Collected Writings of J.N. Darby: Doctrinal 5
John Nelson Darby
Table of Contents
Address to His Roman Catholic Brethren by a Minister of the Gospel: 1
BRETHREN-The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ would ever make to whom it was given anxious to declare it to others. I have been deeply anxious concerning you from the day I came amongst you; and as I did not know how to leave the labor I was engaged in to turn to you, I cannot but see the hand of God in thus taking me from it for a while. I shall be glad to discharge in some measure my conscience towards you; but I desire to do much more, making known to you the riches and power of God's redeeming love.
You all know how carefully you have been kept and warned from intercourse with those who have been anxious to bring the word of God amongst you, and to show you what the Spirit of God has taught us concerning the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ. You are taught to look upon them as heretics, as if we were not in the right faith at all. I shall make no observation on these things, for the Spirit of the Lord Jesus has taught us in His word, and teaches the heart of every real disciple, that the true and only answer to these charges, and this prejudice which they put into your hearts against us is the exercise of unwearied patience and love towards you; and this is our duty, brethren; and I pray God to enable His servants ever thus to walk, that you may see the sincerity of our hearts towards you in love.
I shall now proceed to set before you those blessed truths of the gospel, which we hold as the refuge and salvation of our souls. If you refuse altogether to inquire into them, I beg of you only to consider on what ground you will justify yourself, if God shall call you in question for having despised His truth. Brethren, my heart's desire to God for you is, that you might know the peace and power of the gospel of Christ which is kept from you. No other enmity have I against those who keep you in darkness but this, that they deprive you of the gospel. Would to God they would hear it, and not be heaping up judgment for themselves against the day of wrath! Would to God they would! Gladly and thankfully would every zealous Christian see their work ended by those who exercise authority over you themselves ministering the gospel, joined in one mind with us in furthering the glory of the Savior, and our common hopes; but while they will not, it is the bounden duty of every one to whom the grace of the gospel has been committed, so far as he is afforded opportunity, nay, to seek opportunity, to warn you earnestly that you are kept in darkness, and to hold up the gospel before you, that you may see the light. It is a work of unfeigned love, and I beseech you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to receive it so.
I join with my whole heart those who urge the reading of the scriptures; and I do not conceal from you, that I judge it the manifest work of Satan to keep them from you, and the proof of the power of Antichrist; and all the history of the church shows me this. But I shall not enter on this now. I shall first plainly state the blessed gospel, in the hope that, by the blessing of God, its glory and its grace may reach some soul; and that, if any amongst you be mourning over their sin, they may find the perfect comfort it was meant to give; and I shall then show you, that that in which the priests make their boast over us is an invention only tending to rob Christ of His glory, and you of your comfort, and, I must add, to keep you in sin and impenitence. Forgive me this, brethren. Would to God I had opportunity of simply stating the gospel to you, and you had ears to hear it with desire. Little need I then trouble you or myself with opposing what is contrary to it. But if your souls are endangered by it, is it anything but kindness to show you your danger?
I say then, brethren, that the Lord Jesus, by the one sacrifice of Himself once offered, has totally and eternally put away sin, so that it shall never be imputed at all to those that believe on Him, and that every repentant sinner who comes to Him is justified from all things, is accepted of God in Christ, with all the love He bears towards the Lord Jesus, for whose sake He does so accept us; that the glorious love of Almighty God has provided this deliverance for sinners who could not help themselves. You can understand, my friends, what comfort it would give to a soul really burthened and distressed with sin, who would earnestly desire favor and acceptance with God, against whom he had offended, to find that God Himself had freely put it all away and blotted it out. And He has, if you will believe the Son of God and His Spirit speaking by the apostles-He has so loved us while we were sinners, as to give " his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life "; so that, being justified by faith in Him, we should have peace with God, and rejoice in hope of His glory. And it is Satan's own work to deny this-to say that God did not so love us-that Christ's sacrifice was not sufficient to put away sin-that His blood, through faith in it, does not cleanse from all sin. Brethren, what you want for your peace is to have your conscience cleansed from sin against God; and this the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, once slain for us, alone can do-and can do altogether. How much more, says the apostle, shall the blood of Christ, who by the Holy Ghost offered Himself unspotted unto God, cleanse our conscience from dead works to serve the living God, Heb. 9:14.
Brethren, I beseech you to lay this to heart. Has the Son of God left the glory of His Father, and given His life for you, and will you say, I will not accept your freely offered love, I will not believe that you have wrought a full and perfect salvation for me? And if you do not believe that Christ has altogether and perfectly justified you from your sin by His death, you deprive yourself of all the hope of the gospel. For if you are not at peace with God, you can never have the hope of His glory; and if you are not perfectly justified from sin, it is impossible you can be at peace with God; nay, more, you can never serve God here with a free and willing mind, which is the only acceptable service. For if you do not know but that God is still angry with you, if you are still afraid of Him, your service will be no real service, you will go on working in misery, in hope of gaining His favor. And this is what every sincere Roman Catholic is doing, adding work to work, in hope of turning away the anger of God, and gaining His favor; but this is all in vain, and really a great dishonor to God. God is love, and He has proved it by sending His Son to die for you, while you were in your sins. How freely, how devotedly, would you be able to serve God if you knew that He loved you, and had done such wonderful things for you, and that you were fully accepted! And He has, my friends, or we should all have perished eternally.
Oh! that you knew this; oh! that you would believe this, that you might know the comfort and the joy that there is in believing. And how is all this? By the sacrifice of Christ, the one great atonement for sin, the one glorious showing forth of the love of God to sinners, so that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, as Paul says, or as our Lord Himself says, " He who heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath life everlasting, and cometh not into judgment, but is passed from death to life," John 5:24.
" By one oblation," says the Epistle to the Hebrews, " he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified," Heb. 10:14.
And what, on the denial of this, is promised instead, in which you boast yourselves? The pretended absolution of your priests and the sacrifice of the mass.
The effect of these is not to bring the conscience to God, that it might feel the depth of heart sin against Him, and seek for cleansing pardon and renewal of soul through the blood of the cross, and the power of the Spirit of God-but by relieving your conscience at the moment from the fear it was under, to leave you at liberty to go on sinning again. But, my friends, need I solemnly warn you, do not your own consciences tell you, that this is an impious delusion? It takes away the fears of the wicked man, so as to let him go on in his sins, and leaves the poor humbled penitent with his conscience as burthened as ever; and because they are sincere in their sorrow for sin, some additional burthen of penance put upon them. Oh! is this like the grace of God, or the truth of His love? Brethren, if anything would rouse Christian indignation to what is called religion amongst you, it is to see the wicked thus let go free, and still more, the heaping sorrow upon a contrite heart, putting them off with penances, which in their sincerity they will rigidly fulfill, without one ray of that comfort which the blessed God delights to give the humble. " For thus saith the high and lofty one that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy, I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones." But I tell the unrepenting sinners, they miserably deceive themselves, and they, and those that deceive them, shall find judgment for their iniquity; and I tell the humbled and contrite in the Lord's name, Fear not, Christ has died for you, God Himself has justified you: there is free and perfect remission by the death of Him who was delivered for your offenses. Nay, more, the same Jesus who died for you is now at the right hand of God, making intercession for you; able, as the apostle says, " to save them forever that come to God by him, always living to make intercession for us."
And this is another point where the great and tender love of God has been hid from you, I mean the mediation of Christ. You are led to look at Christ as a severe judge, or an unapproachable Lord, as if we had need of a mediator to come to Him by; but let the humble soul remember that He is, through the infinite grace of God and His own love, man as well as God. Did He not prove to us, that He was ready, nay, desirous to receive all that come to Him, by becoming one of ourselves, though without sin? For what did He pass through suffering and trial in the flesh, but to enter into all our sufferings with us, to understand them all, that they who believe might feel they had a friend who knew thoroughly all our wants and trials? or will they say He has left off to feel for those for whom He suffered so much, nay, whom He purchased at so costly a price? Brethren, I beseech your attention to this. The very glory of the gospel, the way in which it has pleased the Father to glorify Himself and His Son Jesus Christ, is by the Son's becoming mediator between God and man; and for this purpose, as the apostle speaks, He became man. He acquainted Himself with all the trials of those whom He redeemed to be His brethren, and whom He ever looks at as such, that He might succor them in all their difficulties; Heb. 2: I I. The words of the apostle are these: " For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one;
for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren "; and again, " Behold I and my children whom God hath given me." " Therefore, because the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he himself also in like manner hath been partaker of the same, that through death he might destroy him who had
the empire of death, that is to say, the devil. Wherefore it behooved him in all things to be made like unto his brethren, that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest before God, that He might be a propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that wherein he himself hath suffered and been tempted, he is able to succor them also that are tempted."
And it is not merely argument we have for these things: I quoted to you above, He was declared to be " always living to make intercession for us "; but the apostle is plainer still.
" Having therefore a great high priest, that hath passed into the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession; for we have not a high priest who cannot have compassion on our infirmities, but one tempted in all things like as we are, without sin. Let us go therefore with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace in seasonable aid." In short, brethren, what could our hearts desire more, than that One who so loved us as to give His life for us-one who has a perfect sense and tender feeling for all our wants, by having felt them Himself-should be now exercising that love for us at the right hand of the Father? And so John" But if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the just, and he is the propitiation for our sins." Acquaint yourselves with the love and gracious tenderness of our glorified Lord. Taste and see that the Lord is gracious. Dishonor Him not in denying His willingness to receive you, as though He were a consuming fire; He is not except to those who deny Him. The Lord, who is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, has not changed in love since He said, " Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Open your hearts before Him, ye that seek for mercy; if He redeemed you when you were enemies by sin, how much more will He receive you now that He has reconciled you! But having gone on to say so much for the humble soul, I return to the sacrifice and priesthood.
Some, I know, totally to their own confusion, deny that Christ has thus perfectly delivered the conscience of believers, by putting away sin for them by the sacrifice of Himself. But, perhaps, some of you will say, who denies it? I answer as to the comfort of your consciences, as to the faith of the soul in it, it is utterly denied to you; and your consciences in consequence kept in bondage.
Christ, the Spirit of God has declared, has put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself: if He has, what need of any other sacrifices? He hath made an end of sin, says Daniel, and brought in everlasting righteousness. But in your sacrifices there is a remembrance made of sin as not put away; for if Christ has reconciled us to God, and expiated sin for us, what is the repeated sacrifice for? Does it not directly and expressly take away from the glory of His sacrifice, and say it was not enough, that it was insufficient? And while it robs Christ of His glory, as if He had not reconciled us to God, it deprives us of our comfort by declaring His sacrifice insufficient to clear our consciences. And mark the utter folly of such a thought. As if the sacrifice which the Lord Jesus Christ offered Himself in the shedding of His blood by the eternal Spirit was insufficient to put away sin, or to cleanse our consciences by faith in it, but the sacrifice which men offer without blood does that which the former did not do!
Ah! brethren, why will you be kept from the faith of the Son of God once dying for us?
I further show you, that it is contrary to express testimony of the Spirit of God: not merely as to the sacrifice, but as to their claim of being priests, and that both one and the other are in fact a denial of Christianity. In the Epistle to the Hebrews (chap. 7:22) the Spirit of God thus testifies, " By so much is Jesus Christ made a surety of a better testament; and the others [referring to the Jewish priests] indeed were made many priests, because by reason of death they were not suffered to continue; but this [that is, Christ as a priest], for that he continueth forever, hath an everlasting priesthood, whereby he is able also to save forever them that come to God by Him, always living to make intercession for us, for it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and made higher than the heavens; who needeth not daily (as the other priests) to offer sacrifices, first for his own sins, and then for the people's; for this he did once in offering himself." Now, brethren, if you feel any interest in how you may rightly come to God, if this be the express teaching of the Spirit of God, is not the claim of priesthood, and the offering of sacrifice, which is the proper office of a priest (Heb. 5:1), directly opposed to the truth of the gospel, and the mind of the Holy Ghost?
It is fitting, that we Christians should have a High Priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separate from sinners, made higher than the heavens, who needeth not daily to offer sacrifices, for this He did once in offering Himself. What room does this leave to one who believes in it, that accepts the mercies of God in His Son, set forth by the Holy Ghost, to look for constantly repeated sacrifices, and a multitude of priests on earth? For if that which the Holy Ghost declares to be fitting has been done, as it certainly has, there can be no truth in that which is contrary to it; and supporting the earthly priesthood and sacrifice is not only against the honor, but is really a denial, of the sacrifice and priesthood of the Lord Jesus our Savior; which is the hope, the support, the comfort of every believer in Him, and the blessed earnest of their being with Him in glory, seeing, as the apostle speaks, Jesus, in entering into the heavens, has entered for us as a forerunner.
In a word, Jesus Christ is the Priest of the Christian church and its sacrifice; nor is there the least ground whatever given by God, for any man to assume the character of a priest, that is a sacrificer; and whoever does it, does it on his own authority and in opposition to God and His Christ.
The repetition of the sacrifice shows its total inefficiency to cleanse the conscience from sin. By this the apostle shows the inefficacy of the Jewish sacrifices, and afterward asserts that to which I would earnestly entreat your attention, as the great center of truth in this matter; I mean, the perfect remission of sins wrought for believers by the death of Christ. Speaking of the sacrifices under the law, he says (Heb. 10:1), " the law by the self-same sacrifice which they offer continually every year can never make the comers thereunto perfect, for then they would have ceased to be offered, because the worshippers once purged would have no conscience of sin any longer; but in them there is made a commemoration of sins every year "; and then v. To, " In the which will " (that is, of God) " we are sanctified by the oblation of the body of Jesus Christ once." And again, v. 12, " But this man offering one sacrifice for sins, forever sitteth on the right hand of God." And again vv. 14-18, " For by one oblation He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified; and the Holy Ghost doth also testify this to us; for after that He said, And this is the testament which I make unto them after those days, saith the Lord, I will give my laws in their hearts, and in their minds will I write them, and their sins and iniquities I will remember no more. Now, where there is remission of these, there is no more an oblation for sin."
So that, my friends, either there is not remission of sins by Jesus Christ, or there is no more oblation for sin; and if the Holy Ghost hath testified truly that there is remission of sins by Jesus Christ, and that the sins and iniquities of those within His testament are remembered no more, then the sacrifice which you pretend to offer for sin is false, and not merely a harmless error, but one amounting to a denial of the remission of sins by Jesus Christ, the preaching of which in His name was the great commission given to the apostles; Luke 24:47.
I shall copy another passage without any observation. I speak as unto wise men; judge ye what is said. The apostle had said (Heb. 9:22), " Without shedding of blood is no remission of sins," and then (v. 24), " For Jesus is not entered into the holiest made with hands, the patterns of the true, but into heaven itself, that he may appear now in the presence of God for us. Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holies every year with the blood of others, for then he ought to have suffered often from the beginning of the world; but now once at the end of ages he hath appeared for the destruction of sin by the sacrifice of himself. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment; so also Christ was offered once to exhaust the sins of many, the second time he shall appear without sin to them that expect him unto salvation."
In a word my friends (Rom. 5:19), " as by the disobedience of one man many were made sinners, so also by the obedience of one man many shall be made just." And I solemnly warn you, in the name of Him who shall judge the quick and the dead, that if you are not partakers in the righteousness of Christ, you have no hope in you: all your works are vain delusions, unacceptable, nay, an abomination to God; they can give you no peace, nor have they any fruit unto life eternal, while you despise the work which God has Himself wrought in the gift of His own Son.
Brethren, brethren, my heart's desire would be to preach the gospel simply to you, and not touch-why should I desire it?-upon those things in which you are kept in error: my own hope and comfort, and, through the mercy of God, my joy too (blessed forever be His holy name, who hath called me in His mercy to the faith of His Son), is in the knowledge of the perfect and gracious salvation wrought by Jesus Christ, so that all fear is taken from him that believes; and in the knowledge we are given of the glory of the Lord, of God our Savior in it. Of this I earnestly desire that you may be partakers: we are all equally unworthy of it. It is free grace to all. The prayer of my soul is offered up to God for you, that through that grace you may be brought to the knowledge of salvation by faith in Christ Jesus. But, brethren, it is an awful time for you. Your errors in ignorance would be freely forgiven and put out of remembrance, if you repent and believe the gospel: but judgment comes upon those, who, when " light is come into the world, love darkness rather than light," John 3:19. Read the whole chapter down to this. The fear of men will be no excuse in that day; for if you had thought rightly of God, you would rather have feared Him. I have anxiously, according to the grace given me, thought of the state you are in, and the testimony of the Spirit of God in His word concerning you, and I earnestly and solemnly entreat you to consider it in your own souls, to examine what real ground you have for hope of acceptance, which you know God sanctions; you will see you have none, and that the rejection of the gospel now declared to you is the rejection of your salvation.
You are in the extremity of danger, where you are, of being involved in the judgment which shall fall upon those who, from willful corruption of the truth, will have their portion appointed with unbelievers. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.
May God Almighty, by the power of the Spirit of truth, deliver you from the power of darkness, and lead you into all truth, that you may know the glory of His grace, whereby He has made us accepted in the Beloved, and give you a place in the fold of the great Shepherd, who loved us, and gave Himself for us, and liveth for evermore, our great and merciful High Priest.
Your affectionate friend and servant in Christ Jesus.
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I have purposely refrained from controverting errors, but you will find all those things which are peculiar to your system tend to the robbing Christ of His glory, and the denial of the completeness of His work; and this, if any wish, can be shown them. Where I have made any direct quotations, I have quoted from the Douay version to satisfy you. In your translation and ours the sense was the same.
Address to His Roman Catholic Brethren by a Minister of the Gospel: 2
Men and Brethren,
I consider often within myself, when I write these things to you, what motive have I for doing it? And if you can find any but love to Christ and your souls, that, by the truth, coming to Christ, you may find the holy liberty of Christian obedience, then blame me. I consider further-Is the way in which I do it according to the will of God and the Spirit of Jesus Christ? If you can show me that in anything it is not, I will acknowledge it with sorrow.
In my intercourse with you I am conscious of no fault, unless it be not having spoken the truth to you in love sooner: I pray you to forgive me this. I will endeavor to repair it towards you.
Yet is it in no righteousness of my own, brethren, I am, or seek to be justified, but in the righteousness of God by faith in Jesus Christ. I know that some of you count me to have turned your enemy, because I tell you the truth-show me wherein. It is because I love you and would have you to know the blessings of Christ's grace, that I am willing to sacrifice my good name amongst you, that I may win your souls for Christ. That is my whole and sole desire: my allegiance is to Christ; the rule of my faith, the word of the living God. My object is in no way to gain proselytes to any outward human system, but to bring you (if God will please to accept and bless my humble endeavor), in the acknowledgment of sin, to the truth of God, and the pure faith of the gospel, your souls to a hearty confession of it unto salvation, and your lives unto the way of His will, and the rejection of everything that is contrary to it.
Here, brethren, I find the rest of my own soul, which was once as far from God and consequently without hope as any of you, till I found the good Shepherd, Christ Jesus, who gave His life for the sheep, and has gathered me, as I trust undoubtingly, into His fold, and whose best and proper mercy and grace I count it, till He gather me to Himself, or rather while we wait for His appearing, to be the humble instrument of gathering others into the same place of security and blessing.
I am led to some of these remarks by the little book called " Reasons which Roman Catholics offer why they cannot conform to the Protestant religion." I shall make some observations on these, in the hope that they may lead you to inquire diligently on what ground the hope of your souls rests. One reason given is the impossibility of the church of Christ erring from the true faith; and I know this weighs much with many sincere persons amongst you. Now brethren, I freely admit this; for rightly understood as to the true church, it is a self-evident truth; for this reason, that where there is no true faith, there could be no church, for the church thus understood is properly an assembly of believers, that is, of people that have a true faith. And I further freely admit, as the promise on which my souls rests, that from Christ's first coming in the flesh, till His second coming in His glory, there undoubtedly has been and will be such a company of believers; and this company of believers are all witnesses to the faith, and maintain in and to the world the profession of faith, and thus the honor of the Redeemer's name. And this is what Paul means by the church of God being the pillar and ground of the faith. And my assurance of this, which makes me full of joy and gratitude, is rested on the promise of God in His word (and its actual fulfillment at this day), and, amongst others, on the very texts given in the little book I have mentioned: so that they are proving what I joyfully confess and praise God for. And more, brethren, I say that it is the church of Christ who have the only hope of salvation; so that this is not the question between us at all. The question is, who is able to say that he is in that church, and keeping the sayings of the great Head of it? So that they should show, which they do not, and it is absolutely impossible that they should do, that the church of Rome, and none else, is the church of Christ. On the contrary, brethren, I affirm, and I call upon you to search the scriptures whether it be so or not, that every true believer is a member of Christ, that is, one of His true church; as the Lord Christ says Himself, " / am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman."
And here I think I am bound to notice an argument which is given publicly amongst you, and which I heard also from one of yourselves, and that is this-" If you say that every one that is a true believer in Christ will be saved, why may I not stay in the church of Rome and still be saved by being a true believer; especially as your divines say that a man can be saved as a Roman Catholic, and we say that he cannot be safe as a Protestant? "
Now I must say, that this is not the objection of one that fears God, for such an one seeks with a willing heart what the whole will of God is; and does not say, if I am safe here, why should I not stay? And, brethren, I should have awful fears for the safety of a soul that should willfully use this argument at all, instead of seeking to follow Christ with all his heart, in whatever He showed him to do. It is the spirit of a true believer to say, " Lo, we have left all and followed thee "; so that a person cannot be safe willfully continuing in that which is contrary to the truth and will of God, for every true believer takes the will of God as the rule of all he does. Hence if a man continues in what he sees to be contrary to it, he is not a true believer. And I honestly confess to you, that this seems to me not only an unsound but a very wicked argument.
The reason then, why it does behoove men to separate themselves from the communion of the church of Rome, is this one, given by our Lord Himself, that they make the word of God void, and that their worship is vain, because they teach for doctrines the commandments of men. You say you hold the fundamentals; if you do, this proves nothing, for, as James says, " The devils believe and tremble." The question in which your souls are concerned is-Have you believed the gospel of the Son of God with the heart unto righteousness?
But our Lord declares that there is such a thing as making void the commandments of God by traditions: it was this very thing that our Lord charged upon the Jewish teachers. You boast in traditions: should not this sentence of our Lord's teach you to reflect on such a boast? And accordingly, what is looked for from a Roman Catholic who desires to become a Protestant is to renounce those doctrines and commandments which have no warrant in the word of God, avowing his faith in that which is found there, and to receive the word of God as the warrant of his faith, and Christ Himself as the only hope of his soul. And the name of " Protestant " was received from protesting against practices contrary to His will and goodness-against laying on men's consciences the burthen of things which God had not laid, and thereby keeping them from the knowledge of the exceeding riches of God's grace in His kindness towards us by Christ Jesus, and thus making Him seem to men a hard Master, instead of a tender Father to those that believe in Him. As the scripture says, " Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish aught from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you." Again, " Every word of God is pure. He is a shield unto them that put their trust in him. Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar."
They teach things, brethren, which have no warrant in the word of God, and (by offering remedies for sin which God has not offered, and therefore will not accept) prevent men from being led to true repentance and faith in Christ Jesus for remission of sins and salvation, which is expressly offered by God as the remedy for sin, and the only one. There is therefore in the present doctrines of the church of Rome no real remission of sins at all; and not only so, but it is expressly denied. And they say that the doctrine which God has set forth in His word about it tends-dreadful thought-to sin! The doctrines they teach, and the character they assume-I speak it, brethren, with deep sorrow-directly dishonor the Lord that bought us with the price of His own most precious blood, by assuming to themselves the honor and authority which belong to Him alone, whose glory is the believer's satisfaction.
They teach and command things which have not only no warrant, but are in truth contrary to the word of God.
You who have ears to hear are called upon by the voice of the Lord's love to separate yourselves from them, that you may find the true grace and truth of the gospel for your soul, and lest the judgment and plagues which will come upon them for these things should find you amongst them, and fall upon you also.
Brethren, I presume not to say when that hour of judgment will come. It will come suddenly and with terror upon those who have lived carelessly and at ease, saying, We shall see no sorrow, we are safe. But I could, brethren, earnestly desire to see you, having believed the testimony of God, watching as men prepared for your Lord, as those that are of the day, so that it should not come upon you unawares, but " when these things begin to come to pass," you may be among those who shall " lift up their heads, because their redemption draweth nigh "; who have put their trust in Christ, and the promises of God in Him, so that, when He appears, ye may rejoice before Him with exceeding joy. Oh! how differently will that man feel, who has trusted in His word and promise and acted upon faith in Him alone, when He shall appear, from one, who not relying upon His word that He would save all that trust in Him, has trusted in his own works, has put his hope in man and man's word and man's work.
Look unto Him, I beseech you, that cares for your souls, while He calls, " Seek ye the Lord, while he may be found, and call upon him while he is nigh. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." And if it bring reproach upon you, and trouble, dearest brethren, and they cast out your name as evil, is not this very thing rather a mark of truth? " For all," says the apostle, " that will live godly in Christ Jesus, will suffer persecution": nay, as our Lord Himself said, " Rejoice and be exceeding glad [that is if ye suffer as witnesses of God's truth], for great is your reward in heaven, for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you." And when Paul went round the churches he had planted among the Gentiles, he went " confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God."
I say, then, that the whole hope of the gospel is denied by the doctrines of the Church of Rome-I mean the free, full, entire redemption purchased for us by the blood-shedding of Christ, and laid hold on by faith; that consequently there is no saving faith amongst you at all; and this is why I am in earnest in speaking to you on the subject. I own to you, brethren, that though I was firmly convinced that you were utterly in the wrong in every point in which I was acquainted with the differences between us, I never felt the deep necessity that now lay upon you of coming to Christ out of the system of popery, as I do now. I entreat every one, with my whole soul, who loves our Lord Jesus Christ and His honor, to come out from among them and be separate. I would lead you to the discovery that you have not Christ amongst you, and that you are given " another gospel " than that which the Lord and the apostles preached, " which is not another, but there are some that trouble you, subverting your souls "; but the Lord will judge them in His own time, when He hath gathered His own sheep. I know not, brethren, the hour when the Lord will call me, and I solemnly assure you, that you will find in Christ, and in Christ alone, by faith in Him, that which your priests falsely pretend to give you, and yet which none of you have- the solid comfort of Christ's gospel. I ask you if you have, yourselves; and I tell you it is expressly promised in God's word, and the power of it is brought to a believer's soul by the Spirit promised to them that believe in the name of the only-begotten Son of God. Why will they not even let you read it?
Brethren, they keep you in bondage, because you know not the glorious promises of the Father of mercies; and they are enemies, and try to make you enemies, of all that have them. But the voice of the gospel is gone abroad, and His sheep will hear it; yes, brethren, salvation by the blood of the Lamb of God, free, undeserved-reconciliation to God by the death of His own Son, come amongst us in the flesh to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, is proclaimed, and He will see of the travail of His soul, and be satisfied. His own word shall not fail: " I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me." Will you count yourselves unworthy of eternal life? Hear, I beseech you, brethren, and save yourselves from this untoward generation, who hate and oppose the knowledge of Christ by the gospel. Ask any real believer, of any denomination, of the Established Church, of the Presbyterians, of the Independents, or by whatever name they may be called; and see if they do not agree in the faith, that " the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin "; but why do I say, ask a real believer?-Ask the word of God, in which they find the promises on which their faith is founded. What infatuation is it of your priests, under the name of Christianity, to deny all the efficacy of God's promises in the gospel!-the cleansing of the blood of Jesus Christ, and the renewing, enlightening power of the Holy Ghost, and to lead you-to what? To that which is not to be found in His word, and has no warrant but the word of men like yourselves. If they can show any authority for it, it were all well; but they show none but of men like themselves, or perhaps none at all; and they will not suffer you to have God's word to see if it be there or not. Oh! they are heaping up wrath against the day of wrath in a way they little know. They say you cannot understand it, and yet the Lo red says, " I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes: even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight." And He declares that He Himself was anointed to preach the gospel to the poor; and who were His disciples? Were they rich or poor? They were fishermen; and I tell you why they understood it-they were taught of God: as it is written, " They shall be all taught of God: whosoever, therefore, hath heard and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me." The Jews of that day said they were the only children of God, and yet those only who left them and came to Jesus were saved from the judgment that came on their nation.
Brethren, the Lord Jesus is not now amongst us in the flesh, but the scriptures of God declare the truth and power of His coming in the flesh; and they keep these from you. They hide the glory of His free and glorious salvation to the utmost of their power; and when those actuated by the Spirit of truth would declare it to you in love, and appeal to these scriptures, they do all they can to prevent your hearing the one or searching the other. Why could not you understand when you read it by the teaching of God, as well as the poor of that day, when they heard it by the teaching of God? Is God less powerful, or less near us than He was? and so far from saying that the Jews could not understand the scriptures, He says the greatest of all wonders would fail of convincing them if the scriptures did. " If they hear not Moses and the prophets "-that is, the scriptures of the Old Testament, which was what the Jews had-" neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."
Hear too what Paul says-" it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For the Jews require a sign "-as your teachers ask for miracles-" and the Greeks seek after wisdom: but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God " -them which are called, brethren, when the power of Christ's voice reaches the heart so that it feels the call. The gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is proclaimed to you. Some are daily hearing the voice of the good Shepherd: who among you will follow Him, and who will count Himself unworthy of eternal life? " By me [He says] if any man enter in, he shall go in and out and find pasture; and I will give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no man shall be able to pluck them out of his hand." Mark "by Me," as He says, "Come unto me." We preach to you Christ, brethren-Christ crucified, the good Shepherd laying down His life for the sheep-we preach Christ all in all, as Paul preached Him. What will they add to Him? Can the offerings of men, or the works of men, add to Christ? Or has He laid down His life in vain, and done half His work? You say you believe in Christ; yet those that lead you deny His work, the power and efficacy of His blood to cleanse from all sin! What! I repeat it, brethren, the blood of the only-begotten Son of God, come in the flesh for our sakes, be insufficient, and your priests can do what He cannot! Oh! here is the iniquity of these men keeping the sheep of the great Shepherd from the comfort of His love.
I will copy for you a passage in the scripture, which declares His saving love in His own words-" Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep: to him the porter openeth, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out; and when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice; and a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him, for they know not the voice of strangers." " Then said Jesus unto them again, Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep: all that ever came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture. The thief cometh not but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy; I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine: as the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep." Again, " My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father which gave them me is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. I and my Father are one."
Oh! brethren, dearly beloved, I pour out my heart to God for you, and I know that He hears my prayer; and herein I find comfort in the thought of declaring these things to you, that you should be gathered unto Him. Brethren, there is not one doctrine of those which are peculiar to yourselves, on which you are taught to depend for your souls for present grace or future glory, that has the least warrant of God's word; and, moreover, there is not one of them which is not the invention of Satan, to hinder your souls from coming to Christ. Ask those who have had their eyes opened by reading the scriptures, whether they found them there, or free salvation by Christ? Nay, read rather yourselves, dear brethren, and see: and oh! when you see, confess Him with your mouth unto salvation, for His own love's sake, for the sake of your brethren who may be still in darkness, and as you would find mercy yourselves in that day.
I shall go on to mention some things, not for their own sake, but because they use them to keep you in darkness.
They tell you Luther was a bad man. How does that change the truth of the gospel? I firmly believe I shall meet Luther in heaven through the free grace of God: but, brethren, did he tell the great truths of the gospel, which had been hidden or corrupted? But though I have not the least doubt that his name was written in heaven, our faith is in no way founded in him but in scripture, where his was in all its main points founded; and the reading of which made him, by the teaching of God, wise unto salvation, as they will every one partaker of the same grace, and that by leading him to that entire and unmixed dependence upon Christ, which can alone give peace to the soul. " Seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you "; even the full treasure of the unsearchable riches of Christ, freely, " without money and without price," as says the word of the Lord: " He! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, come buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why spend ye your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which satisfieth not? "
Brethren, I had thought of some arguments as to this matter, but I will not lead your souls from the word of the living God the Savior to human arguments. I pledge myself to satisfy, out of the word of God, every one who in sincerity of heart will take the word of God for his authority: and, brethren, will you dare to deny the authority of the word of God? Your teachers wickedly say, that Luther held communion with Satan. Tempted by Satan, no doubt, he was; but you know, brethren, this is the lot of every man, as it was, for our sakes, of the sinless Son of man Himself. For the rest neither you nor I are his judge: and more, if they loved the truth, they would not, if there were faults in the teachers of it, seek to overthrow the truth by means of those faults: if they loved God's word, they would not defame the instruments by which God has made it known. And, I must add, brethren, that denouncing the enemies of God's truth and righteousness where they show themselves such, in a spirit of zealous faith, is not contrary to Christian faith.
Luther honored the truth and loved it, and we love him because he loved it and the Author and Giver of it-the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and we arc thankful to God on his account. He was a man, and we accordingly reject everything he held which we do not find according to the truth of God: acting according to the direction of the apostle, " Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." And so far from asking you to believe Luther, we entreat you to trust in no man implicitly. And it was to the scriptures Luther and his companions appealed, and to which we appeal, and by which God will judge all at the last day. If you accept grace, He will deal with you accordingly; you will be freely forgiven; your sins blotted out and remembered no more; and you will find, what you have trusted in, that God is love. If you will persist in seeking to be saved by your works, God will judge you accordingly, and you will be found wanting in that day; for " in his sight shall no man living be justified." But it was not flesh and blood, much less the enemy of all truth, that made Luther cleave to and preach the scriptures of truth. And if you read them, you will find so, to your soul's everlasting comfort. Or if the gospel of eternal love and the truth in them be hid, when they are brought before you, it is hid to them that are lost, in whom the God of this world hath blinded the hearts of them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine into them.
Moreover, brethren, Luther was not alone, but it pleased the God of all grace to raise up, in order to give to the world the fullest testimony that it was His own work, at the very same time, at a distant place, the monastery of Einsiedeln, a member of that monastery, named Zwingle, to preach the truths of the gospel, and protest against the wickedness of the pope and practices of Rome. And God was pleased so to order it, that these two men, Zwingle and Luther, were never united in sentiment to the day of their death. And so far was Luther from agreeing with Zwingle in his opinion on one point, that he was so angry with him about it that he would never join churches with him. And the truth is, that it rather seems that Zwingle began to preach the gospel before Luther. The cause of the Reformation was God's mercy and grace, the time for which was now fully come. The occasion of it, under God's providence was this: Pope Leo the tenth wanted to finish a very splendid church in Rome, commonly called St. Peter's; and in order to raise money for it, he set indulgences for sin to sale without limit. And this it was which made Luther and Zwingle both at the same time begin to protest against the conduct of the church: though Luther at first did not charge the pope with it, but only preached against the indulgences. When they tried to silence him, he went on to search the scriptures in order to defend himself, and find out where the truth of the matter lay; and there he found that the papacy of Rome had no foundation for its assumed authority, and afterward he was persuaded that it was indeed that Babylon which it is expressly foretold should rise in the Christian church, and corrupt everything herself, and persecute all faithful witnesses to God's truth. Would to God, brethren, and it is my earnest prayer and trust, that many amongst you may be led by the same means of searching the scriptures to discover the same truths; and above all, that your souls may find their way by the teaching of God's Spirit, by the means of God's word, to the full power of eternal life and unfeigned holiness of heart and life through the knowledge of Jesus Christ therein revealed; that you may enter with unmixed joy into the presence of your God.
I have added, brethren, a few distinct texts, which show in direct terms the falseness of the doctrines on which you have been taught to depend. They do not deny that the scriptures are the word of God. And then judge you, whether those men are to be trusted who teach those things, and keep the scriptures from you, which they must own to be true.
They say that men who are forgiven their sins must nevertheless pass through the fire of purgatory, in order to be cleansed from them.
The scripture says, " The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin."
They say that men ought to address the Virgin Mary and the saints as mediators.
The scripture says, " There is one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus."
They say that the mass is a propitiatory sacrifice, an offering or oblation for the sins of the quick and the dead.
The scriptures say, that " by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified "-that remission of sins is obtained by the new covenant in His blood; and that " where remission of these is, there is no more an offering [or oblation] for sin."
They say that salvation is obtained by men's works.
The scriptures say, " By grace ye are saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast."
I take notice of these here (not to enter further upon them as points of controversy; and indeed where the scripture has plainly spoken on a subject, I do not see what room there is for controversy), but to lead you to this point: the priests would have you trust blindly in them; at the same time they cannot deny that the scriptures-take your own Douay, I am content-are the word of the living God. Now I ask you, Do they not teach you the things I have mentioned? and are not the scriptures, your own scriptures, flat contrary? How can you give the salvation of your souls into the hands of men who acknowledge the scriptures to be the word of God, and yet teach things flatly against them?
But not to show you error merely, and what you have reason to distrust, but to set before you truths upon which your souls may rest, if God shall give mercy to you that this may reach you, and open your hearts to the acknowledging the truth, I add-
Christ, and Christ alone, is the true sacrifice.
Christ, and Christ alone, is the great High Priest.
Christ, and Christ alone, is the mediator between God and man.
Christ, and Christ alone, is our righteousness in the sight of God.
Christ, and Christ alone, is our perfect pattern.
Christ, and Christ alone, is the great Head of the church, and the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls.
Christ, and Christ alone, is the true vine, in which every branch finds life; while every believer incorporated into His mystical body by faith and baptism thus by the communion of His Spirit becomes one with Him, and, partaking of His fullness according to the measure of the gift of God, fulfills in his sphere the same offices which He fills as the first-born amongst many brethren, ministering to the completeness and perfection of His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all.
Brethren, the scriptures contain all things necessary to your salvation, because they reveal the fullness of Christ Jesus, " God manifest in the flesh."
The Apostle Paul says, " By grace ye are saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast; for we are God's workmanship, created again in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them."
What we want then is to know the way of salvation, and how to be perfected in good works, in which believers walk.
Both are found in Christ by faith: He is our Savior and our pattern.
Both are revealed in the scriptures, as to which Paul says to Timothy, " From a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus." " All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works."
Further, brethren, that the minds of any of you who love the truth may be undeceived, I add some further points.
First-You rely upon being catholic. Catholic means (as your catechism, I believe, tells you) universal, and that it is universal in different ways.
Brethren, the fact is, the Church of Rome is universal in none, except by the antichristian assumption by the pope of what belongs to Christ alone. A large portion of professing Christians have no communion with the Church of Rome, and have never, at any period, admitted its supremacy. Its faith is not universal; it totally differs from, and is opposed to, "the faith once delivered to the saints "; and for this we appeal to the scriptures, which they cannot deny contain that faith.
Not only, brethren, are they opposed to the scriptures, but the articles which we renounce have been added to the creed, in express defiance of the authority of the primitive church itself. In the year 449 the third General Council, which sat at Ephesus to maintain the truth against heresies, expressly decreed that no innovation should be made on the creed then settled. In the eighth century after Christ, Pope Leo the third wrote to his Legate (who was attending assemblies of German and French bishops), in answer to an inquiry from him, stating, that no addition should be permitted to be made in the creed, which the French and German bishops were thinking of making; and he set up, out of the archives at Rome, silver tablets in St. Peter's and St. Paul's, with the creed engraved on them, as a memorial of what it was then, for the very purpose that nothing should be changed or added. This happened a thousand years ago. Now the great difference between the Greek Church (which denies the supremacy of Rome, and is separated from it) and the Roman (which calls itself catholic) is the addition which this tablet was put up to prevent, and which the Greeks have not agreed to the insertion of. And most of the great points in which we, who deny both the catholicity and the supremacy of the church of Rome, differ from you, are, twelve new points added at the time of the Reformation to the creed by Pope Pius the fourth and the Council of Trent. So that, far from their being catholic in point of faith, we are sanctioned in our separation from them, not only by the scriptures, which these new doctrines of theirs are quite contrary to, but they are, in adding them to the creed and attempting to impose them on us, expressly condemned by a General Council, which they receive and declare to be of divine authority, which sat fourteen hundred years ago. And the Greek Church, which they also condemn as schismatic is, to say the least, justified in its separation by the authority of one of their own popes who took the pains of fixing up a silver tablet to prevent that which after popes did or acquiesced in. So utterly unfounded are they in the pretensions which they set up in order to keep you in bondage.
And this fact is as strong against their pretense of infallibility as catholicity; for we have the church four or five hundred years after Christ, expressly decreeing that no article shall be added; and we have those who call themselves the church, fifteen or sixteen hundred years after Christ, adding twelve articles as matters of faith, and rejecting all who deny them. Was the church in the first ages, or the church of Rome at the Reformation in the right? or how can that be infallible which contradicts itself? But the true catholic church, brethren, that seed of God, which shall indeed never fail, the body of Christ, the real communion of saints, the one holy catholic and apostolic church, subsists in the company of true believers, in every age united to the great Head, Christ Jesus, by His Spirit dwelling in them, and incorporating them into His mystical body. And while the power of the Lord lasts, even to the end of the world, while the influences of the divine Spirit show to souls His glory in hope, so long will there be a church upon earth. But to say that this is any particular communion or body of professing Christians (and that too without inquiring whether they hold the faith once delivered to the saints) is nothing else but the spirit of Antichrist.
And now, brethren, see what sort of arguments they use to keep you still in bondage.
Luther did not give scriptural advice in some instances; therefore do not you read the scriptures, which would have hindered him giving the advice if he had read them properly. Is that sound reason?
Again, King Henry the Eighth was a bad man, and acted contrary to good morals: therefore do not read those scriptures which condemn his immorality. What reason is there in such an argument as that? Do we say that all Protestants are good men, or under the vital influence of the Spirit of God? Alas! no, brethren; but we do say, that they have the truth and faith and kingdom of God amongst them. But the fact is, Henry the Eighth, though he was an instrument in the hand of God to overthrow popery in England, never, I believe even to the time of his death, cordially submitted to protestant truth, and during some part of his life burnt people for believing it, even after he had thrown off popery. For Henry the Eighth, although we leave him to God's final judgment, was corrupted by power and wealth and pleasure, so as to love his own will rather than popery or Protestantism; and the fact is, we have nothing to do with him, nor will his crimes be any answer for your souls in the day of judgment.
The point, brethren, is this-there are certain doctrines in which the faith and hopes of a professor of the Christian religion are deeply concerned. You are told you ought to believe these doctrines. We say there is no foundation for them, and not only so, but that the belief in them precludes the faith by which we find the power and comfort of the gospel of the Son of God come in the flesh; and we appeal to the scriptures, confessed by all to be inspired, and given to us by God for our edification in the truth, written by apostles and evangelists commissioned by God, so that they might say, and none could deny, " he that is of God heareth us." And we declare to you as honest men, that a person reading them with the assistance of God's grace will find none of these doctrines in them, but what is entirely inconsistent with them, and your teachers, while they dare not deny that the scriptures do contain the truth of God, will not let you read them to see whether these things be so, as we say: while we know that the Bereans are expressly commended for so doing: " they were more noble, searching the scriptures daily whether those things were so."
Another common difficulty in the mind of a person beginning to see the truth of God, amongst you, is-this Protestant faith is a new faith; or, as they are accustomed to say, it came fifteen hundred years too late. I mention these arguments as things which might hinder a sincere soul from receiving the truth. They will tell you, the first religion must be the right one. Undoubtedly, brethren, it must. The first religion must be the right one, and the only one, not because it is the first, but as coming from the Lord. And that is exactly the ground we go upon. And it must be so for this reason, that that is the true religion which came from God Himself. In a word, the only true religion is that which was " once delivered to the saints," which came from the lips of Christ and His apostles- so much so indeed that Paul is bold to say, that he wished they were cut off that troubled the Galatians, perverting the gospel of Christ. " But," says he, " though we, or an angel from God, should preach to you any other gospel than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel than that ye have received, let him be accursed."
And now brethren, where will you find the first religion? Hear Paul-" God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son ": and then, after declaring the glory of the Son of God, he goes on, " Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him, God also bearing them witness both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will? " Heb. 2:1-4.
So that we may put the case thus: we agree that the first doctrines are the true ones, as coming from Christ and the inspired apostles: the question is, how we are to find what they are? You take it at the priest's word, who comes eighteen hundred years after them. We appeal to the scriptures, which record Christ's sayings, as none of you deny, and contain the apostles' writings, as none of you deny: is not this a good way of finding out what that first religion was which they taught? And not only do we show that we use the right way to follow the first religion, which I agree we are bound to do; but we show you as a matter of direct history, that they have added twelve articles to the creed which was in use in the primitive or old church, and which is commonly called the Nicene creed. I take for granted you know the creed. Now will you tell me what there is in that about the Virgin Mary, or that the saints are mediators? Ought not this to make you doubt whether you are not misled in being made to believe things which are not in the creed, when they refuse you the scriptures to see if they are there; and when, too, a General Council prohibited any new creed to be made, beside what is called the Nicene creed?
There is one thing more, brethren (which I should never mention; I should in truth be ashamed to mention it, but that it is commonly said amongst you) that is, that Peter stands at the gate of heaven with the keys, and lets in the Romanists as belonging to the true church, and keeps out other people. Now, brethren, you will not deny that, as Paul says, " we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad." Keep this in mind: good and bad, we are all to stand at the judgment-seat of Christ. Now this is quite out of the question if that be true about Peter; for, according to that, they will never get to the judgment-seat of Christ, or perhaps you will say it is after they have been judged. But then Peter need not be there at all, for those that the Lord rejects He sends away to hell: as it is written, " Depart ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."
Brethren, I have spoken of these things for your soul's sake, with sorrow of heart. We are all sinners, and under just judgment in the sight of a holy God, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity; nor can there be any sound real hope to see His face, unless we are cleansed from all sin. It is the very truth and purpose of the gospel to assure us, that there is perfect and entire remission of them in Christ Jesus, for those that believe in Him, and that His blood cleanses from all sin; and also this further blessing to those who by the work of His grace have been brought to desire holiness, that He " will put his law into our hearts, and write it in our minds." Instead of saying to us, " If you do not do so and so, to keep my law, you will be condemned "; He says, " I have mercy upon you; I will put the love of my law in your hearts; I will give you a new heart; and your sins and iniquities I will remember no more." This is what God has said, brethren, and why should you not believe Him? Oh! comfort to a soul weary in itself, to a heavy burdened conscience, to hear the Lord from heaven saying, " Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." And again, " Your sins and iniquities will I remember no more." Think of this.
Yours with many prayers,
Romanism: Answer to a Romish Priest's Pamphlet "The Law and the Testimony"
AND you have not one word, then, to say for the Mass, the very center and distinguishing feature of the whole Romanist system!
The omission is intelligible, but remarkable. The pretension to offer Christ still, as a propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of the living and the dead, is so subversive of Christianity, so contrary to the express testimony of the word of God, that it is natural for one who seeks to conciliate Protestants to Romish doctrines to pass over it in silence, if he can.
The best way to win to these doctrines is to conceal them, to direct the attention from them. You cannot deny that the Mass is the center of your whole system. " He goes to Mass " is the very term familiarly used to designate a Romanist; " he goes to church," to mark out a Protestant. Why have you omitted this subject in your effort to enlighten poor Roman Catholics and disabuse prejudiced Protestants? The pretense to have a sacrifice still offered up on earth, when the word of God declares, that " by one offering Christ has perfected forever them that are sanctified "; that " there is no more offering for sin, where remission of sins is "; that a continual offering was a memorial of sins, proving that they were not put away- the declaration that you have an unbloody sacrifice, when the word of God declares, that " without shedding of blood there is no remission," and that consequently, if the oblation of Christ was to be repeated, He must often have suffered: such a plain distinct testimony of God's word on the very point, makes it natural you should omit all mention of it. The sacrifice of the Mass is the proof that, in what calls itself the church of Rome, there is no true remission of sins; for " where remission of sins is, there is no more offering for sin."
This is a very solemn point, dear reader. If the word of God be true, there is no remission of sins in the so-called church of Rome. Hence, those belonging to it are continually, as the poor Jews were, " offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins "; for they are unbloody sacrifices, and without shedding of blood there is no remission. Romanism has a form of piety, but it denies the substance. God forbid that I should use a hard word as to souls as precious as my own, and who believe they are in the right; whom, I trust -and believe, I love with unfeigned charity; such as I have lived amongst for years, and loved and served as well as I knew how. It is not want of love to speak plainly in what concerns the salvation of souls. I would not use an abusive or hard word that could offend them, but I say plainly, that that is not the church of God, nor is the true remission of sins to be found, where a sacrifice is still pretended to be offered. " For where remission of sins is, there is no more offering for sin." The church of God enjoys the perfect remission of sins by one perfect sacrifice, in which the precious blood of Christ was shed, offered once for all, and which never can be repeated; for Christ can die no more-can never suffer again, nor need He, for He has by one offering perfected forever them that are sanctified. The Mass is but a return to the weakness of Judaism.
Hence this one capital point is sufficient for everyone taught of God, and must lead everyone who bows to the word of God to reject the Romish system as an entire departure from Christianity as revealed of God. Yet I will take up briefly the different points the author of " Law and Testimony " has touched upon. And, first, some general observations which I would address to the writer.
You lean much upon the Fathers. Forgive me if I think you have not much read them. You tell us, that you have taken from the authenticated work of every author you have quoted, as may be ascertained by reference to their writings. Now, that you are not personally acquainted with them, you have afforded most unequivocal proof in your pamphlet, in this: that you have supposed the Clement who wrote the Stromata to be the Clement who was, as you say, a " fellow-laborer of the apostles, who was Pope of Rome, third after Peter, and is often mentioned by St. Paul, in his Epistles." " The church, he writes," you say, " which is one," etc., and you quote " St. Clem. 7 Stromat." Now, the very smallest acquaintance with the Fathers would have saved you so glaring a mistake as you have here made. There was a Clement, companion of Paul, who wrote a letter to the church of Corinth, and who (though there is the greatest confusion and contradiction as to the succession of the first bishops of Rome) is stated by respectable historians to have been the third bishop of Rome. Two letters have been attributed to him; one is believed to be authentic-a pious effort to compose the strifes of the church of Corinth. Bur (must I say so? As my readers may be peasants of the North of Ireland, it may be necessary) Clement of Alexandria, who never was a bishop at all, was the author of the Stromata. He flourished from 192 A.D. to the beginning of the third century. He was president of the school of Alexandria. He was a great philosopher as well as a Christian, but of doubtful soundness enough on some points, and full of philosophical speculations. However, whatever the value of Clement's opinions, one thing is quite clear, that you did not consult him yourself; whether you did the other Fathers, which you quote, every one must judge by this example for himself. One thing is certain: you must be an utter stranger to the Fathers, to have taken Clement of Alexandria for Clement of Rome.
Your definition of the church introduces another point in which the flagrant departure of Romanism from the Christianity taught by the apostles betrays itself in a remarkable manner. It is, you say, an assembly of Christians, United by the profession of the same true faith, and communion of the same sacraments, under the government of lawful pastors, whose head is the pope. Now scripture is as explicit as possible in saying that Christ is its head-and it cannot have two.
The statement of the Catechism of the Council of Trent is curious enough on this point. It says-it could not say otherwise-this church has also but one ruler and governor, the invisible one, Christ, whom the Eternal Father hath made head over all the church, which is His body; the visible one, him who, as legitimate successor of Peter, the prince of the apostles, fills the apostolic chair. One would have thought that made two. God " gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body "; or, if you prefer the Rhemish translation, " hath made him head over all, to the church, which is his body " (Eph. 1:22, 23); and again (chap. 5: 23), " the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church."
Now this is practically very important, because the glorious Head, living in heaven, gives the true church, His body, a heavenly character, though its members may be despised on earth; whereas a glorious head on earth, greater than emperors and princes in the eyes of men, gives it a worldly character which neither Christ nor the true church ever had: besides, Christ as the Head is a source of grace, which it is impossible the pope or any man can be. But the grand point is, Christ is the one sole Head of the true church; the pope is the head of yours; therefore yours is certainly not the true.
One little word in addition as to your definition. You tell us it is an assembly of Christians united by the profession of the same true faith. Hence, as there are millions in the Greek church who say they are the true church, and millions of Protestants who say they are, and millions of Catholics who say they are: and you tell me that their being united in the same true faith is part of the definition by which I shall know which is the true one, I must find out what the true faith is, before I know which Christ's church is, or if any of them are; for each of them tells me it is. Of course they honestly think themselves so; and you tell me that profession of the true faith marks the true church. Well then I must necessarily know what is the true faith, to know who professes it; that is, I find the true faith before I find the church. And so it always was; for it was on receiving the true faith from the apostles, or other servants of Christ, that people at the first became members of the church; and they did not, and could not, become so otherwise.
But, again, you give us the usual marks of unity-sanctity, catholicity, apostolicity, and add infallibility, perpetual visibility. The first four are given in " Milner's End of Controversy "; indeed they are the well-known marks as given in the Catechism of the Council of Trent. Nowhere is the truth given as a mark of the true church. This is strange-still more strange, since in your definition of the church, the profession of the true faith is made essential to it.
It is very convenient to assume it as a definition, and to drop it as a mark; but you have replaced it by a very convenient substitute-infallibility, which means, take it for true without inquiry. Before, I was to take the true faith, as showing Christ's church; now, I must without inquiry take the church and all it teaches, as securing the truth for me. Which is the right way? Both cannot be. Holding and professing the truth are not infallibility. Every true Christian holds and professes the truth, but he is not infallible. If the church professes the true faith, she holds a true faith which exists all ready to be professed, as it was given by inspiration to those whom Christ sent to reveal it. If she is infallible, she is the source of truth, not the receiver of it. Now that is true of God alone.
But, in giving the first four marks, you allege your system justifies you. They are those given in the Catechism of the Council of Trent. The only point I would now insist upon here is this very solemn one, that the truth forms no mark of the true church in the system of Rome. She dare not present it as a test; she disclaims it, she avoids it. She pleads unity, sanctity, catholicity, apostolicity. We will examine these just now.
Truth cannot be borne as a test. All that is taught is to be received without any test at all, though an apostle could say, " Prove all things, hold fast that which is good." They of Berea were noble in the apostle's eyes, because they searched the scriptures to see whether these things were so. But the test of truth cannot be endured at Rome; it is not pretended to be one of the marks of the Romish body. In place of that, it would impose all it teaches without any test at all-pretending to be infallible, which is the attribute of God only. Do I assert that man, by his own powers, is able to fathom the truth? No; but the Lord has said, " They shall be all taught of God; whosoever, therefore, hath heard and learned of the Father, cometh unto me." God may employ any one, a minister of the word, a mother, a friend, a book to present the truth-grace applies it to the heart; that, the church, even the true church, has no pretensions to do, though she is an instrument to hold the truth up before men; but God alone can bring it home.
On the other hand, the Roman Catholic, having relinquished the truth as a test of the true church, saying that the truth is to be searched for in vain, leans not on grace, but entirely upon human powers, to find the true church. He points out, to use the words of a celebrated controversialist and bishop, " certain exterior visible marks, such as plain unlearned persons can discover, if they will take ordinary pains for this purpose, no less than persons of the greatest abilities and literature." This is stated in reply to the marks of the true church, which the author declares to be laid down by Luther, Calvin, and the Church of England-namely, truth of doctrine, and the right administration of the sacraments. That is, truth of doctrine and the right administration of the sacraments are objected to as adequate marks of the true church, by which it may be known.
Now, if it be a question for heathens or Jews-for them the whole question is, just how to be saved. If they believe and are baptized, they are saved, and members, it is to be supposed, of the true church, before they have discussed its merits at all. If it be a question which arises among Christians, who seek among Roman Catholics, and Protestants, and Presbyterians, and other bodies, where the true church is to be found; if, I say, the question arises among Christians, they have not all knowledge, doubtless, but they have saving faith, or they are not Christians at all; and hence, the truth is a most sure means of ascertaining the true church. Thus, if I know, as a matter of my own salvation, that the divinity and atonement of Christ are the very truth of God, and I found everything calling itself a church which denied these fundamental doctrines, I could at once say, That is not the true church. Souls may be ignorantly in error there-may come to the knowledge of the truth and be saved; but I cannot own the body as the true church of God.
And here a great and important question arises, on which I desire to say a few words, from its intrinsic importance, though the book I am commenting on relieves me from the necessity. They quote the scriptures, and, consequently, suppose us capable of understanding them, heretics though we may be, capable of receiving proof from them. But the subject is too important to pass it over with this remark, conclusive though it be. It is said we cannot judge scripture; it is alleged that laws require judges, and the like. Now I do not go upon the ground of our capacity to judge scripture. My reason, dear reader, is very simple-it judges us. " The words that I speak unto you," says the Lord, " shall judge you in the last day." " The word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword, and pierceth to the dividing asunder of joints and marrow, and soul and spirit, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." There is a conscience in every man; God's word speaks to it, and judges everything in his heart. It is the light which manifests all things-the revelation of God and of Christ, who is light. I do not judge if the light be clean; it shows whether I am.
When Christ was in the world, when He spoke the words of God, were not men bound to receive them on peril of condemnation? Did it require the church's authority to lead men to receive it? All the religious authorities-authorities which they quote to confirm their doctrine-rejected Him. Are His words less binding, less true, less holy, less gracious now? The word of God is not judged-it judges. Woe be to the man who hardens his heart against it! Men did then: what was the consequence? God, by John Baptist, mourned to them, they would not lament; He piped to them, they would not dance. Hardening their consciences against the conviction of sin, they (to use the words of the blessed Lord) rejected the counsel of God against themselves; that is, to their own eternal ruin. The word (which was, and, blessed be God, yet is spoken and sent in grace) will judge them, and all who reject it in the last day; for God knows that, when He sent it in grace, He sent it with ample proofs to men's hearts and consciences that it is His word.
But a word more on this. It is not denied that the scriptures are the word of God. The Council of Trent has added seven books to the canon, never publicly received into it before, and against the express testimony of Jerome, the author of the Vulgate translation, which they receive as authentic. But leaving these contested ones for the moment (for in the New Testament there are none such), they own that the scriptures are the word of God. They own that Peter wrote his epistles as an inspired apostle; Paul his, John his, and so of the other books of the New Testament (and the same holds good as to all the Old Testament, to the Jews). Now, save the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, all the books of the New Testament are addressed to all the faithful; in one epistle, that to the Philippians, the bishops and deacons being added. That is, to express myself in modern language, the New Testament was addressed not to the clergy but by the clergy, the highest and wisest of them assuredly, to all the faithful in general, or in particular places. Now, if the faithful in general were incompetent to use them, how came the apostle to write them to them? The apostles thought what they wrote was suited to the mass of the faithful; you think it is not; which is right? And mark what a monstrous position you put yourselves in-the apostles wrote (to say nothing of the guidance of the Holy Ghost yet) in the way they thought best suited to the mass of the faithful, writing to all of them; and even in one case particularly insisting that care should be taken that it was read to all. You think you can do it better than they. What monstrous presumption! Did they do it badly, in a wrong manner, so that you can do it better? If really looked into, it is blasphemy; for it is the Spirit of God who addressed all this, save the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, to all the common mass of the faithful.
But another very solemn question arises here, that of the authority of God in the matter. God did address the writings in question to the mass of the faithful as binding on their consciences, directing their lives and rejoicing their hearts. Now I do not insist here on the right of every Christian to read the scriptures (though no man has a right to call it in question), but on the right of God to address Himself to whom He will, and of the sin of intercepting what He has addressed to His servants. If I have sent directions and promises to my servants, he who hinders their having them as I send them, and directly from myself, meddles, not with the right of the servants, but with mine. God has sent His word to the faithful, not to the clergy (I except Timothy and Titus, as to this argument, however profitable, and in spirit binding on all). He who hinders their receiving it, or pretends to claim control over their getting it, flies in the face of God's authority and God's own acts. To pretend to communicate God's thoughts better and more clearly than His inspired apostles, and to hinder His communications reaching His own servants, when He has addressed them to them, is a strange way of proving any to be the true church of God. And that is exactly what the clergy of the Roman Catholic system do.
But I will enter on your marks of the true church. They are unity, sanctity, catholicity, and apostolicity. You refer to some other points, which I will advert to in their place.
First, unity. That the church of God was one at the beginning, and manifestly and publicly such, is evident to every one that reads the scriptures. That it is not, if we consider it as a public visible body on earth (for the true body of Christ will be infallibly so in glory, and is so always in the living unity of the Spirit) is equally evident, from the simple fact that we are inquiring which of two or three bodies, or if any of them, be the true church. Unity of doctrine, and general discipline, which you give as being unity, is not sufficient. These may prove sameness in two bodies, as well as unity. There must be corporate unity-a single body. I therefore seek more than you do in unity. Further, your proofs of unity are utterly vain and useless; they are as true of the Greek body, which detests and rejects you, as of the Romish, which denounces the Greek as schismatic and heretical. They have bishops and the assemblings on Sundays, and the Eucharist, and the same doctrines, and the same general discipline, which you plead as proofs for Rome. You would find these in the Protestant Episcopal church too all over the world. Perhaps, indeed, we may except a confession to a priest. But what a strange mark of unity you have given us here. It is perfectly certain that if it be one, no Christian for centuries after Christ was in the one true church. There is not an historical point more incontestable than this, that private confession to a priest is a novelty unknown to the early church. After the earliest times men did public penance for scandalous falls, and no confession was imposed as to others. There was indeed for a time one penitentiary priest at Constantinople, and, as it appears elsewhere; and such scandal arose, on a certain occasion, from it, that it was abolished by Nectarius; and his successor, Chrysostom, at the end of the fourth century, urges, over and over again, confession to God alone. Augustine's words are equally clear; so are Ambrose's. In the thirteenth century alone it was first made obligatory by the Lateran Council under Innocent III-the same pope under whom the Inquisition was established, and the Crusades formed against the Albigenses, and the atrocities of that " holy war " perpetrated in the south of France.
We agree that unity was at the first; and it does not exist now. There are Romanists, Greeks, Armenians, Syrians, Protestant Episcopalians, Presbyterians, all composing nominal churches, containing, the smallest of them, millions of professing Christians. Your talking of unity of doctrine and discipline amongst Romanists is nothing at all to the purpose. So there is amongst the millions of the Greek church; so there is in the smallest body of Christians you may affect to despise.
The question is, Is unity found in the whole professing church? If you tell me, But none of the others, save Rome, are in the truth, that is just the question to be solved, and I must first have the truth to judge by. If I have that, according to the word of God, to judge by, then I judge the Romanist system to be apostasy from the truth of God. That you are at one among yourselves proves nothing at all, because others, as the Greek body, are that also. Nay, to go further, Mahometans are, as to doctrine and general discipline, with pretty much such a schism as Greeks and Romans show under the name of Christ. Nay, in China we have numerically more than all put together in one system, worshipping heaven and the manes of their sainted ancestors.
You will say, and say justly, But these are not Christians- have not the truth of God at all. But then I must know what the truth is, to judge that. I do (blessed be God!) know the sure precious truth of God, the doctrine of Christ, as God has revealed it. But when I use this, I find that you have it not.
But you have the pope. Is this a security for unity? Why, you know well that there was a time when there were three at a time, and all three set aside by a council, a general council- that of Constance. If such unity as you speak of was necessary to the existence of the true church, and the pope was the keystone of it, where was it then? and where is your apostolic succession? In which of the three am I to trace it? There was a regular double succession of popes for fifty years; and then we have a council deposing a pope; and mark it well, the present succession of the apostolic see, and the consequent existence of the whole Romish body, depends on the right of a general council to depose a pope, and its superiority to the pope, for it flows at best from the pope set up by the council when they had deposed John XXIII. I say, at best; for these three popes are each of them sources of an ordained clergy. Again, when Pope Liberius solemnly signed the Arian creed, and the vast majority of Christendom were Arian, where was the unity of the church through the pope then? Now I will not affirm that the story of Pope Joan (that is, that a good-for-nothing woman was pope) is true; but with the real uncertainty whether it be not true, what is become of succession, as a secure test of the true church?
We have touched now on the question of apostolicity, as well as unity; but, on other grounds, this mark will not help you out in your assertion that the system of Rome is the one true church. The apostolic succession of the Greek and Eastern bodies is as sure, and indeed much surer-to say nothing of the Protestant-than that of Rome. So that this will not hinder my being a Greek, or an Armenian, or even a Protestant. How will this visible external mark help me? Am I to settle all the nice questions of the Council of Constance? Am I to settle whether Urban VI, or Clement VII, or their successors, were the true popes of their day? or, when the successors of each line were condemned by the council as guilty of heresy, perjury, and contumacy, and were excommunicated, am I to consider them popes or not? or, instead of them, the third set, Alexander V, and his successor, John XXIII, and who was in turn degraded by the council for his crimes? It is a dreary scene; vet it is not I, but you, who have referred me to apostolicity as a test of the true church.
Do you say, that the poor man has nothing to do with all this? But this is apostolicity. It will not, you mean to say, bear examination. For how am I to settle apostolic succession but by knowing it exists? Is this a simple external visible mark? Why, it is a question your most learned divines are at sea about, and avoid. They tell you the pope and a general council together are infallible; but how, when a council condemns a pope and deposes him, a deposition on which the best line of your present orders, and the validity of the succession of the actual Peter, depend? Again, which are the general councils? This they dare not say; because if they admit Constance to be one, then the church can act without a pope, and depose him; if they deny it, their succession is gone, because the present popes derive their succession from this act. Am I to settle all this, before I know the truth of God for my soul, or find the true church? Where am I to find the records? How many historians am I to read? What is the authority of these authors? What a difference from the truth learned from the simple word of God! Or am I to gulp down as I find it, because Rome is infallible-I know not why?
But one word more as to the pope and unity. You tell us, when a heresy spread, a council was assembled by the authority of the pope. Now, if you have the smallest acquaintance with ecclesiastical history, you must know that all the early councils were summoned by the emperors. They were held in the east; and when Christendom in those quarters was torn in pieces by clerical contention and ambition and doctrinal discord, the emperors tried to make peace by gathering these general assemblies, none having been held (if we except that recorded in the Acts) before the emperors professed Christianity; and then it was only bishops and others within the Roman empire who met. The council of Antioch before that time formally condemned the very term as heretical which the council of Nice established as the only secure test of orthodoxy against Arius (that is, Homoousion); and this circumstance being pressed by the eastern bishops who got influence over Constantine, the affair ended in Arius being received as orthodox into what you call the Catholic church, and dying in its communion; and in Athanasius, who held what both you and I believe to be the truth, dying in banishment. And in the subsequent reign (the emperor being an Arian, and the orthodox persecuted), the pope signed the Arian creed, as a more dutiful subject than I suppose he would be now. But this by the bye; it is perfectly certain that, in the first and great general councils, the pope did not assemble them by his authority. Is this what you refer me to as securing me in the knowledge of the truth and the true church?
But you tell me also that I have a test in its catholicity, that is, its universality. But here the voice of facts speaks too loud for you not to sink into what is ridiculous. " It must contain," you say, " more members than any other community or denomination of professing Christians." More members! a majority! Is that all the truth of God has to depend upon? What has that to do with universality? Why, if I live in England a poor countryman, such as you address your book to (the immense majority are Protestants-indeed, save Irishmen, none else scarcely could be found), and if I am to take such a poor test as the name of a building, everybody knows that if I asked, Where is the church? I should be shown the Protestant place of worship; all else are chapels. Indeed this test would hold good in Ireland. But is your test of the true church reduced to a majority? Go to the east, where little is known beyond their own doors, and there this simple external visible test is the certain exclusion of all pretension of the Romanist to be of the true church.
But some facts on this point require a little comment. You tell us that Rome has two hundred and thirty millions of adherents. Where have you found them? The fact is, that you have exaggerated by pretty nearly a hundred millions. There are in the world, on a rough calculation-for nothing more can be given here, or indeed be arrived at, as to some countries-there are in the world about one hundred and forty-three, say one hundred and forty-five, millions of Romanists, eighty-five millions of Protestants, sixty millions of Greeks, and perhaps four or five millions in all of other denominations, as Armenians and the like in the east. Asia and Africa contain a certain number of Protestants and Romanists difficult to enumerate, and scarcely changing the proportions. That is, there are about as many professing Christians who hold that Rome is right and who hold that she is wrong. But who, in his senses, would take this, or the contrary, to be a means of ascertaining the true church? Had men gone by numbers, they would, in the fourth century, have gone from the confession of Christ's divinity to the denial of it with the different emperors and the same pope, who would have helped them in and out with the majority into (not unity, thank God, for some would not give up the truth for an emperor or a pope, but into) so-called orthodoxy, if majorities were to decide it. And alas! being mere professors, so it happened that they did wheel about with the turn of the tide.
I have spoken briefly of three of the marks of the true church -unity, apostolicity, catholicity. As to unity, the Romish body is one, the Greek church is one, and so of others: but general visible unity is lost, or we should not have to inquire which is the true church. Catholicity, or universality, you have given up the pretension to; you claim only a majority; so that, if universality be a test, Romanists have not the true church, nor, since there are Romanists, any other body either.
This test, by your own confession, and change of it into a simple majority (itself more than doubtful), makes the whole ground on which you search for the true church a perfect absurdity. Your own statement proves, if universality be a test, that there is no true visible church at all. Lastly, apostolicity is the most absurd test imaginable; for, while pretending to be simple and external, the succession of bishops from the apostles' day must be ascertained, or the mark does not exist at all. And in the next place Greeks, Armenians, Syrians, and even Protestant Episcopalians have it, and prove it as gaily as Romanists themselves; while the only place where it is known to be most grievously damaged and upset is in the papal succession, where for fifty years there were two popes at a time, both ordaining other successions; and at last three, all put down for heresy, and another set up by a council which upset all their claims together. I have reserved the question of sanctity: it is a painful one, and I shall speak of it at the close.
I shall now refer to your use of scripture. First, your quotation of it is important. It is then available, intelligible to the faithful, and conclusive. We can understand it with God's help (without which we can do nothing right), and it binds our conscience. Your use of it is another thing. You quote, for example, passages, or parts of passages (for one is applicable to the state of glory), saying, that Christ would have one fold and one shepherd (that is, no longer Jews or Gentiles as distinct people); Christ's prayer, that they all may be one; then the passage which applies to glory (" the glory that thou hast given me I have given them," precedes what you quote); Paul's direction to the faithful, to be careful to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace; a direction to Timothy to keep what was committed to his trust; and one to Titus to reject heretics. It is clear, you say, from all these texts, that no one can be a member of the church of Christ unless he holds the same doctrine as she teaches. Well, how this conclusion flows from a prayer for unity, or an exhortation to keep it in the bond of peace, is, I confess, beyond me, and, with all humility, I apprehend beyond anybody; because there is nothing in the passages you quote about the conclusion which you draw. Common sense tells us, that a person who is a member of a body, and does not hold what it teaches, is, in some respects, inconsistent. But your conclusion is utterly false; for either the church must teach some error, or no member can ever be in any error whatever without ceasing thereby to be a member of the church at all; for if he be in any error, he holds something the church does not teach, or else she teaches error.
But, though you tell us the texts prove it, you (strangely enough) give in the same sentence a totally different reason for it. The church has received authority from Christ to teach all nations. Allow me to correct an error of a very grave character, on which all your reasoning, and all the Romish reasoning, is founded. You say the church teaches. Now I deny that the church teaches at all; she holds the truth, has learned the truth, is sanctified by the truth; she teaches nothing. She is taught, and has learned. Ministers, whom God has sent for that purpose, teach. It was never said to the church, " Go ye and teach all nations." It was said to the apostles, when Christ ascended; and they went and taught, as did certain others, sent by the Holy Ghost; and the church was gathered and built up. Then those whom God raised up as pastors and teachers, waited, or were to wait on their teaching.
But there is authority, you allege, also in matters of discipline; but this resides in the body. The passage you quote from Matt. 16 (your text-book failed you here, or you failed it; it is Matt. 18:17: chapter 16:18 is your favorite passage of the rock, on which it is built) does not speak of doctrines, but it does speak of the whole assembly, where a man is, and not of clergy or church teaching, or doctrine. If one Christian wrong his brother, the latter is to seek to win him alone; if the attempt fail, he is to take two or three, that all may be clearly established; and, if he do not hear them, the injured party is to tell it to the whole assembly; and, if the trespasser neglect to hear them, then the wronged man may hold him as unclean and a stranger. What has this to do with the clergy settling doctrine authoritatively, or with the clergy at all, or with doctrine at all? Just nothing. But when nothing is to be had, we must get the best sounding passage we can, that there may be an appearance of the authority of scripture: with the reality of it Rome can well dispense. Shall I tell you what the citation of this passage by Rome proves? That there is no passage in scripture to favor her pretensions-not a trace of one; had there been one, this would not have been always cited, while the smallest attention must prove it to have nothing whatever to do with the matter, and that Rome is forced to pervert scripture to have some appearance of being justified by it.
This is all you have to say for the unity of the church. The unity of the church I believe to be a most precious truth; but if you place it where you do, scripture will not bear you out, because it speaks of the saved, quickened, sanctified members of Christ, called to glory, as His body, the church. There is another view of the church. It is the habitation of God through the Spirit; Eph. 2. As the body of Christ, it is surely preserved and kept; but as a responsible body on earth, its career will certainly close. A falling away will come. This is positively declared in scripture: " that day will not come unless there be the falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, who exalteth himself above all that is called God or worshipped."
As regards the texts to prove the universality, you quote a number of passages which do not apply to the church at all, in which she is never named, and the context of which proves to demonstration that they do not apply to the church. I shall quote one to show how utterly untenable this application is: " Ask of me and I will give thee the Gentiles for thine inheritance, and thy possession to the ends of the earth." But continue: " Thou shall rule them with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel." Is that the church, or judgment? Any one may see, by looking at the epistle to Thyatira in Rev. 2, that it is a judgment to be executed when the church is glorified with Christ. But your proof that these promises apply to the church destroys, on the contrary, all your arguments. You say they are to be fulfilled in the last days. To prove that the last days mean the time of the church and its universal prevalence, you quote the passage of John, which chews that the last days are those of Antichrist. Is the time of Antichrist's rule the time of all nations flowing into the church? For that is the passage you are proving applies to the universal prevalence of the church. Why, in Antichrist's time, instead of all nations flowing into the church, if any one confesses Christ he will be killed. Your friends, the Fathers, speak with the most terrible apprehensions of those days, when Christianity is to hide itself in dens and caves, and, save in such places, scarce such a thing as a Christian known, and if known, slain by apostate fury. This was a very untoward proof of your doctrine.
Another proof you give us of the universality of the church is, that the gospel is to be preached in all the earth. This is more untoward still, because this is not done yet, very far from it; as gathering the nations, the very large majority remain heathen, and a very great part have never been visited by the preachers of the gospel. So that the mark of catholicity or universality is not yet to be found at all. If all the ends of the earth seeing the salvation of our God applies to and means the catholicity of the church, then the church is not catholic yet: for all the ends of the earth have not seen the salvation of our God.
But you quote another-" This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a testimony to all nations." Surely this word shall be accomplished; but you should have finished the sentence, for it destroys even the hope of catholicity, as you state it. It continues-" and then shall the end come." So in Rev. 14 it is said, the everlasting gospel should go to all them that dwell on the earth, and to every people, and nation, and tongue, and language, saying, Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment is come. Indeed, if you would take the trouble to read Psa. 98 (97), which you quote, you would see it states the same truth; it closes by saying, are to rejoice before the Lord, for He cometh to judge the earth.
You tell us that every succession of bishops and priests... communicated to their flocks and successors the same doctrine they themselves had received from their predecessors. Did they? Why the whole world was Arian at one time, save the persecuted. But that is not all. If the bishops and priests did this, why are you seeking to bring the professing Christians of (geographically) the greatest part of the world back to what you consider the truth? Did all the Greek bishops of the East do this? Do you own that they did? If so, why seeking to win them to Rome, and glorying in having here and there a little parcel of " united Greeks," and all the Asiatic bishops, and the Egyptians, to say nothing of poor England? Did they, rejecting you utterly as they do, deem they had the true doctrine handed down? I deny it altogether as to Rome. It has been proved a hundred times over, that it has corrupted the doctrine of the apostles. But I take a shorter road; because, if the whole body of Greek and eastern bishops, who teach different doctrine from Rome, have done so, then Rome is wrong; and if they have not, their bishops and priests have not communicated to their flocks and successors the same doctrine they had received. It is merely an assertion that yours have, which is just the thing to be proved; it cannot be itself a security, because a very large proportion (as you admit) have not done so. The bishops of some hundred millions, between Greeks and Protestant Episcopalians, teach quite different doctrine from Rome. Have they taught what they received? It is sadly poor ground you stand on for your proofs of the true church.
As to your texts for apostolicity, I have no doubt that the Lord sent the apostles, and was with them, and will be with all who, sent of Him, walk in their footsteps and preach their doctrine, and that these will be sent to the end of the age. But how does this prove that the Romanists are these persons? Your proof is that, unchanged by lapse of time, Rome is teaching in every age the same doctrine God revealed and the apostles promulgated. Now this is just the question. In order to settle it I must know what the apostles promulgated. There is no way so good as having it from their own lips addressed to all the faithful; but when I take this sure and admirable criterion, I find that you teach all the contrary of what they promulgated. You teach that there is still a sacrifice for sin, and they very earnestly teach there is no more such. They teach there is only one mediator, and you teach there are a great many, and in most solemn acts leave the true one totally out. In the Confiteor used for renewing the remission of sins the name of Christ is not found, neither as confessed to, nor as demanding His intercession, though you have Michael the archangel and saints in plenty. You teach the pope is the head of the church; they teach that there is but one, and this is Christ; and so with a multitude of the most fundamental doctrines. I take the test you appeal to, and I find it totally condemns the system you advocate. I conclude you are not the real successors of the apostles at all, to whom these promises were made. The pretension is ruinous to you if you are not. What is a loyal man's judgment of one who pretends to be king when he is not? That he is a rebel in audacious hostility to the true king. If you are not the apostles' true successors, the pretension to be so proves you to be in bold and presumptuous hostility to the Lord, and to those whom He did send; and that is the truth. The question is not whether the Lord gave apostles and ministers, but whether you are those He gave.
You tell us to remember our prelates who have spoken to us the word of God, whose faith follow, and denounce the Reformation as setting them aside. As to the mass of the prelates at the Reformation, they did not speak the word of God or anything else to the people; and those who did preach did not preach the word of God. To know at any time whether they do, I must have the word of God to judge by. The apostle tells the Hebrews that their leaders had: does he tell me that your prelates do? How should he? Their faith was to be followed. The apostle puts his seal on it, though in truth the passage speaks of practical faith. They were to remember those whose death had crowned their profession. But how this teaches me that the pope or a priest teaches the right doctrine, no human wit could divine; nor will it do, for Protestants at least, to say to them, Obey your prelates. The question is to know whether they could own you as true prelates-a very different matter.
Here your mild winning preface gives place to judgment. You quote a passage which applies to the last and final message of the Lord Jesus to the Jews, and in which He declares judgment on that impenitent race, if they did not receive it; and you apply His title in sending it to yourselves, and His denunciations to your Protestant brethren, as you call them. Happily we are not Jews, and you are not Christ. Your threats do not awaken terror, but pity for your presumption and ignorance of the passage which you thus quote at random.
The apostles were strictly forbidden on this journey to go to any but the house of Israel. They were not to go near a Gentile, showing the true character of their mission.
In fine, the passages you quote, which embrace the whole world in prospect, prove, not indeed that Christ has failed in preserving the true church, His body-those livingly united to Him by the Spirit-those whom the Father has given Him (as He says, " Those whom thou hast given me I have kept "), for this is impossible; but that the visible church, those particularly called clergy, have wholly failed in acting up to the responsibility connected with these passages. They have not to this hour, though eighteen centuries have elapsed, carried the gospel into all the world. Instead of that, another thing has happened. So corrupt was the visible church, that God has allowed the greater part of what was professing Christendom to be overrun with Mahometanism, which has spread AT LEAST as widely as Christianity; and what you call the Catholic church has had so little spiritual power, that well-nigh half the church split off from it, and became the Greek church (I am speaking according to its own pretensions, for I believe what you call the Catholic church to be Babylon); and subsequently, by the grossness of its corruptions, lost nearly half the countries which remained to it; and in others, as France, Belgium, Bohemia, and Moravia, only escaped the same result by suppressing by the most cruel persecutions the profession of the truth-in Spain and Italy burning those who had any conscience in maintaining it, and in France celebrating the horrible massacre of St. Bartholomew by medal and rejoicing.
Have you never read so much as this warning, drawn from the case of Israel: " On thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness, otherwise thou also shalt be cut off?" Of the professing church you have lost rather more than half; of the heathen world you have not gathered in a quarter, yet you claim catholicity-that is, universality-on such texts as, " All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God." Have you not shame in quoting it?
But this leads me to your next question-the infallibility of the church. You have quoted passages from the Old and New Testament to prove the church is infallible. First, for the quotations from the Old, if I can call quotations passages, or bits of passages, with the beginning or end or middle left out. I can hardly think you read the passages, as I have no wish to have an ungracious thought of you. But you must allow me, at the risk of being tedious, to refer to and complete those passages you have adduced. Not one has the smallest reference to the church.
The first is, " I have made a covenant with my elect, I have sworn to David, my servant, thy seed will I settle forever." Now, allow me to say, the church is neither David nor the seed of David, nor ever called so in scripture, nor by any sober man. And, further, if you will take the trouble to read the psalm, you will find that it is a plaint that the family of David is utterly overthrown, his crown thrown to the ground, and all that is contrary to the hope founded on this promise. Now do you mean that this has actually happened to the church? If so, what comes of your argument? You are unfortunate in your quotations. You see why I am unwilling to believe that you have read the passage you quote from. Now if you apply it to David's seed, of which it speaks, the case is quite clear. It has been set aside, their throne has been cast down, as Ezekiel speaks, " I will overturn, overturn, overturn it, till he come whose right it is, and I will give it him."
When Christ displays His glory, then indeed the promises to the seed of David will be accomplished. Till then His throne is cast down to the ground. But in whatever way you please to interpret the psalm, it is a complaint that the promise, which you cite, as to present fulfillment, wholly failed. Is that what you think as to the church?
In your quotation from Luke there is not a word about the church, but a statement that the throne of David belonged to Christ as come in the flesh, for He is born of the seed of David, according to the flesh, but that is not the church's connection with Him.
I turn to other passages. Did you ever read Isa. 66? This is what it says, " For, behold, Jehovah will come with fire, and with his chariots, like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire and by his sword will Jehovah plead with all flesh; and the slain of Jehovah shall be many." Then he describes their idolatry and abominations, and continues, " For I know their works and their thoughts: it shall come, that I will gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come and see my glory. And I will set a sign among them, and I will send those that escape of them unto the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, that draw the bow, to Tubal, and Javan, to the isles afar off, that have not heard my fame, neither have seen my glory; and they shall declare my glory among the Gentiles. And they shall bring all your brethren for an offering unto Jehovah, out of all nations, upon horses," etc.... Then comes your extract, and after it follows this-" And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith Jehovah. And they shall go forth and look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against me; for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh." Now do you believe that that applies to the church, and that it is this dreadful judgment of all flesh by Jehovah which has set up your clergy, brought out of all nations? or if you do believe it, do you think any sober Christian can think this an evidence that you have solid proofs of what the true church is?
Again, why did you not begin and finish the quotation from Jeremiah? Suffer me to do both for you. You begin with" And they shall be my people." Now what precedes is this" And now, therefore, thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel, concerning this city, whereof ye say, It shall be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon by the sword, and by the famine, and by the pestilence. Behold, I will gather them out of all countries, whither I have driven them in mine anger, and in my fury, and in great wrath; and I will bring them again to this place, and I will cause them to dwell safely, and they shall be my people, and I will be their God," Jer. 32: 36, etc. Is that the church? Has He scattered it in wrath, anger, and fury, into all lands; and is it only at some future restoration to its original place, that He will own it as His people? Do you believe it applies to the church? And now see how it finishes.
You close with-" I will not cease to do them good." The prophet continues, " But I will put my fear in their hearts that they shall not depart from me. Yea, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will plant them in this land assuredly with my whole heart, and with my whole soul. For thus saith Jehovah; Like as I have brought all this great evil upon this people, so will I bring upon them all the good that I have promised them. And fields shall be bought in this land, whereof ye say, It is desolate without man or beast; it is given into the hand of the Chaldeans," etc. Now do you believe that God has utterly dispersed the church, and that it is only when He shall bring it back again, that He will begin to put His fear in the hearts of those who compose it? Or is it not as plain as possible to what it all applies?
But I am bound to hope that, whatever it may be of Isaiah and Jeremiah, you certainly never have looked at the passage in Ezekiel, because you expatiate on every member of the phrase you give, and show in detail how it applies so beautifully and clearly to the church. But the middle of the passage is entirely left out, though you give it as a continuous whole. This is what comes in after " shall do them." " Another shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob, my servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt; and they shall dwell therein, even they, and their children, and their children's children, forever; and my servant David shall be their prince forever," Ezek. 37:25. And this is what precedes: two sticks, representing Israel and Judah, which had been separated, were to become one in the prophet's hand; these two parts of Israel, being separated, were to be united; and then it is said, " And say unto them, thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land; and I will make them one nation in the land, upon the mountains of Israel, and one king shall be king to them all, and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all; neither shall they defile themselves with their idols, nor with their detestable things, nor with any of their transgressions; but I will save them out of all their dwelling-places wherein they have sinned, and will cleanse them: so shall they be my people, and I will be their God; and David my servant shall be king," etc., which you quote.
Now every one who has the smallest acquaintance with scripture history knows what the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel are which were separated in the time of Rehoboam, and what the land means where their fathers dwelt, and that it has nothing to do with the church founded by the apostles. But if you will apply it to the church, instead of proving the infallibility of the church, you prove that it has been divided, scattered, given up to idolatry and transgression, and that it is only when it is brought back from this state that God's sanctuary (which it had wholly lost) was set up in the midst of them, and that then the heathen would know that God sanctified it, when His sanctuary was in the midst of them. They had been in idolatry, divided and dispersed, and had not had God's sanctuary amongst them. Do you believe this applies to the church? But it is the passage, taking what your citation has left out of it. If it does apply to the church, does it prove its infallibility? And why do you cite only a part of the passage? I will not for a moment charge you with garbling scripture in this way, and applying passages in such a manner. Your church has taught you this; you have got it in her schools of theology, and have not examined for yourself. But do you think that your church's garbling passages, cutting out parts of them, leaving out the beginning or the end or the middle or all three, is a proof of her infallibility to a sober Christian taught of God or any man of sense at all? Of course, if a person examine nothing, there is no reason why he should not receive anything, even the church of Rome, or Mormonism, or anything which superstition or fanaticism may propose to his imagination.
But you quote Daniel too: " In the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed." In the days of what kings? The ten kings, if you examine the chapter. Do you mean that the church was only set up after the ten kingdoms existed; that is, after the destruction of the Roman empire? But what does the prophecy say of this kingdom? A little stone, cut out without hands, was to smite the feet of the image, and the whole image was to he totally destroyed, so that no trace was found of it; and the stone that had smitten the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. That is, it first destroyed every trace of the empires and kingdoms of the image, and then extended itself. Do you mean that the church first effaces and obliterates every trace of the empires, east and west, and then begins to spread? There is a judgment of the earth, which you have sadly overlooked: you are not indeed the only one.
This is all you quote from the Old Testament to prove the church infallible, in not one of which the church is mentioned, and not one of which can apply to her, and if they do, instead of proving her infallible, prove she has utterly failed, and lost the presence of God, because this is the truth as to Israel who has so lost it, of which they expressly speak.
We come now to the New Testament. And here I must notice that infallibility is used in two senses totally different, and when one is spoken of or proved, the other is assumed to be so. We are sure the church is infallible; that is, it will surely be kept through this world as to its eternal salvation, till Christ takes it to glory. Till that blessed day He will always have true members of His church upon earth, will keep them, secure eternal life to them and for them. In this sense the church cannot fail. There will infallibly be a church. But infallible is used in another sense, that a person or a body can never fail in what it teaches. The church is said by Romanists to be infallible in what it teaches. Now this is a very different thing. I may be infallibly kept of God for salvation, yet never teach at all, or even fall into error sometimes.
Again, an individual or the church may be kept in the truth by grace, and yet have no pretension to be infallible in teaching. Now I doubt not that God will maintain the truth in the earth, and the church too; though there may be partial failure, yet in spite of failure He will preserve it. But the church has nothing to do with teaching infallibly. She has to learn and hold and profess the truth, not to teach at all. Some of her members may; but no one says they are infallible. Somewhere God will always preserve the truth, and some witness to it, in the earth. Thus, when Arianism overspread the world, and the pope received it, and put his signature to its doctrines, many, though banished and persecuted and hidden through violence for the most part, still held fast the truth. So, amid the disputes and violence which characterized the conduct of ambitious bishops (so that one very large council of them, held at Ephesus, is called " the council of robbers " in ecclesiastical history), yet God preserved the substance of the truth. And if the Eastern church erred, and patriarchs erred, and popes became Arian, still some held fast the faith and a witness for it. You may find a whole council of bishops establishing semi-Arianism at Sirmium, and accepting Arianism at Ariminum and Selinica; but yet God preserved the truth.
But no one is infallible but God. Hence, when an apostle or a prophet was inspired by Him, he spoke the perfect truth. But an apostle or prophet was not himself infallible; for Peter denied the Lord, and, even after he had received the Holy Ghost, carried away all the Jews with his dissimulation. Yet the humblest child of God, if waiting humbly upon Him, will be kept in the truth.
I now turn to the texts you quote; and first the famous passage-" Upon this rock I will build my church." Now the confession of Peter was a remarkable one; it was revealed to him by the Father Himself-a personal favor conferred upon him, which belongs to no one else. We may receive his faith, as every true Christian does; but the revelation is not made directly to us but to Peter alone. " Blessed art thou, Simon Barjonas." Now nobody is Simon Barjonas but himself, not even the other apostles, and certainly not Pius IX. Thus taught of God Peter made a confession which none had yet made-Christ was the Son of the living God. Several had owned Him to be the Christ the Son of God, but he adds the living God. So in his epistle he says, " He hath begotten us to a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead; unto whom coming as unto a living stone, ye also as living stones," etc. Now, here was more than a Messiah come to the Jews, and owned to be, as in Psa. 2, Son of God. It was the power of life in God Himself which was displayed in Him; as He says, He is the resurrection and the life Himself. Now here, in the Person of Christ, was that power of life and resurrection on which He would build His church, and the gates of Hades-that is, of Satan, as having the power of death-should not prevail against it. It is always true. The resurrection of the saints will be the great final proof of it; the resurrection of Christ was the pledge of it, and has given us a living hope.
Here, if I may so speak reverently, the Son of the living God, He who was the power of life, was pitted against him " who has the power of death, that is, the devil." But the knowledge of the Person of Christ, as Son of the living God, removed all question as to the issue of the conflict, and laid a foundation for the church which nothing could shake. It was not mere Messiah glory, nor the kingdom: the living God was engaged in the matter in the Person of His Son. Satan did his best-the Lord allowing it-in Christ's dying on the cross; but it only demonstrated Christ's absolute victory in the resurrection. This is the foundation of the church, so that it cannot fail-the Person of Christ as Son of the living God. God forbid I should trust a church, or be of it, which was founded on a man simply! Be he an apostle himself, he is but a man, and this will not do to build God's church upon. Is God to build on a mere man? Christ (for He says, " I will build ") on Peter? It may do very well for man's church; it is natural man should build on man; but it will not do for God's. It would be impossible, and destructive to His glory. God is not going to set aside His Son for Peter.
But Peter, let men say what they will, is never called a rock. He is called a stone; he partook of the nature of the rock, God having quickened him with this life, and given him to confess Christ in this character. But Peter means a stone, and does not mean a rock. People do not build on a stone, even if it partake of the durability of the rock to which it belongs. Peter is not the rock nor a rock; he is, as to his name, a stone. Peter having just confessed the true, living, and divine foundation of the new thing, which the rejected Christ was going to raise up in contrast with rebellious Israel; and Christ, having recognized that the Father Himself had taught Peter this great truth, carrying far beyond the hopes of Israel, says, " Thou art a stone," thou participatest in this truth; and on this rock, this eternal truth of My Person, which you have been given of the Father to own, I will build the church. The Father had revealed this great truth of Christ's nature to Simon, and Christ gives him besides the name of Peter; for the confession of truth, by divine teaching, connects a man with the strength and durability of the truth he so confessed; he abides livingly with it and by it. The Lord adds that He will give him the keys of the kingdom of heaven (not of heaven, but of the kingdom of heaven to be established on the earth); and here Peter had to serve, whereas Christ builds the true church. He used the keys on Pentecost, and with Cornelius and the like.
As to the Lord's sending the Paraclete, and teaching the twelve all things, surely this precious promise has been fulfilled. To apply it to the church is mere nonsense, because the Lord says, He shall bring to your remembrance whatsoever I have said to you. Now He has said the things to the twelve, not to people alive now. The Holy Ghost may graciously act in any Christian's heart to make him attentive to Christ's recorded words, but He cannot bring to his remembrance what Christ has said to him, unless he pretend to have fresh revelations and then have forgotten them. Hence, though the church pretends to be infallible and to teach all truth infallibly, it has never pretended to have recalled to it what Christ had said to it. It would prove the absurdity of the pretension on the face of it; but then unfortunately this is what the Lord has said, and you have quoted.
You say this states plainly what the Holy Ghost would do when He came. Quite true. But do for whom? He could not do this but for those who had heard Jesus during His life; and mark, He was to teach the apostles all things, and guide them into all truth-that is, the work which the church pretends to do is done long ago. It may be formed by this truth, have it, be kept by it; but it was all taught to the apostles. If you say, that is what we say-we have learned and kept it; we own it was all taught to the apostles, not to us; our boast is to keep it safe; then the verses you quote as a promise to yourselves do not apply to you at all, for they speak of teaching all things, and bringing all things to their remembrance which Christ had said to them. In a word, the thing was complete before you were there, as the text you quote proves. The only question is, Are you acting on, believing, and are your ministers teaching, truths received long ago? The promise is not to you, but to others long since gone. Whether you are doing so, I try by what these persons have confessedly left us. When I try this, I find you abusing their record to every false pretension to exalt self, and that you have departed altogether from the truth they taught and were guided into. The Holy Ghost has not to teach the church all things, because He has taught all things already to the apostles: the text you quote proves it. That He may apply it now to the heart is all very true; that devoted men may teach the same truths to the heathen, or build up the faithful in detail, is all true; but the truths are taught. There is no question of infallibility, because the truth is already there.
That the Holy Ghost remains with the church, dwells in all true Christians, acts in them, helps them, makes them obedient to the truth, and that He will never go away till the time of glory comes, I fully believe. But this does not make them infallible. There is no place for infallibility, when all the truth is there. What are they to be infallible about, when nothing more is to be revealed? That, as weak creatures, we may be kept, preserved in the truth, so that the testimony of it should be always as a fact preserved in the world, is most true and most precious, and that God, I doubt not, will accomplish, according to His sure and precious word. You say,
If the Holy Ghost did come and remain with her, and if he continued to teach her all things whatsoever the Son of God revealed to her, how could she fall into error? " Now what is the meaning of this-" continued to teach her "? Was she then ever learning, and never coming to the knowledge of the truth? Continued to teach her all things whatsoever the Son of God had revealed to her-revealed to her when? Why continue to teach her what was revealed to her? She had then wholly forgotten it? " Continuing to teach her all things whatsoever the Son of God revealed to her " has no tolerable sense. Why did she not keep by the Holy Ghost what had been revealed to her, instead of being taught anew? But I repeat, When revealed to her? It was revealed, all of it, to the apostles who had conversed with Jesus. It has not to be revealed to the church.
You quote also John 16; but it is the same thing in substance, save that, as the passage of John 14 spoke of remembering what He had said, this speaks of showing them (not to the church) things to come. Does the church pretend to have new prophetic revelations? Not one. Where are they authenticated and promulgated with her sanction? In a word we have great pretension to authority when self is exalted; but when the test of reality is to be met, be it as to the past or the future, she is dumb. She has never authenticated one saying of the Lord as brought to her remembrance, nor dared to commit herself to a thing to come which she could show; nay, nor any fresh knowledge of the glory of Christ not in the written word. Yet this was the remaining part of the Holy Ghost's office, as stated in John 16-indeed the whole of it, as teaching and revealing. " He shall take of mine, and shall show it unto you: all things that the Father hath are mine; therefore said I, he shall take of mine, and shall show it unto you." Now what of the past, present, glory of Christ, or of the future, has this boasting body, which calls itself the church, ever taught which is not revealed in the word given by the apostles? Let them produce, authenticated by the church, some new truth not in the word. If not, what is revealed to her? unless she boasts of forgetting it continually to be retaught it anew, and pretends this is the special glory of God, and a proof that she exclusively has the Holy Ghost-namely, that she has not kept the truth, and has to be taught it afresh. That individuals (enabled by God) may, through the help of the Holy Ghost, teach the truths revealed long ago, every one admits; but no one pretends such to be infallible.
But, further, the Lord promises to be with the apostles in teaching all which He had commanded them to the end of the world. It is urged (what is not in the passage) that, as it is to the end of the world, it must be for their successors. Whose successors, and successors in what? In bringing the heathen to the faith? I do not doubt that, though it be not with the title of apostles, whoever do the same service in grace will find the Lord with them in the service, according to their measure; and this is what is promised. Though secured, when inspired to reveal anything, the apostles were not infallible. They had the Lord always with them in their service; in like service, they who accomplish it will find the Lord with them, I doubt not, to the end. There is nothing whatever else in the promise; not a word about infallibility-it is not the subject of the passage, any more than the church; it speaks of the Lord's help in the missionary service they were to perform in His name. He would not abandon them in it; surely He did not.
Thus you have cited from the Old Testament passages which, you allege, speak of the church, which declare the body they contemplate has been divided, dispersed, idolatrous, doing detestable things, and deprived of the presence of God- His sanctuary being set up only when promised restoration takes place. This is a very strange proof of perpetuity and infallibility, which secures from every error; and the citing them equally curious as a proof of infallibility in teaching. From the New you have cited passages which declare that all truth was revealed to the apostles; and hence, if the Holy Ghost has always to continue teaching the church what was revealed to her, affording a proof that she had not kept the truth, and had to learn it again; an equally curious proof of infallibility and security. You quote one, a serious and important one-" But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth." The church of God has been established of God to maintain and uphold the truth; and I am sure, however dark the times, God will never, till judgment comes, leave Himself without a witness of the truth, in and by the church, binding on the consciences of men. Blessed be His name that it is so!
But you cannot speak of the whole visible church as having continued to be such; because you believe that half Christendom, and undoubtedly the most ancient part of it, where it was first established by all the apostles together, and the latest under apostolic care, has departed from the truth, and is not a pillar and ground of it. The Greek church is disputing with you for the holy sepulcher, and for many years the Turks using whips to keep the combatants quiet; while now we have the West arrayed against the East in a war which had its origin in this very dispute. This immense body of the most ancient bishoprics in the world has ceased to be a pillar and ground of the truth. All Protestant Europe and America have equally, in your judgment, abandoned it. It is not a promise then that the whole visible church is necessarily and always such; for by your own account a very large part (nay, if we include the Protestants, Nestorians, and Eutychians, the greater part) is not; if they are, you are not. It is not then the body of the visible church as such. Where this true church is to be found is another question; but your use of the passage is certainly unfounded. You cannot present the visible church as a security for the truth, when you affirm that half of it has gone away. If you tell me they are not the church, but we are, this is just what is to be proved; at any rate, they were, and thus the ground of securing is gone.
I have now examined all you have alleged for this. In conclusion I reply to your assertions. The Old Testament never speaks of the church. Paul declares it was a mystery hidden till the Holy Ghost was given-hidden from ages and generations-hid in God. Christ, no doubt, founded His church (that is, on the day of Pentecost, and in general by the apostles), but He promised to be with them, not her, to the end of the world. The Holy Ghost will surely abide with Christ's true disciples till He takes them up to glory. He did not declare that he would teach the church, but the apostles, all truth-a promise undoubtedly fulfilled; and it is equally sure that Satan's power will never set aside the church of God, and she is, according to God's counsel, the pillar and ground of the truth, whatever may be the condition of the visible body called the church; which we have shown, by your own account, cannot be what this passage applies to. But that you are it, is a very different question.
Instead of declaring that the professing church could not fail, mark it well, the Lord has declared the express contrary. He has said, first, as warning (referring to the Jews, lest the Gentiles should deceive themselves by their conceit), " Be not high-minded, but fear... upon thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness, otherwise thou also shalt be cut off." He has further declared that a falling away or apostasy (so that it is certain that it would not continue in God's goodness to the end, for apostasy is falling away from it) would come; and that the day of Christ's coming to judge could not come till it did. He has declared that the presence of Antichrist was the mark of the last times. He has declared, the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the last days perilous time shall come (men running into all kinds of wickedness shall have the form of piety, denying the power of it); and warns the true disciple to turn away from such, and refers him to the scriptures as able to make him wise unto salvation. You seek to turn him from them, and to trust in that in which it is certain, by God's word, apostasy was to be found.
You may ask, what do we make of the promises of God? I answer, they are infallible; but he who has the scripture, the true servant of Christ who has the truth, has them before his eyes, but has all the rest of the word, so that he does not misapply them. Satan applied true promises to Christ without reference to obedience. He used the rest of the word to show that His part was to walk with God, and He would surely have all that God had promised to the true believer. He does not look for the heirs of promise in what denies the truth, to which God Himself has referred him for warning. He knows that all the unfaithfulness of man will only glorify the faithfulness of God, and that God will certainly preserve the truth and His saints (even should there be partial failure amongst them) till Christ Himself comes to fetch them, according to His own promise, at the end. They do not count the mass of ungodliness and corruption and worldliness around them to be the little flock which is to inherit the kingdom. They do not take the tares for wheat, though it be not their business to root them up, as you have pretended to do (rooting up, for the most part, as the Lord warned, the wheat with them); but they are sure the Lord will keep the wheat for His garner, and that the Holy Ghost will never leave them till He does, nor allow the truth to fail in the earth. It shall be maintained to the end by the church taught of God.
But I am touching on the next point, the perpetual visibility of the church. That there is a great public body called the church of Christ is notorious. The marks you now give you rejected, when, as you alleged, Luther, Calvin, and the church of England pleaded them as such: but we cannot expect error to be consistent. But suppose I was born in Greece or Russia, and I was told that I should obey my pastors, and that pure doctrine and the same sacraments were the marks of the church visible, what would be the effect? Why I should remain a Greek, and abhor you as false. I should have to go to the Propaganda at Rome to find you out, you are so invisible in those countries. Is the true church to change with countries, and east and west? and can these be the adequate marks of it, which, in one, would make me take a body to be the true church, which in another three days' steaming would make me reject as schismatic and heretic? You are tired,. I am sure, of the Greek church. But there it is, as ancient as yours, with the same claims. It has its pastors, it has its sacraments, it has what it calls the true faith, as you allege of yours, it has its visibility.
The marks you give me make me a Greek when in Russia, and you at Rome condemn me for using them when I get there, and, if I were born in Russia, persuade me they are insufficient, and that I must leave what they prove to be the true church there, and join you. Yet there are these Greeks in spite of you. God has taken care by their existence to make all your pretensions and marks futile nonsense. They are proved to be worth nothing to secure a man's finding the true church; for some of them prove two or three to be such, while the existence of the two or three proves the essential ones to be false. God has taken care that the sober godly inquirer should have patent proof, if he take the pains, that your allegations of unity, universality, visibility, perpetuity, tradition, and all the rest, are just worth nothing; because, in the dreadful departure of the professing church from God, He has taken care that there should not be unity, and, consequently, no universality; while visibility, and tradition, and perpetuity, and antiquity are as strong for one as the other, and therefore prove nothing for either. Blessed be God, the spiritual man, who has his Bible and reads it, wants no such proof. He knows that the truth of God has been perverted, the forms of piety assumed, and the power gone, the headship of Christ abandoned (though Romanists alone have ventured to set up another head, and hence are worse than Greeks), and subjection to ordinances brought in. He sees the Spirit's words fulfilled-" In the last days perilous times shall come "-the form of piety, denying the substance. But of this a word at the close.
Must I turn again to your use of the Old Testament? I can afford to be brief after what we have already examined. You quote Isaiah 60: " Arise, be enlightened, 0 Jerusalem, for thy light is come, and the glory of Jehovah is risen upon thee." But again, whom am I to accuse? I honestly lay it on your church, and not on you. You have left out, between what I have just copied and the next verse of the chapter, an all-important verse, which shows the absurdity of the application of the passage: " For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people; but Jehovah shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee." Now, whatever is the subject of this chapter under the name (justly used after the Vulgate, though not in the Hebrew) Jerusalem, it had been in darkness, though existing, and in an awful state, as the previous chapter shows. Truth failed, and he that departed from evil made himself a prey; but now Jehovah visited her, and while all else was in darkness, light and the glory of Jehovah was here. Indeed Paul has quoted part of the preceding description to show the awful state of the Jews. But do you believe that the truth having failed, and he that departs from evil making himself a prey, is a description of the true church? Is that indeed what the church of Rome is? Or, again, when the full light and glory of Jehovah has risen on the church, so that it is in " cloudless manifestation and universal visibility," as you say, how comes darkness just then to cover the earth, and gross darkness the people; or why did you leave that verse out? So Jehovah goes on: " In my wrath I smote thee " (v. o); and again, " Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, so that no man went through thee " (v. 5). When and how long was this unfailing and perpetually visible church forsaken and hated of God? Apply it to Jerusalem which is named, and nothing is more simple: we know it has been her state.
You quote also (and the same a little before) Isa. 2 If you take the trouble to read that chapter, you will find that it is concerning Judah and Jerusalem, and describes the blessing as being brought about by the dreadful judgment of Jehovah, when men shall go into the clefts of the rocks for fear of Jehovah, and for the glory of His majesty, when He ariseth to shake terribly the earth. Well may the Spirit of God add, "Cease ye from man."
Again, Ezek. 17, we have these things explained by the Spirit: " Know ye not what these things mean? tell them, Behold the king of Babylon is come to Jerusalem, and hath taken the king thereof," etc., and then describes the conduct of Zedekiah, and at the close predicts the raising up of Christ as seed of David. What has this to do with the church? The seed of David is not the church.
In Jer. 31 it is revealed: " He that scattered Israel will gather him." Has God scattered the church? Is the church the backsliding daughter of Ephraim? Further, the Lord says, " Like as I have watched over them to pluck up, and to break down, and to throw down, and to destroy, and to afflict, so will I watch over them to build, and to plant, saith Jehovah." Has God watched over the church to pluck it up? And the prophet adds, after the verse you quote, what you do not quote: it runs thus: " Then I will also cast off all the seed of Israel, for all that they have done, saith Jehovah. Behold the days come, saith Jehovah, that the city shall be built to Jehovah, from the tower of Hananeel unto the gate of the corner," etc., " and it shall not be plucked up nor thrown down any more forever." Jeremiah addressed the Jews, and told them that God would not cast them off in that future day, and that the city should he built, and that then they who had been so utterly plucked up should never be so any more. Is this the church?
That God's name may be great among the Gentiles (Mal. 1) no one disputes, and that under the figure of Jewish offerings they should offer theirs, every Christian can believe; though I do not believe it applies to the church. And here allow me to ask a question. All the passages which you have quoted you have applied figuratively up to the present; now that there is a question of oblation and sacrifice, you apply it literally. Why so?
The apostles were the light of the world, and so set doubtless. But how does this prove that you are that light, or that it was to be perpetual? Though, however dimmed, I doubt not that God has never suffered it to be extinguished. The Lord is speaking of His true disciples, poor in spirit, pure in heart. Do you mean that the mass of the professing church, Romish, Greek, Protestant, or Presbyterian, are that? I have been in many Roman Catholic countries, and in Protestant and Presbyterian; and, though doubtless there are blessed exceptions, the mass of pleasure-hunters, and money-hunters, and passion-governed men, are not what the Lord describes in Matt. 5 Or do you mean that, when their character is wholly changed, they are as much light as before? Or is it the judgment of the Romish body, that moral condition or holiness has nothing to do with the light the saints should give? The Lord, on the contrary, says in this same chapter (which you take care not to quote), If the salt have lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? it is good for nothing." You may salt other things with salt; but if the salt be savorless, what other things shall salt it? In fine you tell us, because Christ said to the apostles, " Ye are the light of the world," therefore the church is so at all times-that is, the outward professing Romish body; a strange conclusion where nothing is proved at all. The word of God says the contrary, that the day shall not come except there be a falling away first (e apostasia).
Your chapter on tradition is hardly worth an answer. Every one knows that tradition in scripture always means a doctrine delivered, and never has the Romish sense of it. A passage you quote shows it: " The traditions you have learned by word or by our epistle." The apostle had preached to them by word of mouth, and written an epistle to them: they were to mind all he had taught them. Next, your arguments are a mere nullity. You urge that the apostles taught by word of mouth before they wrote to the churches. Undoubtedly. Who ever doubted it? The question is, whether, since they wrote, what men have retailed for seventeen centuries can be relied upon-a question you do not so much as touch upon. You refer to Timothy's committing the truths Paul had taught him to faithful men: an excellent service, a thing which is done, be it well or ill, among different sects of Christians in their theological schools and colleges, and I doubt not was very well done by Timothy. But how does this make it authoritative teaching? No man's teaching is held, even by Rome, to be infallibly authoritative, save that Ultramontanes hold the popes to be infallible, which the Council of Constance, as we have seen, held them not to be. The question is not, whether Timothy taught or whether you do, but whether you have got what he taught besides what is written. You have no authentic truth by tradition. In the very epistle you cite we have the proof of it: " And now ye know what withholdeth," says the apostle; for when he was yet with them he had told them of these things. Now, here is an instruction given by word of mouth, which we have not got. Can you produce any authenticated church statement of what it was?
Tradition is very convenient to say (I leave something you can have no proof of), in which you must obey me blindly; but when we come to ask what are they, they are not to be had. The Rabbis, to whom you refer for purgatory, keep the poor Jews in blindness by the same means. The early church was frightened by the warnings of the apostle, and thought the final judgments would come after the revelation of antichrist, on the fall of the Roman empire; but this consent of the Fathers as to the millennial scheme and Christ's soon reigning at Jerusalem (for scarce could any topic be found more generally believed by them), this sure tradition belied itself; and already in Augustine's time, and after it passed off into a more general spiritualization, and the faith of the early church (which is declared positively by Justin Martyr, in his dialog with Trypho, to be held by all the orthodox) was cast off as a fable, and the early Fathers left on these points in oblivion and forgetfulness; and the account between tradition, universal tradition, and an orthodoxy founded on tradition, having been thus far falsified by fact, had to be settled by modern orthodoxy, passing as lightly over its grave as it could. Though they misapplied it, I believe, in the substance, Papias, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Nepos, and the orthodox of those days, were right, and not Origen and Dionysius and the moderns. But I believe it, because scripture is clear upon it.
But you mention two things in particular, which you say are founded on tradition, and which are not in scripture-Lent and Sunday. The apostles, you say, instituted the solemn fast of Lent. If they did, certainly it is not found in Scripture. But let us see what the facts arc. I need only quote Irenaeus, a godly Father of the church, who had heard Polycarp, who had heard John. There was a dispute between Victor, the bishop of Rome, and the churches of Asia, as to the celebrating of Easter. Victor would have it on Sunday, and the Asiatic churches celebrated it (as did all the old British, till the sixth or seventh century, if I remember right) on the day of the resurrection, whatever day of the week it fell upon. For the Passover was computed by moons, and was held upon the fourteenth day after the new moon, and the resurrection was three days of course after, and this did not always fall on a Sunday. The Easterns went by the days of the month, the Westerns by the days of the week. Well, Victor refused to own them as Christians at all. Irenaeus agreed, it seems, with Victor in opinion as to the day it should be kept upon. But earlier than this, some thirty or forty years before, the aged Polycarp, himself a disciple of John, came from Asia to Rome, to confer with Anicetus, bishop of Rome, about it.
Think of a disciple of John himself (and a most blessed old man he was, and a martyr too) going all wrong, and insisting on a tradition derived from John himself, contrary to the pope's tradition and his authority too! Well, Polycarp would not give in, nor Anicetus either; but they agreed, it seems, to part in peace, and each go his own way. But Victor, a more energetic and less Christian man than Anicetus, orders all the Christians in Asia to change their rules in this respect, and follow Rome, and give up their apostolic tradition. However, they would not; and then he excommunicated them all in mass, as far at least as Rome was concerned. It was thunder, however, not lightning, for they did not obey; and the bishops elsewhere continued in communion with them. This did not please all the bishops, says Eusebius, some of them writing pretty sharply to him (Victor); and Irenaeus warned him not to cut off whole churches who observed the tradition of their ancient customs. This was at the end of the second century; and then he adds (says Eusebius), not only was the controversy about the day, but about the form itself of the fast; for some think they ought to fast one day, others two, and others more, and some measure this day forty hours, day and night; and this variety of observance had not its birth first in our age, but began long before, with those who went before us.... And then he adds, and thus the disagreement as to the fast commends the unanimity of the faith.-(Euseb. 5: 24).
Now this little bit of ecclesiastical history gives occasion for one or two remarks: first, how the Roman bishop sought to satisfy his ambition, not quite two centuries after Christ; but, secondly, at the same time, not only Polycrates at Ephesus and others, but other bishops besides paid no attention to his orders, and even rebuked him sharply; thirdly, what a slippery thing tradition is! Here, as to this very Lent, which is adduced as a proof of apostolic tradition, Polycarp, who conversed with John, has one from him which he will not give up; because he who leaned on the Lord's bosom, he says, had so kept it and taught. But Victor, who professed to have Peter's and Paul's too, excommunicates whole churches, because, after Polycarp's clear tradition, they kept John's. Could not tradition secure certainty on such a trifle as this? The conflict was maintained till the fourth century, and even long after that the Asiatic way was maintained in certain churches derived from that country.
It is urged that the Holy Ghost was to teach things the apostles could not receive while Christ was alive. No doubt; but what has this to do with tradition? Further, that the Holy Ghost was still teaching. This would tend to show that tradition was not needed; for, in that case, the church had always the same teaching as the apostles themselves, and did not want theirs by word or letter. There is a passage or two important to cite, as regards tradition and apostolic succession.
But I must give the reader a few more quotations from the Fathers as to this Lent, which is not in scripture, says the author, in which he is surely perfectly right, but is observed by tradition from the apostles. The Romans in the fourth or fifth century observed Saturday as a fast, and the Easterns and many of the Africans dined and ate as usual, and did not think of fasting. A hot Roman in St. Augustine's time attacked all the churches for not following the Roman custom. It was alleged, as the origin of the custom, that Peter, having to contend with Simon Magus, fasted along with all the Roman church on Saturday. If he did, I am sure it was a very godly and excellent thought and act for that time; hence the Romans did it every Saturday, when there was no Simon Magus at all. St. Augustine wrote a letter to a presbyter, Casnelanus, on this hot-headed Roman's book. He gives a pleasant reply enough to the Simon Magus reason, that, if he was a figure of the devil as they said, they would have that work every day of the week.
But in replying to this we have from him general remarks on fasts which touch our present point of tradition. He says, it was the opinion of the most, that it was a mere Roman custom in reference to Peter's conflict with Simon Magus. " But if," he continues, " it be answered, James taught this at Jerusalem, John at Ephesus, others in other places, which Peter taught at Rome, that is, that men should fast the Saturday, but that other lands had deviated from this doctrine, and that Rome had remained firm in it; and, on the contrary, it is replied, that rather certain places of the West, among which is Rome, have not kept what the apostles delivered, but that the lands of the East, whence the gospel itself began to be preached, have continued, without ever varying, in what was delivered by all the apostles along with Peter, that they should not fast on the Sabbath (Saturday), that dispute is interminable, generating strifes, not finishing questions."-(Augustine, Ep. 36). And then he says that the unity of the faith was the point, for that the glory of the church, according to the psalm, was within: " The king's daughter is all glorious within "; that the observance was only the garments, and that she was in golden fringes, clothed around with variety: so the Vulgate, circumcincta varietate, after the Seventy.-Psa. 44 (Heb. 45).
What a testimony this bright light (as the author alleges, and justly, compared with much of the Fathers) affords of the certainty of tradition, and about fasting, and about Roman tradition too! It was a source of interminable disputes, he says. In the same letter we have another statement, which I will quote, on the point: " But since we have not found, as I have above remarked, in the evangelical and apostolic letters, which properly belong to the revelation of the New Testament, that it is clearly prescribed that fasts should be observed on any certain days, and therefore, that thing also, like many others which it is difficult to enumerate, has found in the garments of the daughter of the king, that is the church, room for variety, I will tell you what the revered Ambrose answered me when I asked him about this." And then he relates how his mother was uneasy, because at Milan they did not fast the same days as at Rome; and was she to follow the custom of her city, or that of Milan where she then was? Ambrose, a light too among the Fathers, told her he could not teach her better than he practiced-a good deal to say too, if he went beyond fasts; and so she was to do at Milan as they did at Milan, and to do at Rome, in such matters, as they did at Rome. So Augustine recommends in the beginning of the letter: " In those things, concerning which divine scripture has settled nothing certain (and we have seen he states that it had not settled any certain day for fasting), the customs of the people of God, or the institutions of those of old (majorum), are to be considered as a law." This is a strange way to talk, if these are apostolic traditions too. We see, however, the real source of it- following old habits which were made a law of.
However, we have something about Lent itself from Augustine. " The quadragesimal period of fasts, indeed, has authority (that is, scriptural) both in the old books-in the fact of Moses and Elias-and from the gospel, because the Lord fasted so many days, showing the gospel not to depart from the law and the prophets. In the person of Moses, namely, the law, in the person of Elias the prophets are found.. In what part of the year, therefore, could the observation of quadragesima be established more suitably than on the confines of, and close to, the Lord's passion? " And then he shows many wonderful mysteries in the number 40. But where is the apostolic tradition here?
But we have something more from the Fathers on quadragesima. We have seen Irenaeus telling us that some fasted one day, some two, some several, some forty hours continuously. Now, this last is the real secret of this number forty. Tertullian is a Father who lived in the end of the second century, an upright and able man; so that the famous Cyprian used to call him " the master," saying, Bring me the books of the master. This was the famous Cyprian who wrote a celebrated book about the unity of the church; though he would not yield to Rome on what both thought a vital point, namely, re-baptizing heretics. But this Cyprian tells us that the church in his day (Cyprian. de Lapsis) was corrupt to the last degree; that professing Christians were bent upon money-making, men luxurious in their habits, women painting their faces and adorning their hair, cheating going on in a shameful way, marriages with heathens taking place, bishops leaving their sees and flocks to carry on secular affairs, and making long journeys to gain money, not helping their hungry brethren, but seeking large fortunes, seizing on property by insidious frauds, and employing usury to enrich themselves. In other treatises he insists on the evil state of Christendom.
Such a state of things seemed to have moved Tertullian, who lived just before Cyprian, and driven him (Jerome says it was the envy the Roman clergy bore to him) to believe in the rhapsodies of Montanus and his two prophetesses of Phrygia, who were much stricter in their lives and fastings. The pope was on the point of receiving them too (already acknowledging is the term used), when a certain Praxeas, afterward a famous heretic, came to Rome, and put the pope off it, who then excommunicated and rejected them. Our famous Tertullian would not give them up, and said they were rejected, not because of the spirit they alleged they had, but because of the fasts they gave themselves up to. However, this led him to say something of these fasts; and from him we learn that the Catholic party had their quadragesimal fasts from this-the forty hours that Christ passed, as was alleged, in the grave; and that the scriptural authority (for none of them knew anything of apostolic tradition) they had for it was this: " When the Bridegroom shall be taken away, then shall they fast in those days "; and that as Christ was taken away till His resurrection, therefore they fasted these forty hours-a curious reason, by the bye, for doing so, when He was, according to this theory, restored to them. But let that pass. Here we have, from the two earliest Fathers who speak of it (Irenaeus and Tertullian), the original of quadragesima, that is, forty.
But you shall have, reader, a specimen from history also. After relating what we have stated as to the observation of Easter, and that the Quartodecimans (the Asiatics who kept it the third day after the fourteenth of the moon) alleged that John had taught them; and the Romans boast that they had received their way from Peter and Paul, but that neither could bring a writing to prove it (he does not seem to have valued oral tradition much), he goes on to speak of Lent. Socrates, lib. 5, c. 22. " For these who are of the same faith, the same differ among themselves in rites. It will not therefore be out of place to add somewhat about the various rites of the churches. First, therefore, those fasts which are kept before Easter you will find differently kept among different people; for those who are at Rome fast three weeks continuously, except the sabbath and the Lord's day (it is a question whether this does not apply to Novatians). Those who are in Illyria, and throughout Achaia, and those who live in Alexandria, fast six weeks before Easter, and call that the quadragesimal fast. Others, again, follow a different custom from that. They begin their fast the seventh week before Easter, and, fasting three only of five days with intervals, call the time nothing the less quadragesimal; and I cannot but wonder why, although they differ among themselves about the numbers of days, they still call it by the same name of quadragesimal."
" But of this appellation each different person, according to his own invention, gives a different reason: for not only in days alone, but also in abstinence from foods, they are found to differ. For some, indeed, abstain altogether from eating what has had life; others eat fish alone of such as have had life; some, with fishes, eat also of birds, affirming that they also are formed out of water, according to Moses; some abstain from fruit of trees, and from eggs; some eat only bread; others do not use even this. Some, fasting to the ninth hour, eat without distinction of every kind of food afterward. There are other observances, again, in different nations, and innumerable causes are alleged for them; and since no one can produce a written precept concerning this matter, it appears that the apostles left to the choice and will of every one that each one might do what is good, neither from fear nor necessity." What a certainty of apostolical tradition we have here! Sozomen gives the same accounts. Lib. 7, c. Cassian, too, tells us, as others state (I have not his works), the same thing. For a long time there were only thirty-six days' fast, even when six weeks or forty-two days were kept; because they never fasted on the Lord's day, till at last either Gregory the Great or Gregory II (in the close, that is, of the sixth, or beginning of the eighth, century, for it is disputed which) added Ash-Wednesday and the three following days to make it forty. Think of an apostolic tradition, arranged seven hundred years after Christ, and grown from forty hours to forty days, and all the original reasons gone!
But I have yet one extract more from this same Cassian, for which I am also indebted to another. Cassian was a monk, founded monasteries and nunneries, was ordained deacon by Chrysostom, Patriarch of Constantinople, and made priest by Innocent, pope of Rome. He will give us a sounder idea, perhaps, of this apostolic tradition. " It is, therefore, indeed to be remarked that, as long as the perfection of that primitive church remained inviolable, this observance of quadragesima (Lent) did not exist at all; but when the multitude of the faithful, abandoning that apostolic devotion, daily gave themselves up to their wealth, etc., it then pleased the body of priests, that men, bound by secular cares, and almost ignorant of continence or compunction, should be recalled to holy work by canonical obligation of fasting, and compel them by the necessity of a legal tenth (thirty-six days is tenth of 360, or nearly a year)".
What a history of Lent in the way of devotion! and think of apostolic tradition! The reader will not think that I attach great value to Lent or tradition; but I have quoted these passages because Lent has been selected as a point brought forward as a matter of apostolic tradition for a thing not in scripture. We have seen now what, in this carefully selected case, such an assertion is worth, and what solid authority the Fathers are.
I am now going to quote something in favor of what the author says; for you may generally find in the Fathers both sides of anything, except the truth itself. Jerome says (he is writing to Marcella against the Montanists, who had three Lents) that one Lent in the year is observed, according to the tradition of the apostles, and says just that much in passing. Leo calls it the apostolical institution of a forty days' fast, which the apostles instituted by the direction of the Holy Ghost. But then Jerome also says (to show what a solid thing apostolic laws founded on tradition were in those days), " But I think you should be briefly put in mind, that ecclesiastical traditions are so to be observed (especially those which are not in opposition to the faith) " (how much such a reserve shows he could have thought them apostolic!) " as they have been delivered by our ancestors. But let each province abound in its own way as of thinking, and consider the precepts of their ancestors' apostolic laws "! Epist. 52, Ed. Benedict. 71, Ed. Veron.
As to Leo, Pagi (a very learned and highly-esteemed Roman Catholic commentator on Baronius's Annals, and another) tells us that Leo was used to call everything an apostolic law which he found either in the practice of his own church, or decreed in the archives of his predecessors, Damasus and Siricius. (Pagi, Critic. in Baron. an. 67, note 15.) I use another's quotation in this instance also.
You have now, reader, the authorities for Lent being proved by apostolic tradition, and for the Romish assertion to that effect.
I turn to the Lord's day, the other example selected by the author; it is old battle-ground. My answer to this is easy, a lighter and a happier task. It is always distinguished in the early church from the sabbath, which invariably means Saturday. As regards the law, the change of the whole system involved the abolition of the Jewish sabbath. The Jewish sabbath was the sign of their covenant; but this was broken on their part, and gone, and buried on God's part in Christ's grave. The sabbath, which was the public sign of it, Christ passed in the grave.
No establishment of any form of relationship with God took place under Moses without the sabbath being anew introduced-a very remarkable fact; and in Ezek. 20:12 it is said, " And I gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am Jehovah that sanctify them." Hence these sabbaths could not be preserved as a Jewish sabbath, according to the commandments; because, when once Christ was crucified, God did not sanctify the Jewish people any longer. This the Lord spewed beforehand, over and over again during His ministry, in the way He acted and spoke on the sabbath days.
But, further, the sabbath was the sign of the rest of the creation; and, sin having entered into the world, and man having rejected Jesus who had come into its sorrow, there could be no rest of creation in connection with the first Adam. So "If they shall enter into my rest, though the works were finished from the foundation of the world "; grace, and power, and redemption, must he the basis of rest and blessing. Hence, when they maliciously and unreasonably accused the Lord of not keeping the sabbath, He does not pay heed to their malice, but says (in the touching revelation of a grace which, if it could not find its rest where sin and misery were, could begin to work where all was ruined), " My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." We can rest neither in sin nor sorrow, but can work in grace, where both are, and find occasion for work, if not rest, in it. The sabbath of the Jew, as the rest of man in creation, whatever physical mercy it may be to him as it is, could not remain spiritually as the valid sign of a state of things which was abrogated and passed away.
Is there no such witness of rest, and a better rest too, which remains for God's people? Surely there is. If now our rest is not on earth, because it is polluted, it is prepared in heaven, where we shall have our place in glory by resurrection (or an equivalent change), as Christ entered there by it. Hence, not God's rest in the first creation, but the day on which Christ rose from death, which had passed on Adam, the head of the first (and which He had in grace taken on Himself), became the witness, as far as a day is, of the church's hope of rest. She does not celebrate her joys and her hopes on the day her Lord was in the grave (how could she? It was the proof of the ruin of the old, of the first, Adam), but on the day on which He rose, the day of the triumph of the Second, who is the Lord from heaven. The Jewish sabbath fell with the whole system of which it formed part.
It was not the church changing a day, which was gone before the church existed; the cross abrogated it and all it was connected with. The church could not have existed, had the sign of the covenant made with Israel remained in force as a witness that the covenant remained entire. The sabbath was the witness of man having a share in God's rest under the first covenant; but he could not. The covenant was gone, and the sign with it. The resurrection inaugurated with divine power a new ground on which man could rest-a new scene in which he was to find blessing, when the ordinances of blessing were not to be imposed as law, but revealed in grace and spiritually understood.
Have we not proofs from scripture of the institution of the Lord's day not imposed as law, which would be contrary to the very nature of Christianity, but established in grace? The plainest. First, the Lord Jesus assembled on that day His disciples, and met them: two or three assembled in His name, and He in the midst of them. Next Lord's day He did the same thing. This the Gospels give. The Acts inform us that the disciples met on this day to break bread. In the Epistles the day is remarked as that in which the faithful were to lay by for the poor saints, as God had prospered them; and in the Revelation it is expressly called " the Lord's day" "kuriake emera," the apostle being peculiarly blessed on it.
Such is the scriptural warrant, not for making a law, but for recognizing the Lord's day, the first day of the week, as one of worship and blessing; and so it has ever continued. The word of God gives it according to its unfailing perfection. It does not make a law of an ordinance where grace reigns, but it marks out distinctly the character and blessing of a day given us by grace, as the Lord's day, the day on which He began all things new for our eternal blessing. The Old Testament has, in more places than one, recognized the eighth-that is, the first day after the old week was closed-as the day of special blessing. This was a pertinent figure.
Thus we have seen what tradition affords on one of the topics produced by the author, and what scripture affords on the other; that tradition is obscure, variable, and establishes nothing-can demonstrate nothing-which scripture does not prove; and that scripture is clear and simple. For Lent there is no warrant, and it is not in scripture; and, as to the
Lord's day, even to the very name, we have the clearest testimony possible of its observance in scripture.
But you say that the doctrine necessary for salvation was carried down by tradition from the expulsion of Adam from the garden to the time of Moses. If I am to believe tradition, there were writings. Seth, we are told, set up two pillars, and engraved what was necessary to be known, that it might not be lost; and we are told where, which, I am ashamed to say, I forget, and cannot now search for. However, though I judge it certain that the use of letters was far more ancient than is supposed, and that there was in those ancient times a mass of knowledge now lost, of which we have traces in heathen mythology and heathen notions (just showing how insecure a means it is), and that God has given us just what is needed of it in the scriptures; yet I do not believe in Seth's pillars.
At any rate nobody ever read what was on them. But your reference in the case is most untoward; because this tradition was so powerless, that the whole world departed from God; so that He had to bring in the flood to destroy men from off the face of the earth. And after the flood all was so wholly lost, that even Abraham's family were fallen into idolatry (Josh. 24:2), and God had to begin afresh by a new revelation of Himself to him. There were traces of truth which remained, as sacrifices; but the devil had got such complete hold of them that they offered them to him, not to God. Such was the effect of tradition in the case you quote. Your saying that the reference of sacrifice to a Redeemer to come was known to the Jews by tradition is monstrous. Their prophets are as clear on it as possible.
In fine I do not certainly contest that Christ established a church on the earth; no doubt He did. As to her being known by the four marks, we have examined them. Unity is gone; and universality is gone with it, as you admit you only claim a majority, which upsets both; apostolicity breaks down, for the Greeks have it more than you (for they have not a double and treble line of popes for a long while, as Rome has had). As to sanctity, we will speak of it hereafter. And, moreover, the marks are not marks at all; for the church was as true when there had been no succession, no catholicity-that is in the days of the apostles-as any can be now. If these marks are a test, the church wanted them when it was truest and purest.
We are next told of the Fathers and of the unity of the church. Of the latter I have spoken already. It is natural that, when men are in possession of a wide field of power, they should not wish it to be broken up. We have already seen that the true church, the body of Christ, united livingly to Him by the power of the Holy Ghost, is, and must be, as seen of God, always one; and that it will shine forth as one in glory. And we have seen that what is called the church-Christendom—is divided; and that the boast of the Romish body of being one within itself proves nothing as to the unity of the whole church; while the truth is that nothing can be more evident than this, that it is not the true church at all but the most corrupt of any body that pretends to the name; its marks fallacious; while, as to truth and holiness and spiritual union with a heavenly Head, she avoids the test of truth, belies in practice the test of holiness, as every honest conscience knows and as I shall show hereafter, and has another head of unity on earth in place of Christ.
I will now, therefore, speak a little of the Fathers whom you adduce as witnesses. Only remark, that the Fathers cannot tell us whether the visible church is one now (the only really important point), for the plainest of all reasons, that they lived centuries ago. If they only tell us that it began in unity, we do not want them for that, because the scriptures are plain enough upon it, historically and doctrinally. Only that unity they show to us was composed of real saints quickened of God, though false brethren were already creeping in unawares, as we learn from Jude, and the mystery of iniquity already at work, as Paul teaches us. They show divisions always ready to break out, restrained by God's grace and apostolic care; they show that there ought to be unity, but a unity which is called the unity of the Spirit; the power of God by the Holy Ghost, keeping the true members of Christ bound together in one body-not a vast body of persons, three-quarters of them infidels, and few of the rest doing more than going through a routine of forms. The scriptures show us such a unity as God can create and own. The Fathers may echo it as a duty, but cannot tell us what is now.
But we will spend a word on them. The name sounds well and seems to claim respect. Some of them were godly men, a very few martyrs for the Lord's name, a few more confessors in persecution-a real crown of glory for a Christian; but as to doctrine, they (and in particular some of those who suffered) are the loosest, wildest, most absurd, writers that ever wrote a book, to make sober men wonder how any one could possibly read such a mass of nonsense, bad morals, and heresy. If books containing such doctrine as is found for the most part in the Fathers, notions with such an absence of common sense, and such morals, were written now, every honest Christian in the country would forbid them to his children, or they would lie a lumber, so as to render such a prohibition unnecessary; while, as for the doctrine of some of them, Christians would be apt to burn the books, and Romanists the writers. This will scandalize some people, perhaps; but as people are talking so much about the Fathers, it is better the truth should be told. I admit piety is found in some, and, on some points, doctrinal truth in part of others; but there is not a child's religious book in these days which would not contain more and sounder truth than a whole folio of the " Fathers."
All the early Fathers held the millennial reign of Christ, which is now rejected by Romanists, to show how much their authority weighs where it does not suit. Most of the Antenicene Fathers were unsound as to the Person of Christ, and corrupted by Platonism.
You may think that this is mere Protestant abuse of authorities which are against us; but we have already seen that you are not much acquainted with them, and I shall produce the highest Romanist authority for what I say. The very learned Petau, a Jesuit, a man whose theological works are of standard reputation in the Romish body, after speaking of heretics, says, " Others were indeed Christians, and Catholics, and saints; but as the times then were, that mystery (of the divinity of Christ) being not yet sufficiently clearly known, they threw out some things dangerously said "-(Pet. de Trin., lib. t, c. 3, s. i.) Poor Jerome, at a loss to maintain their orthodoxy, says, " It may have been that they have erred through simplicity (simpliciter), or have written in another sense, or that by unskilled editors (copyists) their writings have been by degrees corrupted, or at least, before Arius, as a mid-day demon, was born, they have said things innocently and less cautiously, and which cannot escape the calumny of perverse men "-(Hierom. Cont. Ruffinum, lib. 2, 17, Ver.)
Now I have no objection to take the excuses of Jerome; but if, in such a fundamental point as the divinity of the Lord Jesus, such excuses have to be made for them, what can be said of their authority? This is said by Jerome, when the famous Clement of Alexandria, presbyter, and Dionysius, patriarch of Alexandria, were stated by another Father, the first to have said that the Son of God was a created being, and the latter to have fallen into Arianism, as he surely did when writing against the Sabellians; and, when it was objected against him, said he did not mean it. Jerome will not allow that their writings were corrupted by heretics. The title of this chapter of Petavius is this: " The opinions of certain of the ancients on the Trinity, who flourished in the Christian profession before the times of Arius, discordant from the Catholic rule, at least in the manner of speaking, are set forth; as of Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Tatian, Theophilus, Irenxus, Clemens Romanus." Think of all these eminent Fathers, if we except perhaps Tatian, holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith on the subject of the divinity of Christ, or at least expressing themselves so! What a comfortable security for right interpretation! I do not pretend that Petavius is warranted in all he says; but if so very learned a Jesuit judges the Antenicene Fathers thus, even if some of them may be speciously defended (as the Protestant bishop Bull, and the Jesuit Zacharia, and Horsley, and Burton, have attempted to do), while some certainly cannot, what possible reliance can be placed on them? And remember, that it is on the capital point of the divinity of Christ.
Let us now give a few details. Justin Martyr, and, it seems, Athenagoras (and it was a common notion) held that Christ existed in the Father as His word or reason, and became a distinct person only for the purpose of creation. Justin denies the possibility of the supreme omnipotent God coming, going, acting, descending, or shutting Himself up in a narrow body, as described in Genesis; and that Abraham, Isaac, etc., never saw the Father, and Ineffable, and of Himself Lord of all things aplos, and therefore of Christ Himself, who is God by His will, His son and Messenger, because He is the minister of His will.-(Dial. c. Tryph. 282, 286.) This is Arianism; yet, in other places, he speaks of Him clearly as God. Clement of Alexandria uses language which makes his doctrine as to the Godhead of Christ uncertain. He says that He had a nature nearest or very near (parechestate) to the Father; and, as to the humanity of Christ, he writes what is utterly heterodox, denying that Christ could possibly be nourished by food, and saying that He only ate that people might not think He only appeared to have a body.
As to Origen, he was as heretical as he well could be. He unequivocally declares the Son to be inferior to the Father, and the Spirit to the Son; and held that all men had lived before they were born, and were born here according to their previous merits, could recover themselves here, and be saved, as could the devil, and, as it seems, when in a heavenly state fall, for all that, afterward: in a word, every wild notion that might grace a Mormon.
Tertullian received Montanus and the Phrygian prophetesses as having or being the Paraclete, and treated the Catholics as carnal. The term by which Arius was finally condemned, and which had been condemned as heretical by the previous Council of Antioch, was withdrawn after the Council of Nice, and Arius was thereupon received into, and died in the communion of, what is called the Catholic church, this famous word being revoked; and Athanasius died in banishment, deposed from his see by the Council of Tire. Now, I am satisfied that Arius's views are the most deadly error possible. But what, then, can I think of the Fathers, if compelled to think of them?
Hermas, who is presented as an apostolic Father, tells us, in his Similitudes, that the Son (seen in his vision) was the Holy Ghost; and that God took counsel with the angels what to do with Him; and He made a pure body, and put Him into it, and that was the Christ. Yet this book, we are assured, was read in the churches.
And now for one or two further details. Ignatius, you tell us, was bishop of Antioch after Peter had fixed his chair at Rome. You are aware that it is contested that Peter was at Rome. It seems, indeed, almost impossible. However the succession of the bishopric of Antioch is nearly in the same obscurity as that of Rome, probably because they had not at the beginning such bishops as afterward. Euodias is alleged to be the first at Antioch: some say Peter put him into it, others Paul. The most authentic histories declare he became bishop of it after the death of both. Some, to clear up matters, say that Ignatius had the Gentiles, and Euodias the Jews, and then Ignatius both. If this were the case, it is possible this may have created difficulties in his own path, and this is that which makes him speak so feelingly of adhering to the bishop, for such is his principal subject. His exhortations to unity and avoiding heresy are all very well, though there is evidently an excessive excitement produced by the thought of a man just going to martyrdom, and very full of it, and (I must say) not very full of Christ. Blessed as his end may have been, Polycarp and the Vienne martyrs shine, it seems to me, much more brightly. There is more peace, more calmness, more humility. Still it was given to Ignatius to honor his Lord by giving up his life for Him, and every true Christian will honor him.
I have already remarked that you have taken Clement of Alexandria for Clement of Rome, and I have said what is needed on the former, who was the head of the school at Alexandria, and not a bishop at all. He avows that he must conceal all the highest parts of Christianity as known to the initiated, and only say what suits the public. He was more a philosopher than anything else. Tertullian, as I have said, was forced out of what is called the Catholic church by its worldliness and evil, and, after having written to prove it right by prescription, left it as a hopeless case. Cyprian in the main was a bright specimen of the Fathers, and a martyr; but he resisted Rome energetically, and never yielded, maintaining a correspondence with a famous bishop of Asia Minor, Firmilian, to resist its principles. Even he speaks of the Father commanding us to worship Christ, just as Socinus did. As to what is quoted from Hilary, one of the best of the Fathers, I cordially agree with his very scriptural statement. Whether Rome be that church is another question. No such unity as he speaks of exists now at all. St. Augustine too was a bright light for the times-I have nothing to object to what is quoted from him. That modern Rome is the church is our question. The church redeemed by Christ's blood He purifies by the word, and presents to Himself a glorious church. All its members are members of Christ, and will be in glory; but this no Romanist ever pretends to be the case with Rome.
As regards what I have stated as to the Antenicene Fathers being obscure as to fundamentals, I do not deny that passages may be found showing that they held Christ to be God-there are many But it is not denied that there are many which deny that He was the God over all, o epi panton Theos, that being ascribed to the one supreme God. It cannot be denied that Justin Martyr, for example, teaches, in reasoning with Trypho as to the Being who visited Abraham, that it could not be the supreme God, who is the Lord of the Lord on earth (that is, of Christ in these appearances to the old Fathers) as being Father and God, and is the cause of His being both powerful and Lord and God (I use the translation of a learned and orthodox theologian). The passage is to be found in Dial. c. Tryph. 388 E. Justin declares (Dial. c. T. 283 A.), that it was not the supreme God who appeared to Moses in the bush. Trypho had said there was an angel and God there.
Justin answers, that even so it was not God the Creator of all things. On the other hand, he declares, pages 227-8, that there neither is, nor ever was, any other God than He who created all things, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who led the Jews out of Egypt. He held (and it is not denied to have been the general doctrine of the Antenicene Fathers) that the wisdom of God, which dwelt in Him always, came out, as it were, into distinct existence, in order to the creation by the will of the supreme God. They owned Him to be God, but His eternal existence was endiathetos and not prophorikos. There was more than one source of this. First, they had only the Septuagint Greek translation, which in Prov. 8 reads, " The Lord created me in the beginning of his ways," ektise (not possessed me, ektesato). Secondly, Platonism, to which indeed Justin refers, and the efforts to meet the accusations of the heathens as to God the Son, to which the Platonic doctrine of the logos afforded a reply.
Now I do not desire to accuse these Fathers of heresy, save Origen. But I am forced to read a mass of barbarous folio volumes to know what they do hold, and there I find Platonism in abundance. There I find it denied, over and over again, that Christ is God over all. There I find Him spoken of as having personal existence only just before the creation, and existing by the will of the supreme God as His minister or servant. I find indeed, when they are not philosophizing or meeting difficulties, that their own faith was for the most part more orthodox. But if I want to make orthodox theology out of them, I am obliged to read another set of volumes, in which Romanists deny and affirm their orthodoxy, as in Zacharia's edition of Petavius' Dogm. Theol.; and Protestants labor honestly, as Bull, and Burton, and Horsley, and Kaye, to prove they are all right and orthodox against Romanists and Unitarians; declaring that these learned Romanists undermine the orthodoxy of the Fathers, that there may be no resource but the church, and proving very clearly that the Unitarians are utterly unfounded in what they have said. But what security does this afford for the truth?-what reliance can be placed on the Fathers?
If I turn to scripture, nothing can be plainer. I may try to reason against it; but there I find, without any discussion or philosophy at all, that Christ is " God over all blessed for evermore "; that He and the Father are one; that He " was in the beginning with God, and was God." I find that when Isaiah (chap. 6) saw the glory of Jehovah of hosts, he saw the glory of Christ. In 1 John 5 I find that He is the true God and eternal life. I find that He created all things; Heb. 1; Col. 1; John 1 In a word, I find the proper eternal divinity of the Lord Jesus, and His distinct personality, taught as plainly as any truth possibly can be. John the baptist goes before Jehovah's face, but it is before Christ. God with us, who saves the people, is Christ, the God-man (an expression, by the bye, condemned as heretical by an early council-men were to say God and man) revealed as plainly as testimony can make it; yet the unity of the Godhead (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) shining through every page, from Genesis to Rev. 1 am not, of course, bringing all the proofs of the Trinity in unity here (it would be out of place); I quote only a few passages to show the positiveness and clearness of scripture, which gives these great foundations without a cloud and without hesitation.
The author quotes the Fathers on the sanctity of the church. I have not need to say much here. The Fathers cannot tell us what the Romish body is now. No one denies in the abstract that holiness is a characteristic of the true church of God. But the manner in which this truth is treated is singularly characteristic. The Fathers show "the sanctity of the Catholic church in her origin, in her first preachers, in her doctrine, and in her sacraments." Now is it not singular that her practice is left out here? I should have thought that the first thing holiness would have to be sought in was practice. That the church's origin is holy is certain, for it is God Himself; and, as to power, the Holy Ghost glorifying Christ in the gospel. That her first preachers were is no less sure, for they were apostles, and prophets, and saintly evangelists; that her doctrine was is doubtless true, for we have it in the scriptures from God Himself, and are assured that " without holiness no man shall see the Lord "; that her sacraments, as moderns call them, were, no Christian will dispute either, if the term be rightly used. But then this only leads us to inquire, since this was so in the beginning, whether the doctrine and practice of Rome be like this; and if it be not, then we must conclude that she is not the true church, nor even like it.
But this question of practice our author avoids; it is too practical a one. Only, after a quotation from Tertullian on apostolic succession as a security for doctrine, which has nothing to say to holiness (Tertullian, who broke with the Catholic church, so called, because of its looseness), we just find " holy " in the virtuous lives of her children who observe her precepts. That reserve saves a good deal. We are told too, that the Fathers say there cannot be sanctity out of the Catholic church; but would it not be better to show that there was in what called itself so? Now I have already given a quotation from Cyprian (and others could be added) which shows that, in some two hundred years after Christ, the self-called Catholic church was sunk into the lowest excesses of vanity, corruption, fraud, and avarice, bishops and all; so that God, he says, treated them most gently in sending the Decian persecution. Indeed the choice of bishops was more than once the occasion of bloodshed and war; yet Cyprian was a great stickler for unity.
On the catholicity of the church I have already spoken. That the Fathers used the testimony of the church universal against heretics is quite true; nor, though not a final authority, are they to be much blamed, when it was universal. But we have seen they were not preserved by it themselves, nor was the church; and the question still remains, Is the Romish system in the truth? The Fathers, with their usual inconsistency, when not pressed by the heretics, equally declared that the scriptures alone were authority. They argued, and argued as it suited them. Thus Cyprian, against those who deserted what he belonged to, preached unity as obligatory. But this same Cyprian was exceedingly opposed to the pope and Romans on the re-baptizing of heretics, and wrote against the pope, and never would yield to him. Stephen, the said pope, urged " Let nothing be innovated on what has been handed down " (traditum). Hereupon our good Father changes all his language. " Whence," he cries out, " is that tradition? Does it descend from the authority of the Lord and the Gospels (Evangelica), and come from the commandments and Epistles of the apostles? For God bears witness that these things are to be done which are written, and speaks to Joshua, the son of Nun, saying, ' The book of this law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate in it day and night, that thou mayest observe to do all things that are written therein.' If, therefore, it is commanded in the Gospels, or contained in the Epistles of the apostles, or the Acts, that those coming from whatever heresy should not be baptized, but only hands imposed on him in penance, let this divine and holy tradition be observed.... What obstinacy is that! [in the pope, remember.] What presumption to prefer human tradition to a divine disposition, and not take notice that God is indignant and angry, as often as human tradition sets aside, and passes by, divine precepts, as He cries out and says by Esaias the prophet, ' This people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.' Also the Lord, in the Gospel, reproving and blaming, lays it down, and says, ' Ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may establish your tradition,' mindful of which precept the blessed apostle Paul himself also warns and instructs, saying, If any one teach otherwise, and do not acquiesce in the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and His doctrine, he is puffed up with pride, knowing nothing: from such turn away.' "-(Ep. 74, ed. Oxon.) Here every tradition is to be judged by scripture. 0 si sic omnia! and this is a pope!
The truth is, the Fathers were men, and reasoned as it suited them. The scriptures are the word of God, and speak plainly. " He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes." But the letter of our good prelate affords us some further and excellent advice-" It is simple with religious and simple minds, both to lay aside error, and find and dig out the truth. For if we revert to the head and origin of divine tradition, human error ceases [we must remember that tradition means any doctrine delivered by word or writing]; and the principle (ratione) of the celestial sacraments being considered, whatever lay hid in obscurity and a cloud of darkness, it will be brought out into the light of truth. If a canal, which conducts water that before flowed copiously and abundantly, suddenly fails, do not men go to the fountain, that there the reason of the failure may be known-whether, the veins being dried up, the water has dried up at the source? or whether, being perfect there and full, running forward, failed mid-way? that if it be caused by the fault of an interrupted or leaky canal, which hinders the water from flowing constantly and without interruption, the canal being re-made and strengthened, the water collected for the use and drinking of the city may be re-presented with the same richness and purity as it flows from the fountain, which now is what the priests of God, keeping the divine precepts, have to do. And if in any one (or anything) the truths have tottered or vacillated, let us return to the original of the Lord, and the gospel (originem Dominican et Evangelicam), and the apostolic teaching (traditionem), and let the principle of our acting spring from that whence its order and origin has sprung." Here, remark, tradition does not mean what is now received; for the truth was tottering and lost, and he insists on going back from that to what was originally delivered.
Now we have gone up to the fountain, as Cyprian recommends, and we have found a rich and inexhaustible fountain of pure water of life in the very same source which he urged men to go to. We have found that the canal has been choked with filth; so that, though a little water has oozed through, the result has been mud, undrinkable and contaminated-that the little that trickled through the filth, which has gradually filled up the channel, is utterly tainted; but when the grace of God had led us to the fountain, we have found the water as pure, as fresh, as abundant as ever, and only the more delicious from having found it again. We have found the truth easily discovered and dug out, as Cyprian has said, once arrived at the treasures of the scriptures which God gave. I have already quoted from Irenaeus a passage, where he states that, if we cannot find the solution of all that is in scripture, we are not to look for another God, but leave these things to God, because the scriptures are perfect as spoken by the word of God and His Spirit.
You quote the famous saying of Augustine-that he would not believe the gospel, if the church did not move him to do so. He speaks rather of what led him to do it than as authority. Still it is a very serious statement to find uttered. We will examine it; but you must forgive me for increased hesitation as to your having looked at the original. I am not aware what 2 T. Ep. 53 means exactly; but this passage is in a treatise against a letter of a Manichean, which was called Fundamenti. The old and new editions of epistles have neither of them, in number 53, anything to do with it. However, it may appear as an Ep. in some edition I do not know of. But I have another reason for my hesitation. One would think, from your extract, that it was a continuous passage. This is in nowise the case. You read-" Lastly, the name itself of Catholic. These so many and so great ties bind the believing man to the Catholic church; and unless the authority of the church induced me to it, I would not believe the gospel." Between " Catholic " and " these " there is nearly as much as you have quoted; but that is no matter, for it does not change the sense. But when you say, " These so many and so great ties," I can hardly suppose you translate for yourself. It runs-" These so many and so great (tanta), most dear or cherished, ties of the Christian name bind."
Now, the sentiment is left out in what you say. His affections were in play, and this he expressly speaks of in what follows in contrast with the certainty of truth; and the last and famous phrase is in quite another connection-nearly half a page of my copy farther on, and in another section. Nor have you ever finished the phrase which you end with ' Catholic church." This I will do for you. You see you cannot be surprised if I believe you did not read the passage which you quote; for certainly your manner of quoting it would lead your reader to suppose it was one continuous paragraph. St. Augustine writes-" Lib. Cont. Epist. Manichaei quam vocant Fundamenti, sec. iv " (v. in another edition)-" These, therefore, so many and so great most dear ties of the Christian name keep the believing man in the Catholic church, though, on account of the slowness of our intelligence or the merit of our life, the truth does not yet clearly (or openly) show itself." That is, his affections -perhaps I might say superstitions-linked him to the church, though he did not see the truth clear. What a different thing from being a security for the truth! And so little was it intelligence of the truth that he is speaking of, that he begins his reasoning by saying, that simplicity of faith keeps the crowd safe, not vivacity of intelligence; and therefore, if he leaves aside the wisdom which Manicheans did not believe to be in the Catholic church, many other things would hold him quietly in its bosom. This shows what the dear ties were, and how little it had to do with the certainty of truth.
But this is clearer still, if we cite all that follows the words, " the believing man to the Catholic church." I finished that phrase for you just now; I will now add what comes after the close of it-" But with you " [Manicheans, who were not Christians at all, held there was a good God and a bad one; they had a gospel of their own, Manes having, as was pretended, perfected with far clearer light what Christ had taught, and rejecting much of the scriptures] " but with you, where there is nothing of these things (the most dear ties) which should invite or hold me, the promise of the truth alone resounds; which indeed, if it be so manifestly shown that nothing can come into doubt, is to be preferred to all those things by which I am held in the Catholic [church]. But if it is only promised, and not exhibited, no man shall move me from that faith which binds me, by so many and such bonds, to the Christian religion."
Now here the bonds which did hold him were of no force if the truth was elsewhere, so that he does not look at them as themselves the truth. But, further, however confident he was that it was not the case, yet, if the truth were clearly shown elsewhere, they lost their power, so that they did not in themselves secure the truth. Is it not singular all this part should be left out? But he proceeds to reason with the Manichean, to see if he has the truth. It is a mere argumentation to put the Manichean out of the field by beating his argument; and here it is we find the famous phrase you and others quote. This piece, called Fundamenti, began-" Manicheus, apostle of Jesus Christ by the providence of God the Father. These are healthful words from the perennial and living fountain." " Bear with me," says Augustine, " if I do not believe he is an apostle. I ask, who is he? You will answer, an apostle of Christ. I do not believe it. You will have nothing you can say or do. You promised me the knowledge of the truth, and now you compel me to believe what I am ignorant of. Perhaps you will read me the gospel, and thence you will maintain the character assumed by Manicheus. If, then, you will find any one who does not yet believe the gospel, what will you do with him when he says, I do not believe '? But I would not believe the gospel if the authority of the Catholic church did not move me to it. To those, therefore, to whom I have yielded, saying, Believe the gospel,' why should I not yield when they say, • Do not believe Manicheans '? Take your choice. If you say, believe the Catholics, they themselves warn me not to yield any faith to you; wherefore I cannot believe them unless I disbelieve you. If you say, do not believe the Catholics, you will not do right in compelling me by the gospel to [embrace] the faith of Manicheus, because I believe the gospel by Catholics preaching it."
We see at once here, that to put the Manicheans out of court, he insists, that when he attempted to use the gospel to make him receive Manicheus (Manes) and his doctrine, it could not take effect, because he had believed in the gospel by means of the very Catholics who condemned Manicheus. Now it is a very foolish and bad sentence; but is merely a reasoning used in an argument ad hominem to frustrate the Manichean by taking the ground from under his feet; and it supposes a person refusing to believe the very gospel he appealed to, and then insisting he could not use the gospel against Catholics, because it was through Catholics he had believed. It is no business of mine to defend Augustine, though he were a bright testimony to the grace of God. His reasonings are often weak and foolish enough, and admitted to be so by Romanists, and I may almost say by himself, for he excuses himself as writing in haste, and admits that, not having been able to meet Manes in the plain sense of scripture, he had turned it into allegories. But the close of the chapter shows clearly what he meant. He had been led to believe the gospel by the preaching of Catholics, and, thus led to it by them, he could not read it as condemning them-an argument which has no force. It is in no way a quiet dogmatic sentence as it is presented. It is to be hoped that he did not mean that when, through the instrumentality of the preaching of the Catholics, he had been brought to believe in it as the word of God, he still held it merely by their authority; because if he really believed it to be God's word, and that he had really faith in it as such, however brought to that conviction, he must believe it, because God had spoken it: otherwise there was no divine faith.
He who received Christ's testimony set to his seal that God is true. Anybody may move me and lead me to receive the Bible; but when I receive it, I have faith in it because God has spoken: otherwise it is mere human faith. It cannot be doubted-for we have his account of it-that the word of God had reached his heart with deep conviction within. It had its own title in his heart. Did he rest this on the church's authority? Then it was human faith. A man may bring me my father's letter; I recognize it as his. Its authority is not the bringer's, but the writer's, though the fidelity of the messenger may have been necessary for my getting it. Once received, it has my father's authority-the authority of him who wrote it. There is no pretense that "commoveret," the word Augustine uses, can mean the authority. It proves that the church had a practical influence over his mind, which led him to do it; all very well. It was Catholics' preaching which had led him to faith; he was converted from heathen wickedness and Manicheanism; but it was not their previous authority on which the scriptures rested, but an authority over his mind.
But I take higher ground than showing it was a mere argumentative phrase to excuse Augustine. If the principle be the sober judgment of Augustine, that he would not believe unless on the authority of the church, this is not believing because God has spoken, but because the church had. If one tells me something, and another accredits him, and I believe the first because the other declares what he says is true, it is clear I do not believe the former, though I believe the fact he relates; for I do so because I trust another, not him. That is, if I believe the gospel because the church authenticates it, it is because I do not believe it without: that is, God's saying it is insufficient. I do not believe God in it at all. There is no faith in God's word.
But see what ground the Romanists set me on here, for this is the real truth of the matter. God has spoken; the apostles and evangelists have recorded His revelation: if they deny it, they are infidels, not Christians. I am to believe God, because the church accredits what He has revealed. I am to believe the church because Augustine accredits it; that is, the authority of God Himself (who, in sovereign grace, has spoken to us) is reduced to the opinion I may form of the judgment of Augustine. What a favorable position! as if God, when He has spoken, cannot give proof that He has, so as to bind the Christian's, nay, every man's conscience! Now I have a very poor opinion of the judgment of Augustine, and I shall tell you why; but what a foundation on which to rest belief in what God has said! I must have Augustine's authority for its being true; for if the church accredits the scripture and Augustine accredits the church, the judgment and authority of Augustine is my stay, and the base of the whole. I say, if God has spoken, His word obliges to believe because He has spoken: woe be to him who does not! You plead Augustine's word, that though he has spoken (for you dare not deny this, or you are an infidel)-though God has spoken, you would not believe Him unless the church guaranteed it. Is this faith? God speaks; I cannot believe what He says till some one else accredits it! It is as awful ground to go on as it is unstable and insecure; and this is all the ground that the Romish body can give as security of our faith!
The truth is, Augustine was first attracted by Ambrose's preaching, by his kindness and eloquence, and began to doubt his own Manicheanism; but he was converted by the scriptures, and established in the faith by the scriptures. " Therefore," he says, " as we were infirm in finding the truth by mere reason, and the authority of the holy letters was needful for us, I began now to believe that thou wouldst in nowise have given so excellent an authority to the scriptures in all lands, unless thou hadst written that by it I should believe in thee, and by it I should seek thee." This accordingly he did, passing through much conflict; and at last abandoning himself to tears under a fig-tree, he heard a voice saying, " Take and read, take and read "; and he arose, took up the Epistles to look at the first thing he opened at, and found a passage which was his deliverance. Such is his own account in his Confessions when he is relating the facts, not reasoning with Manicheans. He was not very nice in reasoning with these. He wrote a book against them early in his career; and when he could not make any proper sense out of the scriptures literally, or none could be made (so he says), he turned it into an allegory to get out of the scrape, hoping he might do better afterward; and so, indeed, he tried to do in a treatise on Genesis according to the letter.
As to St. Vincent of Lerins (not Semis), there is a sentence of his almost as famous as St. Augustine's. It is this, that we were to believe quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus, what was believed always, everywhere, and by all. May I guess that you did not quote this famous rule, because you have only, as you allege, a majority-really just half; the Greek church, older than you, thinking you all wrong, and the Protestants thinking you Babylon? If man's opinion and agreement is to be the ground of faith, according to Vincentius Lirinensis, we can have none at all in these days. But the passage you do quote is an unfortunate one, because it was just the very order of Pope Stephanus, which the holy martyr, and the African church, and Firmilian, and Asia Minor, and the East, resisted as subverting the church, and condemned by scripture, in a letter of which I have given an extract.
Allow me also to quote a passage of St. Jerome: " Hear another testimony, by which it is most manifestly proved that a presbyter is the same as a bishop " (Titus 1:5, seqq.); and then he quotes other passages. " But that afterward we should be shown who should have the pre-eminence over the rest, it was done as a remedy for schism, lest every one drawing [people] to himself should break up the church of Christ; for at Alexandria also, from Mark the Evangelist to bishops Heraclus and Dionysius, the presbyters always named as bishop one chosen from among themselves, and placed in a higher grade."... " Nor is the church of the Roman city to be esteemed one, and that of all the earth another. Both the Gauls, and Britains, and Africa, and Persia, and the East, and India, and all barbarous nations, adore one Christ, observe one rule of truth. If authority be sought, the world is greater than a city. Wherever there is a bishop, Rome, or Eugubium, or Constantinople, or Rhegium, or Alexandria, or Tanis, he is of the same worth, he is of the same priesthood. The power of riches and the humility of poverty make neither a higher nor an inferior bishop; but all are successors of the apostles." Am I attaching any authority to Jerome? The learned but irascible and superstitious monk is one of the last to whom I should; but it is just a proof that these Fathers said what suited them at the moment of writing, as other poor mortals do sometimes-indeed rather more, so that there was a name for their way of reasoning. It was called economical; that is, they used reasoning proper to confute their adversary, without the least believing it was the truth themselves (like Augustine's allegories).
But we are arrived at the sacraments.
As to baptism, except Quakers, all own it as a Christian ordinance, so that the scriptures you quote for that are freely accepted. Moreover every true or even orthodox Christian admits we are all born in sin: only I do not admit the application of John 3 to baptism. There is an allusion to what you have quoted from Ezekiel, which has nothing to do with baptism; but from the very words you quote (and reading the whole passage makes it still plainer), it refers to the restoration of the Jews; and the figure of baptism refers to the reality; just as John 3 does also, where the Lord is telling Nicodemus that he must not marvel because He said to him that they, Jews, who thought themselves already children of the kingdom, must be born again. It was a sovereign operation of God, going like the wind, and hence could embrace Gentiles; but he, as a master in Israel, ought, from his own prophets, to have known that such new birth was needed for Israel, as the passage from Ezekiel, for example, shows. The Lord tells us that the water which really cleanses is the word: " Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you " (John 12:48; ch. 15:3); and Paul, " that he might sanctify and cleanse it [the church] by the washing of water by the word," Eph. 5. Baptism refers to this true cleansing, and so does John 3.
As to confirmation, you have produced scriptures which show that the apostles, and apostles alone, conferred the Holy Ghost by laying on their hands; as to " the bishop, the successor of the apostles in the ministry," complete and absolute silence. In the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, in which, according to your system, we might have expected it, not a word is to be found. The laying on of the apostles' hands conferred it, and that it might be clear that Paul was as great an apostle as the rest (Acts 19), a case is recorded in which he also did so. You have quoted some other passages which prove anything but this. " He who hath confirmed or established us with you in Christ "-was Paul confirmed along with them? This is too ridiculous. He, at least, says he never went near the other apostles to be confirmed, nor ever received anything from them. When, therefore, he says, " confirmeth us with you in Christ," it is pre-eminently clear he was speaking of nothing of the kind. Besides, bebaion is not the rite of confirmation. And further, it is God here, not an apostle or a bishop, who has done it.
As to anointing, we read, " Ye have the unction of the Holy one, and ye know all things." Again, why not finish Eph. 1, " in whom also... ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise which is the earnest of our inheritance, till the redemption of the purchased possession "? Is confirmation the earnest of the inheritance? But if you say that it is the thing itself which is, and that confirmation is the sacrament by which it is received, then the text speaks of the thing (as it surely does), and not of any sacrament at all. That is, it has nothing to do with the matter. Now that sealing and anointing are the reality of the thing, and not any rite, we have the certainty, because the word of God says, that " God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power," Acts to: 38. And again, speaking of Him, " Him hath God the Father sealed," John 6:27. No one will have the folly to say it could mean a sacrament as to Christ.
The history of confirmation is clear enough; we hear of it first early in the third century, yet not separate from baptism, but conferred at the same time and with nothing to say to a bishop. In the next, however, it was soon left to the bishop to do. This separation of it from baptism, and leaving it to the bishop, was not established in the East nearly so soon. It continued an act of the baptizing minister, and is treated even by Jerome as that part of baptism by which the Holy Ghost is received, only left to the bishop in order to maintain his dignity. I give some quotations which show this.
First, there is Tertullian (De Baptismo, 7, 8). Having spoken of the water, he says, " Next going out of the laver we are anointed with the blessed unction, according to the former discipline (that is, the Jewish), with which they were accustomed to anoint with oil out of a horn for the priesthood, with which Aaron was anointed by Moses, whence Christ has His name from chrism, which means anointing.... Then the hand is imposed, calling and inviting the Holy Ghost, in the way of blessing." We see it is distinctly given as a part of baptism, without thinking of a bishop, and that the laying on of the apostles' hands as its source never entered his mind.
In a commentary, commonly attributed to Ambrose, in 4 Ep. ad Ephesians (given in Keble's note to Hooker), we read, In Egypt presbyters sealed or signed (that is, confirmed), if the bishop is not present. And in the Apostolic Constitutions, lib. 7: 43, 44 (cap. 28 in ed. J. G. Cotel.) the form of baptism and prayer to be used by the priest is given, and then it is said, And after this, when he shall have baptized him in the name of the Father and Son and Holy Ghost, he shall anoint him with myrrh, adding, Lord God unbegotten, etc., cause that this anointing may be efficacious in the baptized, so that the fragrance of thy Christ may remain firm and stable in him, etc. Afterward there is a prayer for purity, vigilance, etc., by the coming of the Holy Ghost. Now, the Apostolical Constitutions are of the fifth century, so that the anointing and confirmation was still the baptizing minister's office. When they were composed, it is very possible they were Alexandrian, certainly Greek and Eastern.
In Cyprian's time (256) they were brought in the west to the bishop, but on their baptism. Referring to the case of Samaria, he says, " which also is done among us now; that those who are baptized in the church are offered to the presidents of the church, that by our prayer and the imposition of hands they should obtain the Holy Ghost, and be perfected by the Lord's mark " (Ad. Jub. 73, p. 202). And so much was it held to be a part of baptism, that (Ep. 72) the African council say to Pope Stephen, insisting that heretics should be rebaptized as well as have hands imposed, ' Then indeed at length they are fully sanctified, and can be sons of God, if they are born of both sacraments, since it is written, " unless a man be born of water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God."' Every one knows that all solemn acts or mysteries were called a sacrament in those days; there were seventy or even a hundred of them, for aught any one can tell, if we take the word. I cite this to show that it was considered as part of baptism. Eusebius quotes a letter of Cornelius (Pope) to the same effect, as to a baptism of Novatus, on what seemed a death-bed; " for he," the dying man, " did not get the other things which it is necessary to receive according to the rule of the church, nor was sealed by the bishop; and not having got this, how should he get the Holy Ghost? " That is, this was the part of baptism by which, on their system, men got the Holy Ghost-(Euseb. lib. 6: 43, p. 244). We have already seen that these same bishops (to whom Cyprian says persons were brought to be confirmed and anointed, so as to receive the Holy Ghost), he also says, were running through all the provinces to make money by fraud. What a picture of the "Catholic church "!
But there remains a quotation from Jerome, which will complete the history of this rite -" I do not, indeed, deny that this is the custom of the churches, that the bishop runs off to those who have been baptized, far from the greater cities, by presbyters and deacons, to lay on his hands for the invocation of the Holy Ghost."... "But if you ask in this place why we, baptized in the church, should not receive the Holy Ghost, unless by the hands of the bishop, which we assert to be given in true baptism, learn that this rite descends from that authority, that after the ascension of the Lord the Holy Ghost descended on the apostles; and in many places we find the same practiced.... Otherwise, if the Holy Ghost came down only on the demand of a bishop, they are to be pitied who, baptized by presbyters or deacons, in small towns or castles, or in remote places, have fallen asleep before they have been visited by bishops."
Remark here, that he overthrows entirely the doctrine of Pope Cornelius, just cited from Eusebius. What a mess these Fathers make of it! " But sometimes the safety of the church depends on the dignity of the chief priests, for if a certain extraordinary power, eminent above all, were not given to him, there would be as many schisms in the church as priests. Thence it happens, that without anointing, and the command of the bishop, neither a presbyter nor a deacon has the right of baptizing, which, however, frequently, if necessity compels, we know to be lawful for the laity to do. For, as one receives anything, so also he is able to give it, unless also the eunuch indeed, baptized by Philip, is to be believed to be without the Holy Ghost." I quote this as showing-first, that it was a part of baptism; next, that the bishop did it merely as a matter of order and human arrangement, and that after all it was all as good without him, if need was, being reserved merely to maintain order and his dignity, and that even Jerome had not the smallest idea of his conferring the Holy Ghost exclusively as the successor of the apostles. He goes into the case of Samaria; but his reasoning, though to the point as to Lucifer, his adversary, has nothing to do with our subject. For this he only refers to its coming on the apostles (of course, therefore, without laying on of hands), and insists, if the bishop was not there, it was had all the same, quoting as a proof the eunuch of Ethiopia.
I thought a plain history of the facts would be the best means of dispelling the mists and halo which surround the word " Fathers." The earliest, Tertullian, " a most ancient writer, and a man of great erudition," according to the author, speaks of it as a part of baptism done in imitation of Judaism. Gradually this part was reserved to the bishops, for order's sake, but declared by Jerome not to be essential, but a matter of order, and got established gradually, like other superstitious corruptions of early practices, as it is now used. St. Jerome, " that most learned Father and doctor of the church," is unfortunate, for he very satisfactorily refutes on the point what the pope had laid down. Indeed, as I have said, you may prove anything but the truth by the Fathers. They said what suited them in their controversies.
But I have another little word to add here. The author, in the quotation alleged to be from Jerome, after the words, " And having invoked the Holy Ghost, lays his hands on them," continues, " Where, will you ask, is this written? In the Acts of the Apostles," etc. Not a word of this latter part is in what Jerome says; on the contrary, he goes on to prove it can be had without it. The author, I suppose from quoting secondhand, without reading the Fathers, has fallen into a sad mistake here. It is the adversary of the orthodox-namely, Lucifer, or a Luciferian-whom Jerome, under the name of " Orthodox," is confuting, who says this. It gives us such a clue to the origin of these different rites, that I will quote it. Indeed, Lucifer has in many things, perhaps, the best of it. " Are you ignorant," says this honest but stern resister of Arianism in every shape (Jerome, it appears, rather agreed with Cyprian that heretics should be re-baptized, which the pope would not allow), " that this is the custom of the churches, that hands should be afterward laid upon the baptized, and that the Holy Ghost should be invoked? Do you ask, Where is it written? In the Acts of the Apostles. Even if the authority of the scripture was not to be had, the consent of all the world on this point would have the force of a precept. For many other things also, which, through tradition, are observed in the churches, have assumed (usurpaverunt) to themselves the authority of a written law." That is just it. Lucifer was a very faithful, but, as it appears, rigid and somewhat violent man. He was banished by Constantius for refusing to condemn Athanasius. He refused to receive Arian bishops as bishops on retracting their error, and said they must come as laymen. However, Jerome is refuting him in the work quoted from; and the author has quoted Jerome's adversary as Jerome himself. What security for the faith!
I turn to penance. Your quotations of scripture prove that you have as little consulted it as you have the Fathers. You say, " St. Matthew and St. John record the same event," namely, Christ's coming to His apostles after His resurrection. John states a part of the communication Christ made to His disciples at this interview-the power of forgiving sins; Matthew another part-the power of baptizing and teaching all nations whatsoever Christ had commanded them; and in conclusion, Jesus Christ assures them that He would remain with them to " the end of the world." This you do, in order to show that the power to forgive sins remains to the end of the world. How can you expose your own ignorance to such a degree, or presume on that of others? The interview mentioned in John 20 was in Jerusalem, the day of the resurrection; and Matt. 28, in Galilee afterward, the last thing recorded by him before the Lord's ascension. The whole fabric falls, being incorrect in every part.
Now how comes it that for other things the bishops are successors of the apostles, as you tell us? and here " a person must have a very perverse heart, and covered with a dense spiritual blindness," not to see that, on the contrary, all priests are their successors, proving both by the same text of Matthew, which says nothing about either, and thus can be arbitrarily applied to one as well as the other? Again, you quote, " Hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation," as referring to penance; 2 Cor. 5. But the apostle declares that this was preaching the gospel. " Now we are ambassadors for Christ; as though God did beseech by us, we pray in Christ's stead be reconciled to God. For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." Yet you dare to say, " Can language convey more expressively, more definitively, or more clearly, the power which God gave to the priests, of reconciling the world to Him by the ministry of religion? " All this is foolish trifling. What do you mean by the ministry of religion? The apostle speaks of beseeching by the gospel in Christ's name; you of penance. Are you going to put the world under penance? Is this your embassy?
But, further, you have not given a correct account of penance, as Romanists teach it.
You say, the necessary dispositions-namely, contrition of heart, and a firm purpose of turning from his evil ways." This is not a real account of Romish penance. The Catechism of the Council of Trent, according to which you are ordered to teach your parishioners, states the contrary. The " integral parts are contrition, confession, and satisfaction." " We sin against God by thought, word, and deed; when recurring to the power of the keys, we should, therefore, endeavor to appease His wrath, and obtain the pardon of our sins by the very same means by which we offended His supreme Majesty. In further explanation, we may also add, that penance is, as it were, a compensation for offenses which proceed from the free will of the person offending." Again-" On the part of the penitent, therefore, a willingness to make this compensation is required, and in this willingness chiefly consists contrition." But still more clearly, after quoting the Council of Trent, it is said: " From this definition, therefore, the faithful will perceive that contrition does not simply consist in ceasing to sin, purposing to enter, or having actually entered, on a new life: it supposes, first of all, a hatred for sin, and a desire of atoning for past transgressions." You have left all this out. It is easy to talk of contrition of heart; but it chiefly consists in the willingness to make compensation, satisfaction-to atone by one's own free will.
But there is another part of the doctrine you have omitted. " Contrition " (it is still the Catechism which is instructing us), " it is true, blots out sin; but who is ignorant that, to effect this, it must be so intense, so ardent, so vehement, as to bear a proportion to the magnitude of the crimes which it effaces? This is a degree of contrition which few reach; and hence, through perfect contrition alone, very few indeed could hope to obtain the pardon of their sins " (by that they could do without a priest or confession). " It therefore became necessary that the Almighty, in His mercy, should afford a less precarious and less difficult means of reconciliation and of salvation; and this He has done, in His admirable wisdom, by giving to His church the keys of the kingdom of heaven. According to the doctrine of the Catholic church-a doctrine firmly to be believed and professed by all her children-if the sinner have recourse to the tribunal of penance, with a sincere sorrow for his sins, and a firm resolution of avoiding them in future, although he bring not with him that contrition which may be sufficient of itself to obtain the pardon of sin, his sins are forgiven by the minister of religion through the power of the keys."
Justly, then, do the holy Fathers proclaim that " by the keys of the church the gate of heaven is thrown open," that is, to sinners who have not repented as they ought: those who have do not want the keys. Penance, then, is substitution for adequate and right repentance-it is making the conscience easy when it has not properly repented, that is, hardening it. Who does not know this to be the case? A conscientious soul, grieved with sin, is miserable because it has not done its penance in a right spirit; a careless, sin-loving heart goes to confession in order to receive at Easter, as they say, and begins its score of sins again merrily, when the old one is wiped out. It is sorry, no doubt, for having committed them when they are over-who would not be?-and afraid not to receive when Easter comes round, and for the moment proposes to do no more such. Real, thorough contrition is not required; penance supplies its place. Contrition, he is taught by his " church," chiefly consists in this willingness to make satisfaction or compensation; and so he gets absolution for the past, and begins over again. Can there be a more iniquitous system? It is not a notion, taken up by the ignorance of these poor sinners, but established by the deliberate teaching of what calls itself the " church." Now, I believe that remission of sins is, or ought to be, administered in the church of God still: first, in reconciling the world-which has nothing to say to the matter we are on now, even as to ordinances, because restoration or penance, whatever form it has, belongs to the church. Heathens are received by baptism, not by penance: whenever a poor Jew or heathen is received into the church, he receives, as to his present manifest standing, forgiveness; he stands before God as a forgiven man: all recognize that he enters by baptism. Further, if a person be justly excommunicated for sin, being a Christian, he is, on restoration, forgiven his sin as to his public standing before God; so that the forgiveness of sins, in this sense of the word, as to a man's manifest standing and condition on the earth, does continue, and will, as long as the church subsists.
The history of confession I have already given. Auricular confession is a very modern introduction; it was needed when an easy way of letting off sin was wanted coincidently with the growth of priestly power. The passage of James, " Confess your sins one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed," is the plain proof that confession to a priest was unknown. It was a useful mutual exercise of charity, so that chastisement might be removed, when the heart was right before God. Was it to priests that many came and confessed their deeds in the passage cited from the Acts, when they burned their books of magic? The reason why baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost is valid, and " I absolve thee from thy sins, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost " is not, is a very simple one; it is this-Christ positively ordained one, and did not so much as hint at the other. Besides, you know very well that in case of necessity a layman, nay, a woman, can baptize a child: will you allow the same power in penance? If not, why do you assimilate them, as if one proved the other?
You quote St. Chrysostom. But he wrote urgently against confession to a priest, as we have already seen. I do not deny that Christ gave power to His church to forgive sins in the sense I have explained it. I believe it to be a glorious truth, that whosoever is rightly in the church is enjoying the absolute, full, unlimited, forgiveness of all his sins. But we are talking of auricular confession to a priest, and of satisfaction and penance substituted for real full contrition, in order to have it.
I come now to the Eucharist. I have already remarked that you have not ventured to say one word for the mass; you seek to justify transubstantiation, not the sacrifice. You quote John 6. There are three points in this chapter as to Christ: He is the bread come down from heaven (that is, the incarnation); there is His flesh and blood (that is, His death); and His ascending up where He was before. In all we are to own Him. The Lord's supper most preciously presents Him in one of these. It presents a dead Christ, the body broken, and the blood shed. You say the Jews took Him literally; but they certainly knew nothing about the Lord's supper. " The disciples," you add, " knew likewise that Christ meant what He said."... " The sublime mystery they did not comprehend." But then they did not understand Christ at all, but took Him quite wrong; and therefore the Lord corrects them, and says, " It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing." He takes care they should understand He did not mean them to rest in the letter of what He said. They took Him according to the letter. They were quite wrong. Many, supposing He meant it literally, went away. The rest held to Him, because His words were eternal life.
You urge that God could make man out of slime, Eve out of a rib, and a pillar of salt out of Lot's wife. No doubt; but when He made a man, he was a man in form. He did transubstantiate the mud. But a man was a man to all intents and purposes, not to all intents and purposes (save your telling us otherwise) unchanged mud. He did not look or taste like slime, remain unable to move, speak, think, and -go on as before. So of Eve: nobody, when she was changed, could take her for a rib. God gave proof to man of the change. So in the case of Lot's wife. Here there is none-no sign of God's power of any kind. We must believe, we are told, not reason. Yes, if God has taught it.
You quote John 6, and you quote, " I am the living bread which came down from heaven," words as plain as " this is my body." Am I to believe that Christ was transubstantiated into living bread? The words are just as plain, just as positive: why not believe them? Are we to eat Him incarnate and alive on earth? Where? Yet " he that eateth of that bread shall live forever." In the Lord's supper I cannot, for His body is presented broken, not whole; His blood shed, not in His body. But again, the Lord declares that whosoever eats Him, as He describes, is fully and finally saved. They " shall live forever." They " have everlasting life, and he will raise them up at the last day." " They abide in Christ, and Christ in them." That is, it is the real vital saving possession of Christ by faith in the perfect efficacy of His life and work, in which those who possess will abide, and Christ raise them up, consequently, at the last day. But this is confessedly not true of all who partake of the Eucharist. That is, the passage does not refer to it; it refers to what the Eucharist refers to. Further, the terms of the institution preclude the literal sense; for, whatever image He employed, it could not then be literally Himself; because His body was not yet given, His blood was not yet shed, and this is what it is expressly a sacrament of. The Lord plainly shows what He meant in saying, " This cup is the new testament in my blood," which is clearly a figure; and " I will not drink of this fruit of the vine," Matt. 26. Nothing can be plainer. But the Lord did not really hold in His hand a broken body and shed blood; for His body was not broken and His blood was not shed. Yet that is of the very essence of the truth, for it was shed for the remission of sins, and there was no remission without it. In a word, the testimony is as plain as possibly can be, that the literal sense is untrue and impossible; shed blood there was none. Now Christ is glorified. There is no dead Christ; it cannot be He in reality-He in the letter; for there is no such Christ in reality as broken and His blood shed. He is alive for evermore. 1 Corinthians 10 is the plainest of all in reality; it speaks of the body as broken.
As regards a mouse eating it, I am not fond of such arguments; because, though I do not believe lifeless bread to be my living Lord, save as faith realizes Him, yet it is a memorial of Him, and there is no profit in irreverent associations. Yet you have in nothing met the argument in the smallest degree. According to your system, the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ are there; yet it cannot help itself against a mouse. The argument has the same bearing as Isaiah's. The idolater makes a fire with part of a tree, warms himself, roasts at it, and says of the rest, It is a god, and worships it. Here a mouse eats it; it is turned into corruption; and you adore the rest as God. The argument may be a painful one, but it is complete. He cannot deliver himself, says Isaiah: a deceived heart has turned him aside; he cannot say, I have a lie in my right hand. When the Lord says, " Do this in remembrance of me," it was saying it was a memorial of Him when He was gone, not His presence. But there is no life in the wafer. It is monstrous to say it is God, and eat it literally, let Fathers say what they may. It is not a living Christ; were it so, it were no sacrifice either, nor shedding of blood. I live by the life of a living Christ; I feed, commemoratively, on a dying one (such as, blessed be God, He can be no more, and is not now). Hence the cup, and drinking the cup, are essential to the import of the sacrament, and that the blood be nowhere else; for, if not shed, there is no remission.
And now mark the amazing import of this point. The Romanist as such does not partake of the cup. The reason, as is alleged, that it is all the same, is what is called the doctrine of concomitancy-that each element contains all-that in the bread the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ are all found. Now, if the blood be in the body, there is no sacrifice, no redemption, no remission of sins. Without shedding of blood, says the Holy Ghost (Heb. 9), there is no remission. Now, if the blood be in the body, it is not shed. That is, the poor Romanist-and with it I do not reproach him but what calls itself the Catholic church, and the enemy of souls-the poor Romanist has the sacrament of there being no redemption, or no remission of sins; for, as he receives it, His blood is yet in the body. Think how the enemy has mocked his poor soul! No doubt the Fathers spoke of it as the flesh and blood of Christ; but they say plainly now-I repeat I do not cite them as of weight, for there is no one less worthy of authority than they-but, as an historical fact, they say sufficient (not certainly to show that they were not superstitious enough, but) that superstition had not traveled in five centuries as far as it had in fifteen. It went faster with the people than even the clergy, in some respects, for they brought in their heathen habits. Of this anon. I will quote enough from them to show that, when it suited them in argument, they say the contrary of Romish doctrine: it is very possible, when it suits them or their imagination is at work, they teach it too. It just shows what they are worth. The mere saying, " flesh and blood," means nothing.
But to the point. First, when the controversies as to the two natures of Christ were on foot, and yet earlier, on the possibility of His taking flesh, which the Gnostic heretics denied, they insist on the bread being there when He is spiritually or divinely present, as a proof that the two things can be together. Here their whole point was, that it was still bread; just as His flesh, as a living man, was true flesh, which the heretics denied. Thus Tertullian: " He made the bread, received and distributed to His disciples His body, saying, This is my body, that is, the figure of my body; but it would not have been a figure unless the body was truly such; for an empty thing, which is a phantasm, cannot have a figure." The reader must know that early heretics denied that Christ had a real body: Tertullian argues, from the Eucharist being a figure of His body, that the body must be real. Irenaeus argues in the same way, and is very positive as to the bread being there after the consecration, of which he speaks: " For when the bread, which is from the earth, receives the invocation of God, it is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two things, earthly and heavenly; so our bodies," etc.
So Augustine (after saying that people said Christ was immolated at Easter, and constantly, though He never was but once long ago, and could be but once) says, " For if the sacrament had not a certain similitude of these things whereof they are sacraments, they would not be sacraments at all; but from this similitude they receive, for the most part, even the name of the things themselves." What can be plainer? " For the Lord did not hesitate to say, This is my body, when He gave the sign of His body." " The feast at which He commended and delivered to His disciples the figure of His body and of His blood " (on Psa. 3). " He who abides not in Christ, and in whom Christ does not abide, beyond all doubt neither eats His flesh nor drinks His blood, although he eats and drinks for judgment on himself the sacrament of so great a thing " (in Joann. Tract. 26: 18). Chrysostom is quoted also, as saying, " Before the bread is sanctified we call it bread; but, divine grace sanctifying it through the ministry of the priest, it is freed from the name of bread, and judged worthy of the appellation of the Lord's body, although the nature of bread remains in it " (Epist. ad Caesarium).
This last quotation has a very curious history. It was quoted by Peter Martyr. The Romanists cried, Forgery.
Peter Martyr deposited it at Lambeth. It was taken away in Queen Mary's reign. Bigot published it at Paris (he was a Romanist). The edition was suppressed, but the Archbishop of Canterbury got the sheets as they passed through the press, and published it in England; and others have done so.
These may suffice to show that, rapidly as superstition grew, four or five centuries (that is, as long ago as Edward III) had not sufficed to obliterate the original doctrine of the church of God. It was made a dogma of the church only in the thirteenth century, in the Lateran Council, under Innocent III, the bloody instigator of the crusades against the Albigenses in the south of France, and the establisher of the Inquisition. In the tenth it was openly disputed, many prelates supporting the writer; and in the ninth was openly maintained, and the author not condemned as heretical at all, that transubstantiation did not take place. The reader may remark that several of the quotations I have given are from writers whom the author has quoted, showing, when speaking soberly, how little they attributed to their own words the force which is attributed to them; or rather they spoke rhetorically about it in discourse, and showed at other times it was only rhetoric. Again, what a ground to put our faith upon in order to receive it!
But I will add some other passages of the Fathers, showing distinctly, as a learned Romanist has admitted, that, up to Chrysostom, the church did not really hold transubstantiation as a doctrine, however rhetorically individuals may have spoken. I attach no kind of importance to their opinion but historically, as the Romanists lean on them; it shows what a broken reed his way of assuring true doctrine is, and that is our point now.
The passage of Justin Martyr quoted by the author proves the contrary of that for which he cites it. Justin treats the Eucharist as bread, wine, and water, and as nothing else literally. The author has not, as so often has occurred, given the whole passage. " This food," he begins. What food? Hear Justin. " Those called among us deacons give to each of those present to partake of the bread, and wine, and water, over which thanks have been given, and carry it away to the absent, and this food is called among us Eucharist.... For we do not receive these things as common bread nor as common drink; but in the same way." (This the author has entirely changed; I suppose, as usual, quoting from a text-book.
How honest they are-that is, the instructors of the Romish body-we have seen by this time.) " As by the word of God, Jesus Christ, our Savior, being made flesh, had flesh and blood for our salvation, so also the nourishment by which flesh and blood, through change [into them], are nourished, over which thanks have been given, through prayer of the word which is from Him, we have been taught to be the flesh and blood of that Jesus made flesh." Now here, whatever it was to their faith, it was really and substantially bread, and wine, and water, such as nourished the natural body. No Romanist could say that bread and wine and water were given to be partaken of by each person present, nor that they took what nourished their body, on being changed into it. Hence the author, or his text-book, omits it.
Theodoret, in answering the Eutychians who held that there was only one nature in Christ, says, " He that called His own natural body wheat and bread, and gave it the name of a vine, He also honored the visible symbols or elements with the name of His body and blood, not changing their nature, but adding grace to nature" (Dial. I, tom. 4, p. 17). The Eutychian heretic Eranistes (Dial. 2, p. 85, ed. Schulze 4: 126) says, " As the symbols of the Lord's body and blood are one thing before the invocation of the priest, but after invocation are changed, and become another thing, so also the body of our Lord, after its assumption, was changed into the divine substance." Theodoret replies, " Thou art taken in thine own net which thou hast made; for neither do the mystical symbols depart from their own nature after consecration, for they remain in their former substance, figure, and form," ousias kai you schematos kai you eidous. This is most unequivocal. Indeed, the controversy with the Eutychians and Monophysites, who confounded the divine and human natures in Christ, proves clearly that transubstantiation was not believed in. They used the fact of its being still bread and wine against the Eutychian doctrine, as they had against the Gnostics the fact of their being material creatures.
So Ephrem of Antioch, " The body of Christ which is received by the faithful does not depart from its own sensible substance, and yet it is united to spiritual grace; and so baptism, though it becomes wholly a spiritual thing and but one thing, yet it preserves the property of its sensible substance, I mean water, and does not lose what it was before." (Quoted by Photius, god. I: 229.)
Pope Gelasius writing also against Nestorians and Eutychians on the two natures in Christ, says, " Doubtless, the sacraments of the body and blood of Christ which we receive are a divine thing, on account of which, by them, we become partakers of the divine nature, and yet the substance or nature of bread and wine does not cease to exist." (Facund. lib. 9, c. 5.) " As the sacrament of His body and of His blood, which is in the bread and consecrated cup, we call His body and blood, not that the bread is properly His body, and the cup His blood, but because they contain in them the mystery of His body and blood. Hence the Lord also Himself called the bread He had blessed, and the cup which He delivered to His disciples, His body and blood."
This may suffice. The real historical truth is that, when they departed from the simplicity of scripture, they got into the doctrine of a union of grace and bread in the sacrament, and then into a kind of consubstantiation, such as Luther held. When Paschasius Radbert had taught something more than this, he was violently opposed by many church authorities. Berengarius, who taught the contrary, was at last, and indeed more than once (though supported by church authorities), being persecuted by Hincmar, forced to retract; and at last, as I have said, in 1215 transubstantiation was made a dogma of the faith, but never before.
Next we have extreme unction, for which you have not much to say. What has the account in the Acts, of the apostles healing the sick by anointing them, to do with extreme unction? Intimated by Mark, says Trent. Why intimated? Was healing the sick the sacrament of dying men, to go prepared into God's presence? This is too absurd. And James says, " Is any sick? "-not when they are dying, but when chastened for sickness for sin-" Let him send for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up, and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him." That is, he was to be healed by their prayers; and, if sin occasioned it, be forgiven and relieved, not " prepared " to die. So the quotation you give from Augustine states-" Will deserve to obtain the restoration of his health"; and it is most certain that for centuries, up to Bede's time, that is, the ninth century, it was looked at as a remedy to restore health. The Greek church so uses it still, and the Council of Trent says, it may be so interdum. Indeed there is nothing to be said for it, as the short article of the author shows.
And why, if extreme unction wipes away the very remains of sin, do people who have had it go to purgatory? What ineffectual means all the Romanist sacraments are! A man is absolved, but that will not do; he has his viaticum, the Eucharist, in which is remission, they say, but that will not do; extreme unction to wipe off the remains of sins-" reliquias peccati abstergit " (Conc. Trid., sess. 14, c. 2.)-yet the poor man goes to purgatory after all, to burn there for them himself; and then they say masses for him to get him out, though they could not keep him out. How different the peace of him who trusts the word of the living God, who believes His testimony! " The blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth from all sin." " By one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified." " Being justified by faith we have peace with God... and the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given to us." " For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly." Such is the peace given, and the certainty of divine love, by the faith of the gospel. We know no hard God, who will keep us down to the last farthing: Christ has paid it for us, bearing our sins in His own body on the tree. The Lord grant many poor souls laboring under this cruel bondage may know His love who gave His Son for sinners, and the salvation which is in Christ!
As to the sacrament of holy orders, you quote passages which prove that, by the laying on of the apostles' hands, gift was bestowed on Timothy: another, to show that he was designated by prophecy. I do not doubt either. When you can show me gift so bestowed, or a man marked out by prophecy for it, I shall own it with delight; but still you will not have proved that he is a priest. The scripture owns no priesthood now but Christ's, and that of all saints, in the sense in which all Christians are kings and priests. He " hath made us kings and priests to God and his Father." " Ye are a royal priesthood," says Peter.
But the New Testament has not the smallest trace whatever of priests as an order. The priesthood of Christ is exercised on high; all Christians follow Him there in spirit. Romanists have returned in this, as in all their system, to Judaism, and to Judaism after it is set aside; so that they are the beggarly elements of this world, just like heathenism, as which the apostle treats them in Gal. 4:9-I I. The New Testament speaks of a ministry as characteristic of Christianity-apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. Every true Christian blesses the Lord for it, however it may have been abused. But priesthood there is none, save of Christ and all true Christians; it is distinctive of, and essential to, Christianity that there is not, save as we all are priests. That is, we all go within the veil rent, directly and with boldness into the presence of God, where Christ is entered for us, into the holiest of all. The assertion of a priesthood (Christ apart) between us and God is a denial of Christianity. You do not attempt to quote anything till five centuries after Christ.
As to the word sacramentum, none in the least degree acquainted with the early ecclesiastical writers can attach the least importance to it, for they called every mystery a sacrament. Thus, one says there are three sacraments in baptism. Augustine says the number seventeen is a great sacrament; that one hundred and fifty-three, being three times fifty (the Pentecostal number), with three (the number of times it is given), has great weight, and if you begin with one, and go on adding each number up to seventeen, you will have one hundred and fifty-three (I leave my reader to try), and that is the meaning of the one hundred and fifty-three great fishes taken at the Sea of Tiberias. As I was on the word sacrament, I gave this one little example of Patristic matter, so that it may be understood why I said a child's book now would not contain such nonsense as they have: I think my reader will excuse my giving him any great quantity of it.
As to the obligation of marriage, it cannot be held too highly; instituted in paradise, and confirmed by the Lord Himself, its sanctity, I doubt not, is the providential bond of all moral order in the world. If, as the apostle teaches us, one be wholly given up to the Lord's work without any snare to himself, it is all well. After what I have said of sacrament, I shall not be expected to insist on the word one way or another. In Ephesians it is simply, in the original, " This is a great mystery, but I speak of Christ and the church." That is, the union of the church to Christ, as His body, is a great mystery-she is His bride.
We are told that the pope's supremacy was defined in 1439! It is very possible. The world had passed through the dark ages; Christianity was overrun by Mahometanism in more than half its territory; and here was the true secret of it. The patriarch of Constantinople had then recourse to Rome. For a long time after the seat of the empire was transferred to Constantinople, the ecclesiastical chief of that city and Rome contended for supremacy. However, old Rome had precedency by decree of the Council of Nice, for ambition governed all these pillars of Christendom. You have still traces of this horrible ambition in Ireland, in the Archbishop of Dublin being primate of Ireland, and he of Armagh primate of all Ireland. I say they fought as to whether one should carry his cross-what a symbol to use for it!-upright or level when he went into the province of the other. My reader must forgive me if I forget how it was settled; but it was. The rivalry of Alexandria and Constantinople was the source of endless disputes-one ever favoring the holders of doctrine condemned by the other, to make a party; and the emperor convening councils to quiet them, and banishing them often to keep the peace, or making decrees themselves on doctrines which only led to new disputes, till they became contemptible. They were discussing some of these points when the Turks besieged Constantinople.
The Constantinopolitan patriarch assumed at length the title of universal bishop, and was denounced by Pelagius II and Gregory, as antichrist, for his pains. The latter wrote to Phocas, who had murdered the Emperor Maurice and succeeded him, to congratulate him, Maurice having favored Constantinople. Phocas acknowledged Rome as the head of all churches. Decretals were passed which gave the universal supremacy to Rome, everywhere owned to be forged now; and the eastern empire declining under the inroads of Saracens and then Turks, at last a union was proposed between the East and West, long opposed and rivals in doctrine and practices, as a proof of holiness and unity as marks of the true church. What a picture, to be sure, it all is of servants and followers of Christ, as they pretended! This attempt at union was under Pope Eugenius IV. It was a desirable distinction for Rome. A council was sitting at Basle at this time; Eugenius dissolved it; it would not obey, and deposed him; but he declared it null, and called another at Ferrara, which afterward, because of the plague, was removed to Florence. The Council of Basle chose a new pope, Felix V. Most of Christendom owned Eugenius, but many universities Felix: however, he resigned when Nicholas V succeeded Eugenius.
But to return to the council at Florence. The Greek emperor came, and Josephus the patriarch; and the Greek divines, particularly Bessarion-made cardinal afterward- gave up the Greek doctrine on the procession of the Holy Ghost, for the Greeks deny the procession from the Son. They admitted purgatory, which they did not before-now do not. Think of half Christendom not believing it for fourteen centuries after Christ, and agreed the pope should be the head of the church! But alas! they had reckoned without their host; for when they went back, the Greeks would not submit to the terms, and they themselves declared that all had been carried at Florence by artifice and fraud, and the separation has continued to this day. And this is the bride of Christ! It seems the pressure of the pope was worse in their eyes than the pressure of the Turks; that is, of the Council of Florence, which clearly sets forth the pope's supremacy. Less than a century after, it becomes intolerable to the West too, and the Reformation arrived. So much for universality. Of course, some ground must be found for the supremacy, when it is there. The forged decretals established it. Scripture must be forced to contain it. I have already discussed the passage in Matthew; I need not repeat it.
But some of the points are to be cleared up. First, it is exceedingly doubtful if Peter ever was at Rome. Scripture never shows him to have been there, and it seems to me impossible to reconcile what it does state with his having been there. I admit respectable writers think he was, but scripture speaks only of Paul. Peter certainly did not found the church there. There were many Christians before any apostle was there, and Paul was the first that went. In the free exercise of their ministry, as the Holy Ghost has recorded it and thought proper to give it to us, no apostle founded the church at Rome. Paul, who preached the full and blessed gospel to the Gentiles (which was not Peter's office, as we know he was apostle of the circumcision, or of the Jews)-Paul went there as a prisoner. The gospel was never apostolically in Rome, save as in prison.
It is possible that Peter closed his life there; but this is the utmost that can be historically admitted, because we have a divine account of what passed till then, and his presence is incompatible with that account. History is silent for a century afterward, and then every country sought to have it believed to have been visited, and its chief see founded, by an apostle or apostolic man. John lived at Ephesus, yet he certainly did not found the church there, as we know from scripture. So history alleges that Peter founded the church at Antioch-a statement entirely unfounded, because we have, in the Acts of the Apostles, a long account of the church at Antioch; and all that Peter had to do with it was to divide it, when it existed already, by leading away all the Jews by his dissimulation, so that Paul had to resist him to his face. It is just as little true that he founded the church of Rome. We have Christians at Rome two years at least before Paul went there, and Paul there two years, who began working with the Jews; and none of them, Christians, Jews, or Paul, know anything at all of Peter at Rome. He may have visited Rome to see the Jewish Christians after this, and been martyred there, but that is the utmost possible.
But we have in scripture a great deal of Peter and Paul, which is much more important than traditions about the former. And here let me state that I have not the smallest difficulty in saying that, in point of order, though all had the same apostolic authority, Peter was the first of the twelve. With Paul he had nothing to do; he had it during the life of Jesus, and God was mighty in him afterward. He first introduced the Gentile Cornelius; but then this had a definite and specific direction. When the Jews had rejected the gospel, and put Stephen to death, the apostles did not leave Jerusalem, as we learn from the Acts; and Paul, miraculously raised up of God as an apostle in an extraordinary manner, does not go up to Jerusalem, but preaches at once in Damascus, and afterward is sent out from Antioch directly by the Holy Ghost. Jerusalem, the true mother church, having been dispersed, and having ceased to be the source and center of the gospel which the Jews would not receive, Antioch, not Rome, became the point of departure, and to it Paul returns. Long after, he sees the apostles at Jerusalem, and they agree that Paul and Barnabas should go to the Gentiles, and Peter to the circumcision, or Jews; that is, Peter was not apostle of the Gentiles at all.
He taught the same gospel, of course, as to salvation; but his ministry had the Jews for its sphere.
God, says Paul, was mighty in him towards the circumcision, as in me towards the Gentiles; that is, the Jews were the sphere of Peter's ministry. His epistles are directed to the Christian Jews in Asia Minor. He was nowhere apostle of the Gentiles. Of the church, as founded among Gentiles, Paul was the divinely appointed master-builder-Paul only in the account God has given to us. The apostles may have gone anywhere afterward, and doubtless did; but God has given His account of the order He recognized; and there Paul is apostle of the Gentiles, and Peter of the Jews. He was nowhere the founder or origin, by his ministry, of the church among the Gentiles according to God. He was so feeble on the point of their admission and liberty in Christ, that Paul had to withstand him to the face.
As to Rome, no apostle founded the church there; Paul, the first apostle who went there, went there as a prisoner. This has been always the place a full gospel has had there. When the church fell into Judaism, which nothing but Paul's energy saved it from as long as he lived, then they naturally began to look for the apostle of the Jews, as their original founder, and Paul had the second place in their minds-his gospel, as he calls it, none. But they should have gone to Jerusalem-it was impossible-it had fallen. Its principles, once instructive as figures, were really the same as heathenism now; and to that Christendom consequently gave itself up. It turned again, as the apostle speaks in Galatians, to the beggarly elements to which it had again desired to be in bondage. They kept days, and months, and years; Gal. 4. The Roman system is merely a return to heathenism founded on Jewish forms (which God has judged), and claiming the name of Peter, the apostle of the Jews. It is that against which Paul was struggling all his life, and foretold would come in when he was gone. Voluntary humility, worshipping of angels, keeping days, and months, and years, trusting in works, he has long ago pointed out and denounced as signs of abandoning Christ. Of these Rome is the source, and Rome has the heritage. It is a mystery of iniquity fully developed, which is fleshly religion; just as the great mystery of godliness is God manifest in the flesh, and the true people of God marked by boasting in Christ Jesus, worshipping God in spirit, and having no confidence in the flesh.
As to the keys of heaven, it is nonsense. He had the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and opened the door on Pentecost to Jews, and, in letting in Cornelius, to Gentiles. When Hilary says Peter believed first, the good man makes a mistake. It was Andrew (John tells us, in the first chapter of his gospel) who sought him, and brought him to Jesus. Jesus gave him the place of eminency he had among the apostles. Saint Ambrose owns that Paul was to learn nothing from him; but Peter, to know that the same power was given to him as to himself. The truth is, that Paul, and not Peter, had the doctrine of the church revealed to him-its unity and union with Christ. This is not the subject of Peter's teaching. Paul declares he had it by express revelation, as a mystery and dispensation committed to him, and that he was minister of the church as well as of the gospel to fulfill, that is, complete, the word of God by this wonderful truth of the one body united to Christ from among all, Jews and Gentiles. See Col. 1:24, 25, 26; Eph. 3:1-10; Rom. 16:25, 26, and, indeed, other passages.
As to your reasoning, it has not much force. You see I admit that, amongst the twelve, Peter was the first, but this was evidently a personal pre-eminence. " Blessed art thou, Simon Barjonas." Pius IX is not Simon Barjonas. It was a personal gift and energy of faith which made the Lord call him a stone, as he called James and John sons of thunder. Every Christian owns that in the blessed apostle; but gifts, and God putting His seal on them, do not go down by succession; if they do, where is Paul's? where is John's? If popes have Peter's inheritance, who has John's and James's? If it is a principle of successors, with equal power and authority necessarily continuing, where are the other apostles' successors, with their authority? No; this is all nonsense. God was mighty in Peter, and God was mighty in Paul. But this was personal-exclusively and entirely personal; and they say so, as it is evident. You cannot have a successor in gift, or it is not a gift. An office may have a successor in it. But that is not the case here, for there are no apostles now sent by Christ Himself directly from Himself. But gift and God's being mighty in one is confined to the one He is mighty in. To talk of a successor to that is at once nonsense and blasphemy.
I have said Peter and Paul say so. Thus Paul speaks: " I know that after my decease grievous wolves shall enter in, not sparing the flock: yea, of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them; wherefore, watch," etc. Now here Paul most plainly declares that he looks for no successor, but that, when he is gone, evil will flow in; and then commends them to God and the word of His grace, which the Romanists certainly step in and deprive us of-hinder us from going directly to God, and defrauding us of the word of His grace. Peter so little looked for a successor, that he writes, in his epistle, that he was writing to them because he would take pains that after his decease they should have the same things always in remembrance. So that these two great apostles never thought of having successors.
This is of the utmost force. Paul ordained elders for the care of the churches. As to successors, he so little thought of it, that he declares evil would flow in, and that in the last days perilous times and apostasy would come. But of this in a moment. No; there are two great systems: one leans on succession and ordinances, which the apostle denounces; the other on God and the word of His grace, to which he commends us, as able to build us up, and give us an inheritance among the sanctified. Rome has chosen the former; the true Christian blesses God for the latter.
Their reasoning is too absurd to dwell on. There is the consciousness of its weakness. You say the Pope of Rome is the successor of Peter;... the pope, therefore, is by divine appointment Peter's successor. That is logic to be sure: can anything be more glaring? And to this you append (it is happy that you hang it on such a peg), " whoever, therefore, is not under the care and government of this one shepherd belongs not to Christ, is not of the one fold, and cannot be saved." We thank Rome for her tender mercies. We have read, " If thou confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." You will surely forgive us if we trust an inspired apostle more than yourself-an apostle revealing God's precious grace to us poor sinners, more than Rome's anathemas, especially when they hang on reasoning such as this. The pope is the successor of Peter; therefore the pope is by divine appointment the successor of Peter; therefore whoever is not under him cannot be saved. If that is not convincing, what should be?
But your facts, however eloquently stated, are not much more solid. You say, Is there any institution in the world which has remained unchanged by the lapse and vicissitudes of nineteen hundred years, except the primacy and government of the Roman pontiffs? Now, first, the primacy of any bishop was violently denounced as late as Popes Pelagius and Gregory; and for centuries Rome exercised no jurisdiction out of what was called Libra; that is, seventy suburban sees. Many sought her influence as eminent, many resisted her as in error, and would never yield, as all Africa and Asia under Cyprian and Firmilian, who denounced the Pope Stephanus heartily (Cypr. Epp. 73, 74). In those days the primacy of Rome was unknown. It has never been owned in the Greek church. Only at Nice was it settled to have precedency of Constantinople. At the General Council of Chalcedon the pope's legates presided, but the council set aside the precedency of Rome. They state that, as Rome had been the imperial city, the Fathers had accorded precedency to it; but as now Constantinople was, it should be on an equality-ton ison apolauousan presbeion. Leo's legates protested, and produced his orders that they should allow of no diminution of his importance, for it seems he expected it. They withdrew; but there the canon of an acknowledged general council is declaring them equal. The legates had produced the Nicene decree with an addition of their own, stating that Rome was the head of all churches; but the genuine canon was brought forward, so that that plea was overthrown. Pretty work for the successors of apostles! But think of all this horrible ambition being made the foundation of the church, so that a person cannot be saved who does not submit to it! Is this Christianity?
But when you say, " Has any institution," etc., you upset your own system. When you went upon apostolic succession, you gave us the succession of all the sees in the world as securing sound doctrine; now it is only at Rome, and nowhere else. Which is true? If it be only at Rome, the security you gave us for doctrine is entirely gone, and the universality and apostolicity of the church so called with it; you destroy your own groundwork. But further, " the name of every pope, from Peter to Pius IX, you tell us may be seen in every bookseller's shop." Nay, not only so, " but should any claim this dignity without being legitimately appointed, he would be hurled from the chair of Peter as a usurper by the united voices of the Christian world." Indeed! How came it, then, that for seventy years there were two (and half Europe obeying one, and the other half the other), and part of the time three? Which of these was legitimate? and are both of them in the lists in the booksellers' shops and Catholic libraries? Your foundations are rotten here, and your eloquence rash. The popedom is a great worldly prize. Already in the fourth century you will remember Damasus and Ursicinus contended for it, and there was what amounted to a civil war, and abundant bloodshed; and Damasus beat his opponent and was pope-a strange successor to Peter, though he be such in the booksellers' shops!
Peter's apostolic position, then, I own, as apostle of the circumcision, and first among the twelve; but that the command was given to every successor of Peter to the end of the world is a mere chimera. Scripture excludes the idea. It is Barjonas who was blessed, because of the revelation of the Father to him.
You justify next the invocation of saints and angels. In vain has Paul denounced the worshipping of angels (it is not latria, but threskia, all religious deference or service whatever) as a voluntary humility, saying, that it is leaving Christ the head. In vain has he declared that there is but one mediator, the Man Christ Jesus. Rome will return to heathenish ways and Jewish superstitions, for such they really are; and, in order to do so, she has consecrated books of Jewish superstitions, as if they were the word of God; and has dared to do it in the sixteenth century-a deed never ventured on before.
We will examine this point. First, Genesis is quoted: " The angel that redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads." Here, then, Rome is bold enough to teach us that angels redeem us from evil, that angels can bless us. But we can never get whole passages from Rome. All is garbled. Here is the whole, " God, before whom my fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did walk, the God which fed me all my life long unto this day, the angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads." The angel was the God of his fathers. Are you ignorant that angel is applied to all those manifestations of God in favor of His ancient people? Do you not know that Stephen says that Moses was with the angel in the bush, who said, I am that I am? Do you not know that Hosea says that Jacob wrestled with the angel and prevailed; yet Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, because he had seen God face to face? that God had called his name Israel, a prince with God, because he had wrestled with God and with man and had prevailed? See numberless other passages; and are you not ashamed to quote this passage? You quote Zechariah. Here, too, we find the same angel of the covenant, the angel Jehovah, Malak Jehovah, interfering for Jerusalem-that angel who could say, as we have seen, " I am," and before whom, consequently, Zechariah shows us Joshua standing to be judged, and Satan at his right hand to resist. Will you say that angels are to judge too? Anyone the least acquainted with the Old Testament knows who this angel of the covenant is.
The cases quoted of Jacob, and so of Manoah, show that this angel was Jehovah Himself, He who appeared to Abraham and to Isaac, the Word of God, the second person in the blessed Trinity. That Michael the archangel will stand to accomplish God's will in favor of Israel in due time, I doubt not-all angels do this; but it has nothing to do with the matter. The angel in Rev. 8 and 10 is also undoubtedly the Lord Himself, acting as priest in chapter 8; and in the glory of the Lord taking possession of the earth in chapter 1o.
You quote one figurative passage of the twenty-four ancients presenting as figurative priests the incense, according to a Jewish image, on high. The church in glory will be composed of kings and priests; and here it is prophetically set forth in this character in figure; but it is when it is complete in glory. Hence twenty-four, because there were twenty-four classes of priests established by David. And the whole is a symbolical vision-no statement of what goes on now at all, but showing (what scripture tells us plainly) we are made kings and priests; and hence they were on thrones and crowned. Now this takes place only in resurrection, and all have yet to wait for that. Have you nothing but a prophetical symbol of resurrection glory to base your worship on, when the resurrection is not come?
You quote Tobias also: that is, the Apocrypha. This is one of the terrible sins of Rome. She has pretended to authenticate as scripture what was never owned as such till the middle of the sixteenth century, and what the very person who made the translation which she declares to be authentic states not to be scripture at all. Over and over again he (Jerome) declares there are twenty-two books, excluding thus the Apocrypha from the canon; and in particular, in his preface to Tobias, says it was not in the Hebrew scriptures. In his preface to the Books of Solomon he says, " As, therefore, the church reads, indeed, Judith and Tobias, and the books of the Maccabees, but does not receive them among canonical scriptures, so also let her read these two volumes, for the edification of the people, not to establish the authority of ecclesiastical dogmas." He refers to Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom. Athanasius reckons them up also, twenty-two, both in the Synopsis (if it be his, for some have doubted it), and in the fragment of the Festal epistle, giving them, he says, because some would dare to mix apocryphal books with divine scriptures, and speaking of Tobias and others as read, but not canonical.
Origen tells us the same, Eusebius also. But, to be brief, Christ never cites these books, nor are they found in the Hebrew at all. They were never owned by the Jews as part of their scriptures. Josephus is distinct as to what was received, and says there were none after Artaxerxes; that there were others, but not canonical, and that the prophets gave their sanction to books as forming part of the canon. He owned they have no kind of authority whatever; and all authority, Jewish and Christian, declared they were not of the canon till the Council of Trent. Now, the oracles of God are committed to the church, as of old they were to the Jews. The church gives them no authority-it cannot to what God has spoken; but when God had given them, He entrusted them to the church to keep-only watching over it in all His providence- and Rome has proved herself not the church by deliberate unfaithfulness to this, by setting up as scripture what all Jews and the church, and all witnesses, declare with one voice is not. She is self-condemned here. See what is said in Maccabees: " If I have written well, and as befits the story, that is what I wish; if ill, it is to be pardoned me." Why, it is blasphemy to ascribe such words to the Holy Ghost; and of that blasphemy Rome is guilty.
Lastly, no passage has been even attempted to be quoted of addressing saints or angels. But I will here also give the history of this matter. The first commemoration of the saints was praying for them, that they might speedily see the face of God. Gradually, between rhetoric and Jewish and heathen practices, the saints took the place of the heathen demi-gods. But Romish practice goes farther, because they found prayers on the merits of the saints, as may be seen in the Roman Missal (as on Patrick's day, for example, March 17). As to praying one for another on earth, it is clear and simple, and the New Testament teaches it, and shows it practiced-never to saints absent. As to the Virgin Mary, the Holy Ghost, who knew what would come in, has recorded for us that she never asked anything of the Lord, without being rejected in her request, the Lord saying, What have I to do with thee?
The great and dreadful evil of this doctrine is this: the grace of the gospel shows us two great things: first, that Christ has wrought so great and glorious a work, that I can go directly to the Father, in His name, certain that He hears me, and have boldness to enter into the holiest by His blood; secondly, that Christ in His rich grace came down here, was tempted in all points as we are, without sin-that He is touched with the feeling of my infirmities, and knows, having learned here below, how to speak a word in season to him that is weary. He has shrunk from no suffering, no humiliation, that I may have confidence in His love, and readiness to help. The invocation of saints and angels comes to deny all this. He is too high, too exalted; His heart not tender enough! Saints who never shared our place are to be more trusted; the tender mercies of the Virgin Mary, who never shed her blood for me, is to be more trusted. It is all shameful dishonor put upon Christ's grace and tenderness. I know no one so kind, so condescending, who is come down to the poor sinner, as He. I trust His love more than I do Mary's, or any saint's; not merely His power as God, but the tenderness of His heart as man-none ever showed such, or had such, or proved it so well. None entered into my sorrows, none took a part in them, as He; none understands my heart so well; none has inspired me with such confidence in His. Let others go to saints and angels, if they like; I trust Jesus' kindness more. If it is said, He is too high, I answer, He became a man that we might know His tenderness; and He is not changed. And why go to them? Why, in Jesus' name, not go straight to the Father? The need of all this troop of mediators only shows that men do not believe the gospel. They cannot go to God Himself. Now Christ has brought us to God; suffering, the just for the unjust, He has brought us to a God of love, our Father, having put away our sins. Rome would turn us out again, to leave us trembling at the doors of the saints. I would rather go to God Himself. He, I know, loves me; He has given His Son for me. Which of the saints has done that? As to angels, they are ministering spirits, sent forth to minister to them who shall be heirs of salvation. Looking to them is treated as apostasy in scripture.
If you will have Fathers, here is a quotation for you- Ambrose, on Rom. 1 " Men are accustomed, when feeling shame for having neglected God, to use a miserable excuse, saying that by them (the saints, etc.) they can go to God, as by counts (officers of the court) people go to the king. Away then! Is any one so mad, or so unmindful of his salvation, as that he should give the honor of the king to a count, when, if any should be found to treat of such a matter, they would rightly be condemned of high treason? And so they think they are not guilty who defer the honor of the name of God to a creature, as if anything more could be kept for God. For therefore men go to the king by tribunes or counts, because the king, after all, is but a man, and is ignorant to whom he ought to trust the common weal; but to find favor with God, before whom nothing is hid, for He knows the merits of all- there is not need of one to plead for us (suffragator), but of a devout mind." I might quote many more from Origen, using not latria, but honor and do homage to. So Eusebius from Dionysius-I reverence the true God alone, and none else. So continually in the early conflicts with the heathen; and the well-known passage of the epistle on Polycarp's martyrdom, when the Gentiles refused his body, lest they should do homage to him; " Not knowing," they say, " that we could neither abandon Christ, who suffered for the salvation of the whole world of the saved, nor reverence any other. For to Him, being indeed Son of God, we do homage; but martyrs, as disciples and imitators of the Lord, we love deservedly, because of the great love they have shown to their own king and leader, with whom we would be partakers and fellow-disciples."
Ambrose thought, then, though saints were used only to go to God by, it was high treason against Him; and the saints round Polycarp's martyr-pile, that it was abandoning Christ to reverence them (sebein). Alas! ere long the high treason was committed, and Christ indeed abandoned; while Fathers condemned, Fathers sanctioned, and scripture was forgotten. As to the latter, the statement that it is clearly set forth in it is totally without foundation. Invoking saints is not found even in the passages the author has quoted. In genuine scripture the case is found of a saint in his confession going to do homage to an angel; but the angel positively forbids it, ordering him to offer it to God, for he was his fellow-servant. But what says Rome?-Heed.
The invocation of angels was forbidden by the Council of Laodicea which calls it a secret idolatry. Athanasius uses the invocation of Christ as a proof that He is God; and says, " no one would say God and an angel bless me " (exactly what the author attributes to Jacob); and so other Fathers. And, as I have said, they were prayed for as not yet in the presence of God, that they might speedily arrive there. There was superstition enough, but not Romish doctrine. We learn that Theodoret recommended that, to win the Gentiles, they should present to them the saints and martyrs in lieu of their demigods. It is just what has happened-there are curious facts connected with this. As soon as the Council of Ephesus had decreed that Mary was the mother of God, temples, with all their worshippers, dedicated to the gods, passed over to Christianity as a profession, and Mary took her place as Cybele had before.
I will give the account of this transformation, as given us by M. de Beugnot, a very learned Romanist, whose work was crowned by the Institute of France. " After the Council of Ephesus the churches of the East and West offered to the adoration of the faithful, the Virgin Mary, victorious over a violent attack (she had been decided to be mother of God then). The peoples were dazzled by the image of this divine mother, uniting in her person the modesty of the virgin and the love of the mother-emblem of gentleness, of resignation, and of everything that virtue presents of sublime; who weeps with the unhappy, intercedes for the guilty, and never shows herself, but as the messenger of pardon or of kind succor. They received this new worship with an enthusiasm sometimes too great, since, for many Christians, this worship became the whole of Christianity. The heathen did not even endeavor to defend their altars against the progress of the worship of this mother of God. They opened to Mary the temples which they had kept shut against Jesus Christ, and confessed themselves conquered. It is true they often mixed with the adoration of Mary those heathen ideas, those vain practices, those ridiculous superstitions, from which they seemed unable to separate themselves. The church, however, was delighted to see them enter into her bosom, because she knew well that it would be easy for her, with the help of time, to purify from its alloy a worship whose essence was purity itself." M. de Beugnot, Histoire de la Destruction du Paganisme en Occident, vol. 2, 271. His illustration of the fact is in the following note: " Among a multitude of proofs I chose only one, to show with what facility the worship of Mary swept before it the remains of heathenism, which still covered Europe. Notwithstanding the preaching of St. Hilarion, Sicily had remained faithful to the old worship (heathenism). After the Council of Ephesus (that which declared Mary the mother of God), we see its eight finest pagan temples become in a very short space of time churches under the invocation of the Virgin. These temples were, first, the temple of Minerva at Syracuse; second, the temple of Venus and of Saturn, at Messina; third, the temple of Venus Erycina, on Mount Eryx (it was said to have been built by Aeneas); fourth, the temple of Phalaris, at Agrigentum; fifth, the temple of Vulcan, near Mount Etna; sixth, the Pantheon, at Catania; seventh, the temple of Ceres, in the same town; eighth, the sepulcher of Stesichore. The ecclesiastical annals of each country furnish similar testimonies." And that is pretended to be Christianity!
The truth is, all this system is a mere mixture of Judaism and heathenism. The heathen temples were built over the relics and tombs of heroes and demigods. They sprinkled themselves with holy water on going in, for which they had a place at the entry. They had their images, which they justified in the same way-their priests, their chancels. They believed that every admirable man had gone to heaven, and there interested themselves in the affairs of those who prayed to them. Their temples were built in a similar manner. Rome has not been able to exclude Christ, but it has overwhelmed Him with heathenism, as far as possibly can be, the clergy having accommodated it to popular customs to win the people. Thus the direction given to Augustine, when sent to the Saxons, was to adopt their feasts and customs as much as possible, and give a Christian turn to them. Christmas day is a curious example of this. No one knows the day Christ was born. The Greek church kept His birth and baptism together on the 6th of January, called Epiphany. Hear again M. de Beugnot, 2: 265: " The Romans had acquired in their religion an excessive passion for public festivals; and Christianity, far from opposing a disposition which required only to be directed with more wisdom, adopted a part of the ceremonial system of the old worship. It changed the object of the ceremonies, it purified them of their old filth, but it retained the epoch at which many among them had been celebrated. It is thus that the multitude found in the new religion as much as in the old the means of satisfying its ruling passion."
Think of the blessed Lord sitting at the well of Samaria, and teaching that men should worship in spirit and in truth, for the Father sought such to worship Him, and the " church " taking care the ruling passion for shows should be gratified! The author adds in a note, " The Saturnalia (a festival of unbridled joy) and many of the festivals were celebrated in the calends of January. The Nativity (Christmas) was fixed at the same epoch. The Lupercalia, pretended festivals of purification, took place in the calends of February. The Christian purification was placed on the second of February. For the feast of Augustus, celebrated in the calends of August, was substituted that of St. Peter, de Vinculis, fixed on the first day of that month." So, he adds, to the Ambarvalia, St. Mamert substituted rogation days for country people; so numberless temples became dedicated to worship called Christian. At this day the Pantheon (that is, the temple of all the gods) is dedicated to all the saints. It is well known that the statue of Peter at Rome was a statue of Jupiter Olympius, and they took out the thunderbolt and put in the keys. It all hangs together.
Nor is it merely so modern an author as Beugnot, however learned, who speaks of the corruption of Christianity by the influx of heathenism. Augustine gives us very precise information as to it. He thus writes in a letter in which he is recounting to Alypius, Bishop of Thogostan, the manner in which he had put down the drunken feasts, which were held to celebrate the martyrs (for such was the case in Africa; and so determined were the people to have them, that the clergy had winked at it), and would now explain how he had excused to the people those who had let it go on, by showing how it had risen in the church, for he must needs excuse the clergy. " Namely, after so many and so vehement persecutions, when, peace being made, crowds of Gentiles, desiring to embrace the Christian name, were hindered by this, that they were accustomed to consume festive days with their idols, in abundance of feasts and drunkenness, nor were they easily able to abstain from their pernicious and so very ancient pleasures, it had seemed good to our forefathers, that they should let this part of their infirmity pass, and that they should celebrate other festal says after those they left, in honor of the holy martyrs, or not with similar sacrilege, although with similar luxury."
Is this the holy Catholic church, which, to get in crowds of Gentiles, suffers them to go on, without the least moral change, with their feasting and drunkenness, only substituting holy martyrs for idols? It is not I that make the charge, or account for it thus; it is the sober historical account of Augustine, Presbyter. He says they called it laetitia, joy, endeavoring in vain to hide the name of drunkenness. He told them that not even the carnal private people were found publicly drunk in the name of religion. In another letter he says to Aurelian, Bishop of Carthage: " But since these drunkennesses and luxurious feasts are not only wont to be believed to be honors rendered to the martyrs, but also a solace of the dead [they did not think of praying to them, at any rate], it would seem more easy that they may be persuaded then from that filth and baseness, if it should be prohibited out of the scriptures, and offerings for the spirits of them that sleep, which it is to be believed really help somewhat, over their memories (that is, when buried or celebrated), should not be sumptuous," etc. And Chrysostom advises his hearers to partake of the meal to be appointed in honor of the martyr, besides his martyrium, under a fig-tree or vine, instead of joining in the heathen feasts in Daphne, a suburb of Antioch, where was a famous temple to Venus with all sorts of wickedness.
Can one doubt for a moment of the heathen character of all these feasts in honor of martyrs and saints? But what a picture of the state of the church! The holy Catholic church setting them to get drunk in honor of a martyr, because it was sacrilege to get drunk in honor of an idol, and they would get drunk somewhere! No wonder a priest did not include practice in the elements of her holiness. But I anticipate the last point. It was invocation of saints led us to these festivals in martyrs' memories.
Purgatory remains besides. On this Rome is very weak. She has recourse to it, because full redemption by the work of Jesus and the reality of a new nature is not believed. It is not believed that " the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin," as scripture says it does; it is not believed that " he that is dead is freed from sin," and has left it all behind if he be a Christian, " absent from the body, and present with the Lord," Christ being his life, and he a member of His body. None of this is believed. Hence they must have a purifying fire after death for the Christian, for such only go there (and not those who die, as they say, in mortal sin). Nor do they really believe even in the efficacy of their own rites, as we have seen. If they send men to purgatory, they do not believe that extreme unction abstergit reliquias peccati, wipes off the remains of sin; nor in the other means used for a dying man. They can give no certainty, with all their boasting of being the true church: a man may be of it, and lost after all. Nay, they cannot keep him out of purgatory, with all their rites, even if he be finally saved. They know no other God than one who will exact the last farthing; a God of love, who is a Savior, they know not.
But let us see their proofs. The Council of Trent was uneasy about it; it is anxious that curious questions about it should be avoided. And the author takes care here to tell us that Romanists receive many doctrines on the authority of the Catholic church which are not contained in the written word. To be sure they do: I suppose, by such an introduction, that purgatory is one of them. It is a candid avowal: they have no warrant from scripture for many things they teach. Now, I repeat, the church has to receive and keep the truth, but cannot reveal it; God may use a man-a Paul or a Peter; but the church, as such, receives and keeps it. The church's teaching is all very well as a conventional expression; but the church cannot reveal anything, and that is the whole point here. As a body it is impossible. Its members may teach it, or they may be the instruments by which God reveals it; but the body, as such, cannot reveal it: God uses individuals' minds or mouths for that. The church is not, by its very nature as a body composed of many individuals, capable of it. It may, and ought, in its common faith to maintain the truth.
We are told that they have been revealed by Christ, and always taught by the church. Revealed to whom? to the whole church as a body, or to an individual? If to the latter, then it is not to the church it is revealed, nor she who teaches it. The church receives the revelation made to the individual. If the revelation has been to the whole body, let the author say where and when it was made as to a single truth. This is an important point. I deny any truth was ever revealed to the church as a body-that is, that God so revealed it to the body, that it becomes to others a revelation by the church. It cannot be. Where has it been? I admit her duty to guard it when revealed, and hold it up before men.
But I turn to particulars. Moses does not teach the creation of angels, but he teaches the creation of all things-the heavens and the earth, and all the hosts of them. All the creation is spoken of as referred to man; other scriptures state it clearly. " He maketh his angels spirits."
I have already spoken of the sabbath and the Lord's day.
Moses does not speak of rewards and punishments of a future life; because he was showing the ways of God with Israel in and on the earth by favors and judgment here, God being present with them and dwelling among them on the earth. Other scriptures of the Old Testament are clear enough.
If the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son rests on the church's authority, it is not worth much. The Greek church does not hold it. The early teachers extant are very loose indeed as to the doctrine of the Spirit, though not denying it; and, as we have seen, on the whole doctrine of the Trinity in general. But in John it is said, the Father sends, and the Son sends from the Father. As to the discussion between Greeks and Romanists, it is endless metaphysics. That the Holy Ghost is a divine person, one with the Father and the Son, scripture is clear. He wills, distributes, comes, is sent, is grieved, leads, intercedes: in a word, He does every kind of personal act; yet what is spoken of as done by Him, it is expressly said, God does, in the same chapter; 1 Cor. 12.
Further, the Spirit is called not only the Spirit of God, but the Spirit of the Father, and the Spirit of the Son, in Gal. 4; the Spirit of Christ, even when speaking in the prophets, I Peter I: II, and Rom. 8:9; and of Jesus Christ, Phil. 1:19. He is, indeed, oftener called the Spirit of the Son than the Spirit of the (your) Father. The word procession is never applied to the Son. The Greek Fathers, before the separation from Rome, never use it but in connection with the Father, as it appears; the Latin, from after the Arian controversy, do. Charlemagne raised the question, and Pope Leo said it ought not to be put in the creed. It rather appears, that the dogmatical assertion (the Council of Nice had only, " I believe in the Holy Ghost"; the second, that of Constantinople, added, " proceeding from the Father," without adding " and the Son") first took place in Spain, where Arianism prevailed; but from the fifth century, the Latin Fathers speak of both Father and Son. The Greek held to the terms of scripture. The Council of Ephesus commanded nothing to be added to the creed. Pope Leo not only said to his legates at the French Council, it ought not to be inserted, but, to hinder it, had the creed fixed on at Constantinople, engraved in Greek and Latin on silver plates, and fixed up, without the addition of " and the Son." It was only in the papacy of Nicholas I, in the latter end of the ninth century, that it was regularly inserted. The Greeks objected, and, in what they call the eighth General Council, ordered it to be removed.
So much for the church's teaching, and Vincentius' " what always, what everywhere, what by all," as the sure rule of faith. The Latins did not quote church authority for it, for they had none to quote. All the world knew (for heathens Lucian's Philopatris gives the substance of the creed very exactly, though in scorn) that church authority had never sanctioned it, and a General Council forbidden all addition, and Pope Leo this particular one. They appealed to deductions from scripture, such as " He shall take of mine, and show it unto you "; " All things that the Father hath are mine "; and they said He was received from the Son, and hence proceeded from Him. I do not decide anything about the time; but, as to the Catholic church having always taught it, there cannot be a greater mistake, or more unfounded assertion. And see what a proof the author gives us-she teaches it: therefore it must be right. That is a convenient argument in a book which is to prove she is right. The quotation of Mr. Whiston is unhappy. He wanted to have acknowledged as scripture acknowledged impostures of an Alexandrian, Arian seemingly in his views (as it appears Mr. W. was too), of the fifth century, and which our priest himself quotes in ignorance as of the first, but not as scripture.
The first authority adduced for purgatory is the Jewish church; the quotation to prove it is mistaken. The Lord killeth and maketh alive; He bringeth down to hell, and bringeth up. But what has this to do with purgatory? Hell was Sheol, the invisible place of death, or even the grave. It is a simple statement of the power of God to do what He pleases, to bring down and lift up. Ecclesiasticus, we have seen, is not scripture. The author speaks of the Jewish church believing it, as many portions of the Bible record; but the Jews did not receive this as the Bible at all. That the unbelieving, Christ-rejecting Jews believe in a purgatory is, I believe, quite true; but that is a strange authority for a Christian. They do not know redemption, but boast of being God's people in a fleshly way, but have no real resting-place for their souls. They want a purgatory. The Romanist has the same boast and does not know redemption for his own soul, and he wants a purgatory too. I would not have put their faith on the same ground; the author has thought good to do it. He must know the Lord's judgment of that ground-" In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men."
As to funeral feasts amongst the Jews, it is very likely: they are not the only ones who have them. When people are hard pinched, they will quote anything. The author quotes Zech. 9:11: " By the blood of thy covenant thou hast sent forth thy prisoners out of the pit wherein is no water." What sending people out of a pit where there was no water by the blood of the covenant has to do with purgatory, it would be hard to tell. The prophet is speaking of Ephraim, and God's dealings with the Jews, and nothing else; and declares that, in virtue of the blood of the covenant, He will deliver them from a pit where there was no resource to refresh them. The whole chapter refers to God's dealings with Ephraim and Judah.
Next comes the well-known passage of Christ's going to preach to the spirits in prison. I have no doubt that it was the Spirit of Christ in Noah; as in the same epistle Peter says, the Spirit of Christ which was in the prophets; and that it is not said He preached in prison at all, but to those who are spirits in prison now, because they did not listen when He preached in Noah; and the force is then obvious. The Jews would not listen to the Spirit of Christ speaking by the apostles, and the few who did were despised and persecuted. There was no living Christ to help them on earth. Well, says Peter, it was only by His Spirit He went and preached in Noe, and there were only eight souls saved then, fewer than you; yet the others are in prison for not having listened. Let it be remembered that the passage speaks only of the disobedient in the time of Noe. Now God had said then, " My Spirit shall not always strive with man, but his days shall be a hundred and twenty years." Yet these are chosen as the only ones with whom His Spirit should strive afterward; and, mark, it was the Spirit which then strove, Christ's Spirit, which went and preached. Moreover, Peter, in another passage, says that the sparing Noe, and bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly, was a proof that God knew how to reserve the unjust to the day of judgment to be punished. How so if they were preached to afterward to be delivered? The sense, then, to me is evident, and the whole Roman Catholic application of the passage fails. But at any rate, who ever heard of preaching in purgatory? That is not Romish doctrine. People go there to finish penance and be purged, not to hear sermons.
Christ said to the thief that he should be in paradise. It is monstrous, well-nigh blasphemy, to quote this. Do they mean that the blessed Lord went to purgatory? When Paul was caught up to paradise, and heard unutterable words, he did not go to purgatory, I suppose. Departed souls are in an intermediate state, no doubt, because they have not their bodies; but they are " present with the Lord," 2 Cor. 5. They "depart and are with Christ, which is far better " (Phil. 1); they are the same day in paradise with Him (Luke 23); the Lord Jesus receives their spirit (Acts 7). Paul did not descend into paradise; he was caught up there. But it is monstrous and horrible to make purgatory out of the paradise the soul of Christ went to at His death. His work was so blessed, that the poor thief, justly hung for his crimes, could go straight to paradise with Christ Himself, and not go near any purgatory, because he was purged by the death of Christ. This was what the Lord told him, and teaches us-that the Lord's work was so perfect, that it takes a thief into paradise, as sure as Christ is there, for Christ had borne his sins, and His blood cleansed him from them. The thief thought he would have to wait till Christ came in the glory of His kingdom. No, says the Lord, you shall not wait till then; you shall go straight to paradise with Me to-day. His work was perfect for him-cleansed him; and those wretched teachers would make purgatory of it, and send the Lord there! The Lord forgive them.
As to agreeing with thine adversary, etc., Matt. 5 is meant. There is the general idea of reconciliation in grace, or judgment if not; but the specific application is to the Jews, with whom Christ was on the way. They would not be reconciled, they are under judgment, and as in prison, and there they will stay till they have as a nation received full chastisement. Then they will come out. So in Luke 12. It is definitely connected with an appeal to the Jews, why they did not discern that time (that is, when the Lord was in the way with them).
As regards forgiveness in the world to come, purgatory is not forgiveness, but purging when a man is forgiven; and no forgiveness in the world to come means never forgiven at all; as Mark expresses it-" hath never forgiveness." It is the same thing. The Jews had three periods, or ages, here translated worlds. But it has nothing whatever to do with another place, but with another time. The first was before the law; the second, under the law, in which they were; the third, the age (world) to come, or that under Messiah. In this they knew that there would be more abundant grace and forgiveness than under the law. If their sins were as scarlet, they would be as white as snow; but here was a sin that would not be forgiven even then. Till the kingdom was set up (it was at hand then), the world to come was not arrived.
As to baptism for the dead, baptism has nothing to do with penitential acts and prayer. Paul is speaking of those fallen asleep in Christ, and suffering himself every hour; and after expatiating on what the resurrection is, from 1 Cor. 15:18-28, he resumes, What would they do who enter into the ranks in the very place of those fallen asleep (the dead), if the dead do not rise-Who would take place along with them, if they are to remain dead, and get only that for their faith? To join such ranks, and replace them in them, would be madness; and if in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men, he declares, most miserable. The passage speaks of baptism, and not of things done for departed souls. If purgatorial fire can be called by a figure the last baptism, what has that to say to baptism for the dead?
It is not sins he is speaking of in 1 Cor. 3, when speaking of wood, hay, stubble, but preaching and teaching; and if, though a real Christian on the foundation, all his labor is bad as labor, from teaching nonsense and futility, even if not heresy, when put to the test by trial, it all goes. He is not lost, but his work is; and he sorely shaken and disturbed. Paul is speaking of his own, Apollos', or others' work, not of their sins. Origen believed nobody would be lost, not even the devil, and that hell served for purgatory, and men came back, and might fail over again. He is a pretty authority to quote for purgatory.
What Christ's walking in Solomon's porch, on the feast of the dedication, has to do with admitting the authority of the book of Maccabees, no human wit can tell. The feast after the dedication was there, and he met the people on it. The Maccabees tell us how it came to be celebrated, as Josephus does many other things which the Savior joined in as a Jew. But He could do that without sanctioning the book of Maccabees. As to these books, the first is a fair useful history of the times, never admitted by the Jews into the canon, nor owned as scripture till the Council of Trent. The second, the one quoted, is a very worthless, bad, self-contradicting book, giving three contradictory accounts of Antiochus' death. I have not the decrees of the Council of Florence; it is possible it may have been admitted there near 1500 years after Christ. The second of Maccabees ends-" I will make an end of my discourse also with these things, and if, indeed, well, and as suits the history, it is as I should wish; but if less worthily, it is to be pardoned me. For as always drinking wine, or always drinking water, is bad for us (contrarium), but to use them alternately is delectable, so for readers, if the discourse is always exact, it will not be pleasant. Here, therefore, it shall be completed." Think of the audacity, be it Florence or Trent, of saying that a book which gives this description of itself, is inspired!
But let us take the case alleged; it is quoted for this passage: " It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from their sins." Now, that this was a Jewish superstition, like many others, this may lead us to believe; just as they thought the stars were living beings, and many other things, as previous existence of souls. But here the case does not answer at all for the point it is quoted for. Idols were found on the persons who were slain, and the cause of their death manifest. They had died in mortal sin; but this does not send a man to purgatory in the Romish system, but to hell. But I must go a little farther here, and charge the Vulgate, or at any rate the present reading of it, with being an entirely corrupt translation, or rather version. The Maccabees are in Greek, and the passage in Greek runs thus: " He made a collection of two thousand drachms, and sent it to Jerusalem, to present a sacrifice for sin," that is all; and then speaks of it as done well and comelily, thinking of the resurrection. And after saying it was a good thought, referring to what went before, he says, " Wherefore he made a propitiation about the dead, to do away the sin." The shape in which it is, therefore, in Latin is only a clothing put upon it, by I know not whom; it is not much matter. The author also highly commends Razis for killing himself-14: 2 (I do not know whether that is canonical); and gives such a history of his deeds as I must leave to the reader to believe, if he can, and admire if he will. He ends, after running himself through with a sword, and doing all manner of feats afterward, by plucking out his own bowels, I do not know how, and throwing them at the people. I do not know whether this is a part that, as the author says, is not very exact, to make it pleasant; Rome says it is inspired.
We are told next that the Apostolic Constitutions were written by Clement, the companion of Paul. Why there is not a writer, ancient or modern, Roman or Protestant, unless his friend, the Rev. Mr. Whiston, that believes it. They are universally recognized as an imposture, written four hundred years after Clement. As to Constantine, it was poor work to cry so for him, for he would not be baptized till he was on his death-bed (though he had managed the church for years, and called a General Council and managed it), in order that he might be sure to be washed quite clean. They might as well, indeed, believe in purgatory as seek to secure themselves by such shifts as that. But prayers for the dead did not form purgatory at all; they were used long before purgatory was believed in. The real history of the matter was this. The full acknowledgment of grace is the hardest thing for the proud heart of man to submit to. Its tendency is always to look at God, as Rome does, as an austere man, who will exact the last farthing; and to maintain his good opinion of himself in pretending to satisfy God, while, after all, as works cannot quiet the conscience, he has recourse to ordinances to pacify, if they cannot purify it.
Hence, even while Paul lived, he had to struggle incessantly against this tendency. Peter slipped into it at Antioch, and most of Paul's Epistles were written against it-that is, against Romanism, or what is now called Puseyism, showing it as the mystery of iniquity which was corrupting the church-a form of piety denying the power, and which would go on till it broke out into open apostasy. It is characterized expressly in his epistles by works, ordinances, voluntary humility, worshipping of angels-the very things Rome now boasts of, and by not holding the Head, that is, that real union of the church with Christ, which, while it puts her before God in the same place as Christ as to acceptance, is the power of a new life, in which saints live to God as dead to sin with Christ, and alive to God through Him-perfect acceptance, perfect peace with God, and a really new spiritual life manifested in all a man's ways. The devil and man's heart do not like this; he will have pleasure and ordinances, build tombs of the prophets, have memories of martyrs, celebrate ordinances over their tombs, and get drunk at the celebration.
Man is naturally idolatrous; and a corrupt church will, as we have seen, furnish him with martyrs, if he cannot have demigods. Still, the poor " Catholic church " did not get its present stature all at once. There was what in these times is called " development." The blessed energy of the apostle hardly held the saints, of whose conversion he had been the instrument, even during his own lifetime, in the power of the truth. They were already then returning to the beggarly elements of heathenism under a Jewish form. " After his decease," as he warned it would, that " mystery of iniquity," which worked as leaven while he was there, spread freely, and the full knowledge of redemption, as he had taught it, was gone. Heresies sprang up like weeds, the general remedy used against it was not truth and grace, but external unity, no matter how much evil; and with the influx of numbers corruption came in. Jude warns us of what was going on; and John, that there were already so many antichrists that the last time was apparent.
In the third century superstition had made ample progress, and we find, not indeed prayers to saints, nor purgatory, but prayers for them. If the knowledge of redemption was practically lost, if works and ordinances had taken their place, if the corrupt morals and proud asceticism of Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian, had taken the place of the gospel, men's minds wanted something to mend them when dead, who knew neither redemption nor holiness when living. At first, as given by Origen, it was calling them to mind, with thanksgiving for them, and prayer for resemblance to them. The first person who speaks of these prayers for the dead pretty definitely, is the upright but ardent Tertullian, who left the " Catholic church," as no longer bearing its looseness; and, with an African imagination, though a Father, fell into the wild pretensions of Montanus. His disciple, the martyr Cyprian, also speaks of them; he who tells us that all morality was gone, men given up to shameful vanity, women painting their faces, bishops running about all the provinces to make gain by fraud.
But then, at this time, they prayed for martyrs, apostles, prophets, patriarchs, saints, and all the departed together, that they might have part in the first resurrection; and the Virgin Mary, among the rest, was prayed for in the same way, and not only among the rest but especially for her. Cyril of Jerusalem says the same in connection with the Eucharist, saying, We believe it to be a considerable advantage to their souls! So St. Austin says, as to the drunken bouts, the people believed it to be a solace to the martyrs; and he says, since it was to be believed, it was something (aliquid). But then here a difficulty arose; a step was made in the superstition, and, the saints and martyrs being greatly exalted, they were considered as enjoying the beatific vision; full heathenism was flowing in, and they were to help the living, not the living to help them. This was an immense change indeed in the " Catholic " view of things. Epiphanius justifies prayers for saints, because it put a difference between Christ perfect and other men's imperfection, showing he had wholly lost the notion of Christ Himself being our righteousness, and that, when we depart, we are with Him; but showing too that all other men were held to be prayed for (not a word, remark, about purgatory all this time). So Hincmar, in the ninth century, tells us, " Grant to us, 0 Lord, that this oblation may be of advantage to the soul of thy servant Leo (a St. Leo), by which, in its immolation, thou hast granted that the sins of the whole world should be loosened." In the thirteenth century, as given by Pope Innocent, it had become, " Grant to us, we beseech thee, 0 Lord, that, by the intercession of the blessed Leo, this offering may profit us."
Such was the progress in this superstition. How different from the peace of " to depart and be with Christ is far better"!
From this scripture truth they went back to Judaism, and believed they were in hades, waiting. Now we know that till the resurrection we are not in our perfect state of glory; we do not wait in a separated state in that sense; but scripture is very clear as to it-" To-day," says Christ, " thou shalt be with me in paradise," for redemption was accomplished. " Lord Jesus," says Stephen addressing Christ in heaven, " receive my spirit," and so fell asleep praying for his murderers. " We are always confident," says Paul, " knowing that, while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord, and desiring rather to be absent from the body and present with the Lord," 2 Cor. 5. And again, " Desiring rather to depart and be with Christ, which is far better." Nothing can be plainer; but the power of it was lost. That Christ had by one offering perfected forever them that were sanctified was forgotten; that God would remember their sins and iniquities no more was lost for their consciences; and hence the intermediate state became a kind of prison for the departed, where prayers, they knew scarce how, would do them good; yet at first they were joined with thanksgiving, but there was no thought of their living in purgatory-it is never supposed a moment in their prayers. They also looked to their having part in the first resurrection, which all, they supposed, had not. But then "Fathers" had other notions as regards purgatory, to say nothing of Origen who was out of the way wild and heterodox.
They held that at the last day men would be purged with fire; to this they apply " baptized with fire." It was not now, but in the day of judgment; he owned that was the fire of the day of judgment. Thus Ambrose (I take this quotation from another)-" All must pass through the flames, though it be John the Evangelist, though it be Peter; the sons of Levi shall be purged with fire, Ezekiel, Daniel," etc. So St. Hilary, "Because to the baptizing in the Holy Ghost it still remains to be consummated by the fire of judgment." "As we are to render account of every idle word, can we desire the day of judgment, in which we are to undergo the unwearied fire in which the grave punishments of a soul to be expiated (purified) from sin are to be undergone?" "If," he adds, "the Virgin herself, who conceived God in her womb, must undergo the severity of judgment, who is so bold as to desire to be judged by God? "
Jerome speaks a similar language in the closing sentence of his Commentary on Isaiah-" And as we believe the eternal torments of the devil, and all deniers and impious men who have said in their heart there is no God, so of sinners and impious men, yet Christians, whose works are to be tried by fire and purged, we think there will be a moderate sentence of the Judge, and mixed with clemency."
He is speaking of the final judgment depicted in Isa. 66 I quote it to show what the fire of purgatory then thought of was; but I cannot let it pass without remarking how entirely the truth of God was lost and abused. Redemption cleansing from sin-God's not imputing it-never enters into their mind. They know nothing of the blood of Christ cleansing from sin. Secondly, they have no thought that all are utterly condemned if they come into judgment-" Enter not into judgment with thy servant, 0 Lord, for in thy sight shall no man living be justified." Thirdly, impious Christians they make better off than other impious people: the Lord says they are worse off" He that knew his Lord's will, and did it not, shall be beaten with many stripes." The light that was in them was darkness, and how great was that darkness!
Austin says (Enchir. 78, ad Laurentium: 29) (another witness of the thick darkness the best were fallen into, and which shows the idea of intermediate punishment, not purgatory, but rest or misery, according to deserts)-" With the sacrifice for the very good, it was thanksgiving; for the not very bad, propitiations; for the very bad, though they are no help for the dead, they are a certain consolation for the living " (that is, a lie was, for the dead were not helped). " But those whom they profit, they profit for this, that there should be full remission, or that damnation itself, at any rate, should be more tolerable"! The Benedictine editors cite masses said to mitigate hell; and Augustine goes on to show they will not get out, that God may remember mercy in (not after wrath, he says) wrath, and alleviate them from time to time.
Is it not deplorable? I might cite more passages, but these may suffice. Prayers for the dead there were in the third century; in the next, at any rate. Purgatory was decidedly unknown for six centuries. The Greek church has never received it; the Fathers are all confusion about it. It was a Platonic and Jewish idea. The purgatory generally spoken of in the fourth and fifth was the final judgment, which would be in measure to Christians-which, mark, denies the other. St. Augustine, after saying that an unmarried man built gold, etc., a married one, wood, hay, and stubble, and, reasoning much on the subject, says-Some were willing to prove an intermediate fire by the fire trying every man's work; and thought they who had lived without indulging their affections wrongly would not go there, and the others would, adding" I do not oppose, because perhaps it is the truth "-non redarguo quia forsitan verzim est. That is, it began in the fourth or fifth century to be hinted at as possible. (August. de Civ. Dei, lib. 20: 26.) Prayers for the dead, disproving purgatory, are found there from the third, showing the knowledge of redemption to be lost; and purgatory began to be hinted at merely in the fourth or fifth, the purgatory of a final judgment proportioned to sin being then taught (redemption being wholly lost as a doctrine giving peace to the soul), and in the sixth and seventh it began to be established as a doctrine. This is the true history of it.
Here our author closes his subject. Why have we nothing of indulgences?
I had reserved the point of holiness as a proof of the true church. I have no longer need to say much. It is a painful point to touch on, because it seems like attack. But when holiness is advanced as a proof-and in its place it is a very real one-what can one do (since it is a proof, though not taken alone) but show that holiness did not characterize what is called the Catholic church? I say not alone, for scripture always gives counter-checks. A man comes to me with the truth in form, but unholy-that is not the Spirit of God. The Spirit of truth is the Holy Spirit. Another comes to me with a great appearance of holiness, but he has not the truth. It is not the Spirit of God, for the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth. God guards His children thus on every side. But holiness is a proof in its place; I must therefore touch on it.
We have seen in the third century Cyprian declaring that corruption was universal, and that the bishops were running about everywhere for money, and making gain by fraud. We have seen that the martyrs' memories were, in the fourth and fifth, celebrated with drunken feasts, and Augustine fearing a sedition if an attempt was made to stop it. We have learned from him that this was deliberately allowed, to please heathens coming in and let them go on in their own ways unchanged, only substituting martyrs for idols. This is holiness neither in practice, purpose, nor doctrine. St. Augustine-De Opere Manichaeorum-complains of their running about to sell relics, to make money; and so great was the superstition, that the fifth Council of Carthage orders the innumerable altars to martyrs to be overturned, unless it made a tumult; and, if it could not be done, warns the people not to go.
Hear Jerome now as to priests (so-called). A law was made by Valentinian against priests and monks getting inheritances. Jerome says he does not complain of the law, but of its being necessary. The caution of the law is provident and severe; yet even so avarice is not restrained. We mock at laws by means of trusts; and, as if emperors' decrees were greater than Christ's, we fear the laws and despise the Gospels. And then, " It is the ignominy of all priests to study their own wealth. Born in a poor house, and in a rustic cottage, I, who could scarce content the loud cry of my belly with millet and coarse bread, now am nice about fine flour and honey. I know the kinds and names of fishes; I am knowing on what shore a shell-fish is gathered; I discern provinces by the savor of birds, etc. I hear, moreover, of the base service of some to old men and old women without children-themselves put the chamber pot, besiege the bed, receive with their own hands the purulence of the stomach and the expectoration of the lungs. They tremble at the entrance of the physician, and with faltering lips inquire whether they are better; and if the old person is somewhat more vigorous, they are in danger, and with feigned joy their avaricious mind is tortured within; for they fear lest they should lose their pains, and compare the vigorous old person to the years of Methuselah," Epist. 52: 34.
What do you think of such a state of the clergy, and general enough at least to require a law, not from heathen, as Jerome remarks, but from Christian emperors? Is that holiness? Were bloodshed and tumults, through ambition in the election of bishops, whether from individual ambition, as at Rome, or disputes between the clergy and people who should elect, as happened in France, a holy state of things? Hear Sulpitius Severus in Gaul, de Vita B. Martini 23: " But that I may insert less things than these (although, as is the course of our times, in which all things are depraved and corrupted, it is almost the chief thing, he did not yield priestly firmness to royal adulation); when many bishops from divers parts had come together to the Emperor Maximus, a man of a ferocious spirit, and elated with victory in the civil wars, and a base adulation of all around the prince was to be remarked, and the priestly dignity, by a degenerate inconstancy, had bowed before the royal attendant, in Martin alone apostolic authority remained." He relates he gave the cup of honor to a presbyter to drink before the emperor, " And it was celebrated in all the palace that Martin had done at the king's dinner what no one of the bishops would have done in the festivals of the lowest judges." It was a mixture of the lowest servility and the haughtiest pride: so it ever is in such case. Pride at last got the upper hand.
But your doctrine, you say, is holy. Is it holy to have an absolution to facilitate men getting ease to their consciences, when they have not thoroughly repented? That is the express doctrine of your sacrament of penance, and the daily snare of millions in practice. The doctrine of attrition and a sacrament, or contrition without it, is the most iniquitous principle ever invented to content men with sin; and so it works. Can you show me a more dreadful set of persons than a multitude of the popes, though with honorable exceptions in early days, yet never without excessive ambition? What do you say to indulgences? As a doctrine compounding for penances, as a practice compounding for sins, and paying for my faults with another's dreamed-of superfluous merits, and all disposed of for money? Is that holy doctrine? Are the taxes for sin in the Romish chancellary-that is, how much is to be paid for each-holy in doctrine or in practice? Good books forbidden at any price; all sins set off at some price! Is it a holy thing to teach, as to corruption produced by celibacy, si non casti, cauti? Let me ask, what was a great part of the bishops' revenues, at the time of the Reformation, derived from? Do you know that in Rome, at this day, according to statistical accounts, of over three thousand children born, considerably more than two thousand are given up to be brought up by avellin institutions, illegitimate or abandoned by their parents? Are not Romish countries known to be walking in corruption and evil, even more than Protestant ones? Do you think a person traveling through Spain, or Italy, or France, would find holiness characterize the country? Their state is awful. Do I say, then, that Protestant countries are holy? Far from it. No one is, but he who is born of God, and who is led by the Spirit of God. But I say that the professing church, and, above all, the Romish body, is not; not a person who goes to the East but would sooner trust a Turk than those called Christians; but this is of long date.
I will close this by a passage from Eusebius: " Wickedness of unutterable hypocrisy and dissimulation was risen to the highest pitch; the pastors of note among them, despising all bond of piety, turn in contention one against another, only increasing in strife, threats, envy, hostility, and hatred one against another," Lib. 8: I. Austin declares that, in his day, if any one would live godly he was mocked, not by heathens simply, but by the professing Christians.
But to close. The truth is, all this has been predicted. Even in the apostles' days Paul declares, with a sorrowing heart, " All seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ's." He declares that the mystery of iniquity did already work, and would issue in apostasy, in God's own time; that evil men and seducers would wax worse and worse; that in the last days perilous times should come; that there would be a form of piety without the power. We have seen this fulfilled It fills the heart with sorrow, but not surprise; it tests but it confirms faith; it shows the pretension to universality and external perpetuity, as a visible body, to be the sign of a false church, not of a true one; for the scriptures speak of apostasy, perilous times, and judgment, cutting off, if professing Gentiles do not continue in His goodness, while it is prophetically declared they will not. God will surely keep them that are His, and His own true church will be preserved and maintained, till the time for the Lord to come and take it into glory with Himself.
As to the outward professing body, the Lord has declared that the mystery of iniquity, which existed in the apostles' days, would go on till the full apostasy which would bring the judgment. The tares were sown by Satan in the field; the Lord will reap it in judgment. It is a solemn subject, as solemn for Protestants as for Romanists, for God will judge righteous judgment as to all, and there is grace in Christ for the one as for the other. Yes, holiness is a mark; but it is not forms of piety. " Without holiness no man shall see the Lord "; but God will have reality; it is the real putting on of the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. It is being renewed in the spirit of our minds- this is the holiness which God will have. It is wanting, alas! in many Protestants; but it is that which every man who knows the actual state of Ireland, and still more perhaps other countries professing Romanism, knows does not characterize the vast bulk; he knows that corruption and evil are (with the exception perhaps of Belgium) in the proportion of its influence; France bad, Italy and Spain morally insupportable.
Yet holiness is a mark of the true church; but, my reader, Protestant or Roman Catholic, note it well, truth, the truth of God's holy word, is another; not the uncertain vacillations of Fathers with the growing superstitions of the mystery of iniquity, but God's own pure, certain, blessed word, written by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, by apostles and evangelists, and addressed to Christians and whoever has ears to hear. Lastly, grace is a mark of the true church. The knowledge of a God of love, a God who has given His Son because He loved poor sinners; of that Son's having perfectly accomplished redemption by His own offering of Himself once for all; the knowledge that His blood cleanses from all sin, that He has made peace through the blood of His cross, and that by Him all that believe are justified from all things, and have eternal life; that God will remember their sins and iniquities no more. Yes, holiness, the truth, and the knowledge of a perfect and accomplished redemption of a God of love, mark the member at least of the true church, of the body of Christ, mark the children of a heavenly Father.
May you, reader, as a repentant sinner, know them for yourself!
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Analysis of Dr. Newman's Apologia Pro Vita Sua: With a Glance at the History of Popes, Councils, and the Church
I HAD no thought of even reading Dr. Newman's Apologia pro Vita sua. I know pretty well, in theory and practice, what Romanism is; and the history of the popes is open to every one. But the book has been put into my hands by others, and so far pressed upon me; and I have read it: I cannot say it has won my respect. It has certain charms about it; and the present state of things clothes it with interest. I think it likely to attract and win no small number of minds. There is a seeming candor on the surface, and men's minds are prepared for it, and " quod volumus facile credimus." The circle of university affections is most powerful, formed as they are, just when the heart is fresh and growing to manhood and amiable; and the reference to them is one of the attractive points of Dr. Newman's book, but cannot decide what salvation and the church of God are. If we penetrate below the surface, I do not think the charm of the book remains. The reader must judge when we shall have examined it together.
The secret of the course of Dr. Newman's mind is this-it is sensuous; and so is Romanism. He never possessed the truth, nor, in the process he describes, sought it: he had never found rest or peace in his own soul, nor sought it where it is to be found, according to the holiness of God. He sank into that system where the mind often finds quiet from restless search after repose, when wearied in judging for itself, but never peace with God. This is positively denied and denounced in the Roman Catholic system. In his search he was never- and this difference is all-important-on the true ground or principle of true faith at all. These things his book shows.
From the first Oxford influences he came under, he had a horror of Protestantism. I understand that horror. How earnestly, when I was in the state I have referred to elsewhere in these pages, I should have disowned, and did disown, that name I I looked for the church. Not having peace in my soul, nor knowing yet where peace is, I too, governed by a morbid imagination, thought much of Rome, and its professed sanctity, and catholicity, and antiquity-not of the possession of divine truth and of Christ myself. Protestantism met none of these feelings, and I was rather a bore to my clergyman by acting on the rubrics. I looked out for something more like reverend antiquity. I was really much in Dr. Newman's state of mind. But such a feeling as to Protestantism is shallow, and little founded on fact. I do not think, now, that Protestantism has restored the church to purity. It did not see, I judge, the true doctrine of the church, any more than Dr. Newman. Protestantism occupied itself with the positive evils in doctrine and practice that pressed upon men's consciences, and did the best it knew how in raising national churches so-called. Still its nature is misapprehended. As to the word Protestantism,' it came from the act of several German princes at the second Diet of Spires. The previous Diet of Spires had left each prince free in his own dominions as to religious matters. At the second the emperor, having settled matters with the pope, succeeded with the legate in getting this rescinded. Nothing was to be changed till the general council was held. The principal northern princes and many free cities protested, nor held the recess for valid, as it was passed only by a majority when they had left. Further, on the Continent, half those separated from Rome are not called Protestants but Reformed. The Lutherans are Protestants.
But the matter lies deeper than all this. It is a past history; but it is well it should be known. Protestantism practically broke out about indulgences. The pope, infallible according to Dr. Newman, the center of infidelity in fact at that time when infidelity was the fashion at Rome, had set the sale of indulgences on foot to get money to build St. Peter's. The sale was farmed out, through the Archbishop of Mayence, to the Fuggers; and the well-known Tetzel, in Germany, and Samson, in Switzerland, were the agents for the sale. But of this hereafter.
I do not enter on the sparring between Mr. Kingsley and Dr. Newman. To say the truth, I think it poor and low on both sides. If Mr. K. thinks Dr. N. dishonest, all this shillyshallying about gentlemen's points of honor is folly. The eternal truth of God is beyond this fencing. If he thought in his heart Dr. N. told the truth, he should not seek to prove that he did not by subsequent writings. If he did not, there is affectation in treating of points of honor. All this is below the dignity and seriousness of an inquiry into God's truth.
On the other hand, Dr. N. is vexed and undignified too; his blots, one, two, etc., are poor, and, as I judge, a failure- undignified, and often very poor in reasoning and tone. That he was vexed with being charged with dishonesty, one can conceive; but vexation is a bad counselor. I say, poor in reasoning. To take an example, what analogy is there between accepting devoutly a false historical statement, and Sir D. Brewster's dreams of inhabitants in the stars? This is a very poor come-off. The author of St. Augustine's life says, with the evident wish it should be so, that a statement, historically false, but which has serious effects on the whole state of mind of him who believes it, " will not be without effect on the devout mind," and that " it has been received as a pious opinion." It is admitted, that the alleged visit of Peter, which is to have this effect, is a pretended visit; but devout minds will be influenced by what has been received as a pious opinion. It is " to be kept quite distinct from documentary evidence," but to have its effect. This Dr. N. tells us is sober. Is it sober to look for the effect of a confessed lying legend on the mind, as a pious opinion? Now the legend has for its object to exalt Peter, and Rome through him. For this purpose falsehoods have been told, and minds encouraged in receiving them; and it is a pious opinion to believe it, and not without effect. This Dr. Newman tells us, is a sober judgment, because it is said it is to be kept distinct from documentary and historic proof. That people may have believed it piously, I may admit; but to justify the reception of a confessedly false legend as a pious opinion, saying that it will have its effect on devout minds, I cannot call sober. It is a proof of what Romanists consider devoutness and piety. It proves another thing, how early the church was deceived by falsehoods; for we are here told, that Innocent I (A.D. 416) lets us know, that it was then received as a pious opinion, " that St. Peter was instrumental in the conversion of the west generally." We do get, not sobriety, but a specimen of the kind of thing called devoutness and piety. I have mentioned, however, this part of the book only to say, that while I think it poor in reasoning, it is of a character which in detail calls for no remark. What is important is mainly elsewhere, and to that I turn.
It is written, that there will be a falling away, an apostasy; and, though faith may be answered in arresting judgment, when impending, no efforts of ours will avert finally the predicted evil. This evil will, we are told, have a double character in the course of its development: the form of godliness and denial of its power or religious evil, and open denial of Christianity or infidelity; superstitious idolatrous religiousness, devoid of spiritual truth, and open infidelity.
It is a singular, but providentially a notable fact, that two brothers should be eminently conspicuous in these two forms of evil. Mr. F. Newman has given his personal history in his progress to infidelity; Dr. Newman, in his progress in falling into popery. There are some passages almost literally identical in their form. The fact, of course, would have been the same, whoever it might have been; but, as striking in its effect on the mind, two brothers being representatives of the double form of departure from the truth is, I repeat, providentially remarkable. The more so, as they have both come forward to account for it, not by any direct reasoning as to the truth or falsehood of what they have left or fallen into; but, in each case, in the way in which their minds were filled with it, that is, by an account of themselves. Both have known how to render their books attractive, and themselves attractive by them; both of them unquestionably able men, but I do not, for my own part, think possessed of any depth of moral perception: I speak entirely from their respective works, of course. I do not put them on a par; I must say I think the low, and what I must call filthy, insinuations of Mr. F. Newman in his " Phases of Faith," ought, though but short and occasional, to have at once condemned the whole book, and the state of mind of the writer, in every mind that had a spark of elevation, any sense of what is of good report, of what is comely and pure. From such a reproach Dr. N. is entirely clear; I shall defer pronouncing any judgment of his book till I have examined its contents. One thing is striking in both; they seek to persuade us by showing, in their respective books, that they were wrong, and had each of them to give up everything he held on the points in question. This is singular. Each of these books shows us a mind step by step giving up what they held as true, and finding they were wrong at each step. This has an air of candor. But did it lead them to distrust themselves? Quite the contrary. They would have us embrace the conclusions they have come to, and in which they profess to have the greatest confidence, though in every previous step they had found themselves wrong. Mr. F. N. has given up Christianity altogether, and gives us the phases of his discoveries of mistake after mistake given up; Dr. N., the apology for his life, in which he has relinquished, not the general truths of Christianity, no doubt, but all he once held on the particular points in question. It does seem to me that this shows, not confidence in the truth (for what they supposed such they gave up), but the attaching an immense importance to their own views-I am afraid I must say, to themselves, meaning by that, to the processes of their own minds.
I have no doubt that there is a direct action of the enemy of souls in all this-of Satan. On this I do not enlarge; but I am bound to say so. But is it not singular that I should put forward the discovery of my being wrong in everything I held, not as a lowly acknowledgment of error, but seeking thereby confidence in the conclusion I have arrived at as a motive to influence other minds, and that they should be influenced by it, and attracted to the persons who thus acquaint the public so very elaborately with all that has passed, as they tell us, in their minds? The public, no doubt, likes confidences, likes secret histories; and here it has them, and has them very cleverly written-seemingly very naturally and innocently, and on topics which are in vogue. It is admitted behind the scenes in an interesting epoch, and has the actors familiarly and confidingly brought before it. This, of course, attracts. We like to be thus trusted with secrets, to know what has gone on.
But here I must go a little deeper into the nature of this disposition to have secret histories, though I fear I may not please the public if they condescend to read me; but I must tell the truth, and it bears on the character of these books. Men like to hear the secret history, and learn the progress of what is evil, much more than of what is good. Take a young man, in the human sense innocent, gradually getting away from what is honorable and pure, making impulsive efforts to recover himself, but still sinking,-getting, alas! gradually degraded, till he arrives at some terrible and fatal end. Men are interested. The efforts at recovery cast a halo round the sinking man. His degradation is, comparatively speaking, lost sight of. Pity surrounds his end: we like to know the details. A young female, shining in early youth, wickedly and heartlessly seduced, struggling against the engulfing stream for a while, the moral tone of her mind sinking, sorrow often (if innocence be met), with longings of heart that she were back to innocence, but her career still onward in evil, till she sinks in destitution and shame and sorrow! There is not merely pity (for this is right in both cases), but man likes to read the process; and the person whose secret history he follows becomes interesting to him. Now let these persons be recovered from their evil, instead of sinking to ruin: will the steps of their recovery be traced with the same interest? Most surely not. Put one and the other in a newspaper, in a pamphlet, and try. I do not say our moral judgment approves this tendency of mind: grace surely will correct it. I speak of the fact.
Such is human nature, such is the public; for the public is human nature locally modified. Suppose Mr. F. W. Newman or Dr. Newman were to return, the one to Christianity, the other to scriptural truth, would their phases of return, or the history of their religious recovery, be read with the same interest? I am fully persuaded they would not. Rightminded people would be glad, individuals would trace it with interest. Dr. N.'s present publication might cause the sale of some of that; but no bookseller would undertake an edition of the history of their recovery as he would of their fall. Alas! that it should be so; but the history of their fall away from truth and into evil, this it is that interests. But this is what their history is a history of.
No one questions that at this moment the power of evil is rampant; its forms are the deceit of Romanism and the insolence of open infidelity. Dr. Newman avows in result that he knows only the one or the other-Catholicism (that is, Papal infallibility) or Atheism; not the truth for himself. (Page 231 of first edition.) What is fearful (though the Christian has nothing to fear, far from it) is not that evil is there, but the perfect impotency of existing forms and corporations (I mean of such as ought, from their position and profession, to stand against it) to resist that evil. This is the sign of approaching judgment, of being given up of God. It was not Satan's power which drove the blessed Lord out of the world: as its occasion, it brought Him into it. But when His disciples could not cast demons out, could not use the power which had come in, then He says, " Faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? "
The country is in progress towards these two forms of evil. The National Schools in Ireland are founded on the avowed principle, that it was a vital defect to have the scriptures read in them, and this professedly to please the priests. A lay tribunal has decided that clergymen are not bound to hold the scriptures to be inspired, and that if they do not contravene articles made for another state of the church, they may teach anything they like; that is, that the church is no guardian of the truth at all. On the other hand, when men are subjected to the stultified fatuity that a red gown is like the Holy Ghost, there is no way of meeting such imbecility in public service, because there is a rubric attached to the liturgy, the expression of patience, ill-advised or not, at the time when men were emerging from these things, which permits what was done in the second year of Edward VI.
Now, it is not the evil I am judging here. If men like red gowns, I am sorry they do not instead love to worship God in spirit and in truth; but what I notice, what is fatal in its character is, that while the word of God is surrendered, and men are judicially authorized to give it up, there is no autonomy, no power, avowedly no power, to stand against or remove evil. The authorities of the national body seek to tide it over with the power of evil: but there is no faithfulness to God: and we have Father Ignatius at the Episcopal gatherings as a deacon of the Church of England, and having a right to be there; and we have Colensos and Williamses openly setting aside the word with impunity. Neither can be met, neither can be dealt with as evil. They are authoritatively or judicially accepted; there is no intrinsic power at all to meet evil. I do not doubt the faithfulness of the Lord; I have no fear; I hold it to be a time of great blessing for faith; I believe the Lord is at hand. But it is sorrowful when what, in some sense at least, was the professed seat of righteousness declares its incapacity to remove or resist evil. If it be so, we are on the way to judgment. The aristocratic mind tends to popery; the popular to infidelity. Ecclesiastical authorities are powerless against the former; they are the chief abettors of the latter. Truth remains, blessed be God, always itself, and grace cannot fail.
As I have spoken of these two forms of evil, let me add a few words on them before I formally take up the book which has given occasion to these lines. It is, as regards the true object of these remarks, the best judgment on the book. I am greatly confirmed in the conviction, that at the root of Romanism lies infidelity, not of course in the gross form of denying Christianity in its fundamental truths, or the historical basis of Christianity, but in the annulling those truths on which the blessing of the soul depends, or their application to it. It is a sensuous religion, fills the imagination with gorgeous ceremonies, noble buildings, fine music, stately processions. It feeds it with legends and the poetry of antiquity; but it gives no holy peace to the conscience-ease it may, but not peace; and, while accrediting itself with asceticism, it accepts for the mass of its votaries full association with the world. It holds sin over the conscience as a terror, and relieves from that terror by human intervention, so as to put power into man's hand-into the hands of the priesthood. Looked at as a picture, it fills largely the imagination; in practice it degrades. Christianity and (in its true sense, whatever its shortcoming:, may have been) Protestantism elevate. I shall refer to this last in a moment: it has largely failed in result, but in its nature, as compared with Romanism, it elevates.
Christianity brings us directly, immediately, to God. Each individual is directly, immediately, in relationship to God- his conscience before God, his heart confidingly in His presence. Judaism had a priesthood, the people could not go into God's presence. They might receive blessings, offer offerings, celebrate God's goodness, have a law to command them; but the way into the holiest was closed by a veil: " the Holy Ghost this signifying, that the way into the holiest was not yet made manifest." When the Lord Jesus died, this veil was rent from top to bottom, and " we have boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which he has consecrated through the veil, that is to say, his flesh." " Having made peace by the blood of His cross." " He suffered, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God "; " His blood cleanseth from all sin." Hence the essence of Christianity, as applied to man, is, that the Christian goes himself, directly, personally to God-in Christ's name, and through Christ, but himself, into the holiest, and with boldness. He has by Christ access through the one Spirit to the Father, the Spirit of adoption. This being brought nigh by the blood of Jesus characterizes Christianity in its nature. The holiness of God's own presence is brought to hear on the soul: " If we walk," it is said, " in the light, as he is in the light "-yet not as fear, which repels, for we know perfect love through the gift of Jesus. We have boldness to enter into the holiest, that place where the presence of God Himself assures that the confidence of love will be the adoration of reverence while we go forth to the world; that the life of Jesus may be made manifest in our mortal body, the epistle (as it is said) of Christ. I am not discussing how far each Christian realizes it, but this is what Christianity practically is. He has made us kings and priests to God and His Father. This elevates truly.
Man is not elevated by intellectual pretensions; for he never gets, nor can get, beyond himself. What elevates him is heart-intercourse with what is above him; what truly elevates him is heart-intercourse with God, fellowship (wondrous word!) with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. But, even where the heart has not found its blessed home there through grace, this principle morally elevates; for it at least puts the natural conscience directly before God, and refers the soul, in its estimate of good and evil, personally and immediately to Him. There may be self-will and failure, but the standard of responsibility is preserved for the soul. I do but sketch the great principle on which I insist.
Romanism, wherever it exercises its influence, has closed the veil again. The faithful are not reconciled to God, they cannot go into the holiest, they do not know (as they quote from Ecclesiastes with so false an application) love and hatred by all that is before them; between them and God, they have a priesthood and saints, and the Virgin Mary. Christianity is a divine work which, through the redemption and life of a heavenly Mediator, has brought us to God; Romanism, a system of mediators on earth and in heaven, placed between us and God, to whom we are to go, and who go for us; we are too unworthy to go ourselves. It sounds lowly this voluntary humility, but it shuts out the conscience from the witness of God's presence; it casts us back on our worthiness, it puts away and denies the perfect love of God as known to us (shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost given to us) through Christ. It repudiates the blessed tender grace of Jesus, that High Priest who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. We must go to the heart of Jesus through the heart of Mary, they tell us. Surely I would rather trust His, blessed and honored as she may have been and was in her own place. It removes me from God, to connect me immediately with creatures, however exalted, for my heart, and with sinful men, for my conscience, who are to judge of and absolve me. All this is degrading. It is the denial of Christianity, not in its original facts, but in its power and application to man.
A few illustrations of what I mean. They hold the great facts or truths of Christianity-the Trinity, the divinity and humanity of Christ; the atonement, so far as its sufficiency goes (not, however, as effectual substitution); that men are sinners (this also very imperfectly); and the need of regeneration, though they scorn the true force of the word. They hold the inspiration of the scriptures, though they have falsified them, both in adding books which every honest man knows are not genuine scriptures, and in giving a translation as the authentic scriptures. They own in a general way the personality and agency of the Holy Ghost. My object is not here to state exactly every point, but to say in general that they own the great fundamental facts of Christianity. It is not there that the spirit of infidelity shows itself.
But the moment you come to the application of these facts to men-to their efficacious value, all is lost. The scriptures are inspired, but the faithful are incapable of using them. In vain is it that they are addressed by God Himself through the inspired writers to the body of believers-they must not have them but by leave of others. In vain is it that there is a Holy Ghost-He does not so lead and guide individuals as that they can walk in peace and grace, and understand withal His word. They mock at the thought of His dwelling in believers. They bring the divisions and faults of believers to prove He cannot be there; that is, they use man's sin to deny God's goodness and truth, just as infidels do.
Even as to the scriptures their universal question is the same as the infidel's-How do you know them to be the scriptures? Their doctrine is, You must believe in them through the church: that is, the scriptures do not command faith in and by themselves, nor is man guilty if he reject them, just as the infidel says. God's word must be believed because God has spoken, and for no other reason, or it is not believing His word at all. Grace, no doubt, is needed for it, as for everything; but man's responsibility is there, as the Lord said, " If ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins." They were responsible for not receiving Him, with all ecclesiastical authority rejecting Him: so are men as to the word.
Again, the sacrifice of Christ, they do not deny it. They repeat it in the Mass in an unbloody sacrifice, they say. But scripture says it was accomplished once for all, and contrasts it in its efficacy with the Jewish sacrifices, the repetition of which proved that sin was still there. Whereas the sacrifice of Christ, offered once for all, having perfectly put away sin for him who believes, there could be no repetition, the believer is perfected forever, and God remembers his sins and iniquities no more. Their repetition shows unbelief in this blessed truth. The believer is not perfected forever-the sacrifice must be repeated. It is not true that God will not remember their sins and iniquities any more. That is, the sacrifice is not denied; its efficacy, once offered for the believer's soul, is.
Again, take Christ's intercessional mediatorship. Christianity presents to me that blessed One, in whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; a man tempted in all points as we are, without sin; one who also can be touched with the feeling of my infirmities, who has suffered being tempted, and thus is able to succor them that are tempted. In a word, the Son of God Himself has descended into our sorrows and trials, and passed through them in tender gracious love, that I might confide in His sympathy and love, and know He could feel for and with me. Do they deny His priesthood and intercession? No. But in fact there are a crowd of mediators; above all, Mary His mother. And why? He is too high and glorious. Any poor man would seek a friend at court to have the king's ear; it is the heart of Mary I am to trust, and get the saints' intercession, and reach His heart through Mary's. The whole truth and value of Christ's intercessory love is destroyed and denied in practice. The saints' and Mary's intercession is trusted, their tenderness and nearness believed in, not Christ's. Heathenism denied the one true God the Creator (though in a certain sense owning Him as a dogma) by a multiplicity of gods in practice. God intervenes by a Mediator in the most perfect system of blessing, and Romanism, while admitting the mediatorship of Christ as a dogma, has denied the one true mediatorship in practice by a multiplicity of mediators. It is the heathenism of Christianity, that is, of the blessed truth of a redeeming Mediator.
I turn more immediately to Dr. Newman's book. Let me be forgiven speaking for a moment of myself, as what I say has a bearing on these points. I know the system. I knew it and walked in it years before Dr. Newman (as I learn from this book) thought on the subject; and when Dr. Pusey was not heard of. I fasted in Lent so as to be weak in body at the end of it; ate no meat on week days-nothing till evening on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, then a little bread or nothing; observed strictly the weekly fasts, too. I went to my clergyman always if I wished to take the sacrament, that he might judge of the matter. I held apostolic succession fully, and the channels of grace to be there only. I held thus Luther and Calvin and their followers to be outside. I was not their judge, but I left them to the uncovenanted mercies of God. I searched with earnest diligence into the evidences of apostolic succession in England, and just saved their validity for myself and my conscience. The union of church and state I held to be Babylonish, that the church ought to govern itself, and that she was in bondage but was the church.
I would guard this part of what I say. I still think fasting a useful thing in its place, if spiritually used. I still think there were sacramental ordinances instituted. I still think the state has nothing to do with the church. Only I add that, if it be so, the church must not be an imperium in imperio, but a lowly heavenly body which has no portion on earth at all; as it was at the beginning, suffering as its Head did, unknown and well known, an unearthly witness of heavenly things on earth. What saved me then, I think, from being a Romanist was the ninth and tenth of Hebrews. I could not for priesthood, which I believed in, practically give up our great High Priest and His work. What delivered me from this whole system was the truth. The word of God had its own, its divine, authority over my soul, and maintained it through grace. I was looking for the true church honestly but in the dark. I believe in the church now, but I know it in its reality only as the living body of Christ united to Him by the Holy Ghost. I believe there is a church on earth, but, as is prophesied by the apostles, utterly corrupted as an external thing, and ruined" having the form of godliness, but denying the power of it," causing perilous times. I see the church, the body of Christ, composed of living members united to Him by the Holy Ghost. I see an outward system, the habitation of God through the Spirit; but there I see wood, and hay, and stubble, may be built in, and has been, and worse, but that God's faithfulness will continue His own work. Christ will build till all be finished, and no power shall prevail against it, until the time come to take those that are His to glory. I believe the appropriating the privileges of the members of Christ's body, as a fact, to all that are built into the house is the fundamental principle of popery, and of all that clings to it. I admit a sacramental system, but to identify it with actual spiritual power is unscriptural and false. One may be corrupted by man, the other is the work of God and secured by Him. I know no salvation out of the true church; but the Roman Catholic church is ridiculous as a security for the soul; for they admit that men may be, and hundreds are, members of it, and lost after all. I would not thank you for such security as that. I do not think Protestantism was fully delivered from this identifying the external sacramental system with the divine power of life-these two distinct revealed aspects of the church; and hence its present difficulties. Romanism, specifically and as a system, identifies them, denies the spiritual power and regeneration by the word, and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost-in practice, mocks at it, as an infidel might. It is essential falsehood in this respect. Protestantism does not. It owns the spiritual power and the word; but I do not think there was deliverance from confusion as to it. It is bearing the burden of this now.
We are told there shall come a falling away. As I have said, I believe it. The apostle has declared (that is, God has declared), " Upon thee [the engrafted Gentile] goodness, if thou continue in his goodness; otherwise, thou also shalt be cut off." Falling away, the opposite of continuing in God's goodness, is prophesied of; the lot of the church, as an outward professing system, is to be cut off. I look for partial present success for Romanism-the unbelief of imagination, and especially in its influence over government-but to make a way for open apostasy, or infidelity, the instrument of desolating judgments on it, when Antichrist and judgment will close the scene. Into that system of corruption which shall thus be destroyed, though for the moment successful, Dr. Newman has cast himself, as many others have, out of the uncertainty in which he has found his mind. His brother, as we have seen, publicly represents the open infidelity. Dr. Newman rests on authority; for him the pope is infallible. I have found (through pure grace, I fully own) the truth deliver me out of all difficulties, and the sure stay of my soul; for the word of God abides forever. I rest, through grace, on the truth; on divine authority; on apostles, not on the pope. Dr. Newman cannot say, I know of whom I have learned it; I can. I have learned it of Paul, John, Peter-I need not name the rest-yea, of the blessed Lord Himself.
I will examine the process of Dr. Newman's mind He has set it before us for the purpose. I pity Dr. Newman; I feel his difficulties; I have felt them myself; I do not judge him. But as his book is calculated to interest and influence many, I do not think he can complain if I dissect it freely. It is impossible to do so without speaking of Dr. Newman himself; for the whole part of his book which I comment on is an account of himself. I must necessarily expose his state in commenting on his own account of it. In many things I agree; many of his thoughts I have gone over in my own mind. Strange to say, I find I admit constantly all that infidels hold metaphysically. Only the truth remains, the truth of God untouched. I account for some of their thoughts; I cannot for others. What Dr. Newman calls liberalism is infidelity-man meddling, with his own mind as competent, in divine things. I reject this as utterly as he does. In the two points he professes to name, I do in a measure, I suppose, pretty much as he does; but he need not be so afraid of liberalism. What it hates is truth. Its latitudinarianism will favor-is favoring-popery at present more than anything else does, and has been. I believe the time will come when it will pull down popery. I believe the time will come, as Dr. Newman says, when a mere via media will disappear as satisfying nobody, and the struggle will be between popery and infidelity directly. I believe infidel power will triumph, and popery disappear; but triumph to its own destruction by the judgment of the Lord. But at present the liberal principle, and the majority of dissenters with it, are attacking the Establishment, the via media. It stands in their way. Some have boasted to me of their doing so, looking for the result Dr. N. himself anticipates; that is, putting down the Establishment, and then having a final struggle with Romanism. I have no sympathy with this in any sense or way. They are deceiving themselves too. They will find liberalism too strong for themselves as a system. What is religious, as a system among them, will not, does not, satisfy any active religious or infidel mind now. They may grow for a time by the ruin of others; but they are letting loose what will ruin themselves. But there is another thing besides and behind what Dr. Newman is looking at-the truth of God, the people of God. They will subsist and have their place in heaven when the fashion of this world has passed away.
There will be a people, not liberal so-called, not Romanists, but heavenly Christian men, resting on the word of God in true and lowly faith, led by the Spirit, kept, whatever the ruin, against whom the gates of hell shall not and never can prevail. They will be kept, I mean, in the world, where alone danger for them is. They will have the sacraments, for such there are; but they will have what is inward and essential-true divinely-wrought faith, and the Spirit of God; kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed. May Dr. Newman be found among them, and many of the liberals too; yea, his now poor infidel brother; for grace can gather from every quarter. I am perfectly assured, that the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church that Christ builds; and I mean that He will keep it as a public profession here until the moment known to God, when He will take His own to Himself in heaven. But that which man has built and corrupted, the servant which has said, My Lord delays His coming, and has beaten the men-servants and maid-servants, and has eaten and drunk with the drunken, will be judged, will have his portion with the unbelievers, with the hypocrites, though called His servant to the end. It is well that men who fear God should ponder these things.
The first point which prominently strikes me in Dr. Newman's book is, that, as far as I can find from diligently examining it, neither Christ nor the truth nor the word of God nor any true solid foundation ever was in his mind at all. I hasten to say, I am not speaking of what is called orthodoxy; I am assuming this, as he does. He professed these great Christian foundations before; he professes them now- sincerely, I doubt not, as dogmas then and now, the useless faith of James. But in his search on the point which occupied his mind, in what he discloses in this book, neither Christ nor the truth nor the word of God nor any divine ground of faith is found as an object of research, or possessed as the foundation of his soul. As to a divine foundation of divine faith, it is from beginning to end denied. Romanism has none. It has dogmas, immensely important, fundamental dogmas they are, but no divine ground of faith. My business is here to show that it is so, as to Dr. N. His inquiry was between Anglicanism and Romanism. The soundness and fairness of that inquiry I will speak of; but there are deeper principles at the bottom of the result he has arrived at, and to them I now turn.
I affirm that, as far as this book goes, there is no divine ground of faith at all in it. He says he was converted at fifteen. Charity will surely hope and trust it is so. I do not pretend to judge, I earnestly hope it is; my heart gladly believes it, and rejoices in the thought of it. There is One only who judges. I speak of his book, and the principles laid down there. Whether Christ ever appears there, people must judge of, who have read it. I cannot recall the instance. And this is exceedingly important, as to what religion is. Possessing Christ, having the Son, as scripture expresses it, gives a rest and peace to the soul, which does not leave it beating about after truth, as Dr. Newman's was, saying, Where is it? The soul that has Christ knows it has got the truth-for He is it- that it has found the Father. It does not hunger, as not having what the soul needs and craves after. It is not looking about for safety, for it is safe in Him and through Him; not in self confidence, but trusting the good Shepherd, who knows His sheep, and keeps them. It does not slight the sacraments, but is thankful for them, nor the ministry of men whom the Lord has sent. It blesses God heartily for all these things where it enjoys them, but it possesses the substance of all, eternal life in Christ, shepherd-care in Him. It has peace and rest of heart in Him.
And there is another point connected with this. What finally led Dr. Newman to be satisfied with Romanism, which has confessedly a multitude of doctrines unknown to the primitive church, was the principle of development. He was far down the hill, no doubt, long before; but that plunged him into its waters. Now in the Person of Christ, and the value of His work before God, there can be no development. He is the same-and so is the efficacy of His work-yesterday, to-day, and forever. I or Dr. Newman may grow in the knowledge of Christ. Faithful zeal may resist and dispel errors which arise, and by which Satan seeks to cloud the truth and overthrow faith; but there cannot be a development of the infinitely perfect and completely revealed Person of the Son of God, in whom dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Dr. Newman may find (in spite of Bishop Bull, and as Pettau has admitted) that the ante-Nicene fathers were worse than obscure as to the divinity of the blessed Lord; but Paul is not, who declares that the fullness of the Godhead (theotes not theiotes, that is, proper Deity, not divine character simply) dwells in Him bodily; John is not, who declares, He is the true God, was with God, and was God; and the New Testament, so plainly and blessedly making Christ known to us, is not. There He is Immanuel, Jesus-Jehovah the Savior. He may rejoice that the Nicene Council re-affirmed this truth. But to say that this was development, and that the church of God for three centuries did not know the true divinity of Christ is high treason against Christ and the truth. It is the folly of a mind who, to excuse itself and make out a point, gives up all fundamental truth-does not possess it. It may lead to Romanism-I dare say it does; I am sure it does not lead to God. The apostle tells us, on this very head, " Let that therefore abide in you, which ye have heard from the beginning. If that therefore which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, ye also shall continue in the Son, and in the Father." There might be the rejection of heresies, as Arianism, whose source was in Platonism and philosophy, or of other similar evil doctrines; but it was not to develop but to maintain what was from the beginning. So the apostle Paul, " But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned,... knowing of whom thou hast learned them." I admit no development: that is popery.
I admit of no private judgment, when God has revealed the truth. I will touch on this subject further when I come to speak of Dr. N.'s views of Protestantism. I learn, but I know of whom I learn; I continue in what we have heard from the beginning. The Romish church does not so continue; it does not know of whom it learns, as to the faith of any individual in it. The indiscriminate reading of scripture by Christians it condemns, which the apostle gives as the resource and security of the believer in the last and evil days. We are perfectly sure why.
Next, it is striking how absolutely foreign the search for the truth, or the conscious possession of it, was from Dr. N.'s mind. He was looking out for some via media to preserve from what threatened. The Evangelical system only occupied a space between catholic truth and rationalism (pp. 144, 145). I do not know what else a via media of his own was to do. But I refer to this now to show there was no search for God's truth in the matter; it was some expedient. " It was necessary to have a definite church theory erected on a definite basis; this took me to the great Anglican divines " (146). Then there were the parties in the controversy, the Anglican via media, and the popular religion of Rome. The Anglican disputant took his stand upon antiquity or apostolicity, the Roman on catholicity (148-153). " It is plain, then, that at the end of 1835, or beginning of 1836, I had the whole question before me on which, to my mind, the decision between the churches depended. There was a contrariety of claims between the Anglican and Roman religions, and the history of my conversion is simply the process of working it out to a solution." It was catholicity, or antiquity. I add that the unity of the church, as one body, was not in his mind at all. It was catholicity, or independent dioceses (148). On reading Leo he suddenly felt he was all in the wrong. " Be my soul with the saints," such as Athanasius (who died excommunicated and banished by the so-called universal church for the truth's sake) and Leo. " Anathema to a whole tribe of Cranmers, Ridleys, Latimers, and Jewels! Perish the names of Bramhall, Ussher, Taylor, Stillingfleet, and Barrow from the face of the earth,. ere I should do aught but fall at their feet in love and worship, whose image was continually before my eyes, and whose musical words were ever in my ears and on my tongue." Is there the most distant idea of an approach to the serious search of God's truth on the subject from His teaching? Dr. N. moves in a circle of men's minds to decide a question of the merit of present rival schemes, never for the truth of God. Where he had learned what he did hold, we shall see in the next article. Even here we shall see he rests on no divine testimony. There is no seriousness. Dr. Wiseman's words from St. Augustine, " Securus judicat orbis terrarum," sounded in his ears incessantly, like " Turn again, Whittington "! (157-8). " There was more evidence in antiquity for the necessity of unity, than for the apostolical succession," etc. The truth of God, as revealed, does not enter his mind. He cannot say he possessed it, or thought he did; for he was uncertain and changing, and that even as to why he was to believe; but in this state he never inquired for God's truth on God's authority.
Again, further on (231), he examines the concatenation of arguments by which the mind ascends from its first to its final religious idea: " And I came to the conclusion that there was no medium between atheism and catholicity, and that a perfectly consistent mind, under those circumstances in which it finds itself here below, must embrace either one or the other " (231). Now such a sentence could not by any possibility have been penned by one who possessed the truth himself. One who possessed Christ, knew Him as the Son of God for himself, knew the Father and His love, must have known that there was the possession of truth without being what Dr. N. (when he wrote this) means by catholic. No one who possessed divine truth, as taught of God, whatever the external means-truth as to God, the Trinity, the Lord Jesus, the church as one with Him, sin, salvation (I "mightenlarge the list)-could have declared there was no medium between atheism and catholicity. And note his grounds: " I am a catholic by virtue of my believing in a God; and if I am asked why I believe in a God, it is because I believe in myself."
God's presence in his conscience makes him know God. Now Dr. N. speaks of philosophical correctness. It is not the question here. Either before joining Rome he possessed Christian truth, or he did not. If he did, his position is false; if he did not, anyone can understand why he turned catholic. He had nothing. Nor indeed did he arrive at anything. He came to authority, not faith in any truth. He did not believe, he tells us, in transubstantiation till he was a catholic. Now he receives it on authority (265): He believed that the Roman catholic church was the oracle of God. Transubstantiation passed muster with all the rest, and he declared it to be a part of the original revelation; but this is no true faith in a truth, it is acquiescence in authority, and, after all, it is accrediting Rome for a fact. I might add to this list of proofs that he did not possess the truth nor seek it. I quote this only as short expressions of it on his part, and so proofs. The whole book shows it-it runs through every part of it.
I shall now show that he had no divine ground of faith. His whole ground of believing was, not divine testimony, but probability, and no more; and such is the doctrine of the school, as I shall show from Keble. No wonder that Romanism delights in this. It has no divine ground of faith. It cannot give the same ground of faith to a heathen and a Christian, nor any sure one to either. It declares, I cannot believe in God's word but on the authority of the church. But how am I to believe in the church? The first converts could not. Antiquity, catholicity, succession did not exist. They were called on to believe in Christ alone. There was no church, and all ecclesiastical authority was against Him. The foundation of the first disciples' faith is different on the Romanist system from mine; and, even after Christ was glorified, the faith of the converts could not be founded, and was not founded on the church, but on the testimony of the apostles. Nor could it be with heathens now; for they do not recognize the church. It is said that there is special grace for them. So heathens have special grace which Christians cannot have. And if, as believing in Christ, I seek, not Christianity, but honestly what church is the best one, I am told I must begin by owning the authority of that church. But this is absurd on the face of it; for what I want to know is, has it authority? Is it the true church?
I return to the ground Dr. Newman was on. Now the truth rests on testimony. John the baptist says, " He that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true." So the apostle John, " He that is of God heareth us "; Paul, " Continue thou in the things that thou hast learned, knowing of whom thou hast learned them." Now if I believe the blessed Lord's testimony or Paul's or John's or any of the inspired witnesses, I do not, I cannot, dare not speak of probability. I set to my seal that God is true. There is no divine faith but that. That Dr. N. never had in prosecuting his inquiry; he tells us so. It was one of the great underlying principles of a great portion of his teaching-" Probability is the guide of life " (61, 62). The difficulty was evident: skepticism, that is, certainty about nothing. Keble met this, he tells us, by the doctrine, " that it is not merely probability which makes us intellectually certain "-mark " intellectually." He had spoken before of the logical cogency of faith (62)-but probability as it is put to account by faith and love. " It is faith and love which give to probability a force which it has not in itself " (69).
Thus in itself it was only a probability, and something in myself gives it force. It was reasoning plus right feeling; but no divine testimony at all. Still Dr. N. says that did not satisfy him. " It was beautiful and religious, but it did not even profess to be logical." " My argument is in outline as follows: That that absolute certitude which we were able to possess, whether as to truths of natural theology, or as to the fact of a revelation, was the result of an assemblage of concurring and converging probabilities, and that, both according to the constitution of the human mind and the will of its Maker, that certitude was a habit of mind, that certainty was a quality of propositions," and so forth (7o). There are degrees, consequently, creating certitude, opinion, etc.
Now it is quite certain that there is no divine ground of faith at all here, no testimony of God received as such; and if I take these probabilities as that on which the reception of a testimony is based, the certainty of that testimony cannot be beyond the certainty that it is a true one. Nothing can be clearer than that, whatever he might have had in his soul for the foundation of all his inquiry, no ground of divine faith existed at all. He was already on the ground of Romanism on this point-that is, of infidelity. Such a process of reasoning may show the folly of infidel reasoning, and so far be useful as I might multiply quotations; I only add a few to show he was always on this ground. Thus, page 202, he preached against the danger of being swayed by our feeling rather than our reason in religious inquiry (223). " I wish to go by reason, not by feeling " (232). This was in 1843-4, on the eve of his becoming a Romanist: " I say that I believed in God on a probability, that I believed in Christianity on a probability, and that I believed in catholicism on a probability, and that all three were about the same kind of probabilities, a cumulative and a transcendent probability, but still probability; inasmuch as He who made us has so willed that in mathematics indeed we arrive at certitude by rigid demonstration, but in religious inquiry we arrive at certitude by accumulated probabilities; inasmuch as He who has willed that we should so act, cooperates with us in our acting, and therefore bestows on us a certitude which rises higher than the logical force of our conclusions " (232). Thus we have God's grace helping us in ascertaining probabilities; but, as Dr. N. says, still probability. Now it is perfectly certain that there is no divine ground of faith here at all. No true believer, no one who has received God's testimony and set to his seal that God is true, be he Roman Catholic itself, but knows this has nothing whatever to do with divine faith. It would be a blasphemy to talk of God's testimony being probably true, no matter how high the probability may go. Probability of conclusions is not of the same nature as reception of a testimony.
I might here again add quotations, but they are useless after these. The Romanism of Dr. Newman is not divine faith at all.
I shall now show further that the principles which led him to the place where he is were all derived from man. This may be very clever with a view to involve Anglicanism in his present position, but is a distinct testimony that all was built on human influences, not on God's word or truth divinely received in any way. Dr. Hawkins gave him Sumner on apostolic preaching. Thus he gave up his remaining Calvinism, and received the doctrine of baptismal regeneration. Another principle he received from Dr. Hawkins was the doctrine of tradition: ' To learn doctrine we must have recourse to the catechisms and creeds... after learning from them the doctrines of Christianity, the inquirer must verify them from scripture" (61). Let me say here, I distinguish fully between learning truth and a standard of it; but this is a poor teaching. The first Christians certainly did not learn it from words or catechisms, for there were none to learn them from; and now a parent, as well as a catechism, a friend, a minister, may have taught us the truth, or scripture may have done so. Scripture is the only standard. The fallacy of the statement is in this, that catechisms and creeds are here introduced, not as teaching, but as authority; that is, the church is. We have received the truth from them as truth, without saying so. Let it be true or false, it is a deceitful presentation of the matter. A parent, a friend, a minister, is not an authority. If catechisms and creeds are only means of learning, there are a hundred others. Their authority is at the root of this tradition.
But to proceed: " The Rev. Wm. James taught me the doctrine of apostolic succession." " About this date I read Butler's Analogy, the study of which has been to so many, as it was to me, an era in their religious opinions " (61). From him he learned the doctrine of probability. He had thus given up his early religious convictions, imbibed with what converted him to God, and was prepared for his departure into Romanism. He had been taught by man, and was landed in the denial of divine faith, on the ground of probability as the basis of religious views. Whately then taught him to think and use his reason, " to see with my own eyes, and to walk with my own feet " (62). He learned from him " the existence of the church as a substantive body or corporation. This led, in its effects, to Tractarianism " (63). Keble's poetry, that is, the sacramental system, subsequently exercised a great influence over him, and what was added to the doctrine of probability, of which we have spoken (68). Froude (a hard rider, we are told, on horseback and in views), professed openly his admiration of the church of Rome, and his hatred of the Reformers. His opinions arrested and influenced Dr. N.; he was his bosom friend (73, 74). Mr. Froude was evidently governed by the wild imagination of an unhealthy mind and a strong will. The theory of virginity, and the real presence, and mediaeval antiquity, carried him away-not the primitive church. He went abroad ill, and was shocked by the degeneracy which, says Dr. Newman, he thought he saw in the catholics of Italy. He died young. " There is one remaining source of my opinions," says Dr. N. (so little conscious is he of what that means, the tale it tells), " to be mentioned " (75). This was the study of Fathers and church history, which resulted in his work as to the Arians of the fourth century. He delighted in and received Clement of Alexandria's wild views. They came like music to his inward ear, reviving the self-invented Berkeleyanism he was in when young, of which we will speak farther on. From this school he learned what he held about angels-as wild as need be. He then went abroad ill with Mr. Froude, visited Italy and Sicily, and (with a strong impression he was called to some work, of which anon) he began the Tracts for the Times.
I have gone through the proofs that God's truth was not what Dr. Newman sought, but to settle the question between the principles of catholicity and antiquity, or Romanism and Anglicanism; that men's opinions, not God's word, were what gradually led him on, and that he had no divine foundation for faith at all, but avowedly only probability, which in its nature excludes the idea of the reception of a divine testimony. I will now inquire a little into his actual progress, in which, it seems to me, astonishing levity of mind is exhibited, a large share of self-confidence, it may be some more direct power of the enemy. I shall be forgiven (as instructively tracing the elements of a history, given to us by himself, which has taken the course Dr. Newman's has) in remarking how much he was occupied with himself. At page 20 or 23 he records the phases of his youthful feeling; he kept even his Latin verses and copy-books made and used when a young boy; small things, but which show the tone and character of mind which were fully developed in after life, as here depicted. When he left his tutorship for the continent, he had a vision of some future before him, and on his return felt he had a work to do. " I was naturally led to think that some inward changes, as well as some larger course of action, was coming upon me " (81). His imagination was wild and unrestrained too, and somehow or other formed in a popish school. He headed his first copybook as a. child with a crucifix and rosary, and crossed himself before going into the dark, before he was fifteen; longed that the Arabian tales should be true; thought life might be a dream, or himself an angel; the world a deception, and his fellow-angels concealing themselves from him, and deceiving him with the semblance of a material world (53-55). Nor when a clergyman had this character disappeared. In 1834 he said of the angels in a sermon, " Every breath of air, and ray of light and heat, every beautiful prospect is as it were the skirts of their garments, the waving of the robes of those whose faces see God." " Again I ask, what would be the thoughts of a man who, examining a flower, or a herb, or a pebble, or a ray of light, which he treats as something so beneath him in the scale of existence, suddenly discovered that he was in the presence of some powerful being, who was hidden behind the visible things he was inspecting, who, etc.,... nay, whose robe and ornament these objects were? " (77). " Also, besides the hosts of evil spirits, I considered there was a middle race, daimonia, neither in heaven nor in hell, partially fallen, capricious, wayward, noble or crafty, benevolent or malicious, as the case might be. They gave a sort of inspiration or intelligence to races, nations, and classes of men. Hence the actions of bodies politic," etc. (78). This is connected with his study of Clemens Alexandrinus and Alexandrianism, that is, of the Neoplatonism which corrupted the gospel, and was the true source of Arianism, this Clemens himself being unsound, and Justin Martyr expressly declaring that it was impossible the supreme God could be made flesh.
However, my present object is to show the kind of preparation there was in the state of his mind for his further progress. Depth of conscience, sense of good and evil, the soberness of God's word, subjection to it, one finds no trace of. It is superficial imagination, and on such subjects levity. And he pursued this out. " I cannot but think that there are beings with a great deal of good in them, yet with great defects, who are the animating principles of certain institutions, etc., etc. Take England, with many high virtues and a low Catholicism" (78). This was in 1837. In 1835-6 he had the whole state of the question between Anglicanism and Romanism (152), so that these wild wanderings of mind existed and entered into his judgment of England's ecclesiastical state. Is there anything of earnestness or an exercised conscience here?
I have said there was self-confidence and levity in dealing with solemn subjects. What I mean now by the latter is this. When he was uncertain what he believed, what was the truth, and where it would lead, though growingly inclined to Romanism, he went on acting diligently on the minds of others.
He was not at rest himself (he tells us so), yet went on influencing others; not always saying all he had in his mind, but enough to prepare theirs for it. Now, on so solemn a subject as what is the true religion, to act week after week on others without knowing the true religion oneself, I call moral levity of the worst kind. That he was not at rest he tells us (159). " And first I will say, whatever comes of saying it (for I leave inferences to others), that for years I must have had something of an habitual notion, though it was latent, and had never led me to distrust my own convictions, that my mind had not found its ultimate rest, and that in some sense or other I was on journey." This was the case as early as 1833, and even 1829. Now, what does this show? That with the consciousness of changing views, his mind on a journey he knew not whither, he went on leading and directing others by sermons, tracts, etc. Now, I do think an earnest, serious, conscientious man would not have done this; a modest man would not, he would have waited till he saw what the truth was himself, till he was at the end of his journey. And why did he go on when he knew he had not come to any settled conclusion? Because he had immense confidence in himself. He never was led to distrust his own convictions (that is, himself-his own mind), though they were changing every day; he was on his " journey." This is what I call moral levity and self-confidence.
But we may have some other elements of this. The truth is, that at this moment all was over as to Anglicanism in Dr. N.'s mind. It was in a ruinous evil state; he could and was to reform it. But we have the sources of this movement in his mind; it was in full connection with angelical flowers and pebbles. It was not an earnest inquiry into what Paul taught, or John presses on us in the power of the eternal Spirit; not a heart bowed by Christ's words, and because the church does not answer to what she ought to be for her heavenly Bridegroom. It was not the truth, it was not God's word, it was not what God planted at the first wholly a right seed (to make use of Jeremiah's expression as to Israel), nothing of the moral depth of the exercised conscience which such thoughts are connected with, which heart-connection with Christ, and the desire that the church might be what it ought to be for Him, as the word of God will show it to us, are the source of in the heart. It was Alexandria. So Dr. N. tells. He had been writing the history of the Arians. He had found in the wild mysteries and errors of Platonistic Christianity " the primeval mystery," that all nature was a parable, the world the expression of the Logos, or word of God, the stars living beings. For such was Alexandrian philosophy, as displayed in Philo, and with which the Alexandrian Fathers were more or less imbued. " In her triumphant zeal in behalf of that primeval mystery, to which I had so great a devotion from my youth, I recognized the movement of my spiritual mother, incessu patuit Dea. The self-conquest of her ascetics, the patience of her martyrs, the irresistible determination of her bishops, the joyous swing of her advance, both exalted and abashed me. I said, Look on this picture and on that (the Anglican church). I felt affection for my own church, but not tenderness; I felt dismay at her prospects, anger and scorn at her do-nothing perplexity.... I saw that Reformation principles were powerless to rescue her. As to leaving her, the thought never crossed my imagination; still, I ever kept before me that there was something greater than the Established Church, and that was the church catholic and apostolic, set up from the beginning, of which she was but the local presence and organ. She was nothing unless she was this. She must be dealt with strongly, or she would be lost. There was need of a second Reformation " (80). Now, although Dr. N. speaks of the primitive church, he refers essentially to Alexandria. He says (p. 76), " What principally attached me to the ante-Nicene period was the great church of Alexandria, the historical center of teaching of those times." " The broad philosophy of Clement and Origen carried me away." And this is distinctly connected with his rhapsodies about angels, etc. It is the whole subject from the beginning of 75 to the end of 80. This was what he admired; this forced reformation on his notice. He owed his doctrine about angels to the Alexandrian school (77). He was " drifted back first to the ante-Nicene history, and then to the church of Alexandria." It was the Alexandrian church led him to his reforming undertakings.
Let us see a little what the state of this church was, and in matters which made Dr. N. admire it, and seek to reform the Anglican. Strange to say, it is, to say the very least, excessively doubtful whether for years, yea centuries, there was any episcopal ordination there at all, at least if we are to believe St. Jerome. No doubt in his time, and before it, episcopacy was established, and this he recognizes. But on the pretensions of the diaconate at Rome, he exalts presbyters, declaring that according to scripture bishops and presbyters were identical; he says the apostle perspicuously teaches that presbyters are the same as bishops, quoting Phil. 1, Acts 20:28, Titus 1:5, seq., 1 Tim. 4:14; 1 Peter 5, and the second and third epistles of John. But he adds, that afterward one was chosen who should be set over the others, as a remedy for schism, lest any drawing to himself should make a breach in the church of Christ. For at Alexandria also, from the evangelist Mark up to the bishops Heraclas and Dionysius, the presbyters always called bishop one chosen out of themselves, placed in a higher grade; as if the army should make an Imperator (as they did in the empire), or the deacons choose from themselves one whom they may have known to be industrious, and called him Archdeacon. Now, it is true, he adds, that the bishop differs only in this, that he can ordain. Nor do I doubt for a moment, that this was the universal order in Jerome's time. Nay, the Alexandrian patriarch, whose jurisdiction then was larger than that of Rome, claimed the right to ordain in all his subject-dioceses himself. But it is equally true that Jerome states historically that it had not been so till Heraclas and Dionysius; and this is confirmed by many peculiarities as to the rights of Alexandrian presbyters, and, as is said, the abolition of their rights by Alexander in the time of the Nicene council.
But this by the bye. That Alexandrian theology was philosophical, and corrupted by philosophy, is certain: Clement, the great Alexandrian teacher, does not conceal it. He says in his Stromata (ed. Potter 1, 319, line 35), speaking of the nourishment of souls, the peace in the word, and the life which is of God; he adds, " For souls have their own nourishment, some growing in knowledge and intelligence, some fed according to the Grecian philosophy, of which, as in the case of nuts, all is not edible." In lib. 7, 2 (1831, 2), " the word teaches all, some as friends, some as faithful servants, some as servants; he is the teacher who instructs the man of knowledge (the Gnostic) in mysteries (this is the esoteric teaching for a few), the faithful by good hopes, and the hard-hearted by corrective discipline and sensible (aesthetic) powers." And afterward: " He, the Word, it is who gives philosophy to the Greeks by inferior angels; for the angels, by a divine and ancient ordinance, are distributed by nations, but the doctrine of believers is the Lord's part, insisting on the divine care of all." So in book 6, 8 (773), " All things useful to life are given by the Word, but philosophy more especially to the Greeks was given to them as a special covenant, to be as a foundation of philosophy according to Christ." And in book I, 6 (p. 337) he makes the sower of the parable to have come thus from above from the foundation of the world. What this philosophy was he tells us (338): " Philosophy, I say not the Stoic, not the Platonic, nor the Epicurean and Aristotelian, but whatever things are said rightly by each of these sects, teaching righteousness with pious intelligence; this, as a whole, I call eclectic philosophy." The law, he says elsewhere, was for the Jews, philosophy for the Greeks, till Christ came (6, 17, p. 823), the whole chapter being a long discourse on this subject, each receiving it according to their deserts.
I am fully satisfied that the East was the origin of much more of all this than we are aware of, corrected partially in these Alexandrian Fathers by Christianity, and already in Plato (and, I suppose, Pythagoras) by Grecian habits of thought.
The root of it was, that there was a supreme unknown God who dwelt in the depths of silence, and could have no connection with matter. Hence emanations and the Demiurge, an inferior creator, resulting in Gnosticism-the plague of the early church. Platonism, with its emanated demons and the Alexandrian philosophy, divides into the Christian and heathen parties, Clement giving his perfect Christian the name of Gnostic. Early there was a Jewish party, whom Philo represents. In all Logos was an inferior being, though divine. It resulted, in another form, in Arianism, the doctrine more or less of the Alexandrian ante-Nicene Fathers (not of Irenaeus), combated by Athanasius when it came formally to a head in Arius. Thus it was that Dr. Newman came to be called an Arian. He had imbibed a delight in these ante-Nicene statements. Hence, too, arose asceticism. Matter held, as Plato teaches, the soul down as a nail to the earth; it was to be mortified. Asceticism began in the Alexandrian church, partly indeed by persons who fled in the Decian persecution. Hence forbidding to marry, not that people might be more devoted, but as evil for the Gnostic.
Again, Origen-a most attractive, interesting man, I fully admit, but whose name became the football of passion in the church-what was he? First he applied to himself literally, by mutilation, Matt. 19:12. He held that souls were born into different conditions in this world, according to their conduct in a previously existing state-a doctrine current among the heathen Egyptians, but a well-known eastern idea of Buddhists and Brahmins too. Buddha's great doctrine was, how to escape it by hearing " Bana," and absolute indifference to everything sense could feel, so as to obtain Nirvana (extinction). But Origen held-it is not my part to make him consistent-that the fall (and this was Alexandrian and Philo's doctrine already, and Platonic) was the pure soul of man coming into a body. He was not sound, though he seems sometimes to be clear, on the divinity of Christ. As to the divinity of the Holy Ghost, he was wholly unsound. As to Ammonius (the master of Heraclas the Patriarch, and others), it is disputed whether he is Christian or heathen.
Such was the school Dr. N. delighted in-their philosophy, he tells us, not their theology; but it is impossible to separate them. The fall of man being a pure soul coming into a material body-is that philosophy or theology? Even as to Christ (Origen de Principiis, book 2, e, 6; De Incarnatione, I, 9o, ed. De la Rue), holding, as he does expressly, that the divine nature cannot, without a mediator, be united to a body, and each soul receiving according to its deserts, he states that the Word or Son took one of these previously existing souls from the beginning of creation, and became and remained thoroughly one spirit with him; and then, by the mediation of that, took a body too, though he admits it is beyond even the apostle's thoughts. I need not go farther. Men's souls were to work their way back to liberation from matter, as also Philo and their Platonic predecessors and Gnostic contemporaries held: that was the object of the mission of Christ.
To prove the effect of this heathenish system in morals, I may add-what I regret to have to add, but with modern pretensions in these things it is well it should be known-that one form of asceticism was the clergy abstaining from marriage, under the plea of purity, taking to sleep with them females, with the same pretension to purity, alleging they were free from all evil of mind. This was one form of asceticism-not the only one. I know they went into the desert. But this shows the nature of it. This Dr. N. must know as well as possible. He will say it was often publicly condemned. It was often condemned in the East and in the West, but that shows it was a custom: and they had a name, both in Greek and Latin-Suneisaktai (subintroductce), and agapetai (beloved). Irenaeus himself charges the Gnostics with the same practice. It is recognized in the Shepherd of Hermas (III, sim. 9: I), which was read in the churches-there, of course, in a seemly way. Tertullian, when a Montanist, charges the Catholics with it. (De jejuniis, p. 554.) My reader will easily understand that it is not only in reference to Dr. Newman I quote these things: we learn what early infected the church. But we do see the wild system which attracted Dr. N., and sanctioned his early mental vagaries, preached to his parishioners, be it remembered, at St. Mary's.
After this Dr. N. went abroad. Here it was he had the strong impression that he was called to reform Anglicanism. Let us retrace his history thus far. He was converted, he tells us, at fifteen. He believed, too, that the inward conversion of which he was conscious (and of which he still is more certain than that he has hands and feet) would last into the next life, and that he was elected to eternal glory (58). This was a beginning of divine faith, a great change of thoughts. The influence and books, he tells us, were of the Calvinistic school. He, humanly speaking, almost owed his soul to one good man, whom he does not name. But all the special truth which wrought this in 1822, save the fact of heaven and hell, divine favor and divine wrath of the justified and unjustified, which alone took root in his mind, did not remain with him many years. In 1832 he came under very different influences. On reading Sumner he gave up all his remaining Calvinism. He never believed in reprobation. From Dr. Hawkins he received the doctrine of tradition; from the Rev. W. James, apostolic succession; from Butler's Analogy, he learned to rest his faith in probability, not on divine testimony; from Whately, to think and use his reason, and see with his own eyes, and believe in the existence of the church as a proper corporate body. Keble added faith and love in man to probability, to give it force, leading him to authority; Froude led him in his feelings towards Rome, and hatred of the Reformers (53-73). This brought him to Alexandria, or at least co-operated with it; for the dates mingle at the close of this history together. There we have now found him, and going abroad to rest himself after his labors in this ante-Nicene study, his wild Platonism in full blow.
There was need of a second Reformation. Who was to do it? Here comes the turning-point of Dr. N.'s life. I do not doubt the direct agency of Satan on a self-confident mind; but I must trace it in its human manifestation. " I was exchanging my tutorship for foreign countries and an unknown future. I naturally was led to think that some inward changes, as well as some larger course of action, was coming upon me (81). At this moment, while waiting at Whitchurch for the mail, he wrote the verses about his guardian angel, " Are these the tracks of some unearthly friend? " and goes on to speak of the " vision that haunted " him (80). Why, when jaded with study, and obliged to go abroad for his health, was it natural to look for some larger course of action? There is a natural, though unconfessed, sentiment of force in every active mind; but in the Christian, suppressed by the sense of his own nothingness, that without Christ he can do nothing, and the principle of obedience, than which nothing is more humble, and of conscience, which makes our own path being right of the first importance. Dr. N. had this confidence; he thought of acting on others-a larger course of action. I quite believe he was afterward unaware of the influence he exercised on young men; that is very often the case.
But the sick man, filled with his primeval mystery and inclined towards Rome, having left all the forms of truth that had been the means of his conversion, was looking for a second Reformation, and, through a " vision," a larger course of action for himself. His journey completes this picture. He was not much among the Roman Catholics. His imagination was at work on new scenes naturally enough. " The sight of so many great places, venerable shrines, and noble churches, much impressed my imagination," he tells us. He heard singing in a country church at six o'clock, and his heart thus also was touched (too). Now, a religious congregation singing, when heard from without, has this effect-touches deeply the religious imagination where it exists. It could not have been anything really spiritual in his mind; for he did not know what they were singing. In his weary days at Palermo, " I was not ungrateful for the comfort which I had received in frequenting the churches, nor did I ever forget it." Then again, " her zealous maintenance of the doctrine and rule of celibacy, which I recognized as apostolic, and her faithful agreement with antiquity in so many points besides which were dear to me, was an argument, as well as a plea, in favor of the great church of Rome. Thus I learned to have tender feelings towards her, but still my reason was not affected at all " (p. 100).
Now you will remark, as I said at the beginning, all is sensuous here, what acts on the imagination; no question of truth and grace, no holiness, unless celibacy be taken for it, which he believed apostolic-not, observe, self-devotedness, when given of God, which is apostolic, but as a rule; which is so false, that it shows Dr. N. was wholly governed by imagination. Not only does the apostle say, the elder is to be the husband of one wife, having his children subject in all gravity, and let us know that Peter and the Lord's brethren were married though he and Barnabas were not; but in the council of Nice, which Dr. N. had been just studying, it was formally refused to be made a rule, though it had acquired great influence, and was resisted by Paphnutius, an unmarried bishop, as a snare. What its enforcement in the eleventh century, by Hildebrand (though never carried through till the end of the thirteenth), produced is well known. I may speak of it farther on, when I come to speak of the causes of Protestantism. A man must have been wholly blinded by imagination, or Satan, to say celibacy was, as a rule, apostolic. Even the Roman body holds it for a mere matter of discipline; the Greek requires that priests should be married-only bishops not, if I do not mistake.
His imagination was fully ripened towards Rome; the primitive church, that is, not the scripture or first, but the ante-Nicene church was certainly right, the Anglican useless, if it was not the same; he was tenderly turned towards Rome, as to his heart, and, at any rate, Anglicanism needed a second reformation; he had no tenderness, he tells, for it. Rome was a great church, his heart with her; his habits, no doubt, not overcome, he might hope to defend Anglicanism, but it was dreadfully bad. The whole was a foregone conclusion.
What was the work he was going to do? He had entire, thorough confidence in himself-confidence unrepressed by grace. The motto chosen from Homer by Froude, showing his own feeling, he adds, too, shows this transparently, " You shall know the difference now that I am back again." Nor does he conceal from himself what I am proving-" I began to think I had a mission " (82).
Nor was it an uncertainty. He visited Monsignore Wiseman. He wished they should visit Rome a second time. He saw plainly enough his state, as he did afterward what was going on at Oxford (p. 109). Dr. N. replied to him with great gravity, " We have a work to do in England "; pleased to pander to Romanism, and be in Monsignore's good graces. The state of his mind was shown; when sick, he cried, " I shall not die, I shall not die; I have not sinned against light." No peaceful conscience, no rest in Christ: the latent conviction he speaks of, of not being at rest, ceased to be latent when death seemed to be there. The pressure of darkness on a troubled conscience, used, I doubt not, by the enemy; but still, conscience, which, if not settled between him and God, Satan would drive him to quiet in his own way. He was sobbing bitterly, while waiting to leave Palermo, and replied to the inquiry of his servant, " I have a work to do in England." Now this uneasiness, if not a bad conscience in a general way (of which, of course, I can say nothing, and is not here so presented), was a bad conscience, which, not possessing Christ for its own rest in Him, looked to the church, because it had not rest; and from his previous studies, feeling he did not possess that, and had resisted impressions and feelings which led him to Romanism, broke out in hitter uneasiness when thus ill. But remark, no destruction of self-confidence, no turning to Christ in lowliness of conscience and heart. He turned to self. " I could only answer, I have a work to do.' " This work he was doing afterward.
The rest was merely a process, a question of time. He hated Protestantism, he loved popery, though not agreeing to it. Anglicanism was all wrong, even if it were on the foundation. He pretended to set about and correct it. Romanism was the only certainly right thing in existence. The primitive church had been right and lovely-the only right thing now was Romanism; he hoped to get Anglicanism on right ground, but he had no tenderness for her. And now it is I find the excessive moral levity of Dr. Newman's state, of which I have spoken, come out in full blaze. It was no search for the truth, as such, for himself; he had not accepted all Rome's doctrines, but neither had he when he joined her; but she was the only right church in his eyes: he was looking for the church of his imagination, not for truth. He did not believe transubstantiation the day he joined popery, more than twenty years before. He says so. After joining Rome as infallible, he accepted it on authority.
See what a state this involves. There were two real religions, Protestantism and popery. The former he hated. Seeking communion with Protestants was the last blow to Anglicanism (182). He counted them heretics. Rome, when abroad, he held as undeniably the most exalted church in the whole world, manifesting in all the truth and beauty of the Spirit, high-mindedness, majesty, and the calm consciousness of power. Anglicanism, bishops and all, was at best as a set of unruly boys-Trojans, who would know the difference when he came back. Hence, afterward, when they trench on his via media he threatens them all. There was a limit to forbearance (178, 180, 183, 184, 200). Anglicanism still remained to be tried. He looked to " that future of the Anglican church which was to be a new birth of the ancient religion "; a system would be rising up (143). Thus inclined to Rome, hating Protestantism, Anglicanism being nothing really, he set about to work. Did he ascertain the truth before he set to work? In no wise. I do not mean that he did not like the ante-Nicene church. No doubt he did. But had he searched out the grounds of truth, or truth itself, before he acted? In no wise. Antiquity was his only ground. " Taking antiquity," he says, referring back to this early period (p. 194), not the existing church, as the oracle of truth (never, mark, the Word), " I thought that the Church of England was substantially founded upon them" [the Fathers] (102). Had he searched them thoroughly? Not at all. " I did not know all that the Fathers had said, but I felt that even when their tenets happened to differ from the Anglican, no harm could come of reporting them. I said out what I was clear they had said; I spake vaguely and imperfectly what I thought they had said, or what some of them had said. Anyhow, no harm could come of bending the crooked stick the other way in the process of straightening it; it was impossible to break it." Thus Anglicanism was but a stick to be straightened. He set about reforming, rebuilding the church, getting a church de facto of flesh and bones, as he says-held the Fathers to be authority, yet did not know all that they had said. Can there be conceived, on so solemn a subject, a man acting with more self-confidence and more levity? Nor does he deny it. " I never had the staidness or dignity necessary for a leader. I had a lounging, free and easy way of carrying things on " (105). Now this is true; but think of a man saying it of his whole status as to the church of God, and in the things in which he was acting as one who had a mission to reform the church, and rebuild it in its beauty as of old.
He admits (104) he was widely spreading his principles, not recognizing the hold he had over young men. He laughed when a man innocently thought he meant sacrament when he said the sacrifice of the Eucharist; and did not give himself the trouble of answering it. Accordingly, he tells us, when Dr. Pusey joined the movement, he (Dr. P.) saw that there ought to be more sobriety, more gravity, more careful pains, more sense of responsibility in the tracts and in the whole movement. It was through him the character of the tracts was changed (508). He, however grieved, and, as I judge, justly, though I may not agree with all his views, and Mr. Keble, in the sense of that responsibility, have as yet remained in Anglicanism.
And that he acted in this lounging easy way was so truly the case, that while quite settled in what he was seeking to establish-" a visible church with sacraments and rites which are the channels of invisible grace "-he tells us that he did not know what he aimed at. " I thought this was the doctrine of scripture, of the early church, and of the Anglican church." Of this he never ceased to be certain: but " in 1834 and the following years I put this ecclesiastical doctrine on a broader basis after reading Laud, Bramhall, Stillingfleet, and other Anglican divines on the one hand, and after prosecuting the study of the Fathers on the other." Now, that he held a doctrine immaturely no one can blame; we have all done so. But that he should set about to reform and rebuild the church with a special mission, though he founded it on the Fathers, with his views unformed, seems to me, I confess, intolerable self-sufficiency and levity. " When I began the Tracts for the Times, I rested the main doctrines of which I am speaking upon scripture, St. Ignatius' epistles, and on the Anglican Prayer Book " (96). The visible church on scripture, sacraments and sacramental rites on the Prayer Book, the episcopal system on St. Ignatius. Now the scripture clearly teaches a visible church, and thus is authority that there ought to be one. As to the fact, it is all around us. But why not search scripture as to what it ought to be? I believe it is sadly fallen; but why not go to Paul, and John, and Peter, to know what it ought to be, instead of Ignatius? And note the excessive inconsistency after all: he is going to build a right church, because Anglicanism was not such; and yet he takes the Prayer Book of Anglicans as the rule to prove his point on the matter he was anxious about, although he admits " that the Anglican church must have a ceremonial, a ritual, and a fullness of doctrine and devotion which this had not at present " (204). Was this because it was right? No; " if it were to compete with the Roman church with any prospect of success." Why so? Because he liked that system, not because it could be any authority truth; for the system he was seeking to change. It suited him, the Articles did not. And they were to be interpreted according to Catholic teaching, not the opinion of the framers. " Catholicism " (by which he then meant Romanism), he tells us plainly later, " was the real scope and issue of the movement." And why does he take Ignatius? And why do all who love the system Dr. N. has followed? Why did I myself delight in it, found my thoughts on him) Because he already liked and had adopted the system found in his published writings, not from any real, ascertained authority in Ignatius.
Dr. N. must have well known, that since Ussher and Daille they have been called in question; that there are two recensions, besides confessedly spurious letters, one enormously interpolated, the other shorter; so that though defended by learned men, as a document they were of questionable authority. Since then it has been, I think I may say, ascertained-I do not say all acquiesce in it-that five out of the eight letters are wholly spurious, and the three remaining ones, even in the short recension, interpolated, and the passages in favor of unity, which Dr. N. delighted in, are all, save one, false and spurious; for you must know that these pious frauds were the custom of this vaunted primitive church. There was one Leucas, or Lucius, who had quite a manufactory of them. I do not know that it was he who tampered with Ignatius. There were numbers of false Gospels and acts of the apostles, and that not only by heretics, but by pious people, and this very early indeed.
Dr. Newman scarcely even excuses himself here; if he does, it is only for guilt in his vain confidence, so far as he had strong persuasions in 1832, which he has since given up. I do not blame him for giving up what he thought wrong. I blame him for lightly pretending to reform and rebuild the Anglican body, that is, to form a church as it should be, when he had not searched the grounds on which he did it; when he knew he was not at rest but on journey, as he has told us, and doing it in a free and easy way, and, I must say, with some effrontery, telling us that he had " a lounging, free and easy way " in the matter. Was this God-fearing? The more his book is read through, the more it will be seen. Yet he attaches immense importance to his movement. He says, with singular self-complacency, " Great acts take time. At least I felt this in my own case " (206). He sought, he tells us elsewhere, to go by reason, not sentiment-here, that all the logic in the world would not make him move faster; God does not save people by logic. This when people showed him the evident and necessary consequences of his principles. More of this when his pleas as to his honesty are considered. I do not suppose he was a concealed Roman Catholic before he professed to be so, in the least; but he did know long before where all was tending, and knew he was leading others there, and continued to do so while unsettled, and, full of confidence in himself, charged others as authors of it for resisting him. Yet it did lead him there.
But what I insist on now is the moral levity of teaching without his mind having arrived at any conclusions. He says (p. 111), " Alas! it was my portion for whole years to remain, without any satisfactory basis for my religion profession, in a state of moral sickness, neither able to acquiesce in Anglicanism, nor able to go to Rome." Now these are the very years in which he was laboring as having a special mission, influencing diligently others, taking the future of Anglicanism and of souls on his own shoulders. He had confidence in his cause, despised every rival system of doctrine, had a thorough contempt for the evangelical system. Owing to this confidence, there was a mixture of fierceness and sport in his behavior. If he had brought men on to a certain point, if they stopped, he did not care; he liked to make them preach the truth without knowing it, and encouraged them so to do. " I was not unwilling to draw an opponent on step by step to the brink of some intellectual absurdity, and to leave him to get back as he could." He speaks of the imprudence and wantonness into which his absolute confidence in his cause led him (92-94). I understand this state of mind in a restless spirit confident in its views, but which has found no rest for itself-excited and uneasy, " moral sickness," as he admits. But is it God-fearing? Is it God-fearing to teach others and set the church right in such a state? Can we be surprised at the result? And what must we think of the result such a course in such a state of mind led to? He tells us that, through the storm on Tract 90, he had already before lost full confidence in himself. He had confidence in the apostolic movement; " but how was I any more to have absolute confidence in myself? " (132). Did he cease to go on? No; the movement was out of his hands. But on his views he was obstinate, and bearded the bishops. This is clear: he had had absolute confidence in himself. He got completely bewildered in reading Bellarmine and the Anglican divines. This had no tendency whatever to harass and perplex him. It was a matter of convictions, not of proofs (146). But he had been teaching with absolute confidence in himself, without having ever really ascertained the difference, or found solid ground on it.
In 1839, the fact that Leo's judgment had settled the council of Chalcedon and the monophysite question upset his via media, and showed that Rome was now on the ground of Leo in the fifth century, the Protestants on that of Eutychians and Monophysites, that is, heretics. Here he owns that he had the habitual notion that he was " on journey," had not found his ultimate rest. Yet it had never led him to distrust his convictions. Before and after, he was restlessly teaching others. I feel I need not go farther. The time of his activity, the time of his influence, was the time of his own " moral sickness " and unformed views.
I turn for a moment to Protestantism. Mr. N.'s position, on his return from abroad with a mission, was this-the Roman church was the most exalted church in the whole world (161), certainly catholic. Protestantism he hated: it was heretical, save in England; so that to receive a Protestant without abjuration of error was subsequently sufficient almost, if not quite, to oblige a person to leave the Establishment, and was what finally led to it (182). It shattered his faith in Anglicanism. Anglicanism rested only on paper, to be formed by himself by his mission. As it stood, was of questionable catholicity; could be so only by interpreting her Articles as no one else in the world would. There was no motive for keeping aloof from Rome, but the pope's being Antichrist (101); which for my part, however anti-Christian he may be, I do not believe.
It appears Rome's being the great whore, drunk with the blood of the saints, was nothing. This he got over by its being the spirit of the city acting on the church (161). He was determined to clear Romanism. Transubstantiation he did not believe; but Mr. Palmer held that all the decrees of Trent might have a Catholic sense. I recall his own excuses. But Rome's being the harlot drunk with blood, transubstantiation, purgatory, the worship of the virgin and the saints, indulgences, the repeated sacrifice of the mass as an expiation for the sins of the living and the dead, the supremacy and infallibility of the pope-none of these, or other principles and dogmas of Rome was any ground for separation from it.
It is astonishing how little hold truth had on his mind, how little prominence it had with him; a very peculiar phenomenon. Being disposed towards Rome is nothing uncommon or surprising; but souls are kept, often almost unconsciously, by some truth which guards them. I was, especially by Hebrews 9 and 10. But truth, it is evident (I do not say mere dogma, common to all) he never cared about. He says the English opposition to Romanism was caused by political motives in Henry the Eighth's time, than which nothing can he more unfounded. He burnt people for giving up his Six Articles, which were essentially popish, though he would not accept the pope's supremacy. The Reformation in England was set on foot by Edward VI, as to authority; but by saints, of whom Henry burned many, as to truth.
But I shall show what brought in Protestantism, if it is to be used as a name. I have no doubt there were many defects, and could not but be, in the order that was set up. The mere name is nothing. It came from an act of German Electors at the Diet of Spires protesting against the recess of that Diet, passed only by a majority of votes when they had left, which they held to be illegal. The Reformed are not called Protestants abroad. But Protestantism, used as a popular name, was the protest of the conscience, given energy to by faith, against the most horrible system of iniquity that ever withered and overwhelmed the human conscience. It was not merely negative; there was the positive assertion of common fundamental dogmas (this was the very object of the Confession of Augsburg, because this negative character was charged upon it); and articles were added, which are rejected by Dr. Newman and his party-such as justification by faith, the two sacraments, and other anti-Romanist ones; as the counter doctrine was also maintained in the decrees of the Council of Trent refuting formally this teaching; and, further, the authority of the word of God maintained, of the books of which the Council of Trent has given an undeniably false list.
It was not simply the right of private judgment in the modern sense. The direct responsibility of each conscience to God, as contrasted with the domination of priests, was maintained, and rightly, as between man and man-not the right simply, but the obligation to judge, was maintained; but it was the public confession of positive truth which characterized Protestantism. Each local body framed its own profession of faith. The authority of the word of God was asserted. The right of every man to judge scripture, or have his own thoughts where God has revealed His name, never entered into the thoughts of the Reformers. The right of private judgment, as often now talked of, whether by infidels, who desire it, or Romanists, who condemn it, is essentially and absolutely incompatible with the absolute authority of scripture, which was the Protestant principle. The question was, What was to have authority- scripture, or the clergy and tradition? The duty to judge by scripture was asserted, and rightly. It was the putting away of evil, and the teaching of positive faith, and the authority of the word of God, dogmatically and historically in this order. It broke out, under Luther, by resisting indulgences, the profligate and shameless sale of which was destroying all morality, and even the parochial care of the priests.
I repeat, while truth was promulgated, and Luther's action the fruit of his having learned the truth, the first spring of action was the revolt of the Christian conscience against the state of the professing Christian church. I shall give some account of the state of that church, that it may be seen how far this revolt of conscience was well grounded.
And here I feel I am on painful, and, for any Christian, dangerous ground. It is, and ought to be, painful to rake up evil, especially in that which bears the name of Christ. There is danger of failing in that article of charity, " rejoiceth not in iniquity." I admit, I trust I feel, both the painfulness and the danger. But with the pretensions which are current, and the deceitful statements of morbid imaginations as to the holiness of the Romish body, it becomes necessary that those likely to be deceived should know the truth. Not only is "corruptio optimi pessima corruptio," but the corruption of Rome was in itself worse than any corruption that ever existed. I shall state from authentic sources, and Roman Catholic sources, what the state of things really was, and show how early it began. I have verified the statements in the authorities quoted except two-Mansi's " Councils," being inaccessible to me, and Nic. Clemangis' works not in my library. I have only Hardouin's " Councils," which does not reproduce the document; but there is no doubt it is authentic and correct. I refer to the letter of Pope Alexander V, quoted farther on.
Even in the apostles' days Paul complains that all seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ; Jude, that evil men had crept in unawares, turning the grace of God into lasciviousness. But then there was apostolic power to repress and correct; but Paul knew that after his decease grievous wolves would enter in, yea, that of themselves perverse men would arise. Peter assures us that the time was come for judgment to begin at the house of God.
We have seen that it had become, in the end of the second and in the third century, a common habit for the clergy, under the pretext of purity-unmarried-to live and sleep with unmarried persons, consecrated also to celibacy as above all passion-above that evil matter into which pure souls were descended; for such was the doctrine of these mighty Alexandrians of which Dr. N. was enamored.
Hermas, to whom I referred amongst others, alludes to it thus (the shepherd had commended him to the virgins who were there): " I said, Where shall I tarry? ' They replied, ' Thou shalt sleep with us-as a brother, not as a husband; for thou art our brother, and we are ready henceforth to dwell with thee: for thou art very dear to us.' Howbeit I was ashamed to continue with them. But she that seemed to be chiefest amongst them embraced me, and began to kiss me, and so did the rest. When the evening came on, I would forthwith have gone home; but they withheld me, and suffered me not to depart; therefore I continued with them that night near the same tower; so they spread their linen garments on the ground, and placed me in the middle; nor did they anything else-only prayed."
Origen complains bitterly of the great multitude of Christians who did not trouble themselves about divine things; and if they attended divine service were entirely indifferent to it when there.
I add Cyprian's account (A.D. 251). He is accounting for the Decian persecution, and says it is only too light a chastisement-" exploratio potius quam persecutio videretur." All devoted to increasing their patrimony; no devoted religion in the priests, no upright faithfulness in ministers, no piety in works, no discipline in morals. Men's beards false, women's faces painted, eyes adulterated from what God had made them, their hair falsely colored-cunning frauds to deceive the hearts of the simple. Artful deceit (subdolae voluntatis) in circumventing brethren, marriages with unbelievers, prostituting to Gentiles the members of Christ; not only rash swearing, but perjury too; despising authority with haughty pretension; to speak evil with poisoned lip oneself; mutual discord with pertinacious hatred. Very many bishops, who should be an exhortation and example to others, despising their divinely-committed service (divina procuratione), make themselves agents (procuratores) of secular affairs, leave their see, desert the people, wandering through others' provinces, hunt after markets for gainful traffic, etc. (De Lapsis, 124, Fell's Ox. ed.).
Here is Jerome's account of the clergy (A.D. 394). " It is shameful to have to say, the priests of idols, buffoons, charioteers, harlots, receive inheritance; to the clergy and monks alone it is forbidden by law, and prohibited not by persecutors, but by Christian princes. Nor do I complain of the law, but that we should have deserved it. The cautery is good, but now the worst is that I should need the cautery. The provisions of the law are careful and severe, and yet thus avarice is not restrained. We mock the laws by trustees. The glory of a bishop is to provide for the wants of the poor. The disgrace of all priests is the pursuit of their own wealth. Born in a poor home and in a rustic hut, who could scarcely satisfy my clamorous stomach with millet and the coarsest bread, I now turn up my nose at the finest flour and honey. I know the kinds and names of fishes. I am thoroughly all fait as to what shore shellfish are found on. I discern the provinces birds come from by their savor. I hear, moreover, of the base service of certain to old men and old women without children. They put the chamber-pot beside the bed, take away with their own hand the purulent matter from the stomach, and phlegm of the lungs. They are full of fear at the arrival of the physician, and with trembling lips inquire if the patient is better; and if the old person is a little more vigorous, they are in danger, and pretending falsely joy, the mind, inwardly avaricious, is tortured; for they fear lest they should lose their pains, and compare the living old body to the years of Methuselah." (Epist. ad Nepotianum 52, Vallarsii Ed. 1, 261.)
Drunkenness, Augustine tells us, was universal; the clergy had lent themselves, he tells us, to the evil habits of heathens continuing among Christians, in order to win and keep them. He did not (he was a godly, faithful man), but put it down with danger to himself. (Epp. 22, 29, Ed. Ben.) It had reigned in other places (Ep. 22): he would have had the Africans set an example, but at any rate they should follow it. These are his words in letter 29: " But lest they who preceded us, and permitted, or did not dare prohibit, the manifest crimes of the inexperienced multitude should seem to have some opprobrium cast on them by us, I explained to them by what necessity those things had arisen in the church (getting drunk in church at the martyrs' festivals), namely, that when, after so many persecutions and so vehement, it would be a hindrance, when peace took place, to the crowd of Gentiles desirous of coming to the Christian name, that they were accustomed to pass festal days with their idols in abundance of feasts and drunkenness, nor could easily abstain from these very pernicious and yet very ancient pleasures: it seemed to those of old that they should spare for the time this part of infirmity, and celebrate, not with like sacrilege although with like luxury, other festal days after those which they had relinquished; that now, bound together as they were by the name of Christ, and subjected to the yoke of so great authority, salutary precepts of sobriety would be delivered to them, which, on account of the honor and fear of him who gave them, they would not be able to resist; as to which it was now time that, as those who did not dare deny their being Christians, they should begin to live according to the will of Christ, and that those things which were yielded to them that they might be Christians they should reject now they are so." Many said their fathers were good Christians and did so. However in that place Augustine succeeded. But here is a really holy man, the great light of the west, alleging that they had deliberately let the people be drunk in honor of martyrs, that they might not be so in honor of idols!
Gregory Thaumaturgus instituted saints' festivals to the same end, and Pope Gregory the First gave the same directions as to England. It was the same as to doctrine and worship. The pagans did not attempt, says M. Beugnot (Destruction du Paganisme, 2, 271), to defend their altars against the progress of the worship of the mother of God. They opened to Mary the temples which they had kept shut against Jesus Christ, and avowed themselves conquered. He adds in a note, " Out of a multitude of proofs I shall choose one to show with what facility the worship of Mary swept before it the remains of paganism which yet covered Europe. Notwithstanding the preaching of St. Hilarion, Sicily had remained faithful to the ancient worship. After the Council of Ephesus (which decreed that Mary was the mother of God) we see its eight finest temples become in a very short time churches under the invocation of the virgin. Their temples were," etc., etc. " The annals of every country furnish like testimonies." " In truth," he continues, " they mixed with the adoration of Mary those pagan ideas, those vain practices, those ridiculous superstitions, from which they seemed unable to separate themselves; but the church rejoiced to see them enter within its bosom, because she well knew it would be easy for her, with the help of time, to purify from its alloy a worship which was purity itself." Thus some prudent concessions made temporarily to pagan habits, and the influence exercised by the worship of the virgin-such were the two elements of force made use of by the church to conquer the resistance of the last pagans.
It was the system. The Romans were passionately fond of festivals and processions. The Saturnalia and other feasts were at the end of December. Christmas was fixed there; the Lupercalia in the end of January. It was a feast of purification. The purification of the Virgin Mary was fixed there. St. Peter de Vinculis replaced Augustus Caesar, and so of many others. See Beugnot, 2, 263, etc., where the concessions to pagan usages are enlarged on and justified. It is difficult to do this when they sanctified drunkenness by dedicating it to martyrs instead of demigods. M. Beugnot admits that their martyrs' festivals were a very large concession made to ancient manners, for all that passed while they lasted was little edifying! It was that system Vigilantius attacked and Jerome defended. Christians went to the heathen feasts, as Augustine, Chrysostom, and many others testify; they resisted, as in the case of Pope Gelasius and others, and when paganism fell, and the populations entered in crowds, they gave them Christian festivals, so-called, to replace the heathen ones. It was a whole system.
I may take the passage I have referred to in Gregory Thaumaturgus' life by Gregory Nyssen, as describing it in the case of the former. I shall be excused these long quotations. It is the establishment of an immense system, paganizing Christianity, first in doctrines in Alexandria, then in ceremonies everywhere." But when, with the divine help, that tyranny had been overthrown, and peace had again accepted human life, service towards God, which lay before them, was free to every one according to his ability; descending again to the city, and going round the whole district in a circle, he made an appendage for the people everywhere to their divine service. Having instituted the general assemblies for those who had been in the combat of faith, and, as they had taken away different persons to different places, the bodies of the martyrs, going round in a procession, they celebrated festivities in a yearly anniversary, holding a general assembly to the honor of the martyrs. For indeed this was a demonstration of his great wisdom, that, remodeling to a new life in a mass the whole generation of his day, set as a charioteer to nature, submitting them securely to the reins of faith and the knowledge of God, he allowed what was subject to the yoke of faith to caper a little in enjoyment. For perceiving that the childish and uninstructed mind of the many remained, through bodily hilarity and enjoyments, in the error of idols, that the principal thing with them should be specially set right, their looking to God instead of vain objects for worship, he allowed them to make merry at the memories (tombs or places consecrated to them) of the martyrs, and to enjoy themselves, and to celebrate festivities, that some time or other their life might be changed to what was more seemly and exact." It is said he only left seventeen heathen at his death.
But how opposite to the blessed delivering power of the Spirit, as seen in scripture! How does it come under the apostle's word, " But now after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain." This part of the history gives the decay in doctrine and spiritual state, till on the fall of paganism its ceremonies and feasts were deliberately transferred to the nominal church. Many went on with their heathenism. This was condemned by the hierarchical authorities, but long persevered in. Gregory I condemns it in England, but directs, as Gregory Thaumaturgus did, similar feasts among the professing mass that had been brought in, to keep their fleshly minds contented. This was the primitive church, ante-Nicene and post-Nicene. From this we pass gradually into the medieval. It was a space of nine hundred years, dark, confessedly dark; but we must leave it. Its result was what gave occasion to Protestantism. I shall examine the church, and afterward the history of the popes. We shall see how far holiness, the alleged note of the church, can be found.
In 953, 931-974, Ratherius, bishop of Verona and Liege, charges the clergy with corrupt avarice and universal incontinency; the popes themselves many times married, a warrior, perjurer, heretic, gambler, and drunkard-such a shame to the whole church could not be a rebuker of others. He says in his Itinerary (Fleury, 12, 193) he held a synod to correct this, but the clergy kept none of the canons; the synods he held were to maintain the canons. There were bigamists, concubine-keepers, conspirators, perjurers, drunkards, usurers. The cause of the ruin of all the people, he says, is the clergy. The ignorance of the clergy was excessive; he says they must learn the three creeds, and be able to read the Gospel and certain services. No one, he says, was fit to be made a bishop, or to consecrate one. They would not give up their incontinency, and counted the rest for nothing. The Italian clergy despise the canons the most, because they are the most given to impudicity, and minister to this vice by ragouts and excess of wine (Dupin, vol. 8, 19, etc. Fleury 5o, loo, from D'Achery and Mabillon). He may have been said to be ruthless and violent. The Benedictines defend him. Damianus, a great friend of Hildebrand (Gregory VII), the strictest of monks, re-establisher, if not inventor, of the Flagellators (self-scourgers), the able champion of Rome against the emperor, the reducer of Milan (till then independent) to subjection to the pope, given up to devotion to Mary, who gave up his cardinalate and see, to the great pain and offense of Hildebrand, out of piety, in a book entitled "Liber Gomorrhianus," the name of which betrays its import, addressed to the pope, complains of the way in which the clergy were given up to such crimes, it being alleged they could not depose them for it, as people must have the sacraments: they committed them, we read, with their own children-I apprehend, those who came to confession. Pope Leo approved the book. His letter of recommendation is prefixed to it. Damianus refers to canons which gave trifling penances for fornication; if even with a nun, and habitually, five years' penances. (These canons he alleged to be forged, or of uncertain authority, though amongst the canons.) Damianus demanded the deposition of those guilty of these things. The pope answers, they deserved by the canons to be deposed, but out of clemency he would depose only the most immoral. On which Fleury remarks, " which leads us to suppose that the numbers of the guilty were too great to treat them with rigor." The next pope, Alexander II, got the book, and hid it, of which Damianus complains bitterly. In the Romish council of 1059 he wished them to take it up, but it was refused, as likely to produce scandal. (Fleury, 12, 532; Dupin.)
Already in 888, in two councils (Mogunt. et Metens. Hardouin, vol. 6), the clergy are forbidden to have a mother or sister in the house, though it had been allowed. In the latter case examples of vice had given occasion to it (Conc. Mog. cap. to). Renolf of Soissons gave like orders (889). In the council of Aenamhense (1009), connection with women is forbidden; but it is added (101), " but it is worse that some should have two or more, and (nonnullus) such an one, although he had sent her off whom he lately had, during her life should marry another."
In the time of Gregory VI (1045) Rome was full of assassins and robbers, says Fleury, quoting William of Malmesbury. They drew the sword even at the altar and the tombs of the apostles, to carry off the offerings as soon as they were put there, and use them for feasts and to maintain corrupt women. He exhorted, excommunicated in vain, and at last seized St. Peter's to begin, and drove away or killed those who were stealing the offerings.
In 910 and 927-941 Clugny (that is, the reformation of the monks) began. Before, in the confusion of the empire, laymen, women, had the monasteries as inheritances; abbots had their wives-as Campo, who had seven daughters and three sons, and his second, Hildebrand, and all their monks. Yet, in the well-known discourse of Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, he says, the whole Christian people, from the least to the greatest, had conspired against God. It is not the time to say, As the people, so the priest: for the people are not even as the priest is. They are ministers of Christ, but serve Antichrist. All that remains is, that this man of sin should be revealed. (Sermon on conversion of Paul.)
Pope Benedict VIII rages against the licentiousness of the clergy (forbidding marriage), but more because the clergy, who were serfs, had children by free women, and the church lost her property in serfs. Still, he declares, in language which I do not transfer to these pages, the universal and open profligacy of the clergy, more shameless than the laity, between the years 1012 and 1014 (Hardouin, 6).
It was at this epoch that the prohibition to the clergy to marry was rigidly enforced, and, as is known, by Hildebrand.
The wives were treated as concubines by the popes; but they were married, and openly, with ordinary solemnities very often. In England, it appears, few were not, but the kings made them pay for it (Hard. Conc. Lon. 7, 1147). Lanfranc allowed it: later, Anselm raged against it. It shows the state of Christendom, that many of the synods forbid the children born of the priests inheriting their cures. They gave them as portions even to their daughters. Paschal, pope, died 1118, ordered men on their death-beds to receive the sacrament from them, rather than from none; and that their sons should be admitted to the priesthood in England, as almost the major part of the clergy, and the better part, were in this case (Paschal's letter in Hard. 7, 1804-1807). That the bishops took money for allowing the priests to live with women is recognized (Conc. Lat. 114, Hard. 8, 31), and in the Constitutions of Canterbury, where it is said, as spiritual judgments did not hinder the evil of concubinage, they were to be mulcted in their benefices.
Decrees as to this may be found in Hardouin from 1217 to 1302; the canons of Conc. Lat. 4, 1215, enforced by Edmund, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1236, Hard. 8, 1236. In the canon law (Distinct. 81, 100, 6) it is said, that a clergyman convicted of having begotten children in the presbytery is to be deposed. The gloss on this is-But it is generally said, that a clergyman is not to be deposed for simple fornication, because few can be found without that sin.
The literature of these ages teems with the bitterest reproaches against the clergy, as setting an example of simony, money-getting (one was alleged to have five hundred benefices), and licentious morals, brawls in taverns, unnatural crimes, impossible to be quoted, increased by a prohibition to marry, a measure not however fully carried into effect for two centuries, and long resisted in the north, as in England, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the people often insisting that the priest should have a wife. Pope Alexander IV (as quoted, it is not in Hardouin, and I have not access to Mansi) admits the evil state of things in 1258. " So a drowsiness of deadly carelessness seems in the greater part to have oppressed the vigilance of pastoral life, which we say, groaning, as the too great corruption of Christian people crying out from many regions testifies; which, when it ought to be cured by the remedies of a sacerdotal antidote, alas! grows greater by the contagion of evils, which proceeds from the clergy, so that it should be anywhere true what the prophetic complaint bears witness to, saying, As the people is become, so the priest."
I may now go on to a later state of things. The bishops received money regularly to allow the priests to keep women. This was forbidden by the Council of Paris, 1429 (c, 23, Hard., vol. 9, Derlusanum (Tortosa), 1429, loo, 2; the council of Basle, session 20, c, 1). But it is said, it was again authorized by a local council of Breslau, that they were to put them away under a penalty of ten florins. I have not the German local councils to verify the quotation in this case.
Later again, W. F. Picus, Lord of Mirandola, that is, the nephew of the famous Pic de Mirandola (as quoted in a literal extract which I cannot verify, not possessing his works) says, that priests left the natural use of women, and good boys were given up to them by their parents, and, when grown older, then were made priests of. I give it literally, only in Latin: " Ab illis (sacerdotibus) etiam (proh pudor) faeminx abiguntur ad eorum libidines explendas, et meritorii pueri a parentibus commendantur et condonantur his, qui ab omni corporis etiam concessa voluptate sese immaculatos custodire deberent. Hi postea ad sacerdotiorum gradus promoventur mtatis fl ore transacto jam exoleti." This was an address to Pope Leo in 1517, the year Luther began the Reformation.
The receiving of money by bishops for priests' concubines was evidently general; complained of in Constance, written against by authors. Theodorich, Archbishop of Cologne, ordered them to be dismissed, and then took money from the priests for it. In the council of Paris, already quoted from Hardouin, they complain, that because of the concubinage of the clergy, with which many ecclesiastical and religious men (secular clergy and monks) are infected, the church of God and the whole clergy are held in derision, abomination, and reproach by everybody, and that most iniquitous crime has so prevailed in the church of God, that Christians do not now believe simple fornication to be a sin. These testimonies may be multiplied ad libitum.
I go on now to what preceded the Council of Pisa, a council that is a great trouble to Roman Catholics, as I may show farther on. Clemangis was rector of the University of Paris, the most famous then in the world, the correspondent of popes and kings, earnestly seeking the healing of the schism; for there were two popes then. This led to their using all possible means to make money, provisions, annates, tenths, exacting in every shape and every way, giving a right to their favorites to a living, whoever had a right to present to it. He declares that many of the clergy did not know their A B C. He attacks the cardinals for their pride and insolence; though drawn from the lowest ranks of the clergy, they had up to about five hundred benefices. He says, " he is not willing (non volo) to enumerate their adulteries, rapts (stupra), fornications, by which they pollute the Roman court, nor relate the most obscene life of their family-nothing inconsistent, however, with the morals of their masters." The oppression of the bishops was intolerable: if any ecclesiastic was put in prison for any great crime, on payment of a certain sum he came out as white as snow. He complains of the bishops, as we have seen they did, making the clergy compound for keeping a concubine. " If any now is lazy, if any one hates to work, he flies to the priesthood. As soon as he has attained to it, they diligently frequent brothels and taverns, and spend their time drinking, eating, dining, supping, playing at dice and games, gorged and drunken; they fight, cry out, make riots, execrate the name of God and His saints with their most polluted lips. Sicque tandem compositi, ex meretricum suarum complexibus ad divinum altare veniunt." This was a common complaint. " The bishops," he says, " go to court; perhaps they were better away, for what could they profit by their presence, who at the utmost enter the church two or three times a year; who pass whole days in falconry and the chase, who eat most exquisite feasts, in shouting and dances, and pass their nights with girls and effeminate persons; who drag, by a base example, the flock by crooked paths on to the precipice," etc. Were the monks and councils better? They are Pharisees, false doctors, the ravening wolves spoken of in scripture; he calls the nunneries brothels of Venus. To make a girl take the veil is to give her up to prostitution. All that Dupin ventures to say as to this last is, that he describes it in very strong terms, and apparently too violent (outres).
Clemangis admits that there are exceptions to this state of the clergy, but that the majority are such. Now, I do not doubt a moment that there were godly men who shrunk away from all this iniquity, and sought communion with God, some persecuted, some not; and communities of another character, not under vows, as the brethren of the common doctrine, Groot, Thomas a Kempis, and many others, whose schools merged in the light of the Reformation. But this is the character of the so-called Holy Catholic Apostolic Church. Christian conscience, yea, natural conscience, was weary of the wickedness.
I shall be told that the doctrine of the church was holy. Dr. Milner, a standard book in England, tells us, that there is the doctrine of holiness, the means of holiness, the fruits of holiness, the divine testimony of holiness. That the church itself was holy he does not attempt to show; he speaks of individuals, a number of persons, who have given their names to churches as saints, and besides that, it was certain, there have been a countless number. As to sanctity of doctrine, he speaks of the Trinity and the Incarnation, etc., most holy doctrines surely, but not doctrines about holiness. He identifies justification and sanctity, saying, " the efficient cause of justification or sanctity "-the principal and most efficient means being the sacraments, and then her public service. The attestation of sanctity is miracles.
Now, there is not an attempt to say that the church is holy; in fact, I do not admit the doctrines of Rome to be holy. It is not holy to confound sanctity and justification; it is not holy to make sacraments the principal means, leaving out the word and Spirit of God, to which Christ and His apostles directly ascribe sanctification. It is not holy, it is Manicheism, to make holiness, and a holiness necessary to the clergy, by a prohibition to marry. It was the most unholy and wicked doctrine, against which the apostle warns us as a doctrine of devils, the fruit of a conscience seared with a hot iron. The fruits of it have been produced. They characterized the church.
If a man can devote himself to the Lord, body, soul, and spirit, without a snare to himself, be it so. It is a grace and gift from God. But the moment you forbid to marry, you are on Manichean and Gnostic ground. It is urged, in order to defend Rome, that the passages in Paul's Epistle to Timothy apply to Gnostics. I admit it. They held that matter was a bad thing, hence that Christ had no material body, and other extravagances of every kind; but as a way or means of holiness, they taught abstinence from women. This was the doctrine of the Alexandrian school Dr. N. admires. They were infected with it. The Albigenses, the medieval fruit of Gnosticism in Christendom, constantly practiced it; their perfect, or bonshommes, did not eat meat, nor have to say to women.
The Roman Catholic church taught holiness in this way, and of this kind. Their doctrine was unholy; what the fruits of it were we have seen. Further, the doctrine of indulgences was a horribly unholy doctrine. We are told it is only the remission of the temporal punishment of sin. But if a man died with the sacraments, he never could have any other. It was purgatory that was feared. A good Catholic has nothing else to fear; besides, the ignorant masses were not so nice as to this. The terror of sin was on their consciences, and the Roman church helped them to get rid of this terror; not by Christ's blood for the repentant, known by faith, and therefore purifying; not by having their soul restored by the operation of the Spirit of God; but by pardons bought with money. It was used to build and adorn churches, farmed out to bankers. A money tariff was made for sins, or the commutations of them, and years, thousands of years, of purgatory avoided by paying money. It was a traffic of sin-security as to future sins too. The nominal church had returned to pagan vices, as Paul foretold it would. (Compare Rom. 1 and 2 Tim. 3.) The difference was this: corruption had its way in paganism; it was horrible as horrible could be. But Papal Rome systematized it, and made a tariff for sin. Not in the known world, that I am aware of, has there been iniquity like this-a tariff made for sin! Can Dr. N. be surprised that there arose a protest against it? that there were Protestants? The word of God was brought out; no one can deny it. Old truths were maintained, and justification by faith preached. Truth was preached. That man's will, long suppressed, broke out; that the church was not set up as at the beginning, I admit; that a vast mass of Protestantism has fallen into infidelity, alas! I do not deny, though in Germany there is a strong reaction, and it is far more the case among cultivated Roman Catholics: only they do not publish it, as in Germany. But a protest against Rome could not have been delayed. It had been going on at Pisa, at Basle, at Constance, by legal attempts, by the centum gravamina, by the complaints of Bernard and Wessalas, and holy men of times previous to the Reformation. All the difference was, that God then raised up men of sufficient faith to brave the pope; whereas previously the reformation had been left to the popes, and all was worse than ever.
I admit and feel that it is dismal work going over all this wickedness; and I have still to pursue the task. If we pursue the study of the truth, it nourishes and sanctifies. We are occupied with unseen things; but as the imagination of men is sought to be filled with an idea of the holy Catholic church, it is needful to turn to the facts, that one may know that what is called the Catholic church was the unholiest thing in the world-that it had extinguished the truth, put to death the saints, and corrupted morals, till it became intolerable. Satan was not allowed to set aside the dogmatic foundation of the evidence of a divine Savior, as in the mass of the population in the East by Mahometanism; so that still I do not the least doubt many unknown pious souls were found, and some known, however dark in knowledge, as Bernard; but these felt the evil. As Bernard said, it only remained for Antichrist to come. My object here is not to go through the Roman Catholic controversy: when God's word is believed, it is very simple. Heb. 9 and 10 suffice to prove it apostate in its central doctrine. I believe it false in all that distinguishes it. Its pretension to catholicity is absurd, as probably the majority of Christendom, and certainly the most ancient churches, are outside its pale. Unity hence fails in its first element. There is no external unity now. Nor was there in the Roman body in former times. The great modern doctrine of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary was denied by the most powerful body in the Roman system, the Dominicans. The prince Archbishop of Breslau left that system not long ago because of its being papally decreed. Transubstantiation was only decreed in 1215, having been rejected by the best of the fathers and doctors for centuries: the contrary doctrines were used earnestly by them against the Eutychians. Whatever apostolic succession is worth, it is far more elsewhere than at Rome. But I cannot enter now into all these questions. I am accounting for the Protestantism which Dr. N. hated.
It will be alleged that there was individual sanctity. Now that there were God's hidden ones in all times I cannot doubt a moment. And if the character of their holiness showed want of scriptural light, it was not necessarily the less sincere. Still it is beyond all question that the universal unholiness of the professing world, and especially of the priests, and the idolatry prevalent in Christendom, exposed those whose consciences were oppressed by what was all around them to fall into the snares laid for them by Satan in the shape of false doctrine. The effect of this was, that Christendom was composed of, first, unholy, iniquitous, and persecuting orthodoxy (a few souls groaning under the state of things, such as Bernard, who said, All that remained was for Antichrist to come; and others, that he was born already at Rome); secondly, of a vast number (for they filled the country from Asia to Spain) who had fallen into Manichean notions, and sought holiness by judging all matter as itself unholy, but whose devoted and blameless walk won the conscience of the population, till they were put down by fire and sword; and thirdly, of a number- whose doctrines it is hard to discover-whose constancy and blameless walk astonished conscientious men; and lastly, of others who were counted only schismatics, whose only fault was that they could not own the corruption which reigned around them. One class or another of these was spread all over Europe. It is a sad history; for they were all hunted as wild beasts all over the country, burned and tortured, and it is often hard to ascertain what they really did hold. The inquisition was invented for putting them down. Of one large class, Albigenses and Waldenses (of whom the former, I suppose, were, as to their leaders at any rate, more or less Manichean), the judgments at Toulouse may be found in the end of Limborch's History of the Inquisition, other notices in many popular books, and a good deal of research as to them collected in a note to Elliott's Horse Apocalypticce. Of the Moravians, before they were driven out of Bohemia and Moravia, the best account is a German work- History of the Bohemian Brethren by Gindely. Prague, 1857.
But I must add a few words as to the character of the holiness that was introduced as the church declined, and when it had lost its first love and true Christian holiness of walk. We have seen, by contemporary statements of Cyprian, Jerome, Augustine, that this was the case, and dreadfully so. I now only notice the character of what was substituted. It was at a time (and it is not without importance to note it) when Jerome complains bitterly that there was no need to make laws against heathen priests and deceivers, but that there was against Christian priests besetting the sick-beds of old persons in order to get their inheritance. A new kind of sanctity was introduced -devotedness to the saints, monastic habits of life, celibacy, etc. Jerome, Paulinus of Nola, and Martin of Tours, were the great promoters of this. Sulpicius Severus gives us the history of the last, Jerome and Paulinus furnish us with their own history; but it was a spurious holiness, false miracles and wonders, accompanied with drunkenness and violent tempers. No one can deny that the men I have named were the types and promoters of this kind of devotion.
Let us see some of the historical characteristics of it. First, as to Martin of Tours, the apostle of Gaul, he lay on ashes, as he was, for his bed, and covered with a sack and the like; and when he put his foot out of the cell to go a couple of miles to church, all the possessed in the church showed he was coming, though in different ways, so that the clergy learned thus he was coming. " I saw " (I quote from Sulp. Sev. Dialogs 3, 6) " one caught up into the air as Martin was coming-suspended on high, with his hands stretched out, his feet unable to touch the ground: Martin prayed prostrate in sackcloth and ashes. Then you might see the unhappy men cleansed by their going out in different ways; these, their feet being carried up on high, hang as if from a cloud, and yet their garments fall not down over their face, lest the naked part of their bodies should put people to shame." So in Egypt. Two friends went to see one of the Anchorites. An enormous lioness came and sought him, and they all followed her. She took them to a cave, and they saw what was the matter: five cubs were all blind. The Anchorite stroked their eyes, and they saw. Soon after the lioness brought a skin of some rare wild beast-how acquired we do not learn-and brought it to the Anchorite, and he took it and wore it (Dialog I, 9). Another lived up in Mount Sinai, naked; and, when at last seen, he said, He who was visited by men, could not be by angels. Martin met a furious cow that had gored several. She was rushing at him. He told her to stand, and she did; and then saw a devil on her back, and ordered him off; and he went, and the cow was quiet. Nor was that all. The cow knew very well what had happened, and came and knelt down before Martin, then, on Martin's order, went and found the herd (Dialog 2, 9). He was most familiar with demons; knew when it was Jupiter, when Mercury, who was the most troublesome of all, and specially when he had the saints with him. When Sulpicius Severus went to see him, all was harmony, and Martin was talking, and women's voices within, for two hours, while Sulpicius and Gallus were outside. This turned out, as he told them after he came out covered with ashes and filth, to be Agnes, and Thecla, and Mary: often Martin said Peter and Paul: but then all of a sudden a whole lot of devils came, Martin denouncing them by their names. Jove, he said, was a brute, and stupid (brutum et hebetum). Alas! they beset his dying bed (Letter 3 to Bassula). " Why are you standing there, bloody beast? " he said; " thou shalt find nothing, 0 fatal one, in me; the bosom of Abraham has received me "; and so expired. Yet he had promised pardon to the devil if he repented. The devil was accusing some monks who had sinned after baptism. Martin replied that crimes were purged by the conversation of a better life, and God would pardon; and then said to the devil, if he, as judgment-day was near, even then left off following after men, and repented of his deeds, he himself, trusting in the Lord, promised him the mercy of Christ. I might multiply all kinds of stories; but this surely is enough. He died in 402, or thereabouts. When he dined with the Emperor, he gave the cup to the presbyter first, as superior to him; such was the lowliness of the ascetic worker of miracles (Life, 23).
This was the kind of sanctity now introduced. Paulinus' was specially shown in honoring St. Felix. He had festivals in honor of his saint. But, alas! as we have seen, this change to honoring saints instead of heathen demigods, thus systematically established, did not change the habits. He deplores the votaries honoring the saints with drinking bouts. Verum utinam sanis agerent hoc gaudia votis, nec sua liminibus miscerent pocula sanctis (Natalis, 9). So elsewhere. He adds, he has covered St. Felix's house with holy pictures; that the gaper may drink in sobriety, and forget too much wine. He implores the aid of St. Felix directly, not even his intercession, for sickness and a bad eye; he calls himself him that is thine; he seems to make the saints particularly efficacious wherever a part of their body was. This is the holiness Baronius compares with Protestantism (394, 93).
As to St. Jerome, it is impossible to have a more eloquent description of Romish holiness than the efforts of the excellent Tillemont to keep poor Jerome's name among the saints. He sought to overcome his nature, I dare say. He fasted excessively, lived in grime and filth, did everything possible to subdue flesh by flesh's efforts; but nature is not overcome thus. Tillemont declares that he was very little exact in stating things as they were, following more his own ideas than the truth. These, however, he says, are the defects of a great genius. But he did not weigh what he said, and, which is more to be regretted, attacked St. Chrysostom; indeed, whoever he had as an adversary was the basest of men: he had too great an idea of his eloquence, shows it, was naturally jealous and envious, so as to wound his greatest friends and alienate them. It is hard not to recognize that he had in his natural character a sourness and bitterness which pained many. He was soon on fire when offended, and did not easily pardon. Are we to say, he asks, if so many saints who have admired him, and the church who honors him amongst its saints and doctors, have been deluded-a humble son of the church cannot say that- St. Ambrose, St. Chrysostom, St. Augustine are excellent models of a perfect virtue to animate us to imitate them? But others have had great sins, as David. We may say even that the defects of Jerome are useful, as teaching us what the substance (le fond) of virtue and Christian piety is. For if it consisted in an even and uniform life, in which few faults are committed, one would have to prefer Rufinus to him. But the church leaves him to God's judgment, and has always had the greatest respect for Jerome. Not the services he has rendered the church by his labors; these are not virtues. Tillemont can see that in his case his austerities would not do. Doubtless, he says, they were very useful to him (which his own account, by the bye, does not show, though I do not question their sincerity in seeking to maintain incorruptness in celibacy, which he held the highest of virtues), yet, if we had nothing else to praise in him, we should have reason to fear they had rendered him proud, and had been the cause of that severe and critical spirit which some have blamed in him. He then shows what he thinks proof of what constitutes a saint: first, his love of his solitary life and poverty, though he could have enjoyed the favor of Pope Damasus and the wealth of Saint Marcella and Saint Paula, two rich women who admired him greatly; and his fleeing those who honored him- humility which was shown in not exercising the functions of priest, for which he had been brought up; his eleemosynary charity and laborious service for others, when he might have been glad to be writing; he hopes his anger against his heretical adversaries, and certainly his conduct in exalting St. Augustine, when he might have seemed a competitor, the more so as he had quarreled with him. Such is Tillemont's kindly and gracious excuse for what he was obliged to tell in his history; for in fact Jerome's language, particularly against those who deprecated monkish sanctity, saint and image worship, was regular Billingsgate; for this is really the only word to describe it by. Tillemont then makes a saint of him in these words. The scripture does not call him alone happy who is without spot and does not sin; but, moreover, him to whom God does not impute sin, because he hates it by a pure and sincere love of righteousness, and that he covers it by the nuptial robe of charity, which covers a multitude of sins-a deep and deadly error, arising from a confusion of Proverbs 10:12, quoted by Peter, and Psa. 32:1. I believe, as to God's government in the church, fervent charity may keep many sins out of sight by Christian forgiveness so as not to come before God for present judgment; but to confound it with Psa. 32, quoted in Rom. 4, is a denial of the gospel and the truth, but the foundation of Romish righteousness and sanctity, even in the hands of the very respectable Tillemont.
Another painful question may be asked-Why bring all this failure up, if things are changed? Is there such vice now? In the first place I reply in the inquiry, Has the Romish body the " note of holiness "? The facts are everything. It certainly has not. But I must answer. There is no doubt that the light and spiritual energy of the Reformation caused a certain amelioration in Rome; but I still must say, that where the action of this is not directly felt, it is not changed. Mr. Froude, whose hard-riding imagination had made a picture of medieval holiness, as we learn, was checked by the degeneracy he found in Italy. We have seen what they degenerated from. I have known a good deal by personal experience in several countries, and a good deal more by that of others; and I believe that in principle and practice there is no change, though there may be more concealment.
It is thought infidelity is found among Protestants especially. It is a mistake: more, I believe, in the bosom of what is called Catholicism; but not published, as among those called Protestants. Go to France and Italy, and see the state of men, in towns especially.
I turn to the popes, to see what their history affords as a stay to the soul, or if it were a cause of righteous revolt. The absence of the emperors from Rome, and their presence at Constantinople, made the episcopate of Rome a post of great importance and political power. Its ecclesiastical jurisdiction was really comparatively small. It was respected as the see of the capital, and had a primary rank-if worldly rank is to be looked for in Christ-which Constantinople contested with it as the new capital. But Augustine, the great western doctor, and the African council, forbade appeals to Rome as intolerable. But I confine myself here to their history, that we may have what we are called to look upon as infallible, as commanding our respect and submission as holy, as of God.
Already, in the fourth century, intrigues for the possession of papal power became a source of public trouble. In 366 Pope Liberius died, and contests for the see began. Damasus was elected by a majority, Ursicinus by a large party, both being consecrated bishops of Rome. The Emperor banished Ursicinus; but his partisans met in the churches they possessed, and refused communion with Damasus. The Emperor took away the churches. They met outside Rome, and were banished the country. In the dispute the parties fought for victory, and a vast number of Christians were killed, even in the churches.
But the origin of the violent feud is more important than the feud itself. The Emperor Constans was an Arian persecutor. Liberius had condemned Athanasius, and communicated with the Arians. When called on to subscribe an Arian creed, it appears he repented, and recalled his condemnation. The Emperor summoned a council at Arles, where the legates of Liberius signed a semi-Arian creed. Afterward, at the Council of Milan, hesitating, he was banished, and Felix consecrated pope by an Arian minority. Rome murmured, and Liberius was restored, after three years' exile, but signed an Arian creed; and there were two popes-one said to be really Arian, and in communion with Arians who had made him pope; the other, who had signed an Arian creed against his conscience. Felix was driven out by the people, who favored Liberius, though the clergy had mainly submitted to Felix. Liberius wrote to the Eastern bishops, who had condemned Athanasius, to declare his agreement with them, and that he never agreed with Athanasius. Hosius, of Cordova, the president of the Council of Nice which condemned Arius, had given way to the Emperor before Liberius. Felix is counted among the popes as Felix II. Damasus was of the Felix party, and hence the riots. It is stated that in the riots about Felix, which were very great, many were killed; that there were real massacres in baths, streets, and churches, of laity and clergy who favored Felix; but there is some obscurity as to the history. (Bar., anno 357, Tillemont, vol. 6; Hilarii P. Fragmenta,fp. 1335, where he interrupts his history, or rather Liberius' letter to the Eastern bishops, and turns to anathematize Liberius.) Efforts have been made to screen Liberius, by questioning what Sirmian creed he adopted. So Baronius. But, if we are to trust Hilary, there can be no mistake as to his Arianism; nor does Tillemont nor Dupin defend him from this accusation, nor Jerome either.
Zosimus became pope in 417. He formally approved Pelagianism. The synod at Lydda accepted Pelagius' confession of faith. Augustine and the African bishops had condemned him. Zosimus reproves them sharply. The African churches met in 418; Pelagius was condemned and anathematized; and they add, if any one presumed to appeal beyond sea, no one was to receive him into communion. There is as to what follows some conflict of dates; but a decree of the Emperor Honorius was obtained, Pelagius and Caelestius banished from Rome, and Zosimus now condemned what he had approved, and cut them both off from communion. On the death of Zosimus (418), two popes, Boniface and Eulalius, were elected. Boniface attempted to maintain his place by force. The prefect kept the peace, and reported in favor of Eulalius to the Emperor Honorius. Honorius confirmed Eulalius, and banished Boniface from the city. Boniface maintained his ground outside, and his partisans appealed to Honorius. The Emperor cited both before him. The prefect told him neither could be trusted in their statements. Difficulties arose in the decision. Honorius forbade both to go into the city, and sent a bishop for the Easter ceremonies. However, Eulalius went in. His adherents were unarmed. Boniface's, who were of the populace, made a violent attack, and the prefect hardly escaped. But Honorius, glad to terminate the matter, condemned Eulalius for going in, and appointed Boniface. Eulalius was driven out of the city by force. (Baronius' Annals, 419.)
It was about this time that the popes alleged forged canons of the Council of Nice to maintain their authority in Africa. The African bishops had the records of Constantinople, Antioch, and Alexandria, besides their own, searched; found they were forged, and refused to submit, reproving Pope Celestine, and denying his right to send his legate a latere. These appeals of evil persons the popes were constantly receiving as a means of establishing their authority. (Hardouin's Councils, I, 934, Prohibition to Appeal, Can. 125, Letters to Pope Boniface, 939, and to Celestine, 947.) The letter to Celestine is very strong indeed, Faustinus, the legate's mission, being wholly rejected.
The fifth general council condemned three chapters of the fourth. Pope Vigilius, who was at Constantinople, had demanded the council called the fifth; then objected to it, and would not assist; was exiled by the Emperor, published a constitution condemning the chapters, saying that he did not condemn the council of Chalcedon (the fourth), on whose authority they rested. The Romans wished him back. The Emperor agreed, and said they might have him or Archdeacon Pelagius for pope, or the latter after Vigilius. They wished Vigilius, and said they would take Pelagius afterward, as he prescribed to them, and the Emperor let him go, on his confirming the council which condemned the three chapters. He died in Sicily on the way. Pelagius, who was suspected of poisoning him, succeeded him, publicly declaring however his innocence. Vigilius himself had climbed over the wall into the Papacy, Belisarius having, by the empress's orders, sent off Pope Silverius, who would not submit to the Emperor's theology, and put in Vigilius. Silverius however returned. Belisarius gave him up to Vigilius, who sent him to the island Palmaria, in guard, where he died. (Fleury, 537-558; vol. 7, 356, 482.) Baronius (sub an. 538) counts Silverius pope till his death. Vigilius had promised two hundred pounds of gold to Belisarius, and would not pay it. Pelagius' own election was very uncertain. Vigilius had at first condemned the three chapters in his judicatum. Thereupon the Roman clergy separated from him. The Africans excommunicated him. He, seeing he had condemned thus a general council to please the Emperor, and that the clergy turned against him, retracted; but meanwhile, it seems (Conf. Pagi ad Bar. 555, 8, note), the Roman clergy elected Pelagius. Then Vigilius yielded, and got into favor again, and the Emperor told the Romans they might have which they liked, and Pelagius, who came back with Vigilius from Constantinople, certainly joined in ill-treating him. Baronius says, no day or month is named when he succeeded, and complains bitterly of all this. Vigilius had condemned the council of Chalcedon, and written to the three other patriarchs (who were heretics according to it), anathematized the doctrines of the council of Chalcedon and Pope Leo in his famous letter, adopted by it, and renounced communion with those who defended it. Baronius denies the authenticity of these letters; but Pagi and Fleury both admit they are genuine. Silverius was really murdered by want and starvation. " He died of hunger," says Fleury; and indeed all historians remark that Vigilius was chosen pope when Silverius was alive, and never afterward. Baronius tries to get out of it by supposing Vigilius was re-elected after Silverius' death; but it is merely because it ought to be. Silverius was son of Pope Hormisdas. (Fleury, and Baronius, 53, 12o.) Vigilius ordained eighty-one bishops.
Pope Honorius was condemned as a heretic by the sixth aecumenical council. Baronius laboriously seeks to prove that Theodoret did it, and left his own name out, and put Honorius' in; but Pagi, his annotator, has, in very few words and by facts, shown the absurdity of his attempt. Pope Adrian II refers to it, and says heresy was the only ground for thus resisting such a superior authority. He was anathematized also by Pope Leo II. (See Fleury, 40, 28. For the acts of the council, see Hardouin; quoted in Baronius and Fleury.)
Symmachus and Laurentius contended for the Papacy (498). It was a violently contested matter. Both were ordained pope the same day, and they appealed to Theodoric at Ravenna, Gothic king, an Arian, to decide. As most were for Symmachus, he was to be pope. He was accused of all sorts of crimes, and never was cleared. There was fighting in the streets for a length of time, and many killed and wounded. The only godly man we hear of was on the other side. Symmachus made regulations to hinder these contests-in vain, however; for men will be ambitious. The clergy had in other cases sold all the church's goods, and even the vessels of service, by auction, for pushing their candidates; so that it had been forbidden by rescripts and laws of the senate; and after Vigilius' election, more than 3,000 solidi were not to be paid at court after an election for the royal confirmation, etc., for a pope; 2,000 for a metropolitan. This was in 532. The king wrote to John, the new pope, recalling a decree of the senate in the previous pope's time, and allowing his officers to take so much. (Fleury, book 7, 625).
The history of the papal influence was this-when there were emperors, they ruled; but the pope's influence was growing ecclesiastically, though often resisted. When the empire fell, they were the chief influence (except the Arian Goths in Italy), and did pretty freely what they pleased, increasing in power in respect of Constantinople. However the Gothic kings confirmed them, and interfered, and were appealed to, as we have seen. When for a time the eastern empire reconquered Italy, the popes were servile and submissive to the emperors; they could not help it. When these were driven out again, they were oppressed by Lombards, but established in Rome by the Franks, Charlemagne however fully holding his own, and ruling at Rome. When the succeeding Carlovingian emperors were weak and divided, their power grew. Powerful emperors contended for the right of confirmation of popes and local investiture of prelates; and the history of the middle ages is the history of this conflict, the popes raising Italy against them (Guelphs and Ghibelines), and the emperors sometimes doing as they pleased. But the German emperors having to contend with subject princes as powerful as themselves, and jealous of them, the pope and they coalesced against the emperors: the popes even supported the rebellion of a son against his father the Emperor. In Boniface the eighth's time they laid their hand on France; but this was more united, and there was a signal failure. The pope had to give way. The next pope had his seat at Avignon, under French influence-the Avignon popes and the court being degraded to the last degree. At the end they had one pope at Rome and another at Avignon, this giving rise to the question whether the authority of a council were not superior to that of a pope, and to the three councils of Pisa, Basle (Florence, Lausanne), and Constance, which so puzzle Roman Catholic theorists. There was a universal cry for reformation in head and members, always avoided. At last came the Reformation, which threw the whole power into the pope's hands, the bishops holding only under him. And though Louis XIV maintained Gallican liberties, as they are called, yet the clergy are simply slaves to the pope. The Jesuit society sprang up at that time more powerful than the pope himself, and recovered southern Germany to popery.
I have now to see in what way the state of the Papacy gave occasion to Protestantism. From 887, then, the popes were engaged in the strifes of the Italian nobles, when the power of the Empire fell. Another circumstance has to be introduced here. A number of forged decretals were produced at this time, which formed the foundation of the pope's pretensions subsequently-the Isidorean collection. No doubt political circumstances were a means of the popes' power, but their canonical pretensions leaned on these forged decretals. They declare the notable falsehood that all churches had their origin from Rome-" A qua omnes ecclesias principium sumsisse "and then go on to state its consequent rights. It is said they were written between 829 and 845; appear at Mentz in the time of Archbishop Autcarius; alleged to be brought from Spain at the end of the eighth century, or thereabouts. Some think they were forged by Autcarius himself, at Mentz; and that there were some old decretals which gave rise to them, or, as some allege, introduced to accredit the forgeries. At any rate, what gave legal (not political) force to papal authority from this date was the forged Isidorean collection. It is admitted on all hands they are forgeries. They were not detected till the Reformation. Calvin states it (Inst. 4, 7, 20, and the Cent. 2, 7), and fully (3, 7) demonstrated it. Bellarmine says they are ancient, but does not dare defend them as genuine; and Baronius gives them up (6, 865, and following, with Pagi Ann.). Hincmar combated, in 870, the authority of the decrees, but used them too. However no one denies their spuriousness, but they served their purpose when wanted. They were used by Nicholas I in 864.
I turn to the history of the popes from this time. After the death of Formosus (897), Boniface took possession of the see, and held it for fifteen days. Stephen VI (VII) drove him out, and took possession. Baronius here remarks: Boniface is not to be counted, Stephen is; future popes having owned one, not the other, the clergy thought it better, though all was taken by fear and violence, to sanction it, rather than by electing a legitimate pope to have a schism (Bar. 1, 897). Stephen dragged Formosus out of his tomb, clothed him in pontifical robes, and put him on the throne; charged him with intrusion into the see (he had been made pope in a tumult, Sergius having been chosen by a party), stripped him then of his pontifical robes, cut off the three fingers which were used to bless with, and had his body thrown into the Tiber, and re-ordained all the clergy he had ordained. Baronius says he should not dare to count him among the popes, if he had not found it done by those of old (6, 987). Stephen was put in prison and strangled. Baronius owns he had only the fact of subsequent recognition by the church to accept such a pope (1, 897).
I should have, perhaps, mentioned the history of Pope Joan. A woman, an Englishwoman, who had received a learned education at Athens, became, it is said, pope in 855. She is said to have died in childbirth, having been taken with pains of labor in the street, going to the Lateran church; so that the popes never pass that way. This seems unquestionable, and it is certain that the sex of the Pontiffs was examined for long years, and the story believed till the time of Reformation, that is, for many centuries. She is put by Platina, who speaks of the story as of uncertain authority, between Leo IV and Benedict III. The whole controversy is fully gone into in Basnage, 7, 12, and SchrOck, 22, 75-I1o. Baronius and Fleury pass the Joan of Platina over in a suspicious silence, and make Benedict elected on the death of Leo IV. Here there was a contested election too: Anastasius was chosen by the people and installed pope, Benedict by the clergy, and Anastasius was driven away.
To continue. After Stephen was gone, the Roman faction having the upper hand at the time, Romanus was pope somewhat more than four months. I quote Baronius' account: " Thus indeed all things, as well sacred as profane, were mixed up with factions, so that promotion to the Apostolic see of the Roman pontiff was in the power of the party which seemed the strongest. So that at one time the Roman nobles, at another the Prince of Etruria intruded by secular power whom he would, and put down when he could, the Roman pontiff promoted by the contrary faction. Which things were carried on for almost a whole century, until the Othos (German Emperors) came in between, in opposition to both parties, but arrogating to themselves in the same way the election of a pope and his deposition when elected." Romanus disappeared. Theodorus was pope twenty days. Benedict IV succeeded, of whom nothing is known; he seems to have been a respectable man. Leo V succeeded. After forty days he was driven out, and put in prison by Christopher. He was, after seven months, driven out, put in prison, and obliged to retire to a monastery by Sergius, who was all-powerful through Adelbert, Marquis of Tuscany. It is to be added, that these popes undid the ordinations of their predecessors, as having no legitimate title. One Auxilius wrote a dialog, by decrees and canonical examples, to guard against the intestine discord of the Roman church; namely, on ordinations, exordinations, and super-ordinations (Baronius, 907, 3). " That reprobate Sergius," says Baronius (908, 2), " the slave of all vices, the most iniquitous of all men-what did he leave unattempted? " " One pope undid," he says, " all the acts of another; what, then (912, 7), was the face of the holy Roman church? how filthy, when the most powerful and basest harlots ruled at Rome! at whose will sees were changed, bishops given, and, what is horrible and unutterable to hear of, lovers were introduced into the see of Peter, who are only to be written in the catalog of Roman pontiffs to mark such times. For who can say that persons, intruded without law in this way by harlots, can be said to be legitimate Roman pontiffs? The clergy never elected, nor is there afterward any consenting mention," etc. Yet succession depends upon this, we are told! Baronius says, " Christ indeed seemed to sleep, but He was in the ship; and that this proves the unfailing security of the church." Of the church, I believe; not however by, but in spite of, the popes.
On the death of Lando, Theodora (who lived with Adelbert, marquis of Tuscany, and whose daughter Marozia was concubine of Pope Sergius), makes John, son of Sergius and Marozia, pope (John X). Marozia became wife of Guido, marquis of Tuscany. She being angry with his brother Peter, had Peter killed, and John seized and put in a dungeon, where he died- they say suffocated. The Emperor at this epoch got a lance, made out of the nails of Christ's cross, from Rudolf, king of Burgundy, after threatening fire and sword if he did not give it to him; afterward gave a large part of Swabia to him, because he gave it up; and always beat his enemies with it.
Afterward Pope Stephen, the marquis of Tuscany and Marozia make another son of hers, by Pope Sergius, pope, by the name of John XI; but Alberic (son of Adelbert, marquis of Tuscany, by Theodora, not his wife), who ruled at Rome, put John in prison. There he remained three years, and there was no other pope made. In 936 Leo VII became pope. I pass over a number which need no mention. Octavianus, son of Alberic, was a clergyman; and as he governed at Rome, made himself pope (John), being at the outside not eighteen years old. Baronius again remarks here (955, 4), that though not of an age to be made bishop, or even deacon, he was owned afterward in the succession, the clergy being supposed to consent, not to have a schism. The truth is plain enough- he ruled at Rome. However, the Emperor Otho comes to Rome (963), and holds a council, which deposes John, and elects Leo VIII, whom Baronius will not own, because nobody could depose a pope; yet he was ordained pope, and ordained priests and deacons, and held the see a year and four months (Fleury, book 56, sec. 7), and they swore fidelity to them. But Otho having sent away some of his troops, the Romans rose against him, and tried to kill him; which he knew, and had the advantage; but when the Emperor left, Leo had to fly, and John was pope again. However, being one night out of Rome with a married woman, he was caught in the act of adultery, and had his head smashed, and died without the sacraments.
The Romans chose Benedict V pope. Otho came and besieged them, and they were forced to give up Benedict to him, and Leo re-enters. The Emperor committed Benedict to the keeping of the Archbishop of Hamburg. The Emperor held a council at Rome. Benedict appeared; owned he had sinned; was stripped of his robes, and his pastoral staff broken: he had joined in deposing John, and swore fidelity to Leo. No wonder Baronius does not own Leo, as he recognized the right of Otho to establish the pope, of investitures, etc., under pain of excommunication, exile, and death. However, the next Leo was Leo the ninth, so that on Baronius' principle he must be reckoned such. Baronius has no Leo VIII at all. After Leo's death they sent to Otho to know whom he would have, and he sent ambassadors to Rome, and John XIII was chosen. He was followed by Benedict VI who became odious to the Romans. Crescentius, son of Theodora and Pope John X, took him, shut him up, and afterward strangled him; while yet alive, Boniface VII became pope. After the death of Benedict they drove out Boniface, and Donus became pope (though some do not count him among the popes), then a relation of Alberic. But Baronius inserts Donus, and does not count Boniface.
I pass over the popes named while temporal influence prevailed. The Germans were more respectable; but Baronius does not like them. In 1002 or 1003 we have John XVI, called also and commonly XVIII for a few months, and then John XVII (usually XIX). Baronius will not own him but as XVII, because it would be recognizing schismatic popes. Baronius (10, 1003) puts two popes John; he says, to make the numbers run right. Crescens had expelled Gregory V from Rome, and made a Greek pope. The Emperor and Gregory V marched together on Rome. But some servants of the Emperor, fearing his clemency (John was a favorite at court), followed, and caught the pope, and put his eyes out, and put him in prison (Fleury, 57, 50). Benedict VIII now took the see after Sergius IV, but another party chose Gregory VI. But Benedict, being son of the Count of Tusculum, carried the day; but the party of Gregory VI roused itself, and Benedict fled to the Emperor. However Benedict was restored in less than two years.
After Benedict, John, a layman not in orders at all, had the papacy. He was Benedict's brother, another son of the Count of Tusculum. He got the papacy, says Fleury, partly by money (59, 3), evidently by family influence too. The patriarch of Constantinople very nearly succeeded in buying the universal papacy of the East. The Romans drove John XIX out; but Conrad, the Emperor, came with an army and set him up again: he died that year, 1033. His nephew, son of Alberic, Count of Tusculum, was made pope, a boy of about twelve years old, says Fleury; not quite ten, says Glabeus, in Baronius-by money also, and intrigue too (Fleury, 59, 81; Bar. 1033, 5)-
Benedict IX. His life was infamous, and through his plunderings and murders he became so odious, that the people drove him out. Sylvester III became pope, but only held it three months; he was of another powerful family, says Baronius. But Benedict, with the Tusculum family, attacked Rome, and was reinstated. But his conduct became insupportable, and he agreed to leave for a sum of money, and the papal revenue of England, to follow his pleasures freely; and they made John Gratian pope, as Gregory VI. But all three called themselves popes. Gregory VI gave up the papacy, in a council called to settle matters, as having entered on it unlawfully; as Benedict was paid to go out. But Baronius, who speaks of it as a beast with three heads (5, 1044) coming out of the gates of hell, insists Gregory VI was a real pope, owned so by Gregory VII, Peter Damianus, etc. The number designating the pope is constantly uncertain, because whether such or such an one was really pope is uncertain. Him who is called John XIX Baronius calls XVII. Benedict is VIII or IX: so Stephen.
But when things are at the worst they mend. The Emperor came, gathered the clergy and nobles of Rome; they agreed to have things done decently, and the Emperor took up Suidger, bishop of Bamberg, and he became Clement II. No fit person, it is said, was found in Rome. However, Clement II died in nine months, and Benedict came back and held the papacy for nine months, then, as it seems, repented, and gave it up. Sylvester went back to his sec. What came of Gregory I know not. The Emperor sent Poppo, bishop of Brixia, to be pope. He lived as Damasus II twenty-three days; and was said to be poisoned. Bruno, six months after, in a diet held at Worms, was chosen pope. But Baronius says, Benedict was tearing it to pieces and defiling it: so Dupin (11 century, chap. 4), who refers to Clement's being poisoned. A circumstance is to be noted here. Hildebrand, afterward Gregory VII, came with Bruno. The Romans had sent to the Emperor, and asked him to give them a pope, through dread, it appears, of Benedict; and after his choice at Worms, Bruno (Leo IX) came in his pontifical robes. Hildebrand got him to take them off, ond be again chosen at Rome. He it was who established the modern papacy (Bar., Fleury, Dupin). Everyone who searches for himself must look to the facts, not the title of the pope, as the succession is so uncertain, that VIII in one is IX in the other, and sometimes, as in the Johns, there are three enumerations.
We have seen already the state of the clergy; the buying and sale of benefices was universal, even of the popedom; and immorality, the most degraded, all but universal among the clergy. The chase or pleasure was their occupation. On the death of Leo, the Romans sent Hildebrand to the Emperor to choose a pope in Germany; they had no one fit in Rome. The Emperor assembled a council at Mayence, and Hildebrand got them to choose Gibbard, bishop of Eichstadt, a near relative to the Emperor, who did not wish to lose him. However he went, kept his bishopric too, and became pope. He was very near being poisoned by a subdeacon in the sacrament, but could not lift the cup. They say another devil openly seized the poisoner.
Hildebrand was now the soul of the papacy at Rome. A great change took place under Nicholas II. On the death of Stephen, the Emperor, who kept things in order, the Roman nobles, the Alberic family, and others, chose the bishop of Veletri as Pope Benedict. The cardinals opposed; but Fleury says he held the papacy nearly ten months; but Hildebrand got the bishop of Florence chosen at Florence. When he had arrived, the Romans sent to the Emperor, who sanctioned the choice of Florence; the pope was Nicholas II. He recognized publicly the Emperor's rights, but decreed, when pope, that the cardinals should choose the pope, thus excluding the Emperor and the Roman people. This laid the foundation of the modern papacy, which was born in Hildebrand, Gregory VII. Therefore it is I have noticed this part of the history. Benedict abdicated.
This was the era of Damianus, whom we have previously cited. Alexander II was the first chosen by the cardinals (1061). Another was chosen at Basle, and consecrated through Lombard influence, Pope Honorius. He came to Rome in arms, was at first victorious, but afterward beaten, the German princes deserting him to weaken an infant Emperor. He was deserted by his soldiers, got into the castle of St. Angelo, was besieged two years by Alexander, and then fled. But Honorius never gave up his claim. One great means of the depression of imperial power was, that the archbishop of Cologne stole away the young Emperor from his mother, who had maintained his authority, and went over to Pope Alexander's side, so that the Emperor was null, though nominally saved. There was a council at Mantua, where the archbishop appeared, as did Alexander, who was charged also with simony, and Honorius. Alexander was recognized pope, Honorius pardoned, the Emperor's rights nominally saved, and some of the German party promoted. The archbishop charged Alexander with having despised the Emperor's rights. P. Damianus wrote on this, that Honorius contrived to claim and exercise papal authority as far as he could (see Bar. 1064, 40), and the archbishop of Ravenna favored him. After Alexander, Hildebrand was pope, as Gregory VII. He decreed absolutely the celibacy of the clergy; was resisted everywhere in the north of Europe, where there was some more respect for morality; but prosecuted it earnestly.
The papal system was now established. I have only to notice, till I come to those near the Reformation, the dying struggles of the imperial power which had given popes for nearly a century, as Baronius admits, and the Avignon popes, and the schism; and briefly. Before I turn to this, I give Gregory VII's account of the state of the church. I have not preserved any reference here, but have no doubt of the correctness of the extract. " Alone with my mind's eye, I look at the west, south, and north. I scarcely find bishops, legally such by their entrance and life, who rule the Christian people for the love of Christ, and not secular ambition; and among all secular princes, I know none who put God's honor before their own, and justice before gain. As to those amongst whom I dwell, as I often tell them, Romans, Lombards, and Normans, I denounce them as, in a certain way, worse than Jews and Pagans." Gregory having excommunicated the Emperor, the latter and his bishops chose Guibert (Clement III) pope. Gregory would have attacked him at Ravenna with an army (Fleury, 1080, 4). He sought the help of the Normans, the Italians (Lombardy) and Germany being for the Emperor. The latter (1084) entered Rome and set Clement III on the Papal throne. Gregory retired to St. Angelo. The Emperor besieged him there. Robert Guiscard, the Norman, freed him, and, after staying awhile in Rome, retired to Salerno under the protection of the Normans. Gregory VII died at Salerno. The small papal party secretly elected Desiderius (Victor III). Clement returned to Rome; he had been expelled in 1089, and came back in 1091 (Fleury, Bar.). Didier refused to be pope, and when chosen went back to Mont Casino, and would not be ordained, but at last yielded. The Normans and others came to Rome, and turned out Clement III from St. Peter's by force. Still, it appears, he held the upper hand there; for after the death of Victor III (Dither), Urban, named by him, was chosen at Terracina, under the influence of Mathilde, the great protectress of the popedom then, by a small assembly, forty persons, clergy and laity partly, by proxy, John, bishop of Porto, having their authority. (Fleury, 63, 41; Dupin, 11 cent., chap. 6; Bar. 1(388, t, et seq.).
It is important to notice at this part of the history, that what destroyed the power of Clement and the Emperor in Italy was, that Urban got up the crusades through Peter the hermit, and when that took effect, Clement was rejected. He was driven, it appears, from Rome by the crusaders. Pope Urban the second (Grat. Decr. part 2, Caus. 23, Quxs. 5,. 47) says, " Enjoin a measure of suitable satisfaction to those who have killed the excommunicated. For we do not consider those as guilty of homicide who, burning with the zeal of their Catholic mother against the excommunicated, shall have happened to have slain some of them." At this time this was the greater part of Europe.
The remaining facts may be briefly recounted. Paschal II raised the Emperor's son against him. That son banished him from Rome, and Gregory VIII was set up as pope. The Roman pope died in exile, or two days after his return; but Gelasius was elected as Roman pope, but died in exile soon after. Calistus II followed as Roman pope; he treats of peace with the Emperor. Gregory was his prisoner. Calistus was not elected, Baronius admits; he was chosen by a few cardinals and clergy at Clugny, when Gelasius died, as trusted by him (Bar. 1119, I and 5). After Honorius there was a contested election between cardinals and people, but the circumstances are of no moment. After him the cardinals who had been beaten in Honorius's case chose Gregory (Innocent II). Other cardinals and the people chose Peter (Anacletus II), favored by the laity. Innocent had to leave Rome, went to France, owned by Bernard, and in general in Europe; but Anacletus was pope at Rome. On Anacletus's death, the schism for the moment is ended by St. Bernard's influence. The Emperor Lothaire brought back Innocent; but as soon as he was gone, Innocent had to go back to Pisa. Gregory was elected in Anacletus's stead as Victor, and submitted to Innocent, but the Romans renounced obedience to the latter. Celestine followed quickly. Baronius says Anacletus's presence at Rome was the triumph of Antichrist, and that it was easy to see who was the successor of St. Peter (1130, 3). The next, Lucius, was killed in a rebellion of the Romans, by a blow of a stone, when assaulting the Capitol; or of chagrin, as some say. Baronius, Dupin, Fleury, do not say how he died. His successor, Eugene, fled from Rome, but returned. Then came Anastasius IV; Adrian IV followed. Then a disputed election-Alexander and Victor; the latter given up by the Emperor when beaten by the Lombards. Lucius III and Urban III sat at Verona, not at Rome. Lucius fled, being hated and despised by the Romans, who attacked his territories, and he finally settled at Verona, where Urban was chosen.
From Urban III on to Boniface VIII, that is, taking in Lucius, from 1181 to 1294, the history of the papacy is that of a worldly power, yet using excommunication as its weapon, contending against the emperors, using Sicily and Lombardy as their main arms against him with various success, but in result successful. But it wearied the world, and when Boniface attempted to use the acquired power against Philip of France, he signally failed. His successor repeated his acts. And the next pope, chosen by French influence, removed to Avignon, in France. This, as being practically secular history, I leave untouched. " My kingdom," says the Lord, " is not of this world, else would my servants fight "; the pope's was.
The most remarkable pope of the period was Innocent III, who held the fourth council of Lateran, when transubstantiation was for the first time decreed. He established the inquisition in the crusades against the Albigenses. We may notice that, the see having been vacant three years through election intrigues, there was a compromise, and Gregory X made a decree for what is now practiced, that the cardinals should be shut up till they chose a pope. Celestine V reserved it, and then resigned, as the cardinals were two years and a half before electing him. The person who got Celestine to resign got himself chosen in his place-it was Boniface VIII. Celestine gives a curious reason to justify his abdication. He says Clement, who was named by Peter, resigned, that no pope might be named by his predecessor; and then came third after Linus and Anacletus. So Peter made a blunder in beginning the matter. It is known the succession of the first three possessors of the see is hopelessly embroiled.
As to the manners of the clergy and the court of Rome in Innocent's time, Matthew Paris is quoted as giving the parting address of Cardinal Hugo, at Lyons (P. 819. I have not the book to verify the quotation.) " Amici magnam fecimus postquam in hanc urbem vcnimus utilitatem et eleemosynam. Quando enim prime huc venimus tria vel quatuor prostibula invenimus [here in the sense of lupanar], sed nunc recedentes unum solum relinquimus, verum ipsuin durat continuatum ab orientali porta civitatis usque ad occidentalem."
From 1309 the pope lived at Avignon, under French influence and protection, proclaimed his rights over others, and submitted to France. The struggles with the Emperor went on. Louis was set up an anti-pope at Rome-Nicholas V; but he was soon given up to his competitor at Avignon. The friars Minorites and Italian cardinals sided with the Emperor, who was preparing a general council against the pope who meanwhile died. Benedict XII succeeded at Avignon. France would not allow him to make peace with the Emperor; the Emperor was deprived of the sacraments by the pope; but the clergy who would not administer them were banished. But Louis took ecclesiastical powers in hand, and lost influence. Clement VI succeeded Benedict, and anathematized the Emperor, and set up an anti-Emperor who was forced to fly. But the conduct of Clement, who had deposed an ecclesiastical Elector to gain voices for his anti-Emperor, had wearied men of the popes. Clement got the upper hand, but injured the Papacy. The Electors of the empire meet, and declare the King of Rome receives his power from Electors only.
From 1313 to 1316 the see was vacant: the cardinals would not elect. Clement V, first pope at Avignon, lived in adultery, sold all the benefices he had to dispose of, and left immense wealth (Fleury, 92, 1). Yet this same Clement, in opening the council of Vienne, describes the state of the whole church as corruption itself, clergy and laity (Raynald, con. of Bar. 1311, 55). This is Petrarch's account of the court at Avignon. He died in the Papacy of Gregory XI, and had lived at Avignon. " It is the third Babylon, the fifth labyrinth. Here dreadful prisons, nor the tortuous way of a dark house, nor the fatal mixing of the fate of the human urn, lastly, not imperious Minos, nor a voracious minotaur, nor the monument of condemned lusts (veneris), are wanting; but remedies-love, charity, faith to promises, friendly counsels, or thread by silent help, marking the perplexed way-Ariadne and Dmdalus. The only hope of safety is gold! A fierce king is appeased by gold, and heaven is opened by gold; nay more, Christ is sold for gold! "
During this time, from the universal corruption and squeezing for money, the consciences of godly men were rising up against the state of things-Milicz, Matthias Von Jannow, both Bohemians, before Huss; in England, Wickliff (136o, etc.). Gregory XI died at Rome, and a pope was elected then in a riot: Raynald says the uproar was afterward. However this may be, for all was violence and confusion, the cardinals elected another, Clement VII, who went to Avignon; and there were two who divided Europe between them. Benedict XIII succeeded at Avignon, Boniface IX at Rome, and then Gregory XII. This brought on the Council of Pisa, which put down both. The council chose Alexander V. He dissolves the council, and does not reform.
There were now three popes. The exaction of money became intolerable, selling of benefices public. It was said it was allowable, as the pope could not sin in it. This brought on the council of Pisa, " a council," says Bellarmine, " neither manifestly approved nor manifestly condemned " (De Conc. lib. 1, c. 8). That it is approved, the succeeding Alexander being called VI shows, for Alexander V was made pope by that council; and the same circumstance shows John XXIII to be confessedly a true pope, though moderns say no. John XXIII being obliged to fly, Rome consented to a new council, which met at Constance. Here first they voted by nations. John was deposed, accused of every sort of horrible crime. He had first fled the council. Gregory XII resigned. Benedict XIII remained determined, was deposed, and finally deserted by all but the Spanish town he lived in. Martin V was elected by all. The council had formally decreed a council superior to the pope, and had acted on it. Martin condemned all appeals from popes, and after a little reformation dissolved the council. It was here John Huss was burnt, and it was declared that faith was not to be kept with a heretic, he having had letters of safe conduct. Martin confirmed the articles of faith of the council of Constance (Raynald, 1418, 2). Martin V quarreled with cardinals. He appointed a council first at Pavia, then at Siena; but which met afterward at Basle under Eugenius. But there was no reformation really, and the universal complaint continued. France made regulations for herself. Eugene IV succeeded Martin V. The iniquities with which John XXIII was charged were so dreadful, that, when presented to the chief men of the Council of Constance, they thought it better not to have him called to account-the apostolic see would be discredited altogether, and all his promotions of ecclesiastics held void.
I should add, that the Council of Constance had ordered that a council should be held within a limited time, and a second within seven years; and these were held in consequence. Eugenius, fearing reformation from the first, sought to dissolve the council. The council, under his own legate, resisted, confirmed the decrees of Constance that a council was above the pope, and could decide so as to subject all, the pope included, in articles of faith, schism, and reformation. The cry universal echoed in these councils for reformation in head and members. The French held a national council to back up the Council of Basle against the pope's effort, and even the Emperor, though yielding to the pope for a time to get crowned, returned to the council. But this pope tried it out. It condemned the pope, and deposed him, and elected Felix V. Meanwhile, the council having cited the pope (1437) to appear before it, he appointed a council at Ferrara, and the two sat together. The Council of Ferrara condemns that of Basle. From Ferrara it was transferred to Florence. The Council of Florence ended in 1442, the pope appointing one in Rome; that at Basle, in 1444, appointing one in Germany. Felix V had one at Lausanne, but subsequently resigned the Papacy, on condition of having all his cardinals and promotions to benefices owned, and certain personal privileges. Nicholas, the other pope, withdrew all his acts against him and the Council of Basle.
The pope of Rome had thus seemingly gained uncontested supremacy; but the fact that all the respectable clergy had met, condemned deposed popes, and named others whose successors all subsequent popes have been, made their position very different. All their theologians avoid, if possible, pronouncing a judgment on these councils, even when they hold the supremacy of the pope in the highest way. Bellarmine admits that Pisa can neither be approved nor condemned. If it be condemned, the pope is not pope, for the popes are the successors of the council's nominee; if it be approved, then a council can depose a pope. Neither proposition would do. The like is the case of Constance. That council deposed three popes, and chose another. But then it openly declared that a pope was subject to a general council, and that a council represented the universal church, and could act in its name, and was infallible; and it acted on it; and again, the succession depends on their act. Moreover, Martin V sanctioned the doctrine that a general council represents the whole church (Fleury, 106, 14). Bellarmine recognizes the power of a council to settle schism. He refers to Popes Cornelius, Symmachus, Innocent II, Alexander III, and the Pisa and Constance councils. No remedy, he says, is more powerful than a council. So for false doctrines in popes, as Marcellinus, Damasus, Sixtus III, Leo III and IV. Marcellinus, he said, had to confess it; the rest purged themselves.
Now, though the popes had the upper hand, the universal conscience of the church was roused; the weightiest, godliest doctors declared there must be reform in the head and in the members. This became the universal cry all over Europe; whenever the pope went too far, there was an appeal to a general council. France maintained, in what are called the Gallican liberties, the doctrine of Constance. The popes themselves (instead of governing an ignorant and prostrate Europe, whose princes, being divided and jealous of one another, were glad of the pope's help, while he was always himself and one in his purpose, and scrupled at no weapons), were now judged by laity and clergy, who were subject to them, and gave themselves up to mere petty local ambition. France and Germany were considerably emancipated in the spirit of men's minds, deliverance being looked for anxiously, and though disappointed in their hopes of redress from the councils, were groaning so much the more, though hopelessly, under the burden. Spain and Portugal were more content, because they liked that title of the pope which divided the new world between them. But men's spirits craved deliverance; threatened councils, appealed to them, were ripe for some deliverance. The unheard-of infamies of Alexander VI, and even the crimes and conduct of Sixtus and Julius, only sunk the Papacy lower, though none opposed it; and the shameless sale of indulgences, practically an allowance to sin, gave the last blow to man's conscience, and opened the door to the testimony of an offended God. I shall briefly trace this, which will lead us to the Reformation.
Nicholas V arranged matters peaceably with Felix V, the Lausanne pope, who was during his life to be respected as such, though without power. Calixtus IV followed him. They succeeded in gaining influence in Germany; but the attempt to rouse the people to a crusade against the Turks utterly failed. Pius II failed in like attempts; he condemned appeals to a general council (Raynald, 1460, to, t), where we see it was become a general thing. This same pope, as Aeneas Sylvius, had been a great adherent of the Council of Basle. Paul II was arbitrary. The cardinals at this time bound themselves all when in conclave, as in the case of Eugenius, to reform the papal court in head and members, hold a council, and to many other points. Eugene confirmed this by a bull. Paul bound himself in the same way, but by a decree rejected it all, and by cajoling and violence forced all the cardinals but one to join him, though some very reluctantly (Raynald, 1431, 5, 1458, 5, 1464, 61, 62). Platina complains bitterly of his undoing iniquitously all Pius II had done, threatened to complain to kings and princes (for parliaments, universities, kings, everybody did so now), and have a general council, and got put in prison and in the stocks for his pains. Sixtus IV succeeded. He occupied himself with low Italian intrigues and conspiracy to advance his family. Innocent VIII came after him. He was famous for promoting and enriching his illegitimate children, though one of the conditions (in conclave) of election was not to do it. He was the subject of pasquinades on this account. Rome, they said, might well call him father. It appears he had seven children while pope. The general fact is stated by Raynald (1492, 23). He received pay from the Sultan for keeping a rival brother safe when the Turks were invading Europe.
To Alexander VI one hardly knows how to refer. He is recognized to have been-except it be his own second illegitimate son-the most horrible fiend who has come under public notice. A thorough debauchee at all times, so as to attract notice and reproof even at the Papal court, elected pope by bribery and promises, he got rid, in one way or another, of those who promoted him. His second son killed his eldest brother, and the pope's other favorite, Peroto, who had hidden himself in the pope's mantle, so that the blood spurted up in the pope's face. (Casillo, Appendix to Ranke.) Alexander had made a cardinal of him when quite young, but he left the clerical order to be a prince in Italy. France made him Duke of Valentinois to reward the pope for his divorce. He killed his sister's husband to marry her better. This same sister, when the pope was away, kept the Papal court, and opened the despatches, consulting the cardinals. She was one of the pope's five illegitimate children. Her marriage was celebrated with pomp in the pope's palace. Infessina's language is bitter to a degree on the occasion, and he declares that the universal corruption of the clergy through Innocent and Alexander's care of their children made men fear it might reach the monks and people of religion. " Although," he adds, " the monasteries of the city were almost all (quasi omnia) turned into brothels, no one gainsaying it. The current lines on him were, ' Alexander sells kings, altars, Christ. He first bought them, he has good right to sell them.' " Engaged with his second son Borgia in poisoning (as he had poisoned others already) some rich cardinals, to get their money, at a feast prepared for it, he took, being very hot, the poisoned wine, and died.
I cannot be expected to go into the details of such a life as this. Raynald tries to cover the way he met his death, but no one believes him. The very brief pontificate of Pius III needs no notice. Julius II was engaged in wars. The cardinals had all sworn to reform, and to have a general council. He was occupied fighting against the Venetians, and afterward the French, etc. Louis XII had a council at Tours. Germany prepared her griefs, and sought a pragmatic sanction like France. The French council held that the king could renounce allegiance to the pope. He should keep the decrees of Basle, and appeal to a future council. If Julius, armed pronounced sentence upon him or his allies, it would be of no force whatever. The king and Emperor summoned a general council at Pisa, but it was mainly composed of French bishops. The pope convoked another at the Lateran. The Pisan came to nothing, though it deposed the pope by a decree. A number of cardinals were engaged in it, founded on Julius' promise to have a general council within two years. I only refer to it to show the confusion all was in. The Emperor and King of France adhered afterward to the Lateran. Francis I and Leo X made a treaty. The pope by this had again quietly the upper hand. The Councils of Constance and Basle, on the first of which the succession of the Papacy depends, maintained the authority of councils and bishops. France held strongly to this. The Councils of Florence and Lateran V set up the pope. In result half Europe broke off, and the pope by the Council of Trent remained absolute in the rest, if we except the Gallican liberties.
This brings us to the last act which brought about the Reformation: not the wisdom of princes, nor the power of councils, but God rousing conscience and faith-conscience long wearied, and faith which He gave, roused by the excessive wickedness which the popes, grown secure in wickedness, countenanced for mere esthetical purposes. Julius II had begun St. Peter's, Leo wanted to finish it. Italy had been flooded with fresh light from Constantinople, and the educated clergy were infidels. Elegant Latin or Greek was alone sought after, pleasure and literary pursuits. It is said that Leo himself was an infidel; but there is no proof of it. At any rate St. Peter's was to be finished, and for this purpose money was to be raised. For this purpose an old expedient, by which the piety of the ignorant had been before that imposed on, was resorted to, but with a recklessness that passed all bounds. Indulgences were issued, as to which there are very pretty theories, but which are but allowances to commit sin for money. I know well it is said to be commutation of penance, and shortening, consequently, the duration of purgatorial pains; but penance had taken place of the need of holiness, and as a man with the sacraments would not go to hell,' purgatory had taken the place of hell, and when a man wanted to sin, he got rid of the purgatory he was afraid of by paying a sum of money: he wanted to sin, and paid so much money to do it with impunity. Guilt (culpa) was settled by sacraments, so that he did not much trouble himself about it; the pains which remained, about which he did care, by money. Now, too, it was not provided for troubled sinners, but offered everywhere to bold ones who wanted to sin. Each sin had its price. The object was to get money. Grace, or holiness, or any doctrine, no matter which, was not thought of.
Albert, brother of Joachim of Brandenburg-a young, elegant, sumptuous Archbishop of Mayence, and Elector- spent, like Leo, more than he could afford, and applied to Leo for the farming of the indulgences; but he had not paid for his pallium, or archiepiscopal robe, some 30,000 florins, and could not have it without; for the pope wanted money, and Cardinal Pucci had suggested this means of getting it. The Fuggers were bankers of Augsburg, and Albert owed them money already; the affair seemed a good one, and they advanced the money for the pallium, and became bankers for the indulgence-money. A certain Tetzel (whose life, it is said, the Elector of Saxony had already saved, when Maximilian was going to put him in a sack and throw him into the Inn, and who had before preached indulgences with success), undertook the matter for Albert. It is stated that he declared that, if a person had violated the Virgin Mary, he could give him pardon: that as soon as the money was in the box the souls were out of purgatory. It is certain from his own statement, that he urged that when a man had pardon (plenary remission, say the instruction) for his sins on confession and contrition, which he got on confessing them or undertaking to do it, still for mortal sin there was seven years' penance on earth; and men committed countless ones, and God knew how long they would be in purgatory; and that, save for four cases, reserved to the pope, he could give pardon for everything now, at any time on confession, and plenary at the hour of death, so that they would slip purgatory altogether for a small sum. As to condemnation, the confession, contrition, and absolution had put all that out of the question.
The Jesuit Maimbourg does not attempt to conceal the iniquity of what was and had been going on. Before this, indulgences had been largely used to make money-farmed out to questors, who made all the money of them they could. It was one of the charges against John XXIII, giving power to his legate to appoint confessors, and free every one from sins, and all the penalty besides, if they paid what they were rated at. Still Maimbourg admits it went on with Leo all the same, that Tetzel was employed because he had got in great sums for the Teutonic knights, that the agents made people believe they were sure of their salvation, and souls were delivered out of purgatory as soon as the money was paid; and as they saw the clerks of these same agents carousing in taverns on their profits, much indignation was created (Maimbourg's History of Lutheranism, 3rd edition, 121110, Paris, p. 9 et seq). This, he admits, was the origin of Protestantism. No doubt popes had made money of indulgences before. It was now an habitual resource; that is, religious iniquity of the profoundest kind was. The sale of liberty to sin was the settled practice of the Romish church, the authorized practice and doctrine of its popes and leaders. It was farmed out to profit. I repeat, no heathenism, horrible as was its corruption, ever was guilty of such deep and dark iniquity.
It will be said that Tetzel's conduct was a gross abuse. Be it so. To a rightly constituted mind the principle is far worse than the abuse. The pope getting money to build or ornament a grand church, by a universal commutation of godly discipline (if we go no farther) for money, really for an allowance of all sorts of sin for money, is worse than the abuses that a reckless agent may be guilty of. Dr. N. knew this. An ignorant man might be ignorant of this; Dr. N. was not; he knew this gave birth to Protestantism. Has he not learned to hate such things as this?
In Leo's time light had come in; the condemning of popes by councils had weakened confidence; the people were weary of the iniquity long ago, but the authority that sanctioned it had now lost a great deal of its influence, and the excessive insult to conscience, shown in the present sale of indulgences, filled the cup. The princes were angry at their oppression by the pope; they had long complained, though they had not dared to stir. But when God raised up Luther to apply the word of God to the conscience, and show the iniquity of all this and after some time the want of foundation for the pope's power, all was providentially prepared. People came to confess to him, guilty of all sorts of crimes; and when he insisted on putting practical penance on them, they produced their letters of indulgence, and were easy in their sin. My business here is not to pursue the history of the Reformation. For my own part, I do not for a moment think it established the church on its original basis; nor did its leaders see this any more than Dr. Newman does; but it was the righteous rising up of faith, with the power of the truth and word of God, as far as it was possessed, against the most iniquitous system that ever the sun looked on, of which nations and conscience were alike weary. I challenge Dr. Newman, or any one else, to show me a like system of iniquity in the world. That gave rise to Protestantism. If natural conscience even was not to have been finally destroyed by the heads and authorities of Christendom, it must have protested. That protest first made by Luther's faith was Protestantism.
I have followed out the historical state of what Dr. N. looks at as the holy Catholic church, and that of the popes its leaders, according to him, the alleged vicegerents of Christ on earth. If details were gone into and the statements of private historians, all would appear far darker than I have made it. But it is needless. A righteous soul will judge whether " the note " of holiness is to be found in this history. That upright souls there were who groaned under it, I admit. But what did they groan under? Who made them groan?
But Dr. N. tells us that normally infallibility resides in a pope and general council. " It is to the pope in aecumenical council that we look as to the normal seat of infallibility " (280). I will therefore run through the aecumenical councils, and see what we can trust to in them.
Constantine, the first Christian emperor, meddled, as did his successors, largely in ecclesiastical matters. As a political man, he felt his government hindered by the dissensions of the bishops, which roused the whole Christian world. He took up the Donatist question; he directed certain bishops to hear the same a second time, others to rehear it, and at last heard it himself, and put the Donatists down. Meanwhile the Arian controversy raged in the East. It had spread from Alexandria over the whole eastern world, and divided the people into two factions (Euseb. Life of Const., book 2, 6x to the end). Thereupon the Emperor writes a letter, saying the East had been the source of light to the world; how grieved he was, and so on, that, as they were one in faith (Alexander and Arius), they ought to hold their tongues on nice points, and not let such delicate questions before the ignorant, and make confusion. But in vain; so he summoned a council at Nice in the hope of settling it. The invitations came from himself, and he provided horses for the bishops to come, or allowed them to use the public posts; he had them to meet in the palace, and presided himself. A glowing description is given by Eusebius of his coming into the assembly, and taking his seat at the head of it. When the bishops had bowed and said a few complimentary words, he sat down, and the bishops too. Then he made a long harangue to them, and gave liberty of speech afterward to the bishops, soothed them, answered objections, reasoned with them, and brought them, though with difficulty, to some kind of quietness, and got all but five to sign, who were banished. The Emperor held thus a strong hand over them; having once made a decision in a council, little or big, he enforced it, for peace' sake, by his own authority. The orthodox suffered as others, if they were not quiet-Athanasius himself among the rest. That Constantine convoked and managed the council is beyond all question: Eusebius, Ruffinus, Epiphanius all agree. That he presided is equally certain; he sat in a little golden seat at the head, the bishops down the sides, of the apartment. Alexander of Alexandria, Epiphanius tells us, got him to convoke it. Hosius subscribed first, then the two presbyters sent by Silvester of Rome, then the rest.
I may note here that in the early councils scarce any Western bishops were ever present. The West had not the mental activity of the East, and they did not raise useless questions as the Easterns did. In no one of the first six general councils were there a dozen Western bishops, in many not half that number. Three are found in this first one. A note, said to be of Dionysius Exiguus, says, they did not sign at Nice, because they were not suspected of heresy (Hard. r, 311). If this were so, it gives a curious character to the decrees and signatures. It was to force the suspected bishops to declare and bind themselves. The number of prelates is uncertain; Eusebius says 250. In Hardouin you have 318 names, which afterward was held to be a mystical number.
The late councils were, on the contrary, wholly Western, and of the Latin church. There were no Easterns. At Florence Pope Eugenius attempted it, but it was a complete failure; the assent a few Greek prelates did give was utterly repudiated by their church when they went home. All these late Western councils, save Pisa, Constance, and Basle, were assemblies called and managed by the popes for their own purposes, with, in general, a vast majority of Italian bishops. Pisa, Constance, and Basle, were the fruit of the struggles of the conscience of Christendom against the hopeless wickedness and oppression of the papacy and the popes. There has been no council since which represented East and West. It was attempted at Sardica, and failed; they split, and held two; the most complete one was Ariminium, under Constantius, where 400 bishops undid the work of Nice by dropping the words-" of one substance with the Father," though they rejected many statements of Arius: but it did not succeed; the Westerns had been dragged in, and afterward protested.
Catholicity is a fable as to fact. As to holiness, to seek it leads into a tissue of horrible facts. Unity in the outward body there has been none, since the pretensions of the popes and Constantinople began.
The second so-called general council consisted of 150 Eastern bishops, called together by Theodosius; and the bishops so declare in their letter which precedes the decrees, and ask expressly the confirmation by the Emperor of what they had decreed. They communicate their decrees and canons to the Western bishops in common, then assembled at Rome, giving Constantinople the second rank after Rome, but on grounds which refer merely to civil rank in each. They confirm the sixth canon of the Council of Nice as to the independence of the larger divisions of the hierarchical system. Their creed is the now accepted Nicene one, an article forbidden by Pope Leo being added. But the pope had nothing to say to the council; the popes did not accept its canons; but they are received in the universal church. Baronius seeks to invalidate one, but is corrected by Pagi, who shows it to have been universally received.
It is worthy of note here, that the article added to their creed is still rejected by the Greeks, who hold the creed as settled by the Council of Constantinople. And it is further to be remarked, that the general council of Ephesus forbade any other creed to be proposed to any one, and the great Pope Leo, the means of Dr. N.'s becoming a Romanist, this very article in particular. This added article, which came from Spain and France, is the great subject of division with the Greeks, though they do not believe in purgatory either, nor, of course, recognize the popes. Not only did Pope Leo formally forbid its being inserted, but had the Constantinopolitan creed engraved in Greek and Latin on silver plates on this account in the church. (Compare Pearson on the Creed, on the eighth article, where the authorities are cited.)
We have not much security from councils as yet, nor is the pope found in an aecumenical council hitherto, save by his presbyters at Nice, who subscribed in their place after Hosius, the Emperor's confidant, as it appears. The council of Ephesus followed, in which the pope acted very ably by his legates, but in which no other Western prelates were present. The Emperor had convoked the council, and his commissioner forbade them to meet till all the Eastern prelates were there: but Cyril, and the bishops of his party, drove him out, took possession of all the churches, and settled the matter by condemning Nestorius before the Easterns came, Nestorius and his party protesting, but not daring to go. The Easterns, however, did not yield: Cyril was excommunicated and deposed by them; and it was only on Cyril's giving up some points that John of Antioch was reconciled some years later with Cyril, through the Emperor's means. The result was, Nestorianism spread through the East even to China. The Emperor gave up Nestorius to have peace, and he was banished. But Leo, in his letter subsequently to Flavian of Constantinople, adopted at the council of Chalcedon, does not use the word Nestorius objected to—Deipara. The whole course of Cyril was a disgrace to any sober Christian man; he was the true source 'of Eutychianism, and I judge his soundness very questionable on the atonement.
The next council of Ephesus was convoked as the previous one; the pope's representatives were in it. But Cyril's violence against Nestorius had left Eutychian sects at Alexandria, and bore its fruits here. The Archbishop of Alexandria presided as before. Why was not the Holy Ghost here? Yet they beat the poor old Archbishop of Constantinople in such a way, that he died of it in a few days, and others were sorely maltreated. Pope Leo condemned Eutyches in the famous epistle to Flavian, too rhetorical for such a subject, and questionable, I judge, in some expressions; but doubtless a remarkable document, and substantially sound, and asked for a council in or near Italy. The Emperor refused; but the council first convened at Nice, and then removed to Chalcedon, was held, which also condemned Eutyches, adopting Leo's statement and Cyril's two letters to Nestorius, on the ground of their intrinsic merits. The legates asked if this and the other councils agree with Leo. The bishops answered, Leo agrees with them. There was a great struggle for jurisdiction and rank between Leo and Anatolius, the legates having orders to resist all advance in rank of Constantinople. Leo's predecessor denied any to it. But it was maintained and increased to equal dignity and second rank in precedence, and the contested jurisdiction given it, the legates staying away that day, then complaining of its being done; but it was confirmed. Anatolius gave way afterward in form, but kept his ground in fact. The canon remains in the universal canons; but the popes would never own it. Pretty work for the lowly servants of Christ! The Romans were charged with forging part of a canon here to give supremacy to Rome, as they were convicted of it just at this time in Africa, which peremptorily rejected the pretensions of Rome, and sent off its legate. But what I mainly refer to in the council was this, that Theodore and Ibas were declared sound in the faith. And Leo confirmed twice over the doctrinal decisions of the council. But in the following aecumenical council, Pope Vigilius first gave a judgment in favor of the three chapters, as it was called; but he had to do with a powerful Emperor who had now re-conquered Italy, and he made the pope come to the council, and finally forced him to sign and confirm its decrees, which condemned the three chapters which Chalcedon had pronounced sound, by which confirmation, moreover (Baronius says) it became a general council. But if it did, we have alleged infallible authority, a pope in an aecumenical council, condemning what the same infallibility approves. What kind of infallibility or security is this? The truth is, the best of these councils were disgraceful scenes of turbulent violence, even Chalcedon.
God has taken care of His church, and the faith that is true, blessed be His name; and He uses any means He pleases; but the history of the means shows that, if they are rested in, it is worse than a broken reed. It is an utterly false principle to sanction the means God has employed, because He has employed them. The wickedness of the Jews was the means God employed for our salvation, with the utter want of conscience of Pilate. Who justifies them?
The third general council was perfectly shameful, and really produced lasting disasters to the church at large. No one acquainted with history can deny it. It was really the fruit of the pope's jealousy of Constantinople, and consequent intrigues. Constantinople had not been what was called an apostolic see; it was raised to eminence by the importance of the city as the capital. Old Rome could not bear this. At any rate, these councils, which we arc told are to secure us, rested the preeminence of Rome and Constantinople on their being capitals, old and new Rome. The Christian has nothing to do with these worldly intrigues. They enable him to judge the whole system by the faith of Him whose kingdom was not of this world. At any rate general councils confirmed by popes have directly contradicted one another. In very deed, if we examine their history, we find no trace of the Spirit's presence, but every proof of His absence, though the faith may have been substantially preserved.
I am not writing a history of the councils, but meeting what is referred to in Dr. N.'s self-defense. I pass to three others, to show how groundless, how wild, these foundations of faith are; how unsimple, compared with the precious word of God, the statements of the Lord and His inspired apostles, or other servants.
First, Pisa. Here is a council on which the whole succession of the pope and Roman clergy depends. Yet Bellarmine declares that it is a council which can neither be approved nor condemned. The reason is very simple; there were two popes, Benedict and Gregory. The council was formed by a number of the cardinals of each, and the prelates and others they brought together. They summoned formally the two popes, and deposed them; they chose a third, who confirmed all their acts, and is recognized pope. If they do accept the council, then it is above the pope, and can act without him; for this is what amongst other things is confirmed. If they do not accept it, then the succession of popes is a false one. Benedict and Gregory held their ground, but in vain. The council had decreed a new council, and Alexander, the newly elected pope, had John for his successor. The Emperor was able to get him to hold a council, to which he went. Here was normal infallibility; but the council deposed him for crimes, and the other two as schismatics, etc., and chose a fourth, Martin, whose authority, of course, depended on that of the council. He tried to destroy it by an evasive confirmation, and closed it without any reforms.
Now, if normal infallibility rests in a pope in aecumenical council, it is not to be found at all; for in the early councils they contradicted one another, to say nothing of their being horrible bear gardens; and in the later ones, the existence of popes depends on their action without a pope amongst them.
Is it to this the Christian is reduced-he who seeks the truth or even the true church? He cannot receive a priest, nay, not a sacrament, till he knows he is one. I say this on their own ground, and we are supposing a person inquiring. He cannot take it for granted, or he is decided already; he looks to the person who established the priest, and finally to the ultimate source of certainty and authority. In Rome it cannot be found. It is not a question of profiting by a recognized ministry, but finding the truth, and a true one. But this normal seat of infallibility is not to be found by a person competent to inquire; and what a thing to search for, when their own authorities cannot tell me which council, or what part of it, has authority, if a person is not competent!
Whereas, if I receive the scriptures as the word of God (and if not, I am an infidel) I have the teaching of Paul, and Peter, and John, and of the blessed Lord Himself. Surely I have need of holiness and grace to learn; but I have infallible authority to learn from. It is in vain to say it is a rule of faith, not a proper means of communicating truth. I insist urgently on the difference. I may learn there; I may have learned from my mother, a minister, or others. I may have done so from the Bible. But I have a certain rule here; the Romanist has none, if the question is raised. They say the universal church is right. But where is it to be found? The majority of Christians, and the most ancient churches, are outside Rome. One will tell me the seat of this authority is in the pope; another, the pope with a council; another, a council as independent of and above a pope. And if this last be not held, there is no true pope to be had, no true succession. And this not as an individual argument; it has been decreed twice by assembled Christendom, held by universities the most famous in the world, denounced, no doubt, the other side of the Alps, at Rome. But when I inquire of their greatest authority about that council on which their cause depends, which was confirmed absolutely by a pope, I am told it is uncertain-cannot be condemned or approved! As another is a secret not to be spoken of! There is no known seat of infallibility for a person capable of inquiring. The whole thing is as foreign from God's dealings, and His way of securing us in the truth, as it is possible to be. I might much enlarge upon this point, but I refrain. That which I have said is enough to show what the Roman church system produced, as its own best authors record it (individual authors teem with reproaches and scorn), what its popes were, what refuge its councils were to the inquiring mind. I close this part of my inquiry.
The question of Dr. Newman's honesty has been raised. It is a painful kind of subject. But, I must say, I do not think him honest, without in the least meaning that gross dishonesty which sets about to deceive and say what is false. But a false way always begets false ways-that kind of dishonesty of which scripture says, " deceiving and being deceived." Every one saw, and Monsignor Wiseman saw, as he tells us, and Dr. Newman knew that his path led to Rome. He counted Rome the most exalted church in the world; hated Protestantism, though he had a special mission to reform Anglicanism; had a presentiment that he himself should land in popery; admits now the scope and issue of the movement was such; knew his leading was leading others into it; hence was willing to bend the stick beyond what was straight, in order to straighten it- that is, to go beyond the truth to gain the result he wished. He was not, as many thought that he was, a concealed Romanist, seeking to gain others; but he did know or feel where it led, though there were difficulties from habits of thought in his own mind, yet continued without his conscience being stirred as to the path he was pursuing, and bending everything as, I must say, no honest mind could do to the purpose he had in view. I suppose, from what he says of visions and secret feelings as to a mission, that there was some direct action of Satan: else it was connected with the most absolute confidence in himself, and the most total absence of the truth, or any concern in it. When he joined Romanism, he did not yet believe its principal tenets; he submitted to authority-that authority, I have no doubt, Satan's. It is characteristic of Rome to be regardless of the truth, of Christ to be the truth. It is the more solemn in his case, because he declares he is now certain that he was converted to God by that which he gave up.
Till the end of 1842 he was in doubt, not certain, that Rome was right (246). But long before this, for he disclosed it in 1839, he had a strong presentiment that his existing opinions would ultimately give way, and that the grounds of them were unsound. Only before 1839 he felt such a strong presentiment was not a sufficient ground for disclosing the state of his mind. Perhaps not, if he had not been active in a work and mission confided to him. At that time he knew (174) he was disposing young men's minds towards Rome: this in 1839, and he had mentioned his general difficulty to A.B. a year before. He stayed then, because he had not made trial how much the English church would bear. As to the result, he says, namely, whether this process will not approximate the whole English church, as a body, to Rome, that is nothing to us (176). " I am more certain that the Protestant spirit which I oppose leads to infidelity, than that which I recommend leads to Rome " (177). In page 195 we read, " I have felt all along Bishop Bull's theology was the only theology on which the English church could stand. I have felt that opposition to the church of Rome was part of that theology, and that he who could not protest against the church of Rome was no true divine in the church of England. I have never said, nor attempted to say, that any one in office in the English church, whether bishop or incumbent, could be otherwise than in hostility to the church of Rome." Yet in the next page he says, " You cannot tell how sad your account of Moberly has made me. His view of the sinfulness of the Tridentine decrees is as much against union of churches as against individual conversions." In page 116 he tells us, " We had a real wish to co-operate with Rome in all lawful things, if she would let us, and the rules of our church let us; and we thought there was no better way towards the restoration of doctrinal purity and unity." Yet opposition to the church of Rome was part of the theology of the church of England divines, and none in office in the church of England could be otherwise than in hostility to the church of Rome, yet he talks of saving his protest.
So as regards the Articles. " I wished to institute an inquiry how far in critical fairness the text could be opened. I was aiming far more at ascertaining what a man who subscribed it might hold, than what he must, so that my conclusions were negative rather than positive " (124). " In addition, I was embarrassed in consequence of my wish to go as far as possible in interpreting the Articles in the direction of Roman dogma, without disclosing what I was doing to the parties whose doubts I was meeting, who might be thereby encouraged to go still farther than at present they found in themselves any call to do." This, he tells us, was from being enjoined, he thinks, by his bishop to keep the men straight who were going into popery through his means.
What a labyrinth of disingenuousness! I ask any man if this be plain uprightness. I do not mean he intended to deceive; but a false way, I repeat, leads to false ways. His pretension to reform the Anglican system, for which he had a vision and a charge, led him into this tortuous course, through absolute confidence in himself. My reader will perhaps say that it is a hard word, " absolute confidence in himself." It is his own. In the storm that arose on Tract 90, he says, " But how was I to have any more absolute confidence in myself? how was I to have confidence in my present confidence? " (132). " Am I wrong in saying, a vision, a mission, a charge? " (81). Going abroad he wrote the verses about his guardian angel, which began with these words,
" Are these the tracks of some unearthly friend? "
and goes on to speak of " the vision which haunted me." While abroad he repeated to himself the words, even of old dear to him, "Exoriari aliquis.... I began to think I had a mission " (82), and so wrote to his friends. It was at this time he said, " I shall not die; I have a work to do in England." Nor did this ever leave him. When Tract 90 came out, in writing to Dr. Bagot of the See of Oxford, he says (134), " I think I can bear, or at least will try to bear, any personal humiliation, so that I am preserved from betraying sacred interests which the Lord of grace and power has given into my charge." The words of St. Augustine, Securus judicat orbis terrarum-the whole world judges in security-came into his mind as a light from heaven, in connection with Leo and the monophysites, and Cardinal Wiseman's lecturing on the Anglican claim. " I had seen the shadow of a hand upon the wall. The heavens had opened and closed again " (158). At this time he wrote the sermon in which it is said, " Compared with this one aim, of not being disobedient to a heavenly vision." Now, what was this mission? At this time the effect of the vision was, " the church of Rome will be found right after all." Already, when abroad, we have seen he held Rome to be the most exalted of all churches. In 1839 he held the churches of Rome and England were both one (163). His via media was then gone (161). His mission was to reform the Anglican church.
But in the beginning of 1839, in an article in the British Critic, he says (143), " Lastly, I proceed to the question of that future of the Anglican church which was to be a new birth of the ancient religion." Yet he had no prospect as to it; the age was moving towards Rome, he knew (204). But in defending Anglicanism he did not at all mind framing a sort of defense, which they (the High Church clergy) " might call a revolution, while I thought it a restoration. Thus, for illustration, I might discourse upon the communion of saints in such a manner (though I do not recollect doing so) as might lead the way towards devotion to the blessed Virgin and the saints on the one hand, and towards prayers for the dead on the other. If the church be not defended on establishment grounds, it must be upon principles which go far beyond their immediate object. Sometimes I saw these further results, sometimes not. Though I saw them, I sometimes did not say that I saw them; it was indeed one of my great difficulties and causes of reserve, as time went on, that I at length recognized, in principles which I had honestly preached as if Anglican, conclusions favorable to the Roman church. Of course, I did not like to confess this, and when interrogated was in perplexity. If Leo had overset, in my own mind, its (antiquity's) force in the special argument for Anglicanism, yet I was committed to antiquity, together with the whole Anglican school. What, then, was I to say when acute minds urged this or that application of it against the via media? It was impossible that any answer could be given that was not unsatisfactory, or any behavior adopted that was not mysterious." Now this was already the case in 1839 (155, 156). He was preaching principles favorable to the Roman church at that date; knowing them to be such, did not confess it, and was mysterious in his conduct (204, 205).
Is it possible that Dr. N. now does not see the want of simplicity and uprightness in this? When he found out he was preaching principles favorable to Rome, when he declares a true Anglican divine must be hostile; if he could not bring himself to confess it, could he not have stopped, instead of adopting a mysterious behavior? I certainly judge an honest man would have done so. He says in this page, " I simply deny that I ever said anything which secretly bore against the church of England, knowing it myself, in order that others might unwarily accept it." But for him, as we have seen, the whole question was between the churches of England and Rome. He recognized, by 1839 at any rate, that he was in effect preaching in favor of the latter. When he continued to do so, was it that others might accept it or not? He was all this time remaining without any satisfactory basis for a religious profession in a state of moral sickness, neither able to acquiesce in Anglicanism, nor able to go to Rome. " But I bore it till, in course of time, my way was made clear to me " (112). But he had the presentiment he was going there, was teaching conclusions favorable to it, knew it, and preached on, and was mysterious in behavior, with the conviction that he had a mission from some heavenly vision, to which he would not be disobedient-that vision being that Rome was right. He had a secret longing love of Rome (202), preached conclusions favorable to Rome, knew it, but never said anything which secretly bore against the church of England.
Dr. N. may think this honest; I avow I cannot. His friends may attribute it more to his " absolute confidence in myself." This, doubtless, had a share in it. But it does not make it honest. He had a great sense of his own importance. His secession is a great act (206). It is a great event (245). But this does not solve the question of honesty. He was seeking disciples (247) till he gave up his place in the movement; but this last was only after Tract 90, that is, in 1841. Yet he knew in 1839 he was preaching principles favorable to Rome, yet tells us (247) he was fighting for the Anglican church in Oxford. I may admit the being deceived, but I cannot admit it was not deceiving. He charges (131) others as being as bad; but this is a poor defense. I think the only possible excuse is a confusion and self-deception which comes from the enemy.
He says in 1845, when a Romanist, " I do not think at all more than I did that the Anglican principles which I advocated at the date you mention lead men to the church of Rome. If I must specify what I mean by Anglican principles, I would say, e.g., taking antiquity, not the existing church, as the oracle of truth " (194). Yet in page 205 he says, " I recognized, in principles which I had preached, conclusions favorable to the Roman church. The prime instance of this was the appeal to antiquity."
This confession was the effect of habitual mental dishonesty. I do not now enlarge on Tract 90. Dr. N. has still no consciousness of it. Thus (129) his attempt to show the articles purposely left questions open, and those on which the controversy hinged.
Article XII positively states that good works, which are the fruits of faith and follow after justification, are pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ; and the XIII, which is Of Works before Justification, says, " Works done before the grace of God and the inspiration of His Spirit are not agreeable to God." Dr. N.'s comment is, " They say that works before grace and justification are worthless and worse, and that works after grace and justification are acceptable; but they do not speak at all of works with God's aid before justification." They do not, because they say that good works, without any distinction at all, are the fruits of faith, and follow after justification; that is, they say there are not any such. Nor can the miserable plea, that " which " distinguishes some, namely, those that spring from faith, and follow, be of any avail. Not only is it evident to every upright person that it is not the meaning of the sentences, but the title disproves it, and the next article sets it at rest, because it says of works done before justification, " Forasmuch as they spring not from faith in Christ, they are not pleasant to God." He says, " They say that councils called by princes may err; they do not determine whether councils called in the name of Christ may err." To be sure. But they say, general councils (none, that is) cannot be called without the commandment and will of princes; and that general councils, which cannot be called in any other way, may and have erred.
That is, it applies to all general councils. No; all this is offensive dishonesty. He was trying, as he says, how much the church of England could bear; he did not expect people to look at the articles for themselves. I think his answer to Mr. Kingsley, as to the sermon on " Wisdom and Innocence " being a Protestant sermon, dishonest; but I will not enter on that part of the book. It is to be noted that, already in 1833, when abroad, he was forming theories which tended to obliterate " the stain upon my imagination " his youth had left as regards Rome. And note, this was not merely his feelings, which he tells us all through the book led him Romewards; " but as regards my reason, I began in 1833 to form theories." It was deliberate; it was his reason. Foolish his theories were; but that is not my subject now. It was the genius loci like the Prince of Persia, one of his Alexandrian middle demons, neither good nor bad absolutely, which infected " the undeniably most exalted church in the whole world."
I cannot but think that Dr. N.'s book to prove himself honest proves distinctly he was not. As to a Protestant theology in the interpretation of the articles, " it sets his teeth on edge even to hear the sound " of it. He had led many on so far towards popery, that he was forced, when ordered by Dr. Bagot to try and keep them, to stretch the articles as far as possible, without their being aware why; as we have seen him say. Was he honestly asking what they did mean? Not he; he tells us so: but what they could bear by perversion. " Men had done their worst to disfigure, to mutilate, the old Catholic truth; but there it was, in spite of them, in the articles still " (171). We have seen how he found it there.
It will be said, But his protest against Rome saved his consistency. His consistency in what? Forming theories in favor of it, tenderly loving it, counting it the most exalted church in the world? But there was no conviction in his protest either. In excusing himself when he retracted his words against Rome, he tells us, at the time he protested, " I said to myself, I am not speaking my own words; I am but following almost a consensus of the divines of my own church. They have ever used the strongest language against Rome, even the most able and learned of them. I wish to throw myself into their system. While I say what they say, I am safe. Such views, too, are necessary to our position " (233). Yes, they spoke against Rome, but they believed what they said. They were opposed to Rome; Dr. N. favored it. He has explained their words when urged against him; but there is no explaining them to an honest mind. I admit he did not believe in transubstantiation; he thought they adored the Virgin Mary too much. But these were slight things; he joined the church of Rome when he did not believe them a bit more. He believed them because Rome was now an oracle, and what she taught must be right.
I do not think I ever met, in all my experience, a mind so effceta veri as Dr. Newman's, so perfectly incapable of valuing truth; and truth of doctrine has more to say to truthfulness than we are aware, for we are sanctified by the truth. In that conviction which wholly overthrew his whole scheme of the via media, it never occurred to him to think even whether in one case error was opposed, in the other, truth.
In studying the monophysite history-that is, the controversy whether Christ had one nature or two, or rather, whether the divinity did not take the place of a human soul-he found Eutyches on one side, and Leo, a most able pope, on the other, who wrote a famous letter, accepted by the Council of Chalcedon as rightly defining the doctrine; and the doctrine so defined has been ever since accepted. Eutyches sought imperial protection. Well, here was a pope instructing a council, and a heretic condemned, the universal church accepting the council's act. At Trent a pope confirms a council's decisions, which the Protestant world does not accept; consequently the Protestant world must be as wrong as Eutyches. What the composition of the Council of Trent was; what the doctrine was that was condemned; whether Eutyches held what was contrary to the faith of the apostles or not; whether Trent condemned the faith of the apostles or not, is never a subject of his inquiry even. There was a pope, and a council, and Eutyches; and a council and a pope, and half the European world, against it, the Greek church absent. But as in the two cases there was a pope and a council (whether general or not even, is a question), half Europe must be wrong, as Eutyches and many Orientals were. The only question for Dr. N. was analogy of position. What was condemned was a matter of total indifference to him. Dr. Newman knows very well that another pope and another general council condemned a part of this same council of Chalcedon for all that-what was called the three chapters. But this was no matter; he was on journey to Rome. But, as we have seen, when he joined Rome he did not believe in transubstantiation more than before. He says, " People say that the doctrine of transubstantiation is difficult to believe. I did not believe the doctrine till I was a Catholic. I had no difficulty in believing it, as soon as I believed that the Catholic Roman church was the oracle of God, and that she had declared this doctrine to be part of the original revelation." Is it possible for truth to be more absolutely null in a human mind, or true faith to be more absent from it?
Another principle which really led Dr. Newman to popery was the doctrine of development. I will say a word on this. I deny it absolutely in divine things. In the human mind there is development. In the present truth there cannot, for God has been revealed. There is no revelation more, nor meant to be any. Individuals may learn more and more, but it is there to be learned. The scriptures give two positive grounds for this-that I am to continue in what I have learned as the only true ground of safety, that I know of whom I have learned them. There is a negative ground of proof-the apostles committing us, when they should be gone, to that which would be a security for us. If the Person of Christ be the foundation truth of Christianity (as scripture declares it is) as the Son revealing the Father, it is clear there can be no development. His Person cannot be developed. But I quite understand it will be said, Of course not; but the revelation of it can. Equally impossible. He Himself is wholly, fully revealed, and reveals the Father. The Holy Ghost has revealed, and is the truth.
Hence John, who treats this subject, declares that was to continue (abide in them) which they had learned, and they would so abide in the Father and in the Son. They could not have more. If any doctrine other than this, or "para," beyond or on one side, besides " what he preached," says Paul, " was preached," neither the doctrine nor the preacher were to be received. If the church did not possess fully the revelation of the Father in the glorified Son by the Holy Ghost, it did not possess Christ at all, as there revealed; if it did, it could not be added to nor developed. If it did add to it, it falsified Christ. That men speculated about it, and their foolish and irreverent speculations had to be rebuked, repressed, corrected, that is true; but whatever was more than returning to the simplicity of the first revelations, or went beyond its fullness, was pure mischief. Either the apostles and first church had a full revelation of Christ, or the church never was founded on it. If they had, there was no development of it. So of His work. It is complete, or the church is not saved; was completely revealed, or the church had not its ground of justification and peace. If it had, there was no development. That much was lost I believe.
The greatest stickler for church authority does not pretend the church receives a fresh revelation. He merely says that the church pronounces on truth as having been revealed. But then there can be no development. Till revelation was complete there were further truths unfolded, but it was by revelation. Once that complete, all is closed; and Christianity completes it. The word of God is fulfilled, completed, says Paul to the Colossians. We are to walk in the light, as God is in the light. It was an unction of the Holy One, by which we know all things. " The Spirit," says the apostle, " searcheth all things, even the deep things of God." And then the apostle tells us he spoke by the Holy Spirit in words which He taught. The true light now shines. We have the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The Holy Ghost may guard the saints against error, and show it is error; but the apostles were guided into all truth. Thus John, in a passage quoted, " Let that therefore abide in you which ye have heard from the beginning. If that which ye have heard from the beginning abide in you, ye also shall continue in the Father and in the Son." We have the " glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." So again: " Continue thou in the things that thou hast learned, knowing of whom thou hast learned them." Paul, in going, commends them to God and the word of His grace, as sufficient. Peter writes that they should have, after his decease, these things always in remembrance. As Tertullian justly says, " What is first is the truth." If Eutyches introduces error, Eutyches may be condemned, and truth stated; but this is not development, but maintenance of the truth as it had been revealed.
The church does not teach; the teacher teaches. The church abides in and professes the truth she has learned. She is, or ought to be, the pillar and ground of the truth; but she does not teach it. The mystery of iniquity began in the apostles' days: the last days were already come. The Truth was there; but men, like Satan, abode not in it. But abiding in it, walking in it, in the truth perfectly revealed in Christ, this was the duty of the saint, even if the professing church would not, and the time should come when they would turn away from the truth: Paul declared they would.
In result, Dr. N.'s book presents us with this history-a man who declares that he was converted in a system and by truth which he afterward gave up.
I value the doctrine of the church of God deeply, as the body of Christ (Eph. 1), and on earth the dwelling-place of the Spirit (Eph. 2). I believe the confounding these two to be the source of popery, and men's present confusions. But I do not believe that trusting the church is the ground of faith, for then there could have been none. Heathens and Jews did not receive the church at all. " Of his own will begat he us," says James, " by the word of truth."
However, I am analyzing Dr. N.'s account. He was converted, he is still perfectly sure, at fifteen, by the power of certain truths, and by the instrumentality of a clergyman he calls Calvinistic. He got then and there (29), in the system he left, conversion, of which he is " still more certain than that he has hands and feet " (56); and the beginning of divine faith, so he calls it now. In a word, he owes his salvation to what he got then. He, indeed, all but admits it as entirely obtained there. Next we see him gradually giving up the truth which was the means of it, by intercourse with Dr. Hawkins, Froude, Whately, James, and Bishop Butler. The result has been, that he has wholly apostatized from all true ground of faith. " Speaking historically of what I held in 1833-4, I say that I believed in a God on a ground of probability, that I believed in Christianity on a probability, and that I believed in Catholicism on a probability, and that all these were about the same kind of probability accumulative, a transcendent probability; but still probability, inasmuch as He who has made us has willed that, in a religious inquiry, we arrive at certitude by accumulated probabilities."
It was thus he was " led on into the church of Rome." That is, it was by giving up all true faith. Faith is the reception of a divine testimony by the operation of the Spirit of God, and can have no possible connection with probability. To say it is probable that God speaks the truth would be a blasphemy. He who receives a thing as probable does not believe that God has said or taught it at all. What led Dr. N. to popery was giving up faith. In this way he was in a sick state of soul, neither able to acquiesce in Anglicanism, nor to go to Rome; but thought, by some vision first, and then a special call, as to which he was not quite sure, but that it came from Satan. He says he had a mission, a charge, and was diligently making converts (247), until, after Tract 90, he gave up the lead in the movement. All the while his heart was towards Rome: she was certainly Catholic, he was not quite sure that England was; at any rate, she needed a complete revolution in her state. As to the true unity of the body, he never had an idea of it. He threatened his Romanist friends, and threatened the bishops; he knew, as we have seen, at the bottom of his heart, that he was going to Rome; had a secret longing love of it, and knew he was disposing others to it, yet worked on. The result of his account is this: the truth was the means of his conversion to God; departure from all true ground of faith, that of his going to Rome.
Christianity Not Christendom
THE times in which we are-the question in every serious man's mind, " Are we to go back to popery or not? " the fears of surprised Protestants; and the insolent pretensions of Papists and Puseyites (while the only thing that has courage by their side is infidelity, and indifference to truth, which rather favors error than truth, because truth is truth, and insists on itself) the heart-sickening imbecility of those who govern, or rather who are afraid to govern; the solemn sight that courage is found only on the side of evil, so that it looks like the judgment of God-lead one to ask, What is this church so vaunted by dishonest Puseyites, and honest Roman Catholics, or those who, from its prestige and influence, whatever that prestige and influence may be, cling to it, while they do not believe one word about it, for such is the case very widely in Roman Catholic countries. What is this church, this great system, which carries such weight with men?
We must not suppose that anglicans, or evangelicals, or dissenters, have escaped its influence; they may be anxious to avoid its being quite popish, or to lower its condition to open infidelity. Men may be high church or broad church, Roman or Greek; but they are all church of some kind, or would be. They may have altars instead of tables, or cry establishments down; but if they do, they will dignify the once modest chapel with the name of church. What is this church? that word which has such charm in it; is it something from God, and of God, as it stands?
That it has some charm in it is evident from the well-known fact, that whereas in the popular English Bible of the day there was " congregation," where now we have " church," king James insisted that church, and only church, should be there. It has a successional character, and however small the rivulet in which some think to have pure water, still it is to be derived from larger ones into channels which, they pretend, make the water pure. The grosser corruptions were purged away three centuries ago; what resulted has largely turned to infidelity, and many arc going back to the superstitions as that which is in the old channel.
What is this great system, this potent idea? Is a successional church, corrupt or purified or infidelized (if I may coin a new word for a new state of things), a church of the past, on a pattern some centuries ago, or a church of the future, with no pattern at all but man's fancied competency in this age to do better and be wiser than all before him-is any church as now understood, coming down from ages past, however reformed and arranged, a thing of God? Is it to pass in some shape on this descendible principle? Is there that which, calling itself a church, exercises authority over the mind of man according to the mind of God? We are forced to look the whole question in the face: is the existing professing church, whatever shape it may assume, a thing which God owns? Is a successional body, in any shape, true or right according to God? I repeat, this question is forced upon us, the whole question; not, Is this or that church right?
The universal confusion, Greek rejecting Rome, Puseyites coyly flirting with it, Protestants abhorring it, dissenters seeking to pull down what exists, because it stands in their way, joining Rome for this purpose, episcopalians trying to keep it together, truth or no truth, Rome itself divided through idolatry of the Virgin, and infallibility of the pope, which notoriously contradicts all history, yet increasing her sway in the world; all in confusion, as all admit, from the pope to dissenters, all wanting to have the church right, though all for very different reasons thinking its state wrong; making the inquiry as to which is right hopeless. They have raised the question: what is it they are fighting about? Each party, no doubt, trust themselves; but every man's hand is against his neighbor, and how is the sober looker-on to trust them?
I am well aware that the good churchman will tell me that this is the effect of schism, and that people have what calls itself the church to look to; but how am I to know which is the church? I am told there are marks of it, yet who is to assign the true ones? But be it so, catholicity is one of them, that is, universality; but more than half professing Christendom is outside what pretends to be it, and hundreds of thousands of its most respectable members leaving it as corrupt. Sanctity? But history shows it to have been the most unholy thing that ever existed. Apostolic succession? A man must be a learned man to know if it exist, and if he is, he will know it did not; that nothing is more uncertain, if not certain that it is broken. Besides, to make my salvation depend on the right succession of a set of wicked men, who put down one another in the dark ages, is rather too strong. Then, unity? The oldest church, the Greek, counting by millions, reject and denounce it. Unity, holiness, catholicity, are a fable as regards the church; excellent blessed things, only not to be found nowadays.
The conscience of half Europe rose against the open, flagrant, impious iniquity of what they call the church. Nay, take it altogether, the change of system shows, at the rate it has gone on, that the boasted church could not take care of its children-was incompetent to prevent the mischief. All we simple people know is, that Quicquid delirant reges plectuntur Achivi. The church cannot be trusted, it has not been able somehow to take care of itself. In Roman Catholic countries, and now also in Protestant ones, not only scientific men, but masses of the uneducated are turned, or turning, infidels; and the remedy is superstitious ceremonies and a going back to what was so notoriously corrupt that natural conscience would stand it no longer; when to be a clergyman, or of religion, was universally to be esteemed worthless, submitted to for the necessities of sacramental grace, and despised for licensed and unlicensed immorality.
And this was the church! Is this what we are reduced to? or to turn infidel and deny the Savior that loved us and gave Himself for us? Assuredly not. The truth is as true as ever, divine love as full, above all our evil, the Lord as sure in His faithfulness, His arm unshortened. But the church, so called, cannot help us; it cannot help itself. Which church am I to trust to? Who will tell me? The church, I am told. Where is it? In Rome? No, cry loudly both the most ancient church, the Greek, and all the Protestants, who have more or less purified themselves from it, unless in despair of themselves they are going back to it, and now many of the most respectable of themselves who have broken with it. From Rome to which am I to go? Who will tell me that? I have a din of voices claiming to be right. We want Christianity, not Christendom; we have had enough of this.
Now I look all this in the face, and take the question up, not on the disputed claims of churches, who mutually disprove their respective claims, but on the question of the church, as man looks at it now, as we see it in every time as the subject of ecclesiastical history; and I say it never was, as a system, the institution of God, or what God established; but at all times, from its first appearance in ecclesiastical history, the departure, as a system, from what God established, and nothing else; primitive church and all; and the more it was formally established, the more it was corrupt. Saints, beloved of God I do not doubt were and are in it; but it was a corruption offensive to God from the beginning of its history. Take a history, any history, of the church, it is a history, not of God's institution, but of man's corruption. History and scripture both testify of this, and no man can speak of the church of ecclesiastical history, if he be an honest man, without admitting that it was man's corruption, not God's institution, or denying history and scripture alike; I say, from its outset as the subject of ecclesiastical records, or scripture statements.
That Christ has a church which He loved and gave Himself for, and will present to Himself a glorious church, no true Christian denies; nor that the work which gathered it was to be carried on on earth, nor that, in a scriptural sense, the foundation was laid on earth. All that is true; but my proposition is simple: the church as the subject of history never was anything but man's corruption; the people who composed it went on, but the moment it was left to man's responsibility it departed from God's principles.
Let not my reader be surprised. Let us speak of man. What is man before our eyes and the subject of history and of God's dealings? Is he, was he ever, in his actual history God's creature as He set him up? Never! He is the corruption of what God set up, and nothing else, save the one blessed One who came to save. Let me draw attention to a great principle running through scripture, that surprise may be less at my assertion, which may naturally astound many-so much do we cling to tradition; and here even an infidel may recognize, not the truth of God of course, but the principle that runs through what the believer owns, what I own, as a divine revelation. That principle is that in every case God set up that which was good positively or relatively, and the first thing man did was to corrupt and ruin it; and then history is the history of man's corrupt condition, though no doubt so much the more of God's patience and goodness.
Man was set up good. The first thing he did was to fall into sin and corrupt himself. His history is the history of a fallen race: God judged that world. I am putting the scripture account of what has always happened; not discussing its truth, but giving its view of what has taken place.
Noah was spared from a ruined world and government set up as restraint to man's passions. The first thing he does after his burnt-offering that is stated in scripture-mind, I am giving its view of things-is to get drunk, and we hear no more of him, and the world goes on to Babel and confusion.
The law was given when God called out a people for Himself, the world being gone into idolatry, worshipping stocks and stones, and given up to a reprobate mind. Before Moses comes down from the mount with the two tables of the law, the people have made a golden calf, and have cast off God altogether.
The priesthood was set up, consecrated of God: the first day after the consecration was complete, two of them offer strange fire, and Aaron never entered into the holy of holies in his robes of glory and beauty-was excluded from all ordinary access to God.
Royalty was set up; the son of David was to be God's king, build his temple, and be every way blessed. He loves many strange women, turns to idolatry, and the kingdom is ruined.
God afterward transfers power to the Gentiles, sets up the head of gold, leaving Jerusalem, casting down David's throne; and men often think, if despotic, they would do all manner of wise and good things. But Nebuchadnezzar casts the faithful into the fire, and gets in every sense a beast's heart. Gentile power is corrupt, ambitious, and violent-cannot, as scripture speaks, stay at home, what it describes by likening them to ravening beasts.
Such is the uniform account given me in scripture of what has gone on-God's ways, and man's ways when God has set up anything. I am not saying anything of grace on His part which is exalted, but of His public dealings, and man's conduct when God had instituted anything on earth-of man's history. Is it very surprising if the same thing has happened in Christianity? No doubt vastly increased light and an altogether fuller revelation of grace are found in Christianity. It was the revelation of God, not the government of man as he was, or law suited to him. But this is not the question, but, what has man been when this was committed to him? when he was placed under responsibility in respect of this revelation? Nor could I, nor could any, thank God, deny that there were saints when the general standing was one of total failure, and, in principle, apostasy from the first estate. There was Abel, and Noah, and Enoch, after the fall, and even fuller testimony as evil closed in, and Elijah's when Israel, in one sense because Israel, had made the golden calves, and gone after Baal; but that is not the question, but, what was the state of things?
Now I shall first present the historical fact before I quote the instructions of scripture on the subject; but scripture must itself tell us both the basis from which men fell away, and some of the facts too. Now Galatians, without going into the higher doctrines of Ephesians and Colossians, will afford us the great foundational basis, and in a measure what departure from it is. Two great principles lie at the base of Christianity, God's righteousness, Christ sitting at the right hand of God, and the presence of the Holy Ghost. Paul tells us (2 Cor. 3) that Christianity (or the gospel) was the ministration of righteousness and the ministration of the Spirit: these are the two great essential elements. So again, " But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested "; and again, " to declare, I say, at this time His righteousness "; and " the righteousness of God by faith of Jesus Christ." So Phil. 3, " not having mine own righteousness which is by the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith." Christ has made peace by the blood of His cross, and left peace to His disciples. Peace was what was preached, and remission of sins: " being justified by faith," says the apostle, " we have peace with God," Christ having borne our sins in His own body on the tree.
The cross had told what man was. He had there rejected God's Son, His last messenger to seek fruit from men as such; and God's work of redemption and peace-making was wholly finished here, so that believers are reconciled to God, have no more conscience of sins. In Him we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace; redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. They that are sanctified are perfected forever by one offering, and the Holy Ghost is a witness that our sins and inquiries are remembered no more; yea, we have boldness for the day of judgment, because as He (Christ) is, so are we in this world. It is on the work of grace in Christ that the apostle rests, and assures us of the blessedness of the man to whom the Lord imputes no sin, our being justified by faith; Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness.
Now in the Galatian assemblies the Judaizing teachers had introduced the doctrine of righteousness by the law; and this the apostle earnestly combats. In no epistle do we find the anxiety that is in this, not a salutation at the end, not a kind word at the beginning; but, absorbed by the fatal subversion of Christianity that had got in amongst them, he plunges at once into his subject-" I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel, which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ: but though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that which ye have received, let him be accursed."
He then goes on laboriously to deny any succession from the apostles; he had received neither the truth nor office from them; he was not of man nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father. His adversaries insisted on succession in the ministry and ordination, but he indignantly repudiated it; but the main point which he declared to be the subversion of Christianity was the introduction of righteousness by works of law, or law in any shape. It was frustrating, setting aside, and making void (ouk atheto) the grace of God, for if righteousness came by law, Christ was dead in vain. And as many as were of the works of the law were under the curse. This was the great thesis of the apostle: Christ is become of no effect unto you; as many of you as are justified by the law, ye are fallen from grace. And what he especially appeals to in testimony of this is, that they had received the Holy Ghost as the seal of this doctrine of being justified by faith, and not by works of law; the presence of the Holy Ghost, and the way it came, decided the question.
I do not question that fruits of a new nature would follow, demonstrating the faith to be real, and that the Christian has to show his faith by his works, but never by works of law. The works which God delights in are alone those which are the fruit of faith. The Christian is bound, and disposed, if he is one, to do good works: you do right to claim them from him, but why? Because he is a Christian first. People have forgotten the simple principle that duties flow from the relationships we are already in, and cannot exist for us till we are in those relationships. I say this much to avoid mistakes, but it is not my subject. Man had duties as man, but he has failed in them; he is a sinner, and is lost, according to Christianity. The full exposition given in the Romans on this great point is, that Gentiles were lawless, the Jews law-breakers; that there was none righteous, no not one; that every mouth was stopped, and all the world guilty before God; all had sinned and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that was in Christ Jesus. And Christianity teaches us that the blessed Son of God finished the work which His Father gave Him to do; and we read that by Him all that believe are justified from all things, from which they could not be justified by the law of Moses: that, when He had by Himself purged our sins, He sat down at the right hand of God; that, if this whole work of making peace and perfecting the believers forever were not accomplished by His one offering, He must have suffered often.
We have seen that it is by faith that we are justified; redemption is through His blood; and hence the believer's being justified through faith, reconciled to God, having peace with God, is one great pillar of Christianity, Christianity itself as a foundation including the blessed revelation of the Father in the Son: for it is not as slighting His blessed Person that I speak of His work, but when grace has drawn the heart to own His Person, the gospel is the answer to the need the revelation of His Person has created. So the poor woman in the city that was a sinner, drawn in deep humiliation to His Person, receives the answer, " Thy sins arc forgiven thee, thy faith hath saved thee: go in peace." The thief who owned Him Lord and the Man who had done nothing amiss, and looked for the kingdom, received the blessed answer, " To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise."
The other great truth which constitutes Christianity is the presence of the Holy Ghost; that the believer receives it, so that he is sealed thereby, and that the Spirit dwells in him. We have a kind of picture of the connection of both in John 20, when the Lord first says to Mary Magdalene to tell His brethren, " I go to my Father and your Father, my God and your God "; and then, when they gather, He is there, and says to them, " Peace be unto you," and " as my Father hath sent me, so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost." I merely take the general thought that we get the disciples, the brethren, put into the same relationship to God and the Father as Christ Himself, peace proclaimed to them, and the Holy Ghost communicated to them.
I return to the Galatians, to which I first referred. We have seen how the apostle makes justification by faith a question of Christianity, or the contrary; and this we have seen confirmed by a crowd of passages, and divine righteousness put as the answer to there being none righteous, no, not one, amongst men, and this by the work of Christ effectual to us by faith, so that we are perfected forever by one offering, and no sin imputed to us. The apostle shows how this is no allowance of sin, but the way of power against it, in Rom. 6; only here I confine myself to the point in hand.
Now let us see what is said as to the Holy Spirit. This is directly everywhere connected with the exaltation of Christ as man to the right hand of God; that when man in the Person of the Lord Jesus was exalted to the right hand of God, in virtue of His perfectly glorifying God on the cross, the Holy Ghost was sent down here to dwell in them that believe; and that this made the distinctive difference of Christians and Christianity, divine righteousness having placed man on high; as the result of a work done for man's salvation and blessing, the Holy Ghost was given to those that believed. Let us proceed to cite the proofs; they may be multiplied, but the principal ones are so clear and definite that I need not go through them, though the distinctive character of the presence of the Holy Ghost marking out the essential difference of Christianity will be clearer the more we are acquainted with the Old and New Testaments.
The promise of the Holy Ghost in the Old Testament, as characterizing Christianity, is sufficiently demonstrated by Peter's quotation of Joel: " It shall come to pass in the last days I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams, and on my servants and on my handmaids will I pour out in those days of my Spirit." It is only needful to remark that it was upon all, young and old, servants and handmaids, no trace of a clergy or body to whom it was limited, but formally the contrary: nor was it then only the apostles, there were a hundred and twenty there, and women among them. The Lord Himself had promised it: " If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink, and, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water; this spake he of the Spirit which they that believe on him should receive, for the Holy Ghost was not yet [given, oupo en], because Jesus was not yet glorified "; what was known as the Holy Ghost thus present among them was not yet.
And this is what the twelve disciples at Ephesus say; we have not so much as heard, not whether there be any Holy Ghost, but whether the Holy Ghost is (come). They were John's disciples, and he had spoken of baptizing with the Holy Ghost as one of the things which Jesus would do, presenting the work of Jesus as comprehended in the two things I have spoken of-the Lamb of God that takes away sin, and He that baptizes with the Holy Ghost. So the Lord Himself, " If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you, but if I go away, I will send him unto you." So again, " whom the Father will send in my name." When He is come, He will reprove (convict) the world of sin and righteousness and judgment, guide the disciples into all truth, and show them things to come. So Peter (when He was come according to promise), " being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost [note this reception of it for others on His exaltation], he hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear ": and when pricked in their hearts, they asked, " Men and brethren, what shall we do? " he replies, " Repent, and be baptized, every one of you, for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is to you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call." So, before the priests, " We are witnesses of these things, and so also is the Holy Ghost which is given to them that obey him." So to Cornelius God gives the proof that He will have the Gentiles by giving him the Holy Ghost, so that Peter could not forbid water. So at Samaria, they all receive the Holy Ghost by means of Peter and John, having been baptized by Philip. In the case referred to in Acts 19 Paul says, " Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed? "
Peter, in his first Epistle, describing the order of dispensations, speaks of the prophets finding that the things they prophesied were not for them; neither have we got them: they are reported unto you, he says, " by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; wherefore be sober and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ."
These are ample to show that the presence of the Holy Ghost, founded on the work of Christ and His exaltation, was the distinctive character of Christianity; the blessings connected with it run through the New Testament; the love of God shed abroad in our hearts, the knowledge that we are in Christ and Christ in us, the knowing that we are sons, so that we cry, Abba, Father-nay, dwelling in God, and God in us. True holy liberty, true divine knowledge, all and every enjoyment of blessings, and abounding in hope, and help in our infirmities, are attributed to the Holy Ghost; our good fruits are the fruits of the Spirit; our joy is joy in the Holy Ghost; our love, love in the Spirit; it is by one Spirit through Christ we have access to the Father: " If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his "; and this is Christ being in us.
All this shows to an attentive mind that it is distinctive of the Christian, but though it be the bright and blessed side, I must not dwell on this further, but cite what FORMALLY shows it to be distinctive of the Christian; it is, " If we are led of the Spirit, we are not under law ": our bodies are the temple of the Holy Ghost which we have of God: we are not to grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by which we are sealed for the day of redemption. What is the appeal of the apostle to the Galatians connected with justification by faith? " This only would I learn of you, received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are ye so foolish, having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect in the flesh? " They were slipping away through Judaizing teachers, teachers of the law, who were subverting (we read) whole houses from justification by faith; and his appeal, as that which they all knew, is to their having received the Holy Ghost-not that they all walked well, but that the Holy Ghost was come, and that they had received it.
It may be said, But they who ministered the Spirit to them (an expression much to be noted) worked miracles. But all knew they had the Holy Ghost: if the flesh lusted in them, it lusted against the Spirit. In Romans a Christian is described as he that is after the Spirit: they were not in the flesh, their old Adam standing, but in the Spirit, if the Spirit of God dwelt in them. If any man had not the Spirit of Christ, he was none of His: and this is not mere temper, for he continues, " and if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin, and the Spirit is life because of righteousness ": the Christian state was the effect of Christ being in them. It is by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body: we are also builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit.
But it is not my object to draw all the consequences of the presence of the Holy Ghost, but merely to show that Christianity was characterized by it: even if they walked badly, they grieved the Holy Spirit of God by which they were sealed unto the day of redemption. It is not surprising. The Father sending the Son was the grand and mighty basis of Christianity, and the sending of the Spirit by both the Father and a glorified Christ was a witness of His Lordship and exaltation, and the great testimony in the world, and that by which we know the value of the work and exaltation of One, and our relationship with the other, as sons by grace with Him-that by which all was received here. Such was Christianity essentially in its basis. There were other collateral truths of course, and important ones too, but these formed its base, not only for our blessing, but for the full revelation of God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
There were directions for order, and simple ordinances clearly referred to, as two, baptism and the Lord's supper; both telling of Christ's death (one initiatory, the other continual), of man judged, for Christ had been rejected, and of redemption accomplished in His death. I refer to them now simply to show that I acknowledge them fully and their value.
As a rule, elders and deacons were appointed in the various assemblies; ministry consisted in the exercise of gift (the gifts of the Spirit, who distributed to every man severally as He would), and each gifted person was a member of Christ's body, and exercised it according to scriptural order under the authority of Christ. The directions are found in I Corinthians, where there is no appearance of the existence of any elders at all. But such was Christianity as presented to us in scripture in its essential features. Has it preserved them? Is what is now called the church that Christianity, the system I find there?
The Christianity we find in scripture is: saints justified, no sin imputed to them, perfected forever, knowing they were forgiven and were sons, having personal consciousness of their relationship with God, accepted in the beloved, having full assurance of faith and hope, a confidence they were warned to hold fast; and, as to service, gifts from on high, through the power of the Holy Ghost, imposed on each one the duty of service, according to the gift he had received and the order prescribed in the word. If he had two talents or five talents, he was to trade with them-a wicked and slothful servant if he did not; as every man had received the gift, he was so to minister the same, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. Women were to keep silence in the assemblies; men were to exercise their gifts according to prescribed order: these gifts were set in the whole church at large, and exercised according to God's will, as a distinct member of the one whole body. Some were signs of power (as to which there is no promise of continuance), others, the fruit of Christ's faithful care of His body-two of these being the foundation-to continue till we all come to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ: besides this, the edifying and growth of the body was carried on by that which every joint supplied, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part.
Such was the Christian state scripturally, known personal relationship with God, according to the efficacy of Christ's redemption, and the Holy Ghost given to each, and working in each, as seemed good to Him, Christ giving from on high assuredly what was needed for the accomplishment of the assembly as His body, and these gifts operating in those that had them as members of the one body, and set in the assembly as a whole, in no way local. Besides this, and baptism and the Lord's supper, by one of which they were received into God's house, and by the other both the unity of the body and Christ's death were symbolized, there were local officers, elders appointed in every city. They were local offices, not gifts, though gifts they might have, and one was desirable to make their service in their office more effectual; but these were local, the gifts were not.
The church, as understood in modern times in all its compartments, is constituted, has its existence by, and is based on, the clergy and its sacraments, rot on an accomplished redemption and the presence and power of the Holy Ghost- a clergy which is called the ministry, and even the church. I take, as a plain popular proof of the truth of this, the Evangelical Alliance. It abhors the corruption that has entered into the church, but it would not admit Quakers and Plymouth Brethren: the former reject clergy and sacraments, the latter clergy only, holding baptism and the Lord's supper, both insisting on ministry by the Spirit. I am not insisting now on their being right or wrong; I merely take it as a popular proof of the basis of the universal system, even where gross corruptions are resisted. It results in this, that the recognition of a clergy is the basis of the church, the sine qua non, the essential condition.
I am not, remark here, speaking of the corruption of the church. This was so great, that Nicholas Clemangis, the greatest man of his age in the middle ages, declares that putting a girl into a convent was making her a prostitute. Unnatural crimes were usual with the clergy; and Baronius declares that for a hundred years he cannot recognize the popes as legitimate popes at all, save for dates. They were not elected by the clergy, nor approved even by their vote, but put in by the mistresses of the marquises of Tuscany, sometimes those who were sons of a previous pope by their mothers after his death. And it came to fightings even at the moment of consecration, and, as whichever got the upper hand broke all the ordinations of the one whom he had driven out, a book was written to reassure people as to having any sacraments at all.
But this was the corruption of the church, and I do not enter into it. It is no wonder that the Holy Ghost, as scripture testifies of it, was utterly turned away from. My thesis is, not that the church as now held historically was corrupted, but that the church so held was itself the total departure in principle from scripture, from what Christ set up by the Holy Ghost. The doctrine of full justification by faith, founded on accomplished redemption, and the recognition of the Holy Ghost as present and a directing power, were lost, and the clergy and sacraments substituted for them. The Reformation removed many corruptions which had grown intolerable, and many false principles; but the notion of the church was still based on the clergy and the sacraments. It is hard to prove a negative; but it is quite certain that neither a full redemption, nor, though the words be used once or twice, a complete possessed justification by faith, as Paul teaches it, a perfecting forever by its one offering, a known personal acceptance in Christ, is ever found in any ecclesiastical writings after the canonical scriptures for long centuries. We have Barnabas saying they had forgiveness of sins by baptism (chap. 11): this, note, was only previous sins, administrating a great blessing surely, but not the definite acceptance in Christ of a person to whom the Lord imputes no sin, so that there was no condemnation. There was no trace of any full justification by faith, though of course Christ is owned as having come and having died as the Savior, along with a mass of strange allegorical interpretations. He calls Christianity a new law. We have a very meager reference to His dying for the forgiveness of our sins (chap. 5). But he insists on the cross and water going together (chap. 1), that is, baptism, putting their trust in the cross, descending into the water. We go down into the water, full of sins and pollutions, but come up again bringing forth fruit. He refers to the serpent of brass, but it is looking to Christ as able to give life. He says too, as regards God's dwelling in us, having received remission of our sins, and trusting in the name of the Lord, we are become renewed, being again created, as it were, from the beginning, wherefore God truly dwells in our house, that is, in us. But how does He dwell in us? The word of faith, the calling of His promise, the wisdom of His righteous judgments, etc., etc.
Now I have quoted all this because, while the epistle is so full of absurdities, that people have denied that it is of Barnabas, and one sees how one falls down a precipice after we leave inspiration, yet it has by far the most truth of any of these old writings. His attributing forgiveness of sins to baptism is very natural; for when a heathen or a Jew became professedly a Christian by baptism, he did administratively enter into the privileges belonging to Christianity, though this became soon the doctrine of the efficiency of the sacrament. But I cannot doubt that the writer was a Christian, and though despised by many ancient and modern writers, and the departure from the true Christian standing, from a gospel such as Paul's who was not sent to baptize, is flagrantly evident, still it contains by far the most truths of any of these ancient writers. I have quoted all that is of worth: the rest is really nonsense in general.
Besides this, he makes us hasten to our appointed place by our works, and then gives a string of commandments to follow, among which he tells them to labor with their hands to give to the poor, that their sins might be forgiven them, and these commandments were the way of light. We get here some very faint trace of the first elements of the gospel, but the application of the blessing of it is by baptism and works, but he is pretty much on the ground of the historic church. Be ye taught, he says, of God, seeking what it is the Lord requires of you, and doing it, that ye may be saved in the day of judgment. We have nothing of the clergy. The epistle is found attached to the New Testament in the MSS. (as in Sinaiticus) along with Hermas. He distinctly substitutes (2) men's offering themselves for the burnt-offerings, and quotes the prophets as putting man's conduct in the place of sacrifices. It is an utter departure from the gospel as found in scripture, with happy signs that he did not intend to deny it.
In Polycarp we have one of the best of these epistles, and he quotes Paul to the Ephesians: " Knowing that by grace ye are saved, not by works, but by the faith of God, through Jesus Christ," again making it vague. We have no recognition of the Holy Ghost: I do not mean that he denies it. It is forgotten; but the clergy (though he has not a notion of episcopacy in an individual, nor writes as such, but the contrary) are fully recognized, " being subject to the priests and deacons as unto God and Christ." In fine, there is no harm in the epistle, not a trace of the gospel, save the quotation of Paul, Christ's death being used as an example, no recognition of the Holy Ghost, or any gift of the Spirit, but a full recognition of the clergy.
As to Clement, we have a long exhortation to peace: the blood of Christ is owned (it is precious to God, and has obtained the grace of repentance for the whole world) as given for us (21, 49). If we walk aright, obey the commands of God, we shall get the blessing, as all the ancient worthies (7, 9). Faith he refers to, but only acting by faith to get the blessing. " For what (32) was our father Abraham blessed? was it not because that through faith he wrought righteousness? " He says we are not justified by our own wisdom, or by the works which we have done in the holiness of our hearts, but by that faith by which God Almighty justified all men from the beginning (32). As to the clergy, he owns no bishop at Corinth -this is very marked in the letter; like Polycarp, he owns presbyters only; his letter would have been a flagrant disrespect if there had been one, and he states that the apostles appointed presbyters, but he knew no prelacy. But he is the first to introduce what soon corrupted the church. In insisting on order he refers to the chief-priest, priests, Levites, and laymen. This he speaks of as Jewish, and only by way of illustration; still it gave the direction to thought. So he speaks of offerings at the appointed seasons and the appointed place: God has ordained by His supreme will and authority both where and by what persons they are to be performed (40). In a word, the full doctrine of redemption and peace is dropped, the Holy Ghost, as a present thing, unknown (he refers to the Corinthians having had a great effusion of the Holy Ghost), and the clergy set up distinctly, and that on the pattern of Judaism. Two things are objected to in him, and that even as long ago as Photius, that he was unsound as to the divinity of Christ, and the Phoenix. We easily see that the power of the Holy Ghost as inspiration was gone, so that the mere reference to the Phoenix is nothing extraordinary; what is to me in the matter is, that he refers to heathen priests and their inquiries as true knowledge and, so to speak, divine matters, and the miracle of the Phoenix appears as a plain sanction of heathenism.
As to the divinity of Christ, he is, to say the least, cloudy. It has been answered that he calls Him the scepter of the divine Majesty. This does not prove much, rather worse than nothing. Christ is throughout a man, a priest prescribing our offerings, and, what is strange, quoting Hebrews t, he says, " But unto the Son, saith the Lord, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee, ask of me," etc. It cannot, perhaps, be said that he denied the Deity of the Lord, but it certainly is not in his mind; he is insensible to it, he thinks of the blessed Lord in another way; a full known salvation by grace he most assuredly knows not. There is no present Holy Ghost in his mind; and he sets up the clergy on the pattern of Judaism. His epistle is a distinct revelation of where Christians had got to. It is relied on for justifying the present state of the church. Prelacy it does not justify, it has no trace of such a thing, or of any individual episcopacy, but it does picture the general state, in its germinal principles. But it does not speak of a full redemption and peace; not a word of what Paul teaches of our standing as Christians, nothing; nor of the presence of the Holy Ghost. The clergy, and offerings at an appointed place, he insists on, quoting Judaism and the order of an army as a pattern and authority.
Further, Paul's doctrine as to the Holy Ghost and ministry are so completely ignored as to place these points on ground which obliterates and denies all Paul's teaching (42). He says, " The apostles brought us the good news of the gospel from the Lord Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ from God." Now this ignores the Holy Ghost, and the whole of that form of Christianity which resulted from Christ's exaltation. The blessed Lord says, " I have many things to say to you, but ye cannot bear them now; but when he the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth." This Clement wholly ignores. But Paul flatly contradicts Clement's statement: I neither received it-speaking of the gospel he preached-of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ; and this in Gal. 1:2, when he is carefully setting aside any connection with a derivation of office or truth from the apostles. He was sent forth from Antioch, it is expressly said, by the Holy Ghost, and this is so true, that he does not recognize the apostles as sent forth by Christ on earth, but only as gifts from Christ when ascended (Eph. 4:10, 11). " He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things; and he gave some apostles," etc. The apostles, during the lifetime of Christ, were forbidden to go to the Gentiles (Matt. 10), and the mission they received (Matt. 28) after Christ's resurrection, not after His ascension, they relinquished to Paul (Gal. 2:8, 9). However, I do not dwell on this; but the assertion of Clement denies the whole ministry and power of the Holy Ghost, as sent down from on high, after Christ's exaltation, and the truths into which He led the apostles, even the twelve themselves, and which Christ declares they could not bear when He was with them, and into which the Holy Ghost would lead them. So, as to power, too (Luke 24:49).
As to Ignatius little need be said. In the Syriac epistles there is no allusion to any gospel truth at all; in the shorter Greek ones, generally received till the Syriac were found, we find an allusion to salvation by the fruits of the cross in that to the Smyrnaeans (1, 2). But still, as in that to the Ephesians, it is sacramental forgiveness. Christ was born and baptized, that through His passion He might sanctify water to the washing away of sin. He suffered for us that we might be saved. He is sound in the faith, denounces the Gnostics and teachers of the Jewish law; but of the doctrine of redemption and peace there is not a trace, nor of the presence of the Holy Ghost in the believer. As to the clergy, the Greek epistles are a tissue of bombastical laudations, declaring that, apart from the bishop, they were without God and away from every blessing. In the Syriac of the epistle to Polycarp we have, " Look to the bishop, that God also may look upon you. I will be instead of the souls of those who are subject to the bishop, and the presbyters, and the deacons; with them may I have a portion with God."
As to sacraments, I am not aware that he speaks of baptism; a passage in the Epistle to the Romans may refer to the Lord's supper, or not. In Syriac, " I do not desire the food of corruption, neither the desires of this world; the bread of God I seek, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, and His blood I seek, which is love incorruptible "; in Greek, " I delight not in the food of corruption, nor in the pleasures of this life; I desire the bread of God, the heavenly bread, the bread of life, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was born in these last days of the seed of David and Abraham; and the drink of God which I desire is His blood, which is incorruptible love and eternal life." He had said, " my love is crucified." It is hard to say exactly what he means, his language is so outrageously mystical and exaggerated. Thus he talks of being fervent in the blood of God. One thing is clear, that in about fifty years after the destruction of Jerusalem, and Clement and Barnabas, episcopacy had got strong hold of some minds. Ignatius seems to have been inflamed by some divisions or difficulties, if the Greek epistles are genuine; but, while quite orthodox, the small dying remains of the sense of salvation to be found fifty years before were pretty much lost altogether, and the doctrine of the clergy ripened as constituting the church.
Hermas remains. Here all thought of divine truth is gone, and baptism and nonsensical heresy reign triumphant, with the proof that the system of immoral asceticism was grown up in the professing church, to say nothing of lying visions. He sees a tower, which is the church; but this tower is made up of the apostles, bishops, and doctors, and ministers. Then there were those who had suffered for the Lord's name, and are fallen asleep; then young ones are built in, but some who had sinned were cast out, and would be put into the tower if they repented. But there were those which fell by the water, and could not get in-they had doubted; these may repent, and be in a lower rank, but not in this tower. The water is clearly baptism; the builders are angels. Faith is one of seven virtues, only the first; and those that hold fast to their works shall have a place in the tower. In the fourth command (3) we are forgiven by baptism; then he has one repentance granted him; if he sins more, he shall hardly live: man has two angels, one suggests evil, the other good. If a man is sad in an evil sort, this vexes the Holy Spirit who dwells in him, and the Spirit entreats God, and leaves him. All this part is wholly of works and man's will, listening to the good Spirit in him.
In the fifth similitude he represents the work of Christ thus: A man had a farm, set his servant to stake the vineyard. This he did, but of his own good will dug it, and pulled up the weeds. The master, finding this, then takes counsel with his son and the angels what he should do, as the servant had done more than was required; so he makes the servant heir with the son. The master is the Creator, and the son is the Holy Ghost; the stakes, those set over His people to support them; the friends called to counsel are the angels; the servant is Christ, who was set to have their messengers to support the people, but of His own mind suffered to blot out their offenses. God placed in a chosen body, in which God should dwell, the Holy Spirit, which was created first of all. This body therefore into which the Holy Spirit was brought served that Spirit, walking rightly and purely in modesty, nor ever defiled that Spirit; and as He had served this Holy Spirit without blame, and done more than He was set to do, He was made heir with the master's son.
He seems to have had some scruple about his statements, for he answers the objection as to putting the Son of God there, that He was put in a place of authority to set His messengers over those the Father had delivered to Him. His instructor adds, he must keep his body clean and pure. Hermas then asks, what if, through ignorance, he had already defiled his Holy Spirit? His instructor replies, as for men's former actions which through ignorance they have committed, God only can afford a remedy unto them, for all power belongeth unto Him; but now guard thyself; and seeing God is Almighty and merciful, He will grant a remedy to what thou hast formerly done amiss, if for the time to come thou shalt not defile thy body and spirit.
In the ninth similitude (16) we find, if indeed I understand it, the dead of the Old Testament, though already dead, were sealed with baptism, or they could not be built into the tower, the church: how is somewhat obscure, but it seems the apostles and teachers, when they died, went down to the dead, and put the seal of baptism on them, so they came up alive with them (8: 3).
The great tree... is the law of God published throughout the whole earth. Now this law is the Son of God, who is preached to all the ends of the earth.... The great and venerable angel was Michael, who has power over this people, and governs them; for he has planted the law in the hearts of those who have believed; and therefore visits those to whom he has given the law, to see if they have kept it.
The immoral asceticism, to which I have alluded, I have, on the whole, decided to leave out. It is a fact well known by readers of ecclesiastical history, under the title of pareisaktai, or subintroductae. The only importance of introducing it here was the public sanction given to a most vile and abominable practice; for Hermas was read in the churches. This Hermas was brother to Pope Pius I (of old he was thought to be he of whom Paul speaks), and he lived about forty to sixty years after the death of the apostle John.
Now, I have already given the very best things that are said in Barnabas, Clement, and Polycarp, and the other two, if good can be spoken of in Ignatius and Hermas. Some of old rejected Barnabas; the others have hardly been called into question as to genuineness. Some call Hermas inspired, as Origen; Irenaeus quotes it as scripture. Now, genuine or not, Hermas and Clement were read in the churches, not in result put in the canon, still were added at the end of the manuscripts of the New Testament, as Barnabas and Hermas in the Sinaitic, Clement in the Alexandrian, and so on. I do not know that Ignatius' epistles ever were; he was a martyr, and eager for martyrdom. Nor do I know that Polycarp's was; but in the early church it was a question as to most of them whether they were scripture or not. They were of the next highest authority, and some unquestionably constantly read in the churches. If Ignatius' Latin or Greek ones are spurious, the Syriac are there, and quite enough: nobody doubts that he wrote epistles-seven, it is said; nobody doubts that the primitive church teemed with forgeries and falsifications to prop up the system I refer to, and other foolish or evil things.
But we have enough to show that, immediately after the apostles (beginning with Clement, Paul's companion, whose epistles no one questions, Barnabas, of the same date, whoever wrote it, soon after 7o; Ignatius, some say 1o6, others 116; Polycarp at the same date; Hermas some so years later) we have a collection of writings which express the then current thoughts and views, and which were more or less publicly read. Now in these writings we do not find a trace of the gospel, and redemption, and salvation, and blessings, which are found in Galatians, Romans, Colossians, Ephesians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, John, or even Peter, who does not go so far as Paul and John; nor do we find the practical recognition of the Holy Ghost. I speak of their teachings. Polycarp and Ignatius were, no doubt, saints; Barnabas and Clement, it may be too, though in the last less appears; yet I would not call it in question. On the other hand the clergy and sacraments, particularly baptism (Paul was not sent to baptize), are the constituent elements of the church they are conversant with. They own Christ's death of course, but its effect or application, and the Christian's place, as Paul and other apostles put it, are nowhere found.
It is not, of course, the fact that there are elders that makes the sudden departure from scriptural truth and standing evident (Paul chose such), but that they and sacraments are everything- constitute the church; and what constituted Christianity as God gave it is gone.
All this led the way to hierarchical power, and finally to popery in the West; and, as to practice, the deliberate adoption of heathenism, days, and months, and years, formally judged in Galatians as a return to heathenism, and the deliberate substitution of saints' memories, as they were called, for those of demigods-places of memorial, where they feasted and got drunk in honor of saints instead of demi-gods, that at least, as Augustine expresses it, their drunkenness might be consecrated to saints, not to demons. And this was deliberately done everywhere, formally allowed in England, where temples were changed into churches; and these festivals were the origin of our village wakes, Christmas being the dissolute feast of the Lupercalia.
But all these things were the fruits of this departure from Christianity. I speak of the departure itself. It had not come to this in Clement's and Barnabas' time; but the church, such as it is historically known and thought of to-day, had been substituted for Christianity.
I may sum up the system in the words of a writer long subsequent, as briefly stating the system, using another's translation: " Whereas the human race, by the demerit derived to it from the fault of the first sinner, had become pierced with the darts of eternal punishment.... Christ granted to it certain remedial sacraments, to the end that it might acknowledge the difference between what is merited by nature and what it received by grace; and that, as nature could bring punishment only, grace, not called grace if granted to merit, might furnish whatever appertains to salvation." This is its ripe formulary. The system began as soon as the apostles were gone.
There were two departures from truth: heresy, particularly at first Gnosticism-this ends in Antichrist; and a human view of the church, with the practical denial of the Christian's place by the Spirit; the last ends in Babylon. This takes essentially the character of the clergy, and the Spirit being with them; and so of the sacramental system as the channels of special grace. We may now see what light the New Testament throws on the subject; but history and the writings of the apostolic fathers, so called, from Clement to Hermas, show us plainly that the doctrine of the Christian's place in Christ, and of the Holy Ghost present and active in all saints, as also freely distributing His gifts as He will, was totally lost at once by Christians after the apostles were gone. I am not denying that there was a set of people gathered, which gathering, in fact, continued, and was corrupted gradually (this is clear), but that from the outset this gathered body of men lost the place, position, and power of that in which they had been established, and that the principles on which the gathering stood and was held to exist were, as soon as placed on their own responsibility, the contrary of what God had set them on. That it was not a body of persons knowing themselves to be in Christ, exalted as man at the right hand of God, consequent upon His having redeemed them, and perfected them forever, for whom there was no condemnation, every one of whom was anointed and sealed by the Holy Ghost come down from heaven, the earnest of the inheritance which they had not yet, which Holy Ghost, uniting them into one body, and distributing to every man severally as He would, made each a servant of Christ in his place and gift, and responsible to trade with the talent confided to him; and, as every man had received the gift, so to minister the same; but a body of persons who were viewed as connected with a clergy, who might or might not be gifted, but their connection with whom formed them into one corporation, of which the administration of the sacraments formed the bond and link, and who by their works were to obtain salvation at the end.
Now this was really the Judaism against which the apostle so earnestly contended, and which met and harassed him in his service in every place, which would have a derived ordained ministry, disowning the power and title of the Spirit, and the true Lordship of Christ, and teaching justification by works, apostolic succession, and the observing of days and months and years.
Was this departure from Christ to be expected at once? or was the successional continuance of the outward body that which was secured by the Lord's promise? What does the word declare? Heresy fully contributed its part; but whatever was the cause, was the continuance of the body under God's approbation contemplated or not?
Let us see what was the state of things even before the apostle's death. " All they which be in Asia have turned away from me; all seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ; the mystery of iniquity doth already work." So Paul. Peter says, " The time is come that judgment shall begin at the house of God." Jude says, " False brethren have crept in unawares." Was this to be remedied? " These are they," he says, " of whom Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, The Lord cometh, with ten thousand of his saints, to execute judgment." So John, " Ye have heard that antichrist cometh, and already there are many antichrists, whereby we know that it is the last time." All this before the apostles were gone-Peter expecting no proper successional care and writing that " they might have these things always in remembrance "; Jude having to " contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints "; James telling them " to be patient to the coming of the Lord," that " the judge was at the door "; Peter, that delay was not " slackness concerning promise, but the long-suffering of God, not willing that any should perish "; the Lord Himself, hanging all in suspense over them, saying words already then misinterpreted, " If I will that he tarry till I come "; but all marking the decay and ruin, and teaching to look forward to the coming of the Lord.
But Paul, especially the apostle of the church, and who alone indeed formally speaks of it, gives us more precise and definite statements. " I know that after my decease grievous wolves shall enter in, not sparing the flock, yea, even of your own selves shall perverse men arise to draw away the disciples after them; wherefore watch, and remember," etc., etc. Thought of a successor, in these days called bishop, he had none; the existence of such, then or after his departure, is a thing unknown to him. He commends them to God and the word of His grace (compare the language of Ignatius in similar circumstances) which was able to build them up and give them an inheritance among all them that are sanctified. The time, he tells us, would come when they would not endure sound doctrine but after their own lusts heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears, and they shall turn away their ears from the truth and be turned unto fables. This, mark, is a general character of the state of things. There were many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision, whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses. The result he fully states in 2 Tim. 3, " that in the last days perilous times should come," and then, giving a description answering to that in which he shows the state of heathenism, he closes by saying, " having the form of godliness, but denying the power of it "; but at the close of the chapter he says, " Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived," and then refers to Timothy's having learned the truth from himself, and the power and authority of the scriptures as a safeguard.
The tares which the devil sowed in the field were to remain till harvest; the mystery of iniquity already working in the apostles' days would go on and ripen into the man of sin, and end in judgment. When the message comes from Christ through John to the churches, they have no authority but are judged, and the Christian is called upon to hear what the Spirit says to them; they were not competent to speak or guide, but he that had ears to hear was to listen to the judgment pronounced on them, to what was said. No voice of any universal church was to guide, but the individual to listen to the voice of testimony as to what was found in the church. The church did not judge or guide or teach, but the word revealed Christ's judgment of this church, and to that he who had ears was to listen.
The Gentiles have not continued in God's goodness and are to be cut off. But the origin of all this was that they, having begun in the Spirit, ended in the flesh. The clergy replaced the power and gifts of the Spirit, the sacraments His grace; and, the clergy being the ministry, the free distribution of the Holy Ghost, and the exercise of gift, where gift was, was set aside. The apostolic order was set aside, and the Christian position before God was lost, both connected with the presence of the Holy Ghost, as the expectation of God's Son from heaven was soon dropped out, men ceasing to watch for Him.
All the principles which constituted Christianity under apostolic teaching were lost in the body left behind them: the place of Christians in Christ, known by the Holy Ghost, His free presence and power working in living streams in individual Christians, under the authority of Christ, regulated by the word, and constant expectation of Christ from heaven. These were the principles of the church on earth, as established by God: what is called the church is the denial of all these, only the last was lost later than the others. But the church system was founded on an ordained clergy, with whom rested all ministry, and the sacraments as that which incorporated the laity under them, and thereby the establishment of the church on earth, not waiting for God's Son from heaven.
I am not denying the existence of elders, or of baptism and the Lord's supper: what I insist on is, that what has taken place is the substitution of these for the principles on which God founded His assembly in the world, and that this was immediate. The historical church is man's system, from the beginning, in contrast with God's: that system has been corrupted, but what has been corrupted is man's system, not God's. No doubt God had gathered the first materials into unity, but the principles on the which He founded His assembly resisted, specially by Judaism, during the life of the apostles, were given up when they were gone; and the system they had resisted became that which stood before men's eyes as the church. The free power of the Spirit, and known acceptance in an exalted Christ, ceased to be the constituent principles of those gathered; the clerical principle denying the Spirit, making elders the ministry as a clergy, that is, ordained teachers, not the gift and power of the Holy Ghost. This was first developed in local episcopacy, then in diocesan episcopacy and the hierarchy, and then in popery.
We are called on by God to go to the scriptures, which are abiding truth, knowing the Holy Ghost was to abide with us forever. Our choice is between, on one side, the authority of the word and the Holy Ghost, connected with what is called the universal priesthood of Christians (an incorrect application of an important truth); on the other, the infallible pope, or infidelity, the crown of the system of the clergy; or the no longer disguised enmity of the human heart against God and His word. Only remark, the word of God and the Spirit of God, as acting in all saints, is alike set aside by both. The abominations, in which the departure I signalize (abominations worthy of, yea, worse than heathenism), in the professing church resulted, are known to those acquainted with ecclesiastical history; but that is not my object now. But it is well that he who is not familiar with that history should know that the very vilest and most degraded evil of which history has preserved the record is found in the history of what is called the church of God.
Familiar Conversations on Romanism: Faith Is in God and His Word, Not in the Church
N-. Well, James, I hear you have been visited by some Roman Catholics, and are in some perplexity.
James. I have, and they spoke very fair; and I cannot deny that I do not see clear. Christ surely left a church on earth, and some authority to guide us poor people, and instruct us in the right way. It is a great comfort to feel assured that one is of the true church that Christ founded. And, after I had been reflecting awhile on what they said, I began to feel that I have got no proof that the Bible is the word of God.
N-. And did you ever doubt it before, James?
James. No, I cannot say I did; I have always believed it to be the word of God; and, though I am afraid I have sadly neglected it many a year, still I, and my wife more than myself, used to find comfort in it; and the children too used to read a chapter when they came from school; and I think it used to do us all good, and bring God home to us somehow, and keep our consciences alive; and the children took wonderfully to beautiful histories that are in it, and so indeed did we, and it made our home happy. There was only Jem that paid no heed to it; and he was an unruly boy: I have had a deal of trouble with him. But, since I have got more serious and anxious in my mind, I have found the Bible bring trouble into my conscience. I hardly know where I am with God-it condemns me: I see there is goodness and wonderful grace in Jesus; but then I have no peace in myself, and now I see there is a deal I do not understand, and I should like to know the bottom of it.
Bill M. (my neighbor, who has turned Catholic), says he has never been so happy in his life, his soul never got rest till now. He never thought much about religion, it is true, and those ladies that visit were wonderfully kind when his lass was sick; but he says he knows some who never get a minute's rest in their souls, that were always seeking it, till they found it in the true church. It was he that asked me how I knew it was the Bible; and if the true church had not kept the Bible and given it, who could say it was the word of God? and how did I, an ignorant man, know it was the word of God, as I called it? And that has dashed me uncommonly, because, though I never doubted it a moment before, and saw in infidels that there was no good nor godliness in their ways, yet I felt I had no proof to give, and what am I to do? I know it speaks of a church that Christ would build on the rock, and I think if that would give me certainty it would be a great rest to me. But my Mary says she could not think of such a thing; that she could no more doubt it to be the word of God than that the sun shines, and less, if that were possible: that there is more light and comfort to her soul in the Bible than there is light for her eyes and warmth in the sun. And she is a rare wife to me, and I see she has great sense in the things of God, and is a comfort in the house, and wonderful to the children- very civil to those black ladies that visit, but shy of them and of the way they try to get into the family.
I do not think that I doubt at bottom that it is the word of God; my conscience and my heart too, I think, make me feel it is. But since this talk with Bill M. my mind is all in perplexity, and I feel I have no proof it is the word of God: and just because I have begun to be anxious about it, and about my soul, I should like to have something certain to rest upon. You will forgive, I am sure, sir, my saying everything, and telling you all that is in my mind, because I have known you so long and your kindness, and I am in perplexity, and, to say the truth, glad to open my mind to some one I can trust, though I do not rightly know what to trust now. I thought I could entirely trust the word of God, and what am I to do now? You will excuse me.
N-. I am very much obliged to you, James, for telling me what was passing in your mind, and grateful for the confidence you have shown me, and thankful to God that He disposed your heart to do so, and we could not do better than take up the subject: there cannot be a more important one. The faith, or, to speak more truly, Christ, is everything for us poor sinners, and we do want some sure ground on which to believe. Our faith must be a divine faith, in its nature and source, as well as in the things which it reveals; and for a divine faith we must have divine testimony. But there is, in what you say, one thing which strikes me much, namely, that your Roman Catholic friends have only led you to doubt of the authority of the scriptures, which yet they believe to be divine, or they are infidels themselves. They have not ventured to say the scriptures are not divine: that would be infidelity, and, as far as man went, straightforward infidelity; but they have sought to make you doubt of the certainty of their being divine. This may be all very well to bring you under their influence, and to make you believe that they only can give you this certainty; but I confess that I do not see the honesty of making you uncertain as to the authority of the scriptures, when they own that authority themselves.
James. That is true. If they do believe they are the word of God, I do not see why they should seek to make me doubt as to how I can be sure of it.
N-. Just so; and in respect of such a matter as the word of God, it is something approaching to blasphemy. It is saying, that when God has spoken to men, His word has no certain authority of itself over their consciences. They deprive your soul of certainty in the word of God on one side, and they deprive the word of God of its authority over your soul on the other. This, I must say, seems to me a wicked course, seeing they do not dare to say it is not the word of God. Now an upright heart can very often judge of a thing by the conscience, when it is quite unable to meet argument. These men seek, as to what they believe is the word of God, and which they believe ought to exercise authority over your conscience, to make you doubt whether you have any proof whereby you may know it to be such when you read it. Is not this the course your infidel acquaintance took with you? Only they took it openly.
James. Well, it is just the same.
N-. The word of God, James, carries its own authority in the heart of him in whom it has wrought. And, mark this, if it has not wrought in a man's heart, though all the churches in the world should accredit him, that man is lost. If they believe it to be the word of God, why not take it and see what it says? They dare not: it is too plain, it condemns their whole system. For instance, you know that it is said, " Where remission of these (sins and iniquities) is, there is no more offering for sin " (Heb. 10:13). Now their whole system depends upon there being still offerings for sin. The very way a Roman Catholic is described is-he goes to Mass. Now the Mass is an offering for the sins of the living and the dead. And when the word says there is no more offering for sin, and the most important distinctive point in their doctrine, and the keystone of the system they belong to, is, that there is still an offering for sin, it is easy to understand why they try to shake your confidence in the word, or to make you think that you cannot understand it. It is because it is very plain indeed, for the poorest, that they do not like it.
You are a poor man, but it does not require much learning to understand that the declaration that " there is no more offering for sin " upsets a system which is built upon offering one continually. They may quote Fathers of all names to prove that there ought to be one, or that there was one; but, if the word of God has authority, they cannot say there is one according to the authority of God. There is a kind of learning, James, learning such as your wife has, being taught of God-a learning from Him according to the promise of that word, the only learning that saves-which gives a weight and power to the truth I am referring to, which all the sophistry of Romanists or infidels cannot shake-I mean the knowledge of the unchangeable value of the one offering of Christ, offered once for all. A man taught of God knows that it is in force forever, that it gives peace to the conscience, that Christ suffered agonies in accomplishing our salvation in that offering; and that, as is expressly said, if it had to be repeated, Christ must suffer repeatedly; that if it be an offering wherein Christ does not suffer-an offering wherein He does not shed His blood-it is an utterly worthless sacrifice-a base pretension to be an offering-a mockery, really, of the solemn truth of the sufferings and agonies of the Son of God for us.
It is said (Heb. 9:25), " Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place with blood of others, for then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world; but now once, in the end of the world, hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And, as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment, so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many." Mark the words " ONCE " and " bear the sins." Does Christ bear sins in the Roman Catholic Mass? If not, it is a new way of getting forgiveness, which sets aside the unspeakably gracious but heart-bowing way in which God has wrought salvation out for us, namely, the dreadful but infinitely precious sufferings of His own Son. If Christ does suffer in the Mass, He is not glorified at the right hand of God. True Christianity and the doctrine of the Mass cannot go together. And the more you examine chapters 9 and 10 of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the more you will see how the truth of God is set aside by the Mass. For the apostle is showing the value of Christ's offering because it was only once, in contrast with the Jewish offerings which were repeated. Those offerings, he says, were a remembrance of sins, brought them to mind; the sins were still there, or why would the offerings for sin not have ceased to be offered? But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever sat down at the right hand of God. And then marl:, he shows how we know it: " Whereof also the Holy Ghost is a witness to us... their sins and iniquities will I remember no more." And note, how blessedly this chapter presents it to us. First, the will of God giving His Son, instead of all these useless sacrifices which could never take away sins. Thus I see His thoughts and love. Then, again, the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Thus I see (not only Christ willing, in the same love, to come, but) the needed work actually accomplished. And lastly, the Holy Ghost bearing witness about it. I have the divine will and thoughts, the divine work; and, that I may have divine faith about it, and peace in my soul through it, I have a divine testimony about it.
And note, James, that this testimony is the written word of God; that is, he quotes a passage of scripture as the witness which the Holy Ghost has given. Now that is what as a poor sinner I want, and which I get only by this truth-the efficacy of this one offering testified of by the Holy Ghost Himself. And that is the reason I said that one taught of God knows it with a certainty and blessing which Romanists and infidels cannot shake. And no man that possessed this would, for a moment, think of giving up the divinely-witnessed and known efficacy of the sacrifice by Christ of Himself, once for all, for the vain profitless repetition of it [sacrifice] where Christ does not nor can offer Himself, for He is at the right hand of God, where He does not suffer or bear sin, for this He cannot do now He is in glory.
And note, this repetition of it, if I admit it, denies the lasting, perfect, efficacy of the offering He Himself made. For if it be lasting and perfect, why repeat it? My objection to the Roman Catholic system on this head is that it is built on a pretended offering which Christ does not offer, in which no blood is shed, in which Christ does not suffer, in which Christ does not bear sins, which is therefore utterly worthless; but which, by the pretension to offer Christ again, denies the abiding efficacy of Christ's one real offering of Himself. What a fraud of Satan's, to be sure, it is!
James. But then do we not commit sins (not only after Christ has died, but even) after we come to have part in the sacrifice of Christ?
N-. Surely we may; but scripture does not speak of the repetition of Christ's sacrifice for that: this was once for all. His blood cannot be shed again, and without shedding of blood there is no remission. It was not our sins up to a certain day which Christ bore, if indeed we have part in that sacrifice. God knows all beforehand the same as at the time, and we had committed none of our sins when Christ died for them: so that it is not the time when they were committed that makes the difference, save that they are worse when we have Christian light and life. Do not think that I count them slight; but we must not confound the efficacious work done about our sins, which was done once for all, and that work of grace and of God's Spirit in the heart which produces in us right thoughts and feelings about our sins and brings us into communion with God. The remedy practically, as to our hearts, if we do sin, is not a new sacrifice, for a new sacrifice to put them away is IMPOSSIBLE; but, " if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins." Christ is our righteousness, and this and the worth of His propitiation remain always before God; and when we fail, in which we never can excuse ourselves, Christ intercedes for us, and the Spirit of God makes us feel the sin, and we are humbled and contrite, and thus Christ restores our souls, and we are again in communion with God. It is beautifully pictured, let me add, by that blessed expression of the Savior's condescension and love in washing the disciples' feet. He that is washed-truly born of God-needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit. God may use His written word, or a sermon, or the warning of a friend, as means-but it is the work of Christ's grace in the soul.
James. Well, I feel greatly comforted by what you say, but all is not clear to my mind yet; still this grace of Jesus Christ does give rest to one's spirit, and makes one think of Him and of God's goodness and of His love to poor sinners like me; so that one likes to think of Him. Besides, I think it takes hardness and pride out of one's heart, and puts away bad thoughts, and makes one love other people too, whoever they may be.
N-. It does, James. It gives rest, and does what you have spoken of-sheds the love of God abroad in the heart, and purifies the heart by faith. It is a blessed thing to think that God commends His love to us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.
James. Yes, that is a comfort, and I like to think of it better than of my doubts. Still, sir, you will forgive me, but they come back like a chill on my heart; and, as I said, I am not clear yet, for if I might take a wrong meaning out of the scriptures, and I feel I am very ignorant, I mean no offense to you, sir, but one wants something sure for one's soul.
N-. All right, James; I have not forgotten our subject. You only make me feel more keenly the wickedness of those who seek to cast a doubt into the mind of a poor man, poor or rich either, as to the purity and source of these blessed wells of salvation, so that he is half afraid there may be poison in them, or that at any rate they do not suit him, while they know, or (at any rate) profess all the time to believe, that they are divinely given, and divine well-springs of health. I will treat this point in a direct manner by and bye, but you will let me, I am sure, pursue the subject in my own manner. It is well, you know, when a person is disposed to take a step, say to go into a house or a farm, to know what the house or the farm is. He is warned at any rate. All well that he should inquire afterward what authority there is for what he has heard, and take care there is a title.
James. Ay, that is true. Go on, sir, as you think best. I shall listen, and I have heard what you have said gladly.
N-. I shall say a few words more about the Mass. You are aware that the church, as they call it, does not permit the laity to partake of the cup.
James. Don't they! Why not?
N-. Well, it is for them to say why they change Christ's ordinance, but it exalts the priest who does take the cup. They allege the danger of a drop of what they declare to be really the blood of Christ falling to the ground; though it would be hard to tell why there is more danger of this with the layman than with the priest. However such is their rule; laymen do not partake of the cup. They allege, to prove that they lose nothing, that the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ are in each species, that is, in each part-in the bread by itself, and the wine by itself; they call this the doctrine of concomitancy. Never mind the hard words; the sense is that the bread is a complete Christ, no longer bread at all, and nothing else but Christ, save in appearance. But see how the enemy has mocked them, for if the blood be in the body now, there is no redemption at all. Christ shed His blood to redeem and save us. Hence they were to drink as well as to eat.
I will not dwell on this, but what a pretension this is, that the priest, on pronouncing the formula-" This is my body," turns the bit of paste into God, or (as it is constantly expressed by themselves) the priest makes God; for this is the expression familiarly used among them when they have the courage to speak freely. Now I knew a very poor man in Ireland tell his neighbor, a staunch champion for his church, when he was arguing for this doctrine, that he was contending for what he did not believe; for if that was true, the priest could do what God could not do, for God could not make God. And this is true enough. A poor man, James, if taught of God, often hits right and wrong-truth and error-right on the head better than your learned men that make all kinds of fine distinctions. Nor would their distinctions serve here. They cannot say Christ comes into the bread as God was incarnate, because there the manhood was, and remained manhood; but, according to their doctrine, the bread does not remain at all. And therefore it is called transubstantiation; that is, the substance of the bread is changed into the substance of Christ, and the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ are all there. They make a Christ out of the bread-a whole Christ, divinity and all. It must indeed be a new Christ. You cannot change it into the Christ that is already.
James. But, dear me, can all this be true! Why, I knew nothing of all this. They did not speak of all this to me. The true church! well, it is well to know things. And yet, sure enough, the Mass is the great thing with them. But I did not know what the Mass was; I thought it was the sacrament with them.
N-. Well, so it is. I shall, as I said, come to the question of the church's authority; but knowing what people teach is one very good way of knowing what authority they can have. They anxiously seek to puzzle you about the church, that, having fixed you on the ground of authority, you may receive everything they say without conscience, without personal responsibility, and without faith in God: for faith in a priest or in the church is not faith in God. You are to believe them, they say; yet if God has spoken by an apostle, you cannot believe that, nor understand it without them. I suppose they know better how to speak of divine things than the apostles and inspired writers did. But this is the point we have to speak of by and bye. Only remark this well, James, you are to believe them. You cannot understand what God has said, nor even believe He said it, without them. You must depend on them. Can they answer for you in the day of judgment?
James. No, of course they cannot. I should be sorry to trust them.
N-. Of course they cannot. Then do not depend on them now. You must answer for yourself without them before God. This is just as true now, though that day be not come, for it is for what you do now that you will have to answer. You are individually responsible. You must assure yourself that the ground you are standing on now will be a sure and solid one in that day. Another cannot do it for you: you are personally responsible. They cannot pretend to relieve you from this. They would have you trust them blindly now, but they must abandon you when the real need comes, when you have to answer for yourself, and they for themselves.
James. That is true though.
N-. Surely it is true; but, mark, if you believe in Christ, and rest your soul on Him, He never will abandon you. If He who of God is made unto us righteousness is your righteousness now, He will be your righteousness when sitting on the throne, before which you have to appear.
James. Is this in scripture-that He is our righteousness?
N-. It is, James, in I Corinthians i: 3o: " Of him [God] are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption."
James. Well, that relieves my heart, however, more than all I have heard. Christ our righteousness! why that changes everything, and makes a man love Him too; and He bore our sins to be so! I think I do see it. I understand why Mary is happy now, though I am not like her; and I am afraid I may not keep it as she does. Is there more like that? I know the Bible but too little, and then one heeds it, after all, so little, till one finds one really wants it.
N-. Well, James, as we are on this subject, and a blessed one it is, before our going on with the question of the true church, or Romish doctrines, I will refer to some of the passages you inquire about. You will remark in the one I quoted to you that it says, " Of him are ye "; that is, that these blessings belong to one who is a Christian at heart, one who in his soul (as a sinner who has need of Christ) believes in Him, a man whose conscience has been before God, in whom (as scripture speaks) there is truth in the inward parts, who does not believe merely because he has been brought up in it, however sincerely, as far as that goes, he may have done so; but who has believed for himself, has come to Christ in his heart, because he wants Him. God will have realities, not notions, be they false or true. When the truth is really received, it is received in the heart and conscience. It convicts of sin, shows the heart to itself, and makes it know the need of the truths which, perhaps, it had learned before, perhaps had never heard of.
James. Yes, yes. I understand that. I have not, I am sure, felt my sins as I ought, but I know I am not right. I am uneasy, I know I am not right with God. That is what made me listen to what they said about the true church and the rest a man might get there; but I do not see, what I think ought to be, in those who go there either. I know I am a sinner. Whatever the Bible is, it has made me see that: sometimes angry with myself, sometimes (God forgive me!) almost angry with the Bible itself and Him that gave it; and yet I am ashamed of that, because it makes me see I am a sinner. I see I could not but be lost if I am judged as I am; yet I hope too it won't be so.
N-. A word about this rest, James. I do not deny that the Roman Catholic system gives rest to some persons. Suppose a child had been at mischief, and was uneasy, and some one was to appease its parent, or its master, and it was let off, or its schoolmaster was to pardon repeated faults which showed a bad disposition, and not tell the parent: the child would be at ease, and have its conscience quiet, and think no more about it; but it would not have a purified conscience. A little penitence might be added to keep up appearances, but the evil would be unhealed. That is the church's absolution as contrasted with God's pardon. It quiets the conscience, but it does not purge it. This will not do for God, nor for a soul in which true desires after Himself are awakened. The doctrine of absolution and the sacrament of penance is an unholy doctrine. It is professedly a means of having forgiveness where the heart has not attained to true contrition. This is the express doctrine of the Catechism of the Council of Trent, a work of absolute authority for all Roman Catholics. According to that the sacrament of penance is a less precarious and less difficult means of reconciliation and salvation than contrition, afforded by the Almighty by giving to the church the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Thus the conscience gets tranquility without that true contrition which alone restores the soul to true communion with God. It is, in my judgment, a horribly wicked doctrine, to say nothing of its accompaniments connected with confession. 'The practical result is that thousands and thousands sin all the year, get cleared off by absolution for communion at Easter, and begin to sin again as soon as Easter is over.
James. But it is impossible an awakened soul, one that wanted really to be in communion with God, could be contented with such rest for his conscience as that; nay, he could not get any rest that way, because he knows he has to say to God, and God's presence awakens the sense of sin when he comes to it, and he cannot rest in his soul till his conscience is purged.
N-. Impossible, James, as you say: but many a natural conscience is uneasy that has never got into the presence of God, and such a fear may be quieted without God, as it was felt without Him. But what has made you feel that it is impossible for an awakened soul which desires to be at peace with God to content itself with such rest as that?
James. Well, it is the word of God, I suppose, by His goodness, because it has made me see my sinfulness and want to have peace with God Himself.
N-. Then the word of God is true, James, and has power. It has proved itself true to your conscience, told you what you have done, and revealed God to you. It is God's word. It has shown you to yourself in His sight, and revealed Him. And none could do that but God. You do not want it proved, you do not want it judged. It has judged you in revealing God to you, by His grace surely, but as His word.
James. That is true, I see it now. It has, by grace, power in itself.
N-. Just so. " The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." But a word more. There is another kind of rest a man may get. When he is not clear as to truth, and is harassed about it, when the truth has not power in his soul as known to himself, he would like to find it out, and be satisfied about it. And he cannot get clear, he is uneasy, and (instead of waiting humbly in the exercise of his own soul to be taught of God, so that his own heart, and soul, and conscience get established in the present truth), he rests through weariness upon authority; he does not know the truth himself in his inward parts, but takes whatever he is told as true. It is rest from the fatigue of his mind, but his soul has not the truth for itself at all. He does not believe for himself.
Another (whom, out of weariness, he trusts to) has told him it is true, and he believes him.
James. That I see. That is just where I was in danger of coming, sure enough. But that is not having the truth from God at all; it is not having it. I feel I must have it for myself and in myself to have it really at all; but I was almost tired of the conflict, and, as I said to you, sir, they spoke fair, and I saw Bill M. had rest, and I had not, and I wanted to get sure ground for my soul, something certain. I can't say I have rest in my heart yet, but I am a deal lighter, and I see God is good, and I see that His word is the truth, and sure it must be so if it is His, and they don't deny that. So I have something I can surely trust in, and I can understand some of it plain enough. Not all, it is true; but maybe I will more in time. Mary herself does, a deal more than I do, but everything is clearer to me than it was.
N-. You cannot have real rest and peace of soul, James, till you really know Christ as your righteousness before God. The goodness of God makes light and hope shine in, by grace, on the soul; and confidence in Him and His goodness springs up in the heart, which is an immense matter. Still God is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and cannot look at sin; and hence the conscience once in His presence feels it must be cleansed and forgiven, and find a righteousness which our sinful lives surely have not given us.
James. I know it is said the blood of Christ cleanses us from all sin; and that, if a man's sins were as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. That comforts and encourages me, but I have not rightly peace by it. I am not quite sure it is for me: for I am a poor sinner after all. I find sin in myself still, and I think that troubles me more than my past sins.
N-. It always does when grace has wrought in the soul. You do quite right to judge it, and yourself for it. Sin becomes hateful to us if we are really born of God, and we are ashamed of ourselves for it. Nor can we ever excuse ourselves, and especially the true Christian, because the grace of Christ is sufficient for him to make him walk aright. But you will find, James, that power against sin will come when you know what it is to be cleansed from it. Not that it will not always require vigilance and prayer for grace; but, when your soul is in communion with the Lord through the peace He gives, you will find there the strength for victory, and for holding your evil nature in subjection. That communion gives happiness and strength. Hitherto you have been more learning your need of cleansing than the efficacy of Christ's blood for it: and that is all right, because, as we were seeing already, God will have realities, and have inward purification and judgment of sin along with peace with Himself, and so shows us the sin we have to be cleansed from. But now remember what we were referring to in Heb. 9 and to, how the blood of Christ purges the conscience.
James. Yes, yes, I see that more and more, and that it is done once for all on the cross, and cannot be repeated; I see, too, more how it applies; yet I cannot apply it entirely to myself.
N-. Well now, as God has brought you to see and judge your sin-though I am sure, as you know Christ better, this feeling will even deepen; but as He has brought you to repentance, I do fully trust-let me ask you, Is it from your righteousness or good deeds that you have to be cleansed?
James. Well, no; nor have I any either.
N-. Well, it is from your sins, then?
James. Yes.
N-. From those you have, or those you have not? James. Why, from those I have, of course.
N-. What are those you are feeling, I trust hating too; are they not those you have?
James. To be sure, and I can say I hate them, any way. But they overcome me still, and sometimes I think I am worse than ever.
N-. All right, as I said, James, to judge yourself. God has shown you the evil of sin. It must be so if we are brought into His presence in the light. But do you not see that those are the sins you have, for which Christ gave Himself that you might be cleansed in God's sight from them, bearing our sins in His own body on the tree? God has made you feel the guilt and unholiness of them. Now He shows you the full atonement for them, that in His sight the blood of Christ cleanses perfectly from them; that when God sees the blood, He cannot charge them on you, whom He has taught to trust in that blood, or your faith would be in vain. Thus He said to Israel in that solemn night when God went through Egypt to smite the firstborn, and commanded the blood to be put upon the lintel and the two doorposts. You remember that account in Ex. 12.
James. Yes, yes, the night of the passover.
N-. Well, God said then, " when I see the blood, I will pass over." Now, if a man had not believed God, he would not, of course, have had the refuge, and so it is now with us: but so God now sees the blood of our true paschal lamb, and passes over. He cannot see the true Christian's sins as on him, because He sees the blood which has put them away forever.
James. I see it all now. He gave Himself for my sins, and suffered agonies and wrath for them on the cross, that I may be clear from them. Well, it is blessed grace. To think-why one can't think as one ought of it-one is bought with a price, as it is said! I see why Mary is so happy, and no wonder. Why, how blind I was!
N-. And yet God has been gracious to you, James.
James. Ay, gracious to me, that He has. It is I that have to say so; but you will excuse my saying much more about it now, sir. It is too wonderful, and I hardly know how to get my heart to contain it all rightly; but I see it, and thank you, sir, too. Oh, it is all plain, and it is now I see that the word of God is true, and what a book that blessed book is. Yet I have all to learn in it. I did not just doubt it till they spoke to me, but it is a different thing when it is light in one's own soul. It convicted me before; but then I could hardly delight in its being true enough. It judged me, but now it is light to my soul.
N-. So the apostle John speaks, James: " He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself. He that believeth not hath made God a liar, because he believeth not the record that God hath given concerning his Son." This last you did not do, James, though you were in danger of it; but, as a system, Romanism and infidelity does. I say as a system, because I do not impute it to all the poor souls in the system, as if they did it willfully. Now you have, as I fully trust, got the other part, the witness in yourself. You see what forgiveness is, but you have yet to learn more fully what divine righteousness is-what it is to be made the righteousness of God in Christ. You will find that there is a fullness in the deliverance of which God has made you partaker, of which you are hardly yet quite aware. You see that there is a perfect forgiveness, and that the blood of Christ has blotted out all the wretched sinful fruits of your old nature; that He has borne your sins and died for you as a sinner, and that all that you are as such is done away by His death, in God's sight; for sin in the flesh has been condemned in the sacrifice He has made for sin, as well as sins atoned for. But, besides that, Christ is risen, and has taken a new place as an accepted Man, who as such is God the Father's delight, and this is your place before God. You are accepted in Him; as well as the sins of your old man, and all its guilt, put away. He has been raised again for our justification.
And this connects itself, you see, with a new life in us, the power of which has been displayed in His resurrection. It was divine power, no doubt, which was displayed in that, but in the way of the energy of life, and that life is made ours in Christ. We are quickened together with Him, and raised up together, and made to sit together in heavenly places in Him. We are made the righteousness of God in Him. This perhaps you cannot fully understand yet; but, as we were speaking of what is given to us in being justified through Christ, I have just mentioned it. It is fully opened out in Paul's Epistle to the Romans, in the second chapter of that to the Ephesians, in the third of Colossians, and in the Epistle to the Galatians. You will find there that the fleshly religion, so largely now developed in Romanism, was what opposed Paul in his day; only his energy, through the power of the Holy Ghost, kept it down. If you humbly study the word of God, looking to Him to help you, He will lead you on in these things. I now only just point them out to you.
A remarkable image of these truths is found in the history of the children of Israel, which may help you to understand what this deliverance is which I speak of. When God passed through Egypt in judgment, the blood on the doorposts protected them against that judgment, and most blessed it was; but Israel was still in Egypt. But when they arrived at the Red Sea, God said by Moses: " Stand still and see the salvation of Jehovah." Then Israel, as you remember, passed through the Red Sea dry-shod, and got out of Egypt, and into an entirely new position: as a people accepted of God, having a great deal to learn, but with God, and all their former state behind them. So it is not all, that the precious blood of Christ protects us, as the Lamb slain for us, from the righteous judgment of God; but His death and resurrection bring us into a new place, accepted before God in Him, who is risen up from among the dead after having paid the wages of sin for us. But I must leave you, James, thankful that you see that Christ has made peace by the blood of His cross. You can rejoice with your dear wife: it will be a cheer to her, and lead your children on. A poor man is the happiest being on the earth when he has the Lord with him in his peaceful, if humble, home. It is not that you will not find questions and difficulties arise in your mind, and temptations to overcome, and sin to resist; the Lord has warned us it will be so-but we have One to go to, whom you, as I trust, now know for yourself, James.
We have, what is a less pleasant part of our intercourse (but may be useful as you are circumstanced), your questions with Bill M. to settle about Romanist views, and I will try and see you again.
James. Thank you, sir, I shall be glad to see you. I am right glad to have seen you to-day, and I do not mind so much about those questions now, but it is as well to look into them, as I meet some of them often. I do not understand all you said about righteousness, but I see that it is there in the word, and that Israel was not only spared in the judgment but got into a new place with God. But my heart has not got in itself into it yet.
N-. Well, good-bye. Search the word, James, now your heart is in it. It strengthens the heart, and it keeps the conscience alive. A dull conscience is apt to be more or less a hardened one, and leaves the soul open to temptations and the assaults of the enemy. And pray continually to God, your Father in Christ, for grace to help and keep you. The Bible has been a blessing to you, even though you long had no divine light on it, James. I often think it is like the fire that is laid, but not lit. The truths it contains cannot take effect till grace puts the fire to them; but the truth, divine truth, is there to be kindled, any way, though it may be increased condemnation if a man give no heed to what God has said. So Paul speaks to Timothy, speaking of the safeguard in the last days, " that from a child thou hast known the scriptures." God bless you, James; I hope to see you again.
James. Farewell, sir.
Familiar Conversations on Romanism: The Forgiveness of Sins; Purgatory
N-. Good day, James.
James. Good day, sir.
N-. Well, James, I am come to continue our inquiries into the truth of Roman Catholic doctrines.
James. I am glad you arc, sir, and much obliged to you. Bill M. has been here since, and angry at my being so sure of the Bible being the word of God, and that I am so happy because I see that God has forgiven me, and that I have found salvation in Christ. He says I am turned fanatic, and that my head is turned, and what not. It tried me a little, but I know I am happy, and my wife helped me. And it was only what he had said to me before. And when I turned to scripture, it came to me just with light and power; it was like another book to me; so I was not shaken really. If a man sees the sun, it is hard to persuade him he does not see it, though he cannot explain to another how he comes to see it, only that God gave him eyes; but I should like to hear something more about the church, for that is what he always comes down upon. I expect he will be here to-night, and perhaps, if it is not too much to ask, you would have some conversation with him about it. My woman would be glad to hear, too, if you have no objection.
N-. Not the least; we will wait to speak of the church and authority till M. comes. I am glad he will be here, we can have our questions fully out. We will take however Roman Catholic doctrines from their own authoritative sources, which is still better. However he can recall any point I might forget, which will be an advantage. As to their arguments, I have Milner's " End of Controversy," which I know is distributed largely in cheap editions, so that I suppose we shall have the best arguments which they have to produce. Meanwhile there is a point I can touch on (for which we had not time the other day), I mean purgatory, because it is directly connected with the all-sufficiency of Christ's sacrifice, which gave you, through grace, such comfort the last time I saw you. The Romanists teach that there are two kinds of sins, mortal and venial. The first, they say, deprives the soul of sanctifying grace (that is, the grace that makes us friends of God), and deserves hell; venial sin does not deprive us of this. It does not, spiritually speaking, kill the soul, so their catechisms speak. The Council of Trent declares that the grace of justification is lost by mortal sin. Venial sin however, according to the same authority, does not exclude from grace, but by mortal sins men are sons of wrath and enemies of God. They say that if a man dies in mortal sin he goes to hell, but if he dies in venial sin he goes to purgatory; or if his mortal sin has been forgiven, and he is again justified by penance, he may go to purgatory to satisfy for the penalties that may remain after forgiveness.
James. What is purgatory?
N-. They are very shy indeed of saying what it is. Our friend, Dr. Milner, says, " All which is necessary to be believed on that subject is, there is a purgatory, and the souls detained there are helped by the prayers of the faithful, and particularly by the acceptable sacrifice of the altar." This is the same as the Council of Trent. Only they anathematize any one who denies that, after men are freed from the eternal penalty of their sins, they have to satisfy in this world or in purgatory the temporal penalty to which they are liable for them. They do not tell us what it is, and forbid curious questions; only there is, they say, a place of temporary punishment. In the Catechism of the Council of Trent, however, it is called the fire of purgatory, in which the souls of the just are cleansed by a temporary punishment. Those who get in must stay there till they have paid the very last farthing, for so they apply that text; yet their friends can help them to get out by prayers, alms, and particularly by the so-called sacrifice of the Mass. Now all this you can easily see (however little clear it may be) goes clean against the whole testimony of God as to the forgiveness of sins. They ground it in their reasonings on the impossibility of a soul suffering for a small sin as it would for murder. They put a person under vindictive temporal punishment, which does not purify, but satisfies God. They are always laboring to get people out; indulgences are used to spare people part of this temporal punishment due to sin, as they say, but " no one can ever be sure that he has gained the entire benefit of an indulgence, though he has performed all the conditions appointed for this end." How different is scripture. God does chasten for sin with a view to our holiness, even when we are perfectly forgiven-He, for our profit (it is said), that we may be partakers of His holiness. That, the heart assured of His goodness can easily believe, and bless Him for it. He speaks to us (as it is beautifully said) as unto children: " My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him." It is also true that God governs, and shows sometimes His displeasure against sin in this world. And He has so ordered the world that he that sows to the flesh, of the flesh reaps corruption; but a vindictive penalty-when a man is not in the flesh at all, as to which God can be satisfied by the man's sufferings in this or another world, or by his friends' offerings, with which no purifying is connected, but which serve merely to buy him off from God's hand, who will not let him go till the last farthing is paid-is a horrible blasphemy against the truth and grace of God. The scriptures do not teach us thus. What should you say, James, to the thought that, after God had forgiven you, and declared that He would remember your sins and iniquities no more, God was going to put you into the fire or some other horrible pain, till you paid Him the last farthing of these temporal penalties?
James. I never could think that.
N-. No one who knows God's truth could, James. It revolts every thought that God has given to us of His grace and of Himself.
James. But, then, what do you say to the murderer not being punished more than one who had committed a small fault?
N-. I say that if they turn to God through Christ, they are both washed clean, as white as snow, even if the sin was as scarlet. The whole argument, James, denies Christian truth. No person renewed in heart will call any fault small which comes from the carnal mind, which is enmity against God. We know that, if we are not redeemed and justified and born again, we are all children of wrath; that if we are, though we may be chastened for our profit, God imputes to us no sin at all, as Paul says in Rom. 4, " Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth no sin," quoting Psa. 32, because Christ has, for those who by grace are in Him, borne and satisfied perfectly for them all; that (Heb. 10) by one offering He has perfected forever them that are sanctified; that, if they are really Christ's, they have a new nature (Col. 3:10); that Christ Himself is their life (Col. 3; Gal. 2:20); and that, when we die, we are absent from the body and present with the Lord (2 Cor. 5); that God has made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light (Col. 1). In a word, we believe in salvation through the work of Christ, and a new, divinely-given, nature. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin (1 John 1). God forgives and cleanses from all iniquity. It was when Christ had by Himself purged our sins that He sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high (Heb. 1). What do we want of a purgatory, if we are perfectly purged and cleansed, made (as scripture speaks) as white as snow! They would persuade us that God has given His Son for our sins, that He has borne them; and yet, that for those who die in grace, who are really in Christ, all whose sins Christ has borne, cleansing them in His precious blood- interceding for them in virtue of it if they have failed (1 John 2) -God has still a prison in order to punish them grievously for the very sins which Christ has borne, and that He will exact the last farthing of them!
James. That's not Christianity, I'm sure, nor the God of the Bible.
N-. It is not, James: and what strikes me in all the doctrines of popery is that they deny the grace and truth that came by Jesus Christ, His own grace. But a word as regards degrees of guilt. Even in eternal punishment scripture speaks of a difference, of few stripes and many stripes (Luke 12:46, 47); but that is in eternal punishment when Christ comes to judge, as you may see, verse 46; and they are all alike shut out from the presence of the blessed God, and that is what is infinitely dreadful; while, if through grace they have been brought to repentance and faith in Christ, if they have really been made partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:3, 4), the Lord imputes no sin to them. The Romanist reasoning supposes that the sinner who is in grace has to answer for his own sins, and hence it makes the difference of great and small. Christianity teaches us that, if a man be in Christ, Christ is He who has answered for them, and that hence none is imputed to him at all. But he does look for purifying by the word of God in whatever details he may need it, and by chastening in the flesh when it is called for; but he has a new nature, and, if he dies and leaves this world of discipline, he will not have his body or flesh remaining at all. He departs and is with Christ; he falls asleep in Christ, Jesus receiving his spirit. He could not look on the God who has loved him, given His Son for him, justified him, cleansed him in Christ's blood, made him His own child, and declared He would never remember his sins, as a God who would after all put him into torment till he paid the last farthing.
James. That is true; I see plain enough it denies the very nature of Christianity, all it tells you of God and all the feelings it gives towards God for His love. Why the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost! I begin to feel it now, and see in the Bible that it belongs to the Christian; and there would be an utter end of that, if it was true that God was going, after saving us by Christ, to put us into prison till we had paid the last farthing. No: I believe Christ has paid the last farthing for me (blessed be His name), and that He ever lives to make intercession for me. I do not know what kind of a religion that is, but it is not real Christianity. Of this I am sure; though I do not say good people may not be blinded by it.
N-. No: its character is not divine. Penances to satisfy an exacting God, purgatory if you do not do enough, multiplied rites and ceremonies to quiet the conscience without purifying it, no confidence in God as a God of love, no resting in thankful peace on the efficacy of Christ's work, no childlike confidence in a Father's goodness taking away fear; these are not the grace and truth that came by Jesus Christ, nor their fruits. The system really sets aside grace, and puts us under the terror of an eternity which we are not fit to meet. It pretends that Christ's blood was shed to bring the Old Testament saints to paradise, but that the commandments are given for us to merit it by. Then there are ceremonies to eke out our failures; and, in spite of them all, and of a sacrament that is to wipe out the remains of sin (for so they say extreme unction does, which Christ's blood, however believed in, has not done of itself), we are to go to purgatory and finish the payment to a God who will have the last farthing. It is neither God come down to us in love (and this is what Christ really was on earth, and as to His love He surely is not changed), nor we reconciled to God by the death of His Son, which scripture says that we who believe are. Forgive me, James, if I speak earnestly and warmly when I think of the wrong done to God's love and to the efficacy of Christ's precious blood by it.
They can give a thousand cunning explanations about purgatory, which after all are but straw before the word of God; but the end is that the poor soul under this teaching needs, and feels it needs, purging in order to be with God. It does its best, is not purged; gets the sacraments, is not purged; and then goes to purgatory, and God knows when it will get out. For see what a poor case it is after all. A man is absolved, has the viaticum, the benefit of Christ's sacrifice; afterward he is anointed, which is declared to wipe away the remains of sin, and then after all goes to purgatory. What is that for? Not to purge him-for the remains of sin are wiped away (I use the terms of the Council of Trent) by extreme unction: what does he go to purgatory for after that? The natural conscience feels it must be to purge the soul, not merely to satisfy a vindictive God; but, if it be, then the sacraments have not done it. And though they have had masses before which have not kept them out of this prison, and they get masses said to get them out when they are in, yet we never know when they will get out after all. They are helped, but we are not told (that is carefully avoided) whether the satisfaction is judicially received for the satisfaction of another: the offended judge is not bound to receive. It is probable it is; but they are only suffrages, not satisfaction necessarily applied.
And remark here, that it is with no view of benefit to the souls that are in purgatory that they are tormented. God does chasten men in this world (and to this Roman Catholics appeal); but we read, " he for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness." God may bring in judgment, like the flood, or the perishing of the Israelites in the wilderness; but, in this last case, it is said, " As I live, saith Jehovah, all the earth shall be filled with my glory." It was His public government in this world vindicated. But Bellarmine says, the souls in purgatory are sure of their salvation, that death has wholly taken away the principle of sin in them, nor is the purgatorial fire to correct evil habits that have been acquired. It is purely completing so much punishment imposed on them, satisfying a penalty. And for that they are in horrible torments, perhaps till the resurrection.
James. Well, how can people be so blinded? For I cannot believe, if a soul is forgiven and purged, God could take pleasure in tormenting it; and if it is not purged, then their absolution, and sacrament, and unction are worth nothing after all. Purgatory and they cannot both be true, that is plain. Ah! when a man is in the blessed light, he sees clear, even if he be ignorant, because he knows the love of God and the value of the precious blood of Christ.
N-. Yes, James, he is taught of God; and what concerns his soul is as clear as daylight, ay, and what God is too, though he have much to learn. We have considered what purgatory is for the soul when compared with the truth of scripture; we will see the value of their proofs of it by and bye. In the meanwhile see how their doctrine of the intercession of the saints hides the grace of Christ.
The word of God teaches us that the blessed Son of God came down to earth, and got, as scripture beautifully speaks, the tongue of the learned, to speak a word in season to him that is weary (Isa. 50:4). We are told that He was in all points tempted like as we are without sin; that we have not a high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but that, having suffered being tempted, He is able to succor them that are tempted (Heb. 2:17, 18; chap. 4: 15, 16): so that I can come boldly to a throne of grace to find mercy and grace to help in time of need; that if I sin, which I can never excuse, still I have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and He is the propitiation for our sins (1 John 2). Here then God teaches me I have a throne of grace to which I can come boldly, and a high priest who understands all my weakness and sorrows, and feels for me in them, and, if I have sinned, One who has made propitiation for the sin. Now that is all I want. It is holy • ground to go on, for no sin is allowed at all, but it suits my heart and my wants. On the other hand, what does the intercession of the saints and Mary tell me? It says to me, No, you cannot come boldly to the throne of grace. Christ is too high, too glorious. He does not, and either will not or cannot
I will add here, from a prayer-book, " St. John's Manual," recommended (1856) by John, Archbishop of New York, some of the devotions to the Virgin. " I worship thee, 0 great Queen, and I thank thee for all the graces which thou hast hitherto granted me; and especially I thank thee for having delivered me from hell, which I have so often deserved.... I place all my hopes in thee, and confide my salvation to thy care."-Saint John's Manual, p. 886; and in p. 887, " By thee we have been reconciled to our God; Thou art the only advocate of sinners.... We have no hope but in thee, 0 most pure Virgin." feel for my wants and sorrows as others do. Mary has a more tender heart. The saints can enter better into my wants-are nearer to me. In vain has the Son of God become a man on purpose to know and to bear my sorrows, to assure me that He feels for me in tender love and compassion: others (if I am to believe the Romanist doctrine) are more suited to me. I must get them to go and move Him to love me and enter into my sorrows, and get what I want from Him for me. And if I have sinned, instead of trusting to His intercession who has made propitiation for me, I must get saints to do it, who never could nor ever have done it. Did they ever, when in the form of God, become a poor man for me? Did Mary ever do so, or shed her blood for me?-And see how it denies the grace of God. Is this getting saints to go because I dare not go, coming boldly to the throne of grace because it is a throne of grace? I had rather have the heart of Him who became a man of sorrows for me, and shed His blood for me, and is the one only high priest, than all the Marys and all the saints (blessed as they may be in their place) that ever were.
I speak with you, James, of the substance of these things, and compare the Roman Catholic system with the truth, with what Christianity is as given to us of God; because you have not lost it as given of God, but are rather come to it really in your heart, and thus can understand the difference. Romanism is not the Christianity of the scriptures at all, not God's Christianity: grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
James. Thank you, sir, thank you. It does me good, and clears up many a point for me. It does make a wonderful difference when one knows there is such a thing as grace- knows God's grace ever so little, as shown us in Christ. When one has learned to have confidence in God's goodness, one sees the whole system is false; that it is not grace; that man has to work and suffer to satisfy God. He may have sacraments to get grace and works to merit glory, but it is no God of grace that he has to do with.
N-. But they will not allow you, James, to have confidence in the love of God, or to be assured. They cite the words" no man can know love or hatred by all that is before him," to prove that no Christian can be assured.
James. Well, I do not see, if a Christian believes that God gave His only-begotten Son for him when he was a poor sinner, to say nothing of His love being shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, how he can doubt that God loves him. No doubt the grace of God must work in his heart to make him really think of it, or care for it, or believe it; but if it does, he must know God loves him, and he is bound to believe that the blood of Christ cleanses him from all sin.
N-. Surely he is, James, but this is formally denied by the Council of Trent, and every Roman Catholic.
James. I see it is impossible for a true believer to receive for a moment their doctrine. It denies the grace of God, and the real efficacy of Christ's work, so that His love is never known, and the soul has never true peace, and penances are put in the place of inward purity.
N-. That is the truth. Scripture tells us of divine love, and its sweet and blessed comfort known in the soul; of purity, inward purity, required, but communicated to us by a new life, by one being born of God, and enjoying the renewing of the Holy Ghost; of the perfect efficacy of Christ's sacrifice once for all, so that being justified by faith I have peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord: and then of walking thus, through His continual grace, in the favor and fear of God, with the assurance that when I am absent from the body I shall be present with the Lord, and finally be glorified with Him. They tell me of meriting heaven by my works; of satisfying God for my sins (even if forgiven), of multiplied sacraments, and ceremonies, and penances, and, when I have done all, of going to hell or to purgatory. And if the blessed Son of God has died, it is only to give efficacy to the sacraments which leave me in this evil case after all. It is a poor kind of religion. They tell me I cannot be saved out of it-and yet, if I am in it, I cannot after all tell whether I am saved or not. Well, I do not believe that the God of grace meant to leave a man there. I believe He gave His Son that I might have peace in my soul, and be happy, according to His holy nature; not that I might remain ignorant after all of His love and of my own salvation. I read that the revelation of Christ was " to give knowledge of salvation to His people by the remission of their sins "; and that peace by Jesus Christ was preached because He has made peace. And I see that Romanism deprives us of all the present blessing of the gospel altogether. But here, I suppose, is your neighbor.
James. Sit down, Bill. This is the gentleman I told you of. This, sir, is Bill M.
N-. Good day, M.
Bill M. Good day, sir.
N-. We have been talking of the true religion, M., and whether the Roman Catholic system is the true one. Hitherto we have mainly compared it with the substance of Christianity as it is set out in scripture for the comfort of us poor sinners. But it is all fair to hear what you have to say for the system which you have adopted and would persuade James to adopt, and I propose we should take Milner's " End of Controversy " as a kind of text-book, for it is largely circulated by zealous Romanists to win Protestants by to Romanism, and printed cheap by your friends, as giving the best possible account of their doctrine and overthrowing Protestantism.
Bill M. The church alone can judge of the truth, sir, and we must submit to her authority, or we shall never arrive at it.
N-. Well, but we are Christians, what you will call Protestants, professing to believe sincerely in Christ, and you must show us the truth somehow. We do not, at any rate, yet own the Roman Catholic system to be the true church. Of course I do not conceal from you that I am very far from thinking it so. It will not do to say the church teaches so and so, when you have not yet shown us what is the true church; but I shall gladly hear all you have to say. You have sought to bring James here to turn Roman Catholic, saying you alone have the true church, and I have sought to guard him against it. You, or Dr. Milner himself, can tell us what that which you call the true church says on the points in controversy; but you cannot use the authority of the church to me before I believe that that to which you belong is so. Indeed, there would be another thing to prove, namely, that the church has authority to teach. I believe it has not, but that the apostles had, and subordinately, the ministry, those whom God has called to it, though these last not so as to be any rule of faith. I am quite ready to discuss the question of the church's authority: it is of all importance; but we cannot use it till we have it, and as your famous Dr. Milner has discussed the different points, we can see what your best authorities have to say. We will discuss the true church like all the rest.
Bill M. I do not know whether I ought to argue with you, because, till you submit to the authority of the true church, you cannot see the truth.
James. Well, but then you must confess you have nothing to say for your doctrines. You used to praise Milner's book, M., to me, and say nobody could answer it.
Bill M. When once the church has pronounced, I believe.
N-. You must first show what is the church. But besides that, this is not receiving the truth yourself in the love of it. And if you think we are in such deadly error, and do not seek to convince us, you are answerable for our souls. Besides, it is not enough to show me where the true church is (I believe I am in the true church these many years): I must have the truth of God for its own sake. I believe in the authority of the word of God, and one way of knowing whether that which calls itself a church is the true church is to know what it teaches. And when your doctors write books on these points, they do try to persuade us. They must, or we should not be persuaded; though, strange to say, they never give the holding of the truth of God as a mark of the true church.
Bill M. But you cannot tell what the true sense of the Bible is. There the church alone can guide you.
N-. I do not see, if I humbly depend on God's grace, why I cannot understand what Paul says as well as what Dr. Milner says; and if I cannot understand all scripture, I can see where it directly contradicts your doctrine. Besides you circulate Dr. Milner's book, and I suppose therefore I can understand him, and surely I must examine what his book says. You must think me capable of that; or am I to swallow all he, too, says as gospel without inquiry? If you are going to convince me by Dr. Milner's book, you must let me examine what it says. You have put the things before me, and I must examine them. I am surely not to believe Dr. Milner as infallible. I am willing to take him as correctly representing what the church of Rome wishes to say; though as authority I must take the Council of Trent and what is called the Catechism of the Council of Trent. I do not wish now to discuss the true sense of the Bible, though I shall freely refer to it if needed, as you do not deny its authority, and I shall leave it to its own authority in the conscience. Nor can I swallow all manner of evil doctrines which you may have propounded to me by putting them in the gilded pill, " the church." If you are going to convert me to your system, I must know what it is. We were speaking of purgatory, and, if you please, we will finish that subject, and then speak of the church, or rule of faith, or any other point you please: only you must let me speak plainly without being offended. I would not willingly hurt any man's feeling: it would be a sin to do so; but when we are discussing the truth, we must have the truth.
Bill M. Oh! to be sure. It is better to speak all plainly out. I shall not be offended.
N-. You will have no objection, then, to my taking Dr. Milner's " End of Controversy " as my guide in learning what Roman Catholic views are, as it has been given to so many for that purpose. This is the best and readiest way, even while referring to any other authority desirable. Allow me now to ask you what is purgatory?
Bill M. It is a place of punishment for venial sins, and for anything that remains of the temporal punishment of forgiven mortal sins, into which Christians dying in a state of grace go.
N-. Well, I suppose that is pretty correct. Dr. Milner says (Letter 43), " All which is necessary to be believed by Catholics on this subject is contained in the following brief declaration of the Council of Trent: There is a purgatory, and the souls detained there are helped by the prayers of the faithful, and particularly by the acceptable sacrifice of the altar.' " (Sess. 25, De Purg.). This is singularly vague, carefully vague. What is purgatory? Do people suffer there? What do they suffer for? What are they helped out of?-Of all this the statement tells us nothing. Yet on this is founded all the system of masses for the dead, masses multiplied according to the wealth of the dead man or his family (for the poor stand a poor chance here), and the anxious terror of the living; on this was founded all the dreadful traffic in indulgences. Yet the Catholic is not bound to believe that there is any suffering at all. But Dr. Milner is right: I seek in vain for any authoritative instruction from the Roman rule of faith upon the subject. What is left vague may be filled with terror, and so in practice it is. The Catechism of the Council of Trent, however, gives us a little further insight into it. Speaking of Christ's descent into hell, it says, " Hell, then, here signifies those hidden abodes, in which are detained the souls that have not been admitted to the regions of bliss " (vol. I, p. 123). And then, after speaking of the hell of the damned, it says, " Amongst them (the places called hell) is also the fire of purgatory, in which the souls of the pious, being tormented for a definite time, are cleansed, that an entrance may lie open to them into the eternal country, into which nothing defiled entereth." And then it is left to the minister in these words: " The truth of this doctrine, founded, as holy councils declare, on scripture, and confirmed by apostolical tradition, demands diligent and frequent exposition, proportioned to the times in which we live, when men endure not sound doctrine." The truth is, the Romanists are very shy of saying much on this head, because the statements of the Fathers are as contradictory and as full of confusion as they can possibly be. Here we are told Abraham's bosom is in hell (hades).
Tertulliant says (when a good churchman), I think that hell (hades) is one thing, Abraham's bosom another.
Augustine says that Abraham's bosom is to be thought a part of hell (hades) elsewhere he cannot tell-thinks it may, but says he cannot find it is so called; and doubts if any one could endure its not being taken in a good sense, and therefore he does not see how it can be hell. Again, he says the bosom of Abraham is the rest of the blessed poor whose is the kingdom of heaven. In the first letter alluded to he refutes Christ having taken all out.
St. Jerome says, " Our Lord Jesus Christ descended into the furnace of hell, in which the souls of sinners and just were kept shut up, that without any burning or hurt to Himself He might free from the chains of death those who were shut up there " (in Dan. 1:3). Still I suppose we must take this only as applying to those that were His. He says (in Lamentations Jer. 2:3), " Therefore the Redeemer called on the name of the Lord out of the lowest lake, when in the power of His divinity He descended into hell, and, the bars of Tartarus being destroyed, tearing away His own whom He found there, ascended conqueror to the upper regions." Thus then all the just, all that belonged to Christ, would be delivered. Again, yet further (in Esaiam 6, 14), " hell is the place of punishment and torment, in which the rich man clothed in purple is seen, to which also the Lord descended, that He might loose the bound out of prison." This was hardly Abraham's bosom, as Augustine often says. Indeed he ventures on rather slippery ground for an orthodox Father, the pillar of Romanism (in Eph. 2, cap. 4). " The Son of God, therefore, descended into the lower parts of the earth, and ascended above all heavens, that He might not only fulfill the law and the prophets, but also certain hidden dispensations which He alone knew with the Father. For indeed neither can we know how the blood of Christ can profit the angels and those who are in hell, and yet we cannot be ignorant that it did profit them." Whatever this may mean, it is clear that the preceding statements overthrow the idea of His simply delivering those who in quiet repose were awaiting the Redeemer's victory. I suppose the bars of Tartarus were hardly round Abraham's bosom. Can there be a greater confusion and ignorance? I do not quote as many different speculations as there are fathers. But saints may thus learn what the Fathers' writings are worth.
I add only these to show that it is no individual mistake of Jerome's. Ambrose (de Mys. Pasch. 4) says, " Christ being void of sin when He descended to the bottom of Tartarus, breaking the bars and gates of hell, recalled the souls bound by sin, the dominion of death being destroyed, out of the jaws of the devil into life." So many others. Now this was not delivering merely those in repose. Either all the just were in repose and better off than Christians, who go (I may say) all to purgatory-and then those fathers are all condemned; or else they were in purgatory, and this deliverance of peaceful souls in a distinct place from purgatory, as taught by the Catechism of the Council of Trent, is all wrong. And what is
come of those that were in purgatory none can tell. St. Augustine will help us out a bit perhaps (Enchiridion, Ito, 29): " When therefore sacrifices, whether of the altar or of any alms-giving whatsoever, are offered for all baptized persons deceased, for the very good they are givings of thanks; for the not very bad they are propitiations; for the very bad, even if they are no help to the dead, they are certain consolations of the living. But to whom they are profitable, they are profitable either to this, that there should be full remission, or at any rate that damnation itself may be more tolerable." Albert the Great teaches that that must mean purgatory; but the famous master of sentences, as he was called, Peter Lombard, declares that it is not to be denied that it is accepted for the punishment of those who are never to be set free. All who are in purgatory are middling good: the least bad, who are never to be freed, are middling bad, and their pains may be mitigated. They can do better, it seems, than what the Lord taught as to Abraham and Lazarus: but, oh! how we see the wild unbridled imagination of these Fathers. They had lost the plain truth of scripture, and wandered in every uncertain and unstable thought of their own imagination.
James. Well, it is strange doctrine. It is a terrible thing, after one is justified and in a state of grace, to go and suffer in a kind of temporary hell-fire. And there we must go, and that just if we are in a state of grace. What do you say to that, Bill?
Bill M. It is no good arguing on religion. How could you expect me to explain everything? The church says there is a purgatory, and we are warned not to look curiously into it, and be taking notions to ourselves.
N-. Yes, my good friend, but we are not looking curiously into it. We are paying attention to what is taught in the Catechism of the Council of Trent; and according to that, though the doctrine be inconsistent and contrary to itself, if I am to take the general statement, it would have been far better, to have been a godly Jew than to be a godly Christian.
Bill M. But that Catechism is for the clergy, not for us.
N-. Yes, but the clergy are to teach according to it, and according to the consent of the Fathers. But we will pass on. I will quote Bellarmine's account of purgatory, as he is of very high, perhaps the highest, authority among Roman Catholics; for as to the consent of the Fathers, it is out of the question.
On this point he says, what is so called is " a certain place in which, as in a prison, souls are purged after this life which have not been fully purged in this life; that thus purged, namely, they may be able to enter into heaven, where nothing defiled will enter." Yet the same Bellarmine distinctly declares that lust has ceased in death, that evil habits are not corrected in purgatory, that it is purely a penal satisfaction for sin-that is, no purifying or purging at all. See what he says as to satisfaction, lust being gone. Well, I deny purgatory as a wholly false unscriptural idea, and as a denial of the efficacy of the work of Christ. I read in scripture, " the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." God declares of the sanctified (and they only, it seems, go into purgatory), that " He will remember their sins and iniquities no more." I find that, when we are absent from the body, we are present with the Lord; I am taught to give thanks to the Father, who hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. I find that the poor thief went, the same day he died, straight into paradise to be with Christ. Hence for the true Christian the fear of death is wholly taken away. He is already one spirit with Christ, and he knows that to depart and be with Him is far better. Christ has borne his sins in His own body
on the tree; and he has not himself therefore to bear the consequences of them. He has a wholly new life by the quickening power of Christ. Christ is his life; and when out of this sinful flesh he is in every sense clear from sin forever.
Bill M. Do you think, then, a murderer, and one who steals an apple, will be punished in the same way?
N-. Are you, then, an unbeliever, M.?
Bill M. No, I am a good Catholic.
N-. You are reasoning as an unbeliever would. What you say is as if Christ had not died for those who go to heaven. I do not say that the murderer and he who steals an apple will be punished alike; though we are very bad judges of guilt.
It was by stealing an apple that men were driven out of God's presence and the earthly paradise; because they had given up God for an apple, and because lust and sin had come in. The tree is proved by its fruit, and one wild apple proves as well as a hundred would that the tree which bears it is wild and good-for-nothing. I do not say some men have not broken through more restraints of conscience-have not sinned against light, so as to be beaten with many stripes.
But this has nothing to do with the matter we are speaking of, namely, of those that are forgiven, who are going to heaven, who are justified and sanctified; for purgatory is for none others. The question is not therefore about the degrees of punishment for the lost, but of the saved (and according to Bellarmine all in purgatory are all even sure they are saved, and so indeed they might well be, since none others go there): and I say as to such, that, whether they had been murderers or apple-stealers before, they are cleansed from all sin. They are, as scripture speaks, as white as snow, if their sins had been as scarlet. When I have washed anything, the question is not how much dirt it had before, disgusting as that may be, if the dirt be there, but whether I have washed it perfectly. Now the scripture tells us Christ has washed us perfectly, and I believe it. We are made meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. If we are saved, we have a new nature, and that is a holy one. We are made, says Peter, partakers of the divine nature. And, when we die, nothing remains but this holy life which is born of God. Guilt is gone, all impurity is gone, and in due time we shall have a glorious body too. Purgatory denies the efficacy of Christ's work, and the reality of receiving life from God. It upsets your own doctrines (as I said to James); for, as guilt is wholly removed, extreme unction, which wipes away the remains of sin, must be false, or else one that has been anointed has nothing to go to purgatory for; for men, we are told, go there for the remains of sin.
Bill M. Do you mean that the soul (when it goes out of the body) is fit for heaven or paradise?
N-. Certainly, or how did the thief get there? I see the whole system of Romanism to be the very contrary to the gospel of peace. In that-in the Christianity of the scriptures-I see a God perfect in holiness, but one " rich in mercy," who loved the world, and gave His Son, that whoever believes in Him might not perish. God, I see, is love. Christ, the blessed Savior, gives Himself to bear and put away our sins, that we might draw near to God without fear: as it is said, " to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the remission of their sins." It is with a view to our being happy before Him, serving Him without fear. He gives His Spirit to them that believe, as a spirit of adoption and joy, the Holy Spirit; but He is given, says Peter, to all them that believe. Thus heaven is opened to them, and Jesus has entered as their forerunner; the joy of heaven is in their souls beforehand, the love of God shed abroad in their hearts, and by that Spirit which is the earnest of their inheritance till the redemption of the purchased possession. Having peace with God, they stand in God's favor, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. If they are tempted and tried, the blessed Jesus has been tempted in all things like them, sin apart: and having suffered being tempted, He is able to succor them that are tempted.
In a word, God is a source of joy because He is a Savior, and a gracious help in every trouble. He finds me in misery, lost, going to hell, and warns me of it, and that if I go on in the broad road I shall surely come there. But when He is turned to, when Christ is really believed in, He takes me out of that position and saves me. In so doing He puts me in a place of joy and peace before Him, and He makes me know all this by His word and Spirit. Romanism is the very opposite of that. It brings me before a terrible exacting God when I am a Christian. It brings me by a series of ceremonies (after Christ has done all) into a position where I, even if a true Christian, have still to answer for my sins-may very likely go to hell for them-must do penance (unless I compromise it by an indulgence) for present failings: where I am always dreading eternity, and uncertain what is to become of me at last-only sure that God will exact satisfaction of me; that in any case I must go to purgatory into the fire, and make satisfaction for my faults, and that God will not let me out thence till I have paid the last farthing. Forgiving priests I may find, a tenderhearted Mary, kind interceding saints; but a forgiving God who loves and cleanses me, a tender-hearted interceding Savior-that I cannot have in Romanism. Even if I am forgiven as to damnation, and if Christ Himself has effectually died for me, and I die in a state of grace, God will have the last farthing of me after all. This, as to the whole spirit of it, is contrary to the God revealed in Christ. God manifest in flesh, God become a man to die for me-that God I know. But that when He has done all that for me, He is going to exact the last farthing of me, and throw me into a fire of anguish till it is paid, this I do not believe. Such a God is not the God who has come to save us by Christ; it is another, and, morally speaking, a false one. It makes God one who lays heavy burdens on the human heart when we have to say to Him.
Christianity does show us what an awful burden we are bringing on ourselves if we have not to say to Him, but shows us joy and peace if we have. It calls us from every burden of sin and of sorrow to find rest in Christ; and it shows me He was willing to take my burden on Himself, that I might be free. Christ says: " Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Is it rest to be put to do penance for my sins, living? and, even if saved, to go to purgatory for them when I am dead? And all this just to sustain the power of those that impose the penance, and profess to be able to help people out of-when they could not help their getting into-this terrible fire!
James. How plain and true it is! Oh, if God had not been a God of grace to me, where should I have been? But I had no thought the Romanists believed all this. What! penances while they are alive, and then the last farthing exacted when they die, and they forgiven and justified all the while! And, as you were saying, sir, told all the while that by extreme unction the very remains of sin are wiped away!
Mrs. J. I am sure we ought to feel for them, and pray for them too: but it is sad to think any could be so ignorant of what God is.
Bill M. But by your system a man may say he is justified, and go on sinning, and get clear to heaven.
N-. So man always reasons when he does not know what grace is; but scripture says, purifying their hearts by faith. Revealing God's presence to a man is not the way to make a man sin. Besides, if a man has a part in God's righteousness, it is by being born again, and thus he loves obedience to God and what is holy. Most true it is that we need grace every moment; but Christ has said: " My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness." And besides, if, through carelessness, we get away from God's presence and fail, Christ intercedes for us, and God will warn us outwardly and inwardly: and, if we heed not the warning, He will chasten us. But tell me, humanly speaking, who will be most anxious to keep himself clean: one who is spick and span clean, and going to meet the Queen-or one who is dirty, and does not know whether he ever will go out, unless it be to be hanged?
Bill M. Well, I suppose the man that was clean.
N-. And he must know he is clean.
Bill M. Of course.
N-. So with the Christian. He knows he is cleansed to meet Jesus, and he seeks to be clean in his walk, going to meet Him. We know, says the Apostle John, (mark that word, " we know ") " that when he [Christ] shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; and he that hath this hope in him purifieth himself even as he is pure." So the Apostle Paul: " Therefore we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord, for we walk by faith and not by sight. We are confident and willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord. Wherefore we labor, whether present or absent, to be accepted of " (or, as in your Rhemish Testament, " to please) him." People forget that a new nature, the new man, as it is called, is as necessary and as much a part of Christianity as is the blessed sacrifice of Christ. Your objection is just the one that was made to the Apostle Paul's teaching, because he taught this very doctrine (Rom. 6), and he shows that Christ, who is his life, having died to sin, the true Christian reckons himself dead--cannot live in the thing which he is dead to. We have a part in the righteousness by having a part in the death, and so reckon ourselves dead, crucified with Christ. Having a part in death is not living on. How, says he, can we that are dead to sin live any longer therein? But if I deny that I am dead, I deny I am justified and righteous; for it is only by having a part in His death that I am justified. And it is real life and grace, and these will show themselves in a man's walk.
But we can come to the proofs. I deny that any such thing as purgatory is found in scripture. When we have examined this, we must see what you all allege from the Fathers. Not that I attribute the smallest authority to them, or believe anything as revealed truth but what is in the word of God; but as we are reasoning about it, it is fair to meet all you have to say. It would be quite enough to say they reveal nothing, and have no authority at all; nor would I allege them for the smallest thing; but as you do elege them, we may examine what you allege. I own to you I have a very poor opinion of them from what I have read of them, without meaning to say they have no historical value. We have the highest authority for saying we must have what was from the beginning. But that is Christ and the apostles-none of it elsewhere. And John says, " He that is of God heareth us." Hearing what the apostles say themselves is the test of truth; and he who continues in what was from the beginning (and I repeat, the writings of the apostles and evangelists alone are that) shall abide in the Father and in the Son.
James. Where is that, sir?
N-. In 1 John 2:24 and chap. 4:6. But we will hear all you have to allege from the Fathers.
Bill M. They do not reveal anything; but they must know the truth better than we, and no sense ought to be received from scripture but according to their common consent as to the meaning of it. So says the Council of Trent (Sess. 4).
N-. Are you sure they do agree?
Bill M. To be sure they do, and the church teaches the doctrine they agree in.
N-. It would be a poor thing to have to wait for the truth till we had read all the Fathers. But I think you will find, even in our short inquiries, they are far from agreeing on the subject which occupies us, or indeed on any other.
However, to our proofs. The first that Milner notices is drawn from the second book of Maccabees. He tells us that he has a right to consider these books as scripture, because the Catholic church so considers them. Now, first, I do not admit the Roman system to be the Catholic church: but I leave this till we come to that question. But no church ever took them to be canonical scripture for fifteen hundred years. Augustine declares the Apocryphal books inferior to the other scripture, and Jerome, who was the translator of the Bible at the request of Pope Damasus, and whose translation, called the Vulgate, is declared authentic by the Council of Trent, and so held by all Romanists, says in his preface that Judith and Tobias, and the books of the Maccabees, the church indeed reads, but does not receive them among canonical scriptures. (Preface to the books of Solomon). So Ruffinus (published with Cyprian's works). He gives the list of canonical scriptures, exactly as Protestants receive them, and not merely as his opinion, but declaring that they are the books which, according to the tradition of the ancients, are believed to be inspired by the Holy Spirit Himself. And having given the list, he adds: these are what the Fathers have included in the canon. But however, he adds, it is to be known that there are also other books, now called Apocrypha; and adds, which all they have willed should be read in the churches, but not anything be produced out of them to confirm as authority anything concerning the faith. So Jerome: thus also these two volumes the church reads for edification of the people, but not as an authority to confirm ecclesiastical dogmas. So Athanasius, or the author of the Synopsis ascribed to him, says-they were not put in the canon, but read to the catechumens; and in his festal letter again he gives the twenty-two books of the Old Testament, pronouncing the strongest blame on those who might pretend any others were scripture (1 (62) 767).
This is the constant testimony of the early church. Cyril of Jerusalem gives the same list of the Old Testament, and does not admit the Maccabees. The Council of Laodicea forbids any others to be read in the churches, and gives the same list. The Apostolic Constitutions (which of course I do not cite as of the apostles, but which show the early judgment on this point) give us the same list-2, 57, and that for reading in the churches. The only exception, or apparent one, is that the African churches, as represented by the Council of Carthage and St. Augustine (though Augustine makes a formal distinction between some books and others, and he says that they are not canonical), call the Apocrypha canonical too: but Augustine admits at the same time that learned men did not doubt that two of them were spurious, that is, not written by the professed authors, but says that though they were so, they were received by the Western churches. We learn also how little weight he attached to the word canonical. He says that people ought to attach most authority to those which were received by all the churches; and that in those which were not received by all, they should prefer those received by most and the more important churches It is clear none of them were even received in the Eastern churches, nor were they in the churches of Gaul, as both the Hilarys show. Hilary of Arles tells St. Augustine, writing to him on predestination and free will, on occasion of the Pelagian controversy, that the churches of France around him rejected one testimony he had produced, because it was cited from an uncanonical book.
Not only so, but a pope, and a very distinguished one indeed, who earned the name of Great-Gregory-says, Moral 19, 13 (34) on Job 29, " Concerning which we do not act out of order if we produce a testimony out of books which, though not canonical, are published for the edification of the church "; and then cites Maccabees.
Thus we have the constant sense of the doctors of early ages; and, referring to the African church, Cardinal Cajetan, one greatly employed by the pope about Luther, says, " The words as well of councils as of doctors are to be reduced to the rule of St. Jerome, and, according to his judgment, those books are not canonical, that is, regular, to establish those things which are of the faith. They may be called, however, canonical, that is, regular, for the edification of the faithful, as received and authorized for this purpose in the canon of the Bible: with this distinction, thou mayest discern what is said by Augustine, and written in the provincial Council of Carthage." Thus he reconciles, as others have done, the statements of the African prelates with the universal judgment of Christendom.
Further, we have a list in the middle of the third century from Origen, the most diligent student of scripture, in his Commentary on Psa. 1 (De la Rue, vol. 2, 29), quoted by Eusebius, Hist. Ec. 6, 25), bearing exactly the same testimony as to what is canonical. We have a list of Melito's, about the close of the second century, given by Eusebius, 4, 26. He says he has given, in extracts written by him, " a catalog of the books of the Old Testament received of all, which I have thought necessary to put down here "; and then he gives the same list as all do, but not the Apocrypha. Epiphanius (B. T. 7, vol. I, 122), confirms this same list as being received by the Jews, though not speaking of his own judgment. But Christendom is not all we have to look to, nor indeed the principal thing; because the Old Testament was committed originally to God's people Israel, to the Jews.
Bill M. But you are not going to make infidel Jews an authority?
N-. I am not speaking of infidel Jews, who are now scattered because they rejected Christ (though in this even they are more faithful than Rome and her doctors), but of those of whom Paul says that the oracles of God were committed to them. The Old Testament was committed to Israel as God's people, nor have they at any time failed in keeping it. Now they recognized the books we receive as canonical, and not those which the Council of Trent has wickedly added. This is a matter of undoubted history. Indeed the Apocryphal books are not extant in Hebrew at all. But further, Josephus also states it in a very formal manner, and adds that there were books written since Artaxerxes, but that they were not esteemed worthy of the same faith as the others, for there was no regular succession of prophets. He declares, " We have not a multitude of books, discordant and opposed to one another, but only two-and-twenty, embracing the history of all time, which are fully esteemed to be divine "; and thereon enlarges on their divine authority and the empire they obtain, from youth up, over the Jew's mind. He gives then their number and triple division, as held by the Jews. But there is yet more and incontrovertible authority, which quotes them according to this same division, as the law, the prophets, and the psalms. That is, the Lord Himself quotes them, these same books, as of divine authority, as a known set, to the exclusion of all others; and declares too, in another place, the absolute authority of the scriptures-" The scripture cannot be broken."
But I will appeal to yourself, and James here, or any man in his senses that fears God, to say if this book, the second of Maccabees, can be inspired. Here is the writer's own account of it, at the beginning, 2 Maccabees 2: 23: " All these things, I say, being declared by Jason the Cyrenean in five books, we have tried to abbreviate into one: for, considering the multitude of books, and the difficulty of those who wish to occupy themselves with historical accounts by reason of the multitude of events, we have taken care, for those who wish to read, that there should be pleasure for the mind; for the studious, that they may commit it more easily to memory; for all who read, that profit may be conferred on them. And for ourselves, indeed, who have undertaken this work of abbreviating, we have taken on ourselves no light labor, but, indeed, a business full of vigils and toils." Then he describes the different style of authors and abbreviators (to the former belongs truth in details-to abbreviators studiousness of brevity, according to the given form), and adds, he will begin his story, " for it is foolish to be diffuse before the history, and then short in the history itself ": and finally he closes thus (2 Macc. 15: 37-39) " With these things I will make an end of the discourse, and if indeed well, and as suited the history, this I myself also would wish; but if less worthily, it is to be pardoned me. For as drinking always wine or always water is unwholesome to us, but to use both alternately is delightful, so to those that read, if the discourse be always exact, it will not be pleasant. Here, therefore, it will be closed."
Now, I ask you, is it not a blasphemy to say that " if it was well done, it suited the history, but if less worthily, it was to be borne with," was said by the Holy Ghost?
Mrs. J. And surely they do not give that for scripture, sir?
N-. It is the very book which Dr. Milner quotes as scripture, on the authority of the Catholic church, to prove purgatory.
James. Why, Bill, how can you receive such things? I never could have thought it possible. I am not learned, but sure no one that had a respect for God could ever say that was inspired, or that the Holy Ghost could excuse Himself, and say that what was badly done was inspired, or that He had done it.
N-. Well, James, I do not think M. has much to say for himself in this matter; but note this, that the citation of this passage has proved to us another point-that the Romanists have falsified scripture, and have flown in the face of the constant testimony of the church for fifteen centuries, whatever value that may have, and of that too of the Jews, as divinely-appointed keepers of the Old Testament, who have given a testimony as to what is holy scripture, sanctioned by the Lord Himself, but rejected by what calls itself the Catholic church.
But this is not all: the passage (2 Macc. 12: 39), even on their own chewing, can have nothing to do with purgatory, but denies all their doctrine. The men who were slain in Maccabees had votive offerings to idols about them, and therefore had fallen in battle, and hence had defiled themselves with idolatry; but purgatory is for venial sins, not for apostasy to idols. And it is hard to tell what was to free them then. And we must remember there is not one word in the law or the prophets which Christ owned of any such a purgatory, and that He sharply condemned the tradition of the elders who make thereby the word of God void. Dr. Milner ventures to quote no others from the Old Testament. I will give a list from Bellarmine; you may easily see whether they apply. They prove only one thing, that I can see, namely, that they could find nothing in scripture for it.
Tobias 4: 18: this is also Apocrypha, a history of an angel, accompanying a good young man as a dog, and helping him to drive a devil away from his nuptial chamber with a broiled fish's liver.
Mrs. J. And do they call that the word of God?
N-. They do.
Mrs. J. Well, well: but pardon, sir; you were giving the list.
N-. 1 Sam. 31:13; 2 Sam. 1:12; Psa. 37:1; Psa. 65:11; Isa. 4:4; chap. 9:18; Micah 7:8; Zech. 9:11. To return to Dr. Milner's proofs. I need not notice 1 Cor. 15:29, because the apostle does not give a hint that he is speaking of Jews; he is speaking of being baptized. And supposing he were, I know not what Jewish superstitions have to do with Christians We are all baptized unto death, and of that's being the sense (comparing verse 28) I have no doubt. The only thing such a quotation proves is that they are very hard run for a passage. The proof from the expression, " Abraham's bosom," is soon answered: the Catechism of the Council of Trent contrasts it with purgatory. How Dr. Milner reconciles it with honesty to quote it for purgatory I cannot tell. The force of the expression, however, is evident. Abraham had for the Jew the highest and most blessed place in the other world, and to be in his bosom was to be in the next best place to him, as the beloved disciple in Jesus' bosom, when at the table. Besides, Dr. Milner says Lazarus reposed there. Is it repose to be in purgatory? All this is too bad.
Again, Christ in spirit went and preached to the spirits in prison. This is the prison above mentioned-Abraham's bosom. He says, But Christ went into paradise. This day, He said to the thief, thou shalt be with Me in paradise. Do they preach in paradise? or is Abraham's bosom (and, still more, is paradise) a prison? It is perfectly evident that the Lord uses Abraham's bosom as a place of special favor and blessedness. The poor man died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. And again, Now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. Did the angels carry him to the fire of purgatory to comfort him, after his sorrowful life on earth?
James. Why, Bill, that can't be. Is it not plain that the Lord meant to show that the poor man that had so sad a portion below had, after all, if we think of the other world, a better part than the man that had his good things in this life? And surely that cannot mean making satisfaction to God in torment. But I don't quite see, sir, why the poor man went there and the rich man to hell.
N-. I believe the Lord loves the poor, James. Still, alas! of course, all the poor do not go to heaven because they are poor. But the force of the Lord's history, I believe, is this: He is, in these chapters of Luke, showing the grace that seeks and receives poor sinners, as the lost sheep and the prodigal, and at the same time opening heaven to our view, and teaching us that we ought to use this world in view of the next, and not as the place of present rest and comfort. You know the Jew had been promised riches and blessings here, if obedient, because in that people God was showing His government on earth. But after Christ was rejected this was no longer the case, and the veil was to be rent in His death, and saints were to take up their cross daily, and heavenly things were to be their portion and reward, as in very truth they always were; but now it was plainly and openly so, even as Christ speaks in this same chapter, calling them their own things: earthly things were only in their hands for a time, as another's. Hence the Lord draws the veil, as it were, and shows that a poor man, whom a Jew might have thought to be under judgment for his sins, went straight to Abraham's bosom-that is, to a Jew's mind, to the best place in the other world: and riches, instead of being a proof of God's favor, had shut the man up in his own selfishness, for he had slighted the poor man at his door- the dogs had more compassion than he-and when the other world came, he was in torment. He had had his good things.
James. I see, sir, it is all plain enough; and, indeed, if one sees God's ways in the Bible, all becomes plain by degrees.
N.- We must wait upon the Lord to be taught, James, and He will surely instruct us. He has graciously said, " If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not." So the Lord opened the understanding of the two that went to Emmaus, and so He does now.
Bill M. But you cannot deny that St. Augustine held a middle place.
N.- You know the Romanists hold two middle places, one where the Old Testament saints were before Christ came, and another where the yet incompletely purified just go now: and here I cannot exempt Dr. Milner from the charge of dishonesty. He says, Christ descended into hell... the prison above mentioned, or Abraham's bosom-in short, a middle state. And he says, What place, I ask, must that be which our Savior calls Abraham's bosom, where the soul of Lazarus reposed among the other just souls, till by His sacred passion He paid their ransom?... Not heaven, but evidently a middle place, as St. Augustine teacheth. Now, if he had answered his own question, Dr. Milner knows very well he must have said " limbus patrum (that is, the place where they say the saints dying before Christ were), and not purgatory" (which, in the Roman Catholic doctrine, is entirely distinguished from the limbus patrum). This is wholly and wittingly deceiving, for he adds, after speaking of Abraham's bosom, " It is of this prison, according to the holy fathers, that our blessed Master speaks, when He says, ' I tell thee thou shalt not depart thence till thou hast paid the very last mite.' " This is not Abraham's bosom. Now this they do apply to a middle state, but not to the limbus patrum. Christ delivered the patriarchs and the others from that, and it is now quite empty. They were at perfect rest, they tell us, suffering no pain. All this is attempted to be passed upon us as a proof of purgatory, with the expression, " in short, a middle state."
Further, he says, " As St. Augustine teacheth." Now Augustine says, " Neither is it to be believed that Abraham's bosom, that is, the habitation of a certain hidden rest, is any part of hell " (Letter to Evodius). But Dr. Milner refers to De Civit. Dei, 15, c. 20 (it should be 20, C. 15). Augustine does not say a word of purgatory there, but says, " For if it does not seem absurd to be believed that those ancient saints also, who kept the faith of a Christ to come, were in places as far as possible from the torments of the impious, but in hades (or hell, not the hell of the damned) until the blood of Christ, He, having descended also to those places, should bring them up immediately; thenceforward the faithful good, already redeemed thus at the price of that blood poured out, know nothing more at all of hades until, having received their bodies also, they should receive the good things they deserve."
Hence his notion, whatever it is worth (and it is really worth nothing at all-it is a mere notion, and I will produce an opposite one from himself in a moment, but, such as it is, it is here), would prove that Abraham was clean out of hades now, and whatever middle place he is in is not purgatory, nor ever was; and moreover that since the death of Christ the faithful redeemed have nothing to do with hades.
But Augustine has said more than this, for he speculated, and very wildly too, on all sorts of subjects. He elaborately argues, reasoning on the text, " He hath loosened the pains of hades " (hell), which was then applied to Christ's descent to hell (though an undoubtedly incorrect passage in the Latin translation) but insists, for that reason, that, as evidently the patriarchs and prophets go even there where Abraham was, Christ could do nothing for them as to loosening the pains of hades (or hell), a word which he declares was never yet found to be used in scripture in a good sense, for they were not in it, and the great gulf fixedly separated them at an immense distance. And he wonders if any one could dare (if the scripture had said Christ when dead went into Abraham's bosom, not mentioning hades or hell) to assert He had descended into hell. He says that, if it is nowhere read in the divine authorities, it is not to be believed that that bosom of Abraham-that is, the habitation of a certain secret quietness-is any part of hell at all. Now, it is quite true that the Catechism of the Council of Trent says it is. How they manage about the consent of the Fathers I do not know. I believe, in all this utter confusion, one knew nearly as much about it as the other. How blessed is the simplicity that is in Christ! To depart and to be with Christ is far better, knowing that if we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord, and desiring rather to be absent from the body and present with the Lord. The more I see of the Fathers, the more I see what darkness and confusion they were in; only I was to answer what you should bring forward. A word more, therefore, from St. Augustine. He declares that (Letter to Evodius 3) he does not see what Christ could have conferred on these just who were in Abraham's bosom, " from whence I do not see that, according to the beatific presence of His divinity, He had ever left them." As also He promised the thief, that on the same day on which he died he should be in paradise with Him, when He was going to descend to loose the pains of hell. So that before even He went into hades He was in paradise and Abraham's bosom, and even before, by His beatific wisdom, and in hades or hell by His judicial power (Epistle to Evodius). He says indeed that loosing the pains of hades might apply to Christ Himself, as there follows, " in which it was impossible for him to be holden." This is undoubtedly the sense, only the true word is having loosed the pains of death. If Augustine had only looked to the Greek!
On the whole, he seems to deem it best to think that Christ's soul descended to hell (hades), His body remained in the grave, and His divinity in Abraham's bosom, and to believe that the thief was with Him as God in paradise. As to preaching to the spirits in prison, he is inclined to think (Epistle to Evodius) it was by His Spirit in Noe. Peter speaks only of the souls then disobedient, an interpretation which I have no kind of doubt is the true one. Peter speaks of the Spirit of Christ in the prophets; so here in Noe. The Jews, who expected a glorious Messiah in the body, had only His presence in Spirit, and were a small minority. So in Noe they were a small minority, and Christ was only there in Spirit: but those who despised that, are all in prison to await the judgment of the great day. We are saved, like Noe, by death and resurrection in Christ, as he in a figure was. In Genesis God says, " My Spirit shall not always strive with man, but his days shall be an hundred and twenty years." It would be monstrous to say that these were the only ones to whom more time would be given, and they be preached to when dead, for those only are spoken of.
Augustine refers also in this letter to 1 Peter 4: 6, as well as to 1 Peter 3: 19, 20. There it is said the gospel was preached to them that were dead. He prefers the sense of dead in sins; I believe it was simply when they were alive, hence to be judged accordingly (as said in verse 5). The truth is, this letter is an answer to one written to Augustine on the former passage, and the writer had used the expression that Christ had emptied, or made void, hades or hell which he questions, speaking uncertainly as to this-as to whether souls could believe after they were there. And a second question raises more nice points too, into which it is not necessary to go. But he arrives, on the point that now occupies us, at exactly the opposite conclusion to Dr. Milner, namely, that Abraham's bosom had nothing to do with hades, or hell, that it was Christ's Spirit in Noe, and that preaching to the dead meant the dead in sin, but allows his friend, Bishop Evodius, to think otherwise if he liked.
As to purgatory, he does speak of it elsewhere, but with the greatest possible uncertainty, so that to say he taught it is alleging what is false. He speaks of the subject in three different places, and in all of them in reference to I Corinthians 3-he shall be saved, yet so as by fire-and using the same arguments, and indeed in a great measure the same words. The places are, De fide et operibus, 15 and following (or 24 and following); Enchiridion de fide, spe et charitate, 69 (or end of 18); and De Civitate Dei, 21, 26.
In the first he is resisting persons who viewed the text as meaning that, if men believed and were baptized, they were on the foundation, and, let them live in whatever sin they might, they would be saved; passing through certain pains of fire, they would be purged so as to obtain salvation by the merit of the foundation. This he resisted by a multitude of texts. Some other sense, he said, must be sought for, and that this text is one of those of which Peter speaks as hard to be understood, and adds, " When I consider it, I had rather hear more intelligent and learned men." He then puts the case of Christians living in a lawful state, but while never denying Christ for pleasure, yet not living in a self-denying way, and consequently having grief and distress when they lost the things. Those who sought only to please God were building gold, silver, and precious stones; those who please themselves, though Christians, wood, hay, and stubble. All would be tried by fire and tribulation, and the latter feel the loss, yet be saved, as on the foundation. Then he adds, " Whether in this life only men suffer these things, or whether after this life certain judgments of this kind follow, my understanding of the passage is not abhorrent from the principle of truth." At any rate, he says, however we interpret it, the living wicked will not be saved.
In the Enchiridion, after going over the same ground, and saying it happens in this life that man is so proved, he says, That some such thing takes place after this life is not incredible, and whether it be so may be inquired, and it may be discovered, or remain hidden, etc.
In The City of God he insists that it cannot be what is said in Matt. 25, as in 1 Cor. 3, all go through this probation; and after speaking of self-willed, and unsubdued souls, though Christian, he says, "After the death of the body, until they come to that which is to be the last day of remuneration and damnation after the resurrection of bodies, if, in this interval of time, the spirits of the dead are said to suffer a fire of this kind, which they do not feel who have not had such morals and such loves in the life of this body, in order that their wood, hay, and stubble should be consumed, but which others feel who have carried that kind of building with them, whether there only, or here and there, or, be it so, here and not there, they find a fire of transitory tribulation, burning worldly things, although not imputable to damnation (or pardonable as regards damnation), I do not oppose, because perhaps it is true."
As to Psa. 37, there is not the smallest proof that what he says refers to purgatory. He does frighten the people (for it is to the people he speaks here) with a terrible fire, more terrible than anything in this life; but he may refer to his purifying work of the day of judgment, which is quite as likely, or seems so.
Now, no Christian soul who knows what it is to be cleansed from all sin could be shaken by confused notions of possible punishment such as this poor father debits here. It is as poor a foundation to build anything on as could well be thought of. Had he looked soberly at the passage, he would have seen it applies to those laboring in the ministry in the world- builders in the church; and that the things destroyed are not bad works, but bad building, so that the man's labor was lost, though the builder was saved, yet even he as a man that just saves his life out of a fire.
As to the controversy-for as to divine truth such statements are not worth a thought, and only show what an unstable foundation the doctrine of the Fathers is-as to the controversy, it is not purgatory he speaks of, for all saints go through it. He insists on that as its distinctive character; whereas into purgatory only those go who need partial purging. He adds, as a possible interpretation of it, persecutions when martyrs are crowned, and all stand good; others are consumed in it if the foundation is not there; others saved, but suffer loss. He instances Antichrist also as a possible explanation.
To show how little he can be reckoned on, I may add that he holds that the judgment of the last day itself, the final judgment, will be purgatorial fire for some. He saw nothing of the judgment of the quick in this world, and so misapplied Mal. 3:1-6 to the judgment of the great white throne (De Civitate Dei, 20, 25). And when Malachi says the sons of Levi shall offer sacrifices of righteousness, he applies it to their being themselves offered up to God pure when thus cleansed, " for what could such offer more grateful to God than themselves?" and then says that that question of purgatorial pains, to be diligently treated, " must be put off to another time." He thinks that thus they will offer perfectly, the floor being purged, and they that need it purified by fire.
That I may complete however the doctrine of the Fathers on this subject, and show how sure a foundation they give for us to build upon, Origen tells us (and Dr. Milner quotes him among the holy Fathers as an authority, and he was very early in church history indeed) that we shall want the sacrament to purify us after our resurrection. Having spoken of purifying of women after child-birth, " If, because the law is spiritual, and has a shadow of good things to come, we can understand that a truer purifying will happen to us, I think that after the resurrection from the dead we want the sacrament, washing us and purging us; for no one can rise again without filth, nor can any soul be found which is immediately free from all faults." That is comfortable doctrine (Origen in Luc., Horn. 14, ed. De la Rue, 3, 948).
James. Well, Bill, how can you or Dr. Milner bring such confusion and uncertainty for us to build our faith on? The Bible is a thousand times clearer and more certain than all this. I understand plain enough, thank God, now that the blood of Jesus cleanses from all sin, and that God purifies the heart by faith, and that I am born again, and have a new nature in Christ; but all these doubts and dark doctrines could only blind and puzzle the mind.
Bill M. But I did not quote them.
James. No, but Dr. Milner, in the book you gave me, quotes different places in them; and, now I have heard what they say, I doubt if they understood the gospel at all-at least what redemption really is.
N-. It is just what they did not, James. The evil that pressed so sore upon Paul, even in his time, had now overrun the church, as he forewarned it would; and true saints, as surely Augustine was, having lost the full sense of the value of Christ's work, indulged in all kinds of speculation, and were in confusion and darkness as to doctrine. They had lost the truth of the full value of Christ's sacrifice, that by one offering He has perfected forever them that are sanctified. Hence, each had to get clear somewhere of his own sins, each differing in degree from another, and having to answer for them in proportion, and as there was nothing in scripture, none knew exactly how.
James. But is that all you have for purgatory?
Bill M. No; there are a number of holy Fathers who are quoted, as you may see in Milner, and passages of scripture too.
N-. I will refer to one of them, as one on whom the Roman Catholics build a good deal (the rest will soon be disposed of)-I mean Jerome (adversus Jovinian., lib. 2, 23). Jovinian denied human merits, and said all were equally saved who persevered in the faith of Christ, and opposed celibacy. Jerome, who was a very violent and abusive man, though called a saint, was furious, and St. Augustine was severe upon him too. In this work he refers to the same text of i Corinthians 3, but does not say a word of purgatory, and contradicts Augustine expressly. Augustine, from the text, refutes those who used the passage (Matt. 25) by showing that every man's work would be tried. Here Jerome says that he whose work remains will be saved without being tried by fire, and there is a certain difference between salvation and salvation. This is an attempt to answer Jovinian, but not a syllable about purgatory.
The truth is, Jerome expresses himself so strangely about the matter, that some accused him of denying eternal punishment, and say that Augustine refers to him in rejecting certain views on it. At all events one thing is certain, that it is not of purgatory, as held by Roman Catholics, that he teaches. In speaking of punishment, as contrasted with perishing, he quotes: " They that have done good unto resurrection of life, they that have done evil unto resurrection of judgment," adding, to explain it (a gross misapplication), " those that have sinned without law shall perish without law " (that is, an impious person, who perishes altogether); " he that has sinned under the law shall be judged by the law, and shall not perish." That is pretty interpretation! the sinner with light will not perish, the sinner without it will, contrary to all righteousness and the Lord's express teaching. But, at any rate, in Jerome's statement the judgment, in which man does not perish, comes consequent upon resurrection; that is, it is not purgatory at all.
The passage on which he is mainly charged with denying eternal punishment is in his Commentary on Isa. 66 I do not know that there is more than gross confusion, and, I must say, excessive ignorance of truth. But I will trace his views more closely just now. It will help us to understand the truth of purgatory. But one has really only to read the so much-vaunted Fathers to see the utter worthlessness of their doctrine, and their excessive perversion of scripture. I have paid attention to these two writers, because they are the two great teachers of western or Latin Christendom, and are the real source of the establishment of these doctrines there, though we have seen that one of them affirms (indeed both) quite another doctrine, namely, that of the final judgment itself being a probationary fire; and the other saying that, as to the fire after death, he could not tell: he did not oppose it, for it might be true, but repeatedly expressing his doubts about it, and declaring that several of the scriptures relied upon, in his judgment, meant another thing. But both showed that of the clear and scriptural doctrine of redemption, and the forgiveness of sins, and the perfect cleansing of Christ's blood, they were wholly ignorant. It was practically lost in the church. Superstition and horrible corruption had come in like a flood.
As to the other Fathers, a single remark will suffice for them; they speak of prayers for the dead, not of purgatory. This was the common practice, to pray for all the dead, that they might have a part, or a speedy part, in the resurrection to glory, or in the first resurrection. They were remembered in the sacrifice of the altar. But this had no possible connection with purgatory, for they named patriarchs, apostles, prophets, martyrs, and the Virgin Mary herself. I suppose, M., you do not think all these arc in purgatory?
Bill M. Of course they arc not; they are all in heaven. James. In heaven! and what do they pray for them for? Bill M. Well, I did not know they did.
(' Bellarmine attempts to say it was only commemoration at the Mass; but that is false. Epiphanius speaks distinctly of prayers for them.)
N-. I dare say not, but Dr. Milner did very well; and I must say, if he had been honest he would not have quoted them. If he was only proving that superstition and false doctrine and immorality came in very soon into the professing church, I should have nothing to say; the true thing to say would be that they characterized it; but that it was yet fallen into modern popish doctrine is not true. Faith is not shaken by the corruption of the early church (and you shall have proofs of that corruption), because the scripture foretells it as plainly as possible, saying that on the departure of the apostles the evil would break out, that the mystery of iniquity was already at work, and that in the last days perilous times would come-men would have a form of piety, denying the power of it; and scripture warns men to hold fast by the scriptures.
James. So it does; I remember that, to be sure. How blind one is when one has not them in one's heart! And yet how good God is; He has saved me from all this confusion I did not know of.
N-. We shall get on this point when we touch on the authority of the church and scripture. We will try and finish with purgatory. One of the books quoted is a treatise of Tertullian's, which he wrote when he had left the church, and refers in it to a fanatical teacher, whom he calls the Paraclete, or, as we should say, the Comforter; for Tertullian, the first and one of the most distinguished of the Latin Fathers, left what you call the Catholic church as insupportable.
I do not know that I need go farther into the Fathers. I admit that they prayed for the dead, and remembered them at the Eucharist. Their ideas were wholly unscriptural, and full of confusion; yet what they held was not the Romish purgatory, but what was entirely inconsistent with it. It was a doctrine which arose from their having entirely lost the sense of the completeness of redemption, and got back to the Judaism which Paul so contended against; so that when a person stated that all true believers persevering in the faith of Christ were alike saved, he was cried out against as a dreadful man. I have already quoted them as to their view of men going one of two ways after their death.
As regards the scriptures quoted, I have spoken of I Peter 3: 19, and 1 Cor. 3:13-15. The fire would try the work of every man who was a workman in God's house. This was the day of the Lord, to be revealed by fire. But it is not purgatory. The work is the work of the laborers, not the conduct of Christians at all, and the day of the Lord, not purgatory; and it is alike evident and admitted that it cannot be applied to the Romish doctrine of purgatory, because every one's work is to be tried. As regards not going out till men have paid to the last farthing, I have not the least doubt that it was addressed to the Jewish people, with whom God was in the way while Christ was there, and they have been delivered to the officer, and arc still under judgment, and will remain so, till they have received the full chastisement under which they are lying, and then will be brought to repentance and blessing. This may not be as clear in Matt. 5:25, but it is as clear as possibly can be in the parallel passage in Luke 12:54-59. St. Augustine (Sermo 9, Sermo 109, and Tract. in Joh., 45) refers both the passages to the day of judgment in contrast with this life, and does not hint at purgatory.
As to the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, the incontestable meaning of the passage is that which is expressed in the Gospel of Mark; it " hath never forgiveness." The Jews believed in an age to come, in which, under Messiah, there would be a fuller revelation of God's grace and favor than under the law; and, in a general way, they were right. The Lord declares that this sin would be forgiven in neither-that is, never forgiven at all. Besides, this text, if applied as Roman Catholics apply it, would not prove purgatory, but deny eternal punishment, for purgatory is for those who are forgiven and justified. Hence this passage cannot apply to purgatory, for this sin is not to be forgiven, and it would mean that the unforgiven, the lost, would be forgiven in the next world. In Gregory the Great we find another view of purgatory. In general he rejects it, but admits it in a very small degree, referring to the last passage I have quoted. He quotes a number of passages to prove that we shall be in the day of judgment as we are when we die, and that now is the time to settle all with God-John 12:35; Isa. 49:8, quoted by Paul; 2 Cor. 6:2;
Psalm '17-concluding from which sentences it is evident that such as any one goes out of this world, such he is presented in judgment. But, however, concerning certain light faults, it is to be believed that there is a purgatorial fire before the judgment, and he refers to 1 Corinthians 3 as the proof; but, however, as I said before, for little and the very smallest sins, such as " idle speech, immoderate laughter, or the sin of carefulness in family matters," etc. And then he gives us an altogether novel explanation of the passage in I Corinthians. Augustine makes gold, etc., to mean works so good that they stood the fire: for Jerome it was salvation without going through the fire at all; Gregory does not notice them, but speaks of iron, brass, lead-such dreadful sins that men are wholly lost. He says, However the passage may be understood of the fire of tribulation applied to us in this life, however, if any one take it as speaking of the fire of future purgation, it is to be diligently considered that he says he can be saved through fire, not who shall have built on this foundation iron, brass, or lead-that is, greater sins, and therefore harder, and then already insoluble- but wood, hay, stubble, that is, the very smallest and lightest sins, which fire easily consumes." (Dial. lib. 4, c. 39.) How fire consumes sins, every one must judge for himself.
The result is, purgatory has infinitely more influence than the truth: note what it is. A man, according to Pope Gregory, can build on the foundation—that is, on Christ-iron, brass, lead, such dreadful and indissoluble sins, that he goes to hell, and that no man is free to die in peace; for, for the smallest, he must go to purgatory. Christ has fully and effectually cleansed from none. To hell, however, no Catholic who goes to the priest can go. If a man neglects the church, he goes to hell; at any rate, if he does not confess once a year, he is in mortal sin: but for the most grievous sins he gets absolution on his confessing them-prayers and fasting, perhaps, for penance; but for not finishing these, or for venial sins, he goes to the horrible fire of purgatory, so that is really the only thing to fear. The most dreadful sin can be built on Christ, according to Pope Gregory, and a man not go to hell; but Christ saves none but some rare martyr from purgatory, the true and real place of suffering; all must go there. And that is Catholic Christianity!
Scripture, not history, is the warrant for doctrine; but the historical fact is that half the church, and the oldest half of it, never held purgatory, nor do to this day (the other half, when expressing their personal faith, spoke in a way entirely contrary to it), but had, when the true knowledge of redemption was lost, and the purifying power of ceremonies and works came in, some mere vague notion of an intermediate state, or its possibility, or a purgatorial fire in the judgment of the last day, which ripened gradually in the West to the fact of a purgatory stated, as we have seen it, by Gregory at the end of the sixth century, but then only, if these were just, for very little sins, such as idle words. Before that prayers for the dead were offered, but then for all departed in peace, including the Virgin Mary. I give a specimen from Chrysostom: " We offer to thee this reasonable service for those that are absent in the faith-our forefathers, fathers, patriarchs, prophets and apostles, preachers, evangelists, martyrs, confessors, religious persons, and every spirit perfected in the faith, but especially for all-holy, spotless, over-and-above-blessed, God-bearing, and ever-Virgin Mary."
The importance of this is that it shows that all that Dr. Milner says of the connection of prayers for the dead and purgatory is without foundation, and is, I must say, disingenuous. I have quoted quite sufficient of the Fathers' denying purgatory; I only fear that it might be supposed that I attach any importance to their opinions. From Epiphanius we may find both doctrines of going to the Lord and prayers for the dead combined. Aerius had objected to prayers for the dead, just before the time of Augustine and Jerome, saying, What good could it do them? Epiphanius answers, What can be more useful, more opportune, more worthy of admiration, than the hearing the names of the dead: first, in order that those present may be persuaded that the dead live, nor are reduced to nothing, but still exist and live with the Lord; then, that that most religious doctrine may be preached by which it is evident that those who pray for their brethren think well of them-that they are gone on a journey. But the prayer which is made profits them, though it may not cut off all the sins: but it is profitable in this, that, for the most part, while in this life we fail, voluntarily or involuntarily, something more perfect may be signified, for we make mention at the same time of the just and of sinners, of patriarchs, prophets, apostles, evangelists, martyrs, confessors, bishops, authorities, and all of the whole universal assembly, that Jesus Christ the Lord, receiving a special honor, may be separated from the rest of men, etc. The Lord Jesus was, of course, not prayed for; His mother, Mary, we have seen, was.
The statement of Dr. Milner, that the Greek church holds it, is an unworthy statement. The deputies did agree to it at Florence. The Emperor was pressed very hard by the Turks, and looked to help from the West, and so came to get the Greek and Roman sees and systems united. The Greeks strongly resisted purgatory, saying they were afraid it would lead to Origen's doctrine, that there was nothing else for any one-no eternal punishment. However, they did yield; but their concession was rejected with outcries on their return. They themselves said they had been deceived, and the doctrine is denied to this day, and they remain separate from Rome as before.
Alphonsus de C. (Adversus omnes Haereses) admits that in the ancient writers " there is almost no mention of purgatory, especially in the Greek writers, and that therefore by the Grecians it is not believed unto this day." So Fisher, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Rochester, " that no orthodox person now doubts whether there is a purgatory, concerning which, however, amongst the ancients, there is either none, or, at any rate, very seldom indeed, mention (rarissima). But among the Greeks, even to this day, it is not believed." I give the quotations from others, but there is no doubt of their correctness.
Neither this reference then, to the Greek church, nor that to the Fathers, proves anything, save that the statements of Dr. Milner are unfounded. The Fathers cannot be trusted for doctrine a moment. Justin Martyr declares that it was impossible that the Supreme God could assume a body, and that it was not He who appeared to Abraham. He, I may say all the early Fathers, if we except the good and gracious old Irenaeus, held that there was no personality of the Son till the time of the creation. Hardly any of them-none, perhaps, but Irenaeus before the Council of Nice, were clear as to the divinity of Christ. All this came from the same source as purgatory, a mixture of Judaism and Platonic philosophy; so, indeed, did saintly and angelic mediation. This mixture of philosophy and Judaism at Alexandria in Egypt was the fertile cause of corruption in the church.
A few words as to the true origin of purgatory.
The Romanists do, as heretics always do, take a hard passage, which people do not understand, and use it for their false doctrine. If one knows the right interpretation, one can answer at once, and say, " No; it means so-and-so "; but if you cannot, you are exposed to be led away by false interpretation, because you do not know at all what the passage means. One may be guarded by other plain truths, but, as to such a question, a person has nothing to answer. But the true source of the doctrine of purgatory is a mixture of Judaism and Platonism. Roman Catholic authors refer to both as being the same doctrine in substance as the Romanist doctrine of purgatory; and so they are. It will help us, if I give you here a sketch of the history of purgatory. No one denies that the modern idea of purgatory is found nowhere so closely stated as in Plato. Dr. Milner admits and insists on it; and Bellarmine, De Purg. lib. t, c. 2, appeals to Plato, Cicero, Virgil, and the Mahometans, to prove that it is according to natural light. Now, what does that mean? That redemption and the complete putting away of sin by the work of Christ for the believer-his heart being purified by faith-having been set aside, natural conscience (having the sense of faults in it, having nothing else to make amends for these faults according to their gravity, and unable to quiet or purge itself here) looked with hope and fear to some satisfying for them, or being purged from them hereafter; that is, that Romanism, through the loss of the knowledge of redemption, is a return to heathenism, or, at best, to the instincts of natural light.
I will now give the statement of Plato. After a pretty elaborate description of hades, or the infernal regions, he continues: " These things being so, when those who are departed come to the place where the demon carries each, first they are distinguished in judgment, both those who have lived well, and piously, and righteously, and those who have not; and those who seem to have lived in a middle way, having come to the Acheron, having ascended the vehicle for each, they come to the lake, and there they dwell and, being purified and paying the penalty of their unrighteous deeds, they are absolved, if any one has acted unrighteously, and have the rewards of their good deeds, each according to his desert. But those who seem to be incapable of being healed, because of the greatness of their sins-having committed either many and great sacrileges, or many unrighteous and illegal murders, or whatever else such-like they may be involved in-these a fitted fate hurries away to Tartarus, whence they never get out; but those who have committed such as may be healed, yet great sins... are kept a year, and, if need be, more, till they obtain release from those they have injured for the wrongs done; for that is the penalty adjudged them.... But those who are esteemed to have excelled as regards living piously, these, liberated and removed from their places on the earth, as from prisons, going away to the pure dwelling-place, dwell over the earth. And of these same, those who have been adequately purified by philosophy, live without pain all time after, and come into a better habitation than these, which it is neither easy to describe, nor is there now time." And again, " If a soul depart in this state (a good one) it departs to what is like itself, and invisible-what is divine, immortal, and wise, and, coming there, begins to be happy, is freed from the contagion of human ills, and is in the society of the gods. But if it shall depart contaminated out of the body, it will be, when separated, impure. Those who have passed through life justly and piously, when they die, go to the isles of the blessed, to dwell in all happiness, without any evils. But he who has lived unrighteously, and without God, will go to the prison of vengeance and punishment, which they call Tartarus. But they who have committed the worst unrighteousness, and on account of such unrighteousness cannot be healed any more, of these examples are made. These cannot indeed any longer be helped who are incurable, but they help those who see them, when they see them, for their very great sins, suffering most painful and frightful sufferings forever."
All this was borrowed from Egypt, as different points show, though made up into Grecian philosophy, as in other parts we find him stating the Egyptian doctrine of the transmigration of souls, accompanied with another doctrine, greatly taught there afterward, that the soul existed before, and came down to dwell in the body, two natures making up one person, as will be found in the places I have quoted from. But, though in a heathen form, we have the Roman doctrine of saints who go to heaven, the wicked to hell, and a middle class to purgatory. So Virgil, when Aeneas goes down to hades, he is told by them in purgatory, " When life leaves with the last light (of day), not yet is every evil over to the unhappy, nor all corporeal infection wholly gone; and it is altogether necessary that many things should have grown up as part of ourselves in wonderful ways therefore they are exercised with penal torments, and pay the penalty of old evils." And then he speaks of different punishments before they go to elysium. And, further, in the Odyssey, souls complain that sacrifices have not been offered for them, to get them out of this place. So Ovid's Fasti, lib. 2, 33.
Plato teaches the pre-existence of the soul (Phaedo, 923) and transmigration. Only true saints, who had kept alone from every snare of corporate existence, went, it is suggested, to
God: so did Pythagoras. Philo, the Jew, held the pre-existence of the soul, as Plato, and that the air is full of demons up to the moon; and the lower, or inferior class, were disposed to be earthly, and came into bodies. This came from Indian or Egyptian heathenism. Why do I speak of these things? Because the great early doctors of the church, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, were educated in Platonism. Origen, too, embraced the whole system-transmigration, and the renewal of the whole series of the soul's history in another earth. Jerome and Ruffinus (Latins), and even, in part, Ambrose followed Origen in a great deal, as did Gregory of Nyssa, and many others in the East.
Origen was followed and defended till the fifth general council. Jerome and Augustine, who hesitated, as we have seen, about it all, led in the notions of the Western church. But Origen held that angels, devils, and men, were all on the same footing of responsibility, though in different states; and withal, that all would be ultimately saved; punishment was only purgatory for any.
Ambrose we may speedily dismiss, the only difficulty being that he directly contradicts himself. But that is nothing with the Fathers. His doctrine, in result, is, that all professing Christians will be saved, and heathen unbelievers, that is, Christ's enemies, will not; that Christ chastens those that are His, and consigns those who are strangers to Him to eternal punishment (Enar. of Psa. 118, Octon. 20, sect. 24). As to the manner of it, he gives two directly conflicting statements: first, that there are three classes, the godly Christians, who will not come into judgment at all; those who have failed, though Christians, who will come into judgment; and the wicked, who will not come into judgment, abiding under wrath, so that it is not needed (Enar. in Ps. I: 53 and 56). He held two resurrections, and the failing Christian class to be tormented between the two; but it is after their resurrection. To the third class he refers the passage, " They are condemned already." Those who have added good works to faith will rise to blessedness, not judgment. He rests on John 5:28, 29, and the Revelation. But there is nothing clear as to when the resurrection to life or judgment takes place. In another place he declares that all must pass through the fire, even John and Peter; that the flaming sword is in the way of paradise (confounding the garden of Eden and the paradise of God); and hence, though John, the beloved of Christ, might escape death, he could not escape the fire, only such as John would be soon done with it (Enar. Psa. 118, Octon. 20, sect. 12, etc.).
Jerome may be fairly said to have also held that all Christians would be saved; but his history demands a little more attention. He admired and quotes Origen, or his views, at least, largely. Ruffinus, a great friend of Jerome, translated Origen. This made him known, and he was widely condemned. Jerome attacked Ruffinus, and Ruffinus answered, it was no worse to translate him (Origen) than to cite him continually on these very points without the smallest disapprobation. Jerome, though a saint, got badly out of the scrape, as Tillemont and Dupin, honest Roman Catholics, confess. He alleges all sorts of bad excuses, and at last says, if he had held the views, he did not hold them now. I will now give some of his statements, and the result.
On Ezek. 1:4, 5, our God, he says, is a consuming fire, and, as the ember comes after the fire, so happier things will be afforded after the torment of fire, which is for all believers (nobis omnibusque credentibus). Here all professors of Christ are to be delivered: we arc to be in the fire, to give better things to the pure and purged; though, indeed, it goes farther than believers here, saying that after judgment and torments comes the precious brightness to the sufferers, as the providence of God governs all things, and what may be thought penalty is medicine.
On Eccl. 9 he records the opinion of some, that reasonable creatures can offend and merit in another age, though death ends it in this, and he does not blame this.
In the end of his thirty-fifth Homily on Luke, " agree with thine adversary quickly," he gives getting out of prison, not as he excuses himself, and is pleaded for him, but as his own,-the effect of paying the last farthing is that a man gets out; a minute sin soon paid; greater ones longer; and, if they are very bad, how long will people remain? But it is all after judgment, but no one can say how long; it may be infinite ages.
Finally, at the end of his Commentary on Isaiah, after quoting a series of passages, as alleged by others, to show punishment will have an end [citations which show utter ignorance of scripture, and the misleading of human imaginations, spiritualizing, as it is called, what is plain], after quoting, as the assertion of others, that this future mercy is hid for the sake of useful terror [which is Origen's doctrine], he adds for himself, " which we ought to leave to the knowledge of God alone, who knows how to weigh both mercy and torments, and knows also how and how long he ought to purge," etc.; and then he closes by saying, " and as we believe the torments of the devil, and of all deniers and impious men who say in their heart, ' there is no God,' to be eternal, of sinners and impious men, yet Christians, whose works are to be proved and purged in fire, we think the sentence of the Judge to be moderate, and mixed with clemency."
Worse doctrine one could hardly have, for Christians, who have light, are to be dealt with in clemency, even if impious, but the impious heathen are to be eternally lost. With purgatory it has nothing to do; it takes place after judgment, and of forgiveness, which is the groundwork of purgatory, there is no hint.
James. But, with all this confusion and darkness, why do they quote the Fathers, and make so much of them? This man does not seem to know the truth, nor grace, either.
Bill M. How can an ignorant man like you judge these holy men?
James. I do not know what they are, nor why they are called Fathers; but I am sure what we have just heard is not according to scripture nor God's truth, as the Lord Himself, and as Paul, and the rest-that is, the word of God-has taught it, and we are told to call no man father on the earth. But why is it, sir, so much is made of them, when such things are in them?
N-. It would not be so, James, with one who knew the truth and the scriptures of God. But what is ancient is venerable in men's eyes, and the word of God is too powerful for any one whose heart does not bow to it to hear, and they put it practically aside. The writings of these men are a matter of learning, the tradition of the elders, not of conscience; and, besides that, we must remember the influence and power of the enemy.
James. But then, surely, sir, Paul, and Peter, and John, and all the apostles, and others, are more venerable than they are- the inspired apostles of the blessed Lord, chosen by Himself; and so the other inspired writers. But these writers are not inspired.
N-. Undoubtedly, James, they are more venerable; and we are specially charged to hold fast to that which was from the beginning, as the apostles clearly were, and those called Fathers clearly were not.
Bill M. But you will be taking a wrong meaning out of the scriptures, and those men that lived hundreds of years ago must know better what the apostles taught than we can.
James. Well, Bill (begging your pardon, sir, for answering; we are poor men, and understand each other), but surely the best way of knowing what the apostles taught is to read what the apostles say? I know we need God's grace for it, and I am ignorant of many things in scripture; but, at any rate, the right meaning is certainly there to get, and it is not in what we have heard of these Fathers at all; and I find it a great deal easier to understand, upon those things we have been speaking of, than what we have heard out of these books. Anybody can understand that if the writers of the scriptures were inspired, they must have said it right, and perfectly, rightly, and better than those Fathers, who were not inspired at all; and why can they tell me the matter better than those we know God sent to tell it?
Bill M. But it is the priest will tell you what the truth is; you need not be reading those books.
James. How can I tell that he is inspired?
Bill M. No, of course, he is not.
James. Then he is no better to me, as to this matter, than any other; and why can I not read the scriptures that are for myself?
Bill M. You are too proud entirely. The priest is not inspired, but he teaches what the bishop teaches, and the bishop teaches what the pope and the church teach; and the scriptures were written in Greek, and languages you do not know.
James. Sure, it is not pride to listen to what God says. The Lord Jesus commended a poor woman for doing it, and said it should not be taken from her; and I know that the New Testament scriptures were written to all the Christian people, except a small part. How can I tell the priest teaches, or the bishop either, what the church teaches? I cannot rest the salvation of my soul on that; it is resting it on man. I know what the apostles and the Lord taught is right, and my soul can trust it for salvation; but you give me nothing for my faith to rest in, except fallible men, for that you do not deny they are: and, as to Greek and Latin, what are these Fathers written in? I have no need to judge anything about them, for I rest my soul on the word of God, that I know is His; but what I have heard of the Fathers is very poor stuff any way.
N-. Poor stuff indeed; but it is what these doctors refer to, and the truth is, if you were learned, James, you would know that to refer to what the Fathers teach is to put your foot on a quicksand, in order to have firm ground. They contradict each other, and contradict themselves, as indeed we have seen already. But go on with Bill M.
James. I have not much more to say, sir. You see, Bill, I have a soul to be saved, and I must have some sure foundation from God for it, and I have got that, and through mercy know I have got it, in the word of God, in what you do not deny to be such. There I find that God hides these things from the wise and prudent, and reveals them unto babes. It was not through learning I found salvation and got peace in my soul, and to know I was saved, but by the grace of God.
Bill M. It is awful to hear you talk so. Know you are saved! Who can know that?
James. I wonder you can rest a minute till you do know it. I do not mean to offend you, Bill, but what is your church worth, if a man cannot know he is saved in it, after all? You would be a happier man, if you knew you were.
Bill M. Of course I should; who would not? But it is all presumption.
James. Not if a person comes honestly to Christ. He says, " Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest ": and through mercy I came to Him, and found rest. If you go to Him, you will find it. Sure, He cannot deceive us, nor tell us what is not true; and him that comes to Him He will in no wise cast out.
Bill M. I suppose you are going to turn preacher; and what about all your sins?
James. And what did the blessed Lord give Himself for? was it not our sins? and His blood cleanses from all sin; and I have read, " by him all that believe are justified from all things," and " their sins and iniquities will I remember no more." That is the comfort, Bill, having God's own word for it. And, as to preaching, I am no preacher, but only giving, as I ought to be able to do, a reason for the hope that is in me, I trust, with meekness and fear, as I read we should.
Bill M. And I suppose you may sin now as much as you please?
James. No, indeed; I have to watch and pray, lest I enter into temptation, and find I need it too. But a Christian is a new creature, is born again, and hates sin; and there are blessed promises of help and grace for time of need, and that God will not suffer us to be tempted above that we are able; and, if we do fail (and we have no excuse, I know, if we do), we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He is the propitiation for our sins. But there is no work to put away sin but the blessed Lord's one offering of Himself, and that is finished and perfected forever, and He is set down at the right hand of God.
Bill M. But there is the holy, unbloody, sacrifice of the Mass.
James. Now, I know all your religion is a false one-forgive me for being plain, Bill-for the word of God declares that, where remission of sins is, there is no more offering for sin, and without shedding of blood there is no remission. Now, either you have no true remission of sins in your church, or there is no more offering for sin; and an unbloody sacrifice is of no use at all. Ah! Bill, when one has learned the truth from God, and has the word of God to rest on, one does not want learning to know these things. I am very ignorant of scripture itself yet; but what one wants for the saving of one's own soul, one gets through mercy fast hold of. My missus, there, knows a great deal more of scripture than I do; but, through mercy, I know what saves me. I wanted it, and, through mercy, I have got it; and I know what scripture is, not by learning, but because I found the holy God and a Savior in it, or it found me, perhaps I should say. Any way, I know what I have got, and where I got it.
Bill M. But how do you know you are not deceiving yourself all the while?
James. That I might well do; but God cannot lie, and it is on His word I rest-on what you do not deny is His word, what I know to be such. It found me out, revealed my sins and myself to me, told me all I was, and told me what Christ was. The Spirit of God (as it must for that) worked in my heart; I was convinced of sin; it was not I judged about it, it laid hold of me-was God's eye, that brought me naked before Him. No one, Bill, who has been under its power doubts what it is; and it is always so, and is holy, and will have holiness. Besides the Holy Spirit is given to those that believe, as it is promised; and he that believes on the Son of God has the witness in himself.
Bill M. I told you you would turn preacher; your head is just turned. I do not understand a word you say.
James. Well, Bill, I hope you may, and be as happy as I am, though I am a poor, ignorant, and feeble creature, and know only what I want for my soul's salvation; but I hope to learn more of this blessed book the Lord Himself has given us. But you were telling us about these Fathers, sir. I was led on, talking to Bill M.; but it is well to know what they are. They say so much about them, and, of course, I cannot read them myself, and they make a wonderful deal of them.
N-. What you have been saying is far happier, and much more important, James, than all the so-called Fathers. You would have poor work to do, to read the hundreds of volumes of them, if you even knew Greek and Latin. It is only because they make much of them, and you cannot tell what they are, and all that is unknown is apt to be wonderful, that it is well to know what they are. We were giving the statements by which they are alleged to support purgatory, and, I am glad to say, we have almost done. Of one more I will quote some passages, because he, as well as Jerome, is made a great deal of, and he will nearly complete our history. He is called Augustine-was a very ungodly, and undoubtedly became a truly godly man. As to poor Jerome, saint though he be called, he had an awful and wholly unsubdued temper, and was abusive and revengeful to the last degree: however, he was a saint for Rome. I hope it was all right with him; but really, one can say no more. And now for Augustine.
What we have cited from Ambrose and Jerome has nothing to do with purgatory, but made judgment a temporary and purifying thing for all Christians, and was chiefly borrowed from Origen, admitted to be a heretic on all these points. But I will give you Augustine's statements, a good man, and partially led by what we have already looked at, but confessedly uncertain in his own mind; only he rejects positively the doctrines of the earlier Fathers, Origen, Ambrose, and Jerome. In the twenty-first book of The City of God, chapter 25, he had insisted that a man might outwardly partake of the Lord's supper, and not really receive Christ, that he who fed on Christ abode in Him, and that they were not members of Christ if in sin. Then he takes up the case of being burned (1 Cor. 3), and first refers to tribulation. " So," he says, " as far as it appears to me, that fire is found "; and goes on to declare it cannot be the eternal fire, as some have said, into which those who are on the left hand are cast, and that only those who are set on the Lord's right hand go into that fire, inasmuch as they are saved, though their work is burnt; whereas those who go into the eternal fire will never be saved, but punished forever (21, 26, 3). Then, in 4, " if in the interval between death and resurrection the spirits of the deceased are said to suffer this kind of fire, that their wood, hay, and stubble may be consumed, which those who have not such morals and affections in the life of this body will not feel, but those feel who have carried building of this sort with them, whether there only, or here and there, or therefore here, that it may not be there, they find fire of transitory tribulation, consuming worldly things, but pardonable as concerns eternal damnation, I do not controvert, for perhaps it is true." Death may belong to it. " Persecution, in which martyrs are crowned, or which any Christians suffer, tries both kinds of building as fire, and if they do not find Christ in them, consumes some works and builders, some without the builders, if Christ be found," etc. He was a good man, and knew what it was to have Christ, and could not confound the substance of the matter with chaff, however dark he might be on a passage, and owns he was. " There will be, too, in the end of the age, tribulation in the time of Antichrist, such as never was." Thus his own mind rests on tribulation. He utterly rejects Origen's notions, taken up by Ambrose and Jerome; but, as I said, is partially led by their views, so as to admit the possibility of another purifying fire when a true Christian had allowed evil in himself. The application of r Corinthians 3 to purgatory, Bellarmine assures us, is quite wrong, because there every one's work is tried, and that will not do for purgatory (Bell. de Purg., lib. I, c. 5, sect. 37, 38), and he rejects Augustine's own opinion, which is that of Gregory, that it is tribulation here (sect. 22, 26, 36). So little have we to trust in these doctors for unanimity of judgment. But in the tract on Faith and Works, 25 (15), this same Augustine utterly rejects the opinion of Ambrose and Jerome, though not naming them, and shows their views to be contrary to scripture where it is plainest, because of this, to him, obscure passage in 1 Corinthians 3, and quotes 1 Corinthians 13; James 2:14; 1 Corinthians 6: 9, 10; Gal. 5:19-21. " All this will be false," he says, " if they are saved by fire who persevere in such evil things, if only they believe and are baptized. And thus the baptized in Christ even who do such things will possess the kingdom of God." He adds a great deal more to the same purpose, which I need not quote. He then adds, 29 (16), " Perhaps it will be asked me here what I think of the sentence of the apostle Paul itself, and how I think it is to be understood. I confess I had rather hear more intelligent and learned persons, who shall so expound it, as that all those things which I have above recited should remain true and unshaken, and what I have not cited by which scripture most openly testifies that faith profits nothing save that which the apostle has defined, which works by love." He says, however, he will explain, as well as he can, that if there is a faith which works by love, that faith will not suffer him to perish; he will be saved: but if he has with that allowed his heart to be attached to earthly things, " in losing them they suffer loss, and by a certain fire of grief arrive at salvation." It is all poor and uncertain teaching, but of a godly man. On the same point, in the Enchiridion 18 (69), referring to the same passage, he says, " It is not incredible there may be some such thing after this life, and whether it be so may be inquired, and it may be discovered, or lay hid, that some of the faithful may be saved by a certain purifying fire; by how much they may have more or less loved perishing good things, by so much they may be more quickly or slowly saved."
His doctrine as to good works shows how he lay open to these thoughts, and such uncertainty, for here we have a different doctrine from what he says in the tract on Faith and Good Works. In The City of God he gives both, but that the fire means tribulation, as his own view. In his book on Dulcitius' Eight Questions (1, 14), he earnestly rejects Origen's doctrine of the salvation of the wicked after a time of punishment; and, while mourning over those he cannot mend, nor refuse at the sacrament, still bows to scripture that they are lost. But in the thirteenth chapter of the twenty-first book of the Civ. Dei, citing the Platonicians and Virgil, which I have already referred to, he accepts purgatorial pains between death and judgment, though rejecting (what Origen and Jerome and Ambrose taught) that all the baptized would be saved. But in the twenty-fifth chapter of the twentieth book of the Civ. Dei, he teaches, from Mal. 3, that the day of judgment itself will be purgatorial for some, and as Malachi (who really refers to Israel) speaks of offering, he says they will then offer, but it will be themselves when purified, for what offering could be more acceptable to God? They cannot offer for their sins when purged; but he puts off the full discussion of that subject to another time. He then goes on, as the sacrifices would be offered as of old, to state that they were offered in paradise before the fall, and he loses himself in other ideas.
James. But you say, sir, Augustine was a godly man; yet he is confused and uncertain on the plainest things in scripture.
N-. That is the very use of referring, as I have done, to the Fathers. They are quoted, and Bill M. had referred to them as great authorities to you, and so do Dr. Milner and all Roman Catholic teachers. Nay, their Council of Trent will have no interpretation of scripture but what is by their unanimous consent. Hence it was well to know what they are really worth. Augustine was a godly man, and hence his spirit rejected the vagaries of Origen, copied by Jerome and by Ambrose, who must have had great weight with him as his spiritual father, but he rejects it all. But not knowing the fullness of redemption, as not one of the Fathers did, nor that the poor thief could go straight into paradise to be with Christ, because Christ's blood (who was in grace on the cross by him) had cleansed him from all sin, nor able, as scripture speaks, to " give thanks to the Father, who bath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light," they were at a loss what to do with the faults and failings of real Christians. Before Augustine the purifying was held to be after the day of judgment: this he sometimes teaches-sometimes that it was tribulation here-sometimes between death and judgment; and then he put off its full discussion (but never took it up again), and wished some more learned man to treat of it- would not controvert its being after death, or here and not there, or here and there both.
But the seed of the doctrine was now sown. Gregory the First, of Rome, a great but very superstitious man, whom sober Roman Catholics acknowledge to have stuffed the very book I quote from with absurd and incredible stories, thus speaks in it, founding his doctrine on the Lord's words, " neither in this world nor in the next ": which refer solely to the age of the law and that of the Messiah, a perfectly well-known Jewish distinction, of which he knew nothing. He says it is to be believed that there is a purifying fire for very light faults, but only for small and the very least faults, as frequent idle talk, or immoderate laughter, or error of ignorance in immaterial things; and then refers to 1 Cor. 3, which, as we have seen, their great doctor, Bellarmine, says can not apply to purgatory, and which Gregory says may be understood of tribulation in this life, but with the strangest application, saying, contrary to the rest, " not iron, brass, lead-hard things, and these, indeed, indissoluble; but wood, hay, stubble-that is, the smallest and lightest sins, which the fire easily consumes ": and then he adds, " only if a man has deserved it in this life " (Dialogs, lib. 4).
James. But that has no sense, and the apostle speaks of gold and silver, and precious stones, and what the teacher has built in his service. They don't seem to have understood the scriptures at all, according to what you have quoted, sir.
N-. Nothing can be more foolish as an interpretation; but they had all lost the doctrine of a complete redemption and purging of the conscience by the precious blood of Christ, and therefore all was dark to them. They had to make out some other way of clearing themselves, and hence penances and purgatory and indulgences and such like means. But this is all poor Romanists have to rest on. How different from the clear and sure testimony of the word of God, with its holy claim on the conscience, and full and perfect grace for the soul, the constant presence of Christ before God for us, and His intercession unsought, for every need and every failure, in virtue of a blood and righteousness which never can fail, and sanctifying correction by His word and Spirit in our hearts, with chastening, if needed, for our good, not as an exacting God, for " whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth," and for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness!
But I have done my history of purgatory. The doctrine had now come in, and soon after the dark ages, when wickedness, and corruption, and superstition were at their height. What do we see, then, as the result? Scripture does not say one word of purgatory, but teaches exactly the contrary. We have examined the pretended passages; but when I turn to heathen philosophers and Jews, I find a system of doctrine to which the Romanist doctrine is conformed. Nor is that all. These Jewish doctrines were mixed up with this particular class of heathen ones at Alexandria, a.: is well known, and all the works of Philo testify. Now all the early learned Fathers who imprinted the character of their doctrines on the church lived at Alexandria. There was the great Christian catechetical school, and the principal of these Fathers were its masters, as Clement and Origen; and through these this mixture of Platonism and Judaism flowed into the church. The fact of the accordance of these doctrines is not my statement alone; you see Dr. Milner admits it, and says it shows how suited it was to human nature, which is quite true: only that the reasonings of philosophy were added. And Bellarmine, the Jesuit, and one of the highest authorities in Romanist doctrine, refers to Plato and Cicero and Virgil, as holding these views, and seeks to prove it thereby as of the common light of nature (Bell. de Purg., lib. 1; Prague, 1721, p. 348). So Dr. Milner, " it is conformable to the dictates of natural religion "; that is, punishment suited to the degrees of guilt is. Now, I do not deny this; moreover, scripture speaks of it (Luke 12:47, 48). Before I answer this, let us recall the doctrines to which I refer.
Plato holds that the flesh is an evil part of the nature, which infects the soul, and that if it has wholly given itself up to vice, it would be given up to punishment for the advantage of others, as an example: if not, but that still any had not kept themselves free, they would be punished in hades for a certain time, proportioned to their unpurged stains; that there were two instruments for the health of the body, exercise (gymnastics) and medicine, and if the first were not sufficient, the other was to be applied; that the spots of the soul were like the colors after a wound when completely well. The soul, at the end of its purification and punishment, would be rendered splendid and spotless. That is simply purgatory-purgatory from the natural need of the soul without Christ. Virgil enlarges a little on it: besides the torments of hell, he states the same process of punishment and purification, but he does not quite finish them off then; he sends them to elysium, a place of blessedness, and then, after a length of time, the hardened spots are wholly gone, and the ethereal soul is left quite pure. Other fictions were added; the souls quite pure, according to Plato, went off to the stars, according to their qualities, for they held (so Philo, the Jew) the stars to be living beings. All this was much borrowed from the Egyptians and Pythagoras. Hades was placed by them under the earth, and so by Romanists (as Bellarmine) This doctrine of purgatory was connected with the famous mysteries of Eleusis. It was signified in the rites, says Plato, that he who was not initiated and the unperfected in them would go to hades, and lie in mire, but that the purified and perfected person, when he departed, would dwell with the gods. So they held that there were those who answered to the Romish saints-the heroes, who went to heaven at once, and were eternally happy. Here is Virgil's account of purgatory: " Moreover, when at the last ray life leaves, yet not every sorrow ceases to the unhappy, nor do bodily pains altogether pass, and it is altogether necessary that many things contracted by long usage should grow in a wonderful way into their very constitution. Therefore they are exercised with penal sufferings, and satisfy by punishment for the inveterate evils." This is not Tartarus, the hell of the condemned, but souls that can be purified, who are not yet fit for elysium. You must not be surprised if we refer Roman Catholic doctrines to heathens, where we find exactly the same doctrine. All the language used of the sacraments by the Fathers is borrowed from heathen mysteries, and that even in the language of the liturgies.
But there was another source historically of this doctrine (I say historically, for it was all the same reasoning of human nature that did not know the gospel of salvation)-the Jewish doctrine. The Jews' notion (and the identity of thought is here also extraordinary) was this: they say (as Cyprian, Ambrose, and hosts of others) that there is no place of repentance after death. This the Fathers repeat continually; so the Jews. It is true; but where redemption is not known the only resource is to keep people from sin by terrifying the mind always by the dread of an avenging God, falsifying His character. But then they make almost all Jews get out of the place of punishment, because God has punished the best for all faults, and, after punishing the wicked, must crown what they have done right. Even if one commandment be kept, a Jew will be blest, so that, between that and Abraham's help and Moses', every child of Israel will see the world to come. God leans to the side of mercy, and it would not be just, they say, that a man suffered eternally for crimes which have often been light ones. Hence they have a purgatory for prevaricators in Israel, those who are not entirely good nor entirely bad. They pray to get souls out of it, and God releases them, and particularly at great days of expiation. It is even said that they sell indulgences to the people to get out quicker. Their purgatory is a part of hell beneath the earth. They judge that souls who have done both evil and good works will be punished for the evil, and then be rewarded for the good. So exactly says Origen (Hom. 16) on Jer. 5:6, " If after you are on the foundation of Jesus Christ, you have gold, etc., and wood, etc., what would you have done to you when your soul quits your body? Would you enter into the holy place for the gold, etc., to pollute God's kingdom, or stay out for the wood, and receive no reward for the gold," etc.? Yet neither is this just. He then quotes, " our God is a consuming fire," and says, there comes always blessing after threats and sorrow. And quoting falsely, I know not how, Isaiah 4o, he insists on the word first ("I will first retribute double their iniquities "); first we shall suffer the torment for our iniquities, then be crowned for our righteousness. This is exactly Jewish.
Jerome, reasoning against Pelagius (who said that in the day of judgment the wicked and sinners are not to be spared, but to be burned), answers, You interdict mercy to God. When He says, sinners shall cease out of the earth, He does not say they shall be burned in eternal fire-sin and iniquity (not impiety, which is not knowing God) according to the quality of the vices, after the wound of sin and iniquity receives health. It is one thing to lose the glory of the resurrection-another to perish everlastingly. This, too, was the Jewish notion. The resurrection is for Moses, the saints, and the righteous. In all this we see, no doubt, what suits nature, and how thoroughly the Fathers have followed the crude imaginations of Jews and heathens; and then Rome has made a new system out of it, whose first definite traces are to be found in Gregory the Great, at the end of the sixth century. Only some went farther, as Origen, who held, as Bellarmine himself tells us, that there was no punishment but purifying punishment: he thought that souls had existed before, and were then born into this world, and that they would go on purifying gradually till they purely enjoyed God. It is hard to say what place he gave to Christ in this. Gregory of Nyssa held the same views, and speaks of Judas being purified, of whom Peter says, " he went to his own place," and the Lord, " it had been good for him not to have been born." And throughout his works this doctrine is taught. Some looked shy at him with good reason; but the great Romanist champion, Bellarmine, eulogizes him as admirable, and he was one of ten whom the Council of Ephesus said they were to decide all by, and one of those sent on a kind of visitation round the churches to see there was no Arian heresy.
And now see the true character of all this.
Christianity has come finding man lost-justly lost by sin, and departed from God-has brought him salvation when he is in that state-has brought him life, eternal life. Christ is that life-a life holy in its nature, and which loves God and that which is good; he, it tells us, who receives Christ, receives this life. Such is the positive plain declaration of scripture; but that is not all. How can such poor, sinful, guilty, creatures have confidence to come to God; to walk at peace with Him, so as to come to His holy habitation hereafter, even if, quickened by Christ, they desire it? First, the Son of God has become a man, and lived amongst men to prove His love, and that He does not reject the vilest; He is the friend of publicans and sinners. God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them. Hence we see the very vilest (who could not venture near a decent person) come to Jesus-humbled surely, but received, and told to go in peace. Thus God was revealed amongst men, that sinners, such as we are, might trust Him. But to enter into His presence in heaven we must be cleansed-justified. The same blessed One gives Himself for us; has given Himself for the sins of all who come to God by Him; has borne their sins in His own body on the tree. Thereupon the Holy Ghost declares to us that they which believe are justified from all things; that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses them from all sin, and that God will remember their sins and iniquities no more. Hence we are assured of being with Christ directly when we die-absent from the body and present with the Lord-and we are called upon to give thanks to the Father, who has made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. So the poor thief, who talked of being remembered when the kingdom came, was assured that he should be that very day with Christ in paradise. And the Holy Ghost is given to those who believe as the seal of God upon them, and the earnest of their inheritance. And He is in them-a Spirit of adoption-crying Abba, Father. Death they know is a gain to them-resurrection the time of glory. They know that when He comes He will receive all that have believed in Him, and they will appear with Him in glory.
Being justified by faith they have peace with God; holiness is their delight; glory and being like Christ their sure hope. If they fail, Christ is an Advocate with the Father for them, and ever liveth to make intercession for them, and hence is able to save utterly and completely. Warnings they need; exhortations too, vigilance, prayer, and every other means, public or private, that God in grace has afforded them. If they carelessly fail, they have every ground to humble themselves in the dust, and confess their fault before God. If they do not own the warnings of the word in grace, God chastens them as a father, that they may be partakers of His holiness; but they do not doubt that they have eternal life in Christ, because God says so, nor that the blood of Christ cleanses them from all sin, nor think that God will remember their sins and iniquities any more.
Instead of that, what do I find? Christ brought in as a foundation to begin with, and a man who is built on Christ as a foundation having still to answer for everything as much as if there was no Christ; he has to pay the penalty of his sins now, or must do so hereafter, for God will have the last farthing. Sacraments there are to cleanse and justify-justified in baptism, not from his actual sins (for as yet he has committed none), but when he has, a sacrament to purify him from guilt without purifying his heart; nay, on the contrary, a sacrament which makes contrition unnecessary, and gives absolution on sorrow from a lower motive, called attrition-a horribly unholy doctrine-forgiveness quieting the conscience without purifying the heart, but the forgiven man having still to satisfy an exacting God for his sins, unless this temporal penalty too be excused by an indulgence. Then, when dying, other sacraments, no less than three, to quiet his conscience again; and then he must go to purgatory to pay and satisfy God still. And all this if a man is in grace forgiven, sanctified, and justified! It is not Christianity, whatever else it may be.
James. Well, how little one knows what Romanism is! I could never have thought it; but all these Fathers! I thought they were such holy people, all teaching as nobody else could. Why, they only make everything dark, I think: the word of God is clearer and surer too. I see that plainly now, and then one has the words of the apostles and of the blessed Lord Himself, and we are sure they are right. Oh, what a comfort for one's poor soul that is!
Mrs. J. But I do not know, sir, why one should trouble oneself with all these books and mazes of uncertain teaching when one has the word of God. They are beyond poor folks like us, and if knowing the truth depended on reading them, we should be in a bad way, while with my Bible and the words of my blessed Savior all is simple and full of grace, just suited to simple people: and then they are His own.
N-. Just so, Mrs. J.; they are His own. Oh, what a thought that is! They come with power, they come with authority, and that is what no man's words can do; and then they come in grace to the heart-God's grace.
Mrs. J. They do, sir.
N-. When God has become a man-when He can say, If thou knewest the gift of God, and Who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of Him, and He would have given-when the High and Holy One has come so low to be with sinners, the moment I believe it, I can have confidence in Him. I have much to learn; but to learn from one who loves us. If we reject His grace, we have a debt we never can pay at all: but if we have Him, we have one who- blessed be His name-has paid the last farthing for us. There is not the smallest need of your knowing the Fathers. They may be interesting, as a matter of history, to show what went on in those days for those who make research, and they are so; and in a very few indeed we see marks of piety and true grace, as in Irenaeus of the more voluminous, and others I need not name here; but it is not in the books of those times you get the highest parts of Christianity. They were almost all corrupted by heathenism and philosophical reasonings. I do not think you would find as much rubbish and false interpretation in any quantity of serious books of the same size nowadays. But men suffered then for Christ, and so did some of these very men. As to their consent in doctrines, it is all a fable. There never was more disputing and confusion about doctrine than in those days. They were holding councils on councils to try and settle it, and often the emperors managed the matter their own way-by their power, by the banishment of those whose opinions they did not like, etc. In one great council they had, the prelates of one party beat the old Archbishop of Constantinople so that he died of it. And some of the other councils were not a great deal better, though not so violent.
Bill M. But I do not want you to read the Fathers, but to hear the church. I cannot answer as to all these Fathers, because I have not read their books: the priest would answer all, I am sure.
James. But you used to talk about the holy Fathers to me, Bill, and how they all agreed from the beginning in one doctrine and one church, and all that.
Bill M. And so they did, I am sure.
N-. You cannot, M., speak of the Fathers, nor do I blame you for that, unless it is speaking of them without examining; but Dr. Milner has read them, and though I own scripture alone for an authority, we agreed to take his book as you had given it, and we were bound, as he had quoted them, to examine what he said. Nor can I acquit Dr. Milner of dishonesty on this subject. As to the scripture (I Pet. 3: 19) there is no preaching in purgatory we well know: Abraham's bosom, Augustine even assures us, cannot mean purgatory. As to
Corinthians 3, not only Augustine says it is most difficult, but Bellarmine declares it cannot apply to purgatory, for there all are to go into the fire. But as to the Fathers it is worse, because he knows that prayers for the dead cannot be reconciled with the Romish purgatory, for all were prayed for, even the Virgin Mary. This he must have known; so that to quote the Fathers, who speak of it as proving purgatory, is utterly dishonest, and to say " an intermediate state which we call purgatory "-he knew very well it was not what they call purgatory. His statement as to the Greek church is equally false: it holds neither purgatory nor indulgences. They do hold prayers for the dead, as in the earlier centuries, but reject wholly purgatory. Neither was " from the beginning," and we must have that, or what is false. We have examined these Fathers on the subject of purgatory pretty much at length, and we may leave it. You, I know, would like to take up the question of the church, which you think settles everything.
Bill M. Yes, it is no good arguing; we must get some authority to decide. And the church, the Lord declares, is that authority, and tells us to hear it. What can you say against the Lord's own words?
N-. Well, M., we will take your own subject up next. It is fair you should have your turn; but for the present I think we have had enough. The Lord willing, we will take that up when we meet again; only remember, as far as we have gone, we have had all your friend, Dr. Milner, has to say for your doctrine. It is not taking a person who cannot be expected to know much of the Fathers, and seeking to confound him. I can add, that I have looked into a more famous man still of your party, and that is Bellarmine; but it is the same in substance, and I do not see that he adds anything material. He says St. Chrysostom is quite wrong in his view of 1 Cor. 3, for on this interpretation all would be saved. I do not know how he manages about the consent of the Fathers. I suppose he was not thinking of it just then, yet this is their pet text on the subject. Bellarmine prefers Gregory, which I have given you. For my own part, what I see is this-the real source of purgatory is heathenism and Judaism, which were associated at Alexandria, where the first great doctors of the church lived. At first it took the shape of purifying all completely in eternal fire. Still this was not generally accepted. It then took the form of prayers for all, because they had not fully the sense of Christ's having so atoned for believers' sins, that they were white as snow for God. They apportioned, therefore, to all some punishment-at the least the punishment of loss, not seeing God; or at any rate were uncertain, and prayed for all, even for the Virgin Mary, with a view to their speedily seeing the face of God; but the idea of the purging process survived through, and in Augustine's time was a question as to which he doubted-Jerome speaking with such uncertainty that he is accused of denying eternal punishment. This was in the fifth century: in the end of the sixth Gregory specifies the purifying very light sins, but doubts still. With schoolmen it was like other things formed into an elaborate system; but all this last part was only in Western Christendom. Greek or Eastern Christendom has never received the doctrine.
I conclude: scripture is positively and clearly against it, as destructive of Christ's work. The Fathers are one mass of confusion as to it, its true source being heathenism and Judaism; and the oldest half of Christendom rejects it to this day. Yet it is practically the great doctrine of Romanism in connection with the Mass. It is to get people out of it that Masses are constantly said. The poverty of the system is shown, and the character it gives to God, in that it proceeds on the ground of God's exacting the last farthing (an interpretation denied by Augustine and Jerome), and that after the use of all the means the Roman system has at its disposal-absolution, the viaticum, and extreme unction, which wipes off the remains of sin-so utterly unprofitable are they (by their own confession) that the faithful have to go to purgatory to get these remains burned out by the relentless and exacting hand of God.
Oh, what a difference from that holy grace of God that saves, cleanses, and gives life!