^B E R K C 1 " Y "N
LIBRARY I
UNIVERSITY OF J
^ CALIFORNIA^/
Edward C.M.Tower
Ex Libris
^N
£Au»<fcx\ ^- ^- \<toj<x
$.JK*
><jt&ed<
Catholicity
IN ITS RELATIONSHIP TO
Protestantism *nd Romanism
SIX CONFERENCES
Delivered at Newark, N. J., at the Request of Leading
Laymen of that City
BY
THE REV. F. C. EWER, S.T.D.
Milwaukee:
15he Young Churchman Co
CorVKiGHT by G. P. Putnam's Sons, j%t%.
LOAN STACK
Bins.
TO THE
REV. S. BARING GOULD,
WHOSE TEACHINGS IN THE CHURCH HAVE LENT COURAGE
AND INSPIRATION TO THE AUTHOR,
THIS VOLUME
GRATEFULLY DEDICATED
BY HIS BROTHER IN THE CATHOLIC FAITH
F. C. EWER.
140
TO THE READER.
The Addresses in wins volume were prepared
and delivered in compliance with the following re-
quest, signeo by some thirty laymen from every
Parish in the city of Newark, N. J., viz. :
" Impressed with a conviction that the Word of
God sets forth a distinct System of Truth, which is
held and fully taught by the Church ; and also that
a clear understanding and reception of the Funda-
mental Teachings of the Christian Religion are
necessary for the proper development of man's
spiritual life ; and, further, convinced that a desire
exists on the part of many earnest-minded men to
know of a System of Faith resting on a surer basis
than individual opinion, we, laymen of the Church
in Newark, respectfully invite you to deliver in our
city a series of Conferences on the Church as the
Custodian and Teacher of Divine Truth, in opposi-
tion to ultra-Protestantism, and to the anti-Catholic
claims of the Papal Church."
To this request the following reply was sent, viz. :
vi To the Reader.
New York, April 24th, 1878.
Gentlemen :
I was yesterday in receipt of your communica-
tion, requesting me to deliver in Newark a series of
Addresses on Catholicity in Its Relationship to
Protestantism on the one hand, and to Romanism
on the other.
I understand from the gentleman who brought
me your communication, that your desire is to have
the Conferences delivered on the Wednesday even-
ings in May and early June ; and that three of them
be on the subject of Catholicity in Its Relationship
to Protestantism, and three on Catholicity in Its
Relationship to Romanism.
I do not fail to recognize the importance of this
call ; first, in the subject it suggests, and secondly,
in the number and high standing in the Church and
in the community of the citizens by whom it is
signed. And I desire to thank you for the confi-
dence which it extends to me.
Your call comes at a time when I am very much
pressed with Parochial duties ; and in justice both
to the subject and to yourselves, I could have wished
to have the comparative leisure of the months of
June, July, and August, in which to prepare the
Conferences you desire.
But on the assurance of the gentleman who bore
me your letter, that you would be entirely satisfied,
To the Reader. vii
and would not deem me discourteous, should I use
material for the first three Conferences which has
already been used and is somewhat known to por-
tions of the public, I comply with your request ; and
will endeavor to be with you for the first address on
Wednesday evening, May the first.
With great respect,
Your obedient servant,
F. C. EWER.
However, on further consideration, the author
resolved not to use any of the material contained in
his volume on " The Failure of Protestantism," as
that work had already passed through several edi-
tions, and would, moreover, have furnished to his
hand sermons, rather than such religious addresses
calculated for a secular audience, as the request
called for.
In preparing the following addresses from week
to week, therefore, as they were delivered, he has
endeavored, by the development of an argument
which begins in the First Address and does not close
until the end of the Sixth, to show the sceptic, first,
why he should be a Christian rather than an Infidel,
or a Unitarian in belief; secondly, a Catholic rather
than a Protestant ; and lastly, an Anglican Catholic
rather than a Roman Catholic.
In compliance with the request of a number of
viii To the Reader.
those who desire to have these Addresses in book-
form, a Sermon has been added, which the author
was invited to prepare and preach last year before
the members of an Evangelical Parish, in explana-
tion of the Object and Meaning of the Catholic
Movement in the Anglican Communion.
CONTENTS
First Conference .
Catholicity, a Continent of Certainty; Protestantism,
an Ocean of Conjecture I
Second Conference:
Catholicity, a Life and an Organizer ; Protestantism,
a Disorganizer and a Death * 43
Third Conference:
The Catholic Church, both Perfect and Imperfect.—
Leaves Room for Play of Mental Activity. — Catho-
licity, the " Yea " of Christianity ; Protestantism,
the ■ Nay."— True Cause of Protestant " Reforma-
tion." — Protestantism, Diversity wtthout Organic
Unity ; Rome Organic Unity without Diversity ;
Catholicity, Organic Unity in Diversity 74
Fourth Conference:
Functions of Reason in Religion. — Recapitulation. —
Catholicity in History. — Which is the Catholic
Church? — Difference between the Catholic and the
Roman Idea of the Unity of the Church. The Ro-
man Idea essentially the same as the Protestant. —
The Roman Idea not sustained either by Scripture
or by History 1 29
x Contents.
Fifth Conference: pag«
Constitution of The Catholic Church in Its Priestly,
Sacrificial, Prophetic, and Regal Functions. — Ro-
manism overthrows this Constitution. — The Church's
Government Episcopal, not Papal. — Gallicanism a
Logical Mistake. — Hierarchy within the Catholic
Episcopate. — Papal Supremacy not Sustained by
Scripture 166
Sixth Conference:
The Papal Autocracy not Sustained by History. —
Caution with regard to Papal Controversial Books.
—The Theory of the Anglican Church, Catholic,
though Her Present Ritual Practice be Uncatholic ;
The Theory of the Roman Church, Uncatholic,
though Her Present Ritual Practice be Catholic. —
Prophecy touching Rome's need for Conversion, and
Her Three-fold Denial of Christ. — Conclusion 219
Sermon :
The Object and Meaning of the Catholic Movement in
the Anglican Communion 267
NOTES.
N. B. — This edition has been carefully corrected
from notes made by Dr. Ewer on the margins of his
library copy; but the following additions could not
be conveniently introduced into the body of the book.
Page 41, line 7, after "Himself," add "But how do
we know that this is the Body of God on earth ?
Gentlemen, there is and has been no other organic
form in time that claims to be God's earthly Body.
If then it must be that He is on earth in a body
somewhere, this alone must be that Body. If He is
on earth, surely that Body in which He is visible
would be self-conscious of its pre-eminence among
all other earthly organisms. But no other than one
only, viz., the Catholic Church, claims this pre-emi-
nence."
Page 171, line 2, after "Ordination," add "takes
a member of the Church and binds him into unity
with His Priestly body."
Notes.
Page 172, line 11, after "Body on earth," add
"Christ's Real Presence in Heaven and Christ's
Sacramental Presence on our altars."
Page 226, line 15, after "it is all novel," add
" Thus when a Protestant rouses up to run headlong
away from Protestantism, Rome by the simplicity of
its system readily catches his attention, his compre-
hension and his acceptance."
Page 263, line 4, after " He knew that," add
" those who would be called."
CATHOLICITY, PROTESTANTISM
AND ROMANISM.
FIRST CONFERENCE.
Catholicity, a Continent of Certainty: Protestant-
ism, an Ocean of Conjecture.
Gentlemen,
The most solemn question a man can put to him-
self is, What is Truth ? We are somewhere in a uni-
verse of complicated fact and intricate phenomena;
but where ? We exist now ; but where along the flow
of the eternal is that " now " set ? In this universe,
whose bounds we know not, complexity pervades every
part ; it is within us, it stretches away behind the
farthest stars, it comes up to us from an eternity be-
hind, and goes on to an eternity before us. All the
facts and phenomena of this vast and intricate scene
move with perfect harmony, because guided by the
great single will of God. All, do I say ? All but mar
and demons. Set in this universe, to act in discord
2 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
with its laws and complex movement, is misery, dis-
aster and death. To move in accordance with the
All is peace, success, life. Now, to have the order of
ideas within correspond with the order of fact and
phenomena without, is to have within us the Truth ;
this, therefore, is to have the means of life. To have
the order of ideas within not correspond with the
order of phenomena without — this is error j and acting
on it is disaster, misery, death.
You have not come up here to consider the cor-
respondence between the order of ideas within and
the order of all fact and phenomena without. Scientif-
ic, political, financial, artistic fact and phenomena you
care not for ; for this world passeth away. No, the
correspondence you wish, is that between the order of
ideas within and the order of those unseen facts and
phenomena that lie beyond the limits of the natural
and below the horizon of time. What is Truth there ?
Your question is a question, then, of life or death.
We have to live but once ; we have to die but once.
How shall we live aright ?, How shall we die aright ?
Once only can we shape our course for eternity. It is
according to error or according to truth. It is either
to sail into correspondence evenasting with the com-
plex facts and phenona^-A o* the eternal and the su-
Protcsta?itis77i and Romanism. 3
pernatura., or to sail into a miserable discord with
them j it is either, then, unto life, or unto that whose
only fitting name is death. For, an extraneous parti-
cle, caught in a vast machine and out of harmony with
its movements, is but crushed and ground by the re-
sistless, ceaseless action of that in which it is set.
God, time, eternity, and all that fills them — this is the
vast machine in which you are set. You have come
up here, therefore, to ask, What is Truth ? to seek to
bring the order of your ideas into correspondence
with the order of supernatural fact and movement, ex-
ternal to yourselves, unalterable and eternal.
But a question is "an hunger." For who would
ask for what he already has ? Three hundred years
ago Luther and Calvin announced that they had the
Truth. But the stormy seas of private judgment and
of human criticism upon which they launched it, and
the detective solvents of inexorable logic which they
challenged, have been too much for it. Calvin can-
not answer Channing ; Channing cannot answer Par-
ker ; Parker cannot answer Frothingham. Lapsing
time, too, hath brought its strain upon it; lapsing
time, which is the Divine criticism on all systems, hath
confronted it with unexpected situations, hath stretched
it upon new problems for which, in its human infirmity,
4 Catholicity », Protestantism and Romanism.
it had not foreprovided ; and, lo ! it is rent and gone
to pieces. After three hundred years you behold it a
miserable raft, its fragments floating apart like the
mere flying rack of the heavens. And you behold
poor remnants only of the great nations clinging to its
parted and broken logs, and earnest thinking men at
their wits' end to know what is Truth. It is a ques-
tion of the preservation of Christianity on earth.
Let me pause here a moment. How is it that I
am summoned here by citizens of widely variant views ?
What has happened in the last ten years ? The world
does not stop. Truth may be drowned by the cries
of ridicule ; but the hearts of the silent people, who
are watching it, are ever loyal to it, even in its degra-
dation on Calvary ; and there is no device yet dis-
covered that shall transubstantiate, in their eyes,
either ridicule or prejudice into argument. In 1868
the solemn Indictment against Protestantism, drawn
up in the fear of God and in behalf of dying souls, and
uttered from Christ Church, Murray Hill, was met,
not by argument, but only by a gale of holy maledic-
tion and impotent scorn. But those who felt with the
penman of that Indictment have bided their time.
For there is no device yet discovered that can prolong
the life of an excitement, and save it from sinking in-
Protestantism and Romanism. 5
to a calm in which the quiet voice of argument can
again be heard. I look around, and, lo, ten years
have wrought a change. In St. Louis, in Wisconsin,
East and West, the challenge to Protestantism is taken
up again and begins to swell. And here, in 1878, I
call you to mark the pregnant fact, that, as that In-
dictment was not in a single instance answered in
1868, so it has not been answered since. And here,
as a priest of God Almighty's Catholic Church, I call
again from these steps of His holy Altar for an answer
to that Indictment, if it can be given.
If any one claims again that steamboats and
cotton mills are Protestantism, one can only say that
again the claim calls for no notice. Protestantism a
failure ? Why, look at your lucifer matches, your
locomotives and suspension bridges ! And one, gaz-
ing with sad eye upon the five points of Calvinism,
upon the Lutheran dogma of justification by faith,
upon the rule of private Scriptural interpretation, upon
absolute predestination, effectual grace, final persever-
ance and infant damnation, looked away from Protes-
tantism as he was bidden, and observed the patent
reapers and sewing machines, and failed to see the
connection. No one ever charged the inventive
faculty of man with being a failure when acting in the
6 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
natural realm. It was the inventive faculty of fallible
man operating in the supernatural realm, and substi'
tuting there a human for a Divine contrivance 01 sal
vation that had failed.
In short, the attempt was made to identify Protes-
tantism with the Nineteenth Century ; and, because the
Nineteenth Century was clearly a success, to non-suit
the indictment against Protestantism. This was
shrewd, but not sagacious. With many it succeeded
for a time. Grave critics in newspaper and magazine
flew at the volume of sermons entitled " The Failure of
Protestantism," condemned it out and out, declaiing
in the same breath that they had not even read it, and
did not need to. One eminent New York clergyman
received a service of silver plate from his parishioners,
for proving that the Nineteenth Century was not a
failure, and that Romanism was an error; neither
pastor nor people having the slightest conception of
the comical attitude in which they had placed them-
selves.
No one had charged that the Nineteenth Century
was a failure, or claimed that Romanism was true.
Protestantism is something that exists in modern
times ; now, if not only modern times, but also every-
thing that is in modern times, are successes, then are
Protestantism a?id Romanism. 7
the Comtean school of Positivism, and Emersonian
Pantheism, and Spiritualism, and Fourierism and
Mormonism successes.
Protestantism was set up as the Cause of all the
glories of the Nineteenth Century. What ! the reli-
gious dogma that says : " Away with God's Apostolic
visible Church, and let every man be his own church,
his own Priest, his own interpreter of the Bible, and
his own judge as to what the Bible is," the cause of
all this science and modern light ?
The real cause of the light and advance of modern
times is not a theological dogma which had its birth
in the Sixteenth Century. But it is the human mind,
which began to awaken into activity far back in the
middle ages, four hundred years before the Protestant
dogma was thought of. As that human mind began to
arouse out of its sleep in the Eighth Century, it began
to be prolific. It abandoned the rude structures of
those ages, and brought out, long before the Conti-
nental Reformation, the most ornate specimens of
architecture the world ever saw ; in the Eleventh
Century it invented paper, and produced printing
before Calvin and Luther saw the light ; in the
Twelfth Century it devised banks of exchange and
discount, and, not long after, invented gunpowder,
8 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
conceived the idea of the post-office, discovered and
applied the principle of magnetism in the mariner's
compass, and thus gave such a start to commerce and
geographical discovery as they had never had before \
it invented painting in oil-colors before Luther was
born ; in the Thirteenth Century it introduced as-
tronomy and geometry into Europe, and, not long
after, brought in algebra also, and fostered all three
sciences ; it produced a Dante, a Petrarch, a Chaucer,
a Boccaccio and a Roger Bacon, long before Luther
was born ; five hundred years before Calvin and
Luther, it established free schools for the country
urchin and the town child ; centuries before, too, it
gathered up out of the Gothic and Vandal ruins the
precious literary treasures of Greece and Rome ; and
founded universities at Oxford, Cambridge, Bologna,
Vienna, Heidelberg, Paris, and innumerable other
cities.
No, the cause of the light and advance of modern
times was this general awakening and ever increasing
activity of mind ; an activity which began far back in
the tenth century or earlier ; which not only brought
out all this that I have mentioned, but more also ;
which has been bringing out new blessings to man ever
since ; which has rolled up and out a thousand things
Protestantism and Romanism. 9
— most of them good, some of them bad ; which,
after a while, rolled up the Protestant dogma as one of
its many and varied inventions ; and which is rolling
up to-day in England and America the solemn pre-
sentment of that dogma and of its disastrous fruits at
the bar of this enlightened century.
Now there are those who would have one think
that Protestantism is not merely one of the hetero-
geneous mixture of things, which, awakening mind in
its power, but also in its fallibility, turned up, six
hundred years after that mind had'begun to produce
its marvellous fruits, but that it really is, somehow or
other, the cause of all the good of modern times, gun-
powder, glass, paper, printing, painting, telescopes,
astronomy, algebra, Magna Charta, and everything
else. This were to suppose a mother producing chil-
dren before she was born. Protestantism was but
one of the effects of the general awakening of mind,
not its cause ; and our charge is that it happened to be
one of the bad effects — not in that it struck at Roman
error, but because it has destroyed Catholic truth
also. " Where Protestantism prevails, there everything
prevails which blesses mankind ; ergo, Protestantism
is true." This is the argument. Nay, it should have
been said that where active mind prevails, there thou-
io Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
sands of things prevail which bless mankind, and some
things that are curses. Where Protestantism prevails,
quotha ? Why, one might as well say where Spiritual-
ism prevails, where infidelity prevails, there everything
prevails that blesses mankind : ergo, infidelity is true
To say nothing of the specifications in those eight
Murray Hill discourses, what were two of the main
counts in the Indictment ? First, that whereas, two
hundred and fifty years ago, the Protestant religious
dogmas held captive to themselves great thoughtful
peoples of the Germanic, the Swiss and the Anglo-
Saxon man, those dogmas had failed to retain the
hold they once had, and have, to an overwhelming ex-
tent, lost, at last, the intellect of those peoples : and
that, while two hundred and fifty years ago Protest-
antism held the masses as well as the intellect of those
peoples, it has failed to hold and has lost those
masses as well as the intellect : that Protestantism,
as a form of Christianity, starids to-day breast-deep in
torrents of skepticism, which itself hath let loose,
which are deepening around it, and in which it is
drowning ; and that it stands there to-day aghast and
incompetent. This was one count in the Indictment.
Gentlemen, you have seen that it has not been denied.
A second count was that the fundamental religious
Protestantism and Romanism. i '
premises of Protestantism were essentially anti-Chris-
tian, and must end, by inexorable logic, in infidel con-
clusions \ that if Calvin's and Luther's and Zwingli's
premises were to be accepted, then Channing's con-
clusions were nearer right by logic than Cromwell's,
and Theodore Parker's nearer right than Channing's,
and Frothingham's and Adler's the rightest of all, and
quite unanswerable by a Protestant : that when the
Calvinists burned Servetus at the stake, they burned
Calvin's own brain-child. It was furthermore claimed
that if this logical aspect of Protestantism was correct,
it ought to have shown itself finally in practical his-
torical results. And the charge was made that what
thus ought to have followed logically, had actually
followed historically, and was patent to all in the com-
paratively empty churches and the widespread skep-
ticism of thoughtful Germany, America and Switzer-
land. This was another count.
I reiterate : with all that was said ten years ago
on the subject, in sermon, newspaper and magazine,
not then did any one, not at any time since has any
one come candidly up and grappled with these two
main counts in the Indictment. Can they be met
and answered ? If so, why have several editions of
the volume containing the Indictment been allowed
12 Catholicity, Protestantis?n and Romanism.
to be read, openly or secretly, (for the volume was
forthwith placed on the Index Expurgatorius of Prot
estantism) and to work like leaven in the com-
munity for ten years ? If they cannot be answered,
it is not strange that earnest-minded citizens should
arise and ask, What is Truth ?
To resume ; those who say to the world, " We
have the eternal truth," speak, of course, with author-
ity ; and that authority must be one of two things,
either baseless or founded on a rock. Protestantism
cried, " We have the Truth," and nations listened.
What strange thing do you at once behold as the
nations clustered to the chair of Protestantism ? I
will tell you. The tones of Protestantism to the
world were the tones of authority. It summoned the
people to itself to instruct them. And yet it asserts
its own fallibility. Every religion which does not at
least claim for itself infallibility, convicts itself by that
fact that it is liable to lead men astray in that solemn
concern which, fixed but once, knows no cure. Be-
hold, then, this amazing event — the dying nations
flying for the eternal truth to a system that proclaims
its liability to plunge them into error. For such a
system to teach in the name of a God, Whose truth is
one, fixed and eternal, and Whose ways alter not, nor
Protestantism a?id Romanism. 13
conflict with each other, is the consummation of the
absurd. No, gentlemen, as Jesus Christ was the
only human being who dared to call himself God, so
Catholicity is the only Christian body that dares to
call itself infallible ; that dares to begin its dis-
courses, to give its truth, to pronounce its judgments
and to pardon sin, " In the name of the Father, and
of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." The Sovereign
Lord God hath Himself prepared a remedy for
Protestantism ; and that remedy is the anarchy with
which it rends its own domain in a sublime suicide.
And so it lies writhing under the human, and dying
under the Divine criticism.
Out of the sixteenth century, then, there sounded
the cry, " We have the Truth." We have listened to
that cry and have seen what has come of it. It was
a cry of mere human voices.
On the 1 8th of July, 1870, that cry sounded again
to the world. It arose, not from the plains of Saxony,
not from the lakes of Switzerland, but from beneath
the shadow of the Apennines. This time it was in
the singular number : " I alone have the Truth." All
mankind are bid to note that an august Prelate, when
speaking from his throne as doctor, and instructing
the world in faith or morals, is infallible. But, never-
14 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
theless, gentlemen, you have heard that second cry,
and have turned your ear away from the Vatican.
And do I do other than speak your thoughts aloud
when I give the reason why ?
If we are to yield our own ideas and accept, with-
out arguing, what is told us as the truth, we must first
of all be convinced that we have reached the fountain
from which only eternal truth flows. In short, reason
is truly called by Catholicity " the prelude of faith."
Why, then, is it that, since the 18th of July, 1870, we
are all to believe that the Pope is infallible ? Prior to
that date the world did not believe it ; voices which
spoke from high places in even the Roman Catholic
hierarchy itself "had declared that this doctrine of
Papal Infallibility was not and could not become an
article of Catholic faith. Not only had the once pow-
erful school of Gallican divines emphatically repudia-
ted it ; not only had Roman Catholic bishops and
clergy in Ireland, not very many years back, put on
formal record their denial of it ; not only had such an
approved manual as Keenan's Controversial Cate-
chism declared it to be no article of Catholic belief,
and affirmed that no Papal decision could bind, under
pain of heresy, unless received and prescribed by the
teaching body of the Church ; but many European
Protestafitism ana 7 Romanism. 15
bishops had, in recent times, distinctly denied it to be
a part of Catholic doctrine j and American bishops,
just before the Council and during the Council, had
expressed their conviction that it was out of harmony
with both Scripture and tradition, and that it contra-
dicted the history of the Church as a teaching power."
And yet on and after the 18th day of July, 1870,
we are told that the 170,000,000 of Roman Catholics
accepted the Papal Infallibility. Something must,
then, have happened on that 18th day of July eight
years ago as a reason why the world is called on to
believe the Pope to be infallible. What happened ?
A solemn dogmatic decree was promulgated. That
was all. Who promulgated it ? It was the Pope him-
self, the Patriarchal Council approving. Ah, then, the
decree rests upon two supports, the Pope and the
Council. Let us examine each support. And first
the Council. The Council, as one of the supports of
the decree, was either fallible or infallible. If it was
fallible, then, for all we know, it may have made a
mistake when it announced the Papal infallibility.
But if, on the other hand, it was infallible, then, by as-
serting something else and not itself to be infallible, it
has infallibly pronounced its own fallibility. Indeed,
the decree itself declares the Council to be fallible -
1 6 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
for it says : " The definitions of the Roman Pontiff
are, of themselves, and not in virtue of the consent of the
Church, irreformable." If, then, the Council, by its
own admission and by the Pope's assertion, is liable
to error, we have no guarantee whatever that it spoke
the truth when it taught that the Pope was infallible.
Thus, either way, one of the two supports on which
the decree rests — namely, the Patriarchal Council —
proves utterly rotten and worthless.
Reason is the prelude of faith. Let us pass, then
to the other support on which the decree rests —
namely, the assertion of the Pope himself. Prior to
the 18th day of July, 1870, the question to be decided
was whether or not the Pope was infallible. On the
18th day of July the Pope himself settles the doubtful
question. How ? Why, by simply declaring that he
is infallible. Is this logic? "I am infallible." Why?
" Because I am infallible." Behold here, gentlemen,
born in the womb of an occasion most illustrious, and
issuing from a gathering which, for stateliness, robed
splendor and solemnity, has rarely had its equal, this
flagrant instance of the fallacy known as u Begging the
very question at issue 5" an instance which is perhaps
the sublimest in its presumption and the most absurd
in its simplicity that the world ever stood amazed at
Protestantism and Romanism. 17
There are people in this world thoughtless and
discourteous enough to say that the feminine mind
has some peculiar notions of its own touching logic ;
that if you ask why a certain thing is so, a reason,
entirely satisfactory at any rate to itself, is " Because."
One is reminded, mutatis mutandis, of what the able
critic of The Church Times said of Cardinal Manning.
One " does not know whether such ungallant sugges-
tion be well founded or not in the case of woman ;
probably not. But it applies with singular force " to
the promulgator of the above decree.
What connection there may be between the angry
portents of heaven and the deeds of man in the moral
and intellectual realms, who shall say? That the
former are rolled out of the physical realm coinci-
dently with the occurrence of the latter in the moral
realm by that God, Who holdeth and guideth both
realms as one by His one will and power, may be too
much for science to fathom, but not too much for faith
to receive. At any rate we know what God hath
said : " And there shall be signs in the sun and in the
moon and in the stars j ... for the powers of heaven
shall be shaken." At any rate you have seen Mel-
chior, Gasper and Balthasar guided to the spot where
the young Child lay. And, at any rate, we know that
1 8 Catholicity ', Protestantism and Romanism.
darkness came at noon-day, while the Jews were ac
complishing their purpose. When on the 18th day
of July, 1870, the aged man, crowned with the tiara,
arose with great form and pomp from his throne in
the Vatican Basilica, and made the awful declaration
to the universe, u I alone have the Truth," above the
dome of that Basilica without, there had already gath-
ered out of the reservoirs of the air a storm, which
those who saw it describe as almost unequaled in
blackness and turmoil and terror. And as the poor,
feeble human voice lifted itself from earth, it spoke
into the deepest gloom, and was instantly answered
from heaven by angry flashes of the most blinding light-
ning and peal on peal of sudden thunder, as though in
a Divine derision to drown the Pontiffs awful words.
From the University of Wittenberg and from the
lake-shores of Geneva and Zurich we heard the cry,
" We have the Truth." But it was only the cry of
human voices, claiming no infallibility. Again from
the banks of the Tiber it arose, "I have the Truth."
But it was again the sound of a poor human voice
only ; a voice claiming indeed infallibility, but the
claim based on supports both of which crumble tc
dust at the touch. And so you have turned your eai
away from the Vatican.
Protestantism a?id Romanism. 19
But a question is not only " an hunger," it is also
* a hope." For who would ask for what he despairs
of ever having ? And so you have come up here with
the great question on your lips. Have you seriously
asked yourselves why you have come up here ? Is it
— since you cannot rely upon having the truth from
Rome, from Geneva, from Wittenberg — in order to sil
at the feet of another mere man, and be instructed in
new dogmas of grace, justification and salvation, which
he, too, has excogitated and deems correct ? No,
gentlemen, you have not placed me in so absurd an
attitude. You announce that you have already had
enough of the mere fallible human voice crying to you,
" Put your trust in me."
There is a second explanation, then, of your pres-
ence here ; and does this account for it ? Having,
namely, in your minds the various statements touching
grace, justification, the atonement and salvation, which
men have propounded as the Truth, do you come here
for still another theory, in articled, dogmatic statement,
in order that you may sit as judges, weighing the new
with the old, and decide which is the most Biblical
and probable, or select parts from all and form another
theory to suit yourselves and perhaps to announce to
the world ? But this would be merely using me for
20 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
new material, and then falling back on yourselves fo«
the Truth ; while there is that within you which, in its
hunger, cries, I have not the Truth to give, nor power
to summon it forth, nor reagents to test it. No, gen-
tlemen, in coming up here, as you have not placed me
in a mortifying position, neither have you placed your-
selves in so absurd an attitude.
There is only one more explanation. You will
neither trust me nor yourselves. Ah, then, gentlemen,
you seek no less than the Divine voice to give you the
Truth. But do you expect to hear the Divine voice
speaking the Truth to you through me to-night ? No.
For we accept the 'Divine voice without arguing ; and
you have come here to consider, to weigh, to reason.
To consider what ? Reason is the prelude of faith ;
and you have come up here to reason within yourselves
and to consider whether there be anywhere on earth
any channel of the Divine voice, any audible source
of infallible Truth, and if so, where you are to find it.
For such and such only will neither deceive nor fail
you ; with such and such only will you be satisfied ;
before the presence of such and such only will you be
at rest. Then, having accepted, without arguing, the
Truth from a source that will not deceive us, we may
afterward reverently examine and admire its pearls
Protestantism and Romanism. 21
and rubies, and compare them with the diamonds of
glass and the emeralds of paste.
If there be on earth the audible Divine voice,
where shall we go to find and listen to it ? This is
the question of to-night. It is very difficult to disen-
gage one's self from the influences of education and
from long habits of thought. Ideas and prejudices
which we have gained in our childhood, youth and
early manhood from our parents, from the Bible, from
the atmosphere of Christianity around us, root them-
selves into us until they become almost a part of the
very fabric of our minds. And yet I am going to ask
you to join with me in the difficult task of utterly dis-
engaging yourselves for a brief while from all impres-
sions of every name and nature touching even God,
which you have had all your lives, and touching the
future life, revelation, Christ or salvation. They may
all return upon you when I have gotten through ; but
for the nonce let us put them all away in order that
we may come with virgin minds to a certain pathway
where I wish to take you. In that one pathway at least
we wish no disturbing elements, no shadowy forms of
previous notions and prejudices beckoning us hither
and yon, as we cautiously move on. Then we shall be
all alike as we enter. It is a pathway of very simple
I 2 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
seasoning ; and I beg each one of you to examine
Carefully every single link in the chain from first to last.
Why is it necessary for me to ask you away from
all your previous impressions into this pathway at all ?
It is because we are, with our different educations and
religious influences, all in confusion ; and I desire
that we go back and start even, and all over again,
without a Bible, without a Christ, without a Church,
without Sacraments, without any religious notions —
and see where we shall come out.
Let me say, in the first place, then, that as we
stand surrounded by the innumerable sects and forms
of Christianity, the plain man is utterly bewildered
with the conflicting voices. He thinks there are a
thousand and one questions which he must carefully
and painfully settle if he would get out of the maze
and reach the truth. No, gentlemen, this is a mis-
take. Numerous as the forms of Christianity are, and
certainly their name is legion, they fall as inevitably
and infallibly apart into classes, orders, genera and
species, as do the innumerable flowers of the vege-
table kingdom. Settle three questions and your
trouble is gone. The first two are not difficult or
complex questions either. And it is up to them that
I would bring you face to face to-night.
Protestantism and Romanism. 23
Now all chains of reasoning must hang upon staples.
It is impossible to conceive of a chain of reasoning
extending back infinitely into the past and hanging
nowhere. In the mathematics, reasoning starts from
axioms. I start then with certain statements which I
ask you to admit without proof. I ask you to admit :
(1) That there is a God ; (2) That that God is a perfect
God of love ; (3) That we each of us exist ; and (4)
That our senses give us tolerably accurate intelligence
of that by which we are surrounded. Bear in mind,
gentlemen, that we all admit that God is a perfect
God of love ; for that is of importance. Indeed,
Voltaire himself once said, that even if there were no
God, it would be necessary to invent one. If you
do not admit this, then I have nothing further to say.
If you do admit it, then I go on ; and let us see where
we shall come out. I do not ask any of you to take a
single step where you cannot follow ; but having
taken any step, I simply ask you, in this course of
Conferences, not to go back.
We all start even, and therefore I will take some
one of us, not as a guide, but as a specimen for each
of the rest ; and let that one be myself.
I exist, then. And, looking round about me, I
find myself in a vast temple. Above me is its might)
*4 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism,
dome j spread out beneath me is its vast floor. It is
the Temple of Nature. How did I get here ? (Re-
member, we have wiped out all our previous religious
impressions.) How did I get here? I know not.
I only know that I entered it through the gateway of
birth, and that I shall go out of it through the gate-
way of death. Within this Temple of Nature I find
innumerable objects, and I find physical, mental and
moral laws operating. I can observe and group its
facts, form theories, test my theories by experiment,
ascertain its laws, and come to fixed and certain
conclusions, in which I can rest and on which I can
act. For I have senses which place me in connec-
tion with all around me, and enable me to be. intelligent
concerning the abode within which I am enclosed.
I know that I shall exist here but a few years, and
then I shall go out of this temple through the door-
way of death. Whither shall I go? I cannot see
beyond, and I do not know. I can follow a fellow-
man up to death ; but the moment he has passed
away my faintest whisper, my loudest cry does not
reach him. He is gone from me as completely as
though he had been suddenly annihilated. I stand
and rap at the door of death ; what is there beyond ?
I listen j there is no reply. Is there an existence
Protestantism and Romanism. 25
oeyond and outside of this Temple of Nature? If
so, will my existence be eternal or not ? Are there
rocks and dangers there for me to escape? What
are the beings that live in the realm of super-nature ?
Moreover are there invisible facts and phenomena and
laws that prevail here in the supernatural? I know
not. How then am I to know the Truth with regard
to the latter that I may so shape my course here as
to enter upon a successful existence there ? I know
not. I am completely cut off from them by the walls
of nature. I cannot see them through those walls ; I
cannot hear their sound and movement. If I form
theories about them, I cannot bring those theories to
the test of experiment j and so I am totally cut off
from ascertaining whether my theories are true or not.
How then am I to act here with certainty ? Standing
at the door of death, I can, indeed, conjecture concern-
ing those facts, phenomena, laws and requirements in
which I may be living now and into which I am to
plunge; I can conjecture about all the unseen supernat-
ural that plays here in this Temple of Nature ; about
the law of the forgiveness of sins and justification, and
the means of salvation. And so, too, can another
man conjecture. And his mere guess, though it con-
tradict mine in every particular, is as good as mine ;
26 Catholicity ', Protestantism and Romanism.
for both our guesses are mere guesses, and are reallj
worth, so far as certainty is concerned, just nothing at
all. Why sow seed in cloud-land ? Why waste time ?
Let me turn back, then, from the door of the super-
natural here and hereafter at which I am standing to
this Temple of Nature, where there is something posi-
tive ; where, if I form a natural theory, I can test it
by natural fact and come to some settled and positive
conclusion. As for supernatural fact and law and
process, we, shut up as we are in this Temple of Na-
ture, are all by nature drowning in an ocean of mere
fruitless conjecture and guesswork.
And yet, if I am to live eternally in the realms
of the supernatural and among its phenomena and
laws, if its laws play here unknown to and unseen
by me, and have a bearing upon me, then, that I
should have no guesswork, that I should be able
to bring the order of my ideas within into harmony
with the order of those supernatural facts, phe-
nomena and laws, that I should have no less than the
positive and infallible truth concerning them, this, to
me, is of the vastest importance. It were the most
exquisite cruelty to shut me in here and leave me
drowning in an ocean of mere conjecture about
eternity and its laws and requirements. My danger
Protestantism and Romanism. 27
of unending disaster is enormous ; for truth is one,
like the centre of a circle, while the possibility of va-
riation from it and of error, is infinite like the radii
that point in every direction. This, then, is my situa-
tion by nature.
Now, just here, gentlemen, I call you to take the
first step along the pathway with me. It is this : God
is love ; I have admitted that. Therefore there is no
escape from the logical conclusion that He ca?inot
leave me in my miserable plight of fruitless guesswork.
He cannot leave me in my awful position of drowning
in an ocean of mere conjecture and incertitude about
topics, concerning which it is of the vastest importance
that I should have knowledge no less than exactly
true ; for anything short of infallibility itself in the
matter leaves me still in uncertainty and danger. I
can run no risk whatever where the stake is so fearful,
because eternal. God is love ; and the first conclu-
sion is, He must and has done something to help me.
And, furthermore, it must be that in helping me He
will do so effectually, i. e., He will make no mistake.
He is not going to attempt to help me, and cheat me
by leaving me worse off than before. For He is
perfect and knows what the real help will be, and all-
powerful and able therefore to effect it, or He is not
28 Catnolicity, Protestantism and Roma7iism.
God at all. Being God, then, and infinite Love, He
must, can and has helped me, it may not be to all
truth, but to such truth at any rate as is essential to
my case, and has somehow helped me effectually tc
this truth.
Is there any flaw in this first link ? I cannot see
any ; and I seem to hear you say, " No ; go on. "
Very well — the next point is how has He helped
me ? Gentlemen, there are only three ways possible
and only three ways thinkable. One is so to place
me that I can help myself in this matter of supernatu
ral truth ; the second is to send some one else to
help me ; the third is to help me Himself. If He has
not adopted the first, then He must have chosen one
of the other two. If He has not chosen the second,
then there is no escape for me ; for He must have
adopted the third.
First : He could take me temporarily out of this
Temple of Nature, give me such new senses as would
put me en rapport with the invisible facts and phenom-
ena of grace and the supernatural, leave me to ascer-
tain of myself their laws just as I ascertain here the
laws of nature ; and then, when I am equipped with
the knowledge of the truth, put me back into this
Temple and leave me here to live aright and to die
Protestantism and Romanism. 29
aright. But I know He has not done this. Therefore
He must have adopted one of the two other only
thinkable ways. If, then, He has not enabled me to
help myself, He must, secondly, have sent some one
else to help me ; or, thirdly, He must have helped
me by breaking through the dome of Nature, coming
in to me Himself, and so placing Himself en rapport
with me as to communicate with me intelligibly to
myself.
Here, then, our pathway forks. And here, at this
point, you are face to face with your first great ques-
tion. How will you decide it ? Which way will you
take as you go on ? To the left or straight ahead ?
If you decide that He, sent some one else, you are a
Unitarian. If you decide that He came Himself, you
are a Trinitarian.
Indeed, there are independent reasons why God
must be Triune. For the Divine Being must neces-
sarily have the highest object of blissful contempla-
tion, the highest means of happiness, or He would
not be supremely happy. But God is Himself the
highest of Beings. All creation is, of course, inferior
to Him, and cannot therefore in itself furnish Him
with such highest and most blissful contemplation.
Such highest object of blissful contemplation must
30 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
therefore be found, no otherwhere than in the arche
typal structure Itself of God. Now an object of con-
templation must be different from, it must be, in some
sense, external to that which contemplates it. But
how can there be in the i?iternal structure of God an
external object of contemplation ? Only if God has
existed from all past eternity in a Tri-unity, whereby
the Father can behold His own blissful perfections as
existing in and reflected from the Son, Who is Person-
ally, though not in Substance, external to Himself;
and the Son, those same objects of blissful contempla-
tion reflected in the Holy Ghost ; and the Holy Ghost
can gaze upon His own perfections as they reside in
the Father. The Trinity of Persons in the One Sub-
stance of God is what alone enables the Divine Be-
ing to find within Himself a divine Sabbath of active
self-contemplation in supremest bliss from all past
eternity ; and this, because that which causes the
consummation of bliss, viz. : the infinite perfection
of love, joy and peace, is found within God, and not
within creation, and mutually reflected within Him
from Eternal Person to Eternal Person.
There are those who assert that it is impossible
for a human mind C~ any strength to believe in the
Tri-unity of God. But Plato, who possessed one of the
Protestantism and Romanism. 31
profoundest, if not the profoundest uninspired mind
that ever existed, did not think thus. He declaied
that the more deeply one thought of the Divine Being
the more one found it impossible to conceive of Him
as a strict Unit. It were certainly modest in us all
to think just as deeply as did Plato, before we assert
that the Tri-unity of God is something that a though ;-
ful man cannot hold.
Plato argues that, as creation has not had an
eternal existence in the past, as there must, therefore,
have been a time when God alone existed, it is im-
possible for the human mind, in contemplating the
Divine Being as existing prior to and without any
creation, to conceive of Him as a strict Unit. For
if He had been a simple Unit, there having been, be-
fore creation, nothing external to such unit to awaken
its attention as an object of contemplation, such unit
could never have aroused out of its inactivity and
non-self- consciousness to have produced creation at
all. Therefore there must have been from all past
eternity within God's Archetypal Structure Itself, in
some way, exterior objects of Divine Contemplation ;
and the human mind is forced to admit the necessity
of a species of Plurality within the Unity of God.
It is most remarkable, that Plato asserts that this
3* Catholicity, Protestantism and Ro?namsm.
Plurality must be a Triplicity. The names which he
gives to the three Principles are singularly in harmony
with those which were subsequently fully revealed in
Holy Scripture. To the first of his conceptions he
applies the name 'Ayrf*?, which means Love ; to the
second he gives the name Xoi>f, which means Intelli-
gence \ and to the third the title of life, *vxy.
However, I am not here addressing Unitarians.
I am addressing those whose God is not the god
of Mohammed. It was long since decided, and ad-
mirably set forth by the great French Dominican,
that there are only three possible religions, viz.: one,
whose statement is, " Man is God f a second, whose
statement is, " God is God f and a third, whose
statement is, "God is Man." The first is the religion
of Polytheism ; the second is the religion of Moham-
medanism ; the third is Christianity. Christianity
declares that God has become Man, and so communi-
cates with us directly. Mohammedanism says, this
is impossible ; God remains and is only God, and His
communication with man is only through a prophet —
through a second cause, through a creature. This
also is the fundamental statement of Unitarianism ;
therefore Unitarianism is a European variety of the
second form of religion, or Mohammedanism, agree
ProtestaTitism and Romanism. 33
ingwith it in its mighty fundamental statement, " God
is God," but simply varying that mighty statement
into "Allah il Allah, and Christ is His prophet."
But I am addressing, I say, those whose God is the
God of St. John, of St. Augustine, of Luther, of Cran-
mer and of Wesley. It is unnecessary, therefore, for
me to enter fully into the question whether, in help-
ing us, God sent some one else. It is only necessary
to say that if He sent some one else, then He has
made the mistake of attempting to help us out of our
conjectures, and failing to do so. For it is a patent
fact that the Unitarians, acting on this supposition,
are left conjecturing as to what is Truth ? and what is
God? and what are His ways? and what is Christ ? as
badly as ever. Semi Arians against the Arians, Arians
against the Socinians, Channing against Parker, Bel-
lows against Frothingham. As, therefore, on the theory
that some one else was sent, we are plunged into the
absurdity of supposing that an all-powerful and all-
perfect God of Love tried and failed to help us, that a
perfect God is, therefore, imperfect, and a loving God
either incompetent or unloving, we are forced to reject
the second of the three ways of helping us.
There is but one more thinkable way. He must,
then, have adopted that. There is no escape for us ;
34 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
we must move straight along our path with the settled
and permanent conclusion that God broke through
the dome of Nature and came in among us Himself.
I am not only driven helplessly to this conclusion
gentlemen, by logic, by the absolute necessities of my
case, and by the attributes of God, but I am confirmed
in it, moreover, by the fact that here before me, in
this very Temple of Nature, there is an extraordinary
Book, which, whatever I may say of it, I know as a
historic fact, foretold, long before the extraordinary
Being came Whom they call the God-man, that, sooner
or later, no less than God should come, as the desire
of all nations, and be " with us," that He should be
born of a virgin, and that His name should be called
Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Ever-
lasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
It must be God, too, for I must have nothing less
than certainty as to supernatural truth and the laws
of His grace. And certainty demands infallibility.
All creatures, even the highest, are finite ; they fall
short of omniscience itself. For if the being be less
than omniscient he may innocently lead me astray
through ignorance. I am driven helplessly to admit,
then, that God has come to help us.
I pass on, then ; but, lo, I come suddenly to a spot
Protestantism and Romafiism. 35
where the path forks again. We must pause again.
Gentlemen, you are brought here face to face with
your second great question. For God, having once
come in a visible form, having so come that He can
be touched by us, and can speak to us audibly through
an organic form of human matter, one of two things
must have happened subsequently. There are only
two things possible to have happened ; only two things
thinkable. They are these, namely : He must either
have so gone away again as not afterward to be visi-
ble, tangible and audible through a one organic form
of humanity on earth, or He must have remained with
us, visible, tangible and audible through a one organic
form of humanity on earth. There is no tertium quid.
There is your second great question. If you decide
for the first alternative, then you are a Protestant. If
you decide for the second, that God has still remained,
and will to the end of time remain, in a one, undying,
ever-fresh, amazing, organic, visible, audible, tangible
and recognizable body of human matter, known as the
Body Mystical of God on earth, out into which His
Body Natural has without break or fissure expanded,
then you are a Catholic. Whether you are of the
Anglican, Roman or Greek part is a subsequent ques*
tion ; but you are a Catholic.
36 Catholicity, Protestantism a?id Romanism.
What is the relationship, then, between Protest
antism and Catholicity? As we stand herewhere the
path forks a second time, shall we take off to the left
into theProtestant by-path, or shall we go straight
en? Let us see.
" Oh, yes," says Protestantism ; " God came 1,800
years ago to place Himself physically en rapport with
us ; He stayed thirty-three years ; and then He went
away, and is no longer on earth, visible and tangible
in any one organic speaking body of human matter.
But when He thus went away He left behind Him, for
our certainty in matters of doctrinal truth, grace and
salvation, a Book. Behold this, our sublime Bible.
It is with this that we are en rapport since He left ;
and then He sends His influence from heaven, which
in some recondite, spiritual and transcendental sense,
helps each of us to find the truth as we apply ourselves
to this, His precious legacy."
Certainly, I reply, this is an intelligible theory,
and commands my respect. But I am to decide which
way I am to go. Permit me to ask of you, then, What
is the supernatural truth touching punishment here-
aftei ? " Some of us who accept the ' Bible only,'
claim that it is eternal, and others hold that it is not."
Touching the necessity of Baptism and the Sacraments
Protestantism and Romanism. 37
generally ? " Some of us hold that they are necessary,
and others that they are quite unnecessary." Touch-
ing the number of the Sacraments ? ' Well, some of
us claim that they are ordinances only, and not Sac-
raments at all ; so that some claim that out of the
seven there are only two, and others that there are
none at all." Touching the atoning Cross ? " Some
of us claim that Its effect was universal ; others that
Its effect was particular only." But, touching Its
necessity for salvation at all ? *' Well, some of us that
accept the ' Bible only ' claim that It is necessary, and
others that It is not." Touching the necessity of a
good life ? " Well, there are some that claim it to be
necessary to have wrought at least one hour, from the
eleventh to the twelfth, for the penny of eternal life ;
others that the work of salvation is all completed if
one, as the clock of life is striking twelve, utters the
all-powerful and magical sentence \ I apprehend the
Cross.' " Touching hereafter ? " Some claim that
there is only an eternal Heaven and an eternal Hell ;
others that besides these there is an intermediate tern
poral state of waiting j and still others, that there is
no Hell at all." Touching Satan ? " Some of us think
there is such a being, others deny it." Touching God
Himself ? " Well, we are not agreed \ some of us that
38 Catholicity ', Protestantism and Romanism.
accept the ' Bible only ■ hold that God is a Trinity ;
others, that The Father alone is God,' " and so on to
the end of the chapter.
But if God came and thus went away and left only
a Book and a vague influence, I do not see, O Prot-
estantism, that we are very much helped. I do not
see that we are not all still drowning in an ocean of
mere conjecture as to what that Book says. I do not
see that we are not all left still conjecturing touching
the mightiest and most vastly important facts, phe-
nomena and laws of grace and salvation ; — God, who
He is ; man, and what his state is ; hereafter ; here,
and the supernatural generally. Nay, your Book,
with which alone you say you have been left, hath
only stimulated conjecture concerning these things a
thousand-fold. Before, we knew it was all guesswork ;
now you are all busy at guesswork, and do not realize
it. This is the worst of all. For before, we faced
conjecture, and knew what we faced — it was conjee,
ture, unreliable, unverifiable. Now you face mere con
jecture, and are all and severally cheating your
selves into thinking, each his own is not conjecture
at all.
By your theory, O Protestantism, a loving God
flew to a world that was drowning in an ocean of con-
Frotestantism and Romanism. 39
jecture, gave it a great hope of rescue, and then fled,
leaving that behind Him which only hurled them back
into a vaster, blacker and more tempestuous ocean of
conjecture than ever. By your theory, O Protestant-
ism, a loving God has done Satan's work ! By your
theory an omnipotent God has risen from His Throne
to strive to do a work, and could not ! By your the-
ory an allwise and perfect God has devised and exe-
cuted a plan, which has miserably failed amid the
laughter of Hell ! Your recondite, spiritual, trans-
cendental, vague influence from Heaven, to guide you
into certain Truth — what has come of it ?
I love you, O my relatives ! I respect your sacred
memories, O my forefathers ! but your Protestant by-
path, and the dark and inextricable swamps into which
it leads — it is no way for me to tread. I must bid
you farewell and go on to the uplands of Truth. Ven-
erable is the past, but venerable are not its errors
They tell us that mediaevalism is dead beyond resur-
rection. So it is. But the sixteenth century is just
as dead, too. Begone, sheeted and stinking corpse !
The nineteenth century hath come. We will live with
the living, and not in tombs.
Gentlemen, I have led you up to the presence of
your second great question. It was this : God having
40 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
come in a visible form, must have done one of two
only things : either have departed or remained \ and
remained, too, not in the vague, spiritual, transcen-
dental sense of a mere impalpable influence — for that,
we see, is practically to have departed — but remained
in a real, tangible, visible and organic form, through
which He can and does speak audibly to the world.
These are the only thinkable alternatives. If He de-
parted and left a book only, then we are Protestants.
If He remained, " God with us," then we are Catholics.
But we cannot adopt this position that He departed
bodily without being driven by logic to deny our fun-
damental statement that God is a perfect, all-powerful
and loving God ; without being driven to the position
that He is a God who strove to do what He could not ;
a God devising a plan that failed ; a God wishing to
help us, but powerless ; a loving God giving us a hope
but cheating us, and leaving us worse off than before.
We are driven helplessly, then, on to the other alterna-
tive, namely, that having come in a speaking body of
human matter, He remains in a speaking body, an
organic form of human matter. And we find this one
organic form, the human part of the God-man to-day
on earth, in His Body Mystical, out into which His
Body Natural of Palestine has, without break or fis-
Protestantism and Romanism. 41
sure, gradually expanded over the earth, as human
beings, plucked like branches from the root of the
first Adam, have, out of all generations, been grafted
into unity with It by Baptism, and as His one Body
and Blood, passing through the Eucharist equally
into all the branches, have incorporated them into
Himself.
He is still the God-man on earth. He perpetually
incarnates Himself. He is still "with us," taking
human nature to Himself, and so abiding in a one
visible Form of matter. That Form is the Catholic
Church. It is not a mere society of men ; it is the
one organic Body Mystical of Christ. By It and
through It, and Its marvelous arms and limbs, He
literally touches us that His graces may flow through
His touch. In It as Its living soul, and through It,
He speaks to us audibly, that we may be certified we
have the truth.
We are not cheated. We still have, by logic, by
the necessities of our case, by the sanction of the
Divine attributes, and in actual, historic and present
existence, the Omniscient God on earth, remaining
among us, according to the promise He made at a
moment when, otherwise, we would have thought He
was departing — "Lo, I am with you always, even unto
42 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
the end of the world." In Him, in this God embodied
in the one Church, in this God continuously visible
and audible, therefore, behold, gentlemen, the Foun-
tain of infallibility which you seek ; for God Himself
cannot err nor falsify. And as the one Holy Catho-
lic Church in all Its parts, His own Body, raises Its
voice and chants in unison round and round the world,
in unbroken strain, following the tireless sun through
the centuries and the millenniums, the solemn Catho-
lic Creed of Nice, Constantinople, and Athanasius,
listen : it is the voice of God on earth, Who chanted
the great prophetic psalm, " Deus, Deus," from the
Cross, chanting aloud that all the peoples in all time
may hear, and be without excuse, the unaltering irre
formable Truth.
SECOND CONFERENCE.
Catholicity, a Life and an Organizer ; Protestantism,
a Disorganizer and a Death.
Gentlemen,
St. Thomas of Aquinas defines Life as a spontane-
ous motion. It is something more than this. It is &
mysterious principle pervading the universe, whicL
possesses a centralizing force. It organizes and hai
monizes. It sustains in existence the organic form
which it has constructed. It is the mother of order
and beauty. It builds the crystalline forms with their
glittering angles ; it works out for itself, and then pro-
duces the rustic tracery of the tree ; it frames and
holds together the bird, the beast and man j it con-
structs the family, the State, the Church ; its fountain
is God, and its sanction is, " Thou shalt do no mur-
der." On the other hand, Death is a disorganizer.
It is a despoiler of beauty. On its anvil it smites the
diamond into powder ; it lays the tree low ; it slays
bird and beast and man ; it sends hate, divorce and
orphanage into the family, feuds into the State, schism
into the Church ; its fountain is in hell, and its fiat is :
44 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
" That which is, shall not be \ that which is gathering
into unity, shall be scattered into severalty ; that
which is organizing, shall be decomposed." Life,
then, is the love of beauty and of order ; Death their
foe and destroyer.
It is my privilege, gentlemen, at this conference to
present Catholicity to you as a Life and as an Organi-
zer j and it will follow that the fountain whence She
springs is God, and not Satan.
What was it that this life, issuing from the bosom
of God, went forth to organize and to compact ? What
was it that was to be gathered together out of its
severalty into unity? It was the human race ; which,
when it fell away from God, went into pieces, and lay
upon earth disintegrated and dying. It fell from Him
Who was not only the Life, but Who was also Love.
Cut off from Charity, therefore, selfishness, hates, en-
vies and angers were the mutually repellant force in
its bosom, sundering its individuals apart from each
other, its families and its States.
The life, which we call Catholicity, goes forth into
these ruins as an organizing and integrating force to
build a structure of order and beauty. What was its
cohesive operation as it thus went forth ; and what
'he marvelous structure it erects and sustains ? It
Catholicity and Protestantism. 45
formed an organism in which are four great couplings
or unifications. The first of these unifications had,
indeed, existed in the eternity of the past — namely,
the unity of the Father and the Son in the archetypal,
interior structure of God ; the second and the third of
the great couplings take place during the scene of
time present ; in order to carry the fourth, final and
permanent unity, namely, of human beings with Christ,
through the eternity of the future. Go back with me,
then, to the first, and behold this living force of Catho-
licity going forth to its great integrating, organizing
and centralizing work among the poor fragments with
which it has to deal. Behold the unifications which
it successively effects as it proceeds in its benign work.
1 st. From all past eternity the Father and the Son
in God have been of One Substance. If the Father
is God, the Son is God of God ; if the Father is Light,
the Son is Light out of Light ; and as the Father is
Life, the Son is Life of Life : i. e. life flows out of the
Father, Who is its fountain in God, and owing to the
unity between the Father and the Son so fills the Son
that the Son can come to the earth with the great
statement, " I am the Life." Here, then, we have
the first unification ; in God from all past eternity the
Father and the Son are One. It is in the Trinity and
46 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanis7n.
the entire unity of Its Persons that we have the hope
and the prophecy of human reintegration. For,
secondly, God the Son descended into the Temple of
Nature, took manhood to Himself in the womb of the
Virgin, was born and stood among us the God-man.
Here we have the second great unification effected ;
Christ's Manhood, namely, so entirely one with His
Godhead, that there was no obstruction to hinder the
life, which from all past eternity He had from the
Father, from flowing from His Godhead into and
filling His Manhood.
3d. The third great unity in the successive steps
was the oneness between Christ's Man's Nature and
His Church ; a union, as we saw at our last confer-
ence, without break or fissure between them. In-
deed, Scripture exhausts all metaphor in the effort to
make us realize the consummate integrity of this third
great unification. The oneness of man and wife,
though they be declared by God to be one only flesh,
is not sufficient. The oneness of the head and human
body, though "from the head all the body is by joints
and bands knit together," is not sufficient. If we are
the branches, He is not the stock, but the whole vine.
Indeed, the Church is so one with Him that it is
called by His name, Jesus Christ. Owing, therefore^
Catholicity and Protestantism. 47
to the unity between the Man's Nature of Christ and
His Church, the life which had flowed from His God-
head into His Body Natural now flows out from the
latter and fills His Church.
4th. There is but one more unification, the fourth,
which completes the vast constructive work. In it
the poor broken fragments are reintegrated into this
structure, organized, harmonized and sustained :
namely, the unity effected by the Holy Ghost in Bap-
tism between each separated individual of the race
and this one Catholic Church. The life therefore that
is in the Church, now flows into the baptized man
owing to his unity with the Church.
Behold, then, gentlemen, the kindly, loving, recon-
structive force of Catholic life at its work, gathering
poor disintegrated humanity, one by one, through the
fourth unification into oneness with its one Holy
Catholic and Apostolic Church — which was already
one with the Manhood of Christ ; which Manhood was,
through the second unification, already one with the
Godhead of Christ ; which Godhead, through the first
unification, was always one with God the Father in
the eternity of the past. Behold how life, flowing with
a unity of purpose through these living links, binds all
together — Christians, Church, Christ and the Father
43 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
Who is the Fountain of Life — into a unique and sub-
lime structure, and carries reintegrated humanity out
of time present to sustain it in God through the
eternity of the future. Behold, too, in all this, how
the one Holy Catholic Church and Its Baptismal
Sacrament are inseparable, indispensable and undying
elements in the whole grand organism of life and
unity. " Thou shalt not commit murder," is the sanc-
tion of the sacredness and pricelessness of that one
visible Apostolic Church, and of its blessed life-giving
Sacraments. To slay the Godhead of Christ and the
Trinity and the Incarnation as do the Arians, Socinus
and Priestly ; to slay the Church as does Protestant-
ism ; to slay the Sacraments as do Simeon and Chil-
lingworth, is to break in upon this structure of unity,
and to slay God's plan of salvation.
But, gentlemen, in all this, what have I been giv-
ing you ? I have simply been giving you that plan of
salvation, that Gospel in little, that solemn Creed of
Nice, Constantinople and Athanasius, which the three
Communions, Anglican, Roman and Greek, of the
One Catholic Church, which the three national types
of Catholic man, Saxon, Latin and Oriental, hold in
common, and chant ceaselessly to the peoples as the
sun goes round the world through the centuries ; the
Catholicity and Protestantism. 49
Christian Creed, which that one tripartite Holy Catho-
lic Church alone, too, holds. For Protestantism,
which is the disintegrating, destructive, disorganizing
and scattering element in Christianity, does not and
cannot hold that Creed, or proclaim it to the nations.
Do you ask why ? Two reasons. Following its death-
giving instincts, it rends that Creed apart, disintegrat-
ing it article from article, and then cheats the world
by declaring of each and every separate article, " I
believe it." But the Creed, like all of Catholicity's
works, is organic and a unit ; it is built up, a thing of
life like a flower j article grows out of previous article,
and opens out into the following ; so that its articles
cannot thus be sundered from each other, or re-ar-
ranged, any more than a flower can be torn apart,
petal from petal, and sepal from stamen, and pistil
from ovary, and remain a flower. Though you may
have in your hand afterward all its parts, you have not
the flower. For this holy and unalterable Creed of
Catholicity expresses something as a whole, over and
above the sense of its separate articles, which is the
very thing, the very Gospel, the very plan of salvation
Protestantism will not admit, hates, and with murder-
ous instinct would slay. It makes necessary the four
great unifications, and among them, as a part of the
3
50 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
plan of salvation, the one great Catholic Church in Its
Saxon, Oriental and Latin sides ; Its Apostolic min-
istry, and Its Sacrificial, Sacerdotal and Sacramental
systems.
Secondly : but I hear you say. gentlemen, surely
Protestantism asserts that it believes in a Catholic
Church. True ; but what does it mean ? It means,
and it means avowedly, merely some vague, disinte-
grated nebula of all tolerably good folk, baptized and
unbaptized, for it includes the Quakers and others.
Nebula, do I say ? A nebula is something we can
see, at least with a telescope, and map out in its gen-
eral shape, however hazy. But this indiscriminate
muster of Protestantism retires, when we look at it,
into the complete indistinctness and incertitude of a
profound and permanent invisibility. Gentlemen, this
is not the organic Catholic Church of the Creed.
This is not to believe the Creed, but to believe some-
thing else of Protestantism's own invention. To be-
lieve the Creed, is to believe what that Creed was
written to mean, and what it always has meant from
time immemorial. But to excogitate out of the pro-
found depths of ingenuity a totally new and modern
idea, and to cover that totally different and antago-
nistic idea with the garment of an ancient phrase, and
Catholicity and Protestantism. 51
then send the new idea forth, a mere wolf in sheep's
clothing, is to act the part of the disingenuous, and tc
do the work of him whom the Saviour called u the
liar from the beginning and the father of lies." The
phrase " Holy Catholic Church " is a cover of definite
shape that will fit only one receptacle ; and it cannot
be made, by any manipulation, to hold under itself
and within its rims the innumerable suppositions of
Protestantism sprawling off hither and yon at their
own wild will.
But life is not only an organizing and uniting
force, it is also, as St. Thomas says, a spontaneous
motion. Now u all motion," (I quote from another)
" bears in its very essence the idea of a starting point,
of a point to be reached, and of an effort to pass from
the one to the other." If, then, Catholicity be a life
and not a destroyer, if its fountain be in God and not
in hell, then, as such life, it must exhibit not only this
constructive force which I have shown, but also this
element of motion, and these peculiarities of motion —
namely, a starting point, a point to be reached, and a
flowing from the one to the other.
High up in far-away mountains there is a vast
reservoir of water. From the end of that great lake
its floods tumble in white cataract into a basin on a
52 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
lower level, and form there a second enormous reser-
voir. From the opposite end of this second lake the
waters tumble again into a third basin on a still lower
level. From the opposite end of this third basin they
fall again into a fourth lake still further below. From
the lower end of this fourth sheet of water they issue in
innumerable radiating rills and streams over the level
lowlands, filling them with verdure, with beauty and
with fruits. You have here in these four lakes, one
below the other, and the luxuriant plain spread out at
their foot, an apt illustration of life and grace issuing
as a motion from God the Father, and reaching at
last by Mediation the lowlands of poor humanity, to
turn them from a desert into a garden. Life and
grace, which we all need in place of death and weak-
ness, issue from God the Father, their original Foun-
tain, and fall first into God the Son. They next fall
into the Man's Nature of Jesus Christ. From this
they descended on Pentecost into the great lake of the
Catholic Church, filling its enormous basin ; whence
they issue finally and flow, through the openings of
the Sacraments, into the many stream beds of human
lives, and fill the world with the flowers of sanctity
and the fruits of good works. God the Father is the
starting point of this life. God the Son, in Hi?
Catholicity and Protestantism. 53
Catholic Church and through Its Sacraments, is the
mediatory receptacle, from Whom this overflowing life
and grace reach humanity, which is the term of all.
In our last conference I conducted you up to Jesus
Christ in His visible Catholic Church as its Soul and
Life. It was here that you found, embodied on earth,
Him who is Infallibility itself, because He is God.
It is through this, His one visible, organic Body Mys-
tical, inseparable from Himself, unless indeed you
slay the God-man now on earth, that you heard Him
chanting continuously the unalterable and irreform-
able truth. And that in which He chants aloud this
truth to all the nations is the Catholic Creed.
What, then, is the Creed ? What is the infallible
truth ? In what I have said above, I repeat, I have
been giving you simply that Catholic Creed. For the
Creed is nothing less and nothing more than a history
of the course which life and grace take from stage to
stage, as they issue from God the Father, and, pass-
ing through the Godhead, and the Body Natural and
Mystical of the Son, reach at last, through Baptism,
human beings that need them. The Creed is the
Gospel in little ; the good news unto men ; the way
of salvation. For the Creed begins with : " / believe
in one God the Father Almighty. Maker of heaven and
54 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
earth. And of all things visible and invisible" It
begins, then, with the Father as the Fountain of alJ
things ; the Fountain, therefore, of the life and grace
which we need after the fall. But it is the history,
not of all things, but simply of the course of that
grace. It passes next, therefore, and announces the
reservoir into which life and grace first flow from the
Father : " And in one Lord Jesus Christ the only begot-
ten Son of God;" and it announces the first unifica-
tion j that, namely, between Father and Son, existing
in the eternity of the past : " Begotten of His Father
before all worlds, God of God; Light of Light; very
God of very God; Begotten not made; Being of one sub-
stance with the Father; By Whom all things wert
made. "
It then gives the next reservoir into which the life
and grace flow, and announces the second great unifi-
cation — namely, God and man in Christ — " Who for
us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven,
And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin
Mary, And was made man." But human nature,
before it could, even as it stood on earth in the person
of Christ, receive and be filled with the very fullness
of life and grace, must first undergo, even in Christ, a
time of probation, of temptation, of trial. There are
Catholicity and Protestantism. 55
profound reasons for this, almost if not quite beyond
the grasp of human ken, but which God Himself
displays in furtive flashes out of that sublime passage
beginning, u For it became Him for Whom are all
things, and by Whom are all things, in bringing many
sons to glory, to make the Captain of their salvation
perfect through sufferings," and ending with, u For in
that He, Himself, hath suffered, being tempted, He is
able to succor them that are tempted." The Creed,
therefore, goes on to give the process by which the
Man's Nature of Christ was prepared through "suffer-
ings, crucifixion under Pontius Pilate, death and burial,
to rise again the third day, and to ascend" not astronomi-
cally, but to ascend in the highest moral and spiritual
elevation, even into the condition and lofty spiritual com-
panionship of the Most High, " to receive there," in that
moral and spiritual exaltation, " the gifts for men,"
and, on Pentecost, to pour those gifts forth from His
Body Natural which had thus gained them, and fill
with them His Body Mystical, the Church. Hence
the Creed goes on to say, " /believe in the Holy Ghost,
the Lord and Giver of Life, Who proceedeth from the
Father, and" not from the Father only, but also from
" the Son j and I believe in the one Holy Catholic and
Apostolic Church"
56 Catholicity >, Protestantism and Romanism.
Here we strike the third great unification — the
oneness, nay, the identity of the Church with the
Man's Nature of Christ, even as it is said, " The
Church, which is His Body, the fullness of Him that
filleth all in all ;" and as it is said again, " Ye are the
Body of Christ and members in particular." Let us
pause here a moment before we go on to the conclu-
sion of the Creed.
You will remember that at the close of our last
conference we were left forced into a certain conclu-
sion. We were forced by logic, by the necessities of
our case, and by the attributes of God Himself, into
the conclusion that God, having descended visibly into
the Temple of Nature, having so come that He could
touch and be touched by us, and that He could speak
to us audibly through an organic form of human mat-
ter, must have remained with us in a one visible form
of human matter. This kind of remaining only, we
found, would be an effectual relief. The other only
thinkable suppositions left us worse off than ever.
Besides, why should one small country, one brief gen-
eration, thus have the inestimable boon of His pres-
ence en rapport with itself, and not all nations and all
subsequent time as well ? Let us take up this sub-
ject, then, where we left it at the last conference,
Catholicity and Protestantism. 57
particularly as it relates to the spot in the Creed at
which we have arrived.
We having been forced into the conclusion that
God must remain on earth en rapport with us, the
problem here is, How was He thus to remain in a one
organic body of human matter ; a continuous body,
too, that should be His own Body, still surrounding
His Soul and Divinity, and in unbroken unity with
Them ? There are many reasons whv, if the first or
natural form of His Body had continued visible among
us, it would not have satisfied the requirements of our
case. For that first form and condition of His visible
Body was loca. ; it could stand on only one contracted
spot, while we need Him simultaneously in all nations,
all round the world, in a Body that shall speak to us,
forgive us our sins, touch us and feed us. To that
first condition of His visible Body, which we call the
Body Natural, a few thousand only could have clus-
tered at one time ; while we all, and all round the
world, need to gather simultaneously to " God with
us," at any time and at all times. The overwhelming
majority of the human race, moreover, are sons of toil,
and could not have traveled to Him. Besides, there
were something shocking in the supposition of that
fair *brm upon whose bosom St. John leaned, continu*
3*
58 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
ing visible for centuries, descending to the wrinkled
brow and thin silver locks of extreme old age, and
lasting, undying, beyond even that, in a decrepitude oi
millenniums which we know nothing of. This were
the extreme of the unnatural. God never acts in a
shocking or unnatural way ; and such act were be-
neath the dignity of God. And yet logic, our neces-
sities and the attributes of God have driven us to the
only conclusion that God must remain on earth in His
one organic Body ; that He must so remain as not to
shock us ; that He must so remain that His Body
shall be, however aged, yet ever fresh and youthful j
ever one, yet everywhere simultaneously present
throughout the world. Mighty problem ! Who shall
solve it ? Not you, gentlemen, nor I, nor the wisest
philosopher that ever lived. But what is thus beyond
human ingenuity — what is quite impossible to men —
is easy to God. For there are natural laws of growth
and expansion, and there are supernatural laws of
growth and expansion. The Divine voice had said in
the ancient time that " The stone cut out without
hands," the Human, visible Nature of Christ, should
" grow and become a great mountain and fill the whole
earth." And the Divine ingenuity, in the fullness of
time, found out a way by which His Body Natural
Catholicity and Prokstantisni. 59
could expand without break or fissure into His Body
Mystical, the Catholic Church, and fill the whole earth.
The Natural and the Mystical forms of His Body of
human matter are but two consecutive visible condi-
tions of that Body ; the one local, the other universal j
its natural condition going up and disappearing on Oli-
vet, only that the Mystical condition might thencefor-
ward alone be visible and tangible on earth. Natural
bodies expand from infancy to childhood, to youth, to
manhood, by natural law ; God's Human Body then
continued ceaselessly to expand, but by supernatural
law. Besides, at the very time when we would have sup-
posed that, on Olivet, He was departing out of his con-
dition of visibility among us, He took occasion solemn-
ly to disabuse us of this error ; to disclose to us that He
was not ; to say to us, " Lo, I am still with you, even
unto the end of the world." Of course He had always
been with us in His impalpable omnipresence. If He
had meant to say that He would merely continue thus
to be invisibly and inaudibly with us, a mere influence,
He would have been uttering a needless truism. Nay,
it was no such truism that He was guilty of. But
what He impressed upon us was that, as He had been
en rapport with us, so He would continue to be until
;he end. The event at Olivet was a disappearance of
5o Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
the first and temporary condition of his visibility to
make way for the second and lasting condition. He
that first took our human nature, binding it to Him-
self in the womb of the Virgin, goes on taking our
human nature to Himself till the number of the elect
is made up. The Incarnation is a perpetual fact.
What is the supernatural law, then, under which His
own Personal Body continues to expand ? It is this :
human beings are baptized into Christ, according as
it is said, " We are members of His body, of His flesh
and of His bones.' " Human beings, sprouting like
so many separate branches from the poisoned root of
Adam, are plucked thence by the Holy Ghost, and, in
Baptism, grafted into the new tree, Christ ; our bodies
into His, our souls into His, our hopes, our imagina-
tions, our passions, our reason into His ; and so the
Tree enlarges ; so His Body visible expands ; so " the
Stone grows and becomes a great Mountain and fills
the whole earth j " according as it is said, " Ye are the
Body of Christ and members in particular." Branch
after branch being thus grafted into the Vine, Christ
then sends forth through the Eucharist His one Body
and Blood into all the branches simultaneously, and
binds them up together into His own visible Catholic
Body ; according as it is said, " For we being many.
Catholicity ana Protestantism. 61
are one bread and one body, for we are all partakers
of that one bread." And so, since the Resurrection
and until the end of time, it is life that still playeth in
His Body on earth. The Catholic life is among us ;
the life that centralizes, organizes, integrates, har-
monizes, beautifies, builds and sustains that Body.
No, no ; death, that disorganizes, loosens and scat-
ters, hath no part in It. It hath overcome death \
and, lo, " The gates of hell shall not prevail
against It."
Life is not only thus, gentlemen, the love of order,
and of organism, and of unity, but it is also the love
of freshness and of beauty. God Himself, who is the
Life, must by the laws of His Being finish His works.
He must adorn the meadows with flowers, the streams
with rocks and cascades, the lakes with green islands,
each billow with a white blossom atop, and the very
night with diamonds. And life from God could not
enter into and play within the great Catholic Body,
without Its breaking forth also, not only into the
beauty of meekness and of purity and of all sanctity,
but also into the wonders of fair religious statuary,
paintings, architecture and music, the robed proces-
sion, the incense, the banner, the fringed canopy, the
brilliant altar, and the fair pomp and form. It was
62 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanhm.
that whose other name is Death, the destroyer, the foe
of organism, of freshness and of beauty, that smote all
this in the sixteenth century, and tramples the flowers
to-day as the fecund Life sends them forth once more
to clothe the wide waste of desolation.
Here, then, we have, gentlemen, the infallible God
in a Body on earth, even in the One Holy Catholic
and Apostolic Church, as its Soul. And because we
say of a man that we see him when we look at his
form, though his soul be invisible, so we all around
the world, as they in Palestine, have the Infallible
God still visible, tangible and audible among us ; we
see Him, we touch Him with reverent hand.
Now, His Body of human matter having thus
grown out by supernatural law into so marvelous and
everywhere present a structure, it follows, if He is to
continue to apply Himself to the world through It, as
He did in Palestine through His Natural Body, that
It must have everywhere new and marvelous limbs
and organs which He may stretch forth to poor hu-
manity, and by which He may touch us, and teach us,
and pardon us, and feed us. In Palestine, with the
limbs of His Body Natural, He tenderly touched the
white eye-balls of the blind and the silent ear chambers
of the deaf He laid His loving hands on children, on
Catholicity and Protestantism. 63
the sick, on the sinner, and on bread and wine, that
pardon, and blessing, and transformation, and all gifts
and graces might flow from Him through His Body,
and through even His garments, to those that were
touched. What, then, are the new and marvelous
limbs of this His marvelous supernatural Body ? They
are the Catholic, life-giving, grace-conferring Sacra-
ments and Ministry. These are but limbs of His
Personal Body Mystical, which He stretches forth
to us, by which He touches us, and conveys to us
His graces all around the world.
A hand and arm separated from a living human
body is but a piece of powerless clay. But slip the arm
into its socket in the living body, and the soul within,
using that poor piece of clay, performs with it its
own mighty deeds. So a man separated from Christ's
Body Mystical — a man considered merely in himself
alone — is the very type of powerlessness. But when
set in a socket of Christ's Mystical Body as a Priest
or a Bishop, the God within that Body, using the poor
frame of clay as His own arm and hand, performs with
it His divine and mighty deeds among us. pardons in
the Sacrament of Penitence, transforms bread and
wine at the Altar, blesses, regenerates in Baptism,
anoints with the Holv Ghost in Confirmation, makes
64 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
of twain one flesh, confers the grace of Orders through
His touch, and either raises the sick from death or
sends the soul healed into eternity. The Sacraments
and the Ministry are His limbs with which He touches
us. Tactual succession ? Why of course u God is with
us " in a Body, and literally touches us. When His
arm and hand, a Priest, baptises an infant, it is not a
man that is baptising, or mere water that we are look-
ing at ; we are looking at Christ's own arm and hand
stretched forth and visibly taking our dear one and
grafting it into Himself; at the holy Altar we see in
the human Priest God's visible hand touch and bless
the bread before our eyes and convey it to us ; when
one is confirmed or ordained to the Priesthood we are
literally beholding Christ stretching forth His marvel-
ous hand, a Bishop, and conveying the Holy Ghost
either to the work of the ordinary Christian or to the
work of the Priesthood. And it is He that at last
takes our poor soulless body and, in the requiem, lays
it tenderly away till He shall summon it at the resur-
rection. Beware ; he that hath eyes to see let him
see. The quickening touch of God's Body on earth ?
Ah, gentlemen, as true are the words of Manning, as
they are consummately beautiful : " When the Wis-
dom of God came into the world, He laid His hands
Catholicity and Protestantism. 65
jpon a multitude of things ; upon the sick, the afflicted,
the hungry, the dying; upon little children, upon the
bread He blessed and brake in the wilderness ; upon
sorrow and upon pain \ and, lastly, He laid them upon
the Cross ; and wherever He laid His hands He left a
sweetness and a fragrance which wisdom can perceive
and wisdom alone can know." Look, gentlemen, at
your Protestantism. O Protestantism, in thine un-
wisdom thou wilt drag the world, and even the little
ones of thy bosom, away from the touch of Christ.
Here, then, stands the Catholic Church with con-
tinuous life from the first ; here It stands all round
the world. In It is God, for It is His personal Body ;
through It He applies Himself by Ministry and Sacra-
ments to poor humanity ; to It He made the solemn
promise that He would guide It, when It spoke as a
unit, into all truth ; not that It could possibly speak
error any more than could His Body Natural ?n
Palestine, It being the organ of His Soul and Divin-
ity j but He made the solemn promise in kindly
and descending consideration to our weakness. If
He promised to guide It, when It spoke as a unit,
into all truth, how can any one suppose it to be faili-
ole, and liable to lead us into error, without charging
Christ with breaking His promise, and sc not being
66 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
God at all ? Thus it is always that the Protestant
denial of the infallibility of the Catholic Church is a
first fatal step in that inevitable logical descent, which
ends in denying the Godhead of Christ and setting
up Unitarianism with its murder of the Atonement in
the world.
What, then, has the Catholic Church, as a unit,
spoken ? What is the infallible Truth ? It is the
Creed which I have given you. This is all that It has
formally announced by Its six general Councils. This
is the antagonist of Protestantism, since life is always
the antagonist of death. But, besides the formal
statements of the Creed, there are other things which
we know to be true also ; not because the whole
Church Catholic hath formulated them in general
Council and accepted them as thus formulated, but
because the Church's documentary voice has always,
and in all Its three parts, everywhere declared them,
and would have thrown them into formulae had it been
necessary; viz., the Sacerdotal and Sacramental
systems, the Apostolic succession, Priestly absolution,
the real objective presence of Christ in the Eucharist,
Baptismal regeneration, Prayers for the dead, and
lights, incense, vestments, adoration and song as the
five essentials of Christian worship. Of these all,
Catholicity and Protestantism. 67
every part of the Catholic Church, ancient, mediaeval
and modern, Latin, Saxon and Oriental, Anglican,
Roman and Greek, have held no doubt, but have con-
tinuously and consentingly asserted them in ritual
and official documents. The points on which the
Anglican, Greek and Roman Communions differ are
points over and above these j points upon which the
whole Church has not yet spoken.
Let us return and go on with the Creed. After
making its great announcement, " I believe in the one
Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church" it proceeds to
announce the fourth and final great unification in the
reconstructing work that Life is effecting — namely, " /
acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins " In
this Baptism each individual is brought into unity with
the reservoir of grace. And then comes the grand
close. For, of course, there follows from the internal
life-action of this great organic Catholic Structure,
" The communion of all the saints " within It. Further-
more, as death is only by sin, there follows from the
cure of sin the cure of death. The Creed's next arti-
cle is, therefore, " / look for the resurrection of the
dead" What, finally, is the end and purport of all
this flow of grace and life, and of all these four unifi-
cations ? What is the final result of aP this integra-
68 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
ting, organizing, centralizing, harmonizing and sus-
taining force of Catholic life as it goes forth from God
to broken humanity? It is salvation. Therefore the
Creed rounds out and completes its history with the
final statement, "And the life everlasting in the uorld to
come. Ameti" Thus is the Creed a consecutive history
of Life as a motion, of Life as a redintegrator, organiz-
er, harmonizer and sustainer — of Catholic Life, the foe
of death, with which the race was struck at the Fall.
In the wonderful land of the West there are two
processes going on simultaneously, the one on the
lowlands, the other on the uplands. In the serene
and sunny valleys of Sonoma and Suisun, of Santa
Clara, Los Angeles and Sacramento, those paradises
on earth, the vine dresser, the florist and the agricul-
turist ply their peaceful, kindly crafts : healing all
abrasions in the soil, terracing rugged slopes, gather-
ing out unsightly stones, and covering everywhere with
verdure and billowy beauty. But high up on the
sides of the Sierra there is a different work and a dif-
ferent scene. There, it is the miner that has left his
record. With his sluice-heads and the tremendous im-
pact of their out-bounding water-spouts he has turned
up the mountain sides for miles ; turf and flower and
rounded mound fly to pieces before him ; he strips
Catholicity and Protestantism. 69
away the soil from the land ; he turns the streams
from their own sweet ways of mystery j he disem-
bowels the hills j he decomposes them, throwing up
great mounds of boulders, and spreading wide ex-
panses of sand in his exploiture of the gold. And
he has left behind him, wherever he has trodden, one
vast, broken, verdureless scene of desolation and
death, which it will take kindly nature centuries to
heal, to cure and to cover. One cannot help standing
in admiration before this daring and this power of
our human nature. Its work on the slopes of the
Sierra is, indeed, a mighty work. But, gentlemen, it
is a ghastly work.
The instinct of Protestantism is the instinct, alas,
of disruption, disintegration and death. Leaping up-
on Jesus Christ, it hath rent His Body Mystical, the
Church, apart from His Body Natural of Palestine,
and sent Him, with His Body Natural, into a far-away
astronomic heaven. Leaping, then, upon the Body
Mystical, the Catholic and Apostolic Church on earth,
it hath disconnected Its outward and visible from Its
inward part ; and, while it lauds its disembodied
" Church invisible and spiritual," buries the dead visi-
ble part as some offensive thing, fit only to be put out
of sight. Leaping upon Christendom, it lacerates u
70 Catholicity, Protestcmtism and Romanism.
into numerous fighting sects, and, alas, glories in its
disorganizing work, as producing a beautiful and ac-
tively writhing variety. Leaping upon the rounded
perfect number of the seven Sacraments, it slays five
outright ; and, instantly springing upon each of the
other two, it tears its soul from its body; Baptism is
left without the divine regenerating force of life, the
Eucharist is despoiled of its tremendous, adorable
PYeight, and is left a mere natural and lifeless piece
of bread and a memory of the natural man. Leaping
upon man as an immortal being, it disjoins body from
soul, and, ignoring the former, appeals only to the
latter with, "Save your soul; oh, save your soul."
But, O Jesus, Thou didst tell us to fear him who is
able to destroy both body and soul in hell. Leaping
upon man as a worshiping being, it sunders body from
soul, and forbids the worship of the body — no fasting,
no reverent bending of the head on entering God's
presence in God's House, or at the Sacred Names, as
little kneeling and as little standing as possible. But,
O Jesus, Thou hast taught us that the body is a crea-
ture of God as well as the soul ; and Thou hast taught
us to worship the Lord our God ; and to pray that
" both our hearts and bodies may be directed, sancti-
fied, and governed in the ways of this Thy law, and in
Catholicity and Protestantism. 71
the works of this Thy commandment." O Jesus,
Thou hast taught us, too, that we are to worship Thee
in spirit and in truth. And how can we worship Thee
in truth if our body play not with our spirit in its
changing moods of glorious praise, of lowly humility
and of reverent adoration ; how can we worship Thee
in truth if our body belie the moods of the spirit ? O
Jesus, Thou hast taught us, too, that our body is
grafted into Thine ; that it is precious to Thee, too,
as it is to the very instincts Thou hast planted in us ;
and that Thou wilt rescue it from death. And Thou
hast taught us to pray, (i that, through Thy most mighty
protection, we may be preserved both here and ever in
body and in soul." Nay, cries Protestantism, we have
decomposed the man, and the body is dead as a wor
shiper. Not satisfied with slaying the Body Mystical,
it has cut the Church asunder, not only longitudi-
nally, but also transversely. For it has sundered
Church Militant here from Church Expectant and
Triumphant there, hurling the beloved departed so
far away, that the gulf between the living and the
dead is bridgeless, that all communication is gone,
and that neither can give the other the charity of its
prayers. O God upon Thy Throne, must not even
Thine heart have been filled with amazement as, to
72 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
Thy listening ear, the voice of Thy needy children's
prayers for each other died away into silence ! It
decomposes the organic Christian Creed, and holds
out in its hand the poor disjecta membra of the once
fair flower, that the world may admire its death. It
lays hands on the ancient Apostolic three-fold Minis-
try, slays the Bishop and the Deacon, and, at last, leaves
the world without even a Priest.
While the Anglican rubrics, as all other Catholic
rubrics, speak of but one Priest, of but one Celebrant
at each Eucharist, and of but one Officiant at each
Morning or Evening Prayer, thereby symbolizing the
truth that there is but one great Priest, Jesus Christ,
and that it is heresy to divide Him (one Celebrant, I
say, who may be assisted, indeed, in epistle and gos-
pel, and one Officiant, who may be assisted in the
Lessons), it has with its disruptive force, as the foe of
unity, invaded our own Church, and sundered the
Officiant's and the Celebrant's part of the service into
halves, or into more numerous fragments still, and has
parceled them out to various Officiants, breaking up
even this symbol of the Oneness of Christ. While
the rubrics say the services shall be musically ren-
dered, thus securing the unity of the worship as a
symbol of the unity of the parish and of the Church
Catholicity and Protestantism. 73
which worships with one voice, it has, with its instinct
of disruption, gone down into our congregations, disin-
tegrated this mode of unison in rendering the service,
and separated it into a broken mumble of voices.
With boisterous might it has divided religion from
aesthetics, and has then proceeded to deprave archi-
tecture and to trample ecclesiastical fine arts under
its feet. It has debased manners, until the M gentle-
man of the old school " is a phrase descriptive of a cul-
ture and a suavity that are well-nigh gone. It has
gone down beneath with its besom to sweep hell
away ; nay, in its Unitarian form, it has even mounted
to the Throne of God Himself, and has there disin-
tegrated and separated Father, Son and Holy Ghost
from each other, slain the Holy Ghost, destroyed the
Son, and left the Father without a Son, sterile and
alone upon His throne.
Behold, then, gentlemen, Catholicity, a Life issuing
from God ; an organizing, centralizing, harmonizing,
constructive and beautifying Force ! And behold,
too, Protestantism, the mother of uncomeliness, a dis-
organizing, decentralizing, disruptive and destroying
power ! One cannot but admire its mighf and its
daring. Its work on the slopes of time is indeed a
mighty work. But, gentlemen, it is a ghastly work.
4
THIRD CONFERENCE.
Catholic Church, Perfect and Imperfect. Leaves
Room for Play of Mental Activity. Catholicity the
"Yea" of Christianity; Protestantism the "Nay."
True Cause of Protestant Reformation. Protest-
antism, Diversity without Unity ; Rome, Unity
without Diversity ; Catholicity, Unity in Diversity.
Certain attacks having been made by the pulpit
and the press upon the author of these Conferences,
subsequently to the delivery of the First and of the
Second, he stepped out in front of the rostrum, and
made the following remarks before beginning the Third
Conference, viz.:
I have come up to the consideration of this topic
not to attack a single human being living. I am, on
the other hand, criticising a system. The whole
issue is too solemn, too lofty, too vital in itself for
either side so far to forget itself as to lose temper. I
am attacking not Protestants, for I have many re-
spected and many dearly loved friends and near rela-
tives who are Protestants ; but I am attacking Pro-
testant/^. I am attacking not Roman Catholics, for
I have loved and respected friends who are Roman
Catholicity and Protestantism. 75
Catholics ; but I am attacking Romans. I speak,
gentlemen, not at my own motion, but in obedience to
your call. Hitherto, abstracts only of these Confer-
ences have appeared in the secular press. Indeed who
could expect that any daily paper could find space, in
this busy age, for six long addresses, each four solid
columns in length ? But it results as a fact, that the
public outside of this building cannot adequately as-
certain the ideas of this counter- Reformation. Before
me indeed is a great sea of heads ; but you, gentle-
men, are nothing in comparison with the vast public.
They cannot comprehend what it is that has banded
together the 17,400 of the nobility, gentry and clergy
of the "English Church Union," the 12,000 of the
u Church of England Workingmen's Defense Associa-
tion," the 14,000 members of the " Confraternity of the
Blessed Sacrament," nor the thousands that signed
the late monster petition to the authorities in England.
And certainly the position of the Catholic school of
thought cannot properly, nor indeed at all adequately,
be answered, unless it is comprehended.
The Tribune, day before yesterday, very naturally,
therefore, fell into the mistake of speaking of this
great movement, which began more than a half century
ago, as a retreat toward the Roman Church ; and Mr.
7 6 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
Beecher, in his two sermons on Sunday last, virtually
gave the same impression. All this shows how radi-
cally the movement is misunderstood.
In a brief word, then, Catholics claim that Prot-
estantism has failed as a preservative of Christianity
on earth. The two main counts in the indictment
presented ten years ago against Protestantism were,
that if its premises were true, its logical conclusion
was not Christianity but infidelity ; that Theodore
Parker and Frothingham were the legitimate brain-
children of John Calvin and Martin Luther ; and that
it is impossible for any of the Trinitarian Protestant
sects to answer Parker's and Frothingham 's arguments.
It seems amazing to me, that it should have become
necessary to reiterate this. I thought I had stated it
distinctly enough, even for prejudice to understand it.
Secondly, that what ought thus logically to happen
after three hundred years of Calvinism and Lutheran-
ism, has happened historically — namely, that while
Protestantism two or three hundred years ago held
great thoughtful peoples, it has failed to retain its hold
on those peoples ; that with rare exceptions it has to-
day lost both their intellect and their masses. Ten
years ago, with all that was said in pulpit and press,
these two counts in the indictment were in no one
Catholicity and Protestantism. 77
case met and answered. But ten years have begun to
work a change. Robert Dale Owen, in his calmly
written Introduction to " The Debatable Land," ad-
mits them, and says the time is passed for the Prot-
estant ministers to close their eyes to the facts. Mr.
Beecher last Sunday admits, and even more fully than
your speaker had ever charged, that it is indeed true,
that lands once believing the Protestant presentment
of Christianity are to-day honey-combed with atheism,
pantheism and infidelity generally. He says that
skepticism is wide-spread in the pews even of the very
Protestant churches themselves ; that a photograph
of what is going on in the brains of the people as the
preachers preach would be curious ; that sober-faced,
thoughtful gentlemen sit in the pews, and listen, and
say in reply in their minds, "' Maybe-Maybe,' which
means ' No.' "
Ah, then, it is beginning to be admitted at last
that Protestantism is effete. To say nothing of
Noah's ark against which, by the way, the stubborn
multitudes, who were shortly after drowned, protested
most vigorously, I am afraid Mr. Beecher is about as
wise in remaining in Protestantism, as I should be if
I insisted on sailing to Albany in a sloop, or going to
Boston in a stage-coach, instead of using the railroad
78 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
or steamboat. Mr. Beecher's entire sermon condenses
d jwn to the following statement : " Yes, Protestantism
has destroyed Christian belief and created infidels,
pantheists and atheists by the thousands. And, isn't
it glorious ! " Mr. Beecher, Mr. Beecher, you shouldn't
joke in the pulpit.
Now, this counter- Reformation of ours goes on to
say, " Yes, and Romanism is a failure, too ; the six-
teenth century burst that bubble 3 and to-day Roman
lands also are honey-combed with infidelity."
Is Christianity a failure, then ? Why, it would be,
were there no other presentment of Christianity than
the Roman and the Protestant presentments. But
there is a third presentment, radically different both
from the Roman and from the Protestant. And this
third presentment is " Catholicity ;" an explanation
of which you, gentlemen, have asked for in these Con-
ferences. Eighteen hundred years ago this Catholic
presentment of Christianity went forth into Europe,
and, in less than four centuries, captured not only the
thinkers but also the masses of Europe. But in the
middle ages Romanism arose as a poisoned present-
ment of Christianity ; and afterward, in the Sixteenth
Century, Protestantism came on as another poisoned
presentment of Christianity. And it is because they
Catholicity a?id Protestantism. 79
are both of them poisoned presentments that the
thinking world has virtually rejected both. Very well,
what is he cure for all this? Surely Catholics were
grossly illogical to say, as Mr. Beecher thinks we say,
" Cure one failure by going back to something that
had previously failed."
Nay, say we, if Protestantism and Romanism have
both failed, let us have the Catholic Christianity once
more ; if it be tried for a century or two, it can do
again what it has already done ; it can regain to
Christianity what Protestantism and Romanism be-
tween them have lost. A country enjoys the blessings
of a constitutional government for six or seven hun-
dred years. It subsequently suffers the evils of a more
and more absolute monarchy for a thousand years.
Revolt finally supervenes, and it suffers the evils of
anarchy for three hundred years ; when at last men
arise declaring that they have had enough both of
tyranny and of anarchy, and demand the constitutional
government again. Mr. Beecher calls this going back
to Noah's Ark ; he prefers the anarchy.
In the great world to-day Early Church and Catho-
lic Christianity is a still small voice, it is true. But
now that Romanism has filled the world with its great
strong wind and its fire for 700 years, and Prot-
8o Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
estantism with its earthquakes for 325 years, pos-
sibly the world will listen to something that is not in
the wind, and not in the fire, and not in the earth
quake.
Gentlemen :
In our First Conference we found Catholicity
to be a Continent of Certainty, and Protestantism
an Ocean of Conjecture. In our Second, we found
Catholicity to be a Life and an Organizer and Prot-
estantism a Disorganizer and a Death. In taking
up for the last time the subject of Catholicity in
its Relationship to Protestantism, let me say that
I listen with respect to an objection which I am sure
has arisen in your minds since last we met, and which
I should have treated at the close of the last Confer-
ence, had I not feared exhausting your patience by
detaining you too long.
If the Catholic Church is the Body of God Who
is still on earth, how is it, you will ask, that It exhibits
so many infirmities, not only in the life, but also in
the religious opinions of Its members touching points
lying outside of the Creed ?
All God's great works are composite and intricate.
And the answer to this question will advance our con-
Catholicity and Protestantism. 8 1
ception of the Church ; for, as I understand the subject
you have assigned to me, it is primarily " Catho-
licity;" and secondarily " Its Relationship, first, to
Protestantism, and secondly to Romanism."
In the first place, then, it is with the Church — it
is, that is to say, with the God-man on earth in the
centuries, as it was with the God-man in Palestine.
In His Divine element He was perfect, indefectable
and infinite. But in His human element He was
finite ; He grew in stature and in wisdom ; was often
wearied, soiled and hungry ; " His visage so marred
more than any man that many were astonied at
Him;" His poor frame stretched at last and out of
joint upon the Cross, bruised and swollen with lash-
ings, thorn-pierced, spear-pierced and dead.
Furthermore, it is with the Church as it is with
the Bible. The Bible contains not only a Divine
element, but also human elements ; the Bible is there-
fore both infinite and finite, both perfect and imper-
fect. Parts of It are written in imperfect Greek ; Its
style is sometimes involved; St. Paul's Epistle to the
Laodiceans is gone from It; passages are in It which
all agree should be out of It; one-half of the Chris-
tian world — more than one-half of the Catholic world
even — hold that the Epistle to the Hebrews, St. James'
4*
82 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism,
Epistle, St. Jude's, the Second and Third of St. John,
the Second of St. Peter, the verses from the 9th to the
20th in the xvith chapter of St. Mark, the statement
concerning the bloody sweat in St. Luke, and other
passages here and there, are not fully canonical. The
majority of quotations in the New Testament vary
from the Old Testament text. In St. Mark, the Mag-
dalen came to the sepulchre at the rising of the sun ;
but, according to St. John, it was still dark when she
came and found the tomb empty. In short, the Bible
goes down through the ages bearing the Divine ele-
ment unharmed within It, but showing at the same
time the unsightly bruises and the dark stains of Its
human elements with which the Divine is inseparably
bound up. The Bible has 925,877 words ; and yet
while that band of words is organized into the one,
perfect, outward body expressive of the infallible
message of heaven, each word, in itself considered, is
a poor finite word, and each sentence, in itself con
sidered, is liable to imperfections and fallibility.
So also the Church is at the same time infinite
and finite, divine and human. Infinite and infallible
because It is as a whole the one organic Body of God,
expressing perfectly His truth and conveying perfectly
His graces ; finite, because that Body is made up o*
Catholicity and Protestantism. 83
human atoms, each of which, individually considered,
is fallible and progressive, and of provinces and great
Communions, each of which, in itself considered, is
liable to imperfections and error. The whole Angli-
can Church together, therefore, is fallible ; the whole
Roman Church is fallible ; the whole Greek Church is
fallible. The whole body of bishops is in itself alone
a fallible body. For it is to be remembered that God
did not promise to be with any part of His Church,
however large or small, to preserve that part from
error when acting independently of the rest as a de-
finer of new truth. No, He only promised to be with
His whole Church and guide It into truth when It
acted together as a deflner of new truth. However,
more of this when we come to Romanism.
Furthermore, with regard to these infirmities in
the Church. Man is often compelled to combine
many means to produce one end ; but God not seldom
brings out one single means to accomplish many dif-
ferent ends. And it is to be remembered that if God
is on earth en rapport with us, He is here not for a
single purpose, but for a two-fold purpose — to meet
our two-fold necessities : namely, not only to speak to
us all infallibly, but also to cure each of us individu-
ally. The Catholic Church is, therefore, under one
84 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
aspect, the Body of God speaking the perfect truth
and imparting grace ; but It is also, under another
aspect, the human race convalescing. And that theie
should be pains during convalescence is not surpris-
ing, nay, it is inevitable.
A word or two more touching differences of
opinion in the Church on points lying outside of the
Creed and of those verities mentioned in the last
Conference. Suppose God, having defined through
the Church, the essentials of truth, should go on con-
stantly denning new truth on subordinate points as
they arise. Should He thus do everything for the
individual, should He define all religious truth infalli-
bly, the individual would relapse mentally into leaden
inertness in the matter of theology. Christ, therefore,
neither does nothing, nor yet does He do all. But
while helping the individual where otherwise he would
be left helpless. He leaves to each a necessity for
action — mental action as well as moral action. This
is one of our necessities, and is attended to simulta-
neously with His other works in the Church. How is
it accomplished ? Why, outside of the Creed and the
verities mentioned in the last Conference, outside, that
is to say, of the fundamentals of truth, outside of the
essentials of salvation, Christ leaves in the Church a
Catholicity and Protestantism. 85
region where mental activity can reverently play, where
each can reason on those non-essentials, which are
yet not without their importance, where each can in-
vestigate, form theories and discuss. The essentials
being fixed, no eternal harm follows from temporary
differences on other matters.
But at the same time we are all in one Body, we
are all in one System, in the centre of which stands,
as a sun, the Creed with the essentials of truth. And
that sun of truth exerts throughout the system a cen-
tralizing force of gravity, which is felt by all the erratic
and conflicting theories and reasonings that are within
the system, which restrains them from developing and
straying to lengths that would be finally disastrous,
and which, in the long run, draws them all into suffi-
ciently harmonious revolutions about itself. Thus
Catholicity is a system which holds all up to God,
holds all up to The Life, holds all up to The Truth.
While it is, therefore, the great benign, unifying force,
it does not at the same time crush the individuality
out of any man. For it is to be borne in mind that if
the Body Mystical, the Church, is a creature of God
and therefore sacred, so, too, is each separate indi-
vidual a creature of God and therefore sacred.
Neither of these sacred creatures must crush the
S6 ' Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
other. If the Church crushes the individual, 01 the
individual the Church, it is murder. If the Church
allows itself to be crushed by the individual, or the
individual allows himself to be crushed by the Church,
it is suicide. In Romanism the Church crushes the
individual. In Protestantism the individual kills the
Church. He who perverts from Catholicity to Ro-
manism commits the sin of. suicide. He lays himself
beneath the wheels of the car of its Juggernaut.
Now, cut off by self-action from this grand, unify-
ing Catholic system, Protestantism is left to fly away
from the " Yea " of Christianity into a condition of
perpetual and uncontrolled fluctuation and instability
touching even the very essentials of truth themselves ;
and finally to drop off into the utter darkness and
nothingness of the "Nay" of Christianity; "while
the Son of God, Jesus Christ, Who is preached among
you by us," His Priests, " is not yea and nay, but in
Him is only yea."
Thus the Church hath the Divine and infallible
element of truth and grace bound up into benignant
oneness with the fallible and progressive elements of
humanity ; and, like the Bible, displays sad evidences
of its human elements as well as glad evidences of its
Divine.
Catholicity and Protestantism. 87
We have only this Conference in which further to
treat Catholicity in its relationship with Protestantism.
Permit me, then, to present very briefly a third aspect
of the two.
Before Jesus Christ came, as the human race had
gone into fragments through the fall, so Truth itself
was also in fragments. There were glittering shards
of Truth in all the ancient false philosophies, in the
Kings of China, the Vedas of India, the Zend-Avesta
of the Persians, and in every cultus of ancient Pagan-
ism. Catholicity, coming with Jesus Christ in the
centre of time, was the restorer of Truth as well as of
man. It was the gathering up and harmonious con-
centration of all those verities that were dispersed in
previous modes of worship. It was the cleanser of
them all. It was the supplier of the parts that were
lost ; and it was the restorer to the world of the
rounded sphere of Truth in all its integrity.
But, sixteen hundred years afterward, Protestant-
ism came to smite the rounded truth, and to disperse
its fragments broadcast once more. I cannot refrain
here from quoting, with slight variations, a striking
paragraph of the Count de Maistre's: "Consider," he
says, " the Catholic Truth as an assemblage of posi-
tive dogmas ; the unity of God, the Trinity, the I near-
88 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
nation, the Real Presence, etc. The sixteenth-century
sects denied one and another and another of these
dogmas. But those dogmas which they retained are
common to Catholicity. So that Catholicity includes
all that the sects believe — this is incontestible. The
sects, be they what they may, are not religions, they
are negations ; that is to say, they are nothing in them-
selves ; for directly they affirm anything they are
Catholic."
And Mr. Baring-Gould, in one of the most remark-
able books of the century, " The Origin and Develop
ment of Christianity," admirably illustrates the same
truth. "Catholicity," he says, "proclaims the union
of the Divine and human natures in Christ. Arianism
appeared, and, abandoning more or less completely
the first of these two terms, reproduced the second
alone. What did Arianism affirm ? The humanity of
Christ. Catholicity equally affirms this j it believes
all that Arianism believed. What did Arianism add
to that article of faith ? A negation of the first term,
i. e., nothing. Catholicity proclaims the co-existence
of grace and free-will — that is to say, of divine and
human action. Pelagianism started up and left on
one side the first of these terms and reproduced the
second alone. What did it affirm ? The existence
Catholicity and Protestantism. 89
of human liberty. Catholicity had affirmed it long
before and believed in all that Pelagianism held.
What, then, did Pelagianism add to this article of
belief? A negation of the first term, i. e., nothing.
Catholicity proclaims the double necessity of faith and
good works. Luther arose, and omitting the second
of these two points, asserted the former only. What
did he affirm ? The necessity of faith. Catholicity
had insisted on this with unchanging voice. What
did Luther add ? A negation of the second point, i. e.,
nothing. Finally, Catholicity proclaims the Sacra-
ments, the Eucharistic Sacrifice, the Real Presence,
etc. Protestants reject these ; in other terms, they
substitute for them simple negations, which are noth-
ing. As every heretical or schismatical sect retains
this or that verity which suits it, to the exclusion of
other truths, and as this process takes place from a
thousand different points of view, it is sufficient to
add together the articles separately admitted by these
communions, mutually antagonistic, to arrive at the
sum of all Catholic verities. Also, it is sufficient to
strike out the points which each rejects, or to sub-
tract them from the total, to arrive at zero, and thus
to show that there is no phase of truth which they do
not deny. In the first case they conclude directly for
90 Catholicity », Protestantism and Romanism.
Catholicity, which is the entirety of which they are
the fragments ; in the second, they conclude indi-
rectly, by showing that outside of Catholicity is noth-
ing but a process of disintegration of all belief."
But as you stand in presence of the amazing de-
struction of the sixteenth century, I hear you musing
within yourselves and saying, " Surely vast results
cannot come from trifling causes ; and was there not
a reason for Protestantism ? "
Certainly, gentlemen, there were mediaeval abuses.
The Goths and Vandals had swarmed the decks and
interior of the Catholic ship as she sailed down time,
and brought their unseemly things with them ; but
how could this be reason for burning and sinking the
ship ? if God makes the human eye, and inflamma-
tion gets into that eye, is that a reason for dashing
out the eye itself from the head? There was, indeed,
cause for Reformation. But a cause for Reformation
is not a cause for destruction. To cleanse a palace
by burning it down and tearing up the very stones of
its foundation were, surely, the w:>rk of folly and of
madness. Destruction is a sony synonym for reforma-
tion. The Anglican movement was a Reformation ;
the Protestant movement was a wide-spread destruc-
tion. In England Catholicity was cleansed of its
Catholicity and Protestantism, 91
impurities and is saved. On the Continent Catho-
licity was destroyed and lost. Ah ! gentlemen, if
philosophy would really account for that torch of the
incendiary and knife of the assassin that wrought such
havoc in Germany, Switzerland and Scandinavia with
the true Catholic dogma, practice and life, it must
look deeper than into mediaeval abuses. And what
is deeper, gentlemen, than the human heart itself?
What, since the first resistance of Adam and the fall
of man, hath more mysterious chambers? Within it,
deep-seated, there is, alas ! a basilisk \ and that
monster is ever ready to rouse himself and resist the
principle of submission to Divine authority in matters
of Faith. It was not in the Sixteenth Century alone
that this basilisk was in the human heart. For, the
spirit of resistance to Divine authority has manifested
itself more or less in all centuries since the fall. But
the Sixteenth Century was exceptional in another
respect ; for it stood at the close of a long turmoil.
It was a vast crisis. Every great war is always fol-
lowed, like every great tempest, by a ground-swell,
which heaves up from the bottom of human nature,
and rouses into action, whatsoever is of evil report.
And the thirteen hundred long years of continual
turmoil and war, in which the ancient polities and
92 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
civilizations, after centuries of struggle, went down in
a vast shipwreck, and out of which modern Europe
slowly and painfully emerged, were followed by a re-
crudescence and exacerbation of that human infirmity
and spirit of resistance to God, which appeared,
after the fall, in the unhappy Lamech and the de-
fiant Cain.
Indeed, Erasmus said : u I know, as a positive
fact, that there never were more luxury and adultery
than among the Evangelicals, as they please to call
themselves."
George Wizel, in his letters, says : " When I saw
the evangelical people reject and ridicule all disci-
pline, all decent living, all that conduces to make men
better and truer Christians, and that my sermons, in-
stead of amending hearts, demoralized them, then I
began seriously to doubt this doctrine. My doubts
gained strength when I saw the debauchery, the hard-
ness, the avarice and pride of the leaders, their end-
less contradictions, and the discreditable turn the
enterprise assumed in other respects."
John Egranus says : "Here are fine results ! His-
tory is open to demonstrate to us that, during the
eight centuries since Germany was Christianized,
there has not been in the land a perversity equal tc
Catholicity and Protestantism. 93
thit which, as every one acknowledges, reigns tri-
umphant now."
Luther himself said that for " one devil of popery
expelled, seven worse devils had entered into his
evangelicals." And yet in his recklessness he prayed
that awful prayer : " O Lord God of heaven, may we be
steeped in all kinds of obscenities, in all abominations
of sin, rather than fall back into the blindness of Popery ;
and deliver us from even a spirit of compunction."
Bucer said : " The great bulk of those who joined
the reform proposed to themselves the following ad-
vantages : freedom from the tyranny of the Pope and
the Bishops j that being done, they were all eager-
ness to give themselves up freely to their caprices and
to all their carnal passions. And, indeed, it is to
them a most agreeable thing to be able to say, ' We
are justified by faith only ; and good works, for which
we have no taste, are utterly useless.' Others have
favored the preaching of the Gospel solely because it
offered them the means of appropriating the goods of
the Church. The doctrine of the reign of Jesus
Christ has been faithfully announced in a great num-
ber of places, I own, but I should be sore puzzled to
name a single church where it is practiced, and where
Christian discipline is to be found."
94 Catholicity, Protestantism a?id Ro?nanism.
Luther describes the state of things. He says :
" There is not one of our Evangelicals who is not
seven times worse than he was when he was a Roman-
ist — stealing, lying, deceiving, eating and getting drunk,
and giving himself up to all kinds of vices. ,,
Indeed, the statistics of crime in one single city
show this. There were condemned to death in Nu-
remberg for incest, highway robbery, murder, infanti-
cide, unnatural crimes, etc., in the fifteenth century,
before the Reformation, 41 ; in the sixteenth century,
after the Reformation, 190 ; in the seventeenth cen-
tury , after the Reformation, 272.
Luther wrote to the preacher Riemann : " All the
good which we hoped for in this age has vanished as a
dream ; and in its place a flood of evil is produced
which leaves nothing to hope but the dissolution of all
things. May the day of God's wrath speedily come to
put an end to our miseries and to this infernal dis-
order." Again he writes : " For the price of the whole
world I would not have to begin again. This enter-
prise brings such agonies with it. Oh, dear Sirs, this
is no child's play ! "
If such was the case in the sixteenth and seven
teenth centuries, what would he have said of the
French Revolution of the Protestants in the eigh-
/
Catholicity and Protestantism, 95
teenth, and of the Commune in the nineteenth cen-
turies ?
And so we have, gentlemen, on the Continent of
Europe, after the 1,300 years of turmoil, the rousing
of the Basilisk, and, as a consequence, not a Reforma-
tion, but a Deformation and a hideous destruction.
Shall we be stubborn heirs to this fearful legacy?
Shall this continue forever ?
But, notwithstanding all this, the natural human
heart is of itself so much better than the Protestant
system, that at last even it has reacted, and has risen,
an ally to Catholicity, to restore to some considerable
extent common morality.
Permit me next to present to you, in condensed
form, a fourth aspect of Catholicity and Protestantism.
As we go up the scale of being, we pass from the
simple to the complex ; from homogeneous unities to
unities each of which contains within itself variety. The
simple unity marks a low and imperfect order of ex-
istence. The chick is more complex than the egg ;
the seed, with its radix and two cotyledons, is
simpler and lower in the scale of existence than the
fully developed tree. If we start from the simple
unit} of the atom and go up, we come to the more
complex unity of the stone. We pass from the stone
g6 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
up to the plant, and find there more diversity still.
We pass up to the animal, and we find a still greater
variety in the unit ; we have matter and instinct. We
go up to man only to strike a unit comprehending
more variety yet ; for we have in him body, instinct, in-
tellect with all its diversity, the moral sense and immor-
tality. And so on up to God, in Whom is the complexity,
incomprehensible to us, of three distinct Persons in one
undivided Substance. The highest unit, then, is not the
unit of simplicity. It is the unit which is differenti-
ated within itself into variety and complexity. Such
a unit fills with satisfaction the mind of man and of
God. God did not make the solar system one single,
enormous globe ; nor did He make the earth one
smooth sphere of granite. No ; while He kept the
earth a unit, He developed it into the variations of
land and sea, of mysterious mountain and placid low-
land, of storm and sunshine, of town and farm, and
forest and lake.
Behold, then, in Catholicity the perfect unit, the
unit of the highest order. For while Romanism is
simple organic unity without diversity, and while
Protestantism is diversity without organic unity, Cath
olicity is organic unity in diversity.
The Oriental type of Catholic man does not object
Catholicity a?id Protestantism. 97
to the Catholic worship which is in harmony with the
Anglican type of man, nor does the Anglican object
to the Catholic worship that is in harmony with the
Russo-Greek type of man j although each prefers his
own for himself. No one is disturbed if national re-
ligious habits differ, or if each have his services in his
own language.
No two men are alike ; and yet God has organized
His one visible Church to include all men. It is It-
self, then, Catholic and, outside of the fundamentals,
tolerant. That there should be schools of thought in
Catholicity is unavoidable and not perhaps wrong, so
long as those parties do not, in human infirmity, de-
velop the exclusive sect-spirit. In the Catholic Church
these two forces, the party-force and the Christ-force,
the sundering and the cohesive, are two poles of one
power, and perhaps each, in our fallen condition, may
be necessary to the healthy existence of the other.
As in the solar system there is a centrifugal force to
keep the worlds apart and give variety, and a centrip-
etal to bind them, nevertheless, into oneness, so in
the domain of the Catholic Church the human spirit
of party goes forth into variety, and the Divine power
of God goes forth unto unity. Protestantism strikes out
the Catholic centripetal force, and flies ofTand to pieces
98 Catholicity, Protestantism and Ro?nanism.
Rome strikes out the centrifugal force, and tumbles
from the perfect living unit into the unity of simplicity,
the unit of the lowest order. In Catholicity, while the
rights and prerogatives of the Church are proclaimed
and the correlative duties of the individual insisted on,
the rights of the individual as a creature of God are
not ignored, but respected. While there is hierarchy,
there is yet, normally, no tyranny. Over the child is
the parent, and over the parent is the Priest, and over
the Priest is the Bishop, and over the Bishop is the
ecclesiastical authority of the Province, and over that
the great Communion or Patriarchate, and over that
the whole Catholic Church in space and time. This
is the hierarchy. For it is to be remembered thai the
Church of God is not a democracy, nor a republic J it
is the Kingdom of God on earth. The King is Jesus
Christ, Who exercises His authority through officers
in regular gradation all the way down to the children.
This is the hierarchy. And in it each grade, if a
father to the grade below it, is itself a child to the
grade above. Thus authority is kept from being a
school of pride, finding its corrective in humility.
For if each grade, except the lowest, has something to
command, it has something also above it to obey.
This is the hierarchy. " Children, obey your parents,
Catholicity and Protestantism. 99
is the law binding on every grade, arid it is the mother
of order throughout all the ranks. And yet in this
hierarchy there is normally no tyranny. For suppose
a father should command his child to steal ; is the
child bound to obey on penalty of breaking the fifth
commandment? No. That were tyranny. Even
the child has its rights. And the child knows that
the Priest is a higher father still, and has forbidden
him to steal. And in case of a conflict of commands
issuing from the grade above, and the grade above
that, the command issuing from the higher grade is to
be obeyed, rather than that issuing from the lower, 01
the fifth commandment is really broken. We must
obey the highest parent, all the way up to God. Sup-
pose the Priest should impose on his people something
wrong ; there is no tyranny in the hierarchy \ for the
Bishop is the right reverend father to control aright
the priest. Suppose the Bishop should set up his
private whim as binding upon Priest and people, still
there is no tyranny, for the Provincial authority is over
the Bishop, and the Bishop is bound to leave free wrtat
it leaves free, and to execute its will and law, and not
his own private notions. A Bishop once refused to go
to the Church of the Advent, Boston. The Priest ap-
pealed, and the Provincial authority virtually com-
ioo Catholicity Protestantism and Romanism.
manded the Bishop to go. Thus, when the child is in
obedience to and in harmony with its parent, and the
parents are in obedience to and in harmony with the
Priest, and the Priests with the Bishop, and the Bish-
ops with the Provincial authority, and that with the
great Catholic Church, which is the Body of and in
harmony with Christ, all swing together in obedience
to and in harmony with God.
In mediaeval times the western part of Catholicity,
with all the evils which the Goths and Vandals
brought upon it, yet still presented the ancient aspect
of variety in unity. Even in later times there were
the varieties of the Ultramontane and the Gallican
Church. Nations had their different rituals. Why, in
Queen Bess's time, the Bishop of Rome offered to ac-
cept and acknowledge the Reformed Anglican Church,
Ministry, Prayer-book and all, just as She was, it
England would only admit his sovereignty over her
Queen. But Rome, that never varies, has changed all
this. She has brought her pressure upon all to Ital-
ianize and Romanize everything ; to wipe out all fair
varieties, and to reduce everything to a simple uni-
formity. The Gallican school of thought is crushed.
All now everywhere is Jesuit. The Gallican Ritual is
abolished ; all is Italianized and Romanized. The in*
Catholicity and Protestantism. 101
fluence of .he great St. Ambrose gave to Milan certain
customs, and they held their ground till recently. But
Rome will leave no variety ; she is slowly wiping what
little there is left away. If she clothes an Italian
Bishop, who has no diocese, in oriental robes to say
Mass, it does not deceive the world that is gazing in
attentive neutrality. She will reduce all to the lower
order of simple unity in all things. She will brook no
variety in unity.
The statement, on the other hand, that Protestant-
ism is utter diversity without organic unity, needs no
enlargement or illustration. If there is any apparent
unity, it comes from the fact that Protestantism has
drifted so far off toward negation that there is little
care left in it as to what is believed. And so in my
native town, and elsewhere, it has come to pass, at
last, that the Unitarian exchanges pulpits with the
orthodox Congregationalist. Indeed the belief of the
Protestant world has settled down to about this :
namely, that there is nothing especially true in Reli-
gion ; and even if there were, it would not signify.
Permit me now to present to you a fifth aspect of
Catholicity in its Relationship to Protestantism. Out
of the sacred century I hear the utterance, " In every-
thing ye are enriched by Christ ; so that ye come
102 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
behind in no gift.' Go away, gentlemen, this even-
ing, sit down and seriously ask yourselves, Of what
practical use were that marvelous Fountain through
Which we may be so enriched that we come behind in
no gift, if Its existence is spiritualized away, and Its
location is nowhere in particular. Are we, as Chris-
tians, to strive to reach Him, after the manner of the
modern infidel when he dreamily seeks communion
with the God of Nature ? A thousand times, no.
The Christian's God is a God Incarnate \ a God, Who,
for our sake, has come forth out of indefiniteness into
definiteness. Christianity is not a system that
teaches that there is a Church, but no particular
Church j and Sacraments but no particular Sacra-
ments ; and a Ministry, but no particular Ministry ;
and Religious Truth, but no particular Religious
Truth ; and a Lord's Day, but no particular Lord's
Day ; and a way of Salvation, but no particular way.
The Old Dispensation did not promise to us a
mere continuation of God, Omnipresent, Diffusive and
Invisible ; but it promised something new. It prom-
ised Immanu-el ; it promised that that God Who is
always Omnipresent, should also come and in a
special sense be " with us " in the New Dispen
sation. The perpetual Incarnation of God on Earth,
Catholicity and Protestantism. 103
wrought by the marvelous miracles of Font and
Altar, is what distinguishes the Christian Dispensation
from the Jewish ; it is what distinguishes the Chris-
tian's God from the infidel's God of Nature. To sup
pose, on the other hand, that Christ's Incarnation not
only began but also ended with His Body Natural in
Palestine — to suppose that that " Stone cut out with-
out hands " was not to " grow and become a great
Mountain and fill the whole earth," is to reduce the
Holy Sacraments to mere forms, and to remand the
world back either to Judaism or to Deism.
It is the Catholic Church, then, that is capable of
enriching all men, in everything. As the Church was
made by God to include all men, there is no taste or
requirement belonging to human nature which It can-
not satisfy. There are, indeed, morbid cravings,
which arise, not out of the elements that make up hu-
man nature, but out of defects in character. These
are negative, rather than positive wants. And these
the Catholic Church does not respond to. But what-
soever is a positive want, arising out of an element of
human nature, that She supplies.
Not so a sect. Some men, for instance, have
spiritual and natural requirements which the Quaker
sect could not possibly supply. Fancy a Methodist,
104 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
full of enthusiasm, going into the ice-house of a
Friends' Meeting-house. Fancy a man with nature
tenderl) responsive to the supernatural attempting to
find food for his hungers at the empty board of a Uni-
tarian Lecture Hall. Other men have spiritual re-
quirements which the Methodist or the Presbyterian
sect could not possibly supply. Men differ; and
their differences are so many and so wide apart, that
nothing partial, nothing but what is as broad as human
nature can meet the wants of each and all. No sect,
whatever good it may do to a limited number of per-
sons of similar dispositions, can in the nature of things
be co-extensive with man in all space and time.
Sects, therefore, always have been and always will be
local both in space and time. They always have been
and always will be, of comparatively fleeting career, —
cut flowers without root, blooming rank for a while,
but soon withering away.
Now let us look at man — or rather at men, and
see what they are, and what kind of a Church God
would, therefore, be likely to provide for them. This
will display the relationship between Protestantism and
the Catholic Church, and show us where and how it is
that any given sect, or all of them together, fail to sat-
isfy the deep and lasting requirements of human nature.
Catholicity and Protestantis?n. 105
Take for instance any given man. Whoever he is,
he is but a very partial representative of our human
nature in its fullness. For he may have large imagina-
tion and little reason ; or large causality and compari-
son and feeble social qualities ; or large social nature
and little caution and little reverence; he may have
great ingenuity and little memory for names and
dates. One man may have love largely developed,
and may be reached most easily through that faculty ;
another can only be reached through his fear; an-
other can be reached through his taste and zesthetical
nature ; while still another can best be reached only
through his reason. Thus no given man is round and
full, possessing every human faculty and element, with
each in ripe development, and all in perfect harmony
with each other. Now each man being thus a partial
and imperfect representative of complete human
nature, it follows that the wants and hungers of differ-
ent men, as we find them in life, are widely diverse
from each other. They differ according as the ele-
ments of our common human nature — reason, ambition,
passion, imagination, etc., are combined in different
proportions in each. This being the case, what would
be the Church that God would provide for men?
Surely It would not be fitted merely to meet the wants
5*
106 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
of any one set of men. Doubtless It would be a
Church capable of meeting and supplying all the
positive wants of any man. It would be a Catholic
Church in the broadest sense of the word. It would be
endowed with, and capable of imparting, all supernatu-
ral truths possible to the grasp of human nature ; even
truths which some men can never grasp or hold. It
would include, too, all processes to draw men ; intel-
lectual, to suit the cold brain j loving, to suit excitable
natures ; calming, to suit quiet natures ; threatenings,
for human fears, even though some men may not be
timorous ; warnings for human caution, even though
some men be not cautious ; beauty and stateliness to
correspond with human taste, even though some men
be devoid of the esthetic faculty ; and so on. Such
is the Church which human endowments and corre-
sponding human needs call for. Such is the Church
which God, knowing those human needs, would be
likely to organize. Such He has, indeed, provided
for the world in The Church Catholic.
But on the other hand, how is it with the sects ?
How have they subsequently arisen ? The Catholic
Church is, alas, harassed with differences inside Her-
self. But why is it that select sets of men separate
themselves from the Church Catholic, and maintain
Catholicity and Protestantism. 107
their own private " churches ? " Let us look at this,
and study it a little.
Just as some men are color-blind, and cannot dis-
tinguish blue from green, or scarlet from magenta, just
as some men cannot tell one piece of music from
another, so there are sets of men who are lacking in
other respects. Indeed every man is, as I have said,
lacking in some respects. And so men fall apart into
groups. What then do these several groups do ?
Take the Congregationalists. Now individual freedom
is good ; and external authority is good. But each
becomes bad if unchecked by the other. Internal
freedom, unchecked by external authority, runs out
into license. Authority unchecked by freedom, stiffens
into tyranny. But, nevertheless, there are some men
who have the consummate and irrepressible desire
within for the full and free play of all their motions of
personal and private will, unchecked by its proper
qualifier, viz., the instinct for objective authority of
any kind. They are unbalanced. It is hard for
them to realize that there can rightly be any ex-
ternal authority bringing itself to bear upon them to
check freedom from running into license. Being im-
perfect and wanting in this respect, these men do not
wish to accept God's Church, because It contains
108 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
something disagreeable to them, namely, an element
of authority over all Its members, restraining Its Bish-
ops, Priests and laity from doing, each, just as he
pleases. These men, therefore, go forth and form a
religious organization with the idea of authority cut
out. They set up a Congregational sect ; where each
parish shall be as independent of every other, and each
man in the congregation as independent of every other
as possible. Another set of people is lacking in
another respect, for instance, in a large and tender
sympathy for the Supernatural Objects of Faith, in
a sensitiveness to the beings and operations of the
unseen world. Now intellect is good and Faith is
good. But each needs the other as a check, if intel-
lect is to be saved from stiffening into hardness, cold-
ness and skepticism, and if Faith is to be saved from
softening into weakness and superstition. But, un-
checked by a due development of the Faith-side of
their nature, the intellect of this set of people has sole
play. All such supernatural and spiritual facts and
beings and operating laws are out of their conscious-
ness. The mention or thought of such is in some
sense disagreeable to them. They therefore arrange
a Unitarian sect, in which Holy Sacraments, Holy
places, Holy (or separate) persons shall be as much
Catholicity and Protestantism. 109
excluded as possible j and where they may enjoy with
unalloyed attention the sermon as an intellectual treat.
Another set of men have a large sense of the absolute
sovereignty and authority of God. But they have this
sense to a great degree unchecked and unqualified by
its opposite complement, namely, a large sense also
of man's free will and responsibility. So, they arrange
for themselves, and for others like-minded, a Calvin-
istic sect. Another set of very excellent people are
lacking on the esthetic side of their natures. So, they
arrange for themselves a Quaker sect, where not a
note of music shall sound, and where the benches and
walls shall be unpainted, and where every gay ribbon
and bow shall be abolished.
Thus you will perceive that one main peculiarity
of sect-ism is, that each sect founds a system and sets
it up to suit, not what is in human nature, as one of
its elements, as a gift of God, but what is not in them-
selves. They cut out what the Catholic Church sup-
plies in order that men, who are all partial representa-
tives of human nature, may each be educated, or de-
veloped ) in order that that in which each is lacking
may be drawn out and enlarged, till we all come to
" the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ,"
the perfect Man.
no Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
Thus each sect is inherently intolerant of just that
(vhich it has no taste or talent for, but which it lacks.
Each sect is inherently negative and protestant. It
cries " Nay-Nay," not " Yea- Yea." You must not
have music, cries one. You must not believe in this,
that, or the other doctrine, Sacrament or process, say
the several sects all round the circle.
One of the saddest features is, too, that each sect
encourages an uneven development of character.
Indeed, sectism is the struggle of self-willed man to
exclude the disagreeable. Sectism is founded on the
satisfaction of " negative cravings"— that is, of morbid
hungers that arise out of deficiencies in human char-
acter. On the other hand, the Catholic Church was
arranged by God to appeal to and satisfy every " posi-
tive craving," every hunger and want, that is to say,
that arise not out of deficiencies but out of the ele-
ments of human nature. The Catholic Church is thus
inherently positive, instead of being inherently nega-
tive. She is inherently calculated to break down, in-
stead of fostering selfishness and bigotry. ' For She
appeals to and finds Her raison d'etre in the fulness of
human nature ; while the sects find theirs in its
defects.
If my spiritual nature and wants and capacity arc
Catholicity and Protestantism. in
partial, what quarrel ought I to have with my brother,
if, while I find my wants satisfied, he also finds his
different wants satisfied, too, in the ample treasuries of
our common home, the Church. Rather should I
thank God that my brother's needs are supplied, as
well as mine. Surely, I can, and surely I ought, with-
out selfishness, to live at peace side by side with him.
What does that man do but erect selfishness within
himself, and fan bigotry within himself, what, more-
over, does he do but commit the heinous sin of
schism, who presumes to take the Catholic Church,
which God had provided for us all, and because he
and a few of his friends do not, for instance, want
anything esthetical and stately in its worship, or be-
cause he does not want Priestly absolution, or because
he does not want the Sacrament of Confirmation, or
because he does not want for himself the rousing
storm of a mission, or of a revival, or because he does
not want asceticism, or any fasting, or any Saints' Days
or because he does not want to pray for his dear de-
parted wife, child or mother, or because he does not
want to cherish a likeness or a religious keepsake of
a Saint ; if, I say, he presumes to take God's Catholic
Church and narrow It to his partial wants and limited
horizon by striving to cut out all these things, and
ii2 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
thus to deprive his poor brother of them, even though
that brother happens to be made a little different from
himself in needs, capacities or grasp ? No ! away with
this spirit of selfishness and bigotry and sectarianism,
which feels that God's world and God's Church were
made for one's own select sect.
God's Catholic Church is like a landscape, that
comes behind in no gift to any man. The engineer
goes through that landscape ; and he sees and is fed
by what his peculiarities crave. He sees, all along,
just where he might put a railroad ; just how he will
follow the water courses ; just where he is going to get
his cuttings for his fillings, and his stone for his cul-
verts, and his wood for his sleepers, and his gravel for
his ballast. And the farmer goes through the land-
scape j and, lo, the landscape is rich to him, too. He
gets out of it its capacity for grains and grapes and
grasses; not but that the farmer would be the more
complete man if he also saw with the engineer's eye ;
or the engineer, if he saw also with the agriculturist's
eye. And the artist goes through it ; and, lo, it pre-
sents its exquisite bits of scenery to him. And the
geologist goes through it ; and he reads on its up-
turned leaves the history of the past. The spirit of
Catholicity would cry, " Let it alone: let us each gel
Catholicity and Protestantism. 113
all out of the landscape that ever we can." But the
spirit of sect would go there and would strip it of its
deep and infinite supplies to meet the wants of diverse
men, leaving only what would satisfy its own peculiar
self.
Just because each and every man is a partial and
not a complete representative of human nature, just
because each man is wanting in some elements of
character, so do they all need a Whole Church capable
of educating all the elements of character. But
sectarianism says, on the other hand, because men
are fragmentary, so must we break up that Church
into little pieces — so that one piece shall have and
teach God The Father and the four Gospels alone,
without the Atonement or God The Son, or much else ,
and another piece shall teach the Trinity and the
Atonement without the Sacramental System, or much
else ; and another piece shall teach free will without
God's sovereignty \ and another, God's sovereignty
without free will ; and another, faith without works j
and another, works without faith \ and another, dip-
ping in Baptism without pouring; and another,
pouring without dipping; (and so on through the
whole diapason of doctrines and practice ;) and then
let us draw as many men as we can out of the great
H4 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
Cathedral with its many windows alow and aloft, lei
ting in the light from all around, nave, clere-story,
transepts, lady-chapel, lantern, choir, east end, and
west end, and shut them up in our little room with
its one or two windows letting in light at one side, one
end or one corner only.
God has made His Catholic Church, and endowed
It with every gift, not only that all may find in It what
they severally crave, but that each also may be schooled
in what he may be wanting.
But the sectarian cries to all the world, out of his
deficiencies and out of the antipathies which those
defects rear within him, M Come to our sect ; you do
not like Confirmation ; neither did we ; that is our
' nay ;' we have founded a sect on that ' nay ;' come to
us ; you will not find any Confirmation with us :" or,
" Come to our sect, you hate enthusiasms in religion ;
so do we ; that is our ' nay ;' we have founded a sect
accordingly ; come to us, you will not find any revivals
among us : " or, " There is a deal of music in the
world, indeed, but you do not like music, you think it
is wicked ; so do we ; music is our ■ nay ; ' we have
founded a sect on our lacks, where we have no music,
but sit still for the Spirit to move us : " or " Come to
our sect ; you hate these Religious ; so do we ; we
Catholicity and Protestantism. 115
have founded a sect on our and your deficiencies and
dislikes ; you will not find any monks and nuns with
us:" or "You do not like anything stately and beauti-
ful in worship ; neither did we ; we have founded a
sect on our deficiencies in taste ; you will not find any
boy-choirs or processions or ritual with us." And so
on to the end of the list of ' Nays.'
But come, saith God, come, says Catholicity with
Her " Yeas," come to the Church. Do you want
freedom ? You will find freedom here. Do you want
authority ? You will find it here. Do you want the
contemplative and praying life ? You will find it here.
Do you want the active, secular life ? You will find
it here. And so through all the wants that arise, not
out of the defects, but out of the endowments of hu-
man nature.
If any part of the Catholic Church through the
lapse of the centuries grows untrue to Her functions,
and therefore untrue to man to whom She is sent, that
part must expect one of two things ; either a struggle
and a turmoil within Herself till She takes up again and
uses the weapons against the world which have been
allowed to lie idle and to rust in her armories ; or if this
does not take place, She must expect sects to spring
up around Her as Her punishment. For human
Ii6 Catholicity, Protestantism and Roma?iism.
nature will have neither tyranny nor license, skepticism
nor superstition, baldness nor mere empty formalism.
But there is another divine economy in the Catho-
lic Church, which lifts Her immeasurably above any
sect. If all men were made exactly alike in character,
development and grasp, all would be equally receptive,
and the Church would be able to impart a fixed
amount of Her exhaustless gifts to each. But first, all
men start away in life, ignorant and devoid of even a
single one of the gifts and truths which the Church
bestows. Then, secondly, men develop afterwards
into differences of grasp ; their circumstances are
such, too, that their opportunities and time for ac-
quiring systematic, moral and ascetic theology, and
for attaining spiritual growth, differ. No man, indeed,
however aged and able, is ever in such position that
he may not learn yet more than he already knows,
that he may not attain to higher grades of spirituality,
that he may not look deeper into truths he has already
received, or the better understand the relationship
which these profound truths bear to each other. On
the other hand, the Catholic Church contains all spir
itual, theological, moral and ascetic truth, each in it?
entirety. These are all, not actually, but potentially,
made over to each member of the Church, that all the
Catholicity and Protestantism. 117
members may severally come into actual possession
of as much as ever each one can. Each one, whether
he is a child learning his catechism, or a youth in the
Bible class, or a young man, a middle-aged or an old
man, should thank God for all he knows or has as-
similated to himself; but his true attitude is not to
deny what, either through his want of grasp, or want
of years, or want of opportunity and time, or want of
complete development as a representative of hu-
man nature, he does not yet receive. He should
enjoy his actual possessions, and not be resistant to,
or protestant against, those potential possessions
which are his nevertheless, which have been made
over to him by the Church, as though they were
false because he has not happened to hear of them
before, or been able to grasp or profit by them.
Now if I had a museum, an academy containing
facilities for learning all of art, and of fine art, of
manufacture, and geology, and botany, and languages,
and every science, and, indeed, all knowledge, and if
I put into it a hundred thousand men of different
tastes and capacities, as into a school, I have en-
riched them, each and all ; I have held back from no
one, anything. There would, therefore, be no possi-
Dility, either for the mind of any one of them to fail
ii 8 Catholicity ', Protestantism and Romanism,
of its own proper food, or for any mind among them
all to have a stunted growth.
Now the Catholic Church of God is analogous to
such a complete school. No sect is a universal school.
What is the difference, then, between a man in the
Church and a man in a sect? In a sect he has
grasp of partial truth. But no one in the Church
has complete grasp of the whole truth either. So
there is no difference here. Nevertheless, the Cath-
olic Churchman has an immense advantage over
the other. For even if he also has not actual grasp
of the whole round of Catholic truths, and even if
he does use some only of the whole circle of Catholic
appliances tending to a complete spiritual and moral
growth and development, he is at any rate in the
Church where all the rest of the truths and appli-
ances are ; he is not cut off from them \ they are all
potentially his, and may happily, sooner or later, one
after another, become actually his, to his great en-
richment and advantage. God does not expect the
child to be as far advanced in learning or growth as
the youth, or the youth as the adult, or the young man
as the old man, or those with partial opportunities for
attaining all that is possible to be attained as those
with full. But, on the other hand, take this same
Catholicity and Protestantism. ng
person out of God's Catholic Church and put him in
a sect, which simply presents doctrines and practices
with which the tide of his partial development and
defective character is merely on a level, and behold,
he is absolutely cut oft" from all the rest of the circle
of truth, and from all the rest of the round of appli-
ances. Nay, worse, he is not only cut off from them,
but he is encouraged in prohibiting them to himself.
What hope is there, then, except that such a man must
have a narrow, bigoted, stunted religious development
and life.
Some of you, gentlemen, are already Catholic
Churchmen. Have you carried these thoughts, of
which I am to-night the mouth-piece, out to their
legitimate conclusions in your hearts ? I am here
it is true for a course of conferences, and not of
sermons. I am here to speak to your heads and
not to your hearts. But suffer me, if, for a mo-
ment, I transgress the bounds of my present mis-
sion, and do not forget that I am a Priest speaking
to men who have hearts as well as heads. Let me
remind you, then, that in God's great Church the
Catholic has no quarrel with the Low Churchman.
The truths which the Low Churchman holds, he holds
in common with us. God bless him as he carries the
i2o Catholicity ', Protestantis?n and Romanism,
great truth of the Atonement, the Cross of our Blessed
Saviour, without which we are all lost, on and out into
a sinful world. God bless him, as, full of zeal and
of the love of souls, he gathers earnest men around
him in his lecture room, that he may exhort them
and that they may exhort each other and pray with
each other. We hold everything which he holds \
but we hold a great deal more besides of the great
round of Catholic truth. We can join him in his
prayer meeting ; but let us have no quarrel with him
if, after the meeting is over, he will not go with us,
besides, to the Altar and fall down in adoration before
our Lord Christ and God. The difficulty comes in
where he, instead of being passive as to the additional
and not incompatible truths, actually denies them for
us as well as for himself, and, in a spirit of sectism, has
a fierce quarrel with us for accepting from the Church
and believing a little more than he does.
Now, my Catholic friends, let us beware on our
side of that self same spirit of sectism, which would
prompt us to drive him out of the Church because he
holds only a part and not what we claim to be full
truth as set forth in the formularies of the Church.
For if, like bigoted sectarians, we drive him out
where could he go except into something where he
Catholicity and Protestantism. 121
would be actually cut off from learning those blessed
truths ?
But, besides, there is another reason why we have,
on our side, no quarrel either with our Low Church or
with our old fashioned High Church brethren ; but
rejoice rather that they are all in the Church, and
hope that one and all will stay. And that is, because,
even if we are fully conscious that they have not yet
received all the truth which the Church has to impart
to them in Her Prayer Book, we ourselves, even
though we receive a little more than they, are by no
means graduates. For we all are learners, as I have
said, and always will be, in Her vast school of infinite
truth. And we shall never, any of us, learn the
whole, till we get into that Higher School where we
shall see the Lord face to face in Beatific Vision.
The fact is, we are simply all of us, Low, High and
Catholic, standing at different positions on an in-
clined plane of grasp, opportunity and receptiveness ;
while Christ, through the Church, stands ready to en-
rich us all in everything, so that we come behind in no
gift.
Let us have, I say, no quarrel whatever with them
Let us pray God that they may cease their quarrel
with us ; and that we may all love each other, and
122 Catholicity -, Protestantism and Romanism.
bear with each other, and pray for each other, and
work with each other, and think no evil of each other;
knowing that we shall all do well, if we only continue
sitting in humility and teachableness around the knee
of our great, kind, patient Mother the Church Catho-
lic ; and realizing more fully, the more we learn, how
dangerous a little learning is ; how full it is apt to be
of the spirit of arrogance, bitterness and hardness ;
for down to a certain point the less a man knows,
'alas, the more he thinks he knows.
Gentlemen : — You have assigned to me three
Conferences on Catholicity and Protestantism. In
bidding farewell to this first half of our subject, let us
see to what we trace back Catholicity, and to what we
trace back Protestantism. We follow Catholicity
back, with its stately Rituals and comforting dogmas,
to the sixteenth century ; back through the middle
ages to the ages of the Six Great Councils ; back to
St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, to St. Polycarp, Bishop
of Smyrna, to St. Clement, Bishop of Rome, whose
name St. Paul says is written on the Book of Life, tc
St. Timothy, Archbishop of Ephesus, and St. Titus,
of Crete, to Sts. Andrew, John and James, and up to
Him who said, " Blessed are the pure in heart, for
they shall see God ; blessed are the meek, for they
Catholicity and Protestantism. 123
shall inherit the earth j blessed are they which do
hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be
filled j blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain
mercy." We follow it up to Him who was much in
worship, much in holy meditation, much in prayer.
We follow Protestantism back to the sixteenth
century and up to Martin Luther, on the other hand,
who, writing of holy meditation and prayer, said :
" When the monks, sitting in their cells, meditated on
God and His works, when, inflamed with the most
ardent devotion, they bowed the knee, prayed and con-
templated heavenly things with so much delight that
they shed tears ; here was no thought of women nor
of any other creature, but only of the Creator and His
marvelous works. And yet this thing, most spiritual
in the judgment of reason, is, according to Paul, a
work of the flesh. Wherefore all such is religious
idolatry ; and the more holy and spiritual it is in ap-
pearance, the more pernicious and pestilential it is."
I do not know, I am sure, why Scientific Meditation
has so become a lost art in Protestant lands that we
have to teach the art all over again ; I do not know
why worship has so died away that meeting-houses are
shut up from Sunday night to the subsequent Sunday
morning. I do not know why it should be that when
124 Catholicity, Protestantism and jRomanism.
in Mecklenburg, an inquiry was made into the state of
the Established Lutheran Church in 1854, "it was as-
certained that, in the three head churches of the Prin-
cipality, there had been no divine service two hundred
and twenty-eight times, because there had been no
congregation." I do not know how it is that the
Hartford (Conn.) Courant should have informed the
world ten years ago thus: "The Congregational min-
isters of Connecticut have thoroughly convassed their
parishes to ascertain the actual religious condition of
the State. The result was unexpected. In one hun-
dred towns at least one-third of the families are not
in the habit of going to church. Irreligion was found
to increase in proportion to the distance from the
centre of towns. It prevails more in sparsely-settled
farming districts than in the manufacturing villages.
The Committee on Home Evangelization say in their
published report : ' The returns give the impression
that the Roman Catholic population do not often sink
to so low a grade of heathenism as the irreligious
native-born population. They do not entirely aban-
don some thought of God, and some respect for their
religious observances. Uniformly the districts most
utterly given over to desolation are districts occupied by
a population purely native- American. A similar state
Catholicity and Protestantism. 125
of things is reported to exist in some parts of Massa-
chusetts.' " I do not know why prayer hath so died
away. I only know what the Solifidian, Luther,
said.
We trace Protestantism back to Luther, who said,
again : " Thou seest how rich is the Christian \ even
if he will, he cannot destroy his salvation by any sins
how grievous soever, unless he refuse to believe."
Who said again : " Be thou a sinner and sin boldly,
but still more boldly believe and rejoice in Christ.
From Him sin shall not separate us ; no, though a
thousand times in every day we should commit forni-
cation or murder." Who said again ; " If in faith an
adultery were committed, it were no sin." To Martin
Luther, who said : " The Gospel does not bid us do
anything, or bid us leave anything undone ; it exacts
nothing of us ; quite the contrary. In place of saying,
1 Do this, do that,' it simply requires us to spread out
our lap and accept, saying, ' Hold ! see what God has
done for you, and given His own Son to be incarnate
for you: accept the gift, believe, and you are saved.' "
And again : " You owe nothing to God, nothing, ex-
cept to believe and confess Him. In everything else
He leaves you perfect liberty to do exactly what you
like, without any peril for your conscience ; even — for
126 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism,
He is quite indifferent to it — you may abandon your
wife, or desert your husband, or not keep any engage-
ment you have contracted, for what concern is it to
God whether you do these things or not ? ' To Lu-
ther, who wrote again to one suffering from remorse
on account of his sins : " Drink, play, laugh and do
some sin even as an act of defiance and contempt to
the devil. Therefore, if the devil says to you, ; Don't
drink so,' do you reply to him, ' Aye, I will drink all
the more copiously in the name of Christ.' Thus do
just contrary to that which Satan (/. ^., conscience)
prompts. One can drive these Satanic thoughts away
by introducing other thoughts, such as that of a pretty
girl, avarice, drunkenness, or by giving way to violent
passion : such is my advice."
We trace Protestantism back to Melancthon, who
said : " Whatever thou doest, whether thou eatest,
drinkest, workest with thy hand, I may add shouldst
thou even sin therewith, look not to thy works ; weigh
the promise of God." Who said again, " God ought
not to displease you when He damns the innocent.
All things take place by the eternal and invariable
will of God, Who blasts and shatters in pieces the free
dom of the will. God creates in us the evil in like
manner as the good. The high perfection of faith is
Catholicity and Protestantism. 127
to believe that God is just, notwithstanding that by
His will He renders us necessarily damnable." And
again : "We cannot advise that the license of marrying
more wives than one be publicly introduced. There is
nothing unusual in princes keeping concubines ; and
although the lower orders may not perceive the ex-
cuses of the thing, the more intelligent know how to
make allowance."
We trace Protestantism back to Calvin, who said
that God instigates man to the commission of what is
evil, and that man's fall into crime is ordained by the
providence of God. To Zwingli, who asserted that
God " is the author, mover and impeller to sin," and
that He uses the instrumentality of man to produce
injustice ; " He it is who moves the robber to murder
the innocent." We trace Protestantism back to Beza,
who said : " The Almighty creates a portion of men
to be His instruments, with the intent of carrying out
His evil designs through them."*
But, O Jesus, Thou didst teach thy Catholic Church
that " God is love ! "
Mr. Beecher, in his remarkable sermons of last
* I am indebted for many of these extracts from the Reformers
to Mr. Baring-Gould, who, in his " Origin and Development " and
" Luther and Justification," gives the references.
128 Catholicity -, Protestantism and Romanism.
Sunday, in admitting, even more fully than one had
charged, the wide-spread prevalence of atheism, pan-
theism and infidelity generally in Protestant lands,
and even in Protestant churches themselves, says :
" No matter; Christianity, nevertheless, will not die."
Of course not : for Catholicity still stands with its
rounded sphere of truth, and the Gates of Hell will
not prevail against It. And even Protestantism, in
dashing the sphere to flinders, holds for a while shat-
tered shards of it. The sun of Catholicity, sending its
gravitating force even beyond its own system and into
the outer spaces, has had, and will have a restraining
power. It is the system of Protestantism that has been
attacked in these lectures, not any man — not any man,
1 ving or dead ; not even the shockingly sinful Zwingli,
nor the unhappy, conscience-tormented Luther. Sys-
tems may be hateful, but all men are dear ; and false
systems are hateful because all men are dear.
If Protestantism be not a failure, if the Anglican
Church as a double witness against Protestantism and
Rome be not right, in God's name let it be known.
For we speak in sorrow, not in anger, to friends and
respected brothers, all of whom love Jesus Christ and
His Name as much as we do ; and we seek not vie
tory, but truth.
FOURTH CONFERENCE.
Function of Reason in Religion. Difference between
the Catholic and the Roman Idea of the Unity of
the Church.
Gentlemen,
God has given to each of us the gift of reason ;
and we have no right either to destroy or to misuse a
gift of His. The proper exercise of reason is, there-
fore, a responsibility from which no human being can
escape. The function of reason is unlimited in the
natural realm, except by the theological virtue of
Faith and by the Fifth Gift of the Holy Ghost, name-
ly, the Gift of Knowledge. Reason hath its function
in the supernatural realm also. For if God is on
earth in a speaking Body, or Catholic Church, we
must, first of all, be convinced of that fact. Reason,
therefore, is the prelude of faith. Being convinced,
we afterwards accept, without arguing, what God
through His Catholic Body states to be the Truth.
But there is a preliminary difficulty. What is this
Catholic Body ? Two different theories concerning
this point present their claims to us. Fortunately
130 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
there are only two. Rome claims that she alone is
this Catholic Church. The Anglican Communion
claims that the Catholic Church includes all the Com-
munions that have the Apostolic and Catholic Minis-
try, Faith and Sacraments. What are we to do then
in presence of these two differing theories, the inclu-
sive and the exclusive ? Clearly we cannot escape the
responsibility of still further exercising our private
judgment, and of deciding, each for himself, which of
these two claims is right.
But before we go on, let us see what it is we have
already settled in our minds. You will remember
that in our First Conference the hand of logic led us
into a certain conclusion. That conclusion was, that
Almighty God, having broken through the dome of
Nature and come in among us to save us from drown-
ing in mere guess-work touching Supernatural law
and fact here and hereafter, remained en rapport with
us in a continuous organic Body of human matter,
called the Visible Body Mystical of Christ, or Holy,
Catholic and Apostolic Church. This, you will re-
member, was the answer to the Second Great Question
with which we were brought face to face in our search
for the truth.
When we thus speak of an organic body we mean
Catholicity ana 7 Romanism. 131
a body which has correlated parts ; i. e. differing
members whose functions are reciprocal, and whose
inter-action is orderly. Now, incidentally, we may
remark, that historic fact bears out the logical conclu-
sion at which we have arrived. For nothing is more
certain than that the Christian Body, that stood on
earth eighteen hundred years ago, was an organic and
visible Body. As we read the sacred Epistles we find
them addressed to the saints at Ephesus, at Corinth,
at Colosse. We find them containing instructions
and rules for those saints. It appears, then, that
some parts of this organic Body were rulers and
others were the ruled. We also see, early in the Gos-
pels, allusions made to two of its Sacraments ; and
afterwards, in the Gospels, the Acts and the Epistles,
we find that these two, with a third and others, s.re
regularly arranged as a part of the organic Body, and
commanded to be used. Christ saith to the Apos-
tles, " All power is given unto Me both in Heaven
and Earth ; " " Go ye, therefore, Baptise all nations ; "
" teach them j " " Do, (i. e. offer) This as a Memorial
of Me ; " " Whosoever sins ye remit they are remitted
unto them." We read, moreover, as follows, viz.,
" Ordain elders in every city ; " " The husband is the
head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the Church.
132 Catholicity \ Protesta?itism and Romanism.
This is a great Sacrament, but I speak concerning
Christ and the Church;" "Then laid St. Paul his
hands upon them, and the Holy Ghost came on
them ; " " Let them pray over him, anointing him witb
oil in the name of the Lord."
Thus we see an organic Body created, with Sacra
ments, with members whose function it was to rule, to
instruct, and to administer those Sacraments ; and
with members whose function it was to be the re-
cipients of those teachings, of that discipline and of
those Sacraments. Nothing is more certain than
that, in the organization of that Christian Body, in the
appointing and arranging of its correlative parts, and
in the commission of its rulers, God, i. e. Christ,
worked directly. On Whitsunday God the Holy
Ghost descended upon this Body or Church to fill It
with Himself, and to make It, as an organic Body, a
living and life-giving appliance unto the world.
Later on, the Holy Ghost commands the rulers of the
Body to commit the powers they had received to
others, faithful men j that those powers and functions
might continue in the Body, and not cease through
the death of their original possessors. Thus nothing
is more certain than that, as an historical fact, God
Himself organized a visible Church on earth.
Catholicity and Romanism. 133
This divinely organized Church had, furthermore,
a two-fold function to perform : first, a pastoral func-
tion ; to build up, namely, Its own members in the
truth and in godliness of life ; and, secondly, a mis-
sionary function ; to spread, namely, into all the
world, and to gather into Its bosom and into oneness
with Itself all peoples. And the promise is given to
this Divine Catholic organism, that It should not die,
that Its Soul should not depart from It, " Lo, I am
with you always even unto the end of the world."
Nothing is more certain than that this entire
Organic Body, with the light with which It was en-
dowed, with Its truth-dispensing officers and grace-
dispensing Sacraments, was arranged on earth by a
loving God for the benefit of an ignorant and sinful
race. Nothing is more certain than that, prior to its
existence, men were in darkness touching some of the
most important and saving truths and ways of eternal
life ; and that light as to these matters did spread
forth among men from this Organic Body as a centre,
and from It alone, until Polytheism and its rites fell
all over Europe, and Olympus was depopulated.
Hence, as this Body was to be a Divine Teacher and
Dispenser of grace, an Administrator of Christ and of
His truths and of His gifts unto men, it is evident
134 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
that It could not have been a mere ephemeral crea-
tion. God did not organize It on earth for some men
or for a few generations only ; but for all men in all
time; "Go ye: baptise all nations." Indeed Christ
promised to b^ with It till the end. A priori. It
possessed, as an organic Body, a continuous and
sacred life ; a continuous life and succession in Its
Ministry, in Its Sacraments, in Its Faith, and in Its
Traditions. It must therefore, as an organic undying
Body, with Its rulers and teachers, Its ordinances,
rites, worship and light-giving powers, have passed on
through the centuries, and It must be in existence to-
day.
To kill It, is the essential act of murder, of which
all other murders are mere types ; for, to kill It, is no
less than the murder of God on earth, the repetition
of the tragedy on Calvary. To rob It of Its powers, is
the essential theft, of which all other thefts are types.
To set up a sect as a rival to It, that that sect may
bear children unto Christ, is the essential whoredom
and adultery, of which all other adulteries are but
types. And when the essential adultery has been
committed by a great people, it is comparatively easy
for them to look less sternly than they should on all
other adulteries, and to demand of their State Legis-
Catholicity and Romanism. 135
latures laws of easy divorce. Wilfully to misrepresent
and slander It, is the essential false-witness, of which
all other lying is a type. For, the four laws of the
Second Table, in which man's duty to man is summed
up, Thou shalt not hurt thy neighbor in his person, in
his property, in his good name, or in his chastity, have
their origin philosophically and theologically not in the
arbitrary will of God, or in the well-being of man, but
in the archetypal structure and well-being of God
Himself. All injury to man is sin, because it is a type
of an awful and corresponding outrage upon God.
Protestantism therefore is a sin, because it is a fearful
attack on the well-being of God on earth.
But to return ; if this Catholic Church, organized
by God 1800 years ago, is in existence to day, as I am
one of those human beings, sinful and ignorant by
nature, for whom Christ came and for whom He
organized His Church, as I need light and Sacra-
ments and guidance from divinely appointed superiors
as much as any one ever did in ancient Palestine, or
Corinth, or Ephesus, or Rome, or Antioch, I may not
therefore, pick and choose my ecclesiastical connec-
tions to-day among societies that any men have since
organized. As God Himself organized a Church for
me 1800 years ago, and promised to be with It till the
136 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
end of time, I am left with no choice whatever in the
matter. If He had organized no Church Which was
to exist continuously, and with Which He was to be
till the end of the world, but had left men to organize,
sixteen hundred years afterwards, as many different
H churches " as they chose, I then might select from
among them any one that pleased my fallibility ; or I
might even set up a new one for myself; for I would
have as much right to organize a new church as an)
one else. But who am I ? I am not a Creator. I
cannot make either a new Church, or a new Sacrament,
any more than I can create a new particle of matter.
But, I hear you say, what are we to do in case
God's Catholic Church should, on account of the
human infirmity that is in It, so decline as to need a
reformation in some respects ? Ought we not to
abandon Its Ministry and Sacraments, and go out
from It, as did Luther ? But this were to give up faith
in God. First, never should we cut ourselves off
from the life-giving and life-sustaining Sacraments
Such infirmities in the Church as you speak of can-
not poison the grace that God gives through His
Sacraments, any more than impurities in the air can
alter the sweet tones of a lute as they pass to my ear j
for the Church is perfect as well as imperfect. And,
Catholicity a?id Romanism. 137
secondly, if the Church ever needs a reformation, to
abandon It were to fly from our post as one of Its
forces of cure, and to forget Christ's promise to be
with It. Surely that promise is sanction that It will
throw off Its disease by the internal action of Him,
Who is within It as Its strong health-giving constitu-
tion.
Reformation ? Why this world is the realm of an
imperfect state of things at the best. Perfection in all
things is not to be hoped for even in the Church.
How then was such inevitable imperfection and
liability to err and to need reform to be managed ?
God came and organized it all into His Divine Catho-
lic Church. I am sure He knew best how to deal with
and cure the diseases of His Church, and that I have
no need to kill His Church on account of Its falling ill.
If I feel that I cannot do very much towards curing
Its diseases, I can at least do something ; I can do
more within It than I can if I were without Its pale.
And, at any rate, I must not forget that God remains
in His Church as Its principle of recovery. Surely I
should stay with Him, and cooperate with Him. If It
does not in every century keep on the exact mathemat-
ical straight line of perfection in all things, I am sure
that any other plan than God's for dealing with the im-
138 Catholicity \ Protestantism and Romanism.
perfection would, in the long run, only leave matters
infinitely worse off for time and eternity. A fool is
he who thinks he can mend or do better than God's
work. I stand aghast before the result that would
have happened, had it been Protestantism instead of
Catholicity that the Goths and Vandals overwhelmed
and threw into the trough of the sea. Europe would
have foundered and gone down.
Since God, then, has organized a Church on earth
for the world, I have, I say, no liberty whatever in the
matter ; I must belong to that Church. If that
Church has Sacraments I must be baptized with Its
Baptism and must feed at Its Altars, and at no others.
I cannot countenance any others, even by my pres-
ence. For I should be countenancing by my presence
and connivance the essential robbery, the essential
murder, the essential slander and the essential adul-
tery themselves. If that Catholic Church has rulers
and teachers to guide its members and to dispense the
Faith, of which It was made the divine receptacle, I
must receive that Faith from them. With filial trust I
must come to that Church, strive to do my duty ac-
cording to Its directions, and with perfect assurance,
leave all the rest to God. As to Its Faith, It cannot
fail j but if It fall ill in mere doctrine or manners, I
Catholicity and Romanism. 139
must stand by It and do my part towards effecting Its
cure.
Having reached this point, namely, Catholicity,
you will remember that we paused, before proceeding
to any subsequent questions, to examine the general
characteristics of the Catholicity into which we thus
found ourselves forced.
In our second Conference we found that this
Catholicity was a Life and an Organizer ; while Prot-
estantism was a Disorganizer and a Death. We
found, secondly, that the Omniscient God in His Body
on Earth utters through It to us and to the world the
Nicene Creed as the Infallible Truth, and that He
sets forth certain other fundamentals of truth. Now
faith, which comes in after all this exercise of our
reason and private judgment, is not an acquiescence
in our own opinions, but an humble reception of what
is thus spoken by God. We believe the Creed, that
is to say, not because we think what is said in it is
reasonable ; not because it suits our fancy ; not be-
cause we have studied its truths out for ourselves ;
but only because God Himself speaks it daily to man
kind. But having accepted, without arguing, this in-
fallible statement of supernatural truth and the way
of salvation, we are surely permitted afterwards to
140 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
examine and admire the Gift we have received. Nay
it were an indignity both to the Gift and to the Giver
if we did not examine it with our grace-enlightened
reason. Here, then, is another function of reason in
the Church. We, therefore, then reverently analyzed
the Creed ; and glanced at the havoc which Protes-
tantism had wrought in it by tearing it into separate
pieces.
In the following Conference, we found, thirdly,
that the Catholic Church was both Divine and human •
and displayed, therefore, not only perfections but im-
perfections ; that outside the Creed there was a re-
gion in the Church where mental action was allowed
to play ; that, owing to certain human imperfections,
a reformation of the Western part of the Church be-
came necessary in the sixteenth century ; that such
Reformation took place in England ; but that on the
Continent it went beyond all bounds, and assumed,
instead, the form of a Destruction of Catholicity. We
found that medieval abuses were, as causes, inade-
quate to account for that fell and mad destruction.
And we traced the real cause of Protestantism to that
basilisk in the fallen human heart, which is ever ready
to resist the principle of submission to IX vine Au-
thority in matters of faith, and which thirteen hundred
Catholicity a?id Roma?iism. 141
years of war and turmoil at last availed to rouse intc
terrible action.
We found, fourthly, that while fragments of truth
were dispersed among the religions and philosophies
of the ancient world, Catholicity came in the fulness
of time, gathered these fragments together, and com-
pleted the rounded sphere of truth for the world :
but that, sixteen hundred years subsequently, Prot-
estantism smote that sphere of truth into fragments
again, to lose them in infidelity.
We found, fifthly, that while Romanism was or-
ganic unity without diversity, and Protestantism was
diversity without organic unity, Catholicity was the
highest form of unity, namely, organic unity in variety.
And we closed by glancing at the frightful solifi-
dianism of Luther and his fellow-heretics, and the
consequent wreck of even common morality in Prot-
estant lands during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries.
All this time we have been resting back, I repeat,
at the answer to our Second Great Question, and ex-
amining the general characteristics of the Catholicity
into which we had been led. We have now reached
a time when we must look up and go on. But, in the
Catholic pathway before us, the road divides again,
142 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
and we are face to face with our Third and last Great
Question.
For as I move forward to unite myself with the
Catholic Body, I am suddenly confronted with two
Bodies, each visible, each claiming to be Catholic,
each claiming to have had a continuous organic life
from the Apostles, each claiming the continuous
Catholic Ministry, Faith and Sacraments. They are,
indeed, alike in some respects ; they differ in others.
What am I to do ? There is nothing for me to do but
to pause before them, listen to their claims and decide
between them.
In what do they agree ? In accepting the Six
Great General Councils of the first seven hundred
and eighty years of the life of Catholicity ; in holding
the Nicene Creed ; in having Bishops, Priests and
Deacons ; in the necessity of the Apostolical Succes-
sion ; in the Sacraments and Sacramental System ; in
Baptismal Regeneration, the Eucharistic Sacrifice and
the Real Presence ; in prayers for the dead ; and in a
Ritual form of worship. Concerning these points,
then, we have nothing to do now. I shall hereafter,
merely however for brevity's sake, include all this,
about which there is no question, under the name of
The Nicene Creed.
Catholicity and Romanism. 143
But over and above these, Roman Catholicism has.
erected certain additional dogmas, which it declares
to be necessary to salvation. These, Anglican
Catholicity declares to be either false, or not neces-
sary to salvation.
The first of these points of difference which I shall
take up is this, namely ; the two bodies, Roman and
Anglican, differ as to what constitutes the unity of the
Church. Both hold that the Church is one ; but
Rome sets up the exclusive theory ; She claims that
She alone is that Catholic church ; in other words
that the church is one like a single individual ; and
that whosoever is not in agreement and communion
with the Bishop of Rome is not in the Catholic
Church at all. Formerly She did not claim this.
To-day, since the late Vatican decree, She claims it.
Anglican Catholicity, on the other hand, declares this
to be a novel and modern idea, an alteration of the
ancient idea. Anglican Catholicity holds up the in-
clusive theory. Its conception of the Catholic Church
includes every Communion which, accepting the Ni-
cene Creed and the Six General Councils, possesses
also an Apostolic Ministry, and therefore the Sacra-
ments, and therefore the Catholic Sacramental life ;
in other words that the visible Catholic Church is one
144 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
like a family, rather than one like a single individual
and that the Bishop of Rome, by excommunicating
and anathematizing from time to time all who do not
agree with him in every additional dogma, which
Rome from time to time has denned, has been placing
himself out of communion with more and more of the
Catholic Church, and has brought trouble and fear-
ful discord into the Catholic Body ; that Satan, de-
siring to have him, is indeed " sifting him like wheat ;"
that he is indeed denying the Lord thrice, with
anathemas, and curses ; that he is indeed impetuous
and full of zeal, full of the things of this world, calling
down upon himself the Lord's solemn prophecy,
" Get thee behind me, Satan j thou art an offence unto
me ; for thou savourest not the things that be of God,
but those that be of men f that he has altered the old
Apostolic theory of the unity of the Church ; and that
by the side of that old theory, the Catholic Church,
as defined by Rome, shrinks into something like a
mere sect and the prolific mother of sects.
Catholic Christendom, then, presents itself in two
vast and separate divisions ; namely, first, Catholics
not in communion with the see of Rome, and, secondly,
Catholics in communion with that see. The former
division comprises within itself the Greek Catholics,
Catholicity and Romanism. 145
the Armenian and Georgian Churches, the AnglicaL
Catholics and the Alt-Catholics — in all, something over
one hundred millions of souls. The latter division
comprises the Roman Catholics alone ; in all, about a
hundred and seventy millions of souls. So that while
Protestants number seventy millions, the Catholics
number two hundred and seventy millions. The
former division of Catholics, comprising the Greeks
and the Anglicans with others, we may designate
under the generic title of " Catholics " or " Old- Cath-
olics \ " the latter division under the generic title of
" New-Catholics," or Roman Catholics. The Old
Catholic Communions agree in asserting the paramount
importance of maintaining the old Apostolic constitu-
tion which the Catholic Church presented in the first
five centuries, and in maintaining that Roman Cath-
olicism is one of the most modern of Religions.
Let us, then, to this question of what it is that
makes the unity of the Catholic Church. Rome
claims that unless a person agrees with the views in
addition to the Nicene Creed, which have been an-
nounced by the Pope in successive centuries subse-
quent to the Eighth, he is out of the Catholic Church
and not a Catholic at all. Dollinger, Reinkens and
thousands of others, Alt-Catholics, could not give intel-
7
146 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
lectual assent to the dogma of the Pope's infallibility ,
and were, therefore, excommunicated from itself by the
Roman part of the Church. But the mistake of Rome
is, that she thus rests the unity of the Church on some-
thing which flows from man ; namely the harmony of
men's wills and the consenting of their minds with the
will and mind of the Pope j and that she no longer rests
the unity on something that flows from God. No : a
mere consenting together of minds cannot create a su-
pernatural and divine organic unity. For however two
men may agree together in certain conclusions and
become friends, this cannot create them brothers and
of one flesh. The unity of the Church is something
that flows not from man or anything man can do, but
it is a gift from God. As God alone could make the
natural race of man organically one in Adam, so He
alone can make the supernatural Church organically
one in Christ. Its organic unity is derived from the
New Adam, Christ, in a certain way. We are grafted,
namely, into Christ by God in Baptism, and this unity
is then continued and completed by Christ's Body and
Blood in the Eucharist, Which not only incorporate
Him into us, and us into Him, but us into each other
as a one Communion — a one Body. W T e are one, not
because we agree in intellectual or historical con-
Catholicity and Romanism. 147
elusions ; but because we are all thus made one with
Christ He it is, that is the foundation and cause of
our unity. This organic unity descends from the
Head to the Body, uniting the Body to the Head and
the parts of the Body to each other. Thus our true
supernatural union with one another is not a mere
agreement of minds, but an organic union made by
God, as He unites us all to the one Christ and to each
other by the Catholic life-giving and curing Sacraments.
If mere discord of men's minds could of itself
break this organic Churchly unity, then a mere con-
cord of men's wills and minds could of itself create
such a unity. But this would make man able to cre-
ate a Church, to create organic unity, by something
going out from himself. And, therefore, a mere
human society, a temperance society, a political party,
agglomerating together, could become of itself as
organically one supernaturally, as the race is organi-
cally one naturally. Why, this Roman Catholic theory
of unity is the very theory of Protestantism itself ;
and therefore the Pope is the greatest and most mag-
nificent Protestant of them all. And we are justified
in saying that the Catholic Church, as defined by
Rome, shrinks into something like a mere sect.
No, the Catholic Church is one like a family, not
148 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
one like a single individual. The three or four Sisters
may unhappily fall out among themselves ; they may
not speak to each other j they may not eat at the
same table with each other ; but all this wrangling
among the Sisters can not go down to the foundation
of the unity of the Family, and break that ; they are
Sisters still, (God made them so,) though they do not
speak to each other. The boughs and branches of
the one organic Catholic tree may be tossed by the
winds of mutual discussion and flap against each
other, but the tree remains one tree, because all hold
by the Catholic Sacraments to Christ.
Catholic Sacraments, I say. There may be beau-
tiful ordinances, but there are no Catholic Sacraments
without the Apostolic Ministry. The Anglican Apos-
tolic succession of Orders prior to 16 17, cannot be
impeached by Rome ; though heretofore, that is to
say before the Pope was declared infallible, it was
absolutely vital to her position to impeach them if
possible ; by foul means, if she could not by fair.
But even if there had been forty thousand irregulari-
ties in that succession prior to 16 17, at that date, at
any rate, Mark A. De Dominis, Roman Catholic
Archbishop of Spalato, went to England, and, joining
with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishops
Catholicity and Romanism. 149
of London and Ely, consecrated George Monteigne
and Nicholas Felton to be Bishops ; and there is not
to-day a single Anglican Bishop, Priest or Deacon in
all the world, that cannot trace his Orders directly to
Monteigne and Felton, from them to Mark A. De
Dominis, and so directly into the Roman succession
itself. So that if Rome's Orders and Sacraments are
valid, ours are equally so. The two stand or fall to-
gether.
Permit me to quote here a somewhat lengthy, but
pertinent passage from Ffoulkes's late letter to Arch-
bishop Manning.
" My Lord," he says, " you have preceded me, yourself,
in expatiating on the workings of the Holy Spirit in the
Church of England with your accustomed eloquence, and
have not hesitated to attribute to Its members many
graces in virtue of the Sacrament of Baptism, which you
allow they administer, on the whole, validly ; but there you
stop. I feel morally constrained to go further still. If I
had to die for it, I could not possibly subscribe to the idea
that the Sacraments to which I am admitted week after
week in the Roman Communion — Confession and the
Holy Eucharist, for instance — confer any graces, any priv-
ileges, essentially different from what I used to derive from
those same Sacraments, frequented with the same disposi-
tions, in the Church of England. On the contrary, I go so
far as to say, that comparing one with another strictly,
some of the most edifying communions that I can remem-
ber in all my life, were made in the Church of England,
and they were administered to me by some that have since
submitted to be re-ordained in the Church of Rome; a
150 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
ceremony, therefore, which, except as qualifying them to
undertake duty there, I must consider superfluous. As-
suredly, so far as the registers of my own spiritual life carry
me, I have not been able to discover any greater preserva-
tives from sin, any greater incentives to holiness, in any
that I have received since ; though in saying this, I am far
from intending any derogation to the latter. I frequent
them regularly ; I prize them exceedingly ; I have no fault
to find with their administration or their administrators in
general. All that I was ever taught to expect from them
they do for me, due allowance being made for my own
short-comings. Only, I cannot possibly subscribe to the
notion of my having been a stranger to their beneficial
effects till I joined the Roman Communion. And I deny
that it was my faith alone that made them what they were
to me before then, unless it is through my faith alone that
they are what they are to me now. Holding, myself, that
there are realities attaching to the Sacraments of an objec-
tive character, I am persuaded, and have been more and
more confirmed in this conviction as I have grown older,
that the Sacraments administered in the Church of Eng-
land are realities, objective realities, to the same extent as
any that I could now receive at your hands ; so that you
yourself, therefore, consecrated the Eucharist as truly,
when you were Vicar of Leamington, as you have evet
done since. This may or may not be your own belief.
But you shall be one of my foremost witnesses to its credi-
bility, for I am far from basing it on the experiences of my
own soul.
" My Lord, I have always been accustomed to look upon
the Sacraments as so many means of grace, and to estimate
their value not by the statements of theologians, but by
their effects on myself, my neighbors and mankind at
large. And the vast difference between the moral tone
of society in the Christian and the pagan worlds, I attribute
not merely to the superiority of the rule of life prescribed in
the Gospels, but to the inherent grace of the Sacraments
Catholicity and Romanism. 151
enabling- and assisting us to keep it to the extent we do
Taking this principle for my guide, I have been engaged
constantly, since I joined the Roman Communion, in insti-
tuting comparisons between members of the Church of
England and members of the Church of Rome generally,
and between our former and our present selves in particu-
lar ; or between Christianity in England and on the Conti-
nent ; and the result in each case has been to confirm me
in the belief, which I have already expressed, that the
notion of the Sacraments exercising any greater influence
upon the heart and life in the Church of Rome than in the
Church of England, admitting the dispositions of those who
frequent them to be the same in both cases, is preposterous.
* * * * What I have seen of Roman Catholics myself,
since joining their church, all points to the same conclu-
sion. Till then I knew them only by report; which,
founded on prejudice, was far from being in their favor ;
and I was horrified to find how shamefully it had mis-
represented them. I found them — I mean the educated
classes — all that in general estimate, members of a Chris-
tian church should be ; God-serving, charitable, conscien-
tious, refined, intelligent ; and I could discern nothing
idolatrous or superstitious in their worship, not anything
at variance with first principles in their daily life. At home
or abroad I was equally surprised to find them so different
from what my traditional informants had described them ;
with so much to admire where I had supposed there was
so much to reprobate. But afterwards, when my first
emotions consequent on this discovery had subsided, when
I came to ask myself the question, are these then the only
true Christians that you have ever known in your life ; and
till you conversed with them, had you never conversed with
a true Christian before ? I can scarely describe the recoil
it occasioned in me ! Why my own father and mother
would have compared with the best of them in all the
virtues ordinarily possessed by Christians living in thff
world and discharging their duties conscientiously towards
152 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
God and their neighbors, in, through, and for Christ. * * *
Then I have had relatives and friends, in numbers, mem
bers of the Church of England, whose homes I will under-
take to say are, to all intents and purposes, as thoroughly
Christian as any to be found elsewhere ; and it would be
sheer affectation or hypocrisy in me, were I to pretend the
contrary ; or else to claim for my own friends and relatives
any peculiar excellence distinguishing them from average
specimens of the Anglican body. For a calm, unpresum-
ing, uniform standard of practical Christianity, I have seen
nothing as yet amongst ourselves in any country superior
to that of the English parsonage and its surroundings.
Go where I will, I am always thrown back upon one of
these as the most perfect ideal of a Christian family ; a
combination amongst its members of the highest intelli-
gence with the most unsullied purity and earnest faith I
ever witnessed on earth.
" If it be said that faith and integrity of purpose make
members of the Church of England what they are without
the Sacraments in mature life, by what argument, I should
like to know, can it be proved that it is not to their faith
and integrity of purpose solely that members of the Roman
Catholic Church are indebted likewise for all the progress
they make ? The only test of the efficaciousness of the
Sacraments appreciable by common sense lies in their in-
fluence upon conduct. If, therefore, it were capable of
proof, as distinct from assertion, which it is not, both that
all the Sacraments administered in the Church of England
save one, were shams, and all administered in the Church
of Rome were without exception realities, how comes it
that we are not incomparably more exalted characters our-
selves than we were formerly, or that Roman Catholic
countries on the Continent are not incomparably more
penetrated to the core with Christianity than England ? "
This gift of Sacramental unity to Catholicity i»
Catholicity and Romanism. 153
divine. And so long as the Apostolic Ministry and
Sacraments continue, man cannot destroy the unity
that God makes through them, any more than man
can destroy a particle of matter. Men may, indeed,
do acts towards each other that are inconsistent with
it \ but that will be fallible man's inconsistency with
what God has done, not man's destruction of what
God has done. For let us advance a step, if you
please.
This divine gift of unity requires of us, of course,
a corresponding duty j namely, mutual love and
unison of wills among those who are organically one.
And the natural expression of this unison of wills and
mutual love is intercommunion between all parts of
the one Catholic Church. But if, as is unhappily the
case, intercommunion is temporarily suspended be-
tween the parts of the Church, so that the hundred
and seventy millions do not communicate with the
hundred millions, the underlying unity coming from
the action of God, that binds them together into one
Catholic Church, is neither forfeited nor broken.
The hundred millions of Old Catholics, Greeks,
Russo-Greeks, Georgians, Armenians, Alt-Catholics
and Anglicans, hold that Rome's exclusive claim to
be the whole Church, is not only a most pregnant
7*
154 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
error, fraught with untold evils, but also an exhibition
of the most stupendous arrogance and pride. There
is positively no warrant for it either in Scripture or
in history. The sacramental theory has warrant in
both.
It has warrant in Scripture ; for saith St. Pau
touching the Sacrament of Baptism, " For as tht
body is one and hath many members, and all the
members of that one body being many, are one body ;
so also is Christ. For by one spirit we are all baptized
into one body." And saith St. Paul again, touching
the Eucharist, " The bread which we break, is it not
the Communion of the Body of Christ ? For we being
many are one bread and one body, for we are all partak-
ers of that one bread." In both these passages the
cause of the unity is declared to be the Sacraments,
" For we are all baptized into one body." " We are
one bread and one body. For we are all partakers
of that one bread." Again to the Galatians, " For as
many of you as have been baptized into Christ have
put on Christ, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus."
But where in Scripture is there a passage declaring
that the organic unity of the Church is created in any
other, and antagonistic way ? The Scripture indeed,
hav'ng set up the Sacramental unity of the Catholic
Catholicity ami Romanism. 155
Church, could not declare also an antagonistic theory
of unity without stultifying Itself.
This sacramental theory has warrant too in history
as well as in Scripture. For the exclusive theory of
Rome was resisted from the time it made its first faint
appearance in the Catholic Church until to-day. In
the early centuries the whole Eastern part of the
Catholic Church would not listen to it an instant. As
it grew in strength and insolence during the darkest
time of the Middle Ages, the whole Eastern or Greek
part of the Catholic Church, at that time by far the
largest, most enlightened and numerous part, with
the Patriarch of Constantinople at its head, rose and
excommunicated the Bishop of Rome and all his ad-
herents. Thus four out of the five great Patriarchates
of the world cut off the one Western or Roman
Patriarchate. The Roman theory then, left to itself,
easily gained additional strength and self-assertion in
the West, until in the sixteenth century the Catholic
part of the church in England could endure it no
longer. On it went increasing, until in the nineteenth
century the German, French, and Swiss Alt-Catholics
could bear the strain not another day. So the Roman
part of the Church cut itself off first from the whole
Eastern part of the church, then from the Anglican ;
156 Catholicity. Protestantism a?id Romanism.
and then from the Alt-Catholic part. And the Vati
can, forsooth, with its Protestant theory of unity, sits
oblivious, with a kind of self-conscious innocence,
among these turmoils of the centuries which it hath
introduced into the Catholic Church. So a man
brings powder into a fair and stately mansion, blows
it up, and then sits down in one miserable torn room
and goes off into a revery on the loveliness of a whole
and unharmed mansion. Protestantism, whether out-
side of Rome, or sitting crowned with the tiara on the
Papal throne itself, is, indeed, not a life and an or-
ganizer but a disorganizer and a death.
The Pope of Rome, although he does not by any
means reach back into the earlier centuries of the life
of the Catholic Church, is yet an individual of some
considerable length. And it certainly is not an edify-
ing spectacle to find him forgetting to-day what he
said yesterday about this very matter of Sacramental
unity. To-day, since the Vatican Decree of Infalli-
bility, it is Rome alone that is the Catholic Church ;
but yesterday, that is to say, in the thirteenth century,
Pope Gregory Xth, in summoning the Council of
Florence, at which an attempt was made to heal the
difficulty between the Greek or Eastern and the Latin
or Western parts of the Church, uses this language
Catholicity and Romanism. 157
concerning the Catholic Church, namely : " Because
of our extreme bitterness in beholding the rent of the
Catholic Church foreshadowed in the net of Peter, the
fisherman, that brake for the multitude of fishes it en-
closed j we do not say divided as regards Its Faith * *
but notoriously and lamentably divided as regards Its
faithful m-embers" To-day, it is Rome alone that is
the Catholic Church ; but yesterday, that is to say, in
the fifteenth century, Pope Eugenius IVth said to his
envoys, " It is for the union of the Eastern and West-
ern Church, so long and so ardently desired by us,
*hat you are sent j " or, as he told the Greek Catho-
Jics, when he despaired of such restoration of inter-
communion, "In what shall we be benefited if we
fail to unite the Church of God." Ah, instead of
claiming, then, that Rome alone is the Catholic
Church, he asserts that the Catholic Church of God
included other Communions besides Rome, the four
other Patriarchates besides his own ; and that, instead
of its being true that whosoever was not in commu-
nion with him was out of the Catholic Church, he
admits that he himself was not in communion with
the whole Catholic Church. In the fifteenth century,
at any rate, he included in the Catholic Church of
God, as Anglicans do to-day, the Old Catholics of
158 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
that time, who stood stiffly against him for the ancient
constitution of that Church.
Indeed Ffoulkes, himself at the time a Roman Cath-
olic, writing before the decree of Infallibility, says as
follows : viz., ** The formal teaching of the Popes, ever
since the rupture (i. e. between the Greek Catholics and
the Roman Catholics,) has been that the church is di-
vided as regards her members ; and that there are
Churches forming part of the Catholic Church which
are, and have been for ages, out of communion with the
R^man See •'■**■* They most unquestionably have
conceded that what we call the Roman Catholic
Church has not constituted the whole Church ; and
that they themselves have not spoken at the head of
the whole Church since the rupture between the Greek
and Roman parts of Catholicity." " Furthermore,"
continues this Roman Catholic writer, " as one of the
most warmly debated points in modern times has been
the power of the Popes and their true relation to the
Church, who can fail to be struck with the absence of
any formal assertion on their part that the terms
* Catholic ' and ' Roman Catholic ' are strictly convert
ible ; with the fact that they have never striven to
appropriate the term ' Catholic,' pure and simple, to
their own Communion, but have commonly called it
Catholicity and Romanism. 159
themselves, and been content that it should be called
by others, the Roman Catholic Church as being its
strict and adequate title." In accordance with this,
what says the Creed of Pius, according to which every
pervert to Rome has to pronounce his profession of
faith ? u I, N — N — , with a firm faith, believe and
profess all and every one of those things which are
contained in that creed, which the Holy Roman Cath-
olic Church maketh use of." The Missal, too, is
called not the Catholic, but the Roman Missal. Mr.
Ffoulkes continues: " Where, indeed, is the part of
Christendom seriously purporting to call itself The
Catholic Church in these days? Roman Catholic,
Anglo-Catholic, Orthodox Eastern, all in their degree
seem influenced by some hidden spell to abstain from
arrogating to themselves or attributing to each other
the Epithet " Catholic " without qualification, as it is
applied to the Church in the Creed."
However, gentlemen, this was written by a Roman
Catholic prior to 1870. But since it was written, the
Pope has been declared infallible ; and that has
changed matters with Rome very much. The decree
of Papal Infallibility rids her of a load of troubles she
formerly had. In order to relieve herself of the fearful
charge, and fact too, of being not only an openly
160 Catholicity, Protestantism a?id Romanism.
schismatical body in England, but also heretical as
violating provisions of the First Six General Councils,
it has heretofore, I repeat, been of vital importance to
her to impeach, if not by fair then by foul means, the
validity of Anglican orders. The position of the Greek
Catholic Church, whose faith and orders it had not
been vital to her to impugn, was nevertheless another
ugly and unanswerable fact against her. But no mat-
ter for all this now. Since the Vatican decree, and ac
cording to that decree, Rome solely is the whole
Church j and every thing else, however Catholic it may
have been before, is to her a mere sect. For since
that decree no unimpeachability on the head of ortho-
doxy, of valid orders, of jurisdiction, or of practical
working, any longer makes the least difference to her.
She, with her now infallible Pope, claiming to be the
only Christian Church, can enter upon the jurisdiction
of any non-papal Bishop, whether Anglican or Greek,
and set up her Episcopal Thrones as the only Thrones
having Christian authority. The Pope with one plunge
of his spurs up to their rowels has sent the Roman
steed, at least in its own estimation, bounding clear
out of all ugly facts of the past and present, in which
it had been tumbling entangled. Rome is in the serio-
comic attitude of one who, finding that History over-
Catholicity and Romanism. 161
rams her claims, leaps away from History. However,
the past is nevertheless secure ; and History is a sad
tell-tale, and an invincible advocate. And as Rome
thus bounds away from it all, the hundred millions
gaze at her act with sorrow, not unmingled with quiet,
courteous, but triumphant mirth. The Patriarch of
Rome had reached a point, under the developments
of hostile discussion, where he was compelled to break
either with Romanism or with History.
Ah, what a dream of the distraught it is, for Rome
to imagine for an instant that she can turn aside
God's Hand from its work, that she can shut off the
action of His own appointed Sacraments as they go
forth to bind men into organic unity with His Christ
and with each other ; that she can smite that unity as
with a painted wooden sword, and, by her Protestant
theory, that the mere concord of men's intellects can
make a one organic Church, or their mere discord
break It, sunder what God Himself hath united. If
Protestantism is the sin of essential adultery, Roman-
ism is the essential sin of divorce.
But this argument of Catholicity's touching the
Sacramental unity of the Church is not yet quite fully
developed. For were it taken without any qualifica-
tion whatever, it would be incomplete and prove too
1 62 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
much. There is something else to be said as to dis-
cord of mind in the Church, or all in the Church were
left in utter confusion.
Most decidedly, a heretic, one who presumes to
deny anything that God Himself speaks in the Creed,
forfeits the Sacraments. And most decidedly, on
that forfeiture, Christ i. e., God, Who makes the
Sacramental unity of the Church, hath the power
and the right to break what He hath made, by excom-
municating the heretic.
But the outward visible part, or Body of Christ,
through which He acts, is the Catholic Church ; it is
not the Pope alone that is Christ's Body Mystical.
Now for Christ, thus through the Catholic Church,
His Body, to cut off a heretic from Its unity, because
that heretic will not submit to what God has said, is
one thing ; but for the Bishop of Rome, who surely is
not Jesus Christ, acting clearly at his own instance,
to attempt to cut a man off because that man will not
submit to his views, uttered on his own responsibility
from time to time, and, in the language of the Infalli-
bility Decree, a not because of the consent of the rest,"
even of the Roman part " of the Church," is quite
another, and a very different thing.
Were the Pope the Vicar of Christ, were the whole
Catholicity and Romanism. 163
Catholic Church summed up in the Pope, were he, as
he stands in the Vatican, the incarnation, the visible
presence of God, the Body of God on Earth, then his
excommunication would, of course, be Christ's action.
But Catholicity hath denied and resisted these Papal
claims from their very first appearance. We shall prove
by and by that these claims are baseless. No, it is the
Church that is the incarnation of Christ on Earth, and
not the Pope. And as it was Christ and not the Pope
that made the Sacramental unity of the Church, so it
is Christ alone in His Church, and not the Pope, that
has power to break an individual or a body of individ-
uals away from it.
The whole Church, that is to say Christ, hath ex-
communicated Protestantism. But the Roman com-
munion has not been excommunicated by the whole
Church, but only by the Greek part of the Church. It
is therefore not excommunicated from Catholicity at
all. And the Greek Church has not been excommu-
nicated by the whole church, but only by the Roman
part of the Church j the Greek Church is therefore not
excommunicated from Catholicity at all. And so of
the Anglican and Alt-Catholic Communions. Herein
then is seen the difference between the divisions of the
Catholic Church and the utter separation of all Prot-
164 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism,
estant sects from the Catholic Church. The latter are
schismatic bodies ; the different parts of the Catholic
Church are not in schism, but are suffering under the
evils of a disruption of Catholic concord.
But, you will say, suppose now, that when Christ in
his Catholic Church has cut off a heretic, that heretic
carries away with him the Apostolic Orders and Sacra-
ments ; what then ? Ah, gentlemen, let history answer.
When Christ has cut off, He has invariably brought
to naught a really heretical sect, notwithstanding its
Sacraments. History's answer is, It is hopeless thus
to attempt to defeat God by carrying away the Sacra-
ments. Where are the Arians, the Pelagians, the
Apollinarians, the Macedonians, the Nestorians, the
Eutychians, and innumerable bodies that went off with
the orders, some of those bodies of vast size too ? God
speedily ended them ; and their very names are
strange to our ears.
But compare such rapid death and oblivion of
what God hath cut off, with the unharmed and con-
tinuous life and vigor through the ages of what the
Pope alone has tried to cut off, if you would have a
commentary upon a real excommunication from the
Catholic Church, in contrast with an excommunica-
tion which is a mere sham and travesty. Behold the
Catholicity and Romanism. 165
vast Greek Catholic Church with its thousand years of
mighty life, and its enormous growth and vigor since
the separation between the East and West ; behold,
too, the Anglican Catholic Church. A sect, from the
time it is cut off from the Catholic Church, never re-
covers ; it withers ; its career is always downwards to
death. But the Anglican Church shows that it has
the Catholic life. For even after having been over-
whelmed with Protestants in pulpit, Episcopal Throne,
Theological Seminary, and pew, she is nevertheless
recovering ; for she is rooted in the Catholic Tree ;
and against no part of the Catholic Church can the
gates of Hell prevail.
FIFTH CONFERENCE.
Constitution of the Church, in Its Priestly, Sacri-
ficial, Prophetic, and Regal Functions, according
to Catholicity. The Church's Government Episco-
pal, not Papal. Gallicanism. a Logical Mistake.
Hierarchy within the Episcopate. Papal Supremacy
not sustained by scripture.
Gentlemen,
A second fundamental issue between Catholicity
and Romanism is this, namely : Catholicity claims
that Romanism is the slow but stubborn development
of an absolute monarchy in the Latin part of the
Church, unknown to early days, and the prolific
mother of many other deviations from Catholicity.
The efforts of Rome to alter the government of the
Church from Episcopal to Papal, have been resisted
by the rest of the Church from the first. The entire
contest between Catholicity and Romanism has not
really changed since it began. But since the Vatican
decree of 1870, it has been practically narrowed to
the above single issue. For, if the Papal Supremacy
be right, the entire Catholic Church must, of course ;
Catholicity and Romanism. 167
accept it ; and, with it, all the rest of Romanism.
The Papal Supremacy is, therefore, the fortress of
Rome's position. If that stands, she stands ; if that
falls, the war is over.
Wher the Bishop of Rome sent letters to the
Patriarch of Constantinople, inviting him to attend
the late Vatican Council in 1870, in declining the in-
vitation for himself and his brother Bishops, and de-
clining to open, or even to lift from the table where
the papal delegates had placed it, the elegant case in
which the invitation was enclosed, the venerable
Patriarch expressed in the following words the fixed
attitude of all parts of the Catholic Church not in
communion with the Papal see, viz :
u Since it is manifest that there was a Church in
existence ten centuries ago, Which held the same doc-
trines in the east as in the west, in the Old as in the
New Rome, let us each recur to that ; and see which
of us has added aught, which has diminished aught
therefrom. And let all that may have been added be
struck off, if any there be, and whatever it be ; and
let all that has been diminished therefrom be re-
added, if any there be, and whatever it be. And then
we shall all, unawares, find ourselves united in the
same symbol of Catholic Orthodoxy."
1 68 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
In a similar strain, and with almost identical
language, did the Patriarch of Alexandria also reply
to the Roman messengers that conveyed a like in-
vitation to him and to his brother Bishops. He
declined communion with the see of Rome, and with
all churches adhering to that see ; and he declined
even meeting in council with them, till the Pope
should recede from his usurpations. All was cour-
teous and diplomatic, for each eastern Patriarch re-
ceived formally, and in full Canonicals, the messen-
gers of the Patriarch of Rome, but all was politely
firm.
In the investigation of this vital issue between
Catholicity and Romanism, let me first present to you
the ancient constitution of the Church according to
Catholicity; after which we will view the radically
different autocracy which Rome has succeeded in
imposing on her adherents, and which she insists that
the rest of the Catholic Church shall accept. We
begin, then, with the Catholic theory.
Jesus Christ is four-fold ; He is Priest, Sacrifice,
Prophet, and King. First, then, according to Catho-
licity, there is but one Priest, Jesus Christ. He alone
can offer a Sacrifice j He alone can forgive sins.
Now one purpose for which He is here within the
Catholicity and Ro;na?iism. 169
visible Catholic Church is to act as Priest. But if, as
Priest He had remained invisible, His Priestly Func-
tion would not have adapted itself to the conditions
of time and space, nor to the wants of those who are
in the Church of time and space. To make Himself
accessible to us as the sole Priest, He must break out
into Priestly visibility. He takes to Himself there-
fore, a special visible Priestly Body within the Church.
Now if the Catholic Church consisted of but one
small parish, He need only have taken to Himself
a single earthly Priest for an outward visible Body,
through which His Priestly Function could act. But
as the earth is extensive, His Priestly Function, on
striking its medium and becoming visible, breaks up
into many earthly Priests, for the manifold distribu-
tion and practical application of itself all round the
globe. Thus it is that the One Priest is enabled audi-
bly to pronounce the words of pardon and of blessing.
of oblation and of consecration, every where simul-
taneously. Nevertheless, all these earthly Priests
form, after all, only one organic Body j a single Body
that has a manifold presence in the Church ; a single
Body the Soul of which is the Priestly Function of
Jesus Christ. For each separate earthly Priest is but
a reiteration, on account of the conditions of space, of
170 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism,
every other Priest, as u one only of innumerable
shadows cast by the same object." Being reiterations
of each other, Catholic Priests are all equal. Then,
in this one Body of the earthly Priesthood, in order
to avoid differences in action, and the conflicts, which
the actual multiplicity of Priests on earth would
occasion, certain ecclesiastical regulations have from
the first been observed, restraining each Priest to a
local district. In short, in like manner as Christ
stands in the world, God incarnate in the Great Body
of the Church, so He stands within the Church itself,
a Priest, yea rather the Priest incarnate and visible in
the great one Sacerdotal Body, an incarnation within
an incarnation, a visible body within a visible body.
Every earthly Priest, therefore, holds his power to
exercise Priestly functions not from his Bishop, but
directly from God. He preaches, offers the Sacrifice,
baptises, and pardons, in virtue of the power which
the Holy Ghost has given to him. The Bishop is,
indeed, the superior and the pastor of the Priest, but
the Priest is not a simple vicar of the Bishop. To
claim that he is, is to take a first step towards Roman
ism. Men, though they may be channels through which
power comes, are never the source whence it comes.
It is Christ in His Church that is this source. And
Catholicity and Romanism, 171
Christ, through His instrument the Bishop, gives the
Sacerdotal power directly to the Priest at Ordination.
Rome, on the other hand, claims that the plenitude
of all power is in the Pope; that the Bishops are
merely vicars of the Pope, and the Priests merely
vicars of the Bishops.
Secondly. As there is but one Priest, so there is
but one Sacrifice, Jesus Christ. As He is a " Priest
forever," the Apostle tells us " it is of necessity " that
He should " have somewhat to offer " forever. Being,
then, the one Priest in Heaven and on earth, He pleads
His one Sacrifice simultaneously in Heaven and on
earth before the Father. On the Heavenly Altar
He ever stands, " The Lamb as It had been slain."
This great and perpetual Sacrificial transaction of the
" Priest forever," on striking the medium of space
and time, adapts itself to the conditions of space and
time. Like His Priesthood it, too, breaks out into
visibility in the visible Church.
Now if the Church consisted of but one small
parish, there would be needed but one visible Altar
and one visible Eucharistic Sacrifice for the realiza-
tion to us of the one great perpetual Sacrificial trans-
action of Jesus Christ. But, as before, the earth is
extensive. When, therefore, Christ's act, as He
172 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
perpetually displays His glorious wounds before God
the Father, strikes the medium of space and time, it
breaks out into the many Altars of space and the re-
peated Eucharists of time, in order to meet, by mani-
fold distribution, the wants of that part of the one
Church which is subject to the conditions of extended
space and of continuous time.
I do not know how it is with you, gentlemen, but
to my faith the distinctions that are drawn between
Christ's own Body in Heaven and Christ's Sacra-
mental Body on earth, as though they were in some
mysterious way two separate existences, the one im-
movable in an astronomic Heaven and the other
movable and coming through space to the earth, are
incomprehensible jargon. They are born of the Con-
tinental Reformation ; they are a logical denial of the
unity of the Church Militant and Triumphant ; they
suppose Eternity to be simply a very long Time, in-
stead of something essentially different from Time;
and they suppose Heaven to be a very far and very
fair portion of space, instead of something super-
natural, and essentially different from space. Church
Militant and Triumphant, instead of occupying two
separate portions of space quite distant from each
other, is a One Body, existing, however, under two
CathoHcity and Romanism. 173
conditions. It stands, as a whole, in the immedi-
ate Presence of God the Father ; It is, as such un-
divided Body, standing in the Presence of God
the Father, at once within space and not within
space j It exists equally in Time with its conditions
and in Eternity with its different conditions ; It is at
the same time visible and invisible. Its Priest and
and Its Sacrifice exist, therefore, under the same two
conditions; within space, namely, and not within
space, in Time and also in Eternity. Its Sacrifice is
therefore, at once invisible because it exists within
the Heavenly conditions, and visible because it
exists within the earthly conditions, these differing
conditions not dividing the one Sacrifice. So that,
after all, at all the Altars, all over the earth, and all
through time, it is not many separate Eucharists,
many separate Sacrifices. No, it is all one only
Food ; one only everflowing Blood ; one perpetual
Eucharist, one single perpetual Sacrifice, Jesus Christ.
Thus all the combined earthly Altars, though many,
are after all one only Altar standing at once in Heav-
en and on earth ; and moreover, as such Altar, they
all form simply the one visible part of the Heavenly
Altar, as inseparable from It as a body is from its
soul. So that when we look at our earthly Altar, we
174 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
are merely looking at an outward and visible part of
the great alone Altar of the great alone Priest, where-
on He stands, both visible and invisible, " The Lamb
as it had been slain." If I may be permitted a figure
to make the idea perhaps clearer ; though our earthly
Altars are many, yet they stand, so to speak, all
round an unbroken circumference, the common center
of which is the Heavenly Altar where The Lamb is.
So that when we each kneel before and gaze at our
earthly Altar, in whatever church, we are all adoring
with the angels and looking in directly, and as
through a circumference of lenses, each upon the
same Heavenly Altar at the common centre of the
whole circle, where stands our Sacrifice and our God,
Who, for our sake in space and time, comes out into
Sacrificial visibility all round the circumference.
Thus the God-man, whom we behold and adore at our
several earthly Altars, is the God-man Who is on the
Heavenly Altar ; and in adoring Him at our earthly
Altars we are adoring Him on the Heavenly Altar ; for
we of the Church Militant are as much in the Presence
of God the Father, as are the angels of Heaven.
Permit me to say here, parenthetically, even
though it be extraneous to the current of our present
thought, a word or two touching a difficulty that ma>
Catholicity and Romanism. 175
have presented tself to your minds. Catholicity, you
will say, declares that the Sacrifice presented before
the Father at Its Altars is the Body of Christ j and
yet It also declares that the Church is the Body of
Christ; and is there not here an inconsistency? But
the mental hesitancy, into which these two state-
ments throw the non-catholic mind, clears itself
away at once, when we consider the absolute unity
of Christ, and the unity of His action. For, He
is the One Priest offering Himself as the One
Sacrifice. If we are to join Him in pleading that
Sacrifice, we must become a part of Him ; other-
wise it would not be Himself offering Himself,
His Body offering His Body. Thus He is the
Church as Offerer, and He is at the same time the
Eucharist as the Thing offered. The apparent incon-
sistency grows inevitably out of the marvelous fact
that Christ is both Priest and Victim. Thus, to deny
that the Catholic Church is the Body of Christ, must
end logically in the Unitarian denial that Christ is
both Priest and Victim.
Thirdly. Our Lord is also Prophet, that is to say
Teacher. For, as a Prophet is one who states the
underlying truths and laws in accordance with which
events happen, he is primarily a teacher, and only
176 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism,
subordinately a foreteller. When this Teaching
Function of our Lord strikes the medium of space and
time, it likewise comes out into visibility within the
Church, breaking into many visible earthly preachers
for the manifold distribution and practical application
of itself to all parts of the earthly Church. So that
the combined Catholic pulpits are the one outward
Body of the one Teacher, Christ.
Fourthly. But Christ is not only Priest, Sacrifice
and Prophet. He is also King, or Ruler. If, as
Ruler in the Church, He remained a mere impalpa-
ble influence, the invisibility of this Regal power
would not only be inconsistent with the visibility of
the Church Itself, and of His other functions in It,
but it would leave all order to the incertitude of
men's differing but honest impressions as to what
ought to be done, as each would think he was guided
in some mystical, transcendental way aright. Christ
would no more have adapted Himself as such Ruler
to the conditions of time and space or to the needs
of those in the Church of time and space, than He
would if He had remained invisible as a Priest, or as
a Sacrifice, or as a Teacher. No, all is harmonious.
His Church Catholic is a complete and consistent
system. His Ruling Prerogative, therefore, on strik
Catholicity and Ro?nanism. 177
ing the medium of time and space, comes out also
into visibility.
If the Church were only one small diocese. His
Ruling Function would need for its outward earthly
body through which to act, one earthly Bishop only.
But, again, the earth is extensive. Christ's Ruling
Prerogative, therefore, on striking its medium, adapts
itself to the conditions of space, by breaking into
many Bishops, for the manifold distribution and ap-
plication of itself within the Church all round the
world.
Now just here is the root idea of the Episcopal
government of the Catholic Church as opposed to the
Papal autocratic government. For, as there is in the
Church but one Priest visible and invisible, Jesus
Christ, so there is in the Church but one King or
Bishop visible and invisible. All the earthly Bishops
together form the one visible organic Kingly Body,
of which the inward and inseparable living Soul is
the Ruling Function of Christ. For each separate
earthly Bishop is but a reiteration, on account of the
conditions of space, of every other Bishop, as one of
" innumerable shadows cast by the same " Kingly
object 5 and, being reiterations of each other, they
are all equal. Every Bishop, therefore, holds his
8*
178 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
power to exercise episcopal functions, not from the
Pope, but directly from Christ.
It is in the Combined Episcopate, then, all over
the world, that we have the One Bishop, Christ,
standing everywhere visible to us as King ; just as in
the combined Priesthood we have the one Priest,
Christ, standing everywhere visible as Priest. It is
in the Combined Episcopate, then, that we have the
Vicar of Christ on earth, and not in any single one
of the Bishops. For the single Bishop of Rome to
set himself up, regardless of all the rest, as the alone
Vicar of Christ, is a tremendous deviation from the
Apostolic constitution of the Church. It is to de-
stroy that Regal Body on earth in which the great
Ruler, Christ, stands visible as Ruler everywhere
throughout the Church. It is treason and Regicide.
It puts a usurper on the throne in place of Jesus
Christ's own royal Body. It is an attempt to change
most radically the government of the whole Church
from Episcopal to Papal.
You will see at a glance, for truth is always con-
sistent with itself, that the Great General Councils of
all the Bishops, which for centuries and centuries con-
vened as the undoubted ultimate courts of appeal,
were inconsistent with the modern theory that ultimate
Catholicity and Romanism. 179
appeals rest in the Pope. You will see that those Gen-
eral Councils followed harmoniously, and naturally,
and truthfully, from the original government of the
Catholic Church by the Combined Episcopate.
Indeed Gregory Great, twelve centuries ago, far
from putting himself above the Combined Episcopate,
said that he honored Ecumenical Councils equally
with the four Gospels. And Leo III, in the eighth
century, assured the Frankish Bishops when they
came to him, that, far from setting himself above the
Fathers of the Council of 381, who made additions to
the Nicene Creed, he did not venture to put himself
on a par with them ; and, therefore, would not pre-
sume to make the addition to the creed which those
Frankish Bishops suggested. Consider, too, these
words of the oath which the Popes pronounced on the
day of their inauguration for centuries ; u I promise to
honor and to venerate faithfully the Holy General
Councils, to teach that which they have taught, to
observe that which they have decreed, and to condemn
with heart and mouth that which they have con-
demned." St. Augustine says that a plenary Council
always remains as final arbiter to annul any sentence
of any, even the greatest Bishop. Pope Sylvester II.
says, " If the Pope listens not to the Church, he ought
180 Catholicity, Protestantism and Ro7nanism.
to be treated as a heathen man and a publican."
Pope Leo, in addressing the fathers of the Fourth
General Council, a. d. 451, uses the following lan-
guage, viz: "As the very Christian Emperor has
wished an Episcopal Council to the end that error may
be abolished by a more authorized judgment, I have sent
my brother Julian, Bishop, Renatus, Priest, and my
brother Hilary, Deacon, who will represent me at the
Council, and, by a sentence common with you, will
establish that which will be pleasing to the Lord."
Surely here St. Leo rests the final authority in an
Ecumenical Council. Again, the Robber Council of
Ephesus had been held, sustaining Eutyches. There-
upon the Pope urged upon the Emperor the sum-
moning of a new Council that should be truly Ecu-
menical. Theodocius, deceived, and believing that the
canonical rules had been observed at the Robber
Council, did not wish to consent to a new Council \
" Because," said he, " after the solemn decision of the
Council, it is not possible to resort to a new judg-
ment." Surely the demand of St. Leo and the refusal
of the Emperor prove that both of them rested the
final authority in a truly General Council. The Fifth
Council in 553, uses, moreover the following language :
"There is no other means (except by a General
Catholicity and Romanism. 181
Council) of knowing the truth in the Faith. Each has
need of the aid of his brother, following the Scripture,
1 Where two or three are met together,' " etc. This
Council judged and condemned Pope Vigilius as a
heretic. The sixth General Council, in 680, anathe-
matized Pope Honorius for being a heretic. In 768
Pope Constantine II was deposed by a Council. At
the Eighth Council, in 869. after the letters of Pope
Nicholas were read, the legates asked of the Council,
at the end of its fifth session, " What does the Coun-
cil say of the things it has just heard ? Is this letter
canonical or not ? " The Council replied, " It is
conformable to the canons, it is regular." This, too,
is evidence that the Pope deferred to the Council.
Here, then, in the long course of nine centuries,
we behold the supremacy of Councils. The law of
the Church is the decision of the Combined Episco-
pate. In the first eight Councils each Bishop writes
the phrase " Definiens subscripsi." It is not till we
come to the Roman Lateran Councils that the phrase,
" Sacro approbante concilio," makes its appearance.
But, furthermore, the very struggles of the Popes
in later centuries to rise superior to the dicta of even
a Roman Council, is a standing and unanswerable
argument that this claim of Papal Supremacy is novel
1 82 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
When, in the ninth century, the whole Latin Church
was excommunicated for its errors by the rest of the
Catholic Church, still the idea of the supreme power
of the Combined Episcopate in General Council as-
sembled so lingered even in this Latin part, that Pope
Gregory Xllth himself appealed to a General Council,
as " that, by which and in which the acts of a Pope
are accustomed to be judged." The Latin Council
of Constance as late as 1414, having summoned John
XXIII, deposed him, and afterwards Benedict XIII,
also, from the Papacy. Vienne judged Boniface
VIII. At its Fifth session the Council of Constance
passed the following decree, viz : " The sacred synod
of Constance, making a General Council, legitimately
assembled to the glory of Almighty God for the ex-
tirpation of schism and for the union, and the refor-
mation of the Church in Its Head and in Its mem-
bers, wishing to execute more easily, more surely,
more abundantly, and more freely this union and this
reformation, orders, defines, discerns and decrees as
follows : This Council, legitimately assembled in the
Holy Ghost, making a General Council, and repre
senting the Catholic Church, holds immediately from
Jesus Christ a power, which every person of what-
ever condition and dignity he may be, even papal, is
Catholicity and Romanism. 183
obliged to obey in that which concerns the Faith, the
extirpation of the present schism and the reformation
of the Church in Its Head and in Its members. Who-
ever, of whatever condition or dignity he may be,
even papal, shall refuse obstinately to obey the
statutes, ordinances and precepts, that this Holy
Council, or any other legitimate Council assembled,
has made, or shall make, upon the aforesaid matters,
or upon any thing which regards them, if he does not
repent, shall be punished as he deserves ; and there
shall be employed against him, if it be necessary,
other lawful means." The Council of Basle also de-
clared that, as the Church had through Councils fre-
quently deposed Popes when convicted of errors in
faith, while no Pope had ever pretended to condemn
the Church, the superiority of a Council over a Pope
was clear. In short the struggle, even in the Latin
part of the Church after the rupture between the East
and the West, between its own Councils and its Pope
as to which was supreme, continued with shifting suc-
cesses until at last it is only in modern days that the
Gallican School has gone down, and Papal Supremacy
over a Council has finally succeeded in setting itsell
up. Who shall claim, then, that the Papal Supremacy
is not a modern fiction ? In the Council of Florence
1 84 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism,
in 1438, Bessarion, an eminent Greek, perhaps the
most learned and illustrious of all the Greeks present,
said, " We know the rights and privileges of the
Roman Church j but we know, also, that these rights
have limits. Whatever may be the power of the
Roman Church, it is less than that of the General
Council and of the Universal Church."
Indeed, gentlemen, show me in the past thousand
years of Catholicity where the rising waves of Papal
ambition have beaten, and I will show you where the
rock-bound continent of the true Vicar of Christ has
always stood in resistance j nay, where the very Rock
Himself, Jesus Christ, in His true visible Kingly
Body, the Combined Episcopate, has always stood
unmoved, dashing back those Papal billows.
Let me say here, incidentally, before I come to
the main argument about the Rock, that it is, indeed,
absurd on the face of it, absurd a priori, absurd at its
very first mention, that Christ should have promised
to found His Church on a mere man, instead of on
the God-Man. It is Protestantism, this founding
churches on men ; on Calvin, or Peter, or Luther, or
Wesley. And, therefore, again, the Pope is simply a
superb Protestant clothed in canonicals. Indeed St.
Paul, in his celebrated rebuke to the Corinthians,
Catholicity and Romanism. 185
where he says, " Now this I say, that every one of
you saith I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of
Peter, and I of Christ," makes such very choice of
Peter as the one peculiar note and test of Catholic
fellowship and of covenant with God, a mark of
schism, rather than of Catholicity.
If Anglican Catholics were alone in denying the
Papal Supremacy, and all the rest of the Catholic
Church were, and had always been against us, we
might seem to be setting little stress on the great
blessings of Catholic concord and of uninterrupted
intercommunion. But let Anglican Catholicity be
blotted from the map, what nevertheless is to be
done with the great East, with four out of the five
great Patriarchates of Catholicity? "Are the un-
changed and unchangeable Churches of Asia, of
Greece, and of Russia to be taken also out of the
history of the world and of the Church?" They
have denied from the first, and still do deny, the
Papal Supremacy. "When the whole of the East,
holding equally with ourselves the great principle of
unity, resists, nevertheless, a dogma, which another
great portion of the Church enforces as the only con-
dition of communion with Herself, then we are sure
the breach rests not with that portion which denies,
1 86 Catholicity ', Protestantism and Ro?nanism.
but with that which asserts so great and unjustifiable
a claim "* as the Papal Autocracy.
We have found the true Vicar of Christ not in a
single Bishop, but in all the Bishops combined. Now
the Romanist charges us with imagining that the
Church has no earthly Head. The " Catholic
Review " of last week, in an article on the First of
these Conferences, repeats this charge. Indeed it is
one of the stock fallacies with which Romanists easily
confound the ill-instructed Churchman. The charge
is not true. The fallacy is this. Because we do not
accept the Papal Supremacy, we therefore believe the
Catholic Church to be a Headless Church so far as
this earth is concerned. This will do for an unwary
Protestant, to induce him to pass unwittingly by the
very question at issue and into the Roman conclu-
sion j but it will not do for a Catholic. The Roman-
ist can always handle a Protestant with great ease ;
and the reason why the Romanist is so bitter against
what are called Ritualists, is because he cannot move
them an inch \ that is to say, if the so-called Ritualist
is a true Catholic, and not an Evangelical who is tem-
oorarily dancing through a little mere Ritualism on
his steady way from latitudinarianism to the other ex
* The Rev. W. J. E. Bennett.
Catholicity and Romanism. 187
treme of Rome. If Catholics are all going to Rome,
as is charged by the ignorant, then it is most mar
Velous that the very points which Catholics hold are
the very points which have caused Dollinger and the
Alt-Catholics violently to tear themselves away from
Rome, in which they were born and reared, which
they have loved, and in which they lived, some
of them to ripe and grave old age. Such men as
Pusey, Liddon, Carter, and the Catholic school gen-
erally, refuse to be judged by the case of a few
giddy-headed persons, who, waking up to the misery
of Protestantism, stagger, dazzled and blinded, away
from Low-Churchmanship, caper through a little mere
Ritualism, and then tumble over into Rome, enthusi-
astically sure, superciliously confident, tumultously
certain that they have gotten at the bottom of this
prodigious and complicated question that for over a
thousand years has divided the Church.
Of course, gentlemen, the Church has a Head.
That is not the question at all. But the question is,
in what that Head consists ; whether in the Combined
Episcopate, or in one only of its Bishops. It is an
jndeniable fact, and it settles the question, at any
rate, between Catholicity and Romanism, beyond all
peradventure, that, in the era of the first six great
i88 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
General Councils, it was the Combined Episcopate
alone, and not the Bishop of Rome, that was the ulti-
mate authority and Great Vicar of Christ in questions
of faith and of discipline ; it is an undeniable histor-
ical fact, that nothing doubtful was for centuries
settled in the Church, no matter what the Bishop of
Rome might say, till the Combined Episcopate spoke
in Ecumenical Council.
But let me complete the idea of the Apostolic
Constitution of the Catholic Church. You will re-
member that I stated, while I was speaking of the
body of the Priesthood, that, in order to avoid those
conflicts which the multiplicity of actual human Priests
would otherwise occasion, certain ecclesiastical regu-
lations have, not perhaps from the very first, but from
a very early date, been observed, restraining Priests
to local districts.
Now carry that same idea over into the Episco-
pate. You will perceive that, if there were no analo-
gous ecclesiastical regulations for the Episcopate,
there could not fail to arise confusions, and collisions
in action among the earthly Bishops, owing to their
actual multiplicity. And so there have been, not from,
the very first, but from quite early days, ecclesiastical
regulations restraining Bishops to local districts.
Catholicity and Romanism, 189
Nor is this all. There has been a hierarchy within
the Episcopate from very early days ; consisting of
Bishops, Arch-Bishops, Patriarchs and a Primate as
Head of the whole. There is not and never has been
the slightest issue between Rome and us about such
a hierarchy ; and, moreover, the great Anglican Bishops
and controversial writers have, with consenting voice,
admitted the Primacy of Rome. In fact the Church
must have primacies. Every province must have its
head j it is the Arch-Bishop, or, as we call him in
America, the Senior Bishop. Every Patriarchate or
vast Communion like the Anglican must have its
head j it is the Patriarch, or, as with us, the Arch-
Bishop of Canterbury. And, were intercommunion
restored between all parts of the Church, the whole
Combined Episcopate must have its chief Primate ;
and, according to the decrees of the General Councils,
that chief Primate would of course be the Bishop of
Rome. But the trouble between Catholicity and
Romanism arises outside of this, and is two-fold.
For, first, the Bishop of Rome has not been satis-
fied to rest in his ancient Primacy within the Episco-
pate, but has striven, instead, to usurp the autocracy
over the Episcopate. Instead of being first among
equals, he claims, that is to say, to hold the same
190 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
relative attitude to all Bishops, that any Bishop holds
to his Priests. This is virtually an effort to create a
fourth order in the Ministry. He claims the ap-
pointment of all Bishops ; that every cause of moment
shall go up to himself j that he shall have the right to
suspend, condemn or acquit at his own will ; instead of
receiving law and faith from the Church, he claims to
give the law and the truth to the Church. In short,
it is a demand that the legislative, executive and
judicial powers in the Church be centered in himself,
and that he be responsible to no one. For, the
Vatican decree declares that the Pope holds not
merely the chief part, but the " entire fulness of the
supreme power." Now this is what Catholicity
resists.
Let us take an illustration. We need, for instance
a President of the United States. But let any Presi-
dent draw the sword, overthrow the constitution, and
usurp the powers of an absolute Oriental Autocrat, let
him presume to appoint for each State its Governor,
to supervise or repeal its state, county and municipal
codes, to reverse, if he please, all decrees of the courts
state or federal, and to declare his own irresponsible
will to be law for all, and the American citizen 01
State that would not resist to the end such usurpation,
Catholicity and Romanism. 191
would be traitor to the Federal Constitution, and
unworthy the name of American. In the State, better
civil war than such submission ; in the Church, better
non-intercommunion than a similar submission. No,
no ; the Catholic must stand loyal to the original
constitution of the Catholic Church, if he would be
loyal to that Church. He cannot be loyal at once to
the Pope and to the Church; for the Primacy of
Rome is one thing ; but the Papal Supremacy is a
vastly different thing.
Rome cries to the Greeks and Anglicans, * If you
are not Protestants, (and it seems you claim not to
be,) yet you are not Catholics. For the Catholic is
one who obeys the Pope ; and he who obeys him not
is heretic, excommunicated, and, if not a Protestant, he
must be an unclassified man." But thus replies one
who is a Catholic indeed : " The true Catholic is he
who obeys primarily the Church, inasmuch as She
exercises the authority which Jesus Christ has con-
ferred upon Her. As to the Pope, because he is
the Patriarch of the West, and the first of the other
Patriarchs, the true Catholic can obey him on one
only condition, that he shall, in his turn, obey as a
good Catholic all the laws of the Church. If the
Pope transgress these laws, if he violate the constitu*
192 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
tion established by Christ, if he derogate the Councils
of the Church, if he attribute to himself in the name
of God a power which he holds neither from God nor
from the Church, then he separates himself from the
Church. He is no more Chief Primate, but solely-
chief Disturber. In this case the true Catholic is he
who resists him ; who appeals to the authority to
which the true Primate ought himself to be submis-
sive, viz: the authority of the Church united in a
Council really ecumenical. "*
Innocent IVth taught, indeed, that one ought not
to obey an order of the Pope containing a heresy, or
threatening to shake the whole organization of the
Church ; and that, a Pope being able to fail, it is
necessary to say, " I believe that which the Church
believes, and not that which the Pope believes."
Pius IXth, however, differed with Innocent IVth.
No, the see of Rome, though holding the Primacy,
can rightly have no such jurisdictional power as would
divide or limit the full power of the Combined Epis-
copate, which must, according to ancient constitution,
remain the supreme earthly Head of the Church.
And herein, by the way, consisted the fatal error of
the Gallicans. Finding, namely, that, for purposes of
* Michaud.
Catholicity and Romanism. 193
administrative order, the Church had in the early
centuries developed Archbishops, Exarchs and Patri
archs, each with jurisdictional power within the Epis-
copate, the Gallicans went so far as to admit that
the chief Primate should himself also have analogous
jurisdictional power over the whole Episcopate and
over the whole Church.
But they failed to see that at this very point the
fundamental Apostolic Constitution of the Church
was attacked. We must go up in the last resort
through the jurisdictional powers of Bishops, Arch-
bishops and Patriarchs to the Kingship of Christ as
represented on earth, first by the Board of Apostles
to whom He gave all power, and then by the Com-
bined Episcopate as the successors of the Apostles.
And we fall into a dissolution of the order of the
Apostolic Church, if we go still further up, and over
the corpse indeed of the Combined Episcopate, to the
Bishop of Rome as the final authority in the Church.
This false view of the Primacy has been the logical
destruction of Gallicanism. There is indeed no real
holding ground between the Papal and the Catholic
or Episcopal theories; and Gallicanism, which at-
tempted to stand between the two, was stricken ab
initio with a mortal disease. Its complete overthrow
9
194 Catholicity \ Protestantism and Romanism.
was only a question of time. After having fatally
admitted that the Pope could veto the acts of a Gen-
eral Council, the Gallicans, though historically correct
in resisting the further claims of the Pope to supreme
autocracy, were logically incorrect. The Jesuits on
the other hand, though historically incorrect, were
logically correct. The question was, to what shall we
go up in the hierarchy as final authority ? The Jes-
uits say, to the Pope ; the Catholics say to the Epis-
copate ; but the Gallicans, going as I have said be-
yond the Catholics, strove to pause at a point below
the Jesuits. "Not to the Pope alone," said they,
" nor yet to a Council ; but to the Pope and a Coun-
cil." But, alas, though they took a milder view of the
Pope than did the Jesuits, they were after all suffi-
ciently Papists ; they were to all intents and purposes
Romanists and not Catholics ; and Romanism is a
logical torrent, which will either overwhelm and
destroy those who are in it, or will sweep them to its
extreme logical conclusions. The Gallican theory
was not only weak logically, but impracticable also.
Normally it would leave the Church in an inextrica-
ble difficulty. For we must have a final deciding
court in the Church. Now we can have this either in
a Pope or in a General Council. But if this court is
Catholicity and Romanism. 195
to be found in a co-ordination of the Pope and a
Council, then, should these two differ from each other,
the question on which they differ would be left unde-
termined, and the Church plunged into confusion.
No, the Church can have but one earthly Head.
Either the Jesuits or the Catholics are right. It were
a monstrosity if It were double-headed. However,
Gallicanism is now dead, and probably forever. The
Gallicans should have reinforced the Anglicans in the
sixteenth century. They have met with their inevita-
ble punishment.
But, as has been said, the trouble between Catho-
licity and Romanism is two-fold. Secondly, thtn,
Rome not only claims Supremacy over instead of
honorary primacy within the Episcopate, but that
the Pope is thus supreme " by divine right;" mean-
ing by this phrase, "by Christ's personal appoint-
ment." Catholicity denies this. Catholicity admits
freely that St. Peter, on account of age and zeal and
what we call character, was a man of prominence
among the Apostles j freely admits that he had, if you
please to call it so, a primacy of honor. This, al-
though not distinctly stated in Scripture, is, neverthe-
less, possible perhaps to be inferred from Scripture.
Indeed there never were twelve men yet, that among
196 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
them, some were not stronger characters than others,
and one the strongest of all. But this is a very differ-
ent thing from a Primacy of honor in the Church ;
and a more vastly different thing still from a Primacy
of Functions and powers over the Episcopate through
all time. Catholicity asserts that even Rome's Pri-
macy of honor in the Church was not of divine ap-
pointment or right at all. But that the great and true
Vicar of Christ, namely, the Combined Episcopate,
after all the Apostles were dead, gave the Primacy of
honor to Rome ; that it furthermore arranged the
hierarchies within Itself, and often rearranged them
according to circumstances and to the needs of the
Church ; creating Patriarchs, and altering the order
of precedence among them from time to time. In-
deed this is a wise and indispensable condition, con-
sidering the length and the exigencies of the centuries
of all time. Rome's Primacy was, therefore, entirely
of ecclesiastical regulation, and not of divine appoint-
ment at all. The ultimate power always continued to
lie, and always must lie, in the whole Body of Bishops.
Jesus Christ established a single ministry, and this
ministry in three Orders, Bishops, Priests and Dea-
cons. And this is the only hierarchy that exists of
Divine right. And if it is of Divine right, theie if
Catholicity and Romanism. 197
nothing that can be superior in the Church to the
Episcopate. The Chief Primate comes from the
Bishops ) the Bishops do not derive their origin from
the Pope. The Pope can be Primate, he can be first
among the Bishops, without being the source of the
Episcopate and Autocrat over all the Bishops. We
will see the proof of all this anon, both in Scripture
and in history.
Meanwhile I lay down here a fundamental propo-
sition. It is this, namely : if God is a moral Governor,
and if each man is a responsible being, then it is sim-
ply a logical impossibility for the Popes to have re-
ceived from God the Supremacy, i.e. any such power
to coerce men as is claimed, for instance, in the Bull
of Paul IV, in the Bull Unam Sanctam, and in the
Syllabus. For, first, since the Jewish Dispensation
closed, and since the cases of Ananias, Sapphira and
Elymas, which were exceptional miracles, God refuses
to exercise any coercive authority that shall interfere
with man's liberty, with his right to live, to think, and
to speak. Mr. Baring-Gould develops this idea most
admirably in his " Origin and Development of Chris-
tianity," and it is to him that I am indebted for it.
Now as God refuses to exercise such authority Him-
self, He cannot have transmitted such compulsory
198 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
authority to any power on earth, whether in State or
Church. The divine right of Kings is, therefore, quite
as much a fiction as the divine right of the Pope to
coerce either heretics or Emperors and their sub'
jects. God exercises moral authority only. He can
have transmitted, therefore, directly from Himself, only
such moral authority to His Church and to His State
as He personally exercises Himself. Any additional
authority, either in State or Church, to enforce what
is right, must have been conferred not from above
downwards, but from below upwards to the govern-
ment of Church or State by the common consent of
the governed, whether in Church or State, and for the
purpose of securing and enforcing order among
themselves. God only confers from above downwards
moral authority ; man has the right to confer from
below upward coercive or effective authority. The
moment, then, the Papal Supremacy is held up as a
divine right, it becomes a normal source of confusion
and bloodshed j for it issues inevitably in a con-
flict between the governed, who assert their in-
herent rights, and the usurper of coercive powers
claimed to be from above, and, therefore, never
asked of nor granted by the free consent of the
governed.
Catholicity and Roma?iism. 199
To complete the idea, then, of the constitution of
the Catholic Church. The divine governing grade
of Bishops, when correlated together, could not work
practically without arranging Primacies within Itself;
and could not be prepared to meet the exigencies of
all time, without power to rearrange those Primacies
at will. Such Primacies are elements of order and
sources of strength. But for him who received from
the Episcopate the Head Primacy, without, however,
any jurisdictional power that would be inconsistent
with the full power of the Combined Episcopate, to
assume Autocracy over the Episcopate itself was to
distort and transform the office that had been be-
stowed upon him. It was to play the ingrate towards
those by whose will he existed as "first among
equals." It was to trample the Combined Episco-
pate under foot. And he stands supreme to-day in a
part of the Church against the consent of four out of
five of the great Patriarchates of early days and of six
out of the seven of modern days ; against the decrees
of great Roman Councils themselves ; and, as we have
seen in a previous Conference, against the protest of
even living and able Roman Bishops. His ambition
has done nothing from the first but disturb the order
of the Church, weaken Its Body, and introduce sus-
$
200 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
pension of inter communion and of co-action among
Its members. It led to the sundering of the Easterns
from the Westerns in the middle ages ; of the Angli-
cans from the Latins at the Reformation ; and to the
separation of the Latin part into Old and New Catho-
lics in our own days. Catholicity claims that all that
was necessary to the end of organization, order and
unity was a general Primate, " a First among equals."
Rome claimed that a supreme Pontiff was essential to
effect unity. Here is the distinct issue. But was
there ever anything more self-convicted of error, than
Rome's claim of Supremacy as a necessary condition
for unity ? For, ever since She set it up, Time has
hissed at it, while Christendom has been going to
pieces under it. There is in physics, I believe, a
substance, which, when you attempt to compress it
beyond certain limits, explodes.
The uninstructed or erroneously instructed church-
man knows nothing about Rome's Primacy in early
days j he simply hates the Pope \ and that is all he
knows about it. And so Rome, if she can get his ear,
is very apt to astonish him by proving to him the
Pope's early Primacy. He then does not know where
he stands, and is just in condition to be an easy cap-
tive to the Papal claim of Supremacy. But the ancient
Catholicity and Romanism. 201
Primacy, instead of proving Rome's Supremacy of to-
day is one of the strongest proofs against it.
Now Rome claims, I repeat, that the Pope as suc-
cessor of St. Peter is supreme by Christ's personal
appointment in Palestine. Let us look at this. There
is a preliminary trouble to start with. For even if
Christ gave St. Peter the Supremacy, Rome has first
to prove that St. Peter, who was Bishop of Antioch,
was ever in Rome j which is a doubtful point. It is
very remarkable, at any rate, that the courteous St.
Paul, in writing to the Romans, should make no allu-
sion to St. Peter, if the latter was Bishop there, but
should overrule him by instructing the Romans him-
self. Secondly; if St. Peter was in Rome, the
Romanists have to prove that he ever transferred his
see from Antioch to Rome j which is another doubt-
ful point. And, thirdly ; that if he did, Christ meant
him to transmit his personal authority to his succes-
sors. Christ certainly said nothing about that. At
any rate, it is strange on the face of it, that the com-
paratively obscure Linus or Cletus, Bishops of Rome,
should have been, in any sense, superior to St. John
the Divine, the last living Apostle. However, waive
all this. Did Christ personally give St. Peter the
Supremacy ? Rome says, yes ; Catholicity says, nay.
202 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
Now one of the three texts on which Rome bases
her claim is the text, " Feed my sheep and my lambs."
A thought or two on this. What was it ? It was a
reinstatement of the fallen St. Peter. St. Cyril of
Alexandria says, " By the words of our Lord, ' Feed my
sheep,' a renewal as it were of the Apostolate, already
conferred on him, is understood to take place."
Recall for a moment the incidents that happened
just prior to our Lord's death. When, at two o'clock
on the morning of Good Friday, Christ was arrested,
all the Disciples forsook him. St. Peter particularly
had said, but a few hours previously, with his usual
warmth, " Though all men should be offended because
of Thee, yet will I never be offended ; though I should
die with Thee, yet will I not deny Thee." He had
assured Christ of his love beyond that of the others.
All the disciples, indeed, forsook him j but there was
something peculiarly flagrant and heinous about St.
Peter's case. Christ was led to the High Priest's
house. St. Peter returned to watch afar off. While
he was warming himself in the palace beneath, one of
the maids of the High Priest, looking at him, said,
"And thou also wast with Jesus." But he denied,
saying, " I know not, neither understand what thou
sayest." And he went out into the porch, and the
Protestantism and Romanism. 203
cock crew And another maid saw him, and began to
say "This is one of them." And he denied again.
And a little after, they that stood by said again,
* Surely thou art one of them, for thou art a Galilean,
and thy speech agreeth thereto." But he began to
curse and swear, saying, " I know not this Man of
Whom ye speak." The other disciples merely forsook
Him. Peter not only forsook, but also denied Him
thrice, and with oaths, after having declared, too, that
he loved Him more than all the rest. He, beyond all
others had fallen, and forfeited his apostleship.
Now come the remarks of Christ, being about to
install the Apostles just before He ascended. He
turns to St. Peter ; u Simon, sort of Jonas," (" Simon f
He no longer addresses him by his Apostolic name,
Peter ; He goes back to his old name ;) " Simon, son
of Jonas, Lovest thou Me more than these my other
disciples ? " There are two Greek words meaning to
love ; $tMu, signifying to love with the warm personal
love of human affection, and aya-rrdu^ signifying to love
in the higher, reverential, constant and unvarying
sense. Christ looks upon Peter now and says, using
the strongest word for love, " Dost thou indeed love
Me in the highest sense, and love Me, too, more than
all the resc of my disciples ? " We can well see Peter
20d Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
hanging his head, and, in view of the recent past, ven
turing to use not the strongest word but the milder,
<j>lao), and responding simply, "Yea, Lord, Thou
knowest that I love Thee with the personal love of
human affection." Christ, still bending His mild eye
upon him, says " Feed my lambs." And then, after
a pause, " Simon, son of Jonas, if thou dost not love
Me more than the rest, lovest thou Me in the higher,
reverential, constant and unvarying sense ? " Christ
still insists on the strong word for love, although He
drops all allusion to Simon's loving Him more than the
others loved Him. St. Peter, scarcely looking up, still
using the other word, <ptXa, responds, " Yea, Lord, Thou
knowest that I love Thee." Jesus saith unto him,
" Tend my sheep." And, a third time, after a pause,
with the same mild eyes fixed upon him, with the
same forgiving look, Jesus says, no longer insisting
even upon the aymrdu, but coming down to Simon's
word, " Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me with
warm human affection only ? " " Lord," was Simon's
reply, " Thou knowest all things ; Thou knowest that
I love Thee." " Feed my sheeplings."
O, what a mild and beautiful rebuke for those
three cruel denials. How kind, how considerate was
our gentle Saviour in furnishing this opportunity for
Catholicity and Romanism. 205
Peter, chastened by the past, to reinstate himself
upon a true basis, and in presence of the rest of the
Apostles. Judas had lost his Apostleship entirely.
St. Peter had forfeited his three times over, and under
most aggravating circumstances. Judas had fallen,
and there was danger of Peter also being regarded by
the other Apostles as unworthy of even equality with
them. But as he had thrice denied the Lord, our
Lord thus three times calls him to confess his love for
Him before all the Apostles. He thus reinstates
him ; and then commissions all together.
Rome claims that, in this passage, Christ used the
different Greek words, viz., /3dff«e, to feed, with regard
to the lambs, and xoffiave, tend, guide, or perform all
the duties of a shepherd, with regard to the sheep.
And she claims that the lambs mean the laity, and the
sheep the clergy, including the Bishops ; Feed the
former, Rule the latter. But, first, it is gratuitous to
claim that the lambs and sheep mean anything more
than children and adults. Secondly, It is unfortu-
nate for the supposition that the sheep here means all
the Apostles, whom Peter was to rule, that, in the only
place in the New Testament where the Apostles are
spoken of as sheep at all, St. Peter is included among
them ; " I send you forth as sheep in the midst of
206 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
wolves." And it is furthermore unfortunate for
Rome, that even if -n-oi^ave means tend or rule, the
passage confers no special privilege on St. Peter ; for
we have the same word used in the case of even ordi-
nary Priests or elders, far below the Apostles in power
and dignity ; viz., the Priests of Miletus are command-
ed by St. Paul to " rule " the Church of God j and
St. Peter, using the same word, exhorts the elders " to
tend " the flock of God, taking the oversight thereof ;
the flock j that is to say, the lambs and the sheep.
Indeed, some of the early writers have been careful
to point out that the privilege thus accorded to St.
Peter, was by no means peculiar to him. " Christ
Himself," says St. Basil, "gave to all succeeding
pastors and teachers a like authority." And St. Au
gustine says, " In that it was said to St. Peter, it was
said to all, * Feed my sheep.' "
The Second text on which Rome bases her claim
is the famous passage, " Thou art Peter, and upon
this Rock I will build my Church." Let us see
whether the passage will bear out the claim. What
were the circumstances in which this remark was
made ? The Blessed Lord had come ; He had
chosen His Apostles ; He had presented Himself to
the people by teaching and by miracles. As man, He
Catholicity and Romanism. 207
was anxious to know whether He was understood.
He asks His twelve friends, " Whom do men say that
I am." They answered " Some say this, some that.''
Ah ; but how was it with His chosen few? Did they
realize His mission, and Who He really was ? " But
whom say ye that I am ? " St. Peter, with his usual
impetuosity, spoke first ; " Thou art the Christ, the
Son of the Living God." Now this was precisely
what Christ was anxious to elicit from them. This
was what He longed to have the people also know
and feel. But, first, His twelve must thoroughly
realize it. This great fact, that He was the Messias,
was clearly the uppermost, the lowermost, the absorb-
ing topic in His mind at the time He was speaking.
Is it natural for Him instantly to drop that, and state
another thought j or is it natural for Him to carry that
same idea along? Peter was the only one of the
twelve, so far, that seemed to be thoroughly convinced.
He turns quickly to Peter, therefore, and replies, as it
were, " Yes ; you have spoken rightly ; I am the
Christ — the God-man ; and upon this eternal Rock
I will build my Church."
But besides this naturalness in the flow of the
thought of the moment, the Blessed Lord positively
did not say at all in this passage that He would build
208 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
His Church on Peter. The very passage itself says
that He would build it on something other than St.
Peter. This fact does not appear under our English
translation \ but it appears unmistakably in the origi-
nal Greek. For the word translated Peter does not
mean a Rock at all. Just as there are two words in
English, namely, stone, meaning a pebble, and rock,
meaning a great ledge, so there are two corresponding
words in Greek. The masculine word 6 nfrpoQ, or Peter,
means a stone. The feminine word, v nirpa, means
something else ; it means a great rock. Now if the
Lord had meant to say He would build His Church
on Peter, He would have said so ; He would have
said " Thou art Peter, o petros, a stone, and upon this
petros, this stone, this Peter, I will build my Church "
No, but He changed the word to the feminine, petra ;
" Thou art o petros, a stone, and, not upon this stone,
but upon this Petra, this Rock, which thou hast just
announced, this Christ the Son of the Living God,
will I build my Church."
The only reply of the Romanists to this unanswer-
ible argument, is one that Bellarmine's ingenuity
suggested, namely ; that our Lord spoke in Syriac
and not in Greek ; and that, in Syriac, He did not
change the word from stone to rock, but used the
Catholicity and Romatiism. 209
same word in both clauses, saying, " Thou art Cepha,
and upon this Cepha I will build my Church." But
there are only five difficulties about this reply.
First. It is guess-work on the part of Bellarmine.
For it is not known now whether our Lord spoke at
the time in Greek or in Syriac.
Secondly. Even if Bellarmine's unproved assertion
were true, we should still be " compelled to accept St.
Matthew's variation of the two words, as divinely in-
spired for the express purpose of marking the differ-
ence " between the stone, Peter, and the Rock,Christ.
Thirdly. The Roman Catholic, at any rate, can-
not raise this plea at all. He is shut out from it,
because he is bound by the decrees of Trent to accept
the Latin Vulgate Bible as holy and canonical ; and
that Version uses two different words, Petrus and
Petram j making the same distinction between pebble
and Rock that is found in the Greek.
Fourthly. It so happens (although Bellarmine did
not chance to know it,) that both the Hebrew and the
Syriac word when it means rock is feminine ; which
Cephas, as a masculine noun denoting a man's name,
certainly is not.
And lastly. It also happens that, in the Syriac
version of the Bible itself, Bellarmine's unproved state*
210 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
ment about Cephas is not sustained. For the same
difference is found in the Syriac that the Greek pre-
sents ; for the feminine pronoun is actually united to
the second Cepha, and not to the first.
So that Bellarmine's rejoinder breaks down all
round and utterly.
Indeed the Apostles are often called, in Scripture,
stones, but never a Rock j while Christ Himself is
often called a Rock. Besides, u if the Infinite and
Almighty God was the Rock of the Elder Israel, while
St. Peter, a mere man, was the rock of Christendom,
then the Gospel has sunk unspeakably and immeas-
urably below the Law ; which is contrary to all
analogy of faith."
" Of all the Fathers who interpret this passage,"
say the able Roman Catholic divines who wrote
Janus, " not one single one applies the words to the
Roman Bishops as St. Peter's successors. How
many fathers have busied themselves with the text,
yet not one of them whose commentaries we have,
Origen, Chrysostom, Hilary, Augustine, Cyril, The-
odoret, and those whose interpretations are collected
in catenas, has dropped the faintest hint that the
Primacy of Rome is the consequence of this remark
of Christ's. Not one of them has explained the Rock,
Catholicity and Romanism. 211
or foundation on which Christ would build His
Church, as being any office given to St. Peter to be
transmitted to his successors ; but they understood by
it either Christ Himself, or St. Peter's confession of
faith in Christ ; often both together. Or else they
thought Peter was the foundation equally with the
other Apostles, the twelve being together the founda-
tion stones of the Church."
The Lord is evidently speaking of no subordinate,
but of the chief part of the Church's basis. And when
we come down to plain simple facts, stripped of all
subtleties, if the Church is built on the foundation of
the Apostles and Prophets, surely it is no less than
Jesus Christ Himself that is the Chief corner-stone,
and not St. Peter.
It is very strange, too, if the Lord had by this
passage given the Supremacy to St. Peter, that the
disciples should not have known it ; but should be
found, shortly after, discussing as to who was to have
precedence in Christ's Kingdom ; and that our Lord,
instead of reminding them that He had already ap-
pointed Peter as their head, should reply in terms in-
consistent with that ; and that, a little later, He should
again put them all on a level ; " Ye shall sit upor
twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel."
212 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
When the Lord, after His resurrection, said to
St. Peter, " Follow thou Me," and Peter turned and
asked, " Lord, and what shall this man do ? " " It is
obvious that, if St. Peter had received jurisdiction over
St. John, his question would have been perfectly
legitimate and reasonable, and would have merited a
reply as being his concern, because affecting one for
whom he had been made responsible. But the an-
swer he received," " What is that to thee?" denotes
the restriction of St. Peter's commission to his own
share of Apostolic work, with no right of control over
St. John.
Besides, both St. Luke and St. Mark, who was
St. Peter's amanuensis, omit this text entirely. Hence
it is clear that, in their minds, the important part of
the conversation was the declaration of our Lord's
Person and Office, and not any definition about St.
Peter. And it is evident that St. Peter, in supervis-
ing St. Mark's gospel, did not himself consider it
necessary to communicate this text, on which Rome
relies for the Supremacy, to those for whom his Gos-
pel was written ; " and, therefore, it is clear that he
did not himself attach the meaning to it which Rome
claims it has. For, had he done so, he was bound,
for the highest reasons, to make his peculiar commis-
Catholicity and Romanism. 213
sion known ; precisely as an ambassador is required
to produce his credentials at his entry upon his office.
Nor can such a breach of duty as silence on his part
be excused under such circumstances by attributing
it to St. Peter's humility ; because the truest humility
is implicit obedience to God's commands, whether
tending to exalt or abase him to whom the command
is given."
If St. Peter had succeeded in any special sense
to Christ's authority over the Church as His Vicar,
and " if, in consequence, the Apostolic College bore
any such relation to him as, for instance, the College
of Cardinals does to the Pope — and the Roman theory
requires no less — then, certainly, St. Peter would, after
the Ascension have filled up the vacant place of
Judas on his own authority." But he does nothing
of the kind. He merely suggests that the place be
filled ; but it is the whole College that nominates, and
the vacancy is filled by their ballots.
Moreover, when the College of Apostles heard that
Samaria had received the Word of God, they sent
Peter and John to administer Confirmation. Now
" it is a maxim, admitting of no exception in human
affairs, that the sender is greater than the sent. And,
therefore, the Apostolic Board at Jerusalem was, in
214 Catholicity ', Protestantism and Romanism*
its totality, greater than St. Peter." How would a
similar transaction seem to us to-day? How would
such an announcement as this sound, says a late
writer in the " Church Quarterly," to whom I am in-
debted for some of the above quotations, viz : " The
College of Cardinals at Rome, having heard that a
dispute as to liturgical questions had arisen at Lyons,
sent the Pope and Cardinal Simeoni to settle it ? "
Why such a thing is inconceivable. And yet the
Board of Apostles sent Peter and John.
Furthermore, if Christ had given the Supremacy
to St. Peter, surely St. Peter would have presided at
the first General Council at Jerusalem, and announced
its decision. But, on the other hand, it was St. James
that took this precedency.
Besides, how does it happen that the only inspired
letters of instruction to Bishops should have been
penned by St. Paul and not by St. Peter ? How hap-
pens it that, as soon as St. Paul appears in the Acts
of the Apostles, he completely overshadows St. Peter,
and St. Peter almost disappears from mention ? How
happens it, on the theory that St. Peter was Ruler and
sole Doctor of the Church, that St. Paul's writings are
not only fourteen times in excess of St. Peter's in
mere bulk, but have been incomparably "the most
Catholicity and Romanism, 215
powerful factor in moulding the life and tenets of the
Church?"
If the plenitude of teaching and ruling was vested
in St. Peter, how happens it that the chief store-house
of doctrine and disciplinary instructions is in St.
Paul's, St. James's, St. John's writings ; anywhere,
in fact, instead of St. Peter's ? " It is impossible to
reconcile these broad facts with the position claimed
for the Popes as chief rulers and teachers of the
Church in virtue of their heirship to St. Peter."
Then again, St. Paul makes a remarkable state-
ment in this passage, viz. : M When they saw that the
Gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto me,
as the Gospel of the circumcision was unto Peter, (for
He that wrought effectually in Peter to the apostle-
ship of the circumcision, the Same was mighty in me
towards the Gentiles,)" etc. Here, "instead of the
Church Universal being, so to speak, St. Peter's
diocese, he was, after making the first gentile con-
verts, divinely restricted to the Jewish converts ; and
had no jurisdiction whatever over the gentiles. How
is this consistent with any divine appointment of
St. Peter to universal jurisdiction ?"
St. Paul, too, claims that "the care of all the
churches " came upon him daily. Not a word of the
216 Catholicity \ Protestantism and Romanism.
kind from St. Peter. Tenfold more are the texts
that would seem to elevate St. Paul, than the three
only which diligent search has found to do duty foi
St. Peter. St. Chrysostom, indeed, styles the Apostle
of the Gentiles, " The Apostle of the world," " The
planter of the Church," " The foundation of the faith,"
" The pillar and ground of the truth." If he had said
this of St. Peter, our ears would have been dinned
with the cry of this quotation.
How does it happen that St. Paul and St. James
resisted St. Peter to the face ; in a case, too, where
it eventuated that St. Peter was wrong ? And how
happens it that not in one single instance did St.
Peter either exercise, or claim to exercise, Supremacy
or even Primacy ?
St. Augustine says in his Retractions, " I said, in a
certain place, of the Apostle Peter, that on him, as on
a Rock, the Church is founded. But I am aware that
afterwards I very frequently expounded the words as
said of our Lord. Peter being so named from the Rock,
Petra, and thus representing the Church Which is built
upon the Rock. For it was not said to him, ' Thou art
the Rock, the Petm,' but 'Thou art Petros. 1 The Rock,
the Petra, was Christ, Whom Simon confessing, as the
whole Church confesses Him, was called Petros." *
* Retractions, I. xxi., a.d. 428.
Catholicity and Romanism. 217
The Third text which Rome alleges in support of
the Pope's claims is, " I will give unto thee (Peter) the
Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven." But this text fails
as a support quite as utterly as that about the Rock.
For our Lord indeed promised that He would give
Peter the Keys. But, shortly after, He made the
self-same promise, in the same words, to all the other
Apostles. And when, after His Resurrection, He ful-
filled these promises touching binding and loosing,
He gave the Keys to all the Apostles equally ; of
course, fulfilling His promise both to St Peter and to
the rest. So that the power of the Keys is by no
means St. Peter's exclusive right, but was given to
the Combined Episcopate as the great Vicar of
Christ. In reference to this passage, Origen asks
incredulously, u What ! are the Keys given by the Lord
to Peter only ? " St. Ambrose distinctly teaches that
" What is said to Peter, is said to the Apostles (as a
body)." St. Augustine writes, " These Keys were re-
ceived not by one man, but by the unity of the Church.
Did Peter receive the Keys, and not Paul ? Peter, and
not John and James and the rest of the Apostles ? " *
These three, then, are the passages on which Rome
bases her claim that Peter is supreme by divine ap-
pointment and right.
* S. Augustine Sermons, ccxcv. 2, SS. Peter and Paul.
10
218 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
We have only examined Scripture. We have not
touched the equally strong historical argument at all.
What more miserable attitude for a vast pyramid
can be conceived, than for it to be standing balanced
on its apex. The vast pyramid of the Papal Suprem-
acy stands upside down and rests on these three Scrip-
ture texts. They are the guarantee of its poise and
its security. But, if I mistake not, you have seen
that its apex is not granite, but melting ice.
SIXTH CONFERENCE.
The Papal Autocracy not Sustained by History. Con-
clusion.
Gentlemen,
We have found Rome's claim to possess the Pri-
macy by Divine right, to be quite unwarranted by
Scripture. We have seen that Scripture, on the other
hand, is clear in stating that Christ founded the
Church on Himself as Its corner-stone, and not on
St. Peter ; and gave the keys to the whole College of
Apostles instead of to St. Peter alone. We have
found that St. Peter never exercised, or even claimed
a Primacy ; which, as a humble man, obedient to
God, he was bound to do, had Christ given it to him ;
that, though he seemed to be prominent among the
Apostles at first, as being the man of strongest char-
acter among them, and probably the oldest, yet that
he is completely overshadowed by St. Paul, as soon
as the latter appears on the scene ; and, furthermore,
that St. Peter's personal jurisdiction, far from being
in the end universal, was actually restricted to the
220 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
Jewish converts, while St. Paul, as Apostle of the
Gentiles, had all the rest of the churches committed
to him by the Holy Ghost.
If, then, the Bishop of Rome is found in after
time, as is the fact, with a universal Primacy of
Honor, such Primacy must have had an ecclesiastical
origin subsequent to the times of the Apostles. Leav-
ing Scripture and St. Peter, then, let us come to his-
tory. Here also Catholicity rests her position with
the utmost confidence.
We search in vain in the writings of the immedi-
ate successors of the Apostles, namely, of the Apos-
tolic Fathers, Sts. Clement, Polycarp, Ignatius and
Barnabas, for any evidences of a Primacy of any kind
in Rome. We search in vain for such evidence
through that document of the second century known
as the Apostolic Canons. Catholicity asserts, then,
that sometime subsequently to the Apostles and the
Apostolic Fathers, Our Lord, acting through His
Great Vicar the Combined Episcopate, granted a
Primacy of Honor to the Bishops of Rome ; and this
not because they were successors of St. Peter, but
solely because Rome was the capital city of the world
The Bishop of Rome at that time, therefore, united in
himself several ecclesiastical dignities. He was
Catholicity and Romanism. 221
Bishop of his diocese, Archbishop also of his Prov
ince, Patriarch of the Patriarchate consisting of
Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, and Italy below the forty-
fourth parallel of latitude, and, lastly, so far as the
whole Church was concerned, universal Primate of
Honor. Catholicity asserts that the Great Vicar of
Christ, the Combined Episcopate, did not at that
time abdicate, and has never since abdicated its
supreme power in General Council, that it has never
destroyed itself by giving to the Bishop of Rome a
legislative, judicial and executive Primacy over other
Patriarchates than his own, still less the Autocracy
over the whole church.
Catholicity claims that, by slow degrees, and by
the pursuit of a consistent policy of aggression, the
Bishops of Rome, starting on this slender foundation
of a Primacy of Honor, acquired, through their power,
wealth and influence as Prelates of the capital city of
the world, function after function in the West, until at
last the modern Supremacy is the result. In short,
just as in the State, monarchies slowly emerged out
of the powerful aristocracies of feudal times, so in the
Church the Papal monarchy slowly reared itself in the
west over Episcopal power ; and as in the State
the monarchs gradually became absolute, until we
222 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
have such Kings as Louis XlVth of France, so in the
Church the Papacy also became absolute until we
have such Pontiffs as Gregory the Seventh j and as in
the State this absolutism was succeeded by the be-
heading of Charles First, the Revolution of 1688, the
French and American Revolutions, and by anarchy
generally, so in the Church the Papal absolutism was
followed by the religious revolts and anarchies of the
sixteenth and subsequent centuries.
But surely, gentlemen, to-day we have harbinger
of better times. Your very call for these conferences
is one of the minor but unmistakable notes of the
dawn. Surely the constitutional governments which
are now succeeding the anarchies in state, are, in
God's Providence, preparing men's minds to hate in
Religion both the many-headed individualism and
chronic anarchy of Protestantism, and the one-headed
absolutism of Rome, and to restore that wise consti-
tutionalism in Church also, which God eighteen hun-
dred years ago provided for Catholicity, but which the
ambition of Rome invaded. This divine Constitu-
tionalism in Church is the safeguard of the Bishop,
the Priest, the Deacon and the laymen.
A quickened action of blood in the arm under
exercise is a healthy process. But an increase of
Catholicity and Romanism. 223
blood there amounting to an inflammation is disease \
which, unless it is checked, will in the end kill the
whole body. Now the difference between the healthy
action of the blood and the earliest beginnings of in-
flammation is faint. And so the difference between
Rome's early Primacy of Honor on the one hand, and,
on the other, her later Primacy of functions and her
subsequent Autocracy was at first very faint. The
divergence between them was like the divergence be-
tween two straight lines, which start from the same
point with barely a shade's difference in their several
directions ; but follow them along for sixteen hundred
miles, and they come out vastly far apart. Rome
prefers the diseased limb ; Protestantism would slay
the whole body ; Catholicity would restore the limb
to health.
The slight divergence which took place in the
fourth and fifth centuries, between ambitious Rome's
Primacy of Honor and what has since become her
modern Autocracy, was yielded to at the time by many
a Bishop, who, had he known what it would long sub-
sequently eventuate in, would have been as firm in
resistance to it, as the Eastern Church was from the
first, and as Catholicity has been ever since. We to-
day, however, cannot blame those ancient Bishops
224 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
very much, when we consider that it took England a
thousand years to shake off the absolute monarchy
that was emerging and establishing itself in the
western part of the Church.
Rome's argument with an ill-instructed Church-
man to-day is wily. I do not say the Romanist is
wily ; I speak only of his argument. A sincere man
may use a wily argument. So much the more there-
fore should that ill-instructed Churchman be on his
guard. Unfortunately, too, Rome's argument is re-
inforced by that Churchman's ignorance, or positively
false education. Besides, it is proverbial, that a false-
hood that is all a falsehood is an easy thing to dis-
pose of, but a falsehood that is partly a truth is always
the worst kind of a lie, being a complicated thing to
expose. The uninstructed or falsely instructed and
prejudiced Churchman, if Rome can once get his ear,
is, first, astonished at finding that, as a positive fact,
the Bishop of Rome was after all universal Primate in
the Early Church. He had never dreamed of such a
thing. He now does not know what to think. The
armor of his mere prejudice (proved brittle and worth-
less,) falls from around him and leaves him helpless
He grows indignant at his old teachers as blind guides.
He loses all confidence in them. With a growing
Catholicity and Romanism. 225
Confidence in his new Roman friend he flies to him
for further information. The latter, perfectly cool,
recognizes, with more or less of secret joy, the advan-
tage he has gained, and cultivates it. He makes
further statements with great calmness and with great
confidence. The awakened seeker draws, as he goes
on, no distinction between a Primacy of Honor, a
Primacy of functions and an Autocracy, for he knows
no distinction. He does not trace in History the im-
perceptible passage of the first into the second and
of the second into the third. Rome mingles, mean-
time, the different historical proofs, easily found along
the centuries, of Supremacy, of Primatial functions, and
of Honor, and lays them indiscriminately before him.
Proofs for the later Supremacy reinforce proofs for the
earlier Primacy of functions ; proofs for the earliest
mere Primacy of Honor react upon and reinforce the
other two. The consistent centuries really seem to
him to speak one favorable voice touching the present
Papal claim. And then, with this preparation, the poor
startled man's mind, grown more and more helpless
from want of minute historical information, is just
ready to be run back with the utmost ease into Scrip-
ture and on to Rome's confidently stated and plausible,
"Thou art Peter," and to find itself at last defini-
10*
226 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
tively shipwrecked on the Rock. Rome's false
theory, like many things that are of mere human
contrivance, has the advantage of being easily under-
stood and grasped by an undisciplined mind ; Catho-
licity's true theory, like most Divine things, has the
disadvantage of being complicated and not readily
grasped. A system like Rome's, in which one man's
will is the law for all others, is a simple system in its
workings, and easy to comprehend j a system like
Protestantism's, where each man's will is a law for
himself, is also easy to comprehend ; but a constitu-
tional form of government, with its balances, its intri-
cacies, its checks and counterchecks and its resultant
happiness to man, requires time and care for its com-
prehension by one to whom it is all novel.
Thus it has happened that Protestant and Low-
church ignorance and prejudice have been, and are
Rome's most powerful friends and allies. From the
opening of the nineteenth century Low-churchman-
ship has been the underlying, prolific and sole cause
of perversions to Rome. The gymnastic pirouetting
of eventual perverts through a little ritualism before-
hand does not alter the broad fact. Your speaker
has a list of the clerical perversions to Rome that
have occurred in the American Church since 1820
Catholicity a?id Romanism, 227
There are one or two cases where the early education
of those who perverted could not be traced, and is
not known. But with the exception of, perhaps, one
other case, in every instance the clergymen who have
perverted were reared in Low- church or in Latitudi-
narian views. The one or two recent American per-
versions, that have occurred within the last ten years,
were no exceptions to this general rule.
Let us look now at history. As the Christian
Church came up and took definite shape, let us watch
and ascertain what that shape was. First of all, the
Apostles derived their authority from the Blessed
Lord. " All power," said He, " is given unto Me in
heaven and earth ; go ye therefore." In the commis-
sion thus given there is no reference, you will per-
ceive, either to any local restrictions, or to any dis-
tinction between the Apostles, as if one had received
any power of greater extent than the others; "Go
ye." Thus Christ constituted the Kingdom of God,
which extended throughout the earth, into one great
Apostolic Diocese ; over which, not one Apostle, but
the whole body of the Apostles had spiritual authority
given them. So far, then, the government of the
Christian Church is Episcopal and not Papal. A)
this very root of matters the ultimate power is clearh
228 Catholicity \ Protestantism and Romanism.
vested in the Combined Episcopate as the Vicar of
Christ.
Now though this divine commission was given by
our Lord to the whole Board of the Apostolate, it
does not appear that He intended the Twelve to keep
all together as they exercised their ministry. What-
ever subdivisions, therefore, of the Apostolic Diocese,
that is to say of the whole Kingdom of God on earth,
might be expedient, as one Apostle went to one
region, and another to another, the arrangement of
their several fields of labor was left to the Apostles
themselves, and was not ordained by the Lord before
the disappearance of His Natural Body. St. Paul,
indeed, uses such language as implies that it was
customary for each Apostle to abstain from " building
on another's foundation." "As the number of the
original Apostles was gradually diminished by death,
the jurisdiction of the remainder would naturally ex-
pand j until, at last, St. John was left for many years
the sole living one of the original Apostles ; when all
strictly Apostolic power would, of course, be centered
in him for the rest of his life." It seems to have
been during his sole Apostolate that that local Epis-
copal system of the Church, which had been begun
before, as instance the cases of Sts. Timothy in
Catholicity and Romanism. 229
Ephesus, Titus in Crete, and Mark in Alexandria,
was finally arranged, so as to become the permanent
system all over the Church. " And it is doubtless in
this sense that Tertullian says, ' The order of Bish-
ops, if traced back to its origin, will rest upon John.' "
It is very remarkable he does not say upon St. Peter.
That was a subsequent invention. Thus the orderly
rules, by which a definite field of labor, a diocese,
should be mapped out for each Bishop, grew up
during the Apostolic period, and so the temporary
Apostolic system of jurisdiction was extended into the
permanent Diocesan.
In shaping the Church geographically the Apos-
tles were not obliged on principle to conform to the
territorial divisions or provinces of the Roman Empire.
But practically they seem to have done so. For they
often passed through the principal cities of one pro-
vince and founded the Church, before entering an-
other ; and afterwards they treated the faithful of that
province as forming one community. " For instance
St. Paul writes to the church at Corinth and to all the
faithful of Achaia. He thus unites in his thoughts
all the Christians of Achaia, and, at the head of the
churches of that province, he places that of Corinth,
which was its political capital. He addresses in the
2^0 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
same manner another of his letters to the Churches of
the Galatians ; again uniting in his mind all the com-
munities of that civil province." *
The result of this action was, first, the grouping
of the Churches of each Province together; and,
secondly, the pre-eminence over his colleagues, or
the Archi-episcopal rank, of the Bishop of the capital
city of the Province. Besides this, the provincial
capital was often the first city in a province in which
the Church was founded, and from which the Gospel
spread to the other subordinate cities. This, there-
fore, also threw its Bishop into the rank of the
Metropolitan of the whole Province, and centered in
him the power of taking order for the appointment
and consecration of the suffragan Bishops of his Pro-
vince. In fact St. Titus was evidently left by St.
Paul as Archbishop of Crete, and St. Timothy as
Archbishop of Ephesus.
It is quite material to observe, that customs which
thus grew up of themselves, so to speak, and were
found to be convenient, that the Provincial primacies,
for instance, which were thus established, together
with the powers centering in the Archbishops, became
precedents in newly-worked districts ; and that subse-
* Hefele.
\
Catholicity and Romanism. 231
quently these habits of order and organization, into
which the Church practically and naturally fell, were
confirmed formally from time to time by the Com-
bined Episcopate in General Councils assembled.
The Provincial system, then, thus begun by the Apos-
tles, with its Archbishops and suffragan Bishops, be-
came, first by the authority of the acts of the Apostles
themselves, and secondly by the authority of the
decrees of the Combined Episcopate, the fixed gov-
ernmental policy of the Catholic Church. Thus when
we pass away from the Apostolic days, we find that the
cities of each Province formed the Dioceses of the
Bishops, while the Bishop of the capital city was
Archbishop of the Province. As the ultimate power
of erecting Primacies lay in the Combined Episcopate,
the power of destroying any one, or of altering the
eminence among them lay there also. Indeed the
Councils of Chalcedon and the Trullane ordained,
that " If by royal authority any city be, or should here-
after be, re-established, the order of the churches
shall be according to the civil form."
Such being the state of things, then, in this Sec-
ond or Provincial Period of the Church, it is very
clear that one result would naturally follow, namely :
the mind of the Church would very early have
232 Catholicity \ Protestantism and Romanism.
planted within it what we may call " The leading-
city idea." Under the influence of this idea there
was very early conceded by all, and without opposi-
tion, a general Primacy of Honor and of respect to
the Bishop of that city which was the great capital
city of the world. This was not at first conceded to
the Bishop of Rome formally, nor by decree, but by
habit of mind. And it was the more readily con-
ceded, since it involved no right of interference on his
part with Dioceses or Provinces beyond his own Pro-
vincial, or subsequently Patriarchal, jurisdiction.
Afterwards this generally conceded fact received the
seal of confirmation by the Collective Episcopate in
the Second General Council.
But when the Bishop of Rome began to arrogate
to himself, on this slender foundation, powers of inter-
ference in the East, in England, and in Africa, he was
instantly resisted ; and, as he continued, without au-
thorization from General Council, to claim greater and
wider powers, the whole Church rocked at last as on
an earthquake, and broke into the two Communions,
Greek and Latin ; the Greek at the time being the
larger of the two. This is standing evidence of the
uncatholic nature of the claim of Papal supremacy.
But I am anticipating.
Catholicity and Romanism. 233
All through this Second, or Provincial Period, the
Provincial Councils of the Church and the Apostolic
Canons do not speak of any offices higher than those
of Bishops and Archbishops. But now comes a
change in the geographical constitution of the Em-
pire ; a corresponding change, therefore, followed in
the constitution of the Church. The civil provinces
of the Empire were clustered together into groups,
and a leading city was erected for each group. Let
me take an illustration, which, though not exactly
parallel, will serve our purpose. Suppose, for in-
stance, we should cluster the New England States
together into one political group ; and erect over the
separate State governors an Arch-governor for the
whole group ; and the Middle States into another
group j and the Southern into another, and so on.
This will give you to understand the new organization
of the Roman Empire at the period we are now con-
sidering. By the time the Nicene Council meets, in
the year 325, we find that the Church is accommo-
dating Herself to this new state of things; and the
Combined Episcopate, in that Council assembled,
recognizes and confirms the order which it finds.
The Bishop of the leading city of each group of prov-
inces was subsequently called Patriarch or Exarch.
234 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
This name of Patriarch does not, indeed, appear yet
in conciliar canons ; but nevertheless the Patriarchal
powers which had already centered, for instance, in
the Bishops of Rome, Alexandria and Antioch, are
recognized by the Fathers of the Nicene Council, and
confirmed in their possessors by the Combined Epis-
copate. Not one word, however, not one hint is
dropped that the Bishop of Rome has any jurisdic-
tional powers over the whole Church. The solitary
reference to his powers made by the Fathers of Nice
is in their sixth canon. But this canon only speaks
of his Patriarchal powers. It ordains that, as the
Bishop of Rome possesses authority over his Patri-
archate, (consisting, as has been said above, of the
provinces of Central and Southern Italy with the ad-
jacent islands,) so the Bishop of Alexandria should
have like powers over the provinces of Egypt, Libya
and Pentapolis ; and it confers similar Patriarchal
powers on the Bishop of Antioch. According to
these powers, appeals could now go up in each Patri-
archate beyond the Archbishops of Provinces and to
the Patriarch of the group of Provinces j and the
latter could, furthermore, take order for the selec-
tion and consecration of the Archbishops beneath
him, as the Archbishops could still take order
Catholicity and Romanism. 235
for the consecration, each of his own suffragan
Bishops.
Then in the Second General Council, which met
in the year 381, we have this Patriarchal Period more
distinctly emphasised ; for we have powers similar to
those held by Rome, Alexandria and Antioch, recog-
nized by the Combined Episcopate as having rightly
come to reside also in the great Bishops of Ephesus,
Cesarea, and Constantinople j and those powers are
formally confirmed to them.
But still in the decrees of this Council we search
in vain for the recognition or confirmation by the
Episcopate of any general powers, executive, legisla-
tive or judicial, over the whole Church as residing in
the Bishop of Rome. We simply find that his
Primacy of Honor, and nothing more, is acknowl-
edged, and, for the first time, confirmed. This was
in the year 381.
The reference which the Council makes to the
matter is in its third canon. The Bishop of Constanti-
nople had previously stood sixth in rank among the six
great Bishops. Owing to the fact, however, that the
capital of the Empire had recently been changed
from Rome to Constantinople, the Council now alters
his rank from the sixth up to the second place. The
236 Catholicity », Protestantism and Romanism.
canon reads ; " The Bishop of Constantinople shall
have the Primacy of Honor after the Bishop of Rome,
because that now Constantinople is new Rome."
The Primacy of Honor : not a word about universal
Supremacy. If we count the Apostolic times as the
First Period of the Church, and the Provincial as the
Second Period, we have reached here the Third or
Patriarchal Period. The Dioceses are grouped into
Provinces, with an Archbishop over each. The
Provinces are grouped, except those in the far west
of Europe, England among them, and except a few in
the East, which are still left autocephalous, into
Patriarchates with a Patriarch over each. The Head
of the whole Church, the vicar of Christ, is the Col-
lective Episcopate, speaking and acting in General
Council. Finally within the Episcopate, but not over
it, are two leading Primacies of Honor j first, the
Bishop of Old Rome, and next to him the Bishop of
New Rome.
By the time the Fourth General Council met, that
namely of Chalcedon, a century and a half subse-
quently, we have not only the office but also the name
itself of Patriarch or Exarch mentioned in the Con-
ciliar decrees. Still no erecting of the Bishop of
Rome into the position of Autocrat ; but only a firmer
Catholicity and Romanism, 237
recognition still of the self-same post of honor, with-
out any addition, which the Episcopate in its pre-
vious Councils had confirmed. For the XXVIIIth
canon of this Fourth General Council, which is the
only one having a bearing on the subject, reads :
i; We, following in all things the decisions " of the
second General Council, "do also determine and
decree the same things respecting the privileges of the
most holy city of Constantinople, New Rome. For
the Fathers properly gave the Primacy" (and by
reference to the Second Council we find that Primacy
was distinctly stated in Canon III to be a Primacy
of Honor) — " the Fathers properly gave the Primacy
to the throne of the Elder Rome, because that was
the imperial city. And, being moved with the same
intention, they gave equal privileges to the most holy
Throne of New Rome ; judging, with reason, that
the city which was honored with the sovereignty and
senate, and which enjoyed equal privileges with the
Elder royal Rome, should also be magnified like her
in ecclesiastical matters, being the second after her."
Thus the Combined Episcopate in 451 confirmed
and explained what it had previously done in the
year 381.
Indeed whatever may be said touching Chalcedon's
238 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
famous twenty-eighth canon, Catholicity needs only
this canon in combination with the third of the Sec-
ond General Council, and nothing more, to prove
beyond dispute her position, that the Combined Epis-
copate was, according to the Apostolic Constitution
of the Church, the Great Vicar of Christ, in which all
ultimate power rested ; that it created Primacies and
Patriarchs within itself; that it changed them, and
their order of precedence, at will ; and that it gave
even his general Primacy of Honor to the Bishop of
Rome. For mark how the canon reads ; " The
Fathers" — not Christ — "properly gave the Primacy
of Honor to the Throne of the Elder Rome, because "
— why ? Because it was Rome's by divine right ? No.
Because it was St. Peter's throne? No. Because
Christ said, " Thou art Peter," and " Feed my sheep ? n
No. But solely, " because that was the imperial city ."
And the Fathers of the second General Council, the
Combined Episcopate, gave equal privileges to the
Patriarch of Constantinople, because that had be-
come the New Rome. What more do we need ? We
could close our case just here with confidence. But
let us proceed with history. Indeed the order of rank
among the Bishops of the leading cities was changed
by the Combined Episcopate from time to time ac-
Catholicity and Romanism. 239
cording to :ircum stances. At first the chief see was
Jerusalem, and some authors give the sequence thus :
"Jerusalem, Cassarea, Antioch, Rome, Alexandria."
But however this may have been, we come, at any rate,
to a time when the order was certainly this, namely :
" Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Caesarea and Con-
stantinople." And then afterwards came a time when
the order was changed by the Episcopate into " Rome,
Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus, Caes-
area, and Jerusalem."
To return ; we have reached a time, in the Third or
Patriarchal Period, when the Bishops of the few lead-
ing cities of the world were getting up upon thrones ;
and Rome in the West, and Constantinople in the
East on the highest thrones of all. The natural
effect of this was to reinforce the arrogance and ambi-
tion of Rome. But it also providentially increased
the power of Constantinople to resist Rome, in the
interest of the ancient Episcopal Constitution of the
Church, which Rome was already striving to change,
first into a monarchial form of government, and then
into an absolute Autocracy. The whole East with
Constantinople, together with Africa, steadily resisted
these growing claims of Rome. Meantime Mahomet
swept through Africa and wiped out the noble
240 Catholicity \ Protestantism and Romanism,
churches of Carthage. The collisions increased be-
tween Constantinople on the one hand, and Rome on
the other. These struggles could not have occurred,
had such a thing been understood from the first by
the Church as that Supremacy had been centered in
Rome originally and by H divine right" Meantime
Rome was growing yearly stronger in the unorganized
far west, invading, with little or with ineffectual re-
sistance, the outlying Churches of Spain, Gaul and
Britain, which had not been clustered into an organic
Patriarchate, and which looked with respect, there-
fore, and, with the exception of England, with more
and more willing submission, to their powerful neigh-
bor the Patriarch of Italy.
But at last, as I* have said, the collision between
Rome and the East eventuated in the great rupture of
the ninth century. The four Eastern Patriarchates on
the one hand, and the one Western Patriarchate of
Rome on the other, ceased intercommunion with each
other, and we have the Fourth Period of the Church
begun, in which the west, the barbarous part, that is
to say, is freed by excommunication from the East or
more enlightened part, and the East is freed from the
overbearing ambition and attempted Papal encroach-
ments of the West ; each of the two carrying off intc
Catholicity and Roma?iism. 241
isolation from the other its part of the Apostolic
Ministry, and continuing Its succession and Its con-
sequent Sacraments down to to-day.
During this Fourth Period, the Patriarch of Rome,
thus left free and unrestrained, grew more and more
supreme and autocratic in the West, until a similar
rupture occurred in the Western part of the Church,
whereby it separated into the Anglican and Latin
Communions ; and the Fifth Period opened j each
Communion, Roman and Anglican, carrying off its
part of the Apostolic ministry, and continuing its suc-
cession down to to-day.
Meantime, during this Fifth Period, the Bishop of
Rome developed his Supremacy logically into Infalli-
bility ; when the strain again became too great, and
another rupture took place j Rome dividing now into
New, or Roman Catholics and Alt or old Catholics.
This rupture opens the Sixth or present Period of
Catholicity. In this period we have the division of
the whole Church into two main parts, viz : Catholic
and Roman Catholic ; the Greek, Anglican, and Alt-
Catholics being substantially one in their firm stand
for the ancient Episcopal government of the Catholic
Church, in opposition to the modern autocratic Papal
government, which is a pure absolute monarchy.
11
*42 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism,
Thus we find that down to the middle of the fifth
century, when the Fourth General Council met, the
Combined Episcopate still retained to itself, and never
abdicated in favor of Rome, the ultimate power and
the Supremacy over the Church. Indeed to have
done so would have been to commit the crime of self-
murder, which is the last thing we are to expect of it
in our historical research. And this is an unanswerable
a priori argument that it is quite impossible for Rome
ever to have acquired the Supremacy of the whole
Catholic Church. She can only have a Supremacy in
her own part of the Church, indeed, by the destruction
of the rights of her Bishops. And this is just what she
has at last succeeded in doing. For let me read to
you the noble words of the Archbishop of Halifax,
uttered at the recent Vatican Council of 1870. In
that Council the entire body of Roman Bishops, hav-
ing been for centuries laboring in the trough of the
sea, foundered at last and sank finally in the tempest-
uous waves of Papal power. And the words of Arch-
bishop Conolly are like the wail of shipwrecked mari-
ners when all hope is gone. He spoke as follows :
" Thrice have I asked for proof from Scripture ac-
cording to authentic interpretation, from tradition,
and from Councils, that the Bishops of the Catholic
Catholicity and Romanism. 243
Church ought to be excluded from the definition of
dogmas ; but my request has not been complied with.
And now I adjure you, like the blind man on the way
to Jericho, to give us sight, that we may believe.
Hitherto we have recognized the strongest motive for
the credibility of Catholic doctrine in the general con-
sent of the Church, notified through the Collective
Episcopate. This has been our shield against all ex-
ternal assailants ; and by this powerful magnet we
have drawn hundreds of thousands into the Church.
Is this, our invincible weapon of attack and defence,
now to be broken and trampled under foot ; and the
thousand-headed Episcopate, with the millions of
faithful at its back, to shrink into the voice and wit-
ness of a single man? Let the deputation prove to
us that it has really always been the belief of the
Church that the Pope is everything and the Bishops
nothing. The Council of Jerusalem did not adopt the
formula of Peter, but of John who spake before him j
and in the Apostles' Creed we do not say, ' I believe
in Peter and his successors,' but, ' I believe in one
Catholic Church.' We, Bishops, have no right to
renounce for ourselves and our successors the heredi-
tary and original rights of the Episcopate; to re-
nounce the promise of Christ, ' I am with you to the
z 44 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
end of the world.' But now they want to reduce us
to nullities \ to tear the noblest jewel from our pon-
tifical breast-plate ; to deprive us of the highest
prerogative of our office ; and to transform the whole
Church, and the Bishops with It, into a rabble of
blind men, among whom is one alone who sees ; so
that they must shut their eyes and believe whatever
he tells them."
Indeed the attitude of the minority, of nearly two
hundred out of six hundred Bishops, in that Vatican
Council was pitiable. They made brave struggle to
retain the remnant of the Episcopal rights which pre-
vious Papal usurpations had left them ; but it was a
struggle against invincible logic. For, their predeces-
sors had sowed the wind, and what could they expect
but to reap the whirlwind ? For, the Roman Episco-
pate, having previously given up the Primacy of
Honor and accepted the Papal Supremacy instead,
had already erected a power among themselves,
before which they were compelled at last to stand
helpless, as it easily snatched from their hands the
poor remaining fragments of their rights.
Now as we find no Papal Supremacy authorized
down to the year 451, so too we look in vain through
the acts of the Fifth and Sixth General Councils foi
Catholicity and Romanism. 245
any abdication on the part of the Collective Episco-
pate of the Vicariate of Christ in favor of the Bishop
of Rome. And this brings us to the year 680. The
collisions were now such between Rome and the
whole body of the eastern Bishops, and the final
rupture between the two was so impending on this
very question of the Papal Supremacy, that it is clear
no action was taken then, or has ever since been
taken by the Collective Episcopate of the whole
Church, to relinquish its position of Vicar, and resign
in favor of the single Bishop of Rome. The only
action has been the breaking away of the Anglican
and Alt-Catholics from the Papal position, and the
adding of their forces as reinforcements to the
Eastern Catholic position.
May it not be that, as the See of Rome, with a
fatal logical momentum, develops doctrine after
doctrine and practice after practice, (for how, foi
instance, can she stop short of Pope-olatry ?) national
Church after national Church, finding the strain be-
coming too severe, will follow the great example of
England, break away from Rome, and pass over to
the side of the Catholic Communions, until at last
little or nothing is left to adore the Pope ; and that
so God will at once, in His own deliberate way, even-
246 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
tually purge Catholicity of Popery, " restore commu
nion between the divided members of the Catholic
Church, in the East and in the West," and, thus over-
ruling men's errors, cause His Church to stand once
more a unit of the highest order, a unit differentiated
within itself into variety and complexity? We know
not what is in God's purposes. But, to all human
ken, it would seem to be as reasonable to anticipate
that the Mississippi would pause and return to its
source, as that Rome will not go on with gathering
momentum till she develops something which neither
God nor man can endure.
Let us now look at the Papal Supremacy from
another angle. It certainly belongs to Supremacy to
summon General Councils. Did the Pope possess or
exercise this power in the early Church ? It belongs,
and always has belonged to the Bishop to summon a
Diocesan Council ; to the Archbishop to summon a
Provincial, and to the Patriarch to summon a Na-
tional or Patriarchal Council. If the Pope had analo-
gous jurisdictional powers over the whole Church, to
those which Archbishops have over their Provinces,
surely he would have summoned the General Councils.
But the first General Councils were not summoned by
him. And this is proof positive that he had only a
Catholicity and Romanism. 247
Primacy of Honor ; that he did not stand to the whole
Church as an Archbishop does to his Province, and
that the Head Primacy within the Episcopate was
different in kind from the subordinate jurisdictional
Primacies. The Bishop of Rome did not summon
the First Council in 325; the Second, in 381, was
actually celebrated against his will ; he did not sum-
mon the Third in 431 ; nor the Fourth in 451 ; nor
the Fifth in 533 ; this also was celebrated against his
wishes ; nor did he summon the Sixth in 680. There
was another Council, sometimes called the Seventh.
It met in the latter part of the eighth century. The
Popes did not even summon that. Nor were the
Popes even consulted about the summoning of these
great Councils. In fact there were times when they
even desired a General Council but did not succeed
in obtaining one ; as Innocent, in the matter of St.
Chrysostom, and as Leo learned by experience. Thus
the claim to Papal Supremacy breaks down in this
direction. It was not until the Pope was free from
the whole P^astern part of the Church in the ninth
century, that we find him exercising this sovereign
power of convoking Councils.
Again, it surely belongs to Supremacy to preside
at General Councils. But, beginning with the Coun
248 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
cil of Jersualem in the year 50, St. James, and not St.
Peter, was its President. The Bishop of Rome did
not preside at the Nicene Council either in person or
by deputy, nor, indeed, did he have any considerable
influence or sway there, even though he was Bishop
of the capital city of the world. The council of Sar-
dica was in design a General Council, but in effect
did not prove so. In that synod the Bishop of Rome
did not preside. Nay in its epistle the name of
Hosius of Corduba is mentioned even before the
name of Julius of Rome. Nor did' the Bishop of
Rome preside at the Second General Council. He
was not present at it either personally or by legates. At
the Third, it was St. Cyril of Jerusalem that presided.
At the Fourth, it was the Emperor Marcian and his
commissaries that presided, though they did not of
course vote. At the Fifth, the Patriarch of Constan-
tinople presided, and the Patriarch of Rome was not
present even by deputy. At the Sixth Council, in
6S0, the emperor Constantine IVth presided. In
fact, as we look at history, so little was such a thing
as the Papal Supremacy dreamed of, that the presi-
dency of these great Councils either fell out accord-
ing to the Emperor's wishes, or was settled by the
election of the Fathers present, or on a tacit regard
Catholicity and Romanism. 249
to some personal eminence in comparison to others
present.
Again it would belong to Supremacy to give life
and validity, by its approval, to the canons and decrees
of General Councils. But, beginning with the Council
of Jerusalem, Rome should note that it was not St.
Peter who gave formal confirmation to and promul-
gated its decisions ; but it was St. James. And then
as for the other Councils, a recent Roman Catholic
writer, and a Bishop at that, proves that General
Councils have promulgated their dogmatic acts with-
out awaiting the Papal sanction \ and not only pro-
mulgated them, but put them into execution.
The Council of Nice did not await the approval of
St. Sylvester to condemn the Arian Bishops. In the
Second General Council, Theodosius the Great gave
out immediately the constitution relating to the Mace-
donian heretics. The same thing took place at Eph-
esus and Chalcedon (the Third and Fourth General
Councils). Long before the Holy see's ratification of
the dogmatic decrees became known, the penalties for
its violation had been executed. Clearly then, by an-
cient right, the ultimate authority in the Church rests
in the Collective Episcopate, and not in the Bishop of
Rome ; they, not the Pope, being the Vicar of Christ.
11*
250 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism,
But the Romanist will say to you, why, then, were
the canons of Councils sent to the Pope for his con-
firmation, if the sanction of the see of Rome was not
necessary to their validity? But the answer is, that it
was customary for canons of General Councils to be
sent to all the Bishops ; and of course to so eminent
a Bishop, also, as was always the Bishop of Rome.
Nevertheless, somehow, the canons of the Second
General Council were not transmitted to Rome even
for its information. As for the Fifth General Council,
it actually anathematized Pope Vigilius. Besides,
touching this entire subject of the confirmation of the
Decrees of General Councils, a very limited knowledge
of ecclesiastical history will convince one, that equals
confirm the decrees of equals, and often inferiors con-
firm the decrees of their superiors. The Faith and
the decrees of Nice were confirmed not only by the
General Councils of Constantinople, Ephesus and
Chalcedon, but also by particular councils, such as
those of Sardica and Jerusalem. In the collection of
letters written after the Council of Chalcedon to the
Emperor by the Bishops, whom he had consulted on
the authority of this Council, we find many times this
formula, or similar ones, viz : " We consent to the
decrees of the Holy Fathers, which we confirm b>
Catholicity and Romanism. 251
our Faith and our confession." Decrees of the Bishop
of Rome have been also confirmed by particular
councils. It is quite impossible to see in any confir-
mations of the decrees of any councils, even by the
Bishops of Rome, in the first nine centuries, acts of
superior authority. All these confirmations were ex-
pressions of that reception which was generally ac-
corded by all portions of the Church to the acts of
all really General Councils. Surely the decretal of
Pope Vigilius, by which he adhered to the Fifth Gen-
eral Council, was far from being an act of absolute
superiority. On the other hand it carries with it the
seal of deference and of submission.
Again, the powers of Supremacy are three-fold ;
legislative, judicial and administrative. The Bishop
of Rome claims to-day the first j namely, that his will,
expressed by precept, decree or proclamation, shall
be law. How was it anciently?
Before the Nicene Council in 325, the Church had
no other laws than the divine laws, together with those
which each church enacted for itself in Provincial
synod, and those which were propagated from one to
another by imitation or compliance. Hence several
churches varied in points of order and discipline ac-
cording to local circumstances. No one Bishop then
252 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
could impose his laws upon another territory than his
own. When, once, the Bishop of Rome attempted to
induce several churches of Asia-Minor to keep Easter
on the same day on which it was kept in the West,
he not only met with stout resistance but with sharp
rebuke. This whole Easter difficulty, indeed, which
was a serious one in early times, was not settled by
the Bishops of Rome at all. Not until a General
Council legislated on it did the entire Church acqui-
esce in one rule. To show the condition of things at
that time, let me quote from St. Cyprian. He says,
" For none of us makes himself a Bishop of Bishops,
or by tyrannical terror compels his colleagues to a
necessity of obedience; since every Bishop, accord-
ing to the license of his liberty and power, hath his
own freedom, and can no more be judged by another,
than he himself can judge another." Can we for a
moment conceive of a Roman Bishop to-day writing
thus ? Would not the Bishop of Rome, if such letter
reached him to-day, give very prompt evidence to its
writer, that, however it may have been in earlier cen-
turies, one Bishop could, in the nineteenth century at
any rate, be judged most effectually, and most practi-
cally, too, so far as any farther exercise of his Episco
pal authority was concerned, by another ?
Catholicity and Romanism. 253
Secondly ; the Pope claims the right of appellate
jurisdiction ; that all causes of weight be referred to
him. How was it with this in the fourth century?
The fifth canon of Nice provides that causes may be
appealed from Dioceses up to the Provincial synods ;
but not a word about appeals to the Bishop of Rome.
If he had such judicial power from the beginning, as
there were so many occasions during those early cen-
turies for exercising such power, there would have
been extant in history many clear instances of it. But
this is not the case. Rome has done the best she
could with this argument. Out of a multitude of
cases, she has whipped up two or three cases only,
and these quite impertinent to the issue. When the
Patriarch of Antioch claimed certain rights over the
churches of Cyprus, Innocent, the Roman Patriarch,
sustained him in his pretentions. But the Council of
Ephesus judged otherwise, and prevailed. Where,
then, was the Pope's universal and immediate juris-
diction in the year 431 ? When, subsequently, the
Popes set up this claim of appellate jurisdiction,
divers synods, some great, some smaller, protested
against, and passed acts contrary to it. So we see
resistance to the growing claims of the Pope on every
hand. In the middle of the fourth century a Coun-
254 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
cil (not however a General Council) met at a place
called Sardica. It passed a decree that, under certain
circumstances, Julius, Bishop of Rome, should, as a
personal privilege, appoint judges to hear the cause of
a Bishop on the spot, and in the second instance \
with the right to send legates representing himself.
This power was not granted to the Bishops of Rome,
but to Julius personally. On the strength of this
(albeit it was not a decree of any General Council)
subsequent Popes attempted to set up their claim
of appellate jurisdiction. But it was never recog-
nized by the Eastern or by the African Church.
Indeed the African Bishops in 419 wrote to Boniface
1st. "We are resolved not to admit this arrogant
claim."
In the code of the Fourth General Council, in the
middle of the Fifth century, there is no mention what-
ever of the see of Rome as an ultimate court of
appeal, though its Primacy is implied throughout.
"Hence when the subject of its appellate jurisdiction
came before the heads of the African Church, among
whom was St. Augustine, their deliberate finding,
which they reported to the Bishop of Rome, and on
which they acted themselves, was as follows ; That
the Nicene decrees plainly committed both the infe-
Catholicity and Romanism. 255
rior clergy and the Bishops themselves to their own
Metropolitans ; ' having most wisely and justly pro-
vided that all things should be determined in the very
places where they arise ; * * * especially when every
man has liberty, if he be offended with the decision
of his judges, to appeal to a Provincial Council, or, if
need be,' where ? to the Pope ? No ,■ but ' to a General
Council.' "
. Nor did Rome exercise the third right of Su-
premacy, namely, general administrative power during
those ages. In fact a general and wide spread
administration of the affairs of the universe from
Rome was a sheer impossibility. For it could not
take place without a certain machinery and system,
clerical officials and the like. But nothing of this
kind was dreamt of in Rome during those centuries.
" The Bishops of Rome," says the author of Janus,
" could exclude neither individuals nor churches from
the communion of the Church Universal. They could
withdraw their own Church from communion with
particular Bishops or Churches, and they often did
so ; but this in no wise affected the relations of those
Bishops or Churches with other Bishops or Churches.
And, on the other hand, if Rome admitted into its
Communion one excommunicated by other Churches
256 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Ro7nanism.
this did not bring that one into Communion with any
other Church."
In the Third century Firmilian uses the following
language to Pope Stephen : " How mighty a sin hast
thou heaped to thyself in cutting thyself off from so
many flocks ! For do not deceive thyself ; it is thou
who hast cut off thine own self; he is the real
schismatic, who makes himself an apostate from the
communion of the Church's unity."
There are several points which a Roman Cath-
olic will urge on the attention of an ill-instructed
Churchman calculated to confound him. I can only
find time to instance one now. He will cite cases
where the Bishop of Rome went beyond the bounds
of his Patriarchate to interfere in the ordination of
Bishops. And he will say, Does not this show that
the Pope had powers of supremacy co-extensive with
the Church ? But be not hasty. For, a more careful
knowledge of facts shows, that other leading Bishops
did the self-same thing. His argument does not
sustain his claim therefore j for no one ever thought,
because of the same action on the part of other great
Bishops, to pretend therefore that they ever held
universal control. Indeed it not seldom happened,
that the Bishop of Rome, and the other great Bishops
Catholicity and Romanism. 257
(who. by the way, were all of them then called
" Popes ") were checked on such occasions, and that
their emissaries were dismissed with disgrace, for in-
terfering with a jurisdiction beyond their bounds.
Such was the case with the Bishop of Antioch, when
he attempted to interfere in Cyprus. And what is
more than all. and decisive of the Pope of Rome's
case, the second canon of the Second General
Council positively checked and regulated such irregu-
larity, by enacting in reference to the matter, that no
one of the great Patriarchs go beyond his Patriarch-
ate and enter upon churches without his borders " for
the purpose of ordaining, or exercising any other eccle-
siastical functions •," thus bringing confusion into those
Churches. The fact is, certain ecclesiastical customs
were growing. Power is apt to accumulate at centers.
Patriarchs were invading Provinces that did not
belong to them. And the object of this canon was to
check this special growth ; to recognize it, indeed, as
far as it had gone, but to stop it just there, and fix the
Church for the future in the condition in which It
then was ; the Patriarchs to have no further powers.
This left certain Provinces, and among them Cyprus
and England, under no Patriarch, but autonomic and
autocephalous. Now this canon has never been re
z5& Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
pealed, and is binding to-day on the Bishop of Rome,
and on the whole Church. It is standing evidence
against the claims of the Roman Patriarch to univer-
sal power. It is standing evidence that Rome has
altered, at least in the Latin part of the Church, the
Constitution of the Catholic Church. Two hundred
years afterward, in the year six hundred, Rome en-
tered upon the domain of the British Church, which
from the first had lain outside her Patriarchate, and
had governed itself. And this canon is standing
evidence that, from a. d. 596 to a. d. 1539, the
Bishop of Rome was an intruder into and a usurper
of powers in the English part of the Church, contrary
to the will of a General Council. It is, indeed, even
a mistake to suppose that the Saxon part of England
was very much indebted to St. Augustine for its con-
version to Christianity. For, everywhere else except
in Kent it was the clergy in the ancient British and
Scottish succession that effected that conversion. And
the canon is standing evidence that, to-day, the Ro-
mish church in England is a schismatical body.
I need not say to you, gentlemen, that the two
topics, which I have had the honor of discussing
before you, by no means exhaust the important differ-
ences between Catholicity and Romanism. But I are
Catholicity and Romanism. 259
sure you did not expect of me, in three Conferences,
that which others have only been able to compass in
volumes. And this is my consolation as I bid you
farewell, and reluctantly retire from an unfinished
work. Enough, however, I trust, has been said to
satisfy you that a surrender to Rome is treason to
Catholicity.
I cannot, however, pass finally from this rostrum,
without giving one most important caution concern-
ing controversial books on the Roman side. In the
first place " Latin translations of Greek Fathers, unless
they are carefully compared with the Greek originals,
can have little dependence placed on them ; as they
frequently bear the unmistakable stamp of Western
prejudice." The interpolations into the text of the
Fathers, the alterations of that text, and the down-
right forgeries of the past are, as a fact, so numer-
ous, so extensive, and so vital, that it requires years
of careful study on all sides, and long periods of
suspended judgment as to alleged proofs, and the
sifting of many books antagonistic to each other, be-
fore one who is not a profound historian, or a critical
Grecian or Latinist, can come to any really intelligent
conclusion. There had been many interpolations and
forgeries in the interest of the Roman see before the
260 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
ninth century But in the year eight hundred and
forty-five, when criticism and general intelligence in the
west were at their lowest ebb, there appeared what
is now known as the Isidorian or False Decretals,
For two hundred years the enormity and clumsiness
of those bold forgeries have been exposed, and uni-
versally admitted. Yet those Decretals were received
as genuine for seven long centuries. Marvelously
enough, although the present Papal power was mainly
built up by and through them, it stands to-day as a
permanent edifice, long after the miserable frame-
work, the girders and beams of the Forged Decretals,
on which much of it rested, had fallen from with-
in it and been burned up as useless rubbish amid
universal jeers. But not only does the structure of the
Papal power remain, after that which sustained it has
disappeared ; but something else remains. For those
Decretals, so thoroughly trusted, in their day, and
the interpolations in the writings of the Fathers were
used by earnest and sincere men, like St. Anselm, for
quotations and proofs in favor of Romanism. Later
writers just as sincerely quoted these proofs, not from
the originals, but from St. Anselm, Gratian and
others. And, as proof-quotations, they became stock-
in-trade for still later writers, equally sincere. Sc
Catholicity and Romanism. 261
that, to-day, the fragments of whole centuries of fraud,
mistaken zeal and pious credulousness, mingled with
better material, lie marvelously confused in the
strata of controversy. This complicates matters in-
expressibly. Then again, on the other side, there is
a vast amount of Protestant misrepresentation afloat
concerning Roman Catholicism, which further com-
plicates matters. Now to anyone who knows all these
facts, to anyone who has, mayhap, studied the ques-
tion between Rome and Catholicity, more or less
for twenty-five or thirty years, who has been often
puzzled and astonished at false statements on both
sides, oftener still disgusted at the confusion, oc-
casionally almost ready to give up the question in
despair, to such an one, I say, the sight of young men
and women, and of the middle-aged, devoting the mere
spare time of a few weeks or months to the reading of
two or three popular controversial works, that are
placed in their hands by Roman Catholic propagan-
dists, and then leaping to a conclusion on the whole
complicated matter, rushing over to Rome, turning
instantly, and, with new born zeal, hurling back hot-
shots at the Anglican Mother that bore them, and
Whom they never understood or appreciated in
Her true Catholicity when they were with Her, is
202 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
saddening indeed, not to say pitiable and contempt!
ble.
There is another thing I cannot refrain from say-
ing. It has been admirably put by the English
" Church Review." I have not its language, but I
remember its idea. It is this. The theory of the
Anglican Church is thoroughly Catholic. But, owing
to Continental raids made upon Her prior to and sub-
sequently to the times of Cromwell, the practice of Her
Priests and people happens temporarily to be left to-
day, in too many ways, un-Catholic. Her Catholic
theory will inevitably bring the practice of Her Priests
and people out right in the end. It is steadily, and
as rapidly as we could expect, doing so now. Let us
not toss our shoulder and curl our lip impatiently,
like so many flippant boarding-school misses, because
our un-Catholic practices are so slow in disappearing.
On the other hand the theory of Romanism on many
fundamental points is thoroughly un-Catholic, and
hopelessly so ; while Rome's practice, it is true, still con-
tinues in many respects to be Catholic. Now a calm
and sensible mind, at any rate, will find far less in-
tellectual difficulty in putting up, for a while, with
deficient practice in a Body Whose theory is wholly
Catholic, than in accepting fundamentally false and
Catholicity and Romanism. 263
uncatholic theories for the sake of some perfection in
practice or ritual.
Although Christ did not give the Primacy to St.
Peter, yet of course He knew that St. Peter's succes-
sors in Rome would, in after time, receive the Primacy
through ecclesiastical regulation, and because Rome
was the capital of the world. Looking, therefore, on
one occasion upon St. Peter, He solemnly said to
him " Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you
that he may sift you as wheat ; but I have prayed for
thee that thy faith fail not. And when thou art con-
verted, strengthen thy brethren." And yet Rome
amuses Herself, after this, with the idea that he, who
was once Primate, has been all along invulnerable.
By this, our Lord's solemn prophecy, Rome, then, was
sooner or later to fall into such plight as to need to
turn from her errors; "when thou art converted."
But meantime, also, while she was in her false position,
the brethren, it seems, were to be weak all around.
Is it not indeed so to-day ? Rome herself is by no
means the happy family she has the shrewdness to
appear to the world to be. And is it not true, that
all the religious divisions and weaknesses within the
whole Catholic Church, and without Its borders too,
can be traced back for their source to the ambition
*04 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
and errors of Rome ? Ah, gentlemen, but when
Rome is converted, then indeed shall you see, as the
Lord said, the brethren strengthened all around, and
Christianity marching as one organized and invinci-
ble Catholic Body against Scepticism, the world and
Satan.
Again, Rome is apt to take certain remarks to St.
Peter, and apply them unwarrantably to herself. Very
well, then, why is she so apt to forget others ? She
forgets that solemn prophecy, "Thou shalt deny Me
thrice;" and that her Peter of the centuries must
sooner or later, in an agony, of repentance, " go out"
and weep bitterly. Hath Rome denied Christ once ?
She hath, at any rate, struck down His Royal, visible
Body, the Episcopate, saying, " Away with you ; "
and substituted her Pope as Ruler of the Church in
Its stead. Hath she denied Christ twice ? She
hath, at any rate, struck down His Body the Church
as the Organ to us of the truth, with curses and anathe-
mas, too, saying " Away with you," "I am the truth."
Hath she denied Him thrice ? She hath, at any rate,
reared between Him and us a mediatrix, as though
He, the loving Brother, That died for us, needs to be
appeased before we can steal to Him and lie direc\lv
upon His bosom.
Catholicity and Romanism. 265
She has forgotten that prophecy in action, too,
namely ; St. Paul resisting St. Peter, when he was
wrong, to the face. One does not desire to be fanci-
ful. But one cannot help thinking of the great feud
to-day as a possible fulfilment of that prophecy \
namely, the feud between the mighty Anglican Com-
munion said to be founded by St. Paul, and whose
greatest temple is the Cathedral of London, and the
vast Communion said to be founded by St. Peter,
whose greatest temple is the Cathedral of Rome.
One more word and I have done. The Catholic
Church is Christ's Body. And Satan's warfare on the
Human part of the God-man did not cease at Calvary.
As Satan nailed Him to the Cross, so he follows Him
with mighty smitings through the centuries. And
Rome's fond idea, that Christ's Body is something
that cannot possibly show such ghastly wounds as
non-intercommunion between Its parts, or such
bruises anywhere as a fundamental local alteration in
Its governmental structure, is but a Utopian dream ;
it is to forget the swollen back, the bones stretched
out of joint, the nails, the thorns and the spear.
But, meantime, it is a consolation to know, that
God is, nevertheless, so overruling the ambition of the
See of Rome and its effects in having produced the
12
266 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism.
Greek, Russo-Greek, Anglican, Alt-Catholic and
other Communions, as to differentiate His great
Catholic Church, and develop It from the imperfect
unity of simplicity into the perfect unity of mu*ti-
plexity and harmonious variety.
SERMON.
The Object ane Meaning of the Catholic Movement
in the Anglican Communion.
Preached at Zion Church, Newport, R. Z, at the request
of the Rector of that Church.
Immanuel.— Isa. vii. 14.
Nearly half a century ago a remarkable fraternity
of young men arose in Oxford. Perceiving that the
Prayer Book taught the doctrines which were set forth
by the Early Church, but that Churchmen generally in
1833 did not hold them, these young men issued the
" Tracts for the Times," with the design of arousing
the minds of Churchmen, and bringing them into
agreement with the statements of the Prayer Book and
the teachings of the Early Church. Thus was inaugu-
rated the great Catholic movement in the Anglican
Communion.
T6 a non-Churchman, unfamiliar with the career
of the English Church from 1620 to 1833, the state-
ment that She should teach one thing, and Her
members believe another, would seem not only para-
268 Renaissance of Catholicity in
doxical but incredible. But, without delaying this
discourse by entering upon History, let it be remem-
bered that when Cromwell assumed the reins of
power, he crushed the Church of England ; he drove
Her clergy from their livings j and for years the
people of England were indoctrinated by Presbyte-
rian, Independent and Baptist preachers. Let it be
remembered that when Cromwell passed away there
was little change in this respect. For, six thousand
out of the eight thousand clergy who, under Charles
Hd, occupied the Rectories of England and drew the
tithes, were simply Puritans who had "conformed."
Hating the Church and Her doctrines and Her disci-
pline while they were under the Commonwealth, how
could they love and teach them under the Restora-
tion ? The " conforming " Puritan was a man who
used the Prayer Book to some extent, but taught the
people doctrines antagonistic to its prayers, and prac-
tices in violation of its rubrics. Thus, practically,
there were, and for a long time continued to be,
anomalously enough, two fountains of teaching in the
Church. (The Roman part of the Church was simi-
larly afflicted in the eighteenth century.) One of
these fountains was the Prayer Book, the other was
the pulpit. The Prayer Book, which contains the
The Anglican Communion. 269
teaching of the Church, did not hold its own, as a
teacher, against the pulpit, which poured forth Puri-
tanism to the people. It is not strange, in the secu-
lar confusion of the day, that it was some time before
this state of things could be reversed ; that it should
be a slow process for the silent Prayer Book to begin
to tell at last in the Church against the persistent
voice of the pulpit. The pulpit has a way of sending
its teachings and its teachers into the Theological
Schools, and thus of perpetuating its notions, and
keeping them for a while, even on the Episcopal
Bench. The secular confusion of the time paralyzed
the arm of that discipline which is the mother of order
in the Church. Besides, an individual, here and
there, may change his belief quickly, but a nation,
once indoctrinated, changes its belief slowly. What-
ever the Prayer Book may have taught, the English
people, once fairly in the current of Puritanism,
floated heavily and with steady momentum down that
current through the eighteenth century. Let it be
remembered, that, forty years after Cromwell, there
were Bishops on the English Church thrones who
denied Episcopacy, were opposed to the surplice, sus-
tained sectarians, loved even Unitarianism, counseled
the abolition of Episcopacy in Scotland, and were op-
270 Renaissance of Catholicity i?i
posed to the Thirty-nine Articles. And then consider
the state of things in the reigns of the Georges j and
it will no longer seem incredible that the members of
a National Church can for a while hold doctrines
quite different from those held by the Church to which
they nominally belong. But at last the Prayer Book
began to turn the tide, and to send those it had in-
doctrinated into the pulpit.
The intent of the Catholic movement of to-day is
not to Catholicize the Anglican Church ; She has
always continued Catholic. But it is to awaken Her
members to the Catholic character of their Church.
The Oxford Divines may not have forecast, at the
time they issued the "Tracts," the full grandeur of
the Revolution they had inaugurated ; they may not
have anticipated the many nooks and departments of
inner spiritual life and of outer human need, into
which the new movement would eventually roll and
break with upheaving effect. But they comprehended,
at any rate, its main purport.
That the Oxford Tracts should rouse violent opposi-
tion was of course to be expected. It seemed an easy
thing to stamp the new movement down and out of
existence. And indeed the heaviest odds were, and
have continued to be, against it. But, as that which
The Anglican Communion. 271
began to be preached by the Holy Apostles in the
year 33 (although the power of the Roman Empire
was hurled upon it to crush it), exhibited, neverthe-
less, a stubborn life and an ever increasing growth,
so this, which began to be preached in the year
1833, has exhibited the same phenomena of life
and growth. Why is this ? Simply because the
movement of 1833 is but a resurrection of the move-
ment of a. d. 33. In the sixteenth century, the
thinking world rejected that adulterated presentment
of Christianity known as Romanism ; because it was
tyranny. In the nineteenth century the thinking
world has rejected that other adulterated present-
ment of Christianity known as Protestantism ; because
it is utter anarchy. Is it not possible that that an-
cient Catholicity, which is neither Roman nor Protest-
ant, and which once conquered the world in less than
four centuries, should, now that it has roused from its
long obscurity, regain that world again which Roman-
ism and Protestantism have between them lost ? We
see what Romanism and Protestantism have done in a
thousand years. Is it unreasonable to ask that the
third presentment of Christianity, which was once
victorious, be tried again for a century or two ?
When such an exceptional movement as this Cath
272 Renaissance of Catholicity in
olic revival takes place, there comes a time at last
when its honest and earnest-minded opponents pause
in their opposition, and ask " What does it mean ? "
Such a time as that is dawning now. Already there
are some persons, and their number is yearly increas-
ing, who, even though they do not propose to become
Catholics, are ready to listen dispassionately to an
answer to the question, " What is the object and
meaning of this movement ?" You, as Evangelicals,
have asked this question through your Rector, and
you have at once made one at home among you, who
comes, not in the spirit of a propagandist, but to speak
to brethren who will kindly listen, even though they
may continue to differ with him.
At the outset one asks himself, Is there not some
single statement, that will comprise within its scope
the object of the Catholic movement? If there be
such statement, it is perhaps this, namely : The main
purport of the Catholic movement, is the re-preaching
of the doctrine of the Incarnation in its integrity \ and
then come, logically, the practical application of that
doctrine to public and private worship, its interior ap-
plication to the spiritual life of the soul, and its exterior
application to the modes in which misery, poverty and
sin are to be treated. Of course this practical appli
The Anglican Communion. 273
cation strikes against old modes and habits and preju-
dices with uprooting effect.
Unswerving fidelity to the true doctrine of the
Incarnation accounts for every new energy the move-
ment has put forth \ for every unexpected angle at
which its intense forces have darted out; for every
book of devotion it has printed ; for every altar-candle
it has lighted ; for every community of Sisters or
Brothers it has organized ; for every Early Father it
has translated ; for every reversal it has made from
Choral Matins and plain Celebration, to plain Matins
and Choral Celebration ; for the extemporaneous
mode of preaching it has adopted in place of preach-
ing from a manuscript j for every theological book
and pamphlet it has written ; for every censer it has
swung \ for every mission it has preached to sin-
ners, and every quiet and holy retreat it has held
for earnest souls ; for every Altar and Church it has
restored and glorified; for every confession it has
heard ; for every guild for work among the poor it has
organized ; for every Early Communion it has cele-
brated 1 and every laboring man's club and reading-
room it has opened ; for every Three Hours Agony
Service it has held ; every bannered and vestmented
procession it has thrown out on Good Fridays into
274 Renaissance of Catholicity in
the slums of cities ; every confraternity for combined
prayer it has formed ; every point of asceticism it has
urged; every public Meditation it has given; every
cassock and chasuble it has worn j every convent
and school, the corner stone of which it has laid ; and
for every act of voluntary poverty or self-sacrifice of
any kind it has undertaken. Undying fidelity to that
truth accounts for the turmoils at St. George's in the
East ; for Pusey silenced in his pulpit ; for Keble
banished to the seclusion of a country village, and
going to his grave without ecclesiastical preferment or
higher collegiate degree : for Bennett hurried away by
friends from the mob; for Purchas cut down in the
prime of life and sent to his grave ; for Mahan cross-
ing an ocean to defend himself before the Trustees of
the General Theological Seminary in the matter of
hearing confessions; for Mackonochie suspended and
silenced again and again ; for the laboring men going
forth from the " Pooh ! pooh ! " of the Archbishop of
Canterbury out of Lambeth Palace gates, and organ-
izing by thousands in every town of England for the
defence of Catholicity ; and last and latest, for Arthur
Tooth's utterance to the Bishop of Rochester, " I will
not obey your civil court; for I will not render unto
Caesar the things that are God's."
TJie Anglican Communion. 275
The movement has never been understood by its
opponents, and they have struggled against it wildly.
They have resisted its logical conclusions instead of
grappling with its central premise. The issue is be-
tween Rationalism and Supernaturalism.
For three hundred years, the popular Religions of
the day had been subtly undermining the true doctrine
of the Incarnation, until that doctrine had virtually
disappeared from the belief of Churchmen. It fol-
lowed from this popular teaching, indirectly, indeed,
but surely, that there was, after all, " little reason for
the Son of God becoming man, other than that He
might have a human body in which to satisfy the re-
quirement of the Jewish Law, that without shedding
of blood there is no remission."* No sermon was a
sermon unless the rays of its thoughts were made to
converge at last on the Atonement of Calvary and
that alone. We were, indeed, lost without the blessed
Atonement ; but fatal error came under its holy gar-
ments.
First, as a corollary of this preaching of the Atone-
ment only, subjective faith in the Atoning Blood, —
i. e., a tearful interior apprehension by the sinner that
Christ died for him personally on the Cross, was urged
* The London " Church Review."
276 Renaissance of Catholicity in
universally, perpetually, and to all practical intents
exclusively on the acceptance of man. Without this
faith he had nothing j with it he had all. This could
not, and did not fail to obscure, to greater or less de-
gree, the necessity of good works. Nightly self-exam-
ination as to what, precisely, one's acts and thoughts
and words had been each day, sank into logical unim-
portance and finally into neglect. The general impres-
sion that one was a sinner, took the place of knowledge
of one's particular sins ; acknowledgment and confes-
sion that one was a sinner, took the place of acknowl-
edgment and confession of one's sins. Absolution of
one's sins became logically unnecessary; care over the
soul, sick with definite sins, attacked with definite temp-
tations, and the nursing and training of the sin-sick
soul ceased with the fall of the lesser Sacrament of Ab-
solution j carelessness of watch over acts and words
and thoughts, grew to greater or less extent, until at
last we have the wide-spread result in fearful national
statistics.
Then again, it was man's spirit alone that could
exercise this required interior apprehension and this
application of the Atonement to one's self. Hence
the spirit came to be all in all in the matter of salva-
tion, and the body nothing, as either an aid or a hin
The Anglican Communion. 277
drance, in making one's calling and election sure. It
is the old story of an excess of one truth, unmodified
and unrestrained by another, resulting in error. A
thousand salutary restraints of the body, therefore,
disappeared. The eye, the ear, the hand, the tongue
were neglected. Fasting fell into desuetude j for the
body had little or nothing to do with that " Spiritual "
religion which was summed up in merely apprehend-
ing Christ as one's Saviour, and so being saved. St.
Paul's " I keep my body under and bring it into sub-
jection," " in watchings often, in fastings often," " lest
when I have preached to others, I myself should be a
castaway," grew to be a dead letter. Christ's " This
kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting," was as
though He had never said it.
Furthermore, what was called " spiritual worship "
took the place of the worship of the whole man in
body and soul. Forms, liturgies and the Visible
Church disappeared ; for matter had been decon-
secrated ; churches fell into decay and squalor ; and
the worship of Almighty God was made cold and
gloomy to the heart of child and man, and contempti-
ble in the eyes of the world. Families became pray-
erless. Time was, when nobody thought of going to
bed at night or rising in the morning without saying
278 Renaissance of Catholicity in
his prayers. Now, not merely thousands but millions
in England, America and Germany, go prayerless to
bed, and rise in the morning and enter prayerless
upon a new day. With decay of worship came, as a
matter of course, decay of godliness, with all its atten-
dant evils ; the absence of the poor from God's house,
the neglect of the poor, their ignorance and practical
heathenism.
Then again, with faith in the Atoning Cross the soli-
tary thing needful, a mere natural memory of the past
tragedy on Calvary took the place of the supernatural
and perpetually recurring Sacrifice of the Altar, in
which is presented, in a Consecration Prayer addressed
to Almighty God (and not in a mere instruction to
man) a Memorial to God the Father. " Wherefore with
these Thy Holy Gifts which we offer unto Thee, we
do make here before Thy Divine Majesty^ the Memo-
rial Thy Son hath commanded us to make." The five
lesser Sacraments fell out entirely from Christianity j
and the whole character of Sunday assemblages
changed. Instead of presenting to the world a sol-
emn, Sacrificial and Sacramental worship offered to
Almighty God, they presented the aspect of a congre-
gation seated before a pulpit from which the all-suffi
cient Justification by faith in the Atonement was sol
The Anglican Communion. 279
emnly and impressively urged. As a logical conse-
quence, sermons increased in number, and men began
to abolish the only service the Lord had especially
commanded ; Eucharists sank from daily to weekly,
from weekly to monthly, from monthly to quarterly,
from quarterly, in some cases to yearly or less seldom,
and with the Friends they disappeared entirely. Men
love Christ, and will always crowd to Him when He
comes ; but with the Real Presence of Christ ban-
ished from the Altar, and with the disappearance of
the Altar itself, Sunday assemblages grew thinner ex-
cept under the electrical power of the popular
preacher, always a rare personage. Daily prayer
ceased ; and churches were closed six days out of the
seven. With the fall of prayers, public and private,
and of the Sacrament of the Altar, the Sacrament of
Baptism fell also. Time was, when every child was
of course baptised. From a holy and tremendous
thing, Baptism, though solemnly commanded by God,
fell logically in the estimation of the masses into a
mere form by no means of great importance. A com-
paratively non -church-going community became, to a
large extent, not only a prayerless community but also
one thoughtless of religious subjects and careless of
religious truth. And then followed the consequences :
280 Renaissance of Catholicity in
worldliness, the hasting to be rich, extravagance,
gambling, defalcations, bribery, divorces, infanticide
and foeticide ; Roman Catholics left mainly to popu-
late the country with their children, through our great
Herodian sin.
Again, if a man was saved when he could at last
by an interior process apprehend the Saviour as dying
on the Cross for him personally, what more was
needed ? Saved is saved ; full is full. The distinc-
tion, therefore, between the precepts for all and the
counsels for the few who can bear them, disappeared
from the public apprehension. Efforts, therefore, after
any higher life by rare souls ceased ; and, as a matter
of course, Sisterhoods and Brotherhoods, which ars
built upon that distinction, became an impertinence,
and at last an offence. Hence that ethereal phenome-
non in the soul, rare sanctity, as distinguished from
eminent moral goodness, disappeared. With the
disappearance of the skilled religious, as practical
agents, as the right and left arms of the Church, and
with that training and life of theirs abolished which
makes them skilled, a crude and mercenary, a compara-
tively ineffective, expensive and malapert treatment o/
misery, poverty, illness and ignorance followed.
The Anglican Communion. 281
II. Bui time forbids that we should go on and
trace all the steps of disaster and decay leading out
from a false view of the Incarnation.
Nay, there were other and great reasons for the
Son of God becoming man than that He might merely
possess a human body in which to be crucified, and
then leave a Bible and a pulpit behind Him. And
the object of the Catholic movement, from its first
phase in 1833 to its last to-day, is to re-preach and to
restore, in all its practical applications and conse-
quences, the true doctrine of the Incarnation. Having
considered the process of decay, let us now consider
some of the steps in the process of reconstruction.
Many excellent people suppose that this great
Catholic movement begins and ends in Ritualism.
Ritual is not, indeed, utterly unimportant. As the
stars and stripes stood, in the late war, as a symbol
of the great principles of nationality and union, so that
if any one hauled them down he was to be " shot on
the spot," so analogously is it with Ritual. But al-
though it is of less importance than other things in the
movement, permit me first to say a word or two on
Ritual, since it is that part of the movement which is
most conspicuous to the world, and has led the world to
misunderstand and belittle the great movement itsel£
282 Renaissance of Catholicity in
It is to be remembered that the true doctrine of
the Incarnation involves many things j more than can
now be enumerated. But one of those things is this,
namely : the Incarnation, — the Son of God descending
and taking to Himself man's nature, with human body
and soul subsisting, — means, not only the reconsecra-
tion of the soul, but also the reconsecration both of
the body and of all matter to the service and glory of
God. That on Mount Tabor the Flesh of the Lord
was transfigured we readily remember j but it is an
amazing thought that the very earthly garments He
wore were also transfigured. As, then, one result of
the Incarnation was the reconsecration both of the
body and of all matter to the service and glory of
God, it was logically inevitable, " that this great
Catholic movement should make a place in itself
somewhere for external Ritual." And Ritual has
been defended by Catholics when it has been at-
tacked, it has been more firmly insisted on when ridi-
culed, because they cannot permit the capture of any
outwork in the unbroken circle of those defences
which guard the vital central doctrine of the Incarna-
tion. The old yellow and white-wash, which Puritan-
ism applied to church walls, is therefore scraped off ;
churches are restored ; Altars are set up and glorified
The Anglican Communion. 283
with lights and embroidery and gold, with spotless
linen, the flower, the garnet and the emerald ; vest-
ments are worn \ congregations kneel ; and, in gen-
eral, the public worship of God is made more glorious
and grand by song and procession and adoration j for
in the Incarnation the body of man is reconsecrated
as a creature of God to the glory of its Maker.
" Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God j" " Vouch-
safe to direct, sanctify and govern " (not only our
hearts, but) " our bodies M (also) " in the ways of Thy
Laws."
But there is also involved in the re-preaching of the
Incarnation what is of more importance : i. e. the re-
appearance and the nurture of that Supernatural and
Sacramental phenomenon, the Inner Spiritual Life of
the Soul. When this Spiritual life is well developed,
we have something higher than mere goodness, and
different in quality. We have Sainthood. Sainthood
does not pause at eminent morality, but taking it for
its starting point goes on to something more ethereal.
What is this Spiritual life ? It is the union within
each man of the Divine Life with the human. That
union began in the God-Man, and is imparted to each
of us through Baptism. That is to say, Almighty
God, having in the Incarnation imparted the Divine
284 Renaissance of Catholicity in
Nature to the Human, so that the two should be one
in the Person of Christ, extends the process by which
the Divine Nature is incarnated, by planting a germ of
that Christ-nature in each other human soul at Bap-
tism ; so that Christ becomes " one flesh " not only in
an abstract sense with mankind, but concretely with
each human being, to whom at first He gave His nature
in germ, and then afterwards feeds it with His Body
and Blood. Thus His Body Natural grows out and
becomes His Body Mystical, the Church. This germ,
entering into the Soul and becoming one with it,
becomes its divine and Supernatural life. Without it
the soul possesses only its natural and moral life, and
is therefore dead supernaturally.
Now this spiritual life is, I say, to be imparted after
birth to the soul. It is to be superadded to the moral
life which we get from Adam. It is given by God in
Baptism. Hence there is involved in the re-preaching
of the Incarnation a revival also of the Sacrament of
Baptism as a tremendous supernatural reality, as an
agent through which God works on earth.
This sacramental, supernatural life is afterwards to
be strengthened, nurtured, developed ; otherwise it will
remain in its mere germ state, to all practical intents
useless. Hence there is involved in the re-preaching
The Anglican Communion. 285
of the Incarnation the revival of the other Sacra-
ments, the five lesser as well as the two greater. For,
first, this spiritual life must be strengthened ; hence
more care by Catholics in the matter of Confirmation.
It must also be fed with appropriate Spiritual food j
hence the Catholic movement calls back the Blessed
Sacrament of the Altar from yearly celebrations to
monthly, to weekly, to daily.
But you may ask, How happens it that the Sacra-
ment of Absolution is revived, and the rubric in the
English Prayer Book concerning confession is obeyed
once more, instead of remaining a dead letter ? The
answer is as follows : It is the distinguishing feature
and consummate blessing of the Incarnation, with its
necessary Sacramental System, that it brings God into
actual contact with man. This contact occurred first
in the God-Man j and is extended to us through the
Sacraments. It is in the Sacraments that we touch
God. It is in Baptism that the Divine germ passes
into incorporation with the Soul. It is in Communion
that real contact between Christ and the Soul takes
place, so that each shall not only touch, but dwell in
the other. It is in Confirmation that the Holy Ghost
is in contact with the Soul. So, too, there is the con
tact between God and the Soul in the Sacrament of
286 Renaissance of Catholicity in
Absolution. Hence confession in that Sacrament is
perceived to be the true, direct and immediate con-
fession to God, which Christianity and Chriitianity
only vouchsafes ; while confession in the closet, in-
stead of being the direct, is after all that indirect and
distant mode of confession to God, which the heathen
and the infidel could always have used, and which the
non-christian can use to-day j it is not distinctively
Christian. It is the way of natural religion. But
nay, think we, Christianity vouchsafes some higher
and better and more immediate and holier privilege
than Natural Religion or heathenism could boast. It
is a layman's question j no one has a right to compel
any one to confess \ and if a man wishes to confess,
no one has a right to deprive him of his right. And
the laymen in England and America, in increasing
thousands, are rising and demanding their right to
confess (as they feel) directly to God in His Sacra-
ment of Absolution, in which He vouchsafes contact
with man ; and to receive absolution directly from God
in that Sacrament through the hands of their Priests.
We go to Penance, not in order to confess our sins to
a man ; but rather do we go to confess our sins in
a Holy Sacrament to God.
Again, this Sacramental life must be trained
The Anglican Communion. 287
Merely preaching to it may instruct, and please, but
it does not train, assist, guide and discipline it in the
use of its faculties. The little child, the apprentice,
needs to be trained and helped, not simply to be
talked to. The spiritual life is awkward at first. How
to resist different kinds of temptations, how to accquire
the use of its newly-given and germinal faculties, how
to overcome different sins and shades and combina-
tions of sins, is not known to it by instinct. The
Christian life has been called by great Saints a diffi-
cult trade to learn ; with labor, in much awkwardness
at first, and with persistent care and patience. Now the
detection of Spiritual diseases and their combinations,
and the adjustment to each disease of its various
remedies and combination of remedies, are not known
to the soul by instinct ; a thousand mistakes have
been made in the past eighteen centuries in these re-
spects, and, having been discovered to be mistakes,
need not be made again. It is barbarism for each
generation, and for each man, ignoring the past, to
begin all over again where the previous generation
began, in the treatment of his spiritual case. It were
like abolishing the medical profession and medical
libraries, and each man in his ignorance and unskill-
fulness treating himself when sick physically. Hence
288 Renaissance of Catholicity in
there is further involved in the re-preaching of the In
carnation, that revival of the whole science of Ascetic
and Moral Theology which the Catholic movement is
effecting j a department of theology which treats of the
cure of sin and spiritual disease.
Hence, too, there follows a restoration of the
clergy from their position as mere preachers and so- ,
cial visitors, to their Apostolic and Catholic position
as Priests, as trainers and physicians of the Spiritual
life. There follows also a revival of the sharp dis-
tinction between clergy and laity, and of the tender
relationship of clerical Fatherhood and lay Sonship,
with that perfect confidence between confessor and
penitent which their mutual silence alone could give \
a silence as deep as that of the interstellar spaces.
The Catholic Church is one continuous, visible, or-
ganic Body, the invisible Soul of Which is the God-
Man, Christ. If Christ is not in and one with the
Catholic Church, as a soul is in and one with its
body, then the Church is a dead body. But if Christ
is literally on earth in His Body Mystical, the Church,
to suppose that He cannot speak the word of pardon
to the kneeling, repentant, confessing sinner, is tc
suppose that Christ is, as to one of the organs of His
Body Mystical and Visible, stricken with paralysis.
The Anglican Communion. 289
Involved in all the above is necessarily the revival
also of daily self-examination, of counsel and direc-
tion, of the strengthening aid of specific penances,
each appropriate to its end in the soul. Thus the
Catholic movement centres all its efforts and subor-
dinates all its means, external and internal, upon the
inner divine life of the soul, to rectify and to build it
up in true sanctity, in humility, meekness, charity,
patience and purity. All this, too, accounts for the
missions which Catholics preach to the careless and
the sinner ; and for the retreats they hold for clergy,
for merchants, for women, for clerks, for the laboring
man \ that the earnest soul may take account of itself
and deepen its spiritual life.
Again, if sins are the sickness and death of the
spiritual life, they come through temptation ; and
temptations reach the soul through the body. The
senses are open doors through which they enter.
Hence the re-preaching of the Incarnation involves a
restoration again of the restraint of the body, which is
another phenomenon of the movement. The eye, the
ear, the tongue, the touch, the taste, must be guarded,
restrained and trained ; the feet, that they walk not to
sin ; the hands, that they search not for sin. This
involves also the revival of fasting, and indeed of all
13
290 Renaissance of Catholicity in
other points of asceticism which Catholicity urges.
Crucify thyself, crucify thyself; "If thou wouldst in-
deed see clearly," she cries, "pluck out thine eyes
and become blind. If thou wouldst hear well, be
deaf. If thou wouldst speak well, be dumb. If thou
wouldst walk well, cut off thy feet. If thou wouldst
love well, hate thyself. If thou wouldst work well,
cut off thy hands. If thou wouldst live well, make
thyself die. If thou wouldst gain, learn to lose. If
thou wouldst be rich, become poor. If thou wouldst
live in pleasure, afflict thyself. If thou wouldst be
secure, have perpetual fear. If thou wouldst be hon-
ored, despise thyself and honor those who despise
thee. If thou wouldst be at rest, work."
Again, if it follows from and is involved in the
doctrine of the Incarnation that the Holy Sacraments
are the medicine and the strengthening food of the
Spiritual life, it equally follows that prayer is the very
breath of its existence. Catholicity, therefore, un-
looses the tongue of prayer once more. The Confra-
ternity of the Blessed Sacrament and other Confrater-
nities are formed for combined prayer ; churches are '
re-opened on week-days for Daily Morning and Eve-
ning Prayer and for private prayer and meditation.
This accounts, too, for the fact that Catholicity has
The Anglican Communion. 291
flooded our church bookstores with hundreds of new
books of sweetest and most varied devotions ; treasu-
ries, litanies, chaplets, crowns, and rosaries of prayer
follow each other in quick profusion. This, too, ac-
counts for the further phenomenon of the setting up
again of the lost arts of mental prayer, of Meditation,
and of Contemplation, of Spiritual Communion, of
recollection, and of the application of the senses to
spiritual objects. For while by nature the senses, and
the soul's four faculties of memory, understanding, affec
tions, and will, are ever busying themselves on earthly
things and themes, and so taking an earthly hue and
fabric, Catholicity teaches not only the four faculties
but even the senses also to apply themselves to spir-
itual objects ; to Christ, His words, works, birth,
death, and all His other mysteries ; in order that the
soul, the senses, the whole man, indeed, may become,
so to speak, steeped and saturated with the things of
spirit and of Heaven, and not be left taking the hue
and fabric of the things only of earth and of time.
Who ever, in the Georgian Era, heard of such things
as Scientific Meditation, Spiritual Communion and
the application of the senses to spirit? Verily the
last half of the nineteenth century is witnessing a reli-
gious revolution, destined to add once more to the
292 Renaissance of Catholicity in
Kalendar of the Saints. With the restoration of fast-
ing and prayer follows of course the observance of
Fridays, Lent, the Ember days, and indeed of the
whole Kalendar. Again are the English and other
Saints thought of, and their lives lifted out of forget-
ful ness. No longer can it be said, our Mother, the
Church, sorrowfully buries Her illustrious children,
and we, their brothers, make haste to cast away all
tender mementoes of them, and take pride in obliter-
ating even their names and memories.
Again, if the Holy Sacraments are the medicine
and food of the spiritual life and prayer the very
breath of its existence, it equally follows that practi-
cal works, in all the fourteen spiritual and corporal
deeds of mercy, are its exercise, absolutely necessary
to its vigor and health. I know that this suggests at
once those other phenomena of the movement, not
only the revival of Sisterhoods and Brotherhoods, but
also the new-born energy with which the movement
has planted its Churches in the purlieus of cities ;
organized workingmen's guilds, clubs and reading
rooms, convalescent homes, creches, indeed the hun-
dred and one new appliances of practical good which
have sprung up under the magic wand of — "mere
Ritualism and nonsense."
The Anglican Communion. 293
But a word, at least, in passing, on the occult
current that has led out from the Incarnation into all
this practical energy among the poor and suffering and
ignorant. The moment the true doctrine of the In-
carnation, with its spiritual life and its Sacraments,
rises before the mind, that moment there springs up
again, by necessity, from its fallen estate the distinc-
tion between precepts and counsels, which are the
rules of the spiritual life, and which divide it into its
two departments, the Religious life, namely, of the
Sister and the Brother, and the secular life of the
ordinary Christian who lives in the world. And then,
with communities of Religious restored to the Church,
something else of the greatest value follows and is
restored also. For, by an inevitable process, too
long to describe now, a spiritual stamina and sus-
tained power are accumulated in the Sisters and
Brothers, and a corresponding new-born practical
skill in the exercise of the works of mercy is acquired
by them \ a stamina and skill which do not confine
themselves to the Sisterhoods and Brotherhoods, but
which, partly through the instruction and example of
the Regulars and partly by a use of the same new
spiritual causes that have given them this skill and
stamina, flow down to some extent and spread
294 Renaissance of Catholicity in
Ihrough the secular part of the Church also. So that
both Regulars and Seculars (or the Trained and the
Untrained), rousing with a new energy and hope, go
forth hand in hand to the work among the poor, the
Ignorant and the afflicted, with that aptitude, faculty,
Sustained power, and self-sacrificing spirit, with that
bve of God and of man, and with that marvellous
effectiveness, which have marked the movement more
and more as time advances, and to which the Church
had been a stranger for over two centuries. Behold
earnest Bishops beginning to be desirous of having
Sisters work in their dioceses. Verily there is a
change since that time when one of the earliest of our
Sisters entered St. Alban's Church, Holborn, covered
from bonnet to the skirts of her dress with the spittle
of the mob.
Much more might be said. The Sacrificial aspect
of the Blessed Eucharist ; the charity of prayers for
the dead which is due from the living, and the Christian
fine arts have not been forgotten j but this discourse
already taxes the patience by its length. Nor is the
adoration paid by Catholics to Our Blessed Lord
present in His Holy Sacrament forgotten. I may
visit a person's library for the purpose of procuring a
book ; but, though I did not go merely for wishing
The Anglican Communion. 295
him the compliments of the day, I should nevertheless
be deemed guilty of a great discourtesy should I
not salute him in the customary manner on entering.
And so the Catholic feels, that even though he ap-
proaches the Lord for the purpose of receiving the in-
estimable bounty of His Body and Blood, to do so
without offering incidentally that solemn, adoring
salutation which is due from the creature to his God,
would be, to say the least, not the highest instinct of
tenderness, of recollection, and of humility. John
Keble has said that it seems to him as impossible for
Faith, as it beholds Christ in the Blessed Eucharist,
to keep from adoring Him, as it is for a mother to
help loving her child when she contemplates it in its
cradle.
But enough has been hinted and suggested, I trust,
to show you, that, of all the phenomena of this great
revival, not one is fortuitous, not one is erratic, but
all grow logically and have come irresistibly out of
the re-preaching of the Early Church doctrine of the
Incarnation ; not even excepting the translation into
English of the works of the Early Fathers, that every
man may read and see for himself that the Catholic
revival is nothing other than the re-birth and re-pre-
sentation in its integrity of Early Church and Apos
296 The Anglican Communion.
tolic Catholic Christianity, which has been in some
vital respects fearfully contorted by Rome, and i»
others destroyed by Protestantism.
The End.
RETURN TO the circulation desk of any
University of California Library
or to the
NORTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY
Bldg. 400, Richmond Field Station
University of California
Richmond, CA 94804-4698
ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS
• 2-month loans may be renewed by calling
(510)642-6753
• 1-year loans may be recharged by bringing
books to NRLF
• Renewals and recharges may be made 4
days prior to due date.
DUE AS STAMPED BELOW
UUL 1 6 2002
12.000(11/95)
U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES
C0D31fl 43(DS
