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Protestantism and Government
Brownson's Quarterly Review, April, 1852
Art. VI. A Course of Five Lectures, delivered in St. Louis, on Protestantism and Government. By Hon. Hugh A. Garland, Author of "John Randolph of Roanoke." Phonographically reported by E. F. Underhill. St. Louis. 1852. 8vo. pp. 28.
During the last winter, the editor of this journal, at the invitation of the Catholic Institute of St. Louis, gave in that city a course of five lectures on Catholicity and Civilization, in which he endeavored to maintain that all true civilization is of Catholic origin, and that all nations in the ancient world became barbarous in proportion as they departed from the patriarchal religion, and that all modern nations tend to barbarism in proportion as they recede from the Catholic Church. He did not maintain this thesis precisely as an argument for the Church, for he contended that the Church is spiritual, instituted not for the civilization of nations, but for the glory of God in the salvation of souls; he maintained it because it is historically true, and because it is a conclusive argument against the carnal Judaism into which the world has lapsed, and which proposes simply material civilization and temporal well-being as its sole end. His lectures were nothing but a running commentary on the sacred text, "Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you."
The conclusions of the lecturer were neither flattering nor acceptable to the carnal Jews and gentiles who listened to them. If his conclusions were sound, and nobody pretended that they did not follow irresistibly from his premises, and if what he alleged to be facts were really facts, the
boasted progress and intelligence of the modern uncatholic world could be regarded only as false intelligence, worse than no intelligence at all, and a progress towards barbarism, if not arrested, destined to end in savagism. The secular and sectarian press, with one or two honorable exceptions, kept up during the delivery of the lectures a continual fire against the lecturer and his assertions, and even sought to crush him beneath the weight of his own shameful writings prior to his conversion, and which he had long since retracted. But this was not enough. The lectures were listened to by large numbers of the most respectable and influential classes of the city, with deep interest, almost with enthusiasm. Nowhere had the lecturer ever found a more intelligent audience, or been listened to with more manifest respect and sympathy. Something was necessary to be done to counteract the influence of his decidedly anti-Jewish and anti-gentile lectures. So, at their close, a number of anti-Catholic citizens of St. Louis invited the Hon. Hugh A. Garland, a Virginian, and formerly clerk of the House of Representatives of the Congress of the United States, to deliver a course of lectures in reply to them, and to tell the people what they were to believe as to the compatibility of Protestantism with civilization and good government. Mr. Garland accepted the invitation so far as to consent to give a course of lectures on the same subject, or at least some branches of it, and the pamphlet before us consists of a phonographical report of his course.
The author does not profess to reply to the course by the editor of this journal, but professes to go over the same ground, and, save in the correspondence between him and the gentlemen who invited him to lecture, he makes but a single allusion to him, and that, save as to its too complimentary character, one to which we can take no exception. We might, therefore, very well regard ourselves as under no special obligation to notice the pamphlet; but as the correspondence which occasioned it is published at its head, and as it was no doubt intended to be a vindication of Protestantism against the Catholic lecturer, without the responsibility of a direct answer to his arguments, and as our silence might be misconstrued by the enemies of our faith, we have concluded not to let it pass without making it the subject of a few brief comments.
With the author personally our relations have long been friendly and affectionate, and we remember with great pleasure the intercourse we enjoyed with him, in the bosom of his own family and elsewhere, during our late visit to St. Louis, the great city of the West. We confess we were not prepared for such a course of lectures as he appears to have given, from a gentleman of his character and intelligence. Surrounded as he is by Catholics, in daily and hourly intercourse with them, and to some extent familiar with Catholic doctrines and treatises, we did not expect from him arguments against us which would hardly have been creditable to a Howling or a Sparry. We speak of the arguments as to their substance, not of the language in which they are clothed, which for the most part is that of a gentleman, and unexceptionable.
The precise purpose of the author in his lectures he nowhere distinctly states, and we are at a loss to determine what general thesis he means to maintain or to refute. His lectures as a course appear to lack unity of design and distinctness of aim. The author has read a good deal on various subjects, has thought intensely, and has made many just observations ; but he does not seem to have digested his materials, or to have worked out his thoughts, and reduced them to a system. He does not appear to have determined his principles and doctrines, and become able to state them clearly and distinctly, so as to bring his reading and observation to bear directly on their illustration and defence. His lectures are to us, though eloquent and high-wrought in passages, confused, indeed chaotic, and successfully defy our powers of analysis. We cannot reduce them to unity, and test their soundness or unsoundness by testing them in their principle. In a word, the author is far more of a Protestant than we had taken him to be, and, like all Protestants, argues and draws conclusions in general without any major premise, or, when he has a major premise, without any middle term. The only way of thoroughly reviewing such an author is to take him up sentence by sentence, and examine each sentence by itself. This is not precisely the author's fault; no Protestant can write otherwise, without writing himself out of his Protestantism. Protestantism is essentially illogical and unintellectual, repugnant to the fundamental laws of reason, and the Protestant who should undertake in his writings against Catholics to conform to those laws, would at every step refute himself. We have neither the space nor the time to take up these lectures at length, and point out all that we judge unsound in them, and the author must expect from us only a few brief remarks on such statements of his as appear to us the most deserving of animadversion.
The author very properly, in his first lecture, denies and refutes the doctrine, popular in our times at least, that man began in the savage state; and consequently he denies and refutes, whether he intends to do so or not, the whole modern doctrine of the progress of the species, or the perfectibility of human nature. He also asserts a spiritual order, and maintains that it is above the temporal, or in other words, he maintains the supremacy of the spiritual order. Thus far he has done well, and done much. His admission that man began in perfection, that is, in perfection as a man, not in imperfection, and his assertion of the supremacy of the spiritual order, contain in themselves the refutation of all his Protestantism, and substantially all that he alleges against the Church. But though he recognizes a spiritual order, he does not recognize, properly speaking, the supernatural order, or at least, that God has not only given us a religion supernaturally, but also a supernatural religion. Besides the faculties of understanding, and the passions, and the appetites which belong to nature or this outward material order, man is endowed with reason, conscience, and high moral faculties, which teach him truth, what is right and what is wrong, the great guides given him by his Creator to accomplish the ends of his creation here. These faculties are the highest qualities that man possesses, and that distinguish him from the material world around him. These moral faculties, properly educated and properly instructed with the truths which God, his creator, has revealed to him by means of these faculties, can keep in subjection the animal appetites, and guide man to reason and justice. The spiritual quality, being supreme, should govern and control the whole man." We will not press the language here employed as far as it would bear, because even the best reporters are seldom to be relied on for strict verbal accuracy; but it is clear from it, that the spiritual recognized by the lecturer is the higher faculties of the soul, which are evidently in the order of nature, since they pertain to the nature of the human soul, and that these higher faculties, without supernatural revelation and without the grace which enlightens, elevates, and sanctifies, are adequate to teach us the truth, and to enable us to attain our destiny; for the only revelation assumed to be necessary, or to have been made, is the revelation which God makes to us by the means, that is, through the medium, of these faculties, which, as they are natural, must be natural as to its medium, and therefore as to its substance, for no natural faculty can attain to truth that lies in the supernatural order.
The author, whatever he may believe himself, is therefore in his principles really a nationalist or a Transcendentalist. Here is his fundamental error, and the source of all his other errors. Revelation with him means only the man arriving through his higher faculties at a higher order of truth than is perceptible by his senses; that is, God has made man capable of attaining to supersensible truth, and as man does attain to it by means of a higher order of faculties than those of the senses, God is said to reveal it, simply because it is not revealed or presented to our apprehension by the external world, to which the author improperly restricts the word nature. But this is no proper revelation at all, and gives apprehension of nothing that transcends the natural order. Hence religion according to the author is natural, and is only the educator or the education of our higher faculties. It develops the moral faculties, draws out what is in them, and directs them to their proper objects; but it neither gives to them, or presupposes in them, as supernaturally communicated to or infused into them, any thing above nature, fitting them to perform what surpasses the natural light and strength of man. "Religion," he says, "taken in its broad and comprehensive sense, as teaching' man to live, and bringing forward and making predominant in all his acts that moral and spiritual faculty which belongs to him, is the most essential and important principle in the training and education of society." Religion in its broad and comprehensive sense must comprehend all that is essential to religion. But as the author here defines the term, it is only the cultivation of human nature, and implies no grace, nothing that lifts nature above itself. This is evident from what he immediately adds in the same paragraph-: "How is this to be done? has been the great problem of history from the beginning down to the present day, has been the difficult question that has never yet been solved, and of which it has fallen upon us, in our country, to attempt a solution. I trust that during the present course I shall be able to show that there has been a revelation to man of all those great truths, and that they must be taught to the individual and the community, must be enforced and impressed on them, so as to bring out and make predominant in all man's acts those moral faculties the nature of which has been revealed to man by his Creator"; that is, a revelation by means of these faculties themselves. The end of religion is, therefore, not to raise man above his nature and enable him to attain to a supernatural destiny, but to develop and render predominant in himself and society the higher faculties or quality of his nature. This clearly brings religion within the natural order, and entirely neglects at least the supernatural.
But there is another point involved in this extract, not without difficulty. The author contends and proves that man began in the perfection of his nature, a fully developed and perfect man. Of course in the beginning the higher nature predominated, the spiritual ruled the carnal. He tells us also that the moral faculties, educated and instructed by the truths which God reveals to us through them, are adequate to teach us truth, what is right and what is wrong, to enable us to keep our animal appetites in subjection, and to guide us to reason and justice. But in this extract, how the moral and spiritual faculty which belongs to man is to be made predominant in all his acts, individually and socially, he alleges, has remained unsolved from the beginning down to the present time, and the task of solving it has fallen upon us at this late day in this country. So up to the present, all the revelations of God and all our moral faculties have only enabled us to know that the spiritual faculty ought to predominate in all our acts, whether as individuals or society, without teaching us in any respect how or by what means it can be made thus to predominate! Man began with that predominance, has always been able through his faculties to know what it is, and to effect it, and nevertheless, how it is to be done has never yet been ascertained, and remains for us in this country to find out!
Art. VI. A Course of Five Lectures, delivered in St. Louis, on Protestantism and Government. By Hon. Hugh A. Garland, Author of "John Randolph of Roanoke." Phonographically reported by E. F. Underhill. St. Louis. 1852. 8vo. pp. 28.
During the last winter, the editor of this journal, at the invitation of the Catholic Institute of St. Louis, gave in that city a course of five lectures on Catholicity and Civilization, in which he endeavored to maintain that all true civilization is of Catholic origin, and that all nations in the ancient world became barbarous in proportion as they departed from the patriarchal religion, and that all modern nations tend to barbarism in proportion as they recede from the Catholic Church. He did not maintain this thesis precisely as an argument for the Church, for he contended that the Church is spiritual, instituted not for the civilization of nations, but for the glory of God in the salvation of souls; he maintained it because it is historically true, and because it is a conclusive argument against the carnal Judaism into which the world has lapsed, and which proposes simply material civilization and temporal well-being as its sole end. His lectures were nothing but a running commentary on the sacred text, "Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you."
The conclusions of the lecturer were neither flattering nor acceptable to the carnal Jews and gentiles who listened to them. If his conclusions were sound, and nobody pretended that they did not follow irresistibly from his premises, and if what he alleged to be facts were really facts, the
boasted progress and intelligence of the modern uncatholic world could be regarded only as false intelligence, worse than no intelligence at all, and a progress towards barbarism, if not arrested, destined to end in savagism. The secular and sectarian press, with one or two honorable exceptions, kept up during the delivery of the lectures a continual fire against the lecturer and his assertions, and even sought to crush him beneath the weight of his own shameful writings prior to his conversion, and which he had long since retracted. But this was not enough. The lectures were listened to by large numbers of the most respectable and influential classes of the city, with deep interest, almost with enthusiasm. Nowhere had the lecturer ever found a more intelligent audience, or been listened to with more manifest respect and sympathy. Something was necessary to be done to counteract the influence of his decidedly anti-Jewish and anti-gentile lectures. So, at their close, a number of anti-Catholic citizens of St. Louis invited the Hon. Hugh A. Garland, a Virginian, and formerly clerk of the House of Representatives of the Congress of the United States, to deliver a course of lectures in reply to them, and to tell the people what they were to believe as to the compatibility of Protestantism with civilization and good government. Mr. Garland accepted the invitation so far as to consent to give a course of lectures on the same subject, or at least some branches of it, and the pamphlet before us consists of a phonographical report of his course.
The author does not profess to reply to the course by the editor of this journal, but professes to go over the same ground, and, save in the correspondence between him and the gentlemen who invited him to lecture, he makes but a single allusion to him, and that, save as to its too complimentary character, one to which we can take no exception. We might, therefore, very well regard ourselves as under no special obligation to notice the pamphlet; but as the correspondence which occasioned it is published at its head, and as it was no doubt intended to be a vindication of Protestantism against the Catholic lecturer, without the responsibility of a direct answer to his arguments, and as our silence might be misconstrued by the enemies of our faith, we have concluded not to let it pass without making it the subject of a few brief comments.
With the author personally our relations have long been friendly and affectionate, and we remember with great pleasure the intercourse we enjoyed with him, in the bosom of his own family and elsewhere, during our late visit to St. Louis, the great city of the West. We confess we were not prepared for such a course of lectures as he appears to have given, from a gentleman of his character and intelligence. Surrounded as he is by Catholics, in daily and hourly intercourse with them, and to some extent familiar with Catholic doctrines and treatises, we did not expect from him arguments against us which would hardly have been creditable to a Howling or a Sparry. We speak of the arguments as to their substance, not of the language in which they are clothed, which for the most part is that of a gentleman, and unexceptionable.
The precise purpose of the author in his lectures he nowhere distinctly states, and we are at a loss to determine what general thesis he means to maintain or to refute. His lectures as a course appear to lack unity of design and distinctness of aim. The author has read a good deal on various subjects, has thought intensely, and has made many just observations ; but he does not seem to have digested his materials, or to have worked out his thoughts, and reduced them to a system. He does not appear to have determined his principles and doctrines, and become able to state them clearly and distinctly, so as to bring his reading and observation to bear directly on their illustration and defence. His lectures are to us, though eloquent and high-wrought in passages, confused, indeed chaotic, and successfully defy our powers of analysis. We cannot reduce them to unity, and test their soundness or unsoundness by testing them in their principle. In a word, the author is far more of a Protestant than we had taken him to be, and, like all Protestants, argues and draws conclusions in general without any major premise, or, when he has a major premise, without any middle term. The only way of thoroughly reviewing such an author is to take him up sentence by sentence, and examine each sentence by itself. This is not precisely the author's fault; no Protestant can write otherwise, without writing himself out of his Protestantism. Protestantism is essentially illogical and unintellectual, repugnant to the fundamental laws of reason, and the Protestant who should undertake in his writings against Catholics to conform to those laws, would at every step refute himself. We have neither the space nor the time to take up these lectures at length, and point out all that we judge unsound in them, and the author must expect from us only a few brief remarks on such statements of his as appear to us the most deserving of animadversion.
The author very properly, in his first lecture, denies and refutes the doctrine, popular in our times at least, that man began in the savage state; and consequently he denies and refutes, whether he intends to do so or not, the whole modern doctrine of the progress of the species, or the perfectibility of human nature. He also asserts a spiritual order, and maintains that it is above the temporal, or in other words, he maintains the supremacy of the spiritual order. Thus far he has done well, and done much. His admission that man began in perfection, that is, in perfection as a man, not in imperfection, and his assertion of the supremacy of the spiritual order, contain in themselves the refutation of all his Protestantism, and substantially all that he alleges against the Church. But though he recognizes a spiritual order, he does not recognize, properly speaking, the supernatural order, or at least, that God has not only given us a religion supernaturally, but also a supernatural religion. Besides the faculties of understanding, and the passions, and the appetites which belong to nature or this outward material order, man is endowed with reason, conscience, and high moral faculties, which teach him truth, what is right and what is wrong, the great guides given him by his Creator to accomplish the ends of his creation here. These faculties are the highest qualities that man possesses, and that distinguish him from the material world around him. These moral faculties, properly educated and properly instructed with the truths which God, his creator, has revealed to him by means of these faculties, can keep in subjection the animal appetites, and guide man to reason and justice. The spiritual quality, being supreme, should govern and control the whole man." We will not press the language here employed as far as it would bear, because even the best reporters are seldom to be relied on for strict verbal accuracy; but it is clear from it, that the spiritual recognized by the lecturer is the higher faculties of the soul, which are evidently in the order of nature, since they pertain to the nature of the human soul, and that these higher faculties, without supernatural revelation and without the grace which enlightens, elevates, and sanctifies, are adequate to teach us the truth, and to enable us to attain our destiny; for the only revelation assumed to be necessary, or to have been made, is the revelation which God makes to us by the means, that is, through the medium, of these faculties, which, as they are natural, must be natural as to its medium, and therefore as to its substance, for no natural faculty can attain to truth that lies in the supernatural order.
The author, whatever he may believe himself, is therefore in his principles really a nationalist or a Transcendentalist. Here is his fundamental error, and the source of all his other errors. Revelation with him means only the man arriving through his higher faculties at a higher order of truth than is perceptible by his senses; that is, God has made man capable of attaining to supersensible truth, and as man does attain to it by means of a higher order of faculties than those of the senses, God is said to reveal it, simply because it is not revealed or presented to our apprehension by the external world, to which the author improperly restricts the word nature. But this is no proper revelation at all, and gives apprehension of nothing that transcends the natural order. Hence religion according to the author is natural, and is only the educator or the education of our higher faculties. It develops the moral faculties, draws out what is in them, and directs them to their proper objects; but it neither gives to them, or presupposes in them, as supernaturally communicated to or infused into them, any thing above nature, fitting them to perform what surpasses the natural light and strength of man. "Religion," he says, "taken in its broad and comprehensive sense, as teaching' man to live, and bringing forward and making predominant in all his acts that moral and spiritual faculty which belongs to him, is the most essential and important principle in the training and education of society." Religion in its broad and comprehensive sense must comprehend all that is essential to religion. But as the author here defines the term, it is only the cultivation of human nature, and implies no grace, nothing that lifts nature above itself. This is evident from what he immediately adds in the same paragraph-: "How is this to be done? has been the great problem of history from the beginning down to the present day, has been the difficult question that has never yet been solved, and of which it has fallen upon us, in our country, to attempt a solution. I trust that during the present course I shall be able to show that there has been a revelation to man of all those great truths, and that they must be taught to the individual and the community, must be enforced and impressed on them, so as to bring out and make predominant in all man's acts those moral faculties the nature of which has been revealed to man by his Creator"; that is, a revelation by means of these faculties themselves. The end of religion is, therefore, not to raise man above his nature and enable him to attain to a supernatural destiny, but to develop and render predominant in himself and society the higher faculties or quality of his nature. This clearly brings religion within the natural order, and entirely neglects at least the supernatural.
But there is another point involved in this extract, not without difficulty. The author contends and proves that man began in the perfection of his nature, a fully developed and perfect man. Of course in the beginning the higher nature predominated, the spiritual ruled the carnal. He tells us also that the moral faculties, educated and instructed by the truths which God reveals to us through them, are adequate to teach us truth, what is right and what is wrong, to enable us to keep our animal appetites in subjection, and to guide us to reason and justice. But in this extract, how the moral and spiritual faculty which belongs to man is to be made predominant in all his acts, individually and socially, he alleges, has remained unsolved from the beginning down to the present time, and the task of solving it has fallen upon us at this late day in this country. So up to the present, all the revelations of God and all our moral faculties have only enabled us to know that the spiritual faculty ought to predominate in all our acts, whether as individuals or society, without teaching us in any respect how or by what means it can be made thus to predominate! Man began with that predominance, has always been able through his faculties to know what it is, and to effect it, and nevertheless, how it is to be done has never yet been ascertained, and remains for us in this country to find out!
We mean no disrespect to the author, who is really a man of fine abilities, and, where not cramped or blinded by his Protestantism, a good reasoner and a pleasing rhetorician. We call his attention to this inconsistency into which he has been betrayed, for we believe he honestly means to be a Christian, and is one of the few Protestants who would sooner give up private judgment than the Gospel. No doubt man has the moral and spiritual faculties the author contends for, but we respectfully suggest to him that the cultivation of these does not place a man in the Christian order, nor advance him a single step towards the kingdom of heaven. Christianity is a new creation, above the primitive creation, and holds from God as supernatural creator, as the latter does from God as the creator of nature. It differs as to order from nature. It is the kingdom of grace, and demands of its subjects that they act from God to and for God in a sense unintelligible or superintelligible to any of our natural faculties. Man considered in his natural powers and capacities can no more grow or develop, no matter what the instruction or cultivation he receives, into a Christian, into a citizen or subject of the kingdom of grace, than an alder-shrub into an oak, or a dunghill fowl into the eagle that gazes with undazzled eye on the noonday sun. The most upright and perfectly developed man in the natural order can no more enter into the Christian order without being born again, regenerated, made a new creature, than the foulest sinner, the most revolting criminal. As to live a natural life it is necessary that the child should be born, so to live the Christian life is it necessary that he be born again, supernaturally regenerated. No acts are in the Christian order, or meritorious in relation to heaven, except those that proceed from grace as their principle, and are done for God as the end of grace in the supernatural order, either as the Supreme Good itself, or as our supreme good. This is what Christianity teaches us, and it discloses the grand mistake of all who make Christianity nothing but a means, natural or supernatural, of cultivating our spiritual faculties.
There was one great fact to which the lecturer to whom the author was requested to reply called the attention of his audience, and on which he insisted at great length; namely, that our nature has been so corrupted by the Fall, the understanding so obscured, and the will so attenuated that left to itself the inferior nature, the appetites and passions, uniformly predominates, and thus man falls in his natural life even below, so to speak, the plane of his nature. Hence, left to the light and strength of his nature alone, he not only cannot gain heaven, but cannot institute and maintain true civilization. Civilization he defined to be the supremacy of reason, or the freedom of man's higher faculties; and barbarism, to be the predominance of appetite and passion, or of man's lower nature. The former he contended could not be secured except by Catholicity, or true religion, not only as a revelation, not only as a teacher, but as a repairer, as infusing into man a supernatural power to subject the lower, and maintain the freedom and supremacy of the higher, faculties of his nature. Here was the whole doctrine of his five lectures, and all else that he said was brought forward solely to elucidate and defend it. The author, considering that he was, if not expressly, yet in some sense, replying to the Catholic lecturer, and endeavoring to set aside his conclusions, should not have passed over this in silence, or quietly, almost surreptitiously, assumed the contrary, and reasoned from it as an admitted truth. The great fact is, that men under the law of nature alone, without the aid of supernatural religion, of Catholicity, cannot in their present fallen state fulfill the law of nature, and have a perpetual tendency to run into barbarism; for barbarism is in society only the dominion of the flesh in the individual. No training, no cultivation in the order of nature alone, can save a people from barbarism, for it is only by grace that men can in their present state keep the law of nature even, and maintain the freedom and predominance of what the author calls the moral faculties. This is not speculation or theory; it is fact, proved to be such by all experience.
This being undeniable, the conclusion that all true civilization, and therefore all true liberty, are the products of Catholicity, and that all nations lapse into barbarism as they recede from it, follows inevitably, unless there be included under the name of Catholicity other than the true religion. If the alleged Catholicity be the true religion, the conclusion is certain, and the Catholic lecturer proved it a posteriori to be true of what he called Catholicity; that is, the one religion which has been transmitted to us from the beginning, through the patriarchs, the synagogue, and the Catholic Church, or Church in communion with the See of Rome. He proved, or at least attempted to prove, this historically, and the author had no right to assume the contrary, without at least some attempt to answer the arguments of the Catholic lecturer, or some attempt at independent proofs. He was not, in a quasi answer to the Catholic lecturer, at liberty to assume as a conceded truth, that religion in any other sense than that of mere education of man's natural faculties is not needed, and that man is abundantly able without supernatural grace to keep the law of nature, and institute and maintain true civilization. Till he had refuted his Catholic opponent, and established the fact that civilization is practicable without Catholicity, as the lecturer defined it, he was not free to attack the Catholic Church; for that was virtually to deny civilization itself. The Catholic proofs that civilization is impossible without Catholicity were conclusive so long as unanswered, and to attempt, without answering them, to disprove Catholicity, was not to prove that there can be civilization without Catholicity, but, if any thing, that there never has been and never can be any true civilization at all, assuredly not the thesis the author wished to defend. The author has thus signally failed. The corruption of our nature is a fact that cannot be denied, and equally undeniable is it that nature left to itself tends inevitably to barbarism, for we receive the seeds or germs of true civilization only as supernaturally deposited in our hearts. We bear the seeds or germs of barbarism in our very natures, and we have only to act out our corrupt nature to be genuine barbarians.
The author makes no account of this fact, and proceeds on the assumption of the natural origin of civilization, and of the capacity of nature, without supernatural light and strength, to sustain the most perfect civilization. Overlooking the necessity of grace to enable us to keep even the natural law, he attempts to prove historically that the Catholic Church is false, and that Protestantism and society well governed are compatible with each other. But he has failed in both respects, for his proofs rest on the misreading or the misinterpreting of history on the one hand, and the surreptitious change of the terms of his proposition on the other, as often as necessary to meet historical facts which he can neither misread nor misinterpret. He does not keep steadily to one view of civilization, and his conception of good government is very much that of no government at all, or of a government that leaves men a prey to all the barbarous elements of our nature. Man started, he concedes, with all he needed, a good government, and proper teachers and guides, but soon fell from the right way, lost his good government, lost his light and freedom, and became a degraded, ignorant, superstitious slave. Through the corruptions of human nature? O, no ! But through the cupidity and grasping ambition of the priesthood. Indeed, the author seems disposed to charge all the evils of society, and nearly all the faults of individuals, upon the priesthood, the heathen priesthoods in the world before Christ, and the Catholic priesthood since. Religion has always been perverted and man corrupted by his spiritual guides. Of antiquity, only the Jewish people were preserved in a state of true civilization, and they only by the frequent and miraculous interposition of Almighty God; that is, they were protected and prevented from falling into all the barbarism of the gentiles only by the supernatural grace of God, precisely the doctrine maintained by the Catholic lecturer. In the world before Christ the author finds himself obliged to concede, and apparently without being conscious that he does concede, the practical inadequacy of nature to sustain good government and true civilization. What becomes now of his doctrine of the sufficiency of nature, of the sufficiency of our moral faculties to tell us what is right and what is wrong, and to keep our animal appetites in subjection? If this were so, how came your ancient priesthoods so corrupt, and how could they so corrupt the people and degrade them to the lowest barbarism ?
If the author may be credited, prior to the coming of Christ true civilization was maintained only by the continued supernatural intervention of Almighty God, and all nations tended to barbarism in proportion as they receded from the patriarchal religion and polity. This is precisely the doctrine the Catholic lecturer himself asserted and defended in his lectures at St. Louis, and thus far the author, consciously or unconsciously, agrees with him.
But since the coming of Christ it has not been the same. By the Christian revelation "man found that which had been lost and forgotten, and was once more restored to himself." Nevertheless, only a short time elapsed before he, in part at least, lost himself again, and fell anew into ignorance, superstition, and slavery. His spiritual guides proved unfaithful, his faith was corrupted, and his manners and morals were debased. Whence and by what means? Whence and in the same way in which the gentiles lost the patriarchal religion and polity. Menes, king of Egypt, "brought all the priesthood into subjection to him, and associated them with him for the purpose of enslaving and degrading the people." In the same way Christianity was corrupted. Under paganism the emperor was not only supreme civil lord, but also pontifex maximus, or supreme head of the pagan church. When the emperor became converted, he "placed himself at the head of the Church, in the same position which he had previously occupied with respect to the pagan church, and was now as before pontifex maximus" This is inferred from the conduct of Constantine and Theodosius, who are alleged to have imitated Menes of Egypt, especially Theodosius, who as pontifex maximus took upon himself to decree what is orthodoxy. In this way the clergy were subjected to the prince, made civil functionaries, and employed to pervert religion, and to corrupt and enslave the people.
An ingenious theory, only it does not happen to be supported by a single fact. But suppose it to be true, what does it make in favor of the author's thesis, if thesis he has? Suppose it, it only proves that the subjection of the Church to the state, and the usurpation of ecclesiastical functions by the civil power, are fatal to religion and civilization, precisely what the Catholic lecturer at St. Louis alleged. What does this say in favor of Protestantism, or against the position assumed, that modern nations in proportion as they recede from the Catholic Church tend towards barbarism? Surely there can be no greater departure from the Church than to subject her to the civil authority, and to convert her clergy into civil functionaries. Then, again, this very absorption of the Church into the state, of which the author complains, is the characteristic of Protestantism. Protestantism was sought as the emancipation of sovereigns from subjection in spirituals even to the spiritual authority, and of giving them supreme authority in both spirituals and temporals. Every Protestant sovereign claimed to be pontifex maximus in his own dominions. Henry the Eighth of England assumed for himself all the powers that had previously been attributed to the Pope, and caused himself to be declared supreme head of the Church in his realm. The present Queen of England is the sovereign pontiff or papess of the Church of England, and all the bishops hold from the crown. The same is true of the Protestant sovereigns of the Continent, and here, where democracy prevails, the great boast of Protestantism is that it emancipates the people from all subjection to spiritual authority, and gives them the control of their pastors, and the power to determine their religion for themselves. On the author's own principles, then, Protestantism is a departure from primitive Christianity, and tends necessarily to destroy true civilization, and barbarize the nations that submit to it, by absorbing the spiritual power in the temporal. Why, when really reasoning from the principles of the Catholic lecturer, did the author put on the air of reasoning against them ?
There was one great fact to which the lecturer to whom the author was requested to reply called the attention of his audience, and on which he insisted at great length; namely, that our nature has been so corrupted by the Fall, the understanding so obscured, and the will so attenuated that left to itself the inferior nature, the appetites and passions, uniformly predominates, and thus man falls in his natural life even below, so to speak, the plane of his nature. Hence, left to the light and strength of his nature alone, he not only cannot gain heaven, but cannot institute and maintain true civilization. Civilization he defined to be the supremacy of reason, or the freedom of man's higher faculties; and barbarism, to be the predominance of appetite and passion, or of man's lower nature. The former he contended could not be secured except by Catholicity, or true religion, not only as a revelation, not only as a teacher, but as a repairer, as infusing into man a supernatural power to subject the lower, and maintain the freedom and supremacy of the higher, faculties of his nature. Here was the whole doctrine of his five lectures, and all else that he said was brought forward solely to elucidate and defend it. The author, considering that he was, if not expressly, yet in some sense, replying to the Catholic lecturer, and endeavoring to set aside his conclusions, should not have passed over this in silence, or quietly, almost surreptitiously, assumed the contrary, and reasoned from it as an admitted truth. The great fact is, that men under the law of nature alone, without the aid of supernatural religion, of Catholicity, cannot in their present fallen state fulfill the law of nature, and have a perpetual tendency to run into barbarism; for barbarism is in society only the dominion of the flesh in the individual. No training, no cultivation in the order of nature alone, can save a people from barbarism, for it is only by grace that men can in their present state keep the law of nature even, and maintain the freedom and predominance of what the author calls the moral faculties. This is not speculation or theory; it is fact, proved to be such by all experience.
This being undeniable, the conclusion that all true civilization, and therefore all true liberty, are the products of Catholicity, and that all nations lapse into barbarism as they recede from it, follows inevitably, unless there be included under the name of Catholicity other than the true religion. If the alleged Catholicity be the true religion, the conclusion is certain, and the Catholic lecturer proved it a posteriori to be true of what he called Catholicity; that is, the one religion which has been transmitted to us from the beginning, through the patriarchs, the synagogue, and the Catholic Church, or Church in communion with the See of Rome. He proved, or at least attempted to prove, this historically, and the author had no right to assume the contrary, without at least some attempt to answer the arguments of the Catholic lecturer, or some attempt at independent proofs. He was not, in a quasi answer to the Catholic lecturer, at liberty to assume as a conceded truth, that religion in any other sense than that of mere education of man's natural faculties is not needed, and that man is abundantly able without supernatural grace to keep the law of nature, and institute and maintain true civilization. Till he had refuted his Catholic opponent, and established the fact that civilization is practicable without Catholicity, as the lecturer defined it, he was not free to attack the Catholic Church; for that was virtually to deny civilization itself. The Catholic proofs that civilization is impossible without Catholicity were conclusive so long as unanswered, and to attempt, without answering them, to disprove Catholicity, was not to prove that there can be civilization without Catholicity, but, if any thing, that there never has been and never can be any true civilization at all, assuredly not the thesis the author wished to defend. The author has thus signally failed. The corruption of our nature is a fact that cannot be denied, and equally undeniable is it that nature left to itself tends inevitably to barbarism, for we receive the seeds or germs of true civilization only as supernaturally deposited in our hearts. We bear the seeds or germs of barbarism in our very natures, and we have only to act out our corrupt nature to be genuine barbarians.
The author makes no account of this fact, and proceeds on the assumption of the natural origin of civilization, and of the capacity of nature, without supernatural light and strength, to sustain the most perfect civilization. Overlooking the necessity of grace to enable us to keep even the natural law, he attempts to prove historically that the Catholic Church is false, and that Protestantism and society well governed are compatible with each other. But he has failed in both respects, for his proofs rest on the misreading or the misinterpreting of history on the one hand, and the surreptitious change of the terms of his proposition on the other, as often as necessary to meet historical facts which he can neither misread nor misinterpret. He does not keep steadily to one view of civilization, and his conception of good government is very much that of no government at all, or of a government that leaves men a prey to all the barbarous elements of our nature. Man started, he concedes, with all he needed, a good government, and proper teachers and guides, but soon fell from the right way, lost his good government, lost his light and freedom, and became a degraded, ignorant, superstitious slave. Through the corruptions of human nature? O, no ! But through the cupidity and grasping ambition of the priesthood. Indeed, the author seems disposed to charge all the evils of society, and nearly all the faults of individuals, upon the priesthood, the heathen priesthoods in the world before Christ, and the Catholic priesthood since. Religion has always been perverted and man corrupted by his spiritual guides. Of antiquity, only the Jewish people were preserved in a state of true civilization, and they only by the frequent and miraculous interposition of Almighty God; that is, they were protected and prevented from falling into all the barbarism of the gentiles only by the supernatural grace of God, precisely the doctrine maintained by the Catholic lecturer. In the world before Christ the author finds himself obliged to concede, and apparently without being conscious that he does concede, the practical inadequacy of nature to sustain good government and true civilization. What becomes now of his doctrine of the sufficiency of nature, of the sufficiency of our moral faculties to tell us what is right and what is wrong, and to keep our animal appetites in subjection? If this were so, how came your ancient priesthoods so corrupt, and how could they so corrupt the people and degrade them to the lowest barbarism ?
If the author may be credited, prior to the coming of Christ true civilization was maintained only by the continued supernatural intervention of Almighty God, and all nations tended to barbarism in proportion as they receded from the patriarchal religion and polity. This is precisely the doctrine the Catholic lecturer himself asserted and defended in his lectures at St. Louis, and thus far the author, consciously or unconsciously, agrees with him.
But since the coming of Christ it has not been the same. By the Christian revelation "man found that which had been lost and forgotten, and was once more restored to himself." Nevertheless, only a short time elapsed before he, in part at least, lost himself again, and fell anew into ignorance, superstition, and slavery. His spiritual guides proved unfaithful, his faith was corrupted, and his manners and morals were debased. Whence and by what means? Whence and in the same way in which the gentiles lost the patriarchal religion and polity. Menes, king of Egypt, "brought all the priesthood into subjection to him, and associated them with him for the purpose of enslaving and degrading the people." In the same way Christianity was corrupted. Under paganism the emperor was not only supreme civil lord, but also pontifex maximus, or supreme head of the pagan church. When the emperor became converted, he "placed himself at the head of the Church, in the same position which he had previously occupied with respect to the pagan church, and was now as before pontifex maximus" This is inferred from the conduct of Constantine and Theodosius, who are alleged to have imitated Menes of Egypt, especially Theodosius, who as pontifex maximus took upon himself to decree what is orthodoxy. In this way the clergy were subjected to the prince, made civil functionaries, and employed to pervert religion, and to corrupt and enslave the people.
An ingenious theory, only it does not happen to be supported by a single fact. But suppose it to be true, what does it make in favor of the author's thesis, if thesis he has? Suppose it, it only proves that the subjection of the Church to the state, and the usurpation of ecclesiastical functions by the civil power, are fatal to religion and civilization, precisely what the Catholic lecturer at St. Louis alleged. What does this say in favor of Protestantism, or against the position assumed, that modern nations in proportion as they recede from the Catholic Church tend towards barbarism? Surely there can be no greater departure from the Church than to subject her to the civil authority, and to convert her clergy into civil functionaries. Then, again, this very absorption of the Church into the state, of which the author complains, is the characteristic of Protestantism. Protestantism was sought as the emancipation of sovereigns from subjection in spirituals even to the spiritual authority, and of giving them supreme authority in both spirituals and temporals. Every Protestant sovereign claimed to be pontifex maximus in his own dominions. Henry the Eighth of England assumed for himself all the powers that had previously been attributed to the Pope, and caused himself to be declared supreme head of the Church in his realm. The present Queen of England is the sovereign pontiff or papess of the Church of England, and all the bishops hold from the crown. The same is true of the Protestant sovereigns of the Continent, and here, where democracy prevails, the great boast of Protestantism is that it emancipates the people from all subjection to spiritual authority, and gives them the control of their pastors, and the power to determine their religion for themselves. On the author's own principles, then, Protestantism is a departure from primitive Christianity, and tends necessarily to destroy true civilization, and barbarize the nations that submit to it, by absorbing the spiritual power in the temporal. Why, when really reasoning from the principles of the Catholic lecturer, did the author put on the air of reasoning against them ?
But the author has misread history. It is not true that Constantine or any other Christian Emperor ever claimed to be in relation to the Christian Church pontifex maximus, or supreme head of the Church. Constantine expressly disclaimed the character, and recognized in its fullest extent the independence and exclusive jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical authorities in all things spiritual. When he entered the Holy Council of Nice, he remained standing till invited to be seated by the Bishops, and even then took his seat on a low stool at their feet, acknowledging that there they were sovereign, not he. Theodosius never pretended to any ecclesiastical powers, and in the decree referred to he only promulgated as the law of the land the decisions and canons of the Church, made by the proper ecclesiastical authorities. That some usurping Emperors, both in the East and the West, sought to encroach on the liberties of the Church, and in doing so caused incalculable evil, is no doubt true; but they were resisted by the Church, and never succeeded in subjecting the spiritual authority to themselves, save in heretical or schismatic countries. The Catholic Church always asserted her independence in face of the temporal power, and she is the only church that has uniformly maintained the freedom of the spiritual order. Schismatics and heretics have always been ready to surrender spiritual liberty to the prince, on condition that he would protect them in their heresy, or their schism, against the Church. One of the reasons alleged by the Catholic lecturer why she and she alone could preserve civilization was because she and she alone asserted and was able to maintain freedom of religion, the liberty of conscience, in face of the temporal power.
But the author tells us that subsequently the popes themselves destroyed the purity and efficacy of the Christian religion, by absorbing the state, and making themselves supreme in both orders. "The second or third successor of Hildebrand completely triumphed over the emperor, and established himself as supreme head of both temporal and spiritual affairs, and was now pontifex maximus." The Pope "now placed himself on the throne of the Ceasars, and was supreme in all things, both spiritual and temporal, was emperor and pontifex maximus, as Constantine and Theodosius before him had been, and was like them the supreme object of adoration to his subjects." Unhappily for the author, this is all pure theory, or pure imagination. It is false as a whole, and in all its parts. The second successor of Hildebrand, or St. Gregory the Seventh, was Urban the Second. He proclaimed the Crusades indeed, and excommunicated Philip the First of France, for a scandalous adultery, but did not completely triumph over the emperor, or exercise supreme authority as emperor any more than his predecessors. The third successor was Pascal the Second, whom Henry the Fifth of Germany caused to be imprisoned, with many cardinals, bishops, and nobles who adhered to the Holy See, and forced to concede to the Emperor the faculty of investiture. This was no triumph over the emperor, but for the moment a triumph of the emperor over the pope. The fact is, none of the Popes, in their struggles with the emperor, ever completely triumphed; they saved the principle at stake, but were often obliged to concede to the temporal authority in practice the faculties it claimed. There is no instance on record of a Pope who was in himself both emperor and pope, as there is on record no instance of a Christian emperor who was both pope and emperor. The two powers have always been, under the Church, distinct, and, saving in the ecclesiastical states, not only distinct, but separate; and the struggle of the popes with the civil power has never been to place themselves on the throne of the Caesars, to absorb the imperial authority and dignity in the pontifical, but simply to maintain the freedom and independence of the spiritual order, and prevent that very union of the two powers which the author regards as the source of all spiritual and temporal evils. All the power the sovereign pontiff's have ever exercised, or pretended to exercise, over temporal sovereigns, is that of declaring the law according to which they are bound in the sight of God to govern; of subjecting them, as Catholics, to the discipline of the Church for their sins, crimes, and moral offences, in like manner as if they were private individuals; and, as the highest recognized court of Christendom, to judge the causes between sovereign and sovereign, and a sovereign and his subjects, submitted to them for adjudication. The pope's right to decide judicially causes thus submitted is unquestionable, though whether he holds it jure humano, or jure divino, may not be defined; and whether he has or has not the right to execute by physical force the sentence he pronounces, is a question of no practical importance, because as pope he has never the physical force for the purpose at his command, and cannot have it without the consent of secular sovereigns. He has in the secular order for enforcing his commands, or for executing his sentences, whether upon private individuals or upon public persons or authorities, practically at least, only moral means, and can have no other.
That the Pope ever was "the supreme object of adoration to his subjects" is a charge which the author should never have suffered himself to bring. The supreme object of adoration to all Catholics was always, and is, and always will be, God, and God alone, and the author disparages his own understanding rather than ours, when he supposes that any of us are incapable of distinguishing between God and the Pope. The author is wholly unwarranted in his assertion that Constantine and Theodosius were the supreme object of adoration to their subjects, especially if he means their Christian subjects. The pagan Emperors were adored by their pagan subjects, but no Christian emperor has ever received divine honors from his Christian subjects. Charges so foul, made without the shadow of authority, by men so respectable in their station and general character as our author, are in the last degree unpardonable, for such men cannot be ignorant that they are unfounded, and utterly false. In Mr. Garland's particular case, the charge, we doubt not, was made without deliberation, and from a habit acquired when he was a Transcendentalist of substituting theory for fact, and his own gloss for the text.
The author has much to say of the doctrine which he ascribes to St. Gregory the Seventh. We have no space to follow him through his commentaries; but the whole amount of what he alleges, taking it in its fullest sense, is, in principle, that the spiritual authority is supreme, and that kings are no more exempt from the power of the keys given to St. Peter than are their subjects, in their public than in their private conduct. Supposing the power of the keys, this is nothing to which the author can object, for he himself says the spiritual is supreme and ought to rule in the individual and the community; and it would be ridiculous to pretend that sovereigns are not as much bound to obey the law of God in their official as in their private conduct. If you concede to the Church the power of binding and loosing at all, that is, any power of spiritual discipline, you cannot without gross inconsistency and absurdity subtract all public persons in their public capacity from its operation. Hildebrand, even according to the most the author makes out, asserted only the principle that the spiritual is supreme and ought to rule in the individual and the community; that is, that princes and states as well as individuals are bound to conform to the law of God, and are subject to spiritual discipline when they violate it, a principle no Christian, and no well-conditioned pagan even, can have the folly to deny.
The author has conjured up a phantom, and is frightened at it. He seems to suppose that in the Catholic world the two powers, spiritual and temporal, have been identified, first by the emperor making himself pope, and secondly by the pope making himself emperor. All this is fancy. The Church, and therefore the pope, or the pope, and therefore the Church, teaches that the two powers are distinct, and she neither claims the imperial purple for herself, nor accords the tiara to the emperor. But in admitting the two as distinctly subsisting powers, she does not therefore admit them as equal in rank or authority, as two coordinate and in all respects mutually independent powers, for she asserts the supremacy of the spiritual order, and the obligation of the temporal power to rule in secular affairs in obedience to the law of God as defined by the spiritual authority instituted by Almighty God, and supernaturally assisted and protected for that purpose. Here is no identification of the two orders, no absorbing of the one by the other, but here are two distinctly subsisting powers, each with its own constitution, only the one is inferior and subordinate to the other, as the body is interior and subordinate to the soul. This is only the doctrine the author himself asserts in principle, and therelore is a doctrine to which he has no right to object, and to which none but a political atheist can object. The only thing here to be objected is, that the Catholic Church is not the divinely constituted representative of the spiritual order on earth. If she is, the author must concede St. Gregory's doctrine; if not, he is where he was when he began, and obliged to end, not with the conclusion that Protestantism and good government are compatible, but with the conclusion that how true civilization and good government are to be secured is, as he says in the outset, an unsolved problem, and reserved for the future to solve. This in fact is the author's conclusion. His church is in the future, and so is his civilized order. He takes refuge in hope, and sings,
" There is a good time coming, boys,"
but when or how he confesses himself ignorant, as must every Protestant.
That the Pope ever was "the supreme object of adoration to his subjects" is a charge which the author should never have suffered himself to bring. The supreme object of adoration to all Catholics was always, and is, and always will be, God, and God alone, and the author disparages his own understanding rather than ours, when he supposes that any of us are incapable of distinguishing between God and the Pope. The author is wholly unwarranted in his assertion that Constantine and Theodosius were the supreme object of adoration to their subjects, especially if he means their Christian subjects. The pagan Emperors were adored by their pagan subjects, but no Christian emperor has ever received divine honors from his Christian subjects. Charges so foul, made without the shadow of authority, by men so respectable in their station and general character as our author, are in the last degree unpardonable, for such men cannot be ignorant that they are unfounded, and utterly false. In Mr. Garland's particular case, the charge, we doubt not, was made without deliberation, and from a habit acquired when he was a Transcendentalist of substituting theory for fact, and his own gloss for the text.
The author has much to say of the doctrine which he ascribes to St. Gregory the Seventh. We have no space to follow him through his commentaries; but the whole amount of what he alleges, taking it in its fullest sense, is, in principle, that the spiritual authority is supreme, and that kings are no more exempt from the power of the keys given to St. Peter than are their subjects, in their public than in their private conduct. Supposing the power of the keys, this is nothing to which the author can object, for he himself says the spiritual is supreme and ought to rule in the individual and the community; and it would be ridiculous to pretend that sovereigns are not as much bound to obey the law of God in their official as in their private conduct. If you concede to the Church the power of binding and loosing at all, that is, any power of spiritual discipline, you cannot without gross inconsistency and absurdity subtract all public persons in their public capacity from its operation. Hildebrand, even according to the most the author makes out, asserted only the principle that the spiritual is supreme and ought to rule in the individual and the community; that is, that princes and states as well as individuals are bound to conform to the law of God, and are subject to spiritual discipline when they violate it, a principle no Christian, and no well-conditioned pagan even, can have the folly to deny.
The author has conjured up a phantom, and is frightened at it. He seems to suppose that in the Catholic world the two powers, spiritual and temporal, have been identified, first by the emperor making himself pope, and secondly by the pope making himself emperor. All this is fancy. The Church, and therefore the pope, or the pope, and therefore the Church, teaches that the two powers are distinct, and she neither claims the imperial purple for herself, nor accords the tiara to the emperor. But in admitting the two as distinctly subsisting powers, she does not therefore admit them as equal in rank or authority, as two coordinate and in all respects mutually independent powers, for she asserts the supremacy of the spiritual order, and the obligation of the temporal power to rule in secular affairs in obedience to the law of God as defined by the spiritual authority instituted by Almighty God, and supernaturally assisted and protected for that purpose. Here is no identification of the two orders, no absorbing of the one by the other, but here are two distinctly subsisting powers, each with its own constitution, only the one is inferior and subordinate to the other, as the body is interior and subordinate to the soul. This is only the doctrine the author himself asserts in principle, and therelore is a doctrine to which he has no right to object, and to which none but a political atheist can object. The only thing here to be objected is, that the Catholic Church is not the divinely constituted representative of the spiritual order on earth. If she is, the author must concede St. Gregory's doctrine; if not, he is where he was when he began, and obliged to end, not with the conclusion that Protestantism and good government are compatible, but with the conclusion that how true civilization and good government are to be secured is, as he says in the outset, an unsolved problem, and reserved for the future to solve. This in fact is the author's conclusion. His church is in the future, and so is his civilized order. He takes refuge in hope, and sings,
" There is a good time coming, boys,"
but when or how he confesses himself ignorant, as must every Protestant.