"The Errors and Superstitions of the Church of Rome: A Dudleian Lecture delivered at Harvard," 1853
The Errors and Superstitions of the Church of Rome
A man by the name of Paul Dudley, we know not how many years since, left a fund to Harvard College, for the establishment of a Lecture, to be delivered annually, we believe, in support of natural and revealed religion, and against infidelity, prelacy, and papacy. Consequently, and in four years we are treated to a lecture against the Church of Rome. This year the lecturer was Dr. Burnap, of Baltimore, a literary man of some pretensions, a passable scholar, and, as far as we have heard, a very respectable gentleman, belonging to the extreme Right, as Mr. Parker belongs to the extreme Left, of the American Unitarians.
We have read Dr. Burnap’s Lecture with some attention, but we do not find that it rises above the level of mediocrity. It contains nothing novel of striking, and is remarkable neither for the depth of its views not the clearness, force, and relevancy of its reasoning. It is an hour’s public talk of a polished gentile, of very moderate abilities, on a subject of which he knows nothing, not even so much as to suspect his own ignorance, and is as entertaining and as instructive as we can reasonably expect such talk to be. The author’s self-complacency is, upon the whole, rather amusing, and his naivete is charming. Many a man has lectured against the Catholic Church, who has shown himself as weak, and far less polite and good-natured, and the ablest of those who have sought to immortalize themselves like him of old who fired the temple of Ephesus, have seldom done much better. He is from the nastiness of Leahy and Giustiniani, and the vulgarity and malignity of Achilli and Gavazzi, and not much inferior to those anti-popery celebrities and pets of Evangelical saints in the appositeness and cogency of his reasoning.
After and introduction of some length, in which he manifests considerable alarm at the rapid spread of catholicity in this country, the lecturer proceeds to his subject, and says:-
“It is my purpose today to address you on three fundamental errors of the Church of Rome;- in the first place, its ultra-conservatism; in the second place, its corporate spirit; and in the third place, its unfriendliness to the diffusion of the Sacred Scriptures.
“Let it be understood, however, that in handling these topics I shall abstain from every thing sectarian and personal. Accustomed to associate in the daily intercourse of life, for more than a quarter of a century, with the members of the Catholic communion, I should be false to truth and to the courtesies of Christian charity, were I to indulge in any disparagement of the personal or Christian character of the disciples of that faith. A descendant of the Pilgrims has much to learn in this respect, when he leaves the keen atmosphere of Protestant New England. He will be surprised to find that all good men possess a common Christianity; that dogmas which he has been taught to denounce as pernicious and deride as absurd may abide for a lifetime in the mind quiescent and innoxious; that in the Catholic mind, more perhaps than any other, dogmas are laid aside to slumber, and really pervert the mind less than in some Protestant denominations, and the man is left to the guidance of the good impulses and rational principles of human nature. At any rate, in the spirit of reverence and a warm and active benevolence he will find some of the brightest examples in the Catholic Church. Having made these concessions, demanded by truth and experience, I proceed with the greater freedom to discuss what I deem the errors of our brethren of the Chrisitan household in that communion.” – pp. 49, 50.
We must leave the author to define, when he finds himself at leisure, what he means by this “common Christianity” of which he speaks with so much unction, and which we suppose is every thing in general and nothing in particular, and pass to the consideration of his proofs and illustrations of the three fundamental errors which he lays to the charge of our Church.
The first fundamental error is ultra-conservatism. Dr. Burnap regards it as a fundamental error, not that the Church is conservative, but that she is ultra-conservative, that is, more than conservative, or conservative overmuch. A Unitarian of the right could not denounce conservatism altogether, for if he should, how could he complain of Theodore Parker? And he cannot commend conservatism without some qualification, for if he should, how could he vindicate his Unitarianism? Up to a certain point he can be conservative, but beyond that point he must be a radical, and favor the rejection of the old and the introduction of the new. The error of the Church, then, is not conservatism, but ultraism. The first thing to be settled is, therefore, the limits of conservatism, or the point up to which conservatism is conservatism, and beyond which it is ultraism, or an excess of conservatism; for before you can say what is the error on a given subject, you must know what on that subject is the truth. Now where is the point? Or where does the conservatism end and the ultraism begin? By what authority does Dr. Burnap determine the point? His own? But, salva reverentia sua, that does not suffice. Mr. Parker may differ with him, and contend that it should be placed much farther forward; and why is the authority of Dr. Burnap, the Unitarian minister of Baltimore, to be taken as paramount to that of Mr. Theodore Parker, a Unitarian minister of Boston? “Mr. Parker is an infidel, and goes too far.” So you say. But he denies it, and says you are an old fogie, and do not go far enough. Dr. Pusey, again, says that you yourself are an infidel, and go too far; you deny it, and say he is an old fogie, and does not go far enough. Why are you good authority against Mr. Parker, and Dr. Pusey not so against you? Or why is Mr. Parker’s authority less against you, than yours against Dr. Pusey? You tell us that the doctrine of the Trinity is an error, “one of the first aberrations of the Church in point of time,” and therefore must hold that to preserve it is ultra-conservatism. But here the whole Trinitarian world rises up and flatly contradicts you. Who is to decide between you? You say our Church is ultra-conservative. This is your assertion. She denies it, and you must be aware that, at the very lowest, her denial is as good as your assertion. The Catholic, man to man, is, at worst, the equal of the Protestant. You, an individual Protestant, say the Catholic Church is excessively conservative; I, an individual Catholic, say she is not. I am equal to you, and therefore my denial reduces your assertion to zero, and you are just as far advanced as you were before you opened your mouth, and no farther.
Here is a grave difficulty. Before Dr. Burnap can charge the Church with being ultra-conservative, he must determine what is the point at which the conservatism ends and the ultraism begins. This must be a fixed point, for if it be not, he alleges nothing against the Church but his own opinions, which is of no moment. But we cannot see how he can determine this point. We are willing to grant that the ultra-conservatism, if the thing is conceivable, is an error, for there may be error of excess as well as of defect; we concede, also, that if the Church has pushed her conservatism to excess, she has erred even fundamentally, and should be rejected; but the author should recollect that it is his business to prove that she has done so, and that he cannot possibly prove this before having settled the question as to the point at which conservatism must stop,- the point at which he may say, Thus far and no farther; for till he has done that, he cannot say what is ultra or what is not, and has no fixed criterion by which to distinguish between conservatism and ultraism. But the difficulty is, he has nothing but his private opinion by which to settle that point, and his private opinion is neutralized, not only by the teaching of the Church, which even as her private opinion is worth as much as his, but by the private opinion of his Protestant brother Parker on the one hand, and of his Protestant brother Pusey on the other. The only way he could possibly settle it would be by an appeal to a catholic authority, admitted alike by Catholics and non-Catholics; but such an authority he does not appeal to, and cannot, because there is for him no such authority.
We suppose that it must be conceded on all hands that the Church, sine the author fully grants that she was the Church of Christ and for long ages the only Church of Christ, had from the beginning the right and the duty to preserve her own existence and the truth committed to her charge. To do this, we may suppose, it will be granted is only legitimate conservatism, and if the Church has done this, and only this, she cannot justly be accused of ultraism. To sustain this charge, then, the author must prove that she has done something more. But how will he do it? To do it, he must know what she was as to her own existence in the beginning, and what, and precisely what, was the deposit of truth which she received. Does he know this? Has he any authority by which he can say infallibly what she was and what she received? Of course not. He has only his conjectures and opinions, and the conjectures and private opinions of others as liable to err, perhaps, as himself. Does he say the Church has become changed, and is no longer what she was? Then his charge is not, that she is ultra-conservative, but that she has not been conservative enough. Does he say, as in fact he does, that she has deviated from the truth, and in her progress through ages of ignorance and barbarism has fallen into many aberrations? The charge, again, is not that of being ultra-conservatism, but that of not having been even conservative. If he says she remains what she was, and carefully preserves without change or alteration, addition or diminution, the deposit which she received, then he must concede that she is simply conservative, and no ultra, unless he would have her abdicate herself, abandon the truth, and become the patroness of error.
The trouble we have with Dr. Burnap is, that he does not keep to his thesis, that he lays down one thesis and speaks to several others. The whole subject is confused in his head, and equally confused in his speech. We had the right to expect, when she announced his subject to be “the errors and superstitions of the Church of Rome,” that he would specify those errors and superstitions, and proceed to prove them. When he charged her with these fundamental errors, of which the first is ultra-conservatism, what more reasonable than to suppose that he would undertake to establish them? But he does no such thing. He includes all her supposed errors and superstitions under the three heads, and then undertakes to show how she came to fall into them, to excuse her for having patronized them for fifteen hundred years, and to condemn her for holding them now, or not taking sides with the Reformation, as he develops it. In other words, he takes for granted the errors and superstitions which he should have proved, and then undertakes to say how for the Church should or should not be blamed for them. He takes for his text the words of St. Paul, Acts 17, 30: “And the times of this ignorance God winked at, but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent”; or, rather, “And God indeed having overlooked the times of this ignorance, now declareth to men, that all should everywhere do penance.” From this text he proceeds to argue that the Church, down to the end of the Middle Ages, to the revival of Greek literature, and the holding of the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century, when she was the only Church, and contained all the Christianity there was in the world, should not be blamed for her errors and superstitions, for they belonged to the times, and not to her. She did what she could to avoid them, and to train up the world in the principles of the Gospel; but the times were too hard for her. The Jews could hardly be expected to pass over to her “without carrying their old opinions, usages, and prejudices with them into a religion cognate and analogous to their own,” and much more difficult was it for the Pagan, on becoming Christian, to “abandon his old religion at once, with all its opinions, usages, and associations.” (p. 51) “Accustomed to worship a variety of deities, the Pagans felt no incongruity in exalting Christ and the holy Ghost into the rank of divinities, and making them participants in the glories of the Godhead. Accustomed to an iron rule and a rigid subordination in the civil organization of the Roman empire, the Church, when it grew up as an outward institution, was formed by the Roman spirit upon the same model, and the same tendency to centralization, to conquest, and domination, which had placed the Caesars on the throne of universal empire, afterwards stretched the scepter of the Pope over the civilized world.” The confessional grew out of the necessities of the times, “but that it was adopted with dishonest purposes is highly improbable.” (p. 52) So of asceticism, “originating in the philosophical doctrine of the impurity of matter, it found some countenance in the Jewish tradition of the Fall.”
“The influence of all these causes upon Christianity, its doctrines, its outward form and its mode of administration, was inevitable. Nothing but a perpetual miracle could have prevented it. ‘The light shone in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.’ And they exonerate in equal measure the Catholic Church, that is, the Christian Church, the only Church which then existed, from the charge of intentional and deliberate wrong.” – p. 53
All this is no doubt very ingenuous and very liberal, and yet is nothing to the purpose. Before the author undertook to write an apology for the errors and superstitions of the Church from the Apostles down to the sixteenth century, he should have specified them, and proved that they really are errors and superstitions, and that she adopted them. We do not thank him for his apology; for if our Church is what she professes to be, she needs no apology; is she is not, she deserves none. It may be very Protestant to apologize for an erroneous and superstitious Church, but it is not very Catholic. If the Church can fall into error and superstition, she is an imposition upon mankind, a temptation, and a snare, the synagogue of Satan, not the Church of God, and whoever undertakes to defend her only condemns himself. The whole theory of the author is a baseless fabric, and, instead of saying anything for the Church of the Dark Ages, only exposes him to ridicule for his ignorance of facts, and to grave censure for the loose and immoral principles he assumes. Let him without going any further prove that the Church has at any period of her existence taught or countenanced error or superstition, and he may be assured that no Catholic will any longer uphold her. But he must prove this, not take it for granted, or imagine that the attempt to account for her errors and superstitions will be accepted as proof that she has errors and superstitions. In Paul Dudley’s day this might have passed, but will not pass in ours. Then a Protestant could have it all his own way in New England, and could say what he pleased against the Catholic Church, without any fear of being called to an account or required to substantiate his charges. The law had taken care that the Papist should remain silent. But it is not so now. The Catholic is here to speak for himself, and he will not suffer his religion to be calumniated without at least contradicting the calumniator.
But though the Church is excusable for her errors and superstitions during the ages of ignorance and barbarism which preceded the Reformation, she is not now. Thus the author continues:-
“After the darkness of the Middle Ages had passed, after the revival of learning, the invention of printing, and the general diffusion of knowledge over Europe, a totally different state of things took place. That advancing light revealed great errors in doctrines which had long been innocently held, great abuses of administration, which a more sensitive conscience could no longer tolerate; and a ritual adapted to a rude and sensuous age was no longer edifying to an intellectual and refined one. The whole world became clamorous for reform. Beginning with a few brave and clear-sighted spirits, the voice of remonstrance spread among the multitude, it rose and swelled, till it became as the sound of many waters. And the burden of their cry was, Reform. ‘The times of this ignorance God winked at, but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent.’
“The Church was at length aroused, and assembled to take order on the altered condition of the world. At the Council of Trent, commenced in the year 1545, the Catholic Church took her final ground and decided her destiny. She had arrived at the parting of the ways, and her path was to choose once and for ever. The question was distinctly put to her, Would she belong to the future or to the past? Would she join the march of progress, or throw her whole weight against the cause of human advancement? She deliberately chose the latter alternative. She cast in her lot with the past, and made it henceforth to be her interest, and, as she conceived, her duty, to arrest and war against the progress of the human race. From that hour her relation to mankind was completely reversed, and every thing with her has gone wrong. Up to that hour she had been the best friend that humanity had ever had. She had renovated the whole face of the civilized world. She had been the conservator of every thing valuable in the ancient civilization, which had survived the wreck of the Roman Empire. She had been the pioneer in all generous enterprises for the amelioration of the condition of the human race. She had been a patient laborer in the great field of human improvement. But when she had contributed to reform every thing else, she refused to reform herself. As a church, as association of fallible men, she was human, and of course liable to err; but she chose to assume the attribute of infallibility. Religion and the Bible are divine and unchangeable. But theology is human, a science deduced by fallible human reason form the Bible, the phenomena of man and the universe. It is a human production, and therefore capable of revision, and requiring amendment form age to age. But the Church of Rome claims for her theology an absolute infallibility. She demands, therefore, that it should be held immutable, and be placed on the same level with the Sacred Scriptures themselves.” – pp. 53, 54.
The argument here, if argument there be, is that the Church, though excusable, when the world knew no better, for her errors and superstitions, is inexcusable now, when the age of light has come, for still holding on to them, and not allowing them to be put away. She is determined to remain, and in the Council of Trent obliged herself to remain, through all coming time, what she was through the Middle Ages, and therefore she is ultra-conservative. But suppose she did in the Council of Trent bind herself to remain unchanged, to wear the same form she had always worn, to teach the same doctrines she had always taught, and to observe the same ritual she had always observed, how does that prove she is ultra-conservative. The author has not proved, he has only assumed, that prior to that Council she had erred in doctrine or practice. And if she had not erred, the obligation she then took- although everybody knows that it was no new obligation- only bound her to be conservative, which the author concedes she ought to be. In 1545, the Church, according to the author, “had arrived at the parting of the ways, and her path was to choose once and for ever. The question was distinctly put to her, Would she belong to the future or to the past? Would she join the march of progress, or throw her whole weight against the cause of human advancement? She deliberately chose the latter alternative.” (p. 53) If she did, and it was something she had not done before, she innovated, and the author’s charge of ultra-conservatism is ill laid. But is this certain? It is certain the Church waited till 1545 to choose her path once and forever? It is certain, again, the side she took was against progress, against the cause of human advancement? This needs to be proved, not simply assumed. The author concedes that prior to 1545 the Church had been on the side of progress, and “the best friend that humanity had ever had. She had renovated the whole face of the civilized world. She had been the conservator of every thing valuable in the ancient civilization, which had survived the wreck of the Roman Empire. She had been the pioneer in all generous enterprises for he amelioration of the condition of the human race. She had been a patient laborer in the great field of human improvement.” The Church is always the same. It is certain that she chose in 1545 no new path, underwent no change, and the precise complaint the author brings against her is that she did not, would not change. It would seem, then, even according to his own showing, that she did not deliberately take her stand against progress, and throw her whole weight against the cause of human advancement; but continued on the course she had always pursued, and which for fifteen hundred years had proved so eminently successful in their favor. May it not be that the Reformers were the party in the wrong, and that the Church condemned them, and refused to accept the path they indicated, because it was the path, not of progress, but of destruction, because it would conduct away from God and heaven, and undo all that she, with so much labor, patience, and suffering, at the cost of so many sacrifices, for fifteen hundred years, had effected for the human race? This view of the case is very conceivable, and is the more natural inference from the important concessions which the force of truth has wring from the author. What has the author to oppose to it? His opinion? But what is that worth? His opinion is at least contradicted by our opinion, and we should like to know why his opinion on the subject is of more weight than ours?
“But when she had contributed to reform every thing else, she refused to reform herself.” If the Church had done, and was doing up to that hour, all the author asserts, what need had she of reforming herself? How does the author know that she needed reforming? Or how can he say that she was not right in refusing to reform herself, and that, if she contributed to reform every thing else, she did not contribute to all the reformation that was required? “As a Church, as an association of fallible men, she was human, and of course liable to err; but she chose to assume the attribute of infallibility.” But certainly not then for the first time, dear Doctor. She assumed that attribute in the sixteenth century no more than she had assumed it in the fourteenth, the twelfth, the ninth, the fourth, the second, or the first. Rightly or wrongly, she had always claimed that attribute, and claimed it just as distinctly, and acted on the assumption that she possessed it just as decidedly, when she was aiding, according to the author, progress and the cause of human advancement, as now, when he accuses her of opposing them. The Church is, if you will, an association of fallible men, but by what authority do you assert that she is only that? She claims to be more than such association; she claims to be human and at the same time divine, as is her heavenly Spouse,- to be a divinely organized, protected, and assisted institution, for teaching the Divine word, and administering the Divine law, and therefore in these respects not fallible, but infallible, by virtue of the Holy Ghost who dwells in her. Allow us to say, that to invalidate this claim you must adduce something of graver authority than your own opinion, even were that more respectable than it is.
“Theology is human, a science…capable of revision, and requiring amendment from age to age. But the Church of Rome claims for her theology an absolute infallibility.” A poor quibble. In the sense in which theology is a human science, it is false to say that the Church claims for her theology, or any theology, absolute infallibility. She does no such thing. In the sense of revealed truth, as the faith, or what God has revealed and commanded us to believe, she asserts, indeed, that it is infallible, and before you accuse her of error, you must prove that she proposes as revealed truth something which God has not revealed. “Jesus Christ prescribed no specific or immutable form to his Church.” (p. 54) So you say; but how know you that? You think so? Well, I think differently. Jesus Christ established a Church, for you speak of “his Church.” If he established a Church at all, he gave it a specific form, for nothing does or can exist without a specific form, as you must know, if you have ever made and remember your philosophy. If he established his Church to endure unto the end of the world, he gave it an immutable form; for to change the specific form of a thing is to destroy its existence, and either to annihilate it or to convert it into some other existence. The author says, though “Jesus Christ prescribed no specific or immutable form to his Church, or to that organization which naturally and necessarily tool place among those who received his religion, this much he did ordain, that it should not be hierarchical.” (ibid.) And he quotes several texts from the Gospels to prove it. But how will he assure us that he rightly understands those texts? Is he not a fallible man, and liable to err? How then shall we hold his application of these texts to be conclusive? Dr. Pusey will tell him they mean no such thing, and will cite texts equally strong to prove that our Lord did give to his Church the hierarchical form. Why shall Dr. Burnap be credited in preference to Dr. Pusey? “The Christian Church was left to take that [organization] which circumstances might render expedient.” (p. 55) How does the author know that? Very respectable men maintain the contrary, and it is very evident from history that the Church set out from the Apostles with the precise specific form she now has. But suppose it was so, who was to judge of the expediency? Each individual believer? That were disorganization, sheer individualism, and would make the author contradict himself in terms. The minority? Whence the evidence? The majority? Then the case, we fear, must go against our author, for he is in a decided minority, and the great majority of believers of all times have adhered to the hierarchical and papal forms of the Church?
“The error lay in ultra-conservatism, in imagining that there was not the same freedom in laying aside as there had been in adopting the forms of outward administration.” (p. 55) So this, after all, is ultra-conservatism,- not asserting the same freedom in laying aside as in adopting the forms of outward administration. Will the author tell us any form which the Church has ever held herself free to adopt, that she does not hold herself equally free to lay aside when she judges it expedient? Every canonist will tell him, that what the Church of her own legislative authority has enacted, she can and often does abrogate. Wherever there was freedom in adopting, there is freedom in laying aside. What the Church says she cannot abrogate is the Divine legislation, what has been expressly enacted and ordained by God himself. Would Dr. Burnap have her do that? “The mistake consisted in imagining that there was no difference between the tenth century and the sixteenth.” (ibid.) Pray, who was it that committed that mistake? But is there any difference between truth in one century and truth in another? If so, what is that difference? If not, what it is you complain of? “That because the Church might be kept stationary, the world would remain so too.” (ibid.) So you would have a movable and moving Church, here today and there tomorrow, one thing in this age and another thing in another,- not a Church teaching the world the truth and directing it in the way of salvation, but a Church tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine, conforming to the world, following it, whatever crochet it may get into its head for the time, and, if it chooses to go to the Devil, going there along with it. It is very certain that on this subject you and we do not think alike.
The trouble, according to the author, is, that the Church as she ceases to be a child, does not put away childish things.
“But the error lay in ultra-conservatism, in imagining that there was not the same freedom in laying aside, as there had been in adopting, the forms of outward administration. The mistake consisted in imagining that there was no difference between the tenth century and the sixteenth; that because the Church might be kept stationary, the world would remain so too; that because the human mind had had its infancy, it never could have its maturity and manhood. The Church overlooked the wisdom of the Apostle. ‘When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.’ The manhood has come, but, contrary to the law of nature, the childish things are not put away.” – p. 55
How does the author know that there was any error or mistake in the case? He asserts there was, but he does not happen to prove it. How does he know that the Church ever had any childish thing to put away, or that she ever thought or spake as a child? The law which he alleges is not universal. It is not applicable to the Divinity, and Adam was created, not a baby, but in the perfection of a full-grown man. By what authority, then, does he assume that such was not the case with the Church? It might have been, and how does he know that it was not? By what authority does he assume that the Church, on her first going forth, was a child, subject to the law of her human side, and on that side a growth which can be only extension in space and time, she has also her divine side, or is held to have it, and on her divine side, the only side now in question, she has and can have no childhood or old age, no development or growth; for the Divinity, we suppose it will be conceded us, does not grow, and is never young, never old, and therefore she not only might, but must have begun, not as an infant, not as a child, thinking as a child and speaking as a child but in the full possession and exercise of all her divine faculties, complete and perfect in all her parts, and able to discharge all her functions. The author is not at liberty, therefore, to say she must have been a child, and have had childish things, or declare her ultra-conservative because she refuses to put away childish things. He must first prove that she has childish things to put away, and it will be time enough to reply when he has brought in his bill of items, and the evidence by which he proposes to sustain them.
But after all, what does all that the worthy Doctor advances in proof of the ultra-conservatism of the Church amount to? At the very best, it amounts only to this,- that his theory of Christian doctrine and practice is different from that asserted by the Church, and she requires all her children to believe hers and reject his. Here is the whole. Dr. Burnap does not agree with the Church, and the Church does not agree with Dr. Burnap, and since she does not agree with Dr. Burnap, and since she does not agree with him, she is, in his opinion, ultra-conservative, opposed to “progress, and throws her whole weight against the cause of human advancement”! He will pardon her all her alleged errors and superstitions during the Dark Ages, her having taught the doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, Original Sin, Redemption, etc., established the Confessional, and favored asceticism, if she will now only abandon her old pretensions, place herself in harmony with the new times, adopt modern ideas, encourage modern innovators and innovations, and conform to the Unitarianism a la Burnap, of Baltimore, and not a la Parker, of Boston. He is not, after all, particular as to what doctrines she teaches, or what practices she approves, if she will not put her doctrines forth as divine truths necessary to be believed, and insist on her practices as neceeary to be observed, and will leave her children free to speculate as they please, and adopt any notions or observe any practices which they happen for the time being to fancy. Very liberal and condescending indeed! And what an obstinate, bigoted, and stupid old woman the Church must be, to refuse to gratify him and his friends in so small an affair! Why can she not be as liberal to him as he is to her? If she would be, she would have him her friend, at least till some new light broke in upon his mind, or he got a new kink in his head, and- nobody else! This is really the sum of all he says, and this he has judged worthy to be written in this nineteenth century by a Unitarian Doctor of Divinity, to be delivered in the chapel of Harvard College, the oldest and most illustrious literary institution of the United States, and to be printed in The Christian Examiner, the first literary, philosophical, and theological organ of the American Unitarians! Perhaps he has judged rightly.
The gravamen of the author’s objection against the Church is, that since 1545 she has refused to “join the march of progress, and has thrown her whole weight against the cause of human advancement.” We shall not stop to dispute the false and absurd theory of progress which the author assumes, and which underlies his whole thought, but we will simply ask him to specify a single truth, known by him or anyone else to be a truth, which she does not teach, or which she forbids as Catholics to hold. We ask him also to specify a single virtue which she forbids or does not enjoin, a single discovery of modern science, not a mere hypothesis, which she does not accept, or a single movement or enterprise of modern philanthropy which it is certain tends to the amelioration of the individual or of society, that she refuses to encourage, or does not sanction. Let us have no more vague generalities, which mean everything or nothing, no more noisy declamations, no more unsupported assertions. Let the matter be brought to a test. Show us some truth which, but for the ultra-conservatism of the Church, we might have had that we have not, or which we might hold, if we renounced her authority, that we cannot hold now. Show us, we beg you, some good which can be done for mankind, either in relation to this world or to the next, which, as genuine Catholics, we are forbidden or not commanded to labor for, and which she has prevented from being obtained. Show us, finally, what genuine progress the Church opposes, in what respect she throws her weight against the cause of human advancement. Give us facts, dear Doctor, not speculations,- facts, not mere opinions,- certainties which cannot be gainsaid, not mere conjectures, or vague dreams. If you can do this, do it, and we are no longer Catholics; if you cannot, as you well know you cannot, then cease your perpetual clamor about the Church being opposed to progress or human advancement, for your clamor can only mean that the Church opposes progress and human advancement simply because she opposes you and your insane speculations and ridiculous projects of reform, in which case, to say the least, you are as likely as she to be the party in the wrong.
That the Church opposed the Reformers in the sixteenth century, the Puritans and kindred sectaries in the seventeenth, the Philosophers and Jacobins in the eighteenth, and opposes the Socialists and Communists in the nineteenth, is very true, and well is it for the world that it is true; for these have all, the author himself being judge, deserved to be opposed. If the Church had sanctioned Luther’s doctrine of the serf-will, Calvin’s of election and reprobation, the common doctrine of all the Reformers, that man by the transgression has lost his spiritual faculties and became totally corrupted in his whole nature, or the doctrine of justification by faith alone without works, the author himself would have denounced her, for he, no less than she, rejects all these doctrines. Excepting those relating to the Sacraments and the Papacy, there is scarcely a point of doctrine on which she has condemned the Reformers, on which he does not also condemn them. Why, then, blame her for not approving the Reformers? Ke, like ourselves, is, we believe, a descendant of the old English Puritans, but he has hardly departed less from them than we have, and in several respects he departs even farther. He rejects as error or superstition, bigotry or fanaticism, all that they called Christian, and will he pretend that the Church proved herself hostile to the interests of progress, and threw her whole weight against the cause of human advancement, because she condemned them? The author claims to be a Christian; will he, then, maintain that the Church was ultra-conservative because she refused to make common cause with such Free-Thinkers as Collins, Tindall, Toland, Morgan, Mandeville, Voltaire, Rousseau, Helvetius, Diderot, D’Alembert, and D’Holbach, and to encourage the old French Jacobins in their terrible war on religion and society? Does he say that it would be for the interests of progress, and would favor the cause of human advancement, for her to approve and encourage your Saint-Simonians, your Owenites, your Fourierists, your Icarians, your Women’s-Rights men, and your Bloomers? In the non-Catholic world, there no doubt is a constant succession of reformers, projectors, schemers, visionaries, dreamers, following one another as wave follows wave. Each has his panacea, his “Morrison’s Pill” for all the ills flesh is heir to, and is always just on the point of recovering the terrestrial paradise; but what wise man can place confidence in any one of their nostrums? These would-be reformers are but children amusing themselves with blowing soap-bubbles with a pipe-stem in a tin porringer. Is the Church to be condemned as the enemy of human advancement, because she refuses to take these bubble-blowers to her bosom, and cherish them as the sages, seers, and philosophers of mankind? Is she to be denounced as ultra-conservative, because she takes their bubbles for what they are, and refuses to commend them as new worlds, no less solid than brilliant?
Perhaps what you demand is, not that the Church should endorse each individual bubble-blower, or attempt to construct the whole world after the pattern of each particular bubble blown, but that she should herself become a bubble-blower, encourage all bubble-blowers, and declare bubble-blowing the noblest employment man can make of his faculties. Her precise error is, that she will neither blow bubbles herself, nor suffer those that would to blow them. Therefore is she opposed to the interests of progress, and throws her whole weight against the cause of human advancement. This is probably your real objection. But can you refer us to any good that has ever come from your favorite employment of bubble-blowing? What has been gained for humanity by that reckless spirit of speculation gained for humanity by that reckless spirit of speculation and enquiry, which treats all subjects as uncertain and doubtful, and requires all our faculties to be employed in devising and refuting schemes of improvement? Nothing as yet, perhaps you will reply; but then it is just about to gain something. Moreover, it keeps us employed, our minds active, constantly on the stretch, and that itself is worth something, and is infinitely better than the intellectual death produced by your Church. Alas! Poor bubble-blowers! Do you not see that in all this you assume that the truth is unknown, that God has made no certain revelation of his will, that the possession of truth kills the mind, and that there can be life only in seeking and not finding? Much of this may be true of non-Catholics, but is it their advantage, or is it their misfortune or their shame? In your actual state, free enquiry assuredly is your right and your duty, but only because you have not the truth, and are bound to seek it. But to assume that the great business of life is to be seeking after the truth, is to assume that we are to be always seeking, without ever finding, and to make the apology of those whom the Apostle condemns as “always learning, and never attaining to the knowledge of the truth.” The real business of life cannot be in seeking the truth, because the commencement and conduct of that business demand the knowledge of the truth, and no one till he has that knowledge can be said properly to live, for it is through it that we are spiritually begotten. God reveals to us the truth, and the business of life is to accept and apply it. The truth is not to be sought for the sake of the seeking, but for the sake of the end to be attained by its possession and application. Mental activity, like all activity, is good or bad, according to the end to which it is subordinated; but for its own sake alone, that is, without any end, it is the activity of a fool, not the activity of a wise man. Free mental activity, or freedom of mind, is certainly desirable, and is always to be encouraged; but it is found in truth only, never in falsehood or error. Veritas liberabit vos. It is the truth that makes free, and without it you are in the bonds of ignorance, exposed to every fatal error, and the slave of every illusion. The three hundred years of experience which Protestants have had of the operations of the spirit you condemn the Church for anathematizing, ought to suffice to shut your mouth forever. What has that spirit done for you? It has filled your minds with doubt and your hearts with bitterness; it has led you to reject all certain revealed truth, and to fall back on the insufficient light of reason, to deal with familiar spirits, to revive ancient necromancy, to reestablish in this very city – not inaptly called Athens of America – the worship of demons, to substitute for the word of God the instincts of man, and to deify the passions, pride, lust, and revenge. This is solemn fact; it stares you in the face, and you cannot deny it, however you may try to disguise it, or to explain it away. There stands the fact, and with what face, or want of face, can you clamor for that spirit, and declare the Church ultra-conservative because she anathematizes it, and bids you beware of it?
2. But it is time to proceed to the consideration of the second fundamental error which the author alleges against the Church, namely, her “corporate spirit.” We will let the author speak for himself.
“I now come to the second fundamental error of the Roman Catholic Church,- its corporate spirit. This, I am aware, is an awkward phrase, and perhaps needs definition. I mean by it, a disposition to sacrifice everything to the interests of a gigantic and perpetual corporation. This was first manifested in the establishment of a hierarchy, in the continual elevation of the clergy with church, the depression of the laity, in the association of which with church, the subordination of provincials to metropolitans, and, finally, the subjugation of the whole Western Church to the Bishop of Rome; the establishment of religious orders, the vows of celibacy, obedience, poverty, and seclusion, the prohibition of marriage to the clergy, and the unreserved consignment of the priesthood, body and soul, as bondslaves of the Church; the submission of the individual conscience at the confessional, and the denial of the right of individual judgment in matters of faith,- all these things constitute a mass of sacrifices of the individual to the interests and ambition of a corporation, such as finds no parallel in the records of the human race. It is wonderful that this was ever submitted to at all, and still more wonderful that it has continued so long.” – p. 56.
This definition needs defining, as do most Protestant definitions. The fundamental error consists, he tells us, in “a disposition to sacrifice everything to the interests of a gigantic and perpetual corporation.” A disposition on the part of whom or what? Of the Church? Of the Church in her corporate capacity, or on the part of her individual members? Is it a disposition enjoined by the individual members? Is it a disposition enjoined by the Church, or simply counselled by her, and voluntarily entertained and compiled with by individuals? Is this disposition an error, because the corporation is gigantic, or because it is perpetual, or because it is at once both gigantic and perpetual? Would it cease to be a fundamental error if the corporation were small and temporary? In a word, it is an error because the corporation is a corporation, or because it is a corporation of a particular sort? Is it an error because the corporation is human, or would it be also an error if the corporation were divine? These are questions not answered by the definition itself, and yet they are not without grave importance. This disposition “was first manifested in the establishment of a hierarchy, in the continual elevation of the clergy and the depression of the laity, in the association of church with church, the subordination of provincials [suffragans?] to metropolitans, and, finally, the subjugation of the whole Western [why not say also the whole Eastern?] Church to the Bishop of Rome”; that is, in the establishment of the hierarchical and papal constitution of the Church. But if God himself ordained or established this hierarchical and papal constitution, and imposed it upon the Church as a law from which she could no more depart than an individual can take his own life without ceasing to exist, would our author say, then, that it is a fundamental error? He would not dare say it, for then the corporation would be a divine corporation, and its interests would be divine interests, and the disposition to sacrifice every thing to them would be just and proper. That disposition can be an error only on the supposition that it is a purely human corporation, with only human rights and interests. The objection, then, is not well laid. It should have been, not that the Church is a corporation, gigantic and perpetual or otherwise, but that she is a merely human corporation, and therefore with no authority to demand, and with no right to receive, the sacrifice of every thing to her interests, for God is above every thing human, and we must obey him rather than men. This is the only form in which the author could legitimately bring his objection, unless he was prepared to deny the right of God himself to give his Church the hierarchical and papal constitution, and therefore affirm that God can err and do wrong; and having brought it in this form, he should have proceeded to prove, not that she requires every thing to be sacrificed to her interests, but that she is a purely human corporation, holding her charter only from men, and possessing only human rights and interests. If he had done this, he could have legitimately concluded that the corporate spirit he objects to is a fundamental error; but then there would have been no need of drawing such a conclusion, for the proof that the Church is a purely human corporation would of itself have been sufficient to induce all Catholics to abandon her. But it so happens that he has not proved this; he has only quietly assumed it, and from it concluded that the corporate spirit is an error, when, for ought that he shows to the contrary, it may be true and proper spirit for a Christian.
The establishment of a hierarchy, if done by men on their own authority, is an error, a wrong, for men have of themselves no right to do any thing of the sort; but if done by God, or by men under his authority, it is not an error, and no man who believes in God and recognizes his universal dominion dare say it is. The elevation of the clergy above the laity as to their office, which is all that can be alleged, if by divine appointment, is no error, and can no more be objected to than the elevation of magistrates above simple citizens. The associating of church with church, the subordination of suffragans to metropolitans (if a fact), and the subordination – there is no subjugation in the case – to the Bishop of Rome as chief pastor, if done by ordination of God, cannot be complained of, and is absolutely necessary if the Church is to be one, to be a kingdom, a true spiritual polity, for the government of all men and nations. None of these things can be objected to without blasphemy, if the Church holds her charter of incorporation, as she alleges, from Almighty God himself, who is King of kings and Lord of lords, who has absolute dominion over all creatures, and may do according to his will in both heaven and earth. The sacrifice they demand or authorize would then be to God, to whom belongs all that we are or have. Plainly, then, the author should, in the outset, have proved that the Church is simply human; for only on the supposition that she is, and that she is not divinely instituted, can any of the things he alleges be divinely instituted, can any of the things he alleges be objections to her. But not having done this, he has only blundered in logic, history, and moral theology.
The other things immediately added in the passage cited may prove the corporate spirit of the Church, if the author pleases; but what if they do? He has not yet proved that the corporate spirit is an error. He had to prove the fact of the corporate spirit, and its erroneousness. The first he proves, but unnecessarily, for nobody denies it, and all Catholics will concede it. The second, the only contested point, he assumes, takes for granted, and simply argues that the Church is in a fundamental error because she has a corporate spirit! The vows he enumerates prove nothing to his purpose, unless they are wrong in themselves, and can in no supposition be lawful. But that they can in no case be lawful he assumes, but does not even attempt to prove. The fact that the Church has established religious orders proves nothing against her, unless such orders are repugnant to the law of God, which from the very nature of the case he cannot prove. Religious orders, and the vows of chastity, obedience, and poverty, are all in the supernatural order, both as to their origin and end, and can neither be defended nor condemned, except as by authority competent to decide on supernatural matters. That a man may justly neglect the duties of one state for the sake of applying himself to those of a higher state, all are obliged to concede, for the thing takes place every day, and society could not go on if it did not. Reason can say nothing against the principle of the religious orders, which is, that it is lawful under certain circumstances for a man to leave a less perfect, and consecrate himself by solemn vows to the duties of a more perfect state. No man is bound to marry against his will, and therefore, if free, one may, for the sake of God and the attainment of Christian perfection, vow to preserve his chastity, and to live unmarried. So of the other vows. But the individual in these matters must act under authority, and be guided not by his own will or judgment alone. The whole question, therefore, of religious orders must depend for its solution on the fact whether the Church is or is not a divinely constituted corporation, with authority to say when one is free to take the religious vows, and to what rule, if he does take them, he must or must not, may or may not, be subjected. Supposing the Church to be what she professes to be, religious orders are defensible, the vows are proper; but if she is not what she professes to be, we have nothing to say in their defense, because confessedly all are not free to take them, or to say what is or is not a higher state. All we say here is, that the vows which are taken are taken voluntarily, and the Church never commands or urges anyone to take them, though she often prohibits persons desirous of taking them from taking them. All vows must be voluntary; the Church simply decides when and on what conditions they may be taken, and requires them when lawfully taken to be kept inviolate. The right of a man, supposing him to have contracted no obligations except those imposed by the law of nature, to consecrate himself to God in a religious order approved by a competent authority, cannot be questioned, and it is only such as these that the Church ever permits to enter into a religious order.
The prohibition of the clergy to marry proves nothing to the author’s purpose, because the Church compels no one to be a priest. She has the right to prescribe the conditions on which she will admit the candidate to the priesthood, as much so as the state has to prescribe the conditions on which its offices may be held; and if she judges it wise and proper to prescribe the vow of chastity as one of these conditions, nothing forbids her to do so. She violates in so doing no right of the priest, for no one can claim admission to the priesthood as a right, and she compels no one to be a priest. She says to him before ordaining him, You are free to remain in society, and to marry, if such be your wish, and you are under no obligation to bind yourself by wish, and you are under no obligation to bind yourself by the vow of celibacy, unless you choose; but if it is your free choice to become a priest, you must take that vow, and will be compelled to keep it. All this is fair. If he takes the vow, he takes it freely, with his eyes open; and as it is a lawful vow, and as he takes it voluntarily, there is no hardship in requiring him to keep it. As for the clergy being bondslaves to the Church, what the author says is simply nonsense. The priest is simply bound to conform to the canons, or to the law of his office, and we suppose every officer in church or state is bound in like manner. The office of priest has certain well-known and prescribed duties, and these he is bound to perform, in subordination to the supreme authority. You may call him a bondslave, if you please, and so you may call the deputy-sheriff or the sheriff himself a bondslave. Every man, in that he is a man, has certain duties which he is bound to perform, and in this sense is a bondslave, and just as much so as the priest. St. Paul calls himself the slave of Jesus Christ, and subjection to the Church, whether of clergy or laity, is only subjection to Jesus Christ, who teaches and governs through her, and subjection to him is the most perfect freedom conceivable.
The right of the individual judgment in matters of faith being only an imaginary right, we need not stop to defend the Church for denying it. That she denies it in the author’s sense is true, and when he adduces any evidence that in this she does wrong, we will consider what is to be said. Individual judgment in matters of faith has unsettled everything in the Protestant world, and resulted in general unbelief or demon-worship, and therefore it has no great attraction for us. We would rather rely on an infallible teacher, and instead of finding it a hardship, we find it a blessed privilege. Do not ask us to abandon an infallible Church for an exceedingly fallible private judgment in matters so important as those of faith, on which depends our eternal salvation. We know from forty years’ experience as a Protestant what private judgment is worth, and, thank God, we know too, by experience, the freedom of mind and joy of heart there are in feeling what we have a teacher on whom we can rely, who cannot deceive us, and who would lead us in the way we should go.
The author says, “nothing can be more certain than that no such corporation was contemplated by Christ in the establishment of his Church.” (p. 56) That is possibly his opinion, but it is not ours. “Not only was freedom of action broken down under the colossal organization of the Romish Church, but freedom of mind and thought was crushed under the same overpowering weight.” (p. 57) Indeed! Where did you learn that? Nevertheless, as this is no more true of the Chruch now than when, according to you she was “the best friend humanity ever had”; when she “renovated the whole face of the civilized world,” was “the pioneer in all generous enterprises for the amelioration of the condition of the human race,” and “a patient laborer in the great field of human improvement,” – we will endeavor to console ourselves as well as we can, till you bring forward some better friend, a more generous pioneer, or a more patient laborer. “Had a creed been necessary, it is to be supposed that Christ would have pre3scribed one to his Church.” (ibid.) How do you know that he did not? If a creed is not necessary, why did the Unitarians in our goodly city of Boston last May draw up and vote one? It was a very meagre creed, it is true, “a very little one,” as said Jack Easy’s wet nurse, but nevertheless it was a creed, designed to define, if not all that one is required to believe, at least what one cannot deny and be a Christian. If no creed is necessary, nothing is necessary to be believed, and then you either deny that our Lord revealed any thing, or else hold that you may, without ceasing to be his followers, deny his revelation. Why then complain of Parker, to cut off whom you drew up your little creed?
“By thus adopting a stringent and unchangeable organization, the Catholic Church has numbered itself among the things which are destined to be outgrown.” (p. 58) Do you happen to know, dear Doctor, when that will happen? Will you not tell us what will outgrow her? “It has allied itself with the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, and is bound to share their fate. (ibid.) And pray what is that fate to be? But when did the Church form the alliance you speak of? What proof have you of it? Will you favor us with a sight of the documents? But all this is nonsense. The Church forms no alliance with monarchy or with republicanism; she leaves to each nation the political constitution which God in his providence gives it, and requires all her children to submit to it in all things not repugnant to the law of God. Where monarchy is the historical right, she sustains it, where republicanism is the historical right, she sustains republicanism, as we have told you till we are weary of repeating it. “The tendency of this age is to freedom and individualism, and whatever will not go along with it is destined to be left behind.” (ibid.) All cant, my dear Doctor. The tendency of this age seems to be socialism and despotism. Are you not yourself a little behind the age? But be it the tendency is to freedom and individualism, that is, to license and anarchy, it is not possible that the Church may resist that tendency, and recall the age to law and order? It is not certain that in the long run the age will prove stronger than the Church. If again the age happens to be wrong, as it does, whether its tendency is as you think or as we think, would you have the Church go on with it? Or do you deny that the tendency of an age can be wrong, and therefore claim for each age the infallibility we claim for the Church? But enough of this. The author may think that he means well and talks good sense, but he should remember that it is possible for people in esteeming themselves wise to become fools; and, without positively classing him with these, we cannot forbear telling him that he says he knows not what, and implies principles the baseness of which, could he see them in their nakedness, would shock even himself.
3. The third and last fundamental error alleged against the Church is her “unfriendliness to the diffusion of the Sacred Scriptures.” “This is the crowning error – may I say, sin? – of the Roman polity. He who shuts up the Bible from the masses puts out the moral light of the world.” (ibid.)
That last sentence, Doctor, would do to deliver at an Anniversary Meeting of the American Bible Society. It is upon the whole rather a good sentence, and well sounding. But that word masses, however, is not well chosen, because it conveys the notion of brute matter, and one is a little troubled to understand what moral light could be derived from the Bible or any other book by human beings so little elevated as to be designated after brute matter. Nineteen twentieths of the human race, it is estimated, and therefore of the “masses,” are unable to read. Now will the good doctor explain what moral light would be put out for them by shutting up the Bible? Does the Bible operate upon “the masses” as a charm or amulet, and of itself enlighten such as cannot read it, and who, if they could read it, could not understand it? “The Bible is the manifest moral agent that has ever wrought upon our earth.” (p. 59) What does this mean? Is it the Bible as a book that is such a moral agent? Or is it the doctrine the Bible contains and the grace of God which operates with it? If you say the book as a book, and nothing else, you utter an absurd falsehood. If you say the doctrine, you condemn yourself, for you hold that it makes no difference what doctrines a man believes if he leads a good life, and he can, you hold, lead a good life in any belief, and besides say nothing to your purpose, for then the shutting the Bible from the masses would put out no light, unless the doctrine was shut also.
“The Bible is the best theological manual for the busy, toiling masses of mankind.” (ibid.) Do you really believe so? What will your brother Parker or your brother Pusey say to that? What do you conceive to be the object of a theological manual? Is it not to give a clear, distinct, and brief summary of what men are to believe respecting God, his providence, and his works, and of our relations to God, the duties we owe him, the way and manner of performing them, and the consequences of performing or not performing them? Do you really mean that this object is better accomplished for the busy, toiling multitude by the bible than by any other manual? If so, then you are a very strange man, and past the reach of argument. We speak not lightly of the Bible, for it has been written, though you doubt it, by the inspiration of Almighty God, dictated by the Holy Ghost himself, and we hold its words in a veneration wholly foreign from the Protestant heart; but we do not believe, by any means, that it is the best theological manual that can be put into the hands of “the busy, toiling masses,” for the great bulk of them cannot read it, a large portion of those who can read it will not, and a few of those who can and do read it, unless they have previously been taught the faith, can understand it, or draw any consistent meaning from it. You know this is the literal fact, and therefore you must consult, in what you say, what has a fine sound, rather than what is true. The learned themselves, applying their whole lives to the study of the Bible, cannot agree at all among themselves as it its meaning; how much less, then, the unlearned, who have no time and none of the necessary aids for its study!
“The Bible is the grand educator of the conscience.” (p. 60) “The Bible is the true confessional.” (ibid.) “The Bible is the chief source of that purity of sentiment and refinement of manners, which distinguish modern society from the coarseness and sensuality of heathen antiquity.” (p. 61) How the Bible can be the true confessional is to us a puzzle. That is should, when properly understood, convict us of sin and send us to the confessional, we can very well understand; but how it can be itself the confessional, is too transcendental for our comprehension. In what else the author here says of the Bible he must be understood as using a figure of rhetoric, such as taking the vase for the liquor, and as really meaning, not the Bible, as a book and nothing else, but the contents of the Bible, that is, the Christian faith. In simple justice to him, we must presume this to be his meaning, and then all he says amounts to nothing against us.
“The Church of Rome, then, as it seems to me, cannot commit a greater error, than to permit her conflict with Protestantism to engender any real hostility to the circulation of the Sacred Scriptures.” (ibid.) That is to say, an error in policy. The Bible is such a good book, and has rendered such important services to the human race, that any unfriendliness on the part of the Church to its circulation will give Protestants a great advantage over her. So the Church is not so worldly-wise as sometimes represented, and her crowning error, perhaps her sin, is a blunder in mere human policy! Really, the old Church comes off that she is rather a sad politician, and has never been remarkable for her worldly wisdom, any more than her Master was.
“The time has been when the Catholic Church was friendly to the circulation of the Scriptures. But it was when she reigned alone, when her unity was unbroken, and the whole Christian world was of one language and one speech. She was put in a false position in relation to the Scriptures, by the breaking out of the Reformation. The Bible was the magazine from which the Reformers drew their most effective weapons,” and “it was natural that the Church should feel a hostility to a book which gave it so much annoyance.” (p. 58) Were these weapons really in the Bible, and were they honestly drawn from it by the Reformers against the Church? If so, how do you account for the fact that she had not discovered them, or foreseen the mischief they might do, and guarded against them by prohibiting the circulation of the Scriptures. The author deviates very materially from the common Protestant story. He concludes that prior to the Reformation the Church was friendly to the circulation of the Scriptures; Protestants generally maintain the contrary, and that she had been able to corrupt the faith only through concealing the Bible, and it was only by accidentally discovering one day in the library of his convent at Erfurt a stray copy of the Bible, that Luther learned her gross impositions. It was, however, not so, and her present unfriendliness to the circulation of the Scriptures began with the Reformation, and was caused by it. This is some advance towards the truth, and perhaps erelong our Protestant friends will learn and confess the whole truth. The fact that the Church down to the Reformation was friendly to the circulation of the Scriptures proves at least this much,- that in her estimation there is no discrepancy between her teaching and the Scriptures; and furthermore, that if she is not equally friendly to their circulation now, it is not because she dreads any testimony they may bear against her, but because she would guard against their being abused. The author is mistaken in supposing that the Church became hostile to the Bible in consequence of the annoyance she received from its use or abuse by the Reformers, and equally so in saying that Balmes concedes it. The fact that the Reformers abused the Scriptures to attack the faith and pervert the minds of the faithful induced her to place some restrictions on the promiscuous reading of the Scriptures, in the vernacular tongues and unauthorized versions, but did not of course alter her feelings or her position in regard to the Scriptures themselves.
The author say, the Church “was put into a false position in relation to the Scriptures, by the breaking out of the Reformation.” The Church by that event was forced to change in some respects her discipline in regard to the reading of them, but to say that she was put into a false position in regard to them is a mere begging of the question. The Church is the guardian of the Scriptures and of the faith of her children, and it is her right and her duty to protect the faithful from the dangers to which they are exposed. If in order to protect them she is obliged to restrict the reading of the Scriptures in the vulgar tongues to those who are not likely to wrest them to their own destruction, she assumes no false position in regard to them, and the falsity is on the part of those who force her to take such a step. If the pastor is obliged for their protection to restrict the range of the sheep when wolves abound, and to allow them less freedom than when no wolves are to be feared, the fault is not his, but that of the wolves, and the blame, if blame there be in the case, attaches not to him, who only does his duty, but to those who render the restriction necessary.
But after all, is the fact alleged true, or is it a fact that the Church is unfriendly to the diffusion of the Sacred Scriptures? Of course not. The author asserts it, says it can be proved, but, as usual with him, offers no proof of it. There is not, so far as we are aware, and never has been, any restriction placed by the Church on the circulation or reading of the Scriptures in the learned languages, especially, the authorized version in the Latin language, commonly called the Vulgate. In all Catholic countries, at least until quite recently, when the knowledge of Latin is less general than it was prior to modern revolutionism, this brought the Scriptures within the reach of nearly all who could read them with much profit, and gave the learned free access to them,- the very class from whom the Church would be the most anxious to conceal them, if she regarded them as teaching any thing at variance with her doctrines and practices. The restrictions she has placed on the circulation of the Scriptures in the vulgar tongues have been directed solely against unauthorized and corrupt versions, such as Luther’s version in German, Diodati’s in Italian, and King James’s in English. The circulation and reading of such versions is strictly prohibited to all Catholics, and it is because the Bible Society circulates only such versions that its publications are prohibited. But there is no prohibition in any Catholic country, or among the faithful in any country, to circulate the Scriptures in an approved version, even in the vernacular language. There is then no unfriendliness on the part of the Church to the diffusion of the Sacred Scriptures; there is only unfriendliness to their circulation in a corrupt form. The reading of the Scriptures in the vernacular tongue, if the version be approved, is free to all Catholics, and we are aware of no canon prohibiting it to anyone. The pastors, indeed, advise such, if such there be, who give reason to fear that they will wrest them to their own destruction, not to read them, and in some cases it is possible the confessor may forbid the reading to his penitent. This is the very course every prudent father pursues, that of advising his children not to read, and in some instances positively forbidding them to read, that from which it is evident that they can only receive harm. The Church goes no farther than this, and if she goes thus far, we shall not undertake to defend her, for she does only her duty, and needs no defense.
Everybody knows, or might know, that Protestants generally, and Unitarians particularly, have no genuine belief in the Scriptures, or respect for them, although they may sometimes believe that they believe and respect them, and that their great zeal for the Bible and its circulation is all affected, for the purpose of decrying and injuring the Church. It is proverbial among them, that the Bible is like a fiddle, on which a skillful performer may play any tune he pleases. And we have never yet met the decided Protestant who respected the Bible enough to bow it its authority, when its authority was shown to be clearly against him. Here is Dr. Burnap, a Unitarian minister, praising the Bible, and greatly scandalized, as he would have us believe, because the Church, as he alleges, is unfriendly to its circulation, yet he himself by no means believes in its plenary inspiration, and he would shrink from calling it the word of God. He has very little respect for the Old Testament, and he will tell you that St. Paul was far from having a correct understanding of the Gospel, and that he even began the corruption of the simple religion of the Jesus; and if, in the parts to which he accords a quasi-inspiration, he finds a passage which he cannot explain in accordance with his notions, he will term it an Eastern hyperbole, or suggest that the sacred writer was most likely warped by his Jewish prejudices. And yet he has the effrontery to come forward and read us Catholics a lecture on our pretended hostility to the Bible! This is a little too bad, since, of all who are called Christians, we alone retain, believe, and venerate the whole Bible as the word of God.
The clamor Protestants set up about the Scriptures, there can be no doubt, arises not from friendliness to the Bible, but from hostility to the Church. They know that Catholics believe the Bible to be the word of God, and reverence it as such. They know that to Catholics the whole Bible is inspired and authoritative, and that they believe whatever is really repugnant to it to be false; hence they seek to induce Catholics to read Protestant versions of the Scriptures, hoping through the corrupt rendering of certain passages and the adroit insinuations of Bible readers, trained to insinuate a Protestant sense, to excite suspicions in the minds of simple Catholics that there is a discrepancy between the Bible, the word of God, and the teaching of their Church, and thus prepare the way for their perversion. Their object is to make the simple faithful believe that the Church is opposed to the circulation of the Scriptures, and opposed to them because the Scriptures are opposed to the faith, and practicing gross imposition upon the ignorant and confiding. They seek to do this for the purpose of inducing them to abandon the Church, and to join the ranks of non-Catholics.
Now this whole course of proceeding is based on the supposition that Catholics really believe the Bible to be the word of God, and hold themselves bound to receive its authority as final. Such, unquestionably, is the fact, and a man who has been brought up a Protestant on coming among Catholics is perfectly astonished at their high veneration for the Bible, and their profound deference to its authority. But whence have Catholics derived this firm belief that the Bible is the word of God, this profound respect for its authority, and this high veneration for all its words? Most assuredly from the teaching of their Church, and from no other source. Now here is a fact worth looking at. Nobody can deny that the Church knows as well as Protestants do or can deny that the Church knows as well as Protestants do or can whether there be or be not any discrepancy between her teaching and the Bible. If, then, as Protestants pretend, the Bible condemns the Church, how is it that she teaches her children to believe the Bible to be the word of God, and inspires them with this profound reverence for it? If such were the fact, she would have gradually taught them differently, and little by little have induced them to regard the Bible very much as Protestants, especially Unitarians, regard it. This very fact that she has not done so is a full and triumphant answer to the Protestant slander that the Church supersedes the word of God, and that Catholics place the Church above the Bible. It proves that the Church holds the Bible to be the word of God, and teaches her children to reverence and obey it as such, and therefore neither dreads it nor is hostile to it. Let us then hear no more about the Church setting aside the Bible, and making naught of the word of God; the very charge, as addressed to Catholics, refutes itself, because if it were a fact, the argument would have no force or meaning to a Catholic.
But we have said enough. Dr. Burnap in some instances has shown more candor than is usual with an American Protestant, and is misled, when misled, more by his ignorance of Catholicity and his own absurd theories, than by his passions, which do not seem to be very strong or violent, or his malignant feelings against the Church. His ignorance is sometimes marvelous, as for instance in regard to the confessional, where he mistakes certain accessories of the sacrament for the sacrament itself. A visit once, as an humble penitent, to the confessional, would teach him that,
“There are more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in his philosophy.”
But we will part with him in civility. We only regret that he has not treated the subject from a higher point of view and with more learning and ability, so that we could have gained some honor for our religion in refuting him. But Protestantism no longer produces any worthy champions, with whom it is an honor to contend. She has no longer any confidence in herself, and no longer dares engage in a regular battle with the Catholic. She carries on only a partisan warfare, which, though it may enable her to annoy Catholics, can never win for her any real advantage over them. But it is idle to complain. We must take such opponents as present themselves, and if they are unworthy, let the disgrace rest on those who send them, and have no better to send.