"Christianity and the Church Identical," Brownson's Quarterly Review for 1857

*A repsonse to O.A. Brownson.  Universalist Quarterly and General Review.  Boston: Thomkins. April, 1857. Brownson answers the objection posed by his Protestant counterpart who maintains that individual conscience is a sufficient guide in matters of faith and morals.  

 

Our Universalist friend, in his issue for April, offers a rejoinder to the Reply in this Review for January last to his criticisms on our Article on The Church and the Republic, published the previous July.  We have nothing to object to the tone or temper of what he calls his Response.  It is respectful, in better taste even than his first article, and, we doubt not, intended to be perfectly fair and candid, although it is less full and less vigorous than we were prepared to meet.

The author thinks we made too much of his concessions, but we can assure him that we understood them precisely as he does himself.

“Before attempting to comply with Mr. Brownson’s invitation to respond to his last article, we must ask him not to make too much concession we have made relative to the logical advantage which the Catholic has over the Calvinist.  We write from the standpoint of a Universalist interpretation of Christianity; and we say, what we presume most of our Universalist brethren are also ready to say, that Calvinism concedes the premises out of which the necessity of an infallible interpreter is educed.  But such a statement, coming from a Universalist, is no concession.  We have not said, nor do we think, that Universalism gives the Catholic any such ground of deduction.  We have only said, that Calvinism does this; but as the Calvinist will not permit us to speak for him, our statement cannot be viewed in the light of the concession.” – p. 156

We cited his concessions not as indications of his Catholic tendencies, nor as the concessions of one who would be recognized as authority by Calvinists, but as the concessions of an intelligent Protestant, who has as good a right to the name of Protestant as any one of those who pretend to believe more than he does, that there is no middle ground between Catholicity and Rationalism; and as a testimony confirmatory of what we so often assert, that intelligent Protestants very generally regard so-called Orthodox Protestantism as an exploded humbug, and are very well satisfied that if Christianity is any thing more than a republication of the law of nature, if it be in fact a supernatural and authoritative religion, it is identically the Roman Catholic religion.

In our Article on The Church and the Republic, we maintained that religion is necessary as a mediating power between the individual and the state, to save us, on the one hand, from anarchy, and the other, from despotism; and we further maintained, that to answer this purpose it must be religion organized as an organism, indeed, as the Church, because otherwise it is not a power, but simply an idea.  The Reviewer accused us of taking the vital point, the only point in the argument which Protestants want proved for granted, and leaving it without even a show of proof.  We replied, and showed, as we thought, that the charge was unfounded.  Our reply, it seems, has not satisfied him, and he reiterates and insists on his objection in his response. He says:-

“It is possible that our author, in the words here quoted from him, shows that he did not assume, that he really attempted to prove what we have termed the vital point in his argument.  Possibly there is something in his words that we do not see.  Candor, however, compels us to say, that we see in the extract nothing but an assumption of that ‘vital point!’ What does he give as argument, that religion to be authoritative in society, must be organized, must be an organism?  Why must religion be an organization, a church?  The answer is, ‘because religion without the church, without an organization, is not a power, is only an idea, a simple opinion, and therefore nothing but individualism.’  Now it may seem an act of presumption to call in question Mr. Brownson’s logic- the province, of all other, wherein he is deemed a master.  But truly, the words which we have just quoted from him, look very much like what Whately calls a petitio principii;  in common words, a begging of the question.  The real question is, can religion be a power without being an organization, a church?  The conclusion for Mr. Brownson to establish is, that religion is not a power, except as it is an organism.   And one of the premises by which he seeks to establish this conclusion is the affirmation that religion without a church is not a power!  This conclusion, so far from being educed from his premise, seems to us simply a re-statement of the very premise!  He affirms that religion to be a power, must be an organism.  We ask for proof.  He replies: religion unorganized is not a power.  We leave it with our intelligent readers to decide, whether there is any difference that we can see, is that the one is stated in the affirmative form, and the other in the negative form.

“If, however, Mr. Brownson can show that the two propositions which we have deemed equivalents, have nevertheless a logical distinction of premise and conclusion,- and very likely he can show this,- we must still complete our complaint, that he has assumed the turning point in the argument.  If he can show that he has not done this in his conclusion, he will certainly admit that he has done so in his premise.  Whether his proposition, that ‘religion without the church, without an organization, is not a power,’ be a restatement, in different form, of the point which needs proof, or whether it may be considered as a prior and distinct proposition, authenticating that point, the proposition itself is an assumption.  And the question arises, have we therefore a right to complain?

“Now with reference to this matter of assumption, we desire not to be irrational.  We need not be told, that in all argument something must be assumed.  Fundamental propositions are always to be taken for granted.  No first truth can be proved.  And so when two persons consent to argue , they go on the presumption that there are propositions to be assumed by both parties. Certainly, we shall not complain of Mr. Brownson for doing what we have done, what every body who reasons must do,- we shall not complain that he has assumed a proposition.  If he has assumed that which is self-evident, which admits of no dispute, we have no right to demur.  Our charge is not, that he has assumed a proposition, but that he has assumed the wrong one, one which is not self-evident, one which calls for proof, and which, if true, admits of proof.  Every thing in our author’s argument rests upon the proposition, that ‘religion, without the church, without an organization, is not a power,’ – always meaning by the term church, or organization, a body of men existing, in certain organic relations, as the depositaries and authentic exponents of religion.  And will our author claim that this is a self-evident proposition?  He has a right to start with an assumption – this he must do; but will he affirm that this is the proposition to start with – to be assumed?  We ask particular attention to the point now under notice, for the whole issue of the present controversy turns upon it.  If we concede that religion without a church, or organism- always meaning by the word church a body of men existing in certain organic relations- is not a power, we concede everything.  We cheerfully grant, that if this point can be established, the argument is wholly with our author.  If it be true, that religion without a church is necessarily only an idea,- and we think we apprehend Mr. Brownson’s use of the word idea,- then we must admit, that the third and authoritative element in society must be an organization, a church.  And although we are reminded, that the question is not a present whether the Catholic Church is that authoritative organization, we are prepared in view of certain considerations not now under discussion, to go further than our author asks us to go, and admit the Catholic Church to be the power which may rightfully adjudicate upon the claims in dispute between the state and the individual. We do not say this without premeditation.  We have given the subject some reading and considerable reflection.  We have long been assured, that the advantage which the Catholic seems to have over the Calvinist, is in the concession which the latter, sometimes formally and always virtually, makes with reference to the office of the church.   Perhaps the Calvinist will admit, that religion without a church cannot be a power.  Having made such an admission, we would like to see him grapple with Mr. Brownson!  We can predict the result.  Such an admission is fatal to Protestantism.” – pp. 158-161.

In our first Article we stated, but did not develop the proof of the point in question; in our second Article we developed it at length, and showed that we did offer proof, at least something in the form of proof.  Our argument was, that to save society on the one hand from despotism, and from anarchy on the other, we must have a third element, namely, the Christian religion, to mediate between the individual and the state, and to restrain one or the other according to the exigencies of the case.  To answer this purpose, religion must be a power resting on its own basis, independent alike of both the state and the individual, and able at need to restrain both.  This much the author concedes, or evidently intends to concede.  “We conceded,” he says, pp. 156, 157, “the proposition that there must be a power to mediate between the rival claims of the individual and the state, and that this power must be something independent of the parties on whose conflicting claims it pronounces authoritative judgment.  We further conceded, that this third element, this authoritative power, is the Christian religion.”  This established, we proceed to say, then it must be religion organized, as an organism, as the Church. Why so?  Because religion not as an organism, as organized, as the Church, is not a power.  Why not a power?  Because it is then merely an idea, and ideas are not powers.  There is no proposition not conceded left without proof, except than an idea is not a power, which we proved at length in our second Article on the subject.  The Reviewer has fallen into the mistake of supposing that we leave the point, that the religion needed must be the Church, unproved, by confounding two propositions, which in our argument are given as distinct, and the one as the proof of the other.  This is evident from the following extract:-

 “In our former article we must have been unfortunate in the choice of words, for it seems that Mr. Brownson regards us admitting his fundamental proposition!  And here we must quote from his article:

“ ‘Here is in substance our argument, and it is a conclusive, an unanswerable argument, if, as we allege, it be true, that religion unorganized, religion without the Church, is only an idea, and religion as an idea is not a power.  That religion without the Church, religion unorganized, is only an IDEA, our Universalist friend does not deny, nay concedes, as he must, if he speaks not merely of natural religion, or the law of nature, for it is impossible to conceive it to be anything else.’ -pp. 9, 10.

“Mr. Brownson’s ‘Universalist friend does not deny’ that religion in order to be a power must be a church?  Indeed, he does deny, and this most emphatically, every thing of the kind!  What we are supposed not to deny, we in fact look upon as a most fruitful source of religious error.  We have no idea whatever in the common idea of a church.  It does very well for the Catholic to laud the church, and to attribute to it supernatural gifts, for in doing this he is consistent with the necessities of his faith.  But we cannot conceive that the Protestant has any right to imitate his example in this respect; and when he does this, he puts himself hopelessly in the power of his Catholic opponent.” -p. 161

Now it is clear from the words cited from us, that we do no such thing.  What we say our Universalist friend does not deny, nay, concedes, is, that religion unorganized or without the Church, is only an idea.  We did not represent him as not denying or conceding that it is not a power, for that was precisely what he did deny.  From his not denying or conceding that it is only an idea, we labored in our Reply to force him an argument ex concessis, to concede that it is not a power, because ideas are not powers.  We can explain his mistake only by supposing that he regarded the two propositions used by us as formally identical, and overlooked the fact, that religion without the Church is only an idea, was adduced as proof that religion without the Church is not a power.

We understood him now to concede that ideas are not powers, and to deny that religion without the Church, or unorganized, is only an idea.  “If it be true,” he says, is a passage already cited, “that religion without a Church be necessarily only an idea- and we think we apprehend Mr. Brownson’s use of the term idea- then we must admit that the third and authoritative element in society must be an organization, a Church,” and “we are prepared in view of certain considerations not now under discussion, to go further than our author asks us to go, and admit the Catholic Church to be the power that may rightfully adjudicate upon the claims in dispute between the state and the individual.”  The author knows that we used the word organization in our Article only in the sense of organism.  His concession is, then, we take it, if religion without the Church is only an idea, if to answer the purpose it must be an organism, it must be religion as the Catholic Church.  This concedes all we contend for, except a single point, and leaves no dispute as to which is the organism or Church, if any, is necessary.  This point is, that religion without the Church is only an idea.  In proof that it is only an idea, we allege the fact, that whatever in God’s universe exists at all, exists as an organism, and cannot otherwise be conceived of as a real existence.  This is conceded as to vegetables, animals, and human beings, and physicists have proved it to be true of minerals,  and thus exploded the old notion of brute matter as well as the materia prima of the of the Peripatetics.  What we call matter does not consist of brute atoms as the old Atomists contended, but of active elements, which Aristotle named entelecheiae, and which Leibnitz calls monads.  Everything in it that actually exists, exists as an active force, or vis activa, and has in itself its own center and principle of action.  Whatever lacks this internal principle, which, as we ascend in the scale of creation, is called life or the principle of vitality, or is incapable of acting from within outwards, is no real, no substantive  existence, and is at best only an idea.  Every real existence then exists as an organism, for an organism is characterized by the fact that it has in itself a principle of life or activity, and lives or acts from its own center.

Now the question whether Christianity be an organism or not, is simply the question whether it really exists or not, an organism, it is not an actual existence, and if not an actual existence, it can in the nature of the case, by the force of the terms themselves, be only an idea, or an idea existence.  Now here is a question which the Reviewer has not duly considered.  The question is this, Is Christianity or is it not an actually existing order of life, a real creation, as real a creation is in the natural order?  If not, it has no distinct existence, and is identical either with God or with nature.  There is then no distinctively Christian religion, no Christian vis activa;  and what we call the Christian religion is either a human conviction or an idea in the Divine mind, at least, if it be not a pure fiction.  It is at best only a possible, not an actual religion.  Precisely what we said when we said it was only an idea.  Possible or ideal things may, but do not exist.  To exist they must be concreted, for nothing exists in the abstract, or as an abstraction, and to be concrete or to be concreted, is to be an organism.  There is no escape from this conclusion.  Either Christianity is no actual existence, or it is an organism; and if an organism, then, as the Reviewer concedes, the Catholic Church, that sublime and mysterious existence, that life of unity in variety, which we presented to the meditation of our Universalist friend in our former reply.

The Reviewer unconsciously proves this even in trying to escape it.

“In rejecting, as we do, in whole and in every part, the theory of a church so brilliantly stated in this extract- in denying the existence of any vital union between religion and a church, as an organization- in affirming that religion may have, does have, and existence and a power, no sanctity; but that it derives all mystery, all power, all sanctity, from the religion which its several members bring into it- bring into it, as individuals- in affirming all these things, Mr. Brownson will say,  and say justly, that we are obligated to furnish, something as having authority- a something which is not the individual, which is not the State, which is not an idea- a something that can speak to the individual, and to the State, and fearing neither, control both- a something, too, which can speak without liability to mistake, whose commands shall be irrevocable, and whose power cannot be resisted.  Yes, we are obliged to furnish a power possessed of all these attributes.  And we are asked, what is the power?  We answer, reverently- God!  We are of the number who believe that God not only was, but that he is- that he rules among the inhabitants of the earth- that he is ever present, actively present, and all-sufficient to mediate between the claims of the individual an the State.  Mr. Brownson himself believes all this.  The difference of conviction between him and us, relates only to the medium through which God, ruling among men, would restrain the licentiousness of the individual and the despotism of the State.  He will say that God speaks through that mysterious body, so vividly portrayed in the extract, last quoted from him.  We say, that God speaks through the reason, the conscience, the soul of the individual man.” – pp. 164, 165.

This is a plain and unequivocal rejection of Christianity as an actual religion.  The power needed, the Reviewer concedes, as we have seen, is the Christian religion.  He now says it is God himself.  “Are we asked, what is this power?  We answer, reverently- God.”  This settles the question, and denies Christianity as an actually existing provision made or instituted by our Heavenly Father for our wants, since it asserts, and permits us to assert, only God and nature.  We proved, and the Reviewer concedes, that the power needed is the Christian religion, and therefore he must concede that the Christian religion is a power, something really existing, and capable of acting from its own central activity or life.  But in the passage before us declaring the power to be God, he denies Christianity to be itself a power, and makes it merely the direct and immediate power of God, which, of course, he must do by denying Christianity as the Church, but which he is not at liberty to do after his concessions.  He has to maintain against us that the Christian religion, without the Church, unorganized, as not an organism, is a power resting on its own basis, and capable of meditating between the two other powers, or social elements.  But here he shows that he cannot do it, for outside of the Church the only Christian religion he can assert is the Divine Being himself; that is, Christianity without the church, as we told him, has no actual existence, and is only an idea either in the Divine mind or in the human mind; for the Christian religion as an actually existing religion, though like all creation inseparable, must be distinguishable from God, as the creature from the Creator, the work from the workman.

The author here proves what we told him in our former reply, that he does not conceive of Christianity as the new creation or supernatural order lying above the natural order.  “He believes in no order of existence above nature, save God himself; God and nature are for him all that is or exists.  He has no conception of Christianity as a substantive existence or second cause.”  The passage we have last cited proves it.  The question is not whether God is a power without the Church, for such a question would be absurd; but is the Christian religion without the Christian Church or Christian organism a power, a substantive existence, with an internal principle of activity or its own central life, as in the case of every other actual existence or living thing.  This is what we denied, and what the Reviewer undertakes to prove, but what he does not succeed in proving.

We tell him again that there is a deeper significance in the Catholic view of the Christian religion objectively considered than he has suspected.  He says all the difference between him and us is, that we hold that God speaks though that mysterious body we call the Church, while he holds that God speaks through the reason, the conscience, the soul of the individual; but he is quite out in his supposition that this is all or even the chief difference between us.  We hold as firmly, and perhaps even more firmly than he does, that God speaks through the reason, the conscience, the soul of the individual.  We hold in this respect all he holds, and we regard with even more reverence and docility the inspirations of the Almighty into the soul of each more than he does.  Our religion requires us to do so.  The Catholic cherishes with the profoundest love and joy this internal communion with God, and seeks always, when faithful to his religion, the internal light and guidance of the Holy Ghost.  Why else his prayer and meditation?  Let the Reviewer read the life of any Catholic Saint, or any Catholic work designed for spiritual instruction and edification, and he will find that in this respect we believe all he believes, and even much more than he has ever dreamed of.  He differs from us here, in that he falls short of us, not in that he goes beyond us.

On this point Protestants generally mistake Catholic teaching.  Because we assert an external authority, they conclude, very rashly and illogically, that we deny spiritual communion with God; because we assert an external objective revelation deposited with the Church, and authoritatively expounded by her, that we deny all interior illumination of the individual soul; because we assert the necessity of communion with the Church, in order to render us acceptable to God, that we deny all individuality and all inward piety and devotion.  Nothing is, or can be, more untrue, more unjust to the teachings of our religion, and the practices of Catholic Saints.  It is possible that our polemical writers have not always been careful in their controversial works to bring out this point, and that they have, by confining their defense to the external, had some influence in confirming the impression that we recognize only the external, and deny the proper internal relations of the pious soul to God.  Protestants have not erred in asserting the interior operations of the Spirit; their error has been in asserting them to the exclusion of the external authority and communion of the Church.  One extreme begets another.  The external being the point denied, the Catholic has had that to defend, and in confining himself almost exclusively to its defense, he has had the appearance of not esteeming, or rather, of not admitting the internal.  But Protestants may be assured that we maintain with equal earnestness both the internal and the external, and both as concurrent, not as antagonistic elements or authorities.  Protestants have less than we; in no case have they more, or indeed so much.

The difference is not where or what our Universalist  friend supposes.  Certainly, we hold that God speaks through the Church, but that is only a little of what we hold.  Certainly, we believe that God has deposited the revelation he has made with the Church,  appointed her its guardian, teacher, and interpreter; but all this, though much, does not begin to exhaust our idea of the Church.  Nothing thus far does more than introduce us into her vestibule, nay, any more than bring us to her door.  Our radical conception of Christianity is that of a new creation or the regeneration, the special work of the Word made flesh,- an order of life which indeed presupposes our natural life, but lying above it, and bearing to the Word made flesh a relation analogous to that borne by natural creation to the unincarnate Divinity.  There is by the Incarnation of the Word introduced into the universe not only a new fact, but a new order of existence, which we call the new creation, the regeneration, or the supernatural order.  Our Lord assumed flesh not merely to make expiation or satisfaction for our sins, not merely to deliver us from the power of Satan, and repair the damage caused by transgression, but also to elevate man above the natural order, to be the second Adam or Father of a regenerated humanity, appointed to a supernatural destiny, or a destiny far above that to which man in the natural order is able to aspire.  This supernatural order, this regenerated humanity, deriving from the Word made flesh, is in its most general expression what the Catholic means by the Church.  The Church in this sense is the grand central fact of the universe, to which all the providences of God converge, for which all historical events are ordered, and in which the whole natural order finds its significance and its explication.  The Church is not merely the Church on earth or Church militant, but it is the Church suffering, including the souls suffering in Purgatory, and the Church triumphant, the Church of the Blest in heaven.  In all three states it is one and the same living and immortal body, one and the same holy communion, one and the same regenerated human race united to God through sameness of nature with the human nature assumed by the Word.  By natural generation or birth no man inters into the Church, becomes a member of regenerated humanity, is introduced into this supernatural order of life, or is placed on the plane of the supernatural beatitude promised to those who enter it and persevere to the end.  The assertion of the Church in this sense does not conflict with that natural communion with God which the Reviewer contends for, and the value of which we should be sorry to underate, but it offers a higher, a supernatural communion with God, even a closer communion by faith here, as well as by the light of glory hereafter.

The Reviewer will see that the office we assign to the Church, or the position she holds in our faith, is far higher, broader, and more intimate and comprehensive than he supposes.  She is not merely a congregation of individuals holding certain relations to one another, but is to Christians what the natural human race is to natural men, and has the relation to them that the race or humanity has to individuals, and they live by its life as individual men and women in the natural order live by the life of humanity.  You may know and assent to all Catholic doctrine, you may comprehend all mysteries; and in your life keep the whole law of nature, or practice with the most scrupulous fidelity all the natural virtues, and yet have no lot or part in the regeneration.  You are a natural man, worthy of all respect in the natural order; but he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than you.  You must be born into the kingdom, into the regeneration, into the new or supernaturalized humanity, or you cannot live its life.  Hence our Lord says, “Except a man be born again, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.”  Hence the reason of the dogma, extra Ecclesiam nulla salus, or, out of the communion of the Church, no one can ever be saved, that is, no one can ever attain the supernatural destiny or beatitude of regenerated humanity.  To maintain the contrary, would be as absurd as to pretend that a creature, never a man in the natural order, can share the natural beatitude of a human being.  As to the punishment of those who die out of the communion of the Church, it will be meted out according to their deserts, and  will be neither greater nor less than in strict justice they by their deliberate acts have merited; but common sense impugns the idea of their sharing the rewards of a humanity of which they have never been members, and whose life they have never lived.

We cannot undertake to explain the whole mystery of the regeneration, for it involves the whole mystery of the Incarnation,- a mystery which is the mystery of mysteries, and into which the angels desire to look in vain.  God alone can adequately comprehend it, for its explication is in his own invisible and ineffable essence.  But this much we know, its internal principle, its central life is Divine grace, flowing from the Word made flesh, and binding it to him as his mystic body, in a living organism.  It is not easy to grasp the conception of unity in variety, but we are obliged to concede it in the natural as well as in the regenerated humanity,- in the human race in the natural order, as well as in the Church, or supernaturalized humanity.  St. Paul says we are many members, but all members of Christ’s body, and members one of another, so that when one of the members suffers all the members suffer.  There is one Spirit, and this one spirit unties all in one spiritual body, and is its informing principle, the center and source of its life.  The fact is certain, and if the mystery is great, it is not greater than that of the life of the human body itself, which is one, and remains one and identical, although one in variety of molecules, each one of which has distinct existence, and acts from its own central principle of activity.

Now Christianity in this sense, as the supernatural order, is what we assert as the Church of God.  Whether there be or be not the supernatural order in this sense, is not now the question; but between the assertion of this order, and simply saying God speaks to us through it, we maintain there is a difference, and therefore that the difference between the Reviewer and us is far greater and even of another kind than he supposes.  We hold the Church to be a new creation, the institution by the Word made flesh of a new, regenerated, or supernaturalized humanity, a humanity propagated by election as natural humanity is by generation, not merely the organ through which God speaks or declares his law, or his pleasure.  Christianity is not simply a law, or simply a doctrine, it is a life, the life of Christ, the Word made flesh, lived by men.  Faith is good and is the foundation and root of every Christian virtue, and without it we cannot enter into the Christian order, and be assimilated to regenerated humanity, but it alone does not suffice.  Faith alone cannot save us, and is never in the New Testament given as the characteristic mark of discipleship.  “A new commandment,” says our Lord, “I give unto you, that ye love one another.”  “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another.”  The characteristic badge of the disciple of Jesus Christ is love, or charity, not the simple natural sentiment of benevolence, though that is good in its own order, but the supernatural affection of the supernaturalized heart, the spontaneous sentiment of the heart elevated by grace to the supernatural order, the natural expression of regenerated humanity, the principle by which the regenerated commune with one another and with the Word made flesh, their Head, and the Fountain of their life.  Now the Church is needed not simply to teach us what we are to believe, or what we are to do, but she is needed as the condition of our rebirth and of our living the supernatural Christian life.  Man lives a natural life only by communion with his like and with his Maker as author of nature; he can live his supernatural life only by communion with those who live that life and with the Word made flesh, its Author and Source.  The end is the regenerated life, and as this life is not out of the regenerated humanity or the Church, it cannot be lived out of the Church.

There are over and above what the Reviewer supposes we ask of the Church, the Sacraments, by which our supernatural life is generated or begotten, recovered, sustained, strengthened, propagated.  There is Baptism, the sacrament of regeneration, by which we are born into the supernatural order, or enter into the Church, and are made members of regenerated humanity, the mystical body of Christ.  There is the sacrament of Penance, by which we recover the supernatural life, when by mortal sin we have lost it, and the Blessed Eucharist, by which our new life is fed, sustained, and invigorated.  Now what is sometimes called the sacramental system is, after all, the great thing in the Church, and that which renders her so indispensable to the Christian.  Could we even know without the Church with infallible certainty what we ought to believe and what we ought to do, we should still need the Church, and be as unable to live the Christian life without her as we are now.  Cut off a man in the natural order from communion with his kind, and he dies.  Sects separated from the Church become in relation to Christian humanity what savages are to natural humanity.  They lose all power to progress, become stationary as to Christan life, or rather retrograde till they lose all traces of their supernatural life communicated in baptism, and fall back on the natural order alone, living only the natural life of humanity, as savages lose all traces of civilized life, lose the arts and sciences, fail to manifest the higher elements of human nature, and almost degenerate into mere animals,  only a grade above the ourang-outang or monkey.  All history proves it.  To live the Christian life you must live in the Christian order, and on the food appropriate to the sustentation of that order of life.  The Christian at once belongs to two humanities, the natural and the supernatural, (for grace does not annihilate nature, but presupposes it,) and he can no more live the life of regenerated humanity without communion with supernatural humanity.  We beg the Reviewer, when attempting to point out what we demand of the Church, to bear these important considerations in mind.  But we pass on.  The Reviewer says:-

“The only objection which Mr. Brownson has offered to our view of the subject under discussion, is that it does not give religion the means of becoming a power.  It must have an existence and an authority distinct from the individual and from the State.  It must not be a part of either of these, for in this case, it will be what the individual or the State makes it, and so may be altered at the will of the party that proclaims it.  We can conceive of no objection more fallacious.  Because God speaks to the guilty wretch through his own conscience- because the word torturing and distressing him what he makes it, to be altered as his will, to be silenced at his nod?  We confess, it occasions us no little surprise to find our author representing everything, spoken through the individual, as a part of the individual, and so subject to him.  Certainly, there is no necessity for such a representation.  God can speak the words of truth, warning, censure, despair, hope, through the individual soul.  To affirm that he does so speak, is to involve no contradiction.  The things so affirmed, are at all events possibilities. And if they are possibilities, the argument, so far as the present issue is concerned, is with us.  Mr. Brownson has argued the necessity of the Church, on the ground that any other authoritative element is society is an impossibility.   We may not have shown that there actually is an authoritative power other than the Church.  We are not called upon to do this.  Our sole obligation is to show that there may be such an element of power.  This we are confident we have done.  And so long as it is in the power of God to speak to man through man- to speak through this medium words which no human will can modify, no human cunning evade, and which no human strength can resist- we find no necessity for that more cumbrous and complex instrumentality, which is usually commended to us as the infallible Church.  This organization has been offered to us on the sole ground that it is a necessity.  We have seen that no such necessity exists; and until forced to accept it on other and more conclusive grounds, we feel compelled to trust in the individual soul as the medium of communication between God and his subject man.” – pp. 165, 166  That God could, if he had chosen, have made provision for the wants of natural society by other means than the supernatural order we call the Church, we have not denied, but expressly asserted.  What we have asserted and claimed to have proved, is that some graciously sustained provision in addition to the law of nature in its natural organism is needed, because that has never been found to suffice.  This much the Reviewer has in reality conceded, in conceding that the mediating power is the Christian religion.  In his explications of Christianity he may, and no doubt does reduce Christianity to the natural law, but it is idle for him to pretend that, in conceding the Christian religion to be the power we had proved to be necessary, and which we had shown must be a power that the ancient heathen world had not, he did not understand, and mean that his readers should understand by it something more than simply the natural law incorporated into the very nature of man.  Nay, we cannot let him off even there.  He has conceded that, if Christianity without the Church is only an idea, or not a power, the third element needed is the Catholic Church as held by us, for he has conceded that if the Christian religion is an organism or a Church at all, or must be in order to be a power, it is that Catholic Church as set forth by us in our former reply.  What we have to show on our side is what we have already shown; that Christianity without the Church is only an idea, or not a power.  What he has to show on his side is, not that there may be a power without the Church adequate to the purpose, for that is not denied; but that there is, and that this power is the Christian religion.  He is bound by his concessions to find this power in the Christian religion, without the Church, and he is not at liberty to seek or to assert it elsewhere.  But, while we have shown that the Christian religion without the Church is not a power, being only an idea, he shows neither that it is nor that it can be a power, for he simply casts it aside.   He shows, if you will, that God can mediate without the Church between the state and the individual, a fact which nobody disputes; but this is nothing to his purpose, for God is not the Christian religion, though as the Word made flesh, he is its Author and Finisher.  We beg the Reviewer’s special attention to this point in his next response.

The Reviewer passing over the Christian religion, and forgetting that he had conceded that it was the power needed, asserts the power to be God speaking to and through individual reason and conscience, and contends that in his so speaking there is something not individual, or under the control of the individual, something which the individual can neither make nor unmake.  He says this, in opposition to our remark that, if we leave religion to be determined by the individual, we make it, practically considered, as was obviously our meaning, dependent on the individual, who would determine it to suit himself.  We have no doubt that God can inspire men as he did the Prophets and Apostles, and accompany his inspirations with sufficient evidence that it is he who inspires them or speaks to them; but the Reviewer neither believes not intends to assert that God so inspires all men.  But were he so to speak to and through individual reason and conscience, he would thus only strengthen the individual in face of the state, not the state in face of the individual, and therefore, whatever power he gave to the individual, it would be one half of the power needed.  But though God may speak to the reason and conscience of the individual, there being on the Reviewer’s hypothesis no objective or external authority to which reason and conscience are bound to conform, or to which an appeal from them can be made, it would depend on the individual to determine that the voice he hears is the voice of God, and also the sense of what he hears, in both of which respects he may err, and mistake for the Divine word his own ignorance, interest, passion, inclination, or hallucination, as the Reviewer will be as ready as we to maintain against Calvinists or the various classes of Evangelicals.

No doubt a man’s conscience often tortures him with remorse, and just as little doubt that a man has no absolute control over his convictions.  But conscience is the judgment which a man passes on his own acts, performed or proposed, and is sound or unsound according to his intelligence or his ignorance.  Conscience it never indeed to be violated, but it is never infallible.  A man sins who deliberately acts against his conscience, but he may have a false conscience, and feel he must do what he ought not to do, and suffer the tortures of remorse for doing what in itself is not wrong.  Certain it is that God does not speak immediately to conscience so as sufficiently to enlighten it, or to save the individual, without instruction from other sources, from false judgments as to what is or is not his duty.  Here is the difficulty.  The individual, mistaking darkness for light, falsehood for truth, forms to himself a false conscience, and really believes that he has the right and is in duty bound to pursue a course of conduct, at war with the legitimate authority of the state.  What, in such a case, is to be done?  Remind him that God speaks to and through his reason and conscience?  But that is only to aggravate the evil.  Attempt to enlighten his reason and conscience?  But does not God speak to his reason and conscience,- does not he himself enlighten them?  Have you more light than God to impart?  Is your human voice to be held paramount to the voice of God himself?  Will you allow the state to disregard the individual’s reason and conscience, and repress his destructive conduct?  What, allow the state to trample on individual reason and conscience?  That is tyranny, that is the grossest and most terrible despotism conceivable.  If there is any thing sacred in the individual, it is his conscience, his intimate reason, for in that consists the elemental principle of all individual freedom.  Over that the state has and can have no control; with it society has no right to intermeddle, for conscience is accountable to God alone.

Let us take a practical case, one which is not unlikely to create no little trouble yet, that of the Mormons.  The Mormon reason and conscience are incompatible with the maintenance of the American state.  Mormonism teaches that the dominion of the World belongs to the Saints, and that the Saints are the Mormons.  The Mormons acknowledge, as we were instructed by two of their twelve apostles, no legitimate authority but that instituted by Joseph Smith amongst themselves, and hold that all the property of the Gentiles is given to them for their inheritance, and that they have a divine right to take and appropriate it to their use when and where they please; and if they do not as yet do it, it is because they are restrained by prudential considerations, because they are not strong enough to make it prudent for them to attempt it.  They hold also that they have a perfect right to slay and exterminate, in the name of the Lord, all who refuse to join their communion and submit to their authority.  “You must exterminate us,” said a Mormon elder to the writer, “or we, as we become strong enough, shall exterminate you,” that is, the non-Mormon portion of the American people.  Moreover, they hold to polygamy, and permit each man to have an unlimited number of wives.  Here is the Mormon reason and conscience.  Here is what Mormons hold God says to them.  What will you do with them?  Suffer them to go on and live an act according to their individual reason and conscience?  But that is incompatible with the safety of the state, the peace of society, and the morals of the community.  Suppress them by the strong arm of power?  But who gave the state authority to decide questions of conscience?  What right has the state to trample on the Mormon conscience any more than it has on the Catholic conscience, the Presbyterian, the Episcopalian, the Baptist, the Methodist, or the Universalist conscience?  The foundation of all civil liberty is religious liberty, and religious liberty denies the competency of the state, or of any human authority whatever, in matters of conscience?  For the state to trample on conscience in the case of Mormons, is in principle as much a violation of religious liberty as to trample on it in the case of any other class of persons.

Or, leaving the Mormons, let us take the Abolitionists.  The abolitionist proper believes that he is bound in conscience to labor for the abolition of slavery, and in doing it to trample on all constitutions, all laws, all vested rights that are in his way.  Here is individual reason and conscience opposed to the state.  What will you do?  Let the abolitionist go on, and trust to his individual reason and conscience to correct and restrain him?  But his individual reason and conscience, supposing him sincere, are precisely what is in fault.  To trust them, would be like trusting the murderer to try, convict, sentence, and hang himself, or to recognize and execute the law which he has shown by the murder he despises.  To let abolitionists proceed is anarchy.  But to repress them by the state on its own authority alone is despotism, and the worst species of despotism, for it is the assumption, by the state, of power to determine questions of reason and conscience.  How with only God speaking through individual reason and conscience are you to get over this difficulty?  Do you say that the reason and conscience of the abolitionist is the voice of God?  How do you know, and how will you prove it?  Do you deny it?  By what right do you step in between the abolitionist and his God?  Here it is evident, whether we speak of the Mormons or of the Abolitionists, the state cannot intervene in its own name, and by its own authority, without the denial of individual liberty, which is civil despotism.  And yet, if the state does not intervene, legitimate civil authority is subverted, and anarchy inevitably follows. 

God speaking to the reason and conscience of the individual is practically only individual reason and conscience, and the Reviewer in reality means no more by them.  What he means is, that the reason and conscience of the individual are the voice of God in the soul, or God speaking in the nature of man, or as perhaps, he would prefer to say, in and through our spiritual nature.  There is no need of any words about it, this is without any doubt his meaning.  What he really means is, that God lives in us and manifests himself in our reason and conscience.  His doctrine is, that the Divine power manifested in the reason and conscience or soul of every individual man is the power that mediates between the individual and the state.  Reason and conscience are a law unto the individual; they are not the individual, they are not subject to his will, but are imposed upon him by his ever present and active Creator.  Practically, then, the mediating power asserted in the reason and conscience of the individual.  But does not the Reviewer see that these are all on the side of the individual, constitutive of the individual, and therefore are not and cannot be a mediating power between the individual and the state?  What power can they give the state to repress them when they resist its authority?  Or what power do they add to the individual to resist the state when it would encroach on individual liberty?  Does not the Reviewer see, that whatever may be the power of God, and whatever God might do, if he saw proper, practically he asserts nothing at all but what is included in the state and in the individual, and therefore leaves society without the third element proved by us and conceded by him to be necessary?  What he wants in an external and objective authority, to which both the state and the individual are amenable, which decides when the individual reason and conscience are really the voice of God, or in harmony with the law of God, and when not, and therefore when the state has the right to use force against them, and when not.  A false conscience is not inviolable, when once decided by competent authority to be a false conscience.  Let a competent authority condemn Mormonism or Abolitionism, and the state may, as far as practicable, suppress either.  But neither the state nor the individual is competent to decide what is or is not a false conscience, or to declare Mormonism or Abolitionism against the law of God.  If the state decides, it is civil despotism; if the individual, it is anarchy. Moreover, the case demands not only a simple judicial power, competent to declare the divine law in the case, but an executive power capable of executing by spiritual pains and penalties, not always without temporal consequences, the sentence pronounced by the court, or of giving efficacy to the judgment rendered, for both the state and the individual may, and often do act, the one tyrannically, the other rebelliously, against their sense of right and clear convictions of duty.

This power must be superior in dignity and authority to both the individual and the state.  It must be a Divine authority, not a human authority, otherwise it would be no higher than the state, would have no more right than the state to decide questions of conscience, and in asserting it, we should only change the despot, not the despotism.  All sects, religious corporations, or religious establishments, that have no Divine commission to teach and govern men in spirituals, are usurpations, and the worst of all possible despotisms, for they enslave the soul as well as the body.  The Church, if a human corporation, if instituted by men even acting from the purest and best motives, and sustained by all the world, would have no spiritual authority whatever, and to compel individual reason and conscience or even the state to conform to its rulings would be the grossest tyranny.  The state is the highest conceivable human authority, and its constitutional acts are laws, and binding on all its subjects, unless they conflict with the laws of God, and conscience is amenable to no human tribunal.  But as both the state and the individual are amenable to the law of God, the “higher law,” there is no encroachment on the prerogatives of the state or on the rights of conscience, by holding both subject to a tribunal expressly instituted and commissioned by God himself, and rendered infallible by his supernatural presence and assistance, to declare and administer his law for both.

  The objection to Senator Seward’s doctrine, concerning the “higher law,” is not that he asserted that there is a higher law than the Constitution of the United States, but that while holding his seat by virtue of the Constitution he should assume the right to disregard it; and, furthermore, that he made the individual reason and conscience the court to declare the higher law.  There is a law above the state, and above the individual reason and conscience, and authority as distinguished from despotism, and liberty as distinguished from license depend on the strict observance of that law; but as that law is the law of God, no court not above the state and the individual, or not expressly instituted, commissioned, and assisted by God himself can be competent to declare, or enforce its observance.  Evidently, then, God simply speaking through the individual reason and conscience is not the power needed, for if it were there never would have been either despotism or anarchy.  The Reviewer, then, has not shown what he acknowledges he was bound to show.  He has not shown us the Christian religion is or can be a power without the Church, far less a power adequate to our wants.  We have on the contrary shown that Christianity without the Church is not a power, because without the Church it is no actual or concrete existence, and can exist only as an idea, either in the Divine mind or in the human mind.  The Reviewer himself virtually proves this, also, in failing to recognize any Christian religion without the Church distinguishable on the one hand from the Divine, and on the other from human nature.