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, and 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, accepts for the mass of its votaries full association with the world. It holds sin over the conscience as 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 (in its true sense, whatever its shortcomings may have been) and Protestantism elevate. I shall refer to this last elsewhere. 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 thus signifying that the way into the holiest was not yet made manifest.” When the Lord Jesus died, the 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;” suffered once, 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.
Thus our being brought nigh by the blood of Jesus characterizes Christianity in its nature. The holiness of God's own presence is brought to bear on the soul. “If we walk,” it is said, “in the light, as he is in the light” —yet not as in 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 bodies—the epistle (as it is said) of Christ. I am not discussing how far each individual 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 privilege on which I insist.
Romanism has, wherever it exercises its influence, 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, they have a priesthood between them and God, 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, who go for us, we being 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 unworthiness, 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. Take 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, they 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 mediator ship. 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 is 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 are 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; but Romanism, while admitting the mediator ship of Christ as a dogma, has denied the one true mediator ship in practice by a multiplicity of mediators. It is the heathenizing of Christianity, that is, of the blessed truth of a redeeming Mediator.