Protestantism Developed "Analytical Investigations concerning the Credibility of the Scriptures"

Protestantism Developed

 

        Dr. McCullough is a genuine Protestant, and entirely free from all Catholic tendencies; but he has evidently been brought up in some one of the so-called Evangelical sects.  He writes as an earnest-minded man, with serious feelings and intentions, and with no little clearness and force of intellect.  He has certainly studied hard, thought much, and has given us here one of the most considerable books, both as to bulk and contents, which Protestantism has produced in our country since the days of Edwards, Hopkins, and Dwight.  It is not brilliant, but it is solid; it cannot be read as one reads a novel; but if studied with care and patience, it will be found to contain a good deal of instructive matter, and we seriously and earnestly recommend it to the attention of all our Protestant friends who still imagine that they can be Churchmen and no Catholics.

We cannot pretend to give our readers an analysis of Dr. McCullough’s book, or to submit it to a thorough review.  He starts as a Protestant, with the assumption that the Bible interpreted by private judgment is the rule and the sole rule of faith, and proceeds to ascertain as well as he can what is the religious system the Scriptures actually contain, together with the credibility of the Scriptures themselves.  We have no special interest in his analysis of what he supposes to be Christian doctrine, and his investigations concerning natural religion and the credibility of the sacred writers have no special value for us.  His philosophy, his rule of life, and the doctrinal results he arrives at, are not ours, and are such as we cannot by any means accept.  The greater part of his well-meant and painful labor is for us worse than thrown away.  But there is one point in which we take a good deal of interest.  The author has naturally an honest and logical mind, and he sees, and does not hesitate to assert, that Protestants have condemned themselves by conceding that our Lord instituted a ministry of his word; and he proves very ably and very successfully, that, if they admit that our Lord did appoint or commission such ministry, they must, in order to be consistent, accept the Catholic Church, submit to her authority, and believe what she teaches.  This is indeed no novel doctrine, but it is one we are very glad to see so able and so earnest-minded a Protestant labor to prove to his brethren.

Our readers know perfectly well that we have always contended that the only open questions between Catholics and Protestants are two: - 1. Did our Lord found a Church with authority to teach? 2. If he did, which of the many so-called churches is it?  The second question, Dr. McCullough thinks, very justly, is easily answered, and indeed can hardly be a question at all.  It is clear to him, as it is to us, that if our Lord established a Church, with authority to teach, which is to remain unto the consummation of the world, it is the Roman Catholic Church, and can be no other.  Protestants, then, who admit that our Lord did found such a Church, are logically bound to be Catholics.  He therefore joins issue with the Catholic on the first question, and boldly denies that any church, Catholic or Protestant, or ministry with authority to teach, unto the end of the world, was ever divinely instituted.  The commission which our Lord gave to his Apostles to go and teach all nations, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever he commanded them, and promising to be with them all days unto the consummation of the world (St. Matt. 28: 18,19), he restricts to the Apostles personally, and confines to that Age in which the commission was given.  After the consummation of that age, he holds that there was to be no divinely appointed ministry.  He says:

“Nearly all theologians have interpreted our Savior’s words to signify, that he gave a special commission to the Apostles as an ecclesiastical corporation, who as such were henceforth to preside over the whole body of Christian believers, and as such had authority to expound the principles of the Christian faith, and to administer certain ordinances now called sacraments, and to ordain other persons to the exercise of peculiar functions, which by successive ordinations should continue them as an ecclesiastical corporation until the literal ending of the world.

“This notion, however, of a divinely appointed clergy, or body of ecclesiastics, is opposed in the first instance by the remarkable circumstance, that the Apostles have not recognized the existence of any such corporation in any part of the New Testament.  There is no plan for the organization of a clerical body laid down anywhere in the Apostolic writings, nor rules given by which they should be regulated.  Neither is there a word said concerning their supposed peculiar functions.  These remarkable omissions, therefore, fully justify the conclusion, that no corporation of ministers of the Gospel could have been contemplated by our Savior as an institution pertaining to the Christian dispensation.

“Hence, in warning his disciples against the false prophets (teachers) who would in after-time appear among them, he gave them no other instruction by which the character of these false teachers was to be determined, but by judging of them according to their fruits. (Matt. 7: 15-23)  Such a rule is manifestly opposed to any notion of a divinely commissioned body of clergy, for if such an institution had been recognized by Christ, he would assuredly have referred his disciples at once to some specific test, and not have left the subject to be determined by the mere inferences of their private judgment. 

“The doctrine of a divinely commissioned clergy is furthermore opposed by insuperable objections as regards the exercise of the peculiar functions ascribed to such supposed organization.

“A divinely appointed corporation, who by successive ordinations among themselves should preserve such by successive ordinations among themselves should preserve such an institution throughout all generations of Christians, could only contemplate two objects; first, that they were to teach men by divine authority what were the true principles of Christian faith and practice, and secondly, that they should administer the sacraments as possessing the efficacy in the fact of their clerical administration.

“But neither of these suppositions can bear a moment’s examination.  In the first place, it is evident that, if an authoritative teaching of the doctrines of Christianity has been conferred on the clergy, then every individual clergyman must be infallible in what he teaches; for if not infallible, to what end is a divine commission given?  It is a manifest absurdity to suppose that Christ should have set men apart to teach others by a divine commission, when at the same time, as being fallible, they might through personal infirmity abuse their divine commission, and thus establish error or false doctrine with authority.  It is therefore essential to a divine commission to teach other men, that the teachers themselves should be individually preserved from all error.

“This dilemma was not perceived in the primitive Church until after they had recognized the doctrine that the clergy exercised their functions upon a divine commission, and the expedient to which they resorted to sustain their assumption was to clam this infallibility for the Church as an assembly of clergymen consecrated to God, and whose deliberations as such it was assumed that the Holy Spirit would not only preserve from error, but that it would furthermore lead them to the discernment of all truth.

“But it is not enough that the Church, in the abstract, is supposed to be always under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, or in other words that it is infallible, as is maintained by the Catholics.  We contend, that if the clergy have a divine commission to teach, every ecclesiastic must be infallible, for otherwise their individual teaching may lead their hearers into all manner of error.  What does it signify that the Church abstractedly be infallible, when influential clergymen are the cause of leading thousands into heresy?  Arius was an ecclesiastic, Nestorius was a bishop, Eutychus and Pelagius were ecclesiastics, and yet by their preaching they induced thousands of men to adopt their peculiar opinions, which the greater portion of the clergy now consider to be heresies of the most dangerous kind.   To say that all these individuals ought to have submitted to the Church is to no purpose, for they did not submit, and thousands of men followed their teaching.

“If every clergyman is not infallible, it is perfectly nugatory to assert the existence of a divinely commissioned body of clergy, for we have no possible means of determining whether individual ecclesiastics are led by the Spirit of God or not.  The supposition that a majority of them when assembled in a council will be guided into infallibility by the Holy Spirit, is utterly absurd; for we have no promise of God concerning such assemblies, and our whole experience is sufficient to convince us that truth is not to be determined by majorities.  Our Savior and his disciples were a minority, Luther and the Reformers were a minority, and so with others since.  But the thing itself is self-evident, that we need not attempt to prove it. 

“It is therefore seemingly incredible that Christ could have contemplated the establishment of any organized body of clergy as possessing a divine commission to teach, for not only is no such doctrine taught in the Scriptures, but all the phenomena of ecclesiastical history are utterly irreconcilable to such a hypothesis.

“Thus, for instance, I defy the whole body of Christian ecclesiastics, Catholic and Protestant together, to tell us whether a differing reading of the Samaritan, the Hebrew, or the Septuagint, is the true reading.  I challenge them to tell us whether any disputed text is true Scripture or not, otherwise than as based upon the investigations of commentators and critics, who claim no inspiration for their labors.  Shall we then allow ecclesiastics to tell us they have a commission to expound the sense of the Scripture to us, when they cannot tell whether it is Scripture or not?

“If Christ had constituted his Church as an ecclesiastical corporation, we should have always found the clergy united in harmonious operation, and opposing an undivided front to the irreligious world.  Sects and heresies, therefore, ought to have originated only among laymen, or persons out of the clergy, whereas the very reverse is the case, for heresies and schisms have originated essentially with the clergy only.

“The slightest acquaintance with ecclesiastical history abundantly informs us, that in all times since the advent there has been a great amount of disputes and heresies among the clergy, which it has been impossible to control or counteract by any expedient that the rulers of the Church could adopt.  Councils or assemblies of clergymen have for centuries been working on this subject, but yet have never advanced any further in the disposition of the matter than to decide on the subject of controverted doctrines by a majority of votes.  But such action as this is preposterous; if clergymen had a divine commission, and consequently as such influenced by the Holy Spirit, there could be no differences of opinion among them.  Everywhere as individuals they would have inculcated the same principles of truth.  Hence the very fact of councils or assemblies of clergymen to determine what is true Christian doctrine, is ipso facto proof that they have not been authorized by Jehovah to teach mankind with authority.” – Vol 2. Pp. 155-158.

These arguments are conclusive enough against Protestants, who have only private judgment by which to determine the sense of the Holy Scriptures, although we as Catholics might demand of the author by what authority he interprets the saeculi of the Vulgate, or the tou aionos of the Greek, age, and restricts it to the lifetime of the Apostles.  The word perhaps may sometimes be translated age, but the word age itself signifies an indefinite period of time,  and its duration is not determinable by the word itself.  Nothing in the word restricts its meaning to the lifetime of the Apostles, or prevents us from understanding it to mean the whole period of time from the time when our Lord spoke to the end of the world, that is, what some have called the Messianic Age.  It may be so extended, and we should demand of the author something more than the authority of his private judgment to prove that it does not.  It might also, perhaps, be urged, that “the remarkable circumstance that the Apostles have not recognized the existence of any such corporation in any part of the New Testament,” is by no means certain.  As we read the new Testament, we find such corporation very distinctly recognized, and implied throughout.   But even if we did not, it would not disturb us, for we hold the Church to be prior to the New Testament, and that she received her commission, her doctrines and rules, before a word of the New Testament was written, as is evident from the New Testament itself.

The learned author concludes that our Lord could have established no such corporation, because, in warning his disciples against false teachers, he gave them no instructions by which the character of these false teachers was to be determined, but by judging of them according to “their fruits.”  A careful reader of the New Testament might doubt the accuracy of this statement, or at least be led to give to the word fruits a much more extensive meaning than the author gives it.  St. John gives us a criterion by which we may distinguish between true and false teachers: “We are of God.  He that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth us not.  By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.”  (1 John 4: 1)  Here, it might be urged, the criterion by which to distinguish between true and false teachers is the fact whether they do or do not gather to the Apostolic communion, and hear the voice of the Apostolic authority, that is, of the Church.

Perhaps the Catholic would not find the author’s objections to a divinely commissioned clergy absolutely unanswerable.  Certainly the corporation, if divinely instituted and commissioned, must be infallible in the teaching, and whatever it teaches or authorizes to be taught must be infallibly true; but it does not follow therefore necessarily, that every individual clergyman, in his individual capacity, must be infallible; for it is sufficient that he be infallible in what he teaches by authority of the body.  Whether he should be individually infallible or not was a matter for the Founder of the Church to settle according to his own good pleasure, and is not a matter that we can settle by a priori reasoning.  The body must be infallible, or else he who authorized it would become the accomplice of error, a teacher of false doctrine, which is not supposable for a moment.  The individual teacher must also be infallible, and is infallible, so long as he teaches what the body has authorized him to teach; but nothing prevents him from going beyond his instructions, and undertaking, if so disposed, to teach out of his own head.  The body survives, and is present by its infallible organs to correct him when he does so; and there is never any obligation resting on anyone to believe him, when he presumes to teach what he is not authorized to teach.  Our Lord may have wished to leave error and heresy possible with individuals in order to prove the faith and obedience of the faithful, while he made ample provision for the maintenance of the purity and integrity of his doctrine.  This we hold he has done by making the corporation in its corporate capacity  infallible, and by leaving it possible for individual members in their individual capacity, in which capacity they are not authorized teachers, to err.  There is not difficulty in conceiving the possibility of the infallibility of the corporation as a whole, acting officially, and the fallibility of its members, acting individually and unofficially.  The notion that truth is to be determined by a plurality of voices, is one which no Catholic ever entertains.  The infallibility we predicate of the Church is not predicated of human wisdom, sagacity, or virtue, but is by virtue of the supernatural assistance of the Holy Ghost.  This assistance is granted, not to individuals in their private character, but to the body as a body acting officially according to certain prescribed rules.  In a council the decision of the majority is infallible, if approved by the pope, not because it is the decision of the majority, but because the assistance of the Holy Ghost is granted to the majority, or because he chooses to make the majority rather than the minority his organ.  The ordinary infallible teacher in the Church is the Pope, who represents the whole Church, and possesses in himself the plentitude of the Apostolic authority, but the infallibility is official, not personal.

The other objections are not difficult for a Catholic to answer, but our present purpose is not to combat or refute the author.  We are considering his book, not in its bearing against us, but in its bearing against those Protestants who still retain some notions of the clergy, and profess to have a divinely appointed ministry of the Christian revelation.  We will therefore let the author speak still further for himself.

“This doctrine concerning the divine authority and functions of the ministers of the Gospel, was promulgated in Christendom long before the rise of the Bishop of Rome to universal authority, and of itself led inevitably to such a result.  For, as it was universally conceded, during the fourth and fifth centuries, that Christ had established the clergy as an ecclesiastical corporation under the superintendence of the Apostles, so they also inferred from certain passages of Scripture that Peter had been constituted the head of the Apostolic body; and consequently, when the Bishop of Rome claimed to be Peter’s successor, the doctrine of papal supremacy as the head of the whole Christian clergy as a divinely commissioned body of men was so consistent with such a constitution of things, that it ultimately prevailed throughout the whole Western Empire by the inherent strength of such inferences.

“Though the Protestants from the time of the Reformation have rejected the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome as the successor of the Apostle Peter, they appear to have never doubted that Christ constituted the Apostles an ecclesiastical corporation, with authority to ordain other persons as members of this body, and consequently that all ecclesiastical functions necessarily pertain to the ministers of the Gospel by the excess appointment of Christ, and cannot lawfully be exercised by any other than ecclesiastically ordained persons.  The Protestants therefore only differ essentially from the Church of Rome respecting the supremacy of the Pope, and in certain particulars concerning the powers of the bishops, or their identity in point of rank with presbyters.  I apprehend, however, there is a much more important point to be determined on the general subject than has hitherto been properly investigated; viz. is it an undoubted fact that Christ did institute the Apostles an ecclesiastical corporation?  The determination of this question involves the most serious consequences, for all the claims of the clergy as a body of men consecrated by a divine appointment to perform certain functions rests ultimately on the fact whether the Apostles themselves were a corporation; for unless they were so constituted, they could not convey corporate powers to persons who succeeded them in point of time.  Now every important passage that is quoted from the New Testament as implying commission, authority, or power to the clergy or ministers of the Gospel, has been deduced from words addressed expressly to the Apostles.  But no one has a right to apply to the clergy at large words spoken by Christ specially to his Apostles, unless they can also show that the Apostles were a corporation, and that, as such, they communicated the powers or authority they themselves had received.

“That Christ gave certain powers to his twelve Apostles as individuals, to commence the great work of proselyting mankind, is evident from the New Testament, but that he appointed them in any sense an ecclesiastical corporation, with powers to confer a corporate authority upon those they might ordain to the ministerial function, is a doctrine that we cannot admit to be taught in the Scripture.

“In the first place, there is not a passage in the New Testament that either speaks of or implies any corporate action of the Apostles as a distinct body.

“Secondly, that there could have been no organization of the Apostles as a corporation, is evident from the statement made by Paul, who expressly tells us (Gal. 1: 15, etc.) that, after his miraculous call the Apostleship, he held no conference whatever with those who were Apostles before him, but went as a mere individual into Arabia on the work of his ministry; and not until three years after did he go up to Jerusalem, where he conferred with Peter singly, and merely mentions having seen James only of all the other Apostles.

“Thirdly. Neither did the other Apostles know during these three years that Christ had appointed Paul an Apostle with them; for it is stated expressly, in Acts 9: 26,27, that when Paul first went up to Jerusalem, and “assayed to join himself with the disciples,” they were all afraid of him, not believing him to be even a convert to Christianity, until Barnabas brought him to the other Apostles, who could only have been Peter and James, as stated above, and then declared to them that the Lord Jesus had spoken to Paul, and that he had afterwards preached boldly in his name.  It seems incredible, therefore, that the Apostles were a corporation, when they did not know for three years so eminent a member of their body.

“A further series of arguments against the theory of an Apostolic corporation may be derived from the manifestly independent action of the several Apostles as so many different individuals.  Thus Paul tell us (Gal. 2. 2: 6-9), that fourteen years after his conversion, when he went up to Jerusalem, he only held a private discourse with some of the more eminent of the Apostles, concerning the doctrines he preached among the Gentiles, etc. He then adds, that when the other Apostles saw that the Gospel to the heathen was committed to him, as the Gospel of the Jews was to Peter (i.e. by the evident intention of Christ), they gave him the right hand of fellowship, etc., and then they severally departed on the work of their ministry as mere individuals unconnected with any corporate dependence on each other.

“In further support of this view of the individual action of the different Apostles, we remark that Paul in the greater number of his Epistles associates with himself in the address, Timothy, Sylvanus, or Sosthenes, who were his ordinary attendants on his missionary excursions.  In other Epistles he writes in his own name, and never uses any expression as implying the concurrent authority of an Apostolic corporation.  It is the same with Peter, James, and John; they each write as individuals only.  These facts are altogether inconsistent with the hypothesis that the Apostles constituted a corporation.

“But we can place our objections to the common notions on this subject in a still stronger light, by showing from the clearest inferences, that, notwithstanding the plausibility of the assumptions that have been inferred from Acts 1: 3. Etc., that Christ, neither at that time, nor on any other occasion, could have possibly given the Apostles any direct or explicit instructions, whereby they could have determined by corporate authority either the faith or practice of the general body of Christian believers.

“Thus, for instance, Christ could not have given them any instruction as to what order of things they were to establish among the Gentile nations, for it is abundantly clear that the Apostles did not even comprehend they were to preach to the heathen, until ten or eleven years after Christ’s ascension, when Peter had his vision and interview with Cornelius, as related in Acts 10, and for which intercourse with a Gentile he was actually censured by his Christian brethren (Acts 11: 3), until he justified himself by relating the whole circumstance, and the miraculous testimony of the Holy Spirit that ensued.

“As the Apostles were thus evidently without any express instructions concerning the Gentiles, so we can show it to have been the same case as regarded the Jewish people; for it is evident that Christ could not have taught the Apostles in positive terms that they were to dispense with the observance of the Mosaic institutions concerning circumcision, and the use of clean or unclean food; for if he had thus instructed them, they never would have held a conference twenty-two years after the ascension, to determine this matter among themselves.  (Acts 15)  Surely, if Christ had left them any systematic instructions respecting ecclesiastical institutions or observances, they would have said so at once, instead of making this subject a matter of debate upon which the sense of the whole church-membership was literally taken.

“A still stronger proof that Christ could not have given the Apostles any formal instruction as to any particular organization of the Christian Church, is evident in the fact, that, thirty years after the ascension, the Apostles an the whole Church at Jerusalem were unaware that the Mosaic institutions had been abrogated by the coming of Jesus Christ.  Paul in his individual capacity had correctly inferred this, but the others had not; for when he made his last visit to Jerusalem (Acts 21: 20), the ‘Apostle James and all the elders’ informed him that the Christian society there had heard that he (Paul) had taught the Jews among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, etc.  But, said they, as you perceive there ‘are many thousands of Jews that believe’ (i.e. who are Christians), ‘who are all zealous for the law.’ (i.e. for the observance of the law of Moses); therefore, to induce them to understand that the report they have heard concerning your teaching is unfounded, ‘and that thou thyself walkest orderly and keepest the law,’ now be at the expense of purifying four of our Christian brethren who have taken a (Nazarite) vow upon them according to the law of Moses, etc.

“From this statement it is abundantly clear that no constitution or organization of the Christian Church had been previously appointed by Christ, for had such been the case, it is utterly incredible that the Apostles, James, our Lord’s brother, and the whole body of Christians at Jerusalem, should persist in a zealous observance of the institutions of Moses, instead of adopting the system that our clergy assume Christ himself had appointed at least thirty years before this time.

“The notion, therefore, that Christ established a formal constitution for his Church, which was to be carried out into effectual operation by an organized clergy, possessing those peculiar ecclesiastical powers that the great body of professing Christians presume was conferred upon them, is totally irreconcilable with the statements made above; which shows the Apostles themselves were wholly uninstructed as to the extensive character of the Christian dispensation, beyond proclaiming to the world as mere witnesses what they had heard or seen respecting the personal ministry and history of Christ.  It therefore follows conclusively, that any communications made by Christ to the Apostles, whether before or after his resurrection, could only have been directed to the establishment in their minds of certain particulars concerning himself as being the Messiah, which they were to testify to mankind, as is indeed plainly intimated in Acts 1: 8, ‘Ye shall be witnesses unto me,’ etc., but which instruction was wholly unaccompanied by any special enactments or directions as to the mode by which they were to dispose of those who should be the converts of their future ministry.” – Vol 2. Pp. 161-165.

We should like to see a Protestant who rejects the Catholic Church, and therefore Catholic traditions, reply to this reasoning, and show us how, with the Bible alone, and no clue to its meaning but that furnished by grammar and lexicon, an honest and fair-minded inquirer can come to a more rational conclusion, unsound as we Catholics certainly know it to be.  This is a grave matter for Protestants.  Here is a writer of no mean ability, whose piety and learning they cannot question, who tells them plainly that, if they intend to be Bible Christians, they must give up even their church notions, and abandon, not only priests, but even divinely called and appointed ministers.  Even the vocation of the Protestant parsons is endangered, and they are proved to be more pretenders, on an authority which they hold to be final.  They have here a serious work to do to defend themselves.  And what is more, if they prove that there may be ministers of Christ, by proving, in opposition to Dr. McCulloh, that our Lord did institute a ministry for all time, they must then concede that they are not Christian ministers, because they are not Catholic priests.  Dr. McCulloh is cruel to the Protestant ministers.  They cannot be a divinely appointed ministry, if Christ instituted no ministry; and if he did institute a ministry, they are not his ministers, because the ministry he instituted, if any, is that of the Roman Catholic Church.  Here is a cruel dilemma for our poor Episcopalian and Presbyterian ministers, and one out of which there is, as far as we can see, no logical escape for them.

The author having established, as he supposes, that the commonly received doctrine of a “Holy Catholic Church” founded by Christ, and to be protected by him till the end of time, is a delusion, proceeds to sketch the rise and progress of what he regards as the errors of Catholicity, under the general heads of Developments of the Roman Empire, and Developments of Christianity under the Papacy.  Of what he advances under these two heads we have nothing more to say at present, than that he detects all the tendencies which have developed in the Papal Church at so early a date as the second century, when many of those who had been instructed by the Apostles were still living, and he is quite sure that those who accept the Church as it was in the second, third, and fourth centuries, will never be able to justify their dissent from the Roman catholic Church in the sixteenth century.  This was our opinion as a Protestant, only we went farther and included also the first century, for we felt that we could not denounce the Papal Church as false and corrupt without charging the Apostles themselves with grossly erroneous church views.  It is absurd to suppose that the early Christians, instructed by the Apostles themselves and their immediate successors, could have introduced a church theory and organization wholly repugnant to that which they had received from the Apostles.  If we concede the Catholic tendencies of the Church in the second century, and grant the Catholic Church to be their legitimate development, we must, as Dr. Newman has unanswerably proved, concede them to the first, and then either concede the Catholic to be the Apostolic Church, or stoutly maintain that the Apostles themselves misapprehended the teachings of their Divine Master, and founded an institution directly opposed to what he intended.  We of course do not admit the theory of development, either as advocated by Dr. Newman or as set forth by our author, for in her essential constitution and doctrine we hold the Church was complete from the commencement, and the only development there has been or could be is extrinsic, or development by way of external application or realization.  But Dr. Newman has certainly proved unanswerably, as against those Protestants who contend that what they call the Papal Church is a corruption of the primitive Christianity, that, if you concede it to be the legitimate development of the principles and tendencies of the Church in any subsequent age, you must concede it to be the legitimate development of the principles and tendencies of the foregoing age, and therefore in the end that it is really and truly Apostolic.  Dr. McCulloh cannot concede that the Church is the development of the principles and tendencies of the Christian community in the second century, and deny its legitimacy, without arraigning the Apostles themselves, and perhaps not without even calling in question the infallibility of the Divine Founder of our religion.  The fact is, the Papistic tendencies manifest themselves quite too early to suit even Dr. McCulloh’s purpose.  He can point to no moment of history when the Christian Church did not recognize a body of divinely appointed teachers, ordained and commissioned by the authority of a continuous corporation of teachers, reaching back to the Apostles, under the presidency of Peter.  It was always the sentiment of the Christian community, that no one could take upon himself the Christian community, that no one could take upon himself the Christian ministry, unless called of God as was Aaron.  Orders and mission were at the earliest date deemed essential, and at no moment do we find that community regarding it as an error to suppose that our Lord appointed an authoritative ministry of his word, or that a man was free to take upon himself this ministry by virtue of a mere internal call, without the ordination and commission of the regular external authority.  The doctrine as to church organization contended for by our author is not laid down in the New Testament, even if it be granted that it does not expressly teach the opposite doctrine; and it certainly never has been either in theory or in practice that of the Church, at any period of her history.

This undeniable fact compels Dr. McCulloh, if he insists in regarding our Church as a corruption, to maintain that even the Apostles themselves corrupted the doctrine and intentions of their Master.  If he maintains that, he is afloat, and must abandon Christianity itself, for he knows nothing of our Lord and his doctrines but what he derives through his Apostles.  If they erred, if they corrupted his doctrine, intentionally, or unintentionally, he has no certain knowledge on the subject, and no means whatever, with or without the Bible, of determining what was or was not the real doctrine of our Lord.  We saw and felt this during our Protestant days, and hence the question with us was, first, Church or No Church, and then, the Roman Catholic Church or No Christianity.  We commenced our career as a Protestant minister on the ground occupied by our author; We denied that our Lord had instituted any church at all, or had instituted ant divinely commissioned ministry of his word, to be perpetuated as a corporation of divinely commissioned pastors and teachers.  We took thus the ground of No-churchism, and when we used the word Church, we meant by it only a voluntary association for mutual improvement and edification, organized and governed in such manner as its members judged best.  But we soon found that, if we went thus far, we must go farther, for the reasoning by which we had been led to deny the Church in the Catholic sense compelled us to deny the infallibility of the Apostles and the inspiration of the Scriptures, that is, to deny Christianity itself as a supernaturally revealed religion.  If, to escape the conclusion, we undertook to assert a divinely commissioned ministry, or proper Church principles, we could not, without violence to the clearest deductions of logic and to the best attested facts of history, stop short of the Roman Catholic Church.  It was then, not only either Rome or No Church, but either Rome or no Christianity.  And let us say what we will, the real conviction of the great mass of the intelligent men of our age is the same.  Some few, like our Puseyite and Mercersburg friends, try to reconcile church ideas with the rejection of Rome, or Christianity with the denial of Catholicity, but their success is very slight.  The great body of men who think, really, though sometimes half unconsciously, identify Christianity and Catholicity, and though perhaps wishing there were a religion they could embrace, yet find themselves without any religious belief at all. 

But our intention was not to refute Dr. McCulloh’s doctrine.  What he says of the “Developments of Christianity under the Papacy” shows him to be but slightly versed in ecclesiastical history, and to have studied it, so far as he has studied it at all, in very unreliable works.  In treating what he calls the “Developments of Christianity under Protestantism,” he is less unsuccessful, and deserves to be read by every Protestant.  We let him speak again for himself.

“The common belief of Protestants is, that Luther, Calvin, and other Reformers, as being raised up by the providence of God to effect the Reformation, did, under the influences of his Spirit, republish the true and undoubted principles of Christian truth, so that those who follow their doctrinal expositions in faithful sincerity  shall certainly attain to the everlasting salvation offered in the Gospel.

“But however grateful such belief may be to the respective followers of Luther and Calvin, the fact of their having been guided by the influences of the Holy Spirit in promulgating the absolute principles of Christian truth is met with the formidable objection, that these eminent Reformers did not advocate a common system of Christian doctrine.  Since this fact is notorious, it is impossible we can admit the Holy Spirit acted upon them to any such end, for if it had, then certainly Luther, Zwingle, and Calvin would have harmonized entirely in their expositions.

“But so little did Luther or Calvin comprehend the amount of corruptions existing in the Church, that they never contemplated doing any thing further than purifying it from the corruptions supposed to have been introduced by Papal authority.  These Reformers never doubted that a Holy Catholic Church had been instituted by Christ, which under ecclesiastical ministrations was to endure until the ending of the world.  Hence, as being completely bewildered with this ancient corruption of Christianity, they thought their work would be perfected if they could put the church into the condition she was before the domination of the Popes, or, before the fifth or sixth centuries after Christ.  They therefore adhered to all the dogmata and fundamentals of theological belief taught by the Church prior to those times, with as much reverence as the Catholics, and only differed from them by having taken a stand upon the ground, that the Bishop of Rome, or Pope, had usurped his authority in the Church after the seventh century, through which means he had introduced great abuses and corruptions, and that a reformation, i.e. a purification of the Church, was now necessary, in order to remove all those objectionable doctrines, institutions, or practices, that had ensued through Papal usurpation.  The Reformers therefore considered themselves engaged only in the laudable work of purifying the Holy Catholic Church from any blemishes that had been unjustifiably introduced into her divine organization after the lapse of five or six centuries.” Vol. II. Pp. 381, 382

Here, according to the author, was the fundamental error of Protestantism.  It retained the conception of the Holy Catholic Church.

“As the action of the various ecclesiastics who led the Reformation was thus individual and independent of each other, the necessary consequence was, that some of them went much further than others in their reforms, and dissensions immediately ensued between them as to the propriety of the courses they had taken.  Others, again, began to doubt, and then to teach some modification of those doctrines of the Church which had previously been received as Christian truths by the Reformers as well as the Catholics.  These conflicting opinions soon gave rise to the formation of parties, characterized by certain peculiarities of opinion that is some instances were almost as odious to other portions of the Reformers, as even the ancient doctrines of the Catholic Church.  Thus Luther and Carlostadt soon assumed a hostile position to each other respecting certain particulars of observance and doctrines, while Zwingle’s opinion concerning the Lord’s Supper so wholly alienated Luther from him and his followers, than an entire separation ultimately took place between them.  Infant baptism, which both Luther and Zwingle regarded as an institution of Christ, was utterly rejected by a large number of persons who adopted the principles of the Reformation, and who would have constituted a party among the Reformers fully as powerful as either the followers of Luther or Zwingle, had not the friends of the Reformation been frightened by the proceeding of a sect, who, though without any connection between their insane conduct and the question of infant baptism, had very early filled Europe with dread and aversion to the very name of Baptists.

“All these various causes of distraction arose among the first Reformers in consequence of their adhering to the doctrine of a Holy Catholic Church, which they considered had embodied in itself whatever had been taught by Christ or the Apostles.  They indeed also taught that the obligations of Christianity were to be ascertained only from the Scripture, and that the consciences of men owed no allegiance on religious subjects to either Popes or Councils.   But then they unfortunately did not discern that they themselves had acquired all their theological notions through Popes and Councils, and that what is to be regarded as having been taught in the Scriptures are only those particulars that have been distinctly announced to the consciences of mankind as matters of express revelation, and that inferences or deductions from incidental passages of Scripture are of no importance or obligation whatever. 

“Hence, though the Protestant Reformers rejected whatever doctrine, institution, or practice they supposed had been introduced into the Church through Papal usurpation, yet under the delusion that the Holy Catholic Church was an institution of Christ, they gave full credence to any doctrine, institution, or practice of Christianity, that had been recognized in the Church in the ages preceding the domination of the Bishops of Rome over Christendom.  That they could fall into such delusion seems wonderful, since every reader of ecclesiastical history ought to have been aware, that it was only from the corruption of Christianity in a preceding age, that the usurpation of the Bishops of Rome could have taken place at all; for the Popes only attained to their position through the power of opinion, although they might be sustained in that position by the civil arm after their spiritual authority had become recognized.

“But in consequence of this gross oversight, when the Reformers first undertook, after their secession from the Church of Rome, to draw up expositions of Christian doctrine and institutions, as exhibiting to the world what they taught, or which were to serve as guidance and instructions to their followers; instead of constructing these formularies upon the simplicity of the teachings set forth in the New Testament, the Reformers allowed themselves to be led astray by the authority of Athanasius, Augustine, and others, whom they regarded as the champions of Christian orthodoxy, and correct exponents of the doctrines taught by the Apostles.  Thus the Reformers threw Christianity into systematic forms based upon those presumptuous views of the nature, attributes, or providence of Jehovah, that had been advocated by the earlier Fathers in their doctrines concerning the Trinity, Original Sin, Preventing Grace, the Holy Catholic Church, the power of the sacraments in conferring grace, etc., which were wholly irreconcilable with the simplicity of things as inculcated by the Apostles in the New Testament. Their conduct in this respect was still more inexcusable, since a brief examination of the earlier Fathers ought to have convinced the Reformers, that it was impossible to restrict their testimony to any consistent exposition contrary to the Romish faith; for these very Fathers were all of them quoted by the Catholics to prove the truth of the doctrines advocated by them.  This egregious mistake concerning the value of the writings of the Fathers has been very slowly perceived by Protestants, for even at this day they are absurdly quoted in partial extracts against Romish theology, whereas there are fully thrice as many other passages in their works that oppose any Protestant interpretation.  The truth is, the Fathers of the second, third, and fourth centuries lived during the earlier periods of Christian corruption, and hence, before it attained its consummation, their testimony exhibits the works of a state of transition, whose tendency to what was afterwards fully elaborated in the doctrines and institutions of the Roman Catholic Church cannot be mistaken by any candid reader of modern times.

“As we have already shown what was the doctrine of the Catholic Church concerning the fundamental truths of Christianity, the priesthood, and the sacraments, at the time of the outbreak of the Reformation; so, when the Reformers seceded from the Catholic Church, these particulars, at least in theory, were still impressed on their minds, however much they considered them to have been vitiated by Papal influences during their long domination over the Christian world.  When they, therefore, undertook to perfect the Reformation by the correction of preceding abuses and corruptions, two plans of operations were suggested to them.  Luther, and the large majority of his followers, were in favor of retaining every part of the old Catholic doctrine and institutions that were not contradictory to the Scriptures.  Zwingle, on the contrary, in the true spirit of Christianity, contended that the Reformation should be effected by rejecting every portion of the doctrine, institution, and practice of the Catholic Church, that was not expressly sustained by Scriptural authority.” – Vol. II. Pp. 382-385.

The fact is, according to the author, Protestantism has always been too Popish, and also the slave of the civil power.

“In those countries where Protestantism was firmly rooted, the only alternative of kings and nobles was to obtain the control of the Protestant churches, so as to prevent any further expansion of the Protestant opinions.  This measure was accomplished very adroitly with the concurrence of the Protestants themselves, by taking either the adherents of Luther and Calvin under royal protection, according as they were most numerous or powerful, and then most rigidly prohibiting any one from preaching any other doctrines than those expressly recognized by these celebrated Reformers.  If the king was a Lutheran, he required all the ministers and people of his dominion to give a solemn adhesion to the Augsburg Confession.  If he was a Calvinist, they were required to give their entire assent to the doctrines contained in Calvin’s Institutes.  To all such clergymen small stipends, protection, and patronage were exclusively extended, to the great satisfaction of both ministers and people of the favored denomination, who thus say their theological opponents either silenced or forced to leave the country.  Even the pious and devout rejoiced in such a condition of things, in which they thought they saw the ancient prophecy fulfilled (Isaiah 49: 23) in which kings had become nursing fathers to the Church. 

“Under these delusive influences, National Churches were established in the several Protestant governments of Europe, and the Reformation was thus arrested and stereotyped in the imperfect attempts of the earliest Reformers to purify Christianity from the corruptions that had continually accumulated on it from the very first century after Christ, and which still preserve, though with diminished importance, a large amount of some of the most presumptuous doctrines of the Romish faith.” Vol. II. P. 390

The author certainly understands perfectly well that Protestantism in its essential spirit can allow no authority in matters of religion, and we gather from his book that he is sufficiently logical to deny, with the denial of the Church, all dogmatic Christianity.  All belief as distinguished from science or knowledge is assent on authority, and the moment that all authority to dogmatize is denied, you must, to be consistent, deny all dogmas, and therefore all belief properly so called.  In so far as you reject the Holy Catholic Church, you necessarily reject all Christian doctrines.  Doctrines imply a teacher, and if there is no teacher, there can be no doctrine.  Hence, in rejecting the divinely appointed ministry, Dr. McCulloh not obscurely rejects all Christian belief, and resolves Christianity into mere sentiment or vague opinion, which no one is bound, under pain of making God a liar, to believe.  This is in accordance with what is at present the manifest tendency of Protestantism throughout the world.  The Gospel is supposed to contain no system of doctrines; indeed, not to have been addressed to the understanding at all, but to the heart, to the affections only, and to be not dogma, but a spirit, an influence, which may coalesce with any doctrine, and effect its purpose even without any doctrine at all.  Protestantism demands no credo, and considers it anti-Christian to insist on any articles of faith.  This is as it should be.  Because, denying that our Lord instituted a ministry of his word, or that he provided for the infallible preservation and teaching of any articles of faith, it is perfectly consistent and in character to conclude that he made no belief in such articles necessary.

It would be well, however, for our Protestant friends to bear in mind, that our Lord addressed his Gospel to man such as he is, and in it made provision for his actual wants.  The Gospel is unquestionably addressed to the heart, and a mere intellectual assent to its truths is by no means sufficient.  A belief which is not perfected by love will by no means suffice for salvation.  But the heart addressed by the Gospel is not the mere sensitive heart; it is the rational heart, which moves only as enlightened by the understanding.  The Gospel, to meet even its wants, must illumine the understanding as well as move the affections.  It is spirit, it is influence; it is also doctrine and precept.  The simple intellectual contemplation of the doctrine or the precept does not of course generate the spirit or the influence, as Rationalists would have us believe.  This is done through the medium of the Sacraments, received with a believing heart.  So without word, the doctrine, the spirit of the influence is not obtained, and consequently the tendency to reject Christianity as addressed to the understanding is equally a tendency to reject it as a spirit or an influence intended to operate upon the heart.

Yet we see no help for Protestantism.  It must reject all authoritative teaching, or belie its own nature, and to reject all authoritative teaching, or belie its own nature, and to reject all authoritative teaching is to reject Christianity as doctrine, therefore all articles and dogmas of faith as such.  To do this is in its necessary effect to reject the whole Gospel, or at least to render it a matter of no importance.  The Reformers, we may well believe, did not see whither they tended, but it is clear today that the movement was essentially a movement in behalf of the laity against the clergy, and involved as its vital principle the rejection of the priesthood, and the reduction of the sacerdotal order to the level of the laical.  Misinterpreting a text of the New Testament, it asserted all Christians to be kings and priests; that is, contended that under the Gospel there can be legitimately kings and priests only in the sense in which every believer is a king and priest, which was, as we saw practically verified in the Anabaptists, those true and consistent Protestants, at once the rejection of the Church and the State, or civil society, and the introduction of absolute individualism, or pure anarchy, both civil and spiritual.  The practical submission of Protestants to their ministers and their civil rulers has always been an inconsequence in their system, and hence they always look upon all authority as of the nature of despotism or tyranny, and, as far as it goes, at war with liberty.  Their great argument against our Church is not that her doctrine is false, but that she professes to teach by authority, and therefore enslaves and brutalizes the mind.  They look upon Catholics as slaves, deprived of all mental freedom, because we are bound to believe what she teaches.  This is because they cannot understand how liberty and authority can be harmonized, or how what is assumed by the one is not so much taken from the other.  How, then, can they recognize a divinely constituted Church, commissioned to teach and govern them in all things pertaining to their salvation?  The moment they admit the conception of such a Church, or recognize the least regularly transmitted authority in their ministers, they must either deny logic or become Catholics.  So the real question for them is always Catholicity or No Church and no clergy, and this question is virtually the question, Catholicity or No Christianity, and therefore no religion.