It is unquestionably true that, in lands which have been civilized by Christianity, there is an immense religious movement going on. The surface of Christendom is in a ferment.
Rome is at this moment, amidst the threatened loss of all political power, making fresh efforts upon the credulity of man, and drawing victim after victim into her net, and this with a boldness and barefacedness which, if possible, would deceive the very elect. Her language is, “I sit a queen and am no widow.” One may have heard it said, That going over to Rome is going from nothing to nothing. This may be true in a very modified sense, for if Christ was not in the heart before, He will not be found in this new place; but we dare not treat her as nothing, but rather as an active devilish system, comprehended within that which is prophesied of in the New Testament as the “mother of harlots and abominations of the earth,” which God will judge. (Rev. 17)
Our object, however, is not to write against popery except incidentally, but to make the inquiry, How is it that so many Protestants, especially English ones, are drawn over to her?
It may be assumed that in order to convince reasonable and religious men, Rome must have, or pretend to possess, some truths which Protestants have lost, and which they get by joining her communion. Bossuet rendered her valuable assistance when, in the seventeenth century, he wrote his work “Upon the Variations of Protestants,” as opposed to the unity and order of Rome; and may we not say, in thus beginning our subject, that Protestants from the first have given too little attention to the truth of the unity of the church, in their horror at the false pretenses raised by their antagonist?
There is no weapon which Satan is more skillful in the use of than a neglected scripture truth. Some may remember the havoc which the Mormons made by applying “the stick of Joseph” (Ezek. 37:16, 17, 19) to Joseph Smith, the head of the Mormons in America, where was to be found the New Jerusalem, the city of the saints. Thousands of illiterate but not irreligious people fell under the delusion. This never could have been the case had the truth of the Lord's coming been taught them, and the proper application made of the return of the ten as well as of the two tribes to the land of Israel under the hand and headship of the Lord Jesus. The same kind of deception may reach us. If we do not understand the character of the church as found in the word of God, and do not, in our measure, seek to walk in the truth of it, we are in danger of being taken up by what is false.
I would preface the observations which follow by observing that it is not a question of the condition of a man's individual soul, although this be the first of all questions, nor of the godly walk of a company of believers in any denomination, instructed, peradventure, by a godly teacher. Scores of clergymen have been instructing such companies, according to their light, and yet have found themselves by a strange moral compulsion obliged to depart for Rome. Surely our readers will exclaim, They had much better have remained where they were! We reply, undoubtedly; but when in the midst of their ministrations the subject of “the church” comes up, its unity, its order, its head, &c., and they find that in the system which they have been accustomed to venerate as the church, there exists no certainty of truth, still less unity of opinion—when, too, they find courts of appeal of to-day reversed by courts of appeal to-morrow, and that their spiritual heads, the bishops, may be divided in their opinions, resolving themselves indifferently with the High Church, or Low Church, or Broad Church—when we say this comes to pass, as it has so often done lately, what is left but to return to that focus of unity, Rome, from whence they had as a church once departed!
Viewed from another point we may see in all this a direct work of Satan upon often unconscious agents to bring about that grand climax of evil which as a “mystery” has been working since the days of Paul. The doctrine of the unity of the church under the headship of Peter and his successors is the dogma with which Rome successfully maintains her ground against the whole array of Protestantism. This could never have occurred in the sixteenth century. Men's minds were then filled with hatred of the inquisition, with holy zeal against the system of indulgences, and with earnestness about soul salvation. Now we are a money-getting, pleasure-loving, and, as to the things of God, a cowardly race, expediency being the order of the day; and Rome seizes the moment to make good her claim as the mother and mistress of churches.
Inasmuch as there have been from the first century Christians at Rome, and that Europe did at one time universally follow her ritual and allow her supremacy, we must concede to her, as far as antiquity is concerned, a claim superior to all others to be called the church.
It would be easy to disprove a host of errors held and imposed by her. Considered simply from the point of view now to be looked at, we might instance the adoption of Peter instead of Paul for the chief apostle as a very prominent one (although one little noticed hitherto either by historians or controversialists), because it shows that, whenever this happened, there must already have been a confusion in men's minds between the church and the kingdom. (Matt. 16:16-19.) For Peter, whilst he had the keys of the kingdom, never once uses the title “Son of God” in his epistles; which title is used alone by Paul and John, being the title on which the church is built: “Upon this rock I will build my church.” Another has well observed, “People do not build with keys.” You open with keys, and so Peter opened the doors of the kingdom of heaven to Cornelius; but it was Paul who brought out in his writings, and exemplified in his ways, the precious truth of the church, the body of Christ on earth, with a glorified Head.
Popery is nothing else that corrupt Christianity; but I am doubtful in these days if, in exposing her errors singly, I should gain over many converts. Such errors have over and over been dealt with by abler pens, and yet Popery goes on increasing. Why is this? Simply because by the attack upon and refutation of isolated points in her system, we do not meet the real difficulty in the mind of her votaries. With them the thought of the church is indigenous. The reply to these attacks is something like the following: God has but one church, founded upon Peter, and against which He has said, “The gates of hell shall not prevail.” Let me find out this people and get amongst them. Their supposed false doctrines do not trouble me; and where else do I find the overwhelming concurrence and evidence of all antiquity but in Rome? As to all Protestants, their divergence of interests and clashing of opinions go right against them. But suppose I were to succeed in convincing a Romanist of the untenableness of the doctrines of Popery, one by one, what might be his reply? Either that the church, as having the presence of God, cannot err, or else that if it does, reform can go on within it, but not in an outside place, to which place no promise is attached. I must avow that I consider it difficult to answer a Romanist upon church ground (though it is easy, comparatively speaking, to overthrow him on the question of personal salvation, if one's own self, by infinite mercy, possesses it), unless, first, one understands what scripture has revealed about the church. That is, does it give any countenance to a unity of believers, so as to allow the pretensions of Rome, caricature though they be of the truth? 2ndly, In allowing Rome to be the center, so to speak, of Christianity, is an apostacy predicted? 3dly, Does scripture, supposing a proved departure, indicate any path for a believer who feels himself to be in this ruin?
In considering the scriptural church, one may view it as endowed of God or as seen by men. In the former sense, as it appears in the writings of the Apostle Paul, it is a body on earth (Eph. 4:12) connected with a heavenly and ascended Head (Eph. 4:15, 16), indwelt by the Holy Spirit (John 14:17 Cor. 6:16; 2 Cor. 6:16), who is its power of unity (Eph. 4:3, 4). It has, in the mind of God, the same symmetry and identification of purpose as the human body has to its head. Indeed Christ above, the Head, is not in this view apart from Christ the body. (1 Cor. 12:12.) It was formed on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2) by the descent of the Holy Ghost, who has never left it. (John 14:16.) All its endowments are in the way of permanent spiritual gifts. (Eph. 4:11-14; 1 Cor. 12-14.) It is highly important to recognize the positive administration of the Holy Ghost in her. As Eliezer, the servant, in bringing home Rebecca to Isaac (Gen. 24), had all his master's goods under his hand, and distributed the precious things as he would within Rebecca's household, so the Holy Ghost, on the behalf of Christ, is the absolute distributor of everything in the way of gifts, as well as the power of using them. In nothing is the true discerned from the false more than in this. In Col. 2:19 the Head is that “from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God.” In few words, the church is the body of Christ united to a heavenly Head, formed and filled by the Holy Spirit.
As seen by men, we notice that in 1 Cor. 1 believers are besought all to “speak the same thing,” to have “no divisions among them; but to be perfectly joined together in the same mind, and in the same judgment.”
Again, there never was more than one church in one city. Thus a letter is addressed, “To the church of God which is at Corinth.” Again, so completely does the idea prevail of saints in each city being one, that when Paul left Titus in Crete, it was that he might ordain elders in every city (observe, not in every church); yet when Paul, in Acts 20, sends from Miletus to Ephesus, he calls “the elders of the church;” that is, the elders of the church were the elders in the city, or vice versa, the elders in the city were the elders of the church. There was but one in every city. The elders were to take heed to themselves, “and to all the flock” (ver. 28). They were to “feed the church of God.”
Again, in Eph. 4 we are told to endeavor “to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Seven unities are mentioned. A divided body, which receives its life and strength from one head, is absurd. These passages sufficiently show that scripture does set forth a unity flowing from one Head, the power and administration being by the Spirit, whether doctrinally or practically.
Now, certainly, Protestants, although correct upon foundation truths, ever indeed the most important, and never for a moment to be lost sight of, which carry a soul to heaven and enlighten its path on earth, have never reflected the truth of one body, the witness being the number of sects in every city, each one with a clashing interest. The Reformers do not appear to have made any attempt to penetrate into God's thoughts about things corporate. They attacked with a zealous care all the horrible superstitions of the papacy; and, not content with denying the false, asserted the true, as far as pardon of sins went, and were the instruments of saving thousands of souls, for men were then honest and real; but they seem not to have understood the place which the Holy Ghost occupied, and to have supposed that the safety of the soul was the only thought of God. It was just this lack that popery has taken advantage of.
(To be continued)