. Five points ip the doctrine. — \ 108. Ideal aspects. — \ 109. The sinlessness of Mary. — \ no. Her immaculate conception. — § III. Her perpetual virginity. — \ 112. Drift of Mariolatry. \ 113. Place of the authority of the Church in the argu- ment. — \ 1 14. History of the doctrine of the immaculate con- ception. — \ 115. Gutberlet's review of the history. — \ 116. The theory of development. — \ 117. Criteria of a true de- velopment 210 CHAPTER IV. THE SACRAMENTS. § 118. Definition of the sacraments in general. — \ 119. Meaning oi opus operatutn. — \ 1 20. Mohler's idealization of this con- ception. — \ 121. Requisites to the validity of the sacraments. \ 122. Two forms of "intention." — \ 123. Number. — \ 124. Ideal of the sacraments. — \ 125. Protestant objec- tions. To the number seven. — \ 1 26, To the opus operatum. — \ 127. Consequences of the doctrine of "intention" to the Roman system 237 Contents. xi CHAPTER V. BAPTISM AND CONFIRMATION. PAGE \ 128. Definition in respect to baptism. — \ 129. Dilemma of Cath- olics in consequence of the doctrine as to heretical baptism. \ 130. Protestant view of baptism. — \ 131. Confirmation . . 249 ■» CHAPTER VI. PENANCE. \ 132. Definitions. — \ 133. Ideal. — \ 134. Proof from Scripture. I 135. The judicial power of the priest not authenticated. — g 136. Proof continued. — \ 137. General objections. — § 138. Historical proof. None rendered by the earliest writers. \ 139. " Attrition." — § 140. Artificial position into which the Church of Rome is brought. — \ 141. Satisfactions. In- consistent with the satisfaction of Christ. In actual practice artificial. — \ 142. Prayer no penance. — \ 143. Purgatory. — § 144. Idealization. This renders it all the more unneces- sary and impossible. — § 145. Scripture proof. — \ 146. His- torical proof fails. The doctrine a " corruption." — \ 147. Accompanying scandals. — \ 148. Purgatory a "blessing," and yet to be avoided ! — \ 149. Indulgences. — \ 150. The theories underlying them. — \ 151. Indulgences imperil the whole doctrine of sacramental confession. — \ 1 5 2. The triviality of modern conditions for indulgence. — \ 153. Abuses of the confessional.— § 154. The true argument perpetuating the confessional in the Catholic Church. — g 155. The Inquisition 255 CHAPTER VII. THE LORD'S SUPPER. § 156. Doctrine and religious feeling unite here. — \ 157. Defini- tions. — \ 158. Ideal. — I. The Real Presence.— § 159. The Catholic argument. John Sixth. — \ 160. Discussion of this chapter. — \ 161. The Lord's Supper not a fulfillment of a promise to give his body to be eaten. — \ 162. Gibbons' argu- ment from I Cor. x. 16 and xi. 23-29. — \ 163. The histori- cal argument. — | 164. Real attitude of the early Church to this doctrine. — \ 165. Transubstantiation. — \ 166. Insuper- xii Co7ttents. PAGE able difficulties of this theory. — J 167. True history of the theory of transubstantiation. — § 168. Transubstantiation unnecessary. — II. The Sacrifice of the Mass. — § 169. The Scripture argument for it invalid. — J ^1^- The Scrip- tures positively against the sacrifice. — ^ 171. The historical argument, — ^172. The denial of the cup to the laity. — § 173. The Protestant ideal of the Lord's Supper 293 CHAPTER VIII. THE REMAINING SACRAMENTS— ORDER, MATRIMONY, EXTREME UNCTION. g 174. Order. — J 175. Matrimony. — § 176. Divorce. — ? 177. Im- pediments to marriage. — § 178. Mixed marriages. — g 1 79. Extreme unction 338 CHAPTER IX. CONCLUSION. g 180. Summary of the System. — § 181. Critique of its Proof. — I 182. Effects of Method on the System.— ^ 183. The Protes- tant System. — J 184.. Fundamental Protestant Objection to Catholicism 349 INDEX 357 PART I. THE CHURCH. § I. Although the Roman system of doctrine, upon the exposition of which we now enter, differs very widely from Protestantism in much of its super- structure, it rests upon the same foundation with this. Most Protestants accept without difficulty the results arrived at in the first six general councils of the Church, though they do not ascribe to councils that authoritative place which these receive in the Roman system, nor believe that, as authoritative bodies, they had any great influence upon the development of Christian doctrine. They are rather landmarks of progress. The Apostles' Creed, which the Council of Trent rehearses as the fundamental creed of Chris- tendom, is repeated to-day in almost every Protestant church. The definitions of Nice upon the Trinity, and of Chalcedon upon the person of Christ form the basis of the theology of every great Protestant communion. In the whole of natural theology Catholics and Protestants teach, in general, the same doctrines, and employ many of the same hnes of argumentation and proof The personality of God in distinction from every pantheistic idea, the creation of matter, the providential control of nature by God, the possibility and the actuality of miracles, the reality of revelation, the nature of the soul of man, the great principles of morality and of natural con- 1 2 The Roman System. science, are viewed alike by both systems. And the Protestant may also gladly acknowledge, however he may deem the great saving truths of Christianity to be obscured by the additions of Catholicism, that the Roman Church has always held up the Lord Jesus Christ as the only Saviour of men, and has directed the faith of the inquirer to him. § 2. With these fundamental doctrines, in which the two churches agree, we have nothing to do here. The object of the present work is to set forth the system of the Roman Church w^here it differs from Protestanism. Yet not every difference can be noticed in such a work as this. Minor dis- agreements will be generally passed over in silence. Larger ones will be treated with strict reference to their relation to the system as a whole. The ques- tions raised for answer here are these : What is the system of the Church of Rome in its essential and distinguishing features ? How are these sustained in the eyes of its adherents themselves ? and, What are the merits of that system as a distinctive system ? The key to the answers to these questions is to be found in the doctrine of Rome as to the Church, from which every other peculiarity of the system flows, and hence to this topic attention must first be directed. CHAPTER I. THE ATTRIBUTES OF THE CHURCH. § 3. Definition of the Church. With this the very central point of the difiference between the Roman and Protestant systems is touched. ''AH heresy," says Arnold in his Catholic Dictionary} " involves a rejection of the Church's authority; and, on the other hand, it is impossible to accept the true doc- trine concerning the Church and at the same time be a heretic ... It is misunderstood by Protestants more utterly than by most at least of their predeces- sors in separation, and the true sense of the ninth article in the Apostles' Creed is the hinge on which all our controversy with Protestants turns." The importance of exact definition, and of a full compre- hension of the meaning of such definition, as it lies in the mind of the earnest and schooled Catholic, cannot, therefore, be easily overestimated. And yet, strange as it may seem, the great sym- bols of the Church nowhere contain a concise and authoritative definition of the Church. For the best one we are indebted to Bellarmine, Avho is followed in substance by Cardinal Gibbons.^ He says : '* The one and true Church is the congregation of men united by the profession of the same Christian faith and the communion of the same sacraments, under 1 Article, " Church of Christ." 2 paith of our Fathers, p. 23. 3 4 The Ro7nan System. the rule of the legitimate pastors and especially the one vicar of Christ upon earth." ^ What makes the Church is the profession, the communion, the rule, especially the submission to the papacy. This is all external, and at once identifies the Church with the visible Church. The same thought is brought out with the greatest distinctness in other definitions, such as Mohler's : ** The visible communion of all believers, founded by Christ."^ Perrone puts it: *'The Church, or the society instituted by Christ, must necessarily be one, visible^ and perpetual."^ By this is not meant, as Protestants might acknowl- edge, that the Church of Christ has a visible organi- zation, but that the visible organization is the Church, and hence all that is said in Scripture of the Church applies to the visible Church as such. True, there are both good men- and bad in the Church, and the Roman Catechism distinguishes between them as " dissimilar in life and morals," the good being those " who are united not only by the profession of the faith, but also by the spirit of grace and the bond of charity." But, the catechism goes on to say, since one can never know who are truly pious, *' one may not think that Christ our Saviour spake of the invisible Church when he referred us to the Church and commanded that we should obey her, for, since this is unknown, who could be certain to whose de- cision he was to turn and whose authority obey ? The Church therefore embraces both the good and the bad, as the holy Scriptures and the writings of * Hase, Polc/nik, p. i, from Eccl. mil. c. 2. 2 Symbolik, i., p. 331. 3 Prcelectiones , vol. i., p. 137, Visibility, 5 holy men testify. Of this external Church it is that the Apostle writes, ' One body and one spirit/ " ^ What is then to be taught by Rome as to the Church will be taught of the visible Church. To this will be applied the various '' notes " of the Church, to this applied the offices and authority given to the Church in Scripture, and the privileges she possesses. And this visible Church is the church in communion with Rome. § 4. Proof. This, as conducted by Heinrich, is as follows : ^ Christ did not merely come into the world to teach certain doctrines which he should then leave to operate as they might, invisibly and directly upon the minds of men, without intermedi- aries or agents, but he founded a visible church. . He certainly established a Messianic kingdom which should have no end. True, this kingdom has its invisible side, since its connection with Christ and his presence in it by his Spirit are invisible, as well as its spiritual graces, and is thus an object of faith ; but it is itself visible — /. e., knowable. This is evident {a) from necessity. The nature of man, as a being not only spiritual but also corporeal, demands that his religious activity should be not only internal, but also external, in a society, as all his life — birth, education, and general activity — is lived under the constant ope- ration of his fellow-men upon him in society. And therefore Christ has established such a society for him in the Church. In Judaism the family and the ^ Catechismus Ro7nanus, Pars /., cap. x., qtic^st. vi. The edition employed is the Latin-German of Buse, Leipzig, Velhagen und Klas- ing, 1867. 2 Dog, Theol., i., p. 467. 6 The Roman System, people were not only these, but also, and chiefly, a church. For Christianity, then, a visible church, as a spiritual kingdom of Christ embracing the entire race, existed from the beginning, and was in the highest degree appropriate. Then, again, the nature of revealed religion demands a visible church. Rev- elation is in its essence the exhibition of the invisible truth and grace of God in visible form. The incar- nation is a necessity to this revelation, and the visible Church, as the body of Christ, is equally necessary. The incarnation gives an authoritative truth, and the visible Church a pillar and ground and administrator of that truth. Then (b) it is a fact that Christ estab- lished a visible church. Its origin is known, and it has maintained an unbroken continuity from the first. Mohler says in his eloquent way : '' We see now that the Church, though composed of men, is not merely human. Rather, as in Christ the divine and human are to be distinguished although both are in perfect union, so he is also perpetuated in undi- vided entirety in the Church. The Church, his per- manent manifestation, is at the same time divine and human ; it is the unity of both. He it is who, con- cealed in earthly and human forms, works within it ; it has therefore a divine and a human side in such a way that the divine cannot be separated from the human, nor the human from the divine. These two sides therefore interchange their predicates : if it is the divine, the living Christ and his Spirit, which is the properly infallible, the eternally inerrant element in it, yet the human is also infallible and inerrant, because the divine without the human does not exist, Visibility. 7 so far as we are concerned, at all ; the human is what it is not in itself, but as the organ and manifestation of the divine. And hence we perceive how so great, important, and significant a thing could be intrusted to men.'' ^ Other writers do not add substantially to this argument, except that they often emphasize the necessity of the visibility of the Church if it is to be an authority in matters of faith. " There would be no meaning," says the Catholic Dictionary^ "in the admonition to ' hear the Church,' if she were invisible. We could not accept her as our infallible guide, as the unfailing oracle of truth, if she consisted only of pious people, who are known and can be known as such to God alone." The Church comes first with instruction and the means of grace ; then the soul, thus instructed, becomes a member of the house- hold of God by incorporation in the visible Church. The same authority gives in a condensed form the bibHcal argument: *'The Church which they [the apostles] recognized was, first of all, a visible body. No other kind of church would have answered to the intention of Christ in founding it. His disciples were to be like ' a city that is set upon a mountain * (Matt. V. 14) 'a candle put upon a candlestick' {ib., V. 15). Christ's Church was not to consist merely in the invisible union of pious behevers in him. Far from this, in a series of parables our Lord warns his fol- lowers that the kingdom of heaven — i. e., the Church which he was to establish (since none but the good can enter heaven in the literal sense) — was to consist ^ op. cit., vol. i., p. 333. 2 Art., " Church of Christ." 8 The Roman System, of good and bad. He compares his Church to a field in which good grain and weeds grow together till the day of judgment; to a net which takes good and bad fish ; to a wedding feast where not all the guests are clothed in the wedding garment of charity ; to virgins, some of whom are wise, some foolish." § 5. Reply. Protestants have no objection to make to the statement that Christ established a vis- ible church upon earth, and if the Roman doctrine meant no more than this, nothing further need be said. There is a visible church. It might indeed seem as if this were all that the Roman system main- tained, since the arguments sketched above prove nothing more than that there is a visible church, till an element is introduced, as in the Catholic Diction- ary, which trenches upon the next topic of discus- sion, viz., the authority of the Church. *' We could not accept her as our infallible guide, ... if she con- sisted only of pious people," the Dictionary says. Thus, authority in matters of faith, the unbroken continuity of the Church, and its identity with the Roman Clmrcli and its hierarchy, must all be proved before it is evi- dent that the visible Church is identical, without quali- fication, with the Church that Christ founded. While, therefore, the Roman system demands the identifica- tion of the Church with the visible Church, which is its first and fundamental error in the opinion of Prot- estants, in order to maintain its further doctrines of the authority of the Church, etc., it cannot prove this ultimate position without employing the subsequent doctrines which are built upon it as elements of the Visibility, 9 proof. The proof thus fails at the outset, for this is reasoning in a circle. Nor is the biblical proof more successful. It can- not be doubted that there are in the visible Church both good men and bad, but are there such in that Church which the New Testament Scriptures have in mind when they speak of the true Church of Christ ? No ! That Church is the congregation of believers, and believers are they who have taken Jesus Christ as their Lord and are in vital and gracious rela- tions with him, not those merely who give an intellec- tual consent to certain truths or associate themselves in an outward way with Christians. They are the *'two or three gathered together in his name " in whose midst Jesus is (Matt, xviii. 20). The word of Peter in Acts ii. 38 was, "Repent;" and they ''that received his word were baptized : and there were added in that day about three thousand souls." It was " believe," — that is, change your minds, repent, forsake in heart and life your sin — which constituted the first and fundamental demand made upon men, and only when this was professedly complied with could there fol- low union with the Church, which was thus essenti- ally the fellowship of believers. When Paul wrote to the Church at Colossse (Col. i. 2), he called them " saints and faithful brethren." The Church is the "glorious Church," which is " without spot or wrinkle," and members of it are members of the body of Christ (Eph. V. 27, 30), none of which things can be said of the bad. All wicked men who may be in the visible Church are there improperly (i Cor. v. i, 9), and are to be cast out (Matt, xviii. 17; i Cor. v. 13). There lo The Roman System, was a Judas in the apostolic college, but he was not permitted to remain to hear the last discourse of his Lord. Hence, though the external and visible Church is in a sense the kingdom of Christ, it is this not in the sense that it is identified with that king- dom. It ever remains true that '' the kingdom of God cometh not with observation ; neither shall they say, Lo, here ! or, Tlicre f — which is precisely what the Catlwlic Dictionaiy says they must be able to say, in order that the Church should have and exercise authority — ''for lo, the kingdom of God is within yon'' (Luke xvii. 20, 21).^ § 6. The Catholic, when he identifies the visible with the real Church, is in danger of depreciating that spiritual contact which the Christian gains with Christ through his Spirit without the intervention of the Church. Father Hecker demanded the medi- ation of the Church because Christ was otherwise present only in '' a dead book, or in an indefinite and abstract manner," ^ forgetting, apparently, that '' as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God," and that Christ is " in " us by that Spirit (Rom. viii. 10, 14). We shall see, as we pro- ceed, many instances of the tendency produced by this initial position of Romanism to depotentiate the spiritual truths of Christianity. Thus the Roman position appears to be an error from the beginning; but the full refutation of even 1 Greek, '"Ei/rbg vfxiiv." The other rendering, " among you," I re- ject as less consonant with the context. Either rendering is, however, entirely irreconcilable with the position of the Catholic Dictionary. 2 Questions of the Soul, p. no. Apostolicity. 1 1 this first error cannot be seen till it is found reen- forced in the refutation of the associated ideas as to the Church which form a part of the proof of the identity of the visible and the real Church. § 7. The Notes or Attributes of the Church. The Church, since it is, according to Roman ideas, a visible church, must be capable of being recog- nized. The means of recognizing it are its " notes." These are mentioned in the Apostles' Creed, in which we profess, in the Roman rendering, to " believe one holy, cathoHc, and apostoHc Church." The Greek text of this creed reads : " I believe in one holy . . . Church," by which is emphasized the Church as an object of faith, and so invisible. But the Roman form has dropped the preposition. These then are the ''notes" of the Church, that it is one, holy, cath- olic, and apostoHc. § 8. Upon the apostolicity of the Roman Church we need not Hnger long. It signifies that the Church was planted by the apostles and derived its doc- trines from them.^ Cardinal Gibbons argues in its support on the two lines thus suggested. '' The Catholic Church," he says, " alone teaches doctrines which are in all respects identical with those of the first teachers of the gospel." ^ If this statement is entirely incorrect, and if it shall eventually be found that the distinctively papal system departs from the doctrines of the apostles at every decisive and essential point, this argument for Roman apostolicity will be judged to fail. Such will, we believe, appear to be the case in the course of the following pages, 1 Cat. Rom., i., x., xix. 2 p p^^ p_ 60. 1^ The Roman System. which will discuss these doctrines with special refer- ence to their conformity to the New Testament. It is therefore unnecessary to say more upon this point at present. The Cardinal maintains also that the succession of the Roman bishops can be traced back without break to Peter himself, the first bishop of Rome. Now, that the Church of Rome was founded by the apostles, no Protestant questions. If some obscurer Christian may have first preached the gospel there, certainly Paul resided there and proclaimed the truth from his prison, and from his " own hired dwelling." There would be little occasion to question that Peter had once sojourned in Rome, had not the Church of Rome attached so weighty consequences to it. As it is, the alleged connection of the Church of Rome with the particular apostle Peter requires some ex- amination. § 9. The Vatican Council declares that " the holy and blessed Peter . . . lives, presides, and judges, to this day and always, in his successors the bishops of the Holy See of Rome, which was founded by him, and consecrated by his blood." Three facts are thus asserted in reference to Peter: (i) That he founded the Roman Church ; (2) that he was its first bishop ; (3) that he was martyred at Rome. (i) There is no certain evidence that Peter was ever at Rome. The only biblical evidence alleged is that he dates his First Epistle from — Babylon (v. 1 3) ! Why should he not be believed ? Why say that this is a mystical name for Rome? However natural the use of Babylon for Rome may be in a book of the style of The Revelation, it is not natural in the Was Peter at Rome? 13 date of a plain letter. Perrone^ argues at some length for this interpretation, and says that "the most ancient historians warrant it — Papias, Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius, and almost all others."^ The authority of these three for it is derived from a single citation from Eusebius, ii. 15, in which that historian, after describing Peter's preaching at Rome, relates how Mark was led to write his Gospel there to perpetuate Peter's preaching, confirming himself by citing Clement and Papias. But when he later (iii. 39) comes himself to quote Papias, that writer only says, '' Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not indeed in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ." Not a hint is given by these words that Peter was ever in Romic. Had we the lost book of Clement which Eusebius cites, we should probably find it equally empty. Thus all of Perrone's citations reduce to the single authority of Eusebius, who wrote about A. d. 324, and who thus could know nothing of the matter of himself When we come to the positive historical evidence that Peter was ever at Rome, the case stands as badly as it does with this interpretation of Scripture. Perrone cites Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Papias, Dionysius of Corinth, Irenaeus, Caius, Clement of Alexandria, and a long list of later writers, in favor of the three positions above mentioned, without dis- tinguishing what points they severally support. But when they are accurately examined, their prov- ing force becomes much less than when thus indis- 1 Vol. iv., p. 229 ff, -2 Jbid.y p. 235. 14 The Roman System. criminately quoted. Clement of Rome (i Cor. v.) simply says that Peter suffered martyrdom, but does not say where, nor hint at any residence at Rome. The passage in Ignatius (Rom. iv.) is : *' I do not, as Peter and Paul, issue commandments to you." Ig- natius is addressing the Romans, and it is inferred that Peter was at Rome, as Paul certainly was. But may not the " commandments " have been communi- cated by letter? Not all the apostolic letters are preserved (Col. iv. i6). Papias' testimony, as we have already seen, has nothing to do with the case. We learn nothing from Clement of Alexandria, as before shown. For Dionysius we are referred to Eusebius, in whom all the extant fragments of his writings are preserved. The pertinent passage (ii. 25) is: "You have thus by such an admonition bound together the planting of Peter and Paul at Rome and Corinth. For both of them planted and likewise taught us in our Corinth. And they taught together in like manner in Italy, and suffered martyr- dom at the same time." Such evidence is altogether untrustworthy, since, as Hase points out, we know from the two epistles of Paul to the Corinthians that Peter did not join in the planting of the Corinthian Church, though a party there called itself by his name, as another did by the name of Christ, who was never there, and since we also know that Peter did not go to Rome with Paul, who went alone as a prisoner. Thus Dionysius is discredited. In Irenaeus, who was in Rome in the year 176, we find the first clear state- ment that Peter was in Rome ; and Caius (about 210) supports the same view. After that it is the un- Peter not Bishop of Rome, 15 doubted tradition. We should not distrust this, were it not for difficulties arising from the New Testa- ment; but how Peter could have been at Rome, especially for the twenty-five years which the Roman tradition ascribes to him, when at every decisive point where we should expect some evidence of it the Scripture preserves entire silence, it is difficult to imagine. In the year 44 he is in Jerusalem in prison ; in 50 Paul finds him again in Jerusalem ; in the Epistle to the Romans, written in 58, no refer- ence is made to him, which is very strange if he was then in Rome, or had ever been there, especially as bishop ; and when Paul arrives in Rome (60), again there is utter silence as to any meeting with Peter, so that he could not have been there. If, then, we might readily admit, as a simple and harmless his- torical possibility, or even probability, that Peter was at some time in Rome, as the foundation of an argu- ment, and of so stupendous an argument as the Church of Rome derives from it, it is quite without proof (2) That Peter was ever bishop at Rome is against the earliest authorities. Perrone says : ^ *' AH those agree [that he was bishop] who give a catalogue of the Roman pontiffs, since they with equal reason begin it with Peter, of whom are Irenaeus, Tertullian, Eusebius, Optatus, and others later, as many, namely, as have compiled this catalogue." But Irenaeus says at the place quoted (iii. 3) : " The blessed apostles, then, having founded and built up the Church, com- mitted unto the hands of Linus the office of the epis- 1 Vol. iv., p. 230. i6 The Roman System. copate!' When he says below that '' Eleutherius does now, in the twelfth place from the apostles, hold inheritance of the episcopate,'' the series of which Eleutherius is the twelfth begins, not with the apos- tles, or with one of them, but with Linus. Tertullian {Prescr, 32) claims that all the apostolic churches should be able to show that their first bisliop had for " his ordainer and predecessor some one of the apostles," and says that this is the case with Rome, '' which makes Clement to have been ordained by Peter." The whole chapter is strongly against the idea that any apostle held a local bishopric. Euse- bius nowhere makes any such statement as Perrone requires, and in iii. 2 says expressly : '' Linus was the first to obtain the episcopate of the Church at Rome." Optatus is a writer of the fourth century, and, of course, has no independent value. On the whole, then, it is reasonably certain that Peter was never bishop at Rome, and that in the first centuries it was not supposed that he was. The idea is of later growth, and has no argumentative value what- ever.^ (3) The foundation of the martyrdom at Rome must be equally uncertain. § 10. If such is the case with the apostolicity of the Church at Rome, how is it with its catholieity ? This note is defined by Perrone as consisting in two elements, in '' universal diffusion over the earth," and 1 Gregory the Great once founded the Roman primacy on the suc- cession to Paul! "Saul, converted to Christianity, was made the head of the nations, because he obtained the sovereignty over the whole Church" {qtcia obtlnuit totlus ecclesicB principatMm). Hase, p. 131, quoted from the passage on I Ki. v. Catholicity. 17 in " identity as to faith and communion in whatever place." ^ Gibbons lays chief emphasis upon the former element.^ We may at once grant that the Roman Church is very large, and is found in almost every quarter of the world ; that it has developed a very great missionary activity ; and that it does teach the same doctrine everywhere. But to catholicity ought to be reckoned, certainly, such inclusiveness that every true and humble child of God might find its place in the Church. Does the Roman Church exclude no true Christian? And is her defense against such exclusion, that the mere fact of separa- tion from Rome is evidence of heresy or culpable schism, valid ? It is, if Rome's claims of authority are true ; but without those claims, it is not. Cath- olicity, as Rome phrases it, is, therefore, nothing more nor less than the supreme and sole right of Rome to the title of Church. And hence the full refutation of her claim to catholicity cannot be given till the character of her claims to unhmited authority is examined. To sustain their claim to genuine catholicity Roman Catholic writers discuss missions. Catholic and Protestant. But what they say about Protestant missions is often founded upon great misunderstand- ing. As to their relative success, Protestant mis- sionaries ordinarily count as converts only those who are admitted to communion, and these are those in respect to whom there may be a reasonable hope that they belong to the true household of faith by regeneration. CathoHcs, on the contrary, generally 1 Vol. iv., p. 60. 2 F. F., p. 50 ff. 2 1 8 The Roman System, reckon all their nominal adherents. Where Catholic missions and Protestant have been brought into con- tact, as in Turkey, the Protestant population has steadily grown, while, the Catholic has generally remained stationary. Heinrich ^ reproaches Protes- tantism that the native races of America have died out where it has flourished, while in Catholic regions they have been preserved and incorporated with the immigrant people. But it is also true that the native population of Mexico, for example, has been left in a very ignorant and degraded state by the Catholic Church, while Protestant methods are gradually making a civilized people of the present Indians of the United States. And for that, the United States Indians are about as numerous now as when the country was first colonized. Even the Jesuit mis- sions among these Northern tribes were almost, if not quite, failures, so fierce were the savages. The claim that, after all, the *' Catholic " Church has been the great and only missionary power in Christian history to the exclusion of the Greek Church as well as the Protestant, can be maintained only by identify- ing the early and pre-Charlemagne Church with the present Roman Church, which cannot be ji^Tstified, by claiming also that the Greek Church did in those early ages all that she did do as '' Catholic," which would not be true in the Roman sense of the word, and by denying plain facts as to Protestant missions. Even the comparatively small body of American Congregationalists, with about 600,000 communicants at home, has 40,000 communicants, converts from 1 Vol. i., p. 481. Holiness. 19 heathenism, in mission churches, and the rest of Protestantism has many more. In a word, Rome is not truly cathoHc, if she does not embrace all Christians ; and she does not do this unless exclusion from her body unmakes the Chris- tian character of a man. But this, nobody else besides herself will admit ; and her arguments for it will be carefully refuted in the sequel. § II. The holiness of the Church is defined by the Roman Catechism as consisting in its consecration to God, its union with Christ, the head, and its sole possession of the sacrificial cultus and of the sacra- ments, which are means of grace effecting true holi- ness.^ Cardinal Gibbons ^ emphasizes the holy teach- ings of the Church, which are calculated to call forth holy lives, and dwells upon the books of devotion which have been written in the Church, and upon the martyrs and confessors whose names adorn her history. That much of this is true, that many of these martyrs have been faithful witnesses to their Lord, Protestants have no disposition to deny. We may claim for ourselves such marytrs as Polycarp, Cyprian, Blandina, Perpetua, and Felicitas, for they are marytrs of Christianity, not specially of the Catholic Church. We recognize many of the saints of the calendar as holy men and women, though our selection of those most worthy of honor would be determined rather by the evidence they gave of living union to Christ, and by the works of common morality among men, than by ascetic self-mortification. We prefer an Athanasius to a Simeon Stylites, a 1 Part I., chap, x., quest, xii. 2 p y., p. 35 ff. 20 The Roman System. Bernard of Clairvaux to a John of Nepomuk. There have been Protestant martyrs, too : Huss, burned at Constance, Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, Barrow, Green- wood, etc., etc. And if there are CathoHc mission- » aries who now lay down their lives for their Lord, Protestants can point to bishops Patteson and Han- nington, to Stephens in Mexico, and to a long roll of others whose names might be rehearsed. Whether or not a reader can lay down Butler's Lives of the Saints '* with a sweet and tranquil devotion," as the cardinal says, will depend somewhat upon the degree of offense which incredible narrations give him ; while '' a troubled mind and a sense of vindictive bitterness " which may be excited, as he also says, by Fox's Book of Martyrs, will be stirred up, if at all, by the tales there unfolded of the cruelty of Rome against men who had offended in nothing but in believ- ing in Jesus Christ as the sole mediator between God and man. We cannot pass in silence, however, over the charge which Archbishop Gibbons makes against Luther, Calvin, Zwingle, Knox, and Henry VIII, , that '' the private lives of these pseudo-reformers were stained by cruelty, rapine, and licentiousness." Henry VIII. was not a reformer, and not a Protestant, except as he rejected the supremacy of the bishop of Rome. In theology he remained entirely a Romanist. But against the remaining reformers not a tittle of the charge is true. More self-denying men than these never lived. A more peaceful man than Luther, when deeds of violence were contemplated, never breathed. Of licentiousness, not a trace can be found in one of them except in Zwingle, who con- Holiness. 2i fesses youthful indiscretions while still a Cathohc celibate priest, but against whose character after his entrance upon the work of reform not a particle of evidence exists, except that he married, as did also the others. Rome may call this Hcentiousness, but Protestants call the marriage relation chaste, as does the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Heb. xiii. 4). It is sometimes argued that Luther broke with Rome in order to indulge his lusts, and his marriage to Catherine von Bora is quoted as the sufficient proof He posted his theses in 15 17, was excommunicated in 1520, met his future wife first in 1523, and married in 1525. No enemy raised a word against his chastity before that marriage. The simple dates disprove the argument. And the marriage, instead of being a wrong, has been an unspeakable blessing to the Church, for it settled the question of marriage among the clergy, and founded that most useful of all insti- tutions, the Protestant parsonage, with its wife and children, as the model home of the community. Such lapses from candor and truth upon the cardinal's part as were committed in this charge, are, fortunately, rare. The Church is holy, not only as being consecrated to God, and standing in a living relation to Christ, but also as being composed of '^ saints" — i. e.^ of per- sons who truly believe upon Christ and are forgiven of God for his sake. That Church is invisible, though it is organized upon earth in a variety of forms. Some of its members are to be found in the Roman Catholic Church, and so much of a share has that Church in the designation holy. But the Church of 22 The Roinan System. Rome, as a visible institution, is not therefore holy, and membership in her, even the occupation of the papal chair, does not necessarily carry holiness with it. Even Mohler says of certain popes, '' Hell has swallowed them up." ^ Externally she does not bear indisputably the mark of hoHness. § 12. Unity. This is the most important note of the Church from the Catholic standpoint. Cardinal Gibbons includes in his definition of it substan- tially the definition which Bellarmine gives of the Church, for he writes : '' By unity is meant that the members of the true Church must be united in the belief of the same doctrines of revelation, and in the acknowledgment of the authority of the same pastors." ^ The Roinmi Catechism^ after defin- ing unity as consisting in having one Lord, one faith, one baptism, adds immediately : '' There is also one ruler and governor of it, both invisible, Christ, and visible, namely he who at any time occupies the Roman see of Peter, the prince of the apostles, as his legitimate successor."^ § 13. The ideal of unity in the Church is one which has a great influence upon the mind, and properly so. In these days the press is full of utter- ances which bear testimony to the interest of Chris- tendom in the thought of a possibility of the reunion of all branches of the Church. It is not surprising that the thought of the unity of the Roman Church should stir some of the deepest emotions of the Catholic. Cardinal Gibbons gives expression to such 1 Symbolik, p. 353. 2 p. F., p. 23. 3 Part I., chap, x., quest, x. Ideal of Unity. 23 feelings. After speaking of the divisions among Protestants, and even among those of the same name, as the Baptists and Methodists, he goes on to say : '' Where, then, shall we find this essential unity of faith and government? I answer, confidently, no- where save in the Catholic Church. The number of Catholics in the world is computed at two hundred and twenty-five millions. They have all * one Lord, one faith, one baptism,' one creed. They receive the same sacraments, they worship at the same altar, and pay allegiance to one common Head How subhme and consohng is the thought that, whithersoever a Catholic goes over the broad world, whether he enters his church in Pekin or in Melbourne, in Lon- don, or Dublin, or Paris, or Rome, or New York, or San Francisco, he is sure to hear the self-same doctrine preached, to assist at the same sacrifice, and to partake of the same sacraments." Unity of organization, unity of faith, unchangeability through the succes- sive ages, these are great ideas. § 14. And yet, loudly as she claims it, and much as the thought of it stirs the hearts of her children, Rome does not possess unity. She has divisions within her fold and antagonisms as sharp as exist be- tween the various Protestant sects. Franciscans and Dominicans have quarreled for ages. Even arch- bishops in the United States do not always agree. We shall see that the supposed unchangeability of her system of doctrine is not a fact, but a fancy. Thomists and Scotists are to be found in her theo- logical schools. But there is a more serious objec- tion than this to her claim of unity. Such a fact as 24 The Roman System, perfect external unity, if it were a fact, would amount to little, if it could be shown that Rome had always driven out of her fold every one who would not fol- low in a certain bent which she was determined with- out just reason to impose. Her unity would then be purchased at the cost of all right to the designa- tion of unity, and she would be really the great mother of schism. Now this is just what she has done ; and she deserves the name not so much of the one Church, as of the chief schismatic of Chris- tian history. Let us look, for a little, at her history in this regard. (i) The original condition of the Church, as con- stituted about the time of the Council of Nice (325), was that of a general confederation of churches upon the basis of the equality of their bishops, or, subse- quently, of their patriarchs. This general or cath- olic Church could summon councils for the discus- sion of great questions of the faith or of practice, and was particularly distinguished by the interchange of good offices and the maintenance of ecclesiastical communion. If the Cathohc Church, as such, is an unchangeable institution, then this is the CathoHc Church, and in it there is no pope. (2) The growth of the Roman system led the bishops of Rome to assume a position of su- periority to the other patriarchs and of author- ity over them. The steps of this process will be detailed at a later point. Enough to say that the papal claims underwent a fundamental change from the time when Gregory the Great pro- Roman Schisms. 25 tested against the title of Universal Bishop. The first great result was the separation of Rome from the Greek Church. This was made in 867 by decree of Photius, patriarch of Constantinople, upon vari- ous alleged grounds, but upon the real ground that the pope had interfered arbitrarily, like an abso- lute monarch, in the government of the Greek Church. Affairs remained unsettled, and there were various interchanges of excommunication and other courtesies till the year 1054, when the Greek patri- arch and Church were formally excommunicated by the pope. In 1453 ^ formal union of the two Churches was made, but it amounted to nothing. The true occasion of all the trouble was the unwar- ranted claim of the pope to universal supremacy. The Greek Church would not submit ; and the ef- forts making at the present writing (1895) for a re- union between the two communions will also be wrecked upon the same old rock.^ (3) The Great Schism (i 378-141 5), when there were rival popes and rival papal courts, and a divided Europe, was exclusively an affair of the papacy. (4) The Calixtine schism in Bohemia is another case where Rome was the aggressor. She burnt Huss at Constance, though he had received an imperial safe-conduct, and her act was nothing more nor less than a judicial murder. According to the canonical law of the time, which Huss himself accepted, a per- son convicted of heresy and persevering in the same, was to be executed by fire. But Huss was not con- 1 They have been (1898). Compare the recent efforts to obtain Roman recognition of the validity of the Anglican orders. 26 The Roman System, victed of heresy. The main charge against him, that he denied transubstantiation, was false, for there is every evidence that he accepted it. His views upon the Church were pecuhar, and no doubt clashed with the prevailing doctrine of the day, but they were based upon Augustine, and furthermore, since no recog- nized article of faith upon this topic had been put forth authoritatively, they could not be heretical. His execution was, therefore, nothing but a judicial murder.^ Thus, so far as this was the occasion of the separation of the Calixtines, it was the unjustifiable act of Rome. Or if the demand of the cup at the communion be regarded as the occasion of the schism, the withdrawal of the cup was never an article of faith, but only a disciplinary regulation. To refuse to bend her discipline at such a point as this, was to display that love of rule and that indif- ference to the demands of Christian gentleness and charity which are themselves the cause of an inward, schism, even if no outward schism result. But here was an outward schism, and it was of Rome's mak- ing. (5) The Protestant Church was cast out by Rome, which thus made the existing schism between it and herself Luther in 1520 had departed from the Ro- man system in two vital points by propounding the doctrine of justification by faith, and by denying the infallibility of general councils. But the papal bull of excommunication did not mention the former; and as to the latter, it was not an officially defined doctrine at that time, however rooted in the general ^ See Herzog, Realencyclopadie, vol. vi., p. 392. Roman Schisms. 27 system of the Church. He had, in addition, opposed a great many abuses and practices which others also condemned. The bull condemned forty-one propo- sitions from his works/ among which was the precise doctrine of Augustine and of the Council of Orange upon the certainty of sin after the fall,^ as well as many other matters, of great doubtfulness, to say the least. Such a bull was a theological blunder of high rank ; but it was also a great blunder of policy, for it cut off a man whom Christian charity would have sought to win, by the exercise of arbitrary power and in utter blindness to his importance. A more fatal mistake the see of Rome never made than the issuing of this document. Now, in these four cases of schism, if the Roman Church had really possessed by right the power which she exercised, even then her acts w^ould be unjustifiable because illegal or defective in form, and arbitrary in spirit and method. It is not necessary, therefore, to deny at this point her power, though this will come in the regular development of our subject. It is enough to say that what power she possessed was improperly exercised, that she herself was the aggressor and was guilty of schism, and that she has thereby forever lost her claim to the note ^ See the full Latin text in Schaff 's History of the Christian Church, vol. vi., p. 233 ff. 2 Luther's doctrine as condemned {op. cit.,-p. 239) was thus expressed: " Liberum arbitrium post pcccatum est res de solo titu/o, et dum facit quod in seesi, pcccat mortaliter." The Council of Orange (529) said : *' Nulla vero facit homo bona quae non Deus praestat ut facial homo;'' and: " Nemo habetde suo nisi mendacium et peccatum." Text in Bright's Anti- Pel. Treatises, p. 389. 28 The Roman System, of unity. And thus she is found defective in every one of the notes which she declares the true Church of Christ must possess. § 15. The attentive reader cannot have failed to notice how one underlying idea is common to all the various topics- which have been passed in review in the present chapter, and how necessary it is to the proof of every position taken by the Roman Church as to the nature and notes of the Church, the idea of the Church's authority. The argument for the iden- tification of the visible with the true Church halted till her authority was assumed. She has catholicity and unity only if her exclusiveness is based upon authority to declare who is and who is not a mem- ber of the body of Christ. Her connection with Peter rests not upon objective historical proofs, but upon her own traditions, which derive their value from her authority. And so with her holiness. While, therefore, a partial refutation of her claims has been already given, we have still the main por- tion of the contest before us, and must now proceed to discuss the vital center of the doctrine of the Church. CHAPTER II. THE INFALLIBLE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH. § 1 6. The Vatican Council describes at great length the institution by Christ himself of the apostolic pri- macy in the person of Peter, affirms that this primacy is perpetual in the Roman pontiffs, and divides it into two branches, the power of jurisdiction and that of infallible teaching. For convenience' sake the two will be separated in the following treatment, and the more fundamental taken first.^ If there resides in the papacy the power of infallibly determining the truth upon disputed matters of faith and morals, so that whoever is declared heretical by his disagree- ment w^ith the authoritative definitions of Rome, is really such, then there can be little difficulty in ac- cepting any judicial acts by which such a previous decision is carried into effect. I. Definition of the Infallibility of the Church, § 17. The doctrine of the Church was not treated by the Council of Trent, though the whole assump- tion upon which that council proceeded was of its own infallibility. Hence its anathemas and the rigor with which its decrees were enforced in the Catholic Church. It was, however, the very object of the Vatican Council to define this doctrine, and particu- ^ The topic of jurisdiction will be takcji up in Chapter V., below. 29 30 The Roman System, larly the infallibility of the Church, which it made to reside in the pope. The result reached was ex- pressed in the following language : " Therefore faithfully adhering to the tradition re- ceived from the beginning of the Christian faith, for the glory of God our Saviour, the exaltation of the Cathohc rehgion, and the salvation of Christian peo- ple, the sacred council approving, we teach and de- fine that it is a dogma divinely revealed : that the Roman pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra — that is, when in discharge of the office of pastor and doc- tor of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme apos- tolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith and morals to be held by the universal Church — by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, is possessed of that infalUbility with which the divine Redeemer willed that his Church should be endowed for defining doctrine regarding faith or morals ; and that therefore such definitions of the Roman pontiff are irreformable of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church." ^ § 1 8. This definition, short as it is, has been gener- ally misunderstood by ordinary Protestant readers, and indeed represents a line of thought so remote from the Protestant mind as to require conscious ef- fort to enter into it sufficiently to obtain a clear understanding of it. The importance of the subject will therefore require that considerable attention be devoted to it, and that it be cleared of all misappre- hensions. We shall follow the specially careful and clear discussion of Heinrich. ^ Schaff's Creeds of Christendom, vol. ii., p. 270 f. Definition of Infallibility. 31 In this definition are presupposed, says our author, the following principles : the primacy of Peter over the whole Church in jurisdiction, immediately be- stowed by our Lord ; that he* has a successor in this primacy, who is the Roman bishop ; that he has plenary and supreme jurisdiction, and hence is the su- preme j udge, particularly in matters of faith, from whom there is no appeal ; that the office of teaching is an es- sential element of his jurisdiction ; and that he is infal- lible in the due exercise of it.^ '' The single advance made by the Vatican decree in the formulation of Catholic dogma consisted in this, that the Gallican doctrine, according to which decisions of the pope were to become unchangeable only through the con- sent of the Church, which had always been censured as erroneous, was formally rejected as heretical, and the opposed truth . . . formally defined." ^ The pope — that is, the reigning pope — possesses this authority, but not as a private person, e. g., in his capacity as an author, nor as a secular prince, nor as bishop of the city of Rome, metropolitan of the Roman province, or patriarch of the West, but simply as supreme head of the entire Church. As such he possesses it not in all of his official acts, but only in his cathedratic decisions upon matters per- taining to faith and morals. If his decisions do not 1 The reader should carefully note that the Ihings " presupposed " as necessary to the infallibility of the pope derive their first proof, as already shown, from that infallibility. So that the system involves a circle in reasoning, depending for its teaching as to Peter upon the luthority of the Church, and for the full authority of the Church upon its doctrine as to Peter. ^ Dogmatische Theologie, vol. ii., p. 243. 2)2 The Ro77ian System, pertain to faith and morals, but are, for example, administrative measures, even when formed in the interest of the faith, or if they are not cathedratic, they do not possess infallibility. Thus the pope might forbid certain expressions to be used, because misused by heretics, or he might, in answer to some request, expound matters of faith without intending to define a doctrine and lay upon the Church the obligation to believe it, and in neither case would he possess infallibility. All theologians admit that the pope may hold an erroneous opinion upon some matter of faith, and some have even maintained, though Heinrich would not join them in this, that the pope might become personally a heretic. But none of these things affect his infallibility in his de- cisions ex cathedra. Nor is the papal infallibility a kind of omniscience, which is a divine attribute, and which could not be conferred upon a mortal man by the Holy Spirit, any more than the omnipotence of God. It is pre- cisely that qualification in the pope for his work which the historic Protestant theory of inspiration ascribes to the writers of the New Testament. They were preserved from all error while engaged in the com- position of these books ; and so the pope is conceived to be preserved from error when exercising ex cathe- dra his teaching office in the Church. § 19. What, then, is precisely a definition ex eatli- edra^ in which the pope possesses the infallibility w^hich Christ has given to his Church ? This is evi- dently the vital center of the matter. Heinrich goes on to explain it as follows : The definitions of the Definition of Infallibility. 33 pope are cathedratic when {a) he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals, and when {p) he obh'gates the universal Church to hold such doctrine. To ex- pand, the definition must be a decision which the pope makes as highest judge, and that definitively. It has nothing to do with merely temporary and pro- visional regulations. This decision must define a doctrine — that is, a universally valid truth, or a uni- versally valid principle. The mere application of a general principle to a particular case, as, for example, to the validity of some single marriage, does not fall under this head. The doctrine must be one of faith or morals. If it is such a decision, it is enough that it should be intended by the pope to bind the con- science of the Church, and should be proposed as an unchangeable law for the faithful. That it should be set forth in any particular form, or with any special phrases, as with the customary anathema, is not necessary. Everything depends upon the design of the pope. Has he purposed to bind the Church in consequence of his possessing the power of the keys ? If so, his definition is infallible. Nor is any particu- lar manner of publishing the decree essential to its infallibility. It must, to be sure, be framed in perfect freedom, for a decision called forth by fear, or under a deception, would be no cathedratic decision. And fi- nally, the purpose of the pope to speak ex catliecha can be determined for us by no private judgment, but only by ecclesiastical authority itself It is clear '' when it is made manifest by the words employed, or by the context, or from other declarations of the papal chair." Such expressions as '' define " or '' declare " exhibit 3 .^r^ 34 The Roman System, it. If it is said expressly that the purpose of the pope is to declare a truth in question to be a revealed truth, or if his freedom in issuing such decision is explicitly stated, or a previous examination of the matter mentioned, or if the Holy Ghost is invoked, the cathedratic character of the decision is made certain. Everything depends upon the ascertained purpose of the pope, however that purpose may be ascertained. The importance of this topic will justify the intro- duction of a somewhat long quotation from Cardinal Gibbons, who has put the matter in the following lucid way : **The pope, therefore, be it known, is not the maker of the divine law ; he is only its expounder. He is not the author of revelation, but only its inter- preter. All revelation came from God alone through his inspired ministers, and was complete in the begin- ning of the Church. The holy father has no more authority than you or I to break one iota or tittle of the Scripture, and he is equally with us the servant of the divine law. " In a word, the sovereign pontiff is to the Church, though in a more eminent degee, w^hat the chief justice is to the United States. We have an instru- ment called the Constitution of the United States, which is the charter of our civil rights and liberties. If a controversy arise between two States regarding a constitutional clause, the question is referred, in the last resort, to the Supreme Court at Washington. The chief justice, with his associate judges, examines into the case, and then pronounces judgment upon Definition of InfaUibility. 35 it ; and this decision is final, irrevocable, and practi- cally infallible. *' If there were no such court to settle constitu- tional questions, the constitution itself would soon become a dead letter. Every litigant would consci- entiously decide the dispute in his own favor, and anarchy and separation and civil war would soon follow. But by means of this supreme court dis- putes are ended, and the political union of the States is perpetuated. There would have been no civil war in 1 86 1 had our domestic quarrel been submitted to the legitimate action of our highest court of judica- ture, instead of being left to the arbitrament of the sword. '' The revealed word of God is the constitution of the Church. This is the Magna Cliarta of our Christian liberties. The pope is the official guardian of our religious constitution, as the chief justice is the guardian of our civil constitution. *' When a dispute arises in the Church regarding the sense of Scripture the subject is referred to the pope for final adjudication. The sovereign pontiff, before deciding the case, gathers around him his venerable colleagues, the cardinals of the Church ; or he calls a council of his associate judges of faith, the bishops of Christendom ; or he has recourse to other lights which the Holy Ghost may suggest to him. Then, after mature and prayerful deliberation, he pronounces judgment, and his sentence is final, irrevocable, and infallible. '' If the Catholic Church were not fortified by this divinely established supreme tribunal, she would be 36 The Roman System, broken up like the sects around her into a thousand fragments, and rehgious anarchy would soon follow ; but by means of this infallible court her marvelous unity is preserved throughout the world. This doc- trine is the keystone in the arch of Catholic faith, and, far from arousing opposition, it ought to com- mand the unqualified admiration of every reflecting mind." ^ § 20. Ideal. The attractiveness of this doctrine of infallibility and its influence over the Catholic mind have been already powerfully set forth by the very form in which Cardinal Gibbons defends it. It is in- separably connected with the whole conception of the Church in which he has been educated. The visible Church represents to him the invisible Christ in whom he is to believe. From her he derives his instruction, by her he is brought to the Saviour, and all that he knows of redemption is conveyed to him by her offices and sacraments. She must, then, be infallible, incapable herself of error, and incapable of deceiving him, if he is to have any certainty of salva- tion, or, indeed, any acquaintance with it. As Mohlcr strongly puts it : " The authority of the Church communicates all that in the Christian religion which rests upon authority and is authority, viz., the Chris- tian religion itself; so that Christ himself continues to be authority for us only so far as the Church is an authority." ^ But not alone to Catholics is this idea one of at- tractiveness and power. Father Hecker, who was associated with Unitarian transcendentalists before ^ F. F., p. 148 ff. 2 Symholik, p. 341. Ideal of InfaUibility, 37 his conversion to the Roman Church, expresses him- self thus : '' The first and deepest want of man's heart is guidance; but it must be an unerring and divine guidance. Nothing less than this can give repose to man's feehngs and the sense of security to his intelHgence. Such a guidance alone can give to man happiness, and ennoble his being while he obeys." ^ In the conflicts of modern thinking, a man of feeble Christian experience, or little power of analytic thought, must often long for guidance, and then the idea of an ancient institution, such as the Roman Church is, and of infallible authority to con- vey the very truth of God to weak man, such as Rome claims, will rise before him in grandeur and beauty. Its attractiveness will seem so great that he will require more earnestness and care than some have shown if he do not accept it upon its simple claim to possess the eagerly desired power to guide him, without examination whether that claim have any foundation in fact. The long procession of men who have gone from the Anglican into the Roman communion because they could accept no ministry that did not have an authority behind it which they could not find in their own Church, and could rest in no system of doctrine for which the definite decision of some authoritative tribunal did not speak, has given mournful illustration of the power of the Roman claim. Except a man have within him the witness of the Spirit and know him in whom he has believed, he is likely to fall a prey to any such idea, whatever former prejudices may have done to ^ Questions of the Soul, p. 112. 38 The Roman System. fortify him against it. In facing this claim of the Roman Church, the Protestant thinker is facing a power which it does not become him to beHttle. II. Dogmatic Proof and Reply. §21. As a portion of the Roman system, this doctrine is naturally and properly supported by the general presuppositions of that system, as, for example, the necessity that the Church should exercise the office of an infallible teacher in the world. The dignity of the giver of revelation, the weakness of men, the neces- sity of agreement in faith in different parts of the world, are the various moments of this necessity. But the condition of the argument, as it is now passing in re- view before us, may excuse all attempt at reply to these points. Only an appeal to some acknowledged source of evidence can at present be of any importance. This is afforded by the argument from the Scriptures, to which we therefore pass without further delay. § 22. Three texts in particular are quoted by the Roman dogmaticians, of which the first is Matt. xvi. 18 : " Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church ; and the gates of Hades shall not pre- vail against it." This is supposed to teach the in- fallibility of the Church, for if she fell into error, the gates of Hades would certainly have prevailed against her. And, since Peter is the foundation of the Church, he must also be the foundation of her infallibility. The second text is John xxi. 15-17, in which the charge is given to Peter to '' feed my lambs — my sheep." This is said to confer upon Peter, and upon Peter alone, since it is never addressed to any Proof of Infallibility. 39 other disciple, the pastoral ofifice over the entire flock of Christ. The third text is Luke xxii. 32 : *' But I made supplication for thee, that thy faith fail not : and do thou, when once thou hast turned again, stabHsh thy brethren." This is thought to teach that Peter and his successors will be preserved from all error, and that upon them is laid the care of the faith of all Christians. § 23. But these last two texts, in particular, are ver}^ much simpler in their reference than all this. In the passage from Luke our Lord has just been speaking of his betrayal, and on occasion of a contention among the disciples as to which should be the great- est in his kingdom, has made them a promise of ultimate glory, which he specially emphasizes in case of Peter by the assurance of the text, which, without going into any farther explanation, he couples with a portentous intimation of apostasy. His meaning cannot be doubtful to any reader of the subsequent history. Or, if it could, the presumption of Peter, who is ready to follow him *' to prison and to death," leads him to mention at once, without any ambiguity, the future fall of that apostle and his base denial, and renders the intimation of the former passage quite clear. This interpretation is enough, is in accord- ance with the context, and, in the perfect equaHty which seems to prevail among the apostles in the New Testament, is rather a proof of Peter's infe- riority to his brethren in one respect, that of stead- fastness, than a promise of exaltation above them. So the second passage is well and sufficiently explained by the very significant fact that it contains the first 40 The Roman System, discourse of our Lord with Peter after the denial. It was indeed a question whether Peter did truly love his Lord. And in return for his assurance of undy- ing affection he was, we might say, reinstated in the apostolic office ; but that he was given any primacy over the apostles, or any infallible teaching power, is not for an instant hinted in the passage. It may, indeed, be granted to the Roman argument that, if there were any otlicr evidence of a primacy of Peter, this passage might be taken, by way of inference, as referring to that primacy in one aspect. But in lack of such evidence it has no proving power of its own. § 24. The argument therefore returns to the first- cited text. Matt. xvi. 18. It is historically and dog- matically the great text in the New Testament which Rome can cite for herself, and which she has done well to inscribe around the base of the dome of St. Peter's cathedral. Its form has given occasion for vari- ous interpretations from the earliest times to the pres- ent. Our Lord does not say squarely that upon Peter his Church is to be built, and hence some have made the *' rock " Christ himself, some the faith, some the faith of Peter, and some the confession which he had just made, '' Thou art the Christ." ^ Yet it seems better 1 I quote the following note from Littledale, Plain Reasons, p. 25. —Archbishop Kenrick, of St. Louis, in his speech prepared for, but not delivered in, the Vatican Council, and published at Naples in 1870, declares that Roman Catholics cannot establish the Petrine privilege from Scripture, because of the clause in the Creed of Pius IV., bmd- ingthem to interpret Scripture only according to the unanimous consent of the fathers. And he adds that there are five different patristic inter- pretations of St. Matt. xvi. 18: (i) that St. Peter is the rock, taught by seventeen fathers ; (2) that the whole apostolic college is the rock, represented by Peter as its chief, taught by eight ; (3) that St. Peter's Reply to Proof of Iitfallibility, ^1 to admit, what the candid reader would most natur- ally derive from the passage, that Christ gave to Peter here a peculiar place in the foundation of his Church upon earth. And still, nothing can be plainer, so far as the New Testament is concerned, than that he gave him no such position as Rome claims for him. Peter had no exclusive office above the other apostles.^ He receives in the following verses the *' power of the keys," but it is also given to the apostles as a body in John xx. 22, 23. What the position here given him really was, we find from the subsequent history. He was the natural leader among the apostles by temperament and by native gifts. He led in the movem.ent to choose a suc- cessor to Judas. He preached the first sermon, at Pentecost. He began the w^ork among the gentiles, by receiving CorneHus into the Church ; but this was so far from being an act done in the '' plenitude of primatial power," that Peter was sharply questioned for it by the other apostles who were at Jerusalem, and had to defend himself by relating the special vision by which he had been led to this particular act. He soon disappears from the history, and instead of remaining what he must have remained upon the Roman theory, the acknowledged head of faiih is the rock, taught hy forty -four ; (4) that Christ is the rock, taught by sixteen ; (5) that the rock is the -whole body of the faithful. Several who teach (i) and (2) also teach (3) and (4), and so the arch- bishop sums up thus : " If we are bound to follow the greater number of fathers in this matter, then we must hold for certain that the word Petra means not Peter professing the faith, but the faith professed by- Peter." 1 See Mark ix. 33-35, and Luke xxii. 24-26. 42 The Roman System, every Christian enterprise, he yields to Paul in both prominence and usefulness. With these three texts the Roman argument stands or falls. Not that no other texts are quoted, but every controversialist will acknowledge that these are the primary and determinative passages. Hein- rich, in particular, quotes a great many passages from the historical books, specially The Acts, to show that Peter exercised a primacy.^ But they have no weight if the main passages are surrendered. Perrone does well to rest the case with these.^ § 25. But the Protestant reply does not pause with the demurrer that the texts cited do not prove the doctrine. We regard the Scriptures as against the doctrine. Their whole atmosphere is against it. Particularly, their doctrine of the priesthood of all believers contradicts it. Christ has made all Chris- tians ''priests unto his God" (Rev. i. 6). The only supreme pontiff recognized in the New Testament is Christ, who entered into the holy place '' once for all," having obtained eternal redemption (Heb. ix. II, 12). Upon the Church as a congregation, con- sisting of *' two or three," is -conferred in another passage in Matthew's Gospel (xviii. 15-20) the power of excommunication, and, lest that should be mis- understood, the very power of the keys given a few pages before to Peter, is also, by almo.st superfluous repetition, conferred upon it, and unto it is given the promise of an ever-present Christ. The true dogmatic basis of the doctrine is, there- ^ Dog. Theologie, vol. ii., p. 257 ff. He quotes even Acts xii. 5. 2 Prcelectiones, vol. iv,, p. 306 ff. Reply to Proof of Infallibility, 43 fore, not in the interpretation of the Scriptures : it is rather the result of a certain view of the Church. If, as Mohler says, the external church brings the sinner to Christ, and if he obtains spiritual gifts only through this external channel, if to him Christ is known only as he is represented by the Church, there is an indis- pensable necessity for the infalhble teaching authority of the Church. But the basis upon which this view rests is unwarranted. The Church of Christ is not to be identified, without qualification, with the visible church. This is Rome's prime fallacy. And without it the present argument falls to the ground. § 26. Sometimes the argument from the nature of revelation, hinted at in the beginning of this section, is emphasized.^ If there is a necessity for a revela- tion, it is said, it is alone congruent with the dignity of that revelation as a work of God that it should not be exposed to the subjective interpretation of every individual, but should be intrusted to a plenary and independent authority, just as a well-ordered State establishes a regular tribunal for the interpre- tation of its statutes. But it remains to be proved that such an authoritative interpretation of revela- tion is a necessity. That the individual Christian cannot, in the exercise of his mind, under the guid- ance of the Holy Ghost, who has been promised to 1 Heinrich, Dog. TheoL, ii., p. 159 ff. Littledale, Plain Reasons, p. 162, said that no one pretends that the Jews " ever had an infaUible hving voice to keep them from all error regarding the law of Moses." He rightly uses this against the Catholic argument. But Heinrich does not hesitate to go to the extent of claiming, for its effect on his argument, that the decisions of the high priest were " infallible" ! P. 259. 44 The Roman System. all believers, and not merely to the apostles (John xvi. 13; comp. Rom. viii. 14, 26, 32), obtain from the Scriptures a knowledge of the way of salva- tion, and be saved, is an assertion that few would make, and which would have no justification either in Scripture or in experience. The teaching office of the Church is unnecessarily and arbitrarily thrust in between the soul and its maker. § 27. Indeed, the Roman argument, if it is valid so far as it goes, must by strict logic go still farther. If besides the appearance of God in the flesh and an inspired Bible, there is need of an infallible inter- preter of that Bible, then there is need of an infallible organ in the mind of the believer for the reception of this infallible interpretation, or else finally the inquirer may be deceived and lost. Hence the com- mon argument for the necessity of infallibility proves too much, and therefore fails to prove anything. Cardinal Gibbons does not consider this point, though he gives an ingenious turn to his argument in favor of infallibility. He says, speaking to the Protestant:^ '* Let us see, sir, whether an infallible Bible is sufficient for you. Either you are infallibly certain that your interpretation of the Bible is correct, or you are not. If you are infalHbly certain, then you assert for yourself, and of course for every reader of the Scripture, a personal infallibility which you deny to the pope, and which we claim only for him. You make every man his own pope." I interject the remark that no Protestant claims infal- libility in his interpretation of the Bible, but only 1 F. F., p. 160. Reply to Proof of Infallibility, 45 sufificient success to give him a ground for reasonable certainty that the way of salvation is thus and so. Certainly, of many passages in the Bible he can only hope for a very doubtful opinion as to their meaning at best, and the Catholic Church gives no better, for she has never authoritatively interpreted the whole Bible. But to resume the quotation : " If you are not infallibly certain that you understand the true meaning of the whole Bible — and this is a privilege you do not claim — then, I ask. Of what use to you is the objective infallibihty of the Bible without an in- fallible interpreter?" We may reply. Of as much use as with such an interpreter, unless one has also a perfect mind and is sure that he perfectly under- stands that interpreter. No, honest and competent exegesis is enough. It does not give a mathematical certainty, but it gives certainty enough to live by and die by, as similar investigation in the natural sciences does in their field. The Bible does not become a *' bundle of contradictions,"^ but it is a system of spiritual and life-giving truth. That is enough. § 28. But, finally, the Roman Catholic doctrine of the infallibility of the pope is designed to supplant what is not merely the privilege, or the right, but the duty, of private judgment in matters of religion. In this it has a conclusive refutation of its claims. The subject of private judgment seems to be one which is peculiarly unintelligible to the Catholic ^ lb., p. 161, Littledale (p. 184) points out that the ordinary confes- sor is not infallible, nor the local bishop, and that the opportunity of the average Catholic for getting an infallible interpretation of the " whole Bible," is exceedingly small ! Few make the journey to Rome, fewer still see the pope, very few consult him. 46 The Ro7nan System, mind, for upon no controverted point are the mis- representations into which CathoHc apologists have fallen greater than here. Father Hecker asks : *' Does not the fundamental principle of Protestantism, the supremacy of private judgment, exclude all idea of an unerring authority in religion ?"^ We reply. No ! Private judgment has nothing to do with the author- ity of the Bible, except that Protestants, in the exer- cise of their judgment, have come to accept the Bible as authority. Even the Catholic must exercise the same private judgment before he can accept the authority of the Roman Church.^ The Bible is au- thority to both Catholics and Protestants. The Cath- olic has an authoritative interpreter of the Bible whom the Protestant does not accept ; but this refusal does not carry with it the denial of the biblical authority. Hecker continues : " But Protestantism . . . tends to make each one prefer his own judgment to that of all others. The beau ideal of Protestantism, logically de- veloped, is egotism and the idolatry of self "^ Noth- ing could be a greater caricature. Protestant science has produced a series of works in exposition of the Bible unequaled in scholarship and in extent. Of Meyer, the Catholic Dictioiiary says that he is '' one of the most eminent New Testament scholars — per- haps the most eminent who has appeared in our own time." * It is the '' tendency " of Protestantism to employ all helps wdthin the reach of the reader for 1 Questions of the Soul, p. 129. 2 Cardinal Gibbons says that in embracing Catholicism one does not surrender his " dignity or independence or reasoning powers." F. F., p. 17. — Yes, but does he not practically do this afterwards ? 3 lb., p. 132. * Article " Pope," p. 668 b. Reply to Proof of Infallibility. 47 the determination of the meaning of bibhcal passages, and to enlarge their number as the difficulty of the passage in hand increases ; but at last the reader has upon him the responsibility of deciding. Weninger also caricatures the Protestant idea when he repre- sents us as saying, when giving inquirers the Bible : '' Read for yourselves and discover the truth, if you can ; make out your own faith and hold fast to it, if you are able ; perhaps it will save you." ^ In respect to the simple matter of personal salvation, one might well say, " Read for yourself, and you will soon see w^hat you have to do," for there is in substance but one direction given in the Bible, and that is, " Be- lieve on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved "^ — a direction which it would be difficult to find in ordinaiy Roman books of devotion. But for the formation of a system of truth, the Protestant pas- tor would never recommend his parishioner to throw away all the help that ages of Christian scholarship have accumulated. Weninger supports his own position upon this point by quoting Matt, xviii. 17: *' If he will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as the heathen and the publican." This text has nothing to do with the instruction of the Christian, for which he is never referred in the New Testament to the Church, but with obedience to the Church's reproofs when he has committed an offense against a brother. It pertains solely to matters of dis- cipline. What, then, is the Protestant principle of private judgment in matters of rehgion, in distinction from 1 Catholicity , Protestantisvi, and Infidelity, p 25. 2 Acts xvi. 31. 48 The Romaii System, all this misrepresentation ? Simply this, that as God has given to each man a mind for the investiga- tion of truth, he requires him to exercise^ it and to accept as truth only that for which he has sufficient reason. And, further, as God has given him a will, so he is held responsible for the voluntary accept- ance by acts of choice of what he knows to be true, and for the performance by individual volitions of what he recognizes as duty/ He need not under- stand fully everything, as, for example, the Trinity; but he may nevertheless accept it, and he is bound to accept it, if there are sufficient reasons in his own mind for accepting it as true, though it is uncompre- hended. So far as this is concerned, there is little if any difference between Protestant and Catholic. The Catholic says that the dicUtm of the Church is enough to give reason for believing any given propo- sition. If the Protestant accepted that statement, he would accept the doctrines of the Roman Church by the exercise of the same principle of private judg- ment which he now employs in rejecting the doc- trines of that Church. But when the doctrine of transubstantiation, or any like doctrine, is presented for his acceptance, he examines it, even after the Roman Church has spoken, and finds it, as he thinks, against sound philosophy and common sense, and, above all, against the Scripture, and he there- fore rejects it. The Catholic hears of the doctrine ^ Cardinal Gibbons implies that the doctrine of private judgment requires that a person should read the Bible as a condition without which he cannot be saved (F. F., p. 107). No Protestant ever taught that doctrine. Private Judgment, 49 of justification by faith, and hears that the Church condemns it, and he may, and often does, reject it without further examination, assuming that it must be contrary to Scripture because the Church declares it so. Both beheve the same thing, that God, having put his truth into the world, will hold each man strictly responsible for the treatment which he gives it. That constitutes the duty of private judgment. They differ simply as to the method by which God authenticates his truth before men. The error of the Cathohc is that he takes upon insufficient grounds an authority which has no real claim upon him, and that he then takes the judgment of that authority as to matters upon which a fair examination of all the facts would lead him irresistibly to another opinion. His fundamental mistake has been in accepting the authority of the Church without a due use of his private judgment. In this sense he has surrendered it, and failed in his duty. III. Historical Proof and Reply. Upon the historical proof the Catholic writers naturally lay great weight. We shall follow mainly the development of the argument by Heinrich,^ who is particularly full, though the limits of our space will, of course, prevent our noticing every argument, or even the majority of the arguments. Enough if the main positions, upon which all depend, and with- out which none is of avail, can receive adequate attention. § 29. The first authority usually quoted is that of 1 Vol. ii., p. 314 ff. 50 The Roman System, Irenaeus, who in his third book, third chapter, has an interesting passage. After having treated of the deviations of the Gnostics from tradition and Scrip- ture both, he states that it is easy to determine what the apostoHcal tradition is, since the churches which the apostles founded are well known, and we are able to recount the succession of their bishops, and thus to know what they taught and what the apostolical tradition is. He proceeds : '' Since, how- ever, it would be very tedious, in such a volume as this, to reckon up the successions of all the churches, we do put to confusion all those who in whatever manner, whether by an evil self-pleasing, by vain- glory, or by blindness and perverse opinion, assem- ble in unauthorized meetings ; [we do this, I say,] by indicating that tradition derived from the apostles, of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul ; as also [by pointing out] the faith preached to men, which comes down to our time by means of the suc- cessions of the bishops. For with this church, on account of its higher originality [earlier origin], every church must agree, that is, the faithful in everyplace, in which also that tradition which is derived from the apostles has always been preserved by those who resort to it from every side." ^ 1 I have followed in general the translation of Hase (p. 158) in the last sentence. The passage is very difficult. Bishop Coxe, in his edition of the Ante-Nicene Library, in locum, quotes approvingly Catholic writers (Berington and Kirk), who translate : " For to this church, on account of more potent principality, it is necessary that every church (that is, those who are on every side fe-ithful) resort ; in which church ever, by Irenceus^ great Passage, 51 § 30. The argument of Heinrich from this passage is as follows : (i) The Roman Church is the chief church of the world. But Trenaeus does not say this at all, and Heinrich is obHged to get it by changing the reading antiquissimcE (very ancient) to precipucE ac principis (principal and chief) on a conjectural restoration and mistranslation of the original Greek, now lost. (2) On account of her headship, her authority, which she has as the church of Peter, all churches must agree with her. '' What agrees with Rome is orthodox; what departs from Rome is heretical." But this is not Irenaeus' argument at all. He simply says that he will take Rome as an example. He might equally well take others, but he takes Rome, as he expressly says, because of her greatness, an- tiquity, and fame. To be sure, Heinrich has got headship into this sentence by an emendation, as explained above ; but he gives no reason except the those who are on every side, has been preserved that tradition which is from the apostles." Thus, it is the eminence of the church of the im- perial city which leads the neighboring churches to resort to Rome ; and Rome, like a lens bringing their rays to a focus, is preserved by the surrounding churches from falling into error, rather than preserves them by dispensing her own light, as does the sun. Gieseler {Kirch- engeschichte, Bd. i., Abth. i., p. 214) agrees with Heinrich by translat- ing principalitatem "precedence" {Vorrang), but while Heinrich neglects the adjective, he renders it " more important " precedence. The Latin text of this pivotal sentence is : ''Ad hattc eniin ecclesiam propter potentiorem [so all the MSS.] principalitatem necesse est ofnneni convenire ecclesiam, hoc est, eos qui stent tmdique fideles, in qua semper ab his, qui sunt undique, conservata est ea, quae est ab apostolis, traditio." Gieseler remarks : " All apostolic churches had a precedence : the Roman Church had a more important on account of her greatness and of the fact that 3he was founded by the two foremost apostles," 52 The Roman System somewhat stupid remark that the Church of Rome could not be the most ancient, when Jerusalem, for example, was older ! It could, however, be very an- cient ! — an equally good rendering of the Latin. (3) Hence the last clause of our quotation must mean that the faithful in all the world preserve the apostolic tradition pure precisely because they agree with Rome. But this, though a possible translation of the sentence, is unnatural. Heinrich gives as a further reason for the translation he prefers, (4) That the ground of the necessity of agreeing with the Roman Church is that she through the suc- cession of her bishops has preserved the apostolical tradition pure. But Irenaeus simply says that it is a fact that she has preserved the doctrine pure, for which he does not give the explanation of Heinrich. Of course, if it is pure, then it is, and all churches having pure doctrine zvill agree with it, or, if you choose to say so, mtist agree with it. But this is not to say what Heinrich and the Roman Church say. § 31. The next author quoted is Tertullian. The passage is : *' Come, now, you who would indulge a better curiosity, if you would apply it to the business of your salvation, run over the apostolic churches, in which the very thrones {cathedrcE) of the apostles are still preeminent in their places, in which their own authentic writings are read, uttering the voice and representing the face of each of them severally. Is Achaia nearest you ? You have Corinth. If you are not far from Macedonia, you have Philippi, you have the Thessalonians. If you are able to go to Asia, you have Ephesus. But if you are near Italy, TerttilUan, 53 you have Rome/ whence also our authority is de- rived. How happy is its church on which apostles poured forth all their doctrine along with their blood ! where Peter endured a passion like his Lord's ! where Paul wins his crown in a death like John's ! where the apostle John was first plunged unhurt into boihng oil and thence remitted to his island exile ! See what she has learned, what taught, what fellow- ship has had with even (our) churches in Africa." § 32. Now, evidently, Tertullian is citing the faith of Rome as a witness to the universal Christian faith, in exactly the same spirit and with the same purpose as Irenaeus. Far from making Rome superior to the other apostolic churches, he puts her quite upon a level with them. Heinrich's argument is so interest- ing as a specimen of the common historical reason- ing of Catholics that it is worth quoting. '' The propo- sition of Tertullian's that agreement with the apos- tolic original and mother churches is the criterion of the true faith, speaks with double weight for the necessity of agreement with the Roman Church, which is not only the mother church for most of the 1 This translation of the Latin agrees with Heinrich's understand- ing, and is the more Uteral. Rome was the mother church of Africa, and the authority of the African churches was, in this sense, derived from Rome. Dr. Holmes, in the translation in the Ante-Xicene Lib- rary, renders it: " from which there comes even into our own hands the very authority (of the apostles themselves)." This is quite possi- bly correct, and makes a smoother and closer connection with the context. The passage is from the treatise De PrcBscriptione, chap, xxxvi., and the vital part runs in the Latin thus : " Si autem ItalicB ad- jaces, habes Romam, tinde nobis quo que auctoritas prcesto est. Ista quam felix ecclesia, cui totain doct?'i?iam ApostoU cum sanguine suo profude- runt.iibi Petrus passionidominiccB adequatur . . . Videamus quid dixerit, quid cum Africanis qzioque ecclesiis contesserarit." 54 The Roman System. churches of the West and especially of Africa, be- cause they sprung from her, but zvhich possesses also the primacy over all the chiu^ches of the worlds It will be noticed that this is the very point to be proved by the historical argument, and that it is lugged in, being really an assumption which has nothing to do with the passage from TertuUian. Heinrich seems to feel this, for he continues : " To be sure, TertuUian has not stated this with the same clearness as Irenaeus, since the passage ('you have Rome/ etc.) where he appeals to the agreement of the African churches with Rome and to the author- ity of the Romish Church, may possibly, though not in the meaning of TertuUian, be limited simply to the dignity of Rome as the mother church of Africa. When later TertuUian, as a Montanist, with the bit- terness of a heretic, says in mockery, that the ^ pout if ex uiaxiimis' — that is, the bishop of bishops — has issued a ' peremptory edict ' granting forgiveness to the unchaste after penance, this is an irrefutable proof that at that time the Catholic world believed, even though TertuUian did not, that the pope was bishop of bishops, and qualified to make final de- cisions." He also says that the " even " in the sen- tence, " What fellowship has had with even our churches in Africa," implies the unique position of Rome among churches, whose fellowship reached "even" to remote Africa, and so everywhere. This effort to turn the scornful sarcasm of Tertul- lian into an admission of a generally acknowledged right will have to be judged a failure in view of the historical fact. It is true that such titles as '' uni- Historical Method, 55 versal bishop " began to be applied in the fifth c-en- tury, two hundred years af:er TertulHan's day, but it was to all the patriarchs, not to him of Rome alone. In the West the titles of '' papa " (pope), '' apostoHcus," vicar of Christ, chief pontiff, apostoHc see, were employed of other bishops and their sees in the same century. One letter of Leo I.'s runs in the editions : '' Leo, Bishop of Rome and of the uni- versal and CathoHc Church, to Leo, ever august, greeting." But the MSS. read only : '' Leo Bishop to Leo August." Gregory I. (590-604), when repel- ling the claim of the bishop of Constantinople to the title *^ universal patriarch," said that no one had ever wislied to be called by such a word, no one had ever arrogated to himself this " rash name." ^ Noth- ing can be clearer than that in Tertullian's time no such position of the Roman bishop was acknowl- edged by anybody. Undoubtedly it was the arro- gance of the tone of the Roman bishop, a fault which has always attached to that chair, which led Tertul- lian to apply to him not only the unheard-of, heathen epithet oi pontifex maximus, but the equally unheard- of invention, bishop of bishops. § 33. The defects of the historical method em- ployed in respect to these passages by Heinrich require notice, for they constitute themselves an argument against the correctness of his results. The authors quoted do not sustain the points made, as Heinrich himself seems almost to see, but the * The full facts, with abundant quotations and references, are to be found in Gieseler, Kirchejigeschichte, vol. i., J 93, note 20; ^ 94, note 72 ; ^ 117, note 31. 56 The Roman System. point to be proved in Tertullian is introduced by a declaration of Tertullian's ''meaning," or by the creation of an atmosphere about him which had no actual existence. Perrone ( § 9, above) quotes pas- sages which not only do not prove the point made, but sometimes leave it altogether unmentioned. Such phenomena are as perplexing as they are sur- prising to the Protestant reader, and he is irresistibly led to the inquiry how such errors of historical cita- tion and how such a failure to discriminate between the point to be proved from an historical writer and the materials of the proof, can have arisen. Modern Protestant historical scholarship has emphasized most strongly the necessity of putting one's self in historical study at the standpoint occupied by the writer studied. His environment is carefully studied, and he is interpreted in accordance with this. Ideas are not attributed to him which he does not utter, and institutions are not introduced to explain his more obscure utterances which do not belong in any sense to his day. Thus the student of history takes the history as it comes, and interprets each period by the past, which could be known to any given writer, not by the future, which lay beyond his ken as it does beyond ours. But the Roman method is the exact reverse of this. The end of the process is used as a means of interpreting the beginning. The complete system of the Church is identified with its rudiments. Every feature of its present doctrine is supposed either to exist in the early Church exactly as it does to-day — the standard conception — or to have existed there in substance, requiring only devel- Dogma determi7tes History, 57 opment along straight lines to produce the present — a concession to modern methods. The theory of de- velopment is especially championed by Cardinal New- man, though evidently it is regarded askance by many Roman controversialists as itself bordering upon heresy. Thus Perrone sees in the mere mention of Peter in connection with Mark by one writer a proof that that writer connected both Peter and Mark with Rome, because another writer who associates the two does definitely make such a connection ; and the reason for this is that he starts out with the original conviction that Peter was at Rome. But was he at Rome ? That is the very question ; and Perrone has decided it before he has begun his investigation. Heinrich says plainly, in reference to the question of papal infallibility, that the cases of fallibility some- times quoted are " false and ungrounded." '' This is for the believer fi^om the first \i. ^., before inquiry] certain with the certainty of the faith. . . . To submit the decision up 071 papal iitfallibility to historical science is the utter deitial of the infallibility of the Church and of the entire supernattiral order ^ pure naturalism aitd rationalism^ ^ He does not reflect that facts are a part of the groundwork upon which any properly established doctrine must stand. Hence the prevalent Roman indifference to facts, and to historical criticism in general. The historical conclusion is determined beforehand by the dogmatics of the Church. Now, this is the destruction of history. It renders all the appeal of Rome to the teachings of the fathers essen- tially empty. Catholics found their doctrine pro- ^ op. cit., vol. ii., p. 421. 58 The Roman System, fessedly upon tradition ; but they handle the tradi- tion in such a way as to make it teach the final result, whether or no. This is to found the result upon the result alone. Or, it is a pure begging of the question from the start. The consequences for the system and for the literary conscience are most lamentable. This entirely uncritical treatment of history has so confirmed Catholic teachers in their errors that they now hold with a good conscience what has no support in fact, and quote for it passages which do not teach it, or which teach something quite different from it, and repeat these errors from generation to generation. There is a moral here for Protestants also, who fall too often into the errors of this a priori method. It is perilous to assume that one knows the facts before they have been examined. § 34. The defects of the Roman method with his- tory are strikingly brought out in the next series of citations made by Heinrich in support of papal infal- libility.^ It is from Cyprian. Heinrich says : Accord- ing to Cyprian, '* the unity of the entire Church and of her episcopate consists in the unity and agree- ment of all bishops, and thereby of all churches, with the pope or with the Roman Church." For this assertion he quotes Cyprian ^ as follows : " Which unity we ought firmly to hold and assert, especially we bishops, who preside in the Church, that we may prove the episcopate itself also one and undivided. . . . The episcopate is one, of which a part is held by ^ In this passage I have taken Heinrich's argument as it is found scattered through his volumes and indicated by the cross references given by him. ^ Ti'eatise upon Unity, chap. v. Cyprian on Authority. 59 each one for the whole." How, in any way, does this passage favor Heinrich's contention ? The last clause is against it, rather than for it. If a ''part " is held by " each one " for the whole, how has the Roman bishop any supremacy ? In fact, Heinrich does not venture to rely upon the passage as it stands, but reenforces it by quotations from the preceding chapter of the same treatise. He says : " This unity is original, and of divine institution, for, not merely to manifest, but to establish, effect, and always maintain the unity of the Church, (i) Christ originally made Peter the foundation, head, and shepherd of the Church, to whom the apostles and their successors the bishops are subordinated. (2) But Peter survives in Rome through his successors, and consequently (3) the Roman Church is the root and mother of the Cath- olic Church, from which (4) all churches proceed as branches from one root," etc. The quotation for the head marked (i) is from Epistle Ixix. 3: ''This Church founded by Christ the Lord upon Peter, by a source and principle of unity, is one also," etc. This is not proof of the proposition, but, as will be seen, looks quite in the other direction. Heinrich therefore supports it by quotations from On Unity ^ 4, which, departing from Heinrich's order, we shall quote continuously. Cyprian says, according to Heinrich : '' The Lord speaks to Peter, saying, * I say unto thee, that thou art Peter ; and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven ; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound also in 6o The Roman System. heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.' And again to the same he says after Ids j^esiirrection, ' Feed my sheep! Upon him being one he bnilds his CJinrcli and commits Ids sheep to be fed. And although to all the apostles, after his resurrection, he gives his equal power, and says, * As the Father hath sent me, even so I send you : Receive ye the Holy Ghost : Whose soever sins ye remit, they shall be remitted unto him ; and whose soever sins ye retain, they shall be retained ; ' yet, that he might manifest unity, he established one cathe- dra, and arranged by his authority the origin of that unity, as beginning from one. Assuredly the rest of the apostles were also the same as was Peter, endowed with a like partnership both of honor and power ; but the beginning proceeds from unity. . . . Does he who does not hold this unity of the Church think that he holds the faith ? Does he who strives against and resists the Church, zvho deserts the chair of Peter, npon ivhom the Church is founded, trust that he is in the Church ?" etc. Now, evidently, all the authority for the proposition which is to be sup- ported by this passage is contained in those portions of it which are italicized. Omit these, and the rest of the apostles are " the same as was Peter." How great will be the surprise of the ingenuous reader to learn that these pivotal passages are all interpolations ! The learned Etienne Baluze, himself an ecclesiastic of the Roman Church, prepared shortly before his death an edition of Cyprian, from twenty-five MSS., and pronounced these passages and some others spurious. The work was published posthumously, Cyprian on Authority. 6i and was not printed entirely as Baluze would have had it. But these passages have long been known as spurious, as indeed would be evident from their entire inconsistency with Cyprian's position as shown elsewhere. Heinrich himself acknowledges that the last passage may be an " old gloss," though he thinks it is not. For the head (2), Heinrich cites a legate at the Council of Ephesus (431), a letter of Chrysologus (449), and a remark of Leo the Great's (died 460). What bearing have these upon Cyprian's views, who died in 258 ? The head (3) is sustained by quoting Epistle xliv. : " We have exhorted them to acknowledge and hold the root and matrix of the CathoHc Church," which root and matrix are in Cyprian's thought the episco- pate, not Rome ; and Ep. Ixxiii., which merely styles the Church, in a universal sense, not in the sense of the Church of Rome, '' mother." Head (4) is maintained by quoting On Unity, 5, beginning at ''The Church is also one, which is spread abroad far and wide," etc. The reference is indisputably to the general Church, not to the church at Rome at all. The immediate context speaks of its plurality of bishops, which cannot refer to the single church at Rome. Heinrich now proceeds with his argument from the point where our last quotation closed. Agreement with the successor of Peter must, in Cyprian's mind, be "just as essentially, and before all, an agreement in faith!' To support this he quotes from Epistle liv, : '' For neither have heresies arisen, nor have 62 The Roman System. schisms originated, from any other source than this, that God's priest^ is not obeyed; nor do they con- sider that there is one person for the time priest in the church, and for the time judge in the stead of Christ." This sounds very pat ; but when we read the context we find that Cyprian is speaking of the local church, Hke that of Carthage, for he says, if they did consider what he has just rehearsed, "no one after the divine judgment, after the suffrage of the people, after the consent of the co-bishops, would make himself a judge, not now of the bishop, but of God." The bishop of Rome, in Heinrich's sense, had no *' co-bishops." Cyprian means that every bishop is a supreme court for his own church from which there is no appeal. It is as when he says in his address at the Council of Carthage, *' No bishop can be judged by another, nor himself judge an- other." Heinrich supports himself farther by a quo- tation from Epistle xlv., a remark approved by Cor- nelius, bishop of Rome, that '* in the Cathohc Church there ought to be one bishops But the preferred text is cpiscopatum, " bishopric," not epis- copiim, *' bishop ; " and even if it did read one '' bish- op," instead of one '' episcopate," the context would surely fix the meaning, one bishop in one church. Hence Heinrich comes to his conclusion, that Cyprian recognized the official infallibility of the pope as teacher of the Church, though, after our review of his evidence, we shall entirely refuse to draw this conclusion with him. ^ It may be said in passing that the phrase " God's priest" is corn- mon in Cyprian in the serise of bishop. Cyprian' s True Position, 63 § 35. In opposition to all this dogmatic and false interpretation of the great Carthaginian, it may be well briefly to state Cyprian's real position, and to refer to the most striking passages in proof of it. He held that our Lord founded the Church upon Peter in the sense that he made the unity of his Church to begin with him.^ But he was a head over associates, the apostles, who were all equal.^ Their successors are the bishops, who are also equal and independent,^ but who maintain the unity of the Church in maintaining the unity of the episcopate,^ so that the unity of the Church resides in their unity .^ This single episcopate, of which each bishop has a share,^ is the representative to Cyprian of the 1 Almost all these positions will be found taken in the long passage quoted above from On Unity, chap. 4, and that from chap. 5. For the first point, see the passage which shows what the primacy of Peter was, and what is meant by " origin " as applied to unity by Cyprian, Epistle Ixx. : " For neither did Peter, whom the Lord first chose, and upon whom he built his Church, when Paul disputed with him after- ward about circumcision, claim anything to himself insolently, nor arrogantly assume anything ; so as to say that he held the primacy, and that he ought rather to be obeyed by novices and those lately co7ne." He was primate in the sense that he held a temporary leadership. 2 See citation above from On Unity, 4. 3 In addition to the above, Epistle Ixxi., " Each prelate has in the administration of the Church the exercise of his will free, as he shall give an account of his conduct to the Lord " — not the pope. So also Epistle li. 21. * Besides what is above quoted from On Unity, 5, see Epistle Ixix. 3, "Wherefore we who are with the Lord, and maintain the unity of tfie Lord, and according to his condescension adininister his priesthood in the Church," etc. 5 See also Epistle li. 24, " One episcopate diffused through a harmo- nious multitude of many bishops." 6 See the previous note, and On Unity, 5, " The episcopate is one, of which a part is held by each one for the whole," 64 The Roman System. chair of Peter/ and is his proper successor. Other than this, he has no Hving successor. § 36. It is not necessary to follow Heinrich's argu- ment farther into the later church writers. It may be freely admitted that during the entire history of the Church from the Council of Nice to the Vatican Council, there was a great deal of unanimity upon the general doctrine that the Church is in some way infallible. But there was no such agreement, as Heinrich would make out, that the organ of that infallibility is the pope. The ideal already sketched held sway over the minds of churchmen, but how to express it was not so well understood. The success of the Council of Nice caused it to have among later generations a degree of influence and dignity which its own character and history did not justify. All the early councils gradually attained the character of infallibility in the eyes of the Church through that natural process by which the human mind ever exalts and reveres that which is ancient. But the his- tory of the Middle Ages, with its record of gross cor- ruptions in the see of Rome, made necessary a modi- fication of the doctrine, and Antoninus of Florence taught that the Church can never be without the truth, though it may continue to exist only in a single person — a position far below the Protestant. The experiences of the great schism led to the formation of the doctrine, under the lead of the Uni- ^ See Epistle xxvi. i, "The Church is founded upon the bishops." And Epistle xxxix. 5, " There is one God, and Christ is one, and one chair {cathedra) founded upon the rock by the word of the Lord," Infallibility unknown to Antiquity, 65 versity of Paris, that a general council cannot err, and is therefore the proper judge of the pope. But however it may stand with later times, the failure to make out a doctrine of papal infallibility in the earliest fathers is fatal to the Roman claim that Peter was installed by Christ as head and infal- lible teacher of the Church, and that he has always been acknowledged by true behevers as such. The testimonies of the later writers mentioned by Hein- rich and other controversiaHsts, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine,^ Origen, Chrysostom, etc., we may there- fore pass over without notice. Neither shall we linger over the proof drawn from the utterances of the popes themselves. At subsequent points it will be impossible to avoid noticing many of the defini- tions of the popes upon doctrine, and then the sub- ject will necessarily recur. Heinrich closes his argument with the assertion that infallibility is a fact. We take issue with him here. It will not be enough to bring proofs from a Protestant standpoint that the popes have actually erred, but the effort must be made to show that, upon the premises which the Roman Church itself sets up, the infallibility of the pope can be refuted by an example of fallibility. We take the most patent case of this, the case of Honorius, who was pope 625-638 a. d. ^ Augustine is constantly quoted as having said : " Rome has spoken ; the cause is ended" {Ro7na locuta est, causa finita est). There is no such passage. The nearest approach is this (Serm. cxxxi., Nicene a7jd P.-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. vi., p. 504): "Already have two councils on this question been sent to the apostolic see ; and rescripts also have come from thence. The question has been brought to an issue ; would that their error may some time be brought to an issue, tool" 66 The Roman System, § 37. The Case of Honorius. To a full under- standing of the matter it will be necessary to review the preceding history somewhat. Long before the time of Honorius a considerable portion of the Church had separated, under the general designation of Monophysites, from the Cathohc communion. This was the case especially in Egypt and Armenia. Heraclius, Roman emperor, thought that he dis- covered, upon a journey in Armenia and Syria about 622, that the principal difficulty with the sect was the conclusions they drew from the Catholic expres- sions as to two sorts of voluntary activities in Christ, which they conceived to destroy the unity of his per- son. In his anxiety to reconcile these separated communities with the Catholic Church, and thus to strengthen the weakened and tottering empire, Her- aclius interpellated Sergius, Patriarch of Constanti- nople, v/ho said that the doctrine of one activity of the will and one volitional energy would not contra- dict the symbols of the Church ; and accordingly Heraclius began to favor this phraseology. Cyrus, who had meantime become bishop of Alexandria, secured in 633 the reunion of a large number of Monophysites with the Catholic Church by means of a formula in which, among other expressions, this was used, " one theandric energy." Sophronius, a priest in Alexandria, who afterwards became bishop of Jerusalem, opposed this phrase, and Sergius was obliged to advise him to keep the peace. Having written to Honorius, Sergius not only obtained acquiescence in the advice given, but also in the doc- trine which he had advanced in his letter to Hono- Honorius ; Sergius* Letter. 67 rius. Long afterwards, the Council of Constantinople of the year 681 met, and upon the basis of this reply of Honorius to Sergius pronounced Honorius a here- tic and anathematized him. Leo H. (pope 682-683) confirmed this anathema. It was also incorporated into the Roman oath of office, and was thus repeated by all bishops upon their consecration, for an indefi- nite period thereafter. § 38. Our interest gathers now about the letter of Sergius to Honorius and his reply. As that let- ter expresses Sergius' new notions, and thus sets forth the very doctrine which was condemned as monothelitism, and as the council declared in its re- sult that Honorius agreed in his reply with the let- ter, and was therefore a heretic, the real truth as to this reply is of crucial importance. Sergius is engaged in defining the phrase employed by Cyrus of Alexandria, *^ one theandric energy." He prefers, therefore, not to speak of one or of two operations,^ but insists upon the fact that the only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, one and the same, very God, operates in both human and divine operations. He says, further, that " the phrase ' two operations' scandalizes many;" and that ''this brings in two persons willing opposite things, which is im- pious." Thus, in his mind, two operatio7is lead to two opposing wills ^ and these to tzvo opposing persons^ thus destroying the unity of the person of Christ. To avoid, therefore, opposing zvills, Sergius thought that ^ See Gieseler, Kirchengeschlchte, Bd. L, Abth. II., p. 470 ff., for a view of the whole controversy, with sufficient citations from the sources. 68 The Roman System, there must be only 07ie will, since the idea of two wills in harmony with one another did not seem to him a possible idea. He says that even Nestorius, who made tw^o Sons by separating the natures in Christ, did not teach tw^o wills, but '* identity " of will 'I and therefore it is impossible that the ortho- dox should teach '' two and these opposed wills." ^^ " Whence," he goes on to say, '' we confess one will of our Lord Jesus Christ .... since the humanity with its rational soul never determined itself separately and out of its own will, in opposition to the spirit of the divine Logos hypostatically united with it, but always willed when, and as, and as much as, the divine Logos." That is, one will because there is harmony: tivo wills would lead to disharmony. This, in a nutshell, is the heresy of monothelitism. § 39. A minute examination of Honorius' reply ^ renders it evident that the council of 68 1 was right, and that Honorius agreed wdth Sergius in this doc- trine, and that he accepted the grounds upon w^hich it was based. To be sure, he thinks that the whole question of one or two operations ought to be re- ferred to the grammarians as mere child's play, but he agrees in the policy of avoiding discussions about " one or twin operations." He also takes up the expression that the one Lord Jesus Christ performed things divine and human as ''one operator;" and ^ In the " Ekthesis," put out in 638, which agrees in substance, and often at great length verbally, with the letter. The word employed is TavTo/SovAia. -^ Greek, hvo /cal TaOra kvavTia OcXijfiara. 3 There are two letters preserved, to be found in Migne's Patrologia t>atina^ vol. 80, Honorius^ Reply, 69 then he goes on, with the same dependence upon Sergius which these expressions indicate, to say:^ " Whence also we confess one will of our Lord Jesus Christ, because certainly our nature was assumed by Divinity, not our faulty that nature, namely, which was created before sin, not that which was vitiated after the fall." The idea here is evidently this, that if a human will had been assumed it would have been a sinful will, and hence there was assumed only the nature, and there is with it but one will, that is the divine. Honorius says below : " For there was no other law in the members, or differing will." He also says that the text John vi. 38 — '' not my own will, but the will of him that sent me " — does not prove a " diverse will," implying that a second will would necessarily be diverse, whereas the council quotes the passage to prove that Christ did have a human will. All this rests upon exactly the same thought as Sergius' ''one willy' and hence it is the same thing. As that was monothelitism, so is this. In fact, so firmly was the idea of Sergius, whereby two wills were conceived to involve necessary oppo- sition, rooted in the whole dispute, that the council was obliged to teach not only two operations and two wills, but also "two natural wills not opposed."^ Honorius was therefore guilty of making an heretical utterance upon this occasion. § 40. But up to this point the infallibility of the papal chair is not necessarily impugned. Was Hon- orius, when making this error, speaking ex cathedra ? 1 Migne, vol. cit., p. 472 A. 2 5vo d>V(Tt,Ka. OeXriixaTa o v x VTrevavrCa, 70 The Roma7t System. If not, he may still have been infallible when thus speaking, though fallible on this particular occa- sion. According to the definitions of cathedratic decisions already given (§ 19), any decision is such which is intended to teach a doctrine to be held by the Church, whatever its outward form. Now we say, upon the presuppositions ot Romanists about the authority of the papacy, Honorius most indisputably did, in this case, intend to direct Sergius, and through him, as the patriarch of Constantinople, the whole Church. He says : " These things [viz., the definitions we have just rehearsed] let your Fraternity preach with us." ^ This is equivalent to a com- mand. It expresses design on Honorius' part to teach the defined doctrine as fully as any expression can ; and it therefore carries with it the command to all the Church to preach, and a fortiori to believe, the same doctrine. In the second letter which he wrote to Sergius he says in the same connection as the last-quoted sentence : " But as concerns ecclesiasti- cal dogma ^ we ought to confess I' etc. This defines ^^ dogma " as something which ought to be confessed ; and the definition of dogma is cathe- dratic. We say, therefore, as the sum total of this inves- tigation, that Pope Honorius was, upon the authority of an ecumenical council, and the approval of an- other pope, declared to be a heretic in a cathedratic decision. He was therefore not infallible. And with this one instance the whole edifice of papal 1 Migne, Pat, Lat., 80, p. 474 B. Honoritis^ Reply. 71 infallibility falls,^ for if any pope is infallible, all must be, and if any one is not infallible, none is. § 41. The case of Honorius has naturally attracted much attention from Roman Catholic apologists. Their defenses form an interesting commentary upon each other. Platina said Honorius brought the matter of the monothelite heresy before the emperor and urged him to banish the heretics, which he did ! Two apologists say that the historical sources are in a corrupt state, Baronius suggesting that Theodorus ought to be read in the papers of the Sixth Council in place of Honorius, and Bellarmine that the letters of Honorius are either interpolated or corrupted. Pagi, Garnier, and the Ballerini, and now Heinrich, say that Honorius was condemned for negligence and not for heresy. And Heinrich and Ryder say that the letters, whose orthodoxy the great and acute Bellarmine could rescue only upon the supposition that, as they stand, they are in a corrupt condition, are perfectly orthodox, and need no rectification ! Heinrich shows that he does not understand the controversy by the remark that Honorius taught that there was one will in the sense of one harmonious will, the human will existing side by side with the divine, but in perfect agreement with it. But he for- gets the argument of Sergius against two wills, in which Honorius accords. We may safely leave these various apologists to agree among themselves before 1 So on the principles of Cardinal Gibbons (F. F., p. 95) : " If only one instance could be given in which the Church ceased to teach a doctrine of faith which had been previously held, that single instance would be the death-blow of her claim to infallibility," ^2 The Roman System. we accept any one of their explanations against the plain facts. § 42. Summary. The refutation of the infallibility of the pope is, of course, by no means yet complete. Its complete refutation is nothing less than the whole discussion of the dogmas of Rome. This system rests now, since the Vatican Council, substantially upon the doctrine of papal infallibility ; and if the system is wrong, as we shall attempt to show, the infallibility which gives it authority is without support. Yet enough has now been said to show that the doctrine is without adequate proof The Scriptures have been shown not to support it, but rather to oppose it. There is no necessity in the nature of the case for it. The early Church knew nothing of such a doctrine, which ignorance, since it is inexplicable if the doc- trine formed any part of original Christianity, dis- proves it. And in the case of one pope at least we have a glaring example of actual papal fallibility. We must therefore reject the doctrine ; and in its fall it carries with it other doctrines. The identifi- cation of the visible Roman Church with the true Church of Christ upon earth rests upon the authority of the Church, and ultimately of the pope, in matters of doctrine (§ 5). It therefore falls. The apostolicity, catholicity, holiness, and unity of the Roman Church fall Hkewise. The whole foundation for the subse- quent argumentation of the Roman apologist is swept away. As we pass on, we shall find how entirely this is so. as well as how completely the subsequent refutation of the system sustains the positions already made against it Protestant Certainty. 73 But, now, has the Protestant, in rejecting the infallible teaching office of the Church, lost all certainty in religion, as the Catholic will begin to / think ? No ! For in place of the outward certainty' which an infallible church might offer, he has an inward certainty of the heart, a knowledge springing out of personal experience, and hence peculiar to himself and possessing the immediate certainty which only that can possess which has become a portion of the life. The true Christian is born again by the Holy Spirit. In this most fundamental experience the soul comes in contact with God. It surrenders itself to God, and finds itself at peace in belief in him. It is assured of his love. By knowing what God does for itself, it comes to have a knowledge of what he will do for the sinful world. It finds him in the pages of his word, also, and the Bible is evidenced to the believer as the word of God. And thus, in a variety of ways, a wide range of Christian truth be- comes certain to the mind of the regenerated man. His inward certainty is more for him than any out- ward certainty without it could be. But, rejoins the Roman CathoHc, is not all this fa- tally open to the charge of subjectiveness ? May not all these '' inward " experiences be self-deception ? They certainly might, if they were isolated and singu- lar, known and received only in one soul. But they are the common experiences of God's people. They are found in saints of the Catholic Church, such as Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, and others whose pages Protestants delight to read, and in whose writings they find a spirit akin to their own. In fact, 74 1^^^ Roman System, it is only as Catholics have inward experience of the love of God in personal salvation that their " objec- tive " certainty becomes of any value to them. They must possess the receptive organ. That organ is faith, inner certainty, spiritual experience. This Protestants know themselves to have ; and having this they can dispense with the outward certainty of an infallible teaching Church, w^hich has lost all certainty for them, since they cannot find reason for believing in its asserted authority. / CHAPTER III. THE NECESSITY OF THE CHURCH. § 43. It is the doctrine of the Roman Cathohc Church that membership in the same is essential to eternal salvation. True, there are some qualifica- tions to this statement, which it will be our object in due time to consider, and to which we desire to pay proper attention ; but aside from these, the doctrine is that without the pale of the Roman Church there is no salvation. It is a logical deduction from the fundamental position of that Church, that the visible Church is the true Church, and that the Roman Church is that visible Church. Evidently none can be saved except such as belong to the true (invisible) Church, since that is the congregation of believers, and it is the position of Catholic and Protestant ahke that none but believers are saved. If, then, the in- visible Church is to be identified with the visible Roman Church, membership in the former is the same as membership in the latter, and salvation will depend upon connection with the Roman Church. This principle is the result of a long and gradual growth, and is a fundamental presupposition run- ning through the whole system, now receiving inci- dentally an open expression, now only implied, rather than a formulated dogma ; but, whatever may be true of its origin or its form, it is nevertheless the constantly dominating presupposition of doctrine 75 76 The Roman System, and practice. It excludes all outside the pale of Rome, Protestants and heathen, as well as atheists and infidels, from the benefits of salvation. § 44. Proof that this is the Doctrine of the Roman Church. So offensive is this doctrine to" the outside world that it has been repeatedly denied, espe- cially in America, or, where it has not been denied, the exceptions which are maintained have been so extended as practically to nullify the doctrine. Protestant writers who seek to allay antagonism between Prot- testants and Catholics for the sake of bringing about greater cooperation between them, if not of helping on the final consummation when there shall be actual union between the different portions of the great host of those who call themselves Christians, have also sometimes denied that it is a Roman Catholic doc- trine. It will be necessary, therefore, instead of the usual definition of the doctrine which this is the place to introduce, but which in this case is hardly re- quired, to set forth the reasons why the doctrine must be held to be a part of the Roman system. The noted bull of Boniface VIII., styled Unam Sanctam (1302), has the following passage: The holy Roman Church " firmly believes, professes, and preaches that none who are not found within the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but not even Jews or heretics and schismatics, can become par- takers of eternal Hfe, but shall go into eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels, except they shall have been gathered to the same before the end of life : and that the unity of the ecclesiastical body is of so much importance that only to those The Bull^ Unam Sanctam, 'j'j who remain in it are the ecclesiastical sacraments and fasts profitable, the alms and other offices of piety and exercises of Christian service productive of eternal rewards, and that no one, however great alms he shall have done, eve?i if he shall have shed his blood for the name of Christ, can be saved, except he shall have remained in the bosom and unity of the CathoHc Church." ^ It is in the same bull that we read, in reference now to the temporal power of the pope, but by parity of reasoning the passage applies with equal force to the point now before us : " Moreover, we declare, say, define, and pronounce that it is altogether necessary to the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman pontiff!' ^ Now, this bull, certainly the last-quoted clause of it, according to the criteria which Heinrich has given us (§ 19), is cathedratic, for the pope '* defines, de- clares, and pronounces."^ And it would seem equally evident that the longer passage was a defini- tion of the CathoHc faith, and §0 cathedratic. We shall take it so without fear of successful contradic- tion, and shall say that, upon the supposition of papal infallibility, the position that this is a doctrine of the Church is fully sustained. But there are other proofs. The bull Pastor ^ From the Latin as quoted by Delitzsch, Lehr system d. r'om. Kirche, 1875, P- 70. where this topic is fully treated. 2 " Porro subesse Romano Pontifici omni hum,anoe creaturcB declara- m.us, dicimtis, dejinimus, et pronunciamus omnino esse de necessitate salutisy The political portion of the bull is pretty fully given in Gieseler, Kirchengesch., Bd. ii., Abth. ii., p. 203 (^ 59). 3 So much is admitted by Bishop Fessler, in his Trtie and False InfalUbility of the Popes, says Littledale, Plain Reasons, p. 13. y8 The Roman System, ^ternus (-1516) says: "Obedience [viz., to the Roman see] is the sole mother and guard of all the virtues, alone possessing the merit of faith, without which any one is convicted of being an infidel, even though he may seem to be a believer."^ Without '* obedience," you are an infidel. Again, the Coun- cil of Trent, though it does not expressly define this doctrine, does use the expression, '' our Catholic faith, without which it is impossible to please God," ^ thus perverting a text of Scripture written in refer- ence to a spiritual act, to teach the necessity of intel- lectual belief in a system of ideas ; and it closes with pronouncing the anathema upon all heretics. Now, the anathema denotes, according to the decree of Gratian, " separation from God." Lest some may say that that document is old and does not represent modern Catholicism, hear the Catholic Dictionaiy : " In pronouncing anathema against willful heretics, the Church does but declare that they are excluded from her communion, and that they must, if they continue obstinate, perish eternally." In strict ac- cordance with this, the '' profession of the Tridentine Faith," taken by archbishops, bishops, etc., reads : '' I profess this true Catholic faith [viz., that of the Council of Trent, and now also of the Vatican Coun- cil,^ that the mass is a true sacrifice, purgatory, that the Roman Church is the mistress of all churches, infallibility, etc.], without which no one can be 1 Latin in Delitzsch, op. cit., p. 70. Large extracts from the bull in Gieseler, loc. cit., p. 199. '-^ Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, vol. ii., p. 83. 3 Cath, Diet., art, " CreecJ," Further Authorities, 79 saved." ^ That is, acceptance of the dogmatic system of the Church of Rome is necessary to salvation. The Roman catechism says ^ that '' the Church is styled catholic because all who wish to attain eternal salvation ought ^ to hold and embrace her just as those who entered into the ark that they might not perish in the flood." The bull In Ccena Domini {1610, 1627), though an administrative and not a cathedratic measure, exhibits the spirit and meaning of these definitions when it says : " We excommunicate and anathematize on the part of God Almighty^ Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, by the authority of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own, all Hus- sites, Wiclifites, Lutherans, Zwinglians, Calvinists, Huguenots, Anabaptists, Trinitarians, and apostates from the Christian faith, and all and every other heretic, by whatever name they are called ; . . . also schismatics and those zvho pertinaciously withdraw from the obedience of Us and of the Roman pontiff at the time existing." ^ Or to come down to more modern times, Pius IX. in his Allocution of Dec. 17, 1847, says : " Let there- fore those who wish to be saved come to the pillar and ground of the truth, which is the Church .... ^ Schaff, Creeds, etc., ii., p. 210. 2 Pars. i. cap. x., quaest. xiii. ^ Latin : debeant, which might be translated " must," as the Catholic German translation has it — " festhalten und umfassen mussen.'' The " ought" is not to be understood as meaning 07ight normally, though exceptionally they may fail to do so. It is a specimen of the traditional ambiguous, cumbersome, indirect, and evasive style of the Roman curia, of which many examples will meet us. It means " must." * Latin in Delitzsch, op. cit., p. 72. Large extr^acts in Gieseler, Kgsch,, Bd. iii., Abth. ii., p, 592, 8o The Roman System, We . . shall spare no cares and labors to lead by the grace of Christ those who are ignorant and err to this sole way of truth." ^ Note that the " ignorant" need to come to the Church to be saved. The " Sylla- bus of Errors" (i864),which bears the mark of being an ex cathedra utterance, condemns the error that '' we may entertain at least a well-founded hope for the eternal salvation of all those who are in no manner in the true Church of Christ." And the Vatican Council (1870) ^closes its deliverances with suspending the anathema over all who '' presume to contradict this our definition," viz., that of the infallibility of the pope. Even the generally liberal, though firm Catholic, Mohler, said : '' Connection with Christ is also always at the same time connection with the Church, the inner union with him the union with his Church.^ § 45. Proof of the Doctrine. The consistency of the Roman system so absolutely requires this doctrine that it is scarcely necessary to present further proofs of it to one who accepts the fundamental positions of Rome. But Perrone ^ quotes the follow- ing passages: Matt, xviii. 17, ''If he refuse to hear the Church also, let him be unto thee as the Gentile and the publican," which refers, however, not to the doctrine, but to the discipline of the Church, and certainly falls far short of denying eternal salvation to the recalcitrant member; Luke x. 16, "He that rejecteth you rejecteth me ; and he that rejecteth me rejecteth him that sent me; " Mark xvi. 16, '' He that 1 Latin in Delitzsch, op. cit., p. 74. '^ Schaff, Creeds, ii., p. 271. ^ Symbolik, p. 335. * PrcelecHones, vol. i., p. 199. Proofs Offered. 8i disbelieveth shall be condemned," which cojztradicts the doctrine because it connects salvation with the only condition prescribed in the Scriptures, viz., faith; so John iii. i8; Titus iii. lo, ii, ''A man that is heretical after a first and second admo- nition refuse ; knowing that such a one is perverted, and sinneth, being self-condemned;" 2 Peter ii. i, ^^ False teachers, who shall privily bring in destruc- tive heresies, denying even the Master that bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction ; '^ as also I John ii. i8, 19; 2 John 7, 8, 9 ; Jude 13, 22. In respect to these last passages, no Protestant would deny that men may cherish opin- ions which bring with them eternal loss, because they are at the same time a willful forsaking of truth, and are essentially unbelief, or the refusal to submit to an authority which they after all acknowledge. But is there anything in Scripture to connect all this with those doctrines of Rome which she demands shall be believed, but which we shall find have no place in the Scriptures, the seven sacraments, good •works, the sacrifice of the mass, etc.? The whole connection of these texts with Rome is entirely want- ing, and thus the vital element in the proof is lacking. The proof from the fathers, in lack of any real per- tinence to the question, we shall omit. The early fathers were in no better — in fact, in a less favorable — position than we are to judge of the truth of this doctrine and its scripturalness. § 46. Apologetic Modifications. In recent times, under the pressure of the opposition which this doc- trine receives from the more liberal spirit of the age, 6 82 The Roman System, there have been various apologetic attempts to remove the offense which it gives. Perrone adopts two methods/ He tells the Protestants that they ought not to object to it so much, since up to almost the present moment they have taught the same thing. There may have been isolated expressions which could be thus interpreted, or which were thus meant. Some bigots have thought that their own little sect alone opened the way of salvation. Even great commun- ions and very eminent men have thought that certain truths (which, for the most part, are common to both Catholics and Protestants) were so clearly proved and must carry such conviction to any candid mind that no one could deny them and maintain the right attitude toward God, and thus be a subject of salva- tion. But such has not been the general attitude of Protestants. Luther, it is true, following Roman Catholic ideas as to the means of grace, of which he was not able to rid himself, said that if Socrates, who never had the word and the sacraments, could be saved, then the gospel was nothing ; but he never taught that Roman Catholics, as such, would be lostf Zwingli thought that all good men, such as Socrates, Hercules, etc., would be found in some way in heaven, having been taught by God, from whom alone any- thing good can come forth. The whole drift of the Re- formed theology is to leave a place for the operation of the Spirit of God beyond the limits of the agency of the Church. The Spirit is not bound to the means of grace, although he usually employs them. Perrone's more earnest apologetic effort is, how- PrcBlectiones , vol. i., p. 198 seq. Apologetic Modifications, 83 ever, in another line. It is suggested in the caption of his section upon this doctrine, which begins, " There can be no salvation for those culpably depart- ing from this life in heresy or schism or unbelief" Culpable heretics he styles " formal " heretics. Others are '' material " heretics, who, though they err in the matter of their beliefs, are not culpably in error. He goes on to define them thus : '^ Those who from infancy have been imbued with errors and prejudices, who have never had a suspicion that they were living in heresy or schism, or if a doubt arises in their minds, inquire after the truth with the whole heart and with a sincere mind. These we remit to the judgment of God, whose it is to examine and scruti- nize the thoughts and intents of the heart. For the goodness and clemency of God do not suffer any one to be adjudged to eternal tortures who is not guilty of a voluntary fault. To affirm the contrary zvould be against the express teaching of the Church!' For this he quotes not only Bajus (d. 1589), but also Augustine and '' the rest of the fathers " (a fact which we may well leave to him to reconcile with his quo- tation of many of them in favor of the exclusive- ness of the Church in the following paragraphs) and Thomas Aquinas, but not a pope or bull, or other official utterance of the Church. There is, however, one pope who might be quoted for this position, and he is Pius IX., who said in the Allocution of Dec. 9, 1854 : " It is to be held of faith that out of the apostolic Roman Church no one can be saved, that this is the sole ark of safety, that he who will not enter this shall perish in the flood ; b^it 84 The Roman System, yet it is to be held equally certain that they who labor under ignorance of the true rehgion, if that is invin- cible, are laden with no sin on this account before the eyes of God." ^ Whether this allocution is to be held to be an ex cathedra declaration or not, may be left undecided, although the phrase twice employed, " is to be held," implies that it is. It has the distinc- tion of being the only papal utterance which accords with Perrone's positions. § 47. But who are the '' invincibly ignorant " as to whom we may cherish this larger hope ? Certainly no Jew can be numbered among them, for, according to Boniface VIII., Jews cannot be saved unless they are " gathered to the Church before the end of life." Luther cannot have been so, for, though he was so firmly convinced of the errors of the Roman system that he ventured everything and risked even life itself to protest against those errors, he was excommuni- cated and died under excommunication. No Protes- tant can be among these, for " Lutherans, Zwinglians, Calvinists, Huguenots," etc., are all excommunicated by the bull In Ccena Domini, Invincible ignor- ance must be something especially peculiar, since it is not the same as mere igiiorance of any sort, for Pius IX., the same pope who held out this hope, himself said that he would spare no pains to bring back *' those who are ignorant and err to this sole way of truth " — the Roman Church ! Who are the invincibly ignorant? Bishop Conrad Martin seemed to see some light in this direction. " I am convinced," he says, '' in ^ Latin in Delitzsch, op. cit., p. 80. ■ The ^^ Invincibly Ignorant^ 85 such entirely inculpable religious error no small num- ber among our Protestants of the present day are to be found ; the CathoHc truth has ever been presented to them in so distorted and repellant a manner, the Catholic Church ever in so monstrous deformity." And later : '' What do we understand by heresy ? Not every religious error, not even every culpable religious error, but that culpable religious error which a Christian obstinately maintains, and conse- quently against his better knowledge and conscience, so that he opposes the truth to its face." ^ But such men are not Christians. Indeed, it may be con- fidently declared that upo7i that definition of the matter there are no Protestants whom the evangelical churches woidd regard as believers^ and therefore for whom they would cherish the hope of salvation, who coidd be regarded as heretics^ or who are in any danger of eternal loss. But what, upon such a theory, becomes of the identification of the invisible with the visible, and that the Roman, Church ? This is the doctrine that every honest and sincere man who follows fully the Hght which he has, though it may be error, is a member of the true Church, though outwardly sepa- rated from her. What is that but to say that the true Church is the invisible Church, and that that in- visible Church is scattered throughout the world and may have its representatives in every external com- munion ? And what is that but precisely the rejected and anathematized Protestant doctrine ? No ! This theory is not Romanism. It is not ^ From the German in Delitzsch, op. cit., p. tj f. 86 The Roman System. consistent with the fundamental ideas of the system. It does not admit of consistent elaboration. It con- tradicts the authoritative and symbolic utterances of the Church. That a pope like Pius IX. should have yielded a certain recognition to it does not legitimate it within the system. His various utterances when taken together may well bring upon him the sharp condemnation of Delitzsch, who says : '' The words of the Allocution prove .... that Pius IX not ojily ivas not infallible, but zvas not even capable of consistent dogmatic thinking T ^ When apologetic interests yield to the consistent statement of Roman doctrine, that doctrine is that out of the pale of Rome there is no salvation. We shall reserve the reply to this position to a later point. When the evangelical doctrine of the way of salvation shall have been treated, the assump- tion of Rome, which is rejected even by some of her children, will be finally disproved.^ § 48. One remark, however, we must add. There appears here for the first time what we shall often subsequently note, the strange ambiguity and internal inconsistency of this iron system, apparently so firm and unyielding, for which its defenders claim the attribute of absolute and unchangeable truth. The church is the only " ark " in which salvation from the flood of destruction is possible; yet some not in the ark will be borne above the swelling tide. So again, the church is the agency by which, through the sacraments, absolute certainty of the impartation of grace is afforded to the recipient of these outward ^ op. cit., p, 80. 2 See g ^^^ below. Ambigtcity of the System. 87 signs ; yet, if the priest did not intend to do what the church does, the apparently holy ceremony was aothing, and no grace was imparted — and who can be certain of the intention of the priest? Sins must be confessed to be forgiven, and hence the priest must search the heart of the penitent, though he may thereby excite unhallowed thoughts and pro- voke sinful actions ; yet it is better that a sin be unconfessed and unforgiven than that an evilly sug- gestive question should be asked. These examples are only to convey the thought that it is almost as difficult to find what the Roman system is as to find what are the grounds upon which it is held, or what the facts in respect to the statements made in its sup- port. Let the eye of the reader be open to this peculiarity as he proceeds. CHAPTER IV. THE HIERARCHY. § 49. The Church to the CathoHc is the visible Church ; and in a preeminent sense the visible Church is the clergy. The laity are the passive recipients of blessing; the clergy are the active Church, leading, instructing, interceding for, and governing the rest. The doctrine of the priesthood is a direct conse- quence of the doctrine of the Church as the visible Church. Mohler expresses the connection of these ideas well in the following passage : *' The fundamental conception of the Church as a divine-human institution recurs at this point in a very striking form. In accordance with it, first of all, a divine inward calling and an enduement from on high are necessary for the public service of the Church, the work of teaching and the administration of the sacraments. But since the divine and invisible essence of the Church is united with a human visible form, the divine calling must necessarily be first recognized and then accepted below, and the heav- enly enduement must become evident by means of an act accessible to the senses and performed in the external Church. That is to say, the authorization to perform public service in the Church is conferred by a sacrament, an outward act which is to be per- formed by men after the commission of Christ, and 88 ^ The External Priesthood, 89 which partly symboHzes and partly communicates the inward and divine. Introduction into an invisible Church requires only a spiritual baptism ; continuance in the same only inward nutrition — one may not say with the body of Christ, because body at once sug- gests the outward origination of the Church, but with the Logos of God. An invisible church needs only an inward and purely spiritual offering and a universal priesthood.^ But the case is different with a visible church. This requires that baptism with fire and the Spirit should be a baptism with water also, and that the sustenance of the soul which Christ supplies should be brought before the vision by means of corporeal food. An outward offering is also involved in its idea. The case is the same with the consecration of priests : the inward and the out- ward consecration belong together, the heavenly and the earthly anointing are united in one. Since the Church is intrusted with the maintenance of the doc- trine and institutions of Christ, she cannot immedi- ately reverence every one who may say that he is inwardly consecrated as a priest, as truly such ; rather, as he must first be accurately and strenuously instructed and educated in the divine doctrine of the Church in order to propagate it, so he must receive through the Church, through her outward consecra- tion, the inward consecration from God ; that is, he receives the Holy Ghost through the laying on of the hands of the bishop. The visibility and the per- ^ Note that this sentence surrenders the whole contention to the Prot- estants, provided they prove that the Church is not " visible " in the Catholic sense. go The Ro77ian System, manence of the Church demand, accordingly, an ecclesiastical ordination beginning with Christ, who is the beginning, and continuing in unbroken succes- sion, so that, just as the apostles were sent forth by the Saviour and they again installed bishops, these in their turn should appoint successors for them- selves, and so on till our day. It is by this succes- sion, beginning with the Saviour and handed down unbroken through the bishops, that we can recog- nize, as by an external mark, what is the true Church founded by Christ." ^ § 50. Definition. Perrone, therefore, well ex- presses the essential elements of the Catholic doc- trine of the priesthood in the following definition : " The sacred order and sacrament divinely instituted, by which is conferred the power of consecrating the body and blood of the Lord, as well as of remitting and retaining sins." ^ Or, more at large, it may be defined as the order, established by Christ, endued with peculiar grace through consecration imparted in unbroken succession from the beginning, for the purpose of administering the sacraments and govern- ing the Church and forming the medium of all com- munion between Christ and his people. It is, indeed, through the priesthood that the Church performs its mediatorial and representative office between men and God. Protestants should be on their guard against forming the idea that in thus maintaining the par- ticular priesthood of the clergy the Catholic Church intends to deny the general priesthood of all believ- ^ Symbolik, pp. 388-390. 2 Yq1_ \\\ ^ -^ ^jq. Catholic Proof of the Priesthood, 91 ers. Protestant polemics have sometimes seemed to imply this. But it is not the fact. The Roman Catechism says that there is a " twofold priesthood," one inward and the other outward. '' As to the inward priesthood, all believers, after they have been washed with the water of salvation, are called priests, but especially the just. . . . But the outward priest- hood does not belong to the multitude of all the faithful, but to certain men," ^ etc. Thus the uni- versal priesthood of all behevers is maintained, though with what modifications of the New Testament idea we shall later see. Nor does the CathoHc system make the priesthood essential to the performance of every ecclesiastical function. Baptism may be per- formed in case of extreme peril of death by a layman. Christian antiquity is full of indications of the validity of non-clerical functions in case of need. But yet the emphasis is laid upon the necessity of ordination. The priest is more than the orderly channel of the communication of grace : he is, in general, essential to it. § 51. Proof. Perrone divides the subject into four parts: (i) The external and visible priesthood, insti- tuted by Christ ; (2) this priesthood not common to all Christians ; (3) to be propagated by an external rite in the Church ; and (4) this rite a true sacrament. He conducts the proof upon the lines laid down by the Council of Trent in the following passage : " Sac- rifice and priesthood are, by the ordinance of God, in such wise conjoined, as that both have existed in every law. Whereas, therefore, in the New Testa- 1 Pa7's. a., cap. vli., qucBst. xxii. 9^ The Roman System, ment, the Catholic Church has received from the institution of Christ, the holy, visible sacrifice of the eucharist ; it must needs also be confessed that there is in that church a new, visible, and external priest- hood, into which the old has been translated. And the sacred Scriptures show, and the tradition of the Catholic Church has always taught, that this priest- hood was instituted by the same Lord our Saviour, and that to the apostles and their successors in the priesthood was the power delivered of consecrating, offering, and administering his body and blood, as also of forgiving and retaining sins." ^ The priest- hood is thus justified by the reality of the sacrifice offered in the eucharist. Upon this point he presents no other argument. As to the second point, the priesthood not common to all Christians, he argues that the priesthood was committed at the first Lord's Supper only to those who were present, the apos- tles. It is also reasonable that, if the sacrifices of old required special priests, the greater sacrifice of the new covenant should have its special priests much more. And it was upon the apostles only that the power of remitting sins was conferred in John XX. The authority of the Church is adduced for the same position by a quotation from Chrysos- tom. The third point is sustained by the plain cases of ordination in the New Testament. The argument for the sacramental character of the rite is derived from propriety, and depends too much upon the general idea of sacrament in the Roman Church to receive worthy consideration before that topic shall ^ Schaff, Creeds, ii., i86, 187. Reply. 93 have been reached in the regular order of our dis- cussion. § 52. Reply. The fundamental and decisive argu- ment for the Catholic doctrine of the priesthood is thus shown to be its necessity to the existence in the Church of a true sacrifice. It is the CathoHc doc- trine that the eucharist is not merely a memorial, but a real repetition of the sacrifice of Calvary, so. that it is a ''true sacrifice properly so called." This doctrine Protestantism denies. As it denies the doctrine, so it must deny the consequence drawn from it. It will not be attempted at this point to substantiate this denial, since the full force of the Protestant argu- ments against the idea of a sacrifice in the Church cannot be made evident till the general subject of the sacraments is reached. Enough to say here simply that the representations of the Scriptures make any repetition of the sacrifice of Christ by him- self, and much more by any others, impossible ; for we read that Christ "' needeth not daily, like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for his ow^n sins, and then for the sins of the people : for this he did once for all, when he offered up himself:" and again : '' Nor yet that he should offer himself often ; . . . but now once at the end of the ages hath he been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of him- self:" and still again, '' He, when he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God." ^ But though we thus defer our complete answer to the argument to another point, various subsidiary ^ Heb. vii. 27, ix. 25, 26, x. 12, 94 The Roman Systein. arguments may be considered immediately. The Scriptures give no support, as the Council of Trent asserts, to the CathoHc idea of the priesthood. The allusion of the council to Hebrews vii. 12 in the word " translated," is of no force, since that passage relates to the transfer of the priesthood from the order of Aaron to that of Melchizedek, and the Melchizedekian priest is Christ. In fact, Christ is everywhere held up as the only New Testament priest in the literal sense. He is the " one mediator between God and men" (i. Tim. ii. 5). In reply to the argument that the eucharist was given to the apostles only to celebrate, it might be a fair re- joinder, and certainly one impossible positively to refute, that it was not given to them as apostles but as disciples. We shall give another form to this reply, however, by stating that certainly that other great power, which the Catholic doctrine calls the power to '* forgive or retain sins," which is also char- acteristic of the priesthood, was not given to Peter or to the apostles as such, but to them as believers, since it was expressly given, in Matt, xviii. 15-20, to the whole Church. The only escape from this con- clusion is to say that the word '* church " in the passage in question means the clergy, which is against the usage of Scripture. But if the whole Church has the power, it is impossible to argue from the power to a special priesthood necessary to exercise it. § 53. Protestants do not, however, reject all the ideas which Catholics associate with the office of the priesthood. They do not deny the fact of New Tes- Protestant Ordination, 95 tament ordination, nor the necessity in a well regu- lated church of an outward as well as an inward call to the public ofifice of instruction and government in the church. Like the Catholics, they do not '' im- mediately reverence every one who may say that he is inwardly consecrated as a priest, as truly such." They educate their ministry, and they examine them as to their qualifications. But they maintain that ordination is installment in an office, and that the conferment of office is only the recognition of a pecul- iar fitness in the ordained for the performance of what any Christian has the essential right to do, if he is fit. They would generally maintain with Luther in his Address to the German Nobles that " if a handful of pious Christian laymen were caught and thrown into a wilderness, if they had no conse- crated priest with them, and, agreeing in the matter, elected one among them and conferred upon him the office of baptizing, holding mass, absolving, and preaching, he would be as truly a priest as if all the bishops and popes had consecrated him." ^ That is to say, the priestly power, such as it is, resides in the Church, and may at any time be assumed and exer- cised by the Church. To be sure, it is only figura- tively priestly, for the true priest is Christ alone. But so far as Christ has appointed his servants to represent him in instructing men, and in praying for them, and in giving them the sacred symbols and pledges of his forgiving grace, that appointment be- longs essentially to all believers. It was never com- mitted to any order of men who were essential to its 1 After Hase, p. 95. 96 The Roman System, transmission and whose presence was essential to the existence of the Church. To the end it remains true that '' where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." § 54. The historical argument for the priesthood is equally untenable. Perrone quotes Chrysostom in its favor, who flourished about the year 400. Of course, such testimony is valueless as to the ideas of the early Church. He might have quoted Crypian (d. 258), who styles the clergy priests, speaks of sac- rifice and altar, and makes the priests to '' offer for " the congregation.^ But Cyprian stood at that fatal turning point where the way diverged toward the Roman system. The eariier fathers did not recog- nize any priesthood in the Church. It is true that it was very early the custom to compare the ministers of the New Testament Church to the priests of the Old Testament, as even in the Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians. But this carried with it no idea of a true priesthood in the Catholic sense. Justin Mar- tyr declares that all '' behevers " are '' the true high- priestly race of God " and represents *' Christians in all places throughout the world " as presenting the eucharistic sacrifice, — not the officers of the congre- gation.^ The same conception is found in Irenaeus. He says, " All the righteous possess the sacerdotal rank,"^ and represents ''the Church" as offering the oblation.* In neither of these writers is any trace of modern Catholicism to be found. The sacrifice is not the body and blood of Christ, but bread and wine, 1 Ep. xvii. 2, et al. mult, 2 Dial., 116, 117, 3 Bk. iv., 8, 3. * Bk., iv., 17, 5. The Fathers not for a Priesthood, 97 and it is not a propitiatory offering, but a thank offer- ing, an oblation. Tertullian, in whose time the appel- lation of priest for the ministers of the Church had become common, has a remarkable passage. He says : " Are not even we laics priests ? .... It is the authority of the Church, and the honor which has acquired sanctity through the joint session of the order, which has established the difference between the order and the laity. Accord- ingly, where there is no joint session of the ecclesi- astical order, you offer, and baptize, and are priest alone for yourself. But where three are, a Church is, albeit they be laics." ^ And even Augustine says : *' As we call all believers Christians on account of the mystical chrism, so we call all priests because they are members of the one priest." ^ If anything is clear from a comprehensive and accurate review of the early fathers, it is that the idea of the priesthood in the Church, first introduced in a figurative sense, developed into the Catholic conception by the oper- ation of the same forces which brought about the doctrine of a true sacrifice in the Church, and that both of these changes w^ere illegitimate and resulted in a corruption of the original New Testament doctrine. § 55. Roman Catholic custom has surrounded the priesthood with a sacredness which has led to many expressions of reverence for the office and the person of the priest which are themselves an argument against the doctrine of the Church. The Jesuit Weissenbach thus utters himself: " Pardon us, 1 De exhor. cast., 7. 2 civ. Dei, xx., 10. 7 gS The Roman System. angelic spirits, we know your greatness. But have you even the keys of heaven, Hke the priesthood ? Can you produce the true God at your command? Pardon us even thou, O Queen of Heaven ! Thou canst by thy intercession procure the forgiveness even of the greatest sins, but of thine oztm pozver thou canst forgive none, as our priests do. Once, but once only, hast thou borne the incarnate God, even this only in the state of misery and of poverty. But our priests surpass thee at the very point where thou surpassest all. They can, zvhen, zvherCy and so often as they will^ call down the divine Son from the bosom of Ids glory ^ from the right hand of the almighty Father, upon the earth, and in a certain and real and genuine sense for our purpose bare him into the world." ^ All good things can be abused ; but a doctrine which so readily lends itself to expressions which shock refined Christian feeling, as these do, whether Protestant or Catholic feeling, is certainly a doubtful doctrine, to say the least which one can venture to say. § 56. The Episcopate. The priesthood centers in the episcopate, for to this office are reserved certain functions, such as confirmation and ordination, while no other priestly function is forbidden to the bishop. This superiority in rank, function, and office, is declared by the Roman system to be of divine right. It necessarily follows that the Church must maintain that the bishops were instituted by Christ. Perrone's argument ^ is that this was done 1 Quoted in Delitzsch, Lehrsystem, p. 103. 2 Prcclcctiones, vol. iii., p. 428 ff. Roman Episcopate not in New Test. 99 when Christ appointed the apostles and '' put them over the disciples. For Christ gave the apostles the highest power in the Church and promised them that they should sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel/^ This is his entire scriptural argu- ment, the insufficiency of which he seems to feel, since, though about to treat the patristic argument under a special head, he adds at once the state- ment : '' This is the almost unanimous opinion of the fathers, that the bishops are the successors of the apostles/' § 57. But nothing can' be plainer to the candid reader of the New Testament than that it gives no hint of any such superiority of bishops to presbyters as the Roman system teaches. The text which Perrone quotes has nothing to do with any apostolic or episcopal jurisdiction upon the earth, for it reads : '' In the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of his glory [that is, the judg- ment throne, as in Matt. xxv. 3 1], ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones.'^ The two names, bishop and elder, were applied to the same men, of whom there might be several in any church. The case of the '' elders '^ of the church at Ephesus (Acts xx. 17), who were styled '' bishops '^ (vs. 28), is a sufficient proof of this state- ment. The Epistle to the Philippians mentions only " bishops '^ and *' deacons,^' no presbyters. No single man is referred to in the writings of Paul as head in any apostolic church, for the local church with its elders, a body of several men, does all that is to be done. Peter exhorts the '' elders,^' with whom he, an apostle, is a " fellow-elder,'^ to " feed/' or shepherd, loo The Romaii System, the flock of God (according to the Roman ideas, an episcopal function), to which many ancient authori- ties add the phrase '' exercising the oversight '^ [incaxoTcouvTsc). And in the Epistle to Titus (i. 5-9) Paul directs that elders be appointed in every city, gives for them the same qualifications as are given for '' bishops ^^ in i Tim. iii., and then proceeds : *' For t/ie bisJiop must be blameless,'^ thus completely identifying the bishopric with that eldership about which he is talking in the whole context. These facts, and others which might be cited, are so plain that Perrone does not pretend to deny them. He adopts the ingenious evasion of Petavius that in the infancy of the Church " either all the presbyters or the most of them were so ordained as to obtain at the same time the rank of bishop and presbyter '^ in order that they might all confirm and ordain. He con- tinues : '' So then many bishops administered ecclesi- astical affairs in one and the same city or church by common counsel, obeying the apostles as pontiffs of a higher grade, until, that first charity and love of imitating Christ and embracing modesty and humil- ity growing cold, to remove dissensions and to remedy, as Jerome says, schism, it was pleasing that some one of the presbyters should be elected to preside over the rest. And so many ceased to be created not only of equal dignity, but also of order and power, the prerogative both of honor and jurisdic- tion being transferred to one, and the succession of the bishops began.^^ That is, it is perfectly plain that presbyters and bishops had the same office and did the same things. Protestants affirm, therefore, Not in the Sub-apostolic Church, loi that they were not essentially distinguished. Petavius supposes a double ordination, of which there is not the slightest historical proof, without which neither he nor Perrone can defend the Catholic position. But this is to write the history not upon histori- cal grounds, but upon dogmatic. The reasoning proceeds in a circle. The dogmatics were to be proven by the history, which in its turn is made to rest upon the dogmatics. The only reason for the dogma is the dogma itself § 58. There might be more excuse for this bad logic if the patristic argument whic^ Perrone next adduces had any validity. If it were certain that such a bishopric as the Roman system demands existed fully developed in the Church when it emerged into the sub-apostolic age, then it might be plausibly urged that the obscurity of the subject in the New Testament was due to the meagerness of the records. Perrone quotes Clement to the Corin- thians : ** For his own peculiar services are assigned to the high priest, and their own proper place is pre- scribed to the priests, and their own special ministra- tions devolve upon the Levites." There may be some doubt precisely what this comparison of the Chris- tian Church to the Jewish is intended to signify. Lipsius thinks that the '' high priest " is Christ. That it does not denote the bishop in distinction from the presbyters is plain from the remainder of the epistle. In chapter xlii. the apostles are said to have appointed '' bishops and deacons," thus putting the matter in the same light as it appears in the New Testament passages above cited. The following I02 The Roman System, chapters make Clement's understanding of the rela- tion of the bishopric and eldership indisputable. In chapter xliv. he discusses ejecting men from the " episcopate," and immediately adds, referring to the same thing, ''Blessed are \ho^it presbyters'' who have not been thus ejected—/, r., from the episcopate. And in chapter xlvii., referring to the trouble with the bishops, he calls it " sedition against presbyters!' The Roman doctrine of the episcopate was conse- quently totally foreign to Clement's thought. The nearly contemporaneous '' Teaching of the Twelve Apostles," discovered since Perrone wrote, occupies the same posnion with Clement, exhorting in its fifteenth chapter that " bishops and deacons " be elected over the churches. No presbyters are men- tioned. Ignatius, whom Perrone quotes thrice, does not support his argument. He distinguishes sharply, it is true, between the bishop, the college of presby- ters, and the deacons, but there is no evidence of the existence in his mind of the Roman idea of the epis- copate. What he values in that office is the unity brought about in the Church by obedience to a single leader. He represents the time when, '' to remedy schism," one presbyter had been put at the head of the presbytery. Indeed, the very passage from which Perrone first quotes is sufficient to over- throw his claims (Smyrnaeans viii.), for Ignatius will not allow anything to be done without the bishop. '' It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize or to celebrate a love feast," he says ; but this is not because there were certain functions which belonged to the bishopric as an order. Who ever heard of Hatch on Rise of Episcopate. 103 baptism being restricted to bishops ? Ignatius is in- sisting on such points to secure harmony, and that alone. His bishop was no Roman bishop, but a Protestant leader and pastor. And then, the bishop is compared to Christ and not to the apostles, to whom, by a turn inexplicable upon the Roman theory, the presbyters are compared — '' Follow . . . the presbytery as ye would the apostles !" It is not necessary to probe farther into the cita- tions of Perrone, which are next made from Clement of Alexandria, Origen, TertuUian, and Cyprian. If the case is lost in the New Testament and the ear- liest fathers, no subsequent appearance of an epis- copal order in the Church can justify its divine orig- ination. Modern research has not left us without a clear view of the rise of the episcopate, and has thus contributed what the present age needed to the refu- tation of the claims of Rome. Dr. Edwin Hatch, late Reader in History in Oxford University,^ has shown the great similarity which existed between the early Christian associations and other associations — for charity, burial, etc. — in the world about them. Just as those societies arose by a natural impulse un- der the peculiarities of the times, so, he thinks, the Christian societies or churches arose by a spiritual gravitation. Men of like faith naturally met together. This " meeting " {kxxXrjata) our Lord had contem- plated (Matt, xviii. 17). The officers of the churches were developed like the same officers in the societies, as they were needed (Acts vi. 1-6), and were called 1 Organization of the Early Christian Churches, fourth edit., 1892, pp. 26-112. 104 The Roman System. by the same names. Even the word " bishop " was a secular term, and meant overseer of the charities, or treasurer. That very word " Ordo," of which the CathoHc system makes so much, and which is sup- posed to designate some mysterious gift pertaining to the clergy, was used of any secular body of offi- cers, of a municipal senate, or of the administrative committee of an association. Thus the episcopate was in some places the first office to be established. In other cases the bishop was the president of the board of officers. Elders arose in like manner after the analogy of the synagogue and of the Greek so- cieties also. Over these a president was finally set This free organization, growing out of the circum- stances and conveniences of the times, diverse some- what in character, was gradually harmonized by the constant intercourse of the churches, and became finally the local episcopate in each several church ; then the diocesan episcopate ; then the Nicene sys- tem ; at last in the West, the papal hierarchy. Such is the picture which Dr. Hatch has drawn, with large probability that it is correct. It needs no comment to show how utterly irreconcilable it is with the theories and the claims of Rome. § 59. The Celibacy of the Clergy. The law of the Roman Church forbids persons living in the married state to be ordained and persons in holy orders to marry. This is, however, theoretically merely a matter of discipline. It is freely acknowl- edged by Roman Catholic writers that celibacy has not always been exacted of the clergy. The argu- ments for it are arguments based upon propriety. Celibacy of the Clergy, 105 They are in the main (i) that ceHbacy leaves the cleric more free for a performance of the exacting duties of his office, and (2) that, as continence is a more holy state than marriage, it is especially desir- able for those who have constantly to minister at the altar. Yet it will be seen that the latter argument begins to verge toward an argument for the neces- sity of celibacy ; and the evident tendency of Roman discussion is to exalt the requirement from the rank of a discipHnary to that of a religious requirement. Thus the Council of Trent says : " If any one saith that clerics constituted in sacred orders, or regulars, who have solemnly professed chastity, are able to contract marriage, and that being contracted, it is valid, notwithstanding the ecclesiastical law or vow, ... let him be anathema;" and it puts celibacy above matrimony in the words : " If any one saith that .... it is not better and more blessed to re- main in virginity or in ceHbacy than to be united in matrimony, let him be anathema." ^ Hence it was to be expected that Cardinal Gibbons ^ would main- tain that Christ preferred virgins, and would deny the manifest facts about the apostles. St. Peter, he ac- knowledges, was married, — a strange fact for the reputed founder of the Church which exalts virginity and prohibits marriage to all his successors; but, upon the authority of St. Jerome (who flourished about 400, too late to know anything about it per- sonally), and of Peter's own words, " Behold, we have left all things and followed thee," he asserts that Peter left his wife to undertake the ministry of 1 Schaff 's Creeds, vol. ii., p. 197. 2 p p^ p ^^^ ff^ io6 The Rovtan System, the gospel. St. Paul says that '' the rest of the apos- tles, and the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas " led about " a wife that is a believer" (i Cor. ix. 5). The cardinal says that this is a mistranslation, since it sub- stitutes the word wife for wo7nan. But the cardinal knows that the Greek word for wife and woman is the same, as in many other languages, and that the context must settle the meaning of any particular case. He adds : '* It is evident that St. Paul does not speak here of his wife, since he had none ; but he alludes to those pious women who voluntarily waited upon the apostles and ministered to them in their mission- ary journey." Of course, he does not speak of his wife, since he is expressly denying that he had one, though he had the '' right " to have one, as well as to '' eat and drink." That the apostles had women attending them upon their missionary journeys is altogether improbable, and under the circumstances and customs of the times well nigh impossible. It would have exposed them constantly to the worst suspicions. The cardinal also adduces St. Paul's words: *'A bishop must be sober, just, holy, conti- nent," interpreting the last word of non-intercourse, as he does the word '^ chastity " in the passage, *' Be thou an example to the faithful .... in charity, in faith, in chastity." But Paul has just before said that the bishop must be the *' husband of one wife," which, though under the law of common sense it may not require that every bishop be married, makes marriage at least the rule, as it is the rule in Protest- ant communities to-day. § 60. If celibacy is a holier state than matrimony, Marriage Holy. 107 as Catholic Christianity has from the distant past profoundly felt, it is proper that the peculiar holiness of the celibate should be ascribed to a class of men who have such holy offices to perform as are required of the CathoHc clergy. This is the ideal element in the Roman position, and its strength should not be overlooked by Protestants. But the foundation of the structure is its unsound part. " Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled " (Heb. xiii. 4). The Catholic idea is directly traceable through history to monasticism, and that to the heathen institutions which arose in the Orient from its constant inclina- tion to philosophic dualism. The flesh was deemed essentially evil. But the gospel does not occupy this position. The essential appetites of human na- ture were given it to effect great and holy ends through their proper gratification. He that denies the demands of the body for food and drink will find alluring visions of banquets arising in his disordered soul to torment him ; while he who eats and drinks as he ought will not know what appetite or tempta- tion is. So with the sexual appetite. The married life is chaste. Unholy thoughts and impure desires will have no place in it, but they will arise in the mind of the involuntary and unwilling celibate. Protestants do not maintain, as Cardinal Gibbons, in an unhappy hour, condescended to intimate, that '^ continency is impracticable." They do not deny the purity of the lives of many priests of the Roman Church nor that of many celibates among them- selves. But they do maintain that enforced celibacy is a dangerous and abnormal thing, and doubtless io8 The Roman System, seriously displeasing to Almighty God. The his- tory of Catholic celibacy is a sufficient proof of this statement/ § 6 1. But the practical reasons which favor celi- bacy have been, no doubt, the strongest motives for maintaining it. Cardinal Gibbons says that some ascribe the progress of the Catholic Church '' to her thorough organization ; others to the farseeing wis- dom of her 'chief pastors. Without undervaluing these and other auxiliaries, I incline to the beHef that, under God, the Church has no tower of strength more potent than the celibacy of the clergy." ^ He goes on to mention the freedom of the priests from all diverting and impeding cares. Cardinal Pallavi- cini was still plainer when he said that celibacy was essential to the existence of the Roman hierarchy, since the married priest would be bound by wife and children to the civil order and cease to be a de- pendent of the Roman see.^ No doubt celibacy is essential to the maintenance of the system of domin- 1 I gladly refrain from going into the argument hinted at in the last sentence. It has been drawn out at length in that exceedingly thor- ough and able book of Mr. Henry C. Lea's, An Historical Sketch of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian C^^^r^/^, second edition, 1884. This gentleman has devoted himself in a series of volumes to exposing the abuses of the Catholic system from an historical standpoint, and has rendered service of incalculable value. I will only refer to the mani- fest proof which the very bitterness of the contest in which that pope who fastened celibacy upon the Church, Gregory VII., found himself involved, and the numerous complaints of Roman synods over the ex- cesses of the priesthood, with the severe laws continually enacted, afford of the danger which has been incurred and the evil which has resulted from the enforcement of celibacy. The details are too repul- sive for repetition here, however necessary it is that they be known. 2 F. F., p. 459. 3 Quoted by Delitzsch, Lehrsystem, p. 121. Arguments for Celibacy, 109 ion which Rome has ever sought to maintain over the hearts and Hves of men. But has dominion, power, arbitrary control, been a worthy aim for a Christian Church ? and has it resulted in blessing either to the Church or the people ? To Protestants it seems as if the ambition of the Church for worldly power had been its chief curse from the beginning. If Rome's eye is fixed upon herself, upon her own aggrandizement and magnificence, then she may do well to maintain celibacy. But if she wishes truly to benefit the souls of men, then she will permit her priests to fit themselves for the purest and best min- istrations by themselves passing through that school of life in which all the virtues of man are best devel- oped. Even our Saviour was " made perfect through suffering," and is able to '' succor them that are tempted " because himself '^ tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin." And so the parish priest who knows what the duties and privileges of family life are by experience, who has travailed in soul for his own children, has experienced the sweet fellowship of woman in sorrow and in joy, has wept over the grave of his own loved ones or seen them enter upon the joys and triumphs of successful life, can enter into like joys and sorrows among his flock as no celibate would ever think of doing. The actual usefulness of a pastor's family in the work of the Church is a fact of which Roman apolo- gists seem to be ignorant. Cardinal Gibbons says that '' the world has hitherto been converted by un- married clergymen, and only by them will it continue to be converted." We have already seen that Cath- no The Roman System, olic writers seem generally ignorant as to the suc- cess of Protestant missions. American Protestants alone are now (1898) expending about ;^6,ooo,ooo annually upon their missions among the heathen. The detailed missionary reports give a total of com- municants in all Protestant foreign missions as 1,209,745 for 1895. Such missions are not failures. Generally Protestants expect that their missionaries shall be married, since they have found such mis- sionaries more efficient than any others. In some of its missions the Congregational Foreign Mission- ary Society (known as the ''American Board") re- fuses to send out celibates. The wife of a mission- ary is often as useful in missionary work as the mis- sionary himself; and the erection of a Christian family upon heathen soil, with its chaste wife and its obedient and intelligent children, is itself the estab- lishment of a model Christian institution without which the missionary facilities would be seriously abridged. § 62. If the Roman Church has its ideal of the priesthood, so has the Protestant of the pastorate. The Protestant pastor lives among his flock as one of them. He enters into all their life because he sustains the same relations as they. He, too, is hus- band, father, citizen, neighbor, and friend. He strives in all these things to be an example to his people, to furnish them by his own walk with a pattern by which they may regulate theirs. His wife is a minister to the women of his congregation where he himself cannot be ; his children are helpers to the children of others. Upon Sunday it is his The Protestant Pastor, iii office to give public instruction in the principles and duties of religion in the church ; and here his power is multipHed because of the accumulated influence exerted by his daily life. His people have the greater confidence in his teachings because he proves them by his life among them. If he teaches from the pulpit, he teaches still more effectively in his daily intercourse with them. He occupies no inaccessible height, and has no mysterious and superior holiness. He is like his brethren and such as they are, only as special opportunities and greater grace make him better than they in some respects. Thus he has their love and confidence in the ordinary course of their lives ; and when his administrations are specially needed, in the hours of trial, and when heart and flesh fail, then he enters into their experience as one only can who has also suffered, who brings the sympathy which comes from personal knowledge of the power of trial and the greatness of the divine help. But aside from preparation for his office, the pastor needs to attain in the school of life the perfection of a man. Men and women are made to live with each other. It is the fundamental fault of the Roman system in respect to the present topic that it does not appreciate the place and work of woman. It views her too exclusively in one aspect. The same system which exalts the Virgin Mary far above her proper place, by a strange but characteristic incon- sistency reduces woman far beneath her true position. If sex makes woman the counterpart of man in one respect, she is made by her entire nature his counter- 112 The Roman System. part and helper in every other. Man requires, in order to attain to the fully developed, thoroughly disciplined, well-rounded mascuHne character, associ- ation with the feminine. Man needs the inspiration of the higher and clearer moral view of woman ; his duller intellect needs the illumination of her intu- itions, his strength to be tempered with her sweet- ness, his force to be modified by her love. She on her part equally needs his force, strength, logic, ideality, and originality. The perfect man will be the man associated constantly with good women; and the priest needs to be the perfect man. § 63. The Roman system thus moves in inconsis- tencies as to this theme, because it is at war with nature. Celibacy is a matter of discipline ; and yet it is well nigh a matter of faith. The Roman view of woman degrades her, while it compensates itself by ascribing to one woman superhuman and even divine attributes. It makes marriage a sacrament, and ascribes to it a peculiar and mystical holiness ; and at the same time it refuses this sacramental blessing to the class which it regards the most ex- alted and privileged in the Church. But to war against nature in its fundamental and essential in- stincts and necessities, is to war against God ; for the book of nature is as truly the book of God as is the book of revelation. He that finds himself in conflict with both these books, as the CathoHc does at this point, is indeed to be commiserated. CHAPTER V. THE PAPACY. § 64. The discussion of the doctrine of the Church in former chapters led us necessarily to the discus- sion of the infalHble authority of the Church, and that, since the definitions of the Vatican Council have made infallibility to have its organ in the pope, to the discussion of one portion of the papal office, namely, its supreme teaching power. There is an- other branch of power lodged by the Roman system in the pope to which we must now turn, and this is the power of supreme jurisdiction. § 65. Vatican Definitions of Papal Supremacy. These, abridged as far as possible, are as follows : ^ "We therefore teach and declare that according to the testimony of the gospel the primacy of juris- diction over the universal Church of God was imme- diately and directly promised and given to blessed Peter the apostle by Christ the Lord. . . . The holy and blessed Peter . . . lives, presides, and judges, to this day and always, in his successors the bishops of the holy see of Rome, which w^as founded by him and consecrated by his blood. Whence, whosoever succeeds to Peter in this see, does by the institution of Christ himself obtain the primacy of Peter over the whole Church. . . . Hence we teach and declare that by the appointment of our Lord the Roman 1 Schaff, Creeds, vol. ii., p. 258 ff. 8 113 114 '^^^ Roma7i System. Church possesses a superiority of ordinary power over all other Churches, and that this power of juris- diction of the Roman pontiff, which is truly episco- pal, is immediate ; to which all, of whatever rite and dignity, both pastors and faithful, both individually and collectively, are bound by their duty of hierarch- ical subordination and true .obedience to submit not only in matters which belong to faith and morals, but also in those that appertain to the discipline and government of the Church throughout the world. . . . But so far is this power of the supreme pontiff from being any prejudice to the ordinary and imme- diate power of episcopal jurisdiction, by which bishops, who have been set by the Holy Ghost to succeed and hold the place of the apostles, feed and govern each his own flock as true pastors, that this their episcopal authority is really asserted, strength- ened, and protected by the supreme and universal pastor. . . . We further teach and declare that he is the supreme judge of the faithful, and that in all causes, the decision of which belongs to the Church, recourse may be had to his tribunal, and that none may reopen the judgment of the apostolic see, than whose authority there is no greater, nor can any law- fully review its judgment." In a word, these definitions make every individual Christian, as well as the whole Church, directly sub- ject to the pope. Cardinal Gibbons compares the transmission of the powers of Peter to the popes to the like trans- mission from the first president of the United States to his successors in office. He endeavors to make Development of the Curial System. 115 the position acceptable by comparing the papal court with the Supreme Court at Washington, which is the ultimate tribunal in this government, as the papal is in the Church. And he implies in his whole argu- ment that the present position of the papacy in the Church, determined at Rome in the year 1870, is supported by all antiquity. § 66. Development of the Present or Curiae System in the Roman Church. In antithesis to these positions, the fact is that the papal system, defined at Rome, is only one of the views of the location of authority in the Church which have been held during CathoHc history. The curial system is the victorious system, but it long shared with an- other the favor of the Church, with the episcopal system, which was the first to gain adherence, and which has been only slowly forced out of credit. The definitions above quoted show traces of this conflict between the rival conceptions of the supreme power, when they attempt to reconcile the ''imme- diate" jurisdiction of the popes, which touches every individual Christian, with the " power " of episcopal jurisdiction, which under such circumstances can be only the delegated exercise of another's power, as in fact it has become in the ultramontane, Vatican Church.^ The episcopal theory reached its culmination in the Council of Constance, which sat 1414 to 1418. ^ An excellent discussion of this theme at considerable length, sup- plied with full citations from a large range of original authorities, may be found in Delitzsch, Lehrsystem, pp. 146-267, to whom I am indebted for much of what immediately follows. ii6 The Roman System, The long corruption and schism in the Church called for the most vigorous measures, and under the lead of the French divines, whose head was ^ Gerson, Chancellor of the University of Paris, the council set forth the theory since known as Gallicanism, re- moved three existing rival popes, and elected a fourth, thus reforming the Church in its '' head." Although Gerson himself declared that the plenitude of ecclesi- astical power resided in the pope, he said that it also resided in the Church and in its representative, the general council, since the Church has the power to determine the exercise of this plenary power accord- ing to its own will. The council itself, by an utterance in its fifth session, declared that it was the representative of the Catholic Church militant and affirmed its possession of power immediately conferred by Christ, '' which every one, of whatever condition or dignity, even the papal, is held to obey in those things which pertain to the faith and to the extirpa- tion of schism and the general reformation of the Church of God in head and members." Thus, with the use of the words ^ which are employed, accord- ing to Heinrich, to designate a cathedratic utterance, the central point of the Galilean theory was pro- mulgated, that the general council possesses a su- periority of jurisdiction over the pope.^ § 67. But this theory was not consistent with the fundamental ideas of the Roman system, and was ^ " Ordi?tat, diffinit, statuit, decernit, et declarat." Delitzsch, p. 170. 2 Innocent III. acknowledged that he might fall into heresy, and would then be subject to the jurisdiction of the Church. See Hase, p. 164, for this and other examples. Development of the Cicrial System, 117 destined to disappear before the papal system. It rested upon certain republican ideas derived from the works of Aristotle, and gave to the general body of the Church a prominence which they could not have under the sacerdotal theory of the clergy. If the Church possesses a hierarchy instituted by God, that hierarchy derives its privileges and powers from God directly, and hence not from the body of the Church. Hence the Church can never '' resume '^ its powers or determine their exercise according to its own will. The force of logic also tends directly to the su- premacy of the papacy. Mohler, who calls the Galli- can theory even in the year 1838 ''one already defunct,^' derives the papal supremacy from the visibil- ity of the Church.^ '' For a visible Church a visible head is necessarily required.'^ Otherwise, he declares, the unity of the episcopate would be dissolved, the Church divided up into various separate churches, and its authority in matters of faith destroyed. A mere symbol of ecclesiastical unity could never effect the preservation of these great interests, and that is what the pope would be under the Gallican theory. When the effort is made to bring the theory of the supremacy of councils into practical application, it is found to be impracticable. Councils cannot always be summoned with the celerity necessary to remedy definite errors. To meet this difficulty episcopalists have sometimes said that in cases of haste the pope might give a provisional decision, to which the faith- ful would be bound so long as no opposition in the Church at large was raised against it. But shall a 1 Symbolik, p. 391 f. ii8 The Roman System. Christian man accept a decision as right till he is convinced it is ? And can he be convinced unless the pope have the power of deciding such questions ? He must remain in doubt — that is, he cannot really submit — till finally a general council is called and the true authority speaks. But, if a general council has been called, who is to give the decision ? Suppose that there is a minority and a majority. Can any de- cision be given then at all ? The ancient rule was that there should be three essential requisites for the estab- lishment of any doctrine — universality, perpetuity, and consent. Dollinger accordingly declared that there could be no decision except by unanimous agree- ment. But the Vatican Council declared that a majority should decide. And when the general council has spoken, who is to decide that it is a gen- eral council, or give general authority to its decisions ? The Galileans have sometimes said that the general consent of the Church gives authority to conciliar decisions. But it is the conciliar decision itself which is to express and give form to this same general consent in the Church. So that the council by its authority makes the general consent, and the gen- eral consent makes the authority of the council. That is the old fallacy of reasoning in a circle again. Hence, finally, it can only be the pope who can declare when a council is general. § 68. It is not strange, therefore, that the most consistent thinkers of the Church, so soon as the papacy itself was fairly established, began to locate authority in the pope, and that this view prevailed over GalHcanism at the Vatican Council of 1870. The Curial System, 119 The great popes of the heroic age of the papacy,' Gregory VII., Innocent III., and Boniface VIII.; Gratian (i 1 5 1) ; Thomas Aquinas ; Bonaventura ; Eugene IV. at Florence; Leo X.; the Council of Trent by its general assumptions and the method by which it conducted its business ; the Roman Cate- chism ; and, finally, long before the Vatican Council, Pius IX., who proclaimed the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary upon his ow^n authority ; may be mentioned as maintaining by word or deed the supremacy of the pope in matters of jurisdiction and of infallible teaching in general. The victory of the papal system in 1870 was thus the logical and the historical outcome of the process upon which the Church embarked when it developed the papacy. § 69. This papal or curial system may be sketched under the following heads : (i) In order to give to his Church, as a visible institution needing a perfect organization, the appro- priate and necessary head, our Lord bestowed upon the apostle Peter the first place of authority as his own representative in the kingdom of God upon earth. (2) To provide for the continuance of this headship in the Church there must be a succession in the primacy, and this is determined by the succession in the bishopric of Rome. As successor of Peter, who was the first bishop of Rome, the Roman bishop possesses supreme jurisdiction over the entire Church. Although all bishops are in a sense successors of the apostles, they do not succeed to all their rights, and I20 The Roman System, certainly not to that fullness of power which was lodged not in every apostle, but only in Peter. The pope as his successor, is, therefore, the only bishop in full possession of the apostoHc office and power, and hence his is the only truly apostolic see. The question which is suggested by the history of the papacy, as to the legitimacy of resistance to the pope under extraordinary conditions, has met with various answers. As himself the highest judge, he cannot be judged of any other power. Yet accord- ing to Bellarmine, if he seeks to destroy the Church, he may be resisted with military force. The same writer teaches that in times of schism a general coun- cil may decide who the true pope is ; but other curiaiists say. No ! Help in such a case can come from God alone. The canon Si Papa teaches that a pope *' found departing from the faith " may be judged by the Church, although all hold it very improbable that a pope can become a heretic, and some that it is impossible. (3) General councils are sometimes spoken of by curiaiists with great respect. Some even give them a share in the infallibility of the Church, and speak of a twofold organ of infallibility. But Perrone, who employs this style of speech, says that in case of a division, if the pope held with the minority, their decision would acquire by his agreement the char- acter of infallibility. " Where Peter is, there is the Church, whether the number of the bishops be greater or less." But this is in fact to make the general council superfluous, as was flatly asserted by Cardinal Orsi so long ago as 1722. Supremacy of the Pope, 121 (4) The source of the jurisdiction of bishops is an- other question upon which curiaHsts are divided, but which admits in strictness of reasoning of but one answer. Many have taught that it was derived im- mediately from God. But if so, it can be exercised without the intervention of the pope, and he then possesses not the plenitude of power in the Church, but only the highest power. But if he possesses the plenitude of power, then a bishop is not a bishop in the full sense of the word, even if consecrated, till the pope has bestowed upon him jurisdiction. The bishops are hence " delegates '" of the pope, called by him into participation in the pastoral care : he is the real lord in every diocese. This is the ultimate curialist sentiment, as voiced by Bellarmine and others. § 70. Cardinal Gibbons' Argument for the Supremacy of the Pope.^ This is historical. " I shall endeavor to show," says the cardinal, '^from incontestable historical evidence, that the popes have always, from the days of the apostles, continued to exercise supreme jurisdiction, not only in the West- ern Church till the Reformation, but also throughout the Eastern Church till the great schism of the ninth century." The argument of this chapter is built upon the preceding, in which the argument from the Scriptures for the primacy of Peter has been presented. We have had sufficient occasion in former chapters to review this argument, which is built principally upon the leading text. Matt. xvi. 18, and which derives 1 F. F.,p. 132 ff. 122 The Roman System. what strength it has from introducing into the allu- sions and statements of the Scripture narrative a sig- nificance, borrowed from dogmatic preconceptions, which no objective exegesis can justify. The same general character attaches to the historical discussion to which we are now to turn. The first argument is derived from " appeals." " If we find the see of Rome from the foundation of Christianity, entertaining and deciding cases of ap- peal from the oriental churches ; if we find that her decision was final and irrevocable, we must conclude that the supremacy of Rome over all the churches is an undeniable fact." Ten instances are cited to prove that such is the case. We shall examine them as fully as possible. I. ''Some dissension and scandal having occurred in the Church of Corinth, the matter is brought to the notice of pope Clement. He at once exercises his supreme authority by writing letters of remon- strance and admonition to the Corinthians Why did the Corinthians appeal to Rome far away in the West, and not to Ephesus so near home in the East, where the apostle John lived ? Evidently because the jurisdiction of Ephesus was local, while that of Rome was universal." The '' letters " of Clement are reduced by modern investigation to one, for the so-called second letter is now seen, with its recovered text, to be a homily, and is probably not by Clement at all. Of the first, it is not written in the name of Clement, whose name, in fact, does not occur in it, but in the name of "the Church of God which sojourns at Rome." Supremacy of the Pope, 123 There is no positive evidence that Rome was for- mally consulted/ though it is possible that she was ; but if so, she did not issue an authoritative epistle, for no word occurs which implies authority, but sim- ply warned and exhorted in the spirit of friendly and fraternal equality. If the authority of Rome had been well estabhshed by previous argument, this let- ter might be quoted as an example of the exercise of her authority, but without such proof the letter affords none of itself It rather bears the marks of the perfect equality between churches which every other positive indication shows to have prevailed in the whole Ante-Nicene epoch. Nor is the argument derived from the proximity of Ephesus of much weight, for Rome was little more than twice as far as Ephesus in actual distance, and in ease of com- munication much nearer, to say nothing of the greater importance which it had as the imperial city. We must, therefore, decline to attach any. impor- tance to this case. 2. ''About the year 190 the question regarding the proper day for celebrating Easter was agitated in the East and referred to pope St. Victor I. The Eastern Church generally celebrated Easter on the day on which the Jews kept the passover ; while in the West it was observed then, as it is now, on the first Sunday after the full moon of the vernal equinox. St. Victor directs the Eastern churches, for the sake ^ The phrase " respecting which you consulted us," found in some translations in Chapter I., is a mistranslation. It should read, " con- cerning the things which are discussed among you." The Greek is : Trept Twi/ lmC,yYTov\x.iviiiV -nap vfxtv irpayfidTiuv. 124 *^^^ Roman System. of uniformity, to conform to the practice of the West, and his instructions are universally followed." Our information about the matter is almost wholly derived from Eusebius.^ His narrative contradicts the accounts given by the cardinal at every important point. There was the difference stated between the East and the West. Several synods were held, some in the East and some in the West, upon the matter, and they recommended the Western custom. But the bishops of Asia Minor, who followed the custom which they had received from the apostle John, sent a letter to Victor and the Roman Church defending themselves for persevering in their ancient practice. There was no '' reference " of the matter to Victor. This bishop did not '' direct " them " to conform," but he excommunicated " the parishes of all Asia . ... as heterodox." This was, of course, nothing of the nature of a modern Roman excommunication. Any bishop might excommunicate any church, and such an act simply meant that he and his church refused to have communion with the designated church. It naturally implied a recommendation to other churches to do the same, but nothing more than a recommendation. In a similar fashion, many northern Congregational churches before the civil war in America renounced communion with slaveholders and slaveholding churches, without assuming any farther authority over them, or indeed any authority whatever. But even if Victor's " excommunication " had been one of the modern Roman sort, it had a 1 Eccl. Hist., Bk. v., chap, xxiii.-xxv. See also Socrates, Eccl. Hist., Bk. v., chap. xxii. Supremacy of the Pope, 125 curious outcome for a pope, if Victor really had been a pope in the Catholic sense ; for other bishops did not approve of his course, though agreeing with him upon the controversy, and Irenseus of Lyons '' sharply rebuked " him. It is pretty clear that Vic- tor withdrew his excommunication, and certain that the friendly councils of other bishops gradually brought about an agreement upon the Western practice. If the pope did proceed by way of au- thority, he sadly blundered, and no such conformity to his '* instructions " as the cardinal affirms can be found in the records of Eusebius or other original authorities. Again, the only authority for the car- dinal's view of the episode is his own previous opin- ion as to what must have taken place, since Victor was '' pope," not the historical evidence as to what did take place. 3. '' Dionysius, bishop of Rome, about the middle of the third century, having heard that the patriarch of Alexandria erred on some points of faith, demands an explanation of the suspected prelate, who, in obedience to his superior, promptly vindicates his own orthodoxy .^^ This sounds quite hierarchical ; but the original account of the matter, which we find in Athanasius, "On the Opinion of Dionysius,'^ § 13, has quite another sound. Athanasius says : ^ " The bishop Dionysius having heard of the affairs in the Pentapolis, and having written, in zeal for religion, as I said above, his letter to Euphranor and Ammon- ius against the heresy of Sabellius, some of the 1 According to the translation in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. iv., p. i8i. 126 The Roman System, brethren belonging to the Church, of right opinions, but without asking him, so as to learn from himself how he had written, went up to Rome ; and they spoke against him in the presence of his namesake Dionysius the bishop of Rome. And he, upon hear- ing it, wrote simultaneously against the partisans of Sabellius and against those who held the very opin- ions for uttering which Arius had been cast out of the Church And he wrote also to Dionysius to inform him of what they had said about him. And the latter straightway wrote back, and inscribed his books 'A Refutation and a Defense.^ '^ Dionysius of Rome acts in no other way than any one inter- ested in the truth might act in any day, even our own ; and Dionysius of Alexandria does nothing but what any man zealous for his good name would do. Of " demanding an explanation,'^ and of " obedience to a superior,'^ there is not a whisper. The impor- tance of these considerations, and the impossibility of the interpretation of the event which the cardinal gives, are the more evident when we remember that it was but a little earlier when Cyprian was remarking that the bishop of Rome was in " error in endeavor- ing to maintain the cause of heretics against Chris- tians and against the Church of God,'' ^ and Firmilian of Caesarea was turning back upon him the epithets which he had appHed to Cyprian, of '* false Christ" and " false apostle " and " deceitful worker." ^ Such language is inconceivable in a Church governed as the Catholic theology maintains the primitive Church was, by the supremacy of Peter. 1 Cyprian, Epistle Ixxiii. (Ixxiv.) i. ^ Ibid., Ixxiv. (Ixxv.). Supremacy of the Pope, 127 4. An equally great distortion of the true historic picture is given in the following: *' St. Athanasius, the great patriarch of Alexandria, appeals in the fourth century to pope Juhus I. from an unjust de- cision rendered against him by the oriental bishops ; and the pope reverses the sentence of the Eastern council." The cardinal refers to Socrates, History, Bk. IL, chap, xv., from which we proceed to quote '} "Athanasius, meanwhile, after a lengthened journey, at last reached Italy." Other bishops also, " having been accused on various charges and expelled from their several churches, arrived at the imperial city. There each laid his case before JuHus, bishop of Rome. He on his part, by virtue of the Church of Rome's peculiar privilege, sent them back again into the East, fortifying them with commendatory letters ; and at the same time restored to each his own place, and sharply rebuked those by whom they had been deposed. Relying on the signature of the bishop Juhus, the bishops departed from Rome, and again took possession of their own churches, forwarding the letters to the parties to whom they were addressed. These persons, considering themselves treated with indignity by the reproaches of Julius, called a coun- cil at Antioch, assembled themselves, and dictated a reply to his letters as the expression of the unani- mous feeling of the whole synod. It was not his province, they said, to take cognizance of their de- cisions in reference to any whom they might wish to expel from their churches ; seeing that they had 1 After the Nicejie and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. ii. p. 42. 128 The Roman System, not opposed themselves to him when Novatus was ejected from the Church. These things the bishops of the Eastern Church communicated to Julius, bishop of Rome." If this is a case of the exercise of the " supremacy" of the bishop of Rome, it is a case of rebelHon against that supremacy, and is a poor case to quote as an ar- gument. But it is evident that the eastern bishops are repelling an interference for which they know no authority. What Julius attempted to do he did, in the words of Socrates, '' by virtue of the Church of Rome's peculiar privilege." Catholics would, no doubt, from their dogmatic standpoint, understand this of the inherent privilege of the papacy as the see of Peter. But history reveals several peculiar priv- ileges bestowed about this time upon the Roman bishop for special reasons. The Council of Sardica (347) g^^^ ^he right to ''Julius, bishop of Rome," in certain cases to order a case against a bishop who thought himself unjustly condemned to be reopened, and '' to appoint the judges." In other instances he could try a case again at Rome, in others send a pres- byter de latere, who should sit as his representative in a new trial.^ Damasus subsequently received from the 1 The original Latin found in Gieseler, Kirchengeschichte , vol. i., J 94, note 7. When the vote was proposed, or, as we should say, motion made, it was in the form, " If it pleases you, let us honor the me7nory of the holy apostle Peter, that they who have examined the cause may write to Julius," etc. The tradition that Peter founded the Roman Church was long since current. Out of honor to him it is proposed to give Julius certain rights. If the original primacy of Peter were made out, the natural Roman interpretation, that the italicized phrase in- volves a recognition of the primacy, would stand. But here, again, the failure to understand the historical situation in the New Testament has Supremacy of, the Pope. 129 emperor Valentinian certain judicial rights over schismatic clergymen. Of the exact provisions of the articles of Sardica no use seems to have been made. Julius' attempt in the present case was one much like those provided for. but it met with imme- diate rebuke. Thus the ''peculiar privilege" was of human and not divine origin, and it was one quite disputed. This case therefore gives no evidence of that original and undisputed jurisdiction which the cardinal seeks to make out in behalf of Rome. 5. ''St. Basil, archbishop of Csesarea, in the same century, has recourse in his afflictions to the protec- tion of pope Damasus." The appeal of Basil to Damasus is that he will in- terfere by visitation to bring about peace amid the distraction under which the Church of the East was suffering in consequence of the spread of Arian views. There is not the slightest hint of an appeal to the official power of a pope over the Church, but the letter contains only a request for the fraternal serv- ices of one brother to another. If anything more than a reading of the letter were necessary to prove this point, the existence of another letter, addressed to the bishops of Italy and Gaul, and making pre- cisely the same request of them as was previously made of the one bishop of Rome, that they would visit Csesarea, would be enough. " We beseech you led to a misunderstanding of this historical situation. Besides, it should be remembered that the synod at the passing of this canon was composed of western bishops, the Orientals having seceded. It is thus, at best, far from a universal recognition of a generally acknowl- edged primacy. 130 The Roman System. to send envoys to visit and comfort us in our afiflic- tion " is the burden of this letter, as it is of the first.^ 6. '' St. John Chrysostom, patriarch of Constanti- nople, appeals in the beginning of the fifth century, to pope Innocent I. for a redress of grievances in- flicted on him by several eastern prelates, and by the empress Eudoxia of Constantinople." It is possible that in this letter we see one of the earliest of the instances of a real appeal to the pope to exercise judicial power over the Eastern Church. The confusion in the East led to the invoking of the first and only apostolic see in the West as protector and helper. The significant passage in the letter of Chrysostom to Innocent is as follows : ^ '' Therefore, to prevent such confusion overtaking the whole earth, yield to our entreaties that ye will signify by writing that these lawless transactions executed in our absence, and after hearing one side only, although we did not decline a trial, are invalid, as indeed they are by the very nature of the case, and that those who are convicted of having committed such iniqui- ties must be subjected to the penalty of the ecclesi- astical laws." ZoepffeP thinks that the quoted passage (in which the Latin reads, in addition to the text translated in the edition from which the quota- tion is made, " auctoritate vestra decernitel^ that is, " decide by your authority ") " admits no well-grounded 1 These letters, too long to quote here, are now accessible to English readers in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. vii., pp. 166 and 283. They are the letters numbered LXX. and CCXLIII. 2 Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series, vol. ix., p. 312. 3 Herzog's Realencyclopcedie, vol. vi., p. 719. Supremacy of the Pope, 131 doubt that the condemned patriarch of Constanti- nople invoked the papal decision as that of a higher court." But, as Schaff points out/ the letter to Inno- cent was also addressed to the bishops of Milan and Acquileia. In other writings Chrj^sostom calls the bishop of Antioch a successor of Peter, and says that Paul was of equal honor with Peter. And even the reply of Innocent ^ does not breathe the hierarchial spirit. He does not lay down the law, or give orders to restore Chrysostom. He says : " But what are we to do against such things at the present time ? A sy nodical decision of them is necessary, and we have long declared that a synod ought to be con- vened," etc. His reply is full of comforting words as of a brother, but the redress must be sought else- where, viz., in the synod. Certain it is that the " appeal " resulted in nothing, for Chrysostom died in exile. All this does not favor the argument of cardinal Gibbons. 7. ''wSt. Cyril appeals to pope Celestine against Nestorius ; Nestorius also appeals to the same pontiff, who takes the side of Cyril." It is true that Cyril addressed himself to Celestine as to a judge over the whole Church ; but what such flattering words from an Oriental really meant we shall see later. 8. " Theodoret, the illustrious historian and bishop of Cyrrhus, is condemned by the pseudo-council of Ephesus in 449, and appeals to pope Leo in the fol- lowing touching language : * I await the decision of 1 Nicene and Post- Nicene Fathers, first series, vol. ix., p. 21. 2 Ibidem, p. 313. 132 The Roman System. your apostolic see, and I supplicate your holiness to succor me, who invoke your righteous and just tri- bunal, and to order me to hasten to you and to explain to you my teaching, which follows the steps of the apostles,' " etc., etc. These words '' decision," " tribunal," etc., have at first hearing something of the sound of an acknowl- edgment of the supremacy of the papacy. But closer examination of this very letter will remove this ap- pearance.^ It begins with a rehearsal of the reasons why *' it is fitting for you [the bishop of Rome] to hold the first place." These are, the size of the city of Rome, her sovereignty, her faith, her piety, her possession of the tombs of the apostles Peter and Paul, the person, character, and orthodoxy of the bishop, Leo. Not a word is uttered as to supremacy over the Church, which is indeed far from Theod- oret's thought. He wants vindication and advice as to what he would better do, not an authoritative papal decision. The two remaining cases cited by the cardinal, that of John, abbot of Constantinople, and that of Photius, patriarch of Constantinople, are both too late to have any argumentative value as to the orig- inal and primitive character of the claims of the papacy. The former belongs to the age of Gregory I., 590 to 604, the latter to that of Nicholas I., 858 to 867. In respect to Photius It will be enough to note that, although Nicholas in his reply did assume the lofty tone which characterizes the mediaeval papacy, ' Theodoret's Letters, CXI 1 1., Nicene and Post- Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. iii., p. 293. Supremacy of the Pope, 133 and attempt to 'Mecide" matters, the simple result, which was not mere disobedience, but utter separa- tion between the Latin and Greek Churches, which has never been more than nominally healed from that day to this, and now exists in full force, is enough to show that there was not then, as there never had been, any concession on the part of the Eastern Church of the primacy of the bishop of Rome over them. The subsequent efforts at union with the Greek Church have all split upon the same rock. The pope has assumed rights which the Greeks would not admit. As already said, in an- other connection, the schism of the Greek Church is the direct result of the unwarranted and intolerable assumptions of the papacy. The aggressor has been Rome, and the instrument of offense has been the unfounded claim of supreme jurisdiction. This claim is what has made Rome not the mother of churches, but the mother of schism. Thus far the cardinal's argument from the his- tory of appeals to Rome. Lack of space will com- pel us to omit the remaining argument, which is derived from the alleged testimony of such fathers as " Basil, Chrysostom, Cyprian, Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose, and Leo ;" from the ecumenical councils ; and from the history of missions. Most of the points here made have been already noticed, and will be noticed again. They all rest upon the same funda- mental misunderstanding of the history of the Church, which has been repeatedly revealed in our examina- tions. The most complete and the unanswerable refutation of the general claim that the popes had 134 ^'^^ Roman System. supreme jurisdiction over the Christian Church from the beginning, is the plain tale of what actually oc- curred and how, historically, the papacy was created. With a brief sketch of this history we shall close our argument upon this point. § 71. Historical View of the Development of THE Papacy. About the time of the Council of Nice (325) the metropolitan system of the early Church was fully developed. That system made the ordi- nary bishops subject in certain respects to the bishops of their principal cities, the " metropolitans," but among these latter, and among the bishops of the so-called " apostohc " sees, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, Rome, etc., including later, by a stretch of the word apostolic, Constantinople, there was perfect equaHty. Not an historical trace of the supremacy claimed for the bishop of Rome can be found in the documents which have come down to us from this time. Circumstances, however, favored the gradual de- velopment of a supremacy of a certain sort in the bishopric of Rome. The location of this bishopric in the imperial city, the head of the civilized world, gave it a kind of headship over all other churches. When, later, Constantinople became the real imperial city, the "new Rome," she was declared to have a rank second only to that of the Church of " old Rome." Thus the two cities were brought into comparison, but the situation of the elder city gradually decided in her favor. While the bishop of Constantinople was at the court of the empire, and was often sub- jected to humiliating treatment in the various History of the Papacy. 135 changes which occurred with so great frequency and violence in that excitable East, the bishop of Rome, in his dignified isolation, maintained his character largely unaffected by all these disturb- ances. In the East, too, Constantinople had to share its honors with Alexandria, a rival city, which was anxious often to gain the support of the capital city in its behalf, and so repeatedly appealed for countenance, and always with flattering words and after the self-abasing style of oriental diplomacy, i \o Rome. Soon one of these two cities was sub- merged under the wave of conquest which came up out of the deserts of Arabia, and ultimately the other also, so that Rome was left alone among bishoprics that could maintain any claim whatever to apostolic authority. Meantime, as the one apostolic see of the West, Rome had naturally and easily extended her jurisdiction there, and thus at last stood forth, in fact as well as in theory, the only great see exercising a real and noteworthy authority over any considerable portion of the Christian world. When we come to look more carefully at the his- tory of the papacy in the West we shall see that its development was by no means entirely the result of unworthy efforts and the outcome of illegitimate proc- esses. It was rather, looked at in the large, the result of the complete identification of the spirit of the papacy with the spirit of the age during which it was growing up. The careful student of history will have occasion to note many tokens of the merit of the papacy and of its historical necessity as a ruling force in the turbulent times in which its lot was cast. 136 The Roman System, Thus the history of the papacy will lead to respect for it as an institution, while exhibiting its purely human origin. If it could have been abandoned when it was outgrown, the verdict of history in its behalf would be very largely, if not entirely, favor- able. And could it be maintained as an advantage to the Church rather than as a divine institution and a dogmatic necessity, it might have much to say for itself But it has chosen to perpetuate itself and to claim for itself permanent and supreme jurisdiction. Its dogmatic claims are what the historical scholar can only and forever deny. The general history of Italy between the years 410 and 754 gives the explanation of the growth of the papacy, considered as a creditable and necessary political institution. From the first of these dates, which is that of the sack of Rome, down to the latter, which is that of the journey of pope Stephen to the court of the Franks to implore help against the bar- barous rule of the Lombards, which had grown intolerable, Italy was the scene of almost uninter- rupted confusion. The government of the Roman emperor, which had been for sixty years nothing but a name, ceased to be even this in 476. It was within this period of hastening destruction that Leo I. was bishop of Rome (440-461). He became the prin- cipal figure upon the stage. His career did much to establish the claims of the papacy to supremacy, but this was because he proved himself to be the only man in Italy worthy of taking the lead in those troublous times. When the emperor had failed to deliver the city or to maintain the state, when the History of the Papacy, 137 corrupt and moribund civilization of the past could furnish no virile and commanding force to dominate the situation, that new and powerful society, the Christian Church, which contained the moral force of the people and alone had within it the promise of a future, was compelled to come forth and take con- trol. It was because Leo represented this com- munity, and was himself the greatest man among the ItaHans of his day, that he rose by a kind of moral levitation, as real as any physical gravitation, to the summit of the age. Still more marked was the secular work of Gregory I. It was because the proper officers of the city government had failed in their immemorial duty of feeding the poor that the bishop of Rome, who alone possessed, in the now widespread and rich estates of the Church, the means of performing the work, was compelled to gather food and distribute to the needy. This was a secular function, and it accustomed the world to the sight of the pope regularly administering secular offices. Hence it was but a short step to the other functions of government, to making peace with bar- barians (584 and 599) and thus to acting as the real representative of the old imperial power. We see in these events the beginning of the temporal power of the popes. It had its origin in the wealth and the preeminence of the pope as an individual, in the weakness of the empire and its inability to perform its necessary functions, in the superiority of the Church to the barbarians in intellectual culture and civilization, in the moral force of Christianity, and in the youthful vigor of a new and well-organized insti- 138 The Roman System, tution. The papacy could scarcely fail to become the cynosure of Italy and of all Europe. Even such a combination of circumstances favoring its growth could not have carried the papacy to the point it attained if there had not been an idea underly- ing the conduct of the popes and determining their course at critical moments. This vital element was in- troduced by Leo I. in the adoption from some of his predecessors of that interpretation of the text, Matt, xvi. 18, which has since become the standard Roman interpretation, upon which Leo built up the theory of the supremacy of Peter among the apostles and of his successors the bishops of Rome among the other bishops of the Church. Even Gregory, who refused the title of " universal bishop " and blamed the bishop of Constantinople for adopting it, meant nothing less by his *' servant of the servants of God " than did Leo by his universal episcopate by divine right ; and in all his conduct Gregory showed that he v/as fully animated by the papal idea. As the temporal power became larger, and as the papacy became more and more involved in the general affairs of the empire and of Europe, it was natural that this idea should assume more and more impor- tance in the minds of the popes and become a larger and larger element in determining their course. It reached the highest point in the famous utterance of Boniface VIII. that '' it is necessary to salvation that every creature should be subject to the Roman pontiff." Its importance in all this development can scarcely be overestimated. This dogmatic idea, however mistaken it must be Ignoble Elements. 139 regarded, was one of the more noble elements deter- mining the development of the papacy. But there were ignoble elements also. Common human ambi- tion played no small part. Most striking is the dip- lomatic ability with which, through the long series of ages in which this colossal power was develop- ing, advantage was taken of every circumstance that could aggrandize it. Every success was held in the tenacious memory of succeeding gen- erations to become at the proper time the means of furthering some new pretension. Every failure was forgotten as soon as possible. The flattering ex- pressions of oriental insincerity were taken at their full face value as sober expressions of undeniable truth. The single purpose of the popes made their policy firm and consistent, while other princes were vacillating and uncertain. They had few or no conflicting relations and interests. Nor was this ambitious diplomacy over- scrupulous. Everything was grist that came to the Roman mill. From the time that Zosimus quoted to the African bishops the canons of Sardica in reference to appeals to Rome as Nicene canons, and from the free and effective use which Nicholas I. made of the pseudo-Isidorian Decretals in support of the Roman authority in France, down even to the Protestant Reformation, forgeries have played an important part in the armory of papal offensive weapons. The slippery historical methods of which we have already seen so many examples began at an early date, for Innocent I. (402-417) transferred the rights conferred upon the person of Julius I. by the Council of Sardica to the papal chair as such, and converted the privi- 140 The Roman System. lege there given of recourse to the bishop of Rome into the obligation to. bring all ^' causce majores'' before the papal court. So much fraud is to be de- tected throughout the history of the papacy that the student is, in fact, in danger of referring all the forces which contributed to the erection of the great edifice to the realm of evil and deceit, and of completely ignor- ing the larger and more worthy considerations to which full allusion has already been made. It was not all evil ; but there was so much evil mixed with the indifferent and the good that the merely human origin of the papacy and its entire lack of all divine justification and authorization can only be denied when one willfully shuts his eyes to evidence, or else blindly trusts to mendacious and misleading authority. § 72. The Papacy and the State. The Roman theory of the relations of Church and State com- prises two particulars, that of the absolute inde- pendence of the Church from the State, and that of the absolute dependence of the State upon the Church. The applications of the former principle in Europe^ have comparatively little importance for Americans, so different are the conditions under a government which recognizes no church and trou- bles itself in no way about the internal affairs of any communion. Thus the Roman Church may publish her canons in her own way, without regard to the State. In merely ecclesiastical matters the secular courts do not trouble themselves about the decrees of ecclesiastical courts. Many things are conceded by custom, and according to the generous principle 1 See Delitzsch, Lehrsystem, p. 270 ff. Temporal Pozver, 141 that all churches, as the bulwarks of morals and so of prosperity, are to be encouraged, which would never be granted of right. Thus the CathoHc Church receives immunity from taxation in most States of the Union ; in time of w^ar her clergymen are not ordi- narily compelled to serve in the army, and were they compelled they might easily find a place among the chaplains or in the charitable service. But in fact and in theory every Catholic clergyman, like every other citizen, would be held in case of necessity to the strict performance of all civil and military duty, and would be compelled to answer to the civil courts for any civil offense. No other point of view is con- ceivable for an American. § 73. Among the consequences of the theory that the Church is absolutely independent of the State is the theory of the necessity of the temporal power of the pope. Cardinal Gibbons maintains^ that the temporal power is necessary for the *' independence and freedom of the pope in the government of the Church. The holy father must be either a sovereign or a subject. There is no medium. If a subject, he might become either the pliant creature, if God would so permit, of his royal master, like the schis- matic patriarch of Constantinople, who, as Gibbon observed, was ' a domestic slave under the eye of his master, at whose nod he passed from the convent to the throne, ai)d from the throne to the convent' . . . Or, what is far more probable, the pope might become a virtual prisoner in his own house, as the present illustrious pontiff [Pius IX.] is at this mo- 1 F. F., p. 172 ff. 142 The Roman System, ment [1876]." The necessity of constant communi- cation with all parts of Christendom, which might be interrupted by war, if the pope were not a sovereign, is also emphasized in the following context. How long the obstinacy of the papal policy, bur- dened as it is with the implications of the doctrine of infallibility, may endure and maintain the theory that the temporal power is a necessity, and that the pope is a '' prisoner," it is impossible to say. But it would seem as if the logic of facts would compel a change. The papacy finds ways of excusing inevitable changes both of idea and of policy. The continued and large success of Leo XIII. in conducting the affairs of the Church without any temporalities, and the perfect freedom which the papal Church has in fact enjoyed in Italy since the fatal days when the temporal power went down before the progress of a united Italy, will finally relegate the claim that sovereignty is essential, to the lumber of the garret. In so far as Catholics believe in the truth of their system they will be ready to trust it to the free conflict with other systems which it has in the United States, and which it will have to accept ere long throughout the whole world. And Protestantism, in its eager opposition to what it deems essential error in the papacy, asks for nothing more. ** The truth is mighty and will prevail." § 74. The second of the two principles mentioned under this head, that of the absolute dependence of the State upon the Church, is more important. It received its most distinct enunciation in the famous bull of Boniface VIII., Unam Sanctarn, This bull, The Bull^ Unam Sanctam. 143 closing with the formula, " We declare, say, define, and pronounce," is indisputably an ex cathedra utterance of the papal see,^ and hence is determina- tive of doctrine and practice, and of vital importance to an understanding of the claims of the papacy and of its possible dangers to liberty. The most important parts of this bull are the fol- lowing : " We are compelled to believe with urgent faith and to hold one holy catholic and apostolic Church. Therefore the one and only Church has one body and one head, not two heads like a mon- ster, viz., Christ and the vicar of Christ, Peter and Peter's successor. We are instructed by the Gospels that there are in his power two swords, viz., the spiritual and the temporal. For when the apostles said ' Behold, here are two swords ' (Luke xxii. 38)^ viz., in the Church : when the apostles said so, the Lord did not respond, ' There are too many,' but ' Enough.* Certainly, he who denies that there is in the power of Peter a temporal sword has paid poor attention to the word of the Lord, who said, ' Put up the sword into the sheath' (John xviii. 11). Therefore both are in the power of the Church, both the spiritual and the material sword. But this is to be wielded for the Church, that by the Church ; that by the hand of the priest, this by the hand of kings and soldiers, but at the nod and patience of the priest. Moreover, sword should be under sword, and the temporal authority should be subject to the spiritual; for 1 So even Cardinal Hergenrother, as to the concluding sentence. See in Delitzsch, op. cit., p. 278. And so Bishop Fessler, see Little- dale, Plain Reasons, p. 13. 144 The Roman System, when the apostle says, * There is no power except from God; the powers which be are ordained of God' (Rom. xiii. i); they are not ordained except sword be under sword. For on the testimony of truth, the spiritual power has to institute the earthly, and to judge it, if it is not good. Thus the prophecy of Jeremiah concerning the Church and the ecclesi- astical power is verified, ^ Behold, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms,' etc. (Jer. i. lo). Therefore, if the earthly power deviates from the way, it shall be judged by the spiritual power ; if the inferior spiritual power deviates, by its superior spiritual ; but if the supreme, by God alone, since it cannot be judged by man, on the testimony of the apostle, 'The spiritual man judgeth all things, but is himself judged of no man' (i Cor. ii. 15). Whoever, therefore, resists this power, thus ordained by God, resists the ordination of God ; unless he feigns that there are two principles, like Manichaeus, which we judge false and heretical, because, on the testimony of Moses, God did not create the heavens and the earth in several principles but in one princi- ple (Gen. i. i). Then, to be subject to the Roman pontiff we declare, say, define, and pronounce to be absolutely necessary to every human creature to salvation." ^ It was the more important to quote this remark- able bull at some length, since its own utterances are its best refutation. Who would recognize the texts which are cited in the distortion of this papal exegesis ? 1 After the texts of Gieseler {^KG.^ vol. ii., g 59, note 26), and De- litzsch, op. cit., p. 277. Toleration, 145 Not one of them refers to the subject for which it is quoted or bears the construction put upon it. Nor is the bull a mere fossil, a relic of mediaeval darkness, a repudiated and worthless monument of a position long since abandoned. It is cathedratic, and this fact, were there not so many ways of evading uncom- fortable cathedratic decisions, would make it a per- manent power. Then, it has been made modern, and reenforced by other cathedratic decisions of the present day, as, for example, that of Pius IX. in the famous Syllabus of Errors, in which he condemns religious toleration,^ and declares that in case of conflict the spiritual law is supreme over the civil.^ And so the leading curiahsts of the present day. § 75. Cardinal Gibbons undertakes the difficult task of exhibiting the Roman Church as the friend of liberty and of toleration.^ His misrepresentations of history here are as frequent as elsewhere. It will be impossible to dwell upon them, but time may be taken to note his definition of religious liberty. He says : " A man enjoys rehgious liberty when he pos- sesses the free right of worshiping God according to the dictates of a right conscience, and of practicing a form of religion most in accordance with his duties to God." Yes, but what is a '^ right " conscience ? And who is to decide what are a man's *' duties to God " ? Rome claims to make these decisions, and under this definition there could therefore be no re- ligious liberty for Protestants. Religious liberty is, therefore, quite in distinction from the cardinal's view, ^ See Schaff's Creeds, vol. ii., p. 232. 2 Jbid.^ p. 223. 3 F.F., p. 264. 10 146 The Roman System. only enjoyed when a man has the free right to worship God according to the dictates of his oivn conscience. And this reHgious hberty Rome has never been wilHng to grant. § ^6. It is in immediate connection with the su- premacy of the Church over the State that Rome claims the right of directing the schools of every na- tion, including our own. Pius IX. condemns the prop- osition that '' the best theory of civil society requires that popular schools open to the children of all classes, and generally all public institutes intended for instruction in letters and philosophy and for con- ducting the education of the young, should be freed from all ecclesiastical authority, government, and interference, and should be fully subjected to the civil and political power, in conformity with the will of rulers and the prevalent opinions of the age." ^ Hence the struggle that has arisen in the United States, which can never be settled except by the Church's or the State's abandonment of the right to govern. The Church cannot abandon her claims without involving her entire existence. It would be to surrender her theory of the Church and her doc- trine of infallibility, and to run the risk also of a free and candid examination of her claims on the part of her own children under guidance not ecclesiastical. She cannot do this in the one realm or the other, in that of theory or of practice. She needs her theory to maintain her hold upon her people, and she must educate her children from the beginning in her own peculiar way of interpreting history and nature, or she \ Schaff's Creeds, vol. ii., p. 224. The Public Schools, 147 is lost. The conflict about the schools is therefore an irreconcilable one. Neither the State nor the Church of Rome can yield. And hence the free school is destined to be the great means in the future, as it has been in the past, of breaking up the dominion of the Church. It is the misfortune of Rome, for which she alone bears the fault, that she cannot endure the full light of day. If she could, she would have nothing to fear from the public schools. CHAPTER VI. THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY WITHIN THE CHURCH. § TJ. We have now arrived in the progress of this discussion at the last topic under the general head of the Catholic doctrine of the Church, and find ourselves still face to face with the question of the authority of the Church. Upon that authority, as we have already seen, depends the force of all the ar- guments which have been advanced for the marks of the Church, its unity, catholicity, etc. When the authority of the Church was found to be reduced to the authority of the papacy, it was seen that this depended, in the last analysis, upon the authority of the Church which has proclaimed it. The authority of the papacy is only the form under which the authority of the Church now appears. Thus, as she fronts a hostile world, the Church claims all author- ity for herself, and asserts the papal authority to be that authority. But when she considers herself apart from the world, when she asks herself what is the source of her authority, when she seeks guidance and gives utterance to her own homage before right- ful authority, what does she acknowledge under God, and as the instrument of conveying the divine will, to be the ultimate authority to herself? § 78. The answer to this question might seem to be given in the first doctrinal decree (apart from the repetition of the Apostles' Creed) which was set X43 Tradition. 149 forth by the Council of Trent. The council here acknowledges that all saving truth and moral disci- pline flow from the same fountain, which is the gospel, and affirms that ''this truth and discipline are contained in the written books and the unwritten traditions which, received by the apostles from the mouth of Christ himself, or from the apostles them- selves, the Holy Ghost dictating, have come down even unto us." ^ The " gospel " is then the source of authority for the Church herself, and this is con- tained in Scripture and tradition. Later on in the same paragraph the council expressly affirms that the traditions {traditiones ipsas . . . dictatas) have been dictated by Christ or by the Holy Ghost. Thus Scripture and tradition are put upon the same level as the sources of doctrine. With the acknowl- edgment of the Scripture, Protestants have no quar- rel ; but the question immediately and necessarily arises. In what sense, and to what extent, is tradition placed side by side with Scripture ? and, since there can be but one ultimate appeal, which of the two is this, Scripture or tradition ? § 79. The Ideal. It is a very natural and appar- ently a harmless supposition, which the Council of Trent seems to have made, that there were once in the Church traditions of the teachings of Christ which were never incorporated in the written Scrip- tures, but which have nevertheless been preserved and handed down to us. Historically, it is true, such traditions do not seem to have been preserved to any appreciable extent. Eusebius tried to collect 1 Schaff, Creeds, etc., ii., p. 80. 150 The Roman System, such as were still current in his day, but his labor met with little reward. Mohler, with his constant tendency to lift upon an ideal plane the themes he treats, makes tradition to consist in the universal consciousness of the Church. He says : ^ '^ What is tradition then ? The peculiar Christian sense exist- ing in the Church and propagated by church educa- tion, which, however, is not to be conceived without its content, which has, rather, been formed in and through its content, so that it should be called a sense with a definite content. Tradition is the word, continually living in the hearts of the faithful. The interpretation of the Scriptures is intrusted to this sense as a common and universal sense. The ex- planation given in any disputed case is the judgment of the Church, and the Church is therefore judge in affairs of the faith. Tradition in the objective sense is the universal faith of the Church through all the centuries, accessible in objective historical witnesses. In this sense is tradition generally called the norm, the standard of scriptural interpretation." The same idealizing tendency prevails with other Roman writers. While some have referred various pecuHar- ities of the system, such as the number of the sacra- ments (seven), the necessity of infant baptism, the doctrine of purgatory, prayers for the dead, the wor- ship of the saints, etc., to a distinct tradition from the time of the apostles, others, in the utter lack of evi- dence for such a position, have referred such doc- trines and practices to the present inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to the continuous existence in the ^ Symbolik, p, 356. Ideal of Tradition, 15 1 Church of the mind of Christ. Not every writer has been able to reason like the Jesuit Kilber, who wrote : '' There are approved doctrines in the Catholic Church for which there is either no word of Scripture, or at least no clear word ; consequently there must be for such doctrines a word of God handed down by tradition ; consequently there are divine traditions." ^ The Council of Trent supposed that Scripture and tradition were both of apostolic origin, the Scriptures furnishing only a partial deposit of the teaching of Christ. But the tendency of the Church has been to leave this untenable position and to identify tradition with those deliverances of the Church in decretal, bull, syllabus, or conciliar decision, by which the Church has set forth its understanding of the truth. And thus, finally, tradition comes to mean the formu- lated teaching of the Church, possessing divine au- thority because of the authority of the Church, and forming the norm even for the interpretation of the Scriptures. Ultimately, therefore, the principle of the Catholic Church in distinction from Protestant- ism is tradition, as that of Protestantism is the Scrip- tures. It is a further part of the Roman ideal that there is a perfect agreement between tradition and Scrip- ture. *^The demand of the Church," says Mohler,^ "that the Scriptures should be interpreted accord- ing to her rule of faith, agrees perfectly with the demands of historico-grammatical interpretation, and the most successful interpretation of this sort will reproduce most perfectly her doctrines The 1 See Delitzsch, op, cit., p. 298. 2 Qp^ cit., p. 388. 15^ The Roman System, interpreter who is in other respects the most skillful and successful, will, when supported by her standard, become precisely the most distinguished." Thus, while the exigencies of controversy have led the Roman apologists into a discussion of the defects of the Scriptures considered as the sole standard of faith, it is only just to them to say that the Catholic Church has never intended, whatever may be the practical effect of her positions, to throw disrespect upon the Scriptures. § 80. The Protestant reply to these positions is a various one. When emphasis has been put upon the original unwritten tradition, it has been met with denial. No such tradition actually exists. When tradition is defined, as Mohler defines it, as the com- mon sense of the Church, modern Protestants have not been inclined to deny the existence of such a sense, or to refuse it a place in the determination of truth, under the name of Christian experience, or of Christian consciousness, or, when most carefully employed, of the verdict of the history of doctrine. But this is far from placing it upon a level with the Scriptures. When, however, the tradition advocated is clearly identified with the infallible teaching office of the Church, as is expressly done by Heinrich in his general and formal definition of tradition as such,^ then Protestants have only the answer to give which has already been presented under the head of the infallibility of the Church, that such infallibility is not a fact. But the distinctive reply to this claim of the Roman Church is still sharper. That Church ^ Dog. Theol.^ ii., p. 10. Scripture and Tradition, 153 puts tradition upon a complete level, or, better, she makes the Scriptures only the written and specially inspired word of God, while all tradition, both scrip- tural and other, possesses the same character of divine authority and infallibility. Thus there is not so much the harmony of parallehsm between the two as that of identity. The Scriptures are, in fact, only one form of the tradition. Hence there is and must be, according to the CathoHc position, perfect agreement between the doctrines drawn by the Church from tradition and the Scriptures. But this harmony, Protestants say, does not exist. The char- acteristic doctrines of the Roman Church are con- trary to Scripture. And hence, if they are founded upon tradition, it must be upon a false tradition. Or, in other words, the tradition of the Catholic Church is not what it is claimed to be, a pure source of Christian doctrine. With this reply we shall content ourselves for the present. We are still in the region of the formal. We have not touched the material doctrines of the Church, and it is in that material sphere that the falsity of the claims of Rome grows finally perfectly clear. If the Roman system of doctrines were a perfectly true system, consistent with the Bible and with all other knowledge, then the claims of the Church which alone sets them forth to possess infal- lible divine authority would derive very great weight from that fact, would in truth become irresistible. But such is not the case, as will be shown in the review of the peculiar doctrines of the system one by one. Meantime, a further reason for rejecting the 154 'The Roma7t System. doctrine of tradition will be found in the treatment of the Scriptures which the Catholic Church exhibits, and which is the apparent result of her doctrine of tradition. § 8 1. The Catholic Doctrine of the Scrip- tures. We shall follow here in our review the dis- cussion of Heinrich/ which is exceeding full and able. In defining the relations of tradition and Scripture he places the two upon an equality of purity and reliability. But tradition has the advan- tage of being the '* original, universally vaHd, inde- pendent, and sufficient means of the communication of revealed truth.'' The Scriptures, which were later added to the oral tradition, are not sufficient to bring us to belief of the truth, because they require the help of tradition to attest them, interpret them, and supplement them. But the Scripture has certain ad- vantages of its own. It is inspired, and consequently is the word of God in an eminent sense. Upon the basis of the expressions used by the Council of Trent, Heinrich goes on to develop what would be called among Protestants a " high " doctrine of in- spiration. Trent said that the Scriptures were writ- ten under the '' dictation " of the Holy Spirit, and that God was thus their " author." Heinrich conse- quently teaches that " the entire Scripture in all its parts, and in the minutest particular, is the work, of God." " Nothing is in it but what was written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and according to his will and purpose." '' The sacred WTiters not only wrote the contents, thoughts, truth, and sense 1 Dog. TheoL, i., pp. 699-822. Doctrine of the Scriptures. 155 which God designed, but they also did this i7t the form and with the expressions which met the purpose of God and the needs of those to whom the Scripture was addressed." ** Therefore its entire contents, in every relation, are divinely true, in consequence of the divine inspiration." Heinrich expressly rejects the '' opinion of many modern authors " that only the religious and moral contents of the Bible are in- spired. Such a view is unworthy of the dignity of revelation and unsuitable to the necessities of men. With this general conception of inspiration most Protestants would be very well content. Certainly there is no necessity of condemning Heinrich's doc- trine in the name of historic Protestantism. But he departs from all agreement with, and will lose all sympathy from, any portion of the Protestant world when he extends the same inspiration to the apoc- ryphal books of the Old Testament. It is evidently an inconsistency of Heinrich's when, though he presents so high a doctrine of the Scripture, making it so especial a manifestation of the providen- tial care of God for the Church, he falls in, though only in passing, with the common CathoHc argu- ment : The Church existed before the Scriptures, and hence can exist without them. It is by no means certain that it can exist without them. At any rate, God has given them to the Church, and as a fact it has existed under their constant influence. We may leave unfounded suppositions as to what it could do to take care of themselves. It is, however, a keen turn when Heinrich argues directly from inspiration to the necessity of tradition in the interpretation of 156 The Rommt System. the Bible. '' It follows that the Scripture, as it has been inspired by the Holy Ghost, can be infallibly interpreted only by the Holy Ghost through his organ, the Church." But we fear that the argument will never have a greater merit than its verbal clever- ness. What difficulty is there, in the nature of things, preventing the Holy Spirit from infallibly in- terpreting the Scripture to any single Christian, which does not also prevent him from communicat- ing the infallible interpretation to the Church, since it can be communicated to the Church, which is composed of men, only through some man ? The pope himself is still a man ; and it is not credible that God can have any access to the pope's mind which he has not to mine. But, further, what evidence is there that there either is or need be any infallible in- terpretation whatsoever ? § 82. Heinrich proceeds to a threatening attack upon the Protestant principle of the Scriptures when he maintains that even the inspiration of the Scrip- tures cannot be certainly proved except by the help of tradition. But the danger is at once modified by the concession that "some sort of a natural cer- tainty, at least as concerns genuineness and integrity, and even a probabiHty as to the inspiration of the Scripture, is possible even without the supernatural and infallible authority of the Church.'' Here, again, the cleft between Protestantism and Catholicism comes to view. Protestants desire only such a rea- sonable probability as to religious matters as shall give them good grounds for believing and acting upon the truth of the Bible, and are content to wait Tradition not Necessary, 157 for absolute certainty. Reasonableness gives knowl- edge. Nor do they see how absolute certainty is to be obtained by arguments which are so far from absolute as those by which Rome maintains her *' infallible teaching authority." But Heinrich pro- ceeds. No writing can prove its own genuineness and incorruptness, but must always have the proof which a living tradition alone can give. Much more is this true of such a point as inspiration. True, weighty indications and probable arguments favor inspiration, such as the wonderful agreement of the Old and New Testaments, the fulfillment of proph- ecy, the truth and loftiness of the doctrine, the maj- esty of the personalities there described, particularly Jesus Christ ; but all these things give no certainty. Hence the necessity of the Church. This is sub- stantially all the argument; and to state it is to refute it. It will still remain to ask. Has the Church this authority, and therefore has the Scripture the certainty which Heinrich ascribes to it? We are here brought up again, for the hundredth time, face to face with the authority of the Church, which rests finally upon nothing but her own assertion of it.^ The old Protestant argument from the testimony of the Holy Spirit to the Scripture is mentioned by Heinrich, but is confounded with the altogether different argument from the effect of the Scripture upon the heart. Of course, if this line of proof is declared of no value, the proof of the Scripture is reduced to a mere matter of criticism and science, and is, to that extent, removed from the immediate 1 See ^§ 15, 18, 33, above. 158 The Roman System. knowledge of the unlearned. But the ancient argu- ment still holds. Christians do gain, under the teach- ings of the Spirit of God, an independent knowledge of divine truth, and in consequence of this can recog- nize in the Bible the one unique source of religious knowledge, the channel by which God has conveyed the knowledge of his will to sinful and needy men. And this proof is accessible to the most unlearned, and has actually been felt and appreciated by mul- titudes of such. What can the authority of Rome do beside it ? If the authority of '' learned men " can never give '' certainty " to a Protestant Chris- tian, how can the authority of the pope give certainty to the Catholic? It still remains something alto- gether outside of himself, something which he must take upon some one's dictum, nothing which he knows and sees for himself No ! There must be some inner perception which is accessible to every man — in a word, some teaching of the Spirit, or there is no certainty to Catholic or Protestant. § 83. A similar line of thought, involving the old idea of infallibility with all its fallacies, is pursued in respect to the interpretation of the Scripture. To have infallible interpretation, there must be the infallible in- terpreter, or the Church. When the Church has de- clared the meaning of a passage, that meaning is to be accepted as the true one. In other cases tradition is to be called in, — that is, the Scripture is to be inter- preted by the unanimous interpretation of the fathers. What is the unanimous teaching ? Not even in re- spect to the text^ Thou art Peter, etc., is there any Interpretaiion of Scripture. 159 unanimity.^ Next, in strict accordance with the above, the right of private judgment in respect to the meaning of the Scripture is denied. Then Heinrich attacks the old Protestant principle .of the clearness [perspicuitas) of the Scripture. The attack fails because it is directed against a man of straw. While at one moment Heinrich defines the doctrine rightly, that the Scriptures are clear as to the truths neces- sary to salvation, and while he himself admits that the clearness of Scripture is such as makes it pos- sible " to prove all the chief doctrines of the system of faith and morals out of the Scriptures," he is con- stantly arguing as if the Protestant doctrine were this, that there are no difficulties in the Scripture, and that any one can understand it all without help. Of course, no Protestant ever held such a doctrine. The possibility of failure to understand certain pass- ages after every effort to understand them has been made, is humbly acknowledged ; but it also remains a fact, patent even to Heinrich and admitted by him, that a way of salvation is so clearly presented in the Scriptures that only willful moral perverseness can prevent the reader from knowing what is the an- swer for him to the question which the jailer at Philippi asked, What must I do to be saved? § 84. Only two principal points more need to be touched, the place given by Romanism to the Vul- gate, and the prohibition of the Bible to the common people. As to the former, Heinrich gives the de- crees of Trent the most mild and favorable inter- pretation possible when he says that the Vulgate I See the facts collected by Archbishop Kenrick, § 24 abpve. i6o The Roman System. *' correctly gives the sense of the sacred original text in all things pertaining to the system of doctrines and of duties and to edification in the Christian re- ligion." The official edition of the Vulgate gives, he declares, " an entirely reliable, yet not an abso- lutely perfect text." In other words, he claims for the Latin text what the early Protestant theologians claimed for the EngUsh Bible and other vernacular Bibles, that in these translations the people had the true '' word of God." To this position no objection can properly be made. Protestants admit it, and de- mand in turn that Catholics shall admit theirs. The Vulgate is doubtless the vehicle of the word of God, certainly as much so as one English Bible, Wiclif 's, which was translated from it, and to which the new Revised Version has often returned for pref- erable renderings. It were an unfair treatment of the Roman Church of our own day to make it re- sponsible for the extravagances of Middle Age writers like Canus, or even greater men, like Bellarmine, who defended Mark xvi. 9-20; John vii. 53-viii. ii ; I John V. 7, 8, although they were not in the Greek text, because they were in the Vulgate, and claimed that the Roman Church had watched more carefully over the text than other churches ! ^ One thing, however, remains true, that the Roman Church has not favored the use of the original texts, as have 1 Details upon this point and upon the history of the prohibition of the Bible to the laity are given at length by both Delitzsch and Hase, and form an instructive chapter in the history of Rome. They illustrate again how the " unchangeable " Church can change in her understanding of her own decrees from age to age. Prohibition of the Bible, i6i Protestants, and has rather been urged upon an un- willing path by the course of scientific scholarship when she has employed the Greek and Hebrew Scriptures. This, in the corrupt condition of the Latin text, has been little to her credit. The modern apologists for Rome claim that the '' Church, far from being opposed to the reading of the Scriptures, does all she can to encourage their perusal." ^ The various prohibitions which have been issued are explained as having reference to in- correct translations, such as the Protestant, or to unannotated editions, or to the use of the Bible by those whose spiritual condition would make this otherwise useful book the occasion of difficulty and error. But the history of the Church is against these apologetic modifications. She has seemed very loath indeed to see the Bible in the hands of the people. American missionaries, like those in Austria, find to-day, even when they circulate Catholic trans- lations, with the impidmatiir of Catholic archbishops and cardinals upon the fly leaf, that their efforts meet the constant and cruel hostility of the Church. And, indeed, what is more natural than that a Church which confesses that she needs the tra- dition to supplement the Scriptures, should be reluctant that the Scriptures alone should fall into the hands of the people ? A book which has nothing about the worship of the Virgin, to say nothing of a dozen other main points of the system, must be a dangerous book to a Church so mariolatrized as is the Church of Pius the IX. and his successor. 1 F. F., p. ii6. n i62 The Roman System. § 85. We cannot leave this subject without noticing briefly the chapter upon the Church and the Bible which Cardinal Gibbons adds to his discussion of the authority of the Church/ It is full of sophistries and misstatements. He argues to the wrong point when he asks whether the Redeemer intended '' that his gospel should be disseminated by the circulation of the Bible, or by the living voice of his disciples." The Bible and the living voice are not thus mutually exclusive. No Protestant ever maintained that the gospel was not to be preached. The cardinal says : " No nation has ever yet been converted by the agency of Bible associations." No Protestant ever claimed they had been without the added agency of preaching; and yet it is true that numerous individ- uals in heathen lands have been converted by the Scriptures alone, without the agency of preaching. The cardinal is guilty of a 7io7t seqtdtur .when he says, '' The apostles are never reported to have circu- lated a single volume of the Holy Scripture, but * they going forth, preached everywhere, the Lord cooperating with them.' Thus we see that in the Old and the New Dispensation the people were to be guided by a living authority, and Jiothy their private interpretation of the Scriptures." But it is not true that the apostles did not commend the Scriptures, or that their work was not followed by careful study of the written word. Paul " reasoned " out of the Scriptures everywhere, and the sacred historian com- mends the Bereans as '' more noble " because they searched the Scriptures " to see whether those things 1 F. F., p. 97 ff. Attack upon the Bible. 163 were so." If the apostolic preaching was anything, it was preaching upon the basis of the written word. It is again a misrepresentation when the cardinal exclaims : " The fact is, you reverend gentlemen contradict in practice what you so vehemently ad- vance in theory. Do not tell me that the Bible is all-sufficient ; or, if you believe it is self-sufficient, cease your instructions. Stand not between the people and the Scriptures." What Protestant ever advanced such a theory? And did the cardinal expect readers of sense to take his statement of the theory of Protestants, when, on his own showing, their practice went against his interpretation of that theory ? The argument proceeds after a little to the investigation of the fitness of the Bible to be a com- plete guide to salvation. Such a guide must have three characteristics. It must be within the reach of every one ; it must be clear and intelligible ; and must be able to satisfy us on all questions relating to faith and morals. The inaccessibility of the Bible is then argued, because the Bible was in part un- written till long after the Church was founded ; be- cause there are not, and never have been Bibles enough for every one to have a copy ; and because many cannot read. What of it ? The same is true of the Church. Even the Roman Church has never penetrated to every jungle of Africa with her preach- ing ; and hence that Chiwch is not a '^ complete " guide. If such reasoning is worth anything, it shows that there can be no guide for any one. But does it prove that a guide is not a guide for those who do enjoy its help, that others do not enjoy it? 1 64 The Roman System, Then the Bible is not '' intelligible to all.'' We quote the following paragraph to illustrate how many mistakes the cardinal can make in so short a compass. " Does not the conduct of the Reformers conclu- sively show the utter folly of interpreting the Scrip- tures by private judgment? As soon as they re- jected the oracle of the Church, and set up their own private judgment as the highest standard of author- ity, tliey could hardly agree among themselves on the meaning of a single important text. The Bible became in their hands a complete Babel. The sons of Noah attempted in their pride to ascend to heaven by building a tower at Babel ; their scheme ended in the confusion and multiplication of tongues. The children of the Reformation endeavored in their conceit to lead men to heaven by the private inter- pretation of the Bible, and their efforts led to the confusion and multiplication of religions. Let me give you but one example out of a thousand. These words of the gospel, ' This is my body,' were under- stood only in one sense before the Reformation, The new lights of the sixteenth century gave no fewer than eighty different meanings to these four simple words ; and since their time the number of interpretations has increased to over a hundred."^ Now the statement that the Reformers '^ could hardly agree among themselves upon the meaning of a single important text " is as false as a statement can be. The writer has just risen from a renewed review of Zwingli's writings, after long familiarity in the original Latin, German, and Swiss, with both him i F. F..p, io8. Agreement of Protestants. 165 and Luther. One impression more than all else has imprinted itself upon his mind, that of the essential and wonderful agreement of the two Reformers, and of the two schools of doctrine which issued from them, upon all the leading principles of the evangelical sys- tem, in spite of many minor differences. That there was such an agreement is sufficiently proven by two facts. The first of these is the fact that Zwingli was ready at once to sign the creed which Luther drew up at Marburg after the great disputation by these Re- formers there, and which contained only one mention of difference between the two, that upon the Lord's Supper, though covering in a general way the entire circle of Christian doctrine. The other fact is that of the agreement among the Protestant creeds, from the Augsburg Confession to that of Westminster, which is so great that they may fairly be called dif- ferent forms of one great confession, with only minor variations. The agreement is the main thing, and the differences are not greater than those between different schools in the Catholic Church, like Franciscans and Dominicans. This is an argument large enough for even a cardinal to respect, this general agreement in the results of interpretation, and it leaves not a stick for his argument to stand upon. Then, they did not set up their private judgment as " the highest standard of authority," but the Bible. As to the text, '' This is my body," the cardinal is wrong in saying that there was only one interpretation before the Reformation, for the standard Roman interpretation was not that of the primitive Church, and came in only when sacer- dotalism, the incipiency of Romanism itself, began to 1 66 The Roman System. corrupt the purity of the early Church ; nor was it an undisputed interpretation even in the middle ages, as, for example, at the time of Berengar, who rejected what Cardinal Gibbons calls the " one sense." Nor can the *' eighty " and '' hundred " meanings be made out but by the most hairsplitting distinctions, if at all. There are in general but two views among Protestants : the original Lutheran view, which has now few fol- lowers, that the body of Christ is really, though spiritually, present in the sacrament, and the other, that the bread of the sacrament represents the body. To these small dimensions does the " Babel " shrink. The cardinal further quotes Mormonism, with its advocacy of polygamy, as illustrating the evils of Protestant private interpretation. Does not the cardinal know that Mormonism is as little like Prot- estantism as it is hke Catholicism ? That it has rejected the Bible for the Book of Mormon, though it gives a certain place nominally to the Bible, as does also Mohammedanism, to which it is really kin ? And does he also not know that in Mormonism private interpretation has little place, for that also is a church of infallible teaching, of a dominant priest- hood, and of immediate inspiration, — claims which the Catholic Church is thus not permitted alone to make for itself? Nor is the Bible, according to the cardinal, suf- ficient, since there are truths and duties not embraced within it, such as the duty of observing Sunday. Protestants will regard the example chosen a very un- fortunate one, for if the day which the Lord hallowed by his special appearances after his resurrection, Protestantism not a Babel. 167 which the early Church observed as their special day of worship, whereas they discouraged the special observance of the ancient Sabbath (Col. ii. 16), has not for it the example of the Scripture, then none can have. And is apostolic example inferior to apostolic precept ? It is, indeed, a poor cause which has to be upheld after this fashion. PART II. THE SYSTEM OF DOCTRINES PERTAINING TO SALVATION. CHAPTER I. JUSTIFICATION. FAITH, AND WORKS. § 86. The central point in the controversy of Prot- estants with the Roman Church is the claim which that church makes to possess divine authority to prescribe the doctrines which men must believe, as well as the course of practical conduct which they must pursue. But the original revolt of Luther from Rome was not at this point. He was not a rebel to authority, led by some unruly desire to con- trol others or himself Separation from Rome was a later necessity forced upon him, not the immediate goal of his efforts, or the next consequence of his original premises. He first took his position upon the facts of his own spiritual experience. He was simply true to what he had learned of the grace of God in the Roman communion itself He was con- sciously a forgiven soul. He traced that forgiveness in his own experience to the free grace of Christ bestowed upon him without merit of his own, upon the sole ground of the sacrifice of Christ, and in 169 170 The Roman System. immediate consequence of that faith by which he had thrown himself upon the mercy of God. Thus he was led to the doctrine of Justification by Faith ; and about this doctrine, the " article of the standing or falling Church," the battle waxed fierce. And truly, if this doctrine be rightly received and heartily accepted, all that external system, the main features of which we have now elaborately considered, will pass away under the powerful influence of the concep- tion that salvation is to be sought within the soul itself, consisting in what a man by grace is, not in his surroundings, nor in what is done by others for him. The Roman definition of justification was brought out by the Reformation, and is expressed by the Council of Trent : '' Justification ... is not remis- sion of sins merely, but also the sanctification and renewal of the inward man, through the voluntary reception of the grace and of the gifts, whereby man of unjust becomes just, and of an enemy a friend. . . . The alone formal cause is the justice of God, not that whereby he himself is just, but that whereby he maketh us just, that, to wit, with which we, being endowed by him, are renewed in the spirit of our mind, and we are not only reputed, but are truly called, and are just, receiving justice within us. . . . Whence man, through Jesus Christ, receives in the said justification together with the remission of his sins, all these gifts infused at once, faith, hope, and charity. For faith, unless hope and charity be added thereto, neither unites man perfectly with Christ, nor makes him a living member of his Man's Original State. 171 body." * In a word, justification includes sanctifica- tion, and is *' infused " righteousness. In the following discussion we shall follow prin- cipally the path struck out by Mohler.^ He has presented the Catholic doctrine in a form highly spiritual and ideal ; no one more so. He may therefore serve better than most to set it before us in the form in which it will be somewhat acceptable to the Prot- estant mind ; and if it shall be shown, as is hoped it can be, that the Protestant doctrine is still more spiritual and more in accord with Scripture and with spiritual facts, the Protestant argument will have been put in its strongest form. For certainly there is a gross Catholicism which is far less capable of ac- ceptation — to which also some attention must be paid. § 87. Mohler begins his discussion with defining the original condition of man before the fall. Adam was created in the image of God ; that is, he was in his original condition before the fall, holy and right- eous. The Roman Church thus seeks to maintain the holiness of God, who did not create a sinful creature, and into whose work sin crept by the act of man. It emphasizes also the thought that the original holiness of man was, like all hohness, the consequence of the indwelHng of the Spirit of God, not to be attained or retained by any mere powers of nature. With this we have no controversy, although Mohler says that Luther ascribed the per- fection of the first man to his nature, and not to the Holy Spirit ; for from the Westminster Confession^ I Schaff, vol. ii., p. 94 ff. 2 Symbolik, pp. 25-253. 3 Chaps, iv. and vi. 172 The Roman System, which taught that God '' created man . . . endued with . . . righteousness, and true hoHness, after his own image," and declared that by the original sin our first parents " fell from their original righteousness, and communion with God," down to Jonathan Edwards,^ who taught that the disastrous results of the fall were chiefly in man's deprivation of the Holy Spirit, such has been the doctrine of Protes- tants. After a long chapter upon the origin of evil, in which Mohler constantly identifies Protestantism with the earliest effort of the Protestant leaders to deal with this exceedingly difficult subject — a chapter which needs only the single remark by way of reply that Mohler himself shows us that those views had undergone substantial modification as early as the Augsburg Confession — he advances to the topic of original sin. The consequences of Adam's sin are " the loss of his original righteousness and holiness, the displeasure and punishment of God, death, and corruption in all his parts, of body as well as of soul." Further, the fathers of Trent ascribe even to fallen man freedom of will, although they present it as very much weakened, and consequently teach that not all ethico-religious action of the same is necessarily sin, although never of itself pleasing to God or in any respect perfect." ^ We cannot pass on without one word in criticism of the last of these expressions, since it reflects the Semi-Pelagianism of the Roman theology. What is it which is not sin, and yet at the same time not ^ Treatise on Original Sin, Part IV., ch. ii. ^ Qp ^^/^ pp^ 54-56. Mbhler on Justification, 173 pleasing to God? Protestantism has united with Augustinianism from the beginning to affirm that all the moral activities of man apart from the renewing grace of God are sinful, for they spring from inherited corruption, and lack the root of all holy action, viz., faith. Mohler has fallen here into a confusion of thought which is the consequence of his attempt to maintain a '' freedom of will " which is not entire, but " weakened." How can there be '' weakened '* will ? If the will is free, it is free ; and if it is not, it is not. The error here, as Protestants have always affirmed, consists in ascribing to man before regenera- tion any holiness, or any disposition toward holiness, of which he is as perfectly destitute as if he were dead — as, indeed, the apostle styles him. It is essential to the evangelical system that it ^ould be taught that without the prevenient grace of God man does nothing which is acceptable in his sight. So far as Catholicism means to maintain that, Protestants will agree with it. § 88. We may come therefore after these prelimi- nary remarks directly to the main center of the ancient contention, to the doctrine of justification. Mohler says : "According to the Council of Trent, the case stands as follows : the sinner, estranged from God, is called back to the divine kingdom without being able to exhibit any merit in himself; that is, without being able to make any claim to grace or to forgiving mercy. The divine call which is issued to him for Christ's sake is conveyed not merely by the external invitation by means of the preaching of the gospel, 174 The Ro7nan System. but also at the same time by an inward activity c^ the Holy Spirit, who awakens the slumbering powers of the man, fallen more or less into the sleep of moral death, and moves the same to unite himself with the power from above, in order to enter upon a new course of life and to establish again commun- ion with God (prevenient grace). If the sinner listens to the call which he receives, the first consequence of the divine and human activity thus cooperating is faith in God's word. The sinner perceives the ex- istence of a higher government of the world, and is convinced of the same with a certainty never before imagined. The higher truths and promises which he perceives, especially the good news that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son for it and offers to all, for the sake of the merits of Christ, the forgiveness of their sins, fill the sinner with amaze- ment. When he compares that which he is with that which, according to the revealed will of God, he ought to be ; when he learns that the sin and cor- ruption of the world are so great that they can be expunged only through the intervention of the Son of God, he attains true knowledge of himself and is at the same time filled with fear of the vindicatory justice of God. He turns now to the divine mercy in Christ Jesus, and forms the confident hope that even he may receive God's favor and the forgiveness of his sins for the sake of the Redeemer. The same view of God's infinite love for men enkindles in the breast of the man a spark of divine love, in conse- quence of which hate and loathing of sin are awak- ened, and the man repents. So by the mingled Criticism of Mokler. 175 activity of the Holy Spirit and the man, who through his freedom surrenders himself, is justification proper introduced. If he remains, now, true to the holy work thus begun, the divine Spirit communicates himself in all hia fullness to him, sanctifying him and forgiving his sins at the same time, and sheds abroad the love of God in the heart of the man, so that he is set free from sin in its ultimate root and inwardly renewed, lives a new and God-pleasing life — that is, is truly righteous before God, truly performs good works as fruits of his renewed spirit, of his sanctified disposition, advances from righteousness to righteous- ness, and in consequence of his present ethico-relig- ious condition, gained through the merits of Christ and his Spirit, becomes a participant in the blessed- ness of heaven. Yet even the justified man does not rejoice, without special revelation, in the abso- lutely infaUible certainty that he belongs to the elect." 1 § 89. It may be said comprehensively that every cardinal position in this paragraph is either totally incorrect or seriously defective. The root of all its error lies in its confusion between justification and sanctification, and this is a consequence of its irrec- oncilable disagreement with the New Testament. The word "justification" is taken by the Catholic Church in its strict meaning according to its compo- sition in both Greek and Latin, as signifying '' viak- ing righteous." But nothing can be clearer to the careful student of the Epistle to the Romans than that St, Paul uses this word in the sense which the ^ Op. cit., pp. 100-102. 176 The Roman System, Protestant divines asserted, in the sense of " declar- ing righteous." In Romans iii. 19 the world is represented as standing before the judgment seat of God and seeking acquittal. They would urge their works ; but " by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight" — /. ^., they get no acquittal in that fashion. In the same chapter, verse 28, we read, '' We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from {yjof)c::) the works of the law." Now he cannot be 7nade just, in the CathoHc sense, apart from works of the law, since he is made just, accord- ing to them, precisely by those works ; and there- fore the only consistent sense of the word is that ''justifying" means " declaring" and not "making" righteous. Doubtless, the two cannot be sepa- rated. The justified man will go on to sanctification. But it is exceedingly important that the conditions of his justification — that is, of his forgiveness — be kept absolutely distinct in the mind from all admix- ture with the question of sanctification. Mohler does not understand this, and he can there- fore speak of justification as a process. It can be " introduced," and proceed in such a way that for- giveness and sanctification shall go hand in hand. But since it is an act, it is an instantaneous affair. The Saviour can declare to the penitent woman, '' Thy sins be forgiven thee." When a man beHeves, he '' hath " eternal life. God asks simply whether the condition of forgiveness is fulfilled, and then with the faithfulness of one who keeps his promises and waits only upon spiritual conditions for spiritual gifts, he declares the sinner righteous. Faith Mzsu7tderstood, 177 But not only is justification misunderstood ; the con- dition of justification is equally misunderstood. The Holy Spirit is said to move the man " to unite him- self with the power from above," and then " the first consequence of the divine and human activity thus cooperating is faith in God's word." This is the first mention of faith, and now it is belief of a truth ; that is, substantially an intellectual affair. But in the " uniting " a vastly greater thing has taken place than merely believing a thing to be true, for this is an act of the whole man " receiving " grace, or put- ting forth his voluntaiy activity and bringing himself into harmony with God. It is the exercise of sav- ing faith. Mohler, still following closely the Council of Trent, next speaks of a " hstening to the call," upon which follow various steps leading toward justification. Now, if there is any true listening, the moment this occurs is the moment of conversion. True hstening will be the submission of the will to God ; and sub- mission of the will is twofold in its character; it is turning away from sin and turning toward God, so that it is both repentance and faith. The various steps which Mohler traces as though they were dis- tinct spiritual processes are only phases of the same thing, viz., of faith. While there is little to criticise in the entire picture of faith as he represents it, when thus understood, it is a fault that all is so managed as to obscure the true nature of what is distinctively called " saving " faith. Confusion at this point leads to some strange results. Father Hecker even deduces from the fact that Protestants teach the right of 12 178 The Roman System. private judgment, which prevents the blind accept- ance of what the Church says as true, the strange result that they are thereby precluded from the exer- cise of faith, and so destroy their own system funda- mentally.^ But Protestants have never understood under " saving faith " the intellectiial acceptance of truth as true. It is rather, to use a favorite phrase of President Fairchild's, " treating the truth as true.'' It is an act of the will, a choice, the choice of Christ as Saviour and King, the choice of duty, the putting of one's supreme good in God, trusting Christ, in- trusting one's self to him, or however else one may phrase the same thought. Under whatever form it is exercised, if it is really put forth,* that is the moment of conversion and that the moment of justi- fication. § 90. We have thus touched a topic upon which something more needs to be said. If the conception of justification held by Protestants is one difficult for Catholics to comprehend, the conception of faith seems still more difficult. If one lacks the key to his interpretation, it must be confessed that Luther, with his exuberant and often extravagant expressions, frequently seems to contradict himself, and leaves the subject darker than it was before. Mohler devotes many pages to the theme,^ but without making any great progress. When he attempts to define the Catholic position, he says faith is '^a reunion with God in Christ principally by the powers of knowl- edge illuminated and strengthened by grace." ^ Here ^ Questio7is of the Soul, pp. 144 and 145. 2 qj,^ cit., p. 145 ff. ^ Page 149. Distinctions as to Faith, 179 he accords with Bellarmine, who says that '^the Catholics say that faith has its seat in the intellect." ^ But Mohler does not remain upon such a low plane as this. He continues : '' But if faith, beginning in the intelligence and borne by the emotions which are immediately excited by it, penetrates to the will, and permeates, quickens, and fertilizes this, . . . then first, according to Cathohcs, has the new birth, justi- fication, been introduced." ^ And still further, under the name of fides fonnata^ employing thus an old scholastic distinction, he says: '^ This is that higher faith which brings the man into a real communion with Christ, fills him with complete devotion to God, with the deepest confidence in him, with entire humil- ity and inward love, frees the man from sin, and causes him to behold and love all creatures in God." ^ Now this accords very closely with the Protestant idea of faith, which is, to quote one of the foremost representatives of Lutheran Protestantism of our own day. Professor Luthardt, of Leipzig, " the individual and personal appropriation, wrought not simply in the intellect, but rather in the will, of sal- vation effected and present in Christ Jesus." * We venture to say that, with all the differences of expression in various writers, this has ever been the fundamental thought of Protestants as to faith ; that it is the complete and glad surrender of the will to God, the appropriation of the offered salvation by a voluntary act, the taking of Jesus Christ as Saviour and King, the supreme choice of God. Of all these ^ De Justif., i., 4. Quoted by Luthardt, Compendium, p. 253. 2 Page 150. 3 Page 150. * Compendium, p. 247. i8o The Roman System, forms of expression, the most helpful to the writer has always been the single word, choice. It is the coming of the soul to an agreement with God. It is, therefore, the restoration of communion with him. It contains within it, as an essential element, love, the love of choice, from which the love of the emo- tions cannot long be separated. Luther, to be sure, denied, as Mohler quotes him to prove, that justify- ing faith included love, but the love he was thinking of was love going out in kindness toward men, in distinction from the faith which laid hold upon Christ. He never would have denied that justifying faith in- volved love to God, for are not his expressions full of the thought that the believing soul finds his delight in God? These are the great defects of the Roman view of justification as presented by Mohler and common to all Catholic theologians. There are topics of less importance upon which something ought to be said ere the subject is left behind. Mohler is also seriously in error in attempting to describe the process of a soul in coming to God in so formal a fashion, as if every soul followed just such steps, and in just such an order. The fact is, on the contrary, that scarcely any two souls pursue exactly the same path. The essential elements of the change which leads to justi- fication are the prevenient action of the Holy Spirit and the consequent exercise of faith. Doubtless that prevenient action all falls under one great cate- gory, and that consequent action has many aspects in which it may be viewed by the sinner or by others about him ; but given the essence of the great change Semi-Pelagiamsm, i8i within a man, and the result of justification follows. The scheme which Mohler, in dependence upon the Council of Trent, has given us, commits the error, therefore, of being wise above that which is written, either in Scripture or in human experience. The phrase " powers of man fallen more or less into the sleep of moral death " contains another im- portant error, as well as an illustration of the feeble- ness produced by the Semi-Pelagianism of the Roman Church. The apostle characterizes the Ephesian Christians before their conversion as " dead through trespasses and sins" (ii. i); but he says nothing about '' more or less " ! The language of Mohler is not Tridentine at this point, although the thought is, since Trent denied in the first chapter upon justifica- tion that the free will was ^' extinguished," here declin- ing to follow the Council of Orange, which had said it was '' lost." The truth is, man is wholly dead, as Trent itself elsewhere teaches ; that is, he is alto- gether a sinner, set upon a wrong course, directed downward, and wholly without what can please God, and hence wholly displeasing to him. That is the radicalism of Protestantism and of the Scrip- tures. Mohler closes his treatment by denying that the justified man has an '' absolutely infallible certainty that he belongs to the elect." Luther's expressions upon this topic moved in the sphere of the ideal rather than the actual, and may be charged with some degree of extravagance. Protestants have generally held, with the Westminster Confession, that assurance is not '' of the essence of faith ; " that i82 The Roma7i System, is, in plain words, that a true believer may for certain reasons springing out of his imperfect sanctification be for a longer or shorter time in doubt as to his real spiritual condition. The temper of the Reformed churches has always been unfavorable to confident assertions in this regard. Luther doubtless never meant quite what was imputed to him by the Coun- cil of Trent. He meant what the old monk did who brought him to the knowledge of Christ and the ex- perience of forgiveness by pointing him to the creed, *' I believe in the forgiveness of sins " — that is, " of my sins." But a man who knows that he believes may have an '' infallible assurance " of his salvation, since he may rest with entire confidence upon the promise of Christ, " He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life, and Cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life." The filial spirit toward God, crying '' Father," is the work of the Spirit in our hearts, and so his witness, that we are the children of God ; and hence may come assurance. And the fruits of Chris- tian faith, love toward men, conquest over temptation, gentleness, meekness, temperance, and all the other "fruits of the Spirit," show the presence of the Spirit, and the presence of the Spirit is salvation. In all these ways the true believer may, ought, and ultimately will, come into the possession of an assur- ance of his acceptance with God. He needs no " special revelation." He has the entire, perfect, and completed revelation of God in his word upon which to found his hope. This is the Protestant doctrine of assurance, and this is all of it Good Works, 183 § 91. The full meaning of these differences is not gained, however, till we have followed the conse- quences of the Roman methods of contemplating the subject into its application to the matter of good works. Mohler's presentation of this theme may be con- densed into a few sentences/ '' By good works the Catholic Church understands the entire ethical life of the justified Christian, active and passive, or the fruits of his sanctified disposition, of his believing love. With the observance of certain ecclesiastical ceremonies, external usages, etc., we have nothing here to do. The predicate ' good ' can be applied only to works performed in real communion of life with Christ. Such works may be called meritorious, and are performed by our freedom through the power of Christ. They are properly the gifts of God to men, but, as the fathers say, are counted by him as our merits. Can heaven be merited by the faithful ? Yes, and can be gained in no other way. Men must merit it ; that is, must become worthy of it through Christ. There must be produced a Hke- ness between them and heaven, an inward relation, that very relation which, according to God's eternal order and his distinct promises, is sustained by sanc- tification to blessedness, which two things are as in- separable as cause and effect.'' In this immediate connection Mohler handles the doctrine of purgatory. '' It is," he says, '' the most complete contradiction to speak of entering heaven stained with sin, whether this be covered or not cov- 1 Page 197 ff. 184 The Roman System, ered. The question is therefore forced upon us, How is man finally to be freed from sin, and that which is holy in him made living and pervasive ? Or, if we leave this world still sinful in any respect, how are we to be purified from the same ? " The Catholic answer to this question is. Purgatory, by which is meant that in the intermediate state there will be a process by which the soul will be finally purified from sin and entirely sanctified, so that it shall be ready for admission to heaven. Finally, because Protestants will not teach the necessity of good works to salvation, they are said to put an essential difference between religion and morals, making the former alone of eternal import- ance, and ascribing a merely temporal importance to the latter. § 92. With much of what Mohler here says, Prot- estants may agree. But the thought of merit in the good works of Christians is one which will bear no investigation. Indeed, Catholicism itself theoret- ically denies it, for it says that our good works are God's gifts rather than our merits. There let it stand. They are not in themselves meritorious. If it were not for something else, the atoning work of Christ, they could have no connection with our salvation, for we could not be saved at all. '' Meriting heaven '' by good works is a very unhappy expression. Sup- pose an account were to be opened, and merit cred- ited to the Christian. His whole sinful past before regeneration w^e may suppose stricken out of the account by the forgiving grace of God. But in his post-regenerate state how many sins does he com- No Merit in Good Works. 185 mit ! What saint was there ever who did not have to confess a multitude of sins ? '' If we say we have no sin," we who are Christians, " we deceive our- selves." The Roman Church teaches no sinless per- fection for men in a state of grace. All must come to confession. There are sins of thought, as well as of word and deed. Many of these are " mortal sins," in Catholic terminology, for Rome says of some sins what Westminster says of all, "" Sin deserveth God's wrath and curse, both in this life and that which is to come." It was the Cathohc Anselm of Canterbury who taught that even to look in a direc- tion which God forbade would be an infinite sin; and the Protestant and Congregationalist, Jonathan Ed- wards, laid emphasis upon the infinity of sin as ex- plaining the necessity of an infinite punishment. The saint is, in a word, imperfect, heaped with infinite transgressions ; and hence he is wholly unfit to enter a claim in merit for heaven, since he ''that has offended in one point is guilty of all." With these principles in mind, the Protestant con- ception of justification is seen to be the only one possible. God looks to see whether he can forgive the sinner and receive him to his favor. He does not look at good works, for they avail nothing. He asks simply whether the sinner has faith, and when he sees that, he forgives. But he has not therefore thrown a slight upon good works. The Protestant does not view faith and works as separated, or relig- ion and morals as belonging to different spheres. He establishes rather the most intimate union be- tween the two. If there be faith, there must be 1 86 The Roman System. works. Faith, considered as an act of the will, is a choice of the will of God, an acceptance of the di- vine will for the man's will, of the law of God for the man's law. Hence there must be obedience to that law. It will not be a perfect obedience, for the saint is also sinful, whether he be Protestant or Catholic, but it will be a real obedience, and it will gain in constancy and comprehensiveness as the union of heart with the will of God grows, or as faith be- comes deeper and stronger. A real faith in the Protestant sense, without works, is as completely impossible as a flowing fountain without any issuing stream. All Protestant creeds, which speak of the topic at all, make the evidence of faith to consist in the tangible evidence of actual good works, the fruits of the Spirit. Thus when life ends, the Protestant does not view the transition to another world as Mohler thinks he must, nor does he find a purgatory necessary. There need be no magical or mechanical change in death, which Mohler supposes he must predicate. But one great change takes place, at least. The soul drops its body, and with it all those inducements to sin that spring from bodily appetites, and all those occa- sions of sin that arise out of physical conditions. The will is at harmony with God by the perfect choice of his law as its rule. Why should not the in- dividual choices all hereafter correspond with that ultimate choice? And what call is there for the supposition of a purifying fire ? Is not that essen- tially a punishment of sin ? And what punishment can there still be to a forgiven soul, to whom Christ Popular Distortions. 187 has said, " Today thou shalt be with me in paradise." ^ While, therefore, the modern Protestant has httle objection to many things which Mohler says, and can cordially echo such sentiments as this, that there must be '' a likeness between them and heaven, an inward relation," before the saints can enter it, he does not regard the Catholic doctrine as theoretic- ally correct. The great objection which he has to the Catholic doctrine of good works is, however, against its practical, its popular distortions, rather than against its scholastic definitions. If the com- mon Catholic in America does not think that he is earning heaven in the sense of giving a quid pro quo, and that by many '^ecclesiastical observances," then ordinary Protestant observation is wonderfully at fault. Such is not only the actual, it is almost the inevitable consequence of any doctrine of merit in good works at all. The Christian ought not to fix his eyes upon his works when he is thinking of salvation, but upon God. If he does, he will esteem himself far more highly than he ought to do. A certain '' self-righteousness," not in the sense in which Mohler claims a man should have it — that is, righteousness really in himself,^ but in the more odious sense of undue self-complacence in view of supposed merit, seems to be too characteristic of Catholics, as they ordinarily are. § 93. But the Protestant objection to the Catholic 1 A fuller discussion of purgatory in its general relations follows in Chapter VI. 2 Op. cit., p. 202. 1 88 The Roma7i System. position goes deeper than this. The Roman Church identifies, as we have often seen heretofore, the ex- ternal with the internal. It emphasizes prevenient grace, and it declares that this cannot be merited. But it also teaches that this grace is bestowed in baptism upon all the children of Catholic families, and that the guilt of original sin is then washed away. The grace of God has been bestowed, and now, of course, the new life has begun. Hence the child is held to the observance of the commandments, and its good deeds are regarded as truly meritorious, though there may not be a solitary outward sign of a genuine conversion of soul to God. Thus it goes on " meriting " heaven, never having occasion to refer its good works to the grace of God apart from the opus opcratiim of the Church. And hence it is taught in many cases to depend upon good works for salvation without faith, because in fact it knows that it has no faith. All is purely external and mechanical in thousands and thousands of cases. We discover here the key to those marvelous minimizings of Christian ideas which are current in Catholic practice and morals, and which we shall meet again at a later point of this discussion. Here is a child in the Church, let us suppose, passing through the various stages of Christian instruction and life under the Catholic system. He has no true share in the grace of God, but still, according to theory, as a baptized child, as one who has come to confession and who has partaken of the sacra- ments of the Church, he is in a state of grace. Now, Minimizings of Christian Ideas, 189 theoretically, he ought to have faith in God. He ought to be justified, and this ought to be a truly spiritual process ; but there is no evidence of any such spiritual faith. Therefore a mere outward, his- torical faith in what the Church teaches is accepted, instead of a spiritual process. There ought to be true repentance for sins, but a mere contritio, and then an attritio^ have to be accepted in its stead, since it is itself wanting. In like manner love is reduced to a mere word, and for good deeds springing out of love, mere outward giving of alms, mere repeating of prayers, even without understanding the words (Latin Paternosters), have to be accepted. Thus according to the theory, the person who performs the outward works of piety is assumed to have the inward grace because in the Church, while in fact the heart is left unmoved, the soul unsanctified, the sins unforgiven ; and instead of receiving the fulfill- ment of the promise of the Church that heaven shall be its reward, the poor soul is going down to receive eternal condemnation. Thus to confound the external with the internal is to lay a snare for souls. § 94. And now the refutation of the Roman doc- trine, that salvation is possible only within the pale of the Catholic Church, which was interrupted at the close of § 47, may be completed. The pivotal ques- tion upon this subject is this. Has Rome any monop- oly of the way of salvation ? Does she alone under- stand it? Can she alone provide the means and channels by which it can be obtained ? We have now shown that her understanding of it is incorrect ; I go The Roman System, that she misinterprets the sole biblical - condition, faith ; and that the priesthood which she has set up, the mediation of which she declares to be necessary, has no authority in the word of God or in the his- tory of the Church. Therefore she has no such monopoly. While, on the other hand, the undeni- able existence of spiritual experiences in Protestant communions, the loyal fulfillment in them of scrip- tural conditions of salvation, and the positive Chris- tian certainty attained there under the Holy Spirit, prove that salvation is actually bestowed upon some outside the pale of Rome. This simple fact is worth tons of unfounded assertions, and tons of arguments drawn from fallacious premises. CHAPTER II. OUTGROWTHS OF THE DOCTRINE OF MERIT. § 95. The doctrine of merit, whereby a man can do something which is worthy of reward from God, suggests the provision of ways in which additional reward can be obtained. Merits are opposed to de- merits, and the thought Hes near that the one may be used to offset the other. But this can evidently be done only when the work for which the com- pensating merit is awarded is a work which was not strictly required of the Christian, or when it is '' supererogatory," as it is called. The Roman Cath- olic theology advances, therefore, with the logical consequence of a complete system, to the provision of this class of works. The distinction is made between the divine com- mands, which apply to all, and which carry with them no possibility of the desired merit, and the '' evangelical counsels,'' which are to be obeyed only by those who seek a special perfection. These exhort in par- ticular to voluntary celibacy and poverty. Volun- tary self-denial, almsgiving, prayers, etc., are in the same category. To do such works is to do some- thing more than is demanded of one, something " supererogatory." By the performance of these supererogatory works a fund of merit may be ac- quired, and this may be transferred to the account 191 i()2 The Roman System. of some other person, as, for example, one now suf- fering in purgatory. § 96. The scriptural proof of this position is un- usually tenuous. Our Lord said to the rich young man : '' If thou wouldest be perfect, go, sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have trea- sure in heaven : and come, follow me." ^ But " per- fect " does not mean some degree of superiority to other Christians, for the plain intimation of the con- text, where our Lord says that it is hard for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God, is that this young man was not a saved person. In fact, he had not truly obeyed the commandments at all, for he had not had love ; and the probing command of Christ was designed to bring this fact to his mind. If he had had any true Christian faith, he would have been '^perfect" in the sense of the text. His " treasure in heaven " would have been a well- grounded hope of salvation. The apostle Paul also gave the advice not to marry ,^ but it was '' by reason of the present distress," and in expectation, as it would appear, of the near advent of the Lord. Not a trace can be found of the Roman idea of superero- gation. § 97. Mohler seeks to give a highly ideal turn to this conception. He says : " We perceive, when we consider the lives of the saints, that they are conscious of being in possession of an all-sufficient, infinite power ; and this is that which discovers ever more delicate and noble relations of man to God and his fellow-men, so that he who is sanctified in Christ and 1 Matt. xix. 21. 2 I Cor. vii. 26. Works of Supererogation. 193 filled with his Spirit, always feels himself superior to the law. It is the way of love which has begun in God, which stands far, infinitely above the demands of the mere law, that it is never satisfied with the directions of the law and ever becomes more inven- tive Only in this manner is that remarkable doctrine to be satisfactorily explained, the doctrine that there may be works which are more than suf- ficient {opera siipererogationis)!' ^ In antithesis to this, but only in partial antithesis. Protestantism teaches that no man can ever do more than his duty, for that duty equals the highest povv-ers of his soul. " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart." Nothing more can be asked or given. True, the Christian heart, in possession of this " infinite power," feels itself above the law — that is, above its yoke, above it as an external and unwelcome standard; but as it becomes ''inventive," and seeks new ways of pleasing God, all its discoveries of possibilities become duties, the inward call of God upon it for service in the discovered way. There may arise occasions, and they are frequent enough, when poverty must be voluntarily borne for the sake of performing some good ; but there is no virtue in poverty as such. Celibacy is sometimes necessary, or advisable in the same way ; but to the Protestant eye the mother among her children, exercising her tender care over them, watching and praying in their behalf, denying herself food and rest and comfort for their health and advantage, is a fairer sight than the nun in unnatural and often selfish and useless ' op. cit., p. 216. 13 194 The Roman System. seclusion from the world, however many prayers she may say. It is, of course, true that there are works which are not the duty of every man, since few have either the opportunity or the power to perform them. Such are the services which the great heroes and leaders of humanity have wrought, as Luther, Washington, Lincoln. But if any man were to find himself placed as they were and able to do what they were able to do, his duty would be identical with theirs. The general principle remains, and it covers the whole ground, that God asks of every man the complete surrender of his whole self There is nothing more to give., and hence no place for any supererogatory works. § 98. A further application of the idea of merit is found in the monastic system of the Catholic Church. The great supererogatory works are chastity and poverty, and they find their best field of performance in the monastic world, where, with the added ele- ments of obedience and stability, or the perpetuity of the vows taken, they constitute the central and formative principles of the system. Monasticism is, however, not of Christian origin, but of heathen.^ The stories told of Paul and An- thony, the reputed founders of monasticism, are legendary, and of no historical value. The system really begins with Pachomius, and was derived by him from the worship of the Egyptian heathen deity Serapis, with which a monasticism, having every 1 See the article by Weingarten, Monchthum, in Herzog RE., vol. i., p. 758. Monasttctsm, 195 distinctive feature of the '' rule of Pachomius," had long been associated. The contemplative life, which active and industrious occidentals are sometimes inclined to designate by an adjective far less com- plimentary, was well adapted to the climate and gen- eral conditions of both Egypt and India, in which countries it is prehistoric. An oriental Christianity took it up, and occidental Christianity, after much resistance, accepted it, and, modifying it, made it for a long time of essential value in the career of the Church as that actually developed. It is not the writer's purpose to refuse proper recognition of the good done by monasticism, or by any other peculiar institution of Romanism in dis- tinction from Protestantism. No historians have been more cordial in acknowledging the services of the system to literature, art, civilization, agriculture, colonization, rehgion, and liberty, than Protestants. Those services were great. It is even difficult to see how, as things were, they could have been rendered by any other agency in existence during the Middle Ages. But, considered as an ideal system, as having a right on account of its intrinsic merits to a perma- nent place in the apparatus of the Christian Church, monasticism is to be judged unfavorably. It seems to carry within it the seeds of its own corruption, and the first and great Protestant argument against it is the historical one, that it has shown itself unfit to live. EstabHshed under Benedict in 590, the Benedictine Order was always falling into moral cor- ruption, into both luxury and license, and always undergoing reform. The laments at the corruption 196 The Roman System, of monastic institutions do not come principally from Protestant sources. The bitterest of them are uttered by Catholics. The whole life and distinguish- ing fame of Benedict of Aniane are a testimony against the corruption of his time. The famous monastery of Clugny was founded to reform monas- ticism, but fell itself into such disorder that after centuries of existence it was suppressed. The Cis- tercian Order, of which Bernard was the shining light, was a reforming order. The mendicant orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic were the result of the mani- fest need of purer service. At the Reformation the condition of things was exceedingly bad. The wholesale suppression of monasteries and convents was the result of new ideas as to the propriety of binding vows of the monastic sort and of a new con- ception of the way of salvation through faith ; but it was also the result of the evil repute into which the monasteries had fallen. They were often little better than brothels. Amid all the selfish violence which caused princes and states to sequester founda- tions to their own advantage, the fraction of monastic revenues which was saved to education was enough to justify the process in large degree, for this fraction did more good than the whole was doing or likely to do. With the Reformation arose a new and characteris- tic order, which may be called the modern exempli- fication of the monastic system, and at the same time the greatest witness against it — the Society of Jesus, usually called the Jesuits. In a certain degree this order is the antithesis of the old monastic orders ; The Jesuits, 197 for it substitutes for the retirement and contempla- tive life of these, habitual intercourse with society ; for democracy, despotism ; for localization of abode, the greatest facility of change. More determinative of the differences which have ultimately exhibited themselves, was the demand of a perfect submission of the personality and the will to the commands of the superior, with its associated ideal, that the inter- ests of the society should be made the supreme object of attainment, w^hatever other interests might seem to conflict. And, not the least important, it was provided that the society should remain the supreme object of devotion to the Jesuit by forbid- ding him to accept any post independent of it except upon the positive command of the pope. The ancient principle of obedience thus received a very great extension in this new monasticism, so as to detach the Jesuit as perfectly as possible from every earthly tie but that to his society, and to use him thus detached for the society alone. The object of these arrangements was to make a new and efficient instrument for the restoration of the Roman Church, a kind of " Hght horse " amid the army of the Church. In a large degree the purpose was crowned with success. The restoration of southern Austria, of Bohemia, and of large portions of Germany to the bosom of the Church, the successes and deso- lations of the Thirty Years' War in Germany, possi- bly also the Huguenot wars and massacres in France, were all due to the Jesuits. But even among the Catholic nations the order has met with well nigh universal repudiation. Beginning with Portugal igS The Roman System. in 1759, the Jesuits were expelled successively from France, Spain, Naples, Parma; and in 1773 were dissolved by Pope Clement XIV. Though specially sworn to obey the pope, they would not obey this edict, and maintained an existence in the dominions of Frederick II. of Prussia, and in Russia. In 18 14 they succeeded in procuring their restoration from Pope Pius VII. Since that time history is still against them, for they have been expelled from Rus- sia, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Mexico, etc. Thus they have fallen into decay, not a decay of gross immorality, but a decay of confidence, of fail- ure in their largest plans, of failure to gain and re- tain the cordial support of even their co-religionists. They have, to be sure, molded the doctrines of the Church since the day w^hen their members were made the theologians at Trent, and have made new dogmas in our own time, the immaculate conception of Mary, and the Vatican dogma of infallibility. In a degree it is true, as one Roman bishop is reported to have said: ''We are all Jesuits today;" but, as every other apparent success of this order has been the prelude to a dreadful and shameful fall, it may be questioned whether the doom of the Jesuits does not impend over this Jesuitized Church as a whole, and ruin draw near it. § 99. The Protestant objection to every form of monasticism is that it is a life against nature, and so against the will of God. The Church is for human- ity as God has constituted it, and it can only be sound and safe when it is in immediate contact with the men and women to whom it is sent. Put a man Mo7iasticism against God^s Order. 199 or a woman into monastic seclusion from the ordin- ary relations of the world, from its responsibilities and its discipline, and you put him out of the reach of innumerable corrective and sanative influences. As celibacy is wrong upon any large scale, because men and women are intended of God to live together and educate each other, so poverty, when so assumed as to involve separation from the common life of man, means separation from that contact with tangi- ble things which is necessary to preserve touch with concrete truth. Let a society set itself up as the sole object of devotion, apart from the interests of humanity, and it cannot avoid sinking into immoral practices and evolving immoral theories as their justification. The great principle of human morals as given by our Saviour is, '^ Thou shalt love thy neigh- bor as thyself," not any single set of neighbors, like the Society of Jesus. Restrict the principle, and the system of ethics built upon it will be consequently restricted. There is a positive danger in devoting one's self to reHgion as the business of life, for in becoming one's calling religion may lose something of the healthfulness which is gained by living it in the common relations of life. There is a certain separation from corrective influences even in the life of a Protestant minister. But add the further and wholly unnecessary separation of the celibate Cath- olic priest, and you have multiplied the dangers, and made still greater the probability of his religion becom- ing unreal. Now turn him into a monk, put upon him the vow of poverty, and add obedience, and then, by a still higher degree of refinement, make 200 The Roman System. that obedience the Jesuitical obedience, and you have done a vast deal to render true religion in the man's own heart an impossibility, and have almost insured the impossibility of his rendering any healthful and large service to society and the Church. The Prot- estant thinks these statements self-evident : he points the doubter for proof to the verdict of the history of monasticism in general, and of the Jesuits in particular. § ICO. The worship of the saints is another out- flow of the doctrine that there may be acquired by good works such merit that it can be transferred from one person to another. The Council of Trent presents the matter thus : ^ The holy synod enjoins '' on all bishops . . . that they especially instruct the faithful diligently con- cerning the intercession and invocation of saints ; the honor paid to relics ; and the legitimate use of images : teaching them that the saints who reign together with Christ offer up their own prayers to God for men ; that it is good and useful suppliantly to invoke them and to have recourse to their pray- ers, aid, and help for obtaining benefits from God through his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who is our alone Redeemer and Saviour." "Also, that the holy bodies of holy martyrs .... are to be venerated by the faithful Moreover, 'that the images of Christ, of the Virgin Mother of God, and of the other saints are to be had .... in temples, and that due honor and veneration are to be given them ; not that any divinity or virtue is believed to be in 1 Schaff, Creeds, vol. ii., p. 199 ff. Worship of the Saints. 20i them, on account of which they are to be wor- shiped ; or that anything is to be asked of them ; or that trust is to be reposed in images, as was of old done by the gentiles, who placed their hope in idols ; but because the honor which is shown to them is referred to the prototypes which those images repre- sent ; in such wise that by the images which we kiss and before which we uncover the head and prostrate ourselves, we adore Christ and we venerate the saints .whose similitude they bear: as, by the decrees of councils, and especially of the second Synod of Nicea, has been defined against the opponents of images." In the immediately following context reference is made to the miracles wrought by the saints ; and a little further below warnings are intro- duced against various abuses connected with the use of images, of which '' superstition," " filthy lucre," " lasciviousness," '' revelings and drunkenness," " luxury and wantonness " are mentioned by name. § lOi. The ideal which the CathoHc entertains in respect to these matters may be seen from the fol- lowing words of Cardinal Gibbons. He says : ^ " To ask the prayers of our brethren in heaven is not only conformable to Holy Scripture, but is prompted by the instincts of our nature. The Cath- olic doctrine of the communion of saints robs death of its terrors; while "the Reformers of the sixteenth century, in denying the communion of saints, not only inflicted a deadly wound on the creed, but also severed the tenderest chords of the human heart. They broke asunder the holy ties that united earth 1 F. F., p. 190 -ff. 202 The Rontait System. with heaven, and the soul in the flesh with the soul released from the flesh. If my brother leaves me to cross the seas, I believe that he continues to pray for me. And when he crosses the narrow sea of death, and lands upon the shores of eternity, why should he not pray for me still ? What does death destroy ? The body. The soul still Hves and moves and has its being. It thinks and wills and remem- bers and loves. The dross of sin and selfishness and hatred is burned by the salutary fires o^ contri- tion, and nothing remains but the pure gold of charity." § 1 02. Protestants have not been altogether insen- sible to the force of some of these considerations. That the saints pray for us in the heavenly world may well be believed; and Protestant piety has sometimes ventured to join, in thought at least, the ministrations of departed loved ones with those min- istrations which we are informed in the Epistle to the Hebrews the angels render to the heirs of salva- tion. But the question is. Is the practice of invok- ing the saints scriptural ? is there any evidence that their interest in us is augmented or in any way affected by our invocation ? and particularly, is the practice safe, and consistent with the honor of the "alone Redeemer," and with the preservation of Christian worship from the contamination of heathen idolatry ? § 103. To these questions Protestants return a negative answer, and particularly to the one whether the practice is scriptural. Cardinal Gibbons' argu- ment that it is, will convince no one who does not Scripture Agaiitst Saint Worship. 203 accept it without any Scripture proof whatever. To prove ''that the spirits of the just in heaven are clearly conversant with our affairs upon earth," he cites Jacob's pious wish upon his deathbed, " the angel that delivereth me from all evils bless these boys," a passage from the book of Tobit, and sev- eral others which are more pertinent. This point Protestants will gladly grant him. But he then says, *' We have also abundant testimony from Scripture to show that the saints assist us by their prayers," and for this he urges examples of the prayers of men in behalf of one another, but not a case of tlie inter- cession of the saints. His eloquent question, " Now I ask you, if our friends, though sinners, can aid us by their prayers, why cannot our friends, the saints of God, be able to assist us also ? " is all the argu- ment he presents, and proves nothing as to Scripture testimony. And finally, to prove that the saints are actually interested in us and pray for us, the cardinal quotes 2 Mace. xv. 14; Rev. v. 8; Zech. i. 12, 13, of which passages, the first is apocryphal, the second might possibly be interpreted in favor of the idea, and the third represents an angel in a vision of the prophet praying for Jerusalem. This is the sum total of the Scripture proof which he can bring. Of the Roman practice of invoking the saints there appears, after all has been said, not a trace in the Bible. Over against this failure to find the Scriptures in favor of the practice, there is the much more impor- tant fact that they are emphatically against that and every kindred practice. Among the commands of 204 The Roman System. the decalogue we read, '' Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor the Hkeness of any form that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth : thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them : for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God." To the tempter in the wilderness the Saviour said, '* Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve/' quoting here from Deut. vi. 13. These texts are particularly pertinent with reference to the distinction which Catholics make between '' worship " (^Xarpzia)^ which is to be paid to God alone, and "service" {doijXeia)^ which, rmy be paid to saints, for Deut. vi. 13 has in the Vulgate, Rome's own authentic Bible, ''Doinimun Deum iuum twicbis €t illi soli servies." This last word is the rendering of the Hebrew 'abhadli, which is the word employed in Ex. xx. 5, and reproduced in the Revised English Version by the word " serve," as quoted above. Thus Rome goes in her *' service " of her saints square against the letter of her own Bible. But more than this. There are four instances of attempted saint worship in the New Testament, and in every case it is rebuked. Cornelius fell down at Peter's feet as he entered his house upon that great day when he first preached the gospel to him, " and worshiped him" (Acts x. 25); but Peter said, "Stand up; I myself also am a man." Who supposes that Cornelius meant to render divine honors to Peter ? It was "service" rather than the technical "wor- ship ; " and yet it was forbidden. The men of Lys- tra attempted to do sacrifice to Paul and Barnabas, The Bible Against Saint Worship. 205 and they were rebuked (Acts xiv. 12-15). On two separate occasions did the apostle John, when re- ceiving revelations at the hand of the " angel," attempt to worship him (Rev. xix. 10 and xxii. 8, 9) ; but on both occasions was he corrected with the words, '' See thou do it not, for I am thy fellow-serv- ant, . . . worship God." On the other hand, how constant is the New Tes- tament representation that Christ is the only media- tor, the only w^ay of approach to the Father ! '' No man cometh unto the Father but by me " (John xiv. 6). '' Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt. xi. 28). " Wherefore he is able also to save them to the utter- most that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them" (Heb. vii. 25). So much for the theory and proof of the matter. We may hope, and Rome may guess, that the saints are acquainted with our affairs, in some degree at least ; but even in this particular we shall have to remain where the honest Cajetan, Luther's antago- nist at Augsburg, remained when he said, '' We have no certain knowledge as to whether the saints are aware of our prayers, although we piously believe it." ^ But against the invocation of the saints the whole authority of the Bible stands indisputable. Saint-service is, at best, scarcely distinguishable from idolatry. It is inseparably connected with the pres- ence and worship of images in the churches. At worst, it is idolatry, and it seems to have a tendency 1 Quoted by Littledale, Plain Reasons, p. 32. 2o6 The Roman System. to descend from one degree of corruption to an- other. The Christian Pantheon will not long remain purer than the heathen was. We are therefore re- quired by our theme to look at the actual, as well as the theoretical, invocation of the saints in the Catho- lic Church. We follow here Littledale, from whom the following quotation is taken : ^ '' In direct rebellion against the plain letter and spirit of both the Old and New Testaments, the Roman Church practically compels her children to offer far more prayers to deceased human beings than they address to the Father or to Christ. It is not true, as is often alleged in defense, that the pray- ers of the departed saints are asked only in the same sense as those of Hving ones, with the added thought that they are now more able to pray effectually for us. The petitions are not at all limited to a mere * Pray for us ; ' but are constantly of exactly the same kind and wording as those addressed to Almighty God, and are offered kneeling, and in the course of divine service, which is not how we ever ask the prayers of living friends. A few specimens are here set down from the Raccolta (English trans- lation, Burns and Oates, 1873), ^ collection of prayers specially indulgenced by the popes, and therefore of indisputable authority in the Roman Church. I. "'Hail, Queen, Mother of Mercy, our Life, Sweetness, and Hope, all hail ! To thee we cry, ban- ished sons of Eve, to thee we sigh, groaning and weeping in this vale of tears. Turn then, O our * Ibid., p. 30 f. Invocations of Saints. 207 Advocate, thy merciful eyes to us, and after this our exile, show us Jesus, the blessed fruit of thy womb, O merciful, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary/ " ' V. Make me worthy to praise thee, O sacred Virgin/ ^^ * R. Give me strength against thine enemies/ 2. '' ' We fly beneath thy shelter, O holy Mother of God, despise not our petitions in our necessities, and deliver us always from all perils, O glorious and blessed Virgin/ 3. '' ' Heart of Mary, Mother of God . . . worthy of all the veneration of angels and men . . . Heart full of goodness, ever-compassionate toward our sufferings, vouchsafe to thaw our icy hearts ... In thee let the holy Church find safe shelter ; protect it, and be its sweet asylum, its tower of strength. ... Be thou our help in need, our comfort in trouble, our strength in temptation, our refuge in persecution, our aid in all dangers . . .' 4. '' ' Sweet heart of Mary, be my salvation.' 5. *' * Leave me not, my Mother, in my own hands, or I am lost. Let me but cling to thee. Save me, my Hope ; save me from hell/ 6. '' ' Michael, glorious prince, chief and companion of the heavenly host . . . vouchsafe to free us all from every evil, who with full confidence have re- course to thee.* 7. '' ' Benign Joseph, our Guide, protect us and the holy Church.' 8. ** ' Guardian of virgins, and holy father Joseph, to whose faithful keeping Christ Jesus, innocence itself, and Mary, Virgin of virgins, were committed. 2o8 The Roman System. I pray and beseech thee, by those two dear pledges, Jesus and Mary, that, being preserved from all un- cleanness, I may with spotless mind, pure heart, and chaste body, ever most chastely serve Jesus and Mary. Amen.' " This long extract will suffice to show how com- pletely in practice the '' service " given to the saints coalesces with the " worship " which is due to God alone. It were easy, but scarcely profitable, to go more into the detail of these abuses of a custom whose easy liability to such abuse is but one of the arguments against it. Hase has accumulated a large number of illustrations of the almost incredible fol- lies and superstitions which gather around the prac- tice. But we content ourselves with the reference. § 104. Not less liable to abuse is the practice of canonization. Nominally this task has been taken in hand by the pope to prevent it from abuse by local bishops acting under various disturbing influ- ences, such as local pride, haste in investigating, etc. It is now a long process, regulated by distinct methods of procedure. There are two grades of blessedness : beatification, which is pronounced of one who has lived a pious life and wTought miracles ; and sanctification, which requires the proof that the per- son in question still possesses the power of miracles, evidenced by their being wrought at his tomb. Ac- cording to theory, canonization simply proclaim.s upon earth what has long since been accomplished in heaven. The judicial process is merely to ascertain beyond a doubt what are the facts. But this high theoretic position cannot be maintained. It has Canonization. 209 ever been the popular thought that the judicial proc- ess of the Church created the saintship of those canonized. When on Whitsunday, 1862, Pius IX. canonized 26 Japanese martyrs who had perished in the year 1597, the bishops, in their address to the pope, said : '' They will now assume the protection of the Church in a new manner, and will offer at their altars above thew first prayer for thee!' This altogether unguarded and naive utterance undoubt- edly reflects the real position of its authors. How preposterous the idea is that a mortal can affect the position of saints in heaven, needs no further proof than the eagerness of Roman apologists to forestall such an interpretation of canonization. But Protes- tants will object no less strongly to the validity of any earthly judicial process in respect to persons so long dead as were these Japanese saints, and about whom so little is known. The Roman answer would probably be that everything depended upon the evi- dence of miraculous powers still exerted at their tombs. But this will do little to quiet the difficulties of objectors who have had so many reasons to reject the whole Catholic theory about modern miracles. The suggestion of the pope himself, that he re- joiced to " multiply at that serious time intercessors in heaven," will seem to Protestants to give both the true motive and the unanswerable refutation of canonization.^ 1 Facts from Hase, Polemik, p. 301 f. U CHAPTER III. THE VIRGIN MARY. § 105. The doctrine and practice of the Roman Church in respect to the Virgin Mary have undergone in our own generation a rapid development under the lead of the Jesuits, and particularly of the late Pope Pius IX. Careful dogmatic definitions do not occur, however, before the Council of Trent, nor are they very numerous. There is a distinct difference to be observed between the popular and the scholas- tic theology of every age at this point. A full view of our theme will compel us to pay attention to both of these theologies ; but, since we are dealing with the great and determinative ideas of the Church, it will not be necessary to follow all the details of pop- ular extravagance upon this subject. Still, as doc- trine is of no value except it influence life, and as the resulting life is the best commentary upon the doctrine, it will not be possible to leave either theol- ogy entirely out of the account. § 106. The Council of Trent alludes to the Virgin Mary only incidentally. The controversy as to her immaculate conception was now in full swing, Sixtus IV. having favored this doctrine, and yet (in 1483) forbidden either party to declare the opinion of the other heretical, since the Church had rendered no decision. Pressure was exerted to obtain from the 210 Definitions as to Mary, 211 council a declaration in favor of the immaculate con- ception. But the time seemed scarcely ripe, and so the council contented itself, under papal instruction, with declaring^ ''that it is not its intention to include in this decree, where original sin is treated of, the blessed and immaculate Virgin Mary, the Mother of God ; but that the constitutions of Pope Sixtus IV. of happy memory are to be observed." And later : " If any one saith that a man ... is able dur- ing his whole life to avoid all sins, even those that are venial — except by a special privilege from God, as the Church holds in regard to the Blessed Virgin : Let him be anathema." The profession of the Tri- dentine Faith reads : ^ " I most firmly assert that the images of Christ, and of the perpetual Virgin the Mother of God, and also of other saints, ought to be had and retained, and that due honor and veneration are to be given them." The Roman Catechism is, however, more explicit. We read : ^ " We celebrate God by giving him thanks because he has endowed the most holy Virgin with every celestial gift, and we congratulate the Virgin herself upon her singular felicity. Rightly has the holy church of God joined with this giving of thanks the supplication of the most holy Mother of God by which we piously and suppHantly flee to her, that she may concihate God for us sinners by her inter- cession {ut nobis peccatoribtis sua intercessione concili- aret Deuni), and obtain the good things which are necessary both to this and to the eternal life. There- 1 Schaff, vol. ii., pp. 88 and 115. 2 j^id.^ p. 209. 3 Cat. Rom., iv., v., 8. 212 The Roman System, fore we, exiled children of Eve . . . ought constantly to invoke the Mother of Mercy and the Advocate of her faithful people, that she may pray for us sinners ; and we ought by this prayer to implore aid and help from her whose most surpassing merits before God, and whose highest good will for assisting men, no one can doubt without impiety." § 107. The final element in the official definition of the doctrine of the Virgin was added by Pope Pius IX., who in 1849 issued an encyclical letter in- quiring of the bishops as to the propriety and time- liness of a definition of the immaculate conception. The answers proving sufficiently favorable, a com- mission was appointed the same year upon the ques- tion, and in 1854, an assembly of cardinals and bishops having expressed their delight in the pros- pect of the definition of the doctrine, upon Decem- ber 8th the pope, *^ under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost," by the authority of Christ and the apostles Peter and Paul, " and in his own authority " issued the following : " We proiiounce, declare, and define^ that the doctrine which holds the Blessed Virgin Mary to have been, from the first instant of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of Almighty God, in view of the merits of Christ Jesus the Saviour of mankind, preserved free from all stain of original sin, was revealed by God, and is, therefore, to be firmly and constantly believed by all the faithful." 2 It will be scarcely necessary to remark that this ^ Compare Heinrich's definition of cathedratic, J 19, above. 2 Schaff, Creeds, vol. ii., p. 211 f. Points of the Doctrine. 213 pronunciamento of the pope's, though put out upon his own authority alone, without the assistance or approval of an ecumenical council, must now be considered, in consequence of the Vatican Council, as the official belief of the Church, since it bears the marks of an ex cathedra utterance, and is therefore '' irreformable in itself" Such, then, is the Roman doctrine as to Mary, and it includes the following five points, (i) her immaculate conception, (2) her sinlessness, (3) her perpetual virginity, (4) her possession of at- tributes well-nigh divine, (5) her intercessory office with God the Father, and even with her Son, Jesus Christ. § 108. These ideas have gained an exceedingly powerful hold upon the Roman form of Christianity, as the most superficial attention to rituals and customs will make evident. They have their origin partly in the reverence which is felt for one in so close a con- nection with the Saviour as was his mother.^ The sweetness and gentleness of womanhood, and espe- cially of maternity, have made the thought of her intercession with God, the Almighty and dreadful Sovereign, and even with Jesus Christ, *^ who shall come to be our Judge," welcome to fearful sinners who contemplate the divine Being too exclusively under these aspects. Poetry and art have lent their aid at different epochs of the Church. And, possibly, a still deeper reason can be found in the suggestion 1 See Gibbons' F. F., p. 194 ff, " We cannot conceive y he says, " Mary to have been ever profaned by sin, who was the chosen vessel of election, even the Mother of God." 214 ^^^^ Roman System, of the Protestant Steitz/ that Mary represents the Church, the virgin bride of Christ. This suggestion appears first in Aquinas, who appeals to Augustine. According to this idea, in honoring so highly the Virgin, the people honor the essential attributes of the Church as conceived by Catholics. § 109. But the important question — important for Catholic as well as Protestant — remains, Is the doc- trine true ? Are all these particulars which are affirmed of Mary, which lift her so far above ordi- nary humanity, rightly ascribed to her? We may begin our examination of this question with Mary's supposed sinlessness. This point is without any positive scriptural support, for no state- ment of the kind, and no exception of the mother of Jesus from the general assertion that all men have sinned, can be found. On the contrary, no very strong evidence can be found of any actual sins. The Scriptures speak but little of her. There is no occasion to speak of any sinfulness of hers more than of Stephen's or of Philip's, who are spoken of only in terms of commendation, but whom no one supposes to have been without sin. Yet two pass- ages at least, and possibly three, contain an implied or direct rebuke of her. In Mark iii. 21 we read, "And when his friends heard it, they went out to lay hold on him : for they said, He is beside himself" From the context, verse 31, which according to Matt. xii. 46 is to be taken in close connection with the preceding, we learn that " his friends " were '' his ^ In the article " Maria," Herzog, Realencyc. This idea appears clearly in Heinrich, vol. vii., p. 419 ff. Mary not Sinless, 315 mother and his brethren." They evidently did not understand his work, or doubted his mission, which would, at least, verge very closely upon the sin of unbeHef. Their calls were not permitted to interrupt his work (Mark. iii. 33-35). At Cana Mary seems to have been guilty of presumption, and was rebuked by Jesus (John ii. 1-5). These hints, shght as they are, bar any one completely from affirming Mary's sinlessness with any positiveness, however free the way may be for the cherishing of such an opinion as a pious assumption. And here again, as in the case of Peter's sojourn at Rome, since CathoHcs lay so much stress upon it, and have built up so lofty a fabric of legend, poetry, devotion, and even supersti- tion upon it as they have, it is of the first importance that an indubitable foundation of Scripture proof should be estabhshed for it. But this it is impossible to find. The utter lack in the New Testament of positive statement of Mary's sinlessness becomes more im- portant when we contrast it with the plainness with which the sinlessness of Jesus is stated, and indeed emphasized. He himself claims sinlessness (John viii. 46) ; it is the foundation of the perfect example which he sets us (Matt. xi. 29; cf xii. 50; v. 17; Mark xiv. 36; I John. iii. 5, 6), and the necessary condition of his being the perfect organ of revelation, since it consists in his perfect union of will and life with the Father (John x. 27-30, 38; xvii. 20-23; iv. 34; viii. 29, 55; XV. 10; xiv. 9); and it is repeatedly made the argumentative basis in the epistles for his quali- fication for his great office of Redeemer (2 Cor. v. 2i6 The Roman System, 21 ; Heb. iv. 15 ; vii. 26; I Pet. ii. 22). Now, if so self-evident a truth as the sinlessness of him who is incarnate deity needs this degree of emphasis, how improbable that a truth, possessing so inferior a de- gree of antecedent probability as the sinlessness of Mary, should be left without a single definite state- ment, direct or indirect. We must therefore main- tain that this doctrine is an extra-scriptural doctrine, whatever else may be said for it. § 1 10. Of course, if Mary was not sinless, she was not immaculately conceived so as to be free from all stain of original sin. And yet it may be worth while to note the utter absence of anything which can be called proof for this doctrine also. Pius IX. said the doctrine was '' revealed." When ? To whom ? Not to writers of the Bible, nor in apostolic times. Cardinal Gibbons says that the doctrine is " implied " in the Scriptures, and in justification of this claim quotes a single verse. Gen. iii. 15, after the Catholic version, founded upon the Vulgate : *' I will put enmi- ties between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed; she [Lat. ipsa\ shall crush thy head." The cardinal's argument is : '' Therefore the enmity of Mary, or the woman, toward the devil, never ad- mitted of any momentary reconciliation, which would have existed if she were ever subject to original sin." Of course, the argument, if it has any force anyway, derives what it has from the word " she." But the Hebrew text has *' he," referring to ^'seed" — that is, to Christ, and the Greek Septuagint translates ahrb^^ although it might have put ahrb^ since the Greek for seed, aTiepfia^ is neuter. It is Not hnmacitlately Conceived. 217 another case of a doctrine founded upon a mistrans- lation. It is, however, possibly unfair to dismiss the Cath- olic argument with no fuller presentation of it than Cardinal Gibbons can give in his brief work. I turn therefore to Heinrich, who, in the volume of his Dogmatische Tlieologie last issued, has devoted a large space to the immaculate conception. It is the more necessary to consider him that he begins his discussion with the affirmation that " the Holy Scrip- tures contain the strongest and clearest arguments for the dogma." ^ Heinrich is always vigorous ; and in this subject he does not rely upon verbal argu- ments, but bases his proof upon what seem to him the indisputable requirements of the case. He rests nothing upon the Vulgate translation, regarding it as a matter of indifference whether the Hebrew reads " he " or '' she." " Even in the latter case the seed of the woman is the conqueror of the serpent, and the woman conquers only by his power. That, however, the ' seed of the woman ' is not a collec- tive, but an individual, the Redeemer, is clear enough from the text itself" ^ He thus abandons the sole Scripture argument which Cardinal Gibbons has pre- sented. But the argument from the nature of the case nevertheless remains, and it is this : '' Messianic prophecy connects with the divine Redeemer his Virgin Mother, and puts her with him in opposition to sin, its originator, and its kingdom. This occurs in the proto-evangel Upon the basis of this original gospel .... the holy Fathers and the ^ op. cit., vol. vii., p. 415. 2 Jifid,^ p. 219. 2i8 The Roman System. later teachers of the Church viewed Mary in antith- esis to the first sinful Eve, from whom destruction took its origin, as the second, sinless Eve, through whom God has given us the Saviour, and who has been placed by his side as his helper in the work of our salvation. In like manner the Church also re- fers the words of the proto-evangel to the mystery of the immaculate conception." ^ But how vain, after all, is the argument ! What evidence that Mary is in any way referred to in this passage ? Equally short do the other passages cited for the doctrine fall. The expressions of the angel at the annunciation, "highly favored," ''the Lord is with thee ;" and Elisabeth's *' blessed art thou among women," are next quoted, and thus explained : '' They express what Mary already was before the Eternal Word became her Son, in order to be worthy of this, her divine motherhood. So long as Mary exists is she the ' highly favored,' the full of grace absolutely, the Lord is with her and she belongs entirely to the Lord."^ Here again the parallel to Eve is empha- sized and developed. Next, the great vision of Rev. xii. is cited. " There can be no doubt that the orig- inal of the woman who symbolizes the Church, the spotless bride of Christ, is Mary." ^ Now, evidently, the only force of the argument to this point is the force of an allegory ; and it is upon open allegory that the remainder of the argument is conducted. '* The Church is right " in referring to Mary the bride of Solomon's song, the King's bride in the psalms, i /^i^., p. 4i6f. 2/3/^ p, 418. 3 Ibid., p. 419. The Argument Allegorical, 219 Jerusalem, Zion, and the temple, etc. Even the " Wisdom " of Proverbs, which refers primarily to the incarnation of the Son of God, also refers to the eternal election, and especially to the immaculate conception, of Mary ! And then, as there are numer- ous types of Christ in the Old Testament, that book is found to abound with types of Mary ^ such as, first of all, Eve, then all the holy women of the Old Tes- tament, then paradise, the true ark, the dove with the olive branch, the rainbow, Jacob's ladder, the tabernacle, the ark of the covenant, the vessels con- taining the manna, the holy temple mount, then every holy mountain, the tower of David, the throne of Solomon, the burning bush, Aaron's rod, Gideon's fleece, etc. Is all this legitimate exegesis ? No ! And, strange to say, Heinrich ultimately does not at all pretend that it is. With admirable candor, he, or more probably his continuator, Gutberlet, says : *^ Ecclesiastical science stands under the direetion of the infallible teaching office of the Chwxh. It is there- fore the Holy Ghost who communicates to the Church the full understanding of the doctrines of revelation. Therefore, by the definition of the im- maculate conception that meaning of the teachings of revelation has been finally fixed which was depos- ited in the same at their inspiration. We know now with infallible certainty that the immaculate concep- tion is really involved in the perfect holiness of Mary, as this is taught in revelation. We are at this point in a better case than we are when by means of purely exegetical helps we arrive, more or less immediately, at an article of faith as the contents of any text of 2 20 The Roman System. Holy Scripture." And, a little before, *' as definitely formulated in the dogmatic bull of Pius IX., our doc- trhic is certainly not contained either in Scripture or in tradition. But these contain certainly the doc- trine of the most perfect holiness and purity of Mary, and of her perfect immunity from every curse and from all the power of the devil. In this the immac- ulate conception is substantially contained."^ That is to say, in plain terms, the Scripture proof of this doctrine must be given up. Whatever it is, the im- maculate conception is not a scriptural doctrine. § III. The case stands even worse with the per- petual virginity of Mary. This is positively against the New Testament. We are repeatedly informed that Jesus had '* brethren " (Matt. xii. 46; Mark iii. 31 ; vi. 3, where '' sisters " are also mentioned ; Luke viii. 19; John ii. 12; vii. 3, 5). The natural meaning of these passages, that Mary bore children to Joseph after Jesus' birth, is strengthened, and one might well say rendered indubitable, by Matt. i. 25, where we read, Joseph '' knew her not //// she had brought forth a son : and he called his name Jesus." Cardi- nal Gibbons follows the uncritical text, and cites the passage, '' brought forth her firstborn son," and these words, though apparently introduced into the text from Luke ii. 7, where they are undisputed, heighten the implication that Mary subsequently to the birth of Jesus had other children. The cardinal maintains that there is no implication of subsequent intercourse between Mary and Joseph in this passage any more than of Samuel's ever seeing Saul in the ^ Ibid., p. 447. Perpetual Virginity, 22 1 passage (i Sam. xv. 35), '^And Samuel came no more to see Saul until the day of his death." But surely there is an immense difference in these pass- ages. It was a matter of course that Samuel would not come after his own death ; and the implication would have been very different if it had read, '^ saw him no more till he had anointed David!' Now, this subsequent expectation, that there should be no visiting after death, is quite reversed in the case of the intercourse of a man and his wife. In case there is nothing to contradict that expectation, it must be regarded as having been fulfilled. In fact, the argument for the perpetual virginity of Mary is really a dogmatic one, and that of a doubtful descent, for it comes straight from Gnosti- cism. The Protestant bishop Bull, the famous de- fender of the Nicene Creed, is quoted by Cardinal Gibbons as saying that " it cannot with decency be imagined that the most holy vessel which was once consecrated to be a receptacle of the deity, should be afterwards desecrated and prof aned by human use!' Here is the old idea, which is the fruitful mother of all the errors of the Roman Church upon the sub- ject of marriage and celibacy, that there is some- thing contaminating and degrading in the functions pertaining to birth. There is absolutely nothing in Scripture^ or right reason for this idea, and the "brethren" of Jesus may well stand as a proof to all 1 Not even such passages as Lev. xii. 6, where a "sin offering" is demanded for a woman after childbirth, can be quoted here; for a "sin offering" in Leviticus does not always imply sin in the ethical sense of that word. 222 The Roman Syste7n, time how differently the divine purity has viewed these subjects from the morahsts of a Church still infected with the leaven of heathenism and Gnosti- cism. The holy use of the flesh is holy. The excrescences of the dogmatic argument are strongly against it. The '' perpetual " virgin, it has been thought, must be a virgin even in giving birth, and hence it has been gravely argued that this event occurred clanso utero. Thus the birth is itself a mira- cle, or, better, it is a docetic phenomenon, something unreal. This will verge perilously near upon making the humanity of Christ all unreal. But into these depths we will not descend.^ To return to Cardinal Gibbons for a moment be- fore leaving this topic, he has sought to evacuate the argument that the brethren of Jesus were his true brothers, and to make them his cousins, by identifying Mary the wife of Clopas, mentioned in John as having been at the cross, with the Mary, the mother of James and Joses, mentioned in Matthew and Mark.^ The only link of connection between the two is the fact that both are at the cross. It is certainly strange that the mother of Jesus should have been designated as the mother of James while describing the crucifixion, and therefore this Mary may have well been another — an argument which we may readily grant to have some force ; but what force it possesses is nullified by the still greater 1 Heinrich discusses this point at considerable length, vol. vii. p. 402 ff. The Fathers support it by allegory, of which that derived from John XX. 19, is a favorite example. 2 Heiiirich's argument (vii., p. 407) is the same, and no more cogent. Drift of Mariolatry, 223 strangeness that would arise from the entire omis- sion of reference to the presence of the Virgin Mary at the cross by Matthew and Mark which would thus be created. We are therefore left to interpret this passage, which is dark, by the plainer passages upon the ^'brethren/' which have been already cited. The general poverty of the cardinal's argument is nowhere better shown than by his effort to prove the perpetual virginity of Mary from the use of the word Virgin in the Apos- tles' and the Nicene Creeds, since ''that epithet cannot be restricted to the time of our Saviour's birth, but must be referred to her whole life, inasmuch as both creeds were compiled long after she had passed azvayT Just as if to call Washington " President Washing- ton " to-day would imply that he died in office ! § 112. After all, the great objection to the Cath- olic view of Mary is not to be gained from individual texts, for it lies rather in the whole drift of Mariolatry away from the tone of biblical piety. As an object of worship, constant and universal, and of entreaty for all conceivable benefits, she would seem to re- quire the divine attributes of omnipresence, omnis- cience, and omnipotence. These are the incom- municable properties of the divine, and can never be the possession of a creature, which, after all, Mary is. Then, there seem to be various Virgins. '' Our Lady of Lourdes " will do things which the Virgin suppli- cated by some poor sufferer in the wilds of the Amer- ican frontier, wha can never go to France, will never grant. That seems neither like a being almost divine, such as Mary, nor even like an ordinary, fair, and 224 ^^^ Ro7nan System, kind earthly woman. Why will the Virgin work certain miracles in connection with some images of herself which she will never work elsewhere ? Who is the true Virgin, the Queen in heaven, or the black image in the church at Rome ? And worse yet, if possible, the entire conception of the mediatorial office of Mary is an affi'ont and impertinence toward the "one mediator" (i Tim. ii. 5) between God and man, Jesus Christ. Those views of God which make other mediators necessary, and particularly that view of Christ which renders him the implacable Judge, needing the tender pleading of his mother to soften his heart toward penitents, are born of ignorance of what our God and our Redeemer are ! How the love of God is emphasized by Jesus in that micro- evangel, '^ God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son" (John iii. 16), and how the perfect sym- pathy of the Redeemer with sinners, since he was *^in all points tempted Hke as we are" (Heb. iv. 15), forms the burden of one whole epistle ! Place by the side of these texts Liguori's sentences : " At the command of the Virgin all things obey^ even God',' and *' The salvation of all depends upon their being favored and protected by Mary. He who is pro- tected by Mary will be saved ; he who is not will be lost ;" and it will be safe to leave to the religious sense of any candid Catholic to find suitable words to characterize them. Said one young man, in proc- ess of education for the Protestant ministry, who had been brought up a Catholic : '' When I read the prayers to the Virgin which I used to employ, I shudder." Infallibility Again, 225 § 113. I pause to interject at this point the re- mark that our review of the Roman system has brought us again face to face with the infalHble authority of the Church. The doctrine of Mary cannot be maintained from the Scriptures, but re- quires for its support, as does even its interpretation of the Bible, an appeal to the teaching office of the Church. We have already noted that the whole doc- trine of the Church depends upon the doctrine of in- fallibility; that the identification of the visible with the true Church halts till infallibility is assumed; that cath- olicity and unity cannot be established till her exclu- siveness is proved by her authority to declare who is, and who is not, a member of the body of Christ ; that her connection with Peter depends upon her own traditions, or upon her authority ; and that her holiness is in the same case. Now we find her doc- trine of Mary, one of her most distinguishing doc- trines at the present hour, resting solely upon her authority to teach the truth without Scripture au- thority, and even against it. The Roman Church, when it presents so great a doctrine as infallibility for the acceptance of Christians, certainly ought to be wiUing that it should be tested. But the great and decisive test is to be found in the facts. Has the Church displayed infallibility ? Is she right, for example, in this doctrine of Mary? When we ex- amine it we find that it depends upon that very in- fallibility for its proof Infallibility is to be tested by this doctrine, and the doctrine itself rests upon infallibility ! Truly, the original, and the only inde- pendent doctrine that Rome has \s her unfounded 15 226 The Roman System. and disproved claim to authority to prescribe men's faith. § 114. I have reserved for separate consideration the history of the doctrine of Mary. We may start in our review of this with the fifth century, for Cardinal Newman says ^ that " there was in the first ages no public and ecclesiastical recognition of the place which Saint Mary holds in the economy of grace ; this was reserved for the fifth century.'* True, there were some indications of what was to be ere this. Cardinal Newman mentions the disputed passage in Justin, Apol. I. 6, as a proof of the worship of angels at an earlier date. The passage reads in the cardinal's translation thus : '' But him (God) and the Son who came from him, and taught us these things, and the host of the other good angels who follow and re- semble him, and the prophetic Spirit, we worship and adore, paying them a reasonable and true honor, and not grudging to deliver to any one who wishes to learn, as we ourselves also have been taught." ^ I will leave this passage to make what impression it may, simply remarking that Bishop Coxe, in the American edition of the translation of the Ante- Nicene Fathers, has inserted a parenthesis which, if justified by the general teaching of Justin, removes every difficulty, and which finds no obstacle in the Greek original, as follows : '* Both him and the Son (who came forth from him, and taught us these things, and the host of the other good angels who follow and are made like to him), and the prophetic 1 Development of Christian Doctrine, \., iv., ii., 10, 2 Op. cit., ii., X., iii., 2, History of the Doctrme of Mary. 227 Spirit, we worship and adore/' It is a fact, whether this passage is an illustration of it or not, that '' since the end of the second century there has always been a kind of side-rehgion, a subterranean religion of the second order, varying according to the differences of the peoples, but everywhere aUke in its gross superstition, its naive docetism, its dual- ism and polytheism. ... It is the worship of angels (demi-gods) and demons, the high valuation of pictures, relics, and amulets, a weaker or stronger enthusiasm for the severest asceticism (whence also strongly dualistic conceptions), and the anxious observance of certain words, signs, rites, ceremonies, places, and times, which are regarded as holy. There probably never was a time when Christendom was free from this ' Christianity,' and there will never be one in which it will entirely overcome it."^ Beginning the history, then, in the fifth century, it was the adoption of the word Theotokos, Mother of God, in designation of the Virgin, which gave the first great impulse to her cult. Yet, in spite of the extravagant expressions of Cyril in his sermon after the Council of Ephesus there was no especial form prescribed for her worship. After the Synod of Nice (787) statues and pictures of the Virgin became common both in the East and in the West, candles were lighted before them, incense burned, and prayers offered. The Christianization of Germany opened a new field for the worship of the Virgin among a stock which had always been noted for its reverence for woman. With the eleventh century the venera- 1 Harnack, Dogmefigeschichte^ vol. ii., p. 441 f. 228 The Ro7nan System. tion of Mary took on new proportions. Peter Dami- ani calls her the perfected creature, styling her " deificata " (made divine). Now an office was pre- scribed, and a day consecrated to her, Saturday. Hymns to her became frequent. Numerous mon- asteries and convents were dedicated to her. The orders favored her. With the Reformation arose in Catholic circles, by reaction, especially among the Jesuits, a new enthusiasm for the Virgin. And, from this time on, the approach was made with in- creasing rapidity to the general acceptance and the promulgation of the immaculate conception.^ Pas- chasius Radbertus (d. 865), who also promulgated the doctrine of transubstantiation, declared that Mary was already sanctified in the womb of her mother. Anselm of Canterbury was against the immaculate conception. Yet in 1140, at Lyons, France, a festival was established in honor of the im- maculate conception. This led Bernard of Clairvaux to oppose the doctrine. True, he said, Mary was already sanctified in the womb, and was also pre- served from all actual sin ; but she was not immacu- lately conceived, else her parents also must have been thus conceived. Aquinas opposed the immacu- late conception on the ground that Christ was the Redeemer of all men, and so of her also, which he would not have been if she was free from every stain of original, as well as actual, sin. But scho- lasticism soon found a way to meet this difficulty, and it was held that the anticipatory operation of redemption had provided for her immaculate concep- 1 Harnack, op, cit., vol. iii., p. 558 ff. Gutberlet^ s Version, 229 tion. Scotus, therefore, regarded the immaculate conception as '^probable," and after him the Fran- ciscans contended for the doctrine, in opposition to the Dominicans, who followed their own great theo- logian, Aquinas. The outcome of the contest has been already sufficiently told in the earlier part of this chapter. § 115. We are fortunate in having a general re- view of this history by Gutberlet in Heinrich. After quoting Harnack's remark in his Dogmengeschichte ^ that '* the history of the veneration of Mary is throughout a history in which the superstitious, ecclesiastical, and monastic rehgion has worked up- ward from its dark depths and has determined theology, which only slowly submitted to it," he says : — " The real state of the case is as follows : The passages of the Holy Scripture which treat of the excellences of Mary would admit, considered gram- matically alone, a dry, meager interpretation, such as heretics and other despisers of the veneration of Mary maintain. But when we consider the person to whom those excellences are ascribed, they must be under- stood in a way to correspond to the high dignity of the same : the conferment of grace, for example, must be conceived as one corresponding to the divine motherhood, and hence to the highest dignity and function which a creature can receive. The more, now, Christendom gains a consciousness of this dignity, the more perfectly will the fullness of Mary's grace be apprehended and comprehended. We must certainly grant that the dignity of the 230 The Roma7t System, Mother of God was progressively brought to the consciousness of the Church from beneath upward by the Christian people, by the pious and un- sophisticated, especially also by the monks, and that, above all, by practical veneration/ Here also the proverb holds : What the understanding of the wise perceives not, that the childlike heart practiceth in simplicity. From century to century the venera- tion of Mary grew more profound, the conception of the dignity of the Mother of God, and of the full- ness of the grace thereby given her, more mighty. Consequently the conviction was gradually formed that such a gift of grace was irreconcilable with original sin, and the ' simplices ' celebrated the im- maculate conception and affirmed it regardless of the dogmatic difficulties which were thereby created.^ Wherefore theology was now compelled to take a hand, whether for evil or for good : the discussion of the subject was forced upon her. She maintained for a long time an attitude of disinclination. The most correct among theologians even raised their protest, maintaining, to be sure, with all Christen- dom, that the highest degree of grace was bestowed upon the Mother of God — yes, even explaining it more exactly and amplifying it, but regarding, on the other hand, the immaculate conception as irreconcil- 1 It is true, then, according to both parties, that monasticism is the ground in which Mariolatry has largely flourished. The probability of the purity of the product will be judged according to the estima- tion of the source. Of this, Protestants have a poor opinion. 2 It is not "dogmatic" difficulties which Protestantism chiefly feels, but exegetical and practical. But of the Scriptures the monks of the fifth century were in general profoundly ignorant. Argument froTfi Development, 231 able with other dogmas. Yet the high conception of the grace of the Mother of God became stronger, the difficulties were more and more resolved; or their resolution found more and more recognition : and so the time came when all Christendom (to speak the substantial truth) — people, theologians, and hierarchy — w^ere at one in its recognition, and thereby the notes of a traditional article of faith were fully given, and the definition could be pronounced. " This was, in a certain sense, a movement from beneath upward, but, in fact, the first movement be- gan above, and thus returned to its starting point, or, more accurately, it remained ever on its original high plane. The teaching Church gave to Christendom those excellences of the Mother of God in which the immaculate conception is involved; the hierarchy superintended and guided the veneration of Mary; under the oversight of the same have people and theologians recognized in the perfections of Mary this of the immaculate conception also." ^ § 116. Now, evidently, we face here a quite differ- ent state of things from that which has so often con- fronted us in the examination of Roman doctrine. We have here what Cardinal Newman styled a " de- velopment," an expression which, since his work upon this subject, has acquired a still greater currency from the rise of the theory of evolution in natural science, and from the application of theories of de- velopment to all history, and to all departments of human inquiry. We have the steady progress of an idea from comparatively small beginnings, by means ^ op. cit,, vol. vii., p. 448 f. ^7,2 The Roman System. of successive and slight additions, to the fully matured doctrine of the Virgin, as sharing the government of the world, as possessing intercessory offices, as the object of '' hyperduleia," and as not only sinless, but immaculately conceived. Is not this development one of the strongest possible arguments in favor of the truth of the doctrine ? In its light, are not the faint beginnings, not merely in spite of their faintness, but in consequence of that faintness, positive proofs of the doctrine ? Is it not one of those truths which, not of immediate necessity to the infant Church, or belonging to the central doctrines of the Chris- tian system, were merely indicated at first, but which increasing Hght has brought out into an ever clearer relief? In respect to the supremacy of Peter, it is a sufficient refutation to show that noth- ing was known of such a supremacy in the New Testament times or in the earliest ages of the Church, for if there was any such supremacy, it was estab- lished formally by Christ, and was necessary to the very being, and not merely to the well-being of the Church. The infallibility of the pope stands in the same category. If the present pope is infallible at all, it is in consequence of his official character, and so all popes, simply because they are popes, are therefore infallible. Hence the proof of falHbility in a single pope destroys the whole superstructure of infallibility. And the same holds true in respect to the supreme deity of Christ, which Protestants as well as Catholics accept. If we could show that the New Testament, or the first generation of fathers after the Church emerged from the guidance of the Newmaii' s Criteria, 233 apostles, knew nothing of his divine glory, and did not cherish the same attitude toward him which we cherish, the argument for his divinity would fall to the ground. But the case is not so with this doc- trine, the doctrine of Mary. It has no such relative importance as that of the deity of Christ, no such constitutive character as the supremacy of Peter, or the consequent doctrine of infallibility. Does it not have its stronghold in the fact of its slow develop- ment? § 117. In reply to these questions it may be ad- mitted that the argument from development is one of the strongest arguments which can be urged for any doctrine. But it must be remembered that there are not only developments, but also degenerations. Not every progress by small increments to a definite goal deserves to be called a true development ; and the question with respect to the doctrine of Mary, as held in the Roman Church, will be. Is it a true prod- uct of development ? or, is it an example of degener- ation ? Cardinal Newman, in his famous book upon The Development of CJiristian Doctrine^ has virtually ac- knowledged the correctness of the distinction which has here been drawn. Indeed, he more than virtu- ally acknowledges this, for he has a division of his book upon '' Doctrinal Developments Viewed Rela- tively to Doctrinal Corruptions," in which he pro- ceeds to give the criteria upon which the decision is to be made whether any movement is a development or a corruption. These criteria are, in general, cor- rect. They are seven in number: First, preserva- 234 The Roman System, tion of the type, as a child develops into a man, and not into some animal; second, continuity of princi- ple, by which is meant some determinative idea, such as the principle of private judgment in Protestantism; third, power of assimilation, or, as it might be stated, adaptability to and harmony with other truth ; fourth, logical sequence; fifth, anticipation of the future, or the fact that hints of an idea to be fully developed later will be hkely to be found at an early point ; sixth, conservative action upon the past ; seventh, '' chronic vigor," or, in simpler phrase, duration, the power of survival. With these " notes " of a sound development, we may, in general, agree. I shall restate them in my own form, more for the purpose of giving them a closer apparent connection with a fundamental prin- ciple, than because they are not reasonably adequate in the form which the cardinal has assigned. We must start, then, with the assumption of the perfection of the revelation given in our Lord Jesus Christ. Catholics will agree with this position, how^- ever they may affirm the real character of the in- spiration of the Church. At least, eveiy Catholic will admit the only position which is of importance to Protestantism in this connection, that no subse- quent revelation can in any way contradict or cor- rect the teachings of Jesus, who, as Incarnate God, was the truth itself Tt is but another way of stat- ing the same principle w^hen it is said that all Chris- tian truth will have its root in the teachings of Jesus Christ, and since, for us at least, his teachings are identical with the truths delivered by the inspired Criteria of Development, 235 writers of the New Testament, this is the same as to maintain that all Christian truth will exist, in germ at least, in the New Testament. Subsequent doc- trines, however different their form, or however larger their apparent inclusion, will only unfold, as the flower does, what was formerly infolded, as in the bud. A developing idea " changes," as the car- dinal says, "in order to remain the same." ^ From this assumption we draw four notes of a sound development of Christian doctrine. First, the development must begin from a germ actually pres- ent in the recorded instruction of Jesus Christ and his apostles ; second, it must proceed according to the laws of logical sequence ; third, it must agree with other established Christian doctrines (assimila- tion) ; fourth, its developed form must agree with its original in substance and vital portion (conservation of the past), or it must not contradict sound biblical exegesis. Now, it is upon these criteria of a sound develop- ment that we pronounce, contrary to the cardinal, that the doctrine of Mary in the present Roman sys- tem is manifestly false. There is no " germ " in the Scriptures ; and, however logical the sequence may be with which the idea of the immaculate conception, once introduced, has progressed, it lacks completely the third and fourth criteria, since it neither assimi- lates with other, indisputably Christian doctrines, such as the sole mediatorship of Jesus Christ and the sinfulness of humanity, nor can it justify itself by exegesis. All these points have been already fully 1 op. cit., i., i., i., 7. 236 The Roman System. discussed. The argument from development must therefore be judged to be a failure. We have in the doctrine of Mary in the CathoHc Church a specimen, not of legitimate historical development, but of '' cor- ruption," of doctrinal degeneration. It agrees only with the distinctively Roman system, particularly with the idea of infallibility — which Gutberlet defi- nitely asserts to have given the decisive element in the outcome, and which Cardinal Newman himself requires in order to support such a development as this is — with saint worship in general, with the idea of merits, and with all that sacramental system which we are now to consider. Its affiliations are against it rather than for it, for we have found these doc- trines in part already — and shall find them more and more so as we proceed — we have found them de- partures from scriptural simplicity and scriptural truth, and therefore illegitimate in a professedly Christian system. CHAPTER IV. THE SACRAMENTS. § ii8. Definition of the Sacraments in Gen- eral. A sacrament is defined in the Roman Cate- chism as '' the visible sign of invisible grace, instituted for our justification." ^ These words are taken from Augustine, but they bear in the theology of these later days a sense beyond that intended by their author. The sacrament is not a mere sign. The Council of Trent says (to give a positive form to its negative definitions) that '' grace is given through the sacraments, so far as God's part is concerned, always and to all men;" and that "by the sacraments of the new law grace is conferred through the act performed {ex opere operatd)!'^^ That is to say, the sacrament not only symboHzes the grace, but it also conveys the grace it signifies. Or, as Cardinal Gibbons de- fines it, " A sacrament is a visible sign instituted by Christ, by which grace is conveyed to our souls." ^ § 119. Evidently everything will depend for the meaning of the sacraments upon the idea of '' con- veyance," or upon the meaning of the phrase '' ex opere operato!' The Council of Trent itself defines it by parallel phrases, such as '' The sacraments of the new law contain the grace which they signify," ^ Cat. Rom., ii., i., iii. ^ Schaff, vol. ii., pp. 1 19-122, for this and following quotations. 3 F. F., p. 304. 237 238 The Roma7t System, ** they confer that grace upon those who do not place an obstacle thereto." The meaning of these phrases is made the clearer from the agreement which exists between them and previous scholastic writers, particularly Duns Scotus, Thomas Aquinas, and Gabriel Biel. The latter expresses their com- mon meaning most plainly in the passage : " The sacrament is said to confer grace ex operc operato^ so that grace is conferred from the very fact that the work, viz., the sacrament, is exhibited, unless the obstacle of mortal sin prevents ; so that besides the exliibitioji of the sign openly exhibited no good mo- tion of the heart is required in him who receives it!' ^ This explanation, which is, as it were, the context of the Council of Trent's own utterances, renders the meaning of the council indubitable. It is, accord- ingly, Catholic doctrine that when the sacraments are administered, from the simple fact that the thing has been done, grace is conveyed to the recipient of the outward symbols, whether he exercises or does not exercise faith. § 120. Mohler endeavors, in accordance with the entire tendency of his book, to give a more spiritual interpretation to the matter. He supplies the words " a Christo " with ex opere operato, which he says is put for " qiiod operatus est Christus '* (through that which Christ has done). He con- tinues : *' The sacraments convey a divine power merited for us by Christ, which can be originated by no human disposition, by no spiritual frame and effort, but is given by God simply for Christ's sake 1 Quoted in the original Latin by Hase, p. 347. The Opus Operatum. 239 in the sacrament. Of course, man must receive it, and must therefore be receptive, which is expressed in penitence and pain for sin, in the longing for divine help and in trustful faith ; but he can only receive it, and only be receptive. Accordingly, this doctrine preserves the objectivity of the divine grace, and pre- vents us from reducing the effects of the sacrament to the merely subjective, and from cherishing the illusion that the same consist merely in a moral effect, in the human feeHngs, thoughts, and resolves that are excited upon its reception, as at the sight of a picture representing the death of Christ, or that precede the reception." And he concludes, ^' the opus operatum does not posit a merely divine activity and involve the inactivity of the man in question." He supports himself by an appeal to Bellarmine, who says that to the sacrament are required, among other things, '' on the part of the recipient, will, faith, and penitence ;" and defines finally as follows, that " the sacraments conferring grace ex opere operato is the same as conferring grace by the operation of the sacramental action instituted by God for this pur- pose, not by the merit of the agent or of the recipi- ent." ' By such representations the operation ascribed by CathoHcs to the sacraments would be essentially modified. But these are apologetic modifications. They do not prove that such is the Roman doctrine. Rather they prove that the Roman system, in all its strict logical severity and externality, has never been received by all its nominal adherents. § 121. To the vahdity of the sacraments are re- 1 SymboUk, pp, 255 ff. 240 The Ro77ia7t Systein, quired three things, first, intention ; second, the form or the word, in baptism, " I baptize thee in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost;" and third, the matter, in baptism water. The subject of '* intention " alone gives any difficulty. The Coun- cil of Trent defined it thus : "" There is required in ministers, when they effect and confer the sacra- ments, the intention at least of doing what the Church does." ^ Intention is distinguished into two parts, external intention, or the intention seriously to administer the sacrament in the form usual in the Church; and internal intention, or the intention really to do what the Church does in the sacraments. A mere immersing in water, which was not designed for baptism, though in sport the words " I baptize thee, etc.," were employed, would be no valid bap- tism ; but, on the other hand, though every form were scrupulously observed, if the officiating priest did not intend in his soul to celebrate the sacrament and effect its special work, it would also be entirely invalid. § 122. Upon these two forms of intention there has always been active discussion.^ The Gallican party generally held that the outward intention was enough, for which their great dogmatic argument was the idea of the opus opcj^atinn, and their great practical one the uncertainty which would be caused to hang over every ecclesiastical function, if the valid- ity of the sacraments were made to depend upon a secret intention which could be known to no one 1 Schaff, vol. ii., p. 121. 2 See the rhume in Perrone, vol. iii., p. 54 f., and in Hase, p. 349 f. Intention, 241 but the officiating priest himself. But this party is no longer extant in the Roman Church. The Italian party, which held the other view, has become triumphant ; and the principal argument which they have employed is one that accords well with their whole system, the necessity, if the full idea of the priesthood is to be retained, that the priest should be a real dispenser of the mysteries of God — that is, that without his distinct purpose to dispense them they should not be given. By a strange inconsist- ency in a party which makes so much of the neces- sity of an infallible certainty in matters of religion, they pass very lightly over the difficulty of the Gal- licans, and say that we must suppose there is the intention when the sacrament is administered. God can provide the "interior disposition ;" and some- thing must be left to his providence. We shall be perfectly safe in regarding the real Catholic doctrine as this, that the '' internal " intention is necessary to the actuahty of every sacrament. Without it nothing gracious is done. The condemnation which Alexan- der VIII. pronounced upon the proposition : " The baptism performed by a minister who observes every external rite and the form of baptism, but within, in his heart, resolves with himself, ' I do not iiltend to do what the Church does,' is vaKd;" puts, by a de- cision probably ex cathedra, the authoritative inter- pretation upon the Council of Trent. We should note, finally, that the personal worthiness of the priest, or his intention to do good or evil through the sacraments, does not affect their validity. § 123. The number of the sacraments, after long 16 2^2 The Roma7i System. vacillation, illustrating the character of the tendency which brought about the result as a purely extra- biblical one, was at last formally set by the Council of Trent at seven, all of which were declared to have been "instituted by Christ." They are, baptism, confirmation, the Lord's Supper, penance, extreme unction, order, and matrimony. All are not neces- sary for all believers, nor are all of equal dignity. § 124. Ideal. As to this, little is to be said, for Mohler, upon whom we must rely at this point,^ contents himself with a brief expansion of the par- ticulars brought out in the Roman Catechism. Just as man needs a visible church, placed as he is in a visible world and in a corporeal frame, so he needs the visible sacraments to call to mind and to fix in his attention and mental grasp the invisible grace of God. Then, the sacraments are pledges and seals of the promises of God. It is difficult to bring man to faith ; hence in the New Testament various means are employed to assist faith, among which are the sacraments. Then, they are channels, which convey the grace of God {quasi alvetis^ like a riverbed). They are the means of confession, and the tokens by which Christians know each other. And, as man has vol- untarily submitted to the sinful rule of the world, so he is here compelled to make use of the elements of the world in his spiritual elevation, thus humbhng himself to the use of things apparently mean. § 125. Protestants, first of all, reject the number seven. There is no evidence in the New Testament that our Lord intended to institute any sacrament ^ op. cit., p. 254 f. Number of the Sacrameitts. 243 except those two universally recognized in the Chris- tian Church, viz., baptism and the Lord's Supper. The insufificiency of the Roman proof from Scripture may be seen from the fact that the only support for that important sacrament, extreme unction, is to be found in James v. 14, 15. A much clearer argument might have been founded upon John xiii. 14, 15, for feet washing as a sacrament, for our Lord says ex- plicitly : " I have given you an example, that ye also should do as I have done to you." Yet the Roman Church has never made it a sacrament, though it is annually observed at Rome as a holy ceremony. The difficulty arising from this paucity of scriptural proof is increased by the consideration that the Ro- man Church says that all the seven sacraments were '' instituted by Christ." If this is so, they ought to be in the New Testament, or at least they ought to appear in the early history of the Church. But neither of these expectations is fulfilled. John of Damascus (flourished about 750) betrays no knowl- edge of any sacraments besides the two received by all Christians. Neither do the Greek fathers before him. Peter Lombard is the first to fix upon the number seven, and the Council of Florence (1429) was the first authoritative body to settle upon this number. Such a state of things is inconceivable if the Roman doctrine is right. § 126. Still more strongly, if possible, do Protes- tants object to the opus operatiim. They have no objection to make to the objectivity of grace, and do not themselves by any means maintain the position that its effects consist simply in the feelings which 244 T^^^ Roman System, so affecting an exhibition as the Lord's Supper is well calculated to produce. There is an objective work of the sacraments which all Protestants would assert, however they might differ at other points, viz., the work of pledging in God's name his grace to those who have fulfilled the conditions for its recep- tion. There is no special objection in any Protes- tant's mind to the points which Mohler makes in his summary of the Catechism, except to the analogy of the *' riverbed " and its implications, to the impli- cation also of the kind of the "need" — that is, the indispensable necessity — of the sacraments as visible tokens to man placed in a world of sense. Still, even here the Protestant recognizes a relative necessity. But all this is not the optis operatum. That phrase interprets the objectivity of grace in such a way as to render it independent of the spiritual condition of the recipient, especially and emphatically of his faith. It makes grace work mechanically and externally, and thus transforms religion into an affair of forms and ceremonies, instead of one of the innermost soul. All this seems to Protestants a radical error. Nor have Protestants any objection to the idea that mortal sin alone bars the entrance of grace to the heart. They hold, however, that all sin is mortal sin, w^hen it is indulged and unrepented of. Hence a living faith is necessary to the reception of grace, for this alone makes a place for repentance. The oppo- site of mortal sin is a living union of the heart with God, which is therefore necessary to the right recep- tion of a sacrament ; and such union is faith. Now, doubtless, here as elsewhere, the difference between Faith Necessary to a Sacrament, 245 Catholics and Protestants depends upon a difference in the conception of faith. The Roman Church views faith in various ways, whereas Protestants mean by that faith which is essential to the reception of grace the act of the will in surrendering itself abso- lutely to God, the fundamental and irreversible choice of God as Lord. A man must either have this faith, or not have it. If he has no faith, he is an enemy, a rebel toward God. Will any candid CathoHc say that a man in active rebellion to God does not inter- pose an '' obstacle " to the reception of grace through the sacraments ? Hence Protestants must deny most positively that ^^ no good motion of the heart is required in him who receives " grace through the sacrament. That, viz., faith, is the precise thing which is needed. To say that God can bestow forgiveness through the euchar- ist, for example, without faith upon the part of the recipient, is the same as to say that God can agree with a man who disagrees with him, or that he can approve a man who is, at the moment of approval, in sin. Such doctrine needs only to be clearly apprehended to be rejected by either Protestant or Catholic. Then, in a large portion of the Christian life, the conferment of grace is the same with sancti- fication through the Holy Ghost. Now, the con- dition of the reception of the Holy Ghost is faith, John xiv. 21; XV. 4; xiv. 15-17. Particularly in- structive here are the examples of the conferment of the Holy Ghost recorded in the book of The Acts. And finally, the idea of the opus operatitm con- founds union with God (which is the thing with 246 The Roman System. which the sacrament has to do) with union with the Church. This is a fundamental error, since there are bad men, condemned before God, and '' sons of perdition," in the Church now as in the original apostolic college. Thus the opits operatiim repeats the fundamental fallacy of the entire Roman system. § 127. A few words should be added with refer- ence to the doctrine of intention. Protestants feel no particular necessity of replying to this doctrine for their own sake, since it does not affect them as it does the Catholic, for their idea of the efficacy of the sacraments is quite independent of it. The be- liever can erect the symbols of the body and blood of Christ into a true and gracious sacrament for himself by the adoring contemplation of the divine Redeemer through faith, whether the minister *' in- tend " to perform the sacramental service or not. But the bearing of the doctrine upon the Roman sys- tem itself is of the most radical and important charac- ter. That whole system is centered about the neces- sity of infallible certainty. This is the a priori proof of the infallibility of the pope, of the objectivity of the sacraments. One must be able to rely with entire certainty upon the assurance of the Church that he is saved. But now, what if the Church is itself with- out orders and without sacraments ? What if, some- where in the long line, there has been a fatal gap vitiating the orders, and so the capability of perform- ing sacerdotal functions, in all the succeeding line which is supposed to have handed down the apos- tolic grace to our day? Who can be sure that there is not ? It is not enough to show that all the popes Intention mtd Certainty. 247 have been regularly consecrated, and that all their consecrators have also been, so far as the outward form is concerned, which alone can become the ob- ject of historical investigation and proof This would of itself be an impossibility. But, if it were done, who can say that there has always been the '' inten- tion " ? that among all the bad men who have performed the rites of religion while mocking at its reality, there have not been some who willed that no orders should be conferred at those vital points upon which the whole validity of the Church since depends ? Perrone can only answer to this awful doubt that we '' must trust providence." The w^hole Roman edifice of infallible certainty, then, has crumbled, has it ? We must *' trust " ! What is that better than Protestantism ? And is it not much worse than Protestantism, for this demands only an immediate trust in God now and here, while Roman- ism demands that we should trust him, that in all this almost immeasurably long, and certainly im- mensely complicated, system of consecrations for two thousand years, there has never been a single lapse in the heart of any evil man, leading through lack of ^' intention " to the invalidity of Church orders ? The CathoHcs may rejoin, Is it more difficult to trust God for a great thing than a small ? The Protestant will, indeed, reply. No ; but he will also ask, Is it worse to trust him for a small thing than a great ? to be content with simple trust than to demand a '' certainty " which, after all, requires trust, and that a trust which is unbiblical in its character and enormous in the credulity which it demands and 248 The Ro7?tdn System, the tax which it imposes upon the confidence of the believer? No! Either the doctrine of ** intention " must be surrendered, or the whole system of papal certainty goes by the board, and the very heart of the Roman system is lost. And into what fearful uncertainty is one educated in the Catholic promises thereby thrust when he considers such words as those of Bellarmine : " No one can be certain with the certainty of faith that he receives a true sacra- ment, because the sacrament cannot be vaHd without the intention of the minister, and no man can see an- other's intention!' ^ And hence even the officiating priest, when he knows that he, for his own part, has the '' intention," docs not knozu whethcj^ it is of any avail, because he cannot know whether he himself has been truly ordained. Everything is thus gone ! 1 Quoted by Littledale, p. 22, from Dispiit. Controv., de Justific. CHAPTER V. BAPTISM AND CONFIRMATION. § 128. The Roman Catechism defines baptism as follows : '^ The sacrament of regeneration through water in the word." ^ A literal application of the text, ^^ Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God ;" ^ and still more the objective tendency of the whole system of. thought, lead to the most comprehensive interpreta- tion of this word " regeneration ;" and hence we must further define baptism as the sacrament in which the guilt and penalty of original sin, and of actual sin committed before baptism, are washed away and re- moved," so that neither temporal nor eternal punish- ment is to be feared in respect to them,^ though evil desires are not all miraculously removed.*^ It is also the avenue by which grace comes into the soul.^ It is hence necessary to eternal salvation,^ although the purpose to be baptized, if hindered by some unex- pected and unavoidable obstacle, suffices for baptism itself,^ and heretical baptism is valid.^ Such are the main ideas. Of more purely formal elements we may note that the matter of this sacra- ment is water ; the form, the words ^^ I baptize thee in the name, etc." It may be performed in cases of ^ Cat. Rom., ii., ii., iv. 2 John iii. 5. 3 Cat. Rom., ii., ii., xxxi., xxxiii. * Ibid., ii., ii., xxxiii. 5 Ibid., ii., ii., xxxii. ^ Ibid., ii., ii., xxxviii. ' Ibid., ii., ii., xxv. ^ Ibid., ii., ii., xxix. 9 Schaff, ii., p. 123. 249 250 The Romaii System, necessity by any person, even a heretic, a Jew, or a woman/ Such baptism is valid if with the intention to do what the Church does.^ It cannot be repeated without sacrilege, since it impresses upon the recipi- ent a '* character," which is indelible.^ However, a person who may not be known to have been bap- tized may be baptized again with the formula : ** If thou hast been baptized, I do not baptize thee again ; but if thou hast not been baptized, I baptize thee, etc." The word character, which has here been intro- duced for the first time, obtains its ecclesiastical meaning from its literal by a natural transfer. It signifies a stamp, a seal, such as was impressed upon coins. The ''character militaris'' was impressed upon soldiers as a mark of the imperial service, and remained indelible, although they might forsake the service. *' Thus baptism stamps a man indelibly as a Christian, and enables him to receive the other sacraments ; confirmation makes him a good soldier of Christ, and conveys particular powers of confess- ing the faith ; by holy order he becomes a minister of Christ and is empowered to perform certain sacred functions." ^ Hence these three sacraments are not to be repeated. § 129. The antithesis of CathoHcism and Protes- tanism is not so sharp at this point as at many others. Granting that the Roman idea of the sacra- ment in general is right, Protestants have, of course, no objection to urge on their own account to the 1 Cat. Rom., ii., ii., xviii. 2 Council of Trent, Schaff, ii., p. 123. 3 Cat. Rom., ii., ii., xli. * Catholic Dictionary, art. " Character." Heretical Baptism, 251 extension of valid baptism far beyond the limits of the Roman Church. This liberality of construction comes undoubtedly from the same tendency as has already been noted under the head of the exclusiveness of the Church/ the tendency to provide, out of mere humanity, a way of salvation for those who without their own fault are debarred from membership in the Catholic Church. But this, as well as that, is incon- sistent with the fundamental principles of the Church and. destructive of its claims. And so the Roman theologian is put by the divergence of his system and his heart between the two horns of a dilemma, neither of which he can take, (i) If the baptism of heretics, such as all our Protestant baptism is, is suf- ficient unto salvation, then the external Church is not necessary unto salvation, however helpful it may be, and hence it is not identical and conterminous with the invisible Church, and the whole Roman system col- lapses ; or (2) if the system is to be saved by the denial of the validity of heretical baptism, multi- tudes of infants, whose parents intend to do what the Church does, and give them what they suppose to be baptism, are lost for no fault or omission of their own. Take the Church and you lose the infants ; take the infants and you lose the Church. In either case irreparable harm is done. § 130. Protestantism, in general,^ is saved from this ^ Comp. §^ 46 and 47 above. *^ I am aware that a small portion of Protestants teach infant regen- eration through baptism. They must logically teach its necessity to salvation and have thus let the nose of a very large camel into the tent. But, in the general repudiation of their position by others, we may leave them without further reference. 253 The Rornaii System. dilemma by its rejection of the idea which involves Catholicism in difficulty. It denies that baptism is necessary to salvation. Baptism has a place in the remission of sins, for Peter preached upon the day of Pentecost : '' Repent and be baptized unto the remis- sion of your sins." But this is the connection of order, of outward confession, of the divine sealing testi- mony, not a relation of absolute necessity. True, in the text already quoted, regeneration is said to be of ^' water and the Spirit,^' but in the immediate context it is twice described only as a birth by the Spirit. We read, '' He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved,^^ and, '' He that beHeveth not shall be damned ;" ^ but never, '' He that is not baptized shall be damned.^^ Nor are the dogmatic grounds upon which the doctrine is built more satisfactory. Prot- estants agree in general with Rome in practicing infant baptism, but they do it as an expression of the need of regenerating grace, as a prayer that that grace may be given, as an expression of their hope that it will be, and as a solemn dedication to God. They do not repeat it. But they regard as essential to its validity the after training which a child can re- ceive only from Christian parents or sponsors, and to them the baptism of heretics and infidels who will not train up a child in Christian principles and prac- tices, would seem to have little meaning, and hence little validity. It is not the purpose of this work to charge upon Roman theology all the vagaries of Roman practice. But when we see the absurdities into which the 1 Mark xvi., i6. Confirmation, 253 Roman theory has led enlightened men Hke the Jesuit missionaries in North America, some of whom baptized the infants of Huron Indians, without their knowledge and under the pretense of giving them medicine in sickness, we behold what is a veritable rediictio ad absiirdum of the whole doctrine. § 131. As to the so-called sacrament of confirma- tion, it is necessary to say but little. The Roman Catechism defines the " form " as this : " I sign thee with the sign of the cross and confirm thee with the chrism of salvation in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit." ^ The matter is the oil mixed with balsam. The question between Protestants and Catholics here is simply whether there is any warrant for the sacramental character which the latter have assigned. The arguments for this are given by Cardinal Gibbons as well as by any one. He urges the examples in the book of The Acts (viii. 14-17, and xix. 5, 6) of a laying on of hands in connection with the gifts of the Holy Ghost. But these gifts were miraculous, as is evident from the second of these passages : " The Holy Ghost came on them ; and they spake zvith tongues, and prophesied^ A strong passage, for its implications, would be 2 Cor. i. 21, were there any proof of the existence of the sacra- ment otherwise ; but with the dubious proof which can be derived from history, and with the uncertainty which must attend a sacrament having no more clearly defined a character than this — it merely con- firms what was once done in baptism — we must de- ^ Cat. Rom., ii., iii., ii. 254 ^^^ Roman System, cline to see in the citation any element of proof. If Peter ever *' confirmed," then upon one occasion the essential gift of confirmation, viz., the Holy Spirit, was given before baptism^ in the case of Cornelius — which seems a great neglect of proper order upon the part of the head of the Church. Protestants may be content to let the matter rest here. If Rome makes out her case for the other sacraments, they may readily concede her this one also. CHAPTER VI. PENANCE. § 132. The sacrament of baptism introduces man, according to the Roman system, to the forgiving grace of God, assuring him, with an objective cer- tainty, of the forgiveness of his sins. If he remained in that condition without falHng into mortal sin, there would be no further need of a sacrament of forgiveness. But this is not the case. Fallen again into sin, the sinner needs another means of connec- tion with the forgiving grace of God, a means of restoration which shall be applicable and effective whenever sin shall interpose an obstacle between his soul and God. To meet this necessity the sacrament of penance was estabHshed. Penance is therefore defined as the sacrament *' by which the benefit of the death of Christ is ap- plied to those who have fallen after baptism.'^ ^ Pen- itence was, of course, always demanded of men as the condition of reconciHation with God, but before Christ there was no sacrament of penance, nor after Christ is there any sacramental penitence before bap- tism. It was specially instituted by Christ when " he breathed upon his disciples, saying : ' Receive ye the Holy Ghost ; whose sins ye shall forgive, they are forgiven them ; and whose sins ye shall retain, they are ^ Council of Trent, in Schaff, vol. ii., p. 140 ff. 255 256 The Roman System. retained' (John xx. 23). By which action so signal and words so clear, the consent of all the fathers has ever understood that the power of forgiving and retaining sins was communicated to the apostles and their lawful successors, for the reconciling of the faithful who have fallen after baptism." Like the other sacraments, this sacrament has its form and matter, the form being the words, spoken by the priest, '' I absolve thee;'' the matter, "the acts of the penitent himself, contrition, confession, and satisfac- tion." The thing signified is " reconciliation with God, which sometimes, in persons who are pious and who receive this sacrament with devotion, is wont to be followed by peace and serenity of conscience, with exceeding consolation of spirit." Of the three parts of penance the first, contrition, is defined as '' a sorrow of mind, and a detestation for sin committed, with the purpose of not sinning for the future." ^ Perfect contrition, including a desire for the sacrament of penance, may " reconcile man with God before the sacrament is actually received," since it is the principal thing. Attrition, or imperfect contrition, arising from " the consideration of the turpitude of sin, or from the fear of hell and of pun- ishment," if it '' exclude the wish to sin " may " dis- pose the sinner to obtain the grace of God in the sacrament of penance." But the Council of Trent especially denies that " the sacrament of penance confers grace without any good motion on the part of those who receive it ; a thing which the Church of God never taught nor thought." 1 Ibid,, p. 144 ff. Ideal of Penance. 257 Confession is defined as the oral enumeration be- fore a priest, after a diligent examination of himself, of all the mortal sins of which a penitent may be conscious, even of those against the last two precepts of the law, which are sins of thought alone. Venial sins do not need to be confessed. Mortal sins unre- membered after diligent searching of all the folds and recesses of the conscience are understood to be included in the confession made; but mortal sins remembered and unconfessed will be unforgiven. The ministry of penance is confined to priests and bishops, who may perform it validly though them- selves in mortal sin. The office of the priest is judicial. Satisfactions are thus defined : They are punish- ments for sins inflicted upon the penitent by the w^ord of the priest to recall him from sin, to excite him to greater carefulness, and to remedy the remains of sin by acts of the contrary virtues.^ § 133. Ideal. The institution of confession pre- sents itself somewhat differently to the pious priest and to the penitent. To the former it is the Church's great means of performing her office of restoring the individual soul. To quote from Cardinal Gibbons : '' My experience is that the confessional is the most powerful lever ever erected by a merciful God for raising men from the mire of sin. It has more weight in withdrawing people from vice than even the pulpit. In public sermons we scatter the seed of the word of God : in the confessional we reap the harvest. In sermons, to use a militaiy phrase, the fire is at ran- 1 Substantially as in the Council of Trent, ibidem, p. 155 ff. 17 258 772^ Ro77ta7t System. dom, but in confession it is a dead shot. The words of the priest go home to the heart of the penitent. In a pubhc discourse the priest addresses all in gen- eral, and his words of admonition may be applicable to very few of his hearers. But his w^ords spoken in the confessional are directed exclusively to the penitent, whose heart is open to receive the word of God. The confessor exhorts the penitent according to his spiritual wants. He cautions him against the frequentation of dangerous company, or other occa- sions of sin ; or he recommends special practices of piety suited to the penitent's wants." ^ No one can fail to see in considerations like these the powerful hold which the system must have upon earnest- minded men who have been trained in it both as penitents and confessors. But to the penitent who is not a priest, the insti- tution derives power from its conformity with that whole conception of the external Church as the ground of objective certainty upon which the Roman system rests. Mohler cannot conceive of a true inward repentance without the outward confession.^ The inward spiritual act is completed and perfected by the outward. Then comes the satisfaction, which confirms and develops the contrition. It has a re- troactive effect, since it consists in the restoration and reparation of the wrong as far as this is possible, and also a subsequent effect, since it is a means of cure, a remedy, and a preventive of sin. The soul itself derives comfort from deeds of satisfaction, since it cannot think a sin forgiven when it is unrepaired. 1 F. F., p. 419. 2 Symbolik^ p. 283^. The Confessional. 259 And then, when the penitent, confession made and reparation provided for, hears the words of the priest, *' I absolve thee," he feels, with all the certainty with which he knows that he has heard these words, that God, acting through his minister upon earth, has truly forgiven the sin confessed. § 134. Proof. This is perhaps as w^ell conducted by Cardinal Gibbons, though compendiously, as by any one. After pointing out the fact that the prin- cipal object of the mission of the Saviour was to re- lease the soul from the bonds of sin, he asks the question : '' How was man to obtain forgiveness in the Church after our Lord's ascension ?" Christ could not present himself visibly to every sinner and say to him individually, " Thy sins be forgiven thee ; " and therefore he was compelled to appoint ministers of reconciliation in his name. It is to this ministry, viz., to the ministry of the sacrament of penance, that the cardinal applies the text, " God hath reconciled us to himself through Christ, and hath given to us tlie ministry of reconciliation'' (2 Cor. v. 18-20). But is there direct gospel authority for the conferment of this power ? The cardinal replies. Yes. He quotes the Petrine text, Matt. xvi. 18, 19, '' Whatsoever thou [Peter] shalt bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed also in heaven," calls attention to the same words as uttered '' to all the apostles assembled together on another occasion" (Matt, xviii. 18), and cites, lastly, the only text employed by the Council of Trent, " Receive ye the Holy Ghost ; whose sins ye shall forgive, they are forgiven them ; and whose 26o The Roman System, sins ye shall retain, they are retained " (John xx. § 135. We may properly pause at this point in the argument to consider more fully what has thus far been urged. This is the vital center of the whole subject. The custom of oral confession depends for its meaning and authority upon the authority of the priest to receive such confession, and this upon his judicial power to prescribe satisfactions and im- part absolution. With the judicial power of the priest everything stands or falls. Now, this judicial power we deny. The few texts quoted in favor of it must be interpreted in such a way as to agree with the rest of the New Testament, for, aside from any dogmatic grounds for such a demand, common sense makes it sufficiently plain that an element so funda- mental to the Roman system, if that system is indeed the system of the New Testament, could never have been obscured or contradicted in the remaining por- tions of the sacred writings. But the only condition mentioned in the New Testament upon which for- giveness is to be obtained is repentance. Not even baptism is such a condition, for although this sacra- ment is associated with repentance in passages like Acts ii. 38, or John iii. 5, the texts prescribing repent- ance alone, and offering salvation upon that condi- tion only, are too numerous not to represent the true meaning of Scripture. Baptism, though it occupies 1 The straits into which the argument for confession from the Scrip- tures is brought is illustrated by the fact that the Roma7i Catechism quotes, in favor of its institution by Christ, John xi. 44: " Loose him and let him go," and Luke xvii. 14. The Confessional not Biblical, 261 some place, must occupy a subordinate place in this matter. But auricular confession to a priest is not once mentioned, is not once hinted at^ in the New Tes- tament as a condition of the forgiveness of sins. Such a sentence as that of the Council of Trent, that auricular confession to a priest "is of divine right necessary for all who have fallen after baptism," is not only not in Scripture, but is against every impli- cation of Scripture. The whole gospel was summed up in the word of Paul to the jailer at Philippi, " Be- lieve in the Lord Jesus Christ [the same as repent, substantially], and thou shalt be saved." When we consider the proof texts more closely, whatever appearance they may at first have of favor- ing the Roman system will be speedily removed. If we accept, for sake of argument, the Roman interpre- tation of the first part of the text. Matt. xvi. 18, 19, that it ascribes the primacy in the Church to Peter, then the whole text will seem to pertain, as that por- tion of it indisputably will, to intransferable attri- butes of the head of the Church. Certainly, as far as all appearance is concerned, the power of the keys is communicated to Peter by this text in the same sense as the primacy. But the case is not helped by bringing in the text Matt, xviii. 18. The cardinal restricts the application of this verse to the twelve apostles, but this is contrary to every implication of the context. It is true that the twelve were specially called to the Saviour, and made the immediate objects of a special lesson about humility (comp. Mark ix. 35), but the general drift of the following discourse marks it out as indisputably intended for the whole body of the 262 The Roman System. disciples. " If thy brother sin against thee, go, show him his fault between thee and him alone " — Is that intended for the instruction of the apostles only ? *' If two of you shall agree on earth as touching any- thing that they shall ask " — Is that for apostles alone ? Or is this — '' Where two or three are gath- ered in my name, there am I in the midst of them ?" And, to take the case apparently most favorable to the cardinal, is this text, though it mentions Peter by name, and though he asks a question which is in form applicable personally to himself, intended for Peter, or for the apostles, and not for every Christian everywhere and in all time ? — this namely, '' Then came Peter, and said to him, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him ? until seven times ? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee. Until seven times, but, Until seventy times seven ?" The entire context here makes what is said to apply to the whole Church, as is involved neces- sarily in verse 17, and it is accordingly, in spite of the denial of the Council of Trent,^ the whole Church to which in this second passage the power of binding and loosing is given. This fact, and the circumstance that the power of binding and loosing is here imme- diately connected with the disciplinary power of the Church, with its power to make a man ^' as the gen- tile and the pubHcan," give the final and inexpugna- ble interpretation, that the power of the keys is the power of authoritative discipline in the Church, whereby what the Church does in the way of right- eously correcting sin shall be recognized as valid by ^ See Schaff, p. 152. The Confessional not Biblical, 263 God himself. And this authority belongs as truly to every congregational church as to any bishop, even him of Rome. § 136. It is from such preparatory study that we must cofne to the interpretation of John xx. 23, the only text quoted by the Council of Trent for their doctrine. It stands sohtary and alone in the Johan- nean text, and hence those limitations and definitions which are derived from the context for other texts must here be taken from the general scope of Scrip- ture. On the face of it, the text will bear the Roman interpretation. But we are not to restrict the word d(piTj[xCj forgive, to the final and divine remission of sins. It may have a much looser meaning. It may mean nothing more than '' let pass." And here it will mean, in accordance with the drift of other Scripture, to relieve from disciplinary notice or pun- ishment. The word '' retain " will have the corre- sponding meaning, to assign or inflict such punish- ment. Here, again, the apostles are not specially endowed with a grace for the Church in distinction from the Church, but as representatives of the Church, and at the time constituting the Church, they receive what is conferred through them upon the whole Church. Such is the general position of the New Testament on these themes, and such its departure from the interpretation which Rome would force upon it. § 137. But there are also objections to the Roman argument in the nature of the case. The underly- ing thought of the whole argument is the necessity of the objective and external to the subjective and 264. The Roman System. spiritual, of a channel for the outward transmission of an inward and spiritual grace. This is the prime fallacy of the Roman system, which has repeatedly engaged our attention. But again, the judicial func- tion of the priest, when accurately examined, destroys itself Strictly taken, it requires omniscience upon the part of the priest. How can he apportion the proper satisfactions and pronounce finally a vaHd absolution unless he perfectly knows all the circumstances and all the heart and purpose of the penitent? Of course, this is impossible ; and the system makes a provision against such a demand by admitting that the priest goes upon the confession as it is made, that absolution gained by dishonest confession will be no complete absolution, but that sins unwittingly left unconfessed shall be forgiven as if they were confessed. But here is the element that destroys all the rest. These unconfessed sins that are neverthe- less forgiven, are forgiven without confession, and hence confession is not essentially necessary to for- giveness. They are also forgiven without the exer- cise of the judicial power of the clergy, and hence that power is not essentially necessary. To all this class of sins, the Catholic stands upon the same ground as the Protestant. Besides, perfect contrition brings forgiveness without the sacrament (§ 132). But now, if the sacrament of penance is not indis- pensably necessary for the forgiveness of some spe- cific class of sins, it is not so for any sins. If ex- ceptions are allowed, the whole system is reduced from the rank of a provision dogmatically necessary to a disciplinary arrangement of the Church, like History Against tfie Confessional, 265 celibacy. Here, again, we see the inner inconsistency and ambiguity of the system. Auricular confession of a sin is necessary to its forgiveness. But certain sins may be left unconfessed and yet receive for- giveness, if only they have been forgotten by the penitent. Does God forget them ? If not, then he forgives sin, some sin, without confession to a priest. Why then not all ? § 138. Cardinal Gibbons reenforces his biblical argument with an historical one. '' All the fathers of the Church, from the first to the last," he tells us, '' insist upon the necessity of sacramental confession as a divine institution."^ He himself cites, with whatever degree of success, Basil, Ambrose, Augus- tine, Chrysostom, and Jerome. These writers may be rightly quoted in favor of a rudimentary system of penance, for in Basil we stand at the fountain head of the development of confession.^ But why, if this is indeed an original Christian institution, does the cardinal not quote something in its favor from the earliest representatives of the Christian literature ? Why begin with Basil, who was born about a. d. 330? Perrone begins his citations with Cyprian (died 258). Why did he not mention Ignatius? If the Roman Church is right, auricular confession has been practiced from the beginning in accordance with the institution of Christ. Where are the proofs that it was thus observed ? Receiving no answer to this question from leading 1 F. F., p. 393. 2 The quotation is from his " Rule," the foundation of the monas- tic system, where auricular confession grew up. 266 The Ro7nan System. Catholic authorities, we may undertake investigation upon our own account, and we shall, find, if we begin with the New Testament, that there is in that vol- ume not a single instance of auricular confession to be found. The baptism of John was connected with confession (Matt. iii. 6 ; Mark i. 5), but it was public confession, for they confessed as they were baptized. The very word confess (i^o/wAoyico) probably means to confess publicly. Though it is not indubitably certain, it is extremely probable that the Ephesians who '' came confessing " (Acts xix. 18), did this pub- licly, since others are said to have publicly burned their books. And, finally, the only explicit direction to confess sins found in the New Testament (James v. 16), ''Confess your faults one to another," must be counted directly against auricular confession un- less we are to suppose that the epistle was written to priests alone ! Nor is the effort to find traces of the present Roman custom in other early Christian literature more successful. In the newly discovered '' Teach- ing of the Twelve Apostles," supposed to date about A. D. 100, confession of sins is twice commanded,^ but in neither case is it auricular confession but public (i^o/io?.oyi(o), and in the first instance it is expressly said '' In the clinrcli thou shalt acknowledge thy trans- gressions," where church means not the building, but the- assembly (ixxlr^aia). In Clement of Rome (dated from a. d. 90 to 100) v^e read commendation of acknowledging transgressions (i Cor. li.), but nothing is said of the priest, and in the following 1 Chap, iv., vs. 14, and chap, xiv,, vs. i. Growth of the Confessional, 267 chapter the writer goes on to say: '*The Lord, brethren, stands in need of nothing ; and he desires nothing of any one except that confession be made to Him!'' Barnabas (about 120), who speaks of con- fession only in a passage derived from the " Teach- ing " (xix. 12), has nothing to say or hint of auricular confession, Ignatius nothing, nothing Justin, nothing Clement of Alexandria. The recently discovered apologist Aristides (a. d. 125) speaks of the shame of the newly converted heathen, and of his ^' confes- sion to God',' but says nothing of confession to a priest (chap. xvii.). That word '' confess," which was early used of frequent pubhc confession in the church, began about Tertullian's time to be used of the pub- he and common confession of the congregation in the period of fasting before Easter. It was natural that private confession should be made, as was com- manded by the text in James, and it was no more than natural that the respect in which the clergy were held should early lead to their being employed in this way, originally, of course, for an office of friendship, the penitent seeking advice and help, not forgiveness, which God alone can impart. Similar recourse is now made, and has always been made, to Protestant pastors. But it is true that in the increas- ing legality of the Church, and in its increasing tendency toward an external and work-righteousness — in fact, during the development of just that false view of the Church which now forms the foundation stone of the Roman system — this practice, like other practices, passed through the formalizing process. By A. D. 121 5 the Lateran Council could command ^68 The Roman System, at least one annual confession before the penitent's own priest. But Christian antiquity does not speak for the practice, and this branch of the argument, again, is a failure. § 139. Attrition. The distinction between con- trition and attrition involves a painful lowering of the standards of the gospel. Many of the expres- sions of Roman works upon contrition are above criticism, but the way is always left open, by means of the emphasis laid upon attrition, for the acceptance by the confessor of a spiritual condition as the basis of absolution which is not adequate to meet the lofty demands of the gospel of Christ. The Roman Cate- cliism, for example, is particularly full and good upon the subject of contrition. '' That is inward peni- tence," we read, '' when we turn to God from the heart and detest the sins committed by us, and hate them ; and when we deliberately determine to amend the evil course of our life and our bad ways, not without hope of obtaining pardon by the mercy of God. Upon this follows as an attendant, however, grief and sorrow, which is a disturbance and an affection, and is called by many a passion, and is joined with detes- tation of sins." ^ This is good, and only fails because of that lack of a true psychological analysis, the results of which we have noted elsewhere, which prevents the relations of the different activities of the soul in repentance from being understood. Thus faith is declared to be no part of penitence, because it must precede, being here understood not as the act of the will committing itself to God, but a fore- ' Pars a,, cap. v., qucBstio iv. Contrition and Attrition. 269 going intellectual belief of certain appertaining truths, such as God's existence. But, certainly evan- gelical faith, or turning toward God, is but another phase of repentance, or turning away from sin, and is inseparable from it. Attrition is, however, some- thing still lower. Contrition "is that sorrow for sin which has for its motive the love of God," says the Catholic Dictionary^ while attrition arises from a lower motive, such as fear of hell, the loss of heaven, the turpitude of sin, here following closely the Council of Trent. The Dictio7iary goes on to say that we may " exclude from our definition the sorrow which makes a man renounce sin because he is afraid of hell, while at the same time he would be ready to offend God, if he could do so without incur- ring the penalty." Thus, mere self-regarding pru- dence is excluded from possible forms of the condi- tion of absolution. Now, to be sure, even this lower form of repentance, attrition, is thought to be a super- natural feeling — that is, one elicited by God's grace — and with the sacrament of confession, enough for pardon, since otherwise the sacrament would seem to confer little or nothing upon the penitent, for forgive- ness follows upon perfect contrition without the sac- rament. But, stripped of all verbiage, what is such a doctrine but this, that a man may be forgiven through the sacrament — that is, reconciled to God — while inwardly estranged from him ? and thus exter- nally reconciled while internally not ? Is it not to accept a spiritual state that is not gracious as if it were ? Does it not forget that the sole exhortation 1 Article "Attrition." 270 The Roman Syste7n. of the gospel is that which is condensed in the phrase, " My son, give me thine heart'' ?^ § 140. It is easy to see why the Roman system is driven to this unsatisfactory position. Its artificiahty at other points compels it to be artificial here. It supposes that a child is put in a state of grace by bap- tism, apart from all considerations of its own spiritual activities. In process of time the child is confirmed upon the supposition that it is in a state of grace, with- out sufficient investigation whether it exhibits in actual fact the signs of a true religious life. Now, such a child grown to maturity comes to confession. It is, theoretically, in a state of grace, but it shows no signs of real sorrow for sin or a real love to God. It seems to be without grace in fact. What shall be done? Plainly the theory must be followed still. It must be supposed to have grace, and the sacra- ment of penance must be supposed to make up all that is deficient, or else the whole edifice up to this point collapses. Hence the priest is compelled to accept for grace that which is no grace, or else the whole Roman system must be surrendered. Thus the sacrament of penance leads to a great depoten- tiation of the gospel. That gospel no more views a man reconciled with God when estranged in heart upon this earth than it does in heaven. And what would heaven be, if men could be admitted there while in heart not loving God ? An artificial system makes an artificial forgiveness ; and an artificial for- giveness would make an artificial heaven. ^ Even the Cath. Diet, says : " Sin which separates the soul from God is only annulled by love which unites it to him." Satisfactions. 271 § 141. Satisfactions. To this department of the doctrine of penance Protestants have, again, the greatest objections. Not everything about it is, however, equally objectionable. Sins are viewed by Catholics as having two classes of punishment, eter- nal and temporal. When sin is forgiven, the eternal punishment is removed. But there remain various temporal penalties, and it is the office of the priest to prescribe these, as penances, which are to be per- formed by the penitent that thereby satisfaction may be made to God. The first objection which will occur to the Prot- estant is that the one great satisfaction, made by Jesus Christ, is infringed upon by this idea; but, although the final verdict after mature consideration will be that the objection is well founded, it is only fair to say that the Catholic does not view satisfac- tion exactly in the way implied, and Catholic the- ology has sought in various ways to avoid the diffi- culty here raised. The one superabundant and supererogatory satisfaction for our sins, rendering the fullest conceivable equivalent to God therefor, is the satisfaction of Christ, and it provides for the remission of every penalty against us, temporal as well as spiritual. Even the temporal satisfactions which Christians are held to perform are said by the Council of Trent not to be '' so our own as not to be through Jesus Christ, for we who can do nothing of ourselves, as of ourselves, can do all things, he co- operating who strengthens us. Thus man has not wherein to glory, but all our glorying is in Christ, in whom we live, in whom we nierity in whom we 272 The Roman System, satisfy y ^ The temporal satisfactions are disciplin- ary in their nature to a large extent, although not wholly, and thus designed to ** recall from sin, and check as it were with a bridle, and make penitents more cautious and watchful for the future." ^ These qualifications certainly break the point of the criti- cism to some extent. But a closer examination of the ideas involved will leave the difficulty still remaining. What is for- giveness ? The reception of the sinner into the favor of God. What is the office of punishment in distinction from chastisement ? The satisfaction of the justice of God. For the forgiven sinner there can, therefore, be no more punishment, since he who has the favor of God is not exposed to the justice of God. " There is, therefore, no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus " (Rom. viii. i). True, certain consequences of sin are never removed by forgive- ness. If a man in a fit of drunkenness loses his arm, he may be forgiven of the sin of drunkenness, but his arm will not be restored. So there is a large variety of consequences of sin which are never re- mitted. But what connection have these conse- quences with the penances of the confessional ? Can the act of the priest mxake any difference with them ? Can he, in fact, know anything sufficient about them ? And can his prescriptions of satisfac- tions be thought to reflect in any way the mind of God ? The Catholic will say '' Yes," but the Protestant will ask whether the priest has a revelation of the will of God in respect to the proper penance in every 1 Schaff, p. 157. 2 ji^id,^ p. 156, Prayer as Penance. 273 case ; and when the Catholic repHes " No," he will say, " Then the connection between God's chastisements and the penances of the confessional is still unex- plained." And it remains still unexplained when we see what the penances actually are. Suppose that that unfortunate drunkard who had lost his arm should have as a penance prescribed to him the repetition of a certain number of prayers in a cold church by night clad in light garments : the divorce between the chastisement of God and man would be as complete as the difference between the loss of an arm and the sensation of cold. No ! The bibhcal atmosphere is not that of the confessional. Nothing is said whatever in that sacred volume about the mediation of a priest, but every- where the fullest conceivable pardon is promised upon repentance and faith. " Let us reason together :" says God in Isaiah, '^ though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow;"^ and the refrain is taken up in the New Testament in the words, " able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him," ^ — " the blood of Jesus Christ his Son clean- seth us from all sin." ^ The whole apparatus of the Roman confessional is as foreign to the New Testa- ment as a Russian imperial coronation is to the sim- plicity of the American Republic. § 142. The use which is so largely made of prayer in the modern Catholic Church as penance seems to demand a moment's consideration. The penance is a punishment. But is prayer a punish- ment ? Is it not, rather, the Christian's highest privi- 1 Chap, i., vs. 18. 2 Heb. vii. 25. ^ i John i. 7, 18 274 '^^^ Roman System. lege ? It is communion with God, and this is the essence of the " eternal life " which our Lord came to bestow upon believers (John xvii. 3). '' Yes," the Catholic may reply, '' but that is the goodness of mother Church, that she prescribes as her mild punishments the very privileges of the Christian." But do they remain punishments ? Have they the nature of sufferings ? Are they anything like the *' fifes " of purgatory ? In spite of all the penitential prayers which a Catholic may offer, will he not be in fear, if he understands the system, that, after all, he is not paying penalty by his privilege of prayer, but only deferring to purgatory what must be paid. there under the holy justice of God? Or, if by an approximation to the Protestant posi- tion, prayer has an efficacy in procuring the pardon of sins and so will gain from God the Judge the re- mission of the temporal penalty of sin, why should it be prescribed in the form in which it is ? Why should a man be directed to say one hundred pater- nosters, or three hundred Hail Mary's ? Are Chris- tians to be " like the heathen " and to indulge in " vain repetitions " ? And will they be heard for their *' much speaking " (Matt. vi. 7, 8) ? Roman practice seems to have grown strangely oblivious of the fact that this plain direction of our Lord him- self: '' Be not like unto them : for your Father know- eth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him," immediately precedes, in the gospel narrative, that very Lord's Prayer which it has made the object of innumerable repetitions, and that too as a punish- ment for sin ! Purgatory, 275 § 143. Purgatory. The fully developed doctrine of satisfactions has led to another feature of Catholi- cism to which Protestants strenuously object, but which is required by the logical sequence of the Roman system, that of purgatory. Confessions are imperfect, and there will remain upon each soul a greater or less degree of guilt ^ requiring satisfaction after all has been done which can be done in this world, and hence a place of further satisfaction and of purification thereby is required in the future world. This place is furnished by purgatory. Accordingly, the Roman Catechism defines as follows : "' There is a purgatorial fire, where the souls of the pious, tor- mented (cruciatce) for a definite time, are thereby purified so that entrance may be opened to them into the eternal fatherland into which nothing con- taminated enters."^ The implication, at least, and often the express teaching of CathoHc theologians is that every soul has some purifying punishment to undergo, some re- maining satisfaction to ofifer.^ We may pause to remark that this leaves the system in an unfortunate light, and diminishes greatly the certainty and secur- ity which Rome claims to give her votaries. Let a given soul make an absolutely full confession, men- tioning every sin of which it is conscious, whether mortal or venial.. The priest prescribes the suitable penances, and on condition that they be performed, 1 The Catholic Dictionary mentions venial sins as a chief object of the erection of purgatorial punishments (article " Purgatory"). 2 Op. clt., i., vi., iii. 3 So the Catholic Dictionary , and so, in his elucidation, Hase. 276 The Ro77ian System. goes on to give absolution. Is that absolution iden- tical with the divine forgiveness ? According to the claims of Rome, Yes. Then the soul is entirely for- given, since forgotten sins are regarded as included in the confession and are embraced in the absolution. Yet, nevertheless, that soul, which has made the fullest confession and been entirely absolved by the tribunal of God upon earth, has still sins to satisfy for in purgatory ! Where is Rome's proffered cer- tainty of salvation ? Where is the so much vaunted perfection of her priestly powers ? § 144. The supposition of a purgatory is not with- out support in arguments which tend at the same time to idealize it. Thus Mohler ^ views it as a place where souls are brought into relations which '' cor- respond to their still imperfect religio-ethical spiritual life and where they can perfect the same." He also declares that the '' fire " is merely a figure of speech for positive punishment, although in this respect not having the consent of all the great teachers of the Church, like Bellarmine, for example.^ Protestant theologians in our own day have laid emphasis upon the fact that souls pass out of this life in an exceed- ingly imperfect condition and are at death in no way perfectly prepared for the privileges and occupations of heaven. But the emphasis in the Roman system is laid upon the penal nature of purgatorial suffer- ings, upon the satisfactions there to be rendered ; and the idea of satisfactions for sins militates against the fullness of the forgiveness in Christ, as already drawn ^ Symbollk., p. 218 ff. ^ The Catholic Dictionary leans to literal fire. Purgatory Unnecessary. 2"]^ out at length. Taking the defense of purgatory upon the ideal ground of Mohler, Protestant thought, when cleared of all obscurity, is positive in its affir- mation of the entire superfluity of any such place of purification. It is most consonant with Scripture representations to believe that " the souls of behevers are at their death made perfect in holiness," as the Westminster Confession long since taught. But what is holiness ? It is a condition of the will. And, if the will is made perfectly what it should be, that, like every other change in this faculty, will and must be an instantaneous one. The tone of Scripture is also entirely in favor of the idea that the temptations to evil with which this world abounds will be un- known beyond the grave. The permanence of the change in the will, therefore, will be unthreatened by external or internal attacks. True, the sensibili- ties will not be brought into instantaneous conform- ity with the perfected will, for any change in the sensibility of man must be a gradual one. Yet in a world where the soHcitations of the " flesh " are felt no more, and where the '' world " can bring no ad- verse influence to bear, it would seem as if the change in the sensibility ought to be exceedingly rapid, as, in fact, it often is in this world upon special occasions, like the conversion of a mature man. How often the new convert finds all his desires and appetites turned into completely new channels ! The intellectual hori- zon will also need great enlargement, and this will demand time, though it would seem as if this en- largement ought to be very rapid in such a world, where there is communion with Christ, and where 278 The Roman System. even a beggar may rest ''in Abraham's bosom." But there will be no need of torments to effect such changes. In fact, the atmosphere of love and privi- lege is the atmosphere in which soul growth is most rapid. Paradise and the opportunities of progress afforded by the infinite eternity will develop and per- fect the emotive and intellectual faculties ; but we can perceive no need of torments for this end. § 145. When we come to the Scriptural argument for purgatory, we find it altogether insufficient. Among the texts quoted is 2 Mace. xii. 40 ff. Here we find mention of prayers for dead Jews who had died with the consecrated tokens of idols upon them, and of supplications, sacrifice, and propitiation, " that they might be released from their sins." This apoc- ryphal passage is directly contrary to the doctrine of the canonical Old Testament books which declare that " they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth " (Is. xxxviii. 18; comp. Ps. Ixxxviii. 1 1, 12). But even if it were not thus inharmonious with the Hebrew canon, the passage testifies only to the be- lief that the condition of the dead might be altered, not at all to the doctrine of a purifying fire in the under world. Another text is i Sam. xxxi. 13, which is supported by 2 Sam i. 12, etc.; iii. 33, etc. These passages speak of the mourning made for Saul and Abner, in connection with which there was "fast- ing," but no mention is made of prayer for the de- parted souls, much less of any purgatory. From the Catholic Dictionary we might take a long list of texts which are said to '' point " to the existence of purgatory, but we forbear, inasmuch as that diction- The New Testameiit Against Purgatory, 279 ary itself, with great and rare candor, remarks, " We would appeal to those general principles of Scripture rather than to particular texts often alleged in proof of purgatory. We doubt if they contai7i an explicit and direct reference to it!' And in respect to one New Testament text frequently quoted, it will be enough refutation for a Protestant when he explains, with this dictionary, as follows: "St. Paul (i Cor. iii. 15) speaks of some who will be saved ' yet as through fire,' but he seems to mean the fire in which Christ is to appear at the last St. Paul, if we have caught his meaning, speaks of the end of the world, not of the time between death and judgment, and so, we think, does our Lord in Matt. xii. 32." It were better to say that the " fire " is a mere figure of speech to express difficult salvation, and has reference neither to purgatory nor any other purgation. The last- cited text is, however, generally employed by Cath- olic theologians in defense of purgatory — '' shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come!' Per contra, the New Testament is full of expres- sions which "point" to, and also teach, a doctrine altogether inconsistent with purgatory. "To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise " (Luke xxiii. 43) — Paradise for the dying thief, who certainly must have been " unfit " for its joys ; " Thou art tormented, and . . . there is a great gulf fixed" (Luke xvi. 25, 26) gives no hint of anything temporary in the place of torment, nor any purifying tendency in its flames, which is also not made evident by the unrepentant hardness of all Dives' speech ; " He that believeth 28o The Roman System. hath eternal life " (John vi. 47) ; '' Blessed diVO: the dead which die in the Lord . . . that they may rest from their labors'' (Rev. xiv. 13); and to quote from a book which Protestants do not acknowledge, but which will have the force of a refutation to a Church that has put it in its canon, we read in Wisdom iii. 1-3, " But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment shall toitch them. . . . but they are in peaee!' § 146. Cardinal Gibbons begins his historical proof of purgatory by a citation from Tertullian (died about 220). The Protestant apologist must admit the early practice of praying for the dead, which is supported by his citation. Vague and confused ideas about all that belonged to the future state were universal in all religions surrounding the Christian Church, and it is not wonderful either that the earliest Christians did not have correct ideas, or that the course of de- generation which has resulted in the chief Roman doctrines began before any clearly formulated views as to the decisive character of this life had prepared an obstacle to it. And yet it is remarkable that the very earliest writers, who stand nearest the New Testament, cannot be quoted in favor of any shred of the doctrine of purgatory. The '' Teaching " is silent on it ; Clement of Rome also. Not even the Martyr Ignatius, as he journeys on toward his cer- tain death at Rome, drops a request for prayers for his soul after its departure, though he often requests prayers that he may be supported in his trials and maintained faithful to the end.^ Justin and Irenaeus, 1 The only passage that looks like it is the obscure text (Trallians History of Purgatory. 281 in all their numerous pages, do not refer to the prac- tice. But Clement of Alexandria^ refers to an in- ward spiritual fire, purifying us in this world, which Origen transfers to the other side, and makes an in- strument of purification which even Peter and Paul will require. Cyprian, the two Gregories, and Basil have traces of the same thought. The true develop- ment of the doctrine of purgatory was reserved for the West. Augustine spoke doubtfully of the possi- bility of temporary punishment in the next world, Caesarius of Aries more definitely, while Gregory the Great erected the notion into a doctrine and intro- duced the practice of masses for the dead. But it was only in the scholastic era, and because of the neces- sary implications of the doctrines connected with the sacrament of penance, that the full conception of a place of satisfaction was elaborated. In spite of the cardinal's remark that praying for the dead " is not an invention of modern times, but a doctrine universally enforced in the first and purest ages of the Church,'' we venture to affirm that the doctrine of purga- tory, with all that follows upon it, is a manifest case of what Cardinal Newman called doctrinal " corrup- tion." It lacks a '' germ " in the recorded instruc- tions of our Lord Jesus Christ ; it does not '^ assimi- late " with other Christian doctrines, particularly xiii.) : " Let my spirit be sanctified by yours, not only now, but also when I shall attain to God." It probably means. Let me have your prayers now and at the hour of death. Not even the " longer recen- sion," written much later, which modifies to "When I shall /^^z/^ at- tained to God," made the passage a reference to prayers after death. 1 From this point I follow Hofmann in Herzog, Realencyc, vol. iv., p. 515- 282 The Roman System, with the doctrine of the fullness of the divine forgive- ness ; its developed form is in entire antagonism with a sound exegesis. It cannot, therefore, allege for itself the verdict of the history of doctrine, or of the Catholic experience of the Christian Church. § 147. But the corruptions accompanying it have added most strength to the deep and powerful oppo- sition which this doctrine more than almost any other has excited in Protestant minds. The scandals connected with prayers for the dead, the mechanical weighing of so many masses over against so much purgatorial suffering, the extortions which have been practiced, the fears which have been played upon to create a rich revenue for avaricious ecclesiastics, the superstition that has been promoted — these are the things which have excited Protestant abhorrence, and which testify to the evil affinities of the doctrine. They are too notorious to need proof or any lengthened enumeration. Even the staid Council of Trent was obliged to go out of the path of its doctrinal defini- tions to exhort : *' While those things which tend to a certain kind of curiosity or superstition, or which savor of filthy lucre, let them [the bishops] prohibit as scandals and stumbling-blocks of the faithful." ^ In our own day the rich are often led to endow a church on condition that a certain number of masses for their souls shall be said, and often the number mounts into the thousands. As but one mass can be said in a single church in a day, the road, so to speak, sometimes gets blocked. It becomes impossi- ble to have the masses said which have been bought. 1 Schaff, p. 199. Corricptions and Inconsistencies, 283 Masses gratis for the poor become impossible. And very great scandals, such as the farming out of masses to be said by poor priests in country par- ishes, have arisen and will always arise. I sim- ply allude to these things here. They are too well known to demand proof. A doctrine so cum- bered about with abuse must be, as it is, an abuse in itself^ § 148. One more thought ere we leave this sub- ject. The Catholic Dictionary, quite consistent with other Roman authorities, and with the logical neces- sities of the idea, represents purgatory rather as a place of privilege, for if the soul be not '' fit " for the presence of God, certainly the purification it under- goes is to be regarded as an immeasurable favor. Says the Dictionary , '' All the souls in purgatory have died in the love of God and are certain to enter heaven. But as yet they are not pure and holy enough to see God, and Gods mercy allots them a place and a time for cleansing and preparation!' Why, then, should we labor to relieve them of what is a mercy? Why to shorten the time in which they are becoming fit to see God? The mani- fest inconsistency of presenting purgatory as a blessing to be desired, and a curse to be un- speakably avoided and eagerly removed should receive more consideration from Catholic apologists than it has. It is, however, only another of the in- numerable self-contradictions, small and great, into which this artificial system of doctrine has inextri- ^ Littledale, Plain Reasons,^, in ff., has been careful to collect a great deal of illustrative material on this point. 284 The Roman System. cably fallen. Nothing is consistent but the truth, nothing inconsistent but falsehood. § 149. Indulgences. The distinction between the temporal and the eternal punishment due to sins has led to another feature of the Roman system, the pro- vision of a method of release from heavy penance, which is the temporal punishment, by means of what are called indulgences. Cardinal Gibbons defines : '' An indulgence is simply a remission in whole or in part, through the superabundant merits of Jesus Christ and his saints, of the temporal punishment due to God on account of sin, after the guilt and eternal punishment have been remitted." ^ This temporal punishment may be undergone '* either in this life or the next," and hence the indulgence may remit the sufferings of purgatory. But *' an indul- gence cannot be obtained for unforgiven sin. Before any one can obtain for himself the benefit of an in- dulgence, the guilt must have been washed away, and the eternal punishment, if his sin has been mor- tal, must have been forgiven." ^ Hence an indul- gence does not remit the guilt or eternal punishment of a sin, which must be done in the regular way through confession and absolution, nor does it give license to commit future sins. § 150. The proof of indulgences brings into view unavoidably the theory upon which they operate. The great proof, put first by Gibbons as well as Per- rone, is the power of the keys. The argument is that if Christ conferred the greater, the power to for- give sins, that is, to remit the eternal punishment of 1 F. F., p. 428. 2 Cath. Die, article " Indulgence." Indulgences. 285 sins, he certainly must have included the less, the power to remit the temporal penalty/ Only one other scriptural proof is attempted by either Gibbons or Perrone, that of the restoration of the fellowship of the Church of Corinth to the man who had pre- viously been put under discipline at the direction of the apostle. Cardinal Gibbons says this man had been condemned to a '^ severe penance/' and calls the subsequent action of the apostle a remission of the penalty, that is an indulgence. But the punish- ment laid upon the man was not a penance. This is evident because the man seems to have been still impenitent, and still to lie under liability to '' the eternal punishment " of his sin, for he was apparently still continuing in the commission of his sin (i Cor. V. i), and in danger of eternal loss (vs. 5), and his punishment was exclusion from the fellowship of the Church and deliverance to Satan (vs. 4, 5) which was performed by the vote of the congregation of be- Hevers (2 Cor. ii. 6). The apostle therefore in his second epistle is directing that he be readmitted to the fellowship which he had utterly lost. As to the power of the keys, if the Roman Church possesses the authority to grant indulgences from this prerogative, it ought logically to be restricted to the remission of penalties which she has herself pre- scribed, as the Protestant Reformers argued.^ Car- dinal Gibbons seems to reason upon this ground, for 1 Klee, a Catholic dogmatician, denies the vahdity of this argument, because priests can forgive sins, but cannot bestow indulgences. See in Hase, Pole7nik, p. 390. 2 Pope Gelasius I. presented the same argument. See in Hase, Po- lemik, p. 391. 286 The Roma7i Syste^n, he says that '^ a society which can inflict a punish- ment can also remit it," and his whole rational argu- ment is conducted upon that basis. But what, then, becomes of the remission of punishments in purga- tory by means of indulgences ? Are these punish- ments ''inflicted" by the Church militant? No! Can she, then, indulge them ? It was, no doubt, to meet this difficulty that another theory, and one in- consistent with this, was introduced and is now com- bined with it in Catholic theology, the theory that the power of granting indulgences is derived from the ''treasure of merits^' in the Church. Cardinal Gibbons introduces this theory into his discussion, for he defines the indulgence in the passage quoted above, as given " through the superabundant merits of Jesus Christ and his saints.'^ But if so, who shall distribute these merits ? Is there any evidence in Scripture that the pope has any authority over these merits ? or any commission to distribute them ? The Roman theology has no answer to give to these questions except to refer to the authority of the Church as expressed by Clement VI. in the bull Unigcnitiis where the doctrine of the treasure, and its commission to Peter and his successors is dog- matically affirmed.^ § 151. But are CathoHc theologians aware into how close approximation to the Protestant doctrine of forgiveness this doctrine of indulgence through the superabundant merits of Jesus Christ brings them ? Suppose a man to have committed some sin, and to have come in true penitence and confessed 1 See the Latin text in Harnack, Doggsch, iii., p. 517. Latent Protestantism. 287 this to the priest, and thus received through the merits of Christ the remission of the eternal punish- ment of his sin. He may now obtain an indulgence, and then, through the same merits, he will receive the remission of the temporal punishment, and thus of the whole penalty. And the condition of the in- dulgence may have been the offering of a prayer for mercy in some specified church upon some special occasion. Now, here is a long, cumbersome, and complicated process, but what are its essential ele- ments ? Are they not repentance, confession, prayer for forgiveness, and the operation of the merits of Christ to remove every disability arising from the sin ? And what is that but precisely the Protestant doctrine that upon true repentance and hearty con- fession, God will for Christ's sake absolutely forgive and forever put away the sin of man ? The differ- ence is one of method, not of principle. For the simple direct method of the gospel (Luke xviii. 13, 14) Rome has substituted the unnecessary medi- ation of the priest, and then encumbered that medi- ation with all sorts of difficulties, only to come down at last to what she might have had at first, the free forgiving grace of a pardoning God. § 152. Perhaps the strongest objection which the Protestant feels to indulgences springs from their practical relations ; and one of the practical facts about indulgences as they are managed in our own day is their utter triviality. They are a great ob- stacle to the free operation of the infinite grace of God, but great as they are in this respect, in them- selves they often seem so ridiculously inadequate to 288 The Roman System. all they profess to do as only to provoke the con- tempt of earnest men. Do I speak too strongly? There has fallen into my hands in some way a leaflet of the Apostleship of Prayer, the Holy League of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This institution has its center in New York, and is presided over by a Jesuit. Among numerous other privileges conveyed by membership (which does not seem to have any special conditions attached, and may apparently be had for the asking), is this : " An indulgence of one hundred days each time that an associate, wearing the badge of the apostleship, repeats, orally or men- tally, the aspiration — ' thy kingdom come.' Also, seven years and seven quarantines, if worn visibly before the Blessed Sacrament exposed." The Prot- estant reader will probably require to be told that an indulgence of one hundred days remits as much penance as would be performed in a period of one hundred days under the old system of penitential discipline as it was practiced in the ancient Church. '* Seven quarantines " are seven times forty days of penance. Now, in the ancient Church this '' canoni- cal penance " had nothing trivial or easy about it. A man committing such a sin as adultery might have several years of penance to pass through, during which, in one period, he must stand among the " weepers," clothed in penitential garments, outside the doors of the church, not being admitted to the sight even of the worship of the church. It was as sad as the " scarlet letter " of Hawthorne's romance. Only gradually could he come to hear a part of the serv- ice, and only after several promotions be received Trivialities, 289 again into full membership. But to-day, in the *' Apostleship of Prayer," if an adulterer will wear the badge ^ which may be a bit of ribbon, and is at all events an honorable distinction in the CathoHc's eye, upon the lapel of Ids coat at mass on Sunday morning ^ that is equivalent to " seven years and seven quaran- ti7tes " of the old discipline ! And every time he will tlwtk the aspiration named, he may gain one hundred days of release from penance ! Is not this, unless it is a shamefaced and imperfect Prot- estantism, utter trifling with the solemn necessities of souls ? § 153. Faithfulness to the theme compels the ad- dition of another, a somewhat invidious as well as disagreeable topic, the abuse to which the confes- sional is subject for the attainment of immoral ends. We gladly accept what such writers as Cardinal Gib- bons say upon their own experience in the confes- sional. The Catholic Dictionary says : " Of all pas- toral ministrations we firmly believe there is none which involves a more self-denying devotion to a monotonous duty, none where the good effects are so plain and visible, and very few which are more seldom marred by human weakness and sin." We are glad to believe that in our own country and time the confessional is very carefully guarded from abuse. But the laws of the Church show that confession on the part of females to a celibate priesthood is full of peril to both penitent and priest. While priests are " under the most sacred obligations to abstain from all unnecessary questions, particularly from all such as might convey knowledge of %vsxs previously un- ago The Roman System, known to the penitent," ^ existing books of directions for the hearing of confessions show that very doubt- ful questions are actually asked, and the trail of sHme found in such a book as Gury's '' Moral Theology," ^ which ought to be called an Immoral Theology, and which cannot be read without the most profound disgust, show that the air of the confessional is trem- ulous with danger to all concerned. We must refer to more detailed works for the full particulars of seduction, deceit, and disgrace accompanying this institution.^ We are here concerned with their mean- ing for the truth or falsity of the system of doctrine of the Roman Church, and particularly for this por- tion of it. Our Saviour's test, '' By their fruits ye shall know them," condemns the confessional and the theory of the sacrament of penance. Sins should be confessed to God and their remedy left to his providence, when experience shows how dangerous it is for sinful human beings to talk over committed sin even under elaborate safeguards. § 154. Yet the confessional is retained, and in spite of all the higher arguments which are presented in favor of it, the great argument for it is, without any rational doubt, the same as that which maintains the ^ Cath. Diet., article " Penance." 2 Compendium Theologi(B Moralls, auctore P. Joanne Petro Gury, S. y., etc., RatisboncB, 1874, Benziger Bros., New York. The copy before me is the copy employed in the seminary, as a student, by a priest in this country not yet fifty years old. Paul Bert translated a large por- tion of it into French, from which it was translated into English, and published under the title The Doctrine of the Jesuits, B. F. Bradbury & Co., Boston. 3 Hase, Polemik, p. 375 fF. Lea, Sacerdotal Celibacy, pp. 566 ff., 632-638. The Inquisition, 291 celibacy of the clergy, viz., the immense power which is hereby put into the hands of the Church. What- ever else Rome is or is not, she is undoubtedly greedy of power. The confessional makes the priest in a large measure master of the community in which he lives. He who knows the secrets of men, espe- cially their secret sins, rules them. But, viewed in the light of a larger Christian charity, this very feature of the system is one of the chief argu- ments against it. No human being can be trusted with such power with safety to himself or to others. Even if he could, he ought not to be. The object of the Church is to lead men, not to drive them. Her power resides in the force of love, not in the compulsion which springs from fear. Christians are '' called unto liberty." We " have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but the spirit of adop- tion." This liberty filled with rejoicing in the pres- ence and favor of God, is not consistent with the spirit of the fear of man ; and Rome ought not to cultivate such a fear, would not if her purposes were pure and her charity genuine and permeated with the spirit of the Master. § 155. The Inquisition. A brief notice should be given of this appendage to the system of penance. The Roman Church, besides laying temporal pun- ishments upon the penitent, claims, and formerly exercised, the right of enforcing her doctrine by punishment for heresy. This she does by virtue of her pretensions to the office of sole authoritative teacher of religious truth. If she has the authority, men may be compelled to submit to it. This com- 292 The Roman System, pulsory system was erected into a separate institu- tion by the establishment of regular inquisitorial methods under Innocent III. and the Council of Toulouse (1229). It spread over the different Cath- oHc countries, was particularly active in expelling Jews and Moors from Spain (by which it did incal- culable harm to that country), checked the progress of the Reformation in various lands, and was only suppressed in the present century (Spain, 1834). The methods of procedure were in grossest violation of the principles of justice, though, to be sure, this was true of secular and even Protestant secular tri- bunals, of the same age. An accusation was the equivalent of a condemnation in the majority of cases. The names of the witnesses were usually concealed from the accused, torture was employed at the be- ginning of the process to extort confession, a pre- mium was put upon information and upon conviction by giving the property of the convicted to the ac- cusers and the court, and the play ended with the delivery of the condemned to the secular arm with the prayer for mercy, which was understood to be a demand for immediate execution by burning ! In Spain, down to the year 1809 there had been 341,021 sentences, all of them practically capital. These facts are a sufficient illustration of the theme, and the plainest refutation both of the theory that the power of punishment resides in the Church, and of the claim that the Church c^an sit in judgment on sins, whether in the inquisition or the confessional. A legitimate, God-given, and God-guided power would never have been thus abused. CHAPTER VII. THE LORDS SUPPER. • § 156. In approaching the sacrament of the Lord's Supper we approach at the same time one of the most compHcated and important of the doctrines of the system and the central point and culmination of the worship of the Church. Here unite speculation and devotion. The mass is nothing but a prolonged and elaborate celebration of the Lord's Supper ; so that at every great festival of the Church, and at full service upon every Lord's day, the holy eucharist is the center of interest. Nothing, therefore, stands so prominent before the Catholic as this sacrament. His deepest religious experiences are associated with it, his profoundest feelings stirred by it. § 157. The fundamental idea from which all the rest of the Catholic doctrine upon this subject fol- lows, is that of the real presence in the sacrament, of the very Lord Jesus Christ. '* After the conse- cration of the bread and wine," says the Council of Trent,^ *' our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and man, is truly, really, and substantially contained under the species of those sensible things ... by a manner of existing, which though we can scarcely express it in words, yet can we, by the understanding illuminated by faith, conceive, and we ought most firmly to be- lieve to be possible unto God." From this starting 1 Schaff, p. 126. 293 294 ^^^^ Romait System, point all that is peculiar in the Roman doctrine natu- rally follows. Two elements are, now, carefully to be distin- guished in the doctrine, for the Supper is considered, on the one hand, as a sacrament, the holy Eucharist, and on the other, as a sacrifice, the sacrifice of the mass. As a sacrament, this, like every other, has its matter and its form. The matter is the bread and wine ; the form, the words of institution, '' This is my body ;" '' This is the cup of my blood, the new and eternal covenant, a mystery of the faith, which is shed for you and for many for the remission of sin." ^ As soon as these words have been pronounced over the elements, *' the veritable body of our Lord, and his veritable blood, together with his soul and divin- ity, are under the species of bread and wine ; but the body indeed under the species of bread, and the blood under the species of wine, by force of the words ; but the body itself under the species of wine, and the blood under the species of bread, and the soul under both, by force of that natural connection and concomitancy whereby the parts of Christ our Lord, who hath now risen from the dead to die no more, are united together ; and the divinity, furthermore, on account of the admir- able hypostatical union thereof with his body and soul.^^^ The Council' adds : *' By the consecration of the bread and of the wine, a conversion is made of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord, and of the ^ Cat. Rom., ii., iv., xviii. xx. 2 Schaff, p. 129 f. The Mass a Sacrifice, 295 whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood ; which conversion is by the holy Catholic Church suitably and properly called Transubstantia- tion." The doctrine of " concomitancy '' here affirmed is the theoretical basis upon which the disciplinary regulation, that the cup shall be withheld from the non-officiating communicant, is grounded, since thereby the undivided and whole Christ is re- ceived under the form of bread as truly as under both forms of bread and wine. The real presence is the basis of rendering "in veneration the worship of latria, which is due to the true God, to this most holy sacrament,^' ^ which is customary at every mass when the host is elevated by the priest and the con- gregation fall down before it. '' For,'^ says the Council,^ '' we believe that same God to be present therein of whom the eternal Father, when introduc- ing him into the world, says : And let all the angels of God adore him.'^ But there is also in the mass a sacrifice. " He, therefore, our God and Lord, though he was about to offer himself once on the altar of the cross unto God the Father, by means of his death, there to operate an eternal redemption ; nevertheless, because his priesthood was not to be extinguished by his death, in the last Supper, on the night in which he was betrayed, that he might leave to his own be- loved spouse, the Church, a visible sacrifice, such as the nature of man requires, whereby that bloody sacrifice, once to be accomplished upon the cross, might be represented, and the memory thereof re- 1 Ibid., p. 131. 296 The Roman System, main even unto the end of the world, and its salutary virtue be appHed to the remission of those sins which we daily commit, . . . offered up to God the Father his own body and blood under the species of bread and wine, and . . . commanded the apostles and their successors in the priesthood to offer them.'^ ^ It is to be noted that the sacrifice of the mass is not intended to take the place of the sacrifice of Calvary or to detract in any way from the dignity of that. It is a *' representation " and a '' commemoration " of that. Yet it is, as the Roman Catechism says, '' not a mere {imdani) commemoration of that sacrifice which was made upon the cross, but also a truly propitiatory sacrifice, by which God is rendered pla- cated and propitious toward us."^ In fact, the two sacrifices are represented as, in a sense, identical, for we read further in the Catechism : '' Therefore we confess tha.t it is and ought to be regarded as one and the same sacrifice which is made in the mass and offered upon the cross For the bloody and the unbloody victims are not two victims, but one only, whose sacrifice ... is daily renewed in the eucharist."^ Cardinal Gibbons adds that the two sacrifices have the same " High Priest — Jesus Christ." Thus there is in the mass a true sacrifice, which not only commemorates but also repeats the sacrifice of Christ, and possesses expiatory power for the sins of the living and the dead. § 158. Roman Ideal. These formal and cold defi- nitions do not, however, express the truth, as it appears to the devout Catholic, in its living power. 1 Ibid., p. 176 f. 2 n., iv., Ixiii. 3 ibid,^ Ixi. Ideal of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, 297 The Church, says Mohler substantially/ is upon one side of its being Christ himself. The Redeemer did not live eighteen hundred years ago, to disappear from the earth and leave only his memory to his Church to be revered like that of any other dead hero ; but he still lives in it, is still active in the sac- raments, introducing the soul into the Church by baptism, estabhshing it in confirmation, forgiving it in penance, and so on. In the same way he did not offer a single sacrifice at a definite point in past time, then to remit this sacrificial activity, and leave his Church without a sacrifice, but he is continually offering up himself to the Father for men. Hence there must be in the Church always a continual memorial of the sacrifice, which shall be also a con- tinuation of it, and this is given in the eucharist. The sacrifice of Calvary and that of the altar are really but one sacrifice, since neither is complete without the other, the two forming together one organic whole. Christ offered upon Calvary alone would remain a distant and unknown object, a mere offering ; but Christ condescending to us upon the altar is that offering brought near and made real and personal to us. So that the offering of Calvary with- out that of the altar would be defective, and there- fore the sacrament of the altar is a true sacrifice and essential to the rest. To quote from this point Mohler's own words : '' The eucharistic sacrifice may be viewed, in accordance with the purposes just developed, from a twofold point of view. Since the Church in general, and every separate congregation 1 Symbolik, p. 300 ff. 298 The Roman System. of it, understands that it was founded by the offering of the Son of God and by faith in the same, and that consequently it owes to him its existence, the eu- charistic offering is to be conceived, first, as an offer- ing of praise and thanksgiving. The Church de- clares that it is incapable of expressing its thanks in any other way than by offering again to God Him who became the sacrifice of the world. It says in effect, ' Thou wast willing to view us as thy children in grace and mercy for Christ's sake. Permit us then to venerate thee thankfully as our Father, in Christ, thy Son, here present. We possess nothing else which we could bring to thee but Christ ; graciously accept our offering.' When the congregation does this through the priest it confesses perpetually what Christ has become to it, and ever remains. It is not merely the inward acts of thanks, veneration, and recognition that it offers, but rather Christ, present in the sacrament, is offered up. These affections of the spirit are awakened by the presence and offering of the present Redeemer, are supported, nourished, and developed by him, but they are in themselves unworthy of being offered to God. Christ, the sacri- fice in the worship, is the richest, most inexhaustible source of the deepest devotion ; but in order to be this, a present Saviour, offering himself for the world, is demanded, to whom, as its external object, the heart of man may attach itself, and to which it may expand. But the congregation also continually ac- knowledges itself as sinful, in need of forgiveness, and it seeks to appropriate more perfectly the merits of Jesus Christ. In this aspect the offering is a sin The Real Presence. 299 offering, and the present Christ is to make us his own possession, and this in an increasing degree. Christ, present and capable of being recognized by those spiritually minded, says uninterruptedly to the Father above, ^ Behold graciously in me thy penitent and believing people;' and to his brethren below, ' Come to me all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest, to every one who heartily turns to me, mercy, the forgiveness of his sins, and all grace/ Consequently in the liturgical language of the Greek as well as the Latin Church it is said rightly that it is Christ who in his holy ceremony offers up himself to God ; he is the offering and the High Priest in one. But we, recognizing in the eu- charistic Christ the Christ who gave himself to die the death of the cross out of love for us, say, when the host is elevated, as far and wide as the Catholic Church extends, in faith in a so visible mercy, out of which spring humility, trust, love, and penitence, * O Jesus, to thee I live, O Jesus, to thee I die, O Jesus, thine am I dead and alive.' " For convenience of discussion we may divide the theme into two parts, the Real Presence and the Sac- rifice, and treat these successively. I. The Real Presence. § 159. The Biblical Argument for the Real Presence.^ The argument of Perrone, quite in 1 I proceed in these pages upon the supposition that the true Prot- estant position is that of a denial of the real presence, although a few- Protestants may still be found who accept it. In the Church of Eng- 300 The Roman System, agreement with that of Cardinal Gibbons, though drawn out at great length, may be condensed into the following steps/ It is, first, a scriptural argu- ment. Christ promised in the sixth of John, to give to his disciples his flesh to eat and his blood to drink. He fulfilled this promise when he instituted the sac- rament ot the supper, for he declared the bread which he gave them then to be his body and the cup to be his blood. Hence his body and blood are really present in the sacrament of the altar. This view is confirmed by the universal tradition of the Church, and contains nothing opposed to right reason. Evidently the argument stands or falls with the interpretation of the sixth of John. The passage especially considered is that beginning wdth verse 51, ''I am the living bread which came down out of heaven," etc. This is to be taken literally, says Perrone, as referring to the oral manducation of the real body of Christ. Christ is speaking of the eu- charist, which is evident from the analogy of the manna, just mentioned. As that was a real food, so must the thing here spoken of be a real food, which the eucharist is. The phraseology employed carries this meaning, and more especially so because when *' eating " is used in Scripture figuratively, it is used in a bad sense, as in Ps. xxvii. 2. Then the antith- eses employed, food and drink, eating and drink- land there are some such ; but among Lutherans in Germany there are few now who do not acknowledge that the Scriptures give no solid foundation for what was the original Lutheran opinion. ^ Op. cif., vol. iii., p. 143 ff. The Sixth of John. 301 ing, flesh and blood, are too direct and too frequent to admit of a figurative interpretation. And the same is indicated by the future tenses (" shall give," ''shall have'^) of verses 27 and 53. That the man- ducation meant was no merely spiritual manduca- tion, Perrone seeks also to prove from the fact that the Jews evidently understood Christ as demanding a literal oral manducation (vs. 52), and he, though accustomed to explain misunderstandings, did not undeceive them. Then the phrases used, as, for ex- ample, '' He that eateth me shall live by me,^' ex- clude any reference to Christ's literal death, and so point to the sacramental eating. Then, Christ con- firms his teaching by a future miracle, that of his ascension, which makes the interpretation involving a miracle in the Supper congruous. Christ's charac- ter forbids, also, that he should put an unnecessary stumbling block in the way of the Jews, as he did, if he did not mean this manducation to be a literal one. The apostle John, too, would have explained the saying, as he does others, if it were not to be taken literally. And, lastly, the unanimous consent of the fathers makes the rendering here given certain. § 160. The interpretation of the Catholic Church will have an advantage with some minds because it is apparently literal and simple ; but a careful con- sideration of the context as a whole renders it impos- sible. The premise upon which the entire argument depends is the position that Christ made a promise here which he literally fulfilled when he established the Lord's S upper. If this is so, then, by parity of 302 The Ro77ian System, reasoning, in John iv. 14, " The water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water," is also a promise demanding a future fulfillment in an insti- tution parallel to that of the Supper; but there is no such fulfillment. Neither in the one case nor in the other is there any such promise. The true explana- tion is much simpler. The Jews had followed Jesus for the material benefits which he was able to confer upon them, as he had done when he fed the multi- tude (ver. 26). The first allusion to "meat" was called out by this circumstance. Then when Jesus demanded belief in himself, they asked for a sign, and they mentioned that of the manna in the desert as a proof of Moses' mission, and hence, on occasion of the reference made by the Jews, the figure of bread was easily and naturally introduced into the dis- course. It wasn't Moses that gave you the manna, Christ says, but the Father ; and the manna was, after all, but little, for the true bread is still to be given, and that bread I am. The very word '^ true " shows that " bread " is to be taken figuratively, for the manna was true bread in a literal sense, but not true bread in a figurative sense — that is, not bread capable of doing the great thing demanded, that of ** giving life to the world." And, to make it per- fectly clear that the *' bread " is figurative and the *' eating " figurative, as well as to show what that eating is, it is immediately added (35), "He that conicth to me shall not hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst." And, as in verse 33 the bread " giveth life," so in verse 40 believing gives "eternal life/' The Sixth of John, 303 Now with this everything in the following verses is perfectly in agreement. The only argument which Perrone brings possessing any force is that which may be summarized in the form that the figure is too constantly employed to be intended literally. But this argument has no force in view of the clearness with which the figure has once been introduced. The '' future tenses " are well explained when it is re- membered that the flesh was to be given upon the cross, which was at a future date.-^ And as to Christ's leaving the Jews under an evident misunderstand- ing, he did it repeatedly in his ministry,^ by nearly every parable which he uttered (compare Matt, xiii. 11); and in this case he did what he almost always did in similar cases ; he explained the diffi- culty to the disciples, when they also fell into it, for he added to them, " It is the spirit that quickeneth ; th^ flesh profiteth nothing," by which he rejected the interpretation of literal oral manducation, and pointed out the true way of eating, adding still further, " The words that I have spoken unto you " — and words are to be received by the mind, by believing — '^ are spirit and are life." § 161. We thus find the fundamental position of Perrone, that John vi. contains a promise of provid- 1 Perrone seems to have been led away by the Vulgate in taking verse 53 of future time. That version has " habebitls'' with the Itala; but all the Greek MSS. and texts have exere, making the condition a general supposition, which should be rendered strictly, " Except ye are eating the flesh " etc. (equivalent to "Whenever ye do not eat"), " ye do not have life," etc., which expresses a general truth, true then, and not simply in the future, and so is against oral manducation. 2 We, of course, admit that it is the general custom in John's Gospel to explain such difficulties. 304 The Roman Syste7n, ing a body of Christ which could be Hterally eaten to be invahd. Equally invalid is the next step in his argument, that the institution of the Lord's Sup- per was the fulfillment of this promise, inasmuch as it constituted the elements of the sacrament, the real body and blood of Christ. The question be- tween Protestants and Catholics, says Perrone, is whether the words '' This is my body " are to be taken literally or metaphorically. If metaphorically, there ought to be some reason for this, either in the nature of the material employed, or in some impli- cation that the phrase is figurative, or in common usage. We should reply that all three of these rea- sons speak here for the metaphor. Bread is not body ; the circumstances were such, the living Christ himself distributing the bread, that the literal sense was absolutely excluded, since the disciples could not possibly understand the bread he held in his hand to be identical with his body, and so take the words literally ; and common usage is clearly in favor of employing '' is " in the sense of '' signifies." Then, says Perrone, the words used in blessing the cup are so emphatic that they cannot be taken figur- atively. " For," he continues, '' according to the force of the Greek, they ought to be rendered : ' For this is that blood of mine, that blood of the new cove- nant, that blood which is shed for many for the remis- sion of sins.' " But this is a very much strained inter- pretation of the Greek, where the word translated by Perrone's ''that" (Lat illc) is the simple article, and gives no such emphasis as is conveyed by the trans- lation. But if it did, what of it ? Is the emphasjs (( Hoc est Corpus Meum^ 305 upon the blood as blood ? Is anything lost as to the essential meaning if we read, '' This represents my blood, that very, weighty blood which I shall shed for forgiveness of sins, and for the establishment of a new covenant"? But Perrone continues with his argument. The paralleHsm with Exodus xxiv. 8, '' Behold the blood of the covenant,^' makes the meaning literal. That blood was literal blood ; so is this. Is there any such parallehsm ? Then, again, in so solemn a matter Christ ought to have spoken literally. But did he ? And, finally, Perrone urges the difficulties and contradictions of Protestants, and the entire absurdity of the whole Protestant denial of the Hteral interpretation. In a word, the argu- ment seems to be about upon a level with Luther's when he wrote '^ Hoc est corpus meiini " upon the tablecloth at Marburg, and finally seized the cloth and shook it in the face of his opponent, saying that he '^ stuck to the text." In spite of all that has been said, it still remains that the '' is " may mean '' signi- fies," and that it most probably does. If so great a doctrine as that of the real presence cannot be pro- vided with more abundant and better proofs, the Roman theology will be held by the world at large to have failed to make out its case. § 162. Cardinal Gibbons adds an argument from the apostle Paul, i Cor. x. 16 and xi. 23-29, in which passages is found the account of the institution of the Supper.^ Many of the arguments in favor of the Roman system from the New Testament are merely verbal, and have no force when one seeks to pene- 1 F.F., p. 336 ff. 20 3o6 The Roman System, trate to the meaning of the passages cited in distinc- tion from their form of expression. This is true of the cardinal's argument here ; but for a verbal argu- ment it is so well put, and so likely to be misleading, that it requires an explicit answer. After quoting the passage at length, and especially the clause, '' whoso- ever shall eat .... unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord," he asks the ques- tion : '' Could St. Paul express more clearly his belief in the real presence than he has done here ?" We may admit, in reply, that if there was any evidence that Paul did believe in the real presence, these words would seem to express that idea very well. They certainly accord with the doctrine. But every thinker will per- ceive a vast difference between formal accord, and the intended teaching of a doctrine. To extract from his argument still farther : *' Surely no one could be said to partake of that divine food by eating ordinary bread.^' Why not? If partaking of the body of Christ is receiving the gift of eternal life by believing upon him, why may not the act of faith be put forth in increased energy in consequence of the act of eat- ing common bread, when that bread is conceived as the appointed memorial of Christ's death, and so brings that death vividly before the believer and preaches to him with power its message of reconcili- ation ? '' ' Guilty of the body and blood of the Lord ' . . . signify that he who receives the sacrament un- worthily shall be guilty of the sin of high treason, and of shedding the blood of his Lord in vain. But how^ could he be guilty of a crime so enormous, if he had taken in the eucharist only a particle of bread a Guilty of the Body and Blood. ' ' 307 and wine ? Would a man be accused of homicide, in this commonwealth, if he were to offer violence to the statue or painting of the governor ? Certainly not. In Hke manner, St. Paul would not be so un- reasonable as to declare a man guilty of trampling on the blood of his Saviour by drinking in an un- worthy manner a little wine in memory of him." But the reference to homicide is totally inappropriate, since that it is an overt act, and no man is guilty of homicide by a mere thought, whereas in the Chris- tian sense the thought of the heart makes the sin (Matt. V. 28). Suppose the bread and wine are the body and blood of the Lord in the Catholic sense ; a man who eats them unworthily does nothing dif- ferent from him who eats them worthily, except in his inward disposition, and he may have the wrong disposition of heart, and so fall under the condemna- tion of God, whether he eat the '' real " body, or only a symbol. And, on the other hand, if a man were to trample literally, with his feet, upon the transub- stantiated body of the Lord, he would be no more guilty of real apostasy from God and blasphemy against him than he would if he should designedly mix up, as did the Corinthians, the sacred emblems, considered only as emblems, with common food for the sake of expressing his entire indifference to the gospel and his contempt for the work of Christ. The true sin in all these things is the sin of the heart. This the cardinal blurs by his argument. And when, finally, he interprets the text, " Not discerning the body of the Lord," thus : " The unworthy receiver is condemned for not recognizing or discerning in the 3o8 The Roman System. eucharist the body of the Lord," he errs ; for the context shows that the meaning is that he who does not separate (discern) the sacred supper from the preceding ordinary meal, and thus degrades it be- cause he is not ahve to his true relations with Christ, and is not in the exercise of a living faith in him, is guilty and shall receive condemnation. § 163. The Historical Argument. This is con- ducted upon an altogether unhistorical method, but one which we have seen used repeatedly before. The thesis to be maintained has been set forth, and the disputant proceeds to find proof texts for it. Of investigation, of attempt to find the atmosphere and real meaning of the writer, even of effort to com- prehend text by means of context, there is nothing. We may, perhaps, profitably follow down the indi- vidual arguments for a little.'^ Perrone, writing when he did, could not have mentioned the " Teaching ; " but we may pause to remark that, though the Lord's Supper is made a large topic in that little work, and though prayers to be employed at its celebration are given, there is no trace in the tract of a doctrine of the real pres- ence. Neither is there anything in Clement of Rome. The first two writers after the New Tes- tament fail, therefore, to support the Roman doctrine. Perrone begins his citations with Ignatius. The passage is Smyrneans vii., where the eucharist is styled the ^' flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ." No one need draw from this expression the doctrine of the real presence who does not find it in the New i Op. cit., vol. iii., p. 168 ff. History Against the Real Presence. 309 Testament. But he does not cite Romans vii., where we read : '' I desire the bread of God, the heavenly bread, the bread of Hfe w^hich is the flesh of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became afterwards of the seed of David and Abraham ; and I desire the drink of God, namely his blood, which is incorrupt- ible love and eternal life!' Certainly, there is no thought here of a literal blood. Justin Martyr con- fessedly calls the consecrated bread '' not common bread and common drink, but the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh." ^ Irenaeus makes use of similar expressions. But Perrone does not get the meaning of either of these writers, because he is not intent upon getting their complete thought. They represent what Hase calls ^ the " Asiatic view," viz., that the spiritual Logos was connected with the consecrated bread and wine in a way similar to that in which he once entered flesh, so that the elements became his renewed body, and participation in them gave immortality to our body.^ But the bread and wine remained bread and wine just as truly as the body of Christ remained a real body after the union of the Logos with it. Hence Irenaeus' statement: ''The bread, .... when it receives the invocation of God is no longer common bread, but the eiicharist, consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly I' ^ a statement which Perrone quotes in his " difficulties," ^ and explains of the 1 Apology, I., 66. 2 Polemik, p. 406. 3 Quite in accord with this is Ignatius' expression " medicine of immortahty," Eph. xx. * Adv. Her., IV., xviii., 5. ^ Op. cif., vol. iii., p. 176. 310 The Roman System. divine and human nature, but which he should have allowed to come into the original discussion of his authority, for it shows manifestly that the real pres- ence of Irenaeus is by no means identical with the real presence of the Catholic Church. With Tertullian, Perrone has still worse experi- ences. He quotes Marcion, IV., xl., '* Having taken the bread and given it to his disciples, he made it his own body by saying," etc. But he does not quote the vciy next zvords, which are quite remark- able, and completely destroy his argument, for the passage continues, *' by saying, ' This is my body,' that is, tJie figure of viy body. A figure there could not have been unless there were first a veritable body. An empty thing, or a phantom, is incapable of a figure." This addition explodes the proof of the Roman doctrine at this point, because Tertullian is speaking of the real body of Christ while he was upon earth, and is contending against Gnostic doce- tism, and hence " veritable body " means actual body, and '' figure " means something not a body. Per- rone, to be sure, adds a part of these remaining words of the passage in his *' difficulties,'^ where he has a long explanation of possible meanings of the word '' figure " in the fathers, '' in respect to spe- cies, in respect to the mystical body of Christ, which is the Church, in respect to the body of Christ in heaven, where it is not clothed in the sacramental species ; sometimes also with respect to the reality of the body which is exhibited by an external fig- ure." But no amount of explanation will extricate ^ Ibid., p. 177. Tertiillian and Origen, 311 him from the " difficulty " which he has met in the plain meaning of Tertullian's words. Indeed, this is Tertullian's common form of speech, for he makes bread a '' representative '* ^ of the body, and again a ^' figure " ^ of it ; and in another place the wine is said to be consecrated '' for a memorial of his blood." ^ All these expressions give utterance to the thought of Hase's " African school," which regards the ele- ments as the symbol of the body of Christ, '' since their reception represents the real communication of the divine Logos to believers." * In complete accord with TertulHan, another of this school of thinking, Origen, writes : '' It is not the material of the bread, but the word which is said over it which is of ad- vantage to him who eats it not unworthily of the Lord. And these things, indeed, are said of tlie typical and symbolical body. But many things might be said about the Word himself who became flesh and true meat, of which he that eateth shall assuredly live forever, no worthless person being able to eat it ; for if it were possible for one who continues worth- less to eat of him who became flesh, who was the Word and the living bread, it would not have been written that ' every one who eats of this bread shall live forever.' " ^ This passage cannot be made to agree with the idea of the identification of the ele- ments with the body of Christ. 1 Marcion, i., 14. 2 i^id,^ iii,, 19. 2 De Anima, c, 17. * Polemik, p. 407. ^ Comm. de Matt., c. 14. Similar is Clement of Alexandria, who speaks (Paedag. ii., 2) of a '' -mixture oi the liquid and the Word," and adds : " They who by faith partake of it are sanctified both in body and soul." 312 The Roman System. § 164. In fact, in this early period there is no con- sistent and developed view of the relation of the ele- ments of the Lord's Supper to the great realities with which they are connected. Harnack puts the posi- tion of these fathers as follows : ^ '* While they con- ceived divine gifts of grace in a purely spiritual way, they could think of the benefits conveyed by the holy ceremony only as spiritual (faith, knowledge, i. c, eternal life), and the sacred elements could only be recognized as the mysterious vehicles of the same. There was as yet no reflection upon the distinction between symbol and vehicle : rather the symbol was the vehicle, and vice versa. A special relation be- tween the reception of the elements and the forgive- ness of sins one seeks in vain. It was at that time, under the prevailing idea of sin and forgiveness, im- possible. The point upon which importance was laid was the strengthening of faith and knowledge and the assurance of eternal life ; and to this a par- ticipation seemed to be necessary, in which not com- mon bread and wine, but a '' spiritual food " was received. There was still little reflection ; but cer- tainly the idea moved betw^een the two limits, of the purpose to be just to the traditional, marvelous words of institution, and of the fundamental con- viction that the spiritual is only to be attained by means of the spiritual." Then later he says : ^ " A problem in reference to the relation of the visible elements to the body of Christ (whether realistic or symbolic) suggested itself, so far as we can judge, to no one. The symbol is the mystery, and the ^ Dogmenges ch'i elite , i., p. 180 (2d edition), 2 /^/^,^ p, 297. Transitbstantiation, 313 mystery could not be conceived without symbol. We understand today by symbol a thing which is not what it signifies : then they understood by sym- bol a thing which in some sense or other is really that which it denotes. On the other side, however, the truly heavenly was, in the view of that day, always in or beneath the appearance which it as- sumed, without being identical with it. Accord- ingly, the distinction between a symbolical and a reaHstic conception of the Lord's Supper is alto- gether to be rejected. It would be more correct to distinguish between a materialistic, a ' dyophy- sitic,' and a docetic conception, although this dis- tinction could not be considered as strictly accurate. In the popular view the consecrated elements w^ere heavenly fragments, of magical power (Cyprian, de Laps, 25 ; Eusebius, H. E., vi. 44), with which the multitude in the third century already associated many a superstitious idea, which the priests let pass, or else shared.'* We shall not follow Perrone's further historical proofs, since his failure to make out his case in the second century carries with it failure to show that the real presence is a doctrine of original New Tes- tament Christianity, and since at a later point we shall have a fuller opportunity to review the devel- opment of the Roman doctrine of the Lord's Supper in its whole extent. § 165. The Theory of the Real Presence. Transubstantiation. So remarkable a doctrine as that of the real presence could not be adopted with- out some attempt to make that presence conceivable 314 T^Ji^ Ro77ian System, to the mind by explaining the process by which it is introduced. It is for this purpose that the theory of transubstantiation was developed. This affirms a conversion of the '' substance " of the bread and wine into the '' substance " of the body and blood of the Lord. The distinction between the ''substance" and the *' accidents " of the bread and wine, which is intimated in the phraseology of the symbols, has sometimes been developed at great length ; and some distinction of this kind is necessary, since it is evident that the bread appears after the transubstantiation exactly as it did before. The " accidents," form, color, taste, weight, and even chemical constitution, remain as they were. The change must therefore be somewhere else, and this elsewhere is defined by the Roman councils as the '' substance." Perrone's argumentation upon this subject is ex- ceedingly brief ^ It may be condensed into a single sentence. The words of institution declare the host to be not bread, but the Lord's body ; now, it was once bread; and if it is now the Lord's body, it must have been changed into that body. This argument he sustains by an appeal to tradition, claiming, in the words of Leibnitz, '* pious antiquity " for it, and be- ginning some special quotations in its favor with Cyril of Alexandria. He also refers briefly to the ancient liturgies. This is all. § 166. Now, of course, if the real presence is proved, the theory of transubstantiation may be admitted without making unnecessary opposition. Yet it throws light back upon the unreality of that 1 op. cit., vol. iii., pp. 187-195. Difficulties with Transitbstantiation, 315 supposed presence when we find in how many dififi- culties this theory of the transubstantiation is in- volved. The pious CathoHc may be inchned to refer all to the miracle-working power of God; but the theologians of the Church have raised a long series of questions which have exhibited the untenability of the hypothesis. What becomes of the body of the Lord w^hen it is digested in the human stomach ? Origen said '} '' Even the meat which has been sanc- tified through the word of God and prayer, in accord- ance with the fact that it is material, goes into the belly and is cast out into the draught," quoting Matt. XV. 17 ; but Paschasius rejected this as irreverent, and it was afterwards branded in the Church by the name of Stercoranism. With reference to this and a large number of similar suppositions, such as the case in which a mouse had gnawed the consecrated wafer, or when it had corrupted in common decay, Thomas Aquinas put forward the explanation that "when there is such a change on the part of the accidents that it would not be sufficient to work a corruption of the bread and wine, the body of Christ does not cease to be under the sacrament. . . . But if such a change should be made that the substance of the bread and wine would be corrupted, the body and blood would not remain under this sacrament." ^ Perrone in different language draws out the same position.^ But consider for a moment to what all this leads. The true body and blood of the Lord ^ Comm. in Matt., 14. 2 Quoted by Hase, p. 418, from Summa, p. Hi., qu. 77, art. 4. 3 Loco citato, p. 194. 3i6 The Roman System. depart from the sacrament, according to the express statement of Perrone, " provided the same species [bread and wine] are changed by chemical opera- tion."^ Invoking modern chemistry is a most fatal thing for this theory. Bread is bread because there are a fixed number of chemical substances brought together, and these are what they are because they have a fixed number of the ultimate chemical atoms in fixed combinations. The material body of Christ, which is the body that is present by the Catholic theology in the transubstantiated bread and wine, is what it is because it has a number of quite different chemical substances, which owe their identity to the combination of certain atoms in fixed chemical combinations. These ultimate atoms are the sub- stance in which all the properties of the bodies in question ultimately reside. To change the sub- stance of the bread into the substance of the body, the atoms of the bread must be changed for other atoms, at least in part, and the combinations must be totally changed. That is what a change in substance is, and, therefore, what must occur in transubstantiation. But, says Perrone, the moment you touch the chemical composition of the bread the body of the Lord departs ! That is, the moment of its coming by transubstantiation is the moment of its departure ! The sacrament is made and is destroyed at the same moment and by the same act. Or, if it be said that under the ecclesiastical term " accidents " are included even atoms and their fixed 1 Quoted by Hase (p. 418) from the larger edition. The Latin is: " Sic cess at dum per chymicam operationem ecedem species mutantur.'* Physics and Metaphysics. 317 combinations, what is that but saying that a change into a '' material body " may take place without re- gard to the laws of matter ? But that is to deny the "material" change; and thus to fall back into, the old view of two substances ; or into the Lutheran view of an " iiiy with, and under " presence. Does the theory of transubstantiation thus actually trans- form Catholics into Lutherans ? In fact, the whole idea of a change in the sub- stance without a change in the attributes, a change of bread into the substance of the body of the Lord while it remains of the same appearance and taste, is an idea belonging to the infancy of philosophy and science. We know substance only through its at- tributes, and a change of substance is a change of attributes either by physics or by metaphysics. In the Middle Ages men might talk of unchanged at- tributes because they did not know what they were saying. Today it is impossible. The doctrine of transubstantiation is not '' above reason ;" it is '' con- trary to reason." It is the suicide of reason, and would lead logically to the denial of all our powers of thought, and so rob lis of all knowledge, even of this, that there is a God. § 167. A word as to the true history of the theory of transubstantiation may be added. The theory was doubtless not created, but it was first formulated and given a place in the theology of the Roman Church, by Paschasius Radbertus, who wrote his treatise on The Body and Blood of the Lord in the latter part "of the eighth century. Harnack says of it : ^ '' His great * Dogmengeschichte , vol. iii., p. 278. 3i8 The Roman System, work upon the Lord's Supper is the first ecclesiasti- cal monograph on this subject. The contents are only partially described when they are reduced to the formula : Paschasius taught transubstantiation. Rather, the significance of the book lies in this, that the Lord's Supper is here treated from all possible points of view in an exhaustive fashion, and never- theless a unity is attained. Paschasius rendered to this dogma the service which Origen rendered to Christian doctrine in general. He is the Origen of the Catholic doctrine of the Lord's Supper, which is put by him theoretically in that central position Avhich it had long occupied in practice. One can estimate Peischasius' doctrine correctly only when he remem- bers that in it Greek Christological mysticism, Au- gustinian spiritualism, and — unconsciously to the au- thor himself — the church order of the Prankish monarchy have like part. But one must also re- member that the idea of God as an incomprehensible power was the controlling element. Without this idea the doctrine of transubstantiation could never have arisen." With this work the question was prac- tically settled for the Church. Still it was more than four centuries before the doctrine found its place in an authoritative symbol of the Church, and mean- time Gregory VII. had sheltered Berengar, who denied it, maintaining that it was enough if he de- clared, as he was willing to, that there was in the supper a '' conversion " of bread and wine into the body and blood of the Lord. It is historically a theory, invented in the scholastic period of the church dogma, to explain an idea which had gradu- The Sacrifice of the Mass. 319 ally become controlling in the worship and the doc- trine of the Church, but which lacked adequate foundation, as the theory invented for it lacks con- ceivability and possibility. § 168. And we may say, finally, that transubstan- tiation is not only inconceivable and impossible, but it is even unnecessary. The real presence, which it is designed to explain, is not called for. It belongs to that conception of the Church as a visible and /' objective " institution which we have found to be the prime fallacy of Rome. If Christ is to be with us in the sacrament, it is supposed that he must be with us apart from our personal condition and fit- ness ; apart also from the uncertainty which our un- certainty of our own fitness might throw about his real impartation of himself to us. Hence the objec- tive presence by transubstantiation of the bread and wine. But the whole conception is unscriptural ; the whole thing demanded unnecessary. We can know when we are fulfilHng the divine conditions, and can be certain when we have the divine favor. Rome makes this fundamental error; but once made, it fol- lows her, with dogged persistence, into every part of her system, introducing artificiality everywhere, and with it unscripturalness and unrealness. II. The Sacrifice of the Mass. § 169. The Scriptural Argument. Perrone^ condenses this into the following form : '^ Christ in the supper, or in the institution of the eucharist, offered a true and proper sacrifice to God. Next, he ^ Prcslectiones, vol. iii., p. 221 ff. 320 The Roman System, commanded the very thing which he himself did to be done by the apostles and their successors in the priesthood, by these words, ' This do in remembrance of me.' Therefore in the mass there is offered an equally true and proper sacrifice to God." The force of this argument depends, as Perrone himself goes on immediately to say, upon the real presence of Christ in the eucharist. This he supposes himself to have already proved, and gives no further arguments in its support. We, in turn, might say that we have already refuted the whole argument by re- futing this premise, and need make no further reply. But whatever force there is for the Catholic position in arguments drawn from new texts we are bound to consider; and they will either help the Catholic cause or add to its refutation. The ''adjuncts" of the Last Supper are brought forward, then, as an argument for the truly sacrificial nature of the sacrament. The eucharist took the place of the paschal sacrifice. As that was a true sacrifice, so ought this to be. The only difference is that the sacrifice offered in the slaughter of the lamb was an absolute sacrifice, while the eucharist is a rel- ative sacrifice, having reference to the sacrifice soon to be offered upon the cross. But, certainly, the eu- charist does not take the place of the paschal sacrifice in any respect. It does not refer to the same thing, the passing-over of the Israelites upon the night of the final affliction of Egypt ; it is not a yearly sacri- fice ; it is not expressly or impliedly substituted for it ; and the cessation of the paschal sacrifice has no connection with the institution of the eucharist ex- The Sacrifice of the Mass. 321 cept as the death of Christ upon the cross, of which the eucharist is the memorial, did away with all the sacrifices of the old law, the paschal as well as those of the day of atonement and every other, but the former no more and no otherwise than the latter. Hebrews ix. 17 is made the basis of this argument : Death and sacrifice are necessary to the formation of a covenant ; Christ founded a covenant by means of the eucharistic cup ; therefore that cup was a sacri- fice. But Christ did not found the covenant by means of the cup, but by his death upon the cross ; for in verses 23 and 26 below we read : " The heavenly things themselves \i. e., the prototype, the true cove- nant] must be cleansed with better sacrifices than these [viz., the blood of calves and goats]. For . . . now once at the end of the ages hath he been manifested to put away sin" — not by the eucharistic sacrifice, as the logic of Perrone's argument demands, but — ''by the sacrifice of himself !' Acts xiii. 2 is quoted : " As they ministered to the Lord; and fasted," '' ministering " being taken in the sense of sacrificing. Perrone even cites the Greek word Izi- Toupye7u, as a proof that " these things must be un- derstood of the offering of a sacrifice." But this word does not necessarily mean sacrificing, since it has the more general meaning of ministering. In Heb. x. 1 1 it probably has the more general meaning, though it may mean exactly what the following word '' offer- ing '^ means, by the figure of speech called tautology. In the '' Teaching of the Twelve Apostles " we have the passage (chap, xv.), "For they also serve {hczoup- yelv) you with the service of the prophets and teachers',' 21 322 The Roma7i System. which certainly was not sacrificing. It would there- fore require something definite in the context to show that " ministering " in Acts xiii. 2 referred to offering a sacrifice, and such definite thing there is not. Protestants are far from denying that the table of the Lord is sometimes compared with the altar of the heathen (i Cor. x. i8 ff.) or of the Jews (He- brews xiii. 10, where the word ''altar" is used); but such comparisons do not prove that the table is in every, or even in the principal, respect like those altars. What the sacrifice upon those altars is, is indicated in the context of the second of the last cited passages, where we read : *' Let us offer up a sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of lips which make confession to his name. But to do good and to couiiminicate forget not : for with such sacrifices God is well pleased." The word " altar," therefore, does not carry with it the idea of a " true " sacrifice. As for the quotations from the Old Testament (Gen. xiv. i8, and Mai. i. lo f), it is enough to say that no New Testament authority for their appli- cation to the eucharist can be produced, and that in lack of it they have no more pertinency to this argument than any other passages in which a verbal or formal similarity could be found. § 170. We see, accordingly, that the proffered Scripture proof of the truly sacrificial nature of the eucharistic offering is incapable of sustaining the Roman position. But there is also something further to be said. The Scriptures are not merely not for this doctrine, but they are very positively against it. If Mass not a True Saanjice, 323 there is one fundamental idea in the New Testament, it is that Christ came into the world to do a unique work. There is no prophet Hke him, no priest at all comparable with him. His work has reference to the whole race and to all ages. This is the general impression of the New Testament, and we should therefore expect without further evidence that there would be no repetition of this unique atoning work. But we are not left to this impression alone. There are in the Epistle to the Hebrews, in large num- ber, and with almost every form of emphasis, express statements that the sacrifice of Christ is not to be re- peated. Christ " through his own blood, entered in once for all into the holy place '' (ix. 12) ; *' Nor yet that he should offer himself often ; as the high priest entereth into the holy place year by year with blood not his own ; else must he often have suffered since the foundation of the zvorld : but now once at the end of the ages hath he been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself" (ix. 25, 26); " Christ . . . having been once offered to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time" (ix. 28); "We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all'' (x. 10) ; '* He, when he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever^ sat down upon the right hand of God" (x. 12); ''By one offering hath he perfected forever them that are sanctified " (x. 14) ; " There is no more offejHng for sin " (x. 18). The Roman theologians have a variety of ways of explaining these passages, but they cannot evacuate the simple and plain result, that the sacrifice of Christ admits of no repetition. Indeed, many of 324 The Roman System, their ways of explaining the matter convey a sub- stantial admission of its uniqueness. They say the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross and in the eucha- rist is one sacrifice. It is offered by Christ himself, and is the same sacrifice thus offered as upon Cal- vary. It has no atoning power or meritorious value as offered in the mass, except as it derives this from the cross. It is a memorial repetition of that. It is the individual application of that which was essen- tially general. And when all these explanations have been made, there seems to arise again that old ambiguity, which has so often surprised and perplexed us just as we were beginning to think we- understood what the Roman theology was, and we are thrown into doubt whether after all, the eucharist is a memorial, or a repetition of the sac- rifice of Calvary. If it is a memorial, Protestants have nothing to say against the Catholic idea that it is an individual application of a general sacrifice, etc., etc. But if it is a repetition, it cannot be the same as the sacrifice of the cross ; nor derive its merit from that sacrifice ; nor be merely the indi- vidual application of a general thing. The fact that the Roman Church has been obliged to defend the sacrificial character of the eucharist, upon which she bases the existence of a true priesthood in the Church, and hence, by parity of reasoning, even the power of absolution, by thus confounding it with a memorial, and blurring all the distinct lines by which its character as a sacrifice should be de- fined, proves as perhaps nothing else could, that the idea of a true sacrifice in the eucharist is untenable. Historical Argument, 325 The fall of the doctrine that the eucharist is a true sacrifice carries with it the ruin of the doctrine of a true priesthood in the Church. The one decisive argument for the priesthood (as we have seen, § 51) is the existence of a true sacrifice. We find the argument invahd: the conclusion falls. Catholic theologians have often regarded the doctrine of the sacrifice and that of the priesthood as the two sides of the same thing rather than as separate doctrines dependent one upon the other, and so have often seemed to fall into the fallacy of the circle, proving the priesthood by the sacrifice and then the sacrifice by the priesthood. They are doubtless thus inti- mately connected, and are ahke unscriptural. Still, one of them has the logical priority, and the sacri- fice is properly this prior element. With the refu- tation of this, the other is also refuted. § 171. The Historical Argument. Upon the par- ticulars of this as conducted by CathoHc theologians, it is not necessary to dwell. It differs in no essen- tial respect from the numerous other arguments of the kind w^e have already minutely reviewed. The earliest church writers are supposed to have agreed exactly with the latest, and the use in different epochs of similar terms is assumed to carry with it the proof of the possession of the same ideas. A great deal is made of the early liturgies without much examination of their date or consequent value. Perrone ^ also quotes largely from certain Protestant writers, and could today quote still more largely if he should think the ''Anglo-Catholic" school 1 op. cit., vol. iii., p. 231 ff. 326 The Roma7t System, worthy of his attention. But a proof of a doctrine of the cucharist as a sacrifice in the Roman sense among the earhest writers after the New Testament, apart from all influences from the legahsm of the Judaism and heathenism about them, and, conse- quently, an auxiliary proof of the legitimacy of the doctrine in the Christian system, a proof sustained by a discriminating, critical, and candid weighing of the early fathers, is not to be found in the Catholic systems. It may be worth while briefly to outline the true history of the idea of the eucharist as a sacrifice from the beginning. We shall see a complete change in the meaning attached to this word, and also the corrupting causes introducing it. We shall have thus not only a history but a refutation.^ In close connection with the passage from He- brews already cited (xiii. 15), the "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles " styles the Lord's Supper the '' eu- charist," but evidently in the sense of *' thank offer- ing " (ix. i). The Epistle of Barnabas has the same idea, but approaches it from a different angle. This epistle is marked by its antagonism to everything Jewish, and thus it distinguished sharply between the ritual of the Jews, especially their sacrificial ritual, and the purer service of the Christian Church. God " has therefore abolished these things that the new law of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is without the yoke of necessity, may not have a man-made obla- tion. . . . To us then he declares, ' A sacrifice pleas- 1 I follow here largely Harnack, Dogmengesch., i., pp. 137, 173, 178, 386-92, 522; ii., p. 426. The Sacrifice ImmateriaL 327 ing unto God is a broken spirit/ " ^ Thus even in rejecting sacrifices from the Christian system, the idea of sacrifice has been nitroduced. It maintained the place it thus obtained, for it seemed self-evident that Christians must have some sort of an offering, but just what that offering should be was more un- certain. Thus Polycarp's burning body was desig- nated an ^'acceptable whole burnt offering made ready for God."^ But generally prayer was re- garded in an especial degree as the Christian offer- ing. Thus we read in Justin : " Now, that prayers and giving of thanks \vjyaptaxiai\ when offered by worthy men, are the 07ily pe7fect and well-pleasing sacrifices to God, I also say. For such alone Chris- tians have undertaken to offer, and in the remem- brance effected by their solid and Hquid food, where- by the suffering of the Son of God which he endured is brought to mind." ^ Clement of Alexandria, con- trasting the Christian sacrifices with the heathen in several respects, but always as something immaterial in antithesis to the material, says : '' We honor God in prayer, and thus we bring the best and holiest sacrifice with righteousness. . . . The altar then, that is with us here, the terrestrial one, is the congregation of those who devote themselves to prayers, having, as it were, one common voice and one mind. . . . The sacrifice of the CJiurcli is the word breathing as incense from holy souls, the sacrifice and the whole mind being at the same time unveiled to God."^ To these may be added Ptolemaeus the Heretic in his letter to Flora : " The Saviour prescribed to us to 1 Ep., ii. 2 Mart., xiv. i. ^ Dial., 117. * Stromata, vii., 6. 328 The Roman System, offer oblations \7:poa{popa{\ , but not those by sense- less beasts or these kinds of incense, but by spiritual praises and glories and thanksgivings \pjyai)taTiac\, and by gifts and good deeds toward our neighbors."^ Thus, especially, public prayer, offered in the congre- gation, was the " sacrifice '^ of the Christian worship, and the gifts brought to the church, from which the materials of the Lord's Supper were taken, and which were employed in part for the love feasts, and in part for the relief of the poor, were designated by the same term. This is the earliest and purest stage of this matter ; but soon the offering came to have a larger and larger place, was connected closely with the celebration of the Supper, which became more and more the great event of the public worship, and thus gradually, by a combination of Old Testament influences, tending to restore a sacrifice and a priest- hood, with Greek heathen influences, a total change was brought about in the Christian worship and in its underlying ideas. The Roman apology will seize upon the word vjyacnaiuL in the above given quotations as the suffi- cient proof of its assertions in respect to the primi- tive doctrine. The '^ eucharist " is the perfect sacri- fice, according to Justin, and the Catholic, identifying this word with his own usage of it, will say, '' The eucharist is the perfect sacrifice, for the eucharist is the body and blood of the Lord offered for a true sacrifice; and thus Justin teaches the doctrine of the universal Church, early as well as late.^' But this argument is totally unhistorical. We have rendered ^ Quoted by Harnack, from Epiphanius xxxiii. Tertulltan, 329 eby^fipiazta by the English '' giving of thanks," and this is the only proper rendering. In Justin's thought, the true offering was the giving of thanks ; the con- secration of the bread and drink so that it was no longer '^ common bread and common drink " was by '' giving, thanks," and hence he could say: ''This food is called among us the eucharist," ^ thus spirit- italiziiig the foody not materializing the phrase '' giv- ing of thanks," as the Roman interpretation would make it, and as the exigency of their argument demands. It was Tertullian who made the first great contribu- tion of ideas foreign to pure Christianity, and going to constitute the sacrificial system of the Church of the Middle Ages. He ascribes to such things as fast- ings, voluntary celibacy, and martyrdom, a propitia- tory effect upon God, thus first introducing the idea of a satisfaction, but not connecting it with the Lord's Supper. Cyprian enlarged this idea by making such offerings a satisfaction for sins committed after bap- tism, thus exalting almsgiving, etc., into the category of a means of grace. He also first gave utterance to a distinct theory of the priesthood of the clergy, and with this proper priesthood united a proper offering and made the connection with the eucharist. Christ offered himself a sacrifice to God, and has com- manded this to be repeated by his followers.^ This is the clearly expressed thought which Cyprian pre- sents. It is the Roman theory in outline. He does not express himself consistently, for he sometimes 1 Apol., i., Ixvi. 2 The whole of his doctrine substantially in Epist., Ixiii. [Ixii]. 330 The Roman System, seems to make the '' commemoration " the same as the *' offering." But in this inconsistency the later Roman theology has followed him. From this point on, the progress is steady to the full development of the scholastic doctrine. In the East things took a slightly different turn. The doctrine of the incarna- tion was brought into connection with the Supper. Through consecration the elements became changed into, or taken up into, the body of Christ. But, as the whole tendency of the Alexandrian school, which finally became triumphant in the Greek Church, was toward a subhmation of the human in the divine, so the transformation of the bread and wine was sub- stantially a transformation into the divine nature of Christ. The conception of the sacrifice was substan- tially that of the West. ** And yet," as Harnack says, " it is nothing but pure heathenism which is at work here." The infant Church, plunged into the midst of the corrupt world, surrounded by the ritual of heathen worship, was earlier led to error in ritual than in more purely intellectual directions. It was about the time of the developing idea of sacrifice, about the time of Au- gustine, that the Church came to the parting of the ways. Had she remained free from the State, and had the flood of barbarism from the North been rolled back, she might have recovered herself, and the jangling utterances which we have just rehearsed might have been succeeded by clearer and purer notes. But in the complications of state patronage, in the confusion and darkness succeeding the migra- tions of the German nations, and under the powerful Denial of the Cttp. 331 influence of a developing ecclesiastical empire at Rome, the Western Church turned the wrong way, departed from the purity and simplicity of the gospel, and the fully-developed Roman system of priesthood and sacrifice was the result. It is a history of de- generation, of ''corruption," and not of legitimate and sound development. § 172. The Denial of the Cup to the Laity. We may dispatch this topic more briefly. The Council of Trent erected the practice of denying the cup to the communicant into a " law " on the ground that communion in " either species is sufficient unto salvation,"^ and that, although ''the use of both kinds has, from the beginning of the Christian re- Hgion, not been infrequent," ^ the custom having been already widely changed, the Church thinks fit for just and weighty reasons (which, however, are not mentioned) to approve the custom of communicating under one kind. Thus the cup, except by special dispensation, sometimes granted to kings, sometimes to Protestant nations with a view to their conversion to the CathoHc Church, and conceivably to the whole Church, should there be a general demand for it,^ is withheld from all communicants except the officiating priest. The Roman Church does not teach that this denial of the cup to the laity is a necessity of faith or prac- tice, or that it has been the universal custom of the Church, although implying that it has been the gen- eral custom. The rise of the custom gave rise to 1 Schaff, p. 171. 2 Ji)id,^ p. 173. 3 An idea of Mohler's, Symbolik, p. 320. 332 The Roma7t System. the subsequent law. Perrone ^ summarizes the rea- sons under the following heads : (i) The danger of spilling the blood, especially where there are many communicants. (2) The disgust which many feel at drinking from the same cup with others. (3) Diffi- culty of preserving the wine for the sick, especially in hot or cold countries. (4) Lack of wine in many places. (5) Natural repugnance many have to wine. (6) Voluntary abstinence of the faithful in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. (7) The impudence of heretics who reproach the Church with having de- spised the institution of Christ. But the deeper rea- son, suggested by Hase,^ and more than shadowed forth by Liguori,'^ is the desire to glorify the priest- hood, as being alone competent to enjoy fully the mysteries of this sacrament. Mohler * hints rather broadly that the desire for the cup in Protestant churches is more a desire for the wine it contains than for the sacramental blood. He shows thereby surprising and apparently inexcusable ignorance of the very small amount of wine which each Protestant communicant receives. The reply of Protestants to this '^ law " of the Church is that it is unbiblical, unreasonable, and unhistorical. Our Lord himself at the last supper, '^Op. cit., iii., p. 195 ff. 2 Polef7iik, p. 438. 3 From Littledale : " It is conceded as at least ' probable ' by many Roman theologians that there is a special grace conferred by the chalice, so that a layman is not to be blamed who desires the priest- hood in order that he may communicate in both kinds (Liguori, TheoL Mor., VI, iii. 227)." * Synibolik, p. 320 : " Der KathoUk freut sich dass er in seiner Mltte doch keine so fieischlichgesinnte Meiischen aiitrlfft, die im Abendmahl nicht das heilige Bliit, sondern Wein trinken wo lien." The Denial UnbiblicaL 333 giving the cup to his disciples, said, according to the account of Matthew : " Drink all ye of it," which finds confirmation in the statement of Mark that " they all drank of it." Now, the apostles were communicants, not the officiating priest, and, according to the Roman custom, they should not have drunk of the cup ; but this was the command, as propriety arising from the consecration of two elements instead of one essen- tially demands. Perrone, it is true, explains the direction as meaning that no one was to drink the whole cup.^ It shows the exigency into which the Roman custom brings him ; but it will never be be- lieved that our Lord was thus trying to give his dis- ciples a lesson in good manners. What reason there is in the prohibition is derived exclusively from the theory of transubstantiation, and from the exceeding sacredness that is thereby attached to the elements which have become Christ himself But with the theory, the sacredness and the propriety of the prohi- bition disappear. Unhistorical is the law in a marked degree. For the first thousand years of her existence the Christian Church universally employed both the bread and wine in the sacrament. This is confessed by historical scholars of both sides of the contro- versy. When the cup was withdrawn, lest the blood of Christ might be spilled in the celebration, the scholastics invented the doctrine of concomitance, whereby the whole Christ is conceived as equally present in both elements, to furnish a dogmatic ground for this action. But Thomas Aquinas is 1 1?i loc. cit., p. 207 : '' Ut intelllgerent ApostoU, non totum calicem, sed partem tantum ab unoquoque esse haurie?idam." 334 ^^^ Roman System, confused upon it/ and the Council of Trent did not succeed in perfectly adjusting itself to it.^ If there were any force in this doctrine it would also prevent the tautology of the two forms in the original insti- tution of the Supper. Thus general Christian antiquity is against the withholding of the cup ; but papal an- tiquity is also against it, for the popes repeatedly have pronounced against it.^ Pope Leo I. declared that abstinence from the cup was a Manichaean heresy, and that *' men of this sort whose sacrilegious deceit has been detected are to be expelled by priestly authority from the fellowship of the saints." Gelasius I. (492-496) said that a similar class must " either receive the sacrament in its entirety or be repelled from the entire sacrament, because tlie division of one and the same mystery cannot take place ivithout great sacrilege!' The Council of Clermont, presided over by the crusading pope, Urban II., decreed that " No one shall communicate at the altar without he receive the body and blood separately and alike, unless by way of necessity and for caution." And Pope Pas- chal II. wrote : *' We know that the bread was given separately and the wine given separately by the Lord himself; which custom we therefore teach and com- mand to be always observed in holy church, save in "^ So it appears, on the whole, though he defined concomitance (iii., 76, 2), for he ascribes a different office to each species, the salvation of the body to the Body, and of the soul to the Blood. See Littledale, p. 83, for fuller discussion. Cf. Thorn. Aq. Sumvta, iii., 74, i. 76, 2. 79. I- ^ The definition that the substance of the bread is converted into the substance of the body, and of the wine into that of the blood, is really inconsistent with concomitance. 3 Following instances from Littledale, p. 85 ff. Protestant Ideal. 335 the case of infants and of very infirm people, who cannot swallow bread!' Certainly, nothing could be more explicit and nothing more Protestant than these papal utterances. § 173. The Protestant Ideal of the Lord's Supper. We began this chapter with a sketch of the Roman ideal underlying its doctrine of the eu- charist. Catholics often speak as if Protestants could have no religious experiences in connection with their churches, if in any portion of their life whatever. There are no " altars," and there is no '' presence " of Christ in their temples. But there is a Protestant ideal of the communion of the Lord's Supper, and, it may be, we cannot better close our chapter than by a brief account of it. Let the reader imagine himself assembled with a congregation of communicants in a Protestant church. I remember many such a scene in the New England church in which my youth w^as passed, of a Sunday afternoon. Unbelievers are not present. The hush of Sabbath stillness is over all the place. The disciples of Christ have gathered, mindful of his promise : ** Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them,^' and the bowed head, or here and there the meditative countenance, shows that the promise is receiving fulfillment. By and by the service begins. It has reference by hymn, by selections from the word of God, by prayer, to the original celebration of the Supper in the upper cham- ber with the disciples alone. The simple account of Matthew is strictly followed. The minister '' takes the bread," and asks God's '' blessing " upon it, and 336 The Roman System, " breaks " it, and distributes it to all with the repeti- tion of the words of institution, '' Take, eat ; this is my body." And with similar minuteness and accu- racy he repeats with the cup exactly what the Master said upon that first occasion, just before he w^ent out to the agony of Gethsemane, to betrayal, and to death. It is all familiar to the communicant, for he has been before that table often; and, as it goes on, how there rises before his mind the whole scene, that group of Galilean peasants, now hushed in solemn awe ; the Master in their midst, with glowing face, already transfigured with the anticipation of the great sacrifice ; the tender discourse, " Let not your heart be troubled ;" the garden ; the trial ; the cross ; till, as it were, the death of his Master is vividly set forth before his very eyes ! By force of a holy imagina- tion, kindled and sustained by the simple but divine ceremony, the present Christ is brought very near to his soul. His heart is melted, he ponders on his own unworthiness, on his sins and disobedience, he is broken down in penitence and confession, and with the words of prayer at the table go up mingled his own secret cries of confession and supplication, and then of glad thanksgiving also for *' the unspeakable gift." And thus he hears the words with which the cup is communicated : " This is the cup of the new testament in my blood, which is shed for many, for the forgiveness of sins,'' and with the word of the minister he beholds the visible word given by Christ himself, and hears him say : " My son, just so surely as thou, being penitent, takest upon thy lips this ma- terial emblem of my cleansing blood, just so surely Protestant Ideal, zn art thou forgiven by my grace." Thus Christ is present to him, though not by transubstantiation in the material elements, and Christ's forgiveness is there, though not conveyed ex opere operato by the elements received. The soul, its faith stimulated and lifted by the ordained symbol of the passion of its Lord, has met spiritually the living Lord, and departs refreshed, for it has '' seen the Lord." CHAPTER VIII. THE REMAINING SACRAMENTS— ORDER, MATRIMONY, EXTREME UNCTION. § 174. Order. The remaining sacraments may be dispatched with greater celerity. Of these, order is the first. We have ah'eady considered the priest- hood in all its essential aspects, and other, merely theoretical aspects have very little importance for our present purpose. Enough to say that order, or ordination, is reckoned among the seven sacraments of the Roman Church ; that it is said to confer an indelible '* character," by which is simply meant that once done it does not need to be repeated, and that its effects are permanent ; that, further, its " form " are the words employed in the consecration, " Receive the power of offering sacrifice to God and of cele- brating the mass both for the living and the dead ;" and that the grace conferred by it imparts the ** power of order," that is, of preaching the word and administering the sacraments, and the ''power of jurisdiction," by which authority in the Church, and particularly the authority of the confessional, is bestowed. Whether the Roman ordination can confer the high prerogatives which it is said to convey will de- pend primarily upon the existence in the Church of the powers involved, especially that of sacrificing to God and of judicially forgiving sins. These ques- 338 Is Ordination a Sacrament? 339 tions have been already considered under the heads of the sacraments of penance and the Lord's Supper, and the argument need not be repeated here. The supposed prerogatives cannot be conferred because they have no existence in fact in the Christian Church. But Protestant churches have forms of ordination which confer certain things upon those who receive them, viz., certain offices in the visible Church with certain definitely prescribed powers and duties. In such a sense Roman ordination may be held to effect something in the recipient. Has ordination, how- ever, any claim to be a '^ sacrament " ? It is very difficult to define it so as to bring it into connection with the other sacraments, even upon the Roman principles. The sacraments are " visible signs of an invisible grace ;" but where is the visible sign in ordi- nation ? If its form is the phrase employed by the consecrating bishop, what is the *' matter " corre- sponding to the water of baptism, or even the oil of extreme unction ? Roman authorities do not tell us, and it would be very difficult to find any such " mat- ter." The only substantial argument which can be urged in favor of the sacramental character of ordi- nation is that it confers, as is supposed, ex opere operato^ divine grace. Its sacramental character is supposed to be necessary to secure that priestly qualification in her ministers which Rome demands. Grant the qualifications, and it maybe a matter of no difficulty to regard the ceremony as sacramental. But with the refutation of the supposed qualifications the whole matter falls to the ground, and may now be dismissed. 340 The Roinan System, § 175. Matrimony. The points of con tact between the Protestant and CathoHc doctrines of marriage are more numerous than the points of disagreement. To both a marriage is normally the union for life of two persons of opposite sexes for the purpose of the propagation and education of the race and for the attainment of the highest possible individual develop- ment and efficiency. Catholic controversialists often reproach Protestantism for the reluctant consent which the Wittenberg Reformers gave to the bigamy of the Landgrave of Hesse, and imply that it is also responsible for such deviations from good principle and practice as Mormonism.^ But this is totally unjust. Protestantism repudiated the advice of Lu- ther and Melancthon as soon as it became known ; and, in the modern instance referred to, the pressure of the general public opinion and of legislative enactments upon the Mormons has been so great that, at last, this people, who originated in the lowest strata of American society, and were so violently repudiated by the communities in which they first settled that they fled across deserts to uninhabited and almost uninhabitable wilds to found an empire of their own, have solemnly renounced the practice of polygamy. The Catholic system adds to a recognition of the original divine institution of marriage the assertion that it was erected by Christ into a sacrament, for which is quoted the authority of the text, ^' Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church and delivered himself up for it. . . . This is a great sacra- 1 Cardinal Gibbons does not here make this latter charge, though elsewhere implying it. See p. 166 above ; and see Perrone, iii,, p. 497. Is Marriage a Sacrament f 54 1 ment, but I speak in Christ and in the Church " (Eph. V. 25, 32).^ The interpretation of this text, which depends on the rendering of the Greek given in the Vulgate, is manifestly wrong, for the Greek word [luarfjptov never has the meaning of the Eng- lish '' sacrament " in any other passage, and the context forbids the meaning here.^ It has been im- possible for CathoHc dogmaticians to settle upon a satisfactory statement of those elements which go to make up the supposed sacrament. The fundamental question, who the minister of the sacrament is, whether he is the priest, or the contracting parties themselves, is undecided. Hence the '' form " is either the benediction of the priest or the acceptance of one another by the contracting parties, and the *' matter " is either the contract or the *' corporum tradition ^ In neither case does the " matter," which ought to be something tangible, seem to be very well made out. This vacillation serves to show how uncertain is the foundation for the erection of mar- riage into a sacrament. But it has also one important practical result in its bearing upon the validity of Protestant marriages. If the priest is the necessary minister of the marriage, then Protestant marriages lack the " form," and are invalid. But if the con- tracting parties are themselves the ministers, then the truly sacramental union may take place without ^ Council of Trent, in Schaff, ii., p. 194. 2 Even the Vulgate is against the interpretation of '' sacr amentum" by the English " sacrament," for in every other place in the Old and New Testaments where it is used to translate ^vcrr-qpiov (Dan. ii. 18, iv. 9 ; Eph. i. 9, iii. 3,9;! Tim. iii. 16 ; Rev. i. 20), sacramentum means " mystery." 3 Perrone, vol. iii,, p. 490. 34^ The Roman System. the priest, and Protestant marriages are as valid as any. The general tendency of Catholic theology is toward the recognition of Protestant marriages, and hence toward the theory that the contracting parties are the ministers of marriage. The analogy of hereti- cal baptism, which is accepted by the Roman Church as valid, favors this broader and more humane view. § 176. Another point of difference between Catho- lics and Protestants lies in the subject of divorce. It may be that the sacramental nature ascribed to mar- riage has had an effect in determining the teaching of the Roman Church. Perrone rests the doctrine, in its rational aspect, upon the sacrament imparted in marriage.^ But, however this may be, the Roman Church teaches that a Christian marriage, once con- summated, is indissoluble, so far as the marriage bond is concerned, except by death. True, a mar- riage may be pronounced invalid from the beginning for various reasons, and may thus be terminated ; a marriage not consummated may be dissolved by either party taking the solemn vow of chastity and entering upon what is called a '' religious " life ; a legitimate marriage between heathen may be dissolved as to the bond by the conversion of either party, if the other is unwilling longer to live in the marriage relation ; there may be separation from bed and board for various reasons ; but the indissoluble character of marriage forbids, even in case of adultery, such a divorce as shall give the innocent party the right to enter upon a new marriage. 1 Prcelectiones , larger edition, vol. ix., ^ 45, as quoted by Hase : " In- dissolubiliias unice pendet a sacramentoy Law of Divorce. 343 The scriptural argument for this position in its strongest form rests the case upon those texts in the Gospels of Mark and Luke in which, without any exception, it is declared that '' Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adul- tery against her." ^ '' Surely," says Cardinal Gib- bons, '' if the case of adultery authorized the aggrieved husband to marry another wife, those inspired pen- men would not have failed to mention that qualifying circumstance." That is, the Church puts herself squarely upon the ground of these texts and demands that the other texts. Matt. v. 32, xix. 9, which con- tain the exception, " saving for the cause of fornica- tion," shall be brought into consistency with the simpler and plainer ones in Mark and Luke. Some of the efforts to harmonize the teaching of the different gospels do not, however, commend themselves. Perrone makes the following proposi- tion : '' This little clause ['' saving for the cause of fornication "] ought to be referred, as many inter- preters contend, to the former part of Christ's dec- laration, viz., to the putting away of the wife, which ought not to be except for fornication, and then the sense of Christ's words in Matthew would be, ' Who- ever shall put away his wife for any other cause than adultery, and while she is alive, whether an adulteress or not, shall marry another, commits adultery ; ' and then the difficulty ceases." It is certainly necessary to put in something to get out this interpretation ; but is not this addition, which completely changes the sense of the passage, rather a large addition ? 1 Mk. X. II, 12: Lk. xvi. i8. 344 ^^^ Roman System, Might not the advocates of unHmited divorce feel themselves equally justified in putting in the words " does not " before ** commit adultery " ? But the attempted scriptural argument fails before the general principle that the circumstance that one evangelist did not record an exception, cannot dis- credit an exception recorded by another. The ex- ception is in the gospel narrative, and cannot be removed. A simple evangelical theology will admit the right of complete divorce for the guiltless party in case of adultery. While thus Protestantism has ever defended the right of the innocent party, when once the marriage has been *' broken " by adultery (which is called in one Teutonic language Elicbr7icli), to establish again by a new marriage the relation of which he has thus been robbed, it has never asserted it to be the duty of a married person to note thus every deviation of his companion from the right path. Nor has it uniformly acceded to the opinion of those who have maintained other grounds of divorce. The modern divorce system in the United States has against it, in all its breadth and laxity, the almost unanimous opposition of the Protestant Church. No one who possesses any moral principle, Christian or anti- Christian, can justify it except as Moses' arrange- ments were justified, as a concession of law to the " hardness of men's hearts." Most American Prot- estants would rather stand with Rome in all her strictness than justify for a moment the lax practice which prevails in many States of the country, and fills our courts, and even our daily newspapers, with Certain Lax Practices, 345 the constant rehearsal of nauseating details of sin and crime. And yet Rome, by her unbiblical and excessive strictness, does much to promote the dis- order as well as to alienate multitudes of her own children from her fold. At one point, however, Rome is too lax ; and it is, as is so often the case, the point where the interests of the Church as an institution seem to be imme- diately involved. '' Matrimony legitimately con- tracted by unbelievers may be dissolved as respects the bond {(juoad vinculuni) if, when the one party has been converted to the faith, the other is unwilling to live with him peaceably, or will not consent to live without irreverence toward the Creator." So writes Perrone,^ referring to i Cor. vii. 10 ff. for authority. But the apostle gives no support to the idea that the separation he there speaks of was to be a divorce, with the right of remarriage. There is no evidence that anything more than a separation from bed and board is meant. The word '' bondage " of vs. 1 5 does not indicate it, for doukoco cannot refer to the *' vincithcm!' In the face of Matt. v. 32 and parallels, nothing more than separation can be allowed by the apostle. But Rome judges differently, and has often acted with great mercilessness against parties in such a case. Hase ^ relates one instance which we may hope was never paralleled. A professedly Christian clerk in the house of a Jewish merchant in a city of the Papal States seduced his master's wife and fled with her and her children to the city of Bologna, where the woman and her children were baptized. ^ op. cit., vol. iii., p. 503. ^ Poleinik, p. 451, 346 The Roman System, The Jew demanded that his wife and children should be restored to him, but in vain. The cardinal and papal legate himself married the Jewess to her se- ducer, and the Jew was ordered by court to pay a fixed sum annually for the support of this Christian family. We could wish that the story might be dis- proved ; but all of it, with the exception of the last point, an extreme refinement of cruelty, is perfectly in accord with Roman ecclesiastical law. § 177. The impediments to marriage arising from kinship (see Lev. xviii. 6-18) have been so greatly extended by the Roman Church as to include almost all of whatever degree of relationship. To these im- pediments there have been added the so-called spirit- ual impediments created by spiritual relationship, /. e., by the fiction that a relationship is established be- tween persons who act at baptism as godfathers and godmothers and those who are there born again, as if they were originally and naturally born of these persons. The impediment arising from this is of the same degree as that arising from natural relationship, and has sometimes been extended to include all the natural relatives of the spiritual relatives. Some- times it has become almost impossible to find any one in a small and isolated village with w^hom a good Catholic could wed. Ordination is also a bar to marriage, so that priests cannot contract it, or, being contracted, it is invalid. Inasmuch as priests often leave the Church, marry, and afterwards, in a fit of remorse or fear, return to their former obedience, this principle works great hardship to the forsaken wife and children. The hardship is the greater in Impediments. Mixed Marriages, 347 that the Church declares all these marriages invali- dated by such ecclesiastical impediments, and thus to have been null and void from the beginning. Chil- dren of invalid marriages have, however, often been subsequently legitimated. But, evidently, such legislation is unwise and therefore unjust. The wider the limits within which marriage is possible, provided only those limits be observed w^hich dehcate feeling and sanitary con- siderations suggest, the better, since the opportunity to make a free and wise choice is enlarged. The Levitical rules are stringent enough. § 178. The Catholic Church admits ''mixed mar- riages," or marriages between Catholics and non- Catholics, only with the greatest reluctance. It insists upon some condition, and, where possible, upon this, that the children shall be educated in the CathoHc faith. In different countries different pro- visions have been made by law regulating this mat- ter. In the United States everything must be left to the free consent of the parties, since the courts will enforce no ecclesiastical law upon such a subject. The natural result of the exclusive condition that all the children shall be educated in the Catholic faith, in the gradual catholicization of a divided nation, requires nothing but a passing mention, and is re- ceiving in many portions of Germany mournful illus- tration in our own day. § 179. Extreme Unction. This sacrament, to be administered to the sick in view of immediately im- pending death, is the means by which the Christian is supposed to be defended in his last struggle with 34^ The Roman System. the enemy of souls.^ It is deemed to have been instituted by Christ, as is intimated by Mark (vi. "i 3), but was recommended and promulgated by James (v. 14, 15). The '' matter "is the oil; the *^ form," the words : '' God be merciful to thee " {Indiilgcat tibi Dais). The effect of the sacrament is the im- partation of the grace of the Holy Spirit which ** cleanses away sins, if there be still any to be ex- piated, as also the remains of sins," ^ and strengthens the soul of the sick person, sometimes also raising him to bodily health. To the practice of extreme unction as a pious ceremony Protestantism has little to object, except that the propriety of it, when the Lord's Supper is so naturally, as well as historically, the sacrament of the dying, may be called in question. But to its exaltation to the rank of a sacrament the objection is decided. It utterly lacks authority as a sacrament of Christianity. The passage Mark vi. 13 does not prove it such, nor does it even *' insinuate," to use the word of the Council of Trent, the sacramental character of the observance. Even Bellarmine con- fessed as much. Nor does the passage in James, which properly refers to the exercise of the miracu- lous gifts of the early Church, prescribe a universal and permanent sacrament. Without any adequate biblical support, and without Christian antiquity in its favor, Protestants set it aside as unwarranted in the Christian Church. 1 Council of Trent, Schaff, p. 159 ff. 2 Jbid., p. 161. CHAPTER IX. CONCLUSION. § 1 80. The Roman Catholic Church presents to the inquirer, as we have now fully seen, an imposing sys- tem. He seeks salvation, and first she offers him a refuge, a visible fold of Christ, a church, out of which there is no salvation, but within which the faithful believer, who intrusts himself obediently to her guidance, has assured to him his own personal salvation. She makes these promises because she is, as she claims, the one, holy, CathoHc, and apos- tolic Church, founded originally by Christ, put at the beginning under the guidance and government of the apostles, with Peter at their head, and supplied with every needed grace, but especially with the supreme and exclusive authority to teach men the way of salvation. Since Peter was himself made infallible in the official exercise of his authority as apostolic teacher, and since he has handed down this authority to his successors, the bishops of Rome, they now possess in his place this infallible authority of the Church. Through its exercise from genera- tion to generation the Church has come to possess a large body of articulated and definite truth from which the inquiring soul can draw instruction ; and in our own day, for present needs, the Church can come forward, as Pius IX. did in 1854, and authori- tatively define doctrine. Thus the Church is able to 349 350 The Roinan System, solve the always recurring doubts and difificulties of the ages and give the troubled soul perfect security. But this infallible teaching is conveyed through a regular and sufficient channel, and accompanied with every other grace needed for the best guidance of man upon his journey through this painful and dan- gerous world. The priesthood in its various ranks and degrees is this channel. It is a real priesthood, with a sacrifice to offer, possessed of irrevocable powers, and able, by the exercise of its peculiar pre- rogatives, to confer blessings which no man can truly estimate, with the certainty with which the words spoken in the holy rites, or the elements employed in the sacramental functions, are perceived by the outward senses. This priesthood is divided into ranks for the more perfect performance of its func- tions. Every obscure village may have its parish priest, who can render all the ordinary services re- quired from the cradle to the grave. Bishops guide these priests with larger knowledge and more ample authority. Archbishops stand above bishops, and over all is the bishop of Rome, who, as universal father, presides over the spiritual affairs of the whole world, and provides that everywhere the same truth shall be taught, after the same manner, by qualified persons. Thus the Church arranges at every point for the perfect performance of her functions by one united, consistent, and efficient government. In the performance of all her offices for the soul the Church begins at birth. She takes the new- born infant and baptizes it, and thereby she washes away the guilt of original sin and puts the child in The Offices of the Church. 351 a state of grace. In due time the child comes to the age of confirmation, when it is received into the visible fold of Christ, and confirming grace is be- stowed upon it. As it sins, it has the confessional, where the causes of its error may be sought out, wise counsel given, corrective discipline imposed, and where it may receive, from God himself, by the mouth of his appointed and accredited servants, the forgiveness of all sins. The w^orship of the sanc- tuary brings before the adoring gaze the present Lord under the forms of bread and wine ; and com- munion nourishes both soul and body unto eternal life. If the youth seeks the higher service of the priesthood, he will receive in due time, in the sacra- ment of order, an indelible character of special and miracle-working grace. If he follows the ordinary path of men he will have sacramental grace in mar- riage. And at the end of life he will be sent on his last journey with the holy unction, which will be his defense in the final struggle, and will usher him into the closing stage of his discipHne and preparation for the joys of heaven. In all this process the Church surrounds him with a multitude of saints and angels who minister to him in various ways. Besides the hierarchy of the Church, she has her numerous orders of holy men and women. At her shrines miracles are frequently performed, and prayers before her altars may procure innumerable benefits. Nay, her care reaches even beyond the grave, and, if she teaches a doctrine of purification by purgatorial fires in the intermediate state, she also teaches that the prayers of men upon earth, and especially the offer- 352 The Ro7nan System. ing of the divine sacrifice in the mass, may avail to abridge purgatorial sufferings, and she readily offers her services to this end. § i8i. Such are the imposing claims of Rome. But when the inquirer asks for her proofs he finds him- self immediately lost in a maze of bad and irrelevant reasoning. Rome claims that the visible Church is identical with the true Church, and that she is that visible Church. But she cannot prove this without proving her authority in matters of faith, for other- wise the claim of Protestants to be members of the Church of God cannot be denied. And when she comes to prove her authority she presupposes her visibility, including the authority of Peter in the Church, and thus builds her wall upon its capstone for a foundation (§§ 5 and 18). Now, the authority of the Church resides in the priesthood, and hence to maintain that authority which Rome claims, it must be proved that there is a priesthood. This proof Rome rests upon the existence in the Church of a real sacrifice requiring a priesthood. But the sacrifice rests not upon the Scripture, but upon inter- pretations of Scripture which have nothing for them but the authority of the Church. So that, here again, authority is built upon authority (§§ 49, 51, 161, 169). Even when the appeal is made nomi- nally to Christian history for proof, the argument turns out finally to be the old one, for the history does not prove the points claimed unless it be itself first interpreted by an infallible authority. The his- torical method of Catholic apology is well nigh invariably to assume that the present system of the Authority Rests upon Authority. 353 Church, including the point which is at the moment under discussion, is the ordering of God and the position of the Church from the first. Every indica- tion in the past which bears upon the point, and many which do not, are interpreted into some sort of consistency with this authoritative present. The authority for the interpretation is that for the present, and the authority for the present is therefore used to prove the present for which authority is sought (§ 33)- I^ id^oXy at every point we are ultimately called upon to accept Rome's teachings simply upon her own positive affirmation. If it is the immaculate conception of Mary, the infallible. teaching powder of the Church is called in to tell us what the Scriptures and history mean (§§ no and 113). The doctrine of the opus operatum is a doctrine flowing immediately from the visibility of the Church, and therefore de- pendent, as that is, upon authority for its support (§§ 119 and 126). § 182. The proof of the Roman system, therefore, fails. But the method of proof has brought it into many artificialities and inconsistencies with itself, which are a further and strong argument against it. The opus operatum, interpreting the objectivity of grace in such a way as to render it independent of the spiritual condition of the recipient, and especially of his faith, makes all religion external and artificial. No won- der, then, that an external and artificial repentance for sin is admitted as sufficient for absolution (§§ 126 and 140), and thus the way prepared for a depoten- tiation of the Christian system. Hence the incon- sistencies. The Church is the visible Roman Church, 23 354 '^^^ Roman System. and therefore there is no salvation outside her pale ; but all '' invincibly ignorant," and hence almost all Protestants, may be saved (§ 48). The subject of sacerdotal celibacy, and the Church's view of woman, are encompassed with inconsistencies (§ 63). The sac- raments are objective, and yet something subjective is so demanded by Christian feeling that it is sometimes admitted (§ 120). Purgatory is a "blessing," and yet how many contrivances to avoid it (§ 148). Sins cannot be forgiven for prayer alone, and yet the penance may be a prayer (§ 151). Out of all this springs the observed tendency to depotentiate the system of the gospel. It is such a depotentiation w^hen the Roman Church teaches that a man cannot gain spiritual access to God except through the outward Church (§ 6). Again, when the condition of forgiveness is reduced by gradual steps till it amounts finally to little more than readi- ness to confess, not only are the high demands of the truth of God forgotten, but a positive bar is erected, by the encouragement of an unspiritual frame, to the entrance of forgiving grace into the heart (§ 93). And it is no wonder if all this results in views of God and heaven which are utterly false (§ 140). § 183. How absolutely different the Protestant sys- tem of doctrine and life ! It comes to the inquirer with the original and simple religion of Jesus Christ. It takes his own words, illustrated and explained by the letters of his earliest disciples, and .it asks accept- ance only for the fundamental truths there revealed. It calls the guilty soul to repentance and submission. The Way of Salvation, 355 It asks for his whole heart, and when he has com- pletely surrendered himself to God it brings to him the promises of Christ, and he finds forgiveness min- istered to him by the Holy Spirit. He enters into personal communion with God through the Spirit. This gives him the certainty of forgiveness, which gives him the reality of spiritual truth. The Spirit also wit- nesses to him of the truth and divinity of the written word. He begins to draw his religious guidance directly from the original oracles of God, and he grows thereby. He is encouraged by apostolic ex- ample and precept to seek direct access to God in prayer. He relies upon the one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. The one and perfect sacrifice of the divine Redeemer is enough. The elaborate machinery of the Church is not neces- sary for his salvation or his edification. In the sim- ple sacraments of baptism, by which he professes his faith and receives the divine confirmation of the new birth, and of the Lord's Supper, in which is pledged and witnessed to him, being penitent, the forgiveness of his sins, he finds enough of outward and objective establishment in his course. And when he comes to die, though he may seek the friendly help of those experienced in spiritual things, he commends his soul directly to his faithful Redeemer, and hopes for salvation through him alone. § 184. The Roman Catholic Church is a great organization for doing in an external way what is essentially an inward work within the believing soul. The Protestant objection to it may be condensed into these few words : The machinery of the Church is 356 The Roman System, unnecessary, unwarranted, and injurious. It is un- necessary because the ends which it seeks can be best obtained without its help. It is unwarranted either by Scripture, reason, or antiquity. And it is injurious, because it is unnecessary, and because it has drawn to itself so many questionable practices that it is a positive hindrance to the attainment by the soul of spiritual relations with God, the Father. As one once said of another hierarchical system, originally of direct divine prescription, but become in the course of time an obstacle to the progress of the truth, so may Protestants say of the Roman Church from whose communion they have come forth : *' So we also, when we were children, were held in bondage under the rudiments of the world : but when the fullness of time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them which were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons." Free- dom by Christ in the Spirit, — that is Protestantism. INDEX. Accidents and substance, 316. Agreement of Romanism and Protestantism, i ; of Protestants with one another, 164. Allegory, use of, in defense of the immaculate conception, 218 ; perpetual virginity of Mary, 222. Allocution of Dec. 17, 1847, 79; of Dec. 9, 1854, 83. Altar, argument from, for true sac- rifice in the Mass, 322. Ambiguity of the Roman system, as to necessity of the Church, 86 ; the nature of the sacrifice of the Mass, 324. Anselm of Canterbury, on infinite sin, 185 ; immaculate concep- tion, 228. " Apostleship of Prayer" and in- dulgences, 288. Aquinas against the immaculate conception, 228 ; on sacraments, 238 ; on theory of transubstan- tiation, 315 ; on concomitance, 334- Aristides against oral confession, 267. Artificiality of the Roman view of grace, 187; of penitence and confession, 270; transubstantia- tion, 319. Assurance, Protestant doctrine of, 181. Athanisius, on the action of Dio- nysius of Rome, 125 ; and Julius I., 127. Attributes of the Church, 3 ; visi- bility, 4; apostolicity, 11 ; cathol- icity, 16 ; holiness, 19 ; unity, 22. Attrition, 189; defined, 256; the distinction involves a lowering of the gospel, 268. Augustine, " Roma loctita est," etc., 65 ; on a universal priesthood, 97 ; purgatory, 281. Authority of the Church, 29; centers in its infallibility (which see) ; source of authority within the Church, chapter on, 148 ; tradition, 149 ; ideal of tradition, 149; Protestant reply, 152; the Scriptures, 154; their inspiration, 154; Scriptures and Church, 155 ; Church and proof of Scrip- tures, 156; interpretation, 158; perspicuity, 159 ; the Vulgate, 159 ; prohibition of the Bible, 161; Cardinal Gibbons on Church and Bible, 162 ; agreement of Protestants, 164. Baluze, Etienne, his corrections of text of Cyprian, 60. Barnabas, epistle of, silent on au- ricular confession, 267; on sac- rifice, 326. Basil, appeal to Damasus, 129. Baptism, chapter on, 249 ; defini- tions, 249; "character," 250; heretical baptism, 250; objec- tions, 251. Bellarmine, definition of the Church, 3 ; on the Honorius letters, 71 ; on resistance to the pope, 120; on spurious texts, 160; on faith, 179; faith and the sacraments, 239 ; on uncertainty as to sacraments, 248 ; purga- torial fire literal, 276 ; extreme unction, 348. Bernard of Clairvaux against the immaculate conception, 228. Bible, prohibition of, 161 ; Cardi- nal Gibbons upon, 162. Biel, Gabriel, on the opus operaium, 238. 357 358 Index. Bigamy of the Landgrave, 340. Bulls, papal, cited : Unam Sanctam, 76, 142 ; Pastor ^ternus, jj ; In Cce7ia Doinini, 79, 84 ; Uni- gettitics, 286. Cajetan, prayers to the saints, 205. Canonization, definition, distinc- tions, theory, 208 ; objection- ableness of, 209. Catholic Dictionary, by Thomas Arnold, cited, on the Church, 3, 7, 10; on Meyer, 46; anathe- ma, 78; "character," 250; pur- gatory, 275, 276, 283 ; indul- gences, 284; confessional, 289. Catechism, Roman, v. ; good and bad in the Church, 4; apostoli- city, II ; holiness of the Church, 19 ; one governor of the Church, 22; catholicity of the Church, 79 ; twofold priesthood, 91 ; the Virgin Mary, 211 ; baptism, 249; confirmation, 253 ; bad exegesis, 260; contrition, 268 ; purgatory, 275 ; Lord's Supper, 294, 296. Celestine, appeal to, 131. Celibacy of the clergy, 104; Prot- estant ideal of clerical marriage, 107, no; of the nun, 193. Certainty, Protestant, in religion, 73- Character, indelible, defined, 250. Chemistry and transubstantiation, 316. Chrysostom, appeal to Rome, 130. Church, I ; definition, 3 ; visibil- ity, 4; notes, 11; apostolicity, II ; catholicity, 16; holiness, 19; unity, 22 ; authority (which see), 29; necessity (which see), 75; and State, 140 ; source of au- thority (see " Authority "), 148. Clement of Alexandria, purifying fire, 281 ; altar and sacrifice, 327. Clement of Rome, on Peter, 14; hierarchy, loi ; authority exer- cised by, 122; confession, 266; no purgatory, 280 ; no real pres- ence, 308. Clement VL, in Bull Unigenitus, on treasure of merits, 286. Clermont, council of, against de- nial of cup, 334. Concomitance, definition, 294, 295 ; origin of the doctrine, 333- Confession, defined, 257 ; confes- sional and immorality, 289 ; true argument for, 290. Constance, council of, and episco- pal theory, 115. Confirmation, 253. Constantinople as an apostolic see, 134- Contrition, 189 ; and penance, 256, 264, 269. Corruption, doctrinal, examples: doctrine of Mary, 235 ; of pur- gatory, 281 ; of sacrifice, 330. Councils, supremacy of, 116; de- cision by, 118. Coxe, Bishop A. C, interpretation of Irenaeus iii., 3, 50; of Justin, Apol. L, 6, 226. Cup, denial of the, 331. Curial system, development of, 115; chief points, 119. Cyprian, quoted in behalf of in- fallibility, 58 ff; idea of the epis- copate, 62 f ; summary of his position as to Peter, 63 ; cited for the priesthood, 96 ; on " er- ror " of the pope, 126; purga- tory, 281 ; sacrifice and priest- hood, 329. Cyril and the papacy, 131. Damasus and Basil, 129. Delitzsch, Joh., v. ; text of Unam Sanctam, 76 ; of Pastor ^ternus, 78 ; In Cozna Domini, 79 ; allo- cutions, 79, 83 ; of Martin on invincible ignorance, 84; of Weissenbach on priesthood, 97 ; of Pallavicini, 108 ; on the curial system, 115 ; Unam Sanctam cathedratic, 143 ; Kilber's argu- ment, 151 ; prohibition of the Bible, 160. Depotentiation of Christian ideas, presence of the Spirit, 10 ; state of grace, 188, 270; repentance, 189 ; love and good works, 189 ; reconciliation with God, 270. Development of doctrine. Cardinal Newman's criteria of, 233 ; the criteria restated, 235. Dionysius of Corinth, of Peter, 14. Index. 359 Dionysius of Rome, and the pa- pacy, 125. Divorce, 342. Easter controversy, 123. Edwards, Jonathan, effects of the fall, 172 ; infinity of sin, 185. Episcopal theory of the papacy, 115; inconsistent with the Ro- man system, 116. Episcopate, 98 ; not in the New Testament, 99 ; rise of, 103. Eusebius, on Peter at Rome, 13 ; on the Easter controversy, 124. Ex cathedra, definition, 30, 32 ; cases of: Honorius' letter, 69; Bull Unam Sanctam, jj, 143 ; allocution of 1854, 84; Council of Constance, 116; Alexander VIII., 241. Exegesis, Protestant, criticised by Cardinal Gibbons, 164 ; errors of Catholic, 143, 144, 218 f., 260. Fairchild, President J. H., on faith, 178. Faith, Roman errors as to, 177; true meaning of saving faith, 178 ; necessary connection with works, 185 ; in receiving the sac- raments, 245. Fallacies in Roman methods of proof: reasoning in a circle, 8, 31 note, 43, 118, 225; begging the question, 28, 56 ff., 125, 151, 308 ; ambiguity, 86 ; exegetical, 143, 144, 260; from improper use of allegory, 218 f. Fessler, Bishop, on cathedratic character of bull Unam Sanctam, 77, 143- Firmilian of Caesarea on suprem- acy of the pope, 126. Form in sacraments, 240 ; baptism, 249; confirmation, 253; penance, 256 ; Lord's Supper. 294 ; order, 338 ; matrimony, 341 ; extreme unction, 348. Gelasius I. against denial of the Clip, 334. Gerson, Gallicanism, 116. Gibbons, Cardinal, iv. ; definition of Church, 3; apostolicity, 11; catholicity, 17 ; holiness of the Church, 19 ; charges against the Reformers, 20 ; unity of the Church, 22; infallibility, 34 ff. ; infallible Bible, 44 ; personal in- dependence, 46; private judg- ment, 48 ; on disproof of infalli- bility, 71 ; celibacy, 105 ; value of celibacy, 108 ; transmission of papal powers, 114; suprem- acy of the pope, 121 ; temporal power, 141 ; toleration, 145 ; Bible, 161, 162; fallacies as to the Bible, 162 ff. ; Protestant ex- egesis, 164; Mormonism, 166, 340 ; worship of saints, 201 ; im- maculate conception, 213, 216; perpetual virginity of Mary, 220 ; definition of sacraments, 237 ; confessional, 257, 259, 265 ; pur- gatory, 280; indulgences, 284; Mass, 296 ; real presence, 305 ; divorce, 343. Gieseler, Church History, on Iren- seus iii., 3, 51; Gregory I., 55; ■ Honorius, 67; Unam Sanctam, jj, 144; In Coena Domini, 79; Julius I., 128. Gnosticism, influence in Roman doctrine, 221. Gregory I., founds the Roman primacy on Paul, 16 ; the papacy, 137. 138; purgatory, 281. Gregory VII., and transubstantia- tion, 318. Gury, Moral Theology, 290. Harnack, on "subterranean" Christianity, 227; on the doc- trine of the Virgin, 228; text of Unigenitus, 286; early view of the Lord's Supper, 312; on Pas- chasius Radbertus, 317 ; history of the Mass, 326. Hase, iii; quotations from Bel- larmine, 4; Gregory on the pri- macy of Paul, 16; translation of Irenaeus iii., 3, 50; quota- tion from Luther, 95 ; Innocent III. on subjection to the Church, 116; the Bible, 160; canoniza- tion, 209; quotation from Biel, 238; on "intention," 240; pur- gatory, 275; real presence, 309, 311; Aquinas on transubstantia- tion, 315; Perrone on transub- 36o Index, stantiation, 316; denial of the cup, 332; indissolubility of mar- riage, 342; dissolution of mar- riage, 345. Hatch, Dr. Edwin, upon the epis- copate, 103. Hecker, Father I. T., "dead book," 10; need of guidance, 36; Protestantism excludes authority in religion, 46; ex- cludes faith also, 177, Heinrich, iv. ; visibility of the Church, 5; Protestants and native races, 18; Gallicanism rejected by the Vatican council, 31; on infallibility, 32 ff; pri- macy of Peter, 42; argument for necessity of an authoritative interpretation of Scripture, 43; proof of infallibility, 49 ff; methods criticized, 55; refusal to submit tlie question to his- tory, 57; Fathers quoted, 58; fails to understand Honorius, 71 ; tradition identified with Church teaching, 152; doctrine of the Scriptures, 154 ff; Mary represents the church, 214; im- maculate conception, 217. Heraclius, Roman emperor, 66. Heresy, formal and material, defi- nition, 83; Protestant f^iith not heresy, 85. Hergenrother, Cardinal, on cathe- dratic character of Unam Sanc- tam, 143. Hierarchy, chapter on the, 88; Mohler's argument, 88; defini- tion, 90; four parts of the doc- trine, 91 ; no true priesthood in the Church, 93; ordination, 95; history, 96; the episcopate, 98; celibacy, 104; reasons for its maintenance, 108; Protestant ideal of the pastorate, no; in- consistencies, 112. History, historical proof, Roman use of, 12 ff; methods of, 55, 308, 329. Holiness of the Church defined, 19, 21. Honorius, case of, 66 ff ; letter to Sergius, 68; a heretic, 69; made a cathedratic decision, 70 ; apolo- gies for, 71. Huss, his martyrdom a judicial murder, 26. Ignatius does not prove that Peter was at Rome, 14 ; not for original episcopate, 102; no purgatory, 280; against real presence, 308. Ignorant, the invincibly, who? 84. Immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, 212. Inconsistency of the Roman sys- tem, as to necessity of the Church, 86; as to celibacy, 112; as to certainty given by the Church, 247; as to confession, 265; as to purgatory, 283. Indulgences defined, 284; theory, 284 ff; approximation to Prot- estantism, 286; practical rela- tions, 287. Infallibility, definition, 29; not personal to the pope, 31; not in matters of jurisdiction, 31; confined to cathedratic decisions in matters of faith and morals, 31; not omniscience, but like biblical inspiration, 32; depends on the design of the pope, 33; compared to the functions of the chief justice, 34; attractiveness of the idea, 36; refuted, 39 fif; not necessary, 43, 44; Irenaeus, iii. 3, 50; Tertullian, De Praesc. xxxvi., 53; Cyprian, 58; infalli- bility unknown to antiquity, 65; in the Middle Ages, 64; case of Honorius, 66 ff; summary of the argument against, 72; doc- trine of Mary, 225. Innocent I. and the papacy, 139. Innocent III. and the inquisition, 292. Inquisition, history its condemna- tion, 291. Intention, in the sacraments, 240; Protestant objections, 246. Irenaeus, the passage iii. 3, 15,50; on universal priesthood, 96; real presence, 309. Jesuits, history of, 196; character- istics, 197; successes, 197; ex- pulsion, 198; dissolution and restoration, 198; influence, 198. Julius I., his privileges, 127. Index. 361 Justification, chapter on, 169; Luther's position, 169; Roman definition, 170; original state of man, 171; process of justifica- tion according to Mohler, 173; criticisms, 175; true meaning of justification, 176; not a process, 176 ; faith, 177 ; Semi- Pelagian errors, 181 ; good works, 183 ; purgatory, 183 ; minimizing of Christian ideas, 189. Justin Martyr, on the priesthood, 96 ; worship of angels, 226 ; real presence, 309 ; eucharist, 327. Kenrick, Archbishop of St. Louis, quoted on Matt. xvi. 18, 40. Lateran council on yearly confes- sion, 267. Lea, Henry C, on sacerdotal celi- bacy, 108. AetToupyetv employed to prove a true sacrifice in the Mass, 321. Leo L, and Theodoret, 131 ; and the papacy, 136, 138 ; against the denial of the cup, 334. Leo Xin. conducts the Church without the temporalities, 142. Littledale, v. ; Abp. Kenrick, 40 ; no infallible interpreter in the Old Testament system, 43 ; ac- cess to infallibility, 45 ; Bishop Fessler, 'jj, 143 ; saint worship, 205, 206; Bellarmine, 248; abuses of purgatory, 283. Lord's Supper, chapter on, 293 ; definitions, 293 ; ideal, 296 ; real presence, 299 ; transubstantia- tion, 313 ; sacrifice of the Mass, 319; denial of the cup, 331; Protestant ideal, 335. Luthardt, Prof. C. E., definition of saving faith, 179. Luther, not licentious, 20; mar- riage, 21 ; separation from Rome, 26 ; approach to the doctrine of justification, 169 ; at Marburg, 305. Marriage, Luther's, influence of, 21 ; pastoral, ideal of, no. Martyrs, Protestant, 19, 20. Mary, the Virgin, invocations of, 206 ; chapter on, 210 ; symboli- cal expressions as to, 210, 211 ; definition of immaculate con- ception, 212 ; five points of doc- trine, 213 ; its power, 213 : sin- lessness, 214; conception, 216; perpetual virginity, 220 ; drift of mariolatry, 223 ; doctrine de- pends on naked authority, 225 ; history, 226; Gutberlet's apol- ogy, 229 ; the doctrine a de- velopment, 231 ; a corruption, 235. Mass, defined, 293 ff. ; a sacrifice, 319; history, 326. Masses for the dead, 282, 296. Matrimony, fundamental view of, common, 340; as a sacrament, 340 ; Protestant marriages valid, 342 ; invalid marriages, 342 ; di- vorce, 342 ; impediments to mar- riage, 346 ; mixed marriages, 347. Matter of the sacraments, 240; baptism, 249 ; confirmation, 253 ; penance, 256 ; Lord's Supper, 294 ; order, 339 ; matrimony, 341 ; extreme unction, 348. Merit of good works, 183 ff., 187; outgrowths of the doctrine of, chapter on, 191 ; supererogatory works, 191; monasticism, 194; worship of the saints, 200. Missions, Protestant and Catholic, compared, 17, 18 ; effectiveness of married clergy in, no. Mohler, iii., definition of Church, 4; necessarily visible, 6; dam- nation of certain popes, 22 ; au- thority of Church, 36 ; necessity, 80; necessity of priesthood, 88; papal supremacy, 117; tradition, 150; interpretation of Scripture, 151 ; justification, 171 ff. ; faith, 178 ; good works, 183 ; works of supererogation, 192 ; opus opera- turn, 238 ; necessity of sacra- ments, 242 ; necessity of confes- sion, 258 ; purgatory, 276 ; eu- charistic sacrifice, 297 ; denial of the cup, 331 ; Protestant de- mand for the cup, 332. Monasticism, origin, 194; good done by, 195 ; as an ideal sys- tem, bad, 195 ; history of, 195 ; the Jesuits, 196 ; Protestant ar- 362 Index. gument against, 198 ; connection of, with the immaculate concep- tion, 230. Monophysites, sketch of, 66. Mormonism wrongly cited against Protestantism, 166, 340. Mortal sin, defined, 185 ; true na- ture of, 244; unconfessed, 257. Necessity of the Church, 75 ; modi- fications, 81 ; Protestant views, 82 ; final refutation of, 189. Nestorius and the papacy, 131. Newman, Cardinal, on the Virgin Mary, 226 ; theory of develop- ment, 233. Nicholas I. and the papacy, 132, 139. Opus opera turn, 237 ff. ; Protestant objections, 243. Orange, Council of, on free will, 181. Order, sacrament of, 338 ; difficul- ties, 339. Ordination, 92, 338 ; Protestant idea of, 94. Origen suggests purgatory, 281 ; real presence, 311 ; his " Ster- coranism," 315. Original sin, Roman doctrine, 171 ; Protestant, 172. Papacy, chapter on, 113 ; definition of papal supremacy, 113 ; devel- opment of curial system, 115; episcopal theory, 115; points of the curial system, 119; Cardinal Gibbons' argument upon, 121 ; historical view of the develop- ment of, 134; relations to State, 140 ; temporal power, 141 ; tol- eration, 145 ; the schools, 146. Paschal II. against the denial of the cup, 334. Pastor, Protestant ideal of, no. Paul, Roman primacy founded by Gregory upon his sovereignty over the Church, 16. Penance, chapter on, 255 ; defini- tion, 255 ; parts, 256 ; ideal, 257 ; proof, 259 ; objections, 260 ; con- fession not a condition of for- giveness, 260 ; proof texts, 261 ; philosophical objections, 263 ; historical argument, 265 ; satis- factions, 270 ; prayer as penance, 273- Perrone, iv. ; Church, 4 ; Peter, 13, 15, 16; infallibility, 42; methods criticised, 56 f. ; necessity of the Church, 80; apologetic conces- sions, 82; priesthood, 90, 91, 96; episcopate, 98 ; general council superfluous, 120; intention, 240; "trust" for certainty, 247; ne- cessity of confession, 265 ; indul- gences, 284; real presence, 299; transubstantiation, 314; sacri- fice of the Mass, 319, 325; de- nial of the cup, 332, 333 ; Mor- monism, 340; marriage, 341, 342 ; divorce, 345. Peter, not at Rome, 12 ; not bishop there, 15 ; not martyred there, 16 ; the leader of the apostles, but not a primate, 41. Photius, separates from Rome, 25 ; asserted appeal to Rome, 132. Pius IX., on the necessity of the Church, 79, 83, 86; toleration, 145; canonization, 209; immac- ulate conception, 212. Pontifex Maximus, 54. Pope, may be wicked and finally lost, 22; infallibility of, 30; may hold heresy, 32 ; the title and similar titles, how used, 55. Power of the keys, given unto Peter, 41 ; to the apostles in general, 41 ; to the local church, 42 ; and purgatory, 284. Prayer as penance, 273. Priesthood, general to all believers, 91 ; special, 91 ; founded on sac- rifice, 91 ; partial refutation, 93 ; exaggerations as to, 97; final refutation, 325. Private judgment, 45 ; misunder- stood by Catholics, 46 ; true meaning of, 47. Ptolmaeus, the heretic, on sacrifice, 327. Purgatory, Mohler on, 183; par- tial answer, 186; fuller answer, 275 ff. ; definition, 275 ; ideal, 276 ; unnecessary, 277 ; unscrip- tiiral, 278; history, 280; corrup- tions, 282; a "blessing," 283. Index. 363 Quarantine, definition, 288. Raccolta, the, invocations of Mary from, 206. Radbertus, Paschasius, on immac- ulate conception, 228 ; on tran- substantiation, 317. Real presence of Christ in the sac- rament, 299 ; biblical argument, 299 ; Protestant advocates, 299 ; historical argument, 308 ; theory, transubstantiation, 313. Reformers, charged with immoral- ity, defended, 20. Repetitions, vain, of prayers, 274. Rome, see of, isolation and in- crease of power, 135. Sacraments, chapter on, 237 ; gen- eral definition, 237; opus opera- turn, 2.yj ; ideal interpretations, 238 ; requisites to validity, 239 ; number, 241 ; ideal, 242 ; reply, as to number, 242 ; as to opus op- eratum, 243 ; as to intention, 246. Sacramentum as a translation of fxvaT-qpcov, 34^' Sacrifice for sins, one, 93 ; the Mass not a true, 93 ; so defined, 295. Saints, worship of, definitions, 200; Gibbons' arguments for, 201 ; Scriptures against, 203 ; distin- guished from the worship given to God, 204; Christ the only mediator, 205 ; practical idolatry, 205 ; invocations of Mary from the Raccolta, 206 ; abuses, 208 ; canonization, 208. Sardica, council of, grants privi- leges to Julius I., 128. Satisfactions defined, 257; dis- cussed, 270; relation to chas- tisements, 272. Schism, the great, 25 ; Calixtine, 25 ; the Protestant, 26. Texts of Scripture Genesis. page 1:1 144 3 : 15 216 14 : 18 322 Exodus. 20 : 5 204 24 : 8 305 Schools, the public, 146. Scotus, on the immaculate con- ception, 229 ; on sacraments, 238. Scriptures, Catholic doctrine of, 154 ; clearness of, 159. Semi-Pelagianism of Roman the- ology, 172. Sergius and monophysitism, 66; letter to Honorius, 67 ; doctrine, 68. "Service" of saints distinguished from the "worship" of God, 204. Sinlessness, of Mary, against Scrip- ture, 214; of Jesus, 215. Sixtus IV., on the immaculate con- ception, 210. Spurious passages quoted for proof, 60. Stercoranism, 315. Summary of the book, chapter containing, 349 ; Roman Church, 349; its offices, 350; its proofs, 352 ; its artificialities, 353 ; its depotentiation of the gospel, 354; the Protestant system, 354; condensed objection to Roman- ism, 356. Supererogatory works, 191 ff. ; Christ's the only true, 271. Supremacy, papal, defined, 113, Syllabus of errors, 1864, against the salvation of all outside the pale of the Church, 80. " Teaching of the Twelve Apos- tles," two orders of ministers, 102; public confession, 266; no purgatory, 280; no real pres- ence, 308 ; eucharist, 326. TertuUian on first bishop of Rome, 16; on authority of the Church, 52; priesthood, 97; real pres- ence, 310; sacrifice, 329. Testimony of the Holy Spirit to the Scriptures, 157. cited or discussed : Leviticus. page 12 : 6 221 18 : 6-18 346 Deuteronomy. 6 : 13 204 I Samuel. 15 : 35 221 3^4 htdex. Texts of Scripture PAGE 278 278 278 1 Samuel. 31 : 13 • 2 Samuel. I : 12 . 3: 3 • Psalms. 27 : 2 300 88 : II, 12 278 Proverbs. 23 : 26 270 Isaiah. I : 18 273 38 : 18 278 Jeremiah. I : 10 144 Daniel. 2: 18 . 341 4:9 341 Zechariah. I : 12, 13 203 Malachi. I : 10 322 2 Maccabees. 12 : 40 ff. 278 15 : 14 203 Wisdom. 3:1-3 280 Matthew. I : 25 220 3:6 266 4 : 10 204 5 : 14. 15 7 5 : 17 215 5 : 28 307 5 : 32 343. 345 6 : 7, 8 274 7 : 16 290 II : 23 20s 11 : 29 ... 215 12 : 32 279 12 : 46 214, 220 12 : 50 215 13 : II 303 15:17 315 16 : 18 38, 40 16 : 18, 19 . 261 18 : 15-20 ... 9, 42, 47, 80, 94 103, 259, 261 19 : 9 343 19 : 21 192 22 : 37 193 22 : 39 -199 25:31 99 26 : 26 . . . ." . . . 164, 304 cited {continued^, Matthew. page 26 : 27 . . 333 26 : 28 304 Mark. 1:5 266 3 : 21 ff., 33 ff. 214 3 : 31 220 6:3 220 6:13 348 9:33-35 41,261 10 : II, 12 343 10 : 28 105 14 : 23 333 14 : 36 215 16 : 9-20 160 16 : 16 80, 252 Luke. 1 : 28, 42 218 2:7 220 2 : 14 260 8 : 19 220 10 : 16 80 16 : 18 343 16 : 22 278 16 : 25, 26 279 17 : 20, 21 10 18 : 13, 14 287 22 : 24-26 41 . 22 : 32 39 22 : 38 143 23 : 43 279 John. 2:1-5 215 2 : 12 220 3:5 249, 252, 260 3 : 16 224 3 : 18 .......... 81 4 : 14 302 4 : 34 215 5 : 24 182 6 : 26 ff. 300 6 : 47 280 6 : 53 303 7:3.5 220 7:53-8 : II 160 8 : 29 215 8 : 46, 55 215 10 : 27 ff. 215 11 : 44 26a 13 : 14. 15 243 14 : 6 205 14: 9 215 14 : 15-17, 21 245 15 : 4 245 Index. 365 Texts of Scripture John. PAGE 15 : 10 215 16 : 13 44 17 : 3 274 17 : 20 ff. 215 18 : II 143 20:22,23. .41,256,259,263 21 : 15-17 38 Acts. 2 : 38 9, 252, 260 6 : 1-6 103 8 : 14-17 253 10 : 25 204 13 : 2 321, 322 14:12-15 ........ 205 14 : 13 .204 16 : 31 261 19 • 5. 6 253 19 : 18 266 20 : 17, 28 99 Romans. 8:1 272 8 : 10, 14 10 8 : 14, 26, 32 44 8 : 15, 16 182 13 : I 144 1 Corinthians. 2 : 15 144 3 : 15 279 5 •• I. 9. 13 9 5:1-5 285 7 : 10 ff. 345 7 : 27 192 9:5 106 10 : 16 305 10 : 18 ff. 322 11 : 23-29 305 2 Corinthians. 1 •• 21 253 2:6 285 5 : 18-20 259 5 : 21 216 Ephesians. 1:9 341 2:1 181 3:3.9 341 5 : 27, 30 9 Colossians. 1:2 9 2 : 16 167 4: 16 14 I Timothy. 2: 5 94.224 cited {continued). 1 Timothy. page 3:1 100 3 : 16 . 341 4 : 12 106 2 Timothy. 1:8 106 1 : 5-9 ........ 100 Titus. 3 : 10, II 81 Hebrews. 2 : 10, 18 109 4 : 15 109, 216, 224 7 : 12 94 7 : 25 205, 273 7 : 26 216 7 : 27 93 9 : II, 12 42 9 : 12 323 9 : 17-26 321 9 : 25, 26 93, 323 9 : 28 323 10 : 10 323 10 : II 321 10: 12 93.323 10 : 14 323 10 : 18 323 13: 4 21,107 13 : 10, 15, 16 322 James. 5 : 14. 15 243, 348 5 : 16 266 1 Peter. 2 : 22 216 5:13 12 2 Peter. 2:1 81 1 John. 1:7 273 2 : 18, 19 81 5 : 7. 8 160 2 John. vs. 7, 8, 9 81 Jude. vs. 13, 22 81 Revelation. 1:6 42 I : 20 341 5:8 203 12 : I ff. ........ 218 14 : 13 280 19 : 10 205 22 : 8, 9 205 366 Index. Theodoret, appeal to Rome, 131. Toleration, 145. Tradition defined and discussed, 149. Transubstantiation, 313; difficul- ties, 315; chemistry, 316; his- tory, 317; unnecessary, 319. Treasure of merits and purgatory, 286. Trent, council of, does not treat of the Church, 29; priesthood, 91; celibacy, 105; authority, 149; justification, 170; freewill, 181; saint worship, 200; Virgin Mary, 211; opus operatum, 237 ff; intention, 240, 250; penance, 255 ff; power of the keys, 262; merits, 271 ; abuses of purga- tory, 282; Lord's Supper, 293 ff; denial of the cup, 331 ; con- comitance, 334; marriage, 340; extreme unction, 348. Tridentine profession, necessary to salvation, 78 ; as to Mary, 211. Unam Sanctam, the bull, trans- lated in part and discussed, 76, 142. Unction, extreme, sacrament of, 347. Unity of the Church, 22; power of the idea, 22; Rome does not possess unity, 23; the chief schismatic of history, 24. Urban II., presumably against the denial of the cup, 334. Vatican council, on Peter, 12; on infallibility, 30; on exclusiveness of the Church, 80; on papal supremacy, 113. Victor I. and the Easter contro- versy, 123. Visibility of the Church, 4; de- pends on the authority of the Church, 8. Vulgate, use of, 159; trips Per- rone, 303. Weninger, on Bible and private judgment, 47. Westminster Confession, man's original state, 171 ; assurance, 181; guilt of sin, 185; against purgatory, 277. Works, Catholic doctrine of, 183; merit of, 183 ff ; Protestant view of, 184; connection with faith, 185; popular distortions of doc- trine of, 187; supererogatory, 191 ff. "Worship" distinguished from j " service," 204; to be rendered ! to the host, 295. ! Zwingle, moral character, 20; at I Marburg, 165. r FEB C 1899 /7CS